Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses
Headnote
The Metamorphoses is Ovid’s masterpiece and the great change of scale in his career: fifteen books of hexameter — the meter of epic — given over not to a single hero but to transformation itself. Ovid calls it a carmen perpetuum, a “continuous song,” and promises to lead it from the world’s first origin down to his own day. What follows is some two hundred and fifty metamorphosis stories, drawn from Greek and Roman myth and dovetailed one into the next so that the poem never quite stops: a god’s love opens onto a girl’s flight, her flight onto her freezing into a tree, the tree onto the next tale. The unifying thread is change — of bodies into beasts, stones, rivers, stars, and flowers — but beneath it runs a continuous meditation on desire, power, art, and the precariousness of the human form. The whole sweeps from Creation to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar and a closing prayer for Augustus, so that cosmic history and Roman history are made one arc. The voice is the same quick, witty, pictorially exact Ovid of the elegies, but the couplet’s epigram now serves narrative momentum and spectacle: the arrested gesture, the swift transformation, the pathos heightened or undercut by a sudden image.
Book 1. The first book lays the poem’s foundation and sets its method. It opens with the proem and a cosmogony — Chaos resolved by a god into the ordered elements, the zones of earth and sky, and the making of man, “a face held high” to look at the stars. Then the four ages of the world decline from Gold to Iron, Justice flees the earth, and the Giants assault heaven. Their crime prompts the first of the poem’s many divine councils: Jupiter, recalling the cannibal feast of the Arcadian tyrant Lycaon (whom he turns into a wolf), resolves to destroy mankind, and does so in a great Flood. From the deluge two righteous survivors, Deucalion and Pyrrha, refound the human race by casting stones — “the bones of their great mother” — behind them. The earth then breeds new creatures, among them the serpent Python, slain by Apollo. The book closes with its first two love-and- metamorphosis tales, both turning on flight and transformation: Apollo and Daphne, where the god, humbled by Cupid’s arrow, pursues the nymph until she becomes the laurel; and the long story of Io, loved by Jupiter, changed into a heifer, guarded by the hundred-eyed Argus (whom Mercury lulls with the tale of Pan and Syrinx and then kills), driven mad by Juno across the world, and at last restored in Egypt as the goddess Isis. A coda introduces her descendant Epaphus and his rival Phaethon, whose quest for the Sun, his father, will open Book 2.
Book 2. The second book opens on the great set-piece of the Phaethon story. The boy climbs to the jeweled palace of the Sun, wins from his father an unbreakable oath sworn by the Styx, and against every warning demands to drive the solar chariot for a day. The team, feeling the light load, bolts from the track; terrified by the monstrous zodiac and losing the reins, Phaethon sets the whole world ablaze — Ovid’s bravura catalogue of burning mountains and boiling rivers, the scorching of Ethiopia, the drying of the Nile. Earth herself pleads, and Jupiter strikes the boy down with a thunderbolt; he falls into the Eridanus, is buried by the Naiads, and is mourned into metamorphosis by his sisters the Heliades (turned to amber-weeping poplars) and his kinsman Cycnus (turned to a swan). The book then turns to a chain of tales of divine desire and punishment, most of them set in motion by talk and tale-telling. Jupiter rapes the huntress Callisto in Diana’s own shape; Diana expels her, Juno turns her to a bear, and Jupiter sets mother and son (Arcas) among the stars as the Bears — at which Juno begs Ocean to bar them from his waters. A white raven, flying to inform Apollo of Coronis’s infidelity, is warned off by the crow, who tells how she was demoted for tale-bearing and recounts the daughters of Cecrops and the basket of Ericthonius; the raven tells anyway, Apollo kills Coronis in a rage, repents too late, blackens the raven, and rescues the infant Aesculapius for Chiron to rear. Chiron’s prophetic daughter Ocyrhoe foretells the fates of Aesculapius and her father and is changed into a mare. Mercury then steals Apollo’s cattle and petrifies the betrayer Battus; flying over Athens he falls in love with Herse, but her sister Aglauros — who had earlier opened Minerva’s basket — demands gold and bars his way. Minerva sends Envy, drawn in a famous portrait of the wasting, viper-eating hag, to poison Aglauros, who pines and hardens into dark stone. The book closes, as it began, with Jupiter in disguise: as a beautiful snow-white bull he coaxes Europa onto his back and carries her off across the sea — a seduction whose calm luxuriance answers the violent spectacle of Phaethon’s fire.
Book 3. The third book turns from the gods’ loves to a single mortal house — the line of Cadmus at Thebes — and follows it through a chain of catastrophes bound together by the recurring motifs of sight, knowledge, and the new god Bacchus. It opens with the founding of Thebes: Cadmus, sent to find the stolen Europa and forbidden to return, follows Apollo’s heifer to the site, kills the great serpent of Mars that destroys his men, and, on Pallas’s instruction, sows its teeth — from which armed men spring and cut one another down until five remain to help raise the city. A disembodied voice warns him that he too will one day be a serpent, the first of the book’s many oracles that come true. Then the disasters of his descendants begin. His grandson Actaeon, stumbling by mischance upon Diana bathing, is changed into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds, whom Ovid names in a long catalogue while his companions, unknowing, cheer the kill. Juno, her old grudge against the house inflamed, disguises herself as Semele’s nurse and goads the girl into demanding that Jupiter come to her in his full celestial glory; she is consumed by his lightning, and the unborn Bacchus is rescued and sewn into his father’s thigh to be born a second time. An interlude gives the seer Tiresias — once turned from man to woman and back, and so the judge of a marital jest between Jupiter and Juno — who is blinded by the goddess but granted prophecy in recompense. His first proven oracle introduces the book’s central tale: Narcissus, the beautiful, unmovable youth who will live long only if he never knows himself. The nymph Echo, reduced by Juno to an echoing voice, loves and is spurned by him and wastes to a sound among the rocks; Narcissus, cursed by a scorned suitor and Nemesis, falls in love with his own reflection at a still pool, recognizes the cruel truth too late — iste ego sum, “that one is I” — and dies gazing, leaving the flower that bears his name. The book closes by fulfilling Tiresias’s last prophecy: Pentheus, Cadmus’s grandson and king, scorns the rites of his cousin Bacchus, and his interrogation of the captive Acoetes yields the inset tale of the Tyrrhenian pirates who tried to kidnap the disguised god and were turned, leaping, into dolphins. Defying the warning, Pentheus climbs Cithaeron to spy on the Bacchic revels and is taken for a boar by his own frenzied mother Agave and her sisters, who tear him limb from limb — a domestic sparagmos that answers Actaeon’s and seals the destruction of the founder’s house.
Book 4. The fourth book frames its tales inside a tale: the three daughters of Minyas, refusing the rites of Bacchus, stay home at their looms and pass the festival telling stories — so that the book’s transformations come to us as women’s work-songs before the god’s vengeance falls on the tellers. The first sister gives the most famous of all, Pyramus and Thisbe: the Babylonian lovers who speak through a crack in the shared wall, meet by night at the tomb of Ninus, and die one after the other by a single sword through a chain of mischance, staining the mulberry’s fruit forever dark. Leuconoe tells of the Sun — how he first betrayed the adultery of Mars and Venus to Vulcan, who caught the lovers in an unbreakable net before the laughing gods, and how Venus avenged the informing by striking the Sun himself with love for the mortal Leucothoe; the jealous nymph Clytie betrays the affair, Leucothoe is buried alive and becomes a frankincense shrub, and Clytie pines away into the heliotrope that still turns to follow the Sun. Alcithoe then tells how the Carian spring of Salmacis got its enervating power: the idle nymph desires the boy Hermaphroditus, son of Mercury and Venus, and clinging to him in her pool prays never to be parted from him — and the gods, taking her at her word, fuse the two into a single two-sexed being, who curses the water to unman all who enter it. The frame then closes violently: the god’s power floods the house with phantom drums and vines, and the three weavers are turned into bats. From here the book passes to Juno’s vengeance on the house of Cadmus. Galled that Bacchus is honored at Thebes and that his aunt Ino shares the glory, Juno descends to the underworld — Ovid’s tour of the Stygian city and its famous damned, Tityos and Tantalus and Sisyphus and Ixion and the daughters of Belus — and sets the Fury Tisiphone on the family; infected with hellish madness, Athamas dashes his son Learchus on a rock, and Ino leaps into the sea with the infant Melicerta, the two becoming the sea-gods Leucothea and Palaemon while their mourning companions are turned to stone and seabirds. Cadmus himself, broken by his house’s ruin and wandering to Illyria, recalls the serpent he once killed and prays to become a serpent; he and Harmonia are changed together and creep away as gentle snakes. The book’s last and longest movement opens the saga of Perseus, born of Danae and the golden rain: flying home with the Gorgon’s head, whose blood breeds the snakes of Libya, he reaches the realm of Atlas and, refused hospitality, turns the giant into the sky-bearing mountain; coming on the Ethiopian princess Andromeda chained to a rock as a sacrifice, he bargains for her hand, kills the sea-monster, and at the wedding feast tells how he stole the single eye of the Graeae, beheaded the sleeping Medusa by her reflection, and why she alone of the Gorgons wore serpents for hair — a story that runs on, unbroken, into Book 5.
Contents
My spirit moves me to tell of forms changed into new
bodies. Gods, breathe upon my undertakings — for you changed those too —
and from the world’s first origin
draw down a continuous song to my own times.
bodies. Gods, breathe upon my undertakings — for you changed those too —
and from the world’s first origin
draw down a continuous song to my own times.
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas) adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!
Before the sea and the lands and the sky that covers all,
nature wore one face across the whole round world —
men called it Chaos: a raw and undivided mass,
nothing but an inert weight, the heaped-together,
discordant seeds of things not well joined.
No Titan yet offered light to the world,
nor did Phoebe by growing renew her crescent horns,
nor did the earth hang balanced on her own weight
in the surrounding air, nor had Amphitrite stretched
her arms along the long margin of the lands.
And though earth and sea and air were present there,
the earth could not be stood on, the wave could not be swum,
the air was starved of light; nothing kept its own shape,
and each thing blocked the others, since in one body
cold fought with hot, the wet with the dry,
the soft with the hard, the weightless with what has weight.
A god, and kindlier nature, settled this strife.
For he cut the lands from the sky and the seas from the lands,
and parted the clear heaven from the thick air.
When he had unwound these and freed them from the blind heap,
he bound them, parted by place, in harmonious peace.
The fiery weightless force of the vaulted sky
flashed up and made itself a place in the highest citadel;
nearest to it is air, in lightness and in place;
denser than these, earth drew the heavy elements down
and was pressed by its own weight; the encircling water
took the last place and locked in the solid globe.
So when that god — whichever of them it was —
had carved the heaped mass and pressed it, carved, into members,
first he rolled the earth, that it might not be unequal
on any side, into the shape of a great globe.
Then he bade the seas spread out and swell at the rushing winds
and ring the shores of the encircled earth;
he added springs and measureless pools and lakes,
and bound the down-sloping rivers with winding banks —
which, set in different places, are partly swallowed by the earth itself,
partly reach the sea, and, received in a plain
of freer water, beat shores instead of banks.
He bade the plains stretch out, the valleys sink,
the woods be clothed in leaves, the stony mountains rise.
And as two zones cut the sky on the right and as many
on the left, and a fifth is hotter than these,
so the god’s care marked off the enclosed mass
by the same number, and as many regions are stamped on the earth.
Of these the middle is unlivable for heat;
deep snow covers two; between each pair he set as many
and gave them a temperate blend, flame mixed with cold.
Above these hangs the air, which is heavier than fire
by just so much as water’s weight is lighter than earth’s.
There he bade the mists, there the clouds take their stand,
and the thunder that would shake the minds of men,
and the winds that make the lightning-flashes with their bolts.
To these too the world’s maker did not grant the air
to hold at random; even now they are barely withstood —
though each rules his own blasts in a separate tract —
from tearing the world apart: so great is the brothers’ discord.
Eurus withdrew to the Dawn and the Nabataean realms,
to Persia and the ridges laid under the morning rays;
the evening and the shores that grow warm at the setting sun
are nearest to Zephyr; Scythia and the seven stars of the Wain
shuddering Boreas invaded; the opposite land
grows wet with ceaseless clouds and rain from Auster.
Above these he set the clear aether, free of weight,
holding nothing of earthly dregs.
Scarcely had he fenced off all things within fixed bounds
when the stars, long pressed down in blind darkness,
began to blaze out across the whole sky.
And lest any region be bereft of its own creatures,
the stars and the forms of the gods hold the floor of heaven,
the waves fell to the glittering fish to live in,
earth took the wild beasts, the restless air the birds.
A creature holier than these, more able to hold a lofty mind,
was still wanting, one that could master the rest:
man was born — whether that maker of things shaped him
from divine seed, the source of a better world,
or whether the new-made earth, lately divided from the high
aether, still kept the seeds of its kindred sky.
This earth, mixed with rainwater, the son of Iapetus
molded into the image of the gods who govern all,
and while the other creatures look down, bent, at the ground,
he gave man a face held high and bade him see the sky
and lift his upright gaze to the stars.
So the earth, that lately had been raw and shapeless,
was changed and put on the unknown forms of men.
nature wore one face across the whole round world —
men called it Chaos: a raw and undivided mass,
nothing but an inert weight, the heaped-together,
discordant seeds of things not well joined.
No Titan yet offered light to the world,
nor did Phoebe by growing renew her crescent horns,
nor did the earth hang balanced on her own weight
in the surrounding air, nor had Amphitrite stretched
her arms along the long margin of the lands.
And though earth and sea and air were present there,
the earth could not be stood on, the wave could not be swum,
the air was starved of light; nothing kept its own shape,
and each thing blocked the others, since in one body
cold fought with hot, the wet with the dry,
the soft with the hard, the weightless with what has weight.
A god, and kindlier nature, settled this strife.
For he cut the lands from the sky and the seas from the lands,
and parted the clear heaven from the thick air.
When he had unwound these and freed them from the blind heap,
he bound them, parted by place, in harmonious peace.
The fiery weightless force of the vaulted sky
flashed up and made itself a place in the highest citadel;
nearest to it is air, in lightness and in place;
denser than these, earth drew the heavy elements down
and was pressed by its own weight; the encircling water
took the last place and locked in the solid globe.
So when that god — whichever of them it was —
had carved the heaped mass and pressed it, carved, into members,
first he rolled the earth, that it might not be unequal
on any side, into the shape of a great globe.
Then he bade the seas spread out and swell at the rushing winds
and ring the shores of the encircled earth;
he added springs and measureless pools and lakes,
and bound the down-sloping rivers with winding banks —
which, set in different places, are partly swallowed by the earth itself,
partly reach the sea, and, received in a plain
of freer water, beat shores instead of banks.
He bade the plains stretch out, the valleys sink,
the woods be clothed in leaves, the stony mountains rise.
And as two zones cut the sky on the right and as many
on the left, and a fifth is hotter than these,
so the god’s care marked off the enclosed mass
by the same number, and as many regions are stamped on the earth.
Of these the middle is unlivable for heat;
deep snow covers two; between each pair he set as many
and gave them a temperate blend, flame mixed with cold.
Above these hangs the air, which is heavier than fire
by just so much as water’s weight is lighter than earth’s.
There he bade the mists, there the clouds take their stand,
and the thunder that would shake the minds of men,
and the winds that make the lightning-flashes with their bolts.
To these too the world’s maker did not grant the air
to hold at random; even now they are barely withstood —
though each rules his own blasts in a separate tract —
from tearing the world apart: so great is the brothers’ discord.
Eurus withdrew to the Dawn and the Nabataean realms,
to Persia and the ridges laid under the morning rays;
the evening and the shores that grow warm at the setting sun
are nearest to Zephyr; Scythia and the seven stars of the Wain
shuddering Boreas invaded; the opposite land
grows wet with ceaseless clouds and rain from Auster.
Above these he set the clear aether, free of weight,
holding nothing of earthly dregs.
Scarcely had he fenced off all things within fixed bounds
when the stars, long pressed down in blind darkness,
began to blaze out across the whole sky.
And lest any region be bereft of its own creatures,
the stars and the forms of the gods hold the floor of heaven,
the waves fell to the glittering fish to live in,
earth took the wild beasts, the restless air the birds.
A creature holier than these, more able to hold a lofty mind,
was still wanting, one that could master the rest:
man was born — whether that maker of things shaped him
from divine seed, the source of a better world,
or whether the new-made earth, lately divided from the high
aether, still kept the seeds of its kindred sky.
This earth, mixed with rainwater, the son of Iapetus
molded into the image of the gods who govern all,
and while the other creatures look down, bent, at the ground,
he gave man a face held high and bade him see the sky
and lift his upright gaze to the stars.
So the earth, that lately had been raw and shapeless,
was changed and put on the unknown forms of men.
Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe, quem dixere chaos: rudis indigestaque moles nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem non bene iunctarum discordia semina rerum. nullus adhuc mundo praebebat lumina Titan, nec nova crescendo reparabat cornua Phoebe, nec circumfuso pendebat in aere tellus ponderibus librata suis, nec bracchia longo margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite; utque erat et tellus illic et pontus et aer, sic erat instabilis tellus, innabilis unda, lucis egens aer; nulli sua forma manebat, obstabatque aliis aliud, quia corpore in uno frigida pugnabant calidis, umentia siccis, mollia cum duris, sine pondere, habentia pondus. Hanc deus et melior litem natura diremit. nam caelo terras et terris abscidit undas et liquidum spisso secrevit ab aere caelum. quae postquam evolvit caecoque exemit acervo, dissociata locis concordi pace ligavit: ignea convexi vis et sine pondere caeli emicuit summaque locum sibi fecit in arce; proximus est aer illi levitate locoque; densior his tellus elementaque grandia traxit et pressa est gravitate sua; circumfluus umor ultima possedit solidumque coercuit orbem. Sic ubi dispositam quisquis fuit ille deorum congeriem secuit sectamque in membra coegit, principio terram, ne non aequalis ab omni parte foret, magni speciem glomeravit in orbis. tum freta diffundi rapidisque tumescere ventis iussit et ambitae circumdare litora terrae; addidit et fontes et stagna inmensa lacusque fluminaque obliquis cinxit declivia ripis, quae, diversa locis, partim sorbentur ab ipsa, in mare perveniunt partim campoque recepta liberioris aquae pro ripis litora pulsant. iussit et extendi campos, subsidere valles, fronde tegi silvas, lapidosos surgere montes, utque duae dextra caelum totidemque sinistra parte secant zonae, quinta est ardentior illis, sic onus inclusum numero distinxit eodem cura dei, totidemque plagae tellure premuntur. quarum quae media est, non est habitabilis aestu; nix tegit alta duas; totidem inter utramque locavit temperiemque dedit mixta cum frigore flamma. Inminet his aer, qui, quanto est pondere terrae pondus aquae levius, tanto est onerosior igni. illic et nebulas, illic consistere nubes iussit et humanas motura tonitrua mentes et cum fulminibus facientes fulgura ventos. His quoque non passim mundi fabricator habendum aera permisit; vix nunc obsistitur illis, cum sua quisque regat diverso flamina tractu, quin lanient mundum; tanta est discordia fratrum. Eurus ad Auroram Nabataeaque regna recessit Persidaque et radiis iuga subdita matutinis; vesper et occiduo quae litora sole tepescunt, proxima sunt Zephyro; Scythiam septemque triones horrifer invasit Boreas; contraria tellus nubibus adsiduis pluviaque madescit ab Austro. haec super inposuit liquidum et gravitate carentem aethera nec quicquam terrenae faecis habentem. Vix ita limitibus dissaepserat omnia certis, cum, quae pressa diu fuerant caligine caeca, sidera coeperunt toto effervescere caelo; neu regio foret ulla suis animalibus orba, astra tenent caeleste solum formaeque deorum, cesserunt nitidis habitandae piscibus undae, terra feras cepit, volucres agitabilis aer. Sanctius his animal mentisque capacius altae deerat adhuc et quod dominari in cetera posset: natus homo est, sive hunc divino semine fecit ille opifex rerum, mundi melioris origo, sive recens tellus seductaque nuper ab alto aethere cognati retinebat semina caeli. quam satus Iapeto, mixtam pluvialibus undis, finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum, pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terram, os homini sublime dedit caelumque videre iussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus: sic, modo quae fuerat rudis et sine imagine, tellus induit ignotas hominum conversa figuras.
Golden was the first age sown, which with no enforcer,
of its own accord, without law, kept faith and the right.
Penalty and fear were absent; no threatening words were read
on fixed bronze, nor did a suppliant crowd dread
the face of its judge — they were safe with no enforcer.
Not yet had the pine, felled on its own mountains,
come down to the clear waves to visit a foreign world,
and mortals knew no shores but their own.
Not yet did sheer ditches gird the towns;
there was no straight trumpet, no horn of curved bronze,
no helmets, no sword: without a soldier’s use
the carefree nations passed a soft ease.
The earth herself too, untaxed and untouched by the hoe,
wounded by no plowshare, gave all things of her own accord;
and content with foods raised under no compulsion,
men gathered arbutus fruit and mountain strawberries,
cornel-cherries and the blackberries clinging in the harsh brambles,
and the acorns fallen from Jupiter’s spreading tree.
It was eternal spring, and with warm breezes the calm
west winds caressed the flowers born without seed;
soon too the unplowed earth bore grain,
and the unrenewed field whitened with heavy ears;
now rivers of milk, now rivers of nectar flowed,
and golden honey dripped from the green holm-oak.
After Saturn was sent down to gloomy Tartarus
and the world was under Jove, the silver race came on,
poorer than gold, more precious than tawny bronze.
Jupiter shortened the span of the old springtime
and through winters and summers and uneven autumns
and a brief spring drove the year out in four seasons.
Then first the air, scorched with dry heat,
glowed white, and ice hung bound by the winds;
then first they went under houses — their houses were caves
and dense thickets and rods bound with bark.
Then first the seeds of Ceres were buried in long furrows,
and the young bullocks groaned, pressed under the yoke.
Third after that came the bronze race,
fiercer in temper and quicker to dreadful arms,
yet not wicked; the last is of hard iron.
At once into the age of the baser vein burst
every wickedness: shame fled, and truth, and faith;
into their place came frauds and trickery
and ambushes and violence and the wicked love of having.
They gave their sails to the winds — and the sailor
did not yet know them well — and keels that before had stood
on the high mountains now leapt over unknown waves;
and the ground, before common like the sunlight and the breezes,
the wary surveyor marked off with a long boundary-line.
And not only crops and her due nourishment was the rich
earth required to yield, but men went into her bowels,
and the wealth she had hidden away and moved near the Stygian shades
was dug up — the goads to evil.
And now harmful iron, and gold more harmful than iron,
had come forth; war comes forth, which fights with both,
and shakes the clashing arms in its bloody hand.
Men live by plunder: guest is not safe from host,
nor father-in-law from son-in-law, and even brothers’ love is rare;
the husband looms over his wife’s death, she over her husband’s,
dread stepmothers mix lurid poisons,
the son inquires into his father’s years before their time;
piety lies conquered, and the maiden Astraea, last of the gods,
dripping with slaughter, left the earth.
of its own accord, without law, kept faith and the right.
Penalty and fear were absent; no threatening words were read
on fixed bronze, nor did a suppliant crowd dread
the face of its judge — they were safe with no enforcer.
Not yet had the pine, felled on its own mountains,
come down to the clear waves to visit a foreign world,
and mortals knew no shores but their own.
Not yet did sheer ditches gird the towns;
there was no straight trumpet, no horn of curved bronze,
no helmets, no sword: without a soldier’s use
the carefree nations passed a soft ease.
The earth herself too, untaxed and untouched by the hoe,
wounded by no plowshare, gave all things of her own accord;
and content with foods raised under no compulsion,
men gathered arbutus fruit and mountain strawberries,
cornel-cherries and the blackberries clinging in the harsh brambles,
and the acorns fallen from Jupiter’s spreading tree.
It was eternal spring, and with warm breezes the calm
west winds caressed the flowers born without seed;
soon too the unplowed earth bore grain,
and the unrenewed field whitened with heavy ears;
now rivers of milk, now rivers of nectar flowed,
and golden honey dripped from the green holm-oak.
After Saturn was sent down to gloomy Tartarus
and the world was under Jove, the silver race came on,
poorer than gold, more precious than tawny bronze.
Jupiter shortened the span of the old springtime
and through winters and summers and uneven autumns
and a brief spring drove the year out in four seasons.
Then first the air, scorched with dry heat,
glowed white, and ice hung bound by the winds;
then first they went under houses — their houses were caves
and dense thickets and rods bound with bark.
Then first the seeds of Ceres were buried in long furrows,
and the young bullocks groaned, pressed under the yoke.
Third after that came the bronze race,
fiercer in temper and quicker to dreadful arms,
yet not wicked; the last is of hard iron.
At once into the age of the baser vein burst
every wickedness: shame fled, and truth, and faith;
into their place came frauds and trickery
and ambushes and violence and the wicked love of having.
They gave their sails to the winds — and the sailor
did not yet know them well — and keels that before had stood
on the high mountains now leapt over unknown waves;
and the ground, before common like the sunlight and the breezes,
the wary surveyor marked off with a long boundary-line.
And not only crops and her due nourishment was the rich
earth required to yield, but men went into her bowels,
and the wealth she had hidden away and moved near the Stygian shades
was dug up — the goads to evil.
And now harmful iron, and gold more harmful than iron,
had come forth; war comes forth, which fights with both,
and shakes the clashing arms in its bloody hand.
Men live by plunder: guest is not safe from host,
nor father-in-law from son-in-law, and even brothers’ love is rare;
the husband looms over his wife’s death, she over her husband’s,
dread stepmothers mix lurid poisons,
the son inquires into his father’s years before their time;
piety lies conquered, and the maiden Astraea, last of the gods,
dripping with slaughter, left the earth.
Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo, sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat. poena metusque aberant, nec verba minantia fixo aere legebantur, nec supplex turba timebat iudicis ora sui, sed erant sine vindice tuti. nondum caesa suis, peregrinum ut viseret orbem, montibus in liquidas pinus descenderat undas, nullaque mortales praeter sua litora norant; nondum praecipites cingebant oppida fossae; non tuba derecti, non aeris cornua flexi, non galeae, non ensis erat: sine militis usu mollia securae peragebant otia gentes. ipsa quoque inmunis rastroque intacta nec ullis saucia vomeribus per se dabat omnia tellus, contentique cibis nullo cogente creatis arbuteos fetus montanaque fraga legebant cornaque et in duris haerentia mora rubetis et quae deciderant patula Iovis arbore glandes. ver erat aeternum, placidique tepentibus auris mulcebant zephyri natos sine semine flores; mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat, nec renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis; flumina iam lactis, iam flumina nectaris ibant, flavaque de viridi stillabant ilice mella. Postquam Saturno tenebrosa in Tartara misso sub Iove mundus erat, subiit argentea proles, auro deterior, fulvo pretiosior aere. Iuppiter antiqui contraxit tempora veris perque hiemes aestusque et inaequalis autumnos et breve ver spatiis exegit quattuor annum. tum primum siccis aer fervoribus ustus canduit, et ventis glacies adstricta pependit; tum primum subiere domos; domus antra fuerunt et densi frutices et vinctae cortice virgae. semina tum primum longis Cerealia sulcis obruta sunt, pressique iugo gemuere iuvenci. Tertia post illam successit aenea proles, saevior ingeniis et ad horrida promptior arma, non scelerata tamen; de duro est ultima ferro. protinus inrupit venae peioris in aevum omne nefas: fugere pudor verumque fidesque; in quorum subiere locum fraudesque dolusque insidiaeque et vis et amor sceleratus habendi. vela dabant ventis nec adhuc bene noverat illos navita, quaeque prius steterant in montibus altis, fluctibus ignotis insultavere carinae, communemque prius ceu lumina solis et auras cautus humum longo signavit limite mensor. nec tantum segetes alimentaque debita dives poscebatur humus, sed itum est in viscera terrae, quasque recondiderat Stygiisque admoverat umbris, effodiuntur opes, inritamenta malorum. iamque nocens ferrum ferroque nocentius aurum prodierat, prodit bellum, quod pugnat utroque, sanguineaque manu crepitantia concutit arma. vivitur ex rapto: non hospes ab hospite tutus, non socer a genero, fratrum quoque gratia rara est; inminet exitio vir coniugis, illa mariti, lurida terribiles miscent aconita novercae, filius ante diem patrios inquirit in annos: victa iacet pietas, et virgo caede madentis ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit.
And lest the steep aether be safer than the lands,
they say the Giants aspired to the kingdom of heaven
and built up heaped mountains to the high stars.
Then the almighty father shattered Olympus with a hurled
thunderbolt and struck Pelion off from Ossa beneath it.
When the dread bodies lay crushed under their own mass,
they say that Earth, drenched with the much blood of her sons,
grew wet and gave life to the warm gore,
and, that no memorial of her stock might remain,
turned it into the shape of men; but that brood too
was a scorner of the gods, most greedy of savage slaughter,
and violent: you would know they were born of blood.
they say the Giants aspired to the kingdom of heaven
and built up heaped mountains to the high stars.
Then the almighty father shattered Olympus with a hurled
thunderbolt and struck Pelion off from Ossa beneath it.
When the dread bodies lay crushed under their own mass,
they say that Earth, drenched with the much blood of her sons,
grew wet and gave life to the warm gore,
and, that no memorial of her stock might remain,
turned it into the shape of men; but that brood too
was a scorner of the gods, most greedy of savage slaughter,
and violent: you would know they were born of blood.
Neve foret terris securior arduus aether, adfectasse ferunt regnum caeleste gigantas altaque congestos struxisse ad sidera montis. tum pater omnipotens misso perfregit Olympum fulmine et excussit subiecto Pelion Ossae. obruta mole sua cum corpora dira iacerent, perfusam multo natorum sanguine Terram immaduisse ferunt calidumque animasse cruorem et, ne nulla suae stirpis monimenta manerent, in faciem vertisse hominum; sed et illa propago contemptrix superum saevaeque avidissima caedis et violenta fuit: scires e sanguine natos.
When the Saturnian father saw this from his high citadel,
he groaned, and recalling the foul banquet of Lycaon’s table —
a deed still fresh, not yet made known —
he conceives a huge wrath in his heart, worthy of Jove,
and calls a council: no delay held back the summoned.
There is a lofty road, plain in the clear sky;
it has the name Milky, marked out by its very whiteness.
By this is the gods’ way to the halls of the great Thunderer
and his royal house: right and left the courts
of the noble gods are thronged, their doors thrown open.
The common gods dwell apart in scattered places; on this side
the powerful and illustrious heaven-dwellers have set their homes;
this is the place which — if boldness be granted to my words —
I would not fear to have called the Palatine of high heaven.
So when the gods had taken their seats in the marble recess,
he himself, higher in place and leaning on his ivory scepter,
shook three times and four the terrifying
hair of his head, with which he moved earth, sea, and stars.
Then in such words he loosed his indignant lips:
"Not for the world’s kingdom was I more anxious in that
season, when each of the serpent-footed was making ready
to throw his hundred arms over the captured sky.
For though the enemy was fierce, yet that war
hung from one body and from one stock;
now, wherever Nereus sounds around the whole world,
the mortal race must be destroyed by me: I swear by the rivers
of the underworld that glide beneath the earth through the Stygian grove!
All must be tried first, but the incurable part
must be cut away by the sword, lest the sound part be infected.
I have demigods, I have rustic powers — the nymphs,
the fauns and satyrs and the mountain-dwelling silvans;
since we do not yet think them worthy of heaven’s honor,
let us at least allow them to inhabit the lands we gave.
Or do you believe, O gods, that they will be safe enough,
when against me — who hold and rule the thunderbolt and you —
Lycaon, known for his savagery, has laid an ambush?"
All roared together and with burning zeal demanded
the one who had dared such things: so, when an impious band raged
to blot out the Roman name with Caesar’s blood,
the human race was stunned with sudden terror at so great a ruin,
and the whole world shuddered;
nor is the devotion of your people less welcome to you, Augustus,
than that was to Jove. When he had checked
the murmurs with voice and hand, all kept silence.
When the outcry, checked by the ruler’s gravity, had stopped,
Jupiter broke the silence again with this speech:
"He indeed has paid the penalty — dismiss that care!
yet what the offense was, and what the vengeance, I shall tell.
The infamy of the age had reached my ears;
wishing it false, I glide down from high Olympus
and, a god under human likeness, survey the lands.
It would be long to count up how much harm was found everywhere:
the infamy itself was less than the truth.
I had crossed Maenala, dreadful with the lairs of beasts,
and, with Cyllene, the pine-woods of cold Lycaeus:
from here I enter the Arcadian’s home and the inhospitable house
of the tyrant, just as the late twilight was drawing on the night.
I gave signs that a god had come, and the common folk began
to pray: Lycaon first laughs at their pious vows,
then says, ’I will test, by an open trial, whether this is a god
or a mortal: and the truth will not be in doubt.’
He prepares to destroy me, heavy with sleep, by unexpected death
in the night: this is the test of truth that pleases him;
and not content with that, he cut with the blade the throat
of a hostage, one sent from the Molossian people,
and so, the limbs half-alive, partly he softened them
in boiling water, partly roasted them over a fire set beneath.
The moment he set this on the table, I with avenging flame
overthrew the house onto its household gods, fit for such a master;
terrified, he himself fled, and reaching the silence of the country
he howls and tries in vain to speak: his mouth gathers
rabies from his own self, and with his usual lust for slaughter
he turns upon the flocks and even now delights in blood.
His clothes pass into shaggy hair, his arms into legs:
he becomes a wolf and keeps the traces of his old shape;
the same grayness is there, the same violence of face,
the same eyes gleam, the same image of ferocity is there.
One house has fallen, but not one house alone deserved
to perish: wherever the earth extends, the savage Fury reigns.
You would think they had sworn an oath to crime! Let them all swiftly pay —
such is my resolve — the penalties they have earned to suffer."
Some approve Jove’s words aloud and add goads to his raging,
others fill their parts with assent.
Yet the loss of the human race is a grief
to all, and they ask what the form of the earth will be
once bereft of mortals, who will bring incense to the altars,
whether he means to hand the lands over to the beasts to ravage.
As they ask such things — for the rest would be his care —
the king of the gods forbids them to tremble and promises a stock
unlike the former people, of a marvelous origin.
he groaned, and recalling the foul banquet of Lycaon’s table —
a deed still fresh, not yet made known —
he conceives a huge wrath in his heart, worthy of Jove,
and calls a council: no delay held back the summoned.
There is a lofty road, plain in the clear sky;
it has the name Milky, marked out by its very whiteness.
By this is the gods’ way to the halls of the great Thunderer
and his royal house: right and left the courts
of the noble gods are thronged, their doors thrown open.
The common gods dwell apart in scattered places; on this side
the powerful and illustrious heaven-dwellers have set their homes;
this is the place which — if boldness be granted to my words —
I would not fear to have called the Palatine of high heaven.
So when the gods had taken their seats in the marble recess,
he himself, higher in place and leaning on his ivory scepter,
shook three times and four the terrifying
hair of his head, with which he moved earth, sea, and stars.
Then in such words he loosed his indignant lips:
"Not for the world’s kingdom was I more anxious in that
season, when each of the serpent-footed was making ready
to throw his hundred arms over the captured sky.
For though the enemy was fierce, yet that war
hung from one body and from one stock;
now, wherever Nereus sounds around the whole world,
the mortal race must be destroyed by me: I swear by the rivers
of the underworld that glide beneath the earth through the Stygian grove!
All must be tried first, but the incurable part
must be cut away by the sword, lest the sound part be infected.
I have demigods, I have rustic powers — the nymphs,
the fauns and satyrs and the mountain-dwelling silvans;
since we do not yet think them worthy of heaven’s honor,
let us at least allow them to inhabit the lands we gave.
Or do you believe, O gods, that they will be safe enough,
when against me — who hold and rule the thunderbolt and you —
Lycaon, known for his savagery, has laid an ambush?"
All roared together and with burning zeal demanded
the one who had dared such things: so, when an impious band raged
to blot out the Roman name with Caesar’s blood,
the human race was stunned with sudden terror at so great a ruin,
and the whole world shuddered;
nor is the devotion of your people less welcome to you, Augustus,
than that was to Jove. When he had checked
the murmurs with voice and hand, all kept silence.
When the outcry, checked by the ruler’s gravity, had stopped,
Jupiter broke the silence again with this speech:
"He indeed has paid the penalty — dismiss that care!
yet what the offense was, and what the vengeance, I shall tell.
The infamy of the age had reached my ears;
wishing it false, I glide down from high Olympus
and, a god under human likeness, survey the lands.
It would be long to count up how much harm was found everywhere:
the infamy itself was less than the truth.
I had crossed Maenala, dreadful with the lairs of beasts,
and, with Cyllene, the pine-woods of cold Lycaeus:
from here I enter the Arcadian’s home and the inhospitable house
of the tyrant, just as the late twilight was drawing on the night.
I gave signs that a god had come, and the common folk began
to pray: Lycaon first laughs at their pious vows,
then says, ’I will test, by an open trial, whether this is a god
or a mortal: and the truth will not be in doubt.’
He prepares to destroy me, heavy with sleep, by unexpected death
in the night: this is the test of truth that pleases him;
and not content with that, he cut with the blade the throat
of a hostage, one sent from the Molossian people,
and so, the limbs half-alive, partly he softened them
in boiling water, partly roasted them over a fire set beneath.
The moment he set this on the table, I with avenging flame
overthrew the house onto its household gods, fit for such a master;
terrified, he himself fled, and reaching the silence of the country
he howls and tries in vain to speak: his mouth gathers
rabies from his own self, and with his usual lust for slaughter
he turns upon the flocks and even now delights in blood.
His clothes pass into shaggy hair, his arms into legs:
he becomes a wolf and keeps the traces of his old shape;
the same grayness is there, the same violence of face,
the same eyes gleam, the same image of ferocity is there.
One house has fallen, but not one house alone deserved
to perish: wherever the earth extends, the savage Fury reigns.
You would think they had sworn an oath to crime! Let them all swiftly pay —
such is my resolve — the penalties they have earned to suffer."
Some approve Jove’s words aloud and add goads to his raging,
others fill their parts with assent.
Yet the loss of the human race is a grief
to all, and they ask what the form of the earth will be
once bereft of mortals, who will bring incense to the altars,
whether he means to hand the lands over to the beasts to ravage.
As they ask such things — for the rest would be his care —
the king of the gods forbids them to tremble and promises a stock
unlike the former people, of a marvelous origin.
Quae pater ut summa vidit Saturnius arce, ingemit et facto nondum vulgata recenti foeda Lycaoniae referens convivia mensae ingentes animo et dignas Iove concipit iras conciliumque vocat: tenuit mora nulla vocatos. Est via sublimis, caelo manifesta sereno; lactea nomen habet, candore notabilis ipso. hac iter est superis ad magni tecta Tonantis regalemque domum: dextra laevaque deorum atria nobilium valvis celebrantur apertis. plebs habitat diversa locis: hac parte potentes caelicolae clarique suos posuere penates; hic locus est, quem, si verbis audacia detur, haud timeam magni dixisse Palatia caeli. Ergo ubi marmoreo superi sedere recessu, celsior ipse loco sceptroque innixus eburno terrificam capitis concussit terque quaterque caesariem, cum qua terram, mare, sidera movit. talibus inde modis ora indignantia solvit: ’non ego pro mundi regno magis anxius illa tempestate fui, qua centum quisque parabat inicere anguipedum captivo bracchia caelo. nam quamquam ferus hostis erat, tamen illud ab uno corpore et ex una pendebat origine bellum; nunc mihi qua totum Nereus circumsonat orbem, perdendum est mortale genus: per flumina iuro infera sub terras Stygio labentia luco! cuncta prius temptanda, sed inmedicabile curae ense recidendum, ne pars sincera trahatur. sunt mihi semidei, sunt, rustica numina, nymphae faunique satyrique et monticolae silvani; quos quoniam caeli nondum dignamur honore, quas dedimus, certe terras habitare sinamus. an satis, o superi, tutos fore creditis illos, cum mihi, qui fulmen, qui vos habeoque regoque, struxerit insidias notus feritate Lycaon?’ Confremuere omnes studiisque ardentibus ausum talia deposcunt: sic, cum manus inpia saevit sanguine Caesareo Romanum exstinguere nomen, attonitum tantae subito terrore ruinae humanum genus est totusque perhorruit orbis; nec tibi grata minus pietas, Auguste, tuorum quam fuit illa Iovi. qui postquam voce manuque murmura conpressit, tenuere silentia cuncti. substitit ut clamor pressus gravitate regentis, Iuppiter hoc iterum sermone silentia rupit: ’ille quidem poenas (curam hanc dimittite!) solvit; quod tamen admissum, quae sit vindicta, docebo. contigerat nostras infamia temporis aures; quam cupiens falsam summo delabor Olympo et deus humana lustro sub imagine terras. longa mora est, quantum noxae sit ubique repertum, enumerare: minor fuit ipsa infamia vero. Maenala transieram latebris horrenda ferarum et cum Cyllene gelidi pineta Lycaei: Arcadis hinc sedes et inhospita tecta tyranni ingredior, traherent cum sera crepuscula noctem. signa dedi venisse deum, vulgusque precari coeperat: inridet primo pia vota Lycaon, mox ait "experiar deus hic discrimine aperto an sit mortalis: nec erit dubitabile verum." nocte gravem somno necopina perdere morte comparat: haec illi placet experientia veri; nec contentus eo, missi de gente Molossa obsidis unius iugulum mucrone resolvit atque ita semineces partim ferventibus artus mollit aquis, partim subiecto torruit igni. quod simul inposuit mensis, ego vindice flamma in domino dignos everti tecta penates; territus ipse fugit nactusque silentia ruris exululat frustraque loqui conatur: ab ipso colligit os rabiem solitaeque cupidine caedis vertitur in pecudes et nunc quoque sanguine gaudet. in villos abeunt vestes, in crura lacerti: fit lupus et veteris servat vestigia formae; canities eadem est, eadem violentia vultus, idem oculi lucent, eadem feritatis imago est. occidit una domus, sed non domus una perire digna fuit: qua terra patet, fera regnat Erinys. in facinus iurasse putes! dent ocius omnes, quas meruere pati, (sic stat sententia) poenas.’ Dicta Iovis pars voce probant stimulosque frementi adiciunt, alii partes adsensibus inplent. est tamen humani generis iactura dolori omnibus, et quae sit terrae mortalibus orbae forma futura rogant, quis sit laturus in aras tura, ferisne paret populandas tradere terras. talia quaerentes (sibi enim fore cetera curae) rex superum trepidare vetat subolemque priori dissimilem populo promittit origine mira.
And now he was about to scatter his bolts over all the lands;
but he feared lest the holy aether catch fire from so many flames
and the long axis blaze:
he recalls too that it stands in the fates, that a time will come
when sea, when land, and the seized palace of heaven
will burn, and the beleaguered mass of the world will labor.
The weapons forged by the Cyclopes’ hands are laid aside;
a different penalty pleases him: to destroy the mortal race
beneath the waves and send down rain-storms from all the sky.
At once he shuts the North Wind in the Aeolian caves
and all the blasts that drive off the gathered clouds,
and sends out the South Wind. Notus flies forth on dripping wings,
his terrible face covered in pitch-black gloom;
his beard heavy with storm-clouds, water streams from his gray hair;
mists sit on his brow, his wings and folds drip;
and when he pressed the hanging clouds with his broad hand,
a crash comes: then thick rains pour from the sky;
Iris, messenger of Juno, clothed in her varied colors,
draws up the waters and brings nourishment to the clouds.
The crops are leveled, and the farmer’s lamented prayers
lie ruined, and the wasted toil of a long year perishes.
Nor is Jove’s wrath content with his own sky, but his
sea-blue brother helps him with auxiliary waves.
He calls together the rivers: and when they had entered
their tyrant’s halls, "There is no need now," he says,
"for long urging; pour out your strength:
so it must be! Open your homes, and with the barrier removed
give your rivers all the rein!"
He had commanded; they return and loosen the mouths of their springs
and roll down to the sea in an unbridled course.
He himself struck the earth with his trident, and she
trembled and by the shock opened paths for the waters.
The rivers, spread wide, rush over the open plains
and sweep away orchards together with the crops, and flocks and men
and houses, and the inner shrines together with their holy things.
If any house remained and could withstand so great a ruin
unthrown, yet a higher wave covers its roof,
and the towers lie hidden, pressed beneath the flood.
And now sea and land had no distinction:
all was sea, and the sea too lacked shores.
One man seizes a hill, another sits in a curved skiff
and plies the oars there where he lately plowed;
that one sails over the crops or the rooftop of a drowned farmhouse,
this one catches a fish in the top of an elm.
An anchor is fixed in a green meadow, if chance so brought it,
or the curved keels graze the vineyards below;
and where slender she-goats lately cropped the grass,
now the ungainly seals lay their bodies.
The Nereids marvel at the groves and cities and houses
beneath the water, and the dolphins take to the woods
and run against the high branches and strike the tossed oaks.
The wolf swims among the sheep, the wave carries tawny lions,
the wave carries tigers; the boar’s lightning force does not help him,
nor his swift legs the stag, once swept away,
and the wandering bird, having long sought lands where it might rest,
falls into the sea on wearied wings.
The boundless license of the sea had buried the hills,
and strange waves beat the mountain peaks.
The greatest part is swept off by the wave; those the wave spared,
long fasting tames with scanty fare.
but he feared lest the holy aether catch fire from so many flames
and the long axis blaze:
he recalls too that it stands in the fates, that a time will come
when sea, when land, and the seized palace of heaven
will burn, and the beleaguered mass of the world will labor.
The weapons forged by the Cyclopes’ hands are laid aside;
a different penalty pleases him: to destroy the mortal race
beneath the waves and send down rain-storms from all the sky.
At once he shuts the North Wind in the Aeolian caves
and all the blasts that drive off the gathered clouds,
and sends out the South Wind. Notus flies forth on dripping wings,
his terrible face covered in pitch-black gloom;
his beard heavy with storm-clouds, water streams from his gray hair;
mists sit on his brow, his wings and folds drip;
and when he pressed the hanging clouds with his broad hand,
a crash comes: then thick rains pour from the sky;
Iris, messenger of Juno, clothed in her varied colors,
draws up the waters and brings nourishment to the clouds.
The crops are leveled, and the farmer’s lamented prayers
lie ruined, and the wasted toil of a long year perishes.
Nor is Jove’s wrath content with his own sky, but his
sea-blue brother helps him with auxiliary waves.
He calls together the rivers: and when they had entered
their tyrant’s halls, "There is no need now," he says,
"for long urging; pour out your strength:
so it must be! Open your homes, and with the barrier removed
give your rivers all the rein!"
He had commanded; they return and loosen the mouths of their springs
and roll down to the sea in an unbridled course.
He himself struck the earth with his trident, and she
trembled and by the shock opened paths for the waters.
The rivers, spread wide, rush over the open plains
and sweep away orchards together with the crops, and flocks and men
and houses, and the inner shrines together with their holy things.
If any house remained and could withstand so great a ruin
unthrown, yet a higher wave covers its roof,
and the towers lie hidden, pressed beneath the flood.
And now sea and land had no distinction:
all was sea, and the sea too lacked shores.
One man seizes a hill, another sits in a curved skiff
and plies the oars there where he lately plowed;
that one sails over the crops or the rooftop of a drowned farmhouse,
this one catches a fish in the top of an elm.
An anchor is fixed in a green meadow, if chance so brought it,
or the curved keels graze the vineyards below;
and where slender she-goats lately cropped the grass,
now the ungainly seals lay their bodies.
The Nereids marvel at the groves and cities and houses
beneath the water, and the dolphins take to the woods
and run against the high branches and strike the tossed oaks.
The wolf swims among the sheep, the wave carries tawny lions,
the wave carries tigers; the boar’s lightning force does not help him,
nor his swift legs the stag, once swept away,
and the wandering bird, having long sought lands where it might rest,
falls into the sea on wearied wings.
The boundless license of the sea had buried the hills,
and strange waves beat the mountain peaks.
The greatest part is swept off by the wave; those the wave spared,
long fasting tames with scanty fare.
Iamque erat in totas sparsurus fulmina terras; sed timuit, ne forte sacer tot ab ignibus aether conciperet flammas longusque ardesceret axis: esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur, adfore tempus, quo mare, quo tellus correptaque regia caeli ardeat et mundi moles obsessa laboret. tela reponuntur manibus fabricata cyclopum; poena placet diversa, genus mortale sub undis perdere et ex omni nimbos demittere caelo. Protinus Aeoliis Aquilonem claudit in antris et quaecumque fugant inductas flamina nubes emittitque Notum. madidis Notus evolat alis, terribilem picea tectus caligine vultum; barba gravis nimbis, canis fluit unda capillis; fronte sedent nebulae, rorant pennaeque sinusque. utque manu lata pendentia nubila pressit, fit fragor: hinc densi funduntur ab aethere nimbi; nuntia Iunonis varios induta colores concipit Iris aquas alimentaque nubibus adfert. sternuntur segetes et deplorata coloni vota iacent, longique perit labor inritus anni. Nec caelo contenta suo est Iovis ira, sed illum caeruleus frater iuvat auxiliaribus undis. convocat hic amnes: qui postquam tecta tyranni intravere sui, ’non est hortamine longo nunc’ ait ’utendum; vires effundite vestras: sic opus est! aperite domos ac mole remota fluminibus vestris totas inmittite habenas!’ iusserat; hi redeunt ac fontibus ora relaxant et defrenato volvuntur in aequora cursu. Ipse tridente suo terram percussit, at illa intremuit motuque vias patefecit aquarum. exspatiata ruunt per apertos flumina campos cumque satis arbusta simul pecudesque virosque tectaque cumque suis rapiunt penetralia sacris. si qua domus mansit potuitque resistere tanto indeiecta malo, culmen tamen altior huius unda tegit, pressaeque latent sub gurgite turres. iamque mare et tellus nullum discrimen habebant: omnia pontus erant, derant quoque litora ponto. Occupat hic collem, cumba sedet alter adunca et ducit remos illic, ubi nuper arabat: ille supra segetes aut mersae culmina villae navigat, hic summa piscem deprendit in ulmo. figitur in viridi, si fors tulit, ancora prato, aut subiecta terunt curvae vineta carinae; et, modo qua graciles gramen carpsere capellae, nunc ibi deformes ponunt sua corpora phocae. mirantur sub aqua lucos urbesque domosque Nereides, silvasque tenent delphines et altis incursant ramis agitataque robora pulsant. nat lupus inter oves, fulvos vehit unda leones, unda vehit tigres; nec vires fulminis apro, crura nec ablato prosunt velocia cervo, quaesitisque diu terris, ubi sistere possit, in mare lassatis volucris vaga decidit alis. obruerat tumulos inmensa licentia ponti, pulsabantque novi montana cacumina fluctus. maxima pars unda rapitur; quibus unda pepercit, illos longa domant inopi ieiunia victu.
Phocis separates the Aonian fields from the Oetaean,
a fertile land while it was land, but at that time
a part of the sea and a broad plain of sudden waters.
There a steep mountain reaches the stars with two peaks,
Parnassus by name, and its summits overtop the clouds.
When Deucalion — for the sea had covered all else —
borne in a small boat with the partner of his bed, grounded here,
they worship the Corycian nymphs and the powers of the mountain
and prophetic Themis, who then held the oracle:
no man was better than he, nor more a lover of justice,
nor was any woman more god-fearing than she.
When Jupiter saw the world standing in liquid marsh
and that of so many thousands but one man survived,
and saw that of so many thousands but one woman survived,
both harmless, both worshippers of the divine,
he scattered the clouds, and the storms driven off by the north wind,
he showed the lands to the sky and the sky to the lands.
Nor does the sea’s anger remain, and laying aside his three-pronged spear
the ruler of the deep soothes the waters and calls sea-blue Triton,
rising above the deep, his shoulders thick with inborn shellfish,
and bids him blow into his sounding conch
and now, at the given signal, call back the waves and rivers:
a hollow trumpet is taken up by him,
a spiraling one that widens in a coil from its base,
the trumpet which, when it has caught the air in mid-sea,
fills with its voice the shores that lie under both of Phoebus’s poles;
then too, when it touched the god’s lips, dripping with wet beard,
and, inflated, sounded the ordered retreat,
it was heard by all the waters of land and sea,
and all the waters by which it was heard, it checked.
Now the sea has its shore, the channel holds its full rivers,
the streams subside, and the hills are seen to come forth;
the ground rises, the soil grows as the waters dwindle,
and after a long day the woods show their bared treetops
and hold the mud left behind on their leaves.
The world was restored; and when Deucalion saw it empty
and saw the desolate lands keeping deep silence,
he addresses Pyrrha thus, with tears welling up:
"O sister, O wife, O only surviving woman,
whom a common race and a cousin’s descent first,
then the marriage-bed, joined to me — now the very dangers join us —
of all the lands the setting and the rising sun behold,
we two are the throng; the sea has taken the rest.
And even this assurance of our life is not yet
sure enough; the clouds still terrify my mind.
What spirit would you have now, poor soul, if you had been
snatched from the fates without me? How could you bear your fear
alone? With whom to comfort you would you grieve?
For I — believe me — if the sea held you too,
would follow you, wife, and the sea would hold me too.
Oh that I could restore the peoples by my father’s
arts and pour souls into shaped earth!
Now the mortal race remains in us two.
So it has seemed good to the gods: we remain the models of mankind."
He had spoken, and they wept: they resolved to pray to the heavenly
power and to seek aid through the sacred oracles.
No delay: together they approach the waters of Cephisus,
not yet clear, but already cutting their familiar channels.
Then, when they had sprinkled the drawn waters
on their garments and heads, they bend their steps
to the shrine of the holy goddess, whose gables
were pale with foul moss and whose altars stood without fires.
When they touched the temple’s steps, each fell forward
prone on the ground and, trembling, gave kisses to the cold stone,
and said: "If the powers, conquered by just prayers,
soften, if the anger of the gods is bent,
tell, Themis, by what art the loss of our race
can be repaired, and bring aid, most gentle one, to our drowned world!"
The goddess was moved and gave an oracle: "Depart from the temple
and veil your heads and loosen your girded robes
and throw the bones of your great mother behind your backs!"
Long they stood amazed: and Pyrrha first breaks the silence
with her voice and refuses to obey the goddess’s commands,
and with frightened lips begs pardon, and fears
to wrong her mother’s shade by throwing her bones.
Meanwhile they go back over the obscure words of the oracle
given them, with its dark hidden meaning, and turn them over between themselves.
Then the son of Prometheus soothes the daughter of Epimetheus
with calm words and says: "Either my cunning deceives me,
or — oracles are holy and counsel no wickedness! —
the great mother is the earth: the stones in the earth’s body
I think are called her bones; we are bidden to throw these behind us."
Though the Titan’s daughter was moved by her husband’s guess,
yet her hope is in doubt: so much do they both
distrust the heavenly warnings; but what harm to try?
They go down: they veil their heads and unbelt their tunics
and throw the bidden stones behind their footsteps.
The stones — who would believe it, were not antiquity the witness? —
began to lay aside their hardness and their stiffness,
and to soften by degrees, and, softened, to take on shape.
Soon, when they had grown and a gentler nature
had come to them, a kind of human form could be seen,
though not distinct — but like figures begun from marble,
not finished enough, most like rough-hewn statues.
Yet the part of them that was moist with some sap
and earthy was turned to the use of a body;
what is solid and cannot bend is changed into bones,
what was just now a vein kept its name unchanged,
and in a short space, by the will of the gods, the stones
thrown by the man’s hands took on the look of men,
and from the woman’s throw woman was restored.
From this we are a hard race, and one that endures toil,
and we give proof of the origin from which we were born.
a fertile land while it was land, but at that time
a part of the sea and a broad plain of sudden waters.
There a steep mountain reaches the stars with two peaks,
Parnassus by name, and its summits overtop the clouds.
When Deucalion — for the sea had covered all else —
borne in a small boat with the partner of his bed, grounded here,
they worship the Corycian nymphs and the powers of the mountain
and prophetic Themis, who then held the oracle:
no man was better than he, nor more a lover of justice,
nor was any woman more god-fearing than she.
When Jupiter saw the world standing in liquid marsh
and that of so many thousands but one man survived,
and saw that of so many thousands but one woman survived,
both harmless, both worshippers of the divine,
he scattered the clouds, and the storms driven off by the north wind,
he showed the lands to the sky and the sky to the lands.
Nor does the sea’s anger remain, and laying aside his three-pronged spear
the ruler of the deep soothes the waters and calls sea-blue Triton,
rising above the deep, his shoulders thick with inborn shellfish,
and bids him blow into his sounding conch
and now, at the given signal, call back the waves and rivers:
a hollow trumpet is taken up by him,
a spiraling one that widens in a coil from its base,
the trumpet which, when it has caught the air in mid-sea,
fills with its voice the shores that lie under both of Phoebus’s poles;
then too, when it touched the god’s lips, dripping with wet beard,
and, inflated, sounded the ordered retreat,
it was heard by all the waters of land and sea,
and all the waters by which it was heard, it checked.
Now the sea has its shore, the channel holds its full rivers,
the streams subside, and the hills are seen to come forth;
the ground rises, the soil grows as the waters dwindle,
and after a long day the woods show their bared treetops
and hold the mud left behind on their leaves.
The world was restored; and when Deucalion saw it empty
and saw the desolate lands keeping deep silence,
he addresses Pyrrha thus, with tears welling up:
"O sister, O wife, O only surviving woman,
whom a common race and a cousin’s descent first,
then the marriage-bed, joined to me — now the very dangers join us —
of all the lands the setting and the rising sun behold,
we two are the throng; the sea has taken the rest.
And even this assurance of our life is not yet
sure enough; the clouds still terrify my mind.
What spirit would you have now, poor soul, if you had been
snatched from the fates without me? How could you bear your fear
alone? With whom to comfort you would you grieve?
For I — believe me — if the sea held you too,
would follow you, wife, and the sea would hold me too.
Oh that I could restore the peoples by my father’s
arts and pour souls into shaped earth!
Now the mortal race remains in us two.
So it has seemed good to the gods: we remain the models of mankind."
He had spoken, and they wept: they resolved to pray to the heavenly
power and to seek aid through the sacred oracles.
No delay: together they approach the waters of Cephisus,
not yet clear, but already cutting their familiar channels.
Then, when they had sprinkled the drawn waters
on their garments and heads, they bend their steps
to the shrine of the holy goddess, whose gables
were pale with foul moss and whose altars stood without fires.
When they touched the temple’s steps, each fell forward
prone on the ground and, trembling, gave kisses to the cold stone,
and said: "If the powers, conquered by just prayers,
soften, if the anger of the gods is bent,
tell, Themis, by what art the loss of our race
can be repaired, and bring aid, most gentle one, to our drowned world!"
The goddess was moved and gave an oracle: "Depart from the temple
and veil your heads and loosen your girded robes
and throw the bones of your great mother behind your backs!"
Long they stood amazed: and Pyrrha first breaks the silence
with her voice and refuses to obey the goddess’s commands,
and with frightened lips begs pardon, and fears
to wrong her mother’s shade by throwing her bones.
Meanwhile they go back over the obscure words of the oracle
given them, with its dark hidden meaning, and turn them over between themselves.
Then the son of Prometheus soothes the daughter of Epimetheus
with calm words and says: "Either my cunning deceives me,
or — oracles are holy and counsel no wickedness! —
the great mother is the earth: the stones in the earth’s body
I think are called her bones; we are bidden to throw these behind us."
Though the Titan’s daughter was moved by her husband’s guess,
yet her hope is in doubt: so much do they both
distrust the heavenly warnings; but what harm to try?
They go down: they veil their heads and unbelt their tunics
and throw the bidden stones behind their footsteps.
The stones — who would believe it, were not antiquity the witness? —
began to lay aside their hardness and their stiffness,
and to soften by degrees, and, softened, to take on shape.
Soon, when they had grown and a gentler nature
had come to them, a kind of human form could be seen,
though not distinct — but like figures begun from marble,
not finished enough, most like rough-hewn statues.
Yet the part of them that was moist with some sap
and earthy was turned to the use of a body;
what is solid and cannot bend is changed into bones,
what was just now a vein kept its name unchanged,
and in a short space, by the will of the gods, the stones
thrown by the man’s hands took on the look of men,
and from the woman’s throw woman was restored.
From this we are a hard race, and one that endures toil,
and we give proof of the origin from which we were born.
Separat Aonios Oetaeis Phocis ab arvis, terra ferax, dum terra fuit, sed tempore in illo pars maris et latus subitarum campus aquarum. mons ibi verticibus petit arduus astra duobus, nomine Parnasos, superantque cacumina nubes. hic ubi Deucalion (nam cetera texerat aequor) cum consorte tori parva rate vectus adhaesit, Corycidas nymphas et numina montis adorant fatidicamque Themin, quae tunc oracla tenebat: non illo melior quisquam nec amantior aequi vir fuit aut illa metuentior ulla deorum. Iuppiter ut liquidis stagnare paludibus orbem et superesse virum de tot modo milibus unum, et superesse vidit de tot modo milibus unam, innocuos ambo, cultores numinis ambo, nubila disiecit nimbisque aquilone remotis et caelo terras ostendit et aethera terris. nec maris ira manet, positoque tricuspide telo mulcet aquas rector pelagi supraque profundum exstantem atque umeros innato murice tectum caeruleum Tritona vocat conchaeque sonanti inspirare iubet fluctusque et flumina signo iam revocare dato: cava bucina sumitur illi, tortilis in latum quae turbine crescit ab imo, bucina, quae medio concepit ubi aera ponto, litora voce replet sub utroque iacentia Phoebo; tum quoque, ut ora dei madida rorantia barba contigit et cecinit iussos inflata receptus, omnibus audita est telluris et aequoris undis, et quibus est undis audita, coercuit omnes. iam mare litus habet, plenos capit alveus amnes, flumina subsidunt collesque exire videntur; surgit humus, crescunt sola decrescentibus undis, postque diem longam nudata cacumina silvae ostendunt limumque tenent in fronde relictum Redditus orbis erat; quem postquam vidit inanem et desolatas agere alta silentia terras, Deucalion lacrimis ita Pyrrham adfatur obortis: ’o soror, o coniunx, o femina sola superstes, quam commune mihi genus et patruelis origo, deinde torus iunxit, nunc ipsa pericula iungunt, terrarum, quascumque vident occasus et ortus, nos duo turba sumus; possedit cetera pontus. haec quoque adhuc vitae non est fiducia nostrae certa satis; terrent etiamnum nubila mentem. quis tibi, si sine me fatis erepta fuisses, nunc animus, miseranda, foret? quo sola timorem ferre modo posses? quo consolante doleres! namque ego (crede mihi), si te quoque pontus haberet, te sequerer, coniunx, et me quoque pontus haberet. o utinam possim populos reparare paternis artibus atque animas formatae infundere terrae! nunc genus in nobis restat mortale duobus. sic visum superis: hominumque exempla manemus.’ dixerat, et flebant: placuit caeleste precari numen et auxilium per sacras quaerere sortes. nulla mora est: adeunt pariter Cephesidas undas, ut nondum liquidas, sic iam vada nota secantes. inde ubi libatos inroravere liquores vestibus et capiti, flectunt vestigia sanctae ad delubra deae, quorum fastigia turpi pallebant musco stabantque sine ignibus arae. ut templi tetigere gradus, procumbit uterque pronus humi gelidoque pavens dedit oscula saxo atque ita ’si precibus’ dixerunt ’numina iustis victa remollescunt, si flectitur ira deorum, dic, Themi, qua generis damnum reparabile nostri arte sit, et mersis fer opem, mitissima, rebus!’ Mota dea est sortemque dedit: ’discedite templo et velate caput cinctasque resolvite vestes ossaque post tergum magnae iactate parentis!’ obstupuere diu: rumpitque silentia voce Pyrrha prior iussisque deae parere recusat, detque sibi veniam pavido rogat ore pavetque laedere iactatis maternas ossibus umbras. interea repetunt caecis obscura latebris verba datae sortis secum inter seque volutant. inde Promethides placidis Epimethida dictis mulcet et ’aut fallax’ ait ’est sollertia nobis, aut (pia sunt nullumque nefas oracula suadent!) magna parens terra est: lapides in corpore terrae ossa reor dici; iacere hos post terga iubemur.’ Coniugis augurio quamquam Titania mota est, spes tamen in dubio est: adeo caelestibus ambo diffidunt monitis; sed quid temptare nocebit? descendunt: velantque caput tunicasque recingunt et iussos lapides sua post vestigia mittunt. saxa (quis hoc credat, nisi sit pro teste vetustas?) ponere duritiem coepere suumque rigorem mollirique mora mollitaque ducere formam. mox ubi creverunt naturaque mitior illis contigit, ut quaedam, sic non manifesta videri forma potest hominis, sed uti de marmore coepta non exacta satis rudibusque simillima signis, quae tamen ex illis aliquo pars umida suco et terrena fuit, versa est in corporis usum; quod solidum est flectique nequit, mutatur in ossa, quae modo vena fuit, sub eodem nomine mansit, inque brevi spatio superorum numine saxa missa viri manibus faciem traxere virorum et de femineo reparata est femina iactu. inde genus durum sumus experiensque laborum et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.
The other animals, in their various forms, the earth
brought forth of her own accord, after the old moisture
grew hot from the sun’s fire, and the mud and wet marshes
swelled with the heat, and the fertile seeds of things,
nourished in the life-giving soil as in a mother’s womb,
grew, and by delay took on some shape.
So when the seven-streamed Nile has left the soaked fields
and returned its waters to their ancient channel,
and the fresh mud has blazed under the star of heaven,
farmers, turning the clods, find very many creatures,
and among them some just begun, in the very
span of being born, some unfinished and lacking
their full number of parts, and often in the same body
one part lives, the other part is raw earth.
For when moisture and heat have taken a balance,
they conceive, and from these two all things arise,
and though fire is at war with water, moist vapor
creates all things, and discordant concord is fit for breeding.
So when the earth, muddy from the recent flood,
grew hot again under the heavenly suns and deep heat,
she brought forth countless kinds; partly she restored
the ancient shapes, partly she created new monsters.
She indeed would not have wished it, but you too, mighty Python,
she then bore, and to the new peoples, you unknown serpent,
you were a terror: so much of the mountain you covered.
This one the bow-bearing god — who had never used his deadly arms
before except on deer and fleeing wild goats —
destroyed, heavy with a thousand shafts, his quiver almost emptied,
the venom pouring out through the black wounds.
And lest age be able to wipe out the fame of the deed,
he founded sacred games with a thronged contest,
called Pythian from the name of the conquered serpent.
Here whichever of the young men had won by hand or foot or wheel
took the honor of an oak-leaf garland.
There was not yet the laurel, and Phoebus would wreathe
his temples, comely with long hair, from any tree at all.
brought forth of her own accord, after the old moisture
grew hot from the sun’s fire, and the mud and wet marshes
swelled with the heat, and the fertile seeds of things,
nourished in the life-giving soil as in a mother’s womb,
grew, and by delay took on some shape.
So when the seven-streamed Nile has left the soaked fields
and returned its waters to their ancient channel,
and the fresh mud has blazed under the star of heaven,
farmers, turning the clods, find very many creatures,
and among them some just begun, in the very
span of being born, some unfinished and lacking
their full number of parts, and often in the same body
one part lives, the other part is raw earth.
For when moisture and heat have taken a balance,
they conceive, and from these two all things arise,
and though fire is at war with water, moist vapor
creates all things, and discordant concord is fit for breeding.
So when the earth, muddy from the recent flood,
grew hot again under the heavenly suns and deep heat,
she brought forth countless kinds; partly she restored
the ancient shapes, partly she created new monsters.
She indeed would not have wished it, but you too, mighty Python,
she then bore, and to the new peoples, you unknown serpent,
you were a terror: so much of the mountain you covered.
This one the bow-bearing god — who had never used his deadly arms
before except on deer and fleeing wild goats —
destroyed, heavy with a thousand shafts, his quiver almost emptied,
the venom pouring out through the black wounds.
And lest age be able to wipe out the fame of the deed,
he founded sacred games with a thronged contest,
called Pythian from the name of the conquered serpent.
Here whichever of the young men had won by hand or foot or wheel
took the honor of an oak-leaf garland.
There was not yet the laurel, and Phoebus would wreathe
his temples, comely with long hair, from any tree at all.
Cetera diversis tellus animalia formis sponte sua peperit, postquam vetus umor ab igne percaluit solis, caenumque udaeque paludes intumuere aestu, fecundaque semina rerum vivaci nutrita solo ceu matris in alvo creverunt faciemque aliquam cepere morando. sic ubi deseruit madidos septemfluus agros Nilus et antiquo sua flumina reddidit alveo aetherioque recens exarsit sidere limus, plurima cultores versis animalia glaebis inveniunt et in his quaedam modo coepta per ipsum nascendi spatium, quaedam inperfecta suisque trunca vident numeris, et eodem in corpore saepe altera pars vivit, rudis est pars altera tellus. quippe ubi temperiem sumpsere umorque calorque, concipiunt, et ab his oriuntur cuncta duobus, cumque sit ignis aquae pugnax, vapor umidus omnes res creat, et discors concordia fetibus apta est. ergo ubi diluvio tellus lutulenta recenti solibus aetheriis altoque recanduit aestu, edidit innumeras species; partimque figuras rettulit antiquas, partim nova monstra creavit. Illa quidem nollet, sed te quoque, maxime Python, tum genuit, populisque novis, incognita serpens, terror eras: tantum spatii de monte tenebas. hunc deus arcitenens, numquam letalibus armis ante nisi in dammis capreisque fugacibus usus, mille gravem telis exhausta paene pharetra perdidit effuso per vulnera nigra veneno. neve operis famam posset delere vetustas, instituit sacros celebri certamine ludos, Pythia de domitae serpentis nomine dictos. hic iuvenum quicumque manu pedibusve rotave vicerat, aesculeae capiebat frondis honorem. nondum laurus erat, longoque decentia crine tempora cingebat de qualibet arbore Phoebus.
Phoebus’s first love was Daphne, daughter of Peneus, which not
blind chance gave, but the savage wrath of Cupid.
The Delian, lately proud at the serpent’s defeat,
had seen him bending his bow with the drawn string
and had said, "What have you, wanton boy, to do with mighty arms?
Those trappings suit our shoulders,
who can give sure wounds to a beast, sure wounds to a foe,
who lately laid low swollen Python, pressing so many acres
with his plague-bearing belly, with countless arrows.
Be you content to provoke who knows what loves
with your torch, and do not lay claim to praises that are ours!"
To him the son of Venus said, "Let your bow strike all things, Phoebus,
mine shall strike you; and by as much as all creatures yield
to a god, by so much is your glory less than mine."
He spoke, and with beating wings cleaving the air,
swift he took his stand on the shady height of Parnassus,
and drew from his arrow-bearing quiver two shafts
of opposite work: this one drives love off, that one makes it;
the one that makes it is golden and shines with a sharp point,
the one that drives it off is blunt and has lead beneath the reed.
This last the god fixed in the nymph, daughter of Peneus, but with the other
he pierced Apollo’s marrow, the shaft driven through the bones;
at once the one loves, the other flees the very name of a lover,
rejoicing in the woodland coverts and the spoils
of captured beasts, a rival of unwed Phoebe:
a single band confined her hair, let fall without order.
Many sought her, but she, turning from her suitors,
impatient of and untouched by man, roams the pathless woods
and cares not what Hymen, what Love, what marriage may be.
Often her father said, "You owe me a son-in-law, daughter,"
often her father said, "You owe me grandchildren, child";
she, hating the marriage-torches like a crime,
had suffused her fair face with a modest blush
and, clinging to her father’s neck with coaxing arms,
said, "Grant me, dearest father, to enjoy
perpetual virginity! Her father granted this before to Diana."
He indeed yields, but that beauty of yours forbids you to be
what you wish, and your loveliness fights against your prayer:
Phoebus loves, and desires marriage with Daphne now seen,
and what he desires he hopes for, and his own oracles deceive him,
and as light stubble burns when the ears are stripped off,
as hedges blaze with torches that a traveler by chance
has brought too near, or left behind at daybreak,
so the god went up in flames, so with all his breast
he burns and feeds a barren love by hoping.
He watches her unadorned hair hang at her neck
and says, "What if it were dressed?" He sees her eyes
flashing with fire, like stars, he sees her lips, which it is not
enough to have seen; he praises her fingers and hands
and arms and her upper arms bare more than halfway;
whatever is hidden, he thinks better. She flees swifter than the light
breeze and does not halt at these words of him calling her back:
"Nymph, daughter of Peneus, stay, I beg! I do not pursue as an enemy;
nymph, stay! Thus the lamb flees the wolf, thus the deer the lion,
thus the doves flee the eagle on trembling wing,
each its own foes: love is my reason for the chase!
Wretched me! Lest you fall headlong, or the brambles mark
your legs that do not deserve to be hurt, and I be your cause of pain!
The places you hurry through are rough: more gently, I beg,
run, and check your flight; more gently I myself will pursue.
Yet ask whom you please: I am no mountain-dweller,
I am no shepherd, I do not watch herds and flocks here
unkempt. You do not know, rash girl, you do not know
whom you flee, and so you flee: the Delphic land
and Claros and Tenedos and the Pataraean palace serve me;
Jupiter is my father; through me what will be and has been
and is lies open; through me songs are tuned to strings.
Sure indeed is my arrow, yet one arrow surer
than mine, which has made these wounds in my empty breast!
Medicine is my invention, and through the world I am called
the bringer of aid, and the power of herbs is subject to me.
Alas for me, that love is curable by no herbs,
and the arts that help all do not help their master!"
As he would say more, the daughter of Peneus in fearful flight
fled and left him, with his words unfinished;
then too she seemed comely; the winds bared her body,
the opposing breezes shook her facing garments,
and a light air streamed her hair back behind her,
and her beauty was increased by flight. But indeed the youthful god
no longer endures to waste his coaxing, and, as Love himself urged,
he follows her tracks at full pace.
As when a Gallic hound has seen a hare in an open field,
and this one seeks his prey with his feet, that one safety;
the one, like to fasten on, hopes now, now, to hold,
and grazes the tracks with outstretched muzzle,
the other is in doubt whether he is caught, and from the very
bites is snatched away, and leaves the touching jaws behind:
so are the god and the maiden — he swift with hope, she with fear.
Yet he who pursues, helped by the wings of Love,
is swifter, and denies her rest, and looms over the back
of the fleeing girl, and breathes on the hair scattered over her neck.
Her strength spent, she grew pale, and overcome
by the toil of swift flight, looking at the waters of Peneus,
she said, "Bring help, father! If you rivers have divine power,
destroy by changing this shape by which I have pleased too well!"
Scarcely was the prayer finished when a heavy numbness seizes her limbs,
her soft breast is girded with thin bark,
her hair grows into leaves, her arms into branches,
her foot, just now so swift, clings in sluggish roots,
a treetop holds her face: her radiance alone remains in her.
This too Phoebus loves, and laying his right hand on the trunk
he feels her heart still trembling beneath the new bark,
and embracing the branches with his arms as if they were limbs
he gives kisses to the wood; yet the wood shrinks from his kisses.
To her the god said, "But since you cannot be my wife,
you shall at least be my tree! Always shall my hair have you,
my lyres, my quivers, laurel;
you shall attend the Latin generals, when the glad voice sings
Triumph and the Capitol watches the long processions;
at Augustus’s doorposts you shall stand, the most faithful guardian
before the gates, and shall guard the oak between;
and as my head is youthful with unshorn hair,
so you too always bear the perpetual honors of your leaves!"
Paean had finished: the laurel nodded with her new-made branches
and seemed to have shaken her crown like a head.
blind chance gave, but the savage wrath of Cupid.
The Delian, lately proud at the serpent’s defeat,
had seen him bending his bow with the drawn string
and had said, "What have you, wanton boy, to do with mighty arms?
Those trappings suit our shoulders,
who can give sure wounds to a beast, sure wounds to a foe,
who lately laid low swollen Python, pressing so many acres
with his plague-bearing belly, with countless arrows.
Be you content to provoke who knows what loves
with your torch, and do not lay claim to praises that are ours!"
To him the son of Venus said, "Let your bow strike all things, Phoebus,
mine shall strike you; and by as much as all creatures yield
to a god, by so much is your glory less than mine."
He spoke, and with beating wings cleaving the air,
swift he took his stand on the shady height of Parnassus,
and drew from his arrow-bearing quiver two shafts
of opposite work: this one drives love off, that one makes it;
the one that makes it is golden and shines with a sharp point,
the one that drives it off is blunt and has lead beneath the reed.
This last the god fixed in the nymph, daughter of Peneus, but with the other
he pierced Apollo’s marrow, the shaft driven through the bones;
at once the one loves, the other flees the very name of a lover,
rejoicing in the woodland coverts and the spoils
of captured beasts, a rival of unwed Phoebe:
a single band confined her hair, let fall without order.
Many sought her, but she, turning from her suitors,
impatient of and untouched by man, roams the pathless woods
and cares not what Hymen, what Love, what marriage may be.
Often her father said, "You owe me a son-in-law, daughter,"
often her father said, "You owe me grandchildren, child";
she, hating the marriage-torches like a crime,
had suffused her fair face with a modest blush
and, clinging to her father’s neck with coaxing arms,
said, "Grant me, dearest father, to enjoy
perpetual virginity! Her father granted this before to Diana."
He indeed yields, but that beauty of yours forbids you to be
what you wish, and your loveliness fights against your prayer:
Phoebus loves, and desires marriage with Daphne now seen,
and what he desires he hopes for, and his own oracles deceive him,
and as light stubble burns when the ears are stripped off,
as hedges blaze with torches that a traveler by chance
has brought too near, or left behind at daybreak,
so the god went up in flames, so with all his breast
he burns and feeds a barren love by hoping.
He watches her unadorned hair hang at her neck
and says, "What if it were dressed?" He sees her eyes
flashing with fire, like stars, he sees her lips, which it is not
enough to have seen; he praises her fingers and hands
and arms and her upper arms bare more than halfway;
whatever is hidden, he thinks better. She flees swifter than the light
breeze and does not halt at these words of him calling her back:
"Nymph, daughter of Peneus, stay, I beg! I do not pursue as an enemy;
nymph, stay! Thus the lamb flees the wolf, thus the deer the lion,
thus the doves flee the eagle on trembling wing,
each its own foes: love is my reason for the chase!
Wretched me! Lest you fall headlong, or the brambles mark
your legs that do not deserve to be hurt, and I be your cause of pain!
The places you hurry through are rough: more gently, I beg,
run, and check your flight; more gently I myself will pursue.
Yet ask whom you please: I am no mountain-dweller,
I am no shepherd, I do not watch herds and flocks here
unkempt. You do not know, rash girl, you do not know
whom you flee, and so you flee: the Delphic land
and Claros and Tenedos and the Pataraean palace serve me;
Jupiter is my father; through me what will be and has been
and is lies open; through me songs are tuned to strings.
Sure indeed is my arrow, yet one arrow surer
than mine, which has made these wounds in my empty breast!
Medicine is my invention, and through the world I am called
the bringer of aid, and the power of herbs is subject to me.
Alas for me, that love is curable by no herbs,
and the arts that help all do not help their master!"
As he would say more, the daughter of Peneus in fearful flight
fled and left him, with his words unfinished;
then too she seemed comely; the winds bared her body,
the opposing breezes shook her facing garments,
and a light air streamed her hair back behind her,
and her beauty was increased by flight. But indeed the youthful god
no longer endures to waste his coaxing, and, as Love himself urged,
he follows her tracks at full pace.
As when a Gallic hound has seen a hare in an open field,
and this one seeks his prey with his feet, that one safety;
the one, like to fasten on, hopes now, now, to hold,
and grazes the tracks with outstretched muzzle,
the other is in doubt whether he is caught, and from the very
bites is snatched away, and leaves the touching jaws behind:
so are the god and the maiden — he swift with hope, she with fear.
Yet he who pursues, helped by the wings of Love,
is swifter, and denies her rest, and looms over the back
of the fleeing girl, and breathes on the hair scattered over her neck.
Her strength spent, she grew pale, and overcome
by the toil of swift flight, looking at the waters of Peneus,
she said, "Bring help, father! If you rivers have divine power,
destroy by changing this shape by which I have pleased too well!"
Scarcely was the prayer finished when a heavy numbness seizes her limbs,
her soft breast is girded with thin bark,
her hair grows into leaves, her arms into branches,
her foot, just now so swift, clings in sluggish roots,
a treetop holds her face: her radiance alone remains in her.
This too Phoebus loves, and laying his right hand on the trunk
he feels her heart still trembling beneath the new bark,
and embracing the branches with his arms as if they were limbs
he gives kisses to the wood; yet the wood shrinks from his kisses.
To her the god said, "But since you cannot be my wife,
you shall at least be my tree! Always shall my hair have you,
my lyres, my quivers, laurel;
you shall attend the Latin generals, when the glad voice sings
Triumph and the Capitol watches the long processions;
at Augustus’s doorposts you shall stand, the most faithful guardian
before the gates, and shall guard the oak between;
and as my head is youthful with unshorn hair,
so you too always bear the perpetual honors of your leaves!"
Paean had finished: the laurel nodded with her new-made branches
and seemed to have shaken her crown like a head.
Primus amor Phoebi Daphne Peneia, quem non fors ignara dedit, sed saeva Cupidinis ira, Delius hunc nuper, victa serpente superbus, viderat adducto flectentem cornua nervo ’quid’ que ’tibi, lascive puer, cum fortibus armis?’ dixerat: ’ista decent umeros gestamina nostros, qui dare certa ferae, dare vulnera possumus hosti, qui modo pestifero tot iugera ventre prementem stravimus innumeris tumidum Pythona sagittis. tu face nescio quos esto contentus amores inritare tua, nec laudes adsere nostras!’ filius huic Veneris ’figat tuus omnia, Phoebe, te meus arcus’ ait; ’quantoque animalia cedunt cuncta deo, tanto minor est tua gloria nostra.’ dixit et eliso percussis aere pennis inpiger umbrosa Parnasi constitit arce eque sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra diversorum operum: fugat hoc, facit illud amorem; quod facit, auratum est et cuspide fulget acuta, quod fugat, obtusum est et habet sub harundine plumbum. hoc deus in nympha Peneide fixit, at illo laesit Apollineas traiecta per ossa medullas; protinus alter amat, fugit altera nomen amantis silvarum latebris captivarumque ferarum exuviis gaudens innuptaeque aemula Phoebes: vitta coercebat positos sine lege capillos. multi illam petiere, illa aversata petentes inpatiens expersque viri nemora avia lustrat nec, quid Hymen, quid Amor, quid sint conubia curat. saepe pater dixit: ’generum mihi, filia, debes,’ saepe pater dixit: ’debes mihi, nata, nepotes’; illa velut crimen taedas exosa iugales pulchra verecundo suffuderat ora rubore inque patris blandis haerens cervice lacertis ’da mihi perpetua, genitor carissime,’ dixit ’virginitate frui! dedit hoc pater ante Dianae.’ ille quidem obsequitur, sed te decor iste quod optas esse vetat, votoque tuo tua forma repugnat: Phoebus amat visaeque cupit conubia Daphnes, quodque cupit, sperat, suaque illum oracula fallunt, utque leves stipulae demptis adolentur aristis, ut facibus saepes ardent, quas forte viator vel nimis admovit vel iam sub luce reliquit, sic deus in flammas abiit, sic pectore toto uritur et sterilem sperando nutrit amorem. spectat inornatos collo pendere capillos et ’quid, si comantur?’ ait. videt igne micantes sideribus similes oculos, videt oscula, quae non est vidisse satis; laudat digitosque manusque bracchiaque et nudos media plus parte lacertos; si qua latent, meliora putat. fugit ocior aura illa levi neque ad haec revocantis verba resistit: ’nympha, precor, Penei, mane! non insequor hostis; nympha, mane! sic agna lupum, sic cerva leonem, sic aquilam penna fugiunt trepidante columbae, hostes quaeque suos: amor est mihi causa sequendi! me miserum! ne prona cadas indignave laedi crura notent sentes et sim tibi causa doloris! aspera, qua properas, loca sunt: moderatius, oro, curre fugamque inhibe, moderatius insequar ipse. cui placeas, inquire tamen: non incola montis, non ego sum pastor, non hic armenta gregesque horridus observo. nescis, temeraria, nescis, quem fugias, ideoque fugis: mihi Delphica tellus et Claros et Tenedos Patareaque regia servit; Iuppiter est genitor; per me, quod eritque fuitque estque, patet; per me concordant carmina nervis. certa quidem nostra est, nostra tamen una sagitta certior, in vacuo quae vulnera pectore fecit! inventum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem dicor, et herbarum subiecta potentia nobis. ei mihi, quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis nec prosunt domino, quae prosunt omnibus, artes!’ Plura locuturum timido Peneia cursu fugit cumque ipso verba inperfecta reliquit, tum quoque visa decens; nudabant corpora venti, obviaque adversas vibrabant flamina vestes, et levis inpulsos retro dabat aura capillos, auctaque forma fuga est. sed enim non sustinet ultra perdere blanditias iuvenis deus, utque monebat ipse Amor, admisso sequitur vestigia passu. ut canis in vacuo leporem cum Gallicus arvo vidit, et hic praedam pedibus petit, ille salutem; alter inhaesuro similis iam iamque tenere sperat et extento stringit vestigia rostro, alter in ambiguo est, an sit conprensus, et ipsis morsibus eripitur tangentiaque ora relinquit: sic deus et virgo est hic spe celer, illa timore. qui tamen insequitur pennis adiutus Amoris, ocior est requiemque negat tergoque fugacis inminet et crinem sparsum cervicibus adflat. viribus absumptis expalluit illa citaeque victa labore fugae spectans Peneidas undas ’fer, pater,’ inquit ’opem! si flumina numen habetis, qua nimium placui, mutando perde figuram!’ vix prece finita torpor gravis occupat artus, mollia cinguntur tenui praecordia libro, in frondem crines, in ramos bracchia crescunt, pes modo tam velox pigris radicibus haeret, ora cacumen habet: remanet nitor unus in illa. Hanc quoque Phoebus amat positaque in stipite dextra sentit adhuc trepidare novo sub cortice pectus conplexusque suis ramos ut membra lacertis oscula dat ligno; refugit tamen oscula lignum. cui deus ’at, quoniam coniunx mea non potes esse, arbor eris certe’ dixit ’mea! semper habebunt te coma, te citharae, te nostrae, laure, pharetrae; tu ducibus Latiis aderis, cum laeta Triumphum vox canet et visent longas Capitolia pompas; postibus Augustis eadem fidissima custos ante fores stabis mediamque tuebere quercum, utque meum intonsis caput est iuvenale capillis, tu quoque perpetuos semper gere frondis honores!’ finierat Paean: factis modo laurea ramis adnuit utque caput visa est agitasse cacumen.
There is a grove of Haemonia, which on every side a sheer
wood encloses: they call it Tempe; through it Peneus,
pouring from the foot of Pindus, rolls with foaming waves
and by its heavy fall draws together clouds that stir
fine mists, and rains spray upon the treetops of the woods
and wearies more than the neighboring places with its roar:
this is the home, this the seat, these the inner chambers of the great
river, and seated in these, in a cave made of crags,
he gave laws to the waters and to the nymphs who dwell in the waters.
There first the neighboring rivers gather,
not knowing whether to congratulate or console the father,
poplar-bearing Spercheos and restless Enipeus
and old Apidanos and gentle Amphrysos and Aeas,
and soon the other rivers, which, wherever their force has carried them,
lead down to the sea their waters wearied by wandering.
Inachus alone is absent, and hidden in his deep cave
he swells his waters with weeping and, most wretched, mourns
his daughter Io as lost: he does not know whether she enjoys life
or is among the shades; but her whom he finds nowhere
he thinks to be nowhere, and in his heart fears worse.
Jupiter had seen her returning from her father’s
stream, and had said, "O maiden worthy of Jove, and destined to make
some unknown man happy in your bed, seek the shade
of the deep groves" — and he had pointed to the groves’ shade —
"while it is hot, and the sun is highest in mid-circle!
But if you fear to enter alone the lairs of beasts,
safe under a god’s protection you will go into the groves’ retreats —
no common god, but one who holds the great heavenly
scepter in his hand, who hurls the wandering thunderbolts.
Do not flee me!" — for she was fleeing. Already she had left
the pastures of Lerna and the tree-planted Lyrcean fields,
when the god, drawing a darkness over the wide lands,
hid them and stopped her flight and stole her honor.
Meanwhile Juno looked down into the midst of Argos
and, wondering that the flying mists had made the look of night
under the bright day, perceived that they were not
of the river, nor sent up from the moist earth;
and she looks around for where her husband is, as one who
by now knew the thefts of a mate so often caught.
When she did not find him in the sky, "Either I am deceived,
or I am wronged," she says, and gliding down from highest heaven
she stood on the earth and bade the mists withdraw.
He had foreseen his wife’s coming and had changed the shining
features of Inachus’s daughter into a heifer;
even as a cow she is beautiful. The Saturnian approves the cow’s
form, though against her will, and asks — as if ignorant of the truth —
whose she is, and from where, and from what herd.
Jupiter lies that she was born from the earth, that the source
may cease to be asked: the Saturnian asks for her as a gift.
What is he to do? Cruel to give up his own love,
but not to give her is suspicious: Shame is what urges on the one side,
on the other Love dissuades. Shame would have been conquered by Love,
but if so slight a gift as a cow were denied to the partner
of his birth and bed, it might have seemed no cow at all!
With the rival given to her, the goddess did not at once put off all
fear, and feared Jove, and was anxious about a theft,
until she handed her over to be guarded by Argus, son of Arestor.
Argus had a head girt with a hundred eyes:
of these, in their turns, two at a time took rest,
the rest kept watch and stayed at their post.
In whatever way he stood, he looked toward Io;
even turned away, he had Io before his eyes.
By day he lets her graze; when the sun is deep beneath the earth,
he shuts her in and puts chains around her undeserving neck.
She feeds on the leaves of trees and on bitter grass.
And for a bed the unhappy creature lies on ground
that does not always have grass, and drinks from muddy streams.
She too, when she wished to stretch her arms in supplication
to Argus, had no arms to stretch to Argus,
and trying to complain, she gave forth a lowing from her mouth,
and was terrified at the sounds, frightened by her own voice.
She came too to the banks of Inachus, where she often used to play:
when she saw her gaping jaws and the new horns in the water,
she was terrified, and, beside herself, fled from herself.
The Naiads do not know, nor does Inachus himself know,
who she is; but she follows her father and follows her sisters
and lets herself be touched and offers herself to them as they wonder.
Old Inachus had held out plucked grasses:
she licks his hands and gives kisses to her father’s palms,
and does not hold back her tears, and, if only words would follow,
she would beg help and tell her name and her misfortunes;
a letter instead of words, which her hoof traced in the dust,
carried out the sad disclosure of her altered body.
"Wretched me!" cries her father Inachus, and hanging on the horns
and snow-white neck of the moaning heifer,
"Wretched me!" he repeats; "are you the daughter I sought
through all the lands? You, unfound, were a lighter grief
than you, found! You are silent and give no words in answer
to mine, you only draw sighs from your deep
breast, and — the one thing you can do — low back at my words!
But I, all unknowing, was preparing for you a marriage and torches,
and my first hope was of a son-in-law, my second of grandchildren.
Now from the herd must your husband come, now from the herd your child.
Nor am I allowed to end such griefs by death;
but it harms me to be a god, and the closed gate of death
stretches our mourning into an eternal age."
As he mourns thus, starred Argus drives him off
and drags the daughter, torn from her father, away
into distant pastures. He himself, far off, takes a high mountain peak,
from which, sitting, he watches in all directions.
wood encloses: they call it Tempe; through it Peneus,
pouring from the foot of Pindus, rolls with foaming waves
and by its heavy fall draws together clouds that stir
fine mists, and rains spray upon the treetops of the woods
and wearies more than the neighboring places with its roar:
this is the home, this the seat, these the inner chambers of the great
river, and seated in these, in a cave made of crags,
he gave laws to the waters and to the nymphs who dwell in the waters.
There first the neighboring rivers gather,
not knowing whether to congratulate or console the father,
poplar-bearing Spercheos and restless Enipeus
and old Apidanos and gentle Amphrysos and Aeas,
and soon the other rivers, which, wherever their force has carried them,
lead down to the sea their waters wearied by wandering.
Inachus alone is absent, and hidden in his deep cave
he swells his waters with weeping and, most wretched, mourns
his daughter Io as lost: he does not know whether she enjoys life
or is among the shades; but her whom he finds nowhere
he thinks to be nowhere, and in his heart fears worse.
Jupiter had seen her returning from her father’s
stream, and had said, "O maiden worthy of Jove, and destined to make
some unknown man happy in your bed, seek the shade
of the deep groves" — and he had pointed to the groves’ shade —
"while it is hot, and the sun is highest in mid-circle!
But if you fear to enter alone the lairs of beasts,
safe under a god’s protection you will go into the groves’ retreats —
no common god, but one who holds the great heavenly
scepter in his hand, who hurls the wandering thunderbolts.
Do not flee me!" — for she was fleeing. Already she had left
the pastures of Lerna and the tree-planted Lyrcean fields,
when the god, drawing a darkness over the wide lands,
hid them and stopped her flight and stole her honor.
Meanwhile Juno looked down into the midst of Argos
and, wondering that the flying mists had made the look of night
under the bright day, perceived that they were not
of the river, nor sent up from the moist earth;
and she looks around for where her husband is, as one who
by now knew the thefts of a mate so often caught.
When she did not find him in the sky, "Either I am deceived,
or I am wronged," she says, and gliding down from highest heaven
she stood on the earth and bade the mists withdraw.
He had foreseen his wife’s coming and had changed the shining
features of Inachus’s daughter into a heifer;
even as a cow she is beautiful. The Saturnian approves the cow’s
form, though against her will, and asks — as if ignorant of the truth —
whose she is, and from where, and from what herd.
Jupiter lies that she was born from the earth, that the source
may cease to be asked: the Saturnian asks for her as a gift.
What is he to do? Cruel to give up his own love,
but not to give her is suspicious: Shame is what urges on the one side,
on the other Love dissuades. Shame would have been conquered by Love,
but if so slight a gift as a cow were denied to the partner
of his birth and bed, it might have seemed no cow at all!
With the rival given to her, the goddess did not at once put off all
fear, and feared Jove, and was anxious about a theft,
until she handed her over to be guarded by Argus, son of Arestor.
Argus had a head girt with a hundred eyes:
of these, in their turns, two at a time took rest,
the rest kept watch and stayed at their post.
In whatever way he stood, he looked toward Io;
even turned away, he had Io before his eyes.
By day he lets her graze; when the sun is deep beneath the earth,
he shuts her in and puts chains around her undeserving neck.
She feeds on the leaves of trees and on bitter grass.
And for a bed the unhappy creature lies on ground
that does not always have grass, and drinks from muddy streams.
She too, when she wished to stretch her arms in supplication
to Argus, had no arms to stretch to Argus,
and trying to complain, she gave forth a lowing from her mouth,
and was terrified at the sounds, frightened by her own voice.
She came too to the banks of Inachus, where she often used to play:
when she saw her gaping jaws and the new horns in the water,
she was terrified, and, beside herself, fled from herself.
The Naiads do not know, nor does Inachus himself know,
who she is; but she follows her father and follows her sisters
and lets herself be touched and offers herself to them as they wonder.
Old Inachus had held out plucked grasses:
she licks his hands and gives kisses to her father’s palms,
and does not hold back her tears, and, if only words would follow,
she would beg help and tell her name and her misfortunes;
a letter instead of words, which her hoof traced in the dust,
carried out the sad disclosure of her altered body.
"Wretched me!" cries her father Inachus, and hanging on the horns
and snow-white neck of the moaning heifer,
"Wretched me!" he repeats; "are you the daughter I sought
through all the lands? You, unfound, were a lighter grief
than you, found! You are silent and give no words in answer
to mine, you only draw sighs from your deep
breast, and — the one thing you can do — low back at my words!
But I, all unknowing, was preparing for you a marriage and torches,
and my first hope was of a son-in-law, my second of grandchildren.
Now from the herd must your husband come, now from the herd your child.
Nor am I allowed to end such griefs by death;
but it harms me to be a god, and the closed gate of death
stretches our mourning into an eternal age."
As he mourns thus, starred Argus drives him off
and drags the daughter, torn from her father, away
into distant pastures. He himself, far off, takes a high mountain peak,
from which, sitting, he watches in all directions.
Est nemus Haemoniae, praerupta quod undique claudit silva: vocant Tempe; per quae Peneos ab imo effusus Pindo spumosis volvitur undis deiectuque gravi tenues agitantia fumos nubila conducit summisque adspergine silvis inpluit et sonitu plus quam vicina fatigat: haec domus, haec sedes, haec sunt penetralia magni amnis, in his residens facto de cautibus antro, undis iura dabat nymphisque colentibus undas. conveniunt illuc popularia flumina primum, nescia, gratentur consolenturne parentem, populifer Sperchios et inrequietus Enipeus Apidanosque senex lenisque Amphrysos et Aeas, moxque amnes alii, qui, qua tulit inpetus illos, in mare deducunt fessas erroribus undas. Inachus unus abest imoque reconditus antro fletibus auget aquas natamque miserrimus Io luget ut amissam: nescit, vitane fruatur an sit apud manes; sed quam non invenit usquam, esse putat nusquam atque animo peiora veretur. Viderat a patrio redeuntem Iuppiter illam flumine et ’o virgo Iove digna tuoque beatum nescio quem factura toro, pete’ dixerat ’umbras altorum nemorum’ (et nemorum monstraverat umbras) ’dum calet, et medio sol est altissimus orbe! quodsi sola times latebras intrare ferarum, praeside tuta deo nemorum secreta subibis, nec de plebe deo, sed qui caelestia magna sceptra manu teneo, sed qui vaga fulmina mitto. ne fuge me!’ fugiebat enim. iam pascua Lernae consitaque arboribus Lyrcea reliquerat arva, cum deus inducta latas caligine terras occuluit tenuitque fugam rapuitque pudorem. Interea medios Iuno despexit in Argos et noctis faciem nebulas fecisse volucres sub nitido mirata die, non fluminis illas esse, nec umenti sensit tellure remitti; atque suus coniunx ubi sit circumspicit, ut quae deprensi totiens iam nosset furta mariti. quem postquam caelo non repperit, ’aut ego fallor aut ego laedor’ ait delapsaque ab aethere summo constitit in terris nebulasque recedere iussit. coniugis adventum praesenserat inque nitentem Inachidos vultus mutaverat ille iuvencam; bos quoque formosa est. speciem Saturnia vaccae, quamquam invita, probat nec non, et cuius et unde quove sit armento, veri quasi nescia quaerit. Iuppiter e terra genitam mentitur, ut auctor desinat inquiri: petit hanc Saturnia munus. quid faciat? crudele suos addicere amores, non dare suspectum est: Pudor est, qui suadeat illinc, hinc dissuadet Amor. victus Pudor esset Amore, sed leve si munus sociae generisque torique vacca negaretur, poterat non vacca videri! Paelice donata non protinus exuit omnem diva metum timuitque Iovem et fuit anxia furti, donec Arestoridae servandam tradidit Argo. centum luminibus cinctum caput Argus habebat inde suis vicibus capiebant bina quietem, cetera servabant atque in statione manebant. constiterat quocumque modo, spectabat ad Io, ante oculos Io, quamvis aversus, habebat. luce sinit pasci; cum sol tellure sub alta est, claudit et indigno circumdat vincula collo. frondibus arboreis et amara pascitur herba. proque toro terrae non semper gramen habenti incubat infelix limosaque flumina potat. illa etiam supplex Argo cum bracchia vellet tendere, non habuit, quae bracchia tenderet Argo, conatoque queri mugitus edidit ore pertimuitque sonos propriaque exterrita voce est. venit et ad ripas, ubi ludere saepe solebat, Inachidas: rictus novaque ut conspexit in unda cornua, pertimuit seque exsternata refugit. naides ignorant, ignorat et Inachus ipse, quae sit; at illa patrem sequitur sequiturque sorores et patitur tangi seque admirantibus offert. decerptas senior porrexerat Inachus herbas: illa manus lambit patriisque dat oscula palmis nec retinet lacrimas et, si modo verba sequantur, oret opem nomenque suum casusque loquatur; littera pro verbis, quam pes in pulvere duxit, corporis indicium mutati triste peregit. ’me miserum!’ exclamat pater Inachus inque gementis cornibus et nivea pendens cervice iuvencae ’me miserum!’ ingeminat; ’tune es quaesita per omnes nata mihi terras? tu non inventa reperta luctus eras levior! retices nec mutua nostris dicta refers, alto tantum suspiria ducis pectore, quodque unum potes, ad mea verba remugis! at tibi ego ignarus thalamos taedasque parabam, spesque fuit generi mihi prima, secunda nepotum. de grege nunc tibi vir, nunc de grege natus habendus. nec finire licet tantos mihi morte dolores; sed nocet esse deum, praeclusaque ianua leti aeternum nostros luctus extendit in aevum.’ talia maerenti stellatus submovet Argus ereptamque patri diversa in pascua natam abstrahit. ipse procul montis sublime cacumen occupat, unde sedens partes speculatur in omnes.
Nor can the ruler of the gods bear the great sufferings of Phoroneus’s daughter
any longer, and he calls his son, whom the shining Pleiad bore
in childbirth, and commands him to give Argus to death.
Brief is the delay to take wings for his feet and his sleep-bringing
wand in his strong hand and a covering for his hair.
When he had arranged these, the son of Jove leaped from his father’s
citadel down to the earth; there he took off the covering
and laid aside his wings, only the wand kept back:
with this, like a shepherd, he drives she-goats led aside
through the pathless country as he comes, and pipes on his joined reeds.
Caught by the strange sound, Juno’s watchman said, "But you,
whoever you are, could sit with me on this rock,"
Argus said; "for in no place is there richer grass
for the flock, and you see shade well suited to shepherds."
The grandson of Atlas sat down and, by talking much,
held back the passing day with conversation, and by playing
on his joined reeds he tries to conquer the watching eyes.
Yet he fights to overcome soft sleep,
and although slumber is received in part of his eyes,
in part he still keeps watch. He asks too — for the pipe
had lately been invented — by what means it was invented.
Then the god said, "Under the cold mountains of Arcadia,
among the Nonacrine hamadryads, most renowned,
there was one Naiad: the nymphs called her Syrinx.
More than once she had eluded the pursuing satyrs
and whatever gods the shady wood and the fruitful
country hold. She worshipped the Ortygian goddess in her pursuits
and in her very virginity; girt too in Diana’s manner,
she would deceive you and could be believed Latona’s daughter, were it not
that her bow was of horn, the other’s of gold;
even so she deceived. As she returned from the Lycaean hill,
Pan sees her, and his head wreathed with sharp pine,
he speaks such words —" It remained to report his words,
and that, his prayers scorned, the nymph fled through the pathless places,
until she came to the calm stream of sandy Ladon;
here, when the waters hindered her course,
she begged her watery sisters to change her,
and that Pan, when he thought he had now grasped Syrinx,
held marsh reeds instead of the nymph’s body,
and that, while he sighs there, the winds stirred in the reed
made a thin sound, like one lamenting.
And that the god, caught by the new device and the sweetness of the voice,
said, "This converse with you shall remain to me,"
and that so, with unequal reeds joined to each other
by a binding of wax, it kept the girl’s name.
any longer, and he calls his son, whom the shining Pleiad bore
in childbirth, and commands him to give Argus to death.
Brief is the delay to take wings for his feet and his sleep-bringing
wand in his strong hand and a covering for his hair.
When he had arranged these, the son of Jove leaped from his father’s
citadel down to the earth; there he took off the covering
and laid aside his wings, only the wand kept back:
with this, like a shepherd, he drives she-goats led aside
through the pathless country as he comes, and pipes on his joined reeds.
Caught by the strange sound, Juno’s watchman said, "But you,
whoever you are, could sit with me on this rock,"
Argus said; "for in no place is there richer grass
for the flock, and you see shade well suited to shepherds."
The grandson of Atlas sat down and, by talking much,
held back the passing day with conversation, and by playing
on his joined reeds he tries to conquer the watching eyes.
Yet he fights to overcome soft sleep,
and although slumber is received in part of his eyes,
in part he still keeps watch. He asks too — for the pipe
had lately been invented — by what means it was invented.
Then the god said, "Under the cold mountains of Arcadia,
among the Nonacrine hamadryads, most renowned,
there was one Naiad: the nymphs called her Syrinx.
More than once she had eluded the pursuing satyrs
and whatever gods the shady wood and the fruitful
country hold. She worshipped the Ortygian goddess in her pursuits
and in her very virginity; girt too in Diana’s manner,
she would deceive you and could be believed Latona’s daughter, were it not
that her bow was of horn, the other’s of gold;
even so she deceived. As she returned from the Lycaean hill,
Pan sees her, and his head wreathed with sharp pine,
he speaks such words —" It remained to report his words,
and that, his prayers scorned, the nymph fled through the pathless places,
until she came to the calm stream of sandy Ladon;
here, when the waters hindered her course,
she begged her watery sisters to change her,
and that Pan, when he thought he had now grasped Syrinx,
held marsh reeds instead of the nymph’s body,
and that, while he sighs there, the winds stirred in the reed
made a thin sound, like one lamenting.
And that the god, caught by the new device and the sweetness of the voice,
said, "This converse with you shall remain to me,"
and that so, with unequal reeds joined to each other
by a binding of wax, it kept the girl’s name.
Nec superum rector mala tanta Phoronidos ultra ferre potest natumque vocat, quem lucida partu Pleias enixa est letoque det imperat Argum. parva mora est alas pedibus virgamque potenti somniferam sumpsisse manu tegumenque capillis. haec ubi disposuit, patria Iove natus ab arce desilit in terras; illic tegumenque removit et posuit pennas, tantummodo virga retenta est: hac agit, ut pastor, per devia rura capellas dum venit abductas, et structis cantat avenis. voce nova captus custos Iunonius ’at tu, quisquis es, hoc poteras mecum considere saxo’ Argus ait; ’neque enim pecori fecundior ullo herba loco est, aptamque vides pastoribus umbram.’ Sedit Atlantiades et euntem multa loquendo detinuit sermone diem iunctisque canendo vincere harundinibus servantia lumina temptat. ille tamen pugnat molles evincere somnos et, quamvis sopor est oculorum parte receptus, parte tamen vigilat. quaerit quoque (namque reperta fistula nuper erat), qua sit ratione reperta. Tum deus ’Arcadiae gelidis sub montibus’ inquit ’inter hamadryadas celeberrima Nonacrinas naias una fuit: nymphae Syringa vocabant. non semel et satyros eluserat illa sequentes et quoscumque deos umbrosaque silva feraxque rus habet. Ortygiam studiis ipsaque colebat virginitate deam; ritu quoque cincta Dianae falleret et posset credi Latonia, si non corneus huic arcus, si non foret aureus illi; sic quoque fallebat. Redeuntem colle Lycaeo Pan videt hanc pinuque caput praecinctus acuta talia verba refert – restabat verba referre et precibus spretis fugisse per avia nympham, donec harenosi placidum Ladonis ad amnem venerit; hic illam cursum inpedientibus undis ut se mutarent liquidas orasse sorores, Panaque cum prensam sibi iam Syringa putaret, corpore pro nymphae calamos tenuisse palustres, dumque ibi suspirat, motos in harundine ventos effecisse sonum tenuem similemque querenti. arte nova vocisque deum dulcedine captum ’hoc mihi colloquium tecum’ dixisse ’manebit,’ atque ita disparibus calamis conpagine cerae inter se iunctis nomen tenuisse puellae.
As the Cyllenian was about to say such things, he saw all
the eyes had sunk down and the lights were covered with sleep;
at once he checks his voice and makes the slumber firm,
stroking the languid eyes with his charmed wand.
Without delay he wounds the nodding head with his hooked sword,
where the head borders on the neck, and casts it bloody from the rock
and stains the sheer cliff with blood.
Argus, you lie low, and the light you had in so many lights
is quenched, and one night seizes your hundred eyes.
The Saturnian takes them up and sets them on the feathers
of her own bird and fills its tail with starry jewels.
At once she blazed up and did not put off the time of her wrath,
and set a dreadful Fury before the eyes and mind
of the Argive rival, and buried blind goads
in her breast, and drove her, a fugitive, over the whole world.
You remained, Nile, last to her measureless toil;
and as soon as she reached you, she sank down on her knees
at the edge of the bank, and, with neck thrown back and lifted,
raising to the stars the only face she could,
with groaning and tears and grief-sounding lowing
she seemed to complain to Jove and to pray for an end to her ills.
He, embracing the neck of his wife with his arms,
asks her to end the punishment at last, and says, "For the future
lay aside your fears: this one shall never be a cause of grief
to you," and bids the Stygian marshes hear this.
When the goddess was soothed, Io takes her former looks
and becomes what she was before: the bristles flee from her body,
the horns shrink, the circle of her eye grows smaller,
her gaping jaw draws in, her shoulders and hands return,
and the hoof, dissolved into five, is used up in nails:
of the cow nothing of the form remains in her but her whiteness.
And content with the service of two feet, the nymph
stands erect, and fears to speak, lest in the manner of a heifer
she low, and timidly tries again the words she had broken off.
Now as a goddess she is worshipped, most thronged, by the linen-clad crowd.
To her at last Epaphus, born of the seed of great
Jove, is believed to belong, and through the cities he holds temples
joined to his mother’s. He had, equal in spirit and in years,
Phaethon, sprung from the Sun, who once, speaking big
and yielding to no one, proud of Phoebus as his father,
was not borne with by the son of Inachus, who said, "Madman, you believe
your mother in everything, and are swollen with the image of a false father."
Phaethon blushed and checked his anger out of shame
and carried the taunts of Epaphus to his mother Clymene,
and said, "That you may grieve the more, mother — I, that free,
that fierce one, was silent! It shames me that these reproaches
could be spoken against us and could not be refuted.
But you, if I am indeed born of heavenly stock,
give a token of so great a lineage and claim me for the sky!"
He spoke and threw his arms around his mother’s neck
and by his own head and that of Merops and the marriage-torches of his sisters
begged her to give him sure signs of his true father.
Clymene — it is uncertain whether moved more by Phaethon’s prayers
or by anger at the charge laid against her — stretched both her arms
to the sky, and looking toward the lights of the sun
said, "By this radiance, marked out with its glittering rays,
which hears and sees us, I swear to you, my son,
that by this Sun you look on, by this one who rules the world,
you were begotten of the Sun; if I speak falsehood, let him deny me
the sight of himself, and let that light be the last for my eyes!
Nor is it long labor for you to know your father’s home.
The house from which he rises borders on our land:
if only your spirit prompts you, go and ask him yourself!"
At once Phaethon leaps up, joyful after such words
of his mother, and takes the sky into his thoughts,
and passes his own Ethiopians and the Indians set beneath
the starry fires, and eagerly approaches his father’s rising.
the eyes had sunk down and the lights were covered with sleep;
at once he checks his voice and makes the slumber firm,
stroking the languid eyes with his charmed wand.
Without delay he wounds the nodding head with his hooked sword,
where the head borders on the neck, and casts it bloody from the rock
and stains the sheer cliff with blood.
Argus, you lie low, and the light you had in so many lights
is quenched, and one night seizes your hundred eyes.
The Saturnian takes them up and sets them on the feathers
of her own bird and fills its tail with starry jewels.
At once she blazed up and did not put off the time of her wrath,
and set a dreadful Fury before the eyes and mind
of the Argive rival, and buried blind goads
in her breast, and drove her, a fugitive, over the whole world.
You remained, Nile, last to her measureless toil;
and as soon as she reached you, she sank down on her knees
at the edge of the bank, and, with neck thrown back and lifted,
raising to the stars the only face she could,
with groaning and tears and grief-sounding lowing
she seemed to complain to Jove and to pray for an end to her ills.
He, embracing the neck of his wife with his arms,
asks her to end the punishment at last, and says, "For the future
lay aside your fears: this one shall never be a cause of grief
to you," and bids the Stygian marshes hear this.
When the goddess was soothed, Io takes her former looks
and becomes what she was before: the bristles flee from her body,
the horns shrink, the circle of her eye grows smaller,
her gaping jaw draws in, her shoulders and hands return,
and the hoof, dissolved into five, is used up in nails:
of the cow nothing of the form remains in her but her whiteness.
And content with the service of two feet, the nymph
stands erect, and fears to speak, lest in the manner of a heifer
she low, and timidly tries again the words she had broken off.
Now as a goddess she is worshipped, most thronged, by the linen-clad crowd.
To her at last Epaphus, born of the seed of great
Jove, is believed to belong, and through the cities he holds temples
joined to his mother’s. He had, equal in spirit and in years,
Phaethon, sprung from the Sun, who once, speaking big
and yielding to no one, proud of Phoebus as his father,
was not borne with by the son of Inachus, who said, "Madman, you believe
your mother in everything, and are swollen with the image of a false father."
Phaethon blushed and checked his anger out of shame
and carried the taunts of Epaphus to his mother Clymene,
and said, "That you may grieve the more, mother — I, that free,
that fierce one, was silent! It shames me that these reproaches
could be spoken against us and could not be refuted.
But you, if I am indeed born of heavenly stock,
give a token of so great a lineage and claim me for the sky!"
He spoke and threw his arms around his mother’s neck
and by his own head and that of Merops and the marriage-torches of his sisters
begged her to give him sure signs of his true father.
Clymene — it is uncertain whether moved more by Phaethon’s prayers
or by anger at the charge laid against her — stretched both her arms
to the sky, and looking toward the lights of the sun
said, "By this radiance, marked out with its glittering rays,
which hears and sees us, I swear to you, my son,
that by this Sun you look on, by this one who rules the world,
you were begotten of the Sun; if I speak falsehood, let him deny me
the sight of himself, and let that light be the last for my eyes!
Nor is it long labor for you to know your father’s home.
The house from which he rises borders on our land:
if only your spirit prompts you, go and ask him yourself!"
At once Phaethon leaps up, joyful after such words
of his mother, and takes the sky into his thoughts,
and passes his own Ethiopians and the Indians set beneath
the starry fires, and eagerly approaches his father’s rising.
talia dicturus vidit Cyllenius omnes subcubuisse oculos adopertaque lumina somno; supprimit extemplo vocem firmatque soporem languida permulcens medicata lumina virga. nec mora, falcato nutantem vulnerat ense, qua collo est confine caput, saxoque cruentum deicit et maculat praeruptam sanguine rupem. Arge, iaces, quodque in tot lumina lumen habebas, exstinctum est, centumque oculos nox occupat una. Excipit hos volucrisque suae Saturnia pennis collocat et gemmis caudam stellantibus inplet. protinus exarsit nec tempora distulit irae horriferamque oculis animoque obiecit Erinyn paelicis Argolicae stimulosque in pectore caecos condidit et profugam per totum exercuit orbem. ultimus inmenso restabas, Nile, labori; quem simulac tetigit, positisque in margine ripae procubuit genibus resupinoque ardua collo, quos potuit solos, tollens ad sidera vultus et gemitu et lacrimis et luctisono mugitu cum Iove visa queri finemque orare malorum. coniugis ille suae conplexus colla lacertis, finiat ut poenas tandem, rogat ’in’ que ’futurum pone metus’ inquit: ’numquam tibi causa doloris haec erit,’ et Stygias iubet hoc audire paludes. Ut lenita dea est, vultus capit illa priores fitque, quod ante fuit: fugiunt e corpore saetae, cornua decrescunt, fit luminis artior orbis, contrahitur rictus, redeunt umerique manusque, ungulaque in quinos dilapsa absumitur ungues: de bove nil superest formae nisi candor in illa. officioque pedum nymphe contenta duorum erigitur metuitque loqui, ne more iuvencae mugiat, et timide verba intermissa retemptat. Nunc dea linigera colitur celeberrima turba. huic Epaphus magni genitus de semine tandem creditur esse Iovis perque urbes iuncta parenti templa tenet. fuit huic animis aequalis et annis Sole satus Phaethon, quem quondam magna loquentem nec sibi cedentem Phoeboque parente superbum non tulit Inachides ’matri’ que ait ’omnia demens credis et es tumidus genitoris imagine falsi.’ erubuit Phaethon iramque pudore repressit et tulit ad Clymenen Epaphi convicia matrem ’quo’ que ’magis doleas, genetrix’ ait, ’ille ego liber, ille ferox tacui! pudet haec opprobria nobis et dici potuisse et non potuisse refelli. at tu, si modo sum caelesti stirpe creatus, ede notam tanti generis meque adsere caelo!’ dixit et inplicuit materno bracchia collo perque suum Meropisque caput taedasque sororum traderet oravit veri sibi signa parentis. ambiguum Clymene precibus Phaethontis an ira mota magis dicti sibi criminis utraque caelo bracchia porrexit spectansque ad lumina solis ’per iubar hoc’ inquit ’radiis insigne coruscis, nate, tibi iuro, quod nos auditque videtque, hoc te, quem spectas, hoc te, qui temperat orbem, Sole satum; si ficta loquor, neget ipse videndum se mihi, sitque oculis lux ista novissima nostris! nec longus labor est patrios tibi nosse penates. unde oritur, domus est terrae contermina nostrae: si modo fert animus, gradere et scitabere ab ipso!’ emicat extemplo laetus post talia matris dicta suae Phaethon et concipit aethera mente Aethiopasque suos positosque sub ignibus Indos sidereis transit patriosque adit inpiger ortus. Ovid The Latin Library The Classics Page Ovid The Latin Library The Classics Page
The palace of the Sun rose high on soaring columns,
bright with flashing gold and bronze that mimics flame;
gleaming ivory sheathed the topmost gables,
the double doors shone radiant with silver’s light.
The workmanship surpassed the material: for there Mulciber
had chased the seas that gird the central lands,
and the circle of the lands, and the sky that overhangs the world.
The water holds its sea-blue gods — tuneful Triton,
shifting Proteus, and Aegaeon pressing
the huge backs of whales with his great arms,
and Doris and her daughters: some seem to be swimming,
some sit on a rock drying their green hair,
some are carried on a fish; their faces are not all one,
yet not unlike — such as sisters’ faces should be.
The land bears men and cities, woods and beasts,
and rivers and nymphs and the other powers of the countryside.
Above these was set the image of the shining sky,
with six signs on the right-hand doors and as many on the left.
When Clymene’s son had climbed the sloping path
and entered the house of the father he half-doubted,
at once he turns his steps toward his father’s face
and halts far off, for he could not bear his light
any nearer: robed in a purple cloak sat
Phoebus on a throne that shone with bright emeralds.
To right and left stood Day and Month and Year,
and the Ages, and the Hours set at equal intervals,
and young Spring stood, wreathed with a flowering crown,
naked Summer stood and wore a garland of grain,
and Autumn stood, stained from the trodden grapes,
and icy Winter, his white hair unkempt.
bright with flashing gold and bronze that mimics flame;
gleaming ivory sheathed the topmost gables,
the double doors shone radiant with silver’s light.
The workmanship surpassed the material: for there Mulciber
had chased the seas that gird the central lands,
and the circle of the lands, and the sky that overhangs the world.
The water holds its sea-blue gods — tuneful Triton,
shifting Proteus, and Aegaeon pressing
the huge backs of whales with his great arms,
and Doris and her daughters: some seem to be swimming,
some sit on a rock drying their green hair,
some are carried on a fish; their faces are not all one,
yet not unlike — such as sisters’ faces should be.
The land bears men and cities, woods and beasts,
and rivers and nymphs and the other powers of the countryside.
Above these was set the image of the shining sky,
with six signs on the right-hand doors and as many on the left.
When Clymene’s son had climbed the sloping path
and entered the house of the father he half-doubted,
at once he turns his steps toward his father’s face
and halts far off, for he could not bear his light
any nearer: robed in a purple cloak sat
Phoebus on a throne that shone with bright emeralds.
To right and left stood Day and Month and Year,
and the Ages, and the Hours set at equal intervals,
and young Spring stood, wreathed with a flowering crown,
naked Summer stood and wore a garland of grain,
and Autumn stood, stained from the trodden grapes,
and icy Winter, his white hair unkempt.
Regia Solis erat sublimibus alta columnis, clara micante auro flammasque imitante pyropo, cuius ebur nitidum fastigia summa tegebat, argenti bifores radiabant lumine valvae. materiam superabat opus: nam Mulciber illic aequora caelarat medias cingentia terras terrarumque orbem caelumque, quod imminet orbi. caeruleos habet unda deos, Tritona canorum Proteaque ambiguum ballaenarumque prementem Aegaeona suis inmania terga lacertis Doridaque et natas, quarum pars nare videtur, pars in mole sedens viridis siccare capillos, pisce vehi quaedam: facies non omnibus una, non diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum. terra viros urbesque gerit silvasque ferasque fluminaque et nymphas et cetera numina ruris. haec super inposita est caeli fulgentis imago, signaque sex foribus dextris totidemque sinistris. Quo simul adclivi Clymeneia limite proles venit et intravit dubitati tecta parentis, protinus ad patrios sua fert vestigia vultus consistitque procul; neque enim propiora ferebat lumina: purpurea velatus veste sedebat in solio Phoebus claris lucente smaragdis. a dextra laevaque Dies et Mensis et Annus Saeculaque et positae spatiis aequalibus Horae Verque novum stabat cinctum florente corona, stabat nuda Aestas et spicea serta gerebat, stabat et Autumnus calcatis sordidus uvis et glacialis Hiems canos hirsuta capillos.
The Sun himself, seated in their midst, with the eyes by which he sees all things,
saw the young man trembling at the strangeness of it all,
and said, "What brought you on this road? What have you come to seek
in this citadel, Phaethon, a son no father would deny?"
He answers: "O common light of the boundless world,
Phoebus, my father — if you grant me the use of that name,
and Clymene hides no guilt beneath a false pretense —
give me a token, sire, by which I may be believed
your true offspring, and take this doubt from my mind!"
He had spoken; and his father laid aside the rays
that flashed around his whole head, and bade him come nearer,
and giving him an embrace said, "You are not unworthy
to be called mine, and Clymene told you your true birth;
and that you may doubt the less, ask any gift you wish,
and you shall have it of my granting! Be witness to my promise
the marsh the gods must swear by, unknown to my eyes!"
He had barely finished when the boy asks for his father’s chariot
and the right, for one day, to drive the wing-footed horses.
The father repented his oath: shaking his shining head
three times and four, he said, "Your words have made
my own words rash; would that it were allowed
not to grant my promise! I confess, this one thing alone, my son, I would deny you.
I may at least dissuade: what you want is not safe!
You ask great things, Phaethon, and gifts that suit
neither your strength nor years so boyish:
your lot is mortal — what you desire is not mortal.
In your ignorance you reach for even more than may fall to the gods;
let each be as pleased with himself as he likes,
yet no one but me has the power to stand
on the fire-bearing axle; even the ruler of vast Olympus,
who hurls his fierce thunderbolts with his terrible right hand,
could not drive this chariot — and what have we greater than Jove?
The first part of the road is steep, and one the horses,
fresh in the morning, barely climb; at mid-heaven it is highest,
from where to look down on sea and lands often
strikes fear even into me, and my heart shudders with trembling dread;
the last part of the road runs downward and needs a sure hand:
then even Tethys herself, who takes me into her waters below,
is wont to fear that I be carried headlong.
Add that the sky is swept along in ceaseless whirling
and drags the high stars and spins them in a swift revolution.
I strain against it, and the rush that conquers all else
does not conquer me; I ride contrary to the racing sphere.
Suppose the chariot given: what will you do? Will you be able
to go against the whirling poles, so the swift axle does not sweep you off?
Perhaps too you imagine that there are groves there and cities of the gods
and shrines rich with offerings:
the way runs through ambushes and the shapes of beasts!
And though you hold the path and are led astray by no wandering,
you will still pass through the horns of the Bull set against you,
and the Haemonian bow, and the jaws of the violent Lion,
and the Scorpion curving his savage arms in a long sweep,
and the Crab curving his arms the other way.
Nor is it an easy thing for you to govern the four horses,
spirited with the fires they hold within their breasts
and breathe from mouth and nostrils: they scarcely endure me
when their fierce tempers have grown hot and their necks fight the reins. —
But you, that I be not the author of a deadly gift to you,
my son, beware, and while the matter still permits, correct your wish!
So that you may believe yourself born of my blood,
you ask for sure tokens: I give sure tokens by my fearing,
and by a father’s dread I am proved a father. Look — see
my face; and would that you could thrust your eyes into my breast
and catch within it a father’s cares!
In short, look round at whatever the rich world holds,
and from so many and so great goods of sky and earth and sea
ask for something; you will meet no refusal.
This one thing only I beg off, which by its true name is a punishment,
not an honor: it is a punishment, Phaethon, you ask for as a gift!
Why do you hold my neck with coaxing arms, you foolish boy?
Do not doubt! it will be given (I have sworn by the waters of Styx),
whatever you choose; but choose more wisely!"
saw the young man trembling at the strangeness of it all,
and said, "What brought you on this road? What have you come to seek
in this citadel, Phaethon, a son no father would deny?"
He answers: "O common light of the boundless world,
Phoebus, my father — if you grant me the use of that name,
and Clymene hides no guilt beneath a false pretense —
give me a token, sire, by which I may be believed
your true offspring, and take this doubt from my mind!"
He had spoken; and his father laid aside the rays
that flashed around his whole head, and bade him come nearer,
and giving him an embrace said, "You are not unworthy
to be called mine, and Clymene told you your true birth;
and that you may doubt the less, ask any gift you wish,
and you shall have it of my granting! Be witness to my promise
the marsh the gods must swear by, unknown to my eyes!"
He had barely finished when the boy asks for his father’s chariot
and the right, for one day, to drive the wing-footed horses.
The father repented his oath: shaking his shining head
three times and four, he said, "Your words have made
my own words rash; would that it were allowed
not to grant my promise! I confess, this one thing alone, my son, I would deny you.
I may at least dissuade: what you want is not safe!
You ask great things, Phaethon, and gifts that suit
neither your strength nor years so boyish:
your lot is mortal — what you desire is not mortal.
In your ignorance you reach for even more than may fall to the gods;
let each be as pleased with himself as he likes,
yet no one but me has the power to stand
on the fire-bearing axle; even the ruler of vast Olympus,
who hurls his fierce thunderbolts with his terrible right hand,
could not drive this chariot — and what have we greater than Jove?
The first part of the road is steep, and one the horses,
fresh in the morning, barely climb; at mid-heaven it is highest,
from where to look down on sea and lands often
strikes fear even into me, and my heart shudders with trembling dread;
the last part of the road runs downward and needs a sure hand:
then even Tethys herself, who takes me into her waters below,
is wont to fear that I be carried headlong.
Add that the sky is swept along in ceaseless whirling
and drags the high stars and spins them in a swift revolution.
I strain against it, and the rush that conquers all else
does not conquer me; I ride contrary to the racing sphere.
Suppose the chariot given: what will you do? Will you be able
to go against the whirling poles, so the swift axle does not sweep you off?
Perhaps too you imagine that there are groves there and cities of the gods
and shrines rich with offerings:
the way runs through ambushes and the shapes of beasts!
And though you hold the path and are led astray by no wandering,
you will still pass through the horns of the Bull set against you,
and the Haemonian bow, and the jaws of the violent Lion,
and the Scorpion curving his savage arms in a long sweep,
and the Crab curving his arms the other way.
Nor is it an easy thing for you to govern the four horses,
spirited with the fires they hold within their breasts
and breathe from mouth and nostrils: they scarcely endure me
when their fierce tempers have grown hot and their necks fight the reins. —
But you, that I be not the author of a deadly gift to you,
my son, beware, and while the matter still permits, correct your wish!
So that you may believe yourself born of my blood,
you ask for sure tokens: I give sure tokens by my fearing,
and by a father’s dread I am proved a father. Look — see
my face; and would that you could thrust your eyes into my breast
and catch within it a father’s cares!
In short, look round at whatever the rich world holds,
and from so many and so great goods of sky and earth and sea
ask for something; you will meet no refusal.
This one thing only I beg off, which by its true name is a punishment,
not an honor: it is a punishment, Phaethon, you ask for as a gift!
Why do you hold my neck with coaxing arms, you foolish boy?
Do not doubt! it will be given (I have sworn by the waters of Styx),
whatever you choose; but choose more wisely!"
Ipse loco medius rerum novitate paventem Sol oculis iuvenem, quibus adspicit omnia, vidit ’quae’ que ’viae tibi causa? quid hac’ ait ’arce petisti, progenies, Phaethon, haud infitianda parenti?’ ille refert: ’o lux inmensi publica mundi, Phoebe pater, si das usum mihi nominis huius, nec falsa Clymene culpam sub imagine celat, pignora da, genitor, per quae tua vera propago credar, et hunc animis errorem detrahe nostris!’ dixerat, at genitor circum caput omne micantes deposuit radios propiusque accedere iussit amplexuque dato ’nec tu meus esse negari dignus es, et Clymene veros’ ait ’edidit ortus, quoque minus dubites, quodvis pete munus, ut illud me tribuente feras! promissi testis adesto dis iuranda palus, oculis incognita nostris!’ vix bene desierat, currus rogat ille paternos inque diem alipedum ius et moderamen equorum. Paenituit iurasse patrem: qui terque quaterque concutiens inlustre caput ’temeraria’ dixit ’vox mea facta tua est; utinam promissa liceret non dare! confiteor, solum hoc tibi, nate, negarem. dissuadere licet: non est tua tuta voluntas! magna petis, Phaethon, et quae nec viribus istis munera conveniant nec tam puerilibus annis: sors tua mortalis, non est mortale, quod optas. plus etiam, quam quod superis contingere possit, nescius adfectas; placeat sibi quisque licebit, non tamen ignifero quisquam consistere in axe me valet excepto; vasti quoque rector Olympi, qui fera terribili iaculatur fulmina dextra, non agat hos currus: et quid Iove maius habemus? ardua prima via est et qua vix mane recentes enituntur equi; medio est altissima caelo, unde mare et terras ipsi mihi saepe videre fit timor et pavida trepidat formidine pectus; ultima prona via est et eget moderamine certo: tunc etiam quae me subiectis excipit undis, ne ferar in praeceps, Tethys solet ipsa vereri. adde, quod adsidua rapitur vertigine caelum sideraque alta trahit celerique volumine torquet. nitor in adversum, nec me, qui cetera, vincit inpetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi. finge datos currus: quid ages? poterisne rotatis obvius ire polis, ne te citus auferat axis? forsitan et lucos illic urbesque deorum concipias animo delubraque ditia donis esse: per insidias iter est formasque ferarum! utque viam teneas nulloque errore traharis, per tamen adversi gradieris cornua tauri Haemoniosque arcus violentique ora Leonis saevaque circuitu curvantem bracchia longo Scorpion atque aliter curvantem bracchia Cancrum. nec tibi quadripedes animosos ignibus illis, quos in pectore habent, quos ore et naribus efflant, in promptu regere est: vix me patiuntur, ubi acres incaluere animi cervixque repugnat habenis.— at tu, funesti ne sim tibi muneris auctor, nate, cave, dum resque sinit tua corrige vota! scilicet ut nostro genitum te sanguine credas, pignora certa petis: do pignora certa timendo et patrio pater esse metu probor. adspice vultus ecce meos; utinamque oculos in pectora posses inserere et patrias intus deprendere curas! denique quidquid habet dives, circumspice, mundus eque tot ac tantis caeli terraeque marisque posce bonis aliquid; nullam patiere repulsam. deprecor hoc unum, quod vero nomine poena, non honor est: poenam, Phaethon, pro munere poscis! quid mea colla tenes blandis, ignare, lacertis? ne dubita! dabitur (Stygias iuravimus undas), quodcumque optaris; sed tu sapientius opta!’
He had finished his warnings; yet the boy fights against the words
and presses his purpose and burns with desire for the chariot.
So the father, having delayed as far as he was allowed, leads the youth
to the lofty chariot, the gift of Vulcan.
The axle was gold, the pole gold, gold the rim
of the curving wheel, the rows of spokes were silver;
along the yoke chrysolites and gems set in rows
gave back bright light to the reflected Phoebus.
And while great-hearted Phaethon marvels at this and studies
the work, behold, watchful Aurora from the gleaming east threw open
her purple doors and her halls full of roses:
the stars scatter, whose ranks the Morning-star
gathers, and last he leaves his post in the sky.
When the Titan saw him make for the earth and the world redden,
and the horns of the waning moon as it were fading away,
he orders the swift Hours to yoke the horses.
The goddesses quickly do his bidding, and the four-footed beasts,
breathing fire, full-fed on the juice of ambrosia,
they lead from the high stalls and add the jangling bridles.
Then the father touched his son’s face with a holy salve
and made it able to endure the swift flame,
and set the rays upon his hair, and fetching sighs
that foreboded grief from his anxious breast, he said:
"If at least you can obey these warnings of your father,
spare the goad, boy, and use the reins more strongly!
Of their own accord they hurry; the labor is to check them as they strain.
And let it not please you to take the road straight through the five arcs!
There is a track cut slantwise in a broad curve,
and content with the bound of three zones it shuns
the southern pole and the Bear joined to the north winds:
let your way be here — you will see the clear tracks of my wheels —
and so that sky and earth alike may bear an even heat,
neither press down nor heave the chariot through the highest air!
Going too high, you will scorch the houses of heaven;
too low, the lands; in the middle you will go most safely.
Let not the right-hand wheel turn you aside toward the coiling Serpent,
nor the left-hand draw you to the low-lying Altar;
hold between the two! The rest I entrust to Fortune,
who I hope may help you and look after you better than you do yourself.
While I speak, dewy night has touched the turning-posts
set on the western shore; we are not free to delay!
We are called for: Aurora shines forth, the shadows put to flight.
Seize the reins in your hand — or, if your heart is still
changeable, use my counsel, not my chariot!
While you can, and while you still stand on solid ground,
and while you do not yet, in your ignorance, press the ill-chosen axle,
let me give light to the lands, which you may watch in safety!"
and presses his purpose and burns with desire for the chariot.
So the father, having delayed as far as he was allowed, leads the youth
to the lofty chariot, the gift of Vulcan.
The axle was gold, the pole gold, gold the rim
of the curving wheel, the rows of spokes were silver;
along the yoke chrysolites and gems set in rows
gave back bright light to the reflected Phoebus.
And while great-hearted Phaethon marvels at this and studies
the work, behold, watchful Aurora from the gleaming east threw open
her purple doors and her halls full of roses:
the stars scatter, whose ranks the Morning-star
gathers, and last he leaves his post in the sky.
When the Titan saw him make for the earth and the world redden,
and the horns of the waning moon as it were fading away,
he orders the swift Hours to yoke the horses.
The goddesses quickly do his bidding, and the four-footed beasts,
breathing fire, full-fed on the juice of ambrosia,
they lead from the high stalls and add the jangling bridles.
Then the father touched his son’s face with a holy salve
and made it able to endure the swift flame,
and set the rays upon his hair, and fetching sighs
that foreboded grief from his anxious breast, he said:
"If at least you can obey these warnings of your father,
spare the goad, boy, and use the reins more strongly!
Of their own accord they hurry; the labor is to check them as they strain.
And let it not please you to take the road straight through the five arcs!
There is a track cut slantwise in a broad curve,
and content with the bound of three zones it shuns
the southern pole and the Bear joined to the north winds:
let your way be here — you will see the clear tracks of my wheels —
and so that sky and earth alike may bear an even heat,
neither press down nor heave the chariot through the highest air!
Going too high, you will scorch the houses of heaven;
too low, the lands; in the middle you will go most safely.
Let not the right-hand wheel turn you aside toward the coiling Serpent,
nor the left-hand draw you to the low-lying Altar;
hold between the two! The rest I entrust to Fortune,
who I hope may help you and look after you better than you do yourself.
While I speak, dewy night has touched the turning-posts
set on the western shore; we are not free to delay!
We are called for: Aurora shines forth, the shadows put to flight.
Seize the reins in your hand — or, if your heart is still
changeable, use my counsel, not my chariot!
While you can, and while you still stand on solid ground,
and while you do not yet, in your ignorance, press the ill-chosen axle,
let me give light to the lands, which you may watch in safety!"
Finierat monitus; dictis tamen ille repugnat propositumque premit flagratque cupidine currus. ergo, qua licuit, genitor cunctatus ad altos deducit iuvenem, Vulcania munera, currus. aureus axis erat, temo aureus, aurea summae curvatura rotae, radiorum argenteus ordo; per iuga chrysolithi positaeque ex ordine gemmae clara repercusso reddebant lumina Phoebo. Dumque ea magnanimus Phaethon miratur opusque perspicit, ecce vigil nitido patefecit ab ortu purpureas Aurora fores et plena rosarum atria: diffugiunt stellae, quarum agmina cogit Lucifer et caeli statione novissimus exit. Quem petere ut terras mundumque rubescere vidit cornuaque extremae velut evanescere lunae, iungere equos Titan velocibus imperat Horis. iussa deae celeres peragunt ignemque vomentes, ambrosiae suco saturos, praesepibus altis quadripedes ducunt adduntque sonantia frena. tum pater ora sui sacro medicamine nati contigit et rapidae fecit patientia flammae inposuitque comae radios praesagaque luctus pectore sollicito repetens suspiria dixit: ’si potes his saltem monitis parere parentis parce, puer, stimulis et fortius utere loris! sponte sua properant, labor est inhibere volentes. nec tibi derectos placeat via quinque per arcus! sectus in obliquum est lato curvamine limes, zonarumque trium contentus fine polumque effugit australem iunctamque aquilonibus arcton: hac sit iter—manifesta rotae vestigia cernes— utque ferant aequos et caelum et terra calores, nec preme nec summum molire per aethera currum! altius egressus caelestia tecta cremabis, inferius terras; medio tutissimus ibis. neu te dexterior tortum declinet ad Anguem, neve sinisterior pressam rota ducat ad Aram, inter utrumque tene! Fortunae cetera mando, quae iuvet et melius quam tu tibi consulat opto. dum loquor, Hesperio positas in litore metas umida nox tetigit; non est mora libera nobis! poscimur: effulget tenebris Aurora fugatis. corripe lora manu, vel, si mutabile pectus est tibi, consiliis, non curribus utere nostris! dum potes et solidis etiamnum sedibus adstas, dumque male optatos nondum premis inscius axes, quae tutus spectes, sine me dare lumina terris!’
He seizes the light chariot with his youthful body
and stands upon it and rejoices to touch the light reins
with his hands, and from there gives thanks to his unwilling father.
Meanwhile the winged horses of the Sun — Pyrois and Eous and Aethon,
and Phlegon the fourth — fill the air with flame-bearing
whinnies and beat the barriers with their feet.
When Tethys, unaware of her grandson’s fate,
pushed these back, and the boundless sky lay open before them,
they snatched up the road and, moving their feet through the air,
cut the clouds that blocked them, and lifted on their wings
they overtook the East winds risen from the same quarter.
But the weight was light, not such as the Sun’s horses
could recognize, and the yoke lacked its accustomed heaviness;
and as curved ships reel without their proper ballast
and are borne unsteady over the sea through too much lightness,
so the chariot, empty of its usual load, gives leaps into the air
and is tossed on high and is like an empty thing.
As soon as the team of four felt this, they bolt and leave
the beaten track, and no longer run in the order they ran before.
He himself is in terror, and neither knows which way to turn the reins
entrusted to him, nor where the road lies — nor, if he knew, could he command them.
Then for the first time the icy Oxen grew warm with the rays
and tried in vain to plunge into the forbidden sea,
and the Serpent set nearest the frozen pole,
sluggish before with cold and fearsome to none,
grew hot and took on new wrath from the burning;
they tell that you too fled in confusion, Bootes,
slow though you were and held back by your wain.
But when unhappy Phaethon looked down from the height of heaven
on the lands lying far, far below,
he grew pale, and his knees suddenly trembled with fear,
and through all that light a darkness rose over his eyes,
and now he would rather never have touched his father’s horses,
now it irks him to have learned his lineage and to have won by asking,
now wishing to be called the son of Merops, he is carried on
like a ship driven by the headlong north wind, whose helmsman
has given up the conquered helm and left her to the gods and to prayers.
What is he to do? Much sky is left behind his back,
more lies before his eyes: in his mind he measures both,
and now he looks ahead to the west, which it is not his fate to reach,
now he looks back to the east,
and not knowing what to do he is stunned, and neither lets go the reins
nor has the strength to hold them, nor knows the horses’ names.
Scattered too here and there over the varied sky he sees, trembling,
the marvels and the shapes of monstrous beasts.
There is a place where the Scorpion bends his arms into twin curves
and with his tail and limbs crooked on either side
stretches his body over the space of two signs:
when the boy saw him, dripping with the sweat of black venom
and threatening wounds with his curved sting,
out of his senses with chilling dread he let the reins slip.
and stands upon it and rejoices to touch the light reins
with his hands, and from there gives thanks to his unwilling father.
Meanwhile the winged horses of the Sun — Pyrois and Eous and Aethon,
and Phlegon the fourth — fill the air with flame-bearing
whinnies and beat the barriers with their feet.
When Tethys, unaware of her grandson’s fate,
pushed these back, and the boundless sky lay open before them,
they snatched up the road and, moving their feet through the air,
cut the clouds that blocked them, and lifted on their wings
they overtook the East winds risen from the same quarter.
But the weight was light, not such as the Sun’s horses
could recognize, and the yoke lacked its accustomed heaviness;
and as curved ships reel without their proper ballast
and are borne unsteady over the sea through too much lightness,
so the chariot, empty of its usual load, gives leaps into the air
and is tossed on high and is like an empty thing.
As soon as the team of four felt this, they bolt and leave
the beaten track, and no longer run in the order they ran before.
He himself is in terror, and neither knows which way to turn the reins
entrusted to him, nor where the road lies — nor, if he knew, could he command them.
Then for the first time the icy Oxen grew warm with the rays
and tried in vain to plunge into the forbidden sea,
and the Serpent set nearest the frozen pole,
sluggish before with cold and fearsome to none,
grew hot and took on new wrath from the burning;
they tell that you too fled in confusion, Bootes,
slow though you were and held back by your wain.
But when unhappy Phaethon looked down from the height of heaven
on the lands lying far, far below,
he grew pale, and his knees suddenly trembled with fear,
and through all that light a darkness rose over his eyes,
and now he would rather never have touched his father’s horses,
now it irks him to have learned his lineage and to have won by asking,
now wishing to be called the son of Merops, he is carried on
like a ship driven by the headlong north wind, whose helmsman
has given up the conquered helm and left her to the gods and to prayers.
What is he to do? Much sky is left behind his back,
more lies before his eyes: in his mind he measures both,
and now he looks ahead to the west, which it is not his fate to reach,
now he looks back to the east,
and not knowing what to do he is stunned, and neither lets go the reins
nor has the strength to hold them, nor knows the horses’ names.
Scattered too here and there over the varied sky he sees, trembling,
the marvels and the shapes of monstrous beasts.
There is a place where the Scorpion bends his arms into twin curves
and with his tail and limbs crooked on either side
stretches his body over the space of two signs:
when the boy saw him, dripping with the sweat of black venom
and threatening wounds with his curved sting,
out of his senses with chilling dread he let the reins slip.
Occupat ille levem iuvenali corpore currum statque super manibusque leves contingere habenas gaudet et invito grates agit inde parenti. Interea volucres Pyrois et Eous et Aethon, Solis equi, quartusque Phlegon hinnitibus auras flammiferis inplent pedibusque repagula pulsant. quae postquam Tethys, fatorum ignara nepotis, reppulit, et facta est inmensi copia caeli, corripuere viam pedibusque per aera motis obstantes scindunt nebulas pennisque levati praetereunt ortos isdem de partibus Euros. sed leve pondus erat nec quod cognoscere possent Solis equi, solitaque iugum gravitate carebat; utque labant curvae iusto sine pondere naves perque mare instabiles nimia levitate feruntur, sic onere adsueto vacuus dat in aera saltus succutiturque alte similisque est currus inani. Quod simulac sensere, ruunt tritumque relinquunt quadriiugi spatium nec quo prius ordine currunt. ipse pavet nec qua commissas flectat habenas nec scit qua sit iter, nec, si sciat, imperet illis. tum primum radiis gelidi caluere Triones et vetito frustra temptarunt aequore tingui, quaeque polo posita est glaciali proxima Serpens, frigore pigra prius nec formidabilis ulli, incaluit sumpsitque novas fervoribus iras; te quoque turbatum memorant fugisse, Boote, quamvis tardus eras et te tua plaustra tenebant. Ut vero summo despexit ab aethere terras infelix Phaethon penitus penitusque iacentes, palluit et subito genua intremuere timore suntque oculis tenebrae per tantum lumen obortae, et iam mallet equos numquam tetigisse paternos, iam cognosse genus piget et valuisse rogando, iam Meropis dici cupiens ita fertur, ut acta praecipiti pinus borea, cui victa remisit frena suus rector, quam dis votisque reliquit. quid faciat? multum caeli post terga relictum, ante oculos plus est: animo metitur utrumque et modo, quos illi fatum contingere non est, prospicit occasus, interdum respicit ortus, quidque agat ignarus stupet et nec frena remittit nec retinere valet nec nomina novit equorum. sparsa quoque in vario passim miracula caelo vastarumque videt trepidus simulacra ferarum. est locus, in geminos ubi bracchia concavat arcus Scorpius et cauda flexisque utrimque lacertis porrigit in spatium signorum membra duorum: hunc puer ut nigri madidum sudore veneni vulnera curvata minitantem cuspide vidit, mentis inops gelida formidine lora remisit.
When these, falling slack, touched the horses’ backs,
they break loose and, with no one checking them, go
through the airs of an unknown region, and where their impulse drove them,
there they rush without law and dash against the stars
fixed in high heaven and sweep the chariot through trackless ways,
and now they make for the heights, now down the slopes and headlong paths
are borne nearer to the earth,
and the Moon wonders that her brother’s horses run
below her own, and the scorched clouds smoke.
The earth catches fire, wherever it is highest,
and splits and gapes with cracks and dries up, its moisture drawn off;
the pastures whiten, the tree burns together with its leaves,
and the parched grain furnishes fuel for its own destruction.
I complain of small things: great cities perish with their walls,
and the fires turn whole nations with their peoples
into ash; the woods burn along with the mountains;
Athos burns, and Cilician Taurus, and Tmolus, and Oeta,
and Ida, now dry, once thickest with springs,
and virgin Helicon, and Haemus not yet Oeagrian:
Aetna burns boundlessly with doubled fires,
and two-peaked Parnassus, and Eryx, and Cynthus, and Othrys,
and Rhodope, at last to lose her snows, and Mimas,
and Dindyma, and Mycale, and Cithaeron born for sacred rites.
Nor do her cold spells help Scythia: the Caucasus burns,
and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus greater than both,
and the airy Alps, and the cloud-bearing Apennine.
Then indeed Phaethon sees the world set ablaze
on every side, and cannot endure such heat,
and draws into his mouth the seething air as from a deep furnace,
and feels his chariot grow white-hot;
and now he can no longer bear the ashes and the spewed-out cinders,
and on every side is wrapped in hot smoke,
and, covered in pitch-black murk, knows not where he goes or where he is,
and is swept along at the will of the winged horses.
It was then, men believe, that the peoples of Ethiopia took on
their black color, the blood drawn to the surface of their bodies;
then Libya was made dry, her moisture snatched away by the heat;
then the nymphs with hair unbound wept for their springs and lakes;
Boeotia seeks Dirce, Argos Amymone,
Ephyre the waters of Pirene;
nor do the rivers, allotted banks set far apart,
remain safe: Tanais smoked in mid-current,
and old Peneus, and Teuthrantian Caicus,
and swift Ismenos with Phegian Erymanthus,
and Xanthus, doomed to burn a second time, and tawny Lycormas,
and Maeander, that plays in his winding waters,
and Mygdonian Melas, and Taenarian Eurotas.
Babylonian Euphrates burned, Orontes burned,
and swift Thermodon, and Ganges, and Phasis, and Hister;
Alpheus boils, the banks of Spercheus blaze,
and the gold that Tagus carries in his stream flows molten with fire,
and the river-birds that thronged the Maeonian banks with song
grew hot in the middle of Cayster;
the Nile fled in terror to the edge of the world
and hid his head, which is still hidden: his seven mouths
lie empty and dusty, seven channels without a river.
The same chance dries the Ismarian Hebrus with Strymon
and the western rivers, the Rhine and the Rhône and the Po,
and the Tiber, to whom the empire of the world was promised.
All the ground bursts apart, and the light pierces through the cracks
into Tartarus and terrifies the king of the underworld and his consort;
the sea shrinks, and where lately there was open water
there is a plain of dry sand, and mountains that the deep sea covered
rise up and increase the scattered Cyclades.
The fish make for the depths, and the arching dolphins
dare not lift themselves into the air as they were wont;
the bodies of seals float belly-up, lifeless,
on the surface of the deep: the story is that even Nereus himself
and Doris and her daughters hid in their warmed caves.
Three times Neptune dared to thrust his arms with grim face
out of the waters, three times he could not bear the fires of the air.
they break loose and, with no one checking them, go
through the airs of an unknown region, and where their impulse drove them,
there they rush without law and dash against the stars
fixed in high heaven and sweep the chariot through trackless ways,
and now they make for the heights, now down the slopes and headlong paths
are borne nearer to the earth,
and the Moon wonders that her brother’s horses run
below her own, and the scorched clouds smoke.
The earth catches fire, wherever it is highest,
and splits and gapes with cracks and dries up, its moisture drawn off;
the pastures whiten, the tree burns together with its leaves,
and the parched grain furnishes fuel for its own destruction.
I complain of small things: great cities perish with their walls,
and the fires turn whole nations with their peoples
into ash; the woods burn along with the mountains;
Athos burns, and Cilician Taurus, and Tmolus, and Oeta,
and Ida, now dry, once thickest with springs,
and virgin Helicon, and Haemus not yet Oeagrian:
Aetna burns boundlessly with doubled fires,
and two-peaked Parnassus, and Eryx, and Cynthus, and Othrys,
and Rhodope, at last to lose her snows, and Mimas,
and Dindyma, and Mycale, and Cithaeron born for sacred rites.
Nor do her cold spells help Scythia: the Caucasus burns,
and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus greater than both,
and the airy Alps, and the cloud-bearing Apennine.
Then indeed Phaethon sees the world set ablaze
on every side, and cannot endure such heat,
and draws into his mouth the seething air as from a deep furnace,
and feels his chariot grow white-hot;
and now he can no longer bear the ashes and the spewed-out cinders,
and on every side is wrapped in hot smoke,
and, covered in pitch-black murk, knows not where he goes or where he is,
and is swept along at the will of the winged horses.
It was then, men believe, that the peoples of Ethiopia took on
their black color, the blood drawn to the surface of their bodies;
then Libya was made dry, her moisture snatched away by the heat;
then the nymphs with hair unbound wept for their springs and lakes;
Boeotia seeks Dirce, Argos Amymone,
Ephyre the waters of Pirene;
nor do the rivers, allotted banks set far apart,
remain safe: Tanais smoked in mid-current,
and old Peneus, and Teuthrantian Caicus,
and swift Ismenos with Phegian Erymanthus,
and Xanthus, doomed to burn a second time, and tawny Lycormas,
and Maeander, that plays in his winding waters,
and Mygdonian Melas, and Taenarian Eurotas.
Babylonian Euphrates burned, Orontes burned,
and swift Thermodon, and Ganges, and Phasis, and Hister;
Alpheus boils, the banks of Spercheus blaze,
and the gold that Tagus carries in his stream flows molten with fire,
and the river-birds that thronged the Maeonian banks with song
grew hot in the middle of Cayster;
the Nile fled in terror to the edge of the world
and hid his head, which is still hidden: his seven mouths
lie empty and dusty, seven channels without a river.
The same chance dries the Ismarian Hebrus with Strymon
and the western rivers, the Rhine and the Rhône and the Po,
and the Tiber, to whom the empire of the world was promised.
All the ground bursts apart, and the light pierces through the cracks
into Tartarus and terrifies the king of the underworld and his consort;
the sea shrinks, and where lately there was open water
there is a plain of dry sand, and mountains that the deep sea covered
rise up and increase the scattered Cyclades.
The fish make for the depths, and the arching dolphins
dare not lift themselves into the air as they were wont;
the bodies of seals float belly-up, lifeless,
on the surface of the deep: the story is that even Nereus himself
and Doris and her daughters hid in their warmed caves.
Three times Neptune dared to thrust his arms with grim face
out of the waters, three times he could not bear the fires of the air.
Quae postquam summum tetigere iacentia tergum, exspatiantur equi nulloque inhibente per auras ignotae regionis eunt, quaque inpetus egit, hac sine lege ruunt altoque sub aethere fixis incursant stellis rapiuntque per avia currum et modo summa petunt, modo per declive viasque praecipites spatio terrae propiore feruntur, inferiusque suis fraternos currere Luna admiratur equos, ambustaque nubila fumant. corripitur flammis, ut quaeque altissima, tellus fissaque agit rimas et sucis aret ademptis; pabula canescunt, cum frondibus uritur arbor, materiamque suo praebet seges arida damno. parva queror: magnae pereunt cum moenibus urbes, cumque suis totas populis incendia gentis in cinerem vertunt; silvae cum montibus ardent; ardet Athos Taurusque Cilix et Tmolus et Oete et tum sicca, prius creberrima fontibus, Ide virgineusque Helicon et nondum Oeagrius Haemus: ardet in inmensum geminatis ignibus Aetne Parnasosque biceps et Eryx et Cynthus et Othrys et tandem nivibus Rhodope caritura Mimasque Dindymaque et Mycale natusque ad sacra Cithaeron. nec prosunt Scythiae sua frigora: Caucasus ardet Ossaque cum Pindo maiorque ambobus Olympus aeriaeque Alpes et nubifer Appenninus. Tum vero Phaethon cunctis e partibus orbem adspicit accensum nec tantos sustinet aestus ferventisque auras velut e fornace profunda ore trahit currusque suos candescere sentit; et neque iam cineres eiectatamque favillam ferre potest calidoque involvitur undique fumo, quoque eat aut ubi sit, picea caligine tectus nescit et arbitrio volucrum raptatur equorum. Sanguine tum credunt in corpora summa vocato Aethiopum populos nigrum traxisse colorem; tum facta est Libye raptis umoribus aestu arida, tum nymphae passis fontesque lacusque deflevere comis; quaerit Boeotia Dircen, Argos Amymonen, Ephyre Pirenidas undas; nec sortita loco distantes flumina ripas tuta manent: mediis Tanais fumavit in undis Peneosque senex Teuthranteusque Caicus et celer Ismenos cum Phegiaco Erymantho arsurusque iterum Xanthos flavusque Lycormas, quique recurvatis ludit Maeandros in undis, Mygdoniusque Melas et Taenarius Eurotas. arsit et Euphrates Babylonius, arsit Orontes Thermodonque citus Gangesque et Phasis et Hister; aestuat Alpheos, ripae Spercheides ardent, quodque suo Tagus amne vehit, fluit ignibus aurum, et, quae Maeonias celebrabant carmine ripas flumineae volucres, medio caluere Caystro; Nilus in extremum fugit perterritus orbem occuluitque caput, quod adhuc latet: ostia septem pulverulenta vacant, septem sine flumine valles. fors eadem Ismarios Hebrum cum Strymone siccat Hesperiosque amnes, Rhenum Rhodanumque Padumque cuique fuit rerum promissa potentia, Thybrin. dissilit omne solum, penetratque in Tartara rimis lumen et infernum terret cum coniuge regem; et mare contrahitur siccaeque est campus harenae, quod modo pontus erat, quosque altum texerat aequor, exsistunt montes et sparsas Cycladas augent. ima petunt pisces, nec se super aequora curvi tollere consuetas audent delphines in auras; corpora phocarum summo resupina profundo exanimata natant: ipsum quoque Nerea fama est Doridaque et natas tepidis latuisse sub antris. ter Neptunus aquis cum torvo bracchia vultu exserere ausus erat, ter non tulit aeris ignes.
Yet nurturing Earth, ringed as she was by the sea,
amid the ocean’s waters and the springs shrunk in from every side,
which had hidden themselves in the bowels of their shadowy mother,
lifted, parched up to the neck, her oppressed face
and put her hand to her brow, and shaking all things
with a great trembling she sank a little and was lower
than she is wont to be, and spoke thus with a broken voice:
"If this is your pleasure and I have earned it, why, O highest of the gods,
do your thunderbolts hold back? If I must perish by the force of fire,
let me perish by your fire, and ease my ruin by its author!
Even these very words I scarcely loose from my throat" —
the heat had pressed her mouth shut — "see, look at my scorched hair,
and so much ash in my eyes, so much over my face!
Is this the harvest, this the reward for my fruitfulness
and service you give me back — that I bear the wounds of the curved plow
and the mattock, and am worked the whole year through,
that I furnish leaves and gentle fodder for the herds,
grain for the human race, and incense too for you gods?
But suppose I have deserved destruction: what have the waters,
what has your brother deserved? Why do the seas handed to him by lot
shrink away and recede farther from the sky?
But if regard for me touches neither your brother nor you,
then have pity on your own sky! Look round at both poles:
each is smoking! If the fire ruins them,
your halls will fall! See, Atlas himself struggles
and can scarcely hold the white-hot axle on his shoulders!
If the seas, if the lands perish, if the palace of heaven,
we are confounded back into ancient Chaos! Snatch from the flames
whatever still survives, and take thought for the sum of things!"
So Earth had spoken: for she could bear the heat
no longer, nor say more, and she drew
her face back into herself, into caves nearer the dead.
amid the ocean’s waters and the springs shrunk in from every side,
which had hidden themselves in the bowels of their shadowy mother,
lifted, parched up to the neck, her oppressed face
and put her hand to her brow, and shaking all things
with a great trembling she sank a little and was lower
than she is wont to be, and spoke thus with a broken voice:
"If this is your pleasure and I have earned it, why, O highest of the gods,
do your thunderbolts hold back? If I must perish by the force of fire,
let me perish by your fire, and ease my ruin by its author!
Even these very words I scarcely loose from my throat" —
the heat had pressed her mouth shut — "see, look at my scorched hair,
and so much ash in my eyes, so much over my face!
Is this the harvest, this the reward for my fruitfulness
and service you give me back — that I bear the wounds of the curved plow
and the mattock, and am worked the whole year through,
that I furnish leaves and gentle fodder for the herds,
grain for the human race, and incense too for you gods?
But suppose I have deserved destruction: what have the waters,
what has your brother deserved? Why do the seas handed to him by lot
shrink away and recede farther from the sky?
But if regard for me touches neither your brother nor you,
then have pity on your own sky! Look round at both poles:
each is smoking! If the fire ruins them,
your halls will fall! See, Atlas himself struggles
and can scarcely hold the white-hot axle on his shoulders!
If the seas, if the lands perish, if the palace of heaven,
we are confounded back into ancient Chaos! Snatch from the flames
whatever still survives, and take thought for the sum of things!"
So Earth had spoken: for she could bear the heat
no longer, nor say more, and she drew
her face back into herself, into caves nearer the dead.
Alma tamen Tellus, ut erat circumdata ponto, inter aquas pelagi contractosque undique fontes, qui se condiderant in opacae viscera matris, sustulit oppressos collo tenus arida vultus opposuitque manum fronti magnoque tremore omnia concutiens paulum subsedit et infra, quam solet esse, fuit fractaque ita voce locuta est: ’si placet hoc meruique, quid o tua fulmina cessant, summe deum? liceat periturae viribus ignis igne perire tuo clademque auctore levare! vix equidem fauces haec ipsa in verba resolvo’; (presserat ora vapor) ’tostos en adspice crines inque oculis tantum, tantum super ora favillae! hosne mihi fructus, hunc fertilitatis honorem officiique refers, quod adunci vulnera aratri rastrorumque fero totoque exerceor anno, quod pecori frondes alimentaque mitia, fruges humano generi, vobis quoque tura ministro? sed tamen exitium fac me meruisse: quid undae, quid meruit frater? cur illi tradita sorte aequora decrescunt et ab aethere longius absunt? quodsi nec fratris nec te mea gratia tangit, at caeli miserere tui! circumspice utrumque: fumat uterque polus! quos si vitiaverit ignis, atria vestra ruent! Atlas en ipse laborat vixque suis umeris candentem sustinet axem! si freta, si terrae pereunt, si regia caeli, in chaos antiquum confundimur! eripe flammis, si quid adhuc superest, et rerum consule summae!’ Dixerat haec Tellus: neque enim tolerare vaporem ulterius potuit nec dicere plura suumque rettulit os in se propioraque manibus antra;
But the almighty father, calling the gods to witness, and him too
who had given the chariot, that unless he bring aid all things
would perish in grievous doom, climbs to the topmost citadel,
from which he is wont to draw the clouds over the broad lands,
from which he stirs the thunder and hurls his brandished bolts;
but he had then no clouds to draw over the lands,
nor any rains to send down from the sky:
he thunders, and poising a bolt by his right ear
hurled it at the charioteer and drove him out at once
from life and from the wheels, and with fierce fires quenched the fires.
The horses are panicked and, leaping in opposite directions,
tear their necks from the yoke and leave the reins snapped behind:
here lie the bridles, there the axle wrenched from the pole,
in this place the spokes of the broken wheels,
and the wreckage of the shattered chariot is scattered far and wide.
But Phaethon, the flame ravaging his ruddy hair,
is whirled headlong and borne in a long trail through the air,
as sometimes from a clear sky a star,
though it has not fallen, may seem to have fallen.
Far from his homeland, in a region of the world apart,
great Eridanus receives him and washes his smoking face.
The Hesperian Naiads give to a tomb his body, still smoking
from the three-forked flame, and they mark the stone with a verse too:
HERE LIES PHAETHON, DRIVER OF HIS FATHER’S CHARIOT;
THOUGH HE DID NOT HOLD IT, YET HE FELL IN A GREAT VENTURE.
For the father, pitiable, had hidden his face, veiled over
in sick grief, and — if only we believe it — they say one day
went by without a sun: the burning gave the light,
and there was some use in that disaster.
But Clymene, after she had said whatever was to be said
in such great sorrows, mourning and out of her mind
and her breast torn, ranged over the whole world,
seeking first his lifeless limbs, then his bones,
and found his bones, yet buried on a foreign bank,
and threw herself on the spot, and the name she read on the marble
she drenched with tears and warmed against her bared breast.
who had given the chariot, that unless he bring aid all things
would perish in grievous doom, climbs to the topmost citadel,
from which he is wont to draw the clouds over the broad lands,
from which he stirs the thunder and hurls his brandished bolts;
but he had then no clouds to draw over the lands,
nor any rains to send down from the sky:
he thunders, and poising a bolt by his right ear
hurled it at the charioteer and drove him out at once
from life and from the wheels, and with fierce fires quenched the fires.
The horses are panicked and, leaping in opposite directions,
tear their necks from the yoke and leave the reins snapped behind:
here lie the bridles, there the axle wrenched from the pole,
in this place the spokes of the broken wheels,
and the wreckage of the shattered chariot is scattered far and wide.
But Phaethon, the flame ravaging his ruddy hair,
is whirled headlong and borne in a long trail through the air,
as sometimes from a clear sky a star,
though it has not fallen, may seem to have fallen.
Far from his homeland, in a region of the world apart,
great Eridanus receives him and washes his smoking face.
The Hesperian Naiads give to a tomb his body, still smoking
from the three-forked flame, and they mark the stone with a verse too:
HERE LIES PHAETHON, DRIVER OF HIS FATHER’S CHARIOT;
THOUGH HE DID NOT HOLD IT, YET HE FELL IN A GREAT VENTURE.
For the father, pitiable, had hidden his face, veiled over
in sick grief, and — if only we believe it — they say one day
went by without a sun: the burning gave the light,
and there was some use in that disaster.
But Clymene, after she had said whatever was to be said
in such great sorrows, mourning and out of her mind
and her breast torn, ranged over the whole world,
seeking first his lifeless limbs, then his bones,
and found his bones, yet buried on a foreign bank,
and threw herself on the spot, and the name she read on the marble
she drenched with tears and warmed against her bared breast.
at pater omnipotens, superos testatus et ipsum, qui dederat currus, nisi opem ferat, omnia fato interitura gravi, summam petit arduus arcem, unde solet nubes latis inducere terris, unde movet tonitrus vibrataque fulmina iactat; sed neque quas posset terris inducere nubes tunc habuit, nec quos caelo demitteret imbres: intonat et dextra libratum fulmen ab aure misit in aurigam pariterque animaque rotisque expulit et saevis conpescuit ignibus ignes. consternantur equi et saltu in contraria facto colla iugo eripiunt abruptaque lora relinquunt: illic frena iacent, illic temone revulsus axis, in hac radii fractarum parte rotarum sparsaque sunt late laceri vestigia currus. At Phaethon rutilos flamma populante capillos volvitur in praeceps longoque per aera tractu fertur, ut interdum de caelo stella sereno etsi non cecidit, potuit cecidisse videri. quem procul a patria diverso maximus orbe excipit Eridanus fumantiaque abluit ora. Naides Hesperiae trifida fumantia flamma corpora dant tumulo, signant quoque carmine saxum: hic: sitvs: est: phaethon: cvrrvs: avriga: paterni qvem: si: non: tenvit: magnis: tamen: excidit: avsis Nam pater obductos luctu miserabilis aegro condiderat vultus, et, si modo credimus, unum isse diem sine sole ferunt: incendia lumen praebebant aliquisque malo fuit usus in illo. at Clymene postquam dixit, quaecumque fuerunt in tantis dicenda malis, lugubris et amens et laniata sinus totum percensuit orbem exanimesque artus primo, mox ossa requirens repperit ossa tamen peregrina condita ripa incubuitque loco nomenque in marmore lectum perfudit lacrimis et aperto pectore fovit.
No less do the Heliades give their weeping and tears,
those gifts useless to the dead, and beating their breasts with their palms
they call by night and day on Phaethon, who will not hear
their wretched laments, and lie stretched upon the tomb.
Four times the moon had filled her orb with joined horns;
they, after their manner (for use had made it a manner),
had raised their wailing: of them Phaethusa, the eldest
of the sisters, when she would lie down on the ground, cried out
that her feet had stiffened; and fair Lampetie, trying
to come to her, was held back by a sudden root;
a third, as she made to tear her hair with her hands,
plucks away leaves; this one grieves that her legs are held by a trunk,
that one that her arms are turning into long branches,
and while they marvel at this, bark closes over their loins
and by degrees girds their belly and breast and shoulders and hands,
and only their mouths stood out, calling on their mother.
What can the mother do but go this way and that,
wherever her impulse drags her, and join her kisses while she may?
It is not enough: she tries to tear their bodies from the trunks
and snaps the tender branches with her hands, but from these
drops of blood drip as from a wound.
"Spare me, mother, I beg," cries whichever is wounded,
"spare me, I beg: it is our body that is torn in the tree.
And now farewell" — the bark came over her last words.
From there flow tears, and the amber, dripped from the new branches,
hardens in the sun, which the shining river
receives and sends to be worn by the brides of Latium.
those gifts useless to the dead, and beating their breasts with their palms
they call by night and day on Phaethon, who will not hear
their wretched laments, and lie stretched upon the tomb.
Four times the moon had filled her orb with joined horns;
they, after their manner (for use had made it a manner),
had raised their wailing: of them Phaethusa, the eldest
of the sisters, when she would lie down on the ground, cried out
that her feet had stiffened; and fair Lampetie, trying
to come to her, was held back by a sudden root;
a third, as she made to tear her hair with her hands,
plucks away leaves; this one grieves that her legs are held by a trunk,
that one that her arms are turning into long branches,
and while they marvel at this, bark closes over their loins
and by degrees girds their belly and breast and shoulders and hands,
and only their mouths stood out, calling on their mother.
What can the mother do but go this way and that,
wherever her impulse drags her, and join her kisses while she may?
It is not enough: she tries to tear their bodies from the trunks
and snaps the tender branches with her hands, but from these
drops of blood drip as from a wound.
"Spare me, mother, I beg," cries whichever is wounded,
"spare me, I beg: it is our body that is torn in the tree.
And now farewell" — the bark came over her last words.
From there flow tears, and the amber, dripped from the new branches,
hardens in the sun, which the shining river
receives and sends to be worn by the brides of Latium.
nec minus Heliades fletus et, inania morti munera, dant lacrimas, et caesae pectora palmis non auditurum miseras Phaethonta querellas nocte dieque vocant adsternunturque sepulcro. luna quater iunctis inplerat cornibus orbem; illae more suo (nam morem fecerat usus) plangorem dederant: e quis Phaethusa, sororum maxima, cum vellet terra procumbere, questa est deriguisse pedes; ad quam conata venire candida Lampetie subita radice retenta est; tertia, cum crinem manibus laniare pararet, avellit frondes; haec stipite crura teneri, illa dolet fieri longos sua bracchia ramos, dumque ea mirantur, conplectitur inguina cortex perque gradus uterum pectusque umerosque manusque ambit, et exstabant tantum ora vocantia matrem. quid faciat mater, nisi, quo trahat inpetus illam, huc eat atque illuc et, dum licet, oscula iungat? non satis est: truncis avellere corpora temptat et teneros manibus ramos abrumpit, at inde sanguineae manant tamquam de vulnere guttae. ’parce, precor, mater,’ quaecumque est saucia, clamat, ’parce, precor: nostrum laceratur in arbore corpus iamque vale’—cortex in verba novissima venit. inde fluunt lacrimae, stillataque sole rigescunt de ramis electra novis, quae lucidus amnis excipit et nuribus mittit gestanda Latinis.
Present at this marvel was Cycnus, son of Sthenelus,
who, though joined to you by your mother’s blood, Phaethon,
was nearer to you in heart. He, having left
his rule (for he had governed the peoples and great cities of the Ligurians),
had filled the green banks and the river Eridanus with his laments,
and the wood now increased by the sisters,
when the man’s voice was made thin, and white feathers
disguise his hair, and his neck stretches far out from his breast,
and a webbing binds his reddening fingers,
plumage clothes his side, a blunt beak holds his mouth.
Cycnus becomes a new bird and does not trust himself
to the sky or to Jove, remembering the fire unjustly sent by him;
he seeks pools and broad meres, and hating fire
he chose to dwell in streams, the opposites of flames.
who, though joined to you by your mother’s blood, Phaethon,
was nearer to you in heart. He, having left
his rule (for he had governed the peoples and great cities of the Ligurians),
had filled the green banks and the river Eridanus with his laments,
and the wood now increased by the sisters,
when the man’s voice was made thin, and white feathers
disguise his hair, and his neck stretches far out from his breast,
and a webbing binds his reddening fingers,
plumage clothes his side, a blunt beak holds his mouth.
Cycnus becomes a new bird and does not trust himself
to the sky or to Jove, remembering the fire unjustly sent by him;
he seeks pools and broad meres, and hating fire
he chose to dwell in streams, the opposites of flames.
Adfuit huic monstro proles Stheneleia Cycnus, qui tibi materno quamvis a sanguine iunctus, mente tamen, Phaethon, propior fuit. ille relicto (nam Ligurum populos et magnas rexerat urbes) imperio ripas virides amnemque querellis Eridanum inplerat silvamque sororibus auctam, cum vox est tenuata viro canaeque capillos dissimulant plumae collumque a pectore longe porrigitur digitosque ligat iunctura rubentis, penna latus velat, tenet os sine acumine rostrum. fit nova Cycnus avis nec se caeloque Iovique credit, ut iniuste missi memor ignis ab illo; stagna petit patulosque lacus ignemque perosus quae colat elegit contraria flumina flammis.
Meanwhile the father of Phaethon, unkempt and stripped
of his own splendor, such as he is wont to be
when he fails the world in eclipse, hates the light and himself and the day,
and gives his mind over to grief, and adds wrath to his grief,
and refuses his service to the world. "Enough," he says, "from the beginnings
of time my lot has been without rest, and I am sick
of labors endless and unhonored!
Let anyone else drive the chariot that carries the light!
If there is no one, and all the gods confess they cannot,
let him drive it himself, so that at least, while he tries my reins,
he may for once lay aside the bolts that bereave fathers of their sons!
Then, having tried the strength of the fire-footed horses, he will know
that the one who did not rule them well did not deserve to die."
As the Sun says such things all the divinities
stand round him, and with suppliant voice they beg him
not to wish to bring darkness over the world; Jupiter too
makes excuse for the fires he sent, and to his prayers, as a king, adds threats.
Phoebus gathers the maddened horses, still trembling with terror,
and in his grief rages at them with goad and lash
(rage he does), and casts his son in their teeth and lays the blame on them.
of his own splendor, such as he is wont to be
when he fails the world in eclipse, hates the light and himself and the day,
and gives his mind over to grief, and adds wrath to his grief,
and refuses his service to the world. "Enough," he says, "from the beginnings
of time my lot has been without rest, and I am sick
of labors endless and unhonored!
Let anyone else drive the chariot that carries the light!
If there is no one, and all the gods confess they cannot,
let him drive it himself, so that at least, while he tries my reins,
he may for once lay aside the bolts that bereave fathers of their sons!
Then, having tried the strength of the fire-footed horses, he will know
that the one who did not rule them well did not deserve to die."
As the Sun says such things all the divinities
stand round him, and with suppliant voice they beg him
not to wish to bring darkness over the world; Jupiter too
makes excuse for the fires he sent, and to his prayers, as a king, adds threats.
Phoebus gathers the maddened horses, still trembling with terror,
and in his grief rages at them with goad and lash
(rage he does), and casts his son in their teeth and lays the blame on them.
Squalidus interea genitor Phaethontis et expers ipse sui decoris, qualis, cum deficit orbem, esse solet, lucemque odit seque ipse diemque datque animum in luctus et luctibus adicit iram officiumque negat mundo. ’satis’ inquit ’ab aevi sors mea principiis fuit inrequieta, pigetque actorum sine fine mihi, sine honore laborum! quilibet alter agat portantes lumina currus! si nemo est omnesque dei non posse fatentur, ipse agat ut saltem, dum nostras temptat habenas, orbatura patres aliquando fulmina ponat! tum sciet ignipedum vires expertus equorum non meruisse necem, qui non bene rexerit illos.’ Talia dicentem circumstant omnia Solem numina, neve velit tenebras inducere rebus, supplice voce rogant; missos quoque Iuppiter ignes excusat precibusque minas regaliter addit. colligit amentes et adhuc terrore paventes Phoebus equos stimuloque dolens et verbere saevit (saevit enim) natumque obiectat et inputat illis.
But the almighty father goes round the vast walls of heaven
and searches, lest anything weakened by the force of the fire
should collapse. When he sees them firm and of their own
strength, he surveys the lands and the labors of men.
Yet his greater care is for his own Arcadia:
he restores the springs and the rivers that did not yet dare to flow,
gives grass to the earth, leaves to the trees,
and bids the wounded woods grow green again.
As he comes and goes again and again, he caught fast
on a girl of Nonacris, and the fires he took caught beneath his bones.
Hers was not the task of softening wool by spinning
nor of varying the arrangement of her hair; a clasp had gathered
her dress, a white band her careless hair;
and now she had taken in hand a light javelin, now a bow:
she was a soldier of Phoebe; and no nymph who touched Maenalus
was dearer to Trivia than she; but no favor lasts long.
and searches, lest anything weakened by the force of the fire
should collapse. When he sees them firm and of their own
strength, he surveys the lands and the labors of men.
Yet his greater care is for his own Arcadia:
he restores the springs and the rivers that did not yet dare to flow,
gives grass to the earth, leaves to the trees,
and bids the wounded woods grow green again.
As he comes and goes again and again, he caught fast
on a girl of Nonacris, and the fires he took caught beneath his bones.
Hers was not the task of softening wool by spinning
nor of varying the arrangement of her hair; a clasp had gathered
her dress, a white band her careless hair;
and now she had taken in hand a light javelin, now a bow:
she was a soldier of Phoebe; and no nymph who touched Maenalus
was dearer to Trivia than she; but no favor lasts long.
At pater omnipotens ingentia moenia caeli circuit et, ne quid labefactum viribus ignis corruat, explorat. quae postquam firma suique roboris esse videt, terras hominumque labores perspicit. Arcadiae tamen est inpensior illi cura suae: fontesque et nondum audentia labi flumina restituit, dat terrae gramina, frondes arboribus, laesasque iubet revirescere silvas. dum redit itque frequens, in virgine Nonacrina haesit, et accepti caluere sub ossibus ignes. non erat huius opus lanam mollire trahendo nec positu variare comas; ubi fibula vestem, vitta coercuerat neglectos alba capillos; et modo leve manu iaculum, modo sumpserat arcum, miles erat Phoebes: nec Maenalon attigit ulla gratior hac Triviae; sed nulla potentia longa est.
The high sun held a space beyond the middle of its course,
when she enters a grove that no age had ever felled;
here she took the quiver from her shoulder and unstrung
her supple bow, and lay on the ground that the grass had covered,
and pressed the painted quiver beneath her resting neck.
When Jupiter saw her weary and without a guardian,
"This theft at least," he said, "my wife will not know of —
or if she does find out, they are, oh they are, worth her scolding!"
At once he puts on the face and dress of Diana
and says, "O maiden, one of my companions,
on what ridges have you been hunting?" From the turf the girl
raises herself and says, "Hail, divinity greater — in my judgment —
than Jove, though he himself may hear." He laughs and listens
and is glad to be preferred to himself, and joins his kisses to hers,
neither moderate enough nor such as a maiden should give.
As she makes ready to tell in what wood she had hunted,
he hinders her with an embrace and betrays himself by an outrage.
She indeed fights against him, so far as a woman could
(would that you had seen it, Saturnia — you would be gentler),
she indeed struggles, but whom could a girl overcome,
or who could overcome Jove? Victorious, Jupiter seeks
the upper air: to her the grove is hateful, and the wood that knew her shame;
and turning her step from it she nearly forgot to take up
her quiver with its arrows and the bow she had hung up.
Behold, Dictynna, attended by her own band, walking
across high Maenalus and proud of her slaughter of beasts,
catches sight of her and calls her; called, she shrinks back
and feared at first that Jupiter might be in her;
but after she saw the nymphs advancing alongside,
she knew there was no deceit and came up to their number.
Alas, how hard it is not to betray a fault by the face!
She scarcely lifts her eyes from the ground, nor, as before she used to,
is she close at the goddess’s side, nor first in the whole troop,
but she is silent and gives signs of her injured modesty by her blushing;
and, but that she is a virgin, Diana could have sensed
the fault by a thousand marks: the nymphs are said to have sensed it.
The moon’s horns were rising again on her ninth circle,
when the goddess, faint from the hunt under her brother’s flames,
came upon a cool grove, through which a stream went
gliding with a murmur and turning the worn sands.
When she had praised the place, she touched the surface of the water with her foot;
praising this too, "Far off," she says, "is every witness:
let us bathe our naked bodies in the streaming water!"
The Parrhasian blushed; all the rest lay aside their garments;
one alone seeks delays: as she hesitates her dress is taken off,
and with it laid aside her fault lay open along with her naked body.
To her, stunned and wishing to hide her belly with her hands,
"Go far from here," said Cynthia, "and do not pollute the sacred springs!"
and she bade her withdraw from her company.
when she enters a grove that no age had ever felled;
here she took the quiver from her shoulder and unstrung
her supple bow, and lay on the ground that the grass had covered,
and pressed the painted quiver beneath her resting neck.
When Jupiter saw her weary and without a guardian,
"This theft at least," he said, "my wife will not know of —
or if she does find out, they are, oh they are, worth her scolding!"
At once he puts on the face and dress of Diana
and says, "O maiden, one of my companions,
on what ridges have you been hunting?" From the turf the girl
raises herself and says, "Hail, divinity greater — in my judgment —
than Jove, though he himself may hear." He laughs and listens
and is glad to be preferred to himself, and joins his kisses to hers,
neither moderate enough nor such as a maiden should give.
As she makes ready to tell in what wood she had hunted,
he hinders her with an embrace and betrays himself by an outrage.
She indeed fights against him, so far as a woman could
(would that you had seen it, Saturnia — you would be gentler),
she indeed struggles, but whom could a girl overcome,
or who could overcome Jove? Victorious, Jupiter seeks
the upper air: to her the grove is hateful, and the wood that knew her shame;
and turning her step from it she nearly forgot to take up
her quiver with its arrows and the bow she had hung up.
Behold, Dictynna, attended by her own band, walking
across high Maenalus and proud of her slaughter of beasts,
catches sight of her and calls her; called, she shrinks back
and feared at first that Jupiter might be in her;
but after she saw the nymphs advancing alongside,
she knew there was no deceit and came up to their number.
Alas, how hard it is not to betray a fault by the face!
She scarcely lifts her eyes from the ground, nor, as before she used to,
is she close at the goddess’s side, nor first in the whole troop,
but she is silent and gives signs of her injured modesty by her blushing;
and, but that she is a virgin, Diana could have sensed
the fault by a thousand marks: the nymphs are said to have sensed it.
The moon’s horns were rising again on her ninth circle,
when the goddess, faint from the hunt under her brother’s flames,
came upon a cool grove, through which a stream went
gliding with a murmur and turning the worn sands.
When she had praised the place, she touched the surface of the water with her foot;
praising this too, "Far off," she says, "is every witness:
let us bathe our naked bodies in the streaming water!"
The Parrhasian blushed; all the rest lay aside their garments;
one alone seeks delays: as she hesitates her dress is taken off,
and with it laid aside her fault lay open along with her naked body.
To her, stunned and wishing to hide her belly with her hands,
"Go far from here," said Cynthia, "and do not pollute the sacred springs!"
and she bade her withdraw from her company.
Ulterius medio spatium sol altus habebat, cum subit illa nemus, quod nulla ceciderat aetas; exuit hic umero pharetram lentosque retendit arcus inque solo, quod texerat herba, iacebat et pictam posita pharetram cervice premebat. Iuppiter ut vidit fessam et custode vacantem, ’hoc certe furtum coniunx mea nesciet’ inquit, ’aut si rescierit, sunt, o sunt iurgia tanti!’ protinus induitur faciem cultumque Dianae atque ait: ’o comitum, virgo, pars una mearum, in quibus es venata iugis?’ de caespite virgo se levat et ’salve numen, me iudice’ dixit, ’audiat ipse licet, maius Iove.’ ridet et audit et sibi praeferri se gaudet et oscula iungit, nec moderata satis nec sic a virgine danda. qua venata foret silva, narrare parantem inpedit amplexu nec se sine crimine prodit. illa quidem contra, quantum modo femina posset (adspiceres utinam, Saturnia, mitior esses), illa quidem pugnat, sed quem superare puella, quisve Iovem poterat? superum petit aethera victor Iuppiter: huic odio nemus est et conscia silva; unde pedem referens paene est oblita pharetram tollere cum telis et quem suspenderat arcum. Ecce, suo comitata choro Dictynna per altum Maenalon ingrediens et caede superba ferarum adspicit hanc visamque vocat: clamata refugit et timuit primo, ne Iuppiter esset in illa; sed postquam pariter nymphas incedere vidit, sensit abesse dolos numerumque accessit ad harum. heu! quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu! vix oculos attollit humo nec, ut ante solebat, iuncta deae lateri nec toto est agmine prima, sed silet et laesi dat signa rubore pudoris; et, nisi quod virgo est, poterat sentire Diana mille notis culpam: nymphae sensisse feruntur. orbe resurgebant lunaria cornua nono, cum de venatu fraternis languida flammis, nacta nemus gelidum dea, quo cum murmure labens ibat et attritas versabat rivus harenas. ut loca laudavit, summas pede contigit undas; his quoque laudatis ’procul est’ ait ’arbiter omnis: nuda superfusis tinguamus corpora lymphis!’ Parrhasis erubuit; cunctae velamina ponunt; una moras quaerit: dubitanti vestis adempta est, qua posita nudo patuit cum corpore crimen. attonitae manibusque uterum celare volenti ’i procul hinc’ dixit ’nec sacros pollue fontis!’ Cynthia deque suo iussit secedere coetu.
The consort of the great Thunderer had sensed this long since
and had put off her heavy punishment to a fitting time.
There is no cause for delay now, and already the boy Arcas
(this very thing galled Juno) had been born of the rival.
As soon as she turned her savage mind and eye upon him,
"Of course this too remained, adulteress," she said,
"that you should be fertile, and the wrong be made known by a birth,
and the disgrace of my Jove be put on record.
You shall not get off unpunished: for I will take from you that shape
by which you please yourself, and by which you please my husband, you nuisance."
She spoke, and seizing her by the hair at the front, threw her
face down on the ground. She stretched out her arms in supplication:
her arms began to bristle with black shaggy hairs
and her hands to curve and grow into hooked claws
and to serve as feet, and the face once praised
by Jove to grow misshapen with a wide gaping jaw.
And lest prayers and pleading words sway any mind,
the power of speech is torn from her: a voice angry and threatening
and full of terror is borne from her hoarse throat;
yet her old mind remained even when she was made a bear,
and bearing witness to her griefs with constant groaning
she lifts such hands as she has to the sky and the stars,
and feels Jove ungrateful, though she cannot say so.
Ah, how often, not daring to rest in the lonely wood,
she wandered before her house and in fields once her own!
Ah, how often was she driven over the rocks by the barking of hounds,
and the huntress, in terror of the hunters, fled in fear!
Often she hid at the sight of wild beasts, forgetting what she was,
and, a bear, shuddered at the sight of bears on the mountains,
and dreaded wolves, though her own father was among them.
Behold, Arcas, the grandchild of Lycaon, unaware of his parent,
is at hand, with some thrice five birthdays gone;
and while he follows the wild beasts, while he picks out fit glades
and rings the Erymanthian woods with knotted nets,
he chances upon his mother, who stood still at the sight of Arcas
and was like one recognizing him: he shrank back,
and not knowing her, took fright at her, who held her unmoving eyes
upon him without end, and as he longed to come nearer
he was about to pierce her breast with a wounding spear:
the almighty prevented it and took away at once the pair of them
and the unspeakable deed, and snatched them alike through the void by a wind
and set them in the sky and made them neighboring constellations.
and had put off her heavy punishment to a fitting time.
There is no cause for delay now, and already the boy Arcas
(this very thing galled Juno) had been born of the rival.
As soon as she turned her savage mind and eye upon him,
"Of course this too remained, adulteress," she said,
"that you should be fertile, and the wrong be made known by a birth,
and the disgrace of my Jove be put on record.
You shall not get off unpunished: for I will take from you that shape
by which you please yourself, and by which you please my husband, you nuisance."
She spoke, and seizing her by the hair at the front, threw her
face down on the ground. She stretched out her arms in supplication:
her arms began to bristle with black shaggy hairs
and her hands to curve and grow into hooked claws
and to serve as feet, and the face once praised
by Jove to grow misshapen with a wide gaping jaw.
And lest prayers and pleading words sway any mind,
the power of speech is torn from her: a voice angry and threatening
and full of terror is borne from her hoarse throat;
yet her old mind remained even when she was made a bear,
and bearing witness to her griefs with constant groaning
she lifts such hands as she has to the sky and the stars,
and feels Jove ungrateful, though she cannot say so.
Ah, how often, not daring to rest in the lonely wood,
she wandered before her house and in fields once her own!
Ah, how often was she driven over the rocks by the barking of hounds,
and the huntress, in terror of the hunters, fled in fear!
Often she hid at the sight of wild beasts, forgetting what she was,
and, a bear, shuddered at the sight of bears on the mountains,
and dreaded wolves, though her own father was among them.
Behold, Arcas, the grandchild of Lycaon, unaware of his parent,
is at hand, with some thrice five birthdays gone;
and while he follows the wild beasts, while he picks out fit glades
and rings the Erymanthian woods with knotted nets,
he chances upon his mother, who stood still at the sight of Arcas
and was like one recognizing him: he shrank back,
and not knowing her, took fright at her, who held her unmoving eyes
upon him without end, and as he longed to come nearer
he was about to pierce her breast with a wounding spear:
the almighty prevented it and took away at once the pair of them
and the unspeakable deed, and snatched them alike through the void by a wind
and set them in the sky and made them neighboring constellations.
Senserat hoc olim magni matrona Tonantis distuleratque graves in idonea tempora poenas. causa morae nulla est, et iam puer Arcas (id ipsum indoluit Iuno) fuerat de paelice natus. quo simul obvertit saevam cum lumine mentem, ’scilicet hoc etiam restabat, adultera’ dixit, ’ut fecunda fores, fieretque iniuria partu nota, Iovisque mei testatum dedecus esset. haud inpune feres: adimam tibi namque figuram, qua tibi, quaque places nostro, inportuna, marito.’ dixit et adversam prensis a fronte capillis stravit humi pronam. tendebat bracchia supplex: bracchia coeperunt nigris horrescere villis curvarique manus et aduncos crescere in unguis officioque pedum fungi laudataque quondam ora Iovi lato fieri deformia rictu. neve preces animos et verba precantia flectant, posse loqui eripitur: vox iracunda minaxque plenaque terroris rauco de gutture fertur; mens antiqua tamen facta quoque mansit in ursa, adsiduoque suos gemitu testata dolores qualescumque manus ad caelum et sidera tollit ingratumque Iovem, nequeat cum dicere, sentit. a! quotiens, sola non ausa quiescere silva, ante domum quondamque suis erravit in agris! a! quotiens per saxa canum latratibus acta est venatrixque metu venantum territa fugit! saepe feris latuit visis, oblita quid esset, ursaque conspectos in montibus horruit ursos pertimuitque lupos, quamvis pater esset in illis. Ecce Lycaoniae proles ignara parentis, Arcas adest ter quinque fere natalibus actis; dumque feras sequitur, dum saltus eligit aptos nexilibusque plagis silvas Erymanthidas ambit, incidit in matrem, quae restitit Arcade viso et cognoscenti similis fuit: ille refugit inmotosque oculos in se sine fine tenentem nescius extimuit propiusque accedere aventi vulnifico fuerat fixurus pectora telo: arcuit omnipotens pariterque ipsosque nefasque sustulit et pariter raptos per inania vento inposuit caelo vicinaque sidera fecit.
Juno swelled with anger, after the rival shone among the stars,
and went down to the sea to white-haired Tethys
and old Oceanus, whose reverence has often moved the gods,
and to them, asking the reason for her journey, she begins:
"Do you ask why I, the queen of the gods, am here,
away from my home in the sky? Another holds heaven in my place!
Call me a liar, if, when night has darkened the world,
you do not see, lately honored in the highest heaven — my wounds —
stars there, where the last and shortest circle
rings the outermost pole in its narrow space.
And is there really anyone who would shrink from injuring Juno
and tremble at having offended her — I who do good only by doing harm?
Oh, what great things I have done! How vast is my power!
I forbade her to be human: she has been made a goddess! So do I
lay punishments on the guilty, so great is my might!
Let him restore her former shape and strip off the brutish features —
why does he not, as he did before with the Argive daughter of Phoroneus?
Why does he not, with Juno cast off, marry her
and set her in my chamber and take Lycaon for his father-in-law?
But you, if the contempt shown to your injured foster-child touches you,
keep the seven Oxen from your dark-blue flood,
and drive off the stars received into the sky as the wage of lust,
that the rival may not bathe in your pure water!"
and went down to the sea to white-haired Tethys
and old Oceanus, whose reverence has often moved the gods,
and to them, asking the reason for her journey, she begins:
"Do you ask why I, the queen of the gods, am here,
away from my home in the sky? Another holds heaven in my place!
Call me a liar, if, when night has darkened the world,
you do not see, lately honored in the highest heaven — my wounds —
stars there, where the last and shortest circle
rings the outermost pole in its narrow space.
And is there really anyone who would shrink from injuring Juno
and tremble at having offended her — I who do good only by doing harm?
Oh, what great things I have done! How vast is my power!
I forbade her to be human: she has been made a goddess! So do I
lay punishments on the guilty, so great is my might!
Let him restore her former shape and strip off the brutish features —
why does he not, as he did before with the Argive daughter of Phoroneus?
Why does he not, with Juno cast off, marry her
and set her in my chamber and take Lycaon for his father-in-law?
But you, if the contempt shown to your injured foster-child touches you,
keep the seven Oxen from your dark-blue flood,
and drive off the stars received into the sky as the wage of lust,
that the rival may not bathe in your pure water!"
Intumuit Iuno, postquam inter sidera paelex fulsit, et ad canam descendit in aequora Tethyn Oceanumque senem, quorum reverentia movit saepe deos, causamque viae scitantibus infit: ’quaeritis, aetheriis quare regina deorum sedibus huc adsim? pro me tenet altera caelum! mentior, obscurum nisi nox cum fecerit orbem, nuper honoratas summo, mea vulnera, caelo videritis stellas illic, ubi circulus axem ultimus extremum spatioque brevissimus ambit. et vero quisquam Iunonem laedere nolit offensamque tremat, quae prosum sola nocendo? o ego quantum egi! quam vasta potentia nostra est! esse hominem vetui: facta est dea! sic ego poenas sontibus inpono, sic est mea magna potestas! vindicet antiquam faciem vultusque ferinos detrahat, Argolica quod in ante Phoronide fecit cur non et pulsa ducit Iunone meoque collocat in thalamo socerumque Lycaona sumit? at vos si laesae tangit contemptus alumnae, gurgite caeruleo septem prohibete triones sideraque in caelo stupri mercede recepta pellite, ne puro tinguatur in aequore paelex!’
The gods of the sea had assented: Saturnia in her ready chariot
enters the clear air drawn by her painted peacocks —
peacocks painted as lately as you, talkative raven,
were lately changed into black wings,
though before you had been white.
For this bird was once silver with snow-white feathers,
so that it equaled the spotless doves entire,
and yielded neither to the geese that would one day save the Capitol
with their watchful cry, nor to the swan that loves the rivers.
His tongue was his ruin: by the work of his chattering tongue
the color that was white is now the opposite of white.
There was no one fairer in all Haemonia than Coronis
of Larissa: she pleased you, Delphic god, to be sure,
while she was either chaste or unobserved; but the bird
of Phoebus perceived her adultery, and to uncover
the hidden fault, an informer not to be entreated,
was making his way toward his master.
The chattering crow follows him on beating wings,
to learn everything, and having heard the reason for the journey,
"You take no useful road," she says: "do not scorn the warnings of my tongue!
See what I have been and what I am, and ask what I deserved:
you will find that good faith did me harm. For once upon a time
Pallas had shut up Ericthonius, an offspring born without a mother,
in a basket woven of Attic withes,
and had given it to the three maidens born of two-formed Cecrops,
and laid down a law that they should not look on her secret.
Hidden among light foliage I watched from a dense elm
what they would do: two guard the trust without treachery,
Pandrosos and Herse; one alone, Aglauros, calls her timid sisters
cowards and undoes the knots with her hand, and within
they see an infant and a serpent stretched out beside him.
I report the deed to the goddess. For which such thanks
are given me, that I am said to be cast out from Minerva’s protection
and ranked below the bird of night! My punishment can warn
the birds not to seek danger with their voice.
enters the clear air drawn by her painted peacocks —
peacocks painted as lately as you, talkative raven,
were lately changed into black wings,
though before you had been white.
For this bird was once silver with snow-white feathers,
so that it equaled the spotless doves entire,
and yielded neither to the geese that would one day save the Capitol
with their watchful cry, nor to the swan that loves the rivers.
His tongue was his ruin: by the work of his chattering tongue
the color that was white is now the opposite of white.
There was no one fairer in all Haemonia than Coronis
of Larissa: she pleased you, Delphic god, to be sure,
while she was either chaste or unobserved; but the bird
of Phoebus perceived her adultery, and to uncover
the hidden fault, an informer not to be entreated,
was making his way toward his master.
The chattering crow follows him on beating wings,
to learn everything, and having heard the reason for the journey,
"You take no useful road," she says: "do not scorn the warnings of my tongue!
See what I have been and what I am, and ask what I deserved:
you will find that good faith did me harm. For once upon a time
Pallas had shut up Ericthonius, an offspring born without a mother,
in a basket woven of Attic withes,
and had given it to the three maidens born of two-formed Cecrops,
and laid down a law that they should not look on her secret.
Hidden among light foliage I watched from a dense elm
what they would do: two guard the trust without treachery,
Pandrosos and Herse; one alone, Aglauros, calls her timid sisters
cowards and undoes the knots with her hand, and within
they see an infant and a serpent stretched out beside him.
I report the deed to the goddess. For which such thanks
are given me, that I am said to be cast out from Minerva’s protection
and ranked below the bird of night! My punishment can warn
the birds not to seek danger with their voice.
Di maris adnuerant: habili Saturnia curru, ingreditur liquidum pavonibus aethera pictis, tam nuper pictis caeso pavonibus Argo, quam tu nuper eras, cum candidus ante fuisses, corve loquax, subito nigrantis versus in alas. nam fuit haec quondam niveis argentea pennis ales, ut aequaret totas sine labe columbas, nec servaturis vigili Capitolia voce cederet anseribus nec amanti flumina cycno. lingua fuit damno: lingua faciente loquaci qui color albus erat, nunc est contrarius albo Pulchrior in tota quam Larisaea Coronis non fuit Haemonia: placuit tibi, Delphice, certe, dum vel casta fuit vel inobservata, sed ales sensit adulterium Phoebeius, utque latentem detegeret culpam, non exorabilis index, ad dominum tendebat iter. quem garrula motis consequitur pennis, scitetur ut omnia, cornix auditaque viae causa ’non utile carpis’ inquit ’iter: ne sperne meae praesagia linguae! quid fuerim quid simque vide meritumque require: invenies nocuisse fidem. nam tempore quodam Pallas Ericthonium, prolem sine matre creatam, clauserat Actaeo texta de vimine cista virginibusque tribus gemino de Cecrope natis et legem dederat, sua ne secreta viderent. abdita fronde levi densa speculabar ab ulmo, quid facerent: commissa duae sine fraude tuentur, Pandrosos atque Herse; timidas vocat una sorores Aglauros nodosque manu diducit, et intus infantemque vident adporrectumque draconem. acta deae refero. pro quo mihi gratia talis redditur, ut dicar tutela pulsa Minervae et ponar post noctis avem! mea poena volucres admonuisse potest, ne voce pericula quaerant.
But — I suppose — she did not seek me out unasked, for nothing, when I requested no such thing! —
you may ask this of Pallas herself:
angry as she is, angry she will not deny it.
For Coroneus, famed in the land of Phocis, begot me
(I speak of well-known things), and I was a royal maiden
and was sought by rich suitors (do not scorn me):
my beauty harmed me. For when along the shore with slow
steps, as I am wont, I was strolling on the top of the sand,
the god of the sea saw me and grew hot, and when by pleading
he had spent the time in vain with coaxing words,
he readies force and pursues. I flee and leave the packed
shore and weary myself in vain on the soft sand.
Then I call on gods and men; my voice reached no
mortal: a virgin was moved on behalf of a virgin
and brought aid. I was stretching my arms to the sky:
my arms began to blacken with light feathers;
I struggled to throw the garment off my shoulders, but it
was feathers and had driven its roots deep into my skin;
I tried to beat my bared breast with my palms,
but I no longer had either palms or bared breast;
I ran, and the sand no longer held my feet as before,
but I was lifted from the surface of the ground; soon high through the air
I am carried up and was given as a blameless companion to Minerva.
Yet what does this avail, if Nyctimene, made a bird
for a dreadful crime, has succeeded to my honor?
Or has the thing most notorious through all Lesbos
not been heard by you — that Nyctimene defiled her father’s bed?
A bird she is indeed, but conscious of her guilt
she flees from sight and from the light, and hides her shame
in the darkness, and is driven by all from the whole sky."
you may ask this of Pallas herself:
angry as she is, angry she will not deny it.
For Coroneus, famed in the land of Phocis, begot me
(I speak of well-known things), and I was a royal maiden
and was sought by rich suitors (do not scorn me):
my beauty harmed me. For when along the shore with slow
steps, as I am wont, I was strolling on the top of the sand,
the god of the sea saw me and grew hot, and when by pleading
he had spent the time in vain with coaxing words,
he readies force and pursues. I flee and leave the packed
shore and weary myself in vain on the soft sand.
Then I call on gods and men; my voice reached no
mortal: a virgin was moved on behalf of a virgin
and brought aid. I was stretching my arms to the sky:
my arms began to blacken with light feathers;
I struggled to throw the garment off my shoulders, but it
was feathers and had driven its roots deep into my skin;
I tried to beat my bared breast with my palms,
but I no longer had either palms or bared breast;
I ran, and the sand no longer held my feet as before,
but I was lifted from the surface of the ground; soon high through the air
I am carried up and was given as a blameless companion to Minerva.
Yet what does this avail, if Nyctimene, made a bird
for a dreadful crime, has succeeded to my honor?
Or has the thing most notorious through all Lesbos
not been heard by you — that Nyctimene defiled her father’s bed?
A bird she is indeed, but conscious of her guilt
she flees from sight and from the light, and hides her shame
in the darkness, and is driven by all from the whole sky."
at, puto, non ultro nequiquam tale rogantem me petiit!—ipsa licet hoc a Pallade quaeras: quamvis irata est, non hoc irata negabit. nam me Phocaica clarus tellure Coroneus (nota loquor) genuit, fueramque ego regia virgo divitibusque procis (ne me contemne) petebar: forma mihi nocuit. nam cum per litora lentis passibus, ut soleo, summa spatiarer harena, vidit et incaluit pelagi deus, utque precando tempora cum blandis absumpsit inania verbis, vim parat et sequitur. fugio densumque relinquo litus et in molli nequiquam lassor harena. inde deos hominesque voco; nec contigit ullum vox mea mortalem: mota est pro virgine virgo auxiliumque tulit. tendebam bracchia caelo: bracchia coeperunt levibus nigrescere pennis; reicere ex umeris vestem molibar, at illa pluma erat inque cutem radices egerat imas; plangere nuda meis conabar pectora palmis, sed neque iam palmas nec pectora nuda gerebam; currebam, nec, ut ante, pedes retinebat harena, sed summa tollebar humo; mox alta per auras evehor et data sum comes inculpata Minervae. quid tamen hoc prodest, si diro facta volucris crimine Nyctimene nostro successit honori? an quae per totam res est notissima Lesbon, non audita tibi est, patrium temerasse cubile Nyctimenen? avis illa quidem, sed conscia culpae conspectum lucemque fugit tenebrisque pudorem celat et a cunctis expellitur aethere toto.’ Talia
To her speaking thus the raven says, "May these recallings of yours,
I pray, be to your own harm: I scorn an empty omen."
Nor does he give up the journey he began, and tells his master
that he had seen Coronis lying with a Haemonian youth.
The laurel slipped down when the lover heard the charge,
and together the god’s expression and his plectrum and his color
fell away, and as his heart boiled with swelling wrath
he takes his accustomed weapons and bends the bow
curved from its tips, and the breast so often joined to his own
he pierced with an unerring shaft.
Struck, she gave a groan, and the iron drawn out of her body,
she drenched her white limbs with red blood
and said, "I could have paid you the penalty, Phoebus,
but borne my child first; now two of us will die in one."
So far she spoke, and poured out her life along with her blood;
a deadly chill followed the body emptied of its soul.
I pray, be to your own harm: I scorn an empty omen."
Nor does he give up the journey he began, and tells his master
that he had seen Coronis lying with a Haemonian youth.
The laurel slipped down when the lover heard the charge,
and together the god’s expression and his plectrum and his color
fell away, and as his heart boiled with swelling wrath
he takes his accustomed weapons and bends the bow
curved from its tips, and the breast so often joined to his own
he pierced with an unerring shaft.
Struck, she gave a groan, and the iron drawn out of her body,
she drenched her white limbs with red blood
and said, "I could have paid you the penalty, Phoebus,
but borne my child first; now two of us will die in one."
So far she spoke, and poured out her life along with her blood;
a deadly chill followed the body emptied of its soul.
dicenti ’tibi’ ait ’revocamina’ corvus ’sint, precor, ista malo: nos vanum spernimus omen.’ nec coeptum dimittit iter dominoque iacentem cum iuvene Haemonio vidisse Coronida narrat. laurea delapsa est audito crimine amantis, et pariter vultusque deo plectrumque colorque excidit, utque animus tumida fervebat ab ira, arma adsueta capit flexumque a cornibus arcum tendit et illa suo totiens cum pectore iuncta indevitato traiecit pectora telo. icta dedit gemitum tractoque a corpore ferro candida puniceo perfudit membra cruore et dixit: ’potui poenas tibi, Phoebe, dedisse, sed peperisse prius; duo nunc moriemur in una.’ hactenus, et pariter vitam cum sanguine fudit; corpus inane animae frigus letale secutum est.
Too late, alas, the lover repents the cruel punishment,
and hates himself for having listened, for having so blazed up;
he hates the bird, through which he was forced to learn
the charge and the cause of his grief, and he hates his bow and his hand,
and, with his hand, his rash weapons, the arrows,
and he warms her fallen body and with late help strives
to overcome the fates and plies his healing arts in vain.
When he saw these things tried in vain and the pyre being readied
and her limbs about to burn in their last fires,
then indeed he uttered groans fetched from the depths of his heart
(for the faces of the gods may not be wet with tears),
just as when, the heifer looking on,
the hollow mallet, poised by the right ear of a suckling calf,
shatters its temples with a ringing blow.
Yet when he had poured the unwelcome perfumes on her breast
and given embraces and performed the unjust last rites,
Phoebus could not bear that his own seed should sink
into those same ashes, but snatched his son from the flames
and from the mother’s womb and carried him to the cave of twin-formed Chiron,
and the raven, hoping for the rewards of his not-false tongue,
he forbade to take his place among the white birds.
and hates himself for having listened, for having so blazed up;
he hates the bird, through which he was forced to learn
the charge and the cause of his grief, and he hates his bow and his hand,
and, with his hand, his rash weapons, the arrows,
and he warms her fallen body and with late help strives
to overcome the fates and plies his healing arts in vain.
When he saw these things tried in vain and the pyre being readied
and her limbs about to burn in their last fires,
then indeed he uttered groans fetched from the depths of his heart
(for the faces of the gods may not be wet with tears),
just as when, the heifer looking on,
the hollow mallet, poised by the right ear of a suckling calf,
shatters its temples with a ringing blow.
Yet when he had poured the unwelcome perfumes on her breast
and given embraces and performed the unjust last rites,
Phoebus could not bear that his own seed should sink
into those same ashes, but snatched his son from the flames
and from the mother’s womb and carried him to the cave of twin-formed Chiron,
and the raven, hoping for the rewards of his not-false tongue,
he forbade to take his place among the white birds.
Paenitet heu! sero poenae crudelis amantem, seque, quod audierit, quod sic exarserit, odit; odit avem, per quam crimen causamque dolendi scire coactus erat, nec non arcumque manumque odit cumque manu temeraria tela sagittas conlapsamque fovet seraque ope vincere fata nititur et medicas exercet inaniter artes. quae postquam frustra temptata rogumque parari vidit et arsuros supremis ignibus artus, tum vero gemitus (neque enim caelestia tingui ora licet lacrimis) alto de corde petitos edidit, haud aliter quam cum spectante iuvenca lactentis vituli dextra libratus ab aure tempora discussit claro cava malleus ictu. ut tamen ingratos in pectora fudit odores et dedit amplexus iniustaque iusta peregit, non tulit in cineres labi sua Phoebus eosdem semina, sed natum flammis uteroque parentis eripuit geminique tulit Chironis in antrum, sperantemque sibi non falsae praemia linguae inter aves albas vetuit consistere corvum.
Meanwhile the half-beast was glad of the foster-child of divine stock
and rejoiced in the honor mingled with the burden;
behold, there comes, her shoulders covered with red-gold hair,
the daughter of the centaur, whom once the nymph Chariclo,
having borne her on the banks of a rushing river, named
Ocyrhoe: she was not content to have learned
her father’s arts, she sang the secrets of the fates.
So when she had conceived the prophetic frenzies in her mind
and grew hot with the god she held shut within her breast,
she looks at the infant and says, "Grow, boy,
bringer of health to the whole world! Often will mortal bodies
owe their lives to you, and to you it will be allowed to give back
souls once taken away; and having once dared this against the will of the gods,
you will be barred by your grandfather’s flame from being able to give it again,
and from a god you will become a bloodless body, and a god
you who just now were a body, and twice you will renew your fate.
You too, dear father, now immortal and created by the law of your birth
to abide through all the ages,
will long to be able to die, then when you are tortured
by the blood of the dreadful serpent taken into your wounded limbs;
and the gods will make you, from immortal, capable of death,
and the three goddesses will loose the threads of your life."
Something of the fates still remained: she sighs from the depths
of her breast, and welling tears slip down her cheeks,
and thus she says, "The fates forestall me, and I am forbidden
to speak more, and the use of my voice is shut off.
The arts were not worth so much, which drew on me
the wrath of a divinity: I would rather not have known the future!
Already my human face seems to be taken from me,
already grass pleases me as food, already there is an urge
to run over the broad fields: I am turned into a mare, a body akin to my father’s.
Yet why wholly? My father, surely, is two-formed."
As she spoke thus the last part of her complaint
was little understood, and her words were confused;
soon it seems neither words nor the sound of a mare,
but of one mimicking a mare, and in a short time
she gave out distinct whinnies and moved her arms down into the grass.
Then her fingers come together and a smooth hoof binds her five nails
with unbroken horn, and the length of her face and neck grows,
and the greatest part of her long robe becomes a tail,
and as her loose hair lay along her neck,
it passed into a mane on the right side, and at once both her voice
and her face were made new; and the prodigy gave her a name too.
and rejoiced in the honor mingled with the burden;
behold, there comes, her shoulders covered with red-gold hair,
the daughter of the centaur, whom once the nymph Chariclo,
having borne her on the banks of a rushing river, named
Ocyrhoe: she was not content to have learned
her father’s arts, she sang the secrets of the fates.
So when she had conceived the prophetic frenzies in her mind
and grew hot with the god she held shut within her breast,
she looks at the infant and says, "Grow, boy,
bringer of health to the whole world! Often will mortal bodies
owe their lives to you, and to you it will be allowed to give back
souls once taken away; and having once dared this against the will of the gods,
you will be barred by your grandfather’s flame from being able to give it again,
and from a god you will become a bloodless body, and a god
you who just now were a body, and twice you will renew your fate.
You too, dear father, now immortal and created by the law of your birth
to abide through all the ages,
will long to be able to die, then when you are tortured
by the blood of the dreadful serpent taken into your wounded limbs;
and the gods will make you, from immortal, capable of death,
and the three goddesses will loose the threads of your life."
Something of the fates still remained: she sighs from the depths
of her breast, and welling tears slip down her cheeks,
and thus she says, "The fates forestall me, and I am forbidden
to speak more, and the use of my voice is shut off.
The arts were not worth so much, which drew on me
the wrath of a divinity: I would rather not have known the future!
Already my human face seems to be taken from me,
already grass pleases me as food, already there is an urge
to run over the broad fields: I am turned into a mare, a body akin to my father’s.
Yet why wholly? My father, surely, is two-formed."
As she spoke thus the last part of her complaint
was little understood, and her words were confused;
soon it seems neither words nor the sound of a mare,
but of one mimicking a mare, and in a short time
she gave out distinct whinnies and moved her arms down into the grass.
Then her fingers come together and a smooth hoof binds her five nails
with unbroken horn, and the length of her face and neck grows,
and the greatest part of her long robe becomes a tail,
and as her loose hair lay along her neck,
it passed into a mane on the right side, and at once both her voice
and her face were made new; and the prodigy gave her a name too.
Semifer interea divinae stirpis alumno laetus erat mixtoque oneri gaudebat honore; ecce venit rutilis umeros protecta capillis filia centauri, quam quondam nympha Chariclo fluminis in rapidi ripis enixa vocavit Ocyroen: non haec artes contenta paternas edidicisse fuit, fatorum arcana canebat. ergo ubi vaticinos concepit mente furores incaluitque deo, quem clausum pectore habebat, adspicit infantem ’toto’ que ’salutifer orbi cresce, puer!’ dixit; ’tibi se mortalia saepe corpora debebunt, animas tibi reddere ademptas fas erit, idque semel dis indignantibus ausus posse dare hoc iterum flamma prohibebere avita, eque deo corpus fies exsangue deusque, qui modo corpus eras, et bis tua fata novabis. tu quoque, care pater, nunc inmortalis et aevis omnibus ut maneas nascendi lege creatus, posse mori cupies, tum cum cruciabere dirae sanguine serpentis per saucia membra recepto; teque ex aeterno patientem numina mortis efficient, triplicesque deae tua fila resolvent.’ restabat fatis aliquid: suspirat ab imis pectoribus, lacrimaeque genis labuntur obortae, atque ita ’praevertunt’ inquit ’me fata, vetorque plura loqui, vocisque meae praecluditur usus. non fuerant artes tanti, quae numinis iram contraxere mihi: mallem nescisse futura! iam mihi subduci facies humana videtur, iam cibus herba placet, iam latis currere campis impetus est: in equam cognataque corpora vertor. tota tamen quare? pater est mihi nempe biformis.’ talia dicenti pars est extrema querellae intellecta parum confusaque verba fuerunt; mox nec verba quidem nec equae sonus ille videtur sed simulantis equam, parvoque in tempore certos edidit hinnitus et bracchia movit in herbas. tum digiti coeunt et quinos alligat ungues perpetuo cornu levis ungula, crescit et oris et colli spatium, longae pars maxima pallae cauda fit, utque vagi crines per colla iacebant, in dextras abiere iubas, pariterque novata est et vox et facies; nomen quoque monstra dedere.
The hero son of Philyra wept and in vain, Delphic god,
kept begging your help. For you could not annul
the commands of great Jove, nor, if you could annul them,
were you there then: you were dwelling in Elis and the Messenian fields.
That was the time when a shepherd’s hide covered you,
and a woodland staff was the burden of your left hand,
and of the other a pipe uneven with its seven reeds.
And while love is your care, while your pipe soothes you,
your cattle, men relate, strayed unguarded into the fields of Pylos:
the son of Maia, daughter of Atlas, sees them
and by his own cunning hides them, driven off, in the woods.
No one had noticed this theft except an old man known
in that countryside; all the neighborhood called him Battus.
He, as keeper, guarded the glades of rich Neleus
and his grassy pastures and the herds of noble mares.
Him Mercury held back and drew aside with a coaxing hand, and to him
"Whoever you are, stranger," he says, "if by chance someone asks
after this herd, deny that you have seen it, and lest no thanks
be paid for the deed, take a sleek cow as your reward!"
and he gave it. The stranger, having taken it, gave back these words:
"Go in safety! Sooner will that stone tell of your thefts,"
and he pointed to a stone. The son of Jove pretends to go away;
soon he returns, and with his shape and his voice alike changed,
"Countryman," he said, "if you have seen any cattle
go along this path, give aid and take the silence from the theft!
A female joined to her bull will be given you as your price."
But the old man, after the reward was doubled, "Under those
mountains," he says, "they will be," and they were under those mountains.
The grandson of Atlas laughed and "Do you betray me to myself, traitor?
Do you betray me to myself?" he says, and turned the perjured heart
into hard flint, which even now is called the Informer,
and an old infamy clings to the stone that did not earn it.
kept begging your help. For you could not annul
the commands of great Jove, nor, if you could annul them,
were you there then: you were dwelling in Elis and the Messenian fields.
That was the time when a shepherd’s hide covered you,
and a woodland staff was the burden of your left hand,
and of the other a pipe uneven with its seven reeds.
And while love is your care, while your pipe soothes you,
your cattle, men relate, strayed unguarded into the fields of Pylos:
the son of Maia, daughter of Atlas, sees them
and by his own cunning hides them, driven off, in the woods.
No one had noticed this theft except an old man known
in that countryside; all the neighborhood called him Battus.
He, as keeper, guarded the glades of rich Neleus
and his grassy pastures and the herds of noble mares.
Him Mercury held back and drew aside with a coaxing hand, and to him
"Whoever you are, stranger," he says, "if by chance someone asks
after this herd, deny that you have seen it, and lest no thanks
be paid for the deed, take a sleek cow as your reward!"
and he gave it. The stranger, having taken it, gave back these words:
"Go in safety! Sooner will that stone tell of your thefts,"
and he pointed to a stone. The son of Jove pretends to go away;
soon he returns, and with his shape and his voice alike changed,
"Countryman," he said, "if you have seen any cattle
go along this path, give aid and take the silence from the theft!
A female joined to her bull will be given you as your price."
But the old man, after the reward was doubled, "Under those
mountains," he says, "they will be," and they were under those mountains.
The grandson of Atlas laughed and "Do you betray me to myself, traitor?
Do you betray me to myself?" he says, and turned the perjured heart
into hard flint, which even now is called the Informer,
and an old infamy clings to the stone that did not earn it.
Flebat opemque tuam frustra Philyreius heros, Delphice, poscebat. nam nec rescindere magni iussa Iovis poteras, nec, si rescindere posses, tunc aderas: Elin Messeniaque arva colebas. illud erat tempus, quo te pastoria pellis texit, onusque fuit baculum silvestre sinistrae, alterius dispar septenis fistula cannis. dumque amor est curae, dum te tua fistula mulcet, incustoditae Pylios memorantur in agros processisse boves: videt has Atlantide Maia natus et arte sua silvis occultat abactas. senserat hoc furtum nemo nisi notus in illo rure senex; Battum vicinia tota vocabat. divitis hic saltus herbosaque pascua Nelei nobiliumque greges custos servabat equarum. hunc tenuit blandaque manu seduxit et illi ’quisquis es, hospes’ ait, ’si forte armenta requiret haec aliquis, vidisse nega neu gratia facto nulla rependatur, nitidam cape praemia vaccam!’ et dedit. accepta voces has reddidit hospes: ’tutus eas! lapis iste prius tua furta loquetur,’ et lapidem ostendit. simulat Iove natus abire; mox redit et versa pariter cum voce figura ’rustice, vidisti si quas hoc limite’ dixit ’ire boves, fer opem furtoque silentia deme! iuncta suo pretium dabitur tibi femina tauro.’ at senior, postquam est merces geminata, ’sub illis montibus’ inquit ’erunt,’ et erant sub montibus illis. risit Atlantiades et ’me mihi, perfide, prodis? me mihi prodis?’ ait periuraque pectora vertit in durum silicem, qui nunc quoque dicitur index, inque nihil merito vetus est infamia saxo.
From here the bearer of the caduceus had risen on his balanced wings,
and flying he looked down on the Munychian fields
and the ground dear to Minerva and the groves of cultivated Lyceum.
On that day, by custom, chaste girls were carrying,
on their heads, to the festal heights of Pallas,
the holy offerings, pure, in garlanded baskets.
As they return, the winged god catches sight of them and does not
hold his way straight, but bends it round in the same circle:
as the kite, swiftest of birds, at the sight of entrails,
while it is afraid and the attendants stand thick around the sacrifice,
wheels in a circle and dares not go farther off
and greedily circles round its hope on beating wings,
so the nimble Cyllenian bends his course above the Attic heights
and circles round the same air.
By as much as the Morning-star shines more splendid than the other stars,
and by as much as golden Phoebe than the Morning-star,
by so much did Herse, more excellent than all the maidens,
go along, and was the glory of the procession and of her companions.
The son of Jove was struck dumb by her beauty, and hanging in the air
blazed up no otherwise than when a Balearic sling
hurls its lead: it flies and grows white-hot in going
and finds beneath the clouds the fires it did not have.
He turns his course and, leaving the sky, seeks the earth,
and does not disguise himself: so great is his trust in his beauty.
And though that trust is just, still he helps it with care
and smooths his hair and arranges his cloak, that it may hang aptly,
so that its border and all its gold may show,
that the wand may be polished in his right hand, with which he brings on
and drives off sleep, and that his winged sandals may glisten on his trim feet.
and flying he looked down on the Munychian fields
and the ground dear to Minerva and the groves of cultivated Lyceum.
On that day, by custom, chaste girls were carrying,
on their heads, to the festal heights of Pallas,
the holy offerings, pure, in garlanded baskets.
As they return, the winged god catches sight of them and does not
hold his way straight, but bends it round in the same circle:
as the kite, swiftest of birds, at the sight of entrails,
while it is afraid and the attendants stand thick around the sacrifice,
wheels in a circle and dares not go farther off
and greedily circles round its hope on beating wings,
so the nimble Cyllenian bends his course above the Attic heights
and circles round the same air.
By as much as the Morning-star shines more splendid than the other stars,
and by as much as golden Phoebe than the Morning-star,
by so much did Herse, more excellent than all the maidens,
go along, and was the glory of the procession and of her companions.
The son of Jove was struck dumb by her beauty, and hanging in the air
blazed up no otherwise than when a Balearic sling
hurls its lead: it flies and grows white-hot in going
and finds beneath the clouds the fires it did not have.
He turns his course and, leaving the sky, seeks the earth,
and does not disguise himself: so great is his trust in his beauty.
And though that trust is just, still he helps it with care
and smooths his hair and arranges his cloak, that it may hang aptly,
so that its border and all its gold may show,
that the wand may be polished in his right hand, with which he brings on
and drives off sleep, and that his winged sandals may glisten on his trim feet.
Hinc se sustulerat paribus caducifer alis, Munychiosque volans agros gratamque Minervae despectabat humum cultique arbusta Lycei. illa forte die castae de more puellae vertice supposito festas in Palladis arces pura coronatis portabant sacra canistris. inde revertentes deus adspicit ales iterque non agit in rectum, sed in orbem curvat eundem: ut volucris visis rapidissima miluus extis, dum timet et densi circumstant sacra ministri, flectitur in gyrum nec longius audet abire spemque suam motis avidus circumvolat alis, sic super Actaeas agilis Cyllenius arces inclinat cursus et easdem circinat auras. quanto splendidior quam cetera sidera fulget Lucifer, et quanto quam Lucifer aurea Phoebe, tanto virginibus praestantior omnibus Herse ibat eratque decus pompae comitumque suarum. obstipuit forma Iove natus et aethere pendens non secus exarsit, quam cum Balearica plumbum funda iacit: volat illud et incandescit eundo et, quos non habuit, sub nubibus invenit ignes. vertit iter caeloque petit terrena relicto nec se dissimulat: tanta est fiducia formae. quae quamquam iusta est, cura tamen adiuvat illam permulcetque comas chlamydemque, ut pendeat apte, collocat, ut limbus totumque adpareat aurum, ut teres in dextra, qua somnos ducit et arcet, virga sit, ut tersis niteant talaria plantis.
A secret part of the house had three chambers, adorned
with ivory and tortoise-shell, of which you, Pandrosos, held the right,
Aglauros the left, Herse the middle.
She who held the left was the first to notice
Mercury coming, and dared to ask the god’s name
and the reason for his coming;
to whom the grandson of Atlas and Pleione thus replied:
"I am he who carries my father’s commanded words through the air;
my father is Jupiter himself.
Nor will I invent reasons: only be willing to be faithful to your sister
and to be called the aunt of my offspring:
Herse is the cause of my journey; favor a lover, I beg."
Aglauros looks at him with the same eyes with which she had lately
seen the hidden secrets of golden-haired Minerva,
and for her service she demands gold of great weight
for herself: meanwhile she forces him to leave the house.
with ivory and tortoise-shell, of which you, Pandrosos, held the right,
Aglauros the left, Herse the middle.
She who held the left was the first to notice
Mercury coming, and dared to ask the god’s name
and the reason for his coming;
to whom the grandson of Atlas and Pleione thus replied:
"I am he who carries my father’s commanded words through the air;
my father is Jupiter himself.
Nor will I invent reasons: only be willing to be faithful to your sister
and to be called the aunt of my offspring:
Herse is the cause of my journey; favor a lover, I beg."
Aglauros looks at him with the same eyes with which she had lately
seen the hidden secrets of golden-haired Minerva,
and for her service she demands gold of great weight
for herself: meanwhile she forces him to leave the house.
Pars secreta domus ebore et testudine cultos tres habuit thalamos, quorum tu, Pandrose, dextrum, Aglauros laevum, medium possederat Herse. quae tenuit laevum, venientem prima notavit Mercurium nomenque dei scitarier ausa est et causam adventus; cui sic respondit Atlantis Pleionesque nepos ’ego sum, qui iussa per auras verba patris porto; pater est mihi Iuppiter ipse. nec fingam causas, tu tantum fida sorori esse velis prolisque meae matertera dici: Herse causa viae; faveas oramus amanti.’ adspicit hunc oculis isdem, quibus abdita nuper viderat Aglauros flavae secreta Minervae, proque ministerio magni sibi ponderis aurum postulat: interea tectis excedere cogit.
The warlike goddess turned upon her the orb of her grim eye
and drew sighs from so deep within with such a heave
that she shook at once her breast and the aegis set upon her strong breast:
it comes to her mind that this one had uncovered her secret
with profane hand, when, against the compact given,
she had looked on the motherless offspring of the dweller on Lemnos,
and that now she would be pleasing to the god and pleasing to her sister
and rich with the gold she had greedily demanded and taken.
At once she makes for the house of Envy, foul with black gore:
her home lies hidden in the lowest valleys,
without sun, open to no wind,
gloomy and most full of sluggish cold, and one that
is always empty of fire, always abounding in murk.
When the maiden warrior, to be feared in war, came here,
she halted before the house (for she holds it not lawful
to enter the dwelling) and struck the doorposts with the tip of her spear.
The doors, struck, flew open. She sees within Envy
eating the flesh of vipers, the food of her own vices,
and at the sight she turned away her eyes; but the other
rises sluggishly from the ground and leaves the bodies
of the half-eaten serpents and comes forward with a listless step.
And when she saw the goddess, comely in form and arms,
she groaned and drew her face into a frown together with her sighs.
Pallor sits on her face, leanness over her whole body.
Nowhere is her gaze straight, her teeth are livid with decay,
her breast is green with gall, her tongue is steeped in venom;
laughter is absent, except such as the sight of pain stirs;
nor does she enjoy sleep, roused by wakeful cares,
but she sees, with no pleasure, men’s successes and wastes away
at the sight, and gnaws and is gnawed at once,
and is her own punishment.
Yet though she hated her, the Tritonian addressed her briefly
with such words as these:
"Infect with your venom one of the daughters of Cecrops:
so it must be. It is Aglauros." Having said no more
she fled and pushed off from the earth with her planted spear.
and drew sighs from so deep within with such a heave
that she shook at once her breast and the aegis set upon her strong breast:
it comes to her mind that this one had uncovered her secret
with profane hand, when, against the compact given,
she had looked on the motherless offspring of the dweller on Lemnos,
and that now she would be pleasing to the god and pleasing to her sister
and rich with the gold she had greedily demanded and taken.
At once she makes for the house of Envy, foul with black gore:
her home lies hidden in the lowest valleys,
without sun, open to no wind,
gloomy and most full of sluggish cold, and one that
is always empty of fire, always abounding in murk.
When the maiden warrior, to be feared in war, came here,
she halted before the house (for she holds it not lawful
to enter the dwelling) and struck the doorposts with the tip of her spear.
The doors, struck, flew open. She sees within Envy
eating the flesh of vipers, the food of her own vices,
and at the sight she turned away her eyes; but the other
rises sluggishly from the ground and leaves the bodies
of the half-eaten serpents and comes forward with a listless step.
And when she saw the goddess, comely in form and arms,
she groaned and drew her face into a frown together with her sighs.
Pallor sits on her face, leanness over her whole body.
Nowhere is her gaze straight, her teeth are livid with decay,
her breast is green with gall, her tongue is steeped in venom;
laughter is absent, except such as the sight of pain stirs;
nor does she enjoy sleep, roused by wakeful cares,
but she sees, with no pleasure, men’s successes and wastes away
at the sight, and gnaws and is gnawed at once,
and is her own punishment.
Yet though she hated her, the Tritonian addressed her briefly
with such words as these:
"Infect with your venom one of the daughters of Cecrops:
so it must be. It is Aglauros." Having said no more
she fled and pushed off from the earth with her planted spear.
Vertit ad hanc torvi dea bellica luminis orbem et tanto penitus traxit suspiria motu, ut pariter pectus positamque in pectore forti aegida concuteret: subit, hanc arcana profana detexisse manu, tum cum sine matre creatam Lemnicolae stirpem contra data foedera vidit, et gratamque deo fore iam gratamque sorori et ditem sumpto, quod avara poposcerat, auro. protinus Invidiae nigro squalentia tabo tecta petit: domus est imis in vallibus huius abdita, sole carens, non ulli pervia vento, tristis et ignavi plenissima frigoris et quae igne vacet semper, caligine semper abundet. huc ubi pervenit belli metuenda virago, constitit ante domum (neque enim succedere tectis fas habet) et postes extrema cuspide pulsat. concussae patuere fores. videt intus edentem vipereas carnes, vitiorum alimenta suorum, Invidiam visaque oculos avertit; at illa surgit humo pigre semesarumque relinquit corpora serpentum passuque incedit inerti. utque deam vidit formaque armisque decoram, ingemuit vultumque una ac suspiria duxit. pallor in ore sedet, macies in corpore toto. nusquam recta acies, livent robigine dentes, pectora felle virent, lingua est suffusa veneno; risus abest, nisi quem visi movere dolores; nec fruitur somno, vigilantibus excita curis, sed videt ingratos intabescitque videndo successus hominum carpitque et carpitur una suppliciumque suum est. quamvis tamen oderat illam, talibus adfata est breviter Tritonia dictis: ’infice tabe tua natarum Cecropis unam: sic opus est. Aglauros ea est.’ haud plura locuta fugit et inpressa tellurem reppulit hasta.
Envy, watching the goddess with sidelong eye as she fled,
gave a little muttering and grieved that Minerva would succeed,
and takes her staff, which thorny bands wholly
encircled, and veiled in black clouds,
wherever she goes, she tramples the flowering fields
and burns up the grass and crops the topmost shoots
and with her breath pollutes peoples and cities and houses,
and at last she catches sight of the Tritonian citadel,
flourishing with talents and wealth and festal peace,
and scarcely holds back her tears, because she sees nothing to weep at.
But after she entered the chamber of the daughter of Cecrops,
she does as she was bidden, and touches her breast with a hand
dyed with rust, and fills her heart with barbed thorns,
and breathes in a harmful poison, and scatters a pitch-black
venom through her bones and sprinkles it in the midst of her lungs;
and, lest the causes of the evil should range over too wide a space,
she sets before her eyes her sister, and the sister’s fortunate
marriage, and the god under his beautiful form,
and makes everything great; stung by these things, the daughter of Cecrops
is gnawed by a hidden grief, and anxious by night,
anxious by day, she groans, and most wretched melts away
with a slow decay, like ice wounded by a fitful sun,
and she burns at the good fortune of happy Herse no more gently
than when fire is set beneath thorny weeds,
which give no flames and are consumed in a slow smolder.
Often she wished to die, that she might see no such thing,
often to tell it, as if it were a crime, to her stern father;
at last she sat in the doorway against his coming,
to shut the god out. To him, as he flung out coaxings and prayers
and the gentlest words, "Stop!" she said,
"I will not move myself from here unless I have driven you off."
"Let us stand by that bargain," says the swift Cyllenian,
and with his heavenly wand he threw open the doors: but as she
tried to rise, the parts by which we bend in sitting
could not be moved, for a sluggish heaviness:
she indeed fights to raise herself with upright trunk,
but the joint of her knees stiffens, and a cold
slips through her nails, and her veins grow pale, their blood lost;
and as the incurable disease of cancer is wont to spread
far and to add the unharmed parts to the corrupted,
so the deadly chill came little by little into her breast
and closed the vital ways and the channels of breath,
and she did not try to speak, nor, if she had tried,
had she a passage for her voice: stone already held her neck,
and her mouth had hardened, and she sat, a bloodless statue;
nor was the stone white: her own mind had stained it.
gave a little muttering and grieved that Minerva would succeed,
and takes her staff, which thorny bands wholly
encircled, and veiled in black clouds,
wherever she goes, she tramples the flowering fields
and burns up the grass and crops the topmost shoots
and with her breath pollutes peoples and cities and houses,
and at last she catches sight of the Tritonian citadel,
flourishing with talents and wealth and festal peace,
and scarcely holds back her tears, because she sees nothing to weep at.
But after she entered the chamber of the daughter of Cecrops,
she does as she was bidden, and touches her breast with a hand
dyed with rust, and fills her heart with barbed thorns,
and breathes in a harmful poison, and scatters a pitch-black
venom through her bones and sprinkles it in the midst of her lungs;
and, lest the causes of the evil should range over too wide a space,
she sets before her eyes her sister, and the sister’s fortunate
marriage, and the god under his beautiful form,
and makes everything great; stung by these things, the daughter of Cecrops
is gnawed by a hidden grief, and anxious by night,
anxious by day, she groans, and most wretched melts away
with a slow decay, like ice wounded by a fitful sun,
and she burns at the good fortune of happy Herse no more gently
than when fire is set beneath thorny weeds,
which give no flames and are consumed in a slow smolder.
Often she wished to die, that she might see no such thing,
often to tell it, as if it were a crime, to her stern father;
at last she sat in the doorway against his coming,
to shut the god out. To him, as he flung out coaxings and prayers
and the gentlest words, "Stop!" she said,
"I will not move myself from here unless I have driven you off."
"Let us stand by that bargain," says the swift Cyllenian,
and with his heavenly wand he threw open the doors: but as she
tried to rise, the parts by which we bend in sitting
could not be moved, for a sluggish heaviness:
she indeed fights to raise herself with upright trunk,
but the joint of her knees stiffens, and a cold
slips through her nails, and her veins grow pale, their blood lost;
and as the incurable disease of cancer is wont to spread
far and to add the unharmed parts to the corrupted,
so the deadly chill came little by little into her breast
and closed the vital ways and the channels of breath,
and she did not try to speak, nor, if she had tried,
had she a passage for her voice: stone already held her neck,
and her mouth had hardened, and she sat, a bloodless statue;
nor was the stone white: her own mind had stained it.
Illa deam obliquo fugientem lumine cernens murmura parva dedit successurumque Minervae indoluit baculumque capit, quod spinea totum vincula cingebant, adopertaque nubibus atris, quacumque ingreditur, florentia proterit arva exuritque herbas et summa cacumina carpit adflatuque suo populos urbesque domosque polluit et tandem Tritonida conspicit arcem ingeniis opibusque et festa pace virentem vixque tenet lacrimas, quia nil lacrimabile cernit. sed postquam thalamos intravit Cecrope natae, iussa facit pectusque manu ferrugine tincta tangit et hamatis praecordia sentibus inplet inspiratque nocens virus piceumque per ossa dissipat et medio spargit pulmone venenum, neve mali causae spatium per latius errent, germanam ante oculos fortunatumque sororis coniugium pulchraque deum sub imagine ponit cunctaque magna facit; quibus inritata dolore Cecropis occulto mordetur et anxia nocte anxia luce gemit lentaque miserrima tabe liquitur, et glacies incerto saucia sole, felicisque bonis non lenius uritur Herses, quam cum spinosis ignis supponitur herbis, quae neque dant flammas lentoque vapore cremantur. saepe mori voluit, ne quicquam tale videret, saepe velut crimen rigido narrare parenti; denique in adverso venientem limine sedit exclusura deum. cui blandimenta precesque verbaque iactanti mitissima ’desine!’ dixit, ’hinc ego me non sum nisi te motura repulso.’ ’stemus’ ait ’pacto’ velox Cyllenius ’isto!’ caelestique fores virga patefecit: at illi surgere conanti partes, quascumque sedendo flectimur, ignava nequeunt gravitate moveri: illa quidem pugnat recto se attollere trunco, sed genuum iunctura riget, frigusque per ungues labitur, et pallent amisso sanguine venae; utque malum late solet inmedicabile cancer serpere et inlaesas vitiatis addere partes, sic letalis hiems paulatim in pectora venit vitalesque vias et respiramina clausit, nec conata loqui est nec, si conata fuisset, vocis habebat iter: saxum iam colla tenebat, oraque duruerant, signumque exsangue sedebat; nec lapis albus erat: sua mens infecerat illam.
When the grandson of Atlas had taken these penalties
for her words and her profane mind, he leaves the lands
named by Pallas and enters the air on beating wings.
His father calls him aside, and without confessing the cause — his love —
"Faithful minister, my son, of my commands," he says,
"drive off delay and glide down swift in your usual course,
and the land that looks up at your mother on the left side
(the natives call it by the name of Sidon),
make for it, and the royal herd that you see grazing far off
on the mountain grass, turn it toward the shore!"
He spoke, and the young bulls, long since driven from the mountain,
make for the appointed shore, where the daughter of the great king
was wont to play, attended by her Tyrian maidens.
Majesty and love do not go well together nor stay in one seat;
laying aside the weight of his scepter,
that father and ruler of the gods, whose right hand is armed
with the three-forked fires, who shakes the world with a nod,
puts on the form of a bull and, mingled with the young cattle,
lows and walks beautiful upon the tender grass.
For his color is that of snow which the print of a hard foot
has not trampled, nor the watery south wind melted.
His neck stands out with muscles, the dewlap hangs from his shoulders,
his horns are crooked indeed, but such as you might claim
were made by hand, and more transparent than a clear gem.
No threats on his brow, no fearsome eye:
his face has peace in it. The daughter of Agenor marvels
that he is so beautiful, that he threatens no battles;
but gentle though he is, she fears to touch him at first,
soon she comes near and holds out flowers to his white mouth.
The lover rejoices and, until the hoped-for pleasure should come,
gives kisses to her hands; scarcely now, scarcely does he put off the rest;
and now he frolics and capers on the green grass,
now lays his snowy flank on the tawny sands;
and little by little, her fear removed, now he offers his breast
to be patted by her maiden hand, now his horns
to be entangled with fresh garlands; and the royal maiden even dared,
not knowing whom she sat upon, to settle on the bull’s back,
when the god, away from the land and the dry shore, little by little
sets his false footprints first in the shallows;
then he goes farther off and through the waters of the mid-sea
carries his prey: she is afraid and, borne away, looks back
at the shore she has left, and holds a horn with her right hand,
the other is laid on his back; her fluttering garments billow in the breeze.
for her words and her profane mind, he leaves the lands
named by Pallas and enters the air on beating wings.
His father calls him aside, and without confessing the cause — his love —
"Faithful minister, my son, of my commands," he says,
"drive off delay and glide down swift in your usual course,
and the land that looks up at your mother on the left side
(the natives call it by the name of Sidon),
make for it, and the royal herd that you see grazing far off
on the mountain grass, turn it toward the shore!"
He spoke, and the young bulls, long since driven from the mountain,
make for the appointed shore, where the daughter of the great king
was wont to play, attended by her Tyrian maidens.
Majesty and love do not go well together nor stay in one seat;
laying aside the weight of his scepter,
that father and ruler of the gods, whose right hand is armed
with the three-forked fires, who shakes the world with a nod,
puts on the form of a bull and, mingled with the young cattle,
lows and walks beautiful upon the tender grass.
For his color is that of snow which the print of a hard foot
has not trampled, nor the watery south wind melted.
His neck stands out with muscles, the dewlap hangs from his shoulders,
his horns are crooked indeed, but such as you might claim
were made by hand, and more transparent than a clear gem.
No threats on his brow, no fearsome eye:
his face has peace in it. The daughter of Agenor marvels
that he is so beautiful, that he threatens no battles;
but gentle though he is, she fears to touch him at first,
soon she comes near and holds out flowers to his white mouth.
The lover rejoices and, until the hoped-for pleasure should come,
gives kisses to her hands; scarcely now, scarcely does he put off the rest;
and now he frolics and capers on the green grass,
now lays his snowy flank on the tawny sands;
and little by little, her fear removed, now he offers his breast
to be patted by her maiden hand, now his horns
to be entangled with fresh garlands; and the royal maiden even dared,
not knowing whom she sat upon, to settle on the bull’s back,
when the god, away from the land and the dry shore, little by little
sets his false footprints first in the shallows;
then he goes farther off and through the waters of the mid-sea
carries his prey: she is afraid and, borne away, looks back
at the shore she has left, and holds a horn with her right hand,
the other is laid on his back; her fluttering garments billow in the breeze.
Has ubi verborum poenas mentisque profanae cepit Atlantiades, dictas a Pallade terras linquit et ingreditur iactatis aethera pennis. sevocat hunc genitor nec causam fassus amoris ’fide minister’ ait ’iussorum, nate, meorum, pelle moram solitoque celer delabere cursu, quaeque tuam matrem tellus a parte sinistra suspicit (indigenae Sidonida nomine dicunt), hanc pete, quodque procul montano gramine pasci armentum regale vides, ad litora verte!’ dixit, et expulsi iamdudum monte iuvenci litora iussa petunt, ubi magni filia regis ludere virginibus Tyriis comitata solebat. non bene conveniunt nec in una sede morantur maiestas et amor; sceptri gravitate relicta ille pater rectorque deum, cui dextra trisulcis ignibus armata est, qui nutu concutit orbem, induitur faciem tauri mixtusque iuvencis mugit et in teneris formosus obambulat herbis. quippe color nivis est, quam nec vestigia duri calcavere pedis nec solvit aquaticus auster. colla toris exstant, armis palearia pendent, cornua vara quidem, sed quae contendere possis facta manu, puraque magis perlucida gemma. nullae in fronte minae, nec formidabile lumen: pacem vultus habet. miratur Agenore nata, quod tam formosus, quod proelia nulla minetur; sed quamvis mitem metuit contingere primo, mox adit et flores ad candida porrigit ora. gaudet amans et, dum veniat sperata voluptas, oscula dat manibus; vix iam, vix cetera differt; et nunc adludit viridique exsultat in herba, nunc latus in fulvis niveum deponit harenis; paulatimque metu dempto modo pectora praebet virginea plaudenda manu, modo cornua sertis inpedienda novis; ausa est quoque regia virgo nescia, quem premeret, tergo considere tauri, cum deus a terra siccoque a litore sensim falsa pedum primis vestigia ponit in undis; inde abit ulterius mediique per aequora ponti fert praedam: pavet haec litusque ablata relictum respicit et dextra cornum tenet, altera dorso inposita est; tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes.
And now the god, having laid aside the disguise of the false bull,
had confessed himself, and was holding the Dictaean fields,
when her father, unaware, bids Cadmus search out
the stolen girl, and adds, should he not find her, a penalty—
exile: pious and criminal by one and the same deed.
Having wandered the whole world (for who could catch out
the thefts of Jove?), a fugitive, the son of Agenor shuns
his homeland and his father’s wrath, and as a suppliant consults
the oracle of Phoebus, and asks what land he should dwell in.
’A heifer,’ says Phoebus, ’will meet you in lonely fields,
one that has borne no yoke, untouched by the curved plough.
With her for guide, take your way, and where she lies down in the grass,
see that you found your walls, and call them Boeotian.’
Scarcely had Cadmus come well down from the Castalian cave
when he sees an unguarded heifer going slowly,
bearing on her neck no mark of servitude.
He follows, and with measured tread tracks her footprints,
and silently adores Phoebus, the author of his road.
Now she had passed the fords of Cephisus and the fields of Panope:
the heifer stopped, and lifting to the sky her brow, handsome
with its high horns, she struck the air with her lowing,
and so, looking back at the companions following her flanks,
she sank down and laid her side on the tender grass.
Cadmus gives thanks, and presses kisses on the foreign earth,
and hails the unknown mountains and fields.
He was about to make sacrifice to Jove: he bids his attendants go
and fetch, for the libation, water from living springs.
had confessed himself, and was holding the Dictaean fields,
when her father, unaware, bids Cadmus search out
the stolen girl, and adds, should he not find her, a penalty—
exile: pious and criminal by one and the same deed.
Having wandered the whole world (for who could catch out
the thefts of Jove?), a fugitive, the son of Agenor shuns
his homeland and his father’s wrath, and as a suppliant consults
the oracle of Phoebus, and asks what land he should dwell in.
’A heifer,’ says Phoebus, ’will meet you in lonely fields,
one that has borne no yoke, untouched by the curved plough.
With her for guide, take your way, and where she lies down in the grass,
see that you found your walls, and call them Boeotian.’
Scarcely had Cadmus come well down from the Castalian cave
when he sees an unguarded heifer going slowly,
bearing on her neck no mark of servitude.
He follows, and with measured tread tracks her footprints,
and silently adores Phoebus, the author of his road.
Now she had passed the fords of Cephisus and the fields of Panope:
the heifer stopped, and lifting to the sky her brow, handsome
with its high horns, she struck the air with her lowing,
and so, looking back at the companions following her flanks,
she sank down and laid her side on the tender grass.
Cadmus gives thanks, and presses kisses on the foreign earth,
and hails the unknown mountains and fields.
He was about to make sacrifice to Jove: he bids his attendants go
and fetch, for the libation, water from living springs.
Iamque deus posita fallacis imagine tauri se confessus erat Dictaeaque rura tenebat, cum pater ignarus Cadmo perquirere raptam imperat et poenam, si non invenerit, addit exilium, facto pius et sceleratus eodem. orbe pererrato (quis enim deprendere possit furta Iovis?) profugus patriamque iramque parentis vitat Agenorides Phoebique oracula supplex consulit et, quae sit tellus habitanda, requirit. ’bos tibi’ Phoebus ait ’solis occurret in arvis, nullum passa iugum curvique inmunis aratri. hac duce carpe vias et, qua requieverit herba, moenia fac condas Boeotiaque illa vocato.’ vix bene Castalio Cadmus descenderat antro, incustoditam lente videt ire iuvencam nullum servitii signum cervice gerentem. subsequitur pressoque legit vestigia gressu auctoremque viae Phoebum taciturnus adorat. iam vada Cephisi Panopesque evaserat arva: bos stetit et tollens speciosam cornibus altis ad caelum frontem mugitibus inpulit auras atque ita respiciens comites sua terga sequentis procubuit teneraque latus submisit in herba. Cadmus agit grates peregrinaeque oscula terrae figit et ignotos montes agrosque salutat. Sacra Iovi facturus erat: iubet ire ministros et petere e vivis libandas fontibus undas.
An ancient wood stood there, violated by no axe,
and in its midst a cave, dense with shoots and pliant osier,
forming a low arch with its jointed stones,
teeming with abundant waters; where, hidden in the grotto,
lurked a serpent of Mars, marked out by its crest and gold;
its eyes flash with fire, its whole body swells with venom,
three tongues flicker, and teeth stand in a triple row.
When the men set out from the Tyrian race
reached that grove with ill-starred step, and the urn, let down
into the water, gave its sound, the dark serpent lifted its head
from the deep cave and sent forth horrible hissings.
The urns slipped from their hands, the blood deserted
their bodies, and a sudden trembling seized their stunned limbs.
He twists his scaly coils in rolling knots,
and with a leap curves himself into vast arcs,
and, reared up more than half his length into the light air,
looks down on all the wood; his body is as great—
if you should see it whole—as the Serpent that parts the twin Bears.
Without delay—whether the Phoenicians were making ready their weapons,
or flight, or whether fear itself forbade them either—
he falls on them: some he kills with his bite, some with his long coils,
some with the deadly taint of his breathed-out venom.
and in its midst a cave, dense with shoots and pliant osier,
forming a low arch with its jointed stones,
teeming with abundant waters; where, hidden in the grotto,
lurked a serpent of Mars, marked out by its crest and gold;
its eyes flash with fire, its whole body swells with venom,
three tongues flicker, and teeth stand in a triple row.
When the men set out from the Tyrian race
reached that grove with ill-starred step, and the urn, let down
into the water, gave its sound, the dark serpent lifted its head
from the deep cave and sent forth horrible hissings.
The urns slipped from their hands, the blood deserted
their bodies, and a sudden trembling seized their stunned limbs.
He twists his scaly coils in rolling knots,
and with a leap curves himself into vast arcs,
and, reared up more than half his length into the light air,
looks down on all the wood; his body is as great—
if you should see it whole—as the Serpent that parts the twin Bears.
Without delay—whether the Phoenicians were making ready their weapons,
or flight, or whether fear itself forbade them either—
he falls on them: some he kills with his bite, some with his long coils,
some with the deadly taint of his breathed-out venom.
silva vetus stabat nulla violata securi, et specus in media virgis ac vimine densus efficiens humilem lapidum conpagibus arcum uberibus fecundus aquis; ubi conditus antro Martius anguis erat, cristis praesignis et auro; igne micant oculi, corpus tumet omne venenis, tresque vibrant linguae, triplici stant ordine dentes. quem postquam Tyria lucum de gente profecti infausto tetigere gradu, demissaque in undas urna dedit sonitum, longo caput extulit antro caeruleus serpens horrendaque sibila misit. effluxere urnae manibus sanguisque reliquit corpus et attonitos subitus tremor occupat artus. ille volubilibus squamosos nexibus orbes torquet et inmensos saltu sinuatur in arcus ac media plus parte leves erectus in auras despicit omne nemus tantoque est corpore, quanto, si totum spectes, geminas qui separat arctos. nec mora, Phoenicas, sive illi tela parabant sive fugam, sive ipse timor prohibebat utrumque, occupat: hos morsu, longis conplexibus illos, hos necat adflati funesta tabe veneni.
Now the sun at its highest had made the shadows short:
the son of Agenor wonders what delays his companions,
and tracks the men. His covering was a hide stripped
from a lion; his weapon, a lance of gleaming iron,
and a javelin—and a spirit beyond every weapon.
When he entered the wood and saw the slaughtered bodies,
and over them the victorious foe, with its vast bulk,
licking the grievous wounds with its bloody tongue,
’Either the avenger of your death, most faithful hearts,
or your companion in it,’ he said, ’I shall be.’ He spoke, and with his right hand
lifted a millstone and hurled the great mass with a great effort.
At its impact high walls with lofty towers
would have been shaken; the serpent stayed unwounded,
defended by its scales as by a cuirass, and by the hardness
of its dark hide it threw back the strong blows with its skin;
yet that same hardness did not overcome the javelin too,
which, fixed in the mid-curve of the supple spine,
stuck fast, and the whole iron sank into the guts.
Fierce with pain, he twisted his head back over his coils
and looked at the wound, and bit the embedded shaft,
and when with much force he had worked it loose on every side,
he scarcely tore it from his back; the iron, though, clung to the bones.
the son of Agenor wonders what delays his companions,
and tracks the men. His covering was a hide stripped
from a lion; his weapon, a lance of gleaming iron,
and a javelin—and a spirit beyond every weapon.
When he entered the wood and saw the slaughtered bodies,
and over them the victorious foe, with its vast bulk,
licking the grievous wounds with its bloody tongue,
’Either the avenger of your death, most faithful hearts,
or your companion in it,’ he said, ’I shall be.’ He spoke, and with his right hand
lifted a millstone and hurled the great mass with a great effort.
At its impact high walls with lofty towers
would have been shaken; the serpent stayed unwounded,
defended by its scales as by a cuirass, and by the hardness
of its dark hide it threw back the strong blows with its skin;
yet that same hardness did not overcome the javelin too,
which, fixed in the mid-curve of the supple spine,
stuck fast, and the whole iron sank into the guts.
Fierce with pain, he twisted his head back over his coils
and looked at the wound, and bit the embedded shaft,
and when with much force he had worked it loose on every side,
he scarcely tore it from his back; the iron, though, clung to the bones.
Fecerat exiguas iam sol altissimus umbras: quae mora sit sociis, miratur Agenore natus vestigatque viros. tegumen derepta leoni pellis erat, telum splendenti lancea ferro et iaculum teloque animus praestantior omni. ut nemus intravit letataque corpora vidit victoremque supra spatiosi tergoris hostem tristia sanguinea lambentem vulnera lingua, ’aut ultor vestrae, fidissima pectora, mortis, aut comes’ inquit ’ero.’ dixit dextraque molarem sustulit et magnum magno conamine misit. illius inpulsu cum turribus ardua celsis moenia mota forent, serpens sine vulnere mansit loricaeque modo squamis defensus et atrae duritia pellis validos cute reppulit ictus; at non duritia iaculum quoque vicit eadem, quod medio lentae spinae curvamine fixum constitit et totum descendit in ilia ferrum. ille dolore ferox caput in sua terga retorsit vulneraque adspexit fixumque hastile momordit, idque ubi vi multa partem labefecit in omnem, vix tergo eripuit; ferrum tamen ossibus haesit.
Then indeed, when fresh cause was added to his accustomed
wrath, his throat swelled with full veins,
and white foam flowed round his pestilent jaws,
and the scraped earth resounds with his scales, and the breath that issues
from his mouth, black as the Styx, infects the tainted air.
Now he girds himself with a vast circle as his coils make it,
now he stands up straighter than a long beam,
now with huge onset, like a river swollen by rains,
he is borne on, and shoulders aside the woods that block his way.
The son of Agenor gives ground a little, and with the lion’s spoil
withstands the charges, and checks the threatening jaws
with his outheld spear-point: the serpent rages and gives empty wounds
to the hard iron, and fixes his teeth on the point.
And now blood had begun to flow from his venom-bearing
palate, and had stained the green grass with its spatter;
but the wound was slight, because he kept drawing back from the blow
and gave his hurt neck backward, and by yielding kept
the stroke from settling, and would not let it go deeper,
until the son of Agenor, the iron hurled into his throat,
pressed ever after him, until an oak stood in the way
of his retreat, and neck and trunk were pinned together.
The tree was bent by the serpent’s weight, and groaned
to feel its wood lashed by the end of the tail.
wrath, his throat swelled with full veins,
and white foam flowed round his pestilent jaws,
and the scraped earth resounds with his scales, and the breath that issues
from his mouth, black as the Styx, infects the tainted air.
Now he girds himself with a vast circle as his coils make it,
now he stands up straighter than a long beam,
now with huge onset, like a river swollen by rains,
he is borne on, and shoulders aside the woods that block his way.
The son of Agenor gives ground a little, and with the lion’s spoil
withstands the charges, and checks the threatening jaws
with his outheld spear-point: the serpent rages and gives empty wounds
to the hard iron, and fixes his teeth on the point.
And now blood had begun to flow from his venom-bearing
palate, and had stained the green grass with its spatter;
but the wound was slight, because he kept drawing back from the blow
and gave his hurt neck backward, and by yielding kept
the stroke from settling, and would not let it go deeper,
until the son of Agenor, the iron hurled into his throat,
pressed ever after him, until an oak stood in the way
of his retreat, and neck and trunk were pinned together.
The tree was bent by the serpent’s weight, and groaned
to feel its wood lashed by the end of the tail.
tum vero postquam solitas accessit ad iras causa recens, plenis tumuerunt guttura venis, spumaque pestiferos circumfluit albida rictus, terraque rasa sonat squamis, quique halitus exit ore niger Stygio, vitiatas inficit auras. ipse modo inmensum spiris facientibus orbem cingitur, interdum longa trabe rectior adstat, inpete nunc vasto ceu concitus imbribus amnis fertur et obstantis proturbat pectore silvas. cedit Agenorides paulum spolioque leonis sustinet incursus instantiaque ora retardat cuspide praetenta: furit ille et inania duro vulnera dat ferro figitque in acumine dentes. iamque venenifero sanguis manare palato coeperat et virides adspergine tinxerat herbas; sed leve vulnus erat, quia se retrahebat ab ictu laesaque colla dabat retro plagamque sedere cedendo arcebat nec longius ire sinebat, donec Agenorides coniectum in guttura ferrum usque sequens pressit, dum retro quercus eunti obstitit et fixa est pariter cum robore cervix. pondere serpentis curvata est arbor et ima parte flagellari gemuit sua robora caudae.
While the victor surveys the bulk of his vanquished foe,
a voice was suddenly heard; it was not easy to know
from where, but it was heard: ’Why, son of Agenor, do you gaze
at the slain serpent? You too shall be gazed at as a serpent.’
He, long fearful, had lost his color together
with his wits, and his hair stood stiff with chill terror.
Behold, the hero’s patroness, gliding down through the upper air,
Pallas is there, and bids him set beneath the turned earth
the serpent’s teeth, the seeds of a people to come.
He obeys, and when with the pressed plough he had opened a furrow,
he scatters on the ground, as bidden, the teeth—mortal seeds.
Then—past belief—the clods began to stir,
and first from the furrows appeared the point of a spear,
next the head-coverings nodding with their painted cones,
next shoulders and chests and arms laden with weapons
rise up, and a crop of shielded men grows tall:
so, when the curtains are raised in festive theatres,
the figures are wont to rise and first show their faces,
the rest little by little, and drawn up in a steady flow
stand wholly revealed, and set their feet on the lower border.
a voice was suddenly heard; it was not easy to know
from where, but it was heard: ’Why, son of Agenor, do you gaze
at the slain serpent? You too shall be gazed at as a serpent.’
He, long fearful, had lost his color together
with his wits, and his hair stood stiff with chill terror.
Behold, the hero’s patroness, gliding down through the upper air,
Pallas is there, and bids him set beneath the turned earth
the serpent’s teeth, the seeds of a people to come.
He obeys, and when with the pressed plough he had opened a furrow,
he scatters on the ground, as bidden, the teeth—mortal seeds.
Then—past belief—the clods began to stir,
and first from the furrows appeared the point of a spear,
next the head-coverings nodding with their painted cones,
next shoulders and chests and arms laden with weapons
rise up, and a crop of shielded men grows tall:
so, when the curtains are raised in festive theatres,
the figures are wont to rise and first show their faces,
the rest little by little, and drawn up in a steady flow
stand wholly revealed, and set their feet on the lower border.
Dum spatium victor victi considerat hostis, vox subito audita est; neque erat cognoscere promptum, unde, sed audita est: ’quid, Agenore nate, peremptum serpentem spectas? et tu spectabere serpens.’ ille diu pavidus pariter cum mente colorem perdiderat, gelidoque comae terrore rigebant: ecce viri fautrix superas delapsa per auras Pallas adest motaeque iubet supponere terrae vipereos dentes, populi incrementa futuri. paret et, ut presso sulcum patefecit aratro, spargit humi iussos, mortalia semina, dentes. inde (fide maius) glaebae coepere moveri, primaque de sulcis acies adparuit hastae, tegmina mox capitum picto nutantia cono, mox umeri pectusque onerataque bracchia telis exsistunt, crescitque seges clipeata virorum: sic, ubi tolluntur festis aulaea theatris, surgere signa solent primumque ostendere vultus, cetera paulatim, placidoque educta tenore tota patent imoque pedes in margine ponunt.
Terrified by the new enemy, Cadmus was making ready to take up arms:
’Do not take them!’ one of the people the earth had created
cries out, ’and do not involve yourself in our civil wars!’
And so, hand to hand, he strikes one of his earth-born
brothers with his stiff sword; he himself falls to a javelin from afar.
And he who had dealt him death lives no longer than the other,
and breathes out the very air he had just received,
and by like example the whole throng rages, and in their own
warfare the sudden-born brothers fall by mutual wounds.
And now the youth, allotted so brief a span of life,
beat with warm breast their blood-soaked mother,
five surviving, of whom one was Echion.
He, at the Tritonian’s prompting, cast his arms to the ground
and asked and gave the pledge of brotherly peace:
these the Sidonian stranger had as companions in his work,
when, as bidden by Phoebus’s oracles, he set up his city.
Now Thebes stood; now, Cadmus, you might have seemed
happy in your exile: Mars and Venus had fallen to you
as parents-in-law; add to this the offspring of so great a wife,
so many sons and daughters, and—dear pledges—grandsons,
these too now grown young men; but of course a man’s last day
must always be awaited, and no one ought to be called blessed
before his death and his final funeral rites.
’Do not take them!’ one of the people the earth had created
cries out, ’and do not involve yourself in our civil wars!’
And so, hand to hand, he strikes one of his earth-born
brothers with his stiff sword; he himself falls to a javelin from afar.
And he who had dealt him death lives no longer than the other,
and breathes out the very air he had just received,
and by like example the whole throng rages, and in their own
warfare the sudden-born brothers fall by mutual wounds.
And now the youth, allotted so brief a span of life,
beat with warm breast their blood-soaked mother,
five surviving, of whom one was Echion.
He, at the Tritonian’s prompting, cast his arms to the ground
and asked and gave the pledge of brotherly peace:
these the Sidonian stranger had as companions in his work,
when, as bidden by Phoebus’s oracles, he set up his city.
Now Thebes stood; now, Cadmus, you might have seemed
happy in your exile: Mars and Venus had fallen to you
as parents-in-law; add to this the offspring of so great a wife,
so many sons and daughters, and—dear pledges—grandsons,
these too now grown young men; but of course a man’s last day
must always be awaited, and no one ought to be called blessed
before his death and his final funeral rites.
Territus hoste novo Cadmus capere arma parabat: ’ne cape!’ de populo, quem terra creaverat, unus exclamat ’nec te civilibus insere bellis!’ atque ita terrigenis rigido de fratribus unum comminus ense ferit, iaculo cadit eminus ipse; hunc quoque qui leto dederat, non longius illo vivit et exspirat, modo quas acceperat auras, exemploque pari furit omnis turba, suoque Marte cadunt subiti per mutua vulnera fratres. iamque brevis vitae spatium sortita iuventus sanguineam tepido plangebat pectore matrem, quinque superstitibus, quorum fuit unus Echion. is sua iecit humo monitu Tritonidis arma fraternaeque fidem pacis petiitque deditque: hos operis comites habuit Sidonius hospes, cum posuit iussus Phoebeis sortibus urbem. Iam stabant Thebae, poteras iam, Cadme, videri exilio felix: soceri tibi Marsque Venusque contigerant; huc adde genus de coniuge tanta, tot natos natasque et, pignora cara, nepotes, hos quoque iam iuvenes; sed scilicet ultima semper exspectanda dies hominis, dicique beatus ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet.
First among so many blessings, Cadmus, your grandson
was the cause of grief to you—the alien horns set
upon his brow, and you, hounds glutted with your master’s blood.
But if you ask aright, you will find in that the fault of Fortune,
not a crime; for what crime is there in a mistake?
There was a mountain stained with the slaughter of various beasts,
and now midday had drawn in the shadows of things,
and the sun stood equally distant from either goal,
when the young man, as they wandered through the trackless coverts,
calls his partners in the toil, the Hyantian, with calm voice:
’Our nets are wet, companions, and our iron with the blood of beasts,
and the day has had luck enough; when, on saffron wheels,
another Dawn brings back the light,
we will take up again the work we purposed: now Phoebus stands
the same distance from either goal, and splits the fields with his heat.
Halt the present work and take up the knotted nets!’
The men do as bidden and break off their labor.
There was a valley, dense with pitch-pines and sharp cypress,
Gargaphie by name, sacred to girt-up Diana,
in whose farthest recess there is a woodland cave
wrought by no art: nature by her own genius
had counterfeited art; for from living pumice
and light tufa she had drawn a natural arch;
a spring sounds on the right with its slender, crystal water,
its wide mouth ringed with a grassy margin.
Here the goddess of the woods, when tired with hunting, was wont
to bathe her maiden limbs in the clear dew.
was the cause of grief to you—the alien horns set
upon his brow, and you, hounds glutted with your master’s blood.
But if you ask aright, you will find in that the fault of Fortune,
not a crime; for what crime is there in a mistake?
There was a mountain stained with the slaughter of various beasts,
and now midday had drawn in the shadows of things,
and the sun stood equally distant from either goal,
when the young man, as they wandered through the trackless coverts,
calls his partners in the toil, the Hyantian, with calm voice:
’Our nets are wet, companions, and our iron with the blood of beasts,
and the day has had luck enough; when, on saffron wheels,
another Dawn brings back the light,
we will take up again the work we purposed: now Phoebus stands
the same distance from either goal, and splits the fields with his heat.
Halt the present work and take up the knotted nets!’
The men do as bidden and break off their labor.
There was a valley, dense with pitch-pines and sharp cypress,
Gargaphie by name, sacred to girt-up Diana,
in whose farthest recess there is a woodland cave
wrought by no art: nature by her own genius
had counterfeited art; for from living pumice
and light tufa she had drawn a natural arch;
a spring sounds on the right with its slender, crystal water,
its wide mouth ringed with a grassy margin.
Here the goddess of the woods, when tired with hunting, was wont
to bathe her maiden limbs in the clear dew.
Prima nepos inter tot res tibi, Cadme, secundas causa fuit luctus, alienaque cornua fronti addita, vosque, canes satiatae sanguine erili. at bene si quaeras, Fortunae crimen in illo, non scelus invenies; quod enim scelus error habebat? Mons erat infectus variarum caede ferarum, iamque dies medius rerum contraxerat umbras et sol ex aequo meta distabat utraque, cum iuvenis placido per devia lustra vagantes participes operum conpellat Hyantius ore: ’lina madent, comites, ferrumque cruore ferarum, fortunaeque dies habuit satis; altera lucem cum croceis invecta rotis Aurora reducet, propositum repetemus opus: nunc Phoebus utraque distat idem meta finditque vaporibus arva. sistite opus praesens nodosaque tollite lina!’ iussa viri faciunt intermittuntque laborem. Vallis erat piceis et acuta densa cupressu, nomine Gargaphie succinctae sacra Dianae, cuius in extremo est antrum nemorale recessu arte laboratum nulla: simulaverat artem ingenio natura suo; nam pumice vivo et levibus tofis nativum duxerat arcum; fons sonat a dextra tenui perlucidus unda, margine gramineo patulos incinctus hiatus. hic dea silvarum venatu fessa solebat virgineos artus liquido perfundere rore.
When she had entered there, she handed to one of her nymphs,
her armor-bearer, her javelin and quiver and unstrung bow;
another took on her arms the robe she laid off,
two unbind the sandals from her feet; for more skilled than they,
the Ismenian Crocale gathered into a knot the hair
scattered over the goddess’s neck, though her own hung loose.
Nephele and Hyale and Rhanis catch the water,
and Psecas and Phiale, and pour it from capacious urns.
And while the Titanian bathes there in her accustomed stream,
behold, the grandson of Cadmus, his share of the toil postponed,
wandering with uncertain steps through unfamiliar woodland,
came into the grove: so the fates were carrying him.
As soon as he entered the caves dripping with springs,
the nymphs, naked as they were, at the sight of a man, struck
their breasts and filled all the grove with sudden shrieks,
and, crowding round Diana, covered her
with their bodies; yet the goddess herself is taller than they
and overtops them all by a head.
The color that clouds, struck by the facing sun, are wont
to take, or rosy Dawn,
such was on the face of Diana, seen without her robe.
She—though crowded round by the throng of her companions—
even so stood turned aside, and twisted her face
back, and, as she wished she had her arrows ready,
so she caught up the water she did have, and the man’s face
she drenched, and sprinkling his hair with the avenging waters
she added these words, forewarning of the doom to come:
’Now you may tell that you saw me with my veil laid off—
if you can tell it!’ And with no further threat
she gives to his sprinkled head the horns of a long-lived stag,
gives length to his neck and tapers the tips of his ears,
and changes his hands to feet, his arms to long
legs, and veils his body in a dappled hide;
and fear is added too: the hero, son of Autonoë, flees,
and wonders that he is so swift even in his own running.
her armor-bearer, her javelin and quiver and unstrung bow;
another took on her arms the robe she laid off,
two unbind the sandals from her feet; for more skilled than they,
the Ismenian Crocale gathered into a knot the hair
scattered over the goddess’s neck, though her own hung loose.
Nephele and Hyale and Rhanis catch the water,
and Psecas and Phiale, and pour it from capacious urns.
And while the Titanian bathes there in her accustomed stream,
behold, the grandson of Cadmus, his share of the toil postponed,
wandering with uncertain steps through unfamiliar woodland,
came into the grove: so the fates were carrying him.
As soon as he entered the caves dripping with springs,
the nymphs, naked as they were, at the sight of a man, struck
their breasts and filled all the grove with sudden shrieks,
and, crowding round Diana, covered her
with their bodies; yet the goddess herself is taller than they
and overtops them all by a head.
The color that clouds, struck by the facing sun, are wont
to take, or rosy Dawn,
such was on the face of Diana, seen without her robe.
She—though crowded round by the throng of her companions—
even so stood turned aside, and twisted her face
back, and, as she wished she had her arrows ready,
so she caught up the water she did have, and the man’s face
she drenched, and sprinkling his hair with the avenging waters
she added these words, forewarning of the doom to come:
’Now you may tell that you saw me with my veil laid off—
if you can tell it!’ And with no further threat
she gives to his sprinkled head the horns of a long-lived stag,
gives length to his neck and tapers the tips of his ears,
and changes his hands to feet, his arms to long
legs, and veils his body in a dappled hide;
and fear is added too: the hero, son of Autonoë, flees,
and wonders that he is so swift even in his own running.
quo postquam subiit, nympharum tradidit uni armigerae iaculum pharetramque arcusque retentos, altera depositae subiecit bracchia pallae, vincla duae pedibus demunt; nam doctior illis Ismenis Crocale sparsos per colla capillos colligit in nodum, quamvis erat ipsa solutis. excipiunt laticem Nepheleque Hyaleque Rhanisque et Psecas et Phiale funduntque capacibus urnis. dumque ibi perluitur solita Titania lympha, ecce nepos Cadmi dilata parte laborum per nemus ignotum non certis passibus errans pervenit in lucum: sic illum fata ferebant. qui simul intravit rorantia fontibus antra, sicut erant, nudae viso sua pectora nymphae percussere viro subitisque ululatibus omne inplevere nemus circumfusaeque Dianam corporibus texere suis; tamen altior illis ipsa dea est colloque tenus supereminet omnis. qui color infectis adversi solis ab ictu nubibus esse solet aut purpureae Aurorae, is fuit in vultu visae sine veste Dianae. quae, quamquam comitum turba est stipata suarum, in latus obliquum tamen adstitit oraque retro flexit et, ut vellet promptas habuisse sagittas, quas habuit sic hausit aquas vultumque virilem perfudit spargensque comas ultricibus undis addidit haec cladis praenuntia verba futurae: ’nunc tibi me posito visam velamine narres, si poteris narrare, licet!’ nec plura minata dat sparso capiti vivacis cornua cervi, dat spatium collo summasque cacuminat aures cum pedibusque manus, cum longis bracchia mutat cruribus et velat maculoso vellere corpus; additus et pavor est: fugit Autonoeius heros et se tam celerem cursu miratur in ipso.
But when he saw his face and horns in the water,
’Wretched me!’ he was about to say: no voice followed!
He groaned: that was his voice, and tears flowed
over a face not his own; only his former mind remained.
What is he to do? Go back home and to the royal halls,
or hide in the woods? Shame forbids the one, fear the other.
While he hesitates, the hounds saw him, and first Melampus
and keen-scented Ichnobates gave the signal by baying—
Ichnobates of Cnossos, Melampus of Spartan breed.
Then the rest rush in, faster than the rapid wind,
Pamphagus and Dorceus and Oribasus, all Arcadians,
and strong Nebrophonus, and fierce Theron with Laelaps,
and Pterelas good with his feet, and Agre good with her nose,
and savage Hylaeus, lately gashed by a boar,
and Nape sired by a wolf, and Poemenis that had followed the flocks,
and Harpyia attended by her two pups,
and Sicyonian Ladon, carrying his flanks drawn lean,
and Dromas and Canache and Sticte and Tigris and Alce,
and Leucon with snowy hair, and Asbolus with black,
and powerful Lacon, and Aello strong in running,
and Thoos, and swift Lycisce with her Cyprian brother,
and Harpalus, his black forehead marked with white in the middle,
and Melaneus, and Lachne shaggy of body,
and, born of a Dictaean sire but a Laconian dam,
Labros and Argiodus and shrill-voiced Hylactor,
and those it would take too long to name: that pack, in lust for prey,
over crags and rocks and cliffs without approach,
where the way is hard and where there is no way, gives chase.
He flees through the very places where he had often given chase,
he flees—alas!—his own servants. He longed to cry out:
’Wretched me!’ he was about to say: no voice followed!
He groaned: that was his voice, and tears flowed
over a face not his own; only his former mind remained.
What is he to do? Go back home and to the royal halls,
or hide in the woods? Shame forbids the one, fear the other.
While he hesitates, the hounds saw him, and first Melampus
and keen-scented Ichnobates gave the signal by baying—
Ichnobates of Cnossos, Melampus of Spartan breed.
Then the rest rush in, faster than the rapid wind,
Pamphagus and Dorceus and Oribasus, all Arcadians,
and strong Nebrophonus, and fierce Theron with Laelaps,
and Pterelas good with his feet, and Agre good with her nose,
and savage Hylaeus, lately gashed by a boar,
and Nape sired by a wolf, and Poemenis that had followed the flocks,
and Harpyia attended by her two pups,
and Sicyonian Ladon, carrying his flanks drawn lean,
and Dromas and Canache and Sticte and Tigris and Alce,
and Leucon with snowy hair, and Asbolus with black,
and powerful Lacon, and Aello strong in running,
and Thoos, and swift Lycisce with her Cyprian brother,
and Harpalus, his black forehead marked with white in the middle,
and Melaneus, and Lachne shaggy of body,
and, born of a Dictaean sire but a Laconian dam,
Labros and Argiodus and shrill-voiced Hylactor,
and those it would take too long to name: that pack, in lust for prey,
over crags and rocks and cliffs without approach,
where the way is hard and where there is no way, gives chase.
He flees through the very places where he had often given chase,
he flees—alas!—his own servants. He longed to cry out:
ut vero vultus et cornua vidit in unda, ’me miserum!’ dicturus erat: vox nulla secuta est! ingemuit: vox illa fuit, lacrimaeque per ora non sua fluxerunt; mens tantum pristina mansit. quid faciat? repetatne domum et regalia tecta an lateat silvis? pudor hoc, timor inpedit illud. Dum dubitat, videre canes, primique Melampus Ichnobatesque sagax latratu signa dedere, Cnosius Ichnobates, Spartana gente Melampus. inde ruunt alii rapida velocius aura, Pamphagos et Dorceus et Oribasos, Arcades omnes, Nebrophonosque valens et trux cum Laelape Theron et pedibus Pterelas et naribus utilis Agre Hylaeusque ferox nuper percussus ab apro deque lupo concepta Nape pecudesque secuta Poemenis et natis comitata Harpyia duobus et substricta gerens Sicyonius ilia Ladon et Dromas et Canache Sticteque et Tigris et Alce et niveis Leucon et villis Asbolos atris praevalidusque Lacon et cursu fortis Aello et Thoos et Cyprio velox cum fratre Lycisce et nigram medio frontem distinctus ab albo Harpalos et Melaneus hirsutaque corpore Lachne et patre Dictaeo, sed matre Laconide nati Labros et Argiodus et acutae vocis Hylactor quosque referre mora est: ea turba cupidine praedae per rupes scopulosque adituque carentia saxa, quaque est difficilis quaque est via nulla, sequuntur. ille fugit per quae fuerat loca saepe secutus, heu! famulos fugit ipse suos. clamare libebat:
’It is I, Actaeon: know your own master!’
Words fail his will; the sky resounds with barking.
Melanchaetes first made wounds on his back,
Theridamas next, Oresitrophos clung to his shoulder:
they had set out later, but by shortcuts over the mountain
had cut the road short; while they hold their master back,
the rest of the pack gathers and sinks its teeth into his body.
Now there is no room left for wounds; he groans, and makes a sound
that, though not a man’s, is yet not one a stag
could utter, and he fills the familiar ridges with mournful complaints,
and on bended knees, a suppliant and like one entreating,
he turns about his silent looks as though they were his arms.
But his companions, with their usual cheers, urge on the headlong pack,
unknowing, and seek Actaeon with their eyes,
and, as though he were away, call ’Actaeon!’ in rivalry
(at his name he turns his head), and complain that he is absent,
and that, sluggish, he takes in none of the spectacle of prey laid before him.
He would indeed wish to be away, but he is there; he would wish to see,
and not also feel, the savage deeds of his own hounds.
On every side they stand around him, and burying their muzzles in his body
they tear apart their master under the false shape of a stag,
and not until his life was ended through wounds past counting
is the wrath of the quivered Diana said to have been sated.
Rumor is divided: to some the goddess seemed
more violent than was fair; others praise her, and call her worthy
of her stern virginity: each side finds its reasons.
Words fail his will; the sky resounds with barking.
Melanchaetes first made wounds on his back,
Theridamas next, Oresitrophos clung to his shoulder:
they had set out later, but by shortcuts over the mountain
had cut the road short; while they hold their master back,
the rest of the pack gathers and sinks its teeth into his body.
Now there is no room left for wounds; he groans, and makes a sound
that, though not a man’s, is yet not one a stag
could utter, and he fills the familiar ridges with mournful complaints,
and on bended knees, a suppliant and like one entreating,
he turns about his silent looks as though they were his arms.
But his companions, with their usual cheers, urge on the headlong pack,
unknowing, and seek Actaeon with their eyes,
and, as though he were away, call ’Actaeon!’ in rivalry
(at his name he turns his head), and complain that he is absent,
and that, sluggish, he takes in none of the spectacle of prey laid before him.
He would indeed wish to be away, but he is there; he would wish to see,
and not also feel, the savage deeds of his own hounds.
On every side they stand around him, and burying their muzzles in his body
they tear apart their master under the false shape of a stag,
and not until his life was ended through wounds past counting
is the wrath of the quivered Diana said to have been sated.
Rumor is divided: to some the goddess seemed
more violent than was fair; others praise her, and call her worthy
of her stern virginity: each side finds its reasons.
’Actaeon ego sum: dominum cognoscite vestrum!’ verba animo desunt; resonat latratibus aether. prima Melanchaetes in tergo vulnera fecit, proxima Theridamas, Oresitrophos haesit in armo: tardius exierant, sed per conpendia montis anticipata via est; dominum retinentibus illis, cetera turba coit confertque in corpore dentes. iam loca vulneribus desunt; gemit ille sonumque, etsi non hominis, quem non tamen edere possit cervus, habet maestisque replet iuga nota querellis et genibus pronis supplex similisque roganti circumfert tacitos tamquam sua bracchia vultus. at comites rapidum solitis hortatibus agmen ignari instigant oculisque Actaeona quaerunt et velut absentem certatim Actaeona clamant (ad nomen caput ille refert) et abesse queruntur nec capere oblatae segnem spectacula praedae. vellet abesse quidem, sed adest; velletque videre, non etiam sentire canum fera facta suorum. undique circumstant, mersisque in corpore rostris dilacerant falsi dominum sub imagine cervi, nec nisi finita per plurima vulnera vita ira pharetratae fertur satiata Dianae. Rumor in ambiguo est; aliis violentior aequo visa dea est, alii laudant dignamque severa virginitate vocant: pars invenit utraque causas.
Only the wife of Jove declares not so much whether to blame or to approve
as that she rejoices in the ruin of the house descended from Agenor,
and transfers the hatred she had gathered from the Tyrian rival
onto the kindred of that line; and behold, upon the former
a fresh cause comes: she grieves that Semele is pregnant with the seed
of great Jove; while she loosens her tongue for reproaches,
’What, after all, have I gained so often by reproaches?’ she said.
’It is she I must go after; her I will destroy, if rightly
I am called greatest Juno, if it befits me to hold the jeweled
scepter in my right hand, if I am queen, and Jove’s
both sister and wife—at least his sister. But she, I suppose, is content
with a stolen affair, and the wrong to our marriage-bed is brief.
She conceives—that was all it needed—and bears the manifest crime
in her full womb, and wishes to be made a mother by Jove alone—
a thing that scarcely fell to me: so great is her confidence in her beauty.
I’ll see her beauty fails her; nor am I Saturn’s daughter, if she does not
plunge, by her own Jove, down into the waters of the Styx.’
as that she rejoices in the ruin of the house descended from Agenor,
and transfers the hatred she had gathered from the Tyrian rival
onto the kindred of that line; and behold, upon the former
a fresh cause comes: she grieves that Semele is pregnant with the seed
of great Jove; while she loosens her tongue for reproaches,
’What, after all, have I gained so often by reproaches?’ she said.
’It is she I must go after; her I will destroy, if rightly
I am called greatest Juno, if it befits me to hold the jeweled
scepter in my right hand, if I am queen, and Jove’s
both sister and wife—at least his sister. But she, I suppose, is content
with a stolen affair, and the wrong to our marriage-bed is brief.
She conceives—that was all it needed—and bears the manifest crime
in her full womb, and wishes to be made a mother by Jove alone—
a thing that scarcely fell to me: so great is her confidence in her beauty.
I’ll see her beauty fails her; nor am I Saturn’s daughter, if she does not
plunge, by her own Jove, down into the waters of the Styx.’
sola Iovis coniunx non tam, culpetne probetne, eloquitur, quam clade domus ab Agenore ductae gaudet et a Tyria collectum paelice transfert in generis socios odium; subit ecce priori causa recens, gravidamque dolet de semine magni esse Iovis Semelen; dum linguam ad iurgia solvit, ’profeci quid enim totiens per iurgia?’ dixit, ’ipsa petenda mihi est; ipsam, si maxima Iuno rite vocor, perdam, si me gemmantia dextra sceptra tenere decet, si sum regina Iovisque et soror et coniunx, certe soror. at, puto, furto est contenta, et thalami brevis est iniuria nostri. concipit++id derat++manifestaque crimina pleno fert utero et mater, quod vix mihi contigit, uno de Iove vult fieri: tanta est fiducia formae. fallat eam faxo; nec sum Saturnia, si non ab Iove mersa suo Stygias penetrabit in undas.’
She rises from her throne at this, and hidden in a tawny cloud
approaches Semele’s threshold, and did not put off the cloud
before she had counterfeited an old woman, set white hair at her temples,
furrowed her skin with wrinkles, and carried her bent
limbs with trembling step; she made her voice an old woman’s too,
and she was Beroe herself, Semele’s Epidaurian nurse.
So when, having drawn her into talk and conversing long,
they came to the name of Jove, she sighs and says, ’I do hope
it is Jupiter; yet I fear everything: many men
have entered chaste bedchambers under the name of gods.
And it is not enough that he be Jove: let him give a pledge of his love,
if only he is the true one; and as great and as glorious as he is
when received by lofty Juno, just so great and so glorious—ask it—
let him give you his embrace, and first put on his full insignia!’
With such words Juno had shaped the unsuspecting
daughter of Cadmus: she asks Jove for a gift, unnamed.
To her the god says, ’Choose! You shall suffer no refusal,
and that you may believe it the more, let the divine powers
of the Stygian torrent be witness too: he is the dread and god even of the gods.’
Glad in her own ruin, and too powerful, and about to perish
by her lover’s compliance, Semele said, ’As Saturn’s daughter
is wont to embrace you, when you enter the bond of Venus,
give yourself to me so!’ The god wished to stop the mouth
of her as she spoke: already the hurried words had gone out into the air.
He groaned; for she could not now un-wish this, nor could he
un-swear his oath. So, in deepest grief, he climbs the high
heaven, and by his look drew on the following
clouds, to which he added rainstorms and lightnings mixed with winds
and thunder and the inescapable thunderbolt;
yet, so far as he can, he tries to take his force from himself,
and does not now arm himself with the fire by which he had cast down
hundred-handed Typhoeus: there is too much ferocity in it.
There is another, lighter bolt, to which the right hand of the Cyclopes
had added less of savagery and flame, less of wrath:
the gods above call them the second weapons; he takes them, and enters
the house of Agenor’s line. Her mortal body did not bear
the heavenly tumult, and she burned in her bridal gift.
Still unformed, the infant is snatched from his mother’s
womb, and—if it is worthy of belief—the tender thing is sewn
into his father’s thigh, and fills out the months his mother owed.
In secret his aunt Ino reared him in his first cradle,
then, given over to the Nysean nymphs, they hid him
in their caves and gave him the nourishment of milk.
approaches Semele’s threshold, and did not put off the cloud
before she had counterfeited an old woman, set white hair at her temples,
furrowed her skin with wrinkles, and carried her bent
limbs with trembling step; she made her voice an old woman’s too,
and she was Beroe herself, Semele’s Epidaurian nurse.
So when, having drawn her into talk and conversing long,
they came to the name of Jove, she sighs and says, ’I do hope
it is Jupiter; yet I fear everything: many men
have entered chaste bedchambers under the name of gods.
And it is not enough that he be Jove: let him give a pledge of his love,
if only he is the true one; and as great and as glorious as he is
when received by lofty Juno, just so great and so glorious—ask it—
let him give you his embrace, and first put on his full insignia!’
With such words Juno had shaped the unsuspecting
daughter of Cadmus: she asks Jove for a gift, unnamed.
To her the god says, ’Choose! You shall suffer no refusal,
and that you may believe it the more, let the divine powers
of the Stygian torrent be witness too: he is the dread and god even of the gods.’
Glad in her own ruin, and too powerful, and about to perish
by her lover’s compliance, Semele said, ’As Saturn’s daughter
is wont to embrace you, when you enter the bond of Venus,
give yourself to me so!’ The god wished to stop the mouth
of her as she spoke: already the hurried words had gone out into the air.
He groaned; for she could not now un-wish this, nor could he
un-swear his oath. So, in deepest grief, he climbs the high
heaven, and by his look drew on the following
clouds, to which he added rainstorms and lightnings mixed with winds
and thunder and the inescapable thunderbolt;
yet, so far as he can, he tries to take his force from himself,
and does not now arm himself with the fire by which he had cast down
hundred-handed Typhoeus: there is too much ferocity in it.
There is another, lighter bolt, to which the right hand of the Cyclopes
had added less of savagery and flame, less of wrath:
the gods above call them the second weapons; he takes them, and enters
the house of Agenor’s line. Her mortal body did not bear
the heavenly tumult, and she burned in her bridal gift.
Still unformed, the infant is snatched from his mother’s
womb, and—if it is worthy of belief—the tender thing is sewn
into his father’s thigh, and fills out the months his mother owed.
In secret his aunt Ino reared him in his first cradle,
then, given over to the Nysean nymphs, they hid him
in their caves and gave him the nourishment of milk.
Surgit ab his solio fulvaque recondita nube limen adit Semeles nec nubes ante removit quam simulavit anum posuitque ad tempora canos sulcavitque cutem rugis et curva trementi membra tulit passu; vocem quoque fecit anilem, ipsaque erat Beroe, Semeles Epidauria nutrix. ergo ubi captato sermone diuque loquendo ad nomen venere Iovis, suspirat et ’opto, Iuppiter ut sit’ ait; ’metuo tamen omnia: multi nomine divorum thalamos iniere pudicos. nec tamen esse Iovem satis est: det pignus amoris, si modo verus is est; quantusque et qualis ab alta Iunone excipitur, tantus talisque, rogato, det tibi conplexus suaque ante insignia sumat!’ Talibus ignaram Iuno Cadmeida dictis formarat: rogat illa Iovem sine nomine munus. cui deus ’elige!’ ait ’nullam patiere repulsam, quoque magis credas, Stygii quoque conscia sunto numina torrentis: timor et deus ille deorum est.’ laeta malo nimiumque potens perituraque amantis obsequio Semele ’qualem Saturnia’ dixit ’te solet amplecti, Veneris cum foedus initis, da mihi te talem!’ voluit deus ora loquentis opprimere: exierat iam vox properata sub auras. ingemuit; neque enim non haec optasse, neque ille non iurasse potest. ergo maestissimus altum aethera conscendit vultuque sequentia traxit nubila, quis nimbos inmixtaque fulgura ventis addidit et tonitrus et inevitabile fulmen; qua tamen usque potest, vires sibi demere temptat nec, quo centimanum deiecerat igne Typhoea, nunc armatur eo: nimium feritatis in illo est. est aliud levius fulmen, cui dextra cyclopum saevitiae flammaeque minus, minus addidit irae: tela secunda vocant superi; capit illa domumque intrat Agenoream. corpus mortale tumultus non tulit aetherios donisque iugalibus arsit. inperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo eripitur patrioque tener (si credere dignum est) insuitur femori maternaque tempora conplet. furtim illum primis Ino matertera cunis educat, inde datum nymphae Nyseides antris occuluere suis lactisque alimenta dedere.
And while these things are done on earth by the law of fate,
and the cradle of twice-born Bacchus is safe,
they tell how Jove, mellowed by nectar, once laid aside
his heavy cares, and in an idle hour bandied easy
jests with Juno, and said, ’Yours is surely the greater
pleasure than the one that falls to males.’
She denies it. They resolved to ask what the opinion of learned
Tiresias might be: to him both kinds of love were known.
For two great serpents’ bodies, coupling in a green wood,
he had struck and violated with a blow of his staff,
and—a marvel—made from a man a woman, he had passed seven
autumns; in the eighth he saw the same serpents again,
and said, ’If there is such power in a blow to you,
that it turns the striker’s lot into its opposite,
now too I will strike you.’ Having struck the same snakes,
his former shape returned, and the figure he was born with came back.
So, taken as arbiter of the playful dispute,
he confirms the words of Jove: Saturn’s daughter is said
to have grieved more heavily than was just, and beyond the matter’s worth,
and condemned the eyes of her judge to everlasting night;
but the almighty father (for no god is allowed to make void
what a god has done) gave him, for the sight taken away,
the knowledge of things to come, and lightened the penalty with an honor.
and the cradle of twice-born Bacchus is safe,
they tell how Jove, mellowed by nectar, once laid aside
his heavy cares, and in an idle hour bandied easy
jests with Juno, and said, ’Yours is surely the greater
pleasure than the one that falls to males.’
She denies it. They resolved to ask what the opinion of learned
Tiresias might be: to him both kinds of love were known.
For two great serpents’ bodies, coupling in a green wood,
he had struck and violated with a blow of his staff,
and—a marvel—made from a man a woman, he had passed seven
autumns; in the eighth he saw the same serpents again,
and said, ’If there is such power in a blow to you,
that it turns the striker’s lot into its opposite,
now too I will strike you.’ Having struck the same snakes,
his former shape returned, and the figure he was born with came back.
So, taken as arbiter of the playful dispute,
he confirms the words of Jove: Saturn’s daughter is said
to have grieved more heavily than was just, and beyond the matter’s worth,
and condemned the eyes of her judge to everlasting night;
but the almighty father (for no god is allowed to make void
what a god has done) gave him, for the sight taken away,
the knowledge of things to come, and lightened the penalty with an honor.
Dumque ea per terras fatali lege geruntur tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi, forte Iovem memorant diffusum nectare curas seposuisse graves vacuaque agitasse remissos cum Iunone iocos et ’maior vestra profecto est, quam quae contingit maribus’ dixisse ’voluptas.’ illa negat. placuit quae sit sententia docti quaerere Tiresiae: Venus huic erat utraque nota. nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu deque viro factus (mirabile) femina septem egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem vidit, et ’est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae’ dixit, ’ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet, nunc quoque vos feriam.’ percussis anguibus isdem forma prior rediit, genetivaque venit imago. arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa dicta Iovis firmat: gravius Saturnia iusto nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte; at pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.
He, most renowned by fame through the Aonian cities,
gave blameless answers to the people who sought them;
the first to test the trust and the proven truth of his voice was
azure Liriope, whom once in his winding stream
Cephisus had embraced, and, shut within his waters,
had forced; the loveliest nymph, when her womb was full, brought forth
a child who even then could be loved,
and calls him Narcissus. Consulted about him, whether he would
see the long seasons of a ripe old age,
the prophetic seer said, ’If he does not come to know himself.’
Long did the augur’s word seem empty: the outcome proved it true,
and the manner of his death, and the strangeness of his madness.
For the son of Cephisus had added one year to thrice five,
and could seem both a boy and a young man:
many youths, many girls desired him;
but in that tender beauty was so hard a pride
that no youths, no girls touched him.
gave blameless answers to the people who sought them;
the first to test the trust and the proven truth of his voice was
azure Liriope, whom once in his winding stream
Cephisus had embraced, and, shut within his waters,
had forced; the loveliest nymph, when her womb was full, brought forth
a child who even then could be loved,
and calls him Narcissus. Consulted about him, whether he would
see the long seasons of a ripe old age,
the prophetic seer said, ’If he does not come to know himself.’
Long did the augur’s word seem empty: the outcome proved it true,
and the manner of his death, and the strangeness of his madness.
For the son of Cephisus had added one year to thrice five,
and could seem both a boy and a young man:
many youths, many girls desired him;
but in that tender beauty was so hard a pride
that no youths, no girls touched him.
Ille per Aonias fama celeberrimus urbes inreprehensa dabat populo responsa petenti; prima fide vocisque ratae temptamina sumpsit caerula Liriope, quam quondam flumine curvo inplicuit clausaeque suis Cephisos in undis vim tulit: enixa est utero pulcherrima pleno infantem nymphe, iam tunc qui posset amari, Narcissumque vocat. de quo consultus, an esset tempora maturae visurus longa senectae, fatidicus vates ’si se non noverit’ inquit. vana diu visa est vox auguris: exitus illam resque probat letique genus novitasque furoris. namque ter ad quinos unum Cephisius annum addiderat poteratque puer iuvenisque videri: multi illum iuvenes, multae cupiere puellae; sed fuit in tenera tam dura superbia forma, nulli illum iuvenes, nullae tetigere puellae.
Him, as he was driving frightened deer into his nets,
the vocal nymph beheld—she who has learned neither to keep silent
when another speaks, nor to speak first herself: resounding Echo.
Echo was still a body then, not a voice, and yet the chatterer
had no other use of her mouth than she has now,
namely, that out of many words she could give back the last.
Juno had done this, because, when she might have caught
the nymphs that often lay with her own Jove on the mountain,
Echo would shrewdly hold the goddess back with long talk,
while the nymphs fled. After Saturn’s daughter perceived this,
’Of that tongue by which I was tricked,’ she said, ’a small
power will be given you, and the briefest use of your voice,’
and she makes good her threats. Only this: at the end of speech
she doubles the sounds and brings back the words she has heard.
So when she saw Narcissus wandering through the pathless fields
and grew hot, she follows his footsteps by stealth,
and the more she follows, the nearer the flame, the hotter she glows—
just as when quick sulphur, smeared on the tips of torches,
snatches the flame brought near.
Oh how often she wished to approach him with coaxing words
and to bring soft entreaties! Her nature fights it
and does not let her begin; but what it allows, she is ready for—
to wait for sounds, to which she may send back her own words.
By chance the boy, drawn apart from his faithful band of companions,
had said, ’Is anyone here?’ and ’Here!’ Echo had answered.
He stands amazed, and as he sends his gaze in every direction,
cries with a loud voice, ’Come!’—and she calls the one who calls.
He looks back, and when again no one comes, ’Why,’ he says,
’do you flee me?’ and received back as many words as he spoke.
He persists, and deceived by the semblance of an answering voice,
’Here let us come together,’ he says; and never to answer any sound
more gladly, Echo replied, ’Let us come together,’
and seconds her own words, and coming out of the wood
she went to throw her arms around the neck she hoped for;
he flees, and fleeing, ’Take your hands from these embraces!
I would die first,’ he says, ’before you have your way with me’;
she answered nothing but, ’You have your way with me!’
Scorned, she hides in the woods, and shame-faced shields her face
with foliage, and from that time lives in lonely caves;
yet her love clings, and grows with the pain of rejection;
sleepless cares waste her pitiable body,
leanness shrivels her skin, and all the moisture
of her body passes into the air; only voice and bones are left:
the voice remains; the bones, they say, took on the shape of stone.
From then she hides in the woods, and is seen on no mountain,
but is heard by all: it is sound that lives on in her.
the vocal nymph beheld—she who has learned neither to keep silent
when another speaks, nor to speak first herself: resounding Echo.
Echo was still a body then, not a voice, and yet the chatterer
had no other use of her mouth than she has now,
namely, that out of many words she could give back the last.
Juno had done this, because, when she might have caught
the nymphs that often lay with her own Jove on the mountain,
Echo would shrewdly hold the goddess back with long talk,
while the nymphs fled. After Saturn’s daughter perceived this,
’Of that tongue by which I was tricked,’ she said, ’a small
power will be given you, and the briefest use of your voice,’
and she makes good her threats. Only this: at the end of speech
she doubles the sounds and brings back the words she has heard.
So when she saw Narcissus wandering through the pathless fields
and grew hot, she follows his footsteps by stealth,
and the more she follows, the nearer the flame, the hotter she glows—
just as when quick sulphur, smeared on the tips of torches,
snatches the flame brought near.
Oh how often she wished to approach him with coaxing words
and to bring soft entreaties! Her nature fights it
and does not let her begin; but what it allows, she is ready for—
to wait for sounds, to which she may send back her own words.
By chance the boy, drawn apart from his faithful band of companions,
had said, ’Is anyone here?’ and ’Here!’ Echo had answered.
He stands amazed, and as he sends his gaze in every direction,
cries with a loud voice, ’Come!’—and she calls the one who calls.
He looks back, and when again no one comes, ’Why,’ he says,
’do you flee me?’ and received back as many words as he spoke.
He persists, and deceived by the semblance of an answering voice,
’Here let us come together,’ he says; and never to answer any sound
more gladly, Echo replied, ’Let us come together,’
and seconds her own words, and coming out of the wood
she went to throw her arms around the neck she hoped for;
he flees, and fleeing, ’Take your hands from these embraces!
I would die first,’ he says, ’before you have your way with me’;
she answered nothing but, ’You have your way with me!’
Scorned, she hides in the woods, and shame-faced shields her face
with foliage, and from that time lives in lonely caves;
yet her love clings, and grows with the pain of rejection;
sleepless cares waste her pitiable body,
leanness shrivels her skin, and all the moisture
of her body passes into the air; only voice and bones are left:
the voice remains; the bones, they say, took on the shape of stone.
From then she hides in the woods, and is seen on no mountain,
but is heard by all: it is sound that lives on in her.
adspicit hunc trepidos agitantem in retia cervos vocalis nymphe, quae nec reticere loquenti nec prior ipsa loqui didicit, resonabilis Echo. Corpus adhuc Echo, non vox erat et tamen usum garrula non alium, quam nunc habet, oris habebat, reddere de multis ut verba novissima posset. fecerat hoc Iuno, quia, cum deprendere posset sub Iove saepe suo nymphas in monte iacentis, illa deam longo prudens sermone tenebat, dum fugerent nymphae. postquam hoc Saturnia sensit, ’huius’ ait ’linguae, qua sum delusa, potestas parva tibi dabitur vocisque brevissimus usus,’ reque minas firmat. tantum haec in fine loquendi ingeminat voces auditaque verba reportat. ergo ubi Narcissum per devia rura vagantem vidit et incaluit, sequitur vestigia furtim, quoque magis sequitur, flamma propiore calescit, non aliter quam cum summis circumlita taedis admotas rapiunt vivacia sulphura flammas. o quotiens voluit blandis accedere dictis et mollis adhibere preces! natura repugnat nec sinit, incipiat, sed, quod sinit, illa parata est exspectare sonos, ad quos sua verba remittat. forte puer comitum seductus ab agmine fido dixerat: ’ecquis adest?’ et ’adest’ responderat Echo. hic stupet, utque aciem partes dimittit in omnis, voce ’veni!’ magna clamat: vocat illa vocantem. respicit et rursus nullo veniente ’quid’ inquit ’me fugis?’ et totidem, quot dixit, verba recepit. perstat et alternae deceptus imagine vocis ’huc coeamus’ ait, nullique libentius umquam responsura sono ’coeamus’ rettulit Echo et verbis favet ipsa suis egressaque silva ibat, ut iniceret sperato bracchia collo; ille fugit fugiensque ’manus conplexibus aufer! ante’ ait ’emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri’; rettulit illa nihil nisi ’sit tibi copia nostri!’ spreta latet silvis pudibundaque frondibus ora protegit et solis ex illo vivit in antris; sed tamen haeret amor crescitque dolore repulsae; extenuant vigiles corpus miserabile curae adducitque cutem macies et in aera sucus corporis omnis abit; vox tantum atque ossa supersunt: vox manet, ossa ferunt lapidis traxisse figuram. inde latet silvis nulloque in monte videtur, omnibus auditur: sonus est, qui vivit in illa.
So this nymph, and others sprung from waters or mountains,
he had mocked, and before that the company of men;
then someone he had scorned, raising his hands to the sky,
said, ’So may he himself love, and so not possess what he loves!’
He had spoken: the Rhamnusian assented to the just prayer.
There was a clear spring, silvery with shining waters,
which neither shepherds nor she-goats pastured on the mountain
had touched, nor any other flock; which no bird
nor beast had troubled, nor a branch fallen from a tree;
grass was round about, which the near moisture fed,
and a wood that would let no sun warm the place.
Here the boy, tired with the zeal of hunting and with the heat,
lay down, drawn by the look of the place and the spring,
and while he longs to slake his thirst, another thirst grew:
and while he drinks, seized by the image of the beauty he sees,
he loves a hope without a body; he thinks to be a body what is a shadow.
He is awed at himself, and motionless with the same expression
he clings, like a statue shaped from Parian marble;
lying on the ground he gazes at the twin stars that are his eyes,
and his hair worthy of Bacchus, worthy too of Apollo,
and his smooth cheeks and ivory neck and the grace
of his mouth, and the blush mingled in snowy whiteness,
and marvels at everything for which he is himself a marvel:
unawares he desires himself, and he who approves is himself approved,
and while he seeks, he is sought, and equally he kindles and burns.
How often he gave vain kisses to the deceiving spring!
How often, to seize the neck he saw, he plunged
his arms midway into the waters, and did not catch himself in them!
What he sees, he does not know; but by what he sees he is set afire,
and the same error that deceives his eyes goads them on.
Credulous boy, why do you vainly snatch at fleeting likenesses?
What you seek is nowhere; what you love, turn away, and you will lose!
That which you behold is the shadow of a reflected image:
it has nothing of its own; with you it comes and stays,
with you it will depart—if you could depart!
he had mocked, and before that the company of men;
then someone he had scorned, raising his hands to the sky,
said, ’So may he himself love, and so not possess what he loves!’
He had spoken: the Rhamnusian assented to the just prayer.
There was a clear spring, silvery with shining waters,
which neither shepherds nor she-goats pastured on the mountain
had touched, nor any other flock; which no bird
nor beast had troubled, nor a branch fallen from a tree;
grass was round about, which the near moisture fed,
and a wood that would let no sun warm the place.
Here the boy, tired with the zeal of hunting and with the heat,
lay down, drawn by the look of the place and the spring,
and while he longs to slake his thirst, another thirst grew:
and while he drinks, seized by the image of the beauty he sees,
he loves a hope without a body; he thinks to be a body what is a shadow.
He is awed at himself, and motionless with the same expression
he clings, like a statue shaped from Parian marble;
lying on the ground he gazes at the twin stars that are his eyes,
and his hair worthy of Bacchus, worthy too of Apollo,
and his smooth cheeks and ivory neck and the grace
of his mouth, and the blush mingled in snowy whiteness,
and marvels at everything for which he is himself a marvel:
unawares he desires himself, and he who approves is himself approved,
and while he seeks, he is sought, and equally he kindles and burns.
How often he gave vain kisses to the deceiving spring!
How often, to seize the neck he saw, he plunged
his arms midway into the waters, and did not catch himself in them!
What he sees, he does not know; but by what he sees he is set afire,
and the same error that deceives his eyes goads them on.
Credulous boy, why do you vainly snatch at fleeting likenesses?
What you seek is nowhere; what you love, turn away, and you will lose!
That which you behold is the shadow of a reflected image:
it has nothing of its own; with you it comes and stays,
with you it will depart—if you could depart!
Sic hanc, sic alias undis aut montibus ortas luserat hic nymphas, sic coetus ante viriles; inde manus aliquis despectus ad aethera tollens ’sic amet ipse licet, sic non potiatur amato!’ dixerat: adsensit precibus Rhamnusia iustis. fons erat inlimis, nitidis argenteus undis, quem neque pastores neque pastae monte capellae contigerant aliudve pecus, quem nulla volucris nec fera turbarat nec lapsus ab arbore ramus; gramen erat circa, quod proximus umor alebat, silvaque sole locum passura tepescere nullo. hic puer et studio venandi lassus et aestu procubuit faciemque loci fontemque secutus, dumque sitim sedare cupit, sitis altera crevit, dumque bibit, visae correptus imagine formae spem sine corpore amat, corpus putat esse, quod umbra est. adstupet ipse sibi vultuque inmotus eodem haeret, ut e Pario formatum marmore signum; spectat humi positus geminum, sua lumina, sidus et dignos Baccho, dignos et Apolline crines inpubesque genas et eburnea colla decusque oris et in niveo mixtum candore ruborem, cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse: se cupit inprudens et, qui probat, ipse probatur, dumque petit, petitur, pariterque accendit et ardet. inrita fallaci quotiens dedit oscula fonti, in mediis quotiens visum captantia collum bracchia mersit aquis nec se deprendit in illis! quid videat, nescit; sed quod videt, uritur illo, atque oculos idem, qui decipit, incitat error. credule, quid frustra simulacra fugacia captas? quod petis, est nusquam; quod amas, avertere, perdes! ista repercussae, quam cernis, imaginis umbra est: nil habet ista sui; tecum venitque manetque; tecum discedet, si tu discedere possis!
No care for Ceres, no care for rest can
draw him from there, but stretched on the shaded grass
he gazes with insatiable eye at the lying shape,
and through his own eyes he perishes; and raising himself a little,
stretching his arms to the surrounding woods,
’Has anyone, O woods, ever loved more cruelly?’ he says.
’For you know, and have been a fit hiding-place for many.
Do you remember anyone, in the long ages, since so many centuries
of your life go by, who has wasted away like this?
It pleases me, and I see it; but what I see and what pleases me,
yet I cannot find—so great an error holds the lover—
and, to grieve me the more, no vast sea separates us,
no road, no mountains, no walls with their gates shut;
a little water keeps us apart! He himself longs to be held:
for as often as I have reached my kisses to the clear water,
so often he strains up toward me with face thrown back.
You would think he could be touched: it is the least of things that thwarts the lovers.
Whoever you are, come out here! Why, peerless boy, do you cheat me,
and where do you go when I seek you? Surely it is not my looks or my age
that you flee—nymphs have loved me too!
With a friendly face you promise me some hope I cannot name,
and when I have stretched my arms to you, you stretch yours in turn;
when I have smiled, you smile back; often too I have marked your tears
when I was weeping; with a nod you send back signs as well,
and, so far as I guess from the movement of your lovely mouth,
you return words that do not reach my ears!
That one is I: I have felt it, and my own image does not deceive me;
I burn with love of myself: I both stir the flames and bear them.
What shall I do? Be wooed, or woo? What then shall I ask for?
What I desire is with me: my plenty has made me poor.
Oh, would that I could part from my own body!
A strange wish in a lover: I would want what I love to be away.
And now grief takes my strength, and no long span of life
remains to me, and I am put out in my first youth.
Nor is death heavy to me, who in death shall lay down my griefs;
this one, who is loved, I would wish were longer-lived;
now the two of us, of one accord, shall die in a single breath.’
draw him from there, but stretched on the shaded grass
he gazes with insatiable eye at the lying shape,
and through his own eyes he perishes; and raising himself a little,
stretching his arms to the surrounding woods,
’Has anyone, O woods, ever loved more cruelly?’ he says.
’For you know, and have been a fit hiding-place for many.
Do you remember anyone, in the long ages, since so many centuries
of your life go by, who has wasted away like this?
It pleases me, and I see it; but what I see and what pleases me,
yet I cannot find—so great an error holds the lover—
and, to grieve me the more, no vast sea separates us,
no road, no mountains, no walls with their gates shut;
a little water keeps us apart! He himself longs to be held:
for as often as I have reached my kisses to the clear water,
so often he strains up toward me with face thrown back.
You would think he could be touched: it is the least of things that thwarts the lovers.
Whoever you are, come out here! Why, peerless boy, do you cheat me,
and where do you go when I seek you? Surely it is not my looks or my age
that you flee—nymphs have loved me too!
With a friendly face you promise me some hope I cannot name,
and when I have stretched my arms to you, you stretch yours in turn;
when I have smiled, you smile back; often too I have marked your tears
when I was weeping; with a nod you send back signs as well,
and, so far as I guess from the movement of your lovely mouth,
you return words that do not reach my ears!
That one is I: I have felt it, and my own image does not deceive me;
I burn with love of myself: I both stir the flames and bear them.
What shall I do? Be wooed, or woo? What then shall I ask for?
What I desire is with me: my plenty has made me poor.
Oh, would that I could part from my own body!
A strange wish in a lover: I would want what I love to be away.
And now grief takes my strength, and no long span of life
remains to me, and I am put out in my first youth.
Nor is death heavy to me, who in death shall lay down my griefs;
this one, who is loved, I would wish were longer-lived;
now the two of us, of one accord, shall die in a single breath.’
Non illum Cereris, non illum cura quietis abstrahere inde potest, sed opaca fusus in herba spectat inexpleto mendacem lumine formam perque oculos perit ipse suos; paulumque levatus ad circumstantes tendens sua bracchia silvas ’ecquis, io silvae, crudelius’ inquit ’amavit? scitis enim et multis latebra opportuna fuistis. ecquem, cum vestrae tot agantur saecula vitae, qui sic tabuerit, longo meministis in aevo? et placet et video; sed quod videoque placetque, non tamen invenio’++tantus tenet error amantem++ ’quoque magis doleam, nec nos mare separat ingens nec via nec montes nec clausis moenia portis; exigua prohibemur aqua! cupit ipse teneri: nam quotiens liquidis porreximus oscula lymphis, hic totiens ad me resupino nititur ore. posse putes tangi: minimum est, quod amantibus obstat. quisquis es, huc exi! quid me, puer unice, fallis quove petitus abis? certe nec forma nec aetas est mea, quam fugias, et amarunt me quoque nymphae! spem mihi nescio quam vultu promittis amico, cumque ego porrexi tibi bracchia, porrigis ultro, cum risi, adrides; lacrimas quoque saepe notavi me lacrimante tuas; nutu quoque signa remittis et, quantum motu formosi suspicor oris, verba refers aures non pervenientia nostras! iste ego sum: sensi, nec me mea fallit imago; uror amore mei: flammas moveoque feroque. quid faciam? roger anne rogem? quid deinde rogabo? quod cupio mecum est: inopem me copia fecit. o utinam a nostro secedere corpore possem! votum in amante novum, vellem, quod amamus, abesset. iamque dolor vires adimit, nec tempora vitae longa meae superant, primoque exstinguor in aevo. nec mihi mors gravis est posituro morte dolores, hic, qui diligitur, vellem diuturnior esset; nunc duo concordes anima moriemur in una.’
He spoke, and out of his senses returned to the same face,
and troubled the water with his tears, and the shape, blurred
by the stirred pool, grew dim; and when he had seen it going,
’Where do you flee? Stay, and do not, cruel one, desert
your lover!’ he cried; ’let it be allowed me to look on what I may not
touch, and to feed my wretched madness!’
And while he grieves, he drew his garment down from its upper edge
and struck his bared breast with marble-white palms.
His breast, when struck, drew on a rosy flush,
just as apples are wont, white in part,
in part red, or as a grape on its mottled clusters
is wont to take on a purple color, not yet ripe.
As soon as he saw this in the water, now grown clear again,
he bore it no further, but as golden wax is wont to melt
at a light flame, and the morning frost
in the warming sun, so, worn thin by love,
he melts, and little by little is consumed by a hidden fire;
and now there is no color of red mingled with white,
nor vigor and strength and what, but now seen, gave pleasure,
nor does the body remain that Echo once had loved.
Yet when she saw it, though angry and remembering,
she grieved, and as often as the pitiable boy had said ’Alas,’
with resounding voice she repeated ’Alas’;
and when he had struck his arms with his hands,
she too gave back the same sound of beating.
His last words, as he gazed into the accustomed water, were these:
’Alas, boy loved in vain!’—and the place sent back as many
words, and when he had said ’Farewell,’ ’Farewell’ said Echo too.
He laid his weary head down on the green grass,
and death closed the eyes that marveled at their master’s beauty:
then too, even after he was received in the infernal abode,
he kept gazing at himself in the Stygian water. His sisters
the naiads mourned, and laid their shorn locks on their brother,
the dryads mourned; to their mourning Echo sounds in answer.
And now they were preparing the pyre, the shaken torches, the bier:
nowhere was the body; in place of the body they find a saffron flower
with white petals ringing its center.
and troubled the water with his tears, and the shape, blurred
by the stirred pool, grew dim; and when he had seen it going,
’Where do you flee? Stay, and do not, cruel one, desert
your lover!’ he cried; ’let it be allowed me to look on what I may not
touch, and to feed my wretched madness!’
And while he grieves, he drew his garment down from its upper edge
and struck his bared breast with marble-white palms.
His breast, when struck, drew on a rosy flush,
just as apples are wont, white in part,
in part red, or as a grape on its mottled clusters
is wont to take on a purple color, not yet ripe.
As soon as he saw this in the water, now grown clear again,
he bore it no further, but as golden wax is wont to melt
at a light flame, and the morning frost
in the warming sun, so, worn thin by love,
he melts, and little by little is consumed by a hidden fire;
and now there is no color of red mingled with white,
nor vigor and strength and what, but now seen, gave pleasure,
nor does the body remain that Echo once had loved.
Yet when she saw it, though angry and remembering,
she grieved, and as often as the pitiable boy had said ’Alas,’
with resounding voice she repeated ’Alas’;
and when he had struck his arms with his hands,
she too gave back the same sound of beating.
His last words, as he gazed into the accustomed water, were these:
’Alas, boy loved in vain!’—and the place sent back as many
words, and when he had said ’Farewell,’ ’Farewell’ said Echo too.
He laid his weary head down on the green grass,
and death closed the eyes that marveled at their master’s beauty:
then too, even after he was received in the infernal abode,
he kept gazing at himself in the Stygian water. His sisters
the naiads mourned, and laid their shorn locks on their brother,
the dryads mourned; to their mourning Echo sounds in answer.
And now they were preparing the pyre, the shaken torches, the bier:
nowhere was the body; in place of the body they find a saffron flower
with white petals ringing its center.
Dixit et ad faciem rediit male sanus eandem et lacrimis turbavit aquas, obscuraque moto reddita forma lacu est; quam cum vidisset abire, ’quo refugis? remane nec me, crudelis, amantem desere!’ clamavit; ’liceat, quod tangere non est, adspicere et misero praebere alimenta furori!’ dumque dolet, summa vestem deduxit ab ora nudaque marmoreis percussit pectora palmis. pectora traxerunt roseum percussa ruborem, non aliter quam poma solent, quae candida parte, parte rubent, aut ut variis solet uva racemis ducere purpureum nondum matura colorem. quae simul adspexit liquefacta rursus in unda, non tulit ulterius, sed ut intabescere flavae igne levi cerae matutinaeque pruinae sole tepente solent, sic attenuatus amore liquitur et tecto paulatim carpitur igni; et neque iam color est mixto candore rubori, nec vigor et vires et quae modo visa placebant, nec corpus remanet, quondam quod amaverat Echo. quae tamen ut vidit, quamvis irata memorque, indoluit, quotiensque puer miserabilis ’eheu’ dixerat, haec resonis iterabat vocibus ’eheu’; cumque suos manibus percusserat ille lacertos, haec quoque reddebat sonitum plangoris eundem. ultima vox solitam fuit haec spectantis in undam: ’heu frustra dilecte puer!’ totidemque remisit verba locus, dictoque vale ’vale’ inquit et Echo. ille caput viridi fessum submisit in herba, lumina mors clausit domini mirantia formam: tum quoque se, postquam est inferna sede receptus, in Stygia spectabat aqua. planxere sorores naides et sectos fratri posuere capillos, planxerunt dryades; plangentibus adsonat Echo. iamque rogum quassasque faces feretrumque parabant: nusquam corpus erat; croceum pro corpore florem inveniunt foliis medium cingentibus albis.
The event, made known, had brought the seer deserved fame
through the Achaean cities, and the augur’s name was great;
yet the son of Echion, Pentheus, alone of all, a despiser
of the gods above, scorns him, and mocks the old man’s
prophetic words, and casts in his teeth his darkness and the ruin
of the light taken from him. He, shaking his temples white with age,
’How happy you would be, if you too of this light
were made bereft,’ he says, ’so that you might not see the rites of Bacchus!
For a day will come—and I divine it is not far off—
when a new god comes here, Liber, the offspring of Semele,
whom unless you deign to honor with temples,
you will be scattered, torn, in a thousand places, and with your blood
will defile the woods, and your mother, and your mother’s sisters.
It will happen! For you will not deign to honor his godhead,
and you will complain that under this darkness of mine I saw too much.’
As he says such things, the son of Echion thrusts him out;
confirmation follows the words, and the seer’s responses come to pass.
Liber is present, and the fields roar with festal howls:
the crowd rushes out, mothers and young wives mingled with men,
commons and nobles, are swept to the unknown rites.
through the Achaean cities, and the augur’s name was great;
yet the son of Echion, Pentheus, alone of all, a despiser
of the gods above, scorns him, and mocks the old man’s
prophetic words, and casts in his teeth his darkness and the ruin
of the light taken from him. He, shaking his temples white with age,
’How happy you would be, if you too of this light
were made bereft,’ he says, ’so that you might not see the rites of Bacchus!
For a day will come—and I divine it is not far off—
when a new god comes here, Liber, the offspring of Semele,
whom unless you deign to honor with temples,
you will be scattered, torn, in a thousand places, and with your blood
will defile the woods, and your mother, and your mother’s sisters.
It will happen! For you will not deign to honor his godhead,
and you will complain that under this darkness of mine I saw too much.’
As he says such things, the son of Echion thrusts him out;
confirmation follows the words, and the seer’s responses come to pass.
Liber is present, and the fields roar with festal howls:
the crowd rushes out, mothers and young wives mingled with men,
commons and nobles, are swept to the unknown rites.
Cognita res meritam vati per Achaidas urbes attulerat famam, nomenque erat auguris ingens; spernit Echionides tamen hunc ex omnibus unus contemptor superum Pentheus praesagaque ridet verba senis tenebrasque et cladem lucis ademptae obicit. ille movens albentia tempora canis ’quam felix esses, si tu quoque luminis huius orbus’ ait ’fieres, ne Bacchica sacra videres! namque dies aderit, quam non procul auguror esse, qua novus huc veniat, proles Semeleia, Liber, quem nisi templorum fueris dignatus honore, mille lacer spargere locis et sanguine silvas foedabis matremque tuam matrisque sorores. eveniet! neque enim dignabere numen honore, meque sub his tenebris nimium vidisse quereris.’ talia dicentem proturbat Echione natus; dicta fides sequitur, responsaque vatis aguntur. Liber adest, festisque fremunt ululatibus agri: turba ruit, mixtaeque viris matresque nurusque vulgusque proceresque ignota ad sacra feruntur.
’What madness, you serpent-born, offspring of Mars, has stunned
your minds?’ says Pentheus. ’Can bronze on bronze
struck have such power, and the pipe with its curved horn,
and magic deceits, that those whom the sword of war could not,
nor the trumpet, nor ranks with drawn weapons, terrify,
women’s voices, and frenzy stirred by wine,
and obscene herds, and hollow drums, should conquer?
Should I wonder at you, old men, who, carried over long seas,
set here your Tyre, here your exiled household gods,
and now let yourselves be taken without a fight? Or you, the fiercer age,
O young men, nearer to mine, whom it befitted to hold arms,
not the thyrsus, to be covered by a helmet, not by leaves?
Be mindful, I beg, of the stock from which you were created,
and take on the spirit of that serpent who, one, destroyed many!
For its spring and its pool that serpent
perished: but conquer, you, for your own renown!
It put brave men to death: drive you off these soft ones
and keep your fathers’ honor! If the fates forbade
that Thebes stand long, would that engines and men
were tearing down her walls, and that iron and fire resounded!
We would be wretched without disgrace, and our lot to be lamented,
not hidden, and our tears would lack shame;
but now Thebes will be taken by an unarmed boy,
whom neither wars please, nor weapons, nor the use of horses,
but hair dripping with myrrh, and soft garlands,
and purple, and gold woven into embroidered robes,
whom indeed I will at once (only stand you aside) compel
to confess a borrowed father and his invented rites.
Has Acrisius spirit enough to despise an empty
godhead and to shut the gates of Argos against his coming:
shall the newcomer terrify Pentheus, and all Thebes with him?
Go quickly’ (this he orders his servants), ’go and drag
the leader here in chains! Let sluggish delay be gone from my commands!’
your minds?’ says Pentheus. ’Can bronze on bronze
struck have such power, and the pipe with its curved horn,
and magic deceits, that those whom the sword of war could not,
nor the trumpet, nor ranks with drawn weapons, terrify,
women’s voices, and frenzy stirred by wine,
and obscene herds, and hollow drums, should conquer?
Should I wonder at you, old men, who, carried over long seas,
set here your Tyre, here your exiled household gods,
and now let yourselves be taken without a fight? Or you, the fiercer age,
O young men, nearer to mine, whom it befitted to hold arms,
not the thyrsus, to be covered by a helmet, not by leaves?
Be mindful, I beg, of the stock from which you were created,
and take on the spirit of that serpent who, one, destroyed many!
For its spring and its pool that serpent
perished: but conquer, you, for your own renown!
It put brave men to death: drive you off these soft ones
and keep your fathers’ honor! If the fates forbade
that Thebes stand long, would that engines and men
were tearing down her walls, and that iron and fire resounded!
We would be wretched without disgrace, and our lot to be lamented,
not hidden, and our tears would lack shame;
but now Thebes will be taken by an unarmed boy,
whom neither wars please, nor weapons, nor the use of horses,
but hair dripping with myrrh, and soft garlands,
and purple, and gold woven into embroidered robes,
whom indeed I will at once (only stand you aside) compel
to confess a borrowed father and his invented rites.
Has Acrisius spirit enough to despise an empty
godhead and to shut the gates of Argos against his coming:
shall the newcomer terrify Pentheus, and all Thebes with him?
Go quickly’ (this he orders his servants), ’go and drag
the leader here in chains! Let sluggish delay be gone from my commands!’
’Quis furor, anguigenae, proles Mavortia, vestras attonuit mentes?’ Pentheus ait; ’aerane tantum aere repulsa valent et adunco tibia cornu et magicae fraudes, ut, quos non bellicus ensis, non tuba terruerit, non strictis agmina telis, femineae voces et mota insania vino obscenique greges et inania tympana vincant? vosne, senes, mirer, qui longa per aequora vecti hac Tyron, hac profugos posuistis sede penates, nunc sinitis sine Marte capi? vosne, acrior aetas, o iuvenes, propiorque meae, quos arma tenere, non thyrsos, galeaque tegi, non fronde decebat? este, precor, memores, qua sitis stirpe creati, illiusque animos, qui multos perdidit unus, sumite serpentis! pro fontibus ille lacuque interiit: at vos pro fama vincite vestra! ille dedit leto fortes: vos pellite molles et patrium retinete decus! si fata vetabant stare diu Thebas, utinam tormenta virique moenia diruerent, ferrumque ignisque sonarent! essemus miseri sine crimine, sorsque querenda, non celanda foret, lacrimaeque pudore carerent; at nunc a puero Thebae capientur inermi, quem neque bella iuvant nec tela nec usus equorum, sed madidus murra crinis mollesque coronae purpuraque et pictis intextum vestibus aurum, quem quidem ego actutum (modo vos absistite) cogam adsumptumque patrem commentaque sacra fateri. an satis Acrisio est animi, contemnere vanum numen et Argolicas venienti claudere portas: Penthea terrebit cum totis advena Thebis? ite citi’ (famulis hoc imperat), ’ite ducemque attrahite huc vinctum! iussis mora segnis abesto!’
Him his grandfather, him Athamas, him the rest of his throng
rebuke with words, and labor in vain to restrain him.
He is keener for the warning, and is goaded by being held back,
and his fury grows, and the very checks did harm:
so have I seen a torrent, where nothing blocked its going,
run down more gently and with moderate noise;
but wherever timbers and obstructing rocks held it back,
it went foaming and boiling and fiercer for the barrier.
Behold, they return bloodied, and to their master, asking
where Bacchus was, they denied that they had seen Bacchus;
’But this one,’ they said, ’his companion and the servant of his rites,
we have taken,’ and they hand over, with his hands bound behind his back,
a certain man, of the Tyrrhenian race, who had followed the god’s rites.
rebuke with words, and labor in vain to restrain him.
He is keener for the warning, and is goaded by being held back,
and his fury grows, and the very checks did harm:
so have I seen a torrent, where nothing blocked its going,
run down more gently and with moderate noise;
but wherever timbers and obstructing rocks held it back,
it went foaming and boiling and fiercer for the barrier.
Behold, they return bloodied, and to their master, asking
where Bacchus was, they denied that they had seen Bacchus;
’But this one,’ they said, ’his companion and the servant of his rites,
we have taken,’ and they hand over, with his hands bound behind his back,
a certain man, of the Tyrrhenian race, who had followed the god’s rites.
hunc avus, hunc Athamas, hunc cetera turba suorum corripiunt dictis frustraque inhibere laborant. acrior admonitu est inritaturque retenta et crescit rabies remoraminaque ipsa nocebant: sic ego torrentem, qua nil obstabat eunti, lenius et modico strepitu decurrere vidi; at quacumque trabes obstructaque saxa tenebant, spumeus et fervens et ab obice saevior ibat. Ecce cruentati redeunt et, Bacchus ubi esset, quaerenti domino Bacchum vidisse negarunt; ’hunc’ dixere ’tamen comitem famulumque sacrorum cepimus’ et tradunt manibus post terga ligatis sacra dei quendam Tyrrhena gente secutum.
Pentheus looks at him with eyes that wrath had made
dreadful, and though he scarcely defers the time of punishment,
’O you who are to die, and by your death to give a lesson
to others,’ he says, ’declare your name and the name of your parents
and your country, and why you keep the rites of this new worship!’
He, free of fear, said, ’My name is Acoetes,
my country Maeonia, my parents of humble stock.
My father left me no fields that hardy bullocks might till,
no woolly flocks, no herds at all;
he was poor himself, and used with line and hooks
to trick the fish and draw the leaping ones up with his rod.
His skill was his whole estate; when he handed on that skill,
"Take the wealth I have, you successor and heir
of my pursuit," he said, and dying he left me nothing
but the waters: this one thing I can call my patrimony.
Soon, that I might not cling forever to the same rocks,
I learned besides to steer the helm of a ship with guiding hand,
and marked with my eyes the rainy star of the Olenian
she-goat, and Taygete and the Hyades and the Bear,
and the homes of the winds, and harbors fit for ships.
By chance, making for Delos, I put in at the shores
of the land of Chios, and am brought to the coast by skillful oars,
and give a light leap and land myself on the wet sand:
there the night was spent; as soon as dawn began to redden,
I rise, and warn them to bring fresh water,
and show the path that leads to the streams;
I myself look out from a high mound to see what the breeze
promises me, and call my companions and make for the ship again.
dreadful, and though he scarcely defers the time of punishment,
’O you who are to die, and by your death to give a lesson
to others,’ he says, ’declare your name and the name of your parents
and your country, and why you keep the rites of this new worship!’
He, free of fear, said, ’My name is Acoetes,
my country Maeonia, my parents of humble stock.
My father left me no fields that hardy bullocks might till,
no woolly flocks, no herds at all;
he was poor himself, and used with line and hooks
to trick the fish and draw the leaping ones up with his rod.
His skill was his whole estate; when he handed on that skill,
"Take the wealth I have, you successor and heir
of my pursuit," he said, and dying he left me nothing
but the waters: this one thing I can call my patrimony.
Soon, that I might not cling forever to the same rocks,
I learned besides to steer the helm of a ship with guiding hand,
and marked with my eyes the rainy star of the Olenian
she-goat, and Taygete and the Hyades and the Bear,
and the homes of the winds, and harbors fit for ships.
By chance, making for Delos, I put in at the shores
of the land of Chios, and am brought to the coast by skillful oars,
and give a light leap and land myself on the wet sand:
there the night was spent; as soon as dawn began to redden,
I rise, and warn them to bring fresh water,
and show the path that leads to the streams;
I myself look out from a high mound to see what the breeze
promises me, and call my companions and make for the ship again.
adspicit hunc Pentheus oculis, quos ira tremendos fecerat, et quamquam poenae vix tempora differt, ’o periture tuaque aliis documenta dature morte,’ ait, ’ede tuum nomen nomenque parentum et patriam, morisque novi cur sacra frequentes!’ ille metu vacuus ’nomen mihi’ dixit ’Acoetes, patria Maeonia est, humili de plebe parentes. non mihi quae duri colerent pater arva iuvenci, lanigerosve greges, non ulla armenta reliquit; pauper et ipse fuit linoque solebat et hamis decipere et calamo salientis ducere pisces. ars illi sua census erat; cum traderet artem, "accipe, quas habeo, studii successor et heres," dixit "opes," moriensque mihi nihil ille reliquit praeter aquas: unum hoc possum adpellare paternum. mox ego, ne scopulis haererem semper in isdem, addidici regimen dextra moderante carinae flectere et Oleniae sidus pluviale capellae Taygetenque Hyadasque oculis Arctonque notavi ventorumque domos et portus puppibus aptos. forte petens Delum Chiae telluris ad oras adplicor et dextris adducor litora remis doque levis saltus udaeque inmittor harenae: nox ibi consumpta est; aurora rubescere primo coeperat: exsurgo laticesque inferre recentis admoneo monstroque viam, quae ducat ad undas; ipse quid aura mihi tumulo promittat ab alto prospicio comitesque voco repetoque carinam.
"Here we are!" says Opheltes, first of my companions,
and, as he thinks, having found a prize in a deserted field,
he leads along the shore a boy of maiden beauty.
The boy, heavy with wine and sleep, seems to stagger
and scarcely to follow; I look at his dress and face and gait:
I saw in him nothing that could be believed mortal.
And I felt it, and said to my companions: "What divine power is in that
body, I doubt; but there is a divine power in that body!
Whoever you are, be gracious, and aid our labors;
grant these men too your pardon!" "Stop praying on our behalf!"
says Dictys, than whom no other to climb to the topmost
yard-arms was quicker, or to slide back down by the grasped rope.
This Libys, this fair-haired Melanthus, guardian of the prow,
this Alcimedon approves, and he who gave rest and rhythm
to the oars with his voice, the cheerer of their spirits, Epopeus,
this all the rest: so blind is the lust for plunder.
"Yet I will not allow this pine to be violated by a sacred
burden," I said: "here I have the largest share of the right,"
and I block the gangway: the most reckless of the whole
number rages, Lycabas, who, driven from a Tuscan city,
was paying out exile as the penalty for a dreadful murder;
he, while I stand firm, with a youthful fist broke open
my throat, and would have flung me, knocked loose, into the sea, had I not
clung, half-conscious as I was, held fast by a rope.
The impious crew approves the deed; then at last Bacchus
(for it had been Bacchus), as though the shout had loosed
his slumber, and his senses returned to his breast out of the wine,
"What are you doing? What is this shouting?" he says. "Tell me, sailors,
by what help have I come here? Where are you preparing to carry me?"
"Put away fear," said Proreus, "and tell what harbor you wish
to reach!" he said; "you shall be set down on the land you seek."
"Naxos," says Liber, "turn your course thither!
That is my home; for you it will be a hospitable land."
and, as he thinks, having found a prize in a deserted field,
he leads along the shore a boy of maiden beauty.
The boy, heavy with wine and sleep, seems to stagger
and scarcely to follow; I look at his dress and face and gait:
I saw in him nothing that could be believed mortal.
And I felt it, and said to my companions: "What divine power is in that
body, I doubt; but there is a divine power in that body!
Whoever you are, be gracious, and aid our labors;
grant these men too your pardon!" "Stop praying on our behalf!"
says Dictys, than whom no other to climb to the topmost
yard-arms was quicker, or to slide back down by the grasped rope.
This Libys, this fair-haired Melanthus, guardian of the prow,
this Alcimedon approves, and he who gave rest and rhythm
to the oars with his voice, the cheerer of their spirits, Epopeus,
this all the rest: so blind is the lust for plunder.
"Yet I will not allow this pine to be violated by a sacred
burden," I said: "here I have the largest share of the right,"
and I block the gangway: the most reckless of the whole
number rages, Lycabas, who, driven from a Tuscan city,
was paying out exile as the penalty for a dreadful murder;
he, while I stand firm, with a youthful fist broke open
my throat, and would have flung me, knocked loose, into the sea, had I not
clung, half-conscious as I was, held fast by a rope.
The impious crew approves the deed; then at last Bacchus
(for it had been Bacchus), as though the shout had loosed
his slumber, and his senses returned to his breast out of the wine,
"What are you doing? What is this shouting?" he says. "Tell me, sailors,
by what help have I come here? Where are you preparing to carry me?"
"Put away fear," said Proreus, "and tell what harbor you wish
to reach!" he said; "you shall be set down on the land you seek."
"Naxos," says Liber, "turn your course thither!
That is my home; for you it will be a hospitable land."
"adsumus en" inquit sociorum primus Opheltes, utque putat, praedam deserto nactus in agro, virginea puerum ducit per litora forma. ille mero somnoque gravis titubare videtur vixque sequi; specto cultum faciemque gradumque: nil ibi, quod credi posset mortale, videbam. et sensi et dixi sociis: "quod numen in isto corpore sit, dubito; sed corpore numen in isto est! quisquis es, o faveas nostrisque laboribus adsis; his quoque des veniam!" "pro nobis mitte precari!" Dictys ait, quo non alius conscendere summas ocior antemnas prensoque rudente relabi. hoc Libys, hoc flavus, prorae tutela, Melanthus, hoc probat Alcimedon et, qui requiemque modumque voce dabat remis, animorum hortator, Epopeus, hoc omnes alii: praedae tam caeca cupido est. "non tamen hanc sacro violari pondere pinum perpetiar" dixi: "pars hic mihi maxima iuris" inque aditu obsisto: furit audacissimus omni de numero Lycabas, qui Tusca pulsus ab urbe exilium dira poenam pro caede luebat; is mihi, dum resto, iuvenali guttura pugno rupit et excussum misisset in aequora, si non haesissem, quamvis amens, in fune retentus. inpia turba probat factum; tum denique Bacchus (Bacchus enim fuerat), veluti clamore solutus sit sopor aque mero redeant in pectora sensus, "quid facitis? quis clamor?" ait "qua, dicite, nautae, huc ope perveni? quo me deferre paratis?" "pone metum" Proreus, "et quos contingere portus ede velis!" dixit; "terra sistere petita." "Naxon" ait Liber "cursus advertite vestros! illa mihi domus est, vobis erit hospita tellus."
By the sea and by all the gods the deceivers swear
it shall be so, and bid me give sails to the painted ship.
Naxos was on the right: as I gave the canvas to the right,
"What are you doing, madman? What frenzy holds you, Acoetes?"
says each man for himself. "Make for the left!" The greater part
signal to me with a nod, part with a whisper of the mouth what they want.
I was aghast. "Let someone else take the steering!" I said,
and removed myself from the service of their crime and craft.
I am rebuked by all, and the whole company murmurs against me;
of these Aethalion, "On you alone, no doubt, all
our safety rests!" he says, and takes my place himself
and does my work, and, Naxos left behind, makes for the opposite course.
Then the god, mocking, as though only now at last he had perceived
their treachery, looks out at the sea from the curved stern,
and, like one weeping, "Not these shores, sailors,
did you promise me," he says, "not this is the land I asked for!
By what deed have I earned punishment? What glory is yours,
if you young men cheat a boy, if you, many, cheat one?"
Long had I been weeping: the impious crew laughs at our tears
and drives the sea on with hurrying oars.
By the god himself now (for there is no god more present
than he) I swear to you that I report things as true
as they are beyond belief: the ship stood still on the sea,
just as if a dry dock held it.
They, marveling, persist in the beating of the oars,
and let down the sails, and try to run by the twofold aid:
ivy entangles the oars, and with curling clasp
creeps over them, and studs the sails with heavy clusters.
He himself, his brow ringed with clustering grapes,
brandishes a spear veiled with vine-leaves;
around him lie tigers, and the empty phantoms of lynxes,
and the wild bodies of dappled panthers.
it shall be so, and bid me give sails to the painted ship.
Naxos was on the right: as I gave the canvas to the right,
"What are you doing, madman? What frenzy holds you, Acoetes?"
says each man for himself. "Make for the left!" The greater part
signal to me with a nod, part with a whisper of the mouth what they want.
I was aghast. "Let someone else take the steering!" I said,
and removed myself from the service of their crime and craft.
I am rebuked by all, and the whole company murmurs against me;
of these Aethalion, "On you alone, no doubt, all
our safety rests!" he says, and takes my place himself
and does my work, and, Naxos left behind, makes for the opposite course.
Then the god, mocking, as though only now at last he had perceived
their treachery, looks out at the sea from the curved stern,
and, like one weeping, "Not these shores, sailors,
did you promise me," he says, "not this is the land I asked for!
By what deed have I earned punishment? What glory is yours,
if you young men cheat a boy, if you, many, cheat one?"
Long had I been weeping: the impious crew laughs at our tears
and drives the sea on with hurrying oars.
By the god himself now (for there is no god more present
than he) I swear to you that I report things as true
as they are beyond belief: the ship stood still on the sea,
just as if a dry dock held it.
They, marveling, persist in the beating of the oars,
and let down the sails, and try to run by the twofold aid:
ivy entangles the oars, and with curling clasp
creeps over them, and studs the sails with heavy clusters.
He himself, his brow ringed with clustering grapes,
brandishes a spear veiled with vine-leaves;
around him lie tigers, and the empty phantoms of lynxes,
and the wild bodies of dappled panthers.
per mare fallaces perque omnia numina iurant sic fore meque iubent pictae dare vela carinae. dextera Naxos erat: dextra mihi lintea danti "quid facis, o demens? quis te furor," inquit "Acoete," pro se quisque, "tenet? laevam pete!" maxima nutu pars mihi significat, pars quid velit ore susurro. obstipui "capiat" que "aliquis moderamina!" dixi meque ministerio scelerisque artisque removi. increpor a cunctis, totumque inmurmurat agmen; e quibus Aethalion "te scilicet omnis in uno nostra salus posita est!" ait et subit ipse meumque explet opus Naxoque petit diversa relicta. tum deus inludens, tamquam modo denique fraudem senserit, e puppi pontum prospectat adunca et flenti similis "non haec mihi litora, nautae, promisistis" ait, "non haec mihi terra rogata est! quo merui poenam facto? quae gloria vestra est, si puerum iuvenes, si multi fallitis unum?" iamdudum flebam: lacrimas manus inpia nostras ridet et inpellit properantibus aequora remis. per tibi nunc ipsum (nec enim praesentior illo est deus) adiuro, tam me tibi vera referre quam veri maiora fide: stetit aequore puppis haud aliter, quam si siccam navale teneret. illi admirantes remorum in verbere perstant velaque deducunt geminaque ope currere temptant: inpediunt hederae remos nexuque recurvo serpunt et gravidis distinguunt vela corymbis. ipse racemiferis frontem circumdatus uvis pampineis agitat velatam frondibus hastam; quem circa tigres simulacraque inania lyncum pictarumque iacent fera corpora pantherarum.
The men leaped overboard—whether madness did this
or fear—and Medon first begins to blacken over all
his body, and to be bent with the spine arched out.
To him Lycabas, "Into what marvels are you
turning?" he said; and as he spoke he had a wide jaw and a curved
nostril, and his hardened skin took on a scale.
But Libys, while he wishes to turn the obstructed oars,
saw his hands shrink back into a short space, and that they
were no longer hands, could now be called fins.
Another, longing to give his arms to the twisted ropes,
had no arms, and, bent backward with maimed trunk into the waves
leaped down: his hindmost part is a curved tail,
such as the horns of a divided moon are bent into.
On every side they make leaps and drip with much spray,
and emerge again and dive back beneath the sea,
and play in the likeness of a dance, and wantonly toss
their bodies, and blow out the sea they take in through wide nostrils.
Of the lately twenty (for so many that ship carried)
I alone was left: as I shook, fearful and cold in my trembling
body and scarcely my own, the god steadies me, saying, "Shake
the fear from your heart, and hold for Dia!" Brought there,
I joined his worship, and I keep the rites of Bacchus.’
or fear—and Medon first begins to blacken over all
his body, and to be bent with the spine arched out.
To him Lycabas, "Into what marvels are you
turning?" he said; and as he spoke he had a wide jaw and a curved
nostril, and his hardened skin took on a scale.
But Libys, while he wishes to turn the obstructed oars,
saw his hands shrink back into a short space, and that they
were no longer hands, could now be called fins.
Another, longing to give his arms to the twisted ropes,
had no arms, and, bent backward with maimed trunk into the waves
leaped down: his hindmost part is a curved tail,
such as the horns of a divided moon are bent into.
On every side they make leaps and drip with much spray,
and emerge again and dive back beneath the sea,
and play in the likeness of a dance, and wantonly toss
their bodies, and blow out the sea they take in through wide nostrils.
Of the lately twenty (for so many that ship carried)
I alone was left: as I shook, fearful and cold in my trembling
body and scarcely my own, the god steadies me, saying, "Shake
the fear from your heart, and hold for Dia!" Brought there,
I joined his worship, and I keep the rites of Bacchus.’
exsiluere viri, sive hoc insania fecit sive timor, primusque Medon nigrescere toto corpore et expresso spinae curvamine flecti incipit. huic Lycabas "in quae miracula" dixit "verteris?" et lati rictus et panda loquenti naris erat, squamamque cutis durata trahebat. at Libys obstantis dum vult obvertere remos, in spatium resilire manus breve vidit et illas iam non esse manus, iam pinnas posse vocari. alter ad intortos cupiens dare bracchia funes bracchia non habuit truncoque repandus in undas corpore desiluit: falcata novissima cauda est, qualia dividuae sinuantur cornua lunae. undique dant saltus multaque adspergine rorant emerguntque iterum redeuntque sub aequora rursus inque chori ludunt speciem lascivaque iactant corpora et acceptum patulis mare naribus efflant. de modo viginti (tot enim ratis illa ferebat) restabam solus: pavidum gelidumque trementi corpore vixque meum firmat deus "excute" dicens "corde metum Diamque tene!" delatus in illam accessi sacris Baccheaque sacra frequento.’
’We have lent our ears to your long ramblings,’ says Pentheus,
’that anger might be able to spend its force in delay.
Headlong, servants, seize this man, and send his body, tortured
with dreadful torments, down to the Stygian night!’
At once the Tyrrhenian Acoetes is dragged off and shut
within solid walls; and while the cruel instruments of the death
ordered—iron and fires—are being made ready,
the doors of their own accord flew open, and of their own accord, they say,
the chains slipped from his arms with no one loosing them.
The son of Echion persists, and no longer bids others go, but himself
sets out where Cithaeron, chosen for the rites to be performed,
rang with songs and the clear voice of the Bacchantes.
As a spirited horse snorts, when the war-trumpeter with ringing bronze
has given the signal, and it takes up a love of battle,
so the air, struck with long howls, moved Pentheus,
and at the shout he heard his wrath blazed up again.
’that anger might be able to spend its force in delay.
Headlong, servants, seize this man, and send his body, tortured
with dreadful torments, down to the Stygian night!’
At once the Tyrrhenian Acoetes is dragged off and shut
within solid walls; and while the cruel instruments of the death
ordered—iron and fires—are being made ready,
the doors of their own accord flew open, and of their own accord, they say,
the chains slipped from his arms with no one loosing them.
The son of Echion persists, and no longer bids others go, but himself
sets out where Cithaeron, chosen for the rites to be performed,
rang with songs and the clear voice of the Bacchantes.
As a spirited horse snorts, when the war-trumpeter with ringing bronze
has given the signal, and it takes up a love of battle,
so the air, struck with long howls, moved Pentheus,
and at the shout he heard his wrath blazed up again.
’Praebuimus longis’ Pentheus ’ambagibus aures,’ inquit ’ut ira mora vires absumere posset. praecipitem, famuli, rapite hunc cruciataque diris corpora tormentis Stygiae demittite nocti!’ protinus abstractus solidis Tyrrhenus Acoetes clauditur in tectis; et dum crudelia iussae instrumenta necis ferrumque ignesque parantur, sponte sua patuisse fores lapsasque lacertis sponte sua fama est nullo solvente catenas. Perstat Echionides, nec iam iubet ire, sed ipse vadit, ubi electus facienda ad sacra Cithaeron cantibus et clara bacchantum voce sonabat. ut fremit acer equus, cum bellicus aere canoro signa dedit tubicen pugnaeque adsumit amorem, Penthea sic ictus longis ululatibus aether movit, et audito clamore recanduit ira.
About midway up the mountain there is a plain, its edges ringed
by woods, clear of trees, visible from every side:
here, as he watched the rites with profane eyes,
his mother first sees him, first is driven in mad career,
first wounded her own Pentheus with the thyrsus she hurled,
and cried, ’O my two sisters, be here!
That boar, the hugest, that wanders in our fields,
that boar must be struck down by me.’ The whole throng rushes
raging upon the one; all gather and pursue him as he trembles,
now trembling, now speaking words less violent,
now condemning himself, now confessing that he had sinned.
Wounded, he yet said, ’Bring help, aunt
Autonoë! Let the shade of Actaeon move your heart!’
She knows not who Actaeon is, and tore away the right hand
of the suppliant; the other was rent off by Ino’s wrench.
The unhappy man has no arms to stretch out to his mother,
but, showing the maimed wounds where his limbs were torn away,
’Look, mother!’ he says. At the sight Agave howled
and tossed her neck and flung her hair through the air,
and clutching his torn-off head in her bloody fingers
cries: ’Ho, companions, this work is our victory!’
No more swiftly does the wind snatch from a tall tree the leaves
touched by autumn’s chill and now scarcely clinging,
than the man’s limbs were torn apart by those unspeakable hands.
Warned by such examples, the Ismenian women throng the new rites,
and offer incense, and worship at the holy altars.
by woods, clear of trees, visible from every side:
here, as he watched the rites with profane eyes,
his mother first sees him, first is driven in mad career,
first wounded her own Pentheus with the thyrsus she hurled,
and cried, ’O my two sisters, be here!
That boar, the hugest, that wanders in our fields,
that boar must be struck down by me.’ The whole throng rushes
raging upon the one; all gather and pursue him as he trembles,
now trembling, now speaking words less violent,
now condemning himself, now confessing that he had sinned.
Wounded, he yet said, ’Bring help, aunt
Autonoë! Let the shade of Actaeon move your heart!’
She knows not who Actaeon is, and tore away the right hand
of the suppliant; the other was rent off by Ino’s wrench.
The unhappy man has no arms to stretch out to his mother,
but, showing the maimed wounds where his limbs were torn away,
’Look, mother!’ he says. At the sight Agave howled
and tossed her neck and flung her hair through the air,
and clutching his torn-off head in her bloody fingers
cries: ’Ho, companions, this work is our victory!’
No more swiftly does the wind snatch from a tall tree the leaves
touched by autumn’s chill and now scarcely clinging,
than the man’s limbs were torn apart by those unspeakable hands.
Warned by such examples, the Ismenian women throng the new rites,
and offer incense, and worship at the holy altars.
Monte fere medio est, cingentibus ultima silvis, purus ab arboribus, spectabilis undique, campus: hic oculis illum cernentem sacra profanis prima videt, prima est insano concita cursu, prima suum misso violavit Penthea thyrso mater et ’o geminae’ clamavit ’adeste sorores! ille aper, in nostris errat qui maximus agris, ille mihi feriendus aper.’ ruit omnis in unum turba furens; cunctae coeunt trepidumque sequuntur, iam trepidum, iam verba minus violenta loquentem, iam se damnantem, iam se peccasse fatentem. saucius ille tamen ’fer opem, matertera’ dixit ’Autonoe! moveant animos Actaeonis umbrae!’ illa, quis Actaeon, nescit dextramque precanti abstulit, Inoo lacerata est altera raptu. non habet infelix quae matri bracchia tendat, trunca sed ostendens dereptis vulnera membris ’adspice, mater!’ ait. visis ululavit Agaue collaque iactavit movitque per aera crinem avulsumque caput digitis conplexa cruentis clamat: ’io comites, opus hoc victoria nostra est!’ non citius frondes autumni frigore tactas iamque male haerentes alta rapit arbore ventus, quam sunt membra viri manibus direpta nefandis. talibus exemplis monitae nova sacra frequentant turaque dant sanctasque colunt Ismenides aras.
But Alcithoe, daughter of Minyas, holds that the god’s
orgies are not to be received; rash still, she denies
that Bacchus is the son of Jove, and has her sisters
partners in her impiety. The priest had bidden them keep the feast,
the serving-women freed from their tasks and their mistresses with them,
to cover their breasts with hides, to loosen the headbands from their hair,
to take garlands for their tresses and leafy wands into their hands,
and had prophesied that the wrath of the slighted godhead
would be savage: the matrons and the young wives obey,
lay aside their webs and work-baskets and the unfinished wool,
offer incense, and call on Bacchus — Bromius, Lyaeus,
the fire-born, the twice-sown, the only one with two mothers;
to these they add Nyseus and unshorn Thyoneus,
and Lenaeus, planter of the gladdening grape,
Nyctelius, Eleleus the father, Iacchus, and Euhan,
and all the many names besides that you bear, Liber,
among the Greek nations. For yours is a youth unconsumed,
you are the eternal boy, you are seen most beautiful
in high heaven; when you stand without your horns,
your head is a maiden’s. The East was conquered by you, as far
as where dark India is washed by the distant Ganges.
You, dread god, cut down Pentheus and axe-bearing Lycurgus,
the sacrilegious; you hurl the Tyrrhenian bodies into the sea;
you press the necks of your paired lynxes, splendid
in their painted reins. Bacchants and satyrs follow,
and the old man, drunk, who props his tottering limbs on a staff
and clings none too firmly to his sway-backed ass.
Wherever you go, the shout of youths and women’s voices
together ring out, and drums struck by the palm,
and the hollow bronze, and the boxwood pipe with its long bore.
orgies are not to be received; rash still, she denies
that Bacchus is the son of Jove, and has her sisters
partners in her impiety. The priest had bidden them keep the feast,
the serving-women freed from their tasks and their mistresses with them,
to cover their breasts with hides, to loosen the headbands from their hair,
to take garlands for their tresses and leafy wands into their hands,
and had prophesied that the wrath of the slighted godhead
would be savage: the matrons and the young wives obey,
lay aside their webs and work-baskets and the unfinished wool,
offer incense, and call on Bacchus — Bromius, Lyaeus,
the fire-born, the twice-sown, the only one with two mothers;
to these they add Nyseus and unshorn Thyoneus,
and Lenaeus, planter of the gladdening grape,
Nyctelius, Eleleus the father, Iacchus, and Euhan,
and all the many names besides that you bear, Liber,
among the Greek nations. For yours is a youth unconsumed,
you are the eternal boy, you are seen most beautiful
in high heaven; when you stand without your horns,
your head is a maiden’s. The East was conquered by you, as far
as where dark India is washed by the distant Ganges.
You, dread god, cut down Pentheus and axe-bearing Lycurgus,
the sacrilegious; you hurl the Tyrrhenian bodies into the sea;
you press the necks of your paired lynxes, splendid
in their painted reins. Bacchants and satyrs follow,
and the old man, drunk, who props his tottering limbs on a staff
and clings none too firmly to his sway-backed ass.
Wherever you go, the shout of youths and women’s voices
together ring out, and drums struck by the palm,
and the hollow bronze, and the boxwood pipe with its long bore.
At non Alcithoe Minyeias orgia censet accipienda dei, sed adhuc temeraria Bacchum progeniem negat esse Iovis sociasque sorores inpietatis habet. festum celebrare sacerdos inmunesque operum famulas dominasque suorum pectora pelle tegi, crinales solvere vittas, serta coma, manibus frondentis sumere thyrsos iusserat et saevam laesi fore numinis iram vaticinatus erat: parent matresque nurusque telasque calathosque infectaque pensa reponunt turaque dant Bacchumque vocant Bromiumque Lyaeumque ignigenamque satumque iterum solumque bimatrem; additur his Nyseus indetonsusque Thyoneus et cum Lenaeo genialis consitor uvae Nycteliusque Eleleusque parens et Iacchus et Euhan, et quae praeterea per Graias plurima gentes nomina, Liber, habes. tibi enim inconsumpta iuventa est, tu puer aeternus, tu formosissimus alto conspiceris caelo; tibi, cum sine cornibus adstas, virgineum caput est; Oriens tibi victus, adusque decolor extremo qua tinguitur India Gange. Penthea tu, venerande, bipenniferumque Lycurgum sacrilegos mactas, Tyrrhenaque mittis in aequor corpora, tu biiugum pictis insignia frenis colla premis lyncum. bacchae satyrique sequuntur, quique senex ferula titubantis ebrius artus sustinet et pando non fortiter haeret asello. quacumque ingrederis, clamor iuvenalis et una femineae voces inpulsaque tympana palmis concavaque aera sonant longoque foramine buxus. ’
’Be with us, appeased and gentle,’ the Ismenian women pray,
and keep the rites commanded; only the daughters of Minyas indoors,
spoiling the feast with Minerva’s untimely work,
either draw out wool, or twist the threads with the thumb,
or stay bent over the loom, and drive their maids at their tasks.
One of them, drawing down the thread with a light thumb,
says: ’While the others idle and crowd to invented rites,
let us too, whom Pallas, the better goddess, keeps here,
lighten the useful work of our hands with varied talk,
and by turns bring out, for our idle ears, something
that will not let the long hours seem long!’
They approve her words, and bid her be the first to tell.
She ponders which of many tales to tell — for she knew very many —
and wavers: whether to tell of you, Babylonian
Dercetis, whom the Palestinians believe, her limbs sheathed in scales,
to have troubled their pools, her shape transformed;
or rather how her daughter, taking wings,
spent her last years on white towers;
or how a naiad, by song and herbs too potent,
turned the bodies of young men into voiceless fish,
until she suffered the same; or how the tree that once bore white fruit
now bears black, from the touch of blood.
This pleases her; and since the tale is not a common one,
she began in such measures, her wool following out its thread:
and keep the rites commanded; only the daughters of Minyas indoors,
spoiling the feast with Minerva’s untimely work,
either draw out wool, or twist the threads with the thumb,
or stay bent over the loom, and drive their maids at their tasks.
One of them, drawing down the thread with a light thumb,
says: ’While the others idle and crowd to invented rites,
let us too, whom Pallas, the better goddess, keeps here,
lighten the useful work of our hands with varied talk,
and by turns bring out, for our idle ears, something
that will not let the long hours seem long!’
They approve her words, and bid her be the first to tell.
She ponders which of many tales to tell — for she knew very many —
and wavers: whether to tell of you, Babylonian
Dercetis, whom the Palestinians believe, her limbs sheathed in scales,
to have troubled their pools, her shape transformed;
or rather how her daughter, taking wings,
spent her last years on white towers;
or how a naiad, by song and herbs too potent,
turned the bodies of young men into voiceless fish,
until she suffered the same; or how the tree that once bore white fruit
now bears black, from the touch of blood.
This pleases her; and since the tale is not a common one,
she began in such measures, her wool following out its thread:
Placatus mitisque’ rogant Ismenides ’adsis,’ iussaque sacra colunt; solae Minyeides intus intempestiva turbantes festa Minerva aut ducunt lanas aut stamina pollice versant aut haerent telae famulasque laboribus urguent. e quibus una levi deducens pollice filum ’dum cessant aliae commentaque sacra frequentant, nos quoque, quas Pallas, melior dea, detinet’ inquit, ’utile opus manuum vario sermone levemus perque vices aliquid, quod tempora longa videri non sinat, in medium vacuas referamus ad aures!’ dicta probant primamque iubent narrare sorores. illa, quid e multis referat (nam plurima norat), cogitat et dubia est, de te, Babylonia, narret, Derceti, quam versa squamis velantibus artus stagna Palaestini credunt motasse figura, an magis, ut sumptis illius filia pennis extremos albis in turribus egerit annos, nais an ut cantu nimiumque potentibus herbis verterit in tacitos iuvenalia corpora pisces, donec idem passa est, an, quae poma alba ferebat ut nunc nigra ferat contactu sanguinis arbor: hoc placet; hanc, quoniam vulgaris fabula non est, talibus orsa modis lana sua fila sequente: ’
’Pyramus and Thisbe — he the most beautiful of young men,
she preferred above the girls the East could show —
held neighboring houses, where Semiramis is said
to have ringed her lofty city with walls of brick.
Their nearness made them known, made the first steps toward love;
in time love grew; and they would have joined by the marriage-torch’s right,
but their fathers forbade it. What they could not forbid —
both burned alike, their hearts taken captive.
No confidant is near; they talk by nod and sign,
and the more the fire is covered, the more, covered, it blazes.
The wall shared by the two houses was split by a thin crack
it had drawn long ago, when it was built.
That flaw, marked by no one through the long ages —
what does love not notice? — you lovers first saw it,
and made it a path for your voices; and through it, in safety,
your endearments would pass in the faintest whisper.
Often, when they had taken their stands, Thisbe here, Pyramus there,
and each in turn had caught the breath of the other’s mouth,
they would say: "Jealous wall, why stand between lovers?
How small a thing, to let us join our whole bodies —
or, if that is too much, to open enough for kisses!
Nor are we ungrateful: we own we owe to you
that a passage was given to loving ears for our words."
Such things they said, in vain, from their separate sides,
and toward night said "Farewell," and each gave the wall
kisses on his own side that did not reach across.
The next dawn had cleared away the fires of night,
and the sun had dried the frosty grass with his rays:
they met at the wonted spot. Then, after much complaint
in a low whisper, they resolve that in the silent night
they will try to slip their guards and steal out of doors,
and once out of the house, to leave the city’s roofs as well;
and, lest they go astray ranging the broad fields,
to meet at the tomb of Ninus and hide beneath the shade
of a tree: a tree stood there, heavy with snow-white fruit,
a tall mulberry, hard by a cool spring.
The pact pleases them; and the light, seeming slow to leave,
plunges into the waters, and from those same waters night comes out.
she preferred above the girls the East could show —
held neighboring houses, where Semiramis is said
to have ringed her lofty city with walls of brick.
Their nearness made them known, made the first steps toward love;
in time love grew; and they would have joined by the marriage-torch’s right,
but their fathers forbade it. What they could not forbid —
both burned alike, their hearts taken captive.
No confidant is near; they talk by nod and sign,
and the more the fire is covered, the more, covered, it blazes.
The wall shared by the two houses was split by a thin crack
it had drawn long ago, when it was built.
That flaw, marked by no one through the long ages —
what does love not notice? — you lovers first saw it,
and made it a path for your voices; and through it, in safety,
your endearments would pass in the faintest whisper.
Often, when they had taken their stands, Thisbe here, Pyramus there,
and each in turn had caught the breath of the other’s mouth,
they would say: "Jealous wall, why stand between lovers?
How small a thing, to let us join our whole bodies —
or, if that is too much, to open enough for kisses!
Nor are we ungrateful: we own we owe to you
that a passage was given to loving ears for our words."
Such things they said, in vain, from their separate sides,
and toward night said "Farewell," and each gave the wall
kisses on his own side that did not reach across.
The next dawn had cleared away the fires of night,
and the sun had dried the frosty grass with his rays:
they met at the wonted spot. Then, after much complaint
in a low whisper, they resolve that in the silent night
they will try to slip their guards and steal out of doors,
and once out of the house, to leave the city’s roofs as well;
and, lest they go astray ranging the broad fields,
to meet at the tomb of Ninus and hide beneath the shade
of a tree: a tree stood there, heavy with snow-white fruit,
a tall mulberry, hard by a cool spring.
The pact pleases them; and the light, seeming slow to leave,
plunges into the waters, and from those same waters night comes out.
Pyramus et Thisbe, iuvenum pulcherrimus alter, altera, quas Oriens habuit, praelata puellis, contiguas tenuere domos, ubi dicitur altam coctilibus muris cinxisse Semiramis urbem. notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit, tempore crevit amor; taedae quoque iure coissent, sed vetuere patres: quod non potuere vetare, ex aequo captis ardebant mentibus ambo. conscius omnis abest; nutu signisque loquuntur, quoque magis tegitur, tectus magis aestuat ignis. fissus erat tenui rima, quam duxerat olim, cum fieret, paries domui communis utrique. id vitium nulli per saecula longa notatum - quid non sentit amor? - primi vidistis amantes et vocis fecistis iter, tutaeque per illud murmure blanditiae minimo transire solebant. saepe, ubi constiterant hinc Thisbe, Pyramus illinc, inque vices fuerat captatus anhelitus oris, "invide" dicebant "paries, quid amantibus obstas? quantum erat, ut sineres toto nos corpore iungi aut, hoc si nimium est, vel ad oscula danda pateres? nec sumus ingrati: tibi nos debere fatemur, quod datus est verbis ad amicas transitus auris." talia diversa nequiquam sede locuti sub noctem dixere "vale" partique dedere oscula quisque suae non pervenientia contra. postera nocturnos Aurora removerat ignes, solque pruinosas radiis siccaverat herbas: ad solitum coiere locum. tum murmure parvo multa prius questi statuunt, ut nocte silenti fallere custodes foribusque excedere temptent, cumque domo exierint, urbis quoque tecta relinquant, neve sit errandum lato spatiantibus arvo, conveniant ad busta Nini lateantque sub umbra arboris: arbor ibi niveis uberrima pomis, ardua morus, erat, gelido contermina fonti. pacta placent; et lux, tarde discedere visa, praecipitatur aquis, et aquis nox exit ab isdem. ’
’Crafty Thisbe, turning the hinge, comes out through the dark,
deceives her household, and with her face veiled
reaches the tomb and sits beneath the appointed tree.
Love made her bold. But look — a lioness, her foaming jaws
smeared with the fresh slaughter of cattle, comes
to slake her thirst in the water of the nearby spring;
far off, by the moon’s rays, Babylonian Thisbe
saw her, and fled on frightened foot into a dim cave,
and as she fled left behind the veil that slipped from her back.
When the fierce lioness had quenched her thirst with much water,
returning to the woods she chanced on the thin garment, left without its owner,
and tore it with her bloody mouth.
Coming out later, Pyramus saw the unmistakable tracks
of the beast in the deep dust, and went pale over all his face;
but when he found the garment too, stained with blood,
"One night," he said, "will destroy two lovers,
of whom she was the most worthy of a long life;
mine is the guilty soul. I have killed you, poor girl,
I who bade you come by night to a place full of fear,
and came not first myself. Tear my body apart
and devour my guilty flesh with savage bite,
you lions, whoever you are that dwell beneath this rock!
But to wish for death is the coward’s part." He takes up Thisbe’s veil
and carries it with him to the shade of the appointed tree,
and when he had given the well-known cloth his tears, given it his kisses,
"Receive now," he said, "a draught of my blood too!"
and the sword with which he was girded he drove into his side,
and at once, dying, drew it from the seething wound.
As he lay back on the ground, the blood spurts high,
just as when a pipe bursts at a flaw in the lead
and through the thin hissing hole shoots long jets
of water and splits the air with its strokes.
The fruits of the tree, sprinkled by the slaughter, are turned
to a dark face, and the root, soaked with blood,
tinges the hanging mulberries a purple color.
deceives her household, and with her face veiled
reaches the tomb and sits beneath the appointed tree.
Love made her bold. But look — a lioness, her foaming jaws
smeared with the fresh slaughter of cattle, comes
to slake her thirst in the water of the nearby spring;
far off, by the moon’s rays, Babylonian Thisbe
saw her, and fled on frightened foot into a dim cave,
and as she fled left behind the veil that slipped from her back.
When the fierce lioness had quenched her thirst with much water,
returning to the woods she chanced on the thin garment, left without its owner,
and tore it with her bloody mouth.
Coming out later, Pyramus saw the unmistakable tracks
of the beast in the deep dust, and went pale over all his face;
but when he found the garment too, stained with blood,
"One night," he said, "will destroy two lovers,
of whom she was the most worthy of a long life;
mine is the guilty soul. I have killed you, poor girl,
I who bade you come by night to a place full of fear,
and came not first myself. Tear my body apart
and devour my guilty flesh with savage bite,
you lions, whoever you are that dwell beneath this rock!
But to wish for death is the coward’s part." He takes up Thisbe’s veil
and carries it with him to the shade of the appointed tree,
and when he had given the well-known cloth his tears, given it his kisses,
"Receive now," he said, "a draught of my blood too!"
and the sword with which he was girded he drove into his side,
and at once, dying, drew it from the seething wound.
As he lay back on the ground, the blood spurts high,
just as when a pipe bursts at a flaw in the lead
and through the thin hissing hole shoots long jets
of water and splits the air with its strokes.
The fruits of the tree, sprinkled by the slaughter, are turned
to a dark face, and the root, soaked with blood,
tinges the hanging mulberries a purple color.
Callida per tenebras versato cardine Thisbe egreditur fallitque suos adopertaque vultum pervenit ad tumulum dictaque sub arbore sedit. audacem faciebat amor. venit ecce recenti caede leaena boum spumantis oblita rictus depositura sitim vicini fontis in unda; quam procul ad lunae radios Babylonia Thisbe vidit et obscurum timido pede fugit in antrum, dumque fugit, tergo velamina lapsa reliquit. ut lea saeva sitim multa conpescuit unda, dum redit in silvas, inventos forte sine ipsa ore cruentato tenues laniavit amictus. serius egressus vestigia vidit in alto pulvere certa ferae totoque expalluit ore Pyramus; ut vero vestem quoque sanguine tinctam repperit, "una duos" inquit "nox perdet amantes, e quibus illa fuit longa dignissima vita; nostra nocens anima est. ego te, miseranda, peremi, in loca plena metus qui iussi nocte venires nec prior huc veni. nostrum divellite corpus et scelerata fero consumite viscera morsu, o quicumque sub hac habitatis rupe leones! sed timidi est optare necem." velamina Thisbes tollit et ad pactae secum fert arboris umbram, utque dedit notae lacrimas, dedit oscula vesti, "accipe nunc" inquit "nostri quoque sanguinis haustus!" quoque erat accinctus, demisit in ilia ferrum, nec mora, ferventi moriens e vulnere traxit. ut iacuit resupinus humo, cruor emicat alte, non aliter quam cum vitiato fistula plumbo scinditur et tenui stridente foramine longas eiaculatur aquas atque ictibus aera rumpit. arborei fetus adspergine caedis in atram vertuntur faciem, madefactaque sanguine radix purpureo tinguit pendentia mora colore. ’
’Look — her fear not yet laid aside, lest she fail her lover,
she comes back and seeks the young man with her eyes and her heart,
eager to tell what great perils she has escaped;
and though she knows the place and the shape of the tree she had seen,
the color of the fruit makes her unsure: she hesitates whether this is it.
While she wavers, she sees trembling limbs beat the bloody
ground, and drew her foot back, and wearing a face
paler than boxwood she shuddered like the surface of the sea
that quivers when a slight breeze grazes its top.
But after, lingering, she knew her own beloved,
she beats her undeserving arms with loud lament,
and tearing her hair and clasping the loved body
she filled his wounds with tears and mixed her weeping
with his blood, and fixing kisses on his cold face
she cried: "Pyramus, what mischance has taken you from me?
Pyramus, answer! Your dearest Thisbe
calls you by name; hear me, and lift your fallen face!"
At Thisbe’s name Pyramus raised his eyes,
weighed down by death, and having seen her, closed them again.
’When she had recognized her own veil and saw the ivory sheath
empty of its sword, "Your own hand," she said, "and your love
have undone you, unhappy man! I too have a hand
brave for this one thing, I too have love: it will give me strength for the wound.
I will follow you in death, and be called the most wretched
cause and companion of your end; and you who could be torn from me
by death alone — alas — not even by death shall you be torn from me.
Yet by the words of us both let this be asked of you,
O greatly wretched parents, mine and his:
that those whom sure love, whom the last hour has joined,
you grudge not to be laid in one tomb;
but you, tree, who now shade with your branches the pitiable body
of one, and soon will shade two,
keep the marks of our death, and bear forever dark fruit,
fit for mourning, the memorials of our twin blood."
She spoke, and fitting the point beneath her breast
she fell upon the blade, still warm from the slaughter.
Yet her prayers touched the gods, touched the parents;
for the color in the fruit, when fully ripe, is black,
and what is left from the pyres rests in a single urn.’
she comes back and seeks the young man with her eyes and her heart,
eager to tell what great perils she has escaped;
and though she knows the place and the shape of the tree she had seen,
the color of the fruit makes her unsure: she hesitates whether this is it.
While she wavers, she sees trembling limbs beat the bloody
ground, and drew her foot back, and wearing a face
paler than boxwood she shuddered like the surface of the sea
that quivers when a slight breeze grazes its top.
But after, lingering, she knew her own beloved,
she beats her undeserving arms with loud lament,
and tearing her hair and clasping the loved body
she filled his wounds with tears and mixed her weeping
with his blood, and fixing kisses on his cold face
she cried: "Pyramus, what mischance has taken you from me?
Pyramus, answer! Your dearest Thisbe
calls you by name; hear me, and lift your fallen face!"
At Thisbe’s name Pyramus raised his eyes,
weighed down by death, and having seen her, closed them again.
’When she had recognized her own veil and saw the ivory sheath
empty of its sword, "Your own hand," she said, "and your love
have undone you, unhappy man! I too have a hand
brave for this one thing, I too have love: it will give me strength for the wound.
I will follow you in death, and be called the most wretched
cause and companion of your end; and you who could be torn from me
by death alone — alas — not even by death shall you be torn from me.
Yet by the words of us both let this be asked of you,
O greatly wretched parents, mine and his:
that those whom sure love, whom the last hour has joined,
you grudge not to be laid in one tomb;
but you, tree, who now shade with your branches the pitiable body
of one, and soon will shade two,
keep the marks of our death, and bear forever dark fruit,
fit for mourning, the memorials of our twin blood."
She spoke, and fitting the point beneath her breast
she fell upon the blade, still warm from the slaughter.
Yet her prayers touched the gods, touched the parents;
for the color in the fruit, when fully ripe, is black,
and what is left from the pyres rests in a single urn.’
Ecce metu nondum posito, ne fallat amantem, illa redit iuvenemque oculis animoque requirit, quantaque vitarit narrare pericula gestit; utque locum et visa cognoscit in arbore formam, sic facit incertam pomi color: haeret, an haec sit. dum dubitat, tremebunda videt pulsare cruentum membra solum, retroque pedem tulit, oraque buxo pallidiora gerens exhorruit aequoris instar, quod tremit, exigua cum summum stringitur aura. sed postquam remorata suos cognovit amores, percutit indignos claro plangore lacertos et laniata comas amplexaque corpus amatum vulnera supplevit lacrimis fletumque cruori miscuit et gelidis in vultibus oscula figens "Pyrame," clamavit, "quis te mihi casus ademit? Pyrame, responde! tua te carissima Thisbe nominat; exaudi vultusque attolle iacentes!" ad nomen Thisbes oculos a morte gravatos Pyramus erexit visaque recondidit illa. ’Quae postquam vestemque suam cognovit et ense vidit ebur vacuum, "tua te manus" inquit "amorque perdidit, infelix! est et mihi fortis in unum hoc manus, est et amor: dabit hic in vulnera vires. persequar extinctum letique miserrima dicar causa comesque tui: quique a me morte revelli heu sola poteras, poteris nec morte revelli. hoc tamen amborum verbis estote rogati, o multum miseri meus illiusque parentes, ut, quos certus amor, quos hora novissima iunxit, conponi tumulo non invideatis eodem; at tu quae ramis arbor miserabile corpus nunc tegis unius, mox es tectura duorum, signa tene caedis pullosque et luctibus aptos semper habe fetus, gemini monimenta cruoris." dixit et aptato pectus mucrone sub imum incubuit ferro, quod adhuc a caede tepebat. vota tamen tetigere deos, tetigere parentes; nam color in pomo est, ubi permaturuit, ater, quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.’
She had finished; and after a short interval
Leuconoe began to speak: her sisters held their tongues.
’Love caught even him who tempers all things with his starry light,
the Sun: the Sun’s loves are what we shall tell.
This god is thought to have been the first to see
the adultery of Venus with Mars; this god sees all things first.
He grieved at the deed, and to her husband, the son of Juno,
showed the theft of the marriage-bed and the place of the theft;
and at this both his wits and the work his craftsman’s hand was holding
fell away. At once he files out slender chains of bronze,
and nets and snares, fine enough to cheat the eye.
No finest threads could outdo that work,
nor the spider that hangs from the highest beam;
and he makes them follow a light touch and the slightest motion,
and sets them round the bed with cunning.
When the wife and the adulterer came together onto one couch,
by the husband’s art and the bonds contrived by a new device,
both are caught and held fast in the midst of their embrace.
At once the Lemnian threw open the ivory doors
and let in the gods; the two lay bound
in shame, and one of the gods, not the gloomy ones, prays
to be shamed so; the high ones laughed, and for a long while
this was the best-known story in all of heaven.
Leuconoe began to speak: her sisters held their tongues.
’Love caught even him who tempers all things with his starry light,
the Sun: the Sun’s loves are what we shall tell.
This god is thought to have been the first to see
the adultery of Venus with Mars; this god sees all things first.
He grieved at the deed, and to her husband, the son of Juno,
showed the theft of the marriage-bed and the place of the theft;
and at this both his wits and the work his craftsman’s hand was holding
fell away. At once he files out slender chains of bronze,
and nets and snares, fine enough to cheat the eye.
No finest threads could outdo that work,
nor the spider that hangs from the highest beam;
and he makes them follow a light touch and the slightest motion,
and sets them round the bed with cunning.
When the wife and the adulterer came together onto one couch,
by the husband’s art and the bonds contrived by a new device,
both are caught and held fast in the midst of their embrace.
At once the Lemnian threw open the ivory doors
and let in the gods; the two lay bound
in shame, and one of the gods, not the gloomy ones, prays
to be shamed so; the high ones laughed, and for a long while
this was the best-known story in all of heaven.
Desierat: mediumque fuit breve tempus, et orsa est dicere Leuconoe: vocem tenuere sorores. ’hunc quoque, siderea qui temperat omnia luce, cepit amor Solem: Solis referemus amores. primus adulterium Veneris cum Marte putatur hic vidisse deus; videt hic deus omnia primus. indoluit facto Iunonigenaeque marito furta tori furtique locum monstravit, at illi et mens et quod opus fabrilis dextra tenebat excidit: extemplo graciles ex aere catenas retiaque et laqueos, quae lumina fallere possent, elimat. non illud opus tenuissima vincant stamina, non summo quae pendet aranea tigno; utque levis tactus momentaque parva sequantur, efficit et lecto circumdata collocat arte. ut venere torum coniunx et adulter in unum, arte viri vinclisque nova ratione paratis in mediis ambo deprensi amplexibus haerent. Lemnius extemplo valvas patefecit eburnas inmisitque deos; illi iacuere ligati turpiter, atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat sic fieri turpis; superi risere, diuque haec fuit in toto notissima fabula caelo. ’
’The Cytherean exacts a punishment that does not forget the informing,
and in turn wounds him who wounded her hidden love
with a love to match. What now, son of Hyperion,
do your beauty, your bright color, your radiant beams avail you?
You who scorch all lands with your own fires —
you are scorched with a new fire; you who ought to behold all things,
gaze on Leucothoe, and fix on a single girl
the eyes you owe the world. Now you rise too early
in the eastern sky, now too late you fall into the waves,
and from the lingering of your gaze you stretch out the winter hours;
sometimes you fail, and the fault of your mind
passes into your light, and darkened you terrify mortal hearts.
You go pale, not because the shape of the moon, nearer earth,
has crossed before you: it is that love of yours that makes this color.
You love her alone, and neither Clymene nor Rhodos holds you,
nor the most beautiful mother of Aeaean Circe,
nor Clytie, who, though scorned, was seeking
your bed, and at that very time carried a heavy wound:
Leucothoe made you forget the many —
Leucothoe, whom Eurynome, most beautiful of the perfume-bearing nation,
brought forth in childbirth; but when the daughter grew,
as the mother surpassed all, so the daughter surpassed the mother.
Her father Orchamus ruled the Achaemenian cities,
and is reckoned seventh from ancient Belus in line of descent.
and in turn wounds him who wounded her hidden love
with a love to match. What now, son of Hyperion,
do your beauty, your bright color, your radiant beams avail you?
You who scorch all lands with your own fires —
you are scorched with a new fire; you who ought to behold all things,
gaze on Leucothoe, and fix on a single girl
the eyes you owe the world. Now you rise too early
in the eastern sky, now too late you fall into the waves,
and from the lingering of your gaze you stretch out the winter hours;
sometimes you fail, and the fault of your mind
passes into your light, and darkened you terrify mortal hearts.
You go pale, not because the shape of the moon, nearer earth,
has crossed before you: it is that love of yours that makes this color.
You love her alone, and neither Clymene nor Rhodos holds you,
nor the most beautiful mother of Aeaean Circe,
nor Clytie, who, though scorned, was seeking
your bed, and at that very time carried a heavy wound:
Leucothoe made you forget the many —
Leucothoe, whom Eurynome, most beautiful of the perfume-bearing nation,
brought forth in childbirth; but when the daughter grew,
as the mother surpassed all, so the daughter surpassed the mother.
Her father Orchamus ruled the Achaemenian cities,
and is reckoned seventh from ancient Belus in line of descent.
Exigit indicii memorem Cythereia poenam inque vices illum, tectos qui laesit amores, laedit amore pari. quid nunc, Hyperione nate, forma colorque tibi radiataque lumina prosunt? nempe, tuis omnes qui terras ignibus uris, ureris igne novo; quique omnia cernere debes, Leucothoen spectas et virgine figis in una, quos mundo debes, oculos. modo surgis Eoo temperius caelo, modo serius incidis undis, spectandique mora brumalis porrigis horas; deficis interdum, vitiumque in lumina mentis transit et obscurus mortalia pectora terres. nec tibi quod lunae terris propioris imago obstiterit, palles: facit hunc amor iste colorem. diligis hanc unam, nec te Clymeneque Rhodosque nec tenet Aeaeae genetrix pulcherrima Circes quaeque tuos Clytie quamvis despecta petebat concubitus ipsoque illo grave vulnus habebat tempore: Leucothoe multarum oblivia fecit, gentis odoriferae quam formosissima partu edidit Eurynome; sed postquam filia crevit, quam mater cunctas, tam matrem filia vicit. rexit Achaemenias urbes pater Orchamus isque septimus a prisco numeratur origine Belo. ’
’Beneath the western sky lie the pastures of the Sun’s horses:
they have ambrosia for grass; it feeds their limbs, worn out
with the day’s service, and restores them for their labor.
And while there the steeds crop the heavenly fodder
and night runs its turn, the god enters the chamber he loves,
changed into the face of her mother Eurynome,
and among twice six handmaids sees Leucothoe by the lamplight
drawing out the smooth threads with the turning spindle.
So, when he had given kisses like a mother to her dear daughter,
"It is a secret matter," he said: "maids, withdraw,
and do not rob a mother of her right to speak in private."
They had obeyed; and the god, left in the chamber without a witness,
said: "I am he who measures out the long year,
who sees all things, through whom the earth sees all things,
the eye of the world: believe me, you please me." She is afraid,
and in her fear both distaff and spindle fell from her loosened fingers.
Her very fear became her. And he, delaying no longer,
returned to his true shape and his wonted brightness;
and the girl, though terrified by the unlooked-for sight,
overcome by the god’s brightness, laid her complaint aside and bore his force.
they have ambrosia for grass; it feeds their limbs, worn out
with the day’s service, and restores them for their labor.
And while there the steeds crop the heavenly fodder
and night runs its turn, the god enters the chamber he loves,
changed into the face of her mother Eurynome,
and among twice six handmaids sees Leucothoe by the lamplight
drawing out the smooth threads with the turning spindle.
So, when he had given kisses like a mother to her dear daughter,
"It is a secret matter," he said: "maids, withdraw,
and do not rob a mother of her right to speak in private."
They had obeyed; and the god, left in the chamber without a witness,
said: "I am he who measures out the long year,
who sees all things, through whom the earth sees all things,
the eye of the world: believe me, you please me." She is afraid,
and in her fear both distaff and spindle fell from her loosened fingers.
Her very fear became her. And he, delaying no longer,
returned to his true shape and his wonted brightness;
and the girl, though terrified by the unlooked-for sight,
overcome by the god’s brightness, laid her complaint aside and bore his force.
Axe sub Hesperio sunt pascua Solis equorum: ambrosiam pro gramine habent; ea fessa diurnis membra ministeriis nutrit reparatque labori. dumque ibi quadrupedes caelestia pabula carpunt noxque vicem peragit, thalamos deus intrat amatos, versus in Eurynomes faciem genetricis, et inter bis sex Leucothoen famulas ad lumina cernit levia versato ducentem stamina fuso. ergo ubi ceu mater carae dedit oscula natae, "res" ait "arcana est: famulae, discedite neve eripite arbitrium matri secreta loquendi." paruerant, thalamoque deus sine teste relicto "ille ego sum" dixit, "qui longum metior annum, omnia qui video, per quem videt omnia tellus, mundi oculus: mihi, crede, places." pavet illa, metuque et colus et fusus digitis cecidere remissis. ipse timor decuit. nec longius ille moratus in veram rediit speciem solitumque nitorem; at virgo quamvis inopino territa visu victa nitore dei posita vim passa querella est. ’
’Clytie was jealous (for the Sun’s love for her
had been past all measure), and goaded by anger at her rival
she spreads the adultery abroad, and to her father
betrays the girl thus defamed. Fierce and unrelenting,
as she prayed and stretched out her hands to the Sun’s light
and said, "He took me by force, against my will," he buried her cruelly
deep in the earth, and heaped a mound of heavy sand above.
The son of Hyperion scatters this with his rays
and gives you a way to lift out your buried face;
but you could no longer raise your head, nymph,
killed by the weight of earth, and you lay a bloodless body:
they say the driver of the winged horses saw nothing
more grievous than this after the fires of Phaethon.
He tries, indeed, by the strength of his rays, if he can,
to call her cold limbs back to living warmth;
but since fate stands against so great an effort,
he sprinkled her body and the place with fragrant nectar,
and after much lament said, "Still you shall reach the upper air."
At once the body, steeped in the heavenly nectar,
melted, and soaked the earth with its perfume,
and a shoot of frankincense, its roots driven slowly through the clods,
rose up and broke the mound with its tip.
had been past all measure), and goaded by anger at her rival
she spreads the adultery abroad, and to her father
betrays the girl thus defamed. Fierce and unrelenting,
as she prayed and stretched out her hands to the Sun’s light
and said, "He took me by force, against my will," he buried her cruelly
deep in the earth, and heaped a mound of heavy sand above.
The son of Hyperion scatters this with his rays
and gives you a way to lift out your buried face;
but you could no longer raise your head, nymph,
killed by the weight of earth, and you lay a bloodless body:
they say the driver of the winged horses saw nothing
more grievous than this after the fires of Phaethon.
He tries, indeed, by the strength of his rays, if he can,
to call her cold limbs back to living warmth;
but since fate stands against so great an effort,
he sprinkled her body and the place with fragrant nectar,
and after much lament said, "Still you shall reach the upper air."
At once the body, steeped in the heavenly nectar,
melted, and soaked the earth with its perfume,
and a shoot of frankincense, its roots driven slowly through the clods,
rose up and broke the mound with its tip.
Invidit Clytie (neque enim moderatus in illa Solis amor fuerat) stimulataque paelicis ira vulgat adulterium diffamatamque parenti indicat. ille ferox inmansuetusque precantem tendentemque manus ad lumina Solis et "ille vim tulit invitae" dicentem defodit alta crudus humo tumulumque super gravis addit harenae. dissipat hunc radiis Hyperione natus iterque dat tibi, qua possis defossos promere vultus; nec tu iam poteras enectum pondere terrae tollere, nympha, caput corpusque exsangue iacebas: nil illo fertur volucrum moderator equorum post Phaethonteos vidisse dolentius ignes. ille quidem gelidos radiorum viribus artus si queat in vivum temptat revocare calorem; sed quoniam tantis fatum conatibus obstat, nectare odorato sparsit corpusque locumque multaque praequestus "tanges tamen aethera" dixit. protinus inbutum caelesti nectare corpus delicuit terramque suo madefecit odore, virgaque per glaebas sensim radicibus actis turea surrexit tumulumque cacumine rupit. ’
’But Clytie — though love might have excused her grief,
and grief her informing — the author of light
came to no more, and made an end of love with her.
From that time she wasted, using her love past reason;
unable to bear the other nymphs, beneath the open sky, night and day,
she sat on the bare ground, unkempt, her hair undone,
and for nine days, without water, without food,
she fed her fasting on pure dew and her own tears,
and never stirred from the ground; she only watched the face
of the god as he went, and turned her own face toward him.
They say her limbs clung to the soil, and a wan
pallor turned part of her color to bloodless plants;
in part there is a red, and a flower most like the violet
covers her face. She, though held fast by the root,
turns toward her Sun, and, transformed, keeps her love.’
She had spoken, and the marvelous deed had taken their ears;
some deny it could have happened, some recall that true
gods can do all things: but Bacchus is not among those they name.
and grief her informing — the author of light
came to no more, and made an end of love with her.
From that time she wasted, using her love past reason;
unable to bear the other nymphs, beneath the open sky, night and day,
she sat on the bare ground, unkempt, her hair undone,
and for nine days, without water, without food,
she fed her fasting on pure dew and her own tears,
and never stirred from the ground; she only watched the face
of the god as he went, and turned her own face toward him.
They say her limbs clung to the soil, and a wan
pallor turned part of her color to bloodless plants;
in part there is a red, and a flower most like the violet
covers her face. She, though held fast by the root,
turns toward her Sun, and, transformed, keeps her love.’
She had spoken, and the marvelous deed had taken their ears;
some deny it could have happened, some recall that true
gods can do all things: but Bacchus is not among those they name.
At Clytien, quamvis amor excusare dolorem indiciumque dolor poterat, non amplius auctor lucis adit Venerisque modum sibi fecit in illa. tabuit ex illo dementer amoribus usa; nympharum inpatiens et sub Iove nocte dieque sedit humo nuda nudis incompta capillis, perque novem luces expers undaeque cibique rore mero lacrimisque suis ieiunia pavit nec se movit humo; tantum spectabat euntis ora dei vultusque suos flectebat ad illum. membra ferunt haesisse solo, partemque coloris luridus exsangues pallor convertit in herbas; est in parte rubor violaeque simillimus ora flos tegit. illa suum, quamvis radice tenetur, vertitur ad Solem mutataque servat amorem.’ dixerat, et factum mirabile ceperat auris; pars fieri potuisse negant, pars omnia veros posse deos memorant: sed non est Bacchus in illis.
Alcithoe is called on, when her sisters had fallen silent.
Running the shuttle through the threads of the standing loom,
she said: ’I pass over the well-worn loves of the shepherd
Daphnis of Ida, whom a nymph, in anger at a rival,
turned to stone: so great is the grief that burns lovers;
nor do I tell how once, by a new ruling of nature,
Sithon was of doubtful sex, now man, now woman.
You too, Celmis, now adamant, once most faithful
to the little Jove; and the Curetes, sprung from a generous rain;
and Crocus, turned with Smilax into small flowers —
these I pass by, and will hold your minds with a sweet new tale.
Running the shuttle through the threads of the standing loom,
she said: ’I pass over the well-worn loves of the shepherd
Daphnis of Ida, whom a nymph, in anger at a rival,
turned to stone: so great is the grief that burns lovers;
nor do I tell how once, by a new ruling of nature,
Sithon was of doubtful sex, now man, now woman.
You too, Celmis, now adamant, once most faithful
to the little Jove; and the Curetes, sprung from a generous rain;
and Crocus, turned with Smilax into small flowers —
these I pass by, and will hold your minds with a sweet new tale.
Poscitur Alcithoe, postquam siluere sorores. quae radio stantis percurrens stamina telae ’vulgatos taceo’ dixit ’pastoris amores Daphnidis Idaei, quem nymphe paelicis ira contulit in saxum: tantus dolor urit amantes; nec loquor, ut quondam naturae iure novato ambiguus fuerit modo vir, modo femina Sithon. te quoque, nunc adamas, quondam fidissime parvo, Celmi, Iovi largoque satos Curetas ab imbri et Crocon in parvos versum cum Smilace flores praetereo dulcique animos novitate tenebo. ’
’Learn from what cause Salmacis is ill-famed, why with her enfeebling
waters she unstrings and softens the limbs she touches.
The cause is hidden; the power of the spring is well known.
A boy born to Mercury of the Cytherean goddess
the naiads reared in the caves of Ida —
a boy whose face was such that in it both mother and father
could be known; from them too he drew his name.
When first he had completed three times five years,
he left his native hills, and, leaving Ida his nurse,
delighted to wander in unknown places, to see
unknown rivers, his eagerness lessening the toil.
He came even to the Lycian cities and the Carians,
neighbors of Lycia: here he sees a pool of water
clear to the very bottom; no marsh-reed there,
no barren sedge, no rushes with sharp point;
the water is transparent; yet the pool’s edges
are ringed with living turf and ever-green grass.
A nymph dwells there, but not one fit for hunting, nor used
to bend the bow or to race in running,
and the only naiad unknown to swift Diana.
Often, the story goes, her sisters said to her:
"Salmacis, take up either the javelin or the painted quiver,
and mix your leisure with the hard work of the hunt!"
She takes up neither javelin nor painted quiver,
nor mixes her leisure with the hard work of the hunt,
but now bathes her lovely limbs in her own spring,
often combs out her hair with a Cytorian comb,
and consults the waters she looks into about what becomes her;
now, her body wrapped in a transparent robe,
she lies down on soft leaves or soft grasses,
often gathers flowers. And just then, too, she chanced to be gathering,
when she saw the boy and, seeing him, longed to have him.
waters she unstrings and softens the limbs she touches.
The cause is hidden; the power of the spring is well known.
A boy born to Mercury of the Cytherean goddess
the naiads reared in the caves of Ida —
a boy whose face was such that in it both mother and father
could be known; from them too he drew his name.
When first he had completed three times five years,
he left his native hills, and, leaving Ida his nurse,
delighted to wander in unknown places, to see
unknown rivers, his eagerness lessening the toil.
He came even to the Lycian cities and the Carians,
neighbors of Lycia: here he sees a pool of water
clear to the very bottom; no marsh-reed there,
no barren sedge, no rushes with sharp point;
the water is transparent; yet the pool’s edges
are ringed with living turf and ever-green grass.
A nymph dwells there, but not one fit for hunting, nor used
to bend the bow or to race in running,
and the only naiad unknown to swift Diana.
Often, the story goes, her sisters said to her:
"Salmacis, take up either the javelin or the painted quiver,
and mix your leisure with the hard work of the hunt!"
She takes up neither javelin nor painted quiver,
nor mixes her leisure with the hard work of the hunt,
but now bathes her lovely limbs in her own spring,
often combs out her hair with a Cytorian comb,
and consults the waters she looks into about what becomes her;
now, her body wrapped in a transparent robe,
she lies down on soft leaves or soft grasses,
often gathers flowers. And just then, too, she chanced to be gathering,
when she saw the boy and, seeing him, longed to have him.
Unde sit infamis, quare male fortibus undis Salmacis enervet tactosque remolliat artus, discite. causa latet, vis est notissima fontis. Mercurio puerum diva Cythereide natum naides Idaeis enutrivere sub antris, cuius erat facies, in qua materque paterque cognosci possent; nomen quoque traxit ab illis. is tria cum primum fecit quinquennia, montes deseruit patrios Idaque altrice relicta ignotis errare locis, ignota videre flumina gaudebat, studio minuente laborem. ille etiam Lycias urbes Lyciaeque propinquos Caras adit: videt hic stagnum lucentis ad imum usque solum lymphae; non illic canna palustris nec steriles ulvae nec acuta cuspide iunci; perspicuus liquor est; stagni tamen ultima vivo caespite cinguntur semperque virentibus herbis. nympha colit, sed nec venatibus apta nec arcus flectere quae soleat nec quae contendere cursu, solaque naiadum celeri non nota Dianae. saepe suas illi fama est dixisse sorores "Salmaci, vel iaculum vel pictas sume pharetras et tua cum duris venatibus otia misce!" nec iaculum sumit nec pictas illa pharetras, nec sua cum duris venatibus otia miscet, sed modo fonte suo formosos perluit artus, saepe Cytoriaco deducit pectine crines et, quid se deceat, spectatas consulit undas; nunc perlucenti circumdata corpus amictu mollibus aut foliis aut mollibus incubat herbis, saepe legit flores. et tum quoque forte legebat, cum puerum vidit visumque optavit habere. ’
’Yet she did not approach, though she was eager to approach,
before she had composed herself, looked over her robes,
shaped her face, and earned the look of beauty.
Then she began to speak: "Boy most worthy to be thought
a god, if you are a god, you may be Cupid;
or if you are mortal, blessed are they who bore you,
and happy your brother, and fortunate indeed
any sister of yours, and the nurse who gave you the breast;
but far, far happier than all is she,
if you have any betrothed, any you will honor with the marriage-torch.
If you have one, let mine be a stolen pleasure;
if none, let me be she, and let us enter the one bridal chamber."
The naiad fell silent at this. A blush marked the boy’s face;
for he does not know what love is — but even to have blushed became him:
this was the color of apples hanging on a sunny tree,
or of stained ivory, or of the moon reddening under her whiteness
when the rescuing bronzes clash for her in vain.
As the nymph begged him without end for at least a sister’s kisses,
and was already bringing her hands to his ivory neck,
"Will you stop," he said, "or do I flee and leave this place, and you?"
Salmacis took fright. "I yield these grounds to you freely,
stranger," she said, and feigning to depart with reversed step,
even then looking back, she hid herself in a tangled thicket
of shrubs and sank to a bended knee; but he,
thinking himself alone and unobserved on the empty grass,
goes here and there, and in the playing waters
dips the soles of his feet, then up to the ankle;
and at once, taken by the mildness of the inviting water,
he lays the soft garments from his tender body.
Then truly Salmacis was pleased, and burned with desire
for his naked beauty; the nymph’s eyes blaze too,
just as when the sun, brightest in his clear orb,
is thrown back by the answering image of a mirror;
and she scarcely bears the delay, scarcely now defers her joys,
now longs to embrace him, now, beside herself, can hardly hold back.
He, beating his body quickly with his hollowed palms,
leaps into the pool, and drawing his arms in turn
gleams through the clear water, as if one should sheathe
ivory figures, or white lilies, in transparent glass.
before she had composed herself, looked over her robes,
shaped her face, and earned the look of beauty.
Then she began to speak: "Boy most worthy to be thought
a god, if you are a god, you may be Cupid;
or if you are mortal, blessed are they who bore you,
and happy your brother, and fortunate indeed
any sister of yours, and the nurse who gave you the breast;
but far, far happier than all is she,
if you have any betrothed, any you will honor with the marriage-torch.
If you have one, let mine be a stolen pleasure;
if none, let me be she, and let us enter the one bridal chamber."
The naiad fell silent at this. A blush marked the boy’s face;
for he does not know what love is — but even to have blushed became him:
this was the color of apples hanging on a sunny tree,
or of stained ivory, or of the moon reddening under her whiteness
when the rescuing bronzes clash for her in vain.
As the nymph begged him without end for at least a sister’s kisses,
and was already bringing her hands to his ivory neck,
"Will you stop," he said, "or do I flee and leave this place, and you?"
Salmacis took fright. "I yield these grounds to you freely,
stranger," she said, and feigning to depart with reversed step,
even then looking back, she hid herself in a tangled thicket
of shrubs and sank to a bended knee; but he,
thinking himself alone and unobserved on the empty grass,
goes here and there, and in the playing waters
dips the soles of his feet, then up to the ankle;
and at once, taken by the mildness of the inviting water,
he lays the soft garments from his tender body.
Then truly Salmacis was pleased, and burned with desire
for his naked beauty; the nymph’s eyes blaze too,
just as when the sun, brightest in his clear orb,
is thrown back by the answering image of a mirror;
and she scarcely bears the delay, scarcely now defers her joys,
now longs to embrace him, now, beside herself, can hardly hold back.
He, beating his body quickly with his hollowed palms,
leaps into the pool, and drawing his arms in turn
gleams through the clear water, as if one should sheathe
ivory figures, or white lilies, in transparent glass.
Nec tamen ante adiit, etsi properabat adire, quam se conposuit, quam circumspexit amictus et finxit vultum et meruit formosa videri. tunc sic orsa loqui: "puer o dignissime credi esse deus, seu tu deus es, potes esse Cupido, sive es mortalis, qui te genuere, beati, et frater felix, et fortunata profecto, si qua tibi soror est, et quae dedit ubera nutrix; sed longe cunctis longeque beatior illa, si qua tibi sponsa est, si quam dignabere taeda. haec tibi sive aliqua est, mea sit furtiva voluptas, seu nulla est, ego sim, thalamumque ineamus eundem." nais ab his tacuit. pueri rubor ora notavit; nescit, enim, quid amor; sed et erubuisse decebat: hic color aprica pendentibus arbore pomis aut ebori tincto est aut sub candore rubenti, cum frustra resonant aera auxiliaria, lunae. poscenti nymphae sine fine sororia saltem oscula iamque manus ad eburnea colla ferenti "desinis, an fugio tecumque" ait "ista relinquo?" Salmacis extimuit "loca" que "haec tibi libera trado, hospes" ait simulatque gradu discedere verso, tum quoque respiciens, fruticumque recondita silva delituit flexuque genu submisit; at ille, scilicet ut vacuis et inobservatus in herbis, huc it et hinc illuc et in adludentibus undis summa pedum taloque tenus vestigia tinguit; nec mora, temperie blandarum captus aquarum mollia de tenero velamina corpore ponit. tum vero placuit, nudaeque cupidine formae Salmacis exarsit; flagrant quoque lumina nymphae, non aliter quam cum puro nitidissimus orbe opposita speculi referitur imagine Phoebus; vixque moram patitur, vix iam sua gaudia differt, iam cupit amplecti, iam se male continet amens. ille cavis velox adplauso corpore palmis desilit in latices alternaque bracchia ducens in liquidis translucet aquis, ut eburnea si quis signa tegat claro vel candida lilia vitro. "
’"I have won — he is mine!" the naiad cries, and casting
all her clothing far off she plunges into the midst of the water,
holds him as he fights, snatches struggling kisses,
slips her hands beneath him, touches his unwilling breast,
and winds about the young man now on this side, now on that;
at last, as he strains against her and longs to slip free,
she coils about him like a serpent the royal bird
has caught up on high: hanging, she binds his head and feet,
and with her tail entangles his spreading wings;
or as the ivy is wont to weave through long tree-trunks,
or as the octopus holds an enemy caught beneath the waters,
its feelers let loose on every side.
The descendant of Atlas holds out and denies the nymph
her hoped-for joys; she presses, and clinging with her whole body
as though grafted on, "Struggle as you will, cruel one," she said,
"you shall not escape. So ordain it, gods,
and let no day part him from me, or me from him."
Her prayers found gods to grant them; for the two bodies,
mingled, are joined, and one face is drawn over them.
As, when one grafts a branch into the bark, he sees them
joined in growth and ripening together,
so when their limbs met in that tenacious embrace,
they are not two, and their form is double — neither
to be called woman nor boy: they seem neither and both.
’And so, when he sees that the clear water into which he had gone down
a man has made him half-male, and his limbs softened in it,
stretching out his hands, but now in no manly voice,
Hermaphroditus says: "Grant your son this gift,
both father and mother, since I bear the name of both:
whoever comes a man into this spring, let him go out from it
half a man, and softening suddenly at the touch of the water!"
Both parents, moved, made good the words of their two-formed son,
and tinged the spring with an unhallowing drug.
all her clothing far off she plunges into the midst of the water,
holds him as he fights, snatches struggling kisses,
slips her hands beneath him, touches his unwilling breast,
and winds about the young man now on this side, now on that;
at last, as he strains against her and longs to slip free,
she coils about him like a serpent the royal bird
has caught up on high: hanging, she binds his head and feet,
and with her tail entangles his spreading wings;
or as the ivy is wont to weave through long tree-trunks,
or as the octopus holds an enemy caught beneath the waters,
its feelers let loose on every side.
The descendant of Atlas holds out and denies the nymph
her hoped-for joys; she presses, and clinging with her whole body
as though grafted on, "Struggle as you will, cruel one," she said,
"you shall not escape. So ordain it, gods,
and let no day part him from me, or me from him."
Her prayers found gods to grant them; for the two bodies,
mingled, are joined, and one face is drawn over them.
As, when one grafts a branch into the bark, he sees them
joined in growth and ripening together,
so when their limbs met in that tenacious embrace,
they are not two, and their form is double — neither
to be called woman nor boy: they seem neither and both.
’And so, when he sees that the clear water into which he had gone down
a man has made him half-male, and his limbs softened in it,
stretching out his hands, but now in no manly voice,
Hermaphroditus says: "Grant your son this gift,
both father and mother, since I bear the name of both:
whoever comes a man into this spring, let him go out from it
half a man, and softening suddenly at the touch of the water!"
Both parents, moved, made good the words of their two-formed son,
and tinged the spring with an unhallowing drug.
vicimus et meus est" exclamat nais, et omni veste procul iacta mediis inmittitur undis, pugnantemque tenet, luctantiaque oscula carpit, subiectatque manus, invitaque pectora tangit, et nunc hac iuveni, nunc circumfunditur illac; denique nitentem contra elabique volentem inplicat ut serpens, quam regia sustinet ales sublimemque rapit: pendens caput illa pedesque adligat et cauda spatiantes inplicat alas; utve solent hederae longos intexere truncos, utque sub aequoribus deprensum polypus hostem continet ex omni dimissis parte flagellis. perstat Atlantiades sperataque gaudia nymphae denegat; illa premit commissaque corpore toto sicut inhaerebat, "pugnes licet, inprobe," dixit, "non tamen effugies. ita, di, iubeatis, et istum nulla dies a me nec me deducat ab isto." vota suos habuere deos; nam mixta duorum corpora iunguntur, faciesque inducitur illis una. velut, si quis conducat cortice ramos, crescendo iungi pariterque adolescere cernit, sic ubi conplexu coierunt membra tenaci, nec duo sunt et forma duplex, nec femina dici nec puer ut possit, neutrumque et utrumque videntur. ’Ergo ubi se liquidas, quo vir descenderat, undas semimarem fecisse videt mollitaque in illis membra, manus tendens, sed iam non voce virili Hermaphroditus ait: "nato date munera vestro, et pater et genetrix, amborum nomen habenti: quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit, exeat inde semivir et tactis subito mollescat in undis!" motus uterque parens nati rata verba biformis fecit et incesto fontem medicamine tinxit.’
The telling was at an end, and still the brood of Minyas
drives on its work, scorns the god, and profanes his feast,
when suddenly drums, though none could be seen, broke in
with hoarse sounds, and the pipe with its curved horn
and the jangling bronze ring out; myrrh and saffron breathe their scent,
and — a thing past belief — the webs began to grow green
and the hanging cloth to leaf out in the likeness of ivy;
part goes off into vines, and what just now were threads
are changed to tendrils; from the warp a vine-shoot springs;
purple lends its luster to the painted grapes.
And now the day was spent, and the hour was coming on
that you could call neither darkness nor light,
but the borderland of doubtful night with light still in it:
of a sudden the roof seems shaken and the fat torches
to blaze, and the house to glow with red fires,
and false phantoms of savage beasts to howl.
Already the sisters hide through the smoke-filled rooms,
and in their scattered places shun the fires and the lights,
and while they seek the dark, a membrane stretches over their small
limbs and encloses their arms in a thin wing;
nor does the dark let them know by what means they have lost
their old shape: no plumage lifted them,
yet they held themselves up on transparent wings,
and trying to speak they send out the tiniest voice
to match their bodies, and run through their laments in a faint shrill.
Houses, not woods, they haunt, and hating the light
they fly by night, and take their name from the late evening.
drives on its work, scorns the god, and profanes his feast,
when suddenly drums, though none could be seen, broke in
with hoarse sounds, and the pipe with its curved horn
and the jangling bronze ring out; myrrh and saffron breathe their scent,
and — a thing past belief — the webs began to grow green
and the hanging cloth to leaf out in the likeness of ivy;
part goes off into vines, and what just now were threads
are changed to tendrils; from the warp a vine-shoot springs;
purple lends its luster to the painted grapes.
And now the day was spent, and the hour was coming on
that you could call neither darkness nor light,
but the borderland of doubtful night with light still in it:
of a sudden the roof seems shaken and the fat torches
to blaze, and the house to glow with red fires,
and false phantoms of savage beasts to howl.
Already the sisters hide through the smoke-filled rooms,
and in their scattered places shun the fires and the lights,
and while they seek the dark, a membrane stretches over their small
limbs and encloses their arms in a thin wing;
nor does the dark let them know by what means they have lost
their old shape: no plumage lifted them,
yet they held themselves up on transparent wings,
and trying to speak they send out the tiniest voice
to match their bodies, and run through their laments in a faint shrill.
Houses, not woods, they haunt, and hating the light
they fly by night, and take their name from the late evening.
Finis erat dictis, et adhuc Minyeia proles urguet opus spernitque deum festumque profanat, tympana cum subito non adparentia raucis obstrepuere sonis, et adunco tibia cornu tinnulaque aera sonant; redolent murraeque crocique, resque fide maior, coepere virescere telae inque hederae faciem pendens frondescere vestis; pars abit in vites, et quae modo fila fuerunt, palmite mutantur; de stamine pampinus exit; purpura fulgorem pictis adcommodat uvis. iamque dies exactus erat, tempusque subibat, quod tu nec tenebras nec possis dicere lucem, sed cum luce tamen dubiae confinia noctis: tecta repente quati pinguesque ardere videntur lampades et rutilis conlucere ignibus aedes falsaque saevarum simulacra ululare ferarum, fumida iamdudum latitant per tecta sorores diversaeque locis ignes ac lumina vitant, dumque petunt tenebras, parvos membrana per artus porrigitur tenuique includit bracchia pinna; nec qua perdiderint veterem ratione figuram, scire sinunt tenebrae: non illas pluma levavit, sustinuere tamen se perlucentibus alis conataeque loqui minimam et pro corpore vocem emittunt peraguntque levi stridore querellas. tectaque, non silvas celebrant lucemque perosae nocte volant seroque tenent a vespere nomen.
Then indeed the godhead of Bacchus was famed through all Thebes,
and his aunt tells everywhere the great power
of the new god; and of all those sisters she alone
was free of grief, save what her sisters caused her:
Juno marks her, exalted in her children and in Athamas’s bed
and in her fosterling’s divinity,
and could not bear it, and said within herself: ’The son of a rival
could turn the Maeonian sailors and plunge them in the sea,
and give a son’s flesh to be torn by his own mother,
and cover the three daughters of Minyas with strange wings:
shall Juno be able to do nothing but weep her wrongs unavenged?
And is that enough for me? Is this my only power?
He himself teaches me what to do (it is right to be taught even by an enemy),
and what frenzy can do he has shown, and more than enough,
by the slaughter of Pentheus: why should Ino not be goaded,
and go, by her kindred’s example, into a like frenzy?’
and his aunt tells everywhere the great power
of the new god; and of all those sisters she alone
was free of grief, save what her sisters caused her:
Juno marks her, exalted in her children and in Athamas’s bed
and in her fosterling’s divinity,
and could not bear it, and said within herself: ’The son of a rival
could turn the Maeonian sailors and plunge them in the sea,
and give a son’s flesh to be torn by his own mother,
and cover the three daughters of Minyas with strange wings:
shall Juno be able to do nothing but weep her wrongs unavenged?
And is that enough for me? Is this my only power?
He himself teaches me what to do (it is right to be taught even by an enemy),
and what frenzy can do he has shown, and more than enough,
by the slaughter of Pentheus: why should Ino not be goaded,
and go, by her kindred’s example, into a like frenzy?’
Tum vero totis Bacchi memorabile Thebis numen erat, magnasque novi matertera vires narrat ubique dei de totque sororibus expers una doloris erat, nisi quem fecere sorores: adspicit hanc natis thalamoque Athamantis habentem sublimes animos et alumno numine Iuno nec tulit et secum: ’potuit de paelice natus vertere Maeonios pelagoque inmergere nautas et laceranda suae nati dare viscera matri et triplices operire novis Minyeidas alis: nil poterit Iuno nisi inultos flere dolores? idque mihi satis est? haec una potentia nostra est? ipse docet, quid agam (fas est et ab hoste doceri), quidque furor valeat, Penthea caede satisque ac super ostendit: cur non stimuletur eatque per cognata suis exempla furoribus Ino?’
There is a downward way, shadowy with deadly yew:
it leads through mute silences to the seats below;
the sluggish Styx breathes out its mists, and freshly-made shades
go down that road, and ghosts that have had their burial:
pallor and cold hold those rough places far and wide,
and the new dead do not know which is the road
that leads to the Stygian city, where stands the grim palace of black Dis.
A thousand wide entrances, and gates open on every side,
the city has, and as the sea takes the rivers from all the earth,
so that place receives all souls, and is too small for no
people, nor feels the throng as it comes.
The shades wander, bloodless, without body or bones,
and some throng the forum, some the halls of the lord below,
some ply some craft, copies of their former life.
it leads through mute silences to the seats below;
the sluggish Styx breathes out its mists, and freshly-made shades
go down that road, and ghosts that have had their burial:
pallor and cold hold those rough places far and wide,
and the new dead do not know which is the road
that leads to the Stygian city, where stands the grim palace of black Dis.
A thousand wide entrances, and gates open on every side,
the city has, and as the sea takes the rivers from all the earth,
so that place receives all souls, and is too small for no
people, nor feels the throng as it comes.
The shades wander, bloodless, without body or bones,
and some throng the forum, some the halls of the lord below,
some ply some craft, copies of their former life.
Est via declivis funesta nubila taxo: ducit ad infernas per muta silentia sedes; Styx nebulas exhalat iners, umbraeque recentes descendunt illac simulacraque functa sepulcris: pallor hiemsque tenent late loca senta, novique, qua sit iter, manes, Stygiam quod ducat ad urbem, ignorant, ubi sit nigri fera regia Ditis. mille capax aditus et apertas undique portas urbs habet, utque fretum de tota flumina terra, sic omnes animas locus accipit ille nec ulli exiguus populo est turbamve accedere sentit. errant exsangues sine corpore at ossibus umbrae, parsque forum celebrant, pars imi tecta tyranni, pars aliquas artes, antiquae imitamina vitae.
Saturnian Juno endures to go there, leaving her seat in heaven
(so much she yielded to her hatred and her wrath);
and as soon as she entered, and the threshold, pressed
by her sacred body, groaned, Cerberus lifted his three heads
and gave forth three barkings at once; she calls the sisters
born of Night, dread and implacable powers:
before the closed doors of the prison, barred with adamant, they sat,
and combed black snakes from their hair.
As soon as they knew her amid the shadows of the gloom,
the goddesses rose; the place is called the seat of the wicked:
Tityos offered his flesh to be torn, and was stretched
over nine acres; for you, Tantalus, no water can be caught,
and the tree that overhangs you flees;
you reach for, or heave at, the stone that will roll back, Sisyphus;
Ixion is whirled and both follows and flees himself;
and the daughters of Belus, who dared contrive death for their cousins,
forever fetch again the water they keep losing.
(so much she yielded to her hatred and her wrath);
and as soon as she entered, and the threshold, pressed
by her sacred body, groaned, Cerberus lifted his three heads
and gave forth three barkings at once; she calls the sisters
born of Night, dread and implacable powers:
before the closed doors of the prison, barred with adamant, they sat,
and combed black snakes from their hair.
As soon as they knew her amid the shadows of the gloom,
the goddesses rose; the place is called the seat of the wicked:
Tityos offered his flesh to be torn, and was stretched
over nine acres; for you, Tantalus, no water can be caught,
and the tree that overhangs you flees;
you reach for, or heave at, the stone that will roll back, Sisyphus;
Ixion is whirled and both follows and flees himself;
and the daughters of Belus, who dared contrive death for their cousins,
forever fetch again the water they keep losing.
Sustinet ire illuc caelesti sede relicta (tantum odiis iraeque dabat) Saturnia Iuno; quo simul intravit sacroque a corpore pressum ingemuit limen, tria Cerberus extulit ora et tres latratus semel edidit; illa sorores Nocte vocat genitas, grave et inplacabile numen: carceris ante fores clausas adamante sedebant deque suis atros pectebant crinibus angues. quam simul agnorunt inter caliginis umbras, surrexere deae; sedes scelerata vocatur: viscera praebebat Tityos lanianda novemque iugeribus distentus erat; tibi, Tantale, nullae deprenduntur aquae, quaeque inminet, effugit arbor; aut petis aut urgues rediturum, Sisyphe, saxum; volvitur Ixion et se sequiturque fugitque, molirique suis letum patruelibus ausae adsiduae repetunt, quas perdant, Belides undas.
When Saturnia had seen them all with her grim glance,
and Ixion before them all, then looking from him
to Sisyphus, she said: ’Why does this one of the brothers
suffer endless punishment, while proud Athamas
holds a rich palace — he who, with his wife, has always scorned me?’
And she sets out the causes of her hatred and her coming,
and what she wants: what she wanted was that the house of Cadmus
should not stand, and that the sisters should drag Athamas into crime.
Command, promises, prayers she runs together into one,
and works on the goddesses: when Juno had so spoken,
Tisiphone, disordered as she was, shook her gray hair,
tossed the snakes that blocked her face back from it,
and said: ’There is no need of long windings;
count as done whatever you bid; leave this loveless kingdom
and bear yourself back to the airs of a better heaven.’
Glad, Juno returns, and as she made ready to enter heaven
the daughter of Thaumas, Iris, cleansed her with sprinkled water.
and Ixion before them all, then looking from him
to Sisyphus, she said: ’Why does this one of the brothers
suffer endless punishment, while proud Athamas
holds a rich palace — he who, with his wife, has always scorned me?’
And she sets out the causes of her hatred and her coming,
and what she wants: what she wanted was that the house of Cadmus
should not stand, and that the sisters should drag Athamas into crime.
Command, promises, prayers she runs together into one,
and works on the goddesses: when Juno had so spoken,
Tisiphone, disordered as she was, shook her gray hair,
tossed the snakes that blocked her face back from it,
and said: ’There is no need of long windings;
count as done whatever you bid; leave this loveless kingdom
and bear yourself back to the airs of a better heaven.’
Glad, Juno returns, and as she made ready to enter heaven
the daughter of Thaumas, Iris, cleansed her with sprinkled water.
Quos omnes acie postquam Saturnia torva vidit et ante omnes Ixiona, rursus ab illo Sisyphon adspiciens ’cur hic e fratribus’ inquit ’perpetuas patitur poenas, Athamanta superbum regia dives habet, qui me cum coniuge semper sprevit?’ et exponit causas odiique viaeque, quidque velit: quod vellet, erat, ne regia Cadmi staret, et in facinus traherent Athamanta sorores. imperium, promissa, preces confundit in unum sollicitatque deas: sic haec Iunone locuta, Tisiphone canos, ut erat, turbata capillos movit et obstantes reiecit ab ore colubras atque ita ’non longis opus est ambagibus,’ inquit; ’facta puta, quaecumque iubes; inamabile regnum desere teque refer caeli melioris ad auras.’ laeta redit Iuno, quam caelum intrare parantem roratis lustravit aquis Thaumantias Iris.
Without delay, Tisiphone takes up a torch soaked with blood,
the troubler, puts on a cloak reddened with dripping gore,
girds herself with a twisting snake,
and goes out from the house. Grief goes with her as she goes,
and Dread and Terror, and Madness with quivering face.
She had halted on the threshold: the Aeolian doorposts are said
to have trembled, and pallor stained the maple doors,
and the sun fled the place. The wife is terrified by the portents,
Athamas is terrified, and they made ready to leave the house:
the baleful Fury blocked them and beset the doorway,
and stretching out her arms bound with vipers’ knots
she shook her hair: the stirred snakes hissed,
and some lie on her shoulders, some slipping about her breast
give out hisses, vomit corruption, and flicker with their tongues.
Then from the middle of her hair she tears two snakes
and with her plague-bearing hand flung the seized creatures, and they
range over the breasts of Ino and of Athamas
and breathe heavy madness into them; nor do they bring any wounds
to the limbs: it is the mind that feels the dread strokes.
She had brought with her, too, monstrous liquid venoms,
the foam from Cerberus’s mouth and the poison of Echidna,
roving delusions, the blindness of a darkened mind,
and crime and tears and rage and the love of slaughter,
all ground together, which, mixed with fresh blood,
she had boiled in a hollow bronze, stirred with green hemlock;
and while the two are frozen with fear, she pours the maddening venom
into the breast of both and stirs their inmost hearts.
Then, whirling her torch in the same circle again and again,
she swiftly follows fire with fire as she moves them.
So, victorious and mistress of her command, she returns to the empty
kingdom of great Dis, and ungirds the snake she had taken.
the troubler, puts on a cloak reddened with dripping gore,
girds herself with a twisting snake,
and goes out from the house. Grief goes with her as she goes,
and Dread and Terror, and Madness with quivering face.
She had halted on the threshold: the Aeolian doorposts are said
to have trembled, and pallor stained the maple doors,
and the sun fled the place. The wife is terrified by the portents,
Athamas is terrified, and they made ready to leave the house:
the baleful Fury blocked them and beset the doorway,
and stretching out her arms bound with vipers’ knots
she shook her hair: the stirred snakes hissed,
and some lie on her shoulders, some slipping about her breast
give out hisses, vomit corruption, and flicker with their tongues.
Then from the middle of her hair she tears two snakes
and with her plague-bearing hand flung the seized creatures, and they
range over the breasts of Ino and of Athamas
and breathe heavy madness into them; nor do they bring any wounds
to the limbs: it is the mind that feels the dread strokes.
She had brought with her, too, monstrous liquid venoms,
the foam from Cerberus’s mouth and the poison of Echidna,
roving delusions, the blindness of a darkened mind,
and crime and tears and rage and the love of slaughter,
all ground together, which, mixed with fresh blood,
she had boiled in a hollow bronze, stirred with green hemlock;
and while the two are frozen with fear, she pours the maddening venom
into the breast of both and stirs their inmost hearts.
Then, whirling her torch in the same circle again and again,
she swiftly follows fire with fire as she moves them.
So, victorious and mistress of her command, she returns to the empty
kingdom of great Dis, and ungirds the snake she had taken.
Nec mora, Tisiphone madefactam sanguine sumit inportuna facem, fluidoque cruore rubentem induitur pallam, tortoque incingitur angue egrediturque domo. Luctus comitatur euntem et Pavor et Terror trepidoque Insania vultu. limine constiterat: postes tremuisse feruntur Aeolii pallorque fores infecit acernas solque locum fugit. monstris est territa coniunx, territus est Athamas, tectoque exire parabant: obstitit infelix aditumque obsedit Erinys, nexaque vipereis distendens bracchia nodis caesariem excussit: motae sonuere colubrae, parsque iacent umeris, pars circum pectora lapsae sibila dant saniemque vomunt linguisque coruscant. inde duos mediis abrumpit crinibus angues pestiferaque manu raptos inmisit, at illi Inoosque sinus Athamanteosque pererrant inspirantque graves animas; nec vulnera membris ulla ferunt: mens est, quae diros sentiat ictus. attulerat secum liquidi quoque monstra veneni, oris Cerberei spumas et virus Echidnae erroresque vagos caecaeque oblivia mentis et scelus et lacrimas rabiemque et caedis amorem, omnia trita simul, quae sanguine mixta recenti coxerat aere cavo viridi versata cicuta; dumque pavent illi, vergit furiale venenum pectus in amborum praecordiaque intima movit. tum face iactata per eundem saepius orbem consequitur motis velociter ignibus ignes. sic victrix iussique potens ad inania magni regna redit Ditis sumptumque recingitur anguem.
At once the son of Aeolus, raving in the midst of the hall,
cries: ’Ho, comrades, spread your nets in these woods!
Here just now I saw a lioness with her twin cubs’
and, out of his mind, he follows the tracks of his wife as of a wild beast,
and from his mother’s lap he snatches little Learchus,
laughing and stretching out his small arms, and twice and three times
he whirls him through the air like a sling, and fiercely
dashes the infant’s face against the hard rock;
then at last the mother, stirred — whether grief did it
or the sprinkled venom was the cause —
shrieks aloud and flees, all but mad, her hair streaming,
and carrying you, little Melicerta, in her bare arms,
cries ’Euhoe, Bacchus!’: at the name of Bacchus Juno
laughed and said, ’Let your fosterling do you such service!’
A crag overhangs the sea: its base is hollowed
by the waves and shelters the water it covers from the rains,
its top is sheer and thrusts its brow out into the open sea;
this Ino seizes (madness had given her strength)
and over the deep, held back by no fear,
she flings herself and her burden; the struck water whitened.
cries: ’Ho, comrades, spread your nets in these woods!
Here just now I saw a lioness with her twin cubs’
and, out of his mind, he follows the tracks of his wife as of a wild beast,
and from his mother’s lap he snatches little Learchus,
laughing and stretching out his small arms, and twice and three times
he whirls him through the air like a sling, and fiercely
dashes the infant’s face against the hard rock;
then at last the mother, stirred — whether grief did it
or the sprinkled venom was the cause —
shrieks aloud and flees, all but mad, her hair streaming,
and carrying you, little Melicerta, in her bare arms,
cries ’Euhoe, Bacchus!’: at the name of Bacchus Juno
laughed and said, ’Let your fosterling do you such service!’
A crag overhangs the sea: its base is hollowed
by the waves and shelters the water it covers from the rains,
its top is sheer and thrusts its brow out into the open sea;
this Ino seizes (madness had given her strength)
and over the deep, held back by no fear,
she flings herself and her burden; the struck water whitened.
Protinus Aeolides media furibundus in aula clamat ’io, comites, his retia tendite silvis! hic modo cum gemina visa est mihi prole leaena’ utque ferae sequitur vestigia coniugis amens deque sinu matris ridentem et parva Learchum bracchia tendentem rapit et bis terque per auras more rotat fundae rigidoque infantia saxo discutit ora ferox; tum denique concita mater, seu dolor hoc fecit seu sparsi causa veneni, exululat passisque fugit male sana capillis teque ferens parvum nudis, Melicerta, lacertis ’euhoe Bacche’ sonat: Bacchi sub nomine Iuno risit et ’hos usus praestet tibi’ dixit ’alumnus!’ inminet aequoribus scopulus: pars ima cavatur fluctibus et tectas defendit ab imbribus undas, summa riget frontemque in apertum porrigit aequor; occupat hunc (vires insania fecerat) Ino seque super pontum nullo tardata timore mittit onusque suum; percussa recanduit unda.
But Venus, pitying the undeserved sufferings of her granddaughter,
coaxed her uncle thus: ’O power of the waters,
Neptune, to whom fell the rule next to heaven’s,
great is what I ask, yet pity my own,
whom you see tossed on the vast Ionian,
and add them to your gods. I too have some favor with the sea,
if indeed I was once a foam congealed in the mid-deep,
and from that the Greek name remains to me.’
Neptune nodded to her prayer, and took from them
what was mortal, and laid on them a reverend majesty,
and renewed at once their name and form,
and called the god Palaemon, with his mother Leucothoe.
coaxed her uncle thus: ’O power of the waters,
Neptune, to whom fell the rule next to heaven’s,
great is what I ask, yet pity my own,
whom you see tossed on the vast Ionian,
and add them to your gods. I too have some favor with the sea,
if indeed I was once a foam congealed in the mid-deep,
and from that the Greek name remains to me.’
Neptune nodded to her prayer, and took from them
what was mortal, and laid on them a reverend majesty,
and renewed at once their name and form,
and called the god Palaemon, with his mother Leucothoe.
At Venus, inmeritae neptis miserata labores, sic patruo blandita suo est ’o numen aquarum, proxima cui caelo cessit, Neptune, potestas, magna quidem posco, sed tu miserere meorum, iactari quos cernis in Ionio inmenso, et dis adde tuis. aliqua et mihi gratia ponto est, si tamen in medio quondam concreta profundo spuma fui Graiumque manet mihi nomen ab illa.’ adnuit oranti Neptunus et abstulit illis, quod mortale fuit, maiestatemque verendam inposuit nomenque simul faciemque novavit Leucothoeque deum cum matre Palaemona dixit.
The Sidonian companions, following the footprints
as far as they could, saw the last at the brink of the crag;
and, sure of her death, with their palms they beat in mourning
for the house of Cadmus, tearing their hair with their garments,
and reproached the goddess as too little just and too cruel against a rival.
Juno did not bear their reviling, and said: ’I will make you yourselves
the greatest memorials of my cruelty’; the deed followed the word.
For she who had been chief in loyalty, ’I will follow
the queen into the sea,’ she said, and as she went to make her leap
could nowhere stir, and stuck fast, fixed to the rock;
another, while she tries to strike her breast with the wonted beating,
felt her arms grow stiff as she tried;
that one, as she had chanced to stretch her hands toward the sea’s waves,
turned to stone, stretches them, the same hands, toward those same waves;
this one’s fingers, as she tore the seized hair from the crown of her head,
you would have seen suddenly hardened in the hair:
in whatever gesture each was caught, in that she stuck.
Some were made birds, and even now in that gulf
those Ismenian women skim the waters with their wingtips.
as far as they could, saw the last at the brink of the crag;
and, sure of her death, with their palms they beat in mourning
for the house of Cadmus, tearing their hair with their garments,
and reproached the goddess as too little just and too cruel against a rival.
Juno did not bear their reviling, and said: ’I will make you yourselves
the greatest memorials of my cruelty’; the deed followed the word.
For she who had been chief in loyalty, ’I will follow
the queen into the sea,’ she said, and as she went to make her leap
could nowhere stir, and stuck fast, fixed to the rock;
another, while she tries to strike her breast with the wonted beating,
felt her arms grow stiff as she tried;
that one, as she had chanced to stretch her hands toward the sea’s waves,
turned to stone, stretches them, the same hands, toward those same waves;
this one’s fingers, as she tore the seized hair from the crown of her head,
you would have seen suddenly hardened in the hair:
in whatever gesture each was caught, in that she stuck.
Some were made birds, and even now in that gulf
those Ismenian women skim the waters with their wingtips.
Sidoniae comites, quantum valuere secutae signa pedum, primo videre novissima saxo; nec dubium de morte ratae Cadmeida palmis deplanxere domum scissae cum veste capillos, utque parum iustae nimiumque in paelice saevae invidiam fecere deae. convicia Iuno non tulit et ’faciam vos ipsas maxima’ dixit ’saevitiae monimenta meae’; res dicta secuta est. nam quae praecipue fuerat pia, ’persequar’ inquit ’in freta reginam’ saltumque datura moveri haud usquam potuit scopuloque adfixa cohaesit; altera, dum solito temptat plangore ferire pectora, temptatos sensit riguisse lacertos; illa, manus ut forte tetenderat in maris undas; saxea facta manus in easdem porrigit undas; huius, ut arreptum laniabat vertice crinem, duratos subito digitos in crine videres: quo quaeque in gestu deprensa est, haesit in illo. pars volucres factae, quae nunc quoque gurgite in illo aequora destringunt summis Ismenides alis.
The son of Agenor does not know that his daughter and little grandson
are now gods of the sea; overcome by grief and the chain of evils
and by the portents, many as he had seen,
the founder goes out from his own city, as though
the fortune of the place, not his own, weighed him down,
and, driven by long wanderings, he reached with his wife,
both in exile, the Illyrian borders.
And now, heavy with woes and years, while they go back over
the first fates of their house and recount in talk their old toils,
’Was that a sacred serpent,’ Cadmus says, ’pierced
by my spear, back when, setting out from Sidon,
I scattered the viper’s teeth, strange seed, over the ground?
If the gods avenge it with so unerring a wrath,
I pray that I myself be drawn out, a serpent, into a long belly.’
He spoke, and like a serpent is stretched into a long belly,
and feels scales growing over his hardened skin
and his black body mottled with sea-blue spots,
and falls forward upon his breast, and his legs, joined into one,
are drawn out little by little to a rounded point.
His arms still remain: the arms that remain he stretches out,
and with tears flowing over a face still human
’Come, wife, come, most wretched one,’ he said,
’and while something of me is left, touch me, and take my hand
while it is a hand, while the snake does not yet take me whole.’
He, indeed, wishes to say more, but his tongue is suddenly
split in two, and words fail him as he wills them,
and as often as he makes ready to utter some lament,
he hisses: this voice nature has left him.
Striking her bare breast with her hand his wife cries out:
’Cadmus, stay, and strip yourself, unhappy man, of these monstrous shapes!
Cadmus, what is this? Where is your foot, where your shoulders and hands,
your color, your face, and — while I speak — everything? Why do you not
turn me too, you heavenly ones, into the same snake?’
She had spoken; he licked his wife’s face
and went into her dear bosom, as though he knew it,
and gave embraces and sought her familiar neck.
Whoever is there (companions were there) is terrified; but she
strokes the smooth neck of the crested serpent,
and suddenly there are two of them, who creep with intertwined coil,
until they passed into the hiding-places of a nearby grove.
Even now they neither flee from man nor wound him,
and, peaceful serpents, remember what they once were.
are now gods of the sea; overcome by grief and the chain of evils
and by the portents, many as he had seen,
the founder goes out from his own city, as though
the fortune of the place, not his own, weighed him down,
and, driven by long wanderings, he reached with his wife,
both in exile, the Illyrian borders.
And now, heavy with woes and years, while they go back over
the first fates of their house and recount in talk their old toils,
’Was that a sacred serpent,’ Cadmus says, ’pierced
by my spear, back when, setting out from Sidon,
I scattered the viper’s teeth, strange seed, over the ground?
If the gods avenge it with so unerring a wrath,
I pray that I myself be drawn out, a serpent, into a long belly.’
He spoke, and like a serpent is stretched into a long belly,
and feels scales growing over his hardened skin
and his black body mottled with sea-blue spots,
and falls forward upon his breast, and his legs, joined into one,
are drawn out little by little to a rounded point.
His arms still remain: the arms that remain he stretches out,
and with tears flowing over a face still human
’Come, wife, come, most wretched one,’ he said,
’and while something of me is left, touch me, and take my hand
while it is a hand, while the snake does not yet take me whole.’
He, indeed, wishes to say more, but his tongue is suddenly
split in two, and words fail him as he wills them,
and as often as he makes ready to utter some lament,
he hisses: this voice nature has left him.
Striking her bare breast with her hand his wife cries out:
’Cadmus, stay, and strip yourself, unhappy man, of these monstrous shapes!
Cadmus, what is this? Where is your foot, where your shoulders and hands,
your color, your face, and — while I speak — everything? Why do you not
turn me too, you heavenly ones, into the same snake?’
She had spoken; he licked his wife’s face
and went into her dear bosom, as though he knew it,
and gave embraces and sought her familiar neck.
Whoever is there (companions were there) is terrified; but she
strokes the smooth neck of the crested serpent,
and suddenly there are two of them, who creep with intertwined coil,
until they passed into the hiding-places of a nearby grove.
Even now they neither flee from man nor wound him,
and, peaceful serpents, remember what they once were.
Nescit Agenorides natam parvumque nepotem aequoris esse deos; luctu serieque malorum victus et ostentis, quae plurima viderat, exit conditor urbe sua, tamquam fortuna locorum, non sua se premeret, longisque erroribus actus contigit Illyricos profuga cum coniuge fines. iamque malis annisque graves dum prima retractant fata domus releguntque suos sermone labores, ’num sacer ille mea traiectus cuspide serpens’ Cadmus ait ’fuerat, tum cum Sidone profectus vipereos sparsi per humum, nova semina, dentes? quem si cura deum tam certa vindicat ira, ipse precor serpens in longam porrigar alvum.’ dixit, et ut serpens in longam tenditur alvum durataeque cuti squamas increscere sentit nigraque caeruleis variari corpora guttis in pectusque cadit pronus, commissaque in unum paulatim tereti tenuantur acumine crura. bracchia iam restant: quae restant bracchia tendit et lacrimis per adhuc humana fluentibus ora ’accede, o coniunx, accede, miserrima’ dixit, ’dumque aliquid superest de me, me tange manumque accipe, dum manus est, dum non totum occupat anguis.’ ille quidem vult plura loqui, sed lingua repente in partes est fissa duas, nec verba volenti sufficiunt, quotiensque aliquos parat edere questus, sibilat: hanc illi vocem natura reliquit. nuda manu feriens exclamat pectora coniunx: ’Cadme, mane teque, infelix, his exue monstris! Cadme, quid hoc? ubi pes, ubi sunt umerique manusque et color et facies et, dum loquor, omnia? cur non me quoque, caelestes, in eandem vertitis anguem?’ dixerat, ille suae lambebat coniugis ora inque sinus caros, veluti cognosceret, ibat et dabat amplexus adsuetaque colla petebat. quisquis adest (aderant comites), terretur; at illa lubrica permulcet cristati colla draconis, et subito duo sunt iunctoque volumine serpunt, donec in adpositi nemoris subiere latebras, nunc quoque nec fugiunt hominem nec vulnere laedunt quidque prius fuerint, placidi meminere dracones.
Yet to both, for their changed shape, great comfort
had been given by their grandson, whom conquered India
worshipped, whom Achaia honored with raised temples;
only Acrisius, sprung from the same stock,
the son of Abas, is left to bar him from the walls
of the Argive city, and to bear arms against the god,
and not to think him of Jove’s race: for he did not think
Perseus of Jove’s race either, whom Danae had conceived from the golden rain.
Yet soon (so great is the force of truth)
Acrisius repents both of having wronged the god
and of not owning his grandson: the one is already set in heaven,
while the other, bringing back the memorable spoil of the viperous monster,
was cleaving the thin air with whirring wings,
and as the victor hovered above the Libyan sands,
bloody drops fell from the Gorgon’s head;
the ground caught them and quickened them into various snakes,
and from this that land is thronged and infested with serpents.
had been given by their grandson, whom conquered India
worshipped, whom Achaia honored with raised temples;
only Acrisius, sprung from the same stock,
the son of Abas, is left to bar him from the walls
of the Argive city, and to bear arms against the god,
and not to think him of Jove’s race: for he did not think
Perseus of Jove’s race either, whom Danae had conceived from the golden rain.
Yet soon (so great is the force of truth)
Acrisius repents both of having wronged the god
and of not owning his grandson: the one is already set in heaven,
while the other, bringing back the memorable spoil of the viperous monster,
was cleaving the thin air with whirring wings,
and as the victor hovered above the Libyan sands,
bloody drops fell from the Gorgon’s head;
the ground caught them and quickened them into various snakes,
and from this that land is thronged and infested with serpents.
Sed tamen ambobus versae solacia formae magna nepos dederat, quem debellata colebat India, quem positis celebrabat Achaia templis; solus Abantiades ab origine cretus eadem Acrisius superest, qui moenibus arceat urbis Argolicae contraque deum ferat arma genusque non putet esse Iovis: neque enim Iovis esse putabat Persea, quem pluvio Danae conceperat auro. mox tamen Acrisium (tanta est praesentia veri) tam violasse deum quam non agnosse nepotem paenitet: inpositus iam caelo est alter, at alter viperei referens spolium memorabile monstri aera carpebat tenerum stridentibus alis, cumque super Libycas victor penderet harenas, Gorgonei capitis guttae cecidere cruentae; quas humus exceptas varios animavit in angues, unde frequens illa est infestaque terra colubris.
Thence, driven across the vast sky by warring winds,
he is borne now here, now there, like a rain-cloud,
and from the high air looks down on the lands far below
and flies over the whole world.
Three times he saw the cold Bears, three times the Crab’s claws,
often he was swept toward the setting, often toward the rising,
and now, as day was falling, fearing to trust himself to night,
he halted in the western world, the realm of Atlas,
and sought a little rest, until Lucifer should call out
the fires of Aurora, and Aurora the chariot of day.
Here Atlas, son of Iapetus, surpassing all men in his
huge body, stood: under this king were the farthest land
and the sea that puts its waters under the Sun’s panting horses
and takes in his weary axle.
A thousand flocks and as many herds wandered for him
through the grass, and no neighbor’s land pressed his own;
the leaves of his trees, gleaming with radiant gold,
covered golden branches and golden fruit.
’Stranger,’ Perseus said to him, ’if the glory of a great race
touches you, Jove is the author of my race;
or if you are a marveler at deeds, you will marvel at mine;
I ask for hospitality and rest.’ But he was mindful
of an ancient oracle; Parnassian Themis had given this oracle:
’A time will come, Atlas, when your tree will be stripped
of its gold, and a son of Jove will have the glory of that plunder.’
Fearing this, Atlas had shut his orchards within solid
walls and given them to a vast dragon to guard,
and kept all strangers from his borders.
To this one too he says: ’Go far off, lest the glory of deeds
you lie about, and Jove, be far indeed from you!’
and he adds force to his threats, and tries to drive out with his hands
the man who lingered and mingled brave words with gentle.
Weaker in strength (for who could be equal to the strength
of Atlas?), ’Well, since my goodwill counts for little with you,
take this gift!’ he says, and turning himself away, on the left
held out the squalid face of Medusa.
Great as he was, Atlas was made a mountain: for his beard and hair
go off into woods, his shoulders and hands are ridges,
what was before his head is the peak on the mountain-top,
his bones become stone; then, grown high on every side,
he swelled to a vast size (so, gods, you ordained it), and the whole
sky with all its stars came to rest upon him.
he is borne now here, now there, like a rain-cloud,
and from the high air looks down on the lands far below
and flies over the whole world.
Three times he saw the cold Bears, three times the Crab’s claws,
often he was swept toward the setting, often toward the rising,
and now, as day was falling, fearing to trust himself to night,
he halted in the western world, the realm of Atlas,
and sought a little rest, until Lucifer should call out
the fires of Aurora, and Aurora the chariot of day.
Here Atlas, son of Iapetus, surpassing all men in his
huge body, stood: under this king were the farthest land
and the sea that puts its waters under the Sun’s panting horses
and takes in his weary axle.
A thousand flocks and as many herds wandered for him
through the grass, and no neighbor’s land pressed his own;
the leaves of his trees, gleaming with radiant gold,
covered golden branches and golden fruit.
’Stranger,’ Perseus said to him, ’if the glory of a great race
touches you, Jove is the author of my race;
or if you are a marveler at deeds, you will marvel at mine;
I ask for hospitality and rest.’ But he was mindful
of an ancient oracle; Parnassian Themis had given this oracle:
’A time will come, Atlas, when your tree will be stripped
of its gold, and a son of Jove will have the glory of that plunder.’
Fearing this, Atlas had shut his orchards within solid
walls and given them to a vast dragon to guard,
and kept all strangers from his borders.
To this one too he says: ’Go far off, lest the glory of deeds
you lie about, and Jove, be far indeed from you!’
and he adds force to his threats, and tries to drive out with his hands
the man who lingered and mingled brave words with gentle.
Weaker in strength (for who could be equal to the strength
of Atlas?), ’Well, since my goodwill counts for little with you,
take this gift!’ he says, and turning himself away, on the left
held out the squalid face of Medusa.
Great as he was, Atlas was made a mountain: for his beard and hair
go off into woods, his shoulders and hands are ridges,
what was before his head is the peak on the mountain-top,
his bones become stone; then, grown high on every side,
he swelled to a vast size (so, gods, you ordained it), and the whole
sky with all its stars came to rest upon him.
Inde per inmensum ventis discordibus actus nunc huc, nunc illuc exemplo nubis aquosae fertur et ex alto seductas aethere longe despectat terras totumque supervolat orbem. ter gelidas Arctos, ter Cancri bracchia vidit, saepe sub occasus, saepe est ablatus in ortus, iamque cadente die, veritus se credere nocti, constitit Hesperio, regnis Atlantis, in orbe exiguamque petit requiem, dum Lucifer ignes evocet Aurorae, currus Aurora diurnos. hic hominum cunctos ingenti corpore praestans Iapetionides Atlas fuit: ultima tellus rege sub hoc et pontus erat, qui Solis anhelis aequora subdit equis et fessos excipit axes. mille greges illi totidemque armenta per herbas errabant, et humum vicinia nulla premebat; arboreae frondes auro radiante nitentes ex auro ramos, ex auro poma tegebant. ’hospes’ ait Perseus illi, ’seu gloria tangit te generis magni, generis mihi Iuppiter auctor; sive es mirator rerum, mirabere nostras; hospitium requiemque peto.’ memor ille vetustae sortis erat; Themis hanc dederat Parnasia sortem: ’tempus, Atlas, veniet, tua quo spoliabitur auro arbor, et hunc praedae titulum Iove natus habebit.’ id metuens solidis pomaria clauserat Atlas moenibus et vasto dederat servanda draconi arcebatque suis externos finibus omnes. huic quoque ’vade procul, ne longe gloria rerum, quam mentiris’ ait, ’longe tibi Iuppiter absit!’ vimque minis addit manibusque expellere temptat cunctantem et placidis miscentem fortia dictis. viribus inferior (quis enim par esset Atlantis viribus?) ’at, quoniam parvi tibi gratia nostra est, accipe munus!’ ait laevaque a parte Medusae ipse retro versus squalentia protulit ora. quantus erat, mons factus Atlas: nam barba comaeque in silvas abeunt, iuga sunt umerique manusque, quod caput ante fuit, summo est in monte cacumen, ossa lapis fiunt; tum partes altus in omnes crevit in inmensum (sic, di, statuistis) et omne cum tot sideribus caelum requievit in illo.
The son of Hippotes had shut the winds in their Aetnaean prison,
and Lucifer, brightest in the high sky, the summoner to work,
had risen: Perseus binds his wings on again
to both his feet, girds himself with the hooked blade,
and cleaves the clear air with beating ankle-wings.
Leaving behind countless nations round about and below,
he comes in sight of the peoples of the Ethiopians and the fields of Cepheus.
There unjust Ammon had ordered Andromeda, undeserving,
to pay the penalty for her mother’s tongue;
and as soon as the son of Abas saw her, her arms bound
to the hard rocks — but that a light breeze had stirred her hair
and warm tears flowed from her eyes,
he would have thought her a work of marble; unknowing he takes fire,
and is stunned, and seized by the image of the beauty he saw
he all but forgot to beat his wings in the air.
When he had alighted, ’O you,’ he said, ’not worthy of those chains,
but of the chains by which eager lovers are joined,
tell me, who ask, the name of your land and your own,
and why you wear these bonds.’ At first she is silent, and a maiden
does not dare to address a man, and she would have hidden
her modest face with her hands, had she not been bound;
her eyes, what she could do, she filled with welling tears.
As he pressed her again and again, lest she seem unwilling
to confess faults of her own, she tells the name of her land
and her own, and how great had been her mother’s confidence in her beauty;
and before all was told, the wave roared,
and a monster came menacing over the vast sea
and held the broad surface beneath its breast.
The maiden cries out: her grieving father and her mother
together are there, both wretched, but she the more justly,
and they bring no help with them, but tears and beating
fit for the time, and cling to the bound body,
when the stranger thus speaks: ’There can be long time left for tears;
the hour for bringing help is short.
If I sought her, I, Perseus, son of Jove and of her
whom, shut away, Jove filled with fruitful gold,
Perseus the vanquisher of the snake-haired Gorgon, who has dared
on beating wings to go through the airs of heaven,
I should surely be preferred above all as a son-in-law; to such great
gifts I try to add a service too, if only the gods favor me:
that she be mine, saved by my valor — so I bargain.’
They accept the terms (for who would hesitate?), and they entreat him,
and the parents promise a kingdom besides for her dowry.
and Lucifer, brightest in the high sky, the summoner to work,
had risen: Perseus binds his wings on again
to both his feet, girds himself with the hooked blade,
and cleaves the clear air with beating ankle-wings.
Leaving behind countless nations round about and below,
he comes in sight of the peoples of the Ethiopians and the fields of Cepheus.
There unjust Ammon had ordered Andromeda, undeserving,
to pay the penalty for her mother’s tongue;
and as soon as the son of Abas saw her, her arms bound
to the hard rocks — but that a light breeze had stirred her hair
and warm tears flowed from her eyes,
he would have thought her a work of marble; unknowing he takes fire,
and is stunned, and seized by the image of the beauty he saw
he all but forgot to beat his wings in the air.
When he had alighted, ’O you,’ he said, ’not worthy of those chains,
but of the chains by which eager lovers are joined,
tell me, who ask, the name of your land and your own,
and why you wear these bonds.’ At first she is silent, and a maiden
does not dare to address a man, and she would have hidden
her modest face with her hands, had she not been bound;
her eyes, what she could do, she filled with welling tears.
As he pressed her again and again, lest she seem unwilling
to confess faults of her own, she tells the name of her land
and her own, and how great had been her mother’s confidence in her beauty;
and before all was told, the wave roared,
and a monster came menacing over the vast sea
and held the broad surface beneath its breast.
The maiden cries out: her grieving father and her mother
together are there, both wretched, but she the more justly,
and they bring no help with them, but tears and beating
fit for the time, and cling to the bound body,
when the stranger thus speaks: ’There can be long time left for tears;
the hour for bringing help is short.
If I sought her, I, Perseus, son of Jove and of her
whom, shut away, Jove filled with fruitful gold,
Perseus the vanquisher of the snake-haired Gorgon, who has dared
on beating wings to go through the airs of heaven,
I should surely be preferred above all as a son-in-law; to such great
gifts I try to add a service too, if only the gods favor me:
that she be mine, saved by my valor — so I bargain.’
They accept the terms (for who would hesitate?), and they entreat him,
and the parents promise a kingdom besides for her dowry.
Clauserat Hippotades Aetnaeo carcere ventos, admonitorque operum caelo clarissimus alto Lucifer ortus erat: pennis ligat ille resumptis parte ab utraque pedes teloque accingitur unco et liquidum motis talaribus aera findit. gentibus innumeris circumque infraque relictis Aethiopum populos Cepheaque conspicit arva. illic inmeritam maternae pendere linguae Andromedan poenas iniustus iusserat Ammon; quam simul ad duras religatam bracchia cautes vidit Abantiades, nisi quod levis aura capillos moverat et tepido manabant lumina fletu, marmoreum ratus esset opus; trahit inscius ignes et stupet et visae correptus imagine formae paene suas quatere est oblitus in aere pennas. ut stetit, ’o’ dixit ’non istis digna catenis, sed quibus inter se cupidi iunguntur amantes, pande requirenti nomen terraeque tuumque, et cur vincla geras.’ primo silet illa nec audet adpellare virum virgo, manibusque modestos celasset vultus, si non religata fuisset; lumina, quod potuit, lacrimis inplevit obortis. saepius instanti, sua ne delicta fateri nolle videretur, nomen terraeque suumque, quantaque maternae fuerit fiducia formae, indicat, et nondum memoratis omnibus unda insonuit, veniensque inmenso belua ponto inminet et latum sub pectore possidet aequor. conclamat virgo: genitor lugubris et una mater adest, ambo miseri, sed iustius illa, nec secum auxilium, sed dignos tempore fletus plangoremque ferunt vinctoque in corpore adhaerent, cum sic hospes ait ’lacrimarum longa manere tempora vos poterunt, ad opem brevis hora ferendam est. hanc ego si peterem Perseus Iove natus et illa, quam clausam inplevit fecundo Iuppiter auro, Gorgonis anguicomae Perseus superator et alis aerias ausus iactatis ire per auras, praeferrer cunctis certe gener; addere tantis dotibus et meritum, faveant modo numina, tempto: ut mea sit servata mea virtute, paciscor.’ accipiunt legem (quis enim dubitaret?) et orant promittuntque super regnum dotale parentes.
Look — as a ship with its beak set forward, driven on
by the sweating arms of young men, furrows the water,
so the beast, parting the waves with the thrust of its breast;
it was as far from the rocks as a Balearic sling
can send its whirled lead through the mid-sky,
when suddenly the young man, spurning the earth with his feet,
rose high into the clouds: as his shadow was seen on the surface
of the sea, the beast raged at the shadow it saw;
and as the bird of Jove, when in an empty field it has seen
a serpent offering its livid back to the sun,
seizes it from behind, and, lest it twist back its savage jaws,
fixes its greedy talons in the scaly neck,
so, hurled headlong through the void in swift flight,
the descendant of Inachus pressed the beast’s back and, as it roared,
buried his blade up to the curved hook in its right shoulder.
Hurt by the heavy wound, it now lifts itself high
into the air, now plunges beneath the water, now turns
like a fierce boar that a baying pack of hounds dismays.
He, on swift wings, escapes the greedy bites,
and where it lies open — now the back set thick with hollow shells,
now the ribs of its sides, now where the slenderest tail
ends in a fish — he strikes with his hooked sword;
the monster vomits from its mouth waves mixed with crimson blood:
his wings grew heavy, soaked with the spray.
And Perseus, daring no longer to trust his drenched ankle-wings,
caught sight of a rock that stands out at its top
when the waters are still, but is covered when the sea is stirred.
Resting on it and holding the rock’s first ridge with his left hand,
three times, four times he drove the blade again through its flanks.
by the sweating arms of young men, furrows the water,
so the beast, parting the waves with the thrust of its breast;
it was as far from the rocks as a Balearic sling
can send its whirled lead through the mid-sky,
when suddenly the young man, spurning the earth with his feet,
rose high into the clouds: as his shadow was seen on the surface
of the sea, the beast raged at the shadow it saw;
and as the bird of Jove, when in an empty field it has seen
a serpent offering its livid back to the sun,
seizes it from behind, and, lest it twist back its savage jaws,
fixes its greedy talons in the scaly neck,
so, hurled headlong through the void in swift flight,
the descendant of Inachus pressed the beast’s back and, as it roared,
buried his blade up to the curved hook in its right shoulder.
Hurt by the heavy wound, it now lifts itself high
into the air, now plunges beneath the water, now turns
like a fierce boar that a baying pack of hounds dismays.
He, on swift wings, escapes the greedy bites,
and where it lies open — now the back set thick with hollow shells,
now the ribs of its sides, now where the slenderest tail
ends in a fish — he strikes with his hooked sword;
the monster vomits from its mouth waves mixed with crimson blood:
his wings grew heavy, soaked with the spray.
And Perseus, daring no longer to trust his drenched ankle-wings,
caught sight of a rock that stands out at its top
when the waters are still, but is covered when the sea is stirred.
Resting on it and holding the rock’s first ridge with his left hand,
three times, four times he drove the blade again through its flanks.
Ecce, velut navis praefixo concita rostro sulcat aquas iuvenum sudantibus acta lacertis, sic fera dimotis inpulsu pectoris undis; tantum aberat scopulis, quantum Balearica torto funda potest plumbo medii transmittere caeli, cum subito iuvenis pedibus tellure repulsa arduus in nubes abiit: ut in aequore summo umbra viri visa est, visam fera saevit in umbram, utque Iovis praepes, vacuo cum vidit in arvo praebentem Phoebo liventia terga draconem, occupat aversum, neu saeva retorqueat ora, squamigeris avidos figit cervicibus ungues, sic celeri missus praeceps per inane volatu terga ferae pressit dextroque frementis in armo Inachides ferrum curvo tenus abdidit hamo. vulnere laesa gravi modo se sublimis in auras attollit, modo subdit aquis, modo more ferocis versat apri, quem turba canum circumsona terret. ille avidos morsus velocibus effugit alis quaque patet, nunc terga cavis super obsita conchis, nunc laterum costas, nunc qua tenuissima cauda desinit in piscem, falcato verberat ense; belua puniceo mixtos cum sanguine fluctus ore vomit: maduere graves adspergine pennae. nec bibulis ultra Perseus talaribus ausus credere conspexit scopulum, qui vertice summo stantibus exstat aquis, operitur ab aequore moto. nixus eo rupisque tenens iuga prima sinistra ter quater exegit repetita per ilia ferrum.
Shouting and applause filled the shores and the high halls
of the gods above: Cassiope and father Cepheus rejoice
and hail him son-in-law, and own him the help
and the savior of their house; freed from her chains
the maiden comes forward, the prize and the cause of his labor.
He himself washes his victorious hands in water drawn up,
and, lest the hard sand bruise the snake-bearing head,
softens the ground with leaves and strews shoots grown beneath the sea
and lays on them the face of Medusa, daughter of Phorcys.
The fresh shoot, its pith still living and absorbent,
caught the monster’s power, and hardened at its touch,
and took a new stiffness in its branches and leaves.
And the sea-nymphs try the marvelous deed
on more shoots, and delight that the same thing happens,
and scatter the seeds from them again and again through the waves:
even now the same nature has remained in coral,
that it takes hardness from the air at a touch,
and what was a pliant twig in the water becomes stone above it.
of the gods above: Cassiope and father Cepheus rejoice
and hail him son-in-law, and own him the help
and the savior of their house; freed from her chains
the maiden comes forward, the prize and the cause of his labor.
He himself washes his victorious hands in water drawn up,
and, lest the hard sand bruise the snake-bearing head,
softens the ground with leaves and strews shoots grown beneath the sea
and lays on them the face of Medusa, daughter of Phorcys.
The fresh shoot, its pith still living and absorbent,
caught the monster’s power, and hardened at its touch,
and took a new stiffness in its branches and leaves.
And the sea-nymphs try the marvelous deed
on more shoots, and delight that the same thing happens,
and scatter the seeds from them again and again through the waves:
even now the same nature has remained in coral,
that it takes hardness from the air at a touch,
and what was a pliant twig in the water becomes stone above it.
litora cum plausu clamor superasque deorum inplevere domos: gaudent generumque salutant auxiliumque domus servatoremque fatentur Cassiope Cepheusque pater; resoluta catenis incedit virgo, pretiumque et causa laboris. ipse manus hausta victrices abluit unda, anguiferumque caput dura ne laedat harena, mollit humum foliis natasque sub aequore virgas sternit et inponit Phorcynidos ora Medusae. virga recens bibulaque etiamnum viva medulla vim rapuit monstri tactuque induruit huius percepitque novum ramis et fronde rigorem. at pelagi nymphae factum mirabile temptant pluribus in virgis et idem contingere gaudent seminaque ex illis iterant iactata per undas: nunc quoque curaliis eadem natura remansit, duritiam tacto capiant ut ab aere quodque vimen in aequore erat, fiat super aequora saxum.
To three gods he sets up as many altars of turf,
the left for Mercury, the right for you, warlike maiden,
the altar of Jove is in the middle; a heifer is slaughtered for Minerva,
a calf for the wing-footed god, a bull for you, highest of the gods.
At once he carries off Andromeda, dowerless,
as the reward of so great a deed; Hymenaeus and Amor
shake the torches before them; the fires are sated with lavish perfumes,
garlands hang from the roofs, and everywhere lyres
and pipes and song, the happy proofs of a glad heart,
ring out; the golden halls, their doors unbarred,
lie all open, and the lords of the Cephenes
enter the rich-appointed banquet of the king.
the left for Mercury, the right for you, warlike maiden,
the altar of Jove is in the middle; a heifer is slaughtered for Minerva,
a calf for the wing-footed god, a bull for you, highest of the gods.
At once he carries off Andromeda, dowerless,
as the reward of so great a deed; Hymenaeus and Amor
shake the torches before them; the fires are sated with lavish perfumes,
garlands hang from the roofs, and everywhere lyres
and pipes and song, the happy proofs of a glad heart,
ring out; the golden halls, their doors unbarred,
lie all open, and the lords of the Cephenes
enter the rich-appointed banquet of the king.
Dis tribus ille focos totidem de caespite ponit, laevum Mercurio, dextrum tibi, bellica virgo, ara Iovis media est; mactatur vacca Minervae, alipedi vitulus, taurus tibi, summe deorum. protinus Andromedan et tanti praemia facti indotata rapit; taedas Hymenaeus Amorque praecutiunt; largis satiantur odoribus ignes, sertaque dependent tectis et ubique lyraeque tibiaque et cantus, animi felicia laeti argumenta, sonant; reseratis aurea valvis atria tota patent, pulchroque instructa paratu Cepheni proceres ineunt convivia regis.
When, the feast over, they had unbent their spirits
with the gift of generous Bacchus, the descendant of Lynceus asks
about the way of life and the people of those lands,
their customs and the temper of their men; and as soon as he had been told,
’Now, bravest one,’ he said, ’tell me, I pray, Perseus,
by what valor, by what arts you carried off
the head fringed with serpents.’ The son of Agenor tells
that beneath cold Atlas there lies a place
safe in the rampart of a solid mass;
that in its entrance dwelt the two sisters,
the daughters of Phorcys, who shared the use of a single eye;
this, by clever and stealthy guile, while it was being passed across,
he caught, slipping his hand beneath; and through hidden places
far off the track, and rocks bristling with broken woods,
he reached the homes of the Gorgons, and here and there through fields
and along roads saw the images of men and beasts
turned to flint from the sight of Medusa.
Yet he himself, on the bronze of the shield he bore on his left,
beheld the reflected shape of Medusa,
and while heavy sleep held the snakes and her,
he tore the head from the neck; and that winged Pegasus
and his brother were born from the mother’s blood.
He added too the not-false perils of his long course,
what seas, what lands he had seen beneath him from on high,
and what stars he had touched with his beating wings;
yet he fell silent before they looked for it.
with the gift of generous Bacchus, the descendant of Lynceus asks
about the way of life and the people of those lands,
their customs and the temper of their men; and as soon as he had been told,
’Now, bravest one,’ he said, ’tell me, I pray, Perseus,
by what valor, by what arts you carried off
the head fringed with serpents.’ The son of Agenor tells
that beneath cold Atlas there lies a place
safe in the rampart of a solid mass;
that in its entrance dwelt the two sisters,
the daughters of Phorcys, who shared the use of a single eye;
this, by clever and stealthy guile, while it was being passed across,
he caught, slipping his hand beneath; and through hidden places
far off the track, and rocks bristling with broken woods,
he reached the homes of the Gorgons, and here and there through fields
and along roads saw the images of men and beasts
turned to flint from the sight of Medusa.
Yet he himself, on the bronze of the shield he bore on his left,
beheld the reflected shape of Medusa,
and while heavy sleep held the snakes and her,
he tore the head from the neck; and that winged Pegasus
and his brother were born from the mother’s blood.
He added too the not-false perils of his long course,
what seas, what lands he had seen beneath him from on high,
and what stars he had touched with his beating wings;
yet he fell silent before they looked for it.
Postquam epulis functi generosi munere Bacchi diffudere animos, cultusque genusque locorum quaerit Lyncides moresque animumque virorum; qui simul edocuit, ’nunc, o fortissime,’ dixit ’fare, precor, Perseu, quanta virtute quibusque artibus abstuleris crinita draconibus ora!’ narrat Agenorides gelido sub Atlante iacentem esse locum solidae tutum munimine molis; cuius in introitu geminas habitasse sorores Phorcidas unius partitas luminis usum; id se sollerti furtim, dum traditur, astu supposita cepisse manu perque abdita longe deviaque et silvis horrentia saxa fragosis Gorgoneas tetigisse domos passimque per agros perque vias vidisse hominum simulacra ferarumque in silicem ex ipsis visa conversa Medusa. se tamen horrendae clipei, quem laeva gerebat, aere repercusso formam adspexisse Medusae, dumque gravis somnus colubrasque ipsamque tenebat, eripuisse caput collo; pennisque fugacem Pegason et fratrem matris de sanguine natos. Addidit et longi non falsa pericula cursus, quae freta, quas terras sub se vidisset ab alto et quae iactatis tetigisset sidera pennis; ante exspectatum tacuit tamen.
One of the lords took it up, asking why she alone
of the sisters wore snakes mingled in her hair.
The stranger says: ’Since you ask what is worth the telling,
hear the cause of your question. She was of most renowned beauty,
the envied hope of many suitors,
nor in all of her was any part more striking than her hair:
I have found one who said he had seen her.
The ruler of the sea is said to have ravished her
in the temple of Minerva: the daughter of Jove turned away
and covered her chaste face with the aegis, and, lest this go unpunished,
she changed the Gorgon’s hair into foul water-snakes.
Even now, to terrify her stricken foes with dread,
on her breastplate she carries the snakes she made.’
of the sisters wore snakes mingled in her hair.
The stranger says: ’Since you ask what is worth the telling,
hear the cause of your question. She was of most renowned beauty,
the envied hope of many suitors,
nor in all of her was any part more striking than her hair:
I have found one who said he had seen her.
The ruler of the sea is said to have ravished her
in the temple of Minerva: the daughter of Jove turned away
and covered her chaste face with the aegis, and, lest this go unpunished,
she changed the Gorgon’s hair into foul water-snakes.
Even now, to terrify her stricken foes with dread,
on her breastplate she carries the snakes she made.’
excipit unus ex numero procerum quaerens, cur sola sororum gesserit alternis inmixtos crinibus angues. hospes ait: ’quoniam scitaris digna relatu, accipe quaesiti causam. clarissima forma multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum illa, nec in tota conspectior ulla capillis pars fuit: inveni, qui se vidisse referret. hanc pelagi rector templo vitiasse Minervae dicitur: aversa est et castos aegide vultus nata Iovis texit, neve hoc inpune fuisset, Gorgoneum crinem turpes mutavit in hydros. nunc quoque, ut attonitos formidine terreat hostes, pectore in adverso, quos fecit, sustinet angues.’
And while the hero, son of Danae, recounts these things
amid the throng of Cepheus’s people, the royal halls
fill with a roaring crowd — no cry that sings a wedding,
but one that heralds savage war; and the banquet
turned to sudden tumult you might liken to a sea
when the wild rage of the winds frets its calm to fury
and rouses the waves. First among them Phineus,
the reckless author of the war, brandishing
his ash-wood spear with its bronze point: ’See,’ he cries,
’see, I am here, avenger of the bride snatched from me;
and neither your wings nor Jupiter turned to false gold
shall steal you from me!’ As he tries to throw, Cepheus cries,
’What are you doing? What madness, brother, drives you
raging to this crime? Is this the thanks paid
for service so great? With this dowry do you repay
a life saved? It was not Perseus who took her from you —
if you want the truth — but the dread power of the Nereids,
but horned Ammon, but the sea-beast that came
to be glutted on flesh of my own body; she was lost to you
at the very hour she was to die, unless, cruel man,
you demand precisely this — that she perish — and would ease
your grief with ours. It is not enough, I suppose,
that she was bound while you looked on, and that you,
her uncle and betrothed, brought no help; will you grieve
besides that she was saved by anyone at all,
and tear his prize away? If she seems to you so great,
you should have sought her on those rocks where she hung chained.
Now let the man who sought her — through whom my old age
is not left childless — bear what was pledged by both
desert and word, and understand he was preferred
not over you, but over certain death.’ Phineus said nothing
in answer, but, glancing from Cepheus to Perseus and back,
did not know which to strike, this man or that; and after
a brief delay he hurled his spear, whirled with all the force
that rage could give — in vain — at Perseus. When it stuck
fast in the couch, then at last Perseus sprang from the cushions
and, fierce, with the weapon sent back would have burst
the hostile breast, had Phineus not gone behind the altars:
and — the outrage of it — the altar served a criminal.
Yet the point lodged, not idle, in Rhoetus’s brow,
who, when he fell and the iron was wrenched from the bone,
kicks out and spatters the laid tables with his blood.
Then indeed the mob blazes into ungovernable rage,
and they hurl their weapons; and there are those who say
Cepheus must die together with his son-in-law.
But Cepheus had gone out across his threshold, calling
to witness justice and good faith and the gods of welcome
that this was set in motion against his will.
Warlike Pallas is at hand, shields her brother
with the aegis, and gives him heart.
amid the throng of Cepheus’s people, the royal halls
fill with a roaring crowd — no cry that sings a wedding,
but one that heralds savage war; and the banquet
turned to sudden tumult you might liken to a sea
when the wild rage of the winds frets its calm to fury
and rouses the waves. First among them Phineus,
the reckless author of the war, brandishing
his ash-wood spear with its bronze point: ’See,’ he cries,
’see, I am here, avenger of the bride snatched from me;
and neither your wings nor Jupiter turned to false gold
shall steal you from me!’ As he tries to throw, Cepheus cries,
’What are you doing? What madness, brother, drives you
raging to this crime? Is this the thanks paid
for service so great? With this dowry do you repay
a life saved? It was not Perseus who took her from you —
if you want the truth — but the dread power of the Nereids,
but horned Ammon, but the sea-beast that came
to be glutted on flesh of my own body; she was lost to you
at the very hour she was to die, unless, cruel man,
you demand precisely this — that she perish — and would ease
your grief with ours. It is not enough, I suppose,
that she was bound while you looked on, and that you,
her uncle and betrothed, brought no help; will you grieve
besides that she was saved by anyone at all,
and tear his prize away? If she seems to you so great,
you should have sought her on those rocks where she hung chained.
Now let the man who sought her — through whom my old age
is not left childless — bear what was pledged by both
desert and word, and understand he was preferred
not over you, but over certain death.’ Phineus said nothing
in answer, but, glancing from Cepheus to Perseus and back,
did not know which to strike, this man or that; and after
a brief delay he hurled his spear, whirled with all the force
that rage could give — in vain — at Perseus. When it stuck
fast in the couch, then at last Perseus sprang from the cushions
and, fierce, with the weapon sent back would have burst
the hostile breast, had Phineus not gone behind the altars:
and — the outrage of it — the altar served a criminal.
Yet the point lodged, not idle, in Rhoetus’s brow,
who, when he fell and the iron was wrenched from the bone,
kicks out and spatters the laid tables with his blood.
Then indeed the mob blazes into ungovernable rage,
and they hurl their weapons; and there are those who say
Cepheus must die together with his son-in-law.
But Cepheus had gone out across his threshold, calling
to witness justice and good faith and the gods of welcome
that this was set in motion against his will.
Warlike Pallas is at hand, shields her brother
with the aegis, and gives him heart.
Dumque ea Cephenum medio Danaeius heros agmine commemorat, fremida regalia turba atria conplentur, nec coniugialia festa qui canat est clamor, sed qui fera nuntiet arma; inque repentinos convivia versa tumultus adsimilare freto possis, quod saeva quietum ventorum rabies motis exasperat undis. primus in his Phineus, belli temerarius auctor, fraxineam quatiens aeratae cuspidis hastam ’en’ ait, ’en adsum praereptae coniugis ultor; nec mihi te pennae nec falsum versus in aurum Iuppiter eripiet!’ conanti mittere Cepheus ’quid facis?’ exclamat, ’quae te, germane, furentem mens agit in facinus? meritisne haec gratia tantis redditur? hac vitam servatae dote rependis? quam tibi non Perseus, verum si quaeris, ademit, sed grave Nereidum numen, sed corniger Ammon, sed quae visceribus veniebat belua ponti exsaturanda meis; illo tibi tempore rapta est, quo peritura fuit, nisi si, crudelis, id ipsum exigis, ut pereat, luctuque levabere nostro. scilicet haud satis est, quod te spectante revincta est et nullam quod opem patruus sponsusve tulisti; insuper, a quoquam quod sit servata, dolebis praemiaque eripies? quae si tibi magna videntur, ex illis scopulis, ubi erant adfixa, petisses. nunc sine, qui petiit, per quem haec non orba senectus, ferre, quod et meritis et voce est pactus, eumque non tibi, sed certae praelatum intellege morti.’ Ille nihil contra, sed et hunc et Persea vultu alterno spectans petat hunc ignorat an illum: cunctatusque brevi contortam viribus hastam, quantas ira dabat, nequiquam in Persea misit. ut stetit illa toro, stratis tum denique Perseus exsiluit teloque ferox inimica remisso pectora rupisset, nisi post altaria Phineus isset: et (indignum) scelerato profuit ara. fronte tamen Rhoeti non inrita cuspis adhaesit, qui postquam cecidit ferrumque ex osse revulsum est calcitrat et positas adspergit sanguine mensas. tum vero indomitas ardescit vulgus in iras, telaque coniciunt, et sunt, qui Cephea dicunt cum genero debere mori; sed limine tecti exierat Cepheus testatus iusque fidemque hospitiique deos, ea se prohibente moveri. bellica Pallas adest et protegit aegide fratrem datque animos.
There was an Indian, Athis, whom Limnaee — sprung
from the river Ganges — is believed to have borne
beneath the glassy waves: outstanding in beauty,
which he heightened with rich attire, still whole
in twice eight years, dressed in a Tyrian cloak
a golden border ran around; a chain of gold
adorned his throat, and a curved clasp his hair, wet with myrrh.
He was trained to pierce whatever stood far off
with the cast javelin, but trained better to draw the bow.
Then too, as he bent the pliant horns with his hand, Perseus
struck him with a brand that lay smoking on the altar’s middle
and crushed his face into the shattered bones.
When the Assyrian Lycabas saw him toss in his blood
that face all had praised — Lycabas, bound to him closest,
his companion, and no concealer of a true love —
after he had wept for Athis breathing out
his life beneath the bitter wound, he caught up the bow
that Athis had been bending, and said, ’With me
now be your contest! You shall not long rejoice
in the boy’s death, by which you win more hatred than praise.’
He had not yet said all this: the piercing shaft
leapt from the string and, though dodged, hung caught
in the folds of the robe. Against him the heir of Acrisius
turned the hooked sword proven in Medusa’s killing
and drove it into his breast; but he, already dying,
with eyes swimming under black night, looked round
for Athis, leaned himself against him, and carried
to the shades the comfort of a death shared.
from the river Ganges — is believed to have borne
beneath the glassy waves: outstanding in beauty,
which he heightened with rich attire, still whole
in twice eight years, dressed in a Tyrian cloak
a golden border ran around; a chain of gold
adorned his throat, and a curved clasp his hair, wet with myrrh.
He was trained to pierce whatever stood far off
with the cast javelin, but trained better to draw the bow.
Then too, as he bent the pliant horns with his hand, Perseus
struck him with a brand that lay smoking on the altar’s middle
and crushed his face into the shattered bones.
When the Assyrian Lycabas saw him toss in his blood
that face all had praised — Lycabas, bound to him closest,
his companion, and no concealer of a true love —
after he had wept for Athis breathing out
his life beneath the bitter wound, he caught up the bow
that Athis had been bending, and said, ’With me
now be your contest! You shall not long rejoice
in the boy’s death, by which you win more hatred than praise.’
He had not yet said all this: the piercing shaft
leapt from the string and, though dodged, hung caught
in the folds of the robe. Against him the heir of Acrisius
turned the hooked sword proven in Medusa’s killing
and drove it into his breast; but he, already dying,
with eyes swimming under black night, looked round
for Athis, leaned himself against him, and carried
to the shades the comfort of a death shared.
Erat Indus Athis, quem flumine Gange edita Limnaee vitreis peperisse sub undis creditur, egregius forma, quam divite cultu augebat, bis adhuc octonis integer annis, indutus chlamydem Tyriam, quam limbus obibat aureus; ornabant aurata monilia collum et madidos murra curvum crinale capillos; ille quidem iaculo quamvis distantia misso figere doctus erat, sed tendere doctior arcus. tum quoque lenta manu flectentem cornua Perseus stipite, qui media positus fumabat in ara, perculit et fractis confudit in ossibus ora. Hunc ubi laudatos iactantem in sanguine vultus Assyrius vidit Lycabas, iunctissimus illi et comes et veri non dissimulator amoris, postquam exhalantem sub acerbo vulnere vitam deploravit Athin, quos ille tetenderat arcus arripit et ’mecum tibi sint certamina!’ dixit; ’nec longum pueri fato laetabere, quo plus invidiae quam laudis habes.’ haec omnia nondum dixerat: emicuit nervo penetrabile telum vitatumque tamen sinuosa veste pependit. vertit in hunc harpen spectatam caede Medusae Acrisioniades adigitque in pectus; at ille iam moriens oculis sub nocte natantibus atra circumspexit Athin seque adclinavit ad illum et tulit ad manes iunctae solacia mortis.
Look — Phorbas of Syene, son of Metion, and the Libyan
Amphimedon, eager to join the fight, had slipped
and fallen in the blood that, soaking the ground far and wide,
lay warm; as they rose the sword met them, driven
into the ribs of one, into the throat of Phorbas.
But Erytus, son of Actor, whose weapon was the broad
two-edged axe, Perseus did not attack with the hooked sword:
a huge mixing-bowl, standing high with raised reliefs
and heavy with its mass of metal, he lifts in both hands
and dashes on the man; the man spews scarlet gore
and, toppling backward, beats the ground with dying head.
Then he lays low Polydegmon, sprung of Semiramis’s blood,
and Caucasian Abaris, and Lycetus son of Sperchios,
and Helix of the unshorn hair, and Phlegyas, and Clytus,
and treads the heaped-up piles of the dying.
And Phineus, not daring to close with his foe hand to hand,
flings a javelin, which a straying aim carried to Idas,
who had kept clear of the war in vain and followed neither side.
He, watching grim Phineus with savage eyes,
says, ’Since I am dragged onto a side, take, Phineus,
the enemy you have made, and pay this wound with a wound!’
And now about to send back the spear drawn from his body,
he fell, collapsing on limbs drained of their blood.
Then too Hodites, first of the Cephenes after the king,
lies slain by Clymenus’s sword; Hypseus strikes Prothoenor down,
and Lynceus’s heir strikes Hypseus. Among them was
aged Emathion as well, a keeper of right
and fearful of the gods, who, since his years forbade him
to fight, does battle with words: he steps forth and curses
the wicked weapons; as he clasps the altar
with trembling hands, Chromis strikes off his head
with the sword. It fell straight onto the altar, and there,
with half-living tongue, uttered words of cursing
and breathed its life out into the very flames.
Amphimedon, eager to join the fight, had slipped
and fallen in the blood that, soaking the ground far and wide,
lay warm; as they rose the sword met them, driven
into the ribs of one, into the throat of Phorbas.
But Erytus, son of Actor, whose weapon was the broad
two-edged axe, Perseus did not attack with the hooked sword:
a huge mixing-bowl, standing high with raised reliefs
and heavy with its mass of metal, he lifts in both hands
and dashes on the man; the man spews scarlet gore
and, toppling backward, beats the ground with dying head.
Then he lays low Polydegmon, sprung of Semiramis’s blood,
and Caucasian Abaris, and Lycetus son of Sperchios,
and Helix of the unshorn hair, and Phlegyas, and Clytus,
and treads the heaped-up piles of the dying.
And Phineus, not daring to close with his foe hand to hand,
flings a javelin, which a straying aim carried to Idas,
who had kept clear of the war in vain and followed neither side.
He, watching grim Phineus with savage eyes,
says, ’Since I am dragged onto a side, take, Phineus,
the enemy you have made, and pay this wound with a wound!’
And now about to send back the spear drawn from his body,
he fell, collapsing on limbs drained of their blood.
Then too Hodites, first of the Cephenes after the king,
lies slain by Clymenus’s sword; Hypseus strikes Prothoenor down,
and Lynceus’s heir strikes Hypseus. Among them was
aged Emathion as well, a keeper of right
and fearful of the gods, who, since his years forbade him
to fight, does battle with words: he steps forth and curses
the wicked weapons; as he clasps the altar
with trembling hands, Chromis strikes off his head
with the sword. It fell straight onto the altar, and there,
with half-living tongue, uttered words of cursing
and breathed its life out into the very flames.
Ecce Syenites, genitus Metione, Phorbas et Libys Amphimedon, avidi committere pugman, sanguine, quo late tellus madefacta tepebat, conciderant lapsi; surgentibus obstitit ensis, alterius costis, iugulo Phorbantis adactus. At non Actoriden Erytum, cui lata bipennis telum erat, hamato Perseus petit ense, sed altis exstantem signis multaeque in pondere massae ingentem manibus tollit cratera duabus infligitque viro; rutilum vomit ille cruorem et resupinus humum moribundo vertice pulsat. inde Semiramio Polydegmona sanguine cretum Caucasiumque Abarin Sperchionidenque Lycetum intonsumque comas Helicen Phlegyanque Clytumque sternit et exstructos morientum calcat acervos. Nec Phineus ausus concurrere comminus hosti intorquet iaculum, quod detulit error in Idan, expertem frustra belli et neutra arma secutum. ille tuens oculis inmitem Phinea torvis ’quandoquidem in partes’ ait ’abstrahor, accipe, Phineu, quem fecisti, hostem pensaque hoc vulnere vulnus!’ iamque remissurus tractum de corpore telum sanguine defectos cecidit conlapsus in artus. Tum quoque Cephenum post regem primus Hodites ense iacet Clymeni, Prothoenora percutit Hypseus, Hypsea Lyncides. fuit et grandaevus in illis Emathion, aequi cultor timidusque deorum, qui, quoniam prohibent anni bellare, loquendo pugnat et incessit scelerataque devovet arma; huic Chromis amplexo tremulis altaria palmis decutit ense caput, quod protinus incidit arae atque ibi semianimi verba exsecrantia lingua edidit et medios animam exspiravit in ignes.
Next the twin brothers Broteas and Ammon, unbeaten
with the boxing-gloves — if swords could be beaten by gloves —
fell by Phineus’s hand, and Ampycus, priest of Ceres,
his temples veiled with a white fillet; you too,
Lampetides, not meant for uses such as these,
but to stir the lyre with your voice, the work of peace —
you had been bidden to grace the feast and festival with song.
As he stood apart, holding the unwarlike plectrum,
Pedasus mocked him: ’Sing the rest,’ he said, ’to the shades
of Styx!’ and fixed his point in the left temple;
he fell, and with dying fingers plucked again
the strings of the lyre, and by his fall struck a piteous tune.
Fierce Lycormas would not let him fall unavenged:
wrenching the stout bar from the right doorpost
he smashed it into the bones of the man’s neck, and he
sank to the earth like a slaughtered bullock.
Pelates of the Cinyps was trying to tear the timber
from the left post too; as he tried, his right hand
was pinned by the spear-point of Corythus the Marmarid
and stuck to the wood; as he hung there, Abas pierced
his side, and he did not fall, but, dying, hung from the post
by the very hand that held him. Melaneus too is laid low,
who had followed Perseus’s camp, and Dorylas,
richest in Nasamonian land — Dorylas, rich in acres,
than whom no other had owned wider fields
or stacked up so many heaps of incense.
Into his groin, struck aslant, the iron stood fast:
a death-dealing spot. When the author of the wound,
Bactrian Halcyoneus, saw him gasp out his life
and roll his eyes, ’Of all your lands,’ he said,
’keep this much earth that you press!’ and left
the bloodless body. Against him the avenger, son of Abas,
hurls the spear snatched from the warm wound;
caught in the middle of the nose, it was driven out
through the neck and juts on either side; and while
Fortune aids his hand, he felled Clytius and Clanis,
born of one mother, with unlike wounds: for through
both of Clytius’s thighs the ash, poised by his strong arm,
was driven; Clanis bit the javelin with his mouth.
Celadon of Mendes fell too; Astreus fell,
born of a Palestinian mother and a doubtful father;
and Aethion, once shrewd to foresee what was to come,
now cheated by a false omen; and the king’s armor-bearer
Thoactes, and Agyrtes, infamous for his murdered father.
with the boxing-gloves — if swords could be beaten by gloves —
fell by Phineus’s hand, and Ampycus, priest of Ceres,
his temples veiled with a white fillet; you too,
Lampetides, not meant for uses such as these,
but to stir the lyre with your voice, the work of peace —
you had been bidden to grace the feast and festival with song.
As he stood apart, holding the unwarlike plectrum,
Pedasus mocked him: ’Sing the rest,’ he said, ’to the shades
of Styx!’ and fixed his point in the left temple;
he fell, and with dying fingers plucked again
the strings of the lyre, and by his fall struck a piteous tune.
Fierce Lycormas would not let him fall unavenged:
wrenching the stout bar from the right doorpost
he smashed it into the bones of the man’s neck, and he
sank to the earth like a slaughtered bullock.
Pelates of the Cinyps was trying to tear the timber
from the left post too; as he tried, his right hand
was pinned by the spear-point of Corythus the Marmarid
and stuck to the wood; as he hung there, Abas pierced
his side, and he did not fall, but, dying, hung from the post
by the very hand that held him. Melaneus too is laid low,
who had followed Perseus’s camp, and Dorylas,
richest in Nasamonian land — Dorylas, rich in acres,
than whom no other had owned wider fields
or stacked up so many heaps of incense.
Into his groin, struck aslant, the iron stood fast:
a death-dealing spot. When the author of the wound,
Bactrian Halcyoneus, saw him gasp out his life
and roll his eyes, ’Of all your lands,’ he said,
’keep this much earth that you press!’ and left
the bloodless body. Against him the avenger, son of Abas,
hurls the spear snatched from the warm wound;
caught in the middle of the nose, it was driven out
through the neck and juts on either side; and while
Fortune aids his hand, he felled Clytius and Clanis,
born of one mother, with unlike wounds: for through
both of Clytius’s thighs the ash, poised by his strong arm,
was driven; Clanis bit the javelin with his mouth.
Celadon of Mendes fell too; Astreus fell,
born of a Palestinian mother and a doubtful father;
and Aethion, once shrewd to foresee what was to come,
now cheated by a false omen; and the king’s armor-bearer
Thoactes, and Agyrtes, infamous for his murdered father.
Hinc gemini fratres Broteasque et caestibus Ammon invicti, vinci si possent caestibus enses, Phinea cecidere manu Cererisque sacerdos Ampycus albenti velatus tempora vitta, tu quoque, Lampetide, non hos adhibendus ad usus, sed qui, pacis opus, citharam cum voce moveres; iussus eras celebrare dapes festumque canendo. quem procul adstantem plectrumque inbelle tenentem Pedasus inridens ’Stygiis cane cetera’ dixit ’manibus!’ et laevo mucronem tempore fixit; concidit et digitis morientibus ille retemptat fila lyrae, casuque ferit miserabile carmen. nec sinit hunc inpune ferox cecidisse Lycormas raptaque de dextro robusta repagula posti ossibus inlisit mediae cervicis, at ille procubuit terrae mactati more iuvenci. demere temptabat laevi quoque robora postis Cinyphius Pelates; temptanti dextera fixa est cuspide Marmaridae Corythi lignoque cohaesit; haerenti latus hausit Abas, nec corruit ille, sed retinente manum moriens e poste pependit. sternitur et Melaneus, Perseia castra secutus, et Nasamoniaci Dorylas ditissimus agri, dives agri Dorylas, quo non possederat alter latius aut totidem tollebat turis acervos. huius in obliquo missum stetit inguine ferrum: letifer ille locus. quem postquam vulneris auctor singultantem animam et versantem lumina vidit Bactrius Halcyoneus, ’hoc, quod premis,’ inquit ’habeto de tot agris terrae!’ corpusque exsangue reliquit. torquet in hunc hastam calido de vulnere raptam ultor Abantiades; media quae nare recepta cervice exacta est in partesque eminet ambas; dumque manum Fortuna iuvat, Clytiumque Claninque, matre satos una, diverso vulnere fudit: nam Clytii per utrumque gravi librata lacerto fraxinus acta femur, iaculum Clanis ore momordit. occidit et Celadon Mendesius, occidit Astreus matre Palaestina dubio genitore creatus, Aethionque sagax quondam ventura videre, tunc ave deceptus falsa, regisque Thoactes armiger et caeso genitore infamis Agyrtes.
Yet more remains than has been spent; for the will of all
is to crush one man: the sworn ranks fight on every side
for a cause that assails both desert and good faith.
On this side his father-in-law, loyal in vain, and the new bride
with her mother take his part and fill the halls with wailing;
but the clash of arms drowns them, and the groans of the falling,
and Bellona at once drenches the polluted household gods
with streams of blood and stirs the battle up afresh.
Phineus and the thousand who followed Phineus
ring one man round: the weapons fly, thicker than winter hail,
past either flank, past his very eyes and ears.
He sets his shoulders against the stone of a great column
and, his back made safe, turned to face the ranks before him,
holds off their press: on the left pressed Molpeus of Chaonia,
on the right Ethemon the Nabataean.
As a tigress, goaded by hunger, hearing from valleys
on either side the lowing of two herds,
does not know at which to rush, and burns to rush at both,
so Perseus, unsure whether to bear right or left,
put Molpeus off with a wound that pierced his leg
and was content to see him flee; for Ethemon gives
no time, but rages, and, longing to deal a wound
to the high neck, with strength he never measured
swung the sword full force and broke it
on the column’s outer edge: the blade sprang off
and lodged in its own master’s throat.
Yet that stroke gave no cause strong enough for death;
Perseus ran him through — trembling, stretching out
his unarmed arms in vain — with the Cyllenian sword.
is to crush one man: the sworn ranks fight on every side
for a cause that assails both desert and good faith.
On this side his father-in-law, loyal in vain, and the new bride
with her mother take his part and fill the halls with wailing;
but the clash of arms drowns them, and the groans of the falling,
and Bellona at once drenches the polluted household gods
with streams of blood and stirs the battle up afresh.
Phineus and the thousand who followed Phineus
ring one man round: the weapons fly, thicker than winter hail,
past either flank, past his very eyes and ears.
He sets his shoulders against the stone of a great column
and, his back made safe, turned to face the ranks before him,
holds off their press: on the left pressed Molpeus of Chaonia,
on the right Ethemon the Nabataean.
As a tigress, goaded by hunger, hearing from valleys
on either side the lowing of two herds,
does not know at which to rush, and burns to rush at both,
so Perseus, unsure whether to bear right or left,
put Molpeus off with a wound that pierced his leg
and was content to see him flee; for Ethemon gives
no time, but rages, and, longing to deal a wound
to the high neck, with strength he never measured
swung the sword full force and broke it
on the column’s outer edge: the blade sprang off
and lodged in its own master’s throat.
Yet that stroke gave no cause strong enough for death;
Perseus ran him through — trembling, stretching out
his unarmed arms in vain — with the Cyllenian sword.
Plus tamen exhausto superest; namque omnibus unum opprimere est animus, coniurata undique pugnant agmina pro causa meritum inpugnante fidemque; hac pro parte socer frustra pius et nova coniunx cum genetrice favent ululatuque atria conplent, sed sonus armorum superat gemitusque cadentum, pollutosque simul multo Bellona penates sanguine perfundit renovataque proelia miscet. Circueunt unum Phineus et mille secuti Phinea: tela volant hiberna grandine plura praeter utrumque latus praeterque et lumen et aures. adplicat hic umeros ad magnae saxa columnae tutaque terga gerens adversaque in agmina versus sustinet instantes: instabat parte sinistra Chaonius Molpeus, dextra Nabataeus Ethemon. tigris ut auditis diversa valle duorum exstimulata fame mugitibus armentorum nescit, utro potius ruat, et ruere ardet utroque, sic dubius Perseus, dextra laevane feratur, Molpea traiecti submovit vulnere cruris contentusque fuga est; neque enim dat tempus Ethemon, sed furit et cupiens alto dare vulnera collo non circumspectis exactum viribus ensem fregit, in extrema percussae parte columnae: lamina dissiluit dominique in gutture fixa est. non tamen ad letum causas satis illa valentes plaga dedit; trepidum Perseus et inermia frustra bracchia tendentem Cyllenide confodit harpe.
But when he saw his valor giving way before the crowd,
’Since you yourselves compel it so,’ said Perseus,
’I will seek help from an enemy: turn your faces away,
if any friend is here!’ and raised the Gorgon’s head.
’Look for another whom your marvels may move,’ said
Thescelus; and as his hand made ready to throw
the fatal javelin, in that gesture he stuck, a marble man.
Next to him Ampyx aimed his sword at the breast,
so full of high spirit, of Lynceus’s heir:
and in the aiming his right hand stiffened, moved neither back nor on.
But Nileus, who had falsely claimed to be sprung
from the sevenfold Nile, and on his shield had chased
the seven streams, part in silver, part in gold —
’Look, Perseus,’ he says, ’on the founts of my race:
you will carry great comfort to the silent shades of death,
that you fell by so great a man’; the last of his voice
was choked off mid-sound, and you would think
the opened mouth still meant to speak — but it is no longer
a road for words. Eryx upbraids them: ’It is by fault
of spirit, not by the Gorgon’s power, that you are frozen,’
he says. ’Charge with me, and throw to the ground
this youth who wields his magic weapons!’ He was about to charge:
the earth held his steps, and he stayed an unmoving flint,
an armed image. These, though, paid a deserved penalty;
but one was a soldier of Perseus: as he fought for him,
Aconteus, catching the Gorgon’s eye, hardened
into rock that rose about him; Astyages, thinking him
still alive, struck him with his long sword:
the sword rang out with shrill clangs. While Astyages
stands amazed, he took on the same nature,
and the look of wonder stays on his marble face.
To name the men of the common rank would be long delay:
two hundred bodies remained for the battle;
at the Gorgon’s sight two hundred bodies froze.
’Since you yourselves compel it so,’ said Perseus,
’I will seek help from an enemy: turn your faces away,
if any friend is here!’ and raised the Gorgon’s head.
’Look for another whom your marvels may move,’ said
Thescelus; and as his hand made ready to throw
the fatal javelin, in that gesture he stuck, a marble man.
Next to him Ampyx aimed his sword at the breast,
so full of high spirit, of Lynceus’s heir:
and in the aiming his right hand stiffened, moved neither back nor on.
But Nileus, who had falsely claimed to be sprung
from the sevenfold Nile, and on his shield had chased
the seven streams, part in silver, part in gold —
’Look, Perseus,’ he says, ’on the founts of my race:
you will carry great comfort to the silent shades of death,
that you fell by so great a man’; the last of his voice
was choked off mid-sound, and you would think
the opened mouth still meant to speak — but it is no longer
a road for words. Eryx upbraids them: ’It is by fault
of spirit, not by the Gorgon’s power, that you are frozen,’
he says. ’Charge with me, and throw to the ground
this youth who wields his magic weapons!’ He was about to charge:
the earth held his steps, and he stayed an unmoving flint,
an armed image. These, though, paid a deserved penalty;
but one was a soldier of Perseus: as he fought for him,
Aconteus, catching the Gorgon’s eye, hardened
into rock that rose about him; Astyages, thinking him
still alive, struck him with his long sword:
the sword rang out with shrill clangs. While Astyages
stands amazed, he took on the same nature,
and the look of wonder stays on his marble face.
To name the men of the common rank would be long delay:
two hundred bodies remained for the battle;
at the Gorgon’s sight two hundred bodies froze.
Verum ubi virtutem turbae succumbere vidit, ’auxilium’ Perseus, ’quoniam sic cogitis ipsi,’ dixit ’ab hoste petam: vultus avertite vestros, si quis amicus adest!’ et Gorgonis extulit ora. ’quaere alium, tua quem moveant miracula’ dixit Thescelus; utque manu iaculum fatale parabat mittere, in hoc haesit signum de marmore gestu. proximus huic Ampyx animi plenissima magni pectora Lyncidae gladio petit: inque petendo dextera diriguit nec citra mota nec ultra est. at Nileus, qui se genitum septemplice Nilo ementitus erat, clipeo quoque flumina septem argento partim, partim caelaverat auro, ’adspice’ ait ’Perseu, nostrae primordia gentis: magna feres tacitas solacia mortis ad umbras, a tanto cecidisse viro’; pars ultima vocis in medio suppressa sono est, adapertaque velle ora loqui credas, nec sunt ea pervia verbis. increpat hos ’vitio’ que ’animi, non viribus’ inquit ’Gorgoneis torpetis’ Eryx. ’incurrite mecum et prosternite humi iuvenem magica arma moventem!’ incursurus erat: tenuit vestigia tellus, inmotusque silex armataque mansit imago. Hi tamen ex merito poenas subiere, sed unus miles erat Persei: pro quo dum pugnat, Aconteus Gorgone conspecta saxo concrevit oborto; quem ratus Astyages etiamnum vivere, longo ense ferit: sonuit tinnitibus ensis acutis. dum stupet Astyages, naturam traxit eandem, marmoreoque manet vultus mirantis in ore. nomina longa mora est media de plebe virorum dicere: bis centum restabant corpora pugnae, Gorgone bis centum riguerunt corpora visa.
Then at last Phineus repents the unjust war;
but what is he to do? He sees the statues
in their various postures, knows his own men,
and, calling each by name, begs his help, and, scarce believing,
touches the bodies nearest him: they were marble.
He turns away, and so, a suppliant, stretching out
confessing hands and arms held sidelong,
’You win,’ he says, ’Perseus! Take away your monsters,
and the stone-making face of your Medusa, whatever she is,
take it away, I beg! It was not hatred or a lust
for a kingdom that drove us to war — for a bride
we took up arms! Your cause was the better in desert,
ours in time: it grieves me only that I did not yield.
Grant me nothing, O bravest, but this breath of life;
let all the rest be yours!’ To him, as he said this,
not daring even to look back at the man he begged,
’What I can grant, most cowardly Phineus,
and it is a great gift to a coward,’ he says,
’put off your fear: I will grant it — you shall be harmed
by no iron. Nay more, I will give you a monument
to last through the ages, and in the house of my father-in-law
you shall always be seen, that my wife may console herself
with the image of her betrothed.’ He spoke, and shifted
the daughter of Phorcys to that side toward which
Phineus had turned his frightened face. Then too,
as he tried to turn his eyes aside, his neck
stiffened, and the moisture of his eyes hardened to stone;
yet the frightened mouth, the suppliant look in the marble,
the lowered hands, the guilty face remained.
but what is he to do? He sees the statues
in their various postures, knows his own men,
and, calling each by name, begs his help, and, scarce believing,
touches the bodies nearest him: they were marble.
He turns away, and so, a suppliant, stretching out
confessing hands and arms held sidelong,
’You win,’ he says, ’Perseus! Take away your monsters,
and the stone-making face of your Medusa, whatever she is,
take it away, I beg! It was not hatred or a lust
for a kingdom that drove us to war — for a bride
we took up arms! Your cause was the better in desert,
ours in time: it grieves me only that I did not yield.
Grant me nothing, O bravest, but this breath of life;
let all the rest be yours!’ To him, as he said this,
not daring even to look back at the man he begged,
’What I can grant, most cowardly Phineus,
and it is a great gift to a coward,’ he says,
’put off your fear: I will grant it — you shall be harmed
by no iron. Nay more, I will give you a monument
to last through the ages, and in the house of my father-in-law
you shall always be seen, that my wife may console herself
with the image of her betrothed.’ He spoke, and shifted
the daughter of Phorcys to that side toward which
Phineus had turned his frightened face. Then too,
as he tried to turn his eyes aside, his neck
stiffened, and the moisture of his eyes hardened to stone;
yet the frightened mouth, the suppliant look in the marble,
the lowered hands, the guilty face remained.
Paenitet iniusti tum denique Phinea belli; sed quid agat? simulacra videt diversa figuris adgnoscitque suos et nomine quemque vocatum poscit opem credensque parum sibi proxima tangit corpora: marmor erant; avertitur atque ita supplex confessasque manus obliquaque bracchia tendens ’vincis’ ait, ’Perseu! remove tua monstra tuaeque saxificos vultus, quaecumque est, tolle Medusae, tolle, precor! non nos odium regnique cupido conpulit ad bellum, pro coniuge movimus arma! causa fuit meritis melior tua, tempore nostra: non cessisse piget; nihil, o fortissime, praeter hanc animam concede mihi, tua cetera sunto!’ talia dicenti neque eum, quem voce rogabat, respicere audenti ’quod’ ait, ’timidissime Phineu, et possum tribuisse et magnum est munus inerti, pone metum! tribuam: nullo violabere ferro. quin etiam mansura dabo monimenta per aevum, inque domo soceri semper spectabere nostri, ut mea se sponsi soletur imagine coniunx.’ dixit et in partem Phorcynida transtulit illam, ad quam se trepido Phineus obverterat ore. tum quoque conanti sua vertere lumina cervix deriguit, saxoque oculorum induruit umor, sed tamen os timidum vultusque in marmore supplex submissaeque manus faciesque obnoxia mansit.
The victor, son of Abas, enters his ancestral walls
with his bride, and, as champion and avenger of a grandsire
who had not deserved his fate, sets on Proetus —
for Proetus, his brother routed by arms,
had seized the citadel of Acrisius.
But neither by force of arms nor by the stronghold
he had wrongly taken did he master the grim eyes
of the snake-haired monster. Yet you, Polydectes,
ruler of little Seriphos — neither the youth’s valor,
proven through so many labors, nor his sufferings
had softened; hard, you ply an inexorable hatred,
and there is no end to your unjust anger;
you even belittle his glory, and charge
that the killing of Medusa was a lie.
’I will give you pledges of the truth. Shield your eyes!’
Perseus says, and with Medusa’s face made the king’s face
into bloodless flint.
with his bride, and, as champion and avenger of a grandsire
who had not deserved his fate, sets on Proetus —
for Proetus, his brother routed by arms,
had seized the citadel of Acrisius.
But neither by force of arms nor by the stronghold
he had wrongly taken did he master the grim eyes
of the snake-haired monster. Yet you, Polydectes,
ruler of little Seriphos — neither the youth’s valor,
proven through so many labors, nor his sufferings
had softened; hard, you ply an inexorable hatred,
and there is no end to your unjust anger;
you even belittle his glory, and charge
that the killing of Medusa was a lie.
’I will give you pledges of the truth. Shield your eyes!’
Perseus says, and with Medusa’s face made the king’s face
into bloodless flint.
Victor Abantiades patrios cum coniuge muros intrat et inmeriti vindex ultorque parentis adgreditur Proetum; nam fratre per arma fugato Acrisioneas Proetus possederat arces. sed nec ope armorum nec, quam male ceperat, arce torva colubriferi superavit lumina monstri. Te tamen, o parvae rector, Polydecta, Seriphi, nec iuvenis virtus per tot spectata labores nec mala mollierant, sed inexorabile durus exerces odium, nec iniqua finis in ira est; detrectas etiam laudem fictamque Medusae arguis esse necem. ’dabimus tibi pignora veri. parcite luminibus!’ Perseus ait oraque regis ore Medusaeo silicem sine sanguine fecit.
Thus far Tritonia had given herself as companion
to her gold-begotten brother; then, wrapped in a hollow cloud,
she leaves Seriphos — Cythnos and Gyaros left on her right —
and by the way that seemed shortest over the sea
makes for Thebes and virgin Helicon.
Gaining that mountain she halted and addressed
the learned sisters thus: ’A rumor of a new spring
has reached my ears, which the hard hoof
of the Medusaean winged horse broke open.
That is the reason for my journey; I wished to see
the wondrous thing; I saw the horse himself
born from his mother’s blood.’ Urania takes up the word:
’Whatever the reason that brings you to these halls,
goddess, you are most welcome to our hearts.
Yet the rumor is true: Pegasus is the source
of this spring’ — and she led Pallas to the sacred waters.
Marveling long at the pool a hoof-blow had made,
Pallas looks round on the groves of the ancient woods,
the caves, the grass picked out with countless flowers,
and calls the daughters of Memory happy alike
in their calling and their place.
to her gold-begotten brother; then, wrapped in a hollow cloud,
she leaves Seriphos — Cythnos and Gyaros left on her right —
and by the way that seemed shortest over the sea
makes for Thebes and virgin Helicon.
Gaining that mountain she halted and addressed
the learned sisters thus: ’A rumor of a new spring
has reached my ears, which the hard hoof
of the Medusaean winged horse broke open.
That is the reason for my journey; I wished to see
the wondrous thing; I saw the horse himself
born from his mother’s blood.’ Urania takes up the word:
’Whatever the reason that brings you to these halls,
goddess, you are most welcome to our hearts.
Yet the rumor is true: Pegasus is the source
of this spring’ — and she led Pallas to the sacred waters.
Marveling long at the pool a hoof-blow had made,
Pallas looks round on the groves of the ancient woods,
the caves, the grass picked out with countless flowers,
and calls the daughters of Memory happy alike
in their calling and their place.
Hactenus aurigenae comitem Tritonia fratri se dedit; inde cava circumdata nube Seriphon deserit, a dextra Cythno Gyaroque relictis, quaque super pontum via visa brevissima, Thebas virgineumque Helicona petit. quo monte potita constitit et doctas sic est adfata sorores: ’fama novi fontis nostras pervenit ad aures, dura Medusaei quem praepetis ungula rupit. is mihi causa viae; volui mirabile factum cernere; vidi ipsum materno sanguine nasci.’ excipit Uranie: ’quaecumque est causa videndi has tibi, diva, domos, animo gratissima nostro es. vera tamen fama est: est Pegasus huius origo fontis’ et ad latices deduxit Pallada sacros. quae mirata diu factas pedis ictibus undas silvarum lucos circumspicit antiquarum antraque et innumeris distinctas floribus herbas felicesque vocat pariter studioque locoque Mnemonidas;
To her one of the sisters spoke thus: ’O Tritonia,
who, had your valor not borne you to greater works,
would have come to join our choir, you speak truly,
and rightly praise both our arts and our home;
and ours is a lot to be thankful for — if only we were safe.
But — so utterly is nothing forbidden to crime —
everything frightens our virgin minds: dread Pyreneus
keeps turning before my eyes, and I have not yet
wholly collected myself. That savage man had seized
Daulis and the Phocian fields with Thracian soldiery
and held an unjust kingdom; we were making
for the Parnassian temples. He saw us going
and, worshipping our godhead with a treacherous face,
"Daughters of Memory" — for he knew us — "halt," he said,
"and do not hesitate, I pray, to shun the heavy weather
and the rain" (it was raining) "beneath my roof;
the gods above have often entered humbler huts."
Moved by his words and by the weather, we assented
to the man and entered the outer hall. The rains had ceased,
and, the south wind mastered by the north, the dark clouds
were fleeing from the cleared sky: we had an urge to go;
Pyreneus shuts his house and makes ready force,
which we escaped by taking wing. He himself,
as though to follow, stood high upon his citadel
and "The way you take," he said, "shall be mine too,
the very same" — and, out of his mind, he flings himself
from the top of the highest tower, and falls upon his face,
and, the bones of his skull shattered, beats the ground
as he dies, staining it with his wicked blood.’
who, had your valor not borne you to greater works,
would have come to join our choir, you speak truly,
and rightly praise both our arts and our home;
and ours is a lot to be thankful for — if only we were safe.
But — so utterly is nothing forbidden to crime —
everything frightens our virgin minds: dread Pyreneus
keeps turning before my eyes, and I have not yet
wholly collected myself. That savage man had seized
Daulis and the Phocian fields with Thracian soldiery
and held an unjust kingdom; we were making
for the Parnassian temples. He saw us going
and, worshipping our godhead with a treacherous face,
"Daughters of Memory" — for he knew us — "halt," he said,
"and do not hesitate, I pray, to shun the heavy weather
and the rain" (it was raining) "beneath my roof;
the gods above have often entered humbler huts."
Moved by his words and by the weather, we assented
to the man and entered the outer hall. The rains had ceased,
and, the south wind mastered by the north, the dark clouds
were fleeing from the cleared sky: we had an urge to go;
Pyreneus shuts his house and makes ready force,
which we escaped by taking wing. He himself,
as though to follow, stood high upon his citadel
and "The way you take," he said, "shall be mine too,
the very same" — and, out of his mind, he flings himself
from the top of the highest tower, and falls upon his face,
and, the bones of his skull shattered, beats the ground
as he dies, staining it with his wicked blood.’
quam sic adfata est una sororum: ’o, nisi te virtus opera ad maiora tulisset, in partem ventura chori Tritonia nostri, vera refers meritoque probas artesque locumque, et gratam sortem, tutae modo simus, habemus. sed (vetitum est adeo sceleri nihil) omnia terrent virgineas mentes, dirusque ante ora Pyreneus vertitur, et nondum tota me mente recepi. Daulida Threicio Phoceaque milite rura ceperat ille ferox iniustaque regna tenebat; templa petebamus Parnasia: vidit euntes nostraque fallaci veneratus numina vultu "Mnemonides" (cognorat enim), "consistite" dixit "nec dubitate, precor, tecto grave sidus et imbrem" (imber erat) "vitare meo; subiere minores saepe casas superi." dictis et tempore motae adnuimusque viro primasque intravimus aedes. desierant imbres, victoque aquilonibus austro fusca repurgato fugiebant nubila caelo: inpetus ire fuit; claudit sua tecta Pyreneus vimque parat, quam nos sumptis effugimus alis. ipse secuturo similis stetit arduus arce "qua" que "via est vobis, erit et mihi" dixit "eadem" seque iacit vecors e summae culmine turris et cadit in vultus discussisque ossibus oris tundit humum moriens scelerato sanguine tinctam.’ Musa loquebatur:
The Muse was speaking: wings sounded through the air,
and a voice of greeting came from the high boughs.
Jove’s daughter looks up and asks whence sound
tongues that speak so clearly, and thinks a human had spoken:
it was a bird. Nine in number, lamenting their lot,
magpies had perched on the branches, mimics of everything.
To the marveling goddess the goddess thus began:
’Lately these too, beaten in a contest, swelled
the throng of birds. Pieros, rich in the fields of Pella,
fathered them; Paeonian Euippe was their mother;
nine times, and about to bear nine times, she called
on mighty Lucina. The band of foolish sisters
swelled with pride at their number, and through so many
Haemonian and so many Achaean cities they came here
and join battle with words like these: "Stop cheating
the untaught crowd with your empty sweetness; contend
with us, if you have any confidence, daughters of Thespiae,
you goddesses. In neither voice nor art shall we be beaten,
and we are as many: either yield, defeated,
the Medusaean spring and Hyantean Aganippe,
or we will yield to you the Emathian plains
as far as the snowy Paeonians! Let nymphs judge the contest."
To contend was shameful indeed, but to yield seemed
more shameful: nymphs are chosen, swear by the rivers,
and sat on seats made of the living rock.
and a voice of greeting came from the high boughs.
Jove’s daughter looks up and asks whence sound
tongues that speak so clearly, and thinks a human had spoken:
it was a bird. Nine in number, lamenting their lot,
magpies had perched on the branches, mimics of everything.
To the marveling goddess the goddess thus began:
’Lately these too, beaten in a contest, swelled
the throng of birds. Pieros, rich in the fields of Pella,
fathered them; Paeonian Euippe was their mother;
nine times, and about to bear nine times, she called
on mighty Lucina. The band of foolish sisters
swelled with pride at their number, and through so many
Haemonian and so many Achaean cities they came here
and join battle with words like these: "Stop cheating
the untaught crowd with your empty sweetness; contend
with us, if you have any confidence, daughters of Thespiae,
you goddesses. In neither voice nor art shall we be beaten,
and we are as many: either yield, defeated,
the Medusaean spring and Hyantean Aganippe,
or we will yield to you the Emathian plains
as far as the snowy Paeonians! Let nymphs judge the contest."
To contend was shameful indeed, but to yield seemed
more shameful: nymphs are chosen, swear by the rivers,
and sat on seats made of the living rock.
pennae sonuere per auras, voxque salutantum ramis veniebat ab altis. suspicit et linguae quaerit tam certa loquentes unde sonent hominemque putat Iove nata locutum; ales erat. numeroque novem sua fata querentes institerant ramis imitantes omnia picae. miranti sic orsa deae dea ’nuper et istae auxerunt volucrum victae certamine turbam. Pieros has genuit Pellaeis dives in arvis, Paeonis Euippe mater fuit; illa potentem Lucinam noviens, noviens paritura, vocavit. intumuit numero stolidarum turba sororum perque tot Haemonias et per tot Achaidas urbes huc venit et tali committit proelia voce: "desinite indoctum vana dulcedine vulgus fallere; nobiscum, si qua est fiducia vobis, Thespiades, certate, deae. nec voce, nec arte vincemur totidemque sumus: vel cedite victae fonte Medusaeo et Hyantea Aganippe, vel nos Emathiis ad Paeonas usque nivosos cedemus campis! dirimant certamina nymphae." ’Turpe quidem contendere erat, sed cedere visum turpius; electae iurant per flumina nymphae factaque de vivo pressere sedilia saxo.
Then, without lot, she who first had declared she would contend
sings the wars of the gods, sets the Giants in false honor,
and belittles the deeds of the great gods:
how Typhoeus, sent up from earth’s lowest seat,
struck fear into the heaven-dwellers, and all of them
turned their backs in flight, until the land of Egypt
received them, weary, and the Nile parted into seven mouths.
Here too, she tells, earth-born Typhoeus came,
and the gods hid themselves in lying shapes:
’Jupiter,’ she said, ’becomes the leader of a herd —
whence even now Libyan Ammon is formed with curving horns;
the Delian hid in a crow, Semele’s son in a goat,
Phoebus’s sister in a cat, Saturn’s daughter in a snow-white cow,
Venus in a fish, the Cyllenian in an ibis’s wings.’
Thus far she had moved her singing lips to the lyre.
Now we Aonians are called for — but perhaps
you have no leisure, no time to lend your ears to our songs.’
’Do not doubt it; tell me your song in order!’
Pallas says, and sat down in the light shade of the grove.
sings the wars of the gods, sets the Giants in false honor,
and belittles the deeds of the great gods:
how Typhoeus, sent up from earth’s lowest seat,
struck fear into the heaven-dwellers, and all of them
turned their backs in flight, until the land of Egypt
received them, weary, and the Nile parted into seven mouths.
Here too, she tells, earth-born Typhoeus came,
and the gods hid themselves in lying shapes:
’Jupiter,’ she said, ’becomes the leader of a herd —
whence even now Libyan Ammon is formed with curving horns;
the Delian hid in a crow, Semele’s son in a goat,
Phoebus’s sister in a cat, Saturn’s daughter in a snow-white cow,
Venus in a fish, the Cyllenian in an ibis’s wings.’
Thus far she had moved her singing lips to the lyre.
Now we Aonians are called for — but perhaps
you have no leisure, no time to lend your ears to our songs.’
’Do not doubt it; tell me your song in order!’
Pallas says, and sat down in the light shade of the grove.
tunc sine sorte prior quae se certare professa est, bella canit superum falsoque in honore gigantas ponit et extenuat magnorum facta deorum; emissumque ima de sede Typhoea terrae caelitibus fecisse metum cunctosque dedisse terga fugae, donec fessos Aegyptia tellus ceperit et septem discretus in ostia Nilus. huc quoque terrigenam venisse Typhoea narrat et se mentitis superos celasse figuris; "duxque gregis" dixit "fit Iuppiter: unde recurvis nunc quoque formatus Libys est cum cornibus Ammon; Delius in corvo, proles Semeleia capro, fele soror Phoebi, nivea Saturnia vacca, pisce Venus latuit, Cyllenius ibidis alis." ’Hactenus ad citharam vocalia moverat ora: poscimur Aonides, sed forsitan otia non sint, nec nostris praebere vacet tibi cantibus aures.’ ’ne dubita vestrumque mihi refer ordine carmen!’ Pallas ait nemorisque levi consedit in umbra;
The Muse goes on: ’We gave the whole contest to one:
Calliope rises, her loosed hair gathered with ivy,
tries the plaintive strings with her thumb,
and to the struck chords joins this song:
"First Ceres split the clod with the curved plough,
first gave grain and gentle nourishment to the lands,
first gave laws; all things are Ceres’ gift;
of her I must sing. Would only that I could utter
songs worthy of the goddess! Surely the goddess is worthy of song.
Calliope rises, her loosed hair gathered with ivy,
tries the plaintive strings with her thumb,
and to the struck chords joins this song:
"First Ceres split the clod with the curved plough,
first gave grain and gentle nourishment to the lands,
first gave laws; all things are Ceres’ gift;
of her I must sing. Would only that I could utter
songs worthy of the goddess! Surely the goddess is worthy of song.
Musa refert: ’dedimus summam certaminis uni; surgit et inmissos hedera collecta capillos Calliope querulas praetemptat pollice chordas atque haec percussis subiungit carmina nervis: "Prima Ceres unco glaebam dimovit aratro, prima dedit fruges alimentaque mitia terris, prima dedit leges; Cereris sunt omnia munus; illa canenda mihi est. utinam modo dicere possim carmina digna dea! certe dea carmine digna est.
’"The vast island Trinacris is heaped upon the Giant’s limbs,
and with its great mass presses down Typhoeus,
who dared to hope for the seats of heaven.
He strains indeed, and often struggles to rise again,
but his right hand is pinned under Ausonian Pelorus,
his left under you, Pachynus; his legs are weighed by Lilybaeum;
Etna burdens his head, beneath which, on his back,
Typhoeus spews sand and fiercely vomits flame from his mouth.
Often he wrestles to heave off the weight of earth
and roll the towns and great mountains from his body:
then the land quakes, and the king of the silent dead himself
takes fright, lest the ground gape and split in a wide chasm
and the daylight let in terrify the trembling shades.
Fearing this ruin, the tyrant had gone out
from his dark seat, and, borne in his chariot of black horses,
went warily round the foundations of the Sicilian land.
When it was searched enough, and no place was giving way,
his fear laid by — him, as he wandered, the Erycine
sees from her own mountain, and, clasping her winged son,
’My arms, my hands, my power, son,’ she said,
’take up those weapons, Cupid, by which you conquer all,
and drive your swift arrows into the breast of the god
to whom the last lot of the threefold realm has fallen.
You tame the gods above and Jove himself, you tame
the conquered powers of the sea and him who rules them:
why does Tartarus hold back? Why not extend
your mother’s empire and your own? A third part
of the world is at stake; and yet in heaven —
such, by now, is our patience — we are scorned,
and with me the powers of Love grow less.
Do you not see that Pallas and the spear-throwing Diana
have broken from me? Ceres’ daughter too will stay
a virgin, if we allow it — for she aspires to the same.
But you, for our shared rule — if that grace counts at all —
join the goddess to her uncle.’ So Venus spoke;
he opened his quiver and, at his mother’s bidding,
from a thousand arrows set one apart — than which
none is sharper, none surer, none more obedient to the bow —
and, bracing his knee, bent the supple horn
and struck Dis to the heart with the barbed reed.
and with its great mass presses down Typhoeus,
who dared to hope for the seats of heaven.
He strains indeed, and often struggles to rise again,
but his right hand is pinned under Ausonian Pelorus,
his left under you, Pachynus; his legs are weighed by Lilybaeum;
Etna burdens his head, beneath which, on his back,
Typhoeus spews sand and fiercely vomits flame from his mouth.
Often he wrestles to heave off the weight of earth
and roll the towns and great mountains from his body:
then the land quakes, and the king of the silent dead himself
takes fright, lest the ground gape and split in a wide chasm
and the daylight let in terrify the trembling shades.
Fearing this ruin, the tyrant had gone out
from his dark seat, and, borne in his chariot of black horses,
went warily round the foundations of the Sicilian land.
When it was searched enough, and no place was giving way,
his fear laid by — him, as he wandered, the Erycine
sees from her own mountain, and, clasping her winged son,
’My arms, my hands, my power, son,’ she said,
’take up those weapons, Cupid, by which you conquer all,
and drive your swift arrows into the breast of the god
to whom the last lot of the threefold realm has fallen.
You tame the gods above and Jove himself, you tame
the conquered powers of the sea and him who rules them:
why does Tartarus hold back? Why not extend
your mother’s empire and your own? A third part
of the world is at stake; and yet in heaven —
such, by now, is our patience — we are scorned,
and with me the powers of Love grow less.
Do you not see that Pallas and the spear-throwing Diana
have broken from me? Ceres’ daughter too will stay
a virgin, if we allow it — for she aspires to the same.
But you, for our shared rule — if that grace counts at all —
join the goddess to her uncle.’ So Venus spoke;
he opened his quiver and, at his mother’s bidding,
from a thousand arrows set one apart — than which
none is sharper, none surer, none more obedient to the bow —
and, bracing his knee, bent the supple horn
and struck Dis to the heart with the barbed reed.
’"Vasta giganteis ingesta est insula membris Trinacris et magnis subiectum molibus urguet aetherias ausum sperare Typhoea sedes. nititur ille quidem pugnatque resurgere saepe, dextra sed Ausonio manus est subiecta Peloro, laeva, Pachyne, tibi, Lilybaeo crura premuntur, degravat Aetna caput, sub qua resupinus harenas eiectat flammamque ferox vomit ore Typhoeus. saepe remoliri luctatur pondera terrae oppidaque et magnos devolvere corpore montes: inde tremit tellus, et rex pavet ipse silentum, ne pateat latoque solum retegatur hiatu inmissusque dies trepidantes terreat umbras. hanc metuens cladem tenebrosa sede tyrannus exierat curruque atrorum vectus equorum ambibat Siculae cautus fundamina terrae. postquam exploratum satis est loca nulla labare depositoque metu, videt hunc Erycina vagantem monte suo residens natumque amplexa volucrem ’arma manusque meae, mea, nate, potentia’ dixit, ’illa, quibus superas omnes, cape tela, Cupido, inque dei pectus celeres molire sagittas, cui triplicis cessit fortuna novissima regni. tu superos ipsumque Iovem, tu numina ponti victa domas ipsumque, regit qui numina ponti: Tartara quid cessant? cur non matrisque tuumque imperium profers? agitur pars tertia mundi, et tamen in caelo, quae iam patientia nostra est, spernimur, ac mecum vires minuuntur Amoris. Pallada nonne vides iaculatricemque Dianam abscessisse mihi? Cereris quoque filia virgo, si patiemur, erit; nam spes adfectat easdem. at tu pro socio, si qua est ea gratia, regno iunge deam patruo.’ dixit Venus; ille pharetram solvit et arbitrio matris de mille sagittis unam seposuit, sed qua nec acutior ulla nec minus incerta est nec quae magis audiat arcus, oppositoque genu curvavit flexile cornum inque cor hamata percussit harundine Ditem.
’"Not far from the walls of lofty Henna lies a lake
of water, Pergus by name: not even Cayster hears
more songs of swans on its gliding waters than that.
A wood crowns the pool, ringing every side,
and with its leaves, like an awning, keeps off the sun’s blows;
the boughs give coolness, the moist ground Tyrian flowers:
it is everlasting spring. While Proserpina plays
in that grove and gathers now violets, now white lilies,
and with girlish eagerness fills her baskets and her lap
and strives to outdo her companions in the picking,
almost in one moment she was seen and loved and seized
by Dis: so headlong was his love. The frightened goddess,
with grieving lips, cries out for her mother and her friends —
but for her mother more often; and since she had torn
her dress from its upper edge, the gathered flowers
fell from the loosened folds; and such was the innocence
of her childish years that even this loss stirred her grief.
The ravisher drives his chariot and, calling each by name,
urges his horses, over whose necks and manes
he shakes the dark reins stained with rust,
and is borne through deep lakes, through the pools
of the Palici reeking with sulphur, that boil
where the earth has burst, and where the Bacchiadae,
a race sprung from two-sea’d Corinth, set their walls
between two harbors of unequal size.
of water, Pergus by name: not even Cayster hears
more songs of swans on its gliding waters than that.
A wood crowns the pool, ringing every side,
and with its leaves, like an awning, keeps off the sun’s blows;
the boughs give coolness, the moist ground Tyrian flowers:
it is everlasting spring. While Proserpina plays
in that grove and gathers now violets, now white lilies,
and with girlish eagerness fills her baskets and her lap
and strives to outdo her companions in the picking,
almost in one moment she was seen and loved and seized
by Dis: so headlong was his love. The frightened goddess,
with grieving lips, cries out for her mother and her friends —
but for her mother more often; and since she had torn
her dress from its upper edge, the gathered flowers
fell from the loosened folds; and such was the innocence
of her childish years that even this loss stirred her grief.
The ravisher drives his chariot and, calling each by name,
urges his horses, over whose necks and manes
he shakes the dark reins stained with rust,
and is borne through deep lakes, through the pools
of the Palici reeking with sulphur, that boil
where the earth has burst, and where the Bacchiadae,
a race sprung from two-sea’d Corinth, set their walls
between two harbors of unequal size.
’"Haud procul Hennaeis lacus est a moenibus altae, nomine Pergus, aquae: non illo plura Caystros carmina cycnorum labentibus audit in undis. silva coronat aquas cingens latus omne suisque frondibus ut velo Phoebeos submovet ictus; frigora dant rami, Tyrios humus umida flores: perpetuum ver est. quo dum Proserpina luco ludit et aut violas aut candida lilia carpit, dumque puellari studio calathosque sinumque inplet et aequales certat superare legendo, paene simul visa est dilectaque raptaque Diti: usque adeo est properatus amor. dea territa maesto et matrem et comites, sed matrem saepius, ore clamat, et ut summa vestem laniarat ab ora, collecti flores tunicis cecidere remissis, tantaque simplicitas puerilibus adfuit annis, haec quoque virgineum movit iactura dolorem. raptor agit currus et nomine quemque vocando exhortatur equos, quorum per colla iubasque excutit obscura tinctas ferrugine habenas, perque lacus altos et olentia sulphure fertur stagna Palicorum rupta ferventia terra et qua Bacchiadae, bimari gens orta Corintho, inter inaequales posuerunt moenia portus.
’"Between Cyane and Pisaean Arethusa lies
a stretch of sea shut in by narrowing horns:
here lived Cyane, most famed of the Sicilian nymphs,
from whose name the pool too was called.
She rose waist-high from the middle of her water,
and knew the goddess, and said, ’No farther shall you go!
You cannot be Ceres’ son-in-law against her will:
she should have been asked for, not snatched.
And if I may compare small things with great,
Anapis loved me too; yet I married won by pleading,
not, like this girl, terrified into it.’ She spoke,
and, stretching her arms to either side, barred the way.
The son of Saturn held his wrath no longer,
and, spurring his terrible horses, into the pool’s depths
drove and buried the royal scepter, whirled by his strong arm;
the struck earth made a road down to Tartarus
and took the plunging chariot in the crater’s mouth.
a stretch of sea shut in by narrowing horns:
here lived Cyane, most famed of the Sicilian nymphs,
from whose name the pool too was called.
She rose waist-high from the middle of her water,
and knew the goddess, and said, ’No farther shall you go!
You cannot be Ceres’ son-in-law against her will:
she should have been asked for, not snatched.
And if I may compare small things with great,
Anapis loved me too; yet I married won by pleading,
not, like this girl, terrified into it.’ She spoke,
and, stretching her arms to either side, barred the way.
The son of Saturn held his wrath no longer,
and, spurring his terrible horses, into the pool’s depths
drove and buried the royal scepter, whirled by his strong arm;
the struck earth made a road down to Tartarus
and took the plunging chariot in the crater’s mouth.
’"Est medium Cyanes et Pisaeae Arethusae, quod coit angustis inclusum cornibus aequor: hic fuit, a cuius stagnum quoque nomine dictum est, inter Sicelidas Cyane celeberrima nymphas. gurgite quae medio summa tenus exstitit alvo adgnovitque deam ’ne’ c ’longius ibitis!’ inquit; ’non potes invitae Cereris gener esse: roganda, non rapienda fuit. quodsi conponere magnis parva mihi fas est, et me dilexit Anapis; exorata tamen, nec, ut haec, exterrita nupsi.’ dixit et in partes diversas bracchia tendens obstitit. haud ultra tenuit Saturnius iram terribilesque hortatus equos in gurgitis ima contortum valido sceptrum regale lacerto condidit; icta viam tellus in Tartara fecit et pronos currus medio cratere recepit.
’"But Cyane, grieving for the ravished goddess
and for the scorned rights of her spring, bears
in her silent mind an inconsolable wound,
and is all consumed in tears, and into those waters,
of which she had just now been the great divinity,
she melts away: you might see her limbs soften,
her bones submit to bending, her nails lose their hardness;
and first of all the slenderest parts dissolve —
her sea-blue hair, her fingers, her legs and feet
(for in slight limbs the passage to cold water is short);
after these her shoulders, back, and sides and breast
vanish, passing into thin streams; at last,
in place of living blood, water steals into
her ruined veins, and nothing is left that you could grasp.
and for the scorned rights of her spring, bears
in her silent mind an inconsolable wound,
and is all consumed in tears, and into those waters,
of which she had just now been the great divinity,
she melts away: you might see her limbs soften,
her bones submit to bending, her nails lose their hardness;
and first of all the slenderest parts dissolve —
her sea-blue hair, her fingers, her legs and feet
(for in slight limbs the passage to cold water is short);
after these her shoulders, back, and sides and breast
vanish, passing into thin streams; at last,
in place of living blood, water steals into
her ruined veins, and nothing is left that you could grasp.
’"At Cyane, raptamque deam contemptaque fontis iura sui maerens, inconsolabile vulnus mente gerit tacita lacrimisque absumitur omnis et, quarum fuerat magnum modo numen, in illas extenuatur aquas: molliri membra videres, ossa pati flexus, ungues posuisse rigorem; primaque de tota tenuissima quaeque liquescunt, caerulei crines digitique et crura pedesque (nam brevis in gelidas membris exilibus undas transitus est); post haec umeri tergusque latusque pectoraque in tenues abeunt evanida rivos; denique pro vivo vitiatas sanguine venas lympha subit, restatque nihil, quod prendere possis.
’"Meanwhile the daughter is sought, in vain,
by her frightened mother over all lands, all the deep.
Neither Dawn coming with dewy hair saw her resting,
nor the Evening Star; she kindled two flaming pines
at Etna in both hands and bore them, restless,
through the frosty dark; again, when kindly day
had dimmed the stars, she sought her daughter
from the sun’s setting to its rising. Weary with toil
she had taken on a thirst, and no springs had washed
her lips, when by chance she saw a hut thatched with straw
and knocked at its little door; out comes an old woman,
sees the goddess, and to her asking for water
gave a sweet drink she had topped before with toasted barley.
While she drinks what was given, a boy of bold, hard face
stood before the goddess, laughed, and called her greedy.
The goddess took offense, and, while he was still speaking,
drenched him with the part not yet drunk — barley mixed with liquid:
his face drank in spots, and where he just now had arms
he bears legs; a tail is added to his altered limbs,
and he shrinks into a small shape, that his power to harm be slight,
and his size is less than a little lizard’s. He flees
the old woman who marvels and weeps and makes to touch
the wonder, and seeks a hiding-place, and bears
a name suited to his shame, his body starred with scattered spots.
by her frightened mother over all lands, all the deep.
Neither Dawn coming with dewy hair saw her resting,
nor the Evening Star; she kindled two flaming pines
at Etna in both hands and bore them, restless,
through the frosty dark; again, when kindly day
had dimmed the stars, she sought her daughter
from the sun’s setting to its rising. Weary with toil
she had taken on a thirst, and no springs had washed
her lips, when by chance she saw a hut thatched with straw
and knocked at its little door; out comes an old woman,
sees the goddess, and to her asking for water
gave a sweet drink she had topped before with toasted barley.
While she drinks what was given, a boy of bold, hard face
stood before the goddess, laughed, and called her greedy.
The goddess took offense, and, while he was still speaking,
drenched him with the part not yet drunk — barley mixed with liquid:
his face drank in spots, and where he just now had arms
he bears legs; a tail is added to his altered limbs,
and he shrinks into a small shape, that his power to harm be slight,
and his size is less than a little lizard’s. He flees
the old woman who marvels and weeps and makes to touch
the wonder, and seeks a hiding-place, and bears
a name suited to his shame, his body starred with scattered spots.
’"Interea pavidae nequiquam filia matri omnibus est terris, omni quaesita profundo. illam non udis veniens Aurora capillis cessantem vidit, non Hesperus; illa duabus flammiferas pinus manibus succendit ab Aetna perque pruinosas tulit inrequieta tenebras; rursus ubi alma dies hebetarat sidera, natam solis ab occasu solis quaerebat ad ortus. fessa labore sitim conceperat, oraque nulli conluerant fontes, cum tectam stramine vidit forte casam parvasque fores pulsavit; at inde prodit anus divamque videt lymphamque roganti dulce dedit, tosta quod texerat ante polenta. dum bibit illa datum, duri puer oris et audax constitit ante deam risitque avidamque vocavit. offensa est neque adhuc epota parte loquentem cum liquido mixta perfudit diva polenta: conbibit os maculas et, quae modo bracchia gessit, crura gerit; cauda est mutatis addita membris, inque brevem formam, ne sit vis magna nocendi, contrahitur, parvaque minor mensura lacerta est. mirantem flentemque et tangere monstra parantem fugit anum latebramque petit aptumque pudori nomen habet variis stellatus corpora guttis.
’"Through what lands and what seas the goddess wandered
it would be long to tell; the world ran out for her seeking.
She returns to Sicania, and, scanning all as she goes,
comes also to Cyane. Had she not been changed,
she would have told her everything; but mouth and tongue
were not there for her, willing to speak, nor had she
anything to speak with; yet she gave plain signs,
and showed to the mother, on the surface of the water,
Persephone’s girdle, well known to her, which by chance
had slipped and fallen there in the sacred pool.
As soon as she knew it, as though only then had she learned
her child was stolen, the goddess tore her unkempt hair
and struck her breast again and again with her palms.
She does not yet know where she is; yet she reproaches
all lands and calls them ungrateful, unworthy of the gift
of grain — Trinacria before the rest, where she had found
the traces of her loss. So there with cruel hand
she broke the ploughs that turn the clods, and in her anger
gave to death alike the farmers and the field-tilling oxen,
and bade the tilled land betray its trust, and spoiled the seed.
The fertility of that soil, famed through the wide world,
lies proved false: the crops die in the first blade,
and now too much sun, now too much rain destroys them;
stars and winds do harm, and greedy birds pick up
the scattered seed; darnel and caltrops and unconquerable grass
wear down the harvests of wheat.
it would be long to tell; the world ran out for her seeking.
She returns to Sicania, and, scanning all as she goes,
comes also to Cyane. Had she not been changed,
she would have told her everything; but mouth and tongue
were not there for her, willing to speak, nor had she
anything to speak with; yet she gave plain signs,
and showed to the mother, on the surface of the water,
Persephone’s girdle, well known to her, which by chance
had slipped and fallen there in the sacred pool.
As soon as she knew it, as though only then had she learned
her child was stolen, the goddess tore her unkempt hair
and struck her breast again and again with her palms.
She does not yet know where she is; yet she reproaches
all lands and calls them ungrateful, unworthy of the gift
of grain — Trinacria before the rest, where she had found
the traces of her loss. So there with cruel hand
she broke the ploughs that turn the clods, and in her anger
gave to death alike the farmers and the field-tilling oxen,
and bade the tilled land betray its trust, and spoiled the seed.
The fertility of that soil, famed through the wide world,
lies proved false: the crops die in the first blade,
and now too much sun, now too much rain destroys them;
stars and winds do harm, and greedy birds pick up
the scattered seed; darnel and caltrops and unconquerable grass
wear down the harvests of wheat.
’"Quas dea per terras et quas erraverit undas, dicere longa mora est; quaerenti defuit orbis; Sicaniam repetit, dumque omnia lustrat eundo, venit et ad Cyanen. ea ni mutata fuisset, omnia narrasset; sed et os et lingua volenti dicere non aderant, nec, quo loqueretur, habebat; signa tamen manifesta dedit notamque parenti, illo forte loco delapsam in gurgite sacro Persephones zonam summis ostendit in undis. quam simul agnovit, tamquam tum denique raptam scisset, inornatos laniavit diva capillos et repetita suis percussit pectora palmis. nescit adhuc, ubi sit; terras tamen increpat omnes ingratasque vocat nec frugum munere dignas, Trinacriam ante alias, in qua vestigia damni repperit. ergo illic saeva vertentia glaebas fregit aratra manu, parilique irata colonos ruricolasque boves leto dedit arvaque iussit fallere depositum vitiataque semina fecit. fertilitas terrae latum vulgata per orbem falsa iacet: primis segetes moriuntur in herbis, et modo sol nimius, nimius modo corripit imber; sideraque ventique nocent, avidaeque volucres semina iacta legunt; lolium tribulique fatigant triticeas messes et inexpugnabile gramen.
’"Then the Alpheian nymph lifted her head from the Elean waves
and pushed her dripping hair from her brow back to her ears,
and said: ’O mother of the maiden sought through all the world,
and mother of the crops, cease your measureless toils,
and do not in your violence rage against the faithful land.
The land has deserved nothing, and against its will
opened to the rape; nor am I a suppliant for my homeland:
I came here a stranger. Pisa is my homeland,
and from Elis I draw my birth; I dwell in Sicania
as a foreigner, but this land is dearer to me
than any soil: here now I, Arethusa, keep
my household gods, my home. Spare it, most gentle one.
Why I was moved from my place and borne over the waves
of so great a sea to Ortygia, a fitting hour
for my tale will come, when you are eased of care
and of a better countenance. The passable earth
gives me a road, and, carried beneath the lowest caverns,
here I lift my head and look on stars grown strange.
So, while I glide beneath the earth in the Stygian flood,
your Proserpina was seen there by my own eyes:
sad indeed, and not yet free of fear in her face,
yet a queen, yet the greatest of the shadowy world,
yet the mighty consort of the ruler of the dead!’
The mother, at the words she heard, stood stunned as if of stone,
and for a long while was like one thunderstruck; and when
her heavy madness was driven out by a heavy grief,
she goes forth in her chariot to the regions of the air.
and pushed her dripping hair from her brow back to her ears,
and said: ’O mother of the maiden sought through all the world,
and mother of the crops, cease your measureless toils,
and do not in your violence rage against the faithful land.
The land has deserved nothing, and against its will
opened to the rape; nor am I a suppliant for my homeland:
I came here a stranger. Pisa is my homeland,
and from Elis I draw my birth; I dwell in Sicania
as a foreigner, but this land is dearer to me
than any soil: here now I, Arethusa, keep
my household gods, my home. Spare it, most gentle one.
Why I was moved from my place and borne over the waves
of so great a sea to Ortygia, a fitting hour
for my tale will come, when you are eased of care
and of a better countenance. The passable earth
gives me a road, and, carried beneath the lowest caverns,
here I lift my head and look on stars grown strange.
So, while I glide beneath the earth in the Stygian flood,
your Proserpina was seen there by my own eyes:
sad indeed, and not yet free of fear in her face,
yet a queen, yet the greatest of the shadowy world,
yet the mighty consort of the ruler of the dead!’
The mother, at the words she heard, stood stunned as if of stone,
and for a long while was like one thunderstruck; and when
her heavy madness was driven out by a heavy grief,
she goes forth in her chariot to the regions of the air.
’"Tum caput Eleis Alpheias extulit undis rorantesque comas a fronte removit ad aures atque ait ’o toto quaesitae virginis orbe et frugum genetrix, inmensos siste labores neve tibi fidae violenta irascere terrae. terra nihil meruit patuitque invita rapinae, nec sum pro patria supplex: huc hospita veni. Pisa mihi patria est et ab Elide ducimus ortus, Sicaniam peregrina colo, sed gratior omni haec mihi terra solo est: hos nunc Arethusa penates, hanc habeo sedem. quam tu, mitissima, serva. mota loco cur sim tantique per aequoris undas advehar Ortygiam, veniet narratibus hora tempestiva meis, cum tu curaque levata et vultus melioris eris. mihi pervia tellus praebet iter, subterque imas ablata cavernas hic caput attollo desuetaque sidera cerno. ergo dum Stygio sub terris gurgite labor, visa tua est oculis illic Proserpina nostris: illa quidem tristis neque adhuc interrita vultu, sed regina tamen, sed opaci maxima mundi, sed tamen inferni pollens matrona tyranni!’ Mater ad auditas stupuit ceu saxea voces attonitaeque diu similis fuit, utque dolore pulsa gravi gravis est amentia, curribus oras exit in aetherias:
There, with face all clouded, she stood before Jove,
resentful, her hair let loose, and ’I have come,’
she said, ’a suppliant to you, Jupiter, for my blood
and for yours: if a mother’s claim counts for nothing,
let the daughter move the father, and let not your care
for her, we pray, be cheaper because she was born
of my womb. See, my daughter, long sought, is found
at last for me — if you call it finding to lose more surely,
or if to know where she is you call finding. That she was stolen
I will bear, provided he give her back! For your daughter
does not deserve a robber for a husband — if she is now
no longer mine.’ Jupiter took up the word: ’The child
is a pledge and a charge common to us both;
but if we are willing to give things their true names,
this was done as no wrong, but as love; nor will
that son-in-law be a shame to us, if only you,
goddess, are willing. Even granting all else were lacking —
how much it is to be the brother of Jove! And what of this,
that nothing else is lacking, and he yields to me
in nothing but the lot? But if your longing
for the parting is so great, Proserpina shall return
to heaven — yet on one fixed condition: if there
she has touched no food with her lips; for so it is
provided by the compact of the Fates.’
resentful, her hair let loose, and ’I have come,’
she said, ’a suppliant to you, Jupiter, for my blood
and for yours: if a mother’s claim counts for nothing,
let the daughter move the father, and let not your care
for her, we pray, be cheaper because she was born
of my womb. See, my daughter, long sought, is found
at last for me — if you call it finding to lose more surely,
or if to know where she is you call finding. That she was stolen
I will bear, provided he give her back! For your daughter
does not deserve a robber for a husband — if she is now
no longer mine.’ Jupiter took up the word: ’The child
is a pledge and a charge common to us both;
but if we are willing to give things their true names,
this was done as no wrong, but as love; nor will
that son-in-law be a shame to us, if only you,
goddess, are willing. Even granting all else were lacking —
how much it is to be the brother of Jove! And what of this,
that nothing else is lacking, and he yields to me
in nothing but the lot? But if your longing
for the parting is so great, Proserpina shall return
to heaven — yet on one fixed condition: if there
she has touched no food with her lips; for so it is
provided by the compact of the Fates.’
ibi toto nubila vultu ante Iovem passis stetit invidiosa capillis ’pro’ que ’meo veni supplex tibi, Iuppiter,’ inquit ’sanguine proque tuo: si nulla est gratia matris, nata patrem moveat, neu sit tibi cura, precamur, vilior illius, quod nostro est edita partu. en quaesita diu tandem mihi nata reperta est, si reperire vocas amittere certius, aut si scire, ubi sit, reperire vocas. quod rapta, feremus, dummodo reddat eam! neque enim praedone marito filia digna tua est, si iam mea filia non est.’ Iuppiter excepit ’commune est pignus onusque nata mihi tecum; sed si modo nomina rebus addere vera placet, non hoc iniuria factum, verum amor est; neque erit nobis gener ille pudori, tu modo, diva, velis. ut desint cetera, quantum est esse Iovis fratrem! quid, quod nec cetera desunt nec cedit nisi sorte mihi? sed tanta cupido si tibi discidii est, repetet Proserpina caelum, lege tamen certa, si nullos contigit illic ore cibos;
’"He had spoken; but Ceres is resolved to bring her daughter up:
the Fates do not so allow it, since the girl had broken
her fast, and, while in her innocence she wandered
the trim gardens, had plucked a crimson fruit
from a curving tree and, taking seven seeds
from its pale rind, had pressed them with her mouth;
and of all, Ascalaphus alone saw it — whom Orphne,
not the least known among the nymphs of Avernus,
is said once to have borne to her own Acheron
in the dark woods; he saw, and by his telling
cruelly took her return away. The queen of Erebus groaned,
and made the profane witness a bird, and, his head
sprinkled with Phlegethon’s water, turned it into
a beak, and feathers, and great eyes. He, lost to himself,
is wrapped in tawny wings, swells into all head,
is bent back into long talons, and scarcely moves
the feathers grown along his sluggish arms;
and he becomes a loathsome bird, herald of coming grief,
the slothful screech-owl, a dire omen to mortals.
the Fates do not so allow it, since the girl had broken
her fast, and, while in her innocence she wandered
the trim gardens, had plucked a crimson fruit
from a curving tree and, taking seven seeds
from its pale rind, had pressed them with her mouth;
and of all, Ascalaphus alone saw it — whom Orphne,
not the least known among the nymphs of Avernus,
is said once to have borne to her own Acheron
in the dark woods; he saw, and by his telling
cruelly took her return away. The queen of Erebus groaned,
and made the profane witness a bird, and, his head
sprinkled with Phlegethon’s water, turned it into
a beak, and feathers, and great eyes. He, lost to himself,
is wrapped in tawny wings, swells into all head,
is bent back into long talons, and scarcely moves
the feathers grown along his sluggish arms;
and he becomes a loathsome bird, herald of coming grief,
the slothful screech-owl, a dire omen to mortals.
nam sic Parcarum foedere cautum est.’ ’"Dixerat, at Cereri certum est educere natam; non ita fata sinunt, quoniam ieiunia virgo solverat et, cultis dum simplex errat in hortis, puniceum curva decerpserat arbore pomum sumptaque pallenti septem de cortice grana presserat ore suo, solusque ex omnibus illud Ascalaphus vidit, quem quondam dicitur Orphne, inter Avernales haud ignotissima nymphas, ex Acheronte suo silvis peperisse sub atris; vidit et indicio reditum crudelis ademit. ingemuit regina Erebi testemque profanam fecit avem sparsumque caput Phlegethontide lympha in rostrum et plumas et grandia lumina vertit. ille sibi ablatus fulvis amicitur in alis inque caput crescit longosque reflectitur ungues vixque movet natas per inertia bracchia pennas foedaque fit volucris, venturi nuntia luctus, ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen.
’"He, at least, may seem to have earned his punishment
by his telling and his tongue; but you, daughters of Achelous,
whence your feathers and birds’ feet, though you wear
the faces of maidens? Is it because, when Proserpina
was gathering the spring flowers, you were among her company,
learned Sirens? After you had sought her in vain
through all the world, at once — that the seas too
might feel your care — you wished to be able to stand
above the waves on oars of wings, and found the gods
compliant, and saw your limbs grow golden
with sudden feathers. Yet, lest that song, born to soothe
the ears, and so great a dower of voice should lose
the use of a tongue, your maiden faces and human voice remained.
by his telling and his tongue; but you, daughters of Achelous,
whence your feathers and birds’ feet, though you wear
the faces of maidens? Is it because, when Proserpina
was gathering the spring flowers, you were among her company,
learned Sirens? After you had sought her in vain
through all the world, at once — that the seas too
might feel your care — you wished to be able to stand
above the waves on oars of wings, and found the gods
compliant, and saw your limbs grow golden
with sudden feathers. Yet, lest that song, born to soothe
the ears, and so great a dower of voice should lose
the use of a tongue, your maiden faces and human voice remained.
’"Hic tamen indicio poenam linguaque videri commeruisse potest; vobis, Acheloides, unde pluma pedesque avium, cum virginis ora geratis? an quia, cum legeret vernos Proserpina flores, in comitum numero, doctae Sirenes, eratis? quam postquam toto frustra quaesistis in orbe, protinus, et vestram sentirent aequora curam, posse super fluctus alarum insistere remis optastis facilesque deos habuistis et artus vidistis vestros subitis flavescere pennis. ne tamen ille canor mulcendas natus ad aures tantaque dos oris linguae deperderet usum, virginei vultus et vox humana remansit.
’"But Jupiter, between his brother and his grieving sister,
divides the rolling year in equal halves: now the goddess,
a power shared by the two realms, is with her mother
so many months, with her husband as many. At once
the look of her mind and of her face is changed;
for she who but now could seem sad even to Dis —
the goddess’s brow is glad, as the sun, which before
lay hidden in watery clouds, comes out from the conquered clouds.
divides the rolling year in equal halves: now the goddess,
a power shared by the two realms, is with her mother
so many months, with her husband as many. At once
the look of her mind and of her face is changed;
for she who but now could seem sad even to Dis —
the goddess’s brow is glad, as the sun, which before
lay hidden in watery clouds, comes out from the conquered clouds.
’"At medius fratrisque sui maestaeque sororis Iuppiter ex aequo volventem dividit annum: nunc dea, regnorum numen commune duorum, cum matre est totidem, totidem cum coniuge menses. vertitur extemplo facies et mentis et oris; nam modo quae poterat Diti quoque maesta videri, laeta deae frons est, ut sol, qui tectus aquosis nubibus ante fuit, victis e nubibus exit.
’"Kindly Ceres, free of care now her daughter is recovered,
asks you, Arethusa, what was the cause of your flight,
why you are a sacred spring. The waters fell silent;
from their deep source the goddess lifted her head,
and, drying her green hair with her hand, told
the old love of the Elean river. ’I was one
of the nymphs who are in Achaia,’ she said,
’and no other ranged the glades more keenly than I,
nor more keenly set the nets. But though I never
sought a name for beauty, though I was strong,
I bore the name of fair; nor did my over-praised face
please me, and at that gift of body in which other girls
are wont to take joy I, a country thing, blushed,
and counted it a fault to please. Weary, I was returning
(I remember) from the Stymphalian wood; the heat was great,
and toil had doubled the great heat: I find waters
without an eddy, going without a murmur, clear
to the bottom, through which every pebble deep below
could be counted, which you would scarcely think moved at all.
Hoary willow-thickets and the poplar, fed by the water,
gave shade self-sown on the sloping banks. I drew near
and first dipped the soles of my feet, then to the knee;
and not content with that, I ungird myself,
lay my soft garments on a bending willow,
and plunge naked into the waters. And while I strike
and draw them, gliding a thousand ways and tossing
my flung-out arms, I felt some murmur in mid-flood,
and in fright I take my stand on the nearer bank.
asks you, Arethusa, what was the cause of your flight,
why you are a sacred spring. The waters fell silent;
from their deep source the goddess lifted her head,
and, drying her green hair with her hand, told
the old love of the Elean river. ’I was one
of the nymphs who are in Achaia,’ she said,
’and no other ranged the glades more keenly than I,
nor more keenly set the nets. But though I never
sought a name for beauty, though I was strong,
I bore the name of fair; nor did my over-praised face
please me, and at that gift of body in which other girls
are wont to take joy I, a country thing, blushed,
and counted it a fault to please. Weary, I was returning
(I remember) from the Stymphalian wood; the heat was great,
and toil had doubled the great heat: I find waters
without an eddy, going without a murmur, clear
to the bottom, through which every pebble deep below
could be counted, which you would scarcely think moved at all.
Hoary willow-thickets and the poplar, fed by the water,
gave shade self-sown on the sloping banks. I drew near
and first dipped the soles of my feet, then to the knee;
and not content with that, I ungird myself,
lay my soft garments on a bending willow,
and plunge naked into the waters. And while I strike
and draw them, gliding a thousand ways and tossing
my flung-out arms, I felt some murmur in mid-flood,
and in fright I take my stand on the nearer bank.
’"Exigit alma Ceres nata secura recepta, quae tibi causa fugae, cur sis, Arethusa, sacer fons. conticuere undae, quarum dea sustulit alto fonte caput viridesque manu siccata capillos fluminis Elei veteres narravit amores. ’pars ego nympharum, quae sunt in Achaide,’ dixit ’una fui, nec me studiosius altera saltus legit nec posuit studiosius altera casses. sed quamvis formae numquam mihi fama petita est, quamvis fortis eram, formosae nomen habebam, nec mea me facies nimium laudata iuvabat, quaque aliae gaudere solent, ego rustica dote corporis erubui crimenque placere putavi. lassa revertebar (memini) Stymphalide silva; aestus erat, magnumque labor geminaverat aestum: invenio sine vertice aquas, sine murmure euntes, perspicuas ad humum, per quas numerabilis alte calculus omnis erat, quas tu vix ire putares. cana salicta dabant nutritaque populus unda sponte sua natas ripis declivibus umbras. accessi primumque pedis vestigia tinxi, poplite deinde tenus; neque eo contenta, recingor molliaque inpono salici velamina curvae nudaque mergor aquis. quas dum ferioque trahoque mille modis labens excussaque bracchia iacto, nescio quod medio sensi sub gurgite murmur territaque insisto propioris margine ripae.
’"Where do you hasten, Arethusa?" Alpheus from his waters,
"Where do you hasten?" had said to me again, in a hoarse voice.
Just as I was, I flee without my clothes (the other bank
held my clothes): so much the more he presses on and burns,
and because I was naked, I seemed the readier to him.
So I ran, so that fierce one bore down on me,
as doves flee a hawk on trembling wing,
as a hawk is wont to harry the trembling doves.
As far as below Orchomenos and Psophis and Cyllene
and the folds of Maenalus and cold Erymanthus and Elis
I held on running, nor was he swifter than I;
but, unequal in strength, I could not endure
the long course: he was hardened to long toil.
Yet over plains, over mountains clothed with trees,
over rocks and crags too, and where there was no path, I ran.
The sun was at my back: I saw a long shadow
go before my feet — unless it was fear that saw it;
but surely the sound of his feet frightened me, and his huge
panting breath was blowing on the fillets in my hair.
Worn out by the labor of flight, "Bring help," I cried,
"I am caught, Diana, to your armor-bearer, to whom often
you gave your bow to carry and your shafts shut in the quiver!"
The goddess was moved, and, taking one from the thick clouds,
cast it over me: the river ranges round me, hidden in the mist,
and, baffled, searches about the hollow cloud,
and twice, not knowing, circles the place where the goddess
had hidden me, and twice called "Io Arethusa! Io Arethusa!"
What heart had I then, in my misery? Such as the lamb’s,
if she hears the wolves growling round the high folds,
or the hare’s, who, lurking in the briar, sees the hostile
mouths of the hounds and dares give no movement of her body?
Yet he does not depart; for he sees no tracks
of feet leading farther: he watches the cloud and the place.
A cold sweat seizes my beset limbs, and dark drops
fall from all my body, and wherever I moved my foot
a pool wells up, and from my hair dew falls,
and quicker than I now retell it to you, I am changed
into waters. But the river knows the loved streams,
and, laying off the man’s shape he had put on,
turns back into his own waters, to mingle with me.
The Delian broke the earth, and I, plunged in blind caverns,
am borne to Ortygia, which, dear to me by the surname
of my own goddess, first led me up to the upper air.’
"Where do you hasten?" had said to me again, in a hoarse voice.
Just as I was, I flee without my clothes (the other bank
held my clothes): so much the more he presses on and burns,
and because I was naked, I seemed the readier to him.
So I ran, so that fierce one bore down on me,
as doves flee a hawk on trembling wing,
as a hawk is wont to harry the trembling doves.
As far as below Orchomenos and Psophis and Cyllene
and the folds of Maenalus and cold Erymanthus and Elis
I held on running, nor was he swifter than I;
but, unequal in strength, I could not endure
the long course: he was hardened to long toil.
Yet over plains, over mountains clothed with trees,
over rocks and crags too, and where there was no path, I ran.
The sun was at my back: I saw a long shadow
go before my feet — unless it was fear that saw it;
but surely the sound of his feet frightened me, and his huge
panting breath was blowing on the fillets in my hair.
Worn out by the labor of flight, "Bring help," I cried,
"I am caught, Diana, to your armor-bearer, to whom often
you gave your bow to carry and your shafts shut in the quiver!"
The goddess was moved, and, taking one from the thick clouds,
cast it over me: the river ranges round me, hidden in the mist,
and, baffled, searches about the hollow cloud,
and twice, not knowing, circles the place where the goddess
had hidden me, and twice called "Io Arethusa! Io Arethusa!"
What heart had I then, in my misery? Such as the lamb’s,
if she hears the wolves growling round the high folds,
or the hare’s, who, lurking in the briar, sees the hostile
mouths of the hounds and dares give no movement of her body?
Yet he does not depart; for he sees no tracks
of feet leading farther: he watches the cloud and the place.
A cold sweat seizes my beset limbs, and dark drops
fall from all my body, and wherever I moved my foot
a pool wells up, and from my hair dew falls,
and quicker than I now retell it to you, I am changed
into waters. But the river knows the loved streams,
and, laying off the man’s shape he had put on,
turns back into his own waters, to mingle with me.
The Delian broke the earth, and I, plunged in blind caverns,
am borne to Ortygia, which, dear to me by the surname
of my own goddess, first led me up to the upper air.’
"quo properas, Arethusa?" suis Alpheos ab undis, "quo properas?" iterum rauco mihi dixerat ore. sicut eram, fugio sine vestibus (altera vestes ripa meas habuit): tanto magis instat et ardet, et quia nuda fui, sum visa paratior illi. sic ego currebam, sic me ferus ille premebat, ut fugere accipitrem penna trepidante columbae, ut solet accipiter trepidas urguere columbas. usque sub Orchomenon Psophidaque Cyllenenque Maenaliosque sinus gelidumque Erymanthon et Elin currere sustinui, nec me velocior ille; sed tolerare diu cursus ego viribus inpar non poteram, longi patiens erat ille laboris. per tamen et campos, per opertos arbore montes, saxa quoque et rupes et, qua via nulla, cucurri. sol erat a tergo: vidi praecedere longam ante pedes umbram, nisi si timor illa videbat; sed certe sonitusque pedum terrebat et ingens crinales vittas adflabat anhelitus oris. fessa labore fugae "fer opem, deprendimur," inquam "armigerae, Diana, tuae, cui saepe dedisti ferre tuos arcus inclusaque tela pharetra!" mota dea est spissisque ferens e nubibus unam me super iniecit: lustrat caligine tectam amnis et ignarus circum cava nubila quaerit bisque locum, quo me dea texerat, inscius ambit et bis "io Arethusa" vocavit, "io Arethusa!" quid mihi tunc animi miserae fuit? anne quod agnae est, si qua lupos audit circum stabula alta frementes, aut lepori, qui vepre latens hostilia cernit ora canum nullosque audet dare corpore motus? non tamen abscedit; neque enim vestigia cernit longius ulla pedum: servat nubemque locumque. occupat obsessos sudor mihi frigidus artus, caeruleaeque cadunt toto de corpore guttae, quaque pedem movi, manat lacus, eque capillis ros cadit, et citius, quam nunc tibi facta renarro, in latices mutor. sed enim cognoscit amatas amnis aquas positoque viri, quod sumpserat, ore vertitur in proprias, et se mihi misceat, undas. Delia rupit humum, caecisque ego mersa cavernis advehor Ortygiam, quae me cognomine divae grata meae superas eduxit prima sub auras.’ ’"Hac Arethusa tenus;
’"Thus far Arethusa; the fruitful goddess yoked
twin serpents to her car and curbed their mouths with reins
and was borne through the air midway between heaven and earth,
and sent the light chariot to the Tritonian city,
to Triptolemus, and bade him scatter the given seed,
part on untilled ground, part on land long fallow, tilled afresh.
Now over Europe and the land of Asia, high aloft,
the youth had been carried: he turns toward the Scythian shores.
There Lyncus was king; he enters the king’s house.
Asked whence he comes, and the cause of his journey,
his name and homeland, ’My homeland is famed Athens,’
he said; ’Triptolemus my name; I came neither by ship
over the waves nor on foot over the lands:
the passable air lay open to me. I bring the gifts
of Ceres, which, scattered over the broad fields,
will yield fruitful harvests and gentle nourishment.’
The barbarian envied him, and, that he himself
might be the author of so great a gift, takes him in
as a guest and, when he was heavy with sleep,
sets on him with the sword: as he tried to pierce his breast,
Ceres made him a lynx, and bade the Mopsopian youth
drive her sacred team once more through the air."
twin serpents to her car and curbed their mouths with reins
and was borne through the air midway between heaven and earth,
and sent the light chariot to the Tritonian city,
to Triptolemus, and bade him scatter the given seed,
part on untilled ground, part on land long fallow, tilled afresh.
Now over Europe and the land of Asia, high aloft,
the youth had been carried: he turns toward the Scythian shores.
There Lyncus was king; he enters the king’s house.
Asked whence he comes, and the cause of his journey,
his name and homeland, ’My homeland is famed Athens,’
he said; ’Triptolemus my name; I came neither by ship
over the waves nor on foot over the lands:
the passable air lay open to me. I bring the gifts
of Ceres, which, scattered over the broad fields,
will yield fruitful harvests and gentle nourishment.’
The barbarian envied him, and, that he himself
might be the author of so great a gift, takes him in
as a guest and, when he was heavy with sleep,
sets on him with the sword: as he tried to pierce his breast,
Ceres made him a lynx, and bade the Mopsopian youth
drive her sacred team once more through the air."
geminos dea fertilis angues curribus admovit frenisque coercuit ora et medium caeli terraeque per aera vecta est atque levem currum Tritonida misit in urbem Triptolemo partimque rudi data semina iussit spargere humo, partim post tempora longa recultae. iam super Europen sublimis et Asida terram vectus erat iuvenis: Scythicas advertitur oras. rex ibi Lyncus erat; regis subit ille penates. qua veniat, causamque viae nomenque rogatus et patriam, ’patria est clarae mihi’ dixit ’Athenae; Triptolemus nomen; veni nec puppe per undas, nec pede per terras: patuit mihi pervius aether. dona fero Cereris, latos quae sparsa per agros frugiferas messes alimentaque mitia reddant.’ barbarus invidit tantique ut muneris auctor ipse sit, hospitio recipit somnoque gravatum adgreditur ferro: conantem figere pectus lynca Ceres fecit rursusque per aera iussit Mopsopium iuvenem sacros agitare iugales." ’Finierat doctos e nobis maxima cantus;
’The greatest of us had ended her learned song;
and with one accord the nymphs declared that the goddesses
who dwell on Helicon had won; and when the beaten ones
hurled abuse, "Since it is too little," I said,
"for you to have earned punishment by the contest,
and you add insults to your fault, and our patience
is not without limit, we will proceed to penalties
and follow where anger calls." The Emathian women laugh
and scorn the threatening words; and, as they try to speak
and to thrust out insolent hands with a great clamor,
they saw feathers sprout from their nails, their arms
covered with plumage, and each sees the face of the other
stiffen into a hard beak, and new birds added to the woods;
and while they want to beat their breasts, lifted
by their moving arms they hung in the air —
the scolds of the woods, magpies. Even now in the birds
their old fluency remains, their raucous chatter
and their monstrous passion for talk.’
and with one accord the nymphs declared that the goddesses
who dwell on Helicon had won; and when the beaten ones
hurled abuse, "Since it is too little," I said,
"for you to have earned punishment by the contest,
and you add insults to your fault, and our patience
is not without limit, we will proceed to penalties
and follow where anger calls." The Emathian women laugh
and scorn the threatening words; and, as they try to speak
and to thrust out insolent hands with a great clamor,
they saw feathers sprout from their nails, their arms
covered with plumage, and each sees the face of the other
stiffen into a hard beak, and new birds added to the woods;
and while they want to beat their breasts, lifted
by their moving arms they hung in the air —
the scolds of the woods, magpies. Even now in the birds
their old fluency remains, their raucous chatter
and their monstrous passion for talk.’
at nymphae vicisse deas Helicona colentes concordi dixere sono: convicia victae cum iacerent, "quoniam" dixi "certamine vobis supplicium meruisse parum est maledictaque culpae additis et non est patientia libera nobis, ibimus in poenas et, qua vocat ira, sequemur." rident Emathides spernuntque minacia verba, conantesque loqui et magno clamore protervas intentare manus pennas exire per ungues adspexere suos, operiri bracchia plumis, alteraque alterius rigido concrescere rostro ora videt volucresque novas accedere silvis; dumque volunt plangi, per bracchia mota levatae aere pendebant, nemorum convicia, picae. Nunc quoque in alitibus facundia prisca remansit raucaque garrulitas studiumque inmane loquendi.’
Tritonia had lent her ears to such words,
and approved the Muses’ song and their just wrath;
then to herself: ’To praise is too little — let me too
be praised, and not let my godhead be scorned
without a penalty.’ And she turned her mind
to the fate of Maeonian Arachne, who, she had heard,
would yield to her in no praise for the wool-worker’s art.
Not by her place nor by her family’s stock
was the girl renowned, but by her craft. Her father,
Idmon of Colophon, dyed the thirsty wool
in Phocaean purple; her mother was dead — but she too
had been low-born, a match for her husband. Yet through the towns
of Lydia the girl by her zeal had won
a name worth remembering, though, sprung from a small house,
she dwelt in small Hypaepa. To gaze on her marvelous work,
the nymphs would often leave the vineyards of their own Tmolus,
the Pactolian nymphs would leave their own waters.
And it pleased them not only to see the finished cloths,
but to watch them being made: such grace was in her art —
whether she wound the raw wool into first round balls,
or worked it with her fingers, and, drawing the fleece
again and again in a long pull, softened it to the likeness of cloud,
or whirled the smooth spindle with a light thumb,
or embroidered with the needle: you would know her Pallas-taught.
and approved the Muses’ song and their just wrath;
then to herself: ’To praise is too little — let me too
be praised, and not let my godhead be scorned
without a penalty.’ And she turned her mind
to the fate of Maeonian Arachne, who, she had heard,
would yield to her in no praise for the wool-worker’s art.
Not by her place nor by her family’s stock
was the girl renowned, but by her craft. Her father,
Idmon of Colophon, dyed the thirsty wool
in Phocaean purple; her mother was dead — but she too
had been low-born, a match for her husband. Yet through the towns
of Lydia the girl by her zeal had won
a name worth remembering, though, sprung from a small house,
she dwelt in small Hypaepa. To gaze on her marvelous work,
the nymphs would often leave the vineyards of their own Tmolus,
the Pactolian nymphs would leave their own waters.
And it pleased them not only to see the finished cloths,
but to watch them being made: such grace was in her art —
whether she wound the raw wool into first round balls,
or worked it with her fingers, and, drawing the fleece
again and again in a long pull, softened it to the likeness of cloud,
or whirled the smooth spindle with a light thumb,
or embroidered with the needle: you would know her Pallas-taught.
Praebuerat dictis Tritonia talibus aures carminaque Aonidum iustamque probaverat iram; tum secum: ’laudare parum est, laudemur et ipsae numina nec sperni sine poena nostra sinamus.’ Maeoniaeque animum fatis intendit Arachnes, quam sibi lanificae non cedere laudibus artis audierat. non illa loco nec origine gentis clara, sed arte fuit: pater huic Colophonius Idmon Phocaico bibulas tinguebat murice lanas; occiderat mater, sed et haec de plebe suoque aequa viro fuerat; Lydas tamen illa per urbes quaesierat studio nomen memorabile, quamvis orta domo parva parvis habitabat Hypaepis. huius ut adspicerent opus admirabile, saepe deseruere sui nymphae vineta Timoli, deseruere suas nymphae Pactolides undas. nec factas solum vestes, spectare iuvabat tum quoque, cum fierent: tantus decor adfuit arti, sive rudem primos lanam glomerabat in orbes, seu digitis subigebat opus repetitaque longo vellera mollibat nebulas aequantia tractu, sive levi teretem versabat pollice fusum, seu pingebat acu; scires a Pallade doctam.
Yet this she denies, and, offended at so great a mistress,
’Let her contend with me,’ she says; ’there is nothing
I would refuse, if beaten!’ Pallas takes on an old woman’s shape:
she sets false grey upon her temples, and adds
frail limbs that a staff supports. Then she began to speak:
’Not everything that greater age brings is to be fled —
experience comes with the late years. Do not scorn my counsel:
seek the greatest fame among mortals for the working of wool,
but yield to the goddess, and for your reckless words, rash girl,
beg pardon with a suppliant voice: she will grant it if you ask.’
Arachne eyes her grimly, leaves the threads she had begun,
and, scarcely holding back her hand, her anger plain in her face,
answered the unrecognized Pallas with these words:
’You come witless and worn out with long old age,
and to have lived too long is your undoing. Let your daughter-in-law,
if you have one, or your daughter, hear those words of yours;
I am counsel enough unto myself. And lest you think
your warning has done any good, my mind is unchanged.
Why does she not come herself? Why does she shun this contest?’
Then the goddess: ’She has come!’ and put off the old woman’s form
and showed herself Pallas. The nymphs bow down, and the Mygdonian
matrons; the girl alone is not afraid —
yet she blushed: a sudden flush marked her unwilling face
and again faded, as the sky is wont to grow crimson
when Dawn first stirs, and after a brief while
to whiten at the rising of the sun. She holds to what she began,
and in her lust for a foolish prize rushes upon her own ruin.
’Let her contend with me,’ she says; ’there is nothing
I would refuse, if beaten!’ Pallas takes on an old woman’s shape:
she sets false grey upon her temples, and adds
frail limbs that a staff supports. Then she began to speak:
’Not everything that greater age brings is to be fled —
experience comes with the late years. Do not scorn my counsel:
seek the greatest fame among mortals for the working of wool,
but yield to the goddess, and for your reckless words, rash girl,
beg pardon with a suppliant voice: she will grant it if you ask.’
Arachne eyes her grimly, leaves the threads she had begun,
and, scarcely holding back her hand, her anger plain in her face,
answered the unrecognized Pallas with these words:
’You come witless and worn out with long old age,
and to have lived too long is your undoing. Let your daughter-in-law,
if you have one, or your daughter, hear those words of yours;
I am counsel enough unto myself. And lest you think
your warning has done any good, my mind is unchanged.
Why does she not come herself? Why does she shun this contest?’
Then the goddess: ’She has come!’ and put off the old woman’s form
and showed herself Pallas. The nymphs bow down, and the Mygdonian
matrons; the girl alone is not afraid —
yet she blushed: a sudden flush marked her unwilling face
and again faded, as the sky is wont to grow crimson
when Dawn first stirs, and after a brief while
to whiten at the rising of the sun. She holds to what she began,
and in her lust for a foolish prize rushes upon her own ruin.
quod tamen ipsa negat tantaque offensa magistra ’certet’ ait ’mecum: nihil est, quod victa recusem!’ Pallas anum simulat: falsosque in tempora canos addit et infirmos, baculo quos sustinet, artus. tum sic orsa loqui ’non omnia grandior aetas, quae fugiamus, habet: seris venit usus ab annis. consilium ne sperne meum: tibi fama petatur inter mortales faciendae maxima lanae; cede deae veniamque tuis, temeraria, dictis supplice voce roga: veniam dabit illa roganti.’ adspicit hanc torvis inceptaque fila relinquit vixque manum retinens confessaque vultibus iram talibus obscuram resecuta est Pallada dictis: ’mentis inops longaque venis confecta senecta, et nimium vixisse diu nocet. audiat istas, si qua tibi nurus est, si qua est tibi filia, voces; consilii satis est in me mihi, neve monendo profecisse putes, eadem est sententia nobis. cur non ipsa venit? cur haec certamina vitat?’ tum dea ’venit!’ ait formamque removit anilem Palladaque exhibuit: venerantur numina nymphae Mygdonidesque nurus; sola est non territa virgo, sed tamen erubuit, subitusque invita notavit ora rubor rursusque evanuit, ut solet aer purpureus fieri, cum primum Aurora movetur, et breve post tempus candescere solis ab ortu. perstat in incepto stolidaeque cupidine palmae in sua fata ruit;
For the daughter of Jove does not refuse, nor warn her further,
nor now put off the contest. Without delay they both
take up their stations in different parts, and stretch
the twin webs on the slender warp: the web is bound to the beam,
the reed keeps the threads apart, the woof is threaded in
between by sharp shuttles, which the fingers run out,
and, drawn through the warp, the teeth of the notched comb,
struck home, beat it down. Both hurry, and with their robes
girt up below their breasts they move their skilled arms,
their zeal beguiling the labor. There the purple is woven in
that has known the Tyrian cauldron, and fine shades
of small gradation — as when, after rain, the bow
where the sunbeams strike stains the long sky
with its vast curve, in which, though a thousand differing colors shine,
the very passing of one to the next cheats the watching eye:
so far do they look the same where they touch; yet the ends are far apart.
There too the pliant gold is run into the threads,
and an old story is drawn out upon the web.
nor now put off the contest. Without delay they both
take up their stations in different parts, and stretch
the twin webs on the slender warp: the web is bound to the beam,
the reed keeps the threads apart, the woof is threaded in
between by sharp shuttles, which the fingers run out,
and, drawn through the warp, the teeth of the notched comb,
struck home, beat it down. Both hurry, and with their robes
girt up below their breasts they move their skilled arms,
their zeal beguiling the labor. There the purple is woven in
that has known the Tyrian cauldron, and fine shades
of small gradation — as when, after rain, the bow
where the sunbeams strike stains the long sky
with its vast curve, in which, though a thousand differing colors shine,
the very passing of one to the next cheats the watching eye:
so far do they look the same where they touch; yet the ends are far apart.
There too the pliant gold is run into the threads,
and an old story is drawn out upon the web.
neque enim Iove nata recusat nec monet ulterius nec iam certamina differt. haud mora, constituunt diversis partibus ambae et gracili geminas intendunt stamine telas: tela iugo vincta est, stamen secernit harundo, inseritur medium radiis subtemen acutis, quod digiti expediunt, atque inter stamina ductum percusso paviunt insecti pectine dentes. utraque festinant cinctaeque ad pectora vestes bracchia docta movent, studio fallente laborem. illic et Tyrium quae purpura sensit aenum texitur et tenues parvi discriminis umbrae; qualis ab imbre solent percussis solibus arcus inficere ingenti longum curvamine caelum; in quo diversi niteant cum mille colores, transitus ipse tamen spectantia lumina fallit: usque adeo, quod tangit, idem est; tamen ultima distant. illic et lentum filis inmittitur aurum et vetus in tela deducitur argumentum.
Pallas paints the Cecropian rock, the hill of Mavors,
in the citadel, and the ancient quarrel over the land’s name.
Twice six of the heavenly ones, with Jove in their midst,
sit on high seats in august gravity; each god’s own
likeness marks him: Jove’s is a kingly image.
She makes the god of the sea stand and with his long trident
strike the rough rocks, and from the wound in the rock’s midst
the salt sea leap forth, the pledge by which he claims the city;
but to herself she gives a shield, gives a sharp-pointed spear,
gives a helmet for her head, her breast is guarded by the aegis,
and she figures the earth, struck by her spear’s own point,
bringing forth a shoot of pale-green olive with its berries;
and the gods marveling: Victory is the work’s end.
Yet, that her rival in the bid for fame might grasp by examples
what reward she may hope for so frenzied a daring,
she adds at the four corners four contests of their own,
bright in their color, set off with small figures.
One corner holds Thracian Rhodope and Haemus,
now icy mountains, once mortal bodies,
who claimed for themselves the names of the highest gods;
another part holds the pitiable doom of the Pygmy mother:
Juno, having beaten her in a contest, bade her be
a crane and declare war upon her own people.
She painted Antigone too, who once dared to vie
with the consort of great Jove, whom royal Juno
turned into a bird — and neither Ilion availed her
nor her father Laomedon, but, putting on white feathers,
as a stork she applauds herself with clattering beak.
The one corner left holds Cinyras, bereaved:
clasping the temple steps — the limbs of his own daughters —
and lying on the stone he seems to weep.
She rings the outermost edges with the olive of peace —
that is her bound — and with her own tree ends the work.
in the citadel, and the ancient quarrel over the land’s name.
Twice six of the heavenly ones, with Jove in their midst,
sit on high seats in august gravity; each god’s own
likeness marks him: Jove’s is a kingly image.
She makes the god of the sea stand and with his long trident
strike the rough rocks, and from the wound in the rock’s midst
the salt sea leap forth, the pledge by which he claims the city;
but to herself she gives a shield, gives a sharp-pointed spear,
gives a helmet for her head, her breast is guarded by the aegis,
and she figures the earth, struck by her spear’s own point,
bringing forth a shoot of pale-green olive with its berries;
and the gods marveling: Victory is the work’s end.
Yet, that her rival in the bid for fame might grasp by examples
what reward she may hope for so frenzied a daring,
she adds at the four corners four contests of their own,
bright in their color, set off with small figures.
One corner holds Thracian Rhodope and Haemus,
now icy mountains, once mortal bodies,
who claimed for themselves the names of the highest gods;
another part holds the pitiable doom of the Pygmy mother:
Juno, having beaten her in a contest, bade her be
a crane and declare war upon her own people.
She painted Antigone too, who once dared to vie
with the consort of great Jove, whom royal Juno
turned into a bird — and neither Ilion availed her
nor her father Laomedon, but, putting on white feathers,
as a stork she applauds herself with clattering beak.
The one corner left holds Cinyras, bereaved:
clasping the temple steps — the limbs of his own daughters —
and lying on the stone he seems to weep.
She rings the outermost edges with the olive of peace —
that is her bound — and with her own tree ends the work.
Cecropia Pallas scopulum Mavortis in arce pingit et antiquam de terrae nomine litem. bis sex caelestes medio Iove sedibus altis augusta gravitate sedent; sua quemque deorum inscribit facies: Iovis est regalis imago; stare deum pelagi longoque ferire tridente aspera saxa facit, medioque e vulnere saxi exsiluisse fretum, quo pignore vindicet urbem; at sibi dat clipeum, dat acutae cuspidis hastam, dat galeam capiti, defenditur aegide pectus, percussamque sua simulat de cuspide terram edere cum bacis fetum canentis olivae; mirarique deos: operis Victoria finis. ut tamen exemplis intellegat aemula laudis, quod pretium speret pro tam furialibus ausis quattuor in partes certamina quattuor addit, clara colore suo, brevibus distincta sigillis: Threiciam Rhodopen habet angulus unus et Haemum, nunc gelidos montes, mortalia corpora quondam, nomina summorum sibi qui tribuere deorum; altera Pygmaeae fatum miserabile matris pars habet: hanc Iuno victam certamine iussit esse gruem populisque suis indicere bellum; pinxit et Antigonen, ausam contendere quondam cum magni consorte Iovis, quam regia Iuno in volucrem vertit, nec profuit Ilion illi Laomedonve pater, sumptis quin candida pennis ipsa sibi plaudat crepitante ciconia rostro; qui superest solus, Cinyran habet angulus orbum; isque gradus templi, natarum membra suarum, amplectens saxoque iacens lacrimare videtur. circuit extremas oleis pacalibus oras (is modus est) operisque sua facit arbore finem.
The Maeonian girl pictures Europa, cheated by the bull’s image:
you would think the bull real, the waters real;
she herself seemed to gaze at the lands she had left,
and to call to her companions, and to dread
the touch of the leaping spray, and to draw back her timid feet.
She made Asterie held by the struggling eagle,
made Leda lie beneath the swan’s wings;
she added how Jupiter, hidden in a satyr’s likeness,
filled fair Nycteis with a twin offspring,
how he was Amphitryon when he took you, Tirynthian one,
how as gold he tricked Danae, as fire Asopus’s daughter,
as a shepherd Mnemosyne, as a dappled serpent Deo’s child.
You too, Neptune, she set there, changed to a grim bull
over the Aeolian maid; in the guise of Enipeus you beget
the Aloidae, as a ram you cheat Bisaltis,
and the golden-haired, gentlest mother of the grain
felt you a horse; the mother of the winged horse, her hair
serpents, felt you winged; Melantho felt you a dolphin:
to all of these she gave their own face and the face of their places.
There is Phoebus in a countryman’s likeness,
and how he wore now a hawk’s feathers, now a lion’s hide,
how as a shepherd he tricked Isse, Macareus’s daughter,
how Bacchus deceived Erigone with the false grape,
how Saturn as a horse begot the twin-formed Chiron.
The web’s last part, ringed with a narrow border,
holds flowers interwoven with clinging ivy.
you would think the bull real, the waters real;
she herself seemed to gaze at the lands she had left,
and to call to her companions, and to dread
the touch of the leaping spray, and to draw back her timid feet.
She made Asterie held by the struggling eagle,
made Leda lie beneath the swan’s wings;
she added how Jupiter, hidden in a satyr’s likeness,
filled fair Nycteis with a twin offspring,
how he was Amphitryon when he took you, Tirynthian one,
how as gold he tricked Danae, as fire Asopus’s daughter,
as a shepherd Mnemosyne, as a dappled serpent Deo’s child.
You too, Neptune, she set there, changed to a grim bull
over the Aeolian maid; in the guise of Enipeus you beget
the Aloidae, as a ram you cheat Bisaltis,
and the golden-haired, gentlest mother of the grain
felt you a horse; the mother of the winged horse, her hair
serpents, felt you winged; Melantho felt you a dolphin:
to all of these she gave their own face and the face of their places.
There is Phoebus in a countryman’s likeness,
and how he wore now a hawk’s feathers, now a lion’s hide,
how as a shepherd he tricked Isse, Macareus’s daughter,
how Bacchus deceived Erigone with the false grape,
how Saturn as a horse begot the twin-formed Chiron.
The web’s last part, ringed with a narrow border,
holds flowers interwoven with clinging ivy.
Maeonis elusam designat imagine tauri Europam: verum taurum, freta vera putares; ipsa videbatur terras spectare relictas et comites clamare suas tactumque vereri adsilientis aquae timidasque reducere plantas. fecit et Asterien aquila luctante teneri, fecit olorinis Ledam recubare sub alis; addidit, ut satyri celatus imagine pulchram Iuppiter inplerit gemino Nycteida fetu, Amphitryon fuerit, cum te, Tirynthia, cepit, aureus ut Danaen, Asopida luserit ignis, Mnemosynen pastor, varius Deoida serpens. te quoque mutatum torvo, Neptune, iuvenco virgine in Aeolia posuit; tu visus Enipeus gignis Aloidas, aries Bisaltida fallis, et te flava comas frugum mitissima mater sensit equum, sensit volucrem crinita colubris mater equi volucris, sensit delphina Melantho: omnibus his faciemque suam faciemque locorum reddidit. est illic agrestis imagine Phoebus, utque modo accipitris pennas, modo terga leonis gesserit, ut pastor Macareida luserit Issen, Liber ut Erigonen falsa deceperit uva, ut Saturnus equo geminum Chirona crearit. ultima pars telae, tenui circumdata limbo, nexilibus flores hederis habet intertextos.
Not Pallas, not Envy itself, could fault that work:
the golden warrior-maid grieved at its success
and tore the embroidered cloths, those indictments of heaven,
and, as she held a shuttle of Cytorian boxwood,
three times and four she struck Idmonian Arachne’s brow.
The unhappy girl could not bear it, and, high of heart,
bound her throat in a noose: as she hung, Pallas in pity
lifted her and spoke thus: ’Live, then — but hang, wicked one;
and lest you be careless of the future, let this same
law of punishment be pronounced upon your stock
and your late descendants!’ Then, departing, she sprinkled her
with the juices of Hecate’s herb: and at once, touched
by the dismal drug, her hair fell away, and with it
her nose and ears; her head turns tiny; she is small
in all her body too: thin fingers cling along her sides
for legs, the rest is belly — yet from it still
she pays out thread, and, a spider, plies her old webs.
the golden warrior-maid grieved at its success
and tore the embroidered cloths, those indictments of heaven,
and, as she held a shuttle of Cytorian boxwood,
three times and four she struck Idmonian Arachne’s brow.
The unhappy girl could not bear it, and, high of heart,
bound her throat in a noose: as she hung, Pallas in pity
lifted her and spoke thus: ’Live, then — but hang, wicked one;
and lest you be careless of the future, let this same
law of punishment be pronounced upon your stock
and your late descendants!’ Then, departing, she sprinkled her
with the juices of Hecate’s herb: and at once, touched
by the dismal drug, her hair fell away, and with it
her nose and ears; her head turns tiny; she is small
in all her body too: thin fingers cling along her sides
for legs, the rest is belly — yet from it still
she pays out thread, and, a spider, plies her old webs.
Non illud Pallas, non illud carpere Livor possit opus: doluit successu flava virago et rupit pictas, caelestia crimina, vestes, utque Cytoriaco radium de monte tenebat, ter quater Idmoniae frontem percussit Arachnes. non tulit infelix laqueoque animosa ligavit guttura: pendentem Pallas miserata levavit atque ita ’vive quidem, pende tamen, inproba’ dixit, ’lexque eadem poenae, ne sis secura futuri, dicta tuo generi serisque nepotibus esto!’ post ea discedens sucis Hecateidos herbae sparsit: et extemplo tristi medicamine tactae defluxere comae, cum quis et naris et aures, fitque caput minimum; toto quoque corpore parva est: in latere exiles digiti pro cruribus haerent, cetera venter habet, de quo tamen illa remittit stamen et antiquas exercet aranea telas.
All Lydia is in an uproar, and through the towns of Phrygia
the rumor of the deed runs, and fills the wide world with talk.
Before her marriage Niobe had known Arachne,
back when as a girl she dwelt in Maeonia and on Sipylus;
yet she was not warned by her countrywoman’s punishment
to yield to the gods of heaven and use humbler words.
Many things gave her spirit; but neither her husband’s art,
nor the lineage of them both, nor the power of a great realm
so pleased her — though all of these did please her —
as her own offspring; and Niobe would have been called
the happiest of mothers, had she not seemed so to herself.
For Manto, Tiresias’s daughter, foreknowing what would come,
had been driven through the public streets by a god’s stirring
and prophesied: ’Women of Ismenus, go in crowds
and give to Latona and to Latona’s two children
pious incense with prayer, and bind your hair with laurel:
through my mouth Latona commands it.’ She is obeyed, and all
the Theban women deck their brows with the bidden leaves
and give incense and words of prayer to the holy flames.
the rumor of the deed runs, and fills the wide world with talk.
Before her marriage Niobe had known Arachne,
back when as a girl she dwelt in Maeonia and on Sipylus;
yet she was not warned by her countrywoman’s punishment
to yield to the gods of heaven and use humbler words.
Many things gave her spirit; but neither her husband’s art,
nor the lineage of them both, nor the power of a great realm
so pleased her — though all of these did please her —
as her own offspring; and Niobe would have been called
the happiest of mothers, had she not seemed so to herself.
For Manto, Tiresias’s daughter, foreknowing what would come,
had been driven through the public streets by a god’s stirring
and prophesied: ’Women of Ismenus, go in crowds
and give to Latona and to Latona’s two children
pious incense with prayer, and bind your hair with laurel:
through my mouth Latona commands it.’ She is obeyed, and all
the Theban women deck their brows with the bidden leaves
and give incense and words of prayer to the holy flames.
Lydia tota fremit, Phrygiaeque per oppida facti rumor it et magnum sermonibus occupat orbem. ante suos Niobe thalamos cognoverat illam, tum cum Maeoniam virgo Sipylumque colebat; nec tamen admonita est poena popularis Arachnes, cedere caelitibus verbisque minoribus uti. multa dabant animos; sed enim nec coniugis artes nec genus amborum magnique potentia regni sic placuere illi, quamvis ea cuncta placerent, ut sua progenies; et felicissima matrum dicta foret Niobe, si non sibi visa fuisset. nam sata Tiresia venturi praescia Manto per medias fuerat divino concita motu vaticinata vias: ’Ismenides, ite frequentes et date Latonae Latonigenisque duobus cum prece tura pia lauroque innectite crinem: ore meo Latona iubet.’ paretur, et omnes Thebaides iussis sua tempora frondibus ornant turaque dant sanctis et verba precantia flammis.
See, Niobe comes amid a crowded train of attendants,
splendid in Phrygian robes shot through with gold,
and beautiful, as far as anger allows; tossing,
with her graceful head, the hair streaming over either shoulder,
she halted, and when she had swept her proud eyes about, on high:
’What madness,’ she says, ’to set gods you have only heard of
before gods you have seen? Or why is Latona worshipped at altars
while my own godhead has as yet no incense? Tantalus is my sire,
the one man allowed to touch the tables of the gods above;
my mother is sister to the Pleiades; mightiest Atlas
is my grandfather, who bears the heaven’s axle on his neck;
Jupiter is my other grandfather — and in that father-in-law too I glory.
The peoples of Phrygia fear me, Cadmus’s royal house
lies under me as its mistress, and the walls my husband framed
with his lyre, and their peoples, are ruled by me and my man.
To whatever quarter of the house I turn my eyes,
boundless wealth is seen; and added to it
a face worthy of a goddess; add to this seven daughters
and as many sons, and soon sons- and daughters-in-law!
Ask now what cause our pride may have, and dare
to set above me Latona, that Titaness, Coeus’s child —
Latona, to whom once the vast earth refused
a scrap of ground for her childbearing! Not by sky,
not by earth, not by the waters was your goddess taken in:
she was an outcast from the world, until Delos, pitying the wanderer,
said, "You roam the lands a stranger, I the waves,"
and gave her an unsteady place. She became the mother of two:
that is a seventh part of my own womb. I am happy
— who could deny it? — and happy I shall stay
— who could doubt that too? — my plenty has made me safe.
I am greater than one whom Fortune could harm,
and however much she snatch, she will leave me far more.
My blessings have outgrown fear. Imagine some of this host
of my children could be taken from me: still, even stripped,
I would not be reduced to the number two — Latona’s crowd —
by which how far is she from childless? Go — enough of this rite! —
and lay the laurel from your hair!’ They lay it down
and leave the rites unfinished, and — what they may —
worship the godhead with a silent murmur.
splendid in Phrygian robes shot through with gold,
and beautiful, as far as anger allows; tossing,
with her graceful head, the hair streaming over either shoulder,
she halted, and when she had swept her proud eyes about, on high:
’What madness,’ she says, ’to set gods you have only heard of
before gods you have seen? Or why is Latona worshipped at altars
while my own godhead has as yet no incense? Tantalus is my sire,
the one man allowed to touch the tables of the gods above;
my mother is sister to the Pleiades; mightiest Atlas
is my grandfather, who bears the heaven’s axle on his neck;
Jupiter is my other grandfather — and in that father-in-law too I glory.
The peoples of Phrygia fear me, Cadmus’s royal house
lies under me as its mistress, and the walls my husband framed
with his lyre, and their peoples, are ruled by me and my man.
To whatever quarter of the house I turn my eyes,
boundless wealth is seen; and added to it
a face worthy of a goddess; add to this seven daughters
and as many sons, and soon sons- and daughters-in-law!
Ask now what cause our pride may have, and dare
to set above me Latona, that Titaness, Coeus’s child —
Latona, to whom once the vast earth refused
a scrap of ground for her childbearing! Not by sky,
not by earth, not by the waters was your goddess taken in:
she was an outcast from the world, until Delos, pitying the wanderer,
said, "You roam the lands a stranger, I the waves,"
and gave her an unsteady place. She became the mother of two:
that is a seventh part of my own womb. I am happy
— who could deny it? — and happy I shall stay
— who could doubt that too? — my plenty has made me safe.
I am greater than one whom Fortune could harm,
and however much she snatch, she will leave me far more.
My blessings have outgrown fear. Imagine some of this host
of my children could be taken from me: still, even stripped,
I would not be reduced to the number two — Latona’s crowd —
by which how far is she from childless? Go — enough of this rite! —
and lay the laurel from your hair!’ They lay it down
and leave the rites unfinished, and — what they may —
worship the godhead with a silent murmur.
Ecce venit comitum Niobe celeberrima turba vestibus intexto Phrygiis spectabilis auro et, quantum ira sinit, formosa; movensque decoro cum capite inmissos umerum per utrumque capillos constitit, utque oculos circumtulit alta superbos, ’quis furor auditos’ inquit ’praeponere visis caelestes? aut cur colitur Latona per aras, numen adhuc sine ture meum est? mihi Tantalus auctor, cui licuit soli superorum tangere mensas; Pleiadum soror est genetrix mea; maximus Atlas est avus, aetherium qui fert cervicibus axem; Iuppiter alter avus; socero quoque glorior illo. me gentes metuunt Phrygiae, me regia Cadmi sub domina est, fidibusque mei commissa mariti moenia cum populis a meque viroque reguntur. in quamcumque domus adverti lumina partem, inmensae spectantur opes; accedit eodem digna dea facies; huc natas adice septem et totidem iuvenes et mox generosque nurusque! quaerite nunc, habeat quam nostra superbia causam, nescio quoque audete satam Titanida Coeo Latonam praeferre mihi, cui maxima quondam exiguam sedem pariturae terra negavit! nec caelo nec humo nec aquis dea vestra recepta est: exsul erat mundi, donec miserata vagantem "hospita tu terris erras, ego" dixit "in undis" instabilemque locum Delos dedit. illa duorum facta parens: uteri pars haec est septima nostri. sum felix (quis enim neget hoc?) felixque manebo (hoc quoque quis dubitet?): tutam me copia fecit. maior sum quam cui possit Fortuna nocere, multaque ut eripiat, multo mihi plura relinquet. excessere metum mea iam bona. fingite demi huic aliquid populo natorum posse meorum: non tamen ad numerum redigar spoliata duorum, Latonae turbam, qua quantum distat ab orba? ite—satis pro re sacri—laurumque capillis ponite!’ deponunt et sacra infecta relinquunt, quodque licet, tacito venerantur murmure numen.
The goddess was outraged, and on the topmost peak of Cynthus
spoke to her twin offspring with such words:
’See, I, your mother, proud at having borne you,
and yielding to no goddess but Juno,
am doubted whether I am a goddess at all, and through all the ages
am barred, my children, from worshipped altars, unless you help.
Nor is this my only grief: to the dread deed
the daughter of Tantalus has added insults, and has dared
to rank you below her own children, and has called me
— may it recoil on herself — childless, and shown,
the wicked woman, her father’s tongue.’
Latona was about to add entreaties to this account:
’Have done!’ said Phoebus; ’a long complaint is delay for the penalty!’
Phoebe said the same, and in a swift glide through the air
they reached, screened by clouds, the Cadmean citadel.
spoke to her twin offspring with such words:
’See, I, your mother, proud at having borne you,
and yielding to no goddess but Juno,
am doubted whether I am a goddess at all, and through all the ages
am barred, my children, from worshipped altars, unless you help.
Nor is this my only grief: to the dread deed
the daughter of Tantalus has added insults, and has dared
to rank you below her own children, and has called me
— may it recoil on herself — childless, and shown,
the wicked woman, her father’s tongue.’
Latona was about to add entreaties to this account:
’Have done!’ said Phoebus; ’a long complaint is delay for the penalty!’
Phoebe said the same, and in a swift glide through the air
they reached, screened by clouds, the Cadmean citadel.
Indignata dea est summoque in vertice Cynthi talibus est dictis gemina cum prole locuta: ’en ego vestra parens, vobis animosa creatis, et nisi Iunoni nulli cessura dearum, an dea sim, dubitor perque omnia saecula cultis arceor, o nati, nisi vos succurritis, aris. nec dolor hic solus; diro convicia facto Tantalis adiecit vosque est postponere natis ausa suis et me, quod in ipsam reccidat, orbam dixit et exhibuit linguam scelerata paternam.’ adiectura preces erat his Latona relatis: ’desine!’ Phoebus ait, ’poenae mora longa querella est!’ dixit idem Phoebe, celerique per aera lapsu contigerant tecti Cadmeida nubibus arcem.
There was a level field, broad and open, near the walls,
beaten by the constant tread of horses, where the throng
of wheels and hard hooves had softened the clods beneath.
There some of the seven sons of Amphion mount
their spirited horses, and press backs red with Tyrian dye,
and govern reins heavy with gold.
Of these Ismenus, who had once been his mother’s
first burden, while he bends his mount’s course in a sure circle
and curbs its foaming mouth, cries, ’Ah, me!’
and bears a shaft fixed in the midst of his breast,
and, the reins slipping from his dying hand, slid
little by little down over his right shoulder.
Next to him Sipylus, at the sound of the quiver through the empty air,
gave his horse the rein — as when, foreknowing the storm,
the helmsman flees at sight of the cloud and hauls down
his hanging canvas on every side, that no light breeze escape him:
yet, even as he gave the rein, the inescapable shaft
overtook him, and quivering the arrow clung high in his neck,
and the bare iron stood out from his throat;
he, leaning as he was, rolls forward over the galloping legs
and the mane, and fouls the earth with his hot blood.
beaten by the constant tread of horses, where the throng
of wheels and hard hooves had softened the clods beneath.
There some of the seven sons of Amphion mount
their spirited horses, and press backs red with Tyrian dye,
and govern reins heavy with gold.
Of these Ismenus, who had once been his mother’s
first burden, while he bends his mount’s course in a sure circle
and curbs its foaming mouth, cries, ’Ah, me!’
and bears a shaft fixed in the midst of his breast,
and, the reins slipping from his dying hand, slid
little by little down over his right shoulder.
Next to him Sipylus, at the sound of the quiver through the empty air,
gave his horse the rein — as when, foreknowing the storm,
the helmsman flees at sight of the cloud and hauls down
his hanging canvas on every side, that no light breeze escape him:
yet, even as he gave the rein, the inescapable shaft
overtook him, and quivering the arrow clung high in his neck,
and the bare iron stood out from his throat;
he, leaning as he was, rolls forward over the galloping legs
and the mane, and fouls the earth with his hot blood.
Planus erat lateque patens prope moenia campus, adsiduis pulsatus equis, ubi turba rotarum duraque mollierat subiectas ungula glaebas. pars ibi de septem genitis Amphione fortes conscendunt in equos Tyrioque rubentia suco terga premunt auroque graves moderantur habenas. e quibus Ismenus, qui matri sarcina quondam prima suae fuerat, dum certum flectit in orbem quadripedis cursus spumantiaque ora coercet, ’ei mihi!’ conclamat medioque in pectore fixa tela gerit frenisque manu moriente remissis in latus a dextro paulatim defluit armo. proximus audito sonitu per inane pharetrae frena dabat Sipylus, veluti cum praescius imbris nube fugit visa pendentiaque undique rector carbasa deducit, ne qua levis effluat aura: frena tamen dantem non evitabile telum consequitur, summaque tremens cervice sagitta haesit, et exstabat nudum de gutture ferrum; ille, ut erat, pronus per crura admissa iubasque volvitur et calido tellurem sanguine foedat.
Luckless Phaedimus, and Tantalus, heir to his grandsire’s name,
when they had made an end of their accustomed toil,
had passed to the youthful work of the gleaming wrestling-ground;
and now they had brought their straining breasts together,
locked in a close grip, when, sped from the taut string,
the arrow pierced them both, joined as they were.
Together they groaned, together they laid upon the ground
their limbs bent with pain, together as they lay
they rolled their last gaze, together breathed out their souls.
Alphenor sees it, and beating his torn breast
flies up to lift their cold limbs in his embrace,
and falls in that loving office; for the Delian god
broke through his inmost heart with the death-bearing iron.
The moment it was drawn out, part of his lung too, caught
on the barbs, was torn away, and blood with his soul poured into the air.
But no single wound strikes long-haired Damasichthon:
he was hit where the leg begins, and where the sinewy
hollow of the knee makes the soft joints.
And while he tries with his hand to draw out the deadly shaft,
another arrow was driven through his throat up to the feathers.
The blood drove it out, and, spurting itself on high,
it leaps forth and shoots far through the pierced air.
Last, Ilioneus had lifted in prayer arms
that would not avail, and had said, ’O gods, all of you in common’
— not knowing that not all need be entreated —
’spare me!’ The archer-god was moved, when now the shaft
could not be called back; yet by the smallest wound
that boy died, the arrow striking his heart not deep.
when they had made an end of their accustomed toil,
had passed to the youthful work of the gleaming wrestling-ground;
and now they had brought their straining breasts together,
locked in a close grip, when, sped from the taut string,
the arrow pierced them both, joined as they were.
Together they groaned, together they laid upon the ground
their limbs bent with pain, together as they lay
they rolled their last gaze, together breathed out their souls.
Alphenor sees it, and beating his torn breast
flies up to lift their cold limbs in his embrace,
and falls in that loving office; for the Delian god
broke through his inmost heart with the death-bearing iron.
The moment it was drawn out, part of his lung too, caught
on the barbs, was torn away, and blood with his soul poured into the air.
But no single wound strikes long-haired Damasichthon:
he was hit where the leg begins, and where the sinewy
hollow of the knee makes the soft joints.
And while he tries with his hand to draw out the deadly shaft,
another arrow was driven through his throat up to the feathers.
The blood drove it out, and, spurting itself on high,
it leaps forth and shoots far through the pierced air.
Last, Ilioneus had lifted in prayer arms
that would not avail, and had said, ’O gods, all of you in common’
— not knowing that not all need be entreated —
’spare me!’ The archer-god was moved, when now the shaft
could not be called back; yet by the smallest wound
that boy died, the arrow striking his heart not deep.
Phaedimus infelix et aviti nominis heres Tantalus, ut solito finem inposuere labori, transierant ad opus nitidae iuvenale palaestrae; et iam contulerant arto luctantia nexu pectora pectoribus, cum tento concita nervo, sicut erant iuncti, traiecit utrumque sagitta. ingemuere simul, simul incurvata dolore membra solo posuere, simul suprema iacentes lumina versarunt, animam simul exhalarunt. adspicit Alphenor laniataque pectora plangens advolat, ut gelidos conplexibus adlevet artus, inque pio cadit officio; nam Delius illi intima fatifero rupit praecordia ferro. quod simul eductum est, pars et pulmonis in hamis eruta cumque anima cruor est effusus in auras. at non intonsum simplex Damasicthona vulnus adficit: ictus erat, qua crus esse incipit et qua mollia nervosus facit internodia poples. dumque manu temptat trahere exitiabile telum, altera per iugulum pennis tenus acta sagitta est. expulit hanc sanguis seque eiaculatus in altum emicat et longe terebrata prosilit aura. ultimus Ilioneus non profectura precando bracchia sustulerat ’di’ que ’o communiter omnes,’ dixerat ignarus non omnes esse rogandos ’parcite!’ motus erat, cum iam revocabile telum non fuit, arcitenens; minimo tamen occidit ille vulnere, non alte percusso corde sagitta.
The rumor of the disaster, the people’s grief, the tears of her own
made the mother certain of so sudden a ruin —
amazed that it could happen, and enraged that the gods
had dared this, that they held so great a right;
for the father, Amphion, with the iron driven through his breast,
dying, had ended his grief together with the light.
Alas! how far was this Niobe from that Niobe
who lately had driven the people from Latona’s altars
and borne her steps, head flung back, through the city’s midst,
the envy of her own; but now to be pitied even by a foe!
She throws herself upon the cold bodies, and in no order
deals out last kisses among all her sons;
lifting from them her bruised arms to heaven,
’Feed, cruel Latona, on our grief,’ she says,
’feed and glut your heart with my mourning!
Through seven deaths I am borne to the grave: exult,
triumph, victorious enemy! Yet why victorious?
More is left to me in my misery than to you in your bliss;
after so many deaths, even now I win!’
made the mother certain of so sudden a ruin —
amazed that it could happen, and enraged that the gods
had dared this, that they held so great a right;
for the father, Amphion, with the iron driven through his breast,
dying, had ended his grief together with the light.
Alas! how far was this Niobe from that Niobe
who lately had driven the people from Latona’s altars
and borne her steps, head flung back, through the city’s midst,
the envy of her own; but now to be pitied even by a foe!
She throws herself upon the cold bodies, and in no order
deals out last kisses among all her sons;
lifting from them her bruised arms to heaven,
’Feed, cruel Latona, on our grief,’ she says,
’feed and glut your heart with my mourning!
Through seven deaths I am borne to the grave: exult,
triumph, victorious enemy! Yet why victorious?
More is left to me in my misery than to you in your bliss;
after so many deaths, even now I win!’
Fama mali populique dolor lacrimaeque suorum tam subitae matrem certam fecere ruinae, mirantem potuisse irascentemque, quod ausi hoc essent superi, quod tantum iuris haberent; nam pater Amphion ferro per pectus adacto finierat moriens pariter cum luce dolorem. heu! quantum haec Niobe Niobe distabat ab illa, quae modo Latois populum submoverat aris et mediam tulerat gressus resupina per urbem invidiosa suis; at nunc miseranda vel hosti! corporibus gelidis incumbit et ordine nullo oscula dispensat natos suprema per omnes; a quibus ad caelum liventia bracchia tollens ’pascere, crudelis, nostro, Latona, dolore, pascere’ ait ’satiaque meo tua pectora luctu! corque ferum satia!’ dixit. ’per funera septem efferor: exsulta victrixque inimica triumpha! cur autem victrix? miserae mihi plura supersunt, quam tibi felici; post tot quoque funera vinco!’
She had spoken, and the string sounded from the drawn bow;
which terrified all but Niobe alone:
she is made bold by her own ruin. The sisters stood
in black robes, their hair loosed, before their brothers’ biers;
one of them, drawing out the shaft that clung in her flesh,
swooned dying, her face laid upon a brother;
another, trying to comfort her wretched mother,
fell suddenly silent, doubled by an unseen wound;
this one collapses in vain flight, that one
dies upon her sister; one hides, another you would see tremble.
And when six had been given to death and suffered varied wounds,
one last remained; her the mother, shielding with her whole body,
her whole robe, cried, ’Leave me one, the smallest!
Of all my many I ask the smallest — and just one.’
And even while she begs, the one she begs for falls.
Bereft she sat down, among her lifeless sons and daughters
and husband, and stiffened with her sorrows; no breeze stirs
her hair, the color in her face is bloodless, her eyes
stand fixed in her grieving cheeks; nothing in the figure is alive.
Within her too the tongue freezes against the hard palate,
and the veins cease to be able to move;
neither can the neck bend, nor the arms give motion,
nor the foot go; within, her very vitals are stone.
Yet she weeps, and, wrapped in a strong wind’s whirl,
is swept to her homeland: there, fixed on a mountain’s peak,
she melts away, and even now the marble drips with tears.
which terrified all but Niobe alone:
she is made bold by her own ruin. The sisters stood
in black robes, their hair loosed, before their brothers’ biers;
one of them, drawing out the shaft that clung in her flesh,
swooned dying, her face laid upon a brother;
another, trying to comfort her wretched mother,
fell suddenly silent, doubled by an unseen wound;
this one collapses in vain flight, that one
dies upon her sister; one hides, another you would see tremble.
And when six had been given to death and suffered varied wounds,
one last remained; her the mother, shielding with her whole body,
her whole robe, cried, ’Leave me one, the smallest!
Of all my many I ask the smallest — and just one.’
And even while she begs, the one she begs for falls.
Bereft she sat down, among her lifeless sons and daughters
and husband, and stiffened with her sorrows; no breeze stirs
her hair, the color in her face is bloodless, her eyes
stand fixed in her grieving cheeks; nothing in the figure is alive.
Within her too the tongue freezes against the hard palate,
and the veins cease to be able to move;
neither can the neck bend, nor the arms give motion,
nor the foot go; within, her very vitals are stone.
Yet she weeps, and, wrapped in a strong wind’s whirl,
is swept to her homeland: there, fixed on a mountain’s peak,
she melts away, and even now the marble drips with tears.
Dixerat, et sonuit contento nervus ab arcu; qui praeter Nioben unam conterruit omnes: illa malo est audax. stabant cum vestibus atris ante toros fratrum demisso crine sorores; e quibus una trahens haerentia viscere tela inposito fratri moribunda relanguit ore; altera solari miseram conata parentem conticuit subito duplicataque vulnere caeco est. oraque compressit, nisi postquam spiritus ibat haec frustra fugiens collabitur, illa sorori inmoritur; latet haec, illam trepidare videres. sexque datis leto diversaque vulnera passis ultima restabat; quam toto corpore mater, tota veste tegens ’unam minimamque relinque! de multis minimam posco’ clamavit ’et unam.’ dumque rogat, pro qua rogat, occidit: orba resedit exanimes inter natos natasque virumque deriguitque malis; nullos movet aura capillos, in vultu color est sine sanguine, lumina maestis stant inmota genis, nihil est in imagine vivum. ipsa quoque interius cum duro lingua palato congelat, et venae desistunt posse moveri; nec flecti cervix nec bracchia reddere motus nec pes ire potest; intra quoque viscera saxum est. flet tamen et validi circumdata turbine venti in patriam rapta est: ibi fixa cacumine montis liquitur, et lacrimas etiam nunc marmora manant.
Then indeed all, woman and man, dread the open
wrath of the deity, and all with richer worship
revere the great godhead of the twin-bearing goddess;
and, as happens, from the nearer event they retell older ones.
One of them says: ’In the fields of fertile Lycia too
the peasants of old scorned the goddess, and not unpunished.
The matter is obscure indeed, through the men’s low rank,
yet marvelous: I saw with my own eyes the pool and the place
marked by the prodigy. For my father, now far gone in years
and unfit for the road, had bidden me lead out from there
some chosen oxen, and had given me, as I went, a guide
of that nation himself; and while I range the pastures with him,
behold, in the middle of a lake, an old altar
black with the ash of sacrifice stood, ringed with quivering reeds.
My guide stopped, and in a frightened murmur said, "Be gracious to me!"
and in a like murmur I said, "Be gracious!"
Yet I kept asking whether the altar were of the Naiads or of Faunus
or of some native god, when my host told me this:
wrath of the deity, and all with richer worship
revere the great godhead of the twin-bearing goddess;
and, as happens, from the nearer event they retell older ones.
One of them says: ’In the fields of fertile Lycia too
the peasants of old scorned the goddess, and not unpunished.
The matter is obscure indeed, through the men’s low rank,
yet marvelous: I saw with my own eyes the pool and the place
marked by the prodigy. For my father, now far gone in years
and unfit for the road, had bidden me lead out from there
some chosen oxen, and had given me, as I went, a guide
of that nation himself; and while I range the pastures with him,
behold, in the middle of a lake, an old altar
black with the ash of sacrifice stood, ringed with quivering reeds.
My guide stopped, and in a frightened murmur said, "Be gracious to me!"
and in a like murmur I said, "Be gracious!"
Yet I kept asking whether the altar were of the Naiads or of Faunus
or of some native god, when my host told me this:
Tum vero cuncti manifestam numinis iram femina virque timent cultuque inpensius omnes magna gemelliparae venerantur numina divae; utque fit, a facto propiore priora renarrant. e quibus unus ait: ’Lyciae quoque fertilis agris non inpune deam veteres sprevere coloni. res obscura quidem est ignobilitate virorum, mira tamen: vidi praesens stagnumque locumque prodigio notum. nam me iam grandior aevo inpatiensque viae genitor deducere lectos iusserat inde boves gentisque illius eunti ipse ducem dederat, cum quo dum pascua lustro, ecce lacu medio sacrorum nigra favilla ara vetus stabat tremulis circumdata cannis. restitit et pavido "faveas mihi!" murmure dixit dux meus, et simili "faveas!" ego murmure dixi. Naiadum Faunine foret tamen ara rogabam indigenaene, dei, cum talia rettulit hospes: "
"On this altar, young man, is no mountain god;
she claims it her own to whom once the royal consort
forbade the world — whom wandering Delos scarcely
received, at her prayer, back when the island floated light;
there, leaning against the palm and Pallas’s tree,
Latona bore her twins, against their stepmother’s will.
From here too the new mother is said to have fled from Juno
and carried in her bosom her children, two divinities.
And now, in the bounds of Chimaera-bearing Lycia,
when the heavy sun scorched the fields, the goddess, weary
with long toil, parched by the starry heat, gathered thirst,
and her greedy babes had drunk her milky breasts dry.
By chance she caught sight of a lake of no great water
in the valley’s depths; country folk were there gathering
the bushy osiers with the rushes and the sedge the marsh loves;
the Titaness came near, and, bending her knee, pressed the earth
to draw up the cool waters and drink. The rustic crowd
forbids her; the goddess spoke thus to those forbidding:
’Why do you bar me from the water? The use of water is common.
Nature has made neither the sun her own, nor the air,
nor the thin waves: I have come to a public bounty;
yet I beg as a suppliant that you grant it. I was not
making ready to wash my limbs here and my wearied body,
but to relieve my thirst. My mouth, as I speak, lacks moisture,
my throat is dry, and the path of my voice is barely in it.
A draught of water will be nectar to me, and I will own
I have taken life with it: you will be giving life in the wave.
Let these too move you, who stretch out their little arms
from my bosom’ — and by chance the children were stretching out their arms.
she claims it her own to whom once the royal consort
forbade the world — whom wandering Delos scarcely
received, at her prayer, back when the island floated light;
there, leaning against the palm and Pallas’s tree,
Latona bore her twins, against their stepmother’s will.
From here too the new mother is said to have fled from Juno
and carried in her bosom her children, two divinities.
And now, in the bounds of Chimaera-bearing Lycia,
when the heavy sun scorched the fields, the goddess, weary
with long toil, parched by the starry heat, gathered thirst,
and her greedy babes had drunk her milky breasts dry.
By chance she caught sight of a lake of no great water
in the valley’s depths; country folk were there gathering
the bushy osiers with the rushes and the sedge the marsh loves;
the Titaness came near, and, bending her knee, pressed the earth
to draw up the cool waters and drink. The rustic crowd
forbids her; the goddess spoke thus to those forbidding:
’Why do you bar me from the water? The use of water is common.
Nature has made neither the sun her own, nor the air,
nor the thin waves: I have come to a public bounty;
yet I beg as a suppliant that you grant it. I was not
making ready to wash my limbs here and my wearied body,
but to relieve my thirst. My mouth, as I speak, lacks moisture,
my throat is dry, and the path of my voice is barely in it.
A draught of water will be nectar to me, and I will own
I have taken life with it: you will be giving life in the wave.
Let these too move you, who stretch out their little arms
from my bosom’ — and by chance the children were stretching out their arms.
non hac, o iuvenis, montanum numen in ara est; illa suam vocat hanc, cui quondam regia coniunx orbem interdixit, quam vix erratica Delos orantem accepit tum, cum levis insula nabat; illic incumbens cum Palladis arbore palmae edidit invita geminos Latona noverca. hinc quoque Iunonem fugisse puerpera fertur inque suo portasse sinu, duo numina, natos. iamque Chimaeriferae, cum sol gravis ureret arva, finibus in Lyciae longo dea fessa labore sidereo siccata sitim collegit ab aestu, uberaque ebiberant avidi lactantia nati. forte lacum mediocris aquae prospexit in imis vallibus; agrestes illic fruticosa legebant vimina cum iuncis gratamque paludibus ulvam; accessit positoque genu Titania terram pressit, ut hauriret gelidos potura liquores. rustica turba vetat; dea sic adfata vetantis: ’quid prohibetis aquis? usus communis aquarum est. nec solem proprium natura nec aera fecit nec tenues undas: ad publica munera veni; quae tamen ut detis, supplex peto. non ego nostros abluere hic artus lassataque membra parabam, sed relevare sitim. caret os umore loquentis, et fauces arent, vixque est via vocis in illis. haustus aquae mihi nectar erit, vitamque fatebor accepisse simul: vitam dederitis in unda. hi quoque vos moveant, qui nostro bracchia tendunt parva sinu,’ et casu tendebant bracchia nati.
Whom could the goddess’s coaxing words not have moved?
Yet they persist in barring her prayers, and add threats
besides — unless she go far off — and insults on top.
Nor is that enough: with their very feet and hands
they churned the lake, and from its depths they stirred
the soft mud this way and that with a spiteful leap.
Anger put off her thirst; for no longer does the daughter of Coeus
plead with the unworthy, nor can she bear to speak
words beneath a goddess, but, lifting her palms to the stars,
’Forever,’ she said, ’may you live in that pool of yours!’
The goddess’s wish comes true: they delight to be under the water,
and now to plunge their whole bodies in the hollow swamp,
now to lift the head, now to swim at the surface of the pool,
often to settle on the bank of the mere, often
to leap back into the cold lake; but even now they ply
their foul tongues in quarrels, and, shame thrown off,
though they are under water, under water they try to curse.
Their voice too is now hoarse, their swollen necks puff out,
and their very railings widen their gaping jaws;
their backs touch their heads, their necks seem cut away,
their spine is green, the belly — the body’s greatest part — is white,
and as new frogs they leap in the muddy pool."
Yet they persist in barring her prayers, and add threats
besides — unless she go far off — and insults on top.
Nor is that enough: with their very feet and hands
they churned the lake, and from its depths they stirred
the soft mud this way and that with a spiteful leap.
Anger put off her thirst; for no longer does the daughter of Coeus
plead with the unworthy, nor can she bear to speak
words beneath a goddess, but, lifting her palms to the stars,
’Forever,’ she said, ’may you live in that pool of yours!’
The goddess’s wish comes true: they delight to be under the water,
and now to plunge their whole bodies in the hollow swamp,
now to lift the head, now to swim at the surface of the pool,
often to settle on the bank of the mere, often
to leap back into the cold lake; but even now they ply
their foul tongues in quarrels, and, shame thrown off,
though they are under water, under water they try to curse.
Their voice too is now hoarse, their swollen necks puff out,
and their very railings widen their gaping jaws;
their backs touch their heads, their necks seem cut away,
their spine is green, the belly — the body’s greatest part — is white,
and as new frogs they leap in the muddy pool."
quem non blanda deae potuissent verba movere? hi tamen orantem perstant prohibere minasque, ni procul abscedat, conviciaque insuper addunt. nec satis est, ipsos etiam pedibusque manuque turbavere lacus imoque e gurgite mollem huc illuc limum saltu movere maligno. distulit ira sitim; neque enim iam filia Coei supplicat indignis nec dicere sustinet ultra verba minora dea tollensque ad sidera palmas ’aeternum stagno’ dixit ’vivatis in isto!’ eveniunt optata deae: iuvat esse sub undis et modo tota cava submergere membra palude, nunc proferre caput, summo modo gurgite nare, saepe super ripam stagni consistere, saepe in gelidos resilire lacus, sed nunc quoque turpes litibus exercent linguas pulsoque pudore, quamvis sint sub aqua, sub aqua maledicere temptant. vox quoque iam rauca est, inflataque colla tumescunt, ipsaque dilatant patulos convicia rictus; terga caput tangunt, colla intercepta videntur, spina viret, venter, pars maxima corporis, albet, limosoque novae saliunt in gurgite ranae."’
When thus some one of the Lycian race had told
that destruction, another recalls the satyr
whom the son of Latona, beaten in the contest of Tritonia’s reed,
visited with a penalty. ’Why do you strip me from myself?’
he cried; ’Ah! I am sorry — ah! the flute is not worth this much!’
he kept crying; but even as he cried the skin was torn
from the surface of his limbs, and he was nothing but a wound;
blood flows on every side, the bared sinews lie open,
and the trembling veins, with no skin at all, throb;
you could count the quivering vitals and the bright
fibers within his breast. Him the country folk, the woodland gods,
the fauns, and his brother satyrs, and Olympus, dear to him even then,
and the nymphs wept, and whoever on those mountains
pastured wool-bearing flocks and horned herds.
The fertile earth grew wet, and, soaked, took in
the falling tears and drank them to its deepest veins;
and, having made of them water, sent them forth into the empty air.
Thence, hurrying down sloping banks to the sea,
it bears the name of Marsyas, the clearest river of Phrygia.
that destruction, another recalls the satyr
whom the son of Latona, beaten in the contest of Tritonia’s reed,
visited with a penalty. ’Why do you strip me from myself?’
he cried; ’Ah! I am sorry — ah! the flute is not worth this much!’
he kept crying; but even as he cried the skin was torn
from the surface of his limbs, and he was nothing but a wound;
blood flows on every side, the bared sinews lie open,
and the trembling veins, with no skin at all, throb;
you could count the quivering vitals and the bright
fibers within his breast. Him the country folk, the woodland gods,
the fauns, and his brother satyrs, and Olympus, dear to him even then,
and the nymphs wept, and whoever on those mountains
pastured wool-bearing flocks and horned herds.
The fertile earth grew wet, and, soaked, took in
the falling tears and drank them to its deepest veins;
and, having made of them water, sent them forth into the empty air.
Thence, hurrying down sloping banks to the sea,
it bears the name of Marsyas, the clearest river of Phrygia.
Sic ubi nescio quis Lycia de gente virorum rettulit exitium, satyri reminiscitur alter, quem Tritoniaca Latous harundine victum adfecit poena. ’quid me mihi detrahis?’ inquit; ’a! piget, a! non est’ clamabat ’tibia tanti.’ clamanti cutis est summos direpta per artus, nec quicquam nisi vulnus erat; cruor undique manat, detectique patent nervi, trepidaeque sine ulla pelle micant venae; salientia viscera possis et perlucentes numerare in pectore fibras. illum ruricolae, silvarum numina, fauni et satyri fratres et tunc quoque carus Olympus et nymphae flerunt, et quisquis montibus illis lanigerosque greges armentaque bucera pavit. fertilis inmaduit madefactaque terra caducas concepit lacrimas ac venis perbibit imis; quas ubi fecit aquam, vacuas emisit in auras. inde petens rapidus ripis declivibus aequor Marsya nomen habet, Phrygiae liquidissimus amnis.
At such words the crowd straightway returns to the present
and mourns Amphion, blotted out with his stock;
the mother draws their blame: yet even then one man,
they say, wept for her — Pelops, who, after he had drawn down
his robe from his breast, showed the ivory of his left shoulder.
At his birth this shoulder, like the right, was of one color
and of flesh; soon, they tell, when his limbs had been carved up
by a father’s hands, the gods joined them anew, and, the rest
being found, the place that is midway between throat and upper arm
was lacking: ivory was set in for the use of the part
that did not appear, and by that work Pelops was made whole.
and mourns Amphion, blotted out with his stock;
the mother draws their blame: yet even then one man,
they say, wept for her — Pelops, who, after he had drawn down
his robe from his breast, showed the ivory of his left shoulder.
At his birth this shoulder, like the right, was of one color
and of flesh; soon, they tell, when his limbs had been carved up
by a father’s hands, the gods joined them anew, and, the rest
being found, the place that is midway between throat and upper arm
was lacking: ivory was set in for the use of the part
that did not appear, and by that work Pelops was made whole.
Talibus extemplo redit ad praesentia dictis vulgus et exstinctum cum stirpe Amphiona luget; mater in invidia est: hanc tunc quoque dicitur unus flesse Pelops umeroque, suas a pectore postquam deduxit vestes, ebur ostendisse sinistro. concolor hic umerus nascendi tempore dextro corporeusque fuit; manibus mox caesa paternis membra ferunt iunxisse deos, aliisque repertis, qui locus est iuguli medius summique lacerti, defuit: inpositum est non conparentis in usum partis ebur, factoque Pelops fuit integer illo.
The neighboring nobles gather, and the nearby cities
begged their kings to go with comfort —
Argos and Sparta, and Pelops’s Mycenae,
and Calydon, not yet hateful to grim Diana,
and rich Orchomenos, and Corinth famed for bronze,
and fierce Messene, and Patrae, and lowly Cleonae,
and Nelean Pylos, and Troezen, not yet Pittheus’s,
and what other cities are shut in by the two-sea Isthmus,
or, lying beyond, are looked on from the two-sea Isthmus.
Who could believe it? You alone held back, Athens.
War blocked the duty: barbarian columns brought over the sea
were terrifying the Mopsopian walls.
Thracian Tereus had routed these with his auxiliary arms
and held a name made bright by victory;
him Pandion, powerful in wealth and men
and tracing his line from mighty Gradivus, joined to himself
by marriage with Procne. Not Juno who blesses the bride,
not Hymen, no Grace was at that bed:
the Eumenides held torches snatched from a funeral,
the Eumenides spread the couch, and an unhallowed owl
brooded over the house and perched on the bridal chamber’s roof.
By this bird Procne and Tereus were joined, by this bird
they were made parents; Thrace, to be sure, gave them joy,
and they themselves gave thanks to the gods; and the day
on which the daughter of famous Pandion was given to the king,
and the day Itys was born, they bade be called a festival:
so far does our true good lie hidden.
begged their kings to go with comfort —
Argos and Sparta, and Pelops’s Mycenae,
and Calydon, not yet hateful to grim Diana,
and rich Orchomenos, and Corinth famed for bronze,
and fierce Messene, and Patrae, and lowly Cleonae,
and Nelean Pylos, and Troezen, not yet Pittheus’s,
and what other cities are shut in by the two-sea Isthmus,
or, lying beyond, are looked on from the two-sea Isthmus.
Who could believe it? You alone held back, Athens.
War blocked the duty: barbarian columns brought over the sea
were terrifying the Mopsopian walls.
Thracian Tereus had routed these with his auxiliary arms
and held a name made bright by victory;
him Pandion, powerful in wealth and men
and tracing his line from mighty Gradivus, joined to himself
by marriage with Procne. Not Juno who blesses the bride,
not Hymen, no Grace was at that bed:
the Eumenides held torches snatched from a funeral,
the Eumenides spread the couch, and an unhallowed owl
brooded over the house and perched on the bridal chamber’s roof.
By this bird Procne and Tereus were joined, by this bird
they were made parents; Thrace, to be sure, gave them joy,
and they themselves gave thanks to the gods; and the day
on which the daughter of famous Pandion was given to the king,
and the day Itys was born, they bade be called a festival:
so far does our true good lie hidden.
Finitimi proceres coeunt, urbesque propinquae oravere suos ire ad solacia reges, Argosque et Sparte Pelopeiadesque Mycenae et nondum torvae Calydon invisa Dianae Orchomenosque ferax et nobilis aere Corinthus Messeneque ferox Patraeque humilesque Cleonae et Nelea Pylos neque adhuc Pittheia Troezen, quaeque urbes aliae bimari clauduntur ab Isthmo exteriusque sitae bimari spectantur ab Isthmo; credere quis posset? solae cessastis Athenae. obstitit officio bellum, subvectaque ponto barbara Mopsopios terrebant agmina muros. Threicius Tereus haec auxiliaribus armis fuderat et clarum vincendo nomen habebat; quem sibi Pandion opibusque virisque potentem et genus a magno ducentem forte Gradivo conubio Procnes iunxit; non pronuba Iuno, non Hymenaeus adest, non illi Gratia lecto: Eumenides tenuere faces de funere raptas, Eumenides stravere torum, tectoque profanus incubuit bubo thalamique in culmine sedit. hac ave coniuncti Procne Tereusque, parentes hac ave sunt facti; gratata est scilicet illis Thracia, disque ipsi grates egere; diemque, quaque data est claro Pandione nata tyranno quaque erat ortus Itys, festum iussere vocari: usque adeo latet utilitas.
Now Titan had drawn the seasons of the returning year
through five autumns, when Procne, coaxing her husband,
said: ’If I have any favor with you, either send me
to visit my sister, or let my sister come here:
you will promise my father she will return in a short while.
You will give me, in the sight of my sister, the worth of a great gift.’
He orders the keels run down into the sea, and with sail
and oar enters the Cecropian harbor and touches the shores of Piraeus.
As soon as he was granted his father-in-law’s presence,
right hand is joined to right, and talk is begun with a lucky omen.
He had begun to tell the cause of his coming, his wife’s
charge, and to pledge a swift return for her if sent:
behold, Philomela comes, rich in her great array,
richer in her beauty; such as we are wont to hear
that naiads and dryads walk in the deep woods,
if only you give them like dress and like array.
No otherwise did Tereus take fire at the sight of the maiden
than if one should set flame beneath white corn,
or burn leaves and the grasses laid up in a hayloft.
through five autumns, when Procne, coaxing her husband,
said: ’If I have any favor with you, either send me
to visit my sister, or let my sister come here:
you will promise my father she will return in a short while.
You will give me, in the sight of my sister, the worth of a great gift.’
He orders the keels run down into the sea, and with sail
and oar enters the Cecropian harbor and touches the shores of Piraeus.
As soon as he was granted his father-in-law’s presence,
right hand is joined to right, and talk is begun with a lucky omen.
He had begun to tell the cause of his coming, his wife’s
charge, and to pledge a swift return for her if sent:
behold, Philomela comes, rich in her great array,
richer in her beauty; such as we are wont to hear
that naiads and dryads walk in the deep woods,
if only you give them like dress and like array.
No otherwise did Tereus take fire at the sight of the maiden
than if one should set flame beneath white corn,
or burn leaves and the grasses laid up in a hayloft.
Iam tempora Titan quinque per autumnos repetiti duxerat anni, cum blandita viro Procne ’si gratia’ dixit ’ulla mea est, vel me visendae mitte sorori, vel soror huc veniat: redituram tempore parvo promittes socero; magni mihi muneris instar germanam vidisse dabis.’ iubet ille carinas in freta deduci veloque et remige portus Cecropios intrat Piraeaque litora tangit. ut primum soceri data copia, dextera dextrae iungitur, et fausto committitur omine sermo. coeperat, adventus causam, mandata referre coniugis et celeres missae spondere recursus: ecce venit magno dives Philomela paratu, divitior forma; quales audire solemus naidas et dryadas mediis incedere silvis, si modo des illis cultus similesque paratus. non secus exarsit conspecta virgine Tereus, quam si quis canis ignem supponat aristis aut frondem positasque cremet faenilibus herbas.
A face worthy of love indeed; but inborn lust too
goads him on, and the race in those regions is prone
to Venus: he blazes with his nation’s vice and his own.
His impulse is to corrupt the loyalty of her attendants
and the nurse’s faith, and even to tempt the girl herself
with vast gifts and spend his whole kingdom,
or to seize her and defend the seized in savage war;
and there is nothing that, caught by unbridled love,
he would not dare, nor can his breast contain the shut-in flames.
And now he ill brooks delay, and returns with eager lips
to Procne’s charge, and under hers urges his own desire.
Love made him eloquent, and as often as he asked
beyond what was right, he claimed Procne wished it so.
He added tears as well, as though she had charged him with those too.
O you gods above, how much blind night the hearts
of mortals hold! By the very labor of his crime
Tereus is thought loyal, and wins praise from his guilt.
What of it, that Philomela desires the same, and, coaxing,
holding her father’s shoulders in her arms, asks to go
and see her sister — by her own safety, and against it!
Tereus watches her, and handles her beforehand with his gaze,
and seeing her kisses and the arms thrown round her neck
takes all of it as spurs and torches and fuel for his frenzy,
and, as often as she embraces her father, he would wish
to be that father — for he would be no less impious so.
The father is won over by the prayer of both: she rejoices
and gives her father thanks, and counts it a triumph for the two of them,
poor girl — what will be a grief to the two of them.
goads him on, and the race in those regions is prone
to Venus: he blazes with his nation’s vice and his own.
His impulse is to corrupt the loyalty of her attendants
and the nurse’s faith, and even to tempt the girl herself
with vast gifts and spend his whole kingdom,
or to seize her and defend the seized in savage war;
and there is nothing that, caught by unbridled love,
he would not dare, nor can his breast contain the shut-in flames.
And now he ill brooks delay, and returns with eager lips
to Procne’s charge, and under hers urges his own desire.
Love made him eloquent, and as often as he asked
beyond what was right, he claimed Procne wished it so.
He added tears as well, as though she had charged him with those too.
O you gods above, how much blind night the hearts
of mortals hold! By the very labor of his crime
Tereus is thought loyal, and wins praise from his guilt.
What of it, that Philomela desires the same, and, coaxing,
holding her father’s shoulders in her arms, asks to go
and see her sister — by her own safety, and against it!
Tereus watches her, and handles her beforehand with his gaze,
and seeing her kisses and the arms thrown round her neck
takes all of it as spurs and torches and fuel for his frenzy,
and, as often as she embraces her father, he would wish
to be that father — for he would be no less impious so.
The father is won over by the prayer of both: she rejoices
and gives her father thanks, and counts it a triumph for the two of them,
poor girl — what will be a grief to the two of them.
digna quidem facies; sed et hunc innata libido exstimulat, pronumque genus regionibus illis in Venerem est: flagrat vitio gentisque suoque. impetus est illi comitum corrumpere curam nutricisque fidem nec non ingentibus ipsam sollicitare datis totumque inpendere regnum aut rapere et saevo raptam defendere bello; et nihil est, quod non effreno captus amore ausit, nec capiunt inclusas pectora flammas. iamque moras male fert cupidoque revertitur ore ad mandata Procnes et agit sua vota sub illa. facundum faciebat amor, quotiensque rogabat ulterius iusto, Procnen ita velle ferebat. addidit et lacrimas, tamquam mandasset et illas. pro superi, quantum mortalia pectora caecae noctis habent! ipso sceleris molimine Tereus creditur esse pius laudemque a crimine sumit. quid, quod idem Philomela cupit, patriosque lacertis blanda tenens umeros, ut eat visura sororem, perque suam contraque suam petit ipsa salutem. spectat eam Tereus praecontrectatque videndo osculaque et collo circumdata bracchia cernens omnia pro stimulis facibusque ciboque furoris accipit, et quotiens amplectitur illa parentem, esse parens vellet: neque enim minus inpius esset. vincitur ambarum genitor prece: gaudet agitque illa patri grates et successisse duabus id putat infelix, quod erit lugubre duabus.
Now little of his labor was left to Phoebus, and his horses
beat with their hooves the slope of declining Olympus:
a royal feast is set on the tables, and Bacchus in gold;
then they give their full bodies to peaceful sleep.
But the Odrysian king, though he has withdrawn, seethes
for her, and, recalling her face and movements and hands,
imagines as he wishes what he has not yet seen, and feeds
his own fires, care driving off his sleep.
Day came, and Pandion, clasping the right hand of his departing
son-in-law, commends his companion to him with welling tears:
’Her, dear son, since a loyal cause has compelled me,
and both have wished it — you too wished it, Tereus —
I give to you, and by your faith and our kindred hearts I beg,
a suppliant, by the gods above, that you guard her with a father’s love,
and send back to me, the sweet solace of my anxious old age,
as soon as may be — every delay will be long to us;
and you too, as soon as may be — it is enough that my sister
is far off — if you have any love, come back to me, Philomela!’
So he charged them, and at once gave his daughter kisses,
and gentle tears fell amid his charges;
and as a pledge of faith he asked the right hands of both
and joined them, given each to each, and asks them
to greet for him, with mindful lips, his absent daughter and grandson;
and his last farewell, with a voice full of sobs,
he scarcely spoke, and feared the forebodings of his own mind.
beat with their hooves the slope of declining Olympus:
a royal feast is set on the tables, and Bacchus in gold;
then they give their full bodies to peaceful sleep.
But the Odrysian king, though he has withdrawn, seethes
for her, and, recalling her face and movements and hands,
imagines as he wishes what he has not yet seen, and feeds
his own fires, care driving off his sleep.
Day came, and Pandion, clasping the right hand of his departing
son-in-law, commends his companion to him with welling tears:
’Her, dear son, since a loyal cause has compelled me,
and both have wished it — you too wished it, Tereus —
I give to you, and by your faith and our kindred hearts I beg,
a suppliant, by the gods above, that you guard her with a father’s love,
and send back to me, the sweet solace of my anxious old age,
as soon as may be — every delay will be long to us;
and you too, as soon as may be — it is enough that my sister
is far off — if you have any love, come back to me, Philomela!’
So he charged them, and at once gave his daughter kisses,
and gentle tears fell amid his charges;
and as a pledge of faith he asked the right hands of both
and joined them, given each to each, and asks them
to greet for him, with mindful lips, his absent daughter and grandson;
and his last farewell, with a voice full of sobs,
he scarcely spoke, and feared the forebodings of his own mind.
Iam labor exiguus Phoebo restabat, equique pulsabant pedibus spatium declivis Olympi: regales epulae mensis et Bacchus in auro ponitur; hinc placido dant turgida corpora somno. at rex Odrysius, quamvis secessit, in illa aestuat et repetens faciem motusque manusque qualia vult fingit quae nondum vidit et ignes ipse suos nutrit cura removente soporem. lux erat, et generi dextram conplexus euntis Pandion comitem lacrimis commendat obortis: ’hanc ego, care gener, quoniam pia causa coegit, et voluere ambae (voluisti tu quoque, Tereu) do tibi perque fidem cognataque pectora supplex, per superos oro, patrio ut tuearis amore et mihi sollicitae lenimen dulce senectae quam primum (omnis erit nobis mora longa) remittas; tu quoque quam primum (satis est procul esse sororem), si pietas ulla est, ad me, Philomela, redito!’ mandabat pariterque suae dabat oscula natae, et lacrimae mites inter mandata cadebant; utque fide pignus dextras utriusque poposcit inter seque datas iunxit natamque nepotemque absentes pro se memori rogat ore salutent; supremumque vale pleno singultibus ore vix dixit timuitque suae praesagia mentis.
As soon as Philomela was set on the painted keel,
and the sea was driven near by the oars and the land thrust back,
’I have won!’ he cries; ’my prayer is carried with me!’
and the barbarian exults, and scarcely in his heart defers
his joys, and nowhere turns his eyes away from her,
no otherwise than when the bird of Jove, the eagle, has laid down
a hare in his high nest with hooked talons:
there is no flight for the captive, the ravisher eyes his prize.
And now the journey is done, now on their own shores
they had stepped from the weary ships, when the king drags
Pandion’s daughter into a high steading, hidden in old woods,
and there shuts her in — pale, trembling, fearing all,
and now in tears asking where her sister is —
and, confessing his crime, by force overcomes the virgin, alone,
while she calls out in vain, again and again, on her father,
again and again on her sister, above all on the great gods.
She trembles like a frightened lamb that, wounded and shaken
from the gray wolf’s jaws, does not yet seem safe to itself,
and like a dove whose feathers are soaked with its own blood
and who shudders still and fears the greedy talons it had hung from.
Soon, when her mind returned, tearing her loosened hair,
like one in mourning, beating her arms in lament,
stretching out her palms, ’O barbarian of dreadful deeds,’
she says, ’O cruel one — did neither my father’s charge
with its loyal tears move you, nor care for my sister,
nor my virginity, nor the laws of marriage?
You have thrown all into confusion: I am made my sister’s rival,
you a husband to two, and Procne my due foe!
and the sea was driven near by the oars and the land thrust back,
’I have won!’ he cries; ’my prayer is carried with me!’
and the barbarian exults, and scarcely in his heart defers
his joys, and nowhere turns his eyes away from her,
no otherwise than when the bird of Jove, the eagle, has laid down
a hare in his high nest with hooked talons:
there is no flight for the captive, the ravisher eyes his prize.
And now the journey is done, now on their own shores
they had stepped from the weary ships, when the king drags
Pandion’s daughter into a high steading, hidden in old woods,
and there shuts her in — pale, trembling, fearing all,
and now in tears asking where her sister is —
and, confessing his crime, by force overcomes the virgin, alone,
while she calls out in vain, again and again, on her father,
again and again on her sister, above all on the great gods.
She trembles like a frightened lamb that, wounded and shaken
from the gray wolf’s jaws, does not yet seem safe to itself,
and like a dove whose feathers are soaked with its own blood
and who shudders still and fears the greedy talons it had hung from.
Soon, when her mind returned, tearing her loosened hair,
like one in mourning, beating her arms in lament,
stretching out her palms, ’O barbarian of dreadful deeds,’
she says, ’O cruel one — did neither my father’s charge
with its loyal tears move you, nor care for my sister,
nor my virginity, nor the laws of marriage?
You have thrown all into confusion: I am made my sister’s rival,
you a husband to two, and Procne my due foe!
Ut semel inposita est pictae Philomela carinae, admotumque fretum remis tellusque repulsa est, ’vicimus!’ exclamat, ’mecum mea vota feruntur!’ exsultatque et vix animo sua gaudia differt barbarus et nusquam lumen detorquet ab illa, non aliter quam cum pedibus praedator obuncis deposuit nido leporem Iovis ales in alto; nulla fuga est capto, spectat sua praemia raptor. Iamque iter effectum, iamque in sua litora fessis puppibus exierant, cum rex Pandione natam in stabula alta trahit, silvis obscura vetustis, atque ibi pallentem trepidamque et cuncta timentem et iam cum lacrimis, ubi sit germana, rogantem includit fassusque nefas et virginem et unam vi superat frustra clamato saepe parente, saepe sorore sua, magnis super omnia divis. illa tremit velut agna pavens, quae saucia cani ore excussa lupi nondum sibi tuta videtur, utque columba suo madefactis sanguine plumis horret adhuc avidosque timet, quibus haeserat, ungues. mox ubi mens rediit, passos laniata capillos, lugenti similis caesis plangore lacertis intendens palmas ’o diris barbare factis, o crudelis’ ait, ’nec te mandata parentis cum lacrimis movere piis nec cura sororis nec mea virginitas nec coniugialia iura? omnia turbasti; paelex ego facta sororis, tu geminus coniunx, hostis mihi debita Procne!
Why not snatch this life of mine, that no crime, traitor,
may be left undone for you? And would that you had done it
before the unspeakable union: I would have had a shade
free of this stain. Yet if the gods above see this,
if the powers of heaven are anything, if not all has perished with me,
some day you will pay me the penalty! I myself, with shame
thrown off, will tell your deeds: if the chance be given,
I will come before the people; if I am held shut in the woods,
I will fill the woods and move the knowing rocks;
the upper air will hear it, and any god that is in it!’
When such words had roused the savage tyrant’s anger,
and a fear no less than it, stung by both motives,
he frees from the sheath the sword he was girt with,
and, seizing her by the hair, her arms wrenched behind her back,
forces her to bear the bonds; Philomela was baring her throat,
and at the sight of the sword had conceived a hope of her death:
but he, as she rages and keeps calling her father’s name
and struggling to speak, gripped her tongue with pincers
and cut it off with his cruel sword. The tongue’s last root
quivers, the tongue itself lies trembling and murmurs to the black earth,
and, as the tail of a maimed serpent is wont to leap,
it throbs, and dying seeks its mistress’s footprints.
After this crime too — I would scarcely dare believe it — they say
he often returned in his lust to her mangled body.
After such deeds he has the face to go back to Procne;
who, seeing her husband, asks after her sister, but he
gives feigned groans and tells a made-up death,
and his tears won belief. Procne tears from her shoulders
the robes shining with their broad gold band,
and puts on black garments, and sets up an empty tomb,
and brings funeral-offerings to false shades,
and mourns the fate of a sister not to be mourned so.
may be left undone for you? And would that you had done it
before the unspeakable union: I would have had a shade
free of this stain. Yet if the gods above see this,
if the powers of heaven are anything, if not all has perished with me,
some day you will pay me the penalty! I myself, with shame
thrown off, will tell your deeds: if the chance be given,
I will come before the people; if I am held shut in the woods,
I will fill the woods and move the knowing rocks;
the upper air will hear it, and any god that is in it!’
When such words had roused the savage tyrant’s anger,
and a fear no less than it, stung by both motives,
he frees from the sheath the sword he was girt with,
and, seizing her by the hair, her arms wrenched behind her back,
forces her to bear the bonds; Philomela was baring her throat,
and at the sight of the sword had conceived a hope of her death:
but he, as she rages and keeps calling her father’s name
and struggling to speak, gripped her tongue with pincers
and cut it off with his cruel sword. The tongue’s last root
quivers, the tongue itself lies trembling and murmurs to the black earth,
and, as the tail of a maimed serpent is wont to leap,
it throbs, and dying seeks its mistress’s footprints.
After this crime too — I would scarcely dare believe it — they say
he often returned in his lust to her mangled body.
After such deeds he has the face to go back to Procne;
who, seeing her husband, asks after her sister, but he
gives feigned groans and tells a made-up death,
and his tears won belief. Procne tears from her shoulders
the robes shining with their broad gold band,
and puts on black garments, and sets up an empty tomb,
and brings funeral-offerings to false shades,
and mourns the fate of a sister not to be mourned so.
quin animam hanc, ne quod facinus tibi, perfide, restet, eripis? atque utinam fecisses ante nefandos concubitus: vacuas habuissem criminis umbras. si tamen haec superi cernunt, si numina divum sunt aliquid, si non perierunt omnia mecum, quandocumque mihi poenas dabis! ipsa pudore proiecto tua facta loquar: si copia detur, in populos veniam; si silvis clausa tenebor, inplebo silvas et conscia saxa movebo; audiet haec aether et si deus ullus in illo est!’ Talibus ira feri postquam commota tyranni nec minor hac metus est, causa stimulatus utraque, quo fuit accinctus, vagina liberat ensem arreptamque coma fixis post terga lacertis vincla pati cogit; iugulum Philomela parabat spemque suae mortis viso conceperat ense: ille indignantem et nomen patris usque vocantem luctantemque loqui conprensam forcipe linguam abstulit ense fero. radix micat ultima linguae, ipsa iacet terraeque tremens inmurmurat atrae, utque salire solet mutilatae cauda colubrae, palpitat et moriens dominae vestigia quaerit. hoc quoque post facinus (vix ausim credere) fertur saepe sua lacerum repetisse libidine corpus. Sustinet ad Procnen post talia facta reverti; coniuge quae viso germanam quaerit, at ille dat gemitus fictos commentaque funera narrat, et lacrimae fecere fidem. velamina Procne deripit ex umeris auro fulgentia lato induiturque atras vestes et inane sepulcrum constituit falsisque piacula manibus infert et luget non sic lugendae fata sororis.
The sun-god had ranged the twelve signs, a year gone by;
what is Philomela to do? A guard shuts off flight,
the steading’s walls stand stiff, built of solid stone,
her mute mouth lacks a teller of the deed. Great is the wit
of grief, and cunning comes to wretched straits:
shrewdly she hangs a warp on a barbarian loom
and weaves purple marks among the white threads,
a charge of the crime; and, finished, she hands it to one
and asks by signs that she carry it to her mistress; the woman,
asked, bore it to Procne, and does not know what she conveys in it.
The wife of the savage tyrant unrolled the cloth
and read the pitiable fate of her own sister,
and — a marvel that she could — is silent: grief checked her mouth,
and to her seeking tongue words indignant enough
failed her; nor is there room to weep, but, ready to confound
right and wrong, she rushes on, and is wholly in the image of revenge.
what is Philomela to do? A guard shuts off flight,
the steading’s walls stand stiff, built of solid stone,
her mute mouth lacks a teller of the deed. Great is the wit
of grief, and cunning comes to wretched straits:
shrewdly she hangs a warp on a barbarian loom
and weaves purple marks among the white threads,
a charge of the crime; and, finished, she hands it to one
and asks by signs that she carry it to her mistress; the woman,
asked, bore it to Procne, and does not know what she conveys in it.
The wife of the savage tyrant unrolled the cloth
and read the pitiable fate of her own sister,
and — a marvel that she could — is silent: grief checked her mouth,
and to her seeking tongue words indignant enough
failed her; nor is there room to weep, but, ready to confound
right and wrong, she rushes on, and is wholly in the image of revenge.
Signa deus bis sex acto lustraverat anno; quid faciat Philomela? fugam custodia claudit, structa rigent solido stabulorum moenia saxo, os mutum facti caret indice. grande doloris ingenium est, miserisque venit sollertia rebus: stamina barbarica suspendit callida tela purpureasque notas filis intexuit albis, indicium sceleris; perfectaque tradidit uni, utque ferat dominae, gestu rogat; illa rogata pertulit ad Procnen nec scit, quid tradat in illis. evolvit vestes saevi matrona tyranni germanaeque suae fatum miserabile legit et (mirum potuisse) silet: dolor ora repressit, verbaque quaerenti satis indignantia linguae defuerunt, nec flere vacat, sed fasque nefasque confusura ruit poenaeque in imagine tota est.
It was the time when the Sithonian women are wont
to keep the three-yearly rites of Bacchus: (night is privy to the rites,
by night Rhodope rings with the clash of shrill bronze)
by night the queen went out from her house and is fitted
for the god’s rites, and takes up the frenzied arms;
her head is covered with vine, a deerskin hangs at her left side,
a light spear rests on her shoulder. Swift through the woods,
a throng of her women attending, dreadful Procne,
driven by the furies of her grief, counterfeits your frenzy, Bacchus:
she comes at last to the lonely steading,
and shrieks aloud and sounds the cry euhoe and breaks down the doors,
and seizes her sister, and on the seized one puts the emblems of Bacchus
and hides her face with leaves of ivy,
and, dragging her dumbstruck, leads her within her own walls.
When Philomela felt that she had reached the accursed house,
the poor girl shuddered and went pale over all her face;
Procne, finding a place, takes off the tokens of the rites
and unveils the face of her shamefaced, wretched sister,
and seeks her embrace; but the other cannot bear to lift
her eyes to meet her, seeming to herself her sister’s rival,
and, her face cast down to the ground, wishing to swear
and call the gods to witness that that disgrace was brought on her
by force, used her hand for a voice.
to keep the three-yearly rites of Bacchus: (night is privy to the rites,
by night Rhodope rings with the clash of shrill bronze)
by night the queen went out from her house and is fitted
for the god’s rites, and takes up the frenzied arms;
her head is covered with vine, a deerskin hangs at her left side,
a light spear rests on her shoulder. Swift through the woods,
a throng of her women attending, dreadful Procne,
driven by the furies of her grief, counterfeits your frenzy, Bacchus:
she comes at last to the lonely steading,
and shrieks aloud and sounds the cry euhoe and breaks down the doors,
and seizes her sister, and on the seized one puts the emblems of Bacchus
and hides her face with leaves of ivy,
and, dragging her dumbstruck, leads her within her own walls.
When Philomela felt that she had reached the accursed house,
the poor girl shuddered and went pale over all her face;
Procne, finding a place, takes off the tokens of the rites
and unveils the face of her shamefaced, wretched sister,
and seeks her embrace; but the other cannot bear to lift
her eyes to meet her, seeming to herself her sister’s rival,
and, her face cast down to the ground, wishing to swear
and call the gods to witness that that disgrace was brought on her
by force, used her hand for a voice.
Tempus erat, quo sacra solent trieterica Bacchi Sithoniae celebrare nurus: (nox conscia sacris, nocte sonat Rhodope tinnitibus aeris acuti) nocte sua est egressa domo regina deique ritibus instruitur furialiaque accipit arma; vite caput tegitur, lateri cervina sinistro vellera dependent, umero levis incubat hasta. concita per silvas turba comitante suarum terribilis Procne furiisque agitata doloris, Bacche, tuas simulat: venit ad stabula avia tandem exululatque euhoeque sonat portasque refringit germanamque rapit raptaeque insignia Bacchi induit et vultus hederarum frondibus abdit attonitamque trahens intra sua moenia ducit. Ut sensit tetigisse domum Philomela nefandam, horruit infelix totoque expalluit ore; nacta locum Procne sacrorum pignora demit oraque develat miserae pudibunda sororis amplexumque petit; sed non attollere contra sustinet haec oculos paelex sibi visa sororis deiectoque in humum vultu iurare volenti testarique deos, per vim sibi dedecus illud inlatum, pro voce manus fuit.
Procne blazes, and cannot contain her own wrath,
and, cutting short her sister’s weeping, ’This is no time,’
she says, ’for tears, but for the sword — for anything you have
that can outdo the sword. I have made myself ready, sister,
for every horror: either, when I burn the royal house with torches,
I will fling the craftsman Tereus into the midst of the flames,
or I will tear out with the blade his tongue and his eyes
and the parts that robbed you of your honor, or through a thousand wounds
drive out his guilty soul! Something great I have made ready —
what it is, I still doubt.’ While Procne goes through such things,
Itys was coming to his mother; from him she was warned
what she could do, and, eyeing him with pitiless eyes,
’Ah, how like your father you are!’ she said, and, saying no more,
makes ready a grim deed, and seethes with silent anger.
Yet when her son came near and brought his mother a greeting
and drew her neck down with his little arms
and joined kisses mingled with childish endearments,
the mother was indeed moved, and her anger, broken, faltered,
and her unwilling eyes grew wet with forced tears;
but as soon as she felt her purpose waver from too much
tenderness, she turned again from him to her sister’s face,
and, gazing on both in turn, ’Why does the one,’ she says,
’offer endearments, while the other is silent, her tongue torn out?
Why does she not call me sister, whom he calls mother?
See to what husband you are wed, daughter of Pandion!
You are degenerate! With a husband like Tereus, faithfulness is a crime.’
and, cutting short her sister’s weeping, ’This is no time,’
she says, ’for tears, but for the sword — for anything you have
that can outdo the sword. I have made myself ready, sister,
for every horror: either, when I burn the royal house with torches,
I will fling the craftsman Tereus into the midst of the flames,
or I will tear out with the blade his tongue and his eyes
and the parts that robbed you of your honor, or through a thousand wounds
drive out his guilty soul! Something great I have made ready —
what it is, I still doubt.’ While Procne goes through such things,
Itys was coming to his mother; from him she was warned
what she could do, and, eyeing him with pitiless eyes,
’Ah, how like your father you are!’ she said, and, saying no more,
makes ready a grim deed, and seethes with silent anger.
Yet when her son came near and brought his mother a greeting
and drew her neck down with his little arms
and joined kisses mingled with childish endearments,
the mother was indeed moved, and her anger, broken, faltered,
and her unwilling eyes grew wet with forced tears;
but as soon as she felt her purpose waver from too much
tenderness, she turned again from him to her sister’s face,
and, gazing on both in turn, ’Why does the one,’ she says,
’offer endearments, while the other is silent, her tongue torn out?
Why does she not call me sister, whom he calls mother?
See to what husband you are wed, daughter of Pandion!
You are degenerate! With a husband like Tereus, faithfulness is a crime.’
ardet et iram non capit ipsa suam Procne fletumque sororis corripiens ’non est lacrimis hoc’ inquit ’agendum, sed ferro, sed si quid habes, quod vincere ferrum possit. in omne nefas ego me, germana, paravi: aut ego, cum facibus regalia tecta cremabo, artificem mediis inmittam Terea flammis, aut linguam atque oculos et quae tibi membra pudorem abstulerunt ferro rapiam, aut per vulnera mille sontem animam expellam! magnum quodcumque paravi; quid sit, adhuc dubito.’ Peragit dum talia Procne, ad matrem veniebat Itys; quid possit, ab illo admonita est oculisque tuens inmitibus ’a! quam es similis patri!’ dixit nec plura locuta triste parat facinus tacitaque exaestuat ira. ut tamen accessit natus matrique salutem attulit et parvis adduxit colla lacertis mixtaque blanditiis puerilibus oscula iunxit, mota quidem est genetrix, infractaque constitit ira invitique oculi lacrimis maduere coactis; sed simul ex nimia mentem pietate labare sensit, ab hoc iterum est ad vultus versa sororis inque vicem spectans ambos ’cur admovet’ inquit ’alter blanditias, rapta silet altera lingua? quam vocat hic matrem, cur non vocat illa sororem? cui sis nupta, vide, Pandione nata, marito! degeneras! scelus est pietas in coniuge Tereo.’
No delay: she dragged Itys, as a tigress of the Ganges
drags the suckling fawn of a hind through the shadowy woods,
and when they had reached a far part of the high house,
as he stretched out his hands and already saw his doom
and cried ’Mother! Mother!’ and reached for her neck,
Procne struck him with the sword where the breast joins the side,
and did not turn her face. One wound was enough for his death,
yet Philomela opened his throat with the blade,
and the limbs, still alive and keeping some of the soul,
they tear apart. Part of him leaps in hollow cauldrons,
part hisses on spits; the inner rooms run with gore.
To this feast the wife admits Tereus, knowing nothing,
and, pretending a rite of her fathers’ custom in which only
the husband may take part, she sent away the companions and servants.
Tereus himself, seated high on his ancestral throne,
feeds, and heaps his own flesh and blood into his own belly,
and so deep is the night of his mind that he said, ’Fetch Itys here!’
Procne cannot hide her cruel joy,
and now, longing to be the messenger of her own ruin,
’You have within the one you ask for,’ she says; he looks about
and asks where he is; as he asks and calls again,
just as she was, her hair spattered with the frenzied slaughter,
Philomela leapt forth and flung the bloody head of Itys
into his father’s face, and at no moment more longed
to be able to speak and to attest her joy with fitting words.
drags the suckling fawn of a hind through the shadowy woods,
and when they had reached a far part of the high house,
as he stretched out his hands and already saw his doom
and cried ’Mother! Mother!’ and reached for her neck,
Procne struck him with the sword where the breast joins the side,
and did not turn her face. One wound was enough for his death,
yet Philomela opened his throat with the blade,
and the limbs, still alive and keeping some of the soul,
they tear apart. Part of him leaps in hollow cauldrons,
part hisses on spits; the inner rooms run with gore.
To this feast the wife admits Tereus, knowing nothing,
and, pretending a rite of her fathers’ custom in which only
the husband may take part, she sent away the companions and servants.
Tereus himself, seated high on his ancestral throne,
feeds, and heaps his own flesh and blood into his own belly,
and so deep is the night of his mind that he said, ’Fetch Itys here!’
Procne cannot hide her cruel joy,
and now, longing to be the messenger of her own ruin,
’You have within the one you ask for,’ she says; he looks about
and asks where he is; as he asks and calls again,
just as she was, her hair spattered with the frenzied slaughter,
Philomela leapt forth and flung the bloody head of Itys
into his father’s face, and at no moment more longed
to be able to speak and to attest her joy with fitting words.
nec mora, traxit Ityn, veluti Gangetica cervae lactentem fetum per silvas tigris opacas, utque domus altae partem tenuere remotam, tendentemque manus et iam sua fata videntem et ’mater! mater!’ clamantem et colla petentem ense ferit Procne, lateri qua pectus adhaeret, nec vultum vertit. satis illi ad fata vel unum vulnus erat: iugulum ferro Philomela resolvit, vivaque adhuc animaeque aliquid retinentia membra dilaniant. pars inde cavis exsultat aenis, pars veribus stridunt; manant penetralia tabo. His adhibet coniunx ignarum Terea mensis et patrii moris sacrum mentita, quod uni fas sit adire viro, comites famulosque removit. ipse sedens solio Tereus sublimis avito vescitur inque suam sua viscera congerit alvum, tantaque nox animi est, ’Ityn huc accersite!’ dixit. dissimulare nequit crudelia gaudia Procne iamque suae cupiens exsistere nuntia cladis ’intus habes, quem poscis’ ait: circumspicit ille atque, ubi sit, quaerit; quaerenti iterumque vocanti, sicut erat sparsis furiali caede capillis, prosiluit Ityosque caput Philomela cruentum misit in ora patris nec tempore maluit ullo posse loqui et meritis testari gaudia dictis.
The Thracian thrusts back the tables with a vast cry
and calls up the viper-haired sisters from the Stygian valley,
and now, if he could, longs to open his breast and bring up
from it the dread feast and the half-eaten flesh,
now weeps and calls himself the pitiable tomb of his son,
now pursues with bared sword the daughters of Pandion.
You would think the bodies of the Cecropians hung on wings:
they did hang on wings. One of them makes for the woods,
the other goes up under the roof; and not yet have the marks
of the slaughter left her breast, and the feather is stamped with blood.
He, swift in his grief and his lust for vengeance,
is turned into a bird, on whose crown stand crests;
an outsized beak juts out in place of a long spear-point;
the bird’s name is hoopoe, and its look seems armed for war.
and calls up the viper-haired sisters from the Stygian valley,
and now, if he could, longs to open his breast and bring up
from it the dread feast and the half-eaten flesh,
now weeps and calls himself the pitiable tomb of his son,
now pursues with bared sword the daughters of Pandion.
You would think the bodies of the Cecropians hung on wings:
they did hang on wings. One of them makes for the woods,
the other goes up under the roof; and not yet have the marks
of the slaughter left her breast, and the feather is stamped with blood.
He, swift in his grief and his lust for vengeance,
is turned into a bird, on whose crown stand crests;
an outsized beak juts out in place of a long spear-point;
the bird’s name is hoopoe, and its look seems armed for war.
Thracius ingenti mensas clamore repellit vipereasque ciet Stygia de valle sorores et modo, si posset, reserato pectore diras egerere inde dapes semesaque viscera gestit, flet modo seque vocat bustum miserabile nati, nunc sequitur nudo genitas Pandione ferro. corpora Cecropidum pennis pendere putares: pendebant pennis. quarum petit altera silvas, altera tecta subit, neque adhuc de pectore caedis excessere notae, signataque sanguine pluma est. ille dolore suo poenaeque cupidine velox vertitur in volucrem, cui stant in vertice cristae. prominet inmodicum pro longa cuspide rostrum; nomen epops volucri, facies armata videtur.
This grief sent Pandion, before his day and the final
season of long old age, down to the Tartarean shades.
Erechtheus takes the scepter of the place and the rule of affairs,
of doubtful claim whether stronger in justice or in mighty arms.
Four young men, indeed, he had begotten, and as many
of the female lot, but the beauty of two was equal.
Of these, Cephalus, son of Aeolus, was happy in you,
Procris, as his wife; but Tereus and the Thracians stood against Boreas,
and the god long went without his beloved Orithyia,
while he wooed, and chose to use prayers rather than force;
but when nothing was gained by coaxing, bristling with the anger
that is habitual to that wind and all too native,
’And rightly so!’ he said; ’why have I left my own weapons,
my fierceness and strength and wrath and threatening spirit,
and brought to bear entreaties, the use of which ill becomes me?
Force is my fit means: by force I drive the gloomy clouds,
by force I shake the seas and overturn the knotted oaks,
and harden the snows and lash the lands with hail;
I too, when I have caught my brothers in the open sky
— for that is my field — wrestle with such effort
that the middle air resounds with our clashings
and fires struck out leap from the hollow clouds;
I too, when I have entered the arched hollows of the earth
and set my fierce back beneath the deepest caverns,
trouble the dead and the whole world with tremors.
By this means I ought to have sought my marriage, and Erechtheus
I should not have entreated to be my father-in-law, but made him so.’
season of long old age, down to the Tartarean shades.
Erechtheus takes the scepter of the place and the rule of affairs,
of doubtful claim whether stronger in justice or in mighty arms.
Four young men, indeed, he had begotten, and as many
of the female lot, but the beauty of two was equal.
Of these, Cephalus, son of Aeolus, was happy in you,
Procris, as his wife; but Tereus and the Thracians stood against Boreas,
and the god long went without his beloved Orithyia,
while he wooed, and chose to use prayers rather than force;
but when nothing was gained by coaxing, bristling with the anger
that is habitual to that wind and all too native,
’And rightly so!’ he said; ’why have I left my own weapons,
my fierceness and strength and wrath and threatening spirit,
and brought to bear entreaties, the use of which ill becomes me?
Force is my fit means: by force I drive the gloomy clouds,
by force I shake the seas and overturn the knotted oaks,
and harden the snows and lash the lands with hail;
I too, when I have caught my brothers in the open sky
— for that is my field — wrestle with such effort
that the middle air resounds with our clashings
and fires struck out leap from the hollow clouds;
I too, when I have entered the arched hollows of the earth
and set my fierce back beneath the deepest caverns,
trouble the dead and the whole world with tremors.
By this means I ought to have sought my marriage, and Erechtheus
I should not have entreated to be my father-in-law, but made him so.’
Hic dolor ante diem longaeque extrema senectae tempora Tartareas Pandiona misit ad umbras. sceptra loci rerumque capit moderamen Erectheus, iustitia dubium validisne potentior armis. quattuor ille quidem iuvenes totidemque crearat femineae sortis, sed erat par forma duarum. e quibus Aeolides Cephalus te coniuge felix, Procri, fuit; Boreae Tereus Thracesque nocebant, dilectaque diu caruit deus Orithyia, dum rogat et precibus mavult quam viribus uti; ast ubi blanditiis agitur nihil, horridus ira, quae solita est illi nimiumque domestica vento, ’et merito!’ dixit; ’quid enim mea tela reliqui, saevitiam et vires iramque animosque minaces, admovique preces, quarum me dedecet usus? apta mihi vis est: vi tristia nubila pello, vi freta concutio nodosaque robora verto induroque nives et terras grandine pulso; idem ego, cum fratres caelo sum nactus aperto (nam mihi campus is est), tanto molimine luctor, ut medius nostris concursibus insonet aether exsiliantque cavis elisi nubibus ignes; idem ego, cum subii convexa foramina terrae supposuique ferox imis mea terga cavernis, sollicito manes totumque tremoribus orbem. hac ope debueram thalamos petiisse, socerque non orandus erat mihi sed faciendus Erectheus.’
Having spoken this, or things no weaker than this,
Boreas shook out his wings, by whose buffeting
all the earth was fanned and the broad sea shuddered,
and, trailing his dusty mantle over the highest peaks,
he sweeps the ground, and, wrapped in darkness, the lover
clasps in his tawny wings Orithyia, trembling with fear.
As he flew, his fanned fires burned the fiercer,
nor did the ravisher check the reins of his airy course
before he reached the people and walls of the Cicones.
There the Athenian girl became both wife of the icy
tyrant and a mother, bearing twin offspring,
who in all else were their mother’s, but had their father’s wings.
Yet they say these were not born winged with the body together,
and while the beard, propped under their red hair, was wanting,
the boys Calais and Zetes were featherless;
soon, alike, after the manner of birds, wings began
to gird either side, alike their cheeks to grow golden.
And so, when the boyish season of youth had given way,
with the Minyae they sought, in the first ship, the fleece
that gleamed radiant with shining wool, over an unknown sea.
Boreas shook out his wings, by whose buffeting
all the earth was fanned and the broad sea shuddered,
and, trailing his dusty mantle over the highest peaks,
he sweeps the ground, and, wrapped in darkness, the lover
clasps in his tawny wings Orithyia, trembling with fear.
As he flew, his fanned fires burned the fiercer,
nor did the ravisher check the reins of his airy course
before he reached the people and walls of the Cicones.
There the Athenian girl became both wife of the icy
tyrant and a mother, bearing twin offspring,
who in all else were their mother’s, but had their father’s wings.
Yet they say these were not born winged with the body together,
and while the beard, propped under their red hair, was wanting,
the boys Calais and Zetes were featherless;
soon, alike, after the manner of birds, wings began
to gird either side, alike their cheeks to grow golden.
And so, when the boyish season of youth had given way,
with the Minyae they sought, in the first ship, the fleece
that gleamed radiant with shining wool, over an unknown sea.
haec Boreas aut his non inferiora locutus excussit pennas, quarum iactatibus omnis adflata est tellus latumque perhorruit aequor, pulvereamque trahens per summa cacumina pallam verrit humum pavidamque metu caligine tectus Orithyian amans fulvis amplectitur alis. dum volat, arserunt agitati fortius ignes, nec prius aerii cursus suppressit habenas, quam Ciconum tenuit populos et moenia raptor. illic et gelidi coniunx Actaea tyranni et genetrix facta est, partus enixa gemellos, cetera qui matris, pennas genitoris haberent. non tamen has una memorant cum corpore natas, barbaque dum rutilis aberat subnixa capillis, inplumes Calaisque puer Zetesque fuerunt; mox pariter pennae ritu coepere volucrum cingere utrumque latus, pariter flavescere malae. ergo ubi concessit tempus puerile iuventae, vellera cum Minyis nitido radiantia villo per mare non notum prima petiere carina.
And now the Minyae were cleaving the strait in their Pagasaean ship,
and Phineus had been seen, dragging out his needy old age
in unbroken night, and the young men born of the North Wind
had driven the maiden-birds from the wretched old man’s mouth,
and, having suffered much, under glorious Jason at last
they had reached the rushing waters of the muddy Phasis.
And while they approach the king and demand the fleece of Phrixus,
and a fearful law of mighty labors is laid upon the Minyae,
meanwhile the daughter of Aeetes conceives a violent fire,
and, having struggled long, after she could not by reason
conquer her frenzy: ’In vain, Medea, you fight it:
some god, I know not which, opposes me,’ she says; ’and a marvel it is
if this is not — or at least something very like it — what is called loving.
For why do my father’s commands seem too harsh to me?
They are indeed too harsh! Why, for one whom only now I have seen,
do I fear, lest he perish? What is the cause of so great a fear?
Shake out the flames conceived in your maiden breast,
if you can, unhappy girl! If I could, I should be saner!
But a strange force drags me against my will, and desire
counsels one thing, my mind another: I see the better and approve it,
yet follow the worse.
and Phineus had been seen, dragging out his needy old age
in unbroken night, and the young men born of the North Wind
had driven the maiden-birds from the wretched old man’s mouth,
and, having suffered much, under glorious Jason at last
they had reached the rushing waters of the muddy Phasis.
And while they approach the king and demand the fleece of Phrixus,
and a fearful law of mighty labors is laid upon the Minyae,
meanwhile the daughter of Aeetes conceives a violent fire,
and, having struggled long, after she could not by reason
conquer her frenzy: ’In vain, Medea, you fight it:
some god, I know not which, opposes me,’ she says; ’and a marvel it is
if this is not — or at least something very like it — what is called loving.
For why do my father’s commands seem too harsh to me?
They are indeed too harsh! Why, for one whom only now I have seen,
do I fear, lest he perish? What is the cause of so great a fear?
Shake out the flames conceived in your maiden breast,
if you can, unhappy girl! If I could, I should be saner!
But a strange force drags me against my will, and desire
counsels one thing, my mind another: I see the better and approve it,
yet follow the worse.
Iamque fretum Minyae Pagasaea puppe secabant, perpetuaque trahens inopem sub nocte senectam Phineus visus erat, iuvenesque Aquilone creati virgineas volucres miseri senis ore fugarant, multaque perpessi claro sub Iasone tandem contigerant rapidas limosi Phasidos undas. dumque adeunt regem Phrixeaque vellera poscunt lexque datur Minyis magnorum horrenda laborum, concipit interea validos Aeetias ignes et luctata diu, postquam ratione furorem vincere non poterat, ’frustra, Medea, repugnas: nescio quis deus obstat,’ ait, ’mirumque, nisi hoc est, aut aliquid certe simile huic, quod amare vocatur. nam cur iussa patris nimium mihi dura videntur? sunt quoque dura nimis! cur, quem modo denique vidi, ne pereat, timeo? quae tanti causa timoris? excute virgineo conceptas pectore flammas, si potes, infelix! si possem, sanior essem! sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido, mens aliud suadet: video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.
Why, royal maiden, do you burn for a stranger,
and conceive a marriage with an alien world?
This land too can give you something to love. Whether he live
or die lies with the gods. Yet let him live! Even that I may pray for
without love: for what crime has Jason committed?
Whom, unless he were cruel, would Jason’s youth not touch,
and his birth and his courage? Whom — though all else were wanting —
could his face not move? Mine, at least, it has moved.
But unless I bring him help, he will be breathed on by the bulls’ mouths,
and clash with a crop sprung from the earth, his own
foes, or be given as savage prey to the greedy dragon.
If I allow this, then I will confess I was born of a tigress,
that I carry iron and rock in my heart!
Why not also watch him perish, and defile my eyes
by the seeing? Why not urge the bulls against him,
and the fierce earth-born men, and the unsleeping dragon?
May the gods will better! And yet these are not things to be prayed for,
but to be done by me. — Shall I betray my father’s kingdom,
and by my help shall some stranger, I know not who, be saved,
so that, kept safe by me, without me he may spread sail to the winds
and be another woman’s husband, and Medea be left to her punishment?
If he could do this, or set another above me,
let the ingrate die! But there is no such look in him,
no such nobility in his mind, no such grace of form,
that I should fear treachery and forgetfulness of my service.
And he will pledge his faith first, and I will compel the gods
to be witnesses to our compact. Why fear when you are safe?
Gird yourself and drive off all delay: Jason will owe himself
to you forever, will bind you to him by the solemn torch,
and through the Pelasgian cities you will be thronged
as their savior by a crowd of mothers.
So then — shall I, carried off by the winds, leave sister and brother
and father and gods and native soil?
My father, to be sure, is savage; to be sure my land is barbarous,
my brother still a child; my sister’s prayers stand with me,
and the greatest god is within me! I shall not leave great things,
I shall follow great things: the title of having saved the Achaean youth,
acquaintance with a better soil, and cities
whose fame thrives even here, and the culture and arts of those places,
and the son of Aeson, whom I would not exchange for all
that the whole world possesses — with whom as husband I shall be called
happy and dear to the gods, and shall touch the stars with my crown.
What of it, that certain mountains, they say, clash together
in mid-sea, and that Charybdis, hostile to ships,
now swallows the flood, now gives it back, and ravening Scylla,
girt with savage dogs, barks in the Sicilian deep?
Why, holding what I love, and clinging in Jason’s lap,
I shall be carried over the long straits; embracing him I shall fear nothing,
or, if I fear anything, I shall fear for my husband alone. —
A marriage, do you call it? Do you lay specious names
upon your fault, Medea? No — look how great
a wickedness you approach, and, while you may, flee the crime!’
She spoke, and before her eyes the right, and duty, and shame
had taken their stand, and now Cupid, beaten, was turning his back.
and conceive a marriage with an alien world?
This land too can give you something to love. Whether he live
or die lies with the gods. Yet let him live! Even that I may pray for
without love: for what crime has Jason committed?
Whom, unless he were cruel, would Jason’s youth not touch,
and his birth and his courage? Whom — though all else were wanting —
could his face not move? Mine, at least, it has moved.
But unless I bring him help, he will be breathed on by the bulls’ mouths,
and clash with a crop sprung from the earth, his own
foes, or be given as savage prey to the greedy dragon.
If I allow this, then I will confess I was born of a tigress,
that I carry iron and rock in my heart!
Why not also watch him perish, and defile my eyes
by the seeing? Why not urge the bulls against him,
and the fierce earth-born men, and the unsleeping dragon?
May the gods will better! And yet these are not things to be prayed for,
but to be done by me. — Shall I betray my father’s kingdom,
and by my help shall some stranger, I know not who, be saved,
so that, kept safe by me, without me he may spread sail to the winds
and be another woman’s husband, and Medea be left to her punishment?
If he could do this, or set another above me,
let the ingrate die! But there is no such look in him,
no such nobility in his mind, no such grace of form,
that I should fear treachery and forgetfulness of my service.
And he will pledge his faith first, and I will compel the gods
to be witnesses to our compact. Why fear when you are safe?
Gird yourself and drive off all delay: Jason will owe himself
to you forever, will bind you to him by the solemn torch,
and through the Pelasgian cities you will be thronged
as their savior by a crowd of mothers.
So then — shall I, carried off by the winds, leave sister and brother
and father and gods and native soil?
My father, to be sure, is savage; to be sure my land is barbarous,
my brother still a child; my sister’s prayers stand with me,
and the greatest god is within me! I shall not leave great things,
I shall follow great things: the title of having saved the Achaean youth,
acquaintance with a better soil, and cities
whose fame thrives even here, and the culture and arts of those places,
and the son of Aeson, whom I would not exchange for all
that the whole world possesses — with whom as husband I shall be called
happy and dear to the gods, and shall touch the stars with my crown.
What of it, that certain mountains, they say, clash together
in mid-sea, and that Charybdis, hostile to ships,
now swallows the flood, now gives it back, and ravening Scylla,
girt with savage dogs, barks in the Sicilian deep?
Why, holding what I love, and clinging in Jason’s lap,
I shall be carried over the long straits; embracing him I shall fear nothing,
or, if I fear anything, I shall fear for my husband alone. —
A marriage, do you call it? Do you lay specious names
upon your fault, Medea? No — look how great
a wickedness you approach, and, while you may, flee the crime!’
She spoke, and before her eyes the right, and duty, and shame
had taken their stand, and now Cupid, beaten, was turning his back.
quid in hospite, regia virgo, ureris et thalamos alieni concipis orbis? haec quoque terra potest, quod ames, dare. vivat an ille occidat, in dis est. vivat tamen! idque precari vel sine amore licet: quid enim commisit Iason? quem, nisi crudelem, non tangat Iasonis aetas et genus et virtus? quem non, ut cetera desint, ore movere potest? certe mea pectora movit. at nisi opem tulero, taurorum adflabitur ore concurretque suae segeti, tellure creatis hostibus, aut avido dabitur fera praeda draconi. hoc ego si patiar, tum me de tigride natam, tum ferrum et scopulos gestare in corde fatebor! cur non et specto pereuntem oculosque videndo conscelero? cur non tauros exhortor in illum terrigenasque feros insopitumque draconem? di meliora velint! quamquam non ista precanda, sed facienda mihi.—prodamne ego regna parentis, atque ope nescio quis servabitur advena nostra, ut per me sospes sine me det lintea ventis virque sit alterius, poenae Medea relinquar? si facere hoc aliamve potest praeponere nobis, occidat ingratus! sed non is vultus in illo, non ea nobilitas animo est, ea gratia formae, ut timeam fraudem meritique oblivia nostri. et dabit ante fidem, cogamque in foedera testes esse deos. quid tuta times? accingere et omnem pelle moram: tibi se semper debebit Iason, te face sollemni iunget sibi perque Pelasgas servatrix urbes matrum celebrabere turba. ergo ego germanam fratremque patremque deosque et natale solum ventis ablata relinquam? nempe pater saevus, nempe est mea barbara tellus, frater adhuc infans; stant mecum vota sororis, maximus intra me deus est! non magna relinquam, magna sequar: titulum servatae pubis Achivae notitiamque soli melioris et oppida, quorum hic quoque fama viget, cultusque artesque locorum, quemque ego cum rebus, quas totus possidet orbis, Aesoniden mutasse velim, quo coniuge felix et dis cara ferar et vertice sidera tangam. quid, quod nescio qui mediis concurrere in undis dicuntur montes ratibusque inimica Charybdis nunc sorbere fretum, nunc reddere, cinctaque saevis Scylla rapax canibus Siculo latrare profundo? nempe tenens, quod amo, gremioque in Iasonis haerens per freta longa ferar; nihil illum amplexa verebor aut, siquid metuam, metuam de coniuge solo.— coniugiumne putas speciosaque nomina culpae inponis, Medea, tuae?—quin adspice, quantum adgrediare nefas, et, dum licet, effuge crimen!’ dixit, et ante oculos rectum pietasque pudorque constiterant, et victa dabat iam terga Cupido.
She was going to the ancient altars of Hecate, daughter of Perses,
which a shady grove and a secret wood concealed,
and now she was strong, and the driven passion had withdrawn,
when she sees the son of Aeson, and the quenched flame blazed anew.
Her cheeks reddened, and her whole face glowed again,
and as a spark is wont to take nourishment from the winds —
the little spark that has lain hidden under a film of ash —
to grow, and, fanned, rise again to its old strength,
so now her love, gone gentle, now such as you would think had faded,
when she saw the young man, flared at the sight of him before her.
And by chance the son of Aeson was lovelier than his wont
on that day: you could forgive a girl in love.
She gazes, and holds her eyes fixed on his face as if then
for the first time seen, and in her madness does not think
she looks on a mortal countenance, nor can she turn from him;
but when the stranger began to speak and took her right hand
and asked her aid in a lowered voice
and promised her his bed, she said, with tears pouring down:
’What I am to do, I see; nor will ignorance of the truth
deceive me, but love. You will be saved by my gift;
once saved, make good your promises!’ By the rites of the triple
goddess he swears, and by whatever divinity was in that grove,
and by the all-seeing father of his father-in-law-to-be,
and by his own success and his perils so great:
believed, he received at once the charmed herbs,
learned their use, and withdrew, rejoicing, into the house.
which a shady grove and a secret wood concealed,
and now she was strong, and the driven passion had withdrawn,
when she sees the son of Aeson, and the quenched flame blazed anew.
Her cheeks reddened, and her whole face glowed again,
and as a spark is wont to take nourishment from the winds —
the little spark that has lain hidden under a film of ash —
to grow, and, fanned, rise again to its old strength,
so now her love, gone gentle, now such as you would think had faded,
when she saw the young man, flared at the sight of him before her.
And by chance the son of Aeson was lovelier than his wont
on that day: you could forgive a girl in love.
She gazes, and holds her eyes fixed on his face as if then
for the first time seen, and in her madness does not think
she looks on a mortal countenance, nor can she turn from him;
but when the stranger began to speak and took her right hand
and asked her aid in a lowered voice
and promised her his bed, she said, with tears pouring down:
’What I am to do, I see; nor will ignorance of the truth
deceive me, but love. You will be saved by my gift;
once saved, make good your promises!’ By the rites of the triple
goddess he swears, and by whatever divinity was in that grove,
and by the all-seeing father of his father-in-law-to-be,
and by his own success and his perils so great:
believed, he received at once the charmed herbs,
learned their use, and withdrew, rejoicing, into the house.
Ibat ad antiquas Hecates Perseidos aras, quas nemus umbrosum secretaque silva tegebat, et iam fortis erat, pulsusque recesserat ardor, cum videt Aesoniden exstinctaque flamma reluxit. erubuere genae, totoque recanduit ore, utque solet ventis alimenta adsumere, quaeque parva sub inducta latuit scintilla favilla crescere et in veteres agitata resurgere vires, sic iam lenis amor, iam quem languere putares, ut vidit iuvenem, specie praesentis inarsit. et casu solito formosior Aesone natus illa luce fuit: posses ignoscere amanti. spectat et in vultu veluti tum denique viso lumina fixa tenet nec se mortalia demens ora videre putat nec se declinat ab illo; ut vero coepitque loqui dextramque prehendit hospes et auxilium submissa voce rogavit promisitque torum, lacrimis ait illa profusis: ’quid faciam, video: nec me ignorantia veri decipiet, sed amor. servabere munere nostro, servatus promissa dato!’ per sacra triformis ille deae lucoque foret quod numen in illo perque patrem soceri cernentem cuncta futuri eventusque suos et tanta pericula iurat: creditus accepit cantatas protinus herbas edidicitque usum laetusque in tecta recessit.
The next dawn had driven off the glittering stars:
the peoples gather on the field sacred to Mars
and take their stand on the ridges; in the midst the king himself sat down,
amid the throng, purple-robed and conspicuous with his ivory scepter.
Behold, the bronze-footed bulls breathe out Vulcan’s fire
from their adamantine nostrils, and the grass, touched by the vapors,
burns, and as full furnaces are wont to roar,
or when flints, dissolved in an earthen kiln,
catch fire at the sprinkling of clear water,
so their breasts, rolling the flames shut within,
and their scorched throats resound; yet the son of Aeson
goes to meet them. They turned their terrible faces, fierce,
toward him as he came, and their horns tipped with iron,
and beat the dusty ground with cloven hoof,
and filled the place with smoking bellowings.
The Minyae stiffened with dread; he comes on, and does not feel
the breathed-out fires (so much can the drugs do!),
and with a daring right hand he strokes their hanging dewlaps,
and, setting them under the yoke, forces them to draw
the plow’s heavy weight and to cleave with iron the unaccustomed field:
the Colchians marvel, the Minyae swell it with shouts
and lend him heart.
the peoples gather on the field sacred to Mars
and take their stand on the ridges; in the midst the king himself sat down,
amid the throng, purple-robed and conspicuous with his ivory scepter.
Behold, the bronze-footed bulls breathe out Vulcan’s fire
from their adamantine nostrils, and the grass, touched by the vapors,
burns, and as full furnaces are wont to roar,
or when flints, dissolved in an earthen kiln,
catch fire at the sprinkling of clear water,
so their breasts, rolling the flames shut within,
and their scorched throats resound; yet the son of Aeson
goes to meet them. They turned their terrible faces, fierce,
toward him as he came, and their horns tipped with iron,
and beat the dusty ground with cloven hoof,
and filled the place with smoking bellowings.
The Minyae stiffened with dread; he comes on, and does not feel
the breathed-out fires (so much can the drugs do!),
and with a daring right hand he strokes their hanging dewlaps,
and, setting them under the yoke, forces them to draw
the plow’s heavy weight and to cleave with iron the unaccustomed field:
the Colchians marvel, the Minyae swell it with shouts
and lend him heart.
Postera depulerat stellas Aurora micantes: conveniunt populi sacrum Mavortis in arvum consistuntque iugis; medio rex ipse resedit agmine purpureus sceptroque insignis eburno. ecce adamanteis Vulcanum naribus efflant aeripedes tauri, tactaeque vaporibus herbae ardent, utque solent pleni resonare camini, aut ubi terrena silices fornace soluti concipiunt ignem liquidarum adspergine aquarum, pectora sic intus clausas volventia flammas gutturaque usta sonant; tamen illis Aesone natus obvius it. vertere truces venientis ad ora terribiles vultus praefixaque cornua ferro pulvereumque solum pede pulsavere bisulco fumificisque locum mugitibus inpleverunt. deriguere metu Minyae; subit ille nec ignes sentit anhelatos (tantum medicamina possunt!) pendulaque audaci mulcet palearia dextra suppositosque iugo pondus grave cogit aratri ducere et insuetum ferro proscindere campum: mirantur Colchi, Minyae clamoribus augent adiciuntque animos.
Then from a bronze helmet he takes the serpent’s teeth
and scatters them over the plowed fields. The soil softens the seeds,
steeped beforehand in strong poison, and the teeth grow
and become new bodies, sown;
and as an infant takes on human shape in the mother’s womb
and is composed within through all its parts,
and does not come forth into the common air unless full-formed,
so, when in the entrails of the pregnant earth the likeness
of a man had been wrought, it rises up in the teeming field,
and — more marvelous still — clashes the weapons brought forth with it.
When the Pelasgians saw these men making ready to hurl
their sharp-pointed spears at the head of the Haemonian youth,
they lowered their faces and their courage in fear;
she too was afraid, she who had made him safe.
And when she saw the young man, one man, assailed by so many foes,
she paled, and suddenly sat down cold and bloodless,
and, lest the herbs she had given prove too weak,
she chants a helping song and calls up her secret arts.
He, hurling a heavy stone into the midst of his foes,
turned the warfare from himself onto them:
the earth-born brothers perish by mutual wounds
and fall in civil battle. The Achaeans rejoice
and hold their victor and cling to him with eager embraces.
You too, barbarian girl, would have wished to embrace the victor:
shame stood in the way of the impulse, yet you would have embraced him,
but regard for your name held you back, that you should not.
What is permitted, you rejoice in with silent feeling, and you give
thanks to your songs and to the gods who were their authors.
and scatters them over the plowed fields. The soil softens the seeds,
steeped beforehand in strong poison, and the teeth grow
and become new bodies, sown;
and as an infant takes on human shape in the mother’s womb
and is composed within through all its parts,
and does not come forth into the common air unless full-formed,
so, when in the entrails of the pregnant earth the likeness
of a man had been wrought, it rises up in the teeming field,
and — more marvelous still — clashes the weapons brought forth with it.
When the Pelasgians saw these men making ready to hurl
their sharp-pointed spears at the head of the Haemonian youth,
they lowered their faces and their courage in fear;
she too was afraid, she who had made him safe.
And when she saw the young man, one man, assailed by so many foes,
she paled, and suddenly sat down cold and bloodless,
and, lest the herbs she had given prove too weak,
she chants a helping song and calls up her secret arts.
He, hurling a heavy stone into the midst of his foes,
turned the warfare from himself onto them:
the earth-born brothers perish by mutual wounds
and fall in civil battle. The Achaeans rejoice
and hold their victor and cling to him with eager embraces.
You too, barbarian girl, would have wished to embrace the victor:
shame stood in the way of the impulse, yet you would have embraced him,
but regard for your name held you back, that you should not.
What is permitted, you rejoice in with silent feeling, and you give
thanks to your songs and to the gods who were their authors.
galea tum sumit aena vipereos dentes et aratos spargit in agros. semina mollit humus valido praetincta veneno, et crescunt fiuntque sati nova corpora dentes, utque hominis speciem materna sumit in alvo perque suos intus numeros conponitur infans nec nisi maturus communes exit in auras, sic, ubi visceribus gravidae telluris imago effecta est hominis, feto consurgit in arvo, quodque magis mirum est, simul edita concutit arma. quos ubi viderunt praeacutae cuspidis hastas in caput Haemonii iuvenis torquere parantis, demisere metu vultumque animumque Pelasgi; ipsa quoque extimuit, quae tutum fecerat illum. utque peti vidit iuvenem tot ab hostibus unum, palluit et subito sine sanguine frigida sedit, neve parum valeant a se data gramina, carmen auxiliare canit secretasque advocat artes. ille gravem medios silicem iaculatus in hostes a se depulsum Martem convertit in ipsos: terrigenae pereunt per mutua vulnera fratres civilique cadunt acie. gratantur Achivi victoremque tenent avidisque amplexibus haerent. tu quoque victorem conplecti, barbara, velles: obstitit incepto pudor, at conplexa fuisses, sed te, ne faceres, tenuit reverentia famae. quod licet, adfectu tacito laetaris agisque carminibus grates et dis auctoribus horum.
It remains to lull with herbs the ever-wakeful dragon,
who, marked out by crest and triple tongue and hooked
teeth, was the dreadful guardian of the golden tree.
After she sprinkled this beast with the herb of Lethean juice
and three times spoke the words that bring on peaceful sleep,
words that still the troubled sea, that still the rushing rivers,
sleep came upon those eyes that had never known it, and the Aesonian
hero gains the gold, and, proud of his spoil,
carrying with him a second spoil, the giver of the gift,
in triumph he reached the harbors of Iolcus with his wife.
who, marked out by crest and triple tongue and hooked
teeth, was the dreadful guardian of the golden tree.
After she sprinkled this beast with the herb of Lethean juice
and three times spoke the words that bring on peaceful sleep,
words that still the troubled sea, that still the rushing rivers,
sleep came upon those eyes that had never known it, and the Aesonian
hero gains the gold, and, proud of his spoil,
carrying with him a second spoil, the giver of the gift,
in triumph he reached the harbors of Iolcus with his wife.
Pervigilem superest herbis sopire draconem, qui crista linguisque tribus praesignis et uncis dentibus horrendus custos erat arboris aureae. hunc postquam sparsit Lethaei gramine suci verbaque ter dixit placidos facientia somnos, quae mare turbatum, quae concita flumina sistunt, somnus in ignotos oculos sibi venit, et auro heros Aesonius potitur spolioque superbus muneris auctorem secum, spolia altera, portans victor Iolciacos tetigit cum coniuge portus.
The mothers of Haemonia bring gifts for their sons restored,
and the aged fathers, and they melt heaped frankincense
in the flame, and the vowed victim, its horns sheathed in gold,
falls; but Aeson is absent from the rejoicers,
now nearer to death and worn with the years of age,
when thus the son of Aeson spoke: ’O you to whom I confess
I owe my safety, wife — though you have given me all,
and the sum of your services has passed beyond belief —
yet if your songs can do this (for what can songs not do?),
take from my years and, taken, add them to my father!’
Nor did he hold back his tears: she was moved by the love of his asking,
and the thought of her own deserted Aeetes came over her, so unlike;
yet, owning no such feeling, she said: ’What
wickedness has fallen from your mouth, husband? Do I seem, then,
able to make over to anyone a span of your life?
Let Hecate not allow it, nor do you ask what is fair;
but I will try to give a greater gift than the one you ask, Jason.
By my art I will essay your father’s long age —
to call it back, not by your years — if only the triple goddess
help me, and, present, nod assent to my vast daring.’
and the aged fathers, and they melt heaped frankincense
in the flame, and the vowed victim, its horns sheathed in gold,
falls; but Aeson is absent from the rejoicers,
now nearer to death and worn with the years of age,
when thus the son of Aeson spoke: ’O you to whom I confess
I owe my safety, wife — though you have given me all,
and the sum of your services has passed beyond belief —
yet if your songs can do this (for what can songs not do?),
take from my years and, taken, add them to my father!’
Nor did he hold back his tears: she was moved by the love of his asking,
and the thought of her own deserted Aeetes came over her, so unlike;
yet, owning no such feeling, she said: ’What
wickedness has fallen from your mouth, husband? Do I seem, then,
able to make over to anyone a span of your life?
Let Hecate not allow it, nor do you ask what is fair;
but I will try to give a greater gift than the one you ask, Jason.
By my art I will essay your father’s long age —
to call it back, not by your years — if only the triple goddess
help me, and, present, nod assent to my vast daring.’
Haemoniae matres pro gnatis dona receptis grandaevique ferunt patres congestaque flamma tura liquefaciunt, inductaque cornibus aurum victima vota cadit, sed abest gratantibus Aeson iam propior leto fessusque senilibus annis, cum sic Aesonides: ’o cui debere salutem confiteor, coniunx, quamquam mihi cuncta dedisti excessitque fidem meritorum summa tuorum, si tamen hoc possunt (quid enim non carmina possunt?) deme meis annis et demptos adde parenti!’ nec tenuit lacrimas: mota est pietate rogantis, dissimilemque animum subiit Aeeta relictus; nec tamen adfectus talis confessa ’quod’ inquit ’excidit ore tuo, coniunx, scelus? ergo ego cuiquam posse tuae videor spatium transcribere vitae? nec sinat hoc Hecate, nec tu petis aequa; sed isto, quod petis, experiar maius dare munus, Iason. arte mea soceri longum temptabimus aevum, non annis revocare tuis, modo diva triformis adiuvet et praesens ingentibus adnuat ausis.’
Three nights were wanting, that the horns might wholly meet
and make their round; after the moon had shone full
and looked upon the lands with unbroken disc,
she goes out of doors, in robes ungirt,
bare of foot, her hair poured loose upon her shoulders,
and bears her wandering steps, unattended, through the mute
silences of midnight: deep rest had loosed
men and birds and beasts, no murmur in the hedgerows,
and the leaves are still, unmoving, the dewy air is still,
the stars alone glitter: stretching her arms toward them
she turned herself thrice about, thrice with water taken from the stream
she sprinkled her hair, and with three howls
opened her mouth, and, knee bent to the hard ground:
’Night,’ she says, ’most faithful keeper of secrets, and you,
golden stars that, with the moon, succeed the fires of day,
and you, three-headed Hecate, who come, knowing of our undertakings,
a helper to the songs and the art of sorcerers,
and you, Earth, who furnish sorcerers with potent herbs,
and breezes and winds, and mountains and rivers and lakes,
and all you gods of the groves, and all you gods of night, be present —
by whose help, when I willed it, the rivers, to their banks’ amazement,
have run back to their sources, and I still the shaken seas,
and shake by my song the standing seas; I drive off the clouds
and bring on clouds, I banish the winds and summon them,
I burst the serpents’ jaws with my words and my spell,
and I move the living rocks and the oaks wrenched from their own soil
and the forests, and I bid the mountains tremble
and the ground bellow and the dead come forth from their tombs!
You too, Moon, I draw down, though the bronzes of Temesa
lessen your labors; my song makes pale even the chariot
of my grandfather the Sun, my poisons make Aurora pale!
You blunted for me the bulls’ flames, and pressed
their necks, impatient of the burden, beneath the curved plow,
you turned the serpent-born to fierce war among themselves,
and lulled the unschooled guardian of sleeplessness, and, the keeper
beguiled, sent the gold into the Grecian cities:
now there is need of juices by which renewed old age
may come back into flower and gather up its first years again,
and you will give them. For the stars have not glittered in vain,
nor in vain is the chariot here, drawn by the necks of winged dragons.’
The chariot was there, let down from the upper air.
and make their round; after the moon had shone full
and looked upon the lands with unbroken disc,
she goes out of doors, in robes ungirt,
bare of foot, her hair poured loose upon her shoulders,
and bears her wandering steps, unattended, through the mute
silences of midnight: deep rest had loosed
men and birds and beasts, no murmur in the hedgerows,
and the leaves are still, unmoving, the dewy air is still,
the stars alone glitter: stretching her arms toward them
she turned herself thrice about, thrice with water taken from the stream
she sprinkled her hair, and with three howls
opened her mouth, and, knee bent to the hard ground:
’Night,’ she says, ’most faithful keeper of secrets, and you,
golden stars that, with the moon, succeed the fires of day,
and you, three-headed Hecate, who come, knowing of our undertakings,
a helper to the songs and the art of sorcerers,
and you, Earth, who furnish sorcerers with potent herbs,
and breezes and winds, and mountains and rivers and lakes,
and all you gods of the groves, and all you gods of night, be present —
by whose help, when I willed it, the rivers, to their banks’ amazement,
have run back to their sources, and I still the shaken seas,
and shake by my song the standing seas; I drive off the clouds
and bring on clouds, I banish the winds and summon them,
I burst the serpents’ jaws with my words and my spell,
and I move the living rocks and the oaks wrenched from their own soil
and the forests, and I bid the mountains tremble
and the ground bellow and the dead come forth from their tombs!
You too, Moon, I draw down, though the bronzes of Temesa
lessen your labors; my song makes pale even the chariot
of my grandfather the Sun, my poisons make Aurora pale!
You blunted for me the bulls’ flames, and pressed
their necks, impatient of the burden, beneath the curved plow,
you turned the serpent-born to fierce war among themselves,
and lulled the unschooled guardian of sleeplessness, and, the keeper
beguiled, sent the gold into the Grecian cities:
now there is need of juices by which renewed old age
may come back into flower and gather up its first years again,
and you will give them. For the stars have not glittered in vain,
nor in vain is the chariot here, drawn by the necks of winged dragons.’
The chariot was there, let down from the upper air.
Tres aberant noctes, ut cornua tota coirent efficerentque orbem; postquam plenissima fulsit ac solida terras spectavit imagine luna, egreditur tectis vestes induta recinctas, nuda pedem, nudos umeris infusa capillos, fertque vagos mediae per muta silentia noctis incomitata gradus: homines volucresque ferasque solverat alta quies, nullo cum murmure saepes, inmotaeque silent frondes, silet umidus aer, sidera sola micant: ad quae sua bracchia tendens ter se convertit, ter sumptis flumine crinem inroravit aquis ternisque ululatibus ora solvit et in dura submisso poplite terra ’Nox’ ait ’arcanis fidissima, quaeque diurnis aurea cum luna succeditis ignibus astra, tuque, triceps Hecate, quae coeptis conscia nostris adiutrixque venis cantusque artisque magorum, quaeque magos, Tellus, pollentibus instruis herbis, auraeque et venti montesque amnesque lacusque, dique omnes nemorum, dique omnes noctis adeste, quorum ope, cum volui, ripis mirantibus amnes in fontes rediere suos, concussaque sisto, stantia concutio cantu freta, nubila pello nubilaque induco, ventos abigoque vocoque, vipereas rumpo verbis et carmine fauces, vivaque saxa sua convulsaque robora terra et silvas moveo iubeoque tremescere montis et mugire solum manesque exire sepulcris! te quoque, Luna, traho, quamvis Temesaea labores aera tuos minuant; currus quoque carmine nostro pallet avi, pallet nostris Aurora venenis! vos mihi taurorum flammas hebetastis et unco inpatiens oneris collum pressistis aratro, vos serpentigenis in se fera bella dedistis custodemque rudem somni sopistis et aurum vindice decepto Graias misistis in urbes: nunc opus est sucis, per quos renovata senectus in florem redeat primosque recolligat annos, et dabitis. neque enim micuerunt sidera frustra, nec frustra volucrum tractus cervice draconum currus adest.’ aderat demissus ab aethere currus.
As soon as she mounted it and stroked the bridled necks
of the dragons and shook the light reins in her hands,
she is snatched aloft, and looks down on Thessalian Tempe
beneath her, and steers the snakes toward chosen regions:
and the herbs that Ossa bore, that lofty Pelion bore,
and Othrys and Pindus and Olympus greater than Pindus,
she scans, and tears the ones she likes partly up by the root,
partly cuts with the curve of a bronze sickle.
Many grasses too of Apidanus’s banks pleased her,
many of Amphrysus, and you were not exempt, Enipeus;
Peneus too and the Spercheian waters
contributed something, and the reedy shores of Boebe;
and at Euboean Anthedon she plucked the life-giving grass
not yet made common by the change of Glaucus’s body.
And now the ninth day, by chariot and dragons’ wings,
and the ninth night had seen her ranging over all the fields,
when she returned; nor had the dragons been touched but by the smell,
and yet they sloughed the skin of their aged old age.
of the dragons and shook the light reins in her hands,
she is snatched aloft, and looks down on Thessalian Tempe
beneath her, and steers the snakes toward chosen regions:
and the herbs that Ossa bore, that lofty Pelion bore,
and Othrys and Pindus and Olympus greater than Pindus,
she scans, and tears the ones she likes partly up by the root,
partly cuts with the curve of a bronze sickle.
Many grasses too of Apidanus’s banks pleased her,
many of Amphrysus, and you were not exempt, Enipeus;
Peneus too and the Spercheian waters
contributed something, and the reedy shores of Boebe;
and at Euboean Anthedon she plucked the life-giving grass
not yet made common by the change of Glaucus’s body.
And now the ninth day, by chariot and dragons’ wings,
and the ninth night had seen her ranging over all the fields,
when she returned; nor had the dragons been touched but by the smell,
and yet they sloughed the skin of their aged old age.
quo simul adscendit frenataque colla draconum permulsit manibusque leves agitavit habenas, sublimis rapitur subiectaque Thessala Tempe despicit et certis regionibus adplicat angues: et quas Ossa tulit, quas altum Pelion herbas, Othrysque Pindusque et Pindo maior Olympus, perspicit et placitas partim radice revellit, partim succidit curvamine falcis aenae. multa quoque Apidani placuerunt gramina ripis, multa quoque Amphrysi, neque eras inmunis, Enipeu; nec non Peneos nec non Spercheides undae contribuere aliquid iuncosaque litora Boebes; carpsit et Euboica vivax Anthedone gramen, nondum mutato vulgatum corpore Glauci. Et iam nona dies curru pennisque draconum nonaque nox omnes lustrantem viderat agros, cum rediit; neque erant tacti nisi odore dracones, et tamen annosae pellem posuere senectae.
Arriving, she halted this side of threshold and doors,
and is covered by the sky alone, and shrank from the touch
of men, and set up two altars of turf,
on the right Hecate’s, but on the left side Youth’s.
When she had wreathed these with vervain and woodland boughs,
not far off she empties the earth from two trenches
and makes sacrifice, and plunges her knives into the throat
of a black-fleeced ram, and drenches the open ditches with blood;
then, pouring down upon them goblets of clear honey
and pouring other goblets of warm milk,
she poured out words at once and roused the powers of the earth
and entreats the king of the shades, with his ravished bride,
not to hasten to cheat the old man’s limbs of their aged breath.
When she had appeased these with prayers and long murmuring,
she bade the worn-out body of Aeson be brought forth into the air,
and, dissolving him with a charm into a deep sleep,
she stretched him out, like one lifeless, on a bed of herbs.
Hence she bids the son of Aeson go far, far hence the attendants,
and warns them to keep profane eyes from her secret rites.
They scatter at her order; with streaming hair Medea,
in the manner of the bacchantes, circles the blazing altars,
and dips her many-cleft torches in the dark trench of blood
and lights them, so soaked, at the twin altars,
and thrice with flame, thrice with water, thrice with sulphur cleanses the old man.
Meanwhile the potent drug, set on in a bronze cauldron,
seethes and leaps and whitens with swelling foam.
There she boils down roots cut in a Haemonian valley
and seeds and flowers and dark juices;
she adds stones fetched from the farthest East
and sands that the ebbing sea of Ocean has washed;
she adds also hoarfrost gathered under the all-night moon,
and the ill-famed screech-owl’s wings, flesh and all,
and the slit entrails of the shape-shifting wolf
that is wont to change its wild looks into a man’s;
nor were the thin scaly skin of the Cinyphian water-snake
wanting to them, and the liver of the long-lived stag;
to which besides she adds the eggs and the head of a crow
that had outlasted nine generations.
When with these and a thousand other nameless things
the barbarian had arranged her purpose beyond a mortal’s,
with a dry branch of the gentle olive, long since withered,
she stirred it all together and mingled the bottom with the top.
and is covered by the sky alone, and shrank from the touch
of men, and set up two altars of turf,
on the right Hecate’s, but on the left side Youth’s.
When she had wreathed these with vervain and woodland boughs,
not far off she empties the earth from two trenches
and makes sacrifice, and plunges her knives into the throat
of a black-fleeced ram, and drenches the open ditches with blood;
then, pouring down upon them goblets of clear honey
and pouring other goblets of warm milk,
she poured out words at once and roused the powers of the earth
and entreats the king of the shades, with his ravished bride,
not to hasten to cheat the old man’s limbs of their aged breath.
When she had appeased these with prayers and long murmuring,
she bade the worn-out body of Aeson be brought forth into the air,
and, dissolving him with a charm into a deep sleep,
she stretched him out, like one lifeless, on a bed of herbs.
Hence she bids the son of Aeson go far, far hence the attendants,
and warns them to keep profane eyes from her secret rites.
They scatter at her order; with streaming hair Medea,
in the manner of the bacchantes, circles the blazing altars,
and dips her many-cleft torches in the dark trench of blood
and lights them, so soaked, at the twin altars,
and thrice with flame, thrice with water, thrice with sulphur cleanses the old man.
Meanwhile the potent drug, set on in a bronze cauldron,
seethes and leaps and whitens with swelling foam.
There she boils down roots cut in a Haemonian valley
and seeds and flowers and dark juices;
she adds stones fetched from the farthest East
and sands that the ebbing sea of Ocean has washed;
she adds also hoarfrost gathered under the all-night moon,
and the ill-famed screech-owl’s wings, flesh and all,
and the slit entrails of the shape-shifting wolf
that is wont to change its wild looks into a man’s;
nor were the thin scaly skin of the Cinyphian water-snake
wanting to them, and the liver of the long-lived stag;
to which besides she adds the eggs and the head of a crow
that had outlasted nine generations.
When with these and a thousand other nameless things
the barbarian had arranged her purpose beyond a mortal’s,
with a dry branch of the gentle olive, long since withered,
she stirred it all together and mingled the bottom with the top.
constitit adveniens citra limenque foresque et tantum caelo tegitur refugitque viriles contactus, statuitque aras de caespite binas, dexteriore Hecates, ast laeva parte Iuventae. has ubi verbenis silvaque incinxit agresti, haud procul egesta scrobibus tellure duabus sacra facit cultrosque in guttura velleris atri conicit et patulas perfundit sanguine fossas; tum super invergens liquidi carchesia mellis alteraque invergens tepidi carchesia lactis, verba simul fudit terrenaque numina civit umbrarumque rogat rapta cum coniuge regem, ne properent artus anima fraudare senili. Quos ubi placavit precibusque et murmure longo, Aesonis effetum proferri corpus ad auras iussit et in plenos resolutum carmine somnos exanimi similem stratis porrexit in herbis. hinc procul Aesoniden, procul hinc iubet ire ministros et monet arcanis oculos removere profanos. diffugiunt iussi; passis Medea capillis bacchantum ritu flagrantis circuit aras multifidasque faces in fossa sanguinis atra tinguit et infectas geminis accendit in aris terque senem flamma, ter aqua, ter sulphure lustrat. Interea validum posito medicamen aeno fervet et exsultat spumisque tumentibus albet. illic Haemonia radices valle resectas seminaque floresque et sucos incoquit atros; adicit extremo lapides Oriente petitos et quas Oceani refluum mare lavit harenas; addit et exceptas luna pernocte pruinas et strigis infamis ipsis cum carnibus alas inque virum soliti vultus mutare ferinos ambigui prosecta lupi; nec defuit illis squamea Cinyphii tenuis membrana chelydri vivacisque iecur cervi; quibus insuper addit ova caputque novem cornicis saecula passae. his et mille aliis postquam sine nomine rebus propositum instruxit mortali barbara maius, arenti ramo iampridem mitis olivae omnia confudit summisque inmiscuit ima.
Behold, the old stick, turned about in the hot bronze,
first grows green, and in no long while puts on
leaves, and is suddenly weighed down with heavy olives:
and wherever the fire threw the foam out of the hollow cauldron
and the hot drops fell upon the ground,
the earth grows spring-fresh, and flowers and soft pasture rise.
As soon as she saw this, Medea unsheathes her sword and opens
the old man’s throat, and, letting the old blood run out,
fills him with the juices; and after Aeson had drunk them in,
taken either by mouth or by the wound, his beard and hair,
their grayness laid aside, seized a black color,
his leanness, driven off, flees, his pallor and decay depart,
the hollow wrinkles are filled out with added flesh,
his limbs grow lush: Aeson marvels, and recalls
this self of his as he was forty years before.
first grows green, and in no long while puts on
leaves, and is suddenly weighed down with heavy olives:
and wherever the fire threw the foam out of the hollow cauldron
and the hot drops fell upon the ground,
the earth grows spring-fresh, and flowers and soft pasture rise.
As soon as she saw this, Medea unsheathes her sword and opens
the old man’s throat, and, letting the old blood run out,
fills him with the juices; and after Aeson had drunk them in,
taken either by mouth or by the wound, his beard and hair,
their grayness laid aside, seized a black color,
his leanness, driven off, flees, his pallor and decay depart,
the hollow wrinkles are filled out with added flesh,
his limbs grow lush: Aeson marvels, and recalls
this self of his as he was forty years before.
ecce vetus calido versatus stipes aeno fit viridis primo nec longo tempore frondes induit et subito gravidis oneratur olivis: at quacumque cavo spumas eiecit aeno ignis et in terram guttae cecidere calentes, vernat humus, floresque et mollia pabula surgunt. quae simul ac vidit, stricto Medea recludit ense senis iugulum veteremque exire cruorem passa replet sucis; quos postquam conbibit Aeson aut ore acceptos aut vulnere, barba comaeque canitie posita nigrum rapuere colorem, pulsa fugit macies, abeunt pallorque situsque, adiectoque cavae supplentur corpore rugae, membraque luxuriant: Aeson miratur et olim ante quater denos hunc se reminiscitur annos.
From on high Liber had seen the marvels of so great a wonder,
and, reminded that their youthful years could be given back
to his own nurses, he takes this gift from the Colchian woman.
And that her wiles might not cease, the Phasian feigns
a false quarrel with her husband and flees as a suppliant
to the threshold of Pelias; and since he himself is heavy with age,
his daughters receive her; whom in a short time
the cunning Colchian caught with a counterfeit show of friendship,
and, reminded that their youthful years could be given back
to his own nurses, he takes this gift from the Colchian woman.
And that her wiles might not cease, the Phasian feigns
a false quarrel with her husband and flees as a suppliant
to the threshold of Pelias; and since he himself is heavy with age,
his daughters receive her; whom in a short time
the cunning Colchian caught with a counterfeit show of friendship,
Viderat ex alto tanti miracula monstri Liber et admonitus, iuvenes nutricibus annos posse suis reddi, capit hoc a Colchide munus. Neve doli cessent, odium cum coniuge falsum Phasias adsimulat Peliaeque ad limina supplex confugit; atque illam, quoniam gravis ipse senecta est, excipiunt natae; quas tempore callida parvo Colchis amicitiae mendacis imagine cepit,
and while she tells, among the greatest of her services, that the decay
of Aeson was taken away, and dwells upon this part,
a hope is roused in the maidens, the daughters of Pelias,
that by a like art their own father might grow young again,
and this they seek, and bid her name a price without limit.
She is silent a brief while and seems to hesitate,
and holds their minds in suspense with feigned solemnity.
Soon, when she had promised, ’That your trust in this gift
may be the greater,’ she says, ’the leader of your flock,
the ram that is greatest in age among the sheep, shall by the drug be made a lamb.’
At once the wool-bearer, worn out with countless years,
is dragged up, his horns curving round his hollow temples;
and when she pierced his withered throat with the Haemonian knife
and stained the iron with his scanty blood,
the sorceress plunges the creature’s limbs and her potent juices
together into the hollow bronze: they shrink the body’s parts
and burn away the horns, and the years along with the horns,
and a thin bleating is heard from the middle of the cauldron:
without delay, while they marvel at the bleating, a lamb leaps out
and frolics in flight and seeks the milk-giving udders.
of Aeson was taken away, and dwells upon this part,
a hope is roused in the maidens, the daughters of Pelias,
that by a like art their own father might grow young again,
and this they seek, and bid her name a price without limit.
She is silent a brief while and seems to hesitate,
and holds their minds in suspense with feigned solemnity.
Soon, when she had promised, ’That your trust in this gift
may be the greater,’ she says, ’the leader of your flock,
the ram that is greatest in age among the sheep, shall by the drug be made a lamb.’
At once the wool-bearer, worn out with countless years,
is dragged up, his horns curving round his hollow temples;
and when she pierced his withered throat with the Haemonian knife
and stained the iron with his scanty blood,
the sorceress plunges the creature’s limbs and her potent juices
together into the hollow bronze: they shrink the body’s parts
and burn away the horns, and the years along with the horns,
and a thin bleating is heard from the middle of the cauldron:
without delay, while they marvel at the bleating, a lamb leaps out
and frolics in flight and seeks the milk-giving udders.
dumque refert inter meritorum maxima demptos Aesonis esse situs atque hac in parte moratur, spes est virginibus Pelia subiecta creatis, arte suum parili revirescere posse parentem, idque petunt pretiumque iubent sine fine pacisci. illa brevi spatio silet et dubitare videtur suspenditque animos ficta gravitate rogantum. mox ubi pollicita est, ’quo sit fiducia maior muneris huius’ ait, ’qui vestri maximus aevo est dux gregis inter oves, agnus medicamine fiet.’ protinus innumeris effetus laniger annis attrahitur flexo circum cava tempora cornu; cuius ut Haemonio marcentia guttura cultro fodit et exiguo maculavit sanguine ferrum, membra simul pecudis validosque venefica sucos mergit in aere cavo: minuunt ea corporis artus cornuaque exurunt nec non cum cornibus annos, et tener auditur medio balatus aeno: nec mora, balatum mirantibus exsilit agnus lascivitque fuga lactantiaque ubera quaerit.
The daughters of Pelias stood amazed, and after the promise
had made good its pledge, then indeed they press the harder.
Thrice Phoebus had taken the yokes from his horses plunged
in the Iberian river, and on the fourth night the radiant
stars were glittering, when the deceitful daughter of Aeetes
sets clear water over a rapid fire, and herbs without power.
And now sleep, like to death, held the king, his body unstrung,
and held with their king his guards —
sleep that the chants and the power of her magic tongue had given;
the daughters, bidden, had entered the threshold with the Colchian
and had ringed the bed: ’Why do you hesitate now, you sluggards?
Draw,’ she says, ’your swords, and drain the old blood out,
that I may fill the empty veins with youthful blood!
In your hands lies your father’s life and age:
if there is any love in you, and you do not stir an empty hope,
do your duty to your father, and with your weapons drive out
his old age, and let his corruption out by thrust of iron!’
At these urgings, each in proportion as she is loving is first
in impiety, and, lest she be wicked, commits the wickedness: yet not one
can watch her own blows, and they turn their eyes away,
and, faces averted, deal blind wounds with their cruel right hands.
He, streaming with blood, raises his limbs on his elbow,
and, half-mangled, tries to rise from the bed, and amid
so many swords, stretching out his pallid arms,
’What do you do, my daughters? What arms you against your father’s life?’
he says: their spirits fell, and their hands.
As he would have spoken more, the Colchian took away his throat
with his words, and plunged him, mangled, into the hot waters.
had made good its pledge, then indeed they press the harder.
Thrice Phoebus had taken the yokes from his horses plunged
in the Iberian river, and on the fourth night the radiant
stars were glittering, when the deceitful daughter of Aeetes
sets clear water over a rapid fire, and herbs without power.
And now sleep, like to death, held the king, his body unstrung,
and held with their king his guards —
sleep that the chants and the power of her magic tongue had given;
the daughters, bidden, had entered the threshold with the Colchian
and had ringed the bed: ’Why do you hesitate now, you sluggards?
Draw,’ she says, ’your swords, and drain the old blood out,
that I may fill the empty veins with youthful blood!
In your hands lies your father’s life and age:
if there is any love in you, and you do not stir an empty hope,
do your duty to your father, and with your weapons drive out
his old age, and let his corruption out by thrust of iron!’
At these urgings, each in proportion as she is loving is first
in impiety, and, lest she be wicked, commits the wickedness: yet not one
can watch her own blows, and they turn their eyes away,
and, faces averted, deal blind wounds with their cruel right hands.
He, streaming with blood, raises his limbs on his elbow,
and, half-mangled, tries to rise from the bed, and amid
so many swords, stretching out his pallid arms,
’What do you do, my daughters? What arms you against your father’s life?’
he says: their spirits fell, and their hands.
As he would have spoken more, the Colchian took away his throat
with his words, and plunged him, mangled, into the hot waters.
Obstipuere satae Pelia, promissaque postquam exhibuere fidem, tum vero inpensius instant. ter iuga Phoebus equis in Hibero flumine mersis dempserat et quarta radiantia nocte micabant sidera, cum rapido fallax Aeetias igni imponit purum laticem et sine viribus herbas. iamque neci similis resoluto corpore regem et cum rege suo custodes somnus habebat, quem dederant cantus magicaeque potentia linguae; intrarant iussae cum Colchide limina natae ambierantque torum: ’quid nunc dubitatis inertes? stringite’ ait ’gladios veteremque haurite crurorem, ut repleam vacuas iuvenali sanguine venas! in manibus vestris vita est aetasque parentis: si pietas ulla est nec spes agitatis inanis, officium praestate patri telisque senectam exigite, et saniem coniecto emittite ferro!’ his, ut quaeque pia est, hortatibus inpia prima est et, ne sit scelerata, facit scelus: haud tamen ictus ulla suos spectare potest, oculosque reflectunt, caecaque dant saevis aversae vulnera dextris. ille cruore fluens, cubito tamen adlevat artus, semilacerque toro temptat consurgere, et inter tot medius gladios pallentia bracchia tendens ’quid facitis, gnatae? quid vos in fata parentis armat?’ ait: cecidere illis animique manusque; plura locuturo cum verbis guttura Colchis abstulit et calidis laniatum mersit in undis.
And had she not gone off into the air on her winged serpents,
she would not have been exempt from punishment: she flees aloft and over
shady Pelion, the home of Philyra, and over Othrys
and the places made famous by the fate of old Cerambus:
he, lifted into the air on wings by the nymphs’ help,
when the heavy earth was overwhelmed by the poured-in sea,
escaped Deucalion’s flood unsubmerged.
She leaves Aeolian Pitane on the left,
and the long dragon’s image made of stone,
and the Idaean grove where Liber hid his son’s theft,
a young bullock, under the false shape of a stag,
and where the father of Corythus lies buried in a little sand,
and the fields that Maera terrified with her strange barking,
and the city of Eurypylus, where the Coan mothers wore horns
at the time when the troop of Hercules was departing,
and Phoebean Rhodes and the Ialysian Telchines,
whose eyes, spoiling all things by the very sight,
Jupiter, in loathing, sank beneath his brother’s waves;
she passes too the walls of ancient Carthaea in Cea,
where the father Alcidamas was to marvel that a gentle dove
could be born from his daughter’s body.
Thence she sees the lake of Hyrie and Cycnean Tempe,
which a sudden swan made famous: for there Phylius,
at the boy’s command, had handed over the bird and the wild lion,
tamed; bidden to conquer a bull as well,
he had conquered it, and, angry that his love was so often scorned,
he refused the bull, the last prize, to the boy who demanded it;
the boy, indignant, said, ’You will wish you had given it,’ and leapt
from a high rock; all thought he had fallen:
made a swan, he hung in the air on snowy wings;
but his mother Hyrie, not knowing he was saved, melted away
in weeping, and made a pool of her own name.
Near these lies Pleuron, where on quivering wings
Combe, daughter of Ophias, escaped her sons’ wounds;
thence she beholds the fields of Calaurea, sacred to Latona’s daughter,
that witnessed a king turned to a bird, with his wife.
On the right is Cyllene, where Menephron was to lie
with his mother, in the manner of savage beasts;
far from here she looks back on Cephisus, weeping the fate
of his grandson, turned by Apollo into a bloated seal,
and the house of Eumelus mourning his son in the air.
At last on her serpent-wings she reached
Pirenian Ephyre: here in the first age the ancients
spread abroad that mortal bodies were born from rain-fed mushrooms.
she would not have been exempt from punishment: she flees aloft and over
shady Pelion, the home of Philyra, and over Othrys
and the places made famous by the fate of old Cerambus:
he, lifted into the air on wings by the nymphs’ help,
when the heavy earth was overwhelmed by the poured-in sea,
escaped Deucalion’s flood unsubmerged.
She leaves Aeolian Pitane on the left,
and the long dragon’s image made of stone,
and the Idaean grove where Liber hid his son’s theft,
a young bullock, under the false shape of a stag,
and where the father of Corythus lies buried in a little sand,
and the fields that Maera terrified with her strange barking,
and the city of Eurypylus, where the Coan mothers wore horns
at the time when the troop of Hercules was departing,
and Phoebean Rhodes and the Ialysian Telchines,
whose eyes, spoiling all things by the very sight,
Jupiter, in loathing, sank beneath his brother’s waves;
she passes too the walls of ancient Carthaea in Cea,
where the father Alcidamas was to marvel that a gentle dove
could be born from his daughter’s body.
Thence she sees the lake of Hyrie and Cycnean Tempe,
which a sudden swan made famous: for there Phylius,
at the boy’s command, had handed over the bird and the wild lion,
tamed; bidden to conquer a bull as well,
he had conquered it, and, angry that his love was so often scorned,
he refused the bull, the last prize, to the boy who demanded it;
the boy, indignant, said, ’You will wish you had given it,’ and leapt
from a high rock; all thought he had fallen:
made a swan, he hung in the air on snowy wings;
but his mother Hyrie, not knowing he was saved, melted away
in weeping, and made a pool of her own name.
Near these lies Pleuron, where on quivering wings
Combe, daughter of Ophias, escaped her sons’ wounds;
thence she beholds the fields of Calaurea, sacred to Latona’s daughter,
that witnessed a king turned to a bird, with his wife.
On the right is Cyllene, where Menephron was to lie
with his mother, in the manner of savage beasts;
far from here she looks back on Cephisus, weeping the fate
of his grandson, turned by Apollo into a bloated seal,
and the house of Eumelus mourning his son in the air.
At last on her serpent-wings she reached
Pirenian Ephyre: here in the first age the ancients
spread abroad that mortal bodies were born from rain-fed mushrooms.
Quod nisi pennatis serpentibus isset in auras, non exempta foret poenae: fugit alta superque Pelion umbrosum, Philyreia tecta, superque Othryn et eventu veteris loca nota Cerambi: hic ope nympharum sublatus in aera pennis, cum gravis infuso tellus foret obruta ponto, Deucalioneas effugit inobrutus undas. Aeoliam Pitanen a laeva parte relinquit factaque de saxo longi simulacra draconis Idaeumque nemus, quo nati furta, iuvencum, occuluit Liber falsi sub imagine cervi, quaque pater Corythi parva tumulatus harena est, et quos Maera novo latratu terruit agros, Eurypylique urbem, qua Coae cornua matres gesserunt tum, cum discederet Herculis agmen, Phoebeamque Rhodon et Ialysios Telchinas, quorum oculos ipso vitiantes omnia visu Iuppiter exosus fraternis subdidit undis; transit et antiquae Cartheia moenia Ceae, qua pater Alcidamas placidam de corpore natae miraturus erat nasci potuisse columbam. inde lacus Hyries videt et Cycneia Tempe, quae subitus celebravit olor: nam Phylius illic imperio pueri volucrisque ferumque leonem tradiderat domitos; taurum quoque vincere iussus vicerat et spreto totiens iratus amore praemia poscenti taurum suprema negabat; ille indignatus ’cupies dare’ dixit et alto desiluit saxo; cuncti cecidisse putabant: factus olor niveis pendebat in aere pennis; at genetrix Hyrie, servati nescia, flendo delicuit stagnumque suo de nomine fecit. adiacet his Pleuron, in qua trepidantibus alis Ophias effugit natorum vulnera Combe; inde Calaureae Letoidos adspicit arva in volucrem versi cum coniuge conscia regis. dextera Cyllene est, in qua cum matre Menephron concubiturus erat saevarum more ferarum; Cephison procul hinc deflentem fata nepotis respicit in tumidam phocen ab Apolline versi Eumelique domum lugentis in aere natum. Tandem vipereis Ephyren Pirenida pennis contigit: hic aevo veteres mortalia primo corpora vulgarunt pluvialibus edita fungis.
But after the new bride blazed with the Colchian’s poisons
and both seas had seen the king’s house in flames,
the impious sword is drenched with the blood of her sons,
and the mother, having taken her revenge foully, fled Jason’s arms.
Borne hence by her Titanian dragons she enters
the citadel of Pallas, which saw you, most righteous Phene,
and you, old Periphas, flying side by side,
and Polypemon’s granddaughter borne up on new wings.
Aegeus receives her — to be condemned for this one deed —
and hospitality is not enough: he binds her to him by the bond of marriage too.
and both seas had seen the king’s house in flames,
the impious sword is drenched with the blood of her sons,
and the mother, having taken her revenge foully, fled Jason’s arms.
Borne hence by her Titanian dragons she enters
the citadel of Pallas, which saw you, most righteous Phene,
and you, old Periphas, flying side by side,
and Polypemon’s granddaughter borne up on new wings.
Aegeus receives her — to be condemned for this one deed —
and hospitality is not enough: he binds her to him by the bond of marriage too.
sed postquam Colchis arsit nova nupta venenis flagrantemque domum regis mare vidit utrumque, sanguine natorum perfunditur inpius ensis, ultaque se male mater Iasonis effugit arma. hinc Titaniacis ablata draconibus intrat Palladias arces, quae te, iustissima Phene, teque, senex Peripha, pariter videre volantes innixamque novis neptem Polypemonis alis. excipit hanc Aegeus facto damnandus in uno, nec satis hospitium est, thalami quoque foedere iungit.
And now Theseus had come, a son unknown to his father,
who by his valor had pacified the two-sea Isthmus:
for his destruction Medea mixes the aconite that once
she had brought with her from the Scythian shores.
That poison, they tell, sprang from the teeth of the Echidnean
hound: there is a cave, blind with a shadowy mouth,
and a downward road, by which the Tirynthian hero
dragged forth Cerberus, who hung back and turned his eyes aslant
against the daylight and the glittering rays,
on chains linked with adamant; the beast, roused to rabid rage,
filled the air at once with his triple barking
and sprinkled the green fields with whitening foam;
this, they think, congealed, and, finding nourishment in the rich
and fertile soil, took on the power to harm;
and because they grow tough and long-lived on the hard rock,
the country folk call them aconites. This, by his wife’s craft,
the father Aegeus himself held out to his son as to an enemy.
Theseus had taken the proffered cup in his unsuspecting right hand,
when his father knew, on the ivory hilt of the sword,
the tokens of his own race, and struck the crime from the boy’s lips.
She escaped death by clouds raised through her spells.
who by his valor had pacified the two-sea Isthmus:
for his destruction Medea mixes the aconite that once
she had brought with her from the Scythian shores.
That poison, they tell, sprang from the teeth of the Echidnean
hound: there is a cave, blind with a shadowy mouth,
and a downward road, by which the Tirynthian hero
dragged forth Cerberus, who hung back and turned his eyes aslant
against the daylight and the glittering rays,
on chains linked with adamant; the beast, roused to rabid rage,
filled the air at once with his triple barking
and sprinkled the green fields with whitening foam;
this, they think, congealed, and, finding nourishment in the rich
and fertile soil, took on the power to harm;
and because they grow tough and long-lived on the hard rock,
the country folk call them aconites. This, by his wife’s craft,
the father Aegeus himself held out to his son as to an enemy.
Theseus had taken the proffered cup in his unsuspecting right hand,
when his father knew, on the ivory hilt of the sword,
the tokens of his own race, and struck the crime from the boy’s lips.
She escaped death by clouds raised through her spells.
Iamque aderat Theseus, proles ignara parenti, qui virtute sua bimarem pacaverat Isthmon: huius in exitium miscet Medea, quod olim attulerat secum Scythicis aconiton ab oris. illud Echidnaeae memorant e dentibus ortum esse canis: specus est tenebroso caecus hiatu, est via declivis, per quam Tirynthius heros restantem contraque diem radiosque micantes obliquantem oculos nexis adamante catenis Cerberon abstraxit, rabida qui concitus ira inplevit pariter ternis latratibus auras et sparsit virides spumis albentibus agros; has concresse putant nactasque alimenta feracis fecundique soli vires cepisse nocendi; quae quia nascuntur dura vivacia caute, agrestes aconita vocant. ea coniugis astu ipse parens Aegeus nato porrexit ut hosti. sumpserat ignara Theseus data pocula dextra, cum pater in capulo gladii cognovit eburno signa sui generis facinusque excussit ab ore. effugit illa necem nebulis per carmina motis;
But the father, though he rejoices that his son is safe,
is nonetheless thunderstruck that so great a crime
could have been ventured on so narrow a margin: he warms the altars with fires
and loads the gods with gifts, and the axes strike
the brawny necks of oxen, their horns bound with fillets.
No more festal day, they say, has ever dawned
on the children of Erechtheus: the elders hold banquets,
and the common folk among them, and they sing songs too,
with wine making the wit: ’You, greatest Theseus,
Marathon admired for the blood of the Cretan bull,
and that the farmer plows Cromyon free of care
is your gift and your work; through you the land of Epidaurus
saw the club-bearing offspring of Vulcan laid low,
the bank of Cephisus saw the merciless Procrustes,
Ceres’ Eleusis saw the death of Cercyon.
That Sinis fell, who put his great strength to evil use,
who could bend tree-trunks and used to drag pines
from on high down to earth, to scatter bodies far and wide.
The road to Alcathoë, the Lelegeian walls, lies safe and open
now that Sciron is put down, and to the strewn bones of the brigand
the land denies a resting place, the wave denies a resting place;
which, long tossed about, age, they say, hardened
into cliffs: the cliffs keep the name of Sciron.
If we should wish to count your titles and your years,
your deeds would outweigh your years. For you, bravest one,
we take up public vows, for you we drain draughts of Bacchus.’
The palace rings with the people’s assent and the prayers
of those who favor him, and there is no place in all the city that is sad.
is nonetheless thunderstruck that so great a crime
could have been ventured on so narrow a margin: he warms the altars with fires
and loads the gods with gifts, and the axes strike
the brawny necks of oxen, their horns bound with fillets.
No more festal day, they say, has ever dawned
on the children of Erechtheus: the elders hold banquets,
and the common folk among them, and they sing songs too,
with wine making the wit: ’You, greatest Theseus,
Marathon admired for the blood of the Cretan bull,
and that the farmer plows Cromyon free of care
is your gift and your work; through you the land of Epidaurus
saw the club-bearing offspring of Vulcan laid low,
the bank of Cephisus saw the merciless Procrustes,
Ceres’ Eleusis saw the death of Cercyon.
That Sinis fell, who put his great strength to evil use,
who could bend tree-trunks and used to drag pines
from on high down to earth, to scatter bodies far and wide.
The road to Alcathoë, the Lelegeian walls, lies safe and open
now that Sciron is put down, and to the strewn bones of the brigand
the land denies a resting place, the wave denies a resting place;
which, long tossed about, age, they say, hardened
into cliffs: the cliffs keep the name of Sciron.
If we should wish to count your titles and your years,
your deeds would outweigh your years. For you, bravest one,
we take up public vows, for you we drain draughts of Bacchus.’
The palace rings with the people’s assent and the prayers
of those who favor him, and there is no place in all the city that is sad.
At genitor, quamquam laetatur sospite nato, attonitus tamen est, ingens discrimine parvo committi potuisse nefas: fovet ignibus aras muneribusque deos inplet, feriuntque secures colla torosa boum vinctorum cornua vittis. nullus Erecthidis fertur celebratior illo inluxisse dies: agitant convivia patres et medium vulgus nec non et carmina vino ingenium faciente canunt: ’te, maxime Theseu, mirata est Marathon Cretaei sanguine tauri, quodque suis securus arat Cromyona colonus, munus opusque tuum est; tellus Epidauria per te clavigeram vidit Vulcani occumbere prolem, vidit et inmitem Cephisias ora Procrusten, Cercyonis letum vidit Cerealis Eleusin. occidit ille Sinis magnis male viribus usus, qui poterat curvare trabes et agebat ab alto ad terram late sparsuras corpora pinus. tutus ad Alcathoen, Lelegeia moenia, limes conposito Scirone patet, sparsisque latronis terra negat sedem, sedem negat ossibus unda; quae iactata diu fertur durasse vetustas in scopulos: scopulis nomen Scironis inhaeret. si titulos annosque tuos numerare velimus, facta prement annos. pro te, fortissime, vota publica suscipimus, Bacchi tibi sumimus haustus.’ consonat adsensu populi precibusque faventum regia, nec tota tristis locus ullus in urbe est.
And yet — so true it is that no pleasure is unmixed,
and some care comes between us and our joys — Aegeus
did not take untroubled joy in the son he had regained:
Minos prepares war; who, though strong in soldiery, though strong
in fleet, is yet most strong in a father’s wrath,
and avenges the death of Androgeos with righteous arms.
But first he gains friendly forces for the war,
and ranges the seas with the swift fleet by which he is held powerful:
from here he joins to himself Anaphe and the realm of Astypalaea,
(Anaphe by promises, the realm of Astypalaea by war);
from here lowly Myconos and the chalky fields of Cimolus
and Syros flowering with thyme and level Seriphos
and marble Paros, and Siphnos, which impious Arne betrayed
and, having taken the gold her greed had demanded,
was changed into the bird that even now loves gold,
black of foot, the jackdaw mantled in black feathers.
and some care comes between us and our joys — Aegeus
did not take untroubled joy in the son he had regained:
Minos prepares war; who, though strong in soldiery, though strong
in fleet, is yet most strong in a father’s wrath,
and avenges the death of Androgeos with righteous arms.
But first he gains friendly forces for the war,
and ranges the seas with the swift fleet by which he is held powerful:
from here he joins to himself Anaphe and the realm of Astypalaea,
(Anaphe by promises, the realm of Astypalaea by war);
from here lowly Myconos and the chalky fields of Cimolus
and Syros flowering with thyme and level Seriphos
and marble Paros, and Siphnos, which impious Arne betrayed
and, having taken the gold her greed had demanded,
was changed into the bird that even now loves gold,
black of foot, the jackdaw mantled in black feathers.
Nec tamen (usque adeo nulla est sincera voluptas, sollicitumque aliquid laetis intervenit) Aegeus gaudia percepit nato secura recepto: bella parat Minos; qui quamquam milite, quamquam classe valet, patria tamen est firmissimus ira Androgeique necem iustis ulciscitur armis. ante tamen bello vires adquirit amicas, quaque potens habitus volucri freta classe pererrat: hinc Anaphen sibi iungit et Astypaleia regna, (promissis Anaphen, regna Astypaleia bello); hinc humilem Myconon cretosaque rura Cimoli florentemque thymo Syron planamque Seriphon marmoreamque Paron, quamque inpia prodidit Arne Siphnon et accepto, quod avara poposcerat, auro mutata est in avem, quae nunc quoque diligit aurum, nigra pedes, nigris velata monedula pennis.
But Oliaros and Didyme and Tenos and Andros
and Gyaros and Peparethos, rich in the glossy olive,
did not aid the Cnossian ships; thence from the left
Minos makes for Oenopia, the realm of Aeacus:
Oenopia the ancients called it, but Aeacus himself
named it Aegina, after his mother’s name.
The crowd rushes out, eager to know a man of such great
fame; Telamon meets him, and Peleus, younger
than Telamon, and the third child, Phocus;
Aeacus too himself comes out, slow with the weight of age,
and asks what is the cause of his coming.
Reminded of his fatherly grief, the ruler of a hundred peoples
sighs, and gives him answer such as this:
’Help, I pray, the arms taken up for a son, and be a part
of a righteous campaign; I ask comfort for a grave.’
To him the son of Asopus said: ’You ask what is vain,
and not to be done by my city; for no land is more closely
joined to the children of Cecrops than this: such are our treaties.’
He goes away sorrowing, and ’Your treaties shall cost you dear,’
he said, and thinks it more useful to threaten war
than to wage it, and to spend his strength there beforehand.
The Lyctian fleet could still be seen from the Oenopian
walls, when, driven on with full sail,
an Attic ship arrives and enters the friendly harbors,
which bore Cephalus and at once his country’s commission.
and Gyaros and Peparethos, rich in the glossy olive,
did not aid the Cnossian ships; thence from the left
Minos makes for Oenopia, the realm of Aeacus:
Oenopia the ancients called it, but Aeacus himself
named it Aegina, after his mother’s name.
The crowd rushes out, eager to know a man of such great
fame; Telamon meets him, and Peleus, younger
than Telamon, and the third child, Phocus;
Aeacus too himself comes out, slow with the weight of age,
and asks what is the cause of his coming.
Reminded of his fatherly grief, the ruler of a hundred peoples
sighs, and gives him answer such as this:
’Help, I pray, the arms taken up for a son, and be a part
of a righteous campaign; I ask comfort for a grave.’
To him the son of Asopus said: ’You ask what is vain,
and not to be done by my city; for no land is more closely
joined to the children of Cecrops than this: such are our treaties.’
He goes away sorrowing, and ’Your treaties shall cost you dear,’
he said, and thinks it more useful to threaten war
than to wage it, and to spend his strength there beforehand.
The Lyctian fleet could still be seen from the Oenopian
walls, when, driven on with full sail,
an Attic ship arrives and enters the friendly harbors,
which bore Cephalus and at once his country’s commission.
At non Oliaros Didymeque et Tenos et Andros et Gyaros nitidaeque ferax Peparethos olivae Cnosiacas iuvere rates; latere inde sinistro Oenopiam Minos petit, Aeacideia regna: Oenopiam veteres adpellavere, sed ipse Aeacus Aeginam genetricis nomine dixit. turba ruit tantaeque virum cognoscere famae expetit; occurrunt illi Telamonque minorque quam Telamon Peleus et proles tertia Phocus; ipse quoque egreditur tardus gravitate senili Aeacus et, quae sit veniendi causa, requirit. admonitus patrii luctus suspirat et illi dicta refert rector populorum talia centum: ’arma iuves oro pro gnato sumpta piaeque pars sis militiae; tumulo solacia posco.’ huic Asopiades ’petis inrita’ dixit ’et urbi non facienda meae; neque enim coniunctior ulla Cecropidis est hac tellus: ea foedera nobis.’ tristis abit ’stabunt’ que ’tibi tua foedera magno’ dixit et utilius bellum putat esse minari quam gerere atque suas ibi praeconsumere vires. classis ab Oenopiis etiamnum Lyctia muris spectari poterat, cum pleno concita velo Attica puppis adest in portusque intrat amicos, quae Cephalum patriaeque simul mandata ferebat.
The sons of Aeacus, though he was seen after long time,
yet knew Cephalus, and gave their right hands
and led him to their father’s house: the comely hero,
still keeping even now the tokens of his former beauty,
enters, and, holding a branch of his country’s olive,
the elder has on right and left two younger in years,
Clytus and Butes, sons of Pallas.
After the first meeting had spoken its words,
Cephalus delivers the commission of the Cecropians and asks
their aid, and recalls the treaty and the rights of their fathers,
and adds that empire over all Achaea is sought.
When thus his eloquence had aided the cause entrusted to him,
Aeacus, his left hand resting on the shining hilt of his scepter,
said: ’Do not ask aid, but take it, Athens,
and count, without doubt, the forces this island has, as yours,
and — O may this state of my affairs remain! —
strength is not wanting; I have soldiers to spare, and this is,
thanks to the gods, a time both happy and admitting no excuse.’
’Even so let it be,’ said Cephalus; ’may your city grow
in citizens, I pray; coming just now I took joy
when so fair, so well-matched in age a band of youths
came out to meet me; yet I miss many among them,
whom once I saw when I was received in your city before.’
yet knew Cephalus, and gave their right hands
and led him to their father’s house: the comely hero,
still keeping even now the tokens of his former beauty,
enters, and, holding a branch of his country’s olive,
the elder has on right and left two younger in years,
Clytus and Butes, sons of Pallas.
After the first meeting had spoken its words,
Cephalus delivers the commission of the Cecropians and asks
their aid, and recalls the treaty and the rights of their fathers,
and adds that empire over all Achaea is sought.
When thus his eloquence had aided the cause entrusted to him,
Aeacus, his left hand resting on the shining hilt of his scepter,
said: ’Do not ask aid, but take it, Athens,
and count, without doubt, the forces this island has, as yours,
and — O may this state of my affairs remain! —
strength is not wanting; I have soldiers to spare, and this is,
thanks to the gods, a time both happy and admitting no excuse.’
’Even so let it be,’ said Cephalus; ’may your city grow
in citizens, I pray; coming just now I took joy
when so fair, so well-matched in age a band of youths
came out to meet me; yet I miss many among them,
whom once I saw when I was received in your city before.’
Aeacidae longo iuvenes post tempore visum agnovere tamen Cephalum dextrasque dedere inque patris duxere domum: spectabilis heros et veteris retinens etiamnum pignora formae ingreditur ramumque tenens popularis olivae a dextra laevaque duos aetate minores maior habet, Clyton et Buten, Pallante creatos. Postquam congressus primi sua verba tulerunt, Cecropidae Cephalus peragit mandata rogatque auxilium foedusque refert et iura parentum, imperiumque peti totius Achaidos addit. sic ubi mandatam iuvit facundia causam, Aeacus, in capulo sceptri nitente sinistra, ’ne petite auxilium, sed sumite’ dixit, ’Athenae, nec dubie vires, quas haec habet insula, vestras ducite, et (o maneat rerum status iste mearum!) robora non desunt; superat mihi miles et hoc est, gratia dis, felix et inexcusabile tempus.’ ’immo ita sit’ Cephalus, ’crescat tua civibus opto urbs’ ait; ’adveniens equidem modo gaudia cepi, cum tam pulchra mihi, tam par aetate iuventus obvia processit; multos tamen inde requiro, quos quondam vidi vestra prius urbe receptus.’
Aeacus groaned, and spoke thus in a sorrowing voice:
’A better fortune followed a tearful beginning;
would I could recall the one to you without the other!
Now I will tell it in order, lest I keep you with long winding:
they lie bones and ashes, those you ask after with mindful heart,
and how great a part of my world perished with them!
A dread pestilence fell, by the wrath of unjust Juno,
upon a people, on a land that took its hated name from a rival.
While the evil seemed mortal and the harmful cause
of so great a ruin lay hidden, it was fought with the art of healing:
destruction overcame help, which lay beaten down.
At first the sky pressed the lands with thick murk
and shut in the sluggish heats within the clouds;
and while the Moon four times filled her disc with joined horns,
and four times, waning, unwove her full disc,
the warm south winds blew with death-bearing heats.
It is agreed that the taint came into the springs and lakes too,
and that many thousands of serpents strayed through the untilled fields
and fouled the rivers with their poisons.
By the slaughter of dogs first, and of birds and sheep and oxen,
and in the wild beasts, the sudden power of the disease was detected.
The luckless plowman wonders to see his sturdy bulls fall
amid their work and sink down in the middle of the furrow;
as the wool-bearing flocks give out sick bleatings,
their wool falls of itself and their bodies waste away;
the spirited horse, once of great fame on the racecourse,
degenerates from his palms and, forgetful of his old honors,
groans at the manger, to die by an inglorious death.
The boar does not remember to rage, nor the doe to trust her speed,
nor the bears to charge the strong herds.
A languor holds all things: in woods and fields and roads
foul bodies lie, the airs are tainted with the stenches.
A marvel I shall tell: not dogs nor greedy birds,
not gray wolves touched them; falling apart they melt,
and harm by their breath, and spread the contagion far and wide.
’A better fortune followed a tearful beginning;
would I could recall the one to you without the other!
Now I will tell it in order, lest I keep you with long winding:
they lie bones and ashes, those you ask after with mindful heart,
and how great a part of my world perished with them!
A dread pestilence fell, by the wrath of unjust Juno,
upon a people, on a land that took its hated name from a rival.
While the evil seemed mortal and the harmful cause
of so great a ruin lay hidden, it was fought with the art of healing:
destruction overcame help, which lay beaten down.
At first the sky pressed the lands with thick murk
and shut in the sluggish heats within the clouds;
and while the Moon four times filled her disc with joined horns,
and four times, waning, unwove her full disc,
the warm south winds blew with death-bearing heats.
It is agreed that the taint came into the springs and lakes too,
and that many thousands of serpents strayed through the untilled fields
and fouled the rivers with their poisons.
By the slaughter of dogs first, and of birds and sheep and oxen,
and in the wild beasts, the sudden power of the disease was detected.
The luckless plowman wonders to see his sturdy bulls fall
amid their work and sink down in the middle of the furrow;
as the wool-bearing flocks give out sick bleatings,
their wool falls of itself and their bodies waste away;
the spirited horse, once of great fame on the racecourse,
degenerates from his palms and, forgetful of his old honors,
groans at the manger, to die by an inglorious death.
The boar does not remember to rage, nor the doe to trust her speed,
nor the bears to charge the strong herds.
A languor holds all things: in woods and fields and roads
foul bodies lie, the airs are tainted with the stenches.
A marvel I shall tell: not dogs nor greedy birds,
not gray wolves touched them; falling apart they melt,
and harm by their breath, and spread the contagion far and wide.
Aeacus ingemuit tristique ita voce locutus: ’flebile principium melior fortuna secuta est; hanc utinam possem vobis memorare sine illo! ordine nunc repetam, neu longa ambage morer vos, ossa cinisque iacent, memori quos mente requiris, et quota pars illi rerum periere mearum! dira lues ira populis Iunonis iniquae incidit exosae dictas a paelice terras. dum visum mortale malum tantaeque latebat causa nocens cladis, pugnatum est arte medendi: exitium superabat opem, quae victa iacebat. principio caelum spissa caligine terras pressit et ignavos inclusit nubibus aestus; dumque quater iunctis explevit cornibus orbem Luna, quater plenum tenuata retexuit orbem, letiferis calidi spirarunt aestibus austri. constat et in fontis vitium venisse lacusque, miliaque incultos serpentum multa per agros errasse atque suis fluvios temerasse venenis. strage canum primo volucrumque oviumque boumque inque feris subiti deprensa potentia morbi. concidere infelix validos miratur arator inter opus tauros medioque recumbere sulco; lanigeris gregibus balatus dantibus aegros sponte sua lanaeque cadunt et corpora tabent; acer equus quondam magnaeque in pulvere famae degenerat palmas veterumque oblitus honorum ad praesepe gemit leto moriturus inerti. non aper irasci meminit, non fidere cursu cerva nec armentis incurrere fortibus ursi. omnia languor habet: silvisque agrisque viisque corpora foeda iacent, vitiantur odoribus aurae. mira loquar: non illa canes avidaeque volucres, non cani tetigere lupi; dilapsa liquescunt adflatuque nocent et agunt contagia late. ’
The plague reached the wretched farmers with heavier harm
and lords it within the walls of the great city.
First the inwards are scorched, and a redness is the sign
of the hidden flame, and the drawn-in breath; the tongue
swells, rough with fire, and the parched mouths gape
in the warm winds, and heavy airs are caught at, open-mouthed.
They can bear no bedding, no coverings,
but lay their breasts on the bare earth, and the body
does not grow cold from the ground, but the ground grows hot from the body.
No one controls it, and the savage ruin breaks out
upon the very healers, and their arts harm their authors;
the closer each is, and the more faithfully he serves the sick,
the sooner he comes to his share of death, and as the hope
of safety goes, and they see the end of the disease in death,
they indulge their whims, and there is no care for what is useful:
for nothing is useful. Everywhere, shame laid aside,
they cling to springs and rivers and capacious wells,
nor is their thirst quenched before their life, by drinking.
From this many, grown heavy, cannot rise, and die
in the very waters, though someone draws and drinks even those;
and so great is the loathing of the wretched for their hated bed
that they leap up, or, if their strength forbids them to stand,
they roll their bodies onto the ground and flee, each from his own
household gods, and to each his own house seems deadly,
and, because the cause is hidden, the place is held to blame; in part
you might see men, half-alive, wandering the roads while they could stand,
others weeping and lying on the ground
and turning their weary eyes in a last movement;
and they stretch their limbs toward the stars of the hanging sky,
breathing out their lives here and there, wherever death had caught them.
and lords it within the walls of the great city.
First the inwards are scorched, and a redness is the sign
of the hidden flame, and the drawn-in breath; the tongue
swells, rough with fire, and the parched mouths gape
in the warm winds, and heavy airs are caught at, open-mouthed.
They can bear no bedding, no coverings,
but lay their breasts on the bare earth, and the body
does not grow cold from the ground, but the ground grows hot from the body.
No one controls it, and the savage ruin breaks out
upon the very healers, and their arts harm their authors;
the closer each is, and the more faithfully he serves the sick,
the sooner he comes to his share of death, and as the hope
of safety goes, and they see the end of the disease in death,
they indulge their whims, and there is no care for what is useful:
for nothing is useful. Everywhere, shame laid aside,
they cling to springs and rivers and capacious wells,
nor is their thirst quenched before their life, by drinking.
From this many, grown heavy, cannot rise, and die
in the very waters, though someone draws and drinks even those;
and so great is the loathing of the wretched for their hated bed
that they leap up, or, if their strength forbids them to stand,
they roll their bodies onto the ground and flee, each from his own
household gods, and to each his own house seems deadly,
and, because the cause is hidden, the place is held to blame; in part
you might see men, half-alive, wandering the roads while they could stand,
others weeping and lying on the ground
and turning their weary eyes in a last movement;
and they stretch their limbs toward the stars of the hanging sky,
breathing out their lives here and there, wherever death had caught them.
Pervenit ad miseros damno graviore colonos pestis et in magnae dominatur moenibus urbis. viscera torrentur primo, flammaeque latentis indicium rubor est et ductus anhelitus; igni aspera lingua tumet, tepidisque arentia ventis ora patent, auraeque graves captantur hiatu. non stratum, non ulla pati velamina possunt, nuda sed in terra ponunt praecordia, nec fit corpus humo gelidum, sed humus de corpore fervet. nec moderator adest, inque ipsos saeva medentes erumpit clades, obsuntque auctoribus artes; quo propior quisque est servitque fidelius aegro, in partem leti citius venit, utque salutis spes abiit finemque vident in funere morbi, indulgent animis et nulla, quid utile, cura est: utile enim nihil est. passim positoque pudore fontibus et fluviis puteisque capacibus haerent, nec sitis est exstincta prius quam vita bibendo. inde graves multi nequeunt consurgere et ipsis inmoriuntur aquis, aliquis tamen haurit et illas; tantaque sunt miseris invisi taedia lecti, prosiliunt aut, si prohibent consistere vires, corpora devolvunt in humum fugiuntque penates quisque suos, sua cuique domus funesta videtur, et quia causa latet, locus est in crimine; partim semianimes errare viis, dum stare valebant, adspiceres, flentes alios terraque iacentes lassaque versantes supremo lumina motu; membraque pendentis tendunt ad sidera caeli, hic illic, ubi mors deprenderat, exhalantes. ’
’What was my mind then? Was it not what it ought to have been —
to hate life and long to be a part of my own dead?
Wherever the line of my eyes turned, there
the crowd lay strewn, as when rotten apples fall
from shaken boughs, and acorns from the tossed holm-oak.
You see the temple opposite, lofty with its long flights of steps:
Jupiter holds it. Who did not offer on those altars
unavailing incense? How often, while a husband for his wife,
a father for his son, was speaking words of prayer,
he ended his life at the unmoved altars,
and in his hand a part of the incense was found unconsumed!
How often, brought to the temples, while the priest
makes the vows and pours the unmixed wine between the horns,
the bulls fell without waiting for the wound!
I myself, while making rites to Jupiter for myself and my country
and my three sons, the victim gave out dire bellowings
and, suddenly collapsing without any blows,
stained the knives set under it with scant blood.
The diseased entrails too had lost the marks of truth
and the warnings of the gods: the grim plagues reach to the inward parts.
I saw corpses flung before the sacred doorposts,
before the very altars, that death might be the more hateful.
Some close their breath with the noose, and the fear of death
they flee by death, and of their own will call on the fates that come.
The bodies given over to death are carried out by no
funerals in the wonted way (for the gates could not hold the funerals):
either unburied they weigh upon the ground, or are given to high
pyres without their dues; and now there is no reverence,
and they fight over the pyres and burn on others’ fires.
Those who might weep are wanting, and unwept they wander,
the souls of sons and fathers, of the young and the old,
and there is no room for the graves, nor wood enough for the fires.
to hate life and long to be a part of my own dead?
Wherever the line of my eyes turned, there
the crowd lay strewn, as when rotten apples fall
from shaken boughs, and acorns from the tossed holm-oak.
You see the temple opposite, lofty with its long flights of steps:
Jupiter holds it. Who did not offer on those altars
unavailing incense? How often, while a husband for his wife,
a father for his son, was speaking words of prayer,
he ended his life at the unmoved altars,
and in his hand a part of the incense was found unconsumed!
How often, brought to the temples, while the priest
makes the vows and pours the unmixed wine between the horns,
the bulls fell without waiting for the wound!
I myself, while making rites to Jupiter for myself and my country
and my three sons, the victim gave out dire bellowings
and, suddenly collapsing without any blows,
stained the knives set under it with scant blood.
The diseased entrails too had lost the marks of truth
and the warnings of the gods: the grim plagues reach to the inward parts.
I saw corpses flung before the sacred doorposts,
before the very altars, that death might be the more hateful.
Some close their breath with the noose, and the fear of death
they flee by death, and of their own will call on the fates that come.
The bodies given over to death are carried out by no
funerals in the wonted way (for the gates could not hold the funerals):
either unburied they weigh upon the ground, or are given to high
pyres without their dues; and now there is no reverence,
and they fight over the pyres and burn on others’ fires.
Those who might weep are wanting, and unwept they wander,
the souls of sons and fathers, of the young and the old,
and there is no room for the graves, nor wood enough for the fires.
Quid mihi tunc animi fuit? an, quod debuit esse, ut vitam odissem et cuperem pars esse meorum? quo se cumque acies oculorum flexerat, illic vulgus erat stratum, veluti cum putria motis poma cadunt ramis agitataque ilice glandes. templa vides contra gradibus sublimia longis: Iuppiter illa tenet. quis non altaribus illis inrita tura dedit? quotiens pro coniuge coniunx, pro gnato genitor dum verba precantia dicit, non exoratis animam finivit in aris, inque manu turis pars inconsumpta reperta est! admoti quotiens templis, dum vota sacerdos concipit et fundit durum inter cornua vinum, haud exspectato ceciderunt vulnere tauri! ipse ego sacra Iovi pro me patriaque tribusque cum facerem natis, mugitus victima diros edidit et subito conlapsa sine ictibus ullis exiguo tinxit subiectos sanguine cultros. exta quoque aegra notas veri monitusque deorum perdiderant: tristes penetrant ad viscera morbi. ante sacros vidi proiecta cadavera postes, ante ipsas, quo mors foret invidiosior, aras. pars animam laqueo claudunt mortisque timorem morte fugant ultroque vocant venientia fata. corpora missa neci nullis de more feruntur funeribus (neque enim capiebant funera portae): aut inhumata premunt terras aut dantur in altos indotata rogos; et iam reverentia nulla est, deque rogis pugnant alienisque ignibus ardent. qui lacriment, desunt, indefletaeque vagantur natorumque patrumque animae iuvenumque senumque, nec locus in tumulos, nec sufficit arbor in ignes.
’Thunderstruck at so great a whirlwind of wretched things,
"O Jupiter!" I said, "if the tales do not lie that say
you came to the embraces of Aegina, Asopus’s daughter,
and you are not ashamed, great father, to be my parent,
either give me back my own, or hide me too in the tomb!"
He gave a sign by lightning and a favorable thunderclap.
"I accept it, and I pray these be happy signs
of your mind!" I said; "the omen you give me, I take as a pledge."
By chance there stood near by an oak with spreading boughs,
of rarest growth, sacred to Jupiter, from a Dodonaean seed;
here we saw the grain-gathering ants in a long column
bearing a great load in their tiny mouths
and keeping their own path along the wrinkled bark;
while I marvel at their number, "Best father," I said,
"give me as many citizens, and fill up my empty walls!"
The tall oak trembled, and gave a sound from its branches
moved without a breeze: my limbs had bristled
with quaking fear, and my hair stood up; yet I gave kisses
to the earth and to the oak, and would not confess that I hoped;
yet I did hope, and cherished my prayers in my mind.
Night comes on, and sleep seizes bodies wearied
with cares: before my eyes the same oak seemed to be present,
and to bear on its branches as many creatures, and on its boughs
as many, and to tremble likewise with the motion,
and to scatter the grain-bearing column onto the fields below;
they seemed of a sudden to grow and to look bigger and bigger
and to raise themselves from the ground and stand on upright trunk
and to lay aside their leanness and their number of feet and their black color
and to put on the human form upon their limbs.
"O Jupiter!" I said, "if the tales do not lie that say
you came to the embraces of Aegina, Asopus’s daughter,
and you are not ashamed, great father, to be my parent,
either give me back my own, or hide me too in the tomb!"
He gave a sign by lightning and a favorable thunderclap.
"I accept it, and I pray these be happy signs
of your mind!" I said; "the omen you give me, I take as a pledge."
By chance there stood near by an oak with spreading boughs,
of rarest growth, sacred to Jupiter, from a Dodonaean seed;
here we saw the grain-gathering ants in a long column
bearing a great load in their tiny mouths
and keeping their own path along the wrinkled bark;
while I marvel at their number, "Best father," I said,
"give me as many citizens, and fill up my empty walls!"
The tall oak trembled, and gave a sound from its branches
moved without a breeze: my limbs had bristled
with quaking fear, and my hair stood up; yet I gave kisses
to the earth and to the oak, and would not confess that I hoped;
yet I did hope, and cherished my prayers in my mind.
Night comes on, and sleep seizes bodies wearied
with cares: before my eyes the same oak seemed to be present,
and to bear on its branches as many creatures, and on its boughs
as many, and to tremble likewise with the motion,
and to scatter the grain-bearing column onto the fields below;
they seemed of a sudden to grow and to look bigger and bigger
and to raise themselves from the ground and stand on upright trunk
and to lay aside their leanness and their number of feet and their black color
and to put on the human form upon their limbs.
Attonitus tanto miserarum turbine rerum, "Iuppiter o!" dixi, "si te non falsa loquuntur dicta sub amplexus Aeginae Asopidos isse, nec te, magne pater, nostri pudet esse parentem, aut mihi redde meos aut me quoque conde sepulcro!" ille notam fulgore dedit tonitruque secundo. "accipio sintque ista precor felicia mentis signa tuae!" dixi, "quod das mihi, pigneror omen." forte fuit iuxta patulis rarissima ramis sacra Iovi quercus de semine Dodonaeo; hic nos frugilegas adspeximus agmine longo grande onus exiguo formicas ore gerentes rugosoque suum servantes cortice callem; dum numerum miror, "totidem, pater optime," dixi, "tu mihi da cives et inania moenia supple!" intremuit ramisque sonum sine flamine motis alta dedit quercus: pavido mihi membra timore horruerant, stabantque comae; tamen oscula terrae roboribusque dedi, nec me sperare fatebar; sperabam tamen atque animo mea vota fovebam. nox subit, et curis exercita corpora somnus occupat: ante oculos eadem mihi quercus adesse et ramis totidem totidemque animalia ramis ferre suis visa est pariterque tremescere motu graniferumque agmen subiectis spargere in arvis; crescere desubito et maius maiusque videri ac se tollere humo rectoque adsistere trunco et maciem numerumque pedum nigrumque colorem ponere et humanam membris inducere formam.
’Sleep departs: waking I decry my visions and complain
that there is no help in the gods above; but in the halls a great
murmur arose, and I seemed to hear the voices of men,
now grown strange to me; while I suspect these too to be
of sleep, Telamon came in haste, and, the doors thrown open,
"You will see, father," he said, "things greater than hope or faith:
come out!" I come out, and such as in the image of sleep
I had seemed to see the men, just such, in order,
I behold and know: they approach and salute me as king.
I pay my vows to Jupiter, and to the new peoples I parcel out
the city and the fields emptied of their old tillers,
and I call them Myrmidons, and do not cheat the names of their origin.
You have seen their bodies; the ways they bore before,
they have now too: a thrifty race it is, and patient of toils,
tenacious of what it has gained, and storing up what it has gained.
These will follow you to the wars, equal in years and in spirit,
as soon as the east wind that brought you here so happily’
(for an east wind had brought him) ’shall have shifted to the south.’
that there is no help in the gods above; but in the halls a great
murmur arose, and I seemed to hear the voices of men,
now grown strange to me; while I suspect these too to be
of sleep, Telamon came in haste, and, the doors thrown open,
"You will see, father," he said, "things greater than hope or faith:
come out!" I come out, and such as in the image of sleep
I had seemed to see the men, just such, in order,
I behold and know: they approach and salute me as king.
I pay my vows to Jupiter, and to the new peoples I parcel out
the city and the fields emptied of their old tillers,
and I call them Myrmidons, and do not cheat the names of their origin.
You have seen their bodies; the ways they bore before,
they have now too: a thrifty race it is, and patient of toils,
tenacious of what it has gained, and storing up what it has gained.
These will follow you to the wars, equal in years and in spirit,
as soon as the east wind that brought you here so happily’
(for an east wind had brought him) ’shall have shifted to the south.’
somnus abit: damno vigilans mea visa querorque in superis opis esse nihil; at in aedibus ingens murmur erat, vocesque hominum exaudire videbar iam mihi desuetas; dum suspicor has quoque somni esse, venit Telamon properus foribusque reclusis "speque fideque, pater", dixit "maiora videbis: egredere!" egredior, qualesque in imagine somni visus eram vidisse viros, ex ordine tales adspicio noscoque: adeunt regemque salutant. vota Iovi solvo populisque recentibus urbem partior et vacuos priscis cultoribus agros, Myrmidonasque voco nec origine nomina fraudo. corpora vidisti; mores, quos ante gerebant, nunc quoque habent: parcum genus est patiensque laborum quaesitique tenax et quod quaesita reservet. hi te ad bella pares annis animisque sequentur, cum primum qui te feliciter attulit eurus’ (eurus enim attulerat) ’fuerit mutatus in austrum.’
With such talk and other they filled the long
day; the last part of the daylight was given to the table,
the night to sleep. The golden Sun had lifted his beam,
the east wind was still blowing and held the sails that would return:
to Cephalus the sons of Pallas, to whom belonged the greater age,
to the king, Cephalus and the sons of Pallas together,
gather; but deep sleep still held the king.
Phocus, son of Aeacus, receives them on the threshold;
for Telamon and his brother were levying men for the war.
Phocus leads the Cecropians into the inner space
and the fair retreats, and sat down with them there.
He sees the descendant of Aeolus carrying in his hand a javelin
made from an unknown wood, whose point was of gold.
He, first having spoken a few words amid their talk,
’I am devoted to the woods,’ he says, ’and to the killing of game;
yet from what wood you have the shaft cut,
I have long been doubtful: certainly, if it were ash,
it would be tawny in color; if cornel, there would be a knot in it.
Whence it is, I do not know, but my eyes have seen
no fairer weapon for throwing than this.’
One of the Attic brothers takes him up and said,
’You will marvel more at its use than at its look:
it follows whatever it aims at, and chance does not steer
its throw, and it flies back, bloody, with none to bring it.’
Then indeed the young son of Nereus asks all —
why it is, and whence it was given, who the giver of so great a gift.
What he asks, the other tells, but it is a shame to him to tell
at what price he won it; he is silent, and, touched by grief
for his lost wife, speaks thus, with tears welling:
’This weapon, son of a goddess (who could believe it?),
makes me weep, and will make me long, if the fates grant us
long to live; this it was that ruined me, with my dear wife:
would I had ever been without this gift!
day; the last part of the daylight was given to the table,
the night to sleep. The golden Sun had lifted his beam,
the east wind was still blowing and held the sails that would return:
to Cephalus the sons of Pallas, to whom belonged the greater age,
to the king, Cephalus and the sons of Pallas together,
gather; but deep sleep still held the king.
Phocus, son of Aeacus, receives them on the threshold;
for Telamon and his brother were levying men for the war.
Phocus leads the Cecropians into the inner space
and the fair retreats, and sat down with them there.
He sees the descendant of Aeolus carrying in his hand a javelin
made from an unknown wood, whose point was of gold.
He, first having spoken a few words amid their talk,
’I am devoted to the woods,’ he says, ’and to the killing of game;
yet from what wood you have the shaft cut,
I have long been doubtful: certainly, if it were ash,
it would be tawny in color; if cornel, there would be a knot in it.
Whence it is, I do not know, but my eyes have seen
no fairer weapon for throwing than this.’
One of the Attic brothers takes him up and said,
’You will marvel more at its use than at its look:
it follows whatever it aims at, and chance does not steer
its throw, and it flies back, bloody, with none to bring it.’
Then indeed the young son of Nereus asks all —
why it is, and whence it was given, who the giver of so great a gift.
What he asks, the other tells, but it is a shame to him to tell
at what price he won it; he is silent, and, touched by grief
for his lost wife, speaks thus, with tears welling:
’This weapon, son of a goddess (who could believe it?),
makes me weep, and will make me long, if the fates grant us
long to live; this it was that ruined me, with my dear wife:
would I had ever been without this gift!
Talibus atque aliis longum sermonibus illi inplevere diem; lucis pars ultima mensae est data, nox somnis. iubar aureus extulerat Sol, flabat adhuc eurus redituraque vela tenebat: ad Cephalum Pallante sati, cui grandior aetas, ad regem Cephalus simul et Pallante creati conveniunt, sed adhuc regem sopor altus habebat. excipit Aeacides illos in limine Phocus; nam Telamon fraterque viros ad bella legebant. Phocus in interius spatium pulchrosque recessus Cecropidas ducit, cum quis simul ipse resedit. adspicit Aeoliden ignota ex arbore factum ferre manu iaculum, cuius fuit aurea cuspis. pauca prius mediis sermonibus ille locutus ’sum nemorum studiosus’ ait ’caedisque ferinae; qua tamen e silva teneas hastile recisum, iamdudum dubito: certe si fraxinus esset, fulva colore foret; si cornus, nodus inesset. unde sit, ignoro, sed non formosius isto viderunt oculi telum iaculabile nostri.’ excipit Actaeis e fratribus alter et ’usum maiorem specie mirabere’ dixit ’in isto. consequitur, quodcumque petit, fortunaque missum non regit, et revolat nullo referente cruentum.’ tum vero iuvenis Nereius omnia quaerit, cur sit et unde datum, quis tanti muneris auctor. quae petit, ille refert, sed enim narrare pudori est, qua tulerit mercede; silet tactusque dolore coniugis amissae lacrimis ita fatur obortis: ’hoc me, nate dea, (quis possit credere?) telum flere facit facietque diu, si vivere nobis fata diu dederint; hoc me cum coniuge cara perdidit: hoc utinam caruissem munere semper! ’
’Procris she was — if perhaps Orithyia has come more
to your ears, the sister of the ravished Orithyia;
if you would compare the face and ways of the two,
she herself was the worthier to be carried off! Her father Erechtheus
joined her to me, love joined her to me: I was called happy, and was;
not so it seemed to the gods, or perhaps even now I should be.
The second month was passing after the marriage rites,
when, as I was spreading my nets for the antlered deer
from the topmost peak of ever-flowering Hymettus,
the saffron Aurora, the shadows driven off, sees me in the morning
and carries me off against my will. Let me be allowed to tell the truth,
with the goddess’s leave: though she be lovely with her rosy face,
though she hold the borders of light, hold the borders of night,
though she be nourished on nectar-waters, I loved Procris;
Procris was in my heart, Procris ever on my lips.
I kept telling of the rites of the marriage-bed and our new union
and the fresh wedding and the first vows of the bed I had left:
the goddess was moved, and "Stop your complaints, ingrate;
keep your Procris!" she said, "but if my mind sees ahead,
you will wish you had not kept her." And, angry, she sent me back to her.
While I return and turn over the goddess’s words with myself,
a fear began, that my wife had not kept well
the marriage-rights: her face and her age bade me
believe adultery, her character forbade me to believe it;
but still I had been away, and she too, from whom I was returning,
was an example of such crime, and we lovers fear all things.
I resolve to seek out what would grieve me, and to assail
her chaste faith with gifts; Aurora favors this fear of mine
and alters my form (I seem to have felt it).
to your ears, the sister of the ravished Orithyia;
if you would compare the face and ways of the two,
she herself was the worthier to be carried off! Her father Erechtheus
joined her to me, love joined her to me: I was called happy, and was;
not so it seemed to the gods, or perhaps even now I should be.
The second month was passing after the marriage rites,
when, as I was spreading my nets for the antlered deer
from the topmost peak of ever-flowering Hymettus,
the saffron Aurora, the shadows driven off, sees me in the morning
and carries me off against my will. Let me be allowed to tell the truth,
with the goddess’s leave: though she be lovely with her rosy face,
though she hold the borders of light, hold the borders of night,
though she be nourished on nectar-waters, I loved Procris;
Procris was in my heart, Procris ever on my lips.
I kept telling of the rites of the marriage-bed and our new union
and the fresh wedding and the first vows of the bed I had left:
the goddess was moved, and "Stop your complaints, ingrate;
keep your Procris!" she said, "but if my mind sees ahead,
you will wish you had not kept her." And, angry, she sent me back to her.
While I return and turn over the goddess’s words with myself,
a fear began, that my wife had not kept well
the marriage-rights: her face and her age bade me
believe adultery, her character forbade me to believe it;
but still I had been away, and she too, from whom I was returning,
was an example of such crime, and we lovers fear all things.
I resolve to seek out what would grieve me, and to assail
her chaste faith with gifts; Aurora favors this fear of mine
and alters my form (I seem to have felt it).
Procris erat, si forte magis pervenit ad aures Orithyia tuas, raptae soror Orithyiae, si faciem moresque velis conferre duarum, dignior ipsa rapi! pater hanc mihi iunxit Erectheus, hanc mihi iunxit amor: felix dicebar eramque; non ita dis visum est, aut nunc quoque forsitan essem. alter agebatur post sacra iugalia mensis, cum me cornigeris tendentem retia cervis vertice de summo semper florentis Hymetti lutea mane videt pulsis Aurora tenebris invitumque rapit. liceat mihi vera referre pace deae: quod sit roseo spectabilis ore, quod teneat lucis, teneat confinia noctis, nectareis quod alatur aquis, ego Procrin amabam; pectore Procris erat, Procris mihi semper in ore. sacra tori coitusque novos thalamosque recentes primaque deserti referebam foedera lecti: mota dea est et "siste tuas, ingrate, querellas; Procrin habe!" dixit, "quod si mea provida mens est, non habuisse voles." meque illi irata remisit. cum redeo mecumque deae memorata retracto, esse metus coepit, ne iura iugalia coniunx non bene servasset: facies aetasque iubebat credere adulterium, prohibebant credere mores; sed tamen afueram, sed et haec erat, unde redibam, criminis exemplum, sed cuncta timemus amantes. quaerere, quod doleam, statuo donisque pudicam sollicitare fidem; favet huic Aurora timori inmutatque meam (videor sensisse) figuram.
’Unrecognizable, I enter Palladian Athens
and go into my house; the house itself was free of fault
and gave chaste signs and was anxious for its ravished master:
hardly was access to Erechtheus’s daughter won, through a thousand wiles.
When I saw her, I was struck dumb, and almost gave up
the trials of her faith I had planned; hardly did I keep myself
from confessing the truth, hardly from giving the kisses I should have.
She was sad (yet none can be lovelier than she
when she is sad), and grieved with longing
for her snatched-away husband: gather then, Phocus, what beauty
was in her, whom grief itself so became!
Why should I tell how often her chaste ways
repelled my trials, how often she said, "I keep myself
for one; wherever he is, for one I keep my joys."
To what man, sound of mind, would that not be proof enough
of her faith, and great? I am not content, and fight to my own
wounds, while, by promising to give a fortune for a night
and by heaping up gifts, I forced her at last to waver.
I cry out, an ill victor: "Here is your false adulterer, wicked one!
I was your true husband! By my witness, faithless one, you are caught."
She, nothing; only, beaten by silent shame,
she fled the threshold of her treacherous, wicked husband,
and, offended at me and hating the whole race of men,
she wandered the mountains, busy with the pursuits of Diana.
Then a fiercer fire reached my bones, deserted as I was:
I begged forgiveness and confessed that I had sinned
and that I too could have yielded to a like fault, given gifts,
if such great gifts were given.
This confessed by me, having first avenged her injured honor,
she is given back to me, and harmoniously spends sweet years with me;
she gives me besides, as though she had given herself a small
gift, a dog as a present; which, when her own Cynthia
gave it to her, she had said, "In running it will outstrip them all."
She gives at the same time the javelin too, which, as you see, I hold in my hands.
and go into my house; the house itself was free of fault
and gave chaste signs and was anxious for its ravished master:
hardly was access to Erechtheus’s daughter won, through a thousand wiles.
When I saw her, I was struck dumb, and almost gave up
the trials of her faith I had planned; hardly did I keep myself
from confessing the truth, hardly from giving the kisses I should have.
She was sad (yet none can be lovelier than she
when she is sad), and grieved with longing
for her snatched-away husband: gather then, Phocus, what beauty
was in her, whom grief itself so became!
Why should I tell how often her chaste ways
repelled my trials, how often she said, "I keep myself
for one; wherever he is, for one I keep my joys."
To what man, sound of mind, would that not be proof enough
of her faith, and great? I am not content, and fight to my own
wounds, while, by promising to give a fortune for a night
and by heaping up gifts, I forced her at last to waver.
I cry out, an ill victor: "Here is your false adulterer, wicked one!
I was your true husband! By my witness, faithless one, you are caught."
She, nothing; only, beaten by silent shame,
she fled the threshold of her treacherous, wicked husband,
and, offended at me and hating the whole race of men,
she wandered the mountains, busy with the pursuits of Diana.
Then a fiercer fire reached my bones, deserted as I was:
I begged forgiveness and confessed that I had sinned
and that I too could have yielded to a like fault, given gifts,
if such great gifts were given.
This confessed by me, having first avenged her injured honor,
she is given back to me, and harmoniously spends sweet years with me;
she gives me besides, as though she had given herself a small
gift, a dog as a present; which, when her own Cynthia
gave it to her, she had said, "In running it will outstrip them all."
She gives at the same time the javelin too, which, as you see, I hold in my hands.
Palladias ineo non cognoscendus Athenas ingrediorque domum; culpa domus ipsa carebat castaque signa dabat dominoque erat anxia rapto: vix aditus per mille dolos ad Erecthida factus. ut vidi, obstipui meditataque paene reliqui temptamenta fide; male me, quin vera faterer, continui, male, quin, et oportuit, oscula ferrem. tristis erat (sed nulla tamen formosior illa esse potest tristi) desiderioque dolebat coniugis abrepti: tu collige, qualis in illa, Phoce, decor fuerit, quam sic dolor ipse decebat! quid referam, quotiens temptamina nostra pudici reppulerint mores, quotiens "ego" dixerit "uni servor; ubicumque est, uni mea gaudia servo." cui non ista fide satis experientia sano magna foret? non sum contentus et in mea pugno vulnera, dum census dare me pro nocte loquendo muneraque augendo tandem dubitare coegi. exclamo male victor: "adest, mala, fictus adulter! verus eram coniunx! me, perfida, teste teneris." illa nihil; tacito tantummodo victa pudore insidiosa malo cum coniuge limina fugit; offensaque mei genus omne perosa virorum montibus errabat, studiis operata Dianae. tum mihi deserto violentior ignis ad ossa pervenit: orabam veniam et peccasse fatebar et potuisse datis simili succumbere culpae me quoque muneribus, si munera tanta darentur. haec mihi confesso, laesum prius ulta pudorem, redditur et dulces concorditer exigit annos; dat mihi praeterea, tamquam se parva dedisset dona, canem munus; quem cum sua traderet illi Cynthia, "currendo superabit" dixerat "omnes." dat simul et iaculum, manibus quod, cernis, habemus. muneris alterius quae sit fortuna, requiris? accipe mirandum: novitate movebere facti! ’
’The son of Laius had solved the riddle not understood
by the wits of those before, and the dark prophetess lay
hurled headlong, forgetful of her own ambiguities:
at once a second plague is loosed on Aonian Thebes
(for surely kindly Themis leaves no such things unavenged!),
and many country folk feared the beast, for the ruin of their flocks
and of themselves; we, the neighboring young men, came
and ringed the broad fields with our toils.
She, swift, would clear the nets with a light bound
and overleap the top lines of the snares set for her:
the leash is slipped from the hounds, whom, as they follow,
she escapes, and mocks the pack, no slower than a bird.
I too am called for, with great consent, to give my Laelaps
(this was the gift’s name): long since he fights to strip
the bonds from himself and strains his neck against what holds him back.
Scarcely was he well let go, and already we could not
know where he was; the hot dust held the tracks of his feet,
but he himself was snatched from our eyes: no swifter than he
the spear, nor the bullets shot from the whirled sling,
nor the light reed that leaves the Gortynian bow.
The crest of a hill in the midst overhangs the fields below:
I climb to it and take in the sight of the strange race,
in which now the beast seemed caught, now to draw herself
from the very wound; nor, cunning, does she flee straight on her course
and into the open, but cheats the mouth of her pursuer
and wheels back in a circle, that her foe may have no charge at her:
he presses close and follows, her match, and, like one that holds,
holds not, and works his empty bites upon the air.
I was turning to the help of my javelin; while my right hand
poises it, while I try to fit my fingers into the loop,
I turned my eyes aside. And when I had brought them back again
to the same place: in the middle of the plain (a marvel) two marble shapes
I behold; you would think the one was fleeing, the other seizing.
No doubt some god, if any god was present with them,
willed that both should be unconquered in the contest of the race.’
by the wits of those before, and the dark prophetess lay
hurled headlong, forgetful of her own ambiguities:
at once a second plague is loosed on Aonian Thebes
(for surely kindly Themis leaves no such things unavenged!),
and many country folk feared the beast, for the ruin of their flocks
and of themselves; we, the neighboring young men, came
and ringed the broad fields with our toils.
She, swift, would clear the nets with a light bound
and overleap the top lines of the snares set for her:
the leash is slipped from the hounds, whom, as they follow,
she escapes, and mocks the pack, no slower than a bird.
I too am called for, with great consent, to give my Laelaps
(this was the gift’s name): long since he fights to strip
the bonds from himself and strains his neck against what holds him back.
Scarcely was he well let go, and already we could not
know where he was; the hot dust held the tracks of his feet,
but he himself was snatched from our eyes: no swifter than he
the spear, nor the bullets shot from the whirled sling,
nor the light reed that leaves the Gortynian bow.
The crest of a hill in the midst overhangs the fields below:
I climb to it and take in the sight of the strange race,
in which now the beast seemed caught, now to draw herself
from the very wound; nor, cunning, does she flee straight on her course
and into the open, but cheats the mouth of her pursuer
and wheels back in a circle, that her foe may have no charge at her:
he presses close and follows, her match, and, like one that holds,
holds not, and works his empty bites upon the air.
I was turning to the help of my javelin; while my right hand
poises it, while I try to fit my fingers into the loop,
I turned my eyes aside. And when I had brought them back again
to the same place: in the middle of the plain (a marvel) two marble shapes
I behold; you would think the one was fleeing, the other seizing.
No doubt some god, if any god was present with them,
willed that both should be unconquered in the contest of the race.’
Carmina Laiades non intellecta priorum solverat ingeniis, et praecipitata iacebat inmemor ambagum vates obscura suarum: protinus Aoniis inmittitur altera Thebis [scilicet alma Themis nec talia linquit inulta!] pestis, et exitio multi pecorumque suoque rurigenae pavere feram; vicina iuventus venimus et latos indagine cinximus agros. illa levi velox superabat retia saltu summaque transibat postarum lina plagarum: copula detrahitur canibus, quas illa sequentes effugit et coetum non segnior alite ludit. poscor et ipse meum consensu Laelapa magno (muneris hoc nomen): iamdudum vincula pugnat exuere ipse sibi colloque morantia tendit. vix bene missus erat, nec iam poteramus, ubi esset, scire; pedum calidus vestigia pulvis habebat, ipse oculis ereptus erat: non ocior illo hasta nec excussae contorto verbere glandes nec Gortyniaco calamus levis exit ab arcu. collis apex medii subiectis inminet arvis: tollor eo capioque novi spectacula cursus, quo modo deprendi, modo se subducere ab ipso vulnere visa fera est; nec limite callida recto in spatiumque fugit, sed decipit ora sequentis et redit in gyrum, ne sit suus inpetus hosti: inminet hic sequiturque parem similisque tenenti non tenet et vanos exercet in aera morsus. ad iaculi vertebar opem; quod dextera librat dum mea, dum digitos amentis addere tempto, lumina deflexi. revocataque rursus eodem rettuleram: medio (mirum) duo marmora campo adspicio; fugere hoc, illud captare putares. scilicet invictos ambo certamine cursus esse deus voluit, si quis deus adfuit illis.’ hactenus, et tacuit; ’iaculo quod crimen in ipso est?’ Phocus ait; iaculi sic crimina reddidit ille: ’
’Joys, Phocus, are the beginning of my sorrow: those
I will tell first. O it is sweet to remember the blessed
time, son of Aeacus, when through the first years, as was right,
I was happy in my wife, and she was happy in her husband.
A mutual care held us two, and a wedded love,
nor would she have set Jove’s bed above my love,
nor was there any woman who could take me, not if Venus herself came;
equal flames burned our breasts.
When the sun struck the mountaintops with his first rays
I used to go off, as the young do, hunting in the woods,
and no servants used to go with me, no horses, no keen-scented
dogs, no knotted nets to follow:
I was safe with my javelin; but when my right hand
was sated with the slaughter of game, I sought again the cool and the shade
and the breeze that came out of the chill valleys:
the gentle breeze was what I sought in the midst of the heat,
the breeze I waited for, that was my rest from toil.
"Breeze" (for I remember), "come," I used to sing,
"and aid me and enter my breast, most welcome one,
and, as you do, be willing to relieve the heats with which I burn!"
Perhaps I added (so my fates were dragging me on)
more endearments, and used to say, "You are my great delight,
you refresh and cherish me, you make me love
the woods and the lonely places: and that breath of yours
is forever caught from my lips."
To these ambiguous words someone, deceived, lent an ear,
and thinks the name of "breeze," so often called,
to be a nymph’s: he believes a nymph is loved by me.
At once the rash informer of an invented crime
goes to Procris and reports with his tongue the whispers he had heard.
A credulous thing is love: suddenly fallen down in grief,
as is told to me, she swooned; and, recovered after a long
time, she called herself wretched, called herself of an unjust fate,
and complained of my faith, and, stirred by an empty charge,
fears what is nothing, fears a name without a body,
and grieves, poor woman, as over a real rival.
Yet often she doubts, and, most wretched, hopes to be deceived,
and refuses to believe the report, and, unless she should see for herself,
will not condemn her husband’s faults.
I will tell first. O it is sweet to remember the blessed
time, son of Aeacus, when through the first years, as was right,
I was happy in my wife, and she was happy in her husband.
A mutual care held us two, and a wedded love,
nor would she have set Jove’s bed above my love,
nor was there any woman who could take me, not if Venus herself came;
equal flames burned our breasts.
When the sun struck the mountaintops with his first rays
I used to go off, as the young do, hunting in the woods,
and no servants used to go with me, no horses, no keen-scented
dogs, no knotted nets to follow:
I was safe with my javelin; but when my right hand
was sated with the slaughter of game, I sought again the cool and the shade
and the breeze that came out of the chill valleys:
the gentle breeze was what I sought in the midst of the heat,
the breeze I waited for, that was my rest from toil.
"Breeze" (for I remember), "come," I used to sing,
"and aid me and enter my breast, most welcome one,
and, as you do, be willing to relieve the heats with which I burn!"
Perhaps I added (so my fates were dragging me on)
more endearments, and used to say, "You are my great delight,
you refresh and cherish me, you make me love
the woods and the lonely places: and that breath of yours
is forever caught from my lips."
To these ambiguous words someone, deceived, lent an ear,
and thinks the name of "breeze," so often called,
to be a nymph’s: he believes a nymph is loved by me.
At once the rash informer of an invented crime
goes to Procris and reports with his tongue the whispers he had heard.
A credulous thing is love: suddenly fallen down in grief,
as is told to me, she swooned; and, recovered after a long
time, she called herself wretched, called herself of an unjust fate,
and complained of my faith, and, stirred by an empty charge,
fears what is nothing, fears a name without a body,
and grieves, poor woman, as over a real rival.
Yet often she doubts, and, most wretched, hopes to be deceived,
and refuses to believe the report, and, unless she should see for herself,
will not condemn her husband’s faults.
Gaudia principium nostri sunt, Phoce, doloris: illa prius referam. iuvat o meminisse beati temporis, Aeacide, quo primos rite per annos coniuge eram felix, felix erat illa marito. mutua cura duos et amor socialis habebat, nec Iovis illa meo thalamos praeferret amori, nec me quae caperet, non si Venus ipsa veniret, ulla erat; aequales urebant pectora flammae. sole fere radiis feriente cacumina primis venatum in silvas iuvenaliter ire solebam nec mecum famuli nec equi nec naribus acres ire canes nec lina sequi nodosa solebant: tutus eram iaculo; sed cum satiata ferinae dextera caedis erat, repetebam frigus et umbras et quae de gelidis exibat vallibus aura: aura petebatur medio mihi lenis in aestu, auram exspectabam, requies erat illa labori. "aura" (recordor enim), "venias" cantare solebam, "meque iuves intresque sinus, gratissima, nostros, utque facis, relevare velis, quibus urimur, aestus!" forsitan addiderim (sic me mea fata trahebant), blanditias plures et "tu mihi magna voluptas" dicere sim solitus, "tu me reficisque fovesque, tu facis, ut silvas, ut amem loca sola: meoque spiritus iste tuus semper captatur ab ore." vocibus ambiguis deceptam praebuit aurem nescio quis nomenque aurae tam saepe vocatum esse putat nymphae: nympham mihi credit amari. criminis extemplo ficti temerarius index Procrin adit linguaque refert audita susurra. credula res amor est: subito conlapsa dolore, ut mihi narratur, cecidit; longoque refecta tempore se miseram, se fati dixit iniqui deque fide questa est et crimine concita vano, quod nihil est, metuit, metuit sine corpore nomen et dolet infelix veluti de paelice vera. saepe tamen dubitat speratque miserrima falli indiciique fidem negat et, nisi viderit ipsa, damnatura sui non est delicta mariti.
’The next day’s light had driven off the night:
I go out and make for the wood, and, victorious, through the grass
"Breeze, come," I said, "and heal my toil!"
and suddenly amid my words I seemed to hear
some moans, I knew not whose; yet, saying "Come, best one!",
when a fallen leaf again made a light rustle,
I thought it was a beast, and threw my flying weapon:
it was Procris, and holding the wound in the midst of her breast
she cries out, "Ah me!" When the voice of my faithful wife
was known, I ran headlong and out of my mind toward the voice.
Half-alive, and fouling her scattered garments with blood,
and (wretched me!) drawing her own gift from her wound,
I find her, and lift the body, dearer to me than my own,
in my soft arms, and, tearing the garment from her breast,
I bind the savage wound and try to stanch the blood
and beg her not to leave me guilty by her death.
She, lacking strength and already dying, forced
herself to speak these few words: "By the bond of our bed,
and by the gods, a suppliant I beg, both mine and the high gods’,
by whatever I have deserved well of you, and by the love
that even now, as I perish, remains to me the cause of my death,
do not let Breeze come as a bride into our bedchamber!"
She spoke, and then at last I both perceived
and taught her that there had been a mistake of a name. But what good was the teaching?
She sinks, and her little strength flees with her blood,
and while she can look at anything, she looks at me, and on me
breathes out her unhappy soul, upon my lips;
but with a better look she seems to die untroubled.’
I go out and make for the wood, and, victorious, through the grass
"Breeze, come," I said, "and heal my toil!"
and suddenly amid my words I seemed to hear
some moans, I knew not whose; yet, saying "Come, best one!",
when a fallen leaf again made a light rustle,
I thought it was a beast, and threw my flying weapon:
it was Procris, and holding the wound in the midst of her breast
she cries out, "Ah me!" When the voice of my faithful wife
was known, I ran headlong and out of my mind toward the voice.
Half-alive, and fouling her scattered garments with blood,
and (wretched me!) drawing her own gift from her wound,
I find her, and lift the body, dearer to me than my own,
in my soft arms, and, tearing the garment from her breast,
I bind the savage wound and try to stanch the blood
and beg her not to leave me guilty by her death.
She, lacking strength and already dying, forced
herself to speak these few words: "By the bond of our bed,
and by the gods, a suppliant I beg, both mine and the high gods’,
by whatever I have deserved well of you, and by the love
that even now, as I perish, remains to me the cause of my death,
do not let Breeze come as a bride into our bedchamber!"
She spoke, and then at last I both perceived
and taught her that there had been a mistake of a name. But what good was the teaching?
She sinks, and her little strength flees with her blood,
and while she can look at anything, she looks at me, and on me
breathes out her unhappy soul, upon my lips;
but with a better look she seems to die untroubled.’
postera depulerant Aurorae lumina noctem: egredior silvamque peto victorque per herbas "aura, veni" dixi "nostroque medere labori!" et subito gemitus inter mea verba videbar nescio quos audisse; "veni" tamen "optima!" dicens fronde levem rursus strepitum faciente caduca sum ratus esse feram telumque volatile misi: Procris erat medioque tenens in pectore vulnus "ei mihi" conclamat! vox est ubi cognita fidae coniugis, ad vocem praeceps amensque cucurri. semianimem et sparsas foedantem sanguine vestes et sua (me miserum!) de vulnere dona trahentem invenio corpusque meo mihi carius ulnis mollibus attollo scissaque a pectore veste vulnera saeva ligo conorque inhibere cruorem neu me morte sua sceleratum deserat, oro. viribus illa carens et iam moribunda coegit haec se pauca loqui: "per nostri foedera lecti perque deos supplex oro superosque meosque, per si quid merui de te bene perque manentem nunc quoque, cum pereo, causam mihi mortis amorem, ne thalamis Auram patiare innubere nostris!" dixit, et errorem tum denique nominis esse et sensi et docui. sed quid docuisse iuvabat? labitur, et parvae fugiunt cum sanguine vires, dumque aliquid spectare potest, me spectat et in me infelicem animam nostroque exhalat in ore; sed vultu meliore mori secura videtur.’
Now as the Morning Star uncovered the bright day and put
the hours of night to flight, the East Wind dropped, and the moist clouds
rose: gentle South Winds gave a course to the homecoming
sons of Aeacus and to Cephalus; carried by them with good fortune,
before they looked for it they gained the harbor they sought.
Meanwhile Minos lays waste the Lelegeian shores
and tries the strength of his war-god on the city
of Alcathous, which Nisus holds — on whose head, splendid with purple
among the honored grey, a lock
clung at the very crown, the assurance of his great kingdom.
The sixth horns of the rising moon were lifting again,
and still the fortune of the war hung doubtful, and long
between the two on wavering wings Victory hovers.
There was a royal tower, joined to walls that could sing,
on which the son of Latona is said to have laid down
his golden lyre: the sound of it sank into the stone.
Often the daughter of Nisus used to climb up there
and strike the resounding stones with a little pebble,
in the time when there was peace; in war too she would often
watch from it the contests of unbending Mars,
and now, the war dragging on, she knew even the chieftains’ names,
their arms, their horses, their dress, their Cydonian quivers;
before all others she knew the face of the Europaean leader —
more, even, than is enough to know.
the hours of night to flight, the East Wind dropped, and the moist clouds
rose: gentle South Winds gave a course to the homecoming
sons of Aeacus and to Cephalus; carried by them with good fortune,
before they looked for it they gained the harbor they sought.
Meanwhile Minos lays waste the Lelegeian shores
and tries the strength of his war-god on the city
of Alcathous, which Nisus holds — on whose head, splendid with purple
among the honored grey, a lock
clung at the very crown, the assurance of his great kingdom.
The sixth horns of the rising moon were lifting again,
and still the fortune of the war hung doubtful, and long
between the two on wavering wings Victory hovers.
There was a royal tower, joined to walls that could sing,
on which the son of Latona is said to have laid down
his golden lyre: the sound of it sank into the stone.
Often the daughter of Nisus used to climb up there
and strike the resounding stones with a little pebble,
in the time when there was peace; in war too she would often
watch from it the contests of unbending Mars,
and now, the war dragging on, she knew even the chieftains’ names,
their arms, their horses, their dress, their Cydonian quivers;
before all others she knew the face of the Europaean leader —
more, even, than is enough to know.
Iam nitidum retegente diem noctisque fugante tempora Lucifero cadit Eurus, et umida surgunt nubila: dant placidi cursum redeuntibus Austri Aeacidis Cephaloque; quibus feliciter acti ante exspectatum portus tenuere petitos. interea Minos Lelegeia litora vastat praetemptatque sui vires Mavortis in urbe Alcathoi, quam Nisus habet, cui splendidus ostro inter honoratos medioque in vertice canos crinis inhaerebat, magni fiducia regni. Sexta resurgebant orientis cornua lunae, et pendebat adhuc belli fortuna, diuque inter utrumque volat dubiis Victoria pennis. regia turris erat vocalibus addita muris, in quibus auratam proles Letoia fertur deposuisse lyram: saxo sonus eius inhaesit. saepe illuc solita est ascendere filia Nisi et petere exiguo resonantia saxa lapillo, tum cum pax esset; bello quoque saepe solebat spectare ex illa rigidi certamina Martis, iamque mora belli procerum quoque nomina norat armaque equosque habitusque Cydoneasque pharetras; noverat ante alios faciem ducis Europaei, plus etiam, quam nosse sat est:
By her verdict Minos, whether he had hidden his head
in a crested, plumed helmet, was beautiful in the helmet;
or whether he had taken up his shield gleaming with bronze,
taking up the shield became him; he had hurled the pliant
spear-shafts with his arm drawn back: the girl praised
the skill joined with strength; he had bent the wide bow
with the arrow set to it: so she swore that Phoebus stood,
his arrows taken up; but when, the bronze removed, he bared
his face, and in purple, pressing the back of a white
horse splendid with embroidered housings, governed its foaming mouth,
scarcely was the maiden of Nisus mistress of herself, scarcely
of a sound mind: happy she called the javelin that he might touch,
and happy the reins he pressed in his hand.
The impulse is on her, if only it were allowed, to carry her maiden
steps through the enemy line; the impulse is on her
to fling her body down from the tower-tops into the Cnossian
camp, or to unbar the bronze gates to the foe,
or whatever else Minos might want.
in a crested, plumed helmet, was beautiful in the helmet;
or whether he had taken up his shield gleaming with bronze,
taking up the shield became him; he had hurled the pliant
spear-shafts with his arm drawn back: the girl praised
the skill joined with strength; he had bent the wide bow
with the arrow set to it: so she swore that Phoebus stood,
his arrows taken up; but when, the bronze removed, he bared
his face, and in purple, pressing the back of a white
horse splendid with embroidered housings, governed its foaming mouth,
scarcely was the maiden of Nisus mistress of herself, scarcely
of a sound mind: happy she called the javelin that he might touch,
and happy the reins he pressed in his hand.
The impulse is on her, if only it were allowed, to carry her maiden
steps through the enemy line; the impulse is on her
to fling her body down from the tower-tops into the Cnossian
camp, or to unbar the bronze gates to the foe,
or whatever else Minos might want.
hac iudice Minos, seu caput abdiderat cristata casside pennis, in galea formosus erat; seu sumpserat aere fulgentem clipeum, clipeum sumpsisse decebat; torserat adductis hastilia lenta lacertis: laudabat virgo iunctam cum viribus artem; inposito calamo patulos sinuaverat arcus: sic Phoebum sumptis iurabat stare sagittis; cum vero faciem dempto nudaverat aere purpureusque albi stratis insignia pictis terga premebat equi spumantiaque ora regebat, vix sua, vix sanae virgo Niseia compos mentis erat: felix iaculum, quod tangeret ille, quaeque manu premeret, felicia frena vocabat. impetus est illi, liceat modo, ferre per agmen virgineos hostile gradus, est impetus illi turribus e summis in Cnosia mittere corpus castra vel aeratas hosti recludere portas, vel siquid Minos aliud velit.
And as she sat gazing at the white tents of the Dictaean king,
she says: ’Should I rejoice or grieve that this lamentable
war is waged? — I am in doubt; I grieve that Minos
is the enemy of one who loves him. But had there been no war,
he would never have been known to me! Yet he could lay down the war
if he took me as hostage: let him have me as companion,
me as the pledge of peace. If she who bore you,
fairest of kings, was such as you yourself are,
with reason a god burned for her. O thrice happy I,
if, slipping on wings through the air, I could alight
in the camp of the Cnossian king, and, confessing myself
and my flames, could ask with what dowry he would wish
to be bought — only let him not demand my father’s citadel!
For sooner let the bridal I hope for perish than that I
should prevail by treason! — though the clemency of a placid
victor has often made it a gain to many to be conquered.
He wages a just war, surely, for his slain son:
he is strong in his cause, and in the arms that guard his cause.
We shall be conquered, I think; and if that end awaits the city,
why should his own war-god, and not my love,
open these walls of mine to him? Better he could win
without slaughter and delay, and without the cost of his own blood.
At least I shall not fear, Minos, lest someone unawares
wound your breast: for who is so hard that he would dare
aim a pitiless spear at you, unless he knew not what he did?
The plan pleases, and my resolve stands: to hand over
myself, and my country as my dowry with me, and put an end
to the war; but to wish is too little! A guard watches the approaches,
and my father holds the keys of the gates: him alone,
unhappy I, do I fear, he alone delays my prayers.
Would the gods make me fatherless! Yet surely each
is a god to himself: Fortune fights against idle prayers.
Another, kindled by a passion so great, would by now
rejoice to destroy whatever stood in the way of her love.
And why should any be braver than I? I would dare to go
through fire and sword; yet here there is no need of any
fire or sword — I have need of my father’s lock.
That to me is more precious than gold, that purple
lock will make me blessed and mistress of my desire.’
she says: ’Should I rejoice or grieve that this lamentable
war is waged? — I am in doubt; I grieve that Minos
is the enemy of one who loves him. But had there been no war,
he would never have been known to me! Yet he could lay down the war
if he took me as hostage: let him have me as companion,
me as the pledge of peace. If she who bore you,
fairest of kings, was such as you yourself are,
with reason a god burned for her. O thrice happy I,
if, slipping on wings through the air, I could alight
in the camp of the Cnossian king, and, confessing myself
and my flames, could ask with what dowry he would wish
to be bought — only let him not demand my father’s citadel!
For sooner let the bridal I hope for perish than that I
should prevail by treason! — though the clemency of a placid
victor has often made it a gain to many to be conquered.
He wages a just war, surely, for his slain son:
he is strong in his cause, and in the arms that guard his cause.
We shall be conquered, I think; and if that end awaits the city,
why should his own war-god, and not my love,
open these walls of mine to him? Better he could win
without slaughter and delay, and without the cost of his own blood.
At least I shall not fear, Minos, lest someone unawares
wound your breast: for who is so hard that he would dare
aim a pitiless spear at you, unless he knew not what he did?
The plan pleases, and my resolve stands: to hand over
myself, and my country as my dowry with me, and put an end
to the war; but to wish is too little! A guard watches the approaches,
and my father holds the keys of the gates: him alone,
unhappy I, do I fear, he alone delays my prayers.
Would the gods make me fatherless! Yet surely each
is a god to himself: Fortune fights against idle prayers.
Another, kindled by a passion so great, would by now
rejoice to destroy whatever stood in the way of her love.
And why should any be braver than I? I would dare to go
through fire and sword; yet here there is no need of any
fire or sword — I have need of my father’s lock.
That to me is more precious than gold, that purple
lock will make me blessed and mistress of my desire.’
utque sedebat candida Dictaei spectans tentoria regis, ’laeter,’ ait ’doleamne geri lacrimabile bellum, in dubio est; doleo, quod Minos hostis amanti est. sed nisi bella forent, numquam mihi cognitus esset! me tamen accepta poterat deponere bellum obside: me comitem, me pacis pignus haberet. si quae te peperit, talis, pulcherrime regum, qualis es ipse, fuit, merito deus arsit in illa. o ego ter felix, si pennis lapsa per auras Cnosiaci possem castris insistere regis fassaque me flammasque meas, qua dote, rogarem, vellet emi, tantum patrias ne posceret arces! nam pereant potius sperata cubilia, quam sim proditione potens!—quamvis saepe utile vinci victoris placidi fecit clementia multis. iusta gerit certe pro nato bella perempto: et causaque valet causamque tuentibus armis. at, puto, vincemur; qui si manet exitus urbem, cur suus haec illi reseret mea moenia Mavors et non noster amor? melius sine caede moraque inpensaque sui poterit superare cruoris. non metuam certe, ne quis tua pectora, Minos, vulneret inprudens: quis enim tam durus, ut in te derigere inmitem non inscius audeat hastam? coepta placent, et stat sententia tradere mecum dotalem patriam finemque inponere bello; verum velle parum est! aditus custodia servat, claustraque portarum genitor tenet: hunc ego solum infelix timeo, solus mea vota moratur. di facerent, sine patre forem! sibi quisque profecto est deus: ignavis precibus Fortuna repugnat. altera iamdudum succensa cupidine tanto perdere gauderet, quodcumque obstaret amori. et cur ulla foret me fortior? ire per ignes et gladios ausim; nec in hoc tamen ignibus ullis aut gladiis opus est, opus est mihi crine paterno. illa mihi est auro pretiosior, illa beatam purpura me votique mei factura potentem.’
As she speaks such things, Night, the greatest nurse of cares,
comes between, and in the darkness her boldness grew.
The first quiet was at hand, when sleep holds breasts
wearied by the day’s cares: silent she enters her father’s
chamber and (alas, the deed!) the daughter despoils
her parent of his fatal lock, and, the unspeakable spoil
won, through the midst of the enemy (so great is her trust in her merit)
she comes to the king; whom, as he trembles, she thus addresses:
’Love urged the deed: I, Scylla, the royal child of Nisus,
hand over to you my household gods and my country’s.
I ask no reward but you: take, as the pledge of my love,
the purple lock — and believe that I hand you now
not a lock, but my father’s head!’ And she held out
the wicked gift in her wicked right hand. Minos shrank back
from the offering, and, troubled by the image of the unheard-of deed,
replied: ’May the gods banish you, O disgrace of our age,
from their world, and may land and sea be denied you!
Surely I will not allow so great a monster to touch
Crete, the cradle of Jove, which is my world.’
He spoke, and when, most just lawgiver, he had laid down
terms for the captured enemy, he ordered the fleet’s cables
loosed and the bronze-beaked ships driven on by the oar.
comes between, and in the darkness her boldness grew.
The first quiet was at hand, when sleep holds breasts
wearied by the day’s cares: silent she enters her father’s
chamber and (alas, the deed!) the daughter despoils
her parent of his fatal lock, and, the unspeakable spoil
won, through the midst of the enemy (so great is her trust in her merit)
she comes to the king; whom, as he trembles, she thus addresses:
’Love urged the deed: I, Scylla, the royal child of Nisus,
hand over to you my household gods and my country’s.
I ask no reward but you: take, as the pledge of my love,
the purple lock — and believe that I hand you now
not a lock, but my father’s head!’ And she held out
the wicked gift in her wicked right hand. Minos shrank back
from the offering, and, troubled by the image of the unheard-of deed,
replied: ’May the gods banish you, O disgrace of our age,
from their world, and may land and sea be denied you!
Surely I will not allow so great a monster to touch
Crete, the cradle of Jove, which is my world.’
He spoke, and when, most just lawgiver, he had laid down
terms for the captured enemy, he ordered the fleet’s cables
loosed and the bronze-beaked ships driven on by the oar.
Talia dicenti curarum maxima nutrix nox intervenit, tenebrisque audacia crevit. prima quies aderat, qua curis fessa diurnis pectora somnus habet: thalamos taciturna paternos intrat et (heu facinus!) fatali nata parentem crine suum spoliat praedaque potita nefanda per medios hostes (meriti fiducia tanta est) pervenit ad regem; quem sic adfata paventem est: ’suasit amor facinus: proles ego regia Nisi Scylla tibi trado patriaeque meosque penates; praemia nulla peto nisi te: cape pignus amoris purpureum crinem nec me nunc tradere crinem, sed patrium tibi crede caput!’ scelerataque dextra munera porrexit; Minos porrecta refugit turbatusque novi respondit imagine facti: ’di te summoveant, o nostri infamia saecli, orbe suo, tellusque tibi pontusque negetur! certe ego non patiar Iovis incunabula, Creten, qui meus est orbis, tantum contingere monstrum.’ Dixit, et ut leges captis iustissimus auctor hostibus inposuit, classis retinacula solvi iussit et aeratas impelli remige puppes.
After Scylla saw the keels launched swimming on the strait,
and that the leader gave her no reward for her crime,
her prayers spent, she passes into violent rage,
and stretching out her hands, raving, with her hair flung loose,
she cries: ’Where do you flee, leaving behind the author
of your gains, O you preferred to my country, preferred to my father?
Where do you flee, pitiless one, whose victory is both
my crime and my service? Did the gift I gave not move you,
nor my love, nor that all my hope was heaped on you alone?
For where shall I, abandoned, turn back? To my country?
It lies overthrown! But suppose it stood: it is closed
to me by my treason. To my father’s face? — whom I gave to you?
My fellow citizens hate me, and rightly; the neighboring peoples
fear my example: I am cast out, barred from the whole world,
that Crete alone might lie open to me. If you forbid me this too,
and leave me, ungrateful one, then no Europa was your mother,
but the inhospitable Syrtis, Armenian tigers,
and Charybdis driven by the South Wind. Nor are you Jove’s son,
nor was your mother led astray by the likeness of a bull:
that tale of your descent is false! A real bull —
wild, and captured by the love of no heifer —
was the one that begot you. Exact your punishment,
father Nisus! Rejoice in our ruin, walls now betrayed!
For I confess I have deserved it, and am worthy to die.’
and that the leader gave her no reward for her crime,
her prayers spent, she passes into violent rage,
and stretching out her hands, raving, with her hair flung loose,
she cries: ’Where do you flee, leaving behind the author
of your gains, O you preferred to my country, preferred to my father?
Where do you flee, pitiless one, whose victory is both
my crime and my service? Did the gift I gave not move you,
nor my love, nor that all my hope was heaped on you alone?
For where shall I, abandoned, turn back? To my country?
It lies overthrown! But suppose it stood: it is closed
to me by my treason. To my father’s face? — whom I gave to you?
My fellow citizens hate me, and rightly; the neighboring peoples
fear my example: I am cast out, barred from the whole world,
that Crete alone might lie open to me. If you forbid me this too,
and leave me, ungrateful one, then no Europa was your mother,
but the inhospitable Syrtis, Armenian tigers,
and Charybdis driven by the South Wind. Nor are you Jove’s son,
nor was your mother led astray by the likeness of a bull:
that tale of your descent is false! A real bull —
wild, and captured by the love of no heifer —
was the one that begot you. Exact your punishment,
father Nisus! Rejoice in our ruin, walls now betrayed!
For I confess I have deserved it, and am worthy to die.’
Scylla freto postquam deductas nare carinas nec praestare ducem sceleris sibi praemia vidit, consumptis precibus violentam transit in iram intendensque manus passis furibunda capillis ’quo fugis’ exclamat ’meritorum auctore relicta, o patriae praelate meae, praelate parenti? quo fugis, inmitis, cuius victoria nostrum et scelus et meritum est? nec te data munera, nec te noster amor movit, nec quod spes omnis in unum te mea congesta est? nam quo deserta revertar? in patriam? superata iacet! sed finge manere: proditione mea clausa est mihi! patris ad ora? quem tibi donavi? cives odere merentem, finitimi exemplum metuunt: exponimur orbae terrarum, nobis ut Crete sola pateret. hac quoque si prohibes et nos, ingrate, relinquis, non genetrix Europa tibi est, sed inhospita Syrtis, Armeniae tigres austroque agitata Charybdis. Nec Iove tu natus, nec mater imagine tauri ducta tua est: generis falsa est ea fabula! verus, [et ferus et captus nullius amore iuvencae] qui te progenuit, taurus fuit. exige poenas, Nise pater! gaudete malis, modo prodita, nostris, moenia! nam, fateor, merui et sum digna perire.
’But still let some one of those whom in my impiety I wronged
destroy me! Why do you, who conquered by my crime,
pursue the crime? Let this, which was a wrong to my country
and my father, be a service to you! She is worthy of you
for a wife, who with a wooden cow deceived the fierce bull
and bore in her womb a mismatched offspring. Do my words
reach your ears at all, or do the winds carry off
my empty words — the same winds, ungrateful one, that carry your ships?
Now, now it is no marvel that Pasiphae preferred
the bull to you: you had the more savagery.
Wretched me! He bids them hurry! The water sounds,
torn by the oars, and with me my own land recedes.
You do nothing, O you who forget my services in vain:
I will follow you against your will, and, embracing the curved
stern, I will be dragged through the long seas.’
destroy me! Why do you, who conquered by my crime,
pursue the crime? Let this, which was a wrong to my country
and my father, be a service to you! She is worthy of you
for a wife, who with a wooden cow deceived the fierce bull
and bore in her womb a mismatched offspring. Do my words
reach your ears at all, or do the winds carry off
my empty words — the same winds, ungrateful one, that carry your ships?
Now, now it is no marvel that Pasiphae preferred
the bull to you: you had the more savagery.
Wretched me! He bids them hurry! The water sounds,
torn by the oars, and with me my own land recedes.
You do nothing, O you who forget my services in vain:
I will follow you against your will, and, embracing the curved
stern, I will be dragged through the long seas.’
sed tamen ex illis aliquis, quos impia laesi, me perimat! cur, qui vicisti crimine nostro, insequeris crimen? scelus hoc patriaeque patrique est, officium tibi sit! te vere coniuge digna est, quae torvum ligno decepit adultera taurum discordemque utero fetum tulit. ecquid ad aures perveniunt mea dicta tuas, an inania venti verba ferunt idemque tuas, ingrate, carinas? iam iam Pasiphaen non est mirabile taurum praeposuisse tibi: tu plus feritatis habebas. me miseram! properare iubet! divulsaque remis unda sonat, mecumque simul mea terra recedit. nil agis, o frustra meritorum oblite meorum: insequar invitum puppimque amplexa recurvam per freta longa trahar.’
Scarcely had she spoken: she leaps upon the waves
and follows the ships, desire making her strength,
and clings, a hateful companion, to the Cnossian keel.
When her father saw her — for now he hung in the air,
just made an osprey with tawny wings —
he was going to tear her, clinging, with his hooked beak;
in fear she let go the stern, and the light air seemed
to hold her as she fell, that she might not touch the sea.
Feathers came under her hands: changed into a bird she is called
Ciris, and she got this name from the shorn lock.
and follows the ships, desire making her strength,
and clings, a hateful companion, to the Cnossian keel.
When her father saw her — for now he hung in the air,
just made an osprey with tawny wings —
he was going to tear her, clinging, with his hooked beak;
in fear she let go the stern, and the light air seemed
to hold her as she fell, that she might not touch the sea.
Feathers came under her hands: changed into a bird she is called
Ciris, and she got this name from the shorn lock.
Vix dixerat, insilit undis consequiturque rates faciente cupidine vires Cnosiacaeque haeret comes invidiosa carinae. quam pater ut vidit (nam iam pendebat in aura et modo factus erat fulvis haliaeetus alis), ibat, ut haerentem rostro laceraret adunco; illa metu puppim dimisit, et aura cadentem sustinuisse levis, ne tangeret aequora, visa est. pluma subit palmis: in avem mutata vocatur Ciris et a tonso est hoc nomen adepta capillo.
Minos paid his vows to Jove, a hundred bulls’ bodies,
when, disembarking from the ships, he touched the Curetes’ land,
and the palace was adorned with the hung-up spoils.
The reproach of his line had grown, and the mother’s foul
adultery was laid bare by the strangeness of the two-formed monster;
Minos resolves to remove this shame from his house
and to shut it in a many-chambered building, a blind enclosure.
Daedalus, most renowned for his genius in the builder’s art,
lays out the work and confounds the marks, and leads the eyes
into wandering by the maze of winding ways.
Just as the clear Maeander plays in the Phrygian fields
and with its doubtful course flows back and flows on,
and, meeting itself, looks on its own oncoming waters,
and, turned now toward its source, now toward the open sea,
drives its uncertain waters: so Daedalus fills
the countless ways with wandering, and scarcely could he himself
return to the threshold: so great is the trickery of the house.
when, disembarking from the ships, he touched the Curetes’ land,
and the palace was adorned with the hung-up spoils.
The reproach of his line had grown, and the mother’s foul
adultery was laid bare by the strangeness of the two-formed monster;
Minos resolves to remove this shame from his house
and to shut it in a many-chambered building, a blind enclosure.
Daedalus, most renowned for his genius in the builder’s art,
lays out the work and confounds the marks, and leads the eyes
into wandering by the maze of winding ways.
Just as the clear Maeander plays in the Phrygian fields
and with its doubtful course flows back and flows on,
and, meeting itself, looks on its own oncoming waters,
and, turned now toward its source, now toward the open sea,
drives its uncertain waters: so Daedalus fills
the countless ways with wandering, and scarcely could he himself
return to the threshold: so great is the trickery of the house.
Vota Iovi Minos taurorum corpora centum solvit, ut egressus ratibus Curetida terram contigit, et spoliis decorata est regia fixis. creverat obprobrium generis, foedumque patebat matris adulterium monstri novitate biformis; destinat hunc Minos thalamo removere pudorem multiplicique domo caecisque includere tectis. Daedalus ingenio fabrae celeberrimus artis ponit opus turbatque notas et lumina flexum ducit in errorem variarum ambage viarum. non secus ac liquidus Phrygiis Maeandros in arvis ludit et ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque occurrensque sibi venturas aspicit undas et nunc ad fontes, nunc ad mare versus apertum incertas exercet aquas: ita Daedalus implet innumeras errore vias vixque ipse reverti ad limen potuit: tanta est fallacia tecti.
After he had shut in there the twin shape of bull and youth,
and the third lot, drawn again at nine-year intervals,
had tamed the monster twice fed on Attic blood,
and when, by a maiden’s help, the difficult door,
retraced by no earlier comer, was found by the thread wound back,
at once the son of Aegeus, snatching away the daughter of Minos,
set sail for Dia, and on that shore, cruel,
abandoned his companion; to her, deserted and bitterly
complaining, Bacchus brought his embrace and his aid,
and, that she might be bright with an everlasting star,
he took the crown from her brow and flung it to the sky:
it flies through the thin air, and as it flies
its gems are turned to gleaming fires, and they take their stand,
the shape of the crown remaining, in the place
that is midway between the Kneeler and him who holds the Serpent.
and the third lot, drawn again at nine-year intervals,
had tamed the monster twice fed on Attic blood,
and when, by a maiden’s help, the difficult door,
retraced by no earlier comer, was found by the thread wound back,
at once the son of Aegeus, snatching away the daughter of Minos,
set sail for Dia, and on that shore, cruel,
abandoned his companion; to her, deserted and bitterly
complaining, Bacchus brought his embrace and his aid,
and, that she might be bright with an everlasting star,
he took the crown from her brow and flung it to the sky:
it flies through the thin air, and as it flies
its gems are turned to gleaming fires, and they take their stand,
the shape of the crown remaining, in the place
that is midway between the Kneeler and him who holds the Serpent.
Quo postquam geminam tauri iuvenisque figuram clausit, et Actaeo bis pastum sanguine monstrum tertia sors annis domuit repetita novenis, utque ope virginea nullis iterata priorum ianua difficilis filo est inventa relecto, protinus Aegides rapta Minoide Diam vela dedit comitemque suam crudelis in illo litore destituit; desertae et multa querenti amplexus et opem Liber tulit, utque perenni sidere clara foret, sumptam de fronte coronam inmisit caelo: tenues volat illa per auras dumque volat, gemmae nitidos vertuntur in ignes consistuntque loco specie remanente coronae, qui medius Nixique genu est Anguemque tenentis.
Daedalus meanwhile, hating Crete and his long
exile, and touched by love of his native place,
was shut in by the sea. ’Though he block the lands and the waves,’
he said, ’the sky at least lies open; we will go by that way:
let Minos possess all things — he does not possess the air.’
He spoke, and sent his mind into unknown arts
and made nature new. For he lays feathers in a row,
beginning from the smallest, a shorter following a long one,
so that you would think they had grown on a slope: just as once
the rustic pipe rises little by little with its unequal reeds;
then he binds the middle ones with thread and the lowest with wax,
and, so arranged, bends them with a slight curve,
to imitate real birds. The boy Icarus stood
beside him, and, not knowing that he handled his own perils,
with beaming face now caught at the feathers
that the wandering breeze had stirred, now softened the yellow wax
with his thumb, and by his play hindered his father’s
marvelous work. After the last hand was laid on the undertaking,
the craftsman balanced his own body on the twin wings
and hung poised on the beaten air;
exile, and touched by love of his native place,
was shut in by the sea. ’Though he block the lands and the waves,’
he said, ’the sky at least lies open; we will go by that way:
let Minos possess all things — he does not possess the air.’
He spoke, and sent his mind into unknown arts
and made nature new. For he lays feathers in a row,
beginning from the smallest, a shorter following a long one,
so that you would think they had grown on a slope: just as once
the rustic pipe rises little by little with its unequal reeds;
then he binds the middle ones with thread and the lowest with wax,
and, so arranged, bends them with a slight curve,
to imitate real birds. The boy Icarus stood
beside him, and, not knowing that he handled his own perils,
with beaming face now caught at the feathers
that the wandering breeze had stirred, now softened the yellow wax
with his thumb, and by his play hindered his father’s
marvelous work. After the last hand was laid on the undertaking,
the craftsman balanced his own body on the twin wings
and hung poised on the beaten air;
Daedalus interea Creten longumque perosus exilium tactusque loci natalis amore clausus erat pelago. ’terras licet’ inquit ’et undas obstruat: et caelum certe patet; ibimus illac: omnia possideat, non possidet aera Minos.’ dixit et ignotas animum dimittit in artes naturamque novat. nam ponit in ordine pennas a minima coeptas, longam breviore sequenti, ut clivo crevisse putes: sic rustica quondam fistula disparibus paulatim surgit avenis; tum lino medias et ceris alligat imas atque ita conpositas parvo curvamine flectit, ut veras imitetur aves. puer Icarus una stabat et, ignarus sua se tractare pericla, ore renidenti modo, quas vaga moverat aura, captabat plumas, flavam modo pollice ceram mollibat lusuque suo mirabile patris impediebat opus. postquam manus ultima coepto inposita est, geminas opifex libravit in alas ipse suum corpus motaque pependit in aura;
he instructs his son too, and ’Run on a middle course,
Icarus,’ he says, ’I warn you, lest, if you go too low,
the wave weigh down the feathers, if too high, the fire scorch them:
fly between the two. And I bid you not to watch Bootes
or Helice or the drawn sword of Orion:
with me for guide, take your way!’ At once he hands on
the rules of flying and fits the unknown wings to the boy’s shoulders.
Between the work and the warnings the old man’s cheeks grew wet,
and the father’s hands trembled; he gave his son kisses
not to be repeated again, and, lifted on his wings,
he flies in front and fears for his companion, like the bird
that has led her tender brood out into the air from a high nest,
and urges them to follow, and schools them in the ruinous arts,
and moves his own wings and looks back at his son’s.
Someone, while he catches fish with a quivering rod,
or a shepherd leaning on his staff, or a plowman on his plow-handle,
saw them and was stunned, and believed that they
who could cleave the upper air were gods.
Icarus,’ he says, ’I warn you, lest, if you go too low,
the wave weigh down the feathers, if too high, the fire scorch them:
fly between the two. And I bid you not to watch Bootes
or Helice or the drawn sword of Orion:
with me for guide, take your way!’ At once he hands on
the rules of flying and fits the unknown wings to the boy’s shoulders.
Between the work and the warnings the old man’s cheeks grew wet,
and the father’s hands trembled; he gave his son kisses
not to be repeated again, and, lifted on his wings,
he flies in front and fears for his companion, like the bird
that has led her tender brood out into the air from a high nest,
and urges them to follow, and schools them in the ruinous arts,
and moves his own wings and looks back at his son’s.
Someone, while he catches fish with a quivering rod,
or a shepherd leaning on his staff, or a plowman on his plow-handle,
saw them and was stunned, and believed that they
who could cleave the upper air were gods.
instruit et natum ’medio’ que ’ut limite curras, Icare,’ ait ’moneo, ne, si demissior ibis, unda gravet pennas, si celsior, ignis adurat: inter utrumque vola. nec te spectare Booten aut Helicen iubeo strictumque Orionis ensem: me duce carpe viam!’ pariter praecepta volandi tradit et ignotas umeris accommodat alas. inter opus monitusque genae maduere seniles, et patriae tremuere manus; dedit oscula nato non iterum repetenda suo pennisque levatus ante volat comitique timet, velut ales, ab alto quae teneram prolem produxit in aera nido, hortaturque sequi damnosasque erudit artes et movet ipse suas et nati respicit alas. hos aliquis tremula dum captat harundine pisces, aut pastor baculo stivave innixus arator vidit et obstipuit, quique aethera carpere possent, credidit esse deos.
And now on the left was Juno’s Samos (Delos and Paros
had been left behind), on the right was Lebinthos
and Calymne rich in honey, when the boy began
to delight in his daring flight and deserted his guide,
and, drawn by desire of the sky, drove his course higher.
The nearness of the swift sun softens the fragrant wax,
the bonds of the feathers; the wax had melted: he shakes
his bare arms, and, lacking his oarage, catches no air,
and his mouth, crying his father’s name,
is taken up by the blue water, which drew its name from him.
But the unhappy father, now no father, ’Icarus,’ he said,
’Icarus,’ he said, ’where are you? In what region shall I seek you?’
’Icarus’ he kept saying: he caught sight of the feathers on the waves,
and cursed his own arts, and laid the body in a tomb,
and the land was named from the name of the buried boy.
had been left behind), on the right was Lebinthos
and Calymne rich in honey, when the boy began
to delight in his daring flight and deserted his guide,
and, drawn by desire of the sky, drove his course higher.
The nearness of the swift sun softens the fragrant wax,
the bonds of the feathers; the wax had melted: he shakes
his bare arms, and, lacking his oarage, catches no air,
and his mouth, crying his father’s name,
is taken up by the blue water, which drew its name from him.
But the unhappy father, now no father, ’Icarus,’ he said,
’Icarus,’ he said, ’where are you? In what region shall I seek you?’
’Icarus’ he kept saying: he caught sight of the feathers on the waves,
and cursed his own arts, and laid the body in a tomb,
and the land was named from the name of the buried boy.
et iam Iunonia laeva parte Samos (fuerant Delosque Parosque relictae) dextra Lebinthos erat fecundaque melle Calymne, cum puer audaci coepit gaudere volatu deseruitque ducem caelique cupidine tractus altius egit iter. rapidi vicinia solis mollit odoratas, pennarum vincula, ceras; tabuerant cerae: nudos quatit ille lacertos, remigioque carens non ullas percipit auras, oraque caerulea patrium clamantia nomen excipiuntur aqua, quae nomen traxit ab illo. at pater infelix, nec iam pater, ’Icare,’ dixit, ’Icare,’ dixit ’ubi es? qua te regione requiram?’ ’Icare’ dicebat: pennas aspexit in undis devovitque suas artes corpusque sepulcro condidit, et tellus a nomine dicta sepulti.
As he laid the body of his wretched son in the tomb,
a chattering partridge looked out at him from a muddy ditch,
and clapped her wings and bore witness to her joy with song —
then the only bird of her kind, not seen in years before,
and lately made a bird, a long reproach to you, Daedalus.
For his sister, ignorant of the fates, had handed
her own offspring to him to be taught, a boy of twice six years,
of a mind apt to take instruction; the boy even took
for a model the spines marked in the middle of a fish,
and cut continuous teeth in sharp iron and found the use of the saw;
and he was the first to bind two iron arms from a single joint,
so that, with them held an equal space apart,
one part might stand still and the other trace a circle.
Daedalus envied him, and from the sacred citadel of Minerva
hurled him headlong, lying that he had slipped; but him
Pallas, who favors talents, caught up and made a bird
and clothed in feathers in mid-air — yet the force
of his once-swift genius passed into his wings
and into his feet; the name that he had before remained.
Yet this bird does not lift her body high,
nor make her nests in branches and high treetops:
she flutters near the ground and lays her eggs in hedges,
and, mindful of the old fall, dreads the heights.
a chattering partridge looked out at him from a muddy ditch,
and clapped her wings and bore witness to her joy with song —
then the only bird of her kind, not seen in years before,
and lately made a bird, a long reproach to you, Daedalus.
For his sister, ignorant of the fates, had handed
her own offspring to him to be taught, a boy of twice six years,
of a mind apt to take instruction; the boy even took
for a model the spines marked in the middle of a fish,
and cut continuous teeth in sharp iron and found the use of the saw;
and he was the first to bind two iron arms from a single joint,
so that, with them held an equal space apart,
one part might stand still and the other trace a circle.
Daedalus envied him, and from the sacred citadel of Minerva
hurled him headlong, lying that he had slipped; but him
Pallas, who favors talents, caught up and made a bird
and clothed in feathers in mid-air — yet the force
of his once-swift genius passed into his wings
and into his feet; the name that he had before remained.
Yet this bird does not lift her body high,
nor make her nests in branches and high treetops:
she flutters near the ground and lays her eggs in hedges,
and, mindful of the old fall, dreads the heights.
Hunc miseri tumulo ponentem corpora nati garrula limoso prospexit ab elice perdix et plausit pennis testataque gaudia cantu est, unica tunc volucris nec visa prioribus annis, factaque nuper avis longum tibi, Daedale, crimen. namque huic tradiderat, fatorum ignara, docendam progeniem germana suam, natalibus actis bis puerum senis, animi ad praecepta capacis; ille etiam medio spinas in pisce notatas traxit in exemplum ferroque incidit acuto perpetuos dentes et serrae repperit usum; primus et ex uno duo ferrea bracchia nodo vinxit, ut aequali spatio distantibus illis altera pars staret, pars altera duceret orbem. Daedalus invidit sacraque ex arce Minervae praecipitem misit, lapsum mentitus; at illum, quae favet ingeniis, excepit Pallas avemque reddidit et medio velavit in aere pennis, sed vigor ingenii quondam velocis in alas inque pedes abiit; nomen, quod et ante, remansit. non tamen haec alte volucris sua corpora tollit, nec facit in ramis altoque cacumine nidos: propter humum volitat ponitque in saepibus ova antiquique memor metuit sublimia casus.
And now the land of Aetna held the weary Daedalus,
and Cocalus, taking up arms on his suppliant’s behalf,
was reckoned merciful; now Athens, by Theseus’s glory,
had ceased to pay the lamentable tribute:
the temples are garlanded, and they invoke warlike Minerva
with Jove and the other gods, whom with vowed blood
and gifts bestowed and caskets of incense they honor;
roving rumor had scattered the name of Theseus
through the Argive cities, and the peoples whom rich Achaia held
implored his aid in their great perils,
his aid Calydon — though it had Meleager —
sought, an anxious suppliant, with prayer: the cause of seeking
was a boar, the servant and avenger of offended Diana.
For they say that Oeneus, in a year full of successes,
offered the first-fruits of the crops to Ceres, his wines to Lyaeus,
and the flowing juice of Pallas to golden-haired Minerva;
and Cocalus, taking up arms on his suppliant’s behalf,
was reckoned merciful; now Athens, by Theseus’s glory,
had ceased to pay the lamentable tribute:
the temples are garlanded, and they invoke warlike Minerva
with Jove and the other gods, whom with vowed blood
and gifts bestowed and caskets of incense they honor;
roving rumor had scattered the name of Theseus
through the Argive cities, and the peoples whom rich Achaia held
implored his aid in their great perils,
his aid Calydon — though it had Meleager —
sought, an anxious suppliant, with prayer: the cause of seeking
was a boar, the servant and avenger of offended Diana.
For they say that Oeneus, in a year full of successes,
offered the first-fruits of the crops to Ceres, his wines to Lyaeus,
and the flowing juice of Pallas to golden-haired Minerva;
Iamque fatigatum tellus Aetnaea tenebat Daedalon, et sumptis pro supplice Cocalus armis mitis habebatur; iam lamentabile Athenae pendere desierant Thesea laude tributum: templa coronantur, bellatricemque Minervam cum Iove disque vocant aliis, quos sanguine voto muneribusque datis et acerris turis honorant; sparserat Argolicas nomen vaga fama per urbes Theseos, et populi, quos dives Achaia cepit, huius opem magnis inploravere periclis, huius opem Calydon, quamvis Meleagron haberet, sollicita supplex petiit prece: causa petendi sus erat, infestae famulus vindexque Dianae. Oenea namque ferunt pleni successibus anni primitias frugum Cereri, sua vina Lyaeo, Palladios flavae latices libasse Minervae;
the honor, begun by the farmers, ambitiously,
reached all the gods above: only the altars of Latona’s daughter,
passed over, are said to have been left idle, without incense.
Wrath touches the gods too. ’But we shall not bear it unpunished,
and, though unhonored, we shall not be called unavenged too,’
she says, and, slighted, through the Olenian fields
she sent a boar as her avenger — than which grassy Epirus
has no greater bulls, but the Sicilian fields have smaller.
His eyes flash with blood and fire, his bristling neck is stiff,
and his bristles stand up like rigid spear-shafts;
with a hoarse shriek the boiling foam flows over his broad
shoulders, his tusks are matched with Indian tusks,
lightning comes from his mouth, the leaves burn at his breath.
reached all the gods above: only the altars of Latona’s daughter,
passed over, are said to have been left idle, without incense.
Wrath touches the gods too. ’But we shall not bear it unpunished,
and, though unhonored, we shall not be called unavenged too,’
she says, and, slighted, through the Olenian fields
she sent a boar as her avenger — than which grassy Epirus
has no greater bulls, but the Sicilian fields have smaller.
His eyes flash with blood and fire, his bristling neck is stiff,
and his bristles stand up like rigid spear-shafts;
with a hoarse shriek the boiling foam flows over his broad
shoulders, his tusks are matched with Indian tusks,
lightning comes from his mouth, the leaves burn at his breath.
coeptus ab agricolis superos pervenit ad omnes ambitiosus honor: solas sine ture relictas praeteritae cessasse ferunt Latoidos aras. tangit et ira deos. ’at non inpune feremus, quaeque inhonoratae, non et dicemur inultae’ inquit, et Olenios ultorem spreta per agros misit aprum, quanto maiores herbida tauros non habet Epiros, sed habent Sicula arva minores: sanguine et igne micant oculi, riget horrida cervix, et setae similes rigidis hastilibus horrent: fervida cum rauco latos stridore per armos spuma fluit, dentes aequantur dentibus Indis, fulmen ab ore venit, frondes afflatibus ardent.
Now he tramples the growing crops in the blade,
now he reaps the ripe hopes of the farmer who shall weep,
and cuts off the grain in the ear: in vain the threshing-floor,
in vain the barns await the promised harvests.
The heavy clusters with their long vine-shoots are laid low,
and the berries with the boughs of the ever-leafing olive.
He rages against the flocks too: neither shepherd nor dog
can guard these, nor the fierce bulls the herds.
The peoples scatter and think themselves safe only
within the city’s walls, until Meleager and with him
a chosen band of young men came together in desire of glory:
now he reaps the ripe hopes of the farmer who shall weep,
and cuts off the grain in the ear: in vain the threshing-floor,
in vain the barns await the promised harvests.
The heavy clusters with their long vine-shoots are laid low,
and the berries with the boughs of the ever-leafing olive.
He rages against the flocks too: neither shepherd nor dog
can guard these, nor the fierce bulls the herds.
The peoples scatter and think themselves safe only
within the city’s walls, until Meleager and with him
a chosen band of young men came together in desire of glory:
is modo crescentes segetes proculcat in herba, nunc matura metit fleturi vota coloni et Cererem in spicis intercipit: area frustra et frustra exspectant promissas horrea messes. sternuntur gravidi longo cum palmite fetus bacaque cum ramis semper frondentis olivae. saevit et in pecudes: non has pastorve canisve, non armenta truces possunt defendere tauri. diffugiunt populi nec se nisi moenibus urbis esse putant tutos, donec Meleagros et una lecta manus iuvenum coiere cupidine laudis:
the twin sons of Tyndareus, one outstanding with the gloves,
the other on horseback, and Jason, builder of the first ship,
and Theseus with Pirithous — a happy concord —
and the two sons of Thestius, and the offspring of Aphareus,
Lynceus and swift Idas, and Caeneus, now no longer a woman,
and fierce Leucippus and Acastus, famed for the javelin,
and Hippothous and Dryas and Phoenix, sprung from Amyntor,
and the matched sons of Actor, and Phyleus, sent from Elis.
Nor was Telamon absent, nor the begetter of great Achilles;
and with the son of Pheres and Hyantean Iolaus,
tireless Eurytion and Echion, unconquered in the race,
and Narycian Lelex and Panopeus and Hyleus and fierce
Hippasus, and Nestor, still in his earliest years,
and those whom Hippocoon sent from ancient Amyclae,
and Penelope’s father-in-law with Parrhasian Ancaeus,
and the shrewd son of Ampycus, and the son of Oecleus,
still safe from his wife, and Atalanta of Tegea, the glory of the Lycaean grove:
the other on horseback, and Jason, builder of the first ship,
and Theseus with Pirithous — a happy concord —
and the two sons of Thestius, and the offspring of Aphareus,
Lynceus and swift Idas, and Caeneus, now no longer a woman,
and fierce Leucippus and Acastus, famed for the javelin,
and Hippothous and Dryas and Phoenix, sprung from Amyntor,
and the matched sons of Actor, and Phyleus, sent from Elis.
Nor was Telamon absent, nor the begetter of great Achilles;
and with the son of Pheres and Hyantean Iolaus,
tireless Eurytion and Echion, unconquered in the race,
and Narycian Lelex and Panopeus and Hyleus and fierce
Hippasus, and Nestor, still in his earliest years,
and those whom Hippocoon sent from ancient Amyclae,
and Penelope’s father-in-law with Parrhasian Ancaeus,
and the shrewd son of Ampycus, and the son of Oecleus,
still safe from his wife, and Atalanta of Tegea, the glory of the Lycaean grove:
Tyndaridae gemini, praestantes caestibus alter, alter equo, primaeque ratis molitor Iason, et cum Pirithoo, felix concordia, Theseus, et duo Thestiadae prolesque Aphareia, Lynceus et velox Idas, et iam non femina Caeneus, Leucippusque ferox iaculoque insignis Acastus Hippothousque Dryasque et cretus Amyntore Phoenix Actoridaeque pares et missus ab Elide Phyleus. nec Telamon aberat magnique creator Achillis cumque Pheretiade et Hyanteo Iolao inpiger Eurytion et cursu invictus Echion Naryciusque Lelex Panopeusque Hyleusque feroxque Hippasus et primis etiamnum Nestor in annis, et quos Hippocoon antiquis misit Amyclis, Penelopaeque socer cum Parrhasio Ancaeo, Ampycidesque sagax et adhuc a coniuge tutus Oeclides nemorisque decus Tegeaea Lycaei:
a polished brooch caught the top of her dress,
her hair was plain, gathered into a single knot,
from her left shoulder hung, rattling, the ivory
guardian of her arrows, and her left hand held the bow as well;
such was she in her dress; her face you might truly call
girlish in a boy, boyish in a girl.
As soon as the Calydonian hero saw her, he longed for her —
a god forbidding — and drank in the hidden flames,
and ’O happy the man,’ he said, ’if she shall think any man
worthy!’ Neither the time nor his modesty allows him
to say more: the greater task of the great contest presses on.
her hair was plain, gathered into a single knot,
from her left shoulder hung, rattling, the ivory
guardian of her arrows, and her left hand held the bow as well;
such was she in her dress; her face you might truly call
girlish in a boy, boyish in a girl.
As soon as the Calydonian hero saw her, he longed for her —
a god forbidding — and drank in the hidden flames,
and ’O happy the man,’ he said, ’if she shall think any man
worthy!’ Neither the time nor his modesty allows him
to say more: the greater task of the great contest presses on.
rasilis huic summam mordebat fibula vestem, crinis erat simplex, nodum conlectus in unum, ex umero pendens resonabat eburnea laevo telorum custos, arcum quoque laeva tenebat; talis erat cultu, facies, quam dicere vere virgineam in puero, puerilem in virgine possis. hanc pariter vidit, pariter Calydonius heros optavit renuente deo flammasque latentes hausit et ’o felix, siquem dignabitur’ inquit ’ista virum!’ nec plura sinit tempusque pudorque dicere: maius opus magni certaminis urguet.
A wood thick with timber, which no age had felled,
begins from the level ground and looks down over the sloping fields:
when the men had come there, some stretch the nets,
some loose the leashes from the dogs, some follow the pressed
prints of his feet, and long to find their own peril.
There was a hollow valley, where the streams of rainwater
were used to descend; the bottom of the basin holds
the pliant willow and the light sedge and the marsh rushes
and osiers and the small reeds under the tall cane:
from here the boar, roused, is borne violently into the midst
of his foes, like the fires struck out when the clouds are dashed together.
The grove is laid low by his charge, and the driven wood
gives a crash: the young men cry out, and with strong right hands
hold their leveled weapons quivering with broad iron.
He rushes on and scatters the dogs, as each one
bars his fury, and dashes the barkers apart with a sidelong stroke.
begins from the level ground and looks down over the sloping fields:
when the men had come there, some stretch the nets,
some loose the leashes from the dogs, some follow the pressed
prints of his feet, and long to find their own peril.
There was a hollow valley, where the streams of rainwater
were used to descend; the bottom of the basin holds
the pliant willow and the light sedge and the marsh rushes
and osiers and the small reeds under the tall cane:
from here the boar, roused, is borne violently into the midst
of his foes, like the fires struck out when the clouds are dashed together.
The grove is laid low by his charge, and the driven wood
gives a crash: the young men cry out, and with strong right hands
hold their leveled weapons quivering with broad iron.
He rushes on and scatters the dogs, as each one
bars his fury, and dashes the barkers apart with a sidelong stroke.
Silva frequens trabibus, quam nulla ceciderat aetas, incipit a plano devexaque prospicit arva: quo postquam venere viri, pars retia tendunt, vincula pars adimunt canibus, pars pressa sequuntur signa pedum, cupiuntque suum reperire periclum. concava vallis erat, quo se demittere rivi adsuerant pluvialis aquae; tenet ima lacunae lenta salix ulvaeque leves iuncique palustres viminaque et longa parvae sub harundine cannae: hinc aper excitus medios violentus in hostes fertur, ut excussis elisi nubibus ignes. sternitur incursu nemus, et propulsa fragorem silva dat: exclamant iuvenes praetentaque forti tela tenent dextra lato vibrantia ferro. ille ruit spargitque canes, ut quisque furenti obstat, et obliquo latrantes dissipat ictu.
The spear first hurled from Echion’s arm
was vain, and gave a slight wound to a maple’s trunk;
the next, if it had not used the too-great strength of its thrower,
seemed sure to lodge in the back it sought: it goes too far;
the author of the weapon was Pagasaean Jason.
’Phoebus,’ says the son of Ampycus, ’if I have worshipped you
and worship you, grant me to strike with sure aim what I seek!’
So far as he could, the god assented to his prayers: he was struck
by him, but the boar without a wound: Diana had taken
the iron from the flying javelin; the shaft came without its point.
The beast’s wrath was stirred, and it blazed no gentler than lightning:
flame flashes from its eyes, flame breathes too from its breast,
and as the mass flies, driven by the drawn string,
when it makes for walls or towers full of soldiery,
so with sure onset the wound-dealing boar is borne
against the young men, and lays low Hippalmon and Pelagon,
who guarded the right wing: their comrades caught them up as they lay;
but Enaesimus, sprung from Hippocoon, did not escape
the death-bringing strokes: as he trembled and made ready
to turn his back, the sinews failed him, his ham cut through.
was vain, and gave a slight wound to a maple’s trunk;
the next, if it had not used the too-great strength of its thrower,
seemed sure to lodge in the back it sought: it goes too far;
the author of the weapon was Pagasaean Jason.
’Phoebus,’ says the son of Ampycus, ’if I have worshipped you
and worship you, grant me to strike with sure aim what I seek!’
So far as he could, the god assented to his prayers: he was struck
by him, but the boar without a wound: Diana had taken
the iron from the flying javelin; the shaft came without its point.
The beast’s wrath was stirred, and it blazed no gentler than lightning:
flame flashes from its eyes, flame breathes too from its breast,
and as the mass flies, driven by the drawn string,
when it makes for walls or towers full of soldiery,
so with sure onset the wound-dealing boar is borne
against the young men, and lays low Hippalmon and Pelagon,
who guarded the right wing: their comrades caught them up as they lay;
but Enaesimus, sprung from Hippocoon, did not escape
the death-bringing strokes: as he trembled and made ready
to turn his back, the sinews failed him, his ham cut through.
cuspis Echionio primum contorta lacerto vana fuit truncoque dedit leve vulnus acerno; proxima, si nimiis mittentis viribus usa non foret, in tergo visa est haesura petito: longius it; auctor teli Pagasaeus Iason. ’Phoebe,’ ait Ampycides, ’si te coluique coloque, da mihi, quod petitur, certo contingere telo!’ qua potuit, precibus deus adnuit: ictus ab illo est, sed sine vulnere aper: ferrum Diana volanti abstulerat iaculo; lignum sine acumine venit. ira feri mota est, nec fulmine lenius arsit: emicat ex oculis, spirat quoque pectore flamma, utque volat moles adducto concita nervo, cum petit aut muros aut plenas milite turres, in iuvenes certo sic impete vulnificus sus fertur et Hippalmon Pelagonaque, dextra tuentes cornua, prosternit: socii rapuere iacentes; at non letiferos effugit Enaesimus ictus Hippocoonte satus: trepidantem et terga parantem vertere succiso liquerunt poplite nervi.
Perhaps the man of Pylos too would have perished before his
Trojan years, but, taking his spring from the spear he had set down,
he leaped onto the branches of a tree that stood nearest,
and from his safe place looked down on the foe he had fled.
The beast, fierce, having ground his tusks on the oaken trunk,
threatens destruction, and, trusting in his freshly whetted arms,
gored the thigh of great Eurytus’s son with his hooked snout.
But the twin brothers, not yet stars of heaven,
both conspicuous, both were carried on horses whiter than snow,
both shook through the air the quivering points
of their brandished spears. They would have dealt wounds,
had not the bristled beast gone into the shadowy woods,
where neither javelins nor horse can pass.
Telamon pursues, and, heedless in his eagerness to go on,
fell forward, caught by the root of a tree.
Trojan years, but, taking his spring from the spear he had set down,
he leaped onto the branches of a tree that stood nearest,
and from his safe place looked down on the foe he had fled.
The beast, fierce, having ground his tusks on the oaken trunk,
threatens destruction, and, trusting in his freshly whetted arms,
gored the thigh of great Eurytus’s son with his hooked snout.
But the twin brothers, not yet stars of heaven,
both conspicuous, both were carried on horses whiter than snow,
both shook through the air the quivering points
of their brandished spears. They would have dealt wounds,
had not the bristled beast gone into the shadowy woods,
where neither javelins nor horse can pass.
Telamon pursues, and, heedless in his eagerness to go on,
fell forward, caught by the root of a tree.
forsitan et Pylius citra Troiana perisset tempora, sed sumpto posita conamine ab hasta arboris insiluit, quae stabat proxima, ramis despexitque, loco tutus, quem fugerat, hostem. dentibus ille ferox in querno stipite tritis inminet exitio fidensque recentibus armis Eurytidae magni rostro femur hausit adunco. at gemini, nondum caelestia sidera, fratres, ambo conspicui, nive candidioribus ambo vectabantur equis, ambo vibrata per auras hastarum tremulo quatiebant spicula motu. vulnera fecissent, nisi saetiger inter opacas nec iaculis isset nec equo loca pervia silvas. persequitur Telamon studioque incautus eundi pronus ab arborea cecidit radice retentus.
While Peleus lifts him, the maid of Tegea set a swift arrow
to the string and shot it from the curved bow:
fixed beneath the beast’s ear, the shaft grazed the top
of his body and reddened the bristles with a little blood;
yet she was no happier at the success of her stroke
than Meleager was: he is thought to have seen it first,
and first to have shown his comrades the blood he had seen,
and to have said, ’You will bear the deserved honor of your valor.’
The men blushed and spur each other on, and with shouting
gather courage, and hurl their weapons without order:
the crowd harms the throws, and impedes the strokes it aims.
Behold, the axe-bearing Arcadian, raging against his own fates,
said, ’Learn, young men, how far a man’s weapons surpass
a woman’s, and yield the work to me!
Though Latona’s daughter herself protect him with her own arms,
still, against Diana’s will, my right hand shall destroy him.’
Such things, swollen with pride, he had boasted with grandiloquent mouth,
and lifting with both hands the double-edged axe,
he had risen on his toes, poised forward for the stroke:
the beast forestalls his daring, and where the way is nearest
to death, drove his two tusks into the top of the groin.
Ancaeus fell, and his entrails, slipping out, flow
in a great mass of blood: the ground was soaked with gore.
to the string and shot it from the curved bow:
fixed beneath the beast’s ear, the shaft grazed the top
of his body and reddened the bristles with a little blood;
yet she was no happier at the success of her stroke
than Meleager was: he is thought to have seen it first,
and first to have shown his comrades the blood he had seen,
and to have said, ’You will bear the deserved honor of your valor.’
The men blushed and spur each other on, and with shouting
gather courage, and hurl their weapons without order:
the crowd harms the throws, and impedes the strokes it aims.
Behold, the axe-bearing Arcadian, raging against his own fates,
said, ’Learn, young men, how far a man’s weapons surpass
a woman’s, and yield the work to me!
Though Latona’s daughter herself protect him with her own arms,
still, against Diana’s will, my right hand shall destroy him.’
Such things, swollen with pride, he had boasted with grandiloquent mouth,
and lifting with both hands the double-edged axe,
he had risen on his toes, poised forward for the stroke:
the beast forestalls his daring, and where the way is nearest
to death, drove his two tusks into the top of the groin.
Ancaeus fell, and his entrails, slipping out, flow
in a great mass of blood: the ground was soaked with gore.
dum levat hunc Peleus, celerem Tegeaea sagittam inposuit nervo sinuatoque expulit arcu: fixa sub aure feri summum destrinxit harundo corpus et exiguo rubefecit sanguine saetas; nec tamen illa sui successu laetior ictus quam Meleagros erat: primus vidisse putatur et primus sociis visum ostendisse cruorem et ’meritum’ dixisse ’feres virtutis honorem.’ erubuere viri seque exhortantur et addunt cum clamore animos iaciuntque sine ordine tela: turba nocet iactis et, quos petit, impedit ictus. ecce furens contra sua fata bipennifer Arcas ’discite, femineis quid tela virilia praestent, o iuvenes, operique meo concedite!’ dixit. ’ipsa suis licet hunc Latonia protegat armis, invita tamen hunc perimet mea dextra Diana.’ talia magniloquo tumidus memoraverat ore ancipitemque manu tollens utraque securim institerat digitis pronos suspensus in ictus: occupat audentem, quaque est via proxima leto, summa ferus geminos derexit ad inguina dentes. concidit Ancaeus glomerataque sanguine multo viscera lapsa fluunt: madefacta est terra cruore.
Against the foe went Ixion’s son,
Pirithous, shaking his stout hunting-spears in his strong right hand;
to him the son of Aegeus said, ’Keep off, O part of my soul
dearer to me than myself, stand back! It is allowed the brave
to fight at a distance: rash valor harmed Ancaeus.’
He spoke, and hurled the heavy cornel-shaft with its bronze point;
though well aimed and sure of its prayer,
a leafy branch from an oak stood in its way.
The son of Aeson too threw a javelin: chance turned it
from its mark to the doom of an undeserving hound,
and, cast between the flanks, it was fixed through the flanks into the ground.
But the son of Oeneus’s hand had varying fortune,
and of two thrown the first spear stood in the earth, the other
in the middle of the back. Without delay, while the beast rages,
while it whirls its body in a circle and pours out
hissing foam with fresh blood, the author of the wound
is there, and goads his foe to fury, and buries
the gleaming hunting-spear in the shoulders set against him.
His comrades witness their joy with answering shout,
and seek to join right hand to the victorious right hand,
and gaze in wonder at the huge beast lying over much ground,
and do not yet think it safe to touch him,
but each, even so, bloodies his weapon in him.
Pirithous, shaking his stout hunting-spears in his strong right hand;
to him the son of Aegeus said, ’Keep off, O part of my soul
dearer to me than myself, stand back! It is allowed the brave
to fight at a distance: rash valor harmed Ancaeus.’
He spoke, and hurled the heavy cornel-shaft with its bronze point;
though well aimed and sure of its prayer,
a leafy branch from an oak stood in its way.
The son of Aeson too threw a javelin: chance turned it
from its mark to the doom of an undeserving hound,
and, cast between the flanks, it was fixed through the flanks into the ground.
But the son of Oeneus’s hand had varying fortune,
and of two thrown the first spear stood in the earth, the other
in the middle of the back. Without delay, while the beast rages,
while it whirls its body in a circle and pours out
hissing foam with fresh blood, the author of the wound
is there, and goads his foe to fury, and buries
the gleaming hunting-spear in the shoulders set against him.
His comrades witness their joy with answering shout,
and seek to join right hand to the victorious right hand,
and gaze in wonder at the huge beast lying over much ground,
and do not yet think it safe to touch him,
but each, even so, bloodies his weapon in him.
ibat in adversum proles Ixionis hostem Pirithous valida quatiens venabula dextra; cui ’procul’ Aegides ’o me mihi carior’ inquit ’pars animae consiste meae! licet eminus esse fortibus: Ancaeo nocuit temeraria virtus.’ dixit et aerata torsit grave cuspide cornum; quo bene librato votique potente futuro obstitit aesculea frondosus ab arbore ramus. misit et Aesonides iaculum: quod casus ab illo vertit in inmeriti fatum latrantis et inter ilia coniectum tellure per ilia fixum est. at manus Oenidae variat, missisque duabus hasta prior terra, medio stetit altera tergo. nec mora, dum saevit, dum corpora versat in orbem stridentemque novo spumam cum sanguine fundit, vulneris auctor adest hostemque inritat ad iram splendidaque adversos venabula condit in armos. gaudia testantur socii clamore secundo victricemque petunt dextrae coniungere dextram inmanemque ferum multa tellure iacentem mirantes spectant neque adhuc contingere tutum esse putant, sed tela tamen sua quisque cruentat.
He himself, setting his foot on it, pressed the deadly head,
and so ’Take, maid of Nonacris, the spoil that is my right,’
he said, ’and let my glory come into a share with you.’
At once he gives her the spoils — the hide bristling
with stiff bristles and the head marked with great tusks.
She has joy in the gift, and in the giver of the gift;
the others envied, and there was a murmur through the whole company.
Of these, the sons of Thestius, stretching out their arms,
cry with a great voice, ’Put it down, woman, and do not
intercept our titles, and let not your trust in your beauty
deceive you, lest the giver, captured by love,
be far from helping you,’ and they take from her the gift,
from him the right of giving the gift.
The son of Mars did not bear it, and, gnashing in swelling wrath,
’Learn, you robbers of another’s honor,’ he said,
’how far deeds stand from threats,’ and drained Plexippus’s breast,
fearing no such thing, with the unspeakable iron.
Toxeus, in doubt what to do, and at once wishing to avenge
his brother and fearing his brother’s fate,
he does not let waver long, and warmed the weapon,
still hot from the first slaughter, with the kindred blood of the second.
and so ’Take, maid of Nonacris, the spoil that is my right,’
he said, ’and let my glory come into a share with you.’
At once he gives her the spoils — the hide bristling
with stiff bristles and the head marked with great tusks.
She has joy in the gift, and in the giver of the gift;
the others envied, and there was a murmur through the whole company.
Of these, the sons of Thestius, stretching out their arms,
cry with a great voice, ’Put it down, woman, and do not
intercept our titles, and let not your trust in your beauty
deceive you, lest the giver, captured by love,
be far from helping you,’ and they take from her the gift,
from him the right of giving the gift.
The son of Mars did not bear it, and, gnashing in swelling wrath,
’Learn, you robbers of another’s honor,’ he said,
’how far deeds stand from threats,’ and drained Plexippus’s breast,
fearing no such thing, with the unspeakable iron.
Toxeus, in doubt what to do, and at once wishing to avenge
his brother and fearing his brother’s fate,
he does not let waver long, and warmed the weapon,
still hot from the first slaughter, with the kindred blood of the second.
Ipse pede inposito caput exitiabile pressit atque ita ’sume mei spolium, Nonacria, iuris,’ dixit ’et in partem veniat mea gloria tecum.’ protinus exuvias rigidis horrentia saetis terga dat et magnis insignia dentibus ora. illi laetitiae est cum munere muneris auctor; invidere alii, totoque erat agmine murmur. e quibus ingenti tendentes bracchia voce ’pone age nec titulos intercipe, femina, nostros,’ Thestiadae clamant, ’nec te fiducia formae decipiat, ne sit longe tibi captus amore auctor,’ et huic adimunt munus, ius muneris illi. non tulit et tumida frendens Mavortius ira ’discite, raptores alieni’ dixit ’honoris, facta minis quantum distent,’ hausitque nefando pectora Plexippi nil tale timentia ferro. Toxea, quid faciat, dubium pariterque volentem ulcisci fratrem fraternaque fata timentem haud patitur dubitare diu calidumque priori caede recalfecit consorti sanguine telum.
She was bringing gifts to the gods’ temples for her victorious son,
when Althaea sees her brothers brought back dead.
She, beating her breast, fills the city with mournful cries,
and changed her gilded robes for black;
but as soon as the author of the killing was named,
all grief fell away, and was turned from tears
to a craving for punishment. There was a brand which,
when the daughter of Thestius lay having brought forth her child,
the three sisters set in the flame, and, spinning
the threads of fate with pressed thumb, said,
’We give the same span of time to the wood and to you,
O newborn.’ After they had spoken this charge
and the goddesses had withdrawn, the mother snatched
the blazing branch from the fire and sprinkled it with flowing water.
when Althaea sees her brothers brought back dead.
She, beating her breast, fills the city with mournful cries,
and changed her gilded robes for black;
but as soon as the author of the killing was named,
all grief fell away, and was turned from tears
to a craving for punishment. There was a brand which,
when the daughter of Thestius lay having brought forth her child,
the three sisters set in the flame, and, spinning
the threads of fate with pressed thumb, said,
’We give the same span of time to the wood and to you,
O newborn.’ After they had spoken this charge
and the goddesses had withdrawn, the mother snatched
the blazing branch from the fire and sprinkled it with flowing water.
Dona deum templis nato victore ferebat, cum videt exstinctos fratres Althaea referri. quae plangore dato maestis clamoribus urbem inplet et auratis mutavit vestibus atras; at simul est auctor necis editus, excidit omnis luctus et a lacrimis in poenae versus amorem est. Stipes erat, quem, cum partus enixa iaceret Thestias, in flammam triplices posuere sorores staminaque inpresso fatalia pollice nentes ’tempora’ dixerunt ’eadem lignoque tibique, o modo nate, damus.’ quo postquam carmine dicto excessere deae, flagrantem mater ab igne eripuit ramum sparsitque liquentibus undis.
That brand had long lain hidden in the inmost recesses,
and, kept safe, had kept your years, young man.
The mother brought it out, and orders torches and kindling
to be laid, and, when they were laid, set the hostile fire to them.
Then, having tried four times to lay the branch on the flames,
four times she held back the attempt: mother and sister fight,
and the two names drag one heart in opposite ways.
Often her face grew pale at the fear of the crime to come,
often her boiling wrath gave its redness to her eyes,
and now her look was like one threatening something cruel,
now one you might believe to pity;
and when the fierce heat of her spirit had dried her tears,
tears were found nonetheless, and as a ship
which the wind, and the tide against the wind, carries off,
feels the twin force and, uncertain, obeys the two,
so the daughter of Thestius wavers no differently
in her doubtful feelings, and by turns lays down her wrath
and, laid down, rekindles it.
and, kept safe, had kept your years, young man.
The mother brought it out, and orders torches and kindling
to be laid, and, when they were laid, set the hostile fire to them.
Then, having tried four times to lay the branch on the flames,
four times she held back the attempt: mother and sister fight,
and the two names drag one heart in opposite ways.
Often her face grew pale at the fear of the crime to come,
often her boiling wrath gave its redness to her eyes,
and now her look was like one threatening something cruel,
now one you might believe to pity;
and when the fierce heat of her spirit had dried her tears,
tears were found nonetheless, and as a ship
which the wind, and the tide against the wind, carries off,
feels the twin force and, uncertain, obeys the two,
so the daughter of Thestius wavers no differently
in her doubtful feelings, and by turns lays down her wrath
and, laid down, rekindles it.
ille diu fuerat penetralibus abditus imis servatusque tuos, iuvenis, servaverat annos. protulit hunc genetrix taedasque et fragmina poni imperat et positis inimicos admovet ignes. tum conata quater flammis inponere ramum coepta quater tenuit: pugnat materque sororque, et diversa trahunt unum duo nomina pectus. saepe metu sceleris pallebant ora futuri, saepe suum fervens oculis dabat ira ruborem, et modo nescio quid similis crudele minanti vultus erat, modo quem misereri credere posses; cumque ferus lacrimas animi siccaverat ardor, inveniebantur lacrimae tamen, utque carina, quam ventus ventoque rapit contrarius aestus, vim geminam sentit paretque incerta duobus, Thestias haud aliter dubiis affectibus errat inque vices ponit positamque resuscitat iram.
Yet the sister begins to be stronger than the mother,
and, to appease the kindred shades with blood,
she is dutiful in her impiety. For after the pestilent fire
grew strong, ’Let that pyre burn my own flesh,’ she said,
and, as she held the fatal wood in her dread hand,
unhappy she stood before the sepulchral altars and said,
’Triple goddesses of punishment, Eumenides,
turn your faces toward these funereal rites!
I avenge, and I do a crime; death must be atoned by death,
crime added to crime, funeral to funeral:
through heaped-up griefs let this impious house perish!
Shall happy Oeneus enjoy his victorious son,
and Thestius be bereft? Better that both of you mourn.
Only do you, brotherly shades and fresh-departed souls,
feel my service, and accept the offering made ready
at great cost, the evil pledges of my womb!
Ah me! Where am I being swept? Brothers, forgive a mother!
My hands fail at what I began: I confess he has deserved
to die; the author of his death displeases me.
Then shall he go unpunished, and, alive and victorious
and swollen with his very success, hold the kingdom of Calydon,
while you lie a little ash and cold shades?
Indeed I will not bear it: let the criminal perish,
and drag down with him his father’s hope and kingdom
and his country’s ruin! But where is a mother’s mind?
Where are the dutiful rights of parents, and the labors
I bore for twice five months? O would that you had burned,
an infant, in those first fires, and that I had allowed it!
You lived by my gift; now you shall die by your own desert!
Take the reward of your deed, and the life twice given —
first by birth, then by the rescued brand —
give it back, or add me to my brothers’ tombs!
I both desire and cannot. What shall I do? Now my brothers’ wounds
are before my eyes, and the image of so great a slaughter,
now love and a mother’s name break my spirit.
Wretched me! You will win to my hurt — but win, my brothers,
only let me follow the consolations I shall have given you,
and you yourselves!’ She spoke, and with averted face,
with trembling right hand, threw the deadly brand
into the midst of the fire: either it gave, or seemed to give,
a groan, the brand, as it was caught and burned by the unwilling flames.
and, to appease the kindred shades with blood,
she is dutiful in her impiety. For after the pestilent fire
grew strong, ’Let that pyre burn my own flesh,’ she said,
and, as she held the fatal wood in her dread hand,
unhappy she stood before the sepulchral altars and said,
’Triple goddesses of punishment, Eumenides,
turn your faces toward these funereal rites!
I avenge, and I do a crime; death must be atoned by death,
crime added to crime, funeral to funeral:
through heaped-up griefs let this impious house perish!
Shall happy Oeneus enjoy his victorious son,
and Thestius be bereft? Better that both of you mourn.
Only do you, brotherly shades and fresh-departed souls,
feel my service, and accept the offering made ready
at great cost, the evil pledges of my womb!
Ah me! Where am I being swept? Brothers, forgive a mother!
My hands fail at what I began: I confess he has deserved
to die; the author of his death displeases me.
Then shall he go unpunished, and, alive and victorious
and swollen with his very success, hold the kingdom of Calydon,
while you lie a little ash and cold shades?
Indeed I will not bear it: let the criminal perish,
and drag down with him his father’s hope and kingdom
and his country’s ruin! But where is a mother’s mind?
Where are the dutiful rights of parents, and the labors
I bore for twice five months? O would that you had burned,
an infant, in those first fires, and that I had allowed it!
You lived by my gift; now you shall die by your own desert!
Take the reward of your deed, and the life twice given —
first by birth, then by the rescued brand —
give it back, or add me to my brothers’ tombs!
I both desire and cannot. What shall I do? Now my brothers’ wounds
are before my eyes, and the image of so great a slaughter,
now love and a mother’s name break my spirit.
Wretched me! You will win to my hurt — but win, my brothers,
only let me follow the consolations I shall have given you,
and you yourselves!’ She spoke, and with averted face,
with trembling right hand, threw the deadly brand
into the midst of the fire: either it gave, or seemed to give,
a groan, the brand, as it was caught and burned by the unwilling flames.
incipit esse tamen melior germana parente et consanguineas ut sanguine leniat umbras, inpietate pia est. nam postquam pestifer ignis convaluit, ’rogus iste cremet mea viscera’ dixit, utque manu dira lignum fatale tenebat, ante sepulcrales infelix adstitit aras ’poenarum’ que ’deae triplices, furialibus,’ inquit ’Eumenides, sacris vultus advertite vestros! ulciscor facioque nefas; mors morte pianda est, in scelus addendum scelus est, in funera funus: per coacervatos pereat domus inpia luctus! an felix Oeneus nato victore fruetur, Thestius orbus erit? melius lugebitis ambo. vos modo, fraterni manes animaeque recentes, officium sentite meum magnoque paratas accipite inferias, uteri mala pignora nostri! ei mihi! quo rapior? fratres, ignoscite matri! deficiunt ad coepta manus: meruisse fatemur illum, cur pereat; mortis mihi displicet auctor. ergo inpune feret vivusque et victor et ipso successu tumidus regnum Calydonis habebit, vos cinis exiguus gelidaeque iacebitis umbrae? haud equidem patiar: pereat sceleratus et ille spemque patris regnumque trahat patriaeque ruinam! mens ubi materna est? ubi sunt pia iura parentum et quos sustinui bis mensum quinque labores? o utinam primis arsisses ignibus infans, idque ego passa forem! vixisti munere nostro; nunc merito moriere tuo! cape praemia facti bisque datam, primum partu, mox stipite rapto, redde animam vel me fraternis adde sepulcris! et cupio et nequeo. quid agam? modo vulnera fratrum ante oculos mihi sunt et tantae caedis imago, nunc animum pietas maternaque nomina frangunt. me miseram! male vincetis, sed vincite, fratres, dummodo, quae dedero vobis, solacia vosque ipsa sequar!’ dixit dextraque aversa trementi funereum torrem medios coniecit in ignes: aut dedit aut visus gemitus est ipse dedisse stipes, ut invitis conreptus ab ignibus arsit.
Unknowing and far off, Meleager is burned by that flame,
and feels his entrails scorched by blind fires,
and overcomes the great pains by his courage.
Yet that he falls by an inglorious, bloodless death,
he grieves, and calls Ancaeus’s wounds happy,
and with a groan calls on his aged father and his brothers
and his loyal sisters and the partner of his bed
with his last breath — and perhaps his mother too.
The fire and the pain grow and slacken again;
together both were quenched, and little by little
his spirit passed off into the light air,
as little by little the white ash veiled the embers.
and feels his entrails scorched by blind fires,
and overcomes the great pains by his courage.
Yet that he falls by an inglorious, bloodless death,
he grieves, and calls Ancaeus’s wounds happy,
and with a groan calls on his aged father and his brothers
and his loyal sisters and the partner of his bed
with his last breath — and perhaps his mother too.
The fire and the pain grow and slacken again;
together both were quenched, and little by little
his spirit passed off into the light air,
as little by little the white ash veiled the embers.
Inscius atque absens flamma Meleagros ab illa uritur et caecis torreri viscera sentit ignibus ac magnos superat virtute dolores. quod tamen ignavo cadat et sine sanguine leto, maeret et Ancaei felicia vulnera dicit grandaevumque patrem fratresque piasque sorores cum gemitu sociamque tori vocat ore supremo, forsitan et matrem. crescunt ignisque dolorque languescuntque iterum; simul est exstinctus uterque, inque leves abiit paulatim spiritus auras paulatim cana prunam velante favilla.
Lofty Calydon lies low: young and old mourn,
the commons and the chiefs lament, and the Calydonian mothers
of the Evenus, their hair torn, beat their breasts;
the father, stretched on the ground, fouls his grey hair
and aged face with dust, and reproaches his long life.
For his mother’s hand, conscious of the dread deed,
exacted its penalty, the sword driven through her vitals.
Not if a god had given me a hundred mouths sounding with tongues
and a capacious genius and all of Helicon,
could I tell the sad fates of the wretched sisters.
Heedless of seemliness, they beat their bruised breasts,
and, while the body remains, they warm and warm the body again,
give kisses to him, give kisses to the laid-out bier.
After the ash, they press the gathered ashes to their breasts
and lie flung on the tomb, and, embracing the names
cut in the stone, pour their tears upon the names.
These at last Latona’s daughter, sated with the ruin
of the house of Parthaon — all but Gorge and the daughter-in-law
of noble Alcmena — raises up, with feathers grown
over their bodies, and stretches long wings along their arms
and makes their mouths horny, and sends them, transformed, through the air.
the commons and the chiefs lament, and the Calydonian mothers
of the Evenus, their hair torn, beat their breasts;
the father, stretched on the ground, fouls his grey hair
and aged face with dust, and reproaches his long life.
For his mother’s hand, conscious of the dread deed,
exacted its penalty, the sword driven through her vitals.
Not if a god had given me a hundred mouths sounding with tongues
and a capacious genius and all of Helicon,
could I tell the sad fates of the wretched sisters.
Heedless of seemliness, they beat their bruised breasts,
and, while the body remains, they warm and warm the body again,
give kisses to him, give kisses to the laid-out bier.
After the ash, they press the gathered ashes to their breasts
and lie flung on the tomb, and, embracing the names
cut in the stone, pour their tears upon the names.
These at last Latona’s daughter, sated with the ruin
of the house of Parthaon — all but Gorge and the daughter-in-law
of noble Alcmena — raises up, with feathers grown
over their bodies, and stretches long wings along their arms
and makes their mouths horny, and sends them, transformed, through the air.
Alta iacet Calydon: lugent iuvenesque senesque, vulgusque proceresque gemunt, scissaeque capillos planguntur matres Calydonides Eueninae; pulvere canitiem genitor vultusque seniles foedat humi fusus spatiosumque increpat aevum. nam de matre manus diri sibi conscia facti exegit poenas acto per viscera ferro. non mihi si centum deus ora sonantia linguis ingeniumque capax totumque Helicona dedisset, tristia persequerer miserarum fata sororum. inmemores decoris liventia pectora tundunt, dumque manet corpus, corpus refoventque foventque, oscula dant ipsi, posito dant oscula lecto. post cinerem cineres haustos ad pectora pressant adfusaeque iacent tumulo signataque saxo nomina conplexae lacrimas in nomina fundunt. quas Parthaoniae tandem Latonia clade exsatiata domus praeter Gorgenque nurumque nobilis Alcmenae natis in corpore pennis adlevat et longas per bracchia porrigit alas corneaque ora facit versasque per aera mittit.
Meanwhile Theseus, having done his part of the shared labor,
was going to the Erechthean citadel of Tritonis.
Achelous, swollen with rain, closed his way
and made delays for him as he went: ’Come under my roof,
illustrious son of Cecrops,’ he says, ’and do not trust
yourself to the grasping waves: they are wont to carry off
solid beams and roll down rocks aslant with a great roar.
I have seen high steadings, next to the bank, dragged off
with their flocks; nor there did it help the cattle to be strong,
nor the horses to be swift. Many young bodies, too,
this torrent has drowned in its whirling eddy
when the snows were loosed from the mountain. Rest is safer,
while the rivers run in their accustomed channel,
while the bed holds its slender waters.’ The son of Aegeus
assented and ’I will use, Achelous, both your house
and your counsel,’ he replied; and he used both.
was going to the Erechthean citadel of Tritonis.
Achelous, swollen with rain, closed his way
and made delays for him as he went: ’Come under my roof,
illustrious son of Cecrops,’ he says, ’and do not trust
yourself to the grasping waves: they are wont to carry off
solid beams and roll down rocks aslant with a great roar.
I have seen high steadings, next to the bank, dragged off
with their flocks; nor there did it help the cattle to be strong,
nor the horses to be swift. Many young bodies, too,
this torrent has drowned in its whirling eddy
when the snows were loosed from the mountain. Rest is safer,
while the rivers run in their accustomed channel,
while the bed holds its slender waters.’ The son of Aegeus
assented and ’I will use, Achelous, both your house
and your counsel,’ he replied; and he used both.
Interea Theseus sociati parte laboris functus Erectheas Tritonidos ibat ad arces. clausit iter fecitque moras Achelous eunti imbre tumens: ’succede meis,’ ait ’inclite, tectis, Cecropide, nec te committe rapacibus undis: ferre trabes solidas obliquaque volvere magno murmure saxa solent. vidi contermina ripae cum gregibus stabula alta trahi; nec fortibus illic profuit armentis nec equis velocibus esse. multa quoque hic torrens nivibus de monte solutis corpora turbineo iuvenalia vertice mersit. tutior est requies, solito dum flumina currant limite, dum tenues capiat suus alveus undas.’ adnuit Aegides ’utar,’ que ’Acheloe, domoque consilioque tuo’ respondit; et usus utroque est.
He enters a hall built of porous pumice and rough tufa:
the ground was moist with soft moss, the top
was paneled with shells of alternating murex.
And now, Hyperion having measured two parts of the light,
Theseus and the companions of his labor reclined on the couches —
on this side the son of Ixion, on that the Troezenian hero
Lelex, his temples now sprinkled with thin grey,
and the others whom the river of the Acarnanians
had judged worthy of equal honor, most delighted with so great a guest.
At once bare-footed nymphs set out the tables, laden,
for the feast, and, the dishes removed, set the wine in jewel.
Then the greatest hero, looking out at the waters spread
below his eyes, ’What place is that?’ he says
(and pointed with his finger), ’and tell me the name
that island bears — though it does not seem one!’
the ground was moist with soft moss, the top
was paneled with shells of alternating murex.
And now, Hyperion having measured two parts of the light,
Theseus and the companions of his labor reclined on the couches —
on this side the son of Ixion, on that the Troezenian hero
Lelex, his temples now sprinkled with thin grey,
and the others whom the river of the Acarnanians
had judged worthy of equal honor, most delighted with so great a guest.
At once bare-footed nymphs set out the tables, laden,
for the feast, and, the dishes removed, set the wine in jewel.
Then the greatest hero, looking out at the waters spread
below his eyes, ’What place is that?’ he says
(and pointed with his finger), ’and tell me the name
that island bears — though it does not seem one!’
pumice multicavo nec levibus atria tophis structa subit: molli tellus erat umida musco, summa lacunabant alterno murice conchae. iamque duas lucis partes Hyperione menso discubuere toris Theseus comitesque laborum, hac Ixionides, illa Troezenius heros parte Lelex, raris iam sparsus tempora canis, quosque alios parili fuerat dignatus honore Amnis Acarnanum, laetissimus hospite tanto. protinus adpositas nudae vestigia nymphae instruxere epulis mensas dapibusque remotis in gemma posuere merum. tum maximus heros, aequora prospiciens oculis subiecta, ’quis’ inquit ’ille locus?’ (digitoque ostendit) ’et insula nomen quod gerit illa, doce, quamquam non una videtur!’
The river to this: ’It is not one thing you see:
five lands lie there; the distance cheats the divisions.
And that you may wonder less at the deed of slighted Diana —
naiads these had been, who, when they had slaughtered
twice five bullocks and called the country gods to the rites,
forgetful of me, led their festal dances.
I swelled, and as great as I am borne when fullest ever,
so great was I, and, monstrous alike in spirit and in waves,
I tore woods from woods and fields from fields,
and rolled the nymphs, then at last mindful of me,
with their place into the sea. My flood and the sea’s
parted the continuous land and broke it
into as many parts as you see the Echinades in the midst of the waters.
five lands lie there; the distance cheats the divisions.
And that you may wonder less at the deed of slighted Diana —
naiads these had been, who, when they had slaughtered
twice five bullocks and called the country gods to the rites,
forgetful of me, led their festal dances.
I swelled, and as great as I am borne when fullest ever,
so great was I, and, monstrous alike in spirit and in waves,
I tore woods from woods and fields from fields,
and rolled the nymphs, then at last mindful of me,
with their place into the sea. My flood and the sea’s
parted the continuous land and broke it
into as many parts as you see the Echinades in the midst of the waters.
Amnis ad haec ’non est’ inquit ’quod cernitis unum: quinque iacent terrae; spatium discrimina fallit. quoque minus spretae factum mirere Dianae, naides hae fuerant, quae cum bis quinque iuvencos mactassent rurisque deos ad sacra vocassent, inmemores nostri festas duxere choreas. intumui, quantusque feror, cum plurimus umquam, tantus eram, pariterque animis inmanis et undis a silvis silvas et ab arvis arva revelli cumque loco nymphas, memores tum denique nostri, in freta provolvi. fluctus nosterque marisque continuam diduxit humum partesque resolvit in totidem, mediis quot cernis Echinadas undis.
But, as you yourself see, far off — look, far off — one island
has withdrawn, dear to me; the sailor calls it Perimele:
from her, beloved, I took her maiden name; which her father
Hippodamas bore ill, and shoved his daughter’s body,
to perish, from a cliff into the deep. I caught her up
and, bearing her as she swam, "O you who have been allotted
the realms of the wandering wave nearest the world, Trident-bearer,"
I said, "bring aid, and to her, drowned by a father’s savagery,
grant, I pray, Neptune, a place — or let her be the place herself!"
While I speak, a new land embraced her swimming limbs,
and a heavy island grew over her changed members.’
has withdrawn, dear to me; the sailor calls it Perimele:
from her, beloved, I took her maiden name; which her father
Hippodamas bore ill, and shoved his daughter’s body,
to perish, from a cliff into the deep. I caught her up
and, bearing her as she swam, "O you who have been allotted
the realms of the wandering wave nearest the world, Trident-bearer,"
I said, "bring aid, and to her, drowned by a father’s savagery,
grant, I pray, Neptune, a place — or let her be the place herself!"
While I speak, a new land embraced her swimming limbs,
and a heavy island grew over her changed members.’
ut tamen ipse vides, procul, en procul una recessit insula, grata mihi; Perimelen navita dicit: huic ego virgineum dilectae nomen ademi; quod pater Hippodamas aegre tulit inque profundum propulit e scopulo periturae corpora natae. excepi nantemque ferens "o proxima mundi regna vagae" dixi "sortite, Tridentifer, undae, adfer opem, mersaeque, precor, feritate paterna da, Neptune, locum, vel sit locus ipsa licebit!" dum loquor, amplexa est artus nova terra natantes et gravis increvit mutatis insula membris.’
The river fell silent after this. The marvelous deed
had moved them all: the son of Ixion mocks the believers,
and, scorner of the gods as he was and fierce of mind,
’You tell fictions, Achelous, and think the gods too powerful,’
he said, ’if they give and take away shapes.’
All were stunned and did not approve such words,
and before all Lelex, ripe in mind and age,
spoke thus: ’Boundless is the power of heaven and has no end,
and whatever the gods above have willed, has been done.
had moved them all: the son of Ixion mocks the believers,
and, scorner of the gods as he was and fierce of mind,
’You tell fictions, Achelous, and think the gods too powerful,’
he said, ’if they give and take away shapes.’
All were stunned and did not approve such words,
and before all Lelex, ripe in mind and age,
spoke thus: ’Boundless is the power of heaven and has no end,
and whatever the gods above have willed, has been done.
Amnis ab his tacuit. factum mirabile cunctos moverat: inridet credentes, utque deorum spretor erat mentisque ferox, Ixione natus ’ficta refers nimiumque putas, Acheloe, potentes esse deos,’ dixit ’si dant adimuntque figuras.’ obstipuere omnes nec talia dicta probarunt, ante omnesque Lelex animo maturus et aevo, sic ait: ’inmensa est finemque potentia caeli non habet, et quicquid superi voluere, peractum est,
And, that you may doubt the less, there is, on the Phrygian hills,
an oak next to a linden, ringed by a modest wall;
I myself saw the place; for Pittheus sent me
into the Pelopian fields once ruled by his father.
Not far from here is a marsh, once habitable land,
now waters busy with divers and marsh-coots;
here Jupiter came in mortal form, and with his parent
the wand-bearing descendant of Atlas, his wings laid aside.
To a thousand homes they went, seeking a place and rest;
a thousand homes the bolt shut against them; yet one received them,
small indeed, thatched with straw and marsh reed,
but pious Baucis, an old woman, and Philemon of equal age
were wedded in it in their youthful years, in it
grew old together, and, by confessing their poverty,
made it light, and by bearing it with no resentful mind;
nor does it matter whether you ask there for masters or servants:
the whole household is two, the same who obey and command.
an oak next to a linden, ringed by a modest wall;
I myself saw the place; for Pittheus sent me
into the Pelopian fields once ruled by his father.
Not far from here is a marsh, once habitable land,
now waters busy with divers and marsh-coots;
here Jupiter came in mortal form, and with his parent
the wand-bearing descendant of Atlas, his wings laid aside.
To a thousand homes they went, seeking a place and rest;
a thousand homes the bolt shut against them; yet one received them,
small indeed, thatched with straw and marsh reed,
but pious Baucis, an old woman, and Philemon of equal age
were wedded in it in their youthful years, in it
grew old together, and, by confessing their poverty,
made it light, and by bearing it with no resentful mind;
nor does it matter whether you ask there for masters or servants:
the whole household is two, the same who obey and command.
quoque minus dubites, tiliae contermina quercus collibus est Phrygiis modico circumdata muro; ipse locum vidi; nam me Pelopeia Pittheus misit in arva suo quondam regnata parenti. haud procul hinc stagnum est, tellus habitabilis olim, nunc celebres mergis fulicisque palustribus undae; Iuppiter huc specie mortali cumque parente venit Atlantiades positis caducifer alis. mille domos adiere locum requiemque petentes, mille domos clausere serae; tamen una recepit, parva quidem, stipulis et canna tecta palustri, sed pia Baucis anus parilique aetate Philemon illa sunt annis iuncti iuvenalibus, illa consenuere casa paupertatemque fatendo effecere levem nec iniqua mente ferendo; nec refert, dominos illic famulosne requiras: tota domus duo sunt, idem parentque iubentque.
So when the heaven-dwellers reached the little household gods,
and, stooping, entered the humble doorway,
the old man bade them rest their limbs on a bench set out;
over which busy Baucis threw a rough-woven cloth,
and on the hearth stirred apart the warm ash,
and rouses yesterday’s fire, and feeds it with leaves
and dry bark, and with an old woman’s breath draws it out to flames,
and brought down from the roof split torches and dry brushwood,
and broke them small and set them under a little bronze pot,
and trims the leaves off the vegetables her husband
had gathered from the well-watered garden; he, with a two-pronged fork,
lifts down a grimy chine of pork hanging from a blackened beam,
and from the long-kept back cuts off a small part,
and tames the cut piece in boiling water.
and, stooping, entered the humble doorway,
the old man bade them rest their limbs on a bench set out;
over which busy Baucis threw a rough-woven cloth,
and on the hearth stirred apart the warm ash,
and rouses yesterday’s fire, and feeds it with leaves
and dry bark, and with an old woman’s breath draws it out to flames,
and brought down from the roof split torches and dry brushwood,
and broke them small and set them under a little bronze pot,
and trims the leaves off the vegetables her husband
had gathered from the well-watered garden; he, with a two-pronged fork,
lifts down a grimy chine of pork hanging from a blackened beam,
and from the long-kept back cuts off a small part,
and tames the cut piece in boiling water.
ergo ubi caelicolae parvos tetigere penates summissoque humiles intrarunt vertice postes, membra senex posito iussit relevare sedili; cui superiniecit textum rude sedula Baucis inque foco tepidum cinerem dimovit et ignes suscitat hesternos foliisque et cortice sicco nutrit et ad flammas anima producit anili multifidasque faces ramaliaque arida tecto detulit et minuit parvoque admovit aeno, quodque suus coniunx riguo conlegerat horto, truncat holus foliis; furca levat ille bicorni sordida terga suis nigro pendentia tigno servatoque diu resecat de tergore partem exiguam sectamque domat ferventibus undis.
Meanwhile they beguile the intervening hours with talk,
and shake up a mattress of soft marsh sedge laid on a couch
with frame and feet of willow. They cover it with cloths
they were not used to spread save on a festal day,
but even this was cheap and old, a cloth not to be scorned
by a willow couch. The gods reclined. The old woman,
girt up and trembling, sets the table, but the third foot
of the table was uneven: a potsherd made it even;
and when, slipped beneath, it had taken away the tilt,
green mint wiped it clean. Here is set the two-colored berry
of chaste Minerva, and autumn cornel-cherries
preserved in liquid lees, and endive and radish
and a lump of curdled milk, and eggs lightly turned
in the not-fierce embers, all in earthenware.
After this a mixing-bowl chased from the same silver
is set out, and cups made of beechwood, smeared,
where they are hollow, with yellow wax; a little while,
and the hearth sent up the warm feast, and wines
of no long age are brought back again, and, set a little aside,
give place to the second course: here is the nut, here
the dried fig mixed with wrinkled dates, and plums,
and fragrant apples in wide baskets,
and grapes gathered from the purple vines,
in the middle a bright honeycomb; and above all
came welcoming faces, and no sluggish, grudging goodwill.
and shake up a mattress of soft marsh sedge laid on a couch
with frame and feet of willow. They cover it with cloths
they were not used to spread save on a festal day,
but even this was cheap and old, a cloth not to be scorned
by a willow couch. The gods reclined. The old woman,
girt up and trembling, sets the table, but the third foot
of the table was uneven: a potsherd made it even;
and when, slipped beneath, it had taken away the tilt,
green mint wiped it clean. Here is set the two-colored berry
of chaste Minerva, and autumn cornel-cherries
preserved in liquid lees, and endive and radish
and a lump of curdled milk, and eggs lightly turned
in the not-fierce embers, all in earthenware.
After this a mixing-bowl chased from the same silver
is set out, and cups made of beechwood, smeared,
where they are hollow, with yellow wax; a little while,
and the hearth sent up the warm feast, and wines
of no long age are brought back again, and, set a little aside,
give place to the second course: here is the nut, here
the dried fig mixed with wrinkled dates, and plums,
and fragrant apples in wide baskets,
and grapes gathered from the purple vines,
in the middle a bright honeycomb; and above all
came welcoming faces, and no sluggish, grudging goodwill.
interea medias fallunt sermonibus horas concutiuntque torum de molli fluminis ulva inpositum lecto sponda pedibusque salignis. vestibus hunc velant, quas non nisi tempore festo sternere consuerant, sed et haec vilisque vetusque vestis erat, lecto non indignanda saligno. adcubuere dei. mensam succincta tremensque ponit anus, mensae sed erat pes tertius inpar: testa parem fecit; quae postquam subdita clivum sustulit, aequatam mentae tersere virentes. ponitur hic bicolor sincerae baca Minervae conditaque in liquida corna autumnalia faece intibaque et radix et lactis massa coacti ovaque non acri leviter versata favilla, omnia fictilibus. post haec caelatus eodem sistitur argento crater fabricataque fago pocula, qua cava sunt, flaventibus inlita ceris; parva mora est, epulasque foci misere calentes, nec longae rursus referuntur vina senectae dantque locum mensis paulum seducta secundis: hic nux, hic mixta est rugosis carica palmis prunaque et in patulis redolentia mala canistris et de purpureis conlectae vitibus uvae, candidus in medio favus est; super omnia vultus accessere boni nec iners pauperque voluntas.
Meanwhile they see the mixing-bowl, so often drained,
refill of its own accord, and the wine well up by itself:
astonished, they are afraid at the strangeness, and with upturned hands
Baucis and timid Philemon utter prayers,
and beg pardon for the food and the meager preparation.
There was a single goose, the guardian of the tiny cottage;
which the masters were making ready to slaughter for their divine guests;
he, swift of wing, tires out the slow old folk,
and long eludes them, and at last seemed to have fled
for refuge to the gods themselves: the gods above forbade his killing,
and ’We are gods,’ they said, ’and the impious neighborhood
shall pay its deserved penalty; to you it will be granted
to be exempt from this evil; only leave your dwelling
and accompany our steps, and come together up into the heights
of the mountain!’ Both obey, and, propped on their staffs,
struggle to set their steps up the long slope.
refill of its own accord, and the wine well up by itself:
astonished, they are afraid at the strangeness, and with upturned hands
Baucis and timid Philemon utter prayers,
and beg pardon for the food and the meager preparation.
There was a single goose, the guardian of the tiny cottage;
which the masters were making ready to slaughter for their divine guests;
he, swift of wing, tires out the slow old folk,
and long eludes them, and at last seemed to have fled
for refuge to the gods themselves: the gods above forbade his killing,
and ’We are gods,’ they said, ’and the impious neighborhood
shall pay its deserved penalty; to you it will be granted
to be exempt from this evil; only leave your dwelling
and accompany our steps, and come together up into the heights
of the mountain!’ Both obey, and, propped on their staffs,
struggle to set their steps up the long slope.
’Interea totiens haustum cratera repleri sponte sua per seque vident succrescere vina: attoniti novitate pavent manibusque supinis concipiunt Baucisque preces timidusque Philemon et veniam dapibus nullisque paratibus orant. unicus anser erat, minimae custodia villae: quem dis hospitibus domini mactare parabant; ille celer penna tardos aetate fatigat eluditque diu tandemque est visus ad ipsos confugisse deos: superi vetuere necari "di" que "sumus, meritasque luet vicinia poenas inpia" dixerunt; "vobis inmunibus huius esse mali dabitur; modo vestra relinquite tecta ac nostros comitate gradus et in ardua montis ite simul!" parent ambo baculisque levati nituntur longo vestigia ponere clivo.
They were as far from the top as an arrow once shot can go:
they turned their eyes and saw the rest sunk in the marsh,
only their own house remaining; and while they marvel at it,
while they weep for the fate of their folk,
that old cottage, small even for its two owners,
is turned into a temple: columns came in place of the forked props,
the thatch yellows and the roof is seen gilded,
the doors chased, and the ground covered with marble.
Then the son of Saturn uttered such words with placid mouth:
’Say, just old man, and woman worthy of a just husband,
what you would wish.’ Having spoken a little with Baucis,
Philemon discloses their shared choice to the gods:
’We ask to be your priests and to keep your shrine,
and, since we have passed our years in concord,
let the same hour carry off the two of us, that I may never
see my wife’s tomb, nor be buried by her.’
Fulfillment follows the prayer: they were the temple’s keepers
as long as life was given; and, undone by years and age,
when by chance they stood before the sacred steps
and were telling the story of the place,
Baucis saw Philemon put forth leaves, the elder Philemon
saw Baucis put forth leaves. And now, as the treetop grew
over their two faces, while they still could they exchanged
words in turn, and ’Farewell, O spouse,’ they said together,
and together the bark covered and hid their mouths:
the Thynian dweller there still shows the neighboring
trunks made from the two bodies.
they turned their eyes and saw the rest sunk in the marsh,
only their own house remaining; and while they marvel at it,
while they weep for the fate of their folk,
that old cottage, small even for its two owners,
is turned into a temple: columns came in place of the forked props,
the thatch yellows and the roof is seen gilded,
the doors chased, and the ground covered with marble.
Then the son of Saturn uttered such words with placid mouth:
’Say, just old man, and woman worthy of a just husband,
what you would wish.’ Having spoken a little with Baucis,
Philemon discloses their shared choice to the gods:
’We ask to be your priests and to keep your shrine,
and, since we have passed our years in concord,
let the same hour carry off the two of us, that I may never
see my wife’s tomb, nor be buried by her.’
Fulfillment follows the prayer: they were the temple’s keepers
as long as life was given; and, undone by years and age,
when by chance they stood before the sacred steps
and were telling the story of the place,
Baucis saw Philemon put forth leaves, the elder Philemon
saw Baucis put forth leaves. And now, as the treetop grew
over their two faces, while they still could they exchanged
words in turn, and ’Farewell, O spouse,’ they said together,
and together the bark covered and hid their mouths:
the Thynian dweller there still shows the neighboring
trunks made from the two bodies.
tantum aberant summo, quantum semel ire sagitta missa potest: flexere oculos et mersa palude cetera prospiciunt, tantum sua tecta manere, dumque ea mirantur, dum deflent fata suorum, illa vetus dominis etiam casa parva duobus vertitur in templum: furcas subiere columnae, stramina flavescunt aurataque tecta videntur caelataeque fores adopertaque marmore tellus. talia tum placido Saturnius edidit ore: "dicite, iuste senex et femina coniuge iusto digna, quid optetis." cum Baucide pauca locutus iudicium superis aperit commune Philemon: "esse sacerdotes delubraque vestra tueri poscimus, et quoniam concordes egimus annos, auferat hora duos eadem, nec coniugis umquam busta meae videam, neu sim tumulandus ab illa." vota fides sequitur: templi tutela fuere, donec vita data est; annis aevoque soluti ante gradus sacros cum starent forte locique narrarent casus, frondere Philemona Baucis, Baucida conspexit senior frondere Philemon. iamque super geminos crescente cacumine vultus mutua, dum licuit, reddebant dicta "vale" que "o coniunx" dixere simul, simul abdita texit ora frutex: ostendit adhuc Thyneius illic incola de gemino vicinos corpore truncos.
These things truthful old men
(nor was there any reason they should wish to deceive)
told me; for my own part I saw garlands hanging
over the boughs, and, laying fresh ones, I said:
"Let those who are the gods’ care be gods, and let those
who worshipped be worshipped."’
(nor was there any reason they should wish to deceive)
told me; for my own part I saw garlands hanging
over the boughs, and, laying fresh ones, I said:
"Let those who are the gods’ care be gods, and let those
who worshipped be worshipped."’
haec mihi non vani (neque erat, cur fallere vellent) narravere senes; equidem pendentia vidi serta super ramos ponensque recentia dixi "cura deum di sint, et, qui coluere, colantur."’
He had ceased, and both the matter and the teller
had moved them all, Theseus especially; whom, wishing to hear
of the gods’ marvelous deeds, the Calydonian river,
leaning on his elbow, addresses thus: ’There are, O bravest one,
whose shape has been changed once and stayed in that renewing;
there are those who have the right to pass into more figures —
as you, Proteus, dweller in the sea that clasps the earth.
For now they saw you a young man, now a lion,
now you were a violent boar, now a serpent men would dread
to touch, now horns made you a bull;
often you could seem a stone, often too a tree,
sometimes, mimicking the look of flowing waters,
you were a river, sometimes a fire, the foe of waters.
had moved them all, Theseus especially; whom, wishing to hear
of the gods’ marvelous deeds, the Calydonian river,
leaning on his elbow, addresses thus: ’There are, O bravest one,
whose shape has been changed once and stayed in that renewing;
there are those who have the right to pass into more figures —
as you, Proteus, dweller in the sea that clasps the earth.
For now they saw you a young man, now a lion,
now you were a violent boar, now a serpent men would dread
to touch, now horns made you a bull;
often you could seem a stone, often too a tree,
sometimes, mimicking the look of flowing waters,
you were a river, sometimes a fire, the foe of waters.
Desierat, cunctosque et res et moverat auctor, Thesea praecipue; quem facta audire volentem mira deum innixus cubito Calydonius amnis talibus adloquitur: ’sunt, o fortissime, quorum forma semel mota est et in hoc renovamine mansit; sunt, quibus in plures ius est transire figuras, ut tibi, conplexi terram maris incola, Proteu. nam modo te iuvenem, modo te videre leonem, nunc violentus aper, nunc, quem tetigisse timerent, anguis eras, modo te faciebant cornua taurum; saepe lapis poteras, arbor quoque saepe videri, interdum, faciem liquidarum imitatus aquarum, flumen eras, interdum undis contrarius ignis.
No less right has the wife of Autolycus, daughter
of Erysichthon: her father was one who scorned the powers
of the gods and burned no incense on their altars;
he is even said to have violated Ceres’s grove with the axe
and profaned the ancient woods with iron.
There stood in them a huge oak of aged timber,
itself a grove; fillets and remembering tablets and garlands
wreathed its middle, the proofs of prayers fulfilled.
Often beneath it the dryads led their festal dances,
often too, their hands joined in a row, they circled
the measure of its trunk, and the girth of the timber
filled thrice five ells, and the rest of the wood was
as much beneath it as all the grass was beneath the wood.
Yet not for that did the son of Triopas hold his iron
from it, and he orders his servants to cut down the sacred oak,
and when he saw them, though ordered, hang back,
the criminal snatched an axe from one of them and uttered these words:
"Though it were not only the goddess’s beloved,
but the very goddess, now it shall touch the ground with its leafy top."
of Erysichthon: her father was one who scorned the powers
of the gods and burned no incense on their altars;
he is even said to have violated Ceres’s grove with the axe
and profaned the ancient woods with iron.
There stood in them a huge oak of aged timber,
itself a grove; fillets and remembering tablets and garlands
wreathed its middle, the proofs of prayers fulfilled.
Often beneath it the dryads led their festal dances,
often too, their hands joined in a row, they circled
the measure of its trunk, and the girth of the timber
filled thrice five ells, and the rest of the wood was
as much beneath it as all the grass was beneath the wood.
Yet not for that did the son of Triopas hold his iron
from it, and he orders his servants to cut down the sacred oak,
and when he saw them, though ordered, hang back,
the criminal snatched an axe from one of them and uttered these words:
"Though it were not only the goddess’s beloved,
but the very goddess, now it shall touch the ground with its leafy top."
’Nec minus Autolyci coniunx, Erysicthone nata, iuris habet: pater huius erat, qui numina divum sperneret et nullos aris adoleret odores; ille etiam Cereale nemus violasse securi dicitur et lucos ferro temerasse vetustos. stabat in his ingens annoso robore quercus, una nemus; vittae mediam memoresque tabellae sertaque cingebant, voti argumenta potentum. saepe sub hac dryades festas duxere choreas, saepe etiam manibus nexis ex ordine trunci circuiere modum, mensuraque roboris ulnas quinque ter inplebat, nec non et cetera tantum silva sub hac, silva quantum fuit herba sub omni. non tamen idcirco ferrum Triopeius illa abstinuit famulosque iubet succidere sacrum robur, et ut iussos cunctari vidit, ab uno edidit haec rapta sceleratus verba securi: "non dilecta deae solum, sed et ipsa licebit sit dea, iam tanget frondente cacumine terram."
He spoke, and while he poises the weapon for a slanting stroke,
the oak of Deo trembled and gave a groan,
and alike the leaves, alike the acorns began to pale,
and the long boughs to take on pallor.
When his impious hand made a wound in its trunk,
blood flowed no otherwise from the broken bark
than it is wont when a great bull, a victim, falls
before the altars, and the gore pours from the severed neck.
All were stunned, and one of them all dares to forbid
the sacrilege and to stay the savage axe:
the Thessalian looks at him and "Take the reward of your piety!"
he said, and turned the iron from the tree against the man,
and lops off his head, and strikes the oak again;
and from the midst of the timber such a sound was returned:
"I am a nymph most dear to Ceres beneath this wood,
and I prophesy to you, dying, that the punishment of your deeds
is at hand — a comfort for my death."
He pursues his crime, and the tree, at last weakened
by countless strokes and drawn by ropes, fell,
and laid low much of the wood with its weight.
the oak of Deo trembled and gave a groan,
and alike the leaves, alike the acorns began to pale,
and the long boughs to take on pallor.
When his impious hand made a wound in its trunk,
blood flowed no otherwise from the broken bark
than it is wont when a great bull, a victim, falls
before the altars, and the gore pours from the severed neck.
All were stunned, and one of them all dares to forbid
the sacrilege and to stay the savage axe:
the Thessalian looks at him and "Take the reward of your piety!"
he said, and turned the iron from the tree against the man,
and lops off his head, and strikes the oak again;
and from the midst of the timber such a sound was returned:
"I am a nymph most dear to Ceres beneath this wood,
and I prophesy to you, dying, that the punishment of your deeds
is at hand — a comfort for my death."
He pursues his crime, and the tree, at last weakened
by countless strokes and drawn by ropes, fell,
and laid low much of the wood with its weight.
dixit, et obliquos dum telum librat in ictus, contremuit gemitumque dedit Deoia quercus, et pariter frondes, pariter pallescere glandes coepere ac longi pallorem ducere rami. cuius ut in trunco fecit manus inpia vulnus, haud aliter fluxit discusso cortice sanguis, quam solet, ante aras ingens ubi victima taurus concidit, abrupta cruor e cervice profundi. obstipuere omnes, aliquisque ex omnibus audet deterrere nefas saevamque inhibere bipennem: aspicit hunc "mentis" que "piae cape praemia!" dixit Thessalus inque virum convertit ab arbore ferrum detruncatque caput repetitaque robora caedit, redditus e medio sonus est cum robore talis: "nympha sub hoc ego sum Cereri gratissima ligno, quae tibi factorum poenas instare tuorum vaticinor moriens, nostri solacia leti." persequitur scelus ille suum, labefactaque tandem ictibus innumeris adductaque funibus arbor corruit et multam prostravit pondere silvam.
The dryads, astonished at the loss of the woods and their own,
all sisters, in black robes go mourning to Ceres
and pray for Erysichthon’s punishment.
She assented to them, and with a movement of her most beautiful head
shook the fields laden with heavy harvests,
and contrives a kind of punishment to be pitied,
if he were not, by his own deeds, to be pitied by none —
to tear him with pestilent Hunger: which, since the goddess herself
may not approach her (for the fates do not allow
Ceres and Hunger to meet), she calls one of the mountain
powers, a rustic oread, with such words:
"There is a place on the farthest edges of icy Scythia,
a sad soil, a barren land, without crop, without tree;
sluggish Cold dwells there, and Pallor and Trembling
and fasting Hunger: bid her hide herself, the wicked one,
in the breast of the sacrilegious man, and let no plenty
of things conquer her or overcome my strength in the contest,
and let not the length of the way frighten you — take my chariot,
take the dragons, to guide on high with the reins!"
all sisters, in black robes go mourning to Ceres
and pray for Erysichthon’s punishment.
She assented to them, and with a movement of her most beautiful head
shook the fields laden with heavy harvests,
and contrives a kind of punishment to be pitied,
if he were not, by his own deeds, to be pitied by none —
to tear him with pestilent Hunger: which, since the goddess herself
may not approach her (for the fates do not allow
Ceres and Hunger to meet), she calls one of the mountain
powers, a rustic oread, with such words:
"There is a place on the farthest edges of icy Scythia,
a sad soil, a barren land, without crop, without tree;
sluggish Cold dwells there, and Pallor and Trembling
and fasting Hunger: bid her hide herself, the wicked one,
in the breast of the sacrilegious man, and let no plenty
of things conquer her or overcome my strength in the contest,
and let not the length of the way frighten you — take my chariot,
take the dragons, to guide on high with the reins!"
’Attonitae dryades damno nemorumque suoque, omnes germanae, Cererem cum vestibus atris maerentes adeunt poenamque Erysicthonis orant. adnuit his capitisque sui pulcherrima motu concussit gravidis oneratos messibus agros, moliturque genus poenae miserabile, si non ille suis esset nulli miserabilis actis, pestifera lacerare Fame: quae quatenus ipsi non adeunda deae est (neque enim Cereremque Famemque fata coire sinunt), montani numinis unam talibus agrestem conpellat oreada dictis: "est locus extremis Scythiae glacialis in oris, triste solum, sterilis, sine fruge, sine arbore tellus; Frigus iners illic habitant Pallorque Tremorque et ieiuna Fames: ea se in praecordia condat sacrilegi scelerata, iube, nec copia rerum vincat eam superetque meas certamine vires, neve viae spatium te terreat, accipe currus, accipe, quos frenis alte moderere, dracones!"
And she gave them; she, borne up by the given chariot
through the air, came down into Scythia:
and on the peak of a stiff mountain (they call it Caucasus)
she lifted the dragons’ necks, and saw Hunger, whom she sought,
in a stony field, plucking with nails and teeth the scanty grass.
Her hair was shaggy, her eyes hollow, pallor on her face,
her lips white with neglect, her throat rough with mold,
her skin hard, through which her entrails could be seen;
her dry bones stood out beneath her curved loins,
in place of a belly was the place for a belly; you would think
her breast hung and was held only by the framework of the spine.
Leanness had enlarged her joints, the round of her knees
swelled, and her ankles bulged with an immoderate knob.
As soon as she saw her from afar (for she did not dare
to come near), she reports the goddess’s commands, and,
having delayed a little, though she was far off,
though she had only just come there, still she seemed
to feel hunger, and drove the dragons back into Haemonia,
aloft, the reins turned.
through the air, came down into Scythia:
and on the peak of a stiff mountain (they call it Caucasus)
she lifted the dragons’ necks, and saw Hunger, whom she sought,
in a stony field, plucking with nails and teeth the scanty grass.
Her hair was shaggy, her eyes hollow, pallor on her face,
her lips white with neglect, her throat rough with mold,
her skin hard, through which her entrails could be seen;
her dry bones stood out beneath her curved loins,
in place of a belly was the place for a belly; you would think
her breast hung and was held only by the framework of the spine.
Leanness had enlarged her joints, the round of her knees
swelled, and her ankles bulged with an immoderate knob.
As soon as she saw her from afar (for she did not dare
to come near), she reports the goddess’s commands, and,
having delayed a little, though she was far off,
though she had only just come there, still she seemed
to feel hunger, and drove the dragons back into Haemonia,
aloft, the reins turned.
et dedit; illa dato subvecta per aera curru devenit in Scythiam: rigidique cacumine montis (Caucason appellant) serpentum colla levavit quaesitamque Famem lapidoso vidit in agro unguibus et raras vellentem dentibus herbas. hirtus erat crinis, cava lumina, pallor in ore, labra incana situ, scabrae rubigine fauces, dura cutis, per quam spectari viscera possent; ossa sub incurvis exstabant arida lumbis, ventris erat pro ventre locus; pendere putares pectus et a spinae tantummodo crate teneri. auxerat articulos macies, genuumque tumebat orbis, et inmodico prodibant tubere tali. ’Hanc procul ut vidit, (neque enim est accedere iuxta ausa) refert mandata deae paulumque morata, quamquam aberat longe, quamquam modo venerat illuc, visa tamen sensisse famem est, retroque dracones egit in Haemoniam versis sublimis habenis.
Hunger does Ceres’s bidding, though she is ever opposed
to her work, and is carried through the air by the wind
to the appointed house, and at once enters the sacrilegious man’s
chamber, and, loosed in deep sleep (for it was night-time),
embraces him in her twin arms, and breathes herself into the man,
and blows upon his throat and breast and mouth,
and scatters fasting through his empty veins;
and, her charge discharged, she leaves the fruitful world
and returns to her wonted caves in the needy homes.
Gentle Sleep was still soothing Erysichthon with peaceful wings:
he seeks feasts under the image of a dream,
and moves his mouth on nothing, and wears tooth against tooth,
and works his deluded gullet with empty food,
and for a banquet swallows, in vain, thin air.
But when rest was driven off, a fury of eating rages,
and reigns through his greedy throat and kindled entrails.
Without delay, what the sea, what the land, what the air
brings forth, he demands, and complains of fasting
with the tables set before him, and amid feasts seeks feasts;
and what could be enough for cities, what enough for a people,
does not suffice for one, and he craves the more,
the more he sends down into his belly.
And as the sea takes in the rivers from the whole earth
and is not sated with water, and drinks up the foreign streams,
and as ravening fire never refuses its fuel
and burns countless beams and, the greater the supply
given, seeks the more, and is the more voracious from the very heap:
so the mouth of profane Erysichthon takes in all feasts
and demands them at once. In him all food is the cause of food,
and a place is always made empty by eating.
to her work, and is carried through the air by the wind
to the appointed house, and at once enters the sacrilegious man’s
chamber, and, loosed in deep sleep (for it was night-time),
embraces him in her twin arms, and breathes herself into the man,
and blows upon his throat and breast and mouth,
and scatters fasting through his empty veins;
and, her charge discharged, she leaves the fruitful world
and returns to her wonted caves in the needy homes.
Gentle Sleep was still soothing Erysichthon with peaceful wings:
he seeks feasts under the image of a dream,
and moves his mouth on nothing, and wears tooth against tooth,
and works his deluded gullet with empty food,
and for a banquet swallows, in vain, thin air.
But when rest was driven off, a fury of eating rages,
and reigns through his greedy throat and kindled entrails.
Without delay, what the sea, what the land, what the air
brings forth, he demands, and complains of fasting
with the tables set before him, and amid feasts seeks feasts;
and what could be enough for cities, what enough for a people,
does not suffice for one, and he craves the more,
the more he sends down into his belly.
And as the sea takes in the rivers from the whole earth
and is not sated with water, and drinks up the foreign streams,
and as ravening fire never refuses its fuel
and burns countless beams and, the greater the supply
given, seeks the more, and is the more voracious from the very heap:
so the mouth of profane Erysichthon takes in all feasts
and demands them at once. In him all food is the cause of food,
and a place is always made empty by eating.
’Dicta Fames Cereris, quamvis contraria semper illius est operi, peragit perque aera vento ad iussam delata domum est, et protinus intrat sacrilegi thalamos altoque sopore solutum (noctis enim tempus) geminis amplectitur ulnis, seque viro inspirat, faucesque et pectus et ora adflat et in vacuis spargit ieiunia venis; functaque mandato fecundum deserit orbem inque domos inopes adsueta revertitur antra. ’Lenis adhuc Somnus placidis Erysicthona pennis mulcebat: petit ille dapes sub imagine somni, oraque vana movet dentemque in dente fatigat, exercetque cibo delusum guttur inani proque epulis tenues nequiquam devorat auras; ut vero est expulsa quies, furit ardor edendi perque avidas fauces incensaque viscera regnat. nec mora; quod pontus, quod terra, quod educat aer, poscit et adpositis queritur ieiunia mensis inque epulis epulas quaerit; quodque urbibus esse, quodque satis poterat populo, non sufficit uni, plusque cupit, quo plura suam demittit in alvum. utque fretum recipit de tota flumina terra nec satiatur aquis peregrinosque ebibit amnes, utque rapax ignis non umquam alimenta recusat innumerasque trabes cremat et, quo copia maior est data, plura petit turbaque voracior ipsa est: sic epulas omnes Erysicthonis ora profani accipiunt poscuntque simul. cibus omnis in illo causa cibi est, semperque locus fit inanis edendo.
And now with hunger and the gulf of his deep belly
he had worn down his ancestral wealth, but even then
unworn remained the dread hunger, and the flame
of his gullet flourished unappeased. At last,
his fortune sunk into his vitals, his daughter remained,
not worthy of that father. Her too, destitute, he sells:
high-born, she refuses a master, and, stretching her hands
over the neighboring waters, "Snatch me from my master,
you who have the reward of my snatched virginity!" she says:
this Neptune had taken; who, not scorning the prayer,
although she had just been seen by her pursuing owner,
makes her shape new and puts on her a man’s face
and the dress fit for those who catch fish.
The master, looking at her, "O you who hide the dangling
bronze with a little bait, controller of the rod," he says,
"so may the sea be calm, so may the fish in the wave
be credulous for you and feel no hooks unless fixed:
she who just now stood on this shore in a cheap dress,
with disordered hair (for I saw her standing on the shore),
tell me where she is: for her footprints reach no farther."
She perceived that the god’s gift turned out well, and,
glad to be asked after herself by herself,
answered the questioner thus: "Whoever you are, forgive me;
I have turned my eyes to no part away from this pool,
and, busy at my task, have stuck to it;
and, that you may doubt the less, so may the god of the sea
aid these arts of mine, as no one for a long while now
has stood on that shore — myself excepted — nor any woman."
The master believed her, and, turning on his foot,
trod the sand, and, deceived, went off: to her her own shape
was restored. But when her father perceived that she had
a shape-changing body, often he hands the daughter of Triopas
over to masters, but she would go off now a mare, now a bird,
now a cow, now a deer, and furnished her greedy father
with unrightful food.
he had worn down his ancestral wealth, but even then
unworn remained the dread hunger, and the flame
of his gullet flourished unappeased. At last,
his fortune sunk into his vitals, his daughter remained,
not worthy of that father. Her too, destitute, he sells:
high-born, she refuses a master, and, stretching her hands
over the neighboring waters, "Snatch me from my master,
you who have the reward of my snatched virginity!" she says:
this Neptune had taken; who, not scorning the prayer,
although she had just been seen by her pursuing owner,
makes her shape new and puts on her a man’s face
and the dress fit for those who catch fish.
The master, looking at her, "O you who hide the dangling
bronze with a little bait, controller of the rod," he says,
"so may the sea be calm, so may the fish in the wave
be credulous for you and feel no hooks unless fixed:
she who just now stood on this shore in a cheap dress,
with disordered hair (for I saw her standing on the shore),
tell me where she is: for her footprints reach no farther."
She perceived that the god’s gift turned out well, and,
glad to be asked after herself by herself,
answered the questioner thus: "Whoever you are, forgive me;
I have turned my eyes to no part away from this pool,
and, busy at my task, have stuck to it;
and, that you may doubt the less, so may the god of the sea
aid these arts of mine, as no one for a long while now
has stood on that shore — myself excepted — nor any woman."
The master believed her, and, turning on his foot,
trod the sand, and, deceived, went off: to her her own shape
was restored. But when her father perceived that she had
a shape-changing body, often he hands the daughter of Triopas
over to masters, but she would go off now a mare, now a bird,
now a cow, now a deer, and furnished her greedy father
with unrightful food.
’Iamque fame patrias altique voragine ventris attenuarat opes, sed inattenuata manebat tum quoque dira fames, inplacataeque vigebat flamma gulae. tandem, demisso in viscera censu, filia restabat, non illo digna parente. hanc quoque vendit inops: dominum generosa recusat et vicina suas tendens super aequora palmas "eripe me domino, qui raptae praemia nobis virginitatis habes!" ait: haec Neptunus habebat; qui prece non spreta, quamvis modo visa sequenti esset ero, formamque novat vultumque virilem induit et cultus piscem capientibus aptos. hanc dominus spectans "o qui pendentia parvo aera cibo celas, moderator harundinis," inquit "sic mare conpositum, sic sit tibi piscis in unda credulus et nullos, nisi fixus, sentiat hamos: quae modo cum vili turbatis veste capillis litore in hoc steterat (nam stantem in litore vidi), dic, ubi sit: neque enim vestigia longius exstant." illa dei munus bene cedere sensit et a se se quaeri gaudens his est resecuta rogantem: "quisquis es, ignoscas; in nullam lumina partem gurgite ab hoc flexi studioque operatus inhaesi, quoque minus dubites, sic has deus aequoris artes adiuvet, ut nemo iamdudum litore in isto, me tamen excepto, nec femina constitit ulla." credidit et verso dominus pede pressit harenam elususque abiit: illi sua reddita forma est. ast ubi habere suam transformia corpora sensit, saepe pater dominis Triopeida tradit, at illa nunc equa, nunc ales, modo bos, modo cervus abibat praebebatque avido non iusta alimenta parenti.
Yet after that force of the evil had consumed all
its matter, and new fodder was lacking for the grievous disease,
he himself, tearing his own limbs, began to rend them
with his bite, and, unhappy, fed his body by diminishing it.
its matter, and new fodder was lacking for the grievous disease,
he himself, tearing his own limbs, began to rend them
with his bite, and, unhappy, fed his body by diminishing it.
vis tamen illa mali postquam consumpserat omnem materiam derantque gravi nova pabula morbo, ipse suos artus lacerans divellere morsu coepit et infelix minuendo corpus alebat.—
’Why do I linger on others? I too, young man,
have the power of making my body new — a power limited in number.
For now I am seen as the one I now am, now I am bent
into a serpent, now as leader of the herd I take strength
into my horns — my horns, while I could.
Now one part of my brow lacks its weapon, as you yourself see.’
Groans followed his words.
have the power of making my body new — a power limited in number.
For now I am seen as the one I now am, now I am bent
into a serpent, now as leader of the herd I take strength
into my horns — my horns, while I could.
Now one part of my brow lacks its weapon, as you yourself see.’
Groans followed his words.
’Quid moror externis? etiam mihi nempe novandi est corporis, o iuvenis, numero finita, potestas. nam modo, qui nunc sum, videor, modo flector in anguem, armenti modo dux vires in cornua sumo,— cornua, dum potui. nunc pars caret altera telo frontis, ut ipse vides.’ gemitus sunt verba secuti.
The hero born of Neptune asks the god the cause
of his groans and his maimed brow; and the Calydonian river,
his uncombed hair bound round with reeds, began:
’A sad favor you ask. For who, once beaten, would care
to recount his own battles? Yet I will tell it in order —
nor was being beaten so shameful as the striving was honorable,
and so great a victor gives me great consolation.
If by chance the name of Deianira has reached
your ears in the telling — once the loveliest of maidens,
the envied hope of many suitors.
of his groans and his maimed brow; and the Calydonian river,
his uncombed hair bound round with reeds, began:
’A sad favor you ask. For who, once beaten, would care
to recount his own battles? Yet I will tell it in order —
nor was being beaten so shameful as the striving was honorable,
and so great a victor gives me great consolation.
If by chance the name of Deianira has reached
your ears in the telling — once the loveliest of maidens,
the envied hope of many suitors.
Quae gemitus truncaeque deo Neptunius heros causa rogat frontis; cui sic Calydonius amnis coepit inornatos redimitus harundine crines: ’triste petis munus. quis enim sua proelia victus commemorare velit? referam tamen ordine, nec tam turpe fuit vinci, quam contendisse decorum est, magnaque dat nobis tantus solacia victor. nomine siqua suo fando pervenit ad aures Deianira tuas, quondam pulcherrima virgo multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum.
When along with them I had entered the house of the father I sought,
"Take me as your son-in-law, son of Parthaon," I said;
and Alcides said the same. The others gave way to us two.
He kept urging that he offered Jove for a father-in-law, the fame
of his labors, and the commands of his stepmother, all mastered.
Against him I said, "It is shameful for a god to yield to a mortal" —
he was not yet a god — "you see in me the lord of the waters
that flow in winding courses through your realm.
No foreign guest sent to you from alien shores will be your son-in-law,
but I will be one of your own people, a part of your domain.
Only let it not count against me that royal Juno
does not hate me, and that no penalty of imposed labors is mine.
For as to him from whom you boast you are sprung, son of Alcmena —
Jupiter is either a false father, or a true one through a crime.
Through your mother’s adultery you claim a father. Choose: would you
rather Jove were a fiction, or that you were born of disgrace?"
As I spoke so, for a while now with a grim eye
he watched me, and could not firmly master his kindled rage,
and gave back just these words: "My right hand serves me better than my tongue.
So long as I win at fighting, you may win at talking" —
and he closed with me, fierce.
"Take me as your son-in-law, son of Parthaon," I said;
and Alcides said the same. The others gave way to us two.
He kept urging that he offered Jove for a father-in-law, the fame
of his labors, and the commands of his stepmother, all mastered.
Against him I said, "It is shameful for a god to yield to a mortal" —
he was not yet a god — "you see in me the lord of the waters
that flow in winding courses through your realm.
No foreign guest sent to you from alien shores will be your son-in-law,
but I will be one of your own people, a part of your domain.
Only let it not count against me that royal Juno
does not hate me, and that no penalty of imposed labors is mine.
For as to him from whom you boast you are sprung, son of Alcmena —
Jupiter is either a false father, or a true one through a crime.
Through your mother’s adultery you claim a father. Choose: would you
rather Jove were a fiction, or that you were born of disgrace?"
As I spoke so, for a while now with a grim eye
he watched me, and could not firmly master his kindled rage,
and gave back just these words: "My right hand serves me better than my tongue.
So long as I win at fighting, you may win at talking" —
and he closed with me, fierce.
cum quibus ut soceri domus est intrata petiti, "accipe me generum," dixi "Parthaone nate": dixit et Alcides. alii cessere duobus. ille Iovem socerum dare se, famamque laborum, et superata suae referebat iussa novercae. contra ego "turpe deum mortali cedere" dixi— nondum erat ille deus—"dominum me cernis aquarum cursibus obliquis inter tua regna fluentum. nec gener externis hospes tibi missus ab oris, sed popularis ero et rerum pars una tuarum. tantum ne noceat, quod me nec regia Iuno odit, et omnis abest iussorum poena laborum. nam, quo te iactas, Alcmena nate, creatum, Iuppiter aut falsus pater est, aut crimine verus. matris adulterio patrem petis. elige, fictum esse Iovem malis, an te per dedecus ortum." talia dicentem iamdudum lumine torvo spectat, et accensae non fortiter imperat irae, verbaque tot reddit: "melior mihi dextera lingua. dummodo pugnando superem, tu vince loquendo" congrediturque ferox.
I was ashamed, having just spoken big,
to give way: I threw the green cloak from my body,
put up my arms, held my hands spread wide before my chest
on guard, and set my limbs for the fight.
He scooped up dust in his cupped palms and scattered it over me,
and in his turn went tawny at the touch of the yellow sand.
And now he caught at my neck, now my legs, now my flanks,
or you would think he caught — and harried me from every side.
My own weight defended me, and I was attacked in vain,
no otherwise than a breakwater that the waves assault
with a great roar; it stands, kept safe by its own mass.
We drew apart a little, then came together again for war,
and we stood our ground, resolved not to yield, and
foot was locked with foot, and I, leaning forward with my whole chest,
pressed fingers against fingers and forehead against forehead.
Not otherwise have I seen strong bulls clash,
when the prize of the fight, the sleekest cow in all the pasture,
is sought; the herds look on and tremble,
not knowing whom the victory of so great a realm awaits.
to give way: I threw the green cloak from my body,
put up my arms, held my hands spread wide before my chest
on guard, and set my limbs for the fight.
He scooped up dust in his cupped palms and scattered it over me,
and in his turn went tawny at the touch of the yellow sand.
And now he caught at my neck, now my legs, now my flanks,
or you would think he caught — and harried me from every side.
My own weight defended me, and I was attacked in vain,
no otherwise than a breakwater that the waves assault
with a great roar; it stands, kept safe by its own mass.
We drew apart a little, then came together again for war,
and we stood our ground, resolved not to yield, and
foot was locked with foot, and I, leaning forward with my whole chest,
pressed fingers against fingers and forehead against forehead.
Not otherwise have I seen strong bulls clash,
when the prize of the fight, the sleekest cow in all the pasture,
is sought; the herds look on and tremble,
not knowing whom the victory of so great a realm awaits.
puduit modo magna locutum cedere: reieci viridem de corpore vestem, bracchiaque opposui, tenuique a pectore varas in statione manus et pugnae membra paravi. ille cavis hausto spargit me pulvere palmis, inque vicem fulvae tactu flavescit harenae. et modo cervicem, modo crura, modo ilia captat, aut captare putes, omnique a parte lacessit. me mea defendit gravitas frustraque petebar; haud secus ac moles, magno quam murmure fluctus oppugnant; manet illa, suoque est pondere tuta. digredimur paulum, rursusque ad bella coimus, inque gradu stetimus, certi non cedere, eratque cum pede pes iunctus, totoque ego pectore pronus et digitos digitis et frontem fronte premebam. non aliter vidi fortes concurrere tauros, cum, pretium pugnae, toto nitidissima saltu expetitur coniunx: spectant armenta paventque nescia, quem maneat tanti victoria regni.
Three times without success Alcides tried to thrust
my straining chest from him; at the fourth
he shook off my hold, broke the grip of my locked arms,
and with a shove of his hand — I am bound to confess the truth —
spun me straight about and clung, a weight, upon my back.
If you will believe me — and I do not seek glory by a lying tongue —
I seemed crushed beneath a mountain set upon me.
Barely could I work my arms in, streaming with sweat,
barely loosen his hard grip from my body.
He pressed me as I gasped, kept me from gathering my strength again,
and took command of my neck. Then at last the earth
was pressed by my knee, and I bit the sand with my mouth.
The weaker in strength, I turned aside to my arts,
and slipped from the man, shaped into a long snake.
But after I had curved my body into winding coils
and flickered my forked tongue with a fierce hiss,
the Tirynthian laughed, and mocking my arts,
"It was a labor of my cradle to master snakes,"
he said, "and granting you beat all other serpents, Achelous,
what fraction of the Lernaean Hydra will you be, one single snake?
my straining chest from him; at the fourth
he shook off my hold, broke the grip of my locked arms,
and with a shove of his hand — I am bound to confess the truth —
spun me straight about and clung, a weight, upon my back.
If you will believe me — and I do not seek glory by a lying tongue —
I seemed crushed beneath a mountain set upon me.
Barely could I work my arms in, streaming with sweat,
barely loosen his hard grip from my body.
He pressed me as I gasped, kept me from gathering my strength again,
and took command of my neck. Then at last the earth
was pressed by my knee, and I bit the sand with my mouth.
The weaker in strength, I turned aside to my arts,
and slipped from the man, shaped into a long snake.
But after I had curved my body into winding coils
and flickered my forked tongue with a fierce hiss,
the Tirynthian laughed, and mocking my arts,
"It was a labor of my cradle to master snakes,"
he said, "and granting you beat all other serpents, Achelous,
what fraction of the Lernaean Hydra will you be, one single snake?
ter sine profectu voluit nitentia contra reicere Alcides a se mea pectora; quarto excutit amplexus, adductaque bracchia solvit, inpulsumque manu—certum est mihi vera fateri— protinus avertit, tergoque onerosus inhaesit. siqua fides,—neque enim ficta mihi gloria voce quaeritur—inposito pressus mihi monte videbar. vix tamen inserui sudore fluentia multo bracchia, vix solvi duros a corpore nexus. instat anhelanti, prohibetque resumere vires, et cervice mea potitur. tum denique tellus pressa genu nostro est, et harenas ore momordi. inferior virtute, meas devertor ad artes, elaborque viro longum formatus in anguem. qui postquam flexos sinuavi corpus in orbes, cumque fero movi linguam stridore bisulcam, risit, et inludens nostras Tirynthius artes "cunarum labor est angues superare mearum," dixit "et ut vincas alios, Acheloe, dracones, pars quota Lernaeae serpens eris unus echidnae?
She was fertile from her own wounds, and not one
head of all her hundred was cut off unpunished,
but the neck stood stronger with a double heir.
This monster, branching with snakes born from her own slaughter
and thriving on her hurt, I mastered — and, mastered, made an end of.
What do you think will become of you, who, turned into a counterfeit snake,
wield borrowed weapons, and whom a begged-for shape conceals?"
He had spoken, and threw the bonds of his fingers
round the top of my neck: I was choked, as if my throat were squeezed
in a vise, and I fought to wrench my jaws free of his thumbs.
Beaten even so, I had still my third shape left,
the fierce bull’s. Changed in my limbs to a bull, I fought on.
He flung his arms about my muscles from the left,
and dragged me as I charged, and followed, and forced my hard horns
down, and fixed them in the ground, and stretched me in the deep sand.
Nor was that enough: while his savage right hand held
my stiff horn, he broke it, and tore it, maimed, from my brow.
This the naiads, filling it with fruit and fragrant flowers,
made holy; and Good Plenty is rich from my horn.’
head of all her hundred was cut off unpunished,
but the neck stood stronger with a double heir.
This monster, branching with snakes born from her own slaughter
and thriving on her hurt, I mastered — and, mastered, made an end of.
What do you think will become of you, who, turned into a counterfeit snake,
wield borrowed weapons, and whom a begged-for shape conceals?"
He had spoken, and threw the bonds of his fingers
round the top of my neck: I was choked, as if my throat were squeezed
in a vise, and I fought to wrench my jaws free of his thumbs.
Beaten even so, I had still my third shape left,
the fierce bull’s. Changed in my limbs to a bull, I fought on.
He flung his arms about my muscles from the left,
and dragged me as I charged, and followed, and forced my hard horns
down, and fixed them in the ground, and stretched me in the deep sand.
Nor was that enough: while his savage right hand held
my stiff horn, he broke it, and tore it, maimed, from my brow.
This the naiads, filling it with fruit and fragrant flowers,
made holy; and Good Plenty is rich from my horn.’
vulneribus fecunda suis erat illa, nec ullum de centum numero caput est inpune recisum, quin gemino cervix herede valentior esset. hanc ego ramosam natis e caede colubris crescentemque malo domui, domitamque reclusi. quid fore te credis, falsum qui versus in anguem arma aliena moves, quem forma precaria celat?" dixerat, et summo digitorum vincula collo inicit: angebar, ceu guttura forcipe pressus, pollicibusque meas pugnabam evellere fauces. sic quoque devicto restabat tertia tauri forma trucis. tauro mutatus membra rebello. induit ille toris a laeva parte lacertos, admissumque trahens sequitur, depressaque dura cornua figit humo, meque alta sternit harena. nec satis hoc fuerat: rigidum fera dextera cornu dum tenet, infregit, truncaque a fronte revellit. naides hoc, pomis et odoro flore repletum, sacrarunt; divesque meo Bona Copia cornu est.’
He had spoken; and a nymph, girt up in Diana’s manner,
one of the attendants, her hair loose on either side,
came in, and brought in the lavish horn the whole
of autumn, and the happy fruits, the second course.
Day comes on; and as the first sun struck the peaks
the young men departed, not waiting until the streams
should hold their peace and their quiet gliding and the waters
wholly subside. Achelous hid his rustic face
and his head, maimed of its horn, beneath the midmost waves.
one of the attendants, her hair loose on either side,
came in, and brought in the lavish horn the whole
of autumn, and the happy fruits, the second course.
Day comes on; and as the first sun struck the peaks
the young men departed, not waiting until the streams
should hold their peace and their quiet gliding and the waters
wholly subside. Achelous hid his rustic face
and his head, maimed of its horn, beneath the midmost waves.
Dixerat: et nymphe ritu succincta Dianae, una ministrarum, fusis utrimque capillis, incessit totumque tulit praedivite cornu autumnum et mensas, felicia poma, secundas. lux subit; et primo feriente cacumina sole discedunt iuvenes, neque enim dum flumina pacem et placidos habeant lapsus totaeque residant opperiuntur aquae. vultus Achelous agrestes et lacerum cornu mediis caput abdidit undis.
Yet the loss of his stripped-off beauty grieved him;
for the rest he goes unhurt. His head’s damage, too, with willow leaves
or with reeds laid over it, he hides.
But you, fierce Nessus, a passion for that same girl
had ruined, your back pierced by a flying arrow.
For Jove’s son, on his way back to his ancestral walls with his bride,
had come to the rushing waters of the Evenus.
Swollen beyond its wont, increased by the winter rains,
the river ran thick with whirlpools, and could not be crossed.
While Hercules, fearless for himself, was anxious for his wife,
Nessus came up, strong of limb and knowing the fords,
and "by my service," he said, "she will be set
on that far bank, Alcides. You use your strength to swim!"
for the rest he goes unhurt. His head’s damage, too, with willow leaves
or with reeds laid over it, he hides.
But you, fierce Nessus, a passion for that same girl
had ruined, your back pierced by a flying arrow.
For Jove’s son, on his way back to his ancestral walls with his bride,
had come to the rushing waters of the Evenus.
Swollen beyond its wont, increased by the winter rains,
the river ran thick with whirlpools, and could not be crossed.
While Hercules, fearless for himself, was anxious for his wife,
Nessus came up, strong of limb and knowing the fords,
and "by my service," he said, "she will be set
on that far bank, Alcides. You use your strength to swim!"
Huic tamen ablati doluit iactura decoris, cetera sospes habet. capitis quoque fronde saligna aut superinposita celatur harundine damnum. at te, Nesse ferox, eiusdem virginis ardor perdiderat volucri traiectum terga sagitta. namque nova repetens patrios cum coniuge muros venerat Eueni rapidas Iove natus ad undas. uberior solito, nimbis hiemalibus auctus, verticibusque frequens erat atque inpervius amnis. intrepidum pro se, curam de coniuge agentem Nessus adit, membrisque valens scitusque vadorum, ’officio’ que ’meo ripa sistetur in illa haec,’ ait ’Alcide. tu viribus utere nando!’
And the Aonian handed the Calydonian woman,
pale with fear, dreading the river and Nessus alike, to Nessus.
Then, just as he was, weighed down with quiver and the lion’s spoil —
for he had flung his club and curved bow across the stream —
"Since I have begun, let the river be overcome," he said,
and does not hesitate, nor ask where the current is gentlest,
and scorns to be carried at the water’s pleasure.
And now, holding the bank, as he was lifting the bow he had thrown over,
he knew his wife’s voice, and to Nessus, making ready
to betray his trust, he shouts, "Where does your vain
confidence in your feet carry you, you brute? To you, two-formed Nessus,
I speak. Hear me, and do not steal what is mine.
If no reverence for me has moved you, still your father’s wheel
might have held you back from forbidden couplings.
Yet you will not escape, however you trust in your horse’s aid;
with a wound, not with my feet, will I catch you." His last words
he makes good by the deed, and pierces the fleeing back
with a sped arrow. The barbed iron stood out from his chest.
The moment it was wrenched free, blood from both wounds
spurted, mixed with the poison of the Lernaean bane.
Nessus caught it: "I shall not die unavenged,"
he said within himself, and gave the robe, steeped in his warm gore,
as a gift to the stolen woman — a goad, as it were, to love.
pale with fear, dreading the river and Nessus alike, to Nessus.
Then, just as he was, weighed down with quiver and the lion’s spoil —
for he had flung his club and curved bow across the stream —
"Since I have begun, let the river be overcome," he said,
and does not hesitate, nor ask where the current is gentlest,
and scorns to be carried at the water’s pleasure.
And now, holding the bank, as he was lifting the bow he had thrown over,
he knew his wife’s voice, and to Nessus, making ready
to betray his trust, he shouts, "Where does your vain
confidence in your feet carry you, you brute? To you, two-formed Nessus,
I speak. Hear me, and do not steal what is mine.
If no reverence for me has moved you, still your father’s wheel
might have held you back from forbidden couplings.
Yet you will not escape, however you trust in your horse’s aid;
with a wound, not with my feet, will I catch you." His last words
he makes good by the deed, and pierces the fleeing back
with a sped arrow. The barbed iron stood out from his chest.
The moment it was wrenched free, blood from both wounds
spurted, mixed with the poison of the Lernaean bane.
Nessus caught it: "I shall not die unavenged,"
he said within himself, and gave the robe, steeped in his warm gore,
as a gift to the stolen woman — a goad, as it were, to love.
pallentemque metu, fluviumque ipsumque timentem tradidit Aonius pavidam Calydonida Nesso. mox, ut erat, pharetraque gravis spolioque leonis— nam clavam et curvos trans ripam miserat arcus— ’quandoquidem coepi, superentur flumina’ dixit, nec dubitat nec, qua sit clementissimus amnis, quaerit, et obsequio deferri spernit aquarum. iamque tenens ripam, missos cum tolleret arcus, coniugis agnovit vocem Nessoque paranti fallere depositum ’quo te fiducia’ clamat ’vana pedum, violente, rapit? tibi, Nesse biformis, dicimus. exaudi, nec res intercipe nostras. si te nulla mei reverentia movit, at orbes concubitus vetitos poterant inhibere paterni. haud tamen effugies, quamvis ope fidis equina; vulnere, non pedibus te consequar.’ ultima dicta re probat, et missa fugientia terga sagitta traicit. exstabat ferrum de pectore aduncum. quod simul evulsum est, sanguis per utrumque foramen emicuit mixtus Lernaei tabe veneni. excipit hunc Nessus ’ne’ que enim ’moriemur inulti’ secum ait, et calido velamina tincta cruore dat munus raptae velut inritamen amoris.
Long was the lapse of the time between, and the deeds of great
Hercules had filled the earth, and his stepmother’s hatred too.
Victorious from Oechalia, he was preparing on Cenaeum
his vows to Jove, when talkative Rumor ran ahead
to your ears, Deianira — Rumor, who delights
to add the false to the true and grows from nothing by her lies —
that the son of Amphitryon was held by passion for Iole.
His loving wife believes it, and, terrified by the report
of a new love, gave way at first to tears, and weeping
poured out her grief, the pitiful woman. Then soon, "But why
do I weep?" she said. "The rival will rejoice in these tears.
Since she is coming, I must hurry, and try something new
while I may, and while another does not yet hold my marriage bed.
Shall I complain, or be silent? Go back to Calydon, or die?
Leave the house? Or, if nothing more, stand in the way?
What if, Meleager, remembering that I am your sister,
I make ready some bold crime, and prove how much an injured
woman’s grief can do, by cutting the rival’s throat?"
Her mind runs off down various courses. To them all
she preferred to send the robe steeped in Nessus’s blood,
to give back strength to her failing love;
and to Lichas, ignorant of what he carried, she — not knowing
she handed her own grief — handed it, the most wretched woman, with coaxing words,
and bade him give the gift to her husband. The hero takes it, unsuspecting,
and puts upon his shoulders the venom of the Lernaean viper.
Hercules had filled the earth, and his stepmother’s hatred too.
Victorious from Oechalia, he was preparing on Cenaeum
his vows to Jove, when talkative Rumor ran ahead
to your ears, Deianira — Rumor, who delights
to add the false to the true and grows from nothing by her lies —
that the son of Amphitryon was held by passion for Iole.
His loving wife believes it, and, terrified by the report
of a new love, gave way at first to tears, and weeping
poured out her grief, the pitiful woman. Then soon, "But why
do I weep?" she said. "The rival will rejoice in these tears.
Since she is coming, I must hurry, and try something new
while I may, and while another does not yet hold my marriage bed.
Shall I complain, or be silent? Go back to Calydon, or die?
Leave the house? Or, if nothing more, stand in the way?
What if, Meleager, remembering that I am your sister,
I make ready some bold crime, and prove how much an injured
woman’s grief can do, by cutting the rival’s throat?"
Her mind runs off down various courses. To them all
she preferred to send the robe steeped in Nessus’s blood,
to give back strength to her failing love;
and to Lichas, ignorant of what he carried, she — not knowing
she handed her own grief — handed it, the most wretched woman, with coaxing words,
and bade him give the gift to her husband. The hero takes it, unsuspecting,
and puts upon his shoulders the venom of the Lernaean viper.
Longa fuit medii mora temporis, actaque magni Herculis inplerant terras odiumque novercae. victor ab Oechalia Cenaeo sacra parabat vota Iovi, cum Fama loquax praecessit ad aures, Deianira, tuas, quae veris addere falsa gaudet, et e minimo sua per mendacia crescit, Amphitryoniaden Ioles ardore teneri. credit amans, venerisque novae perterrita fama indulsit primo lacrimis, flendoque dolorem diffudit miseranda suum. mox deinde ’quid autem flemus?’ ait ’paelex lacrimis laetabitur istis. quae quoniam adveniet, properandum aliquidque novandum est, dum licet, et nondum thalamos tenet altera nostros. conquerar, an sileam? repetam Calydona, morerne? excedam tectis? an, si nihil amplius, obstem? quid si me, Meleagre, tuam memor esse sororem forte paro facinus, quantumque iniuria possit femineusque dolor, iugulata paelice testor?’ in cursus animus varios abit. omnibus illis praetulit inbutam Nesseo sanguine vestem mittere, quae vires defecto reddat amori, ignaroque Lichae, quid tradat, nescia, luctus ipsa suos tradit blandisque miserrima verbis, dona det illa viro, mandat. capit inscius heros, induiturque umeris Lernaeae virus echidnae.
He was offering incense and words of prayer to the first flames,
and pouring wine from the bowl onto the marble altars:
that force of evil grew warm, and, loosed by the flames,
spread wide and slid all through the limbs of Hercules.
While he could, he held back his groan with his accustomed courage.
After his endurance was overcome by the pain, he thrust the altars away
and filled wooded Oeta with his cries.
At once he tries to tear off the deadly robe:
where it is pulled, it pulls the skin away, and — foul to tell —
either it clings to the limbs, resisting all his efforts to wrench it free,
or it lays bare the mangled flesh and the great bones.
The blood itself hisses, as when a glowing blade
is dipped in an icy pool, and seethes with the burning venom.
There is no limit: the greedy flames drink down his vitals,
a dark sweat runs from his whole body,
his scorched sinews crackle, and, with his marrow
melted by the unseen rot, raising his palms to the stars
and pouring wine from the bowl onto the marble altars:
that force of evil grew warm, and, loosed by the flames,
spread wide and slid all through the limbs of Hercules.
While he could, he held back his groan with his accustomed courage.
After his endurance was overcome by the pain, he thrust the altars away
and filled wooded Oeta with his cries.
At once he tries to tear off the deadly robe:
where it is pulled, it pulls the skin away, and — foul to tell —
either it clings to the limbs, resisting all his efforts to wrench it free,
or it lays bare the mangled flesh and the great bones.
The blood itself hisses, as when a glowing blade
is dipped in an icy pool, and seethes with the burning venom.
There is no limit: the greedy flames drink down his vitals,
a dark sweat runs from his whole body,
his scorched sinews crackle, and, with his marrow
melted by the unseen rot, raising his palms to the stars
Tura dabat primis et verba precantia flammis, vinaque marmoreas patera fundebat in aras: incaluit vis illa mali, resolutaque flammis Herculeos abiit late dilapsa per artus. dum potuit, solita gemitum virtute repressit. victa malis postquam est patientia, reppulit aras, inplevitque suis nemorosam vocibus Oeten. nec mora, letiferam conatur scindere vestem: qua trahitur, trahit illa cutem, foedumque relatu, aut haeret membris frustra temptata revelli, aut laceros artus et grandia detegit ossa. ipse cruor, gelido ceu quondam lammina candens tincta lacu, stridit coquiturque ardente veneno. nec modus est, sorbent avidae praecordia flammae, caeruleusque fluit toto de corpore sudor, ambustique sonant nervi, caecaque medullis tabe liquefactis tollens ad sidera palmas ’
he cries, ’Feed, daughter of Saturn, on my ruin:
feed, and watch this plague, you cruel one, from on high,
and glut your savage heart. Or, if I am to be pitied even by an enemy —
that is, by you — then take away this soul, sick
and hateful and born to labors, with its dreadful tortures.
Death will be a gift to me; it suits a stepmother to give such gifts.
Was it for this that I tamed Busiris, who fouled
his temples with the blood of strangers? That I tore from savage
Antaeus his mother’s nourishment? That neither the triple shape
of the Iberian herdsman moved me, nor your triple shape, Cerberus?
Was it you, my hands, that bent the strong bull’s horns?
Elis holds your work, and the Stymphalian waters,
and the Parthenian grove. By your valor was brought back
the belt chased with Thermodontian gold,
and the apples kept under guard by the unsleeping dragon.
Could the Centaurs not withstand me, nor
the boar that ravaged Arcadia? Did it profit the Hydra
to grow by her own loss and take on doubled strength?
What of when I saw the Thracian’s horses fat with human blood,
and the stalls full of mangled bodies,
and, having seen, threw them down, and killed both master and horses?
By these arms the Nemean bulk lies crushed;
on this neck I bore the sky. The savage wife of Jove
is wearied of commanding: I am unwearied of doing.
feed, and watch this plague, you cruel one, from on high,
and glut your savage heart. Or, if I am to be pitied even by an enemy —
that is, by you — then take away this soul, sick
and hateful and born to labors, with its dreadful tortures.
Death will be a gift to me; it suits a stepmother to give such gifts.
Was it for this that I tamed Busiris, who fouled
his temples with the blood of strangers? That I tore from savage
Antaeus his mother’s nourishment? That neither the triple shape
of the Iberian herdsman moved me, nor your triple shape, Cerberus?
Was it you, my hands, that bent the strong bull’s horns?
Elis holds your work, and the Stymphalian waters,
and the Parthenian grove. By your valor was brought back
the belt chased with Thermodontian gold,
and the apples kept under guard by the unsleeping dragon.
Could the Centaurs not withstand me, nor
the boar that ravaged Arcadia? Did it profit the Hydra
to grow by her own loss and take on doubled strength?
What of when I saw the Thracian’s horses fat with human blood,
and the stalls full of mangled bodies,
and, having seen, threw them down, and killed both master and horses?
By these arms the Nemean bulk lies crushed;
on this neck I bore the sky. The savage wife of Jove
is wearied of commanding: I am unwearied of doing.
cladibus,’ exclamat ’Saturnia, pascere nostris: pascere, et hanc pestem specta, crudelis, ab alto, corque ferum satia. vel si miserandus et hosti, hoc est, si tibi sum, diris cruciatibus aegram invisamque animam natamque laboribus aufer. mors mihi munus erit; decet haec dare dona novercam. ergo ego foedantem peregrino templa cruore Busirin domui? saevoque alimenta parentis Antaeo eripui? nec me pastoris Hiberi forma triplex, nec forma triplex tua, Cerbere, movit? vosne, manus, validi pressistis cornua tauri? vestrum opus Elis habet, vestrum Stymphalides undae, Partheniumque nemus? vestra virtute relatus Thermodontiaco caelatus balteus auro, pomaque ab insomni concustodita dracone? nec mihi centauri potuere resistere, nec mi Arcadiae vastator aper? nec profuit hydrae crescere per damnum geminasque resumere vires? quid, cum Thracis equos humano sanguine pingues plenaque corporibus laceris praesepia vidi, visaque deieci, dominumque ipsosque peremi? his elisa iacet moles Nemeaea lacertis: hac caelum cervice tuli. defessa iubendo est saeva Iovis coniunx: ego sum indefessus agendo.
But a new plague is here, which can be resisted
neither by courage nor by spear and arms. Through the deep lungs
a devouring fire wanders, and feeds on all my limbs.
Yet Eurystheus thrives! And are there those who can believe
there are gods?’ he said, and, wounded, paced through high Oeta
no otherwise than a bull that carries the hunting-spears
fixed in its body, while the one who did the deed has fled.
Often you might see him uttering groans, often roaring,
often trying again to tear off the whole robe,
and felling tree-trunks, and raging at the mountains,
or stretching his arms toward his father’s sky.
neither by courage nor by spear and arms. Through the deep lungs
a devouring fire wanders, and feeds on all my limbs.
Yet Eurystheus thrives! And are there those who can believe
there are gods?’ he said, and, wounded, paced through high Oeta
no otherwise than a bull that carries the hunting-spears
fixed in its body, while the one who did the deed has fled.
Often you might see him uttering groans, often roaring,
often trying again to tear off the whole robe,
and felling tree-trunks, and raging at the mountains,
or stretching his arms toward his father’s sky.
sed nova pestis adest, cui nec virtute resisti nec telis armisque potest. pulmonibus errat ignis edax imis, perque omnes pascitur artus. at valet Eurystheus! et sunt, qui credere possint esse deos?’ dixit, perque altam saucius Oeten haud aliter graditur, quam si venabula taurus corpore fixa gerat, factique refugerit auctor. saepe illum gemitus edentem, saepe frementem, saepe retemptantem totas infringere vestes sternentemque trabes irascentemque videres montibus aut patrio tendentem bracchia caelo.
Look — he catches sight of Lichas, trembling, hidden in a hollow rock,
and, as his pain had gathered up all its fury,
"Was it you, Lichas," he said, "who gave the deadly gift?
Will you be the author of my death?" The man trembles, and quakes
pale, and timidly speaks excusing words.
As he spoke, and was making ready to set his hands to the knees,
Alcides seized him, and, whirled three and four times round,
flung him into the Euboean waves harder than a catapult.
Hanging in the airy winds, he hardened:
as they say that rains congeal in cold winds,
and snow is formed of them, and from the whirling snow
the soft body is bound and rolled into packed hail,
so he, hurled through the void by those mighty arms,
drained of blood by fear and holding no moisture,
was turned to stiff flint — so the older age has told.
Now too in the Euboean sea a low crag juts from the deep
current and keeps the traces of a human shape,
which sailors fear to tread on, as if it could feel,
and they call it Lichas.
and, as his pain had gathered up all its fury,
"Was it you, Lichas," he said, "who gave the deadly gift?
Will you be the author of my death?" The man trembles, and quakes
pale, and timidly speaks excusing words.
As he spoke, and was making ready to set his hands to the knees,
Alcides seized him, and, whirled three and four times round,
flung him into the Euboean waves harder than a catapult.
Hanging in the airy winds, he hardened:
as they say that rains congeal in cold winds,
and snow is formed of them, and from the whirling snow
the soft body is bound and rolled into packed hail,
so he, hurled through the void by those mighty arms,
drained of blood by fear and holding no moisture,
was turned to stiff flint — so the older age has told.
Now too in the Euboean sea a low crag juts from the deep
current and keeps the traces of a human shape,
which sailors fear to tread on, as if it could feel,
and they call it Lichas.
Ecce Lichan trepidum latitantem rupe cavata aspicit, utque dolor rabiem conlegerat omnem, ’tune, Licha,’ dixit ’feralia dona dedisti? tune meae necis auctor eris?’ tremit ille, pavetque pallidus, et timide verba excusantia dicit. dicentem genibusque manus adhibere parantem corripit Alcides, et terque quaterque rotatum mittit in Euboicas tormento fortius undas. ille per aerias pendens induruit auras: utque ferunt imbres gelidis concrescere ventis, inde nives fieri, nivibus quoque molle rotatis astringi et spissa glomerari grandine corpus, sic illum validis iactum per inane lacertis exsanguemque metu nec quicquam umoris habentem in rigidos versum silices prior edidit aetas. nunc quoque in Euboico scopulus brevis eminet alto gurgite et humanae servat vestigia formae, quem, quasi sensurum, nautae calcare verentur, appellantque Lichan.
But you, glorious offspring of Jove,
having felled the trees that lofty Oeta bore,
and built a pyre, bid the son of Poeas carry your bow,
your capacious quiver, and the arrows that would see
the Trojan realm a second time — by whose service the flame
was set beneath. And while the heap caught with the greedy fires,
you spread the Nemean fleece over the top of the woodpile,
and lay back with your neck propped on your club,
with no other look than if you were a banqueter reclining
among cups full of wine, garlanded with wreaths.
And now, strong and spread to every side, the flame roared,
and reached for the limbs that feared nothing and for him
who scorned it. The gods were afraid for the earth’s champion.
having felled the trees that lofty Oeta bore,
and built a pyre, bid the son of Poeas carry your bow,
your capacious quiver, and the arrows that would see
the Trojan realm a second time — by whose service the flame
was set beneath. And while the heap caught with the greedy fires,
you spread the Nemean fleece over the top of the woodpile,
and lay back with your neck propped on your club,
with no other look than if you were a banqueter reclining
among cups full of wine, garlanded with wreaths.
And now, strong and spread to every side, the flame roared,
and reached for the limbs that feared nothing and for him
who scorned it. The gods were afraid for the earth’s champion.
at tu, Iovis inclita proles, arboribus caesis, quas ardua gesserat Oete, inque pyram structis arcum pharetramque capacem regnaque visuras iterum Troiana sagittas ferre iubes Poeante satum, quo flamma ministro subdita. dumque avidis comprenditur ignibus agger, congeriem silvae Nemeaeo vellere summam sternis, et inposita clavae cervice recumbis, haud alio vultu, quam si conviva iaceres inter plena meri redimitus pocula sertis. Iamque valens et in omne latus diffusa sonabat, securosque artus contemptoremque petebat flamma suum. timuere dei pro vindice terrae.
And Saturn’s son, Jupiter — for he had felt their fear —
addresses them with a glad face: ’This fear of yours is my delight,
O gods above, and with all my heart I gladly congratulate myself
that I am called the ruler and the father of a grateful people,
and that my offspring is safe in your favor too.
For though this is granted to his own enormous deeds,
I am beholden myself as well. But let your loyal hearts
not quake with empty dread. Despise the flames of Oeta!
He who has conquered all will conquer the fires you see;
nor will he feel Vulcan’s power except in the part his mother gave.
What he drew from me is eternal, exempt
and immune from death, and tamed by no flame.
And him, when done with earth, I will receive on the heavenly shores,
and I trust my deed will be a joy to all
the gods. Yet if anyone, perhaps, will grieve at Hercules
being made a god, and grudge the prize bestowed,
he will know it was deserved, and approve it against his will.’
addresses them with a glad face: ’This fear of yours is my delight,
O gods above, and with all my heart I gladly congratulate myself
that I am called the ruler and the father of a grateful people,
and that my offspring is safe in your favor too.
For though this is granted to his own enormous deeds,
I am beholden myself as well. But let your loyal hearts
not quake with empty dread. Despise the flames of Oeta!
He who has conquered all will conquer the fires you see;
nor will he feel Vulcan’s power except in the part his mother gave.
What he drew from me is eternal, exempt
and immune from death, and tamed by no flame.
And him, when done with earth, I will receive on the heavenly shores,
and I trust my deed will be a joy to all
the gods. Yet if anyone, perhaps, will grieve at Hercules
being made a god, and grudge the prize bestowed,
he will know it was deserved, and approve it against his will.’
quos ita, sensit enim, laeto Saturnius ore Iuppiter adloquitur: ’nostra est timor iste voluptas, o superi, totoque libens mihi pectore grator, quod memoris populi dicor rectorque paterque et mea progenies vestro quoque tuta favore est. nam quamquam ipsius datur hoc inmanibus actis, obligor ipse tamen. sed enim nec pectora vano fida metu paveant. Oetaeas spernite flammas! omnia qui vicit, vincet, quos cernitis, ignes; nec nisi materna Vulcanum parte potentem sentiet. aeternum est a me quod traxit, et expers atque inmune necis, nullaque domabile flamma. idque ego defunctum terra caelestibus oris accipiam, cunctisque meum laetabile factum dis fore confido. siquis tamen Hercule, siquis forte deo doliturus erit, data praemia nolet, sed meruisse dari sciet, invitusque probabit.’
The gods assented. The royal wife, too, seemed
to bear the rest with no hard look, but the last
words of Jove with a hard look, and to be stung at being marked.
Meanwhile, whatever was destructible by the flame
Mulciber had carried off, and no recognizable
likeness of Hercules remained, nor anything drawn from his mother’s
image; he keeps only the traces of Jove.
And as a new snake, having sloughed its old age with its skin,
will revel, and gleam with fresh scale,
so, when the Tirynthian had put off his mortal limbs,
he flourishes in his better part, and began to seem
larger, and to grow venerable with august gravity.
Him the almighty father, snatched up amid the hollow clouds,
bore in his four-horse chariot among the radiant stars.
to bear the rest with no hard look, but the last
words of Jove with a hard look, and to be stung at being marked.
Meanwhile, whatever was destructible by the flame
Mulciber had carried off, and no recognizable
likeness of Hercules remained, nor anything drawn from his mother’s
image; he keeps only the traces of Jove.
And as a new snake, having sloughed its old age with its skin,
will revel, and gleam with fresh scale,
so, when the Tirynthian had put off his mortal limbs,
he flourishes in his better part, and began to seem
larger, and to grow venerable with august gravity.
Him the almighty father, snatched up amid the hollow clouds,
bore in his four-horse chariot among the radiant stars.
adsensere dei. coniunx quoque regia visa est cetera non duro, duro tamen ultima vultu dicta tulisse Iovis, seque indoluisse notatam. interea quodcumque fuit populabile flammae, Mulciber abstulerat, nec cognoscenda remansit Herculis effigies, nec quicquam ab imagine ductum matris habet, tantumque Iovis vestigia servat. utque novus serpens posita cum pelle senecta luxuriare solet, squamaque nitere recenti, sic ubi mortales Tirynthius exuit artus, parte sui meliore viget, maiorque videri coepit et augusta fieri gravitate verendus. quem pater omnipotens inter cava nubila raptum quadriiugo curru radiantibus intulit astris.
Atlas felt the weight. And Sthenelus’s son Eurystheus
had not yet let go his wrath, and in his cruelty pursued
against the offspring his hatred of the father. But Argive Alcmena,
anxious with long cares, has Iole to whom to lay down
an old woman’s complaints, to whom to recount her son’s labors,
witnessed by the world, or her own misfortunes.
At Hercules’s bidding Hyllus had taken Iole
into his bed and heart, and had filled her womb
with noble seed; and to her Alcmena thus
begins: ’May the powers at least be kind to you,
and cut short your delays, when, your time come, you call on
Ilithyia, set over women in fearful labor,
whom Juno’s favor made hard to me.
For when laborious Hercules’s birthday was now at hand
and the tenth sign was being pressed beneath its star,
my heaviness stretched my womb, and what I bore
was so great that you could call Jove the author
of the hidden load. And I could endure the pangs
no longer.
had not yet let go his wrath, and in his cruelty pursued
against the offspring his hatred of the father. But Argive Alcmena,
anxious with long cares, has Iole to whom to lay down
an old woman’s complaints, to whom to recount her son’s labors,
witnessed by the world, or her own misfortunes.
At Hercules’s bidding Hyllus had taken Iole
into his bed and heart, and had filled her womb
with noble seed; and to her Alcmena thus
begins: ’May the powers at least be kind to you,
and cut short your delays, when, your time come, you call on
Ilithyia, set over women in fearful labor,
whom Juno’s favor made hard to me.
For when laborious Hercules’s birthday was now at hand
and the tenth sign was being pressed beneath its star,
my heaviness stretched my womb, and what I bore
was so great that you could call Jove the author
of the hidden load. And I could endure the pangs
no longer.
Sensit Atlas pondus. neque adhuc Stheneleius iras solverat Eurystheus, odiumque in prole paternum exercebat atrox. at longis anxia curis Argolis Alcmene, questus ubi ponat aniles, cui referat nati testatos orbe labores, cuive suos casus, Iolen habet. Herculis illam imperiis thalamoque animoque receperat Hyllus, inpleratque uterum generoso semine; cui sic incipit Alcmene: ’faveant tibi numina saltem, conripiantque moras tum cum matura vocabis praepositam timidis parientibus Ilithyiam, quam mihi difficilem Iunonis gratia fecit. namque laboriferi cum iam natalis adesset Herculis et decimum premeretur sidere signum, tendebat gravitas uterum mihi, quodque ferebam, tantum erat, ut posses auctorem dicere tecti ponderis esse Iovem. nec iam tolerare labores ulterius poteram.
Indeed even now, as I speak, a cold
shudder grips my limbs, and to remember is part of the pain.
Through seven nights and as many days I was tortured,
worn out with suffering, and stretching my arms to heaven I called
on Lucina and the Nixi together with a great cry.
She came, indeed, but bribed beforehand,
ready to make a gift of my life to unjust Juno.
And when she hears my groans, she sat down on the altar
before the doors, and, pressing her left knee
over her right, and with her fingers joined comb-fashion,
she held back the birth. In a low voice, too, she spoke
charms, and the charms held back the labor once begun.
I strain, and, out of my mind, hurl vain reproaches
at thankless Jove, and long to die, and utter words
that would move hard flint. The Cadmean matrons are at hand,
and offer up vows, and urge me on in my pain.
shudder grips my limbs, and to remember is part of the pain.
Through seven nights and as many days I was tortured,
worn out with suffering, and stretching my arms to heaven I called
on Lucina and the Nixi together with a great cry.
She came, indeed, but bribed beforehand,
ready to make a gift of my life to unjust Juno.
And when she hears my groans, she sat down on the altar
before the doors, and, pressing her left knee
over her right, and with her fingers joined comb-fashion,
she held back the birth. In a low voice, too, she spoke
charms, and the charms held back the labor once begun.
I strain, and, out of my mind, hurl vain reproaches
at thankless Jove, and long to die, and utter words
that would move hard flint. The Cadmean matrons are at hand,
and offer up vows, and urge me on in my pain.
quin nunc quoque frigidus artus, dum loquor, horror habet, parsque est meminisse doloris. septem ego per noctes, totidem cruciata diebus, fessa malis, tendensque ad caelum bracchia, magno Lucinam Nixosque pares clamore vocabam. illa quidem venit, sed praecorrupta, meumque quae donare caput Iunoni vellet iniquae. utque meos audit gemitus, subsedit in illa ante fores ara, dextroque a poplite laevum pressa genu et digitis inter se pectine iunctis sustinuit partus. tacita quoque carmina voce dixit, et inceptos tenuerunt carmina partus. nitor, et ingrato facio convicia demens vana Iovi, cupioque mori, moturaque duros verba queror silices. matres Cadmeides adsunt, votaque suscipiunt, exhortanturque dolentem.
One of my attendants, of the common folk, Galanthis,
golden-haired, was there, quick to do my bidding,
loved for her good services. She sensed that something
was being worked by unjust Juno, and as she went out and in
often through the doors, she saw the goddess seated on the altar
and holding her arms with fingers locked across her knees,
and she said, "Whoever you are, congratulate my mistress. Argive
Alcmena is delivered, and the woman in labor has her wish."
The goddess powerful over the womb leapt up, terrified,
and let her clasped hands go: with the bonds loosed, I am set free.
They say that Galanthis laughed at the cheated divinity.
As she laughed, the cruel goddess seized her by the very hair
and dragged her, and stopped her as she tried to lift her body
from the ground, and changed her arms into forefeet.
Her old quickness stays; and her back did not lose
its color: her shape differs from the one before.
And because she had helped a woman in labor with a lying mouth,
she gives birth through the mouth, and haunts our houses, as before.’
golden-haired, was there, quick to do my bidding,
loved for her good services. She sensed that something
was being worked by unjust Juno, and as she went out and in
often through the doors, she saw the goddess seated on the altar
and holding her arms with fingers locked across her knees,
and she said, "Whoever you are, congratulate my mistress. Argive
Alcmena is delivered, and the woman in labor has her wish."
The goddess powerful over the womb leapt up, terrified,
and let her clasped hands go: with the bonds loosed, I am set free.
They say that Galanthis laughed at the cheated divinity.
As she laughed, the cruel goddess seized her by the very hair
and dragged her, and stopped her as she tried to lift her body
from the ground, and changed her arms into forefeet.
Her old quickness stays; and her back did not lose
its color: her shape differs from the one before.
And because she had helped a woman in labor with a lying mouth,
she gives birth through the mouth, and haunts our houses, as before.’
una ministrarum, media de plebe, Galanthis, flava comas, aderat, faciendis strenua iussis, officiis dilecta suis. ea sensit iniqua nescio quid Iunone geri, dumque exit et intrat saepe fores, divam residentem vidit in ara bracchiaque in genibus digitis conexa tenentem, et "quaecumque es," ait "dominae gratare. levata est Argolis Alcmene, potiturque puerpera voto." exsiluit, iunctasque manus pavefacta remisit diva potens uteri: vinclis levor ipsa remissis. numine decepto risisse Galanthida fama est. ridentem prensamque ipsis dea saeva capillis traxit, et e terra corpus relevare volentem arcuit, inque pedes mutavit bracchia primos. strenuitas antiqua manet; nec terga colorem amisere suum: forma est diversa priori. quae quia mendaci parientem iuverat ore, ore parit nostrasque domos, ut et ante, frequentat.’
She spoke, and, stirred by the memory of her old attendant,
groaned. And her daughter-in-law thus addressed her in her grief:
’Yet you, O mother, are moved by the snatched-away shape
of one who is no blood of ours. What if I tell you the strange
fate of my own sister? Though tears and grief
hinder me and forbid my speaking. She was her mother’s only child —
my father got me of another — most renowned in beauty
of the women of Oechalia, Dryope. Robbed of her virginity,
having suffered the force of the god who holds Delphi and Delos,
Andraemon took her, and is held happy in his wife.
There is a lake that, with its sloping shelving edge,
forms the shape of a shore; myrtle-groves crown its top.
Here Dryope had come, knowing nothing of her fate, and —
to make you more indignant — to bring garlands to the nymphs;
and in her bosom she carried, a sweet burden, her boy,
who had not yet filled out a year, and fed him with warm milk’s help.
Not far from the pool, mimicking Tyrian colors,
a water-lotus bloomed in hope of berries.
Dryope had plucked from it the flowers she meant to hold out
as playthings for her son, and I was about to do the same —
for I was there — when I saw bloody drops fall
from the flower, and the boughs shiver with a quivering shudder.
groaned. And her daughter-in-law thus addressed her in her grief:
’Yet you, O mother, are moved by the snatched-away shape
of one who is no blood of ours. What if I tell you the strange
fate of my own sister? Though tears and grief
hinder me and forbid my speaking. She was her mother’s only child —
my father got me of another — most renowned in beauty
of the women of Oechalia, Dryope. Robbed of her virginity,
having suffered the force of the god who holds Delphi and Delos,
Andraemon took her, and is held happy in his wife.
There is a lake that, with its sloping shelving edge,
forms the shape of a shore; myrtle-groves crown its top.
Here Dryope had come, knowing nothing of her fate, and —
to make you more indignant — to bring garlands to the nymphs;
and in her bosom she carried, a sweet burden, her boy,
who had not yet filled out a year, and fed him with warm milk’s help.
Not far from the pool, mimicking Tyrian colors,
a water-lotus bloomed in hope of berries.
Dryope had plucked from it the flowers she meant to hold out
as playthings for her son, and I was about to do the same —
for I was there — when I saw bloody drops fall
from the flower, and the boughs shiver with a quivering shudder.
Dixit, et admonitu veteris commota ministrae ingemuit. quam sic nurus est affata dolentem: ’te tamen, o genetrix, alienae sanguine nostro rapta movet facies. quid si tibi mira sororis fata meae referam? quamquam lacrimaeque dolorque impediunt, prohibentque loqui. fuit unica matri— me pater ex alia genuit—notissima forma Oechalidum, Dryope. quam virginitate carentem vimque dei passam Delphos Delonque tenentis excipit Andraemon, et habetur coniuge felix. est lacus, adclivis devexo margine formam litoris efficiens, summum myrteta coronant. venerat huc Dryope fatorum nescia, quoque indignere magis, nymphis latura coronas, inque sinu puerum, qui nondum impleverat annum, dulce ferebat onus tepidique ope lactis alebat. haut procul a stagno Tyrios imitata colores in spem bacarum florebat aquatica lotos. carpserat hinc Dryope, quos oblectamina nato porrigeret, flores, et idem factura videbar— namque aderam—vidi guttas e flore cruentas decidere et tremulo ramos horrore moveri.
For, as the slow countryfolk now tell at last,
the nymph Lotis, fleeing the lust of Priapus,
had carried her changed features into this plant, keeping her name.
My sister had not known this. When in terror she wished
to go back and depart from the nymphs she had worshipped,
her feet stuck fast by the root. She fights to tear them free,
and moves nothing but her upper parts. From below there grows up,
and slowly clinging bark presses all her groin.
When she saw it, and tried with her hand to tear her hair,
she filled her hand with leaves: leaves covered her whole head.
But the boy Amphissos — for so his grandfather Eurytus
had given him his name — feels his mother’s breasts
grow stiff; and the milky stream does not follow as he draws.
I stood by, a spectator of the cruel fate, and could bring
you no help, sister, and, so far as I had strength,
I delayed the growing trunk and the branches by my embrace,
and, I confess, I wished to be buried under the same bark.
the nymph Lotis, fleeing the lust of Priapus,
had carried her changed features into this plant, keeping her name.
My sister had not known this. When in terror she wished
to go back and depart from the nymphs she had worshipped,
her feet stuck fast by the root. She fights to tear them free,
and moves nothing but her upper parts. From below there grows up,
and slowly clinging bark presses all her groin.
When she saw it, and tried with her hand to tear her hair,
she filled her hand with leaves: leaves covered her whole head.
But the boy Amphissos — for so his grandfather Eurytus
had given him his name — feels his mother’s breasts
grow stiff; and the milky stream does not follow as he draws.
I stood by, a spectator of the cruel fate, and could bring
you no help, sister, and, so far as I had strength,
I delayed the growing trunk and the branches by my embrace,
and, I confess, I wished to be buried under the same bark.
scilicet, ut referunt tardi nunc denique agrestes, Lotis in hanc nymphe, fugiens obscena Priapi, contulerat versos, servato nomine, vultus. ’Nescierat soror hoc. quae cum perterrita retro ire et adoratis vellet discedere nymphis, haeserunt radice pedes. convellere pugnat, nec quicquam, nisi summa movet. subcrescit ab imo, totaque paulatim lentus premit inguina cortex. ut vidit, conata manu laniare capillos, fronde manum implevit: frondes caput omne tenebant. at puer Amphissos (namque hoc avus Eurytus illi addiderat nomen) materna rigescere sentit ubera; nec sequitur ducentem lacteus umor. spectatrix aderam fati crudelis, opemque non poteram tibi ferre, soror, quantumque valebam, crescentem truncum ramosque amplexa morabar, et, fateor, volui sub eodem cortice condi. ’
Look — her husband Andraemon and her most wretched father are here,
and ask for Dryope: to them asking for Dryope
I pointed out the lotus. They give kisses to the warm wood,
and, flung down, cling to the roots of their tree.
By now my dear sister had nothing but her face that was not tree:
tears bedew the leaves made from her piteous body,
and, while she may, and while her mouth still grants
a path to her voice, she pours such laments into the air:
"If there is any faith for the wretched, I swear by the gods
I have not deserved this horror. I suffer a penalty without a crime.
I have lived doing no harm. If I lie, may I lose, withered,
the leaves I have, and be felled by axes and burned.
Yet take this infant from his mother’s boughs,
and give him to a nurse, and under my tree often
have him drink his milk, and under my tree have him play.
And when he can speak, have him greet his mother,
and sadly say, ’My mother is hidden in this trunk.’
and ask for Dryope: to them asking for Dryope
I pointed out the lotus. They give kisses to the warm wood,
and, flung down, cling to the roots of their tree.
By now my dear sister had nothing but her face that was not tree:
tears bedew the leaves made from her piteous body,
and, while she may, and while her mouth still grants
a path to her voice, she pours such laments into the air:
"If there is any faith for the wretched, I swear by the gods
I have not deserved this horror. I suffer a penalty without a crime.
I have lived doing no harm. If I lie, may I lose, withered,
the leaves I have, and be felled by axes and burned.
Yet take this infant from his mother’s boughs,
and give him to a nurse, and under my tree often
have him drink his milk, and under my tree have him play.
And when he can speak, have him greet his mother,
and sadly say, ’My mother is hidden in this trunk.’
Ecce vir Andraemon genitorque miserrimus adsunt, et quaerunt Dryopen: Dryopen quaerentibus illis ostendi loton. tepido dant oscula ligno, adfusique suae radicibus arboris haerent. nil nisi iam faciem, quod non foret arbor, habebat cara soror: lacrimae misero de corpore factis inrorant foliis, ac, dum licet, oraque praestant vocis iter, tales effundit in aera questus: "siqua fides miseris, hoc me per numina iuro non meruisse nefas. patior sine crimine poenam. viximus innocuae. si mentior, arida perdam quas habeo frondes, et caesa securibus urar. hunc tamen infantem maternis demite ramis, et date nutrici, nostraque sub arbore saepe lac facitote bibat, nostraque sub arbore ludat. cumque loqui poterit, matrem facitote salutet, et tristis dicat ’latet hoc in stipite mater.’
Yet let him fear the pools, and not pluck flowers from any tree,
and think every shrub is the body of a goddess.
Dear husband, farewell, and you, sister, and father!
Who, if there is any love in you, defend my leaves
from the wound of the sharp pruning-hook, from the bite of the flock.
And since it is not allowed me to bend down to you,
lift your bodies up to here, and come to my kisses
while I can be touched, and hold up my little son!
I can say no more. For now over my white neck
the soft bark creeps, and I am being buried in the topmost crown.
Take your hands from my eyes. Without service of yours
let the spreading bark cover my dying sight!"
Together her lips ceased to speak, ceased to be. And long,
the body changed, the fresh boughs kept their warmth.’
and think every shrub is the body of a goddess.
Dear husband, farewell, and you, sister, and father!
Who, if there is any love in you, defend my leaves
from the wound of the sharp pruning-hook, from the bite of the flock.
And since it is not allowed me to bend down to you,
lift your bodies up to here, and come to my kisses
while I can be touched, and hold up my little son!
I can say no more. For now over my white neck
the soft bark creeps, and I am being buried in the topmost crown.
Take your hands from my eyes. Without service of yours
let the spreading bark cover my dying sight!"
Together her lips ceased to speak, ceased to be. And long,
the body changed, the fresh boughs kept their warmth.’
stagna tamen timeat, nec carpat ab arbore flores, et frutices omnes corpus putet esse dearum. care vale coniunx, et tu, germana, paterque! qui, siqua est pietas, ab acutae vulnere falcis, a pecoris morsu frondes defendite nostras. et quoniam mihi fas ad vos incumbere non est, erigite huc artus, et ad oscula nostra venite, dum tangi possum, parvumque attollite natum! plura loqui nequeo. nam iam per candida mollis colla liber serpit, summoque cacumine condor. ex oculis removete manus. sine munere vestro contegat inductus morientia lumina cortex!" desierant simul ora loqui, simul esse. diuque corpore mutato rami caluere recentes.’
And while Iole tells the marvelous deed, and while
Alcmena dries the tears of Eurytus’s daughter with her thumb
(yet she weeps herself too), a strange event checked
all their sorrow. For on the high threshold stood
Iolaus, almost a boy, his cheeks shadowed with uncertain down,
his face reshaped to its first years.
This gift Juno’s daughter Hebe had given him,
overcome by her husband’s prayers.
Alcmena dries the tears of Eurytus’s daughter with her thumb
(yet she weeps herself too), a strange event checked
all their sorrow. For on the high threshold stood
Iolaus, almost a boy, his cheeks shadowed with uncertain down,
his face reshaped to its first years.
This gift Juno’s daughter Hebe had given him,
overcome by her husband’s prayers.
Dumque refert Iole factum mirabile, dumque Eurytidos lacrimas admoto pollice siccat Alcmene (flet et ipsa tamen) compescuit omnem res nova tristitiam. nam limine constitit alto paene puer dubiaque tegens lanugine malas, ora reformatus primos Iolaus in annos. hoc illi dederat Iunonia muneris Hebe, victa viri precibus.
And when she made ready to swear
she would grant such gifts to no one after him,
Themis would not allow it: ’For now in discord Thebes
stirs up war,’ she said, ’and Capaneus will not be conquered
except by Jove, and the brothers will be matched in their wounds,
and the seer, still living, will look on his own shade
when the earth is drawn from under him; and a son, avenging
parent with parent, will be in the one deed both dutiful and accursed,
and, thunderstruck with horrors, an exile from his mind and his home,
will be hounded by the faces of the Eumenides and his mother’s ghost,
until his wife demands of him the fatal gold,
and the Phegeian sword drains his kinsman’s side.
Then at last Achelous’s daughter Callirhoe, a suppliant, will beg
great Jove to add these years to her infant sons,
and not let the avenger’s death go unavenged.
Jupiter, moved by this, will claim beforehand the gifts of his
stepdaughter and daughter-in-law, and make them men in their unripe years.’
she would grant such gifts to no one after him,
Themis would not allow it: ’For now in discord Thebes
stirs up war,’ she said, ’and Capaneus will not be conquered
except by Jove, and the brothers will be matched in their wounds,
and the seer, still living, will look on his own shade
when the earth is drawn from under him; and a son, avenging
parent with parent, will be in the one deed both dutiful and accursed,
and, thunderstruck with horrors, an exile from his mind and his home,
will be hounded by the faces of the Eumenides and his mother’s ghost,
until his wife demands of him the fatal gold,
and the Phegeian sword drains his kinsman’s side.
Then at last Achelous’s daughter Callirhoe, a suppliant, will beg
great Jove to add these years to her infant sons,
and not let the avenger’s death go unavenged.
Jupiter, moved by this, will claim beforehand the gifts of his
stepdaughter and daughter-in-law, and make them men in their unripe years.’
quae cum iurare pararet, dona tributuram post hunc se talia nulli, non est passa Themis: ’nam iam discordia Thebae bella movent,’ dixit ’Capaneusque nisi ab Iove vinci haud poterit, fientque pares in vulnere fratres, subductaque suos manes tellure videbit vivus adhuc vates; ultusque parente parentem natus erit facto pius et sceleratus eodem attonitusque malis, exul mentisque domusque, vultibus Eumenidum matrisque agitabitur umbris, donec eum coniunx fatale poposcerit aurum, cognatumque latus Phegeius hauserit ensis. tum demum magno petet hos Acheloia supplex ab Iove Calliroe natis infantibus annos addat, neve necem sinat esse ultoris inultam. Iuppiter his motus privignae dona nurusque praecipiet, facietque viros inpubibus annis.’
When Themis, foreknowing what was to come, had spoken
these things with prophesying mouth, the gods murmured in varied talk,
and there was grumbling: why was it not allowed to give the same gifts
to others? Pallas’s daughter Aurora complains that her husband’s
years are old; gentle Ceres complains that Iasion
grows gray; Mulciber demands a renewed age
for Erichthonius; Venus too is touched by care for the future,
and bargains to renew the years of Anchises.
Every god has someone to favor; and the turbulent
sedition swells with partisanship, until Jupiter opens
his lips and says: ’O, if you have any reverence for me,
where are you rushing? Does anyone think himself so able
as to overcome the fates as well? By the fates Iolaus
has gone back to the years he lived. By the fates must
Callirhoe’s sons grow young, not by ambition nor by arms.
You too — and bear this with a better spirit —
the fates rule me as well.
these things with prophesying mouth, the gods murmured in varied talk,
and there was grumbling: why was it not allowed to give the same gifts
to others? Pallas’s daughter Aurora complains that her husband’s
years are old; gentle Ceres complains that Iasion
grows gray; Mulciber demands a renewed age
for Erichthonius; Venus too is touched by care for the future,
and bargains to renew the years of Anchises.
Every god has someone to favor; and the turbulent
sedition swells with partisanship, until Jupiter opens
his lips and says: ’O, if you have any reverence for me,
where are you rushing? Does anyone think himself so able
as to overcome the fates as well? By the fates Iolaus
has gone back to the years he lived. By the fates must
Callirhoe’s sons grow young, not by ambition nor by arms.
You too — and bear this with a better spirit —
the fates rule me as well.
Haec ubi faticano venturi praescia dixit ore Themis, vario superi sermone fremebant, et, cur non aliis eadem dare dona liceret, murmur erat. queritur veteres Pallantias annos coniugis esse sui, queritur canescere mitis Iasiona Ceres, repetitum Mulciber aevum poscit Ericthonio, Venerem quoque cura futuri tangit, et Anchisae renovare paciscitur annos. cui studeat, deus omnis habet; crescitque favore turbida seditio, donec sua Iuppiter ora solvit, et ’o! nostri siqua est reverentia,’ dixit ’quo ruitis? tantumne aliquis sibi posse videtur, fata quoque ut superet? fatis Iolaus in annos, quos egit, rediit. fatiiuvenescere debent Calliroe geniti, non ambitione nec armis. vos etiam, quoque hoc animo meliore feratis, me quoque fata regunt.
And if I had power to change them,
the late years would not bow down my Aeacus,
and Rhadamanthus would keep the perpetual flower of his age
together with my Minos — who, because of the bitter
burdens of old age, is despised, and no longer reigns in his former rank.’
The words of Jove moved the gods; and none can bear,
when he sees Rhadamanthus and Aeacus worn with years,
and Minos, to complain. He, while he was whole in his prime,
had terrified great nations by his very name;
then he was feeble, and dreaded Miletus, the son of Deione,
proud in the strength of his youth and in Phoebus his father,
and, believing that he was rising against his realm,
yet did not dare to bar him from his ancestral home.
Of your own will you flee, Miletus, and in a swift ship
you measure the Aegean waters, and on Asian soil
you found a city that bears its founder’s name.
There, while she follows the windings of her father’s bank,
Cyanee, the daughter of Maeander who so often turns back on himself,
known to you, of surpassing beauty of body,
bore you a twin offspring, Byblis with Caunus.
the late years would not bow down my Aeacus,
and Rhadamanthus would keep the perpetual flower of his age
together with my Minos — who, because of the bitter
burdens of old age, is despised, and no longer reigns in his former rank.’
The words of Jove moved the gods; and none can bear,
when he sees Rhadamanthus and Aeacus worn with years,
and Minos, to complain. He, while he was whole in his prime,
had terrified great nations by his very name;
then he was feeble, and dreaded Miletus, the son of Deione,
proud in the strength of his youth and in Phoebus his father,
and, believing that he was rising against his realm,
yet did not dare to bar him from his ancestral home.
Of your own will you flee, Miletus, and in a swift ship
you measure the Aegean waters, and on Asian soil
you found a city that bears its founder’s name.
There, while she follows the windings of her father’s bank,
Cyanee, the daughter of Maeander who so often turns back on himself,
known to you, of surpassing beauty of body,
bore you a twin offspring, Byblis with Caunus.
quae si mutare valerem, nec nostrum seri curvarent Aeacon anni, perpetuumque aevi florem Rhadamanthus haberet cum Minoe meo, qui propter amara senectae pondera despicitur, nec quo prius ordine regnat.’ Dicta Iovis movere deos; nec sustinet ullus, cum videat fessos Rhadamanthon et Aeacon annis et Minoa, queri. qui, dum fuit integer aevi, terruerat magnas ipso quoque nomine gentes; tunc erat invalidus, Deionidenque iuventae robore Miletum Phoeboque parente superbum pertimuit, credensque suis insurgere regnis, haut tamen est patriis arcere penatibus ausus. sponte fugis, Milete, tua, celerique carina Aegaeas metiris aquas, et in Aside terra moenia constituis positoris habentia nomen. hic tibi, dum sequitur patriae curvamina ripae, filia Maeandri totiens redeuntis eodem cognita Cyanee, praestanti corpora forma, Byblida cum Cauno, prolem est enixa gemellam.
Byblis is a warning that girls should love only what is allowed —
Byblis, seized by desire for her brother, Apollo’s descendant;
she loved him not as a sister a brother, nor as she ought.
She, indeed, at first understands no fires,
and thinks it no sin that she joins kisses more often,
that she throws her arms about her brother’s neck;
and long she is deceived by the false show of sisterly love.
By degrees her love slips aside, and she comes adorned
to see her brother, and longs too much to seem beautiful,
and if any woman there is lovelier, she envies her.
But she is not yet plain to herself, and makes no vow
beneath that fire, yet she burns within.
Now she calls him her lord, now she hates the names of blood,
now she would rather he call her Byblis than sister.
Byblis, seized by desire for her brother, Apollo’s descendant;
she loved him not as a sister a brother, nor as she ought.
She, indeed, at first understands no fires,
and thinks it no sin that she joins kisses more often,
that she throws her arms about her brother’s neck;
and long she is deceived by the false show of sisterly love.
By degrees her love slips aside, and she comes adorned
to see her brother, and longs too much to seem beautiful,
and if any woman there is lovelier, she envies her.
But she is not yet plain to herself, and makes no vow
beneath that fire, yet she burns within.
Now she calls him her lord, now she hates the names of blood,
now she would rather he call her Byblis than sister.
Byblis in exemplo est, ut ament concessa puellae, Byblis Apollinei correpta cupidine fratris; non soror ut fratrem, nec qua debebat, amabat. illa quidem primo nullos intellegit ignes, nec peccare putat, quod saepius oscula iungat, quod sua fraterno circumdet bracchia collo; mendacique diu pietatis fallitur umbra. paulatim declinat amor, visuraque fratrem culta venit, nimiumque cupit formosa videri et siqua est illic formosior, invidet illi. sed nondum manifesta sibi est, nullumque sub illo igne facit votum, verumtamen aestuat intus. iam dominum appellat, iam nomina sanguinis odit, Byblida iam mavult, quam se vocet ille sororem.
Yet the obscene hopes she did not dare to let down
into her mind while awake; relaxed in peaceful sleep
she often sees what she loves: she even seemed to join her body
to her brother’s, and blushed, though she lay asleep.
Sleep departs; she is silent a long while, and goes over again
the vision of her own rest, and with wavering mind speaks thus:
’Wretched me! What does this image of the silent night mean?
How I would not have it come true! Why have I seen these dreams?
He indeed is beautiful, even to unfriendly eyes,
and pleases me, and I could love him, if he were not my brother,
and he was worthy of me. But it is my bane to be his sister.
Only let me try, awake, to commit nothing of the kind —
yet often may sleep come back under the like image!
There is no witness to a dream, and no lack of counterfeited pleasure.
O Venus, and winged Cupid with your tender mother,
what joys I had! How plainly desire
touched me! How I lay, dissolved through all my marrow!
How sweet to remember! Though that pleasure was brief,
and the night was headlong and grudging of what we had begun.
into her mind while awake; relaxed in peaceful sleep
she often sees what she loves: she even seemed to join her body
to her brother’s, and blushed, though she lay asleep.
Sleep departs; she is silent a long while, and goes over again
the vision of her own rest, and with wavering mind speaks thus:
’Wretched me! What does this image of the silent night mean?
How I would not have it come true! Why have I seen these dreams?
He indeed is beautiful, even to unfriendly eyes,
and pleases me, and I could love him, if he were not my brother,
and he was worthy of me. But it is my bane to be his sister.
Only let me try, awake, to commit nothing of the kind —
yet often may sleep come back under the like image!
There is no witness to a dream, and no lack of counterfeited pleasure.
O Venus, and winged Cupid with your tender mother,
what joys I had! How plainly desire
touched me! How I lay, dissolved through all my marrow!
How sweet to remember! Though that pleasure was brief,
and the night was headlong and grudging of what we had begun.
Spes tamen obscenas animo demittere non est ausa suo vigilans; placida resoluta quiete saepe videt quod amat: visa est quoque iungere fratri corpus et erubuit, quamvis sopita iacebat. somnus abit; silet illa diu repetitque quietis ipsa suae speciem dubiaque ita mente profatur: ’me miseram! tacitae quid vult sibi noctis imago? quam nolim rata sit! cur haec ego somnia vidi? ille quidem est oculis quamvis formosus iniquis et placet, et possim, si non sit frater, amare, et me dignus erat. verum nocet esse sororem. dummodo tale nihil vigilans committere temptem, saepe licet simili redeat sub imagine somnus! testis abest somno, nec abest imitata voluptas. pro Venus et tenera volucer cum matre Cupido, gaudia quanta tuli! quam me manifesta libido contigit! ut iacui totis resoluta medullis! ut meminisse iuvat! quamvis brevis illa voluptas noxque fuit praeceps et coeptis invida nostris. ’O ego,
’O, if I might be joined under a changed name,
how good a daughter-in-law I could be, Caunus, to your father!
how good a son-in-law you could be, Caunus, to mine!
Would the gods grant that all were common between us
except our grandparents: I would you were the nobler-born!
So you, most beautiful, will make some other woman a mother;
but to me, who am ill-fated, who drew the same parents as you,
you will be nothing but a brother. What stands in the way, that alone we will share.
What, then, do my visions mean to me? And what
weight have dreams? Or do dreams have any weight at all?
The gods forbid! — and yet the gods, surely, have had their sisters.
So Saturn married Ops, joined to him by blood,
Oceanus took Tethys, the ruler of Olympus Juno.
The gods above have their own laws! Why do I try to measure
human customs against the heavenly, and laws so different?
Either the forbidden passion will be driven from my heart,
or, if I cannot do this, I pray I may die first,
and be laid out dead on my bier, and my brother kiss me there.
how good a daughter-in-law I could be, Caunus, to your father!
how good a son-in-law you could be, Caunus, to mine!
Would the gods grant that all were common between us
except our grandparents: I would you were the nobler-born!
So you, most beautiful, will make some other woman a mother;
but to me, who am ill-fated, who drew the same parents as you,
you will be nothing but a brother. What stands in the way, that alone we will share.
What, then, do my visions mean to me? And what
weight have dreams? Or do dreams have any weight at all?
The gods forbid! — and yet the gods, surely, have had their sisters.
So Saturn married Ops, joined to him by blood,
Oceanus took Tethys, the ruler of Olympus Juno.
The gods above have their own laws! Why do I try to measure
human customs against the heavenly, and laws so different?
Either the forbidden passion will be driven from my heart,
or, if I cannot do this, I pray I may die first,
and be laid out dead on my bier, and my brother kiss me there.
si liceat mutato nomine iungi, quam bene, Caune, tuo poteram nurus esse parenti! quam bene, Caune, meo poteras gener esse parenti! omnia, di facerent, essent communia nobis, praeter avos: tu me vellem generosior esses! nescioquam facies igitur, pulcherrime, matrem; at mihi, quae male sum, quos tu, sortita parentes, nil nisi frater eris. quod obest, id habebimus unum. quid mihi significant ergo mea visa? quod autem somnia pondus habent? an habent et somnia pondus? di melius! di nempe suas habuere sorores. sic Saturnus Opem iunctam sibi sanguine duxit, Oceanus Tethyn, Iunonem rector Olympi. sunt superis sua iura! quid ad caelestia ritus exigere humanos diversaque foedera tempto? aut nostro vetitus de corde fugabitur ardor, aut hoc si nequeo, peream, precor, ante toroque mortua componar, positaeque det oscula frater.
And yet that matter asks the will of two!
Suppose it pleases me: to him it will seem a crime.
But the sons of Aeolus did not fear their sisters’ beds!
But how do I know of them? Why have I sought out these examples?
Where am I being carried? Away from here, far off, obscene flames,
and let my brother be loved only as is right for a sister!
Yet if he himself had first been caught by love of me,
perhaps I could indulge his frenzy.
So I, who would not have rejected him had he wooed,
will woo myself! Can you speak? Can you confess?
Love will compel me — I can! Or, if shame holds my lips,
a secret letter will confess the hidden fires.’
Suppose it pleases me: to him it will seem a crime.
But the sons of Aeolus did not fear their sisters’ beds!
But how do I know of them? Why have I sought out these examples?
Where am I being carried? Away from here, far off, obscene flames,
and let my brother be loved only as is right for a sister!
Yet if he himself had first been caught by love of me,
perhaps I could indulge his frenzy.
So I, who would not have rejected him had he wooed,
will woo myself! Can you speak? Can you confess?
Love will compel me — I can! Or, if shame holds my lips,
a secret letter will confess the hidden fires.’
et tamen arbitrium quaerit res ista duorum! finge placere mihi: scelus esse videbitur illi. ’At non Aeolidae thalamos timuere sororum! unde sed hos novi? cur haec exempla paravi? quo feror? obscenae procul hinc discedite flammae nec, nisi qua fas est germanae, frater ametur! si tamen ipse mei captus prior esset amore, forsitan illius possem indulgere furori. ergo ego, quae fueram non reiectura petentem, ipsa petam! poterisne loqui? poterisne fateri? coget amor, potero! vel, si pudor ora tenebit, littera celatos arcana fatebitur ignes.’
This pleases her; this resolve conquered her wavering mind.
She raises herself on her side, and, leaning on her left elbow,
’Let him see to it: let me confess my mad love!’ she says.
’Ah me, where am I slipping? What fire does my mind conceive?’
And with trembling hand she sets down the words she has weighed.
Her right hand holds the stylus, the other the empty wax.
She begins and hesitates, writes and condemns the tablets,
marks and erases, changes, blames and approves,
and by turns lays down what she had taken up and takes up again what she laid down.
She does not know what she wants; whatever she seems about to do
displeases her. In her face is boldness mixed with shame.
She had written ’sister’; she thought best to erase the sister
and to cut such words into the corrected wax:
’The health she will not have unless you give it, this
your loving one sends you: she is ashamed, ah, ashamed to tell her name,
and if you ask what I desire, I would my cause
could be pleaded without a name, and Byblis not be known
before the hope of my prayers were certain.
She raises herself on her side, and, leaning on her left elbow,
’Let him see to it: let me confess my mad love!’ she says.
’Ah me, where am I slipping? What fire does my mind conceive?’
And with trembling hand she sets down the words she has weighed.
Her right hand holds the stylus, the other the empty wax.
She begins and hesitates, writes and condemns the tablets,
marks and erases, changes, blames and approves,
and by turns lays down what she had taken up and takes up again what she laid down.
She does not know what she wants; whatever she seems about to do
displeases her. In her face is boldness mixed with shame.
She had written ’sister’; she thought best to erase the sister
and to cut such words into the corrected wax:
’The health she will not have unless you give it, this
your loving one sends you: she is ashamed, ah, ashamed to tell her name,
and if you ask what I desire, I would my cause
could be pleaded without a name, and Byblis not be known
before the hope of my prayers were certain.
Hoc placet, haec dubiam vicit sententia mentem. in latus erigitur cubitoque innixa sinistro ’viderit: insanos’ inquit ’fateamur amores! ei mihi, quo labor? quem mens mea concipit ignem?’ et meditata manu componit verba trementi. dextra tenet ferrum, vacuam tenet altera ceram. incipit et dubitat, scribit damnatque tabellas, et notat et delet, mutat culpatque probatque inque vicem sumptas ponit positasque resumit. quid velit ignorat; quicquid factura videtur, displicet. in vultu est audacia mixta pudori. scripta ’soror’ fuerat; visum est delere sororem verbaque correctis incidere talia ceris: ’quam, nisi tu dederis, non est habitura salutem, hanc tibi mittit amans: pudet, a, pudet edere nomen, et si quid cupiam quaeris, sine nomine vellem posset agi mea causa meo, nec cognita Byblis ante forem, quam spes votorum certa fuisset. ’
A sign of my wounded heart you could have had
in my color, my thinness, my looks, and my eyes
often wet, and the sighs stirred by no open cause,
and the frequent embraces, and the kisses which — if by chance you marked them —
could be felt to be no sisterly kisses.
Yet I myself, though I had a grievous wound in my heart,
though within me was a fiery frenzy, did everything
(the gods are my witnesses) to become at last more sound of mind,
and long I fought, unhappy, to escape
the violent arms of Cupid, and more than you would think
a girl could bear, I, hard-pressed, have borne.
Overcome, I am forced to confess, and to beg your help with timid prayers.
You alone can save, you alone can ruin your lover:
choose which you will do. It is no enemy that asks this,
but one who, being already most closely joined to you,
longs to be joined closer, and to be bound to you by a nearer tie.
in my color, my thinness, my looks, and my eyes
often wet, and the sighs stirred by no open cause,
and the frequent embraces, and the kisses which — if by chance you marked them —
could be felt to be no sisterly kisses.
Yet I myself, though I had a grievous wound in my heart,
though within me was a fiery frenzy, did everything
(the gods are my witnesses) to become at last more sound of mind,
and long I fought, unhappy, to escape
the violent arms of Cupid, and more than you would think
a girl could bear, I, hard-pressed, have borne.
Overcome, I am forced to confess, and to beg your help with timid prayers.
You alone can save, you alone can ruin your lover:
choose which you will do. It is no enemy that asks this,
but one who, being already most closely joined to you,
longs to be joined closer, and to be bound to you by a nearer tie.
Esse quidem laesi poterat tibi pectoris index et color et macies et vultus et umida saepe lumina nec causa suspiria mota patenti et crebri amplexus, et quae, si forte notasti, oscula sentiri non esse sororia possent. ipsa tamen, quamvis animo grave vulnus habebam, quamvis intus erat furor igneus, omnia feci (sunt mihi di testes), ut tandem sanior essem, pugnavique diu violenta Cupidinis arma effugere infelix, et plus, quam ferre puellam posse putes, ego dura tuli. superata fateri cogor, opemque tuam timidis exposcere votis. tu servare potes, tu perdere solus amantem: elige, utrum facias. non hoc inimica precatur, sed quae, cum tibi sit iunctissima, iunctior esse expetit et vinclo tecum propiore ligari.
Let old men know the laws, and inquire what is permitted,
what is wrong and what is right, and keep the nice balance of statutes.
Reckless Venus suits our years.
What is allowed we do not yet know, and we believe
that all is allowed, and we follow the example of the great gods.
Neither a harsh father, nor regard for reputation,
nor fear will hinder us: only let there be a cause for fear,
we will hide our sweet stolen joys under a brother’s name.
I have the freedom of speaking with you in secret,
and we give embraces, and join kisses, in the open.
How much is it, that is wanting? Pity one who confesses her love,
and would not confess it, did not the last extremity of passion compel her,
and do not deserve to have written, as the cause, upon my tomb.’
what is wrong and what is right, and keep the nice balance of statutes.
Reckless Venus suits our years.
What is allowed we do not yet know, and we believe
that all is allowed, and we follow the example of the great gods.
Neither a harsh father, nor regard for reputation,
nor fear will hinder us: only let there be a cause for fear,
we will hide our sweet stolen joys under a brother’s name.
I have the freedom of speaking with you in secret,
and we give embraces, and join kisses, in the open.
How much is it, that is wanting? Pity one who confesses her love,
and would not confess it, did not the last extremity of passion compel her,
and do not deserve to have written, as the cause, upon my tomb.’
iura senes norint, et quid liceatque nefasque fasque sit, inquirant, legumque examina servent. conveniens Venus est annis temeraria nostris. quid liceat, nescimus adhuc, et cuncta licere credimus, et sequimur magnorum exempla deorum. nec nos aut durus pater aut reverentia famae aut timor impediet: tantum sit causa timendi, dulcia fraterno sub nomina furta tegemus. est mihi libertas tecum secreta loquendi, et damus amplexus, et iungimus oscula coram. quantum est, quod desit? miserere fatentis amorem, et non fassurae, nisi cogeret ultimus ardor, neve merere meo subscribi causa sepulchro.’
As she traced such things in vain, the wax left her hand
full, and the last line clung at the very margin.
At once she seals her guilt with a pressed gem,
which she wetted with her tears (moisture had failed her tongue):
and, ashamed, she called one of her servants,
and, coaxing the frightened man, ’Carry these, most faithful,’
she said, and added, after a long while, ’to my brother.’
As she gave them, the tablets slipped and fell from her hands.
She was troubled by the omen, yet she sent them. The servant, finding
a fit time, comes up and hands over the hidden words.
The Maeandrian youth, thunderstruck with sudden anger,
throws down the tablets he had taken, when he had read part,
and, scarcely holding his hands back from the face of the trembling servant,
’While you may, you cursed pander of forbidden lust,
flee!’ he says; ’you who, if your downfall did not drag
our honor with it, would have paid me the penalty with your death.’
The man flees in terror, and reports to his mistress the fierce
words of Caunus. You turn pale, Byblis, hearing of the rebuff,
and your body, gripped by an icy chill, shudders.
full, and the last line clung at the very margin.
At once she seals her guilt with a pressed gem,
which she wetted with her tears (moisture had failed her tongue):
and, ashamed, she called one of her servants,
and, coaxing the frightened man, ’Carry these, most faithful,’
she said, and added, after a long while, ’to my brother.’
As she gave them, the tablets slipped and fell from her hands.
She was troubled by the omen, yet she sent them. The servant, finding
a fit time, comes up and hands over the hidden words.
The Maeandrian youth, thunderstruck with sudden anger,
throws down the tablets he had taken, when he had read part,
and, scarcely holding his hands back from the face of the trembling servant,
’While you may, you cursed pander of forbidden lust,
flee!’ he says; ’you who, if your downfall did not drag
our honor with it, would have paid me the penalty with your death.’
The man flees in terror, and reports to his mistress the fierce
words of Caunus. You turn pale, Byblis, hearing of the rebuff,
and your body, gripped by an icy chill, shudders.
Talia nequiquam perarantem plena reliquit cera manum, summusque in margine versus adhaesit. protinus inpressa signat sua crimina gemma, quam tinxit lacrimis (linguam defecerat umor): deque suis unum famulis pudibunda vocavit, et pavidum blandita ’fer has, fidissime, nostro’ dixit, et adiecit longo post tempore ’fratri.’ cum daret, elapsae manibus cecidere tabellae. omine turbata est, misit tamen. apta minister tempora nactus adit traditque latentia verba. attonitus subita iuvenis Maeandrius ira proicit acceptas lecta sibi parte tabellas, vixque manus retinens trepidantis ab ore ministri, ’dum licet, o vetitae scelerate libidinis auctor, effuge!’ ait ’qui, si nostrum tua fata pudorem non traherent secum, poenas mihi morte dedisses.’ ille fugit pavidus, dominaeque ferocia Cauni dicta refert. palles audita, Bybli, repulsa, et pavet obsessum glaciali frigore corpus.
Yet when her mind returned, her frenzies returned with it,
and her tongue scarcely gave such words to the struck air:
’And rightly! For why, rash that I was, did I make
a disclosure of this wound? Why did I commit so quickly,
to hasty tablets, words that should have been kept hidden?
I should first have sounded out his mind
with ambiguous sayings. That he might not refuse to follow
where I went, I should have marked, with some part of the sail,
what the breeze would be, and run over a safe sea — I
who now have filled my canvas with winds untried.
So I am carried onto the rocks, and, overturned,
am whelmed by the whole ocean, and my sails have no return.
And what of this, that I was forbidden by sure omens
to indulge my love, just when, as I bade him carry them,
the wax fell out and made our hopes drop away?
Was not that day, or my whole intent —
or rather the day — to be changed? The god himself was warning me
and giving sure signs, had I not been out of my mind.
And yet I should myself have spoken, and not entrusted myself
to wax, and, present, have laid open my frenzies.
He would have seen my tears, would have seen his lover’s face;
I could have said more than the tablets held.
I could have thrown my arms about his unwilling neck,
and, if I were rejected, could have seemed about to die,
and embraced his feet, and, flung down, begged for my life.
I would have done everything, of which, if single things
could not bend his hard mind, all together might have.
Perhaps, too, there is some fault in the servant I sent:
he did not approach aptly, nor chose, I think, a fit
time, nor sought an hour and a mind at leisure.
and her tongue scarcely gave such words to the struck air:
’And rightly! For why, rash that I was, did I make
a disclosure of this wound? Why did I commit so quickly,
to hasty tablets, words that should have been kept hidden?
I should first have sounded out his mind
with ambiguous sayings. That he might not refuse to follow
where I went, I should have marked, with some part of the sail,
what the breeze would be, and run over a safe sea — I
who now have filled my canvas with winds untried.
So I am carried onto the rocks, and, overturned,
am whelmed by the whole ocean, and my sails have no return.
And what of this, that I was forbidden by sure omens
to indulge my love, just when, as I bade him carry them,
the wax fell out and made our hopes drop away?
Was not that day, or my whole intent —
or rather the day — to be changed? The god himself was warning me
and giving sure signs, had I not been out of my mind.
And yet I should myself have spoken, and not entrusted myself
to wax, and, present, have laid open my frenzies.
He would have seen my tears, would have seen his lover’s face;
I could have said more than the tablets held.
I could have thrown my arms about his unwilling neck,
and, if I were rejected, could have seemed about to die,
and embraced his feet, and, flung down, begged for my life.
I would have done everything, of which, if single things
could not bend his hard mind, all together might have.
Perhaps, too, there is some fault in the servant I sent:
he did not approach aptly, nor chose, I think, a fit
time, nor sought an hour and a mind at leisure.
mens tamen ut rediit, pariter rediere furores, linguaque vix tales icto dedit aere voces: ’et merito! quid enim temeraria vulneris huius indicium feci? quid, quae celanda fuerunt, tam cito commisi properatis verba tabellis? ante erat ambiguis animi sententia dictis praetemptanda mihi. ne non sequeretur euntem, parte aliqua veli, qualis foret aura, notare debueram, tutoque mari decurrere, quae nunc non exploratis inplevi lintea ventis. auferor in scopulos igitur, subversaque toto obruor oceano, neque habent mea vela recursus. ’Quid quod et ominibus certis prohibebar amori indulgere meo, tum cum mihi ferre iubenti excidit et fecit spes nostras cera caducas? nonne vel illa dies fuerat, vel tota voluntas, sed potius mutanda dies? deus ipse monebat signaque certa dabat, si non male sana fuissem. et tamen ipsa loqui, nec me committere cerae debueram, praesensque meos aperire furores. vidisset lacrimas, vultum vidisset amantis; plura loqui poteram, quam quae cepere tabellae. invito potui circumdare bracchia collo, et, si reicerer, potui moritura videri amplectique pedes, adfusaque poscere vitam. omnia fecissem, quorum si singula duram flectere non poterant, potuissent omnia, mentem. forsitan et missi sit quaedam culpa ministri: non adiit apte, nec legit idonea, credo, tempora, nec petiit horamque animumque vacantem. ’
These things harmed me. For he was not born of a tigress,
nor does he carry hard flint or solid iron in his breast,
nor adamant, nor did he drink a lioness’s milk.
He shall be conquered! He must be approached again, nor will I take
any weariness of my undertaking, while this breath remains.
For first — if it were allowed me to recall my deeds —
it would have been best not to begin: the next best is to fight my beginning through.
For neither can he, even if I now give up my prayers,
fail ever to remember the things I dared.
And, because I gave up, I will seem to have wished it lightly,
or even to have tried him and assailed him with snares,
or at least to have been overcome, not by the god who most
urges and burns our hearts, but by mere lust, men will believe;
in short, I now cannot but have committed an unspeakable thing.
I have both written and wooed: my will is unsealed;
though I add nothing, I cannot be called guiltless.
What remains is much toward my wish, little toward my guilt.’
She spoke, and (so great is the discord of her uncertain mind),
though she repents having tried, she longs to try. And she goes beyond
measure, and, unhappy, lays herself open to be rebuffed again and again.
Soon, when there is no end, he flees his country and the horror,
and founds a new city in a foreign land.
nor does he carry hard flint or solid iron in his breast,
nor adamant, nor did he drink a lioness’s milk.
He shall be conquered! He must be approached again, nor will I take
any weariness of my undertaking, while this breath remains.
For first — if it were allowed me to recall my deeds —
it would have been best not to begin: the next best is to fight my beginning through.
For neither can he, even if I now give up my prayers,
fail ever to remember the things I dared.
And, because I gave up, I will seem to have wished it lightly,
or even to have tried him and assailed him with snares,
or at least to have been overcome, not by the god who most
urges and burns our hearts, but by mere lust, men will believe;
in short, I now cannot but have committed an unspeakable thing.
I have both written and wooed: my will is unsealed;
though I add nothing, I cannot be called guiltless.
What remains is much toward my wish, little toward my guilt.’
She spoke, and (so great is the discord of her uncertain mind),
though she repents having tried, she longs to try. And she goes beyond
measure, and, unhappy, lays herself open to be rebuffed again and again.
Soon, when there is no end, he flees his country and the horror,
and founds a new city in a foreign land.
Haec nocuere mihi. neque enim est de tigride natus nec rigidas silices solidumve in pectore ferrum aut adamanta gerit, nec lac bibit ille leaenae. vincetur! repetendus erit, nec taedia coepti ulla mei capiam, dum spiritus iste manebit. nam primum, si facta mihi revocare liceret, non coepisse fuit: coepta expugnare secundum est. quippe nec ille potest, ut iam mea vota relinquam, non tamen ausorum semper memor esse meorum. et, quia desierim, leviter voluisse videbor, aut etiam temptasse illum insidiisque petisse, vel certe non hoc, qui plurimus urget et urit pectora nostra, deo, sed victa libidine credar; denique iam nequeo nil commisisse nefandum. et scripsi et petii: reserata est nostra voluntas; ut nihil adiciam, non possum innoxia dici. quod superest, multum est in vota, in crimina parvum.’ dixit, et (incertae tanta est discordia mentis), cum pigeat temptasse, libet temptare. modumque exit et infelix committit saepe repelli. mox ubi finis abest, patriam fugit ille nefasque, inque peregrina ponit nova moenia terra.
Then indeed they say the Milesian woman quite failed
in all her mind; then indeed she tore the robe from her breast
and, frenzied, beat her arms;
and now she is openly mad, and confesses
her hope of forbidden love, since she leaves her country
and her hated home and follows the tracks of her fugitive brother.
And as the Ismarian Bacchants, stirred by your thyrsus,
O son of Semele, keep the triennial feast renewed,
so the Bubasian women saw Byblis howl
across the broad fields. Leaving them behind,
she roams through the Carians and the armed Leleges and Lycia.
Now she had left Cragus and Limyre and the waters of the Xanthus,
and the ridge where the Chimaera bore fire in its middle parts,
the breast and face of a lioness, the tail of a serpent.
The woods give out, when you, worn with following,
fall, and, your hair laid on the hard earth,
Byblis, you lie, and press the fallen leaves with your face.
in all her mind; then indeed she tore the robe from her breast
and, frenzied, beat her arms;
and now she is openly mad, and confesses
her hope of forbidden love, since she leaves her country
and her hated home and follows the tracks of her fugitive brother.
And as the Ismarian Bacchants, stirred by your thyrsus,
O son of Semele, keep the triennial feast renewed,
so the Bubasian women saw Byblis howl
across the broad fields. Leaving them behind,
she roams through the Carians and the armed Leleges and Lycia.
Now she had left Cragus and Limyre and the waters of the Xanthus,
and the ridge where the Chimaera bore fire in its middle parts,
the breast and face of a lioness, the tail of a serpent.
The woods give out, when you, worn with following,
fall, and, your hair laid on the hard earth,
Byblis, you lie, and press the fallen leaves with your face.
Tum vero maestam tota Miletida mente defecisse ferunt, tum vero a pectore vestem diripuit planxitque suos furibunda lacertos; iamque palam est demens, inconcessaeque fatetur spem veneris, siquidem patriam invisosque penates deserit, et profugi sequitur vestigia fratris. utque tuo motae, proles Semeleia, thyrso Ismariae celebrant repetita triennia bacchae, Byblida non aliter latos ululasse per agros Bubasides videre nurus. quibus illa relictis Caras et armiferos Lelegas Lyciamque pererrat. iam Cragon et Limyren Xanthique reliquerat undas, quoque Chimaera iugo mediis in partibus ignem, pectus et ora leae, caudam serpentis habebat. deficiunt silvae, cum tu lassata sequendo concidis, et dura positis tellure capillis, Bybli, iaces, frondesque tuo premis ore caducas.
Often the Lelegeian nymphs try to lift her in their tender arms,
often they counsel her to heal her love,
and offer comfort to her deaf mind.
Mute she lies, and grips the green grass with her nails,
Byblis, and waters the turf with a stream of tears.
Beneath these, they say, the naiads set a vein
that could never run dry. For what greater thing had they to give?
At once, as drops from the cut bark of a pine,
or as sticky bitumen oozes from the teeming earth,
or as water that had stiffened with cold softens
at the coming of the gently breathing west wind in the sun,
so, consumed by her own tears, Phoeban Byblis
is turned into a fountain, which even now in those valleys
has its mistress’s name, and flows beneath a dark holm-oak.
often they counsel her to heal her love,
and offer comfort to her deaf mind.
Mute she lies, and grips the green grass with her nails,
Byblis, and waters the turf with a stream of tears.
Beneath these, they say, the naiads set a vein
that could never run dry. For what greater thing had they to give?
At once, as drops from the cut bark of a pine,
or as sticky bitumen oozes from the teeming earth,
or as water that had stiffened with cold softens
at the coming of the gently breathing west wind in the sun,
so, consumed by her own tears, Phoeban Byblis
is turned into a fountain, which even now in those valleys
has its mistress’s name, and flows beneath a dark holm-oak.
saepe illam nymphae teneris Lelegeides ulnis tollere conantur, saepe, ut medeatur amori, praecipiunt, surdaeque adhibent solacia menti. muta iacet, viridesque suis tenet unguibus herbas Byblis, et umectat lacrimarum gramina rivo. naidas his venam, quae numquam arescere posset, subposuisse ferunt. quid enim dare maius habebant? protinus, ut secto piceae de cortice guttae, utve tenax gravida manat tellure bitumen; utve sub adventu spirantis lene favoni sole remollescit quae frigore constitit unda; sic lacrimis consumpta suis Phoebeia Byblis vertitur in fontem, qui nunc quoque vallibus illis nomen habet dominae, nigraque sub ilice manat.
The rumor of the strange wonder might perhaps have filled
the hundred cities of Crete, had not Crete lately borne
a marvel nearer home, in the changing of Iphis.
For the Phaestian land, next to the Cnossian realm,
once brought forth a man unknown to fame, Ligdus,
of free common stock, with no wealth in him
greater than his rank, but his life and faith
were blameless. He warned the ears of his pregnant wife
with these words, when now her time was near at hand:
’There are two things I pray for: that you be eased with the least pain,
and that you bear a male. The other lot is more burdensome,
and fortune denies the means. So — what I abhor —
if by chance the child brought forth in your labor is a girl —
against my will I command it; forgive me, natural love! — let her be killed.’
the hundred cities of Crete, had not Crete lately borne
a marvel nearer home, in the changing of Iphis.
For the Phaestian land, next to the Cnossian realm,
once brought forth a man unknown to fame, Ligdus,
of free common stock, with no wealth in him
greater than his rank, but his life and faith
were blameless. He warned the ears of his pregnant wife
with these words, when now her time was near at hand:
’There are two things I pray for: that you be eased with the least pain,
and that you bear a male. The other lot is more burdensome,
and fortune denies the means. So — what I abhor —
if by chance the child brought forth in your labor is a girl —
against my will I command it; forgive me, natural love! — let her be killed.’
Fama novi centum Cretaeas forsitan urbes implesset monstri, si non miracula nuper Iphide mutata Crete propiora tulisset. proxima Cnosiaco nam quondam Phaestia regno progenuit tellus ignotum nomine Ligdum, ingenua de plebe virum, nec census in illo nobilitate sua maior, sed vita fidesque inculpata fuit. gravidae qui coniugis aures vocibus his monuit, cum iam prope partus adesset. ’quae voveam, duo sunt: minimo ut relevere dolore, utque marem parias. onerosior altera sors est, et vires fortuna negat. quod abominor, ergo edita forte tuo fuerit si femina partu,— invitus mando; pietas, ignosce!—necetur.’
He had spoken, and they bathed their faces with streaming tears,
both he who gave the charge and she to whom it was given.
Yet still Telethusa presses her husband
with vain prayers, that he not narrow her hope to so strait a bound.
Ligdus’s resolve is fixed. And now, scarcely could she
carry her heavy womb with its ripe burden,
when in the middle space of night, in the likeness of a dream,
the daughter of Inachus, attended by a train of her holy rites,
stood — or seemed to stand — before her bed. On her brow were the moon’s
horns, with ears of grain gleaming yellow as bright gold,
and a royal splendor; with her was the barker Anubis,
and holy Bubastis, and Apis dappled with colors,
and the one who presses down the voice and with a finger counsels silence;
and there were sistrums, and Osiris, never sought enough,
and the foreign serpent full of sleep-bringing venom.
both he who gave the charge and she to whom it was given.
Yet still Telethusa presses her husband
with vain prayers, that he not narrow her hope to so strait a bound.
Ligdus’s resolve is fixed. And now, scarcely could she
carry her heavy womb with its ripe burden,
when in the middle space of night, in the likeness of a dream,
the daughter of Inachus, attended by a train of her holy rites,
stood — or seemed to stand — before her bed. On her brow were the moon’s
horns, with ears of grain gleaming yellow as bright gold,
and a royal splendor; with her was the barker Anubis,
and holy Bubastis, and Apis dappled with colors,
and the one who presses down the voice and with a finger counsels silence;
and there were sistrums, and Osiris, never sought enough,
and the foreign serpent full of sleep-bringing venom.
dixerat, et lacrimis vultum lavere profusis, tam qui mandabat, quam cui mandata dabantur. sed tamen usque suum vanis Telethusa maritum sollicitat precibus, ne spem sibi ponat in arto. certa sua est Ligdo sententia. iamque ferendo vix erat illa gravem maturo pondere ventrem, cum medio noctis spatio sub imagine somni Inachis ante torum, pompa comitata sacrorum, aut stetit aut visa est. inerant lunaria fronti cornua cum spicis nitido flaventibus auro et regale decus; cum qua latrator Anubis, sanctaque Bubastis, variusque coloribus Apis, quique premit vocem digitoque silentia suadet; sistraque erant, numquamque satis quaesitus Osiris, plenaque somniferis serpens peregrina venenis.
Then, as to one shaken from sleep and seeing clearly,
the goddess spoke thus: ’O Telethusa, one of my own,
lay down your heavy cares, and cheat your husband’s charge.
And do not hesitate, when Lucina has eased you of your child,
to raise whatever it shall be. I am a helping goddess, and bring
aid when entreated; nor will you complain that you worshipped
a thankless power.’ She counseled her, and withdrew from the chamber.
The Cretan woman rises glad from her bed, and, a suppliant, lifting
her pure hands to the stars, prays that her vision may come true.
When her pangs increased, and the burden itself thrust out
into the air, and a girl was born, the father not knowing,
the mother bade the boy be reared — a pretense. The thing
found belief, and none knew the trick but the nurse.
The father pays his vows, and gives the grandfather’s name:
Iphis the grandfather had been. The mother rejoiced in the name,
because it was shared, and she deceived no one by it.
From there the lies, begun in a dutiful deceit, lay hidden.
The dress was a boy’s; the face, whether you gave it to a girl
or to a boy, either would have been beautiful.
the goddess spoke thus: ’O Telethusa, one of my own,
lay down your heavy cares, and cheat your husband’s charge.
And do not hesitate, when Lucina has eased you of your child,
to raise whatever it shall be. I am a helping goddess, and bring
aid when entreated; nor will you complain that you worshipped
a thankless power.’ She counseled her, and withdrew from the chamber.
The Cretan woman rises glad from her bed, and, a suppliant, lifting
her pure hands to the stars, prays that her vision may come true.
When her pangs increased, and the burden itself thrust out
into the air, and a girl was born, the father not knowing,
the mother bade the boy be reared — a pretense. The thing
found belief, and none knew the trick but the nurse.
The father pays his vows, and gives the grandfather’s name:
Iphis the grandfather had been. The mother rejoiced in the name,
because it was shared, and she deceived no one by it.
From there the lies, begun in a dutiful deceit, lay hidden.
The dress was a boy’s; the face, whether you gave it to a girl
or to a boy, either would have been beautiful.
tum velut excussam somno et manifesta videntem sic adfata dea est: ’pars o Telethusa mearum, pone graves curas, mandataque falle mariti. nec dubita, cum te partu Lucina levarit, tollere quicquid erit. dea sum auxiliaris opemque exorata fero; nec te coluisse quereris ingratum numen.’ monuit, thalamoque recessit. laeta toro surgit, purasque ad sidera supplex Cressa manus tollens, rata sint sua visa, precatur. Ut dolor increvit, seque ipsum pondus in auras expulit, et nata est ignaro femina patre, iussit ali mater puerum mentita. fidemque res habuit, neque erat ficti nisi conscia nutrix. vota pater solvit, nomenque inponit avitum: Iphis avus fuerat. gavisa est nomine mater, quod commune foret, nec quemquam falleret illo. inde incepta pia mendacia fraude latebant. cultus erat pueri; facies, quam sive puellae, sive dares puero, fuerat formosus uterque.
Meanwhile the thirteenth year had come on:
when your father, Iphis, betrothed to you golden Ianthe,
the maiden most praised among the women of Phaestus
for her dower of beauty, born of Dictaean Telestes.
Equal in age, equal in beauty they were, and took their first
lessons, the rudiments of their years, from the same masters.
From this, love touched the untaught hearts of both, and gave
an equal wound to each — but their confidence was unequal:
Ianthe awaits the marriage and the appointed time of the wedding torch,
and believes the one she thinks a man will be her man;
Iphis loves one she despairs of being able to enjoy, and this
itself swells her flames, and, a maiden, she burns for a maiden,
and, scarcely holding back her tears, ’What end awaits me,’ she said,
’whom a care holds known to none, monstrous, of a strange
and new kind of love? If the gods had wished to spare me,
they should have spared; if not, and wished to ruin me,
they should at least have given a natural ill, one in the course of nature.
Love does not burn a cow for a cow, nor mares for mares:
the ram burns for the ewe, the hind follows her stag.
So too the birds couple, and among all the animals
there is no female seized by desire for a female.
when your father, Iphis, betrothed to you golden Ianthe,
the maiden most praised among the women of Phaestus
for her dower of beauty, born of Dictaean Telestes.
Equal in age, equal in beauty they were, and took their first
lessons, the rudiments of their years, from the same masters.
From this, love touched the untaught hearts of both, and gave
an equal wound to each — but their confidence was unequal:
Ianthe awaits the marriage and the appointed time of the wedding torch,
and believes the one she thinks a man will be her man;
Iphis loves one she despairs of being able to enjoy, and this
itself swells her flames, and, a maiden, she burns for a maiden,
and, scarcely holding back her tears, ’What end awaits me,’ she said,
’whom a care holds known to none, monstrous, of a strange
and new kind of love? If the gods had wished to spare me,
they should have spared; if not, and wished to ruin me,
they should at least have given a natural ill, one in the course of nature.
Love does not burn a cow for a cow, nor mares for mares:
the ram burns for the ewe, the hind follows her stag.
So too the birds couple, and among all the animals
there is no female seized by desire for a female.
Tertius interea decimo successerat annus: cum pater, Iphi, tibi flavam despondet Ianthen, inter Phaestiadas quae laudatissima formae dote fuit virgo, Dictaeo nata Teleste. par aetas, par forma fuit, primasque magistris accepere artes, elementa aetatis, ab isdem. hinc amor ambarum tetigit rude pectus, et aequum vulnus utrique dedit, sed erat fiducia dispar: coniugium pactaeque exspectat tempora taedae, quamque virum putat esse, virum fore credit Ianthe; Iphis amat, qua posse frui desperat, et auget hoc ipsum flammas, ardetque in virgine virgo, vixque tenens lacrimas ’quis me manet exitus,’ inquit ’cognita quam nulli, quam prodigiosa novaeque cura tenet Veneris? si di mihi parcere vellent, parcere debuerant; si non, et perdere vellent, naturale malum saltem et de more dedissent. nec vaccam vaccae, nec equas amor urit equarum: urit oves aries, sequitur sua femina cervum. sic et aves coeunt, interque animalia cuncta femina femineo conrepta cupidine nulla est.
I would I were no female! Yet, that Crete might bear
not all its monsters, the daughter of the Sun loved a bull,
a female, surely, a male. My love is more frenzied than that,
if we own the truth. Yet she pursued
the hope of Venus; yet she, by guile and the image of a cow,
had her bull, and there was an adulterer to be deceived.
Though cunning should stream together here from all the world,
though Daedalus himself should fly back on his waxen wings,
what will he do? Will he make me, by his learned arts,
a boy out of a girl? Will he change you, Ianthe?
Why not steady your spirit, and gather yourself, Iphis,
and shake off these helpless, foolish fires?
See what you were born — unless you cheat yourself as well —
and seek what is right, and love what a woman should!
It is hope that makes love, hope that feeds it.
not all its monsters, the daughter of the Sun loved a bull,
a female, surely, a male. My love is more frenzied than that,
if we own the truth. Yet she pursued
the hope of Venus; yet she, by guile and the image of a cow,
had her bull, and there was an adulterer to be deceived.
Though cunning should stream together here from all the world,
though Daedalus himself should fly back on his waxen wings,
what will he do? Will he make me, by his learned arts,
a boy out of a girl? Will he change you, Ianthe?
Why not steady your spirit, and gather yourself, Iphis,
and shake off these helpless, foolish fires?
See what you were born — unless you cheat yourself as well —
and seek what is right, and love what a woman should!
It is hope that makes love, hope that feeds it.
vellem nulla forem! ne non tamen omnia Crete monstra ferat, taurum dilexit filia Solis, femina nempe marem. meus est furiosior illo, si verum profitemur, amor. tamen illa secuta est spem Veneris; tamen illa dolis et imagine vaccae passa bovem est, et erat, qui deciperetur, adulter. huc licet ex toto sollertia confluat orbe, ipse licet revolet ceratis Daedalus alis, quid faciet? num me puerum de virgine doctis artibus efficiet? num te mutabit, Ianthe? ’Quin animum firmas, teque ipsa recolligis, Iphi, consiliique inopes et stultos excutis ignes? quid sis nata, vide, nisi te quoque decipis ipsam, et pete quod fas est, et ama quod femina debes! spes est, quae faciat, spes est, quae pascat amorem.
But the thing itself takes that from you. No guard
keeps you from the dear embrace, no care of a wary husband,
no harshness of a father; she herself does not refuse you when you ask,
and yet she cannot be won by you, nor, though all things come to pass,
can you be happy, though gods and men should toil.
Even now no part of my prayers is in vain,
and the gods, kindly to me, have given whatever they could;
and what I wish, my father wishes, she herself wishes, and my father-in-law to be.
But nature does not wish it — nature, mightier than all these,
who alone harms me. See, the longed-for time has come,
the wedding day is here, and now Ianthe will be mine —
and will not fall to me: in the midst of waters we shall thirst.
Juno of brides, Hymenaeus, why do you come to these
rites, where the one who should wed is missing, where we both are brides?’
keeps you from the dear embrace, no care of a wary husband,
no harshness of a father; she herself does not refuse you when you ask,
and yet she cannot be won by you, nor, though all things come to pass,
can you be happy, though gods and men should toil.
Even now no part of my prayers is in vain,
and the gods, kindly to me, have given whatever they could;
and what I wish, my father wishes, she herself wishes, and my father-in-law to be.
But nature does not wish it — nature, mightier than all these,
who alone harms me. See, the longed-for time has come,
the wedding day is here, and now Ianthe will be mine —
and will not fall to me: in the midst of waters we shall thirst.
Juno of brides, Hymenaeus, why do you come to these
rites, where the one who should wed is missing, where we both are brides?’
hanc tibi res adimit. non te custodia caro arcet ab amplexu, nec cauti cura mariti, non patris asperitas, non se negat ipsa roganti, nec tamen est potiunda tibi, nec, ut omnia fiant, esse potes felix, ut dique hominesque laborent. nunc quoque votorum nulla est pars vana meorum, dique mihi faciles, quicquid valuere, dederunt; quodque ego, vult genitor, vult ipsa, socerque futurus. at non vult natura, potentior omnibus istis, quae mihi sola nocet. venit ecce optabile tempus, luxque iugalis adest, et iam mea fiet Ianthe— nec mihi continget: mediis sitiemus in undis. pronuba quid Iuno, quid ad haec, Hymenaee, venitis sacra, quibus qui ducat abest, ubi nubimus ambae?’
From these words she checked her voice. Nor more gently does the other maiden
burn, and prays that you, Hymenaeus, come quickly.
What Ianthe seeks, Telethusa, fearing it, now puts off the time,
now drags out delay with feigned illness, often pleading
omens and visions for cause. But now she had used up all
the matter of pretense, and the put-off time of the wedding torch
was upon her, and one day remained. Then she
takes from her own head and her daughter’s the binding fillet,
and, embracing the altar with loosened hair,
’Isis, you who dwell at Paraetonium and the Mareotic fields
and Pharos, and the Nile parted into seven horns:
bring help, I pray,’ she said, ’and heal our fear!
You, goddess, you and these your emblems I once saw,
and knew them all — the sound and the attending bronze
of the sistrums — and marked your commands in a remembering mind.
That this girl sees the light, that I am not punished — behold,
it is your counsel and your gift. Pity us two,
and help us with your aid!’ Tears followed her words.
burn, and prays that you, Hymenaeus, come quickly.
What Ianthe seeks, Telethusa, fearing it, now puts off the time,
now drags out delay with feigned illness, often pleading
omens and visions for cause. But now she had used up all
the matter of pretense, and the put-off time of the wedding torch
was upon her, and one day remained. Then she
takes from her own head and her daughter’s the binding fillet,
and, embracing the altar with loosened hair,
’Isis, you who dwell at Paraetonium and the Mareotic fields
and Pharos, and the Nile parted into seven horns:
bring help, I pray,’ she said, ’and heal our fear!
You, goddess, you and these your emblems I once saw,
and knew them all — the sound and the attending bronze
of the sistrums — and marked your commands in a remembering mind.
That this girl sees the light, that I am not punished — behold,
it is your counsel and your gift. Pity us two,
and help us with your aid!’ Tears followed her words.
pressit ab his vocem. nec lenius altera virgo aestuat, utque celer venias, Hymenaee, precatur. quae petit, haec Telethusa timens modo tempora differt, nunc ficto languore moram trahit, omina saepe visaque causatur. sed iam consumpserat omnem materiam ficti, dilataque tempora taedae institerant, unusque dies restabat. at illa crinalem capiti vittam nataeque sibique detrahit, et passis aram complexa capillis ’Isi, Paraetonium Mareoticaque arva Pharonque quae colis, et septem digestum in cornua Nilum: fer, precor,’ inquit ’opem, nostroque medere timori! te, dea, te quondam tuaque haec insignia vidi cunctaque cognovi, sonitum comitantiaque aera sistrorum, memorique animo tua iussa notavi. quod videt haec lucem, quod non ego punior, ecce consilium munusque tuum est. miserere duarum, auxilioque iuva!’ lacrimae sunt verba secutae.
The goddess seemed to move her altar (and had moved it),
and the temple’s doors trembled, and, mimicking the moon,
her horns flashed, and the rattling sistrum sounded.
Not free of care, yet glad at the favorable omen,
the mother leaves the temple. Iphis follows as she goes,
her companion, with a longer stride than was her wont, and the whiteness
does not stay in her face, and her strength is increased, and her very
look is keener, and the measure of her unkempt hair is shorter,
and there is more vigor present than she had as a woman. For you who
lately were a woman are a boy! Bring gifts to the temples,
and rejoice with no timid faith! They bring gifts to the temples,
and add an inscription too: the inscription held a brief verse:
IPHIS, A BOY, PAYS THE GIFTS HE HAD VOWED AS A GIRL.
and the temple’s doors trembled, and, mimicking the moon,
her horns flashed, and the rattling sistrum sounded.
Not free of care, yet glad at the favorable omen,
the mother leaves the temple. Iphis follows as she goes,
her companion, with a longer stride than was her wont, and the whiteness
does not stay in her face, and her strength is increased, and her very
look is keener, and the measure of her unkempt hair is shorter,
and there is more vigor present than she had as a woman. For you who
lately were a woman are a boy! Bring gifts to the temples,
and rejoice with no timid faith! They bring gifts to the temples,
and add an inscription too: the inscription held a brief verse:
IPHIS, A BOY, PAYS THE GIFTS HE HAD VOWED AS A GIRL.
visa dea est movisse suas (et moverat) aras, et templi tremuere fores, imitataque lunam cornua fulserunt, crepuitque sonabile sistrum. non secura quidem, fausto tamen omine laeta mater abit templo. sequitur comes Iphis euntem, quam solita est, maiore gradu, nec candor in ore permanet, et vires augentur, et acrior ipse est vultus, et incomptis brevior mensura capillis, plusque vigoris adest, habuit quam femina. nam quae femina nuper eras, puer es! date munera templis, nec timida gaudete fide! dant munera templis, addunt et titulum: titulus breve carmen habebat: dona: puer: solvit: quae: femina: voverat: iphis.
From there, veiled in his saffron cloak, through the measureless
air Hymenaeus departs and makes for the shores
of the Cicones, and is called by Orpheus’s voice — in vain.
He was present, indeed, but brought neither the solemn words
nor a glad face nor a lucky omen.
The torch he held, too, kept sputtering with tear-drawing smoke
the whole while, and for all its waving found no fire.
The outcome was graver than the omen: for while the new bride,
wandering through the grass in the company of her band of Naiads,
fell dead, a serpent’s tooth caught in her ankle.
When the bard of Rhodope had wept for her enough
to the upper air, that he might not leave even the shades untried,
he dared to go down to the Styx by the Taenarian gate,
and through the weightless peoples and the ghosts that had had burial
he came to Persephone and to him who holds the unlovely
realm, the lord of the shades, and, striking the strings to his song,
spoke thus: ‘O powers of the world set beneath the earth,
into which we fall back, all we who are born mortal,
if it is allowed, and you let me lay aside the windings
of false speech and tell the truth: I have not come down here
to see dark Tartarus, nor to bind the three throats,
shaggy with snakes, of the Medusan monster:
my wife is the cause of my journey — into whom a trodden viper
spread its venom and stole away her growing years.
I wished to be able to bear it, and I will not deny that I tried:
Love conquered. In the world above he is a god well known;
whether he is so here too, I doubt — yet here too I guess he is,
and if the tale of the old ravishing is not a lie,
you too were joined by Love. By these places full of fear,
by this vast Chaos and the silences of the boundless realm,
I beg you, unweave the hastened fate of Eurydice.
We are all owed to you, and after a little lingering,
sooner or later we hurry to this one abode.
Hither we all make our way, this is our last home, and you
hold the longest reign over the human race.
She too, when ripe she has lived out her rightful years,
will fall to your jurisdiction: in place of a gift I ask her use.
But if the fates deny this grace for my wife, I am resolved
not to return: take your joy in the death of two.’
air Hymenaeus departs and makes for the shores
of the Cicones, and is called by Orpheus’s voice — in vain.
He was present, indeed, but brought neither the solemn words
nor a glad face nor a lucky omen.
The torch he held, too, kept sputtering with tear-drawing smoke
the whole while, and for all its waving found no fire.
The outcome was graver than the omen: for while the new bride,
wandering through the grass in the company of her band of Naiads,
fell dead, a serpent’s tooth caught in her ankle.
When the bard of Rhodope had wept for her enough
to the upper air, that he might not leave even the shades untried,
he dared to go down to the Styx by the Taenarian gate,
and through the weightless peoples and the ghosts that had had burial
he came to Persephone and to him who holds the unlovely
realm, the lord of the shades, and, striking the strings to his song,
spoke thus: ‘O powers of the world set beneath the earth,
into which we fall back, all we who are born mortal,
if it is allowed, and you let me lay aside the windings
of false speech and tell the truth: I have not come down here
to see dark Tartarus, nor to bind the three throats,
shaggy with snakes, of the Medusan monster:
my wife is the cause of my journey — into whom a trodden viper
spread its venom and stole away her growing years.
I wished to be able to bear it, and I will not deny that I tried:
Love conquered. In the world above he is a god well known;
whether he is so here too, I doubt — yet here too I guess he is,
and if the tale of the old ravishing is not a lie,
you too were joined by Love. By these places full of fear,
by this vast Chaos and the silences of the boundless realm,
I beg you, unweave the hastened fate of Eurydice.
We are all owed to you, and after a little lingering,
sooner or later we hurry to this one abode.
Hither we all make our way, this is our last home, and you
hold the longest reign over the human race.
She too, when ripe she has lived out her rightful years,
will fall to your jurisdiction: in place of a gift I ask her use.
But if the fates deny this grace for my wife, I am resolved
not to return: take your joy in the death of two.’
Inde per inmensum croceo velatus amictu aethera digreditur Ciconumque Hymenaeus ad oras tendit et Orphea nequiquam voce vocatur. adfuit ille quidem, sed nec sollemnia verba nec laetos vultus nec felix attulit omen. fax quoque, quam tenuit, lacrimoso stridula fumo usque fuit nullosque invenit motibus ignes. exitus auspicio gravior: nam nupta per herbas dum nova Naiadum turba comitata vagatur, occidit in talum serpentis dente recepto. quam satis ad superas postquam Rhodopeius auras deflevit vates, ne non temptaret et umbras, ad Styga Taenaria est ausus descendere porta perque leves populos simulacraque functa sepulcro Persephonen adiit inamoenaque regna tenentem umbrarum dominum pulsisque ad carmina nervis sic ait: ’o positi sub terra numina mundi, in quem reccidimus, quicquid mortale creamur, si licet et falsi positis ambagibus oris vera loqui sinitis, non huc, ut opaca viderem Tartara, descendi, nec uti villosa colubris terna Medusaei vincirem guttura monstri: causa viae est coniunx, in quam calcata venenum vipera diffudit crescentesque abstulit annos. posse pati volui nec me temptasse negabo: vicit Amor. supera deus hic bene notus in ora est; an sit et hic, dubito: sed et hic tamen auguror esse, famaque si veteris non est mentita rapinae, vos quoque iunxit Amor. per ego haec loca plena timoris, per Chaos hoc ingens vastique silentia regni, Eurydices, oro, properata retexite fata. omnia debemur vobis, paulumque morati serius aut citius sedem properamus ad unam. tendimus huc omnes, haec est domus ultima, vosque humani generis longissima regna tenetis. haec quoque, cum iustos matura peregerit annos, iuris erit vestri: pro munere poscimus usum; quodsi fata negant veniam pro coniuge, certum est nolle redire mihi: leto gaudete duorum.’
As he spoke such things and plucked the strings to his words,
the bloodless souls were weeping; Tantalus did not snatch
at the receding water, Ixion’s wheel stood still in wonder,
the birds did not tear the liver, the daughters of Belus
rested from their urns, and you sat, Sisyphus, on your stone.
Then first, they say, the cheeks of the Eumenides, conquered
by the song, were wet with tears; nor can the royal consort,
nor he who rules the depths, bear to refuse the pleader,
and they call Eurydice: she was among the recent shades,
and came forward with a step slow from her wound.
The Rhodopean hero takes her, and with her this law:
that he not turn his eyes backward until he has passed out
from the valleys of Avernus — or the gift would be void.
The upward path is climbed through the mute silences,
steep, dark, thick with murky gloom,
and they were not far from the edge of the upper earth:
here, fearing she might fail and greedy to see her,
the lover turned his eyes, and at once she slipped back,
and, stretching out her arms and straining to be held and to hold,
the unhappy man caught nothing but the yielding air.
And now, dying a second time, she made no complaint
of her husband (for of what could she complain, except that she was loved?),
and spoke a last ‘farewell,’ which now he scarcely
caught with his ears, and was rolled back again to the same place.
the bloodless souls were weeping; Tantalus did not snatch
at the receding water, Ixion’s wheel stood still in wonder,
the birds did not tear the liver, the daughters of Belus
rested from their urns, and you sat, Sisyphus, on your stone.
Then first, they say, the cheeks of the Eumenides, conquered
by the song, were wet with tears; nor can the royal consort,
nor he who rules the depths, bear to refuse the pleader,
and they call Eurydice: she was among the recent shades,
and came forward with a step slow from her wound.
The Rhodopean hero takes her, and with her this law:
that he not turn his eyes backward until he has passed out
from the valleys of Avernus — or the gift would be void.
The upward path is climbed through the mute silences,
steep, dark, thick with murky gloom,
and they were not far from the edge of the upper earth:
here, fearing she might fail and greedy to see her,
the lover turned his eyes, and at once she slipped back,
and, stretching out her arms and straining to be held and to hold,
the unhappy man caught nothing but the yielding air.
And now, dying a second time, she made no complaint
of her husband (for of what could she complain, except that she was loved?),
and spoke a last ‘farewell,’ which now he scarcely
caught with his ears, and was rolled back again to the same place.
Talia dicentem nervosque ad verba moventem exsangues flebant animae; nec Tantalus undam captavit refugam, stupuitque Ixionis orbis, nec carpsere iecur volucres, urnisque vacarunt Belides, inque tuo sedisti, Sisyphe, saxo. tunc primum lacrimis victarum carmine fama est Eumenidum maduisse genas, nec regia coniunx sustinet oranti nec, qui regit ima, negare, Eurydicenque vocant: umbras erat illa recentes inter et incessit passu de vulnere tardo. hanc simul et legem Rhodopeius accipit heros, ne flectat retro sua lumina, donec Avernas exierit valles; aut inrita dona futura. carpitur adclivis per muta silentia trames, arduus, obscurus, caligine densus opaca, nec procul afuerunt telluris margine summae: hic, ne deficeret, metuens avidusque videndi flexit amans oculos, et protinus illa relapsa est, bracchiaque intendens prendique et prendere certans nil nisi cedentes infelix arripit auras. iamque iterum moriens non est de coniuge quicquam questa suo (quid enim nisi se quereretur amatam?) supremumque ’vale,’ quod iam vix auribus ille acciperet, dixit revolutaque rursus eodem est.
No otherwise was Orpheus stunned by his wife’s twin death
than he who, in fear, saw the three necks of the dog,
the middle one wearing chains — he whom dread did not leave
before his former nature did, as stone grew over his body;
or than Olenos, who drew the guilt upon himself
and wished to seem the guilty one, and you, O Lethaea,
unhappy, too trusting in your beauty: hearts once most closely joined,
now stones, which watery Ida bears upon her.
As he pleaded and wished in vain to cross a second time,
the ferryman barred him: yet for seven days
he sat squalid on the bank, without the gift of Ceres;
care and grief of soul and tears were his nourishment.
Having complained that the gods of Erebus were cruel, he withdrew
to high Rhodope and to Haemus, beaten by the north winds.
than he who, in fear, saw the three necks of the dog,
the middle one wearing chains — he whom dread did not leave
before his former nature did, as stone grew over his body;
or than Olenos, who drew the guilt upon himself
and wished to seem the guilty one, and you, O Lethaea,
unhappy, too trusting in your beauty: hearts once most closely joined,
now stones, which watery Ida bears upon her.
As he pleaded and wished in vain to cross a second time,
the ferryman barred him: yet for seven days
he sat squalid on the bank, without the gift of Ceres;
care and grief of soul and tears were his nourishment.
Having complained that the gods of Erebus were cruel, he withdrew
to high Rhodope and to Haemus, beaten by the north winds.
Non aliter stupuit gemina nece coniugis Orpheus, quam tria qui timidus, medio portante catenas, colla canis vidit, quem non pavor ante reliquit, quam natura prior saxo per corpus oborto, quique in se crimen traxit voluitque videri Olenos esse nocens, tuque, o confisa figurae, infelix Lethaea, tuae, iunctissima quondam pectora, nunc lapides, quos umida sustinet Ide. orantem frustraque iterum transire volentem portitor arcuerat: septem tamen ille diebus squalidus in ripa Cereris sine munere sedit; cura dolorque animi lacrimaeque alimenta fuere. esse deos Erebi crudeles questus, in altam se recipit Rhodopen pulsumque aquilonibus Haemum.
The Sun had ended the third year, shut within
the watery Fishes, and Orpheus had fled from all
love of women — whether because it had gone ill for him,
or because he had pledged his faith; yet many a woman’s ardor
was to join herself to the bard, and many grieved at rejection.
He was even the one who taught the peoples of Thrace to turn
their love to tender males, and, on this side of manhood,
to pluck the brief spring of their years and the first flowers.
the watery Fishes, and Orpheus had fled from all
love of women — whether because it had gone ill for him,
or because he had pledged his faith; yet many a woman’s ardor
was to join herself to the bard, and many grieved at rejection.
He was even the one who taught the peoples of Thrace to turn
their love to tender males, and, on this side of manhood,
to pluck the brief spring of their years and the first flowers.
Tertius aequoreis inclusum Piscibus annum finierat Titan, omnemque refugerat Orpheus femineam Venerem, seu quod male cesserat illi, sive fidem dederat; multas tamen ardor habebat iungere se vati, multae doluere repulsae. ille etiam Thracum populis fuit auctor amorem in teneros transferre mares citraque iuventam aetatis breve ver et primos carpere flores.
There was a hill, and over the hill a level stretch
of open field, which the grass-blades made green:
the place had no shade; but when the god-born bard
had taken his seat there and moved the sounding strings,
shade came to the place: the Chaonian oak was not absent,
nor the grove of the Heliades, nor the winter-oak with its high leaves,
nor the soft lindens, nor the beech and the unwed laurel,
and the brittle hazels and the ash, useful for spears,
and the knotless fir and the holm-oak curved with acorns,
and the festal plane and the maple of unmatched colors,
and with them the riverside willows and the water-lotus
and the ever-green box and the slender tamarisks
and the two-colored myrtle and the tine, blue with its berries.
You too, bending-footed ivies, came, and with you
the vine-shoots and the elms clothed in vines,
the manna-ash and the spruces and the arbutus laden with red fruit,
and the pliant palms, the victor’s prize,
and the pine with girt-up foliage, shaggy at the crown,
dear to the mother of the gods, since Attis of Cybele
put off the man in this tree and hardened into that trunk.
of open field, which the grass-blades made green:
the place had no shade; but when the god-born bard
had taken his seat there and moved the sounding strings,
shade came to the place: the Chaonian oak was not absent,
nor the grove of the Heliades, nor the winter-oak with its high leaves,
nor the soft lindens, nor the beech and the unwed laurel,
and the brittle hazels and the ash, useful for spears,
and the knotless fir and the holm-oak curved with acorns,
and the festal plane and the maple of unmatched colors,
and with them the riverside willows and the water-lotus
and the ever-green box and the slender tamarisks
and the two-colored myrtle and the tine, blue with its berries.
You too, bending-footed ivies, came, and with you
the vine-shoots and the elms clothed in vines,
the manna-ash and the spruces and the arbutus laden with red fruit,
and the pliant palms, the victor’s prize,
and the pine with girt-up foliage, shaggy at the crown,
dear to the mother of the gods, since Attis of Cybele
put off the man in this tree and hardened into that trunk.
Collis erat collemque super planissima campi area, quam viridem faciebant graminis herbae: umbra loco deerat; qua postquam parte resedit dis genitus vates et fila sonantia movit, umbra loco venit: non Chaonis afuit arbor, non nemus Heliadum, non frondibus aesculus altis, nec tiliae molles, nec fagus et innuba laurus, et coryli fragiles et fraxinus utilis hastis enodisque abies curvataque glandibus ilex et platanus genialis acerque coloribus inpar amnicolaeque simul salices et aquatica lotos perpetuoque virens buxum tenuesque myricae et bicolor myrtus et bacis caerula tinus. vos quoque, flexipedes hederae, venistis et una pampineae vites et amictae vitibus ulmi ornique et piceae pomoque onerata rubenti arbutus et lentae, victoris praemia, palmae et succincta comas hirsutaque vertice pinus, grata deum matri, siquidem Cybeleius Attis exuit hac hominem truncoque induruit illo.
Among this throng stood the cypress, shaped like a turning-post,
now a tree, but once a boy beloved by that god
who tunes the lyre with strings and with strings the bow.
For there was a great stag, sacred to the nymphs who hold
the fields of Carthaea, and with his wide-spreading antlers
he gave deep shade to his own head.
His horns shone with gold, and from his rounded neck
hung jeweled collars let down upon his shoulders.
A silver boss, bound with small thongs over his brow,
swayed; and matching pearls of bronze gleamed
from his two ears, about his hollow temples;
and he, free of fear and having laid aside the dread
natural to him, would haunt the houses and offer his neck
to be stroked by any hands, even unknown ones.
But before all others, O fairest of the Cean race,
he was dear to you, Cyparissus: you led the stag
to fresh pasture, you to the water of the clear spring,
now you would weave bright flowers through his horns,
now, a rider seated on his back, glad here and there,
you reined his soft mouth with purple halters.
now a tree, but once a boy beloved by that god
who tunes the lyre with strings and with strings the bow.
For there was a great stag, sacred to the nymphs who hold
the fields of Carthaea, and with his wide-spreading antlers
he gave deep shade to his own head.
His horns shone with gold, and from his rounded neck
hung jeweled collars let down upon his shoulders.
A silver boss, bound with small thongs over his brow,
swayed; and matching pearls of bronze gleamed
from his two ears, about his hollow temples;
and he, free of fear and having laid aside the dread
natural to him, would haunt the houses and offer his neck
to be stroked by any hands, even unknown ones.
But before all others, O fairest of the Cean race,
he was dear to you, Cyparissus: you led the stag
to fresh pasture, you to the water of the clear spring,
now you would weave bright flowers through his horns,
now, a rider seated on his back, glad here and there,
you reined his soft mouth with purple halters.
Adfuit huic turbae metas imitata cupressus, nunc arbor, puer ante deo dilectus ab illo, qui citharam nervis et nervis temperat arcum. namque sacer nymphis Carthaea tenentibus arva ingens cervus erat, lateque patentibus altas ipse suo capiti praebebat cornibus umbras. cornua fulgebant auro, demissaque in armos pendebant tereti gemmata monilia collo. bulla super frontem parvis argentea loris vincta movebatur; parilesque ex aere nitebant auribus e geminis circum cava tempora bacae; isque metu vacuus naturalique pavore deposito celebrare domos mulcendaque colla quamlibet ignotis manibus praebere solebat. sed tamen ante alios, Ceae pulcherrime gentis, gratus erat, Cyparisse, tibi: tu pabula cervum ad nova, tu liquidi ducebas fontis ad undam, tu modo texebas varios per cornua flores, nunc eques in tergo residens huc laetus et illuc mollia purpureis frenabas ora capistris.
It was hot, and midday, and with the sun’s heat
the curved arms of the shore-loving Crab were burning:
the stag, weary, laid his body on the grassy ground
and drew coolness from the trees’ shade.
Him the boy Cyparissus, unwary, with a sharp javelin
pierced, and when he saw him dying of the cruel wound,
he resolved to die. What comforts did Phoebus not
speak, and warned him to grieve but lightly, in proportion
to the cause! Still the boy groans, and asks this
as a last gift from the gods: that he might mourn for all time.
And now, his blood drained away through measureless weeping,
his limbs began to turn to a green color,
and the hair that lately hung over his snowy brow
became a bristling shock and, taking on stiffness,
looked at the starry sky with a slender top.
The god groaned, and sadly said: ‘You will be mourned by me,
and will mourn others, and stand beside those who grieve.’
the curved arms of the shore-loving Crab were burning:
the stag, weary, laid his body on the grassy ground
and drew coolness from the trees’ shade.
Him the boy Cyparissus, unwary, with a sharp javelin
pierced, and when he saw him dying of the cruel wound,
he resolved to die. What comforts did Phoebus not
speak, and warned him to grieve but lightly, in proportion
to the cause! Still the boy groans, and asks this
as a last gift from the gods: that he might mourn for all time.
And now, his blood drained away through measureless weeping,
his limbs began to turn to a green color,
and the hair that lately hung over his snowy brow
became a bristling shock and, taking on stiffness,
looked at the starry sky with a slender top.
The god groaned, and sadly said: ‘You will be mourned by me,
and will mourn others, and stand beside those who grieve.’
Aestus erat mediusque dies, solisque vapore concava litorei fervebant bracchia Cancri: fessus in herbosa posuit sua corpora terra cervus et arborea frigus ducebat ab umbra. hunc puer inprudens iaculo Cyparissus acuto fixit et, ut saevo morientem vulnere vidit, velle mori statuit. quae non solacia Phoebus dixit et, ut leviter pro materiaque doleret, admonuit! gemit ille tamen munusque supremum hoc petit a superis, ut tempore lugeat omni. iamque per inmensos egesto sanguine fletus in viridem verti coeperunt membra colorem, et, modo qui nivea pendebant fronte capilli, horrida caesaries fieri sumptoque rigore sidereum gracili spectare cacumine caelum. ingemuit tristisque deus ’lugebere nobis lugebisque alios aderisque dolentibus’ inquit.
Such a wood the bard had drawn to him, and he sat
amid a gathering of beasts and birds, in the middle of the throng.
When he had tested enough the strings struck by his thumb,
and felt that the varied notes, though they sounded apart,
were in concord, he stirred his voice in this song:
‘From Jove, my mother Muse — all things yield to Jove’s reign —
set our song in motion! Jove’s power has often before
been told by me: I sang of the Giants with a heavier quill,
and the victorious bolts scattered over the Phlegraean fields.
Now there is need of a lighter lyre: let us sing of boys
beloved by the gods, and of girls struck senseless
by forbidden fires, who earned a penalty by their lust.
amid a gathering of beasts and birds, in the middle of the throng.
When he had tested enough the strings struck by his thumb,
and felt that the varied notes, though they sounded apart,
were in concord, he stirred his voice in this song:
‘From Jove, my mother Muse — all things yield to Jove’s reign —
set our song in motion! Jove’s power has often before
been told by me: I sang of the Giants with a heavier quill,
and the victorious bolts scattered over the Phlegraean fields.
Now there is need of a lighter lyre: let us sing of boys
beloved by the gods, and of girls struck senseless
by forbidden fires, who earned a penalty by their lust.
Tale nemus vates attraxerat inque ferarum concilio, medius turbae, volucrumque sedebat. ut satis inpulsas temptavit pollice chordas et sensit varios, quamvis diversa sonarent, concordare modos, hoc vocem carmine movit: ’ab Iove, Musa parens, (cedunt Iovis omnia regno) carmina nostra move! Iovis est mihi saepe potestas dicta prius: cecini plectro graviore Gigantas sparsaque Phlegraeis victricia fulmina campis. nunc opus est leviore lyra, puerosque canamus dilectos superis inconcessisque puellas ignibus attonitas meruisse libidine poenam.
‘The king of the gods once burned with love for Phrygian
Ganymede, and something was found which Jupiter would rather
be than what he was. Yet he deigns to turn into no bird
but the one that could carry his bolts.
Without delay, beating the air with lying wings,
he snatches off the son of Ilus; who now too mixes the cups
and, to Juno’s displeasure, serves the nectar to Jove.
Ganymede, and something was found which Jupiter would rather
be than what he was. Yet he deigns to turn into no bird
but the one that could carry his bolts.
Without delay, beating the air with lying wings,
he snatches off the son of Ilus; who now too mixes the cups
and, to Juno’s displeasure, serves the nectar to Jove.
’Rex superum Phrygii quondam Ganymedis amore arsit, et inventum est aliquid, quod Iuppiter esse, quam quod erat, mallet. nulla tamen alite verti dignatur, nisi quae posset sua fulmina ferre. nec mora, percusso mendacibus aere pennis abripit Iliaden; qui nunc quoque pocula miscet invitaque Iovi nectar Iunone ministrat.
‘You too, son of Amyclas, Phoebus would have set in the sky,
if the sad fates had given room to set you.
Yet, so far as may be, you are eternal: as often as spring
drives back winter, and the Ram succeeds the watery Fish,
so often you rise and bloom on the green turf.
You my father loved above all others, and Delphi, set
in the middle of the world, lacked its guardian
while the god frequented Eurotas and unwalled
Sparta; neither the lyre nor the arrows are in honor:
forgetful of himself, he does not refuse to carry the nets,
to hold the dogs, to go as companion over the ridges
of the rough mountain, and by long habit he feeds his flame.
And now Titan was nearly midway between the coming
and the spent night, and stood at equal distance from both,
when they strip their bodies of clothing, and, gleaming
with the juice of rich olive-oil, begin the contest of the broad discus.
First Phoebus, having poised it, sent it into the airy
breezes and scattered the opposing clouds with its weight;
after a long time the mass fell back to the solid earth,
and showed skill joined with strength.
At once the heedless Taenarian boy, driven by eagerness
for the game, hurried to lift the disk, but the hard ground
sent it back at you with a rebounding stroke,
into your face, Hyacinthus.
if the sad fates had given room to set you.
Yet, so far as may be, you are eternal: as often as spring
drives back winter, and the Ram succeeds the watery Fish,
so often you rise and bloom on the green turf.
You my father loved above all others, and Delphi, set
in the middle of the world, lacked its guardian
while the god frequented Eurotas and unwalled
Sparta; neither the lyre nor the arrows are in honor:
forgetful of himself, he does not refuse to carry the nets,
to hold the dogs, to go as companion over the ridges
of the rough mountain, and by long habit he feeds his flame.
And now Titan was nearly midway between the coming
and the spent night, and stood at equal distance from both,
when they strip their bodies of clothing, and, gleaming
with the juice of rich olive-oil, begin the contest of the broad discus.
First Phoebus, having poised it, sent it into the airy
breezes and scattered the opposing clouds with its weight;
after a long time the mass fell back to the solid earth,
and showed skill joined with strength.
At once the heedless Taenarian boy, driven by eagerness
for the game, hurried to lift the disk, but the hard ground
sent it back at you with a rebounding stroke,
into your face, Hyacinthus.
’Te quoque, Amyclide, posuisset in aethere Phoebus, tristia si spatium ponendi fata dedissent. qua licet, aeternus tamen es, quotiensque repellit ver hiemem, Piscique Aries succedit aquoso, tu totiens oreris viridique in caespite flores. te meus ante omnes genitor dilexit, et orbe in medio positi caruerunt praeside Delphi, dum deus Eurotan inmunitamque frequentat Sparten, nec citharae nec sunt in honore sagittae: inmemor ipse sui non retia ferre recusat, non tenuisse canes, non per iuga montis iniqui ire comes, longaque alit adsuetudine flammas. iamque fere medius Titan venientis et actae noctis erat spatioque pari distabat utrimque, corpora veste levant et suco pinguis olivi splendescunt latique ineunt certamina disci. quem prius aerias libratum Phoebus in auras misit et oppositas disiecit pondere nubes; reccidit in solidam longo post tempore terram pondus et exhibuit iunctam cum viribus artem. protinus inprudens actusque cupidine lusus tollere Taenarides orbem properabat, at illum dura repercusso subiecit verbere tellus in vultus, Hyacinthe, tuos.
The god grew as pale as the boy himself, and catches up
the collapsed limbs, and now warms you again, now dries
the sad wounds, now stays the fleeing spirit with applied herbs.
The arts are no help: the wound was past cure.
As, if someone in a garden break violets or the stiff poppy
and the lilies bristling with their tawny tongues,
they suddenly droop their withered heads, faded,
and cannot hold themselves up, and look at the ground with their tops:
so the dying face sinks, and the neck, failed of vigor,
is a burden to itself and leans upon the shoulder.
‘You are slipping, son of Oebalus, cheated of your first youth,’
says Phoebus, ‘and I see your wound, my crime.
You are my grief and my own doing: my right hand
must be inscribed upon your death. I am the author of your funeral.
Yet what is my fault, unless to have played can be called
a fault, unless to have loved too can be called a fault?
And would that I might die with you, and give back
my life! But since we are held by the law of fate,
you will always be with me, and cling to my remembering lips.
You the lyre struck by my hand, you our songs will sound,
and as a new flower you will imitate our groans in writing.
The time too will come when the bravest of heroes
will add himself to this flower, and be read on the same petal.’
the collapsed limbs, and now warms you again, now dries
the sad wounds, now stays the fleeing spirit with applied herbs.
The arts are no help: the wound was past cure.
As, if someone in a garden break violets or the stiff poppy
and the lilies bristling with their tawny tongues,
they suddenly droop their withered heads, faded,
and cannot hold themselves up, and look at the ground with their tops:
so the dying face sinks, and the neck, failed of vigor,
is a burden to itself and leans upon the shoulder.
‘You are slipping, son of Oebalus, cheated of your first youth,’
says Phoebus, ‘and I see your wound, my crime.
You are my grief and my own doing: my right hand
must be inscribed upon your death. I am the author of your funeral.
Yet what is my fault, unless to have played can be called
a fault, unless to have loved too can be called a fault?
And would that I might die with you, and give back
my life! But since we are held by the law of fate,
you will always be with me, and cling to my remembering lips.
You the lyre struck by my hand, you our songs will sound,
and as a new flower you will imitate our groans in writing.
The time too will come when the bravest of heroes
will add himself to this flower, and be read on the same petal.’
expalluit aeque quam puer ipse deus conlapsosque excipit artus, et modo te refovet, modo tristia vulnera siccat, nunc animam admotis fugientem sustinet herbis. nil prosunt artes: erat inmedicabile vulnus. ut, siquis violas rigidumve papaver in horto liliaque infringat fulvis horrentia linguis, marcida demittant subito caput illa vietum nec se sustineant spectentque cacumine terram: sic vultus moriens iacet et defecta vigore ipsa sibi est oneri cervix umeroque recumbit. "laberis, Oebalide, prima fraudate iuventa," Phoebus ait "videoque tuum, mea crimina, vulnus. tu dolor es facinusque meum: mea dextera leto inscribenda tuo est. ego sum tibi funeris auctor. quae mea culpa tamen, nisi si lusisse vocari culpa potest, nisi culpa potest et amasse vocari? atque utinam tecumque mori vitamque liceret reddere! quod quoniam fatali lege tenemur, semper eris mecum memorique haerebis in ore. te lyra pulsa manu, te carmina nostra sonabunt, flosque novus scripto gemitus imitabere nostros. tempus et illud erit, quo se fortissimus heros addat in hunc florem folioque legatur eodem."
While such things are told by Apollo’s truthful mouth,
behold, the blood that, poured on the ground, had stained the grass,
ceases to be blood, and brighter than Tyrian purple
a flower springs up, and takes the shape the lilies have,
were the color of these not purple, of those silver.
This was not enough for Phoebus (for he was the author of the honor):
he himself inscribes his own groans on the petals, and the flower
has AI AI written on it, and the mournful letters are traced.
Nor is Sparta ashamed to have borne Hyacinthus: his honor
endures to this day, and, kept in the manner of the elders,
the yearly Hyacinthia return with their accustomed procession.
behold, the blood that, poured on the ground, had stained the grass,
ceases to be blood, and brighter than Tyrian purple
a flower springs up, and takes the shape the lilies have,
were the color of these not purple, of those silver.
This was not enough for Phoebus (for he was the author of the honor):
he himself inscribes his own groans on the petals, and the flower
has AI AI written on it, and the mournful letters are traced.
Nor is Sparta ashamed to have borne Hyacinthus: his honor
endures to this day, and, kept in the manner of the elders,
the yearly Hyacinthia return with their accustomed procession.
talia dum vero memorantur Apollinis ore, ecce cruor, qui fusus humo signaverat herbas, desinit esse cruor, Tyrioque nitentior ostro flos oritur formamque capit, quam lilia, si non purpureus color his, argenteus esset in illis. non satis hoc Phoebo est (is enim fuit auctor honoris): ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit, et AI AI flos habet inscriptum, funestaque littera ducta est. nec genuisse pudet Sparten Hyacinthon: honorque durat in hoc aevi, celebrandaque more priorum annua praelata redeunt Hyacinthia pompa.
‘But if you should chance to ask Amathus, rich in ores,
whether she would wish to have borne the Propoetides,
she would deny it, as also those whose brows were once
rough with a pair of horns, whence they took the name Cerastae.
Before their doors stood an altar of Jupiter the Host;
if any newcomer, ignorant of the crime, had seen it
stained with blood, he would have believed that suckling calves
and Amathusian sheep had been slaughtered there:
it was the guest that had been killed! Offended by the abominable rites,
kindly Venus made ready to abandon her own cities
and the fields of Ophiusa. "But how have my pleasant places,
how have my cities sinned?" she said. "What crime is in them?
Rather let the impious race pay penalty by exile,
or by death, or by something midway between death and flight.
And what can that be, but the penalty of an altered shape?"
While she hesitates into what to change them, she turned her face
toward their horns, and was reminded that these could be left them,
and she transforms their great limbs into savage bullocks.
whether she would wish to have borne the Propoetides,
she would deny it, as also those whose brows were once
rough with a pair of horns, whence they took the name Cerastae.
Before their doors stood an altar of Jupiter the Host;
if any newcomer, ignorant of the crime, had seen it
stained with blood, he would have believed that suckling calves
and Amathusian sheep had been slaughtered there:
it was the guest that had been killed! Offended by the abominable rites,
kindly Venus made ready to abandon her own cities
and the fields of Ophiusa. "But how have my pleasant places,
how have my cities sinned?" she said. "What crime is in them?
Rather let the impious race pay penalty by exile,
or by death, or by something midway between death and flight.
And what can that be, but the penalty of an altered shape?"
While she hesitates into what to change them, she turned her face
toward their horns, and was reminded that these could be left them,
and she transforms their great limbs into savage bullocks.
’At si forte roges fecundam Amathunta metallis, an genuisse velit Propoetidas, abnuat aeque atque illos, gemino quondam quibus aspera cornu frons erat, unde etiam nomen traxere Cerastae. ante fores horum stabat Iovis Hospitis ara; ignarus sceleris quam siquis sanguine tinctam advena vidisset, mactatos crederet illic lactantes vitulos Amathusiacasque bidentes: hospes erat caesus! sacris offensa nefandis ipsa suas urbes Ophiusiaque arva parabat deserere alma Venus. "sed quid loca grata, quid urbes peccavere meae? quod" dixit "crimen in illis? exilio poenam potius gens inpia pendat vel nece vel siquid medium est mortisque fugaeque. idque quid esse potest, nisi versae poena figurae?" dum dubitat, quo mutet eos, ad cornua vultum flexit et admonita est haec illis posse relinqui grandiaque in torvos transformat membra iuvencos.
‘Yet the obscene Propoetides dared to deny
that Venus was a goddess; for which, by the goddess’s wrath,
they are said to have been the first to prostitute their bodies
and their good name; and as their shame withdrew, and the blood
of their faces hardened, they were turned, with little change, to rigid flint.
that Venus was a goddess; for which, by the goddess’s wrath,
they are said to have been the first to prostitute their bodies
and their good name; and as their shame withdrew, and the blood
of their faces hardened, they were turned, with little change, to rigid flint.
’Sunt tamen obscenae Venerem Propoetides ausae esse negare deam; pro quo sua numinis ira corpora cum fama primae vulgasse feruntur, utque pudor cessit, sanguisque induruit oris, in rigidum parvo silicem discrimine versae.
‘Because Pygmalion had seen these women spending their lives in crime,
offended by the faults which nature has given in such number
to the female mind, he lived as a celibate without a wife,
and long went without a partner of his bed.
Meanwhile, with wonderful art, he happily carved
snow-white ivory, and gave it a beauty with which no woman
could be born, and conceived a love for his own work.
The face is that of a real maiden, whom you would think alive,
and, did not modesty prevent it, willing to be moved:
so far does the art lie hidden by its own art. Pygmalion marvels,
and draws into his breast the fires of the counterfeit body.
Often he brings his hands, testing, to the work, to learn whether
it is body or ivory, and does not yet admit it to be ivory.
He gives kisses and thinks them returned, and speaks and holds it,
and believes that his fingers sink into the limbs he touches,
and fears lest a bruise come upon the pressed-in flesh,
and now he applies caresses, now brings the gifts
that please girls — shells and smooth pebbles
and little birds and flowers of a thousand colors
and lilies and painted balls and the tears of the Heliades
fallen from the tree; he dresses her limbs in clothing too,
gives gems to her fingers, gives long necklaces to her neck,
light pearls hang from her ear, ribbons hang on her breast:
all become her; and naked she seems no less lovely.
He lays her on coverlets dyed with Sidonian shellfish,
and calls her the partner of his couch, and lays her leaning neck
back on soft feathers, as though she would feel it.
offended by the faults which nature has given in such number
to the female mind, he lived as a celibate without a wife,
and long went without a partner of his bed.
Meanwhile, with wonderful art, he happily carved
snow-white ivory, and gave it a beauty with which no woman
could be born, and conceived a love for his own work.
The face is that of a real maiden, whom you would think alive,
and, did not modesty prevent it, willing to be moved:
so far does the art lie hidden by its own art. Pygmalion marvels,
and draws into his breast the fires of the counterfeit body.
Often he brings his hands, testing, to the work, to learn whether
it is body or ivory, and does not yet admit it to be ivory.
He gives kisses and thinks them returned, and speaks and holds it,
and believes that his fingers sink into the limbs he touches,
and fears lest a bruise come upon the pressed-in flesh,
and now he applies caresses, now brings the gifts
that please girls — shells and smooth pebbles
and little birds and flowers of a thousand colors
and lilies and painted balls and the tears of the Heliades
fallen from the tree; he dresses her limbs in clothing too,
gives gems to her fingers, gives long necklaces to her neck,
light pearls hang from her ear, ribbons hang on her breast:
all become her; and naked she seems no less lovely.
He lays her on coverlets dyed with Sidonian shellfish,
and calls her the partner of his couch, and lays her leaning neck
back on soft feathers, as though she would feel it.
’Quas quia Pygmalion aevum per crimen agentis viderat, offensus vitiis, quae plurima menti femineae natura dedit, sine coniuge caelebs vivebat thalamique diu consorte carebat. interea niveum mira feliciter arte sculpsit ebur formamque dedit, qua femina nasci nulla potest, operisque sui concepit amorem. virginis est verae facies, quam vivere credas, et, si non obstet reverentia, velle moveri: ars adeo latet arte sua. miratur et haurit pectore Pygmalion simulati corporis ignes. saepe manus operi temptantes admovet, an sit corpus an illud ebur, nec adhuc ebur esse fatetur. oscula dat reddique putat loquiturque tenetque et credit tactis digitos insidere membris et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus, et modo blanditias adhibet, modo grata puellis munera fert illi conchas teretesque lapillos et parvas volucres et flores mille colorum liliaque pictasque pilas et ab arbore lapsas Heliadum lacrimas; ornat quoque vestibus artus, dat digitis gemmas, dat longa monilia collo, aure leves bacae, redimicula pectore pendent: cuncta decent; nec nuda minus formosa videtur. conlocat hanc stratis concha Sidonide tinctis adpellatque tori sociam adclinataque colla mollibus in plumis, tamquam sensura, reponit.
‘The festal day of Venus, most thronged in all of Cyprus,
had come, and heifers with gold laid on their curved horns
had fallen, struck on their snowy necks,
and the incense was smoking, when, his offering done, he stood
at the altar and timidly said: "If, gods, you can grant all things,
let my wife be," — not daring to say "the ivory maiden" —
"one like my ivory," said Pygmalion.
Golden Venus, present herself at her own festival,
understood what that prayer meant; and, an omen of the friendly power,
the flame three times kindled and drew its tip up through the air.
When he came home, he sought the image of his girl,
and, leaning on the couch, gave kisses: she seemed to grow warm.
He brings his mouth again, with his hands too he tests the breast:
the tested ivory softens, and, its stiffness laid aside,
yields to the fingers and gives way, as Hymettian wax
softens in the sun and, worked by the thumb, is bent
into many shapes and grows useful by the very handling.
While he is amazed and rejoices in doubt and fears to be deceived,
again and again the lover tries his prayer with his hand.
It was a body! The veins throb when tested by the thumb.
Then indeed the Paphian hero conceives the fullest words
with which to give Venus thanks, and at last presses with his own
mouth a mouth not false; and the maiden felt the kisses
given, and blushed, and, raising her timid eyes to the light,
saw at once the sky and her lover.
The goddess attends the marriage she had made; and now, when nine times
the moon’s horns had been gathered into a full orb,
the bride bore Paphos, from whom the island holds its name.
had come, and heifers with gold laid on their curved horns
had fallen, struck on their snowy necks,
and the incense was smoking, when, his offering done, he stood
at the altar and timidly said: "If, gods, you can grant all things,
let my wife be," — not daring to say "the ivory maiden" —
"one like my ivory," said Pygmalion.
Golden Venus, present herself at her own festival,
understood what that prayer meant; and, an omen of the friendly power,
the flame three times kindled and drew its tip up through the air.
When he came home, he sought the image of his girl,
and, leaning on the couch, gave kisses: she seemed to grow warm.
He brings his mouth again, with his hands too he tests the breast:
the tested ivory softens, and, its stiffness laid aside,
yields to the fingers and gives way, as Hymettian wax
softens in the sun and, worked by the thumb, is bent
into many shapes and grows useful by the very handling.
While he is amazed and rejoices in doubt and fears to be deceived,
again and again the lover tries his prayer with his hand.
It was a body! The veins throb when tested by the thumb.
Then indeed the Paphian hero conceives the fullest words
with which to give Venus thanks, and at last presses with his own
mouth a mouth not false; and the maiden felt the kisses
given, and blushed, and, raising her timid eyes to the light,
saw at once the sky and her lover.
The goddess attends the marriage she had made; and now, when nine times
the moon’s horns had been gathered into a full orb,
the bride bore Paphos, from whom the island holds its name.
’Festa dies Veneris tota celeberrima Cypro venerat, et pandis inductae cornibus aurum conciderant ictae nivea cervice iuvencae, turaque fumabant, cum munere functus ad aras constitit et timide "si, di, dare cuncta potestis, sit coniunx, opto," non ausus "eburnea virgo" dicere, Pygmalion "similis mea" dixit "eburnae." sensit, ut ipsa suis aderat Venus aurea festis, vota quid illa velint et, amici numinis omen, flamma ter accensa est apicemque per aera duxit. ut rediit, simulacra suae petit ille puellae incumbensque toro dedit oscula: visa tepere est; admovet os iterum, manibus quoque pectora temptat: temptatum mollescit ebur positoque rigore subsidit digitis ceditque, ut Hymettia sole cera remollescit tractataque pollice multas flectitur in facies ipsoque fit utilis usu. dum stupet et dubie gaudet fallique veretur, rursus amans rursusque manu sua vota retractat. corpus erat! saliunt temptatae pollice venae. tum vero Paphius plenissima concipit heros verba, quibus Veneri grates agat, oraque tandem ore suo non falsa premit, dataque oscula virgo sensit et erubuit timidumque ad lumina lumen attollens pariter cum caelo vidit amantem. coniugio, quod fecit, adest dea, iamque coactis cornibus in plenum noviens lunaribus orbem illa Paphon genuit, de qua tenet insula nomen.
‘Born of this union was he who, had he been without offspring,
might have been counted among the fortunate — Cinyras.
Dread things I shall sing; be far from here, you daughters, far, you parents;
or, if my songs shall charm your minds,
let belief in me fail in this part, and do not believe the deed,
or, if you will believe it, believe its punishment as well.
Yet if nature allows this crime to be seen as done,
I give thanks to this land, that it lies far from those regions
which bore so great a horror: let the land of Panchaia
be rich in balsam, bear its cinnamon and costus and the incense
sweated from the wood, and other flowers,
so long as it bear myrrh too: a new tree was not worth so much.
Cupid himself denies that his weapons harmed you,
Myrrha, and clears his torches of that charge;
with a Stygian brand and swollen vipers one of the three sisters
breathed upon you: it is a crime to hate a parent,
this love is a crime greater than hatred. — From every side chosen
nobles desire you, and the youth of all the East
come to the contest for your chamber: out of them all choose
one man, Myrrha — only let there not be, among them all, that one.
might have been counted among the fortunate — Cinyras.
Dread things I shall sing; be far from here, you daughters, far, you parents;
or, if my songs shall charm your minds,
let belief in me fail in this part, and do not believe the deed,
or, if you will believe it, believe its punishment as well.
Yet if nature allows this crime to be seen as done,
I give thanks to this land, that it lies far from those regions
which bore so great a horror: let the land of Panchaia
be rich in balsam, bear its cinnamon and costus and the incense
sweated from the wood, and other flowers,
so long as it bear myrrh too: a new tree was not worth so much.
Cupid himself denies that his weapons harmed you,
Myrrha, and clears his torches of that charge;
with a Stygian brand and swollen vipers one of the three sisters
breathed upon you: it is a crime to hate a parent,
this love is a crime greater than hatred. — From every side chosen
nobles desire you, and the youth of all the East
come to the contest for your chamber: out of them all choose
one man, Myrrha — only let there not be, among them all, that one.
’Editus hac ille est, qui si sine prole fuisset, inter felices Cinyras potuisset haberi. dira canam; procul hinc natae, procul este parente aut, mea si vestras mulcebunt carmina mentes, desit in hac mihi parte fides, nec credite factum, vel, si credetis, facti quoque credite poenam. si tamen admissum sinit hoc natura videri, gratulor huic terrae, quod abest regionibus illis, quae tantum genuere nefas: sit dives amomo cinnamaque costumque suum sudataque ligno tura ferat floresque alios Panchaia tellus, dum ferat et murram: tanti nova non fuit arbor. ipse negat nocuisse tibi sua tela Cupido, Myrrha, facesque suas a crimine vindicat isto; stipite te Stygio tumidisque adflavit echidnis e tribus una soror: scelus est odisse parentem, hic amor est odio maius scelus.—undique lecti te cupiunt proceres, totoque Oriente iuventus ad thalami certamen adest: ex omnibus unum elige, Myrrha, virum, dum ne sit in omnibus unus.
‘She indeed feels it, and fights against the foul love,
and says to herself: "Where in my mind am I being carried? What am I attempting?
Gods, I pray, and duty and the sacred rights of parents,
forbid this horror, and resist my crime,
if indeed this is a crime. But duty refuses to condemn
this love: the other animals couple with no distinction,
nor is it counted shameful for a heifer to carry her father
on her back; a horse’s own daughter becomes his mate;
the goat enters the flocks he sired, and the very bird
conceives by him from whose seed she was conceived.
Happy those for whom such things are allowed! Human concern
has given grudging laws, and what nature permits,
spiteful statutes deny. Yet there are said to be nations
in which mother is joined to son and daughter to father,
and natural love grows by the doubled affection.
Wretched me, that it did not fall to me to be born there,
and that I am harmed by the chance of my place! — Why do I dwell on this?
Forbidden hopes, depart! He is worthy to be loved,
but as a father. — So, were I not the daughter of great
Cinyras, I might lie with Cinyras:
now, because he is already mine, he is not mine, and the very
nearness undoes me: a stranger I should be more able.
I long to go far from here and leave my country’s borders,
so that I may escape the crime; but an evil ardor holds me back as I go,
that I may look on Cinyras in his presence, and touch and speak to him,
and bring kisses, if nothing further is allowed.
But can you look for anything further, impious girl?
And do you feel how many rights and names you would confound?
Will you be both your mother’s rival and your father’s adulteress?
Will you be called your son’s sister and your brother’s mother?
And will you not fear the sisters with black snakes for hair,
whom guilty hearts see seeking their eyes and faces
with savage torches? But you, while you have not yet suffered
the horror in your body, do not conceive it in your mind, nor pollute
mighty nature’s bond with a forbidden coupling!
Suppose you wish it: the thing itself forbids it; he is dutiful and mindful
of right — and oh, I wish a like madness were in him!"
and says to herself: "Where in my mind am I being carried? What am I attempting?
Gods, I pray, and duty and the sacred rights of parents,
forbid this horror, and resist my crime,
if indeed this is a crime. But duty refuses to condemn
this love: the other animals couple with no distinction,
nor is it counted shameful for a heifer to carry her father
on her back; a horse’s own daughter becomes his mate;
the goat enters the flocks he sired, and the very bird
conceives by him from whose seed she was conceived.
Happy those for whom such things are allowed! Human concern
has given grudging laws, and what nature permits,
spiteful statutes deny. Yet there are said to be nations
in which mother is joined to son and daughter to father,
and natural love grows by the doubled affection.
Wretched me, that it did not fall to me to be born there,
and that I am harmed by the chance of my place! — Why do I dwell on this?
Forbidden hopes, depart! He is worthy to be loved,
but as a father. — So, were I not the daughter of great
Cinyras, I might lie with Cinyras:
now, because he is already mine, he is not mine, and the very
nearness undoes me: a stranger I should be more able.
I long to go far from here and leave my country’s borders,
so that I may escape the crime; but an evil ardor holds me back as I go,
that I may look on Cinyras in his presence, and touch and speak to him,
and bring kisses, if nothing further is allowed.
But can you look for anything further, impious girl?
And do you feel how many rights and names you would confound?
Will you be both your mother’s rival and your father’s adulteress?
Will you be called your son’s sister and your brother’s mother?
And will you not fear the sisters with black snakes for hair,
whom guilty hearts see seeking their eyes and faces
with savage torches? But you, while you have not yet suffered
the horror in your body, do not conceive it in your mind, nor pollute
mighty nature’s bond with a forbidden coupling!
Suppose you wish it: the thing itself forbids it; he is dutiful and mindful
of right — and oh, I wish a like madness were in him!"
illa quidem sentit foedoque repugnat amori et secum "quo mente feror? quid molior?" inquit "di, precor, et pietas sacrataque iura parentum, hoc prohibete nefas scelerique resistite nostro, si tamen hoc scelus est. sed enim damnare negatur hanc Venerem pietas: coeunt animalia nullo cetera dilectu, nec habetur turpe iuvencae ferre patrem tergo, fit equo sua filia coniunx, quasque creavit init pecudes caper, ipsaque, cuius semine concepta est, ex illo concipit ales. felices, quibus ista licent! humana malignas cura dedit leges, et quod natura remittit, invida iura negant. gentes tamen esse feruntur, in quibus et nato genetrix et nata parenti iungitur, et pietas geminato crescit amore. me miseram, quod non nasci mihi contigit illic, fortunaque loci laedor!—quid in ista revolvor? spes interdictae, discedite! dignus amari ille, sed ut pater, est.—ergo, si filia magni non essem Cinyrae, Cinyrae concumbere possem: nunc, quia iam meus est, non est meus, ipsaque damno est mihi proximitas: aliena potentior essem. ire libet procul hinc patriaeque relinquere fines, dum scelus effugiam; retinet malus ardor euntem, ut praesens spectem Cinyran tangamque loquarque osculaque admoveam, si nil conceditur ultra. ultra autem spectare aliquid potes, inpia virgo? et quot confundas et iura et nomina, sentis? tune eris et matris paelex et adultera patris? tune soror nati genetrixque vocabere fratris? nec metues atro crinitas angue sorores, quas facibus saevis oculos atque ora petentes noxia corda vident? at tu, dum corpore non es passa nefas, animo ne concipe neve potentis concubitu vetito naturae pollue foedus! velle puta: res ipsa vetat; pius ille memorque est moris—et o vellem similis furor esset in illo!"
‘She had spoken; but Cinyras, whom a worthy crowd of suitors
makes doubtful what to do, asks her herself,
naming the names, whose wife she would wish to be;
she is silent at first, and, fixed on her father’s face,
burns, and brims her eyes with warm dew.
Cinyras, believing this to be a maiden’s shyness,
forbids her to weep, dries her cheeks, and joins kisses;
Myrrha rejoices too much in the kisses given, and, asked
what kind of husband she would wish to have, said, "One like you"; but he,
not understanding the word, praised it, and said, "Be
always so dutiful." At the naming of duty
the girl, conscious of her crime, cast down her face.
‘It was the middle of the night, and sleep had loosed
cares and bodies; but the Cinyreian maiden, wakeful,
is consumed by an untamed fire, and tries over her frenzied desires,
and now despairs, now wishes to make the attempt, and is ashamed
and longs, and does not find what to do; and as a great beam,
wounded by the axe, when the last blow remains,
is in doubt which way to fall and is feared on every side,
so her mind, weakened by the shifting wound, sways
lightly this way and that, and takes its impulse both ways,
and no limit or rest for her love is found but death.
Death pleases her. She rises and resolves to fasten her throat
in a noose, and, her girdle tied to the top of the doorpost,
"Dear Cinyras, farewell, and understand the cause of my death!"
she said, and was fitting the bonds to her pale neck.
makes doubtful what to do, asks her herself,
naming the names, whose wife she would wish to be;
she is silent at first, and, fixed on her father’s face,
burns, and brims her eyes with warm dew.
Cinyras, believing this to be a maiden’s shyness,
forbids her to weep, dries her cheeks, and joins kisses;
Myrrha rejoices too much in the kisses given, and, asked
what kind of husband she would wish to have, said, "One like you"; but he,
not understanding the word, praised it, and said, "Be
always so dutiful." At the naming of duty
the girl, conscious of her crime, cast down her face.
‘It was the middle of the night, and sleep had loosed
cares and bodies; but the Cinyreian maiden, wakeful,
is consumed by an untamed fire, and tries over her frenzied desires,
and now despairs, now wishes to make the attempt, and is ashamed
and longs, and does not find what to do; and as a great beam,
wounded by the axe, when the last blow remains,
is in doubt which way to fall and is feared on every side,
so her mind, weakened by the shifting wound, sways
lightly this way and that, and takes its impulse both ways,
and no limit or rest for her love is found but death.
Death pleases her. She rises and resolves to fasten her throat
in a noose, and, her girdle tied to the top of the doorpost,
"Dear Cinyras, farewell, and understand the cause of my death!"
she said, and was fitting the bonds to her pale neck.
’Dixerat, at Cinyras, quem copia digna procorum, quid faciat, dubitare facit, scitatur ab ipsa, nominibus dictis, cuius velit esse mariti; illa silet primo patriisque in vultibus haerens aestuat et tepido suffundit lumina rore. virginei Cinyras haec credens esse timoris, flere vetat siccatque genas atque oscula iungit; Myrrha datis nimium gaudet consultaque, qualem optet habere virum, "similem tibi" dixit; at ille non intellectam vocem conlaudat et "esto tam pia semper" ait. pietatis nomine dicto demisit vultus sceleris sibi conscia virgo. ’Noctis erat medium, curasque et corpora somnus solverat; at virgo Cinyreia pervigil igni carpitur indomito furiosaque vota retractat et modo desperat, modo vult temptare, pudetque et cupit, et, quid agat, non invenit, utque securi saucia trabs ingens, ubi plaga novissima restat, quo cadat, in dubio est omnique a parte timetur, sic animus vario labefactus vulnere nutat huc levis atque illuc momentaque sumit utroque, nec modus et requies, nisi mors, reperitur amoris. mors placet. erigitur laqueoque innectere fauces destinat et zona summo de poste revincta "care, vale, Cinyra, causamque intellege mortis!" dixit et aptabat pallenti vincula collo.
‘The murmur of her words, they say, reached the faithful ears
of the nurse, who kept her nursling’s threshold.
The old woman rises and unbars the doors, and, seeing the instruments
of death made ready, in the same instant cries out
and strikes herself and tears her bosom, and snatching the bonds
from the neck rends them apart; then at last she had leisure to weep,
then to give embraces and to ask the noose’s cause.
The girl is mute and silent, and gazes motionless at the ground,
and grieves that her slow attempt at death is caught.
The old woman presses, and, baring her white hair and her empty
breasts, beseeches her by the cradle and her first nourishment
to entrust to her whatever grieves her. The girl, at the asking,
turns away and groans; the nurse is resolved to find it out,
and not to pledge her faith alone. "Speak," she says, "and let me
bring you help: my old age is not sluggish.
If it is madness, I have one to heal it with charm and herbs;
if someone has harmed you, you shall be cleansed by magic rite;
if it is the gods’ wrath, that wrath is appeased by sacrifice.
What further should I think? Surely your fortune and your house
are safe and in their course: your mother and your father live."
Myrrha, hearing "father," drew sighs from the bottom
of her breast; nor does the nurse even now conceive any
horror in her mind, yet she does foresee some love;
and, holding to her purpose, she begs her to disclose it,
whatever it is, and lifts the weeping girl into her aged lap,
and so, clasping her limbs with her feeble arms,
"We have understood," she says, "you are in love! And in this my
diligence — lay aside your fear — will be fit for you, nor shall your father
ever know it." The girl leapt up in fury from the lap, and pressing
her face into the couch, "Go away, I beg, and spare my wretched
shame!" she says; and when the nurse pressed on, "Go away, or cease
to ask what grieves me! It is a crime, what you toil to learn."
The old woman shudders, and stretches out her trembling hands,
palsied with years and with fear, and falls suppliant before her nursling’s feet,
and now coaxes, now, if she be not made her confidante,
frightens her, and threatens to disclose the noose and the attempted
death, and pledges her service to the love confessed.
The girl raised her head and filled the nurse’s breast
with welling tears, and, often trying to confess,
often checks her voice, and veiled her shamefaced face with her garment,
and said, "O happy mother in her husband!"
So far, and groaned.
of the nurse, who kept her nursling’s threshold.
The old woman rises and unbars the doors, and, seeing the instruments
of death made ready, in the same instant cries out
and strikes herself and tears her bosom, and snatching the bonds
from the neck rends them apart; then at last she had leisure to weep,
then to give embraces and to ask the noose’s cause.
The girl is mute and silent, and gazes motionless at the ground,
and grieves that her slow attempt at death is caught.
The old woman presses, and, baring her white hair and her empty
breasts, beseeches her by the cradle and her first nourishment
to entrust to her whatever grieves her. The girl, at the asking,
turns away and groans; the nurse is resolved to find it out,
and not to pledge her faith alone. "Speak," she says, "and let me
bring you help: my old age is not sluggish.
If it is madness, I have one to heal it with charm and herbs;
if someone has harmed you, you shall be cleansed by magic rite;
if it is the gods’ wrath, that wrath is appeased by sacrifice.
What further should I think? Surely your fortune and your house
are safe and in their course: your mother and your father live."
Myrrha, hearing "father," drew sighs from the bottom
of her breast; nor does the nurse even now conceive any
horror in her mind, yet she does foresee some love;
and, holding to her purpose, she begs her to disclose it,
whatever it is, and lifts the weeping girl into her aged lap,
and so, clasping her limbs with her feeble arms,
"We have understood," she says, "you are in love! And in this my
diligence — lay aside your fear — will be fit for you, nor shall your father
ever know it." The girl leapt up in fury from the lap, and pressing
her face into the couch, "Go away, I beg, and spare my wretched
shame!" she says; and when the nurse pressed on, "Go away, or cease
to ask what grieves me! It is a crime, what you toil to learn."
The old woman shudders, and stretches out her trembling hands,
palsied with years and with fear, and falls suppliant before her nursling’s feet,
and now coaxes, now, if she be not made her confidante,
frightens her, and threatens to disclose the noose and the attempted
death, and pledges her service to the love confessed.
The girl raised her head and filled the nurse’s breast
with welling tears, and, often trying to confess,
often checks her voice, and veiled her shamefaced face with her garment,
and said, "O happy mother in her husband!"
So far, and groaned.
’Murmura verborum fidas nutricis ad aures pervenisse ferunt limen servantis alumnae. surgit anus reseratque fores mortisque paratae instrumenta videns spatio conclamat eodem seque ferit scinditque sinus ereptaque collo vincula dilaniat; tum denique flere vacavit, tum dare conplexus laqueique requirere causam. muta silet virgo terramque inmota tuetur et deprensa dolet tardae conamina mortis. instat anus canosque suos et inania nudans ubera per cunas alimentaque prima precatur, ut sibi committat, quicquid dolet. illa rogantem aversata gemit; certa est exquirere nutrix nec solam spondere fidem. "dic" inquit "opemque me sine ferre tibi: non est mea pigra senectus. seu furor est, habeo, quae carmine sanet et herbis; sive aliquis nocuit, magico lustrabere ritu; ira deum sive est, sacris placabilis ira. quid rear ulterius? certe fortuna domusque sospes et in cursu est: vivunt genetrixque paterque." Myrrha patre audito suspiria duxit ab imo pectore; nec nutrix etiamnum concipit ullum mente nefas aliquemque tamen praesentit amorem; propositique tenax, quodcumque est, orat, ut ipsi indicet, et gremio lacrimantem tollit anili atque ita conplectens infirmis membra lacertis "sensimus," inquit "amas! et in hoc mea (pone timorem) sedulitas erit apta tibi, nec sentiet umquam hoc pater." exiluit gremio furibunda torumque ore premens "discede, precor, miseroque pudori parce!" ait; instanti "discede, aut desine" dixit "quaerere, quid doleam! scelus est, quod scire laboras." horret anus tremulasque manus annisque metuque tendit et ante pedes supplex procumbit alumnae et modo blanditur, modo, si non conscia fiat, terret et indicium laquei coeptaeque minatur mortis et officium commisso spondet amori. extulit illa caput lacrimisque inplevit obortis pectora nutricis conataque saepe fateri saepe tenet vocem pudibundaque vestibus ora texit et "o" dixit "felicem coniuge matrem!" hactenus, et gemuit.
‘A chill tremor pierces the nurse’s limbs and bones
(for she understood), and the white hoariness stood bristling
on her whole head with stiffened hairs,
and she added many words, to shake off, if she could, the dread love.
But the girl knows she is not falsely warned;
yet she is resolved to die, if she may not have her love.
"Live," says the nurse, "you shall have your —" and, not daring to say "father,"
she fell silent, and confirms her promise by a god.
‘The dutiful mothers were keeping the yearly feast of Ceres,
that on which, their bodies veiled in snow-white robes,
they give the first-fruits of the grain, garlands of wheat-ears,
and through nine nights count love and the touch of men
among forbidden things: in that throng Cenchreis,
the king’s consort, is present and attends the secret rites.
So, while the bed was empty of his lawful wife,
the ill-zealous nurse, finding Cinyras heavy with wine,
under a false name sets forth a true love
and praises the girl’s beauty; asked the maiden’s years,
"She is the age of Myrrha," she says. When she was bidden to bring her,
and had returned home, "Rejoice, my nursling," she said:
"we have won!" The unhappy girl does not feel the joy
with her whole heart, and her foreboding breast mourns,
but still she rejoices too: so great is the discord of her mind.
(for she understood), and the white hoariness stood bristling
on her whole head with stiffened hairs,
and she added many words, to shake off, if she could, the dread love.
But the girl knows she is not falsely warned;
yet she is resolved to die, if she may not have her love.
"Live," says the nurse, "you shall have your —" and, not daring to say "father,"
she fell silent, and confirms her promise by a god.
‘The dutiful mothers were keeping the yearly feast of Ceres,
that on which, their bodies veiled in snow-white robes,
they give the first-fruits of the grain, garlands of wheat-ears,
and through nine nights count love and the touch of men
among forbidden things: in that throng Cenchreis,
the king’s consort, is present and attends the secret rites.
So, while the bed was empty of his lawful wife,
the ill-zealous nurse, finding Cinyras heavy with wine,
under a false name sets forth a true love
and praises the girl’s beauty; asked the maiden’s years,
"She is the age of Myrrha," she says. When she was bidden to bring her,
and had returned home, "Rejoice, my nursling," she said:
"we have won!" The unhappy girl does not feel the joy
with her whole heart, and her foreboding breast mourns,
but still she rejoices too: so great is the discord of her mind.
gelidus nutricis in artus ossaque (sensit enim) penetrat tremor, albaque toto vertice canities rigidis stetit hirta capillis, multaque, ut excuteret diros, si posset, amores, addidit. at virgo scit se non falsa moneri; certa mori tamen est, si non potiatur amore. "vive," ait haec, "potiere tuo"—et, non ausa "parente" dicere, conticuit promissaque numine firmat. ’Festa piae Cereris celebrabant annua matres illa, quibus nivea velatae corpora veste primitias frugum dant spicea serta suarum perque novem noctes venerem tactusque viriles in vetitis numerant: turba Cenchreis in illa regis adest coniunx arcanaque sacra frequentat. ergo legitima vacuus dum coniuge lectus, nacta gravem vino Cinyran male sedula nutrix, nomine mentito veros exponit amores et faciem laudat; quaesitis virginis annis "par" ait "est Myrrhae." quam postquam adducere iussa est utque domum rediit, "gaude, mea" dixit "alumna: vicimus!" infelix non toto pectore sentit laetitiam virgo, praesagaque pectora maerent, sed tamen et gaudet: tanta est discordia mentis.
‘It was the time when all things are silent, and Bootes
had turned his wain among the oxen with its slanting pole:
she comes to her crime; the golden moon flees the sky,
black clouds hide the lurking stars;
the night lacks its fires; first you, Icarus, veil your face,
and Erigone, hallowed by dutiful love of her father.
Three times, by the stumbling of her foot, she was called back; three times
the funereal owl made an omen with its deadly song:
still she goes, and the darkness and black night lessen her shame;
with her left hand she holds the nurse’s hand, with the other by groping
she explores the blind way. Now she touches the chamber’s threshold,
now she opens the doors, now she is led within: but her knees
trembled, her hams giving way, and color and blood
fled, and her spirit left her as she went.
And the nearer she is to her crime, the more she shudders, and repents
her daring, and would wish she could turn back unrecognized.
As she lingers, the aged woman leads her on by the hand, and, bringing her
to the high bed, as she handed her over said, "Take her,
she is yours, Cinyras," and joined the doomed bodies.
The father receives his own flesh in the obscene bed,
and eases her maiden fears and urges on the trembling girl.
Perhaps too, by the name of her age, he called her "daughter,"
and she called him "father," that names might not be wanting to the crime.
had turned his wain among the oxen with its slanting pole:
she comes to her crime; the golden moon flees the sky,
black clouds hide the lurking stars;
the night lacks its fires; first you, Icarus, veil your face,
and Erigone, hallowed by dutiful love of her father.
Three times, by the stumbling of her foot, she was called back; three times
the funereal owl made an omen with its deadly song:
still she goes, and the darkness and black night lessen her shame;
with her left hand she holds the nurse’s hand, with the other by groping
she explores the blind way. Now she touches the chamber’s threshold,
now she opens the doors, now she is led within: but her knees
trembled, her hams giving way, and color and blood
fled, and her spirit left her as she went.
And the nearer she is to her crime, the more she shudders, and repents
her daring, and would wish she could turn back unrecognized.
As she lingers, the aged woman leads her on by the hand, and, bringing her
to the high bed, as she handed her over said, "Take her,
she is yours, Cinyras," and joined the doomed bodies.
The father receives his own flesh in the obscene bed,
and eases her maiden fears and urges on the trembling girl.
Perhaps too, by the name of her age, he called her "daughter,"
and she called him "father," that names might not be wanting to the crime.
’Tempus erat, quo cuncta silent, interque triones flexerat obliquo plaustrum temone Bootes: ad facinus venit illa suum; fugit aurea caelo luna, tegunt nigrae latitantia sidera nubes; nox caret igne suo; primus tegis, Icare, vultus, Erigoneque pio sacrata parentis amore. ter pedis offensi signo est revocata, ter omen funereus bubo letali carmine fecit: it tamen, et tenebrae minuunt noxque atra pudorem; nutricisque manum laeva tenet, altera motu caecum iter explorat. thalami iam limina tangit, iamque fores aperit, iam ducitur intus: at illi poplite succiduo genua intremuere, fugitque et color et sanguis, animusque relinquit euntem. quoque suo propior sceleri est, magis horret, et ausi paenitet, et vellet non cognita posse reverti. cunctantem longaeva manu deducit et alto admotam lecto cum traderet "accipe," dixit, "ista tua est, Cinyra" devotaque corpora iunxit. accipit obsceno genitor sua viscera lecto virgineosque metus levat hortaturque timentem. forsitan aetatis quoque nomine "filia" dixit, dixit et illa "pater," sceleri ne nomina desint.
‘Full of her father, she leaves the chamber, and bears in her dread
womb impious seed, and carries the crime she has conceived.
The next night doubles the deed, nor is there an end in that one,
until at last Cinyras, eager to know his lover
after so many couplings, brought in a light and saw
both the crime and his daughter, and, his words checked by grief,
snatched his gleaming sword from the hanging sheath;
Myrrha fled: by the darkness and the gift of blind night
she was saved from death, and, wandering through the broad fields,
left the palm-bearing Arabs and the Panchaean country,
and roamed through nine returns of the moon’s horns,
until at last, weary, she rested in the Sabaean land;
and scarcely could she carry her womb’s burden. Then, not knowing what to pray,
and between the fear of death and the weariness of life,
she framed such prayers: "O if any powers are open
to those who confess, I have deserved, and do not refuse,
a grievous punishment; but lest, surviving, I profane the living,
and, dead, the dead, drive me from both realms,
and, changed, deny me both life and death!"
Some power is open to those who confess: at least her last
prayers found their gods. For, as she spoke, the earth
came over her legs, and a slanting root stretched out
through her bursting nails, the supports of a tall trunk;
her bones turn to wood, and, while the marrow stays in the middle,
her blood goes into sap, her arms into great branches,
her fingers into small ones, her skin hardens into bark.
And now the growing tree had bound tight her heavy womb,
and buried her breast, and was making ready to cover her neck:
she did not bear the delay, and, meeting the rising wood,
sank down and plunged her face into the bark.
And though she lost her former feeling with her body,
she weeps still, and warm drops flow from the tree.
There is honor even in her tears, and the myrrh that drips from the bark
keeps its mistress’s name, and will be silent in no age.
womb impious seed, and carries the crime she has conceived.
The next night doubles the deed, nor is there an end in that one,
until at last Cinyras, eager to know his lover
after so many couplings, brought in a light and saw
both the crime and his daughter, and, his words checked by grief,
snatched his gleaming sword from the hanging sheath;
Myrrha fled: by the darkness and the gift of blind night
she was saved from death, and, wandering through the broad fields,
left the palm-bearing Arabs and the Panchaean country,
and roamed through nine returns of the moon’s horns,
until at last, weary, she rested in the Sabaean land;
and scarcely could she carry her womb’s burden. Then, not knowing what to pray,
and between the fear of death and the weariness of life,
she framed such prayers: "O if any powers are open
to those who confess, I have deserved, and do not refuse,
a grievous punishment; but lest, surviving, I profane the living,
and, dead, the dead, drive me from both realms,
and, changed, deny me both life and death!"
Some power is open to those who confess: at least her last
prayers found their gods. For, as she spoke, the earth
came over her legs, and a slanting root stretched out
through her bursting nails, the supports of a tall trunk;
her bones turn to wood, and, while the marrow stays in the middle,
her blood goes into sap, her arms into great branches,
her fingers into small ones, her skin hardens into bark.
And now the growing tree had bound tight her heavy womb,
and buried her breast, and was making ready to cover her neck:
she did not bear the delay, and, meeting the rising wood,
sank down and plunged her face into the bark.
And though she lost her former feeling with her body,
she weeps still, and warm drops flow from the tree.
There is honor even in her tears, and the myrrh that drips from the bark
keeps its mistress’s name, and will be silent in no age.
’Plena patris thalamis excedit et inpia diro semina fert utero conceptaque crimina portat. postera nox facinus geminat, nec finis in illa est, cum tandem Cinyras, avidus cognoscere amantem post tot concubitus, inlato lumine vidit et scelus et natam verbisque dolore retentis pendenti nitidum vagina deripit ensem; Myrrha fugit: tenebrisque et caecae munere noctis intercepta neci est latosque vagata per agros palmiferos Arabas Panchaeaque rura relinquit perque novem erravit redeuntis cornua lunae, cum tandem terra requievit fessa Sabaea; vixque uteri portabat onus. tum nescia voti atque inter mortisque metus et taedia vitae est tales conplexa preces: "o siqua patetis numina confessis, merui nec triste recuso supplicium, sed ne violem vivosque superstes mortuaque exstinctos, ambobus pellite regnis mutataeque mihi vitamque necemque negate!" numen confessis aliquod patet: ultima certe vota suos habuere deos. nam crura loquentis terra supervenit, ruptosque obliqua per ungues porrigitur radix, longi firmamina trunci, ossaque robur agunt, mediaque manente medulla sanguis it in sucos, in magnos bracchia ramos, in parvos digiti, duratur cortice pellis. iamque gravem crescens uterum perstrinxerat arbor pectoraque obruerat collumque operire parabat: non tulit illa moram venientique obvia ligno subsedit mersitque suos in cortice vultus. quae quamquam amisit veteres cum corpore sensus, flet tamen, et tepidae manant ex arbore guttae. est honor et lacrimis, stillataque cortice murra nomen erile tenet nulloque tacebitur aevo.
‘But the ill-conceived infant had grown beneath the wood
and sought a way by which to put itself forth, its mother left behind;
the swollen belly bulges in the middle of the tree.
The burden strains the mother; but her pangs have no words,
nor can Lucina be called by the voice of one in labor.
Yet she is like a woman straining, and the bent tree
gives frequent groans and is wet with falling tears.
Gentle Lucina stood by the grieving boughs
and laid on her hands and spoke the words of childbirth:
the tree splits, and from the cleft bark gives back
its living burden, and the boy wails; whom the naiads laid
on soft grasses and anointed with his mother’s tears.
Even Envy would praise his face; for such as
the bodies of the naked Loves are painted in a picture,
such was he; but, that their dress make no difference,
either add light quivers to him, or take them from those.
and sought a way by which to put itself forth, its mother left behind;
the swollen belly bulges in the middle of the tree.
The burden strains the mother; but her pangs have no words,
nor can Lucina be called by the voice of one in labor.
Yet she is like a woman straining, and the bent tree
gives frequent groans and is wet with falling tears.
Gentle Lucina stood by the grieving boughs
and laid on her hands and spoke the words of childbirth:
the tree splits, and from the cleft bark gives back
its living burden, and the boy wails; whom the naiads laid
on soft grasses and anointed with his mother’s tears.
Even Envy would praise his face; for such as
the bodies of the naked Loves are painted in a picture,
such was he; but, that their dress make no difference,
either add light quivers to him, or take them from those.
’At male conceptus sub robore creverat infans quaerebatque viam, qua se genetrice relicta exsereret; media gravidus tumet arbore venter. tendit onus matrem; neque habent sua verba dolores, nec Lucina potest parientis voce vocari. nitenti tamen est similis curvataque crebros dat gemitus arbor lacrimisque cadentibus umet. constitit ad ramos mitis Lucina dolentes admovitque manus et verba puerpera dixit: arbor agit rimas et fissa cortice vivum reddit onus, vagitque puer; quem mollibus herbis naides inpositum lacrimis unxere parentis. laudaret faciem Livor quoque; qualia namque corpora nudorum tabula pinguntur Amorum, talis erat, sed, ne faciat discrimina cultus, aut huic adde leves, aut illis deme pharetras.
‘Flying time slips by unseen and deceives us,
and nothing is swifter than the years: that boy,
born of his sister and his grandfather, who was lately hidden
in a tree, was lately born, just now a most beautiful infant,
now a youth, now a man, now is more beautiful than himself,
now pleases even Venus and avenges his mother’s fires.
For while the quivered boy was giving his mother kisses,
he grazed her breast, all unknowing, with a projecting arrow;
the wounded goddess pushed her son away with her hand: the wound
was driven deeper than it seemed, and had at first deceived even her.
Captured by the man’s beauty, she no longer cares for the shores
of Cythera, nor seeks again Paphos, girdled by the deep sea,
and fishy Cnidos, and Amathus heavy with ores;
she stays away even from heaven: to heaven Adonis is preferred.
Him she holds, to him she is companion, and, though always wont
to indulge herself in the shade and to heighten her beauty by care,
she wanders over ridges, through woods and bushy rocks,
her garment girt to the knee in Diana’s manner,
and cheers on the hounds, and hunts the game of safe quarry,
either the headlong hares, or the stag high-antlered,
or the does; from brave boars she keeps away,
and shuns the ravening wolves and the bears armed with claws
and the lions glutted with the slaughter of the herd.
and nothing is swifter than the years: that boy,
born of his sister and his grandfather, who was lately hidden
in a tree, was lately born, just now a most beautiful infant,
now a youth, now a man, now is more beautiful than himself,
now pleases even Venus and avenges his mother’s fires.
For while the quivered boy was giving his mother kisses,
he grazed her breast, all unknowing, with a projecting arrow;
the wounded goddess pushed her son away with her hand: the wound
was driven deeper than it seemed, and had at first deceived even her.
Captured by the man’s beauty, she no longer cares for the shores
of Cythera, nor seeks again Paphos, girdled by the deep sea,
and fishy Cnidos, and Amathus heavy with ores;
she stays away even from heaven: to heaven Adonis is preferred.
Him she holds, to him she is companion, and, though always wont
to indulge herself in the shade and to heighten her beauty by care,
she wanders over ridges, through woods and bushy rocks,
her garment girt to the knee in Diana’s manner,
and cheers on the hounds, and hunts the game of safe quarry,
either the headlong hares, or the stag high-antlered,
or the does; from brave boars she keeps away,
and shuns the ravening wolves and the bears armed with claws
and the lions glutted with the slaughter of the herd.
’Labitur occulte fallitque volatilis aetas, et nihil est annis velocius: ille sorore natus avoque suo, qui conditus arbore nuper, nuper erat genitus, modo formosissimus infans, iam iuvenis, iam vir, iam se formosior ipso est, iam placet et Veneri matrisque ulciscitur ignes. namque pharetratus dum dat puer oscula matri, inscius exstanti destrinxit harundine pectus; laesa manu natum dea reppulit: altius actum vulnus erat specie primoque fefellerat ipsam. capta viri forma non iam Cythereia curat litora, non alto repetit Paphon aequore cinctam piscosamque Cnidon gravidamve Amathunta metallis; abstinet et caelo: caelo praefertur Adonis. hunc tenet, huic comes est adsuetaque semper in umbra indulgere sibi formamque augere colendo per iuga, per silvas dumosaque saxa vagatur fine genus vestem ritu succincta Dianae hortaturque canes tutaeque animalia praedae, aut pronos lepores aut celsum in cornua cervum aut agitat dammas; a fortibus abstinet apris raptoresque lupos armatosque unguibus ursos vitat et armenti saturatos caede leones.
‘You too she warns to fear these — if warning can avail at all —
Adonis, and "Be brave," she says, "against things that flee;
against the bold, boldness is not safe.
Spare, young man, to be reckless at my peril,
and do not provoke the beasts to which nature has given weapons,
lest your glory cost me dear. Neither youth
nor beauty nor the things that have moved Venus move
lions and bristly boars and the eyes and tempers of wild beasts.
Fierce boars have lightning in their curved tusks,
tawny lions have fury in their charge and a vast wrath,
and the kind is hateful to me." When he asked the cause,
"I will tell it," she says, "and you will marvel at the monstrous outcome of an old fault.
But unaccustomed toil has wearied me by now, and look,
a poplar conveniently coaxes us with its shade,
and the turf gives a couch: I should like to rest here with you"
(and she rested) "on the ground," and pressed both the grass and him,
and, reclining with her neck laid on the young man’s breast,
she spoke thus, and set kisses between her words:
Adonis, and "Be brave," she says, "against things that flee;
against the bold, boldness is not safe.
Spare, young man, to be reckless at my peril,
and do not provoke the beasts to which nature has given weapons,
lest your glory cost me dear. Neither youth
nor beauty nor the things that have moved Venus move
lions and bristly boars and the eyes and tempers of wild beasts.
Fierce boars have lightning in their curved tusks,
tawny lions have fury in their charge and a vast wrath,
and the kind is hateful to me." When he asked the cause,
"I will tell it," she says, "and you will marvel at the monstrous outcome of an old fault.
But unaccustomed toil has wearied me by now, and look,
a poplar conveniently coaxes us with its shade,
and the turf gives a couch: I should like to rest here with you"
(and she rested) "on the ground," and pressed both the grass and him,
and, reclining with her neck laid on the young man’s breast,
she spoke thus, and set kisses between her words:
te quoque, ut hos timeas, siquid prodesse monendo possit, Adoni, monet, "fortis" que "fugacibus esto" inquit; "in audaces non est audacia tuta. parce meo, iuvenis, temerarius esse periclo, neve feras, quibus arma dedit natura, lacesse, stet mihi ne magno tua gloria. non movet aetas nec facies nec quae Venerem movere, leones saetigerosque sues oculosque animosque ferarum. fulmen habent acres in aduncis dentibus apri, impetus est fulvis et vasta leonibus ira, invisumque mihi genus est." quae causa, roganti "dicam," ait "et veteris monstrum mirabere culpae. sed labor insolitus iam me lassavit, et, ecce, opportuna sua blanditur populus umbra, datque torum caespes: libet hac requiescere tecum" (et requievit) "humo" pressitque et gramen et ipsum inque sinu iuvenis posita cervice reclinis sic ait ac mediis interserit oscula verbis:
‘"Perhaps you have heard that some woman outran swift men
in a footrace contest: that report was no fable;
for she did outrun them. Nor could you say
whether she was more outstanding for the glory of her feet or the gift of her beauty.
When she asked the god about a husband, he said: ’You have no need,
Atalanta, of a husband: flee the use of a husband.
Yet you will not escape, and, living, you will lose your own self.’
Terrified by the god’s response, unwed she lives in the shady woods,
and with a fierce condition drives off the pressing crowd of suitors:
’I am not to be won,’ she says, ’unless first beaten in the race.
Contend with me in the foot: a wife and the bridal chamber
will be given as the prizes to the swift, death the price for the slow:
let that be the law of the contest.’ She indeed was pitiless,
but (so great is the power of beauty) the reckless crowd of suitors
came to this law.
in a footrace contest: that report was no fable;
for she did outrun them. Nor could you say
whether she was more outstanding for the glory of her feet or the gift of her beauty.
When she asked the god about a husband, he said: ’You have no need,
Atalanta, of a husband: flee the use of a husband.
Yet you will not escape, and, living, you will lose your own self.’
Terrified by the god’s response, unwed she lives in the shady woods,
and with a fierce condition drives off the pressing crowd of suitors:
’I am not to be won,’ she says, ’unless first beaten in the race.
Contend with me in the foot: a wife and the bridal chamber
will be given as the prizes to the swift, death the price for the slow:
let that be the law of the contest.’ She indeed was pitiless,
but (so great is the power of beauty) the reckless crowd of suitors
came to this law.
’"Forsitan audieris aliquam certamine cursus veloces superasse viros: non fabula rumor ille fuit; superabat enim. nec dicere posses, laude pedum formaene bono praestantior esset. scitanti deus huic de coniuge ’coniuge’ dixit ’nil opus est, Atalanta, tibi: fuge coniugis usum. nec tamen effugies teque ipsa viva carebis.’ territa sorte dei per opacas innuba silvas vivit et instantem turbam violenta procorum condicione fugat, ’nec sum potiunda, nisi’ inquit ’victa prius cursu. pedibus contendite mecum: praemia veloci coniunx thalamique dabuntur, mors pretium tardis: ea lex certaminis esto.’ illa quidem inmitis, sed (tanta potentia formae est) venit ad hanc legem temeraria turba procorum.
‘"Hippomenes had sat as a spectator of the unfair race,
and had said, ’Is a wife sought by anyone through such great perils?’
and had condemned the young men’s excessive loves;
but when he saw her face and her body with its covering laid aside,
such as mine, or such as yours, were you to become a woman,
he was stunned, and raising his hands said, ’Forgive me,
you whom I just now blamed! The prize was not yet known to me
that you were seeking.’ By praising her he conceives the fires,
and wishes that none of the young men may run faster,
and in his envy is afraid. ’But why is the fortune of this contest
left untried by me?’ he says. ’The god himself helps the daring!’
While Hippomenes weighs such things with himself, the maiden flies past on winged step.
and had said, ’Is a wife sought by anyone through such great perils?’
and had condemned the young men’s excessive loves;
but when he saw her face and her body with its covering laid aside,
such as mine, or such as yours, were you to become a woman,
he was stunned, and raising his hands said, ’Forgive me,
you whom I just now blamed! The prize was not yet known to me
that you were seeking.’ By praising her he conceives the fires,
and wishes that none of the young men may run faster,
and in his envy is afraid. ’But why is the fortune of this contest
left untried by me?’ he says. ’The god himself helps the daring!’
While Hippomenes weighs such things with himself, the maiden flies past on winged step.
sederat Hippomenes cursus spectator iniqui et ’petitur cuiquam per tanta pericula coniunx?’ dixerat ac nimios iuvenum damnarat amores; ut faciem et posito corpus velamine vidit, quale meum, vel quale tuum, si femina fias, obstipuit tollensque manus ’ignoscite,’ dixit ’quos modo culpavi! nondum mihi praemia nota, quae peteretis, erant.’ laudando concipit ignes et, ne quis iuvenum currat velocius, optat invidiaque timet. ’sed cur certaminis huius intemptata mihi fortuna relinquitur?’ inquit ’audentes deus ipse iuvat!’ dum talia secum exigit Hippomenes, passu volat alite virgo.
‘"Although she seemed to the Aonian youth to go no slower
than a Scythian arrow, still he marvels the more
at her grace: and the running itself makes her grace.
The breeze carries back the wing-sandals snatched from her swift soles,
and her hair is tossed over her ivory shoulders, and the knee-bands
that lay beneath her hams with their embroidered border;
and over her girlish whiteness her body had drawn
a blush, no otherwise than when a purple awning over a hall
tints the white marble with feigned shadows.
While the stranger marks these things, the last lap was run,
and Atalanta the victress is crowned with the festal garland.
The vanquished give a groan and pay the penalty by the compact.
‘"Yet the young man, not deterred by the outcome of these,
took his stand in the midst, and, his gaze fixed on the maiden,
’Why do you seek an easy title by beating the sluggish?
Match yourself with me,’ he says. ’Whether fortune make me
the winner, you will not scorn to be beaten by so great a man:
for my father is Megareus of Onchestus, and his
grandsire is Neptune; I am the great-grandson of the king of the waters,
nor is my worth this side of my birth; or, if I am beaten, you will have
in conquered Hippomenes a great and memorable name.’
As he spoke such things, the daughter of Schoeneus looks at him
with a soft face, and doubts whether she would rather be beaten or win,
than a Scythian arrow, still he marvels the more
at her grace: and the running itself makes her grace.
The breeze carries back the wing-sandals snatched from her swift soles,
and her hair is tossed over her ivory shoulders, and the knee-bands
that lay beneath her hams with their embroidered border;
and over her girlish whiteness her body had drawn
a blush, no otherwise than when a purple awning over a hall
tints the white marble with feigned shadows.
While the stranger marks these things, the last lap was run,
and Atalanta the victress is crowned with the festal garland.
The vanquished give a groan and pay the penalty by the compact.
‘"Yet the young man, not deterred by the outcome of these,
took his stand in the midst, and, his gaze fixed on the maiden,
’Why do you seek an easy title by beating the sluggish?
Match yourself with me,’ he says. ’Whether fortune make me
the winner, you will not scorn to be beaten by so great a man:
for my father is Megareus of Onchestus, and his
grandsire is Neptune; I am the great-grandson of the king of the waters,
nor is my worth this side of my birth; or, if I am beaten, you will have
in conquered Hippomenes a great and memorable name.’
As he spoke such things, the daughter of Schoeneus looks at him
with a soft face, and doubts whether she would rather be beaten or win,
quae quamquam Scythica non setius ire sagitta Aonio visa est iuveni, tamen ille decorem miratur magis: et cursus facit ipse decorem. aura refert ablata citis talaria plantis, tergaque iactantur crines per eburnea, quaeque poplitibus suberant picto genualia limbo; inque puellari corpus candore ruborem traxerat, haud aliter, quam cum super atria velum candida purpureum simulatas inficit umbras. dum notat haec hospes, decursa novissima meta est, et tegitur festa victrix Atalanta corona. dant gemitum victi penduntque ex foedere poenas. ’"Non tamen eventu iuvenis deterritus horum constitit in medio vultuque in virgine fixo ’quid facilem titulum superando quaeris inertes? mecum confer’ ait. ’seu me fortuna potentem fecerit, a tanto non indignabere vinci: namque mihi genitor Megareus Onchestius, illi est Neptunus avus, pronepos ego regis aquarum, nec virtus citra genus est; seu vincar, habebis Hippomene victo magnum et memorabile nomen.’ talia dicentem molli Schoeneia vultu aspicit et dubitat, superari an vincere malit,
‘and so she says: ’What god, hostile to the beautiful,
wishes to destroy this one, and bids him seek this marriage
at the hazard of his dear life? I am not, in my own judgment, worth so much.
Nor am I touched by his beauty (yet by this too I could be touched),
but that he is still a boy; it is not himself that moves me, but his age.
What of it, that there is courage in him and a mind undaunted by death?
What of it, that he is reckoned fourth from a sea-born origin?
What of it, that he loves, and rates marriage with me so high
that he would die if hard chance should deny me to him?
While you may, stranger, go, and leave this bloody bridal.
My marriage is cruel; no woman will refuse to wed you,
and you may be desired by a wise girl. —
Yet why is there care for you in me, when so many have already perished?
Let him look to it! Let him die, since by so much slaughter of suitors
he is not warned, and is driven to the weariness of life. —
Shall he die, then, because he wished to live with me,
and suffer an unworthy death as the price of his love?
My victory will not be such as can be borne for the hatred it will earn.
But the fault is not mine! Would that you were willing to desist,
or, since you are mad, would that you were swifter!
But what a girlish look there is on his boyish face!
Ah, poor Hippomenes, would that I had not been seen by you!
You were worthy to live. And if I were luckier,
and the unkind fates did not deny me marriage,
you were the one with whom I would wish to share my bed.’
She had spoken, and, as one untrained and touched by her first desire,
not knowing what she does, she loves, and does not feel her love.
wishes to destroy this one, and bids him seek this marriage
at the hazard of his dear life? I am not, in my own judgment, worth so much.
Nor am I touched by his beauty (yet by this too I could be touched),
but that he is still a boy; it is not himself that moves me, but his age.
What of it, that there is courage in him and a mind undaunted by death?
What of it, that he is reckoned fourth from a sea-born origin?
What of it, that he loves, and rates marriage with me so high
that he would die if hard chance should deny me to him?
While you may, stranger, go, and leave this bloody bridal.
My marriage is cruel; no woman will refuse to wed you,
and you may be desired by a wise girl. —
Yet why is there care for you in me, when so many have already perished?
Let him look to it! Let him die, since by so much slaughter of suitors
he is not warned, and is driven to the weariness of life. —
Shall he die, then, because he wished to live with me,
and suffer an unworthy death as the price of his love?
My victory will not be such as can be borne for the hatred it will earn.
But the fault is not mine! Would that you were willing to desist,
or, since you are mad, would that you were swifter!
But what a girlish look there is on his boyish face!
Ah, poor Hippomenes, would that I had not been seen by you!
You were worthy to live. And if I were luckier,
and the unkind fates did not deny me marriage,
you were the one with whom I would wish to share my bed.’
She had spoken, and, as one untrained and touched by her first desire,
not knowing what she does, she loves, and does not feel her love.
atque ita ’quis deus hunc formosis’ inquit ’iniquus perdere vult caraeque iubet discrimine vitae coniugium petere hoc? non sum, me iudice, tanti. nec forma tangor, (poteram tamen hac quoque tangi) sed quod adhuc puer est; non me movet ipse, sed aetas. quid, quod inest virtus et mens interrita leti? quid, quod ab aequorea numeratur origine quartus? quid, quod amat tantique putat conubia nostra, ut pereat, si me fors illi dura negarit? dum licet, hospes, abi thalamosque relinque cruentos. coniugium crudele meum est, tibi nubere nulla nolet, et optari potes a sapiente puella.— cur tamen est mihi cura tui tot iam ante peremptis? viderit! intereat, quoniam tot caede procorum admonitus non est agiturque in taedia vitae.— occidet hic igitur, voluit quia vivere mecum, indignamque necem pretium patietur amoris? non erit invidiae victoria nostra ferendae. sed non culpa mea est! utinam desistere velles, aut, quoniam es demens, utinam velocior esses! at quam virgineus puerili vultus in ore est! a! miser Hippomene, nollem tibi visa fuissem! vivere dignus eras. quodsi felicior essem, nec mihi coniugium fata inportuna negarent, unus eras, cum quo sociare cubilia vellem.’ dixerat, utque rudis primoque cupidine tacta, quod facit, ignorans amat et non sentit amorem.
‘"Now the people and her father demand the wonted race,
when Neptunian Hippomenes calls on me with anxious voice:
’I pray that the Cytherean be present to my daring,’ he says,
’and aid the fires she gave.’ A kindly breeze brought me
his coaxing prayers; I was moved, I confess, and there was no long delay for help.
There is a field — the natives call it by the name of Tamasus —
the best part of the Cyprian land, which the men of old
hallowed to me, and bade be added to my temples as a dowry;
in the middle of it gleams a tree, golden in its foliage,
its branches rustling with tawny gold:
coming from there I happened to be carrying three golden apples
plucked in my hand, and, seen by none but himself,
I came to Hippomenes and taught him what their use was.
The trumpets had given the signal, when each shot forward, bent low,
from the barrier, and skimmed the surface of the sand with swift foot:
you would think they could graze the sea dry-shod
and run over the standing ears of the white grain.
Shouts and cheers and the words of those crying out give the youth heart:
’Now, now is the time to press on!
Hippomenes, hurry! Now use all your strength!
Drive off delay: you will win!’ Doubtful whether the Megareian hero
or the maiden, Schoeneus’s daughter, took more joy in these words.
O how often, when she might have passed him, she lingered,
and, after long gazing at his face, left it against her will!
A dry panting came from his weary mouth,
and the goal was far off: then at last, of the three tree-borne fruits
the son of Neptune threw one.
The maiden was astonished, and in desire of the gleaming fruit
swerved from her course and snatched up the rolling gold;
Hippomenes passes her: the stands ring with applause.
She makes up her delay and the time she had lost by a swift run,
and again leaves the youth behind her back:
and again, delayed by the throwing of a second apple,
she catches up and passes the man. The last part of the course
remained; ’now,’ he says, ’be near, goddess, giver of the gift!’
and into the side of the field, where she would return more slowly,
he threw the gleaming gold aslant, with youthful force.
The maiden seemed to doubt whether to seek it: I forced her
to take it up, and added weight to the lifted apple,
and hindered her at once by the burden’s heaviness and by the delay,
and — lest my tale be slower than the race itself —
the maiden was passed: the victor led off his prize.
when Neptunian Hippomenes calls on me with anxious voice:
’I pray that the Cytherean be present to my daring,’ he says,
’and aid the fires she gave.’ A kindly breeze brought me
his coaxing prayers; I was moved, I confess, and there was no long delay for help.
There is a field — the natives call it by the name of Tamasus —
the best part of the Cyprian land, which the men of old
hallowed to me, and bade be added to my temples as a dowry;
in the middle of it gleams a tree, golden in its foliage,
its branches rustling with tawny gold:
coming from there I happened to be carrying three golden apples
plucked in my hand, and, seen by none but himself,
I came to Hippomenes and taught him what their use was.
The trumpets had given the signal, when each shot forward, bent low,
from the barrier, and skimmed the surface of the sand with swift foot:
you would think they could graze the sea dry-shod
and run over the standing ears of the white grain.
Shouts and cheers and the words of those crying out give the youth heart:
’Now, now is the time to press on!
Hippomenes, hurry! Now use all your strength!
Drive off delay: you will win!’ Doubtful whether the Megareian hero
or the maiden, Schoeneus’s daughter, took more joy in these words.
O how often, when she might have passed him, she lingered,
and, after long gazing at his face, left it against her will!
A dry panting came from his weary mouth,
and the goal was far off: then at last, of the three tree-borne fruits
the son of Neptune threw one.
The maiden was astonished, and in desire of the gleaming fruit
swerved from her course and snatched up the rolling gold;
Hippomenes passes her: the stands ring with applause.
She makes up her delay and the time she had lost by a swift run,
and again leaves the youth behind her back:
and again, delayed by the throwing of a second apple,
she catches up and passes the man. The last part of the course
remained; ’now,’ he says, ’be near, goddess, giver of the gift!’
and into the side of the field, where she would return more slowly,
he threw the gleaming gold aslant, with youthful force.
The maiden seemed to doubt whether to seek it: I forced her
to take it up, and added weight to the lifted apple,
and hindered her at once by the burden’s heaviness and by the delay,
and — lest my tale be slower than the race itself —
the maiden was passed: the victor led off his prize.
’"Iam solitos poscunt cursus populusque paterque, cum me sollicita proles Neptunia voce invocat Hippomenes ’Cytherea,’ que ’conprecor, ausis adsit’ ait ’nostris et quos dedit, adiuvet ignes.’ detulit aura preces ad me non invida blandas: motaque sum, fateor, nec opis mora longa dabatur. est ager, indigenae Tamasenum nomine dicunt, telluris Cypriae pars optima, quem mihi prisci sacravere senes templisque accedere dotem hanc iussere meis; medio nitet arbor in arvo, fulva comas, fulvo ramis crepitantibus auro: hinc tria forte mea veniens decerpta ferebam aurea poma manu nullique videnda nisi ipsi Hippomenen adii docuique, quis usus in illis. signa tubae dederant, cum carcere pronus uterque emicat et summam celeri pede libat harenam: posse putes illos sicco freta radere passu et segetis canae stantes percurrere aristas. adiciunt animos iuveni clamorque favorque verbaque dicentum ’nunc, nunc incumbere tempus! Hippomene, propera! nunc viribus utere totis! pelle moram: vinces!’ dubium, Megareius heros gaudeat an virgo magis his Schoeneia dictis. o quotiens, cum iam posset transire, morata est spectatosque diu vultus invita reliquit! aridus e lasso veniebat anhelitus ore, metaque erat longe: tum denique de tribus unum fetibus arboreis proles Neptunia misit. obstipuit virgo nitidique cupidine pomi declinat cursus aurumque volubile tollit; praeterit Hippomenes: resonant spectacula plausu. illa moram celeri cessataque tempora cursu corrigit atque iterum iuvenem post terga relinquit: et rursus pomi iactu remorata secundi consequitur transitque virum. pars ultima cursus restabat; ’nunc’ inquit ’ades, dea muneris auctor!’ inque latus campi, quo tardius illa rediret, iecit ab obliquo nitidum iuvenaliter aurum. an peteret, virgo visa est dubitare: coegi tollere et adieci sublato pondera malo inpediique oneris pariter gravitate moraque, neve meus sermo cursu sit tardior ipso, praeterita est virgo: duxit sua praemia victor.
‘"Was I not worthy, Adonis, to be thanked, to be offered
the honor of incense? But, forgetful, he gave me neither thanks
nor incense. I am turned to sudden anger,
and, stung by the slight, lest I be scorned by those to come,
I guard myself by an example, and rouse myself against the pair:
they were passing a temple which once famous Echion
had made to the Mother of the gods by vow, hidden in the wooded forest,
and the long journey persuaded them to rest;
there an untimely desire of coupling seizes Hippomenes,
stirred up by my godhead.
Near the temple there was a recess of scant light,
like a cave, roofed with native pumice,
sacred by ancient religion, where a priest had gathered
many wooden images of the old gods;
he enters it and defiles the shrine with forbidden lewdness.
The sacred images turned away their eyes, and the tower-crowned Mother
doubted whether to plunge the guilty in the Stygian water:
the punishment seemed too light; so now tawny manes
veil their lately smooth necks, their fingers curve into claws,
their shoulders become forelegs, all their weight goes into their breasts,
their tails sweep the surface of the sand;
their look has anger, instead of words they return growls,
instead of bridal chambers they haunt the woods, and, fearsome to others,
with tamed tooth they champ the bits of Cybele — lions.
These, dear one, and with them the whole race of beasts
that turn not their backs in flight but their breasts to battle,
flee, lest your valor be ruinous to us both!"
the honor of incense? But, forgetful, he gave me neither thanks
nor incense. I am turned to sudden anger,
and, stung by the slight, lest I be scorned by those to come,
I guard myself by an example, and rouse myself against the pair:
they were passing a temple which once famous Echion
had made to the Mother of the gods by vow, hidden in the wooded forest,
and the long journey persuaded them to rest;
there an untimely desire of coupling seizes Hippomenes,
stirred up by my godhead.
Near the temple there was a recess of scant light,
like a cave, roofed with native pumice,
sacred by ancient religion, where a priest had gathered
many wooden images of the old gods;
he enters it and defiles the shrine with forbidden lewdness.
The sacred images turned away their eyes, and the tower-crowned Mother
doubted whether to plunge the guilty in the Stygian water:
the punishment seemed too light; so now tawny manes
veil their lately smooth necks, their fingers curve into claws,
their shoulders become forelegs, all their weight goes into their breasts,
their tails sweep the surface of the sand;
their look has anger, instead of words they return growls,
instead of bridal chambers they haunt the woods, and, fearsome to others,
with tamed tooth they champ the bits of Cybele — lions.
These, dear one, and with them the whole race of beasts
that turn not their backs in flight but their breasts to battle,
flee, lest your valor be ruinous to us both!"
’"Dignane, cui grates ageret, cui turis honorem ferret, Adoni, fui? nec grates inmemor egit, nec mihi tura dedit. subitam convertor in iram, contemptuque dolens, ne sim spernenda futuris, exemplo caveo meque ipsa exhortor in ambos: templa, deum Matri quae quondam clarus Echion fecerat ex voto, nemorosis abdita silvis, transibant, et iter longum requiescere suasit; illic concubitus intempestiva cupido occupat Hippomenen a numine concita nostro. luminis exigui fuerat prope templa recessus, speluncae similis, nativo pumice tectus, religione sacer prisca, quo multa sacerdos lignea contulerat veterum simulacra deorum; hunc init et vetito temerat sacraria probro. sacra retorserunt oculos, turritaque Mater an Stygia sontes dubitavit mergeret unda: poena levis visa est; ergo modo levia fulvae colla iubae velant, digiti curvantur in ungues, ex umeris armi fiunt, in pectora totum pondus abit, summae cauda verruntur harenae; iram vultus habet, pro verbis murmura reddunt, pro thalamis celebrant silvas aliisque timendi dente premunt domito Cybeleia frena leones. hos tu, care mihi, cumque his genus omne ferarum, quod non terga fugae, sed pugnae pectora praebet, effuge, ne virtus tua sit damnosa duobus!"
‘She gave her warning, and through the air with her yoked swans
makes her way, but his valor stands against the warning.
By chance his dogs, following sure tracks, had roused
a boar from its lair, and, as it was making to leave the wood,
the young son of Cinyras pierced it with a slanting stroke.
At once the fierce boar shook out the blood-stained hunting-spear
with its curved snout, and, as Adonis fled in fear and sought safety,
the savage thing pursued, and buried its whole tusks in his groin,
and laid him dying on the tawny sand.
Borne in her light car through the middle air on swans’ wings,
the Cytherean had not yet reached Cyprus:
from afar she knew the groan of the dying, and turned
her white birds thither, and when from the high air she saw
him lifeless and tossing his body in his own blood,
she leapt down and tore both her bosom and her hair,
and beat her breast with unworthy hands,
and, complaining against the fates, said, ’Yet not all
shall be in your power. The memorials of my grief, Adonis,
shall always remain, and the yearly re-enactment of your death
shall fulfill an imitation of my mourning;
but your blood shall be changed into a flower. Or was it once allowed
to you, Persephone, to change a woman’s limbs into fragrant mint:
and shall the change of the Cinyreian hero be grudged me?’
So speaking, she sprinkled the blood with fragrant nectar,
which, touched by it, swelled up as a clear bubble is wont
to rise in tawny mud, nor was there a delay
longer than a full hour, when a flower sprang up from the blood,
of one color, such as the pomegranates bear,
which hide their seed beneath a tough rind;
yet the enjoyment of it is brief: for, clinging ill and apt to fall
through their too-great lightness, the same winds shake it down
that give it its name.’
makes her way, but his valor stands against the warning.
By chance his dogs, following sure tracks, had roused
a boar from its lair, and, as it was making to leave the wood,
the young son of Cinyras pierced it with a slanting stroke.
At once the fierce boar shook out the blood-stained hunting-spear
with its curved snout, and, as Adonis fled in fear and sought safety,
the savage thing pursued, and buried its whole tusks in his groin,
and laid him dying on the tawny sand.
Borne in her light car through the middle air on swans’ wings,
the Cytherean had not yet reached Cyprus:
from afar she knew the groan of the dying, and turned
her white birds thither, and when from the high air she saw
him lifeless and tossing his body in his own blood,
she leapt down and tore both her bosom and her hair,
and beat her breast with unworthy hands,
and, complaining against the fates, said, ’Yet not all
shall be in your power. The memorials of my grief, Adonis,
shall always remain, and the yearly re-enactment of your death
shall fulfill an imitation of my mourning;
but your blood shall be changed into a flower. Or was it once allowed
to you, Persephone, to change a woman’s limbs into fragrant mint:
and shall the change of the Cinyreian hero be grudged me?’
So speaking, she sprinkled the blood with fragrant nectar,
which, touched by it, swelled up as a clear bubble is wont
to rise in tawny mud, nor was there a delay
longer than a full hour, when a flower sprang up from the blood,
of one color, such as the pomegranates bear,
which hide their seed beneath a tough rind;
yet the enjoyment of it is brief: for, clinging ill and apt to fall
through their too-great lightness, the same winds shake it down
that give it its name.’
’Illa quidem monuit iunctisque per aera cycnis carpit iter, sed stat monitis contraria virtus. forte suem latebris vestigia certa secuti excivere canes, silvisque exire parantem fixerat obliquo iuvenis Cinyreius ictu: protinus excussit pando venabula rostro sanguine tincta suo trepidumque et tuta petentem trux aper insequitur totosque sub inguine dentes abdidit et fulva moribundum stravit harena. vecta levi curru medias Cytherea per auras Cypron olorinis nondum pervenerat alis: agnovit longe gemitum morientis et albas flexit aves illuc, utque aethere vidit ab alto exanimem inque suo iactantem sanguine corpus, desiluit pariterque sinum pariterque capillos rupit et indignis percussit pectora palmis questaque cum fatis "at non tamen omnia vestri iuris erunt" dixit. "luctus monimenta manebunt semper, Adoni, mei, repetitaque mortis imago annua plangoris peraget simulamina nostri; at cruor in florem mutabitur. an tibi quondam femineos artus in olentes vertere mentas, Persephone, licuit: nobis Cinyreius heros invidiae mutatus erit?" sic fata cruorem nectare odorato sparsit, qui tinctus ab illo intumuit sic, ut fulvo perlucida caeno surgere bulla solet, nec plena longior hora facta mora est, cum flos de sanguine concolor ortus, qualem, quae lento celant sub cortice granum, punica ferre solent; brevis est tamen usus in illo; namque male haerentem et nimia levitate caducum excutiunt idem, qui praestant nomina, venti.’
While the Thracian bard with such a song was drawing the woods,
the hearts of wild beasts, and the rocks that followed after,
behold, the Ciconian women, their raving breasts
covered with the skins of beasts, catch sight from a hilltop
of Orpheus matching his songs to the struck strings.
One of them, her hair tossed loose on the light breeze,
cried, ‘Look — look, here is the man who scorns us!’ and flung
her spear at the singing mouth of Apollo’s bard;
wreathed with leaves, it left a mark but made no wound.
Another’s missile was a stone, which, hurled, was overcome
in the very air by the concord of his voice and lyre,
and, as if a suppliant for so frenzied a daring,
fell at his feet. But the reckless warfare swells,
all measure is gone, and the mad Fury reigns;
and all their weapons would have been softened by his song,
but the huge clamor — the Berecyntian pipe with its broken horn,
the drums, the hand-clapping, the Bacchic howls —
drowned out the sound of the lyre; then at last the stones
reddened with the blood of the bard they could no longer hear.
And first the maenads seized the countless birds,
the snakes, the marshalled column of beasts, still spellbound by his voice —
the trophies of Orpheus’s triumph;
then they turn on Orpheus with bloodied hands,
and flock as birds do when by day they spy
the bird of night astray, and as in an amphitheater,
with the seats built up on either side, when on the morning sand
a stag is doomed, the prey of dogs, they make for the bard
and hurl their green-leafed wands, not made for such service.
Some throw clods, some boughs torn from the trees,
some flints; and, lest weapons fail their frenzy,
by chance some oxen were breaking the earth with the driven plowshare,
and not far off, earning their fruit with much sweat,
brawny farmers were digging the hard fields;
seeing the horde, they flee and leave behind
the tools of their toil, and scattered through the empty fields
lie hoes and heavy rakes and long-handled mattocks;
these the savage women snatched, and, after they had torn apart
the oxen menacing with their horns, they rush back to the bard’s destruction,
and as he stretched out his hands, and then for the first time
spoke in vain and moved nothing with his voice,
the sacrilegious women slay him; and through that mouth —
o Jupiter! — heard by the rocks and understood
by the senses of beasts, his breath, sighed out, withdrew into the winds.
the hearts of wild beasts, and the rocks that followed after,
behold, the Ciconian women, their raving breasts
covered with the skins of beasts, catch sight from a hilltop
of Orpheus matching his songs to the struck strings.
One of them, her hair tossed loose on the light breeze,
cried, ‘Look — look, here is the man who scorns us!’ and flung
her spear at the singing mouth of Apollo’s bard;
wreathed with leaves, it left a mark but made no wound.
Another’s missile was a stone, which, hurled, was overcome
in the very air by the concord of his voice and lyre,
and, as if a suppliant for so frenzied a daring,
fell at his feet. But the reckless warfare swells,
all measure is gone, and the mad Fury reigns;
and all their weapons would have been softened by his song,
but the huge clamor — the Berecyntian pipe with its broken horn,
the drums, the hand-clapping, the Bacchic howls —
drowned out the sound of the lyre; then at last the stones
reddened with the blood of the bard they could no longer hear.
And first the maenads seized the countless birds,
the snakes, the marshalled column of beasts, still spellbound by his voice —
the trophies of Orpheus’s triumph;
then they turn on Orpheus with bloodied hands,
and flock as birds do when by day they spy
the bird of night astray, and as in an amphitheater,
with the seats built up on either side, when on the morning sand
a stag is doomed, the prey of dogs, they make for the bard
and hurl their green-leafed wands, not made for such service.
Some throw clods, some boughs torn from the trees,
some flints; and, lest weapons fail their frenzy,
by chance some oxen were breaking the earth with the driven plowshare,
and not far off, earning their fruit with much sweat,
brawny farmers were digging the hard fields;
seeing the horde, they flee and leave behind
the tools of their toil, and scattered through the empty fields
lie hoes and heavy rakes and long-handled mattocks;
these the savage women snatched, and, after they had torn apart
the oxen menacing with their horns, they rush back to the bard’s destruction,
and as he stretched out his hands, and then for the first time
spoke in vain and moved nothing with his voice,
the sacrilegious women slay him; and through that mouth —
o Jupiter! — heard by the rocks and understood
by the senses of beasts, his breath, sighed out, withdrew into the winds.
Carmine dum tali silvas animosque ferarum Threicius vates et saxa sequentia ducit, ecce nurus Ciconum tectae lymphata ferinis pectora velleribus tumuli de vertice cernunt Orphea percussis sociantem carmina nervis. e quibus una leves iactato crine per auras, ’en,’ ait ’en, hic est nostri contemptor!’ et hastam vatis Apollinei vocalia misit in ora, quae foliis praesuta notam sine vulnere fecit; alterius telum lapis est, qui missus in ipso aere concentu victus vocisque lyraeque est ac veluti supplex pro tam furialibus ausis ante pedes iacuit. sed enim temeraria crescunt bella modusque abiit insanaque regnat Erinys; cunctaque tela forent cantu mollita, sed ingens clamor et infracto Berecyntia tibia cornu tympanaque et plausus et Bacchei ululatus obstrepuere sono citharae, tum denique saxa non exauditi rubuerunt sanguine vatis. ac primum attonitas etiamnum voce canentis innumeras volucres anguesque agmenque ferarum maenades Orphei titulum rapuere triumphi; inde cruentatis vertuntur in Orphea dextris et coeunt ut aves, si quando luce vagantem noctis avem cernunt, structoque utrimque theatro ceu matutina cervus periturus harena praeda canum est, vatemque petunt et fronde virentes coniciunt thyrsos non haec in munera factos. hae glaebas, illae direptos arbore ramos, pars torquent silices; neu desint tela furori, forte boves presso subigebant vomere terram, nec procul hinc multo fructum sudore parantes dura lacertosi fodiebant arva coloni, agmine qui viso fugiunt operisque relinquunt arma sui, vacuosque iacent dispersa per agros sarculaque rastrique graves longique ligones; quae postquam rapuere ferae cornuque minaces divulsere boves, ad vatis fata recurrunt tendentemque manus et in illo tempore primum inrita dicentem nec quicquam voce moventem sacrilegae perimunt, perque os, pro Iuppiter! illud auditum saxis intellectumque ferarum sensibus in ventos anima exhalata recessit.
You the mournful birds, Orpheus, you the throng of beasts,
you the hard flints, you the woods that had so often
followed your songs wept for; the tree, shedding its leaves,
mourned you with shorn foliage; they say the rivers too
swelled with their own tears, and the naiads and dryads
wore dark veils on their robes and let their hair hang loose.
His limbs lie scattered in different places; the head and the lyre
you, Hebrus, received: and — a marvel! — while they glide midstream,
the lyre laments some mournful thing, the lifeless tongue
murmurs something mournful, the banks answer mournfully.
And now, borne out to sea, they leave their native river
and gain the shore of Methymnaean Lesbos:
here a fierce serpent attacked the head exposed on the foreign sand
and the hair still dripping with spray.
At last Phoebus came, and warded off the snake as it made
to sink its bite, and froze its open jaws to stone,
and hardened, just as they were, the gaping mouth.
The shade goes down beneath the earth, and recognizes
all the places it had seen before, and, searching through the fields of the blessed,
finds Eurydice and folds her in his longing arms;
here now the two stroll side by side with steps together,
now he follows as she goes before, now leads the way,
and Orpheus now, in safety, looks back at his Eurydice.
you the hard flints, you the woods that had so often
followed your songs wept for; the tree, shedding its leaves,
mourned you with shorn foliage; they say the rivers too
swelled with their own tears, and the naiads and dryads
wore dark veils on their robes and let their hair hang loose.
His limbs lie scattered in different places; the head and the lyre
you, Hebrus, received: and — a marvel! — while they glide midstream,
the lyre laments some mournful thing, the lifeless tongue
murmurs something mournful, the banks answer mournfully.
And now, borne out to sea, they leave their native river
and gain the shore of Methymnaean Lesbos:
here a fierce serpent attacked the head exposed on the foreign sand
and the hair still dripping with spray.
At last Phoebus came, and warded off the snake as it made
to sink its bite, and froze its open jaws to stone,
and hardened, just as they were, the gaping mouth.
The shade goes down beneath the earth, and recognizes
all the places it had seen before, and, searching through the fields of the blessed,
finds Eurydice and folds her in his longing arms;
here now the two stroll side by side with steps together,
now he follows as she goes before, now leads the way,
and Orpheus now, in safety, looks back at his Eurydice.
Te maestae volucres, Orpheu, te turba ferarum, te rigidi silices, te carmina saepe secutae fleverunt silvae, positis te frondibus arbor tonsa comas luxit; lacrimis quoque flumina dicunt increvisse suis, obstrusaque carbasa pullo naides et dryades passosque habuere capillos. membra iacent diversa locis, caput, Hebre, lyramque excipis: et (mirum!) medio dum labitur amne, flebile nescio quid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae. iamque mare invectae flumen populare relinquunt et Methymnaeae potiuntur litore Lesbi: hic ferus expositum peregrinis anguis harenis os petit et sparsos stillanti rore capillos. tandem Phoebus adest morsusque inferre parantem arcet et in lapidem rictus serpentis apertos congelat et patulos, ut erant, indurat hiatus. Umbra subit terras, et quae loca viderat ante, cuncta recognoscit quaerensque per arva piorum invenit Eurydicen cupidisque amplectitur ulnis; hic modo coniunctis spatiantur passibus ambo, nunc praecedentem sequitur, nunc praevius anteit Eurydicenque suam iam tuto respicit Orpheus.
Yet Lyaeus did not let this crime go unpunished,
and, grieving for the lost bard of his own rites,
at once bound fast in the woods, with twisted root,
all the Edonian mothers who had seen the outrage;
for he drew out the toes of their feet, along the very path
that each had then been treading, and drove their tips into the solid earth,
and as a bird, when it has caught its leg in the snare
that the cunning fowler has hidden, and feels itself held,
beats its wings and, in panic, draws its bonds the tighter:
so, as each of them had stuck fast, fixed to the ground,
in terror she tried in vain for flight, but the slow root
holds her and checks her as she strains away;
and while she asks where her fingers are, where her foot, her nails,
she sees the wood creep up her shapely calves,
and, trying to beat her thigh with grieving hand,
struck oak: oak too her breast becomes, oak her shoulders;
and you would think her knotted arms were real
branches — and thinking so, you would not be deceived.
and, grieving for the lost bard of his own rites,
at once bound fast in the woods, with twisted root,
all the Edonian mothers who had seen the outrage;
for he drew out the toes of their feet, along the very path
that each had then been treading, and drove their tips into the solid earth,
and as a bird, when it has caught its leg in the snare
that the cunning fowler has hidden, and feels itself held,
beats its wings and, in panic, draws its bonds the tighter:
so, as each of them had stuck fast, fixed to the ground,
in terror she tried in vain for flight, but the slow root
holds her and checks her as she strains away;
and while she asks where her fingers are, where her foot, her nails,
she sees the wood creep up her shapely calves,
and, trying to beat her thigh with grieving hand,
struck oak: oak too her breast becomes, oak her shoulders;
and you would think her knotted arms were real
branches — and thinking so, you would not be deceived.
Non inpune tamen scelus hoc sinit esse Lyaeus amissoque dolens sacrorum vate suorum protinus in silvis matres Edonidas omnes, quae videre nefas, torta radice ligavit; quippe pedum digitos via, quam tum est quaeque secuta, traxit et in solidam detrusit acumina terram, utque suum laqueis, quos callidus abdidit auceps, crus ubi commisit volucris sensitque teneri, plangitur ac trepidans adstringit vincula motu: sic, ut quaeque solo defixa cohaeserat harum, exsternata fugam frustra temptabat, at illam lenta tenet radix exsultantemque coercet, dumque ubi sint digiti, dum pes ubi, quaerit, et ungues, aspicit in teretes lignum succedere suras et conata femur maerenti plangere dextra robora percussit, pectus quoque robora fiunt, robora sunt umeri; nodosaque bracchia veros esse putes ramos, et non fallare putando.
Nor is this enough for Bacchus: he forsakes those very fields too,
and with a worthier band makes for the vineyards of his Tmolus
and for the Pactolus, though it was not golden at that
time, nor envied for its precious sands.
His accustomed retinue, the satyrs and bacchae, throng him,
but Silenus is missing: him, tottering with age and wine,
the Phrygian countrymen had caught, and, bound with garlands,
led to King Midas, to whom Thracian Orpheus
had handed down the rites, with Cecropian Eumolpus.
As soon as he recognized the comrade and companion of his worship,
he kept festival merrily at the coming of his guest
for twice five days and the nights joined to them in turn,
and now the eleventh Lucifer had driven on high
the host of the stars, when the king came joyful into the Lydian
fields and gave Silenus back to his young foster-son.
and with a worthier band makes for the vineyards of his Tmolus
and for the Pactolus, though it was not golden at that
time, nor envied for its precious sands.
His accustomed retinue, the satyrs and bacchae, throng him,
but Silenus is missing: him, tottering with age and wine,
the Phrygian countrymen had caught, and, bound with garlands,
led to King Midas, to whom Thracian Orpheus
had handed down the rites, with Cecropian Eumolpus.
As soon as he recognized the comrade and companion of his worship,
he kept festival merrily at the coming of his guest
for twice five days and the nights joined to them in turn,
and now the eleventh Lucifer had driven on high
the host of the stars, when the king came joyful into the Lydian
fields and gave Silenus back to his young foster-son.
Nec satis hoc Baccho est, ipsos quoque deserit agros cumque choro meliore sui vineta Timoli Pactolonque petit, quamvis non aureus illo tempore nec caris erat invidiosus harenis. hunc adsueta cohors, satyri bacchaeque, frequentant, at Silenus abest: titubantem annisque meroque ruricolae cepere Phryges vinctumque coronis ad regem duxere Midan, cui Thracius Orpheus orgia tradiderat cum Cecropio Eumolpo. qui simul agnovit socium comitemque sacrorum, hospitis adventu festum genialiter egit per bis quinque dies et iunctas ordine noctes, et iam stellarum sublime coegerat agmen Lucifer undecimus, Lydos cum laetus in agros rex venit et iuveni Silenum reddit alumno.
To him the god, glad at the recovery of his foster-father,
granted the choice of a gift — welcome, but useless.
He, who would use the gift to his harm, said, ‘Make it that whatever
I touch with my body be turned to tawny gold.’
Liber granted his wish and discharged the harmful gift,
grieving that he had not asked for something better.
The Berecyntian hero goes off glad, rejoicing in his bane,
and tries the good faith of the promise by touching things one by one,
and, scarcely believing himself, pulled from a holm-oak
a twig green with low foliage: the twig was turned to gold;
he lifts a stone from the ground: the stone too paled with gold;
he touched a clod as well: at the powerful contact the clod
becomes a nugget; he plucked the dry ears of Ceres:
it was a golden harvest; he holds an apple taken from a tree:
you would think the Hesperides had given it; if he set his fingers
to the high doorposts, the posts seem to shoot out rays;
even when he had washed his hands in clear water,
the water sliding over his palms could have cheated Danae;
he can scarcely grasp his own hopes in his mind, shaping
all things golden.
granted the choice of a gift — welcome, but useless.
He, who would use the gift to his harm, said, ‘Make it that whatever
I touch with my body be turned to tawny gold.’
Liber granted his wish and discharged the harmful gift,
grieving that he had not asked for something better.
The Berecyntian hero goes off glad, rejoicing in his bane,
and tries the good faith of the promise by touching things one by one,
and, scarcely believing himself, pulled from a holm-oak
a twig green with low foliage: the twig was turned to gold;
he lifts a stone from the ground: the stone too paled with gold;
he touched a clod as well: at the powerful contact the clod
becomes a nugget; he plucked the dry ears of Ceres:
it was a golden harvest; he holds an apple taken from a tree:
you would think the Hesperides had given it; if he set his fingers
to the high doorposts, the posts seem to shoot out rays;
even when he had washed his hands in clear water,
the water sliding over his palms could have cheated Danae;
he can scarcely grasp his own hopes in his mind, shaping
all things golden.
Huic deus optandi gratum, sed inutile, fecit muneris arbitrium gaudens altore recepto. ille male usurus donis ait ’effice, quicquid corpore contigero, fulvum vertatur in aurum.’ adnuit optatis nocituraque munera solvit Liber et indoluit, quod non meliora petisset. laetus abit gaudetque malo Berecyntius heros pollicitique fidem tangendo singula temptat vixque sibi credens, non alta fronde virentem ilice detraxit virgam: virga aurea facta est; tollit humo saxum: saxum quoque palluit auro; contigit et glaebam: contactu glaeba potenti massa fit; arentis Cereris decerpsit aristas: aurea messis erat; demptum tenet arbore pomum: Hesperidas donasse putes; si postibus altis admovit digitos, postes radiare videntur; ille etiam liquidis palmas ubi laverat undis, unda fluens palmis Danaen eludere posset; vix spes ipse suas animo capit aurea fingens omnia.
As he rejoiced, his servants set out tables
heaped with feast and not wanting for roasted grain:
but then, whether he had touched with his right hand
the gifts of Ceres, the gifts of Ceres stiffened,
or whether he made ready to tear the food with greedy tooth,
a tawny plate of metal pressed the food at the tooth’s approach;
he had mixed the giver of the gift with pure water:
you could see molten gold come streaming through his jaws.
Stunned by the strangeness of his bane, rich and wretched at once,
he longs to flee his wealth, and hates what he just now prayed for.
No abundance relieves his hunger; dry thirst burns
his throat, and, justly, he is tortured by the gold he loathes,
and, lifting his hands and shining arms to heaven,
‘Grant pardon, father Lenaeus! I have sinned,’ he says,
‘but pity me, I pray, and snatch me from this gorgeous ruin!’
The power of the gods is mild: Bacchus restored him as he confessed
his fault, and, true to the bargain, undid the gift he had given,
‘And, lest you stay coated with the gold you wished for to your harm,
go,’ he says, ‘to the river that neighbors mighty Sardis,
and pressing your way up the ridge against the down-gliding waters
hold your course, until you come to the river’s rising,
and where it gushes fullest plunge your head beneath the foaming
spring, and your body with it, and wash your crime away at once.’
The king went down to the water as he was bidden: the golden power tinged
the stream and passed from the human body into the river;
even now, having taken up the seed of that old vein,
the fields stiffen with gold, pale with the soaked-in clods.
heaped with feast and not wanting for roasted grain:
but then, whether he had touched with his right hand
the gifts of Ceres, the gifts of Ceres stiffened,
or whether he made ready to tear the food with greedy tooth,
a tawny plate of metal pressed the food at the tooth’s approach;
he had mixed the giver of the gift with pure water:
you could see molten gold come streaming through his jaws.
Stunned by the strangeness of his bane, rich and wretched at once,
he longs to flee his wealth, and hates what he just now prayed for.
No abundance relieves his hunger; dry thirst burns
his throat, and, justly, he is tortured by the gold he loathes,
and, lifting his hands and shining arms to heaven,
‘Grant pardon, father Lenaeus! I have sinned,’ he says,
‘but pity me, I pray, and snatch me from this gorgeous ruin!’
The power of the gods is mild: Bacchus restored him as he confessed
his fault, and, true to the bargain, undid the gift he had given,
‘And, lest you stay coated with the gold you wished for to your harm,
go,’ he says, ‘to the river that neighbors mighty Sardis,
and pressing your way up the ridge against the down-gliding waters
hold your course, until you come to the river’s rising,
and where it gushes fullest plunge your head beneath the foaming
spring, and your body with it, and wash your crime away at once.’
The king went down to the water as he was bidden: the golden power tinged
the stream and passed from the human body into the river;
even now, having taken up the seed of that old vein,
the fields stiffen with gold, pale with the soaked-in clods.
gaudenti mensas posuere ministri exstructas dapibus nec tostae frugis egentes: tum vero, sive ille sua Cerealia dextra munera contigerat, Cerealia dona rigebant, sive dapes avido convellere dente parabat, lammina fulva dapes admoto dente premebat; miscuerat puris auctorem muneris undis: fusile per rictus aurum fluitare videres. Attonitus novitate mali divesque miserque effugere optat opes et quae modo voverat, odit. copia nulla famem relevat; sitis arida guttur urit, et inviso meritus torquetur ab auro ad caelumque manus et splendida bracchia tollens ’da veniam, Lenaee pater! peccavimus’ inquit, ’sed miserere, precor, speciosoque eripe damno!’ mite deum numen: Bacchus peccasse fatentem restituit pactique fide data munera solvit ’ne’ ve ’male optato maneas circumlitus auro, vade’ ait ’ad magnis vicinum Sardibus amnem perque iugum nitens labentibus obvius undis carpe viam, donec venias ad fluminis ortus, spumigeroque tuum fonti, qua plurimus exit, subde caput corpusque simul, simul elue crimen.’ rex iussae succedit aquae: vis aurea tinxit flumen et humano de corpore cessit in amnem; nunc quoque iam veteris percepto semine venae arva rigent auro madidis pallentia glaebis.
He, loathing wealth, dwelt in the woods and the country,
and worshiped Pan, who lives forever in mountain caves,
but his dull wit stayed with him, and, as before, the heart
of his foolish mind was again to do its owner harm.
For, looking far out over the sea, Tmolus rises sheer,
steep in its ascent, and, stretched out on either slope,
ends at Sardis on this side, at little Hypaepa on that.
There, while Pan was vaunting his piping to the tender nymphs
and playing a slight song on his waxed reed,
daring to scorn Apollo’s music beside his own,
he came to an unequal contest, with Tmolus for judge.
The old judge took his seat on his own mountain and freed
his ears from the trees: with oak alone is his dark hair
bound, and acorns hang about his hollow temples.
And, looking at the god of the flock, ‘In the judge,’ he said,
‘there is no delay.’ Pan sounds upon his country reeds,
and with his barbarous song charms Midas — for he chanced
to be present at the singing.
and worshiped Pan, who lives forever in mountain caves,
but his dull wit stayed with him, and, as before, the heart
of his foolish mind was again to do its owner harm.
For, looking far out over the sea, Tmolus rises sheer,
steep in its ascent, and, stretched out on either slope,
ends at Sardis on this side, at little Hypaepa on that.
There, while Pan was vaunting his piping to the tender nymphs
and playing a slight song on his waxed reed,
daring to scorn Apollo’s music beside his own,
he came to an unequal contest, with Tmolus for judge.
The old judge took his seat on his own mountain and freed
his ears from the trees: with oak alone is his dark hair
bound, and acorns hang about his hollow temples.
And, looking at the god of the flock, ‘In the judge,’ he said,
‘there is no delay.’ Pan sounds upon his country reeds,
and with his barbarous song charms Midas — for he chanced
to be present at the singing.
Ille perosus opes silvas et rura colebat Panaque montanis habitantem semper in antris, pingue sed ingenium mansit, nocituraque, ut ante, rursus erant domino stultae praecordia mentis. nam freta prospiciens late riget arduus alto Tmolus in ascensu clivoque extensus utroque Sardibus hinc, illinc parvis finitur Hypaepis. Pan ibi dum teneris iactat sua sibila nymphis et leve cerata modulatur harundine carmen ausus Apollineos prae se contemnere cantus, iudice sub Tmolo certamen venit ad inpar. Monte suo senior iudex consedit et aures liberat arboribus: quercu coma caerula tantum cingitur, et pendent circum cava tempora glandes. isque deum pecoris spectans ’in iudice’ dixit ’nulla mora est.’ calamis agrestibus insonat ille barbaricoque Midan (aderat nam forte canenti) carmine delenit; post hunc sacer ora retorsit Tmolus ad os Phoebi: vultum sua silva secuta est.
After him sacred Tmolus turned his face
to the face of Phoebus: his forest followed his look.
He, his golden head bound with Parnassian laurel,
sweeps the ground with a cloak steeped in Tyrian purple,
and on his left holds the lyre inlaid with gems and Indian
ivory; his other hand held the plectrum;
his very stance was an artist’s. Then with skilled thumb
he stirs the strings, and Tmolus, caught by their sweetness,
bids Pan lower his reeds before the lyre.
The judgment and the verdict of the holy mountain pleased
them all, and yet it is challenged and called unjust
by the words of Midas alone; nor does the Delian suffer
his stupid ears to keep their human shape,
but draws them out to length and fills them with white hairs,
and makes them loose at the base and gives them power to move:
the rest is a man’s; he is condemned in one part only,
and puts on the ears of a slow-pacing ass.
to the face of Phoebus: his forest followed his look.
He, his golden head bound with Parnassian laurel,
sweeps the ground with a cloak steeped in Tyrian purple,
and on his left holds the lyre inlaid with gems and Indian
ivory; his other hand held the plectrum;
his very stance was an artist’s. Then with skilled thumb
he stirs the strings, and Tmolus, caught by their sweetness,
bids Pan lower his reeds before the lyre.
The judgment and the verdict of the holy mountain pleased
them all, and yet it is challenged and called unjust
by the words of Midas alone; nor does the Delian suffer
his stupid ears to keep their human shape,
but draws them out to length and fills them with white hairs,
and makes them loose at the base and gives them power to move:
the rest is a man’s; he is condemned in one part only,
and puts on the ears of a slow-pacing ass.
ille caput flavum lauro Parnaside vinctus verrit humum Tyrio saturata murice palla instructamque fidem gemmis et dentibus Indis sustinet a laeva, tenuit manus altera plectrum; artificis status ipse fuit. tum stamina docto pollice sollicitat, quorum dulcedine captus Pana iubet Tmolus citharae submittere cannas. Iudicium sanctique placet sententia montis omnibus, arguitur tamen atque iniusta vocatur unius sermone Midae; nec Delius aures humanam stolidas patitur retinere figuram, sed trahit in spatium villisque albentibus inplet instabilesque imas facit et dat posse moveri: cetera sunt hominis, partem damnatur in unam induiturque aures lente gradientis aselli.
He indeed longs to hide it, and tries to relieve his temples
of their shameful disgrace with purple turbans;
but the servant who was wont to crop his long hair with the iron
had seen this, and, since he dared neither betray the disgrace
he had seen, though longing to bring it out into the air,
nor yet keep silent, withdrew, and dug up
the ground, and in a low voice tells what kind of ears
he had seen on his master, and murmurs it into the upturned earth,
then buried the witness of his own voice with the soil heaped back,
and, the trench filled in, went silently away.
There a thick grove of quivering reeds began
to rise, and, as soon as it ripened with the full year,
betrayed the planter: for, stirred by the gentle south wind,
it tells again the buried words and exposes the master’s ears.
of their shameful disgrace with purple turbans;
but the servant who was wont to crop his long hair with the iron
had seen this, and, since he dared neither betray the disgrace
he had seen, though longing to bring it out into the air,
nor yet keep silent, withdrew, and dug up
the ground, and in a low voice tells what kind of ears
he had seen on his master, and murmurs it into the upturned earth,
then buried the witness of his own voice with the soil heaped back,
and, the trench filled in, went silently away.
There a thick grove of quivering reeds began
to rise, and, as soon as it ripened with the full year,
betrayed the planter: for, stirred by the gentle south wind,
it tells again the buried words and exposes the master’s ears.
ille quidem celare cupit turpique pudore tempora purpureis temptat relevare tiaris; sed solitus longos ferro resecare capillos viderat hoc famulus, qui cum nec prodere visum dedecus auderet, cupiens efferre sub auras, nec posset reticere tamen, secedit humumque effodit et, domini quales adspexerit aures, voce refert parva terraeque inmurmurat haustae indiciumque suae vocis tellure regesta obruit et scrobibus tacitus discedit opertis. creber harundinibus tremulis ibi surgere lucus coepit et, ut primum pleno maturuit anno, prodidit agricolam: leni nam motus ab austro obruta verba refert dominique coarguit aures.
Avenged, Latoius leaves Tmolus, and, borne through the clear air,
this side of the narrow sea of Helle, daughter of Nephele,
took his stand in the fields of Laomedon.
On the right of Sigeum, on the left of deep Rhoeteum,
an old altar stands hallowed to the Thunderer of all oracles:
from there he sees Laomedon first heaving up the walls
of new Troy, and the great work, taken in hand with hard
labor, rising, and demanding no small resources;
and, with the trident-bearing father of the swollen deep,
he puts on mortal form and builds the walls
for the Phrygian tyrant, having bargained gold for the ramparts.
The work stood finished: the king denies the price, and adds,
to crown his treachery, perjury with lying words.
‘You shall not carry this off unpunished,’ said the lord of the sea, and bent
all his waters toward the shores of greedy Troy,
and filled the lands into the likeness of a strait, and took away
the farmers’ wealth, and buried the fields beneath the floods.
Nor is this penalty enough: the king’s daughter too is demanded
for the sea-monster; and her, chained to the hard rocks,
Alcides delivers, and demands the promised gift, the horses
agreed upon, and, when the wage of so great a work was refused,
he takes the walls of vanquished, twice-forsworn Troy.
this side of the narrow sea of Helle, daughter of Nephele,
took his stand in the fields of Laomedon.
On the right of Sigeum, on the left of deep Rhoeteum,
an old altar stands hallowed to the Thunderer of all oracles:
from there he sees Laomedon first heaving up the walls
of new Troy, and the great work, taken in hand with hard
labor, rising, and demanding no small resources;
and, with the trident-bearing father of the swollen deep,
he puts on mortal form and builds the walls
for the Phrygian tyrant, having bargained gold for the ramparts.
The work stood finished: the king denies the price, and adds,
to crown his treachery, perjury with lying words.
‘You shall not carry this off unpunished,’ said the lord of the sea, and bent
all his waters toward the shores of greedy Troy,
and filled the lands into the likeness of a strait, and took away
the farmers’ wealth, and buried the fields beneath the floods.
Nor is this penalty enough: the king’s daughter too is demanded
for the sea-monster; and her, chained to the hard rocks,
Alcides delivers, and demands the promised gift, the horses
agreed upon, and, when the wage of so great a work was refused,
he takes the walls of vanquished, twice-forsworn Troy.
Ultus abit Tmolo liquidumque per aera vectus angustum citra pontum Nepheleidos Helles Laomedonteis Latoius adstitit arvis. dextera Sigei, Rhoetei laeva profundi ara Panomphaeo vetus est sacrata Tonanti: inde novae primum moliri moenia Troiae Laomedonta videt susceptaque magna labore crescere difficili nec opes exposcere parvas cumque tridentigero tumidi genitore profundi mortalem induitur formam Phrygiaeque tyranno aedificat muros pactus pro moenibus aurum. stabat opus: pretium rex infitiatur et addit, perfidiae cumulum, falsis periuria verbis. ’non inpune feres’ rector maris inquit, et omnes inclinavit aquas ad avarae litora Troiae inque freti formam terras conplevit opesque abstulit agricolis et fluctibus obruit agros. poena neque haec satis est: regis quoque filia monstro poscitur aequoreo, quam dura ad saxa revinctam vindicat Alcides promissaque munera dictos poscit equos tantique operis mercede negata bis periura capit superatae moenia Troiae.
Nor did Telamon, a part of the campaign, withdraw without honor,
but wins Hesione, given to him. For Peleus
was famed for his goddess-wife, and was no prouder of his grandfather’s
name than of his father-in-law’s, since to be Jove’s grandson
fell to more than one, but a goddess for wife fell to one alone.
but wins Hesione, given to him. For Peleus
was famed for his goddess-wife, and was no prouder of his grandfather’s
name than of his father-in-law’s, since to be Jove’s grandson
fell to more than one, but a goddess for wife fell to one alone.
For old Proteus had said to Thetis, ‘Goddess of the wave,
conceive: you will be the mother of a youth who, in his strong years,
will surpass his father’s deeds and be called greater than he.’
Therefore, lest the world hold anything greater than Jove,
though he had felt no lukewarm fires beneath his breast,
Jupiter fled the marriage-bed of sea-born Thetis,
and bade his grandson, the son of Aeacus, succeed
to his own desire and go into the embrace of the sea-maiden.
There is a bay of Haemonia, curved into bent arcs,
its arms running out: there, were the water deeper,
would be a harbor; the sea is spread thin over the surface sands;
the shore is firm, such as keeps no footprints,
nor slows the step, nor lies hidden, weighted with weed;
a myrtle wood is near, set thick with two-colored berries.
In the midst is a cave, whether made by nature or by art
is doubtful — yet rather by art: to which you, Thetis,
were wont to come often, riding naked on a bridled dolphin.
conceive: you will be the mother of a youth who, in his strong years,
will surpass his father’s deeds and be called greater than he.’
Therefore, lest the world hold anything greater than Jove,
though he had felt no lukewarm fires beneath his breast,
Jupiter fled the marriage-bed of sea-born Thetis,
and bade his grandson, the son of Aeacus, succeed
to his own desire and go into the embrace of the sea-maiden.
There is a bay of Haemonia, curved into bent arcs,
its arms running out: there, were the water deeper,
would be a harbor; the sea is spread thin over the surface sands;
the shore is firm, such as keeps no footprints,
nor slows the step, nor lies hidden, weighted with weed;
a myrtle wood is near, set thick with two-colored berries.
In the midst is a cave, whether made by nature or by art
is doubtful — yet rather by art: to which you, Thetis,
were wont to come often, riding naked on a bridled dolphin.
Namque senex Thetidi Proteus ’dea’ dixerat ’undae, concipe: mater eris iuvenis, qui fortibus annis acta patris vincet maiorque vocabitur illo.’ ergo, ne quicquam mundus Iove maius haberet, quamvis haut tepidos sub pectore senserat ignes, Iuppiter aequoreae Thetidis conubia fugit, in suaque Aeaciden succedere vota nepotem iussit et amplexus in virginis ire marinae. Est sinus Haemoniae curvos falcatus in arcus, bracchia procurrunt: ubi, si foret altior unda, portus erat; summis inductum est aequor harenis; litus habet solidum, quod nec vestigia servet nec remoretur iter nec opertum pendeat alga; myrtea silva subest bicoloribus obsita bacis. est specus in medio, natura factus an arte, ambiguum, magis arte tamen: quo saepe venire frenato delphine sedens, Theti, nuda solebas.
There Peleus surprises you, as you lay bound in sleep,
and, since, tried with prayers, you resist him,
he readies force, knotting both his arms about your neck;
and had you not, by shapes often changed, fallen back
on your familiar arts, he would have won his daring;
but now you were a bird: yet he held the bird;
now you were a heavy tree: Peleus clung to the tree;
your third shape was a spotted tigress: at that
the terrified son of Aeacus loosed his arms from her body.
Then he worships the gods of the sea, pouring wine over the waters,
with a victim’s entrails and the smoke of incense,
until the Carpathian seer from the midst of the deep
said, ‘Son of Aeacus, you shall win the marriage you seek;
only, when she lies asleep at rest in the rocky cave,
bind her unawares with snares and a holding cord.
And let her not deceive you by feigning a hundred shapes,
but press her, whatever she shall be, until she takes back the form she had before.’
This Proteus had said, and hid his face in the sea,
and let his own waves close over his last words.
The Titan was sinking, and held with his tilted pole
the western strait, when the lovely Nereid, leaving the deep,
enters her accustomed couch;
scarcely had Peleus well laid hold of her maiden limbs:
she renews her shapes, until she feels her body held
and her arms drawn apart in different directions.
Then at last she groaned, and said, ‘Not without a god’s help do you conquer,’
and Thetis showed herself: the hero embraces her confessed,
and wins his desire, and fills her with mighty Achilles.
and, since, tried with prayers, you resist him,
he readies force, knotting both his arms about your neck;
and had you not, by shapes often changed, fallen back
on your familiar arts, he would have won his daring;
but now you were a bird: yet he held the bird;
now you were a heavy tree: Peleus clung to the tree;
your third shape was a spotted tigress: at that
the terrified son of Aeacus loosed his arms from her body.
Then he worships the gods of the sea, pouring wine over the waters,
with a victim’s entrails and the smoke of incense,
until the Carpathian seer from the midst of the deep
said, ‘Son of Aeacus, you shall win the marriage you seek;
only, when she lies asleep at rest in the rocky cave,
bind her unawares with snares and a holding cord.
And let her not deceive you by feigning a hundred shapes,
but press her, whatever she shall be, until she takes back the form she had before.’
This Proteus had said, and hid his face in the sea,
and let his own waves close over his last words.
The Titan was sinking, and held with his tilted pole
the western strait, when the lovely Nereid, leaving the deep,
enters her accustomed couch;
scarcely had Peleus well laid hold of her maiden limbs:
she renews her shapes, until she feels her body held
and her arms drawn apart in different directions.
Then at last she groaned, and said, ‘Not without a god’s help do you conquer,’
and Thetis showed herself: the hero embraces her confessed,
and wins his desire, and fills her with mighty Achilles.
illic te Peleus, ut somno vincta iacebas, occupat, et quoniam precibus temptata repugnas, vim parat, innectens ambobus colla lacertis; quod nisi venisses variatis saepe figuris ad solitas artes, auso foret ille potitus; sed modo tu volucris: volucrem tamen ille tenebat; nunc gravis arbor eras: haerebat in arbore Peleus; tertia forma fuit maculosae tigridis: illa territus Aeacides a corpore bracchia solvit. inde deos pelagi vino super aequora fuso et pecoris fibris et fumo turis adorat, donec Carpathius medio de gurgite vates ’Aeacide,’ dixit ’thalamis potiere petitis, tu modo, cum rigido sopita quiescet in antro, ignaram laqueis vincloque innecte tenaci. nec te decipiat centum mentita figuras, sed preme, quicquid erit, dum, quod fuit ante, reformet.’ dixerat haec Proteus et condidit aequore vultum admisitque suos in verba novissima fluctus. Pronus erat Titan inclinatoque tenebat Hesperium temone fretum, cum pulchra relicto Nereis ingreditur consueta cubilia ponto; vix bene virgineos Peleus invaserat artus: illa novat formas, donec sua membra teneri sentit et in partes diversas bracchia tendi. tum denum ingemuit, ’ne’ que ait ’sine numine vincis’ exhibita estque Thetis: confessam amplectitur heros et potitur votis ingentique inplet Achille.
Happy in his son, and happy in his wife, was Peleus,
and one to whom, but for the crime of murdered Phocus,
all good had fallen: guilty of a brother’s blood,
and driven from his father’s house, the land of Trachis
receives him. Here, without violence and without bloodshed,
Ceyx held his kingdom, sprung from Lucifer his father
and bearing his father’s brightness in his face — Ceyx, who at that
time was sad and unlike himself, mourning the brother taken from him.
When the son of Aeacus, worn with care and the road,
came there and entered the city with a few companions,
the flocks of sheep and the herds he was driving with him
he left not far from the walls in a shadowy valley;
and when first the chance of approaching the king was given,
holding out the suppliant’s wreaths in his hand, he tells
who he is and whose son — only his crime he hides
and lies about the cause of his flight; he asks that with city or field
he be helped. In answer the Trachinian, with a calm face,
addresses him thus: ‘Our bounty lies open even to the middling
folk, Peleus, and we hold no inhospitable realm;
to this goodwill you add weights of power — a famous
name, and Jove for grandfather; do not waste your hours in pleading!
All that you ask you shall have, and call all this, such as you see it,
your own for your share! Would that you saw it better!’
And he was weeping:
and one to whom, but for the crime of murdered Phocus,
all good had fallen: guilty of a brother’s blood,
and driven from his father’s house, the land of Trachis
receives him. Here, without violence and without bloodshed,
Ceyx held his kingdom, sprung from Lucifer his father
and bearing his father’s brightness in his face — Ceyx, who at that
time was sad and unlike himself, mourning the brother taken from him.
When the son of Aeacus, worn with care and the road,
came there and entered the city with a few companions,
the flocks of sheep and the herds he was driving with him
he left not far from the walls in a shadowy valley;
and when first the chance of approaching the king was given,
holding out the suppliant’s wreaths in his hand, he tells
who he is and whose son — only his crime he hides
and lies about the cause of his flight; he asks that with city or field
he be helped. In answer the Trachinian, with a calm face,
addresses him thus: ‘Our bounty lies open even to the middling
folk, Peleus, and we hold no inhospitable realm;
to this goodwill you add weights of power — a famous
name, and Jove for grandfather; do not waste your hours in pleading!
All that you ask you shall have, and call all this, such as you see it,
your own for your share! Would that you saw it better!’
And he was weeping:
Felix et nato, felix et coniuge Peleus, et cui, si demas iugulati crimina Phoci, omnia contigerant: fraterno sanguine sontem expulsumque domo patria Trachinia tellus accipit. hic regnum sine vi, sine caede gerebat Lucifero genitore satus patriumque nitorem ore ferens Ceyx, illo qui tempore maestus dissimilisque sui fratrem lugebat ademptum. quo postquam Aeacides fessus curaque viaque venit et intravit paucis comitantibus urbem, quosque greges pecorum, quae secum armenta trahebat, haut procul a muris sub opaca valle reliquit; copia cum facta est adeundi prima tyranni, velamenta manu praetendens supplice, qui sit quoque satus, memorat, tantum sua crimina celat mentiturque fugae causam; petit, urbe vel agro se iuvet. hunc contra placido Trachinius ore talibus adloquitur: ’mediae quoque commoda plebi nostra patent, Peleu, nec inhospita regna tenemus; adicis huic animo momenta potentia, clarum nomen avumque Iovem; ne tempora perde precando! quod petis, omne feres tuaque haec pro parte vocato, qualiacumque vides!
what cause might stir so great a grief,
Peleus and his companions ask; and to them he speaks:
‘Perhaps you think that this bird, which lives by plunder and terrifies
all the others, has always had its wings:
he was a man (and — so steadfast was his spirit — even then
he was fierce and savage in war and ready for violence),
Daedalion by name. Both of us were sons of him
who calls forth Aurora and leaves the sky the last;
peace was my care, the keeping of peace and of marriage
was my concern, but my brother loved fierce wars:
his prowess subdued kings and nations,
the prowess that now, transformed, harries the doves of Thisbe.
He had a daughter, Chione, who, most richly dowered with beauty,
had a thousand suitors when, at twice seven years, she was ripe for marriage.
By chance, returning, Phoebus and the son of Maia,
the one from his own Delphi, the other from Cyllene’s peak,
saw her together, and together caught the flame.
Apollo puts off his hope of love till the hours of night;
the other brooks no delay, and with the wand that brings on sleep
touches the girl’s face: at the powerful touch she lies still
and suffers the god’s force; night had strewn the sky with stars:
Phoebus, in an old woman’s shape, takes the joy already stolen.
When her ripened womb had filled its time,
from the stock of the wing-footed god a crafty offspring
is born — Autolycus, ingenious at every theft,
who was wont to make white from black and black from white,
no degenerate from his father’s art;
from Phoebus is born (for she bore twins)
Philammon, famed for tuneful song and the lyre.’
Peleus and his companions ask; and to them he speaks:
‘Perhaps you think that this bird, which lives by plunder and terrifies
all the others, has always had its wings:
he was a man (and — so steadfast was his spirit — even then
he was fierce and savage in war and ready for violence),
Daedalion by name. Both of us were sons of him
who calls forth Aurora and leaves the sky the last;
peace was my care, the keeping of peace and of marriage
was my concern, but my brother loved fierce wars:
his prowess subdued kings and nations,
the prowess that now, transformed, harries the doves of Thisbe.
He had a daughter, Chione, who, most richly dowered with beauty,
had a thousand suitors when, at twice seven years, she was ripe for marriage.
By chance, returning, Phoebus and the son of Maia,
the one from his own Delphi, the other from Cyllene’s peak,
saw her together, and together caught the flame.
Apollo puts off his hope of love till the hours of night;
the other brooks no delay, and with the wand that brings on sleep
touches the girl’s face: at the powerful touch she lies still
and suffers the god’s force; night had strewn the sky with stars:
Phoebus, in an old woman’s shape, takes the joy already stolen.
When her ripened womb had filled its time,
from the stock of the wing-footed god a crafty offspring
is born — Autolycus, ingenious at every theft,
who was wont to make white from black and black from white,
no degenerate from his father’s art;
from Phoebus is born (for she bore twins)
Philammon, famed for tuneful song and the lyre.’
utinam meliora videres!’ et flebat: moveat tantos quae causa dolores, Peleusque comitesque rogant; quibus ille profatur: ’forsitan hanc volucrem, rapto quae vivit et omnes terret aves, semper pennas habuisse putetis: vir fuit (et—tanta est animi constantia—iam tum acer erat belloque ferox ad vimque paratus) nomine Daedalion. illo genitore creatis, qui vocat Auroram caeloque novissimus exit, culta mihi pax est, pacis mihi cura tenendae coniugiique fuit, fratri fera bella placebant: illius virtus reges gentesque subegit, quae nunc Thisbaeas agitat mutata columbas. nata erat huic Chione, quae dotatissima forma mille procos habuit, bis septem nubilis annis. forte revertentes Phoebus Maiaque creatus, ille suis Delphis, hic vertice Cyllenaeo, videre hanc pariter, pariter traxere colorem. spem veneris differt in tempora noctis Apollo; non fert ille moras virgaque movente soporem virginis os tangit: tactu iacet illa potenti vimque dei patitur; nox caelum sparserat astris: Phoebus anum simulat praereptaque gaudia sumit. ut sua maturus conplevit tempora venter, alipedis de stirpe dei versuta propago nascitur Autolycus furtum ingeniosus ad omne, candida de nigris et de candentibus atra qui facere adsuerat, patriae non degener artis; nascitur e Phoebo (namque est enixa gemellos) carmine vocali clarus citharaque Philammon.
What did it profit her to have borne two sons, and pleased two gods,
and to be sprung from a brave father and a shining forefather?
Has glory not been a bane to many too? It harmed her, surely!
She who brought herself to rank above Diana
and found fault with the goddess’s face; but in the goddess
fierce anger was stirred, and ‘By deeds, then,’ she said, ‘we will please you.’
Without delay she bent her bow and drove the arrow from the string
and pierced with the shaft the tongue that had deserved it.
The tongue falls silent; neither voice nor the words she tried for follow,
and as she struggled to speak her life left her with her blood;
embracing her, wretched, I then bore in my heart
a brother’s grief, and spoke comfort to my loving brother,
which the father took no otherwise than the crags take the murmurs
of the sea, and he laments his daughter taken from him;
but when he saw her burning, four times he made a rush
to go into the midst of the pyre, four times beaten back from there
he gives his hurrying limbs to flight, and, like a bullock
carrying on its galled neck the stings of hornets,
he rushes where there is no path. Already then he seemed to me
to run more than a man, and you would think his feet had taken wings.
So he outruns them all, and, swift in his longing for death,
gains the peak of Parnassus; Apollo, taking pity,
when Daedalion had flung himself from the high rock,
made him a bird, and held him up, hanging, on sudden wings,
and gave him a hooked beak, gave curved hooks for talons,
his old courage, and strength greater than his body,
and now, as a hawk, fair to none, he rages against all
the birds, and, grieving, becomes to others a cause of grief.’
and to be sprung from a brave father and a shining forefather?
Has glory not been a bane to many too? It harmed her, surely!
She who brought herself to rank above Diana
and found fault with the goddess’s face; but in the goddess
fierce anger was stirred, and ‘By deeds, then,’ she said, ‘we will please you.’
Without delay she bent her bow and drove the arrow from the string
and pierced with the shaft the tongue that had deserved it.
The tongue falls silent; neither voice nor the words she tried for follow,
and as she struggled to speak her life left her with her blood;
embracing her, wretched, I then bore in my heart
a brother’s grief, and spoke comfort to my loving brother,
which the father took no otherwise than the crags take the murmurs
of the sea, and he laments his daughter taken from him;
but when he saw her burning, four times he made a rush
to go into the midst of the pyre, four times beaten back from there
he gives his hurrying limbs to flight, and, like a bullock
carrying on its galled neck the stings of hornets,
he rushes where there is no path. Already then he seemed to me
to run more than a man, and you would think his feet had taken wings.
So he outruns them all, and, swift in his longing for death,
gains the peak of Parnassus; Apollo, taking pity,
when Daedalion had flung himself from the high rock,
made him a bird, and held him up, hanging, on sudden wings,
and gave him a hooked beak, gave curved hooks for talons,
his old courage, and strength greater than his body,
and now, as a hawk, fair to none, he rages against all
the birds, and, grieving, becomes to others a cause of grief.’
quid peperisse duos et dis placuisse duobus et forti genitore et progenitore nitenti esse satam prodest? an obest quoque gloria multis? obfuit huic certe! quae se praeferre Dianae sustinuit faciemque deae culpavit, at illi ira ferox mota est "factis" que "placebimus" inquit. nec mora, curvavit cornu nervoque sagittam inpulit et meritam traiecit harundine linguam. lingua tacet, nec vox temptataque verba sequuntur, conantemque loqui cum sanguine vita reliquit; quam miser amplexans ego tum patriumque dolorem corde tuli fratrique pio solacia dixi, quae pater haut aliter quam cautes murmura ponti accipit et natam delamentatur ademptam; ut vero ardentem vidit, quater impetus illi in medios fuit ire rogos, quater inde repulsus concita membra fugae mandat similisque iuvenco spicula crabronum pressa cervice gerenti, qua via nulla, ruit. iam tum mihi currere visus plus homine est, alasque pedes sumpsisse putares. effugit ergo omnes veloxque cupidine leti vertice Parnasi potitur; miseratus Apollo, cum se Daedalion saxo misisset ab alto, fecit avem et subitis pendentem sustulit alis oraque adunca dedit, curvos dedit unguibus hamos, virtutem antiquam, maiores corpore vires, et nunc accipiter, nulli satis aequus, in omnes saevit aves aliisque dolens fit causa dolendi.’ Quae dum Lucifero genitus miracula narrat de consorte suo, cursu festinus anhelo advolat armenti custos Phoceus Onetor et ’Peleu, Peleu!
While the son of Lucifer was telling these wonders
about his kinsman, breathless and quick in his running,
Onetor the Phocian, keeper of the herd, flies up and
‘Peleus, Peleus! I come to you the messenger of a great
disaster,’ he says. Whatever he brings, Peleus bids him tell,
and the Trachinian himself hangs in fear at the trembling lips;
the man relates: ‘I had driven the weary bullocks
to the curving shore, when the Sun, at his highest in mid-circle,
looked back on as much as he saw still remaining,
and part of the cattle had bent their knees on the tawny sands
and, lying, gazed on the fields of wide waters,
part wandered with slow steps this way and that;
others swim and stand out above the surface with lofty neck.
A temple stands near the sea, bright neither with marble nor with gold,
but shaded with close-set beams and an ancient grove:
the Nereids and Nereus hold it (a sailor of the deep
told me they are the gods, while he dried his nets on the shore);
joined to it is a marsh hemmed with thick willows,
which the water of the backed-up sea has made a fen:
from there, crashing with a heavy din, a vast beast,
a wolf, terrifies the nearest places and comes out of the marsh-reeds,
its lightning jaws smeared with foam and spattered with blood,
its eyes suffused with red flame.
And though it rages with madness and hunger alike,
it is the fiercer with madness: for it does not care to end its fasting
and dire hunger with the slaughter of the cattle, but wounds
the whole herd and lays the whole low like an enemy.
A part of us too, hurt by the deadly bite
as we defended them, was given over to death; the shore
and the near water and the bellowing fens run red with blood.
But delay is ruinous, and the case allows no wavering:
while something is left, let us all gather, and take up arms,
arms, and carry our weapons joined together!’
about his kinsman, breathless and quick in his running,
Onetor the Phocian, keeper of the herd, flies up and
‘Peleus, Peleus! I come to you the messenger of a great
disaster,’ he says. Whatever he brings, Peleus bids him tell,
and the Trachinian himself hangs in fear at the trembling lips;
the man relates: ‘I had driven the weary bullocks
to the curving shore, when the Sun, at his highest in mid-circle,
looked back on as much as he saw still remaining,
and part of the cattle had bent their knees on the tawny sands
and, lying, gazed on the fields of wide waters,
part wandered with slow steps this way and that;
others swim and stand out above the surface with lofty neck.
A temple stands near the sea, bright neither with marble nor with gold,
but shaded with close-set beams and an ancient grove:
the Nereids and Nereus hold it (a sailor of the deep
told me they are the gods, while he dried his nets on the shore);
joined to it is a marsh hemmed with thick willows,
which the water of the backed-up sea has made a fen:
from there, crashing with a heavy din, a vast beast,
a wolf, terrifies the nearest places and comes out of the marsh-reeds,
its lightning jaws smeared with foam and spattered with blood,
its eyes suffused with red flame.
And though it rages with madness and hunger alike,
it is the fiercer with madness: for it does not care to end its fasting
and dire hunger with the slaughter of the cattle, but wounds
the whole herd and lays the whole low like an enemy.
A part of us too, hurt by the deadly bite
as we defended them, was given over to death; the shore
and the near water and the bellowing fens run red with blood.
But delay is ruinous, and the case allows no wavering:
while something is left, let us all gather, and take up arms,
arms, and carry our weapons joined together!’
magnae tibi nuntius adsum cladis’ ait. quodcumque ferat, iubet edere Peleus, pendet et ipse metu trepidi Trachinius oris; ille refert ’fessos ad litora curva iuvencos adpuleram, medio cum Sol altissimus orbe tantum respiceret, quantum superesse videret, parsque boum fulvis genua inclinarat harenis latarumque iacens campos spectabat aquarum, pars gradibus tardis illuc errabat et illuc; nant alii celsoque exstant super aequora collo. templa mari subsunt nec marmore clara neque auro, sed trabibus densis lucoque umbrosa vetusto: Nereides Nereusque tenent (hos navita ponti edidit esse deos, dum retia litore siccat); iuncta palus huic est densis obsessa salictis, quam restagnantis fecit maris unda paludem: inde fragore gravi strepitans loca proxima terret, belua vasta, lupus iuncisque palustribus exit, oblitus et spumis et sparsus sanguine rictus fulmineos, rubra suffusus lumina flamma. qui quamquam saevit pariter rabieque fameque, acrior est rabie: neque enim ieiunia curat caede boum diramque famem finire, sed omne vulnerat armentum sternitque hostiliter omne. pars quoque de nobis funesto saucia morsu, dum defensamus, leto est data; sanguine litus undaque prima rubet demugitaeque paludes. sed mora damnosa est, nec res dubitare remittit: dum superest aliquid, cuncti coeamus et arma, arma capessamus coniunctaque tela feramus!’ dixerat agrestis: nec Pelea damna movebant, sed memor admissi Nereida conligit orbam damna sua inferias exstincto mittere Phoco.
The countryman had spoken: nor did the losses move Peleus,
but, mindful of his crime, he reckons that the bereaved Nereid
was sending these losses of his as death-offerings to the dead Phocus.
The Oetaean king bids his men put on their armor
and take up violent weapons; he himself was making ready
to go with them, but his wife Alcyone, roused by the uproar,
springs out, her hair not yet wholly dressed,
flings even that loose, and, falling on her husband’s neck,
prays him with words and with tears to send help
without going himself, and to save two lives in one.
The son of Aeacus to her: ‘Your fair and loving fears,
queen, lay aside! Full is my gratitude for your pledge.
It does not please me to move arms against this strange monster;
the power of the sea must be entreated!’ There was a high tower,
a beacon on its topmost height, welcome and known to weary keels:
they climb up there, and with a groan look down on the bulls
laid low along the shore, and on the ravager with his bloody
mouth, his long hair stained with gore.
From there, stretching his hands toward the shores of the open sea,
Peleus prays to sea-blue Psamathe to end her wrath
and bring aid; nor was she bent by the words of the
pleading son of Aeacus; Thetis, a suppliant for her husband,
won this pardon. But the wolf, called back from the keen
slaughter, holds on, fierce with the sweetness of blood,
until, as it clung to the neck of a mangled heifer,
she changed it to marble: the body, except for its color,
it kept entire; the color of the stone shows that it is
now no longer a wolf, now not to be feared.
Yet the fates do not allow the fugitive Peleus to settle
on this land; a wandering exile, he goes to the Magnetes, and there
takes from Haemonian Acastus the cleansing of his slaughter.
but, mindful of his crime, he reckons that the bereaved Nereid
was sending these losses of his as death-offerings to the dead Phocus.
The Oetaean king bids his men put on their armor
and take up violent weapons; he himself was making ready
to go with them, but his wife Alcyone, roused by the uproar,
springs out, her hair not yet wholly dressed,
flings even that loose, and, falling on her husband’s neck,
prays him with words and with tears to send help
without going himself, and to save two lives in one.
The son of Aeacus to her: ‘Your fair and loving fears,
queen, lay aside! Full is my gratitude for your pledge.
It does not please me to move arms against this strange monster;
the power of the sea must be entreated!’ There was a high tower,
a beacon on its topmost height, welcome and known to weary keels:
they climb up there, and with a groan look down on the bulls
laid low along the shore, and on the ravager with his bloody
mouth, his long hair stained with gore.
From there, stretching his hands toward the shores of the open sea,
Peleus prays to sea-blue Psamathe to end her wrath
and bring aid; nor was she bent by the words of the
pleading son of Aeacus; Thetis, a suppliant for her husband,
won this pardon. But the wolf, called back from the keen
slaughter, holds on, fierce with the sweetness of blood,
until, as it clung to the neck of a mangled heifer,
she changed it to marble: the body, except for its color,
it kept entire; the color of the stone shows that it is
now no longer a wolf, now not to be feared.
Yet the fates do not allow the fugitive Peleus to settle
on this land; a wandering exile, he goes to the Magnetes, and there
takes from Haemonian Acastus the cleansing of his slaughter.
induere arma viros violentaque sumere tela rex iubet Oetaeus; cum quis simul ipse parabat ire, sed Alcyone coniunx excita tumultu prosilit et nondum totos ornata capillos disicit hos ipsos colloque infusa mariti, mittat ut auxilium sine se, verbisque precatur et lacrimis, animasque duas ut servet in una. Aeacides illi: ’pulchros, regina, piosque pone metus! plena est promissi gratia vestri. non placet arma mihi contra nova monstra moveri; numen adorandum pelagi est!’ erat ardua turris, arce focus summa, fessis nota grata carinis: ascendunt illuc stratosque in litore tauros cum gemitu adspiciunt vastatoremque cruento ore ferum, longos infectum sanguine villos. inde manus tendens in aperti litora ponti caeruleam Peleus Psamathen, ut finiat iram, orat, opemque ferat; nec vocibus illa rogantis flectitur Aeacidae, Thetis hanc pro coniuge supplex accepit veniam. sed enim revocatus ab acri caede lupus perstat, dulcedine sanguinis asper, donec inhaerentem lacerae cervice iuvencae marmore mutavit: corpus praeterque colorem omnia servavit, lapidis color indicat illum iam non esse lupum, iam non debere timeri. nec tamen hac profugum consistere Pelea terra fata sinunt, Magnetas adit vagus exul et illic sumit ab Haemonio purgamina caedis Acasto.
Meanwhile Ceyx, his heart troubled and anxious
at his brother’s fate and at the portents that had followed it,
prepares to go to the Clarian god, to consult the sacred
oracles, the solace of men; for impious Phorbas, with the Phlegyans,
was making the Delphic temple impassable.
But first, most faithful Alcyone, he makes you sure
of his plan; and at once a chill seized her inmost
bones, and a pallor much like boxwood spread over her face,
and her cheeks grew wet with streaming tears.
Three times she tried to speak, three times she drenched her face with weeping,
and, with sobbing breaking her loving complaints,
‘What fault of mine,’ she said, ‘dearest, has turned
your mind? Where is that care for me that used to come first?
Can you now be at ease, far off, with Alcyone left behind?
Now does a long road please you? Now am I dearer to you absent?
But, I suppose, your journey is by land, and I shall only grieve,
not also fear, and my cares will be free of dread.
The seas frighten me, and the grim face of the deep:
lately I saw broken planks upon the shore,
and often I have read names on tombs that held no body.
And let no false confidence touch your mind,
because the son of Hippotes is your father-in-law, who in a prison
keeps the strong winds and, when he wills, calms the seas.
Once the winds are let loose and have seized the waters,
nothing is forbidden them: every land
and every sea is given over to them; they harry even the clouds of heaven
and strike out red fires in their wild collisions.
The more I know them — for I know them, and often in my father’s
small house have seen them — the more I think they should be feared.
But if your resolve can be bent by no
prayers, dear husband, and you are too set on going,
take me too along with you! Surely we shall be tossed together,
nor shall I fear anything but what I suffer, and together we shall bear
whatever comes, together be borne over the wide seas.’
at his brother’s fate and at the portents that had followed it,
prepares to go to the Clarian god, to consult the sacred
oracles, the solace of men; for impious Phorbas, with the Phlegyans,
was making the Delphic temple impassable.
But first, most faithful Alcyone, he makes you sure
of his plan; and at once a chill seized her inmost
bones, and a pallor much like boxwood spread over her face,
and her cheeks grew wet with streaming tears.
Three times she tried to speak, three times she drenched her face with weeping,
and, with sobbing breaking her loving complaints,
‘What fault of mine,’ she said, ‘dearest, has turned
your mind? Where is that care for me that used to come first?
Can you now be at ease, far off, with Alcyone left behind?
Now does a long road please you? Now am I dearer to you absent?
But, I suppose, your journey is by land, and I shall only grieve,
not also fear, and my cares will be free of dread.
The seas frighten me, and the grim face of the deep:
lately I saw broken planks upon the shore,
and often I have read names on tombs that held no body.
And let no false confidence touch your mind,
because the son of Hippotes is your father-in-law, who in a prison
keeps the strong winds and, when he wills, calms the seas.
Once the winds are let loose and have seized the waters,
nothing is forbidden them: every land
and every sea is given over to them; they harry even the clouds of heaven
and strike out red fires in their wild collisions.
The more I know them — for I know them, and often in my father’s
small house have seen them — the more I think they should be feared.
But if your resolve can be bent by no
prayers, dear husband, and you are too set on going,
take me too along with you! Surely we shall be tossed together,
nor shall I fear anything but what I suffer, and together we shall bear
whatever comes, together be borne over the wide seas.’
Interea fratrisque sui fratremque secutis anxia prodigiis turbatus pectora Ceyx, consulat ut sacras, hominum oblectamina, sortes, ad Clarium parat ire deum; nam templa profanus invia cum Phlegyis faciebat Delphica Phorbas. consilii tamen ante sui, fidissima, certam te facit, Alcyone; cui protinus intima frigus ossa receperunt, buxoque simillimus ora pallor obit, lacrimisque genae maduere profusis. ter conata loqui, ter fletibus ora rigavit singultuque pias interrumpente querellas ’quae mea culpa tuam,’ dixit ’carissime, mentem vertit? ubi est quae cura mei prior esse solebat? iam potes Alcyone securus abesse relicta? iam via longa placet? iam sum tibi carior absens? at, puto, per terras iter est, tantumque dolebo, non etiam metuam, curaeque timore carebunt. aequora me terrent et ponti tristis imago: et laceras nuper tabulas in litore vidi et saepe in tumulis sine corpore nomina legi. neve tuum fallax animum fiducia tangat, quod socer Hippotades tibi sit, qui carcere fortes contineat ventos, et, cum velit, aequora placet. cum semel emissi tenuerunt aequora venti, nil illis vetitum est: incommendataque tellus omnis et omne fretum est, caeli quoque nubila vexant excutiuntque feris rutilos concursibus ignes. quo magis hos novi (nam novi et saepe paterna parva domo vidi), magis hoc reor esse timendos. quod tua si flecti precibus sententia nullis, care, potest, coniunx, nimiumque es certus eundi, me quoque tolle simul! certe iactabimur una, nec nisi quae patiar, metuam, pariterque feremus, quicquid erit, pariter super aequora lata feremur.’ Talibus Aeolidis dictis lacrimisque movetur sidereus coniunx: neque enim minor ignis in ipso est; sed neque propositos pelagi dimittere cursus, nec vult Alcyonen in partem adhibere pericli multaque respondit timidum solantia pectus.
By such words and tears of the daughter of Aeolus the starry
husband is moved: for the fire in him is no less;
but he will neither give up his purposed voyage of the sea,
nor admit Alcyone to a share in the danger,
and answered much to comfort her fearful heart.
Yet not for that does he win his case; he added to these
this soothing too, by which alone he bent the loving woman:
‘Every delay, indeed, is long to us, but I swear to you
by my father’s fires, if only the fates send me back,
that I will return before the moon twice fills her circle.’
When by these promises hope of his return was raised,
at once he bids the pine ship be drawn from the docks,
dipped in the sea, and fitted with its tackle;
at the sight of which, once more, as if foreboding the future,
Alcyone shuddered and let fall a rush of tears,
and gave him embraces, and at last, most wretched, with sad
lips said ‘Farewell,’ and sank down with her whole body;
but the young men, while Ceyx seeks for delays, draw back
the oars in double ranks to their sturdy breasts,
and cleave the waters with even stroke: she raised
her streaming eyes and saw her husband standing on the curved stern
and waving his hand, giving her signals,
and, leaning forward, returns the signs; when the land had drawn
farther off, and her eyes could no longer make out his face,
while she could she follows the fleeing ship with her gaze;
and when this too, withdrawn by the distance, could not be seen,
still she watches the sails fluttering at the masthead;
when she does not see the sails either, anxious she seeks the empty bed
and lays herself on the couch: the bed and the couch
renew Alcyone’s tears, and remind her what part of her is gone.
husband is moved: for the fire in him is no less;
but he will neither give up his purposed voyage of the sea,
nor admit Alcyone to a share in the danger,
and answered much to comfort her fearful heart.
Yet not for that does he win his case; he added to these
this soothing too, by which alone he bent the loving woman:
‘Every delay, indeed, is long to us, but I swear to you
by my father’s fires, if only the fates send me back,
that I will return before the moon twice fills her circle.’
When by these promises hope of his return was raised,
at once he bids the pine ship be drawn from the docks,
dipped in the sea, and fitted with its tackle;
at the sight of which, once more, as if foreboding the future,
Alcyone shuddered and let fall a rush of tears,
and gave him embraces, and at last, most wretched, with sad
lips said ‘Farewell,’ and sank down with her whole body;
but the young men, while Ceyx seeks for delays, draw back
the oars in double ranks to their sturdy breasts,
and cleave the waters with even stroke: she raised
her streaming eyes and saw her husband standing on the curved stern
and waving his hand, giving her signals,
and, leaning forward, returns the signs; when the land had drawn
farther off, and her eyes could no longer make out his face,
while she could she follows the fleeing ship with her gaze;
and when this too, withdrawn by the distance, could not be seen,
still she watches the sails fluttering at the masthead;
when she does not see the sails either, anxious she seeks the empty bed
and lays herself on the couch: the bed and the couch
renew Alcyone’s tears, and remind her what part of her is gone.
non tamen idcirco causam probat; addidit illis hoc quoque lenimen, quo solo flexit amantem: ’longa quidem est nobis omnis mora, sed tibi iuro per patrios ignes, si me modo fata remittant, ante reversurum, quam luna bis inpleat orbem.’ his ubi promissis spes est admota recursus, protinus eductam navalibus aequore tingui aptarique suis pinum iubet armamentis; qua rursus visa veluti praesaga futuri horruit Alcyone lacrimasque emisit obortas amplexusque dedit tristique miserrima tandem ore ’vale’ dixit conlapsaque corpore toto est; ast iuvenes quaerente moras Ceyce reducunt ordinibus geminis ad fortia pectora remos aequalique ictu scindunt freta: sustulit illa umentes oculos stantemque in puppe recurva concussaque manu dantem sibi signa maritum prona videt redditque notas; ubi terra recessit longius, atque oculi nequeunt cognoscere vultus, dum licet, insequitur fugientem lumine pinum; haec quoque ut haut poterat spatio submota videri, vela tamen spectat summo fluitantia malo; ut nec vela videt, vacuum petit anxia lectum seque toro ponit: renovat lectusque torusque Alcyonae lacrimas et quae pars admonet absit.
They had gone out from the harbor, and the breeze had stirred the cables:
the sailor turns the hanging oars against the side
and sets the yardarms at the masthead, and over the whole mast
lets down the canvas, and takes the coming winds.
Less than the middle of the sea, or surely no more,
was being cleft by the ship, and either shore was far off,
when toward night the sea began to whiten with swelling
waves, and the headlong east wind to blow more strongly.
‘Lower the high yardarms at once,’ the master
cries, ‘and lash the whole sail to the yards.’
This he commands; the opposing squalls hinder his orders,
nor does the roar of the sea let any voice be heard:
yet of their own accord some hasten to draw in the oars,
some to fence the side, some to deny the sails to the winds;
this one bails the waves and pours sea back into the sea,
this one snatches up the yards; while these things are done without rule,
the harsh storm grows, and on every side the fierce
winds wage war and stir up the indignant straits.
The master himself is afraid, and confesses that even he does not know
what the ship’s state is, nor what to order or forbid:
so great is the mass of the disaster, so much mightier than skill.
Indeed the men ring with shouting, the cables with shrieking,
heavy wave with the onrush of waves, the sky with thunder.
The sea is reared up in waves and seems to make itself level with heaven
and to touch the clouds drawn down, with its spray;
and now, when it churns the tawny sands from the bottom,
it is one color with them, now blacker than the Stygian water,
at times it is laid flat and whitens with sounding foam.
The Trachinian ship too is driven by these changes,
and now, lifted high as from a mountain peak,
seems to look down into the valleys and to lowest Acheron,
now, when the curved sea has stood round it, sunk low,
to look up at the topmost sky from the infernal gulf.
the sailor turns the hanging oars against the side
and sets the yardarms at the masthead, and over the whole mast
lets down the canvas, and takes the coming winds.
Less than the middle of the sea, or surely no more,
was being cleft by the ship, and either shore was far off,
when toward night the sea began to whiten with swelling
waves, and the headlong east wind to blow more strongly.
‘Lower the high yardarms at once,’ the master
cries, ‘and lash the whole sail to the yards.’
This he commands; the opposing squalls hinder his orders,
nor does the roar of the sea let any voice be heard:
yet of their own accord some hasten to draw in the oars,
some to fence the side, some to deny the sails to the winds;
this one bails the waves and pours sea back into the sea,
this one snatches up the yards; while these things are done without rule,
the harsh storm grows, and on every side the fierce
winds wage war and stir up the indignant straits.
The master himself is afraid, and confesses that even he does not know
what the ship’s state is, nor what to order or forbid:
so great is the mass of the disaster, so much mightier than skill.
Indeed the men ring with shouting, the cables with shrieking,
heavy wave with the onrush of waves, the sky with thunder.
The sea is reared up in waves and seems to make itself level with heaven
and to touch the clouds drawn down, with its spray;
and now, when it churns the tawny sands from the bottom,
it is one color with them, now blacker than the Stygian water,
at times it is laid flat and whitens with sounding foam.
The Trachinian ship too is driven by these changes,
and now, lifted high as from a mountain peak,
seems to look down into the valleys and to lowest Acheron,
now, when the curved sea has stood round it, sunk low,
to look up at the topmost sky from the infernal gulf.
Portibus exierant, et moverat aura rudentes: obvertit lateri pendentes navita remos cornuaque in summa locat arbore totaque malo carbasa deducit venientesque accipit auras. aut minus, aut certe medium non amplius aequor puppe secabatur, longeque erat utraque tellus, cum mare sub noctem tumidis albescere coepit fluctibus et praeceps spirare valentius eurus. ’ardua iamdudum demittite cornua’ rector clamat ’et antemnis totum subnectite velum.’ hic iubet; inpediunt adversae iussa procellae, nec sinit audiri vocem fragor aequoris ullam: sponte tamen properant alii subducere remos, pars munire latus, pars ventis vela negare; egerit hic fluctus aequorque refundit in aequor, hic rapit antemnas; quae dum sine lege geruntur, aspera crescit hiems, omnique e parte feroces bella gerunt venti fretaque indignantia miscent. ipse pavet nec se, qui sit status, ipse fatetur scire ratis rector, nec quid iubeatve vetetve: tanta mali moles tantoque potentior arte est. quippe sonant clamore viri, stridore rudentes, undarum incursu gravis unda, tonitribus aether. fluctibus erigitur caelumque aequare videtur pontus et inductas aspergine tangere nubes; et modo, cum fulvas ex imo vertit harenas, concolor est illis, Stygia modo nigrior unda, sternitur interdum spumisque sonantibus albet. ipsa quoque his agitur vicibus Trachinia puppis et nunc sublimis veluti de vertice montis despicere in valles imumque Acheronta videtur, nunc, ubi demissam curvum circumstetit aequor, suspicere inferno summum de gurgite caelum.
Often the side, struck by a wave, gives a huge crash,
and, battered, rings no less loudly than when an iron
ram or a ballista at times shakes a shattered citadel,
and as fierce lions are wont, gathering their force at the charge,
to go breast-on against the weapons leveled at them,
so, when the wave had let itself rise on the gathering winds,
it went at the ship’s heights and was far higher than they;
and now the joints give way, and, stripped of its coat of wax,
the seam gapes and offers a way to the deadly waters.
Behold, copious rains fall from the loosened clouds,
and you would think the whole sky was coming down into the sea,
and the swollen sea climbing up into the tracts of heaven.
The sails are soaked with rain, and with the waters of heaven
the waters of the sea are mingled; the upper air is without its fires,
and the blind night is pressed down with its own darkness and the storm’s.
Yet the flashing lightnings break these and give a glimmering light:
the rains take fire with the lightning’s flames.
Now too the flood gives leaps within the hollow framework
of the keel; and as a soldier, foremost of all the host,
when he has often leapt at the walls of a defended city,
at last wins his hope and, fired with the love of praise,
alone among a thousand men yet takes the wall,
so, when the waves had nine times struck the high sides,
the onset of the tenth wave, rising more vast, rushes on,
and does not give over assailing the weary ship
until it comes down, as into the ramparts of a captured vessel.
Part of the sea, then, was still trying to break into the pine,
part was already within: all tremble no less
than a city is wont to tremble when some dig at the wall outside
and others hold the wall within.
Skill fails, and their courage falls, and as many deaths
seem to rush and break in as there come waves.
This one cannot hold his tears, this one is dazed, that one calls blessed
those whom a funeral awaits; this one worships the gods with prayers
and, lifting in vain his arms to the sky he cannot see,
begs aid; to that one come his brother and his father,
to this one his home with his children and whatever he has left behind;
Alcyone stirs Ceyx, on the lips of Ceyx
is nothing but Alcyone, and, though he longs for her alone,
yet he is glad that she is away.
and, battered, rings no less loudly than when an iron
ram or a ballista at times shakes a shattered citadel,
and as fierce lions are wont, gathering their force at the charge,
to go breast-on against the weapons leveled at them,
so, when the wave had let itself rise on the gathering winds,
it went at the ship’s heights and was far higher than they;
and now the joints give way, and, stripped of its coat of wax,
the seam gapes and offers a way to the deadly waters.
Behold, copious rains fall from the loosened clouds,
and you would think the whole sky was coming down into the sea,
and the swollen sea climbing up into the tracts of heaven.
The sails are soaked with rain, and with the waters of heaven
the waters of the sea are mingled; the upper air is without its fires,
and the blind night is pressed down with its own darkness and the storm’s.
Yet the flashing lightnings break these and give a glimmering light:
the rains take fire with the lightning’s flames.
Now too the flood gives leaps within the hollow framework
of the keel; and as a soldier, foremost of all the host,
when he has often leapt at the walls of a defended city,
at last wins his hope and, fired with the love of praise,
alone among a thousand men yet takes the wall,
so, when the waves had nine times struck the high sides,
the onset of the tenth wave, rising more vast, rushes on,
and does not give over assailing the weary ship
until it comes down, as into the ramparts of a captured vessel.
Part of the sea, then, was still trying to break into the pine,
part was already within: all tremble no less
than a city is wont to tremble when some dig at the wall outside
and others hold the wall within.
Skill fails, and their courage falls, and as many deaths
seem to rush and break in as there come waves.
This one cannot hold his tears, this one is dazed, that one calls blessed
those whom a funeral awaits; this one worships the gods with prayers
and, lifting in vain his arms to the sky he cannot see,
begs aid; to that one come his brother and his father,
to this one his home with his children and whatever he has left behind;
Alcyone stirs Ceyx, on the lips of Ceyx
is nothing but Alcyone, and, though he longs for her alone,
yet he is glad that she is away.
saepe dat ingentem fluctu latus icta fragorem nec levius pulsata sonat, quam ferreus olim cum laceras aries balistave concutit arces, utque solent sumptis incursu viribus ire pectore in arma feri protentaque tela leones, sic, ubi se ventis admiserat unda coortis, ibat in alta ratis multoque erat altior illis; iamque labant cunei, spoliataque tegmine cerae rima patet praebetque viam letalibus undis. ecce cadunt largi resolutis nubibus imbres, inque fretum credas totum descendere caelum, inque plagas caeli tumefactum ascendere pontum. vela madent nimbis, et cum caelestibus undis aequoreae miscentur aquae; caret ignibus aether, caecaque nox premitur tenebris hiemisque suisque. discutiunt tamen has praebentque micantia lumen fulmina: fulmineis ardescunt ignibus imbres. dat quoque iam saltus intra cava texta carinae fluctus; et ut miles, numero praestantior omni, cum saepe adsiluit defensae moenibus urbis, spe potitur tandem laudisque accensus amore inter mille viros murum tamen occupat unus, sic ubi pulsarunt noviens latera ardua fluctus, vastius insurgens decimae ruit impetus undae nec prius absistit fessam oppugnare carinam, quam velut in captae descendat moenia navis. pars igitur temptabat adhuc invadere pinum, pars maris intus erat: trepidant haud setius omnes, quam solet urbs aliis murum fodientibus extra atque aliis murum trepidare tenentibus intus. deficit ars, animique cadunt, totidemque videntur, quot veniunt fluctus, ruere atque inrumpere mortes. non tenet hic lacrimas, stupet hic, vocat ille beatos, funera quos maneant, hic votis numen adorat bracchiaque ad caelum, quod non videt, inrita tollens poscit opem; subeunt illi fraterque parensque, huic cum pignoribus domus et quodcunque relictum est; Alcyone Ceyca movet, Ceycis in ore nulla nisi Alcyone est et, cum desideret unam, gaudet abesse tamen; patriae quoque vellet ad oras respicere inque domum supremos vertere vultus, verum, ubi sit, nescit: tanta vertigine pontus fervet, et inducta piceis e nubibus umbra omne latet caelum, duplicataque noctis imago est.
He would wish, too, to look back toward his native shores
and turn his last gaze upon his home,
but he does not know where it is: with such a whirl the sea
boils, and beneath the shadow drawn from pitch-black clouds
all the sky is hidden, and the image of night is doubled.
The mast is broken by the onset of the rainy whirlwind,
the rudder too is broken, and the wave, spirited and surviving
its spoils, looks down, like a victor, on the waters below;
and no more lightly than if one should tear up Athos or Pindus
whole from their seat and overturn them into the open sea,
it falls headlong and, by weight and blow alike,
plunges the ship to the bottom; and with it a great part of the men,
pressed by the heavy gulf and never given back to the air,
met their fate; others hold pieces and broken limbs
of the keel: Ceyx himself holds, in the hand that used to hold the scepter,
fragments of the ship, and calls on his father-in-law and his father —
alas, in vain — but most on his lips as he swims
is Alcyone his wife: he remembers her and names her again,
he prays that the waves may drive his body before her eyes,
and that, lifeless, he may be entombed by friendly hands.
While he swims, as often as the wave lets him gape for air,
he names the absent Alcyone, and murmurs it into the very waves.
Behold, over the midst of the waves a black arch of waters
breaks, and the bursting wave overwhelms his sunken head.
Lucifer was dim that dawn, and not one you could
recognize, and, since he was not allowed to leave the sky,
he veiled his own face in thick clouds.
and turn his last gaze upon his home,
but he does not know where it is: with such a whirl the sea
boils, and beneath the shadow drawn from pitch-black clouds
all the sky is hidden, and the image of night is doubled.
The mast is broken by the onset of the rainy whirlwind,
the rudder too is broken, and the wave, spirited and surviving
its spoils, looks down, like a victor, on the waters below;
and no more lightly than if one should tear up Athos or Pindus
whole from their seat and overturn them into the open sea,
it falls headlong and, by weight and blow alike,
plunges the ship to the bottom; and with it a great part of the men,
pressed by the heavy gulf and never given back to the air,
met their fate; others hold pieces and broken limbs
of the keel: Ceyx himself holds, in the hand that used to hold the scepter,
fragments of the ship, and calls on his father-in-law and his father —
alas, in vain — but most on his lips as he swims
is Alcyone his wife: he remembers her and names her again,
he prays that the waves may drive his body before her eyes,
and that, lifeless, he may be entombed by friendly hands.
While he swims, as often as the wave lets him gape for air,
he names the absent Alcyone, and murmurs it into the very waves.
Behold, over the midst of the waves a black arch of waters
breaks, and the bursting wave overwhelms his sunken head.
Lucifer was dim that dawn, and not one you could
recognize, and, since he was not allowed to leave the sky,
he veiled his own face in thick clouds.
frangitur incursu nimbosi turbinis arbor, frangitur et regimen, spoliisque animosa superstes unda, velut victrix, sinuataque despicit undas; nec levius, quam siquis Athon Pindumve revulsos sede sua totos in apertum everterit aequor, praecipitata cadit pariterque et pondere et ictu mergit in ima ratem; cum qua pars magna virorum gurgite pressa gravi neque in aera reddita fato functa suo est, alii partes et membra carinae trunca tenent: tenet ipse manu, qua sceptra solebat, fragmina navigii Ceyx socerumque patremque invocat heu! frustra, sed plurima nantis in ore Alcyone coniunx: illam meminitque refertque, illius ante oculos ut agant sua corpora fluctus optat et exanimis manibus tumuletur amicis. dum natat, absentem, quotiens sinit hiscere fluctus, nominat Alcyonen ipsisque inmurmurat undis. ecce super medios fluctus niger arcus aquarum frangitur et rupta mersum caput obruit unda. Lucifer obscurus nec quem cognoscere posses illa luce fuit, quoniamque excedere caelo non licuit, densis texit sua nubibus ora.
Meanwhile the daughter of Aeolus, unaware of such great ills,
counts off the nights, and now hastens the clothes
that he is to put on, now those that she herself
will wear when he has come, and promises herself a homecoming that is empty.
To all the gods, indeed, she was bringing dutiful incense,
yet before all the rest she worshiped at Juno’s temple,
and came to the altars for her husband, who was no more,
and prayed that her own husband be safe and return
and prefer no woman to her; but of all those prayers
this one alone could fall to her lot.
But the goddess can no longer bear to be asked
on behalf of one already dead, and, to keep the death-stained hands from her altars,
‘Iris,’ she said, ‘most faithful messenger of my voice,
go quickly to the sleep-bringing hall of Somnus,
and bid him send to Alcyone, in the image of dead Ceyx,
a dream that tells the true events.’
She had spoken: Iris puts on her veil of a thousand colors
and, marking the sky with her arching curve,
seeks the dwelling of the bidden king, hidden beneath a cloud.
counts off the nights, and now hastens the clothes
that he is to put on, now those that she herself
will wear when he has come, and promises herself a homecoming that is empty.
To all the gods, indeed, she was bringing dutiful incense,
yet before all the rest she worshiped at Juno’s temple,
and came to the altars for her husband, who was no more,
and prayed that her own husband be safe and return
and prefer no woman to her; but of all those prayers
this one alone could fall to her lot.
But the goddess can no longer bear to be asked
on behalf of one already dead, and, to keep the death-stained hands from her altars,
‘Iris,’ she said, ‘most faithful messenger of my voice,
go quickly to the sleep-bringing hall of Somnus,
and bid him send to Alcyone, in the image of dead Ceyx,
a dream that tells the true events.’
She had spoken: Iris puts on her veil of a thousand colors
and, marking the sky with her arching curve,
seeks the dwelling of the bidden king, hidden beneath a cloud.
Aeolis interea, tantorum ignara malorum, dinumerat noctes et iam, quas induat ille, festinat vestes, iam quas, ubi venerit ille, ipsa gerat, reditusque sibi promittit inanes. omnibus illa quidem superis pia tura ferebat, ante tamen cunctos Iunonis templa colebat proque viro, qui nullus erat, veniebat ad aras utque foret sospes coniunx suus utque rediret, optabat, nullamque sibi praeferret; at illi hoc de tot votis poterat contingere solum. At dea non ultra pro functo morte rogari sustinet utque manus funestas arceat aris, ’Iri, meae’ dixit ’fidissima nuntia vocis, vise soporiferam Somni velociter aulam exstinctique iube Ceycis imagine mittat somnia ad Alcyonen veros narrantia casus.’ dixerat: induitur velamina mille colorum Iris et arquato caelum curvamine signans tecta petit iussi sub nube latentia regis.
There is, near the Cimmerians, a cave in a long recess,
a hollow mountain, the home and inner chambers of idle Somnus,
which Phoebus can never reach with his rays, whether rising,
at mid-course, or setting: clouds mixed with mist
are breathed up from the ground, and the twilight of a doubtful light.
There no watchful, crested bird with its crowing
calls forth Aurora, nor do anxious dogs break the silence
with their voice, nor the goose, keener than dogs;
no wild beast, no flocks, no branches stirred by a breeze,
nor the wranglings of a human tongue give back any sound.
Mute repose dwells there; yet from the bottom of the rock comes out
a stream of Lethe’s water, through which the wave, gliding with a murmur,
invites sleep with its rattling pebbles.
Before the doors of the cave abundant poppies bloom,
and herbs past counting, from whose milk Night gathers
drowsiness and scatters it, dewy, over the darkened lands.
There is no door in the whole house, lest a turned hinge
give back a creak, no guard upon the threshold;
but in the middle of the cave is a couch, raised high, of ebony,
filled with down, dark-colored, covered with a dusky spread,
where the god himself lies, his limbs loosened in languor.
Around him, here and there, lie empty Dreams imitating
various shapes, as many as the harvest bears ears of grain,
the wood its leaves, the shore its cast-up sands.
a hollow mountain, the home and inner chambers of idle Somnus,
which Phoebus can never reach with his rays, whether rising,
at mid-course, or setting: clouds mixed with mist
are breathed up from the ground, and the twilight of a doubtful light.
There no watchful, crested bird with its crowing
calls forth Aurora, nor do anxious dogs break the silence
with their voice, nor the goose, keener than dogs;
no wild beast, no flocks, no branches stirred by a breeze,
nor the wranglings of a human tongue give back any sound.
Mute repose dwells there; yet from the bottom of the rock comes out
a stream of Lethe’s water, through which the wave, gliding with a murmur,
invites sleep with its rattling pebbles.
Before the doors of the cave abundant poppies bloom,
and herbs past counting, from whose milk Night gathers
drowsiness and scatters it, dewy, over the darkened lands.
There is no door in the whole house, lest a turned hinge
give back a creak, no guard upon the threshold;
but in the middle of the cave is a couch, raised high, of ebony,
filled with down, dark-colored, covered with a dusky spread,
where the god himself lies, his limbs loosened in languor.
Around him, here and there, lie empty Dreams imitating
various shapes, as many as the harvest bears ears of grain,
the wood its leaves, the shore its cast-up sands.
Est prope Cimmerios longo spelunca recessu, mons cavus, ignavi domus et penetralia Somni, quo numquam radiis oriens mediusve cadensve Phoebus adire potest: nebulae caligine mixtae exhalantur humo dubiaeque crepuscula lucis. non vigil ales ibi cristati cantibus oris evocat Auroram, nec voce silentia rumpunt sollicitive canes canibusve sagacior anser; non fera, non pecudes, non moti flamine rami humanaeve sonum reddunt convicia linguae. muta quies habitat; saxo tamen exit ab imo rivus aquae Lethes, per quem cum murmure labens invitat somnos crepitantibus unda lapillis. ante fores antri fecunda papavera florent innumeraeque herbae, quarum de lacte soporem Nox legit et spargit per opacas umida terras. ianua, ne verso stridores cardine reddat, nulla domo tota est, custos in limine nullus; at medio torus est ebeno sublimis in antro, plumeus, atricolor, pullo velamine tectus, quo cubat ipse deus membris languore solutis. hunc circa passim varias imitantia formas Somnia vana iacent totidem, quot messis aristas, silva gerit frondes, eiectas litus harenas.
As soon as the maiden entered there and pushed aside with her hands
the Dreams that blocked her way, the sacred house shone again
with the brightness of her robe, and the god, his eyes heavy
and slow, scarcely lifting them and again and again sinking back,
striking the top of his breast with his nodding chin,
shook himself at last free of himself, and, propped on his elbow,
asks why she comes (for he knew her); and she:
‘Somnus, repose of things, gentlest of the gods, Somnus,
peace of the mind, whom care flees, who soothe the bodies
worn with hard service and restore them for their toil,
bid the Dreams, which match true shapes in their mimicry,
go to Herculean Trachis in the king’s image,
to Alcyone, and feign the likenesses of shipwreck.
Juno commands this.’ When she had done her errand,
Iris departs: for she could endure the force
of sleep no longer, and, as she felt the drowsiness gliding into her limbs,
she fled, and returns by the arch she had just now come.
But the father rouses from the throng of his thousand sons
Morpheus, the craftsman and counterfeiter of shapes:
no other more skillfully than he expresses
a man’s gait and face and the sound of his speaking;
he adds, too, the clothes and the words most habitual to each;
but he imitates men alone, while another
becomes a beast, becomes a bird, becomes a long-bodied serpent:
him the gods call Icelos, the mortal crowd Phobetor;
there is also a third, of a different art,
Phantasos: he passes deceptively into earth and rock and water and beam,
and all the things that lack a soul;
these are wont to show their faces by night to kings and chieftains,
the others range over the peoples and the commons.
The old one passes these by, and from all the brothers
Somnus chooses out Morpheus alone to carry out what the daughter of Thaumas
had ordered, and again, loosed in soft languor,
laid down his head and hid it deep in the high bedding.
the Dreams that blocked her way, the sacred house shone again
with the brightness of her robe, and the god, his eyes heavy
and slow, scarcely lifting them and again and again sinking back,
striking the top of his breast with his nodding chin,
shook himself at last free of himself, and, propped on his elbow,
asks why she comes (for he knew her); and she:
‘Somnus, repose of things, gentlest of the gods, Somnus,
peace of the mind, whom care flees, who soothe the bodies
worn with hard service and restore them for their toil,
bid the Dreams, which match true shapes in their mimicry,
go to Herculean Trachis in the king’s image,
to Alcyone, and feign the likenesses of shipwreck.
Juno commands this.’ When she had done her errand,
Iris departs: for she could endure the force
of sleep no longer, and, as she felt the drowsiness gliding into her limbs,
she fled, and returns by the arch she had just now come.
But the father rouses from the throng of his thousand sons
Morpheus, the craftsman and counterfeiter of shapes:
no other more skillfully than he expresses
a man’s gait and face and the sound of his speaking;
he adds, too, the clothes and the words most habitual to each;
but he imitates men alone, while another
becomes a beast, becomes a bird, becomes a long-bodied serpent:
him the gods call Icelos, the mortal crowd Phobetor;
there is also a third, of a different art,
Phantasos: he passes deceptively into earth and rock and water and beam,
and all the things that lack a soul;
these are wont to show their faces by night to kings and chieftains,
the others range over the peoples and the commons.
The old one passes these by, and from all the brothers
Somnus chooses out Morpheus alone to carry out what the daughter of Thaumas
had ordered, and again, loosed in soft languor,
laid down his head and hid it deep in the high bedding.
Quo simul intravit manibusque obstantia virgo Somnia dimovit, vestis fulgore reluxit sacra domus, tardaque deus gravitate iacentes vix oculos tollens iterumque iterumque relabens summaque percutiens nutanti pectora mento excussit tandem sibi se cubitoque levatus, quid veniat, (cognovit enim) scitatur, at illa: ’Somne, quies rerum, placidissime, Somne, deorum, pax animi, quem cura fugit, qui corpora duris fessa ministeriis mulces reparasque labori, Somnia, quae veras aequent imitamine formas, Herculea Trachine iube sub imagine regis Alcyonen adeant simulacraque naufraga fingant. imperat hoc Iuno.’ postquam mandata peregit, Iris abit: neque enim ulterius tolerare soporis vim poterat, labique ut somnum sensit in artus, effugit et remeat per quos modo venerat arcus. At pater e populo natorum mille suorum excitat artificem simulatoremque figurae Morphea: non illo quisquam sollertius alter exprimit incessus vultumque sonumque loquendi; adicit et vestes et consuetissima cuique verba; sed hic solos homines imitatur, at alter fit fera, fit volucris, fit longo corpore serpens: hunc Icelon superi, mortale Phobetora vulgus nominat; est etiam diversae tertius artis Phantasos: ille in humum saxumque undamque trabemque, quaeque vacant anima, fallaciter omnia transit; regibus hi ducibusque suos ostendere vultus nocte solent, populos alii plebemque pererrant. praeterit hos senior cunctisque e fratribus unum Morphea, qui peragat Thaumantidos edita, Somnus eligit et rursus molli languore solutus deposuitque caput stratoque recondidit alto.
He flies through the darkness on wings that make no sound,
and within the short space of a brief delay arrives at the Haemonian
city, and, laying the feathers from his body,
takes on the face of Ceyx, and, in the shape he had assumed,
ghastly, like a dead man, without any clothing,
he stood before the bed of the wretched wife: the man’s beard
seems wet, and the heavy water to drip from his soaked hair.
Then, leaning over the bed, his face streaming with tears,
he says: ‘Do you recognize Ceyx, most wretched wife,
or has my face been changed by death? Look: you will know me,
and find, instead of your husband, your husband’s shade!
No help, Alcyone, did your prayers bring us!
I am dead! Do not falsely promise yourself my return!
The cloudy south wind caught the ship on the Aegean sea
and, tossing it with its huge blast, broke it apart,
and the waves filled my mouth as it cried your name in vain.
It is no doubtful informant who tells you this, you do not hear it
from wandering rumors: I myself, present, shipwrecked, declare to you my own fate.
Rise, come, give me your tears, and put on mourning, and do not send me
unwept beneath empty Tartarus!’
To these things Morpheus adds a voice that she would believe
to be her husband’s (he seemed, too, to be shedding real tears),
and he had the gesture of Ceyx’s hand.
Alcyone groans, weeping, and stirs her arms
in sleep, and, reaching for his body, embraces the air,
and cries out: ‘Wait! Where are you rushing? We shall go together.’
and within the short space of a brief delay arrives at the Haemonian
city, and, laying the feathers from his body,
takes on the face of Ceyx, and, in the shape he had assumed,
ghastly, like a dead man, without any clothing,
he stood before the bed of the wretched wife: the man’s beard
seems wet, and the heavy water to drip from his soaked hair.
Then, leaning over the bed, his face streaming with tears,
he says: ‘Do you recognize Ceyx, most wretched wife,
or has my face been changed by death? Look: you will know me,
and find, instead of your husband, your husband’s shade!
No help, Alcyone, did your prayers bring us!
I am dead! Do not falsely promise yourself my return!
The cloudy south wind caught the ship on the Aegean sea
and, tossing it with its huge blast, broke it apart,
and the waves filled my mouth as it cried your name in vain.
It is no doubtful informant who tells you this, you do not hear it
from wandering rumors: I myself, present, shipwrecked, declare to you my own fate.
Rise, come, give me your tears, and put on mourning, and do not send me
unwept beneath empty Tartarus!’
To these things Morpheus adds a voice that she would believe
to be her husband’s (he seemed, too, to be shedding real tears),
and he had the gesture of Ceyx’s hand.
Alcyone groans, weeping, and stirs her arms
in sleep, and, reaching for his body, embraces the air,
and cries out: ‘Wait! Where are you rushing? We shall go together.’
Ille volat nullos strepitus facientibus alis per tenebras intraque morae breve tempus in urbem pervenit Haemoniam, positisque e corpore pennis in faciem Ceycis abit sumptaque figura luridus, exanimi similis, sine vestibus ullis, coniugis ante torum miserae stetit: uda videtur barba viri, madidisque gravis fluere unda capillis. tum lecto incumbens fletu super ora profuso haec ait: ’agnoscis Ceyca, miserrima coniunx, an mea mutata est facies nece? respice: nosces inveniesque tuo pro coniuge coniugis umbram! nil opis, Alcyone, nobis tua vota tulerunt! occidimus! falso tibi me promittere noli! nubilus Aegaeo deprendit in aequore navem auster et ingenti iactatam flamine solvit, oraque nostra tuum frustra clamantia nomen inplerunt fluctus.—non haec tibi nuntiat auctor ambiguus, non ista vagis rumoribus audis: ipse ego fata tibi praesens mea naufragus edo. surge, age, da lacrimas lugubriaque indue nec me indeploratum sub inania Tartara mitte!’ adicit his vocem Morpheus, quam coniugis illa crederet esse sui (fletus quoque fundere veros visus erat), gestumque manus Ceycis habebat.
Troubled by her own voice and the sight of her husband, she shakes off
sleep, and first looks round to see if he is there, the one
who had just now appeared; for the servants, roused by her voice,
had brought in a light. When she finds him nowhere,
she strikes her face with her hand and tears the clothes from her breast
and beats the breast itself, nor cares to loosen her hair:
she rends it, and to the nurse who asks what is the cause of grief,
‘There is no Alcyone, none,’ she says. ‘She has perished together
with her Ceyx. Away with comforting words!
He has died shipwrecked: I saw him and knew him, and stretched
my hands toward him as he left, longing to hold him back.
A shade he was, but a shade plain to see, and truly
my husband’s. He did not, if you ask, have
his accustomed looks, nor did his face shine as before:
pale and naked and with his hair still dripping
I saw him, unhappy. Here in this very place,
look, he stood, pitiable’; and she searches whether any footprints remain.
‘This was it, this, that with foreboding mind I feared,
and I begged you not to flee me and follow the winds.
But surely I could wish, since you were going off to die,
that you had taken me too: much would it have profited me
to go with you; for not any portion of life’s span
would I have spent apart from you, nor would death have been divided.
Now I have perished though absent, I am tossed too on the waves though absent,
and the sea holds me without me. My own mind would be crueler
than the sea itself, if I should strive to draw out my life
longer, and struggle to survive so great a grief!
But I will neither struggle nor leave you, poor man,
and now at least I will come as your companion, and in the tomb,
if not an urn, yet a letter shall join us: if not
my bones to your bones, yet name shall touch name.’
Grief forbids more, and beating breaks in on every word,
and groans are dragged from her stricken heart.
sleep, and first looks round to see if he is there, the one
who had just now appeared; for the servants, roused by her voice,
had brought in a light. When she finds him nowhere,
she strikes her face with her hand and tears the clothes from her breast
and beats the breast itself, nor cares to loosen her hair:
she rends it, and to the nurse who asks what is the cause of grief,
‘There is no Alcyone, none,’ she says. ‘She has perished together
with her Ceyx. Away with comforting words!
He has died shipwrecked: I saw him and knew him, and stretched
my hands toward him as he left, longing to hold him back.
A shade he was, but a shade plain to see, and truly
my husband’s. He did not, if you ask, have
his accustomed looks, nor did his face shine as before:
pale and naked and with his hair still dripping
I saw him, unhappy. Here in this very place,
look, he stood, pitiable’; and she searches whether any footprints remain.
‘This was it, this, that with foreboding mind I feared,
and I begged you not to flee me and follow the winds.
But surely I could wish, since you were going off to die,
that you had taken me too: much would it have profited me
to go with you; for not any portion of life’s span
would I have spent apart from you, nor would death have been divided.
Now I have perished though absent, I am tossed too on the waves though absent,
and the sea holds me without me. My own mind would be crueler
than the sea itself, if I should strive to draw out my life
longer, and struggle to survive so great a grief!
But I will neither struggle nor leave you, poor man,
and now at least I will come as your companion, and in the tomb,
if not an urn, yet a letter shall join us: if not
my bones to your bones, yet name shall touch name.’
Grief forbids more, and beating breaks in on every word,
and groans are dragged from her stricken heart.
ingemit Alcyone lacrimans, motatque lacertos per somnum corpusque petens amplectitur auras exclamatque: ’mane! quo te rapis? ibimus una.’ voce sua specieque viri turbata soporem excutit et primo, si sit, circumspicit, illic, qui modo visus erat; nam moti voce ministri intulerant lumen. postquam non invenit usquam, percutit ora manu laniatque a pectore vestes pectoraque ipsa ferit nec crines solvere curat: scindit et altrici, quae luctus causa, roganti ’nulla est Alcyone, nulla est’ ait. ’occidit una cum Ceyce suo. solantia tollite verba! naufragus interiit: vidi agnovique manusque ad discedentem cupiens retinere tetendi. umbra fuit, sed et umbra tamen manifesta virique vera mei. non ille quidem, si quaeris, habebat adsuetos vultus nec quo prius, ore nitebat: pallentem nudumque et adhuc umente capillo infelix vidi. stetit hoc miserabilis ipso ecce loco’; et quaerit, vestigia siqua supersint. ’hoc erat, hoc, animo quod divinante timebam, et ne me fugiens ventos sequerere rogabam. at certe vellem, quoniam periturus abibas, me quoque duxisses: multum fuit utile tecum ire mihi; neque enim de vitae tempore quicquam non simul egissem, nec mors discreta fuisset. nunc absens perii, iactor quoque fluctibus absens, et sine me me pontus habet. crudelior ipso sit mihi mens pelago, si vitam ducere nitar longius et tanto pugnem superesse dolori! sed neque pugnabo nec te, miserande, relinquam et tibi nunc saltem veniam comes, inque sepulcro si non urna, tamen iunget nos littera: si non ossibus ossa meis, at nomen nomine tangam.’ plura dolor prohibet, verboque intervenit omni plangor, et attonito gemitus a corde trahuntur.
It was morning: she goes out from the house to the shore
and, mournful, seeks again the place from which she had watched him going,
and while she lingers there, and while she says, ‘Here he loosed the cables,
on this shore he gave me kisses as he departed,’
and while she recalls the deeds marked by the places, and looks out
over the sea, she watches, far off in the clear water,
some object like a body, and at first what it
was was doubtful; after the wave had brought it a little nearer,
and, though it was far off, it was clear it was nonetheless a body,
not knowing who it might be — since it was shipwrecked, she was moved by the omen,
and, as if she gave a tear to a stranger, ‘Alas, poor man,’ she said,
‘whoever you are, and if you have any wife!’ Driven by the waves
the body comes nearer: the more she gazes at it,
the less and less she keeps her wits, ah! and now, brought close
to the neighboring land, now such that she could recognize it,
she sees: it was her husband! ‘It is he!’ she cries, and at once
tears her face, her hair, her robe, and, stretching her trembling hands
toward Ceyx, ‘So, o dearest husband,
so, poor man, do you return to me?’ she says.
and, mournful, seeks again the place from which she had watched him going,
and while she lingers there, and while she says, ‘Here he loosed the cables,
on this shore he gave me kisses as he departed,’
and while she recalls the deeds marked by the places, and looks out
over the sea, she watches, far off in the clear water,
some object like a body, and at first what it
was was doubtful; after the wave had brought it a little nearer,
and, though it was far off, it was clear it was nonetheless a body,
not knowing who it might be — since it was shipwrecked, she was moved by the omen,
and, as if she gave a tear to a stranger, ‘Alas, poor man,’ she said,
‘whoever you are, and if you have any wife!’ Driven by the waves
the body comes nearer: the more she gazes at it,
the less and less she keeps her wits, ah! and now, brought close
to the neighboring land, now such that she could recognize it,
she sees: it was her husband! ‘It is he!’ she cries, and at once
tears her face, her hair, her robe, and, stretching her trembling hands
toward Ceyx, ‘So, o dearest husband,
so, poor man, do you return to me?’ she says.
Mane erat: egreditur tectis ad litus et illum maesta locum repetit, de quo spectarat euntem, dumque moratur ibi dumque ’hic retinacula solvit, hoc mihi discedens dedit oscula litore’ dicit dumque notata locis reminiscitur acta fretumque prospicit, in liquida, spatio distante, tuetur nescio quid quasi corpus aqua, primoque, quid illud esset, erat dubium; postquam paulum adpulit unda, et, quamvis aberat, corpus tamen esse liquebat, qui foret, ignorans, quia naufragus, omine mota est et, tamquam ignoto lacrimam daret, ’heu! miser,’ inquit ’quisquis es, et siqua est coniunx tibi!’ fluctibus actum fit propius corpus: quod quo magis illa tuetur, hoc minus et minus est mentis, vae! iamque propinquae admotum terrae, iam quod cognoscere posset, cernit: erat coniunx! ’ille est!’ exclamat et una ora, comas, vestem lacerat tendensque trementes ad Ceyca manus ’sic, o carissime coniunx, sic ad me, miserande, redis?’ ait.
There lies along the waves a mole made by hand, which breaks
the sea’s first angers and wearies out beforehand
the onsets of the waters. She leaps onto it, and it was a marvel
that she could: she was flying, and, beating the light air
with new-formed wings, she skimmed, a pitiable bird, the tops of the waves,
and as she flew, her mouth, clattering with its slender beak,
gave a sound like one mournful and full of lament.
But when she touched the mute and bloodless body,
embracing the beloved limbs with her new wings,
in vain she gave cold kisses with her hard beak.
Whether Ceyx felt this, or whether he only seemed to lift his face
by the motions of the wave, the people doubted, but he
had felt it: and at last, the gods taking pity, both
are changed into birds; subject to the same fates,
their love even then remained, nor was the marriage
bond dissolved in the birds: they couple and become parents,
and for seven calm days in the winter season
Alcyone broods on her nest that hangs over the sea.
Then the wave of the sea lies still: Aeolus guards the winds and keeps them
from going out, and grants a calm sea to his grandchildren.
the sea’s first angers and wearies out beforehand
the onsets of the waters. She leaps onto it, and it was a marvel
that she could: she was flying, and, beating the light air
with new-formed wings, she skimmed, a pitiable bird, the tops of the waves,
and as she flew, her mouth, clattering with its slender beak,
gave a sound like one mournful and full of lament.
But when she touched the mute and bloodless body,
embracing the beloved limbs with her new wings,
in vain she gave cold kisses with her hard beak.
Whether Ceyx felt this, or whether he only seemed to lift his face
by the motions of the wave, the people doubted, but he
had felt it: and at last, the gods taking pity, both
are changed into birds; subject to the same fates,
their love even then remained, nor was the marriage
bond dissolved in the birds: they couple and become parents,
and for seven calm days in the winter season
Alcyone broods on her nest that hangs over the sea.
Then the wave of the sea lies still: Aeolus guards the winds and keeps them
from going out, and grants a calm sea to his grandchildren.
adiacet undis facta manu moles, quae primas aequoris iras frangit et incursus quae praedelassat aquarum. insilit huc, mirumque fuit potuisse: volabat percutiensque levem modo natis aera pennis stringebat summas ales miserabilis undas, dumque volat, maesto similem plenumque querellae ora dedere sonum tenui crepitantia rostro. ut vero tetigit mutum et sine sanguine corpus, dilectos artus amplexa recentibus alis frigida nequiquam duro dedit oscula rostro. senserit hoc Ceyx, an vultum motibus undae tollere sit visus, populus dubitabat, at ille senserat: et tandem, superis miserantibus, ambo alite mutantur; fatis obnoxius isdem tunc quoque mansit amor nec coniugiale solutum foedus in alitibus: coeunt fiuntque parentes, perque dies placidos hiberno tempore septem incubat Alcyone pendentibus aequore nidis. tunc iacet unda maris: ventos custodit et arcet Aeolus egressu praestatque nepotibus aequor.
Some old man watches them as they fly together over the wide waters,
and praises their love, preserved to the end:
one near him, or the same, if chance so brought it, said, ‘This one too,
which you see skimming the sea and trailing its drawn-up legs,’
(pointing to a diver with a long throat)
‘is of royal stock, and if you wish to trace down to him
in unbroken line, his ancestors are
Ilus and Assaracus and Ganymede, snatched up for Jove,
and old Laomedon and Priam, allotted the last
days of Troy; this bird was Hector’s brother:
who, had he not met a strange fate in his early youth,
would perhaps have had a name not lower than Hector’s,
though the daughter of Dymas bore the one,
while Aesacus, they say, was borne in secret under shady Ida
by Alexirhoe, daughter of the two-horned Granicus.
He hated cities and, withdrawn from the gleaming court,
loved lonely mountains and the unambitious
country, and went but rarely to the gatherings of Ilium.
Yet, with a heart not rustic nor unconquerable by love,
he sees Hesperie, often sought through all the woods,
on her father’s bank, the Cebren, drying in the sun the hair flung over her shoulders.
and praises their love, preserved to the end:
one near him, or the same, if chance so brought it, said, ‘This one too,
which you see skimming the sea and trailing its drawn-up legs,’
(pointing to a diver with a long throat)
‘is of royal stock, and if you wish to trace down to him
in unbroken line, his ancestors are
Ilus and Assaracus and Ganymede, snatched up for Jove,
and old Laomedon and Priam, allotted the last
days of Troy; this bird was Hector’s brother:
who, had he not met a strange fate in his early youth,
would perhaps have had a name not lower than Hector’s,
though the daughter of Dymas bore the one,
while Aesacus, they say, was borne in secret under shady Ida
by Alexirhoe, daughter of the two-horned Granicus.
He hated cities and, withdrawn from the gleaming court,
loved lonely mountains and the unambitious
country, and went but rarely to the gatherings of Ilium.
Yet, with a heart not rustic nor unconquerable by love,
he sees Hesperie, often sought through all the woods,
on her father’s bank, the Cebren, drying in the sun the hair flung over her shoulders.
Hos aliquis senior iunctim freta lata volantes spectat et ad finem servatos laudat amores: proximus, aut idem, si fors tulit, ’hic quoque,’ dixit ’quem mare carpentem substrictaque crura gerentem aspicis,’ (ostendens spatiosum in guttura mergum) ’regia progenies, et si descendere ad ipsum ordine perpetuo quaeris, sunt huius origo Ilus et Assaracus raptusque Iovi Ganymedes Laomedonque senex Priamusque novissima Troiae tempora sortitus; frater fuit Hectoris iste: qui nisi sensisset prima nova fata iuventa, forsitan inferius non Hectore nomen haberet, quamvis est illum proles enixa Dymantis, Aesacon umbrosa furtim peperisse sub Ida fertur Alexiroe, Granico nata bicorni. oderat hic urbes nitidaque remotus ab aula secretos montes et inambitiosa colebat rura nec Iliacos coetus nisi rarus adibat. non agreste tamen nec inexpugnabile amori pectus habens silvas captatam saepe per omnes aspicit Hesperien patria Cebrenida ripa iniectos umeris siccantem sole capillos.
At sight of him the nymph fled, as a hind, terrified, flees
the tawny wolf, or a river-duck, caught far from the lake she had left,
flees the hawk; the Trojan hero pursues her,
swift with love urging on her who is swift with fear.
Behold, a snake lurking in the grass grazed the fleeing girl’s foot
with its hooked fang and left its venom in her body;
with her life her flight was stopped: frantic, he embraces
the lifeless girl and cries, ‘It grieves me, grieves me, to have given chase!
But this I did not fear, nor was the victory worth so much to me.
We two have destroyed you, poor girl: the wound was given by the snake,
the cause by me! I should be more guilty than it,
did I not, by my own death, send you a comfort for your death.’
He spoke, and from a crag that the hoarse wave had eaten away beneath
he flung himself into the sea. Tethys, taking pity on him as he fell,
softly received him, and clothed him in feathers as he swam
through the waters, and the chance of the death he longed for was not given.
The lover is indignant that he is forced to live against his will,
and that his soul is hindered when it wishes to go out
from its wretched seat; and, as he had taken new wings on his shoulders,
he flies up and again casts his body upon the waters.
His plumage breaks his fall: Aesacus rages, and headlong into the deep
he goes, and endlessly tries again the road of death.
Love made him lean: long are the joints of his legs,
long his neck remains, his head is far from his body;
he loves the sea, and keeps his name from his plunging into it.’
the tawny wolf, or a river-duck, caught far from the lake she had left,
flees the hawk; the Trojan hero pursues her,
swift with love urging on her who is swift with fear.
Behold, a snake lurking in the grass grazed the fleeing girl’s foot
with its hooked fang and left its venom in her body;
with her life her flight was stopped: frantic, he embraces
the lifeless girl and cries, ‘It grieves me, grieves me, to have given chase!
But this I did not fear, nor was the victory worth so much to me.
We two have destroyed you, poor girl: the wound was given by the snake,
the cause by me! I should be more guilty than it,
did I not, by my own death, send you a comfort for your death.’
He spoke, and from a crag that the hoarse wave had eaten away beneath
he flung himself into the sea. Tethys, taking pity on him as he fell,
softly received him, and clothed him in feathers as he swam
through the waters, and the chance of the death he longed for was not given.
The lover is indignant that he is forced to live against his will,
and that his soul is hindered when it wishes to go out
from its wretched seat; and, as he had taken new wings on his shoulders,
he flies up and again casts his body upon the waters.
His plumage breaks his fall: Aesacus rages, and headlong into the deep
he goes, and endlessly tries again the road of death.
Love made him lean: long are the joints of his legs,
long his neck remains, his head is far from his body;
he loves the sea, and keeps his name from his plunging into it.’
visa fugit nymphe, veluti perterrita fulvum cerva lupum longeque lacu deprensa relicto accipitrem fluvialis anas; quam Troius heros insequitur celeremque metu celer urget amore. ecce latens herba coluber fugientis adunco dente pedem strinxit virusque in corpore liquit; cum vita suppressa fuga est: amplectitur amens exanimem clamatque "piget, piget esse secutum! sed non hoc timui, neque erat mihi vincere tanti. perdidimus miseram nos te duo: vulnus ab angue, a me causa data est! ego sim sceleratior illo, ni tibi morte mea mortis solacia mittam." dixit et e scopulo, quem rauca subederat unda, se dedit in pontum. Tethys miserata cadentem molliter excepit nantemque per aequora pennis texit, et optatae non est data copia mortis. indignatur amans, invitum vivere cogi obstarique animae misera de sede volenti exire, utque novas umeris adsumpserat alas, subvolat atque iterum corpus super aequora mittit. pluma levat casus: furit Aesacos inque profundum pronus abit letique viam sine fine retemptat. fecit amor maciem: longa internodia crurum, longa manet cervix, caput est a corpore longe; aequora amat nomenque tenet, quia mergitur illo.’
Priam the father, not knowing Aesacus still lived
with the wings he had taken on, was mourning him; at a tomb
that bore his name as well, Hector with his brothers
had paid the empty rites. Paris’s presence was missing
from that sad office — Paris, who soon would bring
into his homeland a long war with the wife he had seized:
a thousand ships, sworn together, follow after him,
and with them the whole common host of the Pelasgian race.
Nor would the vengeance have been delayed, had not fierce winds
made the seas impassable, and the Boeotian land
at fish-rich Aulis held back the ships that meant to sail.
Here, when after their fathers’ custom they had readied
their offerings to Jove, and the old altar glowed
with the kindled fires, the Greeks saw a blue-green serpent
gliding up a plane-tree that stood close by the rite they had begun.
There was a nest of birds at the treetop, twice four:
these, and the mother flying about her loss,
the serpent snatched and buried in its greedy maw.
All stood amazed; but the seer who foresees the truth,
Thestor’s son, cried, ‘We shall conquer! Rejoice, Pelasgians!
Troy will fall, but long will be the delay of our toil,’
and he parcels the nine birds into nine years of war.
The serpent, just as it was, twined round the green boughs
in the tree, turns to stone and keeps the snake’s shape in the rock.
with the wings he had taken on, was mourning him; at a tomb
that bore his name as well, Hector with his brothers
had paid the empty rites. Paris’s presence was missing
from that sad office — Paris, who soon would bring
into his homeland a long war with the wife he had seized:
a thousand ships, sworn together, follow after him,
and with them the whole common host of the Pelasgian race.
Nor would the vengeance have been delayed, had not fierce winds
made the seas impassable, and the Boeotian land
at fish-rich Aulis held back the ships that meant to sail.
Here, when after their fathers’ custom they had readied
their offerings to Jove, and the old altar glowed
with the kindled fires, the Greeks saw a blue-green serpent
gliding up a plane-tree that stood close by the rite they had begun.
There was a nest of birds at the treetop, twice four:
these, and the mother flying about her loss,
the serpent snatched and buried in its greedy maw.
All stood amazed; but the seer who foresees the truth,
Thestor’s son, cried, ‘We shall conquer! Rejoice, Pelasgians!
Troy will fall, but long will be the delay of our toil,’
and he parcels the nine birds into nine years of war.
The serpent, just as it was, twined round the green boughs
in the tree, turns to stone and keeps the snake’s shape in the rock.
Nescius adsumptis Priamus pater Aesacon alis vivere lugebat: tumulo quoque nomen habenti inferias dederat cum fratribus Hector inanes; defuit officio Paridis praesentia tristi, postmodo qui rapta longum cum coniuge bellum attulit in patriam: coniurataeque sequuntur mille rates gentisque simul commune Pelasgae; nec dilata foret vindicta, nisi aequora saevi invia fecissent venti, Boeotaque tellus Aulide piscosa puppes tenuisset ituras. hic patrio de more Iovi cum sacra parassent, ut vetus accensis incanduit ignibus ara, serpere caeruleum Danai videre draconem in platanum, coeptis quae stabat proxima sacris. nidus erat volucrum bis quattuor arbore summa: quas simul et matrem circum sua damna volantem corripuit serpens avidoque recondidit ore, obstipuere omnes, at veri providus augur Thestorides ’vincemus’; ait, ’gaudete, Pelasgi! Troia cadet, sed erit nostri mora longa laboris,’ atque novem volucres in belli digerit annos. ille, ut erat virides amplexus in arbore ramos, fit lapis et signat serpentis imagine saxum.
Violent Boreas keeps stirring on the Aonian waves
and will not let the war pass over; and there are those
who believe Neptune is sparing Troy, because he had built
the city’s walls. But not Thestor’s son: for he neither
is ignorant nor silent that a virgin goddess’s anger
must be appeased with a virgin’s blood. After the public cause
had conquered family love, and the king the father,
and Iphigenia stood before the altar, ready
to give her chaste blood, her attendants weeping round her,
the goddess yielded, cast a cloud across their eyes,
and amid the rite, the throng and the voices of those who prayed,
is said to have changed the Mycenaean girl for a substituted hind.
So when Diana was appeased by the death that befit her,
and Phoebe’s wrath, and the sea’s wrath alike drew back,
the thousand keels receive the winds astern,
and after much hardship gain the Phrygian sand.
and will not let the war pass over; and there are those
who believe Neptune is sparing Troy, because he had built
the city’s walls. But not Thestor’s son: for he neither
is ignorant nor silent that a virgin goddess’s anger
must be appeased with a virgin’s blood. After the public cause
had conquered family love, and the king the father,
and Iphigenia stood before the altar, ready
to give her chaste blood, her attendants weeping round her,
the goddess yielded, cast a cloud across their eyes,
and amid the rite, the throng and the voices of those who prayed,
is said to have changed the Mycenaean girl for a substituted hind.
So when Diana was appeased by the death that befit her,
and Phoebe’s wrath, and the sea’s wrath alike drew back,
the thousand keels receive the winds astern,
and after much hardship gain the Phrygian sand.
Permanet Aoniis Boreas violentus in undis bellaque non transfert, et sunt, qui parcere Troiae Neptunum credant, quia moenia fecerat urbi; at non Thestorides: nec enim nescitve tacetve sanguine virgineo placandam virginis iram esse deae. postquam pietatem publica causa rexque patrem vicit, castumque datura cruorem flentibus ante aram stetit Iphigenia ministris, victa dea est nubemque oculis obiecit et inter officium turbamque sacri vocesque precantum supposita fertur mutasse Mycenida cerva. ergo ubi, qua decuit, lenita est caede Diana, et pariter Phoebes, pariter maris ira recessit, accipiunt ventos a tergo mille carinae multaque perpessae Phrygia potiuntur harena.
There is a place at the world’s middle, between the lands
and the sea and the regions of the sky, the borders of the threefold world;
from it whatever exists anywhere, however distant its quarter,
is watched, and every voice pierces through to its hollow ears:
Rumor holds it, and chose her house on the topmost peak,
and added countless entrances and a thousand openings
to the roof, and closed the thresholds with no doors;
night and day it lies open: all of it is sounding bronze,
the whole of it murmurs, echoes voices, repeats what it hears;
there is no rest within, no silence in any part,
yet no clamor either, only the murmur of small voices,
such as tend to rise from the waves of the sea, if one
should hear them far off, or such a sound as the last
of the thunder gives back when Jupiter has rattled the black clouds.
and the sea and the regions of the sky, the borders of the threefold world;
from it whatever exists anywhere, however distant its quarter,
is watched, and every voice pierces through to its hollow ears:
Rumor holds it, and chose her house on the topmost peak,
and added countless entrances and a thousand openings
to the roof, and closed the thresholds with no doors;
night and day it lies open: all of it is sounding bronze,
the whole of it murmurs, echoes voices, repeats what it hears;
there is no rest within, no silence in any part,
yet no clamor either, only the murmur of small voices,
such as tend to rise from the waves of the sea, if one
should hear them far off, or such a sound as the last
of the thunder gives back when Jupiter has rattled the black clouds.
Orbe locus medio est inter terrasque fretumque caelestesque plagas, triplicis confinia mundi; unde quod est usquam, quamvis regionibus absit, inspicitur, penetratque cavas vox omnis ad aures: Fama tenet summaque domum sibi legit in arce, innumerosque aditus ac mille foramina tectis addidit et nullis inclusit limina portis; nocte dieque patet: tota est ex aere sonanti, tota fremit vocesque refert iteratque quod audit; nulla quies intus nullaque silentia parte, nec tamen est clamor, sed parvae murmura vocis, qualia de pelagi, siquis procul audiat, undis esse solent, qualemve sonum, cum Iuppiter atras increpuit nubes, extrema tonitrua reddunt.
A crowd holds the hall: they come, a fickle rabble, and go,
and everywhere a thousand rumors wander, inventions
mixed with the truth, and set their muddled words rolling;
some of these fill empty ears with their talk,
others carry what they were told elsewhere, and the measure
of the fiction grows, and each fresh teller adds something to what he heard.
There is Credulity, there reckless Error,
and empty Gladness, and panic-stricken Fears,
and abrupt Sedition, and Whispers of doubtful source;
Rumor herself sees whatever is done in the sky and on the sea
and on the earth, and goes searching through the whole world.
and everywhere a thousand rumors wander, inventions
mixed with the truth, and set their muddled words rolling;
some of these fill empty ears with their talk,
others carry what they were told elsewhere, and the measure
of the fiction grows, and each fresh teller adds something to what he heard.
There is Credulity, there reckless Error,
and empty Gladness, and panic-stricken Fears,
and abrupt Sedition, and Whispers of doubtful source;
Rumor herself sees whatever is done in the sky and on the sea
and on the earth, and goes searching through the whole world.
atria turba tenet: veniunt, leve vulgus, euntque mixtaque cum veris passim commenta vagantur milia rumorum confusaque verba volutant; e quibus hi vacuas inplent sermonibus aures, hi narrata ferunt alio, mensuraque ficti crescit, et auditis aliquid novus adicit auctor. illic Credulitas, illic temerarius Error vanaque Laetitia est consternatique Timores Seditioque repens dubioque auctore Susurri; ipsa, quid in caelo rerum pelagoque geratur et tellure, videt totumque inquirit in orbem.
She had made it known that the Greek ships were coming
with a valiant soldiery, and the enemy in arms
arrives not unlooked-for: the Trojans bar the approaches
and guard the shore, and by Hector’s spear you, Protesilaus,
fall first, as fate decreed, and the battles, once joined,
cost the Greeks dear, and Hector is known by that brave soul’s death.
Nor at little cost of blood did the Phrygians learn
what an Achaean right hand could do; and now the Sigean
shores were reddening, now Cycnus, Neptune’s offspring,
had given a thousand men to death, now Achilles bore down
in his chariot and was leveling whole columns
with the stroke of his Pelian spear, and through the lines,
seeking either Cycnus or Hector,
with a valiant soldiery, and the enemy in arms
arrives not unlooked-for: the Trojans bar the approaches
and guard the shore, and by Hector’s spear you, Protesilaus,
fall first, as fate decreed, and the battles, once joined,
cost the Greeks dear, and Hector is known by that brave soul’s death.
Nor at little cost of blood did the Phrygians learn
what an Achaean right hand could do; and now the Sigean
shores were reddening, now Cycnus, Neptune’s offspring,
had given a thousand men to death, now Achilles bore down
in his chariot and was leveling whole columns
with the stroke of his Pelian spear, and through the lines,
seeking either Cycnus or Hector,
Fecerat haec notum, Graias cum milite forti adventare rates, neque inexspectatus in armis hostis adest: prohibent aditus litusque tuentur Troes, et Hectorea primus fataliter hasta, Protesilae, cadis, commissaque proelia magno stant Danais, fortisque animae nece cognitus Hector. nec Phryges exiguo, quid Achaica dextera posset, sanguine senserunt, et iam Sigea rubebant litora, iam leto proles Neptunia, Cycnus, mille viros dederat, iam curru instabat Achilles totaque Peliacae sternebat cuspidis ictu agmina perque acies aut Cycnum aut Hectora quaerens
he closes with Cycnus (Hector had been put off
to the tenth year): then, urging on his horses, their necks
gleaming white beneath the pressing yoke, he aimed his chariot
at the foe, and shaking the quivering spear in his arms
he said, ‘Whoever you are, young man, take for the comfort
of your death that you were cut down by Haemonian Achilles!’
So far the grandson of Aeacus: the heavy spear followed his words,
but although the cast was sure and the spear in no way strayed,
the point of the launched iron yet accomplished nothing
and only bruised his breast as with a blunted blow.
‘Goddess-born — for by report we knew you beforehand,’
the other said, ‘why wonder that no wound comes from me?’
(for he was wondering.) ‘This helmet that you see, tawny
with horsehair, and the burden of the hollow shield on my left
are no help to me: it was their grace I sought;
Mars too is used to bearing arms for that. The service
of this covering shall be laid aside: even so I’ll come off unscratched;
it is something not to be born of a Nereid, but of him
who governs Nereus and his daughters and the whole sea.’
He spoke, and a spear meant to lodge in the curve of the shield
to the tenth year): then, urging on his horses, their necks
gleaming white beneath the pressing yoke, he aimed his chariot
at the foe, and shaking the quivering spear in his arms
he said, ‘Whoever you are, young man, take for the comfort
of your death that you were cut down by Haemonian Achilles!’
So far the grandson of Aeacus: the heavy spear followed his words,
but although the cast was sure and the spear in no way strayed,
the point of the launched iron yet accomplished nothing
and only bruised his breast as with a blunted blow.
‘Goddess-born — for by report we knew you beforehand,’
the other said, ‘why wonder that no wound comes from me?’
(for he was wondering.) ‘This helmet that you see, tawny
with horsehair, and the burden of the hollow shield on my left
are no help to me: it was their grace I sought;
Mars too is used to bearing arms for that. The service
of this covering shall be laid aside: even so I’ll come off unscratched;
it is something not to be born of a Nereid, but of him
who governs Nereus and his daughters and the whole sea.’
He spoke, and a spear meant to lodge in the curve of the shield
congreditur Cycno (decimum dilatus in annum Hector erat): tum colla iugo candentia pressos exhortatus equos currum derexit in hostem concutiensque suis vibrantia tela lacertis ’quisquis es, o iuvenis,’ dixit ’solamen habeto mortis, ab Haemonio quod sis iugulatus Achille!’ hactenus Aeacides: vocem gravis hasta secuta est, sed quamquam certa nullus fuit error in hasta, nil tamen emissi profecit acumine ferri utque hebeti pectus tantummodo contudit ictu. ’nate dea, nam te fama praenovimus,’ inquit ille ’quid a nobis vulnus miraris abesse?’ (mirabatur enim.) ’non haec, quam cernis, equinis fulva iubis cassis neque onus, cava parma, sinistrae auxilio mihi sunt: decor est quaesitus ab istis; Mars quoque ob hoc capere arma solet! removebitur huius tegminis officium: tamen indestrictus abibo; est aliquid non esse satum Nereide, sed qui Nereaque et natas et totum temperat aequor.’ dixit et haesurum clipei curvamine telum
he hurled at Achilles, which broke through the bronze
and nine layers of oxhide beneath, but stuck fast at the tenth.
The hero shook it off and again with strong hand
hurled the quivering shaft: again the body was unwounded
and unmarred; nor could a third point so much as graze
Cycnus, who stood open and offered himself to it.
He blazed up no otherwise than a bull in the open ring
when with his fearsome horn he charges the red cloths
that provoke him, and finds his wounds eluded;
he considers whether the iron has dropped from the shaft:
it clung to the wood. ‘Is my hand grown feeble, then,’
he said, ‘and has it poured out on one man the strength it had before?
For surely it was strong, both when first I cast down
the walls of Lyrnesus, or when I filled Tenedos and Eetion’s
Thebes with their own blood,
or when Caicus ran purple with the slaughter of its people,
and Telephus twice felt the work of my spear.
Here too, with so many killed, whose heaps along the shore
I have both made and see, my right hand was strong and is strong.’
and nine layers of oxhide beneath, but stuck fast at the tenth.
The hero shook it off and again with strong hand
hurled the quivering shaft: again the body was unwounded
and unmarred; nor could a third point so much as graze
Cycnus, who stood open and offered himself to it.
He blazed up no otherwise than a bull in the open ring
when with his fearsome horn he charges the red cloths
that provoke him, and finds his wounds eluded;
he considers whether the iron has dropped from the shaft:
it clung to the wood. ‘Is my hand grown feeble, then,’
he said, ‘and has it poured out on one man the strength it had before?
For surely it was strong, both when first I cast down
the walls of Lyrnesus, or when I filled Tenedos and Eetion’s
Thebes with their own blood,
or when Caicus ran purple with the slaughter of its people,
and Telephus twice felt the work of my spear.
Here too, with so many killed, whose heaps along the shore
I have both made and see, my right hand was strong and is strong.’
misit in Aeaciden, quod et aes et proxima rupit terga novena boum, decimo tamen orbe moratum est. excutit hoc heros rursusque trementia forti tela manu torsit: rursus sine vulnere corpus sincerumque fuit; nec tertia cuspis apertum et se praebentem valuit destringere Cycnum. haut secus exarsit, quam circo taurus aperto, cum sua terribili petit inritamina cornu, poeniceas vestes, elusaque vulnera sentit; num tamen exciderit ferrum considerat hastae: haerebat ligno. ’manus est mea debilis ergo, quasque’ ait ’ante habuit vires, effudit in uno? nam certe valuit, vel cum Lyrnesia primus moenia deieci, vel cum Tenedonque suoque Eetioneas inplevi sanguine Thebas, vel cum purpureus populari caede Caicus fluxit, opusque meae bis sensit Telephus hastae. hic quoque tot caesis, quorum per litus acervos et feci et video, valuit mea dextra valetque.’
He spoke, and as if he mistrusted his earlier casts, he hurled
his spear at one Menoetes, facing him, from the Lycian ranks,
and broke through breastplate and the chest beneath at once.
As the dying man beat the heavy ground with his head,
he draws that same weapon from the warm wound
and says, ‘This is the hand, this the spear with which I have just conquered:
on this man I’ll use them; on him, I pray, let the end be the same!’
So saying he aims again at Cycnus, and the ash does not err
and rang, unavoided, on the left shoulder,
then was thrown back as from a wall, from solid rock;
yet where it had struck, Achilles had seen Cycnus
marked with blood, and had rejoiced in vain:
there was no wound — that blood was Menoetes’!
his spear at one Menoetes, facing him, from the Lycian ranks,
and broke through breastplate and the chest beneath at once.
As the dying man beat the heavy ground with his head,
he draws that same weapon from the warm wound
and says, ‘This is the hand, this the spear with which I have just conquered:
on this man I’ll use them; on him, I pray, let the end be the same!’
So saying he aims again at Cycnus, and the ash does not err
and rang, unavoided, on the left shoulder,
then was thrown back as from a wall, from solid rock;
yet where it had struck, Achilles had seen Cycnus
marked with blood, and had rejoiced in vain:
there was no wound — that blood was Menoetes’!
dixit et, ante actis veluti male crederet, hastam misit in adversum Lycia de plebe Menoeten loricamque simul subiectaque pectora rupit. quo plangente gravem moribundo vertice terram extrahit illud idem calido de vulnere telum atque ait: ’haec manus est, haec, qua modo vicimus, hasta: utar in hoc isdem; sit in hoc, precor, exitus idem!’ sic fatus Cycnum repetit, nec fraxinus errat inque umero sonuit non evitata sinistro, inde velut muro solidaque a caute repulsa est; qua tamen ictus erat, signatum sanguine Cycnum viderat et frustra fuerat gavisus Achilles: vulnus erat nullum, sanguis fuit ille Menoetae!
Then indeed, roaring, headlong from the high chariot
he leaps down, and seeking the untroubled foe at close quarters
with his shining sword, he sees the shield and helmet
dented by the blade, but on that hard body the iron itself is harmed.
He bore it no longer, and with his shield drawn back he batters
the man’s face three times, four times, and with the pommel
the hollow temples, and pressing on the retreating foe
he harries him, drives at him, gives the stunned man no rest:
terror seizes him, darkness swims before his eyes,
and as he steps backward a stone in the midfield blocked
his reversed steps; over it Achilles, with great force,
flung Cycnus, pushed back and thrown supine,
and dashed him to the ground. Then, pressing the chest
with shield and hard knees, he hauls at the helmet-straps,
which, drawn tight beneath the chin, throttle the throat
and snatch away the breath and the passage of life.
He was making ready to strip the conquered man: he sees the armor empty;
the god of the sea had changed the body into a white
bird, the one whose name it had borne just now.
he leaps down, and seeking the untroubled foe at close quarters
with his shining sword, he sees the shield and helmet
dented by the blade, but on that hard body the iron itself is harmed.
He bore it no longer, and with his shield drawn back he batters
the man’s face three times, four times, and with the pommel
the hollow temples, and pressing on the retreating foe
he harries him, drives at him, gives the stunned man no rest:
terror seizes him, darkness swims before his eyes,
and as he steps backward a stone in the midfield blocked
his reversed steps; over it Achilles, with great force,
flung Cycnus, pushed back and thrown supine,
and dashed him to the ground. Then, pressing the chest
with shield and hard knees, he hauls at the helmet-straps,
which, drawn tight beneath the chin, throttle the throat
and snatch away the breath and the passage of life.
He was making ready to strip the conquered man: he sees the armor empty;
the god of the sea had changed the body into a white
bird, the one whose name it had borne just now.
tum vero praeceps curru fremebundus ab alto desilit et nitido securum comminus hostem ense petens parmam gladio galeamque cavari cernit, at in duro laedi quoque corpore ferrum. haut tulit ulterius clipeoque adversa reducto ter quater ora viri, capulo et cava tempora pulsat cedentique sequens instat turbatque ruitque attonitoque negat requiem: pavor occupat illum, ante oculosque natant tenebrae retroque ferenti aversos passus medio lapis obstitit arvo; quem super inpulsum resupino corpore Cycnum vi multa vertit terraeque adflixit Achilles. tum clipeo genibusque premens praecordia duris vincla trahit galeae, quae presso subdita mento elidunt fauces et respiramen iterque eripiunt animae. victum spoliare parabat: arma relicta videt; corpus deus aequoris albam contulit in volucrem, cuius modo nomen habebat.
This toil, this fighting brought a respite of many days,
and both sides, laying down their arms, paused.
And while a wakeful watch guards the Phrygian walls,
and a wakeful watch guards the Argive trenches,
a festal day was at hand, on which Achilles, victor over Cycnus,
was appeasing Pallas with the blood of a slaughtered heifer;
when he had laid its cut portions on the hot altars
and the smoke, welcome to the gods, had pierced the upper air,
the rite took its share, the rest was given to the tables.
The chiefs reclined on couches and fill their bodies
with roasted flesh and ease their cares and thirst with wine.
Not the lyre, not the songs of voices,
nor the long boxwood pipe with its many holes delights them,
but they draw out the night in talk, and manly valor
is the matter of their speech: they recount battles, the foe’s and their own,
and by turns it pleases them to recall again and again
the dangers met and drained; for what should Achilles speak of,
or what, rather, should men speak of before great Achilles?
His latest victory above all — Cycnus subdued —
was their talk: it had seemed marvelous to all
that the young man’s body could be pierced by no weapon,
was unconquered by any wound, and wore down the iron.
and both sides, laying down their arms, paused.
And while a wakeful watch guards the Phrygian walls,
and a wakeful watch guards the Argive trenches,
a festal day was at hand, on which Achilles, victor over Cycnus,
was appeasing Pallas with the blood of a slaughtered heifer;
when he had laid its cut portions on the hot altars
and the smoke, welcome to the gods, had pierced the upper air,
the rite took its share, the rest was given to the tables.
The chiefs reclined on couches and fill their bodies
with roasted flesh and ease their cares and thirst with wine.
Not the lyre, not the songs of voices,
nor the long boxwood pipe with its many holes delights them,
but they draw out the night in talk, and manly valor
is the matter of their speech: they recount battles, the foe’s and their own,
and by turns it pleases them to recall again and again
the dangers met and drained; for what should Achilles speak of,
or what, rather, should men speak of before great Achilles?
His latest victory above all — Cycnus subdued —
was their talk: it had seemed marvelous to all
that the young man’s body could be pierced by no weapon,
was unconquered by any wound, and wore down the iron.
Hic labor, haec requiem multorum pugna dierum attulit et positis pars utraque substitit armis. dumque vigil Phrygios servat custodia muros, et vigil Argolicas servat custodia fossas, festa dies aderat, qua Cycni victor Achilles Pallada mactatae placabat sanguine vaccae; cuius ut inposuit prosecta calentibus aris, et dis acceptus penetravit in aethera nidor, sacra tulere suam, pars est data cetera mensis. discubuere toris proceres et corpora tosta carne replent vinoque levant curasque sitimque. non illos citharae, non illos carmina vocum longave multifori delectat tibia buxi, sed noctem sermone trahunt, virtusque loquendi materia est: pugnas referunt hostisque suasque, inque vices adita atque exhausta pericula saepe commemorare iuvat; quid enim loqueretur Achilles, aut quid apud magnum potius loquerentur Achillem? proxima praecipue domito victoria Cycno in sermone fuit: visum mirabile cunctis, quod iuveni corpus nullo penetrabile telo invictumque a vulnere erat ferrumque terebat.
This Achilles himself, this the Achaeans wondered at,
when Nestor spoke thus: ‘In your age the one
scorner of iron, pierceable by no stroke,
was Cycnus. But I myself once saw Perrhaebian Caeneus,
who bore a thousand wounds with his body unharmed,
Caeneus the Perrhaebian, who, famous for his deeds,
dwelt on Othrys — and, to make the marvel greater in him,
had been born a woman.’ All who are present are stirred
by the strangeness of the prodigy, and ask him to tell it;
among them Achilles: ‘Come, speak! For all of us
have the same wish to hear, eloquent old man,
wisdom of our age: who Caeneus was, why he was turned
into his opposite, in what campaign, in the strife of what battle
you came to know him, by whom he was conquered, if by anyone.’
Then the elder: ‘Though slow old age stands in my way,
and many things I saw in my early years escape me,
still I remember more. And among all my deeds in war and peace,
of so many done, there is nothing that clings more fast
in my breast than this; and if length of years could make
anyone a witness of many doings, I have lived
two hundred years; now my third age is being lived.’
when Nestor spoke thus: ‘In your age the one
scorner of iron, pierceable by no stroke,
was Cycnus. But I myself once saw Perrhaebian Caeneus,
who bore a thousand wounds with his body unharmed,
Caeneus the Perrhaebian, who, famous for his deeds,
dwelt on Othrys — and, to make the marvel greater in him,
had been born a woman.’ All who are present are stirred
by the strangeness of the prodigy, and ask him to tell it;
among them Achilles: ‘Come, speak! For all of us
have the same wish to hear, eloquent old man,
wisdom of our age: who Caeneus was, why he was turned
into his opposite, in what campaign, in the strife of what battle
you came to know him, by whom he was conquered, if by anyone.’
Then the elder: ‘Though slow old age stands in my way,
and many things I saw in my early years escape me,
still I remember more. And among all my deeds in war and peace,
of so many done, there is nothing that clings more fast
in my breast than this; and if length of years could make
anyone a witness of many doings, I have lived
two hundred years; now my third age is being lived.’
hoc ipse Aeacides, hoc mirabantur Achivi, cum sic Nestor ait: ’vestro fuit unicus aevo contemptor ferri nulloque forabilis ictu Cycnus. at ipse olim patientem vulnera mille corpore non laeso Perrhaebum Caenea vidi, Caenea Perrhaebum, qui factis inclitus Othryn incoluit, quoque id mirum magis esset in illo, femina natus erat.’ monstri novitate moventur quisquis adest, narretque rogant: quos inter Achilles: ’dic age! nam cunctis eadem est audire voluntas, o facunde senex, aevi prudentia nostri, quis fuerit Caeneus, cur in contraria versus, qua tibi militia, cuius certamine pugnae cognitus, a quo sit victus, si victus ab ullo est.’ tum senior: ’quamvis obstet mihi tarda vetustas, multaque me fugiant primis spectata sub annis, plura tamen memini. nec quae magis haereat ulla pectore res nostro est inter bellique domique acta tot, ac si quem potuit spatiosa senectus spectatorem operum multorum reddere, vixi annos bis centum; nunc tertia vivitur aetas. ’
‘Famed for her beauty was Caenis, Elatus’s child,
loveliest of the Thessalian maidens, and through the neighboring towns
and through your own (for she was your countrywoman, Achilles),
longed for in vain by the prayers of many suitors.
Peleus too might perhaps have tried for that marriage:
but by then the wedding of your mother had either fallen to him
or had been promised; and Caenis married into no
bridal chamber, and walking a lonely shore
suffered the force of the sea-god (so report had it),
and when Neptune had taken the joys of his new love,
he said, "Let your prayers be safe from refusal:
choose what you would have!" (this too the same report told.)
"This wrong," said Caenis, "makes a great prayer:
that I may never be able to suffer such a thing again; grant
that I be not a woman: you will have given me everything."
She spoke her last words in a deeper tone, and that voice
could seem a man’s, as indeed it was; for now the god
of the deep sea had granted her prayer and given besides
that she could be made wounded by no injuries
nor fall by the sword. Glad in the gift, the son of Atrax
goes off and spends his life in manly pursuits,
ranging the Peneian fields.’
loveliest of the Thessalian maidens, and through the neighboring towns
and through your own (for she was your countrywoman, Achilles),
longed for in vain by the prayers of many suitors.
Peleus too might perhaps have tried for that marriage:
but by then the wedding of your mother had either fallen to him
or had been promised; and Caenis married into no
bridal chamber, and walking a lonely shore
suffered the force of the sea-god (so report had it),
and when Neptune had taken the joys of his new love,
he said, "Let your prayers be safe from refusal:
choose what you would have!" (this too the same report told.)
"This wrong," said Caenis, "makes a great prayer:
that I may never be able to suffer such a thing again; grant
that I be not a woman: you will have given me everything."
She spoke her last words in a deeper tone, and that voice
could seem a man’s, as indeed it was; for now the god
of the deep sea had granted her prayer and given besides
that she could be made wounded by no injuries
nor fall by the sword. Glad in the gift, the son of Atrax
goes off and spends his life in manly pursuits,
ranging the Peneian fields.’
Clara decore fuit proles Elateia Caenis, Thessalidum virgo pulcherrima, perque propinquas perque tuas urbes (tibi enim popularis, Achille), multorum frustra votis optata procorum. temptasset Peleus thalamos quoque forsitan illos: sed iam aut contigerant illi conubia matris aut fuerant promissa tuae, nec Caenis in ullos denupsit thalamos secretaque litora carpens aequorei vim passa dei est (ita fama ferebat), utque novae Veneris Neptunus gaudia cepit, "sint tua vota licet" dixit "secura repulsae: elige, quid voveas!" (eadem hoc quoque fama ferebat) "magnum" Caenis ait "facit haec iniuria votum, tale pati iam posse nihil; da, femina ne sim: omnia praestiteris." graviore novissima dixit verba sono poteratque viri vox illa videri, sicut erat; nam iam voto deus aequoris alti adnuerat dederatque super, nec saucius ullis vulneribus fieri ferrove occumbere posset. munere laetus abit studiisque virilibus aevum exigit Atracides Peneiaque arva pererrat. ’
‘The son of bold Ixion had wed Hippodame
and had bidden the wild cloud-born ones recline
at tables set out in order in a tree-roofed cave.
The Haemonian chiefs were there, I too was there,
and the festive palace rang with the mingled throng.
Behold, they sing the wedding-hymn, the halls smoke with torches,
and the girl appears, ringed by a crowd of matrons and young wives,
striking in her beauty; we called Pirithous happy
in that bride — and almost made the omen false.
For you, cruelest of the cruel Centaurs,
Eurytus, your breast burns as much at the sight of the maid
as with the wine, and drunkenness doubled by lust holds sway.
At once the tables are overturned, the feast in uproar,
and the new bride dragged off by force, seized by the hair.
Eurytus seizes Hippodame, the others each the woman
he fancied or could take, and it had the look of a captured city.
The house resounds with women’s cries: in haste we all
rise up, and Theseus first cries, "What madness,
Eurytus, drives you, that while I live you provoke
Pirithous and, blind, in one man wrong two?"
and had bidden the wild cloud-born ones recline
at tables set out in order in a tree-roofed cave.
The Haemonian chiefs were there, I too was there,
and the festive palace rang with the mingled throng.
Behold, they sing the wedding-hymn, the halls smoke with torches,
and the girl appears, ringed by a crowd of matrons and young wives,
striking in her beauty; we called Pirithous happy
in that bride — and almost made the omen false.
For you, cruelest of the cruel Centaurs,
Eurytus, your breast burns as much at the sight of the maid
as with the wine, and drunkenness doubled by lust holds sway.
At once the tables are overturned, the feast in uproar,
and the new bride dragged off by force, seized by the hair.
Eurytus seizes Hippodame, the others each the woman
he fancied or could take, and it had the look of a captured city.
The house resounds with women’s cries: in haste we all
rise up, and Theseus first cries, "What madness,
Eurytus, drives you, that while I live you provoke
Pirithous and, blind, in one man wrong two?"
Duxerat Hippodamen audaci Ixione natus nubigenasque feros positis ex ordine mensis arboribus tecto discumbere iusserat antro. Haemonii proceres aderant, aderamus et ipsi, festaque confusa resonabat regia turba. ecce canunt Hymenaeon, et ignibus atria fumant, cinctaque adest virgo matrum nuruumque caterva, praesignis facie; felicem diximus illa coniuge Pirithoum, quod paene fefellimus omen. nam tibi, saevorum saevissime Centaurorum, Euryte, quam vino pectus, tam virgine visa ardet, et ebrietas geminata libidine regnat. protinus eversae turbant convivia mensae, raptaturque comis per vim nova nupta prehensis. Eurytus Hippodamen, alii, quam quisque probabant aut poterant, rapiunt, captaeque erat urbis imago. femineo clamore sonat domus: ocius omnes surgimus, et primus "quae te vecordia," Theseus "Euryte, pulsat," ait, "qui me vivente lacessas Pirithoum violesque duos ignarus in uno?"
He made no answer (for such deeds cannot be defended
with words), but pursues the face of his rebuker with insolent
hands and strikes that noble breast.
There happened to be near at hand a rough old mixing-bowl,
rugged with projecting figures; huge as it was, the more huge
son of Aegeus lifted it and hurled it full in his foe’s face:
vomiting clots of blood and brains and wine alike
from the wound and from his mouth, he sprawls backward
on the wet sand and drums his heels. His two-formed brothers
blaze up at the slaughter, and vying, all with one voice
cry "Arms, arms!" The wine gave them spirit, and in the first
of the fray flung cups fly, and brittle jars and curved cauldrons,
once things for feasting, now fit for war and slaughter.
with words), but pursues the face of his rebuker with insolent
hands and strikes that noble breast.
There happened to be near at hand a rough old mixing-bowl,
rugged with projecting figures; huge as it was, the more huge
son of Aegeus lifted it and hurled it full in his foe’s face:
vomiting clots of blood and brains and wine alike
from the wound and from his mouth, he sprawls backward
on the wet sand and drums his heels. His two-formed brothers
blaze up at the slaughter, and vying, all with one voice
cry "Arms, arms!" The wine gave them spirit, and in the first
of the fray flung cups fly, and brittle jars and curved cauldrons,
once things for feasting, now fit for war and slaughter.
ille nihil contra, (neque enim defendere verbis talia facta potest) sed vindicis ora protervis insequitur manibus generosaque pectora pulsat. forte fuit iuxta signis exstantibus asper antiquus crater; quem vastum vastior ipse sustulit Aegides adversaque misit in ora: sanguinis ille globos pariter cerebrumque merumque vulnere et ore vomens madida resupinus harena calcitrat. ardescunt germani caede bimembres certatimque omnes uno ore "arma, arma" loquuntur. vina dabant animos, et prima pocula pugna missa volant fragilesque cadi curvique lebetes, res epulis quondam, tum bello et caedibus aptae. ’
‘First Amycus, Ophion’s son, did not fear to strip
the shrine’s inner room of its gifts, and first snatched
from the temple a candelabrum thick with flashing lights,
and raising it high — like one who labors to break
the white neck of a bull with the sacrificial axe —
he smashed it on the brow of the Lapith Celadon and left
the bones in his face crushed past knowing.
His eyes leapt out, and, the facial bones shattered,
his nose was driven back and fixed in the middle of his palate.
Him Pelates of Pella, wrenching loose a maple table-leg,
laid low on the ground, his chin dashed down on his chest,
and as he spat out his teeth mixed with black blood,
sent him with a doubled wound to the Tartarean shades.
Next, Gryneus, as he stood gazing with a dreadful face
at the smoking altars, said, "Why not use these?"
and lifted up the huge altar, fires and all,
and flung it into the midst of the Lapith ranks,
and crushed two men, Broteas and Orios: Orios’ mother
was Mycale, who, it was well known, had often
drawn down by her chants the struggling horns of the moon.
the shrine’s inner room of its gifts, and first snatched
from the temple a candelabrum thick with flashing lights,
and raising it high — like one who labors to break
the white neck of a bull with the sacrificial axe —
he smashed it on the brow of the Lapith Celadon and left
the bones in his face crushed past knowing.
His eyes leapt out, and, the facial bones shattered,
his nose was driven back and fixed in the middle of his palate.
Him Pelates of Pella, wrenching loose a maple table-leg,
laid low on the ground, his chin dashed down on his chest,
and as he spat out his teeth mixed with black blood,
sent him with a doubled wound to the Tartarean shades.
Next, Gryneus, as he stood gazing with a dreadful face
at the smoking altars, said, "Why not use these?"
and lifted up the huge altar, fires and all,
and flung it into the midst of the Lapith ranks,
and crushed two men, Broteas and Orios: Orios’ mother
was Mycale, who, it was well known, had often
drawn down by her chants the struggling horns of the moon.
Primus Ophionides Amycus penetralia donis haut timuit spoliare suis et primus ab aede lampadibus densum rapuit funale coruscis elatumque alte, veluti qui candida tauri rumpere sacrifica molitur colla securi, inlisit fronti Lapithae Celadontis et ossa non cognoscendo confusa relinquit in ore. exsiluere oculi, disiectisque ossibus oris acta retro naris medioque est fixa palato. hunc pede convulso mensae Pellaeus acernae stravit humi Pelates deiecto in pectora mento cumque atro mixtos sputantem sanguine dentes vulnere Tartareas geminato mittit ad umbras. ’Proximus ut steterat spectans altaria vultu fumida terribili "cur non" ait "utimur istis?" cumque suis Gryneus inmanem sustulit aram ignibus et medium Lapitharum iecit in agmen depressitque duos, Brotean et Orion: Orio mater erat Mycale, quam deduxisse canendo saepe reluctanti constabat cornua lunae. "
"You’ll not get off unpunished, if only a weapon be at hand!"
Exadius had said, and has the likeness of a weapon —
the antlers of a votive stag that had hung on a tall pine.
With these, the forked branch, Gryneus is pierced in the eyes
and his eyeballs gouged out; one part clings to the antlers,
the other runs down into his beard and hangs clotted with blood.
‘See, Rhoetus snatches a blazing brand of plum-wood
from the middle of the altars, and on the right side
breaks through Charaxus’s temples, shielded by their tawny hair.
Caught by the swift flame, like a dry cornfield,
his hair blazed up, and the blood, scorched in the wound,
gave a dreadful hissing sound, as glowing iron
is wont to give when the smith has drawn it with curved tongs
and plunged it in the trough: it hisses
and sizzles, sunk in the seething water.
Wounded, he shakes the greedy fire from his shaggy hair,
and lifts onto his shoulders a threshold torn up from the ground,
a wagon’s load, which its very weight keeps him
from hurling at the foe: the stony mass crushed his own comrade
Cometes too, who stood at closer range.
Nor does Rhoetus hold back his joy: "So, I pray," he says,
"may the rest of your camp’s brave crew prove!"
and with the half-burnt stake he renews the wound, struck again,
and three times, four times, with a heavy blow burst
the joinings of the skull, and the bones settled in the liquid brain.
Exadius had said, and has the likeness of a weapon —
the antlers of a votive stag that had hung on a tall pine.
With these, the forked branch, Gryneus is pierced in the eyes
and his eyeballs gouged out; one part clings to the antlers,
the other runs down into his beard and hangs clotted with blood.
‘See, Rhoetus snatches a blazing brand of plum-wood
from the middle of the altars, and on the right side
breaks through Charaxus’s temples, shielded by their tawny hair.
Caught by the swift flame, like a dry cornfield,
his hair blazed up, and the blood, scorched in the wound,
gave a dreadful hissing sound, as glowing iron
is wont to give when the smith has drawn it with curved tongs
and plunged it in the trough: it hisses
and sizzles, sunk in the seething water.
Wounded, he shakes the greedy fire from his shaggy hair,
and lifts onto his shoulders a threshold torn up from the ground,
a wagon’s load, which its very weight keeps him
from hurling at the foe: the stony mass crushed his own comrade
Cometes too, who stood at closer range.
Nor does Rhoetus hold back his joy: "So, I pray," he says,
"may the rest of your camp’s brave crew prove!"
and with the half-burnt stake he renews the wound, struck again,
and three times, four times, with a heavy blow burst
the joinings of the skull, and the bones settled in the liquid brain.
non impune feres, teli modo copia detur!" dixerat Exadius telique habet instar, in alta quae fuerant pinu votivi cornua cervi. figitur hinc duplici Gryneus in lumina ramo eruiturque oculos, quorum pars cornibus haeret, pars fluit in barbam concretaque sanguine pendet. ’Ecce rapit mediis flagrantem Rhoetus ab aris pruniceum torrem dextraque a parte Charaxi tempora perfringit fulvo protecta capillo. correpti rapida, veluti seges arida, flamma arserunt crines, et vulnere sanguis inustus terribilem stridore sonum dedit, ut dare ferrum igne rubens plerumque solet, quod forcipe curva cum faber eduxit, lacubus demittit: at illud stridet et in trepida submersum sibilat unda. saucius hirsutis avidum de crinibus ignem excutit inque umeros limen tellure revulsum tollit, onus plaustri, quod ne permittat in hostem, ipsa facit gravitas: socium quoque saxea moles oppressit spatio stantem propiore Cometen. gaudia nec retinet Rhoetus: "sic, conprecor," inquit "cetera sit fortis castrorum turba tuorum!" semicremoque novat repetitum stipite vulnus terque quaterque gravi iuncturas verticis ictu rupit, et in liquido sederunt ossa cerebro. ’
‘Victorious, he passes on to Euagrus, Corythus, and Dryas;
of these, when Corythus, his cheeks covered with their first down,
went down, Euagrus said, "What glory have you won
in laying a boy low?" and Rhoetus let him say
no more, but fierce thrust the red flames into the open
mouth of the speaking man, and through his mouth into his breast.
You too, savage Dryas, he pursues, whirling the fire
about your head — but in your case the same end did not hold:
as he exulted in the run of unbroken killing,
where the neck joins the shoulder you pierce him with a fire-hardened stake.
Rhoetus groaned and barely wrenched the stake from the hard bone,
and fled, himself soaked in his own blood.
Orneus too flees, and Lycabas, and Medon, wounded
in the right shoulder, and Thaumas with Pisenor,
and Mermeros, who had lately beaten all in the foot-race,
now went more slowly with the wound he had taken;
and Pholus, and Melaneus, and Abas the hunter of boars,
and the augur Asbolus, who had vainly dissuaded his folk
from war: he too, to Nessus who feared wounds,
said, "Do not flee! You shall be kept for Hercules’ bow."
But Eurynomus and Lycidas and Areos and Imbreus
did not escape death; all of them the right hand of Dryas
struck down as they faced him. Facing him you too,
Crenaeus, took your wound, though you had turned your back to flee:
for, looking back, you take the heavy iron between your two eyes,
where the lowest of the nose joins the brow.
of these, when Corythus, his cheeks covered with their first down,
went down, Euagrus said, "What glory have you won
in laying a boy low?" and Rhoetus let him say
no more, but fierce thrust the red flames into the open
mouth of the speaking man, and through his mouth into his breast.
You too, savage Dryas, he pursues, whirling the fire
about your head — but in your case the same end did not hold:
as he exulted in the run of unbroken killing,
where the neck joins the shoulder you pierce him with a fire-hardened stake.
Rhoetus groaned and barely wrenched the stake from the hard bone,
and fled, himself soaked in his own blood.
Orneus too flees, and Lycabas, and Medon, wounded
in the right shoulder, and Thaumas with Pisenor,
and Mermeros, who had lately beaten all in the foot-race,
now went more slowly with the wound he had taken;
and Pholus, and Melaneus, and Abas the hunter of boars,
and the augur Asbolus, who had vainly dissuaded his folk
from war: he too, to Nessus who feared wounds,
said, "Do not flee! You shall be kept for Hercules’ bow."
But Eurynomus and Lycidas and Areos and Imbreus
did not escape death; all of them the right hand of Dryas
struck down as they faced him. Facing him you too,
Crenaeus, took your wound, though you had turned your back to flee:
for, looking back, you take the heavy iron between your two eyes,
where the lowest of the nose joins the brow.
Victor ad Euagrum Corythumque Dryantaque transit; e quibus ut prima tectus lanugine malas procubuit Corythus, "puero quae gloria fuso parta tibi est?" Euagrus ait, nec dicere Rhoetus plura sinit rutilasque ferox in aperta loquentis condidit ora viri perque os in pectora flammas. te quoque, saeve Drya, circum caput igne rotato insequitur, sed non in te quoque constitit idem exitus: adsiduae successu caedis ovantem, qua iuncta est umero cervix, sude figis obusta. ingemuit duroque sudem vix osse revulsit Rhoetus et ipse suo madefactus sanguine fugit. fugit et Orneus Lycabasque et saucius armo dexteriore Medon et cum Pisenore Thaumas, quique pedum nuper certamine vicerat omnes Mermeros, accepto tum vulnere tardius ibat; et Pholus et Melaneus et Abas praedator aprorum, quique suis frustra bellum dissuaserat augur Asbolus: ille etiam metuenti vulnera Nesso "ne fuge! ad Herculeos" inquit "servaberis arcus." at non Eurynomus Lycidasque et Areos et Imbreus effugere necem; quos omnes dextra Dryantis perculit adversos. adversum tu quoque, quamvis terga fugae dederas, vulnus, Crenaee, tulisti: nam grave respiciens inter duo lumina ferrum, qua naris fronti committitur, accipis, imae. ’
‘Amid such uproar Aphidas lay, his veins
sunk in sleep without end and unwakeable,
and in his slack hand held a mixed wine-cup,
sprawled on the shaggy hides of an Ossan she-bear;
when Phorbas saw him from afar, vainly moving no weapon,
he set his fingers in the throwing-strap and said,
"You’ll drink your wine mixed with Styx,"
and without more delay hurled the javelin at the youth,
and the iron-tipped ash was driven into his neck
as he chanced to be lying there on his back.
His death lacked feeling, and from his full throat the black blood
flowed onto the couch and into the very cup.
‘I saw Petraeus trying to lift from the earth
an acorn-bearing oak; while he clasps it in his arms
and shakes it this way and that and heaves the loosened trunk,
the lance of Pirithous, driven into Petraeus’s ribs,
pinned his struggling breast to the hard oak.
By Pirithous’s valor Lycus fell, they said,
by Pirithous’s valor Chromis, but each gave the victor
a lesser title than Dictys and Helops did:
Helops pierced by a javelin that made his temples passable,
thrown from the right it went through to the left ear;
Dictys, slipping from the two-edged peak of a mountain
while he fled in terror the pressing son of Ixion,
fell headlong, and by his body’s weight broke a huge
ash-tree and impaled his guts on the snapped trunk.
sunk in sleep without end and unwakeable,
and in his slack hand held a mixed wine-cup,
sprawled on the shaggy hides of an Ossan she-bear;
when Phorbas saw him from afar, vainly moving no weapon,
he set his fingers in the throwing-strap and said,
"You’ll drink your wine mixed with Styx,"
and without more delay hurled the javelin at the youth,
and the iron-tipped ash was driven into his neck
as he chanced to be lying there on his back.
His death lacked feeling, and from his full throat the black blood
flowed onto the couch and into the very cup.
‘I saw Petraeus trying to lift from the earth
an acorn-bearing oak; while he clasps it in his arms
and shakes it this way and that and heaves the loosened trunk,
the lance of Pirithous, driven into Petraeus’s ribs,
pinned his struggling breast to the hard oak.
By Pirithous’s valor Lycus fell, they said,
by Pirithous’s valor Chromis, but each gave the victor
a lesser title than Dictys and Helops did:
Helops pierced by a javelin that made his temples passable,
thrown from the right it went through to the left ear;
Dictys, slipping from the two-edged peak of a mountain
while he fled in terror the pressing son of Ixion,
fell headlong, and by his body’s weight broke a huge
ash-tree and impaled his guts on the snapped trunk.
In tanto fremitu cunctis sine fine iacebat sopitus venis et inexperrectus Aphidas languentique manu carchesia mixta tenebat, fusus in Ossaeae villosis pellibus ursae; quem procul ut vidit frustra nulla arma moventem, inserit amento digitos "miscenda" que dixit "cum Styge vina bibes" Phorbas; nec plura moratus in iuvenem torsit iaculum, ferrataque collo fraxinus, ut casu iacuit resupinus, adacta est. mors caruit sensu, plenoque e gutture fluxit inque toros inque ipsa niger carchesia sanguis. ’Vidi ego Petraeum conantem tollere terra glandiferam quercum; quam dum conplexibus ambit et quatit huc illuc labefactaque robora iactat, lancea Pirithoi costis inmissa Petraei pectora cum duro luctantia robore fixit. Pirithoi virtute Lycum cecidisse ferebant, Pirithoi virtute Chromin, sed uterque minorem victori titulum quam Dictys Helopsque dederunt, fixus Helops iaculo, quod pervia tempora fecit et missum a dextra laevam penetravit ad aurem, Dictys ab ancipiti delapsus acumine montis, dum fugit instantem trepidans Ixione natum, decidit in praeceps et pondere corporis ornum ingentem fregit suaque induit ilia fractae. ’
‘Aphareus comes as avenger and tries to hurl a rock
torn from the mountain; as he tries, the son of Aegeus
forestalls him with an oaken club and breaks the huge
bones of his elbow; nor has he time or care to give
the useless body further to death, and leaps onto the back
of tall Bienor, not used to carrying anyone but himself,
and set his knee against his ribs, and gripping his hair
with his left hand, holding him, broke the threatening face
and mouth and the very hard temples with his knotted club.
With the club he lays low Nedymnus and the javelin-man Lycopes,
and Hippasus, his breast shielded by his flowing beard,
and Ripheus, who towered above the topmost woods,
and Thereus, who used to catch bears in the Haemonian mountains
and carry them home alive and raging.
Demoleon bore no longer Theseus’s run of success in the fight:
he tries with a great effort to wrench an aged pine
from its solid trunk; and because he could not, he broke it off
and flung it at the foe, but Theseus drew back, far
from the coming weapon, at Pallas’s warning — so he himself
wished it believed.
torn from the mountain; as he tries, the son of Aegeus
forestalls him with an oaken club and breaks the huge
bones of his elbow; nor has he time or care to give
the useless body further to death, and leaps onto the back
of tall Bienor, not used to carrying anyone but himself,
and set his knee against his ribs, and gripping his hair
with his left hand, holding him, broke the threatening face
and mouth and the very hard temples with his knotted club.
With the club he lays low Nedymnus and the javelin-man Lycopes,
and Hippasus, his breast shielded by his flowing beard,
and Ripheus, who towered above the topmost woods,
and Thereus, who used to catch bears in the Haemonian mountains
and carry them home alive and raging.
Demoleon bore no longer Theseus’s run of success in the fight:
he tries with a great effort to wrench an aged pine
from its solid trunk; and because he could not, he broke it off
and flung it at the foe, but Theseus drew back, far
from the coming weapon, at Pallas’s warning — so he himself
wished it believed.
Ultor adest Aphareus saxumque e monte revulsum mittere conatur; conantem stipite querno occupat Aegides cubitique ingentia frangit ossa nec ulterius dare corpus inutile leto aut vacat aut curat tergoque Bienoris alti insilit, haut solito quemquam portare nisi ipsum, opposuitque genu costis prensamque sinistra caesariem retinens vultum minitantiaque ora robore nodoso praeduraque tempora fregit. robore Nedymnum iaculatoremque Lycopen sternit et inmissa protectum pectora barba Hippason et summis exstantem Riphea silvis Thereaque, Haemoniis qui prensos montibus ursos ferre domum vivos indignantesque solebat. haut tulit utentem pugnae successibus ultra Thesea Demoleon: solidoque revellere trunco annosam pinum magno molimine temptat; quod quia non potuit, praefractam misit in hostem, sed procul a telo Theseus veniente recessit Pallados admonitu: credi sic ipse volebat.
‘Yet the tree did not fall idle; for it sheared off tall Crantor’s
shoulder from his neck, and his breast and left arm:
he had been your father’s armor-bearer, Achilles,
whom Amyntor, lord of the Dolopians, beaten in war,
had given to Peleus as the pledge and surety of peace.
When Peleus saw him from afar, mangled by the foul wound,
he said, "At least receive this funeral-offering, Crantor,
most beloved of young men," and with strong arm
hurled at Demoleon an ash-spear with all his force,
which broke through the wicker of his ribs and, clinging in the bones,
quivered: he pulls the wood out by hand without the point
(that too barely follows), the point held fast in the lung;
the very pain gave strength to his spirit: sick, he rears
against the foe and tramples the man with his horse’s hooves.
The other catches the ringing blows on helmet and shield,
defends his shoulders, and holds out his proffered arms,
and through the shoulders pierces both breasts at a single stroke.
Yet before this he had given Phlegraeos and Hyles to death
from afar, Iphinous and Clanis in hand-to-hand fight;
to these is added Dorylas, who wore on his temples
a wolf-skin cap, and, serving the turn of a savage weapon,
the curved horns of oxen, much reddened with gore.
shoulder from his neck, and his breast and left arm:
he had been your father’s armor-bearer, Achilles,
whom Amyntor, lord of the Dolopians, beaten in war,
had given to Peleus as the pledge and surety of peace.
When Peleus saw him from afar, mangled by the foul wound,
he said, "At least receive this funeral-offering, Crantor,
most beloved of young men," and with strong arm
hurled at Demoleon an ash-spear with all his force,
which broke through the wicker of his ribs and, clinging in the bones,
quivered: he pulls the wood out by hand without the point
(that too barely follows), the point held fast in the lung;
the very pain gave strength to his spirit: sick, he rears
against the foe and tramples the man with his horse’s hooves.
The other catches the ringing blows on helmet and shield,
defends his shoulders, and holds out his proffered arms,
and through the shoulders pierces both breasts at a single stroke.
Yet before this he had given Phlegraeos and Hyles to death
from afar, Iphinous and Clanis in hand-to-hand fight;
to these is added Dorylas, who wore on his temples
a wolf-skin cap, and, serving the turn of a savage weapon,
the curved horns of oxen, much reddened with gore.
non tamen arbor iners cecidit; nam Crantoris alti abscidit iugulo pectusque umerumque sinistrum: armiger ille tui fuerat genitoris, Achille, quem Dolopum rector, bello superatus, Amyntor Aeacidae dederat pacis pignusque fidemque. Hunc procul ut foedo disiectum vulnere Peleus vidit, "at inferias, iuvenum gratissime Crantor, accipe" ait validoque in Demoleonta lacerto fraxineam misit contentis viribus hastam, quae laterum cratem praerupit et ossibus haerens intremuit: trahit ille manu sine cuspide lignum (id quoque vix sequitur), cuspis pulmone retenta est; ipse dolor vires animo dabat: aeger in hostem erigitur pedibusque virum proculcat equinis. excipit ille ictus galea clipeoque sonantes defensatque umeros praetentaque sustinet arma perque armos uno duo pectora perforat ictu. ante tamen leto dederat Phlegraeon et Hylen eminus, Iphinoum conlato Marte Claninque; additur his Dorylas, qui tempora tecta gerebat pelle lupi saevique vicem praestantia teli cornua vara boum multo rubefacta cruore. ’
‘To him I (for my spirit gave me strength) said, "Look,
how far your horns must yield to our iron,"
and hurled my javelin: and when he could not avoid it,
he put up his right hand before his brow that was to take the wound:
the hand was pinned to the brow; a shout goes up, but Peleus,
while he stuck there, overcome by the bitter wound
(for he stood nearer), struck him with his sword below the middle of the belly.
He sprang forward and fiercely dragged his own entrails on the ground,
and trampled them as he dragged, and burst them as he trampled,
and tangled his legs in them too, and fell with an emptied belly.
how far your horns must yield to our iron,"
and hurled my javelin: and when he could not avoid it,
he put up his right hand before his brow that was to take the wound:
the hand was pinned to the brow; a shout goes up, but Peleus,
while he stuck there, overcome by the bitter wound
(for he stood nearer), struck him with his sword below the middle of the belly.
He sprang forward and fiercely dragged his own entrails on the ground,
and trampled them as he dragged, and burst them as he trampled,
and tangled his legs in them too, and fell with an emptied belly.
Huic ego (nam viris animus dabat) "aspice," dixi "quantum concedant nostro tua cornua ferro" et iaculum torsi: quod cum vitare nequiret, opposuit dextram passurae vulnera fronti: adfixa est cum fronte manus; fit clamor, at illum haerentem Peleus et acerbo vulnere victum (stabat enim propior) mediam ferit ense sub alvum. prosiluit terraque ferox sua viscera traxit tractaque calcavit calcataque rupit et illis crura quoque inpediit et inani concidit alvo. ’
‘Nor did your beauty, Cyllarus, save you in the fight,
if indeed we grant beauty to that nature of yours.
His beard was just coming, the beard’s color golden, and golden
the hair that fell from his shoulders to mid-back.
A pleasing vigor in his face; his neck, shoulders, hands,
and breast were near the praised statues of craftsmen,
and wherever he is a man; nor under that was the horse’s form
faulty or worse than the man’s; give him neck and head,
he will be worthy of Castor: so fit for the saddle his back,
so high his chest stands with muscle. All of him blacker than black pitch,
yet his tail was white; the color of his legs too was white.
Many of his own race sought him, but one alone
carried him off — Hylonome, than whom no comelier female
dwelt among the half-beasts in the high woods;
she alone holds Cyllarus by coaxing, by loving and by
confessing love, by grooming too, as far as is possible
in those limbs — that her hair be smooth with the comb,
that now she twine herself with rosemary, now with violet
or rose, sometimes wear gleaming lilies,
and twice a day wash her face at the springs that fall
from the top of the Pagasaean wood, twice dip her body in the stream,
and drape on her shoulder or her left side no pelts
but such as suit her, and of choice wild beasts.
if indeed we grant beauty to that nature of yours.
His beard was just coming, the beard’s color golden, and golden
the hair that fell from his shoulders to mid-back.
A pleasing vigor in his face; his neck, shoulders, hands,
and breast were near the praised statues of craftsmen,
and wherever he is a man; nor under that was the horse’s form
faulty or worse than the man’s; give him neck and head,
he will be worthy of Castor: so fit for the saddle his back,
so high his chest stands with muscle. All of him blacker than black pitch,
yet his tail was white; the color of his legs too was white.
Many of his own race sought him, but one alone
carried him off — Hylonome, than whom no comelier female
dwelt among the half-beasts in the high woods;
she alone holds Cyllarus by coaxing, by loving and by
confessing love, by grooming too, as far as is possible
in those limbs — that her hair be smooth with the comb,
that now she twine herself with rosemary, now with violet
or rose, sometimes wear gleaming lilies,
and twice a day wash her face at the springs that fall
from the top of the Pagasaean wood, twice dip her body in the stream,
and drape on her shoulder or her left side no pelts
but such as suit her, and of choice wild beasts.
Nec te pugnantem tua, Cyllare, forma redemit, si modo naturae formam concedimus illi. barba erat incipiens, barbae color aureus, aurea ex umeris medios coma dependebat in armos. gratus in ore vigor; cervix umerique manusque pectoraque artificum laudatis proxima signis, et quacumque vir est; nec equi mendosa sub illo deteriorque viro facies; da colla caputque, Castore dignus erit: sic tergum sessile, sic sunt pectora celsa toris. totus pice nigrior atra, candida cauda tamen; color est quoque cruribus albus. multae illum petiere sua de gente, sed una abstulit Hylonome, qua nulla decentior inter semiferos altis habitavit femina silvis; haec et blanditiis et amando et amare fatendo Cyllaron una tenet, cultu quoque, quantus in illis esse potest membris, ut sit coma pectine levis, ut modo rore maris, modo se violave rosave inplicet, interdum candentia lilia gestet, bisque die lapsis Pagasaeae vertice silvae fontibus ora lavet, bis flumine corpora tinguat, nec nisi quae deceant electarumque ferarum aut umero aut lateri praetendat vellera laevo.
‘Their love is matched: they wander in the mountains together,
enter the caves together; and then together they had gone
into the Lapith halls, together were waging the fierce war:
a javelin (its source is unknown) came from the left
and pierced you, Cyllarus, just below where the breast
joins the neck; the heart, hurt by a small wound,
grew cold with the whole body once the weapon was drawn out.
At once Hylonome catches the dying limbs,
and laying her hand on the wound she cherishes it, and brings
her mouth to his mouth and tries to bar his fleeing breath;
when she sees him dead, with words that the clamor barred
from reaching my ears, she fell upon the weapon
that had stuck in him, and dying embraced her husband.
‘Before my eyes he stands too, who had bound six lions’
hides together with knots tied between them,
Phaeocomes, protected as man and horse at once;
who, hurling a log that two yoked oxen could scarce move,
shattered Tectaphus, Olenus’s son, from the top of his head.
enter the caves together; and then together they had gone
into the Lapith halls, together were waging the fierce war:
a javelin (its source is unknown) came from the left
and pierced you, Cyllarus, just below where the breast
joins the neck; the heart, hurt by a small wound,
grew cold with the whole body once the weapon was drawn out.
At once Hylonome catches the dying limbs,
and laying her hand on the wound she cherishes it, and brings
her mouth to his mouth and tries to bar his fleeing breath;
when she sees him dead, with words that the clamor barred
from reaching my ears, she fell upon the weapon
that had stuck in him, and dying embraced her husband.
‘Before my eyes he stands too, who had bound six lions’
hides together with knots tied between them,
Phaeocomes, protected as man and horse at once;
who, hurling a log that two yoked oxen could scarce move,
shattered Tectaphus, Olenus’s son, from the top of his head.
par amor est illis: errant in montibus una, antra simul subeunt; et tum Lapitheia tecta intrarant pariter, pariter fera bella gerebant: (auctor in incerto est) iaculum de parte sinistra venit et inferius quam collo pectora subsunt, Cyllare, te fixit; parvo cor vulnere laesum corpore cum toto post tela educta refrixit. protinus Hylonome morientes excipit artus inpositaque manu vulnus fovet oraque ad ora admovet atque animae fugienti obsistere temptat; ut videt exstinctum, dictis, quae clamor ad aures arcuit ire meas, telo, quod inhaeserat illi, incubuit moriensque suum conplexa maritum est. ’Ante oculos stat et ille meos, qui sena leonum vinxerat inter se conexis vellera nodis, Phaeocomes, hominemque simul protectus equumque; caudice qui misso, quem vix iuga bina moverent, Tectaphon Oleniden a summo vertice fregit;
‘but I, while he makes ready to strip the fallen man of his arms
(your father knows this), sank my sword into the lowest
belly of the despoiler. Cthonius too and Teleboas
lie by my blade: the first had carried a forked branch,
this one a javelin; with the javelin he wounded me:
you see the marks! the old scar still shows from it.
Then I ought to have been sent to take Pergamum;
then I could have stayed, if not overcome, the arms
of great Hector with mine! But in that time there was no Hector,
or he was a boy, and now my age fails me.
Why tell you of Periphas, victor over twin Pyraethus,
or Ampyx, who fixed in the facing brow of four-footed Echeclus
a cornel-shaft without a point?
Macareus, driving a Pelethronian crowbar into the breast,
laid low Erigdupus; and I remember the hunting-spear
buried in Cymelus’s groin, cast by Nessus’s hands.
Nor would you believe that Mopsus, Ampyx’s son, only
sang of things to come: as Mopsus hurled, the two-formed Hodites
fell and tried in vain to speak, his tongue pinned
to his chin and his chin to his throat.
(your father knows this), sank my sword into the lowest
belly of the despoiler. Cthonius too and Teleboas
lie by my blade: the first had carried a forked branch,
this one a javelin; with the javelin he wounded me:
you see the marks! the old scar still shows from it.
Then I ought to have been sent to take Pergamum;
then I could have stayed, if not overcome, the arms
of great Hector with mine! But in that time there was no Hector,
or he was a boy, and now my age fails me.
Why tell you of Periphas, victor over twin Pyraethus,
or Ampyx, who fixed in the facing brow of four-footed Echeclus
a cornel-shaft without a point?
Macareus, driving a Pelethronian crowbar into the breast,
laid low Erigdupus; and I remember the hunting-spear
buried in Cymelus’s groin, cast by Nessus’s hands.
Nor would you believe that Mopsus, Ampyx’s son, only
sang of things to come: as Mopsus hurled, the two-formed Hodites
fell and tried in vain to speak, his tongue pinned
to his chin and his chin to his throat.
ast ego, dum parat hic armis nudare iacentem, (scit tuus hoc genitor) gladium spoliantis in ima ilia demisi. Cthonius quoque Teleboasque ense iacent nostro: ramum prior ille bifurcum gesserat, hic iaculum; iaculo mihi vulnera fecit: signa vides! adparet adhuc vetus inde cicatrix. tunc ego debueram capienda ad Pergama mitti; tum poteram magni, si non superare, morari Hectoris arma meis! illo sed tempore nullus, aut puer, Hector erat, nunc me mea deficit aetas. quid tibi victorem gemini Periphanta Pyraethi, Ampyca quid referam, qui quadrupedantis Echecli fixit in adverso cornum sine cuspide vultu? vecte Pelethronium Macareus in pectus adacto stravit Erigdupum; memini et venabula condi inguine Nesseis manibus coniecta Cymeli. nec tu credideris tantum cecinisse futura Ampyciden Mopsum: Mopso iaculante biformis occubuit frustraque loqui temptavit Hodites ad mentum lingua mentoque ad guttura fixo. ’
‘Five had Caeneus given to death — Styphelus and Bromus
and Antimachus and Elymus and axe-bearing Pyracmon:
the wounds I do not remember, the number and the names I marked.
Out rushes Latreus, armed with the spoils of Emathian Halesus,
whom he had killed, huge in limb and body:
his age was between young man and old,
his force a young man’s, gray hairs flecking his temples.
Conspicuous with shield and helmet and Macedonian pike,
and turning his face toward both ranks,
he shook his arms and rode in a sure circle
and poured out all these words, spirited, into the empty air:
"And shall I bear with you too, Caenis? For to me you are always
a woman, to me you will be Caenis. Does your birth-origin
not remind you, does it not enter your mind by what deed
and at what price you got the false semblance of a man?
Consider what you were born, or what you suffered, and go,
take up the distaff with the wool-baskets and twist the threads
with your thumb; leave wars to men."
and Antimachus and Elymus and axe-bearing Pyracmon:
the wounds I do not remember, the number and the names I marked.
Out rushes Latreus, armed with the spoils of Emathian Halesus,
whom he had killed, huge in limb and body:
his age was between young man and old,
his force a young man’s, gray hairs flecking his temples.
Conspicuous with shield and helmet and Macedonian pike,
and turning his face toward both ranks,
he shook his arms and rode in a sure circle
and poured out all these words, spirited, into the empty air:
"And shall I bear with you too, Caenis? For to me you are always
a woman, to me you will be Caenis. Does your birth-origin
not remind you, does it not enter your mind by what deed
and at what price you got the false semblance of a man?
Consider what you were born, or what you suffered, and go,
take up the distaff with the wool-baskets and twist the threads
with your thumb; leave wars to men."
Quinque neci Caeneus dederat Styphelumque Bromumque Antimachumque Elymumque securiferumque Pyracmon: vulnera non memini, numerum nomenque notavi. provolat Emathii spoliis armatus Halesi, quem dederat leto, membris et corpore Latreus maximus: huic aetas inter iuvenemque senemque, vis iuvenalis erat, variabant tempora cani. qui clipeo galeaque Macedoniaque sarisa conspicuus faciemque obversus in agmen utrumque armaque concussit certumque equitavit in orbem verbaque tot fudit vacuas animosus in auras: "et te, Caeni, feram? nam tu mihi femina semper, tu mihi Caenis eris. nec te natalis origo commonuit, mentemque subit, quo praemia facto quaque viri falsam speciem mercede pararis? quid sis nata, vide, vel quid sis passa, columque, i, cape cum calathis et stamina pollice torque; bella relinque viris."
‘As he flung out such taunts, Caeneus with a hurled spear
tore open his stretched-out flank as he ran,
where man was joined to horse. He rages with pain
and strikes the bare face of the Phyllean youth with his pike:
it springs back no otherwise than hail from a roof’s ridge,
or as if one were to strike a hollow drum with a little stone.
He attacks at close range and struggles to bury his sword
in the hard flank: there are no passable places for the sword.
"Yet you’ll not escape! You’ll be cut in the throat by the middle of my blade,
since its point is blunt," he said, and slants the sword
into his side and clasps the long flank with his right hand.
The blow makes a sound as when marble is struck,
and the shattered blade leapt apart on the struck skin.
When Caeneus had offered his unhurt limbs enough to the marveling man,
"Now come," said Caeneus, "let us try your body
with our iron!" and to the hilt he sank into his shoulder
the death-dealing sword and worked his hand, unseen, in the entrails,
and turned it, and made a wound within the wound.
Behold, the two-formed ones rush in with vast mad clamor
and all hurl and bring their weapons against this one man.
The weapons fall blunted: Caeneus, Elatus’s son, stays
unpierced and unbloodied by every stroke.
tore open his stretched-out flank as he ran,
where man was joined to horse. He rages with pain
and strikes the bare face of the Phyllean youth with his pike:
it springs back no otherwise than hail from a roof’s ridge,
or as if one were to strike a hollow drum with a little stone.
He attacks at close range and struggles to bury his sword
in the hard flank: there are no passable places for the sword.
"Yet you’ll not escape! You’ll be cut in the throat by the middle of my blade,
since its point is blunt," he said, and slants the sword
into his side and clasps the long flank with his right hand.
The blow makes a sound as when marble is struck,
and the shattered blade leapt apart on the struck skin.
When Caeneus had offered his unhurt limbs enough to the marveling man,
"Now come," said Caeneus, "let us try your body
with our iron!" and to the hilt he sank into his shoulder
the death-dealing sword and worked his hand, unseen, in the entrails,
and turned it, and made a wound within the wound.
Behold, the two-formed ones rush in with vast mad clamor
and all hurl and bring their weapons against this one man.
The weapons fall blunted: Caeneus, Elatus’s son, stays
unpierced and unbloodied by every stroke.
iactanti talia Caeneus extentum cursu missa latus eruit hasta, qua vir equo commissus erat. furit ille dolore nudaque Phyllei iuvenis ferit ora sarisa: non secus haec resilit, quam tecti a culmine grando, aut siquis parvo feriat cava tympana saxo. comminus adgreditur laterique recondere duro luctatur gladium: gladio loca pervia non sunt. "haut tamen effugies! medio iugulaberis ense, quandoquidem mucro est hebes" inquit et in latus ensem obliquat longaque amplectitur ilia dextra. plaga facit gemitus ut corpore marmoris icto, fractaque dissiluit percusso lammina callo. ut satis inlaesos miranti praebuit artus, "nunc age" ait Caeneus "nostro tua corpora ferro temptemus!" capuloque tenus demisit in armos ensem fatiferum caecamque in viscera movit versavitque manum vulnusque in vulnere fecit. ecce ruunt vasto rabidi clamore bimembres telaque in hunc omnes unum mittuntque feruntque. tela retusa cadunt: manet inperfossus ab omni inque cruentatus Caeneus Elateius ictu.
‘The strange thing had struck them dumb. "Ah, the huge disgrace!"
Monychus cries. "A whole people, we are beaten by one,
and that scarcely a man; though he is a man, and we, by our slack deeds,
are what he once was. What good are our enormous limbs?
What good our twin strength, and that our double nature
has joined in us the two strongest of living things?
I do not think a goddess our mother, nor Ixion
our father — Ixion, who was so great that he conceived a hope
of lofty Juno: we are beaten by a half-male foe!
Roll rocks and beams and whole mountains upon him,
and crush out his stubborn life with hurled forests!
Let a mass press his throat, and weight will stand for a wound."
He spoke, and chancing on a trunk thrown down by the mad force
of the south wind, he flung it at his strong foe
and was an example, and in a little while bare of trees
was Othrys, and Pelion had no shadows.
Buried under the monstrous heap, beneath the weight
Caeneus seethes and bears the piled-up oaks on his hard
shoulders; but when the burden grew above his face and head
and his breath has no air to draw,
he faints at times, now tries in vain to lift himself
above the open air and to roll off the cast-on woods,
and at times he stirs them, as — look — when
Monychus cries. "A whole people, we are beaten by one,
and that scarcely a man; though he is a man, and we, by our slack deeds,
are what he once was. What good are our enormous limbs?
What good our twin strength, and that our double nature
has joined in us the two strongest of living things?
I do not think a goddess our mother, nor Ixion
our father — Ixion, who was so great that he conceived a hope
of lofty Juno: we are beaten by a half-male foe!
Roll rocks and beams and whole mountains upon him,
and crush out his stubborn life with hurled forests!
Let a mass press his throat, and weight will stand for a wound."
He spoke, and chancing on a trunk thrown down by the mad force
of the south wind, he flung it at his strong foe
and was an example, and in a little while bare of trees
was Othrys, and Pelion had no shadows.
Buried under the monstrous heap, beneath the weight
Caeneus seethes and bears the piled-up oaks on his hard
shoulders; but when the burden grew above his face and head
and his breath has no air to draw,
he faints at times, now tries in vain to lift himself
above the open air and to roll off the cast-on woods,
and at times he stirs them, as — look — when
fecerat attonitos nova res. "heu dedecus ingens!" Monychus exclamat. "populus superamur ab uno vixque viro; quamquam ille vir est, nos segnibus actis, quod fuit ille, sumus. quid membra inmania prosunt? quid geminae vires et quod fortissima rerum in nobis natura duplex animalia iunxit? nec nos matre dea, nec nos Ixione natos esse reor, qui tantus erat, Iunonis ut altae spem caperet: nos semimari superamur ab hoste! saxa trabesque super totosque involvite montes vivacemque animam missis elidite silvis! massa premat fauces, et erit pro vulnere pondus." dixit et insanis deiectam viribus austri forte trabem nactus validum coniecit in hostem exemplumque fuit, parvoque in tempore nudus arboris Othrys erat, nec habebat Pelion umbras. obrutus inmani cumulo sub pondere Caeneus aestuat arboreo congestaque robora duris fert umeris, sed enim postquam super ora caputque crevit onus neque habet, quas ducat, spiritus auras, deficit interdum, modo se super aera frustra tollere conatur iactasque evolvere silvas interdumque movet, veluti, quam cernimus, ecce,
‘steep Ide is shaken by earth’s tremors.
The outcome is in doubt: some held that his body, thrust down
beneath empty Tartarus, was buried by the mass of woods;
the son of Ampyx denied it, and from the middle of the mound
saw a bird with tawny wings go out into the clear air —
one I saw then for the first and then for the last time.
When Mopsus saw it surveying his camp in gentle flight
and sounding around with a great clangor,
and followed it with his eyes and heart alike,
"O hail," he said, "glory of the Lapith race,
once a mighty man, but now a single bird, Caeneus!"
The thing was believed on its teller’s word: grief added anger,
and we bore it hard that one had been crushed by so many foes;
nor did we cease to ply our grief with the sword
until part was given to death, and flight and night took the rest away.’
The outcome is in doubt: some held that his body, thrust down
beneath empty Tartarus, was buried by the mass of woods;
the son of Ampyx denied it, and from the middle of the mound
saw a bird with tawny wings go out into the clear air —
one I saw then for the first and then for the last time.
When Mopsus saw it surveying his camp in gentle flight
and sounding around with a great clangor,
and followed it with his eyes and heart alike,
"O hail," he said, "glory of the Lapith race,
once a mighty man, but now a single bird, Caeneus!"
The thing was believed on its teller’s word: grief added anger,
and we bore it hard that one had been crushed by so many foes;
nor did we cease to ply our grief with the sword
until part was given to death, and flight and night took the rest away.’
ardua si terrae quatiatur motibus Ide. exitus in dubio est: alii sub inania corpus Tartara detrusum silvarum mole ferebant; abnuit Ampycides medioque ex aggere fulvis vidit avem pennis liquidas exire sub auras, quae mihi tum primum, tunc est conspecta supremum. hanc ubi lustrantem leni sua castra volatu Mopsus et ingenti circum clangore sonantem adspexit pariterque animis oculisque secutus "o salve," dixit "Lapithaeae gloria gentis, maxime vir quondam, sed nunc avis unica, Caencu!" credita res auctore suo est: dolor addidit iram, oppressumque aegre tulimus tot ab hostibus unum; nec prius abstitimus ferro exercere dolorem, quam data pars leto, partem fuga noxque removit.’
At this telling by the Pylian of the battles between the Lapiths
and the half-human Centaurs, Tlepolemus did not endure
with silent lips the slight to the bypassed grandson of Alceus,
and said, ‘It is strange, old man, that forgetfulness
of Hercules’ glory has come over you; surely my father
used often to tell me of the cloud-born ones he had tamed.’
Sad at this, the Pylian: ‘Why do you force me to remember
my woes, and to reopen griefs scarred over by the years,
and to confess my hatred and grievances against your father?
Greater than belief, by the gods! were his deeds, and he filled
the world with his services, which I would rather were able to deny;
but we praise neither Deiphobus nor Polydamas
nor Hector himself: for who would praise an enemy?
That father of yours once leveled the Messenian walls
and destroyed undeserving cities, Elis and Pylos,
and drove sword and fire upon my household gods;
and — to be silent of the others whom he slew —
twice six we sons of Neleus were, a noble youth,
twice six fell, save me alone, by Hercules’
strength; and that the others could be conquered may be borne:
and the half-human Centaurs, Tlepolemus did not endure
with silent lips the slight to the bypassed grandson of Alceus,
and said, ‘It is strange, old man, that forgetfulness
of Hercules’ glory has come over you; surely my father
used often to tell me of the cloud-born ones he had tamed.’
Sad at this, the Pylian: ‘Why do you force me to remember
my woes, and to reopen griefs scarred over by the years,
and to confess my hatred and grievances against your father?
Greater than belief, by the gods! were his deeds, and he filled
the world with his services, which I would rather were able to deny;
but we praise neither Deiphobus nor Polydamas
nor Hector himself: for who would praise an enemy?
That father of yours once leveled the Messenian walls
and destroyed undeserving cities, Elis and Pylos,
and drove sword and fire upon my household gods;
and — to be silent of the others whom he slew —
twice six we sons of Neleus were, a noble youth,
twice six fell, save me alone, by Hercules’
strength; and that the others could be conquered may be borne:
Haec inter Lapithas et semihomines Centauros proelia Tlepolemus Pylio referente dolorem praeteriti Alcidae tacito non pertulit ore atque ait: ’Herculeae mirum est oblivia laudis acta tibi, senior; certe mihi saepe referre nubigenas domitos a se pater esse solebat.’ tristis ad haec Pylius: ’quid me meminisse malorum cogis et obductos annis rescindere luctus inque tuum genitorem odium offensasque fateri? ille quidem maiora fide, di! gessit et orbem inplevit meritis, quod mallem posse negare; sed neque Deiphobum nec Pulydamanta nec ipsum Hectora laudamus: quis enim laudaverit hostem? ille tuus genitor Messenia moenia quondam stravit et inmeritas urbes Elinque Pylonque diruit inque meos ferrum flammamque penatis inpulit, utque alios taceam, quos ille peremit, bis sex Nelidae fuimus, conspecta iuventus, bis sex Herculeis ceciderunt me minus uno viribus; atque alios vinci potuisse ferendum est:
‘but the death of Periclymenus is a marvel — to whom Neptune,
founder of Neleus’s blood, had given the power to take
what shapes he willed and to lay aside the shapes he had taken.
When he had been changed in vain into every form,
he turns into the likeness of the bird that is wont to carry
the thunderbolts in its curved feet, dearest to the king of the gods;
using the bird’s powers — wings, hooked beak,
and barbed talons — he had torn the hero’s face.
At him the Tirynthian aims his all-too-sure bow,
and as the bird bore its high limbs among the clouds
and hung there, he strikes it where the wing joins the side;
nor was the wound grave, but the sinews, broken by the wound,
fail and deny motion and the strength to fly.
It fell to the earth, its weak feathers not catching
the air, and where the arrow had lightly lodged in the wing
it was pressed by the weight of the stricken body
and driven through the top of the side to the left of the throat.
Now do I seem bound to owe praises to the deeds
of your Hercules, fairest leader of the Rhodian fleet?
Yet I avenge my brothers no further than by silence
about his brave deeds: between you and me the friendship is whole.’
After Neleus’s son had uttered this from his sweet mouth,
and the gift of Bacchus had been taken up again from the elder’s tale,
they rose from the couches: the rest of the night was given to sleep.
founder of Neleus’s blood, had given the power to take
what shapes he willed and to lay aside the shapes he had taken.
When he had been changed in vain into every form,
he turns into the likeness of the bird that is wont to carry
the thunderbolts in its curved feet, dearest to the king of the gods;
using the bird’s powers — wings, hooked beak,
and barbed talons — he had torn the hero’s face.
At him the Tirynthian aims his all-too-sure bow,
and as the bird bore its high limbs among the clouds
and hung there, he strikes it where the wing joins the side;
nor was the wound grave, but the sinews, broken by the wound,
fail and deny motion and the strength to fly.
It fell to the earth, its weak feathers not catching
the air, and where the arrow had lightly lodged in the wing
it was pressed by the weight of the stricken body
and driven through the top of the side to the left of the throat.
Now do I seem bound to owe praises to the deeds
of your Hercules, fairest leader of the Rhodian fleet?
Yet I avenge my brothers no further than by silence
about his brave deeds: between you and me the friendship is whole.’
After Neleus’s son had uttered this from his sweet mouth,
and the gift of Bacchus had been taken up again from the elder’s tale,
they rose from the couches: the rest of the night was given to sleep.
mira Periclymeni mors est, cui posse figuras sumere, quas vellet, rursusque reponere sumptas Neptunus dederat, Nelei sanguinis auctor. hic ubi nequiquam est formas variatus in omnes, vertitur in faciem volucris, quae fulmina curvis ferre solet pedibus divum gratissima regi; viribus usus avis pennis rostroque redunco hamatisque viri laniaverat unguibus ora. tendit in hanc nimium certos Tirynthius arcus atque inter nubes sublimia membra ferentem pendentemque ferit, lateri qua iungitur ala; nec grave vulnus erat, sed rupti vulnere nervi deficiunt motumque negant viresque volandi. decidit in terram, non concipientibus auras infirmis pennis, et qua levis haeserat alae corporis adflicti pressa est gravitate sagitta perque latus summum iugulo est exacta sinistro. nunc videor debere tui praeconia rebus Herculis, o Rhodiae ductor pulcherrime classis? nec tamen ulterius, quam fortia facta silendo ulciscor fratres: solida est mihi gratia tecum.’ Haec postquam dulci Neleius edidit ore, a sermone senis repetito munere Bacchi surrexere toris: nox est data cetera somno.
But the god who tempers the sea-waves with his trident
grieves with a father’s heart for his son’s body turned
into the swan, and, hating savage Achilles,
nurses a wrath that remembers more than a kinsman’s should.
And now, with the war drawn out through almost two five-year spans,
he addresses the unshorn Sminthian with such words:
‘O by far the most welcome to me of my brother’s sons,
you who with me raised the walls of Troy to no purpose,
do you not groan at all, when you look on these towers
just now about to fall? or do you not grieve at all the so many
thousands slain in defending the walls? or — not to run through them all —
does the shade of Hector not rise before you, dragged round his own Pergamum?
Yet that fierce one, bloodier than the war itself,
still lives — Achilles, the ravager of our work.
Let him offer himself to me: I’ll make him feel
what I can do with the triple point; but since to meet
the foe at close quarters is not granted, destroy him
unawares with a hidden arrow!’
grieves with a father’s heart for his son’s body turned
into the swan, and, hating savage Achilles,
nurses a wrath that remembers more than a kinsman’s should.
And now, with the war drawn out through almost two five-year spans,
he addresses the unshorn Sminthian with such words:
‘O by far the most welcome to me of my brother’s sons,
you who with me raised the walls of Troy to no purpose,
do you not groan at all, when you look on these towers
just now about to fall? or do you not grieve at all the so many
thousands slain in defending the walls? or — not to run through them all —
does the shade of Hector not rise before you, dragged round his own Pergamum?
Yet that fierce one, bloodier than the war itself,
still lives — Achilles, the ravager of our work.
Let him offer himself to me: I’ll make him feel
what I can do with the triple point; but since to meet
the foe at close quarters is not granted, destroy him
unawares with a hidden arrow!’
At deus, aequoreas qui cuspide temperat undas, in volucrem corpus nati Phaethontida versum mente dolet patria saevumque perosus Achillem exercet memores plus quam civiliter iras. iamque fere tracto duo per quinquennia bello talibus intonsum conpellat Sminthea dictis: ’o mihi de fratris longe gratissime natis, inrita qui mecum posuisti moenia Troiae, ecquid, ubi has iamiam casuras adspicis arces, ingemis? aut ecquid tot defendentia muros milia caesa doles? ecquid, ne persequar omnes, Hectoris umbra subit circum sua Pergama tracti? cum tamen ille ferox belloque cruentior ipso vivit adhuc, operis nostri populator, Achilles. det mihi se: faxo, triplici quid cuspide possim, sentiat; at quoniam concurrere comminus hosti non datur, occulta necopinum perde sagitta!’
The Delian assented, and indulging at once his uncle’s wish
and his own, veiled in a cloud he came into the Trojan
ranks, and amid the slaughter of men sees Paris
scattering, here and there, his idle darts among the nameless
Achaeans, and revealing himself the god, says, ‘Why waste
your arrows on the blood of the rabble? If you have any care
for your own, turn against Achilles and avenge your slaughtered brothers!’
He spoke, and pointing out the son of Peleus laying low
Trojan bodies with his iron, he turned the bow upon him
and guided the sure darts with his death-dealing hand.
Whatever could make old Priam rejoice after Hector,
this was it; so you, then, Achilles, victor over so many,
were conquered by the cowardly ravisher of a Greek man’s wife!
But if you had to fall by warfare with a woman’s part in it,
you would rather have fallen by the Thermodontian axe.
and his own, veiled in a cloud he came into the Trojan
ranks, and amid the slaughter of men sees Paris
scattering, here and there, his idle darts among the nameless
Achaeans, and revealing himself the god, says, ‘Why waste
your arrows on the blood of the rabble? If you have any care
for your own, turn against Achilles and avenge your slaughtered brothers!’
He spoke, and pointing out the son of Peleus laying low
Trojan bodies with his iron, he turned the bow upon him
and guided the sure darts with his death-dealing hand.
Whatever could make old Priam rejoice after Hector,
this was it; so you, then, Achilles, victor over so many,
were conquered by the cowardly ravisher of a Greek man’s wife!
But if you had to fall by warfare with a woman’s part in it,
you would rather have fallen by the Thermodontian axe.
adnuit atque animo pariter patruique suoque Delius indulgens nebula velatus in agmen pervenit Iliacum mediaque in caede virorum rara per ignotos spargentem cernit Achivos tela Parin fassusque deum, ’quid spicula perdis sanguine plebis?’ ait. ’siqua est tibi cura tuorum, vertere in Aeaciden caesosque ulciscere fratres!’ dixit et ostendens sternentem Troica ferro corpora Peliden, arcus obvertit in illum certaque letifera derexit spicula dextra. quod Priamus gaudere senex post Hectora posset, hoc fuit; ille igitur tantorum victor, Achille, victus es a timido Graiae raptore maritae! at si femineo fuerat tibi Marte cadendum, Thermodontiaca malles cecidisse bipenni.
Now that terror of the Phrygians, the glory and shield
of the Pelasgian name, Achilles, the head unconquerable in war,
had burned: the same god had armed him and the same had cremated him;
now he is ash, and of Achilles so great there remains
some little nothing that hardly fills an urn,
but his glory lives, to fill the whole world.
That measure answers to the man, and in it the son of Peleus
is equal to himself, and feels not empty Tartarus.
His very shield, too — that you might know whose it had been —
stirs up war, and over his arms arms are taken up.
Tydeus’s son does not dare to claim them, nor Ajax son of Oileus,
nor the lesser Atrides, nor the one greater in war and years,
nor the others: only in the sons of Telamon and Laertes
was there confidence to claim so great a renown.
The son of Tantalus put the burden and the odium from himself
and bade the Argive leaders sit down in the midst of the camp,
and shifted the judgment of the dispute to them all.
of the Pelasgian name, Achilles, the head unconquerable in war,
had burned: the same god had armed him and the same had cremated him;
now he is ash, and of Achilles so great there remains
some little nothing that hardly fills an urn,
but his glory lives, to fill the whole world.
That measure answers to the man, and in it the son of Peleus
is equal to himself, and feels not empty Tartarus.
His very shield, too — that you might know whose it had been —
stirs up war, and over his arms arms are taken up.
Tydeus’s son does not dare to claim them, nor Ajax son of Oileus,
nor the lesser Atrides, nor the one greater in war and years,
nor the others: only in the sons of Telamon and Laertes
was there confidence to claim so great a renown.
The son of Tantalus put the burden and the odium from himself
and bade the Argive leaders sit down in the midst of the camp,
and shifted the judgment of the dispute to them all.
Iam timor ille Phrygum, decus et tutela Pelasgi nominis, Aeacides, caput insuperabile bello, arserat: armarat deus idem idemque cremarat; iam cinis est, et de tam magno restat Achille nescio quid parvum, quod non bene conpleat urnam, at vivit totum quae gloria conpleat orbem. haec illi mensura viro respondet, et hac est par sibi Pelides nec inania Tartara sentit. ipse etiam, ut, cuius fuerit, cognoscere posses, bella movet clipeus, deque armis arma feruntur. non ea Tydides, non audet Oileos Aiax, non minor Atrides, non bello maior et aevo poscere, non alii: solis Telamone creatis Laertaque fuit tantae fiducia laudis. a se Tantalides onus invidiamque removit Argolicosque duces mediis considere castris iussit et arbitrium litis traiecit in omnes.
The leaders sat, and with the common crowd standing round in a ring,
up rose before them the lord of the sevenfold shield, Ajax,
and, impatient as he was in his anger, he looked back grimly
at the Sigeian shore and the fleet drawn up on the shore,
and stretching out his hands, ‘We plead our cause, by Jupiter,’
he cried, ‘before the ships — and Ulysses is matched against me!
Yet he did not hesitate to give way before Hector’s flames,
which I withstood, which I drove back from this very fleet.
Safer, then, to contend with counterfeit words
than to fight with the hand — but speaking comes no more readily
to me than doing does to him: as much as I am worth
in fierce battle and in the line, so much is he worth in talk.
Yet I do not think my deeds need recounting to you,
Pelasgians: for you have seen them. Let Ulysses tell his own,
which he does without a witness, of which night alone is privy.
A great prize is sought, I grant; but the rival takes its honor:
for Ajax it is no proud thing to have won it, however vast,
since Ulysses too has hoped for it; he has already carried off
the reward of this attempt — that, when he is beaten,
he will be said to have contended with me.
up rose before them the lord of the sevenfold shield, Ajax,
and, impatient as he was in his anger, he looked back grimly
at the Sigeian shore and the fleet drawn up on the shore,
and stretching out his hands, ‘We plead our cause, by Jupiter,’
he cried, ‘before the ships — and Ulysses is matched against me!
Yet he did not hesitate to give way before Hector’s flames,
which I withstood, which I drove back from this very fleet.
Safer, then, to contend with counterfeit words
than to fight with the hand — but speaking comes no more readily
to me than doing does to him: as much as I am worth
in fierce battle and in the line, so much is he worth in talk.
Yet I do not think my deeds need recounting to you,
Pelasgians: for you have seen them. Let Ulysses tell his own,
which he does without a witness, of which night alone is privy.
A great prize is sought, I grant; but the rival takes its honor:
for Ajax it is no proud thing to have won it, however vast,
since Ulysses too has hoped for it; he has already carried off
the reward of this attempt — that, when he is beaten,
he will be said to have contended with me.
Consedere duces et vulgi stante corona surgit ad hos clipei dominus septemplicis Aiax, utque erat inpatiens irae, Sigeia torvo litora respexit classemque in litore vultu intendensque manus ’agimus, pro Iuppiter!’ inquit ’ante rates causam, et mecum confertur Ulixes! at non Hectoreis dubitavit cedere flammis, quas ego sustinui, quas hac a classe fugavi. tutius est igitur fictis contendere verbis, quam pugnare manu, sed nec mihi dicere promptum, nec facere est isti: quantumque ego Marte feroci inque acie valeo, tantum valet iste loquendo. nec memoranda tamen vobis mea facta, Pelasgi, esse reor: vidistis enim; sua narret Ulixes, quae sine teste gerit, quorum nox conscia sola est! praemia magna peti fateor; sed demit honorem aemulus: Aiaci non est tenuisse superbum, sit licet hoc ingens, quicquid speravit Ulixes; iste tulit pretium iam nunc temptaminis huius, quod, cum victus erit, mecum certasse feretur.
And I, even if the courage in me were in doubt,
would be strong in birth: the son of Telamon,
who took the Trojan walls under valiant Hercules
and in the ship of Pagasae entered the Colchian shore;
his father is Aeacus, who renders justice to the silent dead
there, where the heavy stone bears down on Sisyphus, Aeolus’s son;
Aeacus the most high Jupiter acknowledges, and confesses him
his own offspring: so Ajax is third from Jove.
Yet let not this lineage profit my cause, Achaeans,
if it is not shared by me with great Achilles:
he was my cousin — a cousin’s arms I seek! Why do you,
sprung from Sisyphus’s blood, in theft and fraud his very likeness,
graft the name of an alien house onto the line of Aeacus?
Is it because I came to arms first, and under no informer,
that arms must be denied me — and he will seem the better man,
who took them up last and shirked his service
by a feigned madness, until one cleverer than he,
though to his own hurt, the son of Nauplius, unraveled
the pretenses of his cowardly heart and dragged him to the arms he had shunned?
Is he to take the best, because he refused to take any —
and are we to go unhonored, robbed of our cousin’s gifts,
because we offered ourselves to the first dangers?
would be strong in birth: the son of Telamon,
who took the Trojan walls under valiant Hercules
and in the ship of Pagasae entered the Colchian shore;
his father is Aeacus, who renders justice to the silent dead
there, where the heavy stone bears down on Sisyphus, Aeolus’s son;
Aeacus the most high Jupiter acknowledges, and confesses him
his own offspring: so Ajax is third from Jove.
Yet let not this lineage profit my cause, Achaeans,
if it is not shared by me with great Achilles:
he was my cousin — a cousin’s arms I seek! Why do you,
sprung from Sisyphus’s blood, in theft and fraud his very likeness,
graft the name of an alien house onto the line of Aeacus?
Is it because I came to arms first, and under no informer,
that arms must be denied me — and he will seem the better man,
who took them up last and shirked his service
by a feigned madness, until one cleverer than he,
though to his own hurt, the son of Nauplius, unraveled
the pretenses of his cowardly heart and dragged him to the arms he had shunned?
Is he to take the best, because he refused to take any —
and are we to go unhonored, robbed of our cousin’s gifts,
because we offered ourselves to the first dangers?
’Atque ego, si virtus in me dubitabilis esset, nobilitate potens essem, Telamone creatus, moenia qui forti Troiana sub Hercule cepit litoraque intravit Pagasaea Colcha carina; Aeacus huic pater est, qui iura silentibus illic reddit, ubi Aeoliden saxum grave Sisyphon urget; Aeacon agnoscit summus prolemque fatetur Iuppiter esse suam: sic a Iove tertius Aiax. nec tamen haec series in causam prosit, Achivi, si mihi cum magno non est communis Achille: frater erat, fraterna peto! quid sanguine cretus Sisyphio furtisque et fraude simillimus illi inseris Aeacidis alienae nomina gentis? ’An quod in arma prior nulloque sub indice veni, arma neganda mihi, potiorque videbitur ille, ultima qui cepit detractavitque furore militiam ficto, donec sollertior isto sed sibi inutilior timidi commenta retexit Naupliades animi vitataque traxit ad arma? optima num sumat, quia sumere noluit ulla:
And would that the madness had been real, or at least believed,
and that this man had never come, our comrade, to the Phrygian towers,
this prompter of crimes! Then Lemnos would not hold you,
son of Poeas, marooned — to our shame!
You who now, as they tell, hidden in woodland caves,
move the very rocks with your groaning, and call down on Laertes’s son
what he has earned — and what, if there are gods, you do not call down in vain.
And now that man, sworn like us to these same arms —
alas, one of our own leaders — by whose succession the arrows
of Hercules are wielded, broken by disease and hunger,
is clothed and fed by birds, and in hunting fowl
spends the shafts that are owed to the fate of Troy.
Yet he lives, at least, because he did not go with Ulysses.
Unhappy Palamedes too would have wished to be left behind —
the man whom this fellow, too mindful of his ill-proved madness,
framed for betraying the Danaan cause, and proved the trumped-up
charge, and showed the gold he had himself first buried.
So by exile or by death he has stripped the Achaeans of their strength:
this is how Ulysses fights; this is why he must be feared!
and that this man had never come, our comrade, to the Phrygian towers,
this prompter of crimes! Then Lemnos would not hold you,
son of Poeas, marooned — to our shame!
You who now, as they tell, hidden in woodland caves,
move the very rocks with your groaning, and call down on Laertes’s son
what he has earned — and what, if there are gods, you do not call down in vain.
And now that man, sworn like us to these same arms —
alas, one of our own leaders — by whose succession the arrows
of Hercules are wielded, broken by disease and hunger,
is clothed and fed by birds, and in hunting fowl
spends the shafts that are owed to the fate of Troy.
Yet he lives, at least, because he did not go with Ulysses.
Unhappy Palamedes too would have wished to be left behind —
the man whom this fellow, too mindful of his ill-proved madness,
framed for betraying the Danaan cause, and proved the trumped-up
charge, and showed the gold he had himself first buried.
So by exile or by death he has stripped the Achaeans of their strength:
this is how Ulysses fights; this is why he must be feared!
nos inhonorati et donis patruelibus orbi, obtulimus quia nos ad prima pericula, simus? ’Atque utinam aut verus furor ille, aut creditus esset, nec comes hic Phrygias umquam venisset ad arces hortator scelerum! non te, Poeantia proles, expositum Lemnos nostro cum crimine haberet! qui nunc, ut memorant, silvestribus abditus antris saxa moves gemitu Laertiadaeque precaris, quae meruit, quae, si di sunt, non vana precaris. et nunc ille eadem nobis iuratus in arma, heu! pars una ducum, quo successore sagittae Herculis utuntur, fractus morboque fameque velaturque aliturque avibus, volucresque petendo debita Troianis exercet spicula fatis. ille tamen vivit, quia non comitavit Ulixem; mallet et infelix Palamedes esse relictus, [viveret aut certe letum sine crimine haberet] quem male convicti nimium memor iste furoris prodere rem Danaam finxit fictumque probavit crimen et ostendit, quod iam praefoderat, aurum.
Though in eloquence he may outdo even faithful Nestor,
he will never bring me to believe that abandoning Nestor
was no crime — Nestor, who, when he begged Ulysses for help,
slowed by his horse’s wound and weary with an old man’s years,
was betrayed by his comrade. That I do not invent these charges
Tydeus’s son knows well, who, calling him often by name,
caught at him and reproached his trembling friend for his flight.
The gods above look on mortal affairs with just eyes!
See — he needs help, he who gave none, and as he abandoned others,
so should he have been abandoned: he had set the rule himself.
He shouts for his comrades: I come, and see him shaking,
pale with fear and trembling at the death to come;
I set the bulk of my shield against them and covered him where he lay
and saved his cowardly life (small praise in that).
If you persist in contending, let us go back to that spot:
bring back the enemy and your wound and your usual terror,
hide behind my shield, and match yourself with me beneath it!
But once I had snatched him up — the man whose wounds had left him
no strength to stand — slowed by no wound, off he ran.
he will never bring me to believe that abandoning Nestor
was no crime — Nestor, who, when he begged Ulysses for help,
slowed by his horse’s wound and weary with an old man’s years,
was betrayed by his comrade. That I do not invent these charges
Tydeus’s son knows well, who, calling him often by name,
caught at him and reproached his trembling friend for his flight.
The gods above look on mortal affairs with just eyes!
See — he needs help, he who gave none, and as he abandoned others,
so should he have been abandoned: he had set the rule himself.
He shouts for his comrades: I come, and see him shaking,
pale with fear and trembling at the death to come;
I set the bulk of my shield against them and covered him where he lay
and saved his cowardly life (small praise in that).
If you persist in contending, let us go back to that spot:
bring back the enemy and your wound and your usual terror,
hide behind my shield, and match yourself with me beneath it!
But once I had snatched him up — the man whose wounds had left him
no strength to stand — slowed by no wound, off he ran.
ergo aut exilio vires subduxit Achivis, aut nece: sic pugnat, sic est metuendus Ulixes! ’Qui licet eloquio fidum quoque Nestora vincat, haut tamen efficiet, desertum ut Nestora crimen esse rear nullum; qui cum inploraret Ulixem vulnere tardus equi fessusque senilibus annis, proditus a socio est; non haec mihi crimina fingi scit bene Tydides, qui nomine saepe vocatum corripuit trepidoque fugam exprobravit amico. aspiciunt oculis superi mortalia iustis! en eget auxilio, qui non tulit, utque reliquit, sic linquendus erat: legem sibi dixerat ipse. conclamat socios: adsum videoque trementem pallentemque metu et trepidantem morte futura; opposui molem clipei texique iacentem servavique animam (minimum est hoc laudis) inertem. si perstas certare, locum redeamus in illum: redde hostem vulnusque tuum solitumque timorem post clipeumque late et mecum contende sub illo! at postquam eripui, cui standi vulnera vires
Hector comes on, and brings the gods with him into the fight,
and where he charges, not you alone are terrified, Ulysses,
but brave men too: so much dread does he drag in his wake.
Him, as he exulted in the success of his bloody slaughter,
I felled from afar, flat on his back, with a huge weight of stone;
him, when he called for someone to meet him, I alone
withstood. You prayed for my lot, Achaeans,
and your prayers prevailed. If you ask the outcome
of that fight, I was not overcome by him.
Look — the Trojans bring sword and fire and Jove himself
against the Danaan fleet: where now is eloquent Ulysses?
It was I who shielded a thousand sterns with my own breast,
the hope of your return: give me arms for so many ships.
and where he charges, not you alone are terrified, Ulysses,
but brave men too: so much dread does he drag in his wake.
Him, as he exulted in the success of his bloody slaughter,
I felled from afar, flat on his back, with a huge weight of stone;
him, when he called for someone to meet him, I alone
withstood. You prayed for my lot, Achaeans,
and your prayers prevailed. If you ask the outcome
of that fight, I was not overcome by him.
Look — the Trojans bring sword and fire and Jove himself
against the Danaan fleet: where now is eloquent Ulysses?
It was I who shielded a thousand sterns with my own breast,
the hope of your return: give me arms for so many ships.
non dederant, nullo tardatus vulnere fugit. ’Hector adest secumque deos in proelia ducit, quaque ruit, non tu tantum terreris, Ulixe, sed fortes etiam: tantum trahit ille timoris. hunc ego sanguineae successu caedis ovantem eminus ingenti resupinum pondere fudi, hunc ego poscentem, cum quo concurreret, unus sustinui: sortemque meam vovistis, Achivi, et vestrae valuere preces. si quaeritis huius fortunam pugnae, non sum superatus ab illo. ecce ferunt Troes ferrumque ignesque Iovemque in Danaas classes: ubi nunc facundus Ulixes? nempe ego mille meo protexi pectore puppes, spem vestri reditus: date pro tot navibus arma. ’Quodsi vera licet mihi dicere, quaeritur istis
And if I may speak the truth, more honor is sought for these arms
than for me, and our glory is joined as one,
and it is Ajax the arms seek, not arms that Ajax seeks.
Let the Ithacan set against these his Rhesus, and unwarlike Dolon,
and Priam’s son Helenus taken, and Pallas’s image carried off:
nothing done by daylight, nothing with Diomedes away;
if ever you give these arms for deserts so cheap,
divide them, and let Diomedes’s share be the greater.
But what use are they to the Ithacan, who works by stealth,
always unarmed, and tricks the unwary enemy by guile?
The very gleam of the helmet, radiant with bright gold,
will betray his ambushes and reveal the man in hiding;
nor will the Dulichian head beneath Achilles’s helm
bear such a weight, nor can the Pelian spear, heavy and cumbersome,
be anything but a burden to unwarlike arms,
nor will the shield, engraved with the image of the vast world,
suit a timid left hand born for thieving:
why, you rascal, do you ask for a gift that will only cripple you,
which, if the Achaean people’s blunder grants it to you,
will give the enemy reason to strip you, not to fear you,
and flight — the one thing, you greatest of cowards, in which you beat us all —
will be slow for you, dragging such gear along?
Add that this shield of yours, so seldom carried into battle,
is unscarred; while mine, gaping with a thousand blows
from bearing weapons, must have a new successor.
Finally — what need of words? — let us be judged by deeds!
Throw the brave man’s arms into the midst of the foe:
order them fetched from there, and deck the one who brings them back.’
than for me, and our glory is joined as one,
and it is Ajax the arms seek, not arms that Ajax seeks.
Let the Ithacan set against these his Rhesus, and unwarlike Dolon,
and Priam’s son Helenus taken, and Pallas’s image carried off:
nothing done by daylight, nothing with Diomedes away;
if ever you give these arms for deserts so cheap,
divide them, and let Diomedes’s share be the greater.
But what use are they to the Ithacan, who works by stealth,
always unarmed, and tricks the unwary enemy by guile?
The very gleam of the helmet, radiant with bright gold,
will betray his ambushes and reveal the man in hiding;
nor will the Dulichian head beneath Achilles’s helm
bear such a weight, nor can the Pelian spear, heavy and cumbersome,
be anything but a burden to unwarlike arms,
nor will the shield, engraved with the image of the vast world,
suit a timid left hand born for thieving:
why, you rascal, do you ask for a gift that will only cripple you,
which, if the Achaean people’s blunder grants it to you,
will give the enemy reason to strip you, not to fear you,
and flight — the one thing, you greatest of cowards, in which you beat us all —
will be slow for you, dragging such gear along?
Add that this shield of yours, so seldom carried into battle,
is unscarred; while mine, gaping with a thousand blows
from bearing weapons, must have a new successor.
Finally — what need of words? — let us be judged by deeds!
Throw the brave man’s arms into the midst of the foe:
order them fetched from there, and deck the one who brings them back.’
quam mihi maior honos, coniunctaque gloria nostra est, atque Aiax armis, non Aiaci arma petuntur. conferat his Ithacus Rhesum inbellemque Dolona Priamidenque Helenum rapta cum Pallade captum: luce nihil gestum, nihil est Diomede remoto; si semel ista datis meritis tam vilibus arma, dividite, et pars sit maior Diomedis in illis. ’Quo tamen haec Ithaco, qui clam, qui semper inermis rem gerit et furtis incautum decipit hostem? ipse nitor galeae claro radiantis ab auro insidias prodet manifestabitque latentem; sed neque Dulichius sub Achillis casside vertex pondera tanta feret, nec non onerosa gravisque Pelias hasta potest inbellibus esse lacertis, nec clipeus vasti caelatus imagine mundi conveniet timidae nataeque ad furta sinistrae: debilitaturum quid te petis, inprobe, munus, quod tibi si populi donaverit error Achivi, cur spolieris, erit, non, cur metuaris ab hoste, et fuga, qua sola cunctos, timidissime, vincis, tarda futura tibi est gestamina tanta trahenti? adde quod iste tuus, tam raro proelia passus, integer est clipeus; nostro, qui tela ferendo mille patet plagis, novus est successor habendus. ’Denique (quid verbis opus est?) spectemur agendo!
The son of Telamon had finished, and the crowd’s murmur
followed his last words, until the Laertian hero
stood up, and lifting his eyes, that had lingered a little on the ground,
to the chiefs, opened his lips for the awaited sound,
and grace was not wanting to his eloquent words.
‘If my prayers had prevailed with yours, Pelasgians,
the heir of so great a contest would be in no doubt,
and you would have your arms, Achilles, and we would have you —
but since unjust fates have denied him to me and to you,’
(and at the same time, as if wiping weeping eyes, he passed his hand across them)
‘who better succeeds to great Achilles
than the man through whom great Achilles came to the Greeks’ rescue?
Only let it not help him that he is, as he is, seen to be dull,
nor harm me that my wit has always served you, Achaeans;
and let this eloquence of mine, if any I have,
which now speaks for its master, and has often spoken for you,
go free of envy — let no man begrudge another his own goods.
followed his last words, until the Laertian hero
stood up, and lifting his eyes, that had lingered a little on the ground,
to the chiefs, opened his lips for the awaited sound,
and grace was not wanting to his eloquent words.
‘If my prayers had prevailed with yours, Pelasgians,
the heir of so great a contest would be in no doubt,
and you would have your arms, Achilles, and we would have you —
but since unjust fates have denied him to me and to you,’
(and at the same time, as if wiping weeping eyes, he passed his hand across them)
‘who better succeeds to great Achilles
than the man through whom great Achilles came to the Greeks’ rescue?
Only let it not help him that he is, as he is, seen to be dull,
nor harm me that my wit has always served you, Achaeans;
and let this eloquence of mine, if any I have,
which now speaks for its master, and has often spoken for you,
go free of envy — let no man begrudge another his own goods.
arma viri fortis medios mittantur in hostes: inde iubete peti et referentem ornate relatis.’ Finierat Telamone satus, vulgique secutum ultima murmur erat, donec Laertius heros adstitit atque oculos paulum tellure moratos sustulit ad proceres exspectatoque resolvit ora sono, neque abest facundis gratia dictis. ’Si mea cum vestris valuissent vota, Pelasgi, non foret ambiguus tanti certaminis heres, tuque tuis armis, nos te poteremur, Achille, quem quoniam non aequa mihi vobisque negarunt fata,’ (manuque simul veluti lacrimantia tersit lumina) ’quis magno melius succedat Achilli, quam per quem magnus Danais successit Achilles? huic modo ne prosit, quod, uti est, hebes esse videtur, neve mihi noceat, quod vobis semper, Achivi, profuit ingenium, meaque haec facundia, siqua est, quae nunc pro domino, pro vobis saepe locuta est, invidia careat, bona nec sua quisque recuset. ’Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi,
For lineage and ancestors and what we ourselves did not do,
these I scarcely call our own; but since Ajax has claimed
to be Jove’s great-grandson, the founder of our blood too
is Jupiter, and we stand the same number of steps from him:
for Laertes is my father, Arcesius his, and Jupiter his,
and among these is none condemned or in exile;
and through my mother the Cyllenian adds to us
a second nobility: a god stands in each parent.
But not because I am nobler in my mother’s descent,
nor because my father is innocent of a brother’s blood,
do I seek the offered arms: weigh the case by merits,
only let it not be Ajax’s merit that Telamon and Peleus
were brothers, nor the order of blood, but let the honor of valor
be what is sought in these spoils!
Or if nearness and the first heir is the question,
there is his father Peleus, there is his son Pyrrhus:
what place for Ajax? Let these arms go to Phthia or Scyros!
And Teucer is no less Achilles’s cousin than he:
yet does he ask for them? and if he asked, would he carry them off?
So, since it is a bare contest of deeds,
I have done more, indeed, than I could readily
gather in words; yet I will be led by the order of events.
these I scarcely call our own; but since Ajax has claimed
to be Jove’s great-grandson, the founder of our blood too
is Jupiter, and we stand the same number of steps from him:
for Laertes is my father, Arcesius his, and Jupiter his,
and among these is none condemned or in exile;
and through my mother the Cyllenian adds to us
a second nobility: a god stands in each parent.
But not because I am nobler in my mother’s descent,
nor because my father is innocent of a brother’s blood,
do I seek the offered arms: weigh the case by merits,
only let it not be Ajax’s merit that Telamon and Peleus
were brothers, nor the order of blood, but let the honor of valor
be what is sought in these spoils!
Or if nearness and the first heir is the question,
there is his father Peleus, there is his son Pyrrhus:
what place for Ajax? Let these arms go to Phthia or Scyros!
And Teucer is no less Achilles’s cousin than he:
yet does he ask for them? and if he asked, would he carry them off?
So, since it is a bare contest of deeds,
I have done more, indeed, than I could readily
gather in words; yet I will be led by the order of events.
vix ea nostra voco, sed enim, quia rettulit Aiax esse Iovis pronepos, nostri quoque sanguinis auctor Iuppiter est, totidemque gradus distamus ab illo: nam mihi Laertes pater est, Arcesius illi, Iuppiter huic, neque in his quisquam damnatus et exul; est quoque per matrem Cyllenius addita nobis altera nobilitas: deus est in utroque parente. sed neque materno quod sum generosior ortu, nec mihi quod pater est fraterni sanguinis insons, proposita arma peto: meritis expendite causam, dummodo, quod fratres Telamon Peleusque fuerunt, Aiacis meritum non sit nec sanguinis ordo, sed virtutis honor spoliis quaeratur in istis! aut si proximitas primusque requiritur heres, est genitor Peleus, est Pyrrhus filius illi: quis locus Aiaci? Pthiam haec Scyrumve ferantur! nec minus est isto Teucer patruelis Achilli: num petit ille tamen? num, si petat, auferat illa? ergo, operum quoniam nudum certamen habetur, plura quidem feci, quam quae conprendere dictis
His Nereid mother, foreknowing the death to come,
disguised her son in dress, and the trick of the assumed clothing
had deceived everyone, among them Ajax:
I set arms among the women’s wares, arms that would stir a manly spirit,
and the hero had not yet thrown off the maiden’s garb
when, as he held the shield and spear,
‘Son of a goddess,’ I said, ‘Troy keeps itself, doomed to perish, for you!
why do you hesitate to overthrow mighty Troy?’
and I laid my hand on him and sent the brave man to brave deeds.
So his deeds are mine: I tamed Telephus
fighting with the spear, and healed him, beaten and begging;
that Thebes fell is mine; believe that I took Lesbos,
I Tenedos and Chryse and Cilla, Apollo’s cities,
and Scyros; think that by my right hand the Lyrnesian walls
were shaken and laid in the dust;
and, to pass over the rest, the man who could destroy
fierce Hector — I surely gave him: through me lies famous Hector low!
For the arms by which Achilles was found,
I seek these arms: I gave them while he lived; after his death I reclaim them.
disguised her son in dress, and the trick of the assumed clothing
had deceived everyone, among them Ajax:
I set arms among the women’s wares, arms that would stir a manly spirit,
and the hero had not yet thrown off the maiden’s garb
when, as he held the shield and spear,
‘Son of a goddess,’ I said, ‘Troy keeps itself, doomed to perish, for you!
why do you hesitate to overthrow mighty Troy?’
and I laid my hand on him and sent the brave man to brave deeds.
So his deeds are mine: I tamed Telephus
fighting with the spear, and healed him, beaten and begging;
that Thebes fell is mine; believe that I took Lesbos,
I Tenedos and Chryse and Cilla, Apollo’s cities,
and Scyros; think that by my right hand the Lyrnesian walls
were shaken and laid in the dust;
and, to pass over the rest, the man who could destroy
fierce Hector — I surely gave him: through me lies famous Hector low!
For the arms by which Achilles was found,
I seek these arms: I gave them while he lived; after his death I reclaim them.
in promptu mihi sit, rerum tamen ordine ducar. ’Praescia venturi genetrix Nereia leti dissimulat cultu natum, et deceperat omnes, in quibus Aiacem, sumptae fallacia vestis: arma ego femineis animum motura virilem mercibus inserui, neque adhuc proiecerat heros virgineos habitus, cum parmam hastamque tenenti "nate dea," dixi "tibi se peritura reservant Pergama! quid dubitas ingentem evertere Troiam?" iniecique manum fortemque ad fortia misi. ergo opera illius mea sunt: ego Telephon hasta pugnantem domui, victum orantemque refeci; quod Thebae cecidere, meum est; me credite Lesbon, me Tenedon Chrysenque et Cillan, Apollinis urbes, et Scyrum cepisse; mea concussa putate procubuisse solo Lyrnesia moenia dextra, utque alios taceam, qui saevum perdere posset Hectora, nempe dedi: per me iacet inclitus Hector! illis haec armis, quibus est inventus Achilles, arma peto: vivo dederam, post fata reposco.
When one man’s grief reached all the Danaans,
and a thousand keels filled Euboean Aulis,
the winds, long awaited, were either none or against the fleet,
and harsh oracles bade Agamemnon
sacrifice his guiltless daughter to savage Diana.
The father refuses, and is angry at the gods themselves,
and yet in the king the father remains; I turned the gentle nature
of the parent by words to the public good:
I — I confess it, and may Atrides forgive the confession —
held a difficult case before a biased judge.
Yet the people’s good and his brother and the weight
of the scepter granted him move him to balance glory against blood;
I am sent also to the mother, who was not to be urged but to be deceived
by craft — and had the son of Telamon gone on that errand,
our sails would even now be bereft of their winds.
I am sent too, a bold envoy, to the towers of Ilium,
and the senate-house of lofty Troy was seen and entered by me,
and it was still full of men; undaunted I pleaded
the common cause that Greece had entrusted to me,
and I accuse Paris and demand back the plunder and Helen
and move Priam, and Antenor joined with Priam;
but Paris and his brothers and those who had helped him in the rape
scarcely held back their unspeakable hands (you know this, Menelaus),
and that day was the first of our shared peril with you.
and a thousand keels filled Euboean Aulis,
the winds, long awaited, were either none or against the fleet,
and harsh oracles bade Agamemnon
sacrifice his guiltless daughter to savage Diana.
The father refuses, and is angry at the gods themselves,
and yet in the king the father remains; I turned the gentle nature
of the parent by words to the public good:
I — I confess it, and may Atrides forgive the confession —
held a difficult case before a biased judge.
Yet the people’s good and his brother and the weight
of the scepter granted him move him to balance glory against blood;
I am sent also to the mother, who was not to be urged but to be deceived
by craft — and had the son of Telamon gone on that errand,
our sails would even now be bereft of their winds.
I am sent too, a bold envoy, to the towers of Ilium,
and the senate-house of lofty Troy was seen and entered by me,
and it was still full of men; undaunted I pleaded
the common cause that Greece had entrusted to me,
and I accuse Paris and demand back the plunder and Helen
and move Priam, and Antenor joined with Priam;
but Paris and his brothers and those who had helped him in the rape
scarcely held back their unspeakable hands (you know this, Menelaus),
and that day was the first of our shared peril with you.
’Ut dolor unius Danaos pervenit ad omnes, Aulidaque Euboicam conplerunt mille carinae, exspectata diu, nulla aut contraria classi flamina erant, duraeque iubent Agamemnona sortes inmeritam saevae natam mactare Dianae. denegat hoc genitor divisque irascitur ipsis atque in rege tamen pater est, ego mite parentis ingenium verbis ad publica commoda verti: hanc equidem (fateor, fassoque ignoscat Atrides) difficilem tenui sub iniquo iudice causam. hunc tamen utilitas populi fraterque datique summa movet sceptri, laudem ut cum sanguine penset; mittor et ad matrem, quae non hortanda, sed astu decipienda fuit, quo si Telamonius isset, orba suis essent etiam nunc lintea ventis. ’Mittor et Iliacas audax orator ad arces, visaque et intrata est altae mihi curia Troiae, plenaque adhuc erat illa viris; interritus egi quam mihi mandarat communem Graecia causam accusoque Parin praedamque Helenamque reposco et moveo Priamum Priamoque Antenora iunctum; at Paris et fratres et qui rapuere sub illo, vix tenuere manus (scis hoc, Menelae) nefandas, primaque lux nostri tecum fuit illa pericli. ’Longa referre mora est, quae consilioque manuque
It is a long delay to recount what by counsel and by hand
I did to good purpose in the long span of the war.
After the first battles the enemy kept themselves
within the city walls a long while, and there was no chance
of open warfare; in the tenth year at last we fought:
what do you do meanwhile, you who know nothing but battles?
what use were you? For if you ask my deeds:
I lay ambush for the enemy, I ring the defenses with a trench,
I comfort the comrades, that they may bear the weariness of the long war
with a calm mind, I teach by what means we are to be fed
and armed, I am sent wherever need demands.
Behold, the king, deceived by a dream-image at Jove’s prompting,
bids us let go the care of the war begun;
he can defend his word by its author:
let Ajax not allow this, and demand that Troy be destroyed,
and fight, since that he can do! why does he not hold back those about to leave?
why not take up arms and give the wavering crowd something to follow?
that was not too much for a man who never speaks but big.
What of this — that he himself fled? I saw it, and was ashamed to see,
when you turned your back and were readying your shameful sails;
and at once, ‘What are you doing? what madness,’ I said,
‘drives you, comrades, to let go captured Troy,
and what do you carry home in the tenth year but disgrace?’
With such words and others, into which the grief itself had made me
eloquent, I led the men back, turned away from the fugitive fleet.
I did to good purpose in the long span of the war.
After the first battles the enemy kept themselves
within the city walls a long while, and there was no chance
of open warfare; in the tenth year at last we fought:
what do you do meanwhile, you who know nothing but battles?
what use were you? For if you ask my deeds:
I lay ambush for the enemy, I ring the defenses with a trench,
I comfort the comrades, that they may bear the weariness of the long war
with a calm mind, I teach by what means we are to be fed
and armed, I am sent wherever need demands.
Behold, the king, deceived by a dream-image at Jove’s prompting,
bids us let go the care of the war begun;
he can defend his word by its author:
let Ajax not allow this, and demand that Troy be destroyed,
and fight, since that he can do! why does he not hold back those about to leave?
why not take up arms and give the wavering crowd something to follow?
that was not too much for a man who never speaks but big.
What of this — that he himself fled? I saw it, and was ashamed to see,
when you turned your back and were readying your shameful sails;
and at once, ‘What are you doing? what madness,’ I said,
‘drives you, comrades, to let go captured Troy,
and what do you carry home in the tenth year but disgrace?’
With such words and others, into which the grief itself had made me
eloquent, I led the men back, turned away from the fugitive fleet.
utiliter feci spatiosi tempore belli. post acies primas urbis se moenibus hostes continuere diu, nec aperti copia Martis ulla fuit; decimo demum pugnavimus anno: quid facis interea, qui nil nisi proelia nosti? quis tuus usus erat? nam si mea facta requiris, hostibus insidior, fossa munimina cingo, consolor socios, ut longi taedia belli mente ferant placida, doceo, quo simus alendi armandique modo, mittor, quo postulat usus. ’Ecce Iovis monitu deceptus imagine somni rex iubet incepti curam dimittere belli; ille potest auctore suam defendere vocem: non sinat hoc Aiax delendaque Pergama poscat, quodque potest, pugnet! cur non remoratur ituros? cur non arma capit, dat, quod vaga turba sequatur? non erat hoc nimium numquam nisi magna loquenti. quid, quod et ipse fugit? vidi, puduitque videre, cum tu terga dares inhonestaque vela parares; nec mora, "quid facitis? quae vos dementia" dixi "concitat, o socii, captam dimittere Troiam, quidque domum fertis decimo, nisi dedecus, anno?" talibus atque aliis, in quae dolor ipse disertum fecerat, aversos profuga de classe reduxi. convocat Atrides socios terrore paventes:
Atrides calls together the comrades trembling with terror:
and the son of Telamon does not even now dare to open his mouth,
but Thersites had dared to assail the kings with words —
insolent words, and not unpunished, thanks to me!
I rise up and urge the trembling men against the enemy
and by my voice restore their forfeited valor.
From this time on, whatever this man can be seen to have done
bravely is mine — I who dragged him back as he turned to flee.
Finally, who of the Danaans praises you or seeks you out?
But Tydeus’s son shares his exploits with me,
approves me, and always trusts in his comrade Ulysses.
It is something, out of so many thousand Greeks, to be the one
chosen by Diomedes! Nor did the lot bid me go:
yet even so, scorning the peril of night and enemy alike,
I kill Dolon of the Phrygian race, who had dared the same as we —
but not before I forced him to betray everything
and learned what treacherous Troy was preparing.
I had learned all, and had nothing left to spy out,
and could already return with the promised glory:
not content with that, I sought the tents of Rhesus
and slew the man himself in his own camp, and his comrades,
and so, victor and master of my prayers, with a captive
I ride in the chariot that mimicked a glad triumph;
the horses whose owner had demanded them as his pay for that night —
deny me the arms, and let Ajax have been the more generous!
and the son of Telamon does not even now dare to open his mouth,
but Thersites had dared to assail the kings with words —
insolent words, and not unpunished, thanks to me!
I rise up and urge the trembling men against the enemy
and by my voice restore their forfeited valor.
From this time on, whatever this man can be seen to have done
bravely is mine — I who dragged him back as he turned to flee.
Finally, who of the Danaans praises you or seeks you out?
But Tydeus’s son shares his exploits with me,
approves me, and always trusts in his comrade Ulysses.
It is something, out of so many thousand Greeks, to be the one
chosen by Diomedes! Nor did the lot bid me go:
yet even so, scorning the peril of night and enemy alike,
I kill Dolon of the Phrygian race, who had dared the same as we —
but not before I forced him to betray everything
and learned what treacherous Troy was preparing.
I had learned all, and had nothing left to spy out,
and could already return with the promised glory:
not content with that, I sought the tents of Rhesus
and slew the man himself in his own camp, and his comrades,
and so, victor and master of my prayers, with a captive
I ride in the chariot that mimicked a glad triumph;
the horses whose owner had demanded them as his pay for that night —
deny me the arms, and let Ajax have been the more generous!
nec Telamoniades etiamnunc hiscere quicquam audet, at ausus erat reges incessere dictis Thersites etiam, per me haut inpune protervis! erigor et trepidos cives exhortor in hostem amissamque mea virtutem voce repono. tempore ab hoc, quodcumque potest fecisse videri fortiter iste, meum est, qui dantem terga retraxi. ’Denique de Danais quis te laudatve petitve? at sua Tydides mecum communicat acta, me probat et socio semper confidit Ulixe. est aliquid, de tot Graiorum milibus unum a Diomede legi! nec me sors ire iubebat: sic tamen et spreto noctisque hostisque periclo ausum eadem, quae nos, Phrygia de gente Dolona interimo, non ante tamen, quam cuncta coegi prodere et edidici, quid perfida Troia pararet. omnia cognoram nec, quod specularer, habebam et iam promissa poteram cum laude reverti: haut contentus eo petii tentoria Rhesi inque suis ipsum castris comitesque peremi atque ita captivo, victor votisque potitus, ingredior curru laetos imitante triumphos; cuius equos pretium pro nocte poposcerat hostis, arma negate mihi, fueritque benignior Aiax. quid Lycii referam Sarpedonis agmina ferro
Why should I tell of the Lycian Sarpedon’s ranks
laid waste by my sword? With much blood I felled
Coeranus son of Iphitus, and Alastor and Chromius,
Alcander and Halius and Noemon and Prytanis,
and gave to ruin, with Chersidamas, Thoon
and Charops, and Ennomon driven on by pitiless fates,
and those less famous who beneath our city’s walls
fell by my hand. I too have wounds, fellow soldiers,
beautiful for their very place; do not trust empty words —
look!’ and he tore his garment open with his hand and ‘here is a breast,’
he said, ‘always toiling in your service!
while the son of Telamon, through all these years, has spent
no drop of blood for his comrades, and keeps a body without a wound!
laid waste by my sword? With much blood I felled
Coeranus son of Iphitus, and Alastor and Chromius,
Alcander and Halius and Noemon and Prytanis,
and gave to ruin, with Chersidamas, Thoon
and Charops, and Ennomon driven on by pitiless fates,
and those less famous who beneath our city’s walls
fell by my hand. I too have wounds, fellow soldiers,
beautiful for their very place; do not trust empty words —
look!’ and he tore his garment open with his hand and ‘here is a breast,’
he said, ‘always toiling in your service!
while the son of Telamon, through all these years, has spent
no drop of blood for his comrades, and keeps a body without a wound!
devastata meo? cum multo sanguine fudi Coeranon Iphitiden et Alastoraque Chromiumque Alcandrumque Haliumque Noemonaque Prytaninque exitioque dedi cum Chersidamante Thoona et Charopem fatisque inmitibus Ennomon actum quique minus celebres nostra sub moenibus urbis procubuere manu. sunt et mihi vulnera, cives, ipso pulchra loco; nec vanis credite verbis, aspicite! en’ vestemque manu diduxit et ’haec sunt pectora semper’ ait ’vestris exercita rebus!
Yet what does it matter, if he reports that he bore arms
for the Pelasgian fleet against the Trojans and Jove?
I grant he did (for it is not my way to belittle good deeds
out of spite); but let him not seize alone what is common,
and let him render some honor to you too:
it was Actor’s grandson, safe in the guise of Achilles,
who drove the Trojans, with their would-be burner, from the ships about to burn.
He thinks, too, that he alone dared meet Hector’s weapons,
forgetting the king, the chiefs, and me —
ninth in the offering, and preferred by the gift of the lot.
Yet what, bravest one, was the outcome of your fight?
Hector went off, marred by no wound at all!
for the Pelasgian fleet against the Trojans and Jove?
I grant he did (for it is not my way to belittle good deeds
out of spite); but let him not seize alone what is common,
and let him render some honor to you too:
it was Actor’s grandson, safe in the guise of Achilles,
who drove the Trojans, with their would-be burner, from the ships about to burn.
He thinks, too, that he alone dared meet Hector’s weapons,
forgetting the king, the chiefs, and me —
ninth in the offering, and preferred by the gift of the lot.
Yet what, bravest one, was the outcome of your fight?
Hector went off, marred by no wound at all!
at nihil inpendit per tot Telamonius annos sanguinis in socios et habet sine vulnere corpus! ’Quid tamen hoc refert, si se pro classe Pelasga arma tulisse refert contra Troasque Iovemque? confiteorque, tulit (neque enim benefacta maligne detractare meum est), sed ne communia solus occupet atque aliquem vobis quoque reddat honorem, reppulit Actorides sub imagine tutus Achillis Troas ab arsuris cum defensore carinis. ausum etiam Hectoreis solum concurrere telis se putat, oblitus regisque ducumque meique, nonus in officio et praelatus munere sortis. sed tamen eventus vestrae, fortissime, pugnae quis fuit? Hector abit violatus vulnere nullo! ’Me miserum, quanto cogor meminisse dolore
Wretched me, with what grief I am forced to remember
that time, when Achilles, the wall of the Greeks,
fell! Nor did tears, grief, and fear hold me back
from lifting his body high from the ground:
on these shoulders, these very shoulders, I bore the body of Achilles
and, with it, the arms — which now too I strive to bear.
I have strength to match such a weight,
and a mind, surely, that will feel your honors:
was it for this, then, that the sea-blue mother was so eager
for her son, that a heavenly gift, the work of such great art,
should clothe a raw soldier with no heart in him?
For he does not know the shield’s engravings —
the Ocean and the lands and the stars in the deep sky,
the Pleiades and the Hyades and the Bear that never touches the sea,
the opposing circles and the bright sword of Orion.
that time, when Achilles, the wall of the Greeks,
fell! Nor did tears, grief, and fear hold me back
from lifting his body high from the ground:
on these shoulders, these very shoulders, I bore the body of Achilles
and, with it, the arms — which now too I strive to bear.
I have strength to match such a weight,
and a mind, surely, that will feel your honors:
was it for this, then, that the sea-blue mother was so eager
for her son, that a heavenly gift, the work of such great art,
should clothe a raw soldier with no heart in him?
For he does not know the shield’s engravings —
the Ocean and the lands and the stars in the deep sky,
the Pleiades and the Hyades and the Bear that never touches the sea,
the opposing circles and the bright sword of Orion.
temporis illius, quo, Graium murus, Achilles procubuit! nec me lacrimae luctusque timorque tardarunt, quin corpus humo sublime referrem: his umeris, his inquam, umeris ego corpus Achillis et simul arma tuli, quae nunc quoque ferre laboro. sunt mihi, quae valeant in talia pondera, vires, est animus certe vestros sensurus honores: scilicet idcirco pro nato caerula mater ambitiosa suo fuit, ut caelestia dona, artis opus tantae, rudis et sine pectore miles indueret? neque enim clipei caelamina novit, Oceanum et terras cumque alto sidera caelo Pleiadasque Hyadasque inmunemque aequoris Arcton diversosque orbes nitidumque Orionis ensem. [postulat, ut capiat, quae non intellegit, arma!]
What of his charge that I shirked the hard duties of war
and came late to the toil begun —
not feeling that he slanders great-hearted Achilles too?
If you call pretending a crime, we both pretended;
if delay is a fault, I am the earlier of the two.
A loving wife held me back, a loving mother Achilles,
and to them the first days were given, the rest to you:
I do not fear a charge, even could I not now defend it,
shared with so great a man: yet he was caught by Ulysses’s
wit, while Ulysses was never caught by Ajax’s.
And let us not wonder that he pours a stupid tongue’s abuse
on me — he charges you, too, with things worthy of shame.
Was it base for me to accuse Palamedes on a false charge,
but seemly for you to condemn him?
Yet the son of Nauplius could not defend a deed so great
and so plain, nor did you only hear the charges against him:
you saw them, and the bribe laid the accusation bare.
and came late to the toil begun —
not feeling that he slanders great-hearted Achilles too?
If you call pretending a crime, we both pretended;
if delay is a fault, I am the earlier of the two.
A loving wife held me back, a loving mother Achilles,
and to them the first days were given, the rest to you:
I do not fear a charge, even could I not now defend it,
shared with so great a man: yet he was caught by Ulysses’s
wit, while Ulysses was never caught by Ajax’s.
And let us not wonder that he pours a stupid tongue’s abuse
on me — he charges you, too, with things worthy of shame.
Was it base for me to accuse Palamedes on a false charge,
but seemly for you to condemn him?
Yet the son of Nauplius could not defend a deed so great
and so plain, nor did you only hear the charges against him:
you saw them, and the bribe laid the accusation bare.
’Quid, quod me duri fugientem munera belli arguit incepto serum accessisse labori nec se magnanimo maledicere sentit Achilli? si simulasse vocas crimen, simulavimus ambo; si mora pro culpa est, ego sum maturior illo. me pia detinuit coniunx, pia mater Achillem, primaque sunt illis data tempora, cetera vobis: haut timeo, si iam nequeam defendere, crimen cum tanto commune viro: deprensus Ulixis ingenio tamen ille, at non Aiacis Ulixes. ’Neve in me stolidae convicia fundere linguae admiremur eum, vobis quoque digna pudore obicit. an falso Palameden crimine turpe accusasse mihi, vobis damnasse decorum est? sed neque Naupliades facinus defendere tantum
Nor, because Vulcanian Lemnos holds the son of Poeas,
have I deserved to be the guilty one (defend your own act!
for you consented), nor will I deny that I advised
he withdraw himself from the toil of war and march
and try to ease his savage pains with rest.
He obeyed — and he lives! That counsel was not only loyal,
but lucky too, when it is enough to be loyal.
Since the seers now demand him for the razing of Troy,
do not assign the task to me! Better let the son of Telamon go,
and with his eloquence soften the man raging with disease and wrath,
or bring him out by some cunning art!
Sooner will Simois flow backward, and Ida stand leafless,
and Achaea promise help to Troy,
than, should my mind cease working for your affairs,
dull Ajax’s cunning profit the Danaans.
have I deserved to be the guilty one (defend your own act!
for you consented), nor will I deny that I advised
he withdraw himself from the toil of war and march
and try to ease his savage pains with rest.
He obeyed — and he lives! That counsel was not only loyal,
but lucky too, when it is enough to be loyal.
Since the seers now demand him for the razing of Troy,
do not assign the task to me! Better let the son of Telamon go,
and with his eloquence soften the man raging with disease and wrath,
or bring him out by some cunning art!
Sooner will Simois flow backward, and Ida stand leafless,
and Achaea promise help to Troy,
than, should my mind cease working for your affairs,
dull Ajax’s cunning profit the Danaans.
tamque patens valuit, nec vos audistis in illo crimina: vidistis, pretioque obiecta patebant. ’Nec, Poeantiaden quod habet Vulcania Lemnos, esse reus merui (factum defendite vestrum! consensistis enim), nec me suasisse negabo, ut se subtraheret bellique viaeque labori temptaretque feros requie lenire dolores. paruit—et vivit! non haec sententia tantum fida, sed et felix, cum sit satis esse fidelem. quem quoniam vates delenda ad Pergama poscunt, ne mandate mihi! melius Telamonius ibit eloquioque virum morbis iraque furentem molliet aut aliqua producet callidus arte! ante retro Simois fluet et sine frondibus Ide stabit, et auxilium promittet Achaia Troiae,
Though you be hostile to the allies and the king and me,
harsh Philoctetes, though you curse and call down endless
doom on my head, and long, in your pain,
for me to be given to you by chance, to drain my blood,
and that, as I may have you, so you may have your chance at me:
yet I will approach you and strive to bring you back with me,
and gain your arrows too (let Fortune favor me),
as surely as I took and held the Dardanian seer,
as I unraveled the gods’ responses and the fates of Troy,
as I snatched the hidden image of Phrygian Minerva
from the enemy’s midst. And shall Ajax compare himself with me?
The fates surely forbade Troy to be taken without it:
where then is brave Ajax? where are the huge words
of the great man? why do you fear here? Why does Ulysses dare
to go through the sentries and commit himself to the night
and through fierce swords enter not only the Trojan walls
but the very heights of the citadel, and snatch the goddess from her shrine
and carry her, stolen, through the enemy?
Had I not done this, in vain would Telamon’s son
have borne on his left the seven bulls’ hides:
on that night the victory over Troy was won for me:
I conquered Troy then, when I forced it to be conquerable.
harsh Philoctetes, though you curse and call down endless
doom on my head, and long, in your pain,
for me to be given to you by chance, to drain my blood,
and that, as I may have you, so you may have your chance at me:
yet I will approach you and strive to bring you back with me,
and gain your arrows too (let Fortune favor me),
as surely as I took and held the Dardanian seer,
as I unraveled the gods’ responses and the fates of Troy,
as I snatched the hidden image of Phrygian Minerva
from the enemy’s midst. And shall Ajax compare himself with me?
The fates surely forbade Troy to be taken without it:
where then is brave Ajax? where are the huge words
of the great man? why do you fear here? Why does Ulysses dare
to go through the sentries and commit himself to the night
and through fierce swords enter not only the Trojan walls
but the very heights of the citadel, and snatch the goddess from her shrine
and carry her, stolen, through the enemy?
Had I not done this, in vain would Telamon’s son
have borne on his left the seven bulls’ hides:
on that night the victory over Troy was won for me:
I conquered Troy then, when I forced it to be conquerable.
quam, cessante meo pro vestris pectore rebus, Aiacis stolidi Danais sollertia prosit. sis licet infestus sociis regique mihique dure Philoctete, licet exsecrere meumque devoveas sine fine caput cupiasque dolenti me tibi forte dari nostrumque haurire cruorem, utque tui mihi sit, fiat tibi copia nostri: te tamen adgrediar mecumque reducere nitar tamque tuis potiar (faveat Fortuna) sagittis, quam sum Dardanio, quem cepi, vate potitus, quam responsa deum Troianaque fata retexi, quam rapui Phrygiae signum penetrale Minervae hostibus e mediis. et se mihi conferat Aiax? nempe capi Troiam prohibebant fata sine illo: fortis ubi est Aiax? ubi sunt ingentia magni verba viri? cur hic metuis? cur audet Ulixes ire per excubias et se committere nocti perque feros enses non tantum moenia Troum, verum etiam summas arces intrare suaque eripere aede deam raptamque adferre per hostes? quae nisi fecissem, frustra Telamone creatus gestasset laeva taurorum tergora septem. illa nocte mihi Troiae victoria parta est: Pergama tunc vici, cum vinci posse coegi. ’Desine Tydiden vultuque et murmure nobis
Stop flaunting at me, with face and muttering,
my Diomedes: his own share of the praise is his!
Nor were you alone, when you held your shield for the allied fleet:
a crowd was your companion; to me fell but one.
And he, did he not know that the fighter is less than the wise,
and that the prizes are not owed to an untamed right hand,
would seek these arms himself; the more moderate Ajax would seek them,
and fierce Eurypylus, and the son of famous Andraemon,
and no less Idomeneus and Meriones, born of the same country,
and the brother of the elder Atrides would seek them:
brave of hand, indeed, and not second to me in war,
they have yielded to my counsels.
Your right hand is useful in war; your wit is what needs
my guidance; you carry strength without mind, mine is the care of the future;
you can fight, but the time for fighting Atrides chooses with me;
you serve by body only, I by mind;
and as much as he who steers the ship surpasses
the rower’s office, as much as the general is greater than the soldier,
so much do I surpass you. And in our body, too,
the heart is worth more than the hand: all the vigor lives there.
my Diomedes: his own share of the praise is his!
Nor were you alone, when you held your shield for the allied fleet:
a crowd was your companion; to me fell but one.
And he, did he not know that the fighter is less than the wise,
and that the prizes are not owed to an untamed right hand,
would seek these arms himself; the more moderate Ajax would seek them,
and fierce Eurypylus, and the son of famous Andraemon,
and no less Idomeneus and Meriones, born of the same country,
and the brother of the elder Atrides would seek them:
brave of hand, indeed, and not second to me in war,
they have yielded to my counsels.
Your right hand is useful in war; your wit is what needs
my guidance; you carry strength without mind, mine is the care of the future;
you can fight, but the time for fighting Atrides chooses with me;
you serve by body only, I by mind;
and as much as he who steers the ship surpasses
the rower’s office, as much as the general is greater than the soldier,
so much do I surpass you. And in our body, too,
the heart is worth more than the hand: all the vigor lives there.
ostentare meum: pars est sua laudis in illo! nec tu, cum socia clipeum pro classe tenebas, solus eras: tibi turba comes, mihi contigit unus. qui nisi pugnacem sciret sapiente minorem esse nec indomitae deberi praemia dextrae, ipse quoque haec peteret; peteret moderatior Aiax Eurypylusque ferox claroque Andraemone natus nec minus Idomeneus patriaque creatus eadem Meriones, peteret maioris frater Atridae: quippe manu fortes nec sunt mihi Marte secundi, consiliis cessere meis. tibi dextera bello utilis, ingenium est, quod eget moderamine nostro; tu vires sine mente geris, mihi cura futuri; tu pugnare potes, pugnandi tempora mecum eligit Atrides; tu tantum corpore prodes, nos animo; quantoque ratem qui temperat, anteit remigis officium, quanto dux milite maior, tantum ego te supero. nec non in corpore nostro pectora sunt potiora manu: vigor omnis in illis. ’At vos, o proceres, vigili date praemia vestro,
But you, O chiefs, give the reward to your watchman,
and for the care of so many years, in which I have toiled in dread,
render this honor to be set against my deserts:
now the labor is at its end; I have removed the obstructing fates
and, by making lofty Troy able to be taken, have taken it.
By our shared hopes now, and the about-to-fall walls of Troy,
and by the gods I lately took from the foe,
by whatever is left that must be done with wisdom,
by anything still to be sought with daring from the brink —
be mindful of me! Or if you will not give me the arms,
give them to her!’ — and he showed the fatal image of Minerva.
and for the care of so many years, in which I have toiled in dread,
render this honor to be set against my deserts:
now the labor is at its end; I have removed the obstructing fates
and, by making lofty Troy able to be taken, have taken it.
By our shared hopes now, and the about-to-fall walls of Troy,
and by the gods I lately took from the foe,
by whatever is left that must be done with wisdom,
by anything still to be sought with daring from the brink —
be mindful of me! Or if you will not give me the arms,
give them to her!’ — and he showed the fatal image of Minerva.
proque tot annorum cura, quibus anxius egi, hunc titulum meritis pensandum reddite nostris: iam labor in fine est; obstantia fata removi altaque posse capi faciendo Pergama, cepi. per spes nunc socias casuraque moenia Troum perque deos oro, quos hosti nuper ademi, per siquid superest, quod sit sapienter agendum, siquid adhuc audax ex praecipitique petendum est, [si Troiae fatis aliquid restare putatis,] este mei memores! aut si mihi non datis arma,
The band of chiefs was moved, and what eloquence could do
the outcome showed: the eloquent man carried off the brave man’s arms.
He who alone, who so often withstood Hector, sword, fire, and Jove,
cannot withstand one thing — wrath;
grief conquered the unconquered man: he snatches his sword
and ‘This at least is surely mine! Or does Ulysses claim this too?
This,’ he says, ‘I must use upon myself, and the blade that often
dripped with the blood of Phrygians will now drip with its master’s,
that none may overcome Ajax but Ajax.’
He spoke, and into his breast — that then at last took a wound —
where it lay open to the steel, he buried the deadly sword.
No hands had strength to draw the fixed weapon out:
the blood itself expelled it, and the earth, reddened with gore,
brought forth from the green turf a purple flower,
the same that earlier had sprung from the Oebalian wound;
a letter common to the boy and the man
is inscribed upon the petals — for the one the name, for the other the lament.
the outcome showed: the eloquent man carried off the brave man’s arms.
He who alone, who so often withstood Hector, sword, fire, and Jove,
cannot withstand one thing — wrath;
grief conquered the unconquered man: he snatches his sword
and ‘This at least is surely mine! Or does Ulysses claim this too?
This,’ he says, ‘I must use upon myself, and the blade that often
dripped with the blood of Phrygians will now drip with its master’s,
that none may overcome Ajax but Ajax.’
He spoke, and into his breast — that then at last took a wound —
where it lay open to the steel, he buried the deadly sword.
No hands had strength to draw the fixed weapon out:
the blood itself expelled it, and the earth, reddened with gore,
brought forth from the green turf a purple flower,
the same that earlier had sprung from the Oebalian wound;
a letter common to the boy and the man
is inscribed upon the petals — for the one the name, for the other the lament.
huic date!’ et ostendit signum fatale Minervae. Mota manus procerum est, et quid facundia posset, re patuit, fortisque viri tulit arma disertus. Hectora qui solus, qui ferrum ignesque Iovemque sustinuit totiens, unam non sustinet iram, invictumque virum vicit dolor: arripit ensem et ’meus hic certe est! an et hunc sibi poscit Ulixes? hoc’ ait ’utendum est in me mihi, quique cruore saepe Phrygum maduit, domini nunc caede madebit, ne quisquam Aiacem possit superare nisi Aiax.’ dixit et in pectus tum demum vulnera passum, qua patuit ferrum, letalem condidit ensem. nec valuere manus infixum educere telum: expulit ipse cruor, rubefactaque sanguine tellus purpureum viridi genuit de caespite florem, qui prius Oebalio fuerat de vulnere natus; littera communis mediis pueroque viroque inscripta est foliis, haec nominis, illa querellae. Victor ad Hypsipyles patriam clarique Thoantis et veterum terras infames caede virorum
The victor sets sail for the homeland of Hypsipyle and famous Thoas
and the lands infamous for the old slaughter of their men,
to bring back the Tirynthian weapons, the arrows;
and when he had carried these back to the Greeks, their owner with him,
the last hand was at length laid on the long war.
Ilion was burning, and the fire had not yet sunk,
and the altar of Jove had drunk up the scant blood
of old Priam; the priestess of Phoebus, dragged by the hair,
stretched out to heaven palms that would avail nothing;
the Dardanian mothers, embracing the images of their fathers’ gods
while they could, and clinging to the burning temples,
the victorious Greeks drag off, the spoils that breed envy;
Astyanax is flung from those towers from which
he used so often to watch his father, pointed out by his mother,
fighting for him and guarding his ancestral realm.
And now Boreas urges the way, and the canvas, stirred by a favoring blast,
cracks aloud: the sailor bids them use the winds;
‘Troy, farewell! We are swept away,’ the Trojan women cry, and kiss the earth
and leave the smoking roofs of their homeland.
Last to board the fleet — pitiful to see —
was Hecuba, found in the midst of her children’s tombs:
as she clutched the graves and gave kisses to the bones,
the Dulichian hands dragged her off; yet she scooped up
the ashes of one, and bore Hector’s gathered ashes in her bosom;
on Hector’s tomb she left a lock from her grey head,
poor offerings — a lock and her tears.
and the lands infamous for the old slaughter of their men,
to bring back the Tirynthian weapons, the arrows;
and when he had carried these back to the Greeks, their owner with him,
the last hand was at length laid on the long war.
Ilion was burning, and the fire had not yet sunk,
and the altar of Jove had drunk up the scant blood
of old Priam; the priestess of Phoebus, dragged by the hair,
stretched out to heaven palms that would avail nothing;
the Dardanian mothers, embracing the images of their fathers’ gods
while they could, and clinging to the burning temples,
the victorious Greeks drag off, the spoils that breed envy;
Astyanax is flung from those towers from which
he used so often to watch his father, pointed out by his mother,
fighting for him and guarding his ancestral realm.
And now Boreas urges the way, and the canvas, stirred by a favoring blast,
cracks aloud: the sailor bids them use the winds;
‘Troy, farewell! We are swept away,’ the Trojan women cry, and kiss the earth
and leave the smoking roofs of their homeland.
Last to board the fleet — pitiful to see —
was Hecuba, found in the midst of her children’s tombs:
as she clutched the graves and gave kisses to the bones,
the Dulichian hands dragged her off; yet she scooped up
the ashes of one, and bore Hector’s gathered ashes in her bosom;
on Hector’s tomb she left a lock from her grey head,
poor offerings — a lock and her tears.
vela dat, ut referat Tirynthia tela, sagittas; quae postquam ad Graios domino comitante revexit, inposita est sero tandem manus ultima bello. [Troia simul Priamusque cadunt. Priameia coniunx perdidit infelix hominis post omnia formam externasque novo latratu terruit auras, longus in angustum qua clauditur Hellespontus.] Ilion ardebat, neque adhuc consederat ignis, exiguumque senis Priami Iovis ara cruorem conbiberat, tractata comis antistita Phoebi non profecturas tendebat ad aethera palmas; Dardanidas matres patriorum signa deorum, dum licet, amplexas succensaque templa tenentes invidiosa trahunt victores praemia Grai; mittitur Astyanax illis de turribus, unde pugnantem pro se proavitaque regna tuentem saepe videre patrem monstratum a matre solebat. iamque viam suadet Boreas, flatuque secundo carbasa mota sonant: iubet uti navita ventis; ’Troia, vale! rapimur’ clamant, dant oscula terrae Troades et patriae fumantia tecta relinquunt. ultima conscendit classem—miserabile visu!— in mediis Hecabe natorum inventa sepulcris: prensantem tumulos atque ossibus oscula dantem Dulichiae traxere manus, tamen unius hausit inque sinu cineres secum tulit Hectoris haustos; Hectoris in tumulo canum de vertice crinem, inferias inopes, crinem lacrimasque reliquit, Est, ubi Troia fuit, Phrygiae contraria tellus Bistoniis habitata viris: Polymestoris illic
There is, where Troy once stood, a land facing Phrygia,
peopled by Bistonian men: there stood
the rich palace of Polymestor, to whom your father secretly
entrusted you to rear, Polydorus, and removed you from the Phrygian war —
a wise plan, had he not added great wealth, the wages of crime,
a goad to a greedy heart.
When the fortune of the Phrygians fell, the impious king of Thrace
takes up his sword and sinks it in his ward’s throat,
and, as though crimes could be removed along with the body,
flung the lifeless boy from a cliff into the waves below.
peopled by Bistonian men: there stood
the rich palace of Polymestor, to whom your father secretly
entrusted you to rear, Polydorus, and removed you from the Phrygian war —
a wise plan, had he not added great wealth, the wages of crime,
a goad to a greedy heart.
When the fortune of the Phrygians fell, the impious king of Thrace
takes up his sword and sinks it in his ward’s throat,
and, as though crimes could be removed along with the body,
flung the lifeless boy from a cliff into the waves below.
regia dives erat, cui te commisit alendum clam, Polydore, pater Phrygiisque removit ab armis, consilium sapiens, sceleris nisi praemia magnas adiecisset opes, animi inritamen avari. ut cecidit fortuna Phrygum, capit inpius ensem rex Thracum iuguloque sui demisit alumni et, tamquam tolli cum corpore crimina possent, exanimem scopulo subiectas misit in undas. Litore Threicio classem religarat Atrides, dum mare pacatum, dum ventus amicior esset:
On the Thracian shore Atrides had moored the fleet,
till the sea should be calm, the wind more friendly:
here suddenly, as great as he was wont to be in life,
Achilles came forth from the wide-riven earth, and like one threatening
bore again the face of that hour
when he savagely attacked unjust Agamemnon with the sword,
and ‘Forgetful of me you depart, Achaeans,’ he said,
‘and the gratitude for my valor is buried with me!
Do not do so! and that my tomb may not go without honor,
let Polyxena be slain to appease Achilles’s shade!’
He spoke, and his comrades obeying the pitiless shade,
torn from the breast of her mother, whom now she alone almost cherished,
the brave and unhappy maiden, more than a woman,
is led to the tomb and made a victim at the dread pyre.
till the sea should be calm, the wind more friendly:
here suddenly, as great as he was wont to be in life,
Achilles came forth from the wide-riven earth, and like one threatening
bore again the face of that hour
when he savagely attacked unjust Agamemnon with the sword,
and ‘Forgetful of me you depart, Achaeans,’ he said,
‘and the gratitude for my valor is buried with me!
Do not do so! and that my tomb may not go without honor,
let Polyxena be slain to appease Achilles’s shade!’
He spoke, and his comrades obeying the pitiless shade,
torn from the breast of her mother, whom now she alone almost cherished,
the brave and unhappy maiden, more than a woman,
is led to the tomb and made a victim at the dread pyre.
hic subito, quantus, cum viveret, esse solebat, exit humo late rupta similisque minanti temporis illius vultum referebat Achilles, quo ferus iniustum petiit Agamemnona ferro ’inmemores’ que ’mei disceditis,’ inquit ’Achivi, obrutaque est mecum virtutis gratia nostrae! ne facite! utque meum non sit sine honore sepulcrum, placet Achilleos mactata Polyxena manes!’ dixit, et inmiti sociis parentibus umbrae, rapta sinu matris, quam iam prope sola fovebat,
She, mindful of herself, when she had been brought to the cruel altar
and felt the savage rite being readied for her,
and saw Neoptolemus standing, holding the steel,
and fixing his eyes upon her face,
‘Use my noble blood now,’ she said,
‘there is no delay; only plunge your weapon in my throat
or in my breast’ — and she bared throat and breast at once.
‘Be sure Polyxena would be slave to none.
By no such rite will you appease any god!
I would only wish my death could deceive my mother:
my mother holds me back and lessens my joy in death, though
it is not my death she should dread, but her own life.
Only do you, that I go not unfree to the Stygian shades,
stand off, if my plea is just, and from a maiden’s flesh
hold back your men’s hands! More welcome to him,
whoever he is, whom you make ready to appease by my slaughter,
will be unbought blood.
Yet if the last words of my mouth move any —
it is the daughter of King Priam, not a captive, who asks you —
give my body back to my mother unransomed,
and let her not buy the grim right of burial with gold,
but with tears! When she could, she ransomed with gold too.’
She had spoken; but the people did not hold the tears
that she held back; the priest himself, weeping and unwilling,
drove the steel into the breast she offered, and pierced it through.
She, sinking to the ground on a failing knee,
kept her fearless face to the very end;
even then her care was to veil the parts that must be hidden,
as she fell, and to keep the honor of chaste modesty.
and felt the savage rite being readied for her,
and saw Neoptolemus standing, holding the steel,
and fixing his eyes upon her face,
‘Use my noble blood now,’ she said,
‘there is no delay; only plunge your weapon in my throat
or in my breast’ — and she bared throat and breast at once.
‘Be sure Polyxena would be slave to none.
By no such rite will you appease any god!
I would only wish my death could deceive my mother:
my mother holds me back and lessens my joy in death, though
it is not my death she should dread, but her own life.
Only do you, that I go not unfree to the Stygian shades,
stand off, if my plea is just, and from a maiden’s flesh
hold back your men’s hands! More welcome to him,
whoever he is, whom you make ready to appease by my slaughter,
will be unbought blood.
Yet if the last words of my mouth move any —
it is the daughter of King Priam, not a captive, who asks you —
give my body back to my mother unransomed,
and let her not buy the grim right of burial with gold,
but with tears! When she could, she ransomed with gold too.’
She had spoken; but the people did not hold the tears
that she held back; the priest himself, weeping and unwilling,
drove the steel into the breast she offered, and pierced it through.
She, sinking to the ground on a failing knee,
kept her fearless face to the very end;
even then her care was to veil the parts that must be hidden,
as she fell, and to keep the honor of chaste modesty.
fortis et infelix et plus quam femina virgo ducitur ad tumulum diroque fit hostia busto. quae memor ipsa sui postquam crudelibus aris admota est sensitque sibi fera sacra parari, utque Neoptolemum stantem ferrumque tenentem; inque suo vidit figentem lumina vultu, ’utere iamdudum generoso sanguine’ dixit ’nulla mora est; at tu iugulo vel pectore telum conde meo’ iugulumque simul pectusque retexit. ’scilicet haud ulli servire Polyxena vellem. haud per tale sacrum numen placabitis ullum! mors tantum vellem matrem mea fallere posset: mater obest minuitque necis mihi gaudia, quamvis non mea mors illi, verum sua vita tremenda est. vos modo, ne Stygios adeam non libera manes, ite procul, si iusta peto, tactuque viriles virgineo removete manus! acceptior illi, quisquis is est, quem caede mea placare paratis, liber erit sanguis. siquos tamen ultima nostri verba movent oris (Priami vos filia regis, non captiva rogat), genetrici corpus inemptum reddite, neve auro redimat ius triste sepulcri, sed lacrimis! tum, cum poterat, redimebat et auro.’ dixerat, at populus lacrimas, quas illa tenebat, non tenet; ipse etiam flens invitusque sacerdos praebita coniecto rupit praecordia ferro. illa super terram defecto poplite labens pertulit intrepidos ad fata novissima vultus; tunc quoque cura fuit partes velare tegendas, cum caderet, castique decus servare pudoris.
The Trojan women take her up and count over the lamented
sons of Priam, and how much blood one house has given,
and they mourn you, maiden, and you, O lately royal wife,
called royal mother, image of flourishing Asia,
now even a wretched lot of plunder; whom victor Ulysses
would not wish his own, but that you had borne Hector:
hardly did Hector find a master for his mother!
She, embracing the body emptied of so brave a soul,
gives to her too the tears she had so often given
to her country and her sons and her husband; she pours tears into the wounds
and covers them with kisses, and beats the breast she has beaten so often,
and, tearing her white hair clotted with blood,
said much indeed, but this too, with lacerated breast:
‘Daughter — for what is left? — last grief of your mother,
daughter, you lie dead, and I see your wound, my own wound:
look, lest I lose any of mine without slaughter,
you too have a wound; yet you, because a woman, I thought
safe from the sword: you have fallen, a woman, by the sword,
and the same Achilles who destroyed so many of your brothers
destroyed you, the ruin of Troy and bereaver of me;
sons of Priam, and how much blood one house has given,
and they mourn you, maiden, and you, O lately royal wife,
called royal mother, image of flourishing Asia,
now even a wretched lot of plunder; whom victor Ulysses
would not wish his own, but that you had borne Hector:
hardly did Hector find a master for his mother!
She, embracing the body emptied of so brave a soul,
gives to her too the tears she had so often given
to her country and her sons and her husband; she pours tears into the wounds
and covers them with kisses, and beats the breast she has beaten so often,
and, tearing her white hair clotted with blood,
said much indeed, but this too, with lacerated breast:
‘Daughter — for what is left? — last grief of your mother,
daughter, you lie dead, and I see your wound, my own wound:
look, lest I lose any of mine without slaughter,
you too have a wound; yet you, because a woman, I thought
safe from the sword: you have fallen, a woman, by the sword,
and the same Achilles who destroyed so many of your brothers
destroyed you, the ruin of Troy and bereaver of me;
Troades excipiunt deploratosque recensent Priamidas et quot dederit domus una cruores, teque gemunt, virgo, teque, o modo regia coniunx, regia dicta parens, Asiae florentis imago, nunc etiam praedae mala sors; quam victor Ulixes esse suam nollet, nisi quod tamen Hectora partu edideras: dominum matri vix repperit Hector! quae corpus conplexa animae tam fortis inane, quas totiens patriae dederat natisque viroque, huic quoque dat lacrimas; lacrimas in vulnera fundit osculaque ore tegit consuetaque pectora plangit canitiemque suam concretam sanguine vellens plura quidem, sed et haec laniato pectore, dixit: ’nata, tuae—quid enim superest?—dolor ultime matris, nata, iaces, videoque tuum, mea vulnera, vulnus: en, ne perdiderim quemquam sine caede meorum, tu quoque vulnus habes; at te, quia femina, rebar a ferro tutam: cecidisti et femina ferro, totque tuos idem fratres, te perdidit idem, exitium Troiae nostrique orbator, Achilles; at postquam cecidit Paridis Phoebique sagittis, nunc certe, dixi, non est metuendus Achilles: nunc quoque mi metuendus erat; cinis ipse sepulti in genus hoc saevit, tumulo quoque sensimus hostem: Aeacidae fecunda fui! iacet Ilion ingens,
For the son of Aeacus I was fruitful! Great Ilion lies low,
and the public disaster has ended in a grievous close,
but ended all the same; for me alone Troy remains.
And my grief still runs its course: lately the greatest of things,
powerful in so great a line, in sons, daughters-in-law, and husband,
now I am dragged off an exile, destitute, torn from the tombs of my own,
a gift for Penelope, who, showing me as I spin the allotted wool
to the Ithacan mothers, will say ‘this is the famous mother
of Hector, this is Priam’s wife’;
and after so many lost, you now, who alone relieved
a mother’s mourning, have appeased an enemy’s tomb!
Offerings for the enemy I have borne! Why do I, made of iron, hold on?
or why do I linger? for what do you keep me, aged old age?
for what, cruel gods, unless that I may see fresh deaths,
do you put off an old woman who lives too long? Who could think
Priam could be called happy after Troy was razed?
Happy in his death! He does not look on you, my daughter, slain,
and he left life and kingdom both together.
But, I suppose, you will be dowered with funeral rites, royal maiden,
and your body laid in your ancestral tomb!
This is not our house’s fortune: a mother’s gifts to you
will be weeping and a handful of foreign sand!
I have lost everything: there remains one reason I might bear
to live a brief while — my mother’s dearest child,
now my only one, once the least of the male stock,
Polydorus, given to the Ismarian king on these shores.
Why do I delay meanwhile to wash with water the cruel wounds
and the face spattered with pitiless blood?’
and the public disaster has ended in a grievous close,
but ended all the same; for me alone Troy remains.
And my grief still runs its course: lately the greatest of things,
powerful in so great a line, in sons, daughters-in-law, and husband,
now I am dragged off an exile, destitute, torn from the tombs of my own,
a gift for Penelope, who, showing me as I spin the allotted wool
to the Ithacan mothers, will say ‘this is the famous mother
of Hector, this is Priam’s wife’;
and after so many lost, you now, who alone relieved
a mother’s mourning, have appeased an enemy’s tomb!
Offerings for the enemy I have borne! Why do I, made of iron, hold on?
or why do I linger? for what do you keep me, aged old age?
for what, cruel gods, unless that I may see fresh deaths,
do you put off an old woman who lives too long? Who could think
Priam could be called happy after Troy was razed?
Happy in his death! He does not look on you, my daughter, slain,
and he left life and kingdom both together.
But, I suppose, you will be dowered with funeral rites, royal maiden,
and your body laid in your ancestral tomb!
This is not our house’s fortune: a mother’s gifts to you
will be weeping and a handful of foreign sand!
I have lost everything: there remains one reason I might bear
to live a brief while — my mother’s dearest child,
now my only one, once the least of the male stock,
Polydorus, given to the Ismarian king on these shores.
Why do I delay meanwhile to wash with water the cruel wounds
and the face spattered with pitiless blood?’
eventuque gravi finita est publica clades, sed finita tamen; soli mihi Pergama restant. in cursuque meus dolor est: modo maxima rerum, tot generis natisque potens nuribusque viroque nunc trahor exul, inops, tumulis avulsa meorum, Penelopae munus, quae me data pensa trahentem matribus ostendens Ithacis "haec Hectoris illa est clara parens, haec est" dicet "Priameia coniunx," postque tot amissos tu nunc, quae sola levabas maternos luctus, hostilia busta piasti! inferias hosti peperi! quo ferrea resto? quidve moror? quo me servas, annosa senectus? quo, di crudeles, nisi uti nova funera cernam, vivacem differtis anum? quis posse putaret felicem Priamum post diruta Pergama dici? felix morte sua est! nec te, mea nata, peremptam adspicit et vitam pariter regnumque reliquit. at, puto, funeribus dotabere, regia virgo, condeturque tuum monumentis corpus avitis! non haec est fortuna domus: tibi munera matris contingent fletus peregrinaeque haustus harenae! omnia perdidimus: superest, cur vivere tempus in breve sustineam, proles gratissima matri, nunc solus, quondam minimus de stirpe virili, has datus Ismario regi Polydorus in oras.
She spoke and went to the shore with an old woman’s step,
tearing her white hair. ‘Give me an urn, Trojan women!’
the unhappy one had said, to draw the clear water:
she sees Polydorus’s body cast up on the shore,
and the huge wounds made by Thracian weapons;
the Trojan women cry out, but she was struck dumb with grief,
and the grief itself devours alike her voice and the tears that rose within;
like hard rock she stiffens, and now fixes her eyes on the ground before her,
now lifts a savage face to the sky,
now looks at the face of her son laid before her, now at his wounds,
the wounds above all, and arms and equips herself with rage.
As soon as it blazed, as though she remained a queen,
she resolved on vengeance and is wholly bent on the image of punishment;
and as a lioness rages, robbed of her suckling cub,
and, finding the print of his feet, follows the enemy she does not see,
so Hecuba, when she had mixed rage with grief,
not forgetting her spirit, forgetting her years,
goes to Polymestor, the contriver of the dire slaughter,
and asks for a meeting; for she wished, she said, to show him
hidden gold that was left, to give her son.
The Odrysian believed her, and, used to the love of plunder,
came to the secret place: then, crafty, with smooth mouth,
‘Away with delay, Hecuba,’ he said, ‘give your gift for your son!
All that you give, and all you gave before, will be his,
I swear it by the gods above.’
She watches him grimly as he speaks
and swears falsely, and seethes with swelling rage,
and so, seizing him, she calls on the bands of captive mothers
and buries her fingers in his treacherous eyes
and tears the eyeballs from their sockets (rage makes her strong)
and plunges in her hands, and, fouled with the guilty blood,
drains — not the eye (for none is left) — but the places where the eye had been.
tearing her white hair. ‘Give me an urn, Trojan women!’
the unhappy one had said, to draw the clear water:
she sees Polydorus’s body cast up on the shore,
and the huge wounds made by Thracian weapons;
the Trojan women cry out, but she was struck dumb with grief,
and the grief itself devours alike her voice and the tears that rose within;
like hard rock she stiffens, and now fixes her eyes on the ground before her,
now lifts a savage face to the sky,
now looks at the face of her son laid before her, now at his wounds,
the wounds above all, and arms and equips herself with rage.
As soon as it blazed, as though she remained a queen,
she resolved on vengeance and is wholly bent on the image of punishment;
and as a lioness rages, robbed of her suckling cub,
and, finding the print of his feet, follows the enemy she does not see,
so Hecuba, when she had mixed rage with grief,
not forgetting her spirit, forgetting her years,
goes to Polymestor, the contriver of the dire slaughter,
and asks for a meeting; for she wished, she said, to show him
hidden gold that was left, to give her son.
The Odrysian believed her, and, used to the love of plunder,
came to the secret place: then, crafty, with smooth mouth,
‘Away with delay, Hecuba,’ he said, ‘give your gift for your son!
All that you give, and all you gave before, will be his,
I swear it by the gods above.’
She watches him grimly as he speaks
and swears falsely, and seethes with swelling rage,
and so, seizing him, she calls on the bands of captive mothers
and buries her fingers in his treacherous eyes
and tears the eyeballs from their sockets (rage makes her strong)
and plunges in her hands, and, fouled with the guilty blood,
drains — not the eye (for none is left) — but the places where the eye had been.
quid moror interea crudelia vulnera lymphis abluere et sparsos inmiti sanguine vultus?’ Dixit et ad litus passu processit anili, albentes lacerata comas. ’date, Troades, urnam!’ dixerat infelix, liquidas hauriret ut undas: adspicit eiectum Polydori in litore corpus factaque Threiciis ingentia vulnera telis; Troades exclamant, obmutuit illa dolore, et pariter vocem lacrimasque introrsus obortas devorat ipse dolor, duroque simillima saxo torpet et adversa figit modo lumina terra, interdum torvos sustollit ad aethera vultus, nunc positi spectat vultum, nunc vulnera nati, vulnera praecipue, seque armat et instruit ira. qua simul exarsit, tamquam regina maneret, ulcisci statuit poenaeque in imagine tota est, utque furit catulo lactente orbata leaena signaque nacta pedum sequitur, quem non videt, hostem, sic Hecabe, postquam cum luctu miscuit iram, non oblita animorum, annorum oblita suorum, vadit ad artificem dirae, Polymestora, caedis conloquiumque petit; nam se monstrare relictum velle latens illi, quod nato redderet, aurum. credidit Odrysius praedaeque adsuetus amore in secreta venit: tum blando callidus ore ’tolle moras, Hecabe,’ dixit ’da munera nato! omne fore illius, quod das, quod et ante dedisti, per superos iuro.’ spectat truculenta loquentem falsaque iurantem tumidaque exaestuat ira atque ita correpto captivarum agmina matrum invocat et digitos in perfida lumina condit expellitque genis oculos (facit ira potentem) inmergitque manus foedataque sanguine sonti non lumen (neque enim superest), loca luminis haurit. clade sui Thracum gens inritata tyranni
Roused by the ruin of their own tyrant, the Thracian people
began to assail the Trojan woman with a hurling of weapons and stones;
but she pursued the flung stone with a hoarse growl
and bit it, and, her jaws set ready for words,
barked when she tried to speak: the place still stands, and from the event
takes its name, and she, long mindful of her old woes,
even then howled mournfully through the Sithonian fields.
Her fortune moved her own Trojans and the Pelasgian foes,
her fortune moved even all the gods,
all of them so, that even Jove’s own wife and sister
denied that Hecuba had deserved that end.
began to assail the Trojan woman with a hurling of weapons and stones;
but she pursued the flung stone with a hoarse growl
and bit it, and, her jaws set ready for words,
barked when she tried to speak: the place still stands, and from the event
takes its name, and she, long mindful of her old woes,
even then howled mournfully through the Sithonian fields.
Her fortune moved her own Trojans and the Pelasgian foes,
her fortune moved even all the gods,
all of them so, that even Jove’s own wife and sister
denied that Hecuba had deserved that end.
Troada telorum lapidumque incessere iactu coepit, at haec missum rauco cum murmure saxum morsibus insequitur rictuque in verba parato latravit, conata loqui: locus exstat et ex re nomen habet, veterumque diu memor illa malorum tum quoque Sithonios ululavit maesta per agros. illius Troasque suos hostesque Pelasgos, illius fortuna deos quoque moverat omnes, sic omnes, ut et ipsa Iovis coniunxque sororque eventus Hecaben meruisse negaverit illos.
Aurora has no leisure, though she had favored the same arms,
to be moved by the disasters and the fall of Troy and of Hecuba.
A nearer care and a grief at home vexes the goddess —
the loss of Memnon, whom on the Phrygian plains
his saffron mother saw perish by Achilles’s spear;
she saw, and that color with which the morning hours
redden had grown pale, and the sky hid itself in clouds.
But the mother could not bear to watch the limbs
laid on the last fires; with her hair unbound,
just as she was, she did not disdain to fall at the knees
of great Jove and add these words to her tears:
‘Lowest of all the goddesses the golden sky upholds
(for through the whole world my temples are rarest),
yet a goddess, I come — not that you give me shrines
and days of sacrifice and altars to glow with fire:
yet if you would look at how much I, a woman, do for you
when at each new light I keep the borders of night,
you would think rewards were owed; but that is not my care,
nor is Aurora’s state now such that she should ask the honors she has earned:
bereft of my Memnon I come, who bore brave arms in vain
for his uncle, and in his earliest years
fell by brave Achilles (so you willed it).
Grant him, I pray, some honor, a solace for his death,
highest ruler of the gods, and soothe a mother’s wounds!’
to be moved by the disasters and the fall of Troy and of Hecuba.
A nearer care and a grief at home vexes the goddess —
the loss of Memnon, whom on the Phrygian plains
his saffron mother saw perish by Achilles’s spear;
she saw, and that color with which the morning hours
redden had grown pale, and the sky hid itself in clouds.
But the mother could not bear to watch the limbs
laid on the last fires; with her hair unbound,
just as she was, she did not disdain to fall at the knees
of great Jove and add these words to her tears:
‘Lowest of all the goddesses the golden sky upholds
(for through the whole world my temples are rarest),
yet a goddess, I come — not that you give me shrines
and days of sacrifice and altars to glow with fire:
yet if you would look at how much I, a woman, do for you
when at each new light I keep the borders of night,
you would think rewards were owed; but that is not my care,
nor is Aurora’s state now such that she should ask the honors she has earned:
bereft of my Memnon I come, who bore brave arms in vain
for his uncle, and in his earliest years
fell by brave Achilles (so you willed it).
Grant him, I pray, some honor, a solace for his death,
highest ruler of the gods, and soothe a mother’s wounds!’
Non vacat Aurorae, quamquam isdem faverat armis, cladibus et casu Troiaeque Hecabesque moveri. cura deam propior luctusque domesticus angit Memnonis amissi, Phrygiis quem lutea campis vidit Achillea pereuntem cuspide mater; vidit, et ille color, quo matutina rubescunt tempora, palluerat, latuitque in nubibus aether. at non inpositos supremis ignibus artus sustinuit spectare parens, sed crine soluto sicut erat, magni genibus procumbere non est dedignata Iovis lacrimisque has addere voces: ’omnibus inferior, quas sustinet aureus aether, (nam mihi sunt totum rarissima templa per orbem) diva tamen, veni, non ut delubra diesque des mihi sacrificos caliturasque ignibus aras: si tamen adspicias, quantum tibi femina praestem, tum cum luce nova noctis confinia servo, praemia danda putes; sed non ea cura neque hic est nunc status Aurorae, meritos ut poscat honores: Memnonis orba mei venio, qui fortia frustra pro patruo tulit arma suo primisque sub annis occidit a forti (sic vos voluistis) Achille. da, precor, huic aliquem, solacia mortis, honorem, summe deum rector, maternaque vulnera leni!’ Iuppiter adnuerat, cum Memnonis arduus alto
Jupiter had nodded, when Memnon’s lofty pyre
collapsed in deep fire, and rolling coils of black smoke
stained the day, as when a Naiad from a river
breathes out mists, and the sun is not let in below;
the black ash flies and, gathered into one body,
thickens and takes a shape and takes on warmth
and life from the fire (its own lightness gave it wings),
and first like a bird, soon a true bird,
it sounded with its wings; equally sounded its sisters,
countless, who have the same origin at birth,
and thrice they circle the pyre, and a concordant wail
goes up into the air three times; on the fourth flight they draw apart into ranks;
then fierce, from two opposite sides, the people
wage war, and with beaks and hooked talons ply
their wrath, and weary their wings and their facing breasts,
and they fall as offerings, kindred bodies, to the buried ash,
and remember they were born of a brave man.
The author gives the sudden swift birds his name: from him
they are called Memnonides; and when the sun has run through
the twelve signs, they fight again, to die in their ancestral way.
So while to others it seemed a thing for tears that Dymas’s daughter barked,
Aurora is intent upon her own griefs, and even now
gives pious tears and dews the whole world with them.
collapsed in deep fire, and rolling coils of black smoke
stained the day, as when a Naiad from a river
breathes out mists, and the sun is not let in below;
the black ash flies and, gathered into one body,
thickens and takes a shape and takes on warmth
and life from the fire (its own lightness gave it wings),
and first like a bird, soon a true bird,
it sounded with its wings; equally sounded its sisters,
countless, who have the same origin at birth,
and thrice they circle the pyre, and a concordant wail
goes up into the air three times; on the fourth flight they draw apart into ranks;
then fierce, from two opposite sides, the people
wage war, and with beaks and hooked talons ply
their wrath, and weary their wings and their facing breasts,
and they fall as offerings, kindred bodies, to the buried ash,
and remember they were born of a brave man.
The author gives the sudden swift birds his name: from him
they are called Memnonides; and when the sun has run through
the twelve signs, they fight again, to die in their ancestral way.
So while to others it seemed a thing for tears that Dymas’s daughter barked,
Aurora is intent upon her own griefs, and even now
gives pious tears and dews the whole world with them.
corruit igne rogus, nigrique volumina fumi infecere diem, veluti cum flumine Nais exhalat nebulas, nec sol admittitur infra; atra favilla volat glomerataque corpus in unum densetur faciemque capit sumitque calorem atque animam ex igni (levitas sua praebuit alas) et primo similis volucri, mox vera volucris insonuit pennis, pariter sonuere sorores innumerae, quibus est eadem natalis origo, terque rogum lustrant, et consonus exit in auras ter plangor, quarto seducunt castra volatu; tum duo diversa populi de parte feroces bella gerunt rostrisque et aduncis unguibus iras exercent alasque adversaque pectora lassant, inferiaeque cadunt cineri cognata sepulto corpora seque viro forti meminere creatas. praepetibus subitis nomen facit auctor: ab illo Memnonides dictae, cum sol duodena peregit signa, parentali moriturae more rebellant. ergo aliis latrasse Dymantida flebile visum est;
Yet the fates do not allow hope to be overthrown
along with Troy’s walls: the sacred things, and another sacred thing — his father —
the Cytherean hero bears upon his shoulders, a venerable burden.
Out of all his wealth pious Aeneas chooses that plunder
and his Ascanius, and on a fleet of exile over the seas
is borne from Antandros, and leaves the wicked thresholds of the Thracians
and the land dripping with Polydorus’s blood,
and with favoring winds and a following tide
enters, his comrades with him, the Apollonian city.
Anius — under whom as king men, and as priest Phoebus,
were rightly worshipped — received him in temple and home,
and showed him the city, the famous shrines, and the two trees
that Latona once clung to when she gave birth.
Incense given to the flames, wine poured upon the incense,
the entrails of slaughtered oxen burned by custom,
they seek the royal house, and reclined on high tapestries
take the gifts of Ceres with liquid Bacchus.
Then pious Anchises: ‘O chosen priest of Phoebus,
am I wrong, or when first I saw these walls did you not have a son
and twice two daughters, as far as I recall?’
along with Troy’s walls: the sacred things, and another sacred thing — his father —
the Cytherean hero bears upon his shoulders, a venerable burden.
Out of all his wealth pious Aeneas chooses that plunder
and his Ascanius, and on a fleet of exile over the seas
is borne from Antandros, and leaves the wicked thresholds of the Thracians
and the land dripping with Polydorus’s blood,
and with favoring winds and a following tide
enters, his comrades with him, the Apollonian city.
Anius — under whom as king men, and as priest Phoebus,
were rightly worshipped — received him in temple and home,
and showed him the city, the famous shrines, and the two trees
that Latona once clung to when she gave birth.
Incense given to the flames, wine poured upon the incense,
the entrails of slaughtered oxen burned by custom,
they seek the royal house, and reclined on high tapestries
take the gifts of Ceres with liquid Bacchus.
Then pious Anchises: ‘O chosen priest of Phoebus,
am I wrong, or when first I saw these walls did you not have a son
and twice two daughters, as far as I recall?’
luctibus est Aurora suis intenta piasque nunc quoque dat lacrimas et toto rorat in orbe. Non tamen eversam Troiae cum moenibus esse spem quoque fata sinunt: sacra et, sacra altera, patrem fert umeris, venerabile onus, Cythereius heros. de tantis opibus praedam pius eligit illam Ascaniumque suum profugaque per aequora classe fertur ab Antandro scelerataque limina Thracum et Polydoreo manantem sanguine terram linquit et utilibus ventis aestuque secundo intrat Apollineam sociis comitantibus urbem. hunc Anius, quo rege homines, antistite Phoebus rite colebatur, temploque domoque recepit urbemque ostendit delubraque nota duasque Latona quondam stirpes pariente retentas. ture dato flammis vinoque in tura profuso caesarumque boum fibris de more crematis regia tecta petunt, positique tapetibus altis munera cum liquido capiunt Cerealia Baccho. tum pius Anchises: ’o Phoebi lecte sacerdos,
Anius, shaking his temples bound with snowy fillets,
answered sadly: ‘You are not wrong, greatest hero;
you saw the father of five children,
whom now — such inconstancy of fortune whirls mankind —
you see almost childless.
For what help to me is my absent son,
whom the land called Andros after his own name
holds in his father’s stead, keeping the place and the realm?
The Delian gave him augury, and Liber gave another gift
to the female stock, beyond wish and belief:
for at the touch of my daughters all things turned
to grain and the juice of wine and grey Minerva’s oil,
and rich was the use of them.
When Atrides the sacker of Troy learned this
(lest you think we too felt no part of your storm),
using the force of arms he tears them unwilling from their father’s lap
and bids them feed the Argive fleet with the heavenly gift.
They flee, each where she can: Euboea was sought by two,
and their brother’s Andros by as many.
The soldier comes and threatens war unless they are surrendered;
love, conquered by fear, gave up the kindred bodies
to punishment; and you might forgive the timid brother:
there was no Aeneas here, no Hector to defend Andros,
through whom you held out into the tenth year.
And now chains were being readied for their captive arms:
they, raising their arms, still free, to heaven,
cried ‘Father Bacchus, help!’ and the giver of the gift
gave help — if to destroy in a wondrous way is called
giving help; nor by what means they lost their shape
could I learn or now can tell;
the sum of the ill is known: they took wings, and into the birds
of your wife departed, snow-white doves.’
answered sadly: ‘You are not wrong, greatest hero;
you saw the father of five children,
whom now — such inconstancy of fortune whirls mankind —
you see almost childless.
For what help to me is my absent son,
whom the land called Andros after his own name
holds in his father’s stead, keeping the place and the realm?
The Delian gave him augury, and Liber gave another gift
to the female stock, beyond wish and belief:
for at the touch of my daughters all things turned
to grain and the juice of wine and grey Minerva’s oil,
and rich was the use of them.
When Atrides the sacker of Troy learned this
(lest you think we too felt no part of your storm),
using the force of arms he tears them unwilling from their father’s lap
and bids them feed the Argive fleet with the heavenly gift.
They flee, each where she can: Euboea was sought by two,
and their brother’s Andros by as many.
The soldier comes and threatens war unless they are surrendered;
love, conquered by fear, gave up the kindred bodies
to punishment; and you might forgive the timid brother:
there was no Aeneas here, no Hector to defend Andros,
through whom you held out into the tenth year.
And now chains were being readied for their captive arms:
they, raising their arms, still free, to heaven,
cried ‘Father Bacchus, help!’ and the giver of the gift
gave help — if to destroy in a wondrous way is called
giving help; nor by what means they lost their shape
could I learn or now can tell;
the sum of the ill is known: they took wings, and into the birds
of your wife departed, snow-white doves.’
fallor, an et natum, cum primum haec moenia vidi, bisque duas natas, quantum reminiscor, habebas?’ huic Anius niveis circumdata tempora vittis concutiens et tristis ait: ’non falleris, heros maxime; vidisti natorum quinque parentem, quem nunc (tanta homines rerum inconstantia versat) paene vides orbum. quod enim mihi filius absens auxilium, quem dicta suo de nomine tellus Andros habet pro patre locumque et regna tenentem? Delius augurium dedit huic, dedit altera Liber femineae stirpi voto maiora fideque munera: nam tactu natarum cuncta mearum in segetem laticemque meri canaeque Minervae transformabantur, divesque erat usus in illis. hoc ubi cognovit Troiae populator Atrides, (ne non ex aliqua vestram sensisse procellam nos quoque parte putes), armorum viribus usus abstrahit invitas gremio genitoris alantque imperat Argolicam caelesti munere classem. effugiunt, quo quaeque potest: Euboea duabus et totidem natis Andros fraterna petita est. miles adest et, ni dedantur, bella minatur: victa metu pietas consortia corpora poenae dedidit; et timido possis ignoscere fratri: non hic Aeneas, non, qui defenderet Andron, Hector erat, per quem decimum durastis in annum. iamque parabantur captivis vincla lacertis: illae tollentes etiamnum libera caelo bracchia "Bacche pater, fer opem!" dixere, tulitque muneris auctor opem,ãsi miro perdere more ferre vocatur opem, nec qua ratione figuram perdiderint, potui scire aut nunc dicere possum; summa mali nota est: pennas sumpsere tuaeque coniugis in volucres, niveas abiere columbas.’ Talibus atque aliis postquam convivia dictis
When with such talk and other they had filled the feast,
the table removed, they sought their sleep,
and rise with day and go to Phoebus’s oracle,
who bade them seek the ancient mother and the kindred shores;
the king escorts them and gives gifts to the departing —
a scepter to Anchises, a cloak and quiver to the grandson,
a mixing-bowl to Aeneas, which once a guest,
Therses the Ismenian, had brought him from the Aonian shores:
Therses had sent it to him, Alcon of Hyle had wrought it
and engraved it with a long story.
There was a city, and you could point out its seven gates:
these stood for its name and told which city it was;
before the city, funerals and tombs and fires and pyres,
and mothers with loosed hair and bared breasts,
signify mourning; the nymphs too seem to weep
and lament their dried-up springs: a tree, leafless,
stands stiff and bare; goats gnaw the parched rocks.
Behold, in the midst of Thebes he sets the daughters of Orion,
the one giving a not-womanish wound to her bared throat,
the other with a weapon driven through her brave breast,
fallen for their people, and borne through the city
in fair funerals, and burned in a thronged place.
Then from the maiden ash two young men come forth,
lest the line should die, whom fame names the Coronae,
and lead the procession for their mother’s ashes.
Thus far the figures shone on the ancient bronze;
the bowl’s rim was rough with gilded acanthus.
The Trojans send back gifts no lighter than those given,
and give the priest an incense-box to keep his incense,
a libation-bowl, and a crown bright with gold and gems.
the table removed, they sought their sleep,
and rise with day and go to Phoebus’s oracle,
who bade them seek the ancient mother and the kindred shores;
the king escorts them and gives gifts to the departing —
a scepter to Anchises, a cloak and quiver to the grandson,
a mixing-bowl to Aeneas, which once a guest,
Therses the Ismenian, had brought him from the Aonian shores:
Therses had sent it to him, Alcon of Hyle had wrought it
and engraved it with a long story.
There was a city, and you could point out its seven gates:
these stood for its name and told which city it was;
before the city, funerals and tombs and fires and pyres,
and mothers with loosed hair and bared breasts,
signify mourning; the nymphs too seem to weep
and lament their dried-up springs: a tree, leafless,
stands stiff and bare; goats gnaw the parched rocks.
Behold, in the midst of Thebes he sets the daughters of Orion,
the one giving a not-womanish wound to her bared throat,
the other with a weapon driven through her brave breast,
fallen for their people, and borne through the city
in fair funerals, and burned in a thronged place.
Then from the maiden ash two young men come forth,
lest the line should die, whom fame names the Coronae,
and lead the procession for their mother’s ashes.
Thus far the figures shone on the ancient bronze;
the bowl’s rim was rough with gilded acanthus.
The Trojans send back gifts no lighter than those given,
and give the priest an incense-box to keep his incense,
a libation-bowl, and a crown bright with gold and gems.
inplerunt, mensa somnum petiere remota cumque die surgunt adeuntque oracula Phoebi, qui petere antiquam matrem cognataque iussit litora; prosequitur rex et dat munus ituris, Anchisae sceptrum, chlamydem pharetramque nepoti, cratera Aeneae, quem quondam transtulit illi hospes ab Aoniis Therses Ismenius oris: miserat hunc illi Therses, fabricaverat Alcon Hyleus et longo caelaverat argumento. urbs erat, et septem posses ostendere portas: hae pro nomine erant, et quae foret illa, docebant; ante urbem exequiae tumulique ignesque rogique effusaeque comas et apertae pectora matres significant luctum; nymphae quoque flere videntur siccatosque queri fontes: sine frondibus arbor nuda riget, rodunt arentia saxa capellae. ecce facit mediis natas Orione Thebis hac non femineum iugulo dare vulnus aperto, illac demisso per fortia pectora telo pro populo cecidisse suo pulchrisque per urbem funeribus ferri celebrique in parte cremari. tum de virginea geminos exire favilla, ne genus intereat, iuvenes, quos fama Coronas nominat, et cineri materno ducere pompam. hactenus antiquo signis fulgentibus aere, summus inaurato crater erat asper acantho. nec leviora datis Troiani dona remittunt dantque sacerdoti custodem turis acerram, dant pateram claramque auro gemmisque coronam. Inde recordati Teucros a sanguine Teucri
Then, remembering that the Teucrians draw their origin from Teucer’s blood,
they made for Crete, and could not long bear the climate of the place,
and, leaving its hundred cities, they long to reach the Ausonian harbors;
a storm rages and tosses the men, and, received in the faithless harbors
of the Strophades, the bird Aello terrified them.
And now they had sailed past the Dulichian harbors and Ithaca and Same
and the Neritian homes, the realm of false Ulysses:
they see Ambracia, contested in the gods’ suit, and the rock
that bears the shape of the judge transformed, which now is famous
for Actian Apollo,
and the Dodonian land vocal with its oak,
and the Chaonian bays, where the sons of the Molossian king
escaped impious fires on wings spread beneath them.
Next they make for the lands of the Phaeacians, set thick with fruitful trees;
from these they reach Epirus, and Buthrotos ruled by the Phrygian seer,
and a counterfeit Troy.
Then, certain of the future — all that the son of Priam, Helenus,
had foretold with faithful counsel — they enter
Sicania: this runs out into the sea with three tongues,
of which Pachynos is turned toward the rain-bringing south winds,
Lilybaeon is set against the soft west winds, and Pelorus
looks to the Bears, far from the sea, and to the north.
By this side the Teucrians come, and with oars and a following tide
toward nightfall the fleet gains the Zanclaean sand:
Scylla infests the right flank, restless Charybdis the left.
they made for Crete, and could not long bear the climate of the place,
and, leaving its hundred cities, they long to reach the Ausonian harbors;
a storm rages and tosses the men, and, received in the faithless harbors
of the Strophades, the bird Aello terrified them.
And now they had sailed past the Dulichian harbors and Ithaca and Same
and the Neritian homes, the realm of false Ulysses:
they see Ambracia, contested in the gods’ suit, and the rock
that bears the shape of the judge transformed, which now is famous
for Actian Apollo,
and the Dodonian land vocal with its oak,
and the Chaonian bays, where the sons of the Molossian king
escaped impious fires on wings spread beneath them.
Next they make for the lands of the Phaeacians, set thick with fruitful trees;
from these they reach Epirus, and Buthrotos ruled by the Phrygian seer,
and a counterfeit Troy.
Then, certain of the future — all that the son of Priam, Helenus,
had foretold with faithful counsel — they enter
Sicania: this runs out into the sea with three tongues,
of which Pachynos is turned toward the rain-bringing south winds,
Lilybaeon is set against the soft west winds, and Pelorus
looks to the Bears, far from the sea, and to the north.
By this side the Teucrians come, and with oars and a following tide
toward nightfall the fleet gains the Zanclaean sand:
Scylla infests the right flank, restless Charybdis the left.
ducere principium Creten tenuere locique ferre diu nequiere Iovem centumque relictis urbibus Ausonios optant contingere portus, saevit hiems iactatque viros, Strophadumque receptos portubus infidis exterruit ales Aello. et iam Dulichios portus Ithacamque Samonque Neritiasque domus, regnum fallacis Ulixis, praeter erant vecti: certatam lite deorum Ambraciam versique vident sub imagine saxum iudicis, Actiaco quae nunc ab Apolline nota est, vocalemque sua terram Dodonida quercu Chaoniosque sinus, ubi nati rege Molosso inpia subiectis fugere incendia pennis. Proxima Phaeacum felicibus obsita pomis rura petunt, Epiros ab his regnataque vati Buthrotos Phrygio simulataque Troia tenetur; inde futurorum certi, quae cuncta fideli Priamides Helenus monitu praedixerat, intrant Sicaniam: tribus haec excurrit in aequora linguis, e quibus imbriferos est versa Pachynos ad austros, mollibus oppositum zephyris Lilybaeon, ad arctos aequoris expertes spectat boreanque Peloros. hac subeunt Teucri, et remis aestuque secundo sub noctem potitur Zanclaea classis harena: Scylla latus dextrum, laevum inrequieta Charybdis
Charybdis swallows the ships she seizes and vomits them back,
while Scylla is girt about her black belly with savage dogs,
and bears a maiden’s face, and — if the poets have not left us
all fictions — was once, at some time, a maiden too:
many suitors sought her, and, having rejected them,
she would go to the nymphs of the sea — most welcome to the sea-nymphs —
and tell of the baffled loves of the young men.
While Galatea offered her hair to be combed,
sighing again and again, she addressed her with these words:
‘Yet you, O maiden, are sought by no merciless race of men,
and as you do, you can refuse them unpunished;
but for me, whose father is Nereus, whom sea-blue Doris
bore, who am guarded too by a crowd of sisters,
it was not allowed, save through grief, to escape
the Cyclops’s love’ — and tears stopped her voice as she spoke.
When the maiden had wiped them away with her marble thumb
and consoled the goddess, ‘Tell me, dearest,’ she said,
‘and do not hide the cause of your grief (so faithful am I)!’
The Nereid answered the daughter of Crataeis thus:
while Scylla is girt about her black belly with savage dogs,
and bears a maiden’s face, and — if the poets have not left us
all fictions — was once, at some time, a maiden too:
many suitors sought her, and, having rejected them,
she would go to the nymphs of the sea — most welcome to the sea-nymphs —
and tell of the baffled loves of the young men.
While Galatea offered her hair to be combed,
sighing again and again, she addressed her with these words:
‘Yet you, O maiden, are sought by no merciless race of men,
and as you do, you can refuse them unpunished;
but for me, whose father is Nereus, whom sea-blue Doris
bore, who am guarded too by a crowd of sisters,
it was not allowed, save through grief, to escape
the Cyclops’s love’ — and tears stopped her voice as she spoke.
When the maiden had wiped them away with her marble thumb
and consoled the goddess, ‘Tell me, dearest,’ she said,
‘and do not hide the cause of your grief (so faithful am I)!’
The Nereid answered the daughter of Crataeis thus:
infestat; vorat haec raptas revomitque carinas, illa feris atram canibus succingitur alvum, virginis ora gerens, et, si non omnia vates ficta reliquerunt, aliquo quoque tempore virgo: hanc multi petiere proci, quibus illa repulsis ad pelagi nymphas, pelagi gratissima nymphis, ibat et elusos iuvenum narrabat amores. cui dum pectendos praebet Galatea capillos, talibus adloquitur repetens suspiria dictis: ’te tamen, o virgo, genus haut inmite virorum expetit, utque facis, potes his inpune negare; at mihi, cui pater est Nereus, quam caerula Doris enixa est, quae sum turba quoque tuta sororum, non nisi per luctus licuit Cyclopis amorem effugere.’ et lacrimae vocem inpediere loquentis. quas ubi marmoreo detersit pollice virgo et solata deam est, ’refer, o carissima’ dixit ’neve tui causam tege (sic sum fida) doloris!’ Nereis his contra resecuta Crataeide natam est: ’Acis erat Fauno nymphaque Symaethide cretus
‘Acis was the son of Faunus and the Symaethian nymph,
a great joy, indeed, to his father and mother,
but a greater to me; for he had joined himself to me alone.
Beautiful, and having passed twice eight birthdays,
he had marked his tender cheeks with a doubtful down.
Him I sought; me the Cyclops sought without any end.
Nor, if you should ask, could I say whether the hatred of the Cyclops
or the love of Acis was the stronger in me:
the two were equal.
Ah, how great is the power of your reign,
kindly Venus! For that savage one, dreadful even to the woods,
seen by no guest unpunished, scorner of great Olympus and its gods,
feels what love is, and, caught by a strong desire,
burns, forgetful of his flocks and his caves.
And now you care for your looks, now you care to please,
now you comb your stiff hair with rakes, Polyphemus,
now it pleases you to trim your shaggy beard with a sickle
and to gaze at your fierce face in the water and compose it.
Your love of slaughter and your savagery and your boundless thirst for blood
fall still, and the ships come and go in safety.
a great joy, indeed, to his father and mother,
but a greater to me; for he had joined himself to me alone.
Beautiful, and having passed twice eight birthdays,
he had marked his tender cheeks with a doubtful down.
Him I sought; me the Cyclops sought without any end.
Nor, if you should ask, could I say whether the hatred of the Cyclops
or the love of Acis was the stronger in me:
the two were equal.
Ah, how great is the power of your reign,
kindly Venus! For that savage one, dreadful even to the woods,
seen by no guest unpunished, scorner of great Olympus and its gods,
feels what love is, and, caught by a strong desire,
burns, forgetful of his flocks and his caves.
And now you care for your looks, now you care to please,
now you comb your stiff hair with rakes, Polyphemus,
now it pleases you to trim your shaggy beard with a sickle
and to gaze at your fierce face in the water and compose it.
Your love of slaughter and your savagery and your boundless thirst for blood
fall still, and the ships come and go in safety.
magna quidem patrisque sui matrisque voluptas, nostra tamen maior; nam me sibi iunxerat uni. pulcher et octonis iterum natalibus actis signarat teneras dubia lanugine malas. hunc ego, me Cyclops nulla cum fine petebat. nec, si quaesieris, odium Cyclopis amorne Acidis in nobis fuerit praesentior, edam: par utrumque fuit. pro, quanta potentia regni est, Venus alma, tui! nempe ille inmitis et ipsis horrendus silvis et visus ab hospite nullo inpune et magni cum dis contemptor Olympi, quid sit amor, sentit validaque cupidine captus uritur oblitus pecorum antrorumque suorum. iamque tibi formae, iamque est tibi cura placendi, iam rigidos pectis rastris, Polypheme, capillos, iam libet hirsutam tibi falce recidere barbam et spectare feros in aqua et conponere vultus. caedis amor feritasque sitisque inmensa cruoris cessant, et tutae veniuntque abeuntque carinae. Telemus interea Siculam delatus ad Aetnen,
Telemus meanwhile, carried to Sicilian Etna,
Telemus son of Eurymus, whom no bird had ever deceived,
came to terrible Polyphemus and said, ‘The one eye
that you bear in mid-forehead — Ulysses will snatch it from you.’
He laughed and ‘O most foolish of seers, you are wrong,’ he said;
‘another has already snatched it.’
So he spurns the one who warns him truly, in vain,
and either, striding, weighs down the shores with his huge step,
or, wearied, returns beneath his shady caves.
A hill juts into the sea, wedge-shaped with a long point
(the sea’s wave flows round both its sides):
hither the fierce Cyclops climbed and sat down in the middle;
his woolly flocks followed, with none to lead them.
When the pine that served him as a staff
was laid before his feet — fit to bear sails as a yardarm —
and he had taken up the pipe made of a hundred reeds joined together,
all the mountains felt his shepherd’s whistling,
the waves felt it; I, hiding under a rock
and resting in my Acis’s lap, caught from afar with my ears
such words as these, and marked the words I heard in my mind:
Telemus son of Eurymus, whom no bird had ever deceived,
came to terrible Polyphemus and said, ‘The one eye
that you bear in mid-forehead — Ulysses will snatch it from you.’
He laughed and ‘O most foolish of seers, you are wrong,’ he said;
‘another has already snatched it.’
So he spurns the one who warns him truly, in vain,
and either, striding, weighs down the shores with his huge step,
or, wearied, returns beneath his shady caves.
A hill juts into the sea, wedge-shaped with a long point
(the sea’s wave flows round both its sides):
hither the fierce Cyclops climbed and sat down in the middle;
his woolly flocks followed, with none to lead them.
When the pine that served him as a staff
was laid before his feet — fit to bear sails as a yardarm —
and he had taken up the pipe made of a hundred reeds joined together,
all the mountains felt his shepherd’s whistling,
the waves felt it; I, hiding under a rock
and resting in my Acis’s lap, caught from afar with my ears
such words as these, and marked the words I heard in my mind:
Telemus Eurymides, quem nulla fefellerat ales, terribilem Polyphemon adit "lumen" que, "quod unum fronte geris media, rapiet tibi" dixit "Ulixes." risit et "o vatum stolidissime, falleris," inquit, "altera iam rapuit." sic frustra vera monentem spernit et aut gradiens ingenti litora passu degravat, aut fessus sub opaca revertitur antra. prominet in pontum cuneatus acumine longo collis (utrumque latus circumfluit aequoris unda): huc ferus adscendit Cyclops mediusque resedit; lanigerae pecudes nullo ducente secutae. cui postquam pinus, baculi quae praebuit usum, ante pedes posita est antemnis apta ferendis sumptaque harundinibus conpacta est fistula centum, senserunt toti pastoria sibila montes,
‘Galatea, whiter than the leaf of the snowy privet,
more flowery than the meadows, taller than the long alder,
brighter than glass, more playful than a tender kid,
smoother than shells worn by the constant sea,
more welcome than the winter sun and the summer shade,
more graceful than the doe, more conspicuous than the tall plane,
clearer than ice, sweeter than the ripe grape,
softer than swan’s down and curdled milk,
and, did you not flee, more lovely than a watered garden;
yet the same Galatea, fiercer than untamed bullocks,
harder than aged oak, more deceitful than the waves,
tougher than willow-withes and white vines,
more immovable than these rocks, more violent than a river,
prouder than the praised peacock, sharper than fire,
harsher than thorns, more savage than a she-bear with young,
deafer than the seas, more pitiless than a trodden snake,
and — what above all I would I could take from you —
swifter not only than the stag driven by loud baying,
but even than the winds and the fleeting breeze.
more flowery than the meadows, taller than the long alder,
brighter than glass, more playful than a tender kid,
smoother than shells worn by the constant sea,
more welcome than the winter sun and the summer shade,
more graceful than the doe, more conspicuous than the tall plane,
clearer than ice, sweeter than the ripe grape,
softer than swan’s down and curdled milk,
and, did you not flee, more lovely than a watered garden;
yet the same Galatea, fiercer than untamed bullocks,
harder than aged oak, more deceitful than the waves,
tougher than willow-withes and white vines,
more immovable than these rocks, more violent than a river,
prouder than the praised peacock, sharper than fire,
harsher than thorns, more savage than a she-bear with young,
deafer than the seas, more pitiless than a trodden snake,
and — what above all I would I could take from you —
swifter not only than the stag driven by loud baying,
but even than the winds and the fleeting breeze.
senserunt undae; latitans ego rupe meique Acidis in gremio residens procul auribus hausi talia dicta meis auditaque mente notavi: ’"Candidior folio nivei Galatea ligustri, floridior pratis, longa procerior alno, splendidior vitro, tenero lascivior haedo, levior adsiduo detritis aequore conchis, solibus hibernis, aestiva gratior umbra, mobilior damma, platano conspectior alta, lucidior glacie, matura dulcior uva, mollior et cycni plumis et lacta coacto, et, si non fugias, riguo formosior horto; ’"Saevior indomitis eadem Galatea iuvencis, durior annosa quercu, fallacior undis, lentior et salicis virgis et vitibus albis, his inmobilior scopulis, violentior amne, laudato pavone superbior, acrior igni, asperior tribulis, feta truculentior ursa, surdior aequoribus, calcato inmitior hydro, et, quod praecipue vellem tibi demere possem,
(but if you knew me well, you’d be loath to have fled, and would yourself
condemn your own delays and labor to keep me).
I have caves, part of the mountain, hanging from the living rock,
in which neither the sun is felt in the midsummer heat
nor is winter felt; there are apples that weigh down the boughs,
there are grapes like gold on the long vines,
and purple ones too: I keep both these and those for you.
With your own hands you will gather soft strawberries
born under the woodland shade, and autumn cornels,
and plums, not only those livid with dark juice,
but noble ones too, like fresh wax.
With me as husband you will lack neither chestnuts
nor the fruits of the arbutus: every tree will serve you.
All this flock is mine; many wander the valleys too,
many the wood hides, many are stabled in caves;
nor, if you happened to ask, could I tell you how many they are:
counting one’s flock is a poor man’s work; take no word from me
of their praises — you can see for yourself, here and now,
how they can scarcely walk for the udder swelling between their legs.
There are lambs, the younger brood, in warm folds;
there are kids too, of equal age, in other folds.
I always have snow-white milk: part of it is kept
for drinking, part the melted rennet hardens into cheese.
Nor will easy delights and common gifts only fall to you —
does and hares and a goat,
a pair of doves, or a nest taken from a treetop:
I found, for you to play with, twin cubs of a shaggy mountain bear,
so alike that you could scarcely tell them apart,
on the high mountaintops:
I found them and said, ‘These I shall keep for my mistress.’
condemn your own delays and labor to keep me).
I have caves, part of the mountain, hanging from the living rock,
in which neither the sun is felt in the midsummer heat
nor is winter felt; there are apples that weigh down the boughs,
there are grapes like gold on the long vines,
and purple ones too: I keep both these and those for you.
With your own hands you will gather soft strawberries
born under the woodland shade, and autumn cornels,
and plums, not only those livid with dark juice,
but noble ones too, like fresh wax.
With me as husband you will lack neither chestnuts
nor the fruits of the arbutus: every tree will serve you.
All this flock is mine; many wander the valleys too,
many the wood hides, many are stabled in caves;
nor, if you happened to ask, could I tell you how many they are:
counting one’s flock is a poor man’s work; take no word from me
of their praises — you can see for yourself, here and now,
how they can scarcely walk for the udder swelling between their legs.
There are lambs, the younger brood, in warm folds;
there are kids too, of equal age, in other folds.
I always have snow-white milk: part of it is kept
for drinking, part the melted rennet hardens into cheese.
Nor will easy delights and common gifts only fall to you —
does and hares and a goat,
a pair of doves, or a nest taken from a treetop:
I found, for you to play with, twin cubs of a shaggy mountain bear,
so alike that you could scarcely tell them apart,
on the high mountaintops:
I found them and said, ‘These I shall keep for my mistress.’
non tantum cervo claris latratibus acto, verum etiam ventis volucrique fugacior aura, (at bene si noris, pigeat fugisse, morasque ipsa tuas damnes et me retinere labores) sunt mihi, pars montis, vivo pendentia saxo antra, quibus nec sol medio sentitur in aestu, nec sentitur hiems; sunt poma gravantia ramos, sunt auro similes longis in vitibus uvae, sunt et purpureae: tibi et has servamus et illas. ipsa tuis manibus silvestri nata sub umbra mollia fraga leges, ipsa autumnalia corna prunaque non solum nigro liventia suco, verum etiam generosa novasque imitantia ceras. nec tibi castaneae me coniuge, nec tibi deerunt arbutei fetus: omnis tibi serviet arbor. ’"Hoc pecus omne meum est, multae quoque vallibus errant, multas silva tegit, multae stabulantur in antris, nec, si forte roges, possim tibi dicere, quot sint: pauperis est numerare pecus; de laudibus harum nil mihi credideris, praesens potes ipsa videre, ut vix circumeant distentum cruribus uber. sunt, fetura minor, tepidis in ovilibus agni. sunt quoque, par aetas, aliis in ovilibus haedi. lac mihi semper adest niveum: pars inde bibenda servatur, partem liquefacta coagula durant. ’"Nec tibi deliciae faciles vulgataque tantum munera contingent, dammae leporesque caperque, parve columbarum demptusve cacumine nidus: inveni geminos, qui tecum ludere possint, inter se similes, vix ut dignoscere possis,
Now at last lift your bright head from the blue sea,
now, Galatea, come, and do not scorn my gifts!
Surely I know myself: I lately saw myself in the image
of the clear water, and my own form pleased me as I looked.
Look how big I am: not greater than this body
is Jupiter in heaven — for you are wont to tell
of some Jove or other who reigns; abundant hair
hangs over my fierce face and shades my shoulders like a grove;
and do not think it ugly that my body bristles, thick-set
with stiff hairs: a tree is ugly without its leaves,
a horse is ugly unless a mane veils its tawny neck;
feathers clothe birds, their own wool becomes the sheep:
a beard and shaggy bristles suit men.
I have one eye in the middle of my forehead, but it is like
a huge shield. What of it? Does not the great Sun see all this
from heaven? Yet the Sun has but a single orb.
Add that my father reigns in your sea:
him I give you as a father-in-law; only pity me
and hear a suppliant’s prayers! For to you alone I yield,
I who scorn Jove and heaven and the piercing thunderbolt,
daughter of Nereus; I fear you — your wrath is fiercer than the bolt.
And I would bear this contempt more patiently,
if you fled from all; but why, when you reject the Cyclops,
do you love Acis, and prefer Acis’s embraces to mine?
Yet let him please himself and please you too —
though I would not wish it, Galatea — only let the chance be given:
he will feel that I have strength to match so great a body!
I will drag out his living guts and scatter his torn limbs through the fields
and through your waters (so let him mingle with you!).
For I burn, and the wounded fire seethes more fiercely,
and I seem to bear Etna, transferred with all its force,
in my breast — and you, Galatea, are not moved.’
now, Galatea, come, and do not scorn my gifts!
Surely I know myself: I lately saw myself in the image
of the clear water, and my own form pleased me as I looked.
Look how big I am: not greater than this body
is Jupiter in heaven — for you are wont to tell
of some Jove or other who reigns; abundant hair
hangs over my fierce face and shades my shoulders like a grove;
and do not think it ugly that my body bristles, thick-set
with stiff hairs: a tree is ugly without its leaves,
a horse is ugly unless a mane veils its tawny neck;
feathers clothe birds, their own wool becomes the sheep:
a beard and shaggy bristles suit men.
I have one eye in the middle of my forehead, but it is like
a huge shield. What of it? Does not the great Sun see all this
from heaven? Yet the Sun has but a single orb.
Add that my father reigns in your sea:
him I give you as a father-in-law; only pity me
and hear a suppliant’s prayers! For to you alone I yield,
I who scorn Jove and heaven and the piercing thunderbolt,
daughter of Nereus; I fear you — your wrath is fiercer than the bolt.
And I would bear this contempt more patiently,
if you fled from all; but why, when you reject the Cyclops,
do you love Acis, and prefer Acis’s embraces to mine?
Yet let him please himself and please you too —
though I would not wish it, Galatea — only let the chance be given:
he will feel that I have strength to match so great a body!
I will drag out his living guts and scatter his torn limbs through the fields
and through your waters (so let him mingle with you!).
For I burn, and the wounded fire seethes more fiercely,
and I seem to bear Etna, transferred with all its force,
in my breast — and you, Galatea, are not moved.’
villosae catulos in summis montibus ursae: inveni et dixi ’dominae servabimus istos.’ ’"Iam modo caeruleo nitidum caput exere ponto, iam, Galatea, veni, nec munera despice nostra! certe ego me novi liquidaeque in imagine vidi nuper aquae, placuitque mihi mea forma videnti. adspice, sim quantus: non est hoc corpore maior Iuppiter in caelo, nam vos narrare soletis nescio quem regnare Iovem; coma plurima torvos prominet in vultus, umerosque, ut lucus, obumbrat; nec mea quod rigidis horrent densissima saetis corpora, turpe puta: turpis sine frondibus arbor, turpis equus, nisi colla iubae flaventia velent; pluma tegit volucres, ovibus sua lana decori est: barba viros hirtaeque decent in corpore saetae. unum est in media lumen mihi fronte, sed instar ingentis clipei. quid? non haec omnia magnus Sol videt e caelo? Soli tamen unicus orbis. ’"Adde, quod in vestro genitor meus aequore regnat: hunc tibi do socerum; tantum miserere precesque supplicis exaudi! tibi enim succumbimus uni, quique Iovem et caelum sperno et penetrabile fulmen, Nerei, te vereor, tua fulmine saevior ira est. atque ego contemptus essem patientior huius, si fugeres omnes; sed cur Cyclope repulso Acin amas praefersque meis conplexibus Acin? ille tamen placeatque sibi placeatque licebit, quod nollem, Galatea, tibi; modo copia detur: sentiet esse mihi tanto pro corpore vires! viscera viva traham divulsaque membra per agros perque tuas spargam (sic se tibi misceat!) undas. uror enim, laesusque exaestuat acrius ignis, cumque suis videor translatam viribus Aetnam pectore ferre meo, nec tu, Galatea, moveris." ’Talia nequiquam questus (nam cuncta videbam)
Having complained thus in vain (for I saw it all),
he rises, and like a bull maddened when his cow is taken from him
cannot stand still, and wanders through the wood and the familiar glades,
when, fierce, he sees me and Acis, who knew nothing
and feared no such thing, and cries, ‘I see you,
and I’ll make that union of your love your last!’
And that voice was as great as an angry Cyclops
should have: Etna shuddered at the shout.
But I, terrified, plunge beneath the neighboring sea;
the Symaethian hero had turned his back and given himself to flight,
crying, ‘Help me, Galatea, I beg you! And you, my parents,
admit me, about to perish, to your realms!’
The Cyclops pursues, and hurls a piece torn from the mountain,
and though only the farthest corner of the rock
reached him, yet it buried Acis whole;
but I did the only thing the fates allowed:
I made Acis take on his ancestral powers.
Crimson blood was flowing from the mass,
and within a little space of time the redness
began to fade, and the color becomes that of a river
troubled by the first rain, and clears with time;
then the flung mass gapes open,
and a living tall reed rises through the cracks,
and the hollow mouth of the rock sounds with leaping waters,
and — a marvel — suddenly, up to mid-waist, there stood
a youth, his new horns wreathed with bending rushes,
who — except that he was larger, and sea-blue over his whole face —
was Acis; and even so he was still Acis,
turned into a river, and the waters kept their ancient name.’
he rises, and like a bull maddened when his cow is taken from him
cannot stand still, and wanders through the wood and the familiar glades,
when, fierce, he sees me and Acis, who knew nothing
and feared no such thing, and cries, ‘I see you,
and I’ll make that union of your love your last!’
And that voice was as great as an angry Cyclops
should have: Etna shuddered at the shout.
But I, terrified, plunge beneath the neighboring sea;
the Symaethian hero had turned his back and given himself to flight,
crying, ‘Help me, Galatea, I beg you! And you, my parents,
admit me, about to perish, to your realms!’
The Cyclops pursues, and hurls a piece torn from the mountain,
and though only the farthest corner of the rock
reached him, yet it buried Acis whole;
but I did the only thing the fates allowed:
I made Acis take on his ancestral powers.
Crimson blood was flowing from the mass,
and within a little space of time the redness
began to fade, and the color becomes that of a river
troubled by the first rain, and clears with time;
then the flung mass gapes open,
and a living tall reed rises through the cracks,
and the hollow mouth of the rock sounds with leaping waters,
and — a marvel — suddenly, up to mid-waist, there stood
a youth, his new horns wreathed with bending rushes,
who — except that he was larger, and sea-blue over his whole face —
was Acis; and even so he was still Acis,
turned into a river, and the waters kept their ancient name.’
surgit et ut taurus vacca furibundus adempta stare nequit silvaque et notis saltibus errat, cum ferus ignaros nec quicquam tale timentes me videt atque Acin "video" que exclamat "et ista ultima sit, faciam, Veneris concordia vestrae." tantaque vox, quantam Cyclops iratus habere debuit, illa fuit: clamore perhorruit Aetne. ast ego vicino pavefacta sub aequore mergor; terga fugae dederat conversa Symaethius heros et "fer opem, Galatea, precor, mihi! ferte, parentes," dixerat "et vestris periturum admittite regnis!" insequitur Cyclops partemque e monte revulsam mittit, et extremus quamvis pervenit ad illum angulus e saxo, totum tamen obruit Acin, at nos, quod fieri solum per fata licebat, fecimus, ut vires adsumeret Acis avitas. puniceus de mole cruor manabat, et intra temporis exiguum rubor evanescere coepit, fitque color primo turbati fluminis imbre purgaturque mora; tum moles iacta dehiscit, vivaque per rimas proceraque surgit harundo, osque cavum saxi sonat exsultantibus undis, miraque res, subito media tenus exstitit alvo incinctus iuvenis flexis nova cornua cannis, qui, nisi quod maior, quod toto caerulus ore,
Galatea had ceased to speak, and the company breaking up,
the Nereids depart and swim in the calm waters.
Scylla returns; for she does not dare to trust herself
to the open sea, and either wanders without clothes on the thirsty sand,
or, when she is tired, having found the secluded recesses
of the deep, cools her limbs in the enclosed water:
behold, skimming the strait, a new dweller of the deep sea,
his limbs lately transformed at Euboean Anthedon,
Glaucus comes, and clings, caught by desire of the maiden he has seen,
and speaks whatever words he thinks can delay her flight;
yet she flees, and, swift with fear,
reaches the top of a hill set near the shore.
Before the strait there is a huge peak, gathered to a single point,
a summit curving long under the trees out over the sea:
here she halted, and safe in the place, not knowing
whether he is monster or god, she marvels at his color
and the hair that covers his shoulders and the back below them,
and that a twisting fish takes up his lowest groin.
the Nereids depart and swim in the calm waters.
Scylla returns; for she does not dare to trust herself
to the open sea, and either wanders without clothes on the thirsty sand,
or, when she is tired, having found the secluded recesses
of the deep, cools her limbs in the enclosed water:
behold, skimming the strait, a new dweller of the deep sea,
his limbs lately transformed at Euboean Anthedon,
Glaucus comes, and clings, caught by desire of the maiden he has seen,
and speaks whatever words he thinks can delay her flight;
yet she flees, and, swift with fear,
reaches the top of a hill set near the shore.
Before the strait there is a huge peak, gathered to a single point,
a summit curving long under the trees out over the sea:
here she halted, and safe in the place, not knowing
whether he is monster or god, she marvels at his color
and the hair that covers his shoulders and the back below them,
and that a twisting fish takes up his lowest groin.
Acis erat, sed sic quoque erat tamen Acis, in amnem versus, et antiquum tenuerunt flumina nomen.’ Desierat Galatea loqui, coetuque soluto discedunt placidisque natant Nereides undis. Scylla redit; neque enim medio se credere ponto audet, et aut bibula sine vestibus errat harena aut, ubi lassata est, seductos nacta recessus gurgitis, inclusa sua membra refrigerat unda: ecce fretum stringens, alti novus incola ponti, nuper in Euboica versis Anthedone membris, Glaucus adest, visaeque cupidine virginis haeret et, quaecumque putat fugientem posse morari, verba refert; fugit illa tamen veloxque timore pervenit in summum positi prope litora montis. ante fretum est ingens, apicem conlectus in unum longa sub arboribus convexus in aequora vertex: constitit hic et tuta loco, monstrumne deusne ille sit, ignorans admiraturque colorem caesariemque umeros subiectaque terga tegentem, ultimaque excipiat quod tortilis inguina piscis.
He felt it, and leaning on a mass that stood nearby,
‘I am no portent nor wild beast, maiden,
but a god of the water,’ he said; ‘nor has Proteus greater
right over the sea, nor Triton, nor Athamas’s son Palaemon.
Yet before this I was mortal, but — doubtless owed
to the deep seas — even then I worked in them;
for at one time I would draw the nets that drew the fish,
at another, sitting on a rock, I would ply the line with a rod.
There are shores bordering a green meadow, of which
one part is girt by waves, the other by grass,
which neither the horned heifers ever harmed by grazing,
nor you, placid sheep, or shaggy she-goats, ever cropped;
no busy bee carried off gathered flowers from there,
no festive garlands were given for the head, nor ever
did scythe-bearing hands cut it;
I was the first to sit down on that turf,
while I dried my dripping lines, and, to count over in order
the captive fish, laid out upon it those that either
chance had driven into my nets, or their own credulity
onto my hooked barbs.
The thing is like a fiction — but what use is it for me to invent?
‘I am no portent nor wild beast, maiden,
but a god of the water,’ he said; ‘nor has Proteus greater
right over the sea, nor Triton, nor Athamas’s son Palaemon.
Yet before this I was mortal, but — doubtless owed
to the deep seas — even then I worked in them;
for at one time I would draw the nets that drew the fish,
at another, sitting on a rock, I would ply the line with a rod.
There are shores bordering a green meadow, of which
one part is girt by waves, the other by grass,
which neither the horned heifers ever harmed by grazing,
nor you, placid sheep, or shaggy she-goats, ever cropped;
no busy bee carried off gathered flowers from there,
no festive garlands were given for the head, nor ever
did scythe-bearing hands cut it;
I was the first to sit down on that turf,
while I dried my dripping lines, and, to count over in order
the captive fish, laid out upon it those that either
chance had driven into my nets, or their own credulity
onto my hooked barbs.
The thing is like a fiction — but what use is it for me to invent?
sensit et innitens, quae stabat proxima, moli ’non ego prodigium nec sum fera belua, virgo, sed deus’ inquit ’aquae: nec maius in aequora Proteus ius habet et Triton Athamantiadesque Palaemon. ante tamen mortalis eram, sed, scilicet altis debitus aequoribus, iam tum exercebar in illis; nam modo ducebam ducentia retia pisces, nunc in mole sedens moderabar harundine linum. sunt viridi prato confinia litora, quorum altera pars undis, pars altera cingitur herbis, quas neque cornigerae morsu laesere iuvencae, nec placidae carpsistis oves hirtaeve capellae; non apis inde tulit conlectos sedula flores, non data sunt capiti genialia serta, neque umquam falciferae secuere manus; ego primus in illo caespite consedi, dum lina madentia sicco, utque recenserem captivos ordine pisces, insuper exposui, quos aut in retia casus aut sua credulitas in aduncos egerat hamos. res similis fictae, sed quid mihi fingere prodest?
At the touch of the grass my catch began to stir
and to shift its side and to strain on land as in the sea;
and while I delay and marvel at once, the whole crowd
flees into its own waters and leaves its new master and the shore.
I stood amazed, and long I doubt and seek the cause,
whether some god, or the juice of the herb, had done this:
‘yet what herb,’ I said, ‘has this power?’ and with my hand
I plucked the grasses, and bit the plucked grasses with my teeth.
Scarcely had my throat well drunk the unknown juices
when suddenly I felt my heart tremble within
and my breast snatched away by love of another nature;
nor could I stay long: ‘Land never to be sought again,’ I said,
‘farewell!’ and I plunged my body beneath the sea.
The gods of the sea, receiving me, deem me worthy of fellowship’s honor,
and they ask Ocean and Tethys to take from me
whatever mortal I might bear; I am purified by them,
and, with a spell to wash away pollution chanted nine times over me,
I am bidden to set my breast beneath a hundred rivers;
without delay, rivers gliding down from various quarters
and all the seas are turned over my head.
Thus far I can tell you the deeds worth recounting,
thus far I remember these things, nor did my mind perceive the rest.
When it returned, I received myself other in my whole body
than I had lately been, and not the same in mind:
then for the first time I saw this beard, green with rust,
and my hair, which I sweep over the long seas,
and my huge shoulders and sea-blue arms,
and my legs ending, curved, in a finny fish.
Yet what use is this form, what use to have pleased the sea-gods,
what use to be a god, if you are not touched by these?’
As he spoke such things, and would have spoken more,
Scylla left the god; and he rages, and, provoked by the rebuff,
makes for the monstrous halls of Titanian Circe.
and to shift its side and to strain on land as in the sea;
and while I delay and marvel at once, the whole crowd
flees into its own waters and leaves its new master and the shore.
I stood amazed, and long I doubt and seek the cause,
whether some god, or the juice of the herb, had done this:
‘yet what herb,’ I said, ‘has this power?’ and with my hand
I plucked the grasses, and bit the plucked grasses with my teeth.
Scarcely had my throat well drunk the unknown juices
when suddenly I felt my heart tremble within
and my breast snatched away by love of another nature;
nor could I stay long: ‘Land never to be sought again,’ I said,
‘farewell!’ and I plunged my body beneath the sea.
The gods of the sea, receiving me, deem me worthy of fellowship’s honor,
and they ask Ocean and Tethys to take from me
whatever mortal I might bear; I am purified by them,
and, with a spell to wash away pollution chanted nine times over me,
I am bidden to set my breast beneath a hundred rivers;
without delay, rivers gliding down from various quarters
and all the seas are turned over my head.
Thus far I can tell you the deeds worth recounting,
thus far I remember these things, nor did my mind perceive the rest.
When it returned, I received myself other in my whole body
than I had lately been, and not the same in mind:
then for the first time I saw this beard, green with rust,
and my hair, which I sweep over the long seas,
and my huge shoulders and sea-blue arms,
and my legs ending, curved, in a finny fish.
Yet what use is this form, what use to have pleased the sea-gods,
what use to be a god, if you are not touched by these?’
As he spoke such things, and would have spoken more,
Scylla left the god; and he rages, and, provoked by the rebuff,
makes for the monstrous halls of Titanian Circe.
gramine contacto coepit mea praeda moveri et mutare latus terraque ut in aequore niti. dumque moror mirorque simul, fugit omnis in undas turba suas dominumque novum litusque relinquunt. obstipui dubitoque diu causamque requiro, num deus hoc aliquis, num sucus fecerit herbae: "quae tamen has" inquam "vires habet herba?" manuque pabula decerpsi decerptaque dente momordi. vix bene conbiberant ignotos guttura sucos, cum subito trepidare intus praecordia sensi alteriusque rapi naturae pectus amore; nec potui restare diu "repetenda" que "numquam terra, vale!" dixi corpusque sub aequora mersi. di maris exceptum socio dignantur honore, utque mihi, quaecumque feram, mortalia demant, Oceanum Tethynque rogant: ego lustror ab illis, et purgante nefas noviens mihi carmine dicto pectora fluminibus iubeor supponere centum; nec mora, diversis lapsi de partibus amnes totaque vertuntur supra caput aequora nostrum., hactenus acta tibi possum memoranda referre, hactenus haec memini, nec mens mea cetera sensit. quae postquam rediit, alium me corpore toto ac fueram nuper, neque eundem mente recepi: hanc ego tum primum viridem ferrugine barbam caesariemque meam, quam longa per aequora verro, ingentesque umeros et caerula bracchia vidi cruraque pinnigero curvata novissima pisce. quid tamen haec species, quid dis placuisse marinis, quid iuvat esse deum, si tu non tangeris istis?’ talia dicentem, dicturum plura, reliquit Scylla deum; furit ille inritatusque repulsa prodigiosa petit Titanidos atria Circes.
And now the Euboean dweller of the swollen waters had left behind
Aetna, heaped upon the Giants’ jaws, and the Cyclopes’ fields,
that know nothing of the harrow, nothing of the plough’s use,
and owe no debt to yoked oxen;
he had left Zancle too, and the walls of Rhegium opposite,
and the ship-wrecking strait that, pressed between twin shores,
holds the boundary of the Ausonian and the Sicilian land.
From there, borne by his mighty arm across the Tyrrhenian sea,
Glaucus came to the herb-bearing hills and the hall
of Circe, the Sun’s daughter, thronged with beasts of every kind.
When he had seen her, greeting given and received,
he said: ’Goddess, pity a god, I pray – for you alone
can ease this love of mine, if only I prove worthy.
How great the power of herbs is, Titaness, none
knows better than I, who was changed by their working.
And that the cause of my madness be not unknown to you:
on the Italian shore, facing the walls of Messana,
Scylla appeared to me. Shame forbids me to repeat
my promises, my prayers, my coaxing, the words she scorned;
but you – if there is any power of sovereignty in incantation,
move the incantation with your sacred lips, or, if a herb is mightier,
use the proven strength of the potent herb.
I do not ask you to cure me or to close these wounds:
no ending is needed – let her bear a share of the fire.’
Aetna, heaped upon the Giants’ jaws, and the Cyclopes’ fields,
that know nothing of the harrow, nothing of the plough’s use,
and owe no debt to yoked oxen;
he had left Zancle too, and the walls of Rhegium opposite,
and the ship-wrecking strait that, pressed between twin shores,
holds the boundary of the Ausonian and the Sicilian land.
From there, borne by his mighty arm across the Tyrrhenian sea,
Glaucus came to the herb-bearing hills and the hall
of Circe, the Sun’s daughter, thronged with beasts of every kind.
When he had seen her, greeting given and received,
he said: ’Goddess, pity a god, I pray – for you alone
can ease this love of mine, if only I prove worthy.
How great the power of herbs is, Titaness, none
knows better than I, who was changed by their working.
And that the cause of my madness be not unknown to you:
on the Italian shore, facing the walls of Messana,
Scylla appeared to me. Shame forbids me to repeat
my promises, my prayers, my coaxing, the words she scorned;
but you – if there is any power of sovereignty in incantation,
move the incantation with your sacred lips, or, if a herb is mightier,
use the proven strength of the potent herb.
I do not ask you to cure me or to close these wounds:
no ending is needed – let her bear a share of the fire.’
Iamque Giganteis iniectam faucibus Aetnen arvaque Cyclopum, quid rastra, quid usus aratri, nescia nec quicquam iunctis debentia bubus liquerat Euboicus tumidarum cultor aquarum, liquerat et Zanclen adversaque moenia Regi navifragumque fretum, gemino quod litore pressum Ausoniae Siculaeque tenet confinia terrae. inde manu magna Tyrrhena per aequora vectus herbiferos adiit colles atque atria Glaucus Sole satae Circes, variarum plena ferarum. quam simul adspexit, dicta acceptaque salute, ’diva, dei miserere, precor! nam sola levare tu potes hunc,’ dixit ’videar modo dignus, amorem. quanta sit herbarum, Titani, potentia, nulli quam mihi cognitius, qui sum mutatus ab illis. neve mei non nota tibi sit causa furoris: litore in Italico, Messenia moenia contra, Scylla mihi visa est. pudor est promissa precesque blanditiasque meas contemptaque verba referre; at tu, sive aliquid regni est in carmine, carmen ore move sacro, sive expugnacior herba est, utere temptatis operosae viribus herbae nec medeare mihi sanesque haec vulnera mando, fine nihil opus est: partem ferat illa caloris.’
But Circe – for no one has a temper readier than hers
for flames like these, whether the cause is in herself,
or whether Venus, stung by her father’s tale-bearing, makes it so –
answers with these words: ’Better to pursue one who is willing,
who longs for the same, who is caught by an equal desire.
You deserved to be courted unasked – and surely you could have been;
and if you give me hope, believe me, you will be courted unasked.
Do not doubt; let no distrust of your own beauty hold you back:
look, I, though I am a goddess, though the daughter of the shining Sun,
though I can do so much with song and so much with herb,
I vow to be yours. Scorn her who scorns you; to her who follows
pay back in kind, and with a single act avenge two loves.’
To her, as she made this trial, Glaucus said: ’Sooner
shall leaves grow in the sea and seaweed on the mountaintops
than my love change, while Scylla still lives.’
for flames like these, whether the cause is in herself,
or whether Venus, stung by her father’s tale-bearing, makes it so –
answers with these words: ’Better to pursue one who is willing,
who longs for the same, who is caught by an equal desire.
You deserved to be courted unasked – and surely you could have been;
and if you give me hope, believe me, you will be courted unasked.
Do not doubt; let no distrust of your own beauty hold you back:
look, I, though I am a goddess, though the daughter of the shining Sun,
though I can do so much with song and so much with herb,
I vow to be yours. Scorn her who scorns you; to her who follows
pay back in kind, and with a single act avenge two loves.’
To her, as she made this trial, Glaucus said: ’Sooner
shall leaves grow in the sea and seaweed on the mountaintops
than my love change, while Scylla still lives.’
at Circe (neque enim flammis habet aptius ulla talibus ingenium, seu causa est huius in ipsa, seu Venus indicio facit hoc offensa paterno,) talia verba refert: ’melius sequerere volentem optantemque eadem parilique cupidine captam. dignus eras ultro (poteras certeque) rogari, et, si spem dederis, mihi crede, rogaberis ultro. neu dubites absitque tuae fiducia formae, en ego, cum dea sim, nitidi cum filia Solis, carmine cum tantum, tantum quoque gramine possim, ut tua sim, voveo. spernentem sperne, sequenti redde vices, unoque duas ulciscere facto.’ talia temptanti ’prius’ inquit ’in aequore frondes Glaucus ’et in summis nascentur montibus algae, Sospite quam Scylla nostri mutentur amores.’
The goddess was outraged, and since she could not harm him –
nor, loving him, would she – she turns her wrath upon the girl
who was preferred to her; and, stung by love’s rebuff,
at once she grinds infamous weeds with their dreadful juices
and, having ground them, mingles in the spells of Hecate,
puts on a sea-blue veil, and through the throng
of fawning beasts moves out from the midst of her hall,
and, making for Rhegium set against the rocks of Zancle,
she enters the waves that boil with the tides,
on which she sets her steps as on solid ground
and skims the surface of the sea with dry feet.
There was a little pool, curved into a winding bow,
a quiet that Scylla loved: there she would withdraw from the heat
of sea and sky, when the sun was at its highest
in mid-circle and had cast the shortest shadows from the zenith.
This pool the goddess fouls beforehand and taints
with monster-breeding poisons; here she sprinkles juices
pressed from a baneful root, and with a dark tangle
of strange new words she murmurs nine times three a spell from her magic mouth.
nor, loving him, would she – she turns her wrath upon the girl
who was preferred to her; and, stung by love’s rebuff,
at once she grinds infamous weeds with their dreadful juices
and, having ground them, mingles in the spells of Hecate,
puts on a sea-blue veil, and through the throng
of fawning beasts moves out from the midst of her hall,
and, making for Rhegium set against the rocks of Zancle,
she enters the waves that boil with the tides,
on which she sets her steps as on solid ground
and skims the surface of the sea with dry feet.
There was a little pool, curved into a winding bow,
a quiet that Scylla loved: there she would withdraw from the heat
of sea and sky, when the sun was at its highest
in mid-circle and had cast the shortest shadows from the zenith.
This pool the goddess fouls beforehand and taints
with monster-breeding poisons; here she sprinkles juices
pressed from a baneful root, and with a dark tangle
of strange new words she murmurs nine times three a spell from her magic mouth.
indignata dea est et laedere quatenus ipsum non poterat (nec vellet amans), irascitur illi, quae sibi praelata est; venerisque offensa repulsa, protinus horrendis infamia pabula sucis conterit et tritis Hecateia carmina miscet caerulaque induitur velamina perque ferarum agmen adulantum media procedit ab aula oppositumque petens contra Zancleia saxa Region ingreditur ferventes aestibus undas, in quibus ut solida ponit vestigia terra summaque decurrit pedibus super aequora siccis. parvus erat gurges, curvos sinuatus in arcus, grata quies Scyllae: quo se referebat ab aestu et maris et caeli, medio cum plurimus orbe sol erat et minimas a vertice fecerat umbras. hunc dea praevitiat portentificisque venenis inquinat; hic pressos latices radice nocenti spargit et obscurum verborum ambage novorum ter noviens carmen magico demurmurat ore.
Scylla came, and had waded in to the waist,
when she sees her loins fouled with barking monsters,
and at first, not believing these are parts
of her own body, she flees them and drives them off and dreads
the snarling mouths of the dogs – but those she flees she drags along,
and, feeling for the body of her thighs, her legs, her feet,
she finds Cerberean jaws in place of those parts:
she stands rooted in a rage of dogs, and the backs of the beasts below
she pens with her docked loins and her belly jutting out.
Glaucus, her lover, wept, and fled the union
with Circe, who had used the power of her herbs too cruelly;
Scylla stayed in her place, and when the chance was given, first,
out of hatred for Circe, she stripped Ulysses of his comrades;
soon she would have sunk the Trojan keels as well,
had she not first been transformed into a crag that even now
stands out in stone: the crag too the sailor shuns.
when she sees her loins fouled with barking monsters,
and at first, not believing these are parts
of her own body, she flees them and drives them off and dreads
the snarling mouths of the dogs – but those she flees she drags along,
and, feeling for the body of her thighs, her legs, her feet,
she finds Cerberean jaws in place of those parts:
she stands rooted in a rage of dogs, and the backs of the beasts below
she pens with her docked loins and her belly jutting out.
Glaucus, her lover, wept, and fled the union
with Circe, who had used the power of her herbs too cruelly;
Scylla stayed in her place, and when the chance was given, first,
out of hatred for Circe, she stripped Ulysses of his comrades;
soon she would have sunk the Trojan keels as well,
had she not first been transformed into a crag that even now
stands out in stone: the crag too the sailor shuns.
Scylla venit mediaque tenus descenderat alvo, cum sua foedari latrantibus inguina monstris adspicit ac primo credens non corporis illas esse sui partes, refugitque abigitque timetque ora proterva canum, sed quos fugit, attrahit una et corpus quaerens femorum crurumque pedumque Cerbereos rictus pro partibus invenit illis: statque canum rabie subiectaque terga ferarum inguinibus truncis uteroque exstante coercet. Flevit amans Glaucus nimiumque hostiliter usae viribus herbarum fugit conubia Circes; Scylla loco mansit cumque est data copia, primum in Circes odium sociis spoliavit Ulixem; mox eadem Teucras fuerat mersura carinas, ni prius in scopulum, qui nunc quoque saxeus exstat, transformata foret: scopulum quoque navita vitat.
When the Trojan ships had passed these and greedy Charybdis
with their oars, and were now near the Ausonian shore,
they are driven back by the wind to the Libyan coast.
There the Sidonian woman received Aeneas in her heart and home,
she who would bear ill the parting from her Phrygian husband;
and on a pyre built under the pretense of a rite
she fell upon the sword, and, herself deceived, deceived them all.
Fleeing again the new walls of that sandy land,
borne back to the seat of Eryx and faithful Acestes,
he offers sacrifice and honors his father’s tomb.
The ships that Juno’s Iris had all but burned
he frees, and leaves behind the realm of Hippotades
and the lands smoking with hot sulphur, and the rocks
of the Sirens, Achelous’s daughters; and his pine, robbed of its helmsman,
skirts Inarime and Prochyta and Pithecusae,
set upon their barren hill and named from those who dwell there.
with their oars, and were now near the Ausonian shore,
they are driven back by the wind to the Libyan coast.
There the Sidonian woman received Aeneas in her heart and home,
she who would bear ill the parting from her Phrygian husband;
and on a pyre built under the pretense of a rite
she fell upon the sword, and, herself deceived, deceived them all.
Fleeing again the new walls of that sandy land,
borne back to the seat of Eryx and faithful Acestes,
he offers sacrifice and honors his father’s tomb.
The ships that Juno’s Iris had all but burned
he frees, and leaves behind the realm of Hippotades
and the lands smoking with hot sulphur, and the rocks
of the Sirens, Achelous’s daughters; and his pine, robbed of its helmsman,
skirts Inarime and Prochyta and Pithecusae,
set upon their barren hill and named from those who dwell there.
Hunc ubi Troianae remis avidamque Charybdin evicere rates, cum iam prope litus adessent Ausonium, Libycas vento referuntur ad oras. excipit Aenean illic animoque domoque non bene discidium Phrygii latura mariti Sidonis; inque pyra sacri sub imagine facta incubuit ferro deceptaque decipit omnes. rursus harenosae fugiens nova moenia terrae ad sedemque Erycis fidumque relatus Acesten sacrificat tumulumque sui genitoris honorat. quasque rates Iris Iunonia paene cremarat, solvit et Hippotadae regnum terrasque calenti sulphure fumantis Acheloiadumque relinquit Sirenum scopulos, orbataque praeside pinus Inarimen Prochytenque legit sterilique locatas colle Pithecusas, habitantum nomine dictas.
For the father of the gods, hating long ago the fraud
and the perjuries of the Cercopes and that cheating race’s crimes,
changed the men into a misshapen animal, so the same creatures
might seem at once unlike a man and like one:
he shrank their limbs, blunted the snub noses turned up from the brow,
and furrowed their faces with an old crone’s wrinkles,
and, clothing their whole bodies in tawny shag,
sent them to these seats; and first he took from them the use
of speech and of the tongue born for dreadful perjury,
leaving them only the power to complain in a hoarse screech.
and the perjuries of the Cercopes and that cheating race’s crimes,
changed the men into a misshapen animal, so the same creatures
might seem at once unlike a man and like one:
he shrank their limbs, blunted the snub noses turned up from the brow,
and furrowed their faces with an old crone’s wrinkles,
and, clothing their whole bodies in tawny shag,
sent them to these seats; and first he took from them the use
of speech and of the tongue born for dreadful perjury,
leaving them only the power to complain in a hoarse screech.
quippe deum genitor, fraudem et periuria quondam Cercopum exosus gentisque admissa dolosae, in deforme viros animal mutavit, ut idem dissimiles homini possent similesque videri, membraque contraxit naresque a fronte resimas contudit et rugis peraravit anilibus ora totaque velatos flaventi corpora villo misit in has sedes nec non prius abstulit usum verborum et natae dira in periuria linguae; posse queri tantum rauco stridore reliquit.
When he had passed these, and left to the right
the walls of Parthenope, and on the left
the tomb of the tuneful son of Aeolus, and shores teeming with marsh-reeds,
he enters the coast of Cumae and the cave of the long-lived Sibyl
and prays to go down through Avernus to his father’s shade.
But she, her face long held fixed upon the ground,
raised it at last and, filled with the god received within her,
said: ’Great things you ask, man greatest in your deeds,
whose right hand was proven by the sword, your devotion by the fire.
Yet lay aside your fear, Trojan: you will gain what you seek,
and under my guidance you will come to know the Elysian homes
and the world’s last realms and your father’s dear likeness.
To valor no way is closed.’ She spoke, and showed him,
gleaming with gold, a bough in the forest of Avernal Juno,
and bade him tear it from its trunk.
Aeneas obeyed, and saw the riches of dread Orcus
and his own forefathers and the aged shade
of great-hearted Anchises; he learned too the laws of those places,
and what perils must be faced in the wars to come.
the walls of Parthenope, and on the left
the tomb of the tuneful son of Aeolus, and shores teeming with marsh-reeds,
he enters the coast of Cumae and the cave of the long-lived Sibyl
and prays to go down through Avernus to his father’s shade.
But she, her face long held fixed upon the ground,
raised it at last and, filled with the god received within her,
said: ’Great things you ask, man greatest in your deeds,
whose right hand was proven by the sword, your devotion by the fire.
Yet lay aside your fear, Trojan: you will gain what you seek,
and under my guidance you will come to know the Elysian homes
and the world’s last realms and your father’s dear likeness.
To valor no way is closed.’ She spoke, and showed him,
gleaming with gold, a bough in the forest of Avernal Juno,
and bade him tear it from its trunk.
Aeneas obeyed, and saw the riches of dread Orcus
and his own forefathers and the aged shade
of great-hearted Anchises; he learned too the laws of those places,
and what perils must be faced in the wars to come.
Has ubi praeteriit et Parthenopeia dextra moenia deseruit, laeva de parte canori Aeolidae tumulum et, loca feta palustribus ulvis, litora Cumarum vivacisque antra Sibyllae intrat et, ut manes adeat per Averna paternos, orat. at illa diu vultum tellure moratum erexit tandemque deo furibunda recepto ’magna petis,’ dixit, ’vir factis maxime, cuius dextera per ferrum, pietas spectata per ignes. pone tamen, Troiane, metum: potiere petitis Elysiasque domos et regna novissima mundi me duce cognosces simulacraque cara parentis. invia virtuti nulla est via.’ dixit et auro fulgentem ramum silva Iunonis Avernae monstravit iussitque suo divellere trunco. paruit Aeneas et formidabilis Orci vidit opes atavosque suos umbramque senilem magnanimi Anchisae; didicit quoque iura locorum, quaeque novis essent adeunda pericula bellis.
From there, leading his weary steps by the backward path,
he eases the labor with talk with his Cumaean guide.
And while he plies the dreadful road through the dim twilight,
he said: ’Whether you are a goddess in person, or most dear to the gods,
you will always be to me as a divine power, and I will own
that I am a gift of yours – you who willed that I enter the place of death,
and that I escape the place of death once seen.
For these your services, when I am borne aloft to the upper air,
I will raise you temples and grant you the honors of incense.’
The prophetess looks back at him and, drawing deep sighs,
said: ’I am no goddess, nor deem a human head worthy
of the honor of sacred incense; and, lest you stray in ignorance,
eternal light, never to know an ending, was being offered me,
had my virginity lain open to Phoebus’s love.
While he hoped for it, while he longed to bribe me first
with gifts, he said: "Choose, maid of Cumae, what you wish:
you will gain your wish." I, pointing to a heap
of gathered dust, foolishly asked that as many birthdays
fall to me as the dust held grains;
it slipped my mind to ask, besides, for years that stayed young.
Yet these years he kept offering me, and eternal youth as well,
he eases the labor with talk with his Cumaean guide.
And while he plies the dreadful road through the dim twilight,
he said: ’Whether you are a goddess in person, or most dear to the gods,
you will always be to me as a divine power, and I will own
that I am a gift of yours – you who willed that I enter the place of death,
and that I escape the place of death once seen.
For these your services, when I am borne aloft to the upper air,
I will raise you temples and grant you the honors of incense.’
The prophetess looks back at him and, drawing deep sighs,
said: ’I am no goddess, nor deem a human head worthy
of the honor of sacred incense; and, lest you stray in ignorance,
eternal light, never to know an ending, was being offered me,
had my virginity lain open to Phoebus’s love.
While he hoped for it, while he longed to bribe me first
with gifts, he said: "Choose, maid of Cumae, what you wish:
you will gain your wish." I, pointing to a heap
of gathered dust, foolishly asked that as many birthdays
fall to me as the dust held grains;
it slipped my mind to ask, besides, for years that stayed young.
Yet these years he kept offering me, and eternal youth as well,
inde ferens lassos averso tramite passus cum duce Cumaea mollit sermone laborem. dumque iter horrendum per opaca crepuscula carpit, ’seu dea tu praesens, seu dis gratissima,’ dixit, ’numinis instar eris semper mihi, meque fatebor muneris esse tui, quae me loca mortis adire, quae loca me visae voluisti evadere mortis. pro quibus aerias meritis evectus ad auras templa tibi statuam, tribuam tibi turis honores.’ respicit hunc vates et suspiratibus haustis ’nec dea sum,’ dixit ’nec sacri turis honore humanum dignare caput, neu nescius erres, lux aeterna mihi carituraque fine dabatur, si mea virginitas Phoebo patuisset amanti. dum tamen hanc sperat, dum praecorrumpere donis me cupit, "elige," ait "virgo Cumaea, quid optes: optatis potiere tuis." ego pulveris hausti ostendens cumulum, quot haberet corpora pulvis, tot mihi natales contingere vana rogavi; excidit, ut peterem iuvenes quoque protinus annos. hos tamen ille mihi dabat aeternamque iuventam,
if I would suffer his love. Scorning Phoebus’s gift,
I remain unwed; but already my happier age
has turned its back, and sick old age comes on with trembling step,
to be borne for long. For now seven generations
have I lived; yet there remain, to equal the dust’s number,
three hundred harvests, three hundred vintages still to see.
A time will come when length of days will make me small
from a body so great, and my limbs, consumed by age,
will be reduced to the lightest burden: I shall seem never to have been loved,
never to have pleased a god; Phoebus himself perhaps
will either not know me, or deny that he loved me –
so utterly changed shall I be borne, and seen by none,
yet known by my voice: the fates will leave me my voice.’
I remain unwed; but already my happier age
has turned its back, and sick old age comes on with trembling step,
to be borne for long. For now seven generations
have I lived; yet there remain, to equal the dust’s number,
three hundred harvests, three hundred vintages still to see.
A time will come when length of days will make me small
from a body so great, and my limbs, consumed by age,
will be reduced to the lightest burden: I shall seem never to have been loved,
never to have pleased a god; Phoebus himself perhaps
will either not know me, or deny that he loved me –
so utterly changed shall I be borne, and seen by none,
yet known by my voice: the fates will leave me my voice.’
si Venerem paterer: contempto munere Phoebi innuba permaneo; sed iam felicior aetas terga dedit, tremuloque gradu venit aegra senectus, quae patienda diu est. nam iam mihi saecula septem acta, tamen superest, numeros ut pulveris aequem, ter centum messes, ter centum musta videre. tempus erit, cum de tanto me corpore parvam longa dies faciet, consumptaque membra senecta ad minimum redigentur onus: nec amata videbor nec placuisse deo, Phoebus quoque forsitan ipse vel non cognoscet, vel dilexisse negabit: usque adeo mutata ferar nullique videnda, voce tamen noscar; vocem mihi fata relinquent.’
As the Sibyl told such things along the upward path,
the Trojan Aeneas emerges from the Stygian seats
into the Euboean city, and, the customary offerings made,
comes to the shore that does not yet bear his nurse’s name.
Here too, after the long weariness of his toils, had stayed
Macareus of Neritos, companion of much-enduring Ulysses.
He recognizes Achaemenides, once abandoned amid the rocks of Aetna,
and, marveling to find him alive past all hope,
says: ’What chance or god keeps you safe, Achaemenides?
Why does a barbarian prow carry a Greek? What land does your ship seek?’
To him asking this – no longer shaggy in his garb,
now his own and wrapped in no stitched-together thorns –
Achaemenides replies: ’May I look again on Polyphemus
and those jaws streaming with human blood,
if this home and Ithaca are dearer to me than Aeneas’s ship,
if I revere him less than a father; and never
could I be grateful enough, though I gave everything.
That I speak and breathe and look upon the sky and the sun’s stars –
could I be ungrateful and forgetful of that?
He it was who granted that this soul of mine did not pass
into the Cyclops’s mouth, and that, even should I now leave the light of life,
I should be buried in a tomb, or at least not in that belly.’
the Trojan Aeneas emerges from the Stygian seats
into the Euboean city, and, the customary offerings made,
comes to the shore that does not yet bear his nurse’s name.
Here too, after the long weariness of his toils, had stayed
Macareus of Neritos, companion of much-enduring Ulysses.
He recognizes Achaemenides, once abandoned amid the rocks of Aetna,
and, marveling to find him alive past all hope,
says: ’What chance or god keeps you safe, Achaemenides?
Why does a barbarian prow carry a Greek? What land does your ship seek?’
To him asking this – no longer shaggy in his garb,
now his own and wrapped in no stitched-together thorns –
Achaemenides replies: ’May I look again on Polyphemus
and those jaws streaming with human blood,
if this home and Ithaca are dearer to me than Aeneas’s ship,
if I revere him less than a father; and never
could I be grateful enough, though I gave everything.
That I speak and breathe and look upon the sky and the sun’s stars –
could I be ungrateful and forgetful of that?
He it was who granted that this soul of mine did not pass
into the Cyclops’s mouth, and that, even should I now leave the light of life,
I should be buried in a tomb, or at least not in that belly.’
Talia convexum per iter memorante Sibylla sedibus Euboicam Stygiis emergit in urbem Troius Aeneas sacrisque ex more litatis litora adit nondum nutricis habentia nomen. hic quoque substiterat post taedia longa laborum Neritius Macareus, comes experientis Ulixis. desertum quondam mediis qui rupibus Aetnae noscit Achaemeniden inprovisoque repertum vivere miratus, ’qui te casusve deusve servat, Achaemenide? cur’ inquit ’barbara Graium prora vehit? petitur vestra quae terra carina?’ talia quaerenti, iam non hirsutus amictu, iam suus et spinis conserto tegmine nullis, fatur Achaemenides: ’iterum Polyphemon et illos adspiciam fluidos humano sanguine rictus, hac mihi si potior domus est Ithaceque carina, si minus Aenean veneror genitore, nec umquam esse satis potero, praestem licet omnia, gratus. quod loquor et spiro caelumque et sidera solis respicio, possimne ingratus et inmemor esse? ille dedit, quod non anima haec Cyclopis in ora venit, et ut iam nunc lumen vitale relinquam, aut tumulo aut certe non illa condar in alvo.
What spirit was in me then (unless fear had stripped away all sense and feeling), when, left behind, I saw you make for the deep sea? I longed to cry out, but feared to betray myself to the foe: even Ulysses’s shout nearly wrecked your ship. I saw him, when he tore from the mountain a huge crag and flung it into the midst of the waves; I saw him again, as if driven by a catapult’s force, hurling vast rocks with his Giant’s arm, and I trembled lest the wave or the wind sink the keel, forgetting now that I was no longer aboard her. But when your flight had drawn you back from certain death, he indeed roams all Aetna, groaning, gropes the woods with his hand, and, robbed of his eye, crashes into the crags, and, stretching to the sea his arms befouled with gore, curses the Achaean race and says: "Oh, if some chance would bring me back Ulysses, or one of his comrades, on whom my anger might rage, whose entrails I might eat, whose living limbs I might tear with my right hand, whose blood might flood my throat, and whose crushed joints might quiver beneath my teeth: how slight, or nothing, would be the loss of the light taken from me!" This and more he said in his fury, while a pale horror seized me, watching his face still dripping with slaughter, his cruel hands, the empty socket of his eye, his limbs, and his beard caked with human blood.
quid mihi tunc animi (nisi si timor abstulit omnem sensum animumque) fuit, cum vos petere alta relictus aequora conspexi? volui inclamare, sed hosti prodere me timui: vestrae quoque clamor Ulixis paene rati nocuit. vidi, cum monte revulsum inmanem scopulum medias permisit in undas; vidi iterum veluti tormenti viribus acta vasta Giganteo iaculantem saxa lacerto et, ne deprimeret fluctus ventusve carinam, pertimui, iam me non esse oblitus in illa. ut vero fuga vos a certa morte reduxit, ille quidem totam gemebundus obambulat Aetnam praetemptatque manu silvas et luminis orbus rupibus incursat foedataque bracchia tabo in mare protendens gentem exsecratur Achivam atque ait: "o si quis referat mihi casus Ulixem, aut aliquem e sociis, in quem mea saeviat ira, viscera cuius edam, cuius viventia dextra membra mea laniem, cuius mihi sanguis inundet guttur, et elisi trepident sub dentibus artus: quam nullum aut leve sit damnum mihi lucis ademptae!" haec et plura ferox, me luridus occupat horror spectantem vultus etiamnum caede madentes crudelesque manus et inanem luminis orbem membraque et humano concretam sanguine barbam.
Death was before my eyes – yet that was the least of evils;
and now I thought he would seize me, now plunge my entrails
into his own, and there clung to my mind the image
of that time when I saw two bodies of my comrades
dashed three and four times against the ground,
while he himself, sprawled over them like a shaggy lion,
stowed their entrails, their flesh, their bones with white marrow,
and their half-living limbs into his greedy belly;
a trembling seized me: I stood bloodless and grieving,
watching him chew and spew the bloody banquet
from his mouth and vomit gobbets clotted with wine:
such a fate I imagined was being readied for wretched me.
And for many days hiding, shuddering at every sound,
fearing death and yet longing to die,
staving off hunger with acorns and grass mixed with leaves,
alone, helpless, hopeless, abandoned to death and torment,
after a long time I caught sight of this ship far off,
and begged for flight with gestures and ran to the shore,
and moved them: a Trojan ship took in a Greek!
You too, dearest of comrades, unfold your own fortunes,
and your captain’s, and the company’s that put to sea with you.’
and now I thought he would seize me, now plunge my entrails
into his own, and there clung to my mind the image
of that time when I saw two bodies of my comrades
dashed three and four times against the ground,
while he himself, sprawled over them like a shaggy lion,
stowed their entrails, their flesh, their bones with white marrow,
and their half-living limbs into his greedy belly;
a trembling seized me: I stood bloodless and grieving,
watching him chew and spew the bloody banquet
from his mouth and vomit gobbets clotted with wine:
such a fate I imagined was being readied for wretched me.
And for many days hiding, shuddering at every sound,
fearing death and yet longing to die,
staving off hunger with acorns and grass mixed with leaves,
alone, helpless, hopeless, abandoned to death and torment,
after a long time I caught sight of this ship far off,
and begged for flight with gestures and ran to the shore,
and moved them: a Trojan ship took in a Greek!
You too, dearest of comrades, unfold your own fortunes,
and your captain’s, and the company’s that put to sea with you.’
mors erat ante oculos, minimum tamen illa malorum, et iam prensurum, iam nunc mea viscera rebar in sua mersurum, mentique haerebat imago temporis illius, quo vidi bina meorum ter quater adfligi sociorum corpora terrae, cum super ipse iacens hirsuti more leonis visceraque et carnes cumque albis ossa medullis semianimesque artus avidam condebat in alvum; me tremor invasit: stabam sine sanguine maestus, mandentemque videns eiectantemque cruentas ore dapes et frusta mero glomerata vomentem: talia fingebam misero mihi fata parari perque dies multos latitans omnemque tremiscens ad strepitum mortemque timens cupidusque moriri glande famem pellens et mixta frondibus herba solus inops exspes leto poenaeque relictus hanc procul adspexi longo post tempore navem oravique fugam gestu ad litusque cucurri, et movi: Graiumque ratis Troiana recepit! tu quoque pande tuos, comitum gratissime, casus et ducis et turbae, quae tecum est credita ponto.’
He tells that Aeolus reigns in the Tuscan deep,
Aeolus, son of Hippotes, who confines the winds in prison;
that the Dulichian leader had received them, shut in an ox-hide,
a memorable gift, and with a following wind
had sailed nine days and sighted the land he sought;
but when the ninth dawn was followed by the next,
his comrades, overcome by envy and greed for plunder,
thinking it gold, loosed the bindings from the winds;
with these the ship sailed back through the waves it had just crossed,
and came again to the harbor of the Aeolian king.
’From there,’ he says, ’we came to the ancient city of Lamus
the Laestrygonian: Antiphates was king in that land.
I was sent to him, two companions at my side,
and safety was scarcely won by flight for one comrade and me;
the third of us stained the Laestrygonian’s wicked mouth with his blood.
Antiphates presses the fleeing and rouses the mob;
they gather and hurl rocks and beams, and sink the men and sink the ships.
One alone, which carried us and Ulysses himself,
escaped. Grieving for the lost part of our comrades
and lamenting long, we glide to those lands
which you make out far off – and far off, believe me,
is how the island I once saw is best seen!’
Aeolus, son of Hippotes, who confines the winds in prison;
that the Dulichian leader had received them, shut in an ox-hide,
a memorable gift, and with a following wind
had sailed nine days and sighted the land he sought;
but when the ninth dawn was followed by the next,
his comrades, overcome by envy and greed for plunder,
thinking it gold, loosed the bindings from the winds;
with these the ship sailed back through the waves it had just crossed,
and came again to the harbor of the Aeolian king.
’From there,’ he says, ’we came to the ancient city of Lamus
the Laestrygonian: Antiphates was king in that land.
I was sent to him, two companions at my side,
and safety was scarcely won by flight for one comrade and me;
the third of us stained the Laestrygonian’s wicked mouth with his blood.
Antiphates presses the fleeing and rouses the mob;
they gather and hurl rocks and beams, and sink the men and sink the ships.
One alone, which carried us and Ulysses himself,
escaped. Grieving for the lost part of our comrades
and lamenting long, we glide to those lands
which you make out far off – and far off, believe me,
is how the island I once saw is best seen!’
Aeolon ille refert Tusco regnare profundo, Aeolon Hippotaden, cohibentem carcere ventos; quos bovis inclusos tergo, memorabile munus, Dulichium sumpsisse ducem flatuque secundo lucibus isse novem et terram aspexisse petitam; proxima post nonam cum sese aurora moveret, invidia socios praedaeque cupidine victos esse; ratos aurum, dempsisse ligamina ventis; cum quibus isse retro, per quas modo venerat undas, Aeoliique ratem portus repetisse tyranni. ’inde Lami veterem Laestrygonis’ inquit ’in urbem venimus: Antiphates terra regnabat in illa. missus ad hunc ego sum, numero comitante duorum, vixque fuga quaesita salus comitique mihique, tertius e nobis Laestrygonis inpia tinxit ora cruore suo. fugientibus instat et agmen concitat Antiphates; coeunt et saxa trabesque coniciunt merguntque viros merguntque carinas. una tamen, quae nos ipsumque vehebat Ulixem, effugit. amissa sociorum parte dolentes multaque conquesti terris adlabimur illis, quas procul hinc cernis (procul est, mihi crede, videnda insula visa mihi!)
’...And you, most just of the Trojans,
goddess-born – for now that the war is ended you must not be called
an enemy, Aeneas – I warn you: flee the shores of Circe!
We too, our pine moored on Circe’s shore,
remembering Antiphates and the untamed Cyclops,
refused to go; but to enter the unknown halls
we were picked by lot: the lot sent me and faithful Polites
and Eurylochus too, and Elpenor too fond of wine,
and twice nine comrades to Circe’s walls.
As soon as we reached them and stood on the threshold of the house,
a thousand wolves, with bears and lionesses mingled among them,
struck fear in us at the meeting – yet none was to be feared,
and none would make a wound upon our bodies;
nay, they even waved coaxing tails through the air
and, fawning, attend our steps, until
handmaids receive us and lead us through halls roofed with marble
to their mistress: she sits in a fair recess
upon a stately throne, clothed in a shining robe,
and over it is wrapped about with a gilded mantle.
Nereids and nymphs together, who card no fleeces
with moving fingers nor draw out the following threads:
they lay out grasses, and sort into baskets the flowers
strewn without order, and the herbs of varied colors;
she herself directs the work they do, she herself knows
what use is in each leaf, what harmony in their mixing,
and, attentive, weighs the herbs she has examined.
goddess-born – for now that the war is ended you must not be called
an enemy, Aeneas – I warn you: flee the shores of Circe!
We too, our pine moored on Circe’s shore,
remembering Antiphates and the untamed Cyclops,
refused to go; but to enter the unknown halls
we were picked by lot: the lot sent me and faithful Polites
and Eurylochus too, and Elpenor too fond of wine,
and twice nine comrades to Circe’s walls.
As soon as we reached them and stood on the threshold of the house,
a thousand wolves, with bears and lionesses mingled among them,
struck fear in us at the meeting – yet none was to be feared,
and none would make a wound upon our bodies;
nay, they even waved coaxing tails through the air
and, fawning, attend our steps, until
handmaids receive us and lead us through halls roofed with marble
to their mistress: she sits in a fair recess
upon a stately throne, clothed in a shining robe,
and over it is wrapped about with a gilded mantle.
Nereids and nymphs together, who card no fleeces
with moving fingers nor draw out the following threads:
they lay out grasses, and sort into baskets the flowers
strewn without order, and the herbs of varied colors;
she herself directs the work they do, she herself knows
what use is in each leaf, what harmony in their mixing,
and, attentive, weighs the herbs she has examined.
tuque o iustissime Troum, nate dea, (neque enim finito Marte vocandus hostis es, Aenea) moneo, fuge litora Circes! nos quoque Circaeo religata in litore pinu, Antiphatae memores inmansuetique Cyclopis, ire negabamus; sed tecta ignota subire sorte sumus lecti: sors me fidumque Politen Eurylochumque simul nimiique Elpenora vini bisque novem socios Circaea ad moenia misit. quae simul attigimus stetimusque in limine tecti, mille lupi mixtaeque lupis ursaeque leaeque occursu fecere metum, sed nulla timenda nullaque erat nostro factura in corpore vulnus; quin etiam blandas movere per aera caudas nostraque adulantes comitant vestigia, donec excipiunt famulae perque atria marmore tecta ad dominam ducunt: pulchro sedet illa recessu sollemni solio pallamque induta nitentem insuper aurato circumvelatur amictu. Nereides nymphaeque simul, quae vellera motis nulla trahunt digitis nec fila sequentia ducunt: gramina disponunt sparsosque sine ordine flores secernunt calathis variasque coloribus herbas; ipsa, quod hae faciunt, opus exigit, ipsa, quis usus quove sit in folio, quae sit concordia mixtis, novit et advertens pensas examinat herbas.
When she had seen us, greeting given and received,
she beamed, and granted good omen to our prayers.
Without delay she bids barley of roasted grain be mingled,
and honey, and the strength of wine with curdled milk,
and adds juices that might lie hidden, by stealth, beneath this sweetness.
We take the cups given by her sacred hand.
As soon as, thirsting, we had drained them with parched mouths,
and the dread goddess had touched the tops of our hair with her wand,
(I am ashamed, yet I will tell it) I began to bristle with hair,
and could no longer speak; for words I gave a hoarse
murmur, and bent toward the ground with my whole face,
and I felt my mouth harden into a curving snout,
my neck swell into muscle, and, with the part by which just now
I had taken the cups, I made my footprints,
and with the others who had suffered the same – so much can drugs do! –
I am penned in a sty; and we saw that Eurylochus alone
had escaped the shape: he alone fled the offered cup;
had he not shunned it, I would still be one of the bristled herd
even now, nor would Ulysses, told by him of so great a ruin,
have come to Circe to avenge us.
she beamed, and granted good omen to our prayers.
Without delay she bids barley of roasted grain be mingled,
and honey, and the strength of wine with curdled milk,
and adds juices that might lie hidden, by stealth, beneath this sweetness.
We take the cups given by her sacred hand.
As soon as, thirsting, we had drained them with parched mouths,
and the dread goddess had touched the tops of our hair with her wand,
(I am ashamed, yet I will tell it) I began to bristle with hair,
and could no longer speak; for words I gave a hoarse
murmur, and bent toward the ground with my whole face,
and I felt my mouth harden into a curving snout,
my neck swell into muscle, and, with the part by which just now
I had taken the cups, I made my footprints,
and with the others who had suffered the same – so much can drugs do! –
I am penned in a sty; and we saw that Eurylochus alone
had escaped the shape: he alone fled the offered cup;
had he not shunned it, I would still be one of the bristled herd
even now, nor would Ulysses, told by him of so great a ruin,
have come to Circe to avenge us.
haec ubi nos vidit, dicta acceptaque salute diffudit vultus et reddidit omina votis. nec mora, misceri tosti iubet hordea grani mellaque vimque meri cum lacte coagula passo, quique sub hac lateant furtim dulcedine, sucos adicit. accipimus sacra data pocula dextra. quae simul arenti sitientes hausimus ore, et tetigit summos virga dea dira capillos, (et pudet et referam) saetis horrescere coepi, nec iam posse loqui, pro verbis edere raucum murmur et in terram toto procumbere vultu, osque meum sensi pando occallescere rostro, colla tumere toris, et qua modo pocula parte sumpta mihi fuerant, illa vestigia feci cumque eadem passis (tantum medicamina possunt!) claudor hara, solumque suis caruisse figura vidimus Eurylochum: solus data pocula fugit; quae nisi vitasset, pecoris pars una manerem nunc quoque saetigeri, nec tantae cladis ab illo certior ad Circen ultor venisset Ulixes.
The peace-bringing Cyllenian had given him a white flower:
moly the gods call it; it is held fast by a black root.
Safe with this, and with the warnings of heaven, he enters
the house of Circe, and, summoned to the treacherous cup,
as she tried to stroke his hair with her wand,
he thrust her off and cowed the trembling goddess with drawn sword.
Then pledges and right hands are given, and, taken into her chamber,
he asks for the bodies of his comrades as the dower of their union.
We are sprinkled with the kinder juices of an unknown herb
and struck upon the head with the reversed stroke of her wand,
and words are spoken contrary to the words before.
The more she chants, the more, lifted from the ground,
we rise erect; the bristles fall, the cleft leaves
the split of our feet, our shoulders return, and beneath the upper arms
are the forearms: weeping, we embrace our weeping leader
and cling to his neck, and spoke no words
before the ones that testified our thanks.
A year’s delay held us there, and in so long a time
I saw much before my eyes and drank in much with my ears,
this too among many, which one of the four handmaids
appointed for such rites told me in secret.
For while Circe lingered alone with my leader,
she showed me a figure made of snow-white marble,
bearing a woodpecker on its youthful head,
set in a sacred shrine and conspicuous with many garlands.
When I asked, wishing to know, who he was, and why he was worshipped
in a sacred shrine, and why he bore that bird,
’Hear,’ she said, ’Macareus, and learn from this too
what power my mistress has; give heed to my words.’
moly the gods call it; it is held fast by a black root.
Safe with this, and with the warnings of heaven, he enters
the house of Circe, and, summoned to the treacherous cup,
as she tried to stroke his hair with her wand,
he thrust her off and cowed the trembling goddess with drawn sword.
Then pledges and right hands are given, and, taken into her chamber,
he asks for the bodies of his comrades as the dower of their union.
We are sprinkled with the kinder juices of an unknown herb
and struck upon the head with the reversed stroke of her wand,
and words are spoken contrary to the words before.
The more she chants, the more, lifted from the ground,
we rise erect; the bristles fall, the cleft leaves
the split of our feet, our shoulders return, and beneath the upper arms
are the forearms: weeping, we embrace our weeping leader
and cling to his neck, and spoke no words
before the ones that testified our thanks.
A year’s delay held us there, and in so long a time
I saw much before my eyes and drank in much with my ears,
this too among many, which one of the four handmaids
appointed for such rites told me in secret.
For while Circe lingered alone with my leader,
she showed me a figure made of snow-white marble,
bearing a woodpecker on its youthful head,
set in a sacred shrine and conspicuous with many garlands.
When I asked, wishing to know, who he was, and why he was worshipped
in a sacred shrine, and why he bore that bird,
’Hear,’ she said, ’Macareus, and learn from this too
what power my mistress has; give heed to my words.’
pacifer huic dederat florem Cyllenius album: moly vocant superi, nigra radice tenetur; tutus eo monitisque simul caelestibus intrat ille domum Circes et ad insidiosa vocatus pocula conantem virga mulcere capillos reppulit et stricto pavidam deterruit ense. inde fides dextraeque datae thalamoque receptus coniugii dotem sociorum corpora poscit. spargimur ignotae sucis melioribus herbae percutimurque caput conversae verbere virgae, verbaque dicuntur dictis contraria verbis. quo magis illa canit, magis hoc tellure levati erigimur, saetaeque cadunt, bifidosque relinquit rima pedes, redeunt umeri et subiecta lacertis bracchia sunt: flentem flentes amplectimur ipsi haeremusque ducis collo nec verba locuti ulla priora sumus quam nos testantia gratos. annua nos illic tenuit mora, multaque praesens tempore tam longo vidi, multa auribus hausi, hoc quoque cum multis, quod clam mihi rettulit una quattuor e famulis ad talia sacra paratis. cum duce namque meo Circe dum sola moratur, illa mihi niveo factum de marmore signum ostendit iuvenale gerens in vertice picum, aede sacra positum multisque insigne coronis. quis foret et quare sacra coleretur in aede, cur hanc ferret avem, quaerenti et scire volenti ’accipe’ ait, ’Macareu, dominaeque potentia quae sit hinc quoque disce meae; tu dictis adice mentem!’
’Picus, in the Ausonian land, the son of Saturn,
was king, a lover of horses useful in war;
his form was such as you behold: you may look on the beauty itself
and approve the truth from the feigned likeness;
his spirit matched his form; nor yet, through his years,
could he have watched the games at Greek Elis four times in their fifth year.
He had turned toward his own face the dryads
born on the Latian hills; for him the fountain divinities longed,
the naiads whom Albula bore, and those of Numicius,
those of Anio’s water and shortest-coursed Almo
and headlong Nar and shadowy Farfarus’s gloom,
and those who haunt the woodland pool of Scythian Diana
and the neighboring lakes; yet, scorning all,
he courts one nymph alone, whom once on the Palatine hill
Venilia is said to have borne to two-faced Janus.
When first she ripened into years ripe for marriage,
she was given to Laurentine Picus, preferred above all others,
rare indeed in beauty, but rarer in the art of song,
whence she was called Canens: she was wont to move woods and rocks,
to soothe wild beasts, to stay the long rivers,
and to hold the wandering birds with her voice.
While she sang her songs with a woman’s voice,
Picus had gone out from the house into the Laurentine fields
to spear the native boars, and pressed the back
of a spirited horse, and bore two hunting-spears in his left hand,
caught up in a crimson cloak with its tawny gold.
was king, a lover of horses useful in war;
his form was such as you behold: you may look on the beauty itself
and approve the truth from the feigned likeness;
his spirit matched his form; nor yet, through his years,
could he have watched the games at Greek Elis four times in their fifth year.
He had turned toward his own face the dryads
born on the Latian hills; for him the fountain divinities longed,
the naiads whom Albula bore, and those of Numicius,
those of Anio’s water and shortest-coursed Almo
and headlong Nar and shadowy Farfarus’s gloom,
and those who haunt the woodland pool of Scythian Diana
and the neighboring lakes; yet, scorning all,
he courts one nymph alone, whom once on the Palatine hill
Venilia is said to have borne to two-faced Janus.
When first she ripened into years ripe for marriage,
she was given to Laurentine Picus, preferred above all others,
rare indeed in beauty, but rarer in the art of song,
whence she was called Canens: she was wont to move woods and rocks,
to soothe wild beasts, to stay the long rivers,
and to hold the wandering birds with her voice.
While she sang her songs with a woman’s voice,
Picus had gone out from the house into the Laurentine fields
to spear the native boars, and pressed the back
of a spirited horse, and bore two hunting-spears in his left hand,
caught up in a crimson cloak with its tawny gold.
’Picus in Ausoniis, proles Saturnia, terris rex fuit, utilium bello studiosus equorum; forma viro, quam cernis, erat: licet ipse decorem adspicias fictaque probes ab imagine verum; par animus formae; nec adhuc spectasse per annos quinquennem poterat Graia quater Elide pugnam. ille suos dryadas Latiis in montibus ortas verterat in vultus, illum fontana petebant numina, naiades, quas Albula, quasque Numici, quas Anienis aquae cursuque brevissimus Almo Narve tulit praeceps et opacae Farfarus umbrae, quaeque colunt Scythicae stagnum nemorale Dianae finitimosque lacus; spretis tamen omnibus unam ille colit nymphen, quam quondam in colle Palati dicitur ancipiti peperisse Venilia Iano. haec ubi nubilibus primum maturuit annis, praeposito cunctis Laurenti tradita Pico est, rara quidem facie, sed rarior arte canendi, unde Canens dicta est: silvas et saxa movere et mulcere feras et flumina longa morari ore suo volucresque vagas retinere solebat. quae dum feminea modulatur carmina voce, exierat tecto Laurentes Picus in agros indigenas fixurus apros tergumque premebat acris equi laevaque hastilia bina ferebat poeniceam fulvo chlamydem contractus ab auro.
The Sun’s daughter too had come into those same woods
to gather new herbs from the fertile hills,
and had left the fields that bear her name – the land of Circe.
As soon as, hidden in the brush, she saw the youth,
she was stunned: the herbs she had gathered fell from her hand,
and a flame seemed to wander through all her marrow.
When at last she gathered her mind back from the strong heat,
she was about to confess what she desired; but the horse’s speed
and the retinue thronging round kept her from drawing near.
’You shall not escape,’ she said, ’though you be snatched by the wind,
if only I know myself, if all the power of herbs
has not vanished, and my spells do not fail me.’
She spoke, and shaped the bodiless image of a false
boar, and bade it run across the king’s eyes
and seem to go into a thick grove dense with timber,
where the wood is deepest and the ground impassable for a horse.
Without delay, Picus follows unknowing the shadow of his prey,
and, swift, leaves the foaming back of his horse,
and, chasing an empty hope, wanders on foot deep in the wood.
She takes up her prayers and speaks her poisoning words
and worships unknown gods with an unknown spell,
with which she is wont to blur the face of the snow-white Moon
and to draw thirsty clouds over her father’s head.
Then too, at the chanted spell, the sky grows thick,
the ground breathes out mists, his companions wander on blind
paths, and the king is left without his guard.
to gather new herbs from the fertile hills,
and had left the fields that bear her name – the land of Circe.
As soon as, hidden in the brush, she saw the youth,
she was stunned: the herbs she had gathered fell from her hand,
and a flame seemed to wander through all her marrow.
When at last she gathered her mind back from the strong heat,
she was about to confess what she desired; but the horse’s speed
and the retinue thronging round kept her from drawing near.
’You shall not escape,’ she said, ’though you be snatched by the wind,
if only I know myself, if all the power of herbs
has not vanished, and my spells do not fail me.’
She spoke, and shaped the bodiless image of a false
boar, and bade it run across the king’s eyes
and seem to go into a thick grove dense with timber,
where the wood is deepest and the ground impassable for a horse.
Without delay, Picus follows unknowing the shadow of his prey,
and, swift, leaves the foaming back of his horse,
and, chasing an empty hope, wanders on foot deep in the wood.
She takes up her prayers and speaks her poisoning words
and worships unknown gods with an unknown spell,
with which she is wont to blur the face of the snow-white Moon
and to draw thirsty clouds over her father’s head.
Then too, at the chanted spell, the sky grows thick,
the ground breathes out mists, his companions wander on blind
paths, and the king is left without his guard.
venerat in silvas et filia Solis easdem, utque novas legeret fecundis collibus herbas, nomine dicta suo Circaea reliquerat arva. quae simul ac iuvenem virgultis abdita vidit, obstipuit: cecidere manu, quas legerat, herbae, flammaque per totas visa est errare medullas. ut primum valido mentem conlegit ab aestu, quid cuperet, fassura fuit: ne posset adire, cursus equi fecit circumfususque satelles. ’non’ ait ’effugies, vento rapiare licebit, si modo me novi, si non evanuit omnis herbarum virtus, nec me mea carmina fallunt.’ dixit et effigiem nullo cum corpore falsi fingit apri praeterque oculos transcurrere regis iussit et in densum trabibus nemus ire videri, plurima qua silva est et equo loca pervia non sunt. haut mora, continuo praedae petit inscius umbram Picus equique celer spumantia terga relinquit spemque sequens vanam silva pedes errat in alta. concipit illa preces et verba venefica dicit ignotosque deos ignoto carmine adorat, quo solet et niveae vultum confundere Lunae et patrio capiti bibulas subtexere nubes. tum quoque cantato densetur carmine caelum et nebulas exhalat humus, caecisque vagantur limitibus comites, et abest custodia regis.
Having found her place and her moment, she said: ’O by your eyes,
which have captured mine, and by this beauty, fairest one,
which makes me, a goddess, your suppliant, take thought
for my passion, and accept the all-seeing Sun for your father-in-law,
and do not, hard-hearted, scorn Titanian Circe.’
So she had spoken; he fiercely repels both her and her prayers,
and says: ’Whoever you are, I am not yours; another holds me
captive, and long, I pray, may she hold me,
nor will I wrong the bonds of union with a stranger’s love,
while the fates keep Canens, the child of Janus, mine.’
Often retrying her prayers in vain, the Titaness said:
’You will not go unpunished, nor be given back to Canens,
and you shall learn by deeds what a wronged woman, what a lover,
what a woman can do – but Circe is lover and wronged and woman!’
Then twice she turned to the west, twice to the east,
thrice she touched the youth with her staff, and spoke three spells.
He fled, but marvels that he runs faster than his wont:
he saw feathers on his body, and, indignant to be added
suddenly as a strange new bird to the Latian woods,
he pecks the wild oaks with his hard beak
and in anger deals wounds to the long branches;
his feathers took the crimson color of his cloak;
the gold that had been a brooch and pinned his garment
becomes plumage, and his neck is ringed with tawny gold,
and nothing of the old Picus remains except the name.’
which have captured mine, and by this beauty, fairest one,
which makes me, a goddess, your suppliant, take thought
for my passion, and accept the all-seeing Sun for your father-in-law,
and do not, hard-hearted, scorn Titanian Circe.’
So she had spoken; he fiercely repels both her and her prayers,
and says: ’Whoever you are, I am not yours; another holds me
captive, and long, I pray, may she hold me,
nor will I wrong the bonds of union with a stranger’s love,
while the fates keep Canens, the child of Janus, mine.’
Often retrying her prayers in vain, the Titaness said:
’You will not go unpunished, nor be given back to Canens,
and you shall learn by deeds what a wronged woman, what a lover,
what a woman can do – but Circe is lover and wronged and woman!’
Then twice she turned to the west, twice to the east,
thrice she touched the youth with her staff, and spoke three spells.
He fled, but marvels that he runs faster than his wont:
he saw feathers on his body, and, indignant to be added
suddenly as a strange new bird to the Latian woods,
he pecks the wild oaks with his hard beak
and in anger deals wounds to the long branches;
his feathers took the crimson color of his cloak;
the gold that had been a brooch and pinned his garment
becomes plumage, and his neck is ringed with tawny gold,
and nothing of the old Picus remains except the name.’
nacta locum tempusque ’per o, tua lumina,’ dixit ’quae mea ceperunt, perque hanc, pulcherrime, formam, quae facit, ut supplex tibi sim dea, consule nostris ignibus et socerum, qui pervidet omnia, Solem accipe nec durus Titanida despice Circen.’ dixerat; ille ferox ipsamque precesque repellit et ’quaecumque es,’ ait ’non sum tuus; altera captum me tenet et teneat per longum, conprecor, aevum, nec Venere externa socialia foedera laedam, dum mihi Ianigenam servabunt fata Canentem.’ saepe retemptatis precibus Titania frustra ’non inpune feres, neque’ ait ’reddere Canenti, laesaque quid faciat, quid amans, quid femina, disces rebus; at est et amans et laesa et femina Circe!’ tum bis ad occasus, bis se convertit ad ortus, ter iuvenem baculo tetigit, tria carmina dixit. ille fugit, sed se solito velocius ipse currere miratur: pennas in corpore vidit, seque novam subito Latiis accedere silvis indignatus avem duro fera robora rostro figit et iratus longis dat vulnera ramis; purpureum chlamydis pennae traxere colorem; fibula quod fuerat vestemque momorderat aurum, pluma fit, et fulvo cervix praecingitur auro, nec quicquam antiquum Pico nisi nomina restat.’
’Meanwhile his companions, having often called Picus in vain through the fields
and found him in no quarter,
come upon Circe (for by now she had thinned the air
and let the mists be unbound by winds and sun),
and press her with true charges and demand back their king,
and bring force, and make ready to fall on her with cruel weapons:
she, guilty, scatters venom and the juices of poison,
and summons Night and the gods of Night from Erebus and Chaos,
and calls on Hecate with long howls.
The woods leaped from their place (a marvel to tell),
the ground groaned, the neighboring tree grew pale,
the pastures were wet, spattered with bloody drops,
and the stones seemed to give out hoarse bellowings,
the dogs to bark, the earth to bristle with black serpents,
and the thin souls of the silent dead to flit about:
the throng, thunderstruck at the portents, quakes; she touched
their quaking, marveling faces with her poisoned wand,
and at its touch the monstrous shapes of various beasts
came upon the young men: not one kept his own form.’
and found him in no quarter,
come upon Circe (for by now she had thinned the air
and let the mists be unbound by winds and sun),
and press her with true charges and demand back their king,
and bring force, and make ready to fall on her with cruel weapons:
she, guilty, scatters venom and the juices of poison,
and summons Night and the gods of Night from Erebus and Chaos,
and calls on Hecate with long howls.
The woods leaped from their place (a marvel to tell),
the ground groaned, the neighboring tree grew pale,
the pastures were wet, spattered with bloody drops,
and the stones seemed to give out hoarse bellowings,
the dogs to bark, the earth to bristle with black serpents,
and the thin souls of the silent dead to flit about:
the throng, thunderstruck at the portents, quakes; she touched
their quaking, marveling faces with her poisoned wand,
and at its touch the monstrous shapes of various beasts
came upon the young men: not one kept his own form.’
’Interea comites, clamato saepe per agros nequiquam Pico nullaque in parte reperto, inveniunt Circen (nam iam tenuaverat auras passaque erat nebulas ventis ac sole recludi) criminibusque premunt veris regemque reposcunt vimque ferunt saevisque parant incessere telis: illa nocens spargit virus sucosque veneni et Noctem Noctisque deos Ereboque Chaoque convocat et longis Hecaten ululatibus orat. exsiluere loco (dictu mirabile) silvae, ingemuitque solum, vincinaque palluit arbor, sparsaque sanguineis maduerunt pabula guttis, et lapides visi mugitus edere raucos et latrare canes et humus serpentibus atris squalere et tenues animae volitare silentum: attonitum monstris vulgus pavet; illa paventis ora venenata tetigit mirantia virga, cuius ab attactu variarum monstra ferarum in iuvenes veniunt: nulli sua mansit imago.’
’The setting Sun had reddened the Tartessian shores,
and in vain had Canens awaited her husband with eyes and heart:
her servants and the people run through all the woods
and carry torches to meet him;
nor is it enough for the nymph to weep and tear her hair
and beat her breast – though she does all of this – she rushes forth
and wanders, frenzied, through the Latian fields.
Six nights, and as many returning lights of the sun,
saw her, destitute of sleep and of food,
going over ridges, through valleys, wherever chance led;
last, the Tiber saw her, worn out with grief and the road,
laying her body down on the long bank.
There, with tears, she poured out words tuned to grief itself
in a thin voice, mourning, as once
the dying swan sings its own funeral songs;
at last, melted by grief to the thin marrow,
she wasted away and little by little vanished into the light airs;
yet the place was marked by the tale, which the ancient Camenae
rightly named Canens, after the nymph.’
and in vain had Canens awaited her husband with eyes and heart:
her servants and the people run through all the woods
and carry torches to meet him;
nor is it enough for the nymph to weep and tear her hair
and beat her breast – though she does all of this – she rushes forth
and wanders, frenzied, through the Latian fields.
Six nights, and as many returning lights of the sun,
saw her, destitute of sleep and of food,
going over ridges, through valleys, wherever chance led;
last, the Tiber saw her, worn out with grief and the road,
laying her body down on the long bank.
There, with tears, she poured out words tuned to grief itself
in a thin voice, mourning, as once
the dying swan sings its own funeral songs;
at last, melted by grief to the thin marrow,
she wasted away and little by little vanished into the light airs;
yet the place was marked by the tale, which the ancient Camenae
rightly named Canens, after the nymph.’
’Sparserat occiduus Tartessia litora Phoebus, et frustra coniunx oculis animoque Canentis exspectatus erat: famuli populusque per omnes discurrunt silvas atque obvia lumina portant; nec satis est nymphae flere et lacerare capillos et dare plangorem (facit haec tamen omnia) seque proripit ac Latios errat vesana per agros. sex illam noctes, totidem redeuntia solis lumina viderunt inopem somnique cibique per iuga, per valles, qua fors ducebat, euntem; ultimus adspexit Thybris luctuque viaque fessam et iam longa ponentem corpora ripa. illic cum lacrimis ipso modulata dolore verba sono tenui maerens fundebat, ut olim carmina iam moriens canit exequialia cycnus; luctibus extremum tenues liquefacta medullas tabuit inque leves paulatim evanuit auras, fama tamen signata loco est, quem rite Canentem nomine de nymphae veteres dixere Camenae.’
’Such and many things were told to me, and seen, through the long year.
Sluggish, and slow from disuse, we are bidden
to put to sea again, to spread our sails again;
the Titaness had told of treacherous ways and a vast voyage
and of the savage sea’s perils still to come:
I was afraid, I confess, and, finding this shore, I clung to it.’
Macareus had finished; and Aeneas’s nurse, laid
in a marble urn, had a brief verse upon her tomb:
HERE MY NURSLING, OF PROVEN DEVOTION, BURNED ME, CAIETA,
SNATCHED FROM THE ARGIVE FIRE, AS WAS HIS DUTY TO DO.
The cable moored to the grassy bank is loosed,
and far off they leave the snares and the halls
of the ill-famed goddess, and seek the groves where, dim with shade,
the Tiber bursts into the sea with its tawny sand;
and Aeneas wins the house of Faunus’s son and the daughter
of Latinus – yet not without war. War is taken up
with a fierce people, and Turnus rages for his promised bride.
Sluggish, and slow from disuse, we are bidden
to put to sea again, to spread our sails again;
the Titaness had told of treacherous ways and a vast voyage
and of the savage sea’s perils still to come:
I was afraid, I confess, and, finding this shore, I clung to it.’
Macareus had finished; and Aeneas’s nurse, laid
in a marble urn, had a brief verse upon her tomb:
HERE MY NURSLING, OF PROVEN DEVOTION, BURNED ME, CAIETA,
SNATCHED FROM THE ARGIVE FIRE, AS WAS HIS DUTY TO DO.
The cable moored to the grassy bank is loosed,
and far off they leave the snares and the halls
of the ill-famed goddess, and seek the groves where, dim with shade,
the Tiber bursts into the sea with its tawny sand;
and Aeneas wins the house of Faunus’s son and the daughter
of Latinus – yet not without war. War is taken up
with a fierce people, and Turnus rages for his promised bride.
’Talia multa mihi longum narrata per annum visaque sunt. resides et desuetudine tardi rursus inire fretum, rursus dare vela iubemur, ancipitesque vias et iter Titania vastum dixerat et saevi restare pericula ponti: pertimui, fateor, nactusque hoc litus adhaesi.’ Finierat Macareus, urnaque Aeneia nutrix condita marmorea tumulo breve carmen habebat: HIC ME CAIETAM NOTAE PIETATIS ALUMNUS EREPTAM ARGOLICO QUO DEBUIT IGNE CREMAVIT. solvitur herboso religatus ab aggere funis, et procul insidias infamataeque relinquunt tecta deae lucosque petunt, ubi nubilus umbra in mare cum flava prorumpit Thybris harena; Faunigenaeque domo potitur nataque Latini, non sine Marte tamen. bellum cum gente feroci suscipitur, pactaque furit pro coniuge Turnus.
All Etruria clashes with Latium, and long
is the hard-won victory sought with anxious arms.
Each side swells its own strength with foreign might,
and many defend the Rutulians, many the Trojan camp;
nor had Aeneas come in vain to the walls of Evander,
but Venulus in vain to the city of exiled Diomedes:
he indeed, under Iapygian Daunus, had founded
his great walls, and held the fields given as dowry;
but when Venulus had carried out the bidding of Turnus
and asked for aid, the Aetolian hero pleads his want of strength:
he would not commit to battle either his father-in-law’s peoples
or any of his own kindred to arm; ’and lest you think these things invented –
though by the reminder bitter griefs are renewed,
I will endure to recall them nonetheless. After lofty
Ilium was burned, and Pergama fed the Greek flames,
is the hard-won victory sought with anxious arms.
Each side swells its own strength with foreign might,
and many defend the Rutulians, many the Trojan camp;
nor had Aeneas come in vain to the walls of Evander,
but Venulus in vain to the city of exiled Diomedes:
he indeed, under Iapygian Daunus, had founded
his great walls, and held the fields given as dowry;
but when Venulus had carried out the bidding of Turnus
and asked for aid, the Aetolian hero pleads his want of strength:
he would not commit to battle either his father-in-law’s peoples
or any of his own kindred to arm; ’and lest you think these things invented –
though by the reminder bitter griefs are renewed,
I will endure to recall them nonetheless. After lofty
Ilium was burned, and Pergama fed the Greek flames,
concurrit Latio Tyrrhenia tota, diuque ardua sollicitis victoria quaeritur armis. auget uterque suas externo robore vires, et multi Rutulos, multi Troiana tuentur castra, neque Aeneas Euandri ad moenia frustra, at Venulus frustra profugi Diomedis ad urbem venerat: ille quidem sub Iapyge maxima Dauno moenia condiderat dotaliaque arva tenebat; sed Venulus Turni postquam mandata peregit auxiliumque petit, vires Aetolius heros excusat: nec se aut soceri committere pugnae velle sui populos, aut quos e gente suorum armet habere ullos, ’neve haec commenta putetis, admonitu quamquam luctus renoventur amari, perpetiar memorare tamen. postquam alta cremata est Ilios, et Danaas paverunt Pergama flammas,
and the Narycian hero, for a virgin torn from a virgin,
spread upon all the punishment he alone had earned,
we Greeks are scattered and, swept by winds over hostile seas,
we suffer lightnings, night, rains, the wrath of sky and sea,
and Caphereus, the crowning stroke of our ruin;
and, not to delay by telling our sad fortunes one by one,
Greece then might have seemed worth weeping over even to Priam.
Yet me, saved by the care of arms-bearing Minerva,
the waves snatched from death; but again from my native fields
I am driven, and kindly Venus, remembering the old wound,
exacts her vengeance, and I bore such toils on the deep
seas, and such in wars on land,
that I have often called those men happy
whom the common storm and pitiless Caphereus
drowned in the waters – and I would I had been one of them.’
spread upon all the punishment he alone had earned,
we Greeks are scattered and, swept by winds over hostile seas,
we suffer lightnings, night, rains, the wrath of sky and sea,
and Caphereus, the crowning stroke of our ruin;
and, not to delay by telling our sad fortunes one by one,
Greece then might have seemed worth weeping over even to Priam.
Yet me, saved by the care of arms-bearing Minerva,
the waves snatched from death; but again from my native fields
I am driven, and kindly Venus, remembering the old wound,
exacts her vengeance, and I bore such toils on the deep
seas, and such in wars on land,
that I have often called those men happy
whom the common storm and pitiless Caphereus
drowned in the waters – and I would I had been one of them.’
Naryciusque heros, a virgine virgine rapta, quam meruit poenam solus, digessit in omnes, spargimur et ventis inimica per aequora rapti fulmina, noctem, imbres, iram caelique marisque perpetimur Danai cumulumque Capherea cladis, neve morer referens tristes ex ordine casus, Graecia tum potuit Priamo quoque flenda videri. me tamen armiferae servatum cura Minervae fluctibus eripuit, patriis sed rursus ab agris pellor, et antiquo memores de vulnere poenas exigit alma Venus, tantosque per alta labores aequora sustinui, tantos terrestribus armis, ut mihi felices sint illi saepe vocati, quos communis hiems inportunusque Caphereus mersit aquis, vellemque horum pars una fuissem.’
’His comrades, having now suffered the worst in war and sea,
give out and beg an end to their wandering; but Acmon,
hot in temper, and now made harsh by disasters,
said: "What is left, men, that your endurance
should now refuse to bear? What has Cytherea – suppose
she wished it – that she could do beyond this? For while worse is feared,
there is room for prayers; but where fortune is at its worst,
fear lies underfoot, and the summit of evils is secure.
Let her hear it herself, let her hate – as she does – all the men
under Diomedes; yet that hatred of hers we all
despise: her great power costs us little."
With such words the Pleuronian Acmon provokes Venus,
goads her, and revives her old anger.
His words please few; we, the greater number of his friends,
rebuke Acmon; and as he wishes to answer,
his voice and the path of his voice alike are thinned, his hair
turns to feathers, with feathers his new neck is clothed,
his breast and back; his arms take longer pinions,
and his elbows curve into light wings;
a great part of his foot takes up his toes, his mouth
stiffens hard with horn and ends in a point.
Lycus marvels at him, and Idas, and Nycteus with Rhexenor,
and Abas marvels; and while they marvel, they take
the same shape, and the greater number from the company
flies up and circles the oars with beating wings:
if you ask what the form of these sudden birds is,
though not swans, it is closest to white swans.
Hardly do I, the son-in-law, hold these seats and the parched
fields of Iapygian Daunus with the least part of my men.’
give out and beg an end to their wandering; but Acmon,
hot in temper, and now made harsh by disasters,
said: "What is left, men, that your endurance
should now refuse to bear? What has Cytherea – suppose
she wished it – that she could do beyond this? For while worse is feared,
there is room for prayers; but where fortune is at its worst,
fear lies underfoot, and the summit of evils is secure.
Let her hear it herself, let her hate – as she does – all the men
under Diomedes; yet that hatred of hers we all
despise: her great power costs us little."
With such words the Pleuronian Acmon provokes Venus,
goads her, and revives her old anger.
His words please few; we, the greater number of his friends,
rebuke Acmon; and as he wishes to answer,
his voice and the path of his voice alike are thinned, his hair
turns to feathers, with feathers his new neck is clothed,
his breast and back; his arms take longer pinions,
and his elbows curve into light wings;
a great part of his foot takes up his toes, his mouth
stiffens hard with horn and ends in a point.
Lycus marvels at him, and Idas, and Nycteus with Rhexenor,
and Abas marvels; and while they marvel, they take
the same shape, and the greater number from the company
flies up and circles the oars with beating wings:
if you ask what the form of these sudden birds is,
though not swans, it is closest to white swans.
Hardly do I, the son-in-law, hold these seats and the parched
fields of Iapygian Daunus with the least part of my men.’
’Ultima iam passi comites belloque fretoque deficiunt finemque rogant erroris, at Acmon fervidus ingenio, tum vero et cladibus asper, "quid superest, quod iam patientia vestra recuset ferre, viri?" dixit "quid habet Cytherea, quod ultra, velle puta, faciat? nam dum peiora timentur, est in vota locus: sors autem ubi pessima rerum, sub pedibus timor est securaque summa malorum. audiat ipsa licet, licet, ut facit, oderit omnes sub Diomede viros, odium tamen illius omnes spernimus: haud magno stat magna potentia nobis." talibus inritans Venerem Pleuronius Acmon instimulat verbis veteremque resuscitat iram. dicta placent paucis, numeri maioris amici Acmona conripimus; cui respondere volenti vox pariter vocisque via est tenuata, comaeque in plumas abeunt, plumis nova colla teguntur pectoraque et tergum, maiores bracchia pennas accipiunt, cubitique leves sinuantur in alas; magna pedis digitos pars occupat, oraque cornu indurata rigent finemque in acumine ponunt. hunc Lycus, hunc Idas et cum Rhexenore Nycteus, hunc miratur Abas, et dum mirantur, eandem accipiunt faciem, numerusque ex agmine maior subvolat et remos plausis circumvolat alis: si volucrum quae sit subitarum forma requiris, ut non cycnorum, sic albis proxima cygnis. vix equidem has sedes et Iapygis arida Dauni arva gener teneo minima cum parte meorum.’
Thus far the son of Oeneus. Venulus leaves the Calydonian realm, the Peucetian bays, and the Messapian fields. In them he sees a cave which, shrouded in thick wood and hidden among light reeds, the half-goat Pan now holds, though once the nymphs held it. An Apulian shepherd once frightened them, driven from that region, and at first moved them with a sudden terror; soon, when their wits returned and they scorned their pursuer, they led their dances with feet moving to a measure; the shepherd disapproves, and, mimicking with a rustic leap, added boorish jeers to obscene words, nor was his mouth silent until a tree closed his throat: for it is a tree, and by its sap you may know its nature. For the wild olive, by its bitter berries, displays the mark of his tongue: the harshness of his words has passed into it.
Hactenus Oenides, Venulus Calydonia regna Peucetiosque sinus Messapiaque arva relinquit. in quibus antra videt, quae, multa nubila silva et levibus cannis latitantia semicaper Pan nunc tenet, at quodam tenuerunt tempore nymphae. Apulus has illa pastor regione fugatas terruit et primo subita formidine movit, mox, ubi mens rediit et contempsere sequentem, ad numerum motis pedibus duxere choreas; inprobat has pastor saltuque imitatus agresti addidit obscenis convicia rustica dictis, nec prius os tacuit, quam guttura condidit arbor: arbor enim est, sucoque licet cognoscere mores. quippe notam linguae bacis oleaster amaris exhibet: asperitas verborum cessit in illa.
‘When the envoys returned from here, bringing word that the Aetolian
arms were denied them, the Rutulians, without that strength,
wage the war they had made ready, and much blood is shed
on either side; and look – Turnus brings greedy
firebrands against the pine-built ships, and they fear the fire
that the wave had spared. And now Mulciber was burning
the pitch and wax and the flame’s other food,
and was climbing the tall mast toward the sails,
and the benches of the curved ships smoked,
when the holy Mother of the gods, remembering these pines
were felled on Ida’s ridge, filled the air
with the clang of beaten bronze and the blare of the boxwood pipe,
and, borne through the light air by her tamed lions,
said: "In vain you hurl your fires with sacrilegious hand,
Turnus! I will snatch them away: I will not, while I have power,
let the devouring fire burn the parts and limbs of my own."
As the goddess spoke, it thundered, and following the thunder
came heavy showers with leaping hail,
and the brothers, sons of Astraeus, throw the air and the swelling
sea into confusion with sudden clashes, and rush into battle.
arms were denied them, the Rutulians, without that strength,
wage the war they had made ready, and much blood is shed
on either side; and look – Turnus brings greedy
firebrands against the pine-built ships, and they fear the fire
that the wave had spared. And now Mulciber was burning
the pitch and wax and the flame’s other food,
and was climbing the tall mast toward the sails,
and the benches of the curved ships smoked,
when the holy Mother of the gods, remembering these pines
were felled on Ida’s ridge, filled the air
with the clang of beaten bronze and the blare of the boxwood pipe,
and, borne through the light air by her tamed lions,
said: "In vain you hurl your fires with sacrilegious hand,
Turnus! I will snatch them away: I will not, while I have power,
let the devouring fire burn the parts and limbs of my own."
As the goddess spoke, it thundered, and following the thunder
came heavy showers with leaping hail,
and the brothers, sons of Astraeus, throw the air and the swelling
sea into confusion with sudden clashes, and rush into battle.
Hinc ubi legati rediere, negata ferentes arma Aetola sibi, Rutuli sine viribus illis bella instructa gerunt, multumque ab utraque cruoris parte datur; fert ecce avidas in pinea Turnus texta faces, ignesque timent, quibus unda pepercit. iamque picem et ceras alimentaque cetera flammae Mulciber urebat perque altum ad carbasa malum ibat, et incurvae fumabant transtra carinae, cum memor has pinus Idaeo vertice caesas sancta deum genetrix tinnitibus aera pulsi aeris et inflati conplevit murmure buxi perque leves domitis invecta leonibus auras ’inrita sacrilega iactas incendia dextra, Turne!’ ait. ’eripiam: nec me patiente cremabit ignis edax nemorum partes et membra meorum.’ intonuit dicente dea, tonitrumque secuti cum saliente graves ceciderunt grandine nimbi, aeraque et tumidum subitis concursibus aequor Astraei turbant et eunt in proelia fratres.
Of these the kindly Mother, using the strength of one,
snapped the hempen cables of the Phrygian fleet,
and bears the ships face-down and sinks them beneath mid-sea;
the timber softened and turned to bodies,
the curved sterns are changed into the likeness of heads,
the oars pass into fingers and swimming legs,
what had been the side is a side still, and the keel
set beneath the middle of the ships is changed to serve as a spine,
the rigging becomes soft hair, the yardarms arms,
the color is sea-blue, as it had been; and the waters they feared before
they now sport in with maidens’ play,
the sea-naiads; and, born on the hard mountains,
they haunt the soft sea, untouched by their first origin;
yet not forgetting how many perils they had often
borne upon the deep, often they set their hands
beneath the tossed ships – unless one carried Greeks:
still mindful of the Phrygian ruin, they hate the Pelasgians,
and they looked with glad faces on the fragments
of the ship of Neritos, and with glad faces saw the stern
of Alcinous stiffen and the wood grow into stone.
snapped the hempen cables of the Phrygian fleet,
and bears the ships face-down and sinks them beneath mid-sea;
the timber softened and turned to bodies,
the curved sterns are changed into the likeness of heads,
the oars pass into fingers and swimming legs,
what had been the side is a side still, and the keel
set beneath the middle of the ships is changed to serve as a spine,
the rigging becomes soft hair, the yardarms arms,
the color is sea-blue, as it had been; and the waters they feared before
they now sport in with maidens’ play,
the sea-naiads; and, born on the hard mountains,
they haunt the soft sea, untouched by their first origin;
yet not forgetting how many perils they had often
borne upon the deep, often they set their hands
beneath the tossed ships – unless one carried Greeks:
still mindful of the Phrygian ruin, they hate the Pelasgians,
and they looked with glad faces on the fragments
of the ship of Neritos, and with glad faces saw the stern
of Alcinous stiffen and the wood grow into stone.
e quibus alma parens unius viribus usa stuppea praerupit Phrygiae retinacula classis, fertque rates pronas medioque sub aequore mergit; robore mollito lignoque in corpora verso in capitum faciem puppes mutantur aduncae, in digitos abeunt et crura natantia remi, quodque prius fuerat, latus est, mediisque carina subdita navigiis spinae mutatur in usum, lina comae molles, antemnae bracchia fiunt, caerulus, ut fuerat, color est; quasque ante timebant, illas virgineis exercent lusibus undas Naides aequoreae durisque in montibus ortae molle fretum celebrant nec eas sua tangit origo; non tamen oblitae, quam multa pericula saepe pertulerint pelago, iactatis saepe carinis subposuere manus, nisi siqua vehebat Achivos: cladis adhuc Phrygiae memores odere Pelasgos Neritiaeque ratis viderunt fragmina laetis vultibus et laetis videre rigescere puppim vultibus Alcinoi saxumque increscere ligno.
There was hope that, the fleet quickened into sea-nymphs,
the Rutulian might cease from war for fear of the marvel:
he holds on, and each side has its gods, and – what is
as good as gods – they have courage; and now neither dowry-realms,
nor a father-in-law’s scepter, nor you, maiden Lavinia,
do they seek, but to have conquered, and from shame of laying it down
they wage the war; and at last Venus sees the victorious arms
of her son, and Turnus falls: Ardea falls, called mighty
while Turnus lived; and after the barbarian fire
swept it away and its roofs lay hidden in warm ash,
from the very heap there rose for the first time a bird unknown,
and beats the ashes with clapping wings.
Both the sound, and the gauntness, and the pallor, and everything
that befits a captured city – even the city’s name –
remained in it: and Ardea is mourned by her own wings.
the Rutulian might cease from war for fear of the marvel:
he holds on, and each side has its gods, and – what is
as good as gods – they have courage; and now neither dowry-realms,
nor a father-in-law’s scepter, nor you, maiden Lavinia,
do they seek, but to have conquered, and from shame of laying it down
they wage the war; and at last Venus sees the victorious arms
of her son, and Turnus falls: Ardea falls, called mighty
while Turnus lived; and after the barbarian fire
swept it away and its roofs lay hidden in warm ash,
from the very heap there rose for the first time a bird unknown,
and beats the ashes with clapping wings.
Both the sound, and the gauntness, and the pallor, and everything
that befits a captured city – even the city’s name –
remained in it: and Ardea is mourned by her own wings.
Spes erat, in nymphas animata classe marinas posse metu monstri Rutulum desistere bello: perstat, habetque deos pars utraque, quodque deorum est instar, habent animos; nec iam dotalia regna, nec sceptrum soceri, nec te, Lavinia virgo, sed vicisse petunt deponendique pudore bella gerunt, tandemque Venus victricia nati arma videt, Turnusque cadit: cadit Ardea, Turno sospite dicta potens; quam postquam barbarus ignis abstulit et tepida latuerunt tecta favilla, congerie e media tum primum cognita praepes subvolat et cineres plausis everberat alis. et sonus et macies et pallor et omnia, captam quae deceant urbem, nomen quoque mansit in illa urbis, et ipsa suis deplangitur Ardea pennis.
And now Aeneas’s valor had compelled all the gods,
and Juno herself, to end their ancient wrath,
when, the wealth of growing Iulus well founded,
the Cytherean hero was ripe for heaven.
And Venus had gone round the gods above, and, twined
about her father’s neck, had said: ’Never to me
at any time harsh, my father, now be gentlest of all, I pray,
toward my Aeneas, who from our blood
has made you a grandsire; grant him, best one, some godhead,
however small – only grant some! It is enough
to have looked once on the loveless realm, to have crossed once the Stygian streams.’
The gods assented; nor did the royal consort keep her face
unmoved, but nodded with appeased countenance;
then the Father said: ’You are worthy of a heavenly gift,
both you who ask and he for whom you ask: take, daughter, what you wish!’
He had spoken: she rejoices, gives thanks to her father,
and, borne through the light air by her yoked doves,
comes to the Laurentine shore, where, hidden by reeds, Numicius
glides into the sea with his river’s waters.
She bids him wash away whatever in Aeneas is subject to death
and carry it down beneath the sea in his silent course;
the horned god performs Venus’s commands, and with his waters
cleanses away whatever in Aeneas had been mortal,
and sprinkles him; the best part of him remained.
His mother anointed the purified body with divine fragrance,
touched his mouth with ambrosia mixed with sweet nectar,
and made him a god, whom the people of Quirinus
name Indiges, and received him with temple and altars.
and Juno herself, to end their ancient wrath,
when, the wealth of growing Iulus well founded,
the Cytherean hero was ripe for heaven.
And Venus had gone round the gods above, and, twined
about her father’s neck, had said: ’Never to me
at any time harsh, my father, now be gentlest of all, I pray,
toward my Aeneas, who from our blood
has made you a grandsire; grant him, best one, some godhead,
however small – only grant some! It is enough
to have looked once on the loveless realm, to have crossed once the Stygian streams.’
The gods assented; nor did the royal consort keep her face
unmoved, but nodded with appeased countenance;
then the Father said: ’You are worthy of a heavenly gift,
both you who ask and he for whom you ask: take, daughter, what you wish!’
He had spoken: she rejoices, gives thanks to her father,
and, borne through the light air by her yoked doves,
comes to the Laurentine shore, where, hidden by reeds, Numicius
glides into the sea with his river’s waters.
She bids him wash away whatever in Aeneas is subject to death
and carry it down beneath the sea in his silent course;
the horned god performs Venus’s commands, and with his waters
cleanses away whatever in Aeneas had been mortal,
and sprinkles him; the best part of him remained.
His mother anointed the purified body with divine fragrance,
touched his mouth with ambrosia mixed with sweet nectar,
and made him a god, whom the people of Quirinus
name Indiges, and received him with temple and altars.
Iamque deos omnes ipsamque Aeneia virtus Iunonem veteres finire coegerat iras, cum, bene fundatis opibus crescentis Iuli, tempestivus erat caelo Cythereius heros. ambieratque Venus superos colloque parentis circumfusa sui ’numquam mihi’ dixerat ’ullo tempore dure pater, nunc sis mitissimus, opto, Aeneaeque meo, qui te de sanguine nostro fecit avum, quamvis parvum des, optime, numen, dummodo des aliquod! satis est inamabile regnum adspexisse semel, Stygios semel isse per amnes.’ adsensere dei, nec coniunx regia vultus inmotos tenuit placatoque adnuit ore; tum pater ’estis’ ait ’caelesti munere digni, quaeque petis pro quoque petis: cape, nata, quod optas!’ fatus erat: gaudet gratesque agit illa parenti perque leves auras iunctis invecta columbis litus adit Laurens, ubi tectus harundine serpit in freta flumineis vicina Numicius undis. hunc iubet Aeneae, quaecumque obnoxia morti, abluere et tacito deferre sub aequora cursu; corniger exsequitur Veneris mandata suisque, quicquid in Aenea fuerat mortale, repurgat et respersit aquis; pars optima restitit illi. lustratum genetrix divino corpus odore unxit et ambrosia cum dulci nectare mixta contigit os fecitque deum, quem turba Quirini nuncupat Indigetem temploque arisque recepit.
Thereafter, under the sway of two-named Ascanius, Alba
and the Latin state remained. Silvius succeeds him.
His son, the ancient Latinus, took up again the name
revived, together with the scepter; famous Latinus is followed by Alba.
From him is Epytus; after him Capetus and Capys,
but Capys came first; from these Tiberinus took
the kingdom, and, drowned in the waters of the Tuscan river,
gave his name to the stream; from him were born Remulus and fierce
Acrota. Remulus, the elder in years,
perished by a thunderbolt’s stroke, an aper of the thunderbolt.
More moderate than his brother, Acrota hands the scepter
to brave Aventinus, who lies buried on the very
mountain where he had reigned, and gave the hill its name;
and now Proca held the rule of the Palatine race.
and the Latin state remained. Silvius succeeds him.
His son, the ancient Latinus, took up again the name
revived, together with the scepter; famous Latinus is followed by Alba.
From him is Epytus; after him Capetus and Capys,
but Capys came first; from these Tiberinus took
the kingdom, and, drowned in the waters of the Tuscan river,
gave his name to the stream; from him were born Remulus and fierce
Acrota. Remulus, the elder in years,
perished by a thunderbolt’s stroke, an aper of the thunderbolt.
More moderate than his brother, Acrota hands the scepter
to brave Aventinus, who lies buried on the very
mountain where he had reigned, and gave the hill its name;
and now Proca held the rule of the Palatine race.
Inde sub Ascanii dicione binominis Alba resque Latina fuit. succedit Silvius illi. quo satus antiquo tenuit repetita Latinus nomina cum sceptro, clarus subit Alba Latinum. Epytus ex illo est; post hunc Capetusque Capysque, sed Capys ante fuit; regnum Tiberinus ab illis cepit et in Tusci demersus fluminis undis nomina fecit aquae; de quo Remulusque feroxque Acrota sunt geniti. Remulus maturior annis fulmineo periit, imitator fulminis, ictu. fratre suo sceptrum moderatior Acrota forti tradit Aventino, qui, quo regnarat, eodem monte iacet positus tribuitque vocabula monti; iamque Palatinae summam Proca gentis habebat.
Under this king was Pomona, than whom no other
among the Latin hamadryads tended her gardens more skillfully,
nor was any other more devoted to the fruit of trees;
whence she holds her name: she loves not woods nor rivers,
but the countryside and the boughs that bear prospering fruit;
her right hand is weighed not with a javelin, but with a curved pruning-knife,
with which now she checks the rankness and restrains the limbs
that spread everywhere, now splits the bark and sets within
a graft, and lends sap to a stranger nursling;
nor does she let them feel thirst, but waters the curling fibers
of the thirsty root with gliding streams.
This is her love, her zeal; of Venus too she has no desire;
yet, fearing the countrymen’s violence, she shuts her orchards
within and bars the approach of men, and shuns them.
What did they not do – the Satyrs, a youth fit for dancing,
and the Pans with their horns girt with pine,
and Silvanus, ever younger than his years,
and the god who scares thieves with pruning-hook or with his member –
to win her? Yet Vertumnus surpassed even these in loving,
and was no luckier than they.
O how often, in the garb of a rough reaper, did he carry
ears of corn in a basket, and was the very image of a reaper!
Often, his temples bound with fresh hay,
he might have seemed to have turned the new-mown grass;
often he bore the ox-goads in his stiff hand, so that
you would swear he had just unyoked his weary steers.
Given a pruning-knife, he was a leaf-trimmer and pruner of the vine;
he had set up a ladder: you would think him about to gather apples;
he was a soldier with a sword, a fisher with a rod taken up;
in short, through many shapes he often found himself an entrance,
to take the joy of beholding her beauty.
among the Latin hamadryads tended her gardens more skillfully,
nor was any other more devoted to the fruit of trees;
whence she holds her name: she loves not woods nor rivers,
but the countryside and the boughs that bear prospering fruit;
her right hand is weighed not with a javelin, but with a curved pruning-knife,
with which now she checks the rankness and restrains the limbs
that spread everywhere, now splits the bark and sets within
a graft, and lends sap to a stranger nursling;
nor does she let them feel thirst, but waters the curling fibers
of the thirsty root with gliding streams.
This is her love, her zeal; of Venus too she has no desire;
yet, fearing the countrymen’s violence, she shuts her orchards
within and bars the approach of men, and shuns them.
What did they not do – the Satyrs, a youth fit for dancing,
and the Pans with their horns girt with pine,
and Silvanus, ever younger than his years,
and the god who scares thieves with pruning-hook or with his member –
to win her? Yet Vertumnus surpassed even these in loving,
and was no luckier than they.
O how often, in the garb of a rough reaper, did he carry
ears of corn in a basket, and was the very image of a reaper!
Often, his temples bound with fresh hay,
he might have seemed to have turned the new-mown grass;
often he bore the ox-goads in his stiff hand, so that
you would swear he had just unyoked his weary steers.
Given a pruning-knife, he was a leaf-trimmer and pruner of the vine;
he had set up a ladder: you would think him about to gather apples;
he was a soldier with a sword, a fisher with a rod taken up;
in short, through many shapes he often found himself an entrance,
to take the joy of beholding her beauty.
Rege sub hoc Pomona fuit, qua nulla Latinas inter hamadryadas coluit sollertius hortos nec fuit arborei studiosior altera fetus; unde tenet nomen: non silvas illa nec amnes, rus amat et ramos felicia poma ferentes; nec iaculo gravis est, sed adunca dextera falce, qua modo luxuriem premit et spatiantia passim bracchia conpescit, fisso modo cortice virgam inserit et sucos alieno praestat alumno; nec sentire sitim patitur bibulaeque recurvas radicis fibras labentibus inrigat undis. hic amor, hoc studium, Veneris quoque nulla cupido est; vim tamen agrestum metuens pomaria claudit intus et accessus prohibet refugitque viriles. quid non et Satyri, saltatibus apta iuventus, fecere et pinu praecincti cornua Panes Silvanusque, suis semper iuvenilior annis, quique deus fures vel falce vel inguine terret, ut poterentur ea? sed enim superabat amando hos quoque Vertumnus neque erat felicior illis. o quotiens habitu duri messoris aristas corbe tulit verique fuit messoris imago! tempora saepe gerens faeno religata recenti desectum poterat gramen versasse videri; saepe manu stimulos rigida portabat, ut illum iurares fessos modo disiunxisse iuvencos. falce data frondator erat vitisque putator; induerat scalas: lecturum poma putares; miles erat gladio, piscator harundine sumpta; denique per multas aditum sibi saepe figuras repperit, ut caperet spectatae gaudia formae.
He even, his temples wreathed with a painted turban,
leaning on a staff, gray hairs set about his temples,
took on the likeness of an old woman, and entered the well-kept gardens,
and marveled at the apples, and said, ’So much the richer you!’
and gave a few kisses to her, the praised one, such as a true
old woman would never have given, and, bent, sat down on a clod,
gazing up at the boughs that bowed with autumn’s weight.
There was an elm opposite, shapely with gleaming clusters:
when he had praised it together with its companion vine,
he said, ’But if that trunk stood unwed, without its vine-shoots,
it would have nothing, but its leaves, to be sought for;
this vine, too, which is joined to it, rests upon the elm:
were it not wedded, it would lie sprawled upon the ground;
yet you are not touched by the example of this tree,
and you shun the marriage-bed and care not to be joined.
Would that you wished it! Helen would not have been beset
by more suitors, nor she who stirred the Lapith battles,
nor the wife of too-tardy Ulysses.’
leaning on a staff, gray hairs set about his temples,
took on the likeness of an old woman, and entered the well-kept gardens,
and marveled at the apples, and said, ’So much the richer you!’
and gave a few kisses to her, the praised one, such as a true
old woman would never have given, and, bent, sat down on a clod,
gazing up at the boughs that bowed with autumn’s weight.
There was an elm opposite, shapely with gleaming clusters:
when he had praised it together with its companion vine,
he said, ’But if that trunk stood unwed, without its vine-shoots,
it would have nothing, but its leaves, to be sought for;
this vine, too, which is joined to it, rests upon the elm:
were it not wedded, it would lie sprawled upon the ground;
yet you are not touched by the example of this tree,
and you shun the marriage-bed and care not to be joined.
Would that you wished it! Helen would not have been beset
by more suitors, nor she who stirred the Lapith battles,
nor the wife of too-tardy Ulysses.’
ille etiam picta redimitus tempora mitra, innitens baculo, positis per tempora canis, adsimulavit anum: cultosque intravit in hortos pomaque mirata est ’tanto’ que ’potentior!’ inquit paucaque laudatae dedit oscula, qualia numquam vera dedisset anus, glaebaque incurva resedit suspiciens pandos autumni pondere ramos. ulmus erat contra speciosa nitentibus uvis: quam socia postquam pariter cum vite probavit, ’at si staret’ ait ’caelebs sine palmite truncus, nil praeter frondes, quare peteretur, haberet; haec quoque, quae iuncta est, vitis requiescit in ulmo: si non nupta foret, terrae acclinata iaceret; tu tamen exemplo non tangeris arboris huius concubitusque fugis nec te coniungere curas. atque utinam velles! Helene non pluribus esset sollicitata procis nec quae Lapitheia movit proelia nec coniunx nimium tardantis Ulixis.’
Even now, though you flee and turn from your wooers,
a thousand men desire you, and demigods and gods
and whatever powers hold the Alban hills.
But if you are wise, if you would make a good match and listen
to this old woman, who loves you more than all of them,
more than you believe: reject the common torches,
and choose Vertumnus for the partner of your bed! For him
take me too as surety: he is no better known to himself
than to me; nor does he wander straying everywhere over the world,
he dwells in these parts alone; nor, like the great mass of suitors,
does he love whomever he has just seen: you will be his first
and his last flame, and to you alone he vows his years.
Add that he is young, that he has the natural gift
of beauty, and will shape himself aptly into all forms,
and whatever you bid – though you bid all things – he will do.
What of this, that you love the same things, that the fruits grown for you
he holds first, and grasps your gifts with a glad hand!
But now he longs neither for fruit plucked from the tree,
nor for the herbs the garden nurses with their mellow juices,
nor for anything but you: pity his ardor, and believe
that he who seeks you pleads, through my mouth, in person.
Fear the avenging gods, and Venus of Idalium, who hates hard hearts,
and the mindful wrath of the Rhamnusian!
And, that you may fear the more – for old age has given me
much to know – I will tell what is most famous in all Cyprus,
deeds by which you may easily be bent and softened.
a thousand men desire you, and demigods and gods
and whatever powers hold the Alban hills.
But if you are wise, if you would make a good match and listen
to this old woman, who loves you more than all of them,
more than you believe: reject the common torches,
and choose Vertumnus for the partner of your bed! For him
take me too as surety: he is no better known to himself
than to me; nor does he wander straying everywhere over the world,
he dwells in these parts alone; nor, like the great mass of suitors,
does he love whomever he has just seen: you will be his first
and his last flame, and to you alone he vows his years.
Add that he is young, that he has the natural gift
of beauty, and will shape himself aptly into all forms,
and whatever you bid – though you bid all things – he will do.
What of this, that you love the same things, that the fruits grown for you
he holds first, and grasps your gifts with a glad hand!
But now he longs neither for fruit plucked from the tree,
nor for the herbs the garden nurses with their mellow juices,
nor for anything but you: pity his ardor, and believe
that he who seeks you pleads, through my mouth, in person.
Fear the avenging gods, and Venus of Idalium, who hates hard hearts,
and the mindful wrath of the Rhamnusian!
And, that you may fear the more – for old age has given me
much to know – I will tell what is most famous in all Cyprus,
deeds by which you may easily be bent and softened.
nunc quoque, cum fugias averserisque petentes, mille viri cupiunt et semideique deique et quaecumque tenent Albanos numina montes. sed tu si sapies, si te bene iungere anumque hanc audire voles, quae te plus omnibus illis, plus, quam credis, amo: vulgares reice taedas Vertumnumque tori socium tibi selige! pro quo me quoque pignus habe: neque enim sibi notior ille est, quam mihi; nec passim toto vagus errat in orbe, haec loca sola colit; nec, uti pars magna procorum, quam modo vidit, amat: tu primus et ultimus illi ardor eris, solique suos tibi devovet annos. adde, quod est iuvenis, quod naturale decoris munus habet formasque apte fingetur in omnes, et quod erit iussus, iubeas licet omnia, fiet. quid, quod amatis idem, quod, quae tibi poma coluntur, primus habet laetaque tenet tua munera dextra! sed neque iam fetus desiderat arbore demptos nec, quas hortus alit, cum sucis mitibus herbas nec quicquam nisi te: miserere ardentis et ipsum, qui petit, ore meo praesentem crede precari. ultoresque deos et pectora dura perosam Idalien memoremque time Rhamnusidis iram! quoque magis timeas, (etenim mihi multa vetustas scire dedit) referam tota notissima Cypro facta, quibus flecti facile et mitescere possis.
‘Iphis, born of humble stock, had seen Anaxarete,
noble from the blood of old Teucer,
had seen her, and taken in the heat through all his bones,
and, struggling long, after he could not conquer the madness
by reason, came a suppliant to her doors,
and now, confessing his wretched love to her nurse,
begged her, by her hopes for her nursling, not to be harsh to him;
and now, coaxing each of her many maids,
he sought their favor with an anxious voice;
often he gave his words to be carried on coaxing tablets,
sometimes he hung upon her doorposts garlands wet
with the dew of his tears, and laid his soft side
upon the hard threshold, and railed at the cruel bolt.
She, fiercer than the sea rising when the Kids go down,
harder than iron the Norican fire refines,
and than rock still living, held fast by its root,
scorns and mocks him, and to her unkind deeds adds
proud words, fierce, and cheats her lover even of hope.
Iphis, unable to bear the torments of long grief,
spoke these last words before her door:
noble from the blood of old Teucer,
had seen her, and taken in the heat through all his bones,
and, struggling long, after he could not conquer the madness
by reason, came a suppliant to her doors,
and now, confessing his wretched love to her nurse,
begged her, by her hopes for her nursling, not to be harsh to him;
and now, coaxing each of her many maids,
he sought their favor with an anxious voice;
often he gave his words to be carried on coaxing tablets,
sometimes he hung upon her doorposts garlands wet
with the dew of his tears, and laid his soft side
upon the hard threshold, and railed at the cruel bolt.
She, fiercer than the sea rising when the Kids go down,
harder than iron the Norican fire refines,
and than rock still living, held fast by its root,
scorns and mocks him, and to her unkind deeds adds
proud words, fierce, and cheats her lover even of hope.
Iphis, unable to bear the torments of long grief,
spoke these last words before her door:
’Viderat a veteris generosam sanguine Teucri Iphis Anaxareten, humili de stirpe creatus, viderat et totis perceperat ossibus aestum luctatusque diu, postquam ratione furorem vincere non potuit, supplex ad limina venit et modo nutrici miserum confessus amorem, ne sibi dura foret, per spes oravit alumnae, et modo de multis blanditus cuique ministris sollicita petiit propensum voce favorem; saepe ferenda dedit blandis sua verba tabellis, interdum madidas lacrimarum rore coronas postibus intendit posuitque in limine duro molle latus tristisque serae convicia fecit. saevior illa freto surgente cadentibus Haedis, durior et ferro, quod Noricus excoquit ignis, et saxo, quod adhuc vivum radice tenetur, spernit et inridet, factisque inmitibus addit verba superba ferox et spe quoque fraudat amantem. non tulit impatiens longi tormenta doloris Iphis et ante fores haec verba novissima dixit:
‘"You win, Anaxarete, and you will have at last no weariness
of me to bear: contrive your glad triumphs,
call on the Paean, and wreathe yourself with shining laurel!
For you win, and I die gladly: come, iron one, rejoice!
Surely you will be forced to praise something in my love,
whereby I please you, and you will confess my worth.
Yet remember that my care for you did not depart
before my life, and that I lose both lights at once.
Nor will Rumor come to bring you news of my death:
I myself, doubt it not, will be there and be seen present,
that you may feed your cruel eyes upon my lifeless body.
Yet if, O gods above, you see the deeds of mortals,
be mindful of me – my tongue has strength to pray
nothing further – and grant that I be told of in a long age,
and give to my fame the years you have taken from my life!"
He spoke, and lifting to the doorposts, so often dressed with garlands,
his streaming eyes and his pale arms,
when he had fastened the noose’s cords to the top of the door,
he said, "Do these wreaths please you, cruel and pitiless one?"
and put in his head – but even then turned toward her –
and the luckless weight hung with his windpipe crushed.’
of me to bear: contrive your glad triumphs,
call on the Paean, and wreathe yourself with shining laurel!
For you win, and I die gladly: come, iron one, rejoice!
Surely you will be forced to praise something in my love,
whereby I please you, and you will confess my worth.
Yet remember that my care for you did not depart
before my life, and that I lose both lights at once.
Nor will Rumor come to bring you news of my death:
I myself, doubt it not, will be there and be seen present,
that you may feed your cruel eyes upon my lifeless body.
Yet if, O gods above, you see the deeds of mortals,
be mindful of me – my tongue has strength to pray
nothing further – and grant that I be told of in a long age,
and give to my fame the years you have taken from my life!"
He spoke, and lifting to the doorposts, so often dressed with garlands,
his streaming eyes and his pale arms,
when he had fastened the noose’s cords to the top of the door,
he said, "Do these wreaths please you, cruel and pitiless one?"
and put in his head – but even then turned toward her –
and the luckless weight hung with his windpipe crushed.’
’"vincis, Anaxarete, neque erunt tibi taedia tandem ulla ferenda mei: laetos molire triumphos et Paeana voca nitidaque incingere lauru! vincis enim, moriorque libens: age, ferrea, gaude! certe aliquid laudare mei cogeris amoris, quo tibi sim gratus, meritumque fatebere nostrum. non tamen ante tui curam excessisse memento quam vitam geminaque simul mihi luce carendum. nec tibi fama mei ventura est nuntia leti: ipse ego, ne dubites, adero praesensque videbor, corpore ut exanimi crudelia lumina pascas. si tamen, o superi, mortalia facta videtis, este mei memores (nihil ultra lingua precari sustinet) et longo facite ut narremur in aevo, et, quae dempsistis vitae, date tempora famae!" dixit, et ad postes ornatos saepe coronis umentes oculos et pallida bracchia tollens, cum foribus laquei religaret vincula summis, "haec tibi serta placent, crudelis et inpia!" dixit inseruitque caput, sed tum quoque versus ad illam, atque onus infelix elisa fauce pependit.’
Struck by the movement of his trembling feet, the door seemed to give a sound as if bidding it open, and, thrown wide, betrayed the deed; the servants cry out, and, having lifted him in vain (for his father was dead), carry him back to his mother’s door. She takes him to her breast, and, embracing the cold limbs of her son, after she had uttered the words of wretched parents and done what wretched mothers do, led the tearful funeral through the middle of the city and bore the livid body to the pyre upon its bier. By chance the house was near the street where the mournful procession went, and the sound of harsh wailing came to the ears of Anaxarete, whom now an avenging god was driving. Moved nonetheless, she said, "Let us watch this pitiful funeral," and went up into a high room with open windows, and had scarcely seen Iphis well laid on the bier: her eyes stiffened, and the warm blood fled from her body as pallor came over it, and, trying to bring her feet backward, she stuck fast; trying to turn away her face, this too she could not, and little by little the stone that had long been in her hard breast took over her limbs. And lest you think this invented, Salamis still keeps a statue in the lady’s likeness, and has too a temple of Venus the Watcher. Mindful of these, O my nymph, lay aside, I pray, your slow disdain, and join with your lover: so may no spring frost blight your budding fruit, nor the rushing winds shake off your blossoms!’
icta pedum motu trepidantum aperire iubentem visa dedisse sonum est adapertaque ianua factum prodidit, exclamant famuli frustraque levatum (nam pater occiderat) referunt ad limina matris; accipit illa sinu conplexaque frigida nati membra sui postquam miserorum verba parentum edidit et matrum miserarum facta peregit, funera ducebat mediam lacrimosa per urbem luridaque arsuro portabat membra feretro. forte viae vicina domus, qua flebilis ibat pompa, fuit, duraeque sonus plangoris ad aures venit Anaxaretes, quam iam deus ultor agebat. mota tamen "videamus" ait "miserabile funus" et patulis iniit tectum sublime fenestris vixque bene inpositum lecto prospexerat Iphin: deriguere oculi, calidusque e corpore sanguis inducto pallore fugit, conataque retro ferre pedes haesit, conata avertere vultus hoc quoque non potuit, paulatimque occupat artus, quod fuit in duro iam pridem pectore, saxum. neve ea ficta putes, dominae sub imagine signum servat adhuc Salamis, Veneris quoque nomine templum Prospicientis habet.—quorum memor, o mea, lentos pone, precor, fastus et amanti iungere, nymphe: sic tibi nec vernum nascentia frigus adurat poma, nec excutiant rapidi florentia venti!’
When the god, fitted to an old woman’s form, had said these things
in vain, he returned to a youth, and put off from himself
the old woman’s trappings, and appeared to her such
as when the sun’s brightest image, having overcome
the clouds set against it, shines again with nothing in its way,
and prepares to use force: but force is not needed, and the nymph,
captured by the god’s beauty, felt an answering wound.
in vain, he returned to a youth, and put off from himself
the old woman’s trappings, and appeared to her such
as when the sun’s brightest image, having overcome
the clouds set against it, shines again with nothing in its way,
and prepares to use force: but force is not needed, and the nymph,
captured by the god’s beauty, felt an answering wound.
Haec ubi nequiquam formae deus aptus anili edidit, in iuvenem rediit et anilia demit instrumenta sibi talisque apparuit illi, qualis ubi oppositas nitidissima solis imago evicit nubes nullaque obstante reluxit, vimque parat: sed vi non est opus, inque figura capta dei nympha est et mutua vulnera sensit.
Next the soldier of unjust Amulius ruled the Ausonian
power, and old Numitor, by his grandson’s gift, regains
the kingdom he had lost, and at the festal Parilia the city’s
walls are founded; and Tatius and the Sabine fathers
wage war, and the Tarpeian way to the citadel, laid open,
strips a soul that deserved her punishment under a heap of arms;
then the men sprung from Cures, in the manner of silent wolves,
press down their voices and fall upon bodies overcome
by sleep, and make for the gates that the son of Ilia
had shut with a firm bar: one, however, Juno herself opened,
and made no noise as the hinge turned;
Venus alone felt that the gate’s bolts had fallen,
and would have closed it again, but that a god may never
undo what a god has done. The Ausonian naiads held the places
joined to Janus, wet with a cold spring:
of these she asks aid, nor did the nymphs refuse the goddess
asking what was just, and they drew forth the veins and streams
of their fountain; yet not yet was the passage of open Janus
impassable, nor had the water blocked the way:
they set yellow sulphur beneath the teeming spring
and kindle the hollow veins with smoking bitumen.
By these forces and others the heat reached the depths
of the spring; and you, waters that lately dared
to rival Alpine cold, now yield not even to the fires themselves!
power, and old Numitor, by his grandson’s gift, regains
the kingdom he had lost, and at the festal Parilia the city’s
walls are founded; and Tatius and the Sabine fathers
wage war, and the Tarpeian way to the citadel, laid open,
strips a soul that deserved her punishment under a heap of arms;
then the men sprung from Cures, in the manner of silent wolves,
press down their voices and fall upon bodies overcome
by sleep, and make for the gates that the son of Ilia
had shut with a firm bar: one, however, Juno herself opened,
and made no noise as the hinge turned;
Venus alone felt that the gate’s bolts had fallen,
and would have closed it again, but that a god may never
undo what a god has done. The Ausonian naiads held the places
joined to Janus, wet with a cold spring:
of these she asks aid, nor did the nymphs refuse the goddess
asking what was just, and they drew forth the veins and streams
of their fountain; yet not yet was the passage of open Janus
impassable, nor had the water blocked the way:
they set yellow sulphur beneath the teeming spring
and kindle the hollow veins with smoking bitumen.
By these forces and others the heat reached the depths
of the spring; and you, waters that lately dared
to rival Alpine cold, now yield not even to the fires themselves!
Proximus Ausonias iniusti miles Amuli rexit opes, Numitorque senex amissa nepotis munere regna capit, festisque Palilibus urbis moenia conduntur; Tatiusque patresque Sabini bella gerunt, arcisque via Tarpeia reclusa dignam animam poena congestis exuit armis; inde sati Curibus tacitorum more luporum ore premunt voces et corpora victa sopore invadunt portasque petunt, quas obice firmo clauserat Iliades: unam tamen ipse reclusit nec strepitum verso Saturnia cardine fecit; sola Venus portae cecidisse repagula sensit et clausura fuit, nisi quod rescindere numquam dis licet acta deum. Iano loca iuncta tenebant naides Ausoniae gelido rorantia fonte: has rogat auxilium, nec nymphae iusta petentem sustinuere deam venasque et flumina fontis elicuere sui; nondum tamen invia Iani ora patentis erant, neque iter praecluserat unda: lurida subponunt fecundo sulphura fonti incenduntque cavas fumante bitumine venas. viribus his aliisque vapor penetravit ad ima fontis, et Alpino modo quae certare rigori audebatis aquae, non ceditis ignibus ipsis!
The twin gateposts smoke with a fiery spray,
and the gate, vainly promised to the stubborn Sabines,
was barred by the new spring, until the soldier of Mars
should put on his arms; and after Romulus offered
them battle of his own accord, and the Roman ground was strewn
with Sabine bodies and strewn with its own,
and the impious sword mingled the blood of the son-in-law
with the blood of the father-in-law. Yet it pleased them
to halt the war with peace, and not to fight it out to the last with the sword,
and that Tatius should come into the kingdom.
and the gate, vainly promised to the stubborn Sabines,
was barred by the new spring, until the soldier of Mars
should put on his arms; and after Romulus offered
them battle of his own accord, and the Roman ground was strewn
with Sabine bodies and strewn with its own,
and the impious sword mingled the blood of the son-in-law
with the blood of the father-in-law. Yet it pleased them
to halt the war with peace, and not to fight it out to the last with the sword,
and that Tatius should come into the kingdom.
flammifera gemini fumant aspergine postes, portaque nequiquam rigidis promissa Sabinis fonte fuit praestructa novo, dum Martius arma indueret miles; quae postquam Romulus ultro obtulit, et strata est tellus Romana Sabinis corporibus strata estque suis, generique cruorem sanguine cum soceri permiscuit inpius ensis. pace tamen sisti bellum nec in ultima ferro decertare placet Tatiumque accedere regno.
Tatius had fallen, and to both peoples alike, Romulus,
you were giving laws: when, his helmet laid aside, Mars
addresses the father of gods and men in these words:
’The time has come, father, since on a great foundation
the Roman state stands strong and hangs upon no single guardian,
to pay the reward – it was promised to me and to a worthy grandson –
and to take him from the earth and set him in heaven.
You once said to me, in the council of the gods assembled
(for I remember, and have marked the loyal words in a mindful heart):
"One there will be whom you shall raise into the blue of heaven";
let the sum of your words be ratified!’
The Almighty nodded, and hid the air in blinding clouds,
and terrified the world with thunder and lightning.
Gradivus knew these for the ratified signs of the rapture promised him,
and, leaning on his spear, fearless,
mounts his horses, pressed beneath the bloody yoke-pole,
and cracked them with a stroke of the lash, and, gliding down headlong
through the air, halted on the wooded summit of the Palatine,
and bore off the son of Ilia as he gave his royal laws
to his Quirites: his mortal body melted away
through the thin air, as a broad leaden bullet
shot from a sling is wont to melt in mid-sky;
a fair form comes in its place, worthier of the high couches,
such as is the shape of robed Quirinus.
you were giving laws: when, his helmet laid aside, Mars
addresses the father of gods and men in these words:
’The time has come, father, since on a great foundation
the Roman state stands strong and hangs upon no single guardian,
to pay the reward – it was promised to me and to a worthy grandson –
and to take him from the earth and set him in heaven.
You once said to me, in the council of the gods assembled
(for I remember, and have marked the loyal words in a mindful heart):
"One there will be whom you shall raise into the blue of heaven";
let the sum of your words be ratified!’
The Almighty nodded, and hid the air in blinding clouds,
and terrified the world with thunder and lightning.
Gradivus knew these for the ratified signs of the rapture promised him,
and, leaning on his spear, fearless,
mounts his horses, pressed beneath the bloody yoke-pole,
and cracked them with a stroke of the lash, and, gliding down headlong
through the air, halted on the wooded summit of the Palatine,
and bore off the son of Ilia as he gave his royal laws
to his Quirites: his mortal body melted away
through the thin air, as a broad leaden bullet
shot from a sling is wont to melt in mid-sky;
a fair form comes in its place, worthier of the high couches,
such as is the shape of robed Quirinus.
Occiderat Tatius, populisque aequata duobus, Romule, iura dabas: posita cum casside Mavors talibus adfatur divumque hominumque parentem: ’tempus adest, genitor, quoniam fundamine magno res Romana valet nec praeside pendet ab uno, praemia, (sunt promissa mihi dignoque nepoti) solvere et ablatum terris inponere caelo. tu mihi concilio quondam praesente deorum (nam memoro memorique animo pia verba notavi) "unus erit, quem tu tolles in caerula caeli" dixisti: rata sit verborum summa tuorum!’ adnuit omnipotens et nubibus aera caecis occuluit tonitruque et fulgure terruit orbem. quae sibi promissae sensit rata signa rapinae, innixusque hastae pressos temone cruento inpavidus conscendit equos Gradivus et ictu verberis increpuit pronusque per aera lapsus constitit in summo nemorosi colle Palati reddentemque suo iam regia iura Quiriti abstulit Iliaden: corpus mortale per auras dilapsum tenues, ceu lata plumbea funda missa solet medio glans intabescere caelo; pulchra subit facies et pulvinaribus altis dignior, est qualis trabeati forma Quirini.
His wife was weeping for him as lost, when royal Juno
bids Iris go down to Hersilie by her curving path
and bear her commands thus to the widow:
’O glory pre-eminent of the Latin and of the Sabine race,
most worthy, lady, to have been before the wife of so great a man,
and now of Quirinus, stay your weeping, and, if you have
a longing to see your husband, follow me and seek the grove
that grows green on the Quirinal hill and shades the Roman king’s temple.’
Iris obeys, and, gliding to earth on her painted arches,
addresses Hersilie with the bidden words;
she, scarcely lifting her eyes with a modest face,
said: ’O goddess – for it is not easy for me to say who you are,
yet it is clear you are a goddess – lead, O lead me,
and offer me my husband’s face: if only the fates grant me
once to be able to see it, I will own that I have gained heaven!’
Without delay she enters the Romulean hills with the maiden,
daughter of Thaumas; there a star, slipping from the upper air,
fell to earth; kindled by its light,
Hersilie’s hair passed with the star into the breezes:
her the founder of the Roman city receives with familiar hands,
and changes her old name together with her body,
and calls her Hora, who now is a goddess joined to Quirinus.
bids Iris go down to Hersilie by her curving path
and bear her commands thus to the widow:
’O glory pre-eminent of the Latin and of the Sabine race,
most worthy, lady, to have been before the wife of so great a man,
and now of Quirinus, stay your weeping, and, if you have
a longing to see your husband, follow me and seek the grove
that grows green on the Quirinal hill and shades the Roman king’s temple.’
Iris obeys, and, gliding to earth on her painted arches,
addresses Hersilie with the bidden words;
she, scarcely lifting her eyes with a modest face,
said: ’O goddess – for it is not easy for me to say who you are,
yet it is clear you are a goddess – lead, O lead me,
and offer me my husband’s face: if only the fates grant me
once to be able to see it, I will own that I have gained heaven!’
Without delay she enters the Romulean hills with the maiden,
daughter of Thaumas; there a star, slipping from the upper air,
fell to earth; kindled by its light,
Hersilie’s hair passed with the star into the breezes:
her the founder of the Roman city receives with familiar hands,
and changes her old name together with her body,
and calls her Hora, who now is a goddess joined to Quirinus.
Flebat ut amissum coniunx, cum regia Iuno Irin ad Hersilien descendere limite curvo imperat et vacuae sua sic mandata referre: ’o et de Latia, o et de gente Sabina praecipuum, matrona, decus, dignissima tanti ante fuisse viri coniunx, nunc esse Quirini, siste tuos fletus, et, si tibi cura videndi coniugis est, duce me lucum pete, colle Quirini qui viret et templum Romani regis obumbrat’; paret et in terram pictos delapsa per arcus, Hersilien iussis conpellat vocibus Iris; illa verecundo vix tollens lumina vultu ’o dea (namque mihi nec, quae sis, dicere promptum est, et liquet esse deam) duc, o duc’ inquit ’et offer coniugis ora mihi, quae si modo posse videre fata semel dederint, caelum accepisse fatebor!’ nec mora, Romuleos cum virgine Thaumantea ingreditur colles: ibi sidus ab aethere lapsum decidit in terras; a cuius lumine flagrans Hersilie crinis cum sidere cessit in auras: hanc manibus notis Romanae conditor urbis excipit et priscum pariter cum corpore nomen mutat Horamque vocat, quae nunc dea iuncta Quirino est.
Meanwhile a successor is sought, one to bear the weight
of so great a mass, one fit to follow so great a king;
Fame, the herald of truth, marks out famed Numa for the rule.
He is not content to have learned the rites of the Sabine race:
with a capacious mind he conceives greater things
and asks what the nature of the universe may be.
Love of this study, his homeland and Cures left behind,
brought him to the city of Hercules’ host.
When he asked what founder had set Greek walls
on Italian shores, one of the older natives,
not unversed in the ancient age, told him thus:
’The son of Jove, enriched with the Iberian cattle from Ocean,
is said to have reached the Lacinian shore on a prosperous course,
and, while the herd strayed through the tender grass,
to have entered himself the home and not unwelcoming roof
of great Croton, and eased his long labour with rest,
and, departing, to have said: "In the age of your descendants
this place will be a city’s" — and the promise proved true.
For there was one Myscelus, son of the Argive Alemon,
of all that age the most acceptable to the gods.
Leaning over him, weighed down with the heaviness of sleep,
the club-bearer speaks: "Come, forsake your father’s home;
go, seek the stony waters of the distant Aesar!"
and, should he not obey, threatens many fearful things.
Then sleep and the god withdrew together.
Alemon’s son rises, recalls the fresh vision
in his silent mind, and his judgment long wars with itself:
the godhead bids him go, the laws forbid him leave,
and death is the penalty fixed for one who would change his homeland.
of so great a mass, one fit to follow so great a king;
Fame, the herald of truth, marks out famed Numa for the rule.
He is not content to have learned the rites of the Sabine race:
with a capacious mind he conceives greater things
and asks what the nature of the universe may be.
Love of this study, his homeland and Cures left behind,
brought him to the city of Hercules’ host.
When he asked what founder had set Greek walls
on Italian shores, one of the older natives,
not unversed in the ancient age, told him thus:
’The son of Jove, enriched with the Iberian cattle from Ocean,
is said to have reached the Lacinian shore on a prosperous course,
and, while the herd strayed through the tender grass,
to have entered himself the home and not unwelcoming roof
of great Croton, and eased his long labour with rest,
and, departing, to have said: "In the age of your descendants
this place will be a city’s" — and the promise proved true.
For there was one Myscelus, son of the Argive Alemon,
of all that age the most acceptable to the gods.
Leaning over him, weighed down with the heaviness of sleep,
the club-bearer speaks: "Come, forsake your father’s home;
go, seek the stony waters of the distant Aesar!"
and, should he not obey, threatens many fearful things.
Then sleep and the god withdrew together.
Alemon’s son rises, recalls the fresh vision
in his silent mind, and his judgment long wars with itself:
the godhead bids him go, the laws forbid him leave,
and death is the penalty fixed for one who would change his homeland.
Quaeritur interea qui tantae pondera molis sustineat tantoque queat succedere regi: destinat imperio clarum praenuntia veri fama Numam; non ille satis cognosse Sabinae gentis habet ritus, animo maiora capaci concipit et, quae sit rerum natura, requirit. huius amor curae patria Curibusque relictis fecit ut Herculei penetraret ad hospitis urbem. Graia quis Italicis auctor posuisset in oris moenia, quaerenti sic e senioribus unus rettulit indigenis, veteris non inscius aevi: ’dives ab Oceano bobus Iove natus Hiberis litora felici tenuisse Lacinia cursu fertur, et armento teneras errante per herbas ipse domum magni nec inhospita tecta Crotonis intrasse et requie longum relevasse laborem atque ita discedens, "aevo" dixisse "nepotum hic locus urbis erit," promissaque vera fuerunt. nam fuit Argolico generatus Alemone quidam Myscelus, illius dis acceptissimus aevi. hunc super incumbens pressum gravitate soporis claviger adloquitur: "patrias, age, desere sedes; i, pete diversi lapidosas Aesaris undas!" et, nisi paruerit, multa ac metuenda minatur; post ea discedunt pariter somnusque deusque surgit Alemonides tacitaque recentia mente visa refert, pugnatque diu sententia secum: numen abire iubet, prohibent discedere leges, poenaque mors posita est patriam mutare volenti.
The shining Sun had hidden his bright head in Ocean,
and densest Night had raised her starry head:
the same god seemed present and to give the same warning,
and, should he not obey, to threaten more and graver things.
He took fright, and was making ready to move his household gods
at once into a new home — when a murmur rises in the city,
and he is arraigned for flouting the laws; and when the case
was opened first, and the charge stood proven without a witness,
the defendant, in mourning, lifting face and hands to the gods above,
cried: ’O you whose twice-six labours earned you the right of heaven,
bring help, I beg! For you are the author of my charge.’
There was an old custom of white pebbles and of black:
with these to condemn the accused, with those to acquit of guilt.
So too then the grim sentence was cast, and every
black stone is dropped into the pitiless urn;
but the moment it was upturned to pour the pebbles out for counting,
the colour of them all was changed from black to white,
and the verdict, made bright by Hercules’ power,
set Alemon’s son free. He gives thanks to his protector,
the son of Amphitryon, and with favouring winds
sails the Ionian sea, passes Sallentine Neretum
and Sybaris and Spartan Tarentum,
the bays of Siris and Crimisa and the fields of Iapyx,
and scarcely had he wandered past the lands that face those waters
when he found the fated mouth of the river Aesar,
and not far off the mound beneath which the earth
covered the hallowed bones of Croton; and there, on the bidden ground,
he founded the walls, and drew into the city the name of the buried man.’
Such, by sure tradition, men agreed, were the first beginnings
of the place and of the city set on Italian soil.
and densest Night had raised her starry head:
the same god seemed present and to give the same warning,
and, should he not obey, to threaten more and graver things.
He took fright, and was making ready to move his household gods
at once into a new home — when a murmur rises in the city,
and he is arraigned for flouting the laws; and when the case
was opened first, and the charge stood proven without a witness,
the defendant, in mourning, lifting face and hands to the gods above,
cried: ’O you whose twice-six labours earned you the right of heaven,
bring help, I beg! For you are the author of my charge.’
There was an old custom of white pebbles and of black:
with these to condemn the accused, with those to acquit of guilt.
So too then the grim sentence was cast, and every
black stone is dropped into the pitiless urn;
but the moment it was upturned to pour the pebbles out for counting,
the colour of them all was changed from black to white,
and the verdict, made bright by Hercules’ power,
set Alemon’s son free. He gives thanks to his protector,
the son of Amphitryon, and with favouring winds
sails the Ionian sea, passes Sallentine Neretum
and Sybaris and Spartan Tarentum,
the bays of Siris and Crimisa and the fields of Iapyx,
and scarcely had he wandered past the lands that face those waters
when he found the fated mouth of the river Aesar,
and not far off the mound beneath which the earth
covered the hallowed bones of Croton; and there, on the bidden ground,
he founded the walls, and drew into the city the name of the buried man.’
Such, by sure tradition, men agreed, were the first beginnings
of the place and of the city set on Italian soil.
candidus Oceano nitidum caput abdiderat Sol, et caput extulerat densissima sidereum Nox: visus adesse idem deus est eademque monere et, nisi paruerit, plura et graviora minari. pertimuit patriumque simul transferre parabat in sedes penetrale novas: fit murmur in urbe, spretarumque agitur legum reus, utque peracta est causa prior, crimenque patet sine teste probatum, squalidus ad superos tollens reus ora manusque "o cui ius caeli bis sex fecere labores, fer, precor" inquit "opem! nam tu mihi criminis auctor." mos erat antiquus niveis atrisque lapillis, his damnare reos, illis absolvere culpa; tunc quoque sic lata est sententia tristis, et omnis calculus inmitem demittitur ater in urnam: quae simul effudit numerandos versa lapillos, omnibus e nigro color est mutatus in album, candidaque Herculeo sententia numine facta solvit Alemoniden: grates agit ille parenti Amphitryoniadae ventisque faventibus aequor navigat Ionium Sallentinumque Neretum praeterit et Sybarin Lacedaemoniumque Tarentum Sirinosque sinus Crimisenque et Iapygis arva, vixque pererratis, quae spectant aequora, terris, invenit Aesarei fatalia fluminis ora nec procul hinc tumulum, sub quo sacrata Crotonis ossa tegebat humus, iussaque ibi moenia terra condidit et nomen tumulati traxit in urbem.’ talia constabat certa primordia fama esse loci positaeque Italis in finibus urbis.
Here was a man, Samian by birth, but he had fled
both Samos and its masters together, and in hatred of tyranny
was an exile by his own choice; and though the gods dwell far off
in the region of heaven, he reached them with his mind,
and what nature denied to human sight
he drank in with the eyes of the spirit;
and when with mind and wakeful care he had surveyed all things,
he set them out for all to learn, and to the gatherings
that sat in silent wonder he would teach the first beginnings
of the great universe, and the causes of things, and what nature is,
what god is, whence the snows, what the origin of lightning,
whether Jove or the winds thunder when the cloud is split,
what shakes the earth, by what law the stars move,
and whatever lies hidden; and he was the first to denounce
the setting of animals on the table — the first, too, to open lips
learned indeed, but not believed, in words like these:
’Forbear, mortals, to defile your bodies with unspeakable feasts!
There are the crops; there are the apples that weigh the branches down
with their own load, and the swelling grapes upon the vines;
both Samos and its masters together, and in hatred of tyranny
was an exile by his own choice; and though the gods dwell far off
in the region of heaven, he reached them with his mind,
and what nature denied to human sight
he drank in with the eyes of the spirit;
and when with mind and wakeful care he had surveyed all things,
he set them out for all to learn, and to the gatherings
that sat in silent wonder he would teach the first beginnings
of the great universe, and the causes of things, and what nature is,
what god is, whence the snows, what the origin of lightning,
whether Jove or the winds thunder when the cloud is split,
what shakes the earth, by what law the stars move,
and whatever lies hidden; and he was the first to denounce
the setting of animals on the table — the first, too, to open lips
learned indeed, but not believed, in words like these:
’Forbear, mortals, to defile your bodies with unspeakable feasts!
There are the crops; there are the apples that weigh the branches down
with their own load, and the swelling grapes upon the vines;
Vir fuit hic ortu Samius, sed fugerat una et Samon et dominos odioque tyrannidis exul sponte erat isque licet caeli regione remotos mente deos adiit et, quae natura negabat visibus humanis, oculis ea pectoris hausit, cumque animo et vigili perspexerat omnia cura, in medium discenda dabat coetusque silentum dictaque mirantum magni primordia mundi et rerum causas et, quid natura, docebat, quid deus, unde nives, quae fulminis esset origo, Iuppiter an venti discussa nube tonarent, quid quateret terras, qua sidera lege mearent, et quodcumque latet, primusque animalia mensis arguit inponi, primus quoque talibus ora docta quidem solvit, sed non et credita, verbis: ’Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis corpora! sunt fruges, sunt deducentia ramos pondere poma suo tumidaeque in vitibus uvae,
there are sweet herbs; there are those that flame can soften
and make tender; nor is the milky liquid kept from you,
nor honey fragrant with the thyme-flower:
the earth, lavish, heaps up her riches and her gentle foods,
and offers banquets without slaughter and without blood.
Beasts ease their hunger with flesh — yet not all even of these:
for the horse and the flocks and the herds live on grass;
but those whose nature is untamed and savage —
the tigers of Armenia, and the wrathful lions,
and bears together with wolves — delight in a bloody feast.
Ah, how great a wrong, that flesh should be buried in flesh,
that a greedy body should grow fat on a body crammed within it,
that one living thing should live by the death of another!
So, amid all that wealth which Earth, the best of mothers,
brings forth, nothing gives you pleasure but to chew, with savage tooth,
the grievous wounds you make, and bring back the ways of the Cyclopes —
and you cannot appease the hunger of your gluttonous,
ill-conditioned belly unless you have destroyed another!
and make tender; nor is the milky liquid kept from you,
nor honey fragrant with the thyme-flower:
the earth, lavish, heaps up her riches and her gentle foods,
and offers banquets without slaughter and without blood.
Beasts ease their hunger with flesh — yet not all even of these:
for the horse and the flocks and the herds live on grass;
but those whose nature is untamed and savage —
the tigers of Armenia, and the wrathful lions,
and bears together with wolves — delight in a bloody feast.
Ah, how great a wrong, that flesh should be buried in flesh,
that a greedy body should grow fat on a body crammed within it,
that one living thing should live by the death of another!
So, amid all that wealth which Earth, the best of mothers,
brings forth, nothing gives you pleasure but to chew, with savage tooth,
the grievous wounds you make, and bring back the ways of the Cyclopes —
and you cannot appease the hunger of your gluttonous,
ill-conditioned belly unless you have destroyed another!
sunt herbae dulces, sunt quae mitescere flamma mollirique queant; nec vobis lacteus umor eripitur, nec mella thymi redolentia florem: prodiga divitias alimentaque mitia tellus suggerit atque epulas sine caede et sanguine praebet. carne ferae sedant ieiunia, nec tamen omnes: quippe equus et pecudes armentaque gramine vivunt; at quibus ingenium est inmansuetumque ferumque, Armeniae tigres iracundique leones cumque lupis ursi, dapibus cum sanguine gaudent. heu quantum scelus est in viscera viscera condi ingestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus alteriusque animans animantis vivere leto! scilicet in tantis opibus, quas, optima matrum, terra parit, nil te nisi tristia mandere saevo vulnera dente iuvat ritusque referre Cyclopum, nec, nisi perdideris alium, placare voracis et male morati poteris ieiunia ventris! ’
’But that old age, to which we have given the name of gold,
was blessed with the fruits of trees and the herbs the ground sends up,
and did not stain its lips with blood.
Then the birds plied their wings through the air in safety,
and the hare wandered fearless in the open fields,
nor had its own trustfulness hung the fish on a hook:
all things were free of ambush, dreading no treachery,
and full of peace. Once some baneful innovator —
whoever he was — grudged the lions their diet
and sank a meal of flesh into his greedy belly,
he opened the road to crime; and it may be the steel
first grew warm, stained with blood, from the slaughter of wild beasts —
and that would have been enough: we grant that bodies which seek
our own death may be put to death with piety unbroken;
but, though they had to be killed, they were not to be eaten.
’From there the outrage went further: the pig is thought
to have been the first victim to deserve death, because with its broad snout
it rooted up the seed and cut off the year’s hope;
the goat, for gnawing the vine, is led to be slaughtered at the altars
of avenging Bacchus: each was undone by its own fault!
was blessed with the fruits of trees and the herbs the ground sends up,
and did not stain its lips with blood.
Then the birds plied their wings through the air in safety,
and the hare wandered fearless in the open fields,
nor had its own trustfulness hung the fish on a hook:
all things were free of ambush, dreading no treachery,
and full of peace. Once some baneful innovator —
whoever he was — grudged the lions their diet
and sank a meal of flesh into his greedy belly,
he opened the road to crime; and it may be the steel
first grew warm, stained with blood, from the slaughter of wild beasts —
and that would have been enough: we grant that bodies which seek
our own death may be put to death with piety unbroken;
but, though they had to be killed, they were not to be eaten.
’From there the outrage went further: the pig is thought
to have been the first victim to deserve death, because with its broad snout
it rooted up the seed and cut off the year’s hope;
the goat, for gnawing the vine, is led to be slaughtered at the altars
of avenging Bacchus: each was undone by its own fault!
At vetus illa aetas, cui fecimus aurea nomen, fetibus arboreis et, quas humus educat, herbis fortunata fuit nec polluit ora cruore. tunc et aves tutae movere per aera pennas, et lepus inpavidus mediis erravit in arvis, nec sua credulitas piscem suspenderat hamo: cuncta sine insidiis nullamque timentia fraudem plenaque pacis erant. postquam non utilis auctor victibus invidit, quisquis fuit ille, leonum corporeasque dapes avidum demersit in alvum, fecit iter sceleri, primoque e caede ferarum incaluisse potest maculatum sanguine ferrum (idque satis fuerat) nostrumque petentia letum corpora missa neci salva pietate fatemur: sed quam danda neci, tam non epulanda fuerunt. ’Longius inde nefas abiit, et prima putatur hostia sus meruisse mori, quia semina pando eruerit rostro spemque interceperit anni; vite caper morsa Bacchi mactandus ad aras ducitur ultoris: nocuit sua culpa duobus!
What did you sheep deserve, a peaceful flock, born to look after
mankind, who bear nectar in your full udders,
who furnish us soft coverings in your wool,
and help us more by your life than by your death?
What did the oxen deserve, a beast without guile or treachery,
harmless, simple, born to bear hard labour?
Thankless indeed, and unworthy of the gift of corn,
is the man who could slaughter his own field-hand the moment
he had lifted off the curved plough’s weight — who could strike
with the axe that neck worn down with toil, the neck by which
he had so often renewed the stubborn field and won so many harvests.
Nor is it enough that such an outrage is committed: men have
enrolled the very gods in the crime, and believe the power on high
rejoices in the death of the toil-bearing bullock!
A victim without blemish and of surpassing form
— for to have pleased the eye is its undoing — marked out with fillets
and with gold, is set before the altars, and, all unknowing,
hears the prayer, and sees set between its horns, upon its brow,
the grain it tended, and, struck down, stains with its blood
the knives it had perhaps glimpsed before in the clear water.
mankind, who bear nectar in your full udders,
who furnish us soft coverings in your wool,
and help us more by your life than by your death?
What did the oxen deserve, a beast without guile or treachery,
harmless, simple, born to bear hard labour?
Thankless indeed, and unworthy of the gift of corn,
is the man who could slaughter his own field-hand the moment
he had lifted off the curved plough’s weight — who could strike
with the axe that neck worn down with toil, the neck by which
he had so often renewed the stubborn field and won so many harvests.
Nor is it enough that such an outrage is committed: men have
enrolled the very gods in the crime, and believe the power on high
rejoices in the death of the toil-bearing bullock!
A victim without blemish and of surpassing form
— for to have pleased the eye is its undoing — marked out with fillets
and with gold, is set before the altars, and, all unknowing,
hears the prayer, and sees set between its horns, upon its brow,
the grain it tended, and, struck down, stains with its blood
the knives it had perhaps glimpsed before in the clear water.
quid meruistis oves, placidum pecus inque tuendos natum homines, pleno quae fertis in ubere nectar, mollia quae nobis vestras velamina lanas praebetis vitaque magis quam morte iuvatis? quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque, innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores? inmemor est demum nec frugum munere dignus, qui potuit curvi dempto modo pondere aratri ruricolam mactare suum, qui trita labore illa, quibus totiens durum renovaverat arvum, quot dederat messes, percussit colla securi. nec satis est, quod tale nefas committitur: ipsos inscripsere deos sceleri numenque supernum caede laboriferi credunt gaudere iuvenci! victima labe carens et praestantissima forma (nam placuisse nocet) vittis insignis et auro sistitur ante aras auditque ignara precantem inponique suae videt inter cornua fronti, quas coluit, fruges percussaque sanguine cultros inficit in liquida praevisos forsitan unda.
At once they examine the fibres torn from the living breast
and search in them for the minds of the gods;
and from there — so great is man’s hunger for forbidden food —
you dare to feed, O mortal race! Do not, I beg,
do this; turn your minds to my warnings!
When you give the limbs of slaughtered oxen to your palate,
know and feel that you are chewing your own farm-hands.
’And since a god moves my lips, I will duly follow
the god who moves them, and throw open my own Delphi
and the very sky, and unlock the oracles of an august mind:
great matters, untracked by the wit of those before me,
things long hidden, I shall sing. It is my joy to go among
the high stars, my joy to leave the earth and its sluggish seat
and ride the cloud, to stand on mighty Atlas’ shoulders
and look down from far on men straying here and there,
destitute of reason, trembling and afraid of death,
and so to hearten them, and unroll the sequence of fate!
’O race stunned by the chill dread of death,
why do you fear the Styx, the shadows, the empty names,
the stuff of poets, the bogeys of a world that is not?
Bodies, whether the pyre’s flame or wasting age
has taken them — believe they can suffer no harm!
Souls do not die: ever, the former seat left behind,
they live in new homes and dwell there, taken in.
and search in them for the minds of the gods;
and from there — so great is man’s hunger for forbidden food —
you dare to feed, O mortal race! Do not, I beg,
do this; turn your minds to my warnings!
When you give the limbs of slaughtered oxen to your palate,
know and feel that you are chewing your own farm-hands.
’And since a god moves my lips, I will duly follow
the god who moves them, and throw open my own Delphi
and the very sky, and unlock the oracles of an august mind:
great matters, untracked by the wit of those before me,
things long hidden, I shall sing. It is my joy to go among
the high stars, my joy to leave the earth and its sluggish seat
and ride the cloud, to stand on mighty Atlas’ shoulders
and look down from far on men straying here and there,
destitute of reason, trembling and afraid of death,
and so to hearten them, and unroll the sequence of fate!
’O race stunned by the chill dread of death,
why do you fear the Styx, the shadows, the empty names,
the stuff of poets, the bogeys of a world that is not?
Bodies, whether the pyre’s flame or wasting age
has taken them — believe they can suffer no harm!
Souls do not die: ever, the former seat left behind,
they live in new homes and dwell there, taken in.
protinus ereptas viventi pectore fibras inspiciunt mentesque deum scrutantur in illis; inde (fames homini vetitorum tanta ciborum) audetis vesci, genus o mortale! quod, oro, ne facite, et monitis animos advertite nostris! cumque boum dabitis caesorum membra palato, mandere vos vestros scite et sentite colonos. ’Et quoniam deus ora movet, sequar ora moventem rite deum Delphosque meos ipsumque recludam aethera et augustae reserabo oracula mentis: magna nec ingeniis investigata priorum quaeque diu latuere, canam; iuvat ire per alta astra, iuvat terris et inerti sede relicta nube vehi validique umeris insistere Atlantis palantesque homines passim et rationis egentes despectare procul trepidosque obitumque timentes sic exhortari seriemque evolvere fati! ’O genus attonitum gelidae formidine mortis, quid Styga, quid tenebras et nomina vana timetis, materiem vatum, falsi terricula mundi? corpora, sive rogus flamma seu tabe vetustas abstulerit, mala posse pati non ulla putetis! morte carent animae semperque priore relicta sede novis domibus vivunt habitantque receptae:
I myself — for I remember — in the time of the Trojan war
was Euphorbus, son of Panthous, in whose breast once
the heavy spear of the lesser son of Atreus stood fast;
I recognized the shield, the burden of my left arm,
not long ago in the temple of Juno at Abantean Argos!
All things change, nothing perishes: the spirit wanders,
coming from there to here, from here to there, and takes possession
of whatever limbs it pleases; out of beasts it passes
into human bodies, and ours into beasts, and at no time does it die;
and as the pliant wax is stamped with new figures
and does not stay as it was nor keep the same form,
yet is itself the same, so I teach that the soul is ever
the same, but migrates into changing shapes.
Therefore, lest devotion be conquered by the belly’s craving,
forbear — I prophesy it — to drive out kindred souls
by unspeakable slaughter, and let not blood be fed by blood!
’And since I am borne on a great sea, and have spread
my sails full to the winds: there is nothing in the whole world
that stays. All things flow, and every image is formed as it drifts;
was Euphorbus, son of Panthous, in whose breast once
the heavy spear of the lesser son of Atreus stood fast;
I recognized the shield, the burden of my left arm,
not long ago in the temple of Juno at Abantean Argos!
All things change, nothing perishes: the spirit wanders,
coming from there to here, from here to there, and takes possession
of whatever limbs it pleases; out of beasts it passes
into human bodies, and ours into beasts, and at no time does it die;
and as the pliant wax is stamped with new figures
and does not stay as it was nor keep the same form,
yet is itself the same, so I teach that the soul is ever
the same, but migrates into changing shapes.
Therefore, lest devotion be conquered by the belly’s craving,
forbear — I prophesy it — to drive out kindred souls
by unspeakable slaughter, and let not blood be fed by blood!
’And since I am borne on a great sea, and have spread
my sails full to the winds: there is nothing in the whole world
that stays. All things flow, and every image is formed as it drifts;
ipse ego (nam memini) Troiani tempore belli Panthoides Euphorbus eram, cui pectore quondam haesit in adverso gravis hasta minoris Atridae; cognovi clipeum, laevae gestamina nostrae, nuper Abanteis templo Iunonis in Argis! omnia mutantur, nihil interit: errat et illinc huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus spiritus eque feris humana in corpora transit inque feras noster, nec tempore deperit ullo, utque novis facilis signatur cera figuris nec manet ut fuerat nec formam servat eandem, sed tamen ipsa eadem est, animam sic semper eandem esse, sed in varias doceo migrare figuras. ergo, ne pietas sit victa cupidine ventris, parcite, vaticinor, cognatas caede nefanda exturbare animas, nec sanguine sanguis alatur! ’Et quoniam magno feror aequore plenaque ventis vela dedi: nihil est toto, quod perstet, in orbe. cuncta fluunt, omnisque vagans formatur imago;
the seasons themselves glide on in ceaseless motion,
no otherwise than a river; for neither the river
nor the fleeting hour can stand still: but as wave is driven on by wave,
and the one ahead is pressed by the one that comes, and presses the one before,
so the moments of time alike flee and alike follow,
and are forever new; for what was before is left behind,
and what was not comes to be, and every instant is renewed.
’You see, too, how the spent nights press on toward the light,
and this bright radiance follows the black night;
nor is the colour of the sky the same when all things lie
weary in midnight rest, and when Lucifer comes forth
bright on his white horse, and again another when the daughter of Pallas,
forerunner of the daylight, stains the disc she must hand to Phoebus.
The god’s own shield, when it lifts from the earth’s edge,
is red at dawn, and red when it sinks at the earth’s edge,
but white at the height, because there its nature is purer,
nearer the ether, and far from earth’s contagion it flees.
Nor can the nightly form of Diana ever be
equal or the same: today’s is always less than the next’s,
if she is waxing; and greater, if she draws her orb in.
no otherwise than a river; for neither the river
nor the fleeting hour can stand still: but as wave is driven on by wave,
and the one ahead is pressed by the one that comes, and presses the one before,
so the moments of time alike flee and alike follow,
and are forever new; for what was before is left behind,
and what was not comes to be, and every instant is renewed.
’You see, too, how the spent nights press on toward the light,
and this bright radiance follows the black night;
nor is the colour of the sky the same when all things lie
weary in midnight rest, and when Lucifer comes forth
bright on his white horse, and again another when the daughter of Pallas,
forerunner of the daylight, stains the disc she must hand to Phoebus.
The god’s own shield, when it lifts from the earth’s edge,
is red at dawn, and red when it sinks at the earth’s edge,
but white at the height, because there its nature is purer,
nearer the ether, and far from earth’s contagion it flees.
Nor can the nightly form of Diana ever be
equal or the same: today’s is always less than the next’s,
if she is waxing; and greater, if she draws her orb in.
ipsa quoque adsiduo labuntur tempora motu, non secus ac flumen; neque enim consistere flumen nec levis hora potest: sed ut unda inpellitur unda urgeturque prior veniente urgetque priorem, tempora sic fugiunt pariter pariterque sequuntur et nova sunt semper; nam quod fuit ante, relictum est, fitque, quod haut fuerat, momentaque cuncta novantur. ’Cernis et emensas in lucem tendere noctes, et iubar hoc nitidum nigrae succedere nocti; nec color est idem caelo, cum lassa quiete cuncta iacent media cumque albo Lucifer exit clarus equo rursusque alius, cum praevia lucis tradendum Phoebo Pallantias inficit orbem. ipse dei clipeus, terra cum tollitur ima, mane rubet, terraque rubet cum conditur ima, candidus in summo est, melior natura quod illic aetheris est terraeque procul contagia fugit. nec par aut eadem nocturnae forma Dianae esse potest umquam semperque hodierna sequente, si crescit, minor est, maior, si contrahit orbem. ’
’What? Do you not see the year pass into four seasons,
running through the likenesses of our own age of life?
For in early spring it is tender and milky and most like
a boy’s time: then the new grass, lacking strength,
swells, soft and unfirm, and gladdens the farmers with hope;
then all things flower, and the kindly field plays
with the colours of blossom, but as yet no vigour is in the leaves.
After spring the year passes, more robust, into summer
and becomes a sturdy young man: for no age is more robust,
none more abundant, none that burns more hotly.
Autumn takes over, the fever of youth laid by,
ripe and mellow, midway between the young man and the old,
balanced in temperate measure, his temples too sprinkled with grey.
Then comes old man’s winter, bristling, with a trembling step,
its hair either stripped away, or, what it keeps, white.
’Our own bodies, too, are forever changing, without any rest,
and what we have been or are, we shall not be tomorrow;
running through the likenesses of our own age of life?
For in early spring it is tender and milky and most like
a boy’s time: then the new grass, lacking strength,
swells, soft and unfirm, and gladdens the farmers with hope;
then all things flower, and the kindly field plays
with the colours of blossom, but as yet no vigour is in the leaves.
After spring the year passes, more robust, into summer
and becomes a sturdy young man: for no age is more robust,
none more abundant, none that burns more hotly.
Autumn takes over, the fever of youth laid by,
ripe and mellow, midway between the young man and the old,
balanced in temperate measure, his temples too sprinkled with grey.
Then comes old man’s winter, bristling, with a trembling step,
its hair either stripped away, or, what it keeps, white.
’Our own bodies, too, are forever changing, without any rest,
and what we have been or are, we shall not be tomorrow;
Quid? non in species succedere quattuor annum adspicis, aetatis peragentem imitamina nostrae? nam tener et lactens puerique simillimus aevo vere novo est: tunc herba recens et roboris expers turget et insolida est et spe delectat agrestes; omnia tunc florent, florumque coloribus almus ludit ager, neque adhuc virtus in frondibus ulla est. transit in aestatem post ver robustior annus fitque valens iuvenis: neque enim robustior aetas ulla nec uberior, nec quae magis ardeat, ulla est. excipit autumnus, posito fervore iuventae maturus mitisque inter iuvenemque senemque temperie medius, sparsus quoque tempora canis. inde senilis hiems tremulo venit horrida passu, aut spoliata suos, aut, quos habet, alba capillos. ’Nostra quoque ipsorum semper requieque sine ulla corpora vertuntur, nec quod fuimusve sumusve, cras erimus;
there was that day on which, mere seed
and the first hope of men, we lay hidden in a mother’s womb:
nature laid her craftsman’s hands to us, and would not have
our bodies cramped, shut up in the entrails of a swollen mother,
and sent us out from that home into the empty air.
Brought forth into the light, the infant lay without strength;
soon on all fours, after the manner of beasts, he carried his limbs,
and little by little, trembling, his knees not yet firm,
he stood, his sinews helped by some support.
Then he grew strong and swift, and passes the span of youth;
and, the years of middle life served out as well,
he slides down the sloping path of declining age.
This undermines and tears down the strength
of the former time: old Milon weeps when he looks at those arms,
that once, with the mass of their solid muscle,
were like Hercules’, and sees them now hang slack;
Helen, too, weeps when she sees in the mirror an old woman’s wrinkles,
and asks herself why she was twice carried off.
Time, devourer of things, and you, envious age,
you destroy all, and, gnawing them with the teeth of years,
little by little consume all things in a lingering death!
and the first hope of men, we lay hidden in a mother’s womb:
nature laid her craftsman’s hands to us, and would not have
our bodies cramped, shut up in the entrails of a swollen mother,
and sent us out from that home into the empty air.
Brought forth into the light, the infant lay without strength;
soon on all fours, after the manner of beasts, he carried his limbs,
and little by little, trembling, his knees not yet firm,
he stood, his sinews helped by some support.
Then he grew strong and swift, and passes the span of youth;
and, the years of middle life served out as well,
he slides down the sloping path of declining age.
This undermines and tears down the strength
of the former time: old Milon weeps when he looks at those arms,
that once, with the mass of their solid muscle,
were like Hercules’, and sees them now hang slack;
Helen, too, weeps when she sees in the mirror an old woman’s wrinkles,
and asks herself why she was twice carried off.
Time, devourer of things, and you, envious age,
you destroy all, and, gnawing them with the teeth of years,
little by little consume all things in a lingering death!
fuit illa dies, qua semina tantum spesque hominum primae matris latitavimus alvo: artifices natura manus admovit et angi corpora visceribus distentae condita matris noluit eque domo vacuas emisit in auras. editus in lucem iacuit sine viribus infans; mox quadrupes rituque tulit sua membra ferarum, paulatimque tremens et nondum poplite firmo constitit adiutis aliquo conamine nervis. inde valens veloxque fuit spatiumque iuventae transit et emeritis medii quoque temporis annis labitur occiduae per iter declive senectae. subruit haec aevi demoliturque prioris robora: fletque Milon senior, cum spectat inanes illos, qui fuerant solidorum mole tororum Herculeis similes, fluidos pendere lacertos; flet quoque, ut in speculo rugas adspexit aniles, Tyndaris et secum, cur sit bis rapta, requirit. tempus edax rerum, tuque, invidiosa vetustas, omnia destruitis vitiataque dentibus aevi paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte! ’
’These too do not stand fast — the things we call the elements:
give your minds to the changes they run through; I will teach you.
The eternal world holds four generative bodies;
of these two are heavy and, by their own weight,
are borne downward — earth and water —
and as many lack weight, and with nothing pressing them
seek the heights — air, and fire purer than air.
Though these stand apart in space, yet all things come to be
from them and fall back into them: earth, dissolved,
rarefies into flowing water; the moisture, thinned,
departs into breezes and air; and air too, its weight removed,
the most rarefied, flashes up again into the fires on high;
then back they return, and the same order is unwoven.
For fire, condensed, passes into thick air,
this into water, and water, packed together, is forced into earth.
’Nor does each thing keep its own appearance: nature, the renewer
of things, refashions one form out of another;
nor does anything perish in the whole world, believe me,
but it varies and renews its face; and to be born is called
beginning to be other than what one was before, and to die,
ceasing to be that same thing. Though these may be carried hither, perhaps,
and those thither, yet the sum of all stands constant.
give your minds to the changes they run through; I will teach you.
The eternal world holds four generative bodies;
of these two are heavy and, by their own weight,
are borne downward — earth and water —
and as many lack weight, and with nothing pressing them
seek the heights — air, and fire purer than air.
Though these stand apart in space, yet all things come to be
from them and fall back into them: earth, dissolved,
rarefies into flowing water; the moisture, thinned,
departs into breezes and air; and air too, its weight removed,
the most rarefied, flashes up again into the fires on high;
then back they return, and the same order is unwoven.
For fire, condensed, passes into thick air,
this into water, and water, packed together, is forced into earth.
’Nor does each thing keep its own appearance: nature, the renewer
of things, refashions one form out of another;
nor does anything perish in the whole world, believe me,
but it varies and renews its face; and to be born is called
beginning to be other than what one was before, and to die,
ceasing to be that same thing. Though these may be carried hither, perhaps,
and those thither, yet the sum of all stands constant.
Haec quoque non perstant, quae nos elementa vocamus, quasque vices peragant, animos adhibete: docebo. quattuor aeternus genitalia corpora mundus continet; ex illis duo sunt onerosa suoque pondere in inferius, tellus atque unda, feruntur, et totidem gravitate carent nulloque premente alta petunt, aer atque aere purior ignis. quae quamquam spatio distent, tamen omnia fiunt ex ipsis et in ipsa cadunt: resolutaque tellus in liquidas rarescit aquas, tenuatus in auras aeraque umor abit, dempto quoque pondere rursus in superos aer tenuissimus emicat ignes; inde retro redeunt, idemque retexitur ordo. ignis enim densum spissatus in aera transit, hic in aquas, tellus glomerata cogitur unda. ’Nec species sua cuique manet, rerumque novatrix ex aliis alias reparat natura figuras: nec perit in toto quicquam, mihi credite, mundo, sed variat faciemque novat, nascique vocatur incipere esse aliud, quam quod fuit ante, morique desinere illud idem. cum sint huc forsitan illa, haec translata illuc, summa tamen omnia constant. ’
’For my part, I would not believe that anything lasts long
under the same appearance: so you ages came to iron from gold,
so often has the fortune of places been overturned.
I myself have seen what was once most solid land
become sea; I have seen lands made out of the deep;
and seashells have lain far from the ocean,
and an old anchor has been found on the mountain-tops;
and what was a plain, the downrush of waters has made a valley,
and a mountain has been washed by floods down into the sea,
and ground once marshy is parched into dry sands,
and what had borne drought is wet, ponded with marshes.
Here nature has sent forth new springs, but there
has closed them up; and either, stirred by tremors deep in the world,
rivers leap out, or, dried away, sink down.
under the same appearance: so you ages came to iron from gold,
so often has the fortune of places been overturned.
I myself have seen what was once most solid land
become sea; I have seen lands made out of the deep;
and seashells have lain far from the ocean,
and an old anchor has been found on the mountain-tops;
and what was a plain, the downrush of waters has made a valley,
and a mountain has been washed by floods down into the sea,
and ground once marshy is parched into dry sands,
and what had borne drought is wet, ponded with marshes.
Here nature has sent forth new springs, but there
has closed them up; and either, stirred by tremors deep in the world,
rivers leap out, or, dried away, sink down.
Nil equidem durare diu sub imagine eadem crediderim: sic ad ferrum venistis ab auro, saecula, sic totiens versa est fortuna locorum. vidi ego, quod fuerat quondam solidissima tellus, esse fretum, vidi factas ex aequore terras; et procul a pelago conchae iacuere marinae, et vetus inventa est in montibus ancora summis; quodque fuit campus, vallem decursus aquarum fecit, et eluvie mons est deductus in aequor, eque paludosa siccis humus aret harenis, quaeque sitim tulerant, stagnata paludibus ument. hic fontes natura novos emisit, at illic clausit, et aut imis commota tremoribus orbis flumina prosiliunt, aut exsiccata residunt.
So when the Lycus is drunk down into an earthy chasm,
it rises far from there and is reborn at another mouth;
so the great Erasinus, now swallowed up, now slipping along
beneath a hidden channel, is given back in the Argive fields;
and the Mysus, they say, repented of its source and former bank,
and now goes elsewhere as the Caïcus;
the Amenanus, too, rolling the Sicilian sands,
now flows, now, its springs suppressed, runs dry.
The Anigrus, once drinkable, now pours out waters
you would not wish to touch — since (unless all faith
is to be stripped from the poets) the double-formed Centaurs
washed there the wounds the club-bearing Hercules’ bow had made.
What of this? Is not the Hypanis, risen from the Scythian mountains,
once sweet, now spoiled with bitter salts?
’Antissa and Pharos and Phoenician Tyre were once
ringed round by the waves: none of them now is an island.
The old settlers held Leucas as mainland:
now the straits go round it; Zancle, too, is said
to have been joined to Italy, until the sea
carried off the marches and thrust back the land with a wave between;
it rises far from there and is reborn at another mouth;
so the great Erasinus, now swallowed up, now slipping along
beneath a hidden channel, is given back in the Argive fields;
and the Mysus, they say, repented of its source and former bank,
and now goes elsewhere as the Caïcus;
the Amenanus, too, rolling the Sicilian sands,
now flows, now, its springs suppressed, runs dry.
The Anigrus, once drinkable, now pours out waters
you would not wish to touch — since (unless all faith
is to be stripped from the poets) the double-formed Centaurs
washed there the wounds the club-bearing Hercules’ bow had made.
What of this? Is not the Hypanis, risen from the Scythian mountains,
once sweet, now spoiled with bitter salts?
’Antissa and Pharos and Phoenician Tyre were once
ringed round by the waves: none of them now is an island.
The old settlers held Leucas as mainland:
now the straits go round it; Zancle, too, is said
to have been joined to Italy, until the sea
carried off the marches and thrust back the land with a wave between;
sic ubi terreno Lycus est epotus hiatu, existit procul hinc alioque renascitur ore; sic modo conbibitur, tecto modo gurgite lapsus redditur Argolicis ingens Erasinus in arvis, et Mysum capitisque sui ripaeque prioris paenituisse ferunt, alia nunc ire Caicum; nec non Sicanias volvens Amenanus harenas nunc fluit, interdum suppressis fontibus aret. ante bibebatur, nunc, quas contingere nolis, fundit Anigrus aquas, postquam, nisi vatibus omnis eripienda fides, illic lavere bimembres vulnera, clavigeri quae fecerat Herculis arcus. quid? non et Scythicis Hypanis de montibus ortus, qui fuerat dulcis, salibus vitiatur amaris? ’Fluctibus ambitae fuerant Antissa Pharosque et Phoenissa Tyros: quarum nunc insula nulla est. Leucada continuam veteres habuere coloni: nunc freta circueunt; Zancle quoque iuncta fuisse dicitur Italiae, donec confinia pontus abstulit et media tellurem reppulit unda;
If you should seek Helice and Buris, Achaean cities,
you will find them under the water, and to this day the sailors
are wont to point out the towns aslant, their walls submerged.
Near Pittheus’ Troezen there is a mound, steep and treeless,
once a perfectly level stretch of plain,
now a mound; for — a thing dreadful to tell —
the fierce force of the winds, shut in blind caverns,
longing to breathe out somewhere, and struggling in vain
to enjoy a freer sky, since in all their prison there was
no crack, none pervious to their blasts,
swelled the stretched ground up, as the breath of the mouth
is wont to stretch a bladder, or the hide stripped from a two-horned
goat; that swelling of the place remained, and keeps the look
of a high hill, and has hardened with the long passage of time.
you will find them under the water, and to this day the sailors
are wont to point out the towns aslant, their walls submerged.
Near Pittheus’ Troezen there is a mound, steep and treeless,
once a perfectly level stretch of plain,
now a mound; for — a thing dreadful to tell —
the fierce force of the winds, shut in blind caverns,
longing to breathe out somewhere, and struggling in vain
to enjoy a freer sky, since in all their prison there was
no crack, none pervious to their blasts,
swelled the stretched ground up, as the breath of the mouth
is wont to stretch a bladder, or the hide stripped from a two-horned
goat; that swelling of the place remained, and keeps the look
of a high hill, and has hardened with the long passage of time.
si quaeras Helicen et Burin, Achaidas urbes, invenies sub aquis, et adhuc ostendere nautae inclinata solent cum moenibus oppida mersis. est prope Pittheam tumulus Troezena, sine ullis arduus arboribus, quondam planissima campi area, nunc tumulus; nam (res horrenda relatu) vis fera ventorum, caecis inclusa cavernis, exspirare aliqua cupiens luctataque frustra liberiore frui caelo, cum carcere rima nulla foret toto nec pervia flatibus esset, extentam tumefecit humum, ceu spiritus oris tendere vesicam solet aut derepta bicorni terga capro; tumor ille loci permansit et alti collis habet speciem longoque induruit aevo. ’
’Though very many things come to mind that I have heard and learned,
I will add a few. What? Does not water, too, give and take
new shapes? At midday your wave, horned Ammon,
is cold, but warms at sunrise and at sunset;
the Athamanians, it is told, kindle wood by bringing water to it
when the moon has shrunk to her smallest orb.
The Cicones have a river that turns to stone the bowels
of one who drinks it, and lays marble over things it touches;
the Crathis, and the Sybaris bordering on it near our own shores,
make the hair like amber and like gold;
and — what is more marvellous still — there are waters
that have power to change not bodies only but minds:
who has not heard of obscene Salmacis’ wave,
and the Aethiopian lakes? Whoever has drunk of them in his throat
either raves, or suffers a strange heaviness of sleep.
Whoever has eased his thirst at the Clitorian spring
shuns wine, and, abstinent, delights in the pure water —
whether there is a power in the water opposed to heating wine,
or whether, as the natives tell, the son of Amythaon,
after he had by spell and herb snatched the maddened
daughters of Proetus from their frenzy, cast the cleansings
of their minds into that water, and the hatred of wine stayed in the spring.
I will add a few. What? Does not water, too, give and take
new shapes? At midday your wave, horned Ammon,
is cold, but warms at sunrise and at sunset;
the Athamanians, it is told, kindle wood by bringing water to it
when the moon has shrunk to her smallest orb.
The Cicones have a river that turns to stone the bowels
of one who drinks it, and lays marble over things it touches;
the Crathis, and the Sybaris bordering on it near our own shores,
make the hair like amber and like gold;
and — what is more marvellous still — there are waters
that have power to change not bodies only but minds:
who has not heard of obscene Salmacis’ wave,
and the Aethiopian lakes? Whoever has drunk of them in his throat
either raves, or suffers a strange heaviness of sleep.
Whoever has eased his thirst at the Clitorian spring
shuns wine, and, abstinent, delights in the pure water —
whether there is a power in the water opposed to heating wine,
or whether, as the natives tell, the son of Amythaon,
after he had by spell and herb snatched the maddened
daughters of Proetus from their frenzy, cast the cleansings
of their minds into that water, and the hatred of wine stayed in the spring.
Plurima cum subeant audita et cognita nobis, pauca super referam. quid? non et lympha figuras datque capitque novas? medio tua, corniger Ammon, unda die gelida est, ortuque obituque calescit, admotis Athamanas aquis accendere lignum narratur, minimos cum luna recessit in orbes. flumen habent Cicones, quod potum saxea reddit viscera, quod tactis inducit marmora rebus; Crathis et huic Subaris nostris conterminus oris electro similes faciunt auroque capillos; quodque magis mirum est, sunt, qui non corpora tantum, verum animos etiam valeant mutare liquores: cui non audita est obscenae Salmacis undae Aethiopesque lacus? quos si quis faucibus hausit, aut furit aut patitur mirum gravitate soporem; Clitorio quicumque sitim de fonte levavit, vina fugit gaudetque meris abstemius undis, seu vis est in aqua calido contraria vino, sive, quod indigenae memorant, Amythaone natus, Proetidas attonitas postquam per carmen et herbas eripuit furiis, purgamina mentis in illas misit aquas, odiumque meri permansit in undis.
Unlike this in effect flows the Lyncestian stream,
which whoever has drawn down an unguarded throat
reels no otherwise than if he had drunk pure wine.
There is a place in Arcadia — the ancients called it Pheneus —
suspect for its treacherous waters: fear them by night;
drunk by night they harm, by daylight drunk they do no harm.
So lakes and rivers take on one power and another.
There was a time when Ortygia floated on the waves;
now it stands fast; the Argo feared the Symplegades,
scattered with the spray of the dashing waves,
which now stand unmoved and resist the winds.
Nor will Aetna, which burns with sulphurous furnaces,
be fiery forever — for it was not fiery forever.
For whether the earth is an animal and lives and has
breathing-holes that exhale flame in many places,
it can change the paths of its breathing, and as often as it stirs
can close these caverns and open those;
which whoever has drawn down an unguarded throat
reels no otherwise than if he had drunk pure wine.
There is a place in Arcadia — the ancients called it Pheneus —
suspect for its treacherous waters: fear them by night;
drunk by night they harm, by daylight drunk they do no harm.
So lakes and rivers take on one power and another.
There was a time when Ortygia floated on the waves;
now it stands fast; the Argo feared the Symplegades,
scattered with the spray of the dashing waves,
which now stand unmoved and resist the winds.
Nor will Aetna, which burns with sulphurous furnaces,
be fiery forever — for it was not fiery forever.
For whether the earth is an animal and lives and has
breathing-holes that exhale flame in many places,
it can change the paths of its breathing, and as often as it stirs
can close these caverns and open those;
huic fluit effectu dispar Lyncestius amnis, quem quicumque parum moderato gutture traxit, haut aliter titubat, quam si mera vina bibisset. est locus Arcadiae, Pheneon dixere priores, ambiguis suspectus aquis, quas nocte timeto: nocte nocent potae, sine noxa luce bibuntur; sic alias aliasque lacus et flumina vires concipiunt.++tempusque fuit, quo navit in undis, nunc sedet Ortygie; timuit concursibus Argo undarum sparsas Symplegadas elisarum, quae nunc inmotae perstant ventisque resistunt. nec quae sulphureis ardet fornacibus Aetne, ignea semper erit, neque enim fuit ignea semper. nam sive est animal tellus et vivit habetque spiramenta locis flammam exhalantia multis, spirandi mutare vias, quotiensque movetur, has finire potest, illas aperire cavernas;
or whether nimble winds are pent in the deep caves
and hurl rocks against rocks and stuff that holds
the seeds of flame, which catches fire from the blows,
the caverns will be left cold when the winds are stilled;
or whether bituminous forces seize the burning,
or the yellow sulphur smoulders with thin smoke —
yet, when the earth no longer gives food and rich nourishment
to the flame, its strength used up over the long age,
and the ravenous nature lacks its sustenance,
it will not endure the famine, and, deserted, will desert its fire.
’There are men, fame says, in Hyperborean Pallene,
who are wont to veil their bodies with light feathers
when they have dipped nine times in Triton’s marsh;
I myself do not believe it: the women of Scythia, too,
are said to practise the same arts, their limbs sprinkled with poisons.
and hurl rocks against rocks and stuff that holds
the seeds of flame, which catches fire from the blows,
the caverns will be left cold when the winds are stilled;
or whether bituminous forces seize the burning,
or the yellow sulphur smoulders with thin smoke —
yet, when the earth no longer gives food and rich nourishment
to the flame, its strength used up over the long age,
and the ravenous nature lacks its sustenance,
it will not endure the famine, and, deserted, will desert its fire.
’There are men, fame says, in Hyperborean Pallene,
who are wont to veil their bodies with light feathers
when they have dipped nine times in Triton’s marsh;
I myself do not believe it: the women of Scythia, too,
are said to practise the same arts, their limbs sprinkled with poisons.
sive leves imis venti cohibentur in antris saxaque cum saxis et habentem semina flammae materiam iactant, ea concipit ictibus ignem, antra relinquentur sedatis frigida ventis; sive bitumineae rapiunt incendia vires, luteave exiguis ardescunt sulphura fumis, nempe, ubi terra cibos alimentaque pinguia flammae non dabit absumptis per longum viribus aevum, naturaeque suum nutrimen deerit edaci, non feret illa famem desertaque deseret ignis. ’Esse viros fama est in Hyperborea Pallene, qui soleant levibus velari corpora plumis, cum Tritoniacam noviens subiere paludem; haut equidem credo: sparsae quoque membra venenis exercere artes Scythides memorantur easdem. ’
’Yet if any credit is to be added to proven things,
do you not see that whatever bodies have melted away
through decay or through dissolving heat are turned to small creatures?
Slaughter your bulls and bury them flung into a pit
(a thing known by experience): from the rotten flesh, everywhere,
flower-gathering bees are born, who in their parents’ fashion
work the fields and labour at their task and toil toward harvest.
The warhorse pressed into the ground is the origin of the hornet;
if you take the hollow claws from the shore-crab
and lay the rest under earth, from the buried part
a scorpion will come out and threaten with its hooked tail;
and the country grubs that are wont to weave grey threads
over the leaves (a thing the farmers have observed)
change their shape into the funereal butterfly.
’The mud holds seeds that breed green frogs,
and breeds them without feet; soon it gives legs fit
for swimming, and, that the same may serve for long leaps,
the hinder measure surpasses the forward parts.
do you not see that whatever bodies have melted away
through decay or through dissolving heat are turned to small creatures?
Slaughter your bulls and bury them flung into a pit
(a thing known by experience): from the rotten flesh, everywhere,
flower-gathering bees are born, who in their parents’ fashion
work the fields and labour at their task and toil toward harvest.
The warhorse pressed into the ground is the origin of the hornet;
if you take the hollow claws from the shore-crab
and lay the rest under earth, from the buried part
a scorpion will come out and threaten with its hooked tail;
and the country grubs that are wont to weave grey threads
over the leaves (a thing the farmers have observed)
change their shape into the funereal butterfly.
’The mud holds seeds that breed green frogs,
and breeds them without feet; soon it gives legs fit
for swimming, and, that the same may serve for long leaps,
the hinder measure surpasses the forward parts.
Siqua fides rebus tamen est addenda probatis, nonne vides, quaecumque mora fluidove calore corpora tabuerint, in parva animalia verti? in scrobe deiecto mactatos obrue tauros (cognita res usu): de putri viscere passim florilegae nascuntur apes, quae more parentum rura colunt operique favent in spemque laborant. pressus humo bellator equus crabronis origo est; concava litoreo si demas bracchia cancro, cetera supponas terrae, de parte sepulta scorpius exibit caudaque minabitur unca; quaeque solent canis frondes intexere filis agrestes tineae (res observata colonis) ferali mutant cum papilione figuram. ’Semina limus habet virides generantia ranas, et generat truncas pedibus, mox apta natando crura dat, utque eadem sint longis saltibus apta, posterior partes superat mensura priores.
Nor is the cub that the she-bear brings forth at a fresh birth
anything but barely living flesh; by licking, the mother
shapes it into limbs and brings it to such form as she herself has.
Do you not see how the young of the honey-bearing bees,
which the six-sided wax covers, are born as bodies without limbs,
and only late take on feet and late take on wings?
Juno’s bird, that carries stars upon its tail,
and the armour-bearer of Jove, and the doves of Cythera,
and every kind of bird — who, did he not know it happened,
would think they could come to be from the middle of an egg?
There are those who believe that, when the spine has rotted
in the closed tomb, the human marrow is changed into a snake.
anything but barely living flesh; by licking, the mother
shapes it into limbs and brings it to such form as she herself has.
Do you not see how the young of the honey-bearing bees,
which the six-sided wax covers, are born as bodies without limbs,
and only late take on feet and late take on wings?
Juno’s bird, that carries stars upon its tail,
and the armour-bearer of Jove, and the doves of Cythera,
and every kind of bird — who, did he not know it happened,
would think they could come to be from the middle of an egg?
There are those who believe that, when the spine has rotted
in the closed tomb, the human marrow is changed into a snake.
nec catulus, partu quem reddidit ursa recenti, sed male viva caro est; lambendo mater in artus fingit et in formam, quantam capit ipse, reducit. nonne vides, quos cera tegit sexangula fetus melliferarum apium sine membris corpora nasci et serosque pedes serasque adsumere pennas? Iunonis volucrem, quae cauda sidera portat, armigerumque Iovis Cythereiadasque columbas et genus omne avium mediis e partibus ovi, ni sciret fieri, fieri quis posse putaret? sunt qui, cum clauso putrefacta est spina sepulcro, mutari credant humanas angue medullas. ’
’Yet these all draw the first beginnings of their kind from others;
there is one bird that restores and re-sows itself:
the Assyrians call it the phoenix; not on grain nor on herbs,
but on the tears of frankincense and the sap of balsam it lives.
When this has completed five ages of its life,
straightway in the branches, on the top of a swaying palm,
it builds itself a nest with its talons and its clean beak,
and as soon as it has strewn beneath it cassia and the smooth ears of nard
and broken cinnamon with tawny myrrh,
it lays itself upon them and ends its life amid the fragrance.
From there, they say, a little phoenix is reborn
from the father’s body, to live as many years;
when age has given it strength and power to bear the load,
it lifts the branches of the tall tree from the weight of the nest,
and, dutiful, carries its own cradle and its father’s tomb,
and through the light air, reaching the city of Hyperion,
lays it down before the sacred doors of Hyperion’s temple.
there is one bird that restores and re-sows itself:
the Assyrians call it the phoenix; not on grain nor on herbs,
but on the tears of frankincense and the sap of balsam it lives.
When this has completed five ages of its life,
straightway in the branches, on the top of a swaying palm,
it builds itself a nest with its talons and its clean beak,
and as soon as it has strewn beneath it cassia and the smooth ears of nard
and broken cinnamon with tawny myrrh,
it lays itself upon them and ends its life amid the fragrance.
From there, they say, a little phoenix is reborn
from the father’s body, to live as many years;
when age has given it strength and power to bear the load,
it lifts the branches of the tall tree from the weight of the nest,
and, dutiful, carries its own cradle and its father’s tomb,
and through the light air, reaching the city of Hyperion,
lays it down before the sacred doors of Hyperion’s temple.
Haec tamen ex aliis generis primordia ducunt, una est, quae reparet seque ipsa reseminet, ales: Assyrii phoenica vocant; non fruge neque herbis, sed turis lacrimis et suco vivit amomi. haec ubi quinque suae conplevit saecula vitae, ilicet in ramis tremulaeque cacumine palmae unguibus et puro nidum sibi construit ore, quo simul ac casias et nardi lenis aristas quassaque cum fulva substravit cinnama murra, se super inponit finitque in odoribus aevum. inde ferunt, totidem qui vivere debeat annos, corpore de patrio parvum phoenica renasci; cum dedit huic aetas vires, onerique ferendo est, ponderibus nidi ramos levat arboris altae fertque pius cunasque suas patriumque sepulcrum perque leves auras Hyperionis urbe potitus ante fores sacras Hyperionis aede reponit. ’
’Yet if there is anything of marvellous strangeness in these things,
let us marvel that the hyena alternates her roles — she who but now,
a female, submitted to the male upon her back, is now a male;
and that creature, too, which is fed on wind and air,
takes on at once whatever colours it has touched.
Conquered India gave its lynxes to grape-clustered Bacchus:
and of these, they say, whatever the bladder lets go
turns into stones and freezes at the touch of the air.
So coral, too, at the moment it first touches the air,
hardens: under the waves it was a soft plant.
let us marvel that the hyena alternates her roles — she who but now,
a female, submitted to the male upon her back, is now a male;
and that creature, too, which is fed on wind and air,
takes on at once whatever colours it has touched.
Conquered India gave its lynxes to grape-clustered Bacchus:
and of these, they say, whatever the bladder lets go
turns into stones and freezes at the touch of the air.
So coral, too, at the moment it first touches the air,
hardens: under the waves it was a soft plant.
Si tamen est aliquid mirae novitatis in istis, alternare vices et, quae modo femina tergo passa marem est, nunc esse marem miremur hyaenam; id quoque, quod ventis animal nutritur et aura, protinus adsimulat, tetigit quoscumque colores. victa racemifero lyncas dedit India Baccho: e quibus, ut memorant, quicquid vesica remisit, vertitur in lapides et congelat aere tacto. sic et curalium quo primum contigit auras tempore, durescit: mollis fuit herba sub undis. ’
’The day will end, and Phoebus dip his panting horses
in the deep sea, before I can recount in words all the things
translated into new forms: so we see the ages turn,
and those nations take on strength, and these fall;
so Troy was great in wealth and in men,
and could pour out so much blood through ten years,
but now, brought low, shows only her ancient ruins
and, in place of riches, the tombs of her forefathers.
Sparta was famous, mighty Mycenae flourished,
so too the citadels of Cecrops and of Amphion.
Sparta is worthless ground, lofty Mycenae has fallen;
what is Oedipus’ Thebes but a name?
What of Pandion’s Athens remains but the name?
Now, too, fame says that Dardanian Rome is rising,
which, beside the waters of Apennine-born Tiber,
lays the foundations of empire under a vast bulk:
she, then, changes her form by growing, and one day
shall be the head of the boundless world!
in the deep sea, before I can recount in words all the things
translated into new forms: so we see the ages turn,
and those nations take on strength, and these fall;
so Troy was great in wealth and in men,
and could pour out so much blood through ten years,
but now, brought low, shows only her ancient ruins
and, in place of riches, the tombs of her forefathers.
Sparta was famous, mighty Mycenae flourished,
so too the citadels of Cecrops and of Amphion.
Sparta is worthless ground, lofty Mycenae has fallen;
what is Oedipus’ Thebes but a name?
What of Pandion’s Athens remains but the name?
Now, too, fame says that Dardanian Rome is rising,
which, beside the waters of Apennine-born Tiber,
lays the foundations of empire under a vast bulk:
she, then, changes her form by growing, and one day
shall be the head of the boundless world!
Desinet ante dies et in alto Phoebus anhelos aequore tinguet equos, quam consequar omnia verbis in species translata novas: sic tempora verti cernimus atque illas adsumere robora gentes, concidere has; sic magna fuit censuque virisque perque decem potuit tantum dare sanguinis annos, nunc humilis veteres tantummodo Troia ruinas et pro divitiis tumulos ostendit avorum. clara fuit Sparte, magnae viguere Mycenae, nec non et Cecropis, nec non Amphionis arces. vile solum Sparte est, altae cecidere Mycenae, Oedipodioniae quid sunt, nisi nomina, Thebae? quid Pandioniae restant, nisi nomen, Athenae? nunc quoque Dardaniam fama est consurgere Romam, Appenninigenae quae proxima Thybridis undis mole sub ingenti rerum fundamina ponit: haec igitur formam crescendo mutat et olim inmensi caput orbis erit!
So the seers say, and the prophetic oracles, men report;
and, as far as I recall, Helenus, son of Priam,
had said to weeping Aeneas, in doubt of his safety,
when the Trojan cause was tottering:
"Son of a goddess, if you hold well enough the presages
of my mind, Troy shall not wholly fall while you survive!
Flame and sword shall give you passage: you shall go, and shall carry
Pergama away with you, until a foreign field, kindlier
than your fatherland, falls to Troy and to yourself;
and already I see that a city is owed to Phrygian descendants,
such as is not, nor shall be, nor was seen in former years.
This city other nobles shall make powerful through long ages,
but a man born of the blood of Iulus shall make her
mistress of the world; and when earth has had her use of him,
the heavenly seats shall enjoy him, and heaven shall be his end."
These things, I recall in my mind, Helenus sang to Aeneas,
bearer of his household gods; and I rejoice that the kindred walls
are rising, and that the Pelasgians conquered to the Phrygians’ good.
and, as far as I recall, Helenus, son of Priam,
had said to weeping Aeneas, in doubt of his safety,
when the Trojan cause was tottering:
"Son of a goddess, if you hold well enough the presages
of my mind, Troy shall not wholly fall while you survive!
Flame and sword shall give you passage: you shall go, and shall carry
Pergama away with you, until a foreign field, kindlier
than your fatherland, falls to Troy and to yourself;
and already I see that a city is owed to Phrygian descendants,
such as is not, nor shall be, nor was seen in former years.
This city other nobles shall make powerful through long ages,
but a man born of the blood of Iulus shall make her
mistress of the world; and when earth has had her use of him,
the heavenly seats shall enjoy him, and heaven shall be his end."
These things, I recall in my mind, Helenus sang to Aeneas,
bearer of his household gods; and I rejoice that the kindred walls
are rising, and that the Pelasgians conquered to the Phrygians’ good.
sic dicere vates faticinasque ferunt sortes, quantumque recordor, Priamides Helenus flenti dubioque salutis dixerat Aeneae, cum res Troiana labaret: "nate dea, si nota satis praesagia nostrae mentis habes, non tota cadet te sospite Troia! flamma tibi ferrumque dabunt iter: ibis et una Pergama rapta feres, donec Troiaeque tibique externum patria contingat amicius arvum, urbem et iam cerno Phrygios debere nepotes, quanta nec est nec erit nec visa prioribus annis. hanc alii proceres per saecula longa potentem, sed dominam rerum de sanguine natus Iuli efficiet, quo cum tellus erit usa, fruentur aetheriae sedes, caelumque erit exitus illi." haec Helenum cecinisse penatigero Aeneae mente memor refero cognataque moenia laetor crescere et utiliter Phrygibus vicisse Pelasgos. ’
’But, lest with horses forgetful of the goal we range
too far afield, the heaven and whatever is beneath it
changes its forms, and the earth and whatever is in it.
We too, a part of the world, since we are not bodies only
but winged souls as well, and can pass into the homes of beasts
and be lodged in the breasts of cattle —
let us allow the bodies that may have held the souls of our parents,
or of our brothers, or of those joined to us by some bond,
or at least of men, to be safe and unharmed,
and not heap our bellies with a Thyestean banquet!
How ill he schools himself, how he prepares himself for human
bloodshed, the impious man who cuts the throat of a calf
with the steel and lends unmoved ears to its lowing,
or who can butcher a kid that cries like a child,
or feed on a bird to which he himself gave food!
too far afield, the heaven and whatever is beneath it
changes its forms, and the earth and whatever is in it.
We too, a part of the world, since we are not bodies only
but winged souls as well, and can pass into the homes of beasts
and be lodged in the breasts of cattle —
let us allow the bodies that may have held the souls of our parents,
or of our brothers, or of those joined to us by some bond,
or at least of men, to be safe and unharmed,
and not heap our bellies with a Thyestean banquet!
How ill he schools himself, how he prepares himself for human
bloodshed, the impious man who cuts the throat of a calf
with the steel and lends unmoved ears to its lowing,
or who can butcher a kid that cries like a child,
or feed on a bird to which he himself gave food!
Ne tamen oblitis ad metam tendere longe exspatiemur equis, caelum et quodcumque sub illo est, inmutat formas, tellusque et quicquid in illa est. nos quoque, pars mundi, quoniam non corpora solum, verum etiam volucres animae sumus, inque ferinas possumus ire domos pecudumque in pectora condi, corpora, quae possint animas habuisse parentum aut fratrum aut aliquo iunctorum foedere nobis aut hominum certe, tuta esse et honesta sinamus neve Thyesteis cumulemus viscera mensis! quam male consuescit, quem se parat ille cruori inpius humano, vituli qui guttura ferro rumpit et inmotas praebet mugitibus aures, aut qui vagitus similes puerilibus haedum edentem iugulare potest aut alite vesci, cui dedit ipse cibos!
How little is wanting in such deeds
to the full crime? What passage is being prepared from there?
Let the ox plough, or owe his death to his aged years;
let the sheep furnish armour against the shuddering north wind;
let the well-fed she-goats give their udders to be pressed by hands!
Away with nets and snares and nooses and crafty arts!
Do not beguile the bird with the limed twig,
nor pen the deer with the feathers they dread,
nor hide the barbed hooks under treacherous bait;
destroy whatever does harm — but destroy even these only so far:
let your mouths be free of blood, and crop the gentle foods!’
to the full crime? What passage is being prepared from there?
Let the ox plough, or owe his death to his aged years;
let the sheep furnish armour against the shuddering north wind;
let the well-fed she-goats give their udders to be pressed by hands!
Away with nets and snares and nooses and crafty arts!
Do not beguile the bird with the limed twig,
nor pen the deer with the feathers they dread,
nor hide the barbed hooks under treacherous bait;
destroy whatever does harm — but destroy even these only so far:
let your mouths be free of blood, and crop the gentle foods!’
quantum est, quod desit in istis ad plenum facinus? quo transitus inde paratur? bos aret aut mortem senioribus inputet annis, horriferum contra borean ovis arma ministret, ubera dent saturae manibus pressanda capellae! retia cum pedicis laqueosque artesque dolosas tollite! nec volucrem viscata fallite virga nec formidatis cervos includite pinnis nec celate cibis uncos fallacibus hamos; perdite siqua nocent, verum haec quoque perdite tantum: ora cruore vacent alimentaque mitia carpant!’
With his breast furnished with such teachings and others,
Numa, they say, returned to his homeland, and, sought out, took up
of his own will the reins of the Latian people.
Blessed with a nymph for wife and with the Camenae for guides,
he taught the rites of sacrifice and led a race
hardened to fierce war over to the arts of peace.
When, grown old, he had run out his reign and his life,
the Latin wives and the people and the fathers
wept for Numa, dead and gone; for his wife, leaving the city,
hid herself far off in the dense woods of Aricia’s valley,
and with her groaning and lament hindered the rites
of Orestean Diana. Ah, how often the nymphs of grove and lake
warned her not to do so, and spoke words of comfort!
How often did the hero, son of Theseus, say to her weeping:
’Set a limit; for your fortune is not the only one to be lamented;
look at the like misfortunes of others: you will bear yours
the more gently — and would that not my own example
could ease you in your grief! But even mine can.
Numa, they say, returned to his homeland, and, sought out, took up
of his own will the reins of the Latian people.
Blessed with a nymph for wife and with the Camenae for guides,
he taught the rites of sacrifice and led a race
hardened to fierce war over to the arts of peace.
When, grown old, he had run out his reign and his life,
the Latin wives and the people and the fathers
wept for Numa, dead and gone; for his wife, leaving the city,
hid herself far off in the dense woods of Aricia’s valley,
and with her groaning and lament hindered the rites
of Orestean Diana. Ah, how often the nymphs of grove and lake
warned her not to do so, and spoke words of comfort!
How often did the hero, son of Theseus, say to her weeping:
’Set a limit; for your fortune is not the only one to be lamented;
look at the like misfortunes of others: you will bear yours
the more gently — and would that not my own example
could ease you in your grief! But even mine can.
Talibus atque aliis instructo pectore dictis in patriam remeasse ferunt ultroque petitum accepisse Numam populi Latialis habenas. coniuge qui felix nympha ducibusque Camenis sacrificos docuit ritus gentemque feroci adsuetam bello pacis traduxit ad artes. qui postquam senior regnumque aevumque peregit, exstinctum Latiaeque nurus populusque patresque deflevere Numam; nam coniunx urbe relicta vallis Aricinae densis latet abdita silvis sacraque Oresteae gemitu questuque Dianae inpedit. a! quotiens nymphae nemorisque lacusque, ne faceret, monuere et consolantia verba dixerunt! quotiens flenti Theseius heros ’siste modum,’ dixit ’neque enim fortuna querenda sola tua est; similes aliorum respice casus: mitius ista feres, utinamque exempla dolentem non mea te possent relevare! sed et mea possunt. ’
’If by report it has reached your ears that one Hippolytus
died by the credulity of his father and the wicked fraud
of a stepmother, you will marvel, and I shall scarcely prove it,
but I am he. Pasiphaë’s daughter, having once tempted me in vain
to defile my father’s bed, pretended that I had wished
what she herself had wished, and, the charge reversed
(was it more from fear of exposure, or from spite at the rebuff?),
condemned me; and my father, though I had deserved nothing, cast me from the city
and cursed my head, as I went, with a hostile prayer.
I was making for Pittheus’ Troezen, a fugitive in my chariot,
and already skirting the shores of the Corinthian sea,
when the sea rose, and a monstrous heap of waters
seemed to arch into the shape of a mountain and to grow
and to give a bellowing and split at its highest peak;
a horned bull is cast from the burst waves there,
and, reared breast-high into the soft air,
spews out part of the sea from its nostrils and gaping mouth.
The hearts of my companions quail; my own mind stayed undaunted,
filled with thoughts of my exile,
died by the credulity of his father and the wicked fraud
of a stepmother, you will marvel, and I shall scarcely prove it,
but I am he. Pasiphaë’s daughter, having once tempted me in vain
to defile my father’s bed, pretended that I had wished
what she herself had wished, and, the charge reversed
(was it more from fear of exposure, or from spite at the rebuff?),
condemned me; and my father, though I had deserved nothing, cast me from the city
and cursed my head, as I went, with a hostile prayer.
I was making for Pittheus’ Troezen, a fugitive in my chariot,
and already skirting the shores of the Corinthian sea,
when the sea rose, and a monstrous heap of waters
seemed to arch into the shape of a mountain and to grow
and to give a bellowing and split at its highest peak;
a horned bull is cast from the burst waves there,
and, reared breast-high into the soft air,
spews out part of the sea from its nostrils and gaping mouth.
The hearts of my companions quail; my own mind stayed undaunted,
filled with thoughts of my exile,
Fando aliquem Hippolytum vestras si contigit aures credulitate patris, sceleratae fraude novercae occubuisse neci, mirabere, vixque probabo, sed tamen ille ego sum. me Pasiphaeia quondam temptatum frustra patrium temerare cubile, quod voluit, finxit voluisse et, crimine verso (indiciine metu magis offensane repulsae?) damnavit, meritumque nihil pater eicit urbe hostilique caput prece detestatur euntis. Pittheam profugo curru Troezena petebam iamque Corinthiaci carpebam litora ponti, cum mare surrexit, cumulusque inmanis aquarum in montis speciem curvari et crescere visus et dare mugitus summoque cacumine findi; corniger hinc taurus ruptis expellitur undis pectoribusque tenus molles erectus in auras naribus et patulo partem maris evomit ore. corda pavent comitum, mihi mens interrita mansit exiliis contenta suis,
— when the fierce horses turn their necks
toward the sea, and bristle with ears pricked up,
and, panicked by fear of the monster, are thrown into terror, and drag
the chariot headlong down the high cliffs; I struggle to handle the useless reins,
my hand smeared with whitening foam,
and, flung back, strain the slackening straps backward.
Yet even so the madness of the horses would not have overcome my strength,
had not a wheel, where it turns round its unceasing axle,
been broken and shattered by striking a post.
I am thrown from the car, and, the reins holding my limbs fast,
you might have seen my living entrails dragged, my sinews caught on the stump,
my limbs partly torn away and partly held back and left behind,
my broken bones give a heavy sound, and my spent soul
breathed out, and no parts in the whole body
you could have recognized: all of it was one wound.
toward the sea, and bristle with ears pricked up,
and, panicked by fear of the monster, are thrown into terror, and drag
the chariot headlong down the high cliffs; I struggle to handle the useless reins,
my hand smeared with whitening foam,
and, flung back, strain the slackening straps backward.
Yet even so the madness of the horses would not have overcome my strength,
had not a wheel, where it turns round its unceasing axle,
been broken and shattered by striking a post.
I am thrown from the car, and, the reins holding my limbs fast,
you might have seen my living entrails dragged, my sinews caught on the stump,
my limbs partly torn away and partly held back and left behind,
my broken bones give a heavy sound, and my spent soul
breathed out, and no parts in the whole body
you could have recognized: all of it was one wound.
cum colla feroces ad freta convertunt adrectisque auribus horrent quadrupedes monstrique metu turbantur et altis praecipitant currum scopulis; ego ducere vana frena manu spumis albentibus oblita luctor et retro lentas tendo resupinus habenas. nec tamen has vires rabies superasset equorum, ni rota, perpetuum qua circumvertitur axem, stipitis occursu fracta ac disiecta fuisset. excutior curru, lorisque tenentibus artus viscera viva trahi, nervos in stipe teneri, membra rapi partim partimque reprensa relinqui, ossa gravem dare fracta sonum fessamque videres exhalari animam nullasque in corpore partes, noscere quas posses: unumque erat omnia vulnus.
Can you, or do you dare, compare your loss to mine,
nymph? I have seen, too, the realms that lack the light,
and bathed my mangled body in the Phlegethon’s wave,
nor would life have been given back, except by the strong medicine
of Apollo’s offspring; and after, by potent herbs
and Paeonian aid, I had regained it, to Dis’s indignation,
then Cynthia, lest my presence should swell the envy
of this gift, cast thick clouds about me,
and, that I might be safe and could be seen without harm,
added years to me and left me a face not to be recognized,
and long debated whether to give me Crete or Delos
to dwell in: Delos and Crete forsaken,
she set me here, and bade me at the same time lay aside the name
that could call horses to mind, and said: "You who were
Hippolytus, be now the same as Virbius!"
From then I dwell in this grove, and, one of the lesser gods,
I lie hidden beneath my mistress’s power and am numbered among her train.’
nymph? I have seen, too, the realms that lack the light,
and bathed my mangled body in the Phlegethon’s wave,
nor would life have been given back, except by the strong medicine
of Apollo’s offspring; and after, by potent herbs
and Paeonian aid, I had regained it, to Dis’s indignation,
then Cynthia, lest my presence should swell the envy
of this gift, cast thick clouds about me,
and, that I might be safe and could be seen without harm,
added years to me and left me a face not to be recognized,
and long debated whether to give me Crete or Delos
to dwell in: Delos and Crete forsaken,
she set me here, and bade me at the same time lay aside the name
that could call horses to mind, and said: "You who were
Hippolytus, be now the same as Virbius!"
From then I dwell in this grove, and, one of the lesser gods,
I lie hidden beneath my mistress’s power and am numbered among her train.’
num potes aut audes cladi conponere nostrae, nympha, tuam? vidi quoque luce carentia regna et lacerum fovi Phlegethontide corpus in unda, nec nisi Apollineae valido medicamine prolis reddita vita foret; quam postquam fortibus herbis atque ope Paeonia Dite indignante recepi, tum mihi, ne praesens augerem muneris huius invidiam, densas obiecit Cynthia nubes, utque forem tutus possemque inpune videri, addidit aetatem nec cognoscenda reliquit ora mihi Cretenque diu dubitavit habendam traderet an Delon: Delo Creteque relictis hic posuit nomenque simul, quod possit equorum admonuisse, iubet deponere "qui" que "fuisti Hippolytus," dixit "nunc idem Virbius esto!" hoc nemus inde colo de disque minoribus unus numine sub dominae lateo atque accenseor illi.’
Yet others’ losses have no power to lighten Egeria’s
grief; lying at the mountain’s lowest roots,
she melts into tears, until the sister of Phoebus,
moved by the devotion of her mourning, made a cool spring
of her body and thinned her limbs into everlasting waters.
The strange event touched the nymphs, and the son of the Amazon
was struck no otherwise than when the Etruscan ploughman
saw the fateful clod in the midst of his fields
move first of its own accord, with none to stir it,
then take on the form of a man and lose the form of earth,
and open new-made lips to speak the coming fates:
the natives called him Tages, who first taught the Etruscan
race to disclose what was to come;
or as when Romulus once saw the spear that clung
to the Palatine hill suddenly put out leaves —
which stood by a new root, not by the iron driven in,
and now, no weapon but a tree of pliant withe,
gave unlooked-for shade to those who marvelled;
grief; lying at the mountain’s lowest roots,
she melts into tears, until the sister of Phoebus,
moved by the devotion of her mourning, made a cool spring
of her body and thinned her limbs into everlasting waters.
The strange event touched the nymphs, and the son of the Amazon
was struck no otherwise than when the Etruscan ploughman
saw the fateful clod in the midst of his fields
move first of its own accord, with none to stir it,
then take on the form of a man and lose the form of earth,
and open new-made lips to speak the coming fates:
the natives called him Tages, who first taught the Etruscan
race to disclose what was to come;
or as when Romulus once saw the spear that clung
to the Palatine hill suddenly put out leaves —
which stood by a new root, not by the iron driven in,
and now, no weapon but a tree of pliant withe,
gave unlooked-for shade to those who marvelled;
Non tamen Egeriae luctus aliena levare damna valent; montisque iacens radicibus imis liquitur in lacrimas, donec pietate dolentis mota soror Phoebi gelidum de corpore fontem fecit et aeternas artus tenuavit in undas. Et nymphas tetigit nova res, et Amazone natus haut aliter stupuit, quam cum Tyrrhenus arator fatalem glaebam mediis adspexit in arvis sponte sua primum nulloque agitante moveri, sumere mox hominis terraeque amittere formam oraque venturis aperire recentia fatis: indigenae dixere Tagen, qui primus Etruscam edocuit gentem casus aperire futuros; utve Palatinis haerentem collibus olim cum subito vidit frondescere Romulus hastam, quae radice nova, non ferro stabat adacto et iam non telum, sed lenti viminis arbor non exspectatas dabat admirantibus umbras;
or as when Cipus saw in the river’s water
his own horns (for see them he did), and, believing the reflection
gave false witness, brought his fingers again and again to his brow
and touched what he saw; and no longer condemning his own eyes,
he halted — for he was returning a victor from a conquered foe —
and, lifting his eyes to heaven and his arms with them,
said: ’Whatever, you gods, is foretold by this portent,
if it is happy, let it be happy for my country and the people of Quirinus;
if threatening, let it be for me.’
And on grassy altars made of green turf he placates the gods
with fragrant fires, and offers wine in cups,
and consults the quivering entrails of slaughtered sheep
for what they mean to him;
and as soon as the soothsayer of the Etruscan race looked at them,
he saw indeed great undertakings of events in them,
but not yet clear; but when he lifted his keen gaze
from the beast’s fibres to the horns of Cipus,
his own horns (for see them he did), and, believing the reflection
gave false witness, brought his fingers again and again to his brow
and touched what he saw; and no longer condemning his own eyes,
he halted — for he was returning a victor from a conquered foe —
and, lifting his eyes to heaven and his arms with them,
said: ’Whatever, you gods, is foretold by this portent,
if it is happy, let it be happy for my country and the people of Quirinus;
if threatening, let it be for me.’
And on grassy altars made of green turf he placates the gods
with fragrant fires, and offers wine in cups,
and consults the quivering entrails of slaughtered sheep
for what they mean to him;
and as soon as the soothsayer of the Etruscan race looked at them,
he saw indeed great undertakings of events in them,
but not yet clear; but when he lifted his keen gaze
from the beast’s fibres to the horns of Cipus,
aut sua fluminea cum vidit Cipus in unda cornua (vidit enim) falsamque in imagine credens esse fidem, digitis ad frontem saepe relatis, quae vidit, tetigit, nec iam sua lumina damnans restitit, ut victor domito remeabat ab hoste, ad caelumque oculos et eodem bracchia tollens ’quicquid,’ ait ’superi, monstro portenditur isto, seu laetum est, patriae laetum populoque Quirini, sive minax, mihi sit.’ viridique e caespite factas placat odoratis herbosas ignibus aras vinaque dat pateris mactatarumque bidentum, quid sibi significent, trepidantia consulit exta; quae simul adspexit Tyrrhenae gentis haruspex, magna quidem rerum molimina vidit in illis, non manifesta tamen; cum vero sustulit acre a pecudis fibris ad Cipi cornua lumen, ’
’King,’ he said, ’O hail! For to you, Cipus, to you and to your horns
this place and the Latin citadels shall be subject.
Only break off delay and hasten to enter the open gates!
So the fates command; for, received into the city,
you shall be king and shall hold a lasting sceptre in safety.’
He drew back his foot, and, turning his grim face
away from the city walls, said: ’Far, ah, far may the gods
drive all such things away! Far more justly will I pass my life
in exile than the Capitol see me king.’
He spoke, and at once he summons the people and the grave senate;
but first he veils his horns with the laurel of peace,
and takes his stand on a mound the brave soldiers had raised,
and, having prayed to the ancient gods in the old way,
says: ’There is one here who, unless you drive him from the city,
will be king: who he is, I shall tell by a sign, not by name —
he wears horns on his brow! The augur declares to you
that, if he enters Rome, he will make your rights those of slaves.
He could indeed have burst through the open gates,
but I stood in his way, though no one is more closely bound
to him than I: keep the man from the city, Quirites,
this place and the Latin citadels shall be subject.
Only break off delay and hasten to enter the open gates!
So the fates command; for, received into the city,
you shall be king and shall hold a lasting sceptre in safety.’
He drew back his foot, and, turning his grim face
away from the city walls, said: ’Far, ah, far may the gods
drive all such things away! Far more justly will I pass my life
in exile than the Capitol see me king.’
He spoke, and at once he summons the people and the grave senate;
but first he veils his horns with the laurel of peace,
and takes his stand on a mound the brave soldiers had raised,
and, having prayed to the ancient gods in the old way,
says: ’There is one here who, unless you drive him from the city,
will be king: who he is, I shall tell by a sign, not by name —
he wears horns on his brow! The augur declares to you
that, if he enters Rome, he will make your rights those of slaves.
He could indeed have burst through the open gates,
but I stood in his way, though no one is more closely bound
to him than I: keep the man from the city, Quirites,
rex,’ ait ’o! salve! tibi enim, tibi, Cipe, tuisque hic locus et Latiae parebunt cornibus arces. tu modo rumpe moras portasque intrare patentes adpropera! sic fata iubent; namque urbe receptus rex eris et sceptro tutus potiere perenni.’ rettulit ille pedem torvamque a moenibus urbis avertens faciem ’procul, a! procul omnia’ dixit ’talia di pellant! multoque ego iustius aevum exul agam, quam me videant Capitolia regem.’ dixit et extemplo populumque gravemque senatum convocat, ante tamen pacali cornua lauro velat et aggeribus factis a milite forti insistit priscosque deos e more precatus ’est’ ait ’hic unus, quem vos nisi pellitis urbe, rex erit: is qui sit, signo, non nomine dicam: cornua fronte gerit! quem vobis indicat augur, si Romam intrarit, famularia iura daturum. ille quidem potuit portas inrumpere apertas, sed nos obstitimus, quamvis coniunctior illo nemo mihi est: vos urbe virum prohibete, Quirites,
or, if he deserve it, bind him with heavy chains,
or end your fear by the death of the fated tyrant!’
Such murmurs as rise in the girded pine-woods when the fierce east wind
hisses through them, or such as the waves of the sea make,
if one hear them from afar — so sounds the people;
but through the confused words of the roaring crowd
one cry stands out: ’Who is he?’ And they look at brows
and seek the foretold horns. Cipus answered them again:
’The man you demand — you have him,’ and, taking the wreath from his head
though the people would forbid it, showed his temples
marked with the twin horn.
All cast down their eyes and gave a groan,
and looked, unwilling (who could believe it?), at that head
famous for its merits; and, not suffering it to lack
honour any longer, they set on it a festal wreath;
but the nobles, since you were forbidden to enter the walls,
gave you, Cipus, as much honoured land
as you could enclose with the plough pressed down and the oxen yoked
from the rising of the day to its setting.
And they carve on the bronze-plated gateposts the horns,
keeping their marvellous form, to remain through the long age.
or end your fear by the death of the fated tyrant!’
Such murmurs as rise in the girded pine-woods when the fierce east wind
hisses through them, or such as the waves of the sea make,
if one hear them from afar — so sounds the people;
but through the confused words of the roaring crowd
one cry stands out: ’Who is he?’ And they look at brows
and seek the foretold horns. Cipus answered them again:
’The man you demand — you have him,’ and, taking the wreath from his head
though the people would forbid it, showed his temples
marked with the twin horn.
All cast down their eyes and gave a groan,
and looked, unwilling (who could believe it?), at that head
famous for its merits; and, not suffering it to lack
honour any longer, they set on it a festal wreath;
but the nobles, since you were forbidden to enter the walls,
gave you, Cipus, as much honoured land
as you could enclose with the plough pressed down and the oxen yoked
from the rising of the day to its setting.
And they carve on the bronze-plated gateposts the horns,
keeping their marvellous form, to remain through the long age.
vel, si dignus erit, gravibus vincite catenis aut finite metum fatalis morte tyranni!’ qualia succinctis, ubi trux insibilat eurus, murmura pinetis fiunt, aut qualia fluctus aequorei faciunt, siquis procul audiat illos, tale sonat populus; sed per confusa frementis verba tamen vulgi vox eminet una ’quis ille est?’ et spectant frontes praedictaque cornua quaerunt. rursus ad hos Cipus ’quem poscitis,’ inquit ’habetis’ et dempta capiti populo prohibente corona exhibuit gemino praesignia tempora cornu. demisere oculos omnes gemitumque dedere atque illud meritis clarum (quis credere possit?) inviti videre caput: nec honore carere ulterius passi festam inposuere coronam; at proceres, quoniam muros intrare vetaris, ruris honorati tantum tibi, Cipe, dedere, quantum depresso subiectis bobus aratro conplecti posses ad finem lucis ab ortu. cornuaque aeratis miram referentia formam postibus insculpunt, longum mansura per aevum.
Reveal now, Muses, the present powers of poets
(for you know, and the vast reach of time does not deceive you),
whence the island that the deep Tiber flows around
added Coronis’ son to the rites of Romulus’ city.
A dreadful plague had once tainted the Latian air,
and pale bodies were foul with the bloodless disease.
Worn out with funerals, when they see that mortal
attempts avail nothing, that the healers’ arts avail nothing,
they seek heavenly help, and, coming to Delphi,
which holds the central ground of the world, Phoebus’ oracle,
they pray that he be willing to succour their wretched plight
with a health-bringing response, and end the ills of so great a city:
the place and the laurel and the quiver the god himself bears
trembled at once, and the cauldron from the depths of the shrine
gave back this voice and stirred their frightened hearts:
’What you seek from here, Roman, you should have sought from a nearer place;
seek it now from a nearer place: you have no need of Apollo
to lessen your griefs, but of Apollo’s son.
Go with good omens, and summon my offspring.’
(for you know, and the vast reach of time does not deceive you),
whence the island that the deep Tiber flows around
added Coronis’ son to the rites of Romulus’ city.
A dreadful plague had once tainted the Latian air,
and pale bodies were foul with the bloodless disease.
Worn out with funerals, when they see that mortal
attempts avail nothing, that the healers’ arts avail nothing,
they seek heavenly help, and, coming to Delphi,
which holds the central ground of the world, Phoebus’ oracle,
they pray that he be willing to succour their wretched plight
with a health-bringing response, and end the ills of so great a city:
the place and the laurel and the quiver the god himself bears
trembled at once, and the cauldron from the depths of the shrine
gave back this voice and stirred their frightened hearts:
’What you seek from here, Roman, you should have sought from a nearer place;
seek it now from a nearer place: you have no need of Apollo
to lessen your griefs, but of Apollo’s son.
Go with good omens, and summon my offspring.’
Pandite nunc, Musae, praesentia numina vatum, (scitis enim, nec vos fallit spatiosa vetustas,) unde Coroniden circumflua Thybridis alti insula Romuleae sacris adiecerit urbis. Dira lues quondam Latias vitiaverat auras, pallidaque exsangui squalebant corpora morbo. funeribus fessi postquam mortalia cernunt temptamenta nihil, nihil artes posse medentum, auxilium caeleste petunt mediamque tenentes orbis humum Delphos adeunt, oracula Phoebi, utque salutifera miseris succurrere rebus sorte velit tantaeque urbis mala finiat, orant: et locus et laurus et, quas habet ipse, pharetrae intremuere simul, cortinaque reddidit imo hanc adyto vocem pavefactaque pectora movit ’quod petis hinc, propiore loco, Romane, petisses, et pete nunc propiore loco: nec Apolline vobis, qui minuat luctus, opus est, sed Apolline nato. ite bonis avibus prolemque accersite nostram.’
When the prudent senate had received the god’s commands,
they search out what city the young Phoebean god dwells in,
and send men to seek the Epidaurian shores with the winds;
and as soon as the envoys had touched them with their curved keel,
they came before the council and the Greek elders, and begged them
to give the god who might, by his presence, end the deaths
of the Ausonian race: so the sure oracles had said.
Opinion divides and wavers; part think the help
should not be refused; many urge them to keep their own aid,
not to send it out, nor to hand over their divinity:
while they hesitate, twilight drove out the lingering daylight,
and the earth’s shadow had drawn darkness over the world,
when the helping god seemed to stand in a dream
before your bed, Roman — but as he is wont to be in his temple,
holding the rustic staff in his left hand,
and with his right drawing down the locks of his long beard,
and uttering from his calm breast these words:
’Lay aside your fears! I will come and leave my images behind.
Only mark this serpent that twines about my staff with its coils,
and note it well by sight, that you may know it again!
I shall be turned into it — but I shall be larger, and shall seem as great
as heavenly bodies ought to be when they are changed.’
they search out what city the young Phoebean god dwells in,
and send men to seek the Epidaurian shores with the winds;
and as soon as the envoys had touched them with their curved keel,
they came before the council and the Greek elders, and begged them
to give the god who might, by his presence, end the deaths
of the Ausonian race: so the sure oracles had said.
Opinion divides and wavers; part think the help
should not be refused; many urge them to keep their own aid,
not to send it out, nor to hand over their divinity:
while they hesitate, twilight drove out the lingering daylight,
and the earth’s shadow had drawn darkness over the world,
when the helping god seemed to stand in a dream
before your bed, Roman — but as he is wont to be in his temple,
holding the rustic staff in his left hand,
and with his right drawing down the locks of his long beard,
and uttering from his calm breast these words:
’Lay aside your fears! I will come and leave my images behind.
Only mark this serpent that twines about my staff with its coils,
and note it well by sight, that you may know it again!
I shall be turned into it — but I shall be larger, and shall seem as great
as heavenly bodies ought to be when they are changed.’
iussa dei prudens postquam accepere senatus, quam colat, explorant, iuvenis Phoebeius urbem, quique petant ventis Epidauria litora, mittunt; quae simul incurva missi tetigere carina, concilium Graiosque patres adiere, darentque, oravere, deum, qui praesens funera gentis finiat Ausoniae: certas ita dicere sortes. dissidet et variat sententia, parsque negandum non putat auxilium, multi retinere suamque non emittere opem nec numina tradere suadent: dum dubitant, seram pepulere crepuscula lucem; umbraque telluris tenebras induxerat orbi, cum deus in somnis opifer consistere visus ante tuum, Romane, torum, sed qualis in aede esse solet, baculumque tenens agreste sinistra caesariem longae dextra deducere barbae et placido tales emittere pectore voces: ’pone metus! veniam simulacraque nostra relinquam. hunc modo serpentem, baculum qui nexibus ambit, perspice et usque nota visu, ut cognoscere possis! vertar in hunc: sed maior ero tantusque videbor, in quantum verti caelestia corpora debent.’
At once, with the voice, the god, and with the voice and the god,
sleep departs, and kindly light followed the flight of sleep.
The next dawn had put the starry fires to flight:
uncertain what to do, the nobles gather at the elaborate temple
of the sought god, and pray that he show by heavenly signs
in what seat he himself wishes to dwell.
Scarcely had they ceased, when the god, golden with high crest,
in the form of a serpent sent forth heralding hisses,
and at his coming shook the image and the altars and the doors
and the marble floor and the golden pediments,
and, raised breast-high in the middle of the temple,
stood and cast around his eyes flashing with fire:
the terrified crowd quails; the priest, his chaste locks
bound with a white fillet, knew the godhead,
and said: ’The god — behold, it is the god! Be reverent in heart and tongue,
whoever is present! May you, O most beautiful, be seen
to our profit, and help the peoples who keep your rites!’
Whoever is present worships the bidden godhead, and all
repeat the priest’s words doubled, and the sons of Aeneas
give pious favour with both mind and voice.
The god nods to these, and, with his crest stirred, gave ratified pledges,
and hissed again and again with his quivering tongue;
then he glides down the gleaming steps and turns his face
backward, and, about to depart, looks back at his ancient altars,
and salutes his accustomed home and the temple he had dwelt in.
sleep departs, and kindly light followed the flight of sleep.
The next dawn had put the starry fires to flight:
uncertain what to do, the nobles gather at the elaborate temple
of the sought god, and pray that he show by heavenly signs
in what seat he himself wishes to dwell.
Scarcely had they ceased, when the god, golden with high crest,
in the form of a serpent sent forth heralding hisses,
and at his coming shook the image and the altars and the doors
and the marble floor and the golden pediments,
and, raised breast-high in the middle of the temple,
stood and cast around his eyes flashing with fire:
the terrified crowd quails; the priest, his chaste locks
bound with a white fillet, knew the godhead,
and said: ’The god — behold, it is the god! Be reverent in heart and tongue,
whoever is present! May you, O most beautiful, be seen
to our profit, and help the peoples who keep your rites!’
Whoever is present worships the bidden godhead, and all
repeat the priest’s words doubled, and the sons of Aeneas
give pious favour with both mind and voice.
The god nods to these, and, with his crest stirred, gave ratified pledges,
and hissed again and again with his quivering tongue;
then he glides down the gleaming steps and turns his face
backward, and, about to depart, looks back at his ancient altars,
and salutes his accustomed home and the temple he had dwelt in.
extemplo cum voce deus, cum voce deoque somnus abit, somnique fugam lux alma secuta est. postera sidereos aurora fugaverat ignes: incerti, quid agant, proceres ad templa petiti conveniunt operosa dei, quaque ipse morari sede velit, signis caelestibus indicet, orant. vix bene desierant, cum cristis aureus altis in serpente deus praenuntia sibila misit adventuque suo signumque arasque foresque marmoreumque solum fastigiaque aurea movit pectoribusque tenus media sublimis in aede constitit atque oculos circumtulit igne micantes: territa turba pavet, cognovit numina castos evinctus vitta crines albente sacerdos et ’deus en, deus est! animis linguisque favete, quisquis ades!’ dixit ’sis, o pulcherrime, visus utiliter populosque iuves tua sacra colentes!’ quisquis adest, iussum veneratur numen, et omnes verba sacerdotis referunt geminata piumque Aeneadae praestant et mente et voce favorem. adnuit his motisque deus rata pignora cristis ter repetita dedit vibrata sibila lingua; tum gradibus nitidis delabitur oraque retro flectit et antiquas abiturus respicit aras adsuetasque domos habitataque templa salutat.
From there, over the ground covered with strewn flowers,
the huge serpent crawls and winds his coils, and through the middle of the city
makes for the harbour walled with a curving mole.
Here he halted, and, with a calm look, seemed to dismiss
his train and the dutiful service of the following throng,
and laid his body in the Ausonian ship: it felt the weight
of the godhead, and the keel was pressed low by the god’s heaviness;
the sons of Aeneas rejoice, and, a bull slain on the shore,
they loose the twisted cables of the garlanded ship.
A light breeze had driven the ship on: the god stands out on high,
and, pressing his neck upon the curved stern set beneath,
looks down on the dark-blue waters, and over the Ionian sea,
with moderate west winds, at the rising of the sixth dawn
he reached Italy, and is borne past the Lacinian shore,
famed for the goddess’s temple, and past the Scylacean coast;
he leaves Iapygia and with his oars on the left flees
the Amphrisian rocks, and on the right the steep Cocinthian crags,
skirts Romethium and Caulon and Naryx,
and wins past the strait and the narrows of Sicilian Pelorus,
and the home of king Hippotades, and the mines of Temese,
and makes for Leucosia and the rose-gardens of warm Paestum.
the huge serpent crawls and winds his coils, and through the middle of the city
makes for the harbour walled with a curving mole.
Here he halted, and, with a calm look, seemed to dismiss
his train and the dutiful service of the following throng,
and laid his body in the Ausonian ship: it felt the weight
of the godhead, and the keel was pressed low by the god’s heaviness;
the sons of Aeneas rejoice, and, a bull slain on the shore,
they loose the twisted cables of the garlanded ship.
A light breeze had driven the ship on: the god stands out on high,
and, pressing his neck upon the curved stern set beneath,
looks down on the dark-blue waters, and over the Ionian sea,
with moderate west winds, at the rising of the sixth dawn
he reached Italy, and is borne past the Lacinian shore,
famed for the goddess’s temple, and past the Scylacean coast;
he leaves Iapygia and with his oars on the left flees
the Amphrisian rocks, and on the right the steep Cocinthian crags,
skirts Romethium and Caulon and Naryx,
and wins past the strait and the narrows of Sicilian Pelorus,
and the home of king Hippotades, and the mines of Temese,
and makes for Leucosia and the rose-gardens of warm Paestum.
inde per iniectis adopertam floribus ingens serpit humum flectitque sinus mediamque per urbem tendit ad incurvo munitos aggere portus. restitit hic agmenque suum turbaeque sequentis officium placido visus dimittere vultu corpus in Ausonia posuit rate: numinis illa sensit onus, pressa estque dei gravitate carina; Aeneadae gaudent caesoque in litore tauro torta coronatae solvunt retinacula navis. inpulerat levis aura ratem: deus eminet alte inpositaque premens puppim cervice recurvam caeruleas despectat aquas modicisque per aequor Ionium zephyris sextae Pallantidos ortu Italiam tenuit praeterque Lacinia templo nobilitate deae Scylaceaque litora fertur; linquit Iapygiam laevisque Amphrisia remis saxa fugit, dextra praerupta Cocinthia parte, Romethiumque legit Caulonaque Naryciamque evincitque fretum Siculique angusta Pelori Hippotadaeque domos regis Temesesque metalla Leucosiamque petit tepidique rosaria Paesti.
From there he skirts Capri and the promontory of Minerva
and the hills noble with the Surrentine vine,
and the city of Hercules and Stabiae and Parthenope,
born for leisure, and from her the temple of the Cumaean Sibyl.
Hence are reached the hot springs and mastic-bearing
Liternum, and the Volturnus dragging much sand beneath its flood,
and Sinuessa thronged with snow-white doves,
and oppressive Minturnae, and the town its nursling entombed,
and the home of Antiphates, and Trachas hemmed by its marsh,
and the Circaean land, and Antium with its crowded shore.
When the sailors turned their sail-bearing keel here
(for the sea was rough by now), the god unrolls his coils
and, gliding through frequent folds and great convolutions,
enters his father’s temple that touches the tawny shore.
The sea calmed, the Epidaurian leaves his father’s altars,
and, having used the hospitality of the kindred godhead,
furrows the shore’s sand with the trail of his rasping scale,
and, leaning on the ship’s rudder, laid his head on the high
stern, until he came to Castrum and the sacred seats
of Lavinium and the mouths of the Tiber.
and the hills noble with the Surrentine vine,
and the city of Hercules and Stabiae and Parthenope,
born for leisure, and from her the temple of the Cumaean Sibyl.
Hence are reached the hot springs and mastic-bearing
Liternum, and the Volturnus dragging much sand beneath its flood,
and Sinuessa thronged with snow-white doves,
and oppressive Minturnae, and the town its nursling entombed,
and the home of Antiphates, and Trachas hemmed by its marsh,
and the Circaean land, and Antium with its crowded shore.
When the sailors turned their sail-bearing keel here
(for the sea was rough by now), the god unrolls his coils
and, gliding through frequent folds and great convolutions,
enters his father’s temple that touches the tawny shore.
The sea calmed, the Epidaurian leaves his father’s altars,
and, having used the hospitality of the kindred godhead,
furrows the shore’s sand with the trail of his rasping scale,
and, leaning on the ship’s rudder, laid his head on the high
stern, until he came to Castrum and the sacred seats
of Lavinium and the mouths of the Tiber.
inde legit Capreas promunturiumque Minervae et Surrentino generosos palmite colles Herculeamque urbem Stabiasque et in otia natam Parthenopen et ab hac Cumaeae templa Sibyllae. hinc calidi fontes lentisciferumque tenetur Liternum multamque trahens sub gurgite harenam Volturnus niveisque frequens Sinuessa columbis Minturnaeque graves et quam tumulavit alumnus Antiphataeque domus Trachasque obsessa palude et tellus Circaea et spissi litoris Antium. huc ubi veliferam nautae advertere carinam, (asper enim iam pontus erat), deus explicat orbes perque sinus crebros et magna volumina labens templa parentis init flavum tangentia litus. aequore placato patrias Epidaurius aras linquit et hospitio iuncti sibi numinis usus litoream tractu squamae crepitantis harenam sulcat et innixus moderamine navis in alta puppe caput posuit, donec Castrumque sacrasque Lavini sedes Tiberinaque ad ostia venit.
Here all the people, mothers and fathers everywhere,
rush in a throng to meet him, and those who keep your fires,
Trojan Vesta, and they salute the god with glad shouting.
And wherever the swift ship is drawn up against the waves,
incense crackles on the banks, on altars set up in rows
on either side, and makes the air fragrant with smoke,
and the struck victim warms the knives plunged into it.
And now he had entered Rome, the capital of the world:
the serpent rears, and moves his neck where it leans
against the top of the mast, and looks about for a fitting seat.
The river is split into two parts as it flows around
(the Island is its name), and from the side of its two banks
stretches out equal arms, with land between:
here the Phoebean snake betook himself from the Latin ship,
and, his heavenly form resumed, put an end to their mourning,
and came as a bringer of health to the city.
rush in a throng to meet him, and those who keep your fires,
Trojan Vesta, and they salute the god with glad shouting.
And wherever the swift ship is drawn up against the waves,
incense crackles on the banks, on altars set up in rows
on either side, and makes the air fragrant with smoke,
and the struck victim warms the knives plunged into it.
And now he had entered Rome, the capital of the world:
the serpent rears, and moves his neck where it leans
against the top of the mast, and looks about for a fitting seat.
The river is split into two parts as it flows around
(the Island is its name), and from the side of its two banks
stretches out equal arms, with land between:
here the Phoebean snake betook himself from the Latin ship,
and, his heavenly form resumed, put an end to their mourning,
and came as a bringer of health to the city.
huc omnis populi passim matrumque patrumque obvia turba ruit, quaeque ignes, Troica, servant, Vesta, tuos, laetoque deum clamore salutant. quaque per adversas navis cita ducitur undas, tura super ripas aris ex ordine factis parte ab utraque sonant et odorant aera fumis, ictaque coniectos incalfacit hostia cultros. iamque caput rerum, Romanam intraverat urbem: erigitur serpens summoque acclinia malo colla movet sedesque sibi circumspicit aptas. scinditur in geminas partes circumfluus amnis (Insula nomen habet) laterumque a parte duorum porrigit aequales media tellure lacertos: huc se de Latia pinu Phoebeius anguis contulit et finem specie caeleste resumpta luctibus inposuit venitque salutifer urbi.
Yet this god came to our shrines as a foreigner:
Caesar is a god in his own city; him, supreme in war and peace,
it was not so much his wars ended in triumphs,
nor his deeds at home, nor his glory swiftly won,
that turned into a new constellation, a comet-star,
as his own offspring; for of Caesar’s deeds
there is no greater work than that he was the father of this man.
Is it, forsooth, more to have tamed the sea-girt Britons,
and to have led victorious fleets up the seven-mouthed
streams of the papyrus-bearing Nile, and to have added
the rebel Numidians, and Cinyphian Juba, and Pontus
swelling with Mithridates’ name, to the people of Quirinus,
and to have earned many triumphs, and celebrated some,
than to have begotten so great a man, under whose rule, you gods,
you have blessed the human race abundantly?
Caesar is a god in his own city; him, supreme in war and peace,
it was not so much his wars ended in triumphs,
nor his deeds at home, nor his glory swiftly won,
that turned into a new constellation, a comet-star,
as his own offspring; for of Caesar’s deeds
there is no greater work than that he was the father of this man.
Is it, forsooth, more to have tamed the sea-girt Britons,
and to have led victorious fleets up the seven-mouthed
streams of the papyrus-bearing Nile, and to have added
the rebel Numidians, and Cinyphian Juba, and Pontus
swelling with Mithridates’ name, to the people of Quirinus,
and to have earned many triumphs, and celebrated some,
than to have begotten so great a man, under whose rule, you gods,
you have blessed the human race abundantly?
Hic tamen accessit delubris advena nostris: Caesar in urbe sua deus est; quem Marte togaque praecipuum non bella magis finita triumphis resque domi gestae properataque gloria rerum in sidus vertere novum stellamque comantem, quam sua progenies; neque enim de Caesaris actis ullum maius opus, quam quod pater exstitit huius: scilicet aequoreos plus est domuisse Britannos perque papyriferi septemflua flumina Nili victrices egisse rates Numidasque rebelles Cinyphiumque Iubam Mithridateisque tumentem nominibus Pontum populo adiecisse Quirini et multos meruisse, aliquos egisse triumphos, quam tantum genuisse virum, quo praeside rerum humano generi, superi, favistis abunde!
Therefore, that this man might not be sprung from mortal seed,
that other had to be made a god; and when the golden
mother of Aeneas saw this, and saw too that a grievous
death was being prepared for the high priest, and conspirators’ arms set astir,
she paled, and to all the gods, as each met her, kept saying:
’See with how great an effort the snares
are laid for me, with what treachery the head is sought
that alone is left to me of Dardanian Iulus.
Shall I alone forever be harried by just cares —
I whom now the Calydonian spear of Tydeus’ son could wound,
now the walls of ill-defended Troy confound,
I who must see my son driven by long wanderings
and tossed on the sea and entering the homes of the silent,
and waging wars with Turnus, or, if we speak the truth,
with Juno rather? Why do I now recall the ancient
losses of my line? This fear does not let me remember
the former ones; see, you behold the wicked swords being whetted.
Ward them off, I pray, and repel the crime, and do not
quench Vesta’s flames with the priest’s slaughter!’
that other had to be made a god; and when the golden
mother of Aeneas saw this, and saw too that a grievous
death was being prepared for the high priest, and conspirators’ arms set astir,
she paled, and to all the gods, as each met her, kept saying:
’See with how great an effort the snares
are laid for me, with what treachery the head is sought
that alone is left to me of Dardanian Iulus.
Shall I alone forever be harried by just cares —
I whom now the Calydonian spear of Tydeus’ son could wound,
now the walls of ill-defended Troy confound,
I who must see my son driven by long wanderings
and tossed on the sea and entering the homes of the silent,
and waging wars with Turnus, or, if we speak the truth,
with Juno rather? Why do I now recall the ancient
losses of my line? This fear does not let me remember
the former ones; see, you behold the wicked swords being whetted.
Ward them off, I pray, and repel the crime, and do not
quench Vesta’s flames with the priest’s slaughter!’
ne foret hic igitur mortali semine cretus, ille deus faciendus erat; quod ut aurea vidit Aeneae genetrix, vidit quoque triste parari pontifici letum et coniurata arma moveri, palluit et cunctis, ut cuique erat obvia, divis ’adspice,’ dicebat ’quanta mihi mole parentur insidiae, quantaque caput cum fraude petatur, quod de Dardanio solum mihi restat Iulo. solane semper ero iustis exercita curis, quam modo Tydidae Calydonia vulneret hasta, nunc male defensae confundant moenia Troiae, quae videam natum longis erroribus actum iactarique freto sedesque intrare silentum bellaque cum Turno gerere, aut, si vera fatemur, cum Iunone magis? quid nunc antiqua recordor damna mei generis? timor hic meminisse priorum non sinit; en acui sceleratos cernitis enses. quos prohibete, precor, facinusque repellite neve caede sacerdotis flammas exstinguite Vestae!’
Such words anxious Venus throws out in vain through all heaven,
and stirs the gods, who, though they cannot break
the iron decrees of the ancient sisters,
yet give signs of the coming grief, signs not uncertain:
they say that arms clashing among the black clouds,
and dreadful trumpets and horns heard in the sky,
forewarned the wickedness; the sun’s sad image, too,
gave a lurid light to the anxious lands;
often firebrands were seen burning among the stars,
often drops of blood fell amid the rain-clouds;
the Morning Star was dark, his face sprinkled
with black rust, and the Moon’s chariot was sprinkled with blood;
in a thousand places the Stygian owl gave mournful omens,
in a thousand places the ivory wept, and songs are said
to have been heard, and threatening words, in the sacred groves.
No victim gives good omens; the liver warns that great
tumults are at hand, and a severed head is found among the entrails;
and in the forum and around the houses and temples of the gods
the dogs, they say, howled in the night, and the shades of the silent
wandered, and the city was shaken with tremors.
and stirs the gods, who, though they cannot break
the iron decrees of the ancient sisters,
yet give signs of the coming grief, signs not uncertain:
they say that arms clashing among the black clouds,
and dreadful trumpets and horns heard in the sky,
forewarned the wickedness; the sun’s sad image, too,
gave a lurid light to the anxious lands;
often firebrands were seen burning among the stars,
often drops of blood fell amid the rain-clouds;
the Morning Star was dark, his face sprinkled
with black rust, and the Moon’s chariot was sprinkled with blood;
in a thousand places the Stygian owl gave mournful omens,
in a thousand places the ivory wept, and songs are said
to have been heard, and threatening words, in the sacred groves.
No victim gives good omens; the liver warns that great
tumults are at hand, and a severed head is found among the entrails;
and in the forum and around the houses and temples of the gods
the dogs, they say, howled in the night, and the shades of the silent
wandered, and the city was shaken with tremors.
Talia nequiquam toto Venus anxia caelo verba iacit superosque movet, qui rumpere quamquam ferrea non possunt veterum decreta sororum, signa tamen luctus dant haut incerta futuri; arma ferunt inter nigras crepitantia nubes terribilesque tubas auditaque cornua caelo praemonuisse nefas; solis quoque tristis imago lurida sollicitis praebebat lumina terris; saepe faces visae mediis ardere sub astris, saepe inter nimbos guttae cecidere cruentae; caerulus et vultum ferrugine Lucifer atra sparsus erat, sparsi lunares sanguine currus; tristia mille locis Stygius dedit omina bubo, mille locis lacrimavit ebur, cantusque feruntur auditi sanctis et verba minantia lucis. victima nulla litat, magnosque instare tumultus fibra monet, caesumque caput reperitur in extis, inque foro circumque domos et templa deorum nocturnos ululasse canes umbrasque silentum erravisse ferunt motamque tremoribus urbem.
Yet the warnings of the gods could not conquer the snares
and the coming fates, and drawn swords are carried
into the temple: for no place in the city pleases them
for the deed and the dread murder but the senate-house.
Then indeed Cytherea struck her breast with both hands,
and strove to hide the descendant of Aeneas in a cloud,
in which Paris had once been snatched from hostile Atrides,
and Aeneas had escaped the swords of Diomedes.
The Father addressed her thus: ’Do you, my daughter,
prepare alone to move unconquerable fate? You may enter
yourself the house of the three sisters: there you will see
the records of the world in a vast structure of bronze and solid iron,
which fear neither the clashing of the sky nor the wrath of the lightning
nor any ruin, safe and eternal;
there you will find graven on everlasting adamant
the fates of your line: I myself have read them and marked them in my mind,
and I will tell them, that you may be no longer ignorant of the future.
and the coming fates, and drawn swords are carried
into the temple: for no place in the city pleases them
for the deed and the dread murder but the senate-house.
Then indeed Cytherea struck her breast with both hands,
and strove to hide the descendant of Aeneas in a cloud,
in which Paris had once been snatched from hostile Atrides,
and Aeneas had escaped the swords of Diomedes.
The Father addressed her thus: ’Do you, my daughter,
prepare alone to move unconquerable fate? You may enter
yourself the house of the three sisters: there you will see
the records of the world in a vast structure of bronze and solid iron,
which fear neither the clashing of the sky nor the wrath of the lightning
nor any ruin, safe and eternal;
there you will find graven on everlasting adamant
the fates of your line: I myself have read them and marked them in my mind,
and I will tell them, that you may be no longer ignorant of the future.
non tamen insidias venturaque vincere fata praemonitus potuere deum, strictique feruntur in templum gladii: neque enim locus ullus in urbe ad facinus diramque placet nisi curia caedem. tum vero Cytherea manu percussit utraque pectus et Aeneaden molitur condere nube, qua prius infesto Paris est ereptus Atridae, et Diomedeos Aeneas fugerat enses. talibus hanc genitor: ’sola insuperabile fatum, nata, movere paras? intres licet ipsa sororum tecta trium: cernes illic molimine vasto ex aere et solido rerum tabularia ferro, quae neque concursum caeli neque fulminis iram nec metuunt ullas tuta atque aeterna ruinas; invenies illic incisa adamante perenni fata tui generis: legi ipse animoque notavi et referam, ne sis etiamnum ignara futuri.
He, for whom you toil, Cytherea, has completed his time,
his years that he owed to earth now finished.
That he may rise a god to heaven and be worshipped in temples,
you shall bring it to pass, and his own son, who, heir to the name,
shall bear alone the burden laid on him, and shall have us,
bravest avenger of his murdered father, with him in his wars.
Under his auspices the besieged walls of conquered Mutina
shall sue for peace; Pharsalia shall feel him,
and Emathian Philippi shall again be drenched with slaughter,
and the great name shall be overcome in the Sicilian waters,
and the Egyptian consort of a Roman commander,
trusting ill in that marriage, shall fall, and in vain shall she have threatened
that our Capitol should be slave to her own Canopus.
Why should I number for you the barbarian lands and the peoples lying
by either ocean? Whatever habitable earth
sustains shall be his: the sea, too, shall serve him!
his years that he owed to earth now finished.
That he may rise a god to heaven and be worshipped in temples,
you shall bring it to pass, and his own son, who, heir to the name,
shall bear alone the burden laid on him, and shall have us,
bravest avenger of his murdered father, with him in his wars.
Under his auspices the besieged walls of conquered Mutina
shall sue for peace; Pharsalia shall feel him,
and Emathian Philippi shall again be drenched with slaughter,
and the great name shall be overcome in the Sicilian waters,
and the Egyptian consort of a Roman commander,
trusting ill in that marriage, shall fall, and in vain shall she have threatened
that our Capitol should be slave to her own Canopus.
Why should I number for you the barbarian lands and the peoples lying
by either ocean? Whatever habitable earth
sustains shall be his: the sea, too, shall serve him!
hic sua conplevit, pro quo, Cytherea, laboras, tempora, perfectis, quos terrae debuit, annis. ut deus accedat caelo templisque colatur, tu facies natusque suus, qui nominis heres inpositum feret unus onus caesique parentis nos in bella suos fortissimus ultor habebit. illius auspiciis obsessae moenia pacem victa petent Mutinae, Pharsalia sentiet illum, Emathiique iterum madefient caede Philippi, et magnum Siculis nomen superabitur undis, Romanique ducis coniunx Aegyptia taedae non bene fisa cadet, frustraque erit illa minata, servitura suo Capitolia nostra Canopo. quid tibi barbariam gentesque ab utroque iacentes oceano numerem? quodcunque habitabile tellus sustinet, huius erit: pontus quoque serviet illi! ’
’Peace given to the lands, he shall turn his mind to the rights
of citizens, and shall pass laws, a most just author,
and shall govern morals by his own example, and, looking forward
to the age of future time and the descendants to come,
shall bid the offspring born of his holy wife
bear at once his name and his cares,
nor shall he touch the heavenly seats and the kindred stars
until, grown old, he has matched his years to his merits.
Meanwhile, snatch this soul from the slain body
and make it a star, that ever the deified Julius
may look forth on our Capitol and our forum from his lofty temple!’
of citizens, and shall pass laws, a most just author,
and shall govern morals by his own example, and, looking forward
to the age of future time and the descendants to come,
shall bid the offspring born of his holy wife
bear at once his name and his cares,
nor shall he touch the heavenly seats and the kindred stars
until, grown old, he has matched his years to his merits.
Meanwhile, snatch this soul from the slain body
and make it a star, that ever the deified Julius
may look forth on our Capitol and our forum from his lofty temple!’
Pace data terris animum ad civilia vertet iura suum legesque feret iustissimus auctor exemploque suo mores reget inque futuri temporis aetatem venturorumque nepotum prospiciens prolem sancta de coniuge natam ferre simul nomenque suum curasque iubebit, nec nisi cum senior meritis aequaverit annos, aetherias sedes cognataque sidera tanget. hanc animam interea caeso de corpore raptam fac iubar, ut semper Capitolia nostra forumque divus ab excelsa prospectet Iulius aede!’
He had scarcely spoken, when in the midst of the senate-house
kindly Venus took her stand, seen by none,
and snatched from her own Caesar’s limbs his fresh soul,
and, not suffering it to dissolve into air,
bore it up to the heavenly stars;
and as she carried it, she felt it take light and catch fire,
and let it go from her bosom: higher than the moon it flies,
and, drawing a flaming trail along a broad track,
shines as a star, and, seeing the good deeds of her son,
confesses them greater than its own, and rejoices to be surpassed by him.
kindly Venus took her stand, seen by none,
and snatched from her own Caesar’s limbs his fresh soul,
and, not suffering it to dissolve into air,
bore it up to the heavenly stars;
and as she carried it, she felt it take light and catch fire,
and let it go from her bosom: higher than the moon it flies,
and, drawing a flaming trail along a broad track,
shines as a star, and, seeing the good deeds of her son,
confesses them greater than its own, and rejoices to be surpassed by him.
Vix ea fatus erat, medi cum sede senatus constitit alma Venus nulli cernenda suique Caesaris eripuit membris nec in aera solvi passa recentem animam caelestibus intulit astris dumque tulit, lumen capere atque ignescere sensit emisitque sinu: luna volat altius illa flammiferumque trahens spatioso limite crinem stella micat natique videns bene facta fatetur esse suis maiora et vinci gaudet ab illo.
Though he forbids his own deeds to be set above his father’s,
yet free fame, subject to no commands, sets him,
unwilling, above, and in this one thing alone opposes him:
so great Atreus yields to the titles of Agamemnon,
so Theseus surpassed Aegeus, so Achilles surpassed Peleus;
in short, to use examples that match the case,
so Saturn too is less than Jove: Jupiter rules
the heavenly heights and the realms of the triple-formed world,
the earth is under Augustus; each is father and ruler.
Gods, I pray, companions of Aeneas, to whom sword and fire
gave way, and you native Heroes, and you Quirinus, father
of the city, and Gradivus, father of unconquered Quirinus,
and Vesta, hallowed among Caesar’s household gods,
and you, Phoebus of the household, together with Caesar’s Vesta,
and you, Jupiter, who hold on high the Tarpeian heights,
and all others whom it is right and pious for a poet to invoke:
late be that day, and later than our own age,
on which Augustus, leaving the world he rules,
shall rise to heaven and, absent, give ear to those who pray!
yet free fame, subject to no commands, sets him,
unwilling, above, and in this one thing alone opposes him:
so great Atreus yields to the titles of Agamemnon,
so Theseus surpassed Aegeus, so Achilles surpassed Peleus;
in short, to use examples that match the case,
so Saturn too is less than Jove: Jupiter rules
the heavenly heights and the realms of the triple-formed world,
the earth is under Augustus; each is father and ruler.
Gods, I pray, companions of Aeneas, to whom sword and fire
gave way, and you native Heroes, and you Quirinus, father
of the city, and Gradivus, father of unconquered Quirinus,
and Vesta, hallowed among Caesar’s household gods,
and you, Phoebus of the household, together with Caesar’s Vesta,
and you, Jupiter, who hold on high the Tarpeian heights,
and all others whom it is right and pious for a poet to invoke:
late be that day, and later than our own age,
on which Augustus, leaving the world he rules,
shall rise to heaven and, absent, give ear to those who pray!
hic sua praeferri quamquam vetat acta paternis, libera fama tamen nullisque obnoxia iussis invitum praefert unaque in parte repugnat: sic magnus cedit titulis Agamemnonis Atreus, Aegea sic Theseus, sic Pelea vicit Achilles; denique, ut exemplis ipsos aequantibus utar, sic et Saturnus minor est Iove: Iuppiter arces temperat aetherias et mundi regna triformis, terra sub Augusto est; pater est et rector uterque. di, precor, Aeneae comites, quibus ensis et ignis cesserunt, dique Indigetes genitorque Quirine urbis et invicti genitor Gradive Quirini Vestaque Caesareos inter sacrata penates, et cum Caesarea tu, Phoebe domestice, Vesta, quique tenes altus Tarpeias Iuppiter arces, quosque alios vati fas appellare piumque est: tarda sit illa dies et nostro serior aevo, qua caput Augustum, quem temperat, orbe relicto accedat caelo faveatque precantibus absens!
And now I have finished a work that neither Jove’s anger,
nor fire, nor sword, nor devouring age shall be able to abolish.
When it will, let that day, which has no right
but over this body, end the span of my uncertain life:
yet in my better part I shall be borne, immortal,
above the high stars, and my name shall be indelible;
and wherever Roman power lies open over the conquered lands,
I shall be read on the lips of the people, and through all ages, in fame,
if there is any truth in the prophecies of poets, I shall live.
nor fire, nor sword, nor devouring age shall be able to abolish.
When it will, let that day, which has no right
but over this body, end the span of my uncertain life:
yet in my better part I shall be borne, immortal,
above the high stars, and my name shall be indelible;
and wherever Roman power lies open over the conquered lands,
I shall be read on the lips of the people, and through all ages, in fame,
if there is any truth in the prophecies of poets, I shall live.
Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas. cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi: parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum, quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam.