The Metamorphoses of Ovid Books VIII-XV

263

BOOK THE EIGHTH.

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FABLE I.

Minos commences the war with the siege of Megara. The preservation of the city depends on a lock of the hair of its king, Nisus. His daughter, Scylla, falling in love with Minos, cuts off the fatal lock, and gives it to him. Minos makes himself master of the place; and, abhorring Scylla and the crime she has been guilty of, he takes his departure. In despair, she throws herself into the sea, and follows his fleet. Nisus, being transformed into a sea eagle, attacks her in revenge, and she is changed into a bird called Ciris.

Now, Lucifer unveiling the day and dispelling the season of night, the East wind1 fell, and the moist vapours arose. The favourable South winds gave a passage to the sons of Æacus,2 and Cephalus returning; with which, being prosperously impelled, they made the port they were bound for, before it was expected.

In the meantime Minos is laying waste the Lelegeian coasts,3 and previously tries the strength of his arms against the city Alcathoë, which Nisus had; among whose honoured hoary hairs a lock, distinguished by its purple colour, descended from the middle of his crown, the safeguard of his powerful kingdom. The sixth horns of the rising Phœbe were now growing again, and the fortune of the war was still in suspense, and for a long time did victory hover between them both with uncertain 264 viii. 13-47. wings. There was a regal tower built with vocal walls, on which the son of Latona4 is reported to have laid his golden harp; and its sound adhered to the stone. The daughter of Nisus was wont often to go up thither, and to strike the resounding stones with a little pebble, when it was a time of peace. She used, likewise, often to view the fight, and the contests of the hardy warfare, from that tower. And now, by the continuance of the hostilities, she had become acquainted with both the names of the chiefs, their arms, their horses, their dresses, and the Cydonean5 quivers.

Before the rest, she had observed the face of the chieftain, the son of Europa; even better than was enough for merely knowing him. In her opinion, Minos, whether it was that he had enclosed his head in a helm crested with feathers, was beauteous in a helmet; or whether he had taken up a shield shining with gold, it became him to assume that shield. Drawing his arm back, did he hurl the slender javelin; the maiden commended his skill, joined with strength. Did he bend the wide bow with the arrow laid upon it; she used to swear that thus Phœbus stood, when assuming his arrows. But when he exposed his face, by taking off the brazen helmet, and, arrayed in purple, pressed the back of a white horse, beauteous with embroidered housings, and guided his foaming mouth; the virgin daughter of Nisus was hardly mistress of herself, hardly able to control a sound mind. She used to call the javelin happy which he touched, and the reins happy which he was pressing with his hand. She had an impulse (were it only possible) to direct her virgin footsteps through the hostile ranks; she had an impulse to cast her body from the top of the towers into the Gnossian camp, or to open the gates, strengthened with brass, to the enemy; or, indeed, anything else, if Minos should wish it. And as she was sitting, looking at the white tents of the Dictæan king, she said, “I am in doubt whether I should rejoice, or whether I should grieve, that this mournful war is carried on. I grieve that Minos is the enemy of the person who loves him; but unless there had been a war, would he have been known to me? yet, taking me for a 265 viii. 47-82. hostage, he might cease the war, and have me for his companion, me as a pledge of peace. If, most beauteous of beings, she who bore thee, was such as thou art thyself, with reason was the God Jupiter inflamed with love for her. Oh! thrice happy were I, if, moving upon wings through the air, I could light upon the camp of the Gnossian king, and, owning myself and my flame, could ask him with what dowry he could wish to be purchased; provided only, that he did not ask the city of my father. For, perish rather the desired alliance, than that I should prevail by treason; although the clemency of a merciful conqueror has often made it of advantage to many, to be conquered. He certainly carries on a just war for his slain son,6 and is strong both in his cause, and in the arms that defend his cause.

“We shall be conquered, as I suppose. If this fate awaits this city, why should his own arms, and not my love, open the walls to him? It will be better for him to conquer without slaughter and delay, and the expense of his own blood. How much, indeed, do I dread, Minos, lest any one should unknowingly wound thy breast! for who is so hardened as to dare, unless unknowingly, to direct his cruel lance against thee? The design pleases me; and my determination is to deliver up my country as a dowry, together with myself, and so to put an end to the war. But to be willing, is too little; a guard watches the approaches, and my father keeps the keys of the gates. Him alone, in my wretchedness, do I dread; he alone obstructs my desires. Would that the Gods would grant I might be without a father! Every one, indeed, is a God to himself. Fortune is an enemy to idle prayers. Another woman, inflamed with a passion so great, would long since have taken a pleasure in destroying whatever stood in the way of her love. And why should any one be bolder than myself? I could dare to go through flames, and amid swords. But in this case there is no occasion for any flames or any swords; I only want the lock of my father. That purple lock is more precious to me than gold; it will make me happy, and mistress of my own wish.”

As she is saying such things, the night draws on, the greatest nurse of cares, and with the darkness her boldness 266 viii. 82-116. increases. The first slumbers are now come, in which sleep takes possession of the breast wearied with the cares of the day. She silently enters the chamber of her father, and (O abominable crime!) the daughter despoils the father of his fatal lock, and having got the prize of crime, carries with her the spoil of her impiety; and issuing forth by the gate, she goes through the midst of the enemy, (so great is her confidence in her deserts) to the king, whom, in astonishment, she thus addresses: “’Twas love that urged the deed. I am Scylla, the royal issue of Nisus; to thee do I deliver the fortunes of my country and my own, as well; I ask for no reward, but thyself. Take this purple lock, as a pledge of my love; and do not consider that I am delivering to thee a lock of hair, but the life of my father.” And then, in her right hand, she holds forth the infamous present. Minos refuses it, thus held out; and shocked at the thought of so unheard of a crime, he says, “May the Gods, O thou reproach of our age, banish thee from their universe; and may both earth and sea be denied to thee. At least, I will not allow so great a monster to come into Crete, the birth-place of Jupiter, which is my realm.” He thus spoke;7 and when, like a most just lawgiver, he had imposed conditions on the vanquished, he ordered the halsers of the fleet to be loosened, and the brazen beaked ships to be impelled with the oars. Scylla, when she beheld the launched ships sailing on the main, and saw that the prince did not give her the expected reward of her wickedness, having spent all her entreaties, fell into a violent rage, and holding up her hands, with her hair dishevelled, in her frenzy she exclaimed,

“Whither dost thou fly, the origin of thy achievements thus left behind, O thou preferred before my country, preferred before my father? Whither dost thou fly, barbarous man? whose victory is both my crime and my merit. Has neither the gift presented to thee, nor yet my passion, moved thee? nor yet the fact that all my hopes were centred in thee alone? For whither shall I return, forsaken by thee? To my country? Subdued, it is ruined. But suppose it were still safe; by my treachery, it is shut against me. To the face of my father, that I have placed in thy power. My fellow-citizens 267 viii. 116-142. hate me deservedly; the neighbours dread my example. I have closed the whole world against me, that Crete alone might be open to me. And dost thou thus forbid me that as well? Is it thus, ungrateful one, that thou dost desert me? Europa was not thy mother, but the inhospitable Syrtis,8 or Armenian9 tigresses, or Charybdis disturbed by the South wind. Nor wast thou the son of Jupiter; nor was thy mother beguiled by the assumed form of a bull. That story of thy birth is false. He was both a fierce bull, and one charmed with the love of no heifer, that begot thee. Nisus, my father, take vengeance upon me. Thou city so lately betrayed, rejoice at my misfortunes; for I have deserved them, I confess, and I am worthy to perish. Yet let some one of those, whom I have impiously ruined, destroy me. Why dost thou, who hast conquered by means of my crime, chastise that crime? This, which was treason to my country and to my father, was an act of kindness to thee. She is truly worthy10 of thee for a husband, who, adulterously enclosed in wood, deceived the fierce-looking bull, and bore in her womb an offspring of shape dissimilar to herself. And do my complaints reach thy ears? Or do the same winds bear away my fruitless words, and thy ships, ungrateful man? Now, ah! now, it is not to be wondered at that Pasiphaë preferred the bull to thee; thou didst have the more savage nature of the two. Wretch that I am! He joys in speeding onward, and the waves resound, cleaved by his oars. Together with myself, alas! my native land recedes from him. Nothing dost thou avail; oh thou! forgetful to no purpose of my deserts. In spite of thee, will I follow thee, and grasping thy crooked stern, I will be dragged through the long seas.”

268 viii. 143-151.

Scarce has she said this, when she leaps into the waves, and follows the ships, Cupid giving her strength, and she hangs, an unwelcome companion, to the Gnossian ship. When her father beholds her, (for now he is hovering in the air, and he has lately been made a sea eagle, with tawny wings), he is going to tear her in pieces with his crooked beak. Through fear she quits the stern; but the light air seems to support her as she is falling, that she may not touch the sea. It is feathers that support her. With feathers, being changed into a bird, she is called Ciris;11 and this name does she obtain from cutting off the lock.

EXPLANATION.

Minos, having raised an army and received auxiliary troops from his allies, made war upon the Athenians, to revenge the death of his son, Androgeus. Having conquered Nisea, he laid siege to Megara, which was betrayed by the perfidy of Scylla, the daughter of its king, Nisus. Pausanias and other historians say that the story here related by the Poet is based on fact; and that Scylla held a secret correspondence with Minos during the siege of Megara, and, at length, introduced him into the town, by opening the gates to him with the keys which she had stolen from her father, while he was asleep. This is probably alluded to under the allegorical description of the fatal lock of hair, though why it should be depicted in that form especially, it is difficult to guess. The change of Scylla into a lark, or partridge, and of her father into a sea eagle, are poetical fictions based on the equivocal meanings of their names, the one Greek and the other Hebrew; for the name ‘Ciris’ resembles the Greek verb κείρω, which signifies ‘to clip,’ or ‘cut short.’ ‘Nisus,’ too, resembles the Hebrew word ‘Netz,’ which means a bird resembling the osprey, or sea eagle. Apollodorus says, that Minos ordered Scylla to be thrown into the sea; and Zenodotus, that he caused her to be hanged at the mainmast of his ship.

269 viii. 152-176.

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FABLE II.

Minos, having overcome the Athenians, obliges them to pay a tribute of youths and virgins of the best families, to be exposed to the Minotaur. The lot falls on Theseus, who, by the assistance of Ariadne, kills the monster, escapes from the labyrinth, which Dædalus made, and carries Ariadne to the island of Naxos, where he abandons her. Bacchus wooes her, and, to immortalize her name, he transforms the crown which he has given her into a Constellation.

Minos paid, as a vow to Jupiter, the bodies of a hundred bulls, as soon as, disembarking from his ships, he reached the land of the Curetes; and his palace was decorated with the spoils there hung up. The reproach of his family had now grown up, and the shameful adultery of his mother was notorious, from the unnatural shape of the two-formed monster. Minos resolves to remove the disgrace from his abode, and to enclose it in a habitation of many divisions, and an abode full of mazes. Dædalus, a man very famed for his skill in architecture, plans the work, and confounds the marks of distinction, and leads the eyes into mazy wanderings, by the intricacy of its various passages. No otherwise than as the limpid Mæander sports in the Phrygian fields, and flows backwards and forwards with its varying course, and, meeting itself, beholds its waters that are to follow, and fatigues its wandering current, now pointing to its source, and now to the open sea. Just so, Dædalus fills innumerable paths with windings; and scarcely can he himself return to the entrance, so great are the intricacies of the place. After he has shut up here the double figure of a bull and of a youth;12 and the third supply, chosen by lot each nine years, has subdued the monster twice before gorged with Athenian blood; and when the difficult entrance, retraced by none of those who have entered it before, has been found by the aid of the maiden, by means of the thread gathered up again; immediately, the son of Ægeus, carrying away the daughter of Minos, sets sail for Dia,13 and barbarously deserts his companion on those shores.

270 viii. 176-182.

Her, thus deserted and greatly lamenting, Liber embraces and aids; and, that she may be famed by a lasting Constellation, he places in the heavens the crown taken from off her head. It flies through the yielding air, and, as it flies, its jewels are suddenly changed into fires, and they settle in their places, the shape of the crown still remaining; which is in the middle,14 between the Constellation resting on his knee,15 and that which holds the serpents.

EXPLANATION.

Oppressed with famine, and seeing the enemy at their gates, the Athenians went to consult the oracle at Delphi; and were answered, that to be delivered from their calamities, they must give satisfaction to Minos. They immediately sent ambassadors to him, humbly suing for peace, which he granted them, on condition that each year, according to Apollodorus and Diodorus Siculus, or every nine years, according to Plutarch and Ovid, they should send him seven young men and as many virgins. The severity of these conditions provoked the Athenians to render Minos as odious as possible; whereupon, they promulgated the story, that he destined the youths that were sent to him, to fight in the Labyrinth against the Minotaur, which was the fruit of an intrigue of his wife Pasiphaë with a white bull which Neptune had sent out of the sea. They added, that Dædalus favoured this extraordinary passion of the queen; and that Venus inspired Pasiphaë with it, to be revenged for having been surprised with Mars by Apollo, her father. Plato, Plutarch, and other writers acknowledge that these stories were invented from the hatred which the Greeks bore to the king of Crete.

As, however, these extravagant fables have generally some foundation in fact, we are informed by Servius, Tzetzes, and Zenobius, that, in the absence of Minos, Pasiphaë fell in love with a young noble of the Cretan court, named Taurus, who, according to Plutarch, was the commander of the fleet of Minos; that Dædalus, their confidant, allowed their assignations to take place in his house, and that the queen was afterwards 271 viii. 183-189. delivered of twins, of which the one resembled Minos, and the other Taurus. This, according to those authors, was the foundation of the story as to the fate for which the young Athenians were said to be destined. Philochorus, quoted by Plutarch, says that Minos instituted funeral games in honour of his son Androgeus, and that those who were vanquished became the slaves of the conquerors. That author adds, that Taurus was the first who won all the prizes in these games, and that he used the unfortunate Athenians, who became his slaves, with great barbarity. Aristotle tells us that the tribute was paid three times by the Athenians, and that the lives of the captives were spent in the most dreadful servitude.

Dædalus, on returning into Crete, built a labyrinth there, in which, very probably, these games were celebrated. Palæphatus, however, says that Theseus fought in a cavern, where the son of Taurus had been confined. Plutarch and Catullus say, that Theseus voluntarily offered to go to Crete with the other Athenians, while Diodorus Siculus says that the lot fell on him to be of the number. His delivery by Ariadne, through her giving him the thread, is probably a poetical method of informing us that she gave her lover the plan of the labyrinth where he was confined, that he might know its windings and the passage out. Eustathius, indeed, says, that Ariadne received a thread from Dædalus; but he must mean a plan of the labyrinth, which he himself had designed. The story of Ariadne’s intercourse with Bacchus is most probably founded on the fact, that on arriving at the Isle of Naxos, when she was deserted by Theseus, she became the wife of a priest of Bacchus.

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FABLE III.

Dædalus, weary of his exile, finds means, by making himself wings, to escape out of Crete. His son Icarus, forgetting the advice of his father, and flying too high, the Sun melts his wings, and he perishes in the sea, which afterwards bore his name. The sister of Dædalus commits her son Perdix to his care, for the purpose of being educated. Dædalus, being jealous of the talent of his nephew, throws him from a tower, with the intention of killing him; but Minerva supports him in his fall, and transforms him into a partridge.

In the meantime, Dædalus, abhorring Crete and his prolonged exile,16 and inflamed by the love of his native soil, was enclosed there by the sea. “Although Minos,” said he, “may beset the land and the sea, still the skies, at least, are open. By that way will we go: let Minos possess everything besides: he does not sway the air.” Thus he spoke; and he turned his thoughts to arts unknown till then; and varied the course 272 viii. 189-221. of nature. For he arranges feathers in order, beginning from the least, the shorter one succeeding the longer; so that you might suppose they grew on an incline. Thus does the rustic pipe sometimes rise by degrees, with unequal straws. Then he binds those in the middle with thread, and the lowermost ones with wax; and, thus ranged, with a gentle curvature, he bends them, so as to imitate real wings of birds. His son Icarus stands together with him; and, ignorant that he is handling the source of danger to himself, with a smiling countenance, he sometimes catches at the feathers which the shifting breeze is ruffling; and, at other times, he softens the yellow wax with his thumb; and, by his playfulness, he retards the wondrous work of his father.

After the finishing hand was put to the work, the workman himself poised his own body upon the two wings, and hung suspended in the beaten air. He provided his son with them as well; and said to him, “Icarus, I recommend thee to keep the middle tract; lest, if thou shouldst go too low, the water should clog thy wings; if too high, the fire of the sun should scorch them. Fly between both; and I bid thee neither to look at Boötes, nor Helice,17 nor the drawn sword of Orion. Under my guidance, take thy way.” At the same time, he delivered him rules for flying, and fitted the untried wings to his shoulders. Amid his work and his admonitions, the cheeks of the old man were wet, and the hands of the father trembled. He gives kisses to his son, never again to be repeated; and, raised upon his wings, he flies before, and is concerned for his companion, just as the bird which has led forth her tender young from the lofty nest into the air. And he encourages him to follow, and instructs him in the fatal art, and both moves his own wings himself, and looks back on those of his son. A person while he is angling for fish with his quivering rod, or the shepherd leaning on his crook, or the ploughman on the plough tail, when he beholds them, is astonished, and believes them to be Divinities, who thus can cleave the air. And now Samos,18 sacred to Juno, and Delos, 273 viii. 221-253. and Paros, were left behind to the left hand. On the right were Lebynthus,19 and Calymne,20 fruitful in honey; when the boy began to be pleased with a bolder flight, and forsook his guide; and, touched with a desire of reaching heaven, pursued his course still higher. The vicinity of the scorching Sun softened the fragrant wax that fastened his wings. The wax was melted; he shook his naked arms, and, wanting his oar-like wings, he caught no more air. His face, too, as he called on the name of his father, was received in the azure water, which received its name21 from him.

But the unhappy father, now no more a father, said, “Icarus, where art thou? In what spot shall I seek thee, Icarus?” did he say; when he beheld his wings in the waters, and then he cursed his own arts; and he buried his body in a tomb, and the land was called from the name of him buried there. As he was laying the body of his unfortunate son in the tomb, a prattling partridge beheld him from a branching holm-oak,22 and, by its notes, testified its delight. ’Twas then but a single bird of its kind, and never seen in former years, and, lately made a bird, was a grievous reproof, Dædalus, to thee. For, ignorant of the decrees of fate, his sister had entrusted her son to be instructed by him, a boy who had passed twice six birthdays, with a mind eager for instruction. ’Twas he, too, who took the backbones observed in the middle of the fish, for an example, and cut a continued row of teeth in iron, with a sharp edge, and thus discovered the use of the saw.

He was the first, too, that bound two arms of iron to one centre, that, being divided and of equal length, the one part might stand fixed, and the other might describe a circle. Dædalus was envious, and threw him headlong from the sacred citadel of Minerva, falsely pretending that he had fallen by accident. But Pallas, who favours ingenuity, received him, and made him a bird; and, in the middle of the air, he flew upon 274 viii. 254-261. wings. Yet the vigour of his genius, once so active, passed into his wings and into his feet; his name, too, remained the same as before. Yet this bird does not raise its body aloft, nor make its nest in the branches and the lofty tops of trees, but flies near the ground, and lays its eggs in hedges: and, mindful of its former fall, it dreads the higher regions.

EXPLANATION.

Dædalus was a talented Athenian, of the family of Erechtheus; and he was particularly famed for his skill in statuary and architecture. He became jealous of the talents of his nephew, Talos, whom Ovid here calls Perdix; and, envying his inventions of the saw, the compasses, and the art of turning, he killed him privately. Flying to Crete, he was favourably received by Minos, who was then at war with the Athenians. He there built the Labyrinth, as Pliny the Elder asserts, after the plan of that in Egypt, which is described by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Strabo. Philochorus, however, as quoted by Plutarch, says that it did not resemble the Labyrinth of Egypt, and that it was only a prison in which criminals were confined.

Minos, being informed that Dædalus had assisted Pasiphaë in carrying out her criminal designs, kept him in prison; but escaping thence, by the aid of Pasiphaë, he embarked in a ship which she had prepared for him. Using sails, which till then, according to Pausanias and Palæphatus, were unknown, he escaped from the galleys of Minos, which were provided with oars only. Icarus, either fell into the sea, or, overpowered with the fatigues of the voyage, died near an island in the Archipelago, which afterwards received his name. These facts have been disguised by the poets under the ingenious fiction of the wings, and the neglect of Icarus to follow his father’s advice, as here related.

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FABLE IV.

Diana, offended at the neglect of Œneus, king of Calydon, when performing his vows to the Gods, sends a wild boar to ravage his dominions; on which Œneus assembled the princes of the country for its pursuit. His son Meleager leads the chase, and, having killed the monster, presents its head to his mistress, Atalanta, the daughter of the king of Arcadia. He afterwards kills his two uncles, Plexippus and Toxeus, who would deprive her of this badge of his victory. Their sister Althæa, the mother of Meleager, filled with grief at their death, loads her son with execrations; and, remembering the torch which she received from the Fates at his birth, and on which the preservation of his life depends, she throws it into the fire. As soon as it is consumed, Meleager expires in the greatest torments. His sisters mourn over his body, until Diana changes them into birds.

And now the Ætnæan land received Dædalus in his fatigue; and 275 viii. 261-285. Cocalus,23 taking up arms for him as he entreated, was commended for his kindness. And now Athens has ceased to pay her mournful tribute, through the exploits of Theseus. The temples are decked with garlands, and they invoke warlike Minerva, with Jupiter and the other Gods, whom they adore with the blood of victims vowed, and with presents offered, and censers24 of frankincense. Wandering Fame had spread the renown of Theseus throughout the Argive cities, and the nations which rich Achaia contained, implored his aid amid great dangers. Calydon, too, although it had Meleager,25 suppliantly addressed him with anxious entreaties. The occasion of asking aid was a boar, the servant and the avenger of Diana in her wrath.

For they say that Œneus, for the blessings of a plenteous year, had offered the first fruits of the corn to Ceres, to Bacchus his wine, and the Palladian juice26 of olives to the yellow-haired Minerva. These invidious honours commencing with the rural Deities, were continued to all the Gods above; they say that the altars of the daughter of Latona, who was omitted, were alone left without frankincense. Wrath affects even the Deities. “But this,” says she, “I will not tamely put up with; and I, who am thus dishonoured, will not be said to be unrevenged as well:” and she sends a boar as an avenger throughout the lands of Œneus, than which not even does verdant Epirus27 possess bulls of greater size; even the fields of Sicily have them of less magnitude. His eyes shine with blood and 276 viii. 285-304. flames, his rough neck is stiff; bristles, too,28 stand up, like spikes, thickly set; like palisades29 do those bristles project, just like high spikes. Boiling foam, with a harsh noise, flows down his broad shoulders; his tusks rival the tusks of India. Thunders issue from his mouth; the foliage is burnt up with the blast. One while he tramples down the corn in the growing blade, and crops the expectations of the husbandman, doomed to lament, as yet unripe, and he intercepts the corn in the ear. In vain does the threshing floor, and in vain do the barns await the promised harvest. The heavy grapes, with the long branches of the vine, are scattered about, and the berries with the boughs of the ever-green olive. He vents his fury, too, upon the flocks. These, neither dogs nor shepherds can protect; not even the fierce bulls are able to defend the herds. The people fly in all directions, and do not consider themselves safe, but in the walls of a city, until Meleager, and, together with him, a choice body of youths, unite from a desire for fame.

The two sons of Tyndarus,30 the one famous for boxing, the other for his skill in horsemanship; Jason, too, the builder of the first ship, and Theseus, with Pirithoüs,31 happy unison, and the two sons of Thestius,32 and Lynceus,33 the son of 277 viii. 304-312. Aphareus, and the swift Idas, and Cæneus,34 now no longer a woman; and the valiant Leucippus,35 and Acastus,36 famous for the dart, and Hippothoüs,37 and Dryas,38 and Phœnix,39 the son of Amyntor, and the two sons of Actor,40 and Phyleus,41 sent from Elis, are there. Nor is Telamon42 absent; the father, too, of the great Achilles;43 and with the son of Pheres,44 and the Hyantian Iolaüs,45 the active Eurytion,46 and Echion,47 invincible in the race, and the Narycian Lelex,48 and Panopeus,49 and 278 viii. 312-328. Hyleus,50 and bold Hippasus,51 and Nestor,52 now but in his early years. Those, too, whom Hippocoön53 sent from ancient Amyclæ,54 and the father-in-law of Penelope,55 with the Parrhasian Ancæus,56 and the sage son of Ampycus,57 and the descendant of Œclus,58 as yet safe from his wife, and Tegeæan59 Atalanta, the glory of the Lycæan groves. A polished buckle fastened the top of her robe; her plain hair was gathered into a single knot. The ivory keeper of her weapons rattled, hanging from her left shoulder; her left hand, too, held a bow. Such was her dress, and her face such as you might say, with reason, was that of a maid in a boy, that of a boy in a maid. Her the Calydonian hero both beheld, and at the same moment sighed for her, against the will of the God; and he caught the latent flame, and said, “Oh, happy will he be, if she shall vouchsafe to make any one her husband.” The occasion and propriety allow him to say no more; the greater deeds of the mighty contest now engage him.

279 viii. 329-361.

A wood, thick with trees, which no age has cut down, rises from a plain, and looks down upon the fields below. After the heroes are come there, some extend the nets; some take the couples off the dogs, some follow close the traces of his feet, and are anxious to discover their own danger. There is a hollow channel, along which rivulets of rain water are wont to discharge themselves. The bending willows cover the lower parts of the cavity, and smooth sedges, and marshy rushes, and oziers, and thin reeds with their long stalks. Aroused from this spot, the boar rushes violently into the midst of the enemy, like lightning darted from the bursting clouds. In his onset the grove is laid level, and the wood, borne down, makes a crashing noise. The young men raise a shout, and with strong right hands hold their weapons extended before them, brandished with their broad points. Onward he rushes, and disperses the dogs, as any one of them opposes his career; and scatters them, as they bark at him, with sidelong wounds. The spear that was first hurled by the arm of Echion, was unavailing, and made a slight incision in the trunk of a maple tree. The next, if it had not employed too much of the strength of him who threw it, seemed as if it would stick in the back it was aimed at: it went beyond. The owner of the weapon was the Pagasæan Jason. “Phœbus,” said the son of Ampycus,60 “if I have worshipped thee, and if I do worship thee, grant me the favour to reach what is now aimed at, with unerring weapon.” The God consented to his prayer, so far as he could. The boar was struck by him, but without a wound; Diana took the steel head from off the flying weapon; the shaft reached him without the point. The rage of the monster was aroused, and not less violently was he inflamed than the lightnings; light darted from his eyes, and flame was breathed from his breast. As the stone flies, launched by the tightened rope, when it is aimed61 at either walls, or towers filled with soldiers, with the like unerring onset is the destroying boar borne on among the youths, and lays upon the ground Eupalamus and Pelagon,62 who guard the right wing. Thus 280 viii. 361-391. prostrate, their companions bear them off. But Enæsimus, the son of Hippocoön, does not escape a deadly wound. The sinews of his knee, cut by the boar, fail him as he trembles, and prepares to turn his back.

Perhaps, too, the Pylian Nestor would have perished63 before the times of the Trojan war: but taking a spring, by means of his lance, planted in the ground, he leaped into the branches of a tree that was standing close by, and, safe in his position, looked down upon the enemy which he had escaped. He, having whetted his tusk on the trunk of an oak, fiercely stood, ready for their destruction; and, trusting to his weapons newly pointed, gored the thigh of the great Othriades64 with his crooked tusks. But the two brothers, not yet made Constellations of the heavens, distinguished from the rest, were borne upon horses whiter than the bleached snow; and both were brandishing the points of their lances, poised in the air, with a tremulous motion. They would have inflicted wounds, had not the bristly monster entered the shady wood, a place penetrable by neither weapons nor horses. Telamon pursues him; and, heedless in the heat of pursuit, falls headlong, tripped up by the root of a tree. While Peleus65 is lifting him up, the Tegeæan damsel fits a swift arrow to the string, and, bending the bow, lets it fly. Fixed under the ear of the beast, the arrow razes the surface of the skin, and dyes the bristles red with a little blood. And not more joyful is she at the success of her aim than Meleager is.

He is supposed to have observed it first, and first to have pointed out the blood to his companions, and to have said, “Thou shalt receive due honour for thy bravery.” The heroes blush in emulation; and they encourage one another, and raise their spirits with shouts, and discharge their weapons without any order. Their very multitude is a hindrance to those that are thrown, and it baffles the blow for which it is designed. Behold! the Arcadian,66 wielding his battle-axe, rushing madly 281 viii. 391-430. on to his fate, said, “Learn, O youths, how much the weapons of men excel those of women, and give way for my achievement. Though the daughter of Latona herself should protect him by her own arms, still, in spite of Diana, shall my right hand destroy him.” Such words did he boastingly utter with self-confident lips; and lifting his double-edged axe with both hands, he stood erect upon tiptoe. The beast seized him thus bold, and, where there is the nearest way to death, directed his two tusks to the upper part of his groin. Ancæus fell; and his bowels, twisted, rush forth, falling with plenteous blood, and the earth was soaked with gore. Pirithoüs, the son of Ixion, was advancing straight against the enemy, shaking his spear in his powerful right hand. To him the son of Ægeus, at a distance, said, “O thou, dearer to me than myself; stop, thou better part of my soul; we may be valiant at a distance: his rash courage was the destruction of Ancæus.” Thus he spoke, and he hurled his lance of cornel wood, heavy with its brazen point; which, well poised, and likely to fulfil his desires, a leafy branch of a beech-tree opposed.

The son of Æson, too, hurled his javelin, which unlucky chance turned away from the beast, to the destruction of an unoffending dog, and running through his entrails, it was pinned through those entrails into the earth. But the hand of the son of Œneus has different success; and of two discharged by him, the first spear is fastened in the earth, the second in the middle of his back. There is no delay; while he rages, while he is wheeling his body round, and pouring forth foam, hissing with the fresh blood, the giver of the wound comes up, and provokes his adversary to fury, and buries his shining hunting spear in his opposite shoulder. His companions attest their delight in an encouraging shout, and in their right hands endeavour to grasp the conquering right hand; and with wonder they behold the huge beast as he lies upon a large space of ground, and they do not deem it safe as yet to touch him; but yet they, each of them, stain their weapons with his blood. Jason himself, placing his foot upon it, presses his frightful head, and thus he says: “Receive, Nonacrian Nymph, the spoil that is my right; and let my glory be shared by thee.” Immediately he gives her the skin as the spoil, thick with the stiffening bristles, and the head remarkable for the huge tusks. The giver of the present, as well as the present, is a source of pleasure to 282 viii. 430-463. her. The others envy her, and there is a murmuring throughout the whole company. Of these, stretching out their arms, with a loud voice, the sons of Thestius cry out, “Come, lay them down, and do not thou, a woman, interfere with our honours; let not thy confidence in thy beauty deceive thee, and let the donor, seized with this passion for thee, keep at a distance.” And then from her they take the present, and from him the right of disposing of the present.

The warlike67 prince did not brook it, and, indignant with swelling rage, he said, “Learn, ye spoilers of the honour that belongs to another, how much deeds differ from threats;” and, with his cruel sword, he pierced the breast of Plexippus, dreading no such thing. Nor suffered he Toxeus, who was doubtful what to do, and both wishful to avenge his brother, and fearing his brother’s fate, long to be in doubt; but a second time warmed his weapon, reeking with the former slaughter, in the blood of the brother.

Althæa was carrying gifts to the temples of the Gods, her son being victorious, when she beheld her slain brothers carried off from the field: uttering a shriek, she filled the city with her sad lamentations, and assumed black garments in exchange for her golden ones. But soon as the author of their death was made known, all grief vanished; and from tears it was turned to a thirst for vengeance. There was a billet, which, when the daughter of Thestius was lying in labour with her son, the three Sisters, the Fates, placed in the flames, and spinning the fatal threads, with their thumbs pressed upon them, they said, “We give to thee, O new-born babe, and to this wood, the same period of existence.” Having uttered this charm, the Goddesses departed; and the mother snatched the flaming brand from the fire, and sprinkled it with flowing water. Long had it been concealed in her most retired apartment; and being thus preserved, had preserved, O youth, thy life. This billet the mother now brings forth, and orders torches to be heaped on broken pieces of wood; and when heaped, applies to them the hostile flames. Then four times essaying to lay the branch upon the flames, four times does she pause in the attempt. Both the mother 283 viii. 463-492. and the sister struggle hard, and the two different titles influence her breast in different ways. Often is her countenance pale with apprehension of the impending crime; often does rage, glowing in her eyes, produce its red colour. And one while is her countenance like that of one making some cruel threat or other; at another moment, such as you could suppose to be full of compassion. And when the fierce heat of her feelings has dried up her tears, still are tears found to flow. Just as the ship, which the wind and a tide running contrary to the wind, seize, is sensible of the double assault, and unsteadily obeys them both; no otherwise does the daughter of Thestius fluctuate between two varying affections, and in turn lays by her anger, and rouses it again, when thus laid by. Still, the sister begins to get the better of the parent; and that, with blood she may appease the shades of her relations, in her unnatural conduct she proves affectionate.

For after the pernicious flames gained strength, she said, “Let this funeral pile consume my entrails.” And as she was holding the fatal billet in her ruthless hand, she stood, in her wretchedness, before the sepulchral altars,68 and said, “Ye Eumenides,69 the three Goddesses of punishment, turn your faces towards these baleful rites; I am both avenging and am committing a crime. With death must death be expiated; crime must be added to crime, funeral to funeral; by accumulated calamities, let this unnatural race perish. Shall Œneus, in happiness, be blessed in his victorious son; and shall Thestius be childless? It is better that you both should mourn. Only do ye, ghosts of my brothers, phantoms newly made, regard this my act of affection, and receive this funeral offering,70 provided at a cost so great, the guilty pledge of my womb. Ah, wretched me! Whither am I hurried away? Pardon, my brothers, the feelings of a mother. My hands fail me in my 284 viii. 492-522. purpose, I confess that he deserves to die; but the author of his death is repugnant to me. Shall he then go unpunished? Alive and victorious, and flushed with his success, shall he possess the realms of Calydon? And shall you lie, a little heap of ashes, and as lifeless phantoms? For my part, I will not endure this. Let the guilty wretch perish, and let him carry along with him the hopes of his father,71 and the ruin of his kingdom and country. But where are the feelings of a mother, where are the affectionate ties of the parent? Where, too, are the pangs which for twice five months72 I have endured? Oh, that thou hadst been burnt, when an infant, in that first fire! And would that I had allowed it! By my aid hast thou lived; now, for thy own deserts, shalt thou die. Take the reward of thy deeds; and return to me that life which was twice given thee, first at thy birth, next when the billet was rescued; or else place me as well in the tomb of my brothers. I both desire to do it, and I am unable. What shall I do? one while the wounds of my brothers are before my eyes, and the form of a murder so dreadful; at another time, affection and the name of mother break my resolution. Wretch that I am! To my sorrow, brothers, will you prevail; but still prevail; so long as I myself shall follow the appeasing sacrifice that I shall give you, and you yourselves;” she thus said, and turning herself away, with trembling right hand she threw the fatal brand into the midst of the flames.

That billet either utters, or seems to utter, a groan, and, caught by the reluctant flames, it is consumed. Unsuspecting, and at a distance, Meleager is burned by that flame, and feels his entrails scorched by the secret fires; but with fortitude he supports the mighty pain. Still, he grieves that he dies by an inglorious death, and without shedding his blood, and says that the wounds of Ancæus were a happy lot. And while, with a sigh, he calls upon his aged father, and his brother, and his affectionate sisters, and with his last words the companion of his bed,73 perhaps, too, his mother as well; 285 viii. 522-545. the fire and his torments increase; and then again do they diminish. Both of them are extinguished together, and by degrees his spirit vanishes into the light air.

Lofty Calydon now lies prostrate. Young and old mourn, both people and nobles lament; and the Calydonian matrons of Evenus,74 tearing their hair, bewail him. Lying along upon the ground, his father pollutes his white hair and his aged features with dust, and chides his prolonged existence. But her own hand, conscious to itself of the ruthless deed, exacted punishment of the mother, the sword piercing her entrails.75 If a God had given me a mouth sounding with a hundred tongues, and an enlarged genius, and the whole of Helicon besides; still I could not enumerate the mournful expressions of his unhappy sisters. Regardless of shame, they beat their livid bosoms, and while the body still exists, they embrace it, and embrace it again; they give kisses to it, and they give kisses to the bier there set. After he is reduced to ashes, they pour them, when gathered up, to their breasts; and they lie prostrate around the tomb, and kissing his name cut out in the stone, they pour their tears upon his name. Them, the daughter of Latona, at length satiated with the calamities of the house of Parthaon,76 bears aloft on wings springing from their bodies, except Gorge,77 and the daughter-in-law of noble Alcmena; and she stretches long wings over their arms, and makes their mouths horny, and sends them, thus transformed, through the air.

EXPLANATION.

It is generally supposed that the story of the chase of the Calydonian boar, though embracing much of the fabulous, is still based upon historical facts. Homer, in the 9th book of the Iliad, alludes to it, though in somewhat 286 viii. 546-558. different terms from the account here given by Ovid; and from the ancient historians we learn, that Œneus, offering the first fruits to the Gods, forgot Diana in his sacrifices. A wild boar, the same year having ravaged some part of his dominions, and particularly a vineyard, on the cultivation of which he had bestowed much pains, these circumstances, combined, gave occasion for saying that the boar had been sent by Diana. As the wild beast had killed some country people, Meleager collected the neighbouring nobles, for the purpose of destroying it. Plexippus and Toxeus, having been killed, in the manner mentioned by the Poet, Althæa, their sister, in her grief, devoted her son to the Furies; and, perhaps, having used some magical incantations, the story of the fatal billet was invented.

Homer does not mention the death of Meleager; but, on the contrary, says that his mother, Althæa, was pacified. Some writers, however, think that he really was poisoned by his mother. The story of the change of the sisters of Meleager into birds is only the common poetical fiction, denoting the extent of their grief at the untimely death of their brother.

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FABLE V.

Theseus, returning from the chase of the Calydonian boar, is stopped by an inundation of the river Acheloüs, and accepts of an invitation from the God of that river, to come to his grotto. After the repast, Acheloüs gives him the history of the five Naiads, who had been changed into the islands called Echinades, and an account of his own amour with the Nymph Perimele, whom, being thrown by her father into the sea, Neptune had transformed into an island.

In the meantime, Theseus having performed his part in the joint labour, was going to the Erecthean towers of Tritonis. But Acheloüs, swollen with rains, opposed his journey,78 and caused him delay as he was going. “Come,” said he, “famous Cecropian, beneath my roof; and do not trust thyself to the rapid floods. They are wont to bear away strong beams, and to roll down stones, as they lie across, with immense roaring. I have seen high folds, contiguous to my banks, swept away, together with the flocks; nor was it of any avail there for the herd to be strong, nor for the horses to be swift. Many bodies, too, of young men has this torrent overwhelmed in its whirling eddies, when the snows of the mountains dissolved. Rest is the safer for thee; until the river runs within its usual bounds, until its own channel receives the flowing waters.”

287 viii. 559-591.

To this the son of Ægeus agreed; and replied, “I will make use of thy dwelling and of thy advice, Acheloüs;” and both he did make use of. He entered an abode built of pumice stone with its many holes, and the sand-stone far from smooth. The floor was moist with soft moss, shells with alternate rows of murex arched the roof. And now, Hyperion having measured out two parts of the light, Theseus and the companions of his labours lay down upon couches; on the one side the son of Ixion,79 on the other, Lelex, the hero of Trœzen, having his temples now covered with thin grey hairs; and some others whom the river of the Acarnanians, overjoyed with a guest so great, had graced with the like honour. Immediately, some Nymphs, barefoot, furnished with the banquet the tables that were set before them; and the dainties being removed, they served up wine in bowls adorned with gems. Then the mighty hero, surveying the seas that lay beneath his eyes, said, “What place is this?” and he pointed with his finger; “and inform me what name that island bears; although it does not seem to be one only?” In answer to these words, the River said, “It is not, indeed, one object that we see; five countries lie there; they deceive through their distance. And that thou mayst be the less surprised at the deeds of the despised Diana, these were Naiads; who, when they had slain twice five bullocks, and had invited the Gods of the country to a sacrifice, kept a joyous festival, regardless of me. At this I swelled, and I was as great as I ever am, in my course, when I am the fullest; and, redoubled both in rage and in flood, I tore away woods from woods, and fields from fields; and together with the spot, I hurled the Nymphs80 into the sea, who then, at last, were mindful of me. My waves and those of the main divided the land, before continuous, and separated it into as many parts, as thou seest islands, called Echinades, in the midst of the waves.

“But yet, as thou thyself seest from afar, one island, see! was withdrawn far off from the rest, an island pleasing to me. The mariner calls it Perimele.81 This beloved Nymph did I deprive 288 viii. 591-610. of the name of a virgin. This her father, Hippodamas, took amiss, and pushed the body of his daughter, when about to bring forth, from a rock, into the sea. I received her; and bearing her up when swimming, I said, ‘O thou bearer of the Trident, who hast obtained, by lot, next in rank to the heavens, the realms of the flowing waters, in which we sacred rivers end, and to which we run; come hither, Neptune, and graciously listen to me, as I pray. Her, whom I am bearing up, I have injured. If her father, Hippodamas, had been mild and reasonable, or if he had been less unnatural, he ought to have pitied her, and to have forgiven me. Give thy assistance; and grant a place, Neptune, I beseech thee, to her, plunged in the waters by the cruelty of her father; or allow her to become a place herself. Her, even, thus will I embrace.’ The King of the ocean moved his head, and shook all the waters with his assent. The Nymph was afraid; but yet she swam. Her breast, as she was swimming, I myself touched, as it throbbed with a tremulous motion; and while I felt it, I perceived her whole body grow hard, and her breast become covered with earth growing over it. While I was speaking, fresh earth enclosed her floating limbs, and a heavy island grew upon her changed members.”

EXPLANATION.

This story is simply based upon physical grounds. The river Acheloüs, running between Acarnania and Ætolia, and flowing into the Ionian Sea, carried with it a great quantity of sand and mud, which probably formed the islands at its mouth, called the Echinades. The same solution probably applies to the narrative of the fate of the Nymph Perimele.

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FABLE VI.

Jupiter and Mercury, disguised in human shape, are received by Philemon and Baucis, after having been refused admittance by their neighbours. The Gods, in acknowledgment of their hospitality, transform their cottage into a temple, of which, at their own request, they are made the priest and priestess; and, after a long life, the worthy couple are changed into trees. The village where they live is laid under water, on account of the impiety of the inhabitants, and is turned into a lake. Acheloüs here relates the surprising changes of Proteus.

After these things the river was silent. The wondrous deed 289 viii. 613-642. had astonished them all. The son of Ixion laughed at them,82 believing the story; and as he was a despiser of the Gods, and of a haughty disposition, he said, “Acheloüs, thou dost relate a fiction, and dost deem the Gods more powerful than they are, if they both give and take away the form of things.” At this all were amazed, and did not approve of such language; and before all, Lelex, ripe in understanding and age, spoke thus: “The power of heaven is immense, and has no limits; and whatever the Gods above will, ’tis done.

“And that thou mayst the less doubt of this, there is upon the Phrygian hills, an oak near to the lime tree, enclosed by a low wall.83 I, myself, have seen the spot; for Pittheus sent me into the land of Pelops, once governed by his father, Pelops. Not far thence is a standing water, formerly habitable ground, but now frequented by cormorants and coots, that delight in fens. Jupiter came hither in the shape of a man, and together with his parent, the grandson of Atlas, Mercury, the bearer of the Caduceus, having laid aside his wings. To a thousand houses did they go, asking for lodging and for rest. A thousand houses did the bolts fasten against them. Yet one received them, a small one indeed, thatched with straw,84 and the reeds of the marsh. But a pious old woman named Baucis, and Philemon of a like age, were united in their youthful years in that cottage, and in it, they grew old together; and by owning their poverty, they rendered it light, and not to be endured with discontented mind. It matters not, whether you ask for the masters there, or for the servants; the whole family are but two; the same persons both obey and command. When, therefore, the inhabitants of heaven reached this little abode, and, bending their necks, entered the humble door, the old man bade them rest their limbs on a bench set there; upon which the attentive Baucis threw a coarse cloth. Then she moves the warm embers on the hearth, and stirs 290 viii. 642-669. up the fire they had had the day before, and supplies it with leaves and dry bark, and with her aged breath kindles it into a flame; and brings out of the house faggots split into many pieces, and dry bits of branches, and breaks them, and puts them beneath a small boiler. Some pot-herbs, too, which her husband has gathered in the well-watered garden, she strips of their leaves.

“With a two-pronged fork Philemon lifts down85 a rusty side of bacon, that hangs from a black beam; and cuts off a small portion from the chine that has been kept so long; and when cut, softens it in boiling water. In the meantime, with discourse they beguile the intervening hours; and suffer not the length of time to be perceived. There is a beechen trough there, that hangs on a peg by its crooked handle; this is filled with warm water, and receives their limbs to refresh them. On the middle of the couch, its feet and frame86 being made of willow, is placed a cushion of soft sedge. This they cover with cloths, which they have not been accustomed to place there but on festive occasions; but even these cloths are coarse and old, though not unfitting for a couch of willow. The Gods seat themselves. The old woman, wearing an apron, and shaking with palsy, sets the table before them. But the third leg of the table is too short; a potsherd, placed beneath, makes it equal. After this, being placed beneath, has taken away the inequality, green mint rubs down the table thus made level. Here are set the double-tinted berries87 of the chaste Minerva, and cornel-berries, gathered in autumn, and preserved in a thin pickle; endive, too, and radishes, and a large piece of curdled milk, and eggs, that have been gently turned in the slow embers; all served in earthenware. After this, an embossed goblet of 291 viii. 669-599. similar clay is placed there; cups, too, made of beech wood, varnished, where they are hollowed out, with yellow wax.

“There is now a short pause;88 the fire then sends up the warm repast; and wine kept no long time, is again put on; and then, set aside for a little time, it gives place to the second course. Here are nuts, and here are dried figs mixed with wrinkled dates, plums too, and fragrant apples in wide baskets, and grapes gathered from the purple vines. In the middle there is white honey-comb. Above all, there are welcome looks, and no indifferent and niggardly feelings. In the meanwhile, as oft as Baucis and the alarmed Philemon behold the goblet, when drunk off, replenish itself of its own accord, and the wine increase of itself, astonished at this singular event, they are frightened, and, with hands held up, they offer their prayers, and entreat pardon for their entertainment, and their want of preparation. There was a single goose, the guardian of their little cottage, which its owners were preparing to kill for the Deities, their guests. Swift with its wings, it wearied them, rendered slow by age, and it escaped them a long time, and at length seemed to fly for safety to the Gods themselves. The immortals forbade it89 to be killed, and said, ‘We are Divinities, and this impious neighbourhood shall suffer deserved punishment. To you it will be allowed to be free from this calamity; only leave your habitation, and attend our steps, and go together to the summit of the mountain.’

“They both obeyed; and, supported by staffs, they endeavoured to place their feet on the top of the high hill. They were now as far from the top, as an arrow discharged can go at once, when they turned their eyes, and beheld the other parts sinking in a morass, and their own abode alone remaining. While they were wondering at these things, and while they were bewailing the fate of their fellow countrymen, that old cottage of theirs, 292 viii. 699-734. too little for even two owners, was changed into a temple. Columns took the place of forked stakes, the thatch grew yellow, and the earth was covered with marble; the doors appeared carved, and the roof to be of gold. Then, the son of Saturn uttered such words as these with benign lips: ‘Tell us, good old man, and thou, wife, worthy of a husband so good, what it is you desire?’ Having spoken a few words to Baucis, Philemon discovered their joint request to the Gods: ‘We desire to be your priests, and to have the care of your temple; and, since we have passed our years in harmony, let the same hour take us off both together; and let me not ever see the tomb of my wife, nor let me be destined to be buried by her.’ Fulfilment attended their wishes. So long as life was granted, they were the keepers of the temple; and when, enervated by years and old age, they were standing, by chance, before the sacred steps, and were relating the fortunes of the spot, Baucis beheld Philemon, and the aged Philemon saw Baucis, too, shooting into leaf. And now the tops of the trees growing above their two faces, so long as they could they exchanged words with each other, and said together, ‘Farewell! my spouse;’ and at the same moment the branches covered their concealed faces. The inhabitants of Tyana90 still shew these adjoining trees, made of their two bodies. Old men, no romancers, (and there was no reason why they should wish to deceive me) told me this. I, indeed, saw garlands hanging on the branches, and placing there some fresh ones myself, I said, ‘The good are the peculiar care of the Gods, and those who worshipped the Gods, are now worshipped themselves.’”

He had now ceased; and the thing itself and the relator of it had astonished them all; and especially Theseus, whom, desiring to hear of the wonderful actions of the Gods, the Calydonian river leaning on his elbow, addressed in words such as these: “There are, O most valiant hero, some things, whose form has been once changed, and then has continued under that change. There are some whose privilege it is to pass into many shapes, as thou, Proteus, inhabitant of the sea that embraces the earth. For people have seen thee one while a young man, and again a lion; at one time thou wast a furious boar, at another a serpent, which they dreaded to touch; and 293 viii 734-736. sometimes, horns rendered thee a bull. Ofttimes thou mightst be seen as a stone; often, too, as a tree. Sometimes imitating the appearance of flowing water, thou wast a river; sometimes fire, the very contrary of water.”

EXPLANATION.

The story of Baucis and Philemon, which is here so beautifully related by the Poet, is a moral tale, which shows the merit of hospitality, and how, in some cases at least, virtue speedily brings its own reward. If the story is based upon any actual facts, the history of its origin is entirely unknown. Huet, the theologian, indeed, supposes that it is founded on the history of the reception of the Angels by Abraham. This is a bold surmise, but entirely in accordance with his position, that the greatest part of the fictions of the heathen mythology were mere glosses or perversions of the histories of the Old Testament. If derived from Scripture, the story is just as likely to be founded on the hospitable reception of the Prophet Elijah by the woman of Zarephath; and the miraculous increase of the wine in the goblet, calls to mind ‘the barrel of meal that wasted not, and the cruse of oil that did not fail.’ The story of the wretched fate of the inhospitable neighbours of Baucis and Philemon is thought, by some modern writers, to be founded upon the Scriptural account of the destruction of the wicked cities of the plain.

Ancient writers have made many attempts to solve the wondrous story of Proteus. Some say that he was an elegant orator, who charmed his auditors by the force of his eloquence. Lucian says that he was an actor of pantomime, so supple that he could assume various postures. Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Clement of Alexandria, assert that he was an ancient king of Egypt, successor to Pheron, and that he lived at the time, of the Trojan war. Herodotus, who represents him as a prince of great wisdom and justice, does not make any allusion to his powers of transformation, which was his great merit in the eyes of the poets. Diodorus Siculus says that his alleged changes may have had their rise in a custom which Proteus had of adorning his helmet, sometimes with the skin of a panther, sometimes with that of a lion, and sometimes with that of a serpent, or of some other animal. When Lycophron states that Neptune saved Proteus from the fury of his children, by making him go through caverns from Pallene to Egypt, he follows the tradition which says that he originally came from that town in Thessaly, and that he retired thence to Egypt. Virgil, and Servius, his Commentator, assert that Proteus returned to Thessaly after the death of his children, who were slain by Hercules; in which assertion, however, they are not supported by Homer or Herodotus.

294 viii. 737-759.

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FABLE VII.

Acheloüs continues his narrative with the story of Metra, the daughter of Erisicthon, who is attacked with insatiable hunger, for having cut down an oak, in one of the groves of Ceres. Metra begs of Neptune, who was formerly in love with her, the power of transforming herself into different shapes; that she may be enabled, if possible, to satisfy the voracious appetite of her father. By these means, Erisicthon, being obliged to expose her for sale, in order to purchase himself food, always recovers her again; until, by his repeated sale of her, the fraud is discovered. He at last becomes the avenger of his own impiety, by devouring his own limbs.

“Nor has the wife of Autolycus,91 the daughter of Erisicthon, less privileges than he. Her father was one who despised the majesty of the Gods; and he offered them no honours on their altars. He is likewise said to have profaned with an axe a grove of Ceres, and to have violated her ancient woods with the iron. In these there was standing an oak with an ancient trunk, a wood in itself alone, fillets and tablets, as memorials,92 and garlands, proofs of wishes that had been granted, surrounded the middle of it. Often, beneath this tree, did the Dryads lead up the festive dance; often, too, with hands joined in order, did they go round the compass of its trunk; and the girth of the oak made up three times five ells. The rest of the wood, too, lay as much under this oak as the grass lay beneath the whole of the wood. Yet not on that account even did the son of Triopas93 withhold the axe from it; and he ordered his servants to cut down the sacred oak; and when he saw them hesitate, thus ordered, the wicked wretch, snatching from one of them an axe, uttered these words: ‘Were it not only beloved by a Goddess, but even were it a Goddess itself, it should now touch the ground with its leafy top.’ Thus he said; and while he was poising his weapon for a side stroke, the Deoïan oak94 shuddered, and uttered a groan; and 295 viii. 759-793. at once, its green leaves, and, with them, its acorns began to turn pale; and the long branches to be moistened with sweat. As soon as his impious hand had made an incision in its trunk, the blood flowed from the severed bark no otherwise than, as, at the time when the bull, a large victim, falls before the altars, the blood pours forth from his divided neck. All were amazed and one of the number attempted to hinder the wicked design, and to restrain the cruel axe. The Thessalian eyes him, and says, ‘Take the reward of thy pious intentions,’ and turns the axe from the tree upon the man, and hews off his head; and then hacks at the oak again; when such words as these are uttered from the middle of the oak: ‘I, a Nymph,95 most pleasing to Ceres, am beneath this wood; I, now dying, foretell to thee that the punishment of thy deeds, the solace of my death, is at hand.’

“He pursued his wicked design; and, at last, weakened by numberless blows, and pulled downward with ropes, the tree fell down, and with its weight levelled a great part of the wood. All her sisters, the Dryads, being shocked at the loss of the grove and their own, in their grief repaired to Ceres, in black array,96 and requested the punishment of Erisicthon. She assented to their request, and the most beauteous Goddess, with the nodding of her head, shook the fields loaded with the heavy crops; and contrived for him a kind of punishment, lamentable, if he had not, for his crimes, been deserving of the sympathy of none, namely, to torment him with deadly Famine. And since that Goddess could not be approached by herself (for the Destinies do not allow Ceres and Famine to come together), in such words as these she addressed rustic Oreas, one of the mountain Deities: ‘There is an icy region in the extreme part of Scythia, a dreary soil, a land, desolate, without corn and without trees; there dwell drowsy Cold, and Paleness, and Trembling, and famishing Hunger; order her to bury herself in the breast of this sacrilegious wretch. Let no abundance of provisions overcome her; 296 viii. 793-824. and let her surpass my powers in the contest. And that the length of the road may not alarm thee, take my chariot, take the dragons, which thou mayst guide aloft with the reins;’ and then she gave them to her.

“She, borne through the air on the chariot thus granted, arrived in Scythia; and, on the top of a steep mountain (they call it Caucasus), she unyoked the neck of the dragons, and beheld Famine, whom she was seeking, in a stony field, tearing up herbs, growing here and there, with her nails and with her teeth. Rough was her hair, her eyes hollow, paleness on her face, her lips white with scurf,97 her jaws rough with rustiness; her skin hard, through which her bowels might be seen; her dry bones were projecting beneath her crooked loins; instead of a belly, there was only the place for a belly. You would think her breast was hanging, and was only supported from the chine98 of the back. Leanness had, to appearance, increased her joints, and the caps of her knees were stiff, and excrescences projected from her overgrown ancles. Soon as Oreas beheld her at a distance (for she did not dare come near her), she delivered the commands of the Goddess; and, staying for so short a time, although she was at a distance from her, and although she had just come thither, still did she seem to feel hunger; and, turning the reins, she drove aloft the dragon’s back to Hæmonia.

“Famine executes the orders of Ceres (although she is ever opposing her operations), and is borne by the winds through the air to the assigned abode, and immediately enters the bedchamber of the sacrilegious wretch, and embraces him, sunk in a deep sleep (for it is night-time), with her two wings. She breathes herself into the man, and blows upon his jaws, and his breast, and his face; and she scatters hunger through his empty veins. And having thus executed her commission, she forsakes the fruitful world, and returns to her famished abode, her wonted fields. Gentle sleep is still soothing99 Erisicthon with its balmy wings. In a vision of his 297 viii. 824-857. sleep he craves for food, and moves his jaws to no purpose, and tires his teeth grinding upon teeth, and wearies his throat deluded with imaginary food; and, instead of victuals, he devours in vain the yielding air. But when sleep is banished, his desire for eating is outrageous, and holds sway over his craving jaws, and his insatiate entrails. And no delay is there; he calls what the sea, what the earth, what the air produces, and complains of hunger with the tables set before him, and requires food in the midst of food. And what might be enough for whole cities, and what might be enough for a whole people, is not sufficient for one man. The more, too, he swallows down into his stomach, the more does he desire. And just as the ocean receives rivers from the whole earth, and yet is not satiated with water, and drinks up the rivers of distant countries, and as the devouring fire never refuses fuel, and burns up beams of wood without number, and the greater the quantity that is given to it, the more does it crave, and it is the more voracious through the very abundance of fuel; so do the jaws of the impious Erisicthon receive all victuals presented, and at the same time ask for more. In him all food is only a ground for more food, and there is always room vacant for eating still more.

“And now, through his appetite, and the voracity of his capacious stomach, he had diminished his paternal estate; but yet, even then, did his shocking hunger remain undiminished, and the craving of his insatiable appetite continued in full vigour. At last, after he has swallowed down his estate into his paunch,100 his daughter alone is remaining, undeserving of him for a father; her, too, he sells, pressed by want. Born of a noble race, she cannot brook a master; and stretching out her hands, over the neighbouring sea, she says, ‘Deliver me from a master, thou who dost possess the prize of my ravished virginity.’ This prize Neptune had possessed himself of. He, not despising her prayer, although, the moment before, she has been seen by her master in pursuit of her, both alters her form, and gives her the appearance of a man, and a habit befitting such as catch fish. Looking at her, her master says, ‘O thou manager of the rod, who dost cover the brazen hook, as it hangs, with tiny morsels, even so may the sea be smooth for thee, 298 viii. 857-884. even so may the fish in the water be ever credulous for thee, and may they perceive no hook till caught; tell me where she is, who this moment was standing upon this shore (for standing on the shore I saw her), with her hair dishevelled, and in humble garb; for no further do her footsteps extend.’ She perceives that the favour of the God has turned to good purpose, and, well pleased that she is inquired after of herself, she replies to him, as he inquires, in these words: ‘Whoever thou art, excuse me, but I have not turned my eyes on any side from this water, and, busily employed, I have been attending to my pursuit. And that thou mayst the less disbelieve me, may the God of the sea so aid this employment of mine, no man has been for some time standing on this shore, myself only excepted, nor has any woman been standing here.’ Her master believed her, and, turning his feet to go away, he paced the sands, and, thus deceived, withdrew. Her own shape was restored to her.

“But when her father found that his daughter had a body capable of being transformed, he often sold the grand-daughter of Triopas to other masters. But she used to escape, sometimes as a mare, sometimes as a bird, now as a cow, now as a stag; and so provided a dishonest maintenance for her hungry parent. Yet, after this violence of his distemper had consumed all his provision, and had added fresh fuel to his dreadful malady: he himself, with mangling bites, began to tear his own limbs, and the miserable wretch used to feed his own body by diminishing it. But why do I dwell on the instances of others? I, too, O youths,101 have a power of often changing my body, though limited in the number of those changes. For, one while, I appear what I now am, another while I am wreathed as a snake; then as the leader of a herd, I receive strength in my horns. In my horns, I say, so long as I could. Now, one side of my forehead is deprived of its weapons, as thou seest thyself.” Sighs followed his words.

EXPLANATION.

The story of Metra and Erisicthon has no other foundation, in all probability, than the diligent care which she took, as a dutiful daughter, to 299 support her father, when he had ruined himself by his luxury and extravagance. She, probably, was a young woman, who, in the hour of need, could, in common parlance, ‘turn her hand’ to any useful employment. Some, however, suppose that, by her changes are meant the wages she received from those whom she served in the capacity of a slave, and which she gave to her father; and it must be remembered that, in ancient times, as money was scarce, the wages of domestics were often paid in kind. Other writers again suggest, less to the credit of the damsel, that her changes denote the price she received for her debaucheries. Ovid adds, that she married Autolycus, the robber, who stole the oxen of Eurytus. Callimachus also, in his Hymn to Ceres, gives the story of Erisicthon at length. He was the great grandfather of Ulysses, and was probably a man noted for his infidelity and impiety, as well as his riotous course of life. The story is probably of Eastern origin, and if a little expanded might vie with many of the interesting fictions which we read in the Arabian Night’s Entertainments.

300

BOOK THE NINTH.

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FABLE I.

Deïanira, the daughter of Œneus, having been wooed by several suitors, her father gives his consent that she shall marry him who proves to be the bravest of them. Her other suitors, having given way to Hercules and Acheloüs, they engage in single combat. Acheloüs, to gain the advantage over his rival, transforms himself into various shapes, and, at length, into that of a bull. These attempts are in vain, and Hercules overcomes him, and breaks off one of his horns. The Naiads, the daughters of Acheloüs, take it up, and fill it with the variety of fruits which Autumn affords; on which it obtains the name of the Horn of Plenty.

Theseus, the Neptunian hero,1 inquires what is the cause of his sighing, and of his forehead being mutilated; when thus begins the Calydonian river, having his unadorned hair crowned with reeds:

“A mournful task thou art exacting; for who, when overcome, is desirous to relate his own battles? yet I will relate them in order; nor was it so disgraceful to be overcome, as it is glorious to have engaged; and a conqueror so mighty affords me a great consolation. If, perchance, Deïanira,2 by her name, has at last reached thy ears, once she was a most beautiful maiden, and the envied hope of many a wooer; together with these, when the house of him, whom I desired as my father-in-law, was entered by me, I said, ‘Receive me, O son of Parthaon,3 for thy son-in-law.’ Alcides, too, said the same; the others yielded to us two. He alleged that he was offering to the 301 ix. 14-39. damsel both Jupiter as a father-in-law, and the glory of his labours; the orders, too, of his step-mother, successfully executed. On the other hand (I thought it disgraceful for a God to give way to a mortal, for then he was not a God), I said, ‘Thou beholdest me, a king of the waters, flowing amid thy realms,4 with my winding course; nor am I some stranger sent thee for a son-in-law, from foreign lands, but I shall be one of thy people, and a part of thy state. Only let it not be to my prejudice, that the royal Juno does not hate me, and that all punishment, by labours enjoined, is afar from me. For, since thou, Hercules, dost boast thyself born of Alcmena for thy mother; Jupiter is either thy pretended sire, or thy real one through a criminal deed: by the adultery of thy mother art thou claiming a father. Choose, then, whether thou wouldst rather have Jupiter for thy pretended father, or that thou art sprung from him through a disgraceful deed?’

“While I was saying such things as these, for some time he looked at me with a scowling eye, and did not very successfully check his inflamed wrath; and he returned me just as many words as these: ‘My right hand is better than my tongue. If only I do but prevail in fighting, do thou get the better in talking;’ and then he fiercely attacked me. I was ashamed, after having so lately spoken big words, to yield. I threw on one side my green garment from off my body, and opposed my arms to his, and I held my hands bent inwards,5 from before my breast, on their guard, and I prepared my limbs for the combat. He sprinkled me with dust, taken up in the hollow of his hands, and, in his turn, grew yellow with the casting of yellow sand6 upon himself. And at one moment he aimed at my neck, at another my legs, as they shifted about, or you would suppose he was aiming at them; and he assaulted me on every side. My bulk defended me, and I was attacked in vain; no 302 ix. 39-71. otherwise than a mole, which the waves beat against with loud noise: it remains unshaken, and by its own weight is secure.

“We retire a little, and then again we rush together in conflict, and we stand firm, determined not to yield; foot, too, is joined to foot; and then I, bending forward full with my breast, press upon his fingers with my fingers, and his forehead with my forehead. In no different manner have I beheld the strong bulls engage, when the most beauteous mate7 in all the pasture is sought as the reward of the combat; the herds look on and tremble, uncertain which the mastery of so great a domain awaits. Thrice without effect did Alcides attempt to hurl away from him my breast, as it bore hard against him; the fourth time, he shook off my hold, and loosened my arms clasped around him; and, striking me with his hand, (I am resolved to confess the truth) he turned me quite round, and clung, a mighty load, to my back. If any credit is to be given me, (and, indeed, no glory is sought by me through an untrue narration) I seemed to myself as though weighed down with a mountain placed upon me. Yet, with great difficulty, I disengaged my arms streaming with much perspiration, and, with great exertion, I unlocked his firm grasp from my body. He pressed on me as I panted for breath, and prevented me from recovering my strength, and then seized hold of my neck. Then, at last, was the earth pressed by my knee, and with my mouth I bit the sand. Inferior in strength, I had recourse to my arts,8 and transformed into a long serpent, I escaped from the hero.

“After I had twisted my body into winding folds, and darted my forked tongue with dreadful hissings, the Tirynthian laughed, and deriding my arts, he said, ‘It was the labour of my cradle to conquer serpents;9 and although, Acheloüs, thou shouldst excel other snakes, how large a part wilt thou, but one serpent, be of the Lernæan Echidna? By her very wounds was she multiplied, and not one head of her hundred in 303 ix. 71-100. number10 was cut off by me without danger to myself; but rather so that her neck became stronger, with two successors to the former head. Yet her I subdued, branching with serpents springing from each wound, and growing stronger by her disasters; and, so subdued, I slew her. What canst thou think will become of thee, who, changed into a fictitious serpent, art wielding arms that belong to another, and whom a form, obtained as a favour, is now disguising?’ Thus he spoke; and he planted the grip of his fingers on the upper part of my neck. I was tortured, just as though my throat was squeezed with pincers; and I struggled hard to disengage my jaws from his fingers.

“Thus vanquished, too, there still remained for me my third form, that of a furious bull; with my limbs changed into those of a bull I renewed the fight. He threw his arms over my brawny neck, on the left side, and, dragging at me, followed me in my onward course; and seizing my horns, he fastened them in the hard ground, and felled me upon the deep sand. And that was not enough; while his relentless right hand was holding my stubborn horn, he broke it, and tore it away from my mutilated forehead. This, heaped with fruit and odoriferous flowers, the Naiads have consecrated, and the bounteous Goddess, Plenty, is enriched by my horn.” Thus he said; but a Nymph, girt up after the manner of Diana, one of his handmaids, with her hair hanging loose on either side, came in, and brought the whole of the produce of Autumn in the most plentiful horn, and choice fruit for a second course.

Day comes on, and the rising sun striking the tops of the hills, the young men depart; nor do they stay till the stream has quiet restored to it, and a smooth course, and till the troubled waters subside. Acheloüs conceals his rustic features, and his mutilated horn, in the midst of the waves; yet the loss of this honour, taken from him, alone affects him; in other respects, he is unhurt. The injury, too, which has befallen his head, is now concealed with willow branches, or with reeds placed upon it.

304

EXPLANATION.

The river Acheloüs, which ran between Acarnania and Ætolia, often did considerable damage to those countries by its inundations, and, at the same time, by confounding or sweeping away the limits which separated those nations, it engaged them in continual warfare with each other. Hercules, who seems really to have been a person of great scientific skill, which he was ever ready to employ for the service of his fellow men, raised banks to it, and made its course so uniform and straight, that he was the means of establishing perpetual peace between these adjoining nations.

The early authors who recorded these events have narrated them under a thick and almost impenetrable veil of fiction. They say that Hercules engaged in combat with the God of that river, who immediately transformed himself into a serpent, by which was probably meant merely the serpentine windings of its course. Next they say, that the God changed himself into a bull, under which allegorical form they refer to the rapid and impetuous overflowing of its banks, ever rushing onwards, bearing down everything in its course, and leaving traces of its ravages throughout the country in its vicinity. This mode of description the more readily occurred to them in the case of Acheloüs, as from the roaring noise which they often make in their course, rivers in general were frequently represented under the figure of a bull, and, of course, as wearing horns, the great instruments of the havoc which they created.

It was said, then, that Hercules at length overcame this bull, and broke off one of his horns; by which was meant, according to Strabo, that he brought both the branches of the river into one channel. Again, this horn became the Horn of Plenty in that region; or, in other words, being withdrawn from its bed, the river left a large track of very fertile ground for agricultural purposes. As to the Cornucopia, or Horn of Plenty of the heathen Mythology, there is some variation in the accounts respecting it. Some writers say that by it was meant the horn of the goat Amalthea, which suckled Jupiter, and that the Nymphs gave it to Acheloüs, who again gave it in exchange for that of which Hercules afterwards deprived him. Deïanira, having given her hand to Hercules, as the recompense of the important services which he had rendered to her father, Œneus, it was fabled that she had been promised to Acheloüs, who was vanquished by his rival; and on this foundation was built the superstructure of the famous combat which the Poet here describes. After having remained for some time at the court of his father-in-law, Hercules was obliged to leave it, in consequence of having killed the son of Architritilus, who was the cupbearer of that prince.

305 ix. 101-115.

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FABLE II.

Hercules, returning with Deïanira, as the prize of his victory, entrusts her to the Centaur Nessus, to carry her over the river Evenus. Nessus seizes the opportunity of Hercules being on the other side of the river, and attempts to carry her off; on which Hercules, perceiving his design, shoots him with an arrow, and thus prevents its execution. The Centaur, when expiring, in order to gratify his revenge, gives Deïanira his tunic dipped in his blood, assuring her that it contains an effectual charm against all infidelity on the part of her husband. Afterwards, on hearing that Hercules is in love with Iole, Deïanira sends him the tunic, that it may have the supposed effect. As soon as he puts it on, he is affected with excruciating torments, and is seized with such violent fits of madness, that he throws Lychas, the bearer of the garment, into the sea, where he is changed into a rock. Hercules, then, in obedience to a response of the oracle, which he consults, prepares a funeral pile, and laying himself upon it, his friend Philoctetes applies the torch to it, on which the hero, having first recounted his labours, expires in the flames. After his body is consumed, Jupiter translates him to the heavens, and he is placed in the number of the Gods.

But a passion for this same maiden proved fatal to thee, fierce Nessus,11 pierced through the back with a swift arrow. For the son of Jupiter, as he was returning to his native city with his new-made wife, had now come to the rapid waters of the river Evenus.12 The stream was swollen to a greater extent than usual with the winter rains, and was full of whirlpools, and impassable. Nessus came up to him, regardless of himself, but feeling anxiety for his wife, both strong of limb,13 and well acquainted with the fords, and said, “Alcides, she shall be landed on yonder bank through my services, do thou employ thy strength in swimming;” and the Aonian hero entrusted to Nessus the Calydonian damsel full of alarm, and pale with apprehension, and equally dreading both the river and Nessus himself. Immediately, just as he was, loaded both with his quiver and the spoil of the lion, (for he had thrown his club and his crooked bow to the opposite side), he said, “Since I have undertaken it, the stream must be passed.”

306 ix. 118-142.

And he does not hesitate; nor does he seek out where the stream is the smoothest, and he spurns to be borne over by the compliance of the river. And now having reached the bank, and as he is taking up the bow which he had thrown over, he recognizes the voice of his wife; and as Nessus is preparing to rob him of what he has entrusted to his care, he cries out, “Whither, thou ravisher, does thy vain confidence in thy feet hurry thee? to thee am I speaking, Nessus, thou two-shaped monster. Listen; and do not carry off my property. If no regard for myself influences thee, still the wheel of thy father14 might have restrained thee from forbidden embraces. Thou shall not escape, however, although thou dost confide15 in thy powers of a horse; with a wound, and not with my feet, will I overtake thee.” These last words he confirms by deeds, and pierces him through the back, as he is flying, with an arrow discharged at him. The barbed steel stands out from his breast; soon as it is wrenched out, the blood gushes forth from both wounds, mingled with the venom of the Lernæan poison. Nessus takes it out, and says to himself, “And yet I shall not die unrevenged;” and gives his garment, dyed in the warm blood, as a present to her whom he is carrying off, as though an incentive to love.

Long was the space of intervening time, and the feats of the mighty Hercules and the hatred of his step-mother had filled the earth. Returning victorious from Œchalia, he is preparing a sacrifice which he had vowed to Cenæan Jupiter,16 when tattling Rumour (who takes pleasure in adding false things to the truth, and from a very little beginning, swells to a great bulk by her lies) runs before to thy ears, Deïanira, to the effect that the son of Amphitryon is seized with a passion for Iole. As she loves him, she believes it; and being alarmed with the report of this new amour, at first she indulges in 307 ix. 142-175. tears and in her misery gives vent to her grief in weeping. Soon, however, she says, “But why do I weep? My rival will be delighted with these tears; and since she is coming I must make haste, and some contrivance must be resolved on while it is still possible, and while, as yet, another has not taken possession of my bed. Shall I complain, or shall I be silent? Shall I return to Calydon, or shall I stay here? Shall I depart from this abode? or, if nothing more, shall I oppose their entrance? What if, O Meleager, remembering that I am thy sister, I resolve on a desperate deed, and testify, by murdering my rival, how much, injury and a woman’s grief can effect?”

Her mind wavers, amid various resolves. Before them all, she prefers to send the garment dyed in the blood of Nessus, to restore strength to his declining love. Not knowing herself what she is giving, she delivers the cause of her own sorrows to the unsuspecting Lichas,17 and bids him, in gentle words, to deliver this most fatal gift to her husband. In his ignorance, the hero receives it, and places upon his shoulders the venom of the Lernæan Echidna. He is placing frankincense on the rising flames, and is offering the words of prayer, and pouring wine from the bowl upon the marble altars. The virulence of the bane waxes warm, and, melted by the flames, it runs, widely diffused over the limbs of Hercules. So long as he is able, he suppresses his groans with his wonted fortitude. After his endurance is overcome by his anguish, he pushes down the altars, and fills the woody Œta with his cries. There is no further delay; he attempts to tear off the deadly garment; but where it is torn off, it tears away the skin, and, shocking to relate, it either sticks to his limbs, being tried in vain to be pulled off, or it lays bare his mangled limbs, and his huge bones. The blood itself hisses, just as when a red hot plate of metal is dipped in cold water; and it boils with the burning poison. There is no limit to his misery; the devouring flames prey upon his entrails, and a livid perspiration flows from his whole body; his half-burnt sinews also crack; and his marrow being now dissolved by the subtle poison, lifting his hands towards the stars of heaven, 308 ix. 176-198. he exclaims, “Daughter of Saturn, satiate thyself with my anguish; satiate thyself, and look down from on high, O cruel Goddess, at this my destruction, and glut thy relentless heart. Or, if I am to be pitied even by an enemy (for an enemy I am to thee), take away a life insupportable through these dreadful agonies, hateful, too, to myself, and only destined to trouble. Death will be a gain to me. It becomes a stepmother to grant such a favour.

“And was it for this that I subdued Busiris, who polluted the temples of the Gods with the blood of strangers? And did I for this, withdraw from the savage Antæus18 the support given him by his mother? Did neither the triple shape of the Iberian shepherd19, nor thy triple form, O Cerberus, alarm me? And did you, my hands, seize the horns of the mighty bull? Does Elis, too, possess the result of your labours, and the Stymphalian waters, and the Parthenian20 grove as well? By your valour was it that the belt, inlaid with the gold of Thermodon21, was gained, the apples too, guarded in vain by the wakeful dragon? And could neither the Centaurs resist me, nor yet the boar, the ravager of Arcadia? And was it not of no avail to the Hydra to grow through its own loss, and to recover double strength? And what besides? When I beheld the Thracian steeds fattened with human blood, and the mangers filled with mangled bodies, did I throw them down when thus beheld, and slay both the master and the horses themselves? And does the carcass of the Nemean lion lie crushed by these arms? With this neck did I support the heavens?22 309 ix. 198-227. The unrelenting wife of Jupiter23 was weary of commanding, but I was still unwearied with doing. But now a new calamity is come upon me, to which resistance can be made neither by valour, nor by weapons, nor by arms. A consuming flame is pervading the inmost recesses of my lungs, and is preying on all my limbs. But Eurystheus still survives. And are there,” says he, “any who can believe that the Deities exist?”

And then, racked with pain, he ranges along the lofty Œta, no otherwise than if a tiger should chance to carry the hunting spears fixed in his body, and the perpetrator of the deed should be taking to flight. Often might you have beheld him uttering groans, often shrieking aloud, often striving to tear away the whole of his garments, and levelling trees, and venting his fury against mountains, or stretching out his arms towards the heaven of his father. Lo! he espies Lichas, trembling and lying concealed in a hollow rock, and, as his pain has summoned together all his fury, he says, “Didst thou, Lichas, bring this fatal present; and shalt thou be the cause of my death?” He trembles, and turning pale, is alarmed, and timorously utters some words of excuse. As he is speaking, and endeavouring to clasp his knees with his hands, Alcides seizes hold of him, and whirling him round three or four times, he hurls him into the Eubœan waves, with greater force than if sent from an engine of war. As he soars aloft in the aerial breeze he grows hard; and as they say that showers freeze with the cold winds, and that thence snow is formed, and that from the snow, revolving in its descent, the soft body is compressed, and is then made round in many a hailstone,24 so have former ages declared, that, hurled through the air by the strong arms of Hercules, and bereft of blood through fear, and having no moisture left in him, he was transformed into hard stone. Even to this day, in the Eubœan sea, a small rock projects to a height, and 310 ix. 227-257. retains the traces of the human form. This, the sailors are afraid to tread upon, as though it could feel it; and they call it Lichas.

But thou, the famous offspring of Jupiter, having cut down, trees which lofty Œta bore, and having raised them for a pile, dost order the son of Pœas25 to take the bow and the capacious quiver, and the arrows which are again to visit26 the Trojan realms; by whose assistance flames are put beneath the pile; and while the structure is being seized by the devouring fires, thou dost cover the summit of the heap of wood with the skin of the Nemean lion, and dost lie down with thy neck resting on thy club, with no other countenance than if thou art lying as a guest crowned with garlands, amid the full cups of wine.

And now, the flames, prevailing and spreading on every side, roared,27 and reached the limbs thus undismayed, and him who despised them. The Gods were alarmed for this protector of the earth;28 Saturnian Jupiter (for he perceived it) thus addressed them with joyful voice: “This fear of yours is my own delight, O ye Gods of heaven, and, with all my heart, I gladly congratulate myself that I am called the governor and the father of a grateful people, and that my progeny, too, is secure in your esteem. For, although this concern is given in return for his mighty exploits, still I myself am obliged by it. But, however, that your affectionate breasts may not be alarmed with vain fears, despise these flames of Œta. He who has conquered all things, shall conquer the fires which you behold; nor shall he be sensible of the potency of the flame, but in the part of him which he derived from his mother. That part of him, which he derived from me, is immortal, and exempt and secure from death, and to be subdued by no flames. This, too, when disengaged from earth, I will receive into the celestial regions, and I trust that this act of mine will be agreeable to all the Deities. Yet if any one, if any one, I say, perchance should 311 ix. 257-272. grieve at Hercules being a Divinity, and should be unwilling that this honour should be conferred on him; still he shall know that he deserves it to be bestowed on him, and even against his will, shall approve of it.”

To this the Gods assented; his royal spouse, too, seemed to bear the rest of his remarks with no discontented air, but only the last words with a countenance of discontent, and to take it amiss that she was so plainly pointed at. In the mean time, whatever was liable to be destroyed by flame, Mulciber consumed; and the figure of Hercules remained, not to be recognized; nor did he have anything derived from the form of his mother, and he only retained the traces of immortal Jupiter. And as when a serpent revived, by throwing off old age with his slough, is wont to be instinct with fresh life, and to glisten in his new-made scales; so, when the Tirynthian hero has put off his mortal limbs, he flourishes in his more æthereal part, and begins to appear more majestic, and to become venerable in his august dignity. Him the omnipotent Father, taking up among encircling clouds, bears aloft amid the glittering stars, in his chariot drawn by its four steeds.

EXPLANATION.

Hercules, leaving the court of Calydon with his wife, proceeded on the road to the city of Trachyn, in Thessaly, to atone for the accidental death of Eunomus, and to be absolved from it by Ceyx, who was the king of that territory. Being obliged to cross the river Evenus, which had overflowed its banks, the adventure happened with the Centaur Nessus, which the Poet has here related. We learn from other writers, that after Nessus had expired, he was buried on Mount Taphiusa; and Strabo informs us, that his tomb (in which, probably, the ashes of other Centaurs were deposited) sent forth so offensive a smell, that the Locrians, who were the inhabitants of the adjacent country, were surnamed the ‘Ozolæ,’ that is, the ‘ill-smelling,’ or ‘stinking,’ Locrians. Although the river Evenus lay in the road between Calydon and Trachyn, still it did not run through the middle of the latter city, as some authors have supposed; for in such case Hercules would have been more likely to have passed it by the aid of a bridge or of a boat, than to have recourse to the assistance of the Centaur Nessus, and to have availed himself of his acquaintance with the fords of the stream.

Hercules, in lapse of time, becoming tired of Deïanira, by whom he had one son, named Hyllus, fell in love with Iole, the daughter of Eurytus; and that prince, refusing to give her to him, he made war upon Œchalia, and, having slain Eurytus, he bore off his daughter. Upon his return from that expedition, he sent Lychas for the vestments which he had occasion to use in a sacrifice which it was his intention to offer. Deïanira, jealous on account 312 ix. 273-274. of his passion for Iole, sent him either a philtre or love potion, which unintentionally caused his death, or else a tunic smeared on the inside with a certain kind of pitch, found near Babylon, which, when thoroughly warmed, stuck fast to his skin; and this it is, most probably, which has been termed by poets and historians, the tunic of Nessus. It seems, however, pretty clear that Hercules fell into a languishing distemper, without any hopes of recovery, and, probably, in a fit of madness, he threw Lychas into the sea, which circumstance was made by the poets to account for the existence there of a rock known by that name.

Proceeding afterwards to Trachyn, he caused Deiänira to hang herself in despair; and, having consulted the oracle concerning his distemper, he was ordered to go with his friends to Mount Œta, and there to raise a funeral pile. He understood the fatal answer, and immediately prepared to execute its commands. When the pile was ready, Hercules ascended it, and laid himself down with an air of resignation, on which Philoctetes kindled the fire, which consumed him. Some, however, of the ancient authors say, with more probability, that Hercules died at Trachyn, and that his corpse was burned on Mount Œta. His apotheosis commenced at the ceremonial of his funeral, and, from the moment of his death, he was worshipped as a Demigod. Diodorus Siculus says that it was Iolus who first introduced this worship. It was also said that, as soon as Philoctetes had applied fire to the pile, it thundered, and the lightnings descending from heaven immediately consumed Hercules. A tomb was raised for him on Mount Œta, with an altar, upon which a bull, a wild boar, and a he-goat were yearly sacrificed in his honour, at the time of his festival. The Thebans, and, after them, the other people of Greece, soon followed the example of the Trachinians, and temples and altars were raised to him in various places, where he was honoured as a Demigod.

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FABLE III.

Juno, to be revenged on Alcmena for her amour with Jupiter, desires Ilithyïa, the Goddess who presides over births, not to assist her on the occasion of the birth of Hercules. Lucina complies with her request, and places herself on an altar at the gate of Alcmena’s abode, where, by a magic spell, she increases her pains and impedes her delivery. Galanthis, one of her maids, seeing the Goddess at the door, imagines that she may possibly exercise some bad influence on her mistress’s labour, and, to make her retire, declares that Alcmena is already delivered. Upon Ilithyïa withdrawing, Alcmena’s pains are assuaged, and Hercules is born. The Goddess, to punish Galanthis for her officiousness, transforms her into a weazel, a creature which was supposed to bring forth its young through its mouth.

Atlas was sensible29 of this burden. Nor, as yet, had Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelus, laid aside his wrath against Hercules; 313 ix. 274-301. and, in his fury, he vented his hatred for the father against his offspring. But the Argive Alcmena, disquieted with prolonged anxieties for her son has Iole, to whom to disclose the complaints of her old age, to whom to relate the achievements of her son attested by all the world, or to whom to tell her own misfortunes. At the command of Hercules, Hyllus had received her both into his bed and his affections, and had filled her womb with a noble offspring. To her, thus Alcmena began her story:—

“May the Gods be propitious to thee at least; and may they shorten the tedious hours, at the hour when, having accomplished thy time, thou shalt be invoking Ilithyïa,30 who presides over the trembling parturient women; her whom the influence of Juno rendered inexorable to myself. For, when now the natal hour of Hercules, destined for so many toils, was at hand, and the tenth sign of the Zodiac was laden with the great luminary, the heavy weight was extending my womb; and that which I bore was so great, that you might easily pronounce Jupiter to be the father of the concealed burden. And now I was no longer able to endure my labours: even now, too, as I am speaking, a cold shudder seizes my limbs, and a part of my pain is the remembrance of it. Tormented for seven nights, and during as many days, tired out with misery, and extending my arms towards heaven, with loud cries I used to invoke Lucina and the two Nixi.31 She came, indeed, but corrupted beforehand, and she had the intention to give my life to the vengeful Juno. And when she heard my groans, she seated herself upon that altar before the door, and pressing her left knee with her right knee, her fingers being joined together in form of a comb,32 she retarded my delivery; she uttered charms, 314 ix. 301-323. too, in a low voice; and those charms impeded the birth now begun. I struggled hard, and, in my frenzy, I vainly uttered reproaches against the ungrateful Jupiter, and I desired to die, and complained in words that would have moved even the hard stones. The Cadmeian matrons attended me, and offered up vows, and encouraged me in my pains.

“There was present one of my hand-maids of the lower class of people, Galanthis by name, with yellow hair, and active in the execution of my orders; one beloved for her good services. She perceived that something unusual33 was being done by the resentful Juno; and, while she was often going in and out of the door, she saw the Goddess, sitting upon the altar, and supporting her arms upon her knees, linked by the fingers; and then she said, ‘Whoever thou art, congratulate my mistress; the Argive Alcmena is delivered, and, having brought forth, she has gained her wishes.’ The Goddess who presides34 over pregnancy leaped up, and, struck with surprise, loosened her joined hands. I, myself, on the loosening of those bonds, was delivered. The story is, that Galanthis laughed, upon deceiving the Divinity. The cruel Goddess dragged her along thus laughing and seized by her very hair, and she hindered her as she attempted to raise her body from the earth, and changed her arms into fore feet.

“Her former activity still remains, and her back has not lost its colour; but her shape is different from her former one. Because she had assisted me in labour by a lying mouth, she brings forth from the mouth,35 and, just as before, she frequents my house.”

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EXPLANATION.

According to Diodorus Siculus and Apollodorus, Amphitryon was the son of Alceus, the son of Perseus, and his wife, Alcmena, was the daughter of Electryon, also the son of Perseus; and thus they were cousins. When their marriage was about to take place, an unforeseen accident prevented it. Electryon, who was king of Mycenæ, being obliged to revenge the death of his children, whom the sons of Taphius, king of the Teleboans, had killed in combat, returned victorious, and brought back with him his flocks, which he had recovered from Taphius. Amphitryon, who went to meet his uncle, to congratulate him upon the success of his expedition, throwing his club at a cow, which happened to stray from the herd, unfortunately killed him. This accidental homicide lost him the kingdom of Mycenæ, which was to have formed the dower of Alcmena. Sthenelus, the brother of Electryon, taking advantage of the public indignation, which was the result of the accident, drove Amphitryon out of the country of Argos, and made himself master of his brother’s dominions, which he left, at his death, to his son Eurystheus, the inveterate persecutor of Hercules.

Amphitryon, obliged to retire to Thebes, was there absolved by Creon; but when, as he thought, he was about to receive the hand of Alcmena, who accompanied him to the court of that prince, she declared that, not being satisfied with the revenge which her father had taken on the Teleboans, she would consent to be the prize of him who would undertake to declare war against them. Amphitryon accepted these conditions, and, forming an alliance with Creon, Cephalus, and some other princes, made a descent upon the islands which the enemy possessed, and, making himself master of them, bestowed one of them on his ally, Cephalus.

It was during this war that Hercules came into the world; and whether Amphitryon had secretly consummated his marriage before his departure, or whether he had returned privately to Thebes, or to Tirynthus, where Hercules was said to have been born, it was published, that Jupiter, to deceive Alcmena, had taken the form of her husband, and was the father of the infant Hercules. If this is not the true explanation of the story, it may have been invented to conceal some intrigue in which Alcmena was detected; or, in process of time, to account for the extraordinary strength and valour of Hercules, it may have been said that Jupiter, and not Amphitryon, was the father of Hercules. Indeed, we find Seneca, in one of his Tragedies, putting these words into the mouth of Hercules:— ‘Whether all that has been said upon this subject be held as undoubted truth, or whether it proves to be but a fable, and that my father was, after all, in reality, but a mortal; my mother’s fault is sufficiently effaced by my valour, and I have merit sufficient to have had Jupiter for my father.’ The more readily, perhaps, to account for the transcendent strength and prowess of Hercules, the story was invented, that Jupiter made the night on which he was received by Alcmena under the form of Amphitryon, as long as three, or, according to Plautus, Hyginus, and Seneca, nine nights. Some writers say that Alcmena brought forth twins, one of which, Iphiclus, was the son of Amphitryon, while Hercules had Jupiter for his father.

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With respect to the metamorphosis of Galanthis, it is but a little episode here introduced by Ovid, to give greater plausibility to the other part of the story. It most probably originated in the resemblance of the names of that slave to that of the weazel, which the Greeks called γαλῆ. Ælian, indeed, tells us that the Thebans paid honour to that animal, because it had helped Alcmena in her labour. The more ancient poets also added, that Juno retarded the birth of Hercules till the mother of Eurystheus was delivered, which was the cause of his being the subject of that king; though others state that this came to pass by the command of the oracle of Delphi. This king of Mycenæ having ordered him to rid Greece of the numerous robbers and wild beasts that infested it, it is most probable that, as we learn from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, he performed this service at the head of the troops of Eurystheus. If this is the case, the persecutions which the poets have ascribed to the jealousy of Juno, really originated either in the policy or the jealousy of the court of Mycenæ.

As Ovid has here cursorily taken notice of the labours of Hercules, we may observe, that it is very probable that his history is embellished with the pretended adventures of many persons who bore his name, and, perhaps, with those of others besides. Cicero, in his ‘Treatise on the Nature of the Gods,’ mentions six persons who bore the name of Hercules; and possibly, after a minute examination, a much greater number might be reckoned, many nations of antiquity having given the name to such great men of their own as had rendered themselves famous by their actions. Thus, we find one in Egypt in the time of Osiris, in Phœnicia, among the Gauls, in Spain, and in other countries. Confining ourselves to the Grecian Hercules, surnamed Alcides, we find that his exploits have generally been sung of by the poets, under the name of the Twelve Labours; but, on entering into the detail of them, we find them much more numerous. Killing some serpents in his youth, it was published, not only that he had done so, but that they had been sent by Juno for the purpose of destroying him. The forest of Nemea serving as a retreat for a great number of lions that ravaged the country, Hercules hunted them, and, killing the most furious of them, always wore his skin.

Several thieves, having made the neighbourhood of Lake Stymphalus, in Arcadia, their resort, he freed the country of them; the nails and wings which the poets gave them, in representing them as birds, being typical of their voracity and activity. The marshes of Lerna, near Argos, were infested by great numbers of serpents, which, as fast as they were destroyed, were replaced by new swarms; draining the marshes, and, probably, setting fire to the adjacent thickets or jungles, he destroyed these pestilent reptiles, on which it was fabled that he had destroyed the Hydra of Lerna, with its heads, which grew as fast as they were cut off. The forest of Erymanthus was full of wild boars, which laid waste all the neighbouring country: he destroyed them all, and brought one with him to the court of Eurystheus, of a size so monstrous, that the king was alarmed on seeing it, and was obliged to run and hide himself.

The stables of Augeas, king of Elis, were so filled with manure, by reason of the great quantity of oxen that he kept, that Hercules being 317 called upon to cleanse them, employed his engineering skill in bringing the river Alpheus through them. Having pursued a hind for a whole year, which Eurystheus had commanded him to take, it was circulated, probably on account of her untiring swiftness, that she had feet of brass. The river Acheloüs having overflowed the adjacent country, he raised banks to it, as already mentioned. Theseus was a prisoner in Epirus, where he had been with Pirithous, to bring away the daughter of Aidoneus. Hercules delivered him; and that was the foundation of the Fable which said that he had gone down to Hades, or Hell. In the cavern of Tænarus there was a monstrous serpent; this he was ordered to kill, and, probably, this gave rise to the story of Cerberus being chained by him. Pelias having been killed by his daughters, his son Acastus pursued them to the court of Admetus, who, refusing to deliver up Alcestis, of whom he was enamoured, was taken prisoner in an engagement, and was delivered by that princess, who herself offered to be his ransom. Hercules being then in Thessaly, he took her away from Acastus, who was about to put her to death, and returned her to Admetus. This, probably, was the foundation of the fable which stated, that he had recovered her from the Infernal Regions, after having vanquished death, and bound him in chains.

The Amazons were a nation of great celebrity in the time of Hercules, and their frequent victories had rendered them very formidable to their neighbours. Eurystheus ordered him to go and bring away the girdle of Hippolyta, or, in other words, to make war upon them, and to pillage their treasures. Embarking on the Euxine Sea, Hercules arrived on the banks of the Thermodon, and, giving battle to the female warriors, defeated them; killing some, and putting the rest to flight. He took Antiope, or Hippolyta, prisoner, whom he gave to Theseus; but her sister, Menalippa, redeemed herself by giving up the famous girdle, or, in other words, by paying a large ransom. It is very probable, that in that expedition, he slew Diomedes, the barbarous king of Thrace, and brought away his mares, which were said to have been fed by him on human flesh. In returning by way of Thessaly, he embarked in the expedition of the Argonauts; but, leaving them soon afterwards, he went to Troy, and delivered Hesione from the monster which was to have devoured her; but not receiving from Laomedon, the king, the recompense which had been promised him, he killed that prince, sacked the city, and brought away Hesione, whom he gave to Telamon, who had accompanied him on the expedition.

This is probably the extent of the labours of Hercules in Greece, Thrace, and Phrygia. The poets have made him engage in many other laborious undertakings in distant countries, which most probably ought not to be attributed to the Grecian Hercules. Among other stories told of him, it is said, that having set out to fight with Geryon, the king of Spain, he was so much incommoded by the heat of the sun, that his wrath was excited against the luminary, and he fired his arrows at it, on which, the Sun, struck with admiration at his spirited conduct, made him a present of a golden goblet. After this, embarking and arriving in Spain, he defeated Geryon, a prince who was famed for having three heads, which probably either meant that he reigned over the three Balearic islands of Maiorca, Minorca, and Iviza, or else that 318 Hercules defeated three princes who were strictly allied. Having thence passed the straits of Gibraltar to go over to Africa, he fought with the Giant Antæus, who sought to oppose his landing. That prince was said to be a son of the Earth, and was reported to recover fresh strength every time he was thrown on the ground; consequently, Hercules was obliged to hold him in his arms, till he had squeezed him to death. The solution of this fable is most probably that Antæus, always finding succour in a country where he was known as a powerful monarch, Hercules took measures to deprive him of aid, by engaging him in a sea fight, and thereby defeated him, without much trouble, as well as the Pygmies, who were probably some African tribes of stunted stature, who came to his assistance.

Hercules, returning from these two expeditions, passed through Gaul with the herds of Geryon, and went into Italy, where Cacus, a celebrated robber, who had made the caverns of Mount Aventine his haunts, having stolen some of his oxen, he, with the assistance, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, of Evander and Faunus, destroyed him, and shared his spoils with his allies. In his journey from Africa, Hercules delivered Atlas from the enmity of Busiris, the tyrant of Egypt, whom he killed; and gave such good advice to the Mauritanian king, that it was said that he supported the heavens for some time on his own shoulders, to relieve those of Atlas. The latter, by way of acknowledgment of his services, made him a present of several fine sheep, or rather, according to Diodorus Siculus, of some orange and lemon trees, which he carried with him into Greece. These were represented as the golden apples watched by a dragon in the garden of the Hesperides. As the ocean there terminated the scene of his conquests, he was said to have raised two pillars on those shores, to signify the fact of his having been there, and the impossibility of proceeding any further.

The deliverance of Prometheus, as already mentioned; the death of the two brothers, the Cercopes, famous robbers; the defeat of the Bull of Marathon; the death of Lygis, who disputed the passage of the Alps with him; that of the giant Alcyaneus, who hurled at him a stone so vast that it crushed twenty-four men to death; that of Eryx, king of Sicily, whom he killed with a blow of the cestus, for refusing to deliver to him the oxen which he had stolen; the combat with Cycnus, which was terminated by a peal of thunder, which separated the combatants; another combat against the Giants in Gaul, during which, as it was said, Jupiter rained down vast quantities of stones; all these are also attributed to Hercules, besides many more stories, which, if diligently collected, would swell to a large volume.

The foregoing remarks on the history of Hercules, give us an insight into the ideas which, based upon the explanations given by the authors of antiquity, the Abbè Banier, one of the most accomplished scholars of his age, entertained on this subject. We will conclude with some very able and instructive remarks on this mythus, which we extract from Mr. Keightley’s Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy. He says—

“Various theories have been formed respecting the mythus of Hercules. It is evidently one of very remote antiquity, long perhaps, anterior to the 319 times of Homer. We confess that we cannot see any very valid reason for supposing no such real personage to have existed; for it will, perhaps, be found that mythology not unfrequently prefers to absolute fiction, the assuming of some real historic character, and making it the object of the marvels devised by lively and exuberant imagination, in order thereby to obtain more ready credence for the strange events which it creates. Such, then, may the real Hercules have been,—a Dorian, a Theban, or an Argive hero, whose feats of strength lived in the traditions of the people, and whom national vanity raised to the rank of a son of Zeus [Jupiter], and poetic fancy, as geographic knowledge extended, sent on journies throughout the known world, and accumulated in his person the fabled exploits of similar heroes of other regions.

“We may perceive, by the twelve tasks, that the astronomical theory was applied to the mythus of the hero, and that he was regarded as a personification of the Sun, which passes through the twelve signs of the Zodiac. This, probably, took place during the Alexandrian period. Some resemblance between his attributes and those of the Deity, with whom the Egyptian priests were pleased to identify him, may have given occasion to this notion; and he also bore some similitude to the God whom the Phœnicians chiefly worshipped, and who, it is probable, was the Sun. But we must steadily bear in mind, that Hercules was a hero in the popular legend long before any intercourse was opened between Greece and Egypt; and that, however (which is certainly not very likely) a God might be introduced from Phœnicia, the same could hardly be the case with a popular hero.—A very ingenious theory on the mythus of Hercules is given by Buttmann (Mythologus, vol. i., p. 246). Though acknowledging that Perseus, Theseus, and Hercules may have been real persons, he is disposed, from an attentive consideration of all the circumstances in the mythus of the last, to regard him as one of those poetical persons or personifications, who, as he says, have obtained such firm footing in the dark periods of antiquity, as to have acquired the complete air of historic personages.

“In his view of the life of Hercules, it is a mythus of extreme antiquity and great beauty, setting forth the ideal of human perfection, consecrated to the weal of mankind, or rather, in its original form, to that of his own nation. This perfection, according to the ideas of the heroic age, consists in the greatest bodily strength, united with the advantages of mind and soul recognised by that age. Such a hero is, he says, a man; but these noble qualities in him are of divine origin. He is, therefore, the son of the king of the Gods by a mortal mother. To render his perfection the more manifest, the Poet makes him to have a twin brother, the child of a mortal sire. As virtue is not to be learned, Hercules exhibits his strength and courage in infancy; he strangles the snakes, which fills his brother with terror. The character of the hero throughout life, as that of the avenger of injustice and punisher of evil, must exhibit itself in the boy as the wild instinct of nature; and the mythus makes him kill his tutor Linus with a blow of the lyre. When sent away by Amphitryon, he prepares himself, in the stillness and solitude of the shepherd’s life, by feats of strength and courage, for his future task of purifying the earth of violence.

320

“—The number of tasks may not originally have been twelve, though most accounts agree in that number, but they were all of a nature agreeable to the ideas of an heroic age—the destruction of monsters, and bringing home to his own country the valuable productions of other regions. These are, however, regarded by Buttmann as being chiefly allegorical. The Hydra, for instance, he takes to have been meant to represent the evils of democratic anarchy, with its numerous heads, against which, though one may not be able to effect anything, yet the union of even two may suffice to become dominant over it.

“The toils of the hero conclude with the greatest and most rare of all in the heroic age—the conquest over death. This is represented by his descent into the under world, and dragging Cerberus to light is a proof of his victory. In the old mythus, he was made to engage with and wound Hades; and the Alcestis of Euripides exhibits him in conflict with Death. But virtue, to be a useful example, must occasionally succumb to human weakness in the power of the evil principle. Hence, Hercules falls into fits of madness, sent on him by Hera [Juno]; and hence—he becomes the willing slave of Omphale, the fair queen of Lydia, and changes his club and lion’s skin for the distaff and the female robe.

“The mythus concludes most nobly with the assumption of the hero into Olympus. His protecting Deity abandons him to the power of his persevering enemy; his mortal part is consumed by fire, the fiercest of elements; his shade (εἴδωλον), like those of other men, descends to the realms of Hades, while the divine portion himself (αὐτὸς) mounts from the pyre in a thunder-cloud, and the object of Hera’s persecution being now accomplished, espouses youth, the daughter of his reconciled foe.

“Muller (Dorians, vol. i. part ii. ch. 11, 12) is also disposed to view in Hercules a personification of the highest powers of man in the heroic age. He regards him as having been the national hero of the Dorian race, and appropriates to him all the exploits of the hero in Thessaly, Ætolia, and Epirus, which last place he supposes to have been the original scene of the Geryoneia, which was afterwards transformed to the western stream of the ocean. He thinks, however, that the Argives had an ancient hero of perhaps the same name, to whom the Peloponnesus adventures belong, and whom the Dorians combined with their own hero. The servitude to Eurystheus, and the enmity of Hera, he looks on as inventions of the Dorians to justify their own invasion of the Peloponnesus. This critic also proves that the Theban Hercules had nothing to do with the Gods and traditions of the Cadmeians; and he thinks that it was the Dorian Heracleides who introduced the knowledge of him into Thebes, or that he came from Delphi with the worship of Apollo, a Deity with whom, as the tutelar God of the Dorians, he supposes their national hero to have been closely connected.”

321 ix. 324-348.

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FABLE IV.

The Nymph Lotis, pursued by Priapus, in her flight, is changed into a tree. Dryope, going to sacrifice to the Naiads at the same spot, and ignorant of the circumstance, breaks a branch off the tree for her child, which she is carrying with her, and is subjected to a similar transformation. While Iole is relating these circumstances to Alcmena, she is surprised to see her brother Iolaüs restored to youth. The Poet here introduces the prediction of Themis concerning the children of Calirrhoë.

Thus she said; and, moved by the remembrance of her old servant, she heaved a deep sigh. Her daughter-in-law36 addressed her, thus grieving. “Even her form being taken away from one that was an alien to thy blood, affects thee, O mother. What if I were to relate to thee the wondrous fate of my own sister? although tears and sorrow hinder me, and forbid me to speak. Dryope, the most remarkable for her beauty of the Œchalian maids, was the only daughter of her mother (for my father had me by another wife). Deprived of her virginity, and having suffered violence from the God that owns Delphi and Delos, Andræmon married her, and he was esteemed fortunate in his wife.

“There is a lake that gives the appearance of a sloping shore, by its shelving border; groves of myrtle crown the upper part. Hither did Dryope come, unsuspecting of her fate; and, that thou mayst be the more indignant at her lot, she was about to offer garlands to the Nymphs. In her bosom, too, she was bearing her son, who had not yet completed his first year, a pleasing burden; and she was nursing him, with the help of her warm milk. Not far from the lake was blooming a watery lotus that vied with the Tyrian tints, in hope of future berries. Dryope had plucked thence some flowers, which she might give as playthings to her child; and I, too, was just on the point of doing the same; for I was present. I saw bloody drops fall from the flower, and the boughs shake with a tremulous quivering; for, as the swains say, now, at length, too late in their information, the Nymph Lotis, flying from the lust of Priapus,37 had transferred her changed form into this plant, her name being still preserved.

322 ix. 349-383.

“Of this my sister was ignorant. When, in her alarm, she is endeavouring to retire and to depart, having adored the Nymphs, her feet are held fast by a root. She strives hard to tear them up, but she moves nothing except her upper parts. From below, a bark slowly grows up, and, by degrees, it envelopes the whole of her groin. When she sees this, endeavouring to tear her hair with her hands, she fills her hand with leaves, for leaves are covering all her head. But the boy Amphissos (for his grandfather Eurytus gave him this name) feels his mother’s breast growing hard; nor does the milky stream follow upon his sucking. I was a spectator of thy cruel destiny, and I could give thee no help, my sister; and yet, as long as I could, I delayed the growing trunk and branches by embracing them; and, I confess it, I was desirous to be hidden beneath the same bark. Behold! her husband Andræmon and her most wretched father38 appear, and inquire for Dryope: on their inquiring for Dryope, I show them the lotus. They give kisses to the wood still warm with life, and, extended on the ground, they cling to the roots of their own tree. And now, dear sister, thou hadst nothing except thy face, that was not tree. Tears drop upon the leaves made out of thy changed body; and, while she can, and while her mouth gives passage to her voice, she pours forth such complaints as these into the air:—

“‘If any credit is to be given to the wretched, I swear by the Deities that I merited not this cruel usage. I suffer punishment without a crime. I lived in innocence; if I am speaking false, withered away, may I lose the leaves which I bear, and, cut down with axes, may I be burnt. Yet take this infant away from the branches of his mother, and give him to his nurse; and often, beneath my tree, make him drink milk, and beneath my tree let him play; and, when he shall be able to speak, make him salute his mother, and let him in sadness say, ‘Beneath this trunk is my mother concealed.’ Yet let him dread the ponds, and let him not pluck flowers from the trees; and let him think that all shrubs are the bodies of Goddesses. Farewell, dear husband; and thou, sister; and, thou my father; in whom, if there is any affection towards me, protect my branches from the wounds of the sharp pruning-knife, 323 ix. 383-410. and from the bite of the cattle. And since it is not allowed me to bend down towards you, stretch your limbs up hither, and come near for my kisses, while they can still be reached, and lift up my little son. More I cannot say. For the soft bark is now creeping along my white neck, and I am being enveloped at the top of my head. Remove your hands from my eyes;39 and, without your help, let the bark, closing over them, cover my dying eyes.’ Her mouth ceased at once to speak, at once to exist; and long after her body was changed, were her newly formed branches still warm.”

And now, while Iole was relating the wretched fate of her sister, and while Alcmena was drying away the tears of the daughter of Eurytus, with her fingers applied to her face, and still she herself was weeping, a novel event hushed all their sorrow; for Iolaüs40 stood at the lofty threshold, almost a boy again, and covering his cheeks with a down almost imperceptible, having his visage changed to that of the first years of manhood. Hebe, the daughter of Juno had granted him this favour, overcome by the solicitations of her husband. When she was about to swear that she would hereafter grant such favours to no one, Themis did not allow her. “For now,” said she, “Thebes is commencing civil warfare,41 and Capaneus will not be able to be overcome, except by Jupiter, and the two brothers will engage in bloody combat, and the earth dividing, the prophet Amphiaraüs will see his destined shades, while he still lives;42 and the son avenging one parent, by the death of the other parent, will be dutiful and wicked in the same action; and confounded by his misfortunes, deprived both of his reason and of his home, he will be persecuted both by the features of the 324 ix. 410-424. Eumenides, and by the ghost of his mother; until his wife shall call upon him for the fatal gold, and the Phegeïan sword shall stab the side of their kinsman. Then, at last, shall Calirrhoë, the daughter of Acheloüs, suppliantly ask of mighty Jupiter these years of youth for her infant sons. Jupiter, concerned for them, will prescribe for them the peculiar gift of her who is both his step-daughter and his daughter-in-law,43 and will make them men in their years of childhood.”

When Themis, foreseeing the future, had said these words with prophetic voice, the Gods above murmured in varying discourse; and the complaint was,44 why it might not be allowed others to grant the same gifts. Aurora, the daughter of Pallas, complained of the aged years of her husband; the gentle Ceres complained that Iäsion45 was growing grey; Mulciber demanded for Ericthonius a life to live over again; a concern for the future influenced Venus, too, and she made an offer to renew the years of Anchises.

EXPLANATION.

The adventure of Dryope is one of those narratives which have no connexion with the main story which the Poet is relating, and, if really founded on fact, it would almost baffle any attempt to guess at its origin. It is, most probably, built entirely upon the name of the damsel who was said to have met with the untimely and unnatural fate so well depicted by the Poet.

The name of Dryope comes, very probably, from the Greek word Δρῦς, ‘an oak,’ which tree has a considerable resemblance to the lotus tree. If we seek for an historical solution, perhaps Dryope was punished for attempting to profane a tree consecrated to the Gods, a crime of which Erisicthon was guilty, and for which he was so signally punished. All the particulars that we know of Dryope are, that she was the daughter of Eurytus, and the sister of Iole; and that she was the wife of Andræmon.

Ovid says, that while Iole was relating this adventure to Alcmena, Iolaüs, who, according to some, was the son of Hercules, by Hebe, after his apotheosis, and, according to others, was the son of Iphiclus, the brother of Hercules, became young, at the intercession of that Goddess, who had 325 ix. 425-426. appeased Juno. This was, probably, no other than a method of accounting for the great age to which and individual of the name of Iolaüs had lived.

Ovid then passes on to the surprising change in the children of Calirrhoë, the outline of which the story may be thus explained:—Amphiaraüs, foreseeing, (by the aid of the prophetic art, as we learn from Homer, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny and Statius), that the civil wars of Thebes, his native country, would prove fatal to him, retired from the court of Adrastus, King of Argos, whose sister he had married, to conceal himself in some place of safety. The Argives, to whom the oracle had declared, that Thebes could not be taken unless they had Amphiaraüs with their troops, searched for him in every direction; but their labour would have been in vain, if Eriphyle, his wife, gained by a necklace of great value, which her brother Adrastus gave her, had not discovered where he was. Discovered in his retreat, Amphiaraüs accompanied the Argives, and while, according to the rules of the soothsaying art, he was observing a flight of birds, in order to derive an augury from it, his horses fell down a precipice, and he lost his life. Statius and other writers, to describe this event in a poetical manner, say that the earth opened and swallowed up him and his chariot.

Amphiaraüs had engaged his son Alcmæon, in case he lost his life in the war, to kill Eriphyle; which injunction he performed as soon as he heard of the death of his father. Alcmæon, going to the court of Phegeus, to receive expiation for his crime, and to deliver himself from the persecution of the Furies, or, in other words, by the ceremonial of expiation, to tranquillize his troubled conscience, that prince received him with kindness, and gave him his daughter Alphesibæa in marriage. Alcmæon made her a present of his mother Eriphyle’s necklace; but, having afterwards repudiated her to marry Calirrhoë, or Arsinoë, the daughter of Acheloüs, he went to demand the necklace from his brothers-in-law, who assassinated him. Amphiterus and Acarnanus, who were his sons by Calirrhoë, revenged the death of their father when they were very young; and this it is, possibly, which is meant by the Poet when he says that the Goddess Hebe augmented the number of their years, the purpose being, to put them speedily in a position to enable them to avenge the death of their father.

Thus we see, that Iolaüs was, like Æson, who also renewed his youth, a person who, in his old age, gave marks of unusual vigour; while in Amphiterus and Arcananus, to whom Hebe added years, are depicted two young men, who, by a deed of blood, exacted retribution for the death of their father, at a time when they were in general only looked upon as mere children.

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FABLE V.

Byblis falls in love with her brother Caunus, and her passion is inflamed to such a degree, that he is obliged to leave his native country, to avoid any encouragement of her incestuous flame. On this, she follows him; and, in her way through Caria, she is changed into a fountain.

Every God has46 some one to favour; and their jarring discord 326 ix. 428-457. is increasing by their various interests, until Jupiter opens his mouth, and says, “O, if you have any regard for me, to what rash steps are you proceeding? Does any one of you seem to himself so powerful as to overcome even the Fates? By the Fates has Iolaüs returned to those years which he has spent; by the Fates ought the sons of Calirrhoë to become young men, and not by ambition or by dint of arms. And do you, too, endure this as well with more contented mind, for even me do the Fates govern; could I but change them, declining years should not be making my son Æacus to bend beneath them; and Rhadamanthus should have the everlasting flower of age, together with my son, Minos, who is now looked down upon on account of the grievous weight of old age, and does not reign with the dignity with which once he did.”

The words of Jupiter influenced the Divinities; and no one continued to complain when they saw Rhadamanthus and Æacus, and Minos, weary with years; Minos, who, when he was in the prime of life, had alarmed great nations with his very name. Then, however, he was enfeebled by age, and was alarmed by Miletus, the son of Deione,47 exulting in the strength of youth, and in Phœbus as his sire; and though believing that he was aiming at his kingdom, still he did not dare to drive him away from his native home. Of thy own accord, Miletus, thou didst fly, and in the swift ship thou didst pass over the Ægean waters, and in the land of Asia didst build a city, bearing the name of its founder. Here Cyane, the daughter of the river Mæander, that so often returns to the same place, while she was following the windings of her father’s bank, of a body excelling in beauty, being known by thee, brought forth a double offspring, Byblis, with Caunus, her brother.

Byblis is an example that damsels only ought to love what it is allowed them to love; Byblis, seized with a passion for her brother, the descendant of Apollo, loved him not as a sister loves a brother, nor in such manner as she ought. At first, indeed, she understands nothing of the flame, and she 327 ix. 457-488. does not think48 that she is doing wrong in so often giving him kisses, and in throwing her arms round the neck of her brother; and for a long time she herself is deceived, by this resemblance of natural affection. By degrees this affection degenerates, and decked out, she comes to see her brother, and is too anxious to appear beautiful; and if there is any woman there more beautiful, she envies her. But, as yet she is not fully discovered to herself, and under that flame conceives no wishes; but still, inwardly she is agitated. At one moment she calls him sweetheart,49 at another, she hates the mention of his relationship; and now she prefers that he should call her Byblis, rather than sister. Still, while awake, she does not dare admit any criminal hopes into her mind; but when dissolved in soft sleep, she often sees the object which she is in love with. She seems to be even embracing her brother, and she blushes, though she is lying buried in sleep. Slumber departs; for a long time she is silent, and she recalls to memory the appearance of her dream, and thus she speaks with wavering mind:

“Ah, wretched me! What means this vision of the silent night? How far am I from wishing it real. Why have I seen this dream? He is, indeed, beautiful, even to envious eyes. He pleases me, too; and were he not my brother, I could love him, and he would be worthy of me. But it is my misfortune that I am his sister. So long as I strive, while awake, to commit no such attempt, let sleep often return with the like appearance. No witness is there in sleep; and yet there is the resemblance of the delight. O Venus and winged Cupid, together with thy voluptuous mother, how great the joys I experienced! how substantial the transport which affected me! How I lay dissolved in delight throughout my whole marrow! How pleasing to remember it; although short-lived was that pleasure, and the night sped onward rapidly, and was envious of my attempts at bliss. Oh, could I only be united to thee, by changing my name, how happily, Caunus, could I become the daughter-in-law of thy father! how 328 ix. 488-516. happily, Caunus, couldst thou become the son-in-law of my father! O, that the Gods would grant that all things were in common with us, except our ancestors. Would that thou wast more nobly born than myself. For this reason then, most beauteous one, thou wilt make some stranger, whom I know not, a mother; but to me, who have unhappily got the same parents as thyself, thou wilt be nothing more than a brother. That tie alone we shall have, which bars all else. What, then, do my visions avail me? And what weight have dreams? And do dreams have any weight? The Gods fare better; for the Gods have their own sisters in marriage. Thus Saturn married Ops,50 related to him by blood; Ocean Tethys, the ruler of Olympus Juno. The Gods above have their privileges. Why do I attempt to reduce human customs to the rule of divine ordinances, and those so different? Either this forbidden flame shall be expelled from my heart, or if I cannot effect that, I pray that I may first perish, and that when dead I may be laid out on my bed, and that my brother may give me kisses as I lie. And besides, this matter requires the inclination of us both; suppose it pleases me; to him it will seem to be a crime. But the sons of Æolus51 did not shun the embraces of their sisters. But whence have I known of these? Why have I furnished myself with these precedents? Whither am I hurried onward? Far hence begone, ye lawless flames! and let not my brother be loved by me, but as it is lawful for a sister to love him. But yet, if he had been first seized with a passion for me, perhaps I might have indulged his desires. Am I then, myself, to court him, whom I would not have rejected, had he courted me? And canst thou speak out? And canst thou confess it? Love will compel me. I can. Or if shame shall restrain my lips, a private letter shall confess the latent flame.”

This thought pleases her, this determines her wavering 329 ix. 516-546. mind. She raises herself on her side, and leaning on her left elbow, she says, “He shall see it; let me confess my frantic passion. Ah, wretched me! How am I degrading myself! What flame is my mind now kindling!” And then, with trembling hand, she puts together the words well weighed. Her right hand holds the iron pen, the other, clean wax tablets.52 She begins, and then she hesitates; she writes, and then corrects what is written; she marks, and then scratches out; she alters, and condemns, and approves; and one while she throws them down when taken up, and at another time, she takes them up again, when thrown aside. What she would have, she knows not. Whatever she seems on the point of doing, is not to her taste. In her features are assurance mingled with shame. The word ‘sister’ is written; it seems as well to efface the word ‘sister,’ and then to write such words as these upon the smoothed wax: “Thy lover wishes thee that health which she, herself, is not to enjoy, unless thou shalt grant it. I am ashamed! Oh, I am ashamed to disclose my name! and shouldst thou inquire what it is I wish; without my name53 could I wish my cause to be pleaded, and that I might not be known as Byblis, until the hopes of enjoying my desires were realized. There might have been as a proof to thee of my wounded heart, my pale complexion, my falling away, my downcast looks, and my eyes often wet with tears, sighs, too, fetched without any seeming cause; frequent embraces too, and kisses, which, if perchance thou didst observe, could not be deemed to be those of a sister. Still I, myself, though I had a grievous wound in my soul, and although there was a raging fire within, have done everything, as the Gods are my witnesses, that at last I might be cured; and long, in my wretchedness, have I struggled to escape the ruthless weapon of Cupid; and I have endured more hardships than thou wouldst believe that a maiden could endure.

“Vanquished at length, I am forced to own my passion; and with timorous prayers, to entreat thy aid. Thou alone canst 330 ix. 546-579. save, thou destroy, one who loves thee. Choose which thou wilt do. She is not thy enemy who begs this; but one who, though most nearly connected with thee, desires to be still more closely connected, and to be united to thee in a nearer tie. Let aged men be acquainted with ordinances, and make inquiry what is lawful, and what is wicked, and what is proper; and let them employ themselves in considering the laws. A passion that dares all consequences is suited to our years. As yet, we know not what is lawful, and we believe that all things are lawful, and so follow the example of the great Gods. Neither a severe father, nor regard for character, nor fear, shall restrain us, if only the cause for fearing is removed. Under a brother’s name will we conceal our stolen joys so sweet. I have the liberty of conversing with thee in private; and even before others do we give embraces, and exchange kisses. How little is it that is wanting! do have pity on the love of her who confesses it, and who would not confess it, did not extreme passion compel her; and merit not to be inscribed on my tomb as the cause of my death.”

The filled tablets fall short for her hand, as it vainly inscribes such words as these, and the last line is placed in the margin.54 At once she seals up her own condemnation, with the impress of a signet, which she wets with her tears, for the moisture has deserted her tongue. Filled with shame, she then calls one of her male domestics, and gently addressing him in timorous tones, she said, “Carry these, most trusty one, to my,” and, after a long pause, she added, “brother.” While she was delivering them, the tablets, slipping from her hands, fell down. She was shocked by this omen, but still she sent them. The servant, having got a fit opportunity, goes to her brother and delivers the secret writing. The Mæandrian youth,55 seized with sudden anger, throws away the tablets so received, when he has read a part; and, with difficulty withholding his hands from the face of the trembling servant, he says, “Fly hence, O thou accursed pander to forbidden lust, who shouldst have given me satisfaction by thy death, if it was not that thy destruction would bring disgrace on my character.” Frightened, he hastens 331 ix. 579-609. away, and reports to his mistress the threatening expressions of Caunus. Thou, Byblis, on hearing of his refusal, turnest pale, and thy breast, beset with an icy chill, is struck with alarm; yet when thy senses return, so, too, does thy frantic passion return, and thy tongue with difficulty utters such words as these, the air being struck by thy accents:

“And deservedly am I thus treated; for why, in my rashness, did I make the discovery of this wound? why have I so speedily committed words to a hasty letter, which ought rather to have been concealed? The feelings of his mind ought first to have been tried beforehand by me, with ambiguous expressions. Lest he should not follow me in my course, I ought, with some part of my sail56 only, to have observed what kind of a breeze it was, and to have scudded over the sea in safety; whereas, now, I have filled my canvass with winds before untried. I am driven upon rocks in consequence; and sunk, I am buried beneath the whole ocean, and my sails have now no retreat. And besides, was I not forbidden, by unerring omens, to indulge my passion, at the time when the waxen tablets fell, as I ordered him to deliver them, and made my hopes sink to the ground? and ought not either the day to have been changed, or else my whole intentions; but rather, of the two,57 the day? Some God himself warned me, and gave me unerring signs, if I had not been deranged; and yet I ought to have spoken out myself, and not to have committed myself to writing, and personally I ought to have discovered my passion; then he would have seen my tears, then he would have seen the features of her who loved him; I might have given utterance to more than what the letter contained. I might have thrown my arms around his reluctant neck, and have embraced his feet, and lying on the ground, I might have begged for life; and if I had been repelled, I might have seemed on the point of death. All this, I say, I might then have done; if each of these things could not singly have softened his obdurate feelings, yet all of them might.

“Perhaps, too, there may be some fault in the servant that 332 ix. 609-641. was sent. He did not wait on him at a convenient moment; he did not choose, I suppose, a fitting time; nor did he request both the hour and his attention to be disengaged. ’Tis this that has undone me; for he was not born of a tigress, nor does he carry in his breast hard flints, or solid iron, or adamant; nor yet did he suck the milk of a lioness. He will yet be won. Again must he be attacked.58 And no weariness will I admit of in the accomplishment of my design, so long as this breath of mine shall remain. For the best thing (if I could only recall what has been destined) would have been, not to have made the attempt; the next best thing is, to urge the accomplishment of what is begun; for he cannot (suppose I were to relinquish my design) ever be unmindful of this my attempt; and because I have desisted, I shall appear to have desired for but an instant, or even to have been trying him, and to have solicited him with the intention to betray; or, at least, I shall be thought not to have been overcome by this God, who with such intensity now burns, and has burnt my breast, but rather by lust. In fine, I cannot now be guiltless of a wicked deed; I have both written to him, and I have solicited him; my inclination has been defiled. Though I were to add nothing more, I cannot be pronounced innocent: as to what remains, ’twill add much to the gratifying of my wishes, but little to my criminality.”

Thus she says; and (so great is the unsteadiness of her wavering mind) though she is loath to try him, she has a wish to try him, and she exceeds all bounds, and, to her misery, exposes herself to be often repulsed. At length, when there is now no end to this, he flies from his country and the commission of this crime, and founds a new city59 in a foreign land. But then, they say that the daughter of Miletus, in her sadness, was bereft of all understanding. Then did she tear her garments away from her breast, and in her frenzy beat her arms. And now she is openly raving, and she proclaims the unlawful hopes of unnatural lust. Deprived of these hopes, she deserts her native land, and her hated home, and follows the steps of her flying brother. And as the Ismarian60 Bacchanals, 333 ix. 641-664. son of Semele, aroused by thy thyrsus, celebrate thy triennial festivals, as they return, no otherwise did the Bubasian matrons61 see Byblis howling over the wide fields; leaving which, she wandered through the country of the Carians, and the warlike Leleges,62 and Lycia.

And now she has left behind Cragos,63 and Lymira,64 and the waves of Xanthus, and the mountain in which the Chimæra had fire in its middle parts, the breast and the face of a lioness, and the tail of a serpent. The woods at length fail thee; when thou, Byblis, wearied with following him, dost fall down, and laying thy tresses upon the hard ground, art silent, and dost press the fallen leaves with thy face. Often, too, do the Lelegeïan Nymphs endeavour to raise her in their tender arms; often do they advise her to curb her passion, and they apply consolation to a mind insensible to their advice. Silent does Byblis lie, and she tears the green herbs with her nails, and waters the grass with the stream of her tears. They say that the Naiads placed beneath these tears a channel which could never become dry; and what greater gift had they to bestow? Immediately, as drops from the cut bark of the pitch tree, or as the viscid bitumen distils from the impregnated earth, or as water which has frozen with the cold, at the approach of Favonius, gently blowing, melts away in the sun, so is Byblis, the descendant of Phœbus, dissolving in her tears, changed into a fountain, which even now, in those vallies, bears the name of its mistress, and flows beneath a gloomy oak.

EXPLANATION.

This shocking story has been also recounted by Antoninus Liberalis and both he and Ovid have embellished it with circumstances, which are the fruit of a lively imagination. They make Byblis travel over several countries in search of her brother, who flies from her extravagant passion, and they both agree in tracing her to Caria. There, according to Antoninus Liberalis, she was transformed into a Hamadryad, just as she was on 334 ix. 665-668. the point of throwing herself from the summit of a mountain. Ovid, on the other hand, says that she was changed into a fountain, which afterwards bore her name.

It is, however, most probable, that if the story is founded on truth, the whole of the circumstances happened in Caria; since we learn, both from Apollodorus and Pausanias, that Miletus, her father, went from the island of Crete to lead a colony into Caria, when he conquered a city, to which he gave his own name. Pausanias says, that all the men of the city being killed during the siege, the conquerors married their wives and daughters. Cyanea, the daughter of Mæander, fell to the share of Miletus, and Caunus and Byblis were the offspring of that marriage. Byblis, having conceived a criminal passion for her brother, he was obliged to leave his father’s court, that he might avoid her importunities; upon which she died of grief. As she often went to weep by a fountain, which was outside of the town, those who related the adventure, magnified it, by stating that she was changed into the fountain, which, after her death, bore her name. We are informed by Photius, on the authority of the historian Conon, that it was Caunus who fell in love with Byblis, and that she hanged herself upon a walnut tree. Ovid also, in his ‘Art of Love,’ follows the tradition that she hanged herself. ‘Arsit et est laqueo fortiter ulta nefas.’ Miletus lived in the time of the first Minos, and, according to some writers, married his daughter Acallis; but, having disagreed with his father-in-law, he was obliged to leave Crete, and retired to Caria.

The Persians had certain state ordinances, by which their monarchs were enjoined to marry their own sisters; and, as Asia Minor was overrun by them at the time when Crœsus was conquered by Cyrus, it is possible that the story of Byblis and Caunus may have originated in the disgust which the natives felt for their conquerors, and as a covert reproach to them for sanctioning alliances of so incestuous a nature. While Ovid enters into details in the story, which trench on the rules of modesty and decorum, the moral of the tale, aided by some of his precepts, is not uninstructive as a warning to youth to learn betimes how to regulate the passions.

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FABLE VI.

Ligdus commands his wife Telethusa, who is pregnant, to destroy the infant, should it prove to be a girl; on which, the Goddess Isis appears to her in a dream, and, forbidding her to obey, promises her her protection. Telethusa is delivered of a daughter, who is called Iphis, and passes for a son. Iphis is afterwards married to Ianthe, on which, Isis, to reward her mother’s piety, transforms her into a man.

The fame of this new prodigy would, perhaps, have filled the hundred cities of Crete, if Crete had not lately produced a nearer wonder of her own, in the change of Iphis.

For once on a time the Phæstian land65 adjoining to the 335 ix. 668-691. Gnossian kingdom produced one Ligdus, of obscure name, a man of the freeborn class of common people. Nor were his means any greater than his rank, but his life and his honour were untainted. He startled the ears of his wife in her pregnancy, with these words, when her lying-in was near at hand: “Two things there are which I wish for; that thou mayst be delivered with very little pain, and that thou mayst bring forth a male child. The other alternative is a cause of greater trouble, and providence has denied us means for bringing up a female. The thing I abominate; but if a female should, by chance, be brought forth at thy delivery, (I command it with reluctance, forgive me, natural affection) let it be put to death.” Thus he said, and they bathed their faces with tears streaming down; both he who commanded, and she to whom the commands were given. But yet Telethusa incessantly urged her husband, with fruitless entreaties, not to confine his hopes within a compass so limited. But Ligdus’s resolution was fixed.

And now was she hardly able to bear her womb big with the burden ripe for birth; when in the middle of the night, under the form of a vision, the daughter of Inachus, attended by a train of her votaries, either stood, or seemed to stand, before her bed. The horns of the moon were upon her forehead, with ears of corn with their bright golden colour, and the royal ornament of the diadem; with her was the barking Anubis,66 and the holy Bubastis,67 and the particoloured Apis;68 he, too, who suppresses69 his voice, and with 336 ix. 691-711. his finger enjoins silence. There were the sistra too, and Osiris,70 never enough sought for; and the foreign serpent,71 filled with soporiferous poison. When thus the Goddess addressed her, as though roused from her sleep, and seeing all distinctly: “O Telethusa, one of my votaries, lay aside thy grievous cares, and evade the commands of thy husband; and do not hesitate, when Lucina shall have given thee ease by delivery, to bring up the child, whatever it shall be. I am a befriending Goddess,72 and, when invoked, I give assistance; and thou shalt not complain that thou hast worshipped an ungrateful Divinity.”

Thus she advises her, and then retires from her chamber. The Cretan matron arises joyful from her bed; and suppliantly raising her pure hands towards the stars of heaven, prays that her vision may be fulfilled. When her pains increased, and her burden forced itself into the light, and a girl was born to the father unaware of it, the mother ordered it to be brought up, pretending it was a boy; and the thing gained belief, nor was any one but the nurse acquainted with the fact. The father performed his vows, and gave the child the name of its grandfather. The grandfather had been called Iphis. The mother rejoiced in that name because it was common to both sexes, nor would she be deceiving73 any one by it. Her deception lay unperceived under this fraud, the result of natural affection. The 337 ix. 711-743. child’s dress was that of a boy; the face such, that, whether you gave it to a girl or to a boy, either would be beautiful. In the meantime the third year had now succeeded the tenth, when her father, O Iphis, promised to thee, in marriage, the yellow-haired Iänthe, who was a virgin the most commended among all the women of Phæstus, for the endowments of her beauty; the daughter of the Dictæan Telestes. Equal was their age, their beauty equal; and they received their first instruction, the elements suited to their age, from the same preceptor.

Love, in consequence, touches the inexperienced breasts of them both, and inflicts on each an equal wound; but how different are their hopes! Iänthe awaits the time of their union, and of the ceremonial agreed upon, and believes that she, whom she thinks to be a man, will be her husband. Iphis is in love with her whom she despairs to be able to enjoy, and this very thing increases her flame; and, herself a maid, she burns with passion for a maid. And, with difficulty, suppressing her tears, she says, “What issue of my love awaits me, whom the anxieties unknown to any before, and so unnatural, of an unheard-of passion, have seized upon? if the Gods would spare me, (they ought to have destroyed me, and if they would not have destroyed me), at least they should have inflicted some natural evil, and one common to the human race. Passion for a cow does not inflame a cow, nor does that for mares inflame the mares. The ram inflames the ewes; its own female follows the buck. And so do birds couple; and among all animals, no female is seized with passion for a female. Would that I did not exist.

“Yet, lest Crete might not be the producer of all kinds of prodigies, the daughter of the Sun loved a bull; that is to say, a female loved a male. My passion, if I confess the truth, is more extravagant than that. Still she pursued the hopes of enjoyment; still, by a subtle contrivance, and under the form of a cow, did she couple with the bull, and her paramour was one that might be deceived. But though the ingenuity of the whole world were to centre here, though Dædalus himself were to fly back again with his waxen wings, what could he do? Could he, by his skilful arts, make me from a maiden into a youth? or could he transform 338 ix. 743-772. thee, Iänthe? But why dost thou not fortify thy mind, and recover thyself, Iphis? And why not shake off this passion, void of all reason, and senseless as it is? Consider what it was thou wast born (unless thou art deceiving thyself as well), and pursue that which is allowable, and love that which, as a woman, thou oughtst to love. Hope it is that produces, Hope it is that nourishes love. This, the very case itself deprives thee of. No guard is keeping thee away from her dear embrace; no care of a watchful husband, no father’s severity; does not she herself deny thy solicitations. And yet she cannot be enjoyed by thee; nor, were everything possible done, couldst thou be blessed; not, though Gods and men were to do their utmost. And now, too, no portion of my desires is baffled, and the compliant Deities have granted me whatever they were able, and what I desire, my father wishes, she herself wishes, and so does my destined father-in-law; but nature, more powerful than all these, wills it not; she alone is an obstacle to me. Lo, the longed-for time approaches, and the wedding-day is at hand, when Iänthe should be mine; and yet she will not fall to my lot. In the midst of water, I shall be athirst. Why, Juno, guardian of the marriage rites, and why, Hymenæus, do you come to this ceremonial, where there is not the person who should marry the wife, and where both of us females, we are coupled in wedlock?”

After saying these words, she closes her lips. And no less does the other maid burn, and she prays thee, Hymenæus, to come quickly. Telethusa, dreading the same thing that she desires, at one time puts off the time of the wedding, and then raises delays, by feigning illness. Often, by way of excuse, she pretends omens and visions. But now she has exhausted all the resources of fiction; and the time for the marriage so long delayed is now at hand, and only one day remains; whereon she takes off the fillets for the hair from her own head and from that of her daughter,74 and embracing the altar with dishevelled locks, she says, “O Isis, thou who dost inhabit 339 ix. 772-795. Parætonium,75 and the Mareotic fields,76 and Pharos,77 and the Nile divided into its seven horns, give aid, I beseech thee, and ease me of my fears. Thee, Goddess, thee, I once beheld, and these thy symbols; and all of them I recognized; both thy attendants, and thy torches, and the sound of the sistra, and I noted thy commands with mindful care. That this girl78 now sees the light, that I, myself, am not punished, is the result of thy counsel, and thy admonition; pity us both, and aid us with thy assistance.”

Tears followed her words. The Goddess seemed to move, (and she really did move) her altars; and the doors of her temple shook. Her horns, too,79 shone, resembling those of the moon, and the tinkling sistrum sounded. The mother departs from the temple, not free from concern indeed, still pleased with this auspicious omen. Iphis follows her, her companion as she goes, with longer strides than she had been wont; her fairness does not continue on her face; both her strength is increased, and her features are more stern; and shorter is the length of her scattered locks. There is more vigour, also, than she had as a female. And now thou art a male, who so lately wast a female. Bring offerings to the temple, and rejoice with no hesitating confidence. They do bring their offerings to the temple. They add, too, an inscription; the inscription contains one short line: “Iphis, a male, offers the presents, which, as a female, he had vowed.”

The following morn has disclosed the wide world with the rays of the Sun; when Venus, and Juno, and Hymenæus, 340 ix. 795-796. repair to the social fires80; and Iphis, now a youth, gains his dear Iänthe.

EXPLANATION.

The story of Iphis being changed from a young woman into a man, of which Ovid lays the scene in the isle of Crete, is one of those facts upon which ancient history is entirely silent. Perhaps, the origin of the story was a disguise of a damsel in male dress, carried on, for family reasons, even to the very point of marriage; or it may have been based upon an account of some remarkable instance of androgynous formation.

Ovid may possibly have invented the story himself, merely as a vehicle for showing how the Deities recompense piety and strict obedience to their injunctions.

341

BOOK THE TENTH.

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FABLE I.

Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, while sporting in the fields, with other Nymphs, is bitten by a serpent, which causes her death. After having mourned for her, Orpheus resolves to go down to the Infernal Regions in quest of her. Pluto and the Fates consent to her return, on condition that Orpheus shall not look on her till he is out of their dominions. His curiosity prevailing, he neglects this injunction, on which she is immediately snatched away from him, beyond the possibility of recovery. Upon this occasion, the Poet relates the story of a shepherd, who was turned into a rock by a look of Cerberus; and that of Olenus and Lethæa, who were transformed into stones.

Thence Hymenæus, clad in a saffron-coloured1 robe, passed through the unmeasured tract of air, and directed his course to the regions of the Ciconians2, and, in vain, was invoked by the voice of Orpheus. He presented himself indeed, but he brought with him neither auspicious words, nor joyful looks, nor yet a happy omen. The torch, too, which he held, was hissing with a smoke that brought tears to the eyes, and as it was, it found no flames amid its waving. The issue was more disastrous than the omens; for the newmade bride, while she was strolling along the grass, attended by a train of Naiads, was killed, having received the sting of a serpent on her ancle.

After the Rhodopeïan bard had sufficiently bewailed her in the upper realms of air, that he might try the shades below as well, he dared to descend to Styx by the Tænarian gate, and amid the phantom inhabitants and ghosts that had enjoyed 342 x. 15-47. the tomb, he went to Persephone, and him that held these unpleasing realms, the Ruler of the shades; and touching his strings in concert with his words, he thus said, “O ye Deities of the world that lies beneath the earth, to which we all come at last, each that is born to mortality; if I may be allowed, and you suffer me to speak the truth, laying aside3 the artful expressions of a deceitful tongue; I have not descended hither from curiosity to see dark Tartarus, nor to bind the threefold throat of the Medusæan monster, bristling with serpents. But my wife was the cause of my coming; into whom a serpent, trodden upon by her, diffused its poison, and cut short her growing years. I was wishful to be able to endure this, and I will not deny that I have endeavoured to do so. Love has proved the stronger. That God is well known in the regions above. Whether he be so here, too, I am uncertain; but yet I imagine that even here he is; and if the story of the rape of former days is not untrue, ’twas love that united you two together. By these places filled with horrors, by this vast Chaos, and by the silence of these boundless realms, I entreat you, weave over again the quick-spun thread of the life of Eurydice.

“To you we all belong; and having staid but a little while above, sooner or later we all hasten to one abode. Hither are we all hastening. This is our last home; and you possess the most lasting dominion over the human race. She, too, when, in due season she shall have completed her allotted number of years, will be under your sway. The enjoyment of her I beg as a favour. But if the Fates deny me this privilege in behalf of my wife, I have determined that I will not return. Triumph in the death of us both.”

As he said such things, and touched the strings to his words, the bloodless spirits wept. Tantalus did not catch at the retreating water, and the wheel of Ixion stood still, as though in amazement; the birds did not tear the liver of Tityus; and the granddaughters of Belus paused at their urns; thou, too, Sisyphus, didst seat thyself on thy stone. The story is, that then, for the first time, the cheeks of the Eumenides, overcome by his music, were wet with tears; nor could the royal consort, nor he who rules the infernal regions, endure 343 x. 47-75. to deny him his request; and they called for Eurydice. She was among the shades newly arrived, and she advanced with a slow pace, by reason of her wound.

The Rhodopeïan hero receives her, and, at the same time, this condition, that he turn not back his eyes until he has passed the Avernian vallies, or else that the grant will be revoked. The ascending path is mounted in deep silence, steep, dark, and enveloped in deepening gloom. And now they were not far from the verge of the upper earth. He, enamoured, fearing lest she should flag, and impatient to behold her, turned his eyes; and immediately she sank back again. She, hapless one! both stretching out her arms, and struggling to be grasped, and to grasp him, caught nothing but the fleeting air. And now, dying a second time, she did not at all complain of her husband; for why should she complain of being beloved? And now she pronounced the last farewell, which scarcely did he catch with his ears; and again was she hurried back to the same place.

No otherwise was Orpheus amazed at this twofold death of his wife, than he who, trembling, beheld the three necks4 of the dog, the middle one supporting chains; whom fear did not forsake, before his former nature deserted him, as stone gathered over his body: and than Olenus,5 who took on himself the crime of another, and was willing to appear guilty; and than thou, unhappy Lethæa, confiding in thy beauty; breasts, once most united, now rocks, which the watery Ida supports. The ferryman drove him away entreating, and, in vain, desiring again to cross the stream. Still, for seven days, in squalid guise6 did he sit on the banks without the gifts of Ceres. Vexation, 344 x. 75-85. and sorrow of mind, and tears were his sustenance. Complaining that the Deities of Erebus7 were cruel, he betook himself to lofty Rhodope, and Hæmus,8 buffeted by the North winds. The third Titan had now ended the year bounded by the Fishes of the ocean;9 and Orpheus had avoided all intercourse with woman, either because it had ended in misfortune to him, or because he had given a promise to that effect. Yet a passion possessed many a female to unite herself to the bard, and many a one grieved when repulsed. He also was the first adviser of the people of Thrace to transfer their affections to tender youths; and, on this side of manhood, to enjoy the short spring of life, and its early flowers.

EXPLANATION.

Though Ovid has separated the adventures of Orpheus, whose death he does not relate till the beginning of the eleventh Book, we will here shortly enter upon an examination of some of the more important points of his history.

As, in his time, Poetry and Music were in a very low state of perfection, and as he excelled in both of those arts, it was said that he was the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope; and it was added, that he charmed lions and tigers, and made even the trees sensible of the melodious tones of his lyre. These were mere hyperbolical expressions, which signified the wondrous charms of his eloquence and of his music combined, which he employed in cultivating the genius of a savage and uncouth people. Some conjecture that this personage originally came from Asia into Thrace, and suppose that he, together with Linus and Eumolpus, brought poetry and music into Greece, the use of which, till then, was unknown in that country; and that they introduced, at the same time, the worship of Ceres, Mars, and the orgies of Bacchus, which, from him who instituted them, received their name of ‘Orphica.’ Orpheus, too, is supposed to have united the office of high priest with that of king. Horace styles him the interpreter of the Gods; and he was said to have interposed with the Deities for the deliverance of the Argonauts from a dangerous tempest. It is thought that he passed some part of his life in Egypt, and became acquainted with many particulars of the ancient religion of the Egyptians, which he introduced into the theology of Greece. Some modern writers even go so far as to suggest that he learned from the 345 Hebrews, who were then sojourning in Egypt, the knowledge of the true God.

His wife, Eurydice, dying very young, he was inconsolable for her loss. To alleviate his grief, he went to Thesprotia, in Epirus, the natives of which region were said to possess incantations, for the purpose of raising the ghosts of the departed. Here, according to some accounts, being deceived by a phantom, which was made to appear before him, he died of sorrow; but, according to other writers, he renounced the society of mankind for ever and retired to the mountains of Thrace. His journey to that distant country gave occasion to say, that he descended to the Infernal Regions. This is the more likely, as he is supposed to have there promulgated his notions of the infernal world, which, according to Diodorus Siculus, he had learned among the Egyptians.

Tzetzes, however, assures us that this part of his history is founded on the circumstance, that Orpheus cured his wife of the bite of a serpent, which had till then been considered to be mortal; and that the poets gave an hyperbolical version of the story, in saying that he had rescued her from Hell. He says, too, that he had learned in Egypt the art of magic, which was much cultivated there, and especially the method of charming serpents.

After the loss of his wife, he retired to mount Rhodope, to assuage the violence of his grief. There, according to Ovid and other poets, the Mænades, or Bacchanals, to be revenged for his contempt of them and their rites, tore him in pieces; which story is somewhat diversified by the writers who relate that Venus, exasperated against Calliope, the mother of Orpheus, for having adjudged to Proserpine the possession of Adonis, caused the women of Thrace to become enamoured of her son, and to tear him in pieces while disputing the possession of him. An ancient author, quoted by Hyginus, says that Orpheus was killed by the stroke of a thunderbolt, while he was accompanying the Argonauts; and Apollodorus says the same. Diodorus Siculus calls him one of the kings of Thrace; while other writers, among whom are Cicero and Aristotle, assert that there never was such a person as Orpheus. The learned Vossius says, that the Phœnician word ‘ariph,’ which signifies ‘learned,’ gave rise to the story of Orpheus. Le Clerc thinks that in consequence of the same Greek word signifying ‘an enchanter,’ and also meaning ‘a singer,’ he acquired the reputation of having been a most skilful magician.

We may, perhaps, safely conclude, that Orpheus really did introduce the worship of many Gods into Greece; and that, possibly, while he promulgated the necessity of expiating crimes, he introduced exorcism, and brought magic into fashion in Greece. Lucian affirms that he was also the first to teach the elements of astronomy. Several works were attributed to him, which are now no longer in existence; among which were a Poem on the Expedition of the Argonauts, one on the War of the Giants, another on the Rape of Proserpine, and a fourth upon the Labours of Hercules. The Poem on the Argonautic Expedition, which now exists, and is attributed to him, is supposed to have been really written by a poet named Onomacritus, who lived in the sixth century B.C., in the time of Pisistratus.

346 x. 86-99.

After his death, Orpheus was reckoned in the number of Heroes or Demigods; and we are informed by Philostratus that his head was preserved at Lesbos, where it gave oracular responses. Orpheus is not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod. The learned scholar Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus, has entered very deeply into an investigation of the real nature of the discoveries and institutions ascribed to him.

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FABLE II.

Orpheus, retiring to Mount Rhodope, by the charms of his music, attracts to himself all kinds of creatures, rocks, and trees; among the latter is the pine tree, only known since the transformation of Attis.

There was a hill, and upon the hill a most level space of a plain, which the blades of grass made green: all shade was wanting in the spot. After the bard, sprung from the Gods, had seated himself in this place, and touched his tuneful strings, a shade came over the spot. The tree of Chaonia10 was not absent, nor the grove of the Heliades,11 nor the mast-tree with its lofty branches, nor the tender lime-trees, nor yet the beech, and the virgin laurel,12 and the brittle hazels, and the oak, adapted for making spears, and the fir without knots, and the holm bending beneath its acorns, and the genial plane-tree,13 and the parti-coloured maple,14 and, together with them, the willows growing by the rivers, and the watery lotus, and the evergreen box, and the slender tamarisks, and the two-coloured myrtle, and the tine-tree,15 with its azure berries.

You, too, the ivy-trees, with your creeping tendrils, came, 347 x. 99-105. and together, the branching vines, and the elms clothed with vines; the ashes, too, and the pitch-trees, and the arbute, laden with its blushing fruit, and the bending palm,16 the reward of the conqueror; the pine, too, with its tufted foliage,17 and bristling at the top, pleasing to the Mother of the Gods; since for this the Cybeleïan Attis put off the human form, and hardened into that trunk.

EXPLANATION.

The story of Attis, or Athis, here briefly referred to, is related by the ancient writers in many different ways; so much so, that it is not possible to reconcile the discrepancy that exists between them. From Diodorus Siculus we learn that Cybele, the daughter of Mæon, King of Phrygia, falling in love with a young shepherd named Attis, her father ordered him to be put to death. In despair, at the loss of her lover, Cybele left her father’s abode, and, accompanied by Marsyas, crossed the mountains of Phrygia. Apollo, (or, as Vossius supposes, some priest of that God,) touched with the misfortunes of the damsel, took her to the country of the Hyperboreans in Scythia, where she died. Some time after, the plague ravaging Phrygia, and the oracle being consulted, an answer was returned, that, to ensure the ceasing of the contagion, they must look for the body of Attis, and give it funeral rites, and render to Cybele the same honour which they were wont to pay to the Gods: all which was done with such scrupulous care, that in time she became one of the most esteemed Divinities.

Arnobius, says that Attis was a shepherd, with whom Cybele fell in love in her old age. Unmoved by her rank, and repelled by her faded charms, he despised her advances. Midas, King of Pessinus, on seeing this, destined his own daughter, Agdistis, for the young Attis. Fearing the resentment of Cybele, he caused the gates of the city to be shut on the day on which the marriage was to be solemnized. Cybele being informed of this, hastened to Pessinus, and, destroying the gates, met with Attis, who had concealed himself behind a pine tree, and caused him to be emasculated; on which Agdistis committed self-destruction in a fit of sorrow.

Servius, Lactantius, and St. Augustine, give another version of the story, which it is not necessary here to enlarge upon, any farther than to say, that it depicts the love of a powerful queen for a young man who repulsed her advances. Ovid, also, gives a similar account in the fourth Book of the Fasti, line 220. Other authors, quoted by Arnobius, have given some additional circumstances, the origin of which it is 348 x. 106-114. almost impossible to guess at. They say that a female called Nana, by touching a pomegranate or an almond tree, which grew from the blood of Agdistis whom Bacchus had slain, conceived Attis, who afterwards became very dear to Cybele.

All that we can conclude from these accounts, and more especially from that given by Ovid in the Fasti, is, that the worship of Cybele being established in Phrygia, Attis was one of her priests; and that, as he led the example of mutilating himself, all her other priests, who were called Galli, submitted to a similar operation, to the great surprise of the uninitiated, who were not slow in inventing some wonderful story to account for an act so extraordinary.

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FABLE III.

Cyparissus is about to kill himself for having slain, by accident, a favourite deer; but, before he is able to execute his design, Apollo transforms him into a Cypress.

Amid this throng was present the cypress, resembling the cone,18 now a tree, but once a youth, beloved by that God who fits the lyre with the strings, and the bow with strings. For there was a large stag, sacred to the Nymphs who inhabit the Carthæan fields; and, with his horns extending afar, he himself afforded an ample shade to his own head. His horns were shining with gold, and a necklace studded with gems,19 falling upon his shoulders, hung down from his smooth round neck; a silver ball,20 fastened with little straps, played upon his forehead; 349 x. 114-134. and pendants of brass,21 of equal size, shone on either ear around his hollow temples. He, too, void of fear, and laying aside his natural timorousness, used to frequent the houses, and to offer his neck to be patted by any hands, even though unknown to him.

But yet, above all others, he was pleasing to thee, Cyparissus, most beauteous of the nation of Cea.22 Thou wast wont to lead the stag to new pastures, and to the streams of running waters; sometimes thou didst wreathe flowers of various colours about his horns, and at other times, seated on his back, like a horseman, first in this direction and then in that, thou didst guide his easy mouth with the purple bridle. ’Twas summer and the middle of the day, and the bending arms of the Crab, that loves the sea-shore, were glowing with the heat of the sun; the stag, fatigued, was reclining his body on the grassy earth, and was enjoying the coolness from the shade of a tree. By inadvertence the boy Cyparissus pierced him with a sharp javelin; and, when he saw him dying from the cruel wound, he resolved to attempt to die as well. What consolations did not Phœbus apply? and he advised him to grieve with moderation, and 350 x. 134-144. according to the occasion. Still did he lament, and as a last favour, he requested this of the Gods above, that he might mourn for ever. And now, his blood quite exhausted by incessant weeping, his limbs began to be changed into a green colour, and the hair, which but lately hung from his snow-white forehead, to become a rough bush, and, a stiffness being assumed, to point to the starry heavens with a tapering top. The God Phœbus lamented deeply, and in his sorrow he said, “Thou shalt be mourned by me, and shalt mourn for others, and shalt ever attend upon those who are sorrowing23 for the dead.”

EXPLANATION.

Cyparissus, who, according to Ovid was born at Carthæa, a town in the isle of Cea, was probably a youth of considerable poetical talent and proficiency in the polite arts, which caused him to be deemed the favourite of Apollo. His transformation into a Cypress is founded on the resemblance between their names, that tree being called by the Greeks κυπάρισσος. The conclusion of the story is that Apollo, to console himself, enjoined that the Cypress tree should be the symbol of sorrow, or in other words that it should be used at funerals and be planted near graves and sepulchres; which fiction was most likely founded on the fact, that the tree was employed for those purposes; perhaps because its branches, almost destitute of leaves, have a somewhat melancholy aspect.

Some ancient writers also tell us that Cyparissus was a youth beloved by the God Sylvanus, for which reason that God is often represented with branches of Cypress in his hand.

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FABLE IV.

Jupiter, charmed with the beauty of the youth Ganymede, transforms himself into an Eagle, for the purpose of carrying him off. He is taken up into Heaven, and is made the Cup-bearer of the Divinities.

Such a grove of trees had the bard attracted round him, and he sat in the midst of an assembly of wild beasts, and of a multitude 351 x. 144-161. of birds. When he had sufficiently tried the strings struck with his thumb, and perceived that the various tones, though they gave different sounds, still harmonize, in this song he raised his voice: “Begin, my parent Muse, my song from Jove, all things submit to the sway of Jove. By me, often before has the power of Jove been sung. In loftier strains have I sung of the Giants, and the victorious thunderbolts scattered over the Phlegræan plains.24 Now is there occasion for a softer lyre; and let us sing of youths beloved by the Gods above, and of girls surprised by unlawful flames, who, by their wanton desires, have been deserving of punishment.

“The king of the Gods above was once inflamed with a passion for Ganymede, and something was found that Jupiter preferred to be, rather than what he was. Yet into no bird does he vouchsafe to be transformed, but that which can carry his bolts.25 And no delay is there. Striking the air with his fictitious wings, he carries off the youth of Ilium; who even now mingles his cups for him, and, much against the will of Juno, serves nectar to Jove.” 

EXPLANATION.

The rape of Ganymede is probably based upon an actual occurrence, which may be thus explained. Tros, the king of Troy, having conquered several of his neighbours, as Eusebius, Cedrenus, and Suidas relate, sent his son Ganymede into Lydia, accompanied by several of the nobles of his court, to offer sacrifice in the temple dedicated to Jupiter; Tantalus, the king of that country, who was ignorant of the designs of the Trojan king, took his people for spies, and put Ganymede in prison. He having been arrested in a temple of Jupiter, by order of a prince, whose ensign was an eagle, it gave occasion for the report that he had been carried off by Jupiter in the shape of an eagle.

The reason why Jupiter is said to have made Ganymede his cup-bearer 352 x. 162-168. is difficult to conjecture, unless we suppose that he had served his father, in that employment at the Trojan court. The poets say that he was placed by the Gods among the Constellations, where he shines as Aquarius, or the Water-bearer.

The capture of Ganymede occasioned a protracted and bloody war between Tros and Tantalus; and after their death, Ilus, the son of Tros, continued it against Pelops, the son of Tantalus, and obliged him to quit his kingdom and retire to the court of Œnomaüs, king of Pisa, whose daughter he married, and by her had a son named Atreus, who was the father of Agamemnon and Menelaüs. Thus we see that probably Paris, the great grandson of Tros, carried off Helen, as a reprisal on Menelaüs, the great grandson of Tantalus, the persecutor of Ganymede. Agamemnon did not fail to turn this fact to his own advantage, by putting the Greeks in mind of the evils which his family had suffered from the kings of Troy.

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FABLE V.

As Apollo is playing at quoits with the youth Hyacinthus, one of them, thrown by the Divinity, rebounds from the earth, and striking Hyacinthus on the head, kills him. From his blood springs up the flower which still bears his name.

“Phœbus would have placed thee too, descendant of Amycla,26 in the heavens, if the stern Fates had given him time to place thee there. Still, so far as is possible, thou art immortal; and as oft as the spring drives away the winter, and the Ram succeeds the watery Fish, so often dost thou spring up and blossom upon the green turf. Thee, beyond all others, did my father love, and Delphi, situate in the 353 x. 168-192. middle27 of the earth, was without its guardian Deity, while the God was frequenting the Eurotas, and the unfortified Sparta;28 and neither his lyre nor his arrows were held in esteem by him.

“Unmindful of his own dignity, he did not refuse to carry the nets, or to hold the dogs, or to go, as his companion, over the ridges of the rugged mountains; and by lengthened intimacy he augmented his flame. And now Titan was almost in his mid course between the approaching and the past night, and was at an equal distance from them both; when they stripped their bodies of their garments, and shone with the juice of the oily olive, and engaged in the game of the broad quoit.29 First, Phœbus tossed it, well poised, into the airy breeze, and clove the opposite clouds with its weight. After a long pause, the heavy mass fell on the hard ground, and showed skill united with strength. Immediately the Tænarian youth,30 in his thoughtlessness, and urged on by eagerness for the sport, hastened to take up the circlet; but the hard ground sent it back into the air with a rebound against thy face, Hyacinthus.

“Equally as pale as the youth does the Divinity himself turn; and he bears up thy sinking limbs; and at one moment he cherishes thee, at another, he stanches thy sad wound; and now he stops the fleeting life by the application of herbs. His skill is of no avail. The wound is incurable. As if, in a well-watered garden, any one should break down violets, or poppies, and lilies, as they adhere to their yellow stalks; drooping, they 354 x. 192-217. would suddenly hang down their languid heads, and could not support themselves; and would look towards the ground with their tops. So sink his dying features; and, forsaken by its vigour, the neck is a burden to itself, and reclines upon the shoulder. ‘Son of Œbalus,’ says Phœbus, ‘thou fallest, deprived of thy early youth; and I look on thy wound as my own condemnation. Thou art the object of my grief, and the cause of my crime. With thy death is my right hand to be charged; I am the author of thy destruction. Yet what is my fault? unless to engage in sport can be termed a fault; unless it can be called a fault, too, to have loved thee. And oh! that I could give my life for thee, or together with thee; but since I am restrained by the decrees of destiny, thou shalt ever be with me, and shalt dwell on my mindful lips. The lyre struck with my hand, my songs, too, shall celebrate thee; and, becoming a new flower, by the inscription on thee, thou shalt imitate31 my lamentations. The time, too, shall come, at which a most valiant hero32 shall add his name to this flower, and it shall be read upon the same leaves.’

“While such things are being uttered by the prophetic lips of Apollo, behold! the blood which, poured on the ground, has stained the grass, ceases to be blood, and a flower springs up, more bright than the Tyrian purple, and it assumes the appearance which lilies have, were there not in this a purple hue, and in them that of silver. This was not enough for Phœbus, for ’twas he that was the author of this honour. He himself inscribed his own lamentations on the leaves, and the flower has ‘ai, ai,’ inscribed thereon; and the mournful characters33 there are traced. Nor is Sparta ashamed to have given birth 355 x. 217-219. to Hyacinthus; and his honours continue to the present time; the Hyacinthian festival34 returns, too, each year, to be celebrated with the prescribed ceremonials, after the manner of former celebrations.”

EXPLANATION.

Hyacinthus, as Pausanias relates, was a youth of Laconia. His father educated him with so much care, that he was looked upon as the favourite of Apollo, and of the Muses. As he was one day playing with his companions, he unfortunately received a blow on the head from a quoit, from the effects of which he died soon after. Some funeral verses were probably composed on the occasion; in which it was said, with the view of comforting his relations, that Boreas, jealous of the affection which Apollo had evinced for the youth, had turned aside the quoit with which they played; and thus, by degrees, in length of time the name of Apollo became inseparably connected with the story.

The Lacedæmonians each year celebrated a solemn festival near his tomb, where they offered sacrifices to him; and we are told by Athenæus, that they instituted games in his honour, which were called after his name. Pausanias makes mention of his tomb, upon which he says was engraved the figure of Apollo. His alleged change into the flower of the same name is probably solely owing to the similarity of their names. It is not very clear what flower it is that was known to the ancients under the name of Hyacinthus. Dioscorides believes it to be that called ‘vaccinium’ by the Romans, which is 356 x. 220-240. of a purple colour, and on which can be traced, though imperfectly, the letters αἰ (alas!) mentioned by Ovid. The lamentations of Apollo, on the death of Hyacinthus, formed the subject of bitter, and, indeed, deserved raillery, for several of the satirical writers among the ancients.

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FABLE VI.

Venus, incensed at the Cerastæ for polluting the island of Cyprus, which is sacred to her, with the human sacrifices which they offer to their Gods, transforms them into bulls; and the Propœtides, as a punishment for their dissolute conduct, are transformed into rocks.

“But if, perchance, you were to ask of Amathus,35 abounding in metals, whether she would wish to have produced the Propœtides; she would deny it, as well as those whose foreheads were of old rugged with two horns, from which they also derived the name of Cerastæ. Before the doors of these was standing an altar of Jupiter Hospes,36 a scene of tragic horrors; if any stranger had seen it stained with blood, he would have supposed that sucking calves had been killed there, and Amathusian sheep;37 strangers were slain there. Genial Venus, offended at the wicked sacrifices there offered, was preparing to abandon her own cities and the Ophiusian lands.38 ‘But how,’ said she, ‘have these delightful spots, how have my cities offended? What criminality is there in them? Let the inhuman race rather suffer punishment by exile or by death, or if there is any middle course between death and exile; and what can that be, but the punishment of changing their shape?’

“While she is hesitating into what she shall change them, she turns her eyes towards their horns, and is put in mind that those may be left to them; and then she transforms their huge limbs into those of fierce bulls.

“And yet the obscene Propœtides presumed to deny that Venus is a Goddess; for which they are reported the first 357 x. 240-251. of all women to have prostituted their bodies,39 with their beauty, through the anger of the Goddess. And when their shame was gone, and the blood of their face was hardened, they were, by a slight transition, changed into hard rocks.” 

EXPLANATION.

The Cerastæ, a people of the island of Cyprus, were, perhaps, said to have been changed into bulls, to show the barbarous nature and rustic manners of those islanders, who stained their altars with the blood of strangers, in sacrifice to the Gods.

An equivocation of names also, probably, aided in originating the story. The island of Cyprus is surrounded with promontories which rise out of the sea, and whose pointed rocks appear at a distance like horns, from which it had the name of Cerastis, the Greek word κέρας, signifying a ‘horn.’ Thus, the inhabitants having the name of Cerastæ, it was most easy to invent a fiction of their having been once turned into oxen, to account the more readily for their bearing that name.

The Propœtides, who inhabited the same island, were females of very dissolute character. Justin, and other writers, mention a singular and horrible custom in that island, of prostituting young girls in the very temple of Venus. It was most probably the utter disregard of these women for common decency, that occasioned the poets to say that they were transformed into rocks.

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FABLE VII.

Pygmalion, shocked by the dissolute lives of the Propœtides, throws off all fondness for the female sex, and resolves on leading a life of perpetual celibacy. Falling in love with a statue which he has made, Venus animates it; on which he marries this new object of his affections, and has a son by her, who gives his name to the island.

“When Pygmalion saw these women spending their lives in criminal pursuits, shocked at the vices which Nature had so plentifully imparted to the female disposition, he lived a single life without a wife, and for a long time was without a partner of his bed. In the meantime, he ingeniously carved a statue of snow-white ivory with wondrous skill; and gave it a beauty with which no woman can be born; and then conceived a passion for his own workmanship. The appearance was that of a real virgin, whom you might suppose to be alive, and if 358 x. 251-282. modesty did not hinder her, to be desirous to move; so much did art lie concealed under his skill. Pygmalion admires it; and entertains, within his breast, a flame for this fictitious body.

“Often does he apply his hands to the work, to try whether it is a human body, or whether it is ivory; and yet he does not own it to be ivory. He gives it kisses, and fancies that they are returned, and speaks to it, and takes hold of it, and thinks that his fingers make an impression on the limbs which they touch, and is fearful lest a livid mark should come on her limbs when pressed. And one while he employs soft expressions, at another time he brings her presents that are agreeable to maidens, such as shells, and smooth pebbles, and little birds, and flowers of a thousand tints, and lilies, and painted balls, and tears of the Heliades, that have fallen from the trees. He decks her limbs, too, with clothing, and puts jewels on her fingers; he puts, too, a long necklace on her neck. Smooth pendants hang from her ears, and bows from her breast.40 All things are becoming to her; and she does not seem less beautiful than when naked. He places her on coverings dyed with the Sidonian shell, and calls her the companion of his bed, and lays down her reclining neck upon soft feathers, as though it were sensible.

“A festival of Venus, much celebrated throughout all Cyprus, had now come; and heifers, with snow-white necks, having their spreading horns tipped with gold, fell, struck by the axe. Frankincense, too, was smoking, when, having made his offering, Pygmalion stood before the altar, and timorously said, ‘If ye Gods can grant all things, let my wife be, I pray,’ and he did not dare to say ‘this ivory maid,’ but ‘like to this statue of ivory.’ The golden Venus, as she herself was present at her own festival, understood what that prayer meant; and as an omen of the Divinity being favourable, thrice was the flame kindled up, and it sent up a tapering flame into the air. Soon as he returned, he repaired to the image of his maiden, and, lying along the couch, he gave her kisses. She seems to grow warm. Again he applies his mouth; 359 x. 282-299. with his hands, too, he feels her breast. The pressed ivory becomes soft, and losing its hardness, yields to the fingers, and gives way, just as Hymettian wax41 grows soft in the sun, and being worked with the fingers is turned into many shapes, and becomes pliable by the very handling. While he is amazed, and is rejoicing, though with apprehension, and is fearing that he is deceived; the lover again and again touches the object of his desires with his hand. It is a real body; the veins throb, when touched with the thumb.

“Then, indeed, the Paphian hero conceives in his mind the most lavish expressions, with which to give thanks to Venus, and at length presses lips, no longer fictitious, with his own lips. The maiden, too, feels the kisses given her, and blushes; and raising her timorous eyes towards the light of day, she sees at once her lover and the heavens. The Goddess was present at the marriage which she thus effected. And now, the horns of the moon having been nine times gathered into a full orb, she brought forth Paphos; from whom the island derived its name.”

EXPLANATION.

The Pygmalion here mentioned must not be mistaken for the person of the same name, who was the brother of Dido, and king of Tyre. The story is most probably an allegory, which was based on the fact that Pygmalion being a man of virtuous principles, and disgusted with the vicious conduct of the women of Cyprus, took a great deal of care in training the mind and conduct of a young female, whom he kept at a distance from the contact of the prevailing vices; and whom, after having recovered her from the obdurate and rocky state to which the other females were reduced, he made his wife, and had a son by her named Paphos; who was said to have been the founder of the city of Cyprus, known by his name.

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FABLE VIII.

Myrrha, the daughter of Cinyras and Cenchris, having conceived an incestuous passion for her own father, and despairing of satisfying it, attempts to hang herself. Her nurse surprises her in the act, and prevents her death. Myrrha, after repeated entreaties and assurances of assistance, discloses to her the cause of her despair. The nurse, by means of a stratagem, procures her the object of her desires, which being discovered by her father, he pursues his daughter with the intention of killing her. Myrrha flies from her father’s dominions and being delivered of Adonis, is transformed into a tree.

“Of him was that Cinyras sprung, who, if he had been without 360 x. 299-327. issue, might have been reckoned among the happy. Of horrible events shall I now sing. Daughters, be far hence; far hence be parents, too; or, if my verse shall charm your minds, let credit not be given to me in this part of my song, and do not believe that it happened; or, if you will believe, believe as well in the punishment of the deed.

“Yet, if Nature allows this crime to appear to have been committed, I congratulate the Ismarian matrons, and my own division of the globe. I congratulate this land, that it is afar from those regions which produced so great an abomination. Let the Panchæan land42 be rich in amomum, and let it produce cinnamon, and its zedoary,43 and frankincense distilling from its tree, and its other flowers, so long as it produces the myrrh-tree, as well. The new tree was not of so much worth as to be a recompense for the crime to which it owed its origin. Cupid himself denies, Myrrha, that it was his arrows that injured thee; and he defends his torches from that imputation; one of the three Sisters kindled this flame within thee, with a Stygian firebrand and with swelling vipers. It is a crime to hate a parent; but this love is a greater degree of wickedness than hatred. On every side worthy nobles are desiring thee in marriage, and throughout the whole East the youths come to the contest for thy bed. Choose out of all these one for thyself, Myrrha, so that, in all that number, there be not one person, namely, thy father.

“She, indeed, is sensible of her criminality, and struggles hard against her infamous passion, and says to herself, ‘Whither am I being carried away by my feelings? What am I attempting? I beseech you, O ye Gods, and natural affection, and ye sacred ties of parents, forbid this guilt: defend me from a crime so great! if, indeed, this be a crime. But yet the ties of parent and child are said not to forbid this kind of union; and other animals couple with no distinction. It is not considered shameful for the heifer to mate with her sire; his own daughter becomes the mate of the horse; the he-goat, too, consorts 361 x. 327-358. with the flocks of which he is the father; and the bird conceives by him, from whose seed she herself was conceived. Happy they, to whom these things are allowed! The care of man has provided harsh laws, and what Nature permits, malignant ordinances forbid. And yet there are said to be nations44 in which both the mother is united to the son, and the daughter to the father, and natural affection is increased by a twofold passion. Ah, wretched me! that it was not my chance to be born there, and that I am injured by my lot being cast in this place! but why do I ruminate on these things? Forbidden hopes, begone! He is deserving to be beloved, but as a father only. Were I not, therefore, the daughter of the great Cinyras, with Cinyras I might be united. Now, because he is so much mine, he is not mine, and his very nearness of relationship is my misfortune.

“‘A stranger, I were more likely to succeed. I could wish to go far away hence, and to leave my native country, so I might but escape this crime. A fatal delusion detains me thus in love; that being present, I may look at Cinyras, and touch him, and talk with him, and give him kisses, if nothing more is allowed me. But canst thou hope for anything more, impious maid? and dost thou not perceive both how many laws, and how many names thou art confounding? Wilt thou be both the rival of thy mother, and the harlot of thy father? Wilt thou be called the sister of thy son, and the mother of thy brother? and wilt thou not dread the Sisters that have black snakes for their hair, whom guilty minds see threatening their eyes and their faces with their relentless torches? But do not thou conceive criminality in thy mind, so long as thou hast suffered none in body, and violate not the laws of all-powerful Nature by forbidden embraces. Suppose he were to be compliant, the action itself forbids thee; but he is virtuous, and regardful of what is right. And yet, O that there were a like infatuation in him!’

“Thus she says; but Cinyras, whom an honourable crowd of suitors is causing to be in doubt what he is to do, inquires of herself, as he repeats their names, of which husband she would 362 x. 358-389. wish to be the wife. At first she is silent; and, fixing her eyes upon her father’s countenance, she is in confusion, and fills her eyes with the warm tears. Cinyras, supposing this to be the effect of virgin bashfulness, bids her not weep, and dries her cheeks, and gives her kisses. On these being given, Myrrha is too much delighted; and, being questioned what sort of a husband she would have, she says, ‘One like thyself.’ But he praises the answer not really45 understood by him, and says, ‘Ever be thus affectionate.’ On mention being made of affection, the maiden, conscious of her guilt, fixed her eyes on the ground.

“It is now midnight, and sleep has dispelled the cares, and has eased the minds of mortals. But the virgin daughter of Cinyras, kept awake, is preyed upon by an unconquerable flame, and ruminates upon her wild desires. And one while she despairs, and at another she resolves to try; and is both ashamed, and yet is desirous, and is not certain what she is to do; and, just as a huge tree, wounded by the axe, when the last stroke now remains, is in doubt, as it were, on which side it is to fall, and is dreaded in each direction; so does her mind, shaken by varying passions, waver in uncertainty, this way and that, and receives an impulse in either direction; and no limit or repose is found for her love, but death: ’tis death that pleases her. She raises herself upright, and determines to insert her neck46 in a halter; and tying her girdle to the top of the door-post, she says, ‘Farewell, dear Cinyras, and understand the cause of my death;’ and then fits the noose to her pale neck.

“They say that the sound of her words reached the attentive ears of her nurse,47 as she was guarding the door of her foster-child. The old woman rises, and opens the door; and, seeing the instruments of the death she has contemplated, at the same moment she cries aloud, and smites herself, and rends her bosom, and snatching the girdle from her neck, tears it to pieces. And then, at last, she has time to weep, then to give her embraces, and to inquire into the occasion for the halter. The maid is silent, as 363 x. 389-422. though dumb, and, without moving, looks upon the earth; and thus detected, is sorry for her attempt at death in this slow manner. The old woman still urges her; and laying bare her grey hair, and her withered breasts, begs her, by her cradle and by her first nourishment, to entrust her with that which is causing her grief. She, turning from her as she asks, heaves a sigh. The nurse is determined to find it out, and not to promise her fidelity only. ‘Tell me,’ says she, ‘and allow me to give thee assistance; my old age is not an inactive one. If it is a frantic passion, I have the means of curing it with charms and herbs; if any one has hurt thee by spells, by magic rites shalt thou be cured; or if it is the anger of the Gods, that anger can be appeased by sacrifice. What more than these can I think of? No doubt thy fortunes and thy family are prosperous, and in the way of continuing so; thy mother and thy father are still surviving.’ Myrrha, on hearing her father’s name, heaves a sigh from the bottom of her heart. Nor, even yet, does her nurse apprehend in her mind any unlawful passion; and still she has a presentiment that it is something connected with love. Persisting in her purpose, she entreats her, whatever it is, to disclose it to her, and takes her, as she weeps, in her aged lap; and so embracing her in her feeble arms, she says, ‘Daughter, I understand it; thou art in love, and in this case (lay aside thy fears) my assiduity will be of service to thee; nor shall thy father ever be aware of it.’

“Furious, she sprang away from her bosom; and pressing the bed with her face, she said, ‘Depart, I entreat thee, and spare my wretched shame.’ Upon the other insisting, she said, ‘Either depart, or cease to inquire why it is I grieve; that which thou art striving to know, is impious.’ The old woman is struck with horror, and stretches forth her hands palsied both with years and with fear, and suppliantly falls before the feet of her foster-child. And one while she soothes her, sometimes she terrifies her with the consequences, if she is not made acquainted with it; and then she threatens her with the discovery of the halter, and of her attempted destruction, and promises her good offices, if the passion is confided to her. She lifts up her head, and fills the breast of her nurse with tears bursting forth; and often endeavouring to confess, as often does she check her voice; and she covers her blushing face with her garments, and says, ‘O, mother, happy in thy husband!’ 364 x. 423-434. Thus much she says; and then she sighs. A trembling shoots through the chilled limbs and the bones of her nurse, for she understands her; and her white hoariness stands bristling with stiff hair all over her head; and she adds many a word to drive away a passion so dreadful, if only she can. But the maiden is well aware that she is not advised to a false step; still she is resolved to die, if she does not enjoy him whom she loves. ‘Live then,’ says the nurse, ‘thou shalt enjoy thy——’ and, not daring to say ‘parent,’ she is silent; and then she confirms her promise with an oath.

“The pious matrons were now celebrating the annual festival of Ceres,48 on which, having their bodies clothed with snow-white robes, they offer garlands made of ears of corn, as the first fruits of the harvest; and for nine nights 365 x. 434-464. they reckon embraces, and the contact of a husband, among the things forbidden. Cenchreïs, the king’s wife, is absent in that company, and attends the mysterious rites. Therefore, while his bed is without his lawful wife, the nurse, wickedly industrious, having found Cinyras overcome with wine, discloses to him a real passion, but under a feigned name, and praises the beauty of the damsel. On his enquiring the age of the maiden, she says, ‘She is of the same age as Myrrha.’ After she is commanded to bring her, and as soon as she has returned home, she says, ‘Rejoice, my fosterling, we have prevailed.’ The unhappy maid does not feel joy throughout her entire body, and her boding breast is sad. And still she does rejoice: so great is the discord in her mind.

“’Twas the time when all things are silent, and Boötes had turned his wain with the pole obliquely directed among the Triones.49 She approaches to perpetrate her enormity. The golden moon flies from the heavens; black clouds conceal the hiding stars; the night is deprived of its fires. Thou, Icarus, dost conceal thy rising countenance; and thou, Erigone, raised to the heavens through thy affectionate love for thy father. Three times was she recalled by the presage of her foot stumbling; thrice did the funereal owl give an omen by its dismal cry. Yet onward she goes, and the gloom and the dark night lessen her shame. In her left hand she holds that of her nurse, the other, by groping, explores the secret road. And now she is arrived at the door of the chamber; and now she opens the door; now she is led in; but her knees tremble beneath her sinking hams, her colour and her blood vanish; and her courage deserts her as she moves along. The nearer she is to the commission of her crime, the more she dreads it, and she repents of her attempt, and could wish to be able to return unknown. The old woman leads her on by the hand as she lingers, and when she has delivered her up on her approach to the lofty bed, she says, ‘Take her, Cinyras, she is thy 366 x. 464-496. own,’ and so unites their doomed bodies. The father receives his own bowels into the polluted bed, and allays her virgin fears, and encourages her as she trembles. Perhaps, too, he may have called her by a name suited to her age, and she may have called him ‘father,’ that the appropriate names might not be wanting in this deed of horror. Pregnant by her father, she departs from the chamber, and, in her impiety, bears his seed in her incestuous womb, and carries with her, criminality in her conception. The ensuing night repeats the guilty deed; nor on that night is there an end. At last, Cinyras, after so many embraces, longing to know who is his paramour, on lights being brought in, discovers both the crime and his own daughter.

“His words checked through grief, he draws his shining sword from the scabbard as it hangs. Myrrha flies, rescued from death by the gloom and the favour of a dark night; and wandering along the wide fields, she leaves the Arabians famed for their palms, and the Panchæan fields. And she wanders during nine horns of the returning moon; when, at length, being weary, she rests in the Sabæan country,50 and with difficulty she supports the burden of her womb. Then, uncertain what to wish, and between the fear of death and weariness of life, she uttered such a prayer as this: ‘O ye Deities, if any of you favour those who are penitent; I have deserved severe punishment, and I do not shrink from it. But that, neither existing, I may pollute the living, nor dead, those who are departed, expel me from both these realms; and transforming me, deny me both life and death.’ Some Divinity ever regards the penitent; at least, the last of her prayers found its Gods to execute it. For the earth closes over her legs as she speaks, and a root shoots forth obliquely through her bursting nails, as a firm support to her tall trunk. Her bones, too, become hard wood, and her marrow continuing in the middle, her blood changes into sap, her arms into great branches, her fingers into smaller ones; her skin grows hard with bark. And now the growing tree has run over her heavy womb, and has covered her breast, and 367 x. 496-518. is ready to enclose her neck. She cannot endure delay, and sinks down to meet the approaching wood, and hides her features within the bark. Though she has lost her former senses together with her human shape, she still weeps on, and warm drops distil51 from the tree. There is a value even in her tears, and the myrrh distilling from the bark, retains the name of its mistress, and will be unheard-of in no future age.

“But the infant conceived in guilt grows beneath the wood, and seeks out a passage, by which he may extricate himself, having left his mother. Her pregnant womb swells in the middle of the tree. The burden distends the mother, nor have her pangs words of their own whereby to express themselves; nor can Lucina be invoked by her voice while bringing forth. Yet she is like one struggling to be delivered; and the bending tree utters frequent groans, and is moistened with falling tears. Gentle Lucina stands by the moaning boughs, and applies her hands, and utters words that promote delivery. The tree gapes open, in chinks, and through the cleft bark it discharges the living burden. The child cries; the Naiads, laying him on the soft grass, anoint him with the tears of his mother.

“Even Envy herself would have commended his face; for just as the bodies of naked Cupids are painted in a picture, such was he. But that their dress may not make any difference, either give to him or take away from them, the polished quivers.” 

EXPLANATION.

Le Clerc, forming his ideas on what Lucian, Phurnutus, and other authors have said on the subject, explains the story of Cinyras and Myrrha in the following manner. Cynnor, or Cinyras, the grandfather of Adonis, having one day drank to excess, fell asleep in a posture which violated the rules of decency. Mor, or Myrrha, his daughter-in-law, the wife of Ammon, together with her son Adonis, seeing him in that condition, acquainted her husband with her father’s lapse. On his repeating this to Cinyras, the latter was so full of indignation, that he loaded Myrrha and Adonis with imprecations.

Loaded with the execrations of her father, Myrrha retired into Arabia, where she remained some time; and because Adonis passed some portion 368 x. 519-525. of his youth there, the poets feigned that Myrrha was delivered of him in that country. Her transformation into a tree was only invented on account of the equivocal character of her name, ‘Mor,’ which meant in the Arabic language ‘Myrrh.’ It is very probable that the story was founded on a tradition among the Phœnicians of the history of Noah, and of the malediction which Ham drew on himself by his undutiful conduct towards his father.

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FABLE IX.

Adonis is educated by the Naiads. His beauty makes a strong impression on the Goddess Venus, and, in her passion, she traverses the same wilds in pursuit of the youth, which his mother did, when flying from the wrath of her father. After chasing the wild beasts, she invites Adonis to a poplar shade, where she warns him of his danger in hunting lions, wild boars, and such formidable animals. On this occasion, too, she relates the adventures of Hippomenes and Atalanta. The beauty of the latter was such, that her charms daily attracted crowds of suitors. Having consulted the oracle, whether she shall marry, she is answered that a husband will certainly prove her destruction. On this, to avoid marrying, she makes it a rule to offer to run with her suitors, promising that she herself will be the prize of the victor, but only on condition that immediate death shall be the fate of those who are vanquished by her. As she excels in running, her design succeeds, and several suitors die in the attempt to win her. Hippomenes, smitten with her charms, is not daunted at their ill success; but boldly enters the lists, after imploring the aid of Venus. Atalanta is struck with his beauty, and is much embarrassed, whether she shall yield to the charms of the youth, or to the dissuasions of the oracle. Hippomenes attracts her attention in the race, by throwing down some golden apples which Venus has given him, and then, reaching the goal before her, he carries off the reward of victory. Venus, to punish his subsequent ingratitude towards her, raises his desires to such a pitch, that he incurs the resentment of Cybele, by defiling her shrine with the embraces of his mistress; on which they are both transformed into lions, and thenceforth draw the chariot of the Goddess.

“Winged time glides on insensibly and deceives us; and there is nothing more fleeting than years. He, born of his own sister and of his grandfather, who, so lately enclosed in a tree, was so lately born, and but just now a most beauteous infant, is now a youth, now a man, and now more beauteous than he was before. And now he pleases even Venus,52 and revenges the flames of his mother, kindled by her. For, while the boy that wears the quiver is giving kisses to his mother, he 369 x. 526-556. unconsciously grazes her breast with a protruding arrow. The Goddess, wounded, pushed away her son with her hand. The wound was inflicted more deeply than it seemed to be, and at first had deceived even herself. Charmed with the beauty of the youth, she does not now care for the Cytherian shores, nor does she revisit Paphos, surrounded with the deep sea, and Cnidos,53 abounding in fish, or Amathus, rich in metals.

“She abandons even the skies; him she ever attends; and she who has been always accustomed to indulge in the shade, and to improve her beauty, by taking care of it, wanders over the tops of mountains, through the woods, and over bushy rocks, bare to the knee and with her robes tucked up after the manner of Diana, and she cheers on the dogs, and hunts animals that are harmless prey, either the fleet hares, or the stag with its lofty horns, or the hinds; she keeps afar from the fierce boars, and avoids the ravening wolves, and the bears armed with claws, and the lions glutted with the slaughter of the herds. Thee, too, Adonis, she counsels to fear them, if she can aught avail by advising thee. And she says, “Be brave against those animals that fly; boldness is not safe against those that are bold. Forbear, youth, to be rash at my hazard, and attack not the wild beasts to which nature has granted arms, lest thy thirst for glory should cost me dear. Neither thy age, nor thy beauty, nor other things which have made an impression on Venus, make any impression on lions and bristly boars, and the eyes and the tempers of wild beasts. The fierce boars carry lightning54 in their curving tusks; there is rage and fury unlimited in the tawny lions; and the whole race is odious to me.”

“Upon his asking, what is the reason, she says, ‘I will tell thee, and thou wilt be surprised at the prodigious result of a fault long since committed. But this toil to which I am unaccustomed has now fatigued me, and see! a convenient poplar invites us, by its shade, and the turf furnishes a couch. Here I am desirous to repose myself, together with 370 x. 556-592. thee;’ and forthwith she rests herself on the ground, and presses at once the grass and himself. And with her neck reclining on the bosom of the youth, smiling, she thus says, and she mingles kisses in the midst of her words:—

“Perhaps thou mayst have heard how a certain damsel excelled the swiftest men in the contest of speed. That report was no idle tale; for she did excel them. Nor couldst thou have said, whether she was more distinguished in the merit of her swiftness, or in the excellence of her beauty. Upon her consulting the oracle about a husband, the God said to her, ‘Thou hast no need, Atalanta, of a husband; avoid obtaining a husband. And yet thou wilt not avoid it, and, while still living, thou wilt lose thyself.’ Alarmed with the response of the God, she lives a single life in the shady woods, and determinedly repulses the pressing multitude of her suitors with these conditions. ‘I am not,’ says she, ‘to be gained, unless first surpassed in speed. Engage with me in running. Both a wife and a wedding shall be given as the reward of the swift; death shall be the recompense of the slow. Let that be the condition of the contest.’ She, indeed, was cruel in this proposal; but (so great is the power of beauty) a rash multitude of suitors agreed to these terms. Hippomenes had sat, as a spectator, of this unreasonable race, and said, ‘Is a wife sought by any one, amid dangers so great?’ And thus he condemned the excessive ardour of the youths. But when he beheld her face, and her body with her clothes laid aside, such as mine is, or such as thine would be, Adonis, if thou wast to become a woman, he was astonished, and raising his hands, he said, ‘Pardon me, ye whom I was just now censuring; the reward which you contended for was not yet known to me.’

“In commending her, he kindles the flame, and wishes that none of the young men may run more swiftly than she, and, in his envy, is apprehensive of it. ‘But why,’ says he, ‘is my chance in this contest left untried? The Divinity himself assists the daring.’ While Hippomenes is pondering such things within himself, the virgin flies with winged pace. Although she appears to the Aonian youth to go no less swiftly than the Scythian arrow, he admires her still more in her beauty, and the very speed makes her beauteous. The breeze that meets her bears back her pinions on her swift feet, and 371 x. 592-606. her hair is thrown over her ivory shoulders and the leggings which are below her knees with their variegated border, and upon her virgin whiteness her body has contracted a blush; no otherwise than as when purple hangings55 over a whitened hall tint it with a shade of a similar colour. While the stranger is observing these things, the last course is run,56 and the victorious Atalanta is adorned with a festive crown. The vanquished utter sighs, and pay the penalty, according to the stipulation. Still, not awed by the end of these young men, he stands up in the midst; and fixing his eyes on the maiden, he says, ‘Why dost thou seek an easy victory by conquering the inactive? Contend now with me. If fortune shall render me victorious, thou wilt not take it ill to be conquered by one so illustrious. For my father was Megareus, Onchestius his;57 Neptune was his grandsire; I am 372 x. 606-636. the great grandson of the king of the waves. Nor is my merit inferior to my extraction. Or if I shall be conquered, in the conquest of Hippomenes thou wilt have a great and honourable name.’

“As he utters such words as these, the daughter of Schœneus regards him with a benign countenance, and is in doubt whether she shall wish to be overcome or to conquer; and thus she says: ‘What Deity, a foe to the beauteous, wishes to undo this youth? and commands him, at the risk of a life so dear, to seek this alliance? In my own opinion, I am not of so great value. Nor yet am I moved by his beauty. Still, by this, too, I could be moved. But, ’tis because he is still a boy; ’tis not himself that affects me, but his age. And is it not, too, because he has courage and a mind undismayed by death? And is it not, besides, because he is reckoned fourth in descent from the monarch of the sea? And is it not, because he loves me, and thinks a marriage with me of so much worth as to perish for it, if cruel fortune should deny me to him? Stranger, while still thou mayst, begone, and abandon an alliance stained with blood. A match with me is cruelly hazardous. No woman will be unwilling to be married to thee; and thou mayst be desired even by a prudent maid. But why have I any concern for thee, when so many have already perished? Let him look to it; and let him die, since he is not warned by the fate of so many of my wooers, and is impelled onwards to weariness of life.

“‘Shall he then die because he was desirous with me to live? And shall he suffer an undeserved death, the reward of his love? My victory will not be able to support the odium of the deed. But it is no fault of mine. I wish thou wouldst desist! or since thou art thus mad, would that thou wast more fleet than I! But what a feminine look58 there is in his youthful face! Ah, wretched Hippomenes, I would that I had not been seen by thee! Thou wast worthy to have lived! And if I had been more fortunate; and if the vexatious Divinities had not denied me the blessings of marriage, thou wast one with whom I could have shared my bed.’ Thus she said; and as one inexperienced, and smitten by Cupid for the first 373 x. 636-669. time, not knowing what she is doing, she is in love, and yet does not know that she is in love.

“And now, both the people and her father, demanded the usual race, when Hippomenes, the descendant of Neptune, invoked me with anxious voice; ‘I entreat that Cytherea may favour my undertaking, and aid the passion that she has inspired in me.’ The breeze, not envious, wafted to me this tender prayer; I was moved, I confess it; nor was any long delay made in giving aid. There is a field, the natives call it by name the Tamasenian field,59 the choicest spot in the Cyprian land; this the elders of former days consecrated to me, and ordered to be added as an endowment for my temple. In the middle of this field a tree flourishes, with yellow foliage, and with branches tinkling with yellow gold. Hence, by chance as I was coming, I carried three golden apples, that I had plucked, in my hand; and being visible to none but him, I approached Hippomenes, and I showed him what was to be the use of them. The trumpets have now given the signal, when each of them darts precipitately from the starting place, and skims the surface of the sand with nimble feet. You might have thought them able to pace the sea with dry feet, and to run along the ears of white standing corn while erect. The shouts and the applause of the populace give courage to the youth, and the words of those who exclaim, ‘Now, now, Hippomenes, is the moment to speed onward! make haste. Now use all thy strength! Away with delay! thou shalt be conqueror.’ It is doubtful whether the Megarean hero, or the virgin daughter of Schœneus rejoiced the most at these sayings. O how often when she could have passed by him, did she slacken her speed, and then unwillingly left behind the features that long she had gazed upon.

“A parched panting is coming from his faint mouth, and the goal is still a great way off. Then, at length, the descendant of Neptune throws one of the three products of the tree. The virgin is amazed, and from a desire for the shining fruit, she turns from her course, and picks up the rolling gold. Hippomenes passes her. The theatres ring60 with applause. She 374 x. 669-701. makes amends for her delay, and the time that she has lost, with a swift pace, and again she leaves the youth behind. And, retarded by the throwing of a second apple, again she overtakes the young man, and passes by him. The last part of the race now remained. ‘And now,’ said he, ‘O Goddess, giver of this present, aid me;’ and then with youthful might, he threw the shining gold, in an oblique direction, on one side of the plain, in order that she might return the more slowly. The maiden seemed to be in doubt, whether she should fetch it; I forced her to take it up, and added weight to the apple, when she had taken it up, and I impeded her, both by the heaviness of the burden, and the delay in reaching it. And that my narrative may not be more tedious than that race, the virgin was outrun, and the conqueror obtained the prize.

“And was I not, Adonis, deserving that he should return thanks to me, and the tribute of frankincense? but, in his ingratitude, he gave me neither thanks nor frankincense. I was thrown into a sudden passion; and provoked at being slighted, I provided by making an example, that I should not be despised in future times, and I aroused myself against them both. They were passing by a temple, concealed within a shady wood, which the famous Echion had formerly built for the Mother of the Gods, according to his vow; and the length of their journey moved them to take rest there. There, an unseasonable desire of caressing his wife seized Hippomenes, excited by my agency. Near the temple was a recess, with but little light, like a cave, covered with native pumice stone, one sacred from ancient religious observance; where the priest had conveyed many a wooden image of the ancient Gods. This he entered, and he defiled the sanctuary by a forbidden crime. The sacred images turned away their eyes, and the Mother of the Gods, crowned with turrets,61 was in doubt whether she should plunge these guilty ones in the Stygian stream. That seemed too light a punishment. Wherefore yellow manes cover their necks so lately smooth; their fingers are bent into claws, of their shoulders are made fore-legs;62 their whole weight passes 375 x. 701-707. into their breasts. The surface of the sand is swept by their tails.63 Their look has anger in it; instead of words they utter growls; instead of chambers they haunt the woods; and dreadful to others, as lions, they champ the bits of Cybele with subdued jaws. Do thou, beloved by me, avoid these, and together with these, all kinds of wild beasts which turn not their backs in flight, but their breasts to the fight; lest thy courage should be fatal to us both.”

EXPLANATION.

The Atalanta who is mentioned in this story was the daughter of Schœneus, and the granddaughter of Athamas, whose misfortunes obliged him to retire into Bœotia, where he built a little town, which was called after his name, as we learn from Pausanias and Eustathius. Ovid omits to say that it was one of the conditions of the agreement, that the lover was to have the start in the race. According to some writers, the golden apples were from the gardens of the Hesperides; while, according to others, they were plucked by Venus in the isle of Cyprus. The story seems to be founded merely on the fact, that Hippomenes contrived by means of bribes to find the way to the favour of his mistress.

Apollodorus, however, relates the story in a different manner; he says that the father of Atalanta desiring to have sons, but no daughters, exposed her, on her birth, in a desert, that she might perish. A she-bear found the infant, and nourished it, until it was discovered by some hunters. As the damsel grew up, she made hunting her favourite pursuit, and slew two Centaurs, who offered her violence, with her arrows. On her parents pressing her to marry, she consented to be the wife of that man only who could outrun her, on condition that those who were conquered by her in the race should be put to death. Several of her suitors having failed in the attempt, one of the name of Melanion, by using a similar stratagem to that attributed by Ovid to Hippomenes, conquered her in the race, and became her husband. Having profaned the temple of Jupiter, they were transformed, Melanion into a lion, and Atalanta into a lioness. According to Apollodorus, her father’s name was Iasius, though in his first book he says she was the daughter of Schœneus. He also says that she was the same person that was present at the hunt of the Calydonian boar, though other writers represent them to have been different personages. Euripides makes Mænalus to have been the name of her father.

Atalanta had by Melanion, or, as some authors say, by Mars, a son named Parthenopæus, who was present at the Theban war. Ælian gives a long account of her history, which does not very much differ from the narrative of Apollodorus.

376 x. 708-738.

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FABLE X.

Adonis being too ardent in the pursuit of a wild boar, the beast kills him, on which Venus changes his blood into a flower of crimson colour.

“She, indeed, thus warned him; and, harnessing her swans, winged her way through the air; but his courage stood in opposition to her advice. By chance, his dogs having followed its sure track, roused a boar, and the son of Cinyras pierced him, endeavouring to escape from the wood, with a wound from the side. Immediately the fierce boar, with his crooked snout, struck out the hunting-spear, stained with his blood, and then pursued him, trembling and seeking a safe retreat, and lodged his entire tusks in his groin, and stretched him expiring on the yellow sand.

“Cytherea, borne in her light chariot64 through the middle of the air, had not yet arrived at Cyprus upon the wings of her swans. She recognized afar his groans, as he was dying, and turned her white birds in that direction. And when, from the lofty sky, she beheld him half dead, and bathing his body in his own blood, she rapidly descended, and rent both her garments and her hair, and she smote her breast with her distracted hands. And complaining of the Fates, she says, ‘But, however, all things shall not be in your power; the memorials of my sorrow, Adonis, shall ever remain; and the representation of thy death, repeated yearly, shall exhibit an imitation of my mourning. But thy blood shall be changed into a flower. Was it formerly allowed thee, Persephone, to change the limbs65 of a female into fragrant mint; and shall the hero, the son of Cinyras, if changed, be a cause of displeasure against me?’ Having thus said, she sprinkles his blood with odoriferous nectar, which, touched by it, effervesces, just as the transparent bubbles are wont to rise in rainy weather. Nor was there a pause longer than a full hour, when a flower sprang up from the blood, of the same colour with it, such as 377 x. 736-739. the pomegranates are wont to bear, which conceal their seeds beneath their tough rind. Yet the enjoyment of it is but short-lived; for the same winds66 which give it a name, beat it down, as it has but a slender hold, and is apt to fall by reason of its extreme slenderness.”

EXPLANATION.

Theocritus, Bion, Hyginus, and Antoninus Liberalis, beside several other authors, relate the history of the loves of Venus and Adonis. They inform us of many particulars which Ovid has here neglected to remark. They say that Mars, jealous of the passion which Venus had for Adonis, implored the aid of Diana, who, to gratify his revenge, sent the boar that destroyed the youth. According to some writers, it was Apollo himself that took the form of that animal; and they say that Adonis descending to the Infernal Regions, Proserpine fell in love with him, and refused to allow him to return, notwithstanding the orders of Jupiter. On this, the king of heaven fearing to displease both the Goddesses, referred the dispute to the Muse Calliope, who directed that Adonis should pass one half of his time with Venus on earth, and the other half in the Infernal Regions. They also tell us that it took up a year before the dispute could be determined, and that the Hours brought Adonis at last to the upper world, on which, Venus being dissatisfied with the decision of Calliope, instigated the women of Thrace to kill her son Orpheus.

The mythologists have considered this story to be based on grounds either historical or physical. Cicero, in his Discourse on the Nature of the Gods, says, that there were several persons who had the name of Venus, and that the fourth, surnamed Astarte, was a Syrian, who married Adonis, the son of Cinyras, king of Cyprus. Hunting in the forests of Mount Libanus, or Lebanon, he was wounded in the groin by a wild boar, which accident ultimately caused his death. Astarte caused the city of Byblos and all Syria to mourn for his loss; and, to keep his name and his sad fate in remembrance, established feasts in his honour, to be celebrated each year. Going still further, if we suppose the story to have originated in historical facts, it seems not improbable that Adonis did not die of his wound, and that, contrary to all expectation, he was cured; as the Syrians, after having mourned for several days during his festival, rejoiced as though he had been raised from the dead, at a second festival called ‘The Return.’ The worship both of Venus and Adonis probably originated in Syria, and was spread through Asia Minor into Greece; while the Carthaginians, a Phœnician colony introduced it into Sicily. The festival of Adonis is most amusingly described by Theocritus the Sicilian poet, in his ‘Adoniazusæ.’ Some authors have suggested that Adonis was the same with the Egyptian God Osiris, and that the affliction 378 of Venus represented that of Isis at the death of her husband. According to Hesiod, Adonis was the son of Phœnix and Alphesibœa, while Panyasis says that he was son of Theias, the king of the Assyrians.

In support of the view which some commentators take of the story of Adonis having been founded on physical circumstance, we cannot do better than quote the able remarks of Mr. Keightley on the subject. He says (Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, p. 109)— “The tale of Adonis is apparently an Eastern mythus. His very name is Semitic (Hebrew ‘Adon,’ ‘Lord’), and those of his parents also refer to that part of the world. He appears to be the same with the Thammuz, mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel, and to be a Phœnician personification of the sun who, during a part of the year is absent, or, as the legend expresses it, with the Goddess of the under world: during the remainder with Astarte, the regent of heaven. It is uncertain when the Adonia were first celebrated in Greece; but we find Plato alluding to the gardens of Adonis, as boxes of flowers used in them were called; and the ill fortune of the Athenian expedition to Sicily was in part ascribed to the circumstance of the fleet having sailed during that festival.”

This notion of the mourning for Adonis being a testimony of grief for the absence of the Sun during the winter, is not, however, to be too readily acquiesced in. Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 691), for example, asks, with some appearance of reason, why those nations whose heaven was mildest, and their winter shortest, should so bitterly bewail the regular changes of the seasons, as to feign that the Gods themselves were carried off or slain; and he shrewdly observes, that, in that case, the mournful and the joyful parts of the festival should have been held at different times of the year, and not joined together, as they were. He further inquires, whether the ancient writers, who esteemed these Gods to be so little superior to men, may not have believed them to have been really and not metaphorically put to death? And, in truth, it is not easy to give a satisfactory answer to these questions.

379

BOOK THE ELEVENTH.

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FABLE I.

While Orpheus is singing to his lyre on Mount Rhodope, the women of Thrace celebrate their orgies. During that ceremony they take advantage of the opportunity to punish Orpheus for his indifference towards their sex; and, in the fury inspired by their rites, they beat him to death. His head and lyre are carried by the stream of the river Hebrus into the sea, and are cast on shore on the isle of Lesbos. A serpent, about to attack the head when thrown on shore, is changed into a stone, and the Bacchanals who have killed him are transformed into trees.

While with songs such as these, the Thracian poet is leading the woods and the natures of savage beasts, and the following rocks, lo! the matrons of the Ciconians, having their raving breasts covered with the skins of wild beasts, from the summit of a hill, espy Orpheus adapting his voice to the sounded strings of his harp. One of these, tossing her hair along the light breeze, says, “See! see! here is our contemner!” and hurls her spear at the melodious mouth of the bard of Apollo: but, being wreathed at the end with leaves, it makes a mark without any wound. The weapon of another is a stone, which, when thrown, is overpowered in the very air by the harmony of his voice and his lyre, and lies before his feet, a suppliant, as it were, for an attempt so daring.

But still this rash warfare increases, and all moderation departs, and direful fury reigns triumphant. And yet all their weapons would have been conquered by his music; but the vast clamour, and the Berecynthian pipe1 with the blown horns, and the tambourines, and the clapping of hands, and Bacchanalian yells, prevented the sound of the lyre from being heard. 380 xi. 13-28. Then, at last, the stones became red with the blood of the bard, now no longer heard. But first the Mænades lay hands on innumerable birds, even yet charmed with his voice as he sang, and serpents, and a throng of wild beasts, the glory of this audience of Orpheus; and after that, they turn upon Orpheus with blood-stained right hands; and they flock together, as the birds, if at any time they see the bird of night strolling about by day; and as when the stag that is doomed to die2 in the morning sand in the raised amphitheatre is a prey to the dogs; they both attack the bard, and hurl the thyrsi, covered with 381 xi. 28-60. green leaves, not made for such purposes as these. Some throw clods, some branches torn from trees, others flint stones. And that weapons may not be wanting for their fury, by chance some oxen are turning up the earth with the depressed ploughshare; and not far from thence, some strong-armed peasants, providing the harvest with plenteous sweat, are digging the hard fields; they, seeing this frantic troop, run away, and leave the implements of their labour; and there lie, dispersed throughout the deserted fields, harrows and heavy rakes, and long spades.

After they, in their rage, have seized upon these, and have torn to pieces the oxen with their threatening horns, they return to the destruction of the bard; and they impiously murder him, extending his hands, and then for the first time uttering words in vain, and making no effect on them with his voice. And (Oh Jupiter!) through those lips listened to by rocks, and understood by the senses of wild beasts, his life breathed forth, departs into the breezes.3 The mournful birds, the crowd of wild beasts, the hard stones, the woods that oft had followed thy song bewailed thee. Trees, too, shedding their foliage, mourned thee, losing their leaves. They say, too, that rivers swelled with their own tears; and the Naiads and Dryads had mourning garments of dark colour, and dishevelled hair. The limbs lie scattered4 in various places. Thou, Hebrus, dost receive the head and the lyre; and (wondrous to relate!) while it rolls down the midst of the stream, the lyre complains in I know not what kind of mournful strain. His lifeless tongue, too, utters a mournful sound, to which the banks mournfully reply. And now, borne onward to the sea, they leave their native stream, and reach the shores of Methymnæan Lesbos.5 Here an infuriated serpent attacks the head thrown up on the foreign sands, and the hair besprinkled with the oozing blood. At last Phœbus comes to its aid, and drives it away as it tries to inflict its sting, and hardens the open jaws of the serpent 382 xi. 60-84. into stone, and makes solid its gaping mouth just as it is. His ghost descends under the earth, and he recognizes all the spots which he has formerly seen; and seeking Eurydice through the fields of the blessed, he finds her, and enfolds her in his eager arms. Here, one while, they walk together side by side,6 and at another time he follows her as she goes before, and again at another time, walking in front, precedes her; and now, in safety, Orpheus looks back upon his own Eurydice.

Yet Lyæus did not suffer this wickedness to go unpunished; and grieving for the loss of the bard of his sacred rites, he immediately fastened down in the woods, by a twisting root, all the Edonian matrons who had committed this crime. For he drew out the toes of her feet, just as each one had pursued him, and thrust them by their sharp points into the solid earth. And, as when a bird has entangled its leg in a snare, which the cunning fowler has concealed, and perceives that it is held fast, it beats its wings, and, fluttering, tightens the noose with its struggles; so, as each one of these had stuck fast, fixed in the ground, in her alarm, she attempted flight in vain; but the pliant root held her fast, and confined her, springing forward7 to escape. And while she is looking where her toes are, where, too, are her feet and her nails, she sees wood growing up upon her well-turned legs. Endeavouring, too, to smite her thigh, with grieving right hand, she strikes solid oak; her breast, too, becomes oak; her shoulders are oak. You would suppose that her extended arms are real boughs, and you would not be deceived in so supposing.

EXPLANATION.

Some of the ancient mythologists say that the story of the serpent, changed into stone for insulting the head of Orpheus, was founded on the history of a certain inhabitant of the isle of Lesbos, who was punished for attacking the reputation of Orpheus. This critic excited contempt, as a malignant and ignorant person, who endeavoured, as it were, to sting the character of the deceased poet, and therefore, by way of exposing his spite and stupidity, he was said to have been changed from a serpent into a stone. According to Philostratus, the poet’s head was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Lesbos; and he tells us that Diomedes, and 383 xi. 85-94. Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, brought Philoctetes to Troy, after having explained to him the oracular response which the head of Orpheus had given to him from the bottom of a cave at Lesbos.

The harp of Orpheus was preserved in the same temple; and so many wonders were reported of it, that Neanthus, the son of the tyrant Pytharus, purchased it of the priests of Apollo, believing that its sound would be sufficient to put rocks and trees in motion; but, according to Lucian, he succeeded so ill, that on his trying the harp, the dogs of the neighbouring villages fell upon him and tore him to pieces.

The transformation of the women of Thrace into trees, for the murder of Orpheus, is probably an allegory intended to show that these furious and ill-conditioned females did not escape punishment for their misdeeds; and that they were driven by society to pass the rest of their lives in woods and caverns.

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FABLE II.

Bacchus, having punished the Thracian women for the murder of Orpheus, leaves Thrace. His tutor, Silenus, having become intoxicated, loses his companions, and is brought by some Phrygian peasants to Midas. He sends him to Bacchus, on which the God, in acknowledgment of his kindness, promises him whatever favour he may desire. Midas asks to be able to turn everything that he touches into gold. This power is granted; but, soon convinced of his folly, Midas begs the God to deprive him of it, on which he is ordered to bathe in the river Pactolus. He obeys the God, and communicates the power which he possesses to the stream; from which time that river has golden sands.

And this is not enough for Bacchus. He resolves to forsake the country itself, and, with a superior train, he repairs to the vineyards of his own Tymolus, and Pactolus; although it was not golden at that time, nor to be coveted for its precious sands. The usual throng, both Satyrs and Bacchanals, surround him, but Silenus is away. The Phrygian rustics took him, as he was staggering with age and wine, and, bound with garlands, they led him to their king, Midas, to whom, together with the Cecropian Eumolpus,8 the Thracian Orpheus had intrusted the mysterious orgies of Bacchus. Soon as he recognized this associate 384 xi. 94-130. and companion of these rites, he hospitably kept a festival on the coming of this guest, for twice five days, and as many nights joined in succession.

“And now the eleventh Lucifer had closed the lofty host of the stars, when the king came rejoicing to the Lydian lands, and restored Silenus to the youth, his foster-child. To him the God, being glad at the recovery of his foster-father, gave the choice of desiring a favour, pleasing, indeed, but useless, as it turned out. He, destined to make a foolish use of the favour, says, ‘Cause that whatever I shall touch with my body shall be turned into yellow gold.’ Liber assents to his wish, and grants him the hurtful favour, and is grieved that he has not asked for something better. The Berecynthian hero9 departs joyful, and rejoices in his own misfortune, and tries the truth of his promise by touching everything. And, hardly believing himself, he pulls down a twig from a holm-oak, growing on a bough not lofty; the twig becomes gold. He takes up a stone from the ground; the stone, too, turns pale with gold. He touches a clod, also; by his potent touch the clod becomes a mass of gold. He plucks some dry ears of corn, that wheat is golden. He holds an apple taken from a tree, you would suppose that the Hesperides had given it. If he places his fingers upon the lofty door-posts, then the posts are seen to glisten. When, too, he has washed his hands in the liquid stream, the water flowing from his hands might have deceived Danaë. He scarcely can contain his own hopes in his mind, imagining everything to be of gold. As he is thus rejoicing, his servants set before him a table supplied with dainties, and not deficient in parched corn. But then, whether he touches the gifts of Ceres with his right hand, the gifts of Ceres, as gold, become hard; or if he attempts to bite the dainties with hungry teeth, those dainties, upon the application of his teeth, shine as yellow plates of gold. Bacchus, the grantor of this favour, he mingles with pure water; you could see liquid gold flowing through his jaws.

“Astonished at the novelty of his misfortune, being both rich and wretched, he wishes to escape from his wealth, and now he hates what but so lately he has wished for; no plenty relieves his hunger, dry thirst parches his throat, and he is deservedly tormented 385 xi. 130-145. by the now hated gold; and raising his hands towards heaven, and his shining arms, he says, “Grant me pardon, father Lenæus; I have done wrong, but have pity on me, I pray, and deliver me from this specious calamity!” Bacchus, the gentle Divinity among the Gods, restored him, as he confessed that he had done wrong, to his former state, and annulled his given promise, and the favour that was granted: “And that thou mayst not remain overlaid with thy gold, so unhappily desired, go,” said he, “to the river adjoining to great Sardis,10 and trace thy way, meeting the waters as they fall from the height of the mountain, until thou comest to the rise of the stream. And plunge thy head beneath the bubbling spring, where it bursts forth most abundantly, and at once purge thy body, at once thy crime.” The king placed himself beneath the waters prescribed; the golden virtue tinged the river, and departed from the human body into the stream. And even now, the fields, receiving the ore of this ancient vein of gold, are hard, growing of pallid colour, from their clods imbibing the gold.

EXPLANATION.

The ancients divided the Divinities into several classes, and in the last class, which Ovid calls the populace, or commonalty of the Gods, were the Satyrs and Sileni. The latter, according to Pausanias, were no other than Satyrs of advanced age. There seems, however, to have been one among them, to whom the name of Silenus was especially given, and to him the present story relates. According to Pindar and Pausanias he was born at Malea, in Laconia; while Theopompus, quoted by Ælian, represents him as being the son of a Nymph. He was inferior to the higher Divinities, but superior to man, in not being subject to mortality. He was represented as bald, flat-nosed, and red-faced, a perfect specimen of a drunken old man. He is often introduced either sitting on an ass, or reeling along on foot, with a thyrsus to support him.

He was said to have tended the education of the infant Bacchus, and indeed, according to the author whose works are quoted as those of Orpheus, he was an especial favourite of the Gods; while some writers represent him not as a drunken old man, but as a learned philosopher and a skilful commander. Lucian combines the two characters, and describes him as an aged man with large straight ears and a huge belly, wearing yellow clothes, and generally mounted on an ass, or supported by a staff, but, nevertheless, as being a skilful general. Hyginus says, that the Phrygian peasants found Midas near a fountain, into which, 386 according to Xenophon, some one had put wine, which had made him drunk. In his interview with Midas, according to Theopompus, as quoted by Ælian, they had a conversation concerning that unknown region of the earth, to which Plato refers under the name of the New Atlantis, and which, after long employing the speculations of the ancient philosophers, was realized to the moderns in the discovery of America. The passage is sufficiently curious to deserve to be quoted. He says, “Asia, Europe, and Libya, are but three islands, surrounded by the ocean; but beyond that ocean there is a vast continent, whose bounds are entirely unknown to us. The men and the animals of that country are much larger, and live much longer than those of this part of the world. Their towns are fine and magnificent; their customs are different from ours; and they are governed by different laws. They have two cities, one of which is called ‘the Warlike,’ and the other ‘the Devout.’ The inhabitants of the first city are much given to warfare, and make continual attacks upon their neighbours, whom they bring under their subjection. Those who inhabit the other city are peaceable, and blessed with plenty; the earth without toil or tillage furnishing them with abundance of the necessaries of life. Except their sick, they all live in the midst of riches and continual festivity and pleasure; but they are so just and righteous that the Gods themselves delight to go frequently and pass their time among them.

“The warlike people of the first city having extended their conquests in their own vast continent, made an irruption into ours, with a million of men, as far as the country of the Hyperboreans; but when they saw their mode of living, they deemed them to be unworthy of their notice, and returned home. These warriors rarely die of sickness; they delight in warfare, and generally lose their lives in battle. There is also in this new world another numerous people called Meropes; and in their country is a place called ‘Anostus,’ that is to say, ‘not to be repassed,’ because no one ever comes back from thence. It is a dreadful abyss, having no other than a reddish sort of light. There are two rivers in that place; one called the River of Sorrow, and the other the River of Mirth. Trees as large as planes grow about these rivers. Those who eat of the fruit of the trees growing near the River of Sorrow, pass their lives in affliction, weeping continually, even to their last breath; but such as eat of the fruit of the other trees, forget the past, and revert through the different stages of their life, and then die.”

Ælian regards the passage as a mere fable, and the latter part is clearly allegorical. The mention of the two cities, ‘the Warlike’ and ‘the Devout,’ can hardly fail to remind us of Japan, with its spiritual and temporal capitals.

Some writers say, that Silenus was the king of Caria, and was the contemporary and friend of Midas, to whom his counsel proved of considerable service, in governing his dominions. He was probably called the foster-father or tutor, of Bacchus, because he introduced his worship into Phrygia and the neighbouring countries.

387 xi. 146-169.

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FABLE III.

Pan is so elated with the praises of some Nymphs who hear the music of his pipe, that he presumes to challenge Apollo to play with him. The mountain God, Tmolus, who is chosen umpire of the contest, decides in favour of Apollo, and the whole company approve of his judgment except Midas, who, for his stupidity in preferring Pan, receives a pair of asses’ ears. He carefully conceals them till they are discovered by his barber, who publishes his deformity in a very singular manner.

He, abhorring riches, inhabited the woods and the fields, and followed Pan, who always dwells in caves of the mountains; but his obtuse understanding11 still remained, and the impulse of his foolish mind was fated again, as before, to be an injury to its owner. For the lofty Tmolus, looking far and wide over the sea, stands erect, steep with its lofty ascent; and extending in its descent on either side, is bounded on the one side by Sardis, on the other by the little Hypæpæ.

While Pan is there boasting of his strains to the charming Nymphs, and is warbling a little tune upon the reeds joined with wax, daring to despise the playing of Apollo in comparison with his own, he comes to the unequal contest under the arbitration of Tmolus.12 The aged umpire seats himself upon his own mountain, and frees his ears of the incumbering trees. His azure-coloured hair is only covered with oak, and acorns hang around his hollow temples. And looking at the God of the flocks, he says, “there is no delay in me, your umpire.” He sounds his rustic reeds, and delights Midas with his uncouth music; for he, by chance, is present as he plays. After this the sacred Tmolus turns his face towards the countenance of Apollo; his words follow the direction of his face. He, having his yellow head wreathed with Parnassian laurel, sweeps the ground with his robe, soaked in Tyrian purple,13 and supports with his left hand his lyre, adorned with gems and Indian ivory; the other hand holds the plectrum. The very posture 388 xi. 169-193. is that of an artist. He then touches the strings with a skilful thumb; charmed by the sweetness of which, Tmolus bids Pan to hold his reeds in submission to the lyre; and the judgment and decision of the sacred mountain pleases them all. Yet it is blamed, and is called unjust by the voice of Midas alone. But the Delian God does not allow his stupid ears to retain their human shape: but draws them out to a great length, and he fills them with grey hairs, and makes them unsteady at the lower part, and gives them the power of moving. The rest of his body is that of a man; in one part alone is he condemned to punishment; and he assumes the ears of the slowly moving ass.

He, indeed, concealed them, and endeavoured to veil his temples, laden with this foul disgrace, with a purple turban. But a servant, who was wont to cut his hair, when long, with the steel scissars, saw it; who, when he did not dare disclose the disgraceful thing he had seen, though desirous to publish it, and yet could not keep it secret, retired, and dug up the ground, and disclosed, in a low voice, what kind of ears he had beheld on his master, and whispered it to the earth cast up. And then he buried this discovery of his voice with the earth thrown in again, and, having covered up the ditch, departed in silence.

There, a grove, thick set with quivering reeds, began to rise; and as soon as it came to maturity, after a complete year, it betrayed its planter. For, moved by the gentle South wind, it repeated the words there buried, and disclosed the ears of his master.

EXPLANATION.

Midas, according to Pausanias, was the son of Gordius and Cybele, and reigned in the Greater Phrygia. Strabo says that he and his father kept their court near the river Sangar, in cities which, in the time of that author had become mean villages. As Midas was very rich, and at the same time very frugal, it was reported that whatever he touched was at once turned into gold; and Bacchus was probably introduced into his story, because Midas had favoured the introduction of his worship, and was consequently supposed to have owed his success to the good offices of that Divinity. He was probably the first who extracted gold from the sands of the river Pactolus, and in that circumstance the story may have originated. Strabo says that Midas found the treasures which he possessed in the mines of Mount Bermius. It was said that in his infancy some ants were seen to creep into his cradle, and to put grains of wheat in his mouth, which was supposed to portend that he would be rich and frugal.

389 xi. 194-204.

As he was very stupid and ignorant, the fable of his preference of the music of Pan to that of Apollo was invented, to which was added, perhaps, as a mark of his stupidity, that the God gave him a pair of asses’ ears. The scholiast of Aristophanes, to explain the story, says either it was intended to shew that Midas, like the ass, was very quick of hearing, or in other words, had numerous spies in all parts of his dominions; or, it was invented, because his usual place of residence was called Onouta, ὄνου ὦτα, ‘the ears of an ass.’ Strabo says that he took a draught of warm bullock’s blood, from the effects of which he died; and, according to Plutarch, he did so to deliver himself from the frightful dreams with which he was tormented.

Tmolus, the king of Lydia, according to Clitophon, was the son of Mars and the Nymph Theogene, or, according to Eustathius, of Sipylus and Eptonia. Having violated Arriphe, a Nymph of Diana, he was, as a punishment, tossed by a bull, and falling on some sharp pointed stakes, he lost his life, and was buried on the mountain that afterwards bore his name.

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FABLE IV.

Apollo and Neptune build the walls of Troy for king Laomedon, who refuses to give the Gods the reward which he has promised: on which Neptune punishes his perjury by an inundation of his country. Laomedon is then obliged to expose his daughter to a sea monster, in order to appease the God. Hercules delivers her; and Laomedon defrauds him likewise of the horses which he has promised him. In revenge, Hercules plunders the city of Troy, and carries off Hesione, whom he gives in marriage to his companion Telamon.

The son of Latona, having thus revenged himself, departs from Tmolus, and, borne through the liquid air, rests on the plains of Laomedon, on this side of the narrow sea of Helle, the daughter of Nephele. On the right hand of Sigæum and on the left of the lofty Rhœtæum,14 there is an ancient altar dedicated to the Panomphæan15 Thunderer. Thence, he sees Laomedon now first building the walls of rising Troy, and that this great undertaking is growing up with difficult labour, and requires no small resources. And then, with the trident-bearing father of the raging deep, he assumes a mortal form, and for the Phrygian king they build the walls,16 a sum of gold being agreed on for the defences.

390 xi. 205-220.

The work is now finished; the king refuses the reward, and, as a completion of his perfidy, adds perjury to his false words. “Thou shalt not escape unpunished,” says the king of the sea; and he drives all his waters towards the shores of covetous Troy. He turns the land, too, into the form of the sea, and carries off the wealth of the husbandmen, and overwhelms the fields with waves. Nor is this punishment sufficient: the daughter of the king, is also demanded for a sea monster. Chained to the rugged rocks, Alcides delivers her, and demands the promised reward, the horses agreed upon; and the recompense of so great a service being denied him, he captures the twice-perjured walls of conquered Troy. Nor does Telamon, a sharer in the warfare, come off without honour; and he obtains Hesione, who is given to him.

But Peleus was distinguished by a Goddess for his wife; nor was he more proud of the name of his grandfather than that of his father-in-law.17 Since, not to his lot alone did it fall to be the grandson of Jove; to him alone, was a Goddess given for a wife.

EXPLANATION.

Laomedon, being King of Troy, and the city being open and defenceless, he undertook to enclose it with walls, and succeeded so well, that the work was attributed to Apollo. The strong banks which he was obliged to raise to keep out the sea and to prevent inundations, were regarded as the work of Neptune. In time, these banks being broken down by tempests, it was reported that the God of the sea had thus revenged himself on Laomedon, for refusing him the reward which had been agreed upon between them. This story received the more ready credit from the circumstance mentioned by Herodotus and Eustathius, that this king used the treasure belonging to the temple of Neptune, in raising these embankments, and building the walls of his city; having promised the priests to restore it when he should be in a condition to do so; which promise he never performed. Homer says that Neptune and Apollo tended the flocks while all the subjects of Laomedon were engaged in building the walls.

When these embankments were laid under water, and a plague began to rage within the city, the Trojans were told by an oracle that to appease the God of the sea, they must sacrifice a virgin of the royal blood. The lot fell upon Hesione, and she was exposed to the fury of a sea-monster. Hercules offered to deliver her for a reward of six horses, 391 xi. 211-228. and having succeeded, was refused his recompense by Laomedon; whom he slew, and then plundered his city. He then gave the kingdom to Podarces, the son of Laomedon, and Hesione to his companion Telamon, who had assisted him. This monster was probably an allegorical representation of the inundations of the sea; and Hesione having been made the price of him that could succeed in devising a remedy, she was said to have been exposed to the fury of a monster. The six horses promised by Laomedon were perhaps so many ships, which Hercules demanded for his recompense; and this is the more likely, as the ancients said that these horses were so light and swift, that they ran upon the waves, which story seems to point at the qualities of a galley or ship under sail.

Lycophron gives a more wonderful version of the story. He says that the monster, to which Hesione was exposed, devoured Hercules, and that he was three days in its belly, and came out, having lost all his hair. This is, probably, a way of telling us that Hercules and his assistants were obliged to work in the water, which incommoded them very much. Palæphatus gives another explanation: he says that Hesione was about to be delivered up to a pirate, and that Hercules, on boarding his ship, was wounded, although afterwards victorious.

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FABLES V. AND VI.

Proteus foretells that Thetis shall have a son, who shall be more powerful than his father, and shall exceed him in valour. Jupiter, who is in love with Thetis, is alarmed at this prediction, and yields her to Peleus. The Goddess flies from his advances by assuming various shapes, till, by the advice of Proteus, he holds her fast, and then having married her, she bears Achilles. Peleus goes afterwards to Ceyx, king of Trachyn, to expiate the death of his brother Phocus, whom he has killed. Ceyx is in a profound melancholy, and tells him how his brother Dædalion, in the transports of his grief for his daughter Chione, who had been slain for vying with Diana, has been transformed into a hawk. During this relation, Peleus is informed that a wolf which Psamathe has sent to revenge the death of Phocus, is destroying his herds. He endeavours to avert the wrath of the Goddess, but she is deaf to his entreaties, till, by the intercession of Thetis, she is appeased, and she turns the wolf into stone.

For the aged Proteus had said to Thetis, “Goddess of the waves, conceive; thou shalt be the mother of a youth, who by his gallant actions shall surpass the deeds of his father, and shall be called greater than he.” Therefore, lest the world might contain something greater than Jove, although he had felt no gentle flame in his breast, Jupiter avoided the embraces of Thetis,18 the Goddess of the sea, and commanded his grandson, 392 xi. 228-258. the son of Æacus,19 to succeed to his own pretensions, and rush into the embraces of the ocean maid. There is a bay of Hæmonia, curved into a bending arch; its arms project out; there, were the water but deeper, there would be a harbour, but the sea is just covering the surface of the sand. It has a firm shore, which retains not the impression of the foot, nor delays the step of the traveller, nor is covered with sea-weeds. There is a grove of myrtle at hand, planted with particoloured berries. In the middle there is a cave, whether formed by nature or art, it is doubtful; still, by art rather. To this, Thetis, thou wast wont often to come naked, seated on thy harnessed dolphin. There Peleus seized upon thee, as thou wast lying fast bound in sleep; and because, being tried by entreaties, thou didst resist, he resolved upon violence, clasping thy neck with both his arms. And, unless thou hadst had recourse to thy wonted arts, by frequently changing thy shape, he would have succeeded in his attempt. But, at one moment, thou wast a bird (still, as a bird he held thee fast); at another time a large tree: to that tree did Peleus cling. Thy third form was that of a spotted tiger; frightened by that, the son of Æacus loosened his arms from thy body.

Then pouring wine upon its waters,20 he worshipped the Gods of the sea, both with the entrails of sheep and with the smoke of frankincense; until the Carpathian21 prophet said, from the middle of the waves, “Son of Æacus, thou shalt gain the alliance desired by thee. Do thou only, when she shall be resting fast asleep in the cool cave, bind her unawares with cords and tenacious bonds. And let her not deceive thee, by imitating a hundred forms; but hold her fast, whatever she shall be, until she shall reassume the form which she had before.” Proteus said this, and hid his face in the sea, and received his own waves at his closing words. Titan was now descending, and, with the pole of his chariot bent downward, was taking possession of the Hesperian main; when the beautiful 393 xi. 228-289. Nereid, leaving the deep, entered her wonted place of repose. Hardly had Peleus well seized the virgin’s limbs, when she changed her shape, until she perceived her limbs to be held fast, and her arms to be extended different ways. Then, at last, she sighed, and said, “Not without the aid of a Divinity, dost thou overcome me;” and then she appeared as Thetis again. The hero embraced her thus revealed, and enjoyed his wish, and by her was the father of great Achilles.

And happy was Peleus in his son, happy, too, in his wife, and one to whose lot all blessings had fallen, if you except the crime of his killing Phocus. The Trachinian land22 received him guilty of his brother’s blood, and banished from his native home. Here Ceyx, sprung from Lucifer for his father, and having the comeliness of his sire in his face, held the sway without violence and without bloodshed, who, being sad at that time and unlike his former self, lamented the loss of his brother. After the son of Æacus, wearied, both with troubles and the length of the journey, has arrived there, and has entered the city with a few attending him, and has left the flocks of sheep and the herds which he has brought with him, not far from the walls, in a shady valley; when an opportunity is first afforded him of approaching the prince, extending the symbols of peace23 with his suppliant hand, he tells him who he is, and from whom descended. He only conceals his crime, and, dissembling as to the true reason of his banishment, he entreats him to aid him by a reception either in his city or in his territory. On the other hand, the Trachinian prince addresses him with gentle lips, in words such as these: “Peleus, our bounties are open even to the lowest ranks, nor do I hold an inhospitable sway. To this my inclination, thou bringest in addition as powerful inducements, an illustrious name, and Jupiter as thy grandsire. And do not lose thy time in entreaty; all that thou askest thou shalt have. Look upon all these things, whatever thou seest, as in part thy own: would that thou couldst behold them in better condition!” and then 394 xi. 289-320. he weeps. Pelcus and his companions enquire what it is that occasions grief so great. To them he thus speaks:—

“Perhaps you may think that this bird, which lives upon prey, and affrights all the birds, always had wings. It was a man; and as great is the vigour of its courage, as he who was Dædalion by name was active, and bold in war, and ready for violence; he was sprung from him, for his father, who summons forth24 Aurora, and withdraws the last from the heavens. Peace was cherished by me; the care of maintaining peace and my marriage contract was mine; cruel warfare pleased my brother; that prowess of his subdued both kings and nations, which, changed, now chases the Thisbean doves.25 Chione was his daughter, who, highly endowed with beauty, was pleasing to a thousand suitors, when marriageable at the age of twice seven years. By chance Phœbus, and the son of Maia, returning, the one from his own Delphi, the other from the heights of Cyllene, beheld her at the same moment, and at the same moment were inspired with passion. Apollo defers his hope of enjoyment until the hours of night; the other brooks no delay, and with his wand, that causes sleep, touches the maiden’s face. At the potent touch she lies entranced, and suffers violence from the God. Night has now bespangled the heavens with stars; Phœbus personates an old woman, and takes those delights before enjoyed in imagination. When her mature womb had completed the destined time, Autolycus was born, a crafty offspring of the stock of the God with winged feet, ingenious at every kind of theft, and who used, not degenerating from his father’s skill,26 to make white out of black, and black out of white. From Phœbus was born (for she brought forth twins) Philammon, famous for his tuneful song, and for his lyre.

“But what avails it for her to have brought forth two children, and to have been pleasing to two Gods, and to have sprung from a valiant father, and the Thunderer as her ancestor?27 395 xi. 320-353. Is even glory thus prejudicial to many? To her, at least, it was a prejudice; who dared to prefer herself to Diana, and decried the charms of the Goddess. But violent wrath was excited in her, and she said, ‘We will please her by our deeds.’28 And there was no delay: she bent her bow, and let fly an arrow from the string, and pierced with the reed the tongue that deserved it. The tongue was silent; nor did her voice, and the words which she attempted to utter, now follow; and life, with her blood, left her, as she endeavoured to speak. Oh hapless affection! What pain did I then endure in my heart, as her uncle, and what consolations did I give to my affectionate brother? These the father received no otherwise than rocks do the murmurs of the ocean, and he bitterly lamented his daughter thus snatched from him. But when he beheld her burning, four times had he an impulse to rush into the midst of the pile; thence repulsed, four times did he commit his swift limbs to flight, and, like an ox, bearing upon his galled neck the stings of hornets, he rushed where there was no path. Already did he seem to me to run faster than a human being, and you would have supposed that his feet had assumed wings. Therefore he outran all; and, made swift by the desire for death, he gained the heights of Parnassus.

“Apollo pitying him, when Dædalion would have thrown himself from the top of the rock, made him into a bird, and supported him, hovering in the air upon these sudden wings; and he gave him a curved beak, and crooked claws on his talons, his former courage, and strength greater in proportion than his body; and, now become a hawk, sufficiently benignant to none, he rages equally against all birds; and grieving himself, becomes the cause of grief to others.”

While the son of Lucifer is relating these wonders about his brother, hastening with panting speed, Phocæan Antenor, the keeper of his herds, runs up to him. “Alas, Peleus! Peleus!” says he, “I am the messenger to thee of a great calamity;” and then Peleus bids him declare whatever news it is that he has brought; and the Trachinian hero himself is in suspense, and trembles through apprehension. The other tells his story: “I had driven the weary bullocks to the winding shore, when 396 xi. 353-388. the Sun at his height, in the midst of his course, could look back on as much of it as he could see to be now remaining; and a part of the oxen had bent their knees on the yellow sands, and, as they lay, viewed the expanse of the wide waters; some, with slow steps, were wandering here and there; others were swimming, and appearing with their lofty necks above the waves. A temple is hard by the sea, adorned neither with marble nor with gold, but made of solid beams, and shaded with an ancient grove; the Nereids and Nereus possess it. A sailor, while he was drying his nets upon the shore, told us that these were the Gods of the temple. Adjacent to this is a marsh, planted thickly with numerous willows, which the water of the stagnating waves of the sea has made into a swamp. From that spot, a huge monster, a wolf, roaring with a loud bellowing, alarms the neighbouring places, and comes forth from the thicket of the marsh, both having his thundering jaws covered with foam and with clotted blood, and his eyes suffused with red flame. Though he was raging both with fury and with hunger, still was he more excited by fury; for he did not care to satisfy his hunger by the slaughter of the oxen, and to satiate his dreadful appetite, but he mangled the whole herd, and, like a true foe, pulled each to the ground. Some, too, of ourselves, while we were defending them, wounded with his fatal bite, were killed. The shore and the nearest waves were red with blood, and the fens were filled with the lowings of the herd. But delay is dangerous, and the case does not allow us to hesitate: while anything is still left, let us all unite, and let us take up arms, arms, I say, and in a body let us bear weapons.”

Thus speaks the countryman. And the loss does not affect Peleus; but, remembering his crime, he considers that the bereaved Nereid has sent these misfortunes of his, as an offering to the departed Phocus. The Œtæan king29 commands his men to put on their armour, and to take up stout weapons; together with whom, he himself is preparing to go. But Halcyone, his wife, alarmed at the tumult, runs out, and not yet having arranged all her hair, even that which is arranged she throws in disorder; and clinging to the neck of her husband, she entreats him, both with words and tears, to send assistance without himself, and so to save two lives in one. 397 xi. 388-409. The son of Æacus says to her, “O queen, lay aside thy commendable and affectionate fears; the kindness of thy proposal is too great for me. It does not please me, that arms should be employed against this new monster. The Divinity of the sea must be adored.” There is a lofty tower; a fire is upon the extreme summit,30 a place grateful to wearied ships. They go up there, and with sighs they behold the bulls lying scattered upon the sea shore, and the cruel ravager with blood-stained mouth, having his long hair stained with gore. Peleus, thence extending his hands towards the open sea, entreats the azure Psamathe to lay aside her wrath, and to give him her aid. But she is not moved by the words of the son of Æacus, thus entreating. Thetis, interceding on behalf of her husband, obtains that favour for him.

But still the wolf persists, not recalled from the furious slaughter, and keenly urged by the sweetness of the blood; until she changes him into marble, as he is fastening on the neck of a mangled heifer. His body preserves every thing except its colour. The colour of the stone shows that he is not now a wolf, and ought not now to be feared. Still, the Fates do not permit the banished Peleus to settle in this land: the wandering exile goes to the Magnetes,31 and there receives from the Hæmonian Acastus32 an expiation of the murder.

398

EXPLANATION.

Thetis being a woman of extraordinary beauty, it is not improbable, that in the Epithalamia that were composed on her marriage, it was asserted, that the Gods had contended for her hand, and had been forced to give way, in obedience to the superior power of destiny. Hyginus says that Prometheus was the only person that was acquainted with the oracle; and that he imparted it to Jupiter, on condition that he would deliver him from the eagle that tormented him: whereupon the God sent Hercules to Mount Caucasus, to perform his promise. It was on the occasion of this marriage that the Goddess Discord presented the golden apple, the dispute for which occasioned the Trojan war. The part of the story which relates how she assumed various forms, to avoid the advances of Peleus, is perhaps an ingenious method of stating, that having several suitors, she was originally disinclined to Peleus, and used every pretext to avoid him, until, by the advice of a wise friend, he found means to remove all the difficulties which opposed his alliance with her.

Some writers state that Thetis was the daughter of Chiron; but Euripides, in a fragment of his Iphigenia, tells us that Achilles, who was the son of this marriage, took a pride in carrying the figure of a Nereid on his shield. The three sons of Æacus were Peleus, Telamon, and Phocus; while they were playing at quoits, the latter accidentally received a blow from Peleus, which killed him. Ovid, however, seems here to imply that Peleus killed his brother purposely.

The story of Chione most probably took its rise from the difference between the inclinations of the two children that she bore. Autolycus, being cunning, and addicted to theft, he was styled the son of Mercury; while Philammon being a lover of music, Apollo was said to be his father. According to Pausanias, Autolycus was the son of Dædalion, and not of Chione. The story of the wolf, the minister of the vengeance of Psamathe, for the death of Phocus, is probably built on historical grounds. Æacus had two wives, Ægina and Psamathe, the sister of Thetis; by the first he had Peleus and Telamon; by the second, Phocus. Lycomedes, the king of Scyros, the brother of Psamathe, resolved to revenge the death of his nephew, whom Peleus had killed: and declared war against Ceyx, for receiving him into his dominions. The troops of Lycomedes ravaged the country, and carried away the flocks of Peleus: on which prayers and entreaties were resorted to, with the view of pacifying him; which object having been effected, he withdrew his troops. On this, it was rumoured that he was changed into a rock, after having ravaged the country like a wild beast, which comparison was perhaps suggested by the fact of his name being partly compounded of the word λυκὸς, ‘a wolf.’

399 xi. 410-429.

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FABLE VII.

Ceyx, going to Claros, to consult the oracle about his brother’s fate, is shipwrecked on the voyage. Juno sends Iris to the God of Sleep, who, at her request, dispatches Morpheus to Halcyone, in a dream, to inform her of the death of her husband. She awakes in the morning, full of solicitude, and goes to the shore where she finds the body of Ceyx thrown up by the waves. She is about to cast herself into the sea in despair, when the Gods transform them both into king-fishers.

In the mean time, Ceyx being disturbed in mind, both on account of the strange fate of his brother, and the wonders that had succeeded his brother, prepares to go to the Clarian God, that he may consult the sacred oracle, the consolation of mortals: for the profane Phorbas,33 with his Phlegyans, renders the oracle of Delphi inaccessible. Yet he first makes thee acquainted with his design, most faithful Halcyone, whose bones receive a chill, and a paleness, much resembling boxwood, comes over her face, and her cheeks are wet with tears gushing forth. Three times attempting to speak, three times she moistens her face with tears, and, sobs interrupting her affectionate complaints, she says:—

“What fault of mine, my dearest, has changed thy mind? Where is that care of me, which once used to exist? Canst thou now be absent without anxiety, thy Halcyone being left behind? Now, is a long journey pleasing to thee? Now, am I dearer to thee when at a distance? But I suppose thy journey is by land, and I shall only grieve, and shall not fear as well, and my anxiety will be free from apprehension. The seas and the aspect of the stormy ocean affright me. And lately I beheld broken planks on the sea shore; and often have I read the names upon tombs,34 without bodies there buried. 400 xi. 430-460. And let not any deceitful assurance influence thy mind, that the grandson of Hippotas35 is thy father-in-law; who confines the strong winds in prison, and assuages the seas when he pleases. When, once let loose, the winds have taken possession of the deep, nothing is forbidden to them; every land and every sea is disregarded by them. Even the clouds of heaven do they insult, and by their bold onsets strike forth the brilliant fires.36 The more I know them, (for I do know them, and, when little, have often seen them in my father’s abode,) the more I think they are to be dreaded. But if thy resolution, my dear husband, cannot be altered by my entreaties, and if thou art but too determined to go; take me, too, as well. At least, we shall be tossed together; nor shall I fear anything, but what I shall be then suffering; and together we shall endure whatever shall happen; together we shall be carried over the wide seas.”

By such words and the tears of the daughter of Æolus, is her husband, son of the Morning Star, much affected; for the flame of love exists no less in him. But he neither wishes to abandon his proposed voyage, nor to admit Halcyone to a share in the danger; and he says, in answer, many things to console her timorous breast. And yet she does not, on that account, approve of his reasons. To them he adds this alleviation, with which alone he influences his affectionate wife: “All delay will, indeed, be tedious to me; but I swear to thee by the fire of my sire, (if only the fates allow me to return,) that I will come back before the moon has twice completed her orb.” When, by these promises, a hope has been given her of his speedy return, he forthwith orders a ship, drawn out of the dock, to be launched in the sea, and to be supplied with its proper equipments. On seeing this, Halcyone again shuddered, as though presaging the future, and shed her flowing tears, and gave him embraces; and at last, in extreme misery, she said, with a sad voice, “Farewell!” and then she sank with all her body to the ground.

401 xi. 461-479.

But the youths, while Ceyx is still seeking pretexts for delay, in double rows,37 draw the oars towards their hardy breasts, and cleave the main with equal strokes. She raises her weeping eyes, and sees her husband standing on the crooked stern, and by waving his hand making the first signs to her; and she returns the signals. When the land has receded further, and her eyes are unable to distinguish his countenance: still, while she can, she follows the retreating ship with her sight. When this too, borne onward, cannot be distinguished from the distance; still she looks at the sails waving from the top of the mast. When she no longer sees the sails; she anxiously seeks her deserted bed, and lays herself on the couch. The bed, and the spot, renew the tears of Halcyone, and remind her what part of herself is wanting.

They have now gone out of harbour, and the breeze shakes the rigging; the sailor urges the pendent oars towards their sides;38 and fixes the sailyards39 on the top of the mast, and spreads the canvass full from the mast, and catches the coming breezes. Either the smaller part, or, at least, not more than half her course, had now been cut by the ship, and both lands were at a 402 xi. 479-515. great distance, when, towards night, the sea began to grow white with swelling waves, and the boisterous East wind to blow with greater violence. Presently the master cries, “At once, lower the top sails, and furl the whole of the sail to the yards!” He orders, but the adverse storm impedes the execution; and the roaring of the sea does not allow any voice to be heard.

Yet, of their own accord, some hasten to draw in the oars, some to secure the sides, some to withdraw the sails from the winds. This one pumps up the waves, and pours back the sea into the sea; another takes off the yards. While these things are being done without any order, the raging storm is increasing, and the fierce winds wage war on every side, and stir up the furious main. The master of the ship is himself alarmed, and himself confesses that he does not know what is their present condition, nor what to order or forbid; so great is the amount of their misfortunes, and more powerful than all his skill. For the men are making a noise with their shouts, the cordage with its rattling, the heavy waves with the dashing of other waves, the skies with the thunder. The sea is upturned with billows, and appears to reach the heavens, and to sprinkle the surrounding clouds with its foam. And one while, when it turns up the yellow sands from the bottom, it is of the same colour with them; at another time it is blacker than the Stygian waves. Sometimes it is level, and is white with resounding foam. The Trachinian ship too, is influenced by these vicissitudes; and now aloft, as though from the summit of a mountain, it seems to look down upon the vallies and the depths of Acheron; at another moment, when the engulphing sea has surrounded it, sunk below, it seems to be looking at heaven above from the infernal waters. Struck on its side by the waves, it often sends forth a low crashing sound, and beaten against, it sounds with no less noise, than on an occasion when the iron battering ram, or the balista, is shaking the shattered towers. And as fierce lions are wont, gaining strength in their career, to rush with their breasts upon the weapons, and arms extended against them; so the water, when upon the rising of the winds it had rushed onwards, advanced against the rigging of the ship, and was much higher than it.

And now the bolts shrink, and despoiled of their covering of wax,40 the seams open wide, and afford a passage to the 403 xi. 515-540. fatal waves. Behold! vast showers fall from the dissolving clouds, and you would believe that the whole of the heavens is descending into the deep, and that the swelling sea is ascending to the tracts of heaven. The sails are wet with the rain, and the waves of the ocean are mingled with the waters of the skies. The firmament is without its fires; and the gloomy night is oppressed both with its own darkness and that of the storm. Yet the lightnings disperse these, and give light as they flash; the waters are on fire with the flames of the thunder-bolts. And now, too, the waves make an inroad into the hollow texture of the ship; and as a soldier, superior to all the rest of the number, after he has often sprung forward against the fortifications of a defended city, at length gains his desires; and, inflamed with the desire of glory, though but one among a thousand more, he still mounts the wall, so, when the violent waves have beaten against the lofty sides, the fury of the tenth wave,41 rising more impetuously than the rest, rushes onward; and it ceases not to attack the wearied ship, before it descends within the walls, as it were, of the captured bark. Part, then, of the sea is still attempting to get into the ship, part is within it. All are now in alarm, with no less intensity than a city is wont to be alarmed, while some are undermining the walls without, and others within have possession of the walls. All art fails them, and their courage sinks; and as many shapes of death seem to rush and to break in upon them, as the waves that approach. One does not refrain from tears; another is stupefied; another calls those happy42 whom funeral rites 404 xi. 540-569. await; another, in his prayers, addresses the Gods, and lifting up his hands in vain to that heaven which he sees not, implores their aid. His brothers and his parent recur to the mind of another; to another, his home, with his pledges of affection, and so what has been left behind by each.

The remembrance of Halcyone affects Ceyx; on the lips of Ceyx there is nothing but Halcyone; and though her alone he regrets, still he rejoices that she is absent. Gladly, too, would he look back to the shore of his native land, and turn his last glance towards his home; but he knows not where it is. The sea is raging in a hurricane43 so vast, and all the sky is concealed beneath the shade brought on by the clouds of pitchy darkness, and the face of the night is redoubled in gloom. The mast is broken by the violence of the drenching tempest; the helm, too, is broken; and the undaunted wave, standing over its spoil, looks down like a conqueror, upon the waves as they encircle below. Nor, when precipitated, does it rush down less violently, than if any God were to hurl Athos or Pindus, torn up from its foundations, into the open sea; and with its weight and its violence together, it sinks the ship to the bottom. With her, a great part of the crew overwhelmed in the deep water, and not rising again to the air, meet their fate. Some seize hold of portions and broken pieces of the ship. Ceyx himself seizes a fragment of the wreck, with that hand with which he was wont to wield the sceptre, and in vain, alas! he invokes his father, and his father-in-law. But chiefly on his lips, as he swims, is his wife Halcyone. Her he thinks of, and her name he repeats: he prays the waves to impel his body before her eyes; and that when dead he may be entombed by the hands of his friends. While he still swims, he calls upon Halcyone far away, as often as the billows allow44 him to open his mouth, and in the very waves he murmurs her name. When, lo! a darkening arch45 of waters breaks over the middle of the waves, and buries his head sinking beneath the bursting billow. 405 xi. 569-590. Lucifer was obscured that night, and such that you could not have recognized him; and since he was not allowed to depart from the heavens,46 he concealed his face beneath thick clouds.

In the meantime, the daughter of Æolus, ignorant of so great misfortunes, reckons the nights; and now she hastens to prepare the garments47 for him to put on, and now, those which, when he comes, she herself may wear, and vainly promises herself his return. She, indeed, piously offers frankincense to all the Gods above; but, before all, she pays her adorations at the temple of Juno, and comes to the altars on behalf of her husband, who is not in existence. And she prays that her husband may be safe, and that he may return, and may prefer no woman before her. But this last alone can be her lot, out of so many of her wishes. But the Goddess endures not any longer to be supplicated on behalf of one who is dead; and, that she may repel her polluted hands48 from the altars,—she says, “Iris, most faithful messenger of my words, hasten quickly to the soporiferous court of Sleep, and command him, under the form of Ceyx who is dead, to send a vision to Halcyone, to relate her real misfortune.” Thus she says. Iris assumes garment of a thousand colours, and, marking the heavens 406 xi. 590-617. with her curving arch, she repairs to the abode of the king, Sleep, as bidden, concealed beneath a rock.

There is near the Cimmerians49 a cave with a long recess, a hollowed mountain, the home and the habitation of slothful Sleep, into which the Sun, whether rising, or in his mid course, or setting, can never come. Fogs mingled with darkness are exhaled from the ground, and it is a twilight with a dubious light. No wakeful bird, with the notes of his crested features, there calls forth the morn; nor do the watchful dogs, or the geese more sagacious50 than the dogs, break the silence with their voices. No wild beasts, no cattle, no boughs waving with the breeze, no loud outbursts of the human voice, there make any sound; mute Rest has there her abode. But from the bottom of the rock runs a stream, the waters of Lethe,51 through which the rivulet, trickling with a murmuring noise amid the sounding pebbles, invites sleep. Before the doors of the cavern, poppies bloom in abundance, and innumerable herbs, from the juice of which the humid night gathers sleep, and spreads it over the darkened Earth. There is no door in the whole dwelling, to make a noise by the turning of the hinges; no porter at the entrance. But in the middle is a couch, raised high upon black ebony, stuffed with feathers, of a dark colour, concealed by a dark coverlet; on which the God himself lies, his limbs dissolved in sloth. Around him lie, in every direction, imitating divers shapes, unsubstantial dreams as many as the harvest bears ears of corn, the wood green leaves, the shore the sands thrown up. Into this, soon as the maiden had entered, and had put aside with her hands the visions that were 407 xi. 617-648. in her way, the sacred house shone with the splendour of her garment, and the God, with difficulty lifting up his eyes sunk in languid sloth, again and again relapsing, and striking the upper part of his breast with his nodding chin, at last aroused himself from his dozing; and, raised on his elbow, he inquired why she had come; for he knew who she was.

But she replied, “Sleep, thou repose of all things; Sleep, thou gentlest of the Deities; thou peace of the mind, from which care flies, who dost soothe the hearts of men, wearied with the toils of the day, and refittest them for labour, command a vision, that resembles in similitude the real shape, to go to Halcyone, in Herculean Trachyn, in the form of the king, and to assume the form of one that has suffered shipwreck. Juno commands this.” After Iris had executed her commission, she departed; for she could no longer endure the effects of the vapour; and, as soon as she perceived sleep creeping over her limbs, she took to flight,52 and departed along the bow by which she had come just before.

But Father Sleep, out of the multitude of his thousand sons, raises Morpheus,53 a skilful artist, and an imitator of any human shape. No one more dexterously than he mimics the gait, and the countenance, and the mode of speaking; he adds the dress, too, and the words most commonly used by any one. But he imitates men only; for another one becomes a wild beast, becomes a bird, or becomes a serpent, with its lengthened body: this one, the Gods above call Icelos; the tribe of mortals, Phobetor. There is likewise a third, master of a different art, called Phantasos: he cleverly changes himself into earth, and stone, and water, and a tree, and all those things which are destitute of life. These are wont, by night, to show their features to kings and to generals, while others wander amid the people and the commonalty. These, Sleep, the aged God, passes by, and selects Morpheus alone from all his brothers, to execute the commands of the daughter of Thaumas; and again he 408 xi. 648-684. both drops his head, sunk in languid drowsiness, and shrinks back within the lofty couch.

Morpheus flies through the dark with wings that make no noise, and in a short space of intervening time arrives at the Hæmonian city; and, laying aside his wings from off his body, he assumes the form of Ceyx; and in that form, wan, and like one without blood, without garments, he stands before the bed of his wretched wife. The beard of the hero appears to be dripping, and the water to be falling thickly from his soaking hair. Then leaning on the bed, with tears running down his face, he says these words: “My most wretched wife, dost thou recognise thy Ceyx, or are my looks so changed with death? Observe me; thou wilt surely know me: and, instead of thy husband, thou wilt find the ghost of thy husband. Thy prayers, Halcyone, have availed me nothing; I have perished. Do not promise thyself, thus deceived, my return. The cloudy South wind caught my ship in the Ægean Sea,54 and dashed it to pieces, tossed by the mighty blasts; and the waves choked my utterance, in vain calling upon thy name. It is no untruthful messenger that tells thee this: thou dost not hear these things through vague rumours. I, myself, shipwrecked, in person, am telling thee my fate. Come, arise then, shed tears, and put on mourning; and do not send me unlamented to the phantom realms of Tartarus.”

To these words Morpheus adds a voice, which she may believe to be that of her husband. He seems, too, to be shedding real tears, and his hands have the gesture of Ceyx. As she weeps, Halcyone groans aloud, and moves her arms in her sleep, and catching at his body, grasps the air; and she cries aloud, “Stay, whither dost thou hurry? We will go together.” Disturbed by her own voice, and by the appearance of her husband, she shakes off sleep; and first she looks about there, to see if he, who has been so lately seen, is there; for the servants, roused by her voice, have brought in lights. After she has found him nowhere, she smites her face with her hands, and tears her garments from off her breast, and beats her breast itself. Nor cares she to loosen her hair; she tears it, and says to her nurse, as she inquires what is the occasion 409 xi. 684-715. of her sorrow: “Halcyone is no more! no more! with her own Ceyx is she dead. Away with words of comfort. He has perished by shipwreck. I have seen him, and I knew him; and as he departed, desirous to detain him, I extended my hands towards him. The ghost fled: but, yet it was the undoubted and the real ghost of my husband. It had not, indeed, if thou askest me that, his wonted features; nor was he looking cheerful with his former countenance. Hapless, I beheld him, pale, and naked, and with his hair still dripping. Lo! ill-fated man, he stood on this very spot;” and she seeks the prints of his footsteps, if any are left. “This it was, this is what I dreaded in my ill-boding mind, and I entreated that thou wouldst not, deserting me, follow the winds. But, I could have wished, since thou didst depart to perish, that, at least, thou hadst taken me as well. To have gone with thee, yes, with thee, would have been an advantage to me; for then neither should I have spent any part of my life otherwise than together with thee, nor would my death have been divided from thee. Now, absent from thee, I perish; now, absent, I am tossed on the waves; and the sea has thee without me.

“My heart were more cruel than the sea itself, were I to strive to protract my life any further; and, were I to struggle to survive so great a misfortune. But I will not struggle, nor, hapless one, will I abandon thee; and, at least, I will now come to be thy companion. And, in the tomb, if the urn does not, yet the inscription55 shall unite us: if I touch not thy bones with my bones, still will I unite thy name with my name.” Grief forbids her saying more, and wailings come between each word, and groans are heaved from her sorrow-stricken breast.

It is now morning: she goes forth from her abode to the sea-shore, and, wretched, repairs to that place from which she had seen him go, and says, “While he lingered, and while he was loosening the cables, at his departure, he gave me kisses upon this sea-shore;” and while she calls to recollection the incidents which she had observed with her eyes, and looks 410 xi. 715-747. out upon the sea, she observes on the flowing wave, I know not what object, like a body, within a distant space: and at first she is doubtful what it is. After the water has brought it a little nearer, and, although it is still distant, it is plain that it is a corpse. Ignorant who it may be, because it is ship-wrecked, she is moved at the omen, and, though unknown, would fain give it a tear. “Alas! thou wretched one!” she says, “whoever thou art; and if thou hast any wife!” Driven by the waves, the body approaches nearer. The more she looks at it, the less and the less is she mistress of her senses. And now she sees it brought close to the land, that now she can well distinguish it: it is her husband. “’Tis he!” she exclaims, and, on the instant, she tears her face, her hair, and her garments; and, extending her trembling hands towards Ceyx, she says, “And is it thus, Oh dearest husband! is it thus, Oh ill-fated one! that thou dost return to me?”

A mole, made by the hand of man, adjoins the waves, which breaks the first fury of the ocean, and weakens the first shock of its waters. Upon that she leaped, and ’tis wondrous that she could. She flew, and beating the light air with her wings newly formed, she, a wretched bird, skimmed the surface of the water. And, while she flew, her croaking mouth, with its slender bill, uttered a sound like that of one in sadness, and full of complaining. But when she touched the body, dumb, and without blood, embracing the beloved limbs with her new-made wings, in vain she gave him cold kisses with her hardened bill. The people were in doubt whether Ceyx was sensible of this, or whether, by the motion of the wave, he seemed to raise his countenance; but really he was sensible of it; and, at length, through the pity of the Gods above, both were changed into birds. Meeting with the same fate, even then their love remained. Nor, when now birds, is the conjugal tie dissolved: they couple, and they become parents; and for seven calm days,56 in the winter-time, does Halcyone brood upon her nest floating on the sea.57 Then the passage of the deep is safe; 411 xi. 747-754. Æolus keeps the winds in, and restrains them from sallying forth, and secures a smooth sea for his descendants.

EXPLANATION.

According to the testimony of several of the ancient writers, Ceyx was the king of Trachyn, and was a prince of great knowledge and experience; and many had recourse to him to atone for the murders which they had committed, whether through imprudence or otherwise. Pausanias says that Eurystheus having summoned Ceyx to deliver up to him the children of Hercules, that prince, who was not able to maintain a war against so powerful a king, sent the youths to Theseus, who took them into his protection.

To recover from the melancholy consequent upon the death of his brother Dædalion and his niece Chione, he went to Claros to consult the oracle of Apollo, and was shipwrecked on his return; on which, his wife, Halcyone, was so afflicted, that she died of grief, or else threw herself into the sea, as Hyginus informs us. It was said that they were changed into the birds which we call kingfishers, a story which, probably, has no other foundation than the name of Halcyone, which signifies that bird; which by the ancients was considered to be the symbol of conjugal affection.

Apollodorus, however, does not give us so favourable an idea of the virtue of these persons as Ovid has done. According to him, it was their pride which proved the cause of their destruction. Jupiter enraged at Ceyx, because he had assumed his name as Halcyone had done that of Juno, changed them both into birds, he becoming a cormorant, and she a kingfisher. This story is remarkable for the beautiful and affecting manner in which it is told.

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FABLE VIII.

The Nymph Hesperia flying from Æsacus, who is enamoured of her, is bitten by a serpent, and instantly dies from the effects of the wound. He is so afflicted at her death, that he throws himself into the sea, and is transformed into a didapper.

Some old man58 observes them as they fly over the widely extended seas, and commends their love, preserved to the end of their existence. One, close by, or the same, if chance so orders it, says, “This one, too, which you see, as it cuts through the sea, and having its legs drawn up,” pointing at a didapper, with its wide throat, “was the son of a king. 412 xi. 754-786. And, if you want to come down to him in one lengthened series, his ancestors are Ilus, and Assaracus, and Ganymede,59 snatched away by Jupiter, and the aged Laomedon, and Priam, to whom were allotted the last days of Troy. He himself was the brother of Hector, and had he not experienced a strange fate in his early youth, perhaps he would have had a name not inferior to that of Hector; although the daughter of Dymas bore this last. Alexirhoë, the daughter of the two-horned Granicus,60 is said secretly to have brought forth Æsacus, under shady Ida.

“He loathed the cities, and distant from the splendid court, frequented the lonely mountains, and the unambitious fields; nor went but rarely among the throngs of Ilium. Yet, not having a breast either churlish, or impregnable to love, he espies Hesperie, the daughter of Cebrenus,61 on the banks of her sire, who has been often sought by him throughout all the woods, drying her locks, thrown over her shoulders, in the sun. The Nymph, thus seen, takes to flight, just as the frightened hind from the tawny wolf; and as the water-duck, surprised at a distance, having left her wonted stream, from the hawk. Her the Trojan hero pursues, and, swift with love, closely follows her, made swift by fear. Behold! a snake, lurking in the grass, with its barbed sting, wounds her foot as she flies, and leaves its venom in her body. With her flight is her life cut short. Frantic, he embraces her breathless, and cries aloud,— “I grieve, I grieve that ever I pursued thee. But I did not apprehend this; nor was it of so much value to me to conquer. We two have proved the destruction of wretched thee. The wound was given by the serpent; by me was the occasion given. I should be more guilty than he, did I not give the consolation for thy fate by my own death.” Thus he said; and from a rock which the hoarse waves had undermined, he hurled himself into the sea. Tethys, pitying him as he fell, received him softly, and covered him with feathers as he swam through the sea; and the power of obtaining 413 xi. 786-795. the death he sought was not granted to him. The lover is vexed that, against his will, he is obliged to live on, and that opposition is made to his spirit, desirous to depart from its wretched abode. And, as he has assumed newformed wings on his shoulders, he flies aloft, and again he throws his body in the waves: his feathers break the fall. Æsacus is enraged; and headlong he plunges into the deep,62 and incessantly tries the way of destruction. Love caused his leanness; the spaces between the joints of his legs are long; his neck remains long, and his head is far away from his body. He loves the sea, and has his name because he plunges63 in it.

EXPLANATION.

Ovid and Apollodorus agree that Æsacus was the son of Priam, and that he was changed into a didapper, or diver, but they differ in the other circumstances of his life. Instead of being the son of Alexirhoë, Apollodorus says that he was the son of Priam and Arisbe the daughter of Merope, his first wife; that his father made him marry Sterope, who dying very young, he was so afflicted at her death, that he threw himself into the sea. He also says that Priam having repudiated Arisbe to marry Hecuba, the daughter of Cisseus, Æsacus seeing his mother-in-law pregnant of her second son, foretold his father that her progeny would be the cause of a bloody war, which would end in the destruction of the kingdom of Troy; and that upon this prediction, the infant, when born, was exposed on Mount Ida.

Tzetzes adds, that Æsacus told his father that it was absolutely necessary to put to death both the mother and the infant which was born on that same day; on which Priam being informed that Cilla, the wife of Thymætes, being delivered on that day of a son, he ordered them both to be killed; thinking thereby to escape the realization of the prediction. Servius, on the authority of Euphorion, relates the story in much the same manner; but a poet quoted by Cicero in his first book on Divination, says that it was the oracle of Zelia, a little town at the foot of Mount Ida, which gave that answer as an interpretation of the dream of Hecuba. Pausanias says it was the sibyl Herophila who interpreted the dream, while other ancient writers state that it was Cassandra. Apollodorus says that Æsacus learned from his grandfather Merops the art of foretelling things to come.