The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII
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Title: The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII
Author: Ovid
Translator: Henry T. Riley
Release date: June 8, 2007 [eBook #21765]
Most recently updated: June 28, 2021
Language: English
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[Transcriber’s Note:
In the original text, words and phrases supplied by the translator
were printed in _italics_. In this e-text they are shown in {braces}.
Italics in the notes and commentary are shown conventionally with
_lines_, boldface by =marks=.
Line numbers from the original Latin poem were printed as headnotes
on each page. For this e-text, only the line numbers of each complete
“Fable” are given. Line numbers used in footnotes are retained from
the original text; these, too, refer to the Latin poem and are
independent of line divisions in the translation.
Parts of this e-text use material from another edition of the Riley
translation of the _Metamorphoses_: George Bell (London, 1893).
Details are given at the end of the text, before the Errata. Each
segment of the introductory material is individually identified.]
THE
METAMORPHOSES OF OVID
Vol. I--Books I-VII
LITERALLY TRANSLATED WITH NOTES AND EXPLANATIONS
by
HENRY T. RILEY, M.A.
With an Introduction by
EDWARD BROOKS, JR.
Copyright, 1899, By David McKay
Press Of
Sherman & Co., Philadelphia
INTRODUCTION.
[From Bell edition.]
The Metamorphoses of Ovid are a compendium of the Mythological
narratives of ancient Greece and Rome, so ingeniously framed, as to
embrace a large amount of information upon almost every subject
connected with the learning, traditions, manners, and customs of
antiquity, and have afforded a fertile field of investigation to the
learned of the civilized world. To present to the public a faithful
translation of a work, universally esteemed, not only for its varied
information, but as being the masterpiece of one of the greatest Poets
of ancient Rome, is the object of the present volume.
To render the work, which, from its nature and design, must, of
necessity, be replete with matter of obscure meaning, more inviting
to the scholar, and more intelligible to those who are unversed in
Classical literature, the translation is accompanied with Notes and
Explanations, which, it is believed, will be found to throw considerable
light upon the origin and meaning of some of the traditions of heathen
Mythology.
In the translation, the text of the Delphin edition has been generally
adopted; and no deviation has been made from it, except in a few
instances, where the reason for such a step is stated in the notes;
at the same time, the texts of Burmann and Gierig have throughout been
carefully consulted. The several editions vary materially in respect to
punctuation; the Translator has consequently used his own discretion in
adopting that which seemed to him the most fully to convey in each
passage the intended meaning of the writer.
The Metamorphoses of Ovid have been frequently translated into the
English language. On referring to Mr. Bohn’s excellent Catalogue of the
Greek and Latin Classics and their Translations, we find that the whole
of the work has been twice translated into English Prose, while five
translations in Verse are there enumerated. A prose version of the
Metamorphoses was published by Joseph Davidson, about the middle of
the last century, which professes to be “as near the original as the
different idioms of the Latin and English will allow;” and to be
“printed for the use of schools, as well as of private gentlemen.” A few
moments’ perusal of this work will satisfy the reader that it has not
the slightest pretension to be considered a literal translation, while,
by its departure from the strict letter of the author, it has gained
nothing in elegance of diction. It is accompanied by “critical,
historical, geographical, and classical notes in English, from the best
Commentators, both ancient and modern, beside a great number of notes,
entirely new;” but notwithstanding this announcement, these annotations
will be found to be but few in number, and, with some exceptions in the
early part of the volume, to throw very little light on the obscurities
of the text. A fifth edition of this translation was published so
recently as 1822, but without any improvement, beyond the furbishing up
of the old-fashioned language of the original preface. A far more
literal translation of the Metamorphoses is that by John Clarke, which
was first published about the year 1735, and had attained to a seventh
edition in 1779. Although this version may be pronounced very nearly to
fulfil the promise set forth in its title page, of being “as literal as
possible,” still, from the singular inelegance of its style, and the
fact of its being couched in the conversational language of the early
part of the last century, and being unaccompanied by any attempt at
explanation, it may safely be pronounced to be ill adapted to the
requirements of the present age. Indeed, it would not, perhaps, be too
much to assert, that, although the translator may, in his own words,
“have done an acceptable service to such gentlemen as are desirous of
regaining or improving the skill they acquired at school,” he has, in
many instances, burlesqued rather than translated his author. Some of
the curiosities of his version will be found set forth in the notes;
but, for the purpose of the more readily justifying this assertion, a
few of them are adduced: the word “nitidus” is always rendered “neat,”
whether applied to a fish, a cow, a chariot, a laurel, the steps of a
temple, or the art of wrestling. He renders “horridus,” “in a rude
pickle;” “virgo” is generally translated “the young lady;” “vir” is
“a gentleman;” “senex” and “senior” are indifferently “the old blade,”
“the old fellow,” or “the old gentleman;” while “summa arx” is “the very
tip-top.” “Misera” is “poor soul;” “exsilio” means “to bounce forth;”
“pellex” is “a miss;” “lumina” are “the peepers;” “turbatum fugere” is
“to scower off in a mighty bustle;” “confundor” is “to be jumbled;” and
“squalidus” is “in a sorry pickle.” “Importuna” is “a plaguy baggage;”
“adulterium” is rendered “her pranks;” “ambages” becomes either “a long
rabble of words,” “a long-winded detail,” or “a tale of a tub;”
“miserabile carmen” is “a dismal ditty;” “increpare hos” is “to rattle
these blades;” “penetralia” means “the parlour;” while “accingere,” more
literally than elegantly, is translated “buckle to.” “Situs” is “nasty
stuff;” “oscula jungere” is “to tip him a kiss;” “pingue ingenium” is a
circumlocution for “a blockhead;” “anilia instrumenta” are “his old
woman’s accoutrements;” and “repetito munere Bacchi” is conveyed to the
sense of the reader as, “they return again to their bottle, and take the
other glass.” These are but a specimen of the blemishes which disfigure
the most literal of the English translations of the Metamorphoses.
In the year 1656, a little volume was published, by J[ohn] B[ulloker,]
entitled “Ovid’s Metamorphosis, translated grammatically, and, according
to the propriety of our English tongue, so far as grammar and the verse
will bear, written chiefly for the use of schools, to be used according
to the directions in the preface to the painfull schoolmaster, and more
fully in the book called, ‘Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar school,
chap. 8.’” Notwithstanding a title so pretentious, it contains a
translation of no more than the first 567 lines of the first Book,
executed in a fanciful and pedantic manner; and its rarity is now the
only merit of the volume. A literal interlinear translation of the first
Book “on the plan recommended by Mr. Locke,” was published in 1839,
which had been already preceded by “a selection from the Metamorphoses
of Ovid, adapted to the Hamiltonian system, by a literal and interlineal
translation,” published by James Hamilton, the author of the Hamiltonian
system. This work contains selections only from the first six books, and
consequently embraces but a very small portion of the entire work.
For the better elucidation of the different fabulous narratives and
allusions, explanations have been added, which are principally derived
from the writings of Herodotus, Apollodorus, Pausanias, Dio Cassius,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo, Hyginus, Nonnus, and others of the
historians, philosophers, and mythologists of antiquity. A great number
of these illustrations are collected in the elaborate edition of Ovid,
published by the Abbé Banier, one of the most learned scholars of the
last century; who has, therein, and in his “Explanations of the Fables
of Antiquity,” with indefatigable labour and research, culled from the
works of ancient authors, all such information as he considered likely
to throw any light upon the Mythology and history of Greece and Rome.
This course has been adopted, because it was considered that a statement
of the opinions of contemporary authors would be the most likely to
enable the reader to form his own ideas upon the various subjects
presented to his notice. Indeed, except in two or three instances, space
has been found too limited to allow of more than an occasional reference
to the opinions of modern scholars. Such being the object of the
explanations, the reader will not be surprised at the absence of
critical and lengthened discussions on many of those moot points of
Mythology and early history which have occupied, with no very positive
result, the attention of Niebuhr, Lobeck, Müller, Buttmann, and many
other scholars of profound learning.
A SYNOPTICAL VIEW
of the Principal Transformations Mentioned in
THE METAMORPHOSES.
[From Bell edition, omitting Books VIII-XV.]
BOOK I.
Chaos is divided by the Deity into four Elements: to these their
respective inhabitants are assigned, and man is created from earth and
water. The four Ages follow, and in the last of these the Giants aspire
to the sovereignty of the heavens; being slain by Jupiter, a new race of
men springs up from their blood. These becoming noted for their impiety,
Jupiter not only transforms Lycaon into a wolf, but destroys the whole
race of men and animals by a Deluge, with the exception of Deucalion and
Pyrrha, who, when the waters have abated, renew the human race, by
throwing stones behind them. Other animated beings are produced by heat
and moisture: and, among them, the serpent Python. Phœbus slays him, and
institutes the Pythian games as a memorial of the event, in which the
conquerors are crowned with beech; for as yet the laurel does not exist,
into which Daphne is changed soon after, while flying from Phœbus. On
this taking place, the other rivers repair to her father Peneus, either
to congratulate or to console him; but Inachus is not there, as he is
grieving for his daughter Io, whom Jupiter, having first ravished her,
has changed into a cow. She is entrusted by Juno to the care of Argus;
Mercury having first related to him the transformation of the Nymph
Syrinx into reeds, slays him, on which his eyes are placed by Juno in
the tail of the peacock. Io, having recovered human shape, becomes the
mother of Epaphus.
BOOK II.
Epaphus, having accused Phaëton of falsely asserting that Phœbus is his
father, Phaëton requests Phœbus, as a proof of his affection towards his
child, to allow him the guidance of the chariot of the Sun for one day.
This being granted, the whole earth is set on fire by him, and the
Æthiopians are turned black by the heat. Jupiter strikes Phaëton with a
thunderbolt, and while his sisters and his kinsman Cyenus are lamenting
him, the former are changed into trees, and Cyenus into a swan. On
visiting the earth, that he may repair the damage caused by the
conflagration, Jupiter sees Calisto, and, assuming the form of Diana, he
debauches her. Juno, being enraged, changes Calisto into a bear; and her
own son Arcas being about to pierce her with an arrow, Jupiter places
them both among the Constellations. Juno having complained of this to
Oceanus, is borne back to the heavens by her peacocks, who have so
lately changed their colour; a thing which has also happened to the
raven, which has been lately changed from white to black, he having
refused to listen to the warnings of the crow (who relates the story of
its own transformation, and of that of Nyctimene into an owl), and
having persisted in informing Phœbus of the intrigues of Coronis. Her
son Æsculapius being cut out of the womb of Coronis and carried to the
cave of Chiron the Centaur, Ocyrrhoë, the daughter of Chiron, is changed
into a mare, while she is prophesying. Her father in vain invokes the
assistance of Apollo, for he, in the guise of a shepherd, is tending his
oxen in the country of Elis. He neglecting his herd, Mercury takes the
opportunity of stealing it; after which he changes Battus into a
touchstone, for betraying him. Flying thence, Mercury beholds Herse, the
daughter of Cecrops, and debauches her. Her sister Aglauros, being
envious of her, is changed into a rock. Mercury returns to heaven, on
which Jupiter orders him to drive the herds of Agenor towards the shore;
and then, assuming the form of a bull, he carries Europa over the sea to
the isle of Crete.
BOOK III.
Agenor commands his son Cadmus to seek his sister Europa. While he is
doing this, he slays a dragon in Bœotia; and having sowed its teeth in
the earth, men are produced, with whose assistance he builds the walls
of Thebes. His first cause of grief is the fate of his grandson Actæon,
who, being changed into a stag, is torn to pieces by his own hounds.
This, however, gives pleasure to Juno, who hates not only Semele, the
daughter of Cadmus, and the favourite of Jupiter, but all the house of
Agenor as well. Assuming the form of Beroë, she contrives the
destruction of Semele by the lightnings of Jupiter; while Bacchus, being
saved alive from his mother’s womb, is brought up on the earth. Jupiter
has a discussion with Juno on the relative pleasures of the sexes, and
they agree to refer the question to Tiresias, who has been of both
sexes. He gives his decision in favour of Jupiter, on which Juno
deprives him of sight; and, by way of recompense, Jupiter bestows on him
the gift of prophesy. His first prediction is fulfilled in the case of
Narcissus, who, despising the advances of all females (in whose number
is Echo, who has been transformed into a sound), at last pines away with
love for himself, and is changed into a flower which bears his name.
Pentheus, however, derides the prophet; who predicts his fate, and his
predictions are soon verified; for, on the celebration of the orgies,
Bacchus having assumed a disguise, is brought before him; and having
related to Pentheus the story of the transformation of the Etrurian
sailors into dolphins, he is thrown into prison. On this, Pentheus is
torn in pieces by the Bacchanals, and great respect is afterwards paid
to the rites of Bacchus.
BOOK IV.
Still Alcithoë and her sisters, neglecting the rites, attend to their
spinning, during the festivities, and pass the time in telling stories;
and, among others, that of Pyramus and Thisbe, by whose blood the
mulberry is turned from white to black, and that of the discovery of the
intrigues of Mars and Venus, on the information of the Sun. They also
tell how the Sun assumed the form of Eurynome, that he might enjoy her
daughter Leucothoë; how Clytie, becoming jealous of her sister, was
transformed into a sun-flower; and how Salmacis and Hermaphroditus had
become united into one body. After this, through the agency of Bacchus,
the sisters are transformed into bats, and their webs are changed into
vines. Ino rejoicing at this, Juno, in her hatred and indignation, sends
one of the Furies to her, who causes her to be struck with insanity, on
which she leaps into the sea, with her son Melicerta in her arms; but by
the intercession of Venus, they become sea Deities, and their Sidonian
attendants, who are bewailing them as dead, are changed into rocks.
Cadmus, afflicted at this fresh calamity, retires from Thebes, and flies
to Illyria, together with his wife, where they are both transformed into
serpents. Of those who despise Bacchus, Acrisius alone remains, the
grandfather of Perseus, who, having cut off the head of the Gorgon
Medusa, serpents are produced by her blood. Perseus turns Atlas into a
mountain, and having liberated Andromeda, he changes sea-weed into
coral, and afterwards marries her.
BOOK V.
A tumult arising during the celebration of the nuptials, Phineus claims
Andromeda, who has been betrothed to him; and together with Prœtus, he
and Polydectes are turned into stone. Pallas, who has aided Perseus, now
leaves him, and goes to Helicon, to see the fountain of Hippocrene. The
Muses tell her the story of Pyreneus and the Pierides, who were
transformed into magpies after they had repeated various songs on the
subjects of the transformation of the Deities into various forms of
animals; the rape of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the change of
Cyane into a fountain, of a boy into a lizard, of Ascalaphus into an
owl, of the Sirens into birds in part, of Arethusa into a spring, of
Lyncus into a lynx, and of the invention of agriculture by Triptolemus.
BOOK VI.
Influenced by the example of the Muses, Pallas determines on the
destruction of Arachne. She enters with her into a contest for the
superiority in the art of weaving. Each represents various
transformations on her web, and then Arachne is changed into a spider.
Niobe, however, is not deterred thereby from preferring her own lot to
that of Latona; on account of which, all her children are slain by
Apollo and Diana, and she is changed into a rock. On learning this,
while one person relates the transformation by Latona of the Lycian
rustics into frogs, another calls to mind how Marsyas was flayed by
Apollo. Niobe is lamented by Pelops, whose shoulder is of ivory. To
console the Thebans in their afflictions, ambassadors come from the
adjacent cities. The Athenians alone are absent, as they are attacked by
hordes of barbarians, who are routed by Tereus, who marries Progne, the
daughter of Pandion. Tereus coming a second time to Athens, takes back
with him to his kingdom Philomela, his wife’s sister; and having
committed violence on her, with other enormities, he is transformed into
a hoopoe, while Philomela is changed into a nightingale, and Progne
becomes a swallow. Pandion, hearing of these wondrous events dies of
grief. Erectheus succeeds him, whose daughter, Orithyia, is ravished by
Boreas, and by him is the mother of Calais and Zethes, who are of the
number of the Argonauts on the following occasion.
BOOK VII.
Jason, by the aid of Medea, having conquered the bulls that breathe
forth flames, having sowed the teeth of a serpent, from which armed men
are produced, and having lulled the dragon to sleep, recovers the Golden
Fleece. Medea, accompanying Jason to Greece, restores Æson to youth by
the aid of drugs; and promising the same to Pelias, having first, as a
specimen, changed a ram into a lamb, by stratagem she kills him. Passing
through many places made remarkable by various transformations, and
having slain her children, she marries Ægeus, when Theseus returns home,
and narrowly escapes being poisoned by her magic potions. Minos
interrupts the joy of Ægeus on the return of his son, and wages war
against him; having collected troops from all parts, even from Paros,
where Arne has been changed into a jackdaw. Minos endeavours to gain the
alliance of Æacus, who, however, refuses it, and sends the Myrmidons,
(who have been changed into ants from men after a severe pestilence),
under the command of Cephalus to assist Ægeus. Cephalus relates to
Phocus, the son of Æacus, how, being carried off by Aurora and assuming
another shape, he had induced his wife Procris to prove faithless; and
how he had received from her a dog and a javelin, the former of which,
together with a fox, was changed into stone; while the latter, by
inadvertence, caused the death of his wife.
INTRODUCTION.
[By Edward Brooks, Jr., from McKay edition.]
P. Ovidius Naso--commonly known as Ovid--was born at Sulmo, about,
ninety miles from Rome, in the year 43 B.C. His father belonged to an
old equestrian family, and at an early age brought his son to Rome,
where he was educated under the most distinguished masters. Very little
is known of the poet’s life, except that which is gathered from his own
writings. After finishing his education at home he visited Athens, in
company with the poet Macer, for the purpose of completing his studies,
and before returning visited the magnificent cities of Asia Minor and
spent nearly a year in Sicily.
Although as a young man Ovid showed a natural taste and inclination for
poetical composition, he was by no means encouraged to indulge in this
pursuit. His father thought that the profession of law was much more apt
to lead to distinction and political eminence than the vocation of a
poet. He therefore dissuaded his son from writing poetry and urged him
to devote himself to the legal profession. Compliance with his father’s
wishes led him to spend much time in the forum, and for a while poetry
was abandoned. Upon attaining his majority, he held several minor
offices of state; but neither his health nor his inclinations would
permit him to perform the duties of public life. Poetry was his love,
and in spite of the strong objections of his father, he resolved to
abandon the law courts and devote himself to a more congenial
occupation. He sought the society of the most distinguished poets of the
day, and his admiration for them amounted almost to reverence. He
numbered among his intimate friends the poets Macer, Propertius,
Ponticus and Bassus, while Æmilius Macer, Virgil’s contemporary, used to
read his compositions to him, and even the fastidious Horace, it is
said, occasionally delighted the young man’s ear with the charm of his
verse.
Ovid was married three times. His first wife he married when little more
than a boy, and the union does not seem to have been a happy one, though
it was probably due to no fault of the wife. His second wife seems also
to have been of blameless character, but his love for her was of short
duration. His third wife was a lady of the great Fabian house and a
friend of the Empress Livia. She appears to have been a woman in every
way worthy of the great and lasting love which the poet lavished upon
her to the day of his death.
Up to the age of fifty Ovid had lived a life of prosperity and
happiness. Though not a wealthy man, his means were such as to permit
him to indulge in the luxuries of refined life, and his attainments as a
poet had surrounded him with a circle of most desirable friends and
admirers. He had even obtained the favor and patronage of the royal
family. About the year 8 A.D. he, however, incurred the great
displeasure of Augustus, and was ordered by him to withdraw from Rome
and dwell in the colony of Tomi, on the shore of the Euxine sea. Leaving
behind him a wife to whom he was devotedly attached he obeyed the edict
of his emperor and entered upon an exile from which he was destined
never to return. He died in banishment at Tomi in the year 18 A.D.
The exact reason for Ovid’s banishment has never been clear, though
there have been many conjectures as to the cause. About two years
previous to his exile Ovid had published a composition which had greatly
displeased Augustus, on account of its immoral tendency. Almost
coincident with this publication was the discovery of the scandal
relating to Julia, daughter of the emperor. It is probable that the
proximity of these two events tended to intensify the imperial
displeasure, and when some time later there was made public the intrigue
of the emperor’s granddaughter, the indignation of Augustus gave itself
vent in the banishment of Ovid.
The writings of Ovid consist of the _Amores_ in three books; the _Heroic
Epistles_, twenty-one in number; the _Ars Amatoria_; the _Remedia
Amoris_; the _Metamorphoses_, in fifteen books; the _Fasti_, in six
books; the _Tristia_, in five books; the _Epistles_, in four books, and
a few minor poems. In the following pages will be found a translation of
the _Metamorphoses_.
THE METAMORPHOSES.
BOOK THE FIRST.
THE ARGUMENT. [I.1-4]
My design leads me to speak of forms changed into new bodies.[1] Ye
Gods, (for you it was who changed them,) favor my attempts,[2] and bring
down the lengthened narrative from the very beginning of the world,
{even} to my own times.[3]
[Footnote 1: _Forms changed into new bodies._--Ver. 1. Some
commentators cite these words as an instance of Hypallage as being
used for ‘corpora mutata in novas formas,’ ‘bodies changed into
new forms;’ and they fancy that there is a certain beauty in the
circumstance that the proposition of a subject which treats of the
changes and variations of bodies should be framed with a
transposition of words. This supposition is perhaps based rather
on the exuberance of a fanciful imagination than on solid grounds,
as if it is an instance of Hypallage, it is most probably quite
accidental; while the passage may be explained without any
reference to Hypallage, as the word ‘forma’ is sometimes used to
signify the thing itself; thus the words ‘formæ deorum’ and
‘ferarum’ are used to signify ‘the Gods,’ or ‘the wild beasts’
themselves.]
[Footnote 2: _Favor my attempts._--Ver. 3. This use of the word
‘adspirate’ is a metaphor taken from the winds, which, while they
fill the ship’s sails, were properly said ‘adspirare.’ It has been
remarked, with some justice, that this invocation is not
sufficiently long or elaborate for a work of so grave and
dignified a nature as the Metamorphoses.]
[Footnote 3: _To my own times._--Ver. 4. That is, to the days of
Augustus Cæsar.]
FABLE I. [I.5-31]
God reduces Chaos into order. He separates the four elements, and
disposes the several bodies, of which the universe is formed, into
their proper situations.
At first, the sea, the earth, and the heaven, which covers all things,
were the only face of nature throughout the whole universe, which men
have named Chaos; a rude and undigested mass,[4] and nothing {more} than
an inert weight, and the discordant atoms of things not harmonizing,
heaped together in the same spot. No Sun[5] as yet gave light to the
world; nor did the Moon,[6] by increasing, recover her horns anew. The
Earth did not {as yet} hang in the surrounding air, balanced by its own
weight, nor had Amphitrite[7] stretched out her arms along the
lengthened margin of the coasts. Wherever, too, was the land, there also
was the sea and the air; {and} thus was the earth without firmness, the
sea unnavigable, the air void of light; in no one {of them} did its
{present} form exist. And one was {ever} obstructing the other; because
in the same body the cold was striving with the hot, the moist with the
dry, the soft with the hard, things having weight with {those} devoid of
weight.
To this discord God and bounteous Nature[8] put an end; for he separated
the earth from the heavens, and the waters from the earth, and
distinguished the clear heavens from the gross atmosphere. And after he
had unravelled these {elements}, and released them from {that} confused
heap, he combined them, {thus} disjoined, in harmonious unison, {each}
in {its proper} place. The element of the vaulted heaven,[9] fiery and
without weight, shone forth, and selected a place for itself in the
highest region; next after it, {both} in lightness and in place, was the
air; the Earth was more weighty than these, and drew {with it} the more
ponderous atoms, and was pressed together by its own gravity. The
encircling waters sank to the lowermost place,[10] and surrounded the
solid globe.
[Footnote 4: _A rude and undigested mass._--Ver. 7. This is very
similar to the words of the Scriptures, ‘And the earth was without
form and void,’ Genesis, ch. i. ver. 2.]
[Footnote 5: _No Sun._--Ver. 10. Titan. The Sun is so called, on
account of his supposed father, Hyperion, who was one of the
Titans. Hyperion is thought to have been the first who, by
assiduous observation, discovered the course of the Sun, Moon, and
other luminaries. By them he regulated the time for the seasons,
and imparted this knowledge to others. Being thus, as it were, the
father of astronomy, he has been feigned by the poets to have been
the father of the Sun and the Moon.]
[Footnote 6: _The Moon._--Ver. 11. Phœbe. The Moon is so called
from the Greek φοῖβος, ‘shining,’ and as being the sister of
Phœbus, Apollo, or the Sun.]
[Footnote 7: _Amphitrite._--Ver. 14. She was the daughter of
Oceanus and Doris, and the wife of Neptune, God of the Sea. Being
the Goddess of the Ocean, her name is here used to signify the
ocean itself.]
[Footnote 8: _Nature._--Ver. 21. ‘Natura’ is a word often used by
the Poet without any determinate signification, and to its
operations are ascribed all those phenomena which it is found
difficult or impossible to explain upon known and established
principles. In the present instance it may be considered to mean
the invisible agency of the Deity in reducing Chaos into a form of
order and consistency. ‘Et’ is therefore here, as grammarians term
it, an expositive particle; as if the Poet had said, ‘Deus sive
natura,’ ‘God, or in other words, nature.’]
[Footnote 9: _The element of the vaulted heaven._--Ver. 26. This
is a periphrasis, signifying the regions of the firmament or upper
air, in which the sun and stars move; which was supposed to be of
the purest fire and the source of all flame. The heavens are
called ‘convex,’ from being supposed to assume the same shape as
the terrestrial globe which they surround.]
[Footnote 10: _The lowermost place._--Ver. 31. ‘Ultima’ must not
be here understood in the presence of ‘infima,’ or as signifying
‘last,’ or ‘lowest,’ in a strict philosophical sense, for that
would contradict the account of the formation of the world given
by Hesiod, and which is here closely followed by Ovid; indeed, it
would contradict his own words,--‘Circumfluus humor coercuit
solidum orbem.’ The meaning seems to be, that the waters possess
the lowest place only in respect to the earth whereon we tread,
and not relatively to the terrestrial globe, the supposed centre
of the system, inasmuch as the external surface of the earth in
some places rises considerably, and leaves the water to subside in
channels.]
EXPLANATION.
The ancient philosophers, unable to comprehend how something could be
produced out of nothing, supposed a matter pre-existent to the Earth
in its present shape, which afterwards received form and order from
some powerful cause. According to them, God was not the Creator, but
the Architect of the universe, in ranging and disposing the elements
in situations most suitable to their respective qualities. This is the
Chaos so often sung of by the poets, and which Hesiod was the first to
mention.
It is clear that this system was but a confused and disfigured
tradition of the creation of the world, as mentioned by Moses; and
thus, beneath these fictions, there lies some faint glimmering of
truth. The first two chapters of the book of Genesis will be found to
throw considerable light on the foundation of this Mythological system
of the world’s formation.
Hesiod, the most ancient of the heathen writers who have enlarged upon
this subject, seems to have derived much of his information from the
works of Sanchoniatho, who is supposed to have borrowed his ideas
concerning Chaos from that passage in the second verse of the first
Chapter of Genesis, which mentions the darkness that was spread over
the whole universe--‘and darkness was upon the face of the deep’--for
he expresses himself almost in those words. Sanchoniatho lived before
the Trojan war, and professed to have received his information
respecting the original construction of the world from a priest of
‘Jehovah,’ named Jerombaal. He wrote in the Phœnician language; but we
have only a translation of his works, by Philo Judæus, which is by
many supposed to be spurious. It is, however, very probable, that from
him the Greeks borrowed their notions regarding Chaos, which they
mingled with fables of their own invention.
FABLE II. [I.32-88]
After the separation of matter, God gives form and regularity to the
universe; and all other living creatures being produced, Prometheus
moulds earth tempered with water, into a human form, which is animated
by Minerva.
When thus he, whoever of the Gods he was,[11] had divided the mass {so}
separated, and reduced it, so divided, into {distinct} members; in the
first place, that it might not be unequal on any side, he gathered it up
into the form of a vast globe; then he commanded the sea to be poured
around it, and to grow boisterous with the raging winds, and to surround
the shores of the Earth, encompassed {by it}; he added also springs, and
numerous pools and lakes, and he bounded the rivers as they flowed
downwards, with slanting banks. These, different in {different} places,
are some of them swallowed up[12] by {the Earth} itself; some of them
reach the ocean, and, received in the expanse of waters that take a
freer range, beat against shores instead of banks.
He commanded the plains,[13] too, to be extended, the valleys to sink
down, the woods to be clothed with green leaves, the craggy mountains to
arise; and, as on the right-hand side,[14] two Zones intersect the
heavens, and as many on the left; {and as} there is a fifth hotter than
these, so did the care of the Deity distinguish this enclosed mass {of
the Earth} by the same number, and as many climates are marked out upon
the Earth. Of these, that which is the middle one[15] is not habitable
on account of the heat; deep snow covers two[16] {of them}. Between
either these he placed as many more,[17] and gave them a temperate
climate, heat being mingled with cold.
Over these hangs the air, which is heavier than fire, in the same degree
that the weight of water is lighter than the weight of the earth. Here
he ordered vapors, here too, the clouds to take their station; the
thunder, too, to terrify the minds of mortals, and with the lightnings,
the winds that bring on cold. The Contriver of the World did not allow
these indiscriminately to take possession of the sky. Even now,
(although they each of them govern their own blasts in a distinct tract)
they are with great difficulty prevented from rending the world asunder,
so great is the discord of the brothers.[18] Eurus took his way[19]
towards {the rising of} Aurora and the realms of Nabath[20] and Persia,
and the mountain ridges exposed to the rays of the morning. The Evening
star, and the shores which are warm with the setting sun, are bordering
upon Zephyrus.[21] The terrible Boreas invaded Scythia,[22] and the
regions of the North. The opposite quarter is wet with continual clouds,
and the drizzling South Wind.[23] Over these he placed the firmament,
clear and devoid of gravity, and not containing anything of the dregs of
earth.
Scarcely had he separated all these by fixed limits, when the stars,
which had long lain hid, concealed beneath that mass {of Chaos}, began
to glow through the range of the heavens. And that no region might be
destitute of its own {peculiar} animated beings, the stars and the forms
of the Gods[24] possess the tract of heaven; the waters fell to be
inhabited by the smooth fishes;[25] the Earth received the wild beasts,
{and} the yielding air the birds.
{But} an animated being, more holy than these, more fitted to receive
higher faculties, and which could rule over the rest,[26] was still
wanting. {Then} Man was formed. Whether it was that the Artificer of all
things, the original of the world in its improved state, framed him from
divine elements;[27] or whether, the Earth, being newly made, and but
lately divided from the lofty æther, still retained some atoms of its
kindred heaven, which, tempered with the waters of the stream, the son
of Iapetus fashioned after the image of the Gods, who rule over all
things. And, whereas other animals bend their looks downwards upon the
Earth, to Man he gave a countenance to look on high and to behold the
heavens, and to raise his face erect to the stars. Thus, that which had
been lately rude earth, and without any regular shape, being changed,
assumed the form of Man, {till then} unknown.
[Footnote 11: _Whoever of the Gods he was._--Ver. 32. By this
expression the Poet perhaps may intend to intimate that the God
who created the world was some more mighty Divinity than those who
were commonly accounted Deities.]
[Footnote 12: _Are some of them swallowed up._--Ver. 40. He here
refers to those rivers which, at some distance from their sources,
disappear and continue their course under ground. Such was the
stream of Arethusa, the Lycus in Asia, the Erasinus in Argolis,
the Alpheus in Peloponnesus, the Arcas in Spain, and the Rhone in
France. Most of these, however, after descending into the earth,
appear again and discharge their waters into the sea.]
[Footnote 13: _He commanded the plains._--Ver. 43. The use here of
the word ‘jussit,’ signifying ‘ordered,’ or ‘commanded,’ is
considered as being remarkably sublime and appropriate, and
serving well to express the ease wherewith an infinitely powerful
Being accomplishes the most difficult works. There is the same
beauty here that was long since remarked by Longinus, one of the
most celebrated critics among the ancients, in the words used by
Moses, ‘And God said, Let there be light, and there was light,’
Genesis, ch. i. ver. 3.]
[Footnote 14: _On the right-hand side._--Ver. 45. The “right hand”
here refers to the northern part of the globe, and the “left hand”
to the southern. He here speaks of the zones. Astronomers have
divided the heavens into five parallel circles. First, the
equinoctial, which lies in the middle, between the poles of the
earth, and obtains its name from the equality of days and nights
on the earth while the sun is in its plane. On each side are the
two tropics, at the distance of 23 deg. 30 min., and described by
the sun when in his greatest declination north and south, or at
the summer and winter solstices. That on the north side of the
equinoctial is called the tropic of Cancer, because the sun
describes it when in that sign of the ecliptic; and that on the
south side is, for a similar reason, called the tropic of
Capricorn. Again, at the distance of 23½ degrees from the poles
are two other parallels called the polar circles, either because
they are near to the poles, or because, if we suppose the whole
frame of the heavens to turn round on the plane of the
equinoctial, these circles are marked out by the poles of the
ecliptic. By means of these parallels, astronomers have divided
the heavens into four zones or tracks. The whole space between the
two tropics is the middle or torrid zone, which the equinoctial
divides into two equal parts. On each side of this are the
temperate zones, which extend from the tropics to the two polar
circles. And lastly, the portions enclosed by the polar circles
make up the frigid zones. As the planes of these circles produced
till they reached the earth, would also impress similar parallels
upon it, and divide it in the same manner as they divide the
heavens, astronomers have conceived five zones upon the earth,
corresponding to those in the heavens, and bounded by the same
circles.]
[Footnote 15: _That which is the middle one._--Ver. 49. The
ecliptic in which the sun moves, cuts the equator in two opposite
points, at an angle of 23½ degrees; and runs obliquely from one
tropic to another, and returns again in a corresponding direction.
Hence, the sun, which in the space of a year, performs the
revolution of this circle, must in that time be twice vertical to
every place in the torrid zone, except directly under the tropics,
and his greatest distance from their zenith at noon, cannot exceed
47 degrees. Thus his rays being often perpendicular, or nearly so,
and never very oblique, must strike more forcibly, and cause more
intense heat in that spot. Being little acquainted with the extent
and situation of the earth, the ancients believed it
uninhabitable. Modern discovery has shown that this is not the
case as to a considerable part of the torrid zone, though with
some parts of it our acquaintance is still very limited.]
[Footnote 16: _Deep snow covers two._--Ver. 50. The two polar or
frigid zones. For as the sun never approaches these nearer than
the tropic on that side, and is, during one part of the year,
removed by the additional extent of the whole torrid zone, his
rays must be very oblique and faint, so as to leave these tracts
exposed to almost perpetual cold.]
[Footnote 17: _He placed as many more._--Ver. 51. The temperate
zones, lying between the torrid and the frigid, partake of the
character of each in a modified degree, and are of a middle
temperature between hot and cold. Here, too, the distinction of
the seasons is manifest. For in either temperate zone, when the
sun is in that tropic, which borders upon it, being nearly
vertical, the heat must be considerable, and produce summer; but
when he is removed to the other tropic by a distance of 47
degrees, his rays will strike but faintly, and winter will be the
consequence. The intermediate spaces, while he is moving from one
tropic to the other, make spring and autumn.]
[Footnote 18: _The brothers._--Ver. 60. That is, the winds, who,
according to the Theogony of Hesiod, were the sons of Astreus, the
giant, and Aurora.]
[Footnote 19: _Eurus took his way._--Ver. 61. The Poet, after
remarking that the air is the proper region of the winds, proceeds
to take notice that God, to prevent them from making havoc of the
creation, subjected them to particular laws, and assigned to each
the quarter whence to direct his blasts. Eurus is the east wind,
being so called from its name, because it blows from the east. As
Aurora, or the morning, was always ushered in by the sun, who
rises eastward, she was supposed to have her habitation in the
eastern quarter of the world; and often, in the language of
ancient poetry, her name signifies the east.]
[Footnote 20: _The realms of Nabath._--Ver. 61. From Josephus we
learn that Nabath, the son of Ishmael, with his eleven brothers,
took possession of all the country from the river Euphrates to the
Red Sea, and called it Nabathæa. Pliny the Elder and Strabo speak
of the Nabatæi as situated between Babylon and Arabia Felix, and
call their capital Petra. Tacitus, in his Annals (Book ii.
ch. 57), speaks of them as having a king. Perhaps the term
‘Nabathæa regna’ implies here, generally, the whole of Arabia.]
[Footnote 21: _Are bordering upon Zephyrus._--Ver. 63. The region
where the sun sets, that is to say, the western part of the world,
was assigned by the ancients to the Zephyrs, or west winds, so
called by a Greek derivation because they cherish and enliven
nature.]
[Footnote 22: _Boreas invaded Scythia._--Ver. 34. Under the name
of Scythia, the ancients generally comprehended all the countries
situate in the extreme northern regions. ‘Septem trio,’ meaning
the northern region of the world, is so called from the ‘Triones,’
a constellation of seven stars, near the North Pole, known also as
the Ursa Major, or Greater Bear, and among the country people of
our time by the name of Charles’s Wain. Boreas, one of the names
of ‘Aquilo,’ or the ‘north wind,’ is derived from a Greek word,
signifying ‘an eddy.’ This name was probably given to it from its
causing whirlwinds occasionally by its violence.]
[Footnote 23: _The drizzling South Wind._--Ver. 66. The South Wind
is especially called rainy, because, blowing from the
Mediterranean sea on the coast of France and Italy, it generally
brings with it clouds and rain.]
[Footnote 24: _The forms of the Gods._--Ver. 73. There is some
doubt what the Poet here means by the ‘forms of the Gods.’ Some
think that the stars are meant, as if it were to be understood
that they are forms of the Gods. But it is most probably only a
poetical expression for the Gods themselves, and he here assigns
the heavens as the habitation of the Gods and the stars; these
last, according to the notion of the Platonic philosophers being
either intelligent beings, or guided and actuated by such.]
[Footnote 25: _Inhabited by the smooth fishes._--Ver. 74.
‘Cesserunt nitidis habitandæ piscibus;’ Clarke translates ‘fell
to the neat fishes to inhabit.’]
[Footnote 26: _Could rule over the rest._--Ver. 77. This strongly
brings to mind the words of the Creator, described in the first
chapter of Genesis, ver. 28. ‘And God said unto them--_have
dominion_ over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’]
[Footnote 27: _Framed him from divine elements._--Ver. 78. We have
here strong grounds for contending that the ancient philosophers,
and after them the poets, in their account of the creation of the
world followed a tradition that had been copied from the Books of
Moses. The formation of man, in Ovid, as well as in the Book of
Genesis, is the last work of the Creator, and was, for the same
purpose, that man might have dominion over the other animated
works of the creation.]
EXPLANATION.
According to Ovid, as in the book of Genesis, man is the last work of
the Creator. The information derived from Holy Writ is here presented
to us, in a disfigured form. Prometheus, who tempers the earth, and
Minerva, who animates his workmanship, is God, who formed man, and
‘breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.’
Some writers have labored to prove that this Prometheus, of the
heathen Mythology, was a Scriptural character. Bochart believes him to
have been the same with Magog, mentioned in the book of Genesis.
Prometheus was the son of Iapetus, and Magog was the son of Japhet,
who, according to that learned writer, was identical with Iapetus. He
says, that as Magog went to settle in Scythia, so did Prometheus; as
Magog either invented, or improved, the art of founding metals, and
forging iron, so, according to the heathen poets, did Prometheus.
Diodorus Siculus asserts that Prometheus was the first to teach
mankind how to produce fire from the flint and steel.
The fable of Prometheus being devoured by an eagle, according to some,
is founded on the name of Magog, which signifies ‘a man devoured by
sorrow.’ Le Clerc, in his notes on Hesiod, says, that Epimetheus, the
brother of Prometheus, was the same with the Gog of Scripture, the
brother of Magog. Some writers, again, have exerted their ingenuity to
prove that Prometheus is identical with the patriarch Noah.
FABLE III. [I.89-112]
The formation of man is followed by a succession of the four ages of
the world. The first is the Golden Age, during which Innocence and
Justice alone govern the world.
The Golden Age was first founded, which, without any avenger, of its own
accord, without laws, practised both faith and rectitude. Punishment,
and the fear {of it}, did not exist, and threatening decrees were not
read upon the brazen {tables},[28] fixed up {to view}, nor {yet} did the
suppliant multitude dread the countenance of its judge; but {all} were
in safety without any avenger. The pine-tree, cut from its {native}
mountains, had not yet descended to the flowing waves, that it might
visit a foreign region; and mortals were acquainted with no shores
beyond their own. Not as yet did deep ditches surround the towns; no
trumpets of straightened, or clarions of crooked brass,[29] no helmets,
no swords {then} existed. Without occasion for soldiers, the minds {of
men}, free from care, enjoyed an easy tranquillity.
The Earth itself, too, in freedom, untouched by the harrow, and wounded
by no ploughshares, of its own accord produced everything; and men,
contented with the food created under no compulsion, gathered the fruit
of the arbute-tree, and the strawberries of the mountain, and cornels,
and blackberries adhering to the prickly bramble-bushes, and acorns
which had fallen from the wide-spreading tree of Jove. {Then} it was an
eternal spring; and the gentle Zephyrs, with their soothing breezes,
cherished the flowers produced without any seed. Soon, too, the Earth
unploughed yielded crops of grain, and the land, without being renewed,
was whitened with the heavy ears of corn. Then, rivers of milk, then,
rivers of nectar were flowing, and the yellow honey was distilled from
the green holm oak.
[Footnote 28: _Read upon the brazen tables._--Ver. 91. It was the
custom among the Romans to engrave their laws on tables of brass,
and fix them in the Capitol, or some other conspicuous place, that
they might be open to the view of all.]
[Footnote 29: _Clarions of crooked brass._--Ver. 98. ‘Cornu’ seems
to have been a general name for the horn or trumpet; whereas the
“tuba” was a straight trumpet, while the ‘lituus’ was bent into a
spiral shape. Lydus says that the ‘lituus’ was the sacerdotal
trumpet, and that it was employed by Romulus when he proclaimed
the title of his newly-founded city. Acro says that it was
peculiar to the cavalry, while the ‘tuba’ belonged to the
infantry. The notes of the ‘lituus’ are usually described as harsh
and shrill.]
EXPLANATION.
The heathen poets had learned, most probably from tradition, that our
first parents lived for some time in peaceful innocence; that, without
tillage, the garden of Eden furnished them with fruit and food in
abundance; and that the animals were submissive to their commands:
that after the fall the ground became unfruitful, and yielded nothing
without labor; and that nature no longer spontaneously acknowledged
man for its master. The more happy days of our first parents they seem
to have styled the Golden Age, each writer being desirous to make his
own country the scene of those times of innocence. The Latin writers,
for instance, have placed in Italy, and under the reign of Saturn and
Janus, events, which, as they really happened, the Scriptures relate
in the histories of Adam and of Noah.
FABLE IV. [I.113-150]
In the Silver Age, men begin not to be so just, nor, consequently, so
happy, as in the Golden Age. In the Brazen Age, which succeeds, they
become yet less virtuous; but their wickedness does not rise to its
highest pitch until the Iron Age, when it makes its appearance in all
its deformity.
Afterwards (Saturn being driven into the shady realms of Tartarus), the
world was under the sway of Jupiter; {then} the Silver Age succeeded,
inferior to {that of} gold, but more precious than {that of} yellow
brass. Jupiter shortened the duration of the former spring, and divided
the year into four periods by means of winters, and summers, and
unsteady autumns, and short springs. Then, for the first time, did the
parched air glow with sultry heat, and the ice, bound up by the winds,
was pendant. Then, for the first time, did men enter houses; {those}
houses were caverns, and thick shrubs, and twigs fastened together with
bark. Then, for the first time, were the seeds of Ceres buried in long
furrows, and the oxen groaned, pressed by the yoke {of the ploughshare}.
The Age of Brass succeeded, as the third {in order}, after these;
fiercer in disposition, and more prone to horrible warfare, but yet free
from impiety. The last {Age} was of hard iron. Immediately every species
of crime burst forth, in this age of degenerated tendencies;[30]
modesty, truth, and honor took flight; in their place succeeded fraud,
deceit, treachery, violence, and the cursed hankering for acquisition.
The sailor now spread his sails to the winds, and with these, as yet, he
was but little acquainted; and {the trees}, which had long stood on the
lofty mountains, now, {as} ships bounded[31] through the unknown waves.
The ground, too, hitherto common as the light of the sun and the
breezes, the cautious measurer marked out with his lengthened boundary.
And not only was the rich soil required to furnish corn and due
sustenance, but men even descended into the entrails of the Earth; and
riches were dug up, the incentives to vice, which the Earth had hidden,
and had removed to the Stygian shades.[32] Then destructive iron came
forth, and gold, more destructive than iron; then War came forth, that
fights through the means of both,[33] and that brandishes in his
blood-stained hands the clattering arms. Men live by rapine; the guest
is not safe from his entertainer, nor the father-in-law from the
son-in-law; good feeling, too, between brothers is a rarity. The husband
is eager for the death of the wife, she {for that} of her husband.
Horrible stepmothers {then} mingle the ghastly wolfsbane; the son
prematurely makes inquiry[34] into the years of his father. Piety lies
vanquished, and the virgin Astræa[35] is the last of the heavenly
{Deities} to abandon the Earth, {now} drenched in slaughter.
[Footnote 30: _Age of degenerated tendencies._--Ver. 128. ‘Vena’
signifies among other things, a vein or track of metal as it lies
in the mine. Literally, ‘venæ pejoris’ signifies ‘of inferior
metal.’]
[Footnote 31: _Now as ships bounded._--Ver. 134. ‘Insultavere
carinæ.’ This line is translated by Clarke, ‘The keel-pieces
bounced over unknown waves.’]
[Footnote 32: _To the Stygian shades._--Ver. 139. That is, in deep
caverns, and towards the centre of the earth; for Styx was feigned
to be a river of the Infernal Regions, situate in the depths of
the earth.]
[Footnote 33: _Through the means of both._--Ver. 142. Gold forms,
perhaps, more properly the sinews of war than iron. The history of
Philip of Macedon gives a proof of this, as he conquered Greece
more by bribes than the sword, and used to say, that he deemed no
fortress impregnable, where there was a gate large enough to admit
a camel laden with gold.]
[Footnote 34: _Prematurely makes inquiry._--Ver. 148. Namely, by
inquiring of the magicians and astrologers, that by their skill in
casting nativities, they might inform them the time when their
parents were likely to die, and to leave them their property.]
[Footnote 35: _Astræa._--Ver. 150. She was the daughter of Astræus
and Aurora, or of Jupiter and Themis, and was the Goddess of
Justice. On leaving the earth, she was supposed to have taken her
place among the stars as the Constellation of the Virgin.]
EXPLANATION.
The Poet here informs us, that during the Golden Age, a perpetual
spring reigned on the earth, and that the division of the year into
seasons was not known until the Silver Age. This allusion to Eden is
very generally to be found in the works of the heathen poets. The
Silver Age is succeeded by the Brazen, and that is followed by the
Iron Age, which still continues. The meaning is, that man gradually
degenerated from his primeval innocence, and arrived at that state of
wickedness and impiety, of which the history of all ages, ancient and
modern, presents us with so many lamentable examples.
The limited nature of their views, and the fact that their exuberant
fancy was the source from which they derived many of their alleged
events, naturally betrayed the ancient writers into great
inconsistencies. For in the Golden Age of Saturn, we find wars waged,
and crimes committed. Saturn expelled his father, and seized his
throne; Jupiter, his son, treated Saturn as he had done his father
Uranus; and Jupiter, in his turn, had to wage war against the Giants,
in their attempt to dispossess him of the heavens.
FABLE V. [I.151-162]
The Giants having attempted to render themselves masters of heaven,
Jupiter buries them under the mountains which they have heaped
together to facilitate their assault; and the Earth, animating their
blood, forms out of it a cruel and fierce generation of men.
And that the lofty {realms of} æther might not be more safe than the
Earth, they say that the Giants aspired to the sovereignty of Heaven,
and piled the mountains, heaped together, even to the lofty stars. Then
the omnipotent Father, hurling his lightnings, broke through
Olympus,[36] and struck Ossa away from Pelion, that lay beneath it.
While the dreadful carcasses lay overwhelmed beneath their own
structure, they say that the Earth was wet, drenched with the plenteous
blood of her sons, and that she gave life to the warm gore; and that,
lest no memorial of this ruthless race should be surviving, she shaped
them into the form of men. But that generation, too, was a despiser of
the Gods above, and most greedy of ruthless slaughter, and full of
violence: you might see that they derived their origin from blood.
[Footnote 36: _Olympus._--Ver. 154. Olympus was a mountain between
Thessaly and Macedonia. Pelion was a mountain of Thessaly, towards
the Pelasgic gulf; and Ossa was a mountain between Olympus and
Pelion. These the Giants are said to have heaped one on another,
in order to scale heaven.]
EXPLANATION.
The war of the giants, which is here mentioned, is not to be
confounded with that between Jupiter and the Titans, who were
inhabitants of heaven. The fall of the angels, as conveyed by
tradition, probably gave rise to the story of the Titans; while,
perhaps, the building of the tower of Babel may have laid the
foundation of that of the attempt by the giants to reach heaven.
Perhaps, too, the descendants of Cain, who are probably the persons
mentioned in Scripture as the children ‘of men’ and ‘giants,’ were the
race depicted under the form of the Giants, and the generation that
sprung from their blood. See Genesis, ch. vi. ver. 2, 4.
FABLE VI. [I.163-215]
Jupiter, having seen the crimes of this impious race of men, calls a
council of the Gods, and determines to destroy the world.
When the Father {of the Gods}, the son of Saturn, beheld this from his
loftiest height, he groaned aloud; and recalling to memory the polluted
banquet on the table of Lycaon, not yet publicly known, from the crime
being but lately committed, he conceives in his mind vast wrath, and
such as is worthy of Jove, and calls together a council; no delay
detains them, thus summoned.
There is a way on high,[37] easily seen in a clear sky, and which,
remarkable for its very whiteness, receives the name of the Milky {Way}.
Along this is the way for the Gods above to the abode of the great
Thunderer and his royal palace. On the right and on the left side the
courts of the ennobled Deities[38] are thronged, with open gates. The
{Gods of} lower rank[39] inhabit various places; in front {of the Way},
the powerful and illustrious inhabitants of Heaven have established
their residence. This is the place which, if boldness may be allowed to
my expression, I should not hesitate to style the palatial residence of
Heaven. When, therefore, the Gods above had taken their seats in the
marble hall of assembly; he himself, elevated on his seat, and leaning
on his sceptre of ivory, three or four times shook the awful locks[40]
of his head, with which he makes the Earth, the Seas, and the Stars to
tremble. Then, after such manner as this, did he open his indignant
lips:--
“Not {even} at that time was I more concerned for the empire of the
universe, when each of the snake-footed monsters was endeavoring to lay
his hundred arms on the captured skies. For although that was a
dangerous enemy, yet that war was with but one stock, and sprang from a
single origin. Now must the race of mortals be cut off by me, wherever
Nereus[41] roars on all sides of the earth; {this} I swear by the Rivers
of Hell, that glide in the Stygian grove beneath the earth. All methods
have been already tried; but a wound that admits of no cure, must be cut
away with the knife, that the sound parts may not be corrupted. I have
{as subjects}, Demigods, and I have the rustic Deities, the Nymphs,[42]
and the Fauns, and the Satyrs, and the Sylvans, the inhabitants of the
mountains; these, though as yet, we have not thought them worthy of the
honor of Heaven, let us, at least, permit to inhabit the earth which we
have granted them. And do you, ye Gods of Heaven, believe that they will
be in proper safety, when Lycaon remarkable for his cruelty, has formed
a plot against {even} me, who own and hold sway over the thunder and
yourselves?”
All shouted their assent aloud, and with ardent zeal they called for
vengeance on one who dared such {crimes}. Thus, when an impious band[43]
{madly} raged to extinguish the Roman name in the blood of Cæsar, the
human race was astonished with sudden terror at ruin so universal, and
the whole earth shook with horror. Nor was the affectionate regard,
Augustus, of thy subjects less grateful to thee, than that was to
Jupiter. Who, after he had, by means of his voice and his hand,
suppressed their murmurs, all of them kept silence. Soon as the clamor
had ceased, checked by the authority of their ruler, Jupiter again broke
silence in these words:
“He, indeed, (dismiss your cares) has suffered {dire} punishment; but
what was the offence and what the retribution, I will inform you. The
report of the iniquity of the age had reached my ears; wishing to find
this not to be the truth, I descended from the top of Olympus, and,
a God in a human shape, I surveyed the earth. ’Twere an endless task to
enumerate how great an amount of guilt was everywhere discovered; the
report itself was below the truth.”
[Footnote 37: _There is a way on high._--Ver. 168. The Poet here
gives a description of the court of heaven; and supposing the
galaxy, or Milky Way, to be the great road to the palace of
Jupiter, places the habitations of the Gods on each side of it,
and adjoining the palace itself. The mythologists also invented a
story, that the Milky Way was a track left in the heavens by the
milk of Juno flowing from the mouth of Hercules, when suckled by
her. Aristotle, however, suspected what has been since confirmed
by the investigations of modern science, that it was formed by the
light of innumerable stars.]
[Footnote 38: _The ennobled Deities._--Ver. 172. These were the
superior Deities, who formed the privy councillors of Jupiter, and
were called ‘Di majorum gentium,’ or, ‘Di consentes.’ Reckoning
Jupiter as one, they were twelve in number, and are enumerated by
Ennius in two limping hexameter lines:--
‘Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars,
Mercurius, Jovis, Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo.’]
[Footnote 39: _The Gods of lower rank._--Ver. 173. These were the
‘Dii minorum gentium,’ or inferior Deities.]
[Footnote 40: _Shook the awful locks._--Ver. 179. This awful nod
of Jupiter, the sanction by which he confirms his decrees, is an
idea taken from Homer; by whom it is so vividly depicted at the
end of the first book of the Iliad, that Phidias, in his statue of
that God, admired for the awful majesty of its looks, is said to
have derived his conception of the features from that description.
Virgil has the same idea in the Æneid, book x; ‘Annuit, et totum
metu tremefecit Olympum.’]
[Footnote 41: _Nereus._--Ver. 187. He was one of the most ancient
of the Deities of the sea, and was the son of Oceanus and Tethys.]
[Footnote 42: _The Nymphs._--Ver. 192. The terrestrial Nymphs were
the Dryads and Hamadryads, who haunting the woods, and the
duration of their existence depending upon the life of particular
trees, derived their name from the Greek word δρῦς, ‘an oak.’ The
Oreades were nymphs who frequented the mountains, while the Napeæ
lived in the groves and valleys. There were also Nymphs of the sea
and of the rivers; of which, the Nereids were so called from their
father Nereus, and the Oceanitides, from Oceanus. There were also
the Naiads, or nymphs of the fountains, and many others.]
[Footnote 43: _Thus when an impious band._--Ver. 200. It is a
matter of doubt whether he here refers to the conspiracies of
Brutus and Cassius against Julius Cæsar, or whether to that
against Augustus, which is mentioned by Suetonius, in the
nineteenth chapter of his History. As Augustus survived the latter
conspiracy, and the parallel is thereby rendered more complete,
probably this is the circumstance here alluded to.]
EXPLANATION.
It is to be presumed, that Ovid here follows the prevailing tradition
of his time; and it is surprising how closely that tradition adheres
to the words of Scripture, relative to the determination of the
Almighty to punish the earth by a deluge, as disclosed in the sixth
chapter of Genesis. The Poet tells us, that the King of heaven calls
the Gods to a grand council, to deliberate upon the punishment of
mankind, in retribution for their wickedness. The words of Scripture
are, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the
earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, ‘I will
destroy man, whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man
and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air: for it
repenteth me that I have made them.’” --Genesis, ch. vi. ver. 5, 6, 7.
Tradition seems to have faithfully carried down the fact, that, amid
this universal corruption, there was still at least one just man, and
here it attributes to Deucalion the merit that belonged to Noah.
FABLE VII. [I.216-243]
Lycaon, king of Arcadia, in order to discover if it is Jupiter himself
who has come to lodge in his palace, orders the body of an hostage,
who had been sent to him, to be dressed and served up at a feast. The
God, as a punishment, changes him into a wolf.
I had {now} passed Mænalus, to be dreaded for its dens of beasts of
prey, and the pine-groves of cold Lycæus, together with Cyllene.[44]
After this, I entered the realms and the inhospitable abode of the
Arcadian tyrant, just as the late twilight was bringing on the night.
I gave a signal that a God had come, and the people commenced to pay
their adorations. In the first place, Lycaon derided their pious
supplications. Afterwards, he said, I will make trial, by a plain proof,
whether this is a God, or whether he is a mortal; nor shall the truth
remain a matter of doubt. He then makes preparations to destroy me, when
sunk in sleep, by an unexpected death; this mode of testing the truth
pleases him. And not content with that, with the sword he cuts the
throat of an hostage that had been sent from the nation of the
Molossians,[45] and then softens part of the quivering limbs, in boiling
water, and part he roasts with fire placed beneath. Soon as he had
placed these on the table, I, with avenging flames, overthrew the house
upon the household Gods,[46] worthy of their master. Alarmed, he himself
takes to flight, and having reached the solitude of the country, he
howls aloud, and in vain attempts to speak; his mouth gathers rage from
himself, and through its {usual} desire for slaughter, it is directed
against the sheep, and even still delights in blood. His garments are
changed into hair, his arms into legs; he becomes a wolf, and he still
retains vestiges of his ancient form. His hoariness is still the same,
the same violence {appears} in his features; his eyes are bright as
before; {he is still} the same image of ferocity.
“Thus fell one house; but one house alone did not deserve to perish;
wherever the earth extends, the savage Erinnys[47] reigns. You would
suppose that men had conspired to be wicked; let all men speedily feel
that vengeance which they deserve to endure, for such is my
determination.”
[Footnote 44: _Together with Cyllene._--Ver. 217. Cyllenus, or
Cyllene, was a mountain of Arcadia, sacred to Mercury, who was
hence called by the poets Cyllenius. Lycæus was also a mountain of
Arcadia, sacred to Pan, and was covered with groves of
pine-trees.]
[Footnote 45: _Of the Molossians._--Ver. 226. The Molossi were a
people of Epirus, on the eastern side of the Ambracian gulf. Ovid
here commits a slight anachronism, as the name was derived from
Molossus, the son of Neoptolemus, long after the time of Lycaon.
Besides, as Burmann observes, who could believe that ‘wars could
be waged at such an early period between nations so distant as the
Molossi and the Arcadians?’ Apollodorus says, that it was a child
of the same country, whose flesh Lycaon set before Jupiter. Other
writers say that it was Nyctimus, the son of Lycaon, or Arcas, his
grandson, that was slain by him.]
[Footnote 46: _Upon the household Gods._--Ver. 231. This
punishment was awarded to the Penates, or household Gods of
Lycaon, for taking such a miscreant under their protection.]
[Footnote 47: _The savage Erinnys._--Ver. 241. Erinnys was a
general name given to the Furies by the Greeks. They were three in
number--Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megæra. These were so called,
either from the Greek ἔρις νοῦ, ‘the discord of the mind,’ or from
ἐν τῇ ἔρα ναίειν, ‘their inhabiting the earth,’ watching the
actions of men.]
EXPLANATION.
If Ovid is not here committing an anachronism, and making Jupiter,
before the deluge, relate the story of a historical personage, who
existed long after it, the origin of the story of Lycaon must be
sought in the antediluvian narrative. It is just possible that the
guilty Cain may have been the original of Lycaon. The names are not
very dissimilar: they are each mentioned as the first murderer; and
the fact, that Cain murdered Abel at the moment when he was offering
sacrifice to the Almighty, may have given rise to the tradition that
Lycaon had set human flesh before the king of heaven. The Scripture,
too, tells us, that Cain was personally called to account by the
Almighty for his deed of blood.
The punishment here inflicted on Lycaon was not very dissimilar to
that with which Cain was visited. Cain was sentenced to be a fugitive
and a wanderer on the face of the earth; and such is essentially the
character of the wolf, shunned by both men and animals. Of course,
there are many points to which it is not possible to extend the
parallel. Some of the ancient writers tell us, that there were two
Lycaons, the first of whom was the son of Phoroneus, who reigned in
Arcadia about the time of the patriarch Jacob; and the second, who
succeeded him, polluted the festivals of the Gods by the sacrifice of
the human race; for, having erected an altar to Jupiter, at the city
of Lycosura, he slew human victims on it, whence arose the story
related by the Poet. This solution is given by Pausanias, in his
Arcadica. We are also told by that historian, and by Suidas, that
Lycaon was, notwithstanding, a virtuous prince, the benefactor of his
people, and the promoter of improvement.
FABLE VIII. [I.244-312]
Jupiter, not thinking the punishment of Lycaon sufficient to strike
terror into the rest of mankind, resolves, on account of the universal
corruption, to extirpate them by a universal deluge.
Some, by their words approve the speech of Jupiter, and give spur to
him, {indignantly} exclaiming; others, by {silent} assent fulfil their
parts. Yet the {entire} destruction of the human race is a cause of
grief to them all, and they inquire what is to be the form of the earth
in future, when destitute of mankind? who is to place frankincense[48]
on the altars? and whether it is his design to give up the nations for a
prey to the wild beasts? The ruler of the Gods forbids them making these
enquiries, to be alarmed (for that the rest should be his care); and he
promises, {that} from a wondrous source {he will raise} a generation
unlike the preceding race.
And now he was about to scatter his thunder over all lands; but he was
afraid lest, perchance, the sacred æther might catch fire, from so many
flames, and the extended sky might become inflamed. He remembers, too,
that it was in the {decrees of} Fate, that a time should come,[49] at
which the sea, the earth, and the palace of heaven, seized {by the
flames}, should be burned, and the laboriously-wrought fabric of the
universe should be in danger of perishing. The weapons forged by the
hands of the Cyclops are laid aside; a different {mode of} punishment
pleases him: to destroy mankind beneath the waves, and to let loose the
rains from the whole tract of Heaven. At once he shuts the North Wind in
the caverns of Æolus, and {all} those blasts which dispel the clouds
drawn over {the Earth}; and {then} he sends forth the South Wind. With
soaking wings the South Wind flies abroad, having his terrible face
covered with pitchy darkness; his beard {is} loaded with showers, the
water streams down from his hoary locks, clouds gather upon his
forehead, his wings and the folds of his robe[50] drip with wet; and, as
with his broad hand he squeezes the hanging clouds, a crash arises, and
thence showers are poured in torrents from the sky. Iris,[51] the
messenger of Juno, clothed in various colors, collects the waters, and
bears a supply {upwards} to the clouds.
The standing corn is beaten down, and the expectations of the
husbandman, {now} lamented by him, are ruined, and the labors of a long
year prematurely perish. Nor is the wrath of Jove satisfied with his own
heaven; but {Neptune}, his azure brother, aids him with his auxiliary
waves. He calls together the rivers, which, soon as they had entered the
abode of their ruler, he says, “I must not now employ a lengthened
exhortation; pour forth {all} your might, so the occasion requires. Open
your abodes, and, {each} obstacle removed, give full rein to your
streams.” {Thus} he commanded; they return, and open the mouths of their
fountains,[52] and roll on into the ocean with unobstructed course. He
himself struck the Earth with his trident, {on which} it shook, and with
a tremor laid open the sources of its waters. The rivers, breaking out,
rush through the open plains, and bear away, together with the standing
corn, the groves, flocks, men, houses, and temples, together with their
sacred {utensils}. If any house remained, and, not thrown down, was able
to resist ruin so vast, yet the waves, {rising} aloft, covered the roof
of that {house}, and the towers tottered, overwhelmed beneath the
stream. And now sea and land had no mark of distinction; everything now
was ocean; and to that ocean shores were wanting. One man takes
possession of a hill, another sits in a curved boat, and plies the oars
there where he had lately ploughed; another sails over the standing
corn, or the roof of his country-house under water; another catches a
fish on the top of an elm-tree. An anchor (if chance so directs) is
fastened in a green meadow, or the curving keels come in contact with
the vineyards, {now} below them; and where of late the slender goats had
cropped the grass, there unsightly sea-calves are now reposing their
bodies.
The Nereids wonder at the groves, the cities, and the houses under
water; dolphins get into the woods, and run against the lofty branches,
and beat against the tossed oaks. The wolf swims[53] among the sheep;
the wave carries along the tawny lions; the wave carries along the
tigers. Neither does the powers of his lightning-shock avail the wild
boar, nor his swift legs the stag, {now} borne away. The wandering bird,
too, having long sought for land, where it may be allowed to light, its
wings failing, falls down into the sea. The boundless range of the sea
had overwhelmed the hills, and the stranger waves beat against the
heights of the mountains. The greatest part is carried off by the water:
those whom the water spares, long fastings overcome, through scantiness
of food.
[Footnote 48: _To place frankincense._--Ver. 249. In those early
ages, corn or wheaten flour, was the customary offering to the
Deities, and not frankincense, which was introduced among the
luxuries of more refined times. Ovid is consequently guilty of an
anachronism here.]
[Footnote 49: _That a time should come._--Ver. 256. Lactantius
informs us that the Sibyls predicted that the world should perish
by fire. Seneca also, in his consolation to Marcia, and in his
Quæstiones Naturales, mentions the same destined termination of
the present state of the universe. It was a doctrine of the Stoic
philosophers, that the stars were nurtured with moisture, and that
on the cessation of this nourishment the conflagration of the
universe would ensue.]
[Footnote 50: _The folds of his robe._--Ver. 267. ‘Rorant pennæ
sinusque,’ is quaintly translated by Clarke, ‘his wings and the
plaits of his coat drop.’]
[Footnote 51: _Iris._--Ver. 271. The mention of Iris, the goddess
of the rainbow, in connection with the flood of Deucalion, cannot
fail to remind us of the ‘bow set in the cloud, for a token of the
covenant between God and the earth,’ on the termination of Noah’s
flood.--Gen. x. 14.]
[Footnote 52: _The mouths of their fountains._--Ver. 281. The
expressions in this line and in line 283, are not unlike the words
of the 11th verse of the 7th chapter of Genesis, ‘The fountains of
the great deep were broken up.’]
[Footnote 53: _The wolf swims._--Ver. 304. One commentator remarks
here, that there was nothing very wonderful in a dead wolf
swimming among the sheep without devouring them. Seneca is,
however, too severe upon our author in saying that he is trifling
here, in troubling himself on so serious an occasion with what
sheep and wolves are doing: for he gravely means to say, that the
beasts of prey are terrified to that degree that they forget their
carnivorous propensities.]
EXPLANATION.
Pausanias makes mention of five deluges. The two most celebrated
happened in the time of Ogyges, and in that of Deucalion. Of the last
Ovid here speaks; and though that deluge was generally said to have
overflowed Thessaly only, he has evidently adopted in his narrative
the tradition of the universal deluge, which all nations seem to have
preserved. He says, that the sea joined its waters to those falling
from heaven. The words of Scripture are (Genesis, vii. 11), ‘All the
fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven
were opened.’ In speaking of the top of Parnassus alone being left
uncovered, the tradition here followed by Ovid probably referred to
Mount Ararat, where Noah’s ark rested. Noah and his family are
represented by Deucalion and Pyrrha. Both Noah and Deucalion were
saved for their virtuous conduct; when Noah went out of the ark, he
offered solemn sacrifices to God; and Pausanias tells us that
Deucalion, when saved, raised an altar to Jupiter the Liberator. The
Poet tells us, that Deucalion’s deluge was to be the last: God
promised the same thing to Noah. Josephus, in his Antiquities, Book
i., tells us, that the history of the universal deluge was written by
Nicolas of Damascus, Berosus, Mnaseas, and other ancient writers, from
whom the Greeks and Romans received it.
FABLE IX. [I.313-366]
Neptune appeases the angry waves; and he commands Triton to sound his
shell, that the sea may retire within its shores, and the rivers
within their banks. Deucalion and Pyrrha are the only persons saved
from the deluge.
Phocis separates the Aonian[54] from the Actæan region; a fruitful land
while it was a land; but at that time {it had become} a part of the sea,
and a wide plain of sudden waters. There a lofty mountain rises towards
the stars, with two tops, by name Parnassus,[55] and advances beyond the
clouds with its summit. When here Deucalion (for the sea had covered all
other places), borne in a little ship, with the partner of his couch,
{first} rested; they adored the Corycian Nymphs,[56] and the Deities of
the mountain, and the prophetic Themis,[57] who at that time used to
give out oracular responses. No man was there more upright than he, nor
a greater lover of justice, nor was any woman more regardful of the
Deities than she.
Soon as Jupiter {beholds} the world overflowed by liquid waters, and
sees that but one man remains out of so many thousands of late, and sees
that but one woman remains out of so many thousands of late, both
guiltless, and both worshippers of the Gods, he disperses the clouds;
and the showers being removed by the North Wind, he both lays open the
earth to the heavens, and the heavens to the earth. The rage, too, of
the sea does not continue; and his three-forked trident {now} laid
aside, the ruler of the deep assuages the waters, and calls upon the
azure Triton standing above the deep, and having his shoulders covered
with the native purple shells;[58] and he bids him blow[59] his
resounding trumpet, and, the signal being given, to call back the waves
and the streams. The hollow-wreathed trumpet[60] is taken up by him,
which grows to a {great} width from its lowest twist; the trumpet,
which, soon as it receives the air in the middle of the sea, fills with
its notes the shores lying under either sun. Then, too, as soon as it
touched the lips of the God dripping with his wet beard, and being
blown, sounded the bidden retreat;[61] it was heard by all the waters
both of earth and sea, and stopped all those waters by which it was
heard. Now the sea[62] {again} has a shore; their channels receive the
full rivers; the rivers subside; the hills are seen to come forth. The
ground rises, places increase {in extent} as the waters decrease; and
after a length of time, the woods show their naked tops, and retain the
mud left upon their branches.
The world was restored; which when Deucalion beheld to be empty, and how
the desolate Earth kept a profound silence, he thus addressed Pyrrha,
with tears bursting forth:--“O sister, O wife, O thou, the only woman
surviving, whom a common origin,[63] and a kindred descent, and
afterwards the marriage tie has united to me, and {whom} now dangers
themselves unite to me; we two are the whole people of the earth,
whatever {both} the East and the West behold; of all the rest, the sea
has taken possession. And even now there is no certain assurance of our
lives; even yet do the clouds terrify my mind. What would now have been
thy feelings, if without me thou hadst been rescued from destruction,
O thou deserving of compassion? In what manner couldst thou have been
able alone to support {this} terror? With whom for a consoler, {to
endure} these sorrows? For I, believe me, my wife, if the sea had only
carried thee off, should have followed thee, and the sea should have
carried me off as well. Oh that I could replace the people {that are
lost} by the arts of my father,[64] and infuse the soul into the moulded
earth! Now the mortal race exists in us two {alone}. Thus it has seemed
good to the Gods, and we remain as {mere} samples of mankind.”
[Footnote 54: _The Aonian._--Ver. 313. Aonia was a mountainous
region of Bœotia; and Actæa was an ancient name of Attica, from
ἄκτη, the sea-shore.]
[Footnote 55: _By name Parnassus._--Ver. 317. Mount Parnassus has
two peaks, of which the one was called ‘Tichoreum,’ and was sacred
to Bacchus; and the other ‘Hypampeum,’ and was devoted to Apollo
and the Muses.]
[Footnote 56: _The Corycian Nymphs._--Ver. 320. The Corycian
Nymphs were so called from inhabiting the Corycian cavern in Mount
Parnassus; they were fabled to be the daughters of Plistus,
a river near Delphi. There was another Corycian cave in Cilicia,
in Asia Minor.]
[Footnote 57: _The prophetic Themis._--Ver. 321. Themis is said to
have preceded Apollo in giving oracular responses at Delphi. She
was the daughter of Cœlus and Terra, and was the first to instruct
men to ask of the Gods that which was lawful and right, whence she
took the name of Themis, which signifies in Greek, ‘that which is
just and right.’]
[Footnote 58: _The native purple shells._--Ver. 332. ‘Murex’ was
the name of the shell-fish from which the Tyrian purple, so much
valued by the ancients, was procured. Some suppose that the
meaning here is, that Triton had his shoulders tinted with the
purple color of the murex. It is, however, more probable that the
Poet means to say that he had his neck and shoulders studded with
the shells of the murex, perhaps as a substitute for scales.]
[Footnote 59: _He bids him blow._--Ver. 333. There were several
Tritons, or minor sea gods. The one mentioned here, the chief
Triton, was fabled to be the son of Neptune and Amphitrite, who
always preceded Neptune in his course, and whose arrival he was
wont to proclaim by the sound of his shell. He was usually
represented as swimming, with the upper part of his body
resembling that of a human being, while his lower parts terminated
with the tail of a fish.]
[Footnote 60: _The hollow-wreathed trumpet._--Ver. 335. The
‘Buccina,’ or, as we call it, ‘the conch shell,’ was a kind of
horn, or trumpet, made out of a shell, called ‘buccinum.’ It was
sometimes artificially curved, and sometimes straight, retaining
the original form of the shell. The twisted form of the shell was
one of the characteristic features of the trumpet, which, in later
times, was made of horn, wood, or metal, so as to imitate the
shell. It was chiefly used among the Romans, to proclaim the
watches of the day and of the night, which watches were thence
called ‘buccina prima,’ ‘secunda,’ etc. It was also blown at
funerals, and at festive entertainments, both before sitting down
to table and after. Macrobius tells us, that Tritons holding
‘buccinæ’ were fixed on the roof of the temple of Saturn.]
[Footnote 61: _The bidden retreat._--Ver. 340. ‘Canere receptus’
was ‘to sound the retreat,’ as the signal for the soldiers to
cease fighting, and to resume their march.]
[Footnote 62: _Now the sea._--Ver. 343. This and the two following
lines are considered as entitled to much praise for their
terseness and brevity, as depicting by their short detached
sentences the instantaneous effect produced by the commands of
Neptune in reducing his dominions to a state of order.]
[Footnote 63: _A common origin._--Ver. 352. Because Prometheus was
the father of Deucalion and Epimetheus of Pyrrha; Prometheus and
Epimetheus being the sons of Iapetus. It is in an extended sense
that he styles her ‘sister,’ she being really his cousin.]
[Footnote 64: _The arts of my father._--Ver. 363. He alludes to
the story of his father, Prometheus, having formed men of clay,
and animated them with fire stolen from heaven.]
EXPLANATION.
Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, were, perhaps, originally three brothers,
kings of three separate kingdoms. Having been deified each retaining
his sovereignty, they were depicted as having the world divided
between them; the empire of the sea falling to the share of Neptune.
Among his occupations, were those of raising and calming the seas; and
Ovid here represents him as being so employed.
FABLE X. [I.367-415]
Deucalion and Pyrrha re-people the earth by casting stones behind
them, in the manner prescribed by the Goddess Themis, whose oracle
they had consulted.
He {thus} spoke, and they wept. They resolved to pray to the Deities of
Heaven, and to seek relief through the sacred oracles. There is no
delay; together they repair to the waters of Cephisus,[65] though not
yet clear, yet now cutting their wonted channel. Then, when they have
sprinkled the waters poured on their clothes[66] and their heads, they
turn their steps to the temple of the sacred Goddess, the roof of which
was defiled with foul moss, and whose altars were standing without
fires. Soon as they reached the steps of the temple, each of them fell
prostrate on the ground, and, trembling, gave kisses to the cold
pavement. And thus they said:
“If the Deities, prevailed upon by just prayers, are to be mollified, if
the wrath of the Gods is to be averted; tell us, O Themis, by what art
the loss of our race is to be repaired, and give thy assistance, O most
gentle {Goddess} to our ruined fortunes.” The Goddess was moved, and
gave this response: “Depart from my temple, and cover your heads,[67]
and loosen the garments girt {around you}, and throw behind your backs
the bones of your great mother.” For a long time they are amazed; and
Pyrrha is the first by her words to break the silence, and {then}
refuses to obey the commands of the Goddess; and begs her, with
trembling lips, to grant her pardon, and dreads to offend the shades of
her mother by casting her bones. In the meantime they reconsider the
words of the response given, {but} involved in dark obscurity, and they
ponder them among themselves. Upon that, the son of Prometheus soothes
the daughter of Epimetheus with {these} gentle words, and says, “Either
is my discernment fallacious, or the oracles are just, and advise no
sacrilege. The earth is the great mother; I suspect that the stones in
the body of the earth are the bones meant; these we are ordered to throw
behind our backs.” Although she, descended from Titan,[68] is moved by
this interpretation of her husband, still her hope is involved in doubt;
so much do they both distrust the advice of heaven; but what harm will
it do to try?
They go down, and they veil their heads, and ungird their garments, and
cast stones, as ordered, behind their footsteps. The stones (who could
have believed it, but that antiquity is a witness {of the thing?}) began
to lay aside their hardness and their stiffness, and by degrees to
become soft; and when softened, to assume a {new} form. Presently after,
when they were grown larger, a milder nature, too, was conferred on
them, so that some shape of man might be seen {in them}, yet though but
imperfect; and as if from the marble commenced {to be wrought}, not
sufficiently distinct, and very like to rough statues. Yet that part of
them which was humid with any moisture, and earthy, was turned into
{portions adapted for} the use of the body. That which is solid, and
cannot be bent, is changed into bones; that which was just now a vein,
still remains under the same name.[69] And in a little time, by the
interposition of the Gods above, the stones thrown by the hands of the
man, took the shape of a man, and the female {race} was renewed by the
throwing of the woman. Thence are we a hardy generation, and able to
endure fatigue, and we give proofs from what original we are sprung.
[Footnote 65: _The waters of Cephisus._--Ver. 369. The river
Cephisus rises on Mount Parnassus, and flows near Delphi.]
[Footnote 66: _Poured on their clothes._--Ver. 371. It was the
custom of the ancients, before entering a temple, either to
sprinkle themselves with water, or to wash the body all over.]
[Footnote 67: _Cover your heads._--Ver. 382. It was a custom among
the ancients to cover their heads in sacrifice and other acts of
worship, either as a mark of humility, or, according to Plutarch,
that nothing of ill omen might meet their sight, and thereby
interrupt the performance of the rites.]
[Footnote 68: _Descended from Titan._--Ver. 395. Pyrrha was of the
race of the Titans; for Iapetus, her grandfather, was the son of
Titan and Terra.]
[Footnote 69: _Under the same name._--Ver. 410. With his usual
propensity for punning, he alludes to the use of the word ‘vena,’
as signifying either ‘a vein’ of the body, or a ‘streak’ or ‘vein’
in stone, according to the context.]
EXPLANATION.
In the reign of Deucalion, king of Thessaly, the course of the river
Peneus was stopped, probably by an earthquake. In the same year so
great a quantity of rain fell, that all Thessaly was overflowed.
Deucalion and some of his subjects fled to Mount Parnassus; where they
remained until the waters abated. The children of those who were
preserved are the stones of which the Poet here speaks. The Fable,
probably, has for its foundation the double meaning of the word
‘Eben,’ or ‘Aben,’ which signifies either ‘a stone,’ or ‘a child.’ The
Scholiast on Pindar tells us, too, that the word λάος, which means
people, formerly also signified ‘a stone.’
The brutal and savage nature of the early races of men may also have
added strength to the tradition that they derived their original from
stones. After the inundation, Deucalion is said to have repaired to
Athens, where he built a temple to Jupiter, and instituted sacrifices
in his honor. Some suppose that Cranaus reigned at Athens when
Deucalion retired thither; though Eusebius informs us it was under the
reign of Cecrops. Deucalion was the son of Prometheus, and his wife
Pyrrha was the daughter of his uncle, Epimetheus. After his death, he
received the honor of a temple, and was worshipped as a Divinity.
FABLE XI. [I.416-451]
The Earth, being warmed by the heat of the sun, produces many
monsters: among others, the serpent Python, which Apollo kills with
his arrows. To establish a memorial of this event, he institutes the
Pythian games, and adopts the surname of Pythius.
The Earth of her own accord brought forth other animals of different
forms; after that the former moisture was thoroughly heated by the rays
of the sun, and the mud and the wet fens fermented with the heat; and
the fruitful seeds of things nourished by the enlivening soil, as in the
womb of a mother, grew, and, in lapse of time, assumed some {regular}
shape. Thus, when the seven-streamed Nile[70] has forsaken the oozy
fields, and has returned its waters to their ancient channel, and the
fresh mud has been heated with the æthereal sun, the laborers, on
turning up the clods, meet with very many animals, and among them, some
just begun at the very moment of their formation, and some they see
{still} imperfect, and {as yet} destitute of {some} of their limbs; and
often, in the same body, is one part animated, the other part is coarse
earth. For when moisture and heat have been subjected to a due mixture,
they conceive; and all things arise from these two.
And although fire is the antagonist of heat, {yet} a moist vapor creates
all things, and this discordant concord is suited for generation; when,
therefore, the Earth, covered with mud by the late deluge, was
thoroughly heated by the æthereal sunshine and a penetrating warmth, it
produced species {of creatures} innumerable; and partly restored the
former shapes, and partly gave birth to new monsters. She, indeed, might
have been unwilling, but then she produced thee as well, thou enormous
Python; and thou, unheard-of serpent, wast a {source of} terror to this
new race of men, so vast a part of a mountain didst thou occupy.
The God that bears the bow, and that had never before used such arms,
but against the deer and the timorous goats, destroyed him, overwhelmed
with a thousand arrows, his quiver being well-nigh exhausted, {as} the
venom oozed forth through the black wounds; and that length of time
might not efface the fame of the deed, he instituted sacred games,[71]
with contests famed {in story}, called “Pythia,” from the name of the
serpent {so} conquered. In these, whosoever of the young men conquered
in boxing, in running, or in chariot-racing, received the honor of a
crown of beechen leaves.[72] As yet the laurel existed not, and Phœbus
used to bind his temples, graceful with long hair, with {garlands from}
any tree.
[Footnote 70: _The seven-streamed Nile._--Ver. 423. The river Nile
discharges itself into the sea by seven mouths. It is remarkable
for its inundations, which happen regularly every year, and
overflow the whole country of Egypt. To this is chiefly owing the
extraordinary fertility of the soil of that country; for when the
waters subside, they leave behind them great quantities of mud,
which, settling upon the land, enrich it, and continually
reinvigorate it.]
[Footnote 71: _Instituted sacred games._--Ver. 446. Yet Pausanias,
in his Corinthiaca, tells us that they were instituted by
Diomedes; others, again, say by Eurylochus the Thessalian; and
others, by Amphictyon, or Adrastus. The Pythian games were
celebrated near Delphi, on the Crissæan plain, which contained a
race-course, a stadium of 1000 feet in length, and a theatre, in
which the musical contests took place. They were once held at
Athens, by the advice of Demetrius Poliorcetes, because the
Ætolians were in possession of the passes round Delphi. They
were most probably originally a religious ceremonial, and were
perhaps only a musical contest, which consisted in singing a hymn
in honor of the Pythian God, accompanied by the music of the
cithara. In later times, gymnastic and equestrian games and
exercises were introduced there. Previously to the 48th Olympiad,
the Pythian games had been celebrated at the end of every eighth
year; after that period they were held at the end of every fourth
year. When they ceased to be solemnized is unknown; but in the
time of the Emperor Julian they still continued to be held.]
[Footnote 72: _Crown of beechen leaves._--Ver. 449. This was the
prize which was originally given to the conquerors in the Pythian
games. In later times, as Ovid tells us, the prize of the victor
was a laurel chaplet, together with the palm branch, symbolical of
his victory.]
EXPLANATION.
The story of the serpent Python, being explained on philosophical
principles, seems to mean, that the heat of the sun, having dissipated
the noxious exhalations emitted by the receding waters, the reptiles,
which had been produced from the slime left by the flood, immediately
disappeared.
If, however, we treat this narrative as based on historical facts, it
is probable that the serpent represented some robber who infested the
neighborhood of Parnassus, and molested those who passed that way for
the purpose of offering sacrifice. A prince, either bearing the name
of Apollo, or being a priest of that God, by his destruction liberated
that region from this annoyance. This event gave rise to the
institution of the Pythian games, which were celebrated near Delphi.
Besides the several contests mentioned by Ovid, singing, dancing, and
instrumental music, formed part of the exercises of these games. The
event which Ovid here places soon after the deluge, must have happened
much later, since in the time of Deucalion, the worship of Apollo was
not known at Delphi. The Goddess Themis then delivered oracles there,
which, previously to her time, had been delivered by the Earth.
FABLE XII. [I.452-567]
Apollo, falling in love with Daphne, the daughter of the river Peneus,
she flies from him. He pursues her; on which, the Nymph, imploring the
aid of her father, is changed into a laurel.
Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was the first love of Phœbus; whom, not
blind chance, but the vengeful anger of Cupid assigned to him.
The Delian {God},[73] proud of having lately subdued the serpent, had
seen him bending the bow and drawing the string, and had said, “What
hast thou to do, wanton boy, with gallant arms? Such a burden as that
{better} befits my shoulders; I, who am able to give unerring wounds to
the wild beasts, {wounds} to the enemy, who lately slew with arrows
innumerable the swelling Python, that covered so many acres {of land}
with his pestilential belly. Do thou be contented to excite I know not
what flames with thy torch; and do not lay claim to praises {properly}
my own.”
To him the son of Venus replies, “Let thy bow shoot all things, Phœbus;
my bow {shall shoot} thee; and as much as all animals fall short of
thee, so much is thy glory less than mine.” He {thus} said; and cleaving
the air with his beating wings, with activity he stood upon the shady
heights of Parnassus, and drew two weapons out of his arrow-bearing
quiver, of different workmanship; the one repels, the other excites
desire. That which causes {love} is of gold, and is brilliant, with a
sharp point; that which repels it is blunt, and contains lead beneath
the reed. This one the God fixed in the Nymph, the daughter of Peneus,
but with the other he wounded the {very} marrow of Apollo, through his
bones pierced {by the arrow}. Immediately the one is in love; the other
flies from the {very} name of a lover, rejoicing in the recesses of the
woods, and in the spoils of wild beasts taken {in hunting}, and becomes
a rival of the virgin Phœbe. A fillet tied together[74] her hair, put up
without any order. Many a one courted her; she hated all wooers; not
able to endure, and quite unacquainted with man, she traverses the
solitary parts of the woods, and she cares not what Hymen,[75] what
love, {or} what marriage means. Many a time did her father say, “My
daughter, thou owest me a son-in-law;” many a time did her father say,
“My daughter, thou owest me grandchildren.” She, utterly abhorring the
nuptial torch,[76] as though a crime, has her beauteous face covered
with the blush of modesty; and clinging to her father’s neck, with
caressing arms, she says, “Allow me, my dearest father, to enjoy
perpetual virginity; her father, in times, bygone, granted this to
Diana.”
He indeed complied. But that very beauty forbids thee to be what thou
wishest, and the charms of thy person are an impediment to thy desires.
Phœbus falls in love, and he covets an alliance with Daphne, {now} seen
by him, and what he covets he hopes for, and his own oracles deceive
him; and as the light stubble is burned, when the ears of corn are taken
off, and as hedges are set on fire by the torches, which perchance a
traveller has either held too near them, or has left {there}, now about
the break of day, thus did the God burst into a flame; thus did he burn
throughout his breast, and cherish a fruitless passion with his hopes.
He beholds her hair hanging unadorned upon her neck, and he says, “And
what would {it be} if it were arranged?” He sees her eyes, like stars,
sparkling with fire; he sees her lips, which it is not enough to have
{merely} seen; he praises both her fingers and her hands, and her arms
and her shoulders naked, from beyond the middle; whatever is hidden from
view, he thinks to be still more beauteous. Swifter than the light wind
she flies, and she stops not at these words of his, as he calls her
back:
“O Nymph, daughter of Peneus, stay, I entreat thee! I am not an enemy
following thee. In this way the lamb {flies} from the wolf; thus the
deer {flies} from the lion; thus the dove flies from the eagle with
trembling wing; {in this way} each {creature flies from} its enemy: love
is the cause of my following thee. Ah! wretched me! shouldst thou fall
on thy face, or should the brambles tear thy legs, that deserve not to
be injured, and should I prove the cause of pain to thee. The places are
rugged, through which thou art {thus} hastening; run more leisurely,
I entreat thee, and restrain thy flight; I myself will follow more
leisurely. And yet, inquire whom thou dost please; I am not an
inhabitant of the mountains, I am not a shepherd; I am not here, in rude
guise,[77] watching the herds or the flocks. Thou knowest not, rash
girl, thou knowest not from whom thou art flying, and therefore it is
that thou dost fly. The Delphian land, Claros and Tenedos,[78] and the
Pataræan palace pays service to me. Jupiter is my sire; by me, what
shall be, what has been, and what is, is disclosed; through me, songs
harmonize with the strings. My own {arrow}, indeed, is unerring; yet one
there is still more unerring than my own, which has made this wound in
my heart, {before} unscathed. The healing art is my discovery, and
throughout the world I am honored as the bearer of help, and the
properties of simples are[79] subjected to me. Ah, wretched me![80] that
love is not to be cured by any herbs; and that those arts which afford
relief to all, are of no avail for their master.”
The daughter of Peneus flies from him, about to say still more, with
timid step, and together with him she leaves his unfinished address.
Then, too, she appeared lovely; the winds exposed her form to view, and
the gusts meeting her fluttered about her garments, as they came in
contact, and the light breeze spread behind her her careless locks;
and {thus}, by her flight, was her beauty increased. But the youthful
God[81] has not patience any longer to waste his blandishments; and as
love urges him on, he follows her steps with hastening pace. As when the
greyhound[82] has seen the hare in the open field, and the one by {the
speed of} his legs pursues his prey, the other {seeks} her safety; the
one is like as if just about to fasten {on the other}, and now, even
now, hopes to catch her, and with nose outstretched plies upon the
footsteps {of the hare}. The other is in doubt whether she is caught
{already}, and is delivered from his very bite, and leaves behind the
mouth {just} touching her. {And} so is the God, and {so} is the
virgin;[83] he swift with hopes, she with fear.
Yet he that follows, aided by the wings of love, is the swifter, and
denies her {any} rest; and is {now} just at her back as she flies, and
is breathing upon her hair scattered upon her neck. Her strength being
{now} spent, she grows pale, and being quite faint, with the fatigue of
so swift a flight, looking upon the waters of Peneus, she says, “Give
me, my father, thy aid, if you rivers have divine power. Oh Earth,
either yawn {to swallow me}, or by changing it, destroy that form, by
which I have pleased too much, and which causes me to be injured.”
Hardly had she ended her prayer, {when} a heavy torpor seizes her limbs;
{and} her soft breasts are covered with a thin bark. Her hair grows into
green leaves, her arms into branches; her feet, the moment before so
swift, adhere by sluggish roots; a {leafy} canopy overspreads her
features; her elegance alone[84] remains in her. This, too, Phœbus
admires, and placing his right hand upon the stock, he perceives that
the breast still throbs beneath the new bark; and {then}, embracing the
branches as though limbs in his arms, he gives kisses to the wood, {and}
yet the wood shrinks from his kisses. To her the God said: “But since
thou canst not be my wife, at least thou shalt be my tree; my hair, my
lyre,[85] my quiver shall always have thee, oh laurel! Thou shalt be
presented to the Latian chieftains, when the joyous voice of the
soldiers shall sing the song of triumph,[86] and the long procession
shall resort to the Capitol. Thou, the same, shalt stand as a most
faithful guardian at the gate-posts of Augustus before his doors,[87]
and shalt protect the oak placed in the centre; and as my head is {ever}
youthful with unshorn locks, do thou, too, always wear the lasting
honors of thy foliage.”
Pæan had ended {his speech}; the laurel nodded assent with its new-made
boughs, and seemed to shake its top just like a head.
[Footnote 73: _The Delian God._--Ver. 454. Apollo is so called,
from having been born in the Isle of Delos, in the Ægean Sea. The
Peneus was a river of Thessaly.]
[Footnote 74: _A fillet tied together._--Ver. 477. The ‘vitta’ was
a band encircling the head, and served to confine the tresses of
the hair. It was worn by maidens and by married women also; but
the ‘vitta’ assumed on the day of marriage was of a different form
from that used by virgins. It was not worn by women of light
character, or even by the ‘libertinæ,’ or female slaves who had
been liberated; so that it was not only deemed an emblem of
chastity, but of freedom also. It was of various colors: white and
purple are mentioned. In the later ages the ‘vitta’ was sometimes
set with pearls.]
[Footnote 75: _Hymen._--Ver. 480. Hymen, or Hymenæus, was one of
the Gods of Marriage; hence the name ‘Hymen’ was given to the
union of two persons in marriage.]
[Footnote 76: _The nuptial torch._--Ver. 483. Plutarch tells us,
that it was the custom in the bridal procession to carry five
torches before the bride, on her way to the house of her husband.
Among the Romans, the nuptial torch was lighted at the parental
hearth of the bride, and was borne before her by a boy, whose
parents were alive. The torch was also used at funerals, for the
purpose of lighting the pile, and because funerals were often
nocturnal ceremonies. Hence the expression of Propertius,--
‘Vivimus inter utramque facem,’ ‘We are living between the two
torches.’ Originally, the ‘tædæ’ seem to have been slips or
lengths of resinous pine wood: while the ‘fax’ was formed of a
bundle of wooden staves, either bound by a rope drawn round them
in a spiral form, or surrounded by circular bands at equal
distances. They were used by travellers and others, who were
forced to be abroad after sunset; whence the reference in line 493
to the hedge ignited through the carelessness of the traveller,
who has thrown his torch there on the approach of morning.]
[Footnote 77: _Here in rude guise._--Ver. 514. ‘Non hic armenta
gregesve Horridus observo’ is quaintly translated by Clarke, ‘I do
not here in a rude pickle watch herds or flocks.’]
[Footnote 78: _Claros and Tenedos._--Ver. 516. Claros was a city
of Ionia, famed for a temple and oracle of Apollo, and near which
there was a mountain and a grove sacred to him. There was an
island in the Myrtoan Sea of that name, to which some suppose that
reference is here made. Tenedos was an island of the Ægean Sea, in
the neighborhood of Troy. Patara was a city of Lycia, where Apollo
gave oracular responses during six months of the year. It was from
Patara that St. Paul took ship for Phœnicia, Acts, xxi. 1, 2.]
[Footnote 79: _The properties of simples._--Ver. 522. The first
cultivators of the medical art pretended to nothing beyond an
acquaintance with the medicinal qualities of herbs and simples; it
is not improbable that inasmuch as the vegetable world is
nourished and raised to the surface of the earth in a great degree
by the heat of the sun, a ground was thereby afforded for
allegorically saying that Apollo, or the Sun, was the discoverer
of the healing art.]
[Footnote 80: _Ah! wretched me!_--Ver. 523. A similar expression
occurs in the Heroides, v. 149, ‘Me miseram, quod amor non est
medicabilis herbis.’]
[Footnote 81: _The youthful God._--Ver. 531. Apollo was always
represented as a youth, and was supposed never to grow old. The
Scholiast on the Thebais of Statius, b. i., v. 694, says, ‘The
reason is, because Apollo is the Sun; and because the Sun is fire,
which never grows old.’ Perhaps the youthfulness of the Deity is
here mentioned, to account for his ardent pursuit of the flying
damsel.]
[Footnote 82: _As when the greyhound._--Ver. 533. The comparison
here of the flight of Apollo after Daphne, to that of the
greyhound after the hare, is considered to be very beautifully
drawn, and to give an admirable illustration of the eagerness with
which the God pursues on the one hand, and the anxiety with which
the Nymph endeavors to escape on the other. Pope, in his Windsor
Forest, has evidently imitated this passage, where he describes
the Nymph Lodona pursued by Pan, and transformed into a river. His
words are--
‘Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly,
When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky;
Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves,
When through the clouds he drives the trembling doves;
As from the God she flew with furious pace,
Or as the God more furious urged the chase.
Now fainting, sinking, pale, the nymph appears;
Now close behind, his sounding steps she hears;
And now his shadow reach’d her as she run,
His shadow lengthened by the setting sun;
And now his shorter breath, with sultry air,
Pants on her neck, and fans her parting hair.’
The greyhound was probably called ‘canis Gallicus,’ from having
been originally introduced into Italy from Gaul. ‘Vertagus’ was
their Gallic name, which we find used by Martial, and Gratian in
his Cynegeticon, ver. 203.]
[Footnote 83: _And so is the virgin._--Ver. 539. ‘Sic Deus et
virgo est’ is translated by Clarke, ‘So is the God and the young
lady;’ indeed, he mostly translates ‘virgo,’ ‘young lady.’]
[Footnote 84: _Her elegance alone._--Ver. 552. Clarke translates
‘Remanet nitor unus in illa,’ ‘her neatness alone continues in
her.’]
[Footnote 85: _My lyre._--Ver. 559. The players of the cithara,
the instrument of Apollo, were crowned with laurel, in the scenic
representations of the stage.]
[Footnote 86: _The song of triumph._--Ver. 560. The Poet here pays
a compliment to Augustus and the Roman people. The laurel was the
emblem of victory among the Romans. On such occasions the ‘fasces’
of the general and the spears and javelins of the soldiers were
wreathed with laurel; and after the time of Julius Cæsar, the
Roman general, when triumphing, wore a laurel wreath on his head,
and held a branch of laurel in his hand.]
[Footnote 87: _Before his doors._--Ver. 562. He here alludes to
the civic crown of oak leaves which, by order of the Senate, was
placed before the gate of the Palatium, where Augustus Cæsar
resided, with branches of laurel on either side of it.]
EXPLANATION.
To explain this Fable, it must be laid down as a principle that there
were originally many Jupiters, and Apollos, and Mercuries, whose
intrigues being, in lapse of time, attributed to but one individual,
that fact accounts for the great number of children which claimed
those respective Gods for their fathers.
Some prince probably, for whom his love of learning had acquired the
name of Apollo, falling in love with Daphne, pursued her to the brink
of the river Peneus, into which, being accidentally precipitated, she
perished in her lover’s sight. Some laurels growing near the spot,
perhaps gave rise to the story of her transformation; or possibly the
etymology of the word ‘Daphne,’ which in Greek signifies a laurel, was
the foundation of the Fable. Pausanias, however, in his Arcadia, gives
another version of this story. He says that Leucippus, son of Œnomaus,
king of Pisa, falling in love with Daphne, disguised himself in female
apparel, and devoted himself to her service. He soon procured her
friendship and confidence; but Apollo, who was his rival, having
discovered his fraud, one day redoubled the heat of the sun. Daphne
and her companions going to bathe, obliged Leucippus to follow their
example, on which, having discovered his stratagem, they killed him
with the arrows which they carried for the purposes of hunting.
Diodorus Siculus tells us that Daphne was the same with Manto, the
daughter of Tiresias, who was banished to Delphi, where she delivered
oracles, of the language of which Homer availed himself in the
composition of his poems. The inhabitants of Antioch asserted that the
adventure here narrated happened in the suburbs of their city, which
thence derived its name of Daphne.
FABLE XIII. [I.568-600]
Jupiter, pursuing Io, the daughter of Inachus, covers the earth with
darkness, and ravishes the Nymph.
There is a grove of Hæmonia,[88] which a wood, placed on a craggy rock,
encloses on every side. They call it Tempe;[89] through this the river
Peneus, flowing from the bottom of {mount} Pindus,[90] rolls along with
its foaming waves, and in its mighty fall, gathers clouds that scatter
{a vapor like} thin smoke,[91] and with its spray besprinkles the tops
of the woods, and wearies places, far from near to it, with its noise.
This is the home, this the abode, these are the retreats of the great
river; residing here in a cavern formed by rocks, he gives law to the
waters, and to the Nymphs that inhabit those waters. The rivers of that
country first repair thither, not knowing whether they should
congratulate, or whether console the parent; the poplar-bearing
Spercheus,[92] and the restless Enipeus,[93] the aged Apidanus,[94] the
gentle Amphrysus,[95] and Æas,[96] and, soon after, the other rivers,
which, as their current leads them, carry down into the sea their waves,
wearied by wanderings. Inachus[97] alone is absent, and, hidden in his
deepest cavern, increases his waters with his tears, and in extreme
wretchedness bewails his daughter Io as lost; he knows not whether she
{now} enjoys life, or whether she is among the shades below; but her,
whom he does not find anywhere, he believes to be nowhere, and in his
mind he dreads the worst.
Jupiter had seen Io as she was returning from her father’s stream, and
had said, “O maid, worthy of Jove, and destined to make I know not whom
happy in thy marriage, repair to the shades of this lofty grove (and he
pointed at the shade of the grove) while it is warm, and {while} the Sun
is at his height, in the midst of his course. But if thou art afraid to
enter the lonely abodes of the wild beasts alone, thou shalt enter the
recesses of the groves, safe under the protection of a God, and {that} a
God of no common sort; but {with me}, who hold the sceptre of heaven in
my powerful hand; {me}, who hurl the wandering lightnings--Do not fly
from me;” for {now} she was flying. And now she had left behind the
pastures of Lerna,[98] and the Lircæan plains planted with trees, when
the God covered the earth far and wide with darkness overspreading, and
arrested her flight, and forced her modesty.
[Footnote 88: _A grove of Hæmonia._--Ver. 568. Hæmonia was an
ancient name of Thessaly, so called from its king, Hæmon, a son of
Pelasgus, and father of Thessalus, from which it received its
later name.]
[Footnote 89: _Call it Tempe._--Ver. 569. Tempe was a valley of
Thessaly, proverbial for its pleasantness and the beauty of its
scenery. The river Peneus ran through it, but not with the
violence which Ovid here depicts; for Ælian tells us that it runs
with a gentle sluggish stream, more like oil than water.]
[Footnote 90: _Mount Pindus._--Ver. 570. Pindus was a mountain
situate on the confines of Thessaly.]
[Footnote 91: _Like thin smoke._--Ver. 571. He speaks of the
spray, which in the fineness of its particles resembles smoke.]
[Footnote 92: _Spercheus._--Ver. 579. The Spercheus was a rapid
stream, flowing at the foot of Mount Æta into the Malian Gulf,
and on whose banks many poplars grew.]
[Footnote 93: _Enipeus._--Ver. 579. The Enipeus rises in Mount
Othrys, and runs through Thessaly. Virgil (Georgics, iv. 468)
calls it ‘Altus Enipeus,’ the deep Enipeus.]
[Footnote 94: _Apidanus._--Ver. 580. The Apidanus, receiving the
stream of the Enipeus at Pharsalia, flows into the Peneus. It is
supposed by some commentators to be here called ‘senex,’ aged,
from the slowness of its tide. But where it unites the Enipeus it
flows with violence, so that it is probably called ‘senex,’ as
having been known and celebrated by the poets from of old.]
[Footnote 95: _Amphrysus._--Ver. 580. This river ran through that
part of Thessaly known by the name of Phthiotis.]
[Footnote 96: _Æas._--Ver. 580. Pliny the Elder (Book iii, ch. 23)
calls this river Aous. It was a small limpid stream, running
through Epirus and Thessaly, and discharging itself into the
Ionian sea.]
[Footnote 97: _Inachus._--Ver. 583. This was a river of Argolis,
now known as the Naio. It took its rise either in Lycæus or
Artemisium, mountains of Arcadia. Stephens, however, thinks that
Lycæus was a mountain of Argolis.]
[Footnote 98: _Lerna._--Ver. 597. This was a swampy spot on the
Argive territory, where the poets say that the dragon with seven
heads, called Hydra, which was slain by Hercules, had made his
haunt. It is not improbable that the pestilential vapors of this
spot were got rid of by means of its being drained under the
superintendence of Hercules, on which fact the story was founded.
Some commentators, however, suppose the Lerna to have been a
flowing stream.]
EXPLANATION.
The Greeks frequently embellished their mythology with narratives of
Phœnician or Egyptian origin. The story of Io probably came from
Egypt. Isis was one of the chief divinities of that country, and her
worship naturally passed, with their colonies, into foreign countries.
Greece received it when Inachus went to settle there, and in lapse of
time Isis, under the name of Io, was supposed to have been his
daughter, and the fable was invented which is here narrated by Ovid.
The Greek authors, Apollodorus, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and
Pausanias, say that Io was the daughter of Inachus, the first king of
Argos; that Jupiter carried her away to Crete; and that by her he had
a son named Epaphus, who went to reign in Egypt, whither his mother
accompanied him. They also tell us that she married Apis, or Osiris,
who, after his death, was numbered among the Deities of Egypt by the
name of Serapis. From them we also learn that Juno, being actuated by
jealousy, on the discovery of the intrigue, put Io under the care of
her uncle Argus, a man of great vigilance, but that Jupiter having
slain him, placed his mistress on board of a vessel which had the
figure of a cow at its head; from which circumstance arose the story
of the transformation of Io. The Greek writers also state, that the
Bosphorus, a part of the Ægean sea, derived its name from the passage
of Io in the shape of a cow.
FABLE XIV. [I.601-688]
Jupiter, having changed Io into a cow, to conceal her from the
jealousy of Juno, is obliged to give her to that Goddess, who commits
her to the charge of the watchful Argus. Jupiter sends Mercury with an
injunction to cast Argus into a deep sleep, and to take away his life.
In the meantime Juno looked down upon the midst of the fields, and
wondering that the fleeting clouds had made the appearance of night
under bright day, she perceived that they were not {the vapors} from a
river, nor were they raised from the moist earth, and {then} she looked
around {to see} where her husband was, as being one who by this time was
full well acquainted with the intrigues of a husband {who had been} so
often detected.[99] After she had found him not in heaven, she said,
“I am either deceived, or I am injured;” and having descended from the
height of heaven, she alighted upon the earth, and commanded the mists
to retire. He had foreseen the approach of his wife, and had changed the
features of the daughter of Inachus into a sleek heifer.[100] As a cow,
too, {she} is beautiful. The daughter of Saturn, though unwillingly,
extols the appearance of the cow; and likewise inquires, whose it is,
and whence, or of what herd it is, as though ignorant of the truth.
Jupiter falsely asserts that it was produced out of the earth, that the
owner may cease to be inquired after. The daughter of Saturn begs her of
him as a gift. What can {he} do? It is a cruel thing to deliver up his
{own} mistress, {and} not to give her up is a cause of suspicion. It is
shame which persuades him on the one hand, love dissuades him on the
other. His shame would have been subdued by his love; but if so trifling
a gift as a cow should be refused to the sharer of his descent and his
couch, she might {well} seem not to be a cow.
The rival now being given up {to her}, the Goddess did not immediately
lay aside all apprehension; and she was {still} afraid of Jupiter, and
was fearful of her being stolen, until she gave her to Argus, the son of
Aristor, to be kept {by him}. Argus had his head encircled with a
hundred eyes. Two of them used to take rest in their turns, the rest
watched, and used to keep on duty.[101] In whatever manner he stood, he
looked towards Io; although turned away, he {still} used to have Io
before his eyes. In the daytime he suffers her to feed; but when the sun
is below the deep earth, he shuts her up, and ties a cord round her neck
undeserving {of such treatment}. She feeds upon the leaves of the arbute
tree, and bitter herbs, and instead of a bed the unfortunate {animal}
lies upon the earth, that does not always have grass {on it}, and drinks
of muddy streams. And when, too, she was desirous, as a suppliant, to
stretch out her arms to Argus, she had no arms to stretch out to Argus;
and she uttered lowings from her mouth, {when} endeavoring to complain.
And at {this} sound she was terrified, and was affrighted at her own
voice.
She came, too, to the banks, where she was often wont to sport, the
banks of {her father}, Inachus; and soon as she beheld her new horns in
the water, she was terrified, and, astonished, she recoiled from
herself. The Naiads knew her not, and Inachus himself knew her not, who
she was; but she follows her father, and follows her sisters, and
suffers herself to be touched, and presents herself to them, as they
admire {her}. The aged Inachus held her some grass he had plucked; she
licks his hand, and gives kisses to the palms of her father. Nor does
she restrain her tears; and if only words would follow, she would
implore his aid, and would declare her name and misfortunes. Instead of
words, letters, which her foot traced in the dust, completed the sad
discovery of the transformation of her body. “Ah, wretched me!” exclaims
her father Inachus; and clinging to the horns and the neck of the
snow-white cow, as she wept, he repeats, “Ah, wretched me! and art thou
my daughter, that hast been sought for by me throughout all lands? While
undiscovered, thou wast a lighter grief {to me}, than {now, when} thou
art found. Thou art silent, and no words dost thou return in answer to
mine; thou only heavest sighs from the depth of thy breast, and what
alone thou art able to do, thou answerest in lowings to my words. But I,
in ignorance {of this}, was preparing the bridal chamber, and the
{nuptial} torches for thee; and my chief hope was that of a son-in-law,
my next was that of grandchildren. But now must thou have a mate from
the herd, now, {too}, an offspring of the herd. Nor is it possible for
me to end grief so great by death; but it is a detriment to be a God;
and the gate of death being shut against me, extends my grief to eternal
ages.”
While thus he lamented, the starry Argus removed her away, and carried
the daughter, {thus} taken from her father, to distant pastures. He
himself, at a distance, occupies the lofty top of a mountain, whence, as
he sits, he may look about on all sides.
Nor can the ruler of the Gods above, any longer endure so great miseries
of the granddaughter of Phoroneus;[102] and he calls his son {Mercury},
whom the bright Pleiad, {Maia},[103] brought forth, and orders him to
put Argus to death. There is {but} little delay to take wings upon his
feet, and his soporiferous wand[104] in his hand, and a cap for his
hair.[105] After he had put these things in order, the son of Jupiter
leaps down from his father’s high abode upon the earth, and there he
takes off his cap, and lays aside his wings; his wand alone was
retained. With this, as a shepherd, he drives some she-goats through the
pathless country, taken up as he passed along, and plays upon oaten
straws joined together.
The keeper appointed by Juno, charmed by the sound of this new
contrivance, says, “Whoever thou art, thou mayst be seated with me upon
this stone; for, indeed, in no {other} place is the herbage more
abundant for thy flock; and thou seest, too, that the shade is
convenient for the shepherds.” The son of Atlas sat down, and with much
talking he occupied the passing day with his discourse, and by playing
upon his joined reeds he tried to overpower his watchful eyes. Yet {the
other} strives hard to overcome soft sleep; and although sleep was
received by a part of his eyes, yet with a part he still keeps watch. He
inquires also (for the pipe had been {but} lately invented) by what
method it had been found out.
[Footnote 99: _So often detected._--Ver. 606. Clarke translates
‘deprensi toties mariti’ by the expression, ‘who had been so often
catched in his roguery.’]
[Footnote 100: _Into a sleek heifer._--Ver. 611. Clarke renders
the words, ‘nitentem juvencam,’ a neat heifer.]
[Footnote 101: _To keep on duty._--Ver. 627. ‘In statione
manebant.’ This is a metaphorical expression, taken from military
affairs, as soldiers in turns relieve each other, and take their
station, when they keep watch and ward.]
[Footnote 102: _Phoroneus._--Ver. 668. He was the father of Jasius
and of Inachus, the parent of Io. Some accounts, however, say that
Inachus was the father of Phoroneus, and the son of Oceanus.]
[Footnote 103: _Pleiad Maia._--Ver. 670. Maia was one of the seven
daughters of Atlas, who were styled Pleiädes after they were
received among the constellations.]
[Footnote 104: _Soporiferous wand._--Ver. 671. This was the
‘caduceus,’ or staff, with which Mercury summoned the souls of the
departed from the shades, induced slumber, and did other offices
pertaining to his capacity as the herald and messenger of Jupiter.
It was represented as an olive branch, wreathed with two snakes.
In time of war, heralds and ambassadors, among the Greeks, carried
a ‘caduceus.’ It was not used by the Romans.]
[Footnote 105: _A cap for his hair._--Ver. 672. This was a cap
called ‘Petasus.’ It had broad brims, and was not unlike the
‘causia,’ or Macedonian hat, except that the brims of the latter
were turned up at the sides.]
EXPLANATION.
The story of the Metamorphosis of Io has been already enlarged upon in
the Explanation of the preceding Fable. It may, however, not be
irrelevant to observe, that myths, or mythological stories or fables,
are frequently based upon some true history, corrupted by tradition in
lapse of time. The poets, too, giving loose to their fancy in their
love of the marvellous, have still further disfigured the original
story; so that it is in most instances extremely difficult to trace
back the facts to their primitive simplicity, by a satisfactory
explanation of each circumstance attending them, either upon a
philosophical, or an historical principle of solution.
FABLE XV. [I.689-712]
Pan, falling in love with the Nymph Syrinx, she flies from him; on
which he pursues her. Syrinx, arrested in her flight by the waves of
the river Ladon, invokes the aid of her sisters, the Naiads, who
change her into reeds. Pan unites them into an instrument with seven
pipes, which bears the name of the Nymph.
Then the God says, “In the cold mountains of Arcadia, among the
Hamadryads of Nonacris,[106] there was one Naiad very famous; the Nymphs
called her Syrinx. And not once {alone} had she escaped the Satyrs as
they pursued, and whatever Gods either the shady grove or the fruitful
fields have {in them}. In her pursuits and her virginity itself she used
to devote herself to the Ortygian Goddess;[107] and being clothed after
the fashion of Diana, she might have deceived one, and might have been
supposed to be the daughter of Latona, if she had not had a bow of
cornel wood, the other, {a bow} of gold; and even then did she
{sometimes} deceive {people}. Pan spies her as she is returning from the
hill of Lycæus, and having his head crowned with sharp pine leaves, he
utters such words as these;” it remained {for Mercury} to repeat the
words, and how that the Nymph, slighting his suit, fled through pathless
spots, until she came to the gentle stream of sandy Ladon;[108] and that
here, the waters stopping her course, she prayed to her watery sisters,
that they would change her; and {how} that Pan, when he was thinking
that Syrinx was now caught by him, had seized hold of some reeds of the
marsh, instead of the body of the Nymph; and {how}, while he was sighing
there, the winds moving amid the reeds had made a murmuring noise, and
like one complaining; and {how} that, charmed by this new discovery and
the sweetness of the sound, he had said, “This mode of converse with
thee shall ever remain with me;” and that accordingly, unequal reeds
being stuck together among themselves by a cement of wax, had {since}
retained the name of the damsel.
[Footnote 106: _Nonacris._--Ver. 690. Nonacris was the name of
both a mountain and a city of Arcadia, in the Peloponnesus.]
[Footnote 107: _The Ortygian Goddess._--Ver. 694. Diana is called
“Ortygian,” from the isle of Delos, where she was born, one of
whose names was Ortygia, from the quantity of quails, ὄρτυγες,
there found.]
[Footnote 108: _Ladon._--Ver. 702. This was a beautiful river of
Arcadia, flowing into the Alpheus: its banks were covered with
vast quantities of reeds. Ovid here calls its stream ‘placidum;’
whereas in the fifth book of the Fasti, l. 89, he calls it
‘rapax,’ ‘violent;’ and in the second book of the Fasti, l. 274,
its waters are said to be ‘citæ aquæ,’ swift waters. Some
commentators have endeavored to reconcile these discrepancies; but
the probability is, that Ovid, like many other poets, used his
epithets at random, or rather according to the requirements of the
measure for the occasion.]
EXPLANATION.
This appears to have been an Egyptian fable, imported into the works
of the Grecian poets. Pan was probably a Divinity of the Egyptians,
who worshipped nature under that name, as we are told by Herodotus and
Diodorus Siculus. As, however, according to Nonnus, there were not
less than twelve Pans, it is possible that the adventure here related
may have been supposed to have happened to one of them who was a
native of Greece. He was most probably the inventor of the Syrinx, or
Pandæan pipe, and, perhaps, formed his first instrument from the
produce of the banks of the River Ladon, from which circumstance
Syrinx may have been styled the daughter of that river.
FABLE XVI. [I.713-723]
Mercury, having lulled Argus to sleep, cuts off his head, and Juno
places his eyes in the peacock’s tail.
The Cyllenian God[109] being about to say such things, perceived that
all his eyes were sunk in sleep, and that his sight was wrapped[110] in
slumber. At once he puts an end to his song, and strengthens his
slumbers, stroking his languid eyes with his magic wand. There is no
delay; he wounds him, as he nods, with his crooked sword, where the head
is joined to the neck; and casts him, all blood-stained, from the rock,
and stains the craggy cliff with his gore.
Argus, thou liest low, and the light which thou hadst in so many eyes is
{now} extinguished; and one night takes possession of a {whole} hundred
eyes. The daughter of Saturn takes them, and places them on the feathers
of her own bird, and she fills its tail with starry gems.
[Footnote 109: _The Cyllenian God._--Ver. 713. Mercury is so
called from Cyllene, in Arcadia, where he was born.]
[Footnote 110: _That his sight was wrapped._--Ver. 714. Clarke
translates ‘Adopertaque lumina somno,’ ‘and his peepers covered
with sleep.’]
EXPLANATION.
The ancient writers, Asclepiades and Pherecydes, tell us, that Argus
was the son of Arestor. He is supposed by some to have been the fourth
king of Argos after Inachus, and to have been a person of great wisdom
and penetration, on account of which he was said to have a hundred
eyes. Io most probably was committed to his charge, and he watched
over her with the greatest care.
It is impossible to divine the reason why his eyes were said to have
been set by Juno in the tail of the peacock; though, perhaps, the
circumstance has no other foundation than the resemblance of the human
eye to the spots in the tail of that bird, which was consecrated to
Juno. Besides, if Juno is to be considered the symbol of Air, or
Æther, through which light is transmitted to us, it is not surprising
that the ancients bestowed so many eyes upon the bird which was
consecrated to her.
FABLE XVII. [I.724-779]
Io, terrified and maddened with dreadful visions, runs over many
regions, and stops in Egypt, when Juno, at length, being pacified,
restores her to her former shape, and permits her to be worshipped
there, under the name of Isis.
Immediately, she was inflamed with rage, and deferred not the time of
{expressing} her wrath; and she presented a dreadful Fury before the
eyes and thoughts of the Argive mistress,[111] and buried in her bosom
invisible stings, and drove her, in her fright, a wanderer through the
whole earth. Thou, O Nile, didst remain, as the utmost boundary of her
long wanderings. Soon as she arrived there, she fell upon her knees,
placed on the edge of the bank, and raising herself up, with her neck
thrown back, and casting to Heaven those looks which then alone she
could, by her groans, and her tears, and her mournful lowing, she seemed
to be complaining of Jupiter, and to be begging an end of her sorrows.
He, embracing the neck of his wife with his arms, entreats her, at
length, to put an end to her punishment; and he says, “Lay aside thy
fears for the future; she shall never {more} be the occasion of any
trouble to thee;” and {then} he bids the Stygian waters to hear this
{oath}. As soon as the Goddess is pacified, {Io} receives her former
shape, and she becomes what she was before; the hairs flee from off of
her body, her horns decrease, and the orb of her eye becomes less; the
opening of her jaw is contracted; her shoulders and her hands return,
and her hoof, vanishing, is disposed of into five nails; nothing of the
cow remains to her, but the whiteness of her appearance; and the Nymph,
contented with the service of two feet, is raised erect {on them}; and
{yet} she is afraid to speak, lest she should low like a cow, and
timorously tries again the words {so long} interrupted. Now, as a
Goddess, she is worshipped by the linen-wearing throng[112] {of Egypt}.
To her, at length, Epaphus[113] is believed to have been born from the
seed of great Jove, and throughout the cities he possesses temples
joined to {those of} his parent. Phaëton, sprung from the Sun, was equal
to him in spirit and in years; whom formerly, as he uttered great
boasts, and yielded not {at all} to him, and proud of his father,
Phœbus, the grandson of Inachus could not endure; and said, “Thou,
{like} a madman, believest thy mother in all things, and art puffed up
with the conceit of an imaginary father.”
Phaëton blushed, and in shame repressed his resentment; and he reported
to his mother, Clymene,[114] the reproaches of Epaphus; and said,
“Mother, to grieve thee still more, I, the free, the bold {youth}, was
silent; I am ashamed both that these reproaches can be uttered against
us, and that they cannot be refuted; but do thou, if only I am born of a
divine race, give me some proof of so great a descent, and claim me for
heaven.” {Thus} he spoke, and threw his arms around the neck of his
mother; and besought her, by his own head and by that of Merops,[115]
and by the nuptial torches of his sisters, that she would give him some
token of his real father.
It is a matter of doubt whether Clymene was more moved by the entreaties
of Phaëton, or by resentment at the charge made against her; and she
raised both her arms to heaven, and, looking up to the light of the Sun,
she said, “Son, I swear to thee, by this beam, bright with shining rays,
which both hears and sees us, that thou, that thou, {I say}, wast
begotten by this Sun, which thou beholdest; by this {Sun}, which governs
the world. If I utter an untruth, let him deny himself to be seen by me,
and let this light prove the last for my eyes. Nor will it be any
prolonged trouble for thee to visit thy father’s dwelling; the abode
where he arises is contiguous to our regions.[116] If only thy
inclination disposes thee, go forth, and thou shalt inquire of himself.”
Phaëton immediately springs forth, overjoyed, upon these words of his
mother, and reaches the skies in imagination; and he passes by his own
Æthiopians, and the Indians situate beneath the rays of the Sun,[117]
and briskly wends his way to the rising of his sire.
[Footnote 111: _The Argive mistress._--Ver. 726. Clarke renders
‘Pellicis Argolicæ,’ ‘of the Grecian miss.’]
[Footnote 112: _The linen-wearing throng._--Ver. 747. The priests,
and worshippers of Isis, with whom Io is here said to be
identical, paid their adoration to her clothed in linen vestments.
Probably, Isis was the first to teach the Egyptians the
cultivation of flax.]
[Footnote 113: _Epaphus._--Ver. 748. Herodotus, in his second
book, tells us, that this son of Jupiter, by Io, was the same as
the Egyptian God, Apis. Eusebius, quoting from Apollodorus, says
that Epaphus was the son of Io, by Telegonus, who married her.]
[Footnote 114: _Clymene._--Ver. 756. She was a Nymph of the sea,
the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.]
[Footnote 115: _Merops._--Ver. 763. He was king of Ethiopia, and
marrying the Nymph Clymene, was either the stepfather of Phaëton,
or, as some writers say, his putative father.]
[Footnote 116: _To our regions._--Ver. 773. Ethiopia, which, in
the time of Ovid, was generally looked upon as one of the regions
of the East.]
[Footnote 117: _The rays of the Sun._--Ver. 778. ‘Ignibus
sidereis,’ means here the ‘heat,’ or ‘fire of the sun,’ the sun
being considered as a ‘sidus,’ or ‘luminous heavenly body.’]
EXPLANATION.
To the elucidation of this narrative, already given, we will only add,
that some of the mythologists inform us, that when Mercury had lulled
Argus to sleep, a youth named Hierax awoke him; on which Mercury
killed Argus with a stone, and turned Hierax into a spar-hawk.
BOOK THE SECOND.
FABLE I. [II.1-303]
Phaëton, insulted by Epaphus, goes to the Palace of Apollo, to beseech
him to give some token that he is his son. Apollo, having sworn, by
the river Styx, to refuse him nothing that he should desire, he
immediately asks to guide his chariot for one day. He is unsuccessful
in the attempt, and, the horses running away, the world is in danger
of being consumed.
The palace of the Sun was raised high, on stately columns, bright with
radiant gold, and carbuncle that rivals the flames; polished ivory
covered its highest top, {and} double folding doors shone with the
brightness of silver. The workmanship {even} exceeded the material; for
there Mulciber had carved the sea circling round the encompassed Earth;
and the orb of the Earth, and the Heavens which hang over that orb.
{There} the waves have {in them} the azure Deities, both Triton,
sounding {with his shell}, and the changing Proteus, and Ægeon,[1]
pressing the huge backs of whales with his arms; Doris,[2] too, and her
daughters, part of whom appear to be swimming, part, sitting on the
bank, to be drying their green hair; some {are seen} borne upon fishes.
The features in all are not the same, nor, however, {remarkably}
different: {they are} such as those of sisters ought to be. The Earth
has {upon it} men and cities, and woods, and wild beasts, and rivers,
and Nymphs, and other Deities of the country. Over these is placed the
figure of the shining Heaven, and there are six Signs {of the Zodiac} on
the right door, and as many on the left.
Soon as the son of Clymene had arrived thither by an ascending path,
and entered the house of his parent, {thus} doubted of; he immediately
turned his steps to the presence of his father, and stood at a distance,
for he could not bear the refulgence nearer. Arrayed in a purple
garment, Phœbus was seated on a throne sparkling with brilliant
emeralds. On his right hand, and on his left, the Days, the Months,
the Years, the Ages, and the Hours were arranged, at corresponding
distances, and the fresh Spring was standing, crowned with a chaplet of
blossoms; Summer was standing naked, and wearing garlands made of ears
of corn; Autumn, too, was standing besmeared with the trodden-out
grapes; and icy Winter, rough with his hoary hair.
Then the Sun, from the midst of this place, with those eyes with which
he beholds all things, sees the young man struck with fear at the
novelty of {these} things, and says, “What is the occasion of thy
journey {hither}? What dost thou seek, Phaëton, in this {my} palace,
a son not to be denied by his parent?”
He answers, “O thou universal Light of the unbounded World, Phœbus, my
father, if thou grantest me the use of that name; and if Clymene is not
concealing an error under a {false} pretext, give me, my parent, some
token, by which I may be believed to be really thy progeny; and remove
this uncertainty from my mind.” Thus he spoke; but his parent took off
the rays shining all around his head, and commanded him to come nearer;
and, having embraced him, he says, “{And} neither art thou deserving to
be denied to be mine, and Clymene has told thee thy true origin; and
that thou mayst have the less doubt, ask any gift thou mayst please,
that thou mayst receive it from me bestowing it. Let the lake, by which
the Gods are wont to swear, and which is unseen, {even} by my eyes, be
as a witness of my promise.”
Hardly had he well finished, when he asks for his father’s chariot, and
for the command and guidance of the wing-footed horses for one day. His
father repented that he had {so} sworn, and shaking his splendid head
three or four times, he said, “By thine have my words been made rash.
I wish I were allowed not to grant what I have promised! I confess, my
son, that this alone I would deny thee. {Still}, I may dissuade thee:
thy desire is not attended with safety. Thou desirest, Phaëton, a gift
{too} great, and {one} which is suited neither to thy strength, nor to
such youthful years. Thy lot is that of a mortal; that which thou
desirest, belongs not to mortals. {Nay}, thou aimest, in thy ignorance,
at even more than it is allowed the Gods above to obtain. Let every one
be self-satisfied, {if he likes}; still, with the exception of myself,
no one is able to take his stand upon the fire-bearing axle-tree. Even
the Ruler of vast Olympus, who hurls the ruthless bolts with his
terrific right hand, cannot guide this chariot; and {yet}, what have we
greater than Jupiter? The first {part of the} road is steep, and such as
the horses, {though} fresh in the morning, can hardly climb. In the
middle of the heavens it is high aloft, from whence it is often a
{source of} fear, {even} to myself, to look {down} upon the sea and the
earth, and my breast trembles with fearful apprehensions. The last stage
is a steep descent, and requires a sure command {of the horses}. Then,
too, Tethys[3] herself, who receives me in her waves, extended below, is
often wont to fear, lest I should be borne headlong {from above}.
Besides, the heavens are carried round[4] with a constant rotation, and
carry {with them} the lofty stars, and whirl them with rapid revolution.
Against this I have to contend; and that force which overcomes {all}
other things, {does} not {overcome} me; and I am carried in a contrary
direction to the rapid world. Suppose the chariot given {to thee}; what
couldst thou do? Couldst thou proceed, opposed to the whirling poles, so
that the rapid heavens should not carry thee away? Perhaps, too, thou
dost fancy in thy mind that there are groves, and cities of the Gods,
and temples enriched with gifts; {whereas}, the way is through dangers,
and the forms of wild beasts;[5] and though thou shouldst keep on thy
road, and be drawn aside by no wanderings, still thou must pass amid the
horns of the threatening Bull, and the Hæmonian[6] bow, and {before} the
visage of the raging Lion, and the Scorpion, bending his cruel claws
with a wide compass, and the Crab, that bends his claws in a different
manner; nor is it easy for thee to govern the steeds spirited by those
fires which they have in their breasts, and which they breathe forth
from their mouths and their nostrils. Hardly are they restrained by me,
when their high-mettled spirit is {once} heated, and their necks
struggle against the reins. But do thou have a care, my son, that I be
not the occasion of a gift fatal to thee, and while the matter {still}
permits, alter thy intentions. Thou askest, forsooth, a sure proof that
thou mayst believe thyself sprung from my blood? I give thee a sure
proof in {thus} being alarmed {for thee}; and by my paternal
apprehensions, I am shown to be thy father. Lo, behold my countenance!
I wish, too, that thou couldst direct thy eyes into my breast, and
discover my fatherly concern within! Finally, look around thee, upon
whatever the rich world contains, and ask for anything out of the
blessings, so many and so great, of heaven, of earth, and of sea; {and}
thou shalt suffer no denial. In this one thing alone I beg to be
excused, which, {called} by its right name, is a penalty, and not an
honor; thou art asking, Phaëton, a punishment instead of a gift. Why, in
thy ignorance, art thou embracing my neck with caressing arms? Doubt
not; whatever thou shalt desire shall be granted thee (by the Stygian
waves I have sworn it); but do thou make thy desire more considerately.”
He had finished his admonitions; and yet {Phaëton} resists his advice,
and presses his point, and burns with eagerness for the chariot.
Wherefore, his parent having delayed as long as he could, leads the
young man to the lofty chariot, the gift of Vulcan. The axle-tree was of
gold, the poles were of gold; the circumference of the exterior of the
wheel was of gold; the range of the spokes was of silver. Chrysolites
and gems placed along the yoke in order, gave a bright light from the
reflected sun. And while the aspiring Phaëton is admiring these things,
and is examining the workmanship, behold! the watchful Aurora opened her
purple doors in the ruddy east, and her halls filled with roses. The
stars disappear, the troops whereof Lucifer gathers, and moves the last
from his station in the heavens. But the father Titan, when he beheld
the earth and the universe growing red, and the horns of the far-distant
Moon, as if about to vanish, orders the swift Hours to yoke the horses.
The Goddesses speedily perform his commands, and lead forth the steeds
from the lofty stalls, snorting forth flames, and filled with the juice
of Ambrosia; and {then} they put on the sounding bits.
Then the father touched the face of his son with a hallowed drug, and
made it able to endure the burning flames, and placed the rays upon his
locks, and fetching from his troubled heart sighs presaging his sorrow,
he said: “If thou canst here at least, my boy, obey the advice of thy
father, be sparing of the whip, and use the bridle with nerve. Of their
own accord they are wont to hasten on; the difficulty is to check them
in their full career. And let not the way attract thee through the five
direct circles.[7] There is a track cut obliquely, with a broad
curvature, and bounded by the extremities of three zones, and {so} it
shuns the South pole, and the Bear united to the North. Let thy way be
here; thou wilt perceive distinct traces of the wheels. And that heaven
and earth may endure equal heat, neither drive too low, nor urge the
chariot along the summit of the sky. Going forth too high, thou wilt set
on fire the signs of the heavens; too low, the earth; in the middle
course thou will go most safely. Neither let the right wheel bear thee
off towards the twisted Serpent, nor let the left lead thee to the low
Altar; hold thy course between them. The rest I leave to Fortune, who,
I pray, may aid thee, and take more care of thee, than thou dost of
thyself. Whilst I am speaking, the moist Night has touched the goals
placed on the Western shores; delay is not allowed me. I am required;
the Morning is shining forth, the darkness being dispersed. Seize the
reins with thy hands; or if thou hast a mind capable of change, make use
of my advice, {and} not my chariot, while thou art {still} able, and art
even yet standing upon solid ground; and while thou art not yet in thy
ignorance filling the chariot that thou didst so unfortunately covet.”
The other leaps into the light chariot with his youthful body, and
stands aloft, and rejoices to take in his hand the reins presented {to
him}, and then gives thanks to his reluctant parent. In the meantime the
swift Pyroeis, and Eoüs and Æthon, the horses of the sun, and Phlegon,
{making} the fourth, fill the air with neighings, sending forth flames,
and beat the barriers with their feet. After Tethys, ignorant of the
destiny of her grandson, had removed these, and the scope of the
boundless universe was given them, they take the road, and moving their
feet through the air, they cleave the resisting clouds, and raised aloft
by their wings, they pass by the East winds that had arisen from the
same parts. But the weight was light; and such as the horses of the sun
could not feel; and the yoke was deficient of its wonted weight. And as
the curving ships, without proper ballast, are tossed about, and
unsteady, through their too great lightness, are borne through the sea,
so does the chariot give bounds[8] in the air, unimpeded by its usual
burden, and is tossed on high, and is just like an empty one.
Soon as the steeds have perceived this, they rush on, and leave the
beaten track, and run not in the order in which {they did} before. He
himself becomes alarmed; and knows not which way to turn the reins
entrusted {to him}, nor does he know where the way is, nor, if he did
know, could he control them. Then, for the first time, did the cold
Triones grow warm with sunbeams, and attempt, in vain, to be dipped in
the sea that was forbidden {to them}. And the Serpent which is situate
next to the icy pole, being before torpid with cold, and formidable to
no one, grew warm, and regained new rage from the heat. They say,
too,[9] that thou, Boötes, being disturbed, took to flight; although
thou wast {but} slow, and thy wain impeded thee. But when, from the
height of the skies, the unhappy Phaëton looked down upon the earth,
lying far, very far beneath, he grew pale, and his knees shook with a
sudden terror; and in a light so great, darkness overspread his eyes.
And now he could wish that he had never touched the horses of his
father; and now he is sorry that he knew his descent, and that he
prevailed in his request; now desiring to be called the son of Merops.
He is borne along, just as a ship driven by the furious Boreas, to which
its pilot has given up the overpowered helm, {and} which he has resigned
to the Gods and {the effect of} his supplications. What can he do? much
of heaven is left behind his back; still more is before his eyes. Either
{space} he measures in his mind; and at one moment he is looking forward
to the West, which it is not allowed him by fate to reach; {and}
sometimes he looks back upon the East. Ignorant what to do, he is
stupefied; and he neither lets go the reins, nor is he able to retain
them; nor does he know the names of the horses. In his fright, too, he
sees strange objects scattered everywhere in various parts of the
heavens, and the forms of huge wild beasts. There is a spot where the
Scorpion bends his arms into two curves, and with his tail and claws
bending on either side, he extends his limbs through the space of two
signs {of the Zodiac}. As soon as the youth beheld him wet with the
sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point {of
his tail}, bereft of sense, he let go the reins, in a chill of horror.
Soon as they, falling down, have touched the top of their backs, the
horses range at large: and no one restraining them, they go through the
air of an unknown region; and where their fury drives them thither,
without check, do they hurry along, and they rush on to the stars fixed
in the sky, and drag the chariot through pathless places. One while they
are mounting aloft, and now they are borne through steep places, and
{along} headlong paths in a tract nearer to the earth.
The Moon, too, wonders that her brother’s horses run lower than her own,
and the scorched clouds send forth smoke. As each region is most
elevated, it is caught by the flames, and cleft, it makes {vast} chasms,
and becomes dry, its moisture being carried away. The grass grows pale;
the trees, with their foliage, are burnt up; and the dry standing corn
affords fuel for its own destruction. {But} I am complaining of trifling
{ills}. Great cities perish, together with their fortifications, and the
flames turn whole nations, with their populations, into ashes; woods,
together with mountains, are on fire. Athos[10] burns, and the Cilician
Taurus,[11] and Tmolus,[12] and Œta,[13] and Ida,[14] now dry, {but}
once most famed for its springs; and Helicon,[15] the resort of the
Virgin {Muses}, and Hæmus,[16] not yet {called} Œagrian. Ætna[17] burns
intensely with redoubled flames, and Parnassus, with its two summits,
and Eryx,[18] and Cynthus,[19] and Othrys, and Rhodope,[20] at length to
be despoiled of its snows, and Mimas,[21] and Dindyma,[22] and
Mycale,[23] and Cithæron,[24] created for {the performance of} sacred
rites. Nor does its cold avail {even} Scythia; Caucasus[25] is on fire,
and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus, greater than them both, and the lofty
Alps,[26] and the cloud-bearing Apennines.[27]
Then, indeed, Phaëton beholds the world set on fire on all sides, and he
cannot endure heat so great, and he inhales with his mouth scorching
air, as though from a deep furnace, and perceives his own chariot to be
on fire. And neither is he able now to bear the ashes and the emitted
embers; and, on every side, he is involved in heated smoke. Covered with
a pitchy darkness, he knows not whither he is going, nor where he is,
and is hurried away at the pleasure of the winged steeds. They believe
that it was then that the nations of the Æthiopians contracted their
black hue,[28] the blood being attracted into the surface of the body.
Then was Libya[29] made dry by the heat, the moisture being carried off;
then, with dishevelled hair, the Nymphs lamented the springs and the
lakes. Bœotia bewails Dirce,[30] Argos Amymone,[31] and Ephyre[32] the
waters of Pirene. Nor do rivers that have got banks distant in
situation, remain {secure}; Tanais[33] smokes in the midst of its
waters, and the aged Peneus, and Teuthrantian Caïcus,[34] and rapid
Ismenus,[35] with Phocean Erymanthus,[36] and Xanthus[37] again to burn,
and yellow Lycormas,[38] and Mæander,[39] which sports with winding
streams, and the Mygdonian Melas,[40] and the Tænarian Eurotas.[41] The
Babylonian Euphrates, too, was on fire, Orontes[42] was in flames, and
the swift Thermodon[43] and Ganges,[44] and Phasis,[45] and Ister.[46]
Alpheus[47] boils; the banks of Spercheus burn; and the gold which
Tagus[48] carries with its stream, melts in the flames. The river birds
too, which made famous the Mæonian[49] banks {of the river} with their
song, grew hot in the middle of Caÿster. The Nile, affrighted, fled to
the remotest parts of the earth, and concealed his head, which still
lies hid; his seven last mouths are empty, {become} seven {mere}
channels, without any stream. The same fate dries up the Ismarian
{rivers}, Hebrus together with Strymon,[50] and the Hesperian[51]
streams, the Rhine, and the Rhone, and the Po, and the Tiber, to which
was promised the sovereignty of the world.
All the ground bursts asunder; and through the chinks, the light
penetrates into Tartarus, and startles the Infernal King with his
spouse. The Ocean too, is contracted, and that which lately was sea, is
a surface of parched sand; and the mountains which the deep sea had
covered, start up and increase {the number of} the scattered
Cyclades.[52] The fishes sink to the bottom, and the crooked Dolphins do
not care to raise themselves on the surface into the air, as usual. The
bodies of sea calves float lifeless on their backs, on the top of the
water. The story, too, is, that {even} Nereus himself, and Doris and
their daughters, lay hid in the heated caverns. Three times had Neptune
ventured, with a stern countenance, to thrust his arms out of the water;
three times he was unable to endure the scorching heat of the air.
However, the genial Earth, as she was surrounded with sea, amid the
waters of the main, and the springs, dried up on every side, which had
hidden themselves in the bowels of their cavernous parent, burnt-up,
lifted up her all-productive face[53] as far as her neck, and placed her
hands to her forehead, and shaking all things with a vast trembling, she
sank down a little, and retired below the spot where she is wont to be,
and thus she spoke, with a parched voice: “O sovereign of the Gods, if
thou approvest of this, if I have deserved it, why do thy lightnings
linger? Let me, {if} doomed to perish by the force of fire, perish by
thy flames; and alleviate my misfortune, by being the author {of it}.
With difficulty, indeed, do I open my mouth for these very words;” (the
vapor had oppressed her utterance.) “Behold my scorched hair, and such a
quantity of ashes over my eyes, so much {too}, over my features. And
dost thou give this as my recompense? this, as the reward of my
fertility and of my duty, in that I endure wounds from the crooked
plough and harrows, and am harassed all the year through? In that I
supply green leaves for the cattle, and corn, a wholesome food for
mankind, and frankincense for yourselves? But still, suppose that I am
deserving of destruction, why have the waves {deserved this}? Why has
thy brother deserved it? Why do the seas, delivered to him by lot,
decrease, and why do they recede still further from the sky? But if
regard for neither thy brother nor for myself influences thee, still
have consideration for thy own skies; look around, on either side, {how}
each pole is smoking; if the fire shall injure them, thy palace will
fall in ruins. See! Atlas[54] himself is struggling, and hardly can he
bear the glowing heavens on his shoulders. If the sea, if the earth
perishes, if the palace of heaven, we are thrown[55] into the confused
state of ancient chaos. Save it from the flames, if aught still
survives, and provide for the preservation of the universe.”
Thus spoke the Earth; nor, indeed, could she any longer endure the
vapor, nor say more; and she withdrew her face within herself, and the
caverns neighboring to the shades below.
[Footnote 1: _Ægeon._--Ver. 10. Homer makes him to be the same
with Briareus. According to another account, which Ovid here
follows, he was a sea God, the son of Oceanus and Terra.]
[Footnote 2: _Doris._--Ver. 11. She was the daughter of Oceanus,
the wife of Nereus, and the mother of the fifty Nereids.]
[Footnote 3: _Tethys._--Ver. 69. She was the daughter of Cœlus and
Terra, and the wife of Oceanus. Her name is here used to signify
the ocean itself.]
[Footnote 4: _Are carried round._--Ver. 70. Clarke thus renders
this line,--“Add, too, that the heaven was whisked round with a
continual rolling.”]
[Footnote 5: _Wild beasts._--Ver. 78. The signs of the Zodiac.]
[Footnote 6: _Hæmonian._--Ver. 81. Or Thessalian. He here alludes
to the Thessalian Chiron, the Centaur, who, according to Ovid and
other writers, was placed in the Zodiac as the Constellation
Sagittarius: while others say that Crotus, or Croto, the son of
Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses, was thus honored.]
[Footnote 7: _Through the five direct circles._--Ver. 129. There
is some obscurity in this passage, arising from the mode of
expression. Phœbus here counsels Phaëton what track to follow, and
tells him to pursue his way by an oblique path, and not directly
in the plane of the equator. This last is what he calls ‘directos
via quinque per arcus.’ These five arcs, or circles, are the five
parallel circles by which astronomers distinguish the heavens,
namely, the two polar circles, the two tropics, and the
equinoctial. The latter runs exactly in the middle, between the
other two circles, so that the expression must be understood to
mean, ‘pursue not your way directly through that circle which is
the middlemost of the five, but observe the track that cuts it
obliquely.’]
[Footnote 8: _The chariot give bounds._--Ver. 165-6. Clarke thus
renders these lines.--‘Thus does the chariot give jumps into the
air without its usual weight, and is kicked up on high, and is
like one empty.’]
[Footnote 9: _They say, too._--Ver. 176-7. The following is
Clarke’s translation of these two lines,--‘They say, too, that
you, Boötes, scowered off in a mighty bustle, although you were
but slow, and thy cart hindered thee.’]
[Footnote 10: _Athos._--Ver. 217. Athos (now Monte Santo) was a
mountain of Macedonia, so lofty that its shadow was said to extend
even to the Isle of Lemnos, which was eighty-seven miles distant.]
[Footnote 11: _Taurus._--Ver. 217. This was an immense mountain
range which ran through the middle of Cilicia, in Asia Minor.]
[Footnote 12: _Tmolus._--Ver. 217. Tmolus (now Bozdaz) was a
mountain of Lydia, famed for its wines and saffron. Pactolus,
a stream with sands reputed to be golden, took its rise there.]
[Footnote 13: _Œta._--Ver. 217. This was a mountain chain, which
divided Thessaly from Doris and Phocis; famed for the death of
Hercules on one of its ridges.]
[Footnote 14: _Ida._--Ver. 218. There were two mountains of the
name of Ide, or Ida; one in Crete, the other near Troy. The latter
is here referred to, as being famed for its springs.]
[Footnote 15: _Helicon._--Ver. 219. This was a mountain of Bœotia,
sacred to the Virgin Muses.]
[Footnote 16: _Hæmus._--Ver. 219. This, which is now called the
Balkan range, was a lofty chain of mountains running through
Thrace. Orpheus, the son of Œagrus and Calliope, was there torn in
pieces by the Mænades, or Bacchanalian women, whence the mountain
obtained the epithet of ‘Œagrian.’]
[Footnote 17: _Ætna._--Ver. 220. This is the volcanic mountain of
Sicily; the flames caused by the fall of Phaëton, added to its
own, caused them to be redoubled.]
[Footnote 18: _Eryx._--Ver. 221. This was a mountain of Sicily,
now called San Juliano. On it, a magnificent temple was erected,
in honor of Venus.]
[Footnote 19: _Cynthus._--Ver. 221. This was a mountain of Delos,
on which Apollo and Diana were said to have been born.]
[Footnote 20: _Rhodope._--Ver. 222. It was a high mountain, capped
with perpetual snows, in the northern part of Thrace.]
[Footnote 21: _Mimas._--Ver. 222. A mountain of Ionia, near the
Ionian Sea. It was of very great height; whence Homer calls it
ὑψίκρημνος.]
[Footnote 22: _Dindyma._--Ver. 223. This was a mountain of
Phrygia, near Troy, sacred to Cybele, the mother of the Gods.]
[Footnote 23: _Mycale._--Ver. 223. A mountain of Caria, opposite
to the Isle of Samos.]
[Footnote 24: _Cithæron._--Ver. 223. This was a mountain of
Bœotia, famous for the orgies of Bacchus, there celebrated. In its
neighborhood, Pentheus was torn to pieces by the Mænades, for
slighting the worship of Bacchus.]
[Footnote 25: _Caucasus._--Ver. 224. This was a mountain chain in
Asia, between the Euxine and Caspian Seas.]
[Footnote 26: _Alps._--Ver. 226. This mountain range divides
France from Italy.]
[Footnote 27: _Apennines._--Ver. 226. This range of mountains runs
down the centre of Italy.]
[Footnote 28: _Their black hue._--Ver. 235. The notion that the
blackness of the African tribes was produced by the heat of the
sun, is borrowed by the Poet from Hesiod. Hyginus, too, says, ‘the
Indians, because, by the proximity of the fire, their blood was
turned black by the heat thereof, became of black appearance
themselves.’ Notwithstanding the learned and minute investigations
of physiologists on the subject, this question is still involved
in considerable obscurity.]
[Footnote 29: _Libya._--Ver. 237. This was a region between
Mauritania and Cyrene. The Greek writers, however, often use the
word to signify the whole of Africa. Servius gives a trifling
derivation for the name, in saying that Libya was so called,
because λείπει ὁ ὕετος, ‘it is without rain.’]
[Footnote 30: _Dirce._--Ver. 239. Dirce was a celebrated fountain
of Bœotia, into which it was said that Dirce, the wife of Lycus,
king of Thebes, was transformed.]
[Footnote 31: _Amymone._--Ver. 240. It was a fountain of Argos,
near Lerna, into which the Nymph, Amymone, the daughter of Lycus,
king of the Argives, was said to have been transformed.]
[Footnote 32: _Ephyre._--Ver. 240. It was the most ancient name of
Corinth, in the citadel of which, or the Acrocorinthus, was the
spring Pyrene, of extreme brightness and purity and sacred to the
Muses.]
[Footnote 33: _Tanais._--Ver. 242. This river, now the Don, after
a long winding course, discharges itself into the ‘Palus Mæotis,’
now the sea of ‘Azof.’]
[Footnote 34: _Caïcus._--Ver. 243. This is a river of Mysia, here
called ‘Teuthrantian,’ from Mount Teuthras, in its vicinity.]
[Footnote 35: _Ismenus._--Ver. 244. Ismenus was a river of Bœotia,
that flowed past Thebes into the Euripus.]
[Footnote 36: _Erymanthus._--Ver. 245. This was a river of
Arcadia, which, rising in a mountain of that name, fell into the
Alpheus.]
[Footnote 37: _Xanthus._--Ver. 245. This was a river of Troy; here
spoken of as destined to behold flames a second time, in the
conflagration of that city.]
[Footnote 38: _Lycormas._--Ver. 245. This was a rapid river of
Ætolia, which was afterwards known by the name of Evenus.]
[Footnote 39: _Mæander._--Ver. 246. This was a river of Phrygia,
flowing between Lydia and Caria; it was said to have 600 windings
in its course.]
[Footnote 40: _Melas._--Ver. 247. This name was given to many
rivers of Thrace, Thessaly, and Asia, on account of the darkness
of the color of their waters; the name was derived from the Greek
word μέλας, ‘black.’]
[Footnote 41: _Tænarian Eurotas._--Ver. 247. The Eurotas was a
river of Laconia, which flowed under the walls of the city of
Sparta, and discharged itself into the sea near the promontory of
Tænarus, now called Cape Matapan. The Eurotas is now called
‘Basilipotamo,’ or ‘king of streams.’]
[Footnote 42: _Orontes._--Ver. 248. The Orontes was a river of
Asia Minor, which flowed near Antioch.]
[Footnote 43: _Thermodon._--Ver. 249. This was a river of
Cappadocia, near which the Amazons were said to dwell.]
[Footnote 44: _Ganges._--Ver. 249. This is one of the largest
rivers in Asia, and discharges itself into the Persian Gulf; and
not, as Gierig says, in his note on this passage, in the Red Sea.]
[Footnote 45: _Phasis._--Ver. 249. This was a river of Colchis,
falling into the Euxine Sea.]
[Footnote 46: _Ister._--Ver. 249. The Danube had that name from
its source to the confines of Germany; and thence, in its course
through Scythia to the sea, it was called by the name of ‘Ister.’]
[Footnote 47: _Alpheus._--Ver. 250. It was a river of Arcadia, in
Peloponnesus.]
[Footnote 48: _Tagus._--Ver. 251. This was a river of Spain, which
was said to bring down from the mountains great quantities of
golden sand. The Poet here feigns this to be melted by the heat of
the sun, and in that manner to be carried along by the current of
the river.]
[Footnote 49: _Mæonian._--Ver. 252. Mæonia was so called from the
river Mæon, and was another name of Lydia. The Caÿster, famous for
its swans, flowed through Lydia.]
[Footnote 50: _Strymon._--Ver. 257. The Hebrus and the Strymon
were rivers of Thrace. Ismarus was a mountain of that country,
famous for its vines.]
[Footnote 51: _Hesperian._--Ver. 258. Hesperia, or ‘the western
country,’ was a general name of not only Spain and Gaul, but even
Italy. The Rhine is a river of France and Germany, the Rhone of
France. The Padus, or Po, and the Tiber, are rivers of Italy.]
[Footnote 52: _Cyclades._--Ver. 264. The Cyclades were a cluster
of islands in the Ægean Sea, surrounding Delos as though with a
circle, whence their name.]
[Footnote 53: _Her all-productive face._--Ver. 275. The earth was
similarly called by the Greeks παμμήτωρ, ‘the mother of all
things.’ So Virgil calls it ‘omniparens.’]
[Footnote 54: _Atlas._--Ver. 296. This was a mountain of
Mauritania, which, by reason of its height, was said to support
the heavens.]
[Footnote 55: _We are thrown._--Ver. 299. Clarke translates, ‘In
chaos antiquum confundimur,’ ‘We are then jumbled into the old
chaos again.’]
EXPLANATION.
If we were to regard this fable solely as an allegory intended to
convey a moral, we should at once perceive that the adventure of
Phaëton represents the wilful folly of a rash young man, who consults
his own inclination, rather than the dictates of wisdom and prudence.
Some ancient writers tell us that Phaëton was the son of Phœbus and
Clymene, while others make the nymph Rhoda to have been his mother.
Apollodorus, following Hesiod, says that Herse, the daughter of
Cecrops, king of Athens, was the mother of Cephalus, who was carried
away by Aurora; which probably means that he left Greece for the
purpose of settling in the East. Cephalus had a son named Tithonus,
the father of Phaëton. Thus Phaëton was the fourth in lineal descent
from Cecrops, who reigned at Athens about 1580, B.C. The story is most
probably based upon the fact of some excessive heat that happened in
his time. Aristotle supposes that at that period flames fell from
heaven, which ravaged several countries. Possibly the burning of the
cities of the plain, or the stay of the sun in his course at the
command of Joshua, may have been the foundation of the story. St.
Chrysostom suggests that it is based upon an imperfect version of the
ascent of Elijah in a chariot of fire; that name, or rather ‘Elias,’
the Greek form of it, bearing a strong resemblance to Ἥλιος, the Greek
name of the sun. Vossius suggests that this is an Egyptian history,
and considers the story of the grief of Phœbus for the loss of his son
to be another version of the sorrows of the Egyptians for the death of
Osiris. The tears of the Heliades, or sisters of Phaëton, he conceives
to be identical with the lamentations of the women who wept for the
death of Thammuz. The Poet, when he tells us that Phaëton abandoned
his chariot on seeing The Scorpion, probably intends to show that the
event of which he treats happened in the month in which the sun enters
that sign.
Plutarch and Tzetzes tell us that Phaëton was a king of the
Molossians, who drowned himself in the Po; that he was a student of
astronomy, and foretold an excessive heat which happened in his reign,
and laid waste his kingdom. Lucian, also, in his Discourse on
Astronomy, gives a similar explanation of the story, and says that
this prince dying very young, left his observations imperfect, which
gave rise to the fable that he did not know how to drive the chariot
of the sun to the end of its course.
FABLE II. [II.305-324]
Jupiter, to save the universe from being consumed, hurls his thunder
at Phaëton, on which he falls headlong into the river Eridanus.
But the omnipotent father, having called the Gods above to witness, and
him, too, who had given the chariot {to Phaëton}, that unless he gives
assistance, all things will perish in direful ruin, mounts aloft to the
highest eminence, from which he is wont to spread the clouds over the
spacious earth; from which he moves his thunders, and hurls the
brandished lightnings. But then, he had neither clouds that he could
draw over the earth, nor showers that he could pour down from the sky.
He thundered aloud, and darted the poised lightning from his right ear
against the charioteer, and at the same moment deprived him both of his
life and his seat, and by his ruthless fires restrained the flames. The
horses are affrighted, and, making a bound in an opposite direction,
they shake the yoke from off their necks, and disengage themselves from
the torn harness. In one place lie the reins; in another, the axle-tree
wrenched away from the pole; in another part {are} the spokes of the
broken wheels; and the fragments of the chariot torn in pieces are
scattered far and wide. But Phaëton, the flames consuming his yellow
hair, is hurled headlong, and is borne in a long tract through the air;
as sometimes a star from the serene sky may appear to fall, although it
{really} has not fallen. Him the great Eridanus receives, in a part of
the world far distant from his country, and bathes his foaming face.
FABLE III. [II.325-366]
The sisters of Phaëton are changed into poplars, and their tears
become amber distilling from those trees.
The Hesperian Naiads[56] commit his body, smoking from the three-forked
flames, to the tomb, and inscribe these verses on the stone:--“Here is
Phaëton buried, the driver of his father’s chariot, which if he did not
manage, still he miscarried in a great attempt.” But his wretched father
had hidden his face, overcast with bitter sorrow, and, if only we can
believe it, they say that one day passed without the sun.[57] The flames
afforded light; and {so far}, there was some advantage in that disaster.
But Clymene, after she had said whatever things were to be said amid
misfortunes so great, traversed the whole earth, full of woe, and
distracted, and tearing her bosom. And first seeking his lifeless limbs,
{and} then his bones, she found his bones, however, buried on a foreign
bank. She laid herself down on the spot; and bathed with tears the name
she read on the marble, and warmed it with her open breast. The
daughters of the Sun mourn no less, and give tears, an unavailing gift,
to his death; and beating their breasts with their hands, they call
Phaëton both night and day, who is doomed not to hear their sad
complaints; and they lie scattered about the tomb.
The Moon had four times filled her disk, by joining her horns; they,
according to their custom (for use had made custom), uttered
lamentations; among whom Phaëthusa, the eldest of the sisters, when she
was desirous to lie on the ground, complained that her feet had grown
stiff; to whom the fair Lampetie attempting to come, was detained by a
root suddenly formed. A third, when she is endeavoring to tear her hair
with her hands, tears off leaves; one complains that her legs are held
fast by the trunk of a tree, another that her arms are become long
branches. And while they are wondering at these things, bark closes upon
their loins; and by degrees, it encompasses their stomachs, their
breasts, their shoulders, and their hands; and only their mouths are
left uncovered, calling upon their mother. What is their mother to do?
but run here and there, whither frenzy leads her, and join her lips
{with theirs}, while {yet} she may? That is not enough; she tries to
pull their bodies out of the trunks {of the trees}, and with her hands
to tear away the tender branches; but from thence drops of blood flow as
from a wound. Whichever {of them} is wounded, cries out, “Spare me,
mother, O spare me, I pray; in the tree my body is being torn. And now
farewell.” The bark came over the last words.
Thence tears flow forth; and amber distilling from the new-formed
branches, hardens in the sun; which the clear river receives and sends
to be worn by the Latian matrons.
[Footnote 56: _The Hesperian Naiads._--Ver. 325. These were the
Naiads of Italy. They were by name Phaëthusa, Lampetie, and
Phœbe.]
[Footnote 57: _Passed without the sun._--Ver. 331. There is,
perhaps, in this line some faint reference to a tradition of the
sun having, in the language of Scripture, ‘stood still upon
Gibeon, in his course, by the command of Joshua, when dispensing
the divine vengeance upon the Amorites,’ Joshua, x. 13. Or of the
time when ‘the shadow returned ten degrees backward’, by the
sun-dial of Ahaz, 2 Kings, xx. 11.]
FABLE IV. [II.367-400]
Cycnus, king of Liguria, inconsolable for the death of Phaëton, is
transformed into a swan.
Cycnus, the son of Sthenelus,[58] was present at this strange event;
who, although he was related to thee, Phaëton, on his mother’s side, was
yet more nearly allied in affection. He having left his kingdom (for he
reigned over the people and the great cities of the Ligurians[59]) was
filling the verdant banks and the river Eridanus, and the wood, {now}
augmented by the sisters, with his complaints; when the man’s voice
became shrill, and gray feathers concealed his hair. A long neck, too,
extends from his breast, and a membrane joins his reddening toes;
feathers clothe his sides, {and} his mouth holds a bill without a point.
Cycnus becomes a new bird; but he trusts himself not to the heavens or
the air, as being mindful of the fire unjustly sent from thence. He
frequents the pools and the wide lakes, and abhorring fire, he chooses
the streams, the {very} contrary of flames.
Meanwhile, the father of Phaëton, in squalid garb, and destitute of his
comeliness, just as he is wont to be when he suffers an eclipse of his
disk, abhors both the light, himself, and the day; and gives his mind up
to grief, and adds resentment to his sorrow, and denies his services to
the world. “My lot,” says he, “has been restless enough from the {very}
beginning of time, and I am tired of labors endured by me, without end
and without honor. Let any one else drive the chariot that carries the
light. If there is no one, and all the Gods confess that they cannot do
it, let {Jupiter} himself drive it; that, at least, while he is trying
my reins, he may for a time lay aside the lightnings that bereave
fathers. Then he will know, having made trial of the strength of the
flame-footed steeds, that he who did not successfully guide them, did
not deserve death.”
All the Deities stand around the Sun, as he says such things; and they
entreat him, with suppliant voice, not to determine to bring darkness
over the world. Jupiter, as well, excuses the hurling of his lightnings,
and imperiously adds threats to entreaties. Phœbus calls together his
steeds, maddened and still trembling with terror, and, subduing them,
vents his fury both with whip and lash; for he is furious, and upbraids
them with his son, and charges {his death} upon them.
[Footnote 58: _Sthenelus._--Ver. 367. He was a king of Liguria.
Commentators have justly remarked that it was not very likely that
a king of Liguria should be related to Clymene, a queen of the
Ethiopians, as Ovid, in the next line, says was the case. This
story was probably invented by some writer, who fancied that there
were two persons of the name of Phaëton; one the subject of eastern
tradition, and the other a personage of the Latin mythology.]
[Footnote 59: _The Ligurians._--Ver. 370. These were a people
situate on the eastern side of Etruria, between the rivers Var and
Macra. The Grecian writers were in the habit of styling the whole
of the north of Italy Liguria.]
EXPLANATION.
Plutarch places the tomb of Phaëton on the banks of the river Po; and
it is not improbable that his mother and sisters, grieving at his
fate, ended their lives in the neighborhood of his tomb, being
overcome with grief, which gave rise to the story that they were
changed into the poplars on its banks, which distilled amber. Some
writers say, that they were changed into larch trees, and not poplars.
Hesiod and Pindar also make mention of this tradition. Possibly,
Cycnus, being a friend of Phaëton, may have died from grief at his
loss, on which the poets graced his attachment with the story that he
was changed into a swan. Apollodorus mentions two other persons of the
name of Cycnus. One was the son of Mars, and was killed before Troy;
the other, as Hesiod tells us, was killed by Hercules. Lucian, in his
satirical vein, tells us, that inquiring on the banks of the Po for
the swans, and the poplars distilling amber, he was told that no such
things had ever been seen there; and that even the tradition of
Phaëton and his sisters was utterly unknown to the inhabitants of
those parts.
FABLE V. [II.401-465]
Jupiter, while taking a survey of the world, to extinguish the remains
of the fire, falls in love with Calisto, whom he sees in Arcadia; and,
in order to seduce that Nymph, he assumes the form of Diana. Her
sister Nymphs disclose her misfortune before the Goddess, who drives
her from her company, on account of the violation of her vow of
chastity.
But the omnipotent father surveys the vast walls of heaven, and
carefully searches, that no part, impaired by the violence of the fire,
may fall to ruin. After he has seen them to be secure and in their own
{full} strength, he examines the earth, and the works of man; yet a care
for his own Arcadia is more particularly his object. He restores, too,
the springs and the rivers, that had not yet dared to flow, he gives
grass to the earth: green leaves to the trees; and orders the injured
forests again to be green. While {thus} he often went to and fro, he
stopped short on {seeing} a virgin of Nonacris, and the fires engendered
within his bones received {fresh} heat. It was not her employment to
soften the wool by teasing, nor to vary her tresses in their
arrangement; while a buckle fastened her garment, and a white fillet her
hair, carelessly flowing; and at one time she bore in her hand a light
javelin, at another, a bow. She was a warrior of Phœbe; nor did any
{Nymph} frequent Mænalus, more beloved by Trivia,[60] than she; but no
influence is of long duration. The lofty Sun had {now} obtained a
position beyond the mid course, when she enters a grove which no
generation had {ever} cut. Here she puts her quiver off from her
shoulders, and unbends her pliant bow, and lies down on the ground,
which the grass had covered, and presses her painted quiver, with her
neck laid on it. When Jupiter saw her {thus} weary, and without a
protector, he said, “For certain, my wife will know nothing of this
stolen embrace; or, if she should chance to know, is her scolding, is
it, {I say}, of such great consequence?”
Immediately he puts on the form and dress of Diana, and says, “O Virgin!
one portion of my train, upon what mountains hast thou been hunting?”
The virgin raises herself from the turf, and says, “Hail, Goddess! {that
art}, in my opinion, greater than Jove, even if he himself should hear
it.” He both smiles and he hears it, and is pleased at being preferred
to himself; and he gives her kisses, not very moderate, nor such as
would be given by a virgin. He stops her as she is preparing to tell him
in what wood she has been hunting, by an embrace, and he does not betray
himself without the commission {of violence}. She, indeed, on the other
hand, as far as a woman could do (would that thou hadst seen her,
daughter of Saturn, {then} thou wouldst have been more merciful), she,
indeed, {I say}, resists; but what damsel, or who {besides}, could
prevail against Jupiter? Jove, {now} the conqueror, seeks the heavens
above; the grove and the conscious wood is {now} her aversion. Making
her retreat thence, she is almost forgetting to take away her quiver
with her arrows, and the bow which she had hung up.
Behold, Dictynna,[61] attended by her train, as she goes along the lofty
Mænalus, and exulting in the slaughter of the wild beasts, beholds her,
and calls her, thus seen. Being so called, she drew back, and at first
was afraid lest Jupiter might be under her {shape}; but after she saw
the Nymphs walking along with her, she perceived that there was no
deceit,[62] and she approached their train. Alas! how difficult it is
not to betray a crime by one’s looks! She scarce raises her eyes from
the ground, nor, as she used to do, does she walk by the side of the
Goddess, nor is she the foremost in the whole company; but she is
silent, and by her blushes she gives signs of her injured honor. And
Diana, but {for the fact}, that she is a virgin, might have perceived
her fault by a thousand indications; the Nymphs are said to have
perceived it.
The horns of the Moon were {now} rising again in her ninth course, when
the hunting Goddess, faint from her brother’s flames, lighted on a cool
grove, out of which a stream ran, flowing with its murmuring noise, and
borne along the sand worn fine {by its action}. When she had approved of
the spot, she touched the surface of the water with her foot; and
commending it as well, she says, “All overlookers are far off; let us
bathe our bodies, with the stream poured over them.” She of
Parrhasia[63] blushed; they all put off their clothes; she alone sought
{an excuse for} delay. Her garment was removed as she hesitated, which
being put off, her fault was exposed with her naked body. Cynthia said
to her, in confusion, and endeavoring to conceal her stomach with her
hands, “Begone afar hence! and pollute not the sacred springs;” and she
ordered her to leave her train.
[Footnote 60: _Trivia._--Ver. 416. This was an epithet of Diana,
as presiding over and worshipped in the places where three roads
met, which were called ‘trivia.’ Being known as Diana on earth,
the Moon in the heavens, and Proserpine in the infernal regions,
she was represented at these places with three faces; those of a
horse, a dog, and a female; the latter being in the middle.]
[Footnote 61: _Dictynna._--Ver. 441. Diana was so called from the
Greek word δικτὺς, ‘a net,’ which was used by her for the purposes
of hunting.]
[Footnote 62: _There was no deceit._--Ver. 446. Clarke translates
‘sensit abesse dolos,’ ‘she was convinced there was no roguery in
the case.’]
[Footnote 63: _She of Parrhasia._--Ver. 460. Calisto is so called
from Parrhasia, a region of Arcadia. Parrhasius was the name of a
mountain, a grove, and a city of that country and was derived from
the name of Parrhasus, a son of Lycaon.]
FABLES VI AND VII. [II.466-550]
Juno, being jealous that Calisto has attracted Jupiter, transforms her
into a Bear. Her son, Arcas, not recognizing his mother in that shape,
is about to kill her; but Jupiter removes them both to the skies,
where they form the Constellations of the Great and the Little Bear.
The raven, as a punishment for his garrulity, is changed from white to
black.
The spouse of the great Thunderer had perceived this some time before,
and had put off the severe punishment {designed for her}, to a proper
time. There is {now} no reason for delay; and now the boy Arcas (that,
too, was a grief to Juno) was born of the mistress {of her husband}.
Wherefore, she turned her thoughts, full of resentment, and her eyes
{upon her}, and said, “This thing, forsooth, alone was wanting, thou
adulteress, that thou shouldst be pregnant, and that my injury should
become notorious by thy labors, and that {thereby} the disgraceful
conduct of my {husband}, Jupiter, should be openly declared. Thou shalt
not go unpunished; for I will spoil that shape of thine, on which thou
pridest thyself, and by which thou, mischievous one,[64] dost charm my
husband.”
{Thus} she spoke; and seizing her straight in front by the hair,[65]
threw her on her face to the ground. She suppliantly stretched forth her
arms; those arms began to grow rough with black hair,[66] and her hands
to be bent, and to increase to hooked claws, and to do the duty of feet,
and the mouth, that was once admired by Jupiter, to become deformed with
a wide opening; and lest her prayers, and words not needed, should
influence her feelings, the power of speech is taken from her; an angry
and threatening voice, and full of terror, is uttered from her hoarse
throat. Still, her former understanding remains in her, even thus become
a bear; and expressing her sorrows by her repeated groans, she lifts up
her hands, such as they are, to heaven and to the stars, and she deems
Jove ungrateful, though she cannot call him so. Ah! how often, not
daring to rest in the lonely wood, did she wander about before her own
house, and in the fields once her own. Ah! how often was she driven over
the crags by the cry of the hounds; and, a huntress herself, she fled in
alarm, through fear of the hunters! Often, seeing the wild beasts, did
she lie concealed, forgetting what she was; and, a bear herself, dreaded
the he-bears seen on the mountains, and was alarmed at the wolves,
though her father was among them.
Behold! Arcas, the offspring of the daughter of Lycaon, ignorant of who
is his parent, approaches her, thrice five birthdays being now nearly
past; and while he is following the wild beasts, while he is choosing
the proper woods, and is enclosing the Erymanthian forests[67] with his
platted nets, he meets with his mother. She stood still, upon seeing
Arcas, and was like one recognizing {another}. He drew back, and, in his
ignorance, was alarmed at her keeping her eyes fixed upon him without
ceasing; and, as she was desirous to approach still nearer, he would
have pierced her breast with the wounding spear. Omnipotent {Jove}
averted this, and removed both them and {such} wickedness; and placed
them, carried through vacant space with a rapid wind, in the heavens,
and made them neighboring Constellations.
Juno swelled with rage after the mistress shone amid the stars, and
descended on the sea to the hoary Tethys, and the aged Ocean, a regard
for whom has often influenced the Gods; and said to them, inquiring the
reason of her coming, “Do you inquire why I, the queen of the Gods, am
come hither from the æthereal abodes? Another has possession of heaven
in my stead. May I be deemed untruthful, if, when the night has made the
world dark, you see not in the highest part of heaven stars but lately
{thus} honored to my affliction; there, where the last and most limited
circle surrounds the extreme part of the axis {of the world}. Is there,
then, {any ground} why one should hesitate to affront Juno, and dread my
being offended, who only benefit them by my resentment? See what a great
thing I have done! How vast is my power! I forbade her to be of human
shape; she has been made a Goddess; ’tis thus that I inflict punishment
on offenders; such is my mighty power! Let him obtain {for her} her
former shape, and let him remove this form of a wild beast; as he
formerly did for the Argive Phoronis. Why does he not marry her as well,
divorcing Juno, and place her in my couch, and take Lycaon for his
father-in-law? But if the wrong done to your injured foster-child
affects you, drive the seven Triones away from your azure waters, and
expel the stars received into heaven as the reward of adultery, that a
concubine may not be received into your pure waves.”
The Gods of the sea granted her request. The daughter of Saturn enters
the liquid air in her graceful chariot,[68] with her variegated
peacocks; peacocks just as lately tinted, upon the killing of Argus, as
thou, garrulous raven, hadst been suddenly transformed into {a bird
having} black wings, whereas thou hadst been white before. For this bird
was formerly of a silver hue, with snow-white feathers, so that he
equalled the doves entirely without spot; nor would he give place to the
geese that were to save the Capitol by their watchful voice, nor to the
swan haunting the streams. His tongue was the cause of his disgrace; his
chattering tongue being the cause, that the color which was white is now
the reverse of white.
There was no one more beauteous in all Hæmonia than Larissæan[69]
Coronis. At least, she pleased thee, Delphian {God}, as long as she
continued chaste, or was not the object of remark. But the bird of
Phœbus found out her infidelity;[70] and the inexorable informer winged
his way to his master, that he might disclose the hidden offence. Him
the prattling crow follows, with flapping wings, to make all inquiries
of him. And having heard the occasion of his journey, she says, “Thou
art going on a fruitless errand; do not despise the presages of my
voice.”
[Footnote 64: _Thou, mischievous one._--Ver. 475. Clarke, rather
too familiarly, renders ‘importuna,’ ‘plaguy baggage.’]
[Footnote 65: _In front by the hair._--Ver. 476. ‘Adversâ prensis
a fronte capillis,’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘seizing her fore-top.’
Had he been describing the combats of
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