BOOK IV
BOOK IV
But not Minyas' daughter Alcithoë; she will not have the god's holy revels admitted; nay, so bold is she that she denies Bacchus to be Jove's son! And her sisters are with her in the impious deed. The priest had bidden the people to celebrate a Bacchic festival: all serving-women must be excused from toil; with their mistresses they must cover their breasts with the skins of beasts, they must loosen the ribands of their hair, and with garlands upon their heads they must hold in their hands the vine-wreathed thyrsus. And he had prophesied that the wrath of the god would be merciless if he were disregarded. The matrons and young wives all obey, put by weaving and work-baskets, leave their tasks unfinished; they burn incense, calling on Bacchus, naming him also Bromius,[1] Lyaeus,[2] son of the thunderbolt, twice born, child of two mothers; they hail him as Nyseus[3] also, Thyoneus[4] of the unshorn locks, Lenaeus,[5] planter of the joy-giving vine, Nyctelius,[6] father Eleleus,[7] Iacchus,[8] and Euhan, and all the many names besides by which thou art known, O Liber,[9] throughout the towns of Greece For thine is unending youth, eternal boyhood; thou art the most lovely in the lofty sky; thy face is virgin-seeming, if without horns thou stand before us. The Orient owns thy sway, even to the bounds where remotest Ganges laves swart India. Pentheus thou didst destroy, thou awful god, and Lycurgus, armed with the two-edged battle-axe (impious were they both), and didst hurl the Tuscan sailors into the sea. Lynxes, with bright reins harnessed, draw thy car; bacchant women and satyrs follow thee, and that old man who, drunk with wine, supports his staggering limbs on his staff, and clings weakly to his misshapen ass. Where'er thou goest, glad shouts of youths and cries of women echo round, with drum of tambourine, the cymbals' clash, and the shrill piping of the flute.
"Oh, be thou with us, merciful and mild!" the Theban women cry; and perform the sacred rites as the priest bids them. The daughters of Minyas alone stay within, marring the festival, and out of due time ply their household tasks, spinning wool, thumbing the turning threads, or keep close to the loom, and press their maidens with work. Then one of them, drawing the thread the while with deft thumb, says: "While other women are deserting their tasks and thronging this so-called festival, let us also, who keep to Pallas, a truer goddess, lighten with various talk the serviceable work of our hands, and to beguile the tedious hours, let us take turns in telling stories, while all the others listen." The sisters agree and bid her be first to speak. She mused awhile which she should tell of many tales, for very many she knew. She was in doubt whether to tell of thee, Dercetis of Babylon, who, as the Syrians believe, changed to a fish, all covered with scales, and swims in a pool; or how her daughter, changed to a pure white dove, spent her last years perched on high battlements; or how a certain nymph, by incantation and herbs too potent, changed the bodies of some boys into mute fishes, and at last herself became a fish; or how the mulberry-tree, which once had borne white fruit, now has fruit dark red, from the bloody stain. The last seems best. This tale, not commonly known as yet, she tells, spinning her wool the while.
"Pyramus and Thisbe"—he, the most beautiful youth, and she, loveliest maid of all the East—dwelt in houses side by side, in the city which Semiramis is said to have surrounded with walls of brick. Their nearness made the first steps of their acquaintance. In time love grew, and they would have been joined in marriage, too, but their parents forbade. Still, what no parents could forbid, sore smitten in heart they burned with mutual love. They had no go-between, but communicated by nods and signs; and the more they covered up the fire, the more it burned. There was a slender chink in the party-wall of the two houses, which it had at some former time received when it was building. This chink, which no one had ever discovered through all these years—but what does love not see?—you lovers first discovered and made it the channel of speech. Safe through this your loving words used to pass in tiny whispers. Often, when they had taken their positions, on this side Thisbe, and Pyramus on that, and when each in turn had listened eagerly for the other's breath, 'O envious wall,' they would say, 'why do you stand between lovers? How small a thing 'twould be for you to permit us to embrace each other, or, if this be too much, to open for our kisses! But we are not ungrateful. We owe it to you, we admit, that a passage is allowed by which our words may go through to loving ears.' So, separated all to no purpose, they would talk, and as night came on they said good-bye and printed, each on his own side of the wall, kisses that did not go through. The next morning had put out the starry beacons of the night, and the sun's rays had dried the frosty grass; they came together at the accustomed place. Then first in low whispers they lamented bitterly, then decided when all had become still that night to try to elude their guardians' watchful eyes and steal out of doors; and, when they had gotten out, they would leave the city as well; and that they might not run the risk of missing one another, as they wandered in the open country, they were to meet at Ninus' tomb and hide in the shade of a tree. Now there was a tree there hanging full of snow-white berries, a tall mulberry, and not far away was a cool spring. They liked the plan, and slow the day seemed to go. But at last the sun went plunging down beneath the waves, and from the same waves the night came up.
"Now Thisbe, carefully opening the door, steals out through the darkness, seen of none, and arrives duly at the tomb with her face well veiled and sits down under the trysting-tree. Love made her bold. But see! here comes a lioness, her jaws all dripping with the blood of fresh-slain cattle, to slake her thirst at the neighbouring spring. Far off under the rays of the moon Babylonian Thisbe sees her, and flees with trembling feet into the deep cavern, and as she flees she leaves her cloak on the ground behind her. When the savage lioness has quenched her thirst by copious draughts of water, returning to the woods she comes by chance upon the light garment (but without the girl herself!) and tears it with bloody jaws. Pyramus, coming out a little later, sees the tracks of the beast plain in the deep dust and grows deadly pale at the sight. But when he saw the cloak too, smeared with blood, he cried: 'One night shall bring two lovers to death. But she of the two was more worthy of long life; on my head lies all the guilt. Oh, I have been the cause of your death, poor girl, in that I bade you come forth by night into this dangerous place, and did not myself come hither first. Come, rend my body and devour my guilty flesh with your fierce fangs, O all ye lions who have your lairs beneath this cliff! But 'tis a coward's part merely to pray for death.' He picks up Thisbe's cloak and carries it to the shade of the trysting-tree. And while he kisses the familiar garment and bedews it with his tears he cries: 'Drink now my blood too.' So saying, he drew the sword which he wore girt about him, plunged the blade into his side, and straightway, with his dying effort, drew the sword from his warm wound. As he lay stretched upon the earth the spouting blood leaped high; just as when a pipe has broken at a weak spot in the lead and through the small hissing aperture sends spurting forth long streams of water, cleaving the air with its jets. The fruit of the tree, sprinkled with the blood, was changed to a dark red colour; and the roots, soaked with his gore, also tinged the hanging berries with the same purple hue.
"And now comes Thisbe from her hiding-place, still trembling, but fearful also that her lover will miss her; she seeks for him both with eyes and soul, eager to tell him how great perils she has escaped. And while she recognizes the place and the shape of the well-known tree, still the colour of its fruit mystifies her. She doubts if it be this. While she hesitates, she sees somebody's limbs writhing on the bloody ground, and starts back, paler than boxwood, and shivering like the sea when a slight breeze ruffles its surface. But when after a little while she recognizes her lover, she smites her innocent arms with loud blows of grief, and tears her hair; and embracing the well-beloved form, she fills his wounds with tears, mingling these with his blood. And as she kissed his lips, now cold in death, she wailed: 'O my Pyramus, what mischance has reft you from me? Pyramus! answer me. 'Tis your dearest Thisbe calling you. Oh, listen, and lift your drooping head!' At the name of Thisbe, Pyramus lifted his eyes, now heavy with death, and having looked upon her face, closed them again.
"Now when she saw her own cloak and the ivory scabbard empty of the sword, she said: ''Twas your own hand and your love, poor boy, that took your life. I, too, have a hand brave for this one deed; I, too, have love. This shall give me strength for the fatal blow. I will follow you in death, and men shall say that I was the most wretched cause and comrade of your fate. Whom death alone had power to part from me, not even death shall have power to part from me. O wretched parents, mine and his, be ye entreated of this by the prayers of us both, that you begrudge us not that we, whom faithful love, whom the hour of death has joined, should be laid together in the same tomb. And do you, O tree, who now shade with your branches the poor body of one, and soon will shade two, keep the marks of our death and always bear your fruit of a dark colour, meet for mourning, as a memorial of our double death.' She spoke, and fitting the point beneath her breast, she fell forward on the sword which was still warm with her lover's blood. Her prayers touched the gods and touched the parents; for the colour of the mulberry fruit is dark red when it is ripe, and all that remained from both funeral pyres rests in a common urn."
The tale was done. Then, after a brief interval, Leuconoë began, while her sisters held their peace. "Even the Sun, who with his central light guides all the stars, has felt the power of love. The Sun's loves we will relate. This god was first, 'tis said, to see the shame of Mars and Venus; this god sees all things first. Shocked at the sight, he revealed her sin to the goddess' husband, Vulcan, Juno's son, and where it was committed. Then Vulcan's mind reeled and the work upon which he was engaged fell from his hands. Straightway he fashioned a net of fine links of bronze, so thin that they would escape detection of the eye. Not the finest threads of wool would surpass that work; no, not the web which the spider lets down from the ceiling beam. He made the web in such a way that it would yield to the slightest touch, the least movement, and then he spread it deftly over the couch. Now when the goddess and her paramour had come thither, by the husband's art and by the net so cunningly prepared they were both caught and held fast in each other's arms. Straight-way Vulcan, the Lemnian, opened wide the ivory doors and invited in the other gods. There lay the two in chains, disgracefully, and some one of the merry gods prayed that he might be so disgraced. The gods laughed, and for a long time this story was the talk of heaven.
"But the goddess of Cythera did not forget the one METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV who had spied on her, and took fitting vengeance on him; and he that betrayed her stolen love was equally betrayed in love. What now avail, O son of Hyperion, thy beauty and brightness and radiant beams? For thou, who dost inflame all lands with thy fires, art thyself inflamed by a strange fire. Thou w ho shouldst behold all things, dost gaze on Leucothoë alone, and on one maiden dost thou fix those eyes which belong to the whole world. Anon too early dost thou rise in the eastern sky, and anon too late dost thou sink beneath the waves, and through thy long lingering over her dost prolong the short wintry hours. Sometimes thy beams fail utterly, thy heart's darkness passing to thy rays, and darkened thou dost terrify the hearts of men. Nor is it that the moon has come 'twixt thee and earth that thou art dark 'tis that love of thine alone that makes thy face so wan. Thou delightest in her alone. Now neither Clymene seems fair to thee, nor the maid of Rhodes nor Aeaean Circes' mother, though most beautiful, nor Clytie, who, although scorned by thee, still seeks thy love and even now bears its deep wounds in her heart. Leucothoë makes thee forgetful of them all she whom most fair Eurynome bore in the land of spices. But, after the daughter came to womanhood, as the mother surpassed all in loveliness, so did the daughter surpass her. Her father, Orchamus, ruled over the cities of Persia, himself the seventh in line from ancient Belus Beneath the western skies lie the pastures of the Sun's horses. Here not common grass, but ambrosia is their food. On this their bodies, weary with their service of the day, are refreshed and gain new strength for toil. While here his horses crop their celestial pasturage and Night takes her turn of toil, the 193 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV god enters the apartments of his love, assuming the form of Eurynome, her mother. There he discovers Leucothoë, surrounded by her twelve maidens, spin- ning fine wool with whirling spindle. Then having kissed her, just as her mother would have kissed her dear daughter, he says: 'Mine is a private matter. Retire, ye slaves, and let not a mother want the right a private speech.' The slaves obey; and now th , when the last witness has left the room, declares: ' Lo, I am he who measure out the year, who behold all things, by whom the earth beholds all things the world's eve. I tell thee thou hast found favour in my sight.' The nymph is filled with fear; distaff and spindle fall unheeded from her limp fingers. Her very fear becomes her. Then he, no longer tarrying, resumes his own form and his wonted splendour. But the maiden, though in terror at this sudden apparition, yet, overwhelmed by his radiance, last without protest suffers the ardent wooing o the god.
- t Clytie was jealous, for love of the Sun still burned
uncontrolled in her. Burning now with wrath at the sight of her rival, she spread abroad the story, andi especially to the father did she tell his daughter's shame. He, fierce and merciless, unheeding her prayers, unheeding her arms stretched out to the Sun, and unheeding her cry, 'He overbore my will, with brutal cruelty buried her deep in the earth, and heaped on the spot a heavy mound of sand. The son of Hyperion rent this with his rays, and made a way by which you might put forth your buried head; but too late, for now, poor nymph, you could not lift your head, crushed beneath the heavy earth, and you lay there, a lifeless corpse. Naught more pitiful than that sight, they say, did the driver of the swift steeds 195 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV see since Phaëthon's burning death. He tried,indeed, by his warm rays to recall those death-cold limbs to the warmth of life. But since grim fate opposed all his efforts, he sprinkled the body and the ground with fragrant nectar, and preluding with many words of grief, he said: 'In spite of fate shalt thou reach the upper air.' Straightway the body, soaked with the celestial nectar, melted away and filled the earth around with its sweet fragrance. Then did a shrub of frankincense, with deep-driven roots, rise slowly through the soil and its top cleaved the mound <But Clytie, though love could excuse her grief, and grief her tattling, was sought no more by the great light-giver, nor did he find aught to love in her. For this cause she pined away, her love turned to mad- ness. Unable to edure her sister nymphs, beneaththe open sky, by night and day, she sat upon the bare ground, naked, bareheaded, unkempt. For nine whole days she sat, tasting neither drink nor food,her hunger fed by naught save pure dew and tears, and moved not from the ground. Only she gazed on the face ofher god as he went his way, and turned her face towards him. They say that her limbs grew fast to the soil and her deathly pallor changed in part to a blood- less plant; but in part 'twas red, and a flower, much like a violet, came where her face had been. Still, though roots hold her fast, she turns ever towards the sun and, though changed herself, preserves her love unchanged." The story-teller ceased; the wonderful tale had held their ears. Some of the sisters say that such things could not happen; others declare that true gods can do anything. But Bacchus is not one of these. Alcithoë is next called for when the sisters 197 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV have become silent again. Running her shuttle swiftly through the threads of her loom, she said:
- " I will pass by the well-known love of Daphnis, the
shepherd-boy of Ida, whom a nymph, in anger at her rival, changed to stone: so great is the burning smart which jealous lovers feel. Nor will I tell how once Sithon, the natural laws reversed, lived of changing sex, now woman and now man. How you also, Celmis, now adamant, were once most faithful friend of little Jove; how the Curetes sprang from copious showers; how Crocus and his beloved Smilax were changed into tiny flowers. All these stories I will pass by and will charm your minds with a tale that is pleasing because new. "How the fountain of Salmacis is of ill-repute, how it enervates with its enfeebling waters and renders soft and weak all men who bathe therein, you shall now hear. The cause is hidden ; but the enfeebling power of the fountain is well known. A little son of Hermes and of the goddess of Cythera the naiads nursed within Ida's caves. In his fair face mother and father could be clearly seen; his name also he took from them. When fifteen years had passed, he left his native mountains and abandoned his foster- mother, Ida, delighting to wander in unknown lands and to see strange rivers, his eagerness making light f toil. He came even to the Lycian cities and to the Carians, who dwell hard by the land of Lycia. Here he saw a pool of water crystal clear to the very bottom. No marshy reeds grew there, no unfruitful swamp-grass, nor spiky rushes; it is clear water. But the edges of the pool are bordered with fresh grass, and herbage ever green. A nymph dwells in the pool, one that loves not hunting, nor is wont to bend the bow or strive with speed of foot. She 199 METAMORPHOSESBOOK IV only of the naiads follows not in swiftDiana's train. Often, 'tis said, her sisters would chide her: 'Sal- macis, take now either hunting-spear or painted quiver, and vary your ease with the hardships of the hunt.' But she takes no hunting-spear, no painted quiver, nor does she vary her ease with the hardships of the hunt; but at times she bathes her shapely limbs in her own pool; often combs her hair with a boxwood comb, oftenlooks in the mirror-like waters to see what best becomes her. Now, wrapped in a trans- parent robe, she lies down to rest on the soft grass or the soft herbage. Often she gathers flowers; and on this occasion, too, she chanced to be gatherin flowers when she saw the boy and longed to possess what she saw " Not yet, however, did she approach him, thouglh she was eager to do so, until she had calmed herself, until she had arranged her robes and composed her countenance, and taken all pains to appear beautiful. Then did she speak : ' O youth, most worthy to be believed a god, if thou art indeed a god, thou must be Cupid; or if thou art mortal, happy are they who gave thee birth, blest is thy brother, fortunate indeed any sister of thine and thy nurse who gave thee suck. But far, oh, far happier than they all is she, if any be thy promised bride, if thou shalt deem any worthy to be thy wife. If there be any such, let mine be stolen joy; if not, may I be thine, thy bride, and may we be joined in wediock.' The maiden said no more. But the boy blushed rosy red; for he knew not what love is But still the blush became him well. Such colour have apples hanging in sunny orchards, or painted ivory; such has the moon, eclipsed, red under white, wher brazen vesseis clash vainly for her relief. When the nymph begged and prayed for at least a sister's kiss, 201 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV and was in act to throw her arms round his snowy neck, he cried: ' Have done, or I must flee and leave this spot-and you.' Salmacis trembled at this threat and said: 'I yield the place to you, fair stranger, and turning away, pretended to depart. But even so she often looked back, and deep in a neighbouring thicket she hid herself, crouching on bended knee But the boy, freely as if unwatched and alone, walks up and down on the grass, dips his toes in the lapping waters, and his feet. Then quickly, charmed with the coolness of the soothing stream, he threw aside the thin garments from his slender form. Then was the nymph as one spellbound, and her love kindled as she gazed at the naked form. Her eyes shone bright as when the sun's dazzling face is reflected from the surface of a glass held opposite his rays. Scarce can she endure delay, scarce bear her joy postponed, so eager to hold him in her arms, so madly incontinent. He, clapping his body with hollow palms, dives into the pool, and swimming with alternate strokes flashes with gleaming body through the transparent flood, as if one should encase ivory figures or white lilies in translucent glass. 'I win, and he is mine!' cries the naiad, and casting off all her garments dives also into the waters: she holds him fast though he strives against her, steals reluctant kisses, fondles him, touches his unwilling breast, clings to him on this side and on that. At length, as he tries his best to break away from her, she wraps him round with her embrace, as a serpent, when the king of birds has caught her and is bearing her on high: which, hang- ing from his claws, wraps her folds around his head and feet and entangles his flapping wings with her tail; or as the ivy oft-times embraces great trunks of trees, or as the sea-polyp holds its enemy caught 203 METAMORPHOSESBOOK IV beneath the sea, its tentacles embracing him on every side. The son of Atlas resists as best he may and denies the nymph the joy she craves; but she holds on, and clings as if grown fast to him. 'Strive as you may, wicked boy,' she cries, 'still shall you not escape me. Grant me this, ye gods, and may no day ever come thatshall separate him from me or me from him.' The gods heard her prayer. For their two bodies, joined together as they were, were merged in one, with one face and form for both. As when one grafts a twig on some tree, he sees the branches grow one, and with common life come to maturity, so were these two bodies knit in close embrace: they were no longer two, nor such as to be called, one, woman, and one, man. They seemed neither, and yet both. « When now he saw that the waters into which he had plunged had made him but half-man, and that his limbs had become enfeebled there, stretching out his hands and speaking, though not with manly tones, Hermaphroditus cried: 'Oh, grant this boon, my father and my mother, to your son who bears the names of both whoever comes into this pool as man may he go forth half-man, and may he weaken at touch of the water.' His parents heard the prayer of their two-formed son and charged the waters with that uncanny power. Alcithoë was done; but still did the daughters of Minyas ply their tasks, despising the god and pro- faning his holy day: when suddenly unseen timbrels sounded harshly in their ears, and flutes, with curving horns, and tinkling cymbals; the air was full of the sweet scent of saffron and of myrrh; and, past all belief, their weft turned green, the hanging cloth changed into vines of ivy; part became grape-vines, and what were but now threads became clinging 205 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV tendrils; vine-leaves sprang out along the warp, and bright-hued clusters matched the purple tapestry. And now the day was ended and the time was come when you could not say 'twas dark or light; it was the borderland of night, yet with a gleam of day. Suddenly the whole house seemed to tremble, the oil-fed lamps to flare up, and all the rooms to be ablaze with ruddy fires, while ghostly beasts howled round. Meanwhile the sisters are seeking hiding places through the smoke-fiiled rooms, in various corners trying to avoid the flames and glare of light. And while they seek to hide, a skinny covering overspreads their slender limbs, and thin wings enclose their arms. And in what fashion they have lost their forner shape they know not for the darkness No feathered pinions uplift them, yet they sustain themselves on transparent wings. They try to speak, but utter only the tiniest sound as befits their shrivelled forms, and give voice to their grief in thin squeaks. Houses, not forests, are favourite haunts; and, hating the light of day, they flit by night and from late eventide derive their their name1 Then, truly, was the divinity of Bacchus acknow ledged throughout all Thebes, and his mother's sister, Ino, would be telling of the wonderful powers of the new god everywhere. She alone of all her sisters knew naught of grief, except what she felt for them. She, proud of her children, of her husband, Athamas, and proud above all of her divine foster-son, is seen by Juno, who could not bear the sight. "That child of my rival," she said, com muning with herself, " had power to change the
- i.e. vespertiliones, "creatures that flit about in the twi-
light," i.e. bats. 207 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV Maeonian sailors and plunge them in the sea, to cause the flesh of a son to be torn in pieces by his own mother, and to enwrap the three daughters of Minyas with strange wings; and shall naught be given to Juno, save to bemoan her wrongs still unavenged? Does that suffice me? Is this my ? But he himself teaches me what to is proper to learn even from an enemy. To whatlength madness can go he has proved enough and to spare by the slaughter of Pentheus. Why should not Ino be stung to madness too, and, urged by her only power do, 'T fury, go where her kinswomen have led the way ?” There is a down-sloping path, by deadly yew-trees shaded, which leads through dumb silence to the infernal realms. The sluggish Styx there exhales its vaporous breath; and by that way come down the spirits of the new-dead, shades of those who have received due funeral rites. This is a wide-extending waste, wan and cold; and the shades newly arrived know not where the road is which leads to the Stygian city where lies the dread palace of black Dis. This city has a thousand wide approaches and gates open on all sides; and as the ocean receives the rivers that flow down from all the earth, so does this place receive all souls; it is not too small for any people, nor does it feel the accession of a throng. There wander the shades bloodless, without body and bone. Some throng the forum, some the palace of the under- world king; others ply some craft in imitation of their former life. Thither, leaving her abode in heaven, Saturniain Juno endured to go; so much did she grant to her hate and wrath. When she made entrance there, and the threshold groaned beneath the weight of her sacred form, Cerberus reared up his threefold head 209 and uttered his threefold baying. The goddess summoned the Furies, sisters born of Night, divinities deadly and implacable. Before hell's closed gates of adamant they sat, combing the while black snakes from their hair. When they recognized Juno approaching through the thick gloom, the goddesses arose. This place is called the Accursed Place. Here Tityos offered his vitals to be torn, lying stretched out over nine broad acres. Thy lips can catch no water, Tantalus, and the tree that overhangs ever eludes thee. Thou, Sisyphus, dost either push or chase the rock that must always be rolling down the hill again. There whirls Ixion on his wheel, both following himself and fleeing, all in one; and the Belides, for daring to work destruction on their cousin-husbands, with unremitting toil seek again and again the waters, only to lose them.
On all these Saturnia looks with frowning eyes, but especially on Ixion; then, turning her gaze from him to Sisyphus, she says: "Why does this of all the brothers suffer unending pains, while Athamas dwells proudly in a rich palace—Athamas, who with his wife has always scorned my godhead?" And she explains the causes of her hatred and of her journey hither, and what she wants. What she wanted was that the house of Cadmus should fall, and that the Fury-sisters should drive Athamas to madness. Commands, promises, prayers she poured out all in one, and begged the goddesses to aid her. When Juno had done, Tisiphone, just as she was, shook her tangled grey locks, tossed back the straggling snakes from her face, and said: "There is no need of long explanations; consider done all that you ask. Leave this unlovely realm and go back to the sweeter airs of your native skies." Juno went back rejoicing; METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV and as she was entering heaven, Iris, the daughter of Thaumus, sprinkled her o'er with purifying water. Straightway the fell Tisiphone seized a torch which had been steeped in gore, put on a robe red with dripping blood, girt round her waist a writhing snake, and started forth. Grief went along with her, Terror and Dread and Madness, too, with quivering face. Sh . Thev e stood upon the doomed threshold say the very door posts of the house of Aeolus1 shrank away from her; the polished oaken doors grew dim and the sun hid his face. Ino was mad with terror at the monstrous sight, and her husband, Athamas, was filled with fear. They made to leave their palace, but the baleful Fury stood in their way and blocked their exit. And stretching her arms, wreathed with vipers, she shook out her locks: disturbed, the serpents hissed horribly. A part lay on her shoulders, part twined round her breast, hissing, vomiting venomous gore, and darting out their tongues. Then she tears away two serpents from the midst of her tresses, and with deadły aim hurls them at her victims. The snakes go gliding over the breasts of Ino and of Athamas and breathe upon them their pestilential breath. No wounds their bodies suffer; 'tis their minds that feel th<e deadly stroke. The Fury, not content with this, had brought horrid poisons too-froth of Cerberus' jaws, the venom of the Hydra, strange hallucinations and utter forgetfulness, crime and tears, mad love of slaughter, all mixed together with fresh blood and green hemlock juice, and brewed in a brazen cauldron. And while they stood quaking there, over the breasts of both she poured this maddening poison brew, and made it sink to their being's core. 1 The father of Athamss. METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV Then, catching up her torch, she whirled it rapidly round and round and kindled fire by the swiftly moving fire. So, her task accomplished and her victory won, she retraced her way to the unsub- stantial realm of mighty Dis, and there laid off the serpents she had worn, Straightway cried Athamas, the son of Aeolus, madly raving in his palace halls : "Ho! my comrades, spread the nets here in these woods! I saw here but now a lioness with her two cubs " and madl pursued his wife's tracks as if she were a beast of prey. His son, Learchus, laughing and stretching out his little hands in glee, he snatched from the mother's arms, and whirling hiin round and round through the air like a sling, he madly dashed the baby's head against a rough rock. Then the mother, stung to madness too, either by grief or by the sprinkled poison's force, howled wildły, and, quite bereft of sense, with hair streaming, she fled away, bearing thee, little Melicerta, in her naked arms, and shouting "Ho! Bacchus as she fled. At the name of Bacchus, Juno laughed in scorn and said: <« So may your foster-son ever bless you!"A cliff o'erhung the sea, the lower part of which had been hollowed out by the beating waves, and sheltered the waters underneath from the rain. Its top stood high and sharp and stretched far out in front over the deep. To this spot-for madness had made her strong-Ino climbed, and held by no natural fears, she leaped with her child far out above the sea. The water where sne fell was churned white with foam. But Venus, pitying the undeserved sufferings of her granddaughter, thus addressed her uncle with coaxing words: "O Neptune, god of waters, whose 215 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV power is second to heaven alone, I ask great things, I know; but do thou pity these my friends, whom thou seest plunged in the broad Ionian sea, and receive them among thy sea-deities. Some favour is due to me from the sea, if in its sacred depths my being sprang once from foam, and in the Gree tongue I have a name from this." Neptune con- sented to her prayer and, taking from Ino and her son all that was mortal, gave them a being to be revered, changing both name and form; for he called the new god Palaemon, and his goddess- mother, Leucothoë. The Theban women who had been Ino's com- panions followed on her track as best they could, and saw her last act from the edge ot the rock Nothing doubting that she had been killed, in mourning for the house of Cadmus they beat their breasts with their hands, tore their hair, and rent their garments; and they upbraided Juno, saying that she was unjust and too cruel to the woman who had wronged her. Juno could not brook their reproaches and said: I will make yourselves the greatest monument of my cruelty." No sooner said than done. For she who had been most devoted to the queen cried: I sha follow my queen into the sea"; and was just about to take the leap when she was unable to move at all, and stood fixed fast to the rock. A second, while she was preparing a^ain to smite her breasts as she had been doing, felt her lifted arms grow stiff. Another had by chance stretched out her hands towards the waters of the sea, but now 'twas a figure of stone that stretched out hands to those same waters. Still another, plucking at her hair to tear it out, you might see with sudden stiffened fingers still in act to 217 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV tear. Each turned to stone and kept the pose in which she was overaken. Still others were changed to birds, and they also, once Theban women, now on light wings skim the water over that pool. Cadmus was all unaware that his daughter and little grandson had been changed to deities of the sea. Overcome with grief at the misfortunes which had been heaped upon him, and awed by the many portents he had seen, he fled from the city which he had founded, as if the fortune of the place and not his own evil fate were overwhelming him Driven on through long wanderings, at last his flight brought him with his wife to the borders of Illyria. Here, overborne by the weight of woe and age, they reviewed the early misfortunes of their house and their own troubles. Cadmus said: Was that a sacred serpent which my spear transfixed long ago when, fresh come from Sidon, I scat- tered his teeth on the earth, seed of a strange crop of men? If it be this the gods have been avenging with such unerring wrath, I pray that I, too, may be a serpent, and stretch myself in Even as ne spoke he was stretched out in long snaky form; he felt his skin hardening and scales growing on it, while iridescent He fel1 long snaky fornm spots besprinkled his darkening body. prone upon his belly, and his legs were gradually moulded together into one and drawn out into a slender, pointed tail. His arms yet remained; while they remained, he stretched them out, and with tears flowing down his still human cheeks he cried: " Come near, oh, come, my most wretched wife, and while still there is something left of me, touch me, take my hand, while I have a hand, while still the serpent does not usurp me quite." He wanted to 219 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV say much more, but his tongue was of a sudden cleft in two; words failed him, and whenever he tried to utter some sad complaint, it was a hiss: this was the onlv voice whichNature left him. Then his wife smiting her naked breasts with her hands, cried out: <"O Cadmus, stay, unhappy man, and put off this monstrous form! Cadmus, what does this mean? Where are your feet? Where are your shoulders and your hands, your colour, face, and, while I speak, your- everything? Why, O ye gods of heaven, do you not change me also into the same serpent form?" She spoke; he licked his wife's face and glided into her dear breasts as if familiar there, embraced her, and sought his wonted place about her neck. All who were there-for they had comrades with them-were filled with horror. But she only stroked the sleek neck of the crested dragon, and suddenly there were two serpents there with intertwining folds, which after a little while crawled off and hid in the neigh bouring woods. Now also, as of yore, they neither fear mankind nor wound them, mild creatures, remembering what once they were. But both in their altered form found great comfort in their grandson, whom conquered India now wor- shipped, whose temples Greece had filled with adoring throngs. There was one only, Acrisius, the son of Abas, sprung from the same stock, who forbade the entrance of Bacchus within the walls of his city, Argos, who violently opposed the god, and did not admit that he was the son of Jove. Nor did he adnit that Perseus was son of Jove, whom Danaë had conceived of a golden shower. And yet, such is the power of truth, Acrisius in the end was sorry that he had repulsed the god and had not acknowledged his grandson. The one had now been received to a 221 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV place in heaven; but the other, bearing the wonder- ful spoil of the snake-haired monster, was taking his way through the thin air on whirring wings. As he was flying over the sandy wastes of Libya, bloody drops from the Gorgon's head fell down; and the earth received them as they fell and changed them into snakes of various kinds. And for this cause the land of Libya is full of deadly serpents. From there he was driven through the vast stretches of air by warring winds and borne, now hither, now thither, like a cloud of mist. He looked down from his great height upon the lands lying below and flew over the whole world. Thrice did he see the cold Bears, and thrice the Crab's spreading claws; time and again to the west, and as often back to the east was he carried. And now, as daylight was fading, fearing to trust himself to flight by night, he alighted on the borders of the West, in the realm of Atlas Here he sought a little rest until the morn- ing star should wake the fires of dawn and the dawn lead out the fiery car of day. Here, far surpassing all men in huge bulk of body, was Atlas, of the stock of Iapetus. He ruled this edge of the world and the sea which spread its waters to receive the Sun's panting horses and his weary car. A thousand flocks he had, and as many herds, wandering at will over the grassy plains; and no other realm was near to hem in his land. A tree he had whose leaves were of gleaming gold, concealing golden branches and olden fruits. "Good sir," said Perseus, addressing im, "if glory of high birth means anything to you, Jove is my father; or if you admire great deeds, you surely will admire mine. I crave your hospitality and a chance to rest." But Atlas bethought him of an old oracle, which Themis of Parnasus had given: 223 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV « Atlas, the time will come when your tree will be spoiled of its gold, and he who gets the glory of this spoil will be Jove's son." Fearing this, Atlas had enclosed his orchard with massive walls and had put a huge dragon there to watch it; and he kept off all strangers from his boundaries. And now to Perseus, too, he said: "Hence afar, lest the glory of your deeds, which you falsely brag of, and lest this Jupiter of yours be far from aiding you." He added force to threats, and was trying to thrust out the other, who held back and manfully resisted while he urged his case with soothing speech. At length, finding him self unequal in strength-for who would be a match in strength for Atlas?-he said: "Well, since so small a favour you will not grant to me, let me give you a boon"; and, himself turning his back, he held out from his left hand the ghastly Medusa-head. Straightway Atlas became a mountain huge as the giant had been; his beard and hair were changed to trees, his shoulders and arms to spreading ridges; what had been his head was now the mountain's top, and his bones were changed to stones. Then he rew to monstrous size in all his parts-for so, O gods, ye had willed it-and the whole heaven with all its stars rested upon his head. Now Aeolus, the son of Hippotas, had shut the winds in their everlasting prison, and the bright morning star that wakes men to their toil had risen in the heavens. Then Perseus bound on lboth his feet the wings he had laid by, girt on his hooked sword, and soon in swift flight was cleaving the thin air. Having left behind countless peoples all around him and below, he spied at last the Ethiopians and Cepheus' realm. There unrighteous Ammon had bidden Andromeda, though innocent, to 225 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV pay the penalty of her mother's words. As soon as Perseus saw her there bound by the arms to a rough cliff-save that her hair gently stirred in the breeze, and the warm tears were trickling down her cheeks, he would have thought her a marble statue--he took fire unwitting, and stood dumb. Smitten by the sight of her exquisite beauty, he almost forgot to move his wings in the air. Then, when he alighted near the maiden, he said Oh! those are not the chains you deserve to wear, but rather those that link fond lovers together! Tell me, for I would know, your country's name and yours, and why you are chained here." She was silent at first, for, being a maid, she did not dare address a man; she would have hidden her face modestly with her hands but that her hands were bound. Her eyes were free, and these filled with rising tears. As he continued to urge her, she, lest she should seem to be trying to conceal some fault of her own, told him her name and her country, and what sinful boasting her mother had made of her own beauty. While she was yet speaking, there came a loud sound from the sea, and there, advancing over the broad expanse, a monstrous creature loomed up, breasting the wide waves. The ee maiden shrieked. The grieving father and the mother are at hand, both wretched, but she more justly so. They have no help to give, but only wailings and loud beatings of the breast, befitting the occasion, and they hang to the girl's chained form. Then speaks the stranger: "There will be long time for weeping by and by; but time for helping is very short. If I sought this maid as Perseus, son of Jove and that imprisoned one whom Jove filled with his life-giving shower; if as Perseus, victor over Gorgon of the snaky locks, and as he who has dared to ride the 227 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV winds of heaven on fluttering wings, surely I should be preferred to all suitors as your son-in-law. But now I shall try to add to these great gifts the gift of service, too, if only the gods will favour me. That she be mine if saved by my valouris my bargain." The parents accept the condition-for who would refuse? and beg him to save her, promising him a kingdom as dowrv in addition. But see! as a swift ship with its sharp beak plows the waves, driven by stout rowers' sweating arms, so does the monster come, rolling back the water from either side as his breast surges through. And now he was as far from the cliff as is the space through which a Baleai ic sling can send its whizzing bullet; when suddenly the youth, springing up from the earth, mounted high into the clouds. When the monster saw the hero's shadow on the surface of the sea, he savagely attacked the shadow. And as the bird of Jove, when it has seen in an open field a serpent sunning its mottled body, swoops down upon him from behind; and, lest the serpent twist back his deadly fangs, the bird buries deep his sharp claws in the creature's scaly neck; so did Perseus, plunging headlong in a swift swoop through the empty air, attack the roaring nionster from above, and in his right shoulder buried his sword clear down to the curved hook. Smarting under the deep wound, the creature now reared himself high in air, now plunged beneath the waves, now turned like a fierce wild-boar when around him a noisy pack of hounds give tongue. Perseus eludes the greedy fangs by help of his swift wings; and where the vulnerable points lie open to attack. he smites with his hooked sword, now at the back, thick-set with barnacles, now on the sides, now where the tail is most slender and changes into 229 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV the form of fish. The beast belches forth waters mixed with purple blood. Meanwhile Perseus' wings are growing heavy, soaked with spray, and he dares not depend further on his drenched pinions. He spies a rock whose top projects above the surface when the waves are still, but which is hidden by the roughened sea. Resting on this and holding an edge of the rock with his left hand, thrice and again he plunges his sword into the vitals of the monster. At this the shores and the high seats of the gods re-echo with wild shouts of applause. Cassiope and Cepheus rejoice and salute the hero as son-in-law, calling him prop and saviour of their house. The maiden also now comes forward, freed from chains, she, the prize as wel as cause of his feat. He washes his victorious hands in water drawn for him; and, that the Gorgon's snaky head may not be bruised on the hard sand, he softens the ground with leaves, strews seaweed over these, and lays on this the head of Medusa, daughter of Phorcys. The fresh weed twigs, but now alive and porous to the core, absorb the power of the monster and harden at its touch and take a strange stiffness in their stems and leaves. And the sea-nymphs test the wonder on more twigs and are delighted to find the same thing happening to them all; and, by scattering these twigs as seeds, propagate the . And even till this day the same nature has remained in coral so that they harden when exposed to air, and what was a pliant twig beneath the sea is turned to stone wondrous thing throughout their waters above. Now Perseus builds to three gods three altars of turf, the left to Mercury, the right to thee, O warlike maid. and the central one to Jove. To Minerva he slays a cow, a young bullock to the winged god, and 231 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV a bull to thee, thou greatest of the gods. Forthwith the hero claims Andromeda as the prize of his great deed, seeking no further dowry. Hymen and Love shake the marriage torch; the fires are fed full with incense rich and fragrant, garlands deck the dwel ings, and everywhere lyre and flute and songs resound, blessed proofs of inward joy. The huge folding-doors swing back and reveal the great golden palace-hall with a rich banquet spread, where Cepheus' princely courtiers grace the feast. When they have had their fill of food, and their hearts have expanded with Bacchus' generous gift, then Perseus seeks to know the manner of the region thereabouts, its peoples, customs, and the spirit of its men. The prince who answered him then said: " Now tell us, pray, O Perseus, by what woundrous valour, by what arts you won the Gorgon's snaky head." The hero, answering, told how beneath cold Atlas there was a place safe under the protection of the rocky mass. At the entrance to this place two sisters dwelt, both daughters of old Phorcys, who shared one eye between them. This eye by craft and stealth, while it was being passed from one sister to the other, Perseus stole away, and travelling far through trackless and secret ways, rough woods, and bristling rocks, he came at last to where the Gorgons lived. On all sides through the fields and along the ways he saw the forms of men and beasts changed into stone by one look at Medusa's face. But he himself had looked upon the image of that dread face reflected from the bright bronze shield his left hand bore; and while deep sleep held fast both the snakes and her who wore them, he smote her head clean from her neck, and from the blood of his mother swift-winged Pegasus and his brother sprang 233 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV The hero further told of his long journeys and perils passed, all true, what seas, what lands he had beheld from his high flight, what stars he had touched on beating wings. He ceased, while they waited still to hear more. But one of the princes asked him why Medusa only of the sisters wore serpents mingled with her hair. The guest replied: " Since what you ask is a tale well worth the telling, hear then the cause. She was once most beautiful in form, and the jealous hope of many suitors. Of all her beauties, her hair was the most beautiful for so I learned from one who said he had seen her. "Tis said that in Minerva's temple Neptune, lord of the Ocean, ravished her. Jove's daughter turned away and hid her chaste eyes behind her aegis. And, that the deed might be punished as was due, she changed the Gorgon's locks to ugly snakes. And now to frighten her fear-numbed foes, she still wears upon her breast the snakes which she has made 235
- ↑ "The noisy one."
- ↑ "The deliverer from care."
- ↑ "Of Nysa," a city in India, connected traditionally with the infancy of Bacchus.
- ↑ "Son of Thyone," the name given to his mother, Semele, after her translation to the skies.
- ↑ "God of the wine-press."
- ↑ So named from the fact that his orgies were celebrated in the night.
- ↑ From the wild cries uttered by his worshippers in theorgies.
- ↑ A name identified with Bacchus.
- ↑ Either from liber, " the free," or from libo, "he to whom libations of wine are poured."