fictions?); on touching the grass my prey began to move, and to shift
their sides, and to skip about on the land, as though in the sea. And
while I both paused and wondered, the whole batch flew off to the waves,
and left behind their new master and the shore. I was amazed, and, in
doubt for a long time, I considered what could be the cause; whether
some Divinity had done this, or whether the juice of {some} herb. ‘And
yet,’ said I, ‘what herb has these properties?’ and with my hand I
plucked the grass, and I chewed it, {so} plucked, with my teeth. Hardly
had my throat well swallowed the unknown juices, when I suddenly felt my
entrails inwardly throb, and my mind taken possession of by the passions
of another nature. Nor could I stay in {that} place; and I exclaimed,
‘Farewell, land, never more to be revisited;’ and plunged my body
beneath the deep. The Gods of the sea vouchsafed me, on being received
by them, kindred honours, and they entreated Oceanus and Tethys to take
away from me whatever mortality I bore. By them was I purified; and a
charm being repeated over me nine times, that washes away {all} guilt,
I was commanded to put my breast beneath a hundred streams.
“There was no delay; rivers issuing from different springs, and whole
seas, were poured over my head. Thus far I can relate to thee what
happened worthy to be related, and thus far do I remember; but my
understanding was not conscious of the rest. When it returned {to me},
I found myself different throughout all my body from what I was before,
and not the same in mind. Then, for the first time, did I behold this
beard, green with its deep colour, and my flowing hair, which I sweep
along the spacious seas, and my huge shoulders, and my azurecoloured
arms, and the extremities of my legs tapering in {the form of} a finny
fish. But still, what does this form avail me, what to have pleased the
ocean Deities, {and} what to be a God, if thou art not moved by these
things?”
As he was saying such things as these, and about to say still more,
Scylla left the God. He was enraged, and, provoked at the repulse, he
repaired to the marvellous court of Circe, the daughter of Titan.
[Footnote 77: _Ceases._--Ver. 898. ‘Desierat Galatea loqui,’ is
translated by Clarke, ‘Galatea gave over talking.’]
[Footnote 78: _Anthedon._--Ver. 905. Anthedon was a maritime city
of Bœotia, only separated from the Island of Eubœa, by the narrow
strait of the Euripus.]
EXPLANATION.
The ancient writers mention three persons of the name of Glaucus:
one was the son of Minos, the second of Hippolochus, and the third
is the one here mentioned. Strabo calls him the son of Polybus,
while other writers make him to have been the son of Phorbas, and
others of Neptune. Being drowned, perhaps by accident, to do honour
to his memory, it was promulgated that he had become a sea God, and
the city of Anthedon, of which he was a native, worshipped him as
such.
Athenæus says that he carried off Ariadne from the isle of Naxos,
where Theseus had left her; on which Bacchus punished him by binding
him to a vine. According to Diodorus Siculus, he appeared to the
Argonauts, when overtaken by a storm. From Apollonius Rhodius we
learn that he foretold to them that Hercules, and Castor and Pollux,
would be received into the number of the Gods. It was also said,
that in the battle which took place between Jason and the
Tyrrhenians, he was the only person that escaped unwounded.
Euripides, who is followed by Pausanias, says that he was the
interpreter of Nereus, and was skilled in prophecy; and Nicander
even says that it was from him that Apollo learned the art of
prediction. Strabo and Philostratus say that he was metamorphosed
into a Triton, which is a-kin to the description of his appearance
here given by Ovid.
The place where he leaped into the sea was long remembered; and in
the days of Pausanias ‘Glaucus’ Leap’ was still pointed out by the
people of Anthedon. It is not improbable that he drowned himself for
some reason which tradition failed to hand down to posterity.
BOOK THE FOURTEENTH.
FABLE I. [XIV.1-74]
Circe becomes enamoured of Glaucus, who complains to her of his
repulse by Scylla. She endeavours, without success, to make him
desert Scylla for herself. In revenge, she poisons the fountain
where the Nymph is wont to bathe, and communicates to her a hideous
form; which is so insupportable to Scylla, that she throws herself
into the sea, and is transformed into a rock.
And now {Glaucus}, the Eubœan plougher of the swelling waves, had left
behind Ætna, placed upon the jaws of the Giant, and the fields of the
Cyclops, that had never experienced the harrow or the use of the plough,
and that were never indebted to the yoked oxen; he had left Zancle, too,
behind, and the opposite walls of Rhegium,[1] and the sea, abundant
cause of shipwreck, which, confined by the two shores, bounds the
Ausonian and the Sicilian lands. Thence, swimming with his huge hands
through the Etrurian seas, Glaucus arrived at the grass-clad hills, and
the halls of Circe, the daughter of the Sun, filled with various wild
beasts. Soon as he beheld her, after salutations were given and
received, he said, “Do thou, a Goddess, have compassion on me a God; for
thou alone (should I only seem deserving of it,) art able to relieve
this passion {of mine}. Daughter of Titan, by none is it better known
how great is the power of herbs, than by me, who have been transformed
by their agency; and, that the cause of my passion may not be unknown to
thee, Scylla has been beheld by me on the Italian shores, opposite the
Messenian walls. I am ashamed to recount my promises, my entreaties, my
caresses, and my rejected suit. But, do thou, if there is any power in
incantations, utter the incantation with thy holy lips; or, if {any}
herb is more efficacious, make use of the proved virtues of powerful
herbs. But I do not request thee to cure me, and to heal these wounds;
and there is no necessity for an end {to them; but} let her share in the
flame.” But Circe, (for no one has a temper more susceptible of such a
passion, whether it is that the cause of it originates in herself, or
whether it is that Venus, offended[2] by her father’s discovery, causes
this,) utters such words as these:--
“Thou wilt more successfully court her who is willing, and who
entertains similar desires, and who is captivated with an equal passion.
Thou art worthy of it, and assuredly thou oughtst to be courted
spontaneously; and, if thou givest any hopes, believe me, thou shalt be
courted[3] spontaneously. That thou mayst entertain no doubts, or lest
confidence in thy own beauty may not exist, behold! I who am both a
Goddess, and the daughter of the radiant Sun, and am so potent with my
charms, and so potent with my herbs, wish to be thine. Despise her who
despises thee; her, who is attached to thee, repay by like attachment,
and, by one act, take vengeance on two individuals.”
Glaucus answered her, making such attempts as these,-- “Sooner shall
foliage grow in the ocean, and {sooner} shall sea-weed spring up on the
tops of the mountains, than my affections shall change, while Scylla is
alive.” The Goddess is indignant; and since she is not able to injure
him, and as she loves him she does not wish {to do so}, she is enraged
against her, who has been preferred to herself; and, offended with these
crosses in love, she immediately bruises herbs, infamous for their
horrid juices, and, when bruised, she mingles with them the incantations
of Hecate. She puts on azure vestments too, and through the troop of
fawning wild beasts she issues from the midst of her hall; and making
for Rhegium, opposite to the rocks of Zancle, she enters the waves
boiling with the tides; on these, as though on the firm shore, she
impresses her footsteps, and with dry feet she skims along the surface
of the waves.
There was a little bay, curving in {the shape of} a bent bow,
a favourite retreat of Scylla, whither she used to retire from the
influence both of the sea and of the weather, when the sun was at its
height in his mid career, and made the smallest shadow from the head
{downwards}. This the Goddess infects beforehand, and pollutes it with
monster-breeding drugs; on it she sprinkles the juices distilled from
the noxious root, and thrice nine times, with her magic lips, she
mutters over the mysterious charm, {enwrapt} in the dubious language of
strange words.[4] Scylla comes; and she has {now} gone in up to the
middle of her stomach, when she beholds her loins grow hideous with
barking monsters; and, at first believing that they are no part of her
own body, she flies from them and drives them off, and is in dread of
the annoying mouths of the dogs; but those that she flies from, she
carries along with {herself}; and as she examines the substance of her
thighs, her legs, and her feet, she meets with Cerberean jaws in place
of those parts. The fury of the dogs {still} continues, and the backs of
savage {monsters} lying beneath her groin, cut short, and her prominent
stomach, {still} adhere to them.
Glaucus, {still} in love, bewailed {her}, and fled from an alliance with
Circe, who had {thus} too hostilely employed the potency of herbs.
Scylla remained on that spot; and, at the first moment that an
opportunity was given, in her hatred of Circe, she deprived Ulysses of
his companions. Soon after, the same {Scylla} would have overwhelmed the
Trojan ships, had she not been first transformed into a rock, which even
now is prominent with its crags; {this} rock the sailor, too, avoids.
[Footnote 1: _Rhegium._--Ver. 5. Rhegium was a city of Calabria,
opposite to the coast of Sicily.]
[Footnote 2: _Venus offended._--Ver. 27. The Sun, or Apollo, the
father of Circe, as the Poet has already related in his fourth
Book, betrayed the intrigues of Mars with Venus.]
[Footnote 3: _Shalt be courted._--Ver. 31. She means that he shall
be courted, but by herself.]
[Footnote 4: _Of strange words._--Ver. 57. ‘Obscurum verborum
ambage novorum’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘Darkened with a long
rabble of new words.’]
EXPLANATION.
According to Hesiod, Circe was the daughter of the Sun and of the
Nymph Perse, and the sister of Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos. Homer
makes her the sister of Æetes, the king of Colchis, while other
authors represent her as the daughter of that monarch, and the
sister of Medea. Being acquainted with the properties of simples,
and having used her art in mixing poisonous draughts, she was
generally looked upon as a sorceress. Apollonius Rhodius says that
she poisoned her husband, the king of the Sarmatians, and that her
father Apollo rescued her from the rage of her subjects, by
transporting her in his chariot into Italy. Virgil and Ovid say that
she inhabited one of the promontories of Italy, which afterwards
bore her name, and which at the present day is known by the name of
Monte Circello.
It is not improbable that the person who went by the name of Circe
was never in Colchis or Thrace, and that she was styled the sister
of Medea, merely on account of the similarity of their characters;
that they both were called daughters of the Sun, because they
understood the properties of simples; and that their pretended
enchantments were only a poetical mode of describing the effect of
their beauty, which drew many suitors after them, who lost
themselves in the dissipation of a voluptuous life. Indeed, Strabo
says, and very judiciously, as it would seem, that Homer having
heard persons mention the expedition of Jason to Colchis, and
hearing the stories of Medea and Circe, he took occasion to say,
from the resemblance of their characters, that they were sisters.
According to some authors, Scylla was the daughter of Phorcys and
Hecate; but as other writers say, of Typhon. Homer describes her in
the following terms:-- ‘She had a voice like that of a young whelp;
no man, not even a God, could behold her without horror. She had
twelve feet, six long necks, and at the end of each a monstrous
head, whose mouth was provided with a triple row of teeth.’ Another
ancient writer says, that these heads were those of an insect,
a dog, a lion, a whale, a Gorgon, and a human being. Virgil has in a
great measure followed the description given by Homer. Between
Messina and Reggio there is a narrow strait, where high crags
project into the sea on each side. The part on the Sicilian side was
called Charybdis, and that on the Italian shore was named Scylla.
This spot has ever been famous for its dangerous whirlpools, and the
extreme difficulty of its navigation. Several rapid currents meeting
there, and the tide running through the strait with great
impetuosity, the sea sends forth a dismal noise, not unlike that of
the howling or barking of dogs, as Virgil has expressed it, in the
words, ‘Multis circum latrantibus undis.’
Palæphatus and Fusebius, not satisfied with the story being based on
such simple facts, assert that Scylla was a ship that belonged to
certain Etrurian pirates, who used to infest the coasts of Sicily,
and that it had the figure of a woman carved on its head, whose
lower parts were surrounded with dogs. According to these writers,
Ulysses escaped them; and then, using the privileges of a traveller,
told the story to the credulous Phæacians in the marvellous terms in
which Homer has related it. Bochart, however, says that the two
names were derived from the Phœnician language, in which ‘Scol,’ the
root of Scylla, signified ‘a ruin,’ and Charybdis, ‘a gulf.’
FABLE II. [XIV.75-100]
Dido entertains Æneas in her palace, and falls in love with him.
He afterwards abandons her, on which she stabs herself in despair.
Jupiter transforms the Cercopes into apes; and the islands which
they inhabit are afterwards called ‘Pithecusæ,’ from the Greek word
signifying ‘an ape.’
After the Trojan ships, with their oars, had passed by her and the
ravening Charybdis; when now they had approached near the Ausonian
shores, they were carried back by the winds[5] to the Libyan coasts. The
Sidonian {Dido}, she who was doomed not easily to endure the loss of her
Phrygian husband, received Æneas, both in her home and her affection; on
the pile, too, erected under the pretext of sacred rites, she fell upon
the sword; and, {herself} deceived, she deceived all. Again, flying from
the newly erected walls of the sandy regions, and being carried back to
the seat of Eryx and the attached Acestes, he performs sacrifice, and
pays honour[6] to the tomb of his father. He now loosens {from shore}
the ships which Iris, the minister of Juno, has almost burned; and
passes by the realms of the son of Hippotas, and the regions that smoke
with the heated sulphur, and leaves behind him the rocks of the
Sirens,[7] daughters of Acheloüs; and the ship, deprived of its
pilot,[8] coasts along Inarime[9] and Prochyta,[10] and Pithecusæ,
situate on a barren hill, so called from the name of its inhabitants.
For the father of the Gods, once abhorring the frauds and perjuries of
the Cercopians, and the crimes of the fraudulent race, changed these men
into ugly animals; that these same beings might be able to appear unlike
men, and yet like them. He both contracted their limbs, and flattened
their noses; bent back from their foreheads; and he furrowed their faces
with the wrinkles of old age. And he sent them into this spot, with the
whole of their bodies covered with long yellow hair. Moreover, he first
took away from them the use of language, and of their tongues, made for
dreadful perjury; he only allowed them to be able to complain with a
harsh jabbering.
[Footnote 5: _By the winds._--Ver. 77. The storm in which Æneas is
cast upon the shores of Africa forms the subject of part of the
first Book of the Æneid.]
[Footnote 6: _And pays honour._--Ver. 84. The annual games which
Æneas instituted at the tomb of his father, in Sicily, are fully
described in the fifth Book of the Æneid.]
[Footnote 7: _The Sirens._--Ver. 87. The Sirens were said to have
been the daughters of the river Acheloüs. Their names are
Parthenope, Lysia, and Leucosia.]
[Footnote 8: _Deprived of its pilot._--Ver. 88. This was
Palinurus, who, when asleep, fell overboard, and was drowned. See
the end of the fifth Book of the Æneid.]
[Footnote 9: _Inarime._--Ver. 89. This was an island not far from
the coast of Campania, which was also called Ischia and Ænaria.
The word ‘Inarime’ is thought to have been coined by Virgil, from
the expression of Homer, εῖν Ἀρίμοις, when speaking of it, as that
writer is the first who is found to use it, and is followed by
Ovid, Lucan, and others. Strabo tells us, that ‘aremus’ was the
Etrurian name for an ape; if so, the name of this spot may account
for the name of Pithecusæ, the adjoining islands, if the tradition
here related by the Poet really existed. Pliny the Elder, however,
says that Pithecusæ were so called from πίθος, an earthern cask,
or vessel, as there were many potteries there.]
[Footnote 10: _Prochyta._--Ver. 89. This island was said to have
been torn away from the isle of Inarime by an earthquake; for
which reason it received its name from the Greek verb προχέω,
which means ‘to pour forth.’]
EXPLANATION.
Although Ovid passes over the particulars of the visit of Æneas to
Dido, and only mentions her death incidentally, we may give a few
words to a story which has been rendered memorable by the beautiful
poem of Virgil. Elisa, or Dido, was the daughter of Belus, king of
Tyre. According to Justin, at his death he left his crown to his son
Pygmalion jointly with Dido, who was a woman of extraordinary
beauty. She was afterwards married to her uncle Sicharbas, who is
called Sichæus by Virgil. Being priest of Hercules, an office next
in rank to that of king, he was possessed of immense treasures,
which the known avarice of Pygmalion caused him to conceal in the
earth. Pygmalion having caused him to be assassinated, at which Dido
first expressed great resentment, she afterwards pretended a
reconciliation, the better to cover the design which she had formed
to escape from the kingdom.
Having secured the cooperation of several of the discontented
Tyrians, she requested permission to visit Tyre, and to leave her
melancholy retreat, where every thing contributed to increase her
misery by recalling the remembrance of her deceased husband. Hoping
to seize her treasures, Pygmalion granted her request. Putting her
wealth on board ship, she mixed some bags filled with sand among
those that contained gold, for the purpose of deceiving those whom
the king had sent to observe her and to escort her to Tyre. When out
at sea, she threw the bags overboard, to appease the spirit of her
husband, as she pretended, by sacrificing those treasures that had
cost him his life. Then addressing the officers that accompanied
her, she assured them that they would meet with but a bad reception
from the king for having permitted so much wealth to be wasted, and
that it would be more advantageous for them to fly from his
resentment. The officers embarking in her design, after they had
taken on board some Tyrian nobles, who were privy to the plan, she
offered sacrifice to Hercules, and again set sail. Landing in
Cyprus, they carried off eighty young women, who were married to her
companions. On discovering her flight, Pygmalion at first intended
to pursue her; but the intreaties of his mother, and the
remonstrances of the priests, caused him to abandon his design.
Having arrived on the coast of Africa, Dido bargained with the
inhabitants of the coast for as much ground as she could encompass
with a bull’s hide. This being granted, she cut the hide into as
many thongs as enclosed ground sufficient to build a fort upon;
which was in consequence called ‘Byrsa.’ In making the foundation,
an ox’s head was dug up, which being supposed to portend slavery to
the city, if built there, they removed to another spot, where, in
digging, they found a horse’s head, which was considered to be a
more favourable omen. The story of the citadel being named from the
bull’s hide was very probably invented by the Greeks; who, finding
in the Phœnician narrative of the foundation of Carthage, the
citadel mentioned by the Tyrian name of ‘Bostra,’ which had that
signification, and fancying, from its resemblance to their word
βυρσὰ, that it was derived from it, invented the fable of the hide.
Being pressed by Iarbas, king of Mauritania, to marry him, she asked
for three months to come to a determination. The time expiring, she
ordered a sacrifice to be made as an expiation to her husband’s
shade, and caused a pile to be erected, avowedly for the purpose of
burning all that belonged to him. Ascending it, she pretended to
expedite the sacrifice, and then despatched herself with a poniard.
Virgil, wishing to deduce the hatred of the Romans and Carthaginians
from the very time of Æneas, invented the story of the visit of
Æneas to Dido; though he was perhaps guilty of a great anachronism
in so doing, as the taking of Troy most probably preceded the
foundation of Carthage by at least two centuries. Ovid has also
related her story at length in the third book of the Fasti, and has
followed Virgil’s account of the treacherous conduct of Æneas, while
he represents Iarbas as capturing her city after her death, and
driving her sister Anna into exile. In the Phœnician language the
word ‘Dido’ signified ‘the bold woman,’ and it is probable that
Elisa only received that name after her death. Bochart has taken
considerable pains to prove that she was the aunt of Jezebel, the
famous, or rather infamous, wife of King Ahab.
The Poet then proceeds to say that Æneas saw the islands of the
Cercopians on his way, whom Jupiter had transformed into apes.
Æschines and Suidas say that there were two notorious robbers,
inhabitants of an island adjacent to Sicily, named Candulus and
Atlas, who committed outrages on all who approached the island.
Being about to insult Jupiter himself, he transformed them into
apes, from which circumstance the island received its name of
Pithecusa. Sabinus says that they were called Cercopes, because in
their treachery they were like monkeys, who fawn with their tails,
when they design nothing but mischief. Zenobius places the Cercopes
in Libya; and says that they were changed into rocks, for having
offered to fight with Hercules.
FABLE III. [XIV.101-153]
Apollo is enamoured of the Sibyl, and, to engage her affection,
offers her as many years as she can grasp grains of sand. She
forgets to ask that she may always continue in the bloom of youth,
and consequently becomes gray and decrepit.
After he has passed by these, and has left the walls of Parthenope[11]
on the right hand, on the left side he {approaches} the tomb of the
tuneful son of Æolus[12]; and he enters the shores of Cumæ, regions
abounding in the sedge of the swamp, and the cavern of the long-lived
Sibyl[13], and entreats {her}, that through Avernus, he may visit the
shade of his father. But she raises her countenance, a long time fixed
on the ground; and at length, inspired by the influence of the God, she
says, “Thou dost request a great thing, O hero, most renowned by thy
achievements, whose right hand has been proved by the sword, whose
affection {has been proved} by the flames. Yet, Trojan, lay aside {all}
apprehension, thou shalt obtain thy request; and under my guidance thou
shalt visit the abodes of Elysium, the most distant realms of the
universe, and the beloved shade of thy parent. To virtue, no path is
inaccessible.”
{Thus} she spoke, and she pointed out a branch refulgent with gold, in
the woods of the Juno of Avernus[14], and commanded him to pluck it from
its stem. Æneas obeyed; and he beheld the power of the dread Orcus, and
his own ancestors, and the aged ghost of the magnanimous Anchises; he
learned, too, the ordinances of {those} regions, and what dangers would
have to be undergone by him in his future wars. Tracing back thence his
weary steps along the path, he beguiled his labour in discourse with his
Cumæan guide. And while he was pursuing his frightful journey along
darkening shades, he said, “Whether thou art a Goddess personally, or
whether {thou art but a woman} most favoured by the Deities, to me shalt
thou always be equal to a Divinity; I will confess, too, that I exist
through thy kindness, who hast willed that I should visit the abodes of
death, and that I should escape those abodes of death {when} beheld {by
me}. For this kindness, when I have emerged into the breezes of the air,
I will erect a temple to thee, {and} I will give thee the honours of
frankincense.”
The prophetess looks upon him, and, with heaving sighs, she says,
“Neither am I a Goddess, nor do thou honour a human being with the
tribute of the holy frankincense. And, that thou mayst not err in
ignorance, life eternal and without end was offered me, had my virginity
but yielded to Phœbus, in love {with me}. But while he was hoping for
this, while he was desiring to bribe me beforehand with gifts, he said:
‘Maiden of Cumæ, choose whatever thou mayst wish, thou shalt gain thy
wish.’ I, pointing to a heap of collected dust, inconsiderately asked
that as many birth-days might be my lot, as the dust contained
particles. It escaped me to desire as well, at the same time, years
vigorous with youth. But yet he offered me these, and eternal youth, had
I submitted to his desires. Having rejected the offers of Phœbus,
I remain unmarried. But now my more vigorous years have passed by, and
crazy old age approaches with its trembling step, and this must I long
endure.
“For thou beholdest me, having now lived seven ages; it remains for me
to equal the number of particles of the dust; {yet} to behold three
hundred harvests, {and} three hundred vintages. The time will come, when
length of days will make me diminutive from a person so large; and when
my limbs, wasted by old age, will be reduced to the most trifling
weight. {Then} I shall not seem to have {once} been beloved, nor {once}
to have pleased a God. Even Phœbus himself will, perhaps, not recognize
me; or, {perhaps}, he will deny that he loved me. To that degree shall I
be said to be changed; and though perceived by none, I shall still be
recognized by my voice. My voice the Destinies will leave me.”
[Footnote 11: _Parthenope._--Ver. 101. The city of Naples, or
Neapolis, was called Parthenope from the Siren of that name, who
was said to have been buried there.]
[Footnote 12: _Son of Æolus._--Ver. 103. Misenus, the trumpeter,
was said to have been the son of Æolus. From him the promontory
Misenum received its name.]
[Footnote 13: _Long-lived Sibyl._--Ver. 104. The Sibyls were said
by some to have their name from the fact of their revealing the
will of the Deities, as in the Æolian dialect, Σιὸς was ‘a God,’
and βουλὴ was the Greek for ‘will.’ According to other writers,
they were so called from Σίου βύλλη, ‘full of the Deity.’]
[Footnote 14: _Juno of Avernus._--Ver. 114. The Infernal, or
Avernian Juno, is a title sometimes given by the poets to
Proserpine.]
EXPLANATION.
The early fathers of the church, and particularly Justin, in their
works in defence of Christianity, made use of the Sibylline verses
of the ancients. The Emperor Constantine, too, in his harangue
before the Nicene Council, quoted them, as redounding to the
advantage of Christianity; although he then stated that many persons
did not believe that the Sibyls were the authors of them. St.
Augustin, too, employs several of their alleged predictions to
enforce the truths of the Christian religion.
Sebastian Castalio has warmly maintained the truth of the oracles
contained in these verses, though he admits that they have been very
much interpolated. Other writers, however, having carefully examined
them, have pronounced them to be spurious, and so many pious frauds;
which, perhaps, may be pronounced to be the general opinion at the
present day. We will, however, shortly enquire how many Sibyls of
antiquity there were, and when they lived; whether any of their
works were ever promulgated for the perusal of the public, and
whether the verses which still exist under their name have any
ground to be considered genuine.
There is no doubt but that in ancient times there existed certain
women, who, led by a frenzied enthusiasm, uttered obscure sentences,
which passed for predictions with the credulous people who went to
consult them. Virgil and Ovid represent Æneas as going to the cave
of the Cumæan Sibyl, to learn from her the success of the wars he
should be engaged in. Plato, Strabo, Plutarch, Pliny, Solinus, and
Pausanias, with many other writers, have mentioned the Sibyls; and
it would be absurd, with Faustus Socinus, to affirm that no Sibyls
ever existed. Indeed, Plato and other authors of antiquity go so far
as to say, that by their productions they were essentially the
benefactors of mankind. Some mention but one Sibyl, who was born
either at Babylon or at Erythræ, in Phrygia. Diodorus Siculus
mentions one only, and assigns Delphi as her locality, calling her
by the name of Daphne. Strabo and Stephanus Byzantinus mention two,
the one of Gergæ, a little town near Troy, and the other of
Mermessus, in the same country. Solinus reckons three; the Delphian,
named Herophile, the Erythræan, and the Cumæan. According to Varro,
their number amounted to ten, whose names, in the order of time
which Pausanias assigns them, were as follows:
The first and the most ancient was the Delphian, who lived before
the Trojan war. The second was the Erythræan, who was said to have
been the first composer of acrostic verses, and who also lived
before the Trojan war. The third was the Cumæan, who was mentioned
by Nævius in his book on the first Punic war, and by Piso in his
annals. She is the Sibyl spoken of in the Æneid, and her name was
Deïphobe. The fourth was the Samian, called Pitho, though Eusebius
calls her Herophile, and he makes her to have lived about the time
of Numa Pompilius. The fifth, whose name was Amalthea, or Demophile,
lived at Cumæ, in Asia Minor. The sixth was the Hellespontine Sibyl,
born at Mermessus, near Troy. The seventh was the Libyan, mentioned
by Euripides. Some suppose that she was the first who had the name
of Sibyl, which was given to her by the people of Africa. The eighth
was the Persian or Babylonian Sibyl, whom Suidas names Sambetha. The
ninth was the Phrygian, who delivered her oracles at Ancyra, in
Phrygia. The tenth was the Tiburtine, who was called Albunea, and
prophesied near Tibur, or Tivoli, on the banks of the Anio. In the
present story Ovid evidently intends to represent these various
Sibyls as being the same person; and to account for her prolonged
existence, by representing that Apollo had granted her a life to
last for many ages.
Several ages before the Christian era, the Romans had a collection
of verses, which were commonly attributed to the Sibyls. These they
often consulted; and in the time of Tarquinius Superbus, two
officers were appointed for the purpose of keeping the Sibylline
books, whose business it was to look in them on the occasion of any
public calamity, in order to see whether it had been foretold and to
make their report to the Senate. The books were kept in a stone
chest, beneath the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. These Duumvirs
continued until the year of Rome 388, when eight others being added,
they formed the College of the Decemvirs. About eighty-three years
before the Christian era five other keepers of these books were
added, who thus formed the body called the Quindecimvirs.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Aulus Gellius, Servius, and many other
writers, state the following as the origin of the Sibylline books.
An aged woman presented to Tarquinius Superbus three books that
contained the oracles of the Sibyls, and demanded a large sum for
them. The king refusing to buy them, she went and burned them; and
returning, asked the same price for the remaining six, as she had
done for the original number. Being again repulsed, she burnt three
more, and coming back again, demanded the original price for the
three that remained. Astonished at the circumstance, the king bought
the books. Pliny and Solinus vary the story a little, in saying that
the woman at first presented but three books, and that she destroyed
two of them.
It is generally supposed, that on the burning of the Capitol, about
eighty-three years before the Christian era, the Sibylline books of
Tarquinius Superbus were destroyed in the flames. To repair the
loss, the Romans despatched officers to various cities of Italy, and
even to Asia and Africa, to collect whatever they could find, under
the name of Sibylline oracles. P. Gabinius, M. Ottacilius, and L.
Valerius brought back a large collection, of which the greater part
was rejected, and the rest committed to the care of the
Quindecimvirs. Augustus ordered a second revision of them; and,
after a severe scrutiny, those which were deemed to be genuine, were
deposited in a box, under a statue of Apollo Palatinus. Tiberius
again had them examined, and some portion of them was then rejected.
Finally, about the year A.D. 399, Stilcho, according to Rutilius
Numatianus, or rather, the Emperor Honorius himself, ordered them to
be burnt.
The so-called collection of Sibylline verses which now exists is
generally looked upon as spurious; or if any part is genuine, it
bears so small a proportion to the fictitious portion, that it has
shared in the condemnation. Indeed, their very distinctness stamps
them as forgeries; for they speak of the mysteries of Christianity
in undisguised language, and the names of our Saviour and the Virgin
Mary occur as openly as they do in the Holy Scriptures.
It is a singular assertion of St. Jerome, that the gift of prophecy
was a reward to the Sibyls for their chastity. If such was the
condition, we have a right to consider that the Deities were very
partial in the distribution of their rewards, and in withholding
them from the multitudes who, we are bound in charity to believe,
were as deserving as the Sibyls themselves of the gift of
vaticination.
FABLE IV. [XIV.154-247]
Æneas arrives at Caieta, in Italy. Achæmenides, an Ithacan, who is
on board his ship, meets his former companion Macareus there; and
relates to him his escape from being devoured by Polyphemus.
Macareus afterwards tells him how Ulysses had received winds from
Æolus in a hide, and by that means had a prosperous voyage; till,
on the bag being opened by the sailors in their curiosity, the winds
rushed out, and raised a storm that drove them back to Æolia, and
afterwards upon the coast of the Læstrygons.
While the Sibyl was relating such things as these, during the steep
ascent, the Trojan Æneas emerged from the Stygian abodes to the Eubœan
city,[15] and the sacrifice being performed, after the usual manner, he
approached the shores that not yet bore the name of his nurse;[16] here,
too, Macareus of Neritos, the companion of the experienced Ulysses, had
rested, after the prolonged weariness of his toils. He recognized
Achæmenides, once deserted in the midst of the crags of Ætna; and
astonished that, thus unexpectedly found again, he was yet alive, he
said, “What chance, or what God, Achæmenides, preserves thee? why is a
barbarian[17] vessel carrying {thee}, a Greek? What land is sought by
thy bark?”
No longer ragged in his clothing, {but} now his own {master},[18] and
wearing clothes tacked together with no thorns, Achæmenides says, “Again
may I behold Polyphemus, and those jaws streaming with human blood,
if my home and Ithaca be more delightful to me than this bark; if I
venerate Æneas any less than my own father. And, though I were to do
everything {possible}, I could never be sufficiently grateful. ’Tis he
that has caused that I speak, and breathe, and behold the heavens and
the luminary of the sun; and can I be ungrateful, and forgetful of this?
{’Tis through him} that this life of mine did not fall into the jaws of
the Cyclop; and though I were, even now, to leave the light of life,
I should either be buried in a tomb, or, at least, not in that paunch
{of his}. What were my feelings at that moment (unless, indeed, terror
deprived me of all sense and feeling), when, left behind, I saw you
making for the open sea? I wished to shout aloud, but I was fearful of
betraying myself to the enemy; the shouts of Ulysses were very nearly
causing[19] the destruction of even your ship. I beheld him when, having
torn up a mountain, he hurled the immense rock in the midst of the
waves; again I beheld him hurling huge stones, with his giant arms, just
as though impelled by the powers of the engine of war. And, forgetful
that I was not in it, I was now struck with horror lest the waves or the
stones might overwhelm the ship.
“But when your flight had saved you from a cruel death, he, indeed,
roaring with rage, paced about all Ætna, and groped out the woods with
his hands, and, deprived of his eye, stumbled against the rocks; and
stretching out his arms, stained with gore, into the sea, he cursed the
Grecian race, and he said, ‘Oh! that any accident would bring back
Ulysses to me, or any one of his companions, against whom my anger might
find vent, whose entrails I might devour, whose living limbs I might
mangle with my right hand, whose blood might drench my throat, whose
crushed members might quiver beneath my teeth: how insignificant, or how
trifling, {then}, would be the loss of my sight, that has been taken
from me!’ This, and more, he said in his rage. Ghastly horror took
possession of me, as I beheld his features, streaming even yet with
blood, and the ruthless hands, and the round space deprived of the eye,
and his limbs, and his beard matted with human blood. Death was before
my eyes, {and} yet that was the least of my woes. I imagined that[20]
now he was about to seize hold of me, and that now he was on the very
point of swallowing my vitals within his own; in my mind was fixed the
impress of that time when I beheld two bodies of my companions three or
four times dashed against the ground. Throwing himself on the top of
them, just like a shaggy lion, he stowed away their entrails, their
flesh, their bones with the white marrow, and their quivering limbs, in
his ravenous paunch. A trembling seized me; in my alarm I stood without
blood {in my features}, as I beheld him both chewing and belching out
his bloody banquet from his mouth, and vomiting pieces mingled with
wine; {and} I fancied that such a doom was in readiness for wretched me.
“Concealing myself for many a day, and trembling at every sound, and
both fearing death and {yet} desirous to die, satisfying hunger with
acorns, and with grass mixed with leaves, alone, destitute, desponding,
abandoned to death and destruction, after a length of time, I beheld a
ship not far off; by signs I prayed for deliverance, and I ran down to
the shore; I prevailed; and a Trojan ship received me, a Greek. Do thou
too, dearest of my companions, relate thy adventures, and those of thy
chief, and of the company, which, together with thee, entrusted
{themselves} to the ocean.”
The other relates how that Æolus rules over the Etrurian seas; Æolus,
the grandson of Hippotas, who confines the winds in their prison, which
the Dulichean chief had received, shut up in a leather {bag}, a wondrous
gift; how, with a favouring breeze, he had proceeded for nine days, and
had beheld the land he was bound for; {and how}, when the first morning
after the ninth had arrived, his companions, influenced by envy and a
desire for booty, supposing it to be gold, had cut the fastenings of the
winds; {and how}, through these, the ship had gone back along the waves
through which it had just come, and had returned to the harbour of the
Æolian king.
“Thence,” said he, “we came to the ancient city[21] of Lamus, the
Læstrygon. Antiphates was reigning in that land. I was sent to him, two
in number accompanying me; and with difficulty was safety procured by me
and one companion, by flight; the third of us stained the accursed jaws
of the Læstrygon with his blood. Antiphates pursued us as we fled, and
called together his followers; they flocked together, and, without
intermission, they showered both stones and beams, and they overwhelmed
men, and ships, too, did they overwhelm; yet one, which carried us and
Ulysses himself, escaped. A part of our companions {thus} lost, grieving
and lamenting much we arrived at those regions which thou perceivest
afar hence. Look! afar hence thou mayst perceive an island,[22] that has
been seen by me; and do thou, most righteous of the Trojans, thou son of
a Goddess, (for, since the war is ended, thou art not, Æneas, to be
called an enemy) I warn thee--avoid the shores of Circe.”
[Footnote 15: _Eubœan city._--Ver. 155. ‘Cumæ’ was said to have
been founded by a colony from Chalcis, in Eubœa.]
[Footnote 16: _Of his nurse._--Ver. 157. Caieta was the name of
the nurse of Æneas, who was said to have been buried there by
him.]
[Footnote 17: _Barbarian._--Ver. 163. That is, Trojan; to the
Greeks all people but themselves were βαρβαροὶ.]
[Footnote 18: _His own master._--Ver. 166. ‘Now his own master,’
in contradistinction to the time when Macareus looked on himself
as the devoted victim of Polyphemus.]
[Footnote 19: _Nearly causing._--Ver. 181. Homer, in the Ninth
Book of the Odyssey, recounts how Ulysses, after having put out
the eye of Polyphemus, fled to his own ship, and when the Giant
followed, called out to him, disclosing his real name; whereas, he
had before told the Cyclop that his name was οὔτις, ‘nobody.’ By
this indiscreet action, the Cyclop was able to ascertain the
locality of the ship, and nearly sank it with a mass of rock which
he hurled in that direction.]
[Footnote 20: _I imagined that._--Ver. 203-4. ‘Et jam prensurum,
jam, jam mea viscera rebar In sua mersurum.’ Clarke thus renders
these words; ‘And now I thought he would presently whip me up, and
cram my bowels within his own.’]
[Footnote 21: _The ancient city._--Ver. 233. This city was
afterwards known as Formiæ, in Campania.]
[Footnote 22: _An island._--Ver. 245. Macareus here points towards
the promontory of Circæum, which was supposed to have formerly
been an island.]
EXPLANATION.
Æolus, according to Servius and Varro, was the son of Hippotas, and
about the time of the Trojan war reigned in those islands, which
were formerly called ‘Vulcaniæ,’ but were afterwards entitled
‘Æoliæ,’ and are now known as the Lipari Islands. Homer mentions
only one of these islands, which were seven in number. He calls it
by the name of Æolia, and probably means the one which was called
Lipara, and gave its name to the group, and which is now known as
Strombolo. Æolus seems to have been a humane prince, who received
with hospitality those who had the misfortune to be cast on his
island. Diodorus Siculus says that he was especially careful to warn
strangers of the shoals and dangerous places in the neighbouring
seas. Pliny adds, that he applied himself to the study of the winds,
by observing the direction of the smoke of the volcanos, with which
the isles abounded.
Being considered as an authority on that subject, at a time when
navigation was so little reduced to an art, the poets readily
feigned that he was the master of the winds, and kept them pent up
in caverns, under his control. The story of the winds being
entrusted to Ulysses, which Ovid here copies from Homer, is merely a
poetical method of saying, that Ulysses disregarded the advice of
Æolus, and staying out at sea beyond the time he had been
recommended, was caught in a violent tempest. It is possible that
Homer may allude to some custom which prevailed among the ancients,
similar to that of the Lapland witches in modern times, who pretend
to sell a favourable wind, enclosed in a bag, to mariners. Homer
speaks of the six sons and six daughters of Æolus; perhaps they were
the twelve principal winds, upon which he had expended much pains in
making accurate observations.
Bochart suggests that the isle of Lipara was called by the
Phœnicians ‘Nibara,’ on account of its volcano, (that word
signifying ‘a torch,’) which name was afterwards corrupted to
Lipara.
FABLE V. [XIV.248-319]
Achæmenides lands in the isle of Circe, and is sent to her palace
with some of his companions. Giving them a favourable reception, she
makes them drink of a certain liquor; and, on her touching them with
a wand, they are immediately transformed into swine. Eurylochus, who
has refused to drink, informs Ulysses, who immediately repairs to
the palace, and obliges Circe to restore to his companions their
former shape.
“We, too, having fastened our ships to the shores of Circe, remembering
Antiphates and the cruel Cyclop, refused to go and enter her unknown
abode. By lot were we chosen; that lot sent both me and the faithful
Polytes, and Eurylochus, and Elpenor, too much addicted[23] to wine, and
twice nine[24] companions, to the walls of Circe. Soon as we reached
them, and stood at the threshold of her abode; a thousand wolves, and
bears and lionesses mixed with the wolves, created fear through meeting
them; but not one {of them} needed to be feared, and not one was there
to make a wound on our bodies. They wagged their caressing tails in the
air, and fawning, they attended our footsteps, until the female servants
received us, and led us, through halls roofed with marble, to their
mistress.
“She is sitting in a beautiful alcove, on her wonted throne, and clad in
a splendid robe; over it she is arrayed in a garment of gold tissue. The
Nereids and the Nymphs, together, who tease no fleeces with the motion
of their fingers nor draw out the ductile threads, are placing the
plants in due order, and arranging in baskets the flowers confusedly
scattered, and the shrubs variegated in their hues. She herself
prescribes the tasks that they perform; she herself is aware what is the
use of every leaf; what combined virtue there is in them when mixed; and
giving attention, she examines {each} herb as weighed.[25] When she
beheld us, having given and received a salutation, she gladdened her
countenance, and granted every thing to our wishes. And without delay,
she ordered the grains of parched barley to be mingled, and honey, and
the strength of wine, and curds with pressed milk. Secretly, she added
drugs to be concealed beneath this sweetness. We received the cups
presented by her sacred right hand. Soon as, in our thirst, we quaffed
them with parching mouth, and the ruthless Goddess, with her wand,
touched the extremity of our hair (I am both ashamed, and {yet} I will
tell of it), I began to grow rough with bristles, and no longer to be
able to speak; and, instead of words, to utter a harsh noise, and to
grovel on the ground with all my face. I felt, too, my mouth receive a
hard skin, with its crooked snout, and my neck swell with muscles; and
with the member with which, the moment before, I had received the cup,
with the same did I impress my footsteps.
“With the rest who had suffered the same treatment (so powerful are
enchanted potions) I was shut up in a pig-sty; and we perceived that
Eurylochus, alone, had not the form of a swine; he, alone, escaped the
proffered draught. And had he not escaped it, I should even, at this
moment, have still been one of the bristle-clad animals; nor would
Ulysses, having been informed by him of so direful a disaster, have come
to Circe as {our} avenger. The Cyllenian peace-bearer had given him a
white flower; the Gods above call it ‘Moly;’[26] it is supported by a
black root. Protected by that, and at the same time by the instruction
of the inhabitants of heaven, he entered the dwelling of Circe, and
being invited to the treacherous draughts, he repelled her, while
endeavouring to stroke his hair with her wand, and prevented her, in her
terror, with his drawn sword. Upon that, her promise {was given}, and
right hands were exchanged; and, being received into her couch, he
required the bodies of his companions as his marriage gift.
“We are {then} sprinkled with the more favouring juices of harmless
plants, and are smitten on the head with a blow from her inverted wand;
and charms are repeated, the converse of the charms that had been
uttered. The longer she chaunts them, the more erect are we raised from
the ground; and the bristles fall off, and the fissure leaves our cloven
feet; our shoulders return; our arms become attached[27] to their upper
parts. In tears, we embrace him {also} in tears; and we cling to the
neck of our chief; nor do we utter any words before those that testify
that we are grateful.
“The space of a year detained us there; and, as {I was} present for such
a length of time, I saw many things; and many things I heard with my
ears. This, too, among many other things {I heard}, which one of the
four handmaids appointed for such rites, privately informed me of. For
while Circe was passing her time apart with my chief, she pointed out to
me a youthful statue made of snow-white marble, carrying a woodpecker on
its head, erected in the hallowed temple, and bedecked with many a
chaplet. When I asked, and desired to know who he was, and why he was
venerated in the sacred temple, and why he carried that bird; she
said:-- ‘Listen, Macareus, learn hence, too, what is the power of my
mistress, and give attention to what I say.’”
[Footnote 23: _Too much addicted._--Ver. 252. He alludes to the
fate of Elpenor, who afterwards, in a fit of intoxication, fell
down stairs, and broke his neck.]
[Footnote 24: _Twice nine._--Ver. 253. Homer mentions Eurylochus
and twenty-two others as the number, being one more than the
number here given by Ovid.]
[Footnote 25: _As weighed._--Ver. 270. Of course drugs and simples
would require to be weighed before being mixed in their due
proportions.]
[Footnote 26: _Call it ‘Moly.’_--Ver. 292. Homer, in the tenth
Book of the Odyssey, says that this plant had a black root, and a
flower like milk.]
[Footnote 27: _Become attached._--Ver. 304-5. ‘Subjecta lacertis
Brachia sunt,’ Clarke has not a very lucid translation of these
words. His version is, ‘Brachia are put under our lacerti.’ The
‘brachium’ was the forearm, or part, from the wrist to the elbow;
while the ‘lacertus’ was the muscular part, between the elbow and
the shoulder.]
EXPLANATION.
Ulysses having stayed some time at the court of Circe, where all
were immersed in luxury and indolence, begins to reflect on the
degraded state to which he is reduced, and resolutely abandons so
unworthy a mode of life. This resolution is here typified by the
herb moly, the symbol of wisdom. His companions, changed into swine,
are emblems of the condition to which a life of sensuality reduces
its votaries; while the wolves, lions, and horses show that man in
such a condition fails not to exhibit the various bad propensities
of the brute creation. Thus was the prodigal son, mentioned in the
New Testament, reduced to a level with the brutes, ‘and fain would
have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.’
It is not improbable that Circe was the original from which the
Eastern romancer depicted the enchantress queen Labè in the story of
Beder and Giauhare in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. They were
both ladies of light reputation, both fond of exercising their
magical power on strangers, and in exactly the same manner: and as
Ulysses successfully resisted the charms of Circe, so Beder thwarted
the designs of Labè; but here the parallel ends.
FABLE VI. [XIV.320-440]
Circe, being enamoured of Picus, and being unable to shake his
constancy to his wife Canens, transforms him into a woodpecker, and
his retinue into various kinds of animals. Canens pines away with
grief at the loss of her husband, and the place where she disappears
afterwards bears her name.
“‘Picus, the son of Saturn, was a king in the regions of Ausonia, an
admirer of horses useful in warfare. The form of this person was such as
thou beholdest. Thou thyself {here} mayst view his comeliness, and thou
mayst approve of his real form from this feigned resemblance of it. His
disposition was equal to his beauty; and not yet, in his age, could he
have beheld four times the {Olympic} contest celebrated each fifth year
in the Grecian Elis. He had attracted, by his {good} looks, the Dryads,
born in the hills of Latium; the Naiads, the fountain Deities, wooed
him; {Nymphs}, which Albula,[28] and which the waters of Numicus, and
which those of Anio, and Almo but very short[29] in its course, and the
rapid Nar,[30] and Farfarus,[31] with its delightful shades, produced,
and those which haunt the forest realms of the Scythian[32] Diana, and
the neighbouring streams.
“‘Yet, slighting all these, he was attached to one Nymph, whom, on the
Palatine hill, Venilia is said once to have borne to the Ionian
Janus.[33] Soon as she was ripe with marriageable years, she was
presented to Laurentine Picus, preferred {by her} before all others;
wondrous, indeed, was she in her beauty, but more wondrous still,
through her skill in singing; thence she was called Canens.[34] She was
wont, with her voice, to move the woods and the rocks, and to tame the
wild beasts, and to stop {the course of} the long rivers, and to detain
the fleeting birds. While she was singing her songs with her feminine
voice, Picus had gone from his dwelling into the Laurentine fields, to
pierce the wild boars there bred; and he was pressing the back of his
spirited horse, and was carrying two javelins in his left hand, having a
purple cloak fastened with yellow gold. The daughter of the Sun, too,
had come into the same wood; and that she might pluck fresh plants on
the fruitful hills, she had left behind the Circæan fields, {so} called
after her own name.
“‘Hidden by the shrubs, soon as she beheld the youth, she was astounded;
the plants which she had gathered fell from her bosom, and a flame
seemed to pervade her entire marrow. As soon as she regained her
presence of mind from {so} powerful a shock, she was about to confess
what she desired; the speed of his horse, and the surrounding guards,
caused that she could not approach. ‘And yet thou shalt not escape me,’
she said, ‘even shouldst thou be borne on the winds, if I only know
myself, if all potency in herbs has not vanished, and if my charms do
not deceive me.’ {Thus} she said; and she formed the phantom of a
fictitious wild boar, with no substance, and commanded it to run past
the eyes of the king, and to seem to go into a forest, thick set with
trees, where the wood is most dense, and where the spot is inaccessible
to a horse. There is no delay; Picus, forthwith, unconsciously follows
the phantom of the prey; hastily too, he leaves the reeking back of his
steed, and, in pursuit of a vain hope, wanders on foot in the lofty
forest. She repeats prayers to herself, and utters magical incantations,
and adores strange Gods in strange verses, with which she is wont both
to darken the disk of the snow-white moon, and to draw the clouds that
suck up the moisture, over the head of her father. Then does the sky
become lowering at the repeating of the incantation, and the ground
exhales its vapours; and his companions wander along the darkened paths,
and his guards are separated from the king.
“‘She, having now gained a {favourable} place and opportunity, says, ‘O,
most beauteous {youth}! by thy eyes, which have captivated mine, and by
this graceful person, which makes me, though a Goddess, to be thy
suppliant, favour my passion, and receive the Sun, that beholds all
things, as thy father-in-law, and do not in thy cruelty despise Circe,
the daughter of Titan.’ {Thus} she says. He roughly repels her and her
entreaties: and he says, ‘Whoever thou art, I am not for thee; another
female holds me enthralled, and for a long space of time, I pray, may
she so hold me. I will not pollute the conjugal ties with the love of a
stranger, while the Fates shall preserve for me Canens, the daughter of
Janus.’ The daughter of Titan, having often repeated her entreaties in
vain, says, ‘Thou shalt not depart with impunity, nor shalt thou return
to Canens; and by experience shalt thou learn what one slighted, what
one in love, what a woman, can do; but that one in love, and slighted,
and a woman, is Circe.’
“‘Then twice did she turn herself to the West, and twice to the East;
thrice did she touch the youth with her wand; three charms did she
repeat. He fled; wondering that he sped more swiftly than usual, he
beheld wings on his body; and indignant that he was added suddenly as a
strange bird to the Latian woods, he struck the wild oaks with his hard
beak, and, in his anger, inflicted wounds[35] on the long branches. His
wings took the purple colour of his robe. The piece of gold that had
formed a buckle, and had fastened his garment, became feathers, and his
neck was encompassed with {the colour of} yellow gold; and nothing {now}
remained to Picus of his former {self}, beyond the name.
“‘In the meantime his attendants, having, often in vain, called on Picus
throughout the fields, and, having found him in no direction, meet with
Circe, (for now she has cleared the air, and has allowed the clouds to
be dispersed by the woods and the sun); and they charge her with just
accusations, and demand back their king, and are using violence, and are
preparing to attack her with ruthless weapons. She scatters noxious
venom and poisonous extracts; and she summons together Night, and the
Gods of Night, from Erebus and from Chaos, and she invokes Hecate in
magic howlings. Wondrous to tell, the woods leap from their spot; the
ground utters groans, the neighbouring trees become pallid, the grass
becomes moist, besprinkled with drops of blood; the stones seem to send
forth harsh lowings, the dogs {seem} to bark, and the ground to grow
loathsome with black serpents, and unsubstantial ghosts of the departed
{appear} to flit about. The multitude trembles, astonished at these
prodigies; she touches their astonished faces, as they tremble, with her
enchanted wand. From the touch of this, the monstrous forms of various
wild beasts come upon the young men; his own form remains to no one of
them.
“‘The setting Sun has {now} borne down upon the Tartessian shores;[36]
and in vain is her husband expected, both by the eyes and the longings
of Canens. Her servants and the people run about through all the woods,
and carry lights to meet him. Nor is it enough for the Nymph to weep,
and to tear her hair, and to beat her breast; though all this she does,
she rushes forth, and, in her distraction, she wanders through the
Latian fields. Six nights, and as many returning lights of the Sun,
beheld her, destitute of sleep and of food, going over hills and
valleys, wherever chance led her. Tiber, last {of all}, beheld her, worn
out with weeping and wandering, and reposing her body on his cold banks.
There, with tears, she poured forth words attuned, lamenting, in a low
voice, her very woes, as when the swan, now about to die, sings his own
funereal dirge.
“‘At last, melting with grief, {even} to her thin marrow, she pined
away, and by degrees vanished into light air. Yet the Fame of it became
attached to the spot, which the ancient Muses have properly called
Canens, after the name of the Nymph.’ During that long year, many such
things as these were told me and were seen {by me}. Sluggish and
inactive through idleness, we were ordered again to embark on the deep,
again to set our sails. The daughter of Titan had said that dangerous
paths, and a protracted voyage, and the perils of the raging sea were
awaiting us. I was alarmed, I confess; and having reached these shores,
{here} I remained.”
[Footnote 28: _Albula._--Ver. 328. The ancient name of the river
Tiber was Albula. It was so called from the whiteness of its
water.]
[Footnote 29: _But very short._--Ver. 329. The Almo falls in the
Tiber, close to its own source, whence its present epithet.]
[Footnote 30: _Rapid Nar._--Ver. 330. The ‘Nar’ was a river of
Umbria, which fell into the Tiber.]
[Footnote 31: _Farfarus._--Ver. 330. This river, flowing slowly
through the valleys of the country of the Sabines, received a
pleasant shade from the trees with which its banks were lined.]
[Footnote 32: _Scythian._--Ver. 331. He alludes to the statue of
the Goddess Diana, which, with her worship, Orestes was said to
have brought from the Tauric Chersonesus, and to have established
at Aricia, in Latium. See the Fasti, Book III. l. 263, and Note.]
[Footnote 33: _Ionian Janus._--Ver. 334. Janus was so called
because he was thought to have come from Thessaly, and to have
crossed the Ionian Sea.]
[Footnote 34: _Canens._--Ver. 338. This name literally means
‘singing,’ being the present participle of the Latin verb ‘cano,’
‘to sing.’]
[Footnote 35: _Inflicted wounds._--Ver. 392. The woodpecker is
supposed to tap the bark of the tree with his beak, to ascertain,
from the sound, if it is hollow, and if there are any insects
beneath it.]
[Footnote 36: _Tartessian shores._--Ver. 416. ‘Tartessia’ is here
used as a general term for Western, as Tartessus was a city of the
Western coast of Spain. It afterwards had the name of Carteia, and
is thought to have been situated not far from the site of the
present Cadiz, at the mouth of the Bætis, now called the
Guadalquivir. Some suppose this name to be the same with the
Tarshish of Scripture.]
EXPLANATION.
When names occur in the ancient Mythology, of Oriental origin, we
may conclude that they were imported into Greece and Italy from
Egypt or Phœnicia; and that their stories were derived from the same
sources; such as those of Adonis, Arethusa, Arachne, and Isis. Those
that are derived from the Greek languages are attached to fictions
of purely Greek origin, such as the fables of Daphne, Galantis,
Cygnus, and the Myrmidons; and where the names are of Latin
original, we may conclude that their stories originated in Italy:
such, for instance, as those of Canens, Picus, Anna Perenna, Flora,
Quirinus, and others.
To this rule there are certain exceptions; for both Greece and Italy
occasionally appropriated each other’s traditions, by substituting
the names of one language for those of the other. Thus it would not
be safe to affirm positively that the story of Portumnus and Matuta
is of Latin origin, since Greece lays an equal claim to it under the
names of Leucothoë and Palæmon, while, probably, Cadmus originally
introduced it from Phœnicia, under the names of Ino and Melicerta.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, on the authority of Cato the Censor and
Asellius Sempronius, says that the original inhabitants of Italy
were a Greek colony. Cato and Sempronius state that they were from
Achaia, while Dionysius says that they came from Arcadia, under the
command of Œnotrius. Picus is generally supposed to have been one of
the aboriginal kings of Italy, who was afterwards Deified. Servius,
in his Commentary on the seventh Book of the Æneid, informs us that
Picus pretended to know future events, and made use of a woodpecker,
which he had tamed, for the purpose of his auguries. On this ground,
after his death, it was generally reported that he had been
transformed into that bird, and he was ranked among the Dii
Indigetes of Latium. Dying in his youth, his wife Canens retired to
a solitary spot, where she ended her life, and the intensity of her
grief gave rise to the fable that she had pined away into a sound.
It has been suggested that the story took its rise from the oracles
of Mars among the Sabines, when a woodpecker was said to give the
responses. According to Bochart, it arose from the confusion of the
meaning of the Phœnician word ‘picea,’ which signified a ‘diviner.’
It is the exuberant fancy of Ovid alone which connects Picus with
the story of Circe.
FABLES VII. AND VIII. [XIV.441-526]
Turnus having demanded succour from Diomedes against Æneas, the
Grecian prince, fearing the resentment of Venus, refuses to send him
assistance; and relates how some of his followers have been
transformed by Venus into birds. An Apulian shepherd surprising some
Nymphs, insults them, on which he is changed into a wild olive tree.
Macareus had concluded. And the nurse of Æneas, {now} buried in a marble
urn, had {this} short inscription on her tomb:-- “My foster-child, of
proved piety, here burned me, Caieta, preserved from the Argive flames,
with that fire which was my due.” The fastened cable is loosened from
the grassy bank, and they leave far behind the wiles and the dwelling of
the Goddess, of whom so ill a report has been given, and seek the groves
where the Tiber, darkened with the shade {of trees}, breaks into the sea
with his yellow sands. {Æneas}, too, gains the house and the daughter of
Latinus, the {son of} Faunus;[37] but not without warfare. A war is
waged with a fierce nation, and Turnus is indignant on account of the
wife that had been betrothed to him.[38] All Etruria meets {in battle}
with Latium, and long is doubtful victory struggled for with ardent
arms. Each side increases his strength with foreign forces, and many
take the part of the Rutulians, many that of the Trojan side. Nor {had}
Æneas {arrived} in vain at the thresholds of Evander,[39] but Venulus
came {in vain} to the great city, of the exiled Diomedes. He, indeed,
had founded a very great city under the Iapygian Daunus, and held the
lands given to him in dower.
But after Venulus had executed the commands of Turnus, and had asked for
aid, the Ætolian hero pleaded his resources as an excuse: that he was
not wishful to commit the subjects of his father-in-law to a war, and
that he had no men to arm of the nation of his own countrymen; “And that
ye may not think this a pretext, although my grief be renewed at the
bitter recollection, yet I will endure the recital {of it}. After lofty
Ilion was burnt, and Pergamus had fed the Grecian flames, and the
Narycian hero,[40] having ravished the virgin, distributed that
vengeance upon all, which he alone merited, on account of the virgin; we
were dispersed and driven by the winds over the hostile seas; we Greeks
had to endure lightning, darkness, rain, and the wrath both of the
heavens and of the sea, and Caphareus, the completion of our misery. And
not to detain you by relating these sad events in their order, Greece
might then have appeared even to Priam, worthy of a tear. Yet the care
of the armed universe preserved me, rescued from the waves.
“But again was I driven from Argos, {the land} of my fathers; and genial
Venus exacted satisfaction in vengeance for her former wound: and so
great hardships did I endure on the deep ocean, so great amid arms on
shore, that many a time were they pronounced {happy} by me, whom the
storm, common {to all}, and Caphareus, swallowed up in the
threatening[41] waves; and I wished that I had been one of them. My
companions having now endured the utmost extremities, both in war and on
the ocean, lost courage, and demanded an end of their wanderings. But
Agmon, of impetuous temper, and then embittered as well by misfortunes,
said, ‘What does there remain now, ye men, for your patience to refuse
to endure? What has Cytherea, (supposing her to desire it), that she can
do beyond this? For so long as greater evils are dreaded, there is room
for prayers; but where one’s lot is the most wretched possible, fear is
{trampled} under foot, and the extremity {of misfortune} is free from
apprehensions. Let {Venus} herself hear it, if she likes; let her hate,
as she does {hate}, all the men under the rule of Diomedes. Yet all of
us despise her hate, and this our great power is bought by us at great
price.’
“With such expressions does the Pleuronian[42] Agmon provoke Venus
against her will, and revive her former anger. His words are approved of
by a few. We, the greater number of his friends, rebuke Agmon: and as he
is preparing to answer, his voice and the passage of his voice together
become diminished; his hair changes into feathers; his neck newly
formed, his breast and his back are covered with down; his arms assume
longer feathers; and his elbows curve out into light wings. A great part
of his foot receives toes; his mouth becomes stiff and hardened with
horn, and has its end in a point. Lycus and Idas, and Nycteus, together
with Rhetenor, and Abas, are {all} astounded at him; and while they are
astounded, they assume a similar form; and the greater portion of my
company fly off, and resound around the oars with the flapping of their
wings. Shouldst thou inquire what was the form of these birds so
suddenly made; although it was not that of swans, yet it was approaching
to that of white swans. With difficulty, for my part, do I, the
son-in-law of the Iapygian Daunus, possess these abodes and the parched
fields with a very small remnant of my companions.”
Thus far the grandson of Œneus. Venulus leaves the Calydonian[43] realms
and the Peucetian[44] bays, and the Messapian[45] fields. In these he
beholds a cavern, which, overshadowed by a dense grove, and trickling
with a smooth stream, the God Pan, the half goat, occupies; but once on
a time the Nymphs possessed it. An Apulian shepherd alarmed them, scared
away from that spot; and, at first, he terrified them with a sudden
fear; afterwards, when their presence of mind returned, and they
despised him as he followed, they formed dances, moving their feet to
time. The shepherd abused them; and imitating them with grotesque
capers, he added rustic abuse in filthy language. Nor was he silent,
before the {growing} tree closed his throat. But from this tree and its
sap you may understand {what} were his manners. For the wild olive, by
its bitter berries, indicates the infamy of his tongue; the coarseness
of his words passed into them.
[Footnote 37: _Son of Faunus._--Ver. 449. The parents of Latinus
were Faunus and Marica.]
[Footnote 38: _Betrothed to him._--Ver. 451. Amata, the mother of
Lavinia, had promised her to Turnus, in spite of the oracle of
Faunus, which had declared that she was destined for a foreign
husband.]
[Footnote 39: _Evander._--Ver. 456. His history is given by Ovid
in the first Book of the Fasti.]
[Footnote 40: _Narycian hero._--Ver. 468. Naryx, which was also
called Narycium and Naryce, was a city of Locris. He alludes to
the divine vengeance which punished Ajax Oïleus, who had ravished
Cassandra in the temple of Minerva. For this reason the Greeks
were said to have been afflicted with shipwreck, on their return
after the destruction of Troy.]
[Footnote 41: _Threatening._--Ver. 481. ‘Importunis’ is translated
by Clarke, ‘plaguy.’ For some account of Caphareus, see the
Tristia, or Lament, Book I. El. 1. l. 83. and note.]
[Footnote 42: _Pleuronian._--Ver. 494. Pleuron was a town of
Ætolia, adjoining to Epirus.]
[Footnote 43: _Calydonian._--Ver. 512. That part of Apulia, which
Diomedes received from Daunus, as a dower with his wife, was
called Calydon, from the city of Calydon, in his native Ætolia.]
[Footnote 44: _Peucetian._--Ver. 513. Apulia was divided by the
river Aufidus into two parts, Peucetia and Daunia. Peucetia was to
the East, and Daunia lay to the West. According to Antoninus
Liberalis, Daunus, Iapyx, and Peucetius, the sons of Lycaon, were
the first to colonize these parts.]
[Footnote 45: _Messapian._--Ver. 513. Messapia was a name given to
a part of Calabria, from its king Messapus, who aided Turnus
against Æneas.]
EXPLANATION.
Latinus having been told by an oracle that a foreign prince should
come into his country and marry his daughter Lavinia, received Æneas
hospitably, and formed an alliance with him, promising him his
daughter in marriage; on which Turnus, who was the nephew of Amata,
his wife, and to whom Lavinia was betrothed, declared war against
Æneas.
The ancient historians tell us, that, on returning from the siege of
Troy, Diomedes found that his throne had been usurped by Cyllabarus,
who had married his wife Ægiale. Not having sufficient forces to
dispossess the intruder, he sought a retreat in Italy, where he
built the city of Argyripa, or Argos Hippium. Diomedes having
married the daughter of Daunus, quarrelled with his father-in-law,
and was killed in fight; on which his companions fled to an adjacent
island, which, from his name, was called Diomedea. It was afterwards
reported, that on their flight they were changed into birds, and
that Venus inflicted this punishment, in consequence of Diomedes
having wounded her at the siege of Troy. Of this story a confused
version is here presented by Ovid, who makes the transformation to
take place in the lifetime of Diomedes. It is supposed that the fact
of the island being the favourite resort of swans and herons,
facilitated this story of their transformation. Pliny and Solinus
add to this marvellous account by stating, that these birds fawned
upon all Greeks who entered the island, and fled from the people of
all other nations. Ovid says that the birds resembled swans, while
other writers thought them to be herons, storks, or falcons.
The ancient authors are utterly silent as to the rude shepherd who
was changed into a wild olive, but the story was probably derived by
Ovid from some local tradition.
FABLES IX. AND X. [XIV.527-608]
Turnus sets fire to the fleet of Æneas: but Cybele transforms the
ships into sea Nymphs. After the death of Turnus, his capital,
Ardea, is burnt, and a bird arises out of the flames. Venus obtains
of Jupiter that her son, after so many heroic deeds, shall be
received into the number of the Gods.
When the ambassador had returned thence, bringing word that the Ætolian
arms had been refused them, the Rutulians carried on the warfare
prepared for, without their forces; and much blood was shed on either
side. Lo! Turnus bears the devouring torches against the {ships},
fabrics of pine; and those, whom the waves have spared, are {now} in
dread of fire. And now the flames were burning the pitch and the wax,
and the other elements of flame, and were mounting the lofty mast to the
sails, and the benches of the curved ships were smoking; when the holy
Mother of the Gods, remembering that these pines were cut down on the
heights of Ida, filled the air with the tinkling of the clashing cymbal,
and with the noise of the blown boxwood {pipe}. Borne through the
yielding air by her harnessed lions, she said: “Turnus, in vain dost
thou hurl the flames with thy sacrilegious right hand; I will save {the
ships}, and the devouring flames shall not, with my permission, burn a
portion, and the {very} limbs of my groves.”
As the Goddess speaks, it thunders; and following the thunder, heavy
showers fall, together with bounding hailstones; the brothers, sons of
Astræus, arouse both the air and the swelling waves with sudden
conflicts, and rush to the battle. The genial Mother, using the strength
of one of these, first bursts the hempen cables of the Phrygian fleet,
and carries the ships headlong, and buries them beneath the ocean. Their
hardness being now softened, and their wood being changed into flesh,
the crooked sterns are changed into the features of the head; the oars
taper off in fingers and swimming feet; that which has been so before,
is {still} the side; and the keel, laid below in the middle of the ship,
is changed, for the purposes of the back bone. The cordage becomes soft
hair, the yards {become} arms. Their colour is azure, as it was before.
As Naiads of the ocean, with their virgin sports they agitate those
waves, which before they dreaded; and, born on the rugged mountains,
they inhabit the flowing sea; their origin influences them not. And yet,
not forgetting how many dangers they endured on the boisterous ocean,
often do they give a helping hand to the tossed ships; unless any one is
carrying men of the Grecian race.
Still keeping in mind the Phrygian catastrophe, they hated the
Pelasgians; and, with joyful countenances, they looked upon the
fragments of the ship of him of Neritos; and with pleasure did they see
the ship of Alcinoüs[46] become hard upon the breakers, and stone
growing over the wood.
There is a hope that, the fleet having received life in the form of sea
Nymphs, the Rutulian may desist from the war through fear, on account of
this prodigy. He persists, {however}, and each side has {its own}
Deities;[47] and they have courage, equal to the Gods. And now they do
not seek kingdoms as a dower, nor the sceptre of a father-in-law, nor
thee, virgin Lavinia, but {only} to conquer; and they wage the war
through shame at desisting. At length, Venus sees the arms of her son
victorious, and Turnus falls; Ardea falls, which, while Turnus lived,
was called ‘the mighty.’ After ruthless flames consumed it, and its
houses sank down amid the heated embers, a bird, then known for the
first time, flew aloft from the midst of the heap, and beat the ashes
with the flapping of its wings. The voice, the leanness, the paleness,
and every thing that befits a captured city, and the very name of the
city, remain in that {bird}; and Ardea itself is bewailed by {the
beating of} its wings.
And now the merit of Æneas had obliged all the Deities, and Juno
herself, to put an end to their former resentment; when, the power of
the rising Iülus being now well established, the hero, the son of
Cytherea, was ripe for heaven, Venus, too, had solicited the Gods above;
and hanging round the neck of her parent had said: “My father, {who
hast} never {proved} unkind to me at any time, I beseech thee now to be
most indulgent {to me}; and to grant, dearest {father}, to my Æneas,
who, {born} of my blood, has made thee a grandsire, a godhead, {even}
though of the lowest class; so that thou only grant him one. It is
enough to have once beheld the unsightly realms, {enough} to have once
passed over the Stygian streams.” The Gods assented; nor did his royal
wife keep her countenance unmoved; {but}, with pleased countenance, she
nodded assent. Then her father said; “You are worthy of the gift of
heaven; both thou who askest, and he, for whom thou askest: receive, my
daughter, what thou dost desire.” {Thus} he decrees. She rejoices, and
gives thanks to her parent; and, borne by her harnessed doves through
the light air, she arrives at the Laurentine shores; where Numicius,[48]
covered with reeds, winds to the neighbouring sea with the waters of his
stream. Him she bids to wash off from Æneas whatever is subject to
death, and to bear it beneath the ocean in his silent course.
The horned {river} performed the commands of Venus; and with his waters
washed away from Æneas whatever was mortal, and sprinkled him. His
superior essence remained. His mother anointed his body {thus} purified
with divine odours, and touched his face with ambrosia, mingled with
sweet nectar, and made him a God. Him the people of Quirinus, called
Indiges,[49] and endowed with a temple and with altars.
[Footnote 46: _Ship of Alcinoüs._--Ver. 565. Alcinoüs, the king of
the Phæacians, having saved Ulysses from shipwreck, gave him a
ship in which to return to Ithaca. Neptune, to revenge the
injuries of his son Polyphemus, changed the ship into a rock.]
[Footnote 47: _Its own Deities._--Ver. 568. The Trojans were aided
by Venus, while Juno favoured the Rutulians.]
[Footnote 48: _Numicius._--Ver. 599. Livy, in the first Book of
his History, seems to say that Æneas lost his life in a battle,
fought near the Numicius, a river of Latium. He is generally
supposed to have been drowned there.]
[Footnote 49: _Indiges._--Ver. 608. Cicero says, that ‘those, who
for their merits were reckoned in the number of the Gods, and who
formerly living on earth, and afterwards lived among the Gods (in
Diis agerent), were called Indigetes;’ thus implying that the word
‘Indiges’ came from ‘in Diis ago;’ ‘to live among the Gods.’ This
seems a rather far-fetched derivation. The true meaning of the
word seems to be ‘native,’ or ‘indigenous;’ and it applies to a
person Deified, and considered as a tutelary Deity of his native
country. Most probably, it is derived from ‘in,’ or ‘indu,’ the
old Latin form of ‘in,’ and γείνω (for γίνομαι), ‘to be born.’
Some would derive the word from ‘in,’ negative, and ‘ago,’ to
speak, as signifying Deities, whose names were not be mentioned.]
EXPLANATION.
It is asserted by some writers, that when the ships of Æneas were
set on fire by Turnus, a tempest arose, which extinguished the
flames; on which circumstance the story here related by Ovid was
founded. Perhaps Virgil was the author of the fiction, as he is the
first known to have related it, and is closely followed by Ovid in
the account of the delivery of the ships.
The story of the heron arising out of the flames of Ardea seems to
be founded on a very simple fact. It is merely a poetical method of
accounting for the Latin name of that bird, which was very plentiful
in the vicinity of the city of Ardea, and, perhaps, thence derived
its name of ‘ardea.’ The story may have been the more readily
suggested to the punning mind of Ovid, from the resemblance of the
Latin verb ‘ardeo,’ signifying ‘to burn,’ to that name.
Some of the ancient authors say, that after killing Turnus and
marrying Lavinia, Æneas was killed in battle with Mezentius, after a
reign of three years, leaving his wife pregnant with a son,
afterwards known by the name of Sylvius. His body not being found
after the battle, it was given out that his Goddess mother had
translated him to heaven, and he was thenceforth honoured by the
name of Jupiter Indiges.
FABLE XI. [XIV.609-697]
Vertumnus, enamoured of Pomona, assumes several shapes for the
purpose of gaining her favour; and having transformed himself into
an old woman, succeeds in effecting his object.
From that time Alba and the Latin state were under the sway of Ascanius
with the two names;[50] Sylvius[51] succeeded him; sprung of whom,
Latinus had a renewed name, together with the ancient sceptre. Alba
succeeded the illustrious Latinus; Epitos {sprang} from him; {and} next
to him {were} Capetus, and Capys; but Capys was the first {of these}.
Tiberinus received the sovereignty after them; and, drowned in the waves
of the Etrurian river, he gave his name to the stream. By him Remulus
and the fierce Acrota were begotten; Remulus, {who was} the elder,
an imitator of the lightnings, perished by the stroke[52] of a
thunder-bolt. Acrota, more moderate than his brother {in his views},
handed down the sceptre to the valiant Aventinus, who lies buried on the
same mount over which he had reigned; and to that mountain he gave his
name. And now Proca held sway over the Palatine nation.
Under this king Pomona lived; than her, no one among the Hamadryads of
Latium more skilfully tended her gardens, and no one was more attentive
to the produce of the trees; thence she derives her name. She {cares}
not {for} woods, or streams; {but} she loves the country, and the boughs
that bear the thriving fruit. Her right hand is not weighed down with a
javelin, but with a curved pruning-knife, with which, at one time she
crops the {too} luxuriant shoots, and reduces the branches that straggle
without order; at another time, she is engrafting the sucker in the
divided bark, and is {so} finding nourishment for a stranger nursling.
Nor does she suffer them to endure thirst; she waters, too, the winding
fibres of the twisting root with the flowing waters. This is her
delight, this her pursuit; and no desire has she for love. But fearing
the violence of the rustics, she closes her orchard within {a wall}, and
both forbids and flies from the approach of males.
What did not the Satyrs do, a youthful crew expert at the dance, and the
Pans with their brows wreathed with pine, and Sylvanus, ever more
youthful than his years, and the God who scares the thieves either with
his pruning-hook or with his groin, in order that they might gain her?
But yet Vertumnus exceeded even these in his love, nor was he more
fortunate than the rest. O! how often did he carry the ears of corn in a
basket, under the guise of a hardy reaper; and he was the very picture
of a reaper! Many a time, having his temples bound with fresh bay, he
would appear to have been turning over the mowed grass. He often bore a
whip in his sturdy hand, so that you would have sworn that he had that
instant been unyoking the wearied oxen. A pruning-knife being given him,
he was a woodman, and the pruner of the vine. {Now} he was carrying a
ladder, {and} you would suppose he was going to gather fruit.
{Sometimes} he was a soldier, with a sword, {and sometimes} a fisherman,
taking up the rod; in fact, by means of many a shape, he often obtained
access for himself, that he might enjoy the pleasure of gazing on her
beauty.
He, too, having bound his brows with a coloured cap,[53] leaning on a
stick, with white hair placed around his temples, assumed the shape of
an old woman, and entered the well-cultivated gardens, and admired the
fruit; and he said, “So much better off {art thou}!” and {then} he gave
her, thus commended, a few kisses, such as no real old woman {ever}
could have given; and stooping, seated himself upon the grass, looking
up at the branches bending under the load of autumn. There was an elm
opposite, widely spread with swelling grapes; after he had praised it,
together with the vine united {to it}, he said, “{Aye}, but if this
trunk stood unwedded,[54] without the vine, it would have nothing to
attract beyond its leaves; this vine, too, while it finds rest against
the elm, joined to it, if it were not united to it, would lie prostrate
on the ground; {and} yet thou art not influenced by the example of this
tree, and thou dost avoid marriage, and dost not care to be united.
I {only} wish that thou wouldst desire it: Helen would not {then} be
wooed by more suitors, nor she who caused the battles of the Lapithæ,
nor the wife of Ulysses, {so} bold against the cowards. Even now, while
thou dost avoid them courting thee, and dost turn away in disgust,
a thousand suitors desire thee; both Demigod and Gods, and the Deities
which inhabit the mountains of Alba.
“But thou, if thou art wise, {and} if thou dost wish to make a good
match, and to listen to an old woman, (who loves thee more than them
all, and more than thou dost believe) despise a common alliance, and
choose for thyself Vertumnus, as the partner of thy couch; and take me
as a surety {for him}. He is not better known, even to himself, than he
is to me. He is not wandering about, straying here and there, throughout
all the world; these spots only does he frequent; and he does not, like
a great part of thy wooers, fall in love with her whom he sees last.
Thou wilt be his first and his last love, and to thee alone does he
devote his life. Besides, he is young, he has naturally the gift of
gracefulness, he can readily change himself into every shape, and he
will become whatever he shall be bidden, even shouldst thou bid him be
everything. {And} besides, have you {not both} the same tastes? Is {not}
he the first to have the fruits which are thy delight? and does he {not}
hold thy gifts in his joyous right hand? But now he neither longs for
the fruit plucked from the tree, nor the herbs that the garden produces,
with their pleasant juices, nor anything else, but thyself. Have pity on
his passion! and fancy that he who wooes thee is here present, pleading
with my lips; fear, too, the avenging Deities, and the Idalian
{Goddess}, who abhors cruel hearts, and the vengeful anger of her of
Rhamnus.[55]
“And that thou mayst the more stand in awe of them, (for old age has
given me the opportunity of knowing many things) I will relate some
facts very well known throughout all Cyprus, by which thou mayst the
more easily be persuaded and relent.”
[Footnote 50: _The two names._--Ver. 609. The other name of
Ascanius was Iülus. Alba Longa was built by Ascanius.]
[Footnote 51: _Sylvius._--Ver. 610. See the lists of the Alban
kings, as given by Ovid, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and
Eusebius, compared in the notes to the Translation of the Fasti,
Book IV. line 43.]
[Footnote 52: _By the stroke._--Ver. 618. Possibly both Remulus
(if there ever was such a person) and Tullus Hostilius may have
fallen victims to some electrical experiments which they were
making; this may have given rise to the story that they had been
struck with lightning for imitating the prerogative of Jupiter.]
[Footnote 53: _A coloured cap._--Ver. 654. ‘Pictâ redimitus
tempora mitrâ,’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘Having his temples wrapped
up in a painted bonnet.’ The ‘mitra,’ which was worn on the head
by females, was a broad cloth band of various colours. The use of
it was derived from the Eastern nations, and, probably, it was
very similar to our turban. It was much used by the Phrygians, and
in later times among the Greeks and Romans. It is supposed that it
was worn in a broad fillet round the head, and was tied under the
chin with bands. When Clodius went disguised in female apparel to
the rites of Bona Dea, he wore a ‘mitra.’]
[Footnote 54: _Stood unwedded._--Ver. 663. Ovid probably derived
this notion from the language of the Roman husbandmen. Columella
and other writers on agricultural matters often make mention of a
‘maritus ulmus,’ and a ‘nupta vitis,’ in contradistinction to
those trees which stood by themselves.]
[Footnote 55: _Her of Rhamnus._--Ver. 694. See Book III. l. 406.]
EXPLANATION.
Among the Deities borrowed by the Romans from the people of Etruria,
were Vertumnus and Pomona, who presided over gardens and fruits.
Propertius represents Vertumnus as rejoicing at having left Tusculum
for the Roman Forum. According to Varro and Festus, the Romans
offered sacrifices to these Deities, and they had their respective
temples and altars at Rome, the priest of Pomona being called
‘Flamen Pomonalis.’ It is probable that this story originated in the
fancy of the Poet.
The name of Vertumnus, from ‘verto,’ ‘to change,’ perhaps relates to
the vicissitudes of the seasons; and if this story refers to any
tradition, its meaning may have been, that in his taking various
forms, to please Pomona, the change of seasons requisite for
bringing the fruits to ripeness was symbolized. It is possible that
in the disguises of a labourer, a reaper, and an old woman, the Poet
may intend to pourtray the spring, the harvest, and the winter.
There was a market at Rome, near the temple of this God, who was
regarded as one of the tutelary Deities of the traders. Horace
alludes to his temple which was in the Vicus Tuscus, or Etrurian
Street, which led to the Circus Maximus. According to some authors,
he was an ancient king of Etruria, who paid great attention to his
gardens, and, after his death, was considered to have the tutelage
of them.
FABLES XII. AND XIII. [XIV.698-851]
Vertumnus relates to Pomona how Anaxarete was changed into a rock
after her disdain of his advances had forced her lover Iphis to hang
himself. After the death of Amulius and Numitor, Romulus builds
Rome, and becomes the first king of it. Tatius declares war against
him, and is favoured by Juno, while Venus protects the Romans.
Romulus and Hersilia are added to the number of the Deities, under
the names of Quirinus and Ora.
Iphis, born of an humble family, had beheld the noble Anaxarete, sprung
from the race of the ancient Teucer;[56] he had seen her, and had felt
the flame in all his bones; and struggling a long time, when he could
not subdue his passion by reason, he came suppliantly to her doors. And
now having confessed to her nurse his unfortunate passion, he besought
her, by the hopes {she reposed} in her nursling, not to be hard-hearted
to him; and at another time, complimenting each of the numerous
servants, he besought their kind interest with an anxious voice. He
often gave his words to be borne on the flattering tablets; sometimes he
fastened garlands, wet with the dew of his tears, upon the door-posts,
and laid his tender side upon the hard threshold, and uttered reproaches
against the obdurate bolt.
She, more deaf than the sea, swelling when {the Constellation of} the
Kids is setting, and harder than the iron which the Norican fire[57]
refines, and than the rock which in its native state is yet held fast by
the firm roots, despises, and laughs at him; and to her cruel deeds, in
her pride, she adds boastful words, and deprives her lover of even hope.
Iphis, unable to endure this prolonged pain, endured his torments no
{longer}; and before her doors he spoke these words as his last: “Thou
art the conquerer, Anaxarete; and no more annoyances wilt thou have to
bear from me. Prepare the joyous triumph, invoke the God Pæan, and crown
thyself with the shining laurel. For thou art the conqueror, and of my
own will I die; do thou, {woman} of iron, rejoice. At least, thou wilt
be obliged to commend something in me, and there will be one point in
which I shall be pleasing to thee, and thou wilt confess my merits. Yet
remember that my affection for thee has not ended sooner than my life;
and that at the same moment I am about to be deprived of a twofold
light. And report shall not come to thee as the messenger of my death;
I myself will come, doubt it not; and I myself will be seen in person,
that thou mayst satiate thy cruel eyes with my lifeless body. But if, ye
Gods above, you take cognizance of the fortunes of mortals, be mindful
of me; beyond this, my tongue is unable to pray; and cause me to be
remembered in times far distant; and give those hours to Fame which you
have taken away from my existence.”
{Thus} he said; and raising his swimming eyes and his pallid arms to the
door-posts, so often adorned by him with wreaths, when he had fastened a
noose at the end of a halter upon the door; he said,-- “Are these the
garlands that delight thee, cruel and unnatural {woman}?” And he placed
his head within it; but even then he was turned towards her; and he hung
a hapless burden, by his strangled throat. The door, struck by the
motion of his feet as they quivered, seemed to utter a sound, as {of
one} groaning much, and flying open, it discovered the deed; the
servants cried aloud, and after lifting him up in vain, they carried him
to the house of his mother (for his father was dead). She received him
into her bosom; and embracing the cold limbs of her child, after she had
uttered the words that are {natural} to wretched mothers, and had
performed the {usual} actions of wretched mothers, she was preceding[58]
the tearful funeral through the midst of the city, and was carrying his
ghastly corpse on the bier, to be committed to the flames.
By chance, her house was near the road where the mournful procession was
passing, and the sound of lamentation came to the ears of the
hardhearted Anaxarete, whom now an avenging Deity pursued. Moved,
however, she said:-- “Let us behold these sad obsequies;” and she
ascended to an upper room[59] with wide windows. And scarce had she well
seen Iphis laid out on the bier, {when} her eyes became stiffened, and a
paleness coming on, the warm blood fled from her body. And as she
endeavoured to turn her steps back again, she stood fixed {there}; and
as she endeavoured to turn away her face, this too she was unable to do;
and by degrees the stone, which already existed in her cruel breast,
took possession of her limbs.
“And, that thou mayst not think this a fiction, Salamis still keeps the
statue under the form of the maiden; it has also a temple under the name
of ‘Venus, the looker-out.’ Remembering these things, O Nymph, lay aside
this prolonged disdain, and unite thyself to one who loves thee. Then,
may neither cold in the spring nip thy fruit in the bud, nor may the
rude winds strike them off in blossom.” When the God, fitted for every
shape, had in vain uttered these words, he returned to his youthful
form,[60] and took off from himself the garb of the old woman. And such
did he appear to her, as, when the form of the sun, in all his
brilliancy, has dispelled the opposing clouds, and has shone forth, no
cloud intercepting {his rays}. And he {now} purposed violence, but there
was no need for force, and the Nymph was captivated by the form of the
God, and was sensible of a reciprocal wound.
Next, the soldiery of the wicked Amulius held sway over the realms of
Ausonia; and by the aid of his grandsons, the aged Numitor gained the
kingdom that he had lost; and on the festival of Pales, the walls of the
City were founded. Tatius and the Sabine fathers waged war; and {then},
the way to the citadel being laid open, by a just retribution, Tarpeia
lost her life, the arms being heaped {upon her}. On this, they, sprung
from {the town of} Cures, just like silent wolves, suppressed their
voices with their lips, and fell upon the bodies {now} overpowered by
sleep, and rushed to the gates, which the son of Ilia had shut with a
strong bolt. But {Juno}, the daughter of Saturn, herself opened one, and
made not a sound at the turning of the hinge. Venus alone perceived that
the bars of the gate had fallen down; and she would have shut it, were
it not, that it is never allowed for a Deity to annul the acts of the
{other} Gods. The Naiads of Ausonia occupied a spot near {the temple of}
Janus, {a place} besprinkled by a cold fountain; of these she implored
aid. Nor did the Nymphs resist, the Goddess making so fair a request;
and they gave vent to the springs and the streams of the fountain. But
not yet were the paths closed to the open {temple of} Janus, and the
water had not stopped the way. They placed sulphur, with its faint blue
light, beneath the plenteous fountain, and they applied fire to the
hollowed channels, with smoking pitch.
By these and other violent means, the vapour penetrated to the very
sources of the fountain; and {you}, ye waters, which, so lately, were
able to rival the coldness of the Alps, yielded not {in heat} to the
flames themselves. The two door-posts smoked with the flaming spray; and
the gate, which was in vain left open for the fierce Sabines, was
rendered impassable by this new-made fountain, until the warlike
soldiers had assumed their arms. After Romulus had readily led them
onward, and the Roman ground was covered with Sabine bodies, and was
covered with its own {people,} and the accursed sword had mingled the
blood of the son-in-law with the gore of the father-in-law; they
determined that the war should end in peace, and that they would not
contend with weapons to the last extremity, and that Tatius should share
in the sovereignty.
Tatius was {now} dead, and thou, Romulus, wast giving laws in common to
both peoples; when Mavors,[61] his helmet laid aside, in such words as
these addressed the Parent of both Gods and men: “The time is {now}
come, O father, (since the Roman state is established on a strong
foundation, and is no longer dependent on the guardianship of but one),
for thee to give the reward which was promised to me, and to thy
grandson {so} deserving of it, and, removed from earth, to admit him to
heaven. Thou saidst to me once, a council of the Gods being present,
(for I remember it, and with grateful mind I remarked the affectionate
speech), he shall be one, whom thou shalt raise to the azure heaven. Let
the tenor of thy words be {now} performed.”
The all-powerful {God} nodded in assent, and he obscured the air with
thick clouds, and alarmed the City with thunder and lightning. Gradivus
knew that this was a signal given to him for the promised removal; and,
leaning on his lance, he boldly mounted {behind} his steeds, laden with
the blood-stained pole {of the chariot}, and urged them on with the lash
of the whip; and descending along the steep air, he stood on the summit
of the hill of the woody Palatium; and he took away the son of Ilia,
that moment giving out his royal ordinances to his own Quirites. His
mortal body glided through the yielding air; just as the leaden plummet,
discharged from the broad sling, is wont to dissolve itself[62] in mid
air. A beauteous appearance succeeded, one more suitable to the lofty
couches[63] of heaven, and a form, such as that of Quirinus arrayed in
his regal robe. His wife was lamenting him as lost; when the royal Juno
commanded Iris to descend to Hersilia, along her bending path; and thus
to convey to the bereft {wife} her commands:--
“O matron, the especial glory of the Latian and of the Sabine race; thou
woman, most worthy to have been before the wife of a hero so great,
{and} now of Quirinus; cease thy weeping, and if thou hast a wish to see
thy husband, under my guidance repair to the grove which flourishes on
the hill of Quirinus, and overshadows the temple of the Roman king.”
Iris obeys, and gliding down to earth along her tinted bow, she
addressed Hersilia in the words enjoined. She, with a modest
countenance, hardly raising her eyes, replies, “O Goddess, (for {though}
it is not in my power to say who thou art, {yet}, still it is clear that
thou art a Goddess), lead me, O lead me on, and present to me the
features of my husband. If the Fates should but allow me to be enabled
once to behold these, I will confess that I have beheld Heaven.”
There was no delay; with the virgin daughter of Thaumas she ascended the
hill of Romulus. There, a star falling from the skies, fell upon the
earth; the hair of Hersilia set on fire from the blaze of this, ascended
with the star to the skies. The founder of the Roman city received her
with his well-known hands; and, together with her body, he changed her
former name; and he called her Ora; which Goddess is still united to
Quirmus.
[Footnote 56: _Ancient Teucer._--Ver. 698. When Teucer returned
home after the Trojan war, his father Telamon banished him, for
not having revenged the death of his brother Ajax, which was
imputed to Ulysses, as having been the occasion of it, by
depriving him of the armour of Achilles. Thus exiled, he fled to
Cyprus, where he founded the city of Salamis.]
[Footnote 57: _Norican fire._--Ver. 712. Noricum was a district of
Germany, between the Danube and the Alps. It is still famous for
its excellent steel; the goodness of which, Pliny attributes
partly to the superior quality of the ore, and partly to the
temperature of the climate.]
[Footnote 58: _She was preceding._--Ver. 746. It was customary for
the relations, both male and female, to attend the body to the
tomb or the funeral pile. Among the Greeks, the male relatives
walked in front of the body, preceded by the head mourners, while
the female relations walked behind. Among the Romans, all the
relations walked behind the corpse; the males having their heads
veiled, and the females with their heads bare and hair
dishevelled, contrary to the usual practice of each sex.]
[Footnote 59: _An upper room._--Ver. 752. Anaxarete went to an
upper room, to look out into the street, as the apartments on the
ground floor were rarely lighted with windows. The principal
apartments on the ground floor received their light from above,
and the smaller rooms there, usually derived their light from the
larger ones; while on the other hand, the rooms on the upper floor
were usually lighted with windows. The conduct of Anaxarete
reminds us of that of Marcella, the hardhearted shepherdess, which
so aroused the indignation of the amiable, but unfortunate, Don
Quixotte.]
[Footnote 60: _His youthful form._--Ver. 766-7. ‘In juvenem
rediit: et anilia demit Instrumenta sibi.’ These words are thus
translated by Clarke: ‘He returned into a young fellow, and takes
off his old woman’s accoutrements from him.’ We hear of the
accoutrements of a cavalry officer much more frequently than we do
those of an old woman.]
[Footnote 61: _Mavors._--Ver. 806. Mavors, which is often used by
the poets as a name of Mars, probably gave rise to the latter name
as a contracted form of it.]
[Footnote 62: _To dissolve itself._--Ver. 826. Not only, as we
have already remarked, was it a notion among the ancients that the
leaden plummet thrown from the sling grew red hot; but they
occasionally went still further, and asserted that, from the
rapidity of the motion, it melted and disappeared altogether. See
note to Book II. l. 727.]
[Footnote 63: _Lofty couches._--Ver. 827. The ‘pulvinaria’ were
the cushions, or couches, placed in the temples of the Gods, for
the use of the Divinities; which probably their priests (like
their brethren who administered to Bel) did not omit to enjoy. At
the festivals of the ‘lectisternia,’ the statues of the Gods were
placed upon these cushions. The images of the Deities in the Roman
Circus, were also placed on a ‘pulvinar.’]
EXPLANATION.
We are not informed that the story of Iphis, hanging himself for
love of Anaxarete, is based upon any actual occurrence, though
probably it was, as Salamis is mentioned as the scene of it. The
transformation of Anaxarete into a stone, seems only to be the usual
metaphor employed by the poets to denote extreme insensibility.
Following the example of Homer, who represents the Gods as divided
into the favourers of the Greeks and of the Trojans, he represents
the Sabines as entering Rome, while Juno opens the gates for them;
on which the Nymphs of the spot pour forth streams of flame, which
oblige them to return. He tells the same story in the first Book of
the Fasti, where Janus is introduced as taking credit to himself for
doing what the Nymphs are here said to have effected.
As Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives some account of these
transactions, on the authority of the ancient Roman historians, it
will be sufficient here to give the substance thereof. Jealous of
the increasing power of Romulus, the Sabines collected an army, and
marched to attack his city. A virgin named Tarpeia, whose father
commanded the guard, perceiving the golden bracelets which the
Sabines wore on their arms, offered Tatius to open the gate to him,
if he would give her these jewels. This condition being assented to,
the enemy was admitted into the town; and Tarpeia, who is said by
some writers only to have intended to disarm the Sabines, by
demanding their bucklers, which she pretended were included in the
original agreement, was killed on the spot, by the violence of the
blows; Tatius having ordered that they should be thrown on her head.
The same historian says, that opinions were divided as to the death
of Romulus, and that many writers had written, that as he was
haranguing his army, the sky became overcast, and a thick darkness
coming on, it was followed by a violent tempest, in which he
disappeared; on which it was believed that Mars had taken him up to
heaven. Others assert that he was killed by the citizens, for having
sent back the hostages of the Veientes without their consent, and
for assuming an air of superiority, which their lawless spirits
could ill brook. For these reasons, his officers assassinated him,
and cut his body in pieces; each of them carrying off some portion,
that it might be privately interred. According to Livy, great
consternation was the consequence of his death; and the people
beginning to suspect that the senators had committed the crime,
Julius Proculus asserted that Romulus had appeared to him, and
assured him of the fact of his having been Deified. His speech on
the occasion is given by Livy, and Ovid relates the same story in
the second Book of the Fasti. On this, the Roman people paid him
divine honours as a God, under the name of Quirinus, one of the
epithets of Mars. He had a chief priest, who was called ‘Flamen
Quirinalis.’
His wife, Hersilia, also had divine honours paid to her, jointly
with him, under the name of Ora, or ‘Horta.’ According to Plutarch,
she had the latter name from the exhortation which she had given to
the youths to distinguish themselves by courage.
BOOK THE FIFTEENTH.
FABLE I. [XV.1-59]
Myscelos is warned, in a dream, to leave Argos, and to settle in
Italy. When on the point of departing, he is seized under a law
which forbids the Argives to leave the city without the permission
of the magistrates. Being brought up for judgment, through a miracle
he is acquitted. He retires to Italy, where he builds the city of
Crotona.
Meanwhile, one is being sought who can bear a weight of such magnitude,
and can succeed a king so great. Fame, the harbinger of truth, destines
the illustrious Numa for the sovereign power. He does not deem it
sufficient to be acquainted with the ceremonials of the Sabine nation;
in his expansive mind he conceives greater views, and inquires into the
nature of things. ’Twas love of this pursuit, his country and cares left
behind, that caused him to penetrate to the city of the stranger
Hercules. To him, making the inquiry what founder it was that had
erected a Grecian city on the Italian shores, one of the more aged
natives, who was not unacquainted with {the history of} the past, thus
replied:
“The son of Jove, enriched with the oxen of Iberia, is said to have
reached the Lacinian shores,[1] from the ocean, after a prosperous
voyage, and, while his herd was straying along the soft pastures,
himself to have entered the abode of the great Croton, no inhospitable
dwelling, and to have rested in repose after his prolonged labours, and
to have said thus at departing: ‘In the time of thy grandsons this shall
be the site of a city;’ and his promise was fulfilled. For there was a
certain Myscelos, the son of Alemon, an Argive, most favoured by the
Gods in those times. Lying upon him, as he is overwhelmed with the
drowsiness of sleep, the club-bearer, {Hercules}, addresses him: ‘Come,
{now}, desert thy native abodes; go, {and} repair to the pebbly streams
of the distant Æsar.’[2] And he utters threats, many and fearful, if he
does not obey: after that, at once both sleep and the God depart. The
son of Alemon arises, and ponders his recent vision in his thoughtful
mind; and for a long time his opinions are divided among themselves. The
Deity orders him to depart; the laws forbid his going; and death has
been awarded as the punishment of him who attempts to leave his country.