called from Cyllene, in Arcadia, where he was born.]
[Footnote 110: _That his sight was wrapped._--Ver. 714. Clarke
translates ‘Adopertaque lumina somno,’ ‘and his peepers covered
with sleep.’]
EXPLANATION.
The ancient writers, Asclepiades and Pherecydes, tell us, that Argus
was the son of Arestor. He is supposed by some to have been the fourth
king of Argos after Inachus, and to have been a person of great wisdom
and penetration, on account of which he was said to have a hundred
eyes. Io most probably was committed to his charge, and he watched
over her with the greatest care.
It is impossible to divine the reason why his eyes were said to have
been set by Juno in the tail of the peacock; though, perhaps, the
circumstance has no other foundation than the resemblance of the human
eye to the spots in the tail of that bird, which was consecrated to
Juno. Besides, if Juno is to be considered the symbol of Air, or
Æther, through which light is transmitted to us, it is not surprising
that the ancients bestowed so many eyes upon the bird which was
consecrated to her.
FABLE XVII. [I.724-779]
Io, terrified and maddened with dreadful visions, runs over many
regions, and stops in Egypt, when Juno, at length, being pacified,
restores her to her former shape, and permits her to be worshipped
there, under the name of Isis.
Immediately, she was inflamed with rage, and deferred not the time of
{expressing} her wrath; and she presented a dreadful Fury before the
eyes and thoughts of the Argive mistress,[111] and buried in her bosom
invisible stings, and drove her, in her fright, a wanderer through the
whole earth. Thou, O Nile, didst remain, as the utmost boundary of her
long wanderings. Soon as she arrived there, she fell upon her knees,
placed on the edge of the bank, and raising herself up, with her neck
thrown back, and casting to Heaven those looks which then alone she
could, by her groans, and her tears, and her mournful lowing, she seemed
to be complaining of Jupiter, and to be begging an end of her sorrows.
He, embracing the neck of his wife with his arms, entreats her, at
length, to put an end to her punishment; and he says, “Lay aside thy
fears for the future; she shall never {more} be the occasion of any
trouble to thee;” and {then} he bids the Stygian waters to hear this
{oath}. As soon as the Goddess is pacified, {Io} receives her former
shape, and she becomes what she was before; the hairs flee from off of
her body, her horns decrease, and the orb of her eye becomes less; the
opening of her jaw is contracted; her shoulders and her hands return,
and her hoof, vanishing, is disposed of into five nails; nothing of the
cow remains to her, but the whiteness of her appearance; and the Nymph,
contented with the service of two feet, is raised erect {on them}; and
{yet} she is afraid to speak, lest she should low like a cow, and
timorously tries again the words {so long} interrupted. Now, as a
Goddess, she is worshipped by the linen-wearing throng[112] {of Egypt}.
To her, at length, Epaphus[113] is believed to have been born from the
seed of great Jove, and throughout the cities he possesses temples
joined to {those of} his parent. Phaëton, sprung from the Sun, was equal
to him in spirit and in years; whom formerly, as he uttered great
boasts, and yielded not {at all} to him, and proud of his father,
Phœbus, the grandson of Inachus could not endure; and said, “Thou,
{like} a madman, believest thy mother in all things, and art puffed up
with the conceit of an imaginary father.”
Phaëton blushed, and in shame repressed his resentment; and he reported
to his mother, Clymene,[114] the reproaches of Epaphus; and said,
“Mother, to grieve thee still more, I, the free, the bold {youth}, was
silent; I am ashamed both that these reproaches can be uttered against
us, and that they cannot be refuted; but do thou, if only I am born of a
divine race, give me some proof of so great a descent, and claim me for
heaven.” {Thus} he spoke, and threw his arms around the neck of his
mother; and besought her, by his own head and by that of Merops,[115]
and by the nuptial torches of his sisters, that she would give him some
token of his real father.
It is a matter of doubt whether Clymene was more moved by the entreaties
of Phaëton, or by resentment at the charge made against her; and she
raised both her arms to heaven, and, looking up to the light of the Sun,
she said, “Son, I swear to thee, by this beam, bright with shining rays,
which both hears and sees us, that thou, that thou, {I say}, wast
begotten by this Sun, which thou beholdest; by this {Sun}, which governs
the world. If I utter an untruth, let him deny himself to be seen by me,
and let this light prove the last for my eyes. Nor will it be any
prolonged trouble for thee to visit thy father’s dwelling; the abode
where he arises is contiguous to our regions.[116] If only thy
inclination disposes thee, go forth, and thou shalt inquire of himself.”
Phaëton immediately springs forth, overjoyed, upon these words of his
mother, and reaches the skies in imagination; and he passes by his own
Æthiopians, and the Indians situate beneath the rays of the Sun,[117]
and briskly wends his way to the rising of his sire.
[Footnote 111: _The Argive mistress._--Ver. 726. Clarke renders
‘Pellicis Argolicæ,’ ‘of the Grecian miss.’]
[Footnote 112: _The linen-wearing throng._--Ver. 747. The priests,
and worshippers of Isis, with whom Io is here said to be
identical, paid their adoration to her clothed in linen vestments.
Probably, Isis was the first to teach the Egyptians the
cultivation of flax.]
[Footnote 113: _Epaphus._--Ver. 748. Herodotus, in his second
book, tells us, that this son of Jupiter, by Io, was the same as
the Egyptian God, Apis. Eusebius, quoting from Apollodorus, says
that Epaphus was the son of Io, by Telegonus, who married her.]
[Footnote 114: _Clymene._--Ver. 756. She was a Nymph of the sea,
the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.]
[Footnote 115: _Merops._--Ver. 763. He was king of Ethiopia, and
marrying the Nymph Clymene, was either the stepfather of Phaëton,
or, as some writers say, his putative father.]
[Footnote 116: _To our regions._--Ver. 773. Ethiopia, which, in
the time of Ovid, was generally looked upon as one of the regions
of the East.]
[Footnote 117: _The rays of the Sun._--Ver. 778. ‘Ignibus
sidereis,’ means here the ‘heat,’ or ‘fire of the sun,’ the sun
being considered as a ‘sidus,’ or ‘luminous heavenly body.’]
EXPLANATION.
To the elucidation of this narrative, already given, we will only add,
that some of the mythologists inform us, that when Mercury had lulled
Argus to sleep, a youth named Hierax awoke him; on which Mercury
killed Argus with a stone, and turned Hierax into a spar-hawk.
BOOK THE SECOND.
FABLE I. [II.1-303]
Phaëton, insulted by Epaphus, goes to the Palace of Apollo, to beseech
him to give some token that he is his son. Apollo, having sworn, by
the river Styx, to refuse him nothing that he should desire, he
immediately asks to guide his chariot for one day. He is unsuccessful
in the attempt, and, the horses running away, the world is in danger
of being consumed.
The palace of the Sun was raised high, on stately columns, bright with
radiant gold, and carbuncle that rivals the flames; polished ivory
covered its highest top, {and} double folding doors shone with the
brightness of silver. The workmanship {even} exceeded the material; for
there Mulciber had carved the sea circling round the encompassed Earth;
and the orb of the Earth, and the Heavens which hang over that orb.
{There} the waves have {in them} the azure Deities, both Triton,
sounding {with his shell}, and the changing Proteus, and Ægeon,[1]
pressing the huge backs of whales with his arms; Doris,[2] too, and her
daughters, part of whom appear to be swimming, part, sitting on the
bank, to be drying their green hair; some {are seen} borne upon fishes.
The features in all are not the same, nor, however, {remarkably}
different: {they are} such as those of sisters ought to be. The Earth
has {upon it} men and cities, and woods, and wild beasts, and rivers,
and Nymphs, and other Deities of the country. Over these is placed the
figure of the shining Heaven, and there are six Signs {of the Zodiac} on
the right door, and as many on the left.
Soon as the son of Clymene had arrived thither by an ascending path,
and entered the house of his parent, {thus} doubted of; he immediately
turned his steps to the presence of his father, and stood at a distance,
for he could not bear the refulgence nearer. Arrayed in a purple
garment, Phœbus was seated on a throne sparkling with brilliant
emeralds. On his right hand, and on his left, the Days, the Months,
the Years, the Ages, and the Hours were arranged, at corresponding
distances, and the fresh Spring was standing, crowned with a chaplet of
blossoms; Summer was standing naked, and wearing garlands made of ears
of corn; Autumn, too, was standing besmeared with the trodden-out
grapes; and icy Winter, rough with his hoary hair.
Then the Sun, from the midst of this place, with those eyes with which
he beholds all things, sees the young man struck with fear at the
novelty of {these} things, and says, “What is the occasion of thy
journey {hither}? What dost thou seek, Phaëton, in this {my} palace,
a son not to be denied by his parent?”
He answers, “O thou universal Light of the unbounded World, Phœbus, my
father, if thou grantest me the use of that name; and if Clymene is not
concealing an error under a {false} pretext, give me, my parent, some
token, by which I may be believed to be really thy progeny; and remove
this uncertainty from my mind.” Thus he spoke; but his parent took off
the rays shining all around his head, and commanded him to come nearer;
and, having embraced him, he says, “{And} neither art thou deserving to
be denied to be mine, and Clymene has told thee thy true origin; and
that thou mayst have the less doubt, ask any gift thou mayst please,
that thou mayst receive it from me bestowing it. Let the lake, by which
the Gods are wont to swear, and which is unseen, {even} by my eyes, be
as a witness of my promise.”
Hardly had he well finished, when he asks for his father’s chariot, and
for the command and guidance of the wing-footed horses for one day. His
father repented that he had {so} sworn, and shaking his splendid head
three or four times, he said, “By thine have my words been made rash.
I wish I were allowed not to grant what I have promised! I confess, my
son, that this alone I would deny thee. {Still}, I may dissuade thee:
thy desire is not attended with safety. Thou desirest, Phaëton, a gift
{too} great, and {one} which is suited neither to thy strength, nor to
such youthful years. Thy lot is that of a mortal; that which thou
desirest, belongs not to mortals. {Nay}, thou aimest, in thy ignorance,
at even more than it is allowed the Gods above to obtain. Let every one
be self-satisfied, {if he likes}; still, with the exception of myself,
no one is able to take his stand upon the fire-bearing axle-tree. Even
the Ruler of vast Olympus, who hurls the ruthless bolts with his
terrific right hand, cannot guide this chariot; and {yet}, what have we
greater than Jupiter? The first {part of the} road is steep, and such as
the horses, {though} fresh in the morning, can hardly climb. In the
middle of the heavens it is high aloft, from whence it is often a
{source of} fear, {even} to myself, to look {down} upon the sea and the
earth, and my breast trembles with fearful apprehensions. The last stage
is a steep descent, and requires a sure command {of the horses}. Then,
too, Tethys[3] herself, who receives me in her waves, extended below, is
often wont to fear, lest I should be borne headlong {from above}.
Besides, the heavens are carried round[4] with a constant rotation, and
carry {with them} the lofty stars, and whirl them with rapid revolution.
Against this I have to contend; and that force which overcomes {all}
other things, {does} not {overcome} me; and I am carried in a contrary
direction to the rapid world. Suppose the chariot given {to thee}; what
couldst thou do? Couldst thou proceed, opposed to the whirling poles, so
that the rapid heavens should not carry thee away? Perhaps, too, thou
dost fancy in thy mind that there are groves, and cities of the Gods,
and temples enriched with gifts; {whereas}, the way is through dangers,
and the forms of wild beasts;[5] and though thou shouldst keep on thy
road, and be drawn aside by no wanderings, still thou must pass amid the
horns of the threatening Bull, and the Hæmonian[6] bow, and {before} the
visage of the raging Lion, and the Scorpion, bending his cruel claws
with a wide compass, and the Crab, that bends his claws in a different
manner; nor is it easy for thee to govern the steeds spirited by those
fires which they have in their breasts, and which they breathe forth
from their mouths and their nostrils. Hardly are they restrained by me,
when their high-mettled spirit is {once} heated, and their necks
struggle against the reins. But do thou have a care, my son, that I be
not the occasion of a gift fatal to thee, and while the matter {still}
permits, alter thy intentions. Thou askest, forsooth, a sure proof that
thou mayst believe thyself sprung from my blood? I give thee a sure
proof in {thus} being alarmed {for thee}; and by my paternal
apprehensions, I am shown to be thy father. Lo, behold my countenance!
I wish, too, that thou couldst direct thy eyes into my breast, and
discover my fatherly concern within! Finally, look around thee, upon
whatever the rich world contains, and ask for anything out of the
blessings, so many and so great, of heaven, of earth, and of sea; {and}
thou shalt suffer no denial. In this one thing alone I beg to be
excused, which, {called} by its right name, is a penalty, and not an
honor; thou art asking, Phaëton, a punishment instead of a gift. Why, in
thy ignorance, art thou embracing my neck with caressing arms? Doubt
not; whatever thou shalt desire shall be granted thee (by the Stygian
waves I have sworn it); but do thou make thy desire more considerately.”
He had finished his admonitions; and yet {Phaëton} resists his advice,
and presses his point, and burns with eagerness for the chariot.
Wherefore, his parent having delayed as long as he could, leads the
young man to the lofty chariot, the gift of Vulcan. The axle-tree was of
gold, the poles were of gold; the circumference of the exterior of the
wheel was of gold; the range of the spokes was of silver. Chrysolites
and gems placed along the yoke in order, gave a bright light from the
reflected sun. And while the aspiring Phaëton is admiring these things,
and is examining the workmanship, behold! the watchful Aurora opened her
purple doors in the ruddy east, and her halls filled with roses. The
stars disappear, the troops whereof Lucifer gathers, and moves the last
from his station in the heavens. But the father Titan, when he beheld
the earth and the universe growing red, and the horns of the far-distant
Moon, as if about to vanish, orders the swift Hours to yoke the horses.
The Goddesses speedily perform his commands, and lead forth the steeds
from the lofty stalls, snorting forth flames, and filled with the juice
of Ambrosia; and {then} they put on the sounding bits.
Then the father touched the face of his son with a hallowed drug, and
made it able to endure the burning flames, and placed the rays upon his
locks, and fetching from his troubled heart sighs presaging his sorrow,
he said: “If thou canst here at least, my boy, obey the advice of thy
father, be sparing of the whip, and use the bridle with nerve. Of their
own accord they are wont to hasten on; the difficulty is to check them
in their full career. And let not the way attract thee through the five
direct circles.[7] There is a track cut obliquely, with a broad
curvature, and bounded by the extremities of three zones, and {so} it
shuns the South pole, and the Bear united to the North. Let thy way be
here; thou wilt perceive distinct traces of the wheels. And that heaven
and earth may endure equal heat, neither drive too low, nor urge the
chariot along the summit of the sky. Going forth too high, thou wilt set
on fire the signs of the heavens; too low, the earth; in the middle
course thou will go most safely. Neither let the right wheel bear thee
off towards the twisted Serpent, nor let the left lead thee to the low
Altar; hold thy course between them. The rest I leave to Fortune, who,
I pray, may aid thee, and take more care of thee, than thou dost of
thyself. Whilst I am speaking, the moist Night has touched the goals
placed on the Western shores; delay is not allowed me. I am required;
the Morning is shining forth, the darkness being dispersed. Seize the
reins with thy hands; or if thou hast a mind capable of change, make use
of my advice, {and} not my chariot, while thou art {still} able, and art
even yet standing upon solid ground; and while thou art not yet in thy
ignorance filling the chariot that thou didst so unfortunately covet.”
The other leaps into the light chariot with his youthful body, and
stands aloft, and rejoices to take in his hand the reins presented {to
him}, and then gives thanks to his reluctant parent. In the meantime the
swift Pyroeis, and Eoüs and Æthon, the horses of the sun, and Phlegon,
{making} the fourth, fill the air with neighings, sending forth flames,
and beat the barriers with their feet. After Tethys, ignorant of the
destiny of her grandson, had removed these, and the scope of the
boundless universe was given them, they take the road, and moving their
feet through the air, they cleave the resisting clouds, and raised aloft
by their wings, they pass by the East winds that had arisen from the
same parts. But the weight was light; and such as the horses of the sun
could not feel; and the yoke was deficient of its wonted weight. And as
the curving ships, without proper ballast, are tossed about, and
unsteady, through their too great lightness, are borne through the sea,
so does the chariot give bounds[8] in the air, unimpeded by its usual
burden, and is tossed on high, and is just like an empty one.
Soon as the steeds have perceived this, they rush on, and leave the
beaten track, and run not in the order in which {they did} before. He
himself becomes alarmed; and knows not which way to turn the reins
entrusted {to him}, nor does he know where the way is, nor, if he did
know, could he control them. Then, for the first time, did the cold
Triones grow warm with sunbeams, and attempt, in vain, to be dipped in
the sea that was forbidden {to them}. And the Serpent which is situate
next to the icy pole, being before torpid with cold, and formidable to
no one, grew warm, and regained new rage from the heat. They say,
too,[9] that thou, Boötes, being disturbed, took to flight; although
thou wast {but} slow, and thy wain impeded thee. But when, from the
height of the skies, the unhappy Phaëton looked down upon the earth,
lying far, very far beneath, he grew pale, and his knees shook with a
sudden terror; and in a light so great, darkness overspread his eyes.
And now he could wish that he had never touched the horses of his
father; and now he is sorry that he knew his descent, and that he
prevailed in his request; now desiring to be called the son of Merops.
He is borne along, just as a ship driven by the furious Boreas, to which
its pilot has given up the overpowered helm, {and} which he has resigned
to the Gods and {the effect of} his supplications. What can he do? much
of heaven is left behind his back; still more is before his eyes. Either
{space} he measures in his mind; and at one moment he is looking forward
to the West, which it is not allowed him by fate to reach; {and}
sometimes he looks back upon the East. Ignorant what to do, he is
stupefied; and he neither lets go the reins, nor is he able to retain
them; nor does he know the names of the horses. In his fright, too, he
sees strange objects scattered everywhere in various parts of the
heavens, and the forms of huge wild beasts. There is a spot where the
Scorpion bends his arms into two curves, and with his tail and claws
bending on either side, he extends his limbs through the space of two
signs {of the Zodiac}. As soon as the youth beheld him wet with the
sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point {of
his tail}, bereft of sense, he let go the reins, in a chill of horror.
Soon as they, falling down, have touched the top of their backs, the
horses range at large: and no one restraining them, they go through the
air of an unknown region; and where their fury drives them thither,
without check, do they hurry along, and they rush on to the stars fixed
in the sky, and drag the chariot through pathless places. One while they
are mounting aloft, and now they are borne through steep places, and
{along} headlong paths in a tract nearer to the earth.
The Moon, too, wonders that her brother’s horses run lower than her own,
and the scorched clouds send forth smoke. As each region is most
elevated, it is caught by the flames, and cleft, it makes {vast} chasms,
and becomes dry, its moisture being carried away. The grass grows pale;
the trees, with their foliage, are burnt up; and the dry standing corn
affords fuel for its own destruction. {But} I am complaining of trifling
{ills}. Great cities perish, together with their fortifications, and the
flames turn whole nations, with their populations, into ashes; woods,
together with mountains, are on fire. Athos[10] burns, and the Cilician
Taurus,[11] and Tmolus,[12] and Œta,[13] and Ida,[14] now dry, {but}
once most famed for its springs; and Helicon,[15] the resort of the
Virgin {Muses}, and Hæmus,[16] not yet {called} Œagrian. Ætna[17] burns
intensely with redoubled flames, and Parnassus, with its two summits,
and Eryx,[18] and Cynthus,[19] and Othrys, and Rhodope,[20] at length to
be despoiled of its snows, and Mimas,[21] and Dindyma,[22] and
Mycale,[23] and Cithæron,[24] created for {the performance of} sacred
rites. Nor does its cold avail {even} Scythia; Caucasus[25] is on fire,
and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus, greater than them both, and the lofty
Alps,[26] and the cloud-bearing Apennines.[27]
Then, indeed, Phaëton beholds the world set on fire on all sides, and he
cannot endure heat so great, and he inhales with his mouth scorching
air, as though from a deep furnace, and perceives his own chariot to be
on fire. And neither is he able now to bear the ashes and the emitted
embers; and, on every side, he is involved in heated smoke. Covered with
a pitchy darkness, he knows not whither he is going, nor where he is,
and is hurried away at the pleasure of the winged steeds. They believe
that it was then that the nations of the Æthiopians contracted their
black hue,[28] the blood being attracted into the surface of the body.
Then was Libya[29] made dry by the heat, the moisture being carried off;
then, with dishevelled hair, the Nymphs lamented the springs and the
lakes. Bœotia bewails Dirce,[30] Argos Amymone,[31] and Ephyre[32] the
waters of Pirene. Nor do rivers that have got banks distant in
situation, remain {secure}; Tanais[33] smokes in the midst of its
waters, and the aged Peneus, and Teuthrantian Caïcus,[34] and rapid
Ismenus,[35] with Phocean Erymanthus,[36] and Xanthus[37] again to burn,
and yellow Lycormas,[38] and Mæander,[39] which sports with winding
streams, and the Mygdonian Melas,[40] and the Tænarian Eurotas.[41] The
Babylonian Euphrates, too, was on fire, Orontes[42] was in flames, and
the swift Thermodon[43] and Ganges,[44] and Phasis,[45] and Ister.[46]
Alpheus[47] boils; the banks of Spercheus burn; and the gold which
Tagus[48] carries with its stream, melts in the flames. The river birds
too, which made famous the Mæonian[49] banks {of the river} with their
song, grew hot in the middle of Caÿster. The Nile, affrighted, fled to
the remotest parts of the earth, and concealed his head, which still
lies hid; his seven last mouths are empty, {become} seven {mere}
channels, without any stream. The same fate dries up the Ismarian
{rivers}, Hebrus together with Strymon,[50] and the Hesperian[51]
streams, the Rhine, and the Rhone, and the Po, and the Tiber, to which
was promised the sovereignty of the world.
All the ground bursts asunder; and through the chinks, the light
penetrates into Tartarus, and startles the Infernal King with his
spouse. The Ocean too, is contracted, and that which lately was sea, is
a surface of parched sand; and the mountains which the deep sea had
covered, start up and increase {the number of} the scattered
Cyclades.[52] The fishes sink to the bottom, and the crooked Dolphins do
not care to raise themselves on the surface into the air, as usual. The
bodies of sea calves float lifeless on their backs, on the top of the
water. The story, too, is, that {even} Nereus himself, and Doris and
their daughters, lay hid in the heated caverns. Three times had Neptune
ventured, with a stern countenance, to thrust his arms out of the water;
three times he was unable to endure the scorching heat of the air.
However, the genial Earth, as she was surrounded with sea, amid the
waters of the main, and the springs, dried up on every side, which had
hidden themselves in the bowels of their cavernous parent, burnt-up,
lifted up her all-productive face[53] as far as her neck, and placed her
hands to her forehead, and shaking all things with a vast trembling, she
sank down a little, and retired below the spot where she is wont to be,
and thus she spoke, with a parched voice: “O sovereign of the Gods, if
thou approvest of this, if I have deserved it, why do thy lightnings
linger? Let me, {if} doomed to perish by the force of fire, perish by
thy flames; and alleviate my misfortune, by being the author {of it}.
With difficulty, indeed, do I open my mouth for these very words;” (the
vapor had oppressed her utterance.) “Behold my scorched hair, and such a
quantity of ashes over my eyes, so much {too}, over my features. And
dost thou give this as my recompense? this, as the reward of my
fertility and of my duty, in that I endure wounds from the crooked
plough and harrows, and am harassed all the year through? In that I
supply green leaves for the cattle, and corn, a wholesome food for
mankind, and frankincense for yourselves? But still, suppose that I am
deserving of destruction, why have the waves {deserved this}? Why has
thy brother deserved it? Why do the seas, delivered to him by lot,
decrease, and why do they recede still further from the sky? But if
regard for neither thy brother nor for myself influences thee, still
have consideration for thy own skies; look around, on either side, {how}
each pole is smoking; if the fire shall injure them, thy palace will
fall in ruins. See! Atlas[54] himself is struggling, and hardly can he
bear the glowing heavens on his shoulders. If the sea, if the earth
perishes, if the palace of heaven, we are thrown[55] into the confused
state of ancient chaos. Save it from the flames, if aught still
survives, and provide for the preservation of the universe.”
Thus spoke the Earth; nor, indeed, could she any longer endure the
vapor, nor say more; and she withdrew her face within herself, and the
caverns neighboring to the shades below.
[Footnote 1: _Ægeon._--Ver. 10. Homer makes him to be the same
with Briareus. According to another account, which Ovid here
follows, he was a sea God, the son of Oceanus and Terra.]
[Footnote 2: _Doris._--Ver. 11. She was the daughter of Oceanus,
the wife of Nereus, and the mother of the fifty Nereids.]
[Footnote 3: _Tethys._--Ver. 69. She was the daughter of Cœlus and
Terra, and the wife of Oceanus. Her name is here used to signify
the ocean itself.]
[Footnote 4: _Are carried round._--Ver. 70. Clarke thus renders
this line,--“Add, too, that the heaven was whisked round with a
continual rolling.”]
[Footnote 5: _Wild beasts._--Ver. 78. The signs of the Zodiac.]
[Footnote 6: _Hæmonian._--Ver. 81. Or Thessalian. He here alludes
to the Thessalian Chiron, the Centaur, who, according to Ovid and
other writers, was placed in the Zodiac as the Constellation
Sagittarius: while others say that Crotus, or Croto, the son of
Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses, was thus honored.]
[Footnote 7: _Through the five direct circles._--Ver. 129. There
is some obscurity in this passage, arising from the mode of
expression. Phœbus here counsels Phaëton what track to follow, and
tells him to pursue his way by an oblique path, and not directly
in the plane of the equator. This last is what he calls ‘directos
via quinque per arcus.’ These five arcs, or circles, are the five
parallel circles by which astronomers distinguish the heavens,
namely, the two polar circles, the two tropics, and the
equinoctial. The latter runs exactly in the middle, between the
other two circles, so that the expression must be understood to
mean, ‘pursue not your way directly through that circle which is
the middlemost of the five, but observe the track that cuts it
obliquely.’]
[Footnote 8: _The chariot give bounds._--Ver. 165-6. Clarke thus
renders these lines.--‘Thus does the chariot give jumps into the
air without its usual weight, and is kicked up on high, and is
like one empty.’]
[Footnote 9: _They say, too._--Ver. 176-7. The following is
Clarke’s translation of these two lines,--‘They say, too, that
you, Boötes, scowered off in a mighty bustle, although you were
but slow, and thy cart hindered thee.’]
[Footnote 10: _Athos._--Ver. 217. Athos (now Monte Santo) was a
mountain of Macedonia, so lofty that its shadow was said to extend
even to the Isle of Lemnos, which was eighty-seven miles distant.]
[Footnote 11: _Taurus._--Ver. 217. This was an immense mountain
range which ran through the middle of Cilicia, in Asia Minor.]
[Footnote 12: _Tmolus._--Ver. 217. Tmolus (now Bozdaz) was a
mountain of Lydia, famed for its wines and saffron. Pactolus,
a stream with sands reputed to be golden, took its rise there.]
[Footnote 13: _Œta._--Ver. 217. This was a mountain chain, which
divided Thessaly from Doris and Phocis; famed for the death of
Hercules on one of its ridges.]
[Footnote 14: _Ida._--Ver. 218. There were two mountains of the
name of Ide, or Ida; one in Crete, the other near Troy. The latter
is here referred to, as being famed for its springs.]
[Footnote 15: _Helicon._--Ver. 219. This was a mountain of Bœotia,
sacred to the Virgin Muses.]
[Footnote 16: _Hæmus._--Ver. 219. This, which is now called the
Balkan range, was a lofty chain of mountains running through
Thrace. Orpheus, the son of Œagrus and Calliope, was there torn in
pieces by the Mænades, or Bacchanalian women, whence the mountain
obtained the epithet of ‘Œagrian.’]
[Footnote 17: _Ætna._--Ver. 220. This is the volcanic mountain of
Sicily; the flames caused by the fall of Phaëton, added to its
own, caused them to be redoubled.]
[Footnote 18: _Eryx._--Ver. 221. This was a mountain of Sicily,
now called San Juliano. On it, a magnificent temple was erected,
in honor of Venus.]
[Footnote 19: _Cynthus._--Ver. 221. This was a mountain of Delos,
on which Apollo and Diana were said to have been born.]
[Footnote 20: _Rhodope._--Ver. 222. It was a high mountain, capped
with perpetual snows, in the northern part of Thrace.]
[Footnote 21: _Mimas._--Ver. 222. A mountain of Ionia, near the
Ionian Sea. It was of very great height; whence Homer calls it
ὑψίκρημνος.]
[Footnote 22: _Dindyma._--Ver. 223. This was a mountain of
Phrygia, near Troy, sacred to Cybele, the mother of the Gods.]
[Footnote 23: _Mycale._--Ver. 223. A mountain of Caria, opposite
to the Isle of Samos.]
[Footnote 24: _Cithæron._--Ver. 223. This was a mountain of
Bœotia, famous for the orgies of Bacchus, there celebrated. In its
neighborhood, Pentheus was torn to pieces by the Mænades, for
slighting the worship of Bacchus.]
[Footnote 25: _Caucasus._--Ver. 224. This was a mountain chain in
Asia, between the Euxine and Caspian Seas.]
[Footnote 26: _Alps._--Ver. 226. This mountain range divides
France from Italy.]
[Footnote 27: _Apennines._--Ver. 226. This range of mountains runs
down the centre of Italy.]
[Footnote 28: _Their black hue._--Ver. 235. The notion that the
blackness of the African tribes was produced by the heat of the
sun, is borrowed by the Poet from Hesiod. Hyginus, too, says, ‘the
Indians, because, by the proximity of the fire, their blood was
turned black by the heat thereof, became of black appearance
themselves.’ Notwithstanding the learned and minute investigations
of physiologists on the subject, this question is still involved
in considerable obscurity.]
[Footnote 29: _Libya._--Ver. 237. This was a region between
Mauritania and Cyrene. The Greek writers, however, often use the
word to signify the whole of Africa. Servius gives a trifling
derivation for the name, in saying that Libya was so called,
because λείπει ὁ ὕετος, ‘it is without rain.’]
[Footnote 30: _Dirce._--Ver. 239. Dirce was a celebrated fountain
of Bœotia, into which it was said that Dirce, the wife of Lycus,
king of Thebes, was transformed.]
[Footnote 31: _Amymone._--Ver. 240. It was a fountain of Argos,
near Lerna, into which the Nymph, Amymone, the daughter of Lycus,
king of the Argives, was said to have been transformed.]
[Footnote 32: _Ephyre._--Ver. 240. It was the most ancient name of
Corinth, in the citadel of which, or the Acrocorinthus, was the
spring Pyrene, of extreme brightness and purity and sacred to the
Muses.]
[Footnote 33: _Tanais._--Ver. 242. This river, now the Don, after
a long winding course, discharges itself into the ‘Palus Mæotis,’
now the sea of ‘Azof.’]
[Footnote 34: _Caïcus._--Ver. 243. This is a river of Mysia, here
called ‘Teuthrantian,’ from Mount Teuthras, in its vicinity.]
[Footnote 35: _Ismenus._--Ver. 244. Ismenus was a river of Bœotia,
that flowed past Thebes into the Euripus.]
[Footnote 36: _Erymanthus._--Ver. 245. This was a river of
Arcadia, which, rising in a mountain of that name, fell into the
Alpheus.]
[Footnote 37: _Xanthus._--Ver. 245. This was a river of Troy; here
spoken of as destined to behold flames a second time, in the
conflagration of that city.]
[Footnote 38: _Lycormas._--Ver. 245. This was a rapid river of
Ætolia, which was afterwards known by the name of Evenus.]
[Footnote 39: _Mæander._--Ver. 246. This was a river of Phrygia,
flowing between Lydia and Caria; it was said to have 600 windings
in its course.]
[Footnote 40: _Melas._--Ver. 247. This name was given to many
rivers of Thrace, Thessaly, and Asia, on account of the darkness
of the color of their waters; the name was derived from the Greek
word μέλας, ‘black.’]
[Footnote 41: _Tænarian Eurotas._--Ver. 247. The Eurotas was a
river of Laconia, which flowed under the walls of the city of
Sparta, and discharged itself into the sea near the promontory of
Tænarus, now called Cape Matapan. The Eurotas is now called
‘Basilipotamo,’ or ‘king of streams.’]
[Footnote 42: _Orontes._--Ver. 248. The Orontes was a river of
Asia Minor, which flowed near Antioch.]
[Footnote 43: _Thermodon._--Ver. 249. This was a river of
Cappadocia, near which the Amazons were said to dwell.]
[Footnote 44: _Ganges._--Ver. 249. This is one of the largest
rivers in Asia, and discharges itself into the Persian Gulf; and
not, as Gierig says, in his note on this passage, in the Red Sea.]
[Footnote 45: _Phasis._--Ver. 249. This was a river of Colchis,
falling into the Euxine Sea.]
[Footnote 46: _Ister._--Ver. 249. The Danube had that name from
its source to the confines of Germany; and thence, in its course
through Scythia to the sea, it was called by the name of ‘Ister.’]
[Footnote 47: _Alpheus._--Ver. 250. It was a river of Arcadia, in
Peloponnesus.]
[Footnote 48: _Tagus._--Ver. 251. This was a river of Spain, which
was said to bring down from the mountains great quantities of
golden sand. The Poet here feigns this to be melted by the heat of
the sun, and in that manner to be carried along by the current of
the river.]
[Footnote 49: _Mæonian._--Ver. 252. Mæonia was so called from the
river Mæon, and was another name of Lydia. The Caÿster, famous for
its swans, flowed through Lydia.]
[Footnote 50: _Strymon._--Ver. 257. The Hebrus and the Strymon
were rivers of Thrace. Ismarus was a mountain of that country,
famous for its vines.]
[Footnote 51: _Hesperian._--Ver. 258. Hesperia, or ‘the western
country,’ was a general name of not only Spain and Gaul, but even
Italy. The Rhine is a river of France and Germany, the Rhone of
France. The Padus, or Po, and the Tiber, are rivers of Italy.]
[Footnote 52: _Cyclades._--Ver. 264. The Cyclades were a cluster
of islands in the Ægean Sea, surrounding Delos as though with a
circle, whence their name.]
[Footnote 53: _Her all-productive face._--Ver. 275. The earth was
similarly called by the Greeks παμμήτωρ, ‘the mother of all
things.’ So Virgil calls it ‘omniparens.’]
[Footnote 54: _Atlas._--Ver. 296. This was a mountain of
Mauritania, which, by reason of its height, was said to support
the heavens.]
[Footnote 55: _We are thrown._--Ver. 299. Clarke translates, ‘In
chaos antiquum confundimur,’ ‘We are then jumbled into the old
chaos again.’]
EXPLANATION.
If we were to regard this fable solely as an allegory intended to
convey a moral, we should at once perceive that the adventure of
Phaëton represents the wilful folly of a rash young man, who consults
his own inclination, rather than the dictates of wisdom and prudence.
Some ancient writers tell us that Phaëton was the son of Phœbus and
Clymene, while others make the nymph Rhoda to have been his mother.
Apollodorus, following Hesiod, says that Herse, the daughter of
Cecrops, king of Athens, was the mother of Cephalus, who was carried
away by Aurora; which probably means that he left Greece for the
purpose of settling in the East. Cephalus had a son named Tithonus,
the father of Phaëton. Thus Phaëton was the fourth in lineal descent
from Cecrops, who reigned at Athens about 1580, B.C. The story is most
probably based upon the fact of some excessive heat that happened in
his time. Aristotle supposes that at that period flames fell from
heaven, which ravaged several countries. Possibly the burning of the
cities of the plain, or the stay of the sun in his course at the
command of Joshua, may have been the foundation of the story. St.
Chrysostom suggests that it is based upon an imperfect version of the
ascent of Elijah in a chariot of fire; that name, or rather ‘Elias,’
the Greek form of it, bearing a strong resemblance to Ἥλιος, the Greek
name of the sun. Vossius suggests that this is an Egyptian history,
and considers the story of the grief of Phœbus for the loss of his son
to be another version of the sorrows of the Egyptians for the death of
Osiris. The tears of the Heliades, or sisters of Phaëton, he conceives
to be identical with the lamentations of the women who wept for the
death of Thammuz. The Poet, when he tells us that Phaëton abandoned
his chariot on seeing The Scorpion, probably intends to show that the
event of which he treats happened in the month in which the sun enters
that sign.
Plutarch and Tzetzes tell us that Phaëton was a king of the
Molossians, who drowned himself in the Po; that he was a student of
astronomy, and foretold an excessive heat which happened in his reign,
and laid waste his kingdom. Lucian, also, in his Discourse on
Astronomy, gives a similar explanation of the story, and says that
this prince dying very young, left his observations imperfect, which
gave rise to the fable that he did not know how to drive the chariot
of the sun to the end of its course.
FABLE II. [II.305-324]
Jupiter, to save the universe from being consumed, hurls his thunder
at Phaëton, on which he falls headlong into the river Eridanus.
But the omnipotent father, having called the Gods above to witness, and
him, too, who had given the chariot {to Phaëton}, that unless he gives
assistance, all things will perish in direful ruin, mounts aloft to the
highest eminence, from which he is wont to spread the clouds over the
spacious earth; from which he moves his thunders, and hurls the
brandished lightnings. But then, he had neither clouds that he could
draw over the earth, nor showers that he could pour down from the sky.
He thundered aloud, and darted the poised lightning from his right ear
against the charioteer, and at the same moment deprived him both of his
life and his seat, and by his ruthless fires restrained the flames. The
horses are affrighted, and, making a bound in an opposite direction,
they shake the yoke from off their necks, and disengage themselves from
the torn harness. In one place lie the reins; in another, the axle-tree
wrenched away from the pole; in another part {are} the spokes of the
broken wheels; and the fragments of the chariot torn in pieces are
scattered far and wide. But Phaëton, the flames consuming his yellow
hair, is hurled headlong, and is borne in a long tract through the air;
as sometimes a star from the serene sky may appear to fall, although it
{really} has not fallen. Him the great Eridanus receives, in a part of
the world far distant from his country, and bathes his foaming face.
FABLE III. [II.325-366]
The sisters of Phaëton are changed into poplars, and their tears
become amber distilling from those trees.
The Hesperian Naiads[56] commit his body, smoking from the three-forked
flames, to the tomb, and inscribe these verses on the stone:--“Here is
Phaëton buried, the driver of his father’s chariot, which if he did not
manage, still he miscarried in a great attempt.” But his wretched father
had hidden his face, overcast with bitter sorrow, and, if only we can
believe it, they say that one day passed without the sun.[57] The flames
afforded light; and {so far}, there was some advantage in that disaster.
But Clymene, after she had said whatever things were to be said amid
misfortunes so great, traversed the whole earth, full of woe, and
distracted, and tearing her bosom. And first seeking his lifeless limbs,
{and} then his bones, she found his bones, however, buried on a foreign
bank. She laid herself down on the spot; and bathed with tears the name
she read on the marble, and warmed it with her open breast. The
daughters of the Sun mourn no less, and give tears, an unavailing gift,
to his death; and beating their breasts with their hands, they call
Phaëton both night and day, who is doomed not to hear their sad
complaints; and they lie scattered about the tomb.
The Moon had four times filled her disk, by joining her horns; they,
according to their custom (for use had made custom), uttered
lamentations; among whom Phaëthusa, the eldest of the sisters, when she
was desirous to lie on the ground, complained that her feet had grown
stiff; to whom the fair Lampetie attempting to come, was detained by a
root suddenly formed. A third, when she is endeavoring to tear her hair
with her hands, tears off leaves; one complains that her legs are held
fast by the trunk of a tree, another that her arms are become long
branches. And while they are wondering at these things, bark closes upon
their loins; and by degrees, it encompasses their stomachs, their
breasts, their shoulders, and their hands; and only their mouths are
left uncovered, calling upon their mother. What is their mother to do?
but run here and there, whither frenzy leads her, and join her lips
{with theirs}, while {yet} she may? That is not enough; she tries to
pull their bodies out of the trunks {of the trees}, and with her hands
to tear away the tender branches; but from thence drops of blood flow as
from a wound. Whichever {of them} is wounded, cries out, “Spare me,
mother, O spare me, I pray; in the tree my body is being torn. And now
farewell.” The bark came over the last words.
Thence tears flow forth; and amber distilling from the new-formed
branches, hardens in the sun; which the clear river receives and sends
to be worn by the Latian matrons.
[Footnote 56: _The Hesperian Naiads._--Ver. 325. These were the
Naiads of Italy. They were by name Phaëthusa, Lampetie, and
Phœbe.]
[Footnote 57: _Passed without the sun._--Ver. 331. There is,
perhaps, in this line some faint reference to a tradition of the
sun having, in the language of Scripture, ‘stood still upon
Gibeon, in his course, by the command of Joshua, when dispensing
the divine vengeance upon the Amorites,’ Joshua, x. 13. Or of the
time when ‘the shadow returned ten degrees backward’, by the
sun-dial of Ahaz, 2 Kings, xx. 11.]
FABLE IV. [II.367-400]
Cycnus, king of Liguria, inconsolable for the death of Phaëton, is
transformed into a swan.
Cycnus, the son of Sthenelus,[58] was present at this strange event;
who, although he was related to thee, Phaëton, on his mother’s side, was
yet more nearly allied in affection. He having left his kingdom (for he
reigned over the people and the great cities of the Ligurians[59]) was
filling the verdant banks and the river Eridanus, and the wood, {now}
augmented by the sisters, with his complaints; when the man’s voice
became shrill, and gray feathers concealed his hair. A long neck, too,
extends from his breast, and a membrane joins his reddening toes;
feathers clothe his sides, {and} his mouth holds a bill without a point.
Cycnus becomes a new bird; but he trusts himself not to the heavens or
the air, as being mindful of the fire unjustly sent from thence. He
frequents the pools and the wide lakes, and abhorring fire, he chooses
the streams, the {very} contrary of flames.
Meanwhile, the father of Phaëton, in squalid garb, and destitute of his
comeliness, just as he is wont to be when he suffers an eclipse of his
disk, abhors both the light, himself, and the day; and gives his mind up
to grief, and adds resentment to his sorrow, and denies his services to
the world. “My lot,” says he, “has been restless enough from the {very}
beginning of time, and I am tired of labors endured by me, without end
and without honor. Let any one else drive the chariot that carries the
light. If there is no one, and all the Gods confess that they cannot do
it, let {Jupiter} himself drive it; that, at least, while he is trying
my reins, he may for a time lay aside the lightnings that bereave
fathers. Then he will know, having made trial of the strength of the
flame-footed steeds, that he who did not successfully guide them, did
not deserve death.”
All the Deities stand around the Sun, as he says such things; and they
entreat him, with suppliant voice, not to determine to bring darkness
over the world. Jupiter, as well, excuses the hurling of his lightnings,
and imperiously adds threats to entreaties. Phœbus calls together his
steeds, maddened and still trembling with terror, and, subduing them,
vents his fury both with whip and lash; for he is furious, and upbraids
them with his son, and charges {his death} upon them.
[Footnote 58: _Sthenelus._--Ver. 367. He was a king of Liguria.
Commentators have justly remarked that it was not very likely that
a king of Liguria should be related to Clymene, a queen of the
Ethiopians, as Ovid, in the next line, says was the case. This
story was probably invented by some writer, who fancied that there
were two persons of the name of Phaëton; one the subject of eastern
tradition, and the other a personage of the Latin mythology.]
[Footnote 59: _The Ligurians._--Ver. 370. These were a people
situate on the eastern side of Etruria, between the rivers Var and
Macra. The Grecian writers were in the habit of styling the whole
of the north of Italy Liguria.]
EXPLANATION.
Plutarch places the tomb of Phaëton on the banks of the river Po; and
it is not improbable that his mother and sisters, grieving at his
fate, ended their lives in the neighborhood of his tomb, being
overcome with grief, which gave rise to the story that they were
changed into the poplars on its banks, which distilled amber. Some
writers say, that they were changed into larch trees, and not poplars.
Hesiod and Pindar also make mention of this tradition. Possibly,
Cycnus, being a friend of Phaëton, may have died from grief at his
loss, on which the poets graced his attachment with the story that he
was changed into a swan. Apollodorus mentions two other persons of the
name of Cycnus. One was the son of Mars, and was killed before Troy;
the other, as Hesiod tells us, was killed by Hercules. Lucian, in his
satirical vein, tells us, that inquiring on the banks of the Po for
the swans, and the poplars distilling amber, he was told that no such
things had ever been seen there; and that even the tradition of
Phaëton and his sisters was utterly unknown to the inhabitants of
those parts.
FABLE V. [II.401-465]
Jupiter, while taking a survey of the world, to extinguish the remains
of the fire, falls in love with Calisto, whom he sees in Arcadia; and,
in order to seduce that Nymph, he assumes the form of Diana. Her
sister Nymphs disclose her misfortune before the Goddess, who drives
her from her company, on account of the violation of her vow of
chastity.
But the omnipotent father surveys the vast walls of heaven, and
carefully searches, that no part, impaired by the violence of the fire,
may fall to ruin. After he has seen them to be secure and in their own
{full} strength, he examines the earth, and the works of man; yet a care
for his own Arcadia is more particularly his object. He restores, too,
the springs and the rivers, that had not yet dared to flow, he gives
grass to the earth: green leaves to the trees; and orders the injured
forests again to be green. While {thus} he often went to and fro, he
stopped short on {seeing} a virgin of Nonacris, and the fires engendered
within his bones received {fresh} heat. It was not her employment to
soften the wool by teasing, nor to vary her tresses in their
arrangement; while a buckle fastened her garment, and a white fillet her
hair, carelessly flowing; and at one time she bore in her hand a light
javelin, at another, a bow. She was a warrior of Phœbe; nor did any
{Nymph} frequent Mænalus, more beloved by Trivia,[60] than she; but no
influence is of long duration. The lofty Sun had {now} obtained a
position beyond the mid course, when she enters a grove which no
generation had {ever} cut. Here she puts her quiver off from her
shoulders, and unbends her pliant bow, and lies down on the ground,
which the grass had covered, and presses her painted quiver, with her
neck laid on it. When Jupiter saw her {thus} weary, and without a
protector, he said, “For certain, my wife will know nothing of this
stolen embrace; or, if she should chance to know, is her scolding, is
it, {I say}, of such great consequence?”
Immediately he puts on the form and dress of Diana, and says, “O Virgin!
one portion of my train, upon what mountains hast thou been hunting?”
The virgin raises herself from the turf, and says, “Hail, Goddess! {that
art}, in my opinion, greater than Jove, even if he himself should hear
it.” He both smiles and he hears it, and is pleased at being preferred
to himself; and he gives her kisses, not very moderate, nor such as
would be given by a virgin. He stops her as she is preparing to tell him
in what wood she has been hunting, by an embrace, and he does not betray
himself without the commission {of violence}. She, indeed, on the other
hand, as far as a woman could do (would that thou hadst seen her,
daughter of Saturn, {then} thou wouldst have been more merciful), she,
indeed, {I say}, resists; but what damsel, or who {besides}, could
prevail against Jupiter? Jove, {now} the conqueror, seeks the heavens
above; the grove and the conscious wood is {now} her aversion. Making
her retreat thence, she is almost forgetting to take away her quiver
with her arrows, and the bow which she had hung up.
Behold, Dictynna,[61] attended by her train, as she goes along the lofty
Mænalus, and exulting in the slaughter of the wild beasts, beholds her,
and calls her, thus seen. Being so called, she drew back, and at first
was afraid lest Jupiter might be under her {shape}; but after she saw
the Nymphs walking along with her, she perceived that there was no
deceit,[62] and she approached their train. Alas! how difficult it is
not to betray a crime by one’s looks! She scarce raises her eyes from
the ground, nor, as she used to do, does she walk by the side of the
Goddess, nor is she the foremost in the whole company; but she is
silent, and by her blushes she gives signs of her injured honor. And
Diana, but {for the fact}, that she is a virgin, might have perceived
her fault by a thousand indications; the Nymphs are said to have
perceived it.
The horns of the Moon were {now} rising again in her ninth course, when
the hunting Goddess, faint from her brother’s flames, lighted on a cool
grove, out of which a stream ran, flowing with its murmuring noise, and
borne along the sand worn fine {by its action}. When she had approved of
the spot, she touched the surface of the water with her foot; and
commending it as well, she says, “All overlookers are far off; let us
bathe our bodies, with the stream poured over them.” She of
Parrhasia[63] blushed; they all put off their clothes; she alone sought
{an excuse for} delay. Her garment was removed as she hesitated, which
being put off, her fault was exposed with her naked body. Cynthia said
to her, in confusion, and endeavoring to conceal her stomach with her
hands, “Begone afar hence! and pollute not the sacred springs;” and she
ordered her to leave her train.
[Footnote 60: _Trivia._--Ver. 416. This was an epithet of Diana,
as presiding over and worshipped in the places where three roads
met, which were called ‘trivia.’ Being known as Diana on earth,
the Moon in the heavens, and Proserpine in the infernal regions,
she was represented at these places with three faces; those of a
horse, a dog, and a female; the latter being in the middle.]
[Footnote 61: _Dictynna._--Ver. 441. Diana was so called from the
Greek word δικτὺς, ‘a net,’ which was used by her for the purposes
of hunting.]
[Footnote 62: _There was no deceit._--Ver. 446. Clarke translates
‘sensit abesse dolos,’ ‘she was convinced there was no roguery in
the case.’]
[Footnote 63: _She of Parrhasia._--Ver. 460. Calisto is so called
from Parrhasia, a region of Arcadia. Parrhasius was the name of a
mountain, a grove, and a city of that country and was derived from
the name of Parrhasus, a son of Lycaon.]
FABLES VI AND VII. [II.466-550]
Juno, being jealous that Calisto has attracted Jupiter, transforms her
into a Bear. Her son, Arcas, not recognizing his mother in that shape,
is about to kill her; but Jupiter removes them both to the skies,
where they form the Constellations of the Great and the Little Bear.
The raven, as a punishment for his garrulity, is changed from white to
black.
The spouse of the great Thunderer had perceived this some time before,
and had put off the severe punishment {designed for her}, to a proper
time. There is {now} no reason for delay; and now the boy Arcas (that,
too, was a grief to Juno) was born of the mistress {of her husband}.
Wherefore, she turned her thoughts, full of resentment, and her eyes
{upon her}, and said, “This thing, forsooth, alone was wanting, thou
adulteress, that thou shouldst be pregnant, and that my injury should
become notorious by thy labors, and that {thereby} the disgraceful
conduct of my {husband}, Jupiter, should be openly declared. Thou shalt
not go unpunished; for I will spoil that shape of thine, on which thou
pridest thyself, and by which thou, mischievous one,[64] dost charm my
husband.”
{Thus} she spoke; and seizing her straight in front by the hair,[65]
threw her on her face to the ground. She suppliantly stretched forth her
arms; those arms began to grow rough with black hair,[66] and her hands
to be bent, and to increase to hooked claws, and to do the duty of feet,
and the mouth, that was once admired by Jupiter, to become deformed with
a wide opening; and lest her prayers, and words not needed, should
influence her feelings, the power of speech is taken from her; an angry
and threatening voice, and full of terror, is uttered from her hoarse
throat. Still, her former understanding remains in her, even thus become
a bear; and expressing her sorrows by her repeated groans, she lifts up
her hands, such as they are, to heaven and to the stars, and she deems
Jove ungrateful, though she cannot call him so. Ah! how often, not
daring to rest in the lonely wood, did she wander about before her own
house, and in the fields once her own. Ah! how often was she driven over
the crags by the cry of the hounds; and, a huntress herself, she fled in
alarm, through fear of the hunters! Often, seeing the wild beasts, did
she lie concealed, forgetting what she was; and, a bear herself, dreaded
the he-bears seen on the mountains, and was alarmed at the wolves,
though her father was among them.
Behold! Arcas, the offspring of the daughter of Lycaon, ignorant of who
is his parent, approaches her, thrice five birthdays being now nearly
past; and while he is following the wild beasts, while he is choosing
the proper woods, and is enclosing the Erymanthian forests[67] with his
platted nets, he meets with his mother. She stood still, upon seeing
Arcas, and was like one recognizing {another}. He drew back, and, in his
ignorance, was alarmed at her keeping her eyes fixed upon him without
ceasing; and, as she was desirous to approach still nearer, he would
have pierced her breast with the wounding spear. Omnipotent {Jove}
averted this, and removed both them and {such} wickedness; and placed
them, carried through vacant space with a rapid wind, in the heavens,
and made them neighboring Constellations.
Juno swelled with rage after the mistress shone amid the stars, and
descended on the sea to the hoary Tethys, and the aged Ocean, a regard
for whom has often influenced the Gods; and said to them, inquiring the
reason of her coming, “Do you inquire why I, the queen of the Gods, am
come hither from the æthereal abodes? Another has possession of heaven
in my stead. May I be deemed untruthful, if, when the night has made the
world dark, you see not in the highest part of heaven stars but lately
{thus} honored to my affliction; there, where the last and most limited
circle surrounds the extreme part of the axis {of the world}. Is there,
then, {any ground} why one should hesitate to affront Juno, and dread my
being offended, who only benefit them by my resentment? See what a great
thing I have done! How vast is my power! I forbade her to be of human
shape; she has been made a Goddess; ’tis thus that I inflict punishment
on offenders; such is my mighty power! Let him obtain {for her} her
former shape, and let him remove this form of a wild beast; as he
formerly did for the Argive Phoronis. Why does he not marry her as well,
divorcing Juno, and place her in my couch, and take Lycaon for his
father-in-law? But if the wrong done to your injured foster-child
affects you, drive the seven Triones away from your azure waters, and
expel the stars received into heaven as the reward of adultery, that a
concubine may not be received into your pure waves.”
The Gods of the sea granted her request. The daughter of Saturn enters
the liquid air in her graceful chariot,[68] with her variegated
peacocks; peacocks just as lately tinted, upon the killing of Argus, as
thou, garrulous raven, hadst been suddenly transformed into {a bird
having} black wings, whereas thou hadst been white before. For this bird
was formerly of a silver hue, with snow-white feathers, so that he
equalled the doves entirely without spot; nor would he give place to the
geese that were to save the Capitol by their watchful voice, nor to the
swan haunting the streams. His tongue was the cause of his disgrace; his
chattering tongue being the cause, that the color which was white is now
the reverse of white.
There was no one more beauteous in all Hæmonia than Larissæan[69]
Coronis. At least, she pleased thee, Delphian {God}, as long as she
continued chaste, or was not the object of remark. But the bird of
Phœbus found out her infidelity;[70] and the inexorable informer winged
his way to his master, that he might disclose the hidden offence. Him
the prattling crow follows, with flapping wings, to make all inquiries
of him. And having heard the occasion of his journey, she says, “Thou
art going on a fruitless errand; do not despise the presages of my
voice.”
[Footnote 64: _Thou, mischievous one._--Ver. 475. Clarke, rather
too familiarly, renders ‘importuna,’ ‘plaguy baggage.’]
[Footnote 65: _In front by the hair._--Ver. 476. ‘Adversâ prensis
a fronte capillis,’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘seizing her fore-top.’
Had he been describing the combats of two fish-wives, such a
version would have been, perhaps, more appropriate than in the
present instance.]
[Footnote 66: _With black hair._--Ver. 478. To the explanation
given at the end of the story, we may here add the curious one
offered by Palæphatus. He says that Calisto was a huntress who
entered the den of a bear, by which she was devoured; and that the
bear coming out, and Calisto being no more seen, it was reported
that she had been transformed into a bear.]
[Footnote 67: _Erymanthian forests._--Ver. 499. Erymanthus was a
mountain of Arcadia, which was afterwards famous for the slaughter
there, by Hercules, of the wild boar, which made it his haunt.]
[Footnote 68: _Graceful chariot._--Ver. 531. Clarke translates
‘habili curru,’ ‘her neat chariot.’]
[Footnote 69: _Larissæan._--Ver. 542. Larissa was the chief city
of Thessaly, and was situate on the river Peneus.]
[Footnote 70: _Her infidelity._--Ver. 545. ‘Sed ales sensit
adulterium Phœbeius,’ is translated by Clarke, ‘but the Phœban
bird found out her pranks.’]
EXPLANATION.
Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods, Book iii.) tells us, that Lycaon
had a daughter who delighted in the chase, and that Jupiter, the
second of that name, the king of Arcadia, fell in love with her. This
was the ground on which she was said to have been a favorite of Diana.
The story of Calisto having been received into Heaven, and forming the
Constellation of the Bear, was perhaps grounded on the fact of Lycaon,
her father, having been the first known to take particular notice of
this Constellation. The story of the request of Juno, that Tethys will
not receive this new Constellation into the Ocean, is probably derived
from the circumstance, that the Bear, as well as the other stars
within the Arctic Circle, never sets.
Possibly, Arcas, the son of Calisto, dying at a youthful age, may have
been the origin of the Constellation of the Lesser Bear.
FABLE VIII. [II.551-590]
A virgin, the favorite of Apollo, of the same name with Coronis, is
changed into a crow, for a story which she tells Minerva, concerning
the basket in which Ericthonius was enclosed.
“Consider what I was, and what I am, and inquire into my deserts. Thou
wilt find that my fidelity was my ruin. For once upon a time, Pallas had
enclosed Ericthonius, an offspring born without a mother, in a basket
made of Actæan twigs; and had given it to keep to the three virgins born
of the two-shaped[71] Cecrops, and had given them this injunction, that
they should not inquire into her secrets. I, being hidden among the
light foliage, was watching from a thick elm what they were doing. Two
{of them}, Pandrosos and Herse, observe their charge without {any}
treachery; Aglauros alone calls her sisters cowards, and unties the
knots with her hand; but within they behold a child, and a dragon
extended by him. I told the Goddess what was done; for which such a
return as this is made to me, that I am said to have been banished from
the protection of Minerva, and am placed after the bird of the night. My
punishment may warn birds not to incur dangers, by their chattering. But
I consider {that} she courted me with no inclination of my own, nor
asking for any such {favors}. This thou mayst ask of Pallas thyself;
although she is angry, she will not, with all her anger, deny this. For
Coroneus, one famous in the land of Phocis (I mention what is well
known) begot me: and {so} I was a virgin of royal birth, and was courted
by rich suitors ({so} despise me not). My beauty was the cause of my
misfortune; for while I was passing with slow steps along the sea-shore,
on the surface of the sand, as I was wont {to do}, the God of the Ocean
beheld me, and was inflamed; and when he had consumed his time to no
purpose, in entreating me with soft words, he prepared {to use}
violence, and followed me. I fled, and I left the firm shore, and
wearied myself in vain on the yielding sand. Then I invoked both Gods
and men; but my voice did not reach any mortal. A virgin was moved for a
virgin, and gave me assistance. I was extending my arms toward heaven;
{when those} arms began to grow black with light feathers. I struggled
to throw my garments from off my shoulders, but they were feathers, and
had taken deep root in my skin. I tried to beat my naked breast with my
hands, but I had now neither hands nor naked breast. I ran; and the sand
did not retard my feet as before, and I was lifted up from the surface
of the ground. After that, being lifted up, I was carried through the
air, and was assigned, as a faultless companion, to Minerva. Yet what
does this avail me, if Nyctimene, made a bird for a horrid crime, has
succeeded me in my honor?”
[Footnote 71: _Two-shaped._--Ver. 555. Cecrops is here so called,
and in the Greek, διφυὴς from the fact of his having been born in
Egypt, and having settled in Greece, and was thus to be reckoned
both as an Egyptian, and in the number of the Greeks.]
EXPLANATION.
Ericthonius was fabled to be the son, or foster-child, of Athene, or
Minerva, perhaps because he was the son of the daughter of Cranaus,
who had the name of Athene, by a priest of Vulcan, which Divinity was
said to have been his progenitor. St. Augustine alleges that he was
exposed, and found in a temple dedicated to Minerva and Vulcan. His
name being composed of two words, ἔρις and χθὼν, signifying
‘contention,’ and ‘earth,’ Strabo imagines that he was the son of
Vulcan and the Earth. But it seems that the real ground on which he
was called by that name was, that he disputed the right to the crown
of Athens with Amphictyon, on the death of Cranaus, the second king.
Amphictyon prevailed, but Ericthonius succeeded him. To hide his legs,
which were deformed, he is said to have invented chariots; though that
is not likely, as Egypt, from which Greece had received many colonies,
was acquainted with the use of them from the earliest times. He is
also said to have instituted the festival of the Panathenæa, at
Athens, whence, in process of time, it was adopted by the whole of
Greece.
Hyginus tells us, that after his death he was received into heaven as
the constellation ‘Auriga,’ or ‘the Charioteer;’ and he further
informs us, that the deformity of his legs gave occasion to the
saying, that he was half man and half a serpent. Apollodorus says that
he was born in Attica; that he was the son of Cranaë, the daughter of
Attis; and that he dethroned Amphictyon, and became the fourth king of
Athens.
FABLE IX. [II.591-632]
Nyctimene having entertained a criminal passion for her father,
Nycteus, the Gods, to punish her incest, transform her into an owl.
Apollo pierces the breast of Coronis with an arrow, on the raven
informing him of the infidelity of his mistress.
“Has not the thing, which is very well known throughout the whole of
Lesbos,[72] been heard of by thee, that Nyctimene defiled the bed of her
father? She is a bird indeed; but being conscious of her crime, she
avoids {the human} gaze and the light, and conceals her shame in the
darkness; and by all {the birds} she is expelled entirely from the sky.”
The raven says to him, saying such things, “May this, thy calling of me
back, prove a mischief to thee, I pray; I despise the worthless omen.”
Nor does he drop his intended journey; and he tells his master, that he
has seen Coronis lying down with a youth of Hæmonia. On hearing the
crime of his mistress, his laurel fell down; and at the same moment his
usual looks, his plectrum,[73] and his color, forsook the God. And as
his mind was {now} burning with swelling rage, he took up his wonted
arms, and levelled his bow bent from the extremities, and pierced, with
an unerring shaft, that bosom, that had been so oft pressed to his own
breast. Wounded, she uttered a groan, and, drawing the steel from out of
the wound, she bathed her white limbs with purple blood; and she said,
“I might {justly}, Phœbus, have been punished by thee, but {still I
might} have first brought forth; now we two shall die in one.” Thus far
{she spoke}; and she poured forth her life, together with her blood.
A deadly coldness took possession of her body deprived of life.
The lover, too late, alas! repents of his cruel vengeance, and blames
himself that he listened {to the bird, and} that he was so infuriated.
He hates the bird, through which he was forced to know of the crime and
the cause of his sorrow; he hates, too, the string, the bow, and his
hand; and together with his hand, {those} rash weapons, the arrows. He
cherishes her fallen to the ground, and by late resources endeavors to
conquer her destiny; and in vain he practices his physical arts.
When he found that these attempts were made in vain, and that the
funeral pile was being prepared, and that her limbs were about to be
burnt in the closing flames, then, in truth, he gave utterance to sighs
fetched from the bottom of his heart (for it is not allowed the
celestial features to be bathed with tears). No otherwise than, as when
an axe, poised from the right ear {of the butcher}, dashes to pieces,
with a clean stroke, the hollow temples of the sucking calf, while the
dam looks on. Yet after Phœbus had poured the unavailing perfumes on her
breast, when he had given the {last} embrace and had performed the due
obsequies prematurely hastened, he did not suffer his own offspring to
sink into the same ashes; but he snatched the child from the flames and
from the womb of his mother, and carried him into the cave of the
two-formed Chiron. And he forbade the raven, expecting for himself the
reward of his tongue that told no untruth, to perch any longer among the
white birds.
[Footnote 72: _Lesbos._--Ver. 591. This was an island in the Ægean
sea, lying to the south of Troy.]
[Footnote 73: _Plectrum._--Ver. 601. This was a little rod, or
staff, with which the player used to strike the strings of the
lyre, or cithara, on which he was playing.]
EXPLANATION.
History does not afford us the least insight into the foundation of
the story of Coronis transformed into a crow, for making too faithful
a report, nor that of the raven changed from white to black, for
talking too much. If they are based upon some events which really
happened, we must be content to acknowledge that these Fables refer to
the history of two persons entirely unknown to us, and who, perhaps,
lived as far back as the time of the daughters of Cecrops, to whom the
story seems to bear some relation. Coronis being the name of a crow as
well as of a Nymph, Lucian and other writers have fabled that her son,
Æsculapius, was produced from the egg of that bird, and was born in
the shape of a serpent, under which form he was very generally
worshipped.
FABLE X. [II.633-675]
Ocyrrhoe, the daughter of the Centaur Chiron, attempting to predict
future events, tells her father the fate of the child Æsculapius, on
which the Gods transform her into a mare.
In the meantime the half-beast {Chiron} was proud of a pupil of Divine
origin, and rejoiced in the honor annexed to the responsibility. Behold!
the daughter of the Centaur comes, having her shoulders covered with her
yellow hair; whom once the nymph Chariclo,[74] having borne her on the
banks of a rapid stream, called Ocyrrhoë. She was not contented to learn
her father’s arts {only; but} she sang the secrets of the Fates.
Therefore, when she had conceived in her mind the prophetic transports,
and grew warm with the God, whom she held confined within her breast,
she beheld the infant, and she said, “Grow on, child, the giver of
health to the whole world; the bodies of mortals shall often owe their
{own existence} to thee. To thee will it be allowed to restore life when
taken away; and daring to do that once against the will of the Gods,
thou wilt be hindered by the bolts of thy grandsire from being able any
more to grant that {boon}. And from a God thou shalt become a lifeless
carcase; and a God {again}, who lately wast a carcase; and twice shalt
thou renew thy destiny. Thou likewise, dear father, now immortal, and
produced at thy nativity, on the condition of enduring for ever, wilt
then wish that thou couldst die, when thou shalt be tormented on
receiving the blood of a baneful serpent[75] in thy wounded limbs; and
the Gods shall make thee from an immortal {being}, subject to death, and
the three Goddesses[76] shall cut thy threads.”
Something still remained in addition to what she had said. She heaved a
sigh from the bottom of her breast, and the tears bursting forth,
trickled down her cheeks, and thus she said: “The Fates prevent me, and
I am forbidden to say any more, and the use of my voice is precluded. My
arts, which have brought the wrath of a Divinity upon me, were not of so
much value; I wish that I had not been acquainted with the future. Now
the human shape seems to be withdrawing from me; now grass pleases {me}
for my food; now I have a desire to range over the extended plains; I am
turned into a mare, and into a shape kindred {to that of my father}. But
yet, why entirely? For my father partakes of both forms.”
As she was uttering such words as these, the last part of her complaint
was but little understood; and her words were confused. And presently
neither {were} they words indeed, nor did it appear to be the voice of a
mare, but of one imitating a mare. And in a little time she uttered
perfect neighing, and stretched her arms upon the grass. Then did her
fingers grow together, and a smooth hoof united five nails in one
continued piece of horn. The length of her face and of her neck
increased; the greatest part of her long hair became a tail. And as the
hairs lay scattered about her neck, they were transformed into a mane
{lying} upon the right side; at once both her voice and her shape were
changed. And this wondrous change gave her the {new} name {of Enippe}.
[Footnote 74: _Chariclo._--Ver. 636. She was the daughter of
Apollo, or of Oceanus, but is supposed not to have been the same
person that is mentioned by Apollodorus as the mother of the
prophet Tiresias.]
[Footnote 75: _A baneful serpent._--Ver. 652. This happened when
one of the arrows of Hercules, dipped in the poison of the Lernæan
Hydra, pierced the foot of Chiron while he was examining it.]
[Footnote 76: _The three Goddesses._--Ver. 654. Namely, Clotho,
Lachesis, and Atropos, the ‘Parcæ,’ or ‘Destinies.’]
FABLE XI. [II.676-707]
Mercury, having stolen the oxen of Apollo, and Battus having perceived
the theft, he engages him, by a present, to keep the matter secret.
Mistrusting, however, his fidelity, he assumes another shape, and
tempting him with presents, he succeeds in corrupting him. To punish
his treachery, the God changes him into a touchstone.
The Philyrean[77] hero wept, and in vain, {God} of Delphi, implored thy
assistance; but neither couldst thou reverse the orders of great
Jupiter, nor, if thou couldst have reversed them wast thou then present;
{for then} thou wast dwelling in Elis and the Messenian[78] fields. This
was the time when a shepherd’s skin garment was covering thee, and a
stick cut out of the wood was the burden of thy left hand, {and} of the
other, a pipe unequal with its seven reeds. And while love is thy
concern, while thy pipe is soothing thee, some cows are said to have
strayed unobserved into the plains of Pylos.[79] The son of Maia the
daughter of Atlas, observes them, and with his {usual} skill hides them,
driven off, in the woods. Nobody but an old man, well-known in that
country, had noticed the theft: all the neighborhood called him Battus.
He was keeping the forests and the grassy pastures, and the set of
fine-bred mares of the rich Neleus.[80]
{Mercury} was afraid of him, and took him aside with a gentle hand, and
said to him, “Come, stranger, whoever thou art, if, perchance any one
should ask after these herds, deny that thou hast seen them; and, lest
no requital be paid thee for so doing, take a handsome cow as thy
reward;” and {thereupon} he gave {him one}. On receiving it, the
stranger returned this answer: “Thou mayst go in safety. May that stone
first make mention of thy theft;” and he pointed to a stone. The son of
Jupiter feigned to go away. {But} soon he returned, and changing his
form, together with his voice, he said, “Countryman, if thou hast seen
any cows pass along this way, give me thy help, and break silence about
the theft; a female, coupled together with its bull shall be presented
thee as a reward.” But the old man,[81] after his reward was {thus}
doubled, said, “They will be beneath those hills;” and beneath those
hills they {really} were. The son of Atlas laughed and said, “Dost thou,
treacherous man, betray me to my own self? Dost betray me to myself?”
and {then} he turned his perjured breast into a hard stone, which even
now is called the “Touchstone;”[82] and this old disgrace is {attached}
to the stone that {really} deserves it not.
[Footnote 77: _Philyrean._--Ver. 676. Chiron was the son of
Philyra, by Saturn.]
[Footnote 78: _Messenian._--Ver. 679. Elis and Messenia were
countries of Peloponnesus; the former was on the northwest, and
the latter on the southwest side of it.]
[Footnote 79: _Plains of Pylos._--Ver. 684. There were three
cities named Pylos in Peloponnesus. One was in Elis, another in
Messenia, and the third was situate between the other two. The
latter is supposed to have been the native place of Nestor, though
they all laid claim to that honor.]
[Footnote 80: _Neleus._--Ver. 689. He was the king of Pylos, and
the father of Nestor.]
[Footnote 81: _The old man._--Ver. 702. Clarke quaintly translates
‘at senior,’ ‘but then the old blade.’]
[Footnote 82: _The ‘Touchstone.’_--Ver. 706. It is a matter of
doubt among commentators whether ‘index’ here means a general term
for the touchstone, by which metals are tested; or whether it
means that Battus was changed into one individual stone, which
afterwards was called ‘index.’ Lactantius, by his words, seems to
imply that the latter was the case. He says, ‘He changed him into
a stone, which, from this circumstance, is called “index” about
Pylos.’ ‘Index’ was a name of infamy, corresponding with the Greek
word συκοφάντης, and with our term ‘spy.’]
EXPLANATION.
The Centaurs, fabulous monsters, half men and half horses, were
perhaps the first horsemen in Thessaly and its neighborhood. It is
also probable that Chiron, who was one of these, acquired great fame
by the knowledge he had acquired at a time and in a country where
learning was little cultivated. The ancients regarded him as the first
promulgator of the utility of medicines, in which he was said to have
instructed his pupil Æsculapius. He was also considered to be an
excellent musician and a good astronomer, as we learn from Homer,
Diodorus Siculus, and other authors. Most of the heroes of that age,
and among them Hercules and Jason, studied under him. Very probably,
the only foundation for the story of the transformation of Ocyrrhoë,
was the skill and address which, under her father’s instruction, she
acquired in riding and the management of horses. For if, as it seems
really was the case, the horsemen of that age were taken for monsters,
half men and half horses, it is not surprising to find the story that
the daughter of a Centaur was transformed into a mare.
Chiron is generally supposed to have marked out the Constellations,
for the purpose of directing the Argonauts in their voyage for the
recovery of the Golden Fleece.
FABLE XII. [II.708-764]
Mercury, falling in love with Herse, the daughter of Cecrops,
endeavors to engage Aglauros in his interest, and by her means, to
obtain access to her sister. She refuses to assist him, unless he
promises to present her with a large sum of money.
Hence, the bearer of the caduceus raised himself upon equal wings; and
as he flew, he looked down upon the fields of Munychia,[83] and the land
pleasing to Minerva, and the groves of the well-planted Lycæus. On that
day, by chance, the chaste virgins were, in their purity, carrying the
sacred offerings in baskets crowned with flowers, upon their heads to
the joyful citadel of Pallas. The winged God beholds them returning
thence; and he does not shape his course directly forward, but wheels
round in the {same} circle. As that bird swiftest in speed, the kite, on
espying the entrails, while he is afraid, and the priests stand in
numbers around the sacrifice, wings his flight in circles, and yet
ventures not to go far away, and greedily hovers around {the object of}
his hopes with waving wings, so does the active Cyllenian {God} bend his
course over the Actæan towers, and circles round in the same air. As
much as Lucifer shines more brightly than the other stars, and as much
as the golden Phœbe {shines more brightly} than thee, O Lucifer, so much
superior was Herse, as she went, to all the {other} virgins, and was the
ornament of the solemnity and of her companions. The son of Jupiter was
astonished at her beauty; and as he hung in the air, he burned no
otherwise than as when the Balearic[84] sling throws forth the plummet
of lead; it flies and becomes red hot in its course, and finds beneath
the clouds the fires which it had not {before}.
He alters his course, and, having left heaven, goes a different way; nor
does he disguise himself; so great is his confidence in his beauty.
This, though it is {every way} complete, still he improves by care, and
smooths his hair and {adjusts} his mantle,[85] that it may hang
properly, so that the fringe and all the gold may be seen; {and minds}
that his long smooth wand, with which he induces and drives away sleep,
is in his right hand, and that his wings[86] shine upon his beauteous
feet.
A private part of the house had three bed-chambers, adorned with ivory
and with tortoiseshell, of which thou, Pandrosos, hadst the right-hand
one, Aglauros the left-hand, and Herse had the one in the middle. She
that occupied the left-hand one was the first to remark Mercury
approaching, and she ventured to ask the name of the God, and the
occasion of his coming. To her thus answered the grandson of Atlas and
of Pleione: “I am he who carries the commands of my father through the
air. Jupiter himself is my father. Nor will I invent pretences; do thou
only be willing to be attached to thy sister, and to be called the aunt
of my offspring. Herse is the cause of my coming; I pray thee to favor
one in love.” Aglauros looks upon him with the same eyes with which she
had lately looked upon the hidden mysteries of the yellow-haired
Minerva, and demands for her agency gold of great weight; {and}, in the
meantime, obliges him to go out of the house. The warlike Goddess turned
upon her the orbs of her stern eyes, and drew a sigh from the bottom {of
her heart}, with so great a motion, that she heaved both her breast and
the Ægis placed before her valiant breast. It occurred {to her} that she
had laid open her secrets with a profane hand, at the time when she
beheld progeny created for {the God} who inhabits Lemnos,[87] without a
mother, {and} contrary to the assigned laws; and that she could now be
agreeable both to the God and to the sister {of Aglauros}, and that she
would be enriched by taking the gold, which she, in her avarice, had
demanded. Forthwith she repairs to the abode of Envy, hideous with black
gore. Her abode is concealed in the lowest recesses of a cave, wanting
sun, {and} not pervious to any wind, dismal and filled with benumbing
cold; and which is ever without fire, and ever abounding with darkness.
[Footnote 83: _Munychia._--Ver. 709. Munychia was the name of a
promontory and harbor of Attica, between the Piræus and the
promontory of ‘Sunium.’ The spot was so called from Munychius, who
there built a temple in honor of Diana.]
[Footnote 84: _Balearic._--Ver. 727. The Baleares were the islands
of Majorca, Minorca, and Iviza, in the Mediterranean, near the
coast of Spain. The natives of these islands were famous for their
skill in the use of the sling. That weapon does not appear to have
been used in the earliest times among the Greeks, as Homer does
not mention it; it had, however, been introduced by the time of
the war with Xerxes, though even then the sling was, perhaps,
rarely used as a weapon. The Acarnanians and the Achæans of Agium,
Patræ, and Dymæ were very expert in the use of the sling. That
used by the Achæans was made of three thongs of leather, and not
of one only, like those of other nations. The natives of the
Balearic isles are said to have attained their skill from the
circumstance of their mothers, when they were children, obliging
them to obtain their food by striking it, from a tree, with a
sling. While other slings were made of leather, theirs were made
of rushes. Besides stones, plummets of lead, called ‘glandes,’
(as in the present instance), and μολύβδιδες, of a form between
acorns and almonds, were cast in moulds, to be thrown from slings.
They have been frequently dug up in various parts of Greece, and
particularly on the plains of Marathon. Some have the device of a
thunderbolt; while others are inscribed with δέξαι, ‘take this.’
It was a prevalent idea with the ancients that the stone
discharged from the sling became red hot in its course, from the
swiftness of its motion.]
[Footnote 85: _Adjusts his mantle._--Ver. 733. ‘Chlamydemque ut
pendeat apte, Collocat,’ etc., is translated by Clarke--‘And he
places his coat that it might hang agreeably, that the border and
all its gold might appear.’]
[Footnote 86: _That his wings._--Ver. 736. Clarke renders ‘ut
tersis niteant talaria plantis,’ ‘that his wings shine upon his
spruce feet.’]
[Footnote 87: _God who inhabits Lemnos._--Ver. 757. Being
precipitated from heaven for his deformity, Vulcan fell upon the
Isle of Lemnos, in the Ægean Sea, where he exercised the craft of
a blacksmith, according to the mythologists. The birth of
Ericthonius, by the aid of Minerva, is here referred to.]
EXPLANATION.
Cicero tells us, that there were several persons in ancient times
named Mercury. The probability is, that one of them fell in love with
Herse, one of the daughters of Cecrops, king of Athens; and that
Aglauros becoming jealous of her, this tradition was built upon facts
of so ordinary a nature.
FABLE XIII. [II.765-832]
Pallas commands Envy to make Aglauros jealous of her sister Herse.
Envy obeys the request of the Goddess; and Aglauros, stung with that
passion, continues obstinate in opposing Mercury’s passage to her
sister’s apartment, for which the God changes her into a statue.
When the female warrior, to be dreaded in battle, came hither, she stood
before the abode (for she did not consider it lawful to go under the
roof), and she struck the door-posts with the end of the spear. The
doors, being shaken, flew open; she sees Envy within, eating the flesh
of vipers, the nutriment of her own bad propensities; and when she sees
her, she turns away her eyes. But the other rises sluggishly from the
ground, and leaves the bodies of the serpents half devoured, and stalks
along with sullen pace. And when she sees the Goddess graced with beauty
and with {splendid} arms, she groans, and fetches a deep sigh at her
appearance. A paleness rests on her face, {and} leanness in all her
body; she never looks direct on you; her teeth are black with rust; her
breast is green with gall; her tongue is dripping with venom. Smiles
there are none, except such as the sight of grief has excited. Nor does
she enjoy sleep, being kept awake with watchful cares; but sees with
sorrow the successes of men, and pines away at seeing them. She both
torments and is tormented at the same moment, and is {ever} her own
punishment. Yet, though Tritonia[88] hated her, she spoke to her briefly
in such words as these: “Infect one of the daughters of Cecrops with thy
poison; there is occasion so {to do}; Aglauros is she.”
Saying no more, she departed, and spurned the ground with her spear
impressed on it. She, beholding the Goddess as she departed, with a look
askance, uttered a few murmurs, and grieved at the success of Minerva;
and took her staff, which wreaths of thorns entirely surrounded; and
veiled in black clouds, wherever she goes she tramples down the blooming
fields, and burns up the grass, and crops the tops {of the flowers}.
With her breath, too, she pollutes both nations and cities, and houses;
and at last she descries the Tritonian[89] citadel, flourishing in arts
and riches, and cheerful peace. Hardly does she restrain her tears,
because she sees nothing to weep at. But after she has entered the
chamber of the daughter of Cecrops, she executes her orders; and touches
her breast with her hand stained with rust, and fills her heart with
jagged thorns. She breathes into her as well the noxious venom, and
spreads the poison black as pitch throughout her bones, and lodges it in
the midst of her lungs.
And that these causes of mischief may not wander through too wide a
space, she places her sister before her eyes, and the fortunate marriage
of {that} sister, and the God under his beauteous appearance, and
aggravates each particular. By this, the daughter of Cecrops being
irritated, is gnawed by a secret grief, and groans, tormented by night,
tormented by day, and wastes away in extreme wretchedness, with a slow
consumption, as ice smitten upon by a sun often clouded. She burns at
the good fortune of the happy Herse, no otherwise than as when fire is
placed beneath thorny reeds, which do not send forth flames, and burn
with a gentle heat. Often does she wish to die, that she may not be a
witness to any such thing; often, to tell the matters, as criminal, to
her severe father. At last, she sat herself down in the front of the
threshold, in order to exclude the God when he came; to whom, as he
proffered blandishments and entreaties, and words of extreme kindness,
she said, “Cease {all this}; I shall not remove myself hence, until thou
art repulsed.” “Let us stand to that agreement,” says the active
Cyllenian {God}; and he opens the carved door with his wand. But in her,
as she endeavors to arise, the parts which we bend in sitting cannot be
moved, through their numbing weight. She, indeed, struggles to raise
herself, with her body, upright; but the joints of her knees are stiff,
and a chill runs through her nails, and her veins are pallid, through
the loss of blood.
And as the disease {of} an incurable cancer is wont to spread in all
directions, and to add the uninjured parts to the tainted; so, by
degrees, did a deadly chill enter her breast, and stop the passages of
life, and her respiration. She did not endeavor to speak; but if she had
endeavored, she had no passage for her voice. Stone had now possession
of her neck; her face was grown hard, and she sat, a bloodless statue.
Nor was the stone white; her mind had stained it.
[Footnote 88: _Tritonia._--Ver. 783. Minerva is said to have been
called Tritonia, either from the Cretan word τριτω, signifying ‘a
head,’ as she sprang from the head of Jupiter; or from Trito, a
lake of Libya, near which she was said to have been born.]
[Footnote 89: _Tritonian._--Ver. 794. Athens, namely, which was
sacred to Pallas, or Minerva, its tutelary divinity.]
EXPLANATION.
Pausanias, in his Attica, somewhat varies this story, and says that
the daughters of Cecrops, running mad, threw themselves from the top
of a tower. It is very probable that on the introduction of the
worship of Pallas, or Minerva, into Attica, these daughters of Cecrops
may have hesitated to encourage the innovation, and the story was
promulgated that the Goddess had in that manner punished their
impiety. This seems the more likely, from the fact mentioned by
Pausanias that Pandrosos, the third daughter of Cecrops, had, after
her death, a temple built in honor of her, near that of Minerva,
because she had continued faithful to that Goddess, and had not
disobeyed her, as her sisters had done. The reputation and good fame
of Herse and Aglauros had, however, been restored by the time of
Herodotus, since he informs us that they both had their temples at
Athens.
FABLE XIV. [II.833-875]
Jupiter assumes the shape of a Bull, and carrying off Europa, swims
with her on his back to the isle of Crete.
When the grandson of Atlas had inflicted this punishment upon her words
and her profane disposition, he left the lands named after Pallas, and
entered the skies with his waving wings. His father calls him on one
side; and, not owning the cause of his love, he says, “My son, the
trusty minister of my commands, banish delay, and swiftly descend with
thy usual speed, and repair to the region which looks towards thy
{Constellation} mother on the left side, (the natives call it
Sidonis[90] by name) and drive towards the sea-shore, the herd belonging
to the king, which thou seest feeding afar upon the grass of the
mountain.”
{Thus} he spoke; and already were the bullocks, driven from the
mountain, making for the shore named, where the daughter of the great
king, attended by Tyrian virgins, was wont to amuse herself. Majesty and
love but ill accord, nor can they continue in the same abode. The father
and the ruler of the Gods, whose right hand is armed with the
three-forked flames, who shakes the world with his nod, laying aside the
dignity of empire, assumes the appearance of a bull; and mixing with the
oxen, he lows, and, in all his beauty, walks about upon the shooting
grass. For his color is that of snow, which neither the soles of hard
feet have trodden upon, nor the watery South wind melted. His neck
swells with muscles; dewlaps hang from {between} his shoulders. His
horns are small indeed, but such as you might maintain were made with
the hand, and more transparent than a bright gem. There is nothing
threatening in his forehead; nor is his eye formidable; his countenance
expresses peace.
The daughter of Agenor is surprised that he is so beautiful, and that he
threatens no attack; but although so gentle, she is at first afraid to
touch him. By and by she approaches him, and holds out flowers to his
white mouth. The lover rejoices, and till his hoped-for pleasure comes,
he gives kisses to her hands; scarcely, oh, scarcely, does he defer the
rest. And now he plays with her, and skips upon the green grass; {and}
now he lays his snow-white side upon the yellow sand. And, her fear
{now} removed by degrees, at one moment he gives his breast to be patted
by the hand of the virgin; at another, his horns to be wreathed with
new-made garlands. The virgin of royal birth even ventured to sit down
upon the back of the bull, not knowing upon whom she was pressing. Then
the God, by degrees {moving} from the land, and from the dry shore,
places the fictitious hoofs of his feet in the waves near the brink.
Then he goes still further, and carries his prize over the expanse of
the midst of the ocean. She is affrighted, and, borne off, looks back on
the shore she has left; and with her right hand she grasps his horn,
{while} the other is placed on his back; her waving garments are ruffled
by the breeze.
[Footnote 90: _Sidonis._--Ver. 840. Sidon, or Sidonis, was a
maritime city of Phœnicia, near Tyre, of whose greatness it was
not an unworthy rival.]
EXPLANATION.
This Fable depicts one of the most famous events in the ancient
Mythology. As we have already remarked, it is supposed that there were
several persons of the name of Zeus, or Jupiter; though there is great
difficulty in assigning to each individual his own peculiar
adventures. Vossius refers the adventure of Niobe, the daughter of
Phoroneus, to Jupiter Apis, the king of Argos, who reigned about B.C.
1770; and that of Danaë to Jupiter Prœtus, who lived about 1350 years
before the Christian era. It was Jupiter Tantalus, according to him,
that carried off Ganymede; and it was Jupiter, the father of Hercules,
that deceived Leda. He says that the subject of the present Fable was
Jupiter Asterius, who reigned about B.C. 1400. Diodorus Siculus tells
us that he was the son of Teutamus, who, having married the daughter
of Creteus, went with some Pelasgians to settle in the island of
Crete, of which he was the first king. We may then conclude, that
Jupiter Asterius, having heard of the beauty of Europa, the daughter
of Agenor, King of Tyre, fitted out a ship, for the purpose of
carrying her off by force. This is the less improbable, as we learn
from Herodotus, that the custom of carrying those away by force, who
could not be obtained by fair means, was very common in these rude
ages.
The ship in which Asterius made his voyage, had, very probably, the
form of a bull for its figure-head; which, in time, occasioned those
who related the adventure, to say, that Jupiter concealed himself
under the shape of that animal, to carry off his mistress. Palæphatus
and Tzetzes suggest, that the story took its rise from the name of
the general of Asterius, who was called Taurus, which is also the
Greek name for a bull. Bochart has an ingenious suggestion, based upon
etymological grounds. He thinks that the twofold meaning of the word
‘Alpha,’ or ‘Ilpha,’ which, in the Phœnician dialect, meant either a
ship or a bull, gave occasion to the fable; and that the Greeks, on
reading the annals of the Phœnicians, by mistake, took the word in the
latter sense.
Europa was honored as a Divinity after her death, and a festival was
instituted in her memory, which Hesychius calls ‘Hellotia,’ from
Ἑλλωτὶς, the name she received after her death.
BOOK THE THIRD.
FABLE I. [III.1-34]
Jupiter, having carried away Europa, her father, Agenor, commands his
son Cadmus to go immediately in search of her, and either to bring
back his sister with him, or never to return to Phœnicia. Cadmus,
wearied with his toils and fruitless inquiries, goes to consult the
oracle at Delphi, which bids him observe the spot where he should see
a cow lie down, and build a city there, and give the name of Bœotia to
the country.
And now the God, having laid aside the shape of the deceiving Bull, had
discovered himself, and reached the Dictæan land; when her father,
ignorant {of her fate}, commands Cadmus to seek her {thus} ravished, and
adds exile as the punishment, if he does not find her; being {both}
affectionate and unnatural in the self-same act. The son of Agenor,
having wandered over the whole world,[1] as an exile flies from his
country and the wrath of his father, for who is there that can discover
the intrigues of Jupiter? A suppliant, he consults the oracle of Phœbus,
and inquires in what land he must dwell. “A heifer,” Phœbus says, “will
meet thee in the lonely fields, one that has never borne the yoke, and
free from the crooked plough. Under her guidance, go on thy way; and
where she shall lie down on the grass, there cause a city to be built,
and call it the Bœotian[2] {city}.”
Scarcely had Cadmus well got down from the Castalian cave,[3] {when} he
saw a heifer, without a keeper, slowly going along, bearing no mark of
servitude upon her neck. He follows, and pursues her steps with
leisurely pace, and silently adores Phœbus, the adviser of his way.
{And} now he had passed the fords of the Cephisus, and the fields of
Panope, {when} the cow stood still and raising her forehead, expansive
with lofty horns, towards heaven, she made the air reverberate with her
lowings. And so, looking back on her companions that followed behind,
she lay down, and reposed her side upon the tender grass. Cadmus
returned thanks, and imprinted kisses upon the stranger land, and
saluted the unknown mountains and fields. He was {now} going to offer
sacrifice to Jupiter, and commanded his servants to go and fetch some
water for the libation from the running springs. An ancient grove was
standing {there, as yet} profaned by no axe. There was a cavern in the
middle {of it}, thick covered with twigs and osiers, forming a low arch
by the junction of the rocks; abounding with plenty of water. Hid in
this cavern, there was a dragon sacred to Mars,[4] adorned with crests
and a golden {color}. His eyes sparkle with fire, {and} all his body is
puffed out with poison; three tongues, {too}, are brandished, and his
teeth stand in a triple row.
[Footnote 1: _Over the whole world._--Ver. 6. Apollodorus tells us
that Cadmus lived in Thrace until the death of his mother,
Telephassa, who accompanied him; and that, after her decease, he
proceeded to Delphi to make inquiries of the oracle.]
[Footnote 2: _Bœotian._--Ver. 13. He implies here that Bœotia
received its name from the Greek word βοῦς, ‘an ox’ or ‘cow.’
Other writers say that it was so called from Bœotus, the son of
Neptune and Arne. Some authors also say that Thebes received its
name from the Syrian word ‘Thebe,’ which signified ‘an ox.’]
[Footnote 3: _Castalian cave._--Ver. 14. Castalius was a fountain
at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and in the vicinity of Delphi. It
was sacred to the Muses.]
[Footnote 4: _Sacred to Mars._--Ver. 32. Euripides says, that the
dragon had been set there by Mars to watch the spot and the
neighboring stream. Other writers say that it was a son of Mars,
Dercyllus by name, and that a Fury, named Tilphosa, was its
mother. Ancient history abounds with stories of enormous serpents.
The army of Regulus is said by Pliny the Elder, to have killed a
serpent of enormous size, which obstructed the passage of the
river Bagrada, in Africa. It was 120 feet in length.]
EXPLANATION.
Reverting to the history of Europa, it may be here remarked, that
Apollodorus has preserved her genealogy. Libya, according to that
author, had two sons by Neptune, Belus and Agenor. The latter married
Telephassa, by whom he had Cadmus, Phœnix, and Cilix, and a daughter
named Europa. Some ancient writers, however, say, that Europa was the
daughter of Phœnix, and the grandchild of Agenor.
Some authors, and Ovid among the rest, have supposed that Europe
received its name from Europa. Bochart has, with considerable
probability, suggested that it was originally so called from the fair
complexion of the people who inhabited it. Europa herself may have
received her name also from the fairness of her complexion: hence, the
poets, as the Scholiast on Theocritus tells us, invented a fable, that
a daughter of Juno stole her mother’s paint, to give it to Europa, who
used it with so much success as to ensure, by its use, an extremely
fair and beautiful complexion.
FABLE II. [III.35-130]
The companions of Cadmus, fetching water from the fountain of Mars,
are devoured by the Dragon that guards it. Cadmus, on discovering
their destruction, slays the monster, and, by the advice of Minerva,
sows the teeth, which immediately produce a crop of armed men. They
forthwith quarrel among themselves, and kill each other, with the
exception of five who assist Cadmus in building the city of Thebes.
After the men who came from the Tyrian nation had touched this grove
with ill-fated steps, and the urn let down into the water made a splash;
the azure dragon stretched forth his head from the deep cave, and
uttered dreadful hissings. The urns dropped from their hands; and the
blood left their bodies, and a sudden trembling seized their astonished
limbs. He wreathes his scaly orbs in rolling spires, and with a spring
becomes twisted into mighty folds; and uprearing himself from below the
middle into the light air, he looks down upon all the grove, and is of
as large a size,[5] as, if you were to look on him entire, {the serpent}
which separates the two Bears.
There is no delay; he seizes the Phœnicians (whether they are resorting
to their arms or to flight, or whether fear itself is preventing either
{step}); some he kills with his sting,[6] some with his long folds, some
breathed upon[7] by the venom of his baneful poison.
The sun, now at its height, had made the shadows {but} small: the son of
Agenor wonders what has detained his companion and goes to seek his men.
His garment was a skin torn from a lion; his weapon was a lance with
shining steel, and a javelin; and a courage superior to any weapon. When
he entered the grove, and beheld the lifeless bodies, and the victorious
enemy of immense size upon them, licking the horrid wounds with
bloodstained tongue, he said, “Either I will be the avenger of your
death, bodies {of my} faithful {companions}, or {I will be} a sharer {in
it}.” {Thus} he said; and with his right hand he raised a huge stone,[8]
and hurled the vast {weight} with a tremendous effort. {And} although
high walls with lofty towers would have been shaken with the shock of
it, {yet} the dragon remained without a wound; and, being defended by
his scales as though with a coat of mail, and the hardness of his black
hide, he repelled the mighty stroke with his skin. But he did not
overcome the javelin as well with the same hardness; which stood fast,
fixed in the middle joint of his yielding spine, and sank with the
entire {point of} steel into his entrails. Fierce with pain, he turned
his head towards his back, and beheld his wounds, and bit the javelin
fixed there. And after he had twisted it on every side with all his
might, with difficulty he wrenched it from his back; yet the steel stuck
fast in his bones. But then, when this newly inflicted wound has
increased his wonted fury, his throat swelled with gorged veins, and
white foam flowed around his pestilential jaws. The Earth, too, scraped
with the scales, sounds again, and the livid steam that issues from his
infernal mouth,[9] infects the tainted air. One while he is enrolled in
spires making enormous rings; sometimes he unfolds himself straighter
than a long beam. Now with a vast impulse, like a torrent swelled with
rain, he is borne along, and bears down the obstructing forests with his
breast. The son of Agenor gives way a little; and by the spoil of the
lion he sustains the shock, and with his lance extended before him,
pushes back his mouth, as it advances. The dragon rages, and vainly
inflicts wounds on the hard steel, and fixes his teeth upon the point.
And now the blood began to flow from his poisonous palate, and had dyed
the green grass with its spray. But the wound was slight; because he
recoiled from the stroke, and drew back his wounded throat, and by
shrinking prevented the blow from sinking deep, and did not suffer it to
go very far. At length, the son of Agenor, still pursuing, pressed the
spear lodged in his throat, until an oak stood in his way as he
retreated, and his neck was pierced, together with the trunk. The tree
was bent with the weight of the serpent, and groaned at having its trunk
lashed with the extremity of its tail.
While the conqueror was surveying the vast size of his vanquished enemy,
a voice was suddenly heard (nor was it easy to understand whence {it
was}, but heard it was). “Why, son of Agenor, art thou {thus}
contemplating the dragon slain {by thee}? Even thou {thyself} shalt be
seen {in the form of} a dragon.”[10] He, for a long time in alarm, lost
his color together with his presence of mind, and his hair stood on end
with a chill of terror. Lo! Pallas, the favorer of the hero, descending
through the upper region of the air, comes to him, and bids him sow the
dragon’s teeth under the earth turned up, as the seeds of a future
people. He obeyed; and when he had opened a furrow with the pressed
plough, he scattered the teeth on the ground as ordered, the seed of a
race of men. Afterwards (’tis beyond belief) the turf began to move, and
first appeared a point of a spear out of the furrows, next the coverings
of heads nodding with painted cones;[11] then the shoulders and the
breast, and the arms laden with weapons start up, and a crop of men
armed with shields grows apace. So, when the curtains[12] are drawn up
in the joyful theaters, figures are wont to rise, and first to show
their countenances; by degrees the rest; and being drawn out in a
gradual continuation, the whole appear, and place their feet on the
lowest edge {of the stage}. Alarmed with this new enemy, Cadmus is
preparing to take arms, when one of the people that the earth had
produced cries out, “Do not take up {arms}, nor engage thyself in civil
war.” And then, engaged hand to hand, he strikes one of his earth-born
brothers with the cruel sword, {while} he himself falls by a dart sent
from a distance. He, also, who had put him to death, lives no longer
than the other, and breathes forth the air which he has so lately
received. In a similar manner, too, the whole troop becomes maddened,
and the brothers {so} newly sprung up, fall in fight with each other, by
mutual wounds. And now the youths that had the space of {so} short an
existence allotted them, beat with throbbing breast their blood-stained
mother, five {only} remaining, of whom Echion[13] was one. He, by the
advice of Tritonia, threw his arms upon the ground, and both asked and
gave the assurance of brotherly concord.
The Sidonian stranger had these as associates in his task, when he built
the city that was ordered by the oracle of Phœbus.
[Footnote 5: _As large a size._--Ver. 44. This description of the
enormous size of the dragon or serpent is inconsistent with what
the Poet says in line 91, where we find Cadmus enabled to pin his
enemy against an oak.]
[Footnote 6: _With his sting._--Ver. 48. He enumerates in this one
instance the various modes by which serpents put their prey to
death, either by means of their sting, or, in the case of the
larger kinds of serpent, by twisting round it, and suffocating it
in their folds.]
[Footnote 7: _Some breathed upon._--Ver. 49. It was a prevalent
notion among the ancients, that some serpents had the power of
killing their prey by their poisonous breath. Though some modern
commentators on this passage may be found to affirm the same thing,
it is extremely doubtful if such is the fact. The notion was,
perhaps, founded on the power which certain serpents have of
fascinating their prey by the agency of the eye, and thus
depriving it of the means of escape.]
[Footnote 8: _A huge stone._--Ver. 59. ‘Molaris’ here means a
stone as large as a mill-stone, and not a mill-stone itself, for
we must remember that this was an uninhabited country, and
consequently a stranger to the industry of man.]
[Footnote 9: _His infernal mouth._--Ver. 76. ‘Stygio’ means
‘pestilential as the exhalations of the marshes of Styx.’]
[Footnote 10: _Form of a dragon._--Ver. 98. This came to pass
when, having been expelled from his dominions by Zethus and
Amphion, he retired to Illyria, and was there transformed into a
serpent, a fate which was shared by his wife Hermione.]
[Footnote 11: _With painted cones._--Ver. 108. The ‘conus’ was the
conical part of the helmet into which the crest of variegated
feathers was inserted.]
[Footnote 12: _When the curtains._--Ver. 111. The ‘Siparium’ was a
piece of tapestry stretched on a frame, and, rising before the
stage, answered the same purpose as the curtain or drop-scene with
us, in concealing the stage till the actors appeared. Instead of
drawing up this curtain to discover the stage and actors,
according to our present practice, it was depressed when the play
began, and fell beneath the level of the stage; whence ‘aulæa
premuntur,’ ‘the curtain is dropped,’ meant that the play had
commenced. When the performance was finished, this was raised
again gradually from the foot of the stage; therefore ‘aulæa
tolluntur,’ ‘the curtain is raised,’ would mean that the play had
finished. From the present passage we learn, that in drawing it up
from the stage, the curtain was gradually displayed, the unfolding
taking place, perhaps, below the boards, so that the heads of the
figures rose first, until the whole form appeared in full with the
feet resting on the stage, when the ‘siparium’ was fully drawn up.
From a passage in Virgil’s Georgics (book iii. l. 25), we learn
that the figures of Britons (whose country had then lately been
the scene of new conquests) were woven on the canvas of the
‘siparium,’ having their arms in the attitude of lifting the
curtain.]
[Footnote 13: _Echion._--Ver. 126. The names of the others were
Udeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelor, according to Apollodorus.
To these some added Creon, as a sixth.]
EXPLANATION.
Agenor, on losing his daughter, commands his sons to go in search of
her, and not to return till they have found her. The young princes,
either unable to learn what was become of her, or, perhaps, being too
weak to recover her out of the hands of the king of Crete, did not
return to their father, but established themselves in different
countries; Cadmus settling in Bœotia, Cilix in Cilicia, to which he
gave his name, and Phœnix, as Hyginus tells us, remaining in Africa.
Photius, quoting from Conon, the historian, informs us, that the hope
of conquering some country in Europe, and establishing a colony there,
was the true ground of the voyage of Cadmus.
Palæphatus, and other writers, say, that the Dragon which was killed
by Cadmus was a king of the country, who was named Draco, and was a
son of Mars: that his teeth were his subjects, who rallied again after
their defeat, and that Cadmus put them all to the sword, except
Chthonius, Udeus, Hyperenor, Pelor, and Echion, who became reconciled
to him. Heraclitus, however, assures us, that Cadmus really did slay a
serpent, which was very annoying to the Bœotian territory. Bochart and
LeClerc are of opinion that the Fable has the following
foundation:--They say, that in the Phœnician language, the same word
signifies either the teeth of a serpent, or short javelins, pointed
with brass; that the word which signifies the number five likewise
means an army; and that probably, from these circumstances, the Fable
may have taken its rise. For the Greeks, in following the annals
written in the Phœnician language, while writing the history of the
founder of Thebes, instead of describing his soldiers as wearing
helmets on their heads, with back and breast-plates, and with darts in
their hands pointed with brass, which equipment was then entirely
novel in Greece, chose rather to follow the more wonderful version,
and to say, that Cadmus had five companions produced from the teeth of
a serpent; as, according to Bochart’s suggestion, the same Phœnician
phrase may either signify a company of men sprung from the teeth of a
serpent, or a company of men armed with brazen darts.
This conjecture is, perhaps, confirmed by a story related by Herodotus
(book ii.), which resembles it very much. He tells us, that
Psammeticus, king of Egypt, being driven to the marshy parts of his
kingdom, sent to consult the oracle of Latona, which answered that he
should be restored by brass men coming from the sea. At the time, this
answer appeared to him entirely frivolous; but certain Ionian
soldiers, being obliged, some years after, to retire to Egypt, and
appearing on the shore with their weapons and armor, all of brass,
those who perceived them ran immediately to inform the king, that men
clad in brass were plundering the country. The prince then fully
comprehended the meaning of the oracle, and making an alliance with
them, recovered his throne by the assistance they gave him. These
brass men come from the sea, and those sprung from the earth were
soldiers who assisted Psammeticus and Cadmus in carrying out their
objects. Bochart’s conjecture is strengthened by the fact, that Cadmus
was either the inventor of the cuirass and javelin, or the first that
brought them into Greece. Without inquiring further into the subject,
we may conclude, that the men sprung from the earth, or the dragon’s
teeth which were sown, were the people of the country, whom Cadmus
found means to bring over to his interest; and that they first helped
him to conquer his enemies, and then to build the citadel of Thebes,
to ensure his future security. Apollodorus says that Cadmus, to
expiate the slaughter of the dragon, was obliged to serve Mars a whole
year; which year, containing eight of our years, it is not improbable
that Cadmus rendered services for a long time to his new allies before
he received any assistance from them.
FABLE III. [III.131-252]
Actæon, the grandson of Cadmus, fatigued with hunting and excessive
heat, inadvertently wanders to the cool valley of Gargaphie, the usual
retreat of Diana, when tired with the same exercise. There, to his
misfortune, he surprises the Goddess and her Nymphs while bathing, for
which she transforms him into a stag, and his own hounds tear him to
pieces.