[Footnote 49: _As when the Sun._--Ver. 349. Bailey gives this

explanation of the passage,-- ‘The eyes of the Nymph seemed to

sparkle and shine, just as the rays of the sun in a clear sky when

a looking-glass is placed against them, for then they seem most

splendid, and contract the fire.’ From the mention of the eyes of

the Nymph burning ‘flagrant,’ we might be almost justified in

concluding that ‘speculum’ means here not a mirror, but a

burning-glass. The ‘specula,’ or looking-glasses, of the ancients

were usually made of metal, either a composition of tin and

copper, or silver; but in later times, alloy was mixed with the

silver. Pliny mentions the obsidian stone, or, as it is now

called, the Icelandic agate, as being used for this purpose. Nero

is said to have used emeralds for mirrors. Pliny the Elder says

that mirrors were made in the glass-houses of Sidon, which

consisted of glass plates, with leaves of metal at the back; they

were probably of an inferior character. Those of copper and tin

were made chiefly at Brundisium. The white metal formed from this

mixture soon becoming dim, a sponge with powdered pumice stone was

usually fastened to the mirrors made of that composition. They

were generally small, of a round or oval shape, and having a

handle; and female slaves usually held them, while their

mistresses were performing the duties of the toilet. Sometimes

they were fastened to the walls, and they were occasionally of the

length of a person’s body. Venus was supposed often to use the

mirror; but Minerva repudiated the use of it.]

[Footnote 50: _Polypus._--Ver. 366. This is a fish which entangles

its prey, mostly consisting of shell fish, in its great number of

feet or feelers. Ovid here calls them ‘flagella;’ but in the

Halieuticon he styles them ‘brachia’ and ‘crines.’ Pliny the Elder

calls them ‘crines’ and ‘cirri.’]

[Footnote 51: _Descendant of Atlas._--Ver. 368. Hermaphroditus was

the great-grandson of Atlas; as the latter was the father of Maia,

the mother of Mercury, who begot Hermaphroditus.]

[Footnote 52: _The two are united._--Ver. 374. Clarke translates,

‘nam mixta duorum corpora junguntur,’ ‘for the bodies of both,

being jumbled together, are united.’]

EXPLANATION.

The only probable solution of this story seems to have been the fact

that there was in Caria, near the town of Halicarnassus, as we read in

Vitruvius, a fountain which was instrumental in civilizing certain

barbarians who had been driven from that neighborhood by the Argive

colony established there. These men being obliged to repair to the

fountain for water, and meeting the Greek colonists there, their

intercourse not only polished them, but in course of time corrupted

them, by the introduction of the luxurious manners of Greece. Hence

the fountain had the reputation of changing men into women.

Possibly the water of that fountain, by some peculiar chemical

quality, made those who drank of it become soft and effeminate, as

waters are to be occasionally found with extraordinary qualities.

Lylius Gyraldus suggests, that several disgraceful adventures happened

near this fountain (which was enclosed by walls), which in time gave

it a bad name.

FABLE VI. [IV.389-415]

Bacchus, to punish the daughters of Minyas for their contempt of his

worship, changes them into bats, and their work into ivy and vine

leaves.

There was {now} an end of their stories; and still do the daughters of

Minyas go on with their work, and despise the God, and desecrate his

festival; when, on a sudden, tambourines unseen resound with their

jarring noise; the pipe, too, with the crooked horn, and the tinkling

brass, re-echo; myrrh and saffron shed their fragrant odors; and,

a thing past all belief, their webs begin to grow green, and the cloth

hanging {in the loom} to put forth foliage like ivy. Part changes into

vines, and what were threads before, are {now} turned into vine shoots.

Vine branches spring from the warp, and the purple lends its splendor to

the tinted grapes.

And now the day was past, and the time came on, which you could neither

call darkness nor light, but yet the {very} commencement of the dubious

night along with the light. The house seemed suddenly to shake, and

unctuous torches to burn, and the building to shine with glowing fires,

and the fictitious phantoms of savage wild beasts to howl. Presently,

the sisters are hiding themselves throughout the smoking house, and in

different places are avoiding the fires and the light. While they are

seeking a hiding-place, a membrane is stretched over their small limbs,

and covers their arms with light wings; nor does the darkness suffer

them to know by what means they have lost their former shape. No

feathers bear them up; yet they support themselves on pellucid wings;

and, endeavoring to speak, they utter a voice very diminutive {even} in

proportion to their bodies, and express their low complaints with a

squeaking sound. They frequent houses, not woods; and, abhorring the

light, they fly {abroad} by night. And from the late evening do they

derive their name.[53]

[Footnote 53: _Derive their name._--Ver. 415. In Greek they

are called νυκτερίδες, from νυξ, ‘night;’ and in Latin,

‘vespertiliones,’ from ‘vesper,’ ‘evening,’ on account of their

habits.]

FABLE VII. [IV.416-562]

Tisiphone, being sent by Juno to the Palace of Athamas, causes him to

become mad; on which he dashes his son Learchus to pieces against a

wall. He then pursues his wife Ino, who throws herself headlong from

the top of a rock into the sea, with her other son Melicerta in her

arms: when Neptune, at the intercession of Venus, changes them into

Sea Deities. The attendants of Ino, who have followed her in her

flight, are changed, some into stone, and others into birds, as they

are about to throw themselves into the sea after their mistress.

But then the Divine power of Bacchus is famed throughout all Thebes; and

his aunt is everywhere telling of the great might of the new Divinity;

she alone,[54] out of so many sisters, is free from sorrow, except that

which her sisters have occasioned. Juno beholds her, having her soul

elevated with her {children}, and her alliance with Athamas, and the God

her foster-child. She cannot brook this, and says to herself, “Was the

child of a concubine able to transform the Mæonian sailors, and to

overwhelm them in the sea, and to give the entrails of the son to be

torn to pieces by his mother, and to cover the three daughters of Minyas

with newly formed wings? Shall Juno be able to do nothing but lament

these griefs unrevenged? And is that sufficient for me? Is this my only

power? He himself instructs me what to do. It is right to be taught even

by an enemy. And what madness can do, he shows enough, and more than

enough, by the slaughter of Pentheus. Why should not Ino, {too}, be

goaded by madness, and submit to an example kindred to those of her

sisters?”

There is a shelving path, shaded with dismal yew, which leads through

profound silence to the infernal abodes. {Here} languid Styx exhales

vapors; and the new-made ghosts descend this way, and phantoms when they

have enjoyed[55] funeral rites. Horror and winter possess these dreary

regions far and wide, and the ghosts newly arrived know not where the

way is that leads to the Stygian city, {or} where is the dismal palace

of the black Pluto. The wide city has a thousand passages, and gates

open on every side. And as the sea {receives} the rivers for the whole

earth, so does that spot[56] receive all the souls; nor is it {too}

little for any {amount of} people, nor does it perceive the crowd to

increase. The shades wander about, bloodless, without body and bones;

and some throng the place of judgment; some the abode of the infernal

prince. Some pursue various callings, in imitation of their former life;

their own punishment confines others.

Juno, the daughter of Saturn, leaving her celestial habitation, submits

to go thither, so much does she give way to hatred and to anger. Soon as

she has entered there, and the threshold groans, pressed by her sacred

body, Cerberus raises his threefold mouth, and utters triple barkings at

the same moment. She summons the Sisters,[57] begotten of Night,

terrible and implacable Goddesses. They are sitting before the doors of

the prison shut close with adamant, and are combing black vipers from

their hair. Soon as they recognize her amid the shades of darkness,

{these} Deities arise. This place is called “the accursed.” Tityus[58]

is giving his entrails to be mangled, and is stretched over nine acres.

By thee, Tantalus,[59] no waters are reached, and the tree which

overhangs thee, starts away. Sisyphus,[60] thou art either catching or

thou art pushing on the stone destined to fall again. Ixion[61] is

whirled round, and both follows and flies from himself. The

granddaughters, too, of Belus, who dared to plot the destruction of

their cousins, are everlastingly taking up the water which they lose.

After the daughter of Saturn has beheld all these with a stern look, and

Ixion before all; again, after him, looking upon Sisyphus, she says,

“Why does he alone, of {all} the brothers, suffer eternal punishment?

and why does a rich palace contain the proud Athamas, who, with his

wife, has ever despised me?” And {then} she explains the cause of her

hatred and of her coming, and what it is she desires. What she desires

is, that the palace of Cadmus shall not stand, and that the Sister

{Furies} shall involve Athamas in crime. She mingles together promises,

commands, and entreaties, and solicits the Goddesses. When Juno has thus

spoken, Tisiphone, with her locks dishevelled as they are, shakes them,

and throws back from her face the snakes crawling over it; and thus she

says: “There is no need of a long preamble; whatever thou commandest,

consider it as done: leave these hateful realms, and betake thyself to

the air of a better heaven.”

Juno returns, overjoyed; and, preparing to enter heaven, Iris,[62] the

daughter of Thaumas, purifies her by sprinkling water. Nor is there any

delay; the persecuting Tisiphone[63] takes a torch reeking with gore,

and puts on a cloak red with fluid blood, and is girt with twisted

snakes, and {then} goes forth from her abode. Mourning attends her as

she goes, and Fright, and Terror, and Madness with quivering features.

She {now} reaches the threshold; the Æolian door-posts are said to have

shaken, and paleness tints the maple door; the Sun, too, flies from the

place. His wife is terrified at these prodigies; Athamas, {too}, is

alarmed, and they are {both} preparing to leave the house. The baneful

Erinnys stands in the way, and blocks up the passage; and extending her

arms twisted round with folds of vipers, she shakes her locks; the

snakes {thus} moved, emit a sound. Some lying about her shoulders, some

gliding around her temples, send forth hissings and vomit forth

corruption, and dart forth their tongues. Then she tears away two snakes

from the middle of her hair, which, with pestilential hand, she throws

against them. But these creep along the breasts of Ino and Athamas, and

inspire them with direful intent. Nor do they inflict any wounds upon

their limbs; it is the mind that feels the direful stroke. She had

brought, too, with her a monstrous composition of liquid poison, the

foam of the mouth of Cerberus, and the venom of Echidna;[64] and

purposeless aberrations, and the forgetfulness of a darkened

understanding, and crime, and tears, and rage, and the love of murder.

All these were blended together; and, mingled with fresh blood she had

boiled them in a hollow vessel of brass, stirred about with {a stalk of}

green hemlock. And while they are trembling, she throws the maddening

poison into the breasts of them both, and moves their inmost vitals.

Then repeatedly waving her torch in the same circle, she swiftly follows

up the flames {thus} excited with {fresh} flames. Thus triumphant, and

having executed her commands, she returns to the empty realms of the

great Pluto; and she ungirds the snakes which she had put on.

Immediately the son of Æolus, filled with rage, cries out, in the midst

of his palace, “Ho! companions, spread your nets in this wood; for here

a lioness was just now beheld by me with two young ones.” And, in his

madness, he follows the footsteps of his wife, as though of a wild

beast; and he snatches Learchus, smiling and stretching forth his little

arms from the bosom of his mother, and three or four times he whirls him

round in the air like a sling, and, frenzied, he dashes in pieces[65]

the bones of the infant against the hard stones. Then, at last, the

mother being roused (whether it was grief that caused it, or whether the

power of the poison spread {over her}), yells aloud, and runs away

distracted, with dishevelled hair; and carrying thee, Melicerta,

a little {child}, in her bare arms, she cries aloud “Evoë, Bacche.” At

the name of Bacchus, Juno smiles, and says, “May thy foster-child[66] do

thee this service.”

There is a rock[67] that hangs over the sea; the lowest part is worn

hollow by the waves, and defends the waters covered {thereby} from the

rain. The summit is rugged, and stretches out its brow over the open

sea. This Ino climbs (madness gives her strength), and, restrained by no

fear, she casts herself and her burden[68] into the deep; the water,

struck {by her fall}, is white with foam. But Venus, pitying the

misfortunes of her guiltless granddaughter,[69] in soothing words thus

addresses her uncle: “O Neptune, thou God of the waters, to whom fell a

power next after the {empire of} heaven, great things indeed do I

request; but do thou take compassion on my kindred, whom thou seest

being tossed upon the boundless Ionian sea;[70] and add them to thy

Deities. I have {surely} some interest with the sea, if, indeed, I once

was foam formed in the hollowed deep, and my Grecian name is derived[71]

from that.” Neptune yields to her request; and takes away from them

{all} that is mortal, and gives them a venerable majesty; and alters

both their name and their shape, and calls Palæmon a Divinity,[72]

together with his mother Leucothoë.

Her Sidonian attendants,[73] so far as they could, tracing the prints of

their feet, saw the last of them on the edge of the rock; and thinking

that there was no doubt of their death, they lamented the house of

Cadmus, with their hands tearing their hair and their garments; and they

threw the odium on the Goddess, as being unjust and too severe against

the concubine. Juno could not endure their reproaches, and said, “I will

make you yourselves tremendous memorials of my displeasure.”

Confirmation followed her words. For the one who had been especially

attached, said, “I will follow the queen into the sea;” and about to

give the leap, she could not be moved any way, and adhering to the rock,

{there} she stuck fast. Another, while she was attempting to beat her

breast with the accustomed blows, perceived in the attempt that her arms

had become stiff. One, as by chance she had extended her hands over the

waters of the sea, becoming a rock, held out her hands in those same

waters. You might see the fingers of another suddenly hardened in her

hair, as she was tearing her locks seized on the top of her head. In

whatever posture each was found {at the beginning of the change}, in the

same she remained. Some became birds; which, sprung from Ismenus, skim

along the surface of the waves in those seas, with the wings which they

have assumed.

[Footnote 54: _She alone._--Ver. 419. This was Ino, whose only

sorrows hitherto had been caused by the calamities which befell

her sisters and their offspring: Semele having died a shocking

death, Autonoë having seen her son Actæon changed into a stag, and

then devoured by his dogs, and Agave having assisted in tearing to

pieces her own son Pentheus.]

[Footnote 55: _When they have enjoyed._--Ver. 435. The spirits

whose bodies had not received the rites of burial, we learn from

Homer and Virgil, were not allowed to pass the river Styx, but

wandered on its banks for a hundred years.]

[Footnote 56: _So does that spot._--Ver. 441. That is to say,

whatever number of ghosts arrives there, it receives them all with

ease, and is not sensible of the increase of number; either

because the place itself is of such immense extent, or because the

souls of the dead do not occupy space.]

[Footnote 57: _The Sisters._--Ver. 450. These were the Furies,

fabled to be the daughters of Night and Acheron. They were three

in number, Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megæra, and were supposed to be

the avengers of crime and wickedness.]

[Footnote 58: _Tityus._--Ver. 456. Tityus was the son of Jupiter

and Elara. On account of his enormous size, the poets sometimes

style him a son of the earth. Attempting to commit violence upon

Latona, he was slain by the arrows of Apollo, and precipitated to

the infernal regions, where he was condemned to have his liver

constantly devoured by a vulture, and then renewed, to perpetuate

his torments.]

[Footnote 59: _Tantalus._--Ver. 457. He was the son of Jupiter, by

the Nymph Plote. The crime for which he was punished is

differently related by the poets. Some say, that he divulged the

secrets of the Gods, that had been entrusted to him; while others

relate, that at an entertainment which he gave to the Deities, he

caused his own son, Pelops, to be served up, on which Ceres

inadvertently ate his shoulder. He was doomed to suffer intense

hunger and thirst, amid provisions of all kinds within his reach,

which perpetually receded from him.]

[Footnote 60: _Sisyphus._--Ver. 459. Sisyphus, the son of Æolus,

was a daring robber, who infested Attica. He was slain by Theseus;

and being sent to the infernal regions, was condemned to the

punishment of rolling a great stone to the top of a mountain,

which it had no sooner reached than it fell down again, and

renewed his labor.]

[Footnote 61: _Ixion._--Ver. 461. Being advanced by Jupiter to

heaven, he presumed to make an attempt on Juno. Jupiter, to

deceive him, formed a cloud in her shape, on which Ixion begot the

Centaurs. He was cast into Tartarus, and was there fastened to a

wheel, which turned round incessantly.]

[Footnote 62: _Iris._--Ver. 480. Iris was the daughter of Thaumas

and Electra, and the messenger of Juno. She was the Goddess of the

Rainbow.]

[Footnote 63: _Tisiphone._--Ver. 481. Clarke translates ‘Tisiphone

importuna,’ ‘the plaguy Tisiphone.’]

[Footnote 64: _Echidna._--Ver. 501. This word properly means,

‘a female viper;’ but it here refers to the Hydra, or dragon of

the marsh of Lerna, which Hercules slew. It was fabled to be

partly a woman, and partly a serpent, and to have been begotten by

Typhon. According to some accounts, this monster had seven heads.]

[Footnote 65: _Dashes in pieces._--Ver. 519. Euripides and Hyginus

relate, that Athamas slew his son while hunting; and Apollodorus

says, that he mistook him for a stag.]

[Footnote 66: _Thy foster-child._--Ver. 524. Bacchus was the

foster-child of Ino, who was the sister of his mother Semele. The

remaining portion of the story of Ino and Melicerta is again

related by Ovid in the sixth book of the Fasti.]

[Footnote 67: _There is a rock._--Ver. 525. Pausanias calls this

the Molarian rock, and says, that it was one of the Scironian

rocks, near Megara, in Attica. It was a branch of the Geranian

mountain.]

[Footnote 68: _And her burden._--Ver. 530. This was her son

Melicerta, who, according to Pausanias, was received by dolphins,

and was landed by them on the isthmus of Corinth.]

[Footnote 69: _Guiltless granddaughter._--Ver. 531. Venus was the

grandmother of Ino, inasmuch as Hermione, or Harmonia, the wife of

Cadmus, was the daughter of Mars and Venus.]

[Footnote 70: _Boundless Ionian sea._--Ver. 535. The Ionian sea

must be merely mentioned here as a general name for the broad

expanse of waters, of which the Saronic gulf, into which the

Molarian rock projected, formed part. Ovid may, however, mean to

say that Ino threw herself from some rock in the Ionian sea, and

not from the Molarian rock; following, probably, the account of

some other writer, whose works are lost.]

[Footnote 71: _Grecian name is derived._--Ver. 538. Venus was

called Aphrodite, by the Greeks, from ἄφρος, ‘the foam of the

sea,’ from which she was said to have sprung.]

[Footnote 72: _A Divinity._--Ver. 542. Ino and Melicerta were

worshipped as Divinities both in Greece and at Rome.]

[Footnote 73: _Sidonian attendants._--Ver. 543. The Theban matrons

are meant, who had married the companions of Cadmus that

accompanied him from Phœnices.]

EXPLANATION.

The story of Ino, Athamas, and Melicerta appears to have been based

upon historical facts, as we are informed by Herodotus, Diodorus

Siculus, and Pausanias.

Athamas, the son of Æolus, and great-grandson of Deucalion, having, on

the death of Themisto, his first wife, married Ino, the daughter of

Cadmus, divorced her soon afterwards, to marry Nephele, by whom he had

Helle and Phryxus. She having been divorced in her turn, he took Ino

back again, and by her had Learchus and Melicerta. Ino, not being able

to endure the presence of the children of Nephele, endeavored to

destroy them. The city of Thebes being at that time afflicted with

famine, which was said to have been caused by Ino, who ordered the

seed to be parched before it was sown, Athamas ordered the oracle of

Delphi to be consulted. The priests, either having been bribed, or the

messengers having been corrupted, word was brought, that, to remove

this affliction, the children of Nephele must be sacrificed.

Phryxus being warned of the designs of his stepmother, embarked in a

ship, with his sister Helle, and sailed for Colchis, where he met with

a kind reception from his kinsman Æetes. The young princess, however,

either becoming sea-sick, and leaning over the bulwarks of the vessel,

fell overboard and was drowned, or died a natural death in the passage

of the Hellespont, to which she gave its name from that circumstance.

Athamas, having discovered the deceitful conduct of Ino, in his rage

killed her son Learchus, and sought her, for the purpose of

sacrificing her to his vengeance. To avoid his fury, she fled with her

son Melicerta, and, being pursued, threw herself from a rock into the

sea. To console her relatives, the story was probably invented, that

the Gods had changed Ino and Melicerta into Sea Deities, under the

names of Leucothoë and Palæmon. Melicerta was afterwards worshipped in

the Isle of Tenedos, where children were offered to him in sacrifice.

In his honor, Glaucus established the Isthmian games, which were

celebrated for many ages at Corinth; and, being interrupted for a

time, were revived by Theseus, in honor of Neptune. Leucothoë was also

worshipped at Rome, and the Roman women used to offer up their vows to

her for their brothers’ children, not daring to supplicate the Goddess

for their own, because she had been unfortunate in hers. This Ovid

tells us in the Sixth Book of the Fasti. The Romans gave the name of

Matuta to Ino, and Melicerta, or Palæmon, was called Portunus.

The circumstance mentioned by Ovid, that some of Ino’s attendants were

changed into birds, and others into rocks, is, perhaps, only a

poetical method of saying that some of her attendants escaped, while

others perished with her.

FABLE VIII. [IV.563-603]

The misfortunes of his family oblige Cadmus to leave Thebes, and to

retire with his wife Hermione to Illyria, where they are changed into

serpents.

The son of Agenor knows not that his daughter and his little grandson

are {now} Deities of the sea. Forced by sorrow, and a succession of

calamities, and the prodigies which, many in number, he had beheld, the

founder flies from his city, as though the {ill}-luck of the spot, and

not his own, pressed {hard} upon him, and driven, in a long series of

wandering, he reaches the coast of Illyria, with his exiled wife. And

now, loaded with woes and with years, while they are reflecting on the

first disasters of their house, and in their discourse are recounting

their misfortunes, Cadmus says, “Was that dragon a sacred one, that was

pierced by my spear, at the time when, setting out from Sidon, I sowed

the teeth of the dragon in the ground, a seed {till then} unknown? If

the care of the Gods avenges this with resentment so unerring, I pray

that I myself, as a serpent, may be lengthened out into an extended

belly.” {Thus} he says; and, as a serpent, he is lengthened out into an

extended belly, and perceives scales growing on his hardened skin, and

his black body become speckled with azure spots; and he falls flat on

his breast, and his legs, joined into one, taper out by degrees into a

thin round point. His arms are still remaining; those arms which remain

he stretches out; and, as the tears are flowing down his face, still

that of a man, he says, “Come hither, wife, come hither, most unhappy

one, and, while something of me yet remains, touch me; and take my hand,

while it is {still} a hand, {and} while I am not a serpent all over.”

He, indeed, desires to say more, but, on a sudden, his tongue is divided

into two parts. Nor are words in his power when he offers {to speak};

and as often as he attempts to utter any complaints, he makes a hissing:

this is the voice that Nature leaves him. His wife, smiting her naked

breast with her hand, cries aloud, “Stay, Cadmus! and deliver thyself,

unhappy one, from this monstrous form. Cadmus, what means this? Where

are thy feet? where are both thy shoulders and thy hands? where is thy

color and thy form, and, while I speak, {where} all else {besides}? Why

do ye not, celestial Gods, turn me as well into a similar serpent?”

{Thus} she spoke; he licked the face of his wife, and crept into her

dear bosom, as though he recognized her; and gave her embraces, and

reached her well-known neck.

Whoever is by, (some attendants are present), is alarmed; but the

crested snakes soothe them with their slippery necks, and suddenly they

are two {serpents}, and in joined folds they creep along, until they

enter the covert of an adjacent grove. Now, too, do they neither shun

mankind, nor hurt them with wounds, and the gentle serpents keep in mind

what once they were.

EXPLANATION.

After Cadmus had reigned at Thebes many years, a conspiracy was formed

against him. Being driven from the throne, and his grandson Pentheus

assuming the crown, he and his wife Hermione retired into Illyria,

where, as Apollodorus says, he commanded the Illyrian army, and at

length was chosen king: on his death, the story here related by Ovid

was invented. It is possible that it may have been based on the

following grounds:--

The Phœnicians were anciently called ‘Achivi,’ which name they still

retained after their establishment in Greece. ‘Chiva’ being also the

Hebrew, and perhaps Phœnician word for ‘a serpent,’ the Greeks,

probably in reference to the Phœnician origin of Cadmus, reported

after his death, that he and his wife were serpents; and in time, that

transformation may have been stated to have happened at the end of his

life. According to Aulus Gellius, the ancient inhabitants of Illyria

had two eyelids to each eye, and with their looks, when angered, they

were able to kill those whom they beheld stedfastly. The Greeks hence

called them serpents and basilisks; and, it is not unlikely, that when

Cadmus retired among them, they said that he had become one of the

Illyrians, otherwise a dragon, or a serpent. All the ancient writers

who mention his history agree that Cadmus really did retire into

Illyria, where he first assisted the Enchelians in their war against

the Illyrians. The latter were defeated, and, to obtain a peace from

the Enchelians, they gave the crown to Cadmus; to which, on his death,

his son Illyrus succeeded. The historian Christodorus, quoted by

Pausanias, says that he built the city of Nygnis, in the country of

the Enchelians.

Some writers have supposed, upon the authority of Euhemerus as quoted

by Eusebius that Cadmus was not the son of Agenor, but was one of his

officers, who eloped thence with Hermione, a singing girl. Others

suppose that Cadmus is not really a proper name, but that it signifies

a ‘leader,’ or ‘conductor;’ and that he received the name from leading

a colony into Greece. Bochart says that he was called Cadmus, because

he came from the eastern part of Phœnicia, which is called in

Scripture ‘Cadmonia,’ or ‘oriental;’ and that Hermione probably

received her name from Mount Hermon.

FABLE IX. [IV.604-662]

Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danaë, having killed Medusa, carries

her head into Africa, where the blood that runs from it produces

serpents. Atlas, king of that country, terrified at the remembrance of

an oracle, which had foretold that his golden fruit should be taken by

one of the sons of Jupiter, not only orders him to depart, but even

resorts to violence to drive him away, on which Perseus shows him the

Gorgon’s head, and changes him into a mountain.

But yet their grandson, {Bacchus} gave them both a great consolation,

under this change of form; whom India, subdued {by him}, worshipped {as

a} God, {and} whom Achaia honored with erected temples. Acrisius the son

of Abas,[74] descended of the same race,[75] alone remained, to drive

him from the walls of the Argive city, and to bear arms against the God,

and to believe him not to be the offspring of Jove. Neither did he think

Perseus to be the offspring of Jupiter, whom Danaë had conceived in a

shower of gold; but soon (so great is the power of truth) Acrisius was

sorry, both that he had insulted the God, and that he had not

acknowledged his grandson. The one was now placed in heaven, while the

other, bearing the memorable spoil of the viperous monster, cut the

yielding air with hissing wings; and while the conqueror was hovering

over the Libyan sands, bloody drops, from the Gorgon’s head, fell down,

upon receiving {which, the} ground quickened them into various serpents.

For this cause, that region is filled and infested with snakes.

Carried thence, by the fitful winds, through boundless space, he is

borne now here, now there, just like a watery cloud, and, from the lofty

sky, looks down upon the earth, removed afar; and he flies over the

whole world. Three times he saw the cold Bears, thrice did he see the

claws of the Crab; ofttimes he was borne to the West, many a time to the

East. And now, the day declining, afraid to trust himself to the night,

he stopped in the Western part of the world, in the kingdom of Atlas;

and {there} he sought a little rest, until Lucifer should usher forth

the fires of Aurora, Aurora, the chariot of the day. Here was Atlas, the

son of Iapetus, surpassing all men in the vastness of his body. Under

this king was the extremity of the earth, and the sea which holds its

waters under the panting horses of the Sun, and receives the wearied

chariot. For him, a thousand flocks, and as many herds, wandered over

the pastures, and no neighboring places disturbed the land. Leaves of

the trees, shining with radiant gold, covered branches of gold, {and}

apples of gold. “My friend,” said Perseus to him, “if the glory of a

noble race influences thee, Jupiter is the author of my descent; or if

thou art an admirer of exploits, thou wilt admire mine. I beg of thee

hospitality, and a resting place.” The other was mindful of an ancient

oracle. The Parnassian Themis had given this response: “A time will

come, Atlas, when thy tree shall be stripped of its gold, and a son of

Jove shall have the honor of the prize.” Dreading this, Atlas had

enclosed his orchard with solid walls, and had given it to be kept by a

huge dragon;[76] and expelled all strangers from his territories. {To

Perseus}, too, he says, “Far hence begone, lest the glory of the

exploits, to which thou falsely pretendest, and Jupiter as well, be far

from protecting thee.” He adds violence as well to his threats, and

tries to drive him from his doors, as he hesitates and mingles resolute

words with persuasive ones. Inferior in strength (for who could be a

match for Atlas in strength?), he says “Since my friendship is of so

little value to thee, accept {this} present;” and then, turning his face

away, he exposes on the left side the horrible features of Medusa.

Atlas, great as he is, becomes a mountain. Now his beard and his hair

are changed into woods; his shoulders and his hands become mountain

ridges, and what was formerly his head, is the summit on the top of the

mountain. His bones become stones; then, enlarged on every side, he

grows to an immense height (so you willed it, ye Gods), and the whole

heaven, with so many stars, rests upon him.

[Footnote 74: _Son of Abas._--Ver. 608. Acrisius was the son of

Abas, king of Argos. He was the father of Danaë, by whom Jupiter

was the father of Perseus.]

[Footnote 75: _Of the same race._--Ver. 607. Some suppose that by

this it is meant that as Belus, the father of Abas, and

grandfather of Acrisius, was the son of Jupiter, who was also the

father of Bacchus, the latter and Acrisius were consequently

related.]

[Footnote 76: _A huge dragon._--Ver. 647. The name of the dragon

was Ladon.]

EXPLANATION.

The story of the seduction of Danaë, the mother of Perseus, by

Jupiter, in the form of a shower of gold, has been thus explained by

some of the ancient writers. Acrisius, hearing of a prediction that

Danaë, his daughter, should bring forth a child that would kill him,

caused her to be shut in a tower with brazen gates, or, according to

some, in a subterraneous chamber, covered with plates of that metal;

which place, according to Pausanias, remained till the time of

Perilaus, the king of Argos, by whom it was destroyed. The precautions

of Acrisius were, however, made unavailing by his brother Prœtus; who,

falling in love with his niece, corrupted the guards with gold, and

gained admission into the tower. Danaë, being delivered of Perseus,

her father caused them to be exposed in a boat to the mercy of the

waves. Being cast on shore near Seriphus, the king, Polydectes, gave

them a hospitable reception, and took care of the education of

Perseus.

Diodorus Siculus says that the Gorgons were female warriors, who

inhabited the neighborhood of Lake Tritonis, in Libya. Pausanias

explains the story of Medusa, by saying that she ruled the people in

that neighborhood, and laid waste the lands of the nations in her

vicinity. Perseus, having fled, with some companions, from

Peloponnesus, surprised her by night, and killed her, together with

her escort. The next morning, the beauty of her face appeared so

remarkable that he cut it off, and afterwards took it with him to

Greece, to show it to the people, who could not look on it without

being struck with astonishment. On this explanation we may remark,

that if it is true, Perseus must have had more skill than the surgeons

of our day, in being able to preserve the beauty of the features so

long after death.

Again, many of the ancient historians, with Pliny, Athenæus, and

Solinus, think that the Gorgons were wild women of a savage nature,

living in caves and forests, who, falling on wayfarers, committed

dreadful atrocities. Palæphatus and Fulgentius think that the Gorgons

really were three young women, possessed of great wealth, which they

employed in a very careful manner; Phorcus, their father, having left

them three islands, and a golden statue of Minerva, which they placed

in their common treasury. They had one minister in common for the

management of their affairs, who used to go for that purpose from one

island to another, whence arose the story that they had but one eye,

and that they lent it to one another alternately. Perseus, a fugitive

from Argos, hearing of the golden statue, determined to obtain it; and

with that view, seized their minister, or, in the allegorical language

of the poets, took their eye away from them. He then sent them word,

that if they would give him the statue, he would deliver up his

captive, and threatened, in case of refusal, to put him to death.

Stheno and Euryale consented to this; but Medusa resisting, she was

killed by Perseus. Upon his obtaining the statue, which was called the

Gorgon, or Gorgonian, he broke it in pieces, and placed the head on

the prow of his ship. As the sight of this, and the fame of the

exploits of Perseus, spread terror everywhere, and caused passive

submission to him, the fable originated, that with Medusa’s head he

turned his enemies into stone. Landing in the Isle of Seriphus, the

king fled, with all his subjects; and, on entering the chief city,

finding nothing but the bare stones there, he caused the report to be

spread, that he had petrified the inhabitants.

Servius, in his Commentary on the Æneid, quotes an opinion of Ammonius

Serenus, that the Gorgons were young women of such beauty as to make a

great impression on all that saw them; for which reason they were said

to turn them into statues. Le Clerc thinks that the story bears

reference to a voyage which the Phœnicians had made in ancient times

to the coast of Africa, whence they brought a great number of horses;

and that the name ‘Perseus’ comes from the Phœnician word ‘pharscha,’

‘a horseman;’ while the horse Pegasus was so called from the Phœnician

‘pagsous,’ ‘a bridled horse,’ according to the conjecture of Bochart.

Alexander of Myndus, a historian quoted by Athenæus, says that Libya

had an animal which the natives called ‘gorgon;’ that it resembled a

sheep, and with its breath killed all those who approached it; that a

tuft of hair fell over its eyes, which was so heavy as to be removed

with difficulty, for the purpose of seeing the objects around it; but

that when it was removed, by its looks it struck dead any person whom

it gazed upon. He says, that in the war with Jugurtha, some of the

soldiers of Marius were thus slain by it, and that it was at last

killed by means of arrows discharged from a great distance.

The Gorgons are said to have inhabited the Gorgades, islands in the

Æthiopian Sea, the chief of which was called Cerna, according to

Diodorus and Palæphatus. It is not improbable that the Cape Verde

Islands were called by this name. The fable of the transformation of

Atlas into the mountain of that name may possibly have been based upon

the simple fact, that Perseus killed him in the neighborhood of that

range, from which circumstance it derived the name which it has borne

ever since. The golden apples, which Atlas guarded with so much care,

were probably either gold mines, which Atlas had discovered in the

mountains of his country, and had secured with armed men and watchful

dogs; or sheep, whose fleeces were extremely valuable for their

fineness; or else oranges and lemons, and other fruits peculiar to

very hot climates, for the production of which the poets especially

remarked the country of Tingitana (the modern Tangier), as being very

celebrated.

FABLE X. [IV.663-803]

Perseus, after his victory over Atlas, and his change into a mountain,

arrives in Æthiopia, at the time when Andromeda is exposed to be

devoured by a monster. He kills it, and hides the Gorgon’s head under

the sand, covered with sea-weed and plants; which are immediately

turned into coral. He then renders thanks to the Gods for his victory,

and marries Andromeda. At the marriage feast he relates the manner in

which he had killed Medusa; and the reason why Minerva had changed her

hair into serpents.

The grandson of Hippotas[77] had shut up the winds in their eternal

prison; and Lucifer, who reminds {men} of their work, was risen in the

lofty sky, in all his splendor. Resuming his wings, {Perseus} binds his

feet with them on either side, and is girt with his crooked weapon, and

cleaves the liquid air with his winged ankles. Nations innumerable being

left behind, around and below, he beholds the people of the Æthiopians

and the lands of Cepheus. There the unjust Ammon[78] had ordered the

innocent Andromeda to suffer punishment for her mother’s tongue.[79]

Soon as the descendant of Abas beheld her, with her arms bound to the

hard rock, but that the light breeze was moving her hair, and her eyes

were running with warm[80] tears, he would have thought her to be a work

of marble. Unconsciously he takes fire, and is astonished; captivated

with the appearance of her beauty, {thus} beheld, he almost forgets to

wave his wings in the air. When he has lighted {on the ground}, he says,

“O thou, undeserving of these chains, but {rather} of those by which

anxious lovers are mutually united, disclose to me, inquiring both the

name of this land and of thyself, and why thou wearest {these} chains.”

At first she is silent, and, a virgin, she does not dare address[81] a

man; and with her hands she would have concealed her blushing features,

if she had not been bound; her eyes, ’twas {all} she could do, she

filled with gushing tears. Upon his often urging her, lest she should

seem unwilling to confess her offence, she told the name both of her

country and herself, and how great had been the confidence of her mother

in her beauty. All not yet being told, the waves roared, and a monster

approaching,[82] appeared with its head raised out of the boundless

ocean, and covered the wide expanse with its breast. The virgin shrieks

aloud; her mournful father, and her distracted mother, are there, both

wretched, but the latter more justly so. Nor do they bring her any help

with them, but tears suitable to the occasion, and lamentations, and

they cling round her body, bound {to the rock}.

Then thus the stranger says: “Plenty of time will be left for your tears

{hereafter}, the season for giving aid is {but} short. If I were to

demand her {in marriage}, I, Perseus, the son of Jove, and of her whom,

in prison, Jove embraced in the impregnating {shower of} gold, Perseus,

the conqueror of the Gorgon with her serpent locks, and who has dared,

on waving wings, to move through the ætherial air, I should surely be

preferred before all as your son-in-law. To so many recommendations I

endeavor to add merit (if only the Deities favor me). I {only} stipulate

that she may be mine, {if} preserved by my valor.” Her parents embrace

the condition, (for who could hesitate?) and they entreat {his aid}, and

promise as well, the kingdom as a dowry. Behold! as a ship onward

speeding, with the beak fixed {in its prow}, plows the waters, impelled

by the perspiring arms[83] of youths; so the monster, moving the waves

by the impulse of its breast, was as far distant from the rocks, as

{that distance} in the mid space of air, which a Balearic string can

pass with the whirled plummet of lead; when suddenly the youth, spurning

the earth with his feet, rose on high into the clouds. As the shadow of

the hero was seen on the surface of the sea, the monster vented its fury

on the shadow {so} beheld. And as the bird of Jupiter,[84] when he has

espied on the silent plain a serpent exposing its livid back to the

sun, seizes it behind; and lest it should turn upon him its raging

mouth, fixes his greedy talons in its scaly neck; so did the winged

{hero}, in his rapid flight through the yielding {air}, press the back

of the monster, and the descendant of Inachus thrust his sword up to the

very hilt in its right shoulder, as it roared aloud.

Tortured by the grievous wound, it sometimes raises itself aloft in the

air, sometimes it plunges beneath the waves, sometimes it wheels about,

just like a savage boar, which a pack of hounds in full cry around him

affrights. With swift wings he avoids the eager bites[85] {of the

monster}, and, with his crooked sword, one while wounds its back covered

with hollow shells, where it is exposed, at another time the ribs of its

sides, and now, where its tapering tail terminates in {that of} a fish.

The monster vomits forth from its mouth streams mingled with red blood;

its wings, {made} heavy {by it}, are wet with the spray. Perseus, not

daring any longer to trust himself on his dripping pinions,[86] beholds

a rock, which with its highest top projects from the waters {when}

becalmed, {but is now} covered by the troubled sea. Resting on that, and

clinging to the upper ridge[87] of the rock with his left hand, three or

four times he thrusts his sword through its entrails aimed at {by him}.

A shout, with applause, fills the shores and the lofty abodes of the

Gods. Cassiope and Cepheus, the father, rejoice, and salute him as their

son-in-law, and confess that he is the support and the preserver of

their house.

Released from her chains, the virgin walks along, both the reward and

the cause of his labors. He himself washes his victorious hands in water

taken {from the sea}; and that it may not injure the snake-bearing head

with the bare sand, he softens the ground with leaves; and strews some

weeds produced beneath the sea, and lays upon them the face of Medusa,

the daughter of Phorcys. The fresh weeds, being still alive, imbibed the

poison of the monster in their spongy pith, and hardened by its touch;

and felt an unwonted stiffness in their branches and their leaves. But

the Nymphs of the sea attempt the wondrous feat on many {other} weeds,

and are pleased at the same result; and raise seed again from them

scattered on the waves. Even now the same nature remains in the coral,

that it receives hardness from contact with the air; and what was a

plant in the sea, out of the sea becomes stone.

To three Deities he erects as many altars of turf; the left one to

Mercury; the right to thee, warlike Virgin; the altar of Jove is in the

middle. A cow is sacrificed to Minerva; a calf to the wing-footed {God,

and} a bull to thee, greatest of the Deities. Forthwith he takes

Andromeda, and the reward of an achievement so great, without any dowry.

Hymenæus and Cupid wave their torches before them; the fires are heaped

with abundant perfumes. Garlands, too, are hanging from the houses:

flageolets and lyres, and pipes, and songs resound, the happy tokens of

a joyous mind. The folding-doors thrown open, the entire gilded halls

are displayed, and the nobles of king Cepheus sit down at a feast

furnished with splendid preparations. After they have done the feast,

and have cheered their minds with the gifts of the generous Bacchus, the

grandson of Abas inquires the customs and habits of the country.

Immediately one {of them}, Lyncides, tells him, on his inquiring, the

manners and habits of the inhabitants. Soon as he had told him these

things, he said, “Now, most valiant Perseus, tell us, I beseech thee,

with how great valor and by what arts thou didst cut off the head all

hairy with serpents.” The descendant of Abas tells them that there is a

spot situate beneath cold Atlas, safe in its bulwark of a solid mass;

that, in the entrance of this, dwelt the two sisters, the daughters of

Phorcys, who shared the use of a single eye; that he stealthily, by sly

craft, while it was being handed over,[88] obtained possession of this

by putting his hand in the way; and that through rocks far remote, and

pathless, and bristling with woods on their craggy sides, he had arrived

at the abodes of the Gorgons, and saw everywhere, along the fields and

the roads, statues of men and wild beasts turned into stone, from their

{natural form}, at the sight of Medusa; yet that he himself, from the

reflection on the brass of the shield[89] which his left hand bore,

beheld the visage of the horrible Medusa; and that, while a sound sleep

held her and her serpents {entranced}, he took the head from off the

neck; and that Pegasus and his brother,[90] fleet with wings, were

produced from the blood of {her}, their mother. He added, too, the

dangers of his lengthened journey, {themselves} no fiction;[91] what

seas, what lands he had seen beneath him from on high, and what stars he

had reached with his waving wings.

Yet, before it was expected,[92] he was silent; {whereupon} one of the

nobles rejoined, inquiring why she alone, of the sisters, wore snakes

mingled alternately with her hair. “Stranger,” said he, “since thou

inquirest on a matter worthy to be related, hear the cause of the thing

thou inquirest after. She was the most famed for her beauty, and the

coveted hope of many wooers; nor, in the whole of her person, was any

part more worthy of notice than her hair: I have met {with some} who

said they had seen it. The sovereign of the sea is said to have

deflowered her in the Temple of Minerva. The daughter of Jove turned

away, and covered her chaste eyes with her shield. And that this might

not be unpunished, she changed the hair of the Gorgon into hideous

snakes. Now, too, that she may alarm her surprised foes with terror, she

bears in front upon her breast, those snakes which she {thus} produced.”

[Footnote 77: _Hippotas._--Ver. 663. Æolus, the God of the Winds,

was the son of Jupiter, by Acesta, the daughter of Hippotas.]

[Footnote 78: _Ammon._--Ver. 671. Jupiter, with the surname of

Ammon, had a temple in the deserts of Libya, where he was

worshipped under the shape of a ram; a form which he was supposed

to have assumed, when, in common with the other Deities, he fled

from the attacks of the Giants. The oracle of Jupiter Ammon being

consulted relative to the sea monster, which Neptune, at the

request of the Nereids, had sent against the Ethiopians, answered

that Andromeda must be exposed to be devoured by it; which Ovid

here, not without reason, calls an unjust demand.]

[Footnote 79: _Mother’s tongue._--Ver. 670. Cassiope, the mother

of Andromeda, had dared to compare her own beauty with that of the

Nereids. Cepheus, the son of Phœnix, was the father of Andromeda.]

[Footnote 80: _Warm._--Ver. 674. ‘Tepido,’ ‘warm,’ is decidedly

preferable here to ‘trepido,’ ‘trembling.’]

[Footnote 81: _Dare address._--Ver. 682. Heinsius thinks that

‘appellare’ here is not the correct reading; and suggests

‘aspectare,’ which seems to be more consistent with the sense of

the passage, which would then be, ‘and does not dare to look down

upon the hero.’]

[Footnote 82: _Monster approaching._--Ver. 689. Pliny the Elder

and Solinus tell us that the bones of this monster were afterwards

brought from Joppa, a seaport of Judæa, to Rome, and that the

skeleton was forty feet in length, and the spinal bone was six

feet in circumference.]

[Footnote 83: _The perspiring arms._--Ver. 707. ‘Juvenum

sudantibus acta lacertis’ is translated by Clarke, ‘forced forward

by the arms of sweating young fellows.’]

[Footnote 84: _Bird of Jupiter._--Ver. 714. The eagle was the bird

sacred to Jove. The larger kinds of birds which afforded auguries

from their mode of flight, were called ‘præpetes.’]

[Footnote 85: _Avoids the eager bites._--Ver. 723. Clarke

translates this line, ‘He avoids the monster’s eager snaps with

his swift wings.’]

[Footnote 86: _His dripping pinions._--Ver. 730. ‘Talaria’ were

either wings fitted to the ankles, or shoes having such wings

fastened to them; they were supposed to be usually worn by

Mercury.]

[Footnote 87: _Clinging to the upper ridge._--Ver. 733. ‘Tenens

juga prima sinistra’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘seizing the tip-top

of it with his left hand.’]

[Footnote 88: _Being handed over._--Ver. 766. Of course, as they

had but one eye between them, they must have both been blind while

it was passing from one hand to another, so that Perseus could

have had but little difficulty in effecting the theft here

mentioned.]

[Footnote 89: _Brass of the shield._--Ver. 783. This reflecting

shield Perseus is said to have received from Minerva, and by

virtue of it he was enabled to see without being seen. Lucian says

that Minerva herself held this reflecting shield before him, and

by that means afforded him the opportunity of seeing the

reflection of Medusa’s figure; and that Perseus, seizing her by

the hair with his left hand, and keeping his eye fixed on the

image reflected in the shield, took his sword in his right, and

cut off her head, and then, by the aid of his wings, flew away

before the other Gorgon sisters were aware of what he had done.]

[Footnote 90: _Pegasus and his brother._--Ver. 786. Pegasus and

Chrysaor were two winged horses, which were fabled to have sprung

up from the blood of Medusa, when slain by Perseus.]

[Footnote 91: _Themselves no fiction._--Ver. 787. His dangers were

not false or imaginary, inasmuch as he was pursued by Sthenyo and

Euryale, the sisters of Medusa, who were fabled to have wings, and

claws of iron on their hands. Ovid deals a sly hit in the words

‘non falsa pericula cursus,’ at the tales of travellers, who, even

in his day, seem to have commenced dealing in the marvellous; as,

indeed, we may learn for ourselves, on turning to the pages of

Herodotus, who seems to have been often imposed upon.]

[Footnote 92: _Before it was expected._--Ver. 790. Showing thereby

how delighted his audience was with his narrative.]

EXPLANATION.

It is extremely difficult to surmise what may have given rise to many

of the fabulous circumstances here narrated. It has been conjectured

by some, that Pegasus and his brother Chrysaor, the two horses

produced from the blood of Medusa, were really two ships in the harbor

of the island where that princess was residing at the time when she

was slain by Perseus; and that, on that event, they were seized by

him. Perhaps they had the figure of a winged horse on the prow; from

which circumstance the fable had its origin. Possibly, the story of

the production of coral from the blood of Medusa may have originated

in the fact, that on the defeat of the Gorgons, navigation became more

safe, and, consequently, the fishing for coral more common than it had

been before.

The story of the exposure of Andromeda may be founded on the fact,

that she was contracted by her parents against her will to some

fierce, piratical prince, who infested the adjacent seas with his

depredations; and that the betrothal was made, on condition that he

should allow the realms of her father, Cepheus, to be free and

undisturbed; Perseus, being informed of this, slew the pirate, and

Phineus having been kept in a state of inactivity through dread of the

valor of Perseus, it was fabled that he had been changed into a stone.

This interpretation of the story is the one suggested by Vossius.

Some writers think, that Phineus, the uncle of Andromeda, was the

enemy from which she was rescued by Perseus, and who is here

represented under the form of a monster; while others suggest that

this monster was the name of the ship in which the pirate before

mentioned was to have carried away Andromeda.

BOOK THE FIFTH.

FABLE I. [V.1-242]

While Perseus is continuing the relation of the adventures of Medusa,

Phineus, to whom Andromeda has been previously promised in marriage,

rushes into the palace, with his adherents, and attacks his rival.

A furious combat is the consequence, in which Perseus gives signal

proofs of his valor. At length, perceiving himself likely to be

overpowered by the number of his enemies, he shows them the head of

the Gorgon; on which Phineus and his followers are turned into statues

of stone. After this victory, he takes Andromeda with him to Argos,

his native city, where he turns the usurper Prœtus into stone, and

re-establishes his grandfather Acrisius on the throne.

And while the hero, the son of Danaë, is relating these things in the

midst of the company of the subjects of Cepheus, the royal courts are

filled with a raging multitude; nor is the clamor such as celebrates a

marriage-feast, but one which portends dreadful warfare. You might

compare the banquet, changed into a sudden tumult, to the sea, which,

when calm, the boisterous rage of the winds disturbs by raising its

waves.

Foremost among these, Phineus,[1] the rash projector of the onslaught,

shaking an ashen spear with a brazen point, cries, “Behold! {now},

behold! I am come, the avenger of my wife, ravished from me; neither

shall thy wings nor Jupiter turned into fictitious gold, deliver thee

from me.” As he is endeavoring to hurl {his lance}, Cepheus cries out,

“What art thou doing? What fancy, my brother, impels thee, in thy

madness, to this crime? Is this the due acknowledgment to return

for deserts so great? Dost thou repay the life of her {thus} preserved,

with this reward? ’Twas not Perseus, if thou wouldst know the truth,

that took her away from thee; but the incensed majesty of the Nereids,

and horned Ammon, and the monster of the sea, which came to be glutted

with my bowels. She was snatched from thee at that moment, at which she

was to have perished; unless it is that thou dost, in thy cruelty,

insist upon that very thing, that she should perish, and wilt be

appeased only by my affliction. It is not enough, forsooth, that in thy

presence she was bound and that thou, both her uncle and her betrothed,

didst give no assistance; wilt thou be grieving, besides, that she was

saved by another, and wilt thou deprive him of his reward? If this

appears great to thee, thou shouldst have recovered it from the rock to

which it was fastened. Now, let him who has recovered it, through whom

my old age is not childless, have what he stipulated for, both by his

merits and his words; and know that he was preferred not before thee,

but before certain death.”

{Phineus said} nothing, on the other hand; but viewing both him and

Perseus, with alternate looks, he was uncertain whether he should

{first} attack the one or the other; and, having paused a short time, he

vainly threw his spear, hurled with all the force that rage afforded. As

it stood fixed in the cushion,[2] then, at length, Perseus leapt off

from the couch, and in his rage would have pierced the breast of his

enemy with the weapon, thrown back, had not Phineus gone behind an

altar, and {thus} (how unworthily!) an altar[3] protected a miscreant.

However, the spear, not thrown in vain, stuck in the forehead of Rhœtus;

who, after he fell, and the steel was wrenched from the skull, he

{still} struggled, and besprinkled the laid tables with his blood. But

then does the multitude burst forth into ungovernable rage, and hurl

their weapons. Some there are, who say that Cepheus ought to die with

his son-in-law; but Cepheus has gone out by the entrance of the house,

calling right and good faith to witness, and the Gods of hospitality,[4]

that this disturbance is made contrary to his will. The warlike Pallas

comes; and with her shield protects her brother {Perseus}, and gives him

courage. There was an Indian, Athis {by name},[5] whom Limnate, the

daughter of the river Ganges, is believed to have brought forth beneath

the glassy waters; excelling in beauty, which he improved by his rich

dress; in his prime, as yet but twice eight years of age, dressed in a

purple tunic, which a golden fringe bordered; a gilded necklace graced

his neck, and a curved hair-pin his hair wet with myrrh. He, indeed, had

been taught to hit things, although at a distance, with his hurled

javelin, but {he was} more skilled at bending the bow. {Perseus} struck

him even then, as he was bending with his hands the flexible horns {of a

bow}, with a billet, which, placed in the middle of the altar, was

smoking, and he crushed his face into his broken skull.

When the Assyrian Lycabas, who was a most attached friend of his, and no

concealer of his real affection, saw him rolling his features, the

objects of such praises, in his blood; after he had bewailed Athis,

breathing forth his life from this cruel wound, he seized the bow which

he had bent, and said, “And {now} let the contest against thee be with

me; not long shalt thou exult in the fate of the youth, by which thou

acquirest more hatred than praise.” All this he had not yet said, {when}

the piercing weapon darted from the string, and {though} avoided, still

it hung in the folds of his garment. The grandson of Acrisius turned

against him his falchion,[6] {already} proved in the slaughter of

Medusa, and thrust it into his breast. But he, now dying, with his eyes

swimming in black night, looked around for Athis, and sank upon him, and

carried to the shades the consolation of a united death. Lo! Phorbas of

Syene,[7] the son of Methion, and Amphimedon, the Libyan, eager to

engage in the fight, fell down, slipping in the blood with which the

earth was warm, soaked on every side; as they arose the sword met them,

being thrust in the ribs of the one, {and} in the throat of Phorbas. But

Perseus does not attack Erithus, the son of Actor, whose weapon is a

broad battle-axe, by using his sword, but he takes up, with both hands,

a huge bowl,[8] standing out with figures deeply embossed, and of vast

mass in its weight, and hurls it against the man. The other vomits forth

red blood, and, falling on his back, beats the ground with his dying

head. Then he slays Polydæmon, sprung from the blood of Semiramis, and

the Caucasian Abaris, and Lycetus, the son of Sperchius,[9] and Elyces,

with unshorn locks, and Phlegias, and Clytus; and he tramples upon the

heaps of the dying, which he has piled up.

But Phineus, not daring to engage hand to hand with his enemy, hurls his

javelin, which accident carries against Idas, who, in vain, has declined

the warfare[10] and has followed the arms of neither. He, looking at the

cruel Phineus with stern eyes, says, “Since I am {thus} forced to take a

side, take the enemy, Phineus, that thou hast made, and make amends for

my wound with this wound.” And now, just about to return the dart drawn

from his body, he falls sinking down upon his limbs void of blood. Here,

too, Odytes, the next in rank among the followers of Cepheus, after the

king, lies prostrate under the sword of Clymenus; Hypseus kills

Protenor, {and} Lyncides Hypseus. There is, too, among them the aged

Emathion, an observer of justice, and a fearer of the Gods; as his years

prevent him from fighting, he engages by talking, and he condemns and

utters imprecations against their accursed arms. As he clings to the

altars[11] with trembling hands, Chromis cuts off his head with his

sword, which straightway falls upon the altar, and there, with his dying

tongue he utters words of execration, and breathes forth his soul in the

midst of the fires. Upon this, two brothers, Broteas and Ammon

invincible at boxing, if swords could only be conquered by boxing, fell

by the hand of Phineus; Ampycus, too, the priest of Ceres, having his

temples wreathed with a white fillet. Thou too, son of Iapetus, not to

be employed for these services; but one who tuned the lyre, the work of

peace, to thy voice, hadst been ordered to attend the banquet and

festival with thy music. As thou art standing afar, and holding the

unwarlike plectrum, Pettalus says, laughing, “Go sing the rest to the

Stygian ghosts,” and fixes the point of the sword in his left temple. He

falls, and with his dying fingers he touches once again the strings of

the lyre; and in his fall he plays a mournful dirge.[12] The fierce

Lycormas does not suffer him to fall unpunished; and tearing away a

massive bar from the doorpost on the right, he dashes it against the

bones of the middle of the neck {of Pettalus}; struck, he falls to the

ground, just like a slaughtered bullock.

The Cinyphian[13] Pelates, too, was trying to tear away the oaken bar of

the doorpost on the left; as he was trying, his right hand was fastened

{thereto} by the spear of Corythus, the son of Marmarus, and it stood

riveted to the wood. {Thus} riveted, Abas pierced his side; he did not

fall, however, but dying, hung from the post, which still held fast his

hand. Melaneus, too, was slain, who had followed the camp of Perseus,

and Dorylas, very rich in Nasamonian land.[14] Dorylas, rich in land,

than whom no one possessed it of wider extent, or received {thence} so

many heaps of corn. The hurled steel stood fixed obliquely in his groin;

the hurt was mortal. When the Bactrian[15] Halcyoneus, the author of the

wound, beheld him sobbing forth his soul, and rolling his eyes, he said,

“Take {for thine own} this {spot} of earth which thou dost press, out of

so many fields,” and he left his lifeless body. The descendant of Abas,

as his avenger, hurls against {Halcyoneus} the spear torn from his wound

{yet} warm, which, received in the middle of the nostrils, pierced

through his neck, and projected on both sides. And while fortune is

aiding his hand, he slays, with different wounds, Clytius and Clanis,

born of one mother. For an ashen spear poised with a strong arm is

driven through both the thighs of Clytius; with his mouth does Clanis

bite the javelin. Celadon, the Mendesian,[16] falls, too; Astreus falls,

born of a mother of Palestine, {but} of an uncertain father. Æthion,

too, once sagacious at foreseeing things to come, {but} now deceived[17]

by a false omen; and Thoactes, the armor-bearer of the king, and

Agyrtes, infamous for slaying his father.

More work still remains, than what is {already} done; for it is the

intention of all to overwhelm one. The conspiring troops fight on all

sides, for a cause that attacks both merit and good faith. The one side,

the father-in-law, attached in vain, and the new-made wife, together

with her mother, encourage; and {these} fill the halls with their

shrieks. But the din of arms, and the groans of those that fall,

prevail; and for once, Bellona[18] is deluging the household Gods

polluted with plenteous blood, and is kindling the combat anew. Phineus,

and a thousand that follow Phineus, surround Perseus {alone}; darts are

flying thicker than the hail of winter, on both his sides, past his

eyes, and past his ears. On this, he places his shoulders against the

stone of a large pillar, and, having his back secure, and facing the

adverse throng, he withstands their attack. Chaonian[19] Molpeus presses

on the left, Nabathæan Ethemon on the right. As a tiger, urged on by

hunger, when it hears the lowings of two herds, in different valleys,

knows not on which side in preference to rush out, and {yet} is eager to

rush out on both; so Perseus, being in doubt whether to bear onward to

the right or to the left, repulses Molpeus by a wound in the leg, which

he runs through, and is contented with his flight. Nor, indeed, does

Ethemon give him time, but fiercely attacks him; and, desirous to

inflict a wound deep in his neck, he breaks his sword, wielded with

incautious force; and against the extremity of a column which he has

struck, the blade flies to pieces, and sticks in the throat of its

owner; yet that blow has not power sufficient to {effect} his death.

Perseus stabs him with his Cyllenian[20] falchion, trembling, and vainly

extending his unarmed hands.

But when Perseus saw his valor {likely} to yield to such numbers, he

said, “Since you yourselves force me to do it, I will seek assistance

from an enemy: turn away your faces, if any of my friends are here;” and

{then} he produced the head of the Gorgon. “{Go}, seek some one else,”

said Thescelus, “for thy miracles to affect;” and, as he was preparing

to hurl his deadly javelin with his hand, he stood fast in that posture,

a statue of marble. Ampyx, being next him, made a pass with his sword at

the breast of Lyncidas, full of daring spirit, and, while making it, his

right hand became stiff, moving neither to one side nor the other. But

Nileus, who had falsely boasted that he was begotten by the

seven-mouthed Nile, and who had engraved on his shield its seven

channels, partly in silver, partly in gold, said, “Behold, Perseus, the

origin of my race; thou shalt carry to the silent shades a great

consolation for thy death, that thou wast killed by one so great.” The

last part of his address was suppressed in the midst of the utterance;

and you would think his half-open mouth was attempting to speak, but it

gave no passage for his words. Eryx rebuked them,[21] and said, “Ye are

benumbed by the cowardice of your minds, not by the locks of the Gorgon;

rush on with me, and strike to the ground {this} youth that wields his

magic arms.” He was about to rush on, {when} the earth arrested his

steps, and he remained an immovable stone, and an armed statue. But all

these met with the punishment they had deserved: there was one man,

however, Aconteus {by name}, a soldier of Perseus, for whom while he was

fighting, on beholding the Gorgon, he grew hard with stone rising upon

him. Astyages, thinking him still alive, struck him with his long sword;

the sword resounded with a shrill ringing. While Astyages was in

amazement, he took on himself the same nature: and the look of one in

surprise remained on his marble features. It is a tedious task to

recount the names of the men of the lower rank. Two hundred bodies were

{yet} remaining for the fight: two hundred bodies, on beholding the

Gorgon, grew stiff.

Now at length Phineus repents of this unjust warfare. But what can he

do? He sees statues varying in form, and he recognizes his friends, and

demands help of them each, called by name; and not {yet} persuaded, he

touches the bodies next him; they are marble. He turns away {his eyes};

and thus suppliant, and stretching forth his hands, that confessed {his

fault}, and his arms obliquely extended, he says, “Perseus, thou hast

conquered; remove the direful monster, and take away that stone-making

face of thy Medusa, whatever she may be; take it away, I pray. It is not

hatred, or the desire of a kingdom, that has urged me to war: for a wife

I wielded arms. Thy cause was the better in point of merit, mine in

point of time. I am not sorry to yield. Grant me nothing, most valiant

man, beyond this life; the rest be thine.” Upon his saying such things,

and not daring to look upon him, whom he is entreating with his voice,

{Perseus} says, “What am I able to give thee, most cowardly Phineus,

and, a great boon to a craven, that will I give; lay aside thy fears;

thou shalt be hurt by no weapon. Moreover, I will give thee a monument

to last forever, and in the house of my father-in-law thou shalt always

be seen, that my wife may comfort herself with the form of her

betrothed.” {Thus} he said, and he turned the daughter of Phorcys to

that side, towards which Phineus had turned himself with trembling face.

Then, even as he endeavored to turn away his eyes, his neck grew stiff,

and the moisture of his eyes hardened in stone. But yet his timid

features, and his suppliant countenance, and his hands hanging down, and

his guilty attitude, still remained.

The descendant of Abas, together with his wife, enters the walls of his

native city; and as the defender and avenger of his innocent mother, he

attacks Prœtus.[22] For, his brother being expelled by force of arms,

Prœtus had taken possession of the citadel of Acrisius; but neither by

the help of arms, nor the citadel which he had unjustly seized, did he

prevail against the stern eyes of the snake-bearing monster.

[Footnote 1: _Phineus._--Ver. 8. He was the brother of Cepheus, to

whom Andromeda had been betrothed. There was another person of the

same name, who entertained the Argonauts, and who is also

mentioned in the Metamorphoses.]

[Footnote 2: _In the cushion._--Ver. 34. This was probably the

mattress or covering of the couch on which the ancients reclined

during meals. It was frequently stuffed with wool; but among the

poorer classes, with straw and dried weeds.]

[Footnote 3: _An altar._--Ver. 36. This was either the altar

devoted to the worship of the Penates; or, more probably, perhaps,

in this instance, that erected for sacrifice to the Gods on the

occasion of the nuptials of Perseus and Andromeda.]

[Footnote 4: _Gods of hospitality._--Ver. 45. Jupiter was

especially considered to be the avenger of a violation of the laws

of hospitality.]

[Footnote 5: _Athis by name._--Ver. 47. Athis, or Atys, is here

described as of Indian birth, to distinguish him from the Phrygian

youth of the same name, beloved by Cybele, whose story is told by

Ovid in the Fasti.]

[Footnote 6: _His falchion._--Ver. 69. The “Harpe” was a short,

crooked sword, or falchion: such as we call a “scimitar.”]

[Footnote 7: _Syene._--Ver. 74. This was a city on the confines of

Æthiopia, bordering upon Egypt. Ovid tells us in the Pontic

Epistles (Book i. Ep. 5, l. 79), that “there, at the time of the

summer solstice, bodies as they stand, have no shadow.”]

[Footnote 8: _A huge bowl._--Ver. 82. Clarke calls “ingentem

cratera” “a swingeing bowl.”]

[Footnote 9: _Sperchius._--Ver. 86. This was probably a person,

and not the river of Thessaly, flowing into the Malian Gulf.]

[Footnote 10: _Has declined the warfare._--Ver. 91. This is an

illustration of the danger of neutrality, when the necessity of

the times requires a man to adopt the side which he deems to be in

the right.]

[Footnote 11: _Clings to the altars._--Ver. 103. In cases of

extreme danger, it was usual to fly to the temples of the Deities,

and to take refuge behind the altar or statue of the God, and even

to cling to it, if necessity required.]

[Footnote 12: _A mournful dirge._--Ver. 118. Clarke translates

‘Casuque canit miserabile carmen;’ ‘and in his fall plays but a

dismal ditty.’]

[Footnote 13: _Cinyphian._--Ver. 124. Cinyps, or Cinyphus, was the

name of a river situate in the north of Africa.]

[Footnote 14: _Nasamonian land._--Ver. 129. The Nasamones were a

people of Libya, near the Syrtes, or quicksands, who subsisted by

plundering the numerous wrecks on their coasts.]

[Footnote 15: _Bactrian._--Ver. 135. Bactris was the chief city of

Bactria, a region bordering on the western confines of India.]

[Footnote 16: _The Mendesian._--Ver. 144. Mendes was a city of

Egypt, near the mouth of the Nile, where Pan was worshipped,

according to Pliny. Celadon was a native of either this place, or

of the city of Myndes, in Syria.]

[Footnote 17: _Now deceived._--Ver. 147. Because he had not

foreseen his own approaching fate.]

[Footnote 18: _Bellona._--Ver. 155. She was the sister of Mars,

and was the Goddess of War.]

[Footnote 19: _Chaonian._--Ver. 163. Chaonia was a mountainous

part of Epirus, so called from Chaon, who was accidentally killed,

while hunting, by Helenus, the son of Priam. It has been, however,

suggested that the reading ought to be ‘Choanius;’ as the Choanii

were a people bordering on Arabia; and very justly, for how should

the Chaonians and Nabathæans, or Epirotes, and Arabians become

united in the same sentence, as meeting in a region so distant as

Æthiopia?]

[Footnote 20: _Cyllenian._--Ver. 176. His falchion had been given

to him by Mercury, who was born on Mount Cyllene, in Arcadia.]

[Footnote 21: _Eryx rebuked them._--Ver. 195. ‘Increpat hos Eryx’

is translated by Clarke, ‘Eryx rattles these blades.’]

[Footnote 22: _Prœtus._--Ver. 238. He was the brother of Acrisius,

the grandfather of Perseus.]

EXPLANATION.

The scene of this story is supposed by some to have been in Æthiopia,

but it is more probably on the coast of Africa. Josephus and Strabo

assert that this event happened near the city of Joppa, or Jaffa:

indeed, Josephus says that the marks of the chains with which

Andromeda was fastened, were remaining on the rock in his time.

Pomponius Mela says, that Cepheus, the father of Andromeda, was king

of Joppa, and that the memory of that prince and of his brother

Phineus was honored there with religious services. He says, too, that

the inhabitants used to show the bones of the monster which was to

have devoured Andromeda. Pliny tells us the same, and that Scaurus

carried these bones with him to Rome. He calls the monster ‘a

Goddess,’ ‘Dea Cete.’ Vossius believes that he means the God Dagon,

worshipped among the Syrians under the figure of a fish, or

sea-monster. Some authors have suggested that the story of the

creature which was to have devoured Andromeda, was a confused version

of that of the prophet Jonah.

The alleged power of Perseus, to turn his enemies into stone, was

probably, a metaphorical mode of describing his heroism, and the

terror which everywhere followed the fame of his victory over the

Gorgons. This probably caused such consternation, that it was reported

that he petrified his enemies by showing them the head of Medusa.

Bochart supposes that the rocky nature of the island of Seriphus,

where Polydectes reigned, was the ground of the various stories of the

alleged metamorphoses into stone, effected by means of the Gorgon’s

head.

FABLE II. [V.243-340]

Polydectes continues his hatred against Perseus, and treats his

victories and triumphs over Medusa as mere fictions, on which Perseus

turns him into stone. Minerva leaves her brother, and goes to Mount

Helicon to visit the Muses, who show the Goddess the beauties of their

habitation, and entertain her with their adventure at the court of

Pyreneus, and the death of that prince. They also repeat to her the

song of the Pierides, who challenged them to sing.

Yet, O Polydectes,[23] the ruler of little Seriphus, neither the valor

of the youth proved by so many toils, nor his sorrows have softened

thee; but thou obstinately dost exert an inexorable hatred, nor is there

any limit to thy unjust resentment. Thou also detractest from his

praises, and dost allege that the death of Medusa is {but} a fiction.

“We will give thee a proof of the truth,” says Perseus; “have a regard

for your eyes, {all besides};” and he makes the face of the king

{become} stone, without blood, by means of the face of Medusa.

Hitherto Tritonia had presented herself as a companion to her

brother,[24] begotten in the golden shower. Now, enwrapped in an

encircling cloud, she abandons Seriphus, Cythnus and Gyarus[25] being

left on the right. And where the way seems the shortest over the sea,

she makes for Thebes and Helicon, frequented by the virgin {Muses};

having reached which mountain she stops, and thus addresses the learned

sisters: “The fame of the new fountain[26] has reached my ears, which

the hard hoof of the winged steed sprung from the blood of Medusa has

opened. That is the cause of my coming. I wished to see this wondrous

prodigy; I saw him spring from the blood of his mother.” Urania[27]

replies, “Whatever, Goddess, is the cause of thy visiting these abodes,

thou art most acceptable to our feelings. However, the report is true,

and Pegasus is the originator of this spring;” and {then} she conducts

Pallas to the sacred streams. She, long admiring the waters produced by

the stroke of his foot, looks around upon the groves of the ancient

wood, and the caves and the grass studded with flowers innumerable; and

she pronounces the Mnemonian[28] maids happy both in their pursuits and

in their retreat; when one of the sisters {thus} addresses her:

“O Tritonia, thou who wouldst have come to make one of our number, had

not thy valor inclined thee to greater deeds, thou sayest the truth, and

with justice thou dost approve both our pursuits and our retreat; and if

we are but safe, happy do we reckon our lot. But (to such a degree is no

denial borne by villany) all things affright our virgin minds, and the

dreadful Pyreneus is placed before our eyes; and not yet have I wholly

recovered my presence of mind. He, in his insolence, had taken the

Daulian and Phocean[29] land with his Thracian troops, and unjustly held

the government. We were making for the temple of Parnassus; he beheld us

going, and adoring our Divinities[30] in a feigned worship he said (for

he had recognized us), ‘O Mnemonian maids, stop, and do not scruple,

I pray, under my roof to avoid the bad weather and the showers (for it

was raining); oft have the Gods above entered more humble cottages.’

Moved by his invitation and the weather, we assented to the man, and

entered the front part of his house. The rain had {now} ceased, and the

South Wind {now} subdued by the North, the black clouds were flying from

the cleared sky. It was our wish to depart. Pyreneus closed his house,

and prepared for violence, which we escaped by taking wing. He himself

stood aloft on the top {of his abode}, as though about to follow us, and

said ‘Wherever there is a way for you, by the same road there will be

{one} for me.’ And then, in his insanity, he threw himself from the

height of the summit of the tower, and fell upon his face, and with the

bones of his skull thus broken, he struck the ground stained with his

accursed blood.”

{Thus} spoke the Muse. Wings resounded through the air, and a voice of

some saluting them[31] came from the lofty boughs. The daughter of

Jupiter looked up, and asked whence tongues that speak so distinctly

made that noise, and thought that a human being had spoken. They were

birds; and magpies that imitate everything, lamenting their fate, they

stood perched on the boughs, nine in number. As the Goddess wondered,

thus did the Goddess {Urania} commence: “Lately, too, did these being

overcome in a dispute, increase the number of the birds. Pierus, rich in

the lands of Pella,[32] begot them; the Pæonian[33] Evippe[34] was their

mother. Nine times did she invoke the powerful Lucina, being nine times

in labor. This set of foolish sisters were proud of their number, and

came hither through so many cities of Hæmonia, {and} through so many of

Achaia,[35] and engaged in a contest in words such as these: “Cease

imposing upon the vulgar with your empty melody. If you have any

confidence {in your skill}, ye Thespian Goddesses, contend with us; we

will not be outdone in voice or skill; and we are as many in number.

Either, if vanquished, withdraw from the spring formed by the steed of

Medusa, and the Hyantean Aganippe,[36] or we will retire from the

Emathian plains, as far as the snowy Pæonians. Let the Nymphs decide the

contest.” It was, indeed, disgraceful to engage, but to yield seemed

{even} more disgraceful. The Nymphs that are chosen swear by the rivers,

and they sit on seats made out of the natural rock. Then, without

casting lots, she who had been the first to propose the contest, sings

the wars of the Gods above, and gives the Giants honor not their due,

and detracts from the actions of the great Divinities; and {sings} how

that Typhœus, sent forth from the lowest realms of the earth, had struck

terror into the inhabitants of Heaven; and {how} they had all turned

their backs in flight, until the land of Egypt had received them in

their weariness, and the Nile, divided into its seven mouths. She tells,

how that Typhœus had come there, too, and the Gods above had concealed

themselves under assumed shapes; and ‘Jupiter,’ she says, ‘becomes the

leader of the flock, whence, even at the present day, the Libyan Ammon

is figured with horns. {Apollo}, the Delian {God}, lies concealed as a

crow, the son of Semele as a he-goat, the sister of Phœbus as a cat,

{Juno}, the daughter of Saturn, as a snow-white cow, Venus as a

fish,[37] {Mercury}, the Cyllenian {God}, beneath the wings of an

Ibis.’[38]

“Thus far she had exerted her noisy mouth to {the sound of} the lyre; we

of Aonia[39] were {then} called upon; but perhaps thou hast not the

leisure, nor the time to lend an ear to our strains.” Pallas says, “Do

not hesitate, and repeat your song to me in its order;” and she takes

her seat under the pleasant shade of the grove. The Muse {then} tells

her story. “We assigned the management of the contest to one {of our

number}. Calliope rises, and, having her long hair gathered up with ivy,

tunes with her thumb the sounding chords; and {then} sings these lines

in concert with the strings when struck.”

[Footnote 23: _Polydectes._--Ver. 242. Polydectes was king of the

little island of Seriphus, one of the Cyclades. His brother Dictys

had removed Perseus, with his mother Danaë, to the kingdom of

Polydectes. The latter became smitten with love for Danaë, though

he was about to marry Hippodamia. On this occasion he exacted a

promise from Perseus, of the head of the Gorgon Medusa. When

Perseus returned victorious, he found that his mother, with her

protector Dictys, had taken refuge at the altars of the Deities,

against the violence of Polydectes; on which Perseus changed him

into stone. The story of Perseus afforded abundant materials to

the ancient poets. Æschylus wrote a Tragedy called Polydectes,

Sophocles one called Danaë, while Euripides composed two, called

respectively Danaë and Dictys. Pherecydes also wrote on this

subject, and his work seems to have been a text book for

succeeding poets. Polygnotus painted the return of Perseus with

the head of Medusa, to the island of Seriphus.]

[Footnote 24: _To her brother._--Ver. 250. As both Tritonia, or

Minerva, and Perseus had Jupiter for their father.]

[Footnote 25: _Gyarus._--Ver. 252. Cythnus and Gyarus were two

islands of the Cyclades.]

[Footnote 26: _The new fountain._--Ver. 256. This was Helicon,

which was produced by a blow from the hoof of Pegasus.]

[Footnote 27: _Urania._--Ver. 260. One of the Muses, who presided

over Astronomy.]

[Footnote 28: _Mnemonian._--Ver. 268. The Muses are called

‘Mnemonides,’ from the Greek word μνήμων ‘remembering,’ or

‘mindful,’ because they were said to be the daughters, by Jupiter,

of Mnemosyne, or Memory.]

[Footnote 29: _Phocean._--Ver. 276. Daulis was a city of Phocis;

a district between Bœotia and Ætolia, in which the city of Delphi

and Mount Parnassus were situate.]

[Footnote 30: _Our Divinities._--Ver. 279. ‘Nostra veneratus

numina,’ is translated by Clarke, ‘and worshipping our

Goddessships.’]

[Footnote 31: _Some saluting them._--Ver. 295. That is, crying out

χαῖρε, χαῖρε, the usual salutation among the Greeks, equivalent to

our ‘How d’ye do?’ From two lines of Persius, it seems to have

been a common thing to teach parrots and magpies to repeat these

words.]

[Footnote 32: _Lands of Pella._--Ver. 302. Pella was a city of

Macedonia, in that part of it which was called Emathia. It was

famed for being the birthplace of Philip, and Alexander the

Great.]

[Footnote 33: _Pæonian._--Ver. 303. Pæonia was a mountainous

region of Macedonia, adjacent to Emathia.]

[Footnote 34: _Evippe._--Ver. 303. Evippe was the wife of Pierus,

and the mother of the Pierides.]

[Footnote 35: _Achaia._--Ver. 306. The Achaia here mentioned was

the Hæmonian, or Thessalian Achaia. The other parts of Thessaly

were Phthiotis and Pelasgiotis.]

[Footnote 36: _Aganippe._--Ver. 312. Aganippe was the name of a

fountain in Bœotia, near Helicon, sacred to the Muses. It is

called Hyantean, from the ancient name of the inhabitants of the

country.]

[Footnote 37: _Venus as a fish._--Ver. 331. The story of the

transformation of Venus into a fish, to escape the fury of the

Giants, is told, at length, in the second Book of the Fasti.]

[Footnote 38: _Wings of an Ibis._--Ver. 331. The Ibis was a bird

of Egypt, much resembling a crane, or stork. It was said to be of

peculiarly unclean habits, and to subsist upon serpents.]

[Footnote 39: _We of Aonia._--Ver. 333. The Muses obtained the

name of Aonides from Aonia, a mountainous district of Bœotia.]

EXPLANATION.

According to Plutarch, the adventure of the Muses with Pyreneus, and

of their asking wings of the Gods to save themselves, is a metaphor,

which shows that he, when reigning in Phocis, was no friend to

learning. As he had caused all the institutions in which it was taught

to be destroyed, it was currently reported, that he had offered

violence to the Muses, and that he lost his life in pursuing them.

Ovid is the only writer that mentions him by name.

The challenge given by the Pierides to the Muses is not mentioned by

any writer before the time of Ovid. By way of explaining it, it is

said, that Pierus was a very bad poet, whose works were full of

stories injurious to the credit of the Gods. Hence, in time, it became

circulated, that his daughters, otherwise his works, were changed into

magpies, thereby meaning that they were full of idle narratives,

tiresome and unmeaning. It is not improbable that the story of

Typhœus, who forces the Gods to conceal themselves in Egypt, under the

forms of various animals, was a poem which Pierus composed on the war

of the Gods with the Giants.

FABLE III. [V.341-384]

One of the Muses repeats to Minerva the song of Calliope, in answer to

the Pierides; in which she describes the defeat of the Giant Typhœus,

and Pluto viewing the mountains of Sicily, where Venus persuades her

son Cupid to pierce his heart with one of his arrows.

“Ceres was the first to turn up the clods with the crooked plough; she

first gave corn and wholesome food to the earth; she first gave laws;

everything is the gift of Ceres. She is to be sung by me; I only wish

that I could utter verses worthy of the Goddess, {for} doubtless she is

a Goddess worthy of my song. The vast island of Trinacria[40] is heaped

up on the limbs of the Giant, and keeps down Typhœus, that dared to hope

for the abodes of Heaven, placed beneath its heavy mass. He, indeed,

struggles, and attempts often to rise, but his right hand is placed

beneath the Ausonian Pelorus,[41] his left under thee, Pachynus;[42] his

legs are pressed down by Lilybœum;[43] Ætna bears down his head; under

it Typhœus, on his back, casts forth sand, and vomits flame from his

raging mouth; often does he struggle to throw off the load of earth, and

to roll away cities and huge mountains from his body. Then does the

earth tremble, and the King of the shades himself is in dread, lest it

may open, and the ground be parted with a wide chasm, and, the day being

let in, may affright the trembling ghosts.

“Fearing this ruin, the Ruler had gone out from his dark abode; and,

carried in his chariot by black horses, he cautiously surveyed the

foundations of the Sicilian land. After it was sufficiently ascertained

that no place was insecure, and fear was laid aside, Erycina,[44]

sitting down upon her mountain, saw him wandering; and, embracing her

winged son, she said, Cupid, my son, my arms, my hands, and my might,

take up those darts by which thou conquerest all, and direct the swift

arrows against the breast of the God, to whom fell the last lot of the

triple kingdom.[45] Thou subduest the Gods above, and Jupiter himself;

thou {subduest} the conquered Deities of the deep, and him who rules

over the Deities of the deep. Why is Tartarus exempt? Why dost thou not

extend the Empire of thy mother and thine own? A third part of the world

is {now} at stake. And yet so great power is despised even in our own

heaven, and, together with myself, the influence of Love becomes but a

trifling matter. Dost thou not see how that Pallas, and Diana, who

throws the javelin, have renounced me? The daughter of Ceres, too, will

be a virgin, if we shall permit it, for she inclines to similar hopes.

But do thou join the Goddess to her uncle, if I have any interest with

thee in favor of our joint sway.

“Venus {thus} spoke. He opened his quiver, and, by the direction of his

mother, set apart one out of his thousand arrows; but one, than which

there is not any more sharp or less unerring, or which is more true to

the bow. And he bent the flexible horn, by pressing his knee against it,

and struck Pluto in the breast with the barbed arrow.”

[Footnote 40: _Trinacria._--Ver. 347. Sicily was called Trinacris,

or Trinacria, from its three corners or promontories, which are

here named by the Poet.]

[Footnote 41: _Pelorus._--Ver. 350. This cape, or promontory, now

called Capo di Faro, is on the east of Sicily, looking towards

Italy, whence its present epithet, ‘Ausonian.’ It was so named

from Pelorus, the pilot of Hannibal, who, suspecting him of

treachery, had put him to death, and buried him on that spot.]

[Footnote 42: _Pachynus._--Ver. 351. This Cape, now Capo Passaro,

looks towards Greece, from the south of Sicily.]

[Footnote 43: _Lilybæum._--Ver. 351. Now called Capo Marsala. It

is on the west of Sicily, looking towards the African coast.]

[Footnote 44: _Erycina._--Ver. 363. Venus is so called from Eryx,

the mountain of Sicily, on which her son Eryx, one of the early

Sicilian kings, erected a magnificent temple in her honor.]

[Footnote 45: _The triple kingdom._--Ver. 368. In the partition of

the dominion of the universe the heavens fell to the lot of

Jupiter, the seas to that of Neptune; while the infernal regions,

or, as some say, the earth, were awarded to Pluto.]

EXPLANATION.

The ancients frequently accounted for natural phænomena on fabulous

grounds: and whatever they found difficult to explain, from their

ignorance of the principles of natural philosophy, they immediately

attributed to the agency of a supernatural cause. Ætna was often seen

to emit flames, and the earth was subjected to violent shocks from the

forces of its internal fires when struggling for a vent. Instead of

looking for the source of these eruptions in the sulphur and

bituminous matter in which the mountain abounds, they fabled, that the

Gods, having vanquished the Giant Typhœus, or, according to some

authors, Enceladus, threw Mount Ætna on his body; and that the

attempts he made to free himself from the superincumbent weight were

the cause of those fires and earthquakes.

FABLE IV. [V.385-461]

Pluto surprises Proserpina in the fields of Henna, and carries her

away by force. The Nymph Cyane endeavors, in vain, to stop him in his

passage, and through grief and anguish, dissolves into a fountain.

Ceres goes everywhere in search of her daughter, and, in her journey,

turns the boy Stellio into a newt.

“Not far from the walls of Henna[46] there is a lake of deep water,

Pergus by name; Cayster does not hear more songs of swans, in his

running streams, than that. A wood skirts the lake, surrounding it on

every side, and with its foliage, as though with an awning, keeps out

the rays of the sun. The boughs produce a coolness, the moist ground

flowers of Tyrian hue. {There} the spring is perpetual. In this grove,

while Proserpina is amusing herself, and is plucking either violets or

white lilies, and while, with childlike eagerness, she is filling her

baskets and her bosom, and is striving to outdo {her companions} of the

same age in gathering, almost at the same instant she is beheld,

beloved, and seized by Pluto;[47] in such great haste is love. The

Goddess, affrighted, with lamenting lips calls both her mother and her

companions,[48] but more frequently her mother;[49] and as she has torn

her garment from the upper edge, the collected flowers fall from her

loosened robes. So great, too, is the innocence of her childish years,

this loss excites the maiden’s grief as well. The ravisher drives on his

chariot, and encourages his horses, called, each by his name, along

whose necks and manes he shakes the reins, dyed with swarthy rust. He is

borne through deep lakes, and the pools of the Palici,[50] smelling

strong of sulphur, {and} boiling fresh from out of the burst earth; and

where the Bacchiadæ,[51] a race sprung from Corinth, with its two

seas,[52] built a city[53] between unequal harbors.

“There is a stream in the middle, between Cyane and the Pisæan Arethusa,

which is confined within itself, being enclosed by mountain ridges at a

short distance {from each other}. Here was Cyane,[54] the most

celebrated among the Sicilian Nymphs, from whose name the pool also was

called, who stood up from out of the midst of the water, as far as the

higher part of her stomach, and recognized the God, and said, ‘No

further shall you go. Thou mayst not be the son-in-law of Ceres against

her will. {The girl} should have been asked {of her mother}, not carried

away. But if I may be allowed to compare little matters with great ones,

Anapis[55] also loved me. Yet I married him, courted, and not frightened

{into it}, like her.’ She {thus} said, and stretching her arms on

different sides, she stood in his way. The son of Saturn no longer

restrained his rage; and encouraging his terrible steeds, he threw his

royal sceptre, hurled with a strong arm, into the lowest depths of the

stream. The earth, {thus} struck, made a way down to Tartarus, and

received the descending chariot in the middle of the yawning space. But

Cyane, lamenting both the ravished Goddess, and the slighted privileges

of her spring, carries in her silent mind an inconsolable wound, and is

entirely dissolved into tears, and melts away into those waters, of

which she had been but lately the great guardian Divinity. You might see

her limbs soften, her bones become subjected to bending, her nails lay

aside their hardness: each, too, of the smaller extremities of the whole

of her body melts away; both her azure hair, her fingers, her legs, and

her feet; for easy is the change of those small members into a cold

stream. After that, her back, her shoulders, her side, and her breast

dissolve, vanishing into thin rivulets. Lastly, pure water, instead of

live blood, enters her corrupted veins, and nothing remains which you

can grasp {in your hand}.

“In the mean time, throughout all lands and in every sea, the daughter

is sought in vain by her anxious mother. Aurora, coming with her ruddy

locks does not behold her taking any rest, neither does Hesperus. She,

with her two hands, sets light to some pines at the flaming Ætna, and

giving herself no rest, bears them through the frosty darkness. Again,

when the genial day has dulled the light of the stars, she seeks her

daughter from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof. Fatigued by

the labor, she has {now} contracted thirst, and no streams have washed

her mouth, when by chance she beholds a cottage covered with thatch, and

knocks at its humble door, upon which an old woman[56] comes out and

sees the Goddess, and gives her, asking for water, a sweet drink which

she has lately distilled[57] from parched pearled barley. While she is

drinking it {thus} presented, a boy[58] of impudent countenance and

bold, stands before the Goddess, and laughs, and calls her greedy. She

is offended; and a part being not yet quaffed, the Goddess sprinkles

him, as he is {thus} talking, with the barley mixed with the liquor.

“His face contracts the stains, and he bears legs where just now he was

bearing arms; a tail is added to his changed limbs; and he is contracted

into a diminutive form, that no great power of doing injury may exist;

his size is less than {that of} a small lizard. He flies from the old

woman, astounded and weeping, and trying to touch the monstrosity; and

he seeks a lurking place, and has a name suited to his color, having his

body speckled with various spots.”

[Footnote 46: _Henna._--Ver. 385. Henna, or Enna, was a city so

exactly situated in the middle of Sicily that it was called the

navel of that island. The worship of Ceres there was so highly

esteemed, that ancient writers remarked, that you might easily

take the whole place for one vast temple of that Goddess, and all

the inhabitants for her priests. Proserpine is said by many

authors, besides Ovid, to have been carried away by Pluto in the

vicinity of Henna; though some writers say that it took place in

Attica, and others again in Asia, while the Hymn of Orpheus

mentions the western coast of Spain. Cicero describes this spot in

his Oration against Verres: his words are, ‘It is said that

Libera, who is the Deity that we call Proserpine, was carried away

from the Grove of Enna. Enna, where these events took place to

which I now refer, is in a lofty and exposed situation; but on the

summit the ground presents a level surface, and there are springs

of everflowing water. The spot is entirely cut off and separated

from all [ordinary] means of approach. Around it are many lakes

and groves, and flowers in bloom at all seasons of the year; so

that the very spot seems to portray the rape of the damsel, with

which story, from our very infancy, we have been familiar. Close

by, there is a cavern with its face towards the north, of an

immense depth, from which they say that father Pluto, in his

chariot, suddenly emerged, and carrying off the maiden, bore her

away from that spot, and then, not far from Syracuse, descended

into the earth, from which place a lake suddenly arose; where, at

the present day, the inhabitants of Syracuse celebrate a yearly

festival.’]

[Footnote 47: _Seized by Pluto._--Ver. 395. Pluto is here called

‘Dis.’ This name was given to him as the God of the Earth, from

the bowels of which riches are dug up.]

[Footnote 48: _Her companions._--Ver. 397. Pausanias, in his

Messeniaca, has preserved the names of the companions of Ceres,

having copied them from the works of Homer.]

[Footnote 49: _Her mother._--Ver. 397. Homer, in his poem on the

subject, represents that Ceres heard the cries of her daughter,

when calling upon her mother for assistance. Ovid recounts this

tale much more at length in the fourth Book of the Fasti.]

[Footnote 50: _The Palici._--Ver. 406. The Palici were two

brothers, sons of Jupiter and the Nymph Thalea, and, according to

some, received their name from the Greek words πάλιν ἱκέσθαι, ‘to

come again [to life].’ Their mother, when pregnant, prayed the

earth to open, and to hide her from the vengeful wrath of Juno.

This was done; and when they had arrived at maturity, the Palici

burst from the ground in the island of Sicily. They were Deities

much venerated there, but their worship did not extend to any

other countries. We learn from Macrobius that the natives of

Sicily pointed out two small lakes, from which the brothers were

said to have emerged, and that the veneration attached to them was

such, that by their means they decided disputes, as they imagined

that perjurers would meet their death in these waters, while the

guiltless would be able to come forth from them unharmed. They

were fetid, sulphureous pools of water, probably affected by the

volcanic action of Mount Ætna.]

[Footnote 51: _The Bacchiadæ._--Ver. 407. Archias, one of the race

of the Bacchiadæ, a powerful Corinthian family, being expelled

from Corinth, was said to have founded Syracuse, the capital of

Sicily. The family sprang either from Bacchius, a son of

Dionysus, or Bacchus, or from the fifth king of Corinth, who was

named Bacchis. The family was expelled from Corinth by Cypselus,

either on account of their luxury and extravagant mode of life, or

because they were supposed to aim at the sovereignty.]

[Footnote 52: _With its two seas._--Ver. 407. Corinth is called

‘Bimaris’ by the Latin poets, from its having the Ægean sea on one

side of it, and the Ionian sea on the other.]

[Footnote 53: _Built a city._--Ver. 408. Syracuse had two harbors,

one of which was much larger than the other.]

[Footnote 54: _Cyane._--Ver. 412. According to Claudian, Cyane was

one of the companions of Proserpine, when she was carried off by

Pluto.]

[Footnote 55: _Anapis._--Ver. 417. This was a river of Sicily,

which, mingling with the waters of the fountain Cyane, falls into

the sea at Syracuse, opposite to the island of Ortygia. This

island, in which the fountain of Arethusa was situate, was

separated from the isle of Sicily by a narrow strait of the sea,

and communicating with the city of Syracuse by a bridge, was

considered as part of it.]

[Footnote 56: _An old woman._--Ver. 449. Arnobius calls this old

woman here mentioned by the name of Baubo. Nicander, in his

Theriaca, calls her Metaneira. Antoninus Liberalis calls her

Misma, and Ovid, in the fourth Book of the Fasti, Melanina.]

[Footnote 57: _Lately distilled._--Ver. 450. Orpheus, in his Hymn,

calls the drink given by the old woman to Ceres κυκεὼν. According

to Arnobius, it was a mixed liquor, called by the Romans ‘cinnus;’

made of parched pearled barley, honey, and wine, with flowers and

various herbs floating in it. Antoninus Liberalis says, that Ceres

drank it off, ἀθρόως, ‘at one draught.’]

[Footnote 58: _A boy._--Ver. 451. According to Nicander, the boy

was the son of the old woman. If so, the Goddess made her but a

poor return for her hospitality.]

EXPLANATION.

The story of the rape of Proserpine has caused much inquiry among

writers, both ancient and modern, as to the facts on which it was

founded. Some have grounded it on principles of natural philosophy;

while others have supposed it to contain some portion of ancient

history, defaced and blemished in lapse of time.

The antiquarian Pezeron is of opinion, that in the partition of the

world among the Titan kings, Pluto had the west for his share; and

that he carried a colony to the further end of Spain, where he caused

the gold and silver mines of that region to be worked. The situation

of his kingdom, which lay very low, comparatively with Greece, and

which the ancients believed to be covered with eternal darkness, gave

rise to the fable, that Pluto had got Hell for his share; and this

notion was much encouraged by the subterranean nature of the mines

which he caused to be worked. He thinks that the river Tartarus, so

famed in the realms of Pluto, was no other than the Tartessa, or

Guadalquivir of the present day, which runs through the centre of

Spain. Lethe, too, he thinks to have been the Guadalaviar, in the same

country. Pluto, he suggests, had heard of the beauty of Proserpine,

the daughter of Ceres, queen of Sicily, and carried her thence, which

gave rise to the tradition that she had been carried to the Infernal

Regions.

Le Clerc, on the other hand, thinks that it was not Pluto that carried

away Proserpine, but Aidoneus, king of Epirus, or Orcus king of the

Molossians. Aidoneus is supposed to have wrought mines in his kingdom,

and, as the entrance into it was over a river called Acheron, that

prince has often been confounded with Pluto; Epirus too, which was

situate very low, may have been figuratively described as the Infernal

Regions; for which reason, the journeys of Theseus and Hercules into

Epirus may have been spoken of as descents into the Stygian abodes.

Le Clerc supposes that Ceres was reigning in Sicily at the time when

Aidoneus was king of Epirus, and that she took great care to instruct

her subjects in the art of tilling the ground and sowing corn, and

established laws for regulating civil government and the preservation

of private property; for which reasons she was afterward deemed to be

the Goddess of the Earth, and of Corn. Cicero and Diodorus Siculus

tell us that Ceres made her residence at Enna, or Henna, in Sicily,

which name, according to Bochart, signifies ‘agreeable fountain.’

Cicero and Strabo agree with Ovid in telling us that Proserpine, the

only daughter of Ceres, whom other writers name Pherephata, was

walking in the adjacent meadows, and gathering flowers with her

companions; upon which, certain pirates seized her, and, placing her

in a chariot, carried her to the seaside, whence they embarked for

Epirus. As Pausanias tells us, it was immediately spread abroad, that

Aidoneus, or Pluto, as he was called, had done it, the act having been

really committed by others, according to his orders. As those who

carried her off concealed themselves in the caverns of Mount Ætna,

awaiting their opportunity to escape, it was afterwards fabled that

Pluto came out of the Infernal Regions at that place; as that

mountain, from its nature, was always deemed one of the outlets of

Hell. Upon this, Ceres went to Greece, in search of her daughter; and,

resting at Eleusis, in Attica, she heard that the ship in which her

daughter was carried away had sailed westward. On this, she complained

to Jupiter, one of the Titan kings, but could obtain no further

satisfaction than that her daughter should be permitted to visit her

occasionally, whereby, at length, her grief was mitigated.

Banier does not agree with these suggestions of Pezeron and Le Clerc,

and thinks that Ceres is no other personage than the Isis of the

Egyptians, supposing that the story is founded on the following

circumstance:--Greece, he says, was afflicted with famine in the

reign of Erectheus, who was obliged to send to Egypt for corn, when

those who went for it brought back the worship of the Deity who

presided over agriculture. The evils which the Athenians had suffered

by the famine, and the dread of again incurring the same calamity,

made them willingly embrace the rites of a Goddess whom they believed

able to protect them from it. Triptolemus established her worship in

Eleusis, and there instituted the mysteries which he had brought over

from Egypt. These had been previously introduced into Sicily, which

was the reason why it was said that Ceres came from Sicily to Athens.

Her daughter was said to have been taken away, because corn and fruit

had not been produced in sufficient quantities, for some time, to

furnish food for the people. Pluto was said to have carried her to the

Infernal regions, because the grain and seeds at that time remained

buried, as it were, at the very center of the earth. Jupiter was said

to have decided the difference between Ceres and Pluto, because the

earth again became covered with crops.

This appears to be an ingenious allegorical explanation of the story;

but it is not at all improbable that it may have been founded upon

actual facts, and that, having lost her daughter, and going to Attica

to seek her, Ceres taught Triptolemus the mysteries of Isis; and that,

in process of time, Ceres, having become enrolled among the Divinities

of Greece, her worship became confounded with that of Isis.

It is very possible that the story of the transformation of Stellio

into a newt may have had no other foundation than the Poet’s fancy.

FABLE V.

[V. 462-563]

Ceres proceeds in a fruitless search for her daughter over the whole

earth, until the Nymph Arethusa acquaints her with the place of her

ravisher’s abode. The Goddess makes her complaint to Jupiter, and

obtains his consent for her daughter’s return to the upper world,

provided she has not eaten anything since her arrival in Pluto’s

dominions. Ascalaphus, however, having informed that she has eaten

some seeds of a pomegranate, Ceres is disappointed, and Proserpine, in

her wrath, metamorphoses the informer into an owl. The Sirens have

wings given them by the Gods, to enable them to be more expeditious in

seeking for Proserpine. Jupiter, to console Ceres for her loss,

decides that her daughter shall remain six months each year with her

mother upon earth, and the other six with her husband, in the Infernal

Regions.

“It were a tedious task[59] to relate through what lands and what seas

the Goddess wandered; for her search the world was too limited. She

returns to Sicily; and while, in her passage, she views all {places},

she comes, too, to Cyane; she, had she not been transformed, would have

told her everything. But both mouth and tongue were wanting to her,

{thus} desirous to tell, and she had no means whereby to speak. Still,

she gave unmistakable tokens, and pointed out, on the top of the water,

the girdle[60] of Proserpine, well known to her parent, which by chance

had fallen off in that place into the sacred stream.

“Soon as she recognized this, as if then, at last, she fully understood

that her daughter had been carried away[61] the Goddess tore her

unadorned hair, and struck her breast again and again with her hands.

Not as yet does she know where she is, yet she exclaims against all

countries, and calls them ungrateful, and not worthy of the gifts of

corn; {and} Trinacria before {all} others, in which she has found the

proofs of her loss. Wherefore, with vengeful hand, she there broke the

ploughs that were turning up the clods, and, in her anger, consigned to

a similar death both the husbandmen and the oxen that cultivated the

fields, and ordered the land to deny a return of what had been deposited

{therein}, and rendered the seed corrupted. The fertility of the soil,

famed over the wide world, lies in ruin, the corn dies in the early

blade, and sometimes excessive heat of the sun, sometimes excessive

showers, spoil it. Both the Constellations and the winds injure it, and

the greedy birds pick up the seed as it is sown; darnel, and thistles,

and unconquerable weeds, choke the crops of wheat.

“Then the Alpheian Nymph[62] raised her head from out of the Elean

waters, and drew back her dripping hair from her forehead to her ears,

and said, “O thou mother of the virgin sought over the whole world, and

of the crops {as well}, cease {at length} thy boundless toil, and in thy

wrath be not angered with a region that is faithful to thee. This land

does not deserve it; and against its will it gave a path for {the

commission of} the outrage. Nor am I {now} a suppliant for {my own}

country; a stranger I am come hither. Pisa is my native place, and from

Elis do I derive my birth. As a stranger do I inhabit Sicily, but this

land is more pleasing to me than any other soil. I, Arethusa, now have

this for my abode, this for my habitation; which, do thou, most kindly

{Goddess}, preserve. Why I have been removed from my {native} place, and

have been carried to Ortygia, through the waters of seas so spacious,

a seasonable time will come for my telling thee, when thou shalt be

eased of thy cares, and {wilt be} of more cheerful aspect. The pervious

earth affords me a passage, and, carried beneath its lowest caverns,

here I lift my head {again}, and behold the stars which I have not been

used {to see}. While, then, I was running under the earth, along the

Stygian stream, thy Proserpine was there beheld by my eyes.[63] {She}

indeed {was} sad, and not as yet without alarm in her countenance, but

still {she is} a queen, and the most ennobled {female} in the world of

darkness; still, too, is she the powerful spouse of the Infernal King.”

“The mother, on hearing these words, stood amazed, as though she {had

been made} of stone, and for a long time was like one stupefied; and

when her intense bewilderment was dispelled by the weight of her grief,

she departed in her chariot into the ætherial air, and there, with her

countenance all clouded, she stood before Jupiter, much to his

discredit, with her hair dishevelled; and she said, “I have come,

Jupiter, as a suppliant to thee, both for my own offspring and for

thine. If thou hast no respect for the mother, {still} let the daughter

move her father; and I pray thee not to have the less regard for her,

because she was brought forth by my travail. Lo! my daughter, so long

sought for, has been found by me at last; if you call it finding[64] to

be more certain of one’s loss; or if you call it finding, to know where

she is. I will endure {the fact}, that she has been carried off, if he

will only restore her. For, indeed, a daughter of thine is not deserving

of a ravisher for a husband, if now my own daughter is.” Jupiter

replied, “Thy daughter is a pledge and charge, in common to me and thee;

but, should it please thee only to give right names to things, this deed

is not an injury, but it is {a mark of} affection, nor will he, as a

son-in-law, be any disgrace to us, if thou only, Goddess, shouldst give

thy consent. Although other {recommendations} were wanting, how great a

thing is it to be the brother of Jupiter! and besides, is it not because

other points are not wanting, and because he is not my inferior, except

by the accident {of his allotment of the Stygian abodes}? But if thy

eagerness is so great for their separation, let Proserpine return to

heaven; still upon this fixed condition, if she has touched no food

there with her lips; for thus has it been provided by the law of the

Destinies.”

“{Thus} he spoke; still Ceres is {now} resolved to fetch away her

daughter; but not so do the Fates permit. For the damsel had broke her

fast; and, while in her innocence she was walking about the

finely-cultivated garden, she had plucked a pomegranate[65] from the

bending tree, and had chewed in her mouth seven grains[66] taken from

the pale rind. Ascalaphus[67] alone, of all persons, had seen this, whom

Orphne, by no means the most obscure among the Nymphs of Avernus,[68] is

said once to have borne to her own Acheron within {his} dusky caves. He

beheld {this}, and cruelly prevented her return by his discovery. The

Queen of Erebus grieved, and changed the informer into an accursed bird,

and turned his head, sprinkled with the waters of Phlegethon,[69] into a

beak, and feathers, and great eyes. He, {thus} robbed of his own

{shape}, is clothed with tawny wings, his head becomes larger, his long

nails bend inwards, and with difficulty can he move the wings that

spring through his sluggish arms. He becomes an obscene bird, the

foreboder of approaching woe, a lazy owl, a direful omen to mortals.

“But he, by his discovery, and his talkativeness, may seem to have

merited punishment. Whence have you, daughters of Acheloüs,[70] feathers

and the feet of birds, since you have the faces of maidens? Is it

because, when Proserpine was gathering the flowers of spring, you were

mingled in the number of her companions? After you had sought her in

vain throughout the whole world, immediately, that the waters might be

sensible of your concern, you wished to be able, on the support of your

wings, to hover over the waves, and you found the Gods propitious, and

saw your limbs grow yellow with feathers suddenly formed. But lest the

sweetness of your voice, formed for charming the ear, and so great

endowments of speech, should lose the gift of a tongue, your virgin

countenance and your human voice {still} remained.”

[Footnote 59: _A tedious task._--Ver. 463. ‘Dicere longa mora

est,’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘It is a tedious business to tell.’]

[Footnote 60: _The girdle._--Ver. 470. The zone, or girdle,

a fastening round the loins, was much worn by both sexes among

the ancients. It was sometimes made of netted work, and the chief

use of it was for holding up the tunic, and keeping it from

dragging on the ground. Among the Romans, the Magister Equitum, or

‘Master of the Horse,’ wore a girdle of red leather, embroidered

by the needle, and having its extremities joined by a gold buckle.

It also formed part of the cuirass of the warrior. The girdle was

used sometimes by men to hold money instead of a purse; and the

‘pera,’ ‘wallet,’ or ‘purse,’ was generally fastened to the

girdle. As this article of dress was used to hold up the garments

for the sake of expedition, it was loosened when people were

supposed to be abstracted from the cares of the world, as in

performing sacrifice or attending at funeral rites. A girdle was

also worn by the young women, even when the tunic was not girt up;

and it was only discontinued by them on the day of marriage. To

that circumstance, allusion is made in the present instance, as a

proof of the violence that had been committed on Proserpine.]

[Footnote 61: _Had been carried away._--Ver. 471. Clarke

translates ‘tunc denique raptam Scisset,’ ‘knew that she had been

kidnapped.’]

[Footnote 62: _Alpheian Nymph._--Ver. 487. Alpheus was a river of

Elis, in the northwestern part of Peloponnesus. Its present name

is ‘Carbon.’]

[Footnote 63: _Beheld by my eyes._--Ver. 505. Ovid here makes

Arethusa the discoverer to Ceres of the fate of her daughter. In

the Fourth Book of the Fasti, he represents the Sun as giving her

that information, in which he follows the account given by Homer.

Apollodorus describes the descent of Pluto as taking place at

Hermione, a town of Argolis, in Peloponnesus, and the people of

that place as informing Ceres of what had happened to her

daughter.]

[Footnote 64: _If you call it finding._--Ver. 520. This remark of

the Goddess is very like that of the Irish sailor, who vowed that

a thing could not be said to be lost when one knows where it is;

and that his master’s kettle was quite safe, for he knew it to be

at the bottom of the sea.]

[Footnote 65: _Plucked a pomegranate._--Ver. 535. It was for this

reason that the Thesmophoriazusæ, in the performance of the rites

of Ceres, were especially careful not to taste the pomegranate.

This fruit was most probably called ‘malum,’ or ‘pomum punicum,’

or ‘puniceum,’ from the deep red or purple color of the inside,

and not as having been first introduced from Phœnicia.]

[Footnote 66: _Seven grains._--Ver. 537. He says here ‘seven,’ but

in the Fourth Book of the Fasti, only ‘three’ grains.]

[Footnote 67: _Ascalaphus._--Ver. 539. He was the son of Acheron,

by the Nymph Orphne, or Gorgyra, according to Apollodorus. The

latter author says, that for his unseasonable discovery, Ceres

placed a rock upon him; but that, having been liberated by

Hercules, she changed him into an owl, called ὦτον. The Greek name

of a lizard being ἀσκάλαβος, Mellman thinks that the

transformation of the boy into a newt, or kind of lizard, which

has just been related by the Poet, may have possibly originated in

a confused version of the story of Ascalaphus.]

[Footnote 68: _Avernus._--Ver. 540. Avernus was a lake of

Campania, near Baiæ, of a fetid smell and gloomy aspect. Being

feigned to be the mouth, or threshold, of the Infernal Regions,

its name became generally used to signify Tartarus, or the

Infernal Regions. The name is said to have been derived from the

Greek word ἄορνος, ‘without birds,’ or ‘unfrequented by birds,’ as

they could not endure the exhalations that were emitted by it.]

[Footnote 69: _Phlegethon._--Ver. 544. This was a burning river of

the Infernal Regions; which received its name from the Greek word

φλέγω, ‘to burn.’]