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Metamorphoses by Ovid

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Book 1 <#a>
Book 2 <#b>

Book 1

No Titans to encounter yet

CERTAIN gods alter bodies and all other things. Now, let me spin out a
nice thread of words to mention things from the world's first origins
and onwards.
Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything,
Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world. You could call it
chaos: a raw confused mass if you like. There was no Titan yet, or any
planet Earth hovering in surrounding air. I think the first land and sea
and air was unstable at first. Nothing retained a fixed shape for long.
(11-20)

Separation of elements

* Someone split off the earth from the sky, and the sea from the
land, and divided the transparent heavens from the dense air.
* Fire controls and darts upwards.
* Air moves in lightness and may appear kingly
* Earth is rather heavy to carry. One can feel compressed by much
weight.
* Water recounts and moves tactlessly or tactfully. 

The earth and sea. The five zones

When whichever god it was had ordered and divided the mass, and
collected it into separate parts, he first gathered the earth into a
great ball so that it was uniform on all sides. Then he ordered the seas
to spread and rise in waves in the flowing winds and pour around the
coasts of the encircled land. He added springs and standing pools and
lakes, and contained in shelving banks the widely separated rivers, some
of which are swallowed by the earth itself, others of which reach the
sea and entering the expanse of open waters beat against coastlines
instead of riverbanks. He ordered the plains to extend, the valleys to
subside, leaves to hide the trees, stony mountains to rise: and just as
the heavens are divided into two zones to the north and two to the
south, with a fifth and hotter between them, so the god carefully marked
out the enclosed matter with the same number, and described as many
regions on the earth. The equatorial zone is too hot to be habitable;
the two poles are covered by deep snow; and he placed two regions
between and gave them a temperate climate mixing heat and cold.

The four winds

Air overhangs them, heavier than fire by as much as water's weight is
lighter than earth. There he ordered the clouds and vapours to exist,
and thunder to shake the minds of human beings, and winds that create
lightning-bolts and flashes.
The world's maker did not allow these, either, to possess the air
indiscriminately; as it is they are scarcely prevented from tearing the
world apart, each with its blasts steering a separate course: like the
discord between brothers. Eurus, the east wind, drew back to the realms
of Aurora, to Nabatea, Persia, and the heights under the morning light:
Evening, and the coasts that cool in the setting sun, are close to
Zephyrus, the west wind. Chill Boreas, the north wind, seized Scythia
and the seven stars of the Plough: while the south wind, Auster,
drenches the lands opposite with incessant clouds and rain. Above these
he placed the transparent, weightless heavens free of the dross of earth.

Humankind

He had barely separated out everything within fixed limits when the
constellations that had been hidden for a long time in dark fog began to
blaze out throughout the whole sky. And so that no region might lack its
own animate beings, the stars and the forms of gods occupied the floor
of heaven, the sea gave a home to the shining fish, earth took the wild
animals, and the light air flying things.
As yet there was no animal capable of higher thought that could be
ruler of all the rest. Then Humankind was born. Either the creator god,
source of a better world, seeded it from the divine, or the newborn
earth just drawn from the highest heavens still contained fragments
related to the skies, so that Prometheus, blending them with streams of
rain, moulded them into an image of the all-controlling gods. While
other animals look downwards at the ground, he gave human beings an
upturned aspect, commanding them to look towards the skies, and,
upright, raise their face to the stars. So the earth, that had been, a
moment ago, uncarved and imageless, changed and assumed the unknown
shapes of human beings.

The Golden Age

This was the Golden Age that, without coercion, without laws,
spontaneously nurtured the good and the true. There was no fear or
punishment: there were no threatening words to be read, fixed in bronze,
no crowd of suppliants fearing the judge's face: they lived safely
without protection. No pine tree felled in the mountains had yet reached
the flowing waves to travel to other lands: human beings only knew their
own shores. There were no steep ditches surrounding towns, no straight
war-trumpets, no coiled horns, no swords and helmets. Without the use of
armies, people passed their lives in gentle peace and security. The
earth herself also, freely, without the scars of ploughs, untouched by
hoes, produced everything from herself. Contented with food that grew
without cultivation, they collected mountain strawberries and the fruit
of the strawberry tree, wild cherries, blackberries clinging to the
tough brambles, and acorns fallen from Jupiter's spreading oak-tree.
Spring was eternal, and gentle breezes caressed with warm air the
flowers that grew without being seeded. Then the untilled earth gave of
its produce and, without needing renewal, the fields whitened with heavy
ears of corn. Sometimes rivers of milk flowed, sometimes streams of
nectar, and golden honey trickled from the green holm oak.

The Silver Age

When Saturn was banished to gloomy Tartarus, and Jupiter ruled the
world, then came the people of the age of silver that is inferior to
gold, more valuable than yellow bronze. Jupiter shortened spring's first
duration and made the year consist of four seasons, winter, summer,
changeable autumn, and brief spring. Then parched air first glowed white
scorched with the heat, and ice hung down frozen by the wind. Then
houses were first made for shelter: before that homes had been made in
caves, and dense thickets, or under branches fastened with bark. Then
seeds of corn were first buried in the long furrows, and bullocks
groaned, burdened under the yoke.

The Bronze Age

Third came the people of the bronze age, with fiercer natures, readier
to indulge in savage warfare, but not yet vicious. The harsh iron age
was last. Immediately every kind of wickedness erupted into this age of
baser natures: truth, shame and honour vanished; in their place were
fraud, deceit, and trickery, violence and pernicious desires. They set
sails to the wind, though as yet the seamen had poor knowledge of their
use, and the ships' keels that once were trees standing amongst high
mountains, now leaped through uncharted waves. The land that was once
common to all, as the light of the sun is, and the air, was marked out,
to its furthest boundaries, by wary surveyors. Not only did they demand
the crops and the food the rich soil owed them, but they entered the
bowels of the earth, and excavating brought up the wealth it had
concealed in Stygian shade, wealth that incites men to crime. And now
harmful iron appeared, and gold more harmful than iron. War came, whose
struggles employ both, waving clashing arms with bloodstained hands.
They lived on plunder: friend was not safe with friend, relative with
relative, kindness was rare between brothers. Husbands longed for the
death of their wives, wives for the death of their husbands. Murderous
stepmothers mixed deadly aconite, and sons inquired into their father's
years before their time. Piety was dead, and virgin Astraea, last of all
the immortals to depart, herself abandoned the blood-drenched earth.

The giants

Rendering the heights of heaven no safer than the earth, they say the
giants tried to take the Celestial kingdom, piling mountains up to the
distant stars. Then the all-powerful father of the gods hurled his bolt
of lightning, fractured Olympus and threw Mount Pelion down from Ossa
below. Her sons' dreadful bodies, buried by that mass, drenched Earth
with streams of blood, and they say she warmed it to new life, so that a
trace of her children might remain, transforming it into the shape of
human beings. But these progeny also despising the gods were savage,
violent, and eager for slaughter, so that you might know they were born
from blood.
When Saturn's son, the father of the gods, saw this from his
highest citadel, he groaned, and recalling the vile feast at Lycaon's
table, so recent it was still unknown, his mind filled with a great
anger fitting for Jupiter, and he called the gods to council, a summons
that brooked no delay.
There is a high track, seen when the sky is clear, called the
Milky Way, and known for its brightness. This way the gods pass to the
palaces and halls of the mighty Thunderer. To right and left are the
houses of the greater gods, doors open and crowded. The lesser gods live
elsewhere. Here the powerful and distinguished have made their home.
This is the place, if I were to be bold, I would not be afraid to call
high heaven's Palatine.

Jupiter threatens to destroy humankind

When the gods had taken their seats in the marble council chamber their
king, sitting high above them, leaning on his ivory sceptre, shook his
formidable mane three times and then a fourth, disturbing the earth, sea
and stars. Then he opened his lips in indignation and spoke. "I was not
more troubled than I am now concerning the world's sovereignty than when
each of the snake-footed giants prepared to throw his hundred arms
around the imprisoned sky. Though they were fierce enemies, still their
attack came in one body and from one source. Now I must destroy the
human race, wherever Nereus sounds, throughout the world. I swear it by
the infernal streams, that glide below the earth through the Stygian
groves. All means should first be tried, but the incurable flesh must be
excised by the knife, so that the healthy part is not infected. Mine are
the demigods, the wild spirits, nymphs, fauns and satyrs, and sylvan
deities of the hills. Since we have not yet thought them worth a place
in heaven let us at least allow them to live in safety in the lands we
have given them. Perhaps you gods believe they will be safe, even when
Lycaon, known for his savagery, plays tricks against me, who holds the
thunderbolt, and reigns over you."

Lycaon is turned into a wolf

All the gods murmured aloud and, zealously and eagerly, demanded
punishment of the man who committed such actions. When the impious band
of conspirators were burning to drown the name of Rome in Caesar's
blood, the human race was suddenly terrified by fear of just such a
disaster, and the whole world shuddered with horror. Your subjects'
loyalty is no less pleasing to you, Augustus, than theirs was to
Jupiter. After he had checked their murmuring with voice and gesture,
they were all silent. When the noise had subsided, quieted by his royal
authority, Jupiter again broke the silence with these words: "Have no
fear, he has indeed been punished, but I will tell you his crime, and
what the penalty was. News of these evil times had reached my ears.
Hoping it false I left Olympus's heights, and travelled the earth, a god
in human form. It would take too long to tell what wickedness I found
everywhere. Those rumours were even milder than the truth. I had crossed
Maenala, those mountains bristling with wild beasts' lairs, Cyllene, and
the pinewoods of chill Lycaeus. Then, as the last shadows gave way to
night, I entered the inhospitable house of the Arcadian king. I gave
them signs that a god had come, and the people began to worship me. At
first Lycaon ridiculed their piety, then exclaimed "I will prove by a
straightforward test whether he is a god or a mortal. The truth will not
be in doubt." He planned to destroy me in the depths of sleep,
unexpectedly, by night. That is how he resolved to prove the truth. Not
satisfied with this he took a hostage sent by the Molossi, opened his
throat with a knife, and made some of the still warm limbs tender in
seething water, roasting others in the fire. No sooner were these placed
on the table than I brought the roof down on the household gods, with my
avenging flames, those gods worthy of such a master. He himself ran in
terror, and reaching the silent fields howled aloud, frustrated of
speech. Foaming at the mouth, and greedy as ever for killing, he turned
against the sheep, still delighting in blood. His clothes became
bristling hair, his arms became legs. He was a wolf, but kept some
vestige of his former shape. There were the same grey hairs, the same
violent face, the same glittering eyes, the same savage image. One house
has fallen, but others deserve to also. Wherever the earth extends the
avenging furies rule. You would think men were sworn to crime! Let them
all pay the penalty they deserve, and quickly. That is my intent."

Jupiter invokes the floodwaters

When he had spoken, some of the gods encouraged Jupiter's anger,
shouting their approval of his words, while others consented silently.
They were all saddened though at this destruction of the human species,
and questioned what the future of the world would be free of humanity.
Who would honour their altars with incense? Did he mean to surrender the
world to the ravages of wild creatures? In answer the king of the gods
calmed their anxiety, the rest would be his concern, and he promised
them a people different from the first, of a marvellous creation.
Now he was ready to hurl his lightning-bolts at the whole world
but feared that the sacred heavens might burst into flame from the fires
below, and burn to the furthest pole: and he remembered that a time was
fated to come when sea and land, and the untouched courts of the skies
would ignite, and the troubled mass of the world be besieged by fire. So
he set aside the weapons the Cyclopes forged, and resolved on a
different punishment, to send down rain from the whole sky and drown
humanity beneath the waves.
Straight away he shut up the north winds in Aeolus's caves, with
the gales that disperse the gathering clouds, and let loose the south
wind, he who flies with dripping wings, his terrible aspect shrouded in
pitch-black darkness. His beard is heavy with rain, water streams from
his grey hair, mists wreathe his forehead, and his feathers and the
folds of his robes distil the dew. When he crushes the hanging clouds in
his outstretched hand there is a crash, and the dense vapours pour down
rain from heaven. Iris, Juno's messenger, dressed in the colours of the
rainbow, gathers water and feeds it back to the clouds. The cornfields
are flattened and saddening the farmers, the crops, the object of their
prayers, are ruined, and the long year's labour wasted.

The Flood

Jupiter's anger is not satisfied with only his own aerial waters: his
brother the sea-god helps him, with the ocean waves. He calls the rivers
to council, and when they have entered their ruler's house, says "Now is
not the time for long speeches! Exert all your strength. That is what is
needed. Throw open your doors, drain the dams, and loose the reins of
all your streams!" Those are his commands. The rivers return and uncurb
their fountains' mouths, and race an unbridled course to the sea.
Neptune himself strikes the ground with his trident, so that it
trembles, and with that blow opens up channels for the waters.
Overflowing, the rivers rush across the open plains, sweeping away at
the same time not just orchards, flocks, houses and human beings, but
sacred temples and their contents. Any building that has stood firm,
surviving the great disaster undamaged, still has its roof drowned by
the highest waves, and its towers buried below the flood. And now the
land and sea are not distinct, all is the sea, the sea without a shore.

The world is drowned

There one man escapes to a hilltop, while another seated in his rowing
boat pulls the oars over places where lately he was ploughing. One man
sails over his cornfields or over the roof of his drowned farmhouse,
while another man fishes in the topmost branches of an elm. Sometimes,
by chance, an anchor embeds itself in a green meadow, or the curved
boats graze the tops of vineyards. Where lately lean goats browsed
shapeless seals play. The Nereids are astonished to see woodlands,
houses and whole towns under the water. There are dolphins in the trees:
disturbing the upper branches and stirring the oak-trees as they brush
against them. Wolves swim among the sheep, and the waves carry tigers
and tawny lions. The boar has no use for his powerful tusks, the deer
for its quick legs, both are swept away together, and the circling bird,
after a long search for a place to land, falls on tired wings into the
water. The sea in unchecked freedom has buried the hills, and fresh
waves beat against the mountaintops. The waters wash away most living
things, and those the sea spares, lacking food, are defeated by slow
starvation.

Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha

Phocis, a fertile country when it was still land, separates Aonia from
Oeta, though at that time it was part of the sea, a wide expanse of
suddenly created water. There Mount Parnassus lifts its twin steep
summits to the stars, its peaks above the clouds. When Deucalion and his
wife landed here in their small boat, everywhere else being drowned by
the waters, they worshipped the Corycian nymphs, the mountain gods, and
the goddess of the oracles, prophetic Themis. No one was more virtuous
or fonder of justice than he was, and no woman showed greater reverence
for the gods. When Jupiter saw the earth covered with the clear waters,
and that only one man was left of all those thousands of men, only one
woman left of all those thousands of women, both innocent and both
worshippers of the gods, he scattered the clouds and mist, with the
north wind, and revealed the heavens to the earth and the earth to the
sky. It was no longer an angry sea, since the king of the oceans putting
aside his three-pronged spear calmed the waves, and called sea-dark
Triton, showing from the depths his shoulders thick with shells, to blow
into his echoing conch and give the rivers and streams the signal to
return. He lifted the hollow shell that coils from its base in broad
spirals, that shell that filled with his breath in mid-ocean makes the
eastern and the western shores sound. So now when it touched the god's
mouth, and dripping beard, and sounded out the order for retreat, it was
heard by all the waters on earth and in the ocean, and all the waters
hearing it were checked. Now the sea has shorelines, the brimming rivers
keep to their channels, the floods subside, and hills appear. Earth
rises, the soil increasing as the water ebbs, and finally the trees show
their naked tops, the slime still clinging to their leaves.

They ask Themis for help

The world was restored. But when Deucalion saw its emptiness, and the
deep silence of the desolate lands, he spoke to Pyrrha, through welling
tears. "Wife, cousin, sole surviving woman, joined to me by our shared
race, our family origins, then by the marriage bed, and now joined to me
in danger, we two are the people of all the countries seen by the
setting and the rising sun, the sea took all the rest. Even now our
lives are not guaranteed with certainty: the storm clouds still terrify
my mind. How would you feel now, poor soul, if the fates had willed you
to be saved, but not me? How could you endure your fear alone? Who would
comfort your tears? Believe me, dear wife, if the sea had you, I would
follow you, and the sea would have me too. If only I, by my father's
arts, could recreate earth's peoples, and breathe life into the shaping
clay! The human race remains in us. The gods willed it that we are the
only examples of mankind left behind." He spoke and they wept, resolving
to appeal to the sky-god, and ask his help by sacred oracles.
Immediately they went side by side to the springs of Cephisus that,
though still unclear, flowed in its usual course. When they had
sprinkled their heads and clothing with its watery libations, they
traced their steps to the temple of the sacred goddess, whose pediments
were green with disfiguring moss, her altars without fire. When they
reached the steps of the sanctuary they fell forward together and lay
prone on the ground, and kissing the cold rock with trembling lips, said
"If the gods wills soften, appeased by the prayers of the just, if in
this way their anger can be deflected, Themis tell us by what art the
damage to our race can be repaired, and bring help, most gentle one, to
this drowned world!"

The human race is re-created

The goddess was moved, and uttered oracular speech: "Leave the temple
and with veiled heads and loosened clothes throw behind you the bones of
your great mother!" For a long time they stand there, dumbfounded.
Pyrrha is first to break the silence: she refuses to obey the goddess's
command. Her lips trembling she asks for pardon, fearing to offend her
mother's spirit by scattering her bones. Meanwhile they reconsider the
dark words the oracle gave, and their uncertain meaning, turning them
over and over in their minds. Then Prometheus's son comforted
Epimetheus's daughter with quiet words: "Either this idea is wrong, or,
since oracles are godly and never urge evil, our great mother must be
the earth: I think the bones she spoke about are stones in the body of
the earth. It is these we are told to throw behind us."
Though the Titan's daughter is stirred by her husband's thoughts,
still hope is uncertain: they are both so unsure of the divine
promptings; but what harm can it do to try? They descended the steps,
covered their heads and loosened their clothes, and threw the stones
needed behind them. The stones, and who would believe it if it were not
for ancient tradition, began to lose their rigidity and hardness, and
after a while softened, and once softened acquired new form. Then after
growing, and ripening in nature, a certain likeness to a human shape
could be vaguely seen, like marble statues at first inexact and roughly
carved. The earthy part, however, wet with moisture, turned to flesh;
what was solid and inflexible mutated to bone; the veins stayed veins;
and quickly, through the power of the gods, stones the man threw took on
the shapes of men, and women were remade from those thrown by the woman.
So the toughness of our race, our ability to endure hard labour, and the
proof we give of the source from which we are sprung.

Other species are generated

Earth spontaneously created other diverse forms of animal life. After
the remaining moisture had warmed in the sun's fire, the wet mud of the
marshlands swelled with heat, and the fertile seeds of things, nourished
by life-giving soil as if in a mother's womb, grew, and in time acquired
a nature. So, when the seven-mouthed Nile retreats from the drowned
fields and returns to its former bed, and the fresh mud boils in the
sun, farmers find many creatures as they turn the lumps of earth.
Amongst them they see some just spawned, on the edge of life, some with
incomplete bodies and number of limbs, and often in the same matter one
part is alive and the other is raw earth. In fact when heat and moisture
are mixed they conceive, and from these two things the whole of life
originates. And though fire and water fight each other, heat and
moisture create everything, and this discordant union is suitable for
growth. So when the earth muddied from the recent flood glowed again
heated by the deep heaven-sent light of the sun she produced innumerable
species, partly remaking previous forms, partly creating new monsters.

Phoebus kills the Python and sees Daphne

Indeed, though she would not have desired to, she then gave birth to
you, great Python, covering so great an area of the mountain slopes, a
snake not known before, a terror to the new race of men. The archer god,
with lethal shafts that he had only used before on fleeing red deer and
roe deer, with a thousand arrows, almost emptying his quiver, destroyed
the creature, the venom running out from its black wounds. Then he
founded the sacred Pythian games, celebrated by contests, named from the
serpent he had conquered. There the young winners in boxing, in foot and
chariot racing, were honoured with oak wreaths. There was no laurel as
yet, so Phoebus crowned his temples, his handsome curling hair, with
leaves of any tree. Phoebus's first love was Daphne, daughter of Peneus,
and not through chance but because of Cupid's fierce anger. Recently the
Delian god, exulting at his victory over the serpent, had seen him
bending his tightly strung bow and said "Impudent boy, what are you
doing with a man's weapons? That one is suited to my shoulders, since I
can hit wild beasts of a certainty, and wound my enemies, and not long
ago destroyed with countless arrows the swollen Python that covered many
acres with its plague-ridden belly. You should be intent on stirring the
concealed fires of love with your burning brand, not laying claim to my
glories!" Venus's son replied "You may hit every other thing Phoebus,
but my bow will strike you: to the degree that all living creatures are
less than gods, by that degree is your glory less than mine." He spoke,
and striking the air fiercely with beating wings, he landed on the shady
peak of Parnassus, and took two arrows with opposite effects from his
full quiver: one kindles love, the other dispels it. The one that
kindles is golden with a sharp glistening point, the one that dispels is
blunt with lead beneath its shaft. With the second he transfixed
Peneus's daughter, but with the first he wounded Apollo piercing him to
the marrow of his bones.

Phoebus pursues Daphne

Now the one loved, and the other fled from love's name, taking delight
in the depths of the woods, and the skins of the wild beasts she caught,
emulating virgin Phoebe, a careless ribbon holding back her hair. Many
courted her, but she, averse to being wooed, free from men and unable to
endure them, roamed the pathless woods, careless of Hymen or Amor, or
whatever marriage might be. Her father often said "Girl you owe me a
son-in-law', and again often "Daughter, you owe me grandsons." But,
hating the wedding torch as if it smacked of crime she would blush red
with shame all over her beautiful face, and clinging to her father's
neck with coaxing arms, she would say " Dearest father, let me be a
virgin for ever! Diana's father granted it to her." He yields to that
plea, but your beauty itself, Daphne, prevents your wish, and your
loveliness opposes your prayer.
Phoebus loves her at first sight, and desires to wed her, and
hopes for what he desires, but his own oracular powers fail him. As the
light stubble of an empty cornfield blazes; as sparks fire a hedge when
a traveller, by mischance, lets them get too close, or forgets them in
the morning; so the god was altered by the flames, and all his heart
burned, feeding his useless desire with hope. He sees her disordered
hair hanging about her neck and sighs "What if it were properly
dressed?" He gazes at her eyes sparkling with the brightness of
starlight. He praises her wrists and hands and fingers, and her arms
bare to the shoulder: whatever is hidden, he imagines more beautiful.
But she flees swifter than the lightest breath of air, and resists his
words calling her back again.

Phoebus begs Daphne to yield to him

"Wait nymph, daughter of Peneus, I beg you! I who am chasing you am not
your enemy. Nymph, Wait! This is the way a sheep runs from the wolf, a
deer from the mountain lion, and a dove with fluttering wings flies from
the eagle: everything flies from its foes, but it is love that is
driving me to follow you! Pity me! I am afraid you might fall headlong
or thorns undeservedly scar your legs and I be a cause of grief to you!
These are rough places you run through. Slow down, I ask you, check your
flight, and I too will slow. At least enquire whom it is you have
charmed. I am no mountain man, no shepherd, no rough guardian of the
herds and flocks. Rash girl, you do not know, you cannot realise, who
you run from, and so you run. Delphi's lands are mine, Claros and
Tenedos, and Patara acknowledges me king. Jupiter is my father. Through
me what was, what is, and what will be, are revealed. Through me strings
sound in harmony, to song. My aim is certain, but an arrow truer than
mine, has wounded my free heart! The whole world calls me the bringer of
aid; medicine is my invention; my power is in herbs. But love cannot be
healed by any herb, nor can the arts that cure others cure their lord!"

Daphne becomes the laurel bough

He would have said more as timid Pene�s ran, still lovely to see,
leaving him with his words unfinished. The winds bared her body, the
opposing breezes in her way fluttered her clothes, and the light airs
threw her streaming hair behind her, her beauty enhanced by flight. But
the young god could no longer waste time on further blandishments, urged
on by Amor, he ran on at full speed. Like a hound of Gaul starting a
hare in an empty field, that heads for its prey, she for safety: he,
seeming about to clutch her, thinks now, or now, he has her fast,
grazing her heels with his outstretched jaws, while she uncertain
whether she is already caught, escaping his bite, spurts from the muzzle
touching her. So the virgin and the god: he driven by desire, she by
fear. He ran faster, Amor giving him wings, and allowed her no rest,
hung on her fleeing shoulders, breathed on the hair flying round her
neck. Her strength was gone, she grew pale, overcome by the effort of
her rapid flight, and seeing Peneus's waters near cried out "Help me
father! If your streams have divine powers change me, destroy this
beauty that pleases too well!" Her prayer was scarcely done when a heavy
numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair
turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment
ago stuck fast in slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy.
Only her shining beauty was left.

Phoebus honours Daphne

Even like this Phoebus loved her and, placing his hand against the
trunk, he felt her heart still quivering under the new bark. He clasped
the branches as if they were parts of human arms, and kissed the wood.
But even the wood shrank from his kisses, and the god said "Since you
cannot be my bride, you must be my tree! Laurel, with you my hair will
be wreathed, with you my lyre, with you my quiver. You will go with the
Roman generals when joyful voices acclaim their triumph, and the Capitol
witnesses their long processions. You will stand outside Augustus's
doorposts, a faithful guardian, and keep watch over the crown of oak
between them. And just as my head with its uncropped hair is always
young, so you also will wear the beauty of undying leaves." Paean had
done: the laurel bowed her newly made branches, and seemed to shake her
leafy crown like a head giving consent.

Inachus mourns for Io

There is a grove in Haemonia, closed in on every side by wooded cliffs.
They call it Tempe. Through it the river Peneus rolls, with foaming
waters, out of the roots of Pindus, and in its violent fall gathers
clouds, driving the smoking mists along, raining down spray onto the
tree tops, and deafening remoter places with its roar. Here is the
house, the home, the innermost sanctuary of the great river. Seated
here, in a rocky cavern, he laid down the law to the waters and the
nymphs who lived in his streams. Here the rivers of his own country
first met, unsure whether to console with or celebrate Daphne's father:
Spercheus among poplars, restless Enipeus, gentle Amphrysus, Aeas and
ancient Apidanus; and then later all the others that, whichever way
their force carries them, bring down their weary wandering waters to the
sea. Only Inachus is missing, but hidden in the deepest cave he swells
his stream with tears, and in utter misery laments his lost daughter,
Io, not knowing if she is alive or among the shades. Since he cannot
find her anywhere, he imagines her nowhere, and his heart fears worse
than death.

Jupiter's rape of Io

Jupiter first saw her returning from her father's stream, and said
"Virgin, worthy of Jupiter himself, who will make some unknown man happy
when you share his bed, while it is hot and the sun is at the highest
point of its arc, find shade in the deep woods! (and he showed her the
woods' shade). But if you are afraid to enter the wild beasts' lairs,
you can go into the remote woods in safety, protected by a god, and not
by any lesser god, but by the one who holds the sceptre of heaven in his
mighty hand, and who hurls the flickering bolts of lightning. Do not fly
from me!" She was already in flight. She had left behind Lerna's
pastures, and the Lyrcean plain's wooded fields, when the god hid the
wide earth in a covering of fog, caught the fleeing girl, and raped her.

Jupiter transforms Io to a heifer

Meanwhile Juno looked down into the heart of Argos, surprised that rapid
mists had created night in shining daylight. She knew they were not
vapours from the river, or breath from the damp earth. She looked around
to see where her husband was, knowing by now the intrigues of a spouse
so often caught in the act. When she could not find him in the skies,
she said "Either I am wrong, or being wronged" and gliding down from
heaven's peak, she stood on earth ordering the clouds to melt. Jupiter
had a presage of his wife's arrival and had changed Inachus's daughter
into a gleaming heifer. Even in that form she was beautiful. Saturnia
approved the animal's looks, though grudgingly, asking, then, whose she
was, where from, what herd, as if she did not know. Jupiter, to stop all
inquiry, lied, saying she had been born from the earth. Then Saturnia
claimed her as a gift. What could he do? Cruel to sacrifice his love,
but suspicious not to. Shame urges him to it, Amor urges not. Amor would
have conquered Shame, but if he refused so slight a gift as a heifer to
the companion of his race and bed, it might appear no heifer!

Juno claims Io and Argus guards her

Though her rival was given up the goddess did not abandon her fears at
once, cautious of Jupiter and afraid of his trickery, till she had given
Io into Argus's keeping, that son of Arestor. Argus had a hundred eyes
round his head, that took their rest two at a time in succession while
the others kept watch and stayed on guard. Wherever he stood he was
looking at Io, and had Io in front of his eyes when his back was turned.
He let her graze in the light, but when the sun sank below the earth, he
penned her, and fastened a rope round her innocent neck. She grazed on
the leaves of trees and bitter herbs. She often lay on the bare ground,
and the poor thing drank water from muddy streams. When she wished to
stretch her arms out to Argus in supplication, she had no arms to
stretch. Trying to complain, a lowing came from her mouth, and she was
alarmed and frightened by the sound of her own voice. When she came to
Inachus's riverbanks where she often used to play and saw her gaping
mouth and her new horns in the water, she grew frightened and fled
terrified of herself.

Inachus finds Io and grieves for her

The naiads did not know her: Inachus himself did not know her, but she
followed her father, followed her sisters, allowing herself to be
petted, and offering herself to be admired. Old Inachus pulled some
grasses and held them out to her: she licked her father's hand and
kissed his palm, could not hold back her tears, and if only words could
have come she would have begged for help, telling her name and her
distress. With letters drawn in the dust with her hoof, instead of
words, she traced the sad story of her changed form. "Pity me!" said her
father Inachus, clinging to the groaning heifer's horns and snow-white
neck, "Pity me!" he sighed; "Are you really my daughter I searched the
wide world for? There was less sadness with you lost than found! Without
speech, you do not answer in words to mine, only heave deep sighs from
your breast, and all you can do is low in reply to me. Unknowingly I was
arranging marriage and a marriage-bed for you, hoping for a son-in-law
first and then grandchildren. Now you must find a mate from the herd,
and from the herd get you a son. I am not allowed by dying to end such
sorrow; it is hard to be a god, the door of death closed to me, my grief
goes on immortal for ever." As he mourned, Argus with his star-like eyes
drove her to distant pastures, dragging her out of her father's arms.
There, sitting at a distance he occupied a high peak of the mountain,
where resting he could keep a watch on every side.

Jupiter sends Mercury to kill Argus

Now the king of the gods can no longer stand Phoronis's great
sufferings, and he calls his son, born of the shining Pleiad, and orders
him to kill Argus. Mercury, quickly puts on his winged sandals, takes
his sleep-inducing wand in his divine hand, and sets his cap on his
head. Dressed like this the son of Jupiter touches down on the earth
from his father's stronghold. There he takes off his cap, and doffs his
wings, only keeping his wand. Taking this, disguised as a shepherd, he
drives she-goats, stolen on the way, through solitary lanes, and plays
his reed pipe as he goes. Juno's guard is captivated by this new sound.
"You there, whoever you are" Argus calls "you could sit here beside me
on this rock; there's no better grass elsewhere for your flock, and you
can see that the shade is fine for shepherds."
The descendant of Atlas sits down, and passes the day in
conversation, talking of many things, and playing on his reed pipe,
trying to conquer those watching eyes. Argus however fights to overcome
gentle sleep, and though he allows some of his eyes to close, the rest
stay vigilant. He even asks, since the reed pipe has only just been
invented, how it was invented.

Mercury tells the story of Syrinx

So the god explained "On Arcadia's cold mountain slopes among the wood
nymphs, the hamadryads, of Mount Nonacris, one was the most celebrated:
the nymphs called her Syrinx. She had often escaped from the satyrs
chasing her, and from others of the demi-gods that live in shadowy woods
and fertile fields. But she followed the worship of the Ortygian goddess
in staying virgin. Her dress caught up like Diana she deceives the eye,
and could be mistaken for Leto's daughter, except that her bow is of
horn, and the other's is of gold. Even so she is deceptive. Pan, whose
head is crowned with a wreath of sharp pine shoots, saw her, coming from
Mount Lycaeus, and spoke to her." Now Mercury still had to relate what
Pan said, and how the nymph, despising his entreaties, ran through the
wilds till she came to the calm waters of sandy Ladon; and how when the
river stopped her flight she begged her sisters of the stream to change
her; and how Pan, when he thought he now had Syrinx, found that instead
of the nymph's body he only held reeds from the marsh; and, while he
sighed there, the wind in the reeds, moving, gave out a clear, plaintive
sound. Charmed by this new art and its sweet tones the god said "This
way of communing with you is still left to me" So unequal lengths of
reed, joined together with wax, preserved the girl's name.
About to tell all this, Cyllenian Mercury saw that every eye had
succumbed and their light was lost in sleep. Quickly he stops speaking
and deepens their rest, caressing those drowsy eyes with touches of his
magic wand. Then straightaway he strikes the nodding head, where it
joins the neck, with his curved sword, and sends it bloody down the
rocks, staining the steep cliff. Argus, you are overthrown, the light of
your many eyes is extinguished, and one dark sleeps under so many eyelids.

Io is returned to human form

Saturnia took his eyes and set them into the feathers of her own bird,
and filled the tail with star-like jewels. Immediately she blazed with
anger, and did not hold back from its consequences. She set a terrifying
Fury in front of the eyes and mind of that "slut" from the Argolis,
buried a tormenting restlessness in her breast, and drove her as a
fugitive through the world. You, Nile, put an end to her immeasurable
suffering. When she reached you, she fell forward onto her knees on the
riverbank and turning back her long neck with her face upwards, in the
only way she could, looked to the sky, and with groans and tears and sad
lowing seemed to reproach Jupiter and beg him to end her troubles.
Jupiter threw his arms round his wife's neck and pleaded for an end to
vengeance, saying "Do not fear, in future she will never be a source of
pain" and he called the Stygian waters to witness his words.
As the goddess grows calmer, Io regains her previous appearance,
and becomes what she once was. The rough hair leaves her body, the horns
disappear, the great eyes grow smaller, the gaping mouth shrinks, the
shoulders and hands return, and the hooves vanish, each hoof changing
back into five nails. Nothing of the heifer is left except her
whiteness. Able to stand on two feet she raises herself erect and
fearing to speak in case she lows like a heifer, timidly attempts long
neglected words.

Phaethon's parentage

Now she is worshipped as a greatly honoured goddess by crowds of linen
clad acolytes. In due time she bore a son, Epaphus, who shared the
cities' temples with his mother, and was believed to have been conceived
from mighty Jupiter's seed. He had a friend, Phaethon, child of the Sun,
equal to him in spirit and years, who once boasted proudly that Phoebus
was his father, and refused to concede the claim, which Inachus's
grandson could not accept. "You are mad to believe all your mother says,
and you have an inflated image of your father." Phaethon reddened but,
from shame, repressed his anger, and went to his mother Clymene with
Inachus's reproof. "To sadden you more, mother, I the free, proud,
spirit was silent! I am ashamed that such a reproach can be spoken and
not answered. But if I am born at all of divine stock, give me some
proof of my high birth, and let me claim my divinity!" So saying he
flung his arms round his mother's neck, entreating her, by his own and
her husband Merops's life, and by his sisters' marriages, to reveal to
him some true sign of his parentage.

Phaethon sets out for the Palace of the Sun

Clymene, moved perhaps by Phaethon's entreaties or more by anger at the
words spoken, stretched both arms out to the sky and looking up at the
sun's glow said "By that brightness marked out by glittering rays, that
sees us and hears us, I swear to you, my son, that you are the child of
the Sun; of that being you see; you are the child of he who governs the
world; if I lie, may he himself decline to look on me again, and may
this be the last light to reach our eyes! It is no great effort for you
yourself to find your father's house. The place he rises from is near
our land. If you have it in mind to do so, go and ask the sun himself!"
Immediately Phaethon, delighted at his mother's words, imagining the
heavens in his mind, darts off and crosses Ethiopia his people's land,
then India, land of those bathed in radiant fire, and with energy
reaches the East.

TO TOP <#top>

Book 2

The Palace of the Sun

The palace of the Sun towered up with raised columns, bright with
glittering gold, and gleaming bronze like fire. Shining ivory crowned
the roofs, and the twin doors radiated light from polished silver. The
work of art was finer than the material: on the doors Mulciber had
engraved the waters that surround the earth's centre, the earthly globe,
and the overarching sky. The dark blue sea contains the gods, melodious
Triton, shifting Proteus, Aegaeon crushing two huge whales together, his
arms across their backs, and Doris with her daughters, some seen
swimming, some sitting on rocks drying their sea-green hair, some riding
the backs of fish. They are neither all alike, nor all different, just
as sisters should be. The land shows men and towns, woods and creatures,
rivers and nymphs and other rural gods. Above them was an image of the
glowing sky, with six signs of the zodiac on the right hand door and the
same number on the left.
As soon as Clymene's son had climbed the steep path there, and
entered the house of this parent of whose relationship to him he was
uncertain, he immediately made his way into his father's presence, but
stopped some way off, unable to bear his light too close. Wearing a
purple robe, Phoebus sat on a throne shining with bright emeralds. To
right and left stood the Day, Month, and Year, the Century and the
equally spaced Hours. Young Spring stood there circled with a crown of
flowers, naked Summer wore a garland of ears of corn, Autumn was stained
by the trodden grapes, and icy Winter had white, bristling hair.

Phaethon and his father

The Sun, seated in the middle of them, looked at the boy, who was
fearful of the strangeness of it all, with eyes that see everything, and
said "What reason brings you here? What do you look for on these
heights, Phaethon, son that no father need deny?" Phaethon replied
"Universal light of the great world, Phoebus, father, if you let me use
that name, if Clymene is not hiding some fault behind false pretence,
give me proof father, so they will believe I am your true offspring, and
take away this uncertainty from my mind!" He spoke, and his father
removed the crown of glittering rays from his head and ordered him to
come nearer. Embracing him, he said "It is not to be denied you are
worthy to be mine, and Clymene has told you the truth of your birth. So
that you can banish doubt, ask for any favour, so that I can grant it to
you. May the Stygian lake, that my eyes have never seen, by which the
gods swear, witness my promise." Hardly had he settled back properly in
his seat when the boy asked for his father's chariot and the right to
control his wing-footed horses for a day.

The Sun's admonitions

His father regretted his oath. Three times, and then a fourth, shaking
his bright head, he said "Your words show mine were rash; if only it
were right to retract my promise! I confess my boy I would only refuse
you this one thing. It is right to dissuade you. What you want is
unsafe. Phaethon you ask too great a favour, and one that is unfitting
for your strength and boyish years. Your fate is mortal: it is not
mortal what you ask. Unknowingly you aspire to more than the gods can
share. Though each deity can please themselves, within what is allowed,
no one except myself has the power to occupy the chariot of fire. Even
the lord of mighty Olympus, who hurls terrifying lightning-bolts from
his right hand, cannot drive this team, and who is greater than Jupiter?"

His further warnings

"The first part of the track is steep, and one that my fresh horses at
dawn can hardly climb. In mid-heaven it is highest, where to look down
on earth and sea often alarms even me, and makes my heart tremble with
awesome fear. The last part of the track is downwards and needs sure
control. Then even Tethys herself, who receives me in her submissive
waves, is accustomed to fear that I might dive headlong. Moreover the
rushing sky is constantly turning, and drags along the remote stars, and
whirls them in rapid orbits. I move the opposite way, and its momentum
does not overcome me as it does all other things, and I ride contrary to
its swift rotation. Suppose you are given the chariot. What will you do?
Will you be able to counter the turning poles so that the swiftness of
the skies does not carry you away? Perhaps you conceive in imagination
that there are groves there and cities of the gods and temples with rich
gifts. The way runs through ambush, and apparitions of wild beasts! Even
if you keep your course, and do not steer awry, you must still avoid the
horns of Taurus the Bull, Sagittarius the Haemonian Archer, raging Leo
and the Lion's jaw, Scorpio's cruel pincers sweeping out to encircle you
from one side, and Cancer's crab-claws reaching out from the other. You
will not easily rule those proud horses, breathing out through mouth and
nostrils the fires burning in their chests. They scarcely tolerate my
control when their fierce spirits are hot, and their necks resist the
reins. Beware my boy, that I am not the source of a gift fatal to you,
while something can still be done to set right your request!"

Phaethon insists on driving the chariot

"No doubt, since you ask for a certain sign to give you confidence in
being born of my blood, I give you that sure sign by fearing for you,
and show myself a father by fatherly anxiety. Look at me. If only you
could look into my heart, and see a father's concern from within!
Finally, look around you, at the riches the world holds, and ask for
anything from all of the good things in earth, sea, and sky. I can
refuse you nothing. Only this one thing I take exception to, which would
truly be a punishment and not an honour. Phaethon, you ask for
punishment as your reward! Why do you unknowingly throw your coaxing
arms around my neck? Have no doubt! Whatever you ask will be given, I
have sworn it by the Stygian streams, but make a wiser choice!"
The warning ended, but Phaethon still rejected his words, and
pressed his purpose, blazing with desire to drive the chariot. So, as he
had the right, his father led the youth to the high chariot, Vulcan's
work. It had an axle of gold, and a gold chariot pole, wheels with
golden rims, and circles of silver spokes. Along the yoke chrysolites
and gemstones, set in order, glowed with brilliance reflecting Phoebus's
own light.

The Sun's instructions

Now while brave Phaethon is gazing in wonder at the workmanship, see,
Aurora, awake in the glowing east, opens wide her bright doors, and her
rose-filled courts. The stars, whose ranks are shepherded by Lucifer the
morning star, vanish, and he, last of all, leaves his station in the sky.
When Titan saw his setting, as the earth and skies were reddening,
and just as the crescent of the vanishing moon faded, he ordered the
swift Hours to yoke his horses. The goddesses quickly obeyed his
command, and led the team, sated with ambrosial food and breathing fire,
out of the tall stables, and put on their ringing harness. Then the
father rubbed his son's face with a sacred ointment, and made it proof
against consuming flames, and placed his rays amongst his hair, and
foreseeing tragedy, and fetching up sighs from his troubled heart, said
"If you can at least obey your father's promptings, spare the whip, boy,
and rein them in more strongly! They run swiftly of their own accord. It
is a hard task to check their eagerness. And do not please yourself,
taking a path straight through the five zones of heaven! The track runs
obliquely in a wide curve, and bounded by the three central regions,
avoids the southern pole and the Arctic north. This is your road, you
will clearly see my wheel-marks, and so that heaven and earth receive
equal warmth, do not sink down too far or heave the chariot into the
upper air! Too high and you will scorch the roof of heaven: too low, the
earth. The middle way is safest.
Nor must you swerve too far right towards writhing Serpens, nor
lead your wheels too far left towards sunken Ara. Hold your way between
them! I leave the rest to Fortune, I pray she helps you, and takes
better care of you than you do yourself. While I have been speaking,
dewy night has touched her limit on Hesperus's far western shore. We
have no time for freedom! We are needed: Aurora, the dawn, shines, and
the shadows are gone. Seize the reins in your hand, or if your mind can
be changed, take my counsel, do not take my horses! While you can, while
you still stand on solid ground, before unknowingly you take to the
chariot you have unluckily chosen, let me light the world, while you
watch in safety!

The Horses run wild

The boy has already taken possession of the fleet chariot, and stands
proudly, and joyfully, takes the light reins in his hands, and thanks
his unwilling father.
Meanwhile the sun's swift horses, Pyro�s, Eo�s, Aethon, and the
fourth, Phlegon, fill the air with fiery whinnying, and strike the bars
with their hooves. When Tethys, ignorant of her grandson's fate, pushed
back the gate, and gave them access to the wide heavens, rushing out,
they tore through the mists in the way with their hooves and, lifted by
their wings, overtook the East winds rising from the same region. But
the weight was lighter than the horses of the Sun could feel, and the
yoke was free of its accustomed load. Just as curved-sided boats rock in
the waves without their proper ballast, and being too light are unstable
at sea, so the chariot, free of its usual burden, leaps in the air and
rushes into the heights as though it were empty.
As soon as they feel this the team of four run wild and leave the
beaten track, no longer running in their pre-ordained course. He was
terrified, unable to handle the reins entrusted to him, not knowing
where the track was, nor, if he had known, how to control the team. Then
for the first time the chill stars of the Great and Little Bears, grew
hot, and tried in vain to douse themselves in forbidden waters. And the
Dragon, Draco, that is nearest to the frozen pole, never formidable
before and sluggish with the cold, now glowed with heat, and took to
seething with new fury. They say that you Boot�s also fled in confusion,
slow as you are and hampered by the Plough.

Phaethon lets go of the reins

When the unlucky Phaethon looked down from the heights of the sky at the
earth far, far below he grew pale and his knees quaked with sudden fear,
and his eyes were robbed of shadow by the excess light. Now he would
rather he had never touched his father's horses, and regrets knowing his
true parentage and possessing what he asked for. Now he wants only to be
called Merops's son, as he is driven along like a ship in a northern
gale, whose master lets go the ropes, and leaves her to prayer and the
gods. What can he do? Much of the sky is now behind his back, but more
is before his eyes. Measuring both in his mind, he looks ahead to the
west he is not fated to reach and at times back to the east. Dazed he is
ignorant how to act, and can neither grasp the reins nor has the power
to loose them, nor can he change course by calling the horses by name.
Also, alarmed, he sees the marvellous forms of huge creatures everywhere
in the glowing sky. There is a place where Scorpio bends his pincers in
twin arcs, and, with his tail and his curving arms stretched out to both
sides, spreads his body and limbs over two star signs. When the boy saw
this monster drenched with black and poisonous venom threatening to
wound him with its arched sting, robbed of his wits by chilling horror,
he dropped the reins.

The mountains burn

When the horses feel the reins lying across their backs, after he has
thrown them down, they veer off course and run unchecked through unknown
regions of the air. Wherever their momentum takes them there they run,
lawlessly, striking against the fixed stars in deep space and hurrying
the chariot along remote tracks. Now they climb to the heights of
heaven, now rush headlong down its precipitous slope, sweeping a course
nearer to the earth. The Moon, amazed, sees her brother's horses running
below her own, and the boiling clouds smoke. The earth bursts into
flame, in the highest regions first, opens in deep fissures and all its
moisture dries up. The meadows turn white, the trees are consumed with
all their leaves, and the scorched corn makes its own destruction. But I
am bemoaning the lesser things. Great cities are destroyed with all
their walls, and the flames reduce whole nations with all their peoples
to ashes. The woodlands burn, with the hills. Mount Athos is on fire,
Cilician Taurus, Tmolus, Oete and Ida, dry now once covered with
fountains, and Helicon home of the Muses, and Haemus not yet linked with
King Oeagrius's name. Etna blazes with immense redoubled flames, the
twin peaks of Parnassus, Eryx, Cynthus, Othrys, Rhodope fated at last to
lose its snow, Mimas and Dindyma, Mycale and Cithaeron, ancient in
rites. Its chilly climate cannot save Scythia. The Caucasus burn, and
Ossa along with Pindus, and Olympos greater than either, and the lofty
Alps and cloud-capped Apennines.

The rivers are dried up

Then, truly, Phaethon sees the whole earth on fire. He cannot bear the
violent heat, and he breathes the air as if from a deep furnace. He
feels his chariot glowing white. He can no longer stand the ash and
sparks flung out, and is enveloped in dense, hot smoke. He does not know
where he is, or where he is going, swept along by the will of the winged
horses.
It was then, so they believe, that the Ethiopians acquired their
dark colour, since the blood was drawn to the surface of their bodies.
Then Libya became a desert, the heat drying up her moisture. Then the
nymphs with dishevelled hair wept bitterly for their lakes and
fountains. Boeotia searches for Dirce's rills, Argos for Amymone's
fountain, Corinth for the Pirenian spring. Nor are the rivers safe
because of their wide banks. The Don turns to steam in mid-water, and
old Peneus, and Mysian Caicus and swift-flowing Ismenus, Arcadian
Erymanthus, Xanthus destined to burn again, golden Lycormas and Maeander
playing in its watery curves, Thracian Melas and Laconian Eurotas.
Babylonian Euphrates burns. Orontes burns and quick Thermodon, Ganges,
Phasis, and Danube. Alpheus boils. Spercheos's banks are on fire. The
gold that the River Tagus carries is molten with the fires, and the
swans for whose singing Maeonia's riverbanks are famous, are scorched in
Ca�ster's midst. The Nile fled in terror to the ends of the earth, and
hid its head that remains hidden. Its seven mouths are empty and
dust-filled, seven channels without a stream.
The same fate parches the Thracian rivers, Hebrus and Strymon, and
the western rivers, Rhine, Rhone, Po and the Tiber who had been promised
universal power. Everywhere the ground breaks apart, light penetrates
through the cracks down into Tartarus, and terrifies the king of the
underworld and his queen. The sea contracts and what was a moment ago
wide sea is a parched expanse of sand. Mountains emerge from the water,
and add to the scattered Cyclades. The fish dive deep, and the dolphins
no longer dare to rise arcing above the water, as they have done, into
the air. The lifeless bodies of seals float face upwards on the deep.
They even say that Nereus himself, and Doris and her daughters drifted
through warm caves. Three times Neptune tried to lift his fierce face
and arms above the waters. Three times he could not endure the burning air.

Earth complains

Nevertheless, kindly Earth, surrounded as she was by sea, between the
open waters and the dwindling streams that had buried themselves in
their mother's dark womb, lifted her smothered face. Putting her hand to
her brow, and shaking everything with her mighty tremors, she sank back
a little lower than she used to be, and spoke in a faint voice "If this
pleases you, if I have deserved it, O king of the gods, why delay your
lightning bolts? If it is right for me to die through the power of fire,
let me die by your fire and let the doer of it lessen the pain of the
deed! I can hardly open my lips to say these words' (the heat was
choking her). Look at my scorched hair and the ashes in my eyes, the
ashes over my face! Is this the honour and reward you give me for my
fruitfulness and service, for carrying wounds from the curved plough and
the hoe, for being worked throughout the year, providing herbage and
tender grazing for the flocks, produce for the human race and incense to
minister to you gods?
Even if you find me deserving of ruin, what have the waves done,
why does your brother deserve this? Why are the waters that were his
share by lot diminished and so much further from the sky? If neither
regard for me or for your brother moves you pity at least your own
heavens! Look around you on either side: both the poles are steaming! If
the fire should melt them, your own palace will fall! Atlas himself is
suffering, and can barely hold up the white-hot sky on his shoulders! If
the sea and the land and the kingdom of the heavens are destroyed, we
are lost in ancient chaos! Save whatever is left from the flames, and
think of our common interest!

Jupiter intervenes and Phaethon dies

So the Earth spoke, and unable to tolerate the heat any longer or speak
any further, she withdrew her face into her depths closer to the caverns
of the dead. But the all-powerful father of the gods climbs to the
highest summit of heaven, from where he spreads his clouds over the wide
earth, from where he moves the thunder and hurls his quivering lightning
bolts, calling on the gods, especially on him who had handed over the
sun chariot, to witness that, unless he himself helps, the whole world
will be overtaken by a ruinous fate. Now he has no clouds to cover the
earth, or rain to shower from the sky. He thundered, and balancing a
lightning bolt in his right hand threw it from eye-level at the
charioteer, removing him, at the same moment, from the chariot and from
life, extinguishing fire with fierce fire. Thrown into confusion the
horses, lurching in different directions, wrench their necks from the
yoke and throw off the broken harness. Here the reins lie, there the
axle torn from the pole, there the spokes of shattered wheels, and the
fragments of the wrecked chariot are flung far and wide.
But Phaethon, flames ravaging his glowing hair, is hurled
headlong, leaving a long trail in the air, as sometimes a star does in
the clear sky, appearing to fall although it does not fall. Far from his
own country, in a distant part of the world, the river god Eridanus
takes him from the air, and bathes his smoke-blackened face. There the
Italian nymphs consign his body, still smoking from that triple-forked
flame, to the earth, and they also carve a verse in the rock: HERE
PHAETHON LIES WHO THE SUN'S JOURNEY MADE DARED ALL THOUGH HE BY WEAKNESS
WAS BETRAYED

Phaethon's sisters grieve for him

Now the father, pitiful, ill with grief, hid his face, and, if we can
believe it, a whole day went by without the sun. But the fires gave
light, so there was something beneficial amongst all that evil. But
Clymene, having uttered whatever can be uttered at such misfortune,
grieving and frantic and tearing her breast, wandered over the whole
earth first looking for her son's limbs, and then failing that his
bones. She found his bones already buried however, beside the riverbank
in a foreign country. Falling to the ground she bathed with tears the
name she could read on the cold stone and warmed it against her naked
breast. The Heliads, her daughters and the Sun's, cry no less, and offer
their empty tribute of tears to the dead, and, beating their breasts
with their hands, they call for their brother night and day, and lie
down on his tomb, though he cannot hear their pitiful sighs.

The sisters turned into poplar trees

Four times the moon had joined her crescent horns to form her bright
disc. They by habit, since use creates habit, devoted themselves to
mourning. Then Phaeth�sa, the eldest sister, when she tried to throw
herself to the ground, complained that her ankles had stiffened, and
when radiant Lampetia tried to come near her she was suddenly rooted to
the spot. A third sister attempting to tear at her hair pulled out
leaves. One cried out in pain that her legs were sheathed in wood,
another that her arms had become long branches. While they wondered at
this, bark closed round their thighs and by degrees over their waists,
breasts, shoulders, and hands, and all that was left free were their
mouths calling for their mother. What can their mother do but go here
and there as the impulse takes her, pressing her lips to theirs where
she can? It is no good. She tries to pull the bark from their bodies and
break off new branches with her hands, but drops of blood are left
behind like wounds. "Stop, mother, please" cries out whichever one she
hurts, "Please stop: It is my body in the tree you are tearing. Now,
farewell." and the bark closed over her with her last words. Their tears
still flow, and hardened by the sun, fall as amber from the virgin
branches, to be taken by the bright river and sent onwards to adorn
Roman brides.

Cycnus

Cycnus, the son of Sthenelus witnessed this marvel, who though he was
kin to you Phaethon, through his mother, was closer still in love. Now,
though he had ruled the people and great cities of Liguria, he left his
kingdom, and filled Eridanus's green banks and streams, and the woods
the sisters had become part of, with his grief. As he did so his voice
vanished and white feathers hid his hair, his long neck stretched out
from his body, his reddened fingers became webbed, wings covered his
sides, and a rounded beak his mouth. So Cycnus became a new kind of
bird, the swan. But he had no faith in Jupiter and the heavens,
remembering the lightning bolt the god in his severity had hurled. He
looked for standing water, and open lakes hating fire, choosing to live
in floods rather than flames.

The Sun returns to his task

Meanwhile Phaethon's father, mourning and without his accustomed
brightness, as if in eclipse, hated the light, himself and the day. He
gave his mind over to grief, and to grief added his anger, and refused
to provide his service to the earth. "Enough" he says "since the
beginning my task has given me no rest and I am weary of work without
end and labour without honour! Whoever chooses to can steer the chariot
of light! If no one does, and all the gods acknowledge they cannot, let
Jupiter himself do it, so that for a while at least, while he tries to
take the reins, he must put aside the lightning bolts that leave fathers
bereft! Then he will know when he has tried the strength of those
horses, with hooves of fire, that the one who failed to rule them well
did not deserve to be killed."
All the gods gather round Sol, as he talks like this, and beg him
not to shroud everything with darkness. Jupiter himself tries to excuse
the fire he hurled, adding threats to his entreaties as kings do. Then
Phoebus rounds up his horses, maddened and still trembling with terror,
and in pain lashes out at them with goad and whip (really lashes out)
reproaching them and blaming them for his son's death.

Jupiter sees Callisto

Now the all-powerful father of the gods circuits the vast walls of
heaven and examines them to check if anything has been loosened by the
violent fires. When he sees they are as solid and robust as ever he
inspects the earth and the works of humankind. Arcadia above all is his
greatest care. He restores her fountains and streams, that are still
hardly daring to flow, gives grass to the bare earth, leaves to the
trees, and makes the scorched forests grow green again.
Often, as he came and went, he would stop short at the sight of a
girl from Nonacris, feeling the fire take in the very marrow of his
bones. She was not one to spin soft wool or play with her hair. A clasp
fastened her tunic, and a white ribbon held back her loose tresses.
Dressed like this, with a spear or a bow in her hand, she was one of
Diana's companions. No nymph who roamed Maenalus was dearer to Trivia,
goddess of the crossways, than she, Callisto, was. But no favour lasts
long.

Jupiter rapes Callisto

The sun was high, just path the zenith, when she entered a grove that
had been untouched through the years. Here she took her quiver from her
shoulder, unstrung her curved bow, and lay down on the grass, her head
resting on her painted quiver. Jupiter, seeing her there weary and
unprotected, said "Here, surely, my wife will not see my cunning, or if
she does find out it is, oh it is, worth a quarrel! Quickly he took on
the face and dress of Diana, and said "Oh, girl who follows me, where in
my domains have you been hunting?"
The virgin girl got up from the turf replying "Greetings, goddess
greater than Jupiter: I say it even though he himself hears it." He did
hear, and laughed, happy to be judged greater than himself, and gave her
kisses unrestrainedly, and not those that virgins give. When she started
to say which woods she had hunted he embraced and prevented her and not
without committing a crime. Face to face with him, as far as a woman
could, (I wish you had seen her Juno: you would have been kinder to her)
she fought him, but how could a girl win, and who is more powerful than
Jove? Victorious, Jupiter made for the furthest reaches of the sky:
while to Callisto the grove was odious and the wood seemed knowing. As
she retraced her steps she almost forgot her quiver and its arrows, and
the bow she had left hanging.

Diana discover's Callisto's shame

Behold how Diana, with her band of huntresses, approaching from the
heights of Maenalus, magnificent from the kill, spies her there, and
seeing her calls out. At the shout she runs, afraid at first in case it
is Jupiter disguised, but when she sees the other nymphs come forward
she realises there is no trickery and joins their number. Alas! How hard
it is not to show one's guilt in one's face! She can scarcely lift her
eyes from the ground, not as she used to be, wedded to her goddess's
side or first of the whole company, but is silent and by her blushing
shows signs of her shame at being attacked. Even if she were not herself
virgin, Diana could sense her guilt in a thousand ways. They say all the
nymphs could feel it. Nine crescent moons had since grown full when the
goddess faint from the chase in her brother's hot sunlight found a cool
grove out of which a murmuring stream ran, winding over fine sand. She
loved the place and tested the water with her foot. Pleased with this
too she said "Any witness is far away, let's bathe our bodies naked in
the flowing water." The Arcadian girl blushed: all of them took off
their clothes: one of them tried to delay: hesitantly the tunic was
removed and there her shame was revealed with her naked body. Terrified
she tried to conceal her swollen belly. Diana cried "Go, far away from
here: do not pollute the sacred fountain!" and the Moon-goddess
commanded her to leave her band of followers.

Callisto turned into a bear

The great Thunderer's wife had known about all this for a long time and
had held back her severe punishment till the proper time. Now there was
no reason to wait. The girl had given birth to a boy, Arcas, and that in
itself enraged Juno. When she turned her angry eyes and mind to thought
of him she cried out "Nothing more was needed, you adulteress, than your
fertility, and your marking the insult to me by giving birth, making
public my Jupiter's crime. You'll not carry this off safely. Now,
insolent girl, I will take that shape away from you, that pleased you
and my husband so much!" At this she clutched her in front by the hair
of her forehead and pulled her face forwards onto the ground. Callisto
stretched out her arms for mercy: those arms began to bristle with
coarse black hairs: her hands arched over and changed into curved claws
to serve as feet: and her face, that Jupiter had once praised, was
disfigured by gaping jaws: and so that her prayers and words of entreaty
might not attract him her power of speech was taken from her. An angry,
threatening growl, harsh and terrifying, came from her throat. Still her
former feelings remained intact though she was now a bear. She showed
her misery in continual groaning, raising such hands as she had left to
the starry sky, feeling, though she could not speak it, Jupiter's
indifference. Ah, how often she wandered near the house and fields that
had once been her home, not daring to sleep in the lonely woods! Ah, how
often she was driven among the rocks by the baying hounds, and the
huntress fled in fear from the hunters! Often she hid at the sight of
wild beasts forgetting what she was, and though a bear she shuddered at
the sight of other bears on the mountains and feared the wolves though
her father Lycaon ran with them.

Arcas and Callisto become constellations

And now Arcas, grandson of Lycaon, had reached his fifteenth year
ignorant of his parentage. While he was hunting wild animals, while he
was finding suitable glades and penning up the Erymanthian groves with
woven nets, he came across his mother, who stood still at sight of Arcas
and appeared to know him. He shrank back from those unmoving eyes gazing
at him so fixedly, uncertain what made him afraid, and when she quickly
came nearer he was about to pierce her chest with his lethal spear.
All-powerful Jupiter restrained him and in the same moment removed them
and the possibility of that wrong, and together, caught up through the
void on the winds, he set them in the heavens and made them similar
constellations, the Great and Little Bear.

Juno complains to Tethys and Oceanus

Juno was angered when she saw his inamorato shining among the stars, and
went down into the waters to white-haired Tethys and old Oceanus to whom
the gods often make reverence. When they asked her the reason for her
visit she began "You ask me why I, the queen of the gods, have left my
home in the heavens to be here? Another has taken my place in the sky! I
tell a lie, if you do not see, when night falls and the world darkens,
newly exalted stars to wound me, set in the sky, where the remotest and
shortest orbit circles the uttermost pole. Why should anyone wish to
avoid wounding Juno or dread my enmity if I only benefit those I harm?
Oh what a great achievement! Oh what marvellous powers I have! I stopped
her being human and she becomes a goddess! This is the punishment I
inflict on the guilty! This is my wonderful sovereignty! Let him take
away her animal form and restore her former beauty as he did before with
that Argive girl, Io. Why not divorce Juno, install her in my place, and
let Lycaon be his father-in-law? If this contemptible insult to your
foster-child moves you, shut out the seven stars of the Bear from your
dark blue waters, repulse this constellation set in the heavens as a
reward for her defilement, and do not let my rival dip in your pure flood!"

The Raven and the Crow

The gods of the sea nodded their consent. Then Saturnia, in her light
chariot drawn by painted peacocks, drove up through the clear air. These
peacocks had only recently been painted, when Argus was killed, at the
same time that your wings, Corvus, croaking Raven, were suddenly changed
to black, though they were white before. He was once a bird with
silver-white plumage, equal to the spotless doves, not inferior to the
geese, those saviours of the Capitol with their watchful cries, or the
swan, the lover of rivers. His speech condemned him. Because of his
ready speech he, who was once snow white, was now white's opposite.
Coronis of Larissa was the loveliest girl in all Thessaly.
Certainly she pleased you, god of Delphi. Well, as long as she was
faithful, or not caught out. But that bird of Phoebus discovered her
adultery and, merciless informer, flew straight to his master to reveal
the secret crime. The garrulous Crow followed with flapping wings,
wanting to know everything, but when he heard the reason, he said "This
journey will do you no good: don't ignore my prophecy! See what I was,
see what I am, and search out the justice in it. Truth was my downfall.
Once upon a time Pallas hid a child, Erichthonius, born without a
human mother, in a box made of Actaean osiers. She gave this to the
three virgin daughters of two-natured Cecrops, who was part human part
serpent, and ordered them not to pry into its secret. Hidden in the
light leaves that grew thickly over an elm-tree I set out to watch what
they might do. Two of the girls, Pandrosus and Herse, obeyed without
cheating, but the third Aglauros called her sisters cowards and undid
the knots with her hand, and inside they found a baby boy with a snake
stretched out next to him. That act I betrayed to the goddess. And this
is the reward I got for it, no longer consecrated to Minerva's
protection, and ranked below the Owl, that night-bird! My punishment
should be a warning to all birds not to take risks by speaking out.

The Crow's story

And just think, not only had I not asked for her favour, she had sought
me out, of her own accord! - Ask Pallas herself: though she is angry,
she will not deny it even in anger. The famous Coroneus was my father,
in the land of Phocis (it is said to be well known) and I was a royal
virgin and wealthy princes courted me (so do not disparage me). But my
beauty hurt me. Once when I was walking slowly as I used to do along the
crest of the sands by the shore the sea-god saw me and grew hot. When
his flattering words and entreaties proved a waste of time, he tried
force, and chased after me. I ran, leaving the solid shore behind,
tiring myself out uselessly in the soft sand. Then I called out to gods
and men. No mortal heard my voice, but the virgin goddess feels pity for
a virgin and she helped me. I was stretching out my arms to the sky:
those arms began to darken with soft plumage. I tried to lift my cloak
from my shoulders but it had turned to feathers with roots deep in my
skin. I tried to beat my naked breast with my hands but found I had
neither hands nor naked breast.
I ran, and now the sand did not clog my feet as before but I
lifted from the ground, and soon sailed high into the air. So I became
an innocent servant of Minerva. But what use was that to me if
Nyctimene, who was turned into an Owl for her dreadful sins, has usurped
my place of honour? Or have you not heard the story all Lesbos knows
well, how Nyctimene desecrated her father's bed? Though she is now a
bird she is conscious of guilt at her crime and flees from human sight
and the light, and hides her shame in darkness, and is driven from the
whole sky by all the birds."

Coronis is betrayed and Phoebus kills her

To all this, the Raven replied "I pray any evil be on your own head. I
spurn empty prophecies' and, completing the journey he had started, he
told his master he had seen Coronis lying beside a Thessalian youth. The
laurel fell from the lover's head on hearing of the charge, his
expression and colour and the tone of his lyre changed, and his mind
boiled with growing anger. He seized his usual weapons, strung his bow
bending it by the tips, and, with his unerring arrow, pierced the breast
that had so often been close to his own. She groaned at the wound, and
as the arrow was drawn out her white limbs were drenched with scarlet
blood and she cried out " Oh Phoebus it was in your power to have
punished me, but to have let me give birth first: now two will die in
one." She spoke, and then her life flowed out with her blood. A deathly
cold stole over her body, emptied of being.

Phoebus repents and saves Aesculapius

Alas! Too late the lover repents of his cruel act, and hates himself for
listening to the tale that has so angered him. He hates the bird that
has compelled him to know of the fault that brought him pain. He hates
the bow, his hand, and the hastily fired arrow as well as that hand. He
cradles the fallen girl and attempts to overcome fate with his healing
powers. It is too late, and he tries his arts in vain. Later, when all
efforts had failed, seeing the funeral pyre prepared to consume her
body, then indeed the god groaned from the depths of his heart (since
the faces of the heavenly gods cannot be touched by tears), groans no
different from those of a young bullock, seeing the hammer poised at the
slaughterer's right ear, crash down on the hollow forehead of a suckling
calf.
Even though she cannot know of it, the god pours fragrant incense
over her breast, and embraces her body, and unjustly, performs the just
rites. He could not let a child of Phoebus be destroyed in the same
ruin, and he tore his son, Aesculapius, from its mother's womb and from
the flames, and carried him to the cave of Chiron the Centaur, who was
half man and half horse. But he stopped the Raven, who had hoped for a
reward for telling the truth, from living among the white birds.

Chiron and Chariclo's prophecies

The semi-human was pleased with this foster-child of divine origin, glad
at the honour it brought him, when his daughter suddenly appeared, her
shoulders covered with her long red hair, whom the nymph Chariclo called
Ocyrho�, having given birth to her on the banks of that swift stream.
She was not content merely to have learned her father's arts, she also
chanted the secrets of the Fates.
So when she felt the prophetic frenzy in her mind, and was on fire
with the god enclosed in her breast, she looked at the infant boy and
cried out "Grow and thrive, child, healer of all the world! Human beings
will often be in your debt, and you will have the right to restore the
dead. But if ever it is done regardless of the god's displeasure you
will be stopped, by the flame of your grandfather's lightning bolt, from
doing so again. From a god you will turn to a bloodless corpse, and then
to a god who was a corpse, and so twice renew your fate. You also, dear
father, now immortal, and created by the law of your birth to live on
through all the ages, will long for death, when you are tormented by the
terrible venom of the Serpent, Hydra, absorbed through your wounded
limbs. But at last the gods will give you the power to die, and the
Three Goddesses will sever the thread." Other prophecies remained to
tell: but she sighed deeply, distressed by the tears welling from her
eyes, and cried "The Fates prevent me, and forbid me further speech. My
throat is constricted. These arts are not worth the cost if they incur
the gods' anger against me. Better not to know the future! Now I see my
human shape being taken away, now grass contents me for food, now my
impulse is to race over the wide fields. I am changing to a mare, the
form of my kindred. But why am I completely so? Surely my father is
still half human." Even as she spoke, the last part of her complaint was
hard to understand and her words were troubled. Soon they seemed neither
words nor a horse's neighs, but the imitation of a horse. In a little
while she gave out clear whinnying noises, and her arms moved in the
grass. Then her fingers came together and one thin solid hoof of horn
joined her five fingernails. Her head and the length of her neck
extended, the greater part of her long gown became a tail, and the loose
hair thrown over her neck hung down as a mane on her right shoulder. Now
she was altered in both voice and features, and from this marvelous
happening she gained a new name.

Mercury, Battus and the stolen cattle

The demi-god, son of Philyra, wept, and called to you for help in vain,
O lord of Delphi. You could not re-call mighty Jupiter's command, and,
if you had been able to, you were not there. You lived in Elis and the
Messenian lands. That was the time when you wore a shepherd's cloak,
carried a wooden crook in your left hand, and in the other a pipe of
seven disparate reeds. And while your thoughts were of love, while you
played sweetly on your pipe, your cattle, unguarded, strayed, it is
said, into the Pylian fields. There, Mercury Atlantiades, son of Maia,
saw them and by his arts drove them into the woods and hid them there.
Nobody saw the theft except one old man, well known in that country,
whom they called Battus. He served as guardian of a herd of pedigree
mares, for a rich man Neleus, in the rich meadows and woodland pastures.
Mercury found him and drawing him away with coaxing hand said "Whoever
you are, friend, if anyone asks if you have seen any of these cattle,
say no, and so that the favour is not unrewarded, you can take a shining
heifer for your prize!" and he handed it over.
The fellow accepted it and replied "Go on, you are safe. That
stone would betray you quicker than I" and he even pointed out a stone.
Jupiter's son pretended to go, but soon returned in another form and
voice, saying "Countryman, if you have seen any cattle going this way,
help me, and don't be silent, they were stolen! I'll give you a reward
of a bull and its heifer." The old man, hearing the prize doubled said
"They were at the foot of the mountain, and at the foot of the mountain
is where they are." Atlantiades laughed. "Would you betray me to myself,
you rascal? Betray me to myself? And he turned that deceitful body to
solid flint, that even now is called "touchstone', the "informer', and
unjustly the old disgrace clings to the stone.

Mercury sees Herse

The god with the caduceus lifted upwards on his paired wings and as he
flew looked down on the Munychian fields, the land that Minerva loves,
and on the groves of the cultured Lyceum. That day happened to be a
festival of Pallas, when, by tradition, innocent girls carried the
sacred mysteries to her temple, in flower-wreathed baskets, on their
heads. The winged god saw them returning and flew towards them, not
directly but in a curving flight, as a swift kite, spying out the
sacrifical entrails, wheels above, still fearful of the priests crowding
round the victim, but afraid to fly further off, circling eagerly on
tilted wings over its hoped-for prey. So agile Mercury slanted in flight
over the Athenian hill, spiraling on the same winds. As Lucifer shines
more brightly than the other stars, and golden Phoebe outshines Lucifer,
so Herse was pre-eminent among the virgin girls, the glory of that
procession of her comrades. Jupiter's son was astonished at her beauty,
and, even though he hung in the air, he was inflamed. Just as when a
lead shot is flung from a Balearic sling it flies on and becomes red
hot, discovering heat in the clouds it did not have before. He altered
course, leaving the sky, and heading towards earth, without disguising
himself, he was so confident of his own looks. Nevertheless, even though
it is so, he takes care to enhance them. He smooths his hair, and
arranges his robe to hang neatly so that the golden hem will show, and
has his polished wand, that induces or drives away sleep, in his right
hand, and his winged sandals gleaming on his trim feet.

Mercury elicits the help of Aglauros

There were three rooms deep inside the house, decorated with
tortoiseshell and ivory. Pandrosus had the right hand room, Aglauros the
left, and Herse the room between. She of the left hand room first saw
the god's approach and dared to ask his name and the reason for his
visit. The grandson of Atlas and Pleione replied "I am the one who
carries my father's messages through the air. My father is Jupiter
himself. I won't hide the reason. Only be loyal to your sister and
consent to be called my child's aunt. Herse is the reason I am here. I
beg you to help a lover." Aglauros looked at him with the same rapacious
eyes with which she had lately looked into golden Minerva's hidden
secret, and she demanded a heavy weight of gold for her services.
Meanwhile she compelled him to leave the house.

Minerva calls on Envy

Now the warrior goddess turned angry eyes on her, and in her emotion
drew breath from deep inside so that both her strong breast and the
aegis that covered her breast shook with it. She remembered that this
girl had revealed her secret with profane hands, when, breaking her
command, she had seen Erichthonius, son of Vulcan, the Lemnian, the
child born without a mother. Now the girl would be dear to the god, and
to her own sister, and rich with the gold she acquired, demanded by her
greed. Straightaway the goddess made for Envy's house that is filthy
with dark decay. Her cave was hidden deep among valleys, sunless and
inaccessible to the winds, a melancholy place and filled with a numbing
cold. Fire is always absent, and fog always fills it. When the feared
war goddess came there, she stood outside the cave, since she had no
right to enter the place, and struck the doors with the butt of her
spear. With the blow they flew open. Envy could be seen, eating vipers'
meat that fed her venom, and at the sight the goddess averted her eyes.
But the other got up slowly from the ground, leaving the half-eaten
snake flesh, and came forward with sluggish steps. When she saw the
goddess dressed in her armour and her beauty, she moaned and frowned as
she sighed. Pallor spreads over her face, and all her body shrivels.
Her sight is skewed, her teeth are livid with decay, her breast is
green with bile, and her tongue is suffused with venom. She only smiles
at the sight of suffering. She never sleeps, excited by watchful cares.
She finds men's successes disagreeable, and pines away at the sight. She
gnaws and being gnawed is also her own punishment. Though she hated her
so, nevertheless Tritonia spoke briefly to her. "Poison one of Cecrops's
daughters with your venom. That is the task. Aglauros is the one."
Without more words she fled and with a thrust of her spear sprang from
the earth.

Envy poisons Aglauros's heart

Envy, squinting at her as she flees, gives out low mutterings, sorry to
think of Minerva's coming success. She takes her staff bound with
strands of briar, and sets out, shrouded in gloomy clouds. Wherever she
passes she tramples the flower-filled fields, withers the grass, blasts
the highest treetops and poisons homes, cities and peoples with her
breath. At last she sees Athens, Tritonia's city, flourishing with arts
and riches and leisured peace. She can hardly hold back her tears
because she sees nothing tearful. But after entering the chamber of
Cecrops's daughter, she carried out her command and touched her breast
with a hand tinted with darkness and filled her heart with sharp thorns.
Then she breathed poisonous, destructive breath into her and spread
black venom through her bones and the inside of her lungs. And so that
the cause for pain might never be far away she placed Aglauros's sister
before her eyes, in imagination, her sister's fortunate marriage, and
the beauty of the god, magnifying it all.
Cecrops's daughter, tormented by this, is eaten by secret agony,
and troubled by night and troubled by light, she moans and wastes away
in slow, wretched decay, like ice eroded by the fitful sun.

Aglauros is turned to stone

Often she longed to die so that she need not look on, often to tell her
stern father of it as a crime. Finally she sat down at her sister's
threshold to oppose the god's entrance when he came. When he threw
compliments, prayers and gentlest words at her, she said "Stop now,
since I won't go from here till I have driven you away." "We'll hold to
that contract" Cyllenius quickly replied, and he opened the door with a
touch of his heavenly wand. At this the girl tried to rise, but found
her limbs, bent from sitting, unable to move from dull heaviness. When
she tried to lift her body, her knees were rigid, cold sank through her
to her fingernails, and her arteries grew pale with loss of blood.
As an untreatable cancer slowly spreads more widely bringing
disease to still undamaged parts so a lethal chill gradually filled her
breast sealing the vital paths and airways. She no longer tried to
speak, and if she had tried, her voice had no means of exit. Already
stone had gripped her neck, her features hardened, and she sat there, a
bloodless statue. Nor was she white stone: her mind had stained it.

Jupiter's abduction of Europa

When Mercury had inflicted this punishment on the girl for her impious
words and thoughts, he left Pallas's land behind and flew to the heavens
on outstretched wings. There his father calls him aside, and without
revealing love as the reason, says "Son, faithful worker of my commands,
go, quickly in your usual way, fly down to where, in an eastern land,
they observe your mother's star, among the Pleiades, (the inhabitants
give it the name of Sidon). There drive the herd of royal cattle, that
you will see some distance off, grazing the mountain grass, towards the
sea shore!" He spoke, and immediately, as he commanded, the cattle,
driven from the mountain, headed for the shore, where the great king's
daughter, Europa, used to play together with the Tyrian virgins. Royalty
and love do not sit well together, nor stay long in the same house. So
the father and ruler of the gods, who is armed with the three-forked
lightning in his right hand, whose nod shakes the world, setting aside
his royal sceptre, took on the shape of a bull, lowed among the other
cattle, and, beautiful to look at, wandered in the tender grass.
In colour he was white as the snow that rough feet have not
trampled and the rain-filled south wind has not melted. The muscles
rounded out his neck, the dewlaps hung down in front, the horns were
twisted, but one might argue they were made by hand, purer and brighter
than pearl. His forehead was not fearful, his eyes were not formidable,
and his expression was peaceful. Agenor's daughter marvelled at how
beautiful he was and how unthreatening. But though he seemed so gentle
she was afraid at first to touch him. Soon she drew close and held
flowers out to his glistening mouth. The lover was joyful and while he
waited for his hoped-for pleasure he kissed her hands. He could scarcely
separate then from now. At one moment he frolicks and runs riot in the
grass, at another he lies down, white as snow on the yellow sands. When
her fear has gradually lessened he offers his chest now for virgin hands
to pat and now his horns to twine with fresh wreaths of flowers. The
royal virgin even dares to sit on the bull's back, not realising whom
she presses on, while the god, first from dry land and then from the
shoreline, gradually slips his deceitful hooves into the waves. Then he
goes further out and carries his prize over the mid-surface of the sea.
She is terrified and looks back at the abandoned shore she has been
stolen from and her right hand grips a horn, the other his back, her
clothes fluttering, winding, behind her in the breeze.

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