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[Xiii.719-897]Metamorphoses 73ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1Polyphemus, one of the Cyclops, jealous of Acis, who is in love with Galatea, kills the youth with a rock which he hurls at him; on which, his blood is changed into a river which bears his name. 2They make for the neighbouring land of the Phæacians,[68] planted with beauteous fruit. After this, Epirus and Buthrotos,[69] ruled over by the Phrygian prophet, and a fictitious Troy, are reached. Thence, acquainted with the future, all which, Helenus, the son of Priam, in his faithful instructions has forewarned them of, they enter Sicania. With three points this projects into the sea. Of these, Pachynos is turned towards the showery South: Lilybæum is exposed to the soft Zephyrs: but Peloros looks towards the Bear, free from the sea, and towards Boreas. By this {part} the Trojans enter; and with oars and favouring tide, at nightfall the fleet makes the Zanclæan sands. Scylla infests the right hand side, the restless Charybdis the left. This swallows and vomits forth again ships taken down; the other, having the face of a maiden, has her swarthy stomach surrounded with fierce dogs; and (if the poets have not left the whole a fiction) once on a time, too, {she was} a maiden. Many suitors courted her; who being repulsed, she, most beloved by the Nymphs of the ocean, went to the ocean Nymphs, and used to relate the eluded loves of the youths. 3While Galatea[70] was giving her hair be to combed, heaving sighs, she addressed her in such words as these: “{And} yet, O maiden, no ungentle race of men does woo thee; and as thou dost, thou art able to deny them with impunity. But I, whose sire is Nereus, whom the azure Doris bore, who am guarded, too, by a crowd of sisters, was not able, but through the waves, to escape the passion of the Cyclop;” and as she spoke, the tears choked her utterance. When, with her fingers like marble, the maiden had wiped these away, and had comforted the Goddess, “Tell me, dearest,” said she, “and conceal not {from me} ({for} I am true to thee) the cause of thy grief.” In these words did the Nereid reply to the daughter of Cratæis:[71] “Acis was the son of Faunus and of the Nymph Symæthis, a great delight, indeed, to his father and his mother, yet a still greater to me. For the charming {youth} had attached me to himself alone, and eight birth-days having a second time been passed, he had {now} marked his tender cheeks with the dubious down. Him I {pursued}; incessantly did the Cyclop me pursue. Nor can I, shouldst thou enquire, declare whether the hatred of the Cylops, or the love of Acis, was the stronger in me. They were equal. O genial Venus! how great is the power of thy sway. For that savage, and one to be dreaded by the very woods, and beheld with impunity by no stranger, the contemner of great Olympus with the Gods {themselves}, {now} feels what love is; 4and, captivated with passion for me, he burns, forgetting his cattle and his caves. 5“And now, Polyphemus, thou hast a care for thy looks, and now for {the art of} pleasing; now thou combest out thy stiffened hair with rakes, {and} now it pleases thee to cut thy shaggy beard with the sickle, and to look at thy fierce features in the water, and {so} to compose them. Thy love for carnage, and thy fierceness, and thy insatiate thirst for blood, {now} cease; and the ships both come and go in safety. Telemus, in the mean time arriving at the Sicilian Ætna, Telemus, the son of Eurymus, whom no omen had {ever} deceived, accosts the dreadful Polyphemus, and says, ‘The single eye that thou dost carry in the midst of thy forehead, Ulysses shall take away from thee.’ He laughed, and said, ‘O most silly of the prophets, thou art mistaken, {for} another has already taken it away.’ Thus does he slight him, in vain warning him of the truth; and he either burdens the shore, stalking along with huge strides, or, wearied, he returns to his shaded cave. 6“A hill, in form of a wedge, runs out with a long projection into the sea: {and} the waves of the ocean flow round either side. Hither the fierce Cyclop ascended, and sat down in the middle. His woolly flocks followed, there being no one to guide them. After the pine tree,[72] which afforded him the service of a staff, {but more} fitted for sail-yards, was laid before his feet, and his pipe was taken up, formed of a hundred reeds; all the mountains were sensible of the piping of the shepherd: the waves, {too}, were sensible. I, lying hid within a rock, and reclining on the bosom of my own Acis, from afar caught such words as these with my ears, and marked them {so} heard in my mind: ‘O Galatea, fairer than[73] the leaf of the snow-white privet,[74] more blooming than the meadows, more slender than the tall alder, brighter than glass, more wanton than the tender kid, smoother than the shells worn by continual floods, more pleasing than the winter’s sun, {or} than the summer’s shade, more beauteous than the apples, more sightly than the lofty plane tree, clearer than ice, sweeter than the ripened grape, softer than both the down of the swan, and than curdled milk, and, didst thou not fly me, more beauteous than a watered garden. 7{And yet} thou, the same Galatea, {art} wilder than the untamed bullocks, harder than the aged oak, more unstable than the waters, tougher than both the twigs of osier and than the white vines, more immoveable than these rocks, more violent than the torrent, prouder than the bepraised peacock, fiercer than the fire, rougher than the thistles, more cruel than the pregnant she-bear, more deaf than the ocean waves, more savage than the trodden water-snake: and, what I could especially wish to deprive thee of, fleeter not only than the deer when pursued by the loud barkings, but even than the winds and the fleeting air. 8“‘But didst thou {but} know me well, thou wouldst repine at having fled, and thou thyself wouldst blame thy own hesitation, and wouldst strive to retain me. I have a part of the mountain for my cave, pendent with the native rock; in which the sun is not felt in the middle of the heat, nor is the winter felt: there are apples that load the boughs; there are grapes on the lengthening vines, resembling gold; and there are purple ones {as well}; both the one and the other do I reserve for thee. With thine own hands thou shalt thyself gather the soft strawberries growing beneath the woodland shade; thou thyself {shalt pluck} the cornels of autumn, and plums not only darkened with their black juice, but even of the choicest kinds, and resembling new wax. Nor, I being thy husband, will there be wanting to thee chesnuts, nor the fruit of the arbute tree:[75] every tree shall be at thy service. All this cattle is my own: many, too, are wandering in the valleys: many the wood conceals: many {more} are penned in my caves. Nor, shouldst thou ask me perchance, could I tell thee, how many there are; ’tis for the poor man to count his cattle. For the praises of these trust not me at all; in person thou thyself mayst see how they can hardly support with their legs their distended udders. Lambs, too, a smaller breed, are in the warm folds: there are kids, too, of equal age {to them} in other folds. Snow-white milk I always have: 9a part of it is kept for drinking, {another} part the liquified rennet hardens. Nor will common delights, and ordinary enjoyments alone fall to thy lot, {such as} does, and hares, and she-goats, or a pair of doves, or a nest taken from the tree top. I have found on the mountain summit the twin cubs of a shaggy she-bear, which can play with thee, so like each other that thou couldst scarce distinguish them. {These} I found, and I said, ‘These for my mistress will I keep.’ 10“‘Do now but raise thy beauteous head from out of the azure sea; now, Galatea, come, and do not scorn my presents. Surely I know myself, and myself but lately I beheld in the reflection of the limpid water; and my figure[76] pleased me as I saw it. See how huge I am. Not Jove, in heaven, is greater than this body; for thou art wont to tell how one Jupiter reigns, who he is I know not. Plenty of hair hangs over my grisly features, and, like a grove, overshadows my shoulders; nor think it uncomely that my body is rough, thick set with stiff bristles. A tree without leaves is unseemly; a horse is unseemly, unless a mane covers his tawny neck. Feathers cover the birds; their wool is an ornament to the sheep; a beard and rough hair upon their body is becoming to men. I have but one eye in the middle of my forehead, but it is like a large buckler. Well! and does not the Sun from the heavens behold all these things? and yet the Sun has but one eye. And, besides, in your seas does my father reign. Him do I offer thee for a father-in-law; only do take pity on a suppliant, and hear his prayer, for to thee alone do I give way. And I, who despise Jove, and the heavens, and the piercing lightnings, dread thee, daughter of Nereus; than the lightnings is thy wrath more dreadful to me. But I should be more patient under these slights, if thou didst avoid all men. For why, rejecting the Cyclop, dost thou love Acis? And why prefer Acis to my embraces? 11Yet, let him please himself, and let him please thee, too, Galatea, {though} I wish he could not; if only the opportunity is given, he shall find that I have strength proportioned to a body so vast. I will pull out his palpitating entrails; and I will scatter his torn limbs about the fields, and throughout thy waves, {and} thus let him be united to thee. For I burn: and my passion, {thus} slighted, rages with the greater fury; and I seem to be carrying in my breast Ætna, transferred there with {all} its flames; and yet, Galatea, thou art unmoved.’ 12“Having in vain uttered such complaints (for all this I saw), he rises; and like an enraged bull, when the heifer is taken away from him, he could not stand still, and he wandered in the wood, and the well known forests. When the savage {monster} espied me, and Acis unsuspecting and apprehensive of no such thing; and he exclaimed:-- ‘I see you, and I shall cause this to be the last union for your affection.’ And that voice was as loud as an enraged Cyclop ought, {for his size}, to have. Ætna trembled at the noise; but I, struck with horror, plunged into the adjoining sea. The hero, son of Symæthis, turned his back and fled, and cried,-- ‘Help me, Galatea, I entreat thee; help me, ye parents {of hers}; and admit me, {now} on the point of destruction, within your realms.’ The Cyclop pursued, and hurled a fragment, torn from the mountain; and though the extreme angle only of the rock reached him, yet it entirely crushed Acis. But I did the only thing that was allowed by the Fates to be done, that Acis might assume the properties of his grandsire. The purple blood flowed from beneath the rock, and in a little time the redness began to vanish; and at first it became the colour of a stream muddied by a shower; and, in time, it became clear. Then the rock, that had been thrown, opened, and through the chinks, a reed vigorous and stately arose, and the hollow mouth of the rock resounded with the waters gushing forth. And, wondrous event! 13a youth suddenly emerged, as far as the midriff, having his new-made horns encircled with twining reeds. And he, but that he was of larger stature, and azure in all his features, was Acis {still}. But, even then, still it was Acis, changed into a river; and the stream has since retained that ancient name.” 14[Footnote 68: The Phæacians.--Ver. 719. The Phæacians were the people of the Island of Corcyra (now Corfu), who were so called from Phæax, the son of Neptune. This island was famous for the gardens of Alcinoüs, which are mentioned in the Odyssey. The Corcyrans were the originators of the disastrous Peloponnesian war.] 15[Footnote 69: Buthrotos.--Ver. 721. This was a city of Epirus, not far from Corcyra. It received its name from its founder.] 16[Footnote 70: Galatea.--Ver. 738. She was a sea Nymph, the daughter of Nereus and Doris.] 17[Footnote 71: Daughter of Cratæis.--Ver. 749. Cratæis was a river of Calabria, in Italy. Symæthis was a stream of Sicily, opposite to Calabria.] 18[Footnote 72: The pine tree.--Ver. 782. By way of corroborating this assertion, Boccaccio tells us, that the body of Polyphemus was found in Sicily, his left hand grasping a walking-stick longer than the mast of a ship.] 19[Footnote 73: Fairer than.--Ver. 789. This song of Polyphemus is, in some measure, imitated from that of the Cyclop, in the Eleventh Idyll of Theocritus.] 20[Footnote 74: Snow-white privet.--Ver. 789. Hesiod says, that Galatea had her name from her extreme fairness; γάλα being the Greek word for milk. To this the Poet here alludes.] 21[Footnote 75: Arbute tree.--Ver. 820. The fruit of the arbutus, or strawberry tree, were so extremely sour, that they were called, as Pliny the Elder tells us, ‘unedones;’ because people could not eat more than one. The tree itself was valued for the beauty and pleasing shade of its foliage.] 22[Footnote 76: My figure.--Ver. 841. Virgil and Theocritus also represent Polyphemus as boasting of his good looks.] ‹Previous chapterMetamorphoses 72Next chapterMetamorphoses 74›Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. Public domain in the United States via Project Gutenberg