Metamorphoses, Books VIII-XVRoman MythologyAncient Myth / ComparativeLatinShareMetamorphoses 87Riley, Books VIII-XV - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 availableRiley, Books VIII-XVLanguageEnglishEspañol‹Metamorphoses 1Metamorphoses 2Metamorphoses 3Metamorphoses 4Metamorphoses 5Metamorphoses 6Metamorphoses 7Metamorphoses 8Metamorphoses 9Metamorphoses 10Metamorphoses 11Metamorphoses 12Metamorphoses 13Metamorphoses 14Metamorphoses 15Metamorphoses 16Metamorphoses 17Metamorphoses 18Metamorphoses 19Metamorphoses 20Metamorphoses 21Metamorphoses 22Metamorphoses 23Metamorphoses 24Metamorphoses 25Metamorphoses 26Metamorphoses 27Metamorphoses 28Metamorphoses 29Metamorphoses 30Metamorphoses 31Metamorphoses 32Metamorphoses 33Metamorphoses 34Metamorphoses 35Metamorphoses 36Metamorphoses 37Metamorphoses 38Metamorphoses 39Metamorphoses 40Metamorphoses 41Metamorphoses 42Metamorphoses 43Metamorphoses 44Metamorphoses 45Metamorphoses 46Metamorphoses 47Metamorphoses 48Metamorphoses 49Metamorphoses 50Metamorphoses 51Metamorphoses 52Metamorphoses 53Metamorphoses 54Metamorphoses 55Metamorphoses 56Metamorphoses 57Metamorphoses 58Metamorphoses 59Metamorphoses 60Metamorphoses 61Metamorphoses 62Metamorphoses 63Metamorphoses 64Metamorphoses 65Metamorphoses 66Metamorphoses 67Metamorphoses 68Metamorphoses 69Metamorphoses 70Metamorphoses 71Metamorphoses 72Metamorphoses 73Metamorphoses 74Metamorphoses 75Metamorphoses 76Metamorphoses 77Metamorphoses 78Metamorphoses 79Metamorphoses 80Metamorphoses 81Metamorphoses 82Metamorphoses 83Metamorphoses 84Metamorphoses 85Metamorphoses 86Metamorphoses 87Metamorphoses 88Metamorphoses 89Metamorphoses 90Metamorphoses 91Metamorphoses 92Metamorphoses 93Metamorphoses 94Metamorphoses 95Metamorphoses 96Metamorphoses 97Metamorphoses 98Metamorphoses 99Metamorphoses 100Metamorphoses 101Metamorphoses 102Metamorphoses 103Metamorphoses 104Metamorphoses 105Metamorphoses 106›Fable Vi. [Xiv.320-440]Metamorphoses 87ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1Circe, being enamoured of Picus, and being unable to shake his constancy to his wife Canens, transforms him into a woodpecker, and his retinue into various kinds of animals. Canens pines away with grief at the loss of her husband, and the place where she disappears afterwards bears her name. 2“‘Picus, the son of Saturn, was a king in the regions of Ausonia, an admirer of horses useful in warfare. The form of this person was such as thou beholdest. Thou thyself {here} mayst view his comeliness, and thou mayst approve of his real form from this feigned resemblance of it. His disposition was equal to his beauty; and not yet, in his age, could he have beheld four times the {Olympic} contest celebrated each fifth year in the Grecian Elis. He had attracted, by his {good} looks, the Dryads, born in the hills of Latium; the Naiads, the fountain Deities, wooed him; {Nymphs}, which Albula,[28] and which the waters of Numicus, and which those of Anio, and Almo but very short[29] in its course, and the rapid Nar,[30] and Farfarus,[31] with its delightful shades, produced, and those which haunt the forest realms of the Scythian[32] Diana, and the neighbouring streams. 3“‘Yet, slighting all these, he was attached to one Nymph, whom, on the Palatine hill, Venilia is said once to have borne to the Ionian Janus.[33] Soon as she was ripe with marriageable years, she was presented to Laurentine Picus, preferred {by her} before all others; wondrous, indeed, was she in her beauty, but more wondrous still, through her skill in singing; thence she was called Canens.[34] She was wont, with her voice, to move the woods and the rocks, and to tame the wild beasts, and to stop {the course of} the long rivers, and to detain the fleeting birds. While she was singing her songs with her feminine voice, Picus had gone from his dwelling into the Laurentine fields, to pierce the wild boars there bred; and he was pressing the back of his spirited horse, and was carrying two javelins in his left hand, having a purple cloak fastened with yellow gold. The daughter of the Sun, too, had come into the same wood; and that she might pluck fresh plants on the fruitful hills, she had left behind the Circæan fields, {so} called after her own name. 4“‘Hidden by the shrubs, soon as she beheld the youth, she was astounded; the plants which she had gathered fell from her bosom, and a flame seemed to pervade her entire marrow. As soon as she regained her presence of mind from {so} powerful a shock, she was about to confess what she desired; the speed of his horse, and the surrounding guards, caused that she could not approach. ‘And yet thou shalt not escape me,’ she said, ‘even shouldst thou be borne on the winds, if I only know myself, if all potency in herbs has not vanished, and if my charms do not deceive me.’ {Thus} she said; and she formed the phantom of a fictitious wild boar, with no substance, and commanded it to run past the eyes of the king, and to seem to go into a forest, thick set with trees, where the wood is most dense, and where the spot is inaccessible to a horse. There is no delay; Picus, forthwith, unconsciously follows the phantom of the prey; hastily too, he leaves the reeking back of his steed, and, in pursuit of a vain hope, wanders on foot in the lofty forest. She repeats prayers to herself, and utters magical incantations, and adores strange Gods in strange verses, with which she is wont both to darken the disk of the snow-white moon, and to draw the clouds that suck up the moisture, over the head of her father. Then does the sky become lowering at the repeating of the incantation, and the ground exhales its vapours; 5and his companions wander along the darkened paths, and his guards are separated from the king. 6“‘She, having now gained a {favourable} place and opportunity, says, ‘O, most beauteous {youth}! by thy eyes, which have captivated mine, and by this graceful person, which makes me, though a Goddess, to be thy suppliant, favour my passion, and receive the Sun, that beholds all things, as thy father-in-law, and do not in thy cruelty despise Circe, the daughter of Titan.’ {Thus} she says. He roughly repels her and her entreaties: and he says, ‘Whoever thou art, I am not for thee; another female holds me enthralled, and for a long space of time, I pray, may she so hold me. I will not pollute the conjugal ties with the love of a stranger, while the Fates shall preserve for me Canens, the daughter of Janus.’ The daughter of Titan, having often repeated her entreaties in vain, says, ‘Thou shalt not depart with impunity, nor shalt thou return to Canens; and by experience shalt thou learn what one slighted, what one in love, what a woman, can do; but that one in love, and slighted, and a woman, is Circe.’ 7“‘Then twice did she turn herself to the West, and twice to the East; thrice did she touch the youth with her wand; three charms did she repeat. He fled; wondering that he sped more swiftly than usual, he beheld wings on his body; and indignant that he was added suddenly as a strange bird to the Latian woods, he struck the wild oaks with his hard beak, and, in his anger, inflicted wounds[35] on the long branches. His wings took the purple colour of his robe. The piece of gold that had formed a buckle, and had fastened his garment, became feathers, and his neck was encompassed with {the colour of} yellow gold; and nothing {now} remained to Picus of his former {self}, beyond the name. 8“‘In the meantime his attendants, having, often in vain, called on Picus throughout the fields, and, having found him in no direction, meet with Circe, (for now she has cleared the air, and has allowed the clouds to be dispersed by the woods and the sun); and they charge her with just accusations, and demand back their king, and are using violence, and are preparing to attack her with ruthless weapons. She scatters noxious venom and poisonous extracts; and she summons together Night, and the Gods of Night, from Erebus and from Chaos, and she invokes Hecate in magic howlings. Wondrous to tell, the woods leap from their spot; the ground utters groans, the neighbouring trees become pallid, the grass becomes moist, besprinkled with drops of blood; the stones seem to send forth harsh lowings, the dogs {seem} to bark, and the ground to grow loathsome with black serpents, and unsubstantial ghosts of the departed {appear} to flit about. The multitude trembles, astonished at these prodigies; she touches their astonished faces, as they tremble, with her enchanted wand. From the touch of this, the monstrous forms of various wild beasts come upon the young men; his own form remains to no one of them. 9“‘The setting Sun has {now} borne down upon the Tartessian shores;[36] and in vain is her husband expected, both by the eyes and the longings of Canens. Her servants and the people run about through all the woods, and carry lights to meet him. Nor is it enough for the Nymph to weep, and to tear her hair, and to beat her breast; though all this she does, she rushes forth, and, in her distraction, she wanders through the Latian fields. Six nights, and as many returning lights of the Sun, beheld her, destitute of sleep and of food, going over hills and valleys, wherever chance led her. Tiber, last {of all}, beheld her, worn out with weeping and wandering, and reposing her body on his cold banks. There, with tears, she poured forth words attuned, lamenting, in a low voice, her very woes, as when the swan, now about to die, sings his own funereal dirge. 10“‘At last, melting with grief, {even} to her thin marrow, she pined away, and by degrees vanished into light air. Yet the Fame of it became attached to the spot, which the ancient Muses have properly called Canens, after the name of the Nymph.’ During that long year, many such things as these were told me and were seen {by me}. Sluggish and inactive through idleness, we were ordered again to embark on the deep, again to set our sails. The daughter of Titan had said that dangerous paths, and a protracted voyage, and the perils of the raging sea were awaiting us. I was alarmed, I confess; and having reached these shores, {here} I remained.” 11[Footnote 28: Albula.--Ver. 328. The ancient name of the river Tiber was Albula. It was so called from the whiteness of its water.] 12[Footnote 29: But very short.--Ver. 329. The Almo falls in the Tiber, close to its own source, whence its present epithet.] 13[Footnote 30: Rapid Nar.--Ver. 330. The ‘Nar’ was a river of Umbria, which fell into the Tiber.] 14[Footnote 31: Farfarus.--Ver. 330. This river, flowing slowly through the valleys of the country of the Sabines, received a pleasant shade from the trees with which its banks were lined.] 15[Footnote 32: Scythian.--Ver. 331. He alludes to the statue of the Goddess Diana, which, with her worship, Orestes was said to have brought from the Tauric Chersonesus, and to have established at Aricia, in Latium. See the Fasti, Book III. l. 263, and Note.] 16[Footnote 33: Ionian Janus.--Ver. 334. Janus was so called because he was thought to have come from Thessaly, and to have crossed the Ionian Sea.] 17[Footnote 34: Canens.--Ver. 338. This name literally means ‘singing,’ being the present participle of the Latin verb ‘cano,’ ‘to sing.’] 18[Footnote 35: Inflicted wounds.--Ver. 392. The woodpecker is supposed to tap the bark of the tree with his beak, to ascertain, from the sound, if it is hollow, and if there are any insects beneath it.] 19[Footnote 36: Tartessian shores.--Ver. 416. ‘Tartessia’ is here used as a general term for Western, as Tartessus was a city of the Western coast of Spain. It afterwards had the name of Carteia, and is thought to have been situated not far from the site of the present Cadiz, at the mouth of the Bætis, now called the Guadalquivir. Some suppose this name to be the same with the Tarshish of Scripture.] ‹Previous chapterMetamorphoses 86Next chapterMetamorphoses 88›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