Metamorphoses, Books VIII-XVRoman MythologyAncient Myth / ComparativeLatinShareMetamorphoses 99Riley, 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›Fables Ii. And Iii. [Xv.60-478]Metamorphoses 99ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1Pythagoras comes to the city of Crotona, and teaches the principles of his philosophy. His reputation draws Numa Pompilius to hear his discourses; on which he expounds his principles, and, more especially, enlarges on the transmigration of the soul, and the practice of eating animal food. 2There was a man, a Samian by birth; but he had fled from both Samos and its rulers,[8] and, through hatred of tyranny, he was a voluntary exile. He too, mentally, held converse with the Gods, although far distant in the region of the heavens; and what nature refused to human vision, he viewed with the eyes of his mind. And when he had examined all things with his mind, and with watchful study, he gave them to be learned by the public; and he sought the crowds of people {as they sat} in silence, and wondered at the revealed origin of the vast universe, and the cause of things, and what nature {meant}, and what was God; whence {came} the snow, what was the cause of lightning; {whether it was} Jupiter, or whether the winds that thundered when the cloud was rent asunder; what it was that shook the earth; by what laws the stars took their course; and whatever {besides} lay concealed {from mortals}. 3He, too, was the first to forbid animals to be served up at table, and he was the first that opened his lips, learned indeed, but still not obtaining credit, in such words as these: “Forbear, mortals, to pollute your bodies with {such} abominable food. There is the corn; there are the apples that bear down the branches by their weight, and {there are} the grapes swelling upon the vines; there are the herbs that are pleasant; there are some that can become tender, and be softened by {the action of} fire. The flowing milk, too, is not denied you, nor honey redolent of the bloom of the thyme. The lavish Earth yields her riches, and her agreable food, and affords dainties without slaughter and bloodshed. The beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh; and yet not all of them; for the horse, and the sheep, and the herds subsist on grass. But those whose disposition is cruel and fierce, the Armenian tigers, and the raging lions, and the bears together with the wolves, revel in their diet with blood. Alas! what a crime is it, for entrails to be buried in entrails, and for one ravening body to grow fat on {other} carcases crammed {into} it; and for one living creature to exist through the death of another living creature! And does, forsooth! amid so great an abundance, which the earth, that best of mothers, produces, nothing delight you but to gnaw with savage teeth the sad {produce of your} wounds, and to revive the habits of the Cyclops? 4And can you not appease the hunger of a voracious and ill-regulated stomach unless you first destroy another? But that age of old, to which we have given the name of ‘Golden,’ was blest in the produce of the trees, and in the herbs which the earth produces, and it did not pollute the mouth with blood. 5“Then, both did the birds move their wings in safety in the air, and the hare without fear wander in the midst of the fields; then its own credulity had not suspended the fish from the hook; every place was without treachery, and in dread of no injury, and was full of peace. Afterwards, {some one}, no good adviser[9] (whoever among mortals he might have been), envied this simple food, and engulphed in his greedy paunch victuals made from a carcase; ’twas he that opened the path to wickedness; and I can believe that the steel, {since} stained with blood, first grew warm from the slaughter of wild beasts. And that had been sufficient. I confess that the bodies {of animals} that seek our destruction are put to death with no breach of the sacred laws; but, although they might be put to death, yet they were not to be eaten as well. Then this wickedness proceeded still further; and the swine is believed to have deserved death as the first victim, because it grubbed up the seeds with its turned-up snout, and cut short the hopes of the year. Having gnawed the vine, the goat was led[10] for slaughter to the altars of the avenging Bacchus. Their own faults were the ruin of the two. But why have you deserved this, ye sheep? a harmless breed, and born for the service of man; who carry the nectar in your full udders; who afford your wool as soft coverings for us, and who assist us more by your life than by your death. 6Why have the oxen deserved this, an animal without guile and deceit, innocent, harmless, born to endure labour? In fact, the man is ungrateful, and not worthy of the gifts of the harvest, who could, just after taking off the weight of the curving plough, slaughter the tiller of his fields; who could strike, with the axe, that neck worn bare with labour, through which he had so oft turned up the hard ground, {and} had afforded so many a harvest. 7“And it is not enough for such wickedness to be committed; they have imputed to the Gods themselves this abomination; and they believe that a Deity in the heavens can rejoice in the slaughter of the laborious ox. A victim free from a blemish, and most beauteous in form (for ’tis being sightly that brings destruction), adorned with garlands and gold, is placed upon the altars, and, in its ignorance, it hears one praying, and sees the corn, which it has helped to produce, placed on its forehead between its horns; and, felled, it stains with its blood the knives perhaps before seen by it in the limpid water. Immediately, they examine the entrails snatched from its throbbing breast, and in them they seek out the intentions of the Deities. Whence comes it that men have so great a hankering for forbidden food? Do you presume to feed {on flesh}, O race of mortals? Do it not, I beseech you; and give attention to my exhortations. And when you shall be presenting the limbs of slaughtered oxen to your palates, know and consider that you are devouring your {tillers of the ground}. And since a God impels me to speak, I will duly obey the God that {so} prompts me to speak; and I will pronounce my own Delphic {warnings}, and disclose the heavens themselves; and I will reveal the oracles of the Divine will. I will sing of wondrous things, never investigated by the intellects of the ancients, and {things} which have long lain concealed. It delights me to range among the lofty stars; 8it delights me, having left the earth and this sluggish spot {far behind}, to be borne amid the clouds, and to be supported on the shoulders of the mighty Atlas; and to look down from afar on minds wandering {in uncertainty}, and devoid of reason; and so to advise them alarmed and dreading extinction, and to unfold the range of things ordained by fate. 9“O race! stricken by the alarms of icy death, why do you dread Styx? why the shades, why empty names, the stock subjects of the poets, and the atonements of an imaginary world? Whether the funeral pile consumes your bodies with flames, or old age with gradual dissolution, believe that they cannot suffer any injury. Souls are not subject to death; and having left their former abode, they ever inhabit new dwellings, and, {there} received, live on. 10“I, myself, for I remember it, in the days of the Trojan war, was Euphorbus,[11] the son of Panthoüs, in whose opposing breast once was planted the heavy spear of the younger son of Atreus. I lately recognised the shield, {once} the burden of my left arm, in the temple of Juno, at Argos, the realm of Abas. All things are {ever} changing; nothing perishes. The soul wanders about and comes from that spot to this, from this to that, and takes possession of any limbs whatever; it both passes from the beasts to human bodies, and {so does} our {soul} into the beasts; and in no {lapse} of time does it perish. And as the pliable wax is moulded into new forms, and no {longer} abides as it was {before}, nor preserves the same shape, but yet is still the same {wax}, so I tell you that the soul is ever the same, but passes into different forms. Therefore, that natural affection may not be vanquished by the craving of the appetite, cease, I warn you, to expel the souls of your kindred {from their bodies} by this dreadful slaughter; and let not blood be nourished with blood. 11“And, since I am {now} borne over the wide ocean, and I have given my full sails to the winds, there is nothing in all the world that continues in the same state. All things are flowing {onward},[12] and every shape is assumed in a fleeting course. Even time itself glides on with a constant progress, no otherwise than a river. For neither can the river, nor the fleeting hour stop in its course; but, as wave is impelled by wave, and the one before is pressed on by that which follows, and {itself} presses on that before it; so do the moments similarly fly on, and similarly do they follow, and they are ever renewed. For the moment which was before, is past; and that which was not, {now} exists; and every minute is replaced. You see, too, the night emerge and proceed onward to the dawn, and this brilliant light of the day succeed the dark night. Nor is there the same appearance in the heavens, when all things in their weariness lie in the midst of repose, and when Lucifer is coming forth on his white steed; and, again, there is another appearance, when {Aurora}, the daughter of Pallas, preceding the day, tints the world about to be delivered to Phœbus. The disk itself of {that} God, when it is rising from beneath the earth, is of ruddy colour in the morning, and when it is hiding beneath the earth it is of a ruddy colour. At its height it is of brilliant whiteness, because there the nature of the æther is purer, and far away, he avoids {all} infection from the earth. 12Nor can there ever be the same or a similar appearance of the nocturnal Diana; and always that of the present day is less than on the morrow, if she is on the increase; {but} greater if she is contracting her orb. 13“And further. Do you not see the year, affording a resemblance of our life, assume four {different} appearances? for, in early Spring, it is mild, and {like} a nursling, and greatly resembling the age of youth. Then, the blade is shooting, and void of strength, it swells, and is flaccid, and delights the husbandman in his expectations. Then, all things are in blossom, and the genial meadow smiles with the tints of its flowers; and not as yet is there any vigour in the leaves. The year {now} waxing stronger, after the Spring, passes into the Summer; and in its youth it becomes robust. And indeed no season is there more vigorous, or more fruitful, or which glows with greater warmth. Autumn follows, the ardour of youth {now} removed, ripe, and placed between youth and old age, moderate in his temperature, with a {few} white hairs sprinkled over his temples. Then comes aged Winter, repulsive with his tremulous steps, either stript of his locks, or white with those which he has. 14“Our own bodies too are changing always and without any intermission, and to-morrow we shall not be what we were or what we {now} are. The time was, when only as embryos, and the earliest hope of human beings, we lived in the womb of the mother. Nature applied her skilful hands, and willed not that our bodies should be tortured {by} being shut up within the entrails of the distended parent, and brought us forth from our dwelling into the vacant air. Brought to light, the infant lies without {any} strength; soon, {like} a quadruped, it uses its limbs after the manner of the brutes; and by degrees it stands upright, shaking, and with knees still unsteady, the sinews being supported by some assistance. Then he becomes strong and swift, and passes over the hours of youth; and the years of middle age, too, now past, he glides adown the steep path of declining age. This undermines and destroys the robustness of former years; and Milo,[13] {now} grown old, weeps when he sees the arms, which equalled those of Hercules in the massiveness of the solid muscles, hang weak and exhausted. The daughter of Tyndarus weeps, too, as she beholds in her mirror the wrinkles of old age, and enquires of herself why it is that she was twice ravished. Thou, Time, the consumer of {all} things, and thou, hateful Old Age, {together} destroy all things; and, by degrees ye consume each thing, decayed by the teeth of age, with a slow death. 15“These things too, which we call elements, are not of unchanging duration; pay attention, and I will teach you what changes they undergo. 16“The everlasting universe contains four elementary bodies. Two of these, {namely}, earth and water, are heavy, and are borne downwards by their weight; and as many are devoid of weight, and air, and fire still purer than air, nothing pressing them, seek the higher regions. Although these are separated in space, yet all things are made from them, and are resolved into them. Both the earth dissolving distils into flowing water; the water, too, evaporating, departs in the breezes and the air; its weight being removed again, the most subtle air shoots upwards into the fires {of the æther} on high. Thence do they return back again, and the same order is unravelled; for fire becoming gross, passes into dense air; this {changes} into water, and earth is formed of the water made dense. Nor does its own form remain to each; and nature, the renewer of {all} things, re-forms one shape from another. And, believe me, in this universe so vast, nothing perishes; but it varies and changes its appearance; and to begin to be something different from what it was before, is called being born; and to cease to be the same thing, {is to be said} to die. Whereas, perhaps, those things are transferred hither, and these things thither; yet, in the whole, all things {ever} exist. 17“For my part, I cannot believe that anything lasts long under the same form. ’Twas thus, ye ages, that ye came down to the iron from the gold; ’tis thus, that thou hast so often changed the lot of {various} places. I have beheld that {as} sea, which once had been the most solid earth. I have seen land made from the sea; and far away from the ocean the sea-shells lay, and old anchors were found {there} on the tops of the mountains. That which was a plain, a current of water has made into a valley, and by a flood the mountain has been levelled into a plain; the ground that was swampy is parched with dry sand; and places which have endured drought, are wet with standing pools. Here nature has opened fresh springs, but there she has shut them up; and rivers have burst forth, aroused by ancient earthquakes; or, vanishing, they have subsided. 18“Thus, after the Lycus[14] has been swallowed up by a chasm in the earth, it burst forth far thence, and springs up afresh at another mouth. Thus the great Erasinus[15] is at one time swallowed up, and then flowing with its stream concealed, is cast up again on the Argive plains. They say, too, that the Mysus, tired of its spring and of its former banks, now flows in another direction, {as} the Caicus. The Amenanus,[16] too, at one time flows, rolling along the Sicilian sands, {and} at another is dry, its springs being stopped up. Formerly, {the water of} the Anigros[17] was used for drinking; it now pours out water which you would decline to touch; since, (unless all credit must be denied to the poets), the {Centaurs}, the double-limbed mortals, there washed the wounds which the bow of the club-bearing Hercules had made. And what besides? Does not the Hypanis[18] too, which before was sweet, rising from the Scythian mountains, become impregnated with bitter salts? Antissa,[19] Pharos,[20] and Phœnician Tyre,[21] were once surrounded by waves; no one of these is now an island. The ancient inhabitants had Leucas[22] annexed to the continent; now the sea surrounds it. Zancle,[23] too, is said to have been united to Italy, until the sea cut off the neighbouring region, and repelled the land with its waves {flowing} between. 19“Should you seek Helice and Buris,[24] cities of Achaia, you will find them beneath the waves, and the sailors are still wont to point out {these} levelled towns, with their walls buried under water. 20“There is a high hill near Trœzen of Pittheus, without any trees, once a very level surface of a plain, {but} now a hill; for (frightful to tell) the raging power[25] of the winds, pent up in dark caverns, desiring to find some vent and having long struggled in vain to enjoy a freer air, as there was no opening in all their prison and it was not pervious to their blasts, swelled out the extended earth, just as the breath of the mouth is wont to inflate a bladder, or the hide[26] stripped from the two-horned goat. That swelling remained on the spot, and {still} preserves the appearance of a high hill, and has grown hard in length of time. Though many other {instances} may occur, either heard of by, or known to, yourselves, {yet} I will mention a few more. And besides, does not water, as well, both produce and receive new forms? In the middle of the day, thy waters, horned Ammon,[27] are frozen, at the rising and at the setting {of the sun} they are warm. On applying its waters, Athamanis[28] is said to kindle wood when the waning moon has shrunk into her smallest orb. The Ciconians have a river,[29] which when drunk of, turns the entrails into stone, and lays {a covering of} marble on things that are touched by it. The Crathis[30] and the Sybaris adjacent to it, in our own country, make the hair similar {in hue} to amber and gold. 21“And, what is still more wonderful, there are some streams which are able to change, not only bodies, but even the mind. By whom has not Salmacis,[31] with its obscene waters, been heard of? {Who has not heard}, too, of that lake of Æthiopia,[32] of which, if any body drinks with his mouth, he either becomes mad, or falls into a sleep wondrous for its heaviness? Whoever quenches his thirst from the Clitorian spring[33] hates wine, and in his sobriety takes pleasure in pure water. Whether it is that there is a virtue in the water, the opposite of heating wine, or whether, as the natives tell us, after the son of Amithaon,[34] by his charms and his herbs, had delivered the raving daughters of Prœtus from the Furies, he threw the medicines for the mind in that stream; and a hatred of wine remained in those waters. 22“The river Lyncestis[35] flows unlike that {stream} in its effect; for as soon as any one has drunk of it with immoderate throat, he reels, just as if he had been drinking unmixed wine. There is a place in Arcadia, (the ancients called it Pheneos,)[36] suspicious for the twofold nature of its water. Stand in dread of it at night; if drunk of in the night time, it is injurious; in the daytime, it is drunk of without any ill effects. So lakes and rivers have, some, one property, and some another. There was a time when Ortygia[37] was floating on the waves, now it is fixed. The Argo dreaded the Symplegades tossed by the assaults of the waves dashing against them; they now stand immoveable, and resist {the attacks of} the winds. 23“Nor will Ætna, which burns with its sulphureous furnaces, always be a fiery {mountain}; nor yet was it always fiery. For, if the earth is an animal, and is alive, and has lungs that breathe forth flames in many a place, it may change the passages for its breathing, and oft as it is moved, may close these caverns {and} open others; or if the light winds are shut up in its lowermost caverns, and strike rocks against rocks, and matter that contains the elements of flame, {and} it takes fire at the concussion, the winds {once} calmed, the caverns will become cool; or, if the bituminous qualities take fire, or yellow sulphur is being dried up with a smouldering smoke, still, when the earth shall no longer give food and unctuous fuel to the flame, its energies being exhausted in length of time, and when nutriment shall be wanting to its devouring nature, it will not {be able to} endure hunger, and left destitute, it will desert its flames. 24“The story is, that in the far Northern Pallene[38] there are persons, who are wont to have their bodies covered with light feathers, when they have nine times entered the Tritonian lake. For my part I do not believe it; {but} the Scythian women, as well, having their limbs sprinkled with poison, are said to employ the same arts. But if we are to give any credit[39] to things proved {by experience}, do you not see that whatever bodies are consumed by length of time, or by dissolving heat, are changed into small animals? Come too, bury some choice bullocks {just} slain, it is a thing well ascertained by experience, {that} flower-gathering bees are produced promiscuously from the putrefying entrails. These, after the manner of their producers, inhabit the fields, delight in toil, and labour in hope. The warlike steed,[40] buried in the ground, is the source of the hornet. If you take off the bending claws from the crab of the sea-shore, {and} bury the rest in the earth, a scorpion will come forth from the part {so} buried, and will threaten with its crooked tail. 25“The silkworms, too, that are wont to cover the leaves with their white threads, a thing observable by husbandmen, change their forms into that of the deadly moth.[41] Mud contains seed that generate green frogs; and it produces them deprived of feet;[42] soon it gives them legs adapted for swimming; and that the same may be fitted for long leaps, the length of the hinder ones exceeds {that of} the fore legs. And it is not a cub[43] which the bear produces at the moment of birth, but a mass of flesh hardly alive. By licking, the mother forms it into limbs, and brings it into a shape, such as she herself has. Do you not see, that the offspring of the honey bees, which the hexagonal cell conceals, are produced without limbs, and that they assume both feet and wings {only} after a time. Unless he knew it was the case, could any one suppose it possible that the bird of Juno, which carries stars on its tail, and the {eagle}, the armour-bearer of Jove, and the doves of Cytherea, and all the race of birds, are produced from the middle portion of an egg? There are some who believe that human marrow changes into a serpent,[44] when the spine has putrefied in the enclosed sepulchre. 26“But these {which I have named} derive their origin from other particulars; there is one bird which renews and reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phœnix. It lives not on corn or grass, but on drops of frankincense, and the juices of the amomum. This {bird}, when it has completed the five ages of its life, with its talons and its crooked beak constructs for itself a nest in the branches of a holm-oak, or on the top of a quivering palm. As soon as it has strewed in this cassia and ears of sweet spikenard and bruised cinnamon with yellow myrrh, it lays itself down on it, and finishes its life in the midst of odours. They say that thence, from the body of its parent, is reproduced a little Phœnix, which is destined to live as many years. When time has given it strength, and it is able to bear the weight, it lightens the branches of the lofty tree of the burden of the nest, and dutifully carries both its own cradle and the sepulchre of its parent; and, having reached the city of Hyperion through the yielding air, it lays it down before the sacred doors in the temple of Hyperion. 27“And if there is any wondrous novelty in these things, {still more} may we be surprised that the hyæna changes its sex,[45] and that the one which has just now, as a female, submitted to the embrace of the male, is now become a male itself. That animal, too, which feeds upon[46] the winds and the air, immediately assumes, from its contact, any colour whatever. Conquered India presented her lynxes to Bacchus crowned with clusters; {and}, as they tell, whatever the bladder of these discharges is changed into stone,[47] and hardens by contact with the air. So coral, too, as soon as it has come up to the air becomes hard; beneath the waves it was a soft plant.[48] “The day will fail me, and Phœbus will bathe his panting steeds in the deep sea, before I can embrace in my discourse all things that are changed into new forms. So in lapse of time, we see nations change, and these gaining strength, {while} those are falling. So Troy was great, both in her riches and her men, and for ten years could afford so much blood; {whereas}, now laid low, she only shows her ancient ruins, and, instead of her wealth, {she points at} the tombs of her ancestors. Sparta was famed;[49] great Mycenæ flourished; so, too, the citadel of Cecrops, and that of Amphion. {Now} Sparta is a contemptible spot; lofty Mycenæ is laid low. What now is Thebes, the city of Œdipus, but a {mere} story? What remains of Athens, the city of Pandion, but its name? 28“Now, too, there is a report that Dardanian Rome is rising; which, close to the waters of Tiber that rises in the Apennines, is laying the foundations of her greatness beneath a vast structure. She then, in her growth, is changing her form, and will one day be the mistress of the boundless earth. So they say that the soothsayers, and the oracles, revealers of destiny, declare; and, so far as I recollect, Helenus, the son of Priam, said to Æneas, as he was lamenting, and in doubt as to his safety, when {now} the Trojan state was sinking, ‘Son of a Goddess, if thou dost thyself well understand the presentiment of my mind, Troy shall not, thou being preserved, entirely fall. The flames and the sword shall afford thee a passage. Thou shalt go, and, together with thee, thou shalt bear ruined Pergamus; until a foreign soil, more friendly than thy native land, shall be the lot of Troy and thyself. Even now do I see that our Phrygian posterity are destined {to build} a city, so great as neither now exists, nor will exist, nor has been seen in former times. Through a long lapse of ages, other distinguished men shall make it powerful, but one born[50] of the blood of Iülus shall make it the mistress of the world. After the earth shall have enjoyed his presence, the æthereal abodes shall gain him, and heaven shall be his destination.’ Remembering it, I call to mind that Helenus prophesied this to Æneas, who bore the Penates {from Troy}; 29and I rejoice that my kindred walls are rising apace, and that to such good purpose for the Phrygians the Pelasgians conquered. 30“But that we may not range afar with steeds that forget to hasten to the goal; the heavens, and whatever there is beneath them, and the earth, and whatever is upon it, change their form. We too, {who are} a portion of the universe, (since we are not only bodies, but are fleeting souls as well, and can enter into beasts {as our} abode, and be hidden within the breasts of the cattle), should allow those bodies which may contain the souls of our parents, or of our brothers, or of those allied with us by some tie, or of men at all events, to be safe and unmolested; and we ought not to fill[51] our entrails with victuals fit for Thyestes. How greatly he disgraces himself, how in his impiety does he prepare himself for shedding human blood, who cuts the throat of the calf with the knife, and gives a deaf ear to its lowings! or who can kill the kid as it sends forth cries like those of a child; or who can feed upon the bird to which he himself has given food. How much is there wanting in these instances for downright criminality? A {short} step {only} is there thence {to it}! 31“Let the bull plough, or let it owe its death to aged years; let the sheep furnish us a defence against the shivering Boreas; let the well-fed she-goats afford their udders to be pressed by the hand. Away with your nets, and your springes and snares and treacherous contrivances; deceive not the bird with the bird-limed twig; deceive not the deer with the dreaded feather foils;[52] and do not conceal the barbed hooks in the deceitful bait. If any thing is noxious, destroy it, but even then only destroy it. Let your appetites abstain from it for food, and let them consume {a more} befitting sustenance.” 32[Footnote 8: And its rulers.--Ver. 61. Pythagoras is said to have fled from the tyranny of Polycrates, the king of Samos.] 33[Footnote 9: No good adviser.--Ver. 103. Clarke translates ‘Non utilis auctor,’ ‘Some good-for-nothing introducer.’] 34[Footnote 10: The goat is led.--Ver 114. See the Fasti, Book I. l. 361.] 35[Footnote 11: Was Euphorbus.--Ver. 161. Diogenes Laërtius, in the life of Pythagoras, says that Pythagoras affirmed, that he was, first, Æthalides; secondly, Euphorbus, which he proved by recognizing his shield hung up among the spoil in the temple of Juno, at Argos; next, Hermotimus; then, Pyrrhus and fifthly, Pythagoras.] 36[Footnote 12: Flowing onward.--Ver. 178. ‘Cuncta fluunt’ is translated by Clarke, ‘All things are in a flux.’] 37[Footnote 13: Milo.--Ver. 229. Milo, of Crotona, was an athlete of such strength that he was said to be able to kill a bull with a blow of his fist, and then to carry it with ease on his shoulders, and afterwards to devour it. His hands being caught within the portions of the trunk of a tree, which he was trying to cleave asunder, he became a prey to wild beasts.] 38[Footnote 14: Lycus.--Ver. 273. There were several rivers of this name. The one here referred to was also called by the name of Marsyas, and flowed past the city of Laodicea, in Lydia.] 39[Footnote 15: Erasinus.--Ver. 276. This was a river of Arcadia, which running out of the Stymphalian marsh, under the name of Stymphalus, disappeared in the earth, and rose again in the Argive territory, under the name of Erasinus.] 40[Footnote 16: Amenanus.--Ver. 279. This was a little river of Sicily, rising in Mount Ætna, and falling into the sea near the city of Catania.] 41[Footnote 17: Anigros.--Ver. 282. The Anigros, flowing from the mountain of Lapitha, in Arcadia, had waters of a fetid smell, in which no fish could exist. Pausanias thinks that this smell proceeded from the soil, and not the water. He adds, that some said that Chiron, others that Polenor, when wounded by the arrow of Hercules, washed the wound in the water of this river, which became impure from its contact with the venom of the Hydra.] 42[Footnote 18: Hypanis.--Ver. 285. Now the Bog. It falls into the Black Sea.] 43[Footnote 19: Antissa.--Ver. 287. This island, in the Ægean Sea, was said to have been formerly united to Lesbos.] 44[Footnote 20: Pharos.--Ver. 287. According to Herodotus, this island was once a whole day’s sail from the main land of Egypt. In later times, having been increased by the mud discharged by the Nile, it was united to the shore by a bridge.] 45[Footnote 21: Tyre.--Ver. 288. Tyre once stood on an island, separated from the shore by a strait, seven hundred paces in width. Alexander the Great, when besieging it, united it to the main land by a causeway. This, however, does not aid the argument of Pythagoras, who intends to recount the changes wrought by nature, and not by the hand of man. Besides, it is not easy to see how Pythagoras could refer to a fact which took place several hundred years after his death.] 46[Footnote 22: Leucas.--Ver. 289. The island of Leucas was formerly a peninsula, on the coast of Acarnania.] 47[Footnote 23: Zancle.--Ver. 290. Under this name he means the whole of the isle of Sicily, which was supposed to have once joined the shores of Italy.] 48[Footnote 24: Helice and Buris.--Ver. 293. We learn from Pliny the Elder and Orosius, that Helice and Buris, cities of Achaia at the mouth of the Corinthian gulf, were swallowed up by an earthquake, and that their remains could be seen in the sea. A similar fate attended Port Royal, in the island of Jamaica, in the year 1692. Its houses are said to be still visible beneath the waves.] 49[Footnote 25: The raging power.--Ver. 299. Pausanias tells us, that in the time of Antigonus, king of Macedonia, warm waters burst from the earth, through the action of subterranean fires, near the city of Trœzen. Perhaps the ‘tumulus’ here mentioned sprang up at the same time.] 50[Footnote 26: Or the hide.--Ver. 305. He alludes to the goat-skins, which formed the ‘utres,’ or leathern bottles, for wine and oil.] 51[Footnote 27: Horned Ammon.--Ver. 309. The lake of Ammon, in Libya, which is here referred to, is thus described by Quintius Curtius (Book IV. c. 7)-- ‘There is also another grove at Ammon; in the middle it contains a fountain, which they call ‘the water of the Sun.’ At daybreak it is tepid; at mid-day, when the heat is intense, it is ice cold. As the evening approaches, it grows warmer; at midnight, it boils and bubbles; and as the morning approaches, its midnight heat goes off.’ Jupiter was worshipped in its vicinity, under the form of a ram.] 52[Footnote 28: Athamanis.--Ver. 311. This wonderful fountain was said to be in Dodona, the grove sacred to Jupiter.] 53[Footnote 29: Have a river.--Ver. 313. Possibly the Hebrus is here meant. The petrifying qualities of some streams is a fact well known to naturalists.] 54[Footnote 30: The Crathis.--Ver. 315. Crathis and Sybaris were streams of Calabria, flowing into the sea, near Crotona. Euripides and Strabo tell the same story of the river Crathis. Pliny the Elder, in his thirty-second Book, says-- ‘Theophrastus tells us that Crathis, a river of the Thurians, produces whiteness, whereas the Sybaris causes blackness, in sheep and cattle. Men, too, are sensible of this difference; for those who drink of the Sybaris, become more swarthy and hardy, with the hair curling; while those who drink of the Crathis become fairer, and more effeminate with the hair straight.’] 55[Footnote 31: Salmacis.--Ver. 319. See Book IV. l. 285.] 56[Footnote 32: Lake of Æthiopia.--Ver. 320. Possibly these may be the waters of trial, mentioned by Porphyry, as being used among the Indians. He says, that, according to their influence on the person accused, when drunk of by him, he was acquitted or condemned.] 57[Footnote 33: Clitorian spring.--Ver. 322. Clitorium was a town of Arcadia. Pliny the Elder, quoting from Varro, mentions the quality here referred to.] 58[Footnote 34: Son of Amithaon.--Ver. 325. Melampus, the physician, the son of Amithaon, cured Mera, Euryale, Lysippe, and Iphianassa, the daughters of Prœtus, king of Argos, of madness, which Venus was said to have inflicted on them for boasting of their superior beauty. Their derangement consisted in the fancy that they were changed into cows. Melampus afterwards married Iphianassa. He was said to have employed the herb hellebore in the cure, which thence obtained the name of ‘melampodium.’] 59[Footnote 35: Lyncestis.--Ver. 329. The Lyncesti were the people of the town of Lyncus, in Epirus. This stream flowed past that place.] 60[Footnote 36: Pheneos.--Ver. 332. Pheneos was the name of a town of Arcadia, afterwards called ‘Nonacris.’ In its neighbourhood, according to Pausanias, was a rock, from which water oozed drop by drop, which the Greeks called ‘the water of Styx.’ At certain periods it was said to be fatal to men and cattle, to break vessels with which it came in contact, and to melt all metals. Ovid is the only author that mentions the difference in its qualities by day and by night.] 61[Footnote 37: Ortygia.--Ver. 337. Ortygia, or Deloe, was said to have floated till it was made fast by Jupiter as a resting-place for Latona, when pregnant with Apollo and Diana. The Symplegades, or Cyanean Islands, were also said to have formerly floated.] 62[Footnote 38: Far Northern Pallene.--Ver. 356. Pallene was the name of a mountain and a city of Thrace. Tritonis was a lake in the neighbourhood. Vibius Sequester says, ‘When a person has nine times bathed himself in the Tritonian lake, in Thrace, he is changed into a bird.’ The continuous fall of fleecy snow in that neighbourhood is supposed by some to have given rise to the story.] 63[Footnote 39: Give any credit.--Ver. 361. This was a very common notion among the ancients. See the story of Aristæus and the recovery of his bees, in the Fourth Book of Virgil’s Georgics, I. 281-314. It is also told by Ovid in the Fasti, Book I. l. 377.] 64[Footnote 40: The warlike steed.--Ver. 368. Pliny the Elder, Nicander, and Varro state that bees and hornets are produced from the carcase of the horse. Pliny also says, that beetles are generated by the putrefying carcase of the ass.] 65[Footnote 41: Deadly moth.--Ver. 374. Pliny, in the twenty-eighth Book of his History, says, ‘The moth, too, that flies at the flame of the lamp, is numbered among the bad potions,’ evidently alluding to their being used in philtres or incantations. There is a kind called the death’s head moth; but it is so called simply from the figure of a skull, which appears very exactly represented on its body, and not on account of any noxious qualities known to be inherent in it.] 66[Footnote 42: Deprived of feet.--Ver. 376. He alludes to frogs when in the tadpole state.] 67[Footnote 43: Not a cub.--Ver. 379. This was long the common belief. Pliny says, speaking of the cub of the bear, ‘These are white and shapeless lumps of flesh, a little bigger than mice, without eyes, and without hair; the claws, however, are prominent. These the dams by degrees reduce to shape.’] 68[Footnote 44: Into a serpent.--Ver. 390. Pliny tells the same story; and Antigonus (on Miracles, ch. 96) goes still further, and says, that the persons to whom this happens, after death, are able to smell the snakes while they are yet alive. The fiction, very probably, was invented with the praiseworthy object of securing freedom from molestation for the bones of the dead.] 69[Footnote 45: Changes its sex.--Ver. 408. Pliny mentions it as a vulgar belief that the hyæna is male and female in alternate years. Aristotle took the pains to confute this silly notion.] 70[Footnote 46: Which feeds upon.--Ver. 411. The idea that the chameleon subsists on wind and air, arose from the circumstance of its sitting with its mouth continually open, that it may catch flies and small insects, its prey. That it changes colour according to the hue of the surrounding objects, is a fact well known. It receives its name from the Greek χάμαι λέων, ‘The lion on the ground.’] 71[Footnote 47: Changed into stone.--Ver. 415. Pliny says, that this becomes hard, and turns into gems, like the carbuncle, being of a fiery tint, and that the stone has the name of ‘lyncurium.’ Beckmann (Hist. Inventions) thinks that this was probably the jacinth, or hyacinth, while others suppose it to have been the tourmaline, or transparent amber.] 72[Footnote 48: A soft plant.--Ver. 417. Modern improvement in knowledge has shown that coral is not a plant, but an animal substance.] 73[Footnote 49: Sparta was famed.--Ver. 426-30. These lines are looked upon by many Commentators as spurious, as they are omitted in most MSS. Besides, all these cities were flourishing in the time of Pythagoras. If they are genuine, Ovid is here guilty of a series of anachronisms.] 74[Footnote 50: But one born.--Ver. 447. This was Octavius, the adopted son of Julius Cæsar. According to Suetonius, he traced his descent, through his mother, from Ascanius or Iülus.] 75[Footnote 51: Ought not to fill.--Ver. 462. Clarke’s quaint translation is, ‘And let us not cram our g--ts with Thyestian victuals.’] 76[Footnote 52: Feather foils.--Ver. 475. He alludes to the ‘formido;’ which was made of coloured feathers, and was used to scare the deer into the toils.] ‹Previous chapterMetamorphoses 98Next chapterMetamorphoses 100›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