I Will Bring Light to This Again King Phoebus Fitti

Ovid: The Metamorphoses

Book I

• Home
• Download
• Buy This Book

• Adjacent

Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2000 All Rights Reserved

This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for whatsoever non-commercial purpose. Weather condition and Exceptions utilise.

---

Contents

• Bk I:ane-20 The Fundamental Chaos.
• Bk I:21-31 Separation of the elements.
• Bk I:32-51 The earth and sea. The 5 zones.
• Bk I:52-68 The four winds.
• Bk I:68-88 Humankind.
• Bk I:89-112 The Golden Age.
• Bk I:113-124 The Silver Age.
• Bk I:125-150 The Bronze and Iron Ages.
• Bk I:151-176 The giants.
• Bk I:177-198 Jupiter threatens to destroy humankind.
• Bk I:199-243 Lycaon is turned into a wolf
• Bk I:244-273 Jupiter invokes the floodwaters.
• Bk I:274-292 The Flood.
• Bk I:293-312 The world is drowned.
• Bk I:313-347 Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha.
• Bk I:348-380 They ask Themis for help.
• Bk I:381-415 The man race is re-created.
• Bk I:416-437 Other species are generated.
• Bk I:438-472 Phoebus kills the Python and sees Daphne.
• Bk I: 473-503 Phoebus pursues Daphne.
• Bk I:504-524 Phoebus begs Daphne to yield to him.
• Bk I:525-552 Daphne becomes the laurel bender.
• Bk I:553-567 Phoebus honours Daphne.
• Bk I:568-587 Inachus mourns for Io.
• Bk I:587-600 Jupiter's rape of Io.
• Bk I:601-621 Jupiter transforms Io to a heifer.
• Bk I:622-641 Juno claims Io and Argus guards her.
• Bk I:642-667 Inachus finds Io and grieves for her.
• Bk I:668-688 Jupiter sends Mercury to kill Argus.
• Bk I:689-721 Mercury tells the story of Syrinx.
• Bk I:722-746 Io is returned to human form.
• Bk I:747-764 Phaethon's parentage.
• Bk I:765-779 Phaethon sets out for the Palace of the Sun.

---

Bk I: 1-20 The Cardinal Chaos

I desire to speak almost bodies changed into new forms. You, gods, since you lot are the ones who modify these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world's showtime origins to my own time.

Before in that location was world or sea or the heaven that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole earth: what nosotros call chaos: a raw confused mass, goose egg just inert matter, desperately combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the ane place. There was no Titan yet, shining his light on the world, or waxing Phoebe renewing her white horns, or the earth hovering in surrounding air balanced by her own weight, or watery Amphitrite stretching out her arms along the vast shores of the world. Though there was state and sea and air, it was unstable land, unswimmable h2o, air needing light. Zippo retained its shape, 1 thing obstructed another, because in the one trunk, cold fought with estrus, moist with dry, soft with hard, and weight with weightless things.

Bk I: 21-31 Separation of the elements

This conflict was ended by a god and a greater order of nature, since he separate off the globe from the heaven, and the ocean from the country, and divided the transparent heavens from the dumbo air. When he had disentangled the elements, and freed them from the obscure mass, he stock-still them in divide spaces in harmonious peace. The weightless fire, that forms the heavens, darted upwardly to make its habitation in the furthest heights. Next came air in lightness and place. Earth, heavier than either of these, drew downward the largest elements, and was compressed past its own weight. The surrounding water took up the last infinite and enclosed the solid earth.

Bk I: 32-51 The globe and bounding main. The five zones.

When whichever god it was had ordered and divided the mass, and nerveless it into split up parts, he first gathered the earth into a corking brawl and then that it was uniform on all sides. So he ordered the seas to spread and ascension in waves in the flowing winds and pour around the coasts of the encircled country. He added springs and standing pools and lakes, and independent in shelving banks the widely separated rivers, some of which are swallowed by the world itself, others of which attain the ocean and entering the expanse of open waters crush against coastlines instead of riverbanks. He ordered the plains to extend, the valleys to subside, leaves to hide the trees, stony mountains to ascension: and just as the heavens are divided into ii zones to the northward and two to the south, with a fifth and hotter betwixt them, and so the god carefully marked out the enclosed matter with the same number, and described as many regions on the globe. The equatorial zone is too hot to be habitable; the two poles are covered past deep snow; and he placed 2 regions between and gave them a temperate climate mixing heat and common cold.

Bk I: 52-68 The four winds

Air overhangs them, heavier than burn down past as much as water'due south weight is lighter than earth. There he ordered the clouds and vapours to be, and thunder to shake the minds of man beings, and winds that create lightning-bolts and flashes.

The globe's maker did non 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 form: like the discord between brothers. Eurus, the east current of air, drew back to the realms of Aurora, to Nabatea, Persia, and the heights under the morning lite: Evening, and the coasts that cool in the setting lord's day, are close to Zephyrus, the west air current. Chill Boreas, the north wind, seized Scythia and the seven stars of the Plough: while the south wind, Auster, drenches the lands reverse with ceaseless clouds and rain. Above these he placed the transparent, weightless heavens complimentary of the dross of world.

Bk I: 68-88 Humankind

He had barely separated out everything within stock-still limits when the constellations that had been hidden for a long time in night fog began to bonfire out throughout the whole heaven. And and then that no region might lack its ain 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 information technology from the divine, or the newborn globe but fatigued from the highest heavens still contained fragments related to the skies, so that Prometheus, blending them with streams of pelting, moulded them into an image of the all-controlling gods. While other animals look down at the basis, he gave human beings an upturned attribute, commanding them to wait towards the skies, and, upright, raise their face to the stars. So the world, that had been, a moment agone, uncarved and imageless, changed and causeless the unknown shapes of human being beings.

Bk I: 89-112 The Golden Age

This was the Golden Age that, without coercion, without laws, spontaneously nurtured the good and the truthful. There was no fear or penalization: there were no threatening words to be read, fixed in statuary, no crowd of suppliants fearing the judge'southward face up: they lived safely without protection. No pine tree felled in the mountains had yet reached the flowing waves to travel to other lands: human being beings only knew their ain 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 nutrient 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 beingness seeded. And so 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 love trickled from the light-green holm oak.

Bk I: 113-124 The Silver Historic period

When Saturn was banished to gloomy Tartarus, and Jupiter ruled the world, and so came the people of the age of silver that is inferior to gilt, more than valuable than yellowish bronze. Jupiter shortened spring'southward first elapsing and made the year consist of 4 seasons, winter, summertime, changeable autumn, and brief leap. Then parched air beginning glowed white scorched with the heat, and ice hung downwards frozen by the wind. Then houses were first made for shelter: earlier that homes had been fabricated in caves, and dumbo thickets, or under branches fastened with bawl. So seeds of corn were beginning buried in the long furrows, and bullocks groaned, encumbered under the yoke.

Bk I: 125-150 The Bronze and Iron Ages

Third came the people of the bronze historic period, with fiercer natures, readier to indulge in savage warfare, merely non yet barbarous. The harsh fe historic period 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 cognition of their use, and the ships' keels that once were trees standing amongst high mountains, now leaped through uncharted waves. The country that was one time common to all, every bit 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 nutrient the rich soil owed them, simply they entered the bowels of the globe, and excavating brought upward the wealth it had curtained in Stygian shade, wealth that incites men to crime. And at present harmful fe appeared, and aureate more than harmful than fe. State of war came, whose struggles employ both, waving ambivalent artillery with bloodstained hands. They lived on plunder: friend was non prophylactic with friend, relative with relative, kindness was rare betwixt brothers. Husbands longed for the expiry 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 fourth dimension. Piety was dead, and virgin Astraea, terminal of all the immortals to depart, herself abased the blood-drenched earth.

Bk I: 151-176 The giants

Rendering the heights of sky no safer than the earth, they say the giants attempted to accept the Celestial kingdom, piling mountains up to the afar stars. And so 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 being beings. But these progeny also despising the gods were fell, vehement, and eager for slaughter, so that you might know they were born from blood.

When Saturn'southward son, the male parent 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 heed filled with a dandy anger fitting for Jupiter, and he chosen the gods to council, a summons that brooked no delay.

In that location is a high track, seen when the sky is clear, called the Milky Way, and known for its brightness. This mode the gods pass to the palaces and halls of the mighty Thunderer. To correct and left are the houses of the greater gods, doors open and crowded. The bottom gods live elsewhere. Here the powerful and distinguished accept made their home. This is the place, if I were to be bold, I would not be agape to call high heaven'due south Palatine.

Bk I: 177-198 Jupiter threatens to destroy humankind

When the gods had taken their seats in the marble council bedchamber their male monarch, sitting high higher up them, leaning on his ivory sceptre, shook his formidable mane 3 times and and then a 4th, disturbing the earth, body of water and stars. Then he opened his lips in indignation and spoke. 'I was not more troubled than I am now concerning the globe's sovereignty than when each of the snake-footed giants prepared to throw his hundred artillery around the imprisoned sky. Though they were violent enemies, still their attack came in one body and from one source. Now I must destroy the human being race, wherever Nereus sounds, throughout the world. I swear it by the infernal streams, that glide below the globe through the Stygian groves. All means should first be tried, but the incurable mankind must exist excised by the knife, and then that the good for you part is not infected. Mine are the demigods, the wild spirits, nymphs, fauns and satyrs, and sylvan deities of the hills. Since we take not yet idea them worth a identify in heaven let us at least allow them to live in condom in the lands nosotros have given them. Perhaps you gods believe they volition be safe, fifty-fifty when Lycaon, known for his savagery, plays tricks against me, who holds the thunderbolt, and reigns over you.'

Bk I: 199-243 Lycaon is turned into a wolf

All the gods murmured aloud and, zealously and eagerly, demanded penalty 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 past fear of merely 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. Afterwards he had checked their murmuring with voice and gesture, they were all silent. When the noise had subsided, quieted past his regal potency, Jupiter again broke the silence with these words: 'Take no fear, he has indeed been punished, simply I volition tell you his offense, and what the penalisation was. News of these evil times had reached my ears. Hoping information technology imitation I left Olympus's heights, and travelled the earth, a god in homo form. It would take too long to tell what wickedness I plant 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, every bit the terminal shadows gave style 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 volition not exist in dubiousness.' He planned to destroy me in the depths of sleep, unexpectedly, by night. That is how he resolved to testify the truth. Non satisfied with this he took a hostage sent past 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 voice communication. Foaming at the mouth, and greedy every bit ever for killing, he turned against the sheep, yet delighting in blood. His apparel became bristling pilus, his arms became legs. He was a wolf, just kept some vestige of his former shape. In that location were the same grey hairs, the same violent face up, the same glittering eyes, the same barbarous paradigm. One house has fallen, only others deserve to also. Wherever the globe 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.'

Bk I: 244-273 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 exist free of humanity. Who would honor their altars with incense? Did he mean to surrender the world to the ravages of wild creatures? In reply the king of the gods calmed their anxiety, the rest would be his business organisation, and he promised them a people different from the get-go, of a marvellous creation.

Now he was fix to bung 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 bounding main and land, and the untouched courts of the skies would ignite, and the troubled mass of the globe be besieged past fire. So he gear up aside the weapons the Cyclopes forged, and resolved on a different punishment, to send down rain from the whole heaven and drown humanity below the waves.

Directly away he shut up the n winds in Aeolus's caves, with the gales that disperse the gathering clouds, and permit loose the south air current, 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 brow, 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 dumbo vapours pour downwards pelting 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.

Bk I: 274-292 The Flood

Jupiter's anger is not satisfied with simply 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'south house, says 'At present 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 class to the sea.

Neptune himself strikes the basis with his trident, then that it trembles, and with that blow opens up channels for the waters. Overflowing, the rivers blitz across the open plains, sweeping away at the aforementioned time not just orchards, flocks, houses and human beings, but sacred temples and their contents. Any building that has stood firm, surviving the bully 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 non distinct, all is the ocean, the body of water without a shore.

Bk I: 293-312 The world is drowned

There one homo escapes to a hilltop, while another seated in his rowing boat pulls the oars over places where lately he was ploughing. 1 homo sails over his cornfields or over the roof of his drowned farmhouse, while some other man fishes in the topmost branches of an elm. Sometimes, by adventure, 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 h2o. At that place are dolphins in the copse: disturbing the upper branches and stirring the oak-copse as they castor 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 trounce against the mountaintops. The waters wash away most living things, and those the body of water spares, lacking nutrient, are defeated past tiresome starvation.

Bk I: 313-347 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 area 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-scale gunkhole, everywhere else existence drowned by the waters, they worshipped the Corycian nymphs, the mountain gods, and the goddess of the oracles, prophetic Themis.

No i 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 simply one man was left of all those thousands of men, just 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 northward air current, and revealed the heavens to the earth and the earth to the sky. It was no longer an aroused bounding main, since the rex of the oceans putting bated 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 bespeak to render. He lifted the hollow shell that coils from its base in broad spirals, that crush that filled with his breath in mid-bounding main makes the eastern and the western shores audio. So now when it touched the god'south mouth, and dripping beard, and sounded out the lodge 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 testify their naked tops, the slime however clinging to their leaves.

Bk I: 348-380 They ask Themis for help

The globe was restored. Just 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, and so past the union bed, and now joined to me in danger, we two are the people of all the countries seen past the setting and the rise sunday, the sea took all the balance. Even now our lives are non guaranteed with certainty: the storm clouds still terrify my listen. How would you feel now, poor soul, if the fates had willed y'all to be saved, but not me? How could yous endure your fear lonely? Who would comfort your tears? Believe me, dear wife, if the sea had you, I would follow you lot, and the bounding main would take me too. If merely I, by my father's arts, could recreate globe'southward peoples, and exhale life into the shaping dirt! The human being race remains in u.s.a.. The gods willed information technology that we are the only examples of mankind left behind.' He spoke and they wept, resolving to entreatment to the heaven-god, and enquire 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 wear with its watery libations, they traced their steps to the temple of the sacred goddess, whose pediments were greenish with disfiguring moss, her altars without fire. When they reached the steps of the sanctuary they fell frontwards together and lay prone on the ground, and kissing the common cold stone with trembling lips, said 'If the gods' wills soften, appeased by the prayers of the but, if in this fashion their anger can be deflected, Themis tell us by what art the damage to our race can be repaired, and bring assist, most gentle one, to this drowned world!'

Bk I: 381-415 The human race is re-created

The goddess was moved, and uttered oracular speech: 'Exit the temple and with veiled heads and loosened clothes throw backside you the bones of your smashing female parent!' For a long fourth dimension they stand there, dumbfounded. Pyrrha is commencement to break the silence: she refuses to obey the goddess's command. Her lips trembling she asks for pardon, fearing to offend her female parent'south spirit by handful 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 serenity words: 'Either this thought is wrong, or, since oracles are godly and never urge evil, our groovy mother must be the world: I remember the bones she spoke almost are stones in the body of the earth. Information technology is these nosotros are told to throw behind u.s.a..'

Though the Titan'due south daughter is stirred by her husband'south thoughts, withal promise is uncertain: they are both so unsure of the divine promptings; only what harm can information technology do to try? They descended the steps, covered their heads and loosened their clothes, and threw the stones needed backside them. The stones, and who would believe information technology if it were not for ancient tradition, began to lose their rigidity and hardness, and after a while softened, and in one case softened acquired new course. 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 mankind; what was solid and inflexible mutated to os; the veins stayed veins; and quickly, through the power of the gods, stones the human threw took on the shapes of men, and women were remade from those thrown past 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.

Bk I: 416-437 Other species are generated

Earth spontaneously created other diverse forms of beast life. After the remaining wet had warmed in the sun's fire, the moisture mud of the marshlands swelled with heat, and the fertile seeds of things, nourished past life-giving soil as if in a female parent'south womb, grew, and in time acquired a nature. Then, when the vii-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 plough the lumps of world. Amongst them they see some only spawned, on the border of life, some with incomplete bodies and number of limbs, and often in the same matter one role is alive and the other is raw earth. In fact when oestrus and moisture are mixed they excogitate, 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 globe dirty from the recent flood glowed once again heated by the deep heaven-sent light of the sun she produced innumerable species, partly remaking previous forms, partly creating new monsters.

Bk I: 438-472 Phoebus kills the Python and sees Daphne

Indeed, though she would not have desired to, she and then gave birth to yous, corking Python, roofing so bully an area of the mount slopes, a ophidian not known before, a terror to the new race of men. The archer god, with lethal shafts that he had just used before on fleeing cherry-red deer and roe deer, with a m arrows, well-nigh emptying his quiver, destroyed the creature, the venom running out from its black wounds. So he founded the sacred Pythian games, historic by contests, named from the snake he had conquered. There the young winners in boxing, in foot and chariot racing, were honoured with oak wreaths. There was no laurel every bit yet, then Phoebus crowned his temples, his handsome curling hair, with leaves of whatsoever tree.

Phoebus's first dearest 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 snake, had seen him bending his tightly strung bow and said 'Impudent boy, what are y'all doing with a man'southward 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. Yous should be intent on stirring the concealed fires of honey with your burning brand, not laying claim to my glories!' Venus's son replied 'You lot may hit every other affair Phoebus, only my bow will strike yous: to the caste 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 ane that kindles is golden with a sharp glistening bespeak, the one that dispels is blunt with lead below its shaft. With the 2nd he transfixed Peneus's daughter, but with the first he wounded Apollo piercing him to the marrow of his basic.

Bk I: 473-503 Phoebus pursues Daphne

Now the one loved, and the other fled from beloved's name, taking delight in the depths of the forest, 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 matrimony might be. Her father often said 'Girl you lot owe me a son-in-police', and once again oft 'Daughter, you owe me grandsons.' Just, hating the wedding torch as if it smacked of offense she would blush red with shame all over her beautiful face, and clinging to her father's neck with coaxing artillery, she would say 'Beloved father, allow me be a virgin for ever! Diana'due south begetter 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 wednesday her, and hopes for what he desires, but his own oracular powers fail him. As the light stubble of an empty cornfield blazes; every bit sparks fire a hedge when a traveller, past mischance, lets them go too close, or forgets them in the morn; and then the god was altered past the flames, and all his heart burned, feeding his useless desire with hope. He sees her disordered pilus hanging near her neck and sighs 'What if it were properly dressed?' He gazes at her eyes sparkling with the effulgence of starlight. He gazes on her lips, where mere gazing does not satisfy. 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.

Bk I: 504-524 Phoebus begs Daphne to yield to him

'Expect nymph, daughter of Peneus, I beg you lot! I who am chasing you am non your enemy. Nymph, Wait! This is the mode a sheep runs from the wolf, a deer from the mountain panthera leo, and a dove with fluttering wings flies from the hawkeye: everything flies from its foes, but it is love that is driving me to follow you! Pity me! I am afraid yous might fall headlong or thorns undeservedly scar your legs and I exist a cause of grief to you! These are rough places you run through. Ho-hum downward, I ask you, check your flight, and I too will ho-hum. At least inquire whom it is yous have overjoyed. I am no mountain man, no shepherd, no rough guardian of the herds and flocks. Rash girl, you do not know, yous cannot realise, who you run from, and so y'all 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, only an arrow truer than mine, has wounded my free heart! The whole world calls me the bringer of aid; medicine is my invention; my ability is in herbs. But love cannot be healed by whatsoever herb, nor can the arts that cure others cure their lord!'

Bk I: 525-552 Daphne becomes the laurel bough

He would accept said more as timid Peneïs ran, still lovely to meet, leaving him with his words unfinished. The winds bared her torso, the opposing breezes in her way fluttered her clothes, and the light airs threw her streaming hair behind her, her beauty enhanced past flying. Only the young god could no longer waste matter time on further blandishments, urged on past Amor, he ran on at full speed. Like a hound of Gaul starting a hare in an empty field, that heads for its casualty, 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 want, she past 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 cervix. Her force was gone, she grew pale, overcome past the effort of her rapid flying, and seeing Peneus's waters about cried out 'Help me male parent! If your streams have divine powers modify me, destroy this beauty that pleases too well!' Her prayer was scarcely done when a heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bawl 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.

Bk I: 553-567 Phoebus honours Daphne

Even like this Phoebus loved her and, placing his hand against the trunk, he felt her middle still quivering under the new bark. He clasped the branches as if they were parts of man arms, and kissed the woods. Merely fifty-fifty the wood shrank from his kisses, and the god said 'Since you cannot be my bride, you lot must be my tree! Laurel, with you my hair will be wreathed, with you lot my lyre, with y'all my quiver. You will go with the Roman generals when joyful voices acclamation their triumph, and the Capitol witnesses their long processions. You will stand up outside Augustus's doorposts, a faithful guardian, and go along watch over the crown of oak between them. And just as my caput with its un-cropped hair is always immature, then you also will habiliment the beauty of undying leaves.' Paean had done: the laurel bowed her newly fabricated branches, and seemed to shake her leafy crown like a head giving consent.

Bk I: 568-587 Inachus mourns for Io

In that location is a grove in Haemonia, closed in on every side past wooded cliffs. They telephone call information technology Tempe. Through it the river Peneus rolls, with foaming waters, out of the roots of Pindus, and in its tearing fall gathers clouds, driving the smoking mists forth, raining down spray onto the tree tops, and deafening remoter places with its roar. Hither is the house, the dwelling house, the innermost sanctuary of the great river. Seated hither, in a rocky cavern, he laid downwardly the law to the waters and the nymphs who lived in his streams. Hither the rivers of his own land first met, unsure whether to console with or gloat Daphne's male parent: 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 ocean. Just Inachus is missing, simply subconscious in the deepest cave he swells his stream with tears, and in utter misery laments his lost girl, Io, non knowing if she is alive or among the shades. Since he cannot observe her anywhere, he imagines her nowhere, and his heart fears worse than death.

Bk I: 587-600 Jupiter's rape of Io

Jupiter first saw her returning from her father's stream, and said 'Virgin, worthy of Jupiter himself, who will brand some unknown human being happy when yous share his bed, while it is hot and the sun is at the highest signal of its arc, find shade in the deep woods! (And he showed her the wood' shade). But if you are afraid to enter the wild beasts' lairs, you tin get into the remote woods in condom, protected by a god, and not by any lesser god, but past the one who holds the sceptre of heaven in his mighty paw, and who hurls the flickering bolts of lightning. Do not wing from me!' She was already in flying. She had left backside Lerna'south pastures, and the Lyrcean plain's wooded fields, when the god hid the broad earth in a covering of fog, caught the fleeing girl, and raped her.

Bk I: 601-621 Jupiter transforms Io to a heifer

Meanwhile Juno looked down into the eye of Argos, surprised that rapid mists had created nighttime in shining daylight. She knew they were non vapours from the river, or breath from the damp earth. She looked effectually to see where her hubby was, knowing past 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 beingness wronged' and gliding down from sky's peak, she stood on globe ordering the clouds to melt. Jupiter had a presage of his married woman's arrival and had changed Inachus's girl into a gleaming heifer. Even in that form she was beautiful. Saturnia approved the animal'southward looks, though grudgingly, asking, and then, whose she was, where from, what herd, equally if she did non know. Jupiter, to end all enquiry, lied, saying she had been born from the globe. Then Saturnia claimed her as a gift. What could he do? Cruel to sacrifice his honey, but suspicious non to. Shame urges him to it, Amor urges not. Amor would have conquered Shame, merely if he refused so slight a gift equally a heifer to the companion of his race and bed, it might appear no heifer!

Bk I: 622-641 Juno claims Io and Argus guards her

Though her rival was given upward the goddess did non abandon her fears at one time, cautious of Jupiter and agape of his trickery, until she had given Io into Argus'south keeping, that son of Arestor. Argus had a hundred optics round his caput, that took their rest 2 at a time in succession while the others kept watch and stayed on baby-sit. Wherever he stood he was looking at Io, and had Io in front of his optics when his back was turned. He let her graze in the light, but when the dominicus sank beneath the earth, he penned her, and fastened a rope round her innocent neck. She grazed on the leaves of copse and biting herbs. She often lay on the bare ground, and the poor matter drank water from muddy streams. When she wished to stretch her artillery out to Argus in supplication, she had no artillery to stretch. Trying to complain, a lowing came from her oral fissure, and she was alarmed and frightened by the sound of her own voice. When she came to Inachus'southward riverbanks where she ofttimes used to play and saw her gaping mouth and her new horns in the water, she grew frightened and fled terrified of herself.

Bk I: 642-667 Inachus finds Io and grieves for her

The naiads did not know her: Inachus himself did not know her, merely she followed her father, followed her sisters, allowing herself to be petted, and offering herself to exist admired. Old Inachus pulled some grasses and held them out to her: she licked her male parent's manus and kissed his palm, could non hold dorsum her tears, and if but 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 grade. 'Pity me!' said her male parent Inachus, clinging to the groaning heifer's horns and snowfall-white neck, 'Pity me!' he sighed; 'Are y'all actually my girl I searched the wide world for? In that location was less sadness with you lost than found! Without speech, you practise not answer in words to mine, simply heave deep sighs from your breast, and all you can do is depression in answer to me. Unknowingly I was arranging union and a marriage-bed for you, hoping for a son-in-law first and so grandchildren. Now you lot must find a mate from the herd, and from the herd go you a son. I am not allowed past dying to end such sorrow; information technology 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'due south arms. In that location, sitting at a distance he occupied a loftier peak of the mountain, where resting he could continue a watch on every side.

Bk I: 668-688 Jupiter sends Mercury to kill Argus

Now the king of the gods can no longer stand up Phoronis'southward cracking 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 similar this the son of Jupiter touches downwardly on the world from his begetter'south stronghold. There, he takes off his cap, and doffs his wings, only keeping his wand. Taking this, disguised every bit a shepherd, he drives she-goats, stolen on the style, through alone lanes, and plays his reed pipe equally he goes. Juno'south guard is absorbed by this new sound. 'You lot in that location, whoever you are' Argus calls 'you could sit here beside me on this stone; there'due south no better grass elsewhere for your flock, and y'all can see that the shade is fine for shepherds.'

The descendant of Atlas sits downwardly, and passes the twenty-four hours in conversation, talking of many things, and playing on his reed piping, trying to conquer those watching eyes. Argus yet 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 merely just been invented, how it was invented.

Bk I: 689-721 Mercury tells the story of Syrinx

So the god explained 'On Arcadia'southward common cold mountain slopes amid the wood nymphs, the hamadryads, of Mount Nonacris, one was the about celebrated: the nymphs chosen her Syrinx. She had frequently 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'southward girl, except that her bow is of horn, and the other's is of golden. Even so she is deceptive. Pan, whose caput is crowned with a wreath of precipitous pine shoots, saw her, coming from Mount Lycaeus, and spoke to her.' At present Mercury all the same 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 idea he now had Syrinx, establish that instead of the nymph'southward trunk he simply held reeds from the marsh; and, while he sighed at that place, the current of air in the reeds, moving, gave out a clear, plaintive sound. Charmed past this new art and its sweet tones the god said 'This manner of communing with yous is all the same left to me.' Then unequal lengths of reed, joined together with wax, preserved the girl'due south name.

About to tell all this, Cyllenian Mercury saw that every centre 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. And then straightaway he strikes the nodding head, where it joins the neck, with his curved sword, and sends it encarmine downwardly the rocks, staining the steep cliff. Argus, you lot are overthrown, the low-cal of your many eyes is extinguished, and one dark sleeps under so many eyelids.

Bk I: 722-746 Io is returned to human course

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 dorsum from its consequences. She set a terrifying Fury in front end of the optics and mind of that 'slut' from the Argolis, buried a tormenting restlessness in her breast, and drove her as a fugitive through the earth. Y'all, Nile, put an finish to her immeasurable suffering. When she reached you lot, she fell forward onto her knees on the riverbank and turning dorsum her long neck with her face up upwards, in the only way she could, looked to the sky, and with groans and tears and deplorable lowing seemed to reproach Jupiter and beg him to end her troubles. Jupiter threw his artillery round his wife's neck and pleaded for an end to vengeance, maxim 'Do non fear, in futurity she will never be a source of hurting' 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 crude hair leaves her body, the horns disappear, the great optics grow smaller, the gaping mouth shrinks, the shoulders and hands return, and the hooves vanish, each hoof irresolute back into v nails. Cypher of the heifer is left except her whiteness. Able to stand on two feet she raises herself erect and fearing to speak in instance she lows like a heifer, timidly attempts long neglected words.

Bk I: 747-764 Phaethon's parentage

Now she is worshipped equally 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 female parent, and was believed to take been conceived from mighty Jupiter'due south seed. He had a friend, Phaethon, child of the Sun, equal to him in spirit and years, who one time boasted proudly that Phoebus was his father, and refused to concede the merits, which Inachus's grandson could not accept. 'Y'all are mad to believe all your mother says, and you have an inflated image of your father.' Phaethon reddened just, from shame, repressed his anger, and went to his mother Clymene with Inachus's reproof. 'To sadden y'all more than, mother, I the complimentary, proud, spirit was silent! I am ashamed that such a reproach can be spoken and non answered. Simply if I am born at all of divine stock, give me some proof of my high birth, and allow me claim my divinity!' Then 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.

Bk I: 765-779 Phaethon sets out for the Palace of the Sun

Clymene, moved mayhap by Phaethon'southward entreaties or more by acrimony at the words spoken, stretched both artillery out to the heaven and looking upwards at the sun's glow said 'By that brightness marked out past glittering rays, that sees u.s.a. and hears us, I swear to y'all, my son, that you are the child of the Dominicus; of that beingness you see; yous 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 terminal light to achieve our eyes! It is no cracking effort for you lot yourself to find your father's firm. The identify he rises from is nigh our country. If you have it in listen to exercise and so, become and inquire 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.

---

• Next

mccabesheizips.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph.php

Share this post