The Metamorphoses of Ovid Part 19

together with his mother Leucothoe.

Her Sidonian attendants,[73] so far as they could, tracing the prints of their feet, saw the last of them on the edge of the rock; and thinking that there was no doubt of their death, they lamented the house of Cadmus, with their hands tearing their hair and their garments; and they threw the odium on the G.o.ddess, as being unjust and too severe against the concubine. Juno could not endure their reproaches, and said, "I will make you yourselves tremendous memorials of my displeasure."

Confirmation followed her words. For the one who had been especially attached, said, "I will follow the queen into the sea;" and about to give the leap, she could not be moved any way, and adhering to the rock, {there} she stuck fast. Another, while she was attempting to beat her breast with the accustomed blows, perceived in the attempt that her arms had become stiff. One, as by chance she had extended her hands over the waters of the sea, becoming a rock, held out her hands in those same waters. You might see the fingers of another suddenly hardened in her hair, as she was tearing her locks seized on the top of her head. In whatever posture each was found {at the beginning of the change}, in the same she remained. Some became birds; which, sprung from Ismenus, skim along the surface of the waves in those seas, with the wings which they have a.s.sumed.

[Footnote 54: _She alone._--Ver. 419. This was Ino, whose only sorrows. .h.i.therto had been caused by the calamities which befell her sisters and their offspring: Semele having died a shocking death, Autonoe having seen her son Actaeon changed into a stag, and then devoured by his dogs, and Agave having a.s.sisted in tearing to pieces her own son Pentheus.]

[Footnote 55: _When they have enjoyed._--Ver. 435. The spirits whose bodies had not received the rites of burial, we learn from Homer and Virgil, were not allowed to pa.s.s the river Styx, but wandered on its banks for a hundred years.]

[Footnote 56: _So does that spot._--Ver. 441. That is to say, whatever number of ghosts arrives there, it receives them all with ease, and is not sensible of the increase of number; either because the place itself is of such immense extent, or because the souls of the dead do not occupy s.p.a.ce.]

[Footnote 57: _The Sisters._--Ver. 450. These were the Furies, fabled to be the daughters of Night and Acheron. They were three in number, Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera, and were supposed to be the avengers of crime and wickedness.]

[Footnote 58: _t.i.tyus._--Ver. 456. t.i.tyus was the son of Jupiter and Elara. On account of his enormous size, the poets sometimes style him a son of the earth. Attempting to commit violence upon Latona, he was slain by the arrows of Apollo, and precipitated to the infernal regions, where he was condemned to have his liver constantly devoured by a vulture, and then renewed, to perpetuate his torments.]

[Footnote 59: _Tantalus._--Ver. 457. He was the son of Jupiter, by the Nymph Plote. The crime for which he was punished is differently related by the poets. Some say, that he divulged the secrets of the G.o.ds, that had been entrusted to him; while others relate, that at an entertainment which he gave to the Deities, he caused his own son, Pelops, to be served up, on which Ceres inadvertently ate his shoulder. He was doomed to suffer intense hunger and thirst, amid provisions of all kinds within his reach, which perpetually receded from him.]

[Footnote 60: _Sisyphus._--Ver. 459. Sisyphus, the son of aeolus, was a daring robber, who infested Attica. He was slain by Theseus; and being sent to the infernal regions, was condemned to the punishment of rolling a great stone to the top of a mountain, which it had no sooner reached than it fell down again, and renewed his labor.]

[Footnote 61: _Ixion._--Ver. 461. Being advanced by Jupiter to heaven, he presumed to make an attempt on Juno. Jupiter, to deceive him, formed a cloud in her shape, on which Ixion begot the Centaurs. He was cast into Tartarus, and was there fastened to a wheel, which turned round incessantly.]

[Footnote 62: _Iris._--Ver. 480. Iris was the daughter of Thaumas and Electra, and the messenger of Juno. She was the G.o.ddess of the Rainbow.]

[Footnote 63: _Tisiphone._--Ver. 481. Clarke translates 'Tisiphone importuna,' 'the plaguy Tisiphone.']

[Footnote 64: _Echidna._--Ver. 501. This word properly means, 'a female viper;' but it here refers to the Hydra, or dragon of the marsh of Lerna, which Hercules slew. It was fabled to be partly a woman, and partly a serpent, and to have been begotten by Typhon. According to some accounts, this monster had seven heads.]

[Footnote 65: _Dashes in pieces._--Ver. 519. Euripides and Hyginus relate, that Athamas slew his son while hunting; and Apollodorus says, that he mistook him for a stag.]

[Footnote 66: _Thy foster-child._--Ver. 524. Bacchus was the foster-child of Ino, who was the sister of his mother Semele. The remaining portion of the story of Ino and Melicerta is again related by Ovid in the sixth book of the Fasti.]

[Footnote 67: _There is a rock._--Ver. 525. Pausanias calls this the Molarian rock, and says, that it was one of the Scironian rocks, near Megara, in Attica. It was a branch of the Geranian mountain.]

[Footnote 68: _And her burden._--Ver. 530. This was her son Melicerta, who, according to Pausanias, was received by dolphins, and was landed by them on the isthmus of Corinth.]

[Footnote 69: _Guiltless granddaughter._--Ver. 531. Venus was the grandmother of Ino, inasmuch as Hermione, or Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, was the daughter of Mars and Venus.]

[Footnote 70: _Boundless Ionian sea._--Ver. 535. The Ionian sea must be merely mentioned here as a general name for the broad expanse of waters, of which the Saronic gulf, into which the Molarian rock projected, formed part. Ovid may, however, mean to say that Ino threw herself from some rock in the Ionian sea, and not from the Molarian rock; following, probably, the account of some other writer, whose works are lost.]

[Footnote 71: _Grecian name is derived._--Ver. 538. Venus was called Aphrodite, by the Greeks, from ?f???, 'the foam of the sea,' from which she was said to have sprung.]

[Footnote 72: _A Divinity._--Ver. 542. Ino and Melicerta were wors.h.i.+pped as Divinities both in Greece and at Rome.]

[Footnote 73: _Sidonian attendants._--Ver. 543. The Theban matrons are meant, who had married the companions of Cadmus that accompanied him from Phnices.]

EXPLANATION.

The story of Ino, Athamas, and Melicerta appears to have been based upon historical facts, as we are informed by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Pausanias.

Athamas, the son of aeolus, and great-grandson of Deucalion, having, on the death of Themisto, his first wife, married Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, divorced her soon afterwards, to marry Nephele, by whom he had h.e.l.le and Phryxus. She having been divorced in her turn, he took Ino back again, and by her had Learchus and Melicerta. Ino, not being able to endure the presence of the children of Nephele, endeavored to destroy them. The city of Thebes being at that time afflicted with famine, which was said to have been caused by Ino, who ordered the seed to be parched before it was sown, Athamas ordered the oracle of Delphi to be consulted. The priests, either having been bribed, or the messengers having been corrupted, word was brought, that, to remove this affliction, the children of Nephele must be sacrificed.

Phryxus being warned of the designs of his stepmother, embarked in a s.h.i.+p, with his sister h.e.l.le, and sailed for Colchis, where he met with a kind reception from his kinsman aeetes. The young princess, however, either becoming sea-sick, and leaning over the bulwarks of the vessel, fell overboard and was drowned, or died a natural death in the pa.s.sage of the h.e.l.lespont, to which she gave its name from that circ.u.mstance.

Athamas, having discovered the deceitful conduct of Ino, in his rage killed her son Learchus, and sought her, for the purpose of sacrificing her to his vengeance. To avoid his fury, she fled with her son Melicerta, and, being pursued, threw herself from a rock into the sea. To console her relatives, the story was probably invented, that the G.o.ds had changed Ino and Melicerta into Sea Deities, under the names of Leucothoe and Palaemon. Melicerta was afterwards wors.h.i.+pped in the Isle of Tenedos, where children were offered to him in sacrifice.

In his honor, Glaucus established the Isthmian games, which were celebrated for many ages at Corinth; and, being interrupted for a time, were revived by Theseus, in honor of Neptune. Leucothoe was also wors.h.i.+pped at Rome, and the Roman women used to offer up their vows to her for their brothers' children, not daring to supplicate the G.o.ddess for their own, because she had been unfortunate in hers. This Ovid tells us in the Sixth Book of the Fasti. The Romans gave the name of Matuta to Ino, and Melicerta, or Palaemon, was called Portunus.

The circ.u.mstance mentioned by Ovid, that some of Ino's attendants were changed into birds, and others into rocks, is, perhaps, only a poetical method of saying that some of her attendants escaped, while others perished with her.

FABLE VIII. [IV.563-603]

The misfortunes of his family oblige Cadmus to leave Thebes, and to retire with his wife Hermione to Illyria, where they are changed into serpents.

The son of Agenor knows not that his daughter and his little grandson are {now} Deities of the sea. Forced by sorrow, and a succession of calamities, and the prodigies which, many in number, he had beheld, the founder flies from his city, as though the {ill}-luck of the spot, and not his own, pressed {hard} upon him, and driven, in a long series of wandering, he reaches the coast of Illyria, with his exiled wife. And now, loaded with woes and with years, while they are reflecting on the first disasters of their house, and in their discourse are recounting their misfortunes, Cadmus says, "Was that dragon a sacred one, that was pierced by my spear, at the time when, setting out from Sidon, I sowed the teeth of the dragon in the ground, a seed {till then} unknown? If the care of the G.o.ds avenges this with resentment so unerring, I pray that I myself, as a serpent, may be lengthened out into an extended belly." {Thus} he says; and, as a serpent, he is lengthened out into an extended belly, and perceives scales growing on his hardened skin, and his black body become speckled with azure spots; and he falls flat on his breast, and his legs, joined into one, taper out by degrees into a thin round point. His arms are still remaining; those arms which remain he stretches out; and, as the tears are flowing down his face, still that of a man, he says, "Come hither, wife, come hither, most unhappy one, and, while something of me yet remains, touch me; and take my hand, while it is {still} a hand, {and} while I am not a serpent all over."

He, indeed, desires to say more, but, on a sudden, his tongue is divided into two parts. Nor are words in his power when he offers {to speak}; and as often as he attempts to utter any complaints, he makes a hissing: this is the voice that Nature leaves him. His wife, smiting her naked breast with her hand, cries aloud, "Stay, Cadmus! and deliver thyself, unhappy one, from this monstrous form. Cadmus, what means this? Where are thy feet? where are both thy shoulders and thy hands? where is thy color and thy form, and, while I speak, {where} all else {besides}? Why do ye not, celestial G.o.ds, turn me as well into a similar serpent?"

{Thus} she spoke; he licked the face of his wife, and crept into her dear bosom, as though he recognized her; and gave her embraces, and reached her well-known neck.

Whoever is by, (some attendants are present), is alarmed; but the crested snakes soothe them with their slippery necks, and suddenly they are two {serpents}, and in joined folds they creep along, until they enter the covert of an adjacent grove. Now, too, do they neither shun mankind, nor hurt them with wounds, and the gentle serpents keep in mind what once they were.

EXPLANATION.

After Cadmus had reigned at Thebes many years, a conspiracy was formed against him. Being driven from the throne, and his grandson Pentheus a.s.suming the crown, he and his wife Hermione retired into Illyria, where, as Apollodorus says, he commanded the Illyrian army, and at length was chosen king: on his death, the story here related by Ovid was invented. It is possible that it may have been based on the following grounds:--

The Phnicians were anciently called 'Achivi,' which name they still retained after their establishment in Greece. 'Chiva' being also the Hebrew, and perhaps Phnician word for 'a serpent,' the Greeks, probably in reference to the Phnician origin of Cadmus, reported after his death, that he and his wife were serpents; and in time, that transformation may have been stated to have happened at the end of his life. According to Aulus Gellius, the ancient inhabitants of Illyria had two eyelids to each eye, and with their looks, when angered, they were able to kill those whom they beheld stedfastly. The Greeks hence called them serpents and basilisks; and, it is not unlikely, that when Cadmus retired among them, they said that he had become one of the Illyrians, otherwise a dragon, or a serpent. All the ancient writers who mention his history agree that Cadmus really did retire into Illyria, where he first a.s.sisted the Enchelians in their war against the Illyrians. The latter were defeated, and, to obtain a peace from the Enchelians, they gave the crown to Cadmus; to which, on his death, his son Illyrus succeeded. The historian Christodorus, quoted by Pausanias, says that he built the city of Nygnis, in the country of the Enchelians.

Some writers have supposed, upon the authority of Euhemerus as quoted by Eusebius that Cadmus was not the son of Agenor, but was one of his officers, who eloped thence with Hermione, a singing girl. Others suppose that Cadmus is not really a proper name, but that it signifies a 'leader,' or 'conductor;' and that he received the name from leading a colony into Greece. Bochart says that he was called Cadmus, because he came from the eastern part of Phnicia, which is called in Scripture 'Cadmonia,' or 'oriental;' and that Hermione probably received her name from Mount Hermon.

FABLE IX. [IV.604-662]

Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danae, having killed Medusa, carries her head into Africa, where the blood that runs from it produces serpents. Atlas, king of that country, terrified at the remembrance of an oracle, which had foretold that his golden fruit should be taken by one of the sons of Jupiter, not only orders him to depart, but even resorts to violence to drive him away, on which Perseus shows him the Gorgon's head, and changes him into a mountain.

But yet their grandson, {Bacchus} gave them both a great consolation, under this change of form; whom India, subdued {by him}, wors.h.i.+pped {as a} G.o.d, {and} whom Achaia honored with erected temples. Acrisius the son of Abas,[74] descended of the same race,[75] alone remained, to drive him from the walls of the Argive city, and to bear arms against the G.o.d, and to believe him not to be the offspring of Jove. Neither did he think Perseus to be the offspring of Jupiter, whom Danae had conceived in a shower of gold; but soon (so great is the power of truth) Acrisius was sorry, both that he had insulted the G.o.d, and that he had not acknowledged his grandson. The one was now placed in heaven, while the other, bearing the memorable spoil of the viperous monster, cut the yielding air with hissing wings; and while the conqueror was hovering over the Libyan sands, b.l.o.o.d.y drops, from the Gorgon's head, fell down, upon receiving {which, the} ground quickened them into various serpents.

For this cause, that region is filled and infested with snakes.

Carried thence, by the fitful winds, through boundless s.p.a.ce, he is borne now here, now there, just like a watery cloud, and, from the lofty sky, looks down upon the earth, removed afar; and he flies over the whole world. Three times he saw the cold Bears, thrice did he see the claws of the Crab; ofttimes he was borne to the West, many a time to the East. And now, the day declining, afraid to trust himself to the night, he stopped in the Western part of the world, in the kingdom of Atlas; and {there} he sought a little rest, until Lucifer should usher forth the fires of Aurora, Aurora, the chariot of the day. Here was Atlas, the son of Iapetus, surpa.s.sing all men in the vastness of his body. Under this king was the extremity of the earth, and the sea which holds its waters under the panting horses of the Sun, and receives the wearied chariot. For him, a thousand flocks, and as many herds, wandered over the pastures, and no neighboring places disturbed the land. Leaves of the trees, s.h.i.+ning with radiant gold, covered branches of gold, {and} apples of gold. "My friend," said Perseus to him, "if the glory of a n.o.ble race influences thee, Jupiter is the author of my descent; or if thou art an admirer of exploits, thou wilt admire mine. I beg of thee hospitality, and a resting place." The other was mindful of an ancient oracle. The Parna.s.sian Themis had given this response: "A time will come, Atlas, when thy tree shall be stripped of its gold, and a son of Jove shall have the honor of the prize." Dreading this, Atlas had enclosed his orchard with solid walls, and had given it to be kept by a huge dragon;[76] and expelled all strangers from his territories. {To Perseus}, too, he says, "Far hence begone, lest the glory of the exploits, to which thou falsely pretendest, and Jupiter as well, be far from protecting thee." He adds violence as well to his threats, and tries to drive him from his doors, as he hesitates and mingles resolute words with persuasive ones. Inferior in strength (for who could be a match for Atlas in strength?), he says "Since my friends.h.i.+p is of so little value to thee, accept {this} present;" and then, turning his face away, he exposes on the left side the horrible features of Medusa.

Atlas, great as he is, becomes a mountain. Now his beard and his hair are changed into woods; his shoulders and his hands become mountain ridges, and what was formerly his head, is the summit on the top of the mountain. His bones become stones; then, enlarged on every side, he grows to an immense height (so you willed it, ye G.o.ds), and the whole heaven, with so many stars, rests upon him.

[Footnote 74: _Son of Abas._--Ver. 608. Acrisius was the son of Abas, king of Argos. He was the father of Danae, by whom Jupiter was the father of Perseus.]

[Footnote 75: _Of the same race._--Ver. 607. Some suppose that by this it is meant that as Belus, the father of Abas, and grandfather of Acrisius, was the son of Jupiter, who was also the father of Bacchus, the latter and Acrisius were consequently related.]

[Footnote 76: _A huge dragon._--Ver. 647. The name of the dragon was Ladon.]

EXPLANATION.

The story of the seduction of Danae, the mother of Perseus, by Jupiter, in the form of a shower of gold, has been thus explained by some of the ancient writers. Acrisius, hearing of a prediction that Danae, his daughter, should bring forth a child that would kill him, caused her to be shut in a tower with brazen gates, or, according to some, in a subterraneous chamber, covered with plates of that metal; which place, according to Pausanias, remained till the time of Perilaus, the king of Argos, by whom it was destroyed. The precautions of Acrisius were, however, made unavailing by his brother Prtus; who, falling in love with his niece, corrupted the guards with gold, and gained admission into the tower. Danae, being delivered of Perseus, her father caused them to be exposed in a boat to the mercy of the waves. Being cast on sh.o.r.e near Seriphus, the king, Polydectes, gave them a hospitable reception, and took care of the education of Perseus.