The Metamorphoses of Ovid Part 22

[Footnote 30: _Our Divinities._--Ver. 279. 'Nostra veneratus numina,' is translated by Clarke, 'and wors.h.i.+pping our G.o.ddesss.h.i.+ps.']

[Footnote 31: _Some saluting them._--Ver. 295. That is, crying out ?a??e, ?a??e, the usual salutation among the Greeks, equivalent to our 'How d'ye do?' From two lines of Persius, it seems to have been a common thing to teach parrots and magpies to repeat these words.]

[Footnote 32: _Lands of Pella._--Ver. 302. Pella was a city of Macedonia, in that part of it which was called Emathia. It was famed for being the birthplace of Philip, and Alexander the Great.]

[Footnote 33: _Paeonian._--Ver. 303. Paeonia was a mountainous region of Macedonia, adjacent to Emathia.]

[Footnote 34: _Evippe._--Ver. 303. Evippe was the wife of Pierus, and the mother of the Pierides.]

[Footnote 35: _Achaia._--Ver. 306. The Achaia here mentioned was the Haemonian, or Thessalian Achaia. The other parts of Thessaly were Phthiotis and Pelasgiotis.]

[Footnote 36: _Aganippe._--Ver. 312. Aganippe was the name of a fountain in Botia, near Helicon, sacred to the Muses. It is called Hyantean, from the ancient name of the inhabitants of the country.]

[Footnote 37: _Venus as a fish._--Ver. 331. The story of the transformation of Venus into a fish, to escape the fury of the Giants, is told, at length, in the second Book of the Fasti.]

[Footnote 38: _Wings of an Ibis._--Ver. 331. The Ibis was a bird of Egypt, much resembling a crane, or stork. It was said to be of peculiarly unclean habits, and to subsist upon serpents.]

[Footnote 39: _We of Aonia._--Ver. 333. The Muses obtained the name of Aonides from Aonia, a mountainous district of Botia.]

EXPLANATION.

According to Plutarch, the adventure of the Muses with Pyreneus, and of their asking wings of the G.o.ds to save themselves, is a metaphor, which shows that he, when reigning in Phocis, was no friend to learning. As he had caused all the inst.i.tutions in which it was taught to be destroyed, it was currently reported, that he had offered violence to the Muses, and that he lost his life in pursuing them.

Ovid is the only writer that mentions him by name.

The challenge given by the Pierides to the Muses is not mentioned by any writer before the time of Ovid. By way of explaining it, it is said, that Pierus was a very bad poet, whose works were full of stories injurious to the credit of the G.o.ds. Hence, in time, it became circulated, that his daughters, otherwise his works, were changed into magpies, thereby meaning that they were full of idle narratives, tiresome and unmeaning. It is not improbable that the story of Typhus, who forces the G.o.ds to conceal themselves in Egypt, under the forms of various animals, was a poem which Pierus composed on the war of the G.o.ds with the Giants.

FABLE III. [V.341-384]

One of the Muses repeats to Minerva the song of Calliope, in answer to the Pierides; in which she describes the defeat of the Giant Typhus, and Pluto viewing the mountains of Sicily, where Venus persuades her son Cupid to pierce his heart with one of his arrows.

"Ceres was the first to turn up the clods with the crooked plough; she first gave corn and wholesome food to the earth; she first gave laws; everything is the gift of Ceres. She is to be sung by me; I only wish that I could utter verses worthy of the G.o.ddess, {for} doubtless she is a G.o.ddess worthy of my song. The vast island of Trinacria[40] is heaped up on the limbs of the Giant, and keeps down Typhus, that dared to hope for the abodes of Heaven, placed beneath its heavy ma.s.s. He, indeed, struggles, and attempts often to rise, but his right hand is placed beneath the Ausonian Pelorus,[41] his left under thee, Pachynus;[42] his legs are pressed down by Lilyb.u.m;[43] aetna bears down his head; under it Typhus, on his back, casts forth sand, and vomits flame from his raging mouth; often does he struggle to throw off the load of earth, and to roll away cities and huge mountains from his body. Then does the earth tremble, and the King of the shades himself is in dread, lest it may open, and the ground be parted with a wide chasm, and, the day being let in, may affright the trembling ghosts.

"Fearing this ruin, the Ruler had gone out from his dark abode; and, carried in his chariot by black horses, he cautiously surveyed the foundations of the Sicilian land. After it was sufficiently ascertained that no place was insecure, and fear was laid aside, Erycina,[44]

sitting down upon her mountain, saw him wandering; and, embracing her winged son, she said, Cupid, my son, my arms, my hands, and my might, take up those darts by which thou conquerest all, and direct the swift arrows against the breast of the G.o.d, to whom fell the last lot of the triple kingdom.[45] Thou subduest the G.o.ds above, and Jupiter himself; thou {subduest} the conquered Deities of the deep, and him who rules over the Deities of the deep. Why is Tartarus exempt? Why dost thou not extend the Empire of thy mother and thine own? A third part of the world is {now} at stake. And yet so great power is despised even in our own heaven, and, together with myself, the influence of Love becomes but a trifling matter. Dost thou not see how that Pallas, and Diana, who throws the javelin, have renounced me? The daughter of Ceres, too, will be a virgin, if we shall permit it, for she inclines to similar hopes.

But do thou join the G.o.ddess to her uncle, if I have any interest with thee in favor of our joint sway.

"Venus {thus} spoke. He opened his quiver, and, by the direction of his mother, set apart one out of his thousand arrows; but one, than which there is not any more sharp or less unerring, or which is more true to the bow. And he bent the flexible horn, by pressing his knee against it, and struck Pluto in the breast with the barbed arrow."

[Footnote 40: _Trinacria._--Ver. 347. Sicily was called Trinacris, or Trinacria, from its three corners or promontories, which are here named by the Poet.]

[Footnote 41: _Pelorus._--Ver. 350. This cape, or promontory, now called Capo di Faro, is on the east of Sicily, looking towards Italy, whence its present epithet, 'Ausonian.' It was so named from Pelorus, the pilot of Hannibal, who, suspecting him of treachery, had put him to death, and buried him on that spot.]

[Footnote 42: _Pachynus._--Ver. 351. This Cape, now Capo Pa.s.saro, looks towards Greece, from the south of Sicily.]

[Footnote 43: _Lilybaeum._--Ver. 351. Now called Capo Marsala. It is on the west of Sicily, looking towards the African coast.]

[Footnote 44: _Erycina._--Ver. 363. Venus is so called from Eryx, the mountain of Sicily, on which her son Eryx, one of the early Sicilian kings, erected a magnificent temple in her honor.]

[Footnote 45: _The triple kingdom._--Ver. 368. In the part.i.tion of the dominion of the universe the heavens fell to the lot of Jupiter, the seas to that of Neptune; while the infernal regions, or, as some say, the earth, were awarded to Pluto.]

EXPLANATION.

The ancients frequently accounted for natural phaenomena on fabulous grounds: and whatever they found difficult to explain, from their ignorance of the principles of natural philosophy, they immediately attributed to the agency of a supernatural cause. aetna was often seen to emit flames, and the earth was subjected to violent shocks from the forces of its internal fires when struggling for a vent. Instead of looking for the source of these eruptions in the sulphur and bituminous matter in which the mountain abounds, they fabled, that the G.o.ds, having vanquished the Giant Typhus, or, according to some authors, Enceladus, threw Mount aetna on his body; and that the attempts he made to free himself from the superinc.u.mbent weight were the cause of those fires and earthquakes.

FABLE IV. [V.385-461]

Pluto surprises Proserpina in the fields of Henna, and carries her away by force. The Nymph Cyane endeavors, in vain, to stop him in his pa.s.sage, and through grief and anguish, dissolves into a fountain.

Ceres goes everywhere in search of her daughter, and, in her journey, turns the boy Stellio into a newt.

"Not far from the walls of Henna[46] there is a lake of deep water, Pergus by name; Cayster does not hear more songs of swans, in his running streams, than that. A wood skirts the lake, surrounding it on every side, and with its foliage, as though with an awning, keeps out the rays of the sun. The boughs produce a coolness, the moist ground flowers of Tyrian hue. {There} the spring is perpetual. In this grove, while Proserpina is amusing herself, and is plucking either violets or white lilies, and while, with childlike eagerness, she is filling her baskets and her bosom, and is striving to outdo {her companions} of the same age in gathering, almost at the same instant she is beheld, beloved, and seized by Pluto;[47] in such great haste is love. The G.o.ddess, affrighted, with lamenting lips calls both her mother and her companions,[48] but more frequently her mother;[49] and as she has torn her garment from the upper edge, the collected flowers fall from her loosened robes. So great, too, is the innocence of her childish years, this loss excites the maiden's grief as well. The ravisher drives on his chariot, and encourages his horses, called, each by his name, along whose necks and manes he shakes the reins, dyed with swarthy rust. He is borne through deep lakes, and the pools of the Palici,[50] smelling strong of sulphur, {and} boiling fresh from out of the burst earth; and where the Bacchiadae,[51] a race sprung from Corinth, with its two seas,[52] built a city[53] between unequal harbors.

"There is a stream in the middle, between Cyane and the Pisaean Arethusa, which is confined within itself, being enclosed by mountain ridges at a short distance {from each other}. Here was Cyane,[54] the most celebrated among the Sicilian Nymphs, from whose name the pool also was called, who stood up from out of the midst of the water, as far as the higher part of her stomach, and recognized the G.o.d, and said, 'No further shall you go. Thou mayst not be the son-in-law of Ceres against her will. {The girl} should have been asked {of her mother}, not carried away. But if I may be allowed to compare little matters with great ones, Anapis[55] also loved me. Yet I married him, courted, and not frightened {into it}, like her.' She {thus} said, and stretching her arms on different sides, she stood in his way. The son of Saturn no longer restrained his rage; and encouraging his terrible steeds, he threw his royal sceptre, hurled with a strong arm, into the lowest depths of the stream. The earth, {thus} struck, made a way down to Tartarus, and received the descending chariot in the middle of the yawning s.p.a.ce. But Cyane, lamenting both the ravished G.o.ddess, and the slighted privileges of her spring, carries in her silent mind an inconsolable wound, and is entirely dissolved into tears, and melts away into those waters, of which she had been but lately the great guardian Divinity. You might see her limbs soften, her bones become subjected to bending, her nails lay aside their hardness: each, too, of the smaller extremities of the whole of her body melts away; both her azure hair, her fingers, her legs, and her feet; for easy is the change of those small members into a cold stream. After that, her back, her shoulders, her side, and her breast dissolve, vanis.h.i.+ng into thin rivulets. Lastly, pure water, instead of live blood, enters her corrupted veins, and nothing remains which you can grasp {in your hand}.

"In the mean time, throughout all lands and in every sea, the daughter is sought in vain by her anxious mother. Aurora, coming with her ruddy locks does not behold her taking any rest, neither does Hesperus. She, with her two hands, sets light to some pines at the flaming aetna, and giving herself no rest, bears them through the frosty darkness. Again, when the genial day has dulled the light of the stars, she seeks her daughter from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof. Fatigued by the labor, she has {now} contracted thirst, and no streams have washed her mouth, when by chance she beholds a cottage covered with thatch, and knocks at its humble door, upon which an old woman[56] comes out and sees the G.o.ddess, and gives her, asking for water, a sweet drink which she has lately distilled[57] from parched pearled barley. While she is drinking it {thus} presented, a boy[58] of impudent countenance and bold, stands before the G.o.ddess, and laughs, and calls her greedy. She is offended; and a part being not yet quaffed, the G.o.ddess sprinkles him, as he is {thus} talking, with the barley mixed with the liquor.

"His face contracts the stains, and he bears legs where just now he was bearing arms; a tail is added to his changed limbs; and he is contracted into a diminutive form, that no great power of doing injury may exist; his size is less than {that of} a small lizard. He flies from the old woman, astounded and weeping, and trying to touch the monstrosity; and he seeks a lurking place, and has a name suited to his color, having his body speckled with various spots."

[Footnote 46: _Henna._--Ver. 385. Henna, or Enna, was a city so exactly situated in the middle of Sicily that it was called the navel of that island. The wors.h.i.+p of Ceres there was so highly esteemed, that ancient writers remarked, that you might easily take the whole place for one vast temple of that G.o.ddess, and all the inhabitants for her priests. Proserpine is said by many authors, besides Ovid, to have been carried away by Pluto in the vicinity of Henna; though some writers say that it took place in Attica, and others again in Asia, while the Hymn of Orpheus mentions the western coast of Spain. Cicero describes this spot in his Oration against Verres: his words are, 'It is said that Libera, who is the Deity that we call Proserpine, was carried away from the Grove of Enna. Enna, where these events took place to which I now refer, is in a lofty and exposed situation; but on the summit the ground presents a level surface, and there are springs of everflowing water. The spot is entirely cut off and separated from all [ordinary] means of approach. Around it are many lakes and groves, and flowers in bloom at all seasons of the year; so that the very spot seems to portray the rape of the damsel, with which story, from our very infancy, we have been familiar. Close by, there is a cavern with its face towards the north, of an immense depth, from which they say that father Pluto, in his chariot, suddenly emerged, and carrying off the maiden, bore her away from that spot, and then, not far from Syracuse, descended into the earth, from which place a lake suddenly arose; where, at the present day, the inhabitants of Syracuse celebrate a yearly festival.']

[Footnote 47: _Seized by Pluto._--Ver. 395. Pluto is here called 'Dis.' This name was given to him as the G.o.d of the Earth, from the bowels of which riches are dug up.]

[Footnote 48: _Her companions._--Ver. 397. Pausanias, in his Messeniaca, has preserved the names of the companions of Ceres, having copied them from the works of Homer.]

[Footnote 49: _Her mother._--Ver. 397. Homer, in his poem on the subject, represents that Ceres heard the cries of her daughter, when calling upon her mother for a.s.sistance. Ovid recounts this tale much more at length in the fourth Book of the Fasti.]

[Footnote 50: _The Palici._--Ver. 406. The Palici were two brothers, sons of Jupiter and the Nymph Thalea, and, according to some, received their name from the Greek words p???? ???s?a?, 'to come again [to life].' Their mother, when pregnant, prayed the earth to open, and to hide her from the vengeful wrath of Juno.

This was done; and when they had arrived at maturity, the Palici burst from the ground in the island of Sicily. They were Deities much venerated there, but their wors.h.i.+p did not extend to any other countries. We learn from Macrobius that the natives of Sicily pointed out two small lakes, from which the brothers were said to have emerged, and that the veneration attached to them was such, that by their means they decided disputes, as they imagined that perjurers would meet their death in these waters, while the guiltless would be able to come forth from them unharmed. They were fetid, sulphureous pools of water, probably affected by the volcanic action of Mount aetna.]

[Footnote 51: _The Bacchiadae._--Ver. 407. Archias, one of the race of the Bacchiadae, a powerful Corinthian family, being expelled from Corinth, was said to have founded Syracuse, the capital of Sicily. The family sprang either from Bacchius, a son of Dionysus, or Bacchus, or from the fifth king of Corinth, who was named Bacchis. The family was expelled from Corinth by Cypselus, either on account of their luxury and extravagant mode of life, or because they were supposed to aim at the sovereignty.]

[Footnote 52: _With its two seas._--Ver. 407. Corinth is called 'Bimaris' by the Latin poets, from its having the aegean sea on one side of it, and the Ionian sea on the other.]

[Footnote 53: _Built a city._--Ver. 408. Syracuse had two harbors, one of which was much larger than the other.]

[Footnote 54: _Cyane._--Ver. 412. According to Claudian, Cyane was one of the companions of Proserpine, when she was carried off by Pluto.]

[Footnote 55: _Anapis._--Ver. 417. This was a river of Sicily, which, mingling with the waters of the fountain Cyane, falls into the sea at Syracuse, opposite to the island of Ortygia. This island, in which the fountain of Arethusa was situate, was separated from the isle of Sicily by a narrow strait of the sea, and communicating with the city of Syracuse by a bridge, was considered as part of it.]

[Footnote 56: _An old woman._--Ver. 449. Arn.o.bius calls this old woman here mentioned by the name of Baubo. Nicander, in his Theriaca, calls her Metaneira. Antoninus Liberalis calls her Misma, and Ovid, in the fourth Book of the Fasti, Melanina.]

[Footnote 57: _Lately distilled._--Ver. 450. Orpheus, in his Hymn, calls the drink given by the old woman to Ceres ???e??. According to Arn.o.bius, it was a mixed liquor, called by the Romans 'cinnus;'

made of parched pearled barley, honey, and wine, with flowers and various herbs floating in it. Antoninus Liberalis says, that Ceres drank it off, ??????, 'at one draught.']

[Footnote 58: _A boy._--Ver. 451. According to Nicander, the boy was the son of the old woman. If so, the G.o.ddess made her but a poor return for her hospitality.]