Battus

Also known as: countryman / old man / stranger · Role: shepherd · First appears: Fable 26

Life events

• Mercury steals Apollo’s oxen and hides them in the woods.(Fable26 · 📍 plains of Pylos)
  • With: Mercury Apollo
  • “Mercury, having stolen the oxen of Apollo, and Battus having perceived the theft”
• Battus betrays Mercury by revealing where the stolen oxen are hidden.(Fable26)
  • With: Mercury
  • “But the old man,[81] after his reward was {thus} doubled, said, ‘They will be beneath those hills;’ and beneath those hills they {really} were.”
• Mercury transforms Battus into a stone called the Touchstone for his treachery.(Fable26)
  • With: Mercury
  • “and {then} he turned his perjured breast into a hard stone, which even now is called the ‘Touchstone;’[82]”

Fable 26

• with Mercury (Mercury transforms Battus into stone.) “and {then} he turned his perjured breast into a hard stone, which even now is called the ‘Touchstone;’”
• employer: Neleus (Battus tends Neleus’s forests, pastures, and mares.) “He was keeping the forests and the grassy pastures, and the set of fine-bred mares of the rich Neleus.[80]”
• with Mercury (Battus betrays Mercury's theft after receiving a second reward.) “But the old man,[81] after his reward was {thus} doubled, said, ‘They will be beneath those hills;’ and beneath those hills they {really} were.”

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Extracted from the original text of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Made with Rho MD.