The Metamorphoses of Ovid — Chronicle
Ordered by chapter. No event in this book could be dated from the text, so it is not dated — no anchor, no chronology; a date is never inferred. Time expressions are copied from the text as written. Every event links back to one sentence of the original.
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535 events · no event could be dated from the text
Undated
Fable 1
To this discord God and bounteous Nature[8] put an end; for he separated the earth from the heavens, and the waters from the earth, and distinguished the clear heavens from the gross atmosphere. And after he had unravelled these {elements}, and released them from {that} confused heap, he combined them, {thus} disjoined, in harmonious unison, {each} in {its proper} place. The element of the vaulted heaven,[9] fiery and without weight, shone forth, and selected a place for itself in the highest region; next after it, {both} in lightness and in place, was the air; the Earth was more weighty than these, and drew {with it} the more ponderous atoms, and was pressed together by its own gravity. The encircling waters sank to the lowermost place,[10] and surrounded the solid globe.
Fable 2
the son of Iapetus fashioned after the image of the Gods, who rule over all things.
Fable 2
Prometheus moulds earth tempered with water, into a human form, which is animated by Minerva.
Fable 2 · 📍 [[the realms of Nabath]]
Eurus took his way[19] towards {the rising of} Aurora and the realms of Nabath[20] and Persia
Fable 3
man
The formation of man is followed by a succession of the four ages of the world.
Fable 3
Golden Age
The Golden Age was first founded, which, without any avenger, of its own accord, without laws, practised both faith and rectitude.
Fable 3
The Earth itself, too, in freedom, untouched by the harrow, and wounded by no ploughshares, of its own accord produced everything;
Fable 3
{Then} it was an eternal spring; and the gentle Zephyrs, with their soothing breezes, cherished the flowers produced without any seed.
Fable 4
Jupiter shortened the duration of the former spring, and divided the year into four periods by means of winters, and summers, and unsteady autumns, and short springs.
Fable 5
Giants Jupiter
Jupiter buries them under the mountains which they have heaped together to facilitate their assault
Fable 5
Earth Giants
the Earth was wet, drenched with the plenteous blood of her sons, and that she gave life to the warm gore; and that, lest no memorial of this ruthless race should be surviving, she shaped them into the form of men
Fable 5
Men Gods
But that generation, too, was a despiser of the Gods above, and most greedy of ruthless slaughter, and full of violence
Fable 7 · just as the late twilight was bringing on the night
I gave a signal that a God had come, and the people commenced to pay their adorations.
Fable 7
Lycaon hostage
with the sword he cuts the throat of an hostage that had been sent from the nation of the Molossians,
Fable 7
let all men speedily feel that vengeance which they deserve to endure, for such is my determination.
Fable 8
Jupiter, not thinking the punishment of Lycaon sufficient to strike terror into the rest of mankind, resolves, on account of the universal corruption, to extirpate them by a universal deluge.
Fable 8 · 📍 [[caverns of Æolus]] · At once
At once he shuts the North Wind in the caverns of Æolus
Fable 8
Nor is the wrath of Jove satisfied with his own heaven; but Neptune, his azure brother, aids him with his auxiliary waves.
Fable 8
He himself struck the Earth with his trident, {on which} it shook, and with a tremor laid open the sources of its waters.
Fable 8 · And now
And now sea and land had no mark of distinction; everything now was ocean; and to that ocean shores were wanting.
Fable 18 · Soon as the steeds have perceived this
Soon as the steeds have perceived this, they rush on, and leave the beaten track, and run not in the order in which {they did} before.
Fable 18 · As soon as the youth beheld him
As soon as the youth beheld him wet with the sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point {of his tail}, bereft of sense, he let go the reins, in a chill of horror.
Fable 18 · Thus spoke the Earth
and she withdrew her face within herself, and the caverns neighboring to the shades below.
Fable 19 · 📍 [[Eridanus]]
But Phaëton, the flames consuming his yellow hair, is hurled headlong, and is borne in a long tract through the air; as sometimes a star from the serene sky may appear to fall, although it {really} has not fallen. Him the great Eridanus receives, in a part of the world far distant from his country, and bathes his foaming face.
Fable 20
The Hesperian Naiads[56] commit his body, smoking from the three-forked flames, to the tomb, and inscribe these verses on the stone:
Fable 20
And first seeking his lifeless limbs, {and} then his bones, she found his bones, however, buried on a foreign bank.
Fable 20 · The Moon had four times filled her disk
Clymene Lampetie Phaëthusa Phœbe (Hesperian Naiad)
And while they are wondering at these things, bark closes upon their loins; and by degrees, it encompasses their stomachs, their breasts, their shoulders, and their hands;
Fable 20
Clymene Lampetie Phaëthusa Phœbe (Hesperian Naiad)
Thence tears flow forth; and amber distilling from the new-formed branches, hardens in the sun; which the clear river receives and sends to be worn by the Latian matrons.
Fable 21 · 📍 [[Eridanus]]
when the man’s voice became shrill, and gray feathers concealed his hair. A long neck, too, extends from his breast, and a membrane joins his reddening toes; feathers clothe his sides, {and} his mouth holds a bill without a point. Cycnus becomes a new bird;
Fable 22 · 📍 [[Erymanthian forests]] · thrice five birthdays being now nearly past
He drew back, and, in his ignorance, was alarmed at her keeping her eyes fixed upon him without ceasing; and, as she was desirous to approach still nearer, he would have pierced her breast with the wounding spear.
Fable 23 · For once upon a time
Minerva Ericthonius Aglauros Herse Pandrosos
Pallas had enclosed Ericthonius, an offspring born without a mother, in a basket made of Actæan twigs; and had given it to keep to the three virgins born of the two-shaped[71] Cecrops, and had given them this injunction, that they should not inquire into her secrets.
Fable 23
Aglauros alone calls her sisters cowards, and unties the knots with her hand; but within they behold a child, and a dragon extended by him.
Fable 23
I told the Goddess what was done; for which such a return as this is made to me, that I am said to have been banished from the protection of Minerva
Fable 23 · After that
After that, being lifted up, I was carried through the air, and was assigned, as a faultless companion, to Minerva.
Fable 24
Thus far {she spoke}; and she poured forth her life, together with her blood. A deadly coldness took possession of her body deprived of life.
Fable 24 · 📍 [[the cave of the two-formed Chiron]]
but he snatched the child from the flames and from the womb of his mother, and carried him into the cave of the two-formed Chiron.
Fable 25
To thee will it be allowed to restore life when taken away; and daring to do that once against the will of the Gods, thou wilt be hindered by the bolts of thy grandsire from being able any more to grant that {boon}. And from a God thou shalt become a lifeless carcase; and a God {again}, who lately wast a carcase; and twice shalt thou renew thy destiny.
Fable 25
Thou likewise, dear father, now immortal, and produced at thy nativity, on the condition of enduring for ever, wilt then wish that thou couldst die, when thou shalt be tormented on receiving the blood of a baneful serpent[75] in thy wounded limbs; and the Gods shall make thee from an immortal {being}, subject to death, and the three Goddesses[76] shall cut thy threads.
Fable 28
At last, she sat herself down in the front of the threshold, in order to exclude the God when he came; to whom, as he proffered blandishments and entreaties, and words of extreme kindness, she said, “Cease {all this}; I shall not remove myself hence, until thou art repulsed.”
Fable 28
Stone had now possession of her neck; her face was grown hard, and she sat, a bloodless statue.
Fable 30
And so, looking back on her companions that followed behind, she lay down, and reposed her side upon the tender grass.
Fable 31 · 📍 [[fountain of Mars]]
The companions of Cadmus, fetching water from the fountain of Mars, are devoured by the Dragon that guards it.
Fable 31 · The sun, now at its height
The son of Agenor wonders what has detained his companion and goes to seek his men.
Fable 31
At length, the son of Agenor, still pursuing, pressed the spear lodged in his throat, until an oak stood in his way as he retreated, and his neck was pierced, together with the trunk.
Fable 31 · Afterwards
Afterwards (’tis beyond belief) the turf began to move, and first appeared a point of a spear out of the furrows, next the coverings of heads nodding with painted cones;
Fable 31
And now the youths that had the space of {so} short an existence allotted them, beat with throbbing breast their blood-stained mother, five {only} remaining, of whom Echion[13] was one.
Fable 32 · 📍 [[Gargaphie]]
Threatening no more, she places on his sprinkled head the horns of a lively stag; she adds length to his neck, and sharpens the tops of his ears; and she changes his hands into feet, and his arms into long legs, and covers his body with a spotted coat of hair; fear, too is added.
Fable 32
Actæon Melanchætes Theridamas Oresitrophus
They gather round him on all sides, and burying their jaws in his body, tear their master in pieces under the form of an imaginary stag.
Fable 33
Therefore, in extreme sadness, he mounted the lofty skies, and with his nod drew along the attendant clouds; to which he added showers and lightnings mingled with winds, and thunders, and the inevitable thunderbolt.
Fable 34 · seven autumns
For he had separated with a blow of his staff two bodies of large serpents, as they were coupling in a green wood; and (passing strange) become a woman from a man, he had spent seven autumns.
Fable 35
Being consulted concerning him, whether he was destined to see the distant season of mature old age; the prophet, expounding destiny, said, “If he never recognizes himself.”
Fable 35 · 📍 [[lonely caves]] · from that time
Thus rejected, she lies hid in the woods, and hides her blushing face with green leaves, and from that time lives in lonely caves; but yet her love remains, and increases from the mortification of her refusal. Watchful cares waste away her miserable body; leanness shrivels her skin, and all the juices of her body fly off in air. Her voice and her bones alone are left.
Fable 35 · 📍 [[woods]] · Since then
Her voice {still} continues, {but} they say that her bones received the form of stones. Since then, she lies concealed in the woods, and is never seen on the mountains: {but} is heard in all {of them}. It is her voice {alone} which remains alive in her.
Fable 36
While he is drinking, being attracted with the reflection of his own form, seen {in the water}, he falls in love with a thing that has no substance;
Fable 36
The body was nowhere {to be found}. Instead of his body, they found a yellow flower, with white leaves encompassing it in the middle.
Fable 37 · soon
Tiresias Pentheus Bacchus Semele Agave Autonoë
For soon the day will come, and even now I predict that it is not far off, when the new {God} Liber, the son of Semele, shall come hither. Unless thou shalt vouchsafe him the honor of a temple, thou shalt be scattered, torn in pieces, in a thousand places, and with thy blood thou shalt pollute both the woods, and thy mother and the sisters of thy mother.
Fable 37
Confirmation follows his words, and the predictions of the prophet are fulfilled. Liber comes, and the fields resound with festive howlings.
Fable 37 · At once
At once the Etrurian Acœtes, dragged away, is shut up in a strong prison; and while the cruel instruments of the death that is ordered, and the iron and the fire are being made ready, the report is that the doors opened of their own accord, and that the chains, of their own accord, slipped from off his arms, no one loosening them.
Fable 38 · 📍 [[the tomb of Ninus]] · in the night
The Babylonian Thisbe sees her at a distance, by the rays of the moon, and with a trembling foot she flies to a dark cave; and, while she flies, her veil falling from her back, she leaves it behind.
Fable 38 · 📍 [[the tomb of Ninus]] · in the night
and then plunges the sword, with which he is girt, into his bowels
Fable 40
Clytie envied her, (for the love of the Sun[40] for her had not been moderate), and, urged on by resentment at a rival, she published the intrigue, and, when spread abroad, brought it to the notice of her father. He, fierce and unrelenting, cruelly buried her alive deep in the ground
Fable 41
Daphnis
Daphnis, the shepherd of Ida,[43] whom the resentment of the Nymph, his paramour, turned into a stone.
Fable 41
Scython
Scython, the law of nature being altered, was of both sexes first a man, then a woman.
Fable 41
Curetes
and the Curetes,[44] sprung from a plenteous shower of rain;
Fable 42 · 📍 [[caves of Ida]]
Mercury Cytherean Goddess Hermaphroditus
The Naiads nursed a boy, born to Mercury of the Cytherean Goddess in the caves of Ida
Fable 42
if thou hast none, let me be {thy wife}, and let us unite in one tie.” After these things {said}, the Naiad is silent; a blush tinges the face of the youth: he knows not what love is
Fable 42
she plunges in the midst of the waters, and seizes him resisting her, and snatches reluctant kisses
Fable 42
Hermaphroditus Mercury Cytherean Goddess
grant this favor to your son, who has the name of you both, that whoever enters these streams a man, may go out thence {but} half a man
Fable 42
Mercury Cytherean Goddess Hermaphroditus
Both parents, moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint the fountain with drugs of ambiguous quality.
Fable 43
Bacchus daughters of Minyas
Bacchus, to punish the daughters of Minyas for their contempt of his worship, changes them into bats
Fable 43 · on a sudden
daughters of Minyas
their webs begin to grow green, and the cloth hanging {in the loom} to put forth foliage like ivy. Part changes into vines
Fable 44 · 📍 [[Palace of Athamas]] · Immediately
Immediately the son of Æolus, filled with rage, cries out, in the midst of his palace, “Ho! companions, spread your nets in this wood; for here a lioness was just now beheld by me with two young ones.” And, in his madness, he follows the footsteps of his wife, as though of a wild beast; and he snatches Learchus, smiling and stretching forth his little arms from the bosom of his mother, and three or four times he whirls him round in the air like a sling, and, frenzied, he dashes in pieces[65] the bones of the infant against the hard stones.
Fable 44
Ino [[Melicerta]]
This Ino climbs (madness gives her strength), and, restrained by no fear, she casts herself and her burden[68] into the deep; the water, struck {by her fall}, is white with foam.
Fable 44
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 assumed.
Fable 45 · 📍 [[Illyria]]
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.
Fable 45 · 📍 [[Illyria]]
{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.
Fable 46 · 📍 [[Africa]] · while the conqueror was hovering over the Libyan sands
bloody drops, from the Gorgon’s head, fell down, upon receiving {which, the} ground quickened them into various serpents.
Fable 47 · 📍 [[Æthiopia]]
Perseus Andromeda Cassiope Cepheus
If I were to demand her {in marriage}, I, Perseus, the son of Jove, and of her whom, in prison, Jove embraced in the impregnating {shower of} gold, Perseus, the conqueror of the Gorgon with her serpent locks, and who has dared, on waving wings, to move through the ætherial air, I should surely be preferred before all as your son-in-law. To so many recommendations I endeavor to add merit (if only the Deities favor me). I {only} stipulate that she may be mine, {if} preserved by my valor.” Her parents embrace the condition, (for who could hesitate?) and they entreat {his aid}, and promise as well, the kingdom as a dowry.
Fable 47 · 📍 [[Æthiopia]]
Resting on that, and clinging to the upper ridge[87] of the rock with his left hand, three or four times he thrusts his sword through its entrails aimed at {by him}.
Fable 47 · Even now
Even now the same nature remains in the coral, that it receives hardness from contact with the air; and what was a plant in the sea, out of the sea becomes stone.
Fable 49 · 📍 [[Seriphus]]
“We will give thee a proof of the truth,” says Perseus; “have a regard for your eyes, {all besides};” and he makes the face of the king {become} stone, without blood, by means of the face of Medusa.
Fable 49 · And then
And then, in his insanity, he threw himself from the height of the summit of the tower, and fell upon his face, and with the bones of his skull thus broken, he struck the ground stained with his accursed blood.
Fable 49 · 📍 [[Helicon]] · then
Calliope rises, and, having her long hair gathered up with ivy, tunes with her thumb the sounding chords; and {then} sings these lines in concert with the strings when struck.
Fable 50 · 📍 [[Trinacria]]
The vast island of Trinacria[40] is heaped up on the limbs of the Giant, and keeps down Typhœus, that dared to hope for the abodes of Heaven
Fable 50 · 📍 [[Sicilian land]]
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.
Fable 51 · 📍 [[Henna]]
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.
Fable 51
But Cyane, lamenting both the ravished Goddess, 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.
Fable 51 · In the mean time
She is offended; and a part being not yet quaffed, the Goddess 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.
Fable 52 · 📍 [[Trinacria]]
Wherefore, with vengeful hand, she there broke the ploughs that were turning up the clods, and, in her anger, consigned to a similar death both the husbandmen and the oxen that cultivated the fields, and ordered the land to deny a return of what had been deposited {therein}, and rendered the seed corrupted.
Fable 52 · 📍 [[Stygian stream]] · While, then, I was running under the earth
While, then, I was running under the earth, along the Stygian stream, thy Proserpine was there beheld by my eyes.
Fable 52
But if thy eagerness is so great for their separation, let Proserpine return to heaven; still upon this fixed condition, if she has touched no food there with her lips; for thus has it been provided by the law of the Destinies.
Fable 52 · 📍 [[Infernal Regions]] · six months each year
Jupiter Ceres Proserpine Pluto
Jupiter, to console Ceres for her loss, decides that her daughter shall remain six months each year with her mother upon earth, and the other six with her husband, in the Infernal Regions.
Fable 54 · 📍 [[Tritonian citadel]]
and she ordered him to scatter the seeds that were entrusted {to him} partly in the fallow ground, {and} partly {in the ground} restored to cultivation after so long a time.
Fable 54 · 📍 [[Scythia]]
The barbarian envies him; and that he himself may be {deemed} the author of so great a benefit, he receives him with hospitality, and, when overpowered with sleep, he attacks him with the sword.
Fable 54
and again sent the Mopsopian[80] youth to drive the sacred drawers of her chariot through the air.
Fable 55
The yellow-haired Virgin grieved at her success, and tore the web embroidered with the criminal acts of the Gods of heaven. And as she was holding her shuttle {made of boxwood} from Mount Cytorus, three or four times did she strike the forehead of Arachne, the daughter of Idmon.
Fable 55
The unhappy creature could not endure it; and being of a high spirit, she tied up her throat in a halter.
Fable 55
Pallas, taking compassion, bore her up as she hung; and thus she said: “Live on indeed, wicked one,[29] but still hang; and let the same decree of punishment be pronounced against thy race, and against thy latest posterity, that thou mayst not be free from care in time to come.” After that, as she departed, she sprinkled her with the juices of an Hecatean herb;[30] and immediately her hair, touched by the noxious drug, fell off, and together with it her nose and ears. The head of herself, {now} small as well throughout her whole body, becomes very small. Her slender fingers cleave to her sides as legs; her belly takes possession of the rest {of her}; but out of this she gives forth a thread; and {as} a spider, she works at her web as formerly.
Fable 56
For Amphion the father, thrusting his sword through his breast, dying, had ended his grief together with his life.
Fable 56 · Still did she weep on
Her tongue itself, too, congeals within, together with her hardened palate, and the veins cease to be able to be moved. Her neck can neither be bent, nor can her arms give any motion, nor her feet move. Within her entrails, too, it is stone.
Fable 57 · 📍 [[Delos]] · at the time when it was swimming as a light island
There Latona, leaning against a palm, together with the tree of Pallas, brought forth twins, in spite of their stepmother {Juno}.
Fable 57 · 📍 [[country of Lycia]]
The Titaness approached, and bending her knee, she pressed the ground, that she might take up the cool water to drink; the company of rustics forbade it.
Fable 57
For ever may you live in that pool.’ The wish of the Goddess comes to pass. They delight to go beneath the water
Fable 58 · 📍 [[Phrygia]]
And then, as the clearest river in Phrygia, running towards the rapid sea within steep banks, it bears the name of Marsyas.
Fable 59
But she rushes onward, about to confound both right and wrong, and is wholly occupied in the contrivance of revenge.
Fable 60
she comes at length to the lonely dwelling, and howls aloud, and cries “Evoë!” and breaks open the gates, and seizes her sister, and puts upon her, {so} seized, the badges of Bacchus, and conceals her countenance under the foliage of ivy; and dragging her along, full of amazement, leads her within her threshold.
Fable 60
Progne strikes[68] him with the sword, extending his hands, and as he beholds his fate, crying now “Alas!” and now “My mother!” and clinging to her neck, where his breast joins his side; nor does she turn away her face. Even one wound {alone} is sufficient for his death; Philomela cuts his throat with the sword; and they mangle his limbs, still quivering and retaining somewhat of life.
Fable 60
His wife sets Tereus, in his unconsciousness, before this banquet; and falsely pretending rites after the manner of her country, at which it is allowed one man only to be present, she removes his attendants and servants. Tereus himself, sitting aloft on the throne of his forefathers, eats and heaps his own entrails into his own stomach.
Fable 60
Progne is unable to conceal her cruel joy; and now, desirous to be the discoverer of her having murdered him, she says, “Thou hast within {thee}, that for which thou art asking.” He looks around, and inquires where he is; as he inquires, and calls him again, Philomela springs forth, just as she is, with her hair disordered by the infernal murder, and throws the bloody head of Itys in the face of his father
Fable 60
on which, being obliged to fly from the fury of the enraged king, she is changed into a swallow
Fable 60 · 📍 [[Tartarus]]
This affliction dispatched Pandion to the shades of Tartarus before his day
Fable 62 · 📍 [[sacred field of Mavors]] · The next morning
He even strokes their hanging dewlaps with a bold right hand, and, subjected to the yoke, he obliges them to draw the heavy weight of a plough, and to turn up with the share the plain {till now} unused to it.
Fable 62 · 📍 [[sacred field of Mavors]] · The next morning
The Earth-born brothers perish by mutual wounds, and fall in civil fight.
Fable 63
And while among the greatest of her merits, she relates that the infirmities of Æson have been removed, and is dwelling upon that part {of the story}, a hope is suggested to the damsels, the daughters of Pelias, that by the like art their parent may become young again; and this they request {of her}
Fable 65
Theseus Periphetes Procrustes Cercyon Sinnis Scyron
By thy means the country of Epidaurus saw the club-bearing son of Vulcan[80] fall; {and} the banks of the river Cephisus[81] saw the cruel Procrustes {fall by thee}. Eleusis, sacred to Ceres, beheld the death of Cercyon.[82] Sinnis[83] fell too, who barbarously used his great powers; who was able to bend {huge} beams, and used to pull pine trees from aloft to the earth, destined to scatter {human} bodies far and wide. The road to Alcathoë,[84] the Lelegeïan city, is now open in safety, Scyron[85] being laid low {in death}
Fable 65 · before the war
Yet, before the war, he obtains auxiliary forces, and crosses the sea with a swift fleet, in which he is accounted strong.
Fable 68 · 📍 [[Hymettus]] · The second month was now passing, after the marriage rites
The second month was now passing, after the marriage rites, when the saffron-colored Aurora, dispelling the darkness in the morn, beheld me, as I was planting nets for the horned deer, from the highest summit of the ever-blooming Hymettus,[110] and carried me off against my will.
Fable 68 · 📍 [[Athens]]
‘Lo! I, the gallant in disguise, to my sorrow, {and} lavish in promises, to my misery, am thy real husband; thou treacherous woman! thou art caught, {and} I the witness.’ She said nothing: only, overwhelmed with silent shame, she fled from the house of treachery, together with her wicked husband;
Fable 68
She gave me, besides, as though in herself she had given me but a small present, a dog as a gift, which when her own Cynthia had presented to her, she had said, ‘He will excel all dogs in running.’ She gave her, too, a javelin, which, as thou seest, I am carrying in my hand.
Fable 68 · 📍 [[Aonian Thebes]] · Immediately
But the genial Themis,[114] forsooth, did not leave such things unrevenged. Immediately another plague was sent forth against Aonian Thebes; and many of the peasants fed the savage monster, both by the destruction of their cattle, and their own as well.
Fable 68
I turned away my eyes; and again I had directed them, recalled to the same spot, when, {most} wondrous, I beheld two marble statues in the middle of the plain; you would think the one was flying, the other barking {in pursuit}.
Fable 69 · The following light of the morning
The following light of the morning had banished the night, when I sallied forth, and sought the woods; and being victorious in the fields, I said, ‘Come, breeze, and relieve my pain;’ and suddenly I seemed to hear I know not what groans in the midst of my words; yet I said, ‘Come hither, most delightful {breeze}.’ Again, the falling leaves making a gentle noise, I thought it was a wild beast, and I discharged my flying weapon. It was Procris;
Fable 70 · the night
Scylla (daughter of Nisus) Nisus Minos
the daughter despoils the father of his fatal lock, and having got the prize of crime, carries with her the spoil of her impiety;
Fable 70 · 📍 [[Crete]]
Minos Scylla (daughter of Nisus)
Minos refuses it, {thus} held out; and shocked at the thought of so unheard of a crime, he says, “May the Gods, O thou reproach of our age, banish thee from their universe;
Fable 70
Scylla (daughter of Nisus) Minos
Scarce has she said {this, when} she leaps into the waves, and follows the ships, Cupid giving her strength,
Fable 70
Nisus Scylla (daughter of Nisus)
When her father beholds her, (for now he is hovering in the air, and he has lately been made a sea eagle, with tawny wings), he is going to tear her in pieces with his crooked beak.
Fable 70
Scylla (daughter of Nisus) Ciris
With feathers, being changed into a bird, she is called Ciris;
Fable 71
Minos, having overcome the Athenians, obliges them to pay a tribute of youths and virgins of the best families, to be exposed to the Minotaur.
Fable 72
The vicinity of the scorching Sun softened the fragrant wax that fastened his wings. The wax was melted; he shook his naked arms, and, wanting his oar-like wings, he caught no {more} air.
Fable 72
’Twas he, too, who took the backbones observed in the middle of the fish, for an example, and cut {a} continued {row of} teeth in iron, with a sharp edge, and {thus} discovered the use of the saw.
Fable 73 · 📍 Calydon
Atalanta Meleager Plexippus Toxeus
And {then} from her they take the present, {and} from him the right {of disposing} of the present. The warlike[67] {prince} did not brook it, and, indignant with swelling rage, he said, “Learn, ye spoilers of the honour that belongs to another, how much deeds differ from threats;” and, with his cruel sword, he pierced the breast of Plexippus, dreading no such thing. Nor suffered he Toxeus
Fable 73
But her own hand, conscious to itself of the ruthless deed, exacted punishment of the mother, the sword piercing her entrails.
Fable 74 · 📍 [[Echinades]]
My waves and those of the main divided the land, before continuous, and separated it into as many parts, as thou seest islands, called Echinades, in the midst of the waves.
Fable 74 · 📍 [[sea]]
This her father, Hippodamas, took amiss, and pushed the body of his daughter, when about to bring forth, from a rock, into the sea.
Fable 74 · 📍 [[sea]]
The King of the ocean moved his head, and shook all the waters with his assent. The Nymph was afraid; but yet she swam. Her breast, as she was swimming, I myself touched, as it throbbed with a tremulous motion; and while I felt it, I perceived her whole body grow hard, and her breast become covered with earth growing over it.
Fable 75 · 📍 [[Phrygian hills]]
Jupiter Mercury Philemon Baucis
Jupiter came hither in the shape of a man, and together with his parent, the grandson of Atlas, {Mercury}, the bearer of the Caduceus, having laid aside his wings. To a thousand houses did they go, asking for lodging and for rest. A thousand houses did the bolts fasten {against them}. Yet one received them,
Fable 75 · 📍 [[Phrygian hills]] · While they were wondering at these things
Jupiter Mercury Philemon Baucis
The immortals forbade it[89] to be killed, and said, ‘We are Divinities, and this impious neighbourhood shall suffer deserved punishment. To you it will be allowed to be free from this calamity; only leave your habitation, and attend our steps, and go together to the summit of the mountain.’
Fable 75 · 📍 [[Phrygian hills]] · While they were wondering at these things
Jupiter Mercury Philemon Baucis
that old cottage of {theirs}, {too} little for even two owners, was changed into a temple. Columns took the place of forked stakes, the thatch grew yellow, and the earth was covered with marble; the doors appeared carved, and the roof to be of gold.
Fable 75 · when, enervated by years and old age, they were standing, by chance, before the sacred steps
Baucis beheld Philemon, and the aged Philemon saw Baucis, {too}, shooting into leaf. And now the tops of the trees growing above their two faces, so long as they could they exchanged words with each other, and said together, ‘Farewell! my spouse;’ and at the same moment the branches covered their concealed faces.
Fable 75
For people have seen thee one while a young man, and again a lion; at one time thou wast a furious boar, at another a serpent, which they dreaded to touch; {and} sometimes, horns rendered thee a bull. Ofttimes thou mightst be seen as a stone; often, too, as a tree. Sometimes imitating the appearance of flowing water, thou wast a river; sometimes fire, the {very} contrary of water.
Fable 76 · 📍 [[grove of Ceres]]
he ordered his servants to cut down the sacred oak; and when he saw them hesitate, {thus} ordered, the wicked {wretch}, snatching from one of them an axe
Fable 76
The Thessalian eyes him, and says, ‘Take the reward of thy pious intentions,’ and turns the axe from the tree upon the man, and hews off his head
Fable 76 · at last
He pursued his wicked design; and, at last, weakened by numberless blows, and pulled downward with ropes, the tree fell down, and with its weight levelled a great part of the wood.
Fable 76 · 📍 [[Scythia]]
‘There is an icy region in the extreme part of Scythia, a dreary soil, a land, desolate, without corn {and} without trees; there dwell drowsy Cold, and Paleness, and Trembling, and famishing Hunger; order her to bury herself in the breast of this sacrilegious {wretch}.
Fable 76 · night-time
Famine executes the orders of Ceres (although she is ever opposing her operations), and is borne by the winds through the air to the assigned abode, and immediately enters the bedchamber of the sacrilegious {wretch}, and embraces him, sunk in a deep sleep ({for} it is night-time), with her two wings.
Fable 76 · At last
But when her father found that his {daughter} had a body capable of being transformed, he often sold the grand-daughter of Triopas to {other} masters. But she used to escape, sometimes as a mare, sometimes as a bird, now as a cow, now as a stag;
Fable 76
he himself, with mangling bites, began to tear his own limbs, and the miserable {wretch} used to feed his own body by diminishing it.
Fable 77 · Day comes on
Acheloüs conceals his rustic features, and his mutilated horn, in the midst of the waves; yet the loss of this honour, taken from him, {alone} affects him; in other respects, he is unhurt.
Fable 78
Before them all, she prefers to send the garment dyed in the blood of Nessus, to restore strength to his declining love. Not knowing herself what she is giving, she delivers {the cause of} her own sorrows to the unsuspecting Lichas,[17] and bids him, in gentle words, to deliver this most fatal gift to her husband.
Fable 78 · 📍 [[Œta]]
In his ignorance, the hero receives it, and places upon his shoulders the venom of the Lernæan Echidna. He is placing frankincense on the rising flames, and {is offering} the words of prayer, and pouring wine from the bowl upon the marble altars. The virulence of the bane waxes warm, and, melted by the flames, it runs, widely diffused over the limbs of Hercules.
Fable 78 · 📍 [[Eubœan sea]]
As he is speaking, and endeavouring to clasp his knees with his hands, Alcides seizes hold of him, and whirling him round three or four times, he hurls him into the Eubœan waves, with greater force than {if sent} from an engine of war. As he soars aloft in the aerial breeze he grows hard; and as they say that showers freeze with the cold winds, {and} that thence snow is formed, and that from the snow, revolving {in its descent}, the soft body is compressed, and is {then} made round in many a hailstone,[24] so have former ages declared, that, hurled through the air by the strong arms {of Hercules}, and bereft of blood through fear, and having no moisture left in him, he was transformed into hard stone.
Fable 78 · 📍 [[Œta]]
Hercules, then, in obedience to a response of the oracle, which he consults, prepares a funeral pile, and laying himself upon it, his friend Philoctetes applies the torch to it, on which the hero, having first recounted his labours, expires in the flames.
Fable 79 · when now the natal hour of Hercules, destined for so many toils, was at hand
Juno Ilithyïa Alcmena Hercules
Juno, to be revenged on Alcmena for her amour with Jupiter, desires Ilithyïa, the Goddess who presides over births, not to assist her on the occasion of the birth of Hercules. Lucina complies with her request, and places herself on an altar at the gate of Alcmena’s abode, where, by a magic spell, she increases her pains and impedes her delivery.
Fable 80
and the earth dividing, the prophet {Amphiaraüs} will see his {destined} shades, while he still lives
Fable 80 · Then, at last
Then, at last, shall Calirrhoë, the daughter of Acheloüs, suppliantly ask of mighty Jupiter these years {of youth} for her infant sons. Jupiter, concerned {for them}, will prescribe for them the {peculiar} gift of her who is {both} his step-daughter and his daughter-in-law,[43] and will make them men in their years of childhood.
Fable 81 · 📍 [[Asia]]
Of thy own accord, Miletus, thou didst fly, and in the swift ship thou didst pass over the Ægean waters, and in the land of Asia didst build a city, bearing the name of its founder.
Fable 81
The Mæandrian youth,[55] seized with sudden anger, throws away the tablets {so} received, when he has read a part; and, with difficulty withholding his hands from the face of the trembling servant, he says, “Fly hence, O thou accursed pander to forbidden lust, who shouldst have given me satisfaction by thy death, if {it was} not {that} thy destruction would bring disgrace on my character.”
Fable 81 · At length
At length, when there is {now} no end {to this}, he flies from his country and {the commission of} this crime, and founds a new city[59] in a foreign land.
Fable 81
so is Byblis, the descendant of Phœbus, dissolving in her tears, changed into a fountain, which even now, in those vallies, bears the name of its mistress, and flows beneath a gloomy oak.
Fable 82 · 📍 [[Phæstus]] · In the meantime
In the meantime the third year had {now} succeeded the tenth, when her father, O Iphis, promised to thee, in marriage, the yellow-haired Iänthe, who was a virgin the most commended among all the women of Phæstus, for the endowments of her beauty;
Fable 82
Iphis follows her, her companion as she goes, with longer strides than she had been wont; her fairness does not continue on her face; both her strength is increased, and her features are more stern; and shorter is the length of her scattered locks. There is more vigour, also, than she had {as} a female. {And} now thou art a male, who so lately wast a female.
Fable 83 · 📍 [[regions of the Ciconians]]
the newmade bride, while she was strolling along the grass, attended by a train of Naiads, was killed, having received the sting of a serpent on her ancle.
Fable 83 · 📍 [[Styx]]
he dared to descend to Styx by the Tænarian gate, and amid the phantom inhabitants and ghosts that had enjoyed the tomb, he went to Persephone
Fable 83
Orpheus Persephone Pluto Eurydice
nor could the royal consort, nor he who rules the infernal regions, endure to deny him his request; and they called for Eurydice.
Fable 85 · ’Twas summer and the middle of the day
By inadvertence the boy Cyparissus pierced him with a sharp javelin
Fable 85
And now, his blood quite exhausted by incessant weeping, his limbs began to be changed into a green colour
Fable 87 · Immediately
Immediately the Tænarian youth,[30] in his thoughtlessness, and urged on by eagerness for the sport, hastened to take up the circlet; but the hard ground sent it back into the air with a rebound against thy face, Hyacinthus.
Fable 87 · While such things are being uttered
While such things are being uttered by the prophetic lips of Apollo, behold! the blood which, poured on the ground, has stained the grass, ceases to be blood, and a flower springs up, more bright than the Tyrian purple
Fable 87
He himself inscribed his own lamentations on the leaves, and the flower has ‘ai, ai,’ inscribed {thereon};
Fable 87 · 📍 [[Sparta]] · each year
Nor is Sparta ashamed to have given birth to Hyacinthus; and his honours continue to the present time; the Hyacinthian festival[34] returns, too, each year, to be celebrated with the prescribed ceremonials
Fable 88 · 📍 [[Cyprus]]
Venus Cerastæ
While she is hesitating into what she shall change them, she turns her eyes towards their horns, and is put in mind that those may be left to them; and {then} she transforms their huge limbs into {those of} fierce bulls.
Fable 88 · 📍 [[Cyprus]]
Venus Propœtides
And when their shame was gone, and the blood of their face was hardened, they were, by a slight transition, changed into hard rocks.
Fable 89
Pygmalion, shocked by the dissolute lives of the Propœtides, throws off all fondness for the female sex, and resolves on leading a life of perpetual celibacy.
Fable 89 · In the meantime
In the meantime, he ingeniously carved {a statue of} snow-white ivory with wondrous skill; and gave it a beauty with which no woman can be born;
Fable 90 · It is {now} midnight
Myrrha [[Hippolyte]]
She raises herself upright, and determines to insert her neck[46] in a halter; and tying her girdle to the top of the door-post
Fable 90
Myrrha [[Hippolyte]]
‘Daughter, I understand it; thou art in love, and in this case (lay aside thy fears) my assiduity will be of service to thee; nor shall thy father ever be aware of it.’
Fable 90 · 📍 [[Sabæan country]] · during nine horns of the returning moon
For the earth closes over her legs as she speaks, and a root shoots forth obliquely through her bursting nails, {as} a firm support to her tall trunk.
Fable 91
Upon her consulting the oracle about a husband, the God said to her, ‘Thou hast no need, Atalanta, of a husband; avoid obtaining a husband. And yet thou wilt not avoid it, and, while {still} living, thou wilt lose thyself.’
Fable 91
‘I am not,’ says she, ‘to be gained, unless first surpassed in speed. Engage with me in running. Both a wife and a wedding shall be given as the reward of the swift; death {shall be} the recompense of the slow. Let that be the condition of the contest.’
Fable 91
Thus she said; and as one inexperienced, and smitten by Cupid for the first time, not knowing what she is doing, she is in love, and {yet} does not know that she is in love.
Fable 91 · 📍 [[Tamasenian field]]
Hence, by chance as I was coming, I carried three golden apples, that I had plucked, in my hand; and being visible to none but him, I approached Hippomenes, and I showed him what {was to be} the use of them.
Fable 91 · 📍 [[Tamasenian field]]
And that my narrative may not be more tedious than that race, the virgin was outrun, and the conqueror obtained the prize.
Fable 91
This he entered, and he defiled the sanctuary by a forbidden crime. The sacred images turned away their eyes, and the Mother {of the Gods}, crowned with turrets,[61] was in doubt whether she should plunge these guilty ones in the Stygian stream. That seemed {too} light a punishment. Wherefore yellow manes cover their necks so lately smooth; their fingers are bent into claws, of their shoulders are made fore-legs;[62] their whole weight passes into their breasts.
Fable 92
and lodged his entire tusks in his groin, and stretched him expiring on the yellow sand.
Fable 92 · longer than a full hour
Having thus said, she sprinkles his blood with odoriferous nectar, which, touched by it, effervesces, just as the transparent bubbles are wont to rise in rainy weather. Nor was there a pause longer than a full hour, when a flower sprang up from the blood, of the same colour {with it}, such as the pomegranates are wont to bear, which conceal their seeds beneath their tough rind.
Fable 93
After they, in their rage, have seized upon these, and have torn to pieces the oxen with their threatening horns, they return to the destruction of the bard; and they impiously murder him
Fable 93 · 📍 [[Methymnæan Lesbos]]
Thou, Hebrus, dost receive the head and the lyre; and (wondrous {to relate}!) while it rolls down the midst of the stream, the lyre complains in I know not what kind of mournful strain.
Fable 93 · 📍 [[Methymnæan Lesbos]]
At last Phœbus comes to its aid, and drives it away as it tries to inflict its sting, and hardens the open jaws of the serpent into stone
Fable 93 · immediately
Yet Lyæus did not suffer this wickedness to go unpunished; and grieving for the loss of the bard of his sacred rites, he immediately fastened down in the woods, by a twisting root, all the Edonian matrons who had committed this crime.
Fable 93
she sees wood growing up upon her well-turned legs. Endeavouring, too, to smite her thigh, with grieving right hand, she strikes solid oak; her breast, too, becomes oak; her shoulders are oak.
Fable 94 · 📍 [[Lydian lands]] · the eleventh Lucifer had closed the lofty host of the stars
when the king came rejoicing to the Lydian lands, and restored Silenus to the youth, his foster-child. To him the God, being glad at the recovery of his foster-father, gave the choice of desiring a favour
Fable 94
the gifts of Ceres, {as gold}, become hard; or if he attempts to bite the dainties with hungry teeth, those dainties, upon the application of his teeth, shine as yellow plates of gold.
Fable 94 · 📍 [[river Pactolus]]
The king placed himself beneath the waters prescribed; the golden virtue tinged the river, and departed from the human body into the stream.
Fable 95
He, indeed, concealed them, and endeavoured to veil his temples, laden with this foul disgrace, with a purple turban.
Fable 95 · after a complete year
For, moved by the gentle South wind, it repeated the words {there} buried, and disclosed the ears of his master.
Fable 97 · 📍 [[Claros]]
When, by these promises, a hope has been given her of his speedy return, he forthwith orders a ship, drawn out of the dock, to be launched in the sea, and to be supplied with its proper equipments.
Fable 97 · 📍 [[Herculean Trachyn]]
Then leaning on the bed, with tears running down his face, he says these words: “My most wretched wife, dost thou recognise thy Ceyx, or are my looks so changed with death? Observe me; thou wilt surely know me: and, instead of thy husband, thou wilt find the ghost of thy husband. Thy prayers, Halcyone, have availed me nothing; I have perished.
Fable 97 · It is now morning
After the water has brought it a little nearer, and, although it is still distant, it is plain that it is a corpse. Ignorant who it may be, because it is ship-wrecked, she is moved at the omen, and, though unknown, would fain give it a tear. “Alas! thou wretched one!” she says, “whoever thou art; and if thou hast any wife!” Driven by the waves, the body approaches nearer. The more she looks at it, the less and the less is she mistress of her senses. And now she sees it brought close to the land, that now she can well distinguish it: it is her husband.
Fable 97 · for seven calm days, in the winter-time
Then the passage of the deep is safe; Æolus keeps the winds in, and restrains them from sallying forth, and secures a smooth sea for his descendants.
Fable 98
Behold! a snake, lurking in the grass, with its barbed sting, wounds her foot as she flies, and leaves its venom in her body. With her flight is her life cut short.
Fable 98
Thus he said; and from a rock which the hoarse waves had undermined, he hurled himself into the sea.
Fable 98
And, as he has assumed newformed wings on his shoulders, he flies aloft, and again he throws his body in the waves: his feathers break the fall.
Fable 99
{Thus} he said; and he plunged the fatal sword into his breast, then for the first time suffering a wound, where it lay exposed to the steel.
Fable 99
And the earth, made red by the blood, produced a purple flower from the green turf, {the same} which had formerly been produced from the Œbalian wound.
Fable 99 · 📍 [[Lemnos]]
After he had carried them back to the Greeks, their owner attending too, the concluding hand was put, at length, to this protracted war.
Fable 99 · 📍 [[Troy]]
Troy and Priam fell together; the wretched wife of Priam lost after every thing {else} her human form, and alarmed a foreign air[49] with her barkings.
Fable 99 · 📍 [[Troy]]
Astyanax[51] is hurled from those towers from which he was often wont, when shown by his mother, to behold his father, fighting for himself, and defending the kingdom of his ancestors.
Fable 99 · When the fortunes of the Phrygians were ruined
When the fortunes of the Phrygians were ruined, the wicked king of the Phrygians took a sword, and plunged it in the throat of his fosterchild; and, as though the crime could be removed with the body, he hurled him lifeless from a rock into the waters below.
Fable 100
For that savage, and one to be dreaded by the very woods, and beheld with impunity by no stranger, the contemner of great Olympus with the Gods {themselves}, {now} feels what love is; and, captivated with passion for me, he burns, forgetting his cattle and his caves.
Fable 100 · 📍 [[Sicilian Ætna]] · in the mean time
Telemus, in the mean time arriving at the Sicilian Ætna, Telemus, the son of Eurymus, whom no omen had {ever} deceived, accosts the dreadful Polyphemus, and says, ‘The single eye that thou dost carry in the midst of thy forehead, Ulysses shall take away from thee.’
Fable 100
When the savage {monster} espied me, and Acis unsuspecting and apprehensive of no such thing; and he exclaimed:-- ‘I see you, and I shall cause this to be the last union for your affection.’
Fable 100 · in a little time
The purple blood flowed from beneath the rock, and in a little time the redness began to vanish; and at first it became the colour of a stream muddied by a shower; and, in time, it became clear.
Fable 101
Hardly had my throat well swallowed the unknown juices, when I suddenly felt my entrails inwardly throb, and my mind taken possession of by the passions of another nature.
Fable 101
Nor could I stay in {that} place; and I exclaimed, ‘Farewell, land, never more to be revisited;’ and plunged my body beneath the deep.
Fable 101 · 📍 [[Anthedon]]
When it returned {to me}, I found myself different throughout all my body from what I was before, and not the same in mind.
Fable 101
Scylla (daughter of Cratæis) Glaucus
As he was saying such things as these, and about to say still more, Scylla left the God. He was enraged, and, provoked at the repulse,
Fable 102
Glaucus Scylla (daughter of Cratæis) Circe
Sooner shall foliage grow in the ocean, and {sooner} shall sea-weed spring up on the tops of the mountains, than my affections shall change, while Scylla is alive.
Fable 102
Circe Scylla (daughter of Cratæis) Hecate
This the Goddess infects beforehand, and pollutes it with monster-breeding drugs; on it she sprinkles the juices distilled from the noxious root
Fable 102 · at the first moment that an opportunity was given
Scylla (daughter of Cratæis) Ulysses
Scylla remained on that spot; and, at the first moment that an opportunity was given, in her hatred of Circe, she deprived Ulysses of his companions.
Fable 102 · Soon after
Soon after, the same {Scylla} would have overwhelmed the Trojan ships, had she not been first transformed into a rock
Fable 103 · once
Jupiter Cercopians
For the father of the Gods, once abhorring the frauds and perjuries of the Cercopians, and the crimes of the fraudulent race, changed these men into ugly animals;
Fable 104 · 📍 [[Avernus]]
Æneas obeyed; and he beheld the power of the dread Orcus, and his own ancestors, and the aged ghost of the magnanimous Anchises
Fable 104 · 📍 [[Cumæ]]
Having rejected the offers of Phœbus, I remain unmarried. But now my more vigorous years have passed by, and crazy old age approaches with its trembling step
Fable 105 · 📍 [[Ætna]]
but when your flight had saved you from a cruel death, he, indeed, roaring with rage, paced about all Ætna, and groped out the woods with his hands, and, deprived of his eye, stumbled against the rocks;
Fable 105
I imagined that[20] now he was about to seize hold of me, and that now he was on the very point of swallowing my vitals within his own; in my mind was fixed the impress of that time when I beheld two bodies of my companions three or four times dashed against the ground. Throwing himself on the top of them, just like a shaggy lion, he stowed away their entrails, their flesh, their bones with the white marrow, and their quivering limbs, in his ravenous paunch.
Fable 105 · after a length of time
Concealing myself for many a day, and trembling at every sound, and both fearing death and {yet} desirous to die, satisfying hunger with acorns, and with grass mixed with leaves, alone, destitute, desponding, abandoned to death and destruction, after a length of time, I beheld a ship not far off; by signs I prayed for deliverance, and I ran down to the shore; I prevailed; and a Trojan ship received me, a Greek.
Fable 105 · 📍 [[Æolia]] · the first morning after the ninth
{and how}, when the first morning after the ninth had arrived, his companions, influenced by envy and a desire for booty, supposing it to be gold, had cut the fastenings of the winds; {and how}, through these, the ship had gone back along the waves through which it had just come, and had returned to the harbour of the Æolian king.
Fable 105 · 📍 [[Lamus]]
Antiphates pursued us as we fled, and called together his followers; they flocked together, and, without intermission, they showered both stones and beams, and they overwhelmed men, and ships, too, did they overwhelm; yet one, which carried us and Ulysses himself, escaped.
Fable 106 · 📍 [[isle of Circe]] · Soon as
Circe Macareus Polytes Elpenor
Soon as, in our thirst, we quaffed them with parching mouth, and the ruthless Goddess, with her wand, touched the extremity of our hair (I am both ashamed, and {yet} I will tell of it), I began to grow rough with bristles, and no longer to be able to speak; and, instead of words, to utter a harsh noise, and to grovel on the ground with all my face.
Fable 106 · 📍 [[isle of Circe]]
Eurylochus, alone, had not the form of a swine; he, alone, escaped the proffered draught. And had he not escaped it, I should even, at this moment, have still been one of the bristle-clad animals; nor would Ulysses, having been informed by him of so direful a disaster, have come to Circe as {our} avenger.
Fable 107
He roughly repels her and her entreaties: and he says, ‘Whoever thou art, I am not for thee; another female holds me enthralled, and for a long space of time, I pray, may she so hold me. I will not pollute the conjugal ties with the love of a stranger, while the Fates shall preserve for me Canens, the daughter of Janus.’
Fable 107 · 📍 [[Latian woods]] · Then
He fled; wondering that he sped more swiftly than usual, he beheld wings on his body; and indignant that he was added suddenly as a strange bird to the Latian woods, he struck the wild oaks with his hard beak, and, in his anger, inflicted wounds[35] on the long branches.
Fable 107 · In the meantime
From the touch of this, the monstrous forms of various wild beasts come upon the young men; his own form remains to no one of them.
Fable 107 · 📍 [[Tiber]] · Six nights, and as many returning lights of the Sun
At last, melting with grief, {even} to her thin marrow, she pined away, and by degrees vanished into light air.
Fable 108 · 📍 Alba · From that time
[[Ascanius]]
From that time Alba and the Latin state were under the sway of Ascanius with the two names;
Fable 108 · 📍 [[Etrurian river]]
Tiberinus received the sovereignty after them; and, drowned in the waves of the Etrurian river, he gave his name to the stream.
Fable 108
Remulus, {who was} the elder, an imitator of the lightnings, perished by the stroke[52] of a thunder-bolt.
Fable 108
who lies buried on the same mount over which he had reigned; and to that mountain he gave his name.
Fable 108
He, too, having bound his brows with a coloured cap,[53] leaning on a stick, with white hair placed around his temples, assumed the shape of an old woman, and entered the well-cultivated gardens,
Fable 109 · 📍 [[Argos]] · when the accusation had first been made
He was alarmed; and {now} he was also preparing to transfer his country’s home to a new settlement, {when} a rumour arose in the city, and he was accused of holding the laws in contempt.
Fable 109 · 📍 [[Argos]] · Soon as it, being inverted, poured forth the pebbles to be counted
Soon as it, being inverted, poured forth the pebbles to be counted, the colour of them all was changed from black to white, and the sentence, changed to a favourable one by the aid of Hercules, acquitted the son of Alemon.
Fable 110 · 📍 [[Delphi]]
“What here thou dost seek, O Roman, thou mightst have sought in a nearer spot: and now seek it in a nearer spot; thou hast no need of Apollo to diminish thy grief, but of the son of Apollo. Go with a good omen, and invite my son.”
Fable 110 · twilight
“Lay aside thy fears; I will come, and I will leave these {my} statues. Only observe {now} this serpent, which with its folds entwines around this staff, and accurately mark it with thine eyes, that thou mayst be able to know it again. Into this shall I be changed; but I shall be greater, and I shall appear to be of a size as great as that into which heavenly bodies ought to be transformed.”
Fable 110 · The following morn
Hardly have they well ceased, when the God, all glittering with gold, in {the form of} a serpent, with crest erect, sends forth a hissing, as a notice of his approach
Fable 110 · 📍 [[the Island]] · And now
Hither, the serpent, son of Phœbus, betakes himself from the Latian ship; and he puts an end to the mourning, having resumed his celestial form. And {thus} did he come, the restorer of health, to the City.
Fable 111 · 📍 [[Senate-house]]
Julius Cæsar is assassinated in the Senate-house, and by the intercession of Venus, his ancestor, he is changed into a star.
Fable 111 · 📍 [[Senate-house]]
Hardly had he uttered these words, when the genial Venus, perceived by none, stood in the very midst of the Senate-house, and snatched the soul, just liberated {from the body}, away from the limbs of her own Cæsar, and, not suffering it to dissolve in air, she bore it amid the stars of heaven.
Fable 111
Above the moon it takes its flight, and, as a star, it glitters, carrying a flaming train with a lengthened track;
Fable 111 · 📍 [[Philippi]]
Augustus Brutus Cassius Mark Antony
Brutus and Cassius were defeated by Augustus and Antony at Philippi.
Fable 111
Mark Antony was so infatuated as to divorce his wife, Octavia, that he might be enabled to marry Cleopatra.
Fable 111
Augustus Livia Drusilla Tiberius Nero
Augustus took Livia Drusilla, while pregnant, from her husband, Tiberius Nero, and married her.