Metamorphoses

  And there he saw a pool of crystal-clear

  water, not choked with reeds and spiky rushes,

  but fluidly transparent, with a border

  of well-kept lawn, landscaped with evergreens.

  “A nymph dwelled here, who was not keen on hunting,

  not up for archery, unfit for footraces;

  the only nymph not in Diana’s posse.

  Often, the story goes, her sisters said,

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  ‘Choose one, Salmacis, javelin or bow,

  and interrupt your leisure for the chase!’

  “But she would not choose javelin or bow,

  or interrupt her leisure for the chase;

  for she would rather bathe her shapely limbs

  and then spend hours working on her hair,

  using the waters as a mirror to

  reflect the look that made her look most lovely.

  “And after that, in a transparent gown,

  she chose between the softness of the leaves

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  or the lawn’s softness to lie down upon.

  Often she gathered flowers. As it happened,

  one day while so engaged, she saw the boy,

  and realized that she just had to have him.

  “But eager as she was, she still hung back:

  composed herself and then arranged her hair

  and struck a fetching pose; and having done

  her utmost to be seen as beautiful,

  she only then came up to him and spoke:

  “‘O boy, most worthy to be taken for

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  a god, if you’re a god, why you’d be Cupid,

  but if you’re not a god, if you’re just mortal,

  why, blessed are the parents who produced you,

  happy your brother and fortunate indeed

  your sister, if you have one, and the nurse

  who gave her breasts to you, but far more blest

  than any one of these is your betrothed,

  if you’re already promised to another,

  if that’s the case I’ll bed you secretly—

  but if there is no other I would be

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  the one to share a wedding couch with you.’

  “The nymph fell silent, and the boy’s cheeks reddened,

  for though he’d no experience of love,

  he blushed attractively.

  “The color seemed

  like that of apples in a sunny orchard,

  or painted ivory, or like the moon

  eclipsed, when red is glimpsed around her rim,

  and brazen vessels are beaten in the vain

  effort of the pious to restore her.

  “The nymph kept pestering him for a kiss,

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  a friendly kiss, the kind a sister gets—

  while readying herself to fling her arms

  around his ivory neck in an embrace.

  ‘Stop that,’ he said, ‘or I’ll leave you here alone!’

  This terrifies Salmacis, who replies,

  ‘Stranger, this place is yours; I freely yield it.’

  “She walked away, pretending to depart,

  but only went into a nearby thicket

  and hid herself, crouching on bended knee;

  he seemed to think that he was all alone

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  and unobserved, and so went wandering

  along the grassy margins of the pool,

  testing the playful waters with his toes

  and then his feet, and then—no more delay,

  the tepid water summoned him, and he

  removed the garments from his slender body.

  “Salmacis is delighted by the sight

  and burns with passion for his nakedness;

  her eyes light up as though he were the Sun

  and they were mirrors filled with his reflection.

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  Delay seems unendurable and joy

  will suffer no postponement; scarcely able

  to still her passion, she must have him now!

  “And after splashing water on his body

  with his cupped palms, he dives into the pond,

  and breaks the surface with an easy crawl,

  glowing within that liquid as though lilies

  or an ivory figurine has been sealed up

  in clearest glass.

  “‘I’ve won, the boy is mine!’

  the nymph cries out, and tearing off her clothing,

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  she dives into the middle of the pool,

  and though he fights her, holds him in her clutches,

  seizing the kisses he is loath to yield;

  her hands surprise him, coming from below,

  caressing that reluctant breast of his—

  although he strives to tear himself away,

  the nymph—now here, now there—surrounds her prey,

  just as the serpent wraps herself around

  the eagle when he grasps her in his talons

  and takes her up: dangling from his claws,

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  she twines herself between his head and feet

  and with her tail, immobilizes him;

  or just as ivy winds around a tree,

  and as the octopus beneath the sea

  securely binds the prey that it has captured

  with tentacles sent out in all directions;

  yet still the boy denies the nymph her bliss.

  “She presses her whole body against his

  as though stuck on him, crying, ‘Willful boy,

  you can resist me, but you can’t escape!

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  O gods, so order it that from this day

  he will not part from me—nor I from him!’

  “Her wish was granted: their two bodies blent,

  both face and figure, to a single form;

  so when a twig is grafted to a tree,

  they join together in maturity.

  “Now these two figures in their close embrace

  were two no longer, but were something else,

  no longer to be called a man and woman,

  and although neither, nonetheless seemed both.

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  “And when he understood about the water,

  how he had dived into it as a man,

  but left it otherwise, with softened limbs,

  Hermaphroditus raised both hands to heaven

  and cried out in a voice no longer virile:

  “‘O father and mother, after whom I’m named,

  grant me, as consolation, this one boon:

  may any man who sets foot in this pool

  depart from it without virility,

  instantly softened by the water’s touch.’

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  “Hermes and Aphrodite heard the prayer

  of their one child, in whom both sexes were,

  and gave the fountain that defiling power.”

  The daughters of Minyas transformed

  Alcithoë concluded, while the daughters

  of Minyas continued with their work,

  spurning the god, dishonoring his feast;

  when suddenly a dissonant outburst

  from unseen tambours, flutes, and cymbals broke

  upon them with a loud, disturbing clamor—

  the air now smelled of saffron and of myrrh,

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  and, unbelievably, their weaving greened.

  Some of their hanging tapestries burst forth

  with ivy, while the others turned to grape vines,

  and what had lately been unliving threads

  are vine sprouts now, while soft vine tendrils trail

  from the distaff, and brightly clustered grapes

  now seek to match the woven purple dye!

  The day was ended and that time had come

  which you could say was neither light nor dark,

  uncertain night, when yet some day remains.

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  It seemed as though the house suddenly shuddered,

  and unaccountably the oil lamps flared

  and blazing torches lit up every room,

  and howling all around them everywhere

  were the false images of savage beasts.

  Meanwhile, the sisters have been seeking refuge

  in various places from the glaring flames,

  and as they try to slip into the shadows,

  a slender membrane glides over their limbs

  and meager wings enclose their withered arms;

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  darkness conceals from them the true extent

  of the great changes now come over them;

  not downy feathers, but translucent wings

  sustain their flight, and when they try to speak,

  their much diminished bodies now emit

  only the very tiniest of voices,

  telling their woes in little, high-pitched squeaks.

  Shunning the woods, they congregate in houses,

  nocturnal fliers fearful of the day,

  creatures named for the time they first appear:

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  vespertilians. [Or, as we say, bats.]

  Juno in Hades; Ino and Athamas

  After this incident, the divinity

  of Bacchus was much remarked on throughout Thebes,

  and the god’s aunt, Ino, boasted of his powers everywhere, for only she had been

  spared the great grief that her three sisters knew,

  save for her tears of sympathy with them.

  Juno could not but notice Ino’s pride

  in her son and in her husband, Athamas,

  and—yes!—in her immortal foster child!

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  Quite unendurable, she told herself:

  “My rival’s son is able to transform

  men into fishes and plunge them in the sea,

  to make a mother dismember her own child,

  and slip weird new wings over on the three

  daughters of Minyas: what can Juno do,

  but weep for slights and insults unavenged?

  “Should that content me? That be my one power?

  My enemy instructs me (as is fitting)

  in my course of action: the death of Pentheus

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  reveals beyond the shadow of a doubt

  what madness may achieve: why shouldn’t Ino

  be goaded into frenzy like her sisters?”

  There is a road on both sides darkened by

  funereal yew trees as it descends

  through speechless silence to the nether world,

  where sluggish Styx exhales its rotten breath;

  shades of the recent dead tread down that path

  when their last rites have been attended to;

  and in that cold and featureless wasteland,

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  souls newly come are at a loss to find

  the Stygian city and palace of black Dis.

  There are a thousand ways into this city,

  and open gates on all sides; as the ocean

  receives the rivers from around the world,

  so this place gathers in all mortal souls,

  and never fills, however many come.

  Here bloodless, boneless, bodiless shades stray:

  some make their way to the forum; others seek

  the palace of the ruler of the dead,

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  or take up once again the crafts they lived by.

  Motivated by her ferocious hatred,

  Saturnian Juno found the fortitude

  to come here after leaving heaven’s realm.

  Pressed by her sacred body on arrival,

  the threshold groaned, and Cerberus raised up

  his three heads baying all in unison.

  Juno summons those sisters born of Night,

  implacable grave powers, where they sit

  before the adamantine prison’s gates,

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  combing the snakes from their hair; as soon as they

  saw who it was approaching through the gloom,

  the sisters rose at once and greeted her.

  This is the place where infamy is punished;

  here Tityos endures evisceration,

  pegged down over nine acres; here you, Tantalus,

  lower your lips to the receding flood

  and raise them to the ever-rising fruit;

  here, Sisyphus, you push or you pursue

  the rock that always rolls back to its place;

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  here Ixion, bound on his turning wheel

  both flees himself and follows after; here

  the Belides, who slew their cousin-husbands,

  must carry water in their leaky vessels.

  Juno looked daggers at these felons all,

  at Ixion especially, then turned

  her glance to Sisyphus again, and said,

  “Why is it that of all the brothers, he

  should be eternally tormented, when

  Athamas and his wife, who scorned my godhead,

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  live grandly in a palace up above?”

  Juno sets out before them all the reasons

  why hatred had compelled her to this journey,

  and tells them what she wishes, which was this:

  the ruination of the house of Cadmus,

  and that the vengeful Furies should employ

  Athamas as an instrument of evil;

  she bids them, begs, beseeches their support

  in a flood of words.

  When Juno stopped at last,

  Tisiphone shook out her matted locks,

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  and brushed the snakes away so she could speak:

  “It’s no big thing,” she said, “no reason for

  a song and dance about it. Say no more:

  consider it done exactly as you bid;

  and now from this unlovable abode,

  return at once to heaven’s sweeter airs.”

  Thither celestial Juno repairs,

  and on arrival, Iris, Thaumas’ daughter,

  besprinkles her with purifying water.

  At once the ominous Tisiphone

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  selected a torch that had been steeped in blood,

  put on a robe reddened with dripping gore,

  and a belt of live snakes. And so appareled,

  set out from home accompanied by Grief,

  with Fear and Terror and convulsive Madness.

  They say the doorposts shuddered when she stood

  on the threshold of the house of Aeolus;

  the polished oaken doors lost all their luster,

  and the Sun went in. Ino and Athamas

  were blocked, when, terrified, they tried to flee

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  the ill-omened Fury there before them,

  who spreads her arms, alive with tangled snakes,

  and shakes her locks out: stunned, more serpents fall,

  some to her shoulders, others to her breast,

  hissing and vomiting their deadly slaver.

  And then she seizes two from her coiffure

  and hurls them at her victims, but the snakes

  glide easily across their torsos, breathing

  their poison out, though not to harm their bodies:

  it is their minds that take the fatal blows.

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  Besides the serpents, she had brought along

  assorted other poisons and distempers:

  slaver from Cerberus, venom from the Hydra,

  Hallucination, Blindness, Mindlessness,

  with Sin and Tears and Rage and Blood-Lust too,

  all ground together into a fine powder,

  mixed with fresh blood and then brought to a boil

  in a great kettle made of bronze, and stirred

  with a fresh green wand cut from a hemlock tree.

  And while they stood there trembling, she poured

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  her potion on their breasts; at once it sank

  into the very center of their feelings.

  Then snatching up her torch, she whirled it round

  so swiftly that its flames burst into flame!

  And having done what she set out to do,

  victorious Tisiphone returned

  to the insubstantial kingdom of black Dis

  and slipped out of the serpents she was wearing.

  Athamas, raging in his palace, cries,

  “Ah, comrades! Spread your nets here in these woods,

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  for I have just now seen a lioness

  with her twin cubs!”

  Dementedly he stalked

  his wife as though she were a savage beast;

  laughing at this, his infant son, Learchus,

  was reaching toward him with his little arms,

  when the madman snatched him from his mother’s breast

  and whirled him in the air just like a sling,

  two or three times, before he smashed the child’s

  head on a rock.

  Then, maddened by her grief

  or by the poison she’d been sprinkled with,

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  Ino flees, shrieking, with her hair disheveled,

  and you, Melicertes, clutched in her bare arms.

  “Euhoe, Bacchus!” she cried, and at the sound

  of Bacchus’ name, Juno laughed and said,

  “May he always bless you so, your foster son!”

  There is a cliff that juts into the ocean;

  the waves had worn away its lower face,

  leaving a shelf to keep away the rain;

  its high peak thrust far out above the tide.

  She reached this point, for Madness gave her strength,

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  and unrestrained by any normal fears,

  leapt with her burden out into the sea,

  whose pounding waves churned the dark waters white.

  But Venus, out of pity for her grandchild’s

  unmerited distress, addressed her uncle

  caressingly: “O Neptune, god of waters,

  and second in command in all of heaven,

  I realize that I am asking much,

  but these are mine: I beg you pity them,

  who, as you know, are plunged in the immense

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  reaches of the vast lonian Sea,

  and let them join you now as water gods.

  “For after all, the sea owes me a favor,

  if it is true indeed that I arose

  from sea foam in the depths, on that occasion

  commemorated by my name in Greek.”

  Neptune nodded, assenting to her prayer,

  and raised them up no longer mortal,

  but in their majesties most worshipful;

  new names and shapes were also given them:

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  Palaemon was the name of the new god;

  his goddess mother was named Leucothoë.