Metamorphoses

  “O Perseus,” he cries, “you win! Just take away

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  that fright of yours, that petrifying head

  of this Medusa, whatever she may be—

  get rid of it, get rid of it, I beg you!

  I never hated you! I never wanted

  to rule in your place! What got me into this,

  what moved me to take up arms against you,

  was my promised bride—I had the prior claim,

  but on the merits, you deserved to win.

  I’m not at all ashamed at having lost;

  grant me my life and nothing in addition—

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  yours be the spoils, greathearted Perseus!”

  And as he spoke, he did not even dare

  to look upon that other, who replied,

  “Fear not, fainthearted Phineus: the gift

  that lies within my power to bestow

  (and what a tribute to your cowardice it is!)

  I now confer: no sword will injure you.

  You will remain a monument forever,

  displayed in the house of my father-in-law;

  my wife will find great solace,” said the hero,

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  “in gazing at her fiancé’s still form,”

  and carried the Medusa’s head around

  to the agitated gaze of Phineus.

  Then, even as he strove to turn away,

  his neck grew rigid, and, upon his cheeks,

  the tears that he was shedding turned to stone,

  and fixed forever in the marble were

  the frightened face and suppliant expression,

  the pleading hands and abject attitude.

  And now, accompanied by his new bride,

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  triumphant Perseus returns to Argos,

  the high-walled city of his birth; and there,

  in order to avenge his undeserving

  grandfather, Acrisius, he wages war

  on his granduncle, Proetus, who drove

  Acrisius away by force of arms

  and seized his citadel. But neither arms

  nor the citadel that he had wrongly seized

  allowed Proetus to prevail against

  the fierce gaze of the serpent-bearing monster.

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  But you, O Polydectes, governor

  of tiny Seriphos, unmollified

  by the young man’s excellence, so often shown

  in the trials and tribulations he went through—

  you were inflexible in hating him

  and unrelenting in your unjust anger;

  you went so far as to deny him praise,

  and claimed Medusa’s death to be a lie.

  “We’ll give you evidence right now,” said Perseus.

  “Protect your eyes!” He raised Medusa’s face

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  up to the king’s and turned him into stone.

  Minerva visits the Muses

  Up until now, Minerva had companioned

  her gold-begotten brother in his travels;

  but then, surrounded by a hollow cloud,

  she slipped out of Seriphos; on her right,

  the isles of Cythnus and Gyarus fell away,

  as, by the most direct route she could take

  across the sea, she headed right for Thebes

  and Helicon, where the virgin Muses dwell.

  She landed on their mountain and addressed

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  those erudite and skillful sisters nine:

  “We have heard much of this new spring of yours,

  which Pegasus, Medusa’s flying horse,

  created when his hoof broke through the earth.

  That is what brings me here: I wish to see

  this miracle—I have already seen

  the horse himself, born from his mother’s blood.”

  Urania replied: “Whatever cause

  brings you to visit our home, O goddess,

  you are a welcome presence in our hearts;

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  the tale that you have heard is true indeed,

  for it was Pegasus produced this spring.”

  She led Minerva to the sacred waters.

  The goddess long stood rapt in admiration

  of the spring made by a blow from the horse’s hoof,

  and gazed about her at the ancient woods,

  the grottoes, and the varied kinds of grasses

  displaying their innumerable flowers,

  and called the daughters of Mnemosyne

  doubly blest—both by their eagerness to learn

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  and by their home.

  One of them answered her:

  “O goddess, more than welcome in our choir—

  had not your worthiness selected you

  for greater tasks—you speak the truth in praising

  the arts we practice and the home we share.

  “We would be happy were we safe in it,

  but these days wickedness is unrestrained,

  and maiden sensibilities like ours

  are easily affrighted: before our eyes

  we still can see him—fierce king Pyreneus;

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  that scare we have not yet recovered from.

  “For with his Thracian forces, he had seized

  rich Daulis and the fields of Phocea,

  whose folk he tyrannized; we were en route

  to our temple high on Mount Parnassus,

  when he noticed us as we were passing through,

  and recognizing us, put on a face

  that showed false reverence for our godhead.

  ‘Daughters of Memory,’ he said, ‘stop here!

  Take refuge without hesitation, please,

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  from gloomy skies and rain (for it was raining)

  beneath my roof—for often deities

  have taken shelter in much humbler homes.’

  “Persuaded by his words and by the weather,

  we yielded and set foot in his front room.

  The rain soon ceased: the north wind having won

  its struggle with the south wind, the dull clouds

  were promptly purged and exiled from the sky.

  We wished to leave; he shut us up within,

  thinking to have his way with us by force,

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  and so we put our wings on to escape.

  “He perched on the summit of his citadel,

  as though intending to come after us:

  ‘Whither thou goest, I shall go the same,’

  he said, and threw himself from the high tower

  and landed on his head, which shattered it,

  and dyed the earth with his indecent blood.”

  The daughters of Pierus

  As the Muse spoke, Minerva could hear wings

  beating on air, and cries of greeting came

  from high in the trees. She peered into the foliage,

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  attempting to discover where those sounds,

  the speech of human beings to be sure,

  were emanating from: why, from some birds!

  Bewailing their sad fate, a flock of nine

  magpies (which mimic anyone they wish to)

  had settled in the branches overhead.

  Minerva having shown astonishment,

  the Muse gave her a little goddess-chat:

  “This lot has only recently been added

  to the throngs of birds. Why? They lost a contest!

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  Their father was Pierus, lord of Pella,

  their mother was Evippe of Paeonia;

  nine times she called upon Lucina’s aid

  and nine times she delivered. Swollen up

  with foolish pride because they were so many,

  that crowd of simpleminded sisters went

  through all Haemonia and through Achaea too,

  arriving here to challenge us in song:

  “‘We’ll show y
ou girls just what real class is

  Give up tryin’ to deceive the masses

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  Your rhymes are fake: accept our wager

  Learn which of us is minor and which is major

  There’s nine of us here and there’s nine of you

  And you’ll be nowhere long before we’re through

  Nothin’s gonna save you ’cuz your songs are lame

  And the way you sing ’em is really a shame

  So stop with, “Well I never!” and “This can’t be real!”

  We’re the newest New Thing and here is our deal

  If we beat you, obsolete you, then you just get gone

  From these classy haunts on Mount Helicon

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  We give you Macedonia—if we lose

  An’ that’s an offer you just can’t refuse

  So take the wings off, sisters, get down and jam

  And let the nymphs be the judges of our poetry slam!’

  “Shameful it was to strive against such creatures;

  more shameful not to. Nymphs were picked as judges,

  sworn into service on their river banks,

  and took their seats on benches made of tufa.

  “And then—not even drawing lots!—the one

  who claimed to be their champion commenced;

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  she sang of war between the gods and Giants,

  giving the latter credit more than due

  and deprecating all that the great gods did;

  how Typhoeus, from earth’s lowest depths,

  struck fear in every celestial heart,

  so that they all turned tail and fled, until,

  exhausted, they found refuge down in Egypt,

  where the Nile flows from seven distinct mouths;

  she sang of how earthborn Typhoeus

  pursued them even here and forced the gods

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  to hide themselves by taking fictive shapes:

  “‘In Libya the Giants told the gods to scram

  The boss god they worship there has horns like a ram

  ’Cuz Jupiter laid low as the leader of a flock

  And Delius his homey really got a shock

  When the Giants left him with no place to go:

  “Fuggedabout Apollo—make me a crow!”

  And if you believe that Phoebus was a wuss

  His sister Phoebe turned into a puss

  Bacchus takes refuge in the skin of a goat

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  And Juno as a cow with a snow-white coat

  Venus the queen of the downtown scene, yuh know what her wish is?

  “Gimme a body just like a fish’s”

  Mercury takes on an ibis’s shape

  And that’s how the mighty (cheep cheep) gods escape’

  “And then her song, accompanied on the lute,

  came to an end, and it was our turn—

  but possibly you haven’t got the time

  to listen to our song?”

  “Oh, don’t think that,”

  Minerva said. “I want it word for word:

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  sing it for me just as you sang it then.”

  The Muse replied: “We turned the contest over

  to one of us, Calliope, who rose,

  and after binding up her hair in ivy

  and lightly strumming a few plaintive chords,

  she vigorously launched into her song:

  Calliope’s hymn to Ceres: Proem

  “‘Ceres was first to break up the soil with a curved plowshare,

  the first to give us the earth’s fruits and to nourish us gently,

  and the first to give laws: every gift comes from Ceres.

  The goddess must now be my subject. Would that I could sing

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  a hymn that is worthy of her, for she surely deserves it.

  The rape of Proserpina

  “‘Vigorous Sicily sprawled across the gigantic body

  of one who had dared aspire to rule in the heavens;

  the island’s weight held Typhoeus firmly beneath it.

  Often exerting himself, he strives yet again to rise up,

  but there in the north, his right hand is held down by Pelorus,

  his left hand by you, Pachynus; off in the west, Lilybaeum

  weighs on his legs, while Mount Etna presses his head, as

  under it, raging Typhoeus coughs ashes and vomits up fire.

  Often he struggles, attempting to shake off the earth’s weight

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  and roll its cities and mountains away from his body.

  “‘This causes tremors and panics the Lord of the Silent,

  who fears that the earth’s crust will crack and break open,

  and daylight, let in, will frighten the trembling phantoms;

  dreading disaster, the tyrant left his tenebrous kingdom;

  borne in his chariot drawn by its team of black horses,

  he crisscrossed Sicily, checking the island’s foundation.

  “‘After his explorations had left him persuaded

  that none of its parts were in imminent danger of falling,

  his fears were forgotten, and Venus, there on Mount Eryx,

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  observed him relaxing, and said, as she drew Cupid near her,

  “My son, my sword, my strong right arm and source of my power,

  take up that weapon by which all your victims are vanquished

  and send your swift arrows into the breast of the deity

  to whom the last part of the threefold realm was allotted.

  “‘“You govern the gods and their ruler; you rule the defeated

  gods of the ocean and govern the one who rules them, too;

  why give up on the dead, when we can extend our empire

  into their realm? A third part of the world is involved here!

  And yet the celestial gods spurn our forbearance,

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  and the prestige of Love is diminished, even as mine is.

  Do you not see how Athena and huntress Diana

  have both taken leave of me? The virgin daughter of Ceres

  desires to do likewise—and will, if we let her!

  But if you take pride in our alliance, advance it

  by joining her to her uncle!”

  “‘Venus ceased speaking and Cupid

  loosened his quiver, and, just as his mother had ordered,

  selected, from thousands of missiles, the one that was sharpest

  and surest and paid his bow the closest attention,

  and using one knee to bend its horn back almost double,

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  he pierces the heart of Dis with his barb-tipped arrow.

  “‘Near Henna’s walls stands a deep pool of water, called Pergus:

  not even the river Cayster, flowing serenely,

  hears more songs from its swans; this pool is completely surrounded

  by a ring of tall trees, whose foliage, just like an awning,

  keeps out the sun and preserves the water’s refreshing coolness;

  the moist ground is covered with flowers of Tyrian purple;

  here it is springtime forever. And here Proserpina

  was playfully picking its white lilies and violets,

  and, while competing to gather up more than her playmates,

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  filling her basket and stuffing the rest in her bosom,

  Dis saw her, was smitten, seized her and carried her off;

  his love was that hasty. The terrified goddess cried out

  for her mother, her playmates—but for her mother most often,

  since she had torn the uppermost seam of her garment,

  and the gathered flowers rained down from her negligent tunic;

  because of her tender years and her childish simplicity,

  even this loss could move her to maidenly sorrow.

  “‘Her abductor rushed off in his chariot, urging his horses, r />
  calling each one by its name and flicking the somber,

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  rust-colored reins over their backs as they galloped

  through the deep lakes and the sulphurous pools of Palike

  that boil up through the ruptured earth, and where the Bacchiadae,

  a race sprung from Corinth, that city between the two seas,

  had raised their own walls between two unequal harbors.

  “‘There is a bay that is landlocked almost completely

  between the two pools of Cyane and Pisaean Arethusa,

  the residence of the most famous nymph in all Sicily,

  Cyane, who gave her very own name to the fountain.

  She showed herself now, emerged from her pool at waist level,

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  and recognizing the goddess, told Dis, “Go no further!

  You cannot become the son-in-law of great Ceres

  against her will: you should have asked and not taken!

  If it is right for me to compare lesser with greater,

  I accepted Anapis when he desired to have me,

  yielding to pleas and not—as in this case—to terror.”

  She spoke, and stretching her arms out in either direction,

  kept him from passing. That son of Saturn could scarcely

  hold back his anger; he urged on his frightening horses,

  and then, with his strong right arm, he hurled his scepter

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  directly into the very base of the fountain;

  the stricken earth opened a path to the underworld

  and took in the chariot rushing down into its crater.

  “‘Cyane, lamenting not just the goddess abducted,

  but also the disrespect shown for her rights as a fountain,

  tacitly nursed in her heart an inconsolable sorrow;

  and she who had once been its presiding spirit,

  reduced to tears, dissolved right into its substance.

  You would have seen her members beginning to soften,

  her bones and her fingertips starting to lose their old firmness;

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  her slenderest parts were the first to be turned into fluid:

  her feet, her legs, her sea-dark tresses, her fingers

  (for the parts with least flesh turn into liquid most quickly);

  and after these, her shoulders and back and her bosom

  and flanks completely vanished in trickling liquid;

  and lastly the living blood in her veins is replaced by

  springwater, and nothing remains that you could have seized on.

  “‘Meanwhile, the terrified mother was pointlessly seeking

  her daughter all over the earth and deep in the ocean.

  Neither Aurora, appearing with dew-dampened tresses,

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  nor Hesperus knew her to quit; igniting two torches

  of pine from the fires of Etna, the care-ridden goddess

  used them to illumine the wintery shadows of nighttime;