Metamorphoses

  in cruel warfare, and you lulled the rude

  protector of the Golden Fleece to sleep,

  and with its guardian beguiled, you sent

  his treasure sailing off to Grecian cities.

  “Now I must have a potion to renew

  old age, restoring it to youthful bloom.

  And you will give me one, for not in vain

  do the stars above me flicker their assent,

  and not in vain does my chariot appear,

  drawn by its matched pair of flying dragons.”

  And there it was: her chariot, sent down

  from the aethereal regions. Once aboard,

  she stroked her dragons’ necks and flicked their reins

  lightly, and they ascended; below her lay

  Thessalian Tempe; she set her dragons for

  those regions that were sources of her herbs:

  and she descried below plants found on Ossa

  and lofty Pelion, on Othrys, on Pindus,

  and (larger than that last one) on Olympus;

  the herbs that pleased her she took, root and all,

  or snipped off leaves with her bronze pruning hook.

  Many appealing herbs were found along

  the banks of the Apidanus, and many more

  along the Amphrysus, nor were you exempt,

  Enipeus, from her provisioning,

  and Peneus and Sperchios and Boebe;

  and from Euboean Anthedon she seized

  a life-prolonging herb not yet made famous

  by the effects that it produced on Glaucus.

  After nine days and nights had seen Medea

  in her dragon-driven chariot, traversing

  the skies above those regions, she returned

  to her own home; her reptiles had been touched

  only by the odors of those herbs,

  and yet they shed the skins of their old age!

  Nearing her house she halted on its threshold:

  and there, beneath the blue sky’s canopy,

  without allowing Jason to embrace her,

  she built two altars out of turf; on the right

  was Hecate’s—and Youth she gave the other.

  She decorated them with sacred boughs

  fetched out of the forest; near the altars,

  she dug a pair of trenches in the earth,

  and there performed her rites. She slit the throat

  of a black sheep and let his blood drain out

  into the trenches; over it she poured

  a goblet full of honey, liquified,

  and then a goblet full of tepid milk,

  while praying to the gods who dwell below,

  begging the king of shadows and his bride,

  stolen from earth, that they should be less eager

  to cheat an old man of the breath of life.

  And then, when by her prayers and incantations

  the underworld was calmed, she had them bring

  Aeson’s exhausted body to the altars;

  and once her spells had put him in a sleep

  resembling death, she stretched the old man out

  on a bed of strewn grasses, then sent her mate

  and his attendants off, commanding them

  to keep far hence, lest their profaning eyes

  should violate the mysteries.

  They left

  as she had ordered them, and then, her hair

  unbound like one of the Bacchantes, Medea

  walked all around the blazing altars, steeping

  her torches in the trenches black with blood,

  until, igniting them upon the altar stones,

  she purified the old man three times each,

  with water and with fire and with sulpher.

  Meanwhile the potent brew in her bronze cauldron

  is on the boil, leaping with thick white foam;

  in it are roots dug up in Thessaly

  cooking with seeds and flowers and black juice;

  she adds some pebbles from the Orient,

  some sand grains washed by Ocean’s ebbing tide,

  some hoarfrost gathered in the full moon’s light,

  the nasty wings and flesh of a screech owl,

  the innards of a werewolf, which can change

  his feral mask into a human face,

  the scaly skin of a Libyan water snake,

  an old stag’s liver, and the head and eggs

  of an ancient crow that had lived longer than

  nine human generations.

  When, with these,

  and with a thousand other such ingredients

  (whose names we needn’t bother mentioning),

  the miracle to come had been arranged,

  the foreign woman took a long-dead branch

  from a fruitful olive tree and stirred her pot,

  mixing it thoroughly from top to bottom.

  But look! Almost at once, that stick turned green,

  and just a short time later put out leaves,

  and suddenly was loaded down with fruit!

  Wherever her bronze cauldron overflowed

  and the hot potion splashed upon the ground,

  flowers and tender grass turned the earth green.

  Medea, seeing this, unsheathed her sword

  and slit the old man’s throat to drain his blood,

  which she at once replaced with her elixir;

  as soon as Aeson had consumed the stuff

  (poured either in his mouth or in his wound),

  his beard and hair immediately changed

  from white to black, his gauntness and his pallor

  and aura of decay took their departure,

  as all his wrinkles filled out with new flesh

  and withered limbs regained their muscle tone:

  Aeson was now astonished to recall

  himself as he had been four decades past!

  (Bacchus observed this wonder from on high,

  and realizing how his aged nurses

  could be rejuvenated by her gift

  at once obtained it from the sorceress.)

  Medea and Pelias

  Now, so that guile might not go out of fashion,

  Medea feigned a breakup with her husband

  and ran off as a suppliant to Pelias;

  since he himself was burdened with the weight

  of old age too, his daughters welcomed her;

  pretending friendship, the cunning Colchian

  took the girls in and shortly won them over.

  And while she entertained them all with stories

  of her remarkable accomplishments,

  she told at length of how she had restored

  Aeson to his prime. Her story raised the hope

  among her listeners that by such arts

  their father too could be rejuvenated:

  they begged her aid, imploring her to name

  her own reward, however great it was.

  A moment’s silence while she seemed in doubt,

  as by her fictive indecisiveness

  she kept the pleading girls in high suspense—

  but when she’d given them her word, she added,

  “We’ll have a demonstration, so that you

  may be more confident about this gift

  I offer you: your oldest sheep, the aged

  bellwether of your flock, will soon become,

  through my concoctions, a young lamb again.”

  Worn-out by his innumerable years,

  the woolly one, with great horns curving round

  his bulging temples, was brought forth at once;

  slitting his throat with her Thessalian blade

  (which his exhausted blood could barely stain)

  the sorcer woman quickly plunged his carcass

  into the cauldron, where the heat reduced it,

  and where his horns (and years) were burned away.

  A feeble “Baa, baa” comes from deep within:

  to th
eir astonishment, a little lamb

  skips out and eagerly essays a bleat,

  then scampers off—to find a milky teat!

  The daughters of Pelias were dumbstruck then,

  for she had done exactly as she promised!

  Even more eagerly, they urged her on.

  Three times now Phoebus had unyoked his team

  after their plunge into the western stream;

  on the fourth night, the stars were glittering

  when the deceitful daughter of Aeetes

  brought up to boil a cauldron of clear water,

  and added to it herbs of no real power.

  A death-like sleep (produced by magic spells)

  had quite unstrung the king and his defenders.

  As ordered by the Colchian, his daughters,

  slipping across the threshold of his room,

  surround his bed: “Slackers! Why hesitate?

  Unsheathe your swords and spill his ancient gore,

  and I’ll refill his veins with youthful blood.

  Your aged father’s life is in your hands;

  if you have any love for him at all,

  if you’re not merely stirred by empty hopes,

  then give your father what you owe him, now:

  drive his old age off with your sharp weapons,

  let his blood out by plunging in your swords!”

  Urged on by her and by their piety,

  each child commits the worst crime that a child

  can possibly commit against a parent,

  and only to avoid a much worse crime!

  Unable nonetheless to watch themselves,

  they turn away and blindly strike at him.

  Bleeding profusely, leaning on one elbow,

  he struggles to get up, though slashed to ribbons,

  and as he raises arms in supplication

  amid a thicket of swords, cries out to them,

  “What are you doing, daughters? Why arm yourselves

  to slay your father?” Their hands—and spirits—fall;

  he would have gone on speaking, but Medea

  slit his throat and plunged his mangled body

  into the cauldron full of boiling water.

  The flight of Medea

  And she, had she not taken to the air,

  escaping in her dragon-driven carriage,

  would not have gone unpunished for that deed.

  Aloft, she fled above Mount Pelion,

  where Chiron makes his home, and over Othrys,

  famed site of the adventures of Cerambus,

  who managed to escape Deucalion’s flood

  on wings provided him by mountain nymphs

  when the heavy earth was being overwhelmed

  by the engulfing waters of the sea.

  On her left she passed Aeolian Pitane

  with its gigantic serpent made of stone,

  and Ida’s grove, where once the son of Bacchus

  rustled a calf; in order to protect him,

  his father changed the boy into a stag;

  she passed the site where Helen’s lover lies

  beneath a meager monument of sand,

  and passed those fields which Maera terrified

  with her strange barking; flew above the city

  of Eurypylus, where the Coan women

  were changed to cows when Hercules set off

  on his great expedition against Troy;

  and over Rhodes, that island dear to Phoebus,

  and Ialysos, home of the Telechines,

  whose eyes so blighted everything they saw

  that Jupiter condemned them to be plunged

  under the waters governed by his brother;

  she passed the ancient city of Carthaea

  on the Isle of Cea, where Alcidamas once

  would find himself astonished by the strange

  metamorphosis of daughter into dove.

  And after that she saw the Hyrian lake

  and Tempe, home of Cycnus, celebrated

  for his sudden transformation into swan:

  for at this boy’s imperious command,

  Phylius tamed wild birds and a fierce lion

  and brought them to him as love-offerings;

  ordered to overcome a bull as well,

  he did so, but when he saw his passion

  so utterly ignored and unrewarded,

  refused to give the latest of these presents

  to the one who sought it; enraged, the boy

  cried out, “You’ll wish you had!” and straightway leapt

  from a high rock: all thought he had been slain,

  but changed into a swan, he hung in midair,

  supported by strong pinions, white as snow;

  his mother, Hyrie, quite unaware

  of his deliverance, dissolved in tears,

  and turned into the lake that bears her name.

  Nearby is Pleuron, where, on fluttering wings,

  Combe, the daughter of Ophius, escaped

  the death her sons had planned.

  Medea saw the fields of Latona’s Calaurea,

  fields well aware of how a king and queen

  were also changed to birds. Now on her right,

  Cyllene passes by, where Menephron,

  just like a beast, would bed down with his mother;

  and in the distance she beholds Cephisus,

  weeping for the end his grandson came to,

  changed to a tumid sea calf by Apollo;

  and near him was Eumelus, who had tears

  because his son had changed into a bird.

  To Corinth then she came on dragon wing,

  Corinth, the city of the sacred spring;

  for here, according to an old tradition,

  mankind sprang from wet funguses by fission.

  But after the new bride that Jason took

  was poisoned by the old wife he forsook,

  and fisherfolk off Corinth glimpsed through haze

  the ruined palace of the king ablaze,

  the blade that dripped with her own children’s gore

  enraged their father, whom she fled before,

  her fatal vengeance leaving all undone!

  Now, once again, the dragons of the Sun

  bore her aloft, off to the citadel

  of Athens, where the citizens all tell

  the tale of Phene, their most righteous queen,

  who, with her mate, Periphas, was last seen

  flying side by side in tight formation;

  and they recount another transformation,

  that of Polypemon’s Alcyone,

  leaning on her new wings—a halcyon!

  Aegeus welcomed the new refugee,

  and by that act of hospitality

  condemned himself; the king, not satisfied

  to have her as his guest, made her his bride.

  Medea, Aegeus, and Theseus

  Then Theseus appeared, a son unknown

  to his own father; the valorous young man

  has pacified the land between two seas.

  Medea, wishing to destroy him, mixed

  a cup with poison brought from Scythia

  a long time past; they say this poison came

  from the jaws of Cerberus.

  There is a cave

  as black as blindness, with a gloomy mouth,

  and a path that leads down to the underworld.

  Upward along that path, great Hercules

  dragged Cerberus on adamantine chains,

  while the great beast struggled hard against him,

  and turned his eyes away from the harsh daylight.

  Now goaded to a frenzy by his rage,

  he filled the air with barking from three throats,

  and spattered the green fields with his white foam.

  They say those foam flecks grew, and taking root

  were nourished by the richness of that soil,

  and found in it the power to do ill;

  the rusti
cs call them, since they grow on rocks,

  the aconites, or “flowers lacking soil.”

  This poison, through Medea’s treachery,

  father Aegeus offered his own son

  as to an enemy, and Theseus,

  all unaware of any ill intent,

  had taken it and raised the cup to drink,

  when his father recognized the family crest

  on the ivory hilt of the hero’s sword,

  and swept the poisoned goblet from his lips.

  Medea fled the death that would have followed

  in a cloud cover summoned by her spells.

  The father, though delighted by his son’s

  deliverance, was nonetheless astounded

  by just how closely they had come to ruin

  and so had fires kindled on the altars

  and offered gifts up to the gods; now hefty

  axe blows descended on the brawny necks

  of bulls whose horns were gaily draped with ribbons.

  No day more festive ever dawned on Athens,

  say the Athenians, than this one was,

  as elders and those of undistinguished rank

  commingled happily, with wine inspiring

  the song of praise they made up for the hero:

  “Now Marathon lies at your feet,

  The slayer of the Bull of Crete;

  To you the men of Cromyon bow 620

  For sticking the Enormous Sow;

  “You sent the hero, Periphetes,

  With giant club, right to his knees

  In Epidauria, and you slew

  Fierce, club-wielding Procrustes, too!

  “In Eleusis, the dear town

  Of Ceres, you killed Ceryon;

  Sinis you killed, and with due cause,

  Who violated our laws:

  “He’d bend two pine trees of great height 630

  Until their tips were touching, quite;

  The victim in between them tied,

  Released, was scattered far and wide;

  “The coastal road is now secure

  Since vicious Sciron is no more:

  Even his bones were long denied

  A resting place by the restless tide

  “Until they hardened, as folks claim,

  Into those cliffs which bear his name;

  Count your good deeds and then your days, 640

  Deeds are more numerous to praise;

  “To honor the heroic labors

  Of our prince, his subject-neighbors

  In gratitude now offer up

  Libations poured from every cup.”

  Prayers and applause inspired by the hero

  filled the palace; and nowhere in that city

  was there a place where sorrow could be found.

  King Minos threatens war

  And yet, no joy is ever unalloyed,

  and worry worms its way into delight;