Metamorphoses

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  so Aegeus, rejoicing in his son’s

  return, was not completely without care,

  for Minos was preparing to make war;

  though powerful in fleet and infantry,

  his greatest strength was his paternal wrath

  over the death of his son, Androgeos,

  whom he intended, justly, to avenge.

  Before declaring war, he sought out allies,

  ranging the Aegean in that swift fleet

  by which his awesome power was maintained.

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  He brought Anaphe over to his cause

  by promises, and Astypalaea

  by threats of war; low-lying Mykonos

  came over next, then chalk-famed Cimolus

  and Syros, known for its abundant thyme;

  then level Seriphos, the marble cliffs

  of Paros, and then Siphnos, once betrayed

  by wicked Arne, who, acquiring

  the gold her avarice implored, became

  a thieving jackdaw with black feet and wings,

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  who even now takes pleasure in bright gold.

  However, Oliaros and Didyme,

  as well as Tenos, Andros and Gyaros,

  and Peparethos, rich in glistening olives,

  declined to aid the fleet.

  Then Minos sailed

  west to Oenopia, the realm of Aeacus,

  for that was the name given to this island

  in the old days, until the present king

  renamed it for his mother, Aegina.

  A crowd surged forward, eager to become

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  acquainted with a man of such great fame.

  Telamon greeted him, then Peleus,

  and Phocus, youngest of the king’s three sons,

  and then the king himself appeared, Aeacus,

  slow with the burden of his many years,

  and asked King Minos what had brought him there.

  At this reminder of his paternal grief,

  the ruler of a hundred cities sighed

  and answered him: “I must have your assistance

  in a war which I am undertaking now

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  for my dead son’s sake; serve under my command

  in a just cause: I act for his repose.”

  The aged king replied, “You ask in vain

  for something which my city cannot offer:

  no region is more closely linked to Athens,

  and there are treaties binding us to them.”

  Grimly King Minos turned away and said,

  “Those treaties will be kept at a great cost.”

  He thought it much more useful just to threaten,

  instead of waging, war—and thus avoided

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  using up his warriors beforehand.

  Cephalus arrives at Aegina

  The Cretan fleet could still be sighted from

  the city’s walls when there appeared a ship

  flying from Athens under crowded sail,

  which put in to the friendly harbor, bearing

  Cephalus and the greetings of his country.

  Although it had been long since they’d last seen him,

  the three young princes of Aeacus’ line

  immediately recognized Cephalus,

  embracing him and leading him within

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  their father’s house; the hero, well worth seeing,

  still with some traces of his former beauty,

  entered the palace carrying a branch

  of the olive tree, native to his country.

  He stood between a pair of younger men,

  Clytus and Butes, who were sons of Pallas.

  And after an exchange of formal greetings,

  the emissary laid out his commission,

  appealed for aid, referring to the treaty

  and the ancestral league between the cities,

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  adding that Minos sought dominion over

  not only Athens, but the mainland, too.

  His eloquence did justice to his cause;

  Aeacus, his left hand resting on his scepter, spoke:

  “Do not come seeking aid, Athenian:

  assume it! Count as yours whatever men

  this isle may boast of and whatever else

  the present state of my affairs can offer;

  my forces are at strength, and quite sufficient

  to defend Aegina and to mount offenses;

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  thanks to the gods, the times are fortunate,

  and offer us no reason for inaction!”

  “May it be so, indeed,” Cephalus said,

  “and may your city grow in citizens;

  on my way in, joy took me when I saw

  so many young men coming out to meet me,

  so similar in beauty and in age.

  And yet I miss many of the men I saw

  when I came to this city, years ago.”

  Aeacus groaned and sadly answered him:

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  “Though better fortune followed, what came first

  was cause for sorrow: would that I were able

  to call to mind the one without the other!

  “But I will tell you all, as it occurred,

  nor beat about the bushes any further:

  those whom you ask for are now bones and ashes,

  and with them perished much of my own kingdom.

  The plague at Aegina

  “A fearful plague came down among the people,

  brought on when cruel Juno’s anger turned

  against the land that bore her rival’s name.

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  While we were ignorant of what had caused it,

  and while it still appeared to us to be

  a natural disaster, it was fought

  with all the arts of medicine, and still

  it vanquished all of our stratagems!

  “At first the sky pressed down against the earth

  in a dense darkness; clouds helped to contain

  the enervating heat, and while the moon

  filled out its horns four times, and four times waned,

  the south wind warmed us with its fatal breath.

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  “Our pools and springs became infected next,

  when multitudes of serpents slithered through

  the empty fields and left our streams and rivers

  stained with their venom.

  “At first the animals

  alone succumbed: the plague confined itself

  to dogs, birds, sheep, cattle, and wild beasts:

  the luckless plowman is quite stunned to see

  his healthy bulls collapsing at their work,

  falling in midfurrow; woolly flocks

  give a few feeble bleats, then, without help,

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  shed their thick coats, grow wasted and soon die;

  the stall-bound horse, once famous for his speed,

  but now unworthy of his victories,

  ignores his former honors, whinnying

  as death prepares to scratch him from the race.

  “The boar does not remember now to rage,

  nor the deer to trust in swiftness, nor the bear

  to cull the great herds with his fierce attacks;

  a languor seizes all; in woods, in fields,

  along the roads, the fetid corpses lie

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  until the air is blighted with the stench.

  “I’ll tell you something quite astonishing:

  the greedy dogs and vultures—even wolves!—

  left them untouched; those bodies fell apart,

  sickening us with their appalling odor

  and spreading foul contagion everywhere.

  “The plague, grown stronger, now advances on

  the wretched country folk, then rules within

  the walls of the great city. Its first symptom

&nb
sp; is a fierce burning in the viscera,

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  the hidden fire indicated by

  a flushed complexion, pain in drawing breath;

  the patient’s roughened tongue swells up with fever,

  and lips that have been parched by the hot winds

  gape widely, snatching at the torpid air—

  no bed nor covering is bearable;

  they fling themselves facedown upon the ground

  to cool their bodies off; but no: the heat

  of their poor bodies warms the earth instead!

  “Ungovernable plague! The doctors die,

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  their arts a harm to their practitioners,

  and those who are the closest to the sick,

  who serve most faithfully, are first to fall!

  “Now as the hope of health abandons them,

  they realize that their disease will end

  only in death and give in to their desires,

  having no care at all for what might cure them,

  since nothing can. They sprawl about all over,

  without a thought for decency—they lie

  in springs, in streams, and in capacious wells;

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  bloated by water, many cannot rise

  and so they die—where others come to drink!

  “They find their beds too painful to endure

  and leap from them; but if they cannot stand,

  they roll their bodies right along the ground,

  fleeing the homes that now seem charnel houses;

  the cause unknown, the place itself is blamed;

  you would have seen some wandering the roadways,

  half-dead, perhaps, but capable of standing,

  and others lying on the ground in tears,

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  at the point of death: they roll their eyes and die.

  Others lift arms up to oppressive heaven;

  here, there—wherever death overtakes them—

  they breathe their last and silently expire.

  “Can you imagine what my feelings were?

  Like those of anyone in such a case:

  I hated life and longed to share the fate

  of my own kind, for everywhere I looked

  the dead were strewn in heaps, without distinction,

  like rotten apples shaken from the bough

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  or acorns that the wind strips from an oak.

  “Do you see that temple there, the lofty one

  with the long approach? It is Jupiter’s.

  And who among us did not offer up

  the unavailing incense on its altars?

  How often, for his wife, the husband came,

  and for his dying son, the father, who

  gave up the ghost while he was still at prayer

  upon the unmoved altar—in his hand

  a portion of the incense, unconsumed!

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  How often, in that temple, while the priest

  at prayer was pouring wine between the horns

  of sacrificial bulls, the beasts collapsed

  even before the anticipated blow!

  While I myself was sacrificing there

  for my own good and for my sons and nation,

  the beast began to bellow horribly,

  and instantly collapsed without a stroke:

  it barely stained the knife with its thin blood;

  the entrails, too, were sickly, and had lost

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  those signs by which the truth and heaven’s will

  are made apparent, for this grim disease

  had penetrated to the viscera!

  I saw cadavers flung by temple doors,

  and even thrown—as though to shame the gods

  for their indifference—before the altars!

  “Some freed themselves from the fear they had of death

  by taking their own lives—summoning Fate

  even as Fate prepared to summon them.

  No longer were the bodies of the dead

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  carried in processions from the city

  for burial with the customary rites:

  no gates were wide enough for such a throng.

  “Either they lay unburied on the ground

  or, without services, were stacked and burned;

  and now there are no honors for the dead;

  dying, men struggle over scraps of wood,

  and are cremated with a stranger’s flame.

  “With none to mourn them, unlamented souls

  of parents and their children, the young, the old,

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  wander about, their journey uncompleted:

  no wood is left to burn their bodies now,

  no bit of land where they may be interred.

  “And stunned by such a whirlwind of disasters,

  I cried, ‘O Jupiter, if what folks say

  is not untrue, that you have lain in love

  with Aegina, the daughter of Asopus,

  and that you’re not ashamed to be our father,

  either restore to me those who are mine,

  or else give me a sepulcher as well!’

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  “Jove answered favorably with a flash

  of lightning followed by a thunderbolt.

  ‘I take this omen, and I pray that these

  signs of your purpose augur well for us,’

  I said, ‘for I accept them as your promise.’

  “It happened that there was an oak nearby,

  one with unusually widespread branches;

  this tree, whose seed had come from Dodona,

  was therefore sacred to almighty Jove;

  here we observed a swarm, in single file,

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  each bearing a great load in tiny jaws:

  a busy company of grain-gathering ants,

  making its way across the wrinkled bark!

  “Astonished by that multitude, I cried,

  ‘O best of fathers, give me just as many

  new subjects and fill up my lifeless city!’

  That lofty oak tree trembled, and its limbs

  groaned as they moved in the unmoving air;

  I shook with terror and my hair stood up;

  and even though I kissed the earth and oak,

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  could not admit—not even to myself—

  the hopes I had. And yet, I hoped, indeed,

  and in my heart I cherished my desires.

  “Night fell, and sleep claimed our bodies, worn

  by ceaseless cares. Before my eyes I seemed

  to see the oak that I had seen before,

  with just as many branches and the same

  number of creatures swarming over them,

  and the limbs swaying as they had before:

  the grain-bearing ants were shaken to the ground,

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  where they at once seemed to grow much larger,

  lifting themselves from where they’d fallen off,

  to stand with upright torsos; they put aside

  their former leanness, monotonous black hue,

  and many of their feet, while they assumed

  a human form and human attributes.

  “Sleep fled: waking, I had no confidence

  in what my vision had disclosed to me;

  no help, I thought, from heaven.

  “But within,

  a great hubbub arose; it seemed to me

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  I heard what I’d been long unused to hearing:

  the sound of human voices!

  “While I still thought

  myself asleep and dreaming, Telamon

  came bursting in on me and cried out, ‘Father,

  come forth, and you will see a miracle

  greater than you had hoped for or believed in!’

  “I went on out, and there they were: the very

  men that I had just seen in my dream—

  now w
ide awake, I recognized the fellows!

  Approaching, they saluted me as king.

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  I offered thanks to Jove and portioned out

  my city and my fields, now tenantless,

  to these new citizens. I called this folk

  the Myrmidons [from the Greek word for ant],

  a name that doesn’t hide their origins.

  “You’ve seen their bodies; well, their character

  and dispositions have remained the same:

  they are a thrifty race, industrious,

  acquisitive, and keep their acquisitions.

  “All similar in age and bravery,

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  these are the ones who’ll follow you to war

  when the east wind, which so propitiously

  brought you here, shall veer round to the south.”

  Such conversation filled the lengthy day;

  the evening was set aside for feasting,

  and the night for sleep. Now when the Sun

  had brought his radiance to light, the east wind still

  prevented the Athenians’ return.

  The sons of Pallas came to Cephalus

  (who was their elder), and together they

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  went to Aeacus, whom they found still sleeping.

  The king’s son Phocus met them on the threshold,

  for Telamon and Peleus were busy

  mustering the Myrmidons for warfare.

  So Phocus conducted the Athenians

  into a handsome chamber deep within

  the palace, where they all sat down together.

  And here he saw the gold-tipped javelin

  that Cephalus was carrying, its shaft

  made from a kind of wood unknown to him.

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  After a brief exchange, the young man said,

  “Woodlore and hunting are my specialties,

  but for a while now I’ve been wondering

  what kind of wood your javelin is made from:

  if it were ash, it would be tawnier;

  if it were dogwood, there would be more burls.

  —I can’t say what it is, and yet I’m certain

  these eyes of mine have never seen a spear

  more beautiful in its design than this one!”

  One of the two Athenian brothers said,

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  “You will discover more to marvel at

  than just its beauty,” he said, “for it strikes

  the target that it seeks, unruled by chance,

  and then—quite on its own—comes flying back,

  with bloodstained tip, into its owner’s hand.”

  And then, of course, young Phocus had to know

  everything about it: How could this be?

  Where was it from? Who gave him such a gift?

  Cephalus tells him all he wants to know,

  or all, at least, that decency allows:

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  shame keeps him from revealing the concession

  by which he gained it.

  Silence.

  Then, touched by grief