Metamorphoses
“And certainly, he wages a just war
of retribution for his murdered son;
his motive will prevail, as will the arms
advancing it. I think that we are lost.
“Then, if it is the end for our city,
why should his martial skills, and not my love,
unbolt the gates? Much better would it be
for him to conquer us without delay,
without exterminating our folk
80
or being hurt himself. That being so,
Minos, I’ll have no cause to fear, unless
someone should unintentionally wound you,
for who could be so cruel as to dare
deliberately cast a spear at you?
“These undertakings please me. I resolve
to surrender to him, and give my country
as my dowry—and by acting, end the war.
“But mere desire will not be enough!
A sentry guards my father in his sleep:
90
my father holds the keys that keep the city;
he is the source of all my fear and sorrow,
and he alone delays my love’s fulfillment:
would that the gods could make me fatherless!
“But each of us is his own divinity,
and Fortune spurns the coward’s useless prayers.
Another woman in my situation
would long ago have happily destroyed
whatever stood between her and her love!
“Why should another be more brave than I?
100
I would endure the fire and the sword,
but in this situation, there’s no need
for sword or fire: all that I have need of
is but a single lock of my father’s hair!
That would be far more valuable than gold!
One lock of purple hair will make me blest,
and give me everything that I’ve desired.”
Now Night, the greatest nurse of mortal cares,
broke in on these reflections; in the darkness,
her boldness grew. In time of first repose,
110
when Slumber finds its way into the heart
exhausted by its daily round, the daughter
slips silently into her father’s chambers
and robs him of his fated lock of hair.
Oh, what an awful crime! And with this prize
she flees the city, passing through its foes,
and confident of her reception comes
and makes her presentation to the king,
who quails at the sight of her:
“Love has led me
into this betrayal; I am Scylla,
120
the daughter of King Nisus; I surrender
myself, my nation, and my gods as well,
and seek no other recompense but you;
receive this pledge that guarantees my love,
this purple lock—which is no lock at all,
but my father’s head!”
She stretched out her foul hand
with the proffered gift as Minos shrank away,
shocked by the sight of this unholy act:
“Shame of the age,” he said, “may the gods forbid you
their kingdom, and may land and sea deny you!
130
Be sure that I will never let so vile
a monster into Crete, which is my realm
and the sacred cradle of the infant Jove!”
upright leader spoke, and, just as soon
as terms had been imposed upon the vanquished,
ordered his captains to release their moorings,
and the bronze-keeled fleet was rowed away from shore.
Once Scylla saw the ships already launched
and realized that their commander had
no notion of rewarding her wrongdoing,
140
and that her prayers were pointless, she became
enraged with him, and with her arms outstretched
and hair disheveled, cried out in a frenzy:
“Where do you run to now, abandoning
the only reason for your victory?
Where do you flee, you savage man, who took
my nation and my father’s place? To whom
our victory was both my crime and glory!
Are you unmoved by all I’ve done for you?
Unmoved by my great passion and my trust?
150
“Where can I go, abandoned? To my homeland?
It has been conquered. Suppose it hadn’t been:
my treachery has closed it off to me.
Should I return now to my father’s presence?
But I’ve already given him to you!
“My countrymen detest me, and my neighbors
fear my example: I have made myself
an exile everywhere, throughout the world,
that only Crete might offer me its shelter;
if you refuse me Crete as well, you ingrate,
160
and leave me here, then legend has it wrong:
Europa did not give birth to you, King Minos,
it was that tigress from Armenia,
inhospitable Syrtis! Raging Charybdis!
“Your father was not Jove, your mother, not misled
by the counterfeit appearance of a bull!
The story of your origin is false!
In truth, it was a bull that sired you!
“O father, punish me! Walls I have betrayed
so recently, take pleasure in my pain!
170
For I confess that I deserve to perish,
but by the hand of someone I have harmed;
you who have profited from our crime—
why should you be the one to punish it?
You should regard this crime against my father
and country as a service to your cause!
“That wife of yours is worthy, to be sure,
who tricked the fierce bull into lechery
and bore its unnatural offspring in her womb!
“Can you hear my voice? Or do the selfsame winds
that fill your sails out, you ungrateful man,
break up my words and scatter them?
“Now, now,
I see it is no wonder Pasiphaë
preferred the bull to you: you are much more
a savage beast than it could ever be!
“Alas for me! He orders double-speed!
The waves resound as his oars beat on them;
my land and I both disappear from view!
It will avail you nothing to forget
what I have merited! Against your will,
190
I’ll overtake you, cling to your curved plow,
and be dragged through the long furrows of the sea!”
She’d scarcely finished speaking when she leapt
into the water and struck out for the ship,
her passion giving her the strength required.
A hateful guest now clung to the Cretan keel.
Her father, hovering on yellow wings
(for he had just been changed into an osprey),
caught sight of her and dove to the attack,
prepared to savage her with his curved beak.
200
She lost her grip in terror; as she fell,
the light air bore her up—or so it seemed,
so that she lightly skimmed above the surface.
appear upon her hands; transformed
into a bird, she is now known as Ciris,
and has this name from the clipped lock of hair
[because the Greek verb kerein means “to cut”].
Minos and Ariadne
As soon as he had disembarked on Crete,
Minos discharged his debt to Jove by slaying
a hundred bulls, then hung the spoils of war
210
 
; as decorations on his palace walls.
The scandal of his family had grown
past all concealment; now the mother’s foul
adultery was proven by the strange
form of the Minotaur, half man, half bull.
Minos determined to remove the cause
of this opprobrium from his abode,
enclosing it within a labyrinth
devised and built by Daedalus, the most
distinguished of all living architects,
220
who framed confusion and seduced the eye
into a maze of wandering passages.
Not otherwise than when Maeander plays
his liquid games in the Phrygian fields
and flowing back and forth uncertainly,
observes its own waves bearing down on it,
and sends its doubtful waters on their ways
back to their source or down to the open sea:
so Daedalus provided numberless
confusing corridors and was himself
230
just barely able to find his way out,
so utterly deceitful was that place.
Minos confined that monstrous form within
the labyrinth, and twice it had been fed
on the blood of sacrificed Athenians;
after another nine-year interval,
the third demand for tribute doomed the creature,
when, by the aid of Princess Ariadne,
the path back to the hidden entranceway,
which none before had ever reached again,
240
was rediscovered when the thread was wound;
then Theseus abducted Minos’ daughter
and sailed to Dia, where he cruelly
abandoned his companion to her wailing.
Bacchus brought love and comfort to the girl,
and so that she would shine among the stars,
he sent her diadem up into heaven;
it flew through the thin air, and where it flew
its precious stones were turned to brilliant fires;
now in appearance still a crown, it’s found
250
between Ophiucus and Hercules.
Daedalus and Icarus
Meanwhile, detesting Crete and his long exile,
and longing to return to his own nation,
Daedalus found that an escape by sea
was closed to him:
“Though he may bar the earth
and seas,” he said, “without a doubt, the sky
above is open; that is how we’ll go:
Minos rules everything except the air.”
He spoke and turned his mind to arts unknown,
and changed the face of nature, for he placed
260
a row of feathers in ascending order,
smallest to largest, so you would have thought
that they had all grown that way on a slope;
thus antic panpipes with unequal reeds
will rise above each other; these were bound
together in the middle with flaxen thread
and then joined at the quills with molded wax;
and finally, he bent them just a bit,
so they resembled bird’s wings.
Icarus,
his boy, was standing close by, unaware
270
of any danger in the things he handled;
he smiled as he snatched at wisps of feathers blown
from his father’s workbench by a passing breeze,
or left a thumbprint in the golden wax
and playfully got in his father’s way.
The wondrous work continued nonetheless,
and when he’d put the final touches to it,
the artisan himself hung poised between
the wings upon his shoulders in midair,
and offered these instructions to his son:
280
Listen to me: keep to the middle course,
dear Icarus, for if you fly too low,
the waves will weight your wings down with their moisture;
and if you fly too high, flames will consume them;
stay in the middle and don’t set your course
by gazing at the stars: ignore Boötes,
the Dipper, and Orion’s unsheathed sword;
keep to my path and follow where I lead you.”
And while he was instructing him in flight,
he fit the untried wings to the boy’s shoulders.
290
And as he works and as he warns the boy,
the old man’s cheeks are dampened by his tears;
the father’s hands are trembling as he gives
his son a not-to-be-repeated kiss,
and lifts off on his wings into the air;
he flies ahead, afraid for his companion,
just like a bird who leads her young in flight
from their high nest, and as he flies along,
exhorts the boy to follow in his path,
instructing him in their transgressive art,
300
as he employs his wings in flight and watches
his fledgling Icarus attempt his own.
Some fisherman whose line jerks with his catch,
some idle shepherd leaning on his crook,
some plowman at his plow, looks up and sees
something astonishing, and thinks them gods,
who have the power to pass through the air.
Now on their left, they had already passed
the Isle of Samos, Juno’s favorite,
Delos and Paros too; and on their right,
310
Lebinthos and Calymne, honey-rich,
when the boy audaciously began to play
and driven by desire for the sky,
deserts his leader and seeks altitude.
The sun’s consuming rays, much nearer now,
soften the fragrant wax that bound his wings
until it melts.
He agitates his arms,
but without wings, they cannot grip the air,
and with his father’s name on them, his lips
are taken under by the deep blue sea
320
that bears his name, even to the present.
And his unlucky father, now no more
a father, cries out, “Icarus, where are you,
where, in what region, shall I look for you?”
And then he saw the feathers on the waves
and cursed his arts; he built his son a tomb
in the land that takes its name from Icarus.
Daedalus and Perdix
As he entombs his child’s pathetic corpse,
he is observed, from where a rank ditch drips,
by a chatty partridge, who chirps cheerfully
330
and makes his wing tips flutter in applause:
a novel and unprecedented bird,
and one who’d only lately been transformed,
O Daedalus, because of a misdeed
that, for a long time, will be held against you.
For, as it happened, the inventor’s sister,
quite unaware of what the Fates intended,
entrusted her own son to his instruction,
a likely lad of twelve, who had a mind
with the capacity for principles and precepts;
340
and from his observation of the spines
of fishes, which he’d taken as his model,
incised a row of teeth in an iron strip
and thereby managed to invent the saw.
Likewise, he was the first to bind two arms
of iron at a joint, so one is fixed
and the other, as it moves, inscribes a circle.
Daedalus envied him, and headlong hurled
this lad of precepts from a precipice,
the steep acropolis Minerva loves,
350
&n
bsp; and lying, said the lad had slipped and fallen.
But Athena, who takes care of clever people,
snatched him from harm, changed him to a bird,
and covered him with feathers in midair.
His former brilliance, like his former name,
he kept, although the former was transformed
into the swiftness of his wings and feet.
Although a bird, she does not soar aloft,
and does not build her nest high up in trees
or on lofty peaks; she flies close to the ground
360
and lays her eggs in hedges; remembering
that fall of long ago, she fears the heights.
[Perdix is the word Greeks had for “partridge.”]
Meleager and Althaea
And then, exhausted Daedalus found rest
in Sicily, where Cocalus the king
waged war on his behalf against the Cretans.
Now, thanks to Theseus, the Athenians
no longer had to pay their mournful tribute;
the temple is all wrapped around with flowers,
and the people praise the bellicose Minerva,
370
along with Jove and all the other gods,
whose altars they now sacrifice before,
leaving them gifts and burning pungent incense;
Rumor had gone racing through the towns
of Greece, bearing the name of Theseus,
and everywhere Achaean folk implored
the hero to deliver them from dangers.
Calydon sought his help, although she had
a hero of her own, named Meleager;
a pig it was that prompted her petition,
380
hostile Diana’s attendant and avenger.
For they say that Oeneus of Calydon,
in gratitude for an abundant harvest,
offered the first fruits of the grain to Ceres
and the first squeezings of his grapes to Bacchus
and poured out a libation of her oil,
as golden as her hair is, to Minerva.
Commencing with the rural deities,
the gods all got the honors they desired;
only Diana’s altar was ignored,
390
and left, they say, without a gift of incense.
Even the gods may be provoked to anger!
“We will not let them get away with this,”
Diana said. “Dishonored we may be;
but none will say that we were unavenged!”
And the spurned goddess sent her vengeful boar
straightway onto the fields of Calydon:
a beast as great as the bulls of Epirus,
and mightier than those of Sicily,
with blood and fire shining from his eyes
400
and a neck stiff with bristles just like spear shafts;
and as his chest heaved with his grating breath,
his heavy shoulders dripped with seething spume;
in length his tusks were like an elephant’s,