Metamorphoses

  490

  to gather myrtle garlands for the nymphs!

  She carried the sweet burden of her boy,

  an infant, really, not yet one year old,

  and nourished him with milk warm from her breast.

  “Close to the water’s edge, a lotus bloomed,

  whose purple blossoms, bright as Tyrian dye,

  foretold of berries. Dryope reached in

  and picked some flowers to delight her son,

  and I was just about to follow suit,

  for I was present, too—but just in time,

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  I saw the drops of blood those flowers shed

  and saw the branches quivering with dread!

  “For as you know, the local boors still tell

  how the nymph Lotis, fleeing from obscene

  Priapus, found a refuge as this flower,

  and kept her name, though changing her appearance.

  My sister had known nothing of all this:

  when she in fright attempted to turn back

  and leave, while begging pardon of the nymphs,

  her feet, as though turned roots, clung to the ground.

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  “She fought to tear herself away from it,

  yet nothing but her torso could now move;

  a shell of bark wound upward from below,

  little by little, till it sheathed her loins.

  She tried to tear the hair out of her head,

  but found her hands were full of leaves instead.

  Her child, Amphissus (given that name by

  his grandfather, Oechalian Eurytus),

  could feel his mother’s titty growing rigid

  and was no longer able to take suck.

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  “I was a witness to your cruel fate,

  my sister, powerless to bring you aid,

  yet did as much as I was able to;

  with my embraces, I delayed the change

  by clinging to your burgeoning new growth

  at trunk and branches. O sister, I confess,

  I wished to hide myself beneath that bark!

  But look, to where her husband Andraemon

  and her most wretched father now appear,

  seeking Dryope. The Dryope they seek,

  530

  as I point out, is now a lotus tree.

  And having thrown themselves upon the ground,

  they cling to its roots and kiss the still-warm wood.

  “Now only my beloved sister’s face

  had not yet been transformed into the wood:

  your tears were trickling down upon the leaves

  made from your body; while it could, your mouth

  responded to the promptings of your voice

  and filled the air with rending lamentation:

  “‘If those in wretchedness may truly swear,

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  why then I swear by all the gods in heaven,

  I have done nothing to deserve this evil!

  I bear a punishment that has no crime!

  I’ve lived a blameless life—and if I lie,

  then let my foliage shrivel up and die

  and may the axe and flame consume me quite!

  “‘But take my baby from his mother’s limbs

  and give him to a wet nurse who will bring

  him here and nurse him underneath this tree,

  and let him play here too; when my poor babe

  550

  has learned to speak, let him come to this place

  and greet his mother here and sadly say,

  “My mother is hidden underneath this bark.”

  Let him be frightened of the lake, and mindful

  never to pluck the flowers from the trees,

  and think that in each bush a goddess hides!

  “‘Farewell, dear husband—sister—father!

  If you can show compassionate respect,

  then keep the sharpened pruning hook far hence,

  and guard my foliage from browsing flocks.

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  “‘And since I am forbidden to bow down,

  raise yourselves up to where my limbs branch out

  and let us kiss while I am able to;

  lift up my little boy! I can say no more;

  the bloodless bark crawls over my soft neck

  and what I am is hidden in its tip.

  But do not offer me the services

  given to the dead—for without your hands

  the upward crawling bark will close my eyes.’

  “She ceased her speaking—and ceased at once to be,

  570

  but for a long while her new branches held

  her body’s warmth, now changed entirely.”

  Iolaüs and Hebe’s prophecy

  While Iole told this amazing story,

  and while Alcmena (who was weeping too)

  with sympathetic thumbs erased the tears

  cascading down the storyteller’s cheeks,

  a new occurrence drove away their sorrow:

  right there above them on the threshold stood

  a boy with his first beard upon his cheeks,

  Iolaüs, restored to prime of life.

  580

  For Hebe, Hercules’ immortal bride

  and Juno’s daughter, worn down by her mate’s

  entreaties, had just given him this gift.

  And nevermore, she was about to swear,

  would she confer such gifts on anyone,

  when Themis broke in with a prophecy:

  “Why, even now, Thebes suffers the commotion

  of civil war,” she said, “and Capaneus

  will be invincible to all but Jove;

  the two brothers will inflict mortal wounds

  590

  on one another; the still-living seer

  will disappear into the gaping earth

  and find the spirits which he once controlled;

  in a crime of piety his son will slay

  his mother to avenge his father’s death;

  stunned by the horror of this crime, expelled

  from home and driven mad, he will be chased

  by the raging Furies and his mother’s ghost

  until his wife demands from him the fatal

  golden necklace, and the sword of Phegeius

  600

  will find its way into his kinsman’s side.

  “And then, at last, Callirhoë, his wife,

  the daughter of Acheloüs, will be

  given by Jove the gift that will allow

  her sons to change from infancy to manhood,

  so that their father’s murder may not go

  unpunished; and then Jupiter, won over

  by her petitioning shall claim the gifts

  of Hebe in advance for them, and change

  the prepubescent boys into young men.”

  610

  When Themis, who was prescient, had told them

  what was to come, the other gods began

  to grumble openly; a groundswell rose;

  Why was this same gift not allowed to others?

  Aurora railed about her ancient spouse

  Tithonus, and mild-mannered Ceres moaned

  for Iasion’s white locks; Vulcan demanded

  renewed life for his son Erichthonius,

  and Venus also, looking to the future,

  insisted that Anchises be restored.

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  Each of the gods there had a favorite,

  and argued from a partisan position

  against the others, until Jove spoke up:

  “O gods! If you have any reverence

  for us at all, why leap to such confusions?

  Does anyone here imagine himself able

  to overcome the limits set by Fate?

  Iolaüs was given back the years

  he was in need of by the will of Fate;

  not by ambition, not by skill in combat

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  will Callirhoë’s sons turn into men

  from infancy, but by the will of Fate,

  which governs even us; I tell you this

  that you might put a better face on it—

  yes, you are ruled by Fate, and I am too.

  “If I were able to oppose its force,

  the years would not have bent Aeacus down,

  and Rhadamanthus would be always young,

  and Minos too, now held in disregard

  by reason of the bitter weight of age,

  640

  no longer ruling as he used to do.”

  The words of Jove calmed everybody down:

  none of the gods was able to complain

  when he saw Rhadamanthus worn with years,

  and Aeacus, and Minos, who, when young,

  could frighten mighty nations with one word:

  Minos. He was decrepit now and feared

  Miletus, son of Deione and Phoebus,

  a young man proud of his strength and lineage.

  Minos believed Miletus would rise up

  against his realm, but still he did not dare

  to banish him from his ancestral lands.

  You fled, Miletus, of your own accord,

  traversing the Aegean in your swift ship,

  and in the land of Asia you established

  that city which still bears its founder’s name.

  Here you had knowledge of the nymph Cyanee

  (the daughter of that winding stream, Maeander)

  while she was straying on her father’s banks;

  and from that union came a pair of twins,

  Byblis and Caunus, famous for their beauty.

  Byblis and Caunus

  Now Byblis, who was driven by desire

  for her own brother, the grandson of Apollo—

  this Byblis serves to illustrate a moral:

  that girls should not desire what’s forbidden;

  she did not love her brother as a brother,

  or as a sister should.

  Indeed, at first,

  she didn’t even recognize her passion,

  nor did she think it wrong to kiss him often,

  or throw her arms around her brother’s neck;

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  and she herself was for some time deceived

  by the appearance of affectionate devotion.

  Her feelings for him gradually changed,

  and not for the better; when she visited

  her brother, she was elegantly dressed,

  and anxious that he find her beautiful,

  and envious of those who seemed more lovely.

  She was, as yet, unconscious of her feelings,

  and offered up no prayers for satisfaction,

  but burned with inner fire, nonetheless.

  680

  She calls him “Master” now, and now detests

  the thought that they are siblings, and prefers

  that he should call her “Byblis” and not “Sister.”

  Nevertheless, she did not dare admit

  such impure hopes into her wakeful thoughts;

  often, however, when relaxed in sleep,

  an image of her passion came to her,

  an image of her lying with her brother,

  that made her, even sleeping, blush with shame.

  Sleep fled, and for a long time she lay still,

  690

  revisiting the dream of her desire,

  until, at last, she spoke out, doubtfully:

  “I am so wretched! Whatever can they mean,

  these visions that appear in the wordless night?

  I would not have it so! Why do I see

  such things while I am sleeping? He is indeed

  most pleasing, even to a hostile eye,

  and I could love him, not unworthily,

  if he were not my brother! I am wronged,

  and all the harm is—that I am his sister!

  700

  “But even if I keep them out of mind,

  there is no wrong in dreaming of such things

  as often as I want to, in my sleep!

  There are no witnesses to our dreams,

  and they provide a pleasure almost real!

  “O Cupid and sweet Venus, what great joys

  were given to me! And how real they seemed!

  My marrow melted as I lay asleep!

  How pleasing to remember! But how brief

  those pleasures were—the night, with breakneck speed,

  710

  snatched them away, when they had just begun!

  “If I could be allowed to change my name

  and marry you, dear Caunus, what a fine

  daughter-in-law I would make your father!

  What a fine son-in-law you would make mine!

  We would have everything in common then,

  except grandparents—yours should be the nobler!

  Yes, I would have it so! But all too soon,

  you will take someone else to be your wife,

  most beautiful of men—and you will be,

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  by virtue of parental lottery,

  my brother only. There is the harm of it,

  that we will have no more than that in common.

  “What are they telling me, these dreams of mine?

  What weight do dreams have? Have they any weight?

  Oh, may the gods send better dreams than these!

  The gods took their own sisters, to be sure!

  So Saturn had Ops, Oceanus had his Tethys,

  the ruler of Olympus had his Juno:

  the gods, though, are a law unto themselves!

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  —Why should I try to use them as my models

  when their behavior is so unlike ours?

  “Passion suppressed will either leave my heart,

  or, if I am unable to suppress it,

  I pray that I might die and not surrender;

  and when I have been laid upon my bier,

  may my dear brother kiss me on the lips!

  Such a decision should be jointly made:

  what pleases me might seem a crime to him!

  “The sons of Aeolus were not afraid

  740

  to sleep with their sisters! How do I know this,

  and why have I come up with this example?

  Where is this leading me? Depart, indecent thoughts,

  and let me love my brother not at all,

  unless my love is sisterly and lawful!

  “Nevertheless, if he had been seized first

  by love for me, I might indulge his passion.

  And so, since I would never turn him down,

  I will go after him! Can you admit this?

  Will you be able to confess it?

  Compelled by love, I will be able to!

  If Shame should press her finger to my lips,

  a silent letter will confess my hidden feelings.”

  This purpose pleases her and overcomes

  her mind’s uncertainties. Still in her bed,

  she lifts herself up and leans on her left elbow:

  “Now let him see,” she says, “my decadence!

  What slope am I beginning to descend?

  What fire is conceived within my heart?”

  Her shaking hands set down the practiced words:

  760

  she grips the iron stylus in her right,

  and holds the blank wax tablet in her left.

  She starts and stops. Sets down—and then condemns.

  Adds and deletes. Doubts; finds fault with; approves.

  She throws the tablet down, then picks it up!

  She cannot say what she is striving for,

  and every tack she takes displeases her,

  who sometimes seems ashamed, and sometimes bold.

  She first wrote “Sister” down—and then decided

  to take the “Sister” out—and then inscribed

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  these wo
rds on the corrected wax:

  “My dearest—

  One who so holds you, one who will not have

  a dearest, if not you, now sends you this,

  who cannot, out of shame, reveal herself,

  but if you wish to know what I desire,

  it is that, nameless, I might plead my case

  unrecognized as Byblis, undiscovered

  until my wish were certain to be granted.

  “You might have sensed I was in love with you

  from my drained complexion and stressed countenance,

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  my eyes so often filling up with tears,

  the sighs brought on by no apparent cause,

  my constant need to throw my arms about you—

  and, if by any chance you noticed them,

  the kisses that were more than sisterly.

  “And yet, despite the burden of my wound,

  despite the fury of that inner fire,

  I did my best—the gods will witness this!—

  to bring myself again to sanity;

  unfortunate, I’ve struggled for so long

  790

  to get way from Cupid’s fierce encounters,

  enduring more—I think you would agree—

  than any girl could bear.

  “Now overwhelmed

  by my great passion and compelled to speak,

  I seek your help with this fainthearted prayer,

  for you will be my rescue—or my ruin:

  the choice is yours and you must make it now.

  “I pray to you not as an enemy,

  but as the one most closely joined to you,

  who yet desires to be nearer still,

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  more closely linked by even stricter chains.

  “Let old men know what is and is not proper,

  distinguish ‘decent’ from ‘indecencies,’

  and keep the fine distinctions of the law.

  Heedless passion accords with our youth.

  We have not learned yet what may be allowed,

  so we believe that everything may be,

  and follow the example of the gods!

  “In our case, we haven’t a strict father

  or a concern for what the people say,

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  or fear to serve as an impediment;

  and should there be occasion for our fear,

  our pleasurable thefts will be concealed

  by our relationship—for as your sister,

  I am allowed to speak with you in private,

  and openly embrace and give you kisses.

  “The little that is lacking—is it too much?

  Have pity, then, on one who speaks her love

  but would not speak unless compelled by passion;

  and let it not be written on my stone

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  that by refusing me, you caused my death.”

  When she had finished setting down these words

  on tablets which were filled right to their edges

  (though pointlessly, as it will soon appear),