Metamorphoses

  “And with that club, he flattened Nedymnus

  and Lycopes, skilled with the javelin,

  and Hippasos, whose breast was covered by

  his uncut beard, and Ripheus, who loomed

  above the tallest trees, and Thereus,

  who caught bears on the peaks of Thessaly

  and fetched them back still living and indignant.

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  “No longer could Demoleon endure

  the stunning victories of Theseus;

  he had been struggling with all his might

  to tear an ancient pine tree from the ground,

  but when he could not, he just broke it off

  and sent it flying at his enemy;

  and when he saw it coming, Theseus

  moved out of range, upon advice of Pallas—

  or so he would prefer us to believe.

  “That tree still did some damage as it fell,

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  for it sheared off the breast and left shoulder

  from Crantor’s neck—remember him, Achilles?

  That fellow was your father’s armor-bearer,

  given to him as a guarantee of peace

  by Amyntour, king of the Dolopians,

  when Peleus defeated him in battle.

  “At sight of him so horribly disfigured,

  Peleus cried out from far away,

  ‘Crantor, most pleasing of all youths, accept

  this sacrifice sent to the underworld!’

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  With all the strength of his right arm, he hurled

  his ash-wood spear against Demoleon:

  it tore right through the basket of his ribs

  until it shuddered, biting into bone.

  “With difficulty, he plucked out the shaft,

  but the spear tip still adhered within his lung;

  grief gave him courage; wounded though he was,

  he reared up on his hind legs and struck out

  with deadly fore hooves at his enemy.

  “Peleus stood beneath that hammering

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  and took it on his helmet and his shield,

  protecting his torso, readying his thrust,

  then lunging forward, as with one swift blow

  he pierced a human and an equine breast.

  “That man, before he slew Demoleon,

  had already slain Hyles and Phlegraeos,

  both at a distance; and at hand to hand,

  Iphinous and Clanis; Dorylas was next,

  who wore a wolf-skin cap upon his head,

  and armed himself, not with a deadly spear,

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  but with a pair of bull’s horns, dripping blood.

  “Said I to him (for courage gave me strength!),

  ‘See how my iron yields before your horns,’

  and hurled my javelin. Since he could not duck it,

  he raised his right arm to ward off the wound:

  his forehead and his hand were nailed together.

  “On being struck, he made a great commotion,

  but he was quite disabled by his wound,

  and Peleus was standing close to him

  and used his sword to open up his belly;

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  that fierce, unbridled beast bounded forward

  and spilled his entrails out upon the ground,

  and what spilled out of him, he trod upon,

  and what was trodden on was burst asunder

  and tangled in his legs until he fell,

  his belly emptied of its viscera.

  “Nor did your beauty save you in that battle,

  Cyllarus, if we grant that your kind may

  be beautiful; his beard, just growing in,

  was golden in its color, like the hair

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  that fell straight from his shoulders to his flanks.

  He had a gratifying vigor of expression,

  and you would praise all of his human parts

  —his graceful neck, his shoulders, hands, and torso—

  as equal to an artist’s masterpiece.

  “Nor could his equine attributes be faulted

  as inferior to the man’s beauty:

  provide him with a proper head and neck

  and he would be a worthy mount for Castor!

  His back so well adapted for the saddle,

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  his breast so muscular! In color, black,

  and blacker even than the blackest pitch,

  save for his legs and tail, which were both white.

  “Many there were, among the centaur folk,

  who sought him for a lover; only one,

  Hylonome, succeeded, captured him,

  the comeliest of females in that tribe

  of savages who dwelled in the deep woods;

  and by alluring him and loving him

  and whispering sweet nothings in his ear,

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  maintained her own exclusive hold on him;

  and by her refinement—insofar as one

  can speak of such a thing among her kind—

  for she would run a comb through her long tresses,

  and twine them with rosemary, violets,

  or roses—even lilies, now and then;

  and twice a day she washed her face beneath

  the waters of a font near Pegasa,

  that leapt and tumbled from a sylvan height,

  and twice a day she bathed in that same stream;

  and never would you find Hylonome

  dressed unbecomingly, in anything

  but well-matched pelts, all carefully selected

  and draped across her left side from the shoulder.

  “Their love was mutual; together, they

  roamed through the mountains and explored the caves;

  now they were at the Lapith feast together,

  and stood by one another, fiercely fighting;

  from the left side, there came a javelin

  (I don’t know whose) that entered you, Cyllarus,

  just at the sternum: a slight wound to the heart,

  but heart and body all the same grew cold,

  after the weapon was removed.

  “At once

  Hylonome knelt by her dying lover,

  and pressed her hand against the bleeding wound

  and placed her lips on his, and so attempted

  to keep his soul from exiting his body;

  but when she realized that he was dead,

  she took the spear with which he had been slain,

  and saying something that I couldn’t hear

  because of the great clamor there, she fell

  upon it and in death embraced her lover.

  “And even now there stands before my eyes

  Phaeocomes, who killed half a dozen lions

  and tied their skins together to protect

  his human and his horsey parts at once;

  he hurled a tree trunk which two teams of oxen

  could scarcely budge; it cracked Tectaphos’ pate,

  shattered the broad dome of his skull, and pressed

  his fluid brains till they exuded through

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  his mouth, his sinuses, his eyes and ears,

  as when the whey pours through the oaken basket

  leaving the curds behind, or as when grapes

  beneath the press drip through the slender sieve,

  and juice is squeezed out through the narrow openings.

  “But as he knelt to strip the dead man’s arms

  (your father knows this story well, Achilles)

  I thrust my sword up through his testicles

  from underneath! Chthonius as well,

  and Teleboas fell before my sword:

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  the one had as his weapon a forked stick,

  the other had a spear, and with that spear

  the creature wounded me—you see the mark?

  Why, even to this day, I bear the scar!


  “Those were the days when I should have been sent

  to take Troy by myself! Those were the days

  when I could have—not overwhelmed great Hector,

  but fought him to a draw by force of arms.

  But Hector, in those days, was not yet born

  or was a boy, and now it is too late:

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  old age has taken much away from me.

  “Why should I tell you of the victory

  of Periphas over the half-and-half

  Pyraethus? Why should I renew once more

  the deed of Ampyx, who ran his spear haft through

  the forehead of that quadruped Echeclus?

  Or tell how Macareus hurled a crowbar

  at Pelethronian Erigdupus,

  and laid him flat? And well do I recall

  how the hunting spear that left the hand of Nessus

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  was buried in the balls of Cymelus!

  “Nor would it have seemed credible to you

  that Mopsus, the son of Ampycus,

  was nothing other than a soothsayer,

  for by his spear the centaur Hodites

  was stretched out as he tried, in vain, to speak,

  with his tongue fixed to his chin and chin to throat!

  “Caeneus had already slaughtered five:

  Styphelus first, then Bromus, Antimachus,

  Elymus, and axe-wielding Pyracmos;

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  I don’t recall the manner of their deaths,

  for I took note just of the names and numbers.

  “Then Latreus charged out upon the scene,

  gigantic in his limbs and body both,

  and wearing armor taken from Halesus,

  whom he had slain; even though middle-aged,

  with greying hair, he still had youthful vigor.

  “Conspicuously bearing shield and helmet

  and a Macedonian lance, he rode

  between the front lines, showing off to both,

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  and circled tightly, beating on his shield,

  while arrogantly adding to the wind:

  ‘Are you supposed to be my match, Caenis?

  In my eyes, you will always be a woman,

  you’ll always be Caenis to me,’ and such:

  ‘Consider well what you are by your birth

  and by what you have gone through: go, take up

  the colander and milk pail, twist the threads

  across your thumb—leave war to men!’

  “While Latreus was boasting in this manner,

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  Caeneus hurled a spear into his side,

  extended for his gallop, where the man

  and horse were joined; raging with his pain,

  he struck the young man’s unprotected face

  and saw his lance rebounding in the way

  a hailstone does when it strikes against a roof,

  or a pebble when it bounces from a drumhead:

  then Latreus closed in on him and tried

  to slip his sword into the other’s side,

  too hard to penetrate. ‘Still you won’t escape,

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  for even though my weapon’s point is dull,

  it has an edge, with which you will be slain!’

  “So he told him, and holding his weapon flat

  in his long right arm, lunged at the other’s balls.

  It was as though his blade had struck on marble,

  for with that blow, it shattered into pieces!

  “Caeneus, unscathed, paused for effect before

  his astonished enemy a while, then said,

  ‘Now let me try your body with my blade!’

  and thrust his sword into the other’s side

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  up to the hilt, then blindly twisted it

  around to make a wound within the wound.

  “Outraged, the quadrupedal bimanites

  rushed up screaming, hurling all their spears

  against a single target, Caeneus:

  their blunted weapons fell, but he remained

  unbloodied and unbowed by all their blows.

  “They were astounded by this miracle.

  Monychus cried out, ‘What a great disgrace

  that our nation is overwhelmed by one

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  not quite a man—and yet he is a man,

  while we seem more like what he used to be,

  the fault of our indecisiveness.

  “‘What purpose in these monstrous limbs of ours?

  And why is it that we have double strength?

  Wherefore in our natures do we join

  the strongest beings in a single force?

  I can’t believe a goddess was our mother,

  or that we are the sons of Ixion,

  who had the greatness to attempt the rape

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  of lofty Juno—while we are conquered by

  an enemy who used to be a mare!

  “‘Then let a whole mountain worth of boulders

  and a forest full of tree trunks be the missiles

  we use to crush the life right out of him!

  Let the sheer mass of it cut off his breath

  and let its weight do for a fatal wound!’

  “He spoke, and as it happened, came upon

  a tree trunk that had been uprooted by

  the fearsome power of the mad south wind,

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  and hurled it at his formidable foe;

  so many others followed his example

  that in no time, Mount Othrys was denuded,

  and Pelion was left without its shade.

  “Buried beneath that monstrous heap of trees,

  Caeneus seethed with rage and lifted up,

  on his broad shoulders, the whole timber pile;

  but even so, once the enormous burden

  had covered up his lips and then his head,

  he found it was impossible to breathe,

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  and gasping, he attempted (though in vain)

  to raise his buried head up, and so scatter

  the forest heaped upon him; and as he moved,

  he seemed like Mount Ida (visible from here)

  when its green slopes are shaken by an earthquake.

  “His end is still a matter of dispute:

  some claim his body sank beneath the weight

  of all those trees into the underworld;

  Mopsus denies this, for he saw a bird

  on golden wings rising from the center

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  of that great pile into the yielding air,

  and I beheld the very same myself,

  for the first time then, and never afterward.

  “As Mopsus watched him in his graceful flight

  around the camp and heard his beating wings,

  attending with his eyes and with his spirit,

  he cried out to him, ‘Glory of the Lapiths,

  once greatest of all men, but now a bird

  unparalleled, Caeneus, fare thee well!’

  “The story rests on his authority.

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  Grief added to our rage: it sickened us

  to think that one man should be vanquished by

  so many enemies; we did not cease

  expressing grief with our steel until the night

  had fallen; half of our enemies were dead,

  and those still left alive had taken flight.”

  Periclymenus

  And hearing Nestor’s story of the battle

  between the Lapiths and the half-wild centaurs,

  Tlepolemus, indignant that his father

  was being silently passed over, said:

  790

  “One moment, Senior, for a senior moment

  astonishes: how could you possibly

  forget to praise the deeds of Hercules,

  when I have often heard my father speak

  of the cloud-born quadr
upeds he overcame?”

  Nestor rebuked him sharply: “Why must you

  compel me to remember wrongs again,

  unearthing sorrow that the years have buried,

  those injuries that make me hate your father?

  God knows that he has done deeds past belief,

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  and all the earth speaks only of his merits,

  which I, if I were able to, would gainsay:

  Deiphobus does not find praise from us,

  nor Polydamas, no—not even Hector;

  for who will sing the praises of a foe?

  “That father you’re so proud of sacked Messene,

  and devastated without cause the towns

  of Elis and Pylos; yes, Hercules

  destroyed my home by fire and by sword.

  I shall not speak of others whom he slew,

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  but we were the dozen sons of Neleus,

  distinguished youths; all twelve of us were slain

  by the strength of Hercules, except for me.

  “The deaths of all those others could be borne,

  but that of Periclymenus was weird;

  his grandfather Neptune had given him

  the power to transform himself at will

  to any shape and then resume his own.

  “Now when his repertoire had been exhausted

  to no avail, he changed into that bird

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  who in his talons bears the thunderbolt,

  and is most pleasing to the king of heaven;

  that bird, with all the strength of his strong wings,

  curved beak, and talons, tore the hero’s face.

  “Then Hercules took all too certain aim

  with his great bow, as risen to the clouds

  the bird hung, hovering and motionless,

  and the hero’s arrow struck him in the side,

  where his wing began. The wound was minor,

  but sinews which were severed by the arrow

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  were paralyzed and could not aid his flight.

  He lost his purchase on the yielding air,

  and plunged headlong to earth, and when he struck,

  the arrow in his wing was driven through it

  into his breast and then right through his throat.

  “Now then, most admirable admiral

  of the fleet from Rhodes, what reason do I have

  to sing your father’s praises? Nonetheless,

  I seek no further vengeance for my brothers

  than to ignore the deeds of Hercules;

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  but our friendship—yours and mine—is solid.”

  When Nestor had brought his story to an end

  so courteously, the wine was sent around

  once more, and then they rose up from their couches;

  the remainder of the night belonged to sleep.

  The death of Achilles

  But the god who rules the waters with his trident

  still felt paternal sorrow for his son

  Cycnus, who had been changed into a swan,