Metamorphoses

  And now the north wind urged them to depart;

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  the sails flapped noisily against the masts

  and the mariner had whistled up a breeze.

  “Farewell, O Troy, for we are carried off,”

  they cry, kissing the earth as they relinquish

  their still-smoldering homes. Last to embark—

  a pitiable sight—was Hecuba,

  discovered at the princes’ sepulchers,

  clutching the tombs and kissing their dry bones;

  Ulysses broke her grip and dragged her off,

  but she hid Hector’s ashes in her bosom,

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  and left locks of her white hair on his tomb,

  her hair and tears a pointless offering.

  There is, across the way from where Troy was,

  a country that the men of Thrace inhabit;

  here was the wealthy court of Polymestor,

  to whom, O Polydorus, your father Priam,

  entrusted you in secret to be raised

  far from the fighting: a wise decision,

  had he not sent you off with a great treasure,

  provoking avarice and ensuring evil.

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  When Troy collapsed, the impious Thracian king

  savagely cut the throat of his young charge,

  and then, as though to show that crimes could be

  eliminated just as easily

  as victims are, the corpse of Polydorus

  was tossed down from a cliff into the sea.

  Awaiting quiet seas and a steady wind,

  Agamemnon gave orders that the fleet

  was to be moored along the Thracian coast;

  quite unexpectedly, the ground split open,

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  and there emerged the ghost of great Achilles,

  as large, and in his form as threatening

  as in that time when, like a wild man, he

  went after Agamemnon with his sword

  and challenged him for his unjust behavior:

  “O Greeks,” he said, “do you depart for home

  heedless of me? My body lies decayed,

  as are the thanks you owe me for my service!

  This cannot be: so that my sepulcher

  may not go without honor, let my shade

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  be pleasured by the death of Polyxena.”

  He finished speaking, and the Greeks obeyed

  his unforgiving ghost: torn from the arms

  of her mother Hecuba, for whom the maiden

  was almost the only comfort she had left,

  that fierce, unfortunate, unfeminine

  virgin was brought directly to the grave

  and sacrificed upon that ominous tomb.

  And after she had been brought to the altar,

  and realized that she would be the victim

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  of this cruel sacrifice, not even then

  did she forget herself; but when she saw

  Neoptolemus waiting, blade in hand

  and eyes fixed on her countenance, she said,

  “The time has come to spill my noble blood;

  let there be no delay: plunge your blade now

  into my throat or breast,” and she bared both,

  “for you may rest assured: Polyxena

  does not desire to live as a slave!

  “My only wish is that my death somehow

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  could be unnoticed by my mother,

  for her awareness of it spoils the joy

  that I would take in it—although her life,

  and not my death, should really make her tremble!

  “Do not press close around me now, if what

  I ask of you is just: let no man’s hand

  defile a maiden’s honor by its touch,

  lest I go to the Styx unwillingly!

  My death will be more acceptable to him,

  whoever he is, whom you propitiate,

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  if I endure it willingly. But if

  any are moved by these last words of mine—

  no captive maid but Priam’s daughter asks!—

  then let my mother have my body back

  without a ransom; let her tears, not gold,

  redeem my corpse for its sad funeral:

  when she was able to, she gave you gold.”

  The tears that she was able to restrain

  flowed in abundance from the eyes of those

  who heard her speak; and even as he plunged

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  his blade into the breast she offered him,

  the priest himself, though with reluctance, wept.

  Her knees gave out, and she slid to the ground,

  a resolute expression on her face

  right to the end—and as she fell took care

  to cover up those parts that should be hidden

  and served the honor of her chastity.

  The Trojan women took her body up,

  once more lamenting another child of Priam,

  the many victims given by one house;

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  and they mourned you, who, until yesterday,

  had been the king’s consort and queen-mother,

  the image of an Asia in its prime—

  now, even for a captive, you appear

  especially unfortunate. Ulysses,

  in his triumph, would surely not have wished

  you to be his, except that you gave birth

  to Hector, who would not have chosen him

  to be his mother’s master and her lord!

  She bathed her daughter’s corpse now with the tears

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  that she had shed so often for her country,

  her children, and her husband; she poured those tears

  into her daughter’s wound, and kissed her face

  and beat her own breast, accustomed to the gesture,

  and as she plucked her hair in bloody clumps,

  these words, and even more than these, she cried:

  “O daughter, the last grief of your poor mother,

  what else is there still left for me to lose?

  The wound that you were given is my own,

  lest I should ever lose a child of mine

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  without it being murdered—and yet you,

  because you were a woman, I imagined,

  would be safe from the sword—but even so,

  as a woman, you too have perished by it,

  killed as so many of your brothers were,

  the victims of Achilles, who has bereft

  the Trojan people and their helpless queen.

  “But after he had fallen to the arrows

  of Paris and Apollo, I said, ‘Surely

  Achilles is no longer to be feared!’

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  Now more than ever I had cause to fear him!

  The very ashes in his sepulcher

  despise our race, and even from the grave

  we feel the enmity that he still bears us!

  I have been fruitful for Achilles’ sake!

  “Great Troy has fallen, and the public woe

  has ended in calamity—yet it has ended:

  for me alone the story still continues,

  my ship of sorrow holds its steady course.

  “So very fortunate till recently,

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  in children, in their marriages, my husband—

  now destitute, an exile, sundered from

  my family’s remains! Penelope

  will soon display me to her women friends

  on Ithaca, and tell them, as I weave

  my daily quota, ‘This is Priam’s queen,

  and noble Hector’s celebrated mother.’

  “Now after all the others have been lost,

  you who were left to alleviate my grief

  have now been sacrificed upon his tomb!

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  The child that I gave birth to
has become

  an offering made to Achilles’ ghost!

  Why do I linger here, unyielding? To what end

  is my old age, rich only in its years?

  “O cruel gods, why draw my lifetime out,

  unless to show me even further grief?

  For who could think that Priam could be called

  fortunate after Troy had been demolished?

  Only your father’s death was fortunate,

  my daughter, for he did not see you die,

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  leaving his life and kingdom both at once.

  “But surely you, a princess of the blood,

  would have your funeral rites as dowry

  and lie in state among your ancestors?

  No, this is not the fortune of our house:

  your only offerings will be my tears,

  your burial, upon a foreign beach!

  “We have lost everything—yet there remains

  what may allow me to continue living

  a little while: her mother’s favorite,

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  my youngest once, and now my only son,

  my Polydorus, sent to the Thracian king

  on these same shores. But why do I delay

  to wash this cruel wound with water

  and bathe your face, still splattered with your blood?”

  She finished speaking and went down to shore,

  tottering with age, and in her grief

  tearing her white hair: “O women of Troy,

  fetch me an urn,” the luckless one commanded,

  intending to draw water from the sea,

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  she found instead the body of her son

  washed onto shore, disfigured by the open

  wounds carved in it by Thracian implements.

  The Trojan women screamed, but Hecuba

  was silent in her grief, which had devoured

  the tears and the cry that sprang up deep inside her;

  she stood stone still and fixed her angry gaze

  now on the ground and now upon the heavens,

  and sometimes staring at her dead son’s face

  and sometimes, and more often, at his wounds,

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  as surging rage armed and instructed her.

  Yet even in her fury, she behaved

  as though she were still queen, and fixed her mind

  and her imagination on revenge;

  and as a mother lioness, whose cub

  is taken from her, follows its spoor back

  to find the enemy it cannot see,

  so Hecuba, when anger mixed with grief,

  forgot her years, but not her bravery,

  and went directly to the Thracian king,

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  for this cruel murder had been his idea,

  and asked him for an audience, pretending

  that she would give him gold that she had long

  kept hidden for her son. Deceived by this,

  and by his customary avarice, the king

  came in secret and implored her thus:

  “Give your son the treasure, now, Hecuba,

  for everything you give will go to him,

  as everything you’ve so far given has,

  I swear by all the gods.”

  She stared at him

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  ferociously as he foreswore himself,

  and swelling with the flames of indignation,

  she seized him, calling to the captive women,

  and sank her fingers in his faithless eyes,

  and plucked them out—for anger gave her strength—

  then plunged her hands, stained with his foul blood,

  into the places where his eyes had been

  (for they were there no more) and plucked them out.

  The Thracians were enraged by this disaster

  which befell their king, and started to throw stones

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  and spears at Hecuba; growling, she snapped

  at the stones they threw at her, and even though

  her jaws were meant for words, she started barking

  when she attempted speech. Because of this,

  the place has taken (and still takes) its name

  [in Greek, Cynossema: Sign of the Dog]

  from the place where Hecuba, remembering

  the evils of that distant time, would howl

  across the Thracian grasslands mournfully.

  The Trojans and her enemies, the Greeks,

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  were likewise moved by what became of her,

  as were the gods in heaven, all of them,

  even the one who is the bride and sister

  of Jupiter, for Juno, too, denied

  that Hecuba deserved to end like this.

  Memnon

  Although she had supported them with arms,

  Aurora had no time to sympathize

  when Troy and Hecuba both came to ruin.

  The goddess had a care closer to home;

  a private grief tormented her, the loss

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  of her son Memnon, whom she had just seen

  Achilles murder with his deadly spear

  on the Phrygian fields; and, as she watched,

  the reddish color of the dawn grew pale

  and clouds spread over the entire sky.

  Aurora was unable to look on

  as her son’s body fed the final flames,

  but didn’t think it inappropriate,

  just as she was, and with her hair unbound,

  to fling her arms around the knees of Jove

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  and supplement her speech with flowing tears:

  “Although I am inferior to all

  the other gods that dwell in shining heaven

  (my temples being few and far between),

  I nonetheless approach you as a goddess,

  but not to ask you for more festal days

  on earth below, for temples or for altars

  ablaze with the bright flames of sacrifice:

  nevertheless, if you would just consider

  all that I do (though I am just a woman),

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  the services I undertake for you,

  when, with new light, I sever night from day,

  you’d say that I deserved to be rewarded.

  “But my present situation and concern

  is not to ask for honors I deserve:

  I come because I am bereft of Memnon,

  who bravely (but in vain) bore arms for Priam,

  and, still a youth, was slain by bold Achilles,

  for so you wished it. Now I pray that you,

  ruler supreme of all the gods in heaven,

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  grant him some honor, a solace for his death

  and consolation for his mother’s wound.”

  Jupiter nodded, as the towering

  pyre collapsed into its leaping flames,

  and thick, black smoke clouds blotted out the day,

  as when a water nymph exhales a fog

  that can’t be penetrated by the sun;

  black embers flying up accumulate

  into one body, which, thickening, takes shape,

  drawing warmth and animation from the fire;

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  lightness provides it with a pair of wings,

  and birdlike at first, but very soon a bird

  in fact, it flies off noisily among

  innumerable sisters like itself,

  all of them having the same origin.

  Three times they flew around the blazing pyre,

  and their mournful cries in harmony arose

  and filled the air; on their fourth circuit, they

  divided into two opposing camps

  which waged ferocious war against each other,

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  employing their sharp beaks and curved talons

  until they had worn out their wings and breasts;

  and then, a
s sacrifices to the dead,

  these ashy creatures fell back to the earth,

  remembering the hero that they sprang from.

  The unexpected offspring took their name

  from their creator: they are the Memnonides,

  or children of Memnon; when the sun has crossed

  the zodiac, their combat is renewed:

  they fight and die in mourning for their parent.

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  So others wept while Hecuba was barking,

  but Aurora was intent on her own grief,

  and even to this day she sheds her tears,

  the morning dew that falls upon the world.

  The daughters of Anius

  Nevertheless, the Fates did not allow

  the hopes of Troy to perish with the city:

  Aeneas, the heroic son of Venus,

  brought out the sacred objects in his arms,

  and likewise sacred, the venerable burden

  of his father, Anchises. These were the spoils of war

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  that pious man selected from his wealth,

  and with his son Ascanius, he bore

  in his fleet of refugees from Antandros

  and from pernicious Thrace, so lately stained

  with the blood of Polydorus; winds and tides

  favored his voyage, and he soon arrived

  at Delos, the city of Apollo, which

  he entered with his cohorts.

  There Anius

  the king, who served Apollo as high priest,

  received him in his temple and his palace

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  and showed him the city, with its famous shrine

  containing the two trees Latona gripped

  while she was giving birth to the twin gods.

  Here they gave incense to the altar’s flame,

  then doused it with an offering of wine,

  and after sacrificing cattle, burned

  the entrails, as was customary, then

  went back into the palace and reclined

  on piles of carpets and refreshed themselves

  with gifts of Ceres and with flowing wine.

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  Devout Anchises asked, “Priest of Apollo,

  am I mistaken in my recollection,

  or did you not have four daughters and a son

  when I first came to visit in your city?”

  Anius shook his head, bound with white ribbons,

  and sadly answered him: “You are not wrong,

  O greatest of heroes, for you saw me then

  as the father of five children, of whom now

  (such the inconstancy of human life!)

  I am almost entirely bereft;

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  what aid can I expect from my absent son,

  who holds the land of Andros (named for him)

  in his father’s place, and rules there as its king?

  “Apollo gave him the gift of prophecy,

  but Bacchus gave a gift to my four daughters

  greater than they could have prayed or hoped for: