Metamorphoses

  that such a conflagration could ignite

  the sacred heavens and set the skies ablaze;

  and he recalled a time the Fates predicted,

  when land and seas and heaven’s palaces,

  the universe so artfully devised,

  should come to total ruin in a fire.

  He puts away those bolts the Cyclops forged;

  another punishment now pleases him:

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  to sink the mortal race beneath the waves

  and send down sheets of rain from up above.

  At once he seals the north wind in the cave

  of Aeolus, along with all those winds

  that scatter clouds; the south wind is set loose

  and flies off swiftly on his dripping wings,

  his awful face concealed in pitchy blackness;

  his beard is utterly suffused with rain

  that runs in channels down his streaming locks;

  upon his forehead gather clouds of gloom,

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  and his flowing robes are—literally—flowing.

  And when his broad hands squeeze low cloud formations,

  a crash is heard, and they give up their rain.

  Iris, the messenger of Juno, clad

  in many-colored robes, draws water up

  to heaven, where she nourishes the clouds.

  Ripening grain that was the farmer’s hope,

  to his despair, now lies completely ruined;

  the long year’s labor has been all for naught.

  Jove’s own sky cannot yield sufficient water

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  to ease his wrath: Neptune, his sky-blue brother,

  aids him with waves of fresh auxiliaries.

  The tyrant calls his rivers to assemble

  beneath his roof and tells them only this:

  “No point in lengthy battlefield harangues.

  Pour yourselves into this with all your strength,

  that’s what is needed! Open all your doors,

  release the floodgates of your dams and dikes,

  let all your rivers run without restraint!”

  Those are his orders: back the rivers go

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  and loose the reins about their fountainheads;

  unbridled streams go racing to the sea.

  Now with his trident, Neptune strikes the earth,

  who shudders at the blow and opens wide

  new waterways. Delivered from their courses,

  the rivers rush across the open fields,

  and bear away not only figs and flocks,

  but folks who tend them, with their dwelling places;

  they also sink the shrines of household gods!

  If any roof has managed to resist,

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  untoppled, this unnatural disaster,

  the waves embrace above it nonetheless;

  its highest turrets lie beneath the flood.

  There are no longer boundaries between

  earth and the sea, for everything is sea,

  and the sea is everywhere without a shore.

  One takes to the hills, another to his skiff,

  rowing where once he plowed the earth in rows,

  while yet another sails above his grainfields,

  or glimpses, far below, his sunken villa;

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  and here in the topmost branches of an elm

  is someone casting out a fishing line;

  an anchor grazes in a meadow’s grasses,

  or a curved keel sweeps above a vineyard,

  and the seal’s misshapen figure lies at rest

  where the slender goats were lately fond of browsing.

  The Nereids marvel at the sight of groves,

  cities, and dwelling places all submerged,

  while dolphins take possession of the woods

  and shake the lofty branches of the oak

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  as they brush by. The wolf swims among sheep,

  the tawny lion and the tiger both

  are carried helplessly upon the waves;

  the boar’s great power, like a lightning bolt,

  does not avail, nor do the stag’s swift limbs.

  After his long search for a landing place,

  the bird with weary wings collapses seaward.

  Now unrestrained, the sea conceals the hills,

  and strange new waves beat at the mountaintops;

  the greater part are drowned beneath the waves,

  while those spared drowning perish of starvation.

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  Deucalion and Pyrrha

  The land of Phocis separates Boeotia

  from the Oetaean fields—a fertile land,

  when it was land—but now part of the sea,

  a broad field, rather quickly inundated.

  There Mount Parnassus raises its twin peaks,

  piercing the clouds and seeking out the stars;

  in this place (which alone was unsubmerged)

  Deucalion, and she who shared his bed,

  borne on a little raft, had come to land.

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  Immediately they set out to worship

  the local nymphs, the mountain deities,

  and Themis, who, in those days, was in charge

  of giving answers through the oracles;

  there lived no better nor more upright man,

  no wife more reverential than his own.

  When Jupiter realized the world was now

  thoroughly inundated, and observed

  only a single man and woman left

  out of the many thousands there had been,

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  and that they both were blameless and devout,

  he tore the clouds apart and drove them off

  with the blustery north wind; then he revealed

  the heavens and the earth to one another.

  The sea’s great rage subsides now, as its lord

  deactivates his triple-pointed spear

  and soothes the waters; then he summons Triton,

  a sea god, blue as is the sea itself,

  who rises from the vasty deeps, displaying

  a colony of shellfish on his shoulders,

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  and bids him blow on his resounding conch shell

  to signal the retreat of floods and streams.

  He lifts the hollow shell of his great horn,

  which twists, expanding in diameter

  as it revolves around its spiral base;

  and when he blows upon it in midocean,

  its voice reverberates from shore to shore

  along the daily route that Phoebus travels.

  So after he had pressed it to his lips,

  wet from that streaming beard of his, and blew

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  retreat as he had been commanded to,

  the waters everywhere, on land and sea,

  all heard that sound, and were at once restrained.

  Now seas have shores, and streams their swollen beds,

  and hills appear again as floods subside;

  land rises and earth waxes as waves wane;

  after so long a period of time,

  the treetops are uncovered in the woods,

  showing the muck still clinging to their leaves.

  The world was certainly restored, but when

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  Deucalion perceived the emptiness

  and silent desolation of its lands,

  tears rose within him as he turned to Pyrrha:

  “O sister, wife, and only woman left,

  you, whom the bonds of race and family

  and our marriage bed have joined to me,

  we are now joined by our common perils—

  for we two are the crowd that fills the lands

  seen by the rising and the setting sun—

  we two are all: the sea now has the others.

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  And our claim upon our lives is still

  doubtfu
l, for those storm clouds frighten me!

  “And how would you be feeling, my poor wretch,

  if fate had snatched you from the flood without me?

  How would you bear this terror all alone?

  Who would console you in your unshared grief?

  For trust me, if the sea had taken you,

  I would have followed then, my wife; the sea

  would not have taken one of us, but two.

  “Oh, would that I were able to repair

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  these losses by the skills my father had

  of breathing spirit into molded clay,

  for then I could restore the human race!

  “But now humanity depends on us;

  so heaven wills, and wills that we alone

  remain the only models of mankind.”

  He finished speaking. For a while they wept

  and then decided to entreat the heavens

  and seek aid through the sacred oracles.

  So side by side, the couple went at once

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  to the Cephisus, which, though not yet clear,

  was now confined to its accustomed bed.

  They sprinkled drops of water in libation

  upon their heads and garments, then went off

  to worship at the sacred shrine of Themis,

  its gables all discolored with foul moss,

  and altars with no sacrificial fires.

  As soon as they approached the temple steps

  both fell upon the ground in reverence,

  kissing the cold stone with trembling lips:

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  “If heaven may be softened by the prayers

  of the just, and godly anger be deflected,

  then tell us, Themis, by what methods may

  this ruined race of ours be restored,

  and aid, most merciful, this world immersed!”

  Moved by their words, the goddess offered them

  an oracle: “Go from my temple now,

  with your heads covered and your robes unbound;

  behind you, toss the bones of your great mother!”

  Bewildered, were they, for the longest time:

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  Pyrrha broke the silence first, refusing

  to carry out the orders of the goddess;

  begging her pardon, though, with quivering lip,

  but mother’s shade would surely be offended

  by such a casual treatment of her bones.

  And meanwhile they repeat the oracle’s

  obscurities, those words whose sense is hidden,

  turning them over in their puzzled minds,

  until at last the son of Prometheus

  spoke soothing words to Epimetheus’ daughter:

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  “The righteous oracles can’t counsel evil,

  so if I am not very much mistaken,

  our ‘great mother’ is the earth itself;

  I reckon that the ‘bones’ the goddess meant

  are merely stones in the body of the earth:

  it’s stones we’re meant to throw behind our backs!”

  Though Pyrrha was excited by her husband’s

  interpretation of the oracle,

  it seemed a rather doubtful hope at best,

  for neither of them had much confidence

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  in heaven’s admonitions—still, what harm

  could come from trying it?

  As they descend,

  they veil their heads and loosen up their robes,

  and cast the stones behind them as the goddess

  bade them to do—and as they did, these stones

  (you needn’t take this part of it on faith,

  for it’s supported by an old tradition)—

  these stones at once begin to lose their hardness

  and their rigidity; slowly they soften;

  once softened, they begin to take on shapes.

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  Then presently, when they’d increased in size

  and grown more merciful in character,

  they bore a certain incomplete resemblance

  to the human form, much like those images

  created by a sculptor when he begins

  roughly modeling his marble figures.

  That part in them which was both moist and earthy

  was used for the creation of their flesh,

  while what was solid and incapable

  of bending turned to bone; what had been veins

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  continued on, still having the same name.

  By heaven’s will, in very little time,

  stones that the man threw took the forms of men,

  while those thrown from the woman’s hand repaired

  the loss of women: the hardness of our race

  and great capacity for heavy labor

  give evidence of our origins.

  The second creation

  The earth spontaneously generated

  the varied forms of other animals

  after the standing water had been warmed

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  by the sun’s rays; for then the sodden marshes

  swelled up with heat, and fecund seeds of life

  grew in that soil as in a mother’s womb,

  and from its richness took distinctive forms;

  so when the Nile that flows with seven mouths,

  retreating from the fields it irrigates,

  has settled back into its ancient bed

  and the still-damp slime was heated by the sun,

  then farmers, as they tilled the soil, discovered

  numerous kinds of animated life;

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  some, just begun, were not yet quite alive,

  while others showed some sort of imperfection,

  and often in the same form one could see

  that this part lived, while that part was raw earth.

  It is when heat and moisture join as one

  that life is generated; all living forms

  originate from these opposing sources;

  for even though they are at odds by nature,

  the two of them create all living things,

  and their discordant harmony is suited

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  to foster varied offspring in abundance.

  So when the earth, still completely covered

  with fresh muck from that just receded flood,

  was heated by the sun’s rays, she produced

  countless species; some were the old ones, restored,

  and others were monsters, novel in their shapes.

  Apollo and the Python

  Unwillingly, the earth bore you, as well,

  enormous Python, serpent quite unknown

  to all prior ages—you, who would become

  a terror to the newly fashioned folk,

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  so very like a mountainside you were;

  the archer god (with lethal bow unused

  before, except for hunting does and she-goats)

  destroyed this beast by ventilating him

  with almost every arrow in his quiver,

  and the snake’s venom poured through his black wounds.

  And, lest the centuries should wear away

  the glory of his deed, he instituted

  the sacred games whose contests all would throng to,

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  and named them Pythian, to celebrate

  his victory against the vanquished serpent;

  at these events, the youths who won in trial

  of hand or foot or fleet-wheeled chariot

  were given, as their prize, an oaken garland,

  for laurel wasn’t in existence yet;

  in those days, Phoebus bound his flowing locks

  in garlands made from any tree whatever.

  Apollo and Daphne

  Daphne, the daughter of the river god

  Peneus, was the first love of Apollo;

  this happened not b
y chance, but by the cruel

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  outrage of Cupid; Phoebus, in the triumph

  of his great victory against the Python,

  observed him bending back his bow and said,

  “What are you doing with such manly arms,

  lascivious boy? That bow befits our brawn,

  wherewith we deal out wounds to savage beasts

  and other mortal foes, unerringly:

  just now with our innumerable arrows

  we managed to lay low the mighty Python,

  whose pestilential belly covered acres!

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  Content yourself with kindling love affairs

  with your wee torch—and don’t claim our glory!”

  The son of Venus answered him with this:

  “Your arrow, Phoebus, may strike everything;

  mine will strike you: as animals to gods,

  your glory is so much the less than mine!”

  He spoke, and soaring upward through the air

  on wings that thundered, in no time at all

  had landed on Parnassus’ shaded height;

  and from his quiver drew two arrows out

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  which operated at cross-purposes,

  for one engendered flight, the other, love;

  the latter has a polished tip of gold,

  the former has a tip of dull, blunt lead;

  with this one, Cupid struck Peneus’ daughter,

  while the other pierced Apollo to his marrow.

  One is in love now, and the other one

  won’t hear of it, for Daphne calls it joy

  to roam within the forest’s deep seclusion,

  where she, in emulation of the chaste

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  goddess Phoebe, devotes herself to hunting;

  one ribbon only bound her straying tresses.

  Many men sought her, but she spurned her suitors,

  loath to have anything to do with men,

  and rambled through the wild and trackless groves

  untroubled by a thought for love or marriage.

  Often her father said, “You owe it to me,

  child, to provide me with a son-in-law

  and grandchildren!”

  “Let me remain a virgin,

  father most dear,” she said, “as once before

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  Diana’s father, Jove, gave her that gift.”

  Although Peneus yielded to you, Daphne,

  your beauty kept your wish from coming true,

  your comeliness conflicting with your vow:

  at first sight, Phoebus loves her and desires

  to sleep with her; desire turns to hope,

  and his own prophecy deceives the god.

  Now just as in a field the harvest stubble

  is all burned off, or as hedges are set ablaze

  when, if by chance, some careless traveler

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  should brush one with his torch or toss away

  the still-smoldering brand at break of day—

  just so the smitten god went up in flames