Metamorphoses
to the Roman people; his mortal parts
dissolved as he was borne up through the air,
as a leaden bullet fired from a sling
is worn away as it traverses the sky;
and now a beauty that is heavenly,
more worthy of the couches of the gods,
transforms him as he turns into Quirinus,
adorned in a white robe with purple seam.
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His wife, Hersilia, was mourning him
when Juno ordered Iris to descend
upon a rainbow and console her thus,
and carry these instructions to the widow:
“O glory of the Latins and the Sabines,
most worthy to have been the wife and queen
of such a man as Romulus has been,
and now most fit to be Quirinus’ spouse,
leave off your lamentations: would you see
your husband once again? Then come with me
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into that grove, bright green upon the hill
named after Quirinus; within it lies
the shaded temple of the Roman king.”
Iris obeyed, descending to the earth
upon her rainbow and made Hersilia
hearken to the message she was given;
and she, with downcast eyes and modest look,
responded to the messenger of Juno:
“O goddess, for I know that you are one,
although I cannot say which one you are—
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lead on, lead on: show me my husband’s face,
for if the Fates should let me see it once,
then I would say that I have gone to heaven.”
Without delay she went with Iris to
the hill of Romulus, and there a star
slipped from the vault of heaven down to earth;
Hersilia, whose hair burst into flames,
ascended with that star into the air;
Rome’s founder there receives her, takes her hand
within his own, and gives her a new name
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along with her new body; she is called
Hora, and as a goddess now is joined
to her immortal Quirinus forever.
BOOK XV
PROPHETIC ACTS AND VISIONARY DREAMS
Numa (1) Myscelus and the founding of Crotona The teachings of Pythagoras Numa (2) Egeria and Hippolytus Tages; The spear of Romulus; Cipus Aesculapius The apotheosis of Julius Caesar The poet of the future
Numa (1)
In the meantime, a ruler capable
of bearing such responsibilities
and of succeeding Romulus is sought;
Fame accurately prophesies the fitness
of the distinguished Numa for the throne;
and he, not satisfied by his command
of Sabine thought and practices, conceived
a larger project in his receptive mind,
striving to master universal knowledge.
The love he had for this activity
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drove him to leave his capital of Cures,
and travel to a distant city, famed
for its hospitality to Hercules.
Myscelus and the founding of Crotona
Numa asked who had founded this Greek city
on the Italian coast, and an old man
who knew the ancient legends well responded:
“They say that Hercules, the son of Jove,
returning from his journey to the ocean,
enriched by herds of Spanish cattle, landed
felicitously at Lacinium;
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and while his cattle grazed the tender grass,
he enjoyed the home and hospitality
of Croton, a great man, beneath whose roof
he found refreshment from his lengthy labor.
“As he was leaving, he said, ‘In the future,
this place will be a city of your offspring.’
That promise, as it happened, was fulfilled:
there was a certain man named Myscelus,
the son of Alemon of Argus, who
in his day was most pleasing to the gods.
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“One night, as he lay sleeping heavily,
Hercules stood above him with his club
and said, ‘Go now and leave your native land:
seek the remote and rocky straits of Aesar,’
and threatened Myscelus quite vividly
if he did not obey; and after that,
the vision and the god both disappeared.
“The son of Alemon leapt out of bed
and silently reviewed his recent dream,
and struggled for a long time with its meaning:
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the god commanded his departure, but
the law prohibited his setting forth;
death was the penalty for anyone
who wished to change his homeland for another.
“The bright Sun had concealed his shining face
far underneath the surface of the Ocean,
and darkest Night had wreathed her head with stars,
when once again that selfsame god returned
delivering the selfsame admonition,
and threatening, unless the man obeyed,
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worse punishments, and even more of them.
This terrified him: he at once prepared
to move his household to another region.
“Word got around about it in the city,
and he was brought to trial for his malfeasance.
The prosecution rested: no defense:
no need to call on any witnesses;
the poor wretch raised his face and hands to heaven:
‘O you who by twelve labors merited heaven,
help me, I pray,’ he cried, ‘for it is you
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who are the instigator of my crime!’
“Back in those ancient times, white or black pebbles
were used to show one’s innocence or guilt;
and that was how the court proceeded then
in handing down the sentence: every pebble
placed in the unforgiving urn—was black!
But when they turned it over to count up
the pebbles, every single one of them,
without exception, had been changed to white!
“The judgment against Myscelus had been
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reversed by Hercules, and he was saved;
he thanked Amphitryon’s heroic son
and then sailed across the Ionian Sea,
bypassing Neretum, Sybaris, and Tarentum;
nor did he linger by the bay of Siris,
Crimese, or the coast of Apulia;
and scarcely had he gotten past those lands
which look upon those waters, when he found
the end that had been destined for his journey,
the mouth of the river Aesar.
“Not far away
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there was a mound of earth: beneath it lay
the sacred bones of Croton; on this site,
as he had been commanded to, Myscelus
established his new city, which he named
for the one who had been buried in the tomb.”
Such were the origins of that region
and of the Greek city built in Italy,
according to dependable tradition.
The teachings of Pythagoras
There was a man who had been born on Samos,
but fled his native island and its rulers,
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freely choosing to become an exile
out of his hatred for despotism;
and this man was allowed to understand
the thought of gods, off in remotest heavens;
his inner sight exposed what Nature kept
from human view; and when he had at last
exhaustively exam
ined all there was,
would lecture to improve the people’s minds;
a silent multitude stood marveling
at the erudition of his discourse
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upon the origin of the universe,
on the laws of Nature and causality,
what God is, and where the snow comes from,
and whether lightning is produced by Jove
or by the winds that tear apart the clouds;
what causes earthquakes and what keeps the stars
from flying off, and other hidden things;
he was the first to censure man for eating
the flesh of animals and was the first
to preach this learnèd, but not widely held
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doctrine, in these words from his own lips:
“Mortals, refrain from defiling your bodies with sinful
feasting, for you have the fruits of the earth and of arbors,
whose branches bow with their burden; for you the grapes ripen,
for you the delicious greens are made tender by cooking;
milk is permitted you too, and thyme-scented honey:
Earth is abundantly wealthy and freely provides you
her gentle sustenance, offered without any bloodshed.
Some of the beasts do eat flesh to allay their own hunger,
although not all of them, for horses, sheep, and cattle
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feed upon grasses; but those of untamable nature—
Armenian tigers, furious lions, wolves and bears, too—
these creatures take pleasure in feasting on what they have slaughtered.
“What an indecency, mingling entrails with entrails,
fattening one on the flesh from another one’s body,
saving the life of one by another’s destruction!
Surrounded by all of this wealth, so freely provided
by Earth, the best of all mothers, you wholly ignore it,
choosing to mangle sad flesh with your cruel teeth, and
delighted again to act out the rites of the Cyclops,
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unable ever to placate your stomach’s voracious
desires until, at last, you have murdered another!
“That time long since past, which we now refer to as ‘golden,’
was blessed in the fruit of its trees, and in its wild herbs,
and in the absence of blood smeared on men’s faces.
In that time, the birds flew through the air without danger,
the fearless rabbit went wandering over the meadows,
and the fish was not brought to the hook by its credulous nature.
All lived without ambushes; none had a fear of deception,
and peace was everywhere. But after that bringer of trouble,
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whoever he was, who envied the lion his dinner,
had crammed his greedy gut with the flesh from a body,
he led us down the wrong path; for it may be that iron
was first stained with the warm blood of the beast that he butchered;
this would not have been a crime had the creatures attacked us,
for I say that any such beasts may be rightfully murdered,
but those that we must destroy should never be eaten!
“Crimes even greater emerged from that one: the sow is
thought to have merited death as a ritual victim
because she uprooted new crops with her snout, thus depriving
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farmers of hope for the year; the goat was led to the altar
to pay with his life for the sin of devouring Bacchus;
these two, then, died for offenses that they had committed.
But what did you ever do, sheep, to merit your murder?
—You who were born to serve man with milk from your udders
and with the soft wool wherewith we make our garments—
your life is surely more useful to us than your death is!
And what have you done, poor ox, so soulful and guileless,
innocent simpleton, born but to bear our labors?
Wholly unmindful, unworthy the gift of the earth’s fruits
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is one who, after releasing him from the weight of the harness,
strikes down the worker with whom he had broken the hard field
as many times as it had given him harvests,
and chops with his axe at that neck worn out by exertion.
“Nor is it enough that man had committed such misdeeds:
the gods were charged with them too, were believed to take pleasure
in dealing death out to the labor-bearing young bullock!
Since that which makes him so pleasing is what will most harm him,
a victim distinguished in figure and quite without blemish,
his horns gilded, trailing bright ribbons, is led to the altar,
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where he, without comprehending them, listens to prayers,
and observes the barley he helped to cultivate sprinkled
between his horns: perhaps even sees in the basin,
held under his head by the priest, the knife blade reflected
a moment before his blood is spilled into the water.
“At once they tear out the guts from the still-living creature,
and scrutinize them in search of some heavenly purpose!
So great is the human hunger to eat what’s forbidden,
you mortals will dare even to feed upon this! Don’t you do it,
I beg you! Pay close attention to my admonition,
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and when you devour the flesh of your fresh-butchered cattle,
taste it and know you are eating your labor’s companion!
“A god is directing my speech: I will speak as inspired,
revealing, as though I were Delphi, the secrets of heaven,
disclosing mysteries known but to the illumined;
I will sing of great issues, never before now uncovered
by earlier thinkers and hidden until the present,
for it delights me to travel up into the heavens,
delights me to leave the earth’s insipid abode, and
riding on clouds, mount to the capable shoulders
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of Atlas, where I can look down on those wandering mortals,
lacking in reason, anxious and fearful of dying,
and from there, exhort and encourage them by unrolling
the scroll upon which Fate is inscribed in succession.
“O people stunned with the icy terror of dying,
why do you fear the Styx? Why are you frightened of phantoms
and names that mean nothing, the empty blather of poets,
foolish hobgoblins of a world that never existed?
Here is what happens after you die: your body,
whether consumed on the pyre or slowly decaying,
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suffers no evil; souls cannot perish, and always,
on leaving their prior abodes, they come to new ones,
living on, dwelling again in receptive bodies;
in the time of the Trojan war, I remember quite well
that I was Panthoüs, son of Euphorbus, and wounded
once in the breast by a spear cast by Lord Menelaüs;
recently, while in the temple of Juno on Argos,
I recognized the shield that I bore on my left arm!
“Everything changes and nothing can die, for the spirit
wanders wherever it wishes to, now here and now there,
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living with whatever body it chooses, and passing
from feral to human and then back from human to feral,
and at no time does it ever cease its existence;
and just as soft wax easily takes on a new shape,
unable to stay as it was or keep the same form,
and yet is still wax, I prea
ch that the spirit is always
the same even though it migrates to various bodies.
“And so, at the risk of repeating myself, I exhort you,
lest your devotion be vanquished by the greed of your bellies,
stop this expulsion by slaughter of spirits so like you,
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this practice of feeding one creature on blood from another.
“And since I am already embarked upon this great sea,
have given full sails to the wind, hear me out: nothing
endures in this world! The whole of it flows, and all is
formed with a changing appearance; even time passes,
constant in motion, no different from a great river,
for neither a river nor a transitory hour
is able to stand still; but just as each wave is driven
ahead by another, urged on from behind, and urging
the next wave before it in an unbroken sequence,
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so the times flee and at the same time they follow,
and always are new; for what has just been is no longer,
and what has not been will presently come into being,
and every moment’s occasion is a renewal.
“Do you not see how the nighttime turns toward the daylight,
and how a radiant shining comes after night’s darkness?
Nor is the sky at midnight unchanged in appearance
when dazzling Lucifer rides in upon his white horse,
and that too is changed, when Aurora, the herald of sunlight,
brightens the world as she hands it on over to Phoebus,
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whose heavenly shield is brilliantly red when he lifts it
from under the earth in the morning, and also at sunset,
when it is replaced, but turns a pale white at its zenith,
where the air is clearer and free of the earth’s infection.
Nor does nocturnal Diana appear the same always:
for if she is waxing, she will be less today than tomorrow,
and less tomorrow than she is today, if she is waning.
“But really, do you not see how the year has four seasons
in imitation of how we pass through our lifetime?
For tender and milky and most like a child is the early
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Spring, when the world is freshly green and lacking in vigor,
swelling with moisture, a hopeful sign for the farmer.
Everything flowers then, and the fields are a riot of color,
although as yet there is no real strength in the foliage.
Spring is replaced by the Summer, a more robust season,
which in its vigor resembles a hardy young man;
no other time is richer or warmer than this one.
Autumn steps in and the ardor of youth is replaced by