by Ovid
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he doesn’t even know his horses’ names!
And scattered everywhere throughout the sky,
he sees the terrifying images
of enormous beasts, which aggravate his fears.
There is a place where two gigantic arms
bend into bows, and arms and tail extended,
Scorpio wholly occupies two zones:
when the boy sees this venom-sweating monster
bend its tail back to strike at him, his mind
goes blank with icy fear. He drops the reins,
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which slackly lie upon the horses’ backs;
and now his steeds, completely unrestrained,
go galloping off course through the unknown
regions of the upper air, wherever
impulse proposes, purposeless, and knock
against the fixed stars set within the sky,
dragging their chariot through trackless space.
Now they seek heaven’s summit, now they drop
and carry themselves closer to the earth;
Luna now marvels at her brother’s horses
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below her own, at scorched clouds trailing smoke!
Earth at its highest point bursts into flame,
deep fissures open up, and its juices dry;
the ripe grain whitens, trees and leaves all burn,
and the dry crop provides itself as fuel.
What I lament is nothing to what comes:
great cities perish and their walls collapse,
entire nations are reduced to ash;
the woods burn with their mountains: Athos burns,
Cilician Taurus and Timolus burn,
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and Oeta, too; Mount Ida, which had once
been full of fountains, now runs dry and burns;
Muse-haunted Helicon and Haemus (not
yet associated with Oeagrus);
Etna (already blazing) blazes twice;
twin-peaked Parnassus, Eryx, Cynthus, Othrys,
and Rhodope (about to lose its snows),
Mymas and Dindyma, Mycale and Cithaeron
(famed for Apollo’s rites) are now ablaze;
Scythia’s frigid climate does not spare it;
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Caucasus burns, and Ossa burns with Pindus,
and greater than the pair of them, Olympus;
whole ranges burn: the Alps, the Apennines.
Then Phaëthon in truth beholds the world
in every part aflame, and cannot bear
the overwhelming heat; each breath he draws
seems like an exhalation from an oven;
his chariot is white-hot underfoot.
Unable to endure the sparks and ashes
whirling about him, shrouded in black smoke,
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he has no way of knowing where he is,
or where he is going through the darkness, borne
wherever the flying horses wish to take him.
And it was then, according to some folks,
that the inhabitants of Ethiopia
turned black, when blood was drawn up to their skins;
and then that Libya became a desert,
and nymphs lamented their lost springs and pools:
Boeotia mourned Dirce; Argus, Amymone;
and Corinth mourned the spring at Pirene.
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Broad-channeled rivers were no better off:
unquietly the distant Don flows, steaming;
Old Man Peneus, Mysian Caïcus,
swift-running Ismenus, Arcadian Erymanthus,
and Xanthus (destined to blaze up again);
the yellow Lycormas and the Maeander,
that playfully meanders in its course,
the Thracian Melas and Spartan Eurotas;
in Babylon, the wide Euphrates burns,
and the Orontes burns in Syria,
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as do the rapid Thermodon, the Ganges,
the river Phasis and the blue Danube;
Alpheus blazes through Olympia,
and the banks of Sperchios in Thessaly;
the Tagus is so hot that its gold melts!
In Lydia the celebrated swans
that sing upon the Cayster have been scorched;
the Nile in terror seeks a place of refuge
and hides its head—where it is hidden still:
its seven mouths lie empty, choked with dust,
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its seven channels all without a stream.
Likewise the Hebrus and the Strymon shrivel,
as in the west, the Rhone, the Rhine, the Po,
and—fated for later greatness—our Tiber.
The soil cracks everywhere, and now the light
seeps to the underworld and terrifies
its ruler and his wife; the sea contracts,
and what had been until quite recently
a sheet of water is a field of sand,
and peaks that once were covered by the waves
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are new additions to the Cyclades!
Fish seek the bottom, and no dolphins dare
to trust their curving bodies to the air;
the dying sea calves bob upon their backs,
and it is said that even Nereus,
with Doris and the Nereids, attempted
to hide themselves in underwater caves
from the blazing heat.
Three times great Neptune strove
to lift his head and torso from the waves
and three times failed, unable to endure
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the fiery air.
Kind Mother Earth, surrounded
by the sea and by the waters of the deep
and by her streams, contracting everywhere
as they took shelter in her shady womb,
though heat-oppressed, still lifted up her head
and placed a hand upon her fevered brow;
and after a tremor that shook everything
had subsided somewhat, she spoke out to Jove
in a dry, cracked voice:
“If it should please you
that I merit this, greatest of all gods,
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why keep your lightnings back? If I must die
of fire, why not let me die of yours:
knowing that you are author of my doom will make it more endurable to me.
I’m scarcely able to pronounce these words—”
(through choking smoke)
“—Just look at my singed hair,
the glowing ashes in my eyes and face!
“Do I deserve this? Is this the reward
for my unflagging fruitfulness? For bearing,
year after year, the wounds of plow and mattock?
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And for providing flocks with pasturage,
the human race with ripened grain to eat,
the gods with incense smoking on their altars?
“But even assuming I deserve destruction,
why is your brother equally deserving?
Why are those waters, which were his by lot,
so much diminished, so far now from the sky?
“If neither Earth nor Sea deserve your favor,
have pity on the heavens! Look around you!
Both poles are smoking now! If flames destroy them,
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the palaces of heaven will collapse!
“Atlas is scarcely able to support
the white-hot heavens on his bare shoulder!
Now if the sea, the lands, the heavens perish,
all will be plunged in chaos once again!
“Save from the flames whatever is still left,
take measures to preserve the universe!”
So spoke the Earth, and with no more to say,
unable any longer to endure the
heat, retreated deep within herself
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and to
ok up chambers nearer the underworld.
Before he would commit himself, however,
the father almighty made the other gods
(especially the god who gave his son
the chariot) swear that the gravest fate
hung over all, unless he should take action.
And then he sought the pinnacle of heaven,
whence he was wont to parcel out the rain clouds
widely over the earth, and whence he moved
the thunder and sent forth his lightning bolts;
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but now he had no rain clouds to distribute,
nor any rain to send down from the heavens;
and so he thundered and released a bolt
of lightning from beside his ear that drove
the hapless driver from his spinning wheels
and from his life: fires put cruel fires out.
In consternation then, his horses reared
and slipped their yoke and fled from their restraints; the chariot breaks up now: here the reins
come falling from the sky, and here the pole
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now breaks off from its axle, and the spokes
of the shattered wheels fall to another spot,
and wreckage litters a wide area.
But Phaëthon, his bright red hair ablaze,
is whirled headlong, and tracing out an arc,
seems like a comet with a tail of fire,
or like a star about to fall that doesn’t.
In Italy, far distant from his homeland,
the river Eridanus [now the Po]
receives his corpse and bathes his seething face.
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Italian naiads lay his broken body,
still smoking from that three-forked thunderbolt,
within a tomb prepared for it and carve
this epitaph in verse upon the stone:
YOUNG PHAËTHON LIES HERE, POOR LAD, WHO DREAMT
OF MASTERING HIS FATHER’S SKY-BORNE CARRIAGE;
ALTHOUGH HE SADLY DIED IN THE ATTEMPT,
GREAT WAS HIS DARING, WHICH NONE MAY DISPARAGE.
His miserable father, sick with grief,
drew his cloak up around his head in mourning;
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for one whole day then, if the tale is true,
the sun was quite put out. The conflagration
(for the world was still ablaze) provided light;
that was a time some good came out of evil.
After Clymene said what might be said
of such an awful situation, she
wandered the world, her mind quite gone with grief,
beating her breast, and seeking first to gather
his lifeless limbs, then to collect his bones,
which she at last found in a foreign tomb;
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collapsing, she threw herself upon the stone
that bore his name, and bathing it in tears,
she pressed her naked breast on the inscription.
The Heliades
Nor did her daughters, the Heliades,
hold back their empty gift of lamentation;
their cruel hands raised bruises on their breasts,
while night and day they cried to Phaëthon
(who would not hear their wretched wails of grief)
and cast themselves upon his sepulcher.
Four months went by; according to their custom
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(which their persistence had established), they
continued grieving; one day, Phaëthusa,
the eldest of the sisters, while attempting
to fling herself upon the tomb, complained
of a rigidity down in her feet;
and when a second sister, luminous
Lampetia, attempted to approach her,
she suddenly felt rooted to the earth.
Now the third sister, tearing at her hair,
grasps foliage; now this one grieves to find
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her ankles sealed in wood, that one to feel
her slender arms becoming lengthy branches;
and as they marvel at these happenings,
their private parts are wrapped in sheathes of bark,
which, from their loins, move upward to surround
their bellies, breasts and shoulders, arms and hands—
fixed to the ground, they call out to their mother.
What can she do? Where impulse carries her,
she dashes off, now this way and now that,
encouraging their kisses, while she can.
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To no avail! Now frantic, she attempts
to strip their bodies of this new veneer
and breaks the little twigs off with her hands,
releasing drops of blood, as from a wound.
“Pray spare me, mother!” comes from each of them,
the selfsame cry repeated: “Spare me, pray!
It is my body wounded in this tree!
Farewell now, mother!” The conclusive bark
immediately weaves itself upon
those last words of the daughters of the Sun.
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Their tears continue flowing, and, sun-hardened,
fall from the trees; borne onward by the Po,
they will one day adorn the brides of Rome.
[And so, in myth, mourning becomes electrum;
the sisters’ tears are, now and forever, amber.]
Cycnus
Cycnus, the son of Sthenelus, observed this marvelous event, O Phaëthon!
Although related to you through his mother,
he was more closely joined to you by passion,
and so your death was devastating to him.
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Abandoning his kingdom (for he ruled
the people and cities of Liguria)
he wept and wailed along the Po’s green banks
and in those woods so recently augmented
by the Heliades.
His voice becomes
attenuated, and white feathers grow
over the hair upon his face and body;
a lengthy neck extends far from his chest,
a membrane starts between his reddish toes,
wings hide his sides, and a blunt bill, his mouth.
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So Cycnus was turned into something new:
a bird that had no faith in Jove or heaven,
recalling all too well the thunderbolt
unjustly hurled. His habitat is now
the surface of a standing pond or lake;
detesting fire, he calls water home,
preferring flumes to flames—their opposite.
The Sun’s complaint
Phoebus, meanwhile, mourning his lost son,
ignores appearances, as is his wont
whenever he goes into an eclipse:
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hating the light of day and his own being,
he gives himself entirely to grief,
and in his anger threatens to resign:
“Enough!” he cries. “Why, ever since creation
my lot has been incessant restlessness,
work unrewarded, going on forever!
Let someone else—whoever wishes to,
be driver of the chariot of light!
“If no one else of all the gods will do it,
if none admits that he is able to,
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why not just let the Governor take charge:
at least while he is struggling with the reins
he’ll have to put aside the thunderbolt
fated to rob fathers of their children!
“Then he will know—once he has gauged the mettle
of those fire-footed horses—that my son,
who was unable to control the team,
did not deserve to die!”
The other gods
all stand around the Sun beseeching him,
as humble s
uppliants, to keep the darkness
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from covering the world; Jove goes so far
as to defend himself for hurling fire,
but adds (as royals will) threats to entreaties.
Then Phoebus gathers up his team and yokes them,
still trembling and wild-eyed with their fear,
and in his grief torments them with his whip
(torments them truly!) and reproaches them,
holding them liable for his son’s death.
Jove, Callisto, and Arcas
Now Jupiter omnipotent sets out
on an inspection tour of heaven’s walls
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after the fire, in order to make certain
that nothing is in danger of collapsing.
And once he sees that all is up to strength,
he turns toward earth, where the affairs of men,
their varied labors, come into his ken.
Arcadia, his birthplace, above all
is dearest to him; he at once restores
her springs and streams (which had not dared to flow), gives grass back to the earth, gives leaves to trees,
and bids the blackened woods grow green again.
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And as he comes and goes about his business,
he gets stuck on an Arcadian nymph,
Callisto [although Ovid doesn’t name her],
and passion burns into his deepest marrow.
She did not spend her days before the loom
nor in the artful styling of her hair;
a modest brooch was her one ornament,
and a white headband bound her otherwise
neglected tresses; so artlessly adorned,
with sometimes her swift javelin in hand,
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sometimes a bow, she was Diana’s soldier,
and no nymph pleased the goddess more than she did,
there on Mount Maenalus: but influence
cannot be counted on to last for long.
Just as the Sun had passed his highest point,
she set foot in that grove which had not known
the felling of a tree since time began;
putting aside her arrows and unstringing
her resistant bow, she fell upon the grass
and used her painted quiver for a pillow.
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When Jupiter beheld the girl, exhausted
and off her guard, he said, “That wife of mine
will never learn about this escapade!
But if she happens to discover it,
a little scolding is small price to pay!”
At once he was Diana in appearance,
and greeted her: “Dear maiden of my band,
where, on what mountain, did you hunt today?”
The virgin sprang up from her grassy couch:
“Hail, goddess far superior to Jove—
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a judgment I would stand by in his presence!”
He laughed to be preferred above himself,
and joined their lips together with a kiss
