Metamorphoses

by Ovid

  take as your own the spirit of the Serpent,

  one who slew many; he died in the defense

  of his own lair, but you for glory’s sake;

  he slew heroes; you must drive off sissies

  to keep your nation’s honor bright.

  “If fate

  denies long life to Thebes, I’d rather see

  her walls fall to men and the engines of war,

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  in tumult of iron and fire! Our wretchedness

  would be no crime then, we could mourn our lot openly, unshamed by our tears.

  “But Thebes has been captured by a sissyboy, untutored in the arts of war, unaided

  by spears or cavalry: the city taken

  by slicked and scented hair, by tender garlands,

  by robes embroidered with rich gold and purple!

  “Out of my way! I’ll force him to admit

  the truth about his lofty parentage

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  and concocted rites! Didn’t Acrisius

  show what he was made of when he banned

  this empty deity and closed the gates

  of Argos to him and his crowd? Will Pentheus

  and all of Thebes take fright at his approach?

  Go quickly, slaves, bring me their leader back

  in chains: do as I bid without delay!”

  His grandfather and Athamas rebuke him,

  and all the counselors that press around,

  vainly attempting to contain his anger;

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  their warnings, ineffectual, enrage him,

  and his wrath increases as they urge restraint.

  So I have sometime seen a stream in torrent

  make no more than a murmur as it flowed on,

  unobstructed; but where it met resistance

  from logs and rocks, it boiled and foamed, turning

  its waters white with an opposing rage.

  But look: his slaves are back, all smeared with blood,

  and when he asks for Bacchus, they reply

  that even though no Bacchus could be found,

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  they nonetheless have captured his companion,

  a Bacchic priest, hauled up before the king

  with his arms tightly bound behind his back.

  Almost unable to restrain himself,

  Pentheus casts a dreadful eye on him:

  “You who are about to die, and by your death

  serve as a warning to all others, speak:

  tell us your name, your ancestry, your nation, and why you devote yourself to these new rites.”

  He spoke up fearlessly: “My name’s Acoetes,

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  my land’s Maeonia; my people, humble;

  my father didn’t leave me a young bull

  to help the cultivation of the fields

  he didn’t leave me any of besides;

  no herds of sheep, nor any other beasts.

  “He was, in fact, a pauper, baiting hooks

  and casting out to where the fish were leaping;

  that skill was all his wealth and property,

  and when he passed it on to me, he said,

  ‘Accept the only riches that I have,

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  my sole successor, heir of my enterprise.’

  “And so it was that my inheritance

  consisted totally of liquid assets:

  dying, he left me nothing but the water.

  “Then, so as not to have to spend my life

  forever stuck on one rock and the same,

  I added to my repertoire the arts

  of navigation: I learned how to steer

  and set a course for ships by the positions

  of the Goat, the Pleiades, the Hyades, the Bear;

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  I studied the directions of the winds

  and learned which ports make the safest harbors.

  “Happened one day that as we made for Delos,

  we were becalmed and lay to, off the coast

  of Chios, until with our practiced oars,

  we brought the ship to shore, leapt to wet sand,

  and beached her there. And there we spent the night.

  “At dawn, I rose and sent the men for water

  from a nearby spring I showed them where to find,

  while I went up a hill to read the winds,

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  and when I finished, summoned them aboard.

  ‘All present and accounted for,’ answered Opheltes,

  the first of my crew members to return

  with booty (as he thought) found in a field:

  a little boy formed like a little girl.

  “The child seemed to totter, stumbling along as though dulled by sleep. I noted carefully

  the refinement of his bearing, the look of him—

  nothing I saw there made me think him mortal.

  Sensed it at once, and told my crew,

  “‘What god

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  impersonates that child I do not know,

  but there’s a god in him, I’m sure of that!

  Whoever you are, oh, show us grace and favor,

  aid our undertakings, and forgive

  these men for their offense.’

  “‘Don’t pray for us,’

  said Dictys, who would scramble like a monkey

  into the rigging and right back down again.

  Libys concurred with him, as did the lookout,

  blond Melanthus; Alcimedon joined in

  and Epopeus, who timed the rowers’ strokes,

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  and all the others went along with them,

  blinded alike by greediness for plunder.

  “‘I won’t allow this ship to be defiled

  by profaning acts,’ I said. ‘My own authority

  must have the greater weight and precedence.’

  I held them back from boarding, but Lycabas,

  the most abandoned, most headstrong of that crew,

  exiled from Tuscany for manslaughter,

  flew at my throat, enraged, in mortal combat;

  choked me until I very nearly fainted,

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  and would have sent me flying into the water

  had I not grabbed a rope and clung to it.

  “The filthy rabble all approved. At last,

  Bacchus (for it was he), as though awakened

  by our racket, asked, half-drunkenly,

  ‘What’s going on here, sailors? Why this fuss?

  How did I get here? What will you do with me?’

  “‘Don’t you fret none,’ said Proreus. ‘Just say

  which port you want and we’ll deliver you

  straight to whatever land your heart is set on.’

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  “‘Naxos!’ cried Liber: ‘Change your heading to starboard!

  That is my home, and there you will be welcomed!’

  “Those liars swore by the sea, by all the gods,

  it would be so, and ordered me to sail.

  Naxos lay to starboard; starboard was my heading,

  but men kept coming up to me and muttering,

  ‘What are you doing, madman?’ ‘What’s gotten into you,

  Acoetes?’ ‘Tack to port and hold steady!’

  Some made their meaning clear with a nod or wink,

  while others whispered openly. I balked:

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  ‘Have someone else take over then,’ I said,

  letting them know I’d have no part in this.

  “They all began to murmur and rebuke me,

  and from their midst Aethelion emerged:

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘Sure—as if our safety

  depends on one man—you!’ He took the helm

  and set sail to port, away from Naxos.

  “The god began to toy with them, pretending

  he’d only just now seen through their deceit,

  and gazing out at the sea from the curved prow

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  in feigned tears, he cried, ‘This is not the shore

  you promised, sailors, nor the land I sought:

  What have I done to you? What glory is gained,

  if a boy is tricked by men? Or one by many?’

  “I had long been weeping. My indecent crew

  laughed at my tears and rowed at double speed.

  Now, by the presence of the god himself

  (a god more truly present than all others)

  I swear that what I tell you next is truth,

  though past belief: the ship stood still in the sea—

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  as though it had been lifted up in dry dock!

  “The men, although astounded, persevere,

  redoubling their strokes and letting sail out,

  hoping to break loose one way or another.

  But now the oars are tangled up in ivy,

  and twining strands of it coil round their bodies,

  ascend the mast and decorate the sails

  with ivy berries in enormous clusters.

  “And now the god reveals himself at last,

  his brow festooned with leaves and grapes in bunches,

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  shaking a spear with vine leaves wrapped around it!

  About him tigers and the bodiless

  forms of lynxes and fierce leopards lie!

  “Insanity or terror drives my crew,

  and they leap overboard: Medon’s whole body

  begins to darken and his spine is molded

  in a dramatic curve:

  “‘What sort of specimen

  is it you’re turning into?’ asks Lycabas,

  but even as he speaks his jaws gape wide,

  his nose protrudes, his skin gets rough and scaly.

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  And while he leans against unmoving oars,

  Libys becomes aware his hands are shrinking

  until they aren’t even hands—but fins.

  “Another only learns he’s lost his arms

  when he attempts to wrap them round a rope:

  limbless, he does a back-flip into the sea,

  to demonstrate the tail that he now sports,

  curved like the crescent horns of a new moon!

  “Now they leap up and splash back, frolicking

  in the water all around us, everywhere!

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  They carry on like dancers, leaping wildly,

  sucking in water and spraying it into the air!

  “Out of the twenty men that vessel carried,

  I alone was left: trembling, cold with terror,

  scarcely myself, until the god encouraged me:

  ‘Dismiss your fears,’ he said. ‘Set sail for Naxos!’

  And since the time of my arrival there,

  I’ve been devoted to the god and to his rites.”

  “We’ve listened patiently, too patiently,

  to this long-winded drivel, meant to dissipate

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  our anger by delaying punishment,”

  said Pentheus. “Off with him quickly, boys,

  go break his bones and rack him with dread torments

  and plunge him lifeless into Stygian gloom!”

  At once Acoetes was dragged out and chained

  in a thick-walled cell. While they prepared

  the instruments of torture and hot irons,

  the doors flew open, folks said, on their own,

  and just like that, the chains fell from his shoulders!

  But Pentheus kept up his opposition.

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  No longer sending others, he himself

  went to Cithaeron, the appointed site

  for the performance of the mysteries,

  and heard the songs and loud cries of Bacchantes;

  and as a warhorse, eager for some action,

  snorts and whinnies when the brazen trumpet sounds

  the charge, and his old love of battle surges,

  so Pentheus was roused by their wild cries,

  his wrath rekindled by the savage clamor.

  Halfway up the mountain was a clearing

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  surrounded by woods, but wholly visible.

  And here, as he observed the mysteries

  with his profaning eyes, the very first

  to sight him and pursue him in a frenzy,

  the first to wound him, with the wand she hurled,

  was his own mother: “Sisters,” she cried, “come here:

  a great boar has blundered into our field,

  a boar that I must slay!”

  In a seething mass

  they rush out after him from every side,

  driving him on; and he, now terrified,

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  the autocratic no longer, speaking mildly,

  admits to them the error of his ways.

  Wounded, he cries out, “Help, Aunt Autonoe,

  yield to the spirit of your son, Actaeon!”

  But who is this Actaeon he has mentioned?

  How would she know? She tears off his right arm,

  while Ino in rapture savages the left.

  He has no arms to stretch out to his mother,

  unlucky man, but cries out, “Mother, look!”

  and shows her his torso with its missing limbs.

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  Tossing her hair in frenzy and exulting

  at the grim sight, Agave tears her son’s

  head from his trunk and fiercely gripping it

  in a bloody fist maniacally cries,

  “Comrades! The deed, the victory are ours!”

  Swift as the wind that tears the last few leaves

  clinging to trees touched by autumnal frost,

  those impious hands tore him all asunder;

  by that example warned, Thebans observe

  the new rite, bringing incense to its altars.

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  BOOK IV

  SPINNING YARNS AND WEAVING TALES

  The daughters of Minyas Pyramus and Thisbe Mars and Venus The Sun and Leucothoë The fountain of Salmacis The daughters of Minyas transformed Juno in Hades; Ino and Athamas Cadmus and Harmonia Perseus and Atlas Perseus and Andromeda Perseus and Medusa

  The daughters of Minyas

  But not Alcithoë: Minyas’ daughter considers

  the rites of Bacchus unacceptable,

  and goes so far as to deny that Jove

  fathered the new god, an impiety

  her sisters also hold.

  A priest commands

  the people celebrate a festival:

  all servant girls to be excused from work;

  they and their mistresses to dress in hides,

  unbind their hair, wreathe their heads in garlands,

  and lift the leafy thyrsus in procession;

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  failure to comply with these instructions,

  he prophecies, will move the slighted god

  to cruel anger.

  Old wives and young comply:

  the piles of weaving, baskets full of wool,

  all the unfinished business of the day

  is thrust aside; incense is burned, and Bacchus

  summoned by his many names and titles:

  “Great Thunderer! Sweet Bringer of Release!”

  “Child whose father was his second mother!”

  “Child torn from woman, and reborn of Jove!”

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  “Unshorn Son of Semele Translated!”

  “Lenaeus, Planter of the Genial Grape!”

  “Nocturnal Orgiast!”

  “Father of Cries!”

  “Eleleus!”

  “Iacchus!

  “Euhan!”

  “And by whatever other names unmentioned

  here in our litany belong to you,

  Liber, among the multitudes of Greece:

  “O Youth undimmed, Eternal Boy,

  Fairest in the heavens;

  Without your horns, your countenance

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  Is lovely as a maiden’s;

  “Now all the Orient admits

  The godhead that is yours,

  Even as far as India,

  Where the dark Ganges pours;

  “Worshipful god, King Pentheus

  Died of your great wrath,

  And Lycurgus, who swung his axe;

  Blasphemers were they both.

  “You threw the changed Tyrrhenian

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  Sailors in the ocean,

  But you reward your devotees

  Who offer their devotion;

  “Lynxes in harness draw your car,

  Bacchantes and Satyrs follow;

  The boxwood flutes begin to wail,

  Their music fills the hollow;

  “Your revelers collapse in laughter,

  As swaying on his mule,

  Or staggering drunkenly after,

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  Silenus plays the fool!

  “Intoxicating clamor trails

  You upon your rambles:

  The ululations of your horde,

  Their tambourines and cymbals!”

  “Be reconciled, be gentle,” cry the Theban

  women as they perform the rites demanded;

  only the daughters of Minyas keep within,

  spoiling the new god’s feast with their untimely

  spinning and weaving, the diurnal tasks

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  they and their servants are kept busy with.

  One sister, lightly drawing thread, observes,

  “Though other women cease their work and has ten to his concocted rites, a superior

  divinity has kept us in our places:

  Pallas Athena! No reason why we shouldn’t

  lighten the useful labor of these hands

  by taking our turns at telling stories:

  such give and take will pass the time more quickly,

  and be a kindness to those listening.”

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  Her joyful sisters bid her to begin,

  but which of the many stories that she knows

  should she relate? Long she pondered, doubtful:

  your story, Babylonian Dercetis?

  A woman who, as Syria supposes,

  was changed into a scaly thing that swims

  now in a little pool? Or how her daughter,

  transformed into a dove of purest white,

  spent her last years perched on lofty towers?

  Or how, by potent herbs and incantations,

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  a nymph changed little boys to fish, until

  she underwent the very same conversion?

  Or how the mulberry, which once bore white,

  bears dark fruit now, since it’s been stained with blood?

  That one will please them with its novelty!

  And as she weaves, begins to spin her yarn: