by Ovid
“Let the bull plow and in time let him die of old age,
and let the sheep arm you against the freezing north wind,
and let the goat give herself to the hands at her udders!
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Hang up your nets, nooses, snares, and artful deceptions,
completely! Do not betray the poor bird with a limed twig,
nor drive the deer into nets with forms made of feathers,
nor hide a treacherous dinner upon a barbed hook!
Kill any that harm you, but make sure only to kill them;
don’t stain your mouths with their blood; be nourished more gently.”
Numa (2)
They say that Numa, having taken these
and other such instructions to his heart,
returned to his own nation and submitted
to the desire of the Roman people
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that he should be the ruler of their state;
successful in his marriage to a nymph,
and wisely guided by the Muses, he
instructed the Romans in the sacred rites,
and led that previously warlike folk
into the practice of the arts of peace.
Egeria and Hippolytus
In old age, when his life and governance
were ended, people of all classes mourned;
his wife, Egeria, was so distracted
by grief that she left Rome altogether,
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withdrawing to Aricia’s wooded dale,
where her loud groans and lamentations hindered
the celebration of Diana’s rites.
How often all the nymphs of grove and pool
admonished her and offered consolation!
How often did Hippolytus address her:
“Enough!” he cried. “For yours is not the only
misfortune that deserves to be lamented!
Reflect on situations like your own,
and you will find your own more bearable.
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I wish that I had nothing of that kind
to offer for your comfort, but I do:
“If you have heard about Hippolytus
at all, you know that the credulity
his father gave to the perversity
of his stepmother brought him to his death.
It will astonish you to learn that I—
though I can hardly prove it—I am he.
“In vain the daughter of Queen Pasiphaë
once tempted me to shame my father’s bed
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and then imputed her foul lusts to me
(either from fear that she would be discovered
or else from her displeasure with rejection);
and though I had done nothing to deserve it,
my father ordered me to leave the city,
placing a fatal curse upon my head.
“Banished, I headed in my chariot
for Troezen, and had made it to the shore
of the Bay of Corinth, when the sea rose up
and a huge mass of water, like a mountain,
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seemed to arch up and hover over me
till, at its highest point, it split in two,
and when those waters burst, a roaring bull
was driven forth, and rearing on hind legs,
it spewed salt water from its nose and mouth!
“But I was still too occupied with thoughts
of my mistreatment to be terrified,
as my attendants were, when suddenly
my warlike horses turned toward the waves,
their ears pricked up, they shook at what they saw,
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then dragged my chariot in headlong flight
along the rocky coast; in vain I strive
to guide them, dragging on the foam-flecked reins;
bent over backward in my hurtling car,
I test my own against their frenzied strength,
and would have won, had not my turning wheel,
striking a tree stump, shattered into pieces;
had you been there, you would have seen my limbs
entangled in the reins, my viscera
drawn from my living body and bestrewn
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about the tree to the accompaniment
of breaking bones, as trunk and limbs were severed,
and my poor body was strung out between
the tree trunk and my team, still galloping;
when I exhaled my last, nothing at all
was left of me for you to recognize,
for everything was just one single wound.
“And have you got the nerve, nymph, to compare
my sufferings with those that you’ve endured?
I had to journey to the underworld
and warm my limbs in river Phlegethon,
and would not have been brought to life again
had not Apollo’s son, Aesculapius,
revived me with his artful remedies;
when his strong herbs and simples had restored me
(against the will of Pluto), Cynthia,
lest envy be encouraged by this gift,
cast a thick cloud and wrapped it all around me;
so that I would be safe, and could be seen
without endangerment, she added years
to those I had already, and she altered
the features of my face past recognition;
long she debated whether Crete or Delos
would have me, but deciding finally
that neither of them suited, placed me here
and ordered me to put my old name by,
which might remind me too much of my horses.
‘And you,’ she said, ‘who were Hippolytus,’
will now be Virbius, the very same.’
“And in this grove I have dwelt ever since,
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one of the lesser deities, protected from
misfortune by the godhead of my mistress,
and recognized as Cynthia’s attendant.”
But another’s woes could not alleviate
the lamentation of Egeria,
who, situated at a mountain’s base,
dissolved in tears, until the goddess Phoebe,
impressed by the devotion of her sorrow,
transformed her body into a chill fountain,
and of her limbs made streams that will not die.
650
Tages; The spear of Romulus; Cipus
This strange event astonished all the nymphs
and Hippolytus was similarly stunned,
as was the plowman of Etruria
when in his field he saw the fateful clod—
on its own, moving without being touched,
and then exchanging its form for a man’s,
before it opened its unaccustomed mouth
to speak of what would happen in the future!
The locals called him Tages; he first taught
the skill of prophecy to the Etruscans;
660
no less astounding than when, once upon a time,
Romulus saw the spear shaft he had cut
upon the Palatine put forth green leaves
and stand, not with its head fixed in the ground,
but newly rooted: no weapon now: a tree
providing unanticipated shade
to those who flocked beneath it, marveling;
or as when Cipus, looking in the water,
saw horns upon his head, which he believed,
erroneously, to be an illusion,
670
for they were real, as he discovered when
he touched what he could see upon his forehead;
and then, accepting what he saw was there,
as a victor returning from a vanquished foe,
he raised his eyes and hands in prayer to heaven:
“O gods, whatever this should prove to be,
&nb
sp; this wonder, if it prove to be propitious,
may it be so for the Roman folk and nation;
but if misfortune, may it fall on me.”
Then Cipus built an altar out of turf,
680
where he burned incense to placate the gods,
and poured out wine from a libation dish,
and in the entrails of a slaughtered sheep
(still quivering) he sought to comprehend
the meaning of the horns upon his head.
As soon as Tages, the Etruscan seer,
had looked into this matter, he could see
great deeds astir, but somewhat murkily;
yet when he raised his sharp eyes to the horns
on the head of Cipus, he saluted him:
690
“Hail, King Cipus! To you and to your horns
the land and towers of Latium will bow!
Hasten to enter those wide-open gates!
The Fates would have it so, and you will be
received as king and rule securely there,
forever!”
Cipus walked back to the city,
averting his grim visage from its walls:
“O may the gods keep all that far from me!
Better, much better, that I spend my days
in endless exile from my home,” he said,
700
“than that the Capitol see me as king!”
He spoke and called together an assembly
of the people and its leaders in the senate,
but not before he covered up his horns
with peaceful laurel; standing on a mound
constructed by the soldier-citizens,
he offered prayers up to the ancient gods
according to the rites, and then he said,
“There is one here who will become your king
unless you drive him from your city now;
710
I will not tell you what the person’s name is,
but by this sign you may discover him:
he bears a pair of horns upon his forehead!
The augur indicates that if you let this man
enter Rome, you will be reduced to slaves.
He might have broken through your open gates,
had I not stood against him, even though
no one is closer to him than am I:
oh, keep him from your city, citizens,
or if he merits it, put him in chains,
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or end your fear of destined tyranny
by slaying him!”
A murmuring arose
among the folk assembled there, as when
a sharp wind whistles through the girded pine
or like the ocean’s waves, heard from afar—
but out of all their troubled murmuring
a single cry emerged, “Who can it be?”
And they examined one another’s foreheads
in search of the horns that he had spoken of.
Then Cipus spoke again and this time said,
730
“The one that you are seeking has been found,”
and as the crowd attempted to restrain him,
removed the crown of laurel from his head,
exhibiting the horns that marked his brows.
All looked down in dismay and groaned as one,
and then—who could believe this?—with reluctance,
they looked upon that fame-deserving head,
and so that it should not lack further honor,
they placed the laurel crown back on his head.
But since you could not come inside the walls,
740
the leaders, Cipus, gave you as a gift
of honor as much land as could be worked
by a team of oxen yoked up to a plow
from sunrise to sunset; those horns of yours,
transformed into a work of art, have been
inscribed in bronze upon the temple’s gates,
and there they will remain throughout the ages.
Aesculapius
O Muses, who attend upon the bards,
reveal (for you have knowledge of these things,
nor do the ages, stretching out forever,
750
betray your memories) that place from whence
the island bathed in the deep Tiber’s stream
once brought Apollo’s son by Coronis,
and worshiped him among the gods of Rome.
A dire plague once blighted Latium
and men lay wasted from the grim disease.
Exhausted by too-frequent funerals,
and seeing that their labors and the skills
of their own healers had all come to naught,
it was the aid of heaven that they sought,
760
in Delphi, at the center of the earth,
the shrine and oracle of Phoebus, where
they prayed that he would show by prophecy
his own intention to deliver them
from wretchedness and end the city’s woes.
The laurel tree, the shrine, and the quiver
held by the god at once began to tremble,
and from the tripod deep within the shrine
there came a voice that filled their hearts with fear:
O Romans what you seek here what you seek
770
you should have looked for in a closer place
and should now look for in a closer place
the task of lessening your wretchedness
is not that of Apollo but his son
go with good auspices and seek my child
Obedient to the orders of the gods,
the prudent senators soon ascertained
the city that the son of Phoebus lived in,
and sent an emissary under sail
to search for the coast of Epidaurus.
780
Soon as the curved keel scraped against the beach,
they went to the assembly of the Greeks,
begging as a gift the god whose power,
according to the prophecy of Phoebus,
would put an end to Roman funerals;
the Greeks were much divided on this issue,
with some opposed to holding back the aid,
while many favored keeping the god there,
not sending help or letting go of the godhead.
While they debated, evening came on,
790
extinguishing the latest lights of day,
and darkness cast its shadow on the world;
the health-restoring god now seemed to stand
before your couch, O Roman, as you slept,
just as he used to look in his own temple,
holding a rustic staff in his left hand,
and with his right hand stroking his long beard,
as from his gentle heart arose these words:
“Be unafraid, for I will leave my image
and come with you: now carefully observe
800
the snake that winds itself around my staff,
so you will recognize its shape on sight,
for this is what I will change myself into,
although I will appear to be much larger,
as heavenly bodies will, in transformation.
And with his voice, the god (and sleep) departed,
and with the flight of sleep came kindly night,
for Dawn had chased away the burning stars.
Unsure of what to do, the senators
assembled at the temple of the god
810
whose aid they sought and urged him with their prayers
to indicate, by supernatural signs,
where he himself desired to reside.
They had just finished when the golden god,
transformed into a snake with a high crest,
forewarned them of his presence there by hissing;
at his
arrival, the entire temple,
its statues and its altars and its doors,
its marble pavement and its gilded roof,
began to tremble; and right in the center
820
he slowly rose until he stood breast high;
his eyes, like fire flicking, swept the room
and left them shaking; but a priest (whose hair
was bound with a white ribbon) recognized
the presence of divinity and cried:
“The god is here, the god is here among us!
Silence your tongues and keep your spirits still,
you who are present! O god most beautiful,
grant that this vision be a blessing on
these people here who worship at your rites!”
830
Those who were present reverenced the god
as they were ordered to, and everyone
repeated what the priest said; and the sons
of Aeneas also carried out the rites,
performing them with fervor and devotion.
The god then nodded his assent to them,
and shook his heavy crest and hissed three times,
and then, as he descended those smooth steps,
he turned back, looking at the ancient altars
he was about to leave, and then saluted
840
the home that he was so accustomed to
and the temple he had dwelt in for so long.
The great god slithered out and down the streets
strewn with scattered blossoms, through the town,
until he had snaked his way right to the harbor,
which was protected by a curved embankment.
He halted there, and looking most benign,
seemed to dismiss his crowd of devotees
before he went aboard the Roman vessel,
which felt the heavy presence of the god
850
and was pressed down by his immortal form;
the offspring of Aeneas were delighted,
and after sacrificing on the shore
their flower-decorated ship left harbor.
A light wind drove the ship along: the god
conspicuously lay athwart the stern
and gazed down at the sea’s reflective blue
as he was borne through the Ionian Sea,
and on the sixth day came to Italy,
passing Lacinia (where Juno’s temple is)
860
and Skylaceum; Iapygia next,
and then their oars sped them between the rocks
of Amphrysia on the left, and the steep
cliffs of Cocinthia hard on the right;
Rometheum, Caulona, and Narycia
were next, and then the Sea of Sicily
and the constricted straits of Pelorus;
then the Aeolian isles and copper-rich
Temesa; Leucosa, and the warm
rose gardens of Paestum; past Capreae
870
(the promontory of the wise Minerva),
Surrentum, whose soft hills are rich in vines,
