Chapter XVII: Book THE FOURTH: Fable I. Iv.1-166 (1)

The daughters of Minyas, instead of celebrating the festival of
Bacchus, apply themselves to other pursuits during the ceremonies; and
among several narratives which they relate to pass away the time, they
divert themselves with the story of the adventures of Pyramus and
Thisbe. These lovers having made an appointment to meet without the
walls of Babylon, Thisbe arrives first; but at the sight of a lioness,
she runs to hide herself in a cave, and in her alarm, drops her veil.
Pyramus, arriving soon after, finds the veil of his mistress stained
with blood; and believing her to be dead, kills himself with his own
sword. Thisbe returns from the cave; and finding Pyramus weltering in
his blood, she plunges the same fatal weapon into her own breast.

But Alcithoë, the daughter of Minyas,[1] does not think that the rites[2] of the God ought to be received; but still, in her rashness, denies that Bacchus is the progeny of Jupiter; and she has her sisters[3] as partners in her impiety.

The priest had ordered both mistresses and maids, laying aside their employments, to have their breasts covered with skins, and to loosen the fillets of their hair, and {to put} garlands on their locks, and to take the verdant thyrsi in their hands; and had prophesied that severe would be the resentment of the Deity, {if} affronted. Both matrons and new-married women obey, and lay aside their webs and work-baskets,[4] and their tasks unfinished; and offer frankincense, and invoke both Bacchus and Bromius,[5] and Lyæus,[6] and the son of the Flames, and the Twice-Born, and the only one that had two mothers.[7] To these is added {the name of} Nyseus, and the unshorn Thyoneus,[8] and with Lenæus,[9] the planter of the genial grape, and Nyctelius,[10] and father Eleleus, and Iacchus,[11] and Evan,[12] and a great many other names, which thou, Liber, hast besides, throughout the nations of Greece. For thine is youth everlasting; thou art a boy to all time, thou art beheld {as} the most beauteous {of all} in high heaven; thou hast the features of a virgin, when thou standest without thy horns. By thee the East was conquered, as far as where swarthy India is bounded by the remote Ganges. Thou {God}, worthy of our veneration, didst smite Pentheus, and the axe-bearing Lycurgus,[13] sacrilegious {mortals}; thou didst hurl the bodies of the Etrurians into the sea. Thou controllest the neck of the lynxes yoked to thy chariot, graced with the painted reins. The Bacchanals and the Satyrs follow {thee}; the drunken old man, too, {Silenus}, who supports his reeling limbs with a staff, and sticks by no means very fast to his bending ass. And wherever thou goest, the shouts of youths, and together the voices of women, and tambourines beaten with the hands, and hollow cymbals resound, and the box-wood {pipe}, with its long bore. The Ismenian matrons ask thee to show thyself mild and propitious, and celebrate thy sacred rites as prescribed.

The daughters of Minyas alone, within doors, interrupting the festival with unseasonable labor,[14] are either carding wool, or twirling the threads with their fingers, or are plying at the web, and keeping the handmaids to their work. One of them, {as she is} drawing the thread with her smooth thumb, says, “While others are idling, and thronging to {these} fanciful rites, let us, whom Pallas, a better Deity, occupies, alleviate the useful toil of our hands with varying discourse; and let us relate by turns to our disengaged ears, for the general {amusement}, something each in our turn, that will not permit the time to seem long.” They approve of what she says, and her sisters bid her to be the first to tell her story.

She considers which of many she shall tell (for she knows many a one), and she is in doubt whether she shall tell of thee, Babylonian Dercetis,[15] whom the people of Palestine[16] believe to inhabit the pools, with thy changed form, scales covering thy limbs; or rather how her daughter, taking wings, passed her latter years in whitened turrets; or how a Naiad,[17] by charms and too potent herbs, changed the bodies of the young men into silent fishes, until she suffered the same herself. Or how the tree which bore white fruit {formerly}, now bears it of purple hue, from the contact of blood. This {story} pleases her; this, because it was no common tale, she began in manner such as this, while the wool followed the thread:--

“Pyramus and Thisbe, the one the most beauteous of youths,[18] the other preferred before {all} the damsels that the East contained, lived in adjoining houses; where Semiramis is said to have surrounded her lofty city[19] with walls of brick.[20] The nearness caused their first acquaintance, and their first advances {in love}; with time their affection increased. They would have united themselves, too, by the tie of marriage, but their fathers forbade it. A thing which they could not forbid, they were both inflamed, with minds equally captivated. There is no one acquainted with it; by nods and signs, they hold converse. And the more the fire is smothered, the more, when {so} smothered, does it burn. The party-wall, common to the two houses, was cleft by a small chink, which it had got formerly, when it was built. This defect, remarked by no one for so many ages, you lovers (what does not love perceive?) first found one, and you made it a passage for your voices, and the accents of love used to pass through it in safety, with the gentlest murmur. Oftentimes, after they had taken their stations, Thisbe on one side, {and} Pyramus on the other, and the breath of their mouths had been {mutually} caught by turns, they used to say, ‘Envious wall, why dost thou stand in the way of lovers? what great matter were it, for thee to suffer us to be joined with our entire bodies? Or if that is too much, that, at least, thou shouldst open, for the exchange of kisses. Nor are we ungrateful; we confess that we are indebted to thee, that a passage has been given for our words to our loving ears.’ Having said this much, in vain, on their respective sides, about night they said, ‘Farewell’; and gave those kisses each on their own side, which did not reach the other side.

“The following morning had removed the fires of the night, and the Sun, with its rays, had dried the grass wet with rime, {when} they met together at the wonted spot. Then, first complaining much in low murmurs, they determine, in the silent night, to try to deceive their keepers, and to steal out of doors; and when they have left the house, to quit the buildings of the city as well: but that they may not have to wander, roaming in the open fields, to meet at the tomb of Ninus,[21] and to conceal themselves beneath the shade of a tree. There was there a lofty mulberry tree, very full of snow-white fruit, quite close to a cold spring. The arrangement suits them; and the light, seeming to depart {but} slowly, is buried in the waters, and from the same waters the night arises. The clever Thisbe, turning the hinge, gets out in the dark, and deceives her {attendants}, and, having covered her face, arrives at the tomb, and sits down under the tree agreed upon; love made her bold. Lo! a lioness approaches, having her foaming jaws besmeared with the recent slaughter of oxen, about to quench her thirst with the water of the neighboring spring. The Babylonian Thisbe sees her at a distance, by the rays of the moon, and with a trembling foot she flies to a dark cave; and, while she flies, her veil falling from her back, she leaves it behind. When the savage lioness has quenched her thirst with plenteous water, as she is returning into the woods, she tears the thin covering, found by chance without Thisbe herself, with her blood-stained mouth.

“Pyramus, going out later {than Thisbe}, saw the evident footmarks of a wild beast, in the deep dust, and grew pale all over his face. But, as soon as he found her veil, as well, dyed with blood, he said: ‘One night will be the ruin of two lovers, of whom she was the most deserving of a long life. My soul is guilty; ’tis I that have destroyed thee, much to be lamented; who bade thee to come by night to places full of terror, and came not hither first. O, whatever lions are lurking beneath this rock, tear my body in pieces, and devour my accursed entrails with ruthless jaws. But it is the part of a coward to wish for death.’ He takes up the veil of Thisbe, and he takes it with himself to the shade of the tree agreed on, and, after he has bestowed tears on the well-known garment, he gives kisses {to the same}, and he says, ‘Receive, now, a draught of my blood as well!’ and then plunges the sword, with which he is girt, into his bowels; and without delay, as he is dying, he draws it out of the warm wound. As he falls on his back upon the ground, the blood spurts forth on high, not otherwise than as when a pipe is burst on the lead decaying,[22] and shoots out afar the liquid water from the hissing flaw, and cleaves the air with its jet. The fruit of the tree, by the sprinkling of the blood, are changed to a dark tint, and the root, soaked with the gore, tints the hanging mulberries with a purple hue. Behold! not yet having banished her fear, {Thisbe} returns, that she may not disappoint her lover, and seeks for the youth both with her eyes and her affection, and longs to tell him how great dangers she has escaped. And when she observes the spot, and the altered appearance of the tree, she doubts if it is the same, so uncertain does the color of the fruit make her. While she is in doubt, she sees palpitating limbs throbbing upon the bloody ground; she draws back her foot, and having her face paler than box-wood,[23] she shudders like the sea, which trembles[24] when its surface is skimmed by a gentle breeze. But, after pausing a time, she had recognized her own lover, she smote her arms, undeserving {of such usage}, and tearing her hair, and embracing the much-loved body, she filled the gashes with her tears, and mingled her {tokens of} sorrow with his blood; and imprinting kisses on his cold features, she exclaimed, ‘Pyramus! what disaster has taken thee away from me? Pyramus! answer me; ’tis thy own Thisbe, dearest, that calls thee; hear me, and raise thy prostrate features.’

“At the name of Thisbe, Pyramus raised his eyes, now heavy with death, and, after he had seen her, he closed them again. After she had perceived her own garment, and beheld, too, the ivory {sheath}[25] without its sword, she said, ‘’Tis thy own hand, and love, that has destroyed thee, ill-fated {youth}! I, too, have a hand bold {enough} for this one purpose; I have love as well; this shall give me strength for the wound. I will follow thee in thy death, and I shall be called the most unhappy cause and companion of thy fate, and thou who, alas! couldst be torn from me by death alone, shalt not be able, even by death, to be torn from me. And you, O most wretched parents of mine and his, be but prevailed upon, in this one thing, by the entreaties of us both, that you will not deny those whom their constant love {and} whom their last moments have joined, to be buried in the same tomb. But thou, O tree, which now with thy boughs dost overshadow the luckless body of {but} one, art fated soon to cover {those} of two. Retain a token of {this our} fate, and ever bear fruit black and suited for mourning, as a memorial of the blood of us two.’ {Thus} she said; and having fixed the point under the lower part of her breast, she fell upon the sword, which still was reeking with his blood.

“Her prayers, however, moved the Gods, {and} moved their parents. For the color of the fruit, when it has fully ripened, is black;[26] and what was left of them, from the funeral pile, reposed in the same urn.”

[Footnote 1: _Minyas._--Ver. 1. Alcithoë was the daughter of
Minyas, who, according to some, was the son of Orchomenus,
according to others, his father. Pausanias says that the Bœotians,
over whom he reigned, were called ‘Minyæ’ from him; but he makes
no allusion to the females who are here mentioned by Ovid.]

[Footnote 2: _Rites._--Ver. 1. ‘Orgia:’ this was the original name
of the Dionysia, or festival of Bacchus; but in time the word came
to be applied to any occasion of festivity.]

[Footnote 3: _Her sisters._--Ver. 3. The names of the sisters of
Alcithoë, according to Plutarch, were Aristippe and Leucippe. The
names of the three, according to Ælian, were Alcathoë, Leucippe,
and Aristippe, who is sometimes called Arsinoë. The latter author
says, that the truth of the case was, that they were decent women,
fond of their husbands and families, who preferred staying at
home, and attending to their domestic concerns, to running after
the new rites; on which it was said, by their enemies, that
Bacchus had punished them.]

[Footnote 4: _Work-baskets._--Ver. 10. The ‘calathus,’ which was
called by the Greeks κάλαθος, καλαθίσκος, and τάλαρος, generally
signifies the basket in which women placed their work, and
especially the materials used for spinning. They were generally
made of osiers and reeds, but sometimes of more valuable
materials, such as silver, perhaps in filagree work. ‘Calathi’
were also used for carrying fruits and flowers. Virgil (Ecl. v. l.
71) speaks of cups for holding wine, under the name of ‘Calathi.’]

[Footnote 5: _Bromius._--Ver. 11. Bacchus was called Bromius, from
βρέμω, ‘to cry out,’ or ‘shout,’ from the yells and noise made by
his worshippers, whose peculiar cries were, Εὐοῖ Βάκχε, ὦ Ἰακχε,
Ιώ Βάκχε, Εὐοῖ σαβοῖ. ‘Evoë, Bacche! O, Iacche! Io, Bacche! Evoë
sabæ!’]

[Footnote 6: _Lyæus._--Ver. 11. Bacchus was called Lyæus, from the
Greek word, λύειν, ‘to loosen,’ or ‘relax,’ because wine dispels
care.]

[Footnote 7: _That had two mothers._--Ver. 12. The word ‘bimater’
seems to have been fancied by Ovid as an appropriate epithet for
Bacchus, Jupiter having undertaken the duties of a mother for him,
in the latter months of gestation.]

[Footnote 8: _Thyoneus._--Ver. 13. Bacchus was called Thyoneus,
either from Semele, his mother, one of whose names was Thyone, or
from the Greek, θύειν, ‘to be frantic,’ from which origin the
Bacchanals also received their name of Thyades.]

[Footnote 9: _Lenæus._--Ver. 14. From the Greek word λῆνος, ‘a
wine-press.’]

[Footnote 10: _Nyctelius._--Ver. 15. From the Greek word νὺξ,
‘night,’ because his orgies were celebrated by night. Eleleus is
from the shout, or ‘huzza’ of the Greeks, which was ελελεῦ.]

[Footnote 11: _Iacchus._--Ver. 15. From the Greek ἰαχὴ, ‘clamor,’
or ‘noise.’]

[Footnote 12: _Evan._--Ver. 15. From the exclamation, Εὐοῖ, or
‘Evoë’ which the Bacchanals used in performing his orgies.]

[Footnote 13: _Lycurgus._--Ver. 22. He was a king of Thrace, who
having slighted the worship of Bacchus, was afflicted with
madness, and hewed off his own legs with a hatchet, and, according
to Apollodorus, mistaking his own son Dryas for a vine, destroyed
him with the same weapon.]

[Footnote 14: _Unseasonable labor._--Ver. 32. ‘Minerva;’ the name
of the Goddess Minerva is here used for the exercise of the art of
spinning, of which she was the patroness. The term ‘intempestiva’
is appropriately applied, as the arts of industry and frugality,
which were first invented by Minerva, but ill accorded with the
idle and vicious mode of celebrating the festival of Bacchus.]

[Footnote 15: _Dercetis._--Ver. 45. Lucian, speaking of Dercetis,
or Derceto, says, ‘I have seen in Phœnicia a statue of this
goddess, of a very singular kind. From the middle upwards, it
represents a woman, but below it terminates in a fish. The statue
of her, which is shown at Hieropolis, represents her wholly as a
woman.’ He further says, that the temple of this last city was
thought by some to have been built by Semiramis, who consecrated
it not to Juno, as is generally believed, but to her own mother,
Derceto. Atergatis was another name of this Goddess. She was said,
by an illicit amour, to have been the mother of Semiramis, and in
despair, to have thrown herself into a lake near Ascalon, on which
she was changed into a fish.]

[Footnote 16: _Palestine._--Ver. 46. Palæstina, or Philistia,
in which Ascalon was situate, was a part of Syria, lying in its
south-western extremity.]

[Footnote 17: _How a Naiad._--Ver. 49. The Naiad here mentioned is
supposed to have been a Nymph of the Island of the Sun, called
also Nosola, between Taprobana (the modern Ceylon) and the coast
of Carmania (perhaps Coromandel), who was in the habit of changing
such youths as fell into her hands into fishes. As a reward for
her cruelty, she herself was changed into a fish by the Sun.]

[Footnote 18: _Most beauteous of youths._--Ver. 55. Clarke
translates ‘juvenum pulcherrimus alter,’ ‘one of the most handsome
of all the young fellows.’]

[Footnote 19: _Her lofty city._--Ver. 57. The magnificence of
ancient Babylon has been remarked by many ancient writers, from
Herodotus downwards. Its walls are said to have been 60 miles in
compass, 87 feet in thickness, and 350 feet in height.]

[Footnote 20: _Walls of brick._--Ver. 58. The walls were built by
Semiramis of bricks dried in the sun, cemented together with
layers of bitumen.]

[Footnote 21: _The tomb of Ninus._--Ver. 88. According to Diodorus
Siculus, the sepulchre of Ninus, the first king of Babylon, was
ten stadia in length, and nine in depth; it had the appearance of
a vast citadel, and was at a considerable distance from the city
of Babylon. Commentators have expressed some surprise that Ovid
here uses the word ‘busta,’ for ‘tomb,’ as the place of meeting
for these chaste lovers, as the prostitutes of Rome used to haunt
the ‘busta,’ or ‘tombs;’ whence they obtained the epithet of
‘bustuariæ.’]

[Footnote 22: _The lead decaying._--Ver. 122. ‘Fistula’ here means
‘a water-pipe.’ Vitruvius speaks of three methods of conveying
water; by channels of masonry, earthen pipes, and leaden pipes.
The latter were smaller, and more generally used; to them
reference is here made. They were formed by bending plates of lead
into a form, not cylindrical, but the section of which was oblong,
and tapering towards the top like a pear. The description here
given, though somewhat homely, is extremely natural, and, as
frequent experience shows us, depicts the results when the
soldering of a water-pipe has become decayed.]

[Footnote 23: _Paler than box-wood._--Ver. 134. From the light
color of boxwood, the words ‘buxo pallidiora,’ ‘paler than
boxwood,’ became a proverbial expression among the Romans.]

[Footnote 24: _The sea which trembles._--Ver. 136. The ripple, or
shudder, which runs along the surface of the sea, when a breath of
wind is stirring in a calm, is very beautifully described here,
and is worthy of notice.]

[Footnote 25: _The ivory sheath._--Ver. 148. The ‘vagina,’ or
‘sheath’ of the sword, was often highly decorated; and we learn
from Homer and Virgil, as well as Ovid, that ivory was much used
for that purpose. The sheath was worn by the Greeks and Romans on
the left side of the body, so as to enable them to draw the sword
from it, by passing the right hand in front of the body, to take
hold of the hilt, with the thumb next to the blade.]

[Footnote 26: _Is black._--Ver. 165. He thus accounts for the deep
purple hue of the mulberry which, before the event mentioned here,
he says was white.]

EXPLANATION.

It is pretty clear, as we have already seen, that the establishment of
the worship of Bacchus in Greece met with great opposition, and that
his priests and devotees published several miracles and prodigies, the
more easily to influence the minds of their fellow-men. Thus, the
daughters of Minyas are said to have been changed into bats, solely
because they neglected to join in the orgies of that God; when,
probably, the fact was, that they were either secretly despatched, or
were forced to fly for their lives; and their absence was accounted
for to the ignorant and credulous, by the invention of this Fable. The
story of Dercetis, as related by Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, and
Herodotus, is, that having offended Venus, that Goddess caused her to
fall in love with a young man, by whom she had a daughter. In despair
at her misfortune, she killed her lover, and exposed her child, and
afterwards drowned herself. The Syrians, lamenting her fate, built a
temple near where she was drowned, and honored her as a Goddess. They
stated that she was turned into a fish, and they there represented her
under the figure of a woman down to the waist, and of a fish thence
downwards. They also abstained from eating fish; though they offered
them to her in sacrifice, and suspended gilded ones in her temple.
Selden, in his Treatise on the Syrian Gods, suggests that the story of
Dercetis, or Atergatis, was founded on the figure and worship of
Dagon, the God of the Philistines, who was represented under the
figure of a fish; and that the name of Atergatis is a corruption of
‘Adir Dagon,’ ‘a great fish,’ which is not at all improbable. The same
author supposes that Dercetis was originally the same Deity with
Venus, Astarte, Minerva, Juno, Isis, and the Moon; and that she was
worshipped under the name of Mylitta by the Assyrians, and as Alilac
by the Arabians. Lucian tells us, that Dercetis was reported to have
been the mother of Semiramis.

Ovid and Hyginus are the only authors that make mention of the story
of Pyramus and Thisbe, and both agree in making Babylon the scene of
it. It seems to be rather intended as a moral tale, than to have been
built upon any actual circumstance. It affords a lesson to youth not
to enter rashly into engagements: and to parents not to pursue, too
rigorously, the gratification of their own resentment, but rather to
consult the inclination of their children, when not likely to be
productive of unhappiness at a future period.

The reader cannot fail to call to mind the admirable travesty of this
story by Shakspere, in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

FABLE II. [IV.167-233]

The Sun discovers to Vulcan the intrigue between Mars and Venus, and
then, himself, falls in love with Leucothoë. Venus, in revenge for the
discovery, resolves to make his amours unfortunate.

Here she ended; and there was {but} a short time betwixt, and {then} Leuconoë began[27] to speak. Her sisters held their peace. “Love has captivated even this Sun, who rules all things by his æthereal light. I will relate the loves of the Sun. This God is supposed to have been the first to see the adultery of Venus with Mars; this God is the first to see everything. He was grieved at what was done, and showed to the husband, the son of Juno,[28] the wrong done to his bed, and the place of the intrigue. Both his senses, and the work which his skilful right hand was {then} holding, quitted him {on the instant}. Immediately, he files out some slender chains of brass, and nets, and meshes, which can escape the eye. The finest threads cannot surpass that work, nor yet the cobweb that hangs from the top of the beam. He makes it so, too, as to yield to a slight touch, and a gentle movement, and skilfully arranges it drawn around the bed. When the wife and the gallant come into the same bed, being both caught through the artifice of the husband, and chains prepared by this new contrivance, they are held fast in the {very} midst of their embraces.

“The Lemnian {God} immediately threw open the folding doors[29] of ivory, and admitted the Deities. {There} they lay disgracefully bound. And yet many a one of the Gods, not the serious ones, could fain wish thus to become disgraced. The Gods of heaven laughed, and for a long time was this the most noted story in all heaven. The Cytherean[30] goddess exacts satisfaction of the Sun, in remembrance of this betrayal; and, in her turn, disturbs him with the like passion, who had disturbed her secret amours. What now, son of Hyperion,[31] does thy beauty, thy heat, and thy radiant light avail thee? For thou, who dost burn all lands with thy flames, art {now} burnt with a new flame; and thou, who oughtst to be looking at everything, art gazing on Leucothoë, and on one maiden art fixing those eyes which thou oughtst {to be fixing} on the universe. At one time thou art rising earlier in the Eastern sky; at another thou art setting late in the waves; and in taking time to gaze {on her}, thou art lengthening the hours of mid-winter. Sometimes thou art eclipsed, and the trouble of thy mind affects thy light, and, darkened, thou fillest with terror the breasts of mortals. Nor art thou pale, because the form of the moon, nearer to the earth, stands in thy way. It is that passion which occasions this complexion. Thou lovest her alone, neither does Clymene, nor Rhodos,[32] nor the most beauteous mother[33] of the Ææan Circe engage thee, nor {yet} Clytie, who, though despised, was longing for thy embraces; at that very time thou wast suffering these grievous pangs. Leucothoë occasioned the forgetting of many a damsel; she, whom Eurynome, the most beauteous of the perfume-bearing[34] nation produced.[35] But after her daughter grew up, as much as the mother excelled all {other Nymphs}, so much did the daughter {excel} the mother. Her father, Orchamus, ruled over the Achæmenian[36] cities, and he is reckoned the seventh in descent from the ancient Belus.[37]

“The pastures of the horses of the Sun are under the Western sky; instead of grass, they have ambrosia.[38] That nourishes their limbs wearied with their daily service, and refits them for labor. And while the coursers are there eating their heavenly food, and night is taking her turn; the God enters the beloved chamber, changed into the shape of her mother Eurynome, and beholds Leucothoë among twice six handmaids, near the threshold, drawing out the smooth threads with her twirling spindle. When, therefore, as though her mother, he has given kisses to her dear daughter, he says, “There is a secret matter, {which I have to mention}; maids, withdraw, and take not from a mother the privilege of speaking in private {with her daughter}.” They obey; and the God being left in the chamber without any witness, he says, ‘I am he, who measures out the long year, who beholds all things, {and} through whom the earth sees all things; the eye, {in fact}, of the universe. Believe me, thou art pleasing to me.’ She is affrighted; and in her alarm, both her distaff and her spindle fall from her relaxed fingers. Her very fear becomes her; and, he, no longer delaying, returns to his true shape, and his wonted beauty. But the maiden, although startled at the unexpected sight, overcome by the beauty of the God,[39] {and} dismissing {all} complaints, submits to his embrace.

[Footnote 27: _Leuconoë began._--Ver. 168. It is worthy of remark,
how strongly the affecting tale of Pyramus and Thisbe contrasts
with the loose story of the loves of Mars and Venus.]

[Footnote 28: _The son of Juno._--Ver. 173. Vulcan is called
‘Junonigena,’ because, according to some, he was the son of Juno
alone. Other writers, however, say that he was the only son of
Jupiter and Juno.]

[Footnote 29: _The folding doors._--Ver. 185. The plural word
‘valvæ’ is often used to signify a door, or entrance, because
among the ancients each doorway generally contained two doors
folding together. The internal doors even of private houses were
bivalve; hence, as in the present case, we often read of the
folding doors of a bed-chamber. Each of these doors or valves was
usually wide enough to permit persons to pass each other in egress
and ingress without opening the other door as well. Sometimes each
valve was double, folding like our window-shutters.]

[Footnote 30: _Cytherean._--Ver. 190. Cythera was an island on the
southern coast of Laconia; where Venus was supposed to have
landed, after she had risen from the sea. It was dedicated to her
worship.]

[Footnote 31: _Hyperion._--Ver. 192. He was the son of Cœlus, or
Uranus, and the father of the Sun. The name of Hyperion is,
however, often given by the poets to the Sun himself.]

[Footnote 32: _Rhodos._--Ver. 204. She was a damsel of the Isle of
Rhodes, the daughter of Neptune, and, according to some, of Venus.
She was greatly beloved by Apollo, to whom she bore seven
children.]

[Footnote 33: _Beauteous mother._--Ver. 205. This was Persa, the
daughter of Oceanus, and the mother of the enchantress Circe, who
is here called ‘Ææa,’ from Ææa, a city and peninsula of Colchis.
Circe is referred to more at length in the 14th Book of the
Metamorphoses.]

[Footnote 34: _Perfume-bearing._--Ver. 209. Being born in Arabia,
the producer of all kinds of spices and perfumes, which were much
in request among the ancients, for the purposes of sacrifice.]

[Footnote 35: _Produced._--Ver. 210. Eurynome was the wife of
Orchamus, and was the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.]

[Footnote 36: _Achæmenian._--Ver. 212. Persia is called
Achæmenian, from Achæmenes, one of its former kings.]

[Footnote 37: _Ancient Belus._--Ver. 213. The order of descent is
thus reckoned from Belus; Abas, Acrisius, Danaë, Perseus, Bachæmon,
Achæmenes, and Orchamus.]

[Footnote 38: _Ambrosia._--Ver. 215. Ambrosia was said to be the
food of the Deities, and nectar their drink.]

[Footnote 39: _Beauty of the God._--Ver. 233. Clarke translates,
‘Virgo victa nitore Dei.’ ‘The young lady--charmed with the
spruceness of the God.’]

EXPLANATION.

Plutarch, in his Treatise ‘How to read the Poets,’ suggests a curious
explanation of the discovery by the Sun of the intrigue of Mars and
Venus. He says that such persons as are born under the conjunction of
the planets Mars and Venus, are naturally of an amorous temperament;
but that if the Sun does not happen then to be at a distance, their
indiscretions will be very soon discovered.

Palæphatus gives a historical solution to the story. He says that
Helius, the son of Vulcan, king of Egypt, resolving to cause his
father’s laws against adultery to be strictly observed, and having
been informed that a lady of the court had an intrigue with one of the
courtiers, entered her apartment in the night, and obtaining ocular
proof of the courtier’s guilt, caused him to be severely punished. He
also tells us that the similarity of the name gave birth to the Fable
which Homer was the first to relate, with a small variation, and which
is here copied by Ovid. Libanius, deploring the burning of the Temple
of Apollo near Antioch, complains of the ingratitude of Vulcan to that
God, who had formerly discovered to him the infidelity of his wife;
a subject upon which St. Chrysostom seems to think that the
rhetorician would have done better to have been silent.

FABLE III. [IV.234-270]

Clytie, in a fit of revenge, discovers the adventure of Leucothoë to
her father, who orders her to be buried alive. The Sun, grieved at her
misfortune, changed her into the frankincense tree; he also despises
the informer, who pines away for love of him, and is at last changed
into the sunflower.

Clytie envied her, (for the love of the Sun[40] for her had not been moderate), and, urged on by resentment at a rival, she published the intrigue, and, when spread abroad, brought it to the notice of her father. He, fierce and unrelenting, cruelly buried her alive deep in the ground, as she entreated and stretched out her hands towards the light of the Sun, and cried, “’Twas he that offered violence to me against my will;” and upon her he placed a heap of heavy sand. The son of Hyperion scattered it with his rays, and gave a passage to thee, by which thou mightst be able to put forth thy buried features.

But thou, Nymph, couldst not now raise thy head smothered with the weight of the earth; and {there} thou didst lie, a lifeless body. The governor of the winged steeds is said to have beheld nothing more afflicting than that, since the lightnings that caused the death of Phaëton. He, indeed, endeavors, if he can, to recall her cold limbs to an enlivening heat, by the strength of his rays. But, since fate opposes attempts so great, he sprinkles both her body and the place with odoriferous nectar, and having first uttered many a complaint he says, “Still shalt thou reach the skies.”[41] Immediately, the body, steeped in the heavenly nectar, dissolves, and moistens the earth with its odoriferous juices; and a shoot of frankincense having taken root by degrees through the clods, rises up and bursts the hillock with its top.

But the author of light came no more to Clytie (although love might have excused her grief, and her grief the betrayal); and he put an end to his intercourse with her. From that time she, who had made so mad a use of her passion, pined away, loathing the {other} Nymphs; and in the open air, night and day, she sat on the bare ground, with her hair dishevelled and unadorned. And for nine days, without water or food, she subsisted in her fast, merely on dew and her own tears; and she did not raise herself from the ground. She only used to look towards the face of the God as he moved along, and to turn her own features towards him. They say that her limbs became rooted fast in the ground; and a livid paleness turned part of her color into {that of} a bloodless plant. There is a redness in some part; and a flower, very like a violet,[42] conceals her face. Though she is held fast by a root, she turns towards the Sun, and {though} changed, she {still} retains her passion.

[Footnote 40: _For the love of the Sun._--Ver. 234. This remark is
added, to show that the God had not been sufficiently cautious in
his courtship of her sister to conceal it from the observation of
Clytie.]

[Footnote 41: _Reach the skies._--Ver. 251. That is to say, ‘You
shall arise from the earth as a tree bearing frankincense: the
gums of which, burnt in sacrifice to the Gods, shall reach the
heavens with their sweet odors.’ Persia and Arabia have been
celebrated by the poets, ancient and modern, for their great
fertility in frankincense and other aromatic plants.]

[Footnote 42: _Like a violet._--Ver. 268. This cannot mean the
large yellow plant which is called the sunflower. The small
aromatic flower which we call heliotrope, with its violet hue and
delightful perfume, more nearly answers the description. The
larger flower probably derived its name from the resemblance which
it bears to the sun, surrounded with rays, as depicted by the
ancient painters.]

EXPLANATION.

No ascertained historical fact can be found as the basis of the story
of Leucothoë being buried alive by her father Orchamus, or of her
rival Clytie being metamorphosed into a sunflower. The story seems to
have been most probably simply founded on principles of natural
philosophy. Leucothoë, it is not unreasonable to suppose, may have
been styled the daughter of Orchamus, king of Persia, for no other
reason but because that Prince was the first to introduce the
frankincense tree, which was called Leucothoë, into his kingdom; and
it was added that she fell in love with Apollo, because the tree
produces an aromatic drug much used in physic, of which that God was
fabled to have been the inventor. The jealousy of Clytie was, perhaps,
founded upon a fact, stated by some naturalists, that the sunflower is
a plant which kills the frankincense tree, when growing near it.
Pliny, however, who ascribes several properties to the sunflower, does
not mention this among them.

Orchamus is nowhere mentioned by the ancient writers, except in the
present instance.

FABLE IV. [IV.271-284]

Daphnis is turned into a stone. Scython is changed from a man into a
woman. Celmus is changed into adamant. Crocus and Smilax are made into
flowers. The Curetes are produced from a shower.

{Thus} she spoke; and the wondrous deed charms their ears. Some deny that it was possible to be done, some say that real Gods can do all things; but Bacchus is not one of them. When her sisters have become silent, Alcithoë is called upon; who running with her shuttle through the warp of the hanging web, says, “I keep silence upon the well-known amours of Daphnis, the shepherd of Ida,[43] whom the resentment of the Nymph, his paramour, turned into a stone. Such mighty grief inflames those who are in love. Nor do I relate how once Scython, the law of nature being altered, was of both sexes first a man, then a woman. Thee too, I pass by, O Celmus, now adamant, formerly most attached to Jupiter {when} little; and the Curetes,[44] sprung from a plenteous shower of rain; Crocus, too, changed, together with Smilax,[45] into little flowers; and I will entertain your minds with a pleasing novelty.”

[Footnote 43: _Shepherd of Ida._--Ver. 277. This may mean either
Daphnis of Crete, or of Phrygia; for in both those countries there
was a mountain named Ida.]

[Footnote 44: _The Curetes._--Ver. 282. According to Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, the Curetes were the ancient inhabitants of Crete.
We may here remark, that the story of their springing from the
earth after a shower of rain, seems to have no other foundation
than the fact of their having been of the race of the Titans; that
is, they were descended from Uranus, or Cœlus and Tita, by which
names were meant the heaven and the earth.]

[Footnote 45: _Smilax._--Ver. 283. The dictionary meanings given
for this word are--1. Withwind, a kind of herb. 2. The yew tree.
3. A kind of oak. The Nymph was probably supposed to have been
changed into the first.]

EXPLANATION.

Most probably, the story of the shepherd Daphnis being turned into a
stone, was no other than an allegorical method of expressing the
insensibility of an individual. Thalia was the name of the Nymph who
was thus affronted by Daphnis.

The story of Scython changing his sex, is perhaps based upon the fact,
that the country of Thrace, which took the name of Thracia from a
famous sorceress, was before called Scython; and that as it lost a
name of the masculine gender for one of the feminine, in after times
it became reported that Scython had changed sexes.

Pliny tells us that Celmus was a young man of remarkable wisdom and
moderation, and that the passions making no impression on him, he was
changed into adamant. Some, however, assert that he was foster-father
to Jupiter, by whom he was enclosed in an impenetrable tower, for
revealing the immortality of the Gods.

According to one account, Crocus and Smilax were a constant and happy
married couple, who for their chaste and innocent life were said to
have been changed into flowers; but another story is, that Crocus was
a youth beloved by Smilax, and that on his rejecting the Nymph’s
advances, they were both turned into flowers.

The story of the Curetes being sprung from rain, is possibly founded
on the report that they were descended from Uranus and Tita, the
Heaven and the Earth. Some suppose them to have been the original
inhabitants of the isle of Crete; and they are said to have watched
over the infancy of Jupiter, by whom they were afterwards slain, for
having concealed Epaphus from his wrath.

FABLE V. [IV.285-388]

The Naiad Salmacis falls in love with the youth Hermaphroditus, who
rejects her advances. While he is bathing, she leaps into the water,
and seizing the youth in her arms, they become one body, retaining
their different sexes.

Learn how Salmacis became infamous, {and} why it enervates, with its enfeebling waters, and softens the limbs bathed {in it}. The cause is unknown; {but} the properties of the fountain are very well known. The Naiads nursed a boy, born to Mercury of the Cytherean Goddess in the caves of Ida; whose face was such that therein both mother and father could be discerned; he likewise took his name from them. As soon as he had completed thrice five years, he forsook his native mountains, and leaving Ida, the place of his nursing, he loved to wander over unknown spots, {and} to see unknown rivers, his curiosity lessening the fatigue. He went, too, to the Lycian[46] cities, and the Carians, that border upon Lycia. Here he sees a pool of water, clear to the {very} ground at the bottom; here there are no fenny reeds, no barren sedge, no rushes with their sharp points. The water is translucent; but the edges of the pool are enclosed with green turf, and with grass ever verdant. A Nymph dwells {there}; but one neither skilled in hunting, nor accustomed to bend the bow, nor to contend in speed; the only one, too, of {all} the Naiads not known to the swift Diana. The report is, that her sisters often said to her, “Salmacis, do take either the javelin, or the painted quiver, and unite thy leisure with the toils of the chase.” She takes neither the javelin, nor the painted quiver, nor does she unite her leisure with the toils of the chase. But sometimes she is bathing her beauteous limbs in her own spring; {and} often is she straitening her hair with a comb of Citorian boxwood,[47] and consulting the waters, into which she looks, what is befitting her. At other times, covering her body with a transparent garment, she reposes either on the soft leaves or on the soft grass. Ofttimes is she gathering flowers. And then, too, by chance was she gathering them when she beheld the youth, and wished to possess him, {thus} seen.

But though she hastened to approach {the youth}, still she did not approach him before she had put herself in order, and before she had surveyed her garments, and put on her {best} looks, and deserved to be thought beautiful. Then thus did she begin to speak: “O youth, most worthy to be thought to be a God! if thou art a God, thou mayst {well} be Cupid; but, if thou art a mortal, happy are they who begot thee, and blessed is thy brother, and fortunate indeed thy sister, if thou hast one, and the nurse {as well} who gave thee the breast. But far, far more fortunate than all these {is she}; if thou hast any wife, if thou shouldst vouchsafe any one {the honor of} marriage. And if any one is thy {wife, then} let my pleasure be stolen; but, if thou hast none, let me be {thy wife}, and let us unite in one tie.” After these things {said}, the Naiad is silent; a blush tinges the face of the youth: he knows not what love is, but even to blush becomes him. Such is the color of apples, hanging on a tree exposed to the sun, or of painted ivory, or of the moon blushing beneath her brightness when the aiding {cymbals}[48] {of} brass are resounding in vain. Upon the Nymph desiring, without ceasing, such kisses at least as he might give to his sister, and now laying her hands upon his neck, white as ivory, he says, “Wilt thou desist, or am I to fly, and to leave this place, together with thee?”

Salmacis is affrighted, and says, “I freely give up this spot to thee, stranger,” and, with a retiring step, she pretends to go away. But then looking back, and hid in a covert of shrubs, she lies concealed, and puts her bended knees down to the ground. But he, just like a boy, and as though unobserved on the retired sward, goes here and there, and in the sportive waves dips the soles of his feet, and {then} his feet as far as his ankles. Nor is there any delay; being charmed with the temperature of the pleasant waters, he throws off his soft garments from his tender body. Then, indeed, Salmacis is astonished, and burns with desire for his naked beauty. The eyes, too, of the Nymph are on fire, no otherwise than as when the Sun,[49] most brilliant with his clear orb, is reflected from the opposite image of a mirror. With difficulty does she endure delay; hardly does she now defer her joy. Now she longs to embrace him; and now, distracted, she can hardly contain herself. He, clapping his body with his hollow palms, swiftly leaps into the stream, and throwing out his arms alternately, shines in the limpid water, as if any one were to cover statues of ivory, or white lilies, with clear glass.

“I have gained my point,” says the Naiad; “see, he is mine!” and, all her garments thrown aside, she plunges in the midst of the waters, and seizes him resisting her, and snatches reluctant kisses, and thrusts down her hands, and touches his breast against his will, and clings about the youth, now one way, and now another. Finally, as he is struggling against her, and desiring to escape, she entwines herself about him, like a serpent which the royal bird takes up and is bearing aloft; and as it hangs, it holds fast his head and feet, and enfolds his spreading wings with its tail. Or, as the ivy is wont to wind itself along the tall trunks {of trees}; and as the polypus[50] holds fast its enemy, caught beneath the waves, by letting down his suckers on all sides; {so} does the descendant of Atlas[51] {still} persist, and deny the Nymph the hoped-for joy. She presses him hard; and clinging to him with every limb, as she holds fast, she says, “Struggle as thou mayst, perverse one, still thou shalt not escape. So ordain it, ye Gods, and let no time separate him from me, nor me from him.” Her prayers find propitious Deities, for the mingled bodies of the two are united,[52] and one human shape is put upon them; just as if any one should see branches beneath a common bark join in growing, and spring up together. So, when their bodies meet together in the firm embrace, they are no more two, and their form is twofold, so that they can neither be styled woman nor boy; they seem {to be} neither and both.

Therefore, when Hermaphroditus sees that the limpid waters, into which he had descended as a man, have made him but half a male, and that his limbs are softened in them, holding up his hands, he says, but now no longer with the voice of a male, “O, both father and mother, grant this favor to your son, who has the name of you both, that whoever enters these streams a man, may go out thence {but} half a man, and that he may suddenly become effeminate in the waters when touched.” Both parents, moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint the fountain with drugs of ambiguous quality.

[Footnote 46: _Lycian._--Ver. 296. Lycia was a province of Asia
Minor, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Caria was another
province, adjoining to Lycia.]

[Footnote 47: _Citorian boxwood._--Ver. 311. Citorus, or Cythorus,
was a mountain of Paphlagonia, famous for the excellence of the
wood of the box trees that grow there. The Greeks and Romans made
their combs of it. The Egyptians used them made of ivory and wood,
and toothed on one side only; those of the Greeks had teeth on
both sides. Great care was usually taken of the hair; to go with
it uncombed was a sign of affliction.]

[Footnote 48: _The aiding cymbals._--Ver. 333. The witches and
magicians, in ancient times, and especially those of Thessaly,
professed to be able, with their charms and incantations, to bring
the moon down from heaven. The truth of these assertions being
commonly believed, at the period of an eclipse it was supposed by
the multitude that the moon was being subjected to the spells of
these magicians, and that she was struggling (laborabat) against
them, on which the sound of drums, trumpets, and cymbals was
resorted to, to distract the attention of the moon, and to drown
the charms repeated by the enchanters, for which reason, the
instruments employed for the purpose were styled ‘auxiliares.’]

[Footnote 49: _As when the Sun._--Ver. 349. Bailey gives this
explanation of the passage,-- ‘The eyes of the Nymph seemed to
sparkle and shine, just as the rays of the sun in a clear sky when
a looking-glass is placed against them, for then they seem most
splendid, and contract the fire.’ From the mention of the eyes of
the Nymph burning ‘flagrant,’ we might be almost justified in
concluding that ‘speculum’ means here not a mirror, but a
burning-glass. The ‘specula,’ or looking-glasses, of the ancients
were usually made of metal, either a composition of tin and
copper, or silver; but in later times, alloy was mixed with the
silver. Pliny mentions the obsidian stone, or, as it is now
called, the Icelandic agate, as being used for this purpose. Nero
is said to have used emeralds for mirrors. Pliny the Elder says
that mirrors were made in the glass-houses of Sidon, which
consisted of glass plates, with leaves of metal at the back; they
were probably of an inferior character. Those of copper and tin
were made chiefly at Brundisium. The white metal formed from this
mixture soon becoming dim, a sponge with powdered pumice stone was
usually fastened to the mirrors made of that composition. They
were generally small, of a round or oval shape, and having a
handle; and female slaves usually held them, while their
mistresses were performing the duties of the toilet. Sometimes
they were fastened to the walls, and they were occasionally of the
length of a person’s body. Venus was supposed often to use the
mirror; but Minerva repudiated the use of it.]

[Footnote 50: _Polypus._--Ver. 366. This is a fish which entangles
its prey, mostly consisting of shell fish, in its great number of
feet or feelers. Ovid here calls them ‘flagella;’ but in the
Halieuticon he styles them ‘brachia’ and ‘crines.’ Pliny the Elder
calls them ‘crines’ and ‘cirri.’]

[Footnote 51: _Descendant of Atlas._--Ver. 368. Hermaphroditus was
the great-grandson of Atlas; as the latter was the father of Maia,
the mother of Mercury, who begot Hermaphroditus.]

[Footnote 52: _The two are united._--Ver. 374. Clarke translates,
‘nam mixta duorum corpora junguntur,’ ‘for the bodies of both,
being jumbled together, are united.’]

EXPLANATION.

The only probable solution of this story seems to have been the fact
that there was in Caria, near the town of Halicarnassus, as we read in
Vitruvius, a fountain which was instrumental in civilizing certain
barbarians who had been driven from that neighborhood by the Argive
colony established there. These men being obliged to repair to the
fountain for water, and meeting the Greek colonists there, their
intercourse not only polished them, but in course of time corrupted
them, by the introduction of the luxurious manners of Greece. Hence
the fountain had the reputation of changing men into women.

Possibly the water of that fountain, by some peculiar chemical
quality, made those who drank of it become soft and effeminate, as
waters are to be occasionally found with extraordinary qualities.
Lylius Gyraldus suggests, that several disgraceful adventures happened
near this fountain (which was enclosed by walls), which in time gave
it a bad name.

FABLE VI. [IV.389-415]

Bacchus, to punish the daughters of Minyas for their contempt of his
worship, changes them into bats, and their work into ivy and vine
leaves.

There was {now} an end of their stories; and still do the daughters of Minyas go on with their work, and despise the God, and desecrate his festival; when, on a sudden, tambourines unseen resound with their jarring noise; the pipe, too, with the crooked horn, and the tinkling brass, re-echo; myrrh and saffron shed their fragrant odors; and, a thing past all belief, their webs begin to grow green, and the cloth hanging {in the loom} to put forth foliage like ivy. Part changes into vines, and what were threads before, are {now} turned into vine shoots. Vine branches spring from the warp, and the purple lends its splendor to the tinted grapes.