Chapter XVIII: Book THE FOURTH: Fable I. Iv.1-166 (2)

And now the day was past, and the time came on, which you could neither call darkness nor light, but yet the {very} commencement of the dubious night along with the light. The house seemed suddenly to shake, and unctuous torches to burn, and the building to shine with glowing fires, and the fictitious phantoms of savage wild beasts to howl. Presently, the sisters are hiding themselves throughout the smoking house, and in different places are avoiding the fires and the light. While they are seeking a hiding-place, a membrane is stretched over their small limbs, and covers their arms with light wings; nor does the darkness suffer them to know by what means they have lost their former shape. No feathers bear them up; yet they support themselves on pellucid wings; and, endeavoring to speak, they utter a voice very diminutive {even} in proportion to their bodies, and express their low complaints with a squeaking sound. They frequent houses, not woods; and, abhorring the light, they fly {abroad} by night. And from the late evening do they derive their name.[53]

[Footnote 53: _Derive their name._--Ver. 415. In Greek they
are called νυκτερίδες, from νυξ, ‘night;’ and in Latin,
‘vespertiliones,’ from ‘vesper,’ ‘evening,’ on account of their
habits.]

FABLE VII. [IV.416-562]

Tisiphone, being sent by Juno to the Palace of Athamas, causes him to
become mad; on which he dashes his son Learchus to pieces against a
wall. He then pursues his wife Ino, who throws herself headlong from
the top of a rock into the sea, with her other son Melicerta in her
arms: when Neptune, at the intercession of Venus, changes them into
Sea Deities. The attendants of Ino, who have followed her in her
flight, are changed, some into stone, and others into birds, as they
are about to throw themselves into the sea after their mistress.

But then the Divine power of Bacchus is famed throughout all Thebes; and his aunt is everywhere telling of the great might of the new Divinity; she alone,[54] out of so many sisters, is free from sorrow, except that which her sisters have occasioned. Juno beholds her, having her soul elevated with her {children}, and her alliance with Athamas, and the God her foster-child. She cannot brook this, and says to herself, “Was the child of a concubine able to transform the Mæonian sailors, and to overwhelm them in the sea, and to give the entrails of the son to be torn to pieces by his mother, and to cover the three daughters of Minyas with newly formed wings? Shall Juno be able to do nothing but lament these griefs unrevenged? And is that sufficient for me? Is this my only power? He himself instructs me what to do. It is right to be taught even by an enemy. And what madness can do, he shows enough, and more than enough, by the slaughter of Pentheus. Why should not Ino, {too}, be goaded by madness, and submit to an example kindred to those of her sisters?”

There is a shelving path, shaded with dismal yew, which leads through profound silence to the infernal abodes. {Here} languid Styx exhales vapors; and the new-made ghosts descend this way, and phantoms when they have enjoyed[55] funeral rites. Horror and winter possess these dreary regions far and wide, and the ghosts newly arrived know not where the way is that leads to the Stygian city, {or} where is the dismal palace of the black Pluto. The wide city has a thousand passages, and gates open on every side. And as the sea {receives} the rivers for the whole earth, so does that spot[56] receive all the souls; nor is it {too} little for any {amount of} people, nor does it perceive the crowd to increase. The shades wander about, bloodless, without body and bones; and some throng the place of judgment; some the abode of the infernal prince. Some pursue various callings, in imitation of their former life; their own punishment confines others.

Juno, the daughter of Saturn, leaving her celestial habitation, submits to go thither, so much does she give way to hatred and to anger. Soon as she has entered there, and the threshold groans, pressed by her sacred body, Cerberus raises his threefold mouth, and utters triple barkings at the same moment. She summons the Sisters,[57] begotten of Night, terrible and implacable Goddesses. They are sitting before the doors of the prison shut close with adamant, and are combing black vipers from their hair. Soon as they recognize her amid the shades of darkness, {these} Deities arise. This place is called “the accursed.” Tityus[58] is giving his entrails to be mangled, and is stretched over nine acres. By thee, Tantalus,[59] no waters are reached, and the tree which overhangs thee, starts away. Sisyphus,[60] thou art either catching or thou art pushing on the stone destined to fall again. Ixion[61] is whirled round, and both follows and flies from himself. The granddaughters, too, of Belus, who dared to plot the destruction of their cousins, are everlastingly taking up the water which they lose. After the daughter of Saturn has beheld all these with a stern look, and Ixion before all; again, after him, looking upon Sisyphus, she says,

“Why does he alone, of {all} the brothers, suffer eternal punishment? and why does a rich palace contain the proud Athamas, who, with his wife, has ever despised me?” And {then} she explains the cause of her hatred and of her coming, and what it is she desires. What she desires is, that the palace of Cadmus shall not stand, and that the Sister {Furies} shall involve Athamas in crime. She mingles together promises, commands, and entreaties, and solicits the Goddesses. When Juno has thus spoken, Tisiphone, with her locks dishevelled as they are, shakes them, and throws back from her face the snakes crawling over it; and thus she says: “There is no need of a long preamble; whatever thou commandest, consider it as done: leave these hateful realms, and betake thyself to the air of a better heaven.”

Juno returns, overjoyed; and, preparing to enter heaven, Iris,[62] the daughter of Thaumas, purifies her by sprinkling water. Nor is there any delay; the persecuting Tisiphone[63] takes a torch reeking with gore, and puts on a cloak red with fluid blood, and is girt with twisted snakes, and {then} goes forth from her abode. Mourning attends her as she goes, and Fright, and Terror, and Madness with quivering features. She {now} reaches the threshold; the Æolian door-posts are said to have shaken, and paleness tints the maple door; the Sun, too, flies from the place. His wife is terrified at these prodigies; Athamas, {too}, is alarmed, and they are {both} preparing to leave the house. The baneful Erinnys stands in the way, and blocks up the passage; and extending her arms twisted round with folds of vipers, she shakes her locks; the snakes {thus} moved, emit a sound. Some lying about her shoulders, some gliding around her temples, send forth hissings and vomit forth corruption, and dart forth their tongues. Then she tears away two snakes from the middle of her hair, which, with pestilential hand, she throws against them. But these creep along the breasts of Ino and Athamas, and inspire them with direful intent. Nor do they inflict any wounds upon their limbs; it is the mind that feels the direful stroke. She had brought, too, with her a monstrous composition of liquid poison, the foam of the mouth of Cerberus, and the venom of Echidna;[64] and purposeless aberrations, and the forgetfulness of a darkened understanding, and crime, and tears, and rage, and the love of murder. All these were blended together; and, mingled with fresh blood she had boiled them in a hollow vessel of brass, stirred about with {a stalk of} green hemlock. And while they are trembling, she throws the maddening poison into the breasts of them both, and moves their inmost vitals. Then repeatedly waving her torch in the same circle, she swiftly follows up the flames {thus} excited with {fresh} flames. Thus triumphant, and having executed her commands, she returns to the empty realms of the great Pluto; and she ungirds the snakes which she had put on. Immediately the son of Æolus, filled with rage, cries out, in the midst of his palace, “Ho! companions, spread your nets in this wood; for here a lioness was just now beheld by me with two young ones.” And, in his madness, he follows the footsteps of his wife, as though of a wild beast; and he snatches Learchus, smiling and stretching forth his little arms from the bosom of his mother, and three or four times he whirls him round in the air like a sling, and, frenzied, he dashes in pieces[65] the bones of the infant against the hard stones. Then, at last, the mother being roused (whether it was grief that caused it, or whether the power of the poison spread {over her}), yells aloud, and runs away distracted, with dishevelled hair; and carrying thee, Melicerta, a little {child}, in her bare arms, she cries aloud “Evoë, Bacche.” At the name of Bacchus, Juno smiles, and says, “May thy foster-child[66] do thee this service.”

There is a rock[67] that hangs over the sea; the lowest part is worn hollow by the waves, and defends the waters covered {thereby} from the rain. The summit is rugged, and stretches out its brow over the open sea. This Ino climbs (madness gives her strength), and, restrained by no fear, she casts herself and her burden[68] into the deep; the water, struck {by her fall}, is white with foam. But Venus, pitying the misfortunes of her guiltless granddaughter,[69] in soothing words thus addresses her uncle: “O Neptune, thou God of the waters, to whom fell a power next after the {empire of} heaven, great things indeed do I request; but do thou take compassion on my kindred, whom thou seest being tossed upon the boundless Ionian sea;[70] and add them to thy Deities. I have {surely} some interest with the sea, if, indeed, I once was foam formed in the hollowed deep, and my Grecian name is derived[71] from that.” Neptune yields to her request; and takes away from them {all} that is mortal, and gives them a venerable majesty; and alters both their name and their shape, and calls Palæmon a Divinity,[72] together with his mother Leucothoë.

Her Sidonian attendants,[73] so far as they could, tracing the prints of their feet, saw the last of them on the edge of the rock; and thinking that there was no doubt of their death, they lamented the house of Cadmus, with their hands tearing their hair and their garments; and they threw the odium on the Goddess, as being unjust and too severe against the concubine. Juno could not endure their reproaches, and said, “I will make you yourselves tremendous memorials of my displeasure.” Confirmation followed her words. For the one who had been especially attached, said, “I will follow the queen into the sea;” and about to give the leap, she could not be moved any way, and adhering to the rock, {there} she stuck fast. Another, while she was attempting to beat her breast with the accustomed blows, perceived in the attempt that her arms had become stiff. One, as by chance she had extended her hands over the waters of the sea, becoming a rock, held out her hands in those same waters. You might see the fingers of another suddenly hardened in her hair, as she was tearing her locks seized on the top of her head. In whatever posture each was found {at the beginning of the change}, in the same she remained. Some became birds; which, sprung from Ismenus, skim along the surface of the waves in those seas, with the wings which they have assumed.

[Footnote 54: _She alone._--Ver. 419. This was Ino, whose only
sorrows hitherto had been caused by the calamities which befell
her sisters and their offspring: Semele having died a shocking
death, Autonoë having seen her son Actæon changed into a stag, and
then devoured by his dogs, and Agave having assisted in tearing to
pieces her own son Pentheus.]

[Footnote 55: _When they have enjoyed._--Ver. 435. The spirits
whose bodies had not received the rites of burial, we learn from
Homer and Virgil, were not allowed to pass the river Styx, but
wandered on its banks for a hundred years.]

[Footnote 56: _So does that spot._--Ver. 441. That is to say,
whatever number of ghosts arrives there, it receives them all with
ease, and is not sensible of the increase of number; either
because the place itself is of such immense extent, or because the
souls of the dead do not occupy space.]

[Footnote 57: _The Sisters._--Ver. 450. These were the Furies,
fabled to be the daughters of Night and Acheron. They were three
in number, Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megæra, and were supposed to be
the avengers of crime and wickedness.]

[Footnote 58: _Tityus._--Ver. 456. Tityus was the son of Jupiter
and Elara. On account of his enormous size, the poets sometimes
style him a son of the earth. Attempting to commit violence upon
Latona, he was slain by the arrows of Apollo, and precipitated to
the infernal regions, where he was condemned to have his liver
constantly devoured by a vulture, and then renewed, to perpetuate
his torments.]

[Footnote 59: _Tantalus._--Ver. 457. He was the son of Jupiter, by
the Nymph Plote. The crime for which he was punished is
differently related by the poets. Some say, that he divulged the
secrets of the Gods, that had been entrusted to him; while others
relate, that at an entertainment which he gave to the Deities, he
caused his own son, Pelops, to be served up, on which Ceres
inadvertently ate his shoulder. He was doomed to suffer intense
hunger and thirst, amid provisions of all kinds within his reach,
which perpetually receded from him.]

[Footnote 60: _Sisyphus._--Ver. 459. Sisyphus, the son of Æolus,
was a daring robber, who infested Attica. He was slain by Theseus;
and being sent to the infernal regions, was condemned to the
punishment of rolling a great stone to the top of a mountain,
which it had no sooner reached than it fell down again, and
renewed his labor.]

[Footnote 61: _Ixion._--Ver. 461. Being advanced by Jupiter to
heaven, he presumed to make an attempt on Juno. Jupiter, to
deceive him, formed a cloud in her shape, on which Ixion begot the
Centaurs. He was cast into Tartarus, and was there fastened to a
wheel, which turned round incessantly.]

[Footnote 62: _Iris._--Ver. 480. Iris was the daughter of Thaumas
and Electra, and the messenger of Juno. She was the Goddess of the
Rainbow.]

[Footnote 63: _Tisiphone._--Ver. 481. Clarke translates ‘Tisiphone
importuna,’ ‘the plaguy Tisiphone.’]

[Footnote 64: _Echidna._--Ver. 501. This word properly means,
‘a female viper;’ but it here refers to the Hydra, or dragon of
the marsh of Lerna, which Hercules slew. It was fabled to be
partly a woman, and partly a serpent, and to have been begotten by
Typhon. According to some accounts, this monster had seven heads.]

[Footnote 65: _Dashes in pieces._--Ver. 519. Euripides and Hyginus
relate, that Athamas slew his son while hunting; and Apollodorus
says, that he mistook him for a stag.]

[Footnote 66: _Thy foster-child._--Ver. 524. Bacchus was the
foster-child of Ino, who was the sister of his mother Semele. The
remaining portion of the story of Ino and Melicerta is again
related by Ovid in the sixth book of the Fasti.]

[Footnote 67: _There is a rock._--Ver. 525. Pausanias calls this
the Molarian rock, and says, that it was one of the Scironian
rocks, near Megara, in Attica. It was a branch of the Geranian
mountain.]

[Footnote 68: _And her burden._--Ver. 530. This was her son
Melicerta, who, according to Pausanias, was received by dolphins,
and was landed by them on the isthmus of Corinth.]

[Footnote 69: _Guiltless granddaughter._--Ver. 531. Venus was the
grandmother of Ino, inasmuch as Hermione, or Harmonia, the wife of
Cadmus, was the daughter of Mars and Venus.]

[Footnote 70: _Boundless Ionian sea._--Ver. 535. The Ionian sea
must be merely mentioned here as a general name for the broad
expanse of waters, of which the Saronic gulf, into which the
Molarian rock projected, formed part. Ovid may, however, mean to
say that Ino threw herself from some rock in the Ionian sea, and
not from the Molarian rock; following, probably, the account of
some other writer, whose works are lost.]

[Footnote 71: _Grecian name is derived._--Ver. 538. Venus was
called Aphrodite, by the Greeks, from ἄφρος, ‘the foam of the
sea,’ from which she was said to have sprung.]

[Footnote 72: _A Divinity._--Ver. 542. Ino and Melicerta were
worshipped as Divinities both in Greece and at Rome.]

[Footnote 73: _Sidonian attendants._--Ver. 543. The Theban matrons
are meant, who had married the companions of Cadmus that
accompanied him from Phœnices.]

EXPLANATION.

The story of Ino, Athamas, and Melicerta appears to have been based
upon historical facts, as we are informed by Herodotus, Diodorus
Siculus, and Pausanias.

Athamas, the son of Æolus, and great-grandson of Deucalion, having, on
the death of Themisto, his first wife, married Ino, the daughter of
Cadmus, divorced her soon afterwards, to marry Nephele, by whom he had
Helle and Phryxus. She having been divorced in her turn, he took Ino
back again, and by her had Learchus and Melicerta. Ino, not being able
to endure the presence of the children of Nephele, endeavored to
destroy them. The city of Thebes being at that time afflicted with
famine, which was said to have been caused by Ino, who ordered the
seed to be parched before it was sown, Athamas ordered the oracle of
Delphi to be consulted. The priests, either having been bribed, or the
messengers having been corrupted, word was brought, that, to remove
this affliction, the children of Nephele must be sacrificed.

Phryxus being warned of the designs of his stepmother, embarked in a
ship, with his sister Helle, and sailed for Colchis, where he met with
a kind reception from his kinsman Æetes. The young princess, however,
either becoming sea-sick, and leaning over the bulwarks of the vessel,
fell overboard and was drowned, or died a natural death in the passage
of the Hellespont, to which she gave its name from that circumstance.
Athamas, having discovered the deceitful conduct of Ino, in his rage
killed her son Learchus, and sought her, for the purpose of
sacrificing her to his vengeance. To avoid his fury, she fled with her
son Melicerta, and, being pursued, threw herself from a rock into the
sea. To console her relatives, the story was probably invented, that
the Gods had changed Ino and Melicerta into Sea Deities, under the
names of Leucothoë and Palæmon. Melicerta was afterwards worshipped in
the Isle of Tenedos, where children were offered to him in sacrifice.
In his honor, Glaucus established the Isthmian games, which were
celebrated for many ages at Corinth; and, being interrupted for a
time, were revived by Theseus, in honor of Neptune. Leucothoë was also
worshipped at Rome, and the Roman women used to offer up their vows to
her for their brothers’ children, not daring to supplicate the Goddess
for their own, because she had been unfortunate in hers. This Ovid
tells us in the Sixth Book of the Fasti. The Romans gave the name of
Matuta to Ino, and Melicerta, or Palæmon, was called Portunus.

The circumstance mentioned by Ovid, that some of Ino’s attendants were
changed into birds, and others into rocks, is, perhaps, only a
poetical method of saying that some of her attendants escaped, while
others perished with her.

FABLE VIII. [IV.563-603]

The misfortunes of his family oblige Cadmus to leave Thebes, and to
retire with his wife Hermione to Illyria, where they are changed into
serpents.

The son of Agenor knows not that his daughter and his little grandson are {now} Deities of the sea. Forced by sorrow, and a succession of calamities, and the prodigies which, many in number, he had beheld, the founder flies from his city, as though the {ill}-luck of the spot, and not his own, pressed {hard} upon him, and driven, in a long series of wandering, he reaches the coast of Illyria, with his exiled wife. And now, loaded with woes and with years, while they are reflecting on the first disasters of their house, and in their discourse are recounting their misfortunes, Cadmus says, “Was that dragon a sacred one, that was pierced by my spear, at the time when, setting out from Sidon, I sowed the teeth of the dragon in the ground, a seed {till then} unknown? If the care of the Gods avenges this with resentment so unerring, I pray that I myself, as a serpent, may be lengthened out into an extended belly.” {Thus} he says; and, as a serpent, he is lengthened out into an extended belly, and perceives scales growing on his hardened skin, and his black body become speckled with azure spots; and he falls flat on his breast, and his legs, joined into one, taper out by degrees into a thin round point. His arms are still remaining; those arms which remain he stretches out; and, as the tears are flowing down his face, still that of a man, he says, “Come hither, wife, come hither, most unhappy one, and, while something of me yet remains, touch me; and take my hand, while it is {still} a hand, {and} while I am not a serpent all over.” He, indeed, desires to say more, but, on a sudden, his tongue is divided into two parts. Nor are words in his power when he offers {to speak}; and as often as he attempts to utter any complaints, he makes a hissing: this is the voice that Nature leaves him. His wife, smiting her naked breast with her hand, cries aloud, “Stay, Cadmus! and deliver thyself, unhappy one, from this monstrous form. Cadmus, what means this? Where are thy feet? where are both thy shoulders and thy hands? where is thy color and thy form, and, while I speak, {where} all else {besides}? Why do ye not, celestial Gods, turn me as well into a similar serpent?” {Thus} she spoke; he licked the face of his wife, and crept into her dear bosom, as though he recognized her; and gave her embraces, and reached her well-known neck.

Whoever is by, (some attendants are present), is alarmed; but the crested snakes soothe them with their slippery necks, and suddenly they are two {serpents}, and in joined folds they creep along, until they enter the covert of an adjacent grove. Now, too, do they neither shun mankind, nor hurt them with wounds, and the gentle serpents keep in mind what once they were.

EXPLANATION.

After Cadmus had reigned at Thebes many years, a conspiracy was formed
against him. Being driven from the throne, and his grandson Pentheus
assuming the crown, he and his wife Hermione retired into Illyria,
where, as Apollodorus says, he commanded the Illyrian army, and at
length was chosen king: on his death, the story here related by Ovid
was invented. It is possible that it may have been based on the
following grounds:--

The Phœnicians were anciently called ‘Achivi,’ which name they still
retained after their establishment in Greece. ‘Chiva’ being also the
Hebrew, and perhaps Phœnician word for ‘a serpent,’ the Greeks,
probably in reference to the Phœnician origin of Cadmus, reported
after his death, that he and his wife were serpents; and in time, that
transformation may have been stated to have happened at the end of his
life. According to Aulus Gellius, the ancient inhabitants of Illyria
had two eyelids to each eye, and with their looks, when angered, they
were able to kill those whom they beheld stedfastly. The Greeks hence
called them serpents and basilisks; and, it is not unlikely, that when
Cadmus retired among them, they said that he had become one of the
Illyrians, otherwise a dragon, or a serpent. All the ancient writers
who mention his history agree that Cadmus really did retire into
Illyria, where he first assisted the Enchelians in their war against
the Illyrians. The latter were defeated, and, to obtain a peace from
the Enchelians, they gave the crown to Cadmus; to which, on his death,
his son Illyrus succeeded. The historian Christodorus, quoted by
Pausanias, says that he built the city of Nygnis, in the country of
the Enchelians.

Some writers have supposed, upon the authority of Euhemerus as quoted
by Eusebius that Cadmus was not the son of Agenor, but was one of his
officers, who eloped thence with Hermione, a singing girl. Others
suppose that Cadmus is not really a proper name, but that it signifies
a ‘leader,’ or ‘conductor;’ and that he received the name from leading
a colony into Greece. Bochart says that he was called Cadmus, because
he came from the eastern part of Phœnicia, which is called in
Scripture ‘Cadmonia,’ or ‘oriental;’ and that Hermione probably
received her name from Mount Hermon.

FABLE IX. [IV.604-662]

Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danaë, having killed Medusa, carries
her head into Africa, where the blood that runs from it produces
serpents. Atlas, king of that country, terrified at the remembrance of
an oracle, which had foretold that his golden fruit should be taken by
one of the sons of Jupiter, not only orders him to depart, but even
resorts to violence to drive him away, on which Perseus shows him the
Gorgon’s head, and changes him into a mountain.

But yet their grandson, {Bacchus} gave them both a great consolation, under this change of form; whom India, subdued {by him}, worshipped {as a} God, {and} whom Achaia honored with erected temples. Acrisius the son of Abas,[74] descended of the same race,[75] alone remained, to drive him from the walls of the Argive city, and to bear arms against the God, and to believe him not to be the offspring of Jove. Neither did he think Perseus to be the offspring of Jupiter, whom Danaë had conceived in a shower of gold; but soon (so great is the power of truth) Acrisius was sorry, both that he had insulted the God, and that he had not acknowledged his grandson. The one was now placed in heaven, while the other, bearing the memorable spoil of the viperous monster, cut the yielding air with hissing wings; and while the conqueror was hovering over the Libyan sands, bloody drops, from the Gorgon’s head, fell down, upon receiving {which, the} ground quickened them into various serpents. For this cause, that region is filled and infested with snakes.

Carried thence, by the fitful winds, through boundless space, he is borne now here, now there, just like a watery cloud, and, from the lofty sky, looks down upon the earth, removed afar; and he flies over the whole world. Three times he saw the cold Bears, thrice did he see the claws of the Crab; ofttimes he was borne to the West, many a time to the East. And now, the day declining, afraid to trust himself to the night, he stopped in the Western part of the world, in the kingdom of Atlas; and {there} he sought a little rest, until Lucifer should usher forth the fires of Aurora, Aurora, the chariot of the day. Here was Atlas, the son of Iapetus, surpassing all men in the vastness of his body. Under this king was the extremity of the earth, and the sea which holds its waters under the panting horses of the Sun, and receives the wearied chariot. For him, a thousand flocks, and as many herds, wandered over the pastures, and no neighboring places disturbed the land. Leaves of the trees, shining with radiant gold, covered branches of gold, {and} apples of gold. “My friend,” said Perseus to him, “if the glory of a noble race influences thee, Jupiter is the author of my descent; or if thou art an admirer of exploits, thou wilt admire mine. I beg of thee hospitality, and a resting place.” The other was mindful of an ancient oracle. The Parnassian Themis had given this response: “A time will come, Atlas, when thy tree shall be stripped of its gold, and a son of Jove shall have the honor of the prize.” Dreading this, Atlas had enclosed his orchard with solid walls, and had given it to be kept by a huge dragon;[76] and expelled all strangers from his territories. {To Perseus}, too, he says, “Far hence begone, lest the glory of the exploits, to which thou falsely pretendest, and Jupiter as well, be far from protecting thee.” He adds violence as well to his threats, and tries to drive him from his doors, as he hesitates and mingles resolute words with persuasive ones. Inferior in strength (for who could be a match for Atlas in strength?), he says “Since my friendship is of so little value to thee, accept {this} present;” and then, turning his face away, he exposes on the left side the horrible features of Medusa. Atlas, great as he is, becomes a mountain. Now his beard and his hair are changed into woods; his shoulders and his hands become mountain ridges, and what was formerly his head, is the summit on the top of the mountain. His bones become stones; then, enlarged on every side, he grows to an immense height (so you willed it, ye Gods), and the whole heaven, with so many stars, rests upon him.

[Footnote 74: _Son of Abas._--Ver. 608. Acrisius was the son of
Abas, king of Argos. He was the father of Danaë, by whom Jupiter
was the father of Perseus.]

[Footnote 75: _Of the same race._--Ver. 607. Some suppose that by
this it is meant that as Belus, the father of Abas, and
grandfather of Acrisius, was the son of Jupiter, who was also the
father of Bacchus, the latter and Acrisius were consequently
related.]

[Footnote 76: _A huge dragon._--Ver. 647. The name of the dragon
was Ladon.]

EXPLANATION.

The story of the seduction of Danaë, the mother of Perseus, by
Jupiter, in the form of a shower of gold, has been thus explained by
some of the ancient writers. Acrisius, hearing of a prediction that
Danaë, his daughter, should bring forth a child that would kill him,
caused her to be shut in a tower with brazen gates, or, according to
some, in a subterraneous chamber, covered with plates of that metal;
which place, according to Pausanias, remained till the time of
Perilaus, the king of Argos, by whom it was destroyed. The precautions
of Acrisius were, however, made unavailing by his brother Prœtus; who,
falling in love with his niece, corrupted the guards with gold, and
gained admission into the tower. Danaë, being delivered of Perseus,
her father caused them to be exposed in a boat to the mercy of the
waves. Being cast on shore near Seriphus, the king, Polydectes, gave
them a hospitable reception, and took care of the education of
Perseus.

Diodorus Siculus says that the Gorgons were female warriors, who
inhabited the neighborhood of Lake Tritonis, in Libya. Pausanias
explains the story of Medusa, by saying that she ruled the people in
that neighborhood, and laid waste the lands of the nations in her
vicinity. Perseus, having fled, with some companions, from
Peloponnesus, surprised her by night, and killed her, together with
her escort. The next morning, the beauty of her face appeared so
remarkable that he cut it off, and afterwards took it with him to
Greece, to show it to the people, who could not look on it without
being struck with astonishment. On this explanation we may remark,
that if it is true, Perseus must have had more skill than the surgeons
of our day, in being able to preserve the beauty of the features so
long after death.

Again, many of the ancient historians, with Pliny, Athenæus, and
Solinus, think that the Gorgons were wild women of a savage nature,
living in caves and forests, who, falling on wayfarers, committed
dreadful atrocities. Palæphatus and Fulgentius think that the Gorgons
really were three young women, possessed of great wealth, which they
employed in a very careful manner; Phorcus, their father, having left
them three islands, and a golden statue of Minerva, which they placed
in their common treasury. They had one minister in common for the
management of their affairs, who used to go for that purpose from one
island to another, whence arose the story that they had but one eye,
and that they lent it to one another alternately. Perseus, a fugitive
from Argos, hearing of the golden statue, determined to obtain it; and
with that view, seized their minister, or, in the allegorical language
of the poets, took their eye away from them. He then sent them word,
that if they would give him the statue, he would deliver up his
captive, and threatened, in case of refusal, to put him to death.
Stheno and Euryale consented to this; but Medusa resisting, she was
killed by Perseus. Upon his obtaining the statue, which was called the
Gorgon, or Gorgonian, he broke it in pieces, and placed the head on
the prow of his ship. As the sight of this, and the fame of the
exploits of Perseus, spread terror everywhere, and caused passive
submission to him, the fable originated, that with Medusa’s head he
turned his enemies into stone. Landing in the Isle of Seriphus, the
king fled, with all his subjects; and, on entering the chief city,
finding nothing but the bare stones there, he caused the report to be
spread, that he had petrified the inhabitants.

Servius, in his Commentary on the Æneid, quotes an opinion of Ammonius
Serenus, that the Gorgons were young women of such beauty as to make a
great impression on all that saw them; for which reason they were said
to turn them into statues. Le Clerc thinks that the story bears
reference to a voyage which the Phœnicians had made in ancient times
to the coast of Africa, whence they brought a great number of horses;
and that the name ‘Perseus’ comes from the Phœnician word ‘pharscha,’
‘a horseman;’ while the horse Pegasus was so called from the Phœnician
‘pagsous,’ ‘a bridled horse,’ according to the conjecture of Bochart.
Alexander of Myndus, a historian quoted by Athenæus, says that Libya
had an animal which the natives called ‘gorgon;’ that it resembled a
sheep, and with its breath killed all those who approached it; that a
tuft of hair fell over its eyes, which was so heavy as to be removed
with difficulty, for the purpose of seeing the objects around it; but
that when it was removed, by its looks it struck dead any person whom
it gazed upon. He says, that in the war with Jugurtha, some of the
soldiers of Marius were thus slain by it, and that it was at last
killed by means of arrows discharged from a great distance.

The Gorgons are said to have inhabited the Gorgades, islands in the
Æthiopian Sea, the chief of which was called Cerna, according to
Diodorus and Palæphatus. It is not improbable that the Cape Verde
Islands were called by this name. The fable of the transformation of
Atlas into the mountain of that name may possibly have been based upon
the simple fact, that Perseus killed him in the neighborhood of that
range, from which circumstance it derived the name which it has borne
ever since. The golden apples, which Atlas guarded with so much care,
were probably either gold mines, which Atlas had discovered in the
mountains of his country, and had secured with armed men and watchful
dogs; or sheep, whose fleeces were extremely valuable for their
fineness; or else oranges and lemons, and other fruits peculiar to
very hot climates, for the production of which the poets especially
remarked the country of Tingitana (the modern Tangier), as being very
celebrated.

FABLE X. [IV.663-803]

Perseus, after his victory over Atlas, and his change into a mountain,
arrives in Æthiopia, at the time when Andromeda is exposed to be
devoured by a monster. He kills it, and hides the Gorgon’s head under
the sand, covered with sea-weed and plants; which are immediately
turned into coral. He then renders thanks to the Gods for his victory,
and marries Andromeda. At the marriage feast he relates the manner in
which he had killed Medusa; and the reason why Minerva had changed her
hair into serpents.

The grandson of Hippotas[77] had shut up the winds in their eternal prison; and Lucifer, who reminds {men} of their work, was risen in the lofty sky, in all his splendor. Resuming his wings, {Perseus} binds his feet with them on either side, and is girt with his crooked weapon, and cleaves the liquid air with his winged ankles. Nations innumerable being left behind, around and below, he beholds the people of the Æthiopians and the lands of Cepheus. There the unjust Ammon[78] had ordered the innocent Andromeda to suffer punishment for her mother’s tongue.[79]

Soon as the descendant of Abas beheld her, with her arms bound to the hard rock, but that the light breeze was moving her hair, and her eyes were running with warm[80] tears, he would have thought her to be a work of marble. Unconsciously he takes fire, and is astonished; captivated with the appearance of her beauty, {thus} beheld, he almost forgets to wave his wings in the air. When he has lighted {on the ground}, he says, “O thou, undeserving of these chains, but {rather} of those by which anxious lovers are mutually united, disclose to me, inquiring both the name of this land and of thyself, and why thou wearest {these} chains.” At first she is silent, and, a virgin, she does not dare address[81] a man; and with her hands she would have concealed her blushing features, if she had not been bound; her eyes, ’twas {all} she could do, she filled with gushing tears. Upon his often urging her, lest she should seem unwilling to confess her offence, she told the name both of her country and herself, and how great had been the confidence of her mother in her beauty. All not yet being told, the waves roared, and a monster approaching,[82] appeared with its head raised out of the boundless ocean, and covered the wide expanse with its breast. The virgin shrieks aloud; her mournful father, and her distracted mother, are there, both wretched, but the latter more justly so. Nor do they bring her any help with them, but tears suitable to the occasion, and lamentations, and they cling round her body, bound {to the rock}.

Then thus the stranger says: “Plenty of time will be left for your tears {hereafter}, the season for giving aid is {but} short. If I were to demand her {in marriage}, I, Perseus, the son of Jove, and of her whom, in prison, Jove embraced in the impregnating {shower of} gold, Perseus, the conqueror of the Gorgon with her serpent locks, and who has dared, on waving wings, to move through the ætherial air, I should surely be preferred before all as your son-in-law. To so many recommendations I endeavor to add merit (if only the Deities favor me). I {only} stipulate that she may be mine, {if} preserved by my valor.” Her parents embrace the condition, (for who could hesitate?) and they entreat {his aid}, and promise as well, the kingdom as a dowry. Behold! as a ship onward speeding, with the beak fixed {in its prow}, plows the waters, impelled by the perspiring arms[83] of youths; so the monster, moving the waves by the impulse of its breast, was as far distant from the rocks, as {that distance} in the mid space of air, which a Balearic string can pass with the whirled plummet of lead; when suddenly the youth, spurning the earth with his feet, rose on high into the clouds. As the shadow of the hero was seen on the surface of the sea, the monster vented its fury on the shadow {so} beheld. And as the bird of Jupiter,[84] when he has espied on the silent plain a serpent exposing its livid back to the sun, seizes it behind; and lest it should turn upon him its raging mouth, fixes his greedy talons in its scaly neck; so did the winged {hero}, in his rapid flight through the yielding {air}, press the back of the monster, and the descendant of Inachus thrust his sword up to the very hilt in its right shoulder, as it roared aloud.

Tortured by the grievous wound, it sometimes raises itself aloft in the air, sometimes it plunges beneath the waves, sometimes it wheels about, just like a savage boar, which a pack of hounds in full cry around him affrights. With swift wings he avoids the eager bites[85] {of the monster}, and, with his crooked sword, one while wounds its back covered with hollow shells, where it is exposed, at another time the ribs of its sides, and now, where its tapering tail terminates in {that of} a fish. The monster vomits forth from its mouth streams mingled with red blood; its wings, {made} heavy {by it}, are wet with the spray. Perseus, not daring any longer to trust himself on his dripping pinions,[86] beholds a rock, which with its highest top projects from the waters {when} becalmed, {but is now} covered by the troubled sea. Resting on that, and clinging to the upper ridge[87] of the rock with his left hand, three or four times he thrusts his sword through its entrails aimed at {by him}. A shout, with applause, fills the shores and the lofty abodes of the Gods. Cassiope and Cepheus, the father, rejoice, and salute him as their son-in-law, and confess that he is the support and the preserver of their house.

Released from her chains, the virgin walks along, both the reward and the cause of his labors. He himself washes his victorious hands in water taken {from the sea}; and that it may not injure the snake-bearing head with the bare sand, he softens the ground with leaves; and strews some weeds produced beneath the sea, and lays upon them the face of Medusa, the daughter of Phorcys. The fresh weeds, being still alive, imbibed the poison of the monster in their spongy pith, and hardened by its touch; and felt an unwonted stiffness in their branches and their leaves. But the Nymphs of the sea attempt the wondrous feat on many {other} weeds, and are pleased at the same result; and raise seed again from them scattered on the waves. Even now the same nature remains in the coral, that it receives hardness from contact with the air; and what was a plant in the sea, out of the sea becomes stone.

To three Deities he erects as many altars of turf; the left one to Mercury; the right to thee, warlike Virgin; the altar of Jove is in the middle. A cow is sacrificed to Minerva; a calf to the wing-footed {God, and} a bull to thee, greatest of the Deities. Forthwith he takes Andromeda, and the reward of an achievement so great, without any dowry. Hymenæus and Cupid wave their torches before them; the fires are heaped with abundant perfumes. Garlands, too, are hanging from the houses: flageolets and lyres, and pipes, and songs resound, the happy tokens of a joyous mind. The folding-doors thrown open, the entire gilded halls are displayed, and the nobles of king Cepheus sit down at a feast furnished with splendid preparations. After they have done the feast, and have cheered their minds with the gifts of the generous Bacchus, the grandson of Abas inquires the customs and habits of the country. Immediately one {of them}, Lyncides, tells him, on his inquiring, the manners and habits of the inhabitants. Soon as he had told him these things, he said, “Now, most valiant Perseus, tell us, I beseech thee, with how great valor and by what arts thou didst cut off the head all hairy with serpents.” The descendant of Abas tells them that there is a spot situate beneath cold Atlas, safe in its bulwark of a solid mass; that, in the entrance of this, dwelt the two sisters, the daughters of Phorcys, who shared the use of a single eye; that he stealthily, by sly craft, while it was being handed over,[88] obtained possession of this by putting his hand in the way; and that through rocks far remote, and pathless, and bristling with woods on their craggy sides, he had arrived at the abodes of the Gorgons, and saw everywhere, along the fields and the roads, statues of men and wild beasts turned into stone, from their {natural form}, at the sight of Medusa; yet that he himself, from the reflection on the brass of the shield[89] which his left hand bore, beheld the visage of the horrible Medusa; and that, while a sound sleep held her and her serpents {entranced}, he took the head from off the neck; and that Pegasus and his brother,[90] fleet with wings, were produced from the blood of {her}, their mother. He added, too, the dangers of his lengthened journey, {themselves} no fiction;[91] what seas, what lands he had seen beneath him from on high, and what stars he had reached with his waving wings.

Yet, before it was expected,[92] he was silent; {whereupon} one of the nobles rejoined, inquiring why she alone, of the sisters, wore snakes mingled alternately with her hair. “Stranger,” said he, “since thou inquirest on a matter worthy to be related, hear the cause of the thing thou inquirest after. She was the most famed for her beauty, and the coveted hope of many wooers; nor, in the whole of her person, was any part more worthy of notice than her hair: I have met {with some} who said they had seen it. The sovereign of the sea is said to have deflowered her in the Temple of Minerva. The daughter of Jove turned away, and covered her chaste eyes with her shield. And that this might not be unpunished, she changed the hair of the Gorgon into hideous snakes. Now, too, that she may alarm her surprised foes with terror, she bears in front upon her breast, those snakes which she {thus} produced.”

[Footnote 77: _Hippotas._--Ver. 663. Æolus, the God of the Winds,
was the son of Jupiter, by Acesta, the daughter of Hippotas.]

[Footnote 78: _Ammon._--Ver. 671. Jupiter, with the surname of
Ammon, had a temple in the deserts of Libya, where he was
worshipped under the shape of a ram; a form which he was supposed
to have assumed, when, in common with the other Deities, he fled
from the attacks of the Giants. The oracle of Jupiter Ammon being
consulted relative to the sea monster, which Neptune, at the
request of the Nereids, had sent against the Ethiopians, answered
that Andromeda must be exposed to be devoured by it; which Ovid
here, not without reason, calls an unjust demand.]

[Footnote 79: _Mother’s tongue._--Ver. 670. Cassiope, the mother
of Andromeda, had dared to compare her own beauty with that of the
Nereids. Cepheus, the son of Phœnix, was the father of Andromeda.]

[Footnote 80: _Warm._--Ver. 674. ‘Tepido,’ ‘warm,’ is decidedly
preferable here to ‘trepido,’ ‘trembling.’]

[Footnote 81: _Dare address._--Ver. 682. Heinsius thinks that
‘appellare’ here is not the correct reading; and suggests
‘aspectare,’ which seems to be more consistent with the sense of
the passage, which would then be, ‘and does not dare to look down
upon the hero.’]

[Footnote 82: _Monster approaching._--Ver. 689. Pliny the Elder
and Solinus tell us that the bones of this monster were afterwards
brought from Joppa, a seaport of Judæa, to Rome, and that the
skeleton was forty feet in length, and the spinal bone was six
feet in circumference.]

[Footnote 83: _The perspiring arms._--Ver. 707. ‘Juvenum
sudantibus acta lacertis’ is translated by Clarke, ‘forced forward
by the arms of sweating young fellows.’]

[Footnote 84: _Bird of Jupiter._--Ver. 714. The eagle was the bird
sacred to Jove. The larger kinds of birds which afforded auguries
from their mode of flight, were called ‘præpetes.’]

[Footnote 85: _Avoids the eager bites._--Ver. 723. Clarke
translates this line, ‘He avoids the monster’s eager snaps with
his swift wings.’]

[Footnote 86: _His dripping pinions._--Ver. 730. ‘Talaria’ were
either wings fitted to the ankles, or shoes having such wings
fastened to them; they were supposed to be usually worn by
Mercury.]

[Footnote 87: _Clinging to the upper ridge._--Ver. 733. ‘Tenens
juga prima sinistra’ is rendered by Clarke, ‘seizing the tip-top
of it with his left hand.’]

[Footnote 88: _Being handed over._--Ver. 766. Of course, as they
had but one eye between them, they must have both been blind while
it was passing from one hand to another, so that Perseus could
have had but little difficulty in effecting the theft here
mentioned.]

[Footnote 89: _Brass of the shield._--Ver. 783. This reflecting
shield Perseus is said to have received from Minerva, and by
virtue of it he was enabled to see without being seen. Lucian says
that Minerva herself held this reflecting shield before him, and
by that means afforded him the opportunity of seeing the
reflection of Medusa’s figure; and that Perseus, seizing her by
the hair with his left hand, and keeping his eye fixed on the
image reflected in the shield, took his sword in his right, and
cut off her head, and then, by the aid of his wings, flew away
before the other Gorgon sisters were aware of what he had done.]

[Footnote 90: _Pegasus and his brother._--Ver. 786. Pegasus and
Chrysaor were two winged horses, which were fabled to have sprung
up from the blood of Medusa, when slain by Perseus.]

[Footnote 91: _Themselves no fiction._--Ver. 787. His dangers were
not false or imaginary, inasmuch as he was pursued by Sthenyo and
Euryale, the sisters of Medusa, who were fabled to have wings, and
claws of iron on their hands. Ovid deals a sly hit in the words
‘non falsa pericula cursus,’ at the tales of travellers, who, even
in his day, seem to have commenced dealing in the marvellous; as,
indeed, we may learn for ourselves, on turning to the pages of
Herodotus, who seems to have been often imposed upon.]

[Footnote 92: _Before it was expected._--Ver. 790. Showing thereby
how delighted his audience was with his narrative.]

EXPLANATION.

It is extremely difficult to surmise what may have given rise to many
of the fabulous circumstances here narrated. It has been conjectured
by some, that Pegasus and his brother Chrysaor, the two horses
produced from the blood of Medusa, were really two ships in the harbor
of the island where that princess was residing at the time when she
was slain by Perseus; and that, on that event, they were seized by
him. Perhaps they had the figure of a winged horse on the prow; from
which circumstance the fable had its origin. Possibly, the story of
the production of coral from the blood of Medusa may have originated
in the fact, that on the defeat of the Gorgons, navigation became more
safe, and, consequently, the fishing for coral more common than it had
been before.

The story of the exposure of Andromeda may be founded on the fact,
that she was contracted by her parents against her will to some
fierce, piratical prince, who infested the adjacent seas with his
depredations; and that the betrothal was made, on condition that he
should allow the realms of her father, Cepheus, to be free and
undisturbed; Perseus, being informed of this, slew the pirate, and
Phineus having been kept in a state of inactivity through dread of the
valor of Perseus, it was fabled that he had been changed into a stone.
This interpretation of the story is the one suggested by Vossius.

Some writers think, that Phineus, the uncle of Andromeda, was the
enemy from which she was rescued by Perseus, and who is here
represented under the form of a monster; while others suggest that
this monster was the name of the ship in which the pirate before
mentioned was to have carried away Andromeda.