BOOK XV. (continued 7)

“And, that thou mayst not think this a fiction, Salamis still keeps the statue under the form of the maiden; it has also a temple under the name of ‘Venus, the looker-out.’ Remembering these things, O Nymph, lay aside this prolonged disdain, and unite thyself to one who loves thee. Then, may neither cold in the spring nip thy fruit in the bud, nor may the rude winds strike them off in blossom.” When the God, fitted for every shape, had in vain uttered these words, he returned to his youthful form,60 and took off from himself the garb of the old woman. And such did he appear to her, as, when the form of the sun, in all his brilliancy, has dispelled the opposing clouds, and has shone forth, no cloud intercepting his rays. And he now purposed violence, but there was no need for force, and the Nymph was captivated by the form of the God, and was sensible of a reciprocal wound.

Next, the soldiery of the wicked Amulius held sway over the realms of Ausonia; and by the aid of his grandsons, the aged Numitor gained the kingdom that he had lost; and on the festival of Pales, the walls of the City were founded. Tatius and the Sabine fathers waged war; and then, the way to the citadel being laid open, by a just retribution, Tarpeia lost her life, the arms being heaped upon her. On this, they, sprung from the town of Cures, just like silent wolves, suppressed their voices with their lips, and fell upon the bodies now overpowered by sleep, and rushed to the gates, which the son of Ilia had shut with a strong bolt. But Juno, the daughter of Saturn, herself opened one, and made not a sound at the turning of the hinge. Venus alone perceived that the bars of the gate had fallen down; and she would have shut it, were it not, that it is xiv. 785-820. never allowed for a Deity to annul the acts of the other Gods. The Naiads of Ausonia occupied a spot near the temple of Janus, a place besprinkled by a cold fountain; of these she implored aid. Nor did the Nymphs resist, the Goddess making so fair a request; and they gave vent to the springs and the streams of the fountain. But not yet were the paths closed to the open temple of Janus, and the water had not stopped the way. They placed sulphur, with its faint blue light, beneath the plenteous fountain, and they applied fire to the hollowed channels, with smoking pitch.

By these and other violent means, the vapour penetrated to the very sources of the fountain; and you, ye waters, which, so lately, were able to rival the coldness of the Alps, yielded not in heat to the flames themselves. The two door-posts smoked with the flaming spray; and the gate, which was in vain left open for the fierce Sabines, was rendered impassable by this new-made fountain, until the warlike soldiers had assumed their arms. After Romulus had readily led them onward, and the Roman ground was covered with Sabine bodies, and was covered with its own people, and the accursed sword had mingled the blood of the son-in-law with the gore of the father-in-law; they determined that the war should end in peace, and that they would not contend with weapons to the last extremity, and that Tatius should share in the sovereignty.

Tatius was now dead, and thou, Romulus, wast giving laws in common to both peoples; when Mavors,61 his helmet laid aside, in such words as these addressed the Parent of both Gods and men: “The time is now come, O father, (since the Roman state is established on a strong foundation, and is no longer dependent on the guardianship of but one), for thee to give the reward which was promised to me, and to thy grandson so deserving of it, and, removed from earth, to admit him to heaven. Thou saidst to me once, a council of the Gods being present, (for I remember it, and with grateful mind I remarked the affectionate speech), he shall be one, whom thou shalt raise to the azure heaven. Let the tenor of thy words be now performed.”

The all-powerful God nodded in assent, and he obscured the air with thick clouds, and alarmed the City with thunder and lightning. Gradivus knew that this was a signal given to xiv. 820-848. him for the promised removal; and, leaning on his lance, he boldly mounted behind his steeds, laden with the blood-stained pole of the chariot, and urged them on with the lash of the whip; and descending along the steep air, he stood on the summit of the hill of the woody Palatium; and he took away the son of Ilia, that moment giving out his royal ordinances to his own Quirites. His mortal body glided through the yielding air; just as the leaden plummet, discharged from the broad sling, is wont to dissolve itself62 in mid air. A beauteous appearance succeeded, one more suitable to the lofty couches63 of heaven, and a form, such as that of Quirinus arrayed in his regal robe. His wife was lamenting him as lost; when the royal Juno commanded Iris to descend to Hersilia, along her bending path; and thus to convey to the bereft wife her commands:—

“O matron, the especial glory of the Latian and of the Sabine race; thou woman, most worthy to have been before the wife of a hero so great, and now of Quirinus; cease thy weeping, and if thou hast a wish to see thy husband, under my guidance repair to the grove which flourishes on the hill of Quirinus, and overshadows the temple of the Roman king.” Iris obeys, and gliding down to earth along her tinted bow, she addressed Hersilia in the words enjoined. She, with a modest countenance, hardly raising her eyes, replies, “O Goddess, (for though it is not in my power to say who thou art, yet, still it is clear that thou art a Goddess), lead me, O lead me on, and present to me the features of my husband. If the Fates should but allow me to be enabled once to behold these, I will confess that I have beheld Heaven.”

There was no delay; with the virgin daughter of Thaumas she ascended the hill of Romulus. There, a star falling from the skies, fell upon the earth; the hair of Hersilia set on fire from the blaze of this, ascended with the star to the skies. xiv. 849-851. The founder of the Roman city received her with his well-known hands; and, together with her body, he changed her former name; and he called her Ora; which Goddess is still united to Quirmus.

EXPLANATION.

We are not informed that the story of Iphis, hanging himself for love of Anaxarete, is based upon any actual occurrence, though probably it was, as Salamis is mentioned as the scene of it. The transformation of Anaxarete into a stone, seems only to be the usual metaphor employed by the poets to denote extreme insensibility.

Following the example of Homer, who represents the Gods as divided into the favourers of the Greeks and of the Trojans, he represents the Sabines as entering Rome, while Juno opens the gates for them; on which the Nymphs of the spot pour forth streams of flame, which oblige them to return. He tells the same story in the first Book of the Fasti, where Janus is introduced as taking credit to himself for doing what the Nymphs are here said to have effected.

As Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives some account of these transactions, on the authority of the ancient Roman historians, it will be sufficient here to give the substance thereof. Jealous of the increasing power of Romulus, the Sabines collected an army, and marched to attack his city. A virgin named Tarpeia, whose father commanded the guard, perceiving the golden bracelets which the Sabines wore on their arms, offered Tatius to open the gate to him, if he would give her these jewels. This condition being assented to, the enemy was admitted into the town; and Tarpeia, who is said by some writers only to have intended to disarm the Sabines, by demanding their bucklers, which she pretended were included in the original agreement, was killed on the spot, by the violence of the blows; Tatius having ordered that they should be thrown on her head.

The same historian says, that opinions were divided as to the death of Romulus, and that many writers had written, that as he was haranguing his army, the sky became overcast, and a thick darkness coming on, it was followed by a violent tempest, in which he disappeared; on which it was believed that Mars had taken him up to heaven. Others assert that he was killed by the citizens, for having sent back the hostages of the Veientes without their consent, and for assuming an air of superiority, which their lawless spirits could ill brook. For these reasons, his officers assassinated him, and cut his body in pieces; each of them carrying off some portion, that it might be privately interred. According to Livy, great consternation was the consequence of his death; and the people beginning to suspect that the senators had committed the crime, Julius Proculus asserted that Romulus had appeared to him, and assured him of the fact of his having been Deified. His speech on the occasion is given by Livy, and Ovid relates the same story in the second Book of the Fasti. On this, the Roman people paid him divine honours as a God, under the name of Quirinus, one of the epithets of Mars. He had a chief priest, who was called ‘Flamen Quirinalis.’

His wife, Hersilia, also had divine honours paid to her, jointly with him, under the name of Ora, or ‘Horta.’ According to Plutarch, she had the latter name from the exhortation which she had given to the youths to distinguish themselves by courage.

BOOK THE FIFTEENTH.

FABLE I.

Myscelos is warned, in a dream, to leave Argos, and to settle in Italy. When on the point of departing, he is seized under a law which forbids the Argives to leave the city without the permission of the magistrates. Being brought up for judgment, through a miracle he is acquitted. He retires to Italy, where he builds the city of Crotona.

Meanwhile, one is being sought who can bear a weight of such magnitude, and can succeed a king so great. Fame, the harbinger of truth, destines the illustrious Numa for the sovereign power. He does not deem it sufficient to be acquainted with the ceremonials of the Sabine nation; in his expansive mind he conceives greater views, and inquires into the nature of things. ’Twas love of this pursuit, his country and cares left behind, that caused him to penetrate to the city of the stranger Hercules. To him, making the inquiry what founder it was that had erected a Grecian city on the Italian shores, one of the more aged natives, who was not unacquainted with the history of the past, thus replied:

“The son of Jove, enriched with the oxen of Iberia, is said to have reached the Lacinian shores,1 from the ocean, after a prosperous voyage, and, while his herd was straying along the soft pastures, himself to have entered the abode of the great Croton, no inhospitable dwelling, and to have rested in repose after his prolonged labours, and to have said thus at departing: ‘In the time of thy grandsons this shall be the site of a city;’ and his promise was fulfilled. For there was a certain Myscelos, the son of Alemon, an Argive, most favoured by the Gods in those times. Lying upon him, as he is overwhelmed with the drowsiness of sleep, the club-bearer, Hercules, addresses him: ‘Come, now, desert thy native abodes; go, and repair to the pebbly streams of the distant Æsar.’2 And he utters xv. 24-52. threats, many and fearful, if he does not obey: after that, at once both sleep and the God depart. The son of Alemon arises, and ponders his recent vision in his thoughtful mind; and for a long time his opinions are divided among themselves. The Deity orders him to depart; the laws forbid his going; and death has been awarded as the punishment of him who attempts to leave his country.

“The brilliant Sun had now hidden his shining head in the ocean, and darkest Night had put forth her starry face, when the same God seemed to be present, and to give the same commands, and to utter threats, more numerous and more severe, if he does not obey. He was alarmed; and now he was also preparing to transfer his country’s home to a new settlement, when a rumour arose in the city, and he was accused of holding the laws in contempt. And, when the accusation had first been made, and his crime was evident, proved without a witness, the accused, in neglected garb, raising his face and his hands towards the Gods above, says, ‘Oh thou! for whom the twice six labours have created the privilege of the heavens, aid me, I pray; for thou wast the cause of my offence.’ It was the ancient custom, by means of white and black pebbles, with the one to condemn the accused, with the other to acquit them of the charge; and on this occasion thus was the sad sentence passed, and every black pebble was cast into the ruthless urn. Soon as it, being inverted, poured forth the pebbles to be counted, the colour of them all was changed from black to white, and the sentence, changed to a favourable one by the aid of Hercules, acquitted the son of Alemon.

“He gives thanks to the parent, the son of Amphitryon,3 and with favouring gales sails over the Ionian sea, and passes by the Lacedæmonian Tarentum,4 and Sybaris, and the Salentine Neæthus,5 and the bay of Thurium,6 and Temesa, and the xv. 52-60. fields of Iapyx;7 and having with difficulty coasted along the spots which skirt these shores, he finds the destined mouth of the river Æsar; and, not far thence, a mound, beneath which the ground was covering the sacred bones of Croton. And there, on the appointed land, did he found his walls, and he transferred the name of him that was there entombed to his city. By established tradition, it was known that such was the original of that place, and of the city built on the Italian coasts.”

EXPLANATION.

To the story here told of Micylus, or Myscelus, as most of the ancient writers call him, another one was superadded. Suidas, on the authority of the Scholiast of Aristophanes, says that Myscelus, having consulted the oracle, concerning the colony which he was about to lead into a foreign country, was told that he must settle at the place where he should meet with rain in a clear sky, ἐξ αἰθρίας. His faith surmounting the apparent impossibility of having both fair and foul weather at the same moment, he obeyed the oracle, and put to sea; and, after experiencing many dangers, he landed in Italy. Being full of uncertainty where to fix his colony, he was reduced to great distress; on which his wife, whose name was Aithrias, with the view of comforting him, embraced him, and bedewed his face with her tears. He immediately adopted the presage, and understood the spot where he then was to be the site of his intended city.

Strabo says that Myscelus, who was so called from the smallness of his legs, designing to found a colony in a foreign land, arrived on the coast of Italy. Observing that the spot which the oracle had pointed out enjoyed a healthy climate, though the soil was not so fertile as in the adjacent plains, he went once more to consult the oracle; but was answered that he must not refuse what was offered him; an answer which was afterwards turned into a proverb. On this, he founded the city of Crotona, and another colony founded the city of Sybaris on the spot which he had preferred; a place which afterwards became infamous for its voluptuousness and profligacy.

FABLES II. AND III.

Pythagoras comes to the city of Crotona, and teaches the principles of his philosophy. His reputation draws Numa Pompilius to hear his discourses; on which he expounds his principles, and, more especially, enlarges on the transmigration of the soul, and the practice of eating animal food.

There was a man, a Samian by birth; but he had fled from both Samos and its rulers,8 and, through hatred of tyranny, xv. 60-98. he was a voluntary exile. He too, mentally, held converse with the Gods, although far distant in the region of the heavens; and what nature refused to human vision, he viewed with the eyes of his mind. And when he had examined all things with his mind, and with watchful study, he gave them to be learned by the public; and he sought the crowds of people as they sat in silence, and wondered at the revealed origin of the vast universe, and the cause of things, and what nature meant, and what was God; whence came the snow, what was the cause of lightning; whether it was Jupiter, or whether the winds that thundered when the cloud was rent asunder; what it was that shook the earth; by what laws the stars took their course; and whatever besides lay concealed from mortals.

He, too, was the first to forbid animals to be served up at table, and he was the first that opened his lips, learned indeed, but still not obtaining credit, in such words as these: “Forbear, mortals, to pollute your bodies with such abominable food. There is the corn; there are the apples that bear down the branches by their weight, and there are the grapes swelling upon the vines; there are the herbs that are pleasant; there are some that can become tender, and be softened by the action of fire. The flowing milk, too, is not denied you, nor honey redolent of the bloom of the thyme. The lavish Earth yields her riches, and her agreable food, and affords dainties without slaughter and bloodshed. The beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh; and yet not all of them; for the horse, and the sheep, and the herds subsist on grass. But those whose disposition is cruel and fierce, the Armenian tigers, and the raging lions, and the bears together with the wolves, revel in their diet with blood. Alas! what a crime is it, for entrails to be buried in entrails, and for one ravening body to grow fat on other carcases crammed into it; and for one living creature to exist through the death of another living creature! And does, forsooth! amid so great an abundance, which the earth, that best of mothers, produces, nothing delight you but to gnaw with savage teeth the sad produce of your wounds, and to revive the habits of the Cyclops? And can you not appease the hunger of a voracious and ill-regulated stomach unless you first destroy another? But that age of old, to which we have given the name of ‘Golden,’ was blest in the xv. 98-131. produce of the trees, and in the herbs which the earth produces, and it did not pollute the mouth with blood.

“Then, both did the birds move their wings in safety in the air, and the hare without fear wander in the midst of the fields; then its own credulity had not suspended the fish from the hook; every place was without treachery, and in dread of no injury, and was full of peace. Afterwards, some one, no good adviser9 (whoever among mortals he might have been), envied this simple food, and engulphed in his greedy paunch victuals made from a carcase; ’twas he that opened the path to wickedness; and I can believe that the steel, since stained with blood, first grew warm from the slaughter of wild beasts. And that had been sufficient. I confess that the bodies of animals that seek our destruction are put to death with no breach of the sacred laws; but, although they might be put to death, yet they were not to be eaten as well. Then this wickedness proceeded still further; and the swine is believed to have deserved death as the first victim, because it grubbed up the seeds with its turned-up snout, and cut short the hopes of the year. Having gnawed the vine, the goat was led10 for slaughter to the altars of the avenging Bacchus. Their own faults were the ruin of the two. But why have you deserved this, ye sheep? a harmless breed, and born for the service of man; who carry the nectar in your full udders; who afford your wool as soft coverings for us, and who assist us more by your life than by your death. Why have the oxen deserved this, an animal without guile and deceit, innocent, harmless, born to endure labour? In fact, the man is ungrateful, and not worthy of the gifts of the harvest, who could, just after taking off the weight of the curving plough, slaughter the tiller of his fields; who could strike, with the axe, that neck worn bare with labour, through which he had so oft turned up the hard ground, and had afforded so many a harvest.

“And it is not enough for such wickedness to be committed; they have imputed to the Gods themselves this abomination; and they believe that a Deity in the heavens can rejoice in the slaughter of the laborious ox. A victim free from a blemish, and most beauteous in form (for ’tis being sightly that xv. 131-162. brings destruction), adorned with garlands and gold, is placed upon the altars, and, in its ignorance, it hears one praying, and sees the corn, which it has helped to produce, placed on its forehead between its horns; and, felled, it stains with its blood the knives perhaps before seen by it in the limpid water. Immediately, they examine the entrails snatched from its throbbing breast, and in them they seek out the intentions of the Deities. Whence comes it that men have so great a hankering for forbidden food? Do you presume to feed on flesh, O race of mortals? Do it not, I beseech you; and give attention to my exhortations. And when you shall be presenting the limbs of slaughtered oxen to your palates, know and consider that you are devouring your tillers of the ground. And since a God impels me to speak, I will duly obey the God that so prompts me to speak; and I will pronounce my own Delphic warnings, and disclose the heavens themselves; and I will reveal the oracles of the Divine will. I will sing of wondrous things, never investigated by the intellects of the ancients, and things which have long lain concealed. It delights me to range among the lofty stars; it delights me, having left the earth and this sluggish spot far behind, to be borne amid the clouds, and to be supported on the shoulders of the mighty Atlas; and to look down from afar on minds wandering in uncertainty, and devoid of reason; and so to advise them alarmed and dreading extinction, and to unfold the range of things ordained by fate.

“O race! stricken by the alarms of icy death, why do you dread Styx? why the shades, why empty names, the stock subjects of the poets, and the atonements of an imaginary world? Whether the funeral pile consumes your bodies with flames, or old age with gradual dissolution, believe that they cannot suffer any injury. Souls are not subject to death; and having left their former abode, they ever inhabit new dwellings, and, there received, live on.

“I, myself, for I remember it, in the days of the Trojan war, was Euphorbus,11 the son of Panthoüs, in whose opposing xv. 162-195. breast once was planted the heavy spear of the younger son of Atreus. I lately recognised the shield, once the burden of my left arm, in the temple of Juno, at Argos, the realm of Abas. All things are ever changing; nothing perishes. The soul wanders about and comes from that spot to this, from this to that, and takes possession of any limbs whatever; it both passes from the beasts to human bodies, and so does our soul into the beasts; and in no lapse of time does it perish. And as the pliable wax is moulded into new forms, and no longer abides as it was before, nor preserves the same shape, but yet is still the same wax, so I tell you that the soul is ever the same, but passes into different forms. Therefore, that natural affection may not be vanquished by the craving of the appetite, cease, I warn you, to expel the souls of your kindred from their bodies by this dreadful slaughter; and let not blood be nourished with blood.

“And, since I am now borne over the wide ocean, and I have given my full sails to the winds, there is nothing in all the world that continues in the same state. All things are flowing onward,12 and every shape is assumed in a fleeting course. Even time itself glides on with a constant progress, no otherwise than a river. For neither can the river, nor the fleeting hour stop in its course; but, as wave is impelled by wave, and the one before is pressed on by that which follows, and itself presses on that before it; so do the moments similarly fly on, and similarly do they follow, and they are ever renewed. For the moment which was before, is past; and that which was not, now exists; and every minute is replaced. You see, too, the night emerge and proceed onward to the dawn, and this brilliant light of the day succeed the dark night. Nor is there the same appearance in the heavens, when all things in their weariness lie in the midst of repose, and when Lucifer is coming forth on his white steed; and, again, there is another appearance, when Aurora, the daughter of Pallas, preceding the day, tints the world about to be delivered to Phœbus. The disk itself of that God, when it is rising from beneath the earth, is of ruddy colour in the morning, and when it is hiding beneath the earth it is of a ruddy colour. At its height it is of brilliant whiteness, because there the nature of the æther xv. 195-229. is purer, and far away, he avoids all infection from the earth. Nor can there ever be the same or a similar appearance of the nocturnal Diana; and always that of the present day is less than on the morrow, if she is on the increase; but greater if she is contracting her orb.

“And further. Do you not see the year, affording a resemblance of our life, assume four different appearances? for, in early Spring, it is mild, and like a nursling, and greatly resembling the age of youth. Then, the blade is shooting, and void of strength, it swells, and is flaccid, and delights the husbandman in his expectations. Then, all things are in blossom, and the genial meadow smiles with the tints of its flowers; and not as yet is there any vigour in the leaves. The year now waxing stronger, after the Spring, passes into the Summer; and in its youth it becomes robust. And indeed no season is there more vigorous, or more fruitful, or which glows with greater warmth. Autumn follows, the ardour of youth now removed, ripe, and placed between youth and old age, moderate in his temperature, with a few white hairs sprinkled over his temples. Then comes aged Winter, repulsive with his tremulous steps, either stript of his locks, or white with those which he has.

“Our own bodies too are changing always and without any intermission, and to-morrow we shall not be what we were or what we now are. The time was, when only as embryos, and the earliest hope of human beings, we lived in the womb of the mother. Nature applied her skilful hands, and willed not that our bodies should be tortured by being shut up within the entrails of the distended parent, and brought us forth from our dwelling into the vacant air. Brought to light, the infant lies without any strength; soon, like a quadruped, it uses its limbs after the manner of the brutes; and by degrees it stands upright, shaking, and with knees still unsteady, the sinews being supported by some assistance. Then he becomes strong and swift, and passes over the hours of youth; and the years of middle age, too, now past, he glides adown the steep path of declining age. This undermines and destroys the robustness of former years; and Milo,13 now grown old, weeps xv. 229-264. when he sees the arms, which equalled those of Hercules in the massiveness of the solid muscles, hang weak and exhausted. The daughter of Tyndarus weeps, too, as she beholds in her mirror the wrinkles of old age, and enquires of herself why it is that she was twice ravished. Thou, Time, the consumer of all things, and thou, hateful Old Age, together destroy all things; and, by degrees ye consume each thing, decayed by the teeth of age, with a slow death.

“These things too, which we call elements, are not of unchanging duration; pay attention, and I will teach you what changes they undergo.

“The everlasting universe contains four elementary bodies. Two of these, namely, earth and water, are heavy, and are borne downwards by their weight; and as many are devoid of weight, and air, and fire still purer than air, nothing pressing them, seek the higher regions. Although these are separated in space, yet all things are made from them, and are resolved into them. Both the earth dissolving distils into flowing water; the water, too, evaporating, departs in the breezes and the air; its weight being removed again, the most subtle air shoots upwards into the fires of the æther on high. Thence do they return back again, and the same order is unravelled; for fire becoming gross, passes into dense air; this changes into water, and earth is formed of the water made dense. Nor does its own form remain to each; and nature, the renewer of all things, re-forms one shape from another. And, believe me, in this universe so vast, nothing perishes; but it varies and changes its appearance; and to begin to be something different from what it was before, is called being born; and to cease to be the same thing, is to be said to die. Whereas, perhaps, those things are transferred hither, and these things thither; yet, in the whole, all things ever exist.

“For my part, I cannot believe that anything lasts long under the same form. ’Twas thus, ye ages, that ye came down to the iron from the gold; ’tis thus, that thou hast so often changed the lot of various places. I have beheld that as sea, which once had been the most solid earth. I have seen land made from the sea; and far away from the ocean the sea-shells lay, xv. 264-285. and old anchors were found there on the tops of the mountains. That which was a plain, a current of water has made into a valley, and by a flood the mountain has been levelled into a plain; the ground that was swampy is parched with dry sand; and places which have endured drought, are wet with standing pools. Here nature has opened fresh springs, but there she has shut them up; and rivers have burst forth, aroused by ancient earthquakes; or, vanishing, they have subsided.

“Thus, after the Lycus14 has been swallowed up by a chasm in the earth, it burst forth far thence, and springs up afresh at another mouth. Thus the great Erasinus15 is at one time swallowed up, and then flowing with its stream concealed, is cast up again on the Argive plains. They say, too, that the Mysus, tired of its spring and of its former banks, now flows in another direction, as the Caicus. The Amenanus,16 too, at one time flows, rolling along the Sicilian sands, and at another is dry, its springs being stopped up. Formerly, the water of the Anigros17 was used for drinking; it now pours out water which you would decline to touch; since, (unless all credit must be denied to the poets), the Centaurs, the double-limbed mortals, there washed the wounds which the bow of the club-bearing Hercules had made. And what besides? Does not the Hypanis18 too, which before was sweet, rising from the Scythian mountains, become impregnated xv. 285-303. with bitter salts? Antissa,19 Pharos,20 and Phœnician Tyre,21 were once surrounded by waves; no one of these is now an island. The ancient inhabitants had Leucas22 annexed to the continent; now the sea surrounds it. Zancle,23 too, is said to have been united to Italy, until the sea cut off the neighbouring region, and repelled the land with its waves flowing between.

“Should you seek Helice and Buris,24 cities of Achaia, you will find them beneath the waves, and the sailors are still wont to point out these levelled towns, with their walls buried under water.

“There is a high hill near Trœzen of Pittheus, without any trees, once a very level surface of a plain, but now a hill; for (frightful to tell) the raging power25 of the winds, pent up in dark caverns, desiring to find some vent and having long struggled in vain to enjoy a freer air, as there was no opening in all their prison and it was not pervious to their blasts, swelled out the xv. 303-319. extended earth, just as the breath of the mouth is wont to inflate a bladder, or the hide26 stripped from the two-horned goat. That swelling remained on the spot, and still preserves the appearance of a high hill, and has grown hard in length of time. Though many other instances may occur, either heard of by, or known to, yourselves, yet I will mention a few more. And besides, does not water, as well, both produce and receive new forms? In the middle of the day, thy waters, horned Ammon,27 are frozen, at the rising and at the setting of the sun they are warm. On applying its waters, Athamanis28 is said to kindle wood when the waning moon has shrunk into her smallest orb. The Ciconians have a river,29 which when drunk of, turns the entrails into stone, and lays a covering of marble on things that are touched by it. The Crathis30 and the Sybaris adjacent to it, in our own country, make the hair similar in hue to amber and gold.

“And, what is still more wonderful, there are some streams which are able to change, not only bodies, but even the mind. By whom has not Salmacis,31 with its obscene waters, been xv. 319-337. heard of? Who has not heard, too, of that lake of Æthiopia,32 of which, if any body drinks with his mouth, he either becomes mad, or falls into a sleep wondrous for its heaviness? Whoever quenches his thirst from the Clitorian spring33 hates wine, and in his sobriety takes pleasure in pure water. Whether it is that there is a virtue in the water, the opposite of heating wine, or whether, as the natives tell us, after the son of Amithaon,34 by his charms and his herbs, had delivered the raving daughters of Prœtus from the Furies, he threw the medicines for the mind in that stream; and a hatred of wine remained in those waters.

“The river Lyncestis35 flows unlike that stream in its effect; for as soon as any one has drunk of it with immoderate throat, he reels, just as if he had been drinking unmixed wine. There is a place in Arcadia, (the ancients called it Pheneos,)36 suspicious for the twofold nature of its water. Stand in dread of it at night; if drunk of in the night time, it is injurious; in the daytime, it is drunk of without any ill effects. So lakes and rivers have, some, one property, and some another. There was a time when Ortygia37 was floating on the waves, xv. 337-366. now it is fixed. The Argo dreaded the Symplegades tossed by the assaults of the waves dashing against them; they now stand immoveable, and resist the attacks of the winds.

“Nor will Ætna, which burns with its sulphureous furnaces, always be a fiery mountain; nor yet was it always fiery. For, if the earth is an animal, and is alive, and has lungs that breathe forth flames in many a place, it may change the passages for its breathing, and oft as it is moved, may close these caverns and open others; or if the light winds are shut up in its lowermost caverns, and strike rocks against rocks, and matter that contains the elements of flame, and it takes fire at the concussion, the winds once calmed, the caverns will become cool; or, if the bituminous qualities take fire, or yellow sulphur is being dried up with a smouldering smoke, still, when the earth shall no longer give food and unctuous fuel to the flame, its energies being exhausted in length of time, and when nutriment shall be wanting to its devouring nature, it will not be able to endure hunger, and left destitute, it will desert its flames.

“The story is, that in the far Northern Pallene38 there are persons, who are wont to have their bodies covered with light feathers, when they have nine times entered the Tritonian lake. For my part I do not believe it; but the Scythian women, as well, having their limbs sprinkled with poison, are said to employ the same arts. But if we are to give any credit39 to things proved by experience, do you not see that whatever bodies are consumed by length of time, or by dissolving heat, are changed into small animals? Come too, bury some choice bullocks just slain, it is a thing well ascertained by experience, that flower-gathering bees are produced xv. 366-389. promiscuously from the putrefying entrails. These, after the manner of their producers, inhabit the fields, delight in toil, and labour in hope. The warlike steed,40 buried in the ground, is the source of the hornet. If you take off the bending claws from the crab of the sea-shore, and bury the rest in the earth, a scorpion will come forth from the part so buried, and will threaten with its crooked tail.

“The silkworms, too, that are wont to cover the leaves with their white threads, a thing observable by husbandmen, change their forms into that of the deadly moth.41 Mud contains seed that generate green frogs; and it produces them deprived of feet;42 soon it gives them legs adapted for swimming; and that the same may be fitted for long leaps, the length of the hinder ones exceeds that of the fore legs. And it is not a cub43 which the bear produces at the moment of birth, but a mass of flesh hardly alive. By licking, the mother forms it into limbs, and brings it into a shape, such as she herself has. Do you not see, that the offspring of the honey bees, which the hexagonal cell conceals, are produced without limbs, and that they assume both feet and wings only after a time. Unless he knew it was the case, could any one suppose it possible that the bird of Juno, which carries stars on its tail, and the eagle, the armour-bearer of Jove, and the doves of Cytherea, and all the race of birds, are produced from the middle portion of an egg? There are xv. 389-414. some who believe that human marrow changes into a serpent,44 when the spine has putrefied in the enclosed sepulchre.

“But these which I have named derive their origin from other particulars; there is one bird which renews and reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phœnix. It lives not on corn or grass, but on drops of frankincense, and the juices of the amomum. This bird, when it has completed the five ages of its life, with its talons and its crooked beak constructs for itself a nest in the branches of a holm-oak, or on the top of a quivering palm. As soon as it has strewed in this cassia and ears of sweet spikenard and bruised cinnamon with yellow myrrh, it lays itself down on it, and finishes its life in the midst of odours. They say that thence, from the body of its parent, is reproduced a little Phœnix, which is destined to live as many years. When time has given it strength, and it is able to bear the weight, it lightens the branches of the lofty tree of the burden of the nest, and dutifully carries both its own cradle and the sepulchre of its parent; and, having reached the city of Hyperion through the yielding air, it lays it down before the sacred doors in the temple of Hyperion.

“And if there is any wondrous novelty in these things, still more may we be surprised that the hyæna changes its sex,45 and that the one which has just now, as a female, submitted to the embrace of the male, is now become a male itself. That animal, too, which feeds upon46 the winds and the air, immediately assumes, from its contact, any colour whatever. Conquered India presented her lynxes to Bacchus crowned with clusters; and, as they tell, whatever the bladder of these discharges xv. 414-444. is changed into stone,47 and hardens by contact with the air. So coral, too, as soon as it has come up to the air becomes hard; beneath the waves it was a soft plant.48 “The day will fail me, and Phœbus will bathe his panting steeds in the deep sea, before I can embrace in my discourse all things that are changed into new forms. So in lapse of time, we see nations change, and these gaining strength, while those are falling. So Troy was great, both in her riches and her men, and for ten years could afford so much blood; whereas, now laid low, she only shows her ancient ruins, and, instead of her wealth, she points at the tombs of her ancestors. Sparta was famed;49 great Mycenæ flourished; so, too, the citadel of Cecrops, and that of Amphion. Now Sparta is a contemptible spot; lofty Mycenæ is laid low. What now is Thebes, the city of Œdipus, but a mere story? What remains of Athens, the city of Pandion, but its name?

“Now, too, there is a report that Dardanian Rome is rising; which, close to the waters of Tiber that rises in the Apennines, is laying the foundations of her greatness beneath a vast structure. She then, in her growth, is changing her form, and will one day be the mistress of the boundless earth. So they say that the soothsayers, and the oracles, revealers of destiny, declare; and, so far as I recollect, Helenus, the son of Priam, said to Æneas, as he was lamenting, and in doubt as to his safety, when now the Trojan state was sinking, ‘Son of a Goddess, if thou dost thyself well understand the presentiment of my mind, Troy shall not, thou being preserved, entirely fall. The flames and the sword shall afford thee a passage. Thou shalt go, and, together with thee, thou shalt bear ruined Pergamus; until a foreign soil, more friendly than thy native land, shall be the lot of Troy and thyself. Even now do I see that our Phrygian xv. 444-475. posterity are destined to build a city, so great as neither now exists, nor will exist, nor has been seen in former times. Through a long lapse of ages, other distinguished men shall make it powerful, but one born50 of the blood of Iülus shall make it the mistress of the world. After the earth shall have enjoyed his presence, the æthereal abodes shall gain him, and heaven shall be his destination.’ Remembering it, I call to mind that Helenus prophesied this to Æneas, who bore the Penates from Troy; and I rejoice that my kindred walls are rising apace, and that to such good purpose for the Phrygians the Pelasgians conquered.

“But that we may not range afar with steeds that forget to hasten to the goal; the heavens, and whatever there is beneath them, and the earth, and whatever is upon it, change their form. We too, who are a portion of the universe, (since we are not only bodies, but are fleeting souls as well, and can enter into beasts as our abode, and be hidden within the breasts of the cattle), should allow those bodies which may contain the souls of our parents, or of our brothers, or of those allied with us by some tie, or of men at all events, to be safe and unmolested; and we ought not to fill51 our entrails with victuals fit for Thyestes. How greatly he disgraces himself, how in his impiety does he prepare himself for shedding human blood, who cuts the throat of the calf with the knife, and gives a deaf ear to its lowings! or who can kill the kid as it sends forth cries like those of a child; or who can feed upon the bird to which he himself has given food. How much is there wanting in these instances for downright criminality? A short step only is there thence to it!

“Let the bull plough, or let it owe its death to aged years; let the sheep furnish us a defence against the shivering Boreas; let the well-fed she-goats afford their udders to be pressed by the hand. Away with your nets, and your springes and snares and treacherous contrivances; deceive not the bird with the bird-limed twig; deceive not the deer with the dreaded feather xv. 475-478. foils;52 and do not conceal the barbed hooks in the deceitful bait. IfA any thing is noxious, destroy it, but even then only destroy it. Let your appetites abstain from it for food, and let them consume a more befitting sustenance.”

EXPLANATION.

The Poet having now exhausted nearly all the transformations which ancient history afforded him, proceeds to enlist in the number some of the real phenomena of nature, together with some imaginary ones. As Pythagoras was considered to have pursued metaphysical studies more deeply, perhaps, than any other of the ancient philosophers, Ovid could not have introduced a personage more fitted to discuss these subjects. Having travelled through Asia, it is supposed that Pythagoras passed into Italy, and settled at Crotona, to promulgate there the philosophical principles which he had acquired in his travels through Egypt and Asia Minor.

The Pythagorean philosophy was well-suited for the purpose of mingling its doctrines with the fabulous narratives of the Poet, as it consisted, in great part, of the doctrine of an endless series of transformations. Its main features may be reduced to two general heads; the first of which was the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, or continual transmigration of souls from one body into another. Pythagoras is supposed not to have originated this doctrine, but to have received it from the Egyptians, by whose priesthood there is little doubt that it was generally promulgated. Some writers have suggested that this transmigration was only taught by Pythagoras in a metaphorical sense; as, for instance, when he said that the souls of men were transferred to beasts, it was only to teach us that irregular passions render us brutes; on examination, however, we shall find that there is no ground to doubt that he intended his doctrines to be understood according to the literal meaning of his words; indeed, the more strongly to enforce his doctrine by a personal illustration, he was in the habit of promulgating that he remembered to have been Euphorbus, at the time of the siege of Troy, and that his soul, after several other transmigrations, had at last entered the body which it then inhabited, under the name of Pythagoras. In consequence of this doctrine, it was a favourite tenet of his followers to abstain from eating the flesh of animals, for fear of unconsciously devouring some friend or kinsman.

The second feature of this philosophy consisted in the elucidation of the changes that happen in the physical world, a long series of which is here set forth by the Poet; truth being mingled at random with fiction. While some of his facts are based upon truth, others seem to have only emanated from the fertile invention of the travellers of those days; of the latter kind are the stories of the river of Thrace, whose waters petrified those who drank of it; the fountains that kindled wood, that caused a change of sex, that created an aversion to wine, that transformed men into birds, and fables of a similar nature; such, too, are those stories which were generally believed by even the educated men of antiquity, xv. 478-499. but which the wisdom of modern times has long since shown to be utterly baseless, as, for instance, that bees grew from the entrails of the ox, and hornets from those of the horse. The principle of Pythagoras, that everything is continually changing and that nothing perishes, is true to a certain extent; but in his times, and even in those of Ovid, philosophy was not sufficiently advanced to speak with precision on the subject, and to discover the true boundary between truth and fiction.

FABLES IV. V. AND VI.

Egeria, the wife of Numa, is inconsolable after his death, and is changed into a fountain. The horses of Hippolytus being frightened by a sea-monster, he is killed by being thrown from his chariot, and becomes a God, under the name of Virbius. Tages, the Diviner, arises out of a clod of earth. The lance of Romulus is changed into a cornel-tree. Cippus becomes horned, and goes into voluntary banishment, rather than his country should be deprived of its liberty by his means.

With his mind cultivated with precepts such as these and others, they say that Numa returned to his country, and, being voluntarily invited,53 received the sovereignty of the Roman people. Blest with a Nymph for his wife, and the Muses for his guides, he taught the rites of sacrifice, and brought over to the arts of peace a race inured to savage warfare. After, full of years, he had finished his reign and his life, the Latian matrons and the people and the Senators lamented Numa at his death. But his wife, leaving the city, lay hid, concealed in the thick groves of the valley of Aricia, and by her groans and lamentations disturbed the sacred rites of Diana, brought thither by Orestes. Ah! how oft did the Nymphs of the grove and of the lake entreat her not to do so, and utter soothing words. Ah! how often did the hero, the son of Theseus, say to her as she wept, “Put an end to it; for thy lot is not the only one to be lamented. Consider the like calamities of others, thou wilt then bear thine own better. And would that an example, not my own, could lighten thy grief! yet even my own can do so.”

“I suppose, in discourse it has reached thy ears that a certain Hippolytus met with his death through the credulity of his father, by the deceit of his wicked step-mother. Thou wilt xv. 499-531. wonder, and I shall hardly be able to prove it; but yet I am he. In former times, the daughter of Pasiphaë, having tempted me in vain, pretended that I wished to defile the couch of my father, a thing that she herself wished to do; and having turned the accusation against me, (whether it was more through dread of discovery, or through mortification at her repulse) she charged me. And my father expelled me, thus innocent, from the city, and as I went he uttered imprecations against my head, with ruthless prayers. I was going to Trœzen, the city of Pittheus,54 in my flying chariot, and I was now proceeding along the shores of the Corinthian gulf, when the sea was aroused, and an enormous mass of waters seemed to bend and to grow in the form of a mountain, and to send forth a roaring noise, and to burst asunder at its very summit. Thence, the waves being divided, a horned bull was sent forth, and erect in the light air as far as his breast, he vomited forth a quantity of sea-water from his nostrils and his open mouth. The hearts of my attendants quailed; my mind remained without fear, intent only on my exile, when the fierce horses turned their necks towards the sea, and were terrified, with ears erect; and they were alarmed with dread of the monster, and precipitated the chariot over the lofty rocks. I struggled, with unavailing hand, to guide the bridle covered with white foam, and, throwing myself backwards, I pulled back the loosened reins. And, indeed, the madness of my steeds would not have exceeded that strength of mine, had not the wheel, by running against a stump, been broken and disjoined just where it turns round on the long axle-tree.

“I was hurled from my chariot; and, the reins entwined around my limbs, you might have seen my palpitating entrails dragged, my sinews fasten upon the stump, my limbs partly torn to pieces and partly left behind, being caught by various obstacles, my bones in their breaking emit a loud noise, and my exhausted breath become exhaled, and not a part in my body which you could recognize; and the whole of me formed but one continued wound. And canst thou, Nymph, or dost thou venture to compare thy misfortune to mine? I have visited, too, the realms deprived of light, and I have bathed my lacerated body in xv. 531-561. the waves of Phlegethon.55 Nor could life have been restored me, but through the powerful remedies of the son of Apollo. After I had received it, through potent herbs and the Pæonian aid,56 much against the will of Pluto, then Cynthia threw around me thick clouds, that I might not, by my presence, increase his anger at this favour; and that I might be safe, and be seen in security, she gave me a more aged appearance, and left me no features that could be recognized. For a long time she was doubtful whether she should give me Crete or Delos for me to possess. Delos and Crete being abandoned, she placed me here, and, at the same time, she ordered me to lay aside my name, which might have reminded me of my steeds, and she said, ‘Thou, the same who wast Hippolytus, be thou now Virbius.’57 From that time I have inhabited this grove; and, as one of the lower Gods, I lie concealed under the protection of my mistress, and to her am I devoted.”58

But yet the misfortunes of others were not able to alleviate the grief of Egeria; and, throwing herself down at the base of the hill, she dissolved into tears; until, moved by her affection as she grieved, the sister of Phœbus formed a cool fountain from her body, and dissolved her limbs in ever-flowing waters.

But this new circumstance surprised the Nymphs; and the son of the Amazon59 was astonished, in no other manner than as when the Etrurian ploughman beheld the fate-revealing clod in the midst of the fields move at first of its own accord and no one touching it, and afterwards assume a human form, and lose that of earth, and open its new-made mouth with the decrees of future destiny. The natives called him Tages. He was the first to teach the Etrurian nation to foretell future events.

Or, as when Romulus once saw his lance, fixed in the xv. 561-598. Palatine hill, suddenly shoot forth; which now stood there with a root newly-formed, and not with the iron point driven in; and, now no longer as a dart, but as a tree with limber twigs, it sent forth, for the admiring spectators, a shade that was not looked for.

Or, as when Cippus beheld his horns in the water of the stream, (for he did see them) and, believing that there was a false representation in the reflection, often returning his fingers to his forehead, he touched what he saw. And now, no longer condemning his own eyesight, he stood still, as he was returning victorious from the conquest of the enemy; and raising his eyes towards heaven, and his hands in the same direction, he exclaimed, “Ye Gods above! whatever is portended by this prodigy, if it is auspicious, then be it auspicious to my country and to the people of Quirinus; but if unfortunate, be it so for myself.” And then he made atonement at the grassy altars built of green turf, with odoriferous fires, and presented wine in bowls, and consulted the panting entrails of slaughtered sheep what the meaning of it was. Soon as the soothsayer of the Etrurian nation had inspected them, he beheld in them the great beginnings of future events, but still not clearly. But when he raised his searching eyes from the entrails of the sheep, to the horns of Cippus, he said, “Hail, O king! for thee, Cippus, thee and thy horns shall this place and the Latian towers obey. Only do thou lay aside all delay; hasten to enter the gates wide open; thus the fates command thee. For, once received within the City, thou shalt be king, and thou shalt safely enjoy a lasting sceptre.” He retreated backwards, and turning his stern visage away from the walls of the City, he exclaimed, “Far, O far away may the Gods drive such omens! Much more righteously shall I pass my life in exile, than if the Capitol were to see me a king.”

Thus he says; and forthwith he convokes the people and the dignified Senate; but first, he veils his horns with laurel that betokens peace, and he stands upon a mound raised by his brave soldiers; and praying to the Gods after the ancient manner, “Behold!” says he, “one is here who will be king, if you do not expel him from the City. I will tell you who he is by a sign, and not by name. He wears horns on his forehead; the augur predicts to you, that if he enters the City, he shall give you laws as his slaves. He, indeed, was able to xv. 598-621. enter the open gates, but I have opposed him; although no one is more nearly allied with him than myself. Forbid your City to this man, ye Romans, or, if he shall deserve it, bind him with heavy fetters; or else end your fears by the death of the destined tyrant.”

As the murmur which arises among the groves of the slender pine,60 when the furious East wind whistles among them, or as that which the waves of the ocean produce, if any one hears them from afar, such is the noise of the crowd. But yet amid the confused words of the shouting multitude, one cry is distinguished, “Which is he?” And then they examine the foreheads, and seek the predicted horns. Cippus again addresses them: “Him whom you require, ye now have;” and, despite of the people, throwing the chaplet from his head, he exhibits his temples, remarkable for two horns. All cast down their eyes, and utter groans, and (who would have supposed it?) they unwillingly look upon that head famed for its merits. And no longer suffering it to be deprived of its honours, they place upon it the festive chaplet. But the nobles, Cippus, since thou art forbidden to enter the city, give thee as much land, as a mark of honour, as thou canst, with the oxen yoked to the pressed plough, make the circuit of from the rising of the sun to its setting. They carve, too, the horns, imitating their wondrous form, on the door-posts adorned with brass, there to remain for long ages.

EXPLANATION.

Ovid, following the notion that was generally entertained of the wisdom of Numa, pretends that before he was elected to the sovereignty he went to Crotona, for the purpose of studying under Pythagoras; but he is guilty of a considerable anachronism in this instance, as Pythagoras was not born till very many years after the time of Numa. According to Livy, Pythagoras flourished in the time of Servius Tullius, the sixth Roman king, about one hundred and fifty years after Numa. Modern authors are of opinion that upwards of two hundred years intervened between the days of Numa and Pythagoras. Besides, Dionysius of Halicarnassus distinctly asserts that the city of Crotona was only built in the fourth year of the reign of Numa Pompilius.

Numa is said to have been in the habit of retiring to the Arician grove, to consult the Nymph Egeria upon the laws which he was about to promulgate for the benefit of his subjects. It is probable, that to ensure their observance the more effectually, he wished the people to believe that his enactments were compiled under the inspection of one who partook of the immortal nature, and that in so doing he followed the example of previous lawgivers. Zamolxis pretended that the laws which he gave to the Scythians were dictated to him by his attendant genius or spirit. The first Minos affirmed that Jupiter was the author of the ordinances which he gave to the people of Crete, while Lycurgus attributed his to Apollo. It is not improbable that in this they imitated the example of Moses, a tradition of whose reception of the laws on Mount Sinai they may have received from the people of Phœnicia.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus has an interesting passage relative to Numa, which throws some light upon his alleged intercourse with the Nymph Egeria. His words are— ‘The Romans affirm that Numa was never engaged in any warlike expedition; but that he passed his whole reign in profound peace: that his first care was to encourage piety and justice in his dominions, and to civilize his people by good and wholesome laws. His profound skill in governing made him pass for being inspired, and gave rise to many fabulous stories. Some have said that he had secret interviews with the Nymph Egeria; others, that he frequently consulted one of the Muses, and was instructed by her in the art of government. Numa was desirous to confirm the people in this opinion; but because some hesitated to believe his bare affirmation, and others went so far as to call his alleged converse with the Deities a fiction, he took an opportunity to give them such proofs of it, that the most sceptical among them should have no room left for suspicion. This he effected in the following manner. He one day invited several of the nobles to his palace, and showed them the plainness of the apartments, where no rich furniture was to be seen, nor any thing like an attempt at splendour; and how even the most ordinary necessaries were wanting for anything like a great entertainment; after which, he dismissed them with an invitation to come to sup with him on the same night. At the appointed hour his guests arrived; they were received on stately couches; the tables were decked with a variety of plate, and were loaded with the most exquisite dainties. The guests were struck with the sumptuousness and profusion of the entertainment, and considering how impossible it was for any man to have made such preparations in so short a time, were persuaded that his communication with heaven was not a fiction, and that he must have had the aid of the celestial powers to do things of a nature so extraordinary. ‘But,’ as the same author says, ‘those who were not so ready at adopting fabulous narratives as a part of history, say that it was the policy of Numa which led him to feign a conversation with the Nymph Egeria, to make his laws respected by his people, and that he thence followed the example of the Greek sages, who adopted the same method of enforcing the authority of their laws with the people.’

The Romans were so persuaded of the fact of Numa’s conferences with the Nymph Egeria, that they went into the grove of Aricia to seek her; but finding nothing but a fountain in the spot which he used to frequent, they promulgated the story of the transformation of the Nymph. St. Augustin, speaking on this subject, says that Numa made use of the waters of that fountain in the divination which was performed by the aid of water, and was called Hydromancy.

Theseus having left Ariadne in the isle of Naxos, flattered himself with the hopes of marrying her sister Phædra. Deucalion, succeeding Minos in Crete immediately after his death, sent Phædra to Athens. On arriving there, she fell in love with Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, who had been brought up at Trœzen by Pittheus. As she did not dare to request of Theseus that his son might be brought from the court of Pittheus, she built a temple to Venus near Trœzen, that she might the more frequently have the opportunity of seeing Hippolytus, and called it by the name of Hippolyteum. According to Euripides, this youth was wise, chaste, and an enemy to all voluptuousness. He spent his time in hunting and chariot racing, with other exercises which formed the pursuits of youths of high station. According to Plutarch, it was at the time when Theseus was a prisoner in Epirus, that Phædra took the opportunity of disclosing to Hippolytus the violence of her passion for him. Her declaration being but ill received, she grew desperate on his refusal to comply with her desires, and was about to commit self-destruction, when her nurse suggested the necessity of revenging the virtuous disdain of the youth.

Theseus having been liberated by Hercules, Phædra, being fearful lest the intrigue should come to his knowledge, hanged herself, having first written a letter to inform him that she could not survive an attempt which Hippolytus had made on her virtue. Plutarch, Servius and Hyginus, following Euripides, give this account of her death. But Seneca, in his Hippolytus, says that she only appeared before her husband in extreme grief, holding a sword in her hand to signify the violence which Hippolytus had offered her. On this, Theseus implored the assistance of Neptune, who sent a monster out of the sea, to frighten his horses, as he was driving along the sea-shore: on which, they took fright, and throwing him from his chariot, he was killed. It has been suggested that the true meaning of this is, that Theseus having ordered his son to come and justify himself, he made so much haste that his horses ran away with him; and his chariot being dashed over the rocks, he was killed.

Seneca also differs from the other writers, in saying that Phædra did not put herself to death till she had heard of the catastrophe of Hippolytus, on which she stabbed herself. The people of Trœzen, regretting his loss, decreed him divine honours, built a temple, and appointed a priest to offer yearly sacrifices to him. Euripides says, that the young women of Trœzen, when about to be married, cut off their hair and carried it to the temple of Hippolytus. It was also promulgated that the Gods had translated him to the heavens, where he was changed into the Constellation, called by the Latins ‘Auriga,’ or ‘the Charioteer.’ Later authors, whom Ovid here follows, added, that Æsculapius restored him to life, and that he afterwards appeared in Italy under the name of Virbius. This story was probably invented as a source of profit by the priesthood, who were desirous to find some good reason for introducing his worship into the Arician grove near Rome. This story is mentioned by Apollodorus, who quotes the author of the Naupactan verses in favour of it, and by the Scholiasts of Euripides and Pindar.

The ancient Etrurians were great adepts in the art of divination; their favourite method of exercising which was by the inspection of the entrails of beasts, and the observation of the flight of birds; and from them, as we learn from Cicero in his book on Divination, the system spread over the whole of Italy. Tages is supposed to have been the first who taught this art, and he wrote treatises upon it, which, according to Plutarch, were quoted by ancient authors. It not being known whence he came, or who were his parents, he was called, in the language of the poets, a son of the earth. Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of him as being said to have sprung out of the earth in Etruria.

Ovid next makes a passing allusion to the spear of Romulus, which, when thrown by him from the Mount Aventine towards the Capitol, sticking in the ground was converted into a tree, which immediately put forth leaves. This prodigy was taken for a presage of the future greatness of Rome: and Plutarch, in his life of Romulus, says that so long as this tree stood, the Republic flourished. It began to wither in the time of the first civil war; and Julius Cæsar having afterwards ordered a building to be erected near where it stood, the workmen cutting some of its roots in sinking the foundations, it soon after died. It is hardly probable that a cornel tree would stand in a thronged city for nearly seven hundred years; and it is, therefore, most likely, that care was taken to renovate it from time to time, by planting slips from the former tree.

The story of Genucius Cippus is one of those strange fables with which the Roman history is diversified. Valerius Maximus gives the following account of it. He says that Cippus, going one day out of Rome, suddenly found that something which resembled horns was growing out of his forehead. Surprised at an event so extraordinary, he consulted the augurs, who said that he would be chosen king, if he ever entered the city again. As the royal power was abhorred in Rome, he preferred a voluntary banishment to revisiting Rome on those terms. Struck with this heroism, the Romans erected a brazen statue with horns over the gate by which he departed, and it was afterwards called ‘Porta raudusculana,’ because the ancient Latin name of brass was ‘raudus,’ ‘rodus,’ or ‘rudus.’ The fact is, however, as Ovid represents it, that Cippus was not going out of Rome, but returning to it, when the prodigy happened; he having been to convey assistance to the Consul Valerius. The Senate also conferred certain lands on Cippus, as a reward for his patriotism. He lived about two hundred and forty years before the Christian era. Pliny the Elder considers the story of the horns of Cippus as much a fable as that of Actæon. It appears, however, that the account of the horns may have possibly been founded on fact, as excrescences resembling them have appeared on the bodies of individuals. Bayle makes mention of a girl of Palermo, who had little horns all over her body, like those of a young calf. In the Ashmolean museum at Oxford, a substance much resembling the horn of a goat is shown, which is said to have sprung from the forehead of a female named Mary Davis, whose likeness is there shown. The excrescence was most probably produced by a deranged secretion of the hair, and something of a similar nature may perhaps have befallen Genucius Cippus, which, of course, would be made the xv. 622-641. most of in those ages of superstition. Valerius Maximus, with all his credulity, does not say that they were real horns that made their appearance, but that they were ‘just like horns.’

It is not improbable that the story originally was, that Cippus, on his return to Rome, dreamt that he had horns on his head, and that having consulted the augurs, and received the answer mentioned by Ovid, he preferred to suffer exile, rather than enslave his country; and that, in length of time, the more wonderful part of the story was added to it.

FABLE VII.

Rome being wasted by a pestilence, the Delphian oracle is consulted; and the answer is given, that to cause it to cease Æsculapius must be brought to Rome. On this, ambassadors are sent to Epidaurus to demand the God. The people refuse to part with him; but he appears to one of the Romans in a dream, and consents to go. On his arrival at Rome the contagion ceases, and a Temple is built in his honour.

Relate, now, ye Muses, the guardian Deities of poets (for you know, and remote antiquity conceals it not from you), whence it is that the Island surrounded by the channel of the Tiber introduced the son of Coronis into the sacred rites of the City of Romulus. A dire contagion had once infected the Latian air, and the pale bodies were deformed by a consumption that dried up the blood. When, wearied with so many deaths, they found that mortal endeavours availed nothing, and that the skill of physicians had no effect, they sought the aid of heaven, and they repaired to Delphi which occupies the centre spot of the world, the oracle of Phœbus, and entreated that he would aid their distressed circumstances by a response productive of health, and put an end to the woes of a City so great. Both the spot, and the laurels, and the quivers which it has, shook at the same moment, and the tripod61 gave this answer from the recesses of the shrine, and struck with awe their astonished breasts:— “What here thou dost seek, O Roman, thou mightst have sought in a nearer spot: and now seek it in a nearer spot; thou hast no need of Apollo to diminish thy grief, but of the son of Apollo. Go with a good omen, and invite my son.”

After the prudent Senate had received the commands of the xv. 641-677. Deity, they enquired what city the youthful son of Phœbus inhabited; and they sent some to reach the coasts of Epidaurus62 with the winds. Soon as those sent had reached them in the curving ship, they repaired to the council and the Grecian elders, and besought them to grant them the Divinity, who by his presence could put an end to the mortality of the Ausonian nation; for that so the unerring response had directed. Their opinions were divided, and differed; and some thought that aid ought not to be refused. Many refused it, and advised them not to part with their own protector, and to give up their own guardian Deity. While they were deliberating, twilight had now expelled the waning day, and the shadow of the earth had brought darkness over the world; when, in thy sleep, the saving God seemed, O Roman, to be standing before thy couch; but just as he is wont to be in his temple; and, holding a rustic staff in his left hand, he seemed to be stroking the long hair of his beard with his right, and to utter such words as these from his kindly breast— “Lay aside thy fears; I will come, and I will leave these my statues. Only observe now this serpent, which with its folds entwines around this staff, and accurately mark it with thine eyes, that thou mayst be able to know it again. Into this shall I be changed; but I shall be greater, and I shall appear to be of a size as great as that into which heavenly bodies ought to be transformed.”

Forthwith, with these words, the God departs; and with his words and the God sleep departs, and genial light follows upon the departure of sleep. The following morn has now dispersed the starry fires; uncertain what to do, the nobles meet together in the sumptuous temple of the God then sought, and beseech him to indicate, by celestial tokens, in what spot he would wish to abide. Hardly have they well ceased, when the God, all glittering with gold, in the form of a serpent, with crest erect, sends forth a hissing, as a notice of his approach; and in his coming, he shakes both his statue, the altars, the doors, the marble pavement, and the gilded roof, and as far as the breast he stands erect in the midst of the temple, and rolls around his eyes that sparkle with fire. The frightened multitude is alarmed; the priest, having his chaste hair bound with a white fillet, recognizes the Deity and exclaims, “The God! xv. 677-706. Behold the God! Whoever you are that are present, be of good omen, both with your words and your feelings. Mayst thou, most beauteous one, be beheld to our advantage; and mayst thou aid the nations that perform thy sacred rites.” Whoever are present, adore the Deity as bidden; and all repeat the words of the priest over again; and the descendants of Æneas give a pious omen, both with their feelings, and in their words. To these the God shows favour; and with crest erected, he gives a hiss, a sure token, repeated thrice with his vibrating tongue. Then he glides down the polished steps,63 and turns back his head, and, about to depart, he looks back upon his ancient altars, and salutes his wonted abode and the temple that so long he has inhabited. Then, with his vast bulk, he glides along the ground covered with the strewn flowers, and coils his folds, and through the midst of the city repairs to the harbour protected by its winding quay.

Here he stops; and seeming to dismiss his train, and the dutiful attendance of the accompanying crowd, with a placid countenance, he places his body in the Ausonian ship. It is sensible of the weight of the God; and the ship now laden with the Divinity for its freight, the descendants of Æneas rejoice; and a bull having first been slain on the sea-shore, they loosen the twisted cables of the bark bedecked with garlands. A gentle breeze has now impelled the ship. The God is conspicuous aloft,64 and pressing upon the crooked stern with his neck laid upon it, he looks down upon the azure waters; and with the gentle Zephyrs along the Ionian sea, on the sixth rising of the daughter of Pallas, he makes Italy, and is borne along the Lacinian shores, ennobled by the temple of the Goddess Juno, and the Scylacean65 coasts. He leaves Iapygia behind, and flies from the Amphissian66 rocks with the oars on the left side; on the right side he passes by the steep Ceraunia, and Romechium, and Caulon,67 and Narycia, and he crosses xv. 706-718. the sea and the straits of the Sicilian Pelorus, and the abodes of the king the grandson of Hippotas, and the mines of Temesa; and then he makes for Leucosia,68 and the rose-beds of the warm Pæstum. Then he coasts by Capreæ,69 and the promontory of Minerva, and the hills ennobled with the Surrentine70 vines, and the city of Hercules,71 and Stabiæ,72 and Parthenope made for retirement, and after it the temple of the Cumæan Sibyl. Next, the warm springs73 are passed by, and Linternum,74 that bears mastick trees; and then Vulturnus,75 that carries much sand along with its tide, and Sinuessa, that abounds with snow-white snakes,76 and the pestilential Minturnæ,77 and she for whom78 her foster-child erected the tomb, and the abode of Antiphates,79 and Trachas,80 surrounded by the marsh, and the land of Circe, and Antium,81 with its rocky coast.

xv. 719-744.

After the sailors have steered the sail-bearing ship hither (for now the sea is aroused), the Deity unfolds his coils, and gliding with many a fold and in vast coils, he enters the temple of his parent, that skirts the yellow shore. The sea now becalmed, the God of Epidaurus leaves the altars of his sire; and having enjoyed the hospitality of the Deity, thus related to him, he furrows the sands of the sea-shore with the dragging of his rattling scales, and reclining against the helm of the ship, he places his head upon the lofty stern; until he comes to Castrum,82 and the sacred abodes of Lavinium, and the mouths of the Tiber. Hither, all the people indiscriminately, a crowd both of matrons and of men, rush to meet him; they, too, Vesta! who tend thy fires; and with joyous shouts they welcome the God. And where the swift ship is steered through the tide running out, altars being erected in a line, the frankincense crackles along the banks on either side, and perfumes the air with its smoke; the felled victim too, with its blood makes warm the knives thrust into it.

And now he has entered Rome, the sovereign of the world. The serpent rises erect, and lifts his neck that reclines against the top of the mast, and looks around for a habitation suited for himself. There is a spot, where the river flowing around, is divided into two parts; it is called “the Island.” The river in the direction of each side extends its arms of equal length, the dry land lying in the middle. Hither, the serpent, son of Phœbus, betakes himself from the Latian ship; and he puts an end to the mourning, having resumed his celestial form. And thus did he come, the restorer of health, to the City.

EXPLANATION.

The story here narrated by Ovid is derived from the Roman history, to which we will shortly refer for an explanation.

Under the consulate of Quintus Fabius Gurges, and Decimus Junius Brutus Scæva, Rome was ravaged by a frightful pestilence. The resources of physic having been exhausted, the Sibylline books were consulted to ascertain by what expedient the calamity might be put an end to, and they found that the plague would not cease till they had brought Æsculapius from Epidaurus to Rome. Being then engaged in war, they postponed their application to the Epidaurians for a year, at the end of which time they despatched an embassy to Epidaurus; on which a serpent was delivered to them, which the priests of the Deity xv. 745-762. assured them was the God himself. Taking it on board their ship, the delegates set sail. When near Antium, they were obliged to put in there by stress of weather, and the serpent, escaping from the ship, remained three days on shore; after which it came on board of its own accord, and they continued their voyage. On arriving at the Island of the Tiber the serpent escaped, and concealed itself amid the reeds; and as they, in their credulity, fancied that the God had chosen the place for his habitation, they built a temple there in his honour. From this period, which was about the year of Rome 462, the worship of Æsculapius was introduced in the city, and to him recourse was had in cases of disease, and especially in times of pestilence.

FABLE VIII.

Julius Cæsar is assassinated in the Senate-house, and by the intercession of Venus, his ancestor, he is changed into a star. The Poet concludes his work with a compliment to Augustus, and a promise of immortality to himself.

And still, he came a stranger to our temples; Cæsar is a Deity in his own city; whom, alike distinguished both in war and peace, wars ending with triumphs, his government at home, and the rapid glory of his exploits, did not more tend to change into a new planet, and a star with brilliant train, than did his own progeny. For of all the acts of Cæsar, there is not one more ennobling than that he was the father of this our Cæsar. Was it, forsooth, a greater thing to have conquered the Britons surrounded by the ocean, and to have steered his victorious ships along the seven-mouthed streams of the Nile that bears the papyrus, and to have added to the people of Quirinus the rebellious Numidians83 and the Cinyphian Juba, and Pontus84 proud of the fame of Mithridates, and to have deserved many a triumph, and to have enjoyed some, than it was to have been the father of a personage so great, under whose tutelage over the world, you, ye Gods above, have shewn excessive care for the human race? That he then might not be sprung from mortal seed, ’twas fit that Julius should be made a Divinity. When the resplendent mother of xv. 762-798. Æneas was sensible of this; and when she saw that a sad death was in preparation for the Pontiff, and that the arms of the conspirators were brandished; she turned pale, and said to each of the Deities, as she met them:—

“Behold, on how vast a scale treason is plotted against me, and with how great perfidy that life is sought, which alone remains for me from the Dardanian Iülus. Shall I alone be everlastingly harassed by justified anxieties? I, whom one while the Calydonian lance of the son of Tydeus is wounding, and at another time the walls of Troy, defended in vain, are grieving? I, who have seen my son driven about in protracted wanderings, tossed on the ocean, entering the abodes of the departed, and waging war with Turnus; or, if we confess the truth, with Juno rather? But, why am I now calling to mind the ancient misfortunes of my own offspring? Present apprehensions do not allow me to remember things of former days. Against me, you behold how the impious swords are now being whetted. Avert them, I entreat; hinder this crime, and do not, by the murder of the priest, extinguish the flames of Vesta.”

Such expressions as these did Venus, full of anxiety, vainly let fall throughout the heavens, and she moved the Gods above. Although they were not able to frustrate the iron decrees of the aged sisters, yet they afforded no unerring tokens of approaching woe. They say, that arms resounding amid the black clouds, and dreadful blasts of the trumpet, and clarions heard through the heavens, forewarned men of the crime. The sad face too of the sun gave a livid light to the alarmed earth. Often did torches seem to be burning in the midst of the stars; often did drops of blood fall in the showers. The azure-coloured Lucifer had his light tinted with a dark iron colour; the chariot of the moon was besprinkled with blood. The Stygian owl gave omens of ill in a thousand places; in a thousand places did the ivory statues shed tears; dirges, too, are said to have been heard, and threatening expressions in the sacred groves. No victim gave an omen of good; the entrails, too, showed that great tumults were imminent; and the extremity of the liver was found cut off among the entrails. They say, too, that in the Forum, and around the houses and the temples of the Gods, the dogs were howling by night; and that the ghosts of the departed were walking, and that the City was xv. 798-826. shaken by earthquakes. But still the warnings of the Gods could not avert treachery and the approach of Fate, and drawn swords were carried into a temple; and no other place in the whole City than the Senate-house pleased them for this crime and this atrocious murder.

But then did Cytherea beat her breast with both her hands, and attempt to hide the descendant of Æneas in a cloud, in which, long since, Paris was conveyed from the hostile son of Atreus,85 and Æneas had escaped from the sword of Diomedes. In such words as these did her father Jove address her: “Dost thou, my daughter, unaided, attempt to change the insuperable decrees of Fate? Thou, thyself, mayst enter the abode of the three sisters, and there thou wilt behold the register of future events, wrought with vast labour, of brass and of solid iron; these, safe and destined for eternity, fear neither the thundering shock of the heavens, nor the rage of the lightnings, nor any source of destruction. There wilt thou find the destinies of thy descendants engraved in everlasting adamant. I myself have read them, and I have marked them in my mind; I will repeat them, that thou mayst not still be ignorant of the future. He (on whose account, Cytherea, thou art thus anxious), has completed his time, those years being ended which he owed to the earth. Thou, with his son, who, as the heir to his glory, will bear the burden of government devolving on him, wilt cause him, as a Deity, to reach the heavens, and to be worshipped in temples; and he, as a most valiant avenger of his murdered parent, will have us to aid him in his battles. The conquered walls of Mutina,86 besieged under his auspices, shall sue for peace; Pharsalia shall be sensible of him, and Philippi,87 again drenched with Emathian gore; and the name of one renowned as Great, shall be subdued in the Sicilian waves; the Egyptian dame too, the wife88 of the Roman xv. 826-858. general, shall fall, vainly trusting in that alliance; and in vain shall she threaten, that our own Capitol shall be obedient to her Canopus.89 Why should I recount to thee the regions of barbarism, and nations situate in either ocean? Whatever the habitable world contains, shall be his; the sea, too, shall be subject to him. Peace being granted to the earth, he will turn his attention to civil rights, and, as a most upright legislator, he will enact laws. After his own example, too, will he regulate manners; and, looking forward to the days of future time, and of his coming posterity, he will order the offspring born of his hallowed wife90 to assume both his own name and his cares. Nor shall he, until as an aged man he shall have equalled his glories with like years,91 arrive at the abodes of heaven and his kindred stars. Meanwhile, change this soul, snatched from the murdered body, into a beam of light, that eternally the Deified Julius may look down from his lofty abode upon our Capitol and Forum.”

Hardly had he uttered these words, when the genial Venus, perceived by none, stood in the very midst of the Senate-house, and snatched the soul, just liberated from the body, away from the limbs of her own Cæsar, and, not suffering it to dissolve in air, she bore it amid the stars of heaven. And as she bore it, she perceived it assume a train of light and become inflamed; and she dropped it from her bosom. Above the moon it takes its flight, and, as a star, it glitters, carrying a flaming train with a lengthened track; and, as he beholds the illustrious deeds of his son, he confesses that they are superior to his own, and rejoices that he is surpassed by him. Although Augustus forbids his own actions to be lauded before those of his father, still Fame, in her freedom and subject to no commands, prefers him against his will; and, in this one point, she disobeys him. Thus does Atreus yield to the glories of the great Agamemnon; thus does Theseus excel Ægeus, and thus Achilles Peleus. In fine, that I may use examples that equal themselves, thus too, is Saturn inferior to xv. 858-879. Jove. Jupiter rules the abodes of heaven and the realms of the threefold world:92 the earth is under Augustus: each of them is a father and a ruler. Ye Gods, the companions of Æneas,93 for whom both the sword and the flames made a way; and you, ye native Deities, and thou, Quirinus, the father of the City, and thou, Gradivus, the son of the invincible Quirinus, and thou, Vesta, held sacred among the Penates of Cæsar; and, with the Vesta of Cæsar, thou, Phœbus, enshrined in thy abode, and thou, Jupiter, who aloft dost possess the Tarpeian heights, and whatever other Deities it is lawful and righteous for a Poet to invoke; late, I pray, may be that day, and protracted beyond my life, on which the person of Augustus, leaving that world which he rules, shall approach the heavens: and when gone, may he propitiously listen to those who invoke him.

And now I have completed a work, which neither the anger of Jove, nor fire, nor steel, nor consuming time will be able to destroy! Let that day, which has no power but over this body of mine, put an end to the term of my uncertain life, when it will. Yet, in my better part, I shall be raised immortal above the lofty stars, and indelible shall be my name. And wherever the Roman power is extended throughout the vanquished earth, I shall be read by the lips of nations, and (if the presages of Poets have aught of truth) throughout all ages shall I survive in fame.

EXPLANATION.

The Poet having fulfilled his promise, and having brought down his work from the beginning of the world to his own times, concludes it with the apotheosis of Julius Cæsar. He here takes an opportunity of complimenting Augustus, as being more worthy of divine honours than even his predecessor, while he promises him a long and glorious reign. Augustus, however, had not to wait for death to receive divine honours, as he enjoyed the glory of seeing himself worshipped as a Deity and adored at altars erected to him, even in his lifetime. According to Appian, he was but twenty-eight years of age when he was ranked among the tutelar Divinities by all the cities of the empire.

The Romans, who deduced their origin from Æneas, were flattered at the idea of Venus interesting herself in behalf of her posterity, and securing the honours of an apotheosis for Julius Cæsar. The historical circumstances which Ovid here refers to were the following:—After Julius Cæsar had been murdered in the Senate house, Augustus ordered public games to be instituted in his honour. We learn from Suetonius, that during their celebration a new star, or rather a comet, made its appearance, on which it was promulgated that the soul of the deified Julius had taken its place among the stars, and that Venus had procured him that honour. It was then remembered, that the light of the Sun had been unusually pallid the whole year following the death of Cæsar; this which is generally supposed to have been caused by some spots which then appeared on the disk of the sun, was ascribed to the grief of Apollo. Various persons were found to assert various prodigies. Some said that it had rained blood, others that the moon and stars had been obscured; while others, still more imaginative, asserted that beasts had uttered words, and that the dead had risen from their graves.