as she went on all fours through the tall grass.
Her fingers fused together and a single
band of light horn surrounded them, a hoof.
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Her neck and mouth were both increased in size
and her long robe was turned into a tail
while the hair that used to stray across her neck
became a mane that fell on her right side;
made over now in voice and form completely,
this transformation gave her a new name.
Mercury and the tattletale
Heroic Chiron, son of Philyra, wept,
and sought your help, O Phoebus, but in vain,
for you could not revoke the orders of
almighty Jove—and even if you could,
940
you had gone off to Elis and Messenia.
That was the time when you were clothed in homespun and carried, in your left hand or the other,
a shepherd’s crook, and played the pipes of Pan:
love was the care you eased with country music,
and your unguarded herd went wandering
into the fields of Pylos.
Mercury,
that crafty rustler, sees your cattle there
and drives them off and hides them in the woods.
And no one knows about this theft except
950
for one old man well known to everyone
within that area. They called him Battus,
the hired hand of wealthy Neleus,
who watched his herd of mares, all thoroughbreds,
in nearby glades and grassy pasturelands.
Young Mercury gladhands the aged rustic
and taking him aside, inveigles him:
“If anyone should ask about a herd,
deny that you saw cattle passing through.
So that your kindness may not lack reward,
960
select one of these heifers for yourself.”
He gave one to the old man, who replied:
“Your secret’s safe with me! Why, that stone there—”
(and as he spoke, he pointed to a rock)
“—will tell about your theft before I will!”
The son of Jove appeared to go away
but soon returned with a new identity:
“Say there, Hayseed,” he said, “if you’ve just seen
a herd of cattle being moved through here,
don’t keep silent—help me—they’ve been stolen!
970
Your prize will be a heifer—and a bull.”
The doubled bribe appealed to the old man:
“Foot of yon mountain there is where you’ll find ’em,”
the rustic said, and that was where they were.
Mercury laughed at him: “Will you betray me,
you rogue? Betray me even to myself?”
And he turned that hardened criminal to stone,
a peak still known there as “the Tattletale”
unmerited, the ancient libel clings.
Mercury and Aglauros (1)
On wings that steadied him, young Mercury
980
flew off until from high above he looked
on the land which is Minerva’s special love,
the fields of Athens and its learned grove.
He happened to have shown up on the day
on which Minerva’s festival was kept,
when maidens carried sacred gifts in baskets,
poised on their heads, up to the Parthenon.
The winged god gave them the once-over
as they returned, and, altering his flight plan,
made after them in a wide, sweeping arc,
990
as when that swiftest of all birds, the kite,
has glimpsed the entrails of the sacrifice—
but while the priests are crowded round, it fears
to fly too near, yet fears to fly away,
so hovers high above its longed-for prey;
just so the nimble Mercury in flight
made circles over the Acropolis.
Just as the morning star outshines all others,
and as the moon is to the morning star,
so Herse was to her companions there,
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her beauty singular in their procession.
The son of Jupiter was stupified
and in suspension burned with passion’s flame:
as when a Balearic sling lets fly
and its leaden load goes whizzing on its way,
heated by its own speed until it finds
a warmth unknown before within the clouds.
He left the sky and came down to the earth
without disguise, so great his confidence
in his own beauty, which, though not misplaced,
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was aided by the care he took of it,
smoothing his hair, which had been mussed in flight,
arranging his cloak so that it hung just so,
letting its pricey golden border show,
and making sure that the wand in his right hand
(with which he brings sleep on or drives it off)
was freshly shined, and seeing that the wings
were gleaming brightly on his shapely feet.
Expensive ivory and tortoiseshell
adorned the women’s quarters, which held three
1020
bedchambers; yours, Pandrosos, on the right,
Aglauros’ on the left, Herse’s in between.
She on the left first noticed the approach
of Mercury, and dared to ask his name
and reason for his visit.
The grandson
of Atlas and Pleione answered her:
“Let me get to the point directly:
I am the airborne messenger of my father Jove, and you should wish to be loyal to your sister and famous as the aunt of our offspring,
1030
for Herse is the reason I am here;
I pray you favor me in my request.”
Aglauros looked at him in the same way
that she had only recently looked on
the mysteries of golden-haired Minerva;
and for his services, demanded gold
in quantity; and Mercury, meanwhile,
was ordered to vacate the premises.
The house of Envy
Now bellicose Minerva turned the fierce
fire of her gaze upon Aglauros,
1040
sighing so deeply that her breast was shaken
beneath the aegis that defended it;
for she realized that this was the same one
who had gone against her orders and profaned
her mysteries by peeking at Apollo’s
motherless child; and now this one would be
a god’s delight and pleasing to her sister,
and rich with what her avarice demanded!
She headed straight to Envy’s squalid quarters,
black with corruption, hidden deep within
1050
a sunless valley where no breezes blow,
a sad and sluggish place, richly frigid,
where cheerful fires die upon the hearth
and fog that never lifts embraces all.
Arriving here, the warlike maiden stood
before the house (for heaven’s law denied
her entrance) and with her spear tip rapped
upon the doors, which instantly flew open,
revealing Envy at her feast of snakes,
a fitting meal for her corrupted nature:
1060
from such a sight, the goddess turned away.
The object of her visit sluggishly
arises from the ground where she’d been sitting,
leaving behind her interrupted dinner
of half-eaten reptiles. Stiffly she advances,
and when she sees the
beauty of the goddess
and of her armor, she cannot help but groan,
and makes a face, and sighs a wretched sigh.
Then she grows pale, and her body shrivels up.
Her glance is sidewise and her teeth are black;
1070
her nipples drip with poisonous green bile,
and venom from her dinner coats her tongue;
she only smiles at sight of another’s grief,
nor does she know, disturbed by wakeful cares,
the benefits of slumber; when she beholds
another’s joy, she falls into decay,
and rips down only to be ripped apart,
herself the punishment for being her.
Although the goddess hated Envy, she
addressed her nonetheless with these few words:
1080
“Infect one of the daughters of the Cecrops.
That is the task. Aglauros is the one.”
With not another word, the goddess fled,
placing the tip of her spear against the ground
and using it to vault back up to heaven.
Muttering sourly beneath her breath,
she eyes the fleeing goddess with distrust,
already saddened by Minerva’s joy.
She takes her staff, bristling with thorns,
and sets off in a mantle of black clouds,
1090
flicking the heads off flowers as she passes,
blighting the grasses and destroying trees,
her breath polluting houses, cities, states.
At last she sees the city of the goddess;
its wealth, its work, its joyous flourishing
and peaceful temper all affect her so,
she’s scarcely able to prevent herself
from weeping—for there’s nothing here to weep for.
Once in the chambers of Aglauros, Envy
obeys her orders, touching the girl’s breast
1100
with her rust-stained hand and filling it with thorns;
now Envy breathes her poison in the girl,
and spreads her venom right into her bones,
and so that she would have a cause for grief,
draws her a picture of her sister’s fortune,
her blessed marriage to the handsome god,
enlarging on it in imagination.
Aglauros, maddened, feasts on her own heart
in secret wretchedness as anxious day
succeeds each anxious night; groaning, she slowly
1110
wastes away, dissolving, just as ice does
in the uncertain light of early spring.
Mercury and Aglauros (2)
Her envy of her sister’s happiness
consumed her, and she burned as does a fire
that smolders in a pile of thorny scrub.
Often she wished to die in order not
to see such happiness and often wished
to bring the news of it to her stern parents;
and finally she sat down on the threshold
to keep the god from entering.
His prayers
1120
and his most honeyed words proved unavailing:
“Stop it,” she said. “I will not move from here
until you have been thwarted in your purpose!”
“You have,” said Mercury the swift, “a deal!”
And with his wand, he opened up the door;
but she, attempting to get to her feet,
discovered that the parts one bends when sitting
could not be moved, so heavy they had grown;
she tried to stand up, but her knees had stiffened,
and a chill crept down to her extremities
1130
and pallor drained her body of its color;
as cancer, that incurable disease,
spreads its roots widely while it makes its way,
infecting healthy tissue from unhealthy,
so lethal winter gradually came
into her breast and closed the passages
of life and slowly suffocated her;
she no more tried to speak, and if she had,
would not have found a passage for her voice.
Her neck was turned to rock. Her features hardened
1140
until she sat, a bloodless effigy;
nor was that stone white, but stained as by her soul.
Jove and Europa
When Mercury had punished her for these
impieties of thought and word, he left
Athena’s city, and on beating wings
returned to heaven where his father Jove
took him aside and (without telling him
that his new passion was the reason) said:
“Dear son, who does my bidding faithfully,
do not delay, but with your usual
1150
swiftness fly down to earth and find the land
that looks up to your mother on the left,
called Sidon by the natives; there you will see
a herd of royal cattle some way off
upon a mountain; drive them down to shore.”
He spoke and it was done as he had ordered: the cattle were immediately driven
down to a certain place along the shore
where the daughter of a great king used to play,
accompanied by maidens all of Tyre.
1160
Majestic power and erotic love
do not get on together very well,
nor do they linger long in the same place:
the father and the ruler of all gods,
who holds the lightning bolt in his right hand
and shakes the world when he but nods his head,
now relinquishes authority and power,
assuming the appearance of a bull
to mingle with the other cattle, lowing
as gorgeously he strolls in the new grass.
1170
He is as white as the untrampled snow
before the south wind turns it into slush.
The muscles stand out bulging on his neck,
and the dewlap dangles on his ample chest;
his horns are crooked, but appear handmade,
and flawless as a pair of matching gems.
His brow is quite unthreatening, his eye
excites no terror, and his countenance
is calm.
The daughter of King Agenor
admires him, astonished by the presence
1180
of peacefulness and beauty in the beast;
yet even though he seems a gentle creature,
at first she fears to get too close to him,
but soon approaching, reaches out her hand
and pushes flowers into his white mouth.
The lover, quite beside himself, rejoices,
and as a preview of delights to come,
kisses her fingers, getting so excited
that he can scarcely keep from doing it!
Now he disports himself upon the grass,
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and lays his whiteness on the yellow sands;
and as she slowly overcomes her fear
he offers up his breast for her caresses
and lets her decorate his horns with flowers;
the princess dares to sit upon his back
not knowing who it is that she has mounted,
and he begins to set out from dry land,
a few steps on false feet into the shallows,
then further out and further to the middle
of the great sea he carries off his booty;
1200
she trembles as she sees the shore receding
and holds the creature’s horn in her right hand
and with the other clings to his broad back,
her garments streaming in the wind behind her.
BOOK III
THE WRATH OF JUNO
Jove and Europa Cadmus founds Thebes Actaeon and Diana Juno, Jove, and Semele The judgment of Tiresias Narcissus and Echo Narcissus Bacchus and Pentheus
Jove and Europa
And now, his taurine imitation ended,
the god exposed himself for what he was
to cowed Europa on the isle of Crete.
In an action both paternal and perverse,
the captured maiden’s baffled father bids
her brother Cadmus to locate the girl
or face an endless term of banishment.
His search was fruitless, for who can discover
Jove’s secret snatches? The son of Agenor,
shunning alike his parent’s realm and wrath,
10
supplicates the oracle of Phoebus
and asks him for a land to colonize. a
Cadmus founds Thebes
“You will meet a heifer in a trackless place,”
says Phoebus, “one who has not borne the yoke,
nor broken up the earth with a curved plow.
Follow her lead; wherever she reposes,
there build your city. Name the land Boeotia.”
Cadmus had just come down from the Castalian
grotto, when he discovered an unguarded
heifer who ambled on ahead of him,
20
her neck unscarred by any signs of service.
He fell in after, following her tracks,
and as he walked, gave silent thanks to Phoebus,
who instigated this.
The heifer crossed
the shallows of the river called Cephisus,
then passed beyond the meadows of Panope,
and then abruptly halted; lifting up
her lovely rack of horns to heaven, she
bellowed repeatedly: then, with a glance
over her shoulder at the men behind her,
30
knelt and resigned her flank to the soft grasses.
Gratefully, Cadmus kissed the foreign soil
and reverenced the unknown fields and mountains.
A sacrifice to Jove is now in order:
Cadmus sends his attendants off to find
the necessary spring of running water.
Nearby there was a stand of virgin timber,
and deep within, a cave whose mouth was screened
by undergrowth and stones all mixed together;
fresh water poured across the arch it made.
40
Deep in this cave, there lurked a golden-crested
serpent that Mars had chosen as his own:
his eyes flashed fire and his coiling bulk
was swollen up with venom, while his tongue
(divided at its tip into three parts)
flickered past teeth arranged in triple rows.
When the doomed Tyrians had reached this grove
and started to draw water from the spring,
their careless clattering and splashing woke