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to gather myrtle garlands for the nymphs!
She carried the sweet burden of her boy,
an infant, really, not yet one year old,
and nourished him with milk warm from her breast.
“Close to the water’s edge, a lotus bloomed,
whose purple blossoms, bright as Tyrian dye,
foretold of berries. Dryope reached in
and picked some flowers to delight her son,
and I was just about to follow suit,
for I was present, too—but just in time,
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I saw the drops of blood those flowers shed
and saw the branches quivering with dread!
“For as you know, the local boors still tell
how the nymph Lotis, fleeing from obscene
Priapus, found a refuge as this flower,
and kept her name, though changing her appearance.
My sister had known nothing of all this:
when she in fright attempted to turn back
and leave, while begging pardon of the nymphs,
her feet, as though turned roots, clung to the ground.
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“She fought to tear herself away from it,
yet nothing but her torso could now move;
a shell of bark wound upward from below,
little by little, till it sheathed her loins.
She tried to tear the hair out of her head,
but found her hands were full of leaves instead.
Her child, Amphissus (given that name by
his grandfather, Oechalian Eurytus),
could feel his mother’s titty growing rigid
and was no longer able to take suck.
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“I was a witness to your cruel fate,
my sister, powerless to bring you aid,
yet did as much as I was able to;
with my embraces, I delayed the change
by clinging to your burgeoning new growth
at trunk and branches. O sister, I confess,
I wished to hide myself beneath that bark!
But look, to where her husband Andraemon
and her most wretched father now appear,
seeking Dryope. The Dryope they seek,
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as I point out, is now a lotus tree.
And having thrown themselves upon the ground,
they cling to its roots and kiss the still-warm wood.
“Now only my beloved sister’s face
had not yet been transformed into the wood:
your tears were trickling down upon the leaves
made from your body; while it could, your mouth
responded to the promptings of your voice
and filled the air with rending lamentation:
“‘If those in wretchedness may truly swear,
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why then I swear by all the gods in heaven,
I have done nothing to deserve this evil!
I bear a punishment that has no crime!
I’ve lived a blameless life—and if I lie,
then let my foliage shrivel up and die
and may the axe and flame consume me quite!
“‘But take my baby from his mother’s limbs
and give him to a wet nurse who will bring
him here and nurse him underneath this tree,
and let him play here too; when my poor babe
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has learned to speak, let him come to this place
and greet his mother here and sadly say,
“My mother is hidden underneath this bark.”
Let him be frightened of the lake, and mindful
never to pluck the flowers from the trees,
and think that in each bush a goddess hides!
“‘Farewell, dear husband—sister—father!
If you can show compassionate respect,
then keep the sharpened pruning hook far hence,
and guard my foliage from browsing flocks.
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“‘And since I am forbidden to bow down,
raise yourselves up to where my limbs branch out
and let us kiss while I am able to;
lift up my little boy! I can say no more;
the bloodless bark crawls over my soft neck
and what I am is hidden in its tip.
But do not offer me the services
given to the dead—for without your hands
the upward crawling bark will close my eyes.’
“She ceased her speaking—and ceased at once to be,
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but for a long while her new branches held
her body’s warmth, now changed entirely.”
Iolaüs and Hebe’s prophecy
While Iole told this amazing story,
and while Alcmena (who was weeping too)
with sympathetic thumbs erased the tears
cascading down the storyteller’s cheeks,
a new occurrence drove away their sorrow:
right there above them on the threshold stood
a boy with his first beard upon his cheeks,
Iolaüs, restored to prime of life.
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For Hebe, Hercules’ immortal bride
and Juno’s daughter, worn down by her mate’s
entreaties, had just given him this gift.
And nevermore, she was about to swear,
would she confer such gifts on anyone,
when Themis broke in with a prophecy:
“Why, even now, Thebes suffers the commotion
of civil war,” she said, “and Capaneus
will be invincible to all but Jove;
the two brothers will inflict mortal wounds
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on one another; the still-living seer
will disappear into the gaping earth
and find the spirits which he once controlled;
in a crime of piety his son will slay
his mother to avenge his father’s death;
stunned by the horror of this crime, expelled
from home and driven mad, he will be chased
by the raging Furies and his mother’s ghost
until his wife demands from him the fatal
golden necklace, and the sword of Phegeius
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will find its way into his kinsman’s side.
“And then, at last, Callirhoë, his wife,
the daughter of Acheloüs, will be
given by Jove the gift that will allow
her sons to change from infancy to manhood,
so that their father’s murder may not go
unpunished; and then Jupiter, won over
by her petitioning shall claim the gifts
of Hebe in advance for them, and change
the prepubescent boys into young men.”
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When Themis, who was prescient, had told them
what was to come, the other gods began
to grumble openly; a groundswell rose;
Why was this same gift not allowed to others?
Aurora railed about her ancient spouse
Tithonus, and mild-mannered Ceres moaned
for Iasion’s white locks; Vulcan demanded
renewed life for his son Erichthonius,
and Venus also, looking to the future,
insisted that Anchises be restored.
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Each of the gods there had a favorite,
and argued from a partisan position
against the others, until Jove spoke up:
“O gods! If you have any reverence
for us at all, why leap to such confusions?
Does anyone here imagine himself able
to overcome the limits set by Fate?
Iolaüs was given back the years
he was in need of by the will of Fate;
not by ambition, not by skill in combat
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will Callirhoë’s sons turn into men
from infancy, but by the will of Fate,
which governs even us; I tell you this
that you might put a better face on it—
yes, you are ruled by Fate, and I am too.
“If I were able to oppose its force,
the years would not have bent Aeacus down,
and Rhadamanthus would be always young,
and Minos too, now held in disregard
by reason of the bitter weight of age,
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no longer ruling as he used to do.”
The words of Jove calmed everybody down:
none of the gods was able to complain
when he saw Rhadamanthus worn with years,
and Aeacus, and Minos, who, when young,
could frighten mighty nations with one word:
Minos. He was decrepit now and feared
Miletus, son of Deione and Phoebus,
a young man proud of his strength and lineage.
Minos believed Miletus would rise up
against his realm, but still he did not dare
to banish him from his ancestral lands.
You fled, Miletus, of your own accord,
traversing the Aegean in your swift ship,
and in the land of Asia you established
that city which still bears its founder’s name.
Here you had knowledge of the nymph Cyanee
(the daughter of that winding stream, Maeander)
while she was straying on her father’s banks;
and from that union came a pair of twins,
Byblis and Caunus, famous for their beauty.
Byblis and Caunus
Now Byblis, who was driven by desire
for her own brother, the grandson of Apollo—
this Byblis serves to illustrate a moral:
that girls should not desire what’s forbidden;
she did not love her brother as a brother,
or as a sister should.
Indeed, at first,
she didn’t even recognize her passion,
nor did she think it wrong to kiss him often,
or throw her arms around her brother’s neck;
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and she herself was for some time deceived
by the appearance of affectionate devotion.
Her feelings for him gradually changed,
and not for the better; when she visited
her brother, she was elegantly dressed,
and anxious that he find her beautiful,
and envious of those who seemed more lovely.
She was, as yet, unconscious of her feelings,
and offered up no prayers for satisfaction,
but burned with inner fire, nonetheless.
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She calls him “Master” now, and now detests
the thought that they are siblings, and prefers
that he should call her “Byblis” and not “Sister.”
Nevertheless, she did not dare admit
such impure hopes into her wakeful thoughts;
often, however, when relaxed in sleep,
an image of her passion came to her,
an image of her lying with her brother,
that made her, even sleeping, blush with shame.
Sleep fled, and for a long time she lay still,
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revisiting the dream of her desire,
until, at last, she spoke out, doubtfully:
“I am so wretched! Whatever can they mean,
these visions that appear in the wordless night?
I would not have it so! Why do I see
such things while I am sleeping? He is indeed
most pleasing, even to a hostile eye,
and I could love him, not unworthily,
if he were not my brother! I am wronged,
and all the harm is—that I am his sister!
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“But even if I keep them out of mind,
there is no wrong in dreaming of such things
as often as I want to, in my sleep!
There are no witnesses to our dreams,
and they provide a pleasure almost real!
“O Cupid and sweet Venus, what great joys
were given to me! And how real they seemed!
My marrow melted as I lay asleep!
How pleasing to remember! But how brief
those pleasures were—the night, with breakneck speed,
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snatched them away, when they had just begun!
“If I could be allowed to change my name
and marry you, dear Caunus, what a fine
daughter-in-law I would make your father!
What a fine son-in-law you would make mine!
We would have everything in common then,
except grandparents—yours should be the nobler!
Yes, I would have it so! But all too soon,
you will take someone else to be your wife,
most beautiful of men—and you will be,
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by virtue of parental lottery,
my brother only. There is the harm of it,
that we will have no more than that in common.
“What are they telling me, these dreams of mine?
What weight do dreams have? Have they any weight?
Oh, may the gods send better dreams than these!
The gods took their own sisters, to be sure!
So Saturn had Ops, Oceanus had his Tethys,
the ruler of Olympus had his Juno:
the gods, though, are a law unto themselves!
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—Why should I try to use them as my models
when their behavior is so unlike ours?
“Passion suppressed will either leave my heart,
or, if I am unable to suppress it,
I pray that I might die and not surrender;
and when I have been laid upon my bier,
may my dear brother kiss me on the lips!
Such a decision should be jointly made:
what pleases me might seem a crime to him!
“The sons of Aeolus were not afraid
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to sleep with their sisters! How do I know this,
and why have I come up with this example?
Where is this leading me? Depart, indecent thoughts,
and let me love my brother not at all,
unless my love is sisterly and lawful!
“Nevertheless, if he had been seized first
by love for me, I might indulge his passion.
And so, since I would never turn him down,
I will go after him! Can you admit this?
Will you be able to confess it?
Compelled by love, I will be able to!
If Shame should press her finger to my lips,
a silent letter will confess my hidden feelings.”
This purpose pleases her and overcomes
her mind’s uncertainties. Still in her bed,
she lifts herself up and leans on her left elbow:
“Now let him see,” she says, “my decadence!
What slope am I beginning to descend?
What fire is conceived within my heart?”
Her shaking hands set down the practiced words:
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she grips the iron stylus in her right,
and holds the blank wax tablet in her left.
She starts and stops. Sets down—and then condemns.
Adds and deletes. Doubts; finds fault with; approves.
She throws the tablet down, then picks it up!
She cannot say what she is striving for,
and every tack she takes displeases her,
who sometimes seems ashamed, and sometimes bold.
She first wrote “Sister” down—and then decided
to take the “Sister” out—and then inscribed
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these wo
rds on the corrected wax:
“My dearest—
One who so holds you, one who will not have
a dearest, if not you, now sends you this,
who cannot, out of shame, reveal herself,
but if you wish to know what I desire,
it is that, nameless, I might plead my case
unrecognized as Byblis, undiscovered
until my wish were certain to be granted.
“You might have sensed I was in love with you
from my drained complexion and stressed countenance,
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my eyes so often filling up with tears,
the sighs brought on by no apparent cause,
my constant need to throw my arms about you—
and, if by any chance you noticed them,
the kisses that were more than sisterly.
“And yet, despite the burden of my wound,
despite the fury of that inner fire,
I did my best—the gods will witness this!—
to bring myself again to sanity;
unfortunate, I’ve struggled for so long
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to get way from Cupid’s fierce encounters,
enduring more—I think you would agree—
than any girl could bear.
“Now overwhelmed
by my great passion and compelled to speak,
I seek your help with this fainthearted prayer,
for you will be my rescue—or my ruin:
the choice is yours and you must make it now.
“I pray to you not as an enemy,
but as the one most closely joined to you,
who yet desires to be nearer still,
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more closely linked by even stricter chains.
“Let old men know what is and is not proper,
distinguish ‘decent’ from ‘indecencies,’
and keep the fine distinctions of the law.
Heedless passion accords with our youth.
We have not learned yet what may be allowed,
so we believe that everything may be,
and follow the example of the gods!
“In our case, we haven’t a strict father
or a concern for what the people say,
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or fear to serve as an impediment;
and should there be occasion for our fear,
our pleasurable thefts will be concealed
by our relationship—for as your sister,
I am allowed to speak with you in private,
and openly embrace and give you kisses.
“The little that is lacking—is it too much?
Have pity, then, on one who speaks her love
but would not speak unless compelled by passion;
and let it not be written on my stone
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that by refusing me, you caused my death.”
When she had finished setting down these words
on tablets which were filled right to their edges
(though pointlessly, as it will soon appear),