a milder maturing, a time between younger and older,
when the thinning hair begins to go grey at the temples;
260
then Winter’s old age approaches us, lame and trembling,
and whatever hair it still happens to have has been whitened!
“Our bodies, too, are always incessantly changing,
and what we were, or are, is not what we will be,
tomorrow: once we were seeds, the hope of our fathers,
and lay concealed in the womb of our first mother;
creative Nature willed otherwise: took us in hand, and
out of the narrow confines of mother’s expanded
viscera, sent us forth into the open air, homeless!
The infant lay powerless, blinking his eyes at the light, and
270
shortly began to walk like a beast on all fours,
and then learned to stand, although still weak-kneed and trembling,
and needing to grasp at whatever could aid its endeavor;
this changes into the swift and powerful stage of first youth,
and then middle age, which, when its service is ended,
glides down the path of decline that leads us to old age,
which undermines and demolishes all of the strength of
those earlier stages: contemplating the shoulders
and arms that once, with their masses of muscle, resembled
those of great Hercules, Milon, the heavyweight champion,
280
now weeps to see them hanging so useless and flabby;
Helen too weeps at the wrinkles seen in her mirror
and asks herself why she was—twice!—seized by a lover.
“Devouring Time! Envious Age! Working together,
you bring all to ruin: in your unhurried consumption,
the world is ground down, and everything perishes slowly.
Even what we call the elements do not endure, and
if you pay heed, I will show you the changes they go through.
“Four genitive substances make up the eternal cosmos;
two of them, which we call earth and water, are heavy,
290
and of their own weight will sink right down to the bottom;
but the other two, air and fire (purer than air is),
are weightless and will rise up if nothing suppresses them.
Though they are spatially distant, each element rises
out of another, and into that other, collapses;
when earth is unbound, for example, it changes to water,
then, as it loses its moisture, it once again changes,
this time to wind and air, and, as it grows thinner,
bursts into flame and rises through heaven as fire;
from there the way is reversed, and in the same order;
300
fire, condensing, turns into air, which turns into water,
and fluid water, changing to earth, becomes solid.
“Nothing persists without changing its outward appearance,
for Nature is always engaged in acts of renewal,
creating new forms everywhere out of the old ones;
nothing in all of the cosmos can perish, believe me,
but takes on a different shape; and what we call birth is
when something first changes out of its former condition,
and what we call death is when its identity ceases;
things may perhaps be translated hither and thither;
310
nevertheless, they stay constant in their sum total.
“I truly believe that nothing may keep the same image
for a long time; the age of gold yields to iron,
and often places will know a reversal of fortune.
For with my own eyes, I have seen land that once was quite solid
change into water, and I have seen land made from ocean;
seashells have been discovered far from the seashore,
and rusty anchors right on the summits of mountains;
a former plain was converted into a valley
by rushing waters, whose force has leveled great mountains;
320
and a onetime marshland has been turned into a desert,
while thirsty sands have been transformed into marshland.
“Here Nature allows a new spring of water to surface,
there closes one off; and shaken by underground tremors,
rivers leap out of the earth, or shrink and are swallowed.
So then, when Lycus sinks in the ground through a fissure,
he comes up from under again, far away, totally altered;
now the Erasinus, swallowed, glides underground, hidden
till it emerges and flows through the fields of Argolis;
they say that Mysus regrets his former existence,
330
and, having chosen a different course, is the Caïcus;
and the Amenanus flows through the Sicilian desert,
sometimes disappearing, whenever its sources dry up.
Once the Anygras was potable; now no one will touch it,
not since the centaurs, riddled by Hercules’ arrows,
bathed there to clean out their wounds—or else the poets
who tell us this story are truly not to be trusted.
Haven’t the formerly sweet waters of the Hypanis,
sourced in the Scythian mountains, turned bitter and brackish?
“Antissa, Pharos, and Tyre once were surrounded
340
by water, but none of those cities now is an island;
folks around Leucas say it was once part of the mainland,
but now it’s encircled as well; and they say that Messana
was joined to Italy, until the ocean’s waves shattered
their borders, and left them completely divided by water.
If you seek Buris and Helice, those Achaean cities,
you will discover them both underwater, and even
today the sailors still point out their wavering towers
and overwhelmed walls; near Troezen, ruled by Pittheus,
there is a steep and treeless hillock, which once was level
350
but now is rounded; for—it’s a terrible story—
the bestial force of the winds, sealed up in their cavern,
seeking to exhale and vainly striving for freedom—
and since there was not the slightest crack in their prison
through which their breath could break out, they made the earth bulge,
as when one exhales one’s own breath into a bladder
or blows up a goatskin; that was a permanent groundswell,
now like a hillock, which, over the years, has grown harder.
“I will refer to a few of the many such instances
that I have heard of or witnessed—why, isn’t water
360
itself subjected to taking and giving new shapes?
At midday, your waters, O spring of Ammon, are frigid,
but warm in the morning and evening. They say the Boeotians
can set wood on fire by dumping it into the water
when the moon is in its last phase, and the Thracian Cicones
have a river which, if you drink from it, turns your intestines
to stone and changes whatever it touches to marble;
closer to home, those neighboring rivers, the Crathis
and the Subaris, turn hair into gold or silver;
even more strange are those streams that not only alter
370
the body, but have an effect upon the mind too;
who hasn’t heard of the indecent pool of Salmacis,
or of the Ethiopian lakes? Any who swallow
their waters either go mad or go into a coma;
whoever quenches his thirst at the spring of Clitorius
will give up wine in favor of
its purer fluid,
whether there is some intrinsic strength in the water
which counters the heat of the wine, or, as legend would have it,
the son of Amythaon, after relieving the frenzied
daughters of Proetus with potent herbs and enchantments,
380
cast the means of purgation into the river,
making the hatred of wine a part of its nature.
The Lyncestrian river acts in the opposite manner,
for whoever drinks even a tiny amount of it
staggers as though he had swallowed his wine undiluted.
There is a place in Arcadia formerly known as
Pheneus, whose inconsistent stream is mistrusted:
don’t drink it at night, for that is when it is harmful,
while it is harmless if it is drunk in the daytime;
so streams or lakes will have, at one time or another,
390
these or some other effects.
“There was a time when Ortygia
moved about on the ocean, but now she stays still;
when the Argonauts sailed, they found the Symplegades fearful,
twin rocks exploding with spray when they crashed together,
but now, fixed in place, they form a motionless windbreak.
“Nor will Mount Etna, her sulphurous ovens now blazing,
always be fiery, nor was she fiery always.
For if the earth is animal-like in its nature,
then it lives and it has many places that fire exhales from,
and the earth changes those places with every eruption,
400
sealing some caverns off as she opens up others.
“Or if the winds that are penned up deep inside caverns
fling rocks against other rocks or at matter containing
the seeds of fire, a blaze will be started from friction,
but the caves will cool down when the winds are no longer blowing;
and if the fire is caused by the nature of asphalt
and yellow sulphur that burns with a very thin flame,
when the earth no longer furnishes food for that fire
and cannot sustain it, and it has been worn out for ages,
then Nature herself must suffer a want of nutrition
410
and will not be able to endure such a great famine;
abandoned herself, she will abandon her fires.
“In Macedonia, there are supposed to be men whose
bodies get covered completely with delicate feathers
when they have plunged nine times in the pool of Minerva.
I find that hard to believe, but among the Scythians,
women are said to achieve results much the same by
sprinkling a magical potion all over their bodies.
“Nevertheless, if trust in such strange situations
may be adduced from examples already proven,
420
do you not see that when corpses decay from the heat or
from length of time, they turn into wee tiny beasties?
Here is a common experiment: bury some bullocks
slain by the priests, and from their decaying intestines,
the flower-culling bees will be born: rural in nature,
as are their parents, inclined to hard labor and prudent.
Buried in earth, the bellicose horse breeds out hornets;
if you remove a crab’s curved claws from its body
and bury them in the earth, from the interred portion
a scorpion emerges to menace you with its bent tail;
430
we know that worms which quite commonly (ask any farmer)
cover green leaves with their white threads will change to
butterflies, emblems of spirit departing from body.
“Mud contains seeds which generate frogs, at first legless,
though soon they develop limbs that equip them for swimming,
and so that these same limbs can be used for long-distance leaping,
their hind legs are always much greater in length than their forelegs.
Nor is the bear cub, when newly brought forth by the she-bear,
other than bear-pulp: by her own purposeful licking,
the mother bear shapes it and forms it in her own image.
440
Do you not see how the larva of bees, makers of honey,
so well protected within their hexagonal chambers
of wax, are born without any limbs on their bodies,
and only later develop legs and the wings used for flying?
The peacock of Juno, with stars in its feathery tail, or
the arms-bearing eagle of Jove, the doves dear to Venus,
or any others within the entire bird kingdom:
who could believe that such wonders emerged out of eggshells,
unless he already knew how they came into being?
And there are those who believe that when men have been buried
450
and their spines decay, the marrow turns into a serpent.
“Each of these lives is brought forth out of another,
but there is one bird which can renew its own being;
Assyrians call it the Phoenix; it lives not on grasses
and grains but on incense and on the essence of balsam.
As soon as five hundred years of his life are completed,
employing his talons and unsullied beak, the old Phoenix
builds his own nest in the top of a tremulous palm tree.
Once it is covered completely with sweet-smelling branches
of nard and mezereon, myrrh and pieces of cinnamon,
460
he lies down upon it, expiring over the odors.
Out of the corpse of his father, there springs a young Phoenix
(or so people say) destined to live the same life span.
When age gives him strength to carry such weighty burdens,
he lightens that of the palm tree by taking his nest down
and bearing his cradle, along with the tomb of his father,
through the light air until he comes to the city
of Hyperion and piously places his burden
before the sacred doors of Hyperion’s temple.
“Should you think this is at all surprising or novel,
470
you’ll find the hyena a marvel for changing her gender:
females, when they are mounted, turn into males, and
there’s also a creature, nourished on air and light breezes,
that takes on the color of whatever substance it touches.
“Defeated India offered wine-bringing Bacchus
a tribute of lynxes, and it is said that their urine
turns into stones which the air instantly hardens.
So too with coral, which waves like a grass underwater,
but being exposed to the air turns instantly rigid.
“Day will be ended with Phoebus bathing his weary
480
horses at sunset in the deep ocean, before I
manage to put into words how everything changes
into new forms: we can even see the times changing,
as one nation gains in strength while another collapses:
once Troy was great, rich in its wealth and its heroes,
and able to go on bleeding both for ten years;
now brought to earth, she has nothing to show but her ruins,
no wealth besides that which lies in her burial chambers.
“Sparta was famous, mighty Mycenae once flourished,
even as Athens, even as Thebes of the Towers;
490
Sparta is worthless now, lofty Mycenae has toppled,
what but the name remains of the Thebes of Oedipus?
What but the name remains of Pandion’s Athens?
“Fame now informs us that Dardanian Rome is rising,
even now building a deep and enormous foundation
close to the Tiber that flows from the Apennine mountains:
therefore, she changes her form by increasing, and shortly
will be the boundless world’s capital! So say the prophets,
so say the oracles also. Indeed, I remember
Helenus, the son of Priam, telling Aeneas,
500
bitterly weeping and doubtful about his survival,
back when the matter of Troy was beginning to crumble,
‘O goddess-born, if you will pay careful attention
to my foretelling, while you live, Troy will not perish!
Fire and iron will give way as you carry your city
forth from the ruins, until, together, you come to
a more hospitable, even though foreign, site than your homeland.
“‘I now see the city destined for Priam’s descendants:
never has there ever been one as great, or one greater
than this one is, never will there be one in the future!
510
Princes besides him will maintain her power for ages,
but he, the offspring of Julius, will make her the mistress
of all creation! And when he is no longer useful
on earth, the powers above will rejoice in his presence,
for heaven will be his reward and his destination.’
“Helenus foretold all of this to Aeneas, encumbered
by his household gods, and I recall it quite clearly,
and I rejoice in the walls of my relatives rising,
a welcome result of the conquest of Troy by the Argives!
“However, lest I should wander far off in digression,
520
and my forgetful steeds stray from their course on the racetrack,
heaven and everything under it will take on new forms,
as will the earth too, and everything here upon it,
as even we will, for we are a part of it also,
not merely bodies, but wingèd spirits, and able
to shelter in beasts, to lodge in the breasts of cattle;
bodies which once may have given refuge to parents
or brothers, or any joined to us by obligation,
or men like ourselves, to be sure, should be safe and respected,
not crammed into our guts like a Thyestean banquet!
530
“What a slippery slope he descends, who slits a calf’s throat
able to listen unmoved to its piteous mooing,
for he prepares himself to murder a human!
Or who can butcher a kid, whose terrified bleating
so resembles the cries of our children! Or eat a chicken,
whom we have fed from our hand? Is this less than a murder?
How does it differ? What is the end that it leads to?