The
Metamorphoses
Book XIII
Contents
Bk XIII:1-122 The debate over the arms: Ajax speaks1
Bk XIII:123-381 The debate over the arms: Ulysses speaks3
Bk XIII:382-398 The death of Ajax6
Bk XIII:399-428 The fall of Troy.
6
Bk XIII:429-480 The deaths of Polydorus and Polyxena7
Bk XIII:481-575 Hecuba’s lament and transformation.
8
Bk XIII:576-622 Aurora and the Memnonides9
Bk XIII:623-639 Aeneas begins his wanderings10
Bk XIII:640-674 The transformation of Anius’s daughters.10
Bk XIII:675-704 The cup of Alcon.
10
Bk XIII:705-737 Aeneas’s journey to Sicily.
11
Bk XIII:738-788 Acis and Galatea11
Bk XIII:789-869 The song of Polyphemus12
Bk XIII:870-897 Acis is turned into a river-god.
13
Bk XIII:898-968 Glaucus tells Scylla of his
transformation.
14
When the captains were seated, and the rank and
file were standing, in a circle, around them,
Ajax, master of the seven-layered shield, leapt up, and, fired with
indignation, he looked back fiercely at the
Sigean shore, and the ships beached on the shore, and, pointing to
them, he said: ‘It is in front of these vessels I plead my cause, and
Ulysses opposes me, by Jupiter! Yet he did not hesitate to give way
before
Hector’s blazing torches, which I resisted, which I drove away from
the boats. But then, it is less risky to battle using lying words, than
to fight with fists, and I am not prompt to speak, as he is not to act.
I am as powerful in the fierce conflicts of the battle, as that man is
in talk. I do not think however that I need to mention my deeds to you,
Pelasgians, since you have seen them: let Ulysses tell you of his
that are conducted without witness, in which night is the only sharer! I
confess the prize I seek is great: but my rival detracts from the honour
of it. There is nothing magnificent for Ajax in it, however great the
thing is, if Ulysses has aspired to it. He has already won the prize in
this contest, since when he is defeated he can say he fought it out with
me.
As for me, if my courage were in doubt, my noble
birth is a powerful argument, a son of
Telamon, he who, under brave
Hercules, captured the walls of
Troy, and sailed in the ship from
Pagasae, with the
Argonauts, to
Colchis. Telamon’s father was
Aeacus, who judges there, among the silent dead, where
Sisyphus,
son of Aeolus rolls his heavy stone. Lofty
Jupiter acknowledges
Aeacus and confesses him to be his son: so Ajax is third in descent
from
Jove. Yet even this ancestry would not further my cause, if I did
not share it with great Achilles. Our fathers,
Peleus and Aeacus, were brothers: Achilles was my cousin, I ask for
my cousin’s weapons! Why are you, Ulysses, the son of Sisyphus, and
similar to him in your capability for fraud and trickery, involving an
alien race in the affairs of the
Aeacidae?
Are the arms denied me because I took up arms
first, and without being rooted out, and shall he seem the better man
who seized his weapons last, and shirked the fight with a pretence of
madness, until
Palamades,
son of Nauplius, the shrewder man, uncovered this cowardly spirit’s
deceit, and dragged him to the weapons he shunned? Shall he own all, who
wanted none: shall I, who was the first to put myself at risk, be denied
honour, and my cousin’s gifts? If only his madness had been real, or
been believed, and this exhorter to crime had never been our companion
against the Phrygian fortresses! Then
Lemnos would not hold you, to our shame,
Philoctetes,
son of Poeas, of whom they say that, hidden in the woodland caves,
you move the stones, now, with your laments, calling down on
Laërtes’s son the curses that he deserves, and, if there are gods,
do not curse in vain! Now, alas, he who was sworn to the same conflict
as ourselves, one of our captains, heir to
Hercules’s arrows, weakened by sickness and hunger, clothed and fed
by the birds, employs the arrows, that fate intended for Troy, in firing
at birds! Still, he is alive, because he did not accompany Ulysses
further: luckless
Palamades would have preferred to be left behind also: he would have
been alive, or at least have died an irreproachable death: that man
there, remembering all too well the exposure of his own supposed
madness, accused him of betraying the Greek cause, and uncovered gold,
he had previously hidden, as evidence of the fabricated charge. So, by
abandonment or death, he has drawn the strength of Achaea: that is how
Ulysses fights, that is why he is to be feared!
Though he be greater than
Nestor, the true, in eloquence, I will never believe that his
desertion of Nestor in battle was anything but a crime. When Nestor
implored Ulysses’s help, weary as he was with old age, and slowed by a
wound to his horse, he was abandoned by his companion.
Diomede,
son of Tydeus, is well aware that I am not inventing the charge: he
called Ulysses repeatedly, by name, and reproached his cowardly friend
for running away.
The gods look down, with the eyes of the just,
at human dealings! Look, he who gave no help needs it: and as he had
abandoned Nestor, so he would have been abandoned: he himself had
established his own precedent. He shouted to his companions. I
approached, and saw him, trembling and pale, and shaking with fear of
impending death. I thrust out the mass of my shield, and covered him as
he lay there, and (small cause for praise in that) I saved his cowardly
life. If you go through with this contest, let us revisit that spot:
revisit the enemy, your wound, and your usual cowardice, hide behind my
shield, and contend with me under it! Yet, after I had snatched him up,
he who was granted no strength to stand, because of his wounds, ran for
it, not slowed by his wounds at all.
Hector approaches, and, with him, leads the gods to battle, and
brave men as well as you are terrified,
Ulysses, when he rushes onwards, such is the fear he brings. I
felled him to the ground with a huge rock hurled from a distance, as he
was exulting in the success of his bloodthirsty slaughter. When he
challenged one warrior to meet him, I withstood him. You wished the lot
would fall to me, Achaeans, and your prayers were answered. If you ask
what the outcome of that conflict was I was not beaten by Hector. See,
the Trojans bring fire and sword, and
Jupiter himself, against the Greek ships: where now is the eloquent
Ulysses? Surely I, with my own breast, shielded the thousand ships, your
hope of return: grant me the arms for all that fleet.
Yet, if I may speak the truth, the arms search
for greater honour than I do, to be linked to my glory, and the arms
seek out Ajax, not Ajax the arms. Let the
Ithacan compare with these things his killing of
Rhesus, and of cowardly
Dolon, his taking captive
Helenus,
Priam’s son, and his theft of
Pallas’s image, the
Palladium: nothing performed in daylight, nothing without
Diomede present. If ever you grant the armour for such worthless
service, divide it, and let Diomede have the greater share of it.
Nevertheless why give them to the Ithacan, who carries things out
secretly, and always unarmed, deceiving the unsuspecting enemy with his
tricks? The gleam of the helmet, radiant with shining gold, will reveal
his scheming, and show where he hides. The
Dulichian’s head beneath Achilles’s helmet, will not bear so great a
weight, and the spear-shaft, from Pelion, cannot be anything but heavy
and burdensome for his arm, unsuited to war, and the shield, with its
engraved design of the vast world, will not be fit for that cowardly
left hand born for stealing. Perverse man, why do you go after a prize
that will cripple you, one that, if it is given you in error by the
Achaean people, will be a reason for being despoiled by the enemy, not
feared by them? And running away, in which you surpass everyone, you
master-coward, will turn out to be a slow game for you, if you are
carrying such a weight. Add to that your shield that is rarely used in
battle, and uninjured, and mine split in a thousand places from fending
off spear-thrusts, that needs a new successor.
Finally (what is the use of words?) let us be
seen together in action! Send out the brave hero’s arms into the middle
of the enemy ranks: order them to be recovered from there, and let the
retriever be equipped with what he retrieves.’
The son of
Telamon finished, and the crowd’s applause followed his closing
words. Until the hero, son of
Laërtes, stood. He gazed at the ground for a while and then raised
his eyes to look at the captains, and opened his lips for the speech
they anticipated: his eloquent words did not lack grace in their
delivery.
‘If my wishes and yours,
Pelasgians, had been worth anything, there would be no question as
to who should inherit the arms in this great contest: you,
Achilles, would have your armour, and we would have you. But since
unequal fate has denied his presence to me and to you,
(and he made as
if to wipe a tear from his eye), who better to take Achilles’s place
than the man through whom mighty Achilles took his place among the
Greeks? Only do not let it help him that he is slow-witted, as he seems
to be, nor harm my case that my ability has always profited you Greeks.
And let this eloquence of mine, if it exists, that often spoke for you,
and now speaks for its master, escape envy: no man should refuse to
employ his talents.
Now, as to race, and ancestry, and whatever we
have not personally achieved; I hardly call those things ours. But since
Ajax has recalled that he is
Jove’s great grandson, Jupiter is the founder of my bloodline also,
and I am the same distance from him.
Laërtes is my father,
Arcesius was Laërtes’s father, and he was the son of Jupiter: and
there are no exiled criminals, like
Peleus and
Telamon, amongst them. Also there is the addition to my nobility of
Cyllenian
Mercury through my mother, Anticleia. The gods are in both my
parents. But I do not claim the arms lying there because I am nobler on
my mother’s side, nor because my father is innocent of a brother’s
blood. Judge the case on its merits. Provided that it is not regarded as
Ajax’s merit that Telamon and Peleus were brothers, and that what is
considered in this award is respect for ability not the claims of blood!
Or, if you are asking who is the next of kin, and the lawful heir, well
Peleus is Achilles’s father, and
Pyrrhus is Achilles’s son: where is Ajax’s claim? Take the arms to
Peleus’s
Phthia, or Pyrrhus’s
Scyros!
Teucer is no less Achilles’s cousin than Ajax, yet does he ask for
the arms, and if he did, would he gain them? So, since it is a contest
about naked achievements, I have done more than I can recount in glib
words, but I will take things in their proper order.
Thetis, Achilles’s
Nereid mother, foreseeing her son’s death, disguised his appearance,
and wearing women’s clothes he deceived everyone, including
Ajax. But, among the things women buy, I placed arms to stir a man’s
spirit. Before the hero had abandoned the clothes of a girl, while he
held the shield and spear, I said: ‘Pergama the citadel doomed to be
destroyed, waits for you, son of the goddess! Why do you hesitate to
overthrow mighty Troy?’ And I took him in hand, and sent the brave out
to do brave things. So his deeds are mine: I overcame warring
Telephus with my spear, and healed him with it, when he was defeated
and begging for help. It is down to me that
Mysian
Thebes fell: credit the capture of
Lesbos to me,
Tenedos to me,
Chryse and
Cilla the cities of
Apollo, and
Phrygian
Scyros as well. Imagine that my right hand razed
Lyrnesus’s walls to the ground. I gave you the man who could destroy
fierce Hector, not to speak of those other Trojans: through me glorious
Hector lies low! I seek these arms for the arms that revealed Achilles:
I gave to the living, I claim from the dead.
When one man’s sorrow fell on all the Greeks,
and a thousand ships gathered at
Euboean
Aulis, though they waited for a long time, there were adverse winds
or no wind. Then a cruel oracle ordered
Agamemnon to sacrifice his innocent daughter,
Iphigenia, to pitiless
Diana. The father said no, angered with the gods themselves: and
there is still a father even in a king. I with my skill in words turned
him away from a parent’s fondness and towards the common good. I had a
difficult case indeed to plead, before (I confess, and may
Atrides pardon the confession) a prejudiced judge, but given the
needs of his brother and the expedition, and the high command vested in
him, he balanced glory against blood. Then I was sent to the mother,
Clytaemnestra, who was not to be persuaded, but deceived by cunning.
If Telamon’s son had gone, our sails would still be waiting for the
winds.
Also, as an ambassador, I was sent to Troy’s
citadel, and saw and entered the senate house of lofty
Ilium, still full of heroes. As I was charged to do by Greece, for
the common good, undaunted, I accused
Paris, demanded the return of
Helen and what Paris had plundered, and stirred
Priam, and
Antenor, at one with Priam. But Paris, and his brothers, and those
who plundered with him, could scarcely keep their sinful hands off me
(you know it,
Menelaüs) and that first day of danger to me was shared with you.
It would take a long time to tell what I have
achieved that has been useful, by stratagem and deed, in the long space
of this conflict. After the first onslaught the enemy kept inside the
city walls for a long time, and there was no chance for open warfare.
Finally in the tenth year we fought it out. What were you doing
meanwhile,
Ajax, you who only know about battles? What use were you then? If
you ask what I was doing, I laid ambushes for the enemy; surrounded the
defences with a ditch; encouraged our allies so that they might bear the
weariness of a long campaign with patience of mind; advised on how we
should be fed and armed; was sent wherever benefit required it.
See, deceived by a dream in sleep,
Agamemnon, the king, commanded by
Jupiter, orders us to give up all concern with the war we have
begun. He can justify his words by this dream’s authority. Let Ajax
prevent it, and demand that the citadel,
Pergama, be destroyed, let him do what he can do, fight! Why does he
not restrain those who are for returning home? Why does he not take up
arms, and give a lead for the fickle mob to follow?
That was not too much to ask of one who never speaks
without boasting: but what of the fact that he fled as well?
I saw you, Ajax, and was ashamed to see it, when,
turning your back, you readied your dishonourable sails. Instantly I
shouted: ‘What are you doing? What madness is urging you to abandon
captured Troy? What are you taking home with you, except disgrace?’ With
these words, and others, in which my anguish made me eloquent, I turned
men from their flight, and led them back. Atrides assembled the allies
who were quaking with fear: even then the son of Telamon did not dare
utter a thing, but even
Thersites dared to attack the kings with insolent words, though not
without punishment from me! I rose to my feet and urged on my frightened
countrymen against the enemy, and by my voice restored their lost
courage. From that time on, whatever bravery this man can be seen to
have shown, is mine, who dragged him back when he was given to flight.
Next, which of the Greeks praises you or seeks you
out, Ajax? Yet
Diomede shares what he does with me, supports me, and always trusts
Ulysses as his companion. That is something, to be singled out by
Diomede from so many thousand Greeks! No drawing of lots forced me to
go: yet, disregarding the dangers of night and the enemy, I killed
Dolon, the
Phrygian, out on the same errand as we were, but not before I had
forced him to tell what he knew, and had learned what perfidious Troy
was planning. I had discovered everything, and had no need to spy
further, and could now return with the glory I sought: yet not content
with that, I searched out
Rhesus’s tents, and I killed him and his comrades in their camp. And
so, a victor, with what I prayed for achieved, as if it were a triumph,
I rode his captured chariot. Deny me the arms of
Achilles, whose horses my enemy, Dolon, asked of
Hector, for his night’s work, and let Ajax be more generous than
you.
Why should I have to mention the ranks of
Sarpedon of
Lycia cut to pieces by my sword? With bloody slaughter I killed
Coeranos,
Iphitus’s son;
Alastor and
Chromius;
Alcander,
Halius,
Noëmon and
Prytanis; and I dealt destruction to
Thoön,
Chersidamas,
Charopes, and
Ennomos driven by inexorable fate; and others less well known fell
to my hand under the walls of the city. I have wounds, friends,
honourable ones, as their position shows: do not believe empty words,
look!’ and he pulled his tunic open with his hand, ‘here is my breast
that has always been employed in your actions! But the son of Telamon
has shed no blood for his companions, in all these years, and his flesh
is unwounded!
What relevance is it that he declares he took up arms
against the Trojans and against Jove? I agree, he did (since I do not
maliciously disparage beneficial actions) but do not let him seize the
honour that is shared, and let him grant you some respect also. It was
Patroclus,
son of Actor, protected by being disguised in Achilles’s armour, who
pushed back the Trojans from the ships that would have gone up in
flames, with Ajax, their defender. He thinks that he is the only one who
dared to face Hector’s spear, forgetting the captains and the king, and
myself: he was the ninth to volunteer, and selected by the luck of the
draw. But what was the result of your struggle, strongest of men? Hector
retreated without receiving a single wound.
Alas, with what sadness I am forced to recall that
time when Achilles, the defence of Achaia, fell! Yet tears, grief, fear
did not prevent my lifting his body from the earth: I carried the body
of Achilles over these shoulders, these very shoulders, along with the
weapons, that now also I am anxious to carry. I have strength enough for
such a burden, and a mind that can surely appreciate the honour. Was it
for this that his mother, the sea-goddess, was so ambitious for her son,
that the gifts of heaven, the works of such artistry, should adorn an
ignorant and thoughtless soldier? He understands nothing of the shield’s
engraving, Ocean, or earth, or high starry sky; the
Pleiades and the
Hyades, the
Bear that is always clear of the waters, and opposite, beyond the
Milky Way,
Orion, with his glittering sword. He demands to bear armour that he
does not comprehend!
What of the fact that he accuses me of shirking the
harsh duties of war, and of coming late to a labour already begun? Does
he not see that he is speaking ill of great Achilles? If you call it a
crime to dissimulate, we both dissimulated: if delay is a fault, I was
the earlier to arrive. A loving wife detained me, a loving mother
Achilles. Our priority was given to them, the rest to you. I hardly fear
an accusation, even if I cannot defend myself against it, shared with
such a man: he was revealed by Ulysses’s cunning, but not Ulysses by
Ajax’s.
Let us not be astonished that he pours out against me
the invective from his foolish tongue, since he reproaches you
shamefully. Was it a disgrace for me to accuse
Palamades on an erroneous charge, but proper for you to condemn him?
But then the son of Nauplias could not defend himself against so great a
crime, and one so clearly proven: nor did you merely hear of the crime:
you saw it, revealed by the gold I exposed.
Nor do I merit being called a criminal because
Lemnos,
Vulcan’s isle, holds the
son of Poeas,
Philoctetes, (defend your own actions, since you agreed to it!) but
I will not deny that I persuaded him to withdraw from the hardships of
war and the journey, and to try and relieve his terrible agonies in
rest. He agreed – and he still lives! Not only was my opinion offered in
good faith, though it is enough that it was in good faith, but it turned
out well. Now since our seers demand his presence for the destruction of
Troy, do not commission me! Telamon’s son, with his eloquence, had
better go and soothe that man, maddened by pain and fury, or bring him
by some cunning trick! If my mind were idle on your behalf, the River
Simoïs would flow backwards, and Mount
Ida stand there leafless, and Achaia help Pergama, before the skill,
of foolish Ajax, would benefit the Greeks.
I would go to you, harsh Philoctetes, and try to bring
you back with me, though you are aggressive towards king and countrymen,
and myself; though you execrate me, and pour curses endlessly on my
head; and, in your pain, long for me to be given into your power, to
drink my blood, and to have your chance at me, as I did at you. And I
would gain possession of your arrows (by
Fortune’s favour), as I took possession of the
Dardanian seer,
Helenus, whom I captured; as I revealed the gods’ oracles and the
fate of Troy; as I stole the image of Phrygian
Minerva from the inner sanctuary, from the midst of the enemy. Does
Ajax compare himself to me? The fates surely denied our capturing Troy
without it.
Where is brave Ajax now? Where are the great hero’s
mighty words? What do you fear then? Why does Ulysses dare to go through
the sentries and commit himself to night; to enter not only the walls of
Troy but also the heights of the citadel, past the sharp swords; and to
snatch the goddess from her temple, and carry her captive through the
enemy ranks? If I had not done it, the son of Telamon would have carried
the seven-layered bull’s-hide shield on his left arm in vain. That night
the victory over Troy was established: I defeated Pergama then, when I
secured the possibility of her defeat.
You can stop pointing out with your murmurs and looks,
Ajax, that Diomede was my partner: he has his share of praise in this!
Nor were you alone, when you held your shield in defence of the allied
ships: you had a crowd of companions: I had only one. If he did not know
that a fighter is worth less than a thinker, and that the prize is not
owed merely because of an indomitable right hand, he would also claim
it; so would
the lesser Ajax, fierce
Eurypylus, and
Thoas, the son of famous
Andraemon, and no less surely would
Idomeneus, and
Meriones born of the same nation, and
Menelaüs, the brother of Agamemnon.
In fact, they accept my counsel, these strong right
hands, not second to me in battle. Your right hand, useful in war, needs
the guidance of my intellect. You have power without mind, mine is the
care for the future. You can fight, but Atrides, with me, chooses the
time to fight. You only display the flesh, I the spirit. By as much as
he who steers the ship is superior to him who rows, by as much as the
general exceeds the soldier, by that much I surpass you. No less is the
head more powerful than the hand, in our body: the energy of the whole
is within it.
O princes, grant the prize to your sentry, for the
many years I have spent in anxious care, grant me the judgement, this
honour for my services. Now my labour is done: I have removed fate’s
obstacles, and by making it possible to take high Pergama, have taken
her. Now, by our common expectation; by Troy’s doomed walls; by the gods
I recently took from the enemy; by whatever else remains that needs to
be done wisely; I pray, that if there is still some bold and dangerous
thing to attempt, if you think that anything is yet in store involving
Troy’s fate, remember me! And if you do not give me the arms, give them
to her!’ and he pointed towards Minerva’s fatal statue.
The council of princes was swayed, and it shows what
eloquence can do: the gifted speaker carried away the arms of the brave
hero. But
Ajax, who had so often stood alone against Hector, against sword and
flame, against Jove himself, could not stand against mere passion, and
indignation conquered the unconquerable hero. Drawing his sword he
shouted: ‘This is mine, at least! Or does Ulysses demand it for himself?
This I will use myself, on myself, and the iron so often drenched in
Phrygian blood, will now be drenched in its master’s, so that none can
defeat
Ajax but himself.’ He spoke, and drove the lethal weapon to its full
extent into his chest, that, till then, had never felt a wound. No hand
was strong enough to draw out the implanted weapon: it was the blood
itself expelled it, and the bloodstained ground bore a purple flower
from the green turf, that had first sprung from the wound of the
Spartan,
Hyacinthus. In the centre of the petals letters are inscribed,
shared by the hero and the boy, one reading of them being a name, ΑΙΑΣ,
and the other one, ΑΙ ΑΙ, a cry of woe.
Ulysses, the winner, set sail for
Lemnos, the island of Queen
Hypsipyle and her father the famous
Thoas, a country notorious in ancient times for the murder by its
women of their men, to bring back the arrows of
Tyrinthian
Hercules. When he had brought them back to the Greeks, with
Philoctetes their master, the last hand was dealt in the long
drawn-out war.
Troy fell, and
Priam also.
Hecuba, Priam’s unhappy wife, when all else was lost, lost her human
form, and filled the air of an alien country, where the long
Hellespont narrows to a strait, with strange barking.
Ilium burned; the flames had not yet died down;
Jove’s altar was soaking up old Priam’s meagre stream of blood; and
Cassandra, the head priestess of
Apollo, dragged along by her hair, stretched out her arms uselessly
to the heavens. The
Dardanian women, embracing the statues of their nation’s gods while
they still could, and thronging the burning temples, were snatched away
by the victorious Greeks as enviable prizes.
Astyanax, was thrown down from that tower, from which he used to see
his father,
Hector, whom Andromache his mother pointed out to him, as Hector
fought for him, and protected the ancestral kingdom. Now
Boreas, the north wind, urged the Greeks on their way, and the sails
flapped in a favourable breeze.
The sailers are ordered to take advantage of the wind.
The Trojan women wail, kissing their native earth, abandoning the
burning houses: ‘Troy, farewell! We are taken against our will.’
The last to embark – pitiable sight! – was Hecuba,
found among the tombs of her sons. There as she clung to their graves,
trying to kiss their relics, the hands of
Dulichian
Ulysses dragged her away. Yet she emptied one sepulchre, and carried
away with her, at her breast, Hector’s ashes from the emptied urn. And
on Hector’s grave she left a scant offering to the dead, shreds of her
grey hair, hair and tears.
There is a country opposite
Phrygia, where
Troy stood, that the
Bistones inhabit:
Polymestor’s wealthy court was there, to whom
Priam your father secretly sent you,
Polydorus, to be reared away from the Phrygian war: a wise plan if
he had not sent great riches with you, a reward for the criminal, a
temptation to the greedy spirit. When Phrygia’s fortunes waned, the
impious king of
Thrace took his sword and stabbed his young foster child in the
throat, and threw the body from a cliff into the sea, as if murder could
be eliminated with the corpse.
Agamemnon had moored his fleet on a
Thracian beach until the sea calmed, and the winds were kinder.
Here, suddenly the ghost of
Achilles appeared from a broad fissure in the earth, as large as he
used to be in life. He appeared as on the day when, with threatening
face, and sword in hand, he fiercely challenged
Agamemnon’s injustice. ‘You depart, then, Achaeans, forgetting me,
and gratitude for my courage is buried with me!’ he cried, ‘Do not let
it be so! Let
Polyxena be sacrificed, so that my tomb is not without its honours.
Appease Achilles’s shade!’
He spoke, and, his countrymen obeyed the
pitiless ghost. Now, she was torn from her mother’s arms, and the girl,
almost
Hecuba’s only comfort, ill-fated, but with more than a woman’s
courage, was led to the burial mound and became a victim of the dread
grave. She remembered who she was, set before the brutal altar, knowing
the savage rite was readied for her, and when she saw
Neoptolemus standing, gripping his sword, his eyes gazing at her
face, she said: ‘Now, shed noble blood, nothing prevents you: but
sheathe your sword in my throat or in my breast,’ and she uncovered both
her throat and her breast, ‘Polyxena, for certain, has no desire to be
slave to any man! No god will be appeased by such a rite as this! I only
wish my death could be unknown to my mother: my mother weakens and
lessens my joy in death, though it is not my dying but her living that
is terrible. Now, move away, you, so that if my request is lawful, I may
not be hindered in going to the Stygian shades: and take the hands of
man from virgin flesh! My free blood will be more acceptable to him,
whoever he is, whom you are trying to appease with my murder. If my last
words still move any of you (The daughter of Priam asks it, not a
prisoner) return my body to my mother without ransom: let her pay for
the sad privilege of burying me, not with gold, but with tears! When she
could do so, she paid in gold as well’
She spoke, and the crowd could not restrain
tears that she restrained. Then the priest, also weeping, and against
his will, driving his sword home, pierced the breast she offered up. Her
knees gave way, and she sank to the ground, keeping her look of fearless
courage to the end. Even then, as she fell, she was careful to hide the
parts that should be hidden, and to protect the honour of her chaste
modesty.
The
Trojan women lift her body, counting over the lamented
children of Priam, and recounting how much blood one house has
surrendered. They weep for you, girl, and for you,
Hecuba, who were lately called the royal wife, the royal parent, the
image of bright
Asia, now in evil circumstances, even for a prisoner, whom
victorious
Ulysses would not have wanted, except for the fact that you had
given birth to
Hector: a partner for his mother that Hector would scarcely have
imagined!
Embracing the body of Polyxena, now empty of
that brave spirit, she sheds the tears for her that she has shed so
often for her husband, sons and country. She pours her tears over her
daughter’s wound, covers her lips with kisses, and beats at her own
bruised breast.
Then, tearing at her white hair caked with blood, and
plucking at her breast, she said this amongst other things: ‘Child –
since, what else is left me? – your mother’s last grief, Child, you lie
there, and I see your wound, that is my wound. Look, you also have your
wound, so that I might lose none of my children without bloodshed.
Because you were a woman, I thought you safe from the sword: yet, a
woman, you have died by the sword: and that same Achilles who has ruined
Troy and made me childless, who has destroyed so many of your brothers,
has killed you in the same way.
Yet when he fell to the arrow of
Paris, and
Phoebus, I said: “Now surely,
Achilles is no longer to be feared.” Yet even then I still needed to
fear him. His very ashes in the tomb are hostile to our race: even in
the grave we feel his enmity: I gave birth for the
Aeacidae! Mighty
Ilium is in the dust, and, in a grievous outcome, our ruined State
is ended. But still, it ended: in me, only,
Pergama remains. My grief still takes it course. A moment ago I was
endowed with the greatest things, so many sons and daughters,
sons-in-law, and daughters-in-law, and my husband. Now, exiled,
destitute, torn from the tombs of my loved ones, I am dragged off as a
prize, to serve
Penelope. She will point me out to the women of
Ithaca, as I spin the wool she gives me, and say: “This is the
famous mother of
Hector, this is
Priam’s queen.” Now you, Polyxena, after so many have been lost,
you, who were the only one left to comfort your mother’s grief, have
been sacrificed on an enemy tomb! I have borne offerings for the enemy
dead!
Why do I remain, unyielding? Why do I linger
here? Why do you preserve me, wrinkled old age? Why prolong an old
woman’s life, cruel gods, unless it is for me to view more funerals? Who
would have thought
Priam could be happy when
Pergama has fallen? Yet he is happy, in death! He did not see you
killed, daughter, but left his kingdom and his life together. Do I
imagine you will be endowed with funereal splendour, and your body laid
to rest in the ancestral tomb? That is not our house’s fate! Your
mother’s tears will be your funeral gift, and the wastes of foreign
sand. I have lost everything: now an only child is left, once the
youngest son of my family, his mother’s dearest, a reason to endure life
for a brief space of time,
Polydorus, sent to these shores, to the
Ismarian king. But why do I delay, meanwhile, the cleansing of your
cruel wound with water, your face spattered with drops of blood?’
She spoke, and went to the shore, with the
stumbling steps of an old woman, tearing at her white hair. ‘Give me an
urn,
women of Troy!’ said the unhappy mother, wanting to draw water from
the sea. There, she saw
Polydorus’s body, thrown on the beach, covered with open wounds made
by
Thracian spears. The Trojan women cried out, but she was dumb with
grief. The grief itself obliterated both her powers of speech and the
tears welling inside, and she stood unmoving like solid rock, at one
moment with her gaze fixed on the ground, the next lifting her face
grimly towards the sky. Now she looked at her dead son’s face, now at
his wounds, mostly at his wounds, awakening a growing anger in herself.
Then it blazed out, and she, as if she were still a queen, determined on
vengeance, her whole mind filled with thoughts of punishment.
Hecuba, her grief mixed with anger, forgetting her age, but not
forgetting her rage, like a lioness maddened by the theft of her
unweaned cub, that, though she cannot see her enemy, follows the traces
she finds of his footsteps, found her way to the author of the dreadful
crime,
Polymestor. She made out that she wanted to show him a secret hoard
of gold, to be given to her son. The
Thracian believed her, and with his usual desire for gain, came with
her secretly. Then with smooth and cunning words, he said: ‘Do not
delay, Hecuba: give me your gift to your son! It will all be for him,
both what you give and what was given before, I swear by the gods.’
She gazed at him, grimly, as he spoke and swore
his lying oath, until, her seething anger boiling over, she called on
her train of captive women to attack the man, and drove her nails into
his deceitful eyes, and (made strong by anger) tore the eyeballs from
their sockets, and dipped her hand, and drank, stained with his sinful
blood, not from his eyes (nothing of them remained) but from the holes
that were his eyes.
The
Thracians, enraged by the murder of their king, attacked the
Trojan woman, hurling stones and missiles, but she chased the stones
they threw, snapping at them with a harsh growling, and, readying her
jaws for words, barked when she tried to speak. The place is still
there, and takes its name, Cynossema, the Monument of the Bitch, from
this, and she still howls mournfully amongst the
Sithonian fields, remembering endlessly her ancient suffering.
Her fate moved the
Trojans and her enemies the
Greeks, and it moved all the gods as well, yes, all, so that even
Juno,
Jove’s sister-wife, said that
Hecuba did not merit such misfortune.
But
Aurora had no time for being moved by the fall and ruin of
Hecuba and
Troy, though she had aided its defence. A closer sorrow, and a
private grief tormented her, the loss of her son
Memnon, whom she, his bright mother, had seen wasted by
Achilles’s spear on the
Phrygian plain. She saw it, and that colour, that reddens the dawn,
paled, and the sky was covered with cloud. His mother could not bear to
look at his body laid on the summit of the funeral pyre, but with
dishevelled hair, just as she was, she did not scorn to fall at the feet
of mighty
Jove, adding tears to these words: ‘I am the least of all, whom the
golden heavens hold (since temples to me are the rarest in all the
world), yet I come as a goddess: though not that you might give me
sanctuaries, or sacred days, or altars to flame with sacrificial fires.
Yet if you considered what I, as a woman, do for you, when each new dawn
I keep the borders of night, you would think to give me some reward. But
that is not my care, nor Aurora’s errand, to ask for well-merited
honours.
I come bereft of my Memnon, who bore arms
bravely, but in vain, for his uncle
Priam, and in his youth has fallen to mighty Achilles (so you
willed). I beg you to grant him some honour, as a solace for his death,
great king of the gods, and lessen a mother’s wound!’ Jupiter nodded,
while Memnon’s steep pyre collapsed in leaping flames, and the daylight
was stained with columns of black smoke, like the river-fog the
naiad breathes out, that does not admit the light beneath it. Dark
ashes flew upwards, and gathering into a ball and solidifying, they
formed a shape, and it drew life and heat from the fire (its own
lightness giving it wings). At first resembling a bird, then a true
bird, it clapped its wings, and innumerable sisters, sprung from the
same natal source, sounded too. Three times they circled the pyre, and
three times their clamour rose in the air in consonance, on the fourth
flight the flock divided. Then in two separate fierce bands they made
war, wielding beaks and hooked talons in rage, wearying wing and breast
in the struggle.
Remembering they were sprung from a brave hero,
they fell as offerings to the buried ashes of their kinsman’s body. The
source of these suddenly created birds gave them his name: from him they
were called the
Memnonides: and when the sun has transited his twelve signs, they
war and die again in ritual festival.
And so, while others wept to witness Hecuba’s baying,
Aurora was intent on her own grief, and even now she sheds tears, and
wets the whole world with dew.
Yet the fates did not allow
Troy’s destiny, also, to be overthrown with her walls.
Aeneas,
Cytherean
Venus’s heroic son, carried away on his shoulders her sacred icons,
and bore his father, another sacred and venerable burden. He dutifully
chose that prize from all his riches, and his son
Ascanius, and carried over the sea in his exiled fleet, he left
Antandros’s harbour, and the sinful thresholds of
Thrace, and the soil drenched in
Polydorus’s blood, and riding the favourable winds and tides, he
came with his company of friends, to the city of
Apollo on
Delos.
Anius, who ruled the people, and worshipped
Phoebus, with the proper ritual, as high priest, received him in
palace and temple. He showed him the city, the famous sanctuary, and the
two trees to which
Latona clung when she gave birth. They gave incense to the flames,
poured wine onto the incense, and, in accord with custom, burned the
entrails of slaughtered oxen, and then sought out the royal palace,
where reclining on high couches, they ate the gifts of
Ceres, and drank the wine of
Bacchus.
Then virtuous
Anchises said: ‘O chosen priest of
Phoebus, am I wrong, or do I not remember that you had a son and
four daughters, when I first saw your city?’ Shaking his head, bound
with its white sacrificial fillets,
Anius replied sadly: ‘Mightiest of heroes, you are not wrong: you
saw me the father of five children, whom now you see almost bereft. What
is the use of my absent son, who holds the island of
Andros, that takes its name from him, and rules it in his father’s
place?
Delian
Apollo gave him the power of prophecy.
Bacchus
Liber gave my female offspring other gifts, greater than those they
hoped or prayed for. All that my daughter’s touched turned into corn or
wine or the grey-green olives of
Minerva, and employing them was profitable.
When
Agamemnon,
son of Atreus, ravager of
Troy, learned of this (so that you do not think we escaped all
knowledge of your destructive storm) he used armed force to snatch my
unwilling daughters from a father’s arms, and ordered them to feed the
Greek fleet, using their gift from heaven. Each escaped where they
could. Two made for
Euboea, and two for their brother’s island of
Andros. The army landed and threatened war unless they were given
up. Fear overcame brotherly affection, and he surrendered his blood-kin.
It is possible to forgive the cowardly brother, since Aeneas and
Hector, thanks to whom you held out till the tenth year, were not
here to defend Andros.
Now they were readying the chains for the
prisoners’ arms. They, while their arms were free, stretched them out to
the sky, saying: “Bacchus,
father, bring your aid!” and he, who granted their gifts, helped them –
if you call it help for them to lose in some strange way their human
form, for I could not discover by what process they lost it, nor can I
describe it. The end of this misfortune I did observe: they took wing,
and became snow-white doves, the birds of your goddess-wife
Anchises,
Venus.’
After they had filled the time with these and
other matters, they left the table and retired to sleep, and rising with
the dawn, they went to the oracle of
Phoebus, who ordered them to seek their ancient mother, and their
ancestral shores.
The king gave them parting gifts and escorted
them on their way: a sceptre for
Anchises, a cloak and quiver for his grandson,
Ascanius, and a drinking-bowl for
Aeneas, that
Therses of
Thebes, a friend, had sent, from the
Aonian coast, to the king: Therses had given it, but it was made by
Alcon of
Hyle, who had engraved it with a complete story.
There was a city, and you could see its seven
gates: these served to name it, and tell you that it was
Thebes. In front of the city funeral rites, sepulchres, funeral
pyres, and fires, and women with naked breasts and streaming hair,
depicted mourning.
Nymphs, also, appeared weeping, and lamenting their dried-up
fountains: the trees stood bare and leafless: goats nibbled the dry
gravel.
See here, in the midst of
Thebes he portrays
Orion’s daughters, the one, more than a woman, slashing her
unprotected throat, the other stabbing a weapon into her valiant breast,
falling on behalf of their people, then carried in glorious funeral
procession through the city, and burned among crowds of mourners. Then
two youths, famous as the
Coroni, spring from the virgin ashes, so that the race will not die,
and lead the cortège containing their mother’s remains.
Such was the ancient bronze with its gleaming
designs: round the rim gilded acanthus leaves were embossed. The Trojans
gave gifts in return, worth no less: an incense-box for the priest, a
libation-saucer, and a crown shining with gold and jewels.
From there, remembering that they, the
Teucrians, came originally from the blood of
Teucer, they made for his
Crete. But, unable to endure
Jove’s plague, they left Crete with its hundred cities, hoping to
reach the harbours of
Ausonian Italy. Tempests raged, and tossed the heroes on stormy
seas, and taking refuge in the treacherous harbour of the
Strophades, they were terrified by the
harpy,
Aëllo.
Now they were carried past
Dulichium’s anchorage; past
Same, and the houses of
Neritos; and
Ithaca, cunning
Ulysses’s kingdom. They saw
Ambracia, famous now for its
Apollo of
Actium, once contended over by quarreling gods; and saw the image of
the judge who was turned to stone;
Dodona’s land with its oracular oaks; and
Chaonia’s bay, where the sons of Munichus, the
Molossian king, escaped the impious flames on new-found wings.
Next they headed for the country of the
Phaeacians, set with rich orchards, and touched at
Buthrotus in
Epirus, a miniature
Troy, ruled by
Helenus, the Trojan seer. From there, certain of their future, all
of which Helenus,
Priam’s son predicted, with reliable warnings, they entered
Sicilian waters. Three tongues of this land run down into the sea.
Of these
Pachynos faces the rainy south,
Lilybaeon fronts the soft western breeze, and
Peloros looks to the northern
Bears that never touch the waves. Here the Teucrians came, and
rowing, with a favourable tide, their fleet reached the sandy beach of
Zancle, as night fell.
Scylla attacks from the right-hand coast, restless
Charybdis from the left. The latter sucks down and spits out ships
she has caught: the former has a girdle of savage dogs round her dark
belly. She has a girl’s face, and if the tales of poets are not all
false, she was once a girl also. Many suitors wooed her, whom she
rejected, and she would go and tell the ocean nymphs, being well loved
by the ocean nymphs, of the thwarted desires of young men.
Once while
Galatea let
Scylla comb her hair, she addressed these words to her, sighing
often: ‘At least, O virgin Scylla, you are not wooed by a relentless
breed of men: and you can reject them without fear, as you do. But I,
whose father is
Nereus, and whose mother is sea-green
Doris, I, though protected by a crowd of sisters, was not allowed to
flee the love of
Polyphemus, the
Cyclops, except through sorrow’, and tears stopped the sound of her
voice. When the girl had wiped away the tears with her white fingers,
and the goddess was comforted, she said: ‘Tell me, O dearest one: do not
hide the cause of your sadness (I can be so trusted)’ The
Nereid answered
Crateis’s daughter in these words: ‘Acis
was the son of
Faunus and the nymph
Symaethis, a great delight to his father and mother, but more so
even to me, since he and I alone were united. He was handsome, and
having marked his sixteenth birthday, a faint down covered his tender
cheeks. I sought him, the Cyclops sought me, endlessly. If you asked, I
could not say which was stronger in me, hatred of Cyclops or love of
Acis, both of them were equally strong.
Oh! Gentle
Venus, how powerful your rule is over us! How that ruthless
creature, terrifying even to the woods themselves, whom no stranger has
ever seen with impunity, who scorns mighty
Olympus and its gods, how he feels what love is, and, on fire,
captured by powerful desire, forgets his flocks and caves. Now
Polyphemus, you care for your appearance, and are anxious to please, now
you comb your bristling hair with a rake, and are pleased to cut your
shaggy beard with a reaping hook, and to gaze at your savage face in the
water and compose its expression. Your love of killing, your fierceness,
and your huge thirst for blood, end, and the ships come and go in
safety.
Meanwhile,
Telemus the augur, Telemus, the son of
Eurymus, whom no flight of birds could deceive, came to
Sicilian Mount
Aetna, addressed grim Polyphemus, and said: “Ulysses
will take from you, that single eye in the middle of your forehead.” He
laughed, and answered: “O most foolish of seers, you are wrong, another,
a girl, has already taken it.” So he scorned the true warning, given in
vain, and weighed the coast down, walking with giant tread, or returned
weary to his dark cave.
A wedge-shaped hillside, ending in a long spur,
projects into the sea (the waves of the ocean wash round it on both
sides). The fierce
Cyclops climbed to it, and sat at its apex, and his woolly flocks,
shepherd-less, followed. Then laying at his feet the pine trunk he used
as a staff, fit to carry a ship’s rigging, he lifted his panpipes made
of a hundred reeds. The whole mountain felt the pastoral notes, and the
waves felt them too. Hidden by a rock, I was lying in my
Acis’s arms, and my ears caught these words, and, having heard them,
I remembered:’
‘Galatea, whiter than the snowy privet petals,
taller than slim alder, more flowery than the meadows,
friskier than a tender kid, more radiant than crystal,
smoother than the shells, polished, by the endless
tides;
more welcome than the summer shade, or the sun in
winter,
showier than the tall plane-tree, fleeter than the
hind;
more than ice sparkling, sweeter than grapes ripening,
softer than the swan’s-down, or the milk when curdled,
lovelier, if you did not flee, than a watered garden.
Galatea, likewise, wilder than an untamed heifer,
harder than an ancient oak, trickier than the sea;
tougher than the willow-twigs, or the white vine
branches,
firmer than these cliffs, more turbulent than a river,
vainer than the vaunted peacock, fiercer than the fire;
more truculent than a pregnant bear, pricklier than
thistles,
deafer than the waters, crueller than a trodden snake;
oh, what I wish I could alter in you, most of all, is
this:
that you are swifter than the deer, driven by loud
barking,
swifter even than the winds, and the passing breeze.
But if you knew me well, you would regret your flight,
and you would condemn your own efforts yourself, and hold to me: half of
the mountain is mine, and the deep caves in the natural rock, where
winter is not felt nor the midsummer sun. There are apples that weigh
down the branches, golden and purple grapes on the trailing vines.
Those, and these, I keep for you. You will pick ripe strawberries born
in the woodland shadows, in autumn cherries and plums, not just the
juicy blue-purples, but also the large yellow ones, the colour of fresh
bees’-wax. There will be no lack of fruit from the wild strawberry
trees, nor from the tall chestnuts: every tree will be there to serve
you.
This whole flock is mine, and many are wandering the
valleys as well, many hidden by the woods, many penned in the caves. If
you asked me I could not tell you how many there are: a poor man counts
his flocks. You can see, you need not merely believe me, how they can
hardly move their legs with their full udders. There are newborn lambs
in the warn sheepfolds, and kids too, of the same age, in other pens,
and I always have snow-white milk: some of it kept for drinking, and
some with rennet added to curdle it.
You will not have vulgar gifts or easily found
pleasures, such as leverets, or does, or kids, or paired doves, or a
nest from the treetops. I came upon twin cubs of a shaggy bear that you
can play with: so alike you can hardly separate them. I came upon them
and I said: “I shall keep these for my mistress.”
Now
Galatea, only lift your shining head from the dark blue sea: come,
do not scorn my gifts. Lately, I examined myself, it’s true, and looked
at my reflection in the clear water, and, seeing my self, it pleased me.
Look how large I am:
Jupiter, in the sky, since you are accustomed to saying some Jove or
other rules there, has no bigger a body. Luxuriant hair hangs over my
face, and shades my shoulders like a grove. And do not consider it ugly
for my whole body to be bristling with thick prickly hair. A tree is
ugly without its leaves: a horse is ugly unless a golden mane covers its
neck: feathers hide the birds: their wool becomes the sheep: a beard and
shaggy hair befits a man’s body. I only have one eye in the middle of my
forehead, but it is as big as a large shield. Well? Does great
Sol not see all this from the sky? Yet Sol’s orb is unique.
Added to that my father,
Neptune, rules over your waters: I give you him as a father-in-law.
Only have pity, and listen to my humble prayers! I, who scorn Jove and
his heaven and his piercing lightning bolt, submit to you alone: I fear
you,
Nereid: your anger is fiercer than lightning. And I could bear this
contempt of yours more patiently, if you fled from everyone. But why,
rejecting
Cyclops, love
Acis, and prefer Acis’s embrace to mine? Though he is pleased with
himself, and, what I dislike, pleases you too, Galatea, let me just have
a chance at him. Then he will know I am as strong as I am big! I’ll tear
out his entrails while he lives, rend his limbs and scatter them over
the fields, and over your ocean, (so he can join you!) For I am on fire,
and, wounded, I burn with a fiercer flame, and I seem to bear
Aetna with all his violent powers sunk in my breast, yet you,
Galatea, are unmoved.’
‘With such useless complaints he rose (for I saw
it all) and as a bull that cannot stay still, furious when the cow is
taken from it, he wanders through the woods and glades. Not anticipating
such a thing, without my knowing, he saw me, and saw
Acis. “I see you,” he cried, “and I’ll make this the last
celebration of your love.” His voice was as loud as an angry
Cyclops’s voice must be:
Aetna shook with the noise. And I, terrified, plunged into the
nearby waters. My hero,
son of Symaethis, had turned his back, and ran, crying: “Help me, I
beg you,
Galatea! Forefathers, help me, admit me to your kingdom or I die!”
Cyclops followed him and hurled a rock wrenched
from the mountain, and though only the farthest corner of the stone
reached him, it still completely buried Acis. Then I, doing the only
thing that fate allowed me, caused Acis to assume his ancestral powers.
From the rock, crimson blood seeped out, and in a little while its
redness began to fade, became the colour of a river at first swollen by
rain, gradually clearing. Then the rock, that Polyphemus had hurled,
cracked open, and a tall green reed sprang from the fissure, and the
mouth of a chamber in the rock echoed with leaping waters, and (a
marvel) suddenly a youth stood, waist-deep in the water, his fresh horns
wreathed with rushes. It was Acis, except that he was larger, and his
face dark blue: yet it was still Acis, changed to a river-god, and his
waters still retain his former name.
Galatea finished speaking and the group of
Nereids went away, swimming through the placid waves.
Scylla returned to the beach, not daring to trust herself to
mid-ocean, and either wandered naked along the parched sand, or, when
she was tired, found a remote, sheltered pool, and cooled her limbs in
its enclosed waters.
See,
Glaucus comes, skimming the water, a new inhabitant of the sea, his
form recently altered, at
Anthedon opposite
Euboea. Seeing the girl, he stood still, desiring her, and said
whatever he thought might stop her running away. Nevertheless she ran,
and, with the swiftness of fear, came to the top of a mountain standing
near the shore. It faced the wide sea, rising to a single peak, its
wooded summit leaning far out over the water. Here she stopped, and
from a place of safety, marvelled at his colour; the hair that hid his
shoulders and covered his back; and his groin below that merged into a
winding fish’s tail; she not knowing whether he was god or monster.
He saw her, and, leaning on a rock that stood
nearby, he said: ‘Girl, I am no freak or wild creature, but a god of the
sea.
Proteus,
Triton, or
Palaemon
son of Athamas, have no greater power in the ocean. Mortal once, but
no doubt destined for the deep, even then I worked the waves: now
drawing in the drag nets full of fish, now sitting on a rock, casting,
with rod and line.
There is a beach, bounded by a green field, one
side bordered by sea, the other by grass, that horned cattle have not
damaged by grazing, that placid sheep or shaggy goats have not cropped.
No bees intent on gathering pollen plundered the flowers there; no
garlands came from there for the heads of revellers; no one had ever
mown it, scythe in hand. I was the first to sit there on the turf,
drying my sea-soaked lines, and laying out in order the fish I had
caught, to count them, that either chance or innocence had brought to my
curved hook. This will sound like a tale, but what would I get from
lying? Touching the grass, my catch began to stir, and shift about, and
swim over land as if they were in the sea. While I hesitated and
wondered, the complete shoal fled into their native waters, leaving
behind their new master, their new land.
I stood dumbfounded, for a while not believing
it, searching for the cause. Had some god done it, or the juice of some
herb? “Yet what herb has such power?” I asked, and gathering some
herbage in my hand, I bit what I had gathered with my teeth. My throat
had scarcely swallowed the strange juice, when suddenly I felt my heart
trembling inside me, my breast seized with yearning for that other
element. Unable to hold out for long, crying out: “Land, I will never
return to, goodbye!” I immersed my body in the sea.
The gods of the sea received me, thinking me
worth the honour of their company, and asked
Oceanus and
Tethys to purge what was mortal in me. I was purified by them, and,
cleansed of sin by an incantation nine times repeated, they ordered me
to bathe my body in a hundred rivers. Immediately streams from every
side poured their waters over my head. So much I can tell of you of
those marvellous things, so much of them I remember: then my mind knew
no more. When later I came to, my whole body was altered from what I was
before, and my mind was not the same.
Then I saw, for the first time, this dark green
beard, my hair that sweeps the wide sea, these giant shoulders and dusky
arms, these legs that curve below into a fish’s fins. Yet what use is
this shape, or that I was pleasing to the ocean gods? What use is it to
be a god, if these things do not move you?’
As the god spoke these words, looking to say
more, Scylla abandoned him. Then Glaucus, maddened, and angered by her
rejection, sought the wondrous halls of
Circe,
daughter of the Sun.