Metamorphoses, Book I

My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms. You gods — for you changed those as well — breathe favor on these beginnings of mine, and from the world's first origin lead my unbroken song down to my own times!

Before sea was, and lands, and the sky that veils all things, one face of nature lay upon the whole round of the world: they called it Chaos — a rough, unordered mass, nothing but lifeless weight, and heaped together the warring seeds of things not kindly joined. No Titan yet lent light to the world, nor did Phoebe, waxing, renew her crescent horns; nor hung the earth, wrapped round with ambient air, balanced upon her own weights, nor had Amphitrite stretched her arms along the long rim of the lands. And as it was, there was earth there, and sea, and air, so earth was unfixed, water unfit to sail, air starved of light: no shape kept to its own, each stood in the way of each, for in one body cold fought with warm, and wet with dry, and soft with hard, and weightless things with things of weight.

This quarrel the god — and a kinder nature — settled: for he cut the lands from sky, and the waves from lands, and parted the clear heaven from the thickened air. And when he had rolled them out, and freed them from the blind heap, he bound the sundered parts in harmonious peace: the fiery force of the rounded heaven, weightless, flashed upward and made its place upon the height of the citadel; next to it came the air, in lightness and in seat; denser than these the earth drew down her great elements, and was pressed fast by her own weight; and the encircling water took the last place, and fenced the solid globe. So, when he — whoever of the gods it was — had cut that heap, and molded it into members of one design, first he gathered the earth into the shape of a great sphere, that it might be equal on every side.

Then he bade the seas spread out, and swell with rushing winds, and cast their shores about the girdled lands; he added springs, and great pools, and lakes, and fenced the rivers with their sloping banks: which, in their different places, are partly swallowed by the earth itself, and partly reach the sea, and, taken into the plain of freer water, beat on shores instead of banks. He bade the plains stretch out, the valleys sink, the woods be clothed in leaf, the stony mountains rise: and as two zones cut the sky upon the right, and two upon the left, and a fifth is hotter than these, so the care of god distinguished the enclosed weight by that same number: so many zones press upon the earth. Of these, the middle one is uninhabitable with heat; deep snow covers two; between each pair he placed the temperate blend, where flame is mixed with cold.

Over these hangs the air, which, by as much as the weight of earth is lighter than the weight of water, is by so much heavier than fire. There he bade the mists stand, there the clouds, there the thunders that would shake the minds of men, and the winds that make lightnings with their thunderbolts. Not even of these did the world's maker allow the winds to blow at large without restraint: hardly even now are they opposed, when each governs his blasts in his own several tract — lest they tear the world apart: so great is the discord of brothers. Eurus withdrew to the dawn and to the Nabataean realms, and to Persia, and the heights beneath the morning rays; evening, and the shores that grow warm in the westward sun, are nearest to Zephyrus; into Scythia and the seven Bears rushed the shuddering Boreas; the land opposite grows wet with constant cloud and rain from the south wind.

Above all these he set the translucent heaven, wanting weight, that held no taint of any earthly dross. Hardly had he fenced all things with sure boundaries when the stars, so long pressed beneath blind darkness, began to blaze out through the whole of heaven: and that no region might lack its proper creatures, the stars took the heavenly ground, and the shapes of gods; the gleaming waters yielded to the fish to dwell in; the earth took the wild beasts; the restless air, the birds. A holier creature still was wanting, of higher mind, fit to rule the rest: man was born. Whether the maker of all things formed him of divine seed — he, the origin of a better world — or whether the new earth, but lately parted from the high heaven, still kept seeds of her kindred sky, which Prometheus, son of Iapetus, mingled with the streams of rain, and shaped into the likeness of the gods who govern all — while the other animals bend and look upon the ground, he gave to man a lofty countenance, and bade him behold the heaven, and raise his upright face to the stars: so the earth, but lately rough and without shape, changed, put on the unknown shapes of humankind.

The golden age was first, which — with no compeller — of its own will, without a law, kept faith and did the right. Punishment and fear were absent, and no threatening words were read on plates of bronze, nor did a suppliant crowd dread the face of its own judge: they were safe without a guardian. Not yet had the pine, cut from her mountains, come down into the liquid waves to visit a foreign world; mortals knew no shores but their own shores. Not yet did deep ditches ring the steep towns; no straight trumpet, no horns of bent brass, no helmets, no swords were: without a soldier's use the soft nations passed their secure repose. Earth herself, unburdened, untouched by harrow, wounded by no ploughshares, gave all things of herself, and, content with foods created under no constraint, they gathered arbutus berries, and mountain strawberries, cornel cherries, and blackberries clinging to the tough brambles, and acorns fallen from the broad tree of Jove.

Spring was everlasting, and the gentle zephyrs, with their warm breath, caressed the flowers born of no seed; soon, too, the untilled earth bore her grain, and the field, unturned, grew white with heavy ears. Rivers of milk, then rivers of nectar flowed, and golden honey dripped from the green ilex. After Saturn had been sent down to dark Tartarus, the world was under Jove: the silver race arose, worse than gold, more precious than tawny bronze. Jupiter shortened the length of the ancient spring, and through winters, and heats, and unequal autumns, and brief spring, drew out the year in four spaces. Then first the air, scorched by parching heats, glowed white, and ice hung frozen by the winds; then first men entered houses: houses were caves, and thick-set thickets, and twigs bound with bark. Then first the seeds of Ceres were buried in long furrows, and the young oxen groaned beneath the yoke.

Third came after those the race of bronze, crueler in temper, readier for savage arms, yet not wicked: the last was of hard iron. At once there burst into the age of a worse vein every evil: shame fled, and truth, and faith; in their place came cheats and wiles, treacheries, and force, and the wicked love of having. Sails were given to the winds, which the sailor did not yet know well; and keels that once had stood upon the high mountains danced on unknown waves; and the ground, which before had been common like the sunlight and the breezes, the careful surveyor marked out with a long-drawn line. Nor was the rich earth asked only for crops and the food she owed: men went into her bowels, and the riches she had hidden, and had drawn near the shades of Stygia, were dug out — provocations to evil.

Now iron came, and gold more deadly than iron; war was born, which fights with both, and shook its clashing arms in a blood-stained hand. Men live by plunder: guest has no trust from host, father-in-law none from son-in-law; rare is the grace between brothers; the husband hangs over his wife's death, she over his; terrible stepmothers mix their ghastly aconites; the son asks, before his day, his father's years: goodness lies vanquished, and virgin Astraea, last of the immortals, left the blood-soaked earth.

And that the heaven, high as it was, might be no safer than the earth, they say the giants aspired to the kingdom of the sky, and heaped new mountains to the very stars. Then the almighty father, hurling his bolt, broke Olympus open, and shook Pelion down from Ossa. When their dire bodies lay buried under their own heaps, they say the earth drank deep of her children's blood, and warmed it into life, and — so no trace of that stock's line should perish — turned its face to man: but that breed too scorned the gods, and lusted greedily for savage slaughter, and was violent: you would know they were born of blood.

When the son of Saturn saw this from his high citadel, he groaned, and — the deed not yet spread abroad, but fresh — the foul banquet of a Lycaonian table filled him with vast wrath, worthy of Jove himself, and he called a council: no delay held back the called. There is a highway, plain to see in cloudless sky: they call it the Milky Way, famous for its very whiteness. That is the road the gods take to the halls of the great Thunderer, to the royal house: on right and left the courts of noble gods are thronged, their gates flung open; the common gods dwell in other quarters: here the powerful and famous dwellers of heaven have set their household gods. This is the place which — if I may give my words such daring — I should not fear to call the Palatine of high heaven.

So when the gods had taken their seats in the marble recess, Jove himself, higher than all, leaned upon his ivory scepter, and three times, and four, shook his dread head, that shakes together earth, sea, and stars. Then in such wise he loosed his indignant lips: 'Not even in that season was I more anxious for the world's rule, when each of the hundred-handed snakes prepared to throw his captive arms about the sky. For though the enemy was savage, still that war hung from one body, from one origin. Now, wherever Nereus sounds around the world, the mortal race must perish: I swear it by the rivers of the underworld, sliding beneath the earth through the Stygian grove! Yet all must first be tried; but what no cure can mend must be cut off with the blade, lest the sound part be dragged down.

There are demigods of mine, and rustic powers, the nymphs, fauns, satyrs, and the mountain-dwelling silvani: since we do not yet vouchsafe them the honor of heaven, let us at least allow them to inhabit the lands we gave them. Do you believe, o gods above, that they will be safe enough, when Lycaon, known to me for savagery, has laid snares for me — me, who hold the thunderbolt, who hold and rule you?' All roared assent, and with burning zeal called down the punishment upon the daring one: even so, when an impious band raged to extinguish the Roman name in Caesar's blood, mankind was struck with sudden terror at so great a fall, and the whole world shuddered; nor was the piety of your own people less pleasing to you, Augustus, than was that to Jove. And when with voice and hand he had pressed down the murmur, all held their silence.

As the clamor, quelled by the weight of the ruler, stood still, Jove a second time broke the quiet: 'He has paid his penalty (dismiss this care!). But as to the deed, hear what the vengeance was. The infamy of the age had reached my ears; desiring to disprove it, I slid down from high Olympus, and, a god, went over the earth in human guise. Long were the task to count up everywhere what evil was to be found: the infamy itself was less than truth. I had passed over Maenala, dread with the lairs of beasts, and the pine-forests of Cyllene with cold Lycaeus: from there I entered the Arcadian seat, and the inhospitable halls of the tyrant, as late twilight was drawing on the night. I gave the signs of a god come; the crowd began to pray.

Lycaon laughed first at their pious prayers, then said: "I will make trial, by an open test, whether this be a god or a mortal: the truth will not be doubtful." He made ready to destroy me, heavy with sleep, by an unexpected death: this test of truth pleased him; and not content with that, with a blade he opened the throat of a hostage sent from the Molossian race, and so, part softened the half-dead limbs in boiling water, part roasted them on fires beneath. No sooner had he set these on the table than I, with avenging flame, overthrew the household gods upon their lord, well worthy of the lord. He himself fled terrified, and reaching the quiet fields howled, and tried in vain to speak: from his own mouth his rabid rage gathered, and, with his old desire for slaughter, he turned upon the flocks, and even now delights in blood.

His garments pass into hair, his arms into legs: he becomes a wolf, and keeps the traces of his former shape; the same grey hair, the same violence in his face, the same eyes gleam, the same image of ferocity. One house has fallen — but one house only did not deserve to fall: wherever the earth extends, the savage Fury reigns. You would think they had all sworn together on the deed! Let all give, with all speed — such is my decree — the penalties they have deserved.' Part approved the words of Jove, and adding goads to his hot anger; part filled out the speech with approving signs. Yet to all it was a grief, the loss of humankind, and they asked what would be the face of a world bereft of mortals: who would carry incense to the altars, or was he to deliver the lands to wild beasts to be ravaged?

Asking these things (for the rest, they said, was his care) the king of the gods forbade their trembling, and promised a generation unlike the first people, of wondrous origin. He was even now about to scatter his thunderbolts through all the lands; but he feared, lest by chance the holy ether, with so many fires, should catch the flames, and the long axis of the world be set ablaze: he remembered too that it stood in the fates, that a time would come when sea, and land, and the seized palace of the sky should burn, and the mass of the world, beleaguered, labor. The weapons forged by the Cyclops' hands were laid aside: a different punishment pleases him — to destroy the mortal race beneath the waves, and to let loose the rains from all the reaches of the sky.

At once he shuts the North Wind in the Aeolian caves, and whatever gales scatter the gathered storm clouds, and lets loose the South. The South flew out on dripping wings, his terrible face covered in pitch-black fog; his beard heavy with rain, water flowing from his grey hair; mist sat on his brow, and dew on his plumes and robes. And when he pressed the hanging clouds with his broad hand, the crash came: the crowded heavens poured out their rains. Iris, the messenger of Juno, robed in varied colors, gathered the waters, and brought the clouds their nourishment. The standing crops are laid low, and the farmer's lamented hopes lie buried, and the long year's labor is wasted, given to the wind in vain. Nor was Jove's anger content with his own heaven: his azure brother helps with his assisting waves.

He called the rivers; and when they had entered their ruler's halls, he said: "No need of long exhortation — pour out now all your strength: the need is this! Open your doors, and, the barrier thrown down, let all your reins run loose in your rivers!" He commanded; they return, and loosen the mouths of their springs, and roll unchecked across the open level fields. He himself strikes the earth with his trident: it trembles, and with the motion opens ways for the waters. The rivers, spread out, rush across the open plains, and carry off — with the crops, the orchards, the cattle, the men, the houses, and the temples, with their sacred things — whatever they meet. If any house remained, and could resist so great a ruin without check, yet its higher crest the wave covered, and the pressed towers lay hidden beneath the whirlpool.

And now sea and land had no distinction: all was sea — and to the sea even shores were wanting. One man takes a hill; another, seated in his curved bent skiff, rows where he had lately ploughed: one sails above his grain, or over the roof of a buried farmhouse; another takes a fish on the top of an elm. An anchor, if chance so willed, fixes itself in the green meadow; or the curved keels grind over the vineyards buried beneath them; and where but now the slender goats had cropped the grass, there the shapeless seals laid down their bodies. The nereids marvel beneath the waves at groves, and houses, and cities, and things half sunk; and dolphins take the woods, and dash their bodies against the high branches, and strike the trembling oaks. The wolf swims among the sheep; the wave carries tawny lions; the wave carries tigers; nor do the boar's lightning strengths, nor his swift legs, avail the stag when he has lost them — he who, long seeking for lands where he might stand, falls into the sea, wearied, with his wandering wing-like feet.

And the boundless freedom of the sea had buried the hills, and the new waves beat upon the mountain summits. The greater part of men is swept away by the waters; those the waters spared, slow famine overcame, for want of food.

Phocis separates the Aonian fields from those of Oeta, a fertile land while it was land, but at that time part of the sea, and a plain of sudden waters. There a mountain lifts its steep summit to the stars in twin peaks, named Parnassus, and its crest overtops the clouds. Here — for the rest was covered by the sea — Deucalion, carried in a small boat with the partner of his bed, landed: they worshipped the Corycian nymphs and the mountain gods, and prophetic Themis, who then kept the oracles: no man was better than he, none more loving of the right, none more fearful of the gods than she. When Jupiter saw the world sinking in liquid marshes and that one man was left of so many thousands lately, and one woman left of so many thousands lately, both innocent, both worshippers of the god, he scattered the clouds, and, the north wind driving away the rains, he showed the earth to heaven and the heavens to the earth.

Nor does the anger of the sea remain: the ruler of the deep, laying aside his three-pointed spear, soothes the waters, and calls the blue Triton, standing above the deep, his shoulders covered with the native purple shell, and bids him sound the waves and rivers back at the given signal: the hollow shell is taken by him, which, winding, grows wide in a spiral from its base — the shell which, when it takes in the air in mid-sea, fills with its voice the shores lying under either Phoebus. Then also, when it touched the mouth of the god, dripping with wet beard, and, blown, sounded the commanded retreat, it was heard by all the waves of earth and sea, and all that heard it, it restrained. Now the sea has a shore; the channel takes the full rivers; the rivers subside, and the hills seem to come out; the ground rises, the lands grow as the waters lessen, and after a long day the bare crests of the woods show, and hold the mud left on their leaves.

The world was given back; and when he saw it empty, and the deep silence of the desolate lands, Deucalion spoke thus to Pyrrha, with tears rising: "O sister, O wife, O only woman surviving, whom a common stock, and the origin of our fathers, and then the marriage bed joined, and now dangers themselves join us, of all the lands that the west and east behold, we two are the people: the sea possesses the rest. And even now this confidence of our life is not certain enough: the clouds still terrify my mind. What mind would you have now, miserable one, if you had been snatched by the fates without me? In what could you alone bear your fear? With whom could you console your grief? For I — believe me — if the sea held you too, I would follow you, wife, and the sea would hold me too.

O that I could repair the peoples by my father's arts, and breathe into the molded earth those souls! Now the mortal race remains in us two only. So it seemed good to the gods: we remain examples of men." He had spoken, and they wept: it pleased them to pray to the heavenly power, and to seek its aid by sacred lots. No delay: together they go to the waters of Cephisus, cutting the shallows — not yet clear, though now known — and when they had sprinkled their robes and heads with the tasted waters, they turned their steps to the holy shrine of the goddess, whose gables were pale with ugly moss, and the altars stood without fires. When they touched the steps of the temple, each fell prone on the ground, and gave kisses in fear to the cold stone, and so they said: "If the powers, conquered by just prayers are softened, if the anger of the gods is bent, tell us, Themis, by what art the loss of our race may be repaired, and bring aid, most gentle, to our drowned world!" The goddess was moved, and gave the oracle: "Depart from the temple, and veil your heads, and unbind the girded robes, and cast behind your backs the bones of your great mother!" They were stupefied a long while: and Pyrrha first broke the silence with her voice, and refused to obey the goddess's command, and begged pardon with trembling lips, fearing to hurt her mother's shades by the cast bones.

Meanwhile they seek again in blind hiding places the dark words of the given oracle, and turn them over between them. Then the son of Prometheus soothes the daughter of Epimetheus with gentle words, and says: "Either our skill is deceiving, or the oracles are holy and counsel no crime: the great mother is the earth: the stones in the body of the earth I think are meant by bones: we are bidden throw these behind our backs." Though the wife of Titan was moved by her husband's augury, still the hope is doubtful: so much do they both distrust the heavenly commands; but what harm in trying? They descend: they veil their heads, and unbind their robes, and cast the commanded stones behind their own footsteps. The stones — who would believe it, unless ancient custom were witness? — began to lay aside their hardness and their stiffness, and, softened by delay, becoming soft, to take on form.

Soon, when they had grown, and a milder nature had touched them, such that some shape could be seen, not clearly, but like the beginnings of a marble statue, not exact enough, most like to rude images — that part of them which was moist with some juice and earthy was turned to use for the body; what is solid and cannot bend is changed into bones; what had been a vein remained under the same name; and in a short space, by the power of the gods above, the stones thrown by a man's hands took the face of men, and the woman was remade from a woman's throw. From this we are a hard race, experiencing labor, and we give proof of the stock from which we are born. The earth brought forth the other animals in different shapes of her own accord, after the old moisture had been warmed through by the fire of the sun, and the slime and the rich marshes swelled with heat, and the fertile seeds of things, nourished in a living soil, as in a mother's womb, grew, and took on some shape in their settling.

So when the sevenfold Nile has deserted the soaked fields and given back his waters to his old channel, and the fresh slime has glowed in the ethereal star, the farmers find many animals in the turned clods, and among them some just begun in the very space of birth, some unfinished, and lacking their numbers, and often in one body one part lives, and the other part is raw earth. For indeed when moisture and heat have taken their measure, they conceive, and from these two all things arise; and though fire fights with water, humid vapor creates all things, and a discordant concord is fit for births. Therefore, when the earth, muddy with fresh deluge, was glowing warm in the ethereal suns and deep heat, she brought forth countless species; and in part she gave back their ancient forms, and in part created new monsters.

Then Python, serpent of the open vale, unknown to the new peoples, filled them with terror, so vast a stretch of mountain ground he held. The archer god, who never before had used his deadly arms but on fleeing does and roes, destroyed him, heavy with a thousand shafts, his quiver well-nigh emptied, pouring through his wounds a black poison. And that the fame of the deed might not be blotted out by time, he founded sacred games in solemn contest, called Pythian, from the name of the slain serpent. There, whoever conquered with hand, or foot, or wheel, took the honor of the oak's green leaves. As yet no laurel stood, and Phoebus girt his brows, fair in their long hair, with any bough.

His first love was Daphne, daughter of Peneus, which no blind chance gave, but the cruel wrath of Cupid. The Delian god, still proud from the conquered serpent, had seen him bending his bow with tightened cord, and said: "What business have you, wanton boy, with warlike arms? Arms like those become my shoulders, sure of aim, that never miss the wild beasts, never miss the foe — I, who just now destroyed the swollen Python with countless arrows, covering whole acres of ground. Be content to kindle whatever fires are hidden behind your little torch, and leave glory to me." Venus' son answered: "May your bow hit everything, Phoebus — but my bow shall hit you, and by as much as all living things are less than gods." He spoke, and, flicking his wings in the parted air, a stubborn archer, came to the shaded height of Parnassus, and from his quiver of arrows took out two of opposite work: one drives away, one kindles love.

The one that kindles is of gleaming gold, with a sharp point, well polished: the other blunts, with lead beneath the reed. That one the god drove into Peneus' daughter; this one struck Apollo to the marrow of his pierced bone. At once the one loves, and longs to be united; the other flies from the very name of lover, rejoicing in the depths of shaded woods, in the spoils of wild beasts, like another Diana, a fillet binding her hair that barely lies. Many would have her; she would not have suitors, unmoved and unknown to any man, roaming the pathless thickets, caring nothing for Hymen, nor for what love means. Often would her father say: "You owe me a son-in-law, my child." Often her father: "You owe me grandchildren, my daughter." She, like a crime, blushing at the very torch of marriage, would hang her fair head upon her father's neck, and beg him with the one word "let me be forever a maiden, Diana's father, grant me this": yet her beauty forbade what she desired.

Her body glowed with a beauty that did not need it. She was seen — and was loved — and was seized upon by him who loved; and he follows her flight with hope, and, as his hope flies faster than his speech, the lover is lover and pursuer. As when a Gallic hound has seen a hare in an open field, and runs with flying feet toward his promised prey, but the hare flees: he is close, he thinks he has her, his muzzle is nearly in her very flanks — she wonders if she's caught, and twists away from his snap, and is behind him still; because the others stand around her cheering, barking out their hopes; while she flees through the very midst of the teeth. So the god and the girl: his speed is hope, hers is fear.

But he who follows, carried on the wings of love, gives her no rest; presses her flight, coming closer, and his breath is hot upon her scattered hair. Her strength is gone; drained pale by the effort of the wild flight, she sees the waters of her father Peneus, and cries: "Help me, father! If your waters hold divinity, destroy this beauty by which I've pleased too well!" Her prayer was scarcely done, when a heavy numbness seized her limbs; her soft breasts were girt with a thin bark, her hair grew into leaves, her arms into branches; her feet, but now so swift, held fast by sluggish roots; her face was the tree's top: only her shining grace remained. And Phoebus loved her still. He laid his hand upon the trunk, and felt her bosom trembling still in the bark, beneath the new wood; and embraced the branches as if limbs, and kissed the wood, and the wood shrank from his kisses.

And the god said: "But since you cannot be my bride, you shall at least be my own tree. My hair, my lyre, my quiver, laurel, will always hold you. You will attend the Roman leaders, when their joyful voices sing the triumph, and the Capitol sees its long processions. You will stand as faithful guardian at Augustus' gates, before his doors, and keep watch over the oak between. And as my head is ever-young with unshorn hair, so wear, forever, the fresh honor of your leaves." Paean had done: the laurel nodded her new-made branches, and seemed to shake her treetop like a head.

There is a grove in Thessaly, shut in on every side by a wall of forest: they call it Tempe. Through it the Peneus, pouring down from deep Pindus, rolls in foaming waves, and with its heavy fall drives before it thin wisps of cloudy smoke, gathers them to the tops of the woods, rains upon them, and wearies with its roar more than the neighboring streams. This is the house, this the seat, these the inner shrines of the great river: sitting in a cavern carved from the rocks, he gave laws to the waters, and to the nymphs that tended them. First the neighboring rivers came together, not knowing whether to congratulate or console their father: the poplar-bearing Sperchios, the restless Enipeus, the old Apidanus, the gentle Amphrysos, and Aeas, and soon the other rivers, which, wherever their impulse carried them, lead their weary waters, wandering, to the sea.

Inachus alone is absent, hidden in a deep cave, and swells its waters with his weeping, mourning, most wretched, for his daughter Io, as if she were lost: he does not know whether to enjoy life, or whether she is among the shades; but since he finds her nowhere, he believes her nowhere, and in his mind fears worse things than what is. Jupiter had seen her returning from her father's river, and said: "O maiden, worthy of Jove, and of some happy unknown husband of your making — seek the shades of the deep woods" — and he pointed to the shades of the woods — "while it is hot, and the sun stands highest in his circle! But if you fear to enter the lurking places of wild beasts alone, you shall go safe into the hidden woods, with a god as guardian — no god of the common sort, but he who holds in his hand the great scepter of heaven, who sends the wandering thunderbolts.

Do not flee me!" — for she was fleeing. Already she had left the pastures of Lernae, and the fields of Lyrcea, planted with trees, when the god hid the wide lands in a covering mist, and stopped her flight, and took her shame. Meanwhile Juno looked down into the middle of Argos, and marvelled that the flying clouds had made the face of night in bright daylight: she knew they were not of the river, nor sent up from the wet ground. She looked around for where her husband might be — she who knew so well the thefts of a husband so often caught. When she found him absent from the sky: "Either I am mistaken, or I am wronged," she said; and, slipping from the height of heaven, she stood upon the earth, and bade the mists withdraw.

He had foreseen his wife's arrival, and had changed the face of the daughter of Inachus into a sleek heifer. Even as a heifer she was beautiful. The wife of Saturn praised the shape of the cow, though unwillingly; and asked, too, whose she was, and from where, and in what herd — asking, as if she knew nothing of the truth. Jupiter lied, that she was born of the earth, so the author of the crime might stop being sought. The wife of Saturn asked her as a gift. What could he do? To give up his own love was cruel; not to give was suspect. Shame argued for one side, Love against it. Shame would have conquered Love — but so slight a gift, a cow, was refused by the sister and the partner of his bed: she might not seem a cow!

The daughter of Peneus, given away, did not at once put off all her fear, and dreaded Jove, and was anxious over the stolen joy, until she gave her, to be kept, to Argus, son of Aristor. Argus had a head ringed round with a hundred eyes, of which, in their turns, two at a time took sleep: the rest kept watch, and remained on guard. However he stood, he looked toward Io: Io was before his eyes, though he was turned away. He let her feed in the daylight; but when the sun is deep beneath the earth, he pens her, and winds chains around a neck that does not deserve them. She feeds on the leaves of trees, and on bitter grass. Instead of a bed, the unhappy girl lies on the ground, which does not always keep its grass, and drinks from muddy streams.

And when she wished, suppliant, to stretch her arms to Argus, she had no arms to stretch to Argus, and, trying to complain, she lowed from her mouth, and was terrified at the sounds, and frightened by her own voice. She came also to the banks where she often used to play, the Inachid streams: and when she saw in the water her new gaping mouth and horns, she fled in terror, startled at herself. The naiads did not know her, nor did Inachus himself, who she was; but she followed her father, and followed her sisters, and let herself be touched, and offered herself to their admiration. Old Inachus held out herbs he had plucked: she licked her father's palms, and kissed his hands, and could not hold back her tears; and if only words had followed, she would have begged for help, and told her name, and her misfortunes: instead of words, a letter, drawn by her hoof in the dust, finished sadly the proof of her changed body.

"O wretched me!" cried her father Inachus, hanging upon the groaning horns and the snowy neck of the young heifer: "O wretched me!" he said again: "Are you the daughter sought by me through all the lands? You, not found, were a lighter grief than being found! You do not answer, you give no words back to mine; you draw only deep sighs from a heavy breast, and what alone you can do, you low in answer to my words! Ignorant, I was preparing marriage and wedding-torches for you; my first hope was a son-in-law, my second, grandchildren. Now you must have a husband from the herd, and a son from the herd. Nor is it permitted me to end so great a grief by death: but it harms to be a god — the door of death being shut — to stretch our sorrows through eternity." The starry-eyed Argus takes her from her mourning father, and drags the daughter, taken away, to distant pastures.

He himself, far off, seizes the high crest of a mountain, and sitting there, watches every part on every side. Nor could the ruler of the gods above bear to suffer so great an evil any longer over the daughter of Phoronis: he calls his son, whom the shining Pleiad bore in childbirth, and commands that he destroy Argus. Small delay: wings on his feet, the potent sleep-bringing wand in his hand, and the cap for his hair, were taken up. When he had made these ready, the son born of Jove leapt down from his father's citadel to earth; there he took off the cap, and put away his wings — only the wand was kept. With this he drives, like a shepherd, the goats through the pathless country, as they come, led away, and sings on pipes joined together.

Charmed by the new voice, the keeper of Juno said: "Though I know not who you are, you might well sit beside me on this rock — for no place has richer grass for flocks, and you see the shade that suits shepherds." The son of Atlas sat, and with much talking held back the passing day with speech, and, singing on joined reeds, tried to overcome the eyes that kept watch. Argus however fought to conquer soft sleep, and, though sleep was received in part of his eyes, in part he still kept watch. He asked too (for the pipe had but lately been discovered) by what means it was found. Then the god said: "In the cold mountains of Arcadia, among the hamadryad nymphs, one famous naiad was of Nonacris: the nymphs called her Syrinx. She had more than once eluded the satyrs that pursued her, and whatever gods the shadowy woods and fertile fields hold.

She cultivated Ortygia herself in her pursuits, and her maidenhood; and girt in the rite of Diana, she might have been mistaken for the daughter of Latona, were it not that her bow was of cornel wood, and his of gold; even so she passed for her. Pan, girt with sharp pine, saw her returning from the mount of Lycaeus, and spoke such words — it remained to speak the words — and, his prayers despised, the nymph fled through the pathless wild, until she came to the peaceful stream of sandy Ladon; and here, when the waters hindered her course, she prayed her watery sisters to change her; and when Pan, who thought he now held Syrinx in his grasp, found that he held reeds of the marsh instead of the nymph's body, and while he sighed there, the winds, moving in the reeds, made a faint sound, like one mourning.

The god, taken by this new art and the sweetness of the voice, said: "This converse with you shall remain with me." And so, unequal reeds joined with a bond of wax, he kept the name of the maiden. These words the Cyllenian god was about to say when he saw that all the eyes had yielded, and their lights were covered with sleep: he checks his speech at once, and deepens the slumber, caressing the languid, charmed eyes with his medicated wand. Without delay he wounds the nodding watcher with his curved blade, where the head joins the neck, and throws him, bleeding, down the rocks, and stains the steep crag with blood. Argus, you lie: and that light which you had in all your many lights is put out; one night takes all your hundred eyes. The wife of Saturn receives them in her swift bird's feathers, and fills his tail with gleaming gems.

At once she flamed out, and put off no moment of her wrath, but cast before the eyes and heart of her rival's Argolic nurse a hideous Erinys, and buried in her breast its blind goads, and drove her in flight through all the world. You, Nile, were the last of that immense labor; and the moment she touched you — laid on the bank's edge upon her knees, and leaning her lofty neck back — lifting to the stars what looks alone she could, with groan and tears and mournful lowing she seemed to complain to Jove, and to pray for an end of ills. He, throwing his arms around his rival's neck, asked her at last to finish the punishment: "Put away your fears," he said: "this shall never again be a cause of grief to you" — and he bade the Stygian pools hear it.

When the goddess was softened, Io took her former face, and became what she was before: the bristles fled from her body, her horns shrank, the circle of her eyes grew narrower, her gaping mouth closed, her shoulders and hands returned, and the hoof, dissolved, vanished into five nails: nothing of the cow remained in her but her fairness. And content to walk with the service of her two feet, the nymph rises, and fears to speak, lest she low in the manner of a heifer, and timidly tries again the words she had let fall.

Now the goddess in linen robes is worshipped by a most famous crowd. To her, Epaphus, born at last of the great seed of Jove, is believed to be son, and through the cities joined to his mother he holds temples. He had one equal to him in mind and years, Phaethon, son of the Sun, who once, when he was speaking great things, and would not yield to Phoebus, proud of his parent, the son of Inachus could not bear, and said: "Mad one, do you believe all things of your mother, and are you swollen with the false image of a father?" Phaethon blushed, and repressed his anger in shame, and carried the insults of Epaphus to his mother Clymene. "The more it grieves you, mother," he said, "that I, your child — I, the fierce one! — was silent!

It shames us both, that these reproaches could be spoken, and could not be answered. But you, if only I am created of heavenly stock, give forth the proof of so great a birth, and claim me for heaven!" He spoke, and threw his arms around his mother's neck, and begged, by his own head and his mother's, and by the torches of his sisters, that she would give him signs of his true parent. Clymene, moved — whether by the prayers of Phaethon, or by anger at the words of the taunt, or both — stretched her arms to the sky, and, looking to the lights of the sun, said: "By this radiance, marked with flashing rays, I swear to you, my son, which hears and sees us both: that thing you look upon, that thing which governs the world — the Sun — is your father.

If I speak false, let him refuse himself to be seen by me, and let that light be the last light of my eyes! Nor is the labor long, to know your father's home. Where he rises, the house borders on our lands: if your spirit can bear it, go, and ask him yourself!" At once, glad after such words of his mother, Phaethon leapt out, and conceived in his mind the heavens, and crossed his own Ethiopians, and the Indians placed beneath the fires, and came, eager, to the house of his father.