With venom of that drug
Infected dropped her tresses,--nose and ear
Were lost;--her form to smallest bulk compressed
A head minutest crowned ;--to slenderest legs
Jointed on either side her fingers changed:
Her body but a bag, whence still she draws
Her filmy threads, and, with her ancient art,
Weaves the fine meshes of her Spider's web.
Infected dropped her tresses,--nose and ear
Were lost;--her form to smallest bulk compressed
A head minutest crowned ;--to slenderest legs
Jointed on either side her fingers changed:
Her body but a bag, whence still she draws
Her filmy threads, and, with her ancient art,
Weaves the fine meshes of her Spider's web.
Ovid - 1865 - Ovid by Alfred Church
itself;" and the story of his fall may be passed
\j over, though it abounds with passages of splendid de-
scription. Eridanus or Po receives the fallen char-
ioteer. His weeping sisters are transformed into
poplars on its banks.
"But yet they weep :--and, in the Sun, their tears
To amber harden, by the clear stream caught
And borne, the gaud and grace of Latian maids. "
"We have reached the middle of the second out of
fifteen books. We will try their quality at another
place.
Perseus, son of Jupiter, is on his travels, mounted
on the winged steed Pegasus, and armed with the
head of the Gorgon Medusa. He comes to the house
of Atlas, "hugest of the human race "--
"To whom the bounds
Of Earth and Sea were subject, where the Sun
Downward to Ocean guides his panting steeds
And in the waves his glowing axle cools. "
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 63 L
He asks shelter and hospitality; but the Titan, mincU/ /
ful of how Theseus had told him how a son of Jupiter CO^-Y*^
should one day rob him of his orchard's golden fruit, /
refuses the boon. The indignant hero cries--
"'Then take
From me this gift at parting ! ' and his look
Askance he turned, and from his left arm flashed
Full upon Atlas' face the Gorgon-Head,
With all its horrors :--and the Giant-King
A Giant mountain stood! His beard, his hair
Were forests :--into crags his shoulders spread
And arms :--his head the crowning summit towered :--
His bones were granite. So the Fates fulfilled
Their hest;--and all his huge proportions swelled
To vaster bulk, and ample to support
The incumbent weight of Heaven and all its Stars. "
Perseus pursues his journey, and reaches the Lybiafr\
shore, where the beautiful Andromeda is chained to a I
rock, to expiate by becoming the sea-monster's prey \
her mother's foolish boast of beauty. /
"Bound by her white arms to the rugged rocks
The Maid he saw :--and were't not for the breeze
That gave her tresses motion, and the tears
That trickled down her pallid cheeks,--had sure
Some marble statue deemed. "
The reader may like to see how a modern poet has
treated the same subject. It is Perseus who speaks :--
"From afar, unknowing, I marked thee,
Shining, a snow-white cross on the dark-green walls of
the sea-cliff;
Carven in marble I deemed thee, a perfect work of the
craftsman,
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? 64 OVID.
Likeness of Amphitrite, or far-famed Queen Cytherea.
Curious I came, till I saw how thy tresses streamed in the
sea-wind,
Glistening, black as the night, and thy lips moved slow in
thy wailing. "
Mr Kingsley's hero delivers the maiden, trusting to
her for his reward. Ovid's Perseus, less chivalrous,
perhaps, but more in accordance with ancient modes
of thought, bargains with her father and mother that
he shall have her for his wife, before he begins the
conflict with the destroyer. On the other EanclTitrmay
be placed to his credit that he slays the beast with
his falchion, without recourse to the terrible power of
the Gorgon head. Ovid's taste seems a little in fault
in the next passage. Perseus wraps up his dangerous
weapon in sea-weed, which freezes, and stiffens at its
touch into stony leaf and stalk. The 6ea-nymphs, in
delight, repeat the experiment, sow " the novel seeds"
about their realm, and so produce the coral. To us it
seems a puerile conceit, diminishing the beauty of a
noble legend. Ovid, probably, thought only of com-
pleting his work, by introducing every fable of trans-
formation he could find.
After victory comes due sacrifice to the gods, and
then Cepheus makes the marriage-feast for his daughter.
To the assembled guests Perseus tells the story of how
he had won the Gorgon's head. In the midst of their
talk comes a sudden interruption of no friendly kind.
Phineus, brother of Cepheus, bursts with an armed
throng into the hall, and demands Andromeda, who
had been promised to him in marriage. A fierce bat-
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? tie ensues; nnrl Ovij^ in (iBscriViing it, seems to chal-\ vy
lenge comparison arith the great masters of epic. The]
youngJiero^ true to his principles, defends himself with \
mortal weapons, and works prodigies of valour. It is
onlywhen he finds his friends crushed by overpowering /
numbers that he bares the dreadful Head, and turns
it on the assailants;--first as they press forward one by
one, then on the crowd, and last on the leader himself.
"He flashed
Full on the cowering wretch the Gorgon-Head.
Vainly he strove to shun it! Into stone
The writhing neck was stiffened:--white the eyes
Froze in their sockets:--and the statue still,
With hands beseeching spread, and guilty fear
Writ in its face, for mercy seemed to pray. "
Perseus then bore his bride to Argos, where the Head
recovers from the usurping Prcetus his grandfather's
kingdom, and turns to stone the incredulous Poly-
dectes, tyrant of Seriphus.
Here we leave Perseus; and Pallas, who has been "~
his helper throughout his toils, goes to Helicon, there
to inquire of the Muses about the strange fountain
which she hears has sprung from the hoof-dint of the
winged Pegasus. Urania, speaking for the sisterhood,
tells her that the tale is true j and when the goddess
speaks of the beauty and peace of their retreat, nar-
rates the story of how they had escaped from the
tyrant Pyreneus by help of their wings, and how he,
seeking to follow them, had been dashed in pieces.
As she speaks, a
"Whirr of wings
Came rustling overhead, and from the boughs
A. c. s. s. , vol. ii. E
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? 66 0 viD.
Voices that bade them ' Hail! '--so human-clear
That upward Pallas turned her wondering gaze
To see who spoke. She saw but Birds:--a row
Thrice three, of Pies, at imitative sounds
Deftest of winged things, that, on a branch
Perched clamorous, seemed as though some woeful fate
They wailed and strove to tell. "
Urania explains the marvel. They had been nine
sisters, daughters of Pierus, "Lord of Pella's field,"
and proud of their skill in music and song; and, deem-
ing that there lay some magic in their mystic number,
had challenged the sister Muses to contend. The
challenge had been accepted, and the Nymphs swore
by all their river-gods to judge fairly between the
two. One of the daughters of Pierus had sung, and
her song had been treason to the gods; for it told
how, in fear of the Titan onset of the sons of earth,
/ the lords of heaven had fled, disguised in all strange
shapes. Then the Muses had replied; but Pallas
thinks Urania will not care to hear their song. Not
so, replies the goddess; so the tale is told. Calliope
had been their chosen champion, and her theme had
been how Pluto had carried off Proserpi>>%daughter of
Ceres, to share his gloomy throne in Hades, and how
the mourning mother sought her child in every region
of the earth. A touch of the ludicrous comes in, the
fate of the mocking Stellio :--
"Weary and travel-worn,--her lips unwet
With water,--at a straw-thatched cottage door
The Wanderer knocked. An ancient crone came forth
And saw her need, and hospitable brought
/
/
,
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 67
Her bowl of barley-broth, and bade her drink. >>
Thankful she raised it:--but a graceless boy
And impudent stood by, and, ere the half
Was drained, 'Ha! ha! see how the glutton swills! '
With insolent jeer he cried. The Goddess' ire
Was roused, and, as he spoke, what liquor yet
The bowl retained full in his face she dashed.
His cheeks broke out in blotches :--what were arms
Turned legs, and from the shortened trunk a tail
Tapered behind. Small mischief evermore
Might that small body work :--the lizard's self
Was larger now than he. With terror shrieked
The crone, and weeping stooped her altered child
To raise ;--the little monster fled her grasp
And wriggled into hiding. Still his name
His nature tells, and, from the star-like spots
That mark him, known as Stellio crawls the Newt. "
At last, after a fruitless quest, she wanders back to
Sicily, the land where the lost one had last been seen.
And then the secret is half revealed. Cyane, chief of
Sicilian nymphs, had tried to bar the passage of Pluto
as he was descending with his captive, and had been
dissolved into water by the wrath of the god. But
she tells what she can, and shows, floating on her
? waves, the zone which Proserpina had dropped.
Then the mother knew her loss, and in her wrath
banned with barrenness the ungrateful earth. But
who was the robber t That she finds another nymph
to tell her. Arethusa had seen her :--
"All the depths
Of earth I traverse :--where her caverns lie
Darkest and nethermost I pass, and here
Uprising, look once more upon the Stars.
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? 68 0 viD.
And in my course I saw her! yea, these eyes,
As past the Stygian realm my waters rolled,
Proserpina beheld! Still sad she seemed,
And still her cheek some trace of terror wore,
But all a Queen, and, in that dismal world,
Greatest in place and majesty,--the wife
Of that tremendous God who rules in Hell. "
The wretched mother flies to the throne of Jupiter.
She must have back her child. She does not take
account of the great throne which she shares. And
Jove grants the request, but only--for so the Fates
have willed it--on this condition, that no food should
have passed her lips in the realms below. Alas! the
condition cannot be fulfilled. She had plucked a
pomegranate in the garden of the Shades, and had
eaten seven of its grains. Ascalaphus, son of the
gloomy deities "Woe and Darkness, had seen her, and
he told the tale. The mother takes her revenge :--
"With water snatched from Phlegethon
His brow she sprinkled. Instant, beak and plumes
And larger eyes were his, and tawny wings
His altered form uplifted, and his head
Swelled disproportioned to his size: his nails
Curved crooked into claws,--and heavily
His pinions beat the air. A bird accursed,
Augur of coming sorrow, still to Man
Ill-ominous and hateful flits the Owl. "
But Jove reconciles her to her grim son-in-law.
Proserpina was to spend six months in hell and six
on earth, and the satisfied mother has leisure to seek
Arethusa, and find how she had learned the secret.
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 69
She hears in reply how she had fled from the pursuit
of Alpheus from her native home in Achaia, and had
passed through all the depths of earth till she rose
again to the light in Sicily. The story told, Ceres
hastens to Athens, and there teaches the youth Tripto-
lemus the secrets of husbandry, and bids him journey
in her dragon-car over the world to spread the new
knowledge. At the court of the Scythian Lyncus he
is treacherously assailed by his host, but Ceres stays the
murderer's hand, and changes him into a lynx. Here,
after digressions which strongly remind us of the
'Arabian Nights,' we come to the end of Calliope's
song. Then Urania tells how the Nymphs, with one
voice, accorded victory to the Muses; and how the
Pierian sisters--whose name, by the way, their suc-
cessful rivals seem to have appropriated -- rebelled
against the judgment, and found the penalty in trans-
formation into Pies. The story then passes on to the
revenge which Pallas herself has had on a mortal
rival . The poet--with true tact,--does not make
her tell the tale herself, for she seems to have con-
quered by power, not by skill. Arachne, a Lydian
maid, brought all the world to look at her wondrous
spinning. They swear that Pallas herself had taught
her, but she disdains such praise;--her art was all her
own. Let Pallas come to compare her skill. And
Pallas came, but at first in shape of an ancient dame,
? who counsels the bold maiden to be content with
victory over mortal competitors, but to avoid dan-
gerous challenge to the gods. The advice is given
in vain. Arachne rushes upon her fate. The goddess
/
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? 70 0 viD.
reveals herself, and the contest is begun. An admir-
able piece of word-painting follows :--
"The looms were set,--the webs
Were hung: beneath their fingers nimbly pbed
The subtle fabrics grew, and warp and woof,
Transverse, with shuttle and with slay compact
Were pressed in order fair. And either girt
Her mantle close, and eager wrought; the toil
Itself was pleasure to the skilful hands
That knew so well their task. With Tyrian hue
Of purple blushed the texture, and all shades
Of colour, blending imperceptibly
Each into each. So, when the wondrous bow--
What time some passing shower hath dashed the sun--
Spans with its mighty arch the vault of Heaven,
A thousand colours deck it, different all,
Yet all so subtly interfused that each
Seems one with that which joins it, and the eye
But by the contrast of the extremes perceives
The intermediate change. --And last, with thread
Of gold embroidery pictured, on the web
Lifelike expressed, some antique fable glowed. "
Pallas pictures the Hill of Mars at Athens, where
the gods had sat in judgment in the strife between
herself and Neptune as to who should be the patron
deity of that fair city.
"There stood the God
Of Seas, and with his trident seemed to smite
The rugged rock, and from the cleft out-sprang
The Steed that for its author claimed the town.
Herself, with shield and spear of keenest barb
And helm, she painted ;--on her bosom gleamed
The iEgis:--with her lance's point she struck
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 71
The earth, and from its breast the Olive bloomed,
Pale, with its berried fruit:--and all the gods
Admiring gazed, adjudging in that strife
The victory hers. "
Arachne, disloyal, as the daughters of Pierus had
been, to the Lords of Heaven, pictures them in the
base disguises to which love for mortal women had
driven them. But her work is so perfect that--
"Not Pallas, nay, not Envy's self, could fault
In all the work detect. "
The furious goddess smites her rival twelve times on
the forehead :--
"The high-souled Maid
Such insult not endured, and round her neck
Indignant twined the suicidal noose,
And so had died. But, as she hung, some ruth
Stirred in Minerva's breast:--the pendent form
She raised, and 'Live! ' she said--'but hang thou still
For ever, wretch! and through all future time
Even to thy latest race bequeath thy doom! '
And, as she parted, sprinkled her with juice
Of aconite.
With venom of that drug
Infected dropped her tresses,--nose and ear
Were lost;--her form to smallest bulk compressed
A head minutest crowned ;--to slenderest legs
Jointed on either side her fingers changed:
Her body but a bag, whence still she draws
Her filmy threads, and, with her ancient art,
Weaves the fine meshes of her Spider's web. "
Leaving the goddess in the enjoyment of this doubt-
ful victory, the story passes on to the tale of Niobe.
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? '*-- V?
72 W"-A V OVID.
What has been given occupies in the original a space
about equivalent to a book and a half.
Sometimes Ovid gives us an opportunity of com-
paring him with a great master of his own art. A
i' notable instance of the kind is the story of how Orpheus
I went down to the lower world in search of his lost
Eurydice; how he won her by the charms of his song
from the unpitying Gods of Death, and lost her again
on the very borders of life.
"So sang he, and, accordant to his plaint,
As wailed the strings, the bloodless Ghosts were moved
To weeping. By the lips of Tantalus
Unheeded slipped the wave ;--Ixion's wheel
Forgot to whirl;--the Vulture's bloody feast
Was stayed ;--awhile the Belides forbore
Their leaky urns to dip ;--and Sisyphus
Sate listening on his stone. Then first, they say,--
The iron cheeks of the Eumenides
Were wet with pity. Of the nether realm
Nor King nor Queen had heart to say him nay.
Forth from a host of new-descended Shades
Eurydice was called; and, halting yet
Slow with her recent wound she came--alive,
On one condition to her spouse restored,
That, till Avernus' vale is passed and earth
Begained, he look not backward, or the boon
Is null and forfeit. Through the silent realm
Upward against the steep and fronting hill
Dark with obscurest gloom, the way he led:
And now the upper air was all but won,
When, fearful lest the toil o'er-task her strength,
And yearning to behold the form he loved,
An instant back he looked,--and back the Shade
That instant fled! The arms that wildly strove
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 73
To clasp and stay her clasped but yielding air!
No word of plaint even in that second Death
Against her Lord she uttered,--how could Love
Too anxious be upbraided 1--but one last
And sad 'Farewell! ' scarce audible, she sighed,
And vanished to the Ghosts that late, she left. "
ereis v&gil, though he has not the advantage
3? being presented by so skilful a translator as Mr
JKinjT^--
"Stirred by his song, from lowest depths of hell
Came the thin spectres of the sightless dead,
Crowding as crowd the birds among the leaves
Whom darkness or a storm of wintry rain
Drives from the mountains. Mothers came, and sires,
Great-hearted heroes, who had lived their lives,
And boys, and maidens never wed, and men
Whom in their prime, before their parents' eyes,
The funeral flames had eaten. All around
With border of black mud and hideous reed,
Cocytus, pool unlovely, hems them in,
And Styx imprisons with his nine-fold stream.
Nay, and his song the very home of death
Entranced and nethermost abyss of hell,
And those Dread Three whose tresses are entwined
With livid snakes; while Cerberus stood agape,
Nor moved the triple horror of his jaw;
And in charmed air Ixion's wheel was stayed.
And now with step retreating he had shunned
All peril; and the lost one, given back,
Was nearing the sweet breath of upper air,
Following behind--such terms the gods imposed--
When some wild frenzy seized the lover's heart
Unheeding, well, were paTdon known in hell,
Well to be pardoned. Still he stood, and saw,
Ah me! forgetful, mastered all by love,
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? 74: o VID.
Saw, at the very border of the day,
His own Eurydice. 0 wasted toil!
O broken compact of the ruthless god!
Then through Avernus rolled the crash of doom,
And she--' What miserable madness this,
Ah! wretched that I am! which ruins me
And thee, my Orpheus? Lo! the cruel Fates
Call me again; sleep seals my swimming eyes;
Farewell! for boundless darkness wraps me round
And carries me away, still stretching forth
Dark hands to thee, who am no longer thine. '"
No reader will doubt with which poet the general
superiority lies; yet it must be allowed that Ovid is
strong in what may be called his own peculiar line.
There is a noble tenderness and a genuine pathos in
the parting of the two lovers, which is characteristic of
the poet's genius.
/ One of the longest as well as the most striking
\episodes in the whole book is the contest between
^Ljax and Ulysses for the arms of the dead Achilles;
"4nd it has the additional interest of recalling the de-
clamatory studies of the poet's youth. It^through-
out a magnificent piece of rhetoric. The blunt energy
of Ajax, and the craft and persuasiveness of Ulysses,
are admirably given. The elder Seneca, in the pas-
sage already quoted, mentions that the poet was in-
debted for some of his materials and language to his
teacher, Porcius Latro, one of whose declamations on
"The Contest for the Arms" Seneca had either heard
or read. One phrase is specified as having been bor-
rowed from this source. It is the fiery challenge
with which Ajax clenches his argument:--
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 75
"Enough of idle words! let hands, not tongues,
Show what we are! Fling 'mid yon hostile ranks
Our herd's armour:--bid us fetch it thence:--
And be it his who first shall bring it back! "
The piece is too long to be given (it fills more than
half of the thirteenth book), and its effect would be
lost in extracts. A few lines, however, from the be-
ginning may be quoted; and indeed nothing through-
out is more finely put. It may be as well to mention
that the ships spoken of had been in imminent danger
of destruction at the hand of Hector, and that Ajax
had at least some claim to be called their preserver:--
"On high the chieftains sat: the common throng
Stood in dense ring around; then Ajax rose,
Lord of the seven-fold shield; and backward glanced,
Scowling, for anger mastered all his soul,
Where on Sigeeum's shore the fleet was ranged,
And with stretched hand:' Before the ships we plead
Our cause, great heaven! and Ulysses dares
Before the ships to match himself with me ! '"--C.
It maybejqoiiced, as a proof that Ovid went out of his
way, in introducing this episode, to make use of material
to which he attached a special value, that the narrative
rreaDy connected with any transformation. ^Ajax,
efeated by the act which gives the arms to his rival,
falls upon his sword; and the turf, wet with his blood,
"Blossomed with the self-same flower
That erst had birth from Hyacinthus' wound,
And in its graven cup memorial bears
Of either fate,--the characters that shape
Apollo's wailing cry, and Ajax' name. "
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? 76 o vID.
What these characters were we learn from the end
of the story here alluded to, of how the beautiful
Hyacinthus was killed by a quoit from the hand of
Apollo, and how
"The blood
That with its dripping crimson dyed the turf
Was blood no more: and sudden sprang to life
A flower that wore the lily's shape, but not
The lily's silver livery, purple-hued
And brighter than all tinct of Tyrian shells:
Nor with that boon of beauty satisfied,
Upon the petals of its cup the God
Stamped legible his sorrow's wailing cry,
^ And ' Ai! Ai! ' ever seems the flower to say. "
Two more specimens must conclude this chapter.
Pygmalion's statue changing into flesh and blood at
the sculptor's passionate prayer is a subject after
Ovid's own heart, and he treats it with consummate
delicacy and skill:--
"The Sculptor sought
His home, and, bending o'er the couch that bore
His Maiden's lifelike image, to her lips
Fond pressed his own,--and lo! her lips seemed warm,
And warmer, kissed again :--and now his hand
Her bosom seeks, and dimpling to his touch
The ivory seems to yield,--as in the Sun
The waxen labour of Hymettus' bees,
By plastic fingers wrought, to various shape
And use by use is fashioned. Wonder-spelled,
Scarce daring to believe his bliss, in dread
Lest sense deluded mock him, on the form
He loves again and yet again his hand
Lays trembling touch, and to his touch a pulse
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 77
Within throbs answering palpable :--'twas flesh!
'Twas very Life ! --Then forth in eloquent flood
His grateful heart its thanks to Venus poured!
The lips he kissed were living lips that felt
His passionate pressure ;--o'er the virgin cheeks
Stole deepening crimson :--and the unclosing eyes
At once on Heaven and on their Lover looked! "
The fifteenth or last book of the 'Metamorphoses'
contains an eloquent exposition of the Pythagorean
philosophy. Pythagoras, a Greek by birth, had made
Italy, the southern coasts of which were indeed thickly
studded with the colonies of his nation, the land of his
adoption, and the traditions of his teaching and of his
life had a special interest for the people to which had
descended the greatness of all the races--Oscan, Etrus-
can, Greek--which had inhabited the beautiful penin-
sula. A legend, careless, as such legends commonly are,
of chronology, made him the preceptor of JNuma, the
wise king to whom Rome owed so much of its worship
and its law. The doctrine most commonly connected
with his name was that of the metempsychosis, or
transmigration of souls from one body to another,
whether of man or of the lower animals, though it
probably did not occupy a very prominent part in his
philosophy. It was an old belief of the Aryan race,
and it had a practical aspect which commended it to
the Eoman mind, always more inclined to ethical than
to metaphysical speculations. Virgil, in that vision
of the lower world which occupies the sixth book of
his great epic, employs it--partly, indeed, as a poetical
artifice for introducing his magnificent roll of Eoman
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? 78 0 vi D.
worthies, but also in a more serious aspect, as sug-
gesting the method of those purifying influences which
were to educate the human soul for higher destinies.
Ovid sees in it the philosophical explanation of the mar-
vels which he has been relating, and, as it were, their
vindication from the possible charge of being childish
fables, vacant of any real meaning, and unworthy of
a serious pen. The passage which follows refers
to a practical rule in which we may see a natural
inference from the philosophical dogma. If man is so
closely allied to the lower animals--if their forms are
made, equally with his, the receptacles of the one
divine animating spirit--then there is a certain impiety
in his slaughtering them to satisfy his wants. Strangely
enough, the progress or revolution of human thought
has brought science again to the doctrine of man's
kindred with the animals, though it seems altogether
averse to the merciful conclusion which Pythagoras
drew from it.
"What had ye done, ye flocks, ye peaceful race
Created for Man's blessing, that provide
To slake his thirst your udder's nectarous draught,
That with your fleece wrap warm his shivering limbs,
And serve him better with your life than death ? --
What fault was in the Ox, a creature mild
And harmless, docile, born with patient toil
To lighten half the labour of the fields ? --
Ungrateful he, and little worth to reap
The crop he sowed, that, from the crooked share
Untraced, his ploughman slew, and to the axe
Condemned the neck that, worn beneath his yoke,
For many a spring his furrows traced, and home
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 79
"With many a harvest dragged his Autumn-wain!
Nor this is all:--but Man must of his guilt
Make Heaven itself accomplice, and believe
The Gods with slaughter of their creatures pleased!
Lo ! at the altar, fairest of his kind,--
And by that very fairness marked for doom,--
The guiltless victim stands,--bedecked for death
With wreath and garland . '--Ignorant he hears
The muttering Priest,--feels ignorant his brows
White with the sprinkling of the salted meal
To his own labour owed,--and ignorant
Wonders, perchance, to see the lustral urn
Flash back the glimmer of the lifted knife
Too soon to dim its brightness with his blood!
And Priests are found to teach, and men to deem
That in the entrails, from the tortured frame
Yet reeking torn, they read the hest of Heaven ! --
O race of mortal men! what lust, what vice
Of appetite unhallowed, makes ye bold
To gorge your greed on Being like your own?
Be wiselier warned : --forbear the barbarous feast,
Nor in each bloody morsel that ye chew
The willing labourer of your fields devour!
All changes :--nothing perishes ! --Now here,
Now there, the vagrant spirit roves at will,
The shifting tenant of a thousand homes:--
Now, elevate, ascends from beast to man,--
Now, retrograde, descends from man to beast;--
But Timer dies! --Upon the tablet's page
Erased, and written fresh, the characters
Take various shape,--the wax remains the same:--
So is it with the Soul that, migrating
Through all the forms of breathing life, retains
Unchanged its essence. Oh, be wise, and hear
Heaven's warning from my prophet-lips, nor dare
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? 80 0 VID.
With impious slaughter, for your glutton-greed,
The kindly bond of Nature violate,
Nor from its home expel the Soul, perchance
Akin to yours, to nourish blood with blood! "
It has been handed down to us on good authority
that Virgil, in his last illness, desired his friends to
commit his 'iEneid' to the flames. It had not re-
ceived his final corrections, and he was unwilling that
it should go down to posterity less perfect than he
could have made it. Evidences of this incomplete-
ness are to be found, especially in the occasional in-
consistencies of the narrative. Critics have busied
themselves in discovering or imagining other faults
which might have been corrected in revision. The
desire, though it doubtless came from a mind en-
feebled by morbid conditions of the body, was pro-
bably sincere. "We can hardly believe as much of
what Ovid tells us of his own intentions about the
'Metamorphoses:' "As for the verses which told
of the changed forms--an unlucky work, which its
author's banishment interrupted--these in the hour of
my departure I put, sorrowing, as I put many other
of my good things, into the flames with my own
hands. " Doubtless he did so; nothing could have
more naturally displayed his vexation. But he could
hardly have been ignorant that in destroying bis
manuscript he was not destroying his work. "As
they did not perish altogether," he adds, "but still
exist, I suppose that there were several copies of
them. " But it is scarcely conceivable that a poem
containing as nearly as possible twelve thousand lines
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 81
should have existed in several copies by chance, or
without the knowledge of the author. "When he says
that the work never received his final corrections,
we may believe him, though we do not perceive any
signs of imperfection. It is even possible that he
employed some of his time during his banishment in
giving some last touches to his verse.
However this may be, the work has been accepted
by posterity as second in rank--second only to Virgil's
epic--among the great monuments of Roman genius.
It has been translated into every lauguage of modern
Europe that possesses a literature. Its astonishing
ingenuity, the unfailing variety of its colours, the
flexibility with which its style deals alike with the
sublime and the familiar, and with equal facility is
gay and pathetic, tender and terrible, have well en-
titled it to the honour, and justify the boast with
which the poet concludes :--
"So crown I here a work that dares defy
The wrath of Jove, the fire, the sword, the tooth
Of all-devouring Time ! --Come when it will
The day that ends my life's uncertain term,--
That on this corporal frame alone hath power
To work extinction,--high above the Stars
My nobler part shall soar,--my Name remain
Immortal,--wheresoe'er the might of Eome
Oerawes the subject Earth my Verse survive
Familiar in the mouths of men ! --and, if
A Bard may prophesy, while Time shall last
Endure, and die but with the dying World! "
A. c. s. s. , voL ii.
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\j over, though it abounds with passages of splendid de-
scription. Eridanus or Po receives the fallen char-
ioteer. His weeping sisters are transformed into
poplars on its banks.
"But yet they weep :--and, in the Sun, their tears
To amber harden, by the clear stream caught
And borne, the gaud and grace of Latian maids. "
"We have reached the middle of the second out of
fifteen books. We will try their quality at another
place.
Perseus, son of Jupiter, is on his travels, mounted
on the winged steed Pegasus, and armed with the
head of the Gorgon Medusa. He comes to the house
of Atlas, "hugest of the human race "--
"To whom the bounds
Of Earth and Sea were subject, where the Sun
Downward to Ocean guides his panting steeds
And in the waves his glowing axle cools. "
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 63 L
He asks shelter and hospitality; but the Titan, mincU/ /
ful of how Theseus had told him how a son of Jupiter CO^-Y*^
should one day rob him of his orchard's golden fruit, /
refuses the boon. The indignant hero cries--
"'Then take
From me this gift at parting ! ' and his look
Askance he turned, and from his left arm flashed
Full upon Atlas' face the Gorgon-Head,
With all its horrors :--and the Giant-King
A Giant mountain stood! His beard, his hair
Were forests :--into crags his shoulders spread
And arms :--his head the crowning summit towered :--
His bones were granite. So the Fates fulfilled
Their hest;--and all his huge proportions swelled
To vaster bulk, and ample to support
The incumbent weight of Heaven and all its Stars. "
Perseus pursues his journey, and reaches the Lybiafr\
shore, where the beautiful Andromeda is chained to a I
rock, to expiate by becoming the sea-monster's prey \
her mother's foolish boast of beauty. /
"Bound by her white arms to the rugged rocks
The Maid he saw :--and were't not for the breeze
That gave her tresses motion, and the tears
That trickled down her pallid cheeks,--had sure
Some marble statue deemed. "
The reader may like to see how a modern poet has
treated the same subject. It is Perseus who speaks :--
"From afar, unknowing, I marked thee,
Shining, a snow-white cross on the dark-green walls of
the sea-cliff;
Carven in marble I deemed thee, a perfect work of the
craftsman,
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? 64 OVID.
Likeness of Amphitrite, or far-famed Queen Cytherea.
Curious I came, till I saw how thy tresses streamed in the
sea-wind,
Glistening, black as the night, and thy lips moved slow in
thy wailing. "
Mr Kingsley's hero delivers the maiden, trusting to
her for his reward. Ovid's Perseus, less chivalrous,
perhaps, but more in accordance with ancient modes
of thought, bargains with her father and mother that
he shall have her for his wife, before he begins the
conflict with the destroyer. On the other EanclTitrmay
be placed to his credit that he slays the beast with
his falchion, without recourse to the terrible power of
the Gorgon head. Ovid's taste seems a little in fault
in the next passage. Perseus wraps up his dangerous
weapon in sea-weed, which freezes, and stiffens at its
touch into stony leaf and stalk. The 6ea-nymphs, in
delight, repeat the experiment, sow " the novel seeds"
about their realm, and so produce the coral. To us it
seems a puerile conceit, diminishing the beauty of a
noble legend. Ovid, probably, thought only of com-
pleting his work, by introducing every fable of trans-
formation he could find.
After victory comes due sacrifice to the gods, and
then Cepheus makes the marriage-feast for his daughter.
To the assembled guests Perseus tells the story of how
he had won the Gorgon's head. In the midst of their
talk comes a sudden interruption of no friendly kind.
Phineus, brother of Cepheus, bursts with an armed
throng into the hall, and demands Andromeda, who
had been promised to him in marriage. A fierce bat-
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? tie ensues; nnrl Ovij^ in (iBscriViing it, seems to chal-\ vy
lenge comparison arith the great masters of epic. The]
youngJiero^ true to his principles, defends himself with \
mortal weapons, and works prodigies of valour. It is
onlywhen he finds his friends crushed by overpowering /
numbers that he bares the dreadful Head, and turns
it on the assailants;--first as they press forward one by
one, then on the crowd, and last on the leader himself.
"He flashed
Full on the cowering wretch the Gorgon-Head.
Vainly he strove to shun it! Into stone
The writhing neck was stiffened:--white the eyes
Froze in their sockets:--and the statue still,
With hands beseeching spread, and guilty fear
Writ in its face, for mercy seemed to pray. "
Perseus then bore his bride to Argos, where the Head
recovers from the usurping Prcetus his grandfather's
kingdom, and turns to stone the incredulous Poly-
dectes, tyrant of Seriphus.
Here we leave Perseus; and Pallas, who has been "~
his helper throughout his toils, goes to Helicon, there
to inquire of the Muses about the strange fountain
which she hears has sprung from the hoof-dint of the
winged Pegasus. Urania, speaking for the sisterhood,
tells her that the tale is true j and when the goddess
speaks of the beauty and peace of their retreat, nar-
rates the story of how they had escaped from the
tyrant Pyreneus by help of their wings, and how he,
seeking to follow them, had been dashed in pieces.
As she speaks, a
"Whirr of wings
Came rustling overhead, and from the boughs
A. c. s. s. , vol. ii. E
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? 66 0 viD.
Voices that bade them ' Hail! '--so human-clear
That upward Pallas turned her wondering gaze
To see who spoke. She saw but Birds:--a row
Thrice three, of Pies, at imitative sounds
Deftest of winged things, that, on a branch
Perched clamorous, seemed as though some woeful fate
They wailed and strove to tell. "
Urania explains the marvel. They had been nine
sisters, daughters of Pierus, "Lord of Pella's field,"
and proud of their skill in music and song; and, deem-
ing that there lay some magic in their mystic number,
had challenged the sister Muses to contend. The
challenge had been accepted, and the Nymphs swore
by all their river-gods to judge fairly between the
two. One of the daughters of Pierus had sung, and
her song had been treason to the gods; for it told
how, in fear of the Titan onset of the sons of earth,
/ the lords of heaven had fled, disguised in all strange
shapes. Then the Muses had replied; but Pallas
thinks Urania will not care to hear their song. Not
so, replies the goddess; so the tale is told. Calliope
had been their chosen champion, and her theme had
been how Pluto had carried off Proserpi>>%daughter of
Ceres, to share his gloomy throne in Hades, and how
the mourning mother sought her child in every region
of the earth. A touch of the ludicrous comes in, the
fate of the mocking Stellio :--
"Weary and travel-worn,--her lips unwet
With water,--at a straw-thatched cottage door
The Wanderer knocked. An ancient crone came forth
And saw her need, and hospitable brought
/
/
,
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 67
Her bowl of barley-broth, and bade her drink. >>
Thankful she raised it:--but a graceless boy
And impudent stood by, and, ere the half
Was drained, 'Ha! ha! see how the glutton swills! '
With insolent jeer he cried. The Goddess' ire
Was roused, and, as he spoke, what liquor yet
The bowl retained full in his face she dashed.
His cheeks broke out in blotches :--what were arms
Turned legs, and from the shortened trunk a tail
Tapered behind. Small mischief evermore
Might that small body work :--the lizard's self
Was larger now than he. With terror shrieked
The crone, and weeping stooped her altered child
To raise ;--the little monster fled her grasp
And wriggled into hiding. Still his name
His nature tells, and, from the star-like spots
That mark him, known as Stellio crawls the Newt. "
At last, after a fruitless quest, she wanders back to
Sicily, the land where the lost one had last been seen.
And then the secret is half revealed. Cyane, chief of
Sicilian nymphs, had tried to bar the passage of Pluto
as he was descending with his captive, and had been
dissolved into water by the wrath of the god. But
she tells what she can, and shows, floating on her
? waves, the zone which Proserpina had dropped.
Then the mother knew her loss, and in her wrath
banned with barrenness the ungrateful earth. But
who was the robber t That she finds another nymph
to tell her. Arethusa had seen her :--
"All the depths
Of earth I traverse :--where her caverns lie
Darkest and nethermost I pass, and here
Uprising, look once more upon the Stars.
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? 68 0 viD.
And in my course I saw her! yea, these eyes,
As past the Stygian realm my waters rolled,
Proserpina beheld! Still sad she seemed,
And still her cheek some trace of terror wore,
But all a Queen, and, in that dismal world,
Greatest in place and majesty,--the wife
Of that tremendous God who rules in Hell. "
The wretched mother flies to the throne of Jupiter.
She must have back her child. She does not take
account of the great throne which she shares. And
Jove grants the request, but only--for so the Fates
have willed it--on this condition, that no food should
have passed her lips in the realms below. Alas! the
condition cannot be fulfilled. She had plucked a
pomegranate in the garden of the Shades, and had
eaten seven of its grains. Ascalaphus, son of the
gloomy deities "Woe and Darkness, had seen her, and
he told the tale. The mother takes her revenge :--
"With water snatched from Phlegethon
His brow she sprinkled. Instant, beak and plumes
And larger eyes were his, and tawny wings
His altered form uplifted, and his head
Swelled disproportioned to his size: his nails
Curved crooked into claws,--and heavily
His pinions beat the air. A bird accursed,
Augur of coming sorrow, still to Man
Ill-ominous and hateful flits the Owl. "
But Jove reconciles her to her grim son-in-law.
Proserpina was to spend six months in hell and six
on earth, and the satisfied mother has leisure to seek
Arethusa, and find how she had learned the secret.
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 69
She hears in reply how she had fled from the pursuit
of Alpheus from her native home in Achaia, and had
passed through all the depths of earth till she rose
again to the light in Sicily. The story told, Ceres
hastens to Athens, and there teaches the youth Tripto-
lemus the secrets of husbandry, and bids him journey
in her dragon-car over the world to spread the new
knowledge. At the court of the Scythian Lyncus he
is treacherously assailed by his host, but Ceres stays the
murderer's hand, and changes him into a lynx. Here,
after digressions which strongly remind us of the
'Arabian Nights,' we come to the end of Calliope's
song. Then Urania tells how the Nymphs, with one
voice, accorded victory to the Muses; and how the
Pierian sisters--whose name, by the way, their suc-
cessful rivals seem to have appropriated -- rebelled
against the judgment, and found the penalty in trans-
formation into Pies. The story then passes on to the
revenge which Pallas herself has had on a mortal
rival . The poet--with true tact,--does not make
her tell the tale herself, for she seems to have con-
quered by power, not by skill. Arachne, a Lydian
maid, brought all the world to look at her wondrous
spinning. They swear that Pallas herself had taught
her, but she disdains such praise;--her art was all her
own. Let Pallas come to compare her skill. And
Pallas came, but at first in shape of an ancient dame,
? who counsels the bold maiden to be content with
victory over mortal competitors, but to avoid dan-
gerous challenge to the gods. The advice is given
in vain. Arachne rushes upon her fate. The goddess
/
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? 70 0 viD.
reveals herself, and the contest is begun. An admir-
able piece of word-painting follows :--
"The looms were set,--the webs
Were hung: beneath their fingers nimbly pbed
The subtle fabrics grew, and warp and woof,
Transverse, with shuttle and with slay compact
Were pressed in order fair. And either girt
Her mantle close, and eager wrought; the toil
Itself was pleasure to the skilful hands
That knew so well their task. With Tyrian hue
Of purple blushed the texture, and all shades
Of colour, blending imperceptibly
Each into each. So, when the wondrous bow--
What time some passing shower hath dashed the sun--
Spans with its mighty arch the vault of Heaven,
A thousand colours deck it, different all,
Yet all so subtly interfused that each
Seems one with that which joins it, and the eye
But by the contrast of the extremes perceives
The intermediate change. --And last, with thread
Of gold embroidery pictured, on the web
Lifelike expressed, some antique fable glowed. "
Pallas pictures the Hill of Mars at Athens, where
the gods had sat in judgment in the strife between
herself and Neptune as to who should be the patron
deity of that fair city.
"There stood the God
Of Seas, and with his trident seemed to smite
The rugged rock, and from the cleft out-sprang
The Steed that for its author claimed the town.
Herself, with shield and spear of keenest barb
And helm, she painted ;--on her bosom gleamed
The iEgis:--with her lance's point she struck
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 71
The earth, and from its breast the Olive bloomed,
Pale, with its berried fruit:--and all the gods
Admiring gazed, adjudging in that strife
The victory hers. "
Arachne, disloyal, as the daughters of Pierus had
been, to the Lords of Heaven, pictures them in the
base disguises to which love for mortal women had
driven them. But her work is so perfect that--
"Not Pallas, nay, not Envy's self, could fault
In all the work detect. "
The furious goddess smites her rival twelve times on
the forehead :--
"The high-souled Maid
Such insult not endured, and round her neck
Indignant twined the suicidal noose,
And so had died. But, as she hung, some ruth
Stirred in Minerva's breast:--the pendent form
She raised, and 'Live! ' she said--'but hang thou still
For ever, wretch! and through all future time
Even to thy latest race bequeath thy doom! '
And, as she parted, sprinkled her with juice
Of aconite.
With venom of that drug
Infected dropped her tresses,--nose and ear
Were lost;--her form to smallest bulk compressed
A head minutest crowned ;--to slenderest legs
Jointed on either side her fingers changed:
Her body but a bag, whence still she draws
Her filmy threads, and, with her ancient art,
Weaves the fine meshes of her Spider's web. "
Leaving the goddess in the enjoyment of this doubt-
ful victory, the story passes on to the tale of Niobe.
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? '*-- V?
72 W"-A V OVID.
What has been given occupies in the original a space
about equivalent to a book and a half.
Sometimes Ovid gives us an opportunity of com-
paring him with a great master of his own art. A
i' notable instance of the kind is the story of how Orpheus
I went down to the lower world in search of his lost
Eurydice; how he won her by the charms of his song
from the unpitying Gods of Death, and lost her again
on the very borders of life.
"So sang he, and, accordant to his plaint,
As wailed the strings, the bloodless Ghosts were moved
To weeping. By the lips of Tantalus
Unheeded slipped the wave ;--Ixion's wheel
Forgot to whirl;--the Vulture's bloody feast
Was stayed ;--awhile the Belides forbore
Their leaky urns to dip ;--and Sisyphus
Sate listening on his stone. Then first, they say,--
The iron cheeks of the Eumenides
Were wet with pity. Of the nether realm
Nor King nor Queen had heart to say him nay.
Forth from a host of new-descended Shades
Eurydice was called; and, halting yet
Slow with her recent wound she came--alive,
On one condition to her spouse restored,
That, till Avernus' vale is passed and earth
Begained, he look not backward, or the boon
Is null and forfeit. Through the silent realm
Upward against the steep and fronting hill
Dark with obscurest gloom, the way he led:
And now the upper air was all but won,
When, fearful lest the toil o'er-task her strength,
And yearning to behold the form he loved,
An instant back he looked,--and back the Shade
That instant fled! The arms that wildly strove
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 73
To clasp and stay her clasped but yielding air!
No word of plaint even in that second Death
Against her Lord she uttered,--how could Love
Too anxious be upbraided 1--but one last
And sad 'Farewell! ' scarce audible, she sighed,
And vanished to the Ghosts that late, she left. "
ereis v&gil, though he has not the advantage
3? being presented by so skilful a translator as Mr
JKinjT^--
"Stirred by his song, from lowest depths of hell
Came the thin spectres of the sightless dead,
Crowding as crowd the birds among the leaves
Whom darkness or a storm of wintry rain
Drives from the mountains. Mothers came, and sires,
Great-hearted heroes, who had lived their lives,
And boys, and maidens never wed, and men
Whom in their prime, before their parents' eyes,
The funeral flames had eaten. All around
With border of black mud and hideous reed,
Cocytus, pool unlovely, hems them in,
And Styx imprisons with his nine-fold stream.
Nay, and his song the very home of death
Entranced and nethermost abyss of hell,
And those Dread Three whose tresses are entwined
With livid snakes; while Cerberus stood agape,
Nor moved the triple horror of his jaw;
And in charmed air Ixion's wheel was stayed.
And now with step retreating he had shunned
All peril; and the lost one, given back,
Was nearing the sweet breath of upper air,
Following behind--such terms the gods imposed--
When some wild frenzy seized the lover's heart
Unheeding, well, were paTdon known in hell,
Well to be pardoned. Still he stood, and saw,
Ah me! forgetful, mastered all by love,
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? 74: o VID.
Saw, at the very border of the day,
His own Eurydice. 0 wasted toil!
O broken compact of the ruthless god!
Then through Avernus rolled the crash of doom,
And she--' What miserable madness this,
Ah! wretched that I am! which ruins me
And thee, my Orpheus? Lo! the cruel Fates
Call me again; sleep seals my swimming eyes;
Farewell! for boundless darkness wraps me round
And carries me away, still stretching forth
Dark hands to thee, who am no longer thine. '"
No reader will doubt with which poet the general
superiority lies; yet it must be allowed that Ovid is
strong in what may be called his own peculiar line.
There is a noble tenderness and a genuine pathos in
the parting of the two lovers, which is characteristic of
the poet's genius.
/ One of the longest as well as the most striking
\episodes in the whole book is the contest between
^Ljax and Ulysses for the arms of the dead Achilles;
"4nd it has the additional interest of recalling the de-
clamatory studies of the poet's youth. It^through-
out a magnificent piece of rhetoric. The blunt energy
of Ajax, and the craft and persuasiveness of Ulysses,
are admirably given. The elder Seneca, in the pas-
sage already quoted, mentions that the poet was in-
debted for some of his materials and language to his
teacher, Porcius Latro, one of whose declamations on
"The Contest for the Arms" Seneca had either heard
or read. One phrase is specified as having been bor-
rowed from this source. It is the fiery challenge
with which Ajax clenches his argument:--
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 75
"Enough of idle words! let hands, not tongues,
Show what we are! Fling 'mid yon hostile ranks
Our herd's armour:--bid us fetch it thence:--
And be it his who first shall bring it back! "
The piece is too long to be given (it fills more than
half of the thirteenth book), and its effect would be
lost in extracts. A few lines, however, from the be-
ginning may be quoted; and indeed nothing through-
out is more finely put. It may be as well to mention
that the ships spoken of had been in imminent danger
of destruction at the hand of Hector, and that Ajax
had at least some claim to be called their preserver:--
"On high the chieftains sat: the common throng
Stood in dense ring around; then Ajax rose,
Lord of the seven-fold shield; and backward glanced,
Scowling, for anger mastered all his soul,
Where on Sigeeum's shore the fleet was ranged,
And with stretched hand:' Before the ships we plead
Our cause, great heaven! and Ulysses dares
Before the ships to match himself with me ! '"--C.
It maybejqoiiced, as a proof that Ovid went out of his
way, in introducing this episode, to make use of material
to which he attached a special value, that the narrative
rreaDy connected with any transformation. ^Ajax,
efeated by the act which gives the arms to his rival,
falls upon his sword; and the turf, wet with his blood,
"Blossomed with the self-same flower
That erst had birth from Hyacinthus' wound,
And in its graven cup memorial bears
Of either fate,--the characters that shape
Apollo's wailing cry, and Ajax' name. "
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? 76 o vID.
What these characters were we learn from the end
of the story here alluded to, of how the beautiful
Hyacinthus was killed by a quoit from the hand of
Apollo, and how
"The blood
That with its dripping crimson dyed the turf
Was blood no more: and sudden sprang to life
A flower that wore the lily's shape, but not
The lily's silver livery, purple-hued
And brighter than all tinct of Tyrian shells:
Nor with that boon of beauty satisfied,
Upon the petals of its cup the God
Stamped legible his sorrow's wailing cry,
^ And ' Ai! Ai! ' ever seems the flower to say. "
Two more specimens must conclude this chapter.
Pygmalion's statue changing into flesh and blood at
the sculptor's passionate prayer is a subject after
Ovid's own heart, and he treats it with consummate
delicacy and skill:--
"The Sculptor sought
His home, and, bending o'er the couch that bore
His Maiden's lifelike image, to her lips
Fond pressed his own,--and lo! her lips seemed warm,
And warmer, kissed again :--and now his hand
Her bosom seeks, and dimpling to his touch
The ivory seems to yield,--as in the Sun
The waxen labour of Hymettus' bees,
By plastic fingers wrought, to various shape
And use by use is fashioned. Wonder-spelled,
Scarce daring to believe his bliss, in dread
Lest sense deluded mock him, on the form
He loves again and yet again his hand
Lays trembling touch, and to his touch a pulse
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 77
Within throbs answering palpable :--'twas flesh!
'Twas very Life ! --Then forth in eloquent flood
His grateful heart its thanks to Venus poured!
The lips he kissed were living lips that felt
His passionate pressure ;--o'er the virgin cheeks
Stole deepening crimson :--and the unclosing eyes
At once on Heaven and on their Lover looked! "
The fifteenth or last book of the 'Metamorphoses'
contains an eloquent exposition of the Pythagorean
philosophy. Pythagoras, a Greek by birth, had made
Italy, the southern coasts of which were indeed thickly
studded with the colonies of his nation, the land of his
adoption, and the traditions of his teaching and of his
life had a special interest for the people to which had
descended the greatness of all the races--Oscan, Etrus-
can, Greek--which had inhabited the beautiful penin-
sula. A legend, careless, as such legends commonly are,
of chronology, made him the preceptor of JNuma, the
wise king to whom Rome owed so much of its worship
and its law. The doctrine most commonly connected
with his name was that of the metempsychosis, or
transmigration of souls from one body to another,
whether of man or of the lower animals, though it
probably did not occupy a very prominent part in his
philosophy. It was an old belief of the Aryan race,
and it had a practical aspect which commended it to
the Eoman mind, always more inclined to ethical than
to metaphysical speculations. Virgil, in that vision
of the lower world which occupies the sixth book of
his great epic, employs it--partly, indeed, as a poetical
artifice for introducing his magnificent roll of Eoman
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? 78 0 vi D.
worthies, but also in a more serious aspect, as sug-
gesting the method of those purifying influences which
were to educate the human soul for higher destinies.
Ovid sees in it the philosophical explanation of the mar-
vels which he has been relating, and, as it were, their
vindication from the possible charge of being childish
fables, vacant of any real meaning, and unworthy of
a serious pen. The passage which follows refers
to a practical rule in which we may see a natural
inference from the philosophical dogma. If man is so
closely allied to the lower animals--if their forms are
made, equally with his, the receptacles of the one
divine animating spirit--then there is a certain impiety
in his slaughtering them to satisfy his wants. Strangely
enough, the progress or revolution of human thought
has brought science again to the doctrine of man's
kindred with the animals, though it seems altogether
averse to the merciful conclusion which Pythagoras
drew from it.
"What had ye done, ye flocks, ye peaceful race
Created for Man's blessing, that provide
To slake his thirst your udder's nectarous draught,
That with your fleece wrap warm his shivering limbs,
And serve him better with your life than death ? --
What fault was in the Ox, a creature mild
And harmless, docile, born with patient toil
To lighten half the labour of the fields ? --
Ungrateful he, and little worth to reap
The crop he sowed, that, from the crooked share
Untraced, his ploughman slew, and to the axe
Condemned the neck that, worn beneath his yoke,
For many a spring his furrows traced, and home
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 79
"With many a harvest dragged his Autumn-wain!
Nor this is all:--but Man must of his guilt
Make Heaven itself accomplice, and believe
The Gods with slaughter of their creatures pleased!
Lo ! at the altar, fairest of his kind,--
And by that very fairness marked for doom,--
The guiltless victim stands,--bedecked for death
With wreath and garland . '--Ignorant he hears
The muttering Priest,--feels ignorant his brows
White with the sprinkling of the salted meal
To his own labour owed,--and ignorant
Wonders, perchance, to see the lustral urn
Flash back the glimmer of the lifted knife
Too soon to dim its brightness with his blood!
And Priests are found to teach, and men to deem
That in the entrails, from the tortured frame
Yet reeking torn, they read the hest of Heaven ! --
O race of mortal men! what lust, what vice
Of appetite unhallowed, makes ye bold
To gorge your greed on Being like your own?
Be wiselier warned : --forbear the barbarous feast,
Nor in each bloody morsel that ye chew
The willing labourer of your fields devour!
All changes :--nothing perishes ! --Now here,
Now there, the vagrant spirit roves at will,
The shifting tenant of a thousand homes:--
Now, elevate, ascends from beast to man,--
Now, retrograde, descends from man to beast;--
But Timer dies! --Upon the tablet's page
Erased, and written fresh, the characters
Take various shape,--the wax remains the same:--
So is it with the Soul that, migrating
Through all the forms of breathing life, retains
Unchanged its essence. Oh, be wise, and hear
Heaven's warning from my prophet-lips, nor dare
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? 80 0 VID.
With impious slaughter, for your glutton-greed,
The kindly bond of Nature violate,
Nor from its home expel the Soul, perchance
Akin to yours, to nourish blood with blood! "
It has been handed down to us on good authority
that Virgil, in his last illness, desired his friends to
commit his 'iEneid' to the flames. It had not re-
ceived his final corrections, and he was unwilling that
it should go down to posterity less perfect than he
could have made it. Evidences of this incomplete-
ness are to be found, especially in the occasional in-
consistencies of the narrative. Critics have busied
themselves in discovering or imagining other faults
which might have been corrected in revision. The
desire, though it doubtless came from a mind en-
feebled by morbid conditions of the body, was pro-
bably sincere. "We can hardly believe as much of
what Ovid tells us of his own intentions about the
'Metamorphoses:' "As for the verses which told
of the changed forms--an unlucky work, which its
author's banishment interrupted--these in the hour of
my departure I put, sorrowing, as I put many other
of my good things, into the flames with my own
hands. " Doubtless he did so; nothing could have
more naturally displayed his vexation. But he could
hardly have been ignorant that in destroying bis
manuscript he was not destroying his work. "As
they did not perish altogether," he adds, "but still
exist, I suppose that there were several copies of
them. " But it is scarcely conceivable that a poem
containing as nearly as possible twelve thousand lines
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 81
should have existed in several copies by chance, or
without the knowledge of the author. "When he says
that the work never received his final corrections,
we may believe him, though we do not perceive any
signs of imperfection. It is even possible that he
employed some of his time during his banishment in
giving some last touches to his verse.
However this may be, the work has been accepted
by posterity as second in rank--second only to Virgil's
epic--among the great monuments of Roman genius.
It has been translated into every lauguage of modern
Europe that possesses a literature. Its astonishing
ingenuity, the unfailing variety of its colours, the
flexibility with which its style deals alike with the
sublime and the familiar, and with equal facility is
gay and pathetic, tender and terrible, have well en-
titled it to the honour, and justify the boast with
which the poet concludes :--
"So crown I here a work that dares defy
The wrath of Jove, the fire, the sword, the tooth
Of all-devouring Time ! --Come when it will
The day that ends my life's uncertain term,--
That on this corporal frame alone hath power
To work extinction,--high above the Stars
My nobler part shall soar,--my Name remain
Immortal,--wheresoe'er the might of Eome
Oerawes the subject Earth my Verse survive
Familiar in the mouths of men ! --and, if
A Bard may prophesy, while Time shall last
Endure, and die but with the dying World! "
A. c. s. s. , voL ii.
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