The
indignant
hero cries--
"'Then take
From me this gift at parting !
"'Then take
From me this gift at parting !
Ovid - 1865 - Ovid by Alfred Church
he leaves my hopes and all the world desolate at
once. " It is in the same letter that he significantly
deplores the death of Maximus. "I think, Maximus,
that I must have been the cause of your death. "
This may have been a commonplace,--the fear lest the
cause of so unlucky a man might be fatal to any who
undertook it. Viewed in connection with the whole
story, it assumes a different aspect. That Maximus
had perished in an attempt to befriend Ovid may
have been so far true that his death followed an un-
successful effort to restore to the favour of Augustus
and to the succession the family in whose fall the poet
himself had fallen.
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? CHAPTEE IV.
THE METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS.
Ovid tells us that before he was banished he had!
written, but not corrected, the fifteen books of the
'Metamorphoses,' and had also composed twelve books
(only six have been preserved) of the 'Fasti' or Eoman
Calendar. These are his chief surviving poems, and
it will be convenient to describe them in this and the
following chapter.
In the 'Metamorphoses' we have the largest and
most important of Ovid's works; and, if we view
it as a whole, the greatest monument of his poeticaL
genius. The plan of the book is to collect together, \
out of the vast mass of Greek mythology and legend,
the various stories which turn on the change of
men and women from the human form into animals,
pJantsTof inanimate objects. ~ ITar-aro tho tatermerely
collected;--Such a collection would have been inevi-
tably monotonous and tiresome. With consummate
skill the poet arranges and connects them together.
The thread of connection is often indeed slight; some-
times it is broken altogether. But it is sufficiently
continuous to keep alive the reader's interest; which
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? 54 0 vi D.
is, indeed, often excited by the remarkable ingenuity
of the transition from one tale to another. But it did
not escape the author's perception, that to repeat over
and over again the story of a marvel which must have
been as incredible to his own contemporaries as it is
to us, would have been to insure failure. Hence the
metamorphoses themselves occupy but a small part
of the book, which finds its real charm and beauty in
the brilliant episodes, for the introduction of which
they supply the occasion.
How far the idea was Ovid's own it is impossible to
say. Two Greek poets are known to have written on
the same subject. One of them was Nicander, of Colo-
phon, in Asia Minor, an author of the second century
b. c, attached, it would seem, to the court of Per-
gamus, which, under the dynasty of the Attali, was a
famous centre of literary activity. Of his work, the
'Changes' (for so we may translate its Greek title),
only a few fragments are preserved, quite insufficient
to give us any idea of its merits or methods. Parthe-
nius, a native of the Bithynian Nicsea, so famous in
ecclesiastical history, may be credited with having
givea some hints to the Eoman poet, -- to whom,
indeed, as a contemporary,* and connected with
the great literary circle of Eome, he was probably
known. Parthenius, we know on good authority,
taught the Greek language to Virgil, who conde-
scended to borrow at least one line from his pre-
ceptor. His 'Metamorphoses' have entirely perished.
* Parthenius died at an advanced age, about the beginning
of the reign of Tiberius.
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 55
We have only the probability of the case to warrant
us in supposing that Ovid was under obligations to
him. Of these obligations, indeed, no ancient au-
thority speaks; and it is safe, probably, to conjecture
that they were inconsiderable -- nothing, certainly,
like what Virgil owed to Homer, Hesiod, and
Theocritus.
It would weary the reader, not to mention the space
which the execution of such a task would require, to
conduct him along the whole course of the metamor-
phoses--from the description of Chaos, with which the
poet begins, to the transformation of the murdered
Csesar into a comet, with which, not following the
customary adulation to the successor of the great
Dtetatpjy he concludes. Specimens must suffice; and
the book is one which, better than any other great
poem that can be mentioned, specimens may ade-
quately represent.
The first book begins, as has been said, with a de-
scription of Chaos. "Nothing," says Bayle, in his
satirical fashion, "could be clearer and more intel-
ligible than this description, if we consider only the
poetical phrases; but if we examine its philosophy,
we find it confused and contradictory--a chaos, in fact,
more hideous than that which he has described. " Bayle,
however, looked for what the poet never pretended to
give. His cosmogony is, at least, as intelligible as
any other; and it is expressed with marvellous force
of language, culminating in one of the noblest of the
poet's efforts, the description of the creation of man,
the crown and masterpiece of the newly-made world.
r
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? 56 0 VID.
"Something yet lacked--some holier being--dowered
With lofty soul, and capable of rule
And governance o'er all besides,--and Man
At last had birth :--whether from seed divine
Of Him, the artificer of things, and cause
Of the amended world,--or whether Earth
Yet new, and late from iEther separate, still
Retained some lingering germs of kindred Heaven,
Which wise Prometheus, with the plastic aid
Of water borrowed from the neighbouring stream,
Formed in the likeness of the all-ordering Gods;
And, while all other creatures sought the ground
With downward aspect grovelling, gave to man
His port sublime, and bade him scan, erect,
The heavens, and front with upward gaze the stars.
And thus earth's substance, rude and shapeless erst,
Transmuted took the novel form of Man. " *
The four ages of the world thus created are de-
scribed; and to the horrors of the last of these, the
Age of Iron, succeeds the tale of its crowning wicked-
ness--the attempt of the giants to scale the heights
of heaven. Jupiter smites down the assailants, and
the earth brings forth from their blood
"A race, of Gods
Contemptuous, prone to violence and lust
Of strife, and bloody-minded, born from blood. "
Jupiter calls his fellow-gods to council, and they pass
to his hall along the way--
"Sublime, of milky whiteness, whence its name. "
Two lines of Dryden's version are here worth quoting :--
"Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies. "
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 57
He inveighs against the enormities of man, recounting
what he had himself witnessed when he had--
"Putting off the God,
Disguised in human semblance walked the world. "
Many shameful sights he had witnessed, but the
worst horror had met him in the hall of Lycaon, the
Arcadian king, who, after attempting to murder his
guest, had served up to him a feast of human flesh.
LycaojUr-iadeed, bad paid the penalty of his crime :--
"Terror-struck he fled,
And through the silence of the distant plains
Wild howling, vainly strove for human voice.
His maddened soul his form infects:--his arms
To legs are changed, his robes to shaggy hide;--
Glutting on helpless flocks his ancient lust
Of blood, a wolf he prowls,--retaining still
Some traces of his earlier self,--the same
Grey fell of hair--the red fierce glare of eye
And savage mouth,--alike in beast and man! "
But a wider vengeance was needed. The whole race
of man must be swept away. Thus we come to a
description of the deluge. Of all mankind, two only
are left,--Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and Pyrrha,
daughter of the brother Titan Epimetheus--
"Than he no better, juster man had lived;
Than she no woman holier. "
Seeking to know how the earth may be replenished
with the race of man, they receive the mysterious com-
mand--
"Behind you fling your mighty Mother's bones! "
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? 58 OVID.
Deucalion, as becomes the son of so sagacious a father,
discovers its meaning. The "mighty mother " is earth,
. the stones are her bones.
"They descend
The mount, and, with veiled head and vest ungirt,
Behind them, as commanded, fling the stones.
And lo! --a tale past credence, did not all
Antiquity attest it true,--the stones
Their natural rigour lose, by slow degrees
Softening and softening into form; and grow.
And swell with milder nature, and assume
Rude semblance of a human shape, not yet
Distinct, but like some statue new-conceived
And half expressed in marble. What they had
Of moist or earthy in their substance, turns
To flesh :--what solid and inflexible
Forms into bones :--their veins as veins remain:--
Till, in brief time, and by the Immortals' grace,
The man-tossed pebbles live and stand up men,
And women from the woman's cast revive.
So sprang our hard enduring race, which speaks
Its origin--fit fruit of such a stock"
But while man was thus created--
"All other life in various shapes the Earth
Spontaneous bare, soon as the Sun had kissed
Her bosom yet undried, and mud and marsh
Stirred with ferment. "
Among these creatures, equivalents of the monstrous
saurians of modern geological science, springs
"Huge Python, serpent-prodigy, the dread
Of the new world, o'er half the mountain's side
Enormous coiled. But him the Archer-God,
With all his quiver's store of shafts, untried
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 59
y
Till now on aught save deer or nimble goat,
Smote to the death, and from a thousand wounds
Drained the black torrent of his poisonous gore :--
And, that the memory of the deed might live
Through after-time, his famous festival
And Pythian contest, from the monster's name
So called, ordained. "
Flushed with his victory over the monster, Apollo
meets Cupid, and asks him what right he has to such
a manly weapon as the bow. Cupid retaliates by a
shaft which sets the Sun-God's heart on fire with a
passion for Daphne, daughter of Peneus, fairest and
chastest of nymphs. She flies from his pursuit, and,
when flight is ineffectual, is changed at her own \/
prayer into a laurel. The god makes the best of his
defeat:--
"' And if,' he cries,
'Thou canst not now my consort be, at least
My tree thou shalt be! Still thy leaves shall crown
My locks, my lyre, my quiver. Thine the brows
Of Latium's lords to wreathe, what time the voice
Of Rome salutes the triumph, and the pomp
Of long procession scales the Capitol.
Before the gates Augustan shalt thou stand
Their hallowed guardian, high amid thy boughs
Bearing the crown to civic merit due :--
And, as my front with locks that know no steel
Is ever youthful, ever be thine own
Thus verdant, with the changing year unchanged ! '"
The news of the strange event spreads far and wide,
and to Peneus
"Throng
The brother-Powers of all the neighbour-floods,
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? 60 0 VID.
i
Doubtful or to congratulate or condole
The parent's hap. "
One only was absent, Inachus,
"Whom grief
Held absent, in his cave's recess, with tears
His flood augmenting. "
(One of the frigid conceits with which Ovid often
betrays a faulty taste. ) His grief was for his daughter
Io, whom he has lost, changed by Juno into a heifer.
The feelings of the transformed maiden are told with
some pathos.
"By the loved banks she strays
Of Inachus, her childhood's happy haunt,
And in the stream strange horns reflected views,
Back-shuddering at the sight. The Naiads see
And know her not:--nor Inachus himself
Can recognise his child,--though close her sire
She follows--close her sister-band,--and courts
Their praise, and joys to feel their fondling hands.
Some gathered herbs her father proffers--mute,
She licks and wets with tears his honoured palm,
And longs for words to ask his aid, and tell
Her name, her sorrows. "
She contrives to tell her tale in letters scraped by
her hoof. Then Argus, the hundred-eyed herdsman,
to whom Juno has committed her, drives her to
t other pastures. Then Mercury finds him, charms
him to slumber with the song of Syrinx, transformed
into a reed to escape the love of Pan, and then slays
him.
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 61
"So waned at once
The light which filled so many eyes; one night
Closed all the hundred. But Saturnia's care
Later renewed their fires, and bade them shine,
Gem-like, amid the peacock's radiant plumes. "
In Egypt, Io gives birth to her son Epaphus, and
Epaphus, growing up, has among his companions one
Phaeton,--
"Apollo's child, whom once, with boastful tongue,
Vaunting his birth divine, and claiming rank
Superior, the Inachian checked"
-with the taunt that his divine parentage was all a fable.
The furious youth seeks his mother, and demands
whether the story is true. It is, she says; and she bids
him seek the Sun-God himself, and hear the truth from
his lips. The famous description of the Sun-God's
palace follows :--
"Sublime on lofty columns, bright with gold
And fiery carbuncle, its roof inlaid
With ivory, rose the Palace of the Sun,
Approached by folding gates with silver sheen
Radiant; material priceless,--yet less prized
For its own worth than what the cunning head
Of Mulciber thereon had wrought,--the globe
Of Earth,--the Seas that wash it round,--the Skies
That overhang it. 'Mid the waters played
Their Gods cserulean. Triton with his horn
Was there, and Proteus of the shifting shape,
And old jEgeon, curbing with firm hand
The monsters of the deep. Her Nereids there
Bound Doris sported, seeming, some to swim,
Some on the rocks their tresses green to dry,
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? 62 0 viD.
. /
Some dolphin-borne to ride; nor all in face
The same, nor different;--so should sisters be.
Earth showed her men, and towns, and woods, and beasts,
And streams, and nymphs, and rural deities:
And over all the mimic Heaven was bright
With the twelve Zodiac signs, on either valve
Of the great portal figured,--six on each. "
y/ Phaeton 'begs his father to confirm his word by grant-
/ ingvany boon that he may ask; and, the god consent-
ing, asks that he may drive his chariot for a day.
V Phaeton is the stock^exarnpls of " fiery ambition o'er-
vauHIng. 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.
once. " It is in the same letter that he significantly
deplores the death of Maximus. "I think, Maximus,
that I must have been the cause of your death. "
This may have been a commonplace,--the fear lest the
cause of so unlucky a man might be fatal to any who
undertook it. Viewed in connection with the whole
story, it assumes a different aspect. That Maximus
had perished in an attempt to befriend Ovid may
have been so far true that his death followed an un-
successful effort to restore to the favour of Augustus
and to the succession the family in whose fall the poet
himself had fallen.
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? CHAPTEE IV.
THE METAMORPHOSES OR TRANSFORMATIONS.
Ovid tells us that before he was banished he had!
written, but not corrected, the fifteen books of the
'Metamorphoses,' and had also composed twelve books
(only six have been preserved) of the 'Fasti' or Eoman
Calendar. These are his chief surviving poems, and
it will be convenient to describe them in this and the
following chapter.
In the 'Metamorphoses' we have the largest and
most important of Ovid's works; and, if we view
it as a whole, the greatest monument of his poeticaL
genius. The plan of the book is to collect together, \
out of the vast mass of Greek mythology and legend,
the various stories which turn on the change of
men and women from the human form into animals,
pJantsTof inanimate objects. ~ ITar-aro tho tatermerely
collected;--Such a collection would have been inevi-
tably monotonous and tiresome. With consummate
skill the poet arranges and connects them together.
The thread of connection is often indeed slight; some-
times it is broken altogether. But it is sufficiently
continuous to keep alive the reader's interest; which
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? 54 0 vi D.
is, indeed, often excited by the remarkable ingenuity
of the transition from one tale to another. But it did
not escape the author's perception, that to repeat over
and over again the story of a marvel which must have
been as incredible to his own contemporaries as it is
to us, would have been to insure failure. Hence the
metamorphoses themselves occupy but a small part
of the book, which finds its real charm and beauty in
the brilliant episodes, for the introduction of which
they supply the occasion.
How far the idea was Ovid's own it is impossible to
say. Two Greek poets are known to have written on
the same subject. One of them was Nicander, of Colo-
phon, in Asia Minor, an author of the second century
b. c, attached, it would seem, to the court of Per-
gamus, which, under the dynasty of the Attali, was a
famous centre of literary activity. Of his work, the
'Changes' (for so we may translate its Greek title),
only a few fragments are preserved, quite insufficient
to give us any idea of its merits or methods. Parthe-
nius, a native of the Bithynian Nicsea, so famous in
ecclesiastical history, may be credited with having
givea some hints to the Eoman poet, -- to whom,
indeed, as a contemporary,* and connected with
the great literary circle of Eome, he was probably
known. Parthenius, we know on good authority,
taught the Greek language to Virgil, who conde-
scended to borrow at least one line from his pre-
ceptor. His 'Metamorphoses' have entirely perished.
* Parthenius died at an advanced age, about the beginning
of the reign of Tiberius.
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 55
We have only the probability of the case to warrant
us in supposing that Ovid was under obligations to
him. Of these obligations, indeed, no ancient au-
thority speaks; and it is safe, probably, to conjecture
that they were inconsiderable -- nothing, certainly,
like what Virgil owed to Homer, Hesiod, and
Theocritus.
It would weary the reader, not to mention the space
which the execution of such a task would require, to
conduct him along the whole course of the metamor-
phoses--from the description of Chaos, with which the
poet begins, to the transformation of the murdered
Csesar into a comet, with which, not following the
customary adulation to the successor of the great
Dtetatpjy he concludes. Specimens must suffice; and
the book is one which, better than any other great
poem that can be mentioned, specimens may ade-
quately represent.
The first book begins, as has been said, with a de-
scription of Chaos. "Nothing," says Bayle, in his
satirical fashion, "could be clearer and more intel-
ligible than this description, if we consider only the
poetical phrases; but if we examine its philosophy,
we find it confused and contradictory--a chaos, in fact,
more hideous than that which he has described. " Bayle,
however, looked for what the poet never pretended to
give. His cosmogony is, at least, as intelligible as
any other; and it is expressed with marvellous force
of language, culminating in one of the noblest of the
poet's efforts, the description of the creation of man,
the crown and masterpiece of the newly-made world.
r
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? 56 0 VID.
"Something yet lacked--some holier being--dowered
With lofty soul, and capable of rule
And governance o'er all besides,--and Man
At last had birth :--whether from seed divine
Of Him, the artificer of things, and cause
Of the amended world,--or whether Earth
Yet new, and late from iEther separate, still
Retained some lingering germs of kindred Heaven,
Which wise Prometheus, with the plastic aid
Of water borrowed from the neighbouring stream,
Formed in the likeness of the all-ordering Gods;
And, while all other creatures sought the ground
With downward aspect grovelling, gave to man
His port sublime, and bade him scan, erect,
The heavens, and front with upward gaze the stars.
And thus earth's substance, rude and shapeless erst,
Transmuted took the novel form of Man. " *
The four ages of the world thus created are de-
scribed; and to the horrors of the last of these, the
Age of Iron, succeeds the tale of its crowning wicked-
ness--the attempt of the giants to scale the heights
of heaven. Jupiter smites down the assailants, and
the earth brings forth from their blood
"A race, of Gods
Contemptuous, prone to violence and lust
Of strife, and bloody-minded, born from blood. "
Jupiter calls his fellow-gods to council, and they pass
to his hall along the way--
"Sublime, of milky whiteness, whence its name. "
Two lines of Dryden's version are here worth quoting :--
"Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies. "
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 57
He inveighs against the enormities of man, recounting
what he had himself witnessed when he had--
"Putting off the God,
Disguised in human semblance walked the world. "
Many shameful sights he had witnessed, but the
worst horror had met him in the hall of Lycaon, the
Arcadian king, who, after attempting to murder his
guest, had served up to him a feast of human flesh.
LycaojUr-iadeed, bad paid the penalty of his crime :--
"Terror-struck he fled,
And through the silence of the distant plains
Wild howling, vainly strove for human voice.
His maddened soul his form infects:--his arms
To legs are changed, his robes to shaggy hide;--
Glutting on helpless flocks his ancient lust
Of blood, a wolf he prowls,--retaining still
Some traces of his earlier self,--the same
Grey fell of hair--the red fierce glare of eye
And savage mouth,--alike in beast and man! "
But a wider vengeance was needed. The whole race
of man must be swept away. Thus we come to a
description of the deluge. Of all mankind, two only
are left,--Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and Pyrrha,
daughter of the brother Titan Epimetheus--
"Than he no better, juster man had lived;
Than she no woman holier. "
Seeking to know how the earth may be replenished
with the race of man, they receive the mysterious com-
mand--
"Behind you fling your mighty Mother's bones! "
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? 58 OVID.
Deucalion, as becomes the son of so sagacious a father,
discovers its meaning. The "mighty mother " is earth,
. the stones are her bones.
"They descend
The mount, and, with veiled head and vest ungirt,
Behind them, as commanded, fling the stones.
And lo! --a tale past credence, did not all
Antiquity attest it true,--the stones
Their natural rigour lose, by slow degrees
Softening and softening into form; and grow.
And swell with milder nature, and assume
Rude semblance of a human shape, not yet
Distinct, but like some statue new-conceived
And half expressed in marble. What they had
Of moist or earthy in their substance, turns
To flesh :--what solid and inflexible
Forms into bones :--their veins as veins remain:--
Till, in brief time, and by the Immortals' grace,
The man-tossed pebbles live and stand up men,
And women from the woman's cast revive.
So sprang our hard enduring race, which speaks
Its origin--fit fruit of such a stock"
But while man was thus created--
"All other life in various shapes the Earth
Spontaneous bare, soon as the Sun had kissed
Her bosom yet undried, and mud and marsh
Stirred with ferment. "
Among these creatures, equivalents of the monstrous
saurians of modern geological science, springs
"Huge Python, serpent-prodigy, the dread
Of the new world, o'er half the mountain's side
Enormous coiled. But him the Archer-God,
With all his quiver's store of shafts, untried
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 59
y
Till now on aught save deer or nimble goat,
Smote to the death, and from a thousand wounds
Drained the black torrent of his poisonous gore :--
And, that the memory of the deed might live
Through after-time, his famous festival
And Pythian contest, from the monster's name
So called, ordained. "
Flushed with his victory over the monster, Apollo
meets Cupid, and asks him what right he has to such
a manly weapon as the bow. Cupid retaliates by a
shaft which sets the Sun-God's heart on fire with a
passion for Daphne, daughter of Peneus, fairest and
chastest of nymphs. She flies from his pursuit, and,
when flight is ineffectual, is changed at her own \/
prayer into a laurel. The god makes the best of his
defeat:--
"' And if,' he cries,
'Thou canst not now my consort be, at least
My tree thou shalt be! Still thy leaves shall crown
My locks, my lyre, my quiver. Thine the brows
Of Latium's lords to wreathe, what time the voice
Of Rome salutes the triumph, and the pomp
Of long procession scales the Capitol.
Before the gates Augustan shalt thou stand
Their hallowed guardian, high amid thy boughs
Bearing the crown to civic merit due :--
And, as my front with locks that know no steel
Is ever youthful, ever be thine own
Thus verdant, with the changing year unchanged ! '"
The news of the strange event spreads far and wide,
and to Peneus
"Throng
The brother-Powers of all the neighbour-floods,
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? 60 0 VID.
i
Doubtful or to congratulate or condole
The parent's hap. "
One only was absent, Inachus,
"Whom grief
Held absent, in his cave's recess, with tears
His flood augmenting. "
(One of the frigid conceits with which Ovid often
betrays a faulty taste. ) His grief was for his daughter
Io, whom he has lost, changed by Juno into a heifer.
The feelings of the transformed maiden are told with
some pathos.
"By the loved banks she strays
Of Inachus, her childhood's happy haunt,
And in the stream strange horns reflected views,
Back-shuddering at the sight. The Naiads see
And know her not:--nor Inachus himself
Can recognise his child,--though close her sire
She follows--close her sister-band,--and courts
Their praise, and joys to feel their fondling hands.
Some gathered herbs her father proffers--mute,
She licks and wets with tears his honoured palm,
And longs for words to ask his aid, and tell
Her name, her sorrows. "
She contrives to tell her tale in letters scraped by
her hoof. Then Argus, the hundred-eyed herdsman,
to whom Juno has committed her, drives her to
t other pastures. Then Mercury finds him, charms
him to slumber with the song of Syrinx, transformed
into a reed to escape the love of Pan, and then slays
him.
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? THE METAMORPHOSES. 61
"So waned at once
The light which filled so many eyes; one night
Closed all the hundred. But Saturnia's care
Later renewed their fires, and bade them shine,
Gem-like, amid the peacock's radiant plumes. "
In Egypt, Io gives birth to her son Epaphus, and
Epaphus, growing up, has among his companions one
Phaeton,--
"Apollo's child, whom once, with boastful tongue,
Vaunting his birth divine, and claiming rank
Superior, the Inachian checked"
-with the taunt that his divine parentage was all a fable.
The furious youth seeks his mother, and demands
whether the story is true. It is, she says; and she bids
him seek the Sun-God himself, and hear the truth from
his lips. The famous description of the Sun-God's
palace follows :--
"Sublime on lofty columns, bright with gold
And fiery carbuncle, its roof inlaid
With ivory, rose the Palace of the Sun,
Approached by folding gates with silver sheen
Radiant; material priceless,--yet less prized
For its own worth than what the cunning head
Of Mulciber thereon had wrought,--the globe
Of Earth,--the Seas that wash it round,--the Skies
That overhang it. 'Mid the waters played
Their Gods cserulean. Triton with his horn
Was there, and Proteus of the shifting shape,
And old jEgeon, curbing with firm hand
The monsters of the deep. Her Nereids there
Bound Doris sported, seeming, some to swim,
Some on the rocks their tresses green to dry,
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? 62 0 viD.
. /
Some dolphin-borne to ride; nor all in face
The same, nor different;--so should sisters be.
Earth showed her men, and towns, and woods, and beasts,
And streams, and nymphs, and rural deities:
And over all the mimic Heaven was bright
With the twelve Zodiac signs, on either valve
Of the great portal figured,--six on each. "
y/ Phaeton 'begs his father to confirm his word by grant-
/ ingvany boon that he may ask; and, the god consent-
ing, asks that he may drive his chariot for a day.
V Phaeton is the stock^exarnpls of " fiery ambition o'er-
vauHIng. 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
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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.
