The Metamorphoses of Ovid Part 17

[Footnote 24: _The sea which trembles._--Ver. 136. The ripple, or shudder, which runs along the surface of the sea, when a breath of wind is stirring in a calm, is very beautifully described here, and is worthy of notice.]

[Footnote 25: _The ivory sheath._--Ver. 148. The 'v.a.g.i.n.a,' or 'sheath' of the sword, was often highly decorated; and we learn from Homer and Virgil, as well as Ovid, that ivory was much used for that purpose. The sheath was worn by the Greeks and Romans on the left side of the body, so as to enable them to draw the sword from it, by pa.s.sing the right hand in front of the body, to take hold of the hilt, with the thumb next to the blade.]

[Footnote 26: _Is black._--Ver. 165. He thus accounts for the deep purple hue of the mulberry which, before the event mentioned here, he says was white.]

EXPLANATION.

It is pretty clear, as we have already seen, that the establishment of the worship of Bacchus in Greece met with great opposition, and that his priests and devotees published several miracles and prodigies, the more easily to influence the minds of their fellow-men. Thus, the daughters of Minyas are said to have been changed into bats, solely because they neglected to join in the orgies of that G.o.d; when, probably, the fact was, that they were either secretly despatched, or were forced to fly for their lives; and their absence was accounted for to the ignorant and credulous, by the invention of this Fable. The story of Dercetis, as related by Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, and Herodotus, is, that having offended Venus, that G.o.ddess caused her to fall in love with a young man, by whom she had a daughter. In despair at her misfortune, she killed her lover, and exposed her child, and afterwards drowned herself. The Syrians, lamenting her fate, built a temple near where she was drowned, and honored her as a G.o.ddess. They stated that she was turned into a fish, and they there represented her under the figure of a woman down to the waist, and of a fish thence downwards. They also abstained from eating fish; though they offered them to her in sacrifice, and suspended gilded ones in her temple.

Selden, in his Treatise on the Syrian G.o.ds, suggests that the story of Dercetis, or Atergatis, was founded on the figure and worship of Dagon, the G.o.d of the Philistines, who was represented under the figure of a fish; and that the name of Atergatis is a corruption of 'Adir Dagon,' 'a great fish,' which is not at all improbable. The same author supposes that Dercetis was originally the same Deity with Venus, Astarte, Minerva, Juno, Isis, and the Moon; and that she was worshipped under the name of Mylitta by the a.s.syrians, and as Alilac by the Arabians. Lucian tells us, that Dercetis was reported to have been the mother of Semiramis.

Ovid and Hyginus are the only authors that make mention of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and both agree in making Babylon the scene of it. It seems to be rather intended as a moral tale, than to have been built upon any actual circ.u.mstance. It affords a lesson to youth not to enter rashly into engagements: and to parents not to pursue, too rigorously, the gratification of their own resentment, but rather to consult the inclination of their children, when not likely to be productive of unhappiness at a future period.

The reader cannot fail to call to mind the admirable travesty of this story by Shakspere, in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'

FABLE II. [IV.167-233]

The Sun discovers to Vulcan the intrigue between Mars and Venus, and then, himself, falls in love with Leucothoe. Venus, in revenge for the discovery, resolves to make his amours unfortunate.

Here she ended; and there was {but} a short time betwixt, and {then} Leuconoe began[27] to speak. Her sisters held their peace. "Love has captivated even this Sun, who rules all things by his aethereal light.

I will relate the loves of the Sun. This G.o.d is supposed to have been the first to see the adultery of Venus with Mars; this G.o.d is the first to see everything. He was grieved at what was done, and showed to the husband, the son of Juno,[28] the wrong done to his bed, and the place of the intrigue. Both his senses, and the work which his skilful right hand was {then} holding, quitted him {on the instant}. Immediately, he files out some slender chains of bra.s.s, and nets, and meshes, which can escape the eye. The finest threads cannot surpa.s.s that work, nor yet the cobweb that hangs from the top of the beam. He makes it so, too, as to yield to a slight touch, and a gentle movement, and skilfully arranges it drawn around the bed. When the wife and the gallant come into the same bed, being both caught through the artifice of the husband, and chains prepared by this new contrivance, they are held fast in the {very} midst of their embraces.

"The Lemnian {G.o.d} immediately threw open the folding doors[29] of ivory, and admitted the Deities. {There} they lay disgracefully bound.

And yet many a one of the G.o.ds, not the serious ones, could fain wish thus to become disgraced. The G.o.ds of heaven laughed, and for a long time was this the most noted story in all heaven. The Cytherean[30]

G.o.ddess exacts satisfaction of the Sun, in remembrance of this betrayal; and, in her turn, disturbs him with the like pa.s.sion, who had disturbed her secret amours. What now, son of Hyperion,[31] does thy beauty, thy heat, and thy radiant light avail thee? For thou, who dost burn all lands with thy flames, art {now} burnt with a new flame; and thou, who oughtst to be looking at everything, art gazing on Leucothoe, and on one maiden art fixing those eyes which thou oughtst {to be fixing} on the universe. At one time thou art rising earlier in the Eastern sky; at another thou art setting late in the waves; and in taking time to gaze {on her}, thou art lengthening the hours of mid-winter. Sometimes thou art eclipsed, and the trouble of thy mind affects thy light, and, darkened, thou fillest with terror the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of mortals. Nor art thou pale, because the form of the moon, nearer to the earth, stands in thy way. It is that pa.s.sion which occasions this complexion. Thou lovest her alone, neither does Clymene, nor Rhodos,[32] nor the most beauteous mother[33] of the aeaean Circe engage thee, nor {yet} Clytie, who, though despised, was longing for thy embraces; at that very time thou wast suffering these grievous pangs. Leucothoe occasioned the forgetting of many a damsel; she, whom Eurynome, the most beauteous of the perfume-bearing[34] nation produced.[35] But after her daughter grew up, as much as the mother excelled all {other Nymphs}, so much did the daughter {excel} the mother. Her father, Orchamus, ruled over the Achaemenian[36] cities, and he is reckoned the seventh in descent from the ancient Belus.[37]

"The pastures of the horses of the Sun are under the Western sky; instead of gra.s.s, they have ambrosia.[38] That nourishes their limbs wearied with their daily service, and refits them for labor. And while the coursers are there eating their heavenly food, and night is taking her turn; the G.o.d enters the beloved chamber, changed into the shape of her mother Eurynome, and beholds Leucothoe among twice six handmaids, near the threshold, drawing out the smooth threads with her twirling spindle. When, therefore, as though her mother, he has given kisses to her dear daughter, he says, "There is a secret matter, {which I have to mention}; maids, withdraw, and take not from a mother the privilege of speaking in private {with her daughter}." They obey; and the G.o.d being left in the chamber without any witness, he says, 'I am he, who measures out the long year, who beholds all things, {and} through whom the earth sees all things; the eye, {in fact}, of the universe. Believe me, thou art pleasing to me.' She is affrighted; and in her alarm, both her distaff and her spindle fall from her relaxed fingers. Her very fear becomes her; and, he, no longer delaying, returns to his true shape, and his wonted beauty. But the maiden, although startled at the unexpected sight, overcome by the beauty of the G.o.d,[39] {and} dismissing {all} complaints, submits to his embrace.

[Footnote 27: _Leuconoe began._--Ver. 168. It is worthy of remark, how strongly the affecting tale of Pyramus and Thisbe contrasts with the loose story of the loves of Mars and Venus.]

[Footnote 28: _The son of Juno._--Ver. 173. Vulcan is called 'Junonigena,' because, according to some, he was the son of Juno alone. Other writers, however, say that he was the only son of Jupiter and Juno.]

[Footnote 29: _The folding doors._--Ver. 185. The plural word 'valvae' is often used to signify a door, or entrance, because among the ancients each doorway generally contained two doors folding together. The internal doors even of private houses were bivalve; hence, as in the present case, we often read of the folding doors of a bed-chamber. Each of these doors or valves was usually wide enough to permit persons to pa.s.s each other in egress and ingress without opening the other door as well. Sometimes each valve was double, folding like our window-shutters.]

[Footnote 30: _Cytherean._--Ver. 190. Cythera was an island on the southern coast of Laconia; where Venus was supposed to have landed, after she had risen from the sea. It was dedicated to her worship.]

[Footnote 31: _Hyperion._--Ver. 192. He was the son of Clus, or Ura.n.u.s, and the father of the Sun. The name of Hyperion is, however, often given by the poets to the Sun himself.]

[Footnote 32: _Rhodos._--Ver. 204. She was a damsel of the Isle of Rhodes, the daughter of Neptune, and, according to some, of Venus.

She was greatly beloved by Apollo, to whom she bore seven children.]

[Footnote 33: _Beauteous mother._--Ver. 205. This was Persa, the daughter of Ocea.n.u.s, and the mother of the enchantress Circe, who is here called 'aeaea,' from aeaea, a city and peninsula of Colchis.

Circe is referred to more at length in the 14th Book of the Metamorphoses.]

[Footnote 34: _Perfume-bearing._--Ver. 209. Being born in Arabia, the producer of all kinds of spices and perfumes, which were much in request among the ancients, for the purposes of sacrifice.]

[Footnote 35: _Produced._--Ver. 210. Eurynome was the wife of Orchamus, and was the daughter of Ocea.n.u.s and Tethys.]

[Footnote 36: _Achaemenian._--Ver. 212. Persia is called Achaemenian, from Achaemenes, one of its former kings.]

[Footnote 37: _Ancient Belus._--Ver. 213. The order of descent is thus reckoned from Belus; Abas, Acrisius, Danae, Perseus, Bachaemon, Achaemenes, and Orchamus.]

[Footnote 38: _Ambrosia._--Ver. 215. Ambrosia was said to be the food of the Deities, and nectar their drink.]

[Footnote 39: _Beauty of the G.o.d._--Ver. 233. Clarke translates, 'Virgo victa nitore Dei.' 'The young lady--charmed with the spruceness of the G.o.d.']

EXPLANATION.

Plutarch, in his Treatise 'How to read the Poets,' suggests a curious explanation of the discovery by the Sun of the intrigue of Mars and Venus. He says that such persons as are born under the conjunction of the planets Mars and Venus, are naturally of an amorous temperament; but that if the Sun does not happen then to be at a distance, their indiscretions will be very soon discovered.

Palaephatus gives a historical solution to the story. He says that Helius, the son of Vulcan, king of Egypt, resolving to cause his father's laws against adultery to be strictly observed, and having been informed that a lady of the court had an intrigue with one of the courtiers, entered her apartment in the night, and obtaining ocular proof of the courtier's guilt, caused him to be severely punished. He also tells us that the similarity of the name gave birth to the Fable which Homer was the first to relate, with a small variation, and which is here copied by Ovid. Libanius, deploring the burning of the Temple of Apollo near Antioch, complains of the ingrat.i.tude of Vulcan to that G.o.d, who had formerly discovered to him the infidelity of his wife; a subject upon which St. Chrysostom seems to think that the rhetorician would have done better to have been silent.

FABLE III. [IV.234-270]

Clytie, in a fit of revenge, discovers the adventure of Leucothoe to her father, who orders her to be buried alive. The Sun, grieved at her misfortune, changed her into the frankincense tree; he also despises the informer, who pines away for love of him, and is at last changed into the sunflower.

Clytie envied her, (for the love of the Sun[40] for her had not been moderate), and, urged on by resentment at a rival, she published the intrigue, and, when spread abroad, brought it to the notice of her father. He, fierce and unrelenting, cruelly buried her alive deep in the ground, as she entreated and stretched out her hands towards the light of the Sun, and cried, "'Twas he that offered violence to me against my will;" and upon her he placed a heap of heavy sand. The son of Hyperion scattered it with his rays, and gave a pa.s.sage to thee, by which thou mightst be able to put forth thy buried features.

But thou, Nymph, couldst not now raise thy head smothered with the weight of the earth; and {there} thou didst lie, a lifeless body. The governor of the winged steeds is said to have beheld nothing more afflicting than that, since the lightnings that caused the death of Phaeton. He, indeed, endeavors, if he can, to recall her cold limbs to an enlivening heat, by the strength of his rays. But, since fate opposes attempts so great, he sprinkles both her body and the place with odoriferous nectar, and having first uttered many a complaint he says, "Still shalt thou reach the skies."[41] Immediately, the body, steeped in the heavenly nectar, dissolves, and moistens the earth with its odoriferous juices; and a shoot of frankincense having taken root by degrees through the clods, rises up and bursts the hillock with its top.

But the author of light came no more to Clytie (although love might have excused her grief, and her grief the betrayal); and he put an end to his intercourse with her. From that time she, who had made so mad a use of her pa.s.sion, pined away, loathing the {other} Nymphs; and in the open air, night and day, she sat on the bare ground, with her hair dishevelled and unadorned. And for nine days, without water or food, she subsisted in her fast, merely on dew and her own tears; and she did not raise herself from the ground. She only used to look towards the face of the G.o.d as he moved along, and to turn her own features towards him.

They say that her limbs became rooted fast in the ground; and a livid paleness turned part of her color into {that of} a bloodless plant.

There is a redness in some part; and a flower, very like a violet,[42]

conceals her face. Though she is held fast by a root, she turns towards the Sun, and {though} changed, she {still} retains her pa.s.sion.

[Footnote 40: _For the love of the Sun._--Ver. 234. This remark is added, to show that the G.o.d had not been sufficiently cautious in his courtship of her sister to conceal it from the observation of Clytie.]

[Footnote 41: _Reach the skies._--Ver. 251. That is to say, 'You shall arise from the earth as a tree bearing frankincense: the gums of which, burnt in sacrifice to the G.o.ds, shall reach the heavens with their sweet odors.' Persia and Arabia have been celebrated by the poets, ancient and modern, for their great fertility in frankincense and other aromatic plants.]

[Footnote 42: _Like a violet._--Ver. 268. This cannot mean the large yellow plant which is called the sunflower. The small aromatic flower which we call heliotrope, with its violet hue and delightful perfume, more nearly answers the description. The larger flower probably derived its name from the resemblance which it bears to the sun, surrounded with rays, as depicted by the ancient painters.]

EXPLANATION.

No ascertained historical fact can be found as the basis of the story of Leucothoe being buried alive by her father Orchamus, or of her rival Clytie being metamorphosed into a sunflower. The story seems to have been most probably simply founded on principles of natural philosophy. Leucothoe, it is not unreasonable to suppose, may have been styled the daughter of Orchamus, king of Persia, for no other reason but because that Prince was the first to introduce the frankincense tree, which was called Leucothoe, into his kingdom; and it was added that she fell in love with Apollo, because the tree produces an aromatic drug much used in physic, of which that G.o.d was fabled to have been the inventor. The jealousy of Clytie was, perhaps, founded upon a fact, stated by some naturalists, that the sunflower is a plant which kills the frankincense tree, when growing near it.

Pliny, however, who ascribes several properties to the sunflower, does not mention this among them.

Orchamus is nowhere mentioned by the ancient writers, except in the present instance.

FABLE IV. [IV.271-284]

Daphnis is turned into a stone. Scython is changed from a man into a woman. Celmus is changed into adamant. Crocus and Smilax are made into flowers. The Curetes are produced from a shower.

{Thus} she spoke; and the wondrous deed charms their ears. Some deny that it was possible to be done, some say that real G.o.ds can do all things; but Bacchus is not one of them. When her sisters have become silent, Alcithoe is called upon; who running with her shuttle through the warp of the hanging web, says, "I keep silence upon the well-known amours of Daphnis, the shepherd of Ida,[43] whom the resentment of the Nymph, his paramour, turned into a stone. Such mighty grief inflames those who are in love. Nor do I relate how once Scython, the law of nature being altered, was of both s.e.xes first a man, then a woman. Thee too, I pa.s.s by, O Celmus, now adamant, formerly most attached to Jupiter {when} little; and the Curetes,[44] sprung from a plenteous shower of rain; Crocus, too, changed, together with Smilax,[45] into little flowers; and I will entertain your minds with a pleasing novelty."