Metamorphoses, Book 15

Ovid

Category: Verse

Genres: Epic poem,Poetry,Philosophy

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The epic reaches its final book with a tapestry of change and renewal. We meet Numa, the wise king of Rome, who seeks the secrets of the universe from the philosopher Pythagoras. Through Pythagoras’s voice, themes of transformation, the cycles of nature, and the immortality of the soul take center stage. The stories range from sacred teachings to legendary heroes, all threaded together by the idea that nothing truly ends—everything simply changes form.

Metamorphoses

Name: Metamorphoses, Book 15
Author: Ovid

Book 15

by
P. Ovidius Naso

Myscelus.
Croton

Myscelus Builds the City of Crotona

While this was happening, they began to seek
for one who could endure the weight of such
a task and could succeed a king so great;
and Fame, the harbinger of truth, destined
illustrious Numa for the sovereign power.
It did not satisfy his heart to know
only the Sabine ceremonials,
and he conceived in his expansive mind
much greater views, examining the depth
and cause of things. His country and his cares
forgotten, this desire led him to visit
the city that once welcomed Hercules.
Numa desired to know what founder built
a Grecian city on Italian shores.
One of the old inhabitants, who was well
acquainted with past history, replied:

“Rich in Iberian herds, the son of Jove
turned from the ocean and with favoring wind
‘Tis said he landed on Lacinian shores.
And, while the herd strayed in the tender grass,
he visited the house, the friendly home,
of far-famed Croton. There he rested from
his arduous labors. At the time of his
departure, he said, ‘Here in future days
shall be a city of your numerous race.’

The passing years have proved the promise true,
for Myscelus, choosing that site, marked out
a city’s walls. Argive Alemon’s son,
of all men in his generation, he
was most acceptable to the heavenly gods.
Bending over him once at dawn, while he
was overwhelmed with drowsiness of sleep,
the huge club-bearer Hercules addressed
him thus: ‘Come now, desert your native shores.
Go quickly to the pebbly flowing stream
of distant Aesar.’ And he threatened ill
in fearful words, unless he should obey.

“Sleep and the god departed instantly.
Alemon’s son, arising from his couch,
pondered his recent vision thoughtfully,
and with his conclusions at cross purposes. —
The god commanded him to quit that land;
the laws forbade departure, threatening death
to all who sought to leave their native land.

“The brilliant Sun had hidden in the sea
his shining head, and darkest Night had then
put forth her starry face. And at that time,
it seemed as if the same god Hercules
was present and repeating his commands,
threatening still more and graver penalties,
if he should fail to obey. Now sore afraid
he set about to move his household gods
to a new settlement, but rumors then
followed him through the city, and he was
accused of holding statutes in contempt.

“The accusation hardly had been made
when his offense was evidently proved,
even without a witness. Then he raised
his face and hands up to the gods above
and suppliant in neglected garb, exclaimed,
‘Oh mighty Hercules, for whom alone
the twice six labors gave the privilege
of heavenly residence, give me your aid,
for you were the true cause of my offence.’

“It was an ancient custom of that land
to vote with chosen pebbles, white and black.
The white absolved, the black condemned the man.
And so that day the fateful votes were given — :
all cast into the cruel urn were black!
Soon as that urn inverted poured forth all
the pebbles to be counted, every one
was changed completely from its black to white,
and so the vote adjudged him innocent.
By that most fortunate aid of Hercules
he was exempted from the country’s law.

“Myscelus, breathing thanks to Hercules,
with favoring wind sailed on the Ionian Sea,
past Sallentine Neretum, Sybaris,
Spartan Tarentum, and the Sirine Bay,
Crimisa, and on beyond the Iapygian fields.
Then, skirting shores which face these lands, he found
the place foretold the river Aesar’s mouth,
and found not far away a burial mound
which covered with its soil the hallowed bones
of Croton. — There, upon the appointed land,
he built up walls — and he conferred the name
of Croton, who was there entombed, on his
new city, which has ever since been called
Crotona.” By tradition it is known
such strange deeds caused that city to be built,
by men of Greece upon the Italian coast.

Pythagoras

Pythagoras Teaches His Philosophy

Here lived a man, by birth a Samian.
He had fled from Samos and the ruling class,
a voluntary exile, for his hate
against all tyranny. He had the gift
of holding mental converse with the gods,
who live far distant in the height of heaven;
and all that Nature has denied to man
and human vision, he reviewed with eyes
of his enlightened soul.

And, when he had
examined all things in his careful mind
with watchful study, he released his thoughts
to knowledge of the public. He would speak
to crowds of people, silent and amazed,
while he revealed to them the origin
of this vast universe, the cause of things,
what is nature, what a god, whence came the snow,
the cause of lightning — was it Jupiter
or did the winds, that thundered when the cloud
was rent asunder, cause the lightning flash?
What shook the earth, what laws controlled the stars
as they were moved — and every hidden thing.
He was the first man to forbid the use
of any animal’s flesh as human food;
he was the first to speak with learned lips,
though not believed in this, exhorting them. —

“No, mortals,” he would say, “Do not permit
pollution of your bodies with such food,
for there are grain and good fruits which bear down
the branches by their weight, and ripened grapes
upon the vines, and herbs — those sweet by nature
and those which will grow tender and mellow with
a fire, and flowing milk is not denied,
nor honey, redolent of blossoming thyme.

“The lavish Earth yields rich and healthful food
affording dainties without slaughter, death,
and bloodshed. Dull beasts delight to satisfy
their hunger with torn flesh; and yet not all:
horses and sheep and cattle live on grass.
But all the savage animals — the fierce
Armenian tigers and ferocious lions,
and bears, together with the roving wolves —
delight in viands reeking with warm blood.

“Oh, ponder a moment such a monstrous crime —
vitals in vitals gorged, one greedy body
fattening with plunder of another’s flesh,
a living being fed on another’s life!
In that abundance, which our Earth, the best
of mothers, will afford, have you no joy,
unless your savage teeth can gnaw
the piteous flesh of some flayed animal
to reenact Cyclopean crime?
And can you not appease the hungry void —
the perverted craving of a stomach’s greed,
unless you first destroy another life?

“That age of old time which is given the name
of ‘Golden,’ was so blest in fruit of trees,
and in the good herbs which the earth produced
that it never would pollute the mouth with blood.
The birds then safely moved their wings in air,
the timid hares would wander in the fields
with no fear, and their own credulity
had not suspended fishes from the hook.
All life was safe from treacherous wiles,
fearing no injury, a peaceful world.

“After that time some one of ill advice
(it does not matter who it might have been)
envied the ways of lions and gulped into
his greedy paunch stuff from a carcass vile.
He opened the foul paths of wickedness.
It may be that in killing beasts of prey
our steel was for the first time warmed with blood.
And that could be defended, for I hold
that predatory creatures which attempt
destruction of mankind, are put to death
without evasion of the sacred laws:
but, though with justice they are put to death,
that cannot be a cause for eating them.

“This wickedness went further; and the sow
was thought to have deserved death as the first
of victims, for with her long turned-up snout
she spoiled the good hope of a harvest year.
The ravenous goat, that gnawed a sprouting vine,
was led for slaughter to the altar fires
of angry Bacchus. It was their own fault
that surely caused the ruin of those two.

“But why have sheep deserved sad destiny,
harmless and useful for the good of man
with nectar in full udders? Their soft wool
affords the warmest coverings for our use,
their life and not their death would help us more.
Why have the oxen of the field deserved
a sad end — innocent, without deceit,
and harmless, without guile, born to endure
hard labor? Without gratitude is he,
unworthy of the gift of harvest fields,
who, after he relieved his worker from
weight of the curving plow could butcher him,
could sever with an axe that toil worn neck,
by which so often with hard work the ground
had been turned up, so many harvests reared.
For some, even crimes like these are not enough,
they have imputed to the gods themselves
abomination — they believe a god
in heaven above, rejoices at the death
of a laborious ox.

“A victim free
of blemish and most beautiful in form
(perfection brings destruction) is adorned
with garlands and with gilded horns before
the altar. In his ignorance he hears
one praying, and he sees the very grain
he labored to produce, fixed on his head
between the horns, and felled, he stains with blood
the knife which just before he may have seen
reflected in clear water. Instantly
they snatch out entrails from his throbbing form,
and seek in them intentions of the gods.
Then, in your lust for a forbidden food
you will presume to batten on his flesh,
O race of mortals! Do not eat such food!
Give your attention to my serious words;
and, when you next present the slaughtered flesh
of oxen to your palates, know and feel
that you gnaw your fellow tillers of the soil.

“And, since a god impels me to speak out,
I will obey the god who urges me,
and will disclose to you the heavens above,
and I will even reveal the oracles
of the Divine Will. I will sing to you
of things most wonderful, which never were
investigated by the intellects
of ancient times and things which have been long
concealed from man. In fancy I delight
to float among the stars or take my stand
on mighty Atlas’ shoulders, and to look
afar down on men wandering here and there —
afraid in life yet dreading unknown death,
and in these words exhort them and reveal
the sequence of events ordained by fate!

“O sad humanity! Why do you fear
alarms of icy death, afraid of Styx,
fearful of moving shadows and empty names —
of subjects harped on by the poets’ tales,
the fabled perils of a fancied life?
Whether the funeral pile consumes your flesh
with hot flames, or old age dissolves it with
a gradual wasting power, be well assured
the body cannot meet with further ill.
And souls are all exempt from power of death.
When they have left their first corporeal home,
they always find and live in newer homes.

“I can declare, for I remember well,
that in the days of the great Trojan War,
I was Euphorbus, son of Panthous.
In my opposing breast was planted then
the heavy spear-point of the younger son
of Atreus. Not long past I recognised
the shield, once burden of my left arm, where
it hung in Juno’s temple at ancient Argos,
the realm of Abas.

Everything must change:
but nothing perishes. The moving soul
may wander, coming from that spot to this,
from this to that — in changed possession live
in any limbs whatever. It may pass
from beasts to human bodies, and again
to those of beasts. The soul will never die,
in the long lapse of time. As pliant wax
is moulded to new forms and does not stay
as it has been nor keep the self same form
yet is the selfsame wax, be well assured
the soul is always the same spirit, though
it passes into different forms.

Therefore,
that natural love may not be vanquished by
unnatural craving of the appetite,
I warn you, stop expelling kindred souls
by deeds abhorrent as cold murder. — Let
not blood be nourished with its kindred blood!

“Since I am launched into the open sea
and I have given my full sails to the wind,
nothing in all the world remains unchanged.
All things are in a state of flux, all shapes
receive a changing nature. Time itself
glides on with constant motion, ever as
a flowing river. Neither river nor
the fleeting hour can stop its constant course.
But, as each wave drives on a wave, as each
is pressed by that which follows, and must press
on that before it, so the moments fly,
and others follow, so they are renewed.
The moment which moved on before is past,
and that which was not, now exists in Time,
and every one comes, goes, and is replaced.

“You see how night glides by and then proceeds
on to the dawn, then brilliant light of day
succeeds the dark night. There is not the same
appearance in the heavens, when all things
for weariness are resting in vast night,
as when bright Lucifer rides his white steed.
And only think of that most glorious change,
when loved Aurora, Pallas’ daughter, comes
before the day and tints the world, almost
delivered to bright Phoebus. Even the disk
of that god, rising from beneath the earth,
is of a ruddy color in the dawn
and ruddy when concealed beneath the world.
When highest, it is a most brilliant white,
for there the ether is quite purified,
and far away avoids infection from
impurities of earth. Diana’s form
at night remains not equal nor the same!
‘Tis less today than it will be tomorrow,
if she is waxing; greater, if she wanes.

“Yes, do you not see how the year moves through
four seasons, imitating human life:
in early Spring it has a nursling’s ways
resembling infancy, for at that time
the blade is shooting and devoid of strength.
Its flaccid substance swelling gives delight,
to every watching husbandman, alive
in expectation. Then all things are rich
in blossom, and the genial meadow smiles
with tints of blooming flowers; but not as yet
is there a sign of vigor in the leaves.

“The year now waxing stronger, after Spring
it passes into Summer, and its youth
becomes robust. Indeed of all the year
the Summer is most vigorous and most
abounds with glowing and life-giving warmth.
Autumn then follows, and, the vim of life
removed, that ripe and mellow time succeeds
between youth and old age, and a few white hairs
are sprinkled here and there upon his brow.
Then aged Winter with his tremulous step
follows faltering, his hair despoiled,
or, what he still has left, turned white.

“Our bodies also, always change unceasingly:
we are not now what we were yesterday
or we shall be tomorrow. And there was
a time when we were only seeds of man,
mere hopes that lived within a mother’s womb.
But Nature changed us with her skilfull touch,
determined that our bodies should not be
held in such narrow room, below the entrails
of our distended parent; and in time
she brought us forth into the vacant air.

“Brought into light, the helpless infant lies.
Then on all fours he lifts his body up,
feeling his way, like any young wild beast,
and then by slow degrees he stands upright,
weak-kneed and trembling, steadied by support
of some convenient prop. And soon more strong
and swift he passes through the hours of youth,
and, when the years of middle age are past,
slides down the steep path of declining age.

“This undermines him and destroys the strength
of former years: and Milon, now grown old,
weeps, when he sees his arms, which once were firm
with muscles big as those of Hercules,
hang flabby at his side: and Helen weeps,
when in the glass she sees her wrinkled face,
and wonders why two heroes fell in love
and carried her away. — O Time,
devourer of all things, and envious Age,
together you destroy all that exists
and, slowly gnawing, bring on lingering death.

“Yes, even things which we call elements,
do not endure. Now listen well to me,
and I will show the ways in which they change.

“The everlasting universe contains
four elemental parts. And two of these
are heavy — earth and water — and are borne
downwards by weight. The other two devoid
of weight, are air and — even lighter — fire:
and, if these two are not constrained, they seek
the higher regions. These four elements,
though far apart in space, are all derived
from one another. Earth dissolves
as flowing water! Water, thinned still more,
departs as wind and air; and the light air,
still losing weight, sparkles on high as fire.
But they return, along their former way:
the fire, assuming weight, is changed to air;
and then, more dense, that air is changed again
to water; and that water, still more dense,
compacts itself again as primal earth.

“Nothing retains the form that seems its own,
and Nature, the renewer of all things,
continually changes every form
into some other shape. Believe my word,
in all this universe of vast extent,
not one thing ever perished. All have changed
appearance. Men say a certain thing is born,
if it takes a different form from what it had;
and yet they say, that certain thing has died,
if it no longer keeps the self same shape.
Though distant things move near, and near things far,
always the sum of all things is unchanged.

“For my part, I cannot believe a thing
remains long under the same form unchanged.
Look at the change of times from gold to iron;
look at the change in places. I have seen
what had been solid earth become salt waves,
and I have seen dry land made from the deep;
and, far away from ocean, sea-shells strewn,
and on the mountain-tops old anchors found.
Water has made that which was once a plain
into a valley, and the mountain has
been levelled by the floods down to a plain.
A former Marshland is now parched dry sand,
and places which endured severest drought
are wet with standing pools. Here Nature has
opened fresh springs, but there has shut them up;
rivers aroused by ancient earthquakes have
rushed out or vanished, as they lost their depth.

“So, when the Lycus has been swallowed by
a chasm in the earth, it rushes forth
at a distance and is reborn a different stream.
The Erasinus now flows down into a cave,
now runs beneath the ground a darkened course,
then rises lordly in the Argolic fields.
They say the Mysus, wearied of his spring
and of his former banks, appears elsewhere
and takes another name, the Caicus.

“The Amenanus in Sicilian sands
now smoothly rolling, at another time
is quenched, because its fountain springs are dry.
The water of the Anigros formerly
was used for drinking, but it pours out now
foul water which you would decline to touch,
because (unless all credit is denied
to poets) long ago the Centaurs, those
strange mortals double-limbed, bathed in the stream
wounds which club-bearing Hercules had made
with his strong bow. — Yes, does not Hypanis
descending fresh from mountains of Sarmatia,
become embittered with the taste of salt?

“Antissa, Pharos, and Phoenician Tyre,
were once surrounded by the wavy sea:
they are not islands now. Long years ago
Leucas was mainland, if we can believe
what the old timers there will tell, but now
the waves sweep round it. Zancle was a part
of Italy, until the sea cut off
the neighboring land with strong waves in between.
Should you seek Helice and Buris, those
two cities of Achaea, you will find
them underneath the waves, where sailors point
to sloping roofs and streets in the clear deep.

“Near Pittheaan Troezen a steep, high hill,
quite bare of trees, was once a level plain,
but now is a hill, for (dreadful even to tell)
the raging power of winds, long pent in deep,
dark caverns, tried to find a proper vent,
long struggling to attain free sky.
Finding no opening from the prison-caves,
imperious to their force, they raised the earth,
exactly as pent air breathed from the mouth
inflates a bladder, or the bottle-hides
stripped off the two-horned goats. The swollen earth
remained on that spot and has ever since
appearance of a high hill hardened by
the flight of time.

“Of many strange events
that I have heard and known, I will add a few.
Why, does not water give and take strange forms?
Your wave, O horned Ammon, will turn cold
at mid-day, but is always mild and warm
at sun-rise and at sun-set. I have heard
that Athamanians kindle wood, if they
pour water on it, when the waning Moon
has shrunk away into her smallest orb.
The people of Ciconia have a stream
which turns the drinker’s entrails into stone,
which changes into marble all it raves.
The Achaean Crathis and the Sybaris,
which flow not far from here, will turn the hair
to something like clear amber or bright gold.

“What is more wonderful, there are some waters
which change not only bodies but the minds:
who has no knowledge of the Salmacis
and of its ill famed waves? Who has not
heard of the lakes of Aethiopia:
how those who drink of them go raving mad
or fall in a deep sleep, most wonderful
in heaviness. Whoever quenches thirst
from the Clitorian spring will hate all wine,
and soberly secure great pleasure from
pure water. Either that spring has a power
the opposite of wine-heat, or perhaps
as natives tell us, after the famed son
of Amythaon by his charms and herbs,
delivered from their base insanity
the stricken Proetides, he threw the rest
of his mind healing herbs into the spring,
where hatred of all wine has since remained.

Unlike in nature flows another stream
of the country, called Lyncestius: everyone
who drinks of it, even with most Temperate care,
will reel, as if he had drunk unmixed wine.
In Arcadia is a place, called Pheneos
by men of old, which is mistrusted for
the twofold nature of its waters. Stand
in dread of them at night; if drunk at night,
they harm you, but in daytime they will do
no harm at all. So lakes and rivers have
now this, now that effect.

“Ortygia once
moved like a ship that drifts among the waves.
Now it is fixed. The Argo was in dread
of the Symplegades, which moved apart
with waves in-rushing. Now immovable
they stand, resisting the attack of winds.
Aetna, which burns with sulphur furnaces,
will not be always concentrated fire,
nor was it always fiery.

“If the earth
is like an animal and is alive
and breathes out flame at many openings,
then it can change these many passages
used for its breathing and, when it is moved,
may close these caverns as it opens up
some others. Or if rushing winds are penned
in deepest caverns, and they drive great stones
against the rock, and substances which have
the properties of flame and fire are made
by those concussions, when the winds are calmed,
the caverns will, of course, be cool again.

“Or if some black bitumen catches fire
or yellow sulphur burns with little smoke,
then surely, when the ground no longer gives
such food and oily nutriment for flames
and they in time have ravined all their store,
their greedy nature soon will pine with death —
it will not bear such famine but depart
and, when deserted, will desert the place.

“‘Tis said that Hyperboreans of Pallene
can cover all their bodies with light plumes
by plunging nine times in Minerva’s Marsh.
But I cannot believe another tale:
that Scythian women get a like result
by having poison sprinkled on their limbs.

“If we give any credit to the things
proved by experience, we can surely know
whatever bodies are decayed by time
or by dissolving heat are by such means
changed into tiny animals — Come now,
bury choice bullocks killed for sacrifice,
and it is well known by experience
that flower-gathering bees are so produced,
miraculous, from entrails putrefied.
These, like the faithful animals from which
they were produced, inhabit the green fields,
delight in toil, and labor for reward.

“The warlike steed, when buried in the ground,
is a known source of hornets. If you cut
the bending claws off from the sea-shore crab
and bury the remainder in the earth,
a scorpion will come forth from the dead crab
buried there, threatening with its crooked tail.

“The worms which cover leaves with their white threads,
a thing observable by husbandmen,
will change themselves to funeral butterflies.
Mud holds the seeds that generate green frogs,
at first producing tadpoles with no feet,
and soon it gives them legs adapted for
their swimming, and, so they may be as well
adapted to good leaping, their hind legs
are longer than the fore-legs. The mother bear
does not bring forth a cub but a limp mass
of flesh that hardly can be called alive.
By licking it the mother forms the limbs,
and brings it to a shape just like her own.

“Do not the offspring of the honey bees,
concealed in cells hexagonal, at first
get life with no limbs, and assume in time
both feet and wings? Unless the fact were known,
could anyone suppose it possible
that Juno’s bird, whose tail is bright with stars,
the eagle, armor-bearer of high Jove,
the doves of Cytherea, and all birds
emerge from the middle part of eggs?
And some believe the human marrow turns
into a serpent when the spine at length
has putrefied in the closed sepulchre.

“Now these I named derive their origin
from other living forms. There is one bird
which reproduces and renews itself:
the Assyrians gave this bird his name — the Phoenix.
He does not live either on grain or herbs,
but only on small drops of frankincense
and juices of amomum. When this bird
completes a full five centuries of life
straightway with talons and with shining beak
he builds a nest among palm branches, where
they join to form the palm tree’s waving top.