Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Metamorphoses," by Ovid.
Where other animals walk on all fours and look to the ground,
Man was given a towering head and commanded to stand erect, with his face uplifted to gaze upon the stars of heaven.
Thus clay, so lately more than a crude and formless substance,
was metamorphosed into the strange new figure of Man.
But now the clouds that he needed to cover the whole wide earth
and the rain to pour from the sky were lacking. So what was the answer?
A thunderclap! Next a bolt was carefully poised by his right ear.
Jupiter hurled it at Phaéthon, flinging both driver from chariot
and life from body at once. He quenched one fire with another.
The horses stampeded. Rearing up in different directions,
they slipped the yoke from their necks and tore the reins as they broke loose.
Here the bridle was tossed, and there the pole with the ripped-off
axle, there the spokes of the shattered wheels and, scattered
all over the ether, the fragments of metal which once were a chariot.
Phaéthon’s corpse spun down head first, with the fire of the thunderbolt
scorching his flame-red hair. He fell through the sky in a long trail,
blazing away like a comet which sometimes appears in a clear sky,
never to land upon earth, but looking as if it is falling.
Callisto entered a forest whose trees no axe had deflowered,
and here she removed the quiver she wore on her shoulder and
loosened
the string of her supple bow; then laid herself down on the
greensward,
resting her pure white neck on her painted quiver for pillow.
When Jupiter spied her lying exhausted and unprotected,
he reckoned: ‘My wife will never discover this tiny betrayal;
or else, if she does, oh yes, the joy will make up for the scolding!’
So when his wife and her paramour entered the chamber together,
the husband’s exquisite art and ingenious netting enabled
the pair to be caught, unable to move, in the midst of their love-
making.
Instantly Vulcan threw open the ivory doors and admitted
the other gods. There were the guilty ones lying together, entwined
in their shame! The gods were amused, and one of them murmured: “If only
I could be shamed like that!” Then all of them burst into laughter.
This story went the rounds of the sky for a long time afterwards.
He spoke without daring to look at the man he was begging to spare
him.
Then Perseus gave him his answer: ‘Phineus, you spineless coward,
no need to be scared. I'll allow you all that I can — a handsome
gift for a weakling like you. You shan’t be put to the sword, man.
No, I shall make you a lasting memorial for all posterity.
You’ll be on permanent view in the house of my father-in-law,
that my wife may console herself with her former intended’s
likeness.’
With that he quickly carried Medusa across to display her
where Phineus had turned his quivering head. As the cowering villain
attempted to shift his eyes away once again, his neck
grew stiff and the tears running down his cheeks were hardened to
stone.
But still a coward’s face and the suppliant’s look were preserved
in marble, along with the pleading hands and the cringing
posture.
The loser, who’d fought with Hector in single combat, who’d often
withstood the assaults of fire and sword and of Jupiter, only
failed to withstand his own anger. The hero whom no one had
beaten
was beaten at last by resentment. Grasping his sword he cried,
‘This at least is mine! Or is this also claimed by Ulysses?
It must be wielded against myself. The weapon so often
stained with the blood of the Trojans must now be stained with its
master’s.
No one shall have the power to conquer Ajax, but Ajax!’
He spoke, and into the breast which had never been wounded before*
he drove his murderous sword till he buried it up to the hilt.
His hands were too weak to draw out the deeply embedded weapon;
was only expelled by the force of his blood, which reddened theearth
and there gave rise to a purple flower from the soft green turf,
a flower which had once been born from the wound of the young
Hyacinthus.
Both boy and man were recalled in the letters inscribed on the petals,
AIAI* for a cry of lament, AIAI for the name of a hero.
To these advances Glaucus replied,
‘While Scylla is living, my love for her will not alter, till foliage
grows in the ocean and seaweed sprouts on the peaks of the
mountains!’
In the whole of the world there is nothing that stays
unchanged.
All is in flux.* Any shape that is formed is constantly shifting.
Time itself flows steadily by in perpetual motion.
Think of a river: no river can ever arrest its current,
nor can the fleeting hour. But as water is forced downstream
by the water behind it and presses no less on the water ahead,
so time is in constant flight and pursuit, continually new.
The present turns into the past and the future replaces the present;
every moment that passes is new and eternally changing.
Now I have finished my work, which nothing can ever destroy —
not Jupiter’s wrath,* nor fire or sword, nor devouring time.
That day which has power over nothing except this body of mine
may come when it will and end the uncertain span of my life.
But the finer part of myself shall sweep me into eternity,
higher than all the stars. My name shall be never forgotten.
Wherever the might of Rome extends in the lands she has conquered,
the people shall read and recite my words. Throughout all ages,
if poets have vision to prophesy truth, I shall live in my fame.
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