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Bk X:220-242 Orpheus sings: The Propoetides
‘But
if you should ask the Cyprian city of Amathus, rich in mines, whether it
would have wished to have produced those girls, the Propoetides, it would
repudiate them, and equally those men, whose foreheads were once marred by
two horns, from which they took their name, Cerastae. An altar, to Jove the
Hospitable, used to stand in front of the gates: if any stranger, ignorant
of their wickedness, had seen it, stained with blood, they would have
thought that calves or sheep, from Amathus, were sacrificed there: it was
their guests they killed! Kindly Venus was preparing to abandon her cities,
and the Cyprian fields, outraged by their abominable rites, but ‘How,’ she
said, ‘have my cities, or this dear place, sinned? What is their crime?
Instead, let this impious race pay the penalty of death or exile, or some
punishment between execution and banishment, and what might that be but the
penalty of being transformed?’ While she is deciding how to alter them, she
turns her eyes towards their horns, and this suggests that she might leave
them those, and she changed them into wild bullocks.
Nevertheless,
the immoral Propoetides dared to deny that Venus was the goddess. For this,
because of her divine anger, they are said to have been the first to prostitute
their bodies and their reputations in public, and, losing all sense of
shame, they lost the power to blush, as the blood hardened in their cheeks,
and only a small change turned them into hard flints.’
Bk X:243-297 Orpheus sings: Pygmalion and the statue
‘Pygmalion
had seen them, spending their lives in wickedness, and, offended by the
failings that nature gave the female heart, he lived as a bachelor, without
a wife or partner for his bed. But, with wonderful skill, he carved a
figure, brilliantly, out of snow-white ivory, no mortal woman, and fell in
love with his own creation. The features are those of a real girl, who, you
might think, lived, and wished to move, if modesty did not forbid it.
Indeed, art hides his art. He marvels: and passion, for this bodily image,
consumes his heart. Often, he runs his hands over the work, tempted as to
whether it is flesh or ivory, not admitting it to be ivory. he kisses it
and thinks his kisses are returned; and speaks to it; and holds it, and
imagines that his fingers press into the limbs, and is afraid lest bruises
appear from the pressure. Now he addresses it with compliments, now brings
it gifts that please girls, shells and polished pebbles, little birds, and
many-coloured flowers, lilies and tinted beads, and the Heliades’s amber
tears, that drip from the trees. He dresses the body, also, in clothing;
places rings on the fingers; places a long necklace round its neck; pearls
hang from the ears, and cinctures round the breasts. All are fitting: but it
appears no less lovely, naked. He arranges the statue on a bed on which
cloths dyed with Tyrian murex are spread, and calls it his bedfellow, and
rests its neck against soft down, as if it could feel.
The
day of Venus’s festival came, celebrated throughout Cyprus, and heifers,
their curved horns gilded, fell, to the blow on their snowy neck. The
incense was smoking, when Pygmalion, having made his offering, stood by the
altar, and said, shyly: “If you can grant all things, you gods, I wish as a
bride to have...” and not daring to say “the girl of ivory” he said “one
like my ivory girl.” Golden Venus, for she herself was present at the
festival, knew what the prayer meant, and as a sign of the gods’ fondness
for him, the flame flared three times, and shook its crown in the air. When
he returned, he sought out the image of his girl, and leaning over the
couch, kissed her. She felt warm: he pressed his lips to her again, and
also touched her breast with his hand. The ivory yielded to his touch, and
lost its hardness, altering under his fingers, as the bees’ wax of Hymettus
softens in the sun, and is moulded, under the thumb, into many forms, made
usable by use. The lover is stupefied, and joyful, but uncertain, and
afraid he is wrong, reaffirms the fulfilment of his wishes, with his hand,
again, and again.
It was flesh! The pulse throbbed under his thumb. Then the hero, of
Paphos, was indeed overfull of words with which to thank Venus, and still
pressed his mouth against a mouth that was not merely a likeness. The girl
felt the kisses he gave, blushed, and, raising her bashful eyes to the
light, saw both her lover and the sky. The goddess attended the marriage
that she had brought about, and when the moon’s horns had nine times met at
the full, the woman bore a son, Paphos, from whom the island takes its
name.’
Bk X:298-355 Orpheus sings: Myrrha’s incestuous love for Cinyras
‘Cinyras
was the son of Paphos, and he might have been counted amongst the
fortunate, if he, in turn, had been childless. I speak of terrible things.
Fathers and daughters, keep away: or if your mind takes pleasure in my
song, put no faith in this story of mine, and imagine it did not happen.
Or, if you do believe it, believe in the punishment also, that it brought.
If nature, however, allows such crimes to be visible, then I give thanks
that the people of Thrace, this city, and this land, are far from the
regions where such sin is born. Let the land of Panchaia, beyond Araby,
produce its balsam, cinnamon, costmary; its incense, exuded from the trees;
its flowers different from ours; if it produces myrrh: a strange tree is
not worth such a price.
Cupid
denies that his arrows hurt you, Myrrha, and clears his fires of blame for
your crime. One of the three sisters, the Furies, with her swollen snakes,
and firebrand from the Styx, breathed on you. It is wrong to hate your
father, but that love was a greater wrong than hatred. The pick of the
princes, from everywhere, desire you: young men, from the whole of the
East, come to win you in marriage. Out of the many, choose one, for your
husband, Myrrha, but let one man not be amongst the many.
Indeed,
she knows it, and fights against her disgraceful passion, and says, to
herself: “Where is my thought leading? What am I creating? You gods, I
pray, and the duty and sacred laws respecting parents, prevent this
wickedness, and oppose my sin, indeed, if sin it is. But it can be said
that duty declines to condemn such love. Other creatures mate
indiscriminately: it is no disgrace for a heifer to have her sire mount
her, for his filly to be a stallion’s mate: the goat goes with the flocks
he has made, and the birds themselves conceive, by him whose seed conceived
them. Happy the creatures who are allowed to do so! Human concern has made
malign laws, and what nature allows, jealous duty forbids.
Yet
they say there are races where mother and son, and father and daughter,
pair off, and affection is increased by a double bond. Alas for me, that I
did not happen to be born there, and that I am made to suffer by an
accident of place! – Why do I repeat these things? Forbidden hopes, vanish!
He is worth loving, but only as a father. – I could lie with Cinyras, if I
were not Cinyras’s already. Now, he is not mine, because he is already
mine, and the nearness of our relationship damns me: I would be better off
as a stranger. I would be happy to go far away, and leave the borders of my
homeland behind me, if I might run from evil: but even if nothing more is
permitted, a wicked desire to see Cinyras, touch him, speak to him, and
kiss him, face to face, prevents my leaving. But then, what more might you
look to have, impious girl? Do you realise how many names and ties you are
throwing into confusion? Would you be, then, your mother’s rival, and your
father’s mistress? Would you be known, then, as your son’s sister, your
brother’s mother? Do you not
fear the three sisters, with black snaky hair, that those with guilty
hearts see, their eyes and mouths attacked with cruel torches? Since you
have still not committed sin in the flesh, do not conceive it in your mind,
or disregard the prohibitions, of mighty nature, in vile congress! Grant
that you want it: the reality itself forbids it. He is a good man, and
mindful of the moral law – but, O, how I wish the same passion were in
him!” ’
Bk X:356-430 Orpheus sings: Myrrha and her nurse
‘She
spoke: Cinyras, however, who was made doubtful of what to do, by the crowd
of noble suitors, naming them, asked her whom she wanted, as a husband.
At
first she is silent, and staring at her father’s face, hesitates, her eyes
filling with warm tears. Cinyras thinking this to be virgin shyness,
forbids her to cry, dries her cheeks, and kisses her on the lips. Myrrha is
overjoyed at this gift, and, being consulted as to what kind of husband she
might choose, says: “Someone like you”. Not understanding this, however, he
praises her, saying: “Always be so loving.” At the word “loving”, the girl,
lowers her glance, conscious of her sin.
It
was midnight, and sleep had released mortal flesh from worldly cares, but
Cinyras’s daughter, wakeful, stirring the embers, reawakens her
ungovernable desires, one moment despairing, at another willing to try,
ashamed and eager, not yet discovering what to do. As a tall tree, struck
by the axe, the last blow remaining, uncertain how it will fall, causes
fear on all sides, so her fickle mind, swayed this way and that, her
thought taking both directions, seeing no rest for, or end to, her passion,
but death. She felt ready to
die. She got up, determined, to fix a noose round her throat, and,
fastening a cord to the doorway’s crossbeam, she said: “Goodbye, dear
Cinyras, and realize the reason for my death!” And she tied the rope around
her bloodless neck. They say that the murmured words came to the ears of
her loyal nurse, who watched at her foster-child’s threshold.
The old woman gets up, and opens the door, and, seeing the equipment
of death, cries out, and in the same moment, strikes her breast, snatches
at the folds of her robe, and tearing the noose from the girl’s neck, pulls
it apart. Then, finally, she has time to cry, to embrace her, and demand
the reason for the rope. The girl is mute and still, looking, fixedly, at
the ground, and unhappy that her belated attempt at death has been
discovered. The old woman insists on knowing, baring her white hair and
withered breasts, and begs her to say what grieves her, invoking her infant
cradle, and first nurturing.
The girl turns away from her pleading, with a sigh. The nurse is
determined to know, and promises more than loyalty. “Tell me,” she says,
“and let me bring you some help: age does not slow me. If it is some
frenzy, I have herbs and charms that heal: if someone is seeking your harm,
I will purify you with magic rites: if the gods are angry, anger is appeased
by sacrifice. What else could it be? The destiny of your house is
fortunate, and on course: they are well, your mother and father.”
Hearing the word “father”, Myrrha sighed deeply. Even then the nurse
had no idea of the sin in her mind, though she guessed it might be some
love affair. She begged her, tenaciously, to tell her what it was, and took
the weeping girl to her aged breast, and holding her with trembling arms
she said: “I know, you are in love! And in this matter (have no fear) my
diligence can serve you, your father will never know.” The frenzied girl
leapt from her arms, and burying her face in the bed, said, urgently: “Go,
I beg you, and forgo the knowledge of my wretched shame! Go, or stop asking
why I am grieving. What you are striving to know, is wickedness.” The old
woman shuddered, and stretching out her hands that trembled with age and
fear, she fell at her foster-child’s feet, pleading, then coaxing, then
frightening her, into making her party to it. She threatens her with the
evidence of the noose, and the attempt on her life, and promises her help
in her love affair. The girl raises her head, and her welling tears rain on
her nurse’s breast. She often tries to confess, and often stops herself,
and hides her face, in shame, in her clothing: then gets as far as “Mother,
you are happy in your husband!” and sighs.
A shudder of cold penetrated the nurse’s flesh and bone (now she
understood) and her white hair stiffened all over her head. She told her at
length, to banish, if she could,
this fatal passion. Though the girl knew she was being advised
rightly, she was still determined to die, if she could not possess her
love. “Live,” said the nurse, “possess your....” - and did not dare say:
“father”. She was silent, and confirmed her promise in the sight of
heaven.’
Bk X:431-502 Orpheus sings: Myrrha’s crime and punishment
‘The
married women were celebrating that annual festival of Ceres, when, with
their bodies veiled in white robes, they offer the first fruits of the
harvest, wreathes of corn, and, for nine nights, treat sexual union, and
the touch of a man, as forbidden. Cenchreis, the king’s wife was among the
crowd, frequenting the sacred rites. Finding Cinyras drunk with wine, the
king’s bed empty of his lawful partner, the nurse, wrongly diligent, told
him of one who truly loved him, giving him a fictitious name, and praised
her beauty. He, asking the girl’s age, she said: “Myrrha’s is the same.”
After she had been ordered to bring her, and had reached home, she said:
“Be happy, my child, we have won!” The unhappy girl felt no joy at all in
her heart, and her heart prophetically mourned, yet she was still glad:
such was her confusion of mind.
It
was the hour, when all is silent, and Boötes, between the Bears, had turned
his wagon, with downward-pointing shaft: She approached the sinful act. The
golden moon fled the sky; black clouds covered the hidden stars; night
lacked its fires. You, Icarius, and you, Erigone, his daughter,
immortalised for your pious love of your father, hid your faces first.
Myrrha was checked by an omen, three times, when her foot stumbled: three
times, the gloomy screech owl gave her warning, with its fatal cry: she
still went on, her shame made less by blindness and black night. With her
left hand, she kept tight hold of her nurse, groping with the other she
found a way through the dark.
Now
she reaches the threshold of the room, now she opens the door, now is led
inside. But her trembling knees give way, her colour flees with her blood,
and thought vanishes as she goes forward. The closer she is to her sin, the
more she shudders at it, repents of her audacity, and wants to be able to
turn back, unrecognised. When she hesitated, the old woman took her by the
hand, and, leading her to the high bed, delivered her up, saying: “Take her
Cinyras, she is yours”, uniting their accursed flesh. The father admitted
his own child into the incestuous bed, calmed her virgin fears, and
encouraged her timidity. Perhaps he also said the name, “daughter”, in
accordance with her age, and she said, “father”, so that their names were
not absent from their sin.
She
left the room impregnated by her father, bearing impious seed in her fatal
womb, carrying the guilt she had conceived. The next night the crime was
repeated: nor did it finish there. Eventually, Cinyras, eager to discover
his lover after so many couplings, fetching a light, saw his daughter and
his guilt, and speechless from grief, he snatched his bright sword out of
the sheath it hung in. Myrrha ran, escaping death, by the gift of darkness
and secret night. Wandering the wide fields, she left the land of Panchaea,
and palm-bearing Arabia, behind, and after roaming through nine returns of
the crescent moon, weary, she rested at last in the land of the Sabaeans.
Now
she could scarcely bear the weight of her womb. Tired of living, and scared
of dying, not knowing what to pray for, she composed these words of
entreaty: “O, if there are any gods who hear my prayer, I do not plead
against my well deserved punishment, but lest, by being, I offend the
living, or, by dying, offend the dead, banish me from both realms, and
change me, and deny me life and death!” Some god listened to her prayer:
certainly the last request found its path to the heavens. While she was
still speaking, the soil covered her shins; roots, breaking from her toes,
spread sideways, supporting a tall trunk; her bones strengthened, and in
the midst of the remaining marrow, the blood became sap; her arms became
long branches; her fingers, twigs; her skin, solid bark. And now the
growing tree had drawn together over her ponderous belly, buried her
breasts, and was beginning to encase her neck: she could not bear the wait,
and she sank down against the wood, to meet it, and plunged her face into
the bark.
Though she has lost her former senses with her body, she still
weeps, and the warm drops trickle down from the tree. There is merit, also,
in the tears: and the myrrh that drips from the bark keeps its mistress’s
name, and, about it, no age will be silent.’
Bk X:503-559 Orpheus sings: Venus and Adonis
‘The
child, conceived in sin, had grown within the tree, and was now searching
for a way to leave its mother, and reveal itself. The pregnant womb swells
within the tree trunk, the burden stretching the mother. The pain cannot
form words, nor can Lucina be called on, in the voice of a woman in labour.
Nevertheless the tree bends, like one straining, and groans constantly, and
is wet with falling tears. Gentle Lucina stood by the suffering branches,
and laid her hands on them, speaking words that aid childbirth. At this the
tree split open, and, from the torn bark, gave up its living burden, and
the child cried. The naiads laid him on the soft grass, and anointed him
with his mother’s tears. Even Envy would praise his beauty, being so like
one of the torsos of naked Amor painted on boards. But to stop them
differing in attributes, you must add a light quiver, for him, or take
theirs away from them.
Transient
time slips by us unnoticed, betrays us, and nothing outpaces the years.
That son of his grandfather, sister, now hid in a tree, and now born, then
a most beautiful child, then a boy, now a man, now more beautiful than he
was before, now interests Venus herself, and avenges his mother’s desire.
For while the boy, Cupid, with quiver on shoulder, was kissing his mother,
he innocently scratched her breast with a loose arrow. The injured goddess
pushed her son away: but the wound he had given was deeper than it seemed,
and deceived her at first. Now captured by mortal beauty, she cares no more
for Cythera’s shores, nor revisits Paphos, surrounded by its deep waters,
nor Cnidos, the haunt of fish, nor Amathus, rich in mines: she even forgoes
the heavens: preferring Adonis to heaven.
She
holds him, and is his companion, and though she is used to always idling in
the shade, and, by cultivating it, enhancing her beauty, she roams mountain
ridges, and forests, and thorny cliff-sides, her clothing caught up to the
knee, like Diana. And she cheers on the hounds, chasing things safe to
hunt, hares flying headlong, stags with deep horns, or their hinds. She
avoids the strong wild boars, the ravening wolves, and shuns the bears
armed with claws, and the lions glutted with the slaughter of cattle. She
warns you Adonis, as if it were ever effective to warn, to fear them too,
saying: “Be bold when they run, but bravery is unsafe when faced with the
brave. Do not be foolish, beware of endangering me, and do not provoke the
creatures nature has armed, lest your glory is to my great cost. Neither
youth nor beauty, nor the charms that affect Venus, affect lions or
bristling boars or the eyes and minds of other wild creatures. Boars have
the force of a fierce lightning bolt in their curving tusks, and so does
the attack of tawny lions, in their huge anger: the whole tribe are hateful
to me.”
When
he asks her why, she says: “I will tell, and you will wonder, at the
monstrous result of an ancient crime. But now the unaccustomed effort tires
me, and, look, a poplar tree entices us with its welcome shade, and the
turf yields a bed. I should like to rest here on the ground,” (and she
rested) “with you.” She hugged the grass, and him, and leaning her head
against the breast of the reclining youth, she spoke these words,
interspersing them with kisses:’
Bk X:681-707 Venus tells her story: The transformation
‘ “Adonis, did I deserve to be
thanked, to have incense brought me? Unthinking, he neither gave thanks,
nor offered incense to me. I was provoked to sudden anger, and pained by
his contempt, so as not to be slighted in future, I decreed an example
would be made of them, and I roused myself against them both.
They
were passing a temple, hidden in the deep woods, of Cybele mother of the
gods, that noble Echion had built in former times fulfilling a vow, and the
length of their journey persuaded them to rest. There, stirred by my divine
power, an untimely desire to make love seized Hippomenes. Near the temple
was a poorly lit hollow, like a cave, roofed with the natural pumice-stone,
sacred to the old religion, where the priests had gathered together wooden
figures of the ancient gods. They entered it, and desecrated the sanctuary,
with forbidden intercourse. The sacred images averted their gaze, and the
Great Mother, with the turreted crown, hesitated as to whether to plunge
the guilty pair beneath the waters of the Styx: but the punishment seemed
too light. So tawny manes spread over their necks, that, a moment ago, were
smooth; their fingers curved into claws; forelegs were formed from arms; all
their weight was in their breast; and their tails swept the surface of the
sand. They had a fierce expression, roared instead of speaking, and
frequented the woods for a marriage-bed. As lions, fearful to others, they
tamely bite on Cybele’s bit. You must avoid, them, my love, and with them
all the species of wild creature, that do not turn and run, but offer their
breasts to the fight, lest your courage be the ruin of us both!” ’
Bk X:708-739 Orpheus sings: The death of Adonis
‘She
warned him, and made her way through the air, drawn by harnessed swans, but
his courage defied the warning. By chance, his dogs, following a
well-marked trail, roused a wild boar from its lair, and as it prepared to
rush from the trees, Cinyras’s grandson caught it a glancing blow.
Immediately the fierce boar dislodged the blood-stained spear, with its
crooked snout, and chased the youth, who was scared and running hard. It
sank its tusk into his groin, and flung him, dying, on the yellow sand.
Cytherea,
carried in her light chariot through the midst of the heavens, by her
swans’ swiftness, had not yet reached Cyprus: she heard from afar the
groans of the dying boy, and turned the white birds towards him. When, from
the heights, she saw the lifeless body, lying in its own blood, she leapt
down, tearing her clothes, and tearing at her hair, as well, and beat at
her breasts with fierce hands, complaining to the fates. “And yet not
everything is in your power” she said. “Adonis, there shall be an
everlasting token of my grief, and every year an imitation of your death
will complete a re-enactment of my mourning. But your blood will be changed
into a flower. Persephone, you were allowed to alter a woman’s body,
Menthe’s, to fragrant mint: shall the transformation of my hero, of the
blood of Cinyras, be grudged to me?” So saying, she sprinkled the blood
with odorous nectar: and, at the touch, it swelled up, as bubbles emerge in
yellow mud. In less than an hour, a flower, of the colour of blood, was
created such as pomegranates carry, that hide their seeds under a tough
rind. But enjoyment of it is brief; for, lightly clinging, and too easily
fallen, the winds deflower it, which are likewise responsible for its name,
windflower: anemone.
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