Metamorphoses

Ovid

Ovid. Metamorphoses. More, Brookes, translator. Boston: Cornhill Publishing Co., 1922.

  1. So Galatea, after she had told
  2. her sorrow, ceased; and, when the company
  3. had gone from there, the Nereids swam again
  4. in the calm and quiet waves. But Scylla soon
  5. returned (because she did not trust herself
  6. in deep salt waters) and she wandered there
  7. naked of garments on the thirsty sand;
  8. but, tired, by chance she found a lonely bay,
  9. and cooled her limbs with its enclosing waves.
  10. Then suddenly appeared a newly made
  11. inhabitant of that deep sea, whose name
  12. was Glaucus. Cleaving through the blue sea waves,
  13. he swam towards her. His shape had been transformed
  14. but lately for this watery life, while he
  15. was living at Anthedon in Euboea.—
  16. now he is lingering from desire for her
  17. he saw there and speaks whatever words
  18. he thought might stop her as she fled from him.
  19. Yet still she fled from him, and swift through fear,
  20. climbed to a mountain top above the sea.
  21. Facing the waves, it rose in one huge peak,
  22. parting the waters with a forest crown.
  23. She stood on that high summit quite secure:
  24. and, doubtful whether he might be a god
  25. or monster, wondered at his flowing hair
  26. which covered his broad shoulders and his back,—
  27. and marvelled at the color of his skin
  28. and at his waist merged into a twisted fish.
  29. All this he noticed, and while leaning there
  30. against a rock that stood near by, he said: —
  31. “I am no monster, maiden, I am not
  32. a savage beast; I am in truth a god
  33. of waters, with such power upon the seas
  34. as that of Proteus, Triton, or Palaemon—
  35. reared on land the son of Athamas.
  36. “Not long ago I was a mortal man,
  37. yet even then my thought turned to the sea
  38. and all my living came from waters deep,
  39. for I would drag the nets that swept up fish,
  40. or, seated on a rock, I flung the line
  41. forth from the rod. The shore I loved was near
  42. a verdant meadow. One side were the waves,
  43. the other grass, which never had been touched
  44. by horned, grazing cattle. Harmless sheep
  45. and shaggy goats had never cropped it—no
  46. industrious bee came there to harvest flowers;
  47. no festive garlands had been gathered there,
  48. adornments of the head; no mower's hands
  49. had ever cut it. I was certainly
  50. the first who ever sat upon that turf,—
  51. while I was drying there the dripping nets.
  52. And so that I might in due order count
  53. the fish that I had caught, I laid out those
  54. which by good chance were driven into my nets,
  55. or credulous, were caught on my barbed hooks.
  56. “It all seems like a fiction (but what good
  57. can I derive from fictions?) just as soon
  58. as any of my fish-prey touched the grass,
  59. they instantly began to move and skip
  60. as usual in sea water. While I paused
  61. and wondered, all of them slid to the waves,
  62. and left me, their late captor, and the shore.
  63. “I was amazed and doubtful, a long time;
  64. while I considered what could be the cause.
  65. What god had done this? Or perhaps the juice
  66. of some herb caused it? ‘But,’ I said, ‘what herb
  67. can have such properties?’ and with my hand
  68. I plucked the grass and chewed it with my teeth.
  69. My throat had hardly time to swallow those
  70. unheard of juices, when I suddenly
  71. felt all my entrails throbbing inwardly,
  72. and my entire mind also, felt possessed
  73. by passions foreign to my life before.
  74. “I could not stay in that place, and I said
  75. with shouting, ‘Farewell! dry land! never more
  76. shall I revisit you;’ and with those words
  77. upon my lips, I plunged beneath the waves.
  78. The gods of that deep water gave to me,
  79. when they received me, kindred honors, while
  80. they prayed Oceanus and Tethys both
  81. to take from me such mortal essence as
  82. might yet remain. So I was purified
  83. by them and after a good charm had been
  84. nine times repeated over me, which washed
  85. away all guilt, I was commanded then
  86. to put my breast beneath a hundred streams.
  87. “So far I can relate to you all things
  88. most worthy to be told; for all so far
  89. I can remember; but from that time on
  90. I was unconscious of the many things
  91. that followed. When my mind returned to me,
  92. I found myself entirely different
  93. from what I was before; and my changed mind
  94. was not the same as it had always been.
  95. Then, for the first time I beheld this beard
  96. so green in its deep color, and I saw
  97. my flowing hair which now I sweep along
  98. the spacious seas, and my huge shoulders with
  99. their azure colored arms, and I observed
  100. my leg extremities hung tapering
  101. exactly perfect as a finny fish.
  102. “But what avail is this new form to me.
  103. Although it pleased the Ocean deities?
  104. What benefit, although I am a god,
  105. if you are not persuaded by these things?”
  106. While he was telling wonders such as these—
  107. quite ready to say more—Scylla arose
  108. and left the god. Provoked at his repulse—
  109. enraged, he hastened to the marvellous court
  110. of Circe, well known daughter of the Sun.