Metamorphoses

Ovid

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

  1. All present then adored
  2. the deity as bidden by the priest.
  3. The multitude repeated his good words,
  4. and the descendants of Aeneas gave
  5. good omen, with their feelings and their speech.
  6. Nodding well pleased and moving his great crest,
  7. the god at once assured them of his favor
  8. and hissed repeatedly with darting tongue.
  9. And then he glided down the polished steps;
  10. turned back his head; and, ready to depart,
  11. gazed on the altars he had known for so long—
  12. a last salute to the temple of his love.
  13. While all the people strewed his way with flowers,
  14. the great snake wound in sinuous course along
  15. and, passing through the middle of their town,
  16. came to the harbor and its curving wall.
  17. He stopped there, and it seemed that he dismissed
  18. his train and dutiful attendant crowd,
  19. and with a placid countenance he placed
  20. his mighty body in the Ausonian ship,
  21. which plainly showed the great weight of the god.
  22. The glad descendants of Aeneas all
  23. rejoiced, and they sacrificed a bull beside
  24. the harbor, wreathed the ship with flowers, and loosed
  25. the twisted hawsers from the shore. As a soft breeze
  26. impelled the ship, within her curving stern
  27. the god reclined, his coils uprising high,
  28. and gazed down on the blue Ionian waves.
  29. So wafted by the favoring winds, they came
  30. in six days to the shores of Italy.
  31. There he was borne past the Lacinian Cape,
  32. ennobled by the goddess Juno's shrine,
  33. and Scylacean coasts. He left behind
  34. Iapygia; then he shunned Amphrysian rocks
  35. upon the left and on the other side
  36. escaped Cocinthian crags. He passed, near by,
  37. Romechium and Caulon and Naricia;
  38. crossed the Sicilian sea; went through the strait;
  39. sailed by Pelorus and the island home
  40. of Aeolus and by the copper mines
  41. of Temesa. He turned then toward Leucosia
  42. and toward mild Paestum, famous for the rose.
  43. He coasted by Capreae and around
  44. Minerva's promontory and the hills
  45. ennobled with Surrentine vines, from there
  46. to Herculaneum and Stabiae
  47. and then Parthenope built for soft ease.
  48. He sailed near the Cumaean Sibyl's temple.
  49. He passed the Warm Springs and Linternum, where
  50. the mastick trees grow, and the river called
  51. Volturnus, where thick sand whirls in the stream,
  52. over to Sinuessa's snow-white doves;
  53. and then to Antium and its rocky coast.
  54. When with all sails full spread the ship came in
  55. the harbor there (for now the seas grew rough),
  56. the god uncoiled his folds, and, gliding out
  57. with sinuous curves and all his mighty length,
  58. entered the temple of his parent, where
  59. it skirts that yellow shore. But, when the sea
  60. was calm again, the Epidaurian god
  61. departing from his father's shrine, where he
  62. a while had shared the sacred residence
  63. reared to a kindred deity, furrowed
  64. the sandy shore with weight of crackling scales,
  65. again he climbed into the lofty stern
  66. and near the rudder laid his head at rest.
  67. There he remained until the vessel passed
  68. by Castrum and Lavinium's sacred homes
  69. to where the Tiber flows into the sea
  70. there all the people of Rome came rushing out—
  71. mothers and fathers and even those who tend
  72. your sacred fire, O Trojan goddess Vesta—
  73. and joyous shouted welcome to the god.
  74. Wherever the swift ship steered through the tide,
  75. they built up many altars in a line,
  76. so that perfuming frankincense with smoke
  77. crackled along the banks on either hand,
  78. and victims made the keen knives hot with blood.
  79. The serpent-deity has entered Rome,
  80. the world's new capital and, lifting up
  81. his head above the summit of the mast,
  82. looked far and near for a congenial home.
  83. The river there, dividing, flows about
  84. a place known as the Island, on both sides
  85. an equal stream glides past dry middle ground.
  86. And here the serpent child of Phoebus left
  87. the Roman ship, took his own heavenly form,
  88. and brought the mourning city health once more