Metamorphoses

Ovid

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

Now when the valiant Argonauts returned
to Thessaly, their happy relatives,
fathers and mothers, praised the living Gods;
and with their hallowed gifts enhanced the flames
with precious incense; and they offered Jove
a sacred bullock, rich with gilded horns.
But Jason's father, Aeson, came not down
rejoicing to behold his son, for now
worn out with many years, he waited death.
And Jason to Medea grieving said:
“Dearest, to whom my life and love are due,
although your kindness has been great to me,
and you have granted more than I should ask,
yet one thing more I beg of you; if your
enchantments can accomplish my desire,
take from my life some years that I should live
and add them to my father's ending days.”—
And as he spoke he could not check his tears.
Medea, moved by his affection, thought
how much less she had grieved for her loved sire:
and she replied:—“A wicked thing you ask!
Can I be capable of using you
in such a manner as to take your life
and give it to another? Ask not me
a thing so dreadful! May the Gods forbid!—
I will endeavor to perform for you
a task much greater. By the powers of Night
I will most certainly return to him
the lost years of your father, but must not
deprive you of your own. — Oh grant the power,
great goddess of the triple form, that I
may fail not to accomplish this great deed!”
Three nights were wanting for the moon to join
her circling horns and form a perfect orb.
When these were passed, the rounded light shone full
and bright upon the earth.—Through the still night
alone, Medea stole forth from the house
with feet bare, and in flowing garment clothed—
her long hair unadorned and not confined.
Deep slumber has relaxed the world, and all
that's living, animals and birds and men,
and even the hedges and the breathing leaves
are still—and motionless the laden air.
Only the stars are twinkling, and to them
she looks and beckons with imploring hands.
Now thrice around she paces, and three times
besprinkles her long hair with water dipt
from crystal streams, which having done
she kneels a moment on the cold, bare ground,
and screaming three times calls upon the Night,—
“O faithful Night, regard my mysteries!
O golden-lighted Stars! O softly-moving Moon—
genial, your fire succeeds the heated day!
O Hecate! grave three-faced queen of these
charms of enchanters and enchanters, arts!
O fruitful Earth, giver of potent herbs!
O gentle Breezes and destructive Winds!
You Mountains, Rivers, Lakes and sacred Groves,
and every dreaded god of silent Night!
Attend upon me!—
“When my power commands,
the rivers turn from their accustomed ways
and roll far backward to their secret springs!
I speak—and the wild, troubled sea is calm,
and I command the waters to arise!
The clouds I scatter—and I bring the clouds;
I smooth the winds and ruffle up their rage;
I weave my spells and I recite my charms;
I pluck the fangs of serpents, and I move
the living rocks and twist the rooted oaks;
I blast the forests. Mountains at my word
tremble and quake; and from her granite tombs
the liberated ghosts arise as Earth
astonished groans! From your appointed ways,
O wonder-working Moon, I draw you down
against the magic-making sound of gongs
and brazen vessels of Temesa's ore;
I cast my spells and veil the jeweled rays
of Phoebus' wain, and quench Aurora's fires.
“At my command you tamed the flaming bulls
which long disdained to bend beneath the yoke,
until they pressed their necks against the plows;
and, subject to my will, you raised up war
till the strong company of dragon-birth
were slaughtered as they fought amongst themselves;
and, last, you lulled asleep the warden's eyes—
guards of the Golden Fleece—till then awake
and sleeping never—so, deceiving him,
you sent the treasure to the Grecian cities!
“Witness my need of super-natured herbs,
elixirs potent to renew the years of age,
giving the bloom of youth.—You shall not fail
to grant me this; for not in vain the stars
are flashing confirmation; not in vain
the flying dragons, harnessed by their necks,
from skies descending bring my chariot down.”
A chariot, sent from heaven, came to her—
and soon as she had stroked the dragons' necks,
and shaken in her hands the guiding reins—
as soon as she had mounted, she was borne
quickly above, through unresisting air.
And, sailing over Thessaly, she saw
the vale of Tempe, where the level soil
is widely covered with a crumbling chalk—
she turned her dragons towards new regions there:
and she observed the herbs by Ossa born,
the weeds on lofty Pelion, Othrys, Pindus
and vast Olympus—and from here she plucked
the needed roots, or there, the blossoms clipped
all with a moon-curved sickle made of brass—
many the wild weeds by Apidanus,
as well as blue Amphrysus' banks, she chose,
and not escaped Enipeus from her search;
Peneian stretches and Spercheian banks
all yielded what she chose:—and Boebe's shore
where sway the rushes; and she plucked up grass,
a secret grass, from fair Euboean fields
life-giving virtues in their waving blades,
as yet unknown for transformation wrought
on Glaucus.
All those fields she visited,
with ceaseless diligence in quest of charms,
nine days and nine nights sought strong herbs,
and the swift dragons with their active wings,
failed not to guide the chariot where she willed—
until they reached her home. The dragons then
had not been even touched by anything,
except the odor of surrounding herbs,
and yet they sloughed their skins, the growth of years.

She would not cross the threshold of her home
nor pass its gates; but, standing in the field,
alone beneath the canopy of Heaven,
she shunned all contact with her husband, while
she built up from the ever-living turf
two altars, one of which upon the right
to Hecate was given, but the one
upon the left was sacred then to you,
O Hebe, goddess of eternal youth!
Festooning woodland boughs and sweet vervain
adorned these altars, near by which she dug
as many trenches. Then, when all was done,
she slaughtered a black ram, and sprinkled with blood
the thirsty trenches; after which she poured
from rich carchesian goblets generous wine
and warm milk, grateful to propitious Gods—
the Deities of earth on whom she called—
entreating, as she did so, Pluto, lord
of ghostly shades, and ravished Proserpine,
that they should not, in undue haste,
deprive her patient's aged limbs of life.
When certain she compelled the God's regard,
assured her incantations and long prayers
were both approved and heard, she bade her people
bring out the body of her father-in-law—
old Aeson's worn out body—and when she
had buried him in a deep slumber by
her spells, as if he were a dead man, she
then stretched him out upon a bed of herbs.
She ordered Jason and his servants thence,
and warned them not to spy upon her rites,
with eyes profane. As soon as they retired,
Medea, with disheveled hair and wild
abandon, as a Bacchanalian, paced
times three around the blazing altars, while
she dipped her torches, splintered at the top,
into the trenches, dark: with blood, and lit
the dipt ends in the sacred altar flames.
Times three she purified the ancient man
with flames, and thrice with water, and three times
with sulphur,—as the boiling mixture seethed
and bubbled in the brazen cauldron near.
And into this, acerbic juices, roots,
and flowers and seeds—from vales Hemonian—
and mixed elixirs, into which she cast
stones of strange virtue from the Orient,
and sifted sands of ebbing ocean's tide;
white hoar-frost, gathered when the moon was full,
the nauseating flesh and luckless wings
of the uncanny screech-owl, and the entrails
from a mysterious animal that changed
from wolf to man, from man to wolf again;
the scaly sloughing of a water-snake,
the medic liver of a long-lived stag,
and the hard beak and head of an old crow
which was alive nine centuries before;
these, and a thousand nameless things
the foreign sorceress prepared and mixed,
and blended all together with a branch
of peaceful olive, old and dry with years. —
And while she stirred the withered olive branch
in the hot mixture, it began to change
from brown to green; and presently put forth
new leaves, and soon was heavy with a wealth
of luscious olives.—As the ever-rising fire
threw bubbling froth beyond the cauldron's rim,
the ground was covered with fresh verdure — flowers
and all luxuriant grasses, and green plants.
Medea, when she saw this wonder took
her unsheathed knife and cut the old man's throat;
then, letting all his old blood out of him
she filled his ancient veins with rich elixir.
As he received it through his lips or wound,
his beard and hair no longer white with age,
turned quickly to their natural vigor, dark
and lustrous; and his wasted form renewed,
appeared in all the vigor of bright youth,
no longer lean and sallow, for new blood
coursed in his well-filled veins.—Astonished, when
released from his deep sleep, and strong in youth,
his memory assured him, such he was
years four times ten before that day!—
Bacchus, from his celestial vantage saw
this marvel, and convinced his nurses might
then all regain their former vigor, he
pled with Medea to restore their youth.
The Colchian woman granted his request.

but so her malice might be satisfied
Medea feigned she had a quarrel with
her husband, and for safety she had fled
to Pelias. There, since the king himself
was heavy with old age, his daughters gave
her generous reception. And these girls
the shrewd Medea in a short time won,
by her false show of friendliness; and while
among the most remarkable of her
achievements she was telling how she had
rejuvenated Aeson, and she dwelt
particularly, on that strange event,
these daughters were induced to hope that by
some skill like this their father might regain
his lost youth also. And they begged of her
this boon, persuading her to name the price;
no matter if it was large. She did not
reply at once and seemed to hesitate,
and so she held their fond minds in a deep
suspense by her feigned meditation. When
she had at length declared she would restore
his youth, she said to them: “That you may have
strong confidence in this my promised boon,
the oldest leader of your flock of sheep shall be
changed to a lamb again by my prized drugs.”
Straightway a wooly ram, worn out with length
of untold years was brought, his great horns curved
around his hollow temples. After she
had cut his scrawny throat with her sharp knife
Thessalian, barely staining it with his
thin blood, Medea plunged his carcass in
a bronze-made kettle, throwing in it at
the same time juices of great potency.
These made his body shrink and burnt away
his two horns, and with horns his years. And now
thin bleating was heard from within the pot;
and even while they wondered at the sound,
a lamb jumped out and frisking, ran away
to find some udder with its needed milk.
Amazed the daughters looked on and, now that
these promises had been performed, they urged
more eagerly their first request. Three times
Phoebus unyoked his steeds after their plunge
in Ebro's stream, and on the fourth night stars
shown brilliant on the dark foil of the sky,
and then the treacherous daughter of Aeetes
set some clear water over a hot fire
and put in it herbs of no potency.
And now a death-like sleep held the king down,
his body all relaxed, and with the king
his guards, a sleep which incantations with
the potency of magic words had given.
The sad king's daughters, as they had been bid,
were in his room, and with Medea stood
around his bed. “Why do you hesitate,”
Medea said. “You laggards, come and draw
your swords; let out his old blood that
I may refill his empty veins again
with young blood. In your hands your father's life
and youth are resting. You, his daughters, must
have love for him, and if the hopes you have
are not all vain, come, do your duty by
your father; drive out old age at the point
of your good weapons; and let out his blood
enfeebled—cure him with the stroke of iron.”
Spurred on by these words, as each one of them
was filial she became the leader in
the most unfilial act, and that she might
not be most wicked did the wicked deed.
Not one could bear to see her own blows, so
they turned their eyes away; and every face
averted so, they blindly struck him with
their cruel hands. The old man streaming with
his blood, still raised himself on elbow, and
half mangled tried to get up from his bed;
with all those swords around him, he stretched out
his pale arms and he cried: “What will you do,
my daughters? What has armed you to the death
of your loved father?” Their wrong courage left
them, and their hands fell. When he would have said
still more, Medea cut his throat and plunged
his mangled body into boiling water.