My mind is set on telling of bodies transformed into new forms. You gods—since you're the ones who made these changes happen—breathe life into my project and spin my song in one unbroken thread from the world's beginning to my own time.

---

Before the sea and land existed, before the sky that covers everything, nature showed one face throughout the whole world—what they called Chaos: a rough, unorganized mass, nothing but dead weight and the clashing seeds of things badly joined together.

No sun yet gave the world its light. The moon didn't renew her crescent horns by growing full. The earth didn't yet hang suspended in the surrounding air, balanced by her own weight. No ocean yet stretched its arms along the far edges of the land.

Though earth and sea and air were present there, the earth was unstable, the water unswimmable, the air without light. Nothing kept its shape. Everything got in the way of everything else—because within one body, cold fought with hot, wet with dry, soft with hard, things with weight versus weightlessness.

A god—and a better kind of nature—settled this war. He cut the heavens from the earth, the earth from the water, and separated the pure air from the thick fog.

When he'd unraveled these elements and freed them from the blind heap, he bound them in their separate places in harmonious peace. The fiery, weightless energy of the vaulted sky shot upward and claimed the highest place. Air, almost as light, took the next position. The earth, denser than these, drew in the heavier elements and was pressed down by its own gravity. Water flowed around everything and held the solid globe in its embrace.

---

When whichever god it was had organized this pile and divided it into separate parts, he first shaped the earth into a great sphere so it would be equal on every side. Then he ordered the seas to spread out, to swell with rushing winds, and to embrace the shores of the encircled land.

He added springs, vast marshes, and lakes. He bounded rivers with sloping banks that slope in different directions—some absorbed back into the earth itself, some reaching the sea where, received into that wider space of freer water, they beat against shores instead of riverbanks.

He ordered plains to stretch, valleys to sink down, forests to clothe themselves in leaves, and rocky mountains to rise up.

Just as two zones cut across the sky on the right and two on the left, with a fifth zone hotter than these in between, so the god's care marked off the enclosed mass with the same number, and the same zones are imprinted on the earth.

The middle zone is uninhabitable because of heat. Deep snow covers two others. He placed the same number in between and gave them a temperate climate, mixing cold with warmth.

---

Above these zones hangs the air. As much lighter as water is than earth, just that much heavier is air than fire.

There he ordered mists to settle, there clouds, there thunder that would shake human minds, and winds that strike lightning and make the flash.

But the world's builder didn't let these winds roam the air freely—even now, though each one rules its own separate region, they can barely be stopped from tearing the world apart. Such discord exists between brothers!

The East Wind withdrew toward the dawn and the kingdoms of Arabia and Persia, to the ridges that lie beneath the rays of morning. The West Wind claimed the shores warmed by the setting sun. The North Wind invaded frozen Scythia and the northern stars. The opposite land is drenched by constant clouds and rain from the South Wind.

Above all these he placed the clear ether, weightless and free from any earthly residue.

---

As soon as he'd separated everything with these fixed boundaries, the stars that had long been pressed down by blind darkness began to kindle throughout the whole sky.

So that no region would lack its own living things: the heavenly soil holds the stars and divine forms; the gleaming waves were given to fish to inhabit; earth took the wild beasts; the shifting air, the birds.

---

An animal holier than these, more capable of higher thought, one that could rule over all the rest, was still missing. Then human beings were born.

Either that craftsman of the universe, creator of a better world, made them from divine seed, or else the new-formed earth, recently separated from the high ether, still retained seeds related to the sky—which the son of Iapetus, mixing it with rainwater, shaped into the likeness of the gods who control everything.

While other animals look downward at the earth, he gave humanity an upturned face and ordered us to look at the sky and lift our gaze toward the stars.

So the earth that had just been rough and shapeless took on the unknown form of human beings.

---

First came the Golden Age. Without any enforcer, without laws, people cultivated faith and righteousness on their own.

There was no punishment or fear. No threatening words were engraved on bronze tablets. No crowd of suppliants dreaded the face of their judge—they were safe without any enforcer.

No pine tree yet, cut from its mountain, had descended into the clear waves to visit a foreign world. Mortals knew no shores except their own.

No steep ditches yet surrounded cities. There were no straight bronze trumpets, no curved brass horns, no helmets, no swords. Without any need for soldiers, people lived through soft, peaceful times in safety.

The earth itself, untouched by the hoe, unwounded by any plowshare, gave everything on its own. Content with food that required no one's compulsion to create it, people gathered wild strawberries from the mountains, cherries, berries clinging to prickly brambles, and acorns that had fallen from Jupiter's spreading oak tree.

Spring was eternal. Gentle west winds with warm breezes caressed flowers born without seeds. Soon the unplowed earth even produced grain, and the unfilled field grew white with heavy wheat. Rivers flowed with milk, rivers flowed with nectar, and golden honey dripped from the green oak tree.

---

After Saturn was sent down to dark Tartarus and the world came under Jupiter's rule, the Silver Age arrived—worse than gold, but more valuable than tawny bronze.

Jupiter shortened the length of the ancient spring and drove the year through four seasons: winter, summer, unequal autumn, and brief spring.

Then for the first time the air burned white with dry heat, and ice hung frozen by winds. Then for the first time people sought houses—before, their homes had been caves, thick bushes, and branches bound with bark.

Then for the first time grain seeds were buried in long furrows, and young oxen groaned under the weight of the yoke.

---

After that came the third generation, of bronze—fiercer in temperament and quicker to take up savage weapons, but not yet criminal.

---

Last is the age of hard iron. Immediately every kind of wickedness burst into this age of baser material. Shame fled, and truth and faith. In their place came treachery, deceit, traps, violence, and the cursed love of possessions.

Sailors spread their sails to winds they didn't yet know well. Trees that once stood on high mountains now jumped as ships' hulls on unknown waves.

The surveyor carefully marked the ground with long boundary lines—ground that before, like sunlight and air, had been common to all.

Not only were crops and the sustenance we're owed demanded from the rich soil, but people went down into the earth's guts, and they dug up the wealth she'd hidden and stored near the Stygian shades—wealth that incites evil.

And now deadly iron came forth, and gold more deadly than iron. War came forth, which fights with both, and shook clashing weapons with bloody hands.

People lived off theft. Guest wasn't safe from host, nor father-in-law from son-in-law. Even brotherly love was rare. Husbands threatened their wives' lives, wives their husbands'. Terrible stepmothers mixed deadly poisons. Sons checked their fathers' ages before their time.

Righteousness lay defeated. The virgin Astraea, last of the immortals, abandoned the blood-soaked earth.

---

And so that the high heaven wouldn't be safer than the earth, they say the giants aspired to the kingdom of the sky and piled up mountains heaped toward the stars.

Then the all-powerful father shattered Olympus with a thunderbolt he hurled and knocked Pelion down from underlying Ossa.

When those dreadful bodies lay crushed beneath their own mass, they say that Earth, soaked with her sons' abundant blood, gave life to the warm gore—so that some memorial of her offspring would remain.

---

But this bloodthirsty generation didn't escape the notice of the gods. When Saturn's son saw it from his highest citadel, he groaned. Remembering the recent, not-yet-publicized horror of Lycaon's feast, he conceived huge rage worthy of Jupiter and called a council. No delay held back those he summoned.

There's a high road, visible in the clear sky, called the Milky Way—famous for its brilliant whiteness. This is the path the gods take to the palace of the great Thunderer and his royal home. On the right and left, the halls of powerful, distinguished gods bustle with open doors. The common people live in different quarters. Here, in this section, the influential heaven-dwellers and famous ones have placed their household shrines. This is a place that—if words can be so bold—I wouldn't hesitate to call the Palatine of the great sky.

So when the gods had taken their seats in the marble hall, Jupiter himself, seated higher than the rest and leaning on his ivory scepter, shook three or four times the terrifying hair of his head, with which he moves the earth, the sea, and the stars. Then he opened his indignant mouth with these words:

"I was never more anxious for the kingdom of the world than during that crisis when each of the hundred snake-footed giants was preparing to throw its arms around captive heaven. For though that enemy was fierce, still that war hung from one body and sprang from one source. But now, wherever Nereus resounds around the whole world, the mortal race must be destroyed. I swear by the rivers of the underworld that flow beneath the earth through the Stygian grove! Everything must be tried first, but what's incurable must be cut away with the knife, before the healthy part is infected.

"I have demigods, rustic spirits, nymphs, fauns, satyrs, and mountain-dwelling woodland gods. Since we don't yet think them worthy of the honor of heaven, let's at least allow them to live in the lands we've given them. Or do you really believe they'll be safe enough, gods, when Lycaon—notorious for his savagery—has plotted against me, who wield the thunderbolt and rule over both you and myself?"

All the gods murmured together and with burning zeal demanded punishment for such daring. Just as when a wicked gang raged to extinguish the Roman name with Caesar's blood, the whole human race was stunned by the terror of such sudden ruin, and the whole world shuddered—your people's loyalty wasn't less pleasing to you, Augustus, than that loyalty was to Jupiter. He, after he'd quieted the murmurs with voice and hand, all held silence. When the clamor died down, pressed by the ruler's authority, Jupiter again broke the silence with this speech:

"He indeed has paid his penalty—don't worry about that! But I'll tell you what crime he committed and what vengeance followed. Reports of our age's infamy had reached my ears. Hoping these reports were false, I descended from high Olympus and, though a god, I traveled the earth in human form. It would take too long to list how much wickedness I found everywhere. The reputation fell short of the truth.

"I'd crossed the Maenalus—dreadful with its wild beasts' lairs—and Cyllene and the pine forests of cold Lycaeus. From there I entered the home and inhospitable dwelling of the Arcadian tyrant, as late twilight was drawing on night. I gave signs that a god had come, and the common people began to pray. At first Lycaon mocked their pious prayers. Then he said, 'I'll test whether this is a god or a mortal with clear proof—the truth won't be in doubt.'

"He planned to kill me in my sleep during the night, by surprise and without warning. That's the kind of proof of truth that pleased him! Not content with that, he took a hostage sent from the Molossian people, cut his throat with a sword, and then softened some of the half-dead limbs in boiling water, some he roasted over fire. As soon as he set this before me at his table, I brought down his dwelling with avenging flame, collapsing it on the master who deserved it.

"Terrified, he fled and reached the silence of the countryside. He howled and tried in vain to speak. His mouth gathered foam from his own rage, and with his usual lust for slaughter, he turned against flocks—even now he delights in blood. His clothes changed into shaggy fur, his arms to legs. He became a wolf and kept traces of his old form. The same gray hair, the same violent expression, the same gleaming eyes, the same image of savagery.

"One house has fallen, but not only one house deserved to fall. Wherever the earth spreads, savage Vengeance reigns. You'd think they'd sworn an oath to crime! Let them all quickly pay the penalties they've earned—this is my decision."

Some approved Jupiter's words with their voices and added fuel to his rage; others filled their parts with silent agreement. Still, the loss of the human race was painful to all of them, and they asked what form the earth would take without mortals, who would bring incense to the altars, whether he intended to abandon the earth to wild beasts for ravaging. The king of the gods told them not to worry about such things (for the rest would be his concern) and promised a new race unlike the previous people, one with a miraculous origin.

And now he was about to scatter lightning bolts across the whole earth, but he feared that perhaps the sacred ether might catch fire from so many flames and the long axis of heaven burn. He also remembered that it's in the fates that a time will come when the sea, the earth, and the palace of the sky will burn, and the besieged structure of the universe will be in danger. He put away the thunderbolts forged by Cyclopes' hands. A different punishment pleased him—to destroy the mortal race beneath the waves and send down rainstorms from the whole sky.

---

Immediately he imprisoned the North Wind in Aeolus' caves along with whatever breezes scatter the clouds once they're gathered, and he released the South Wind. The South Wind flew out on soaking wings, his terrible face covered in pitch-black darkness. His beard was heavy with rainclouds, water flowed from his white hair, mists sat on his forehead, and his wings and the folds of his robe dripped with rain. When he pressed the hanging clouds with his broad hand, there was a crash. Then thick rainclouds poured down from the sky. Iris, Juno's messenger, dressed in various colors, gathered water and fed it to the clouds. The crops were flattened. The farmers' prayers lay mourned and ruined, and a long year's work perished, all for nothing.

Nor was Jupiter's anger satisfied with his own sky—his sea-blue brother helped him with auxiliary waves. He called the rivers together. After they'd entered their master's dwelling, he said, "There's no need for a long speech now. Pour out your power—that's what's needed! Open your houses and, with all barriers removed, release full rein to your streams!" He'd given his orders. They returned and relaxed their fountainheads and rolled toward the sea in an unbridled course.

He himself struck the earth with his trident, and it trembled and with that movement opened paths for the waters. The rivers spread out and rushed through the open fields. They swept away orchards, crops, cattle, people, houses, and inner shrines with their sacred things. If any house remained standing and could resist such great disaster without being thrown down, still a wave higher than that house covered its roof, and towers lay hidden, pressed down under the flood. And now sea and land had no distinction. Everything was ocean—an ocean that even lacked shores.

---

One person occupied a hill. Another sat in a curved boat and rowed where he'd recently plowed. One sailed over crops or over the roof of his submerged farmhouse. Another caught a fish in the top of an elm tree. An anchor was stuck in a green meadow, if chance brought it there, or curved keels scraped over vineyards beneath them. And where graceful goats had just grazed on grass, now misshapen seals placed their bodies.

The sea nymphs marveled at groves and cities and houses underwater. Dolphins held the forests and ran into high branches and struck against the shaken oaks. A wolf swam among sheep. The wave carried tawny lions, the wave carried tigers. Neither the power of his lightning-bolt strength helped the boar, nor his swift legs the deer, though they'd been taken away. After searching long for land where it could settle, the wandering bird fell into the sea on exhausted wings.

The boundless license of the ocean had buried hills, and new waves beat against mountain peaks. The flood swept away most life. Those the wave spared were conquered by slow starvation from lack of food.

---

Phocis separates the Boeotian fields from those of Oeta—a fertile land while it was land, but at that time it was part of the sea, a broad plain of sudden waters. There a mountain reaches toward the stars with its twin peaks, named Parnassus, and its summits rise above the clouds. Here, when Deucalion—for the sea had covered everything else—landed in his small boat with his wife and companion, they worshiped the Corycian nymphs and the spirits of the mountain and prophetic Themis, who then held the oracle. No man was better than he, none more loving of justice, and no woman was more reverent toward the gods than she.

When Jupiter saw the world stagnating in liquid marshes and saw that one man survived of so many thousands just before, and one woman survived of so many thousands just before—both innocent, both worshipers of divinity—he scattered the clouds and, with the North Wind driving away the rainstorms, revealed the earth to the sky and the heavens to the lands. Nor did the sea's anger remain. The ruler of the deep set aside his three-pronged weapon and calmed the waters. He called sea-blue Triton, who rose above the depths, his shoulders covered with native purple shellfish, and ordered him to blow into his resounding conch shell and with that signal now to call back the waves and rivers. Triton took up his hollow trumpet, twisted in a spiral that grows wide from its base—the trumpet that, when it receives air in the middle of the sea, fills with its voice the shores lying beneath both suns. Then too, when it touched the god's lips, wet and dripping with his beard, and sounded the ordered retreat, it was heard by all the waters of earth and sea, and all the waters it was heard by, it restrained.

Now the sea had shores. Rivers were held in full channels. Floods subsided and hills were seen emerging. The earth rose up. The ground increased as the waters decreased. After a long day, the forests showed their naked peaks and held mud left in the leaves.

The world had been restored. But when Deucalion saw it empty and saw the lands conducting deep silence in their desolation, he spoke to Pyrrha with welling tears:

"O sister, O wife, O only woman surviving! You whom common descent and family origin connected to me, then marriage joined, now dangers themselves join us—of the lands that the setting and rising sun see, we two are the whole population. The sea has claimed the rest. Even now, assurance of our life isn't certain enough. The clouds still terrify my mind. What spirit would you have now, pitiful woman, if you'd been snatched by the fates without me? How could you bear your fear alone? Who would console you in your grief? For believe me, if the sea held you too, I would follow you, wife, and the sea would hold me too.

"Oh, if only I could repopulate the world with my father's arts and breathe souls into molded earth! Now the mortal race survives in just us two. So it seemed good to the gods above: we remain as examples of humanity."

He'd spoken, and they wept. They decided to pray to the heavenly divinity and seek help through sacred oracles. There was no delay. Together they approached the Cephisian waters, still not clear but already cutting their familiar channels. From there, when they'd sprinkled purifying liquid on their clothes and heads, they turned their steps toward the shrine of the holy goddess, whose pediment was pale with foul moss and whose altars stood without fire.

When they'd touched the temple steps, each fell prone on the ground, and trembling, each gave kisses to the cold stone, and said, "If the gods' powers are conquered and softened by just prayers, if divine anger is bent, tell us, Themis, by what art the loss of our race can be repaired, and bring help, most gentle goddess, to our drowned world!"

The goddess was moved and gave this oracle: "Leave the temple and cover your heads and loosen your belted robes and throw the bones of your great mother behind your backs!"

They stood stunned for a long time. Pyrrha first broke the silence with her voice and refused to obey the goddess's commands. With frightened voice she begged for pardon and feared to injure her mother's ghost by throwing her bones. Meanwhile they mulled over the obscure words of the oracle given in dark riddles, turning them over between themselves.

Then Prometheus' son calmed Epimetheus' daughter with these soothing words: "Either our cleverness deceives me, or (the oracles are holy and urge no wrong!) our great mother is the earth. I think the stones in the earth's body are called bones. We're ordered to throw these behind our backs."

Though the Titan's wife was moved by her husband's interpretation, still her hope was in doubt—so much did they both distrust the heavenly instructions. But what harm would trying do? They descended. They covered their heads and loosened their tunics and threw stones behind their tracks as ordered.

The stones (who would believe this, unless ancient tradition proved it?) began to lose their hardness and their rigidity, and to soften gradually, and when softened, to take on form. Soon, when they'd grown and a gentler nature had touched them, a certain shape could be seen—almost like a human form, but not quite clear, like marble statues just begun, not finished enough, most similar to rough figures. Whatever part of the stones that was moist with some dampness and earthy was turned to bodily use. What was solid and couldn't bend was changed into bones. What had just been a vein remained under the same name. And in a brief time, by the will of the gods above, the stones sent by the man's hands took on the appearance of men, and from the woman's throwing, woman was restored.

That's why we're a tough race, experienced in hard work—we give proof of the origin from which we were born.

---

The earth spontaneously produced other animals in various forms after the ancient moisture was warmed by the sun's fire, and the mud and wet marshes swelled with heat. Fertile seeds of things, nourished by life-giving soil as if in a mother's womb, grew and took on some form over time.

So when the seven-channeled Nile abandoned the soaked fields and returned its river to its ancient bed, and the fresh mud baked beneath the heavenly star, farmers turning over the clods found countless animals—and among these they saw some just begun at the very moment of birth, some incomplete and lacking their full count of parts. Often in the same body, one part was alive while the other part was still raw earth.

For whenever moisture and heat have combined in right proportion, they conceive, and all things arise from these two. Though fire fights with water, moist heat creates everything, and this discordant harmony is suited to producing life. So when the earth, muddy from the recent flood, glowed hot beneath the heavenly sunlight and deep warmth, it produced countless species. Partly it brought back ancient forms, partly it created new monsters.

---

That earth didn't want to create you, but it did produce you then too, enormous Python—you were a terror to these new peoples, unknown snake, so much space from the mountain did you occupy. The bow-bearing god destroyed you, weighed down with a thousand arrows, his quiver nearly emptied, poisonous venom streaming through your black wounds—weapons he'd never before used except on deer and fleeing goats.

And so that time's oblivion couldn't erase the fame of this deed, he established sacred games with famous competition, called Pythian from the name of the conquered serpent. There, whatever youth conquered in hand or foot or wheel received the honor of oak-leaf crowns. The laurel didn't yet exist, and Phoebus encircled his temples—beautiful with long hair—with garlands from any tree.

---

Apollo's first love was Daphne, daughter of Peneus. No blind chance gave him this, but Cupid's savage anger. The Delian god, proud after conquering the serpent, had recently seen Cupid bending his bow's drawn string and said, "What are you doing with powerful weapons, playful boy? That equipment suits my shoulders—I who can deal sure wounds to wild beasts, deal wounds to enemies, I who just now laid low the swollen Python, pressing so many acres with its plague-filled belly, with countless arrows. You—be content to provoke some loves or other with your torch, and don't claim my glory!"

Venus' son replied, "Your bow may pierce everything, Phoebus, but mine will pierce you. As much as all animals yield to a god, by that much is your glory less than mine."

He spoke, and cleaving the air with his beating wings, swiftly he stood on shady Parnassus' citadel. From his arrow-bearing quiver he drew two shafts of different effects: one puts love to flight, the other creates it. The one that creates love is golden and gleams with a sharp point. The one that puts it to flight is blunt and has lead beneath its reed shaft. This one the god fixed in the nymph, daughter of Peneus, but with the other he struck Apollo's bones, piercing through to the marrow.

Immediately Apollo loves; Daphne flees even the name of lover, rejoicing in forest hiding places and in the spoils of captured animals, a rival of unmarried Phoebe. A ribbon held back her hair, arranged without care. Many men pursued her; she turned away from her pursuers, impatient with men, untouched by them, and wandered through pathless forests, not caring what Hymen was, what Love was, what marriage was.

Often her father said, "Daughter, you owe me a son-in-law." Often her father said, "Child, you owe me grandchildren." But she hated the wedding torches like a crime, and her beautiful face blushed with modest red, and clinging to her father's neck with coaxing arms, she said, "Dearest father, let me enjoy perpetual virginity! Diana's father granted her this before."

He indeed agreed, but your very beauty prevents you from being what you wish, and your form fights against your prayer. Phoebus loves her and desires marriage with Daphne once he's seen her, and what he desires, he hopes for—and his own oracles deceive him.

Just as light stubble burns when the grain is stripped away, as hedges catch fire from torches that a traveler perhaps brought too close or left behind at daybreak, so the god burst into flames, so he burned through his whole heart and nourished his sterile love with hoping. He looked at the uncombed hair hanging on her neck and said, "What if it were styled?" He saw her eyes sparkling like stars, he saw her lips—which seeing isn't enough. He praised her fingers and hands and arms and shoulders bare more than halfway. Whatever was hidden, he imagined was better.

She fled swifter than the light breeze and didn't stop at these words of the god calling her back: "Nymph, I beg you, daughter of Peneus, stay! I'm not pursuing as an enemy. Nymph, stay! This is how a lamb flees a wolf, a deer flees a lion, how doves flee an eagle on trembling wing, each fleeing its enemies. Love is my reason for following!

"Poor me! Don't fall headlong, don't let brambles mark your legs undeservingly, and don't let me be the cause of your pain! The places you're rushing through are rough. I beg you, run more slowly and hold back your flight—I'll pursue more slowly myself. At least ask who finds you pleasing. I'm no mountain-dweller, I'm no shepherd, I don't watch over herds and flocks unkempt here. You don't know, reckless girl, you don't know whom you're fleeing—that's why you flee. The Delphic land serves me, and Claros and Tenedos and Patara's palace. Jupiter is my father. Through me, what will be and was and is lies open. Through me, songs harmonize with strings. My arrow is sure indeed, yet one arrow is more sure than mine—the one that made this wound in my empty heart!

"Medicine is my invention. I'm called the helper throughout the world, and the power of herbs is subject to me. Ah, but love can't be healed by any herbs, and the arts that help everyone don't help their master!"

He was going to say more, but Peneus' daughter fled in frightened flight and left him and his words unfinished. Even then she looked lovely. The winds bared her body, and opposing breezes fluttered her clothes against her, and a light breeze threw her hair backward, and her beauty was increased by flight.

But the young god couldn't bear to waste more flattery. As Love itself urged, he followed her tracks at full speed. Like a Gallic hunting dog when it sees a rabbit in an open field—one seeks prey with its feet, the other safety; the hound seems just about to grasp its catch and hopes now, now to hold it, and grazes her tracks with outstretched muzzle, but she's uncertain whether she's been caught and escapes from the very bites and leaves behind the mouth that touched her—so the god and maiden were, he swift with hope, she with fear.

Yet he who pursued, aided by Love's wings, was faster and denied her rest and pressed against the back of the fleeing girl and breathed on the hair scattered on her neck. Her strength spent, she grew pale and, overcome by the labor of swift flight, looking at Peneus' waters, said, "Help me, father! If rivers have divine power, destroy by transformation this figure by which I've pleased too much!"

The prayer was scarcely finished when heavy numbness seized her limbs. Soft bark surrounded her chest, her hair grew into leaves, her arms into branches. Her foot, just now so swift, stuck fast in sluggish roots. Her face became a treetop. Only her radiance remained in her.

Even in this form Phoebus loved her. Placing his hand on the trunk, he felt her heart still trembling beneath the new bark. Embracing the branches as if they were limbs with his arms, he gave kisses to the wood—yet the wood shrank from his kisses.

To her the god said, "Since you can't be my wife, you'll certainly be my tree! Forever, laurel, you'll clothe my hair, my lyre, my quiver. You'll attend Latin commanders when joyful voices sing Triumph and the Capitol sees long processions. You'll stand as the most faithful guardian before Augustus' doors and protect the oak in the middle. And as my head is young with unshorn hair, you too will always wear the perpetual honor of leaves!"

The Healer had finished. The laurel, with her newly made branches, seemed to nod and seemed to shake her treetop like a head.

---

There's a grove in Thessaly that a steep forest encloses on every side. They call it Tempe. Through it the Peneus, pouring forth from the base of Pindus, rolls with foaming waves. With its heavy fall, it gathers thin clouds of rising mist and sprinkles the tops of the forests with its spray and wearies places far beyond with its sound. This is the home, this the seat, these are the inner chambers of the great river. Here, residing in a cave made from rock, he gave laws to the waters and to the nymphs who dwell in the waters.

First the rivers of that region gathered there—uncertain whether to congratulate or console the parent: poplar-bearing Spercheus, restless Enipeus, old Apidanus, gentle Amphrysus, and Aeas. Soon other rivers came who, wherever their current carried them, bring their waters, tired from wandering, down to the sea.

Inachus alone was absent, hidden in his deepest cave. With his tears he swelled his waters and, most miserable, mourned his daughter Io as if she were lost. He didn't know whether she enjoyed life or was among the ghosts. But since he found her nowhere, he believed she existed nowhere and feared worse things in his mind.

---

Jupiter had seen her returning from her father's river and said, "O maiden worthy of Jove, about to make some man—I don't know whom—blessed with your bed, seek the shade of the deep forest" (and he'd shown her the forest's shade) "while it's hot and the sun is highest in the middle of its orbit! But if you're afraid to enter the lairs of wild beasts alone, with a god as your protector you'll go safely into the forest's secrets—and not with a common god, but with the one who holds the great scepters of heaven in my hand, the one who hurls the wandering lightning. Don't flee me!"

For she was fleeing. Already she'd left behind the pastures of Lerna and the tree-planted fields of Lyrceus when the god covered the broad lands with darkness and stopped her flight and stole her chastity.

---

Meanwhile Juno looked down into the middle of Argos and marveled that swift clouds had created the appearance of night under a bright day. She sensed they didn't come from a river and weren't released from damp earth. She looked around to see where her husband was—as one who'd already learned so many times of her caught husband's stolen affairs.

When she didn't find him in the sky, she said, "Either I'm wrong or I'm being wronged," and gliding down from highest heaven, she stood on the earth and ordered the clouds to withdraw. Her husband had sensed his wife's arrival and had changed Inachus' daughter's face into a sleek heifer. Even as a cow she was beautiful.

Juno, daughter of Saturn, approved the cow's appearance, though unwillingly, and asked—as if she didn't know the truth—whose she was, where from, and what herd. Jupiter lied that she was born from the earth, so that inquiry about her creator would stop. Juno, daughter of Saturn, asked for her as a gift.

What should he do? It's cruel to hand over his love, but not to give her would be suspicious. Shame urged him one way, Love argued against it the other. Shame would have been conquered by Love, but if he refused so slight a gift as a cow to his partner in marriage and kind, she might seem not to be a cow!

---

Though her rival was given away, the goddess didn't immediately shed all fear. She feared Jupiter and was anxious about the affair until she handed Io over to Argus, son of Arestor, to guard. Argus had a hundred eyes surrounding his head. From these, two at a time took their rest in turns while the rest kept watch and remained at their station.

However Argus stood, he was looking at Io. He kept Io before his eyes even when he'd turned away. During daylight he let her graze. When the sun was beneath the deep earth, he shut her in and bound her innocent neck with a rope. She grazed on tree leaves and bitter grass. Instead of a bed, the poor creature lay on ground that didn't always have grass, and drank muddy streams.

When she wanted to stretch out her arms as a suppliant to Argus, she had no arms to stretch out to Argus. When she tried to complain, she produced a moo from her mouth and was terrified by the sounds, frightened by her own voice.

She came to the banks where she'd often played before, the Inachid banks. When she saw her new horns in the water and her face, she was terrified and fled, startled from herself. The Naiads didn't know who she was, nor did Inachus himself know. But she followed her father and followed her sisters and allowed herself to be touched and offered herself to those who admired her.

Old Inachus had plucked grass and offered it to her. She licked his hands and gave kisses to her father's palms and couldn't hold back tears. If only words would follow, she would beg for help and tell her name and fate. A letter in place of words, which her hoof drew in the dust, completed the sad evidence of her transformed body.

"Woe is me!" exclaimed father Inachus, and clinging to the horns and snowy neck of the moaning heifer, "Woe is me!" he repeated. "Are you my daughter, sought through all lands? You not found were a lighter grief than you found! You're silent and don't respond with words to mine. You only draw deep sighs from your chest, and—the one thing you can do—you moo in answer to my words.

"But I, unknowing, was preparing marriage chamber and wedding torches for you. My first hope was for a son-in-law, my second for grandchildren. Now you must have a husband from the herd, now a son from the herd. I can't even end such great griefs by death. It's harmful to be a god—the gate of death is closed to me and extends my grief into eternity."

While he mourned such things, star-eyed Argus drove Io away, snatched from her father, and dragged her to different pastures. He himself occupied a mountain's high peak at a distance, from where, sitting, he surveyed all directions.

---

Nor could the ruler of the gods bear the sufferings of Phoroneus' daughter any longer. He called his son, whom the bright Pleiad had brought forth in childbirth, and ordered him to bring death to Argus. Little delay there was in taking wings for his feet and a sleep-bringing wand for his powerful hand and a covering for his hair. When he'd arranged these things, Jupiter's son leaped from his father's citadel down to earth. There he removed his covering and put aside his wings—only the wand was kept. With this he drove goats through remote countryside as he came, having led them astray, and played on joined reeds.

Captivated by the new sound, Juno's guardian said, "Whoever you are, you could sit with me on this rock. No grass in any place is more fertile for a flock, and you see there's suitable shade for shepherds."

The son of Atlas sat down and kept the passing day delayed with much talk and tried to overcome the watchful eyes by playing on his joined reeds. But Argus fought to conquer soft sleep, and though drowsiness was received in part of his eyes, he still kept watch with part. He also asked (for the pipe had recently been invented) by what method it was invented.

---

Then the god said, "In the cold mountains of Arcadia, among the Hamadryads of Nonacris, one Naiad was most famous. The nymphs called her Syrinx. More than once she'd eluded satyrs pursuing her, and whatever gods the shadowy forest and fertile countryside contains. In her pursuits and in her very virginity she worshiped the Ortygian goddess. Dressed too in Diana's fashion, she could deceive and could be believed to be Latona's daughter—if her bow weren't horn and the other's weren't gold. Even so she deceived.

"Returning from Lycaeus hill, Pan saw her, his head wreathed with sharp pine, and spoke these words—' The words remained to be told, and how the nymph, prayers spurned, fled through pathless ways until she came to the peaceful stream of sandy Ladon. Here, with the waters blocking her course, she begged her liquid sisters to transform her. And when Pan thought he'd now seized Syrinx, instead of the nymph's body he held marsh reeds.

"While he sighed there, the winds moving in the reeds produced a thin sound like a lament. The god, captivated by the art's novelty and the sweetness of the voice, said, 'This conversation with you will remain for me.' And so, with reeds of unequal lengths joined by wax's binding, the pipes kept the girl's name."

About to say such things, Cyllenius saw all eyes had succumbed and their lights were covered with sleep. Immediately he suppressed his voice and strengthened the slumber, soothing the languid eyes with his magic wand. Without delay he struck the nodding head with his curved sword where the neck joins the head, and hurled him, bloody, from the rock and stained the steep cliff with blood.

Argus, you lie dead. The light you had in so many eyes is extinguished, and one night occupies a hundred eyes.

---

Juno, daughter of Saturn, took these eyes and placed them on the feathers of her own bird and filled its tail with star-like gems. Immediately she blazed with rage and didn't delay her anger. She thrust a dreadful Fury before the eyes and mind of her Greek rival, and planted hidden goads in her heart, and drove her as a fugitive to exercise through the whole world.

You, Nile, remained as the final limit of her immense labor. As soon as she touched you and, kneeling on the river's bank, fell forward, stretching her neck back and lifting to the stars the face that was all she could lift, she seemed with her groans and tears and mournful mooing to complain to Jupiter and beg an end to her miseries.

He, embracing his wife's neck with his arms, begged her to end the punishment at last. "Put away," he said, "fear for the future. She'll never be cause of grief to you," and he ordered the Stygian marshes to hear this oath.

When the goddess was appeased, Io took back her former face and became what she was before. The bristles fled from her body, her horns shrank, her eye's orbit narrowed, her jaws contracted, her shoulders and hands returned, and each hoof, dissolved, disappeared into five nails. Nothing of the cow remained in her except her radiance.

The nymph, content with the function of two feet, stood upright and feared to speak, lest she moo like a heifer, and timidly retried her interrupted words.

Now she's worshiped as a famous goddess by the linen-robed crowd. Her son Epaphus is believed finally to have been born from great Jupiter's seed and holds temples throughout cities joined with his mother.

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Equal to him in spirit and years was Phaethon, born of the Sun. Once when Phaethon was speaking boastfully and not yielding to Epaphus and being proud of his father Phoebus, the grandson of Inachus couldn't bear it and said, "You're crazy to believe everything your mother says, and you're swollen with the false image of your father."

Phaethon blushed and suppressed his anger with shame and brought Epaphus' insults to his mother Clymene. "And so that you may grieve more, mother," he said, "I—the free-spirited, the fierce—was silent! I'm ashamed that such reproaches could be spoken to us and couldn't be refuted. But you, if indeed I was created from heavenly stock, give me a sign of such high birth and assert my claim to heaven!"

He spoke and wrapped his arms around his mother's neck, and by his own head and Merops' head and his sisters' wedding torches, he begged her to give him true signs of his father. It's uncertain whether Clymene was moved more by Phaethon's prayers or by anger at the accusation spoken against her. She stretched both arms toward the sky and, looking toward the sun's light, said:

"By this radiance bright with gleaming rays, my son, I swear to you—by this which hears and sees us, by this Sun you're gazing at, this who governs the world—you're born of him. If I speak falsely, may he himself deny me the sight of him, and may that light be the last for my eyes! Nor is it a long journey for you to learn your father's home. The place from which he rises borders our land. If your spirit moves you, go and ask the truth from him himself!"

Immediately after such words from his mother, Phaethon leaped up, joyful, and conceived heaven in his mind. He passed through his Ethiopians and the Indians placed beneath the stars' fires and eagerly sought his father's rising-place.