But Alcithoe, daughter of Minyas, didn't think the god's rites should be accepted. Still reckless, she denied that Bacchus was Jupiter's offspring and had her sisters as companions in impiety. A priest had ordered them to celebrate the festival—servants and mistresses freed from work should cover their breasts with hides, loosen the ribbons from their hair, wear garlands in their hair, take leafy thyrsi in their hands. He'd prophesied that the anger of the injured god would be savage.

The mothers and daughters-in-law obeyed. They put down their webs and baskets and unfinished wool. They gave incense and called on Bacchus—Bromius and Lyaeus and Fire-Born and Twice-Born and Sole Son of Two Mothers. To these are added Nyseus and Unshorn Thyoneus, and with Lenaeus the genial planter of the vine, Nyctelius and Eleleius the Father and Iacchus and Euhan—and all the many other names you have, Liber, throughout Greek nations.

For yours is youth unconsumed. You're an eternal boy. You're seen most beautiful in high heaven. When you stand without horns, your head is like a maiden's. The East is conquered by you, even to India, made dark where it's stained by the farthest Ganges. Revered one, you struck down sacrilegious Pentheus and ax-bearing Lycurgus, you sent the Tyrrhenian bodies into the sea. You press the necks of twin lynxes marked with painted reins. Bacchants and satyrs follow you, and that old man who, drunk, supports his tottering limbs with his staff and clings, not very sturdily, to his bent donkey.

Wherever you walk, youthful shouting and with it women's voices and drums struck by palms and hollow bronze and boxwood with long holes all sound together. "Be present, appeased and gentle," the daughters of Ismenos begged, and they worshiped the commanded rites. Only the daughters of Minyas inside, disturbing the festival at an unseasonable time with Minerva's work, either drew out wool or turned threads with their thumb or stuck to their looms and pressed their servants with labors.

One of them, drawing out thread with her smooth thumb, said, "While the others idle and frequent made-up rites, let's also—we whom Pallas, a better goddess, detains—lighten useful handwork with varied conversation and, taking turns, bring something to idle ears that won't let the time seem long!"

Her words were approved, and they ordered the first sister to tell a story. She thought about what of many things she should relate (for she knew very many) and was uncertain whether to tell of you, Babylonian Derceto, whom the pools of Palestine believe moved with changed form, scales covering her limbs, or rather how her daughter, having taken wings, spent her final years in white towers, or how a naiad with song and herbs too powerful turned youthful bodies into silent fish until she suffered the same, or how the tree that bore white fruit now bears black fruit from contact with blood.

This last pleased her. Since it wasn't a common tale, she began with these words as her wool followed her thread:

---

"Pyramus and Thisbe—he the most beautiful of young men, she preferred above all girls the East had—occupied neighboring houses where, they say, Semiramis enclosed the lofty city with brick walls. Proximity made acquaintance and first steps. In time love grew. They would have united by marriage rites too, but their fathers forbade it. What they couldn't forbid—both burned with equally captive minds.

"No confidant was present. They spoke with nods and signs. The more the fire was covered, the more it burned, covered. The wall common to both houses had been split by a thin crack, which it had drawn long ago when it was being built. This flaw, noted by no one through long ages—what doesn't love sense?—you lovers first saw it and made it a path for your voice. Safe through it, your blandishments used to pass with the smallest murmur.

"Often, when Thisbe had stood on this side, Pyramus on that, and each had caught the breath of the other's mouth in turns, they'd say, 'Spiteful wall, why do you stand in lovers' way? How much would it take for you to allow us to be joined in whole body, or, if this is too much, at least to lie open for kisses to be given? We're not ungrateful. We confess we owe you that passage was given for words to friendly ears.'

"Having spoken such things in vain from different positions, at nightfall they said 'Farewell' and each gave kisses to their own side—kisses that didn't reach across.

"The next morning's Aurora had removed night's fires, and the sun had dried the frosty grass with its rays. They came together at their usual place. Then in a small murmur, having complained much first, they decided that in the silent night they'd try to deceive their guards and leave through their doors. When they'd left home, they'd also abandon the city's roofs. And so they wouldn't wander as they walked through the wide field, they'd meet at Ninus' tomb and hide beneath the tree's shade. There was a tree there, most abundant with snowy fruit—a tall mulberry beside a cool spring.

"The plan pleased them. The daylight, seeming to depart slowly, plunged into the waters, and night came out from the same waters.

"Clever Thisbe went out through the darkness, the door turned on its hinge, and deceived her people. With covered face she reached the tomb and sat beneath the appointed tree. Love made her bold. Look—a lioness came, her jaws foaming from the recent slaughter of cattle, about to quench her thirst in the water of the nearby spring. Babylonian Thisbe saw her from afar by the moon's rays and fled with fearful foot into a dark cave. As she fled, her fallen garment slipped from her back.

"When the savage lioness had quenched her thirst with much water, as she was returning to the woods, she found the thin cloak without its owner and tore it with her bloody mouth.

"Pyramus, coming out later, saw clear tracks of the beast in the deep dust and grew completely pale in his whole face. But when he also found the garment stained with blood, he said, 'One night will destroy two lovers, of whom she was most worthy of long life. My soul is guilty. I destroyed you, pitiful girl, who ordered you to come at night to places full of fear and didn't come here first myself. Tear apart our body and consume our wicked vitals with savage bite, O whatever lions live beneath this cliff! But it's a coward's wish to seek death.'

"He lifted Thisbe's garment and carried it to the shade of the agreed tree. When he'd given tears, he gave kisses to the known garment and said, 'Receive now also draughts of our blood!' And with what he was girded, he thrust the iron into his groin. Without delay, dying, he drew it from the hot wound.

"As he lay on his back on the ground, blood spurted high—not otherwise than when a pipe is split with damaged lead and hisses through a thin opening and shoots long streams of water and breaks the air with its blows. The tree's fruits turned to a dark appearance from the spray of slaughter, and the root, soaked with blood, stained the hanging mulberries with purple color.

"Look—with fear not yet laid aside, lest she disappoint her lover, she returned and sought the young man with eyes and heart. How eager she was to tell what dangers she'd escaped! Though she recognized the place and the tree's appearance she'd seen, the fruit's color made her uncertain whether this was it.

"While she hesitated, she saw trembling limbs beating the bloody ground and stepped back. Bearing a face paler than boxwood, she shuddered like the surface of the sea that trembles when grazed by a slight breeze. But after she delayed and recognized her love, she beat her arms, innocent of this, with clear lamentation and tore her hair and, embracing the beloved body, filled the wounds with tears and mixed weeping with blood. Planting kisses on the cold face, she cried out:

"'Pyramus, what chance has taken you from me? Pyramus, answer! Your dearest Thisbe calls your name! Hear and lift your fallen face!'

"At Thisbe's name, Pyramus raised eyes heavy with death and, having seen her, closed them again.

"After she recognized her garment and saw the ivory scabbard empty of sword, she said, 'Your hand and your love destroyed you, unlucky man! I too have a hand brave for this one thing. I too have love. This will give strength for wounds. I'll follow you, extinguished, and I'll be called the most wretched cause and companion of your death. You who could, alas, be torn from me only by death—you won't be able to be torn from me even by death.

"'Yet be asked by the words of both of us, O my most miserable parents and his, that those whom sure love, whom their last hour joined—don't begrudge them being placed in the same tomb. But you, tree, who now cover the pitiful body of one, soon about to cover two, keep signs of slaughter and always have dark fruit, suited to mourning—memorials of twin blood.'

"She spoke and, fitting the sword-point beneath her lowest chest, fell upon the iron, which was still warm from slaughter. Yet her prayers touched the gods, touched the parents. For the color in the fruit, when it's fully ripe, is black, and what remains from the pyres rests in one urn."

She'd finished. A brief time was in the middle, and Leuconoe began to speak. The sisters kept silent.

---

"This one too, who controls all things with starry light—the Sun—love captured. We'll tell the Sun's loves. This god is thought to have been first to see Venus' adultery with Mars. This god sees everything first. Grieved by the deed, he showed Juno's son and husband the stolen affair and the place of the theft.

"Both his mind and the work his craftsman's right hand was holding slipped. Immediately he filed slender chains from bronze and nets and snares that could deceive the eyes. That work wouldn't be conquered by the finest threads, nor by the spider web that hangs from the highest beam. He made it so it would follow light touch and small movements, and he placed it, cunningly arranged, around the bed.

"When both wife and adulterer came to the bed together, by the man's art and bonds prepared with new method, both were caught and held in the middle of their embraces. The Lemnian immediately opened the ivory doors and let in the gods. They lay bound shamefully. Some god, not sad, wished to be made so shameful. The gods above laughed, and for a long time this was the most famous story in all heaven.

"Venus the Cytherean exacts punishment for the one mindful of betrayal, and in turn she wounds with equal love him who wounded her secret loves. Now what, son of Hyperion, do your beauty and color and radiant lights help you? You who burn all lands with your fires are burned by a new fire. You who ought to see all things look at Leucothoe and fix on one virgin the eyes you owe the world.

"Now you rise earlier than usual in the eastern sky, now you fall later into the waves, and by the delay of watching you extend the hours of winter. Sometimes you fail, and the flaw of your mind passes into your light, and being dark, you terrify mortal hearts. Nor do you grow pale because the image of the moon, nearer to earth, has blocked you. Love makes this color.

"You cherish this one alone. Neither Clymene nor Rhode holds you, nor the most beautiful mother of Aeaean Circe, nor Clytie, who, though scorned, sought your embraces and had a heavy wound at that very time. Leucothoe made you forget many—she whom Eurynome, most beautiful of the fragrant race, brought forth in childbirth. But after the daughter grew, as the mother surpassed all women, so the daughter surpassed her mother.

"Her father Orchamus ruled the Achaemenian cities and was counted seventh from ancient Belus in origin.

"Under the western sky are the pastures of the Sun's horses. They have ambrosia instead of grass. This nourishes their limbs tired from daily service and restores them for labor. While the four-footed horses there crop the heavenly fodder and night fulfills its turn, the god entered his beloved chambers, changed into the appearance of her mother Eurynome. Among twice-six servants, he saw Leucothoe by the lamps, drawing smooth threads with her turned spindle.

"So when he'd given kisses as if a mother to her dear daughter, he said, 'It's a secret matter. Servants, withdraw and don't take from a mother the right to speak secrets.' They obeyed and, with the chamber left without witness, the god said:

"'I'm the one who measures the long year, who sees all things, through whom earth sees all things, the eye of the world. Believe me, you please me.'

"She was afraid. In her fear, both her distaff and spindle fell from her loosened fingers. Fear itself became her. He, delaying no longer, returned to his true appearance and accustomed brightness. Though the maiden was terrified by the unexpected sight, overcome by the god's brightness, she endured force without complaint.

"Clytie envied her (for the Sun's love in her hadn't been moderate), and, goaded by anger at her rival, she spread word of the adultery and, defaming her, reported her to her father. He, fierce and harsh, though she prayed and stretched hands toward the Sun's light and said 'He took force from an unwilling girl,' cruelly buried her deep in the ground and added a heavy mound of sand above.

"Hyperion's son scattered this with his rays and gave you a path by which you could bring forth your buried face. But you couldn't now lift your head, crushed by the weight of earth, nymph, and your bloodless body lay there. Nothing more painful than this is said to have been seen by the controller of winged horses after Phaethon's fires.

"He indeed tried, if he could, to call back cold limbs to living warmth by the power of his rays. But since fate opposed such great efforts, he sprinkled the body and place with fragrant nectar and, having lamented much, said, 'Yet you'll touch heaven.'

"Immediately the body, soaked with heavenly nectar, melted and moistened the earth with its fragrance. A shoot, gradually driven through the soil with roots, rose up as frankincense and broke through the mound with its peak.

"But Clytie—though love could excuse her grief and grief her betrayal—the author of light visited her no more and put an end to his desire for her. From that time she wasted away, used madly by love. Impatient of the nymphs and under open sky night and day, she sat naked on the bare ground, unkempt with loose hair. For nine days, without water and food, she fed her fast with pure dew and her own tears alone. She didn't move from the ground. She only watched the face of the departing god and turned her own face toward him.

"They say her limbs stuck to the ground, and livid pallor changed part of her color to bloodless plants. Part is red. A flower most like a violet covers her face. She, though held by the root, turns toward the Sun and, changed, preserves her love."

She'd spoken, and the marvelous deed had seized their ears. Some denied it could have happened. Some said true gods could do all things. But Bacchus wasn't among them.

---

Alcithoe was asked for her turn after the sisters fell silent. She, running her shuttle through the threads of the standing loom, said:

"I'll pass over the well-known loves of the shepherd Daphnis of Ida, whom a nymph's anger at her rival turned into stone—so great is the pain that burns lovers. Nor do I speak how Sithon once, by a changed law of nature, was ambiguous—now man, now woman. You too, now diamond, once most faithful to young Jupiter, Celmis, and the Curetes born from copious rain, and Crocon changed with Smilax into small flowers—these I pass over. I'll hold minds with sweet novelty.

"Learn why Salmacis is infamous, why she weakens with bad waters those who are strong and softens touched limbs. The cause is hidden, but the spring's power is most famous.

"The nymphs raised in Idaean caves a boy born to the divine Cytherean from Mercury. In his face, mother and father could be recognized. He took his name from them too. When he'd first completed three sets of five years, he left his father's mountains and, Ida his nurse abandoned, he rejoiced to wander through unknown places, to see unknown rivers—eagerness lessening labor.

"He also went to Lycian cities and Caria neighboring Lycia. Here he saw a pool transparent to its lowest bottom with clear water. No marsh reed was there, nor barren sedge, nor rush with sharp point. The liquid was clear. Yet the pool's edges were surrounded by living turf and ever-green grass.

"A nymph lived there, but one not fit for hunting nor accustomed to bend the bow nor to compete in running—the only naiad not known to swift Diana. Often, they say, her sisters told her:

"'Salmacis, either take up a javelin or painted quiver and mix your leisure with harsh hunting!' But she didn't take up a javelin or painted quiver, nor did she mix her leisure with harsh hunting. Instead, she'd bathe her beautiful limbs in her own spring, often draw down her hair with a Cytoran comb, and consult the reflected water about what would suit her.

"Now, wrapped in translucent garment, she'd lie on soft leaves or soft grass. Often she'd pick flowers. And then too she happened to be picking them when she saw the boy and desired to have what she'd seen.

"Yet she didn't approach, though she hurried to approach, until she'd composed herself, inspected her garments, arranged her expression, and deserved to seem beautiful. Then she began to speak thus:

"'O boy most worthy to be believed a god—if you're a god, you could be Cupid. If you're mortal, blessed are those who begot you, and your brother is fortunate, and truly fortunate is your sister, if you have one, and the nurse who gave you her breasts. But far, far more blessed than all is she, if there's any betrothed to you, if you'll consider any worthy of the torch. If there's anyone, let my pleasure be secret. If there's none, let me be the one, and let us enter the same chamber.'

"The naiad fell silent from these words. The boy's blush marked his face. He didn't know what love was, but blushing became him too. This was the color of fruit hanging from a tree in sun, or tinted ivory, or of red beneath whiteness when bronze sounds as help in vain for the eclipsed moon.

"To the nymph endlessly seeking at least sisterly kisses and now bringing hands to his ivory neck, he said, 'Will you stop, or will I flee and leave you along with this place?'

"Salmacis was frightened and said, 'I grant these places free to you, stranger,' and pretended to leave with turned step. Even then looking back, hidden and concealed in the thicket's forest, she crouched with bent knee. But he, obviously thinking himself unwatched in the empty grass, went here and there and, in the playful water, dipped the tops of his feet and soles to the ankle.

"Without delay, captured by the mild water's warmth, he removed the soft garments from his tender body. Then truly she was pleased, and burning with desire for his naked form, Salmacis blazed. The nymph's eyes also flamed—not otherwise than when the Sun, most shining in pure orb, is reflected back in a mirror's opposite image. She scarcely endured delay, scarcely now put off her joys. Now she wanted to embrace, now she scarcely contained herself, mad.

"He, swift, slapped his cupped palms against his body and leaped into the water and, moving alternating arms, shone through in the clear water—as if someone covered ivory figures or white lilies with clear glass.

"'I've won and he's mine!' the naiad cried out and, all clothing thrown far away, plunged into the middle waves and held him struggling, snatched kisses from him fighting, thrust hands beneath, touched unwilling breasts, and now clung to the youth on this side, now on that.

"Finally, though he strained against her and wanted to slip away, she wrapped around him like a serpent that the royal bird seizes and carries high. Hanging, it binds his head and feet and winds its tail around his spreading wings—or as ivy usually weaves long trunks, or as an octopus, when it's seized an enemy beneath the waves, holds it with tentacles sent out from every side.

"The descendant of Atlas persisted and denied the nymph her hoped joys. She pressed close and, with her whole body joined, clung just as she was and said, 'Though you fight, scoundrel, you won't escape. So, gods, command, and may no day separate him from me or me from him!'

"Her prayers found their gods. For the two bodies, mixed, were joined and one face was put upon them. As when someone grafts bark onto branches and sees them, growing, join and mature together, so when their limbs united in tenacious embrace, they weren't two, and their form was double. Neither female could be said nor boy—they seemed neither and both.

"So when Hermaphroditus saw that the clear waters into which he'd descended as male had made him half-male and that his limbs had been softened in them, stretching out hands but now no longer with a man's voice, he said:

"'Grant gifts to your son—both father and mother—to one who bears the name of both: whoever comes as a man into this spring, may he leave half-male and suddenly soften when the water touches him!'

"Both moved parents made the words of their two-formed son binding and stained the spring with unholy drug."

The end was to her words, and still Minyas' offspring pressed on with work and spurned the god and profaned his festival, when suddenly drums, though not visible, resounded with hoarse sounds, and the flute with curved horn and tinkling bronze sounded. Myrrh and crocus smelled sweet.

---

A thing greater than belief—the looms began to grow green, and the hanging cloth to leaf out in ivy's form. Part went into vines, and what just now had been threads changed into vine-tendrils. Vine leaves came out from the warp. Purple gave its gleam to painted grapes.

And now the day had passed, and time approached that you could call neither darkness nor light, but still the boundary of doubtful night with light. Suddenly the roof seemed to shake and lamps seemed to burn with oil and the house to glow with ruddy fires and false images of savage beasts to howl.

For some time now the sisters hid through the smoky dwelling, and in different places they avoided the fires and light. While they sought darkness, a membrane stretched over their small limbs and enclosed their arms with thin wing. The darkness didn't allow them to know by what method they'd lost their old shape. No feather lifted them, yet they supported themselves on translucent wings. When they tried to speak, they sent out the tiniest voice in proportion to their bodies and made complaints with light squeaking. They frequented roofs, not forests. Hating light, they fly at night and take their name from the late evening.

---

Then truly Bacchus' power was memorable throughout all Thebes, and his aunt everywhere narrated the great strength of the new god. Of so many sisters, she alone was without grief except what her sisters had made. Juno saw her with lofty spirits from her children and marriage to Athamas and her foster-god, and couldn't bear it.

She said to herself: "Could a son born from a concubine change the Maeonian sailors and plunge them in the sea and give a mother her son's vitals to be torn and cover the triple Minyeides with new wings—will Juno be able to do nothing but weep unavenged sorrows? Is that enough for me? Is this my only power?

"He himself teaches what I should do (it's right to be taught even by an enemy), and he's shown enough and more than enough what madness can do by Pentheus' slaughter. Why shouldn't Ino be goaded and go through examples related to her own madness?"

There's a downward path, gloomy with deadly yew. It leads to the infernal seats through mute silence. Sluggish Styx exhales mists, and fresh shades descend there and ghosts of those who've had funerals. Pallor and winter hold the neglected places widely. New shades don't know where the path is that leads to the Stygian city, where the fierce palace of black Dis is.

The city has a thousand entrances with capacity and gates open everywhere. As the sea from all earth receives rivers, so that place receives all souls and isn't too small for any population nor feels a crowd approaching. Bloodless shades without body or bones wander. Some frequent the forum, some the dwelling of the lower tyrant, some pursue some arts, imitations of ancient life.

Juno, daughter of Saturn, endured going there, her heavenly seat abandoned—so much did she give to hatred and anger. When she entered and the threshold, pressed by her sacred body, groaned, three-headed Cerberus raised his three mouths and gave three barks at once. She called the sisters born of Night, a grave and implacable power.

They sat before the prison's doors closed with adamant and combed black snakes from their hair. When they recognized her among the shadows of darkness, the goddesses rose. It's called the wicked seat. Tityos offered his vitals to be torn and was stretched over nine acres. You, Tantalus, seized no waters, and the tree that loomed fled. Either you seek or push the stone about to return, Sisyphus. Ixion turned and followed and fled himself. The Belids, who dared to plot death for their male cousins, continually sought again the waters they'd lose.

When Saturn's daughter had seen all these with fierce gaze, and before all Ixion, but looking back from him at Sisyphus, she said, "Why does he from his brothers endure perpetual punishment while proud Athamas' rich palace has him—he who along with his wife always scorned me?"

She explained the causes of her hatred and journey, and what she wanted. What she wanted was that Cadmus' palace shouldn't stand and that the Furies would drag Athamas into crime. She mixed command, promises, and prayers into one and urged the goddesses.

When Juno had spoken thus, Tisiphone, disturbed as she was, moved her gray hair and threw back obstructing snakes from her face and said: "There's no need for long circumlocutions. Consider done whatever you command. Desert this unlovable kingdom and return to heaven's better air."

Juno returned happy. As she was preparing to enter heaven, Iris, daughter of Thaumas, purified her with sprinkled waters.

Without delay, troublesome Tisiphone took up a torch soaked with blood and put on a robe red with flowing gore and girded herself with a twisted snake and left her home. Grief accompanied her going, and Terror and Fear and Madness with trembling face.

She stood in the threshold. The doorposts of the Aeolian palace are said to have trembled, and pallor infected the maple doors, and the sun fled the place. The wife was terrified by the portents, Athamas was terrified, and they were preparing to leave the dwelling. The unlucky Fury stood in the way and blocked the entrance.

Stretching her arms, knotted with viperous coils, she shook her hair. The moved snakes sounded. Some lay on her shoulders, some slipped around her breast, giving hisses and vomiting gore and flashing their tongues.

Then she tore two snakes from the middle of her hair and, seizing them with plague-bearing hand, hurled them. But they wandered through Ino's and Athamas' robes, breathing heavy breaths. They brought no wounds to limbs—the mind is what felt the terrible blows.

She'd also brought with her monstrous liquid poisons: foam from Cerberus' mouth and the venom of the Echidna and wandering errors and blindness of mind and crime and tears and rage and love of slaughter—all ground together and mixed with fresh blood, cooked in a hollow bronze cauldron, stirred with green hemlock.

While they were afraid, she poured furious poison into the chest of both and moved their innermost hearts. Then, waving her torch through the same circle many times, she pursued fires swiftly with moving flames. So, victorious and powerful in her commands, she returned to great Dis' empty kingdom and ungirded the snake she'd put on.

Immediately the Aeolid, raving in the middle of his hall, shouted, "Hey, companions, spread nets in these woods! Here I just saw a lioness with twin offspring," and, mad, he followed his wife's tracks like a beast's. From his mother's lap he snatched Learchus, laughing and stretching his little arms, and, like a sling, whirled the infant twice and three times through the air and savagely dashed his baby face on hard stone.

Then finally his mother, stirred—whether grief did this or the poison's cause that had been scattered—howled out and, not sane, fled with loosened hair, and carrying you, little Melicertes, in naked arms, she sounded "Euhoe Bacchus!" At Bacchus' name Juno laughed and said, "May your foster-child grant you these uses!"

A cliff hung over the waters. The lowest part was hollowed by waves and defended the covered waters from rain. The top was rigid and extended its forehead to the open sea. Ino (madness had made her strong) seized this and, slowed by no fear, cast herself over the sea with her burden. The struck wave glowed white.

But Venus, pitying her undeserving granddaughter's labors, coaxed her uncle thus: "O power of waters, whose power, second to heaven, yielded to Neptune, great things indeed I ask, but pity my people whom you see tossed in the immense Ionian, and add them to your gods. I too have some favor with the sea, if indeed I was once formed from foam condensed in the deep and my Greek name remains from it."

Neptune nodded to her prayer and took from them what was mortal and imposed revered majesty and changed their name and appearance together, and called the god with his mother Leucothoe Palaemon.

---

The Sidonian companions, as much as they could, followed the footprints and saw the last tracks on the rock. Not doubting her death, they beat the Cadmean house with their palms and tore their hair with their clothing, and made accusation against the goddess as too unjust and too savage to a rival.

Juno didn't bear their insults and said, "I'll make you yourselves the greatest memorials of my savagery." The deed followed the words. For she who had been especially dutiful said, "I'll follow the queen into the waters," and about to give a leap, she couldn't move anywhere and stuck, fastened to the rock.

Another, when she tried to strike her breast with accustomed beating, felt her attempted arms had stiffened. Another, as she happened to have stretched hands into the sea's waves, became stone—a stone hand stretched to the same waves. You'd see this one's fingers suddenly hardened in her hair as she tore her seized head.

In whatever gesture each was caught, she stuck in that. Some became birds, which even now in that gulf skim the waters with their Ismenid wings.

Agenor's son didn't know his daughter and small grandson were sea gods. Defeated by grief and the series of disasters and the many portents he'd seen, the founder left his city, as if the fortune of the place, not his own, pressed him. Driven by long wanderings, he reached Illyrian borders with his fugitive wife.

And now, heavy with troubles and years, as they retraced their house's first fates and reviewed their labors in conversation, Cadmus said:

"Was that sacred serpent I pierced with my spear sacred when I went from Sidon and scattered the viper's teeth, new seeds, over the ground? If the gods' care avenges it with such sure anger, I myself pray to be stretched as a serpent into a long belly."

He spoke, and as a serpent he was stretched into a long belly. He felt scales growing on his hardened skin and black spots varying his bluish body. He fell prone on his chest, and his legs, joined into one, gradually tapered to a smooth point.

His arms still remained. What remained as arms he stretched out and, with tears flowing through still-human face, said, "Come, O wife, come, most miserable! While something remains of me, touch me and take my hand while it's still a hand, while the snake doesn't possess all."

He indeed wanted to speak more, but suddenly his tongue was split in two, and words didn't suffice for his will. Whenever he prepared to make some complaints, he hissed. This voice nature left him.

His wife, striking her naked breast with her hand, cried out, "Cadmus, stay! Remove yourself, unlucky one, from these monsters! Cadmus, what's this? Where are your feet, where are shoulders and hands and color and face and—while I speak—everything? Why don't you too, heavenly ones, turn me into the same serpent?"

She'd spoken. He licked his wife's face and went into her dear lap, as if he recognized it, and gave embraces and sought the neck he knew.

Whoever was present (companions were present) was terrified. But she stroked the smooth neck of the crested dragon, and suddenly there were two and, with joined coil, they crept until they entered the hiding places of a nearby grove.

Even now they neither flee people nor harm with wounds, and, peaceful, they remember what they were before.

---

But still a great consolation for their changed form was given to both by their grandson, whom conquered India worshiped, whom Achaia celebrated with established temples. Only Abantid Acrisius, born from the same origin, remained, who shut him from the walls of his Argolic city and bore arms against the god and didn't think he was Jupiter's race. Nor did he think Perseus was Jupiter's, whom Danaë had conceived in the golden rain.

Soon, however, Acrisius (so great is truth's presence) repented both having violated the god and having not acknowledged his grandson. One was already placed in heaven. But the other, carrying the memorable spoils of the viper-haired monster, was cleaving the air with whirring wings.

While victorious he hung over Libyan sands, bloody drops fell from the Gorgon's head. The earth received these and brought them to life as various snakes. From this, that land is crowded with hostile serpents.

From there, driven through immense space by discordant winds, now here, now there like a watery cloud, he was carried and from high heaven, withdrawn far away, looked down on lands and flew over the whole world. Three times he saw the frozen Bears, three times the Crab's claws. Often he was carried beneath the west, often to the east.

And now with day falling, fearing to trust himself to night, he stopped in the western world, the kingdom of Atlas, and sought brief rest until the Morning Star should call Aurora's fires, Aurora the daily chariot.

Here was Atlas, son of Iapetus, surpassing all men in huge body. This king ruled the farthest land and the sea that received the Sun's panting horses and their tired axles beneath its waters.

A thousand flocks and as many herds wandered for him through the grass, and no neighborhood pressed the ground. Tree leaves shining with radiant gold covered branches of gold and fruit of gold.

"Guest," Perseus said to him, "if glory of great race touches you, Jupiter is the author of my race. If you're an admirer of deeds, you'll admire ours. I seek hospitality and rest."

He remembered an old oracle. Themis of Parnassus had given this oracle: "A time will come, Atlas, when your tree will be despoiled of gold, and a son born of Jupiter will have the title of this booty."

Fearing this, Atlas had enclosed his orchard with solid walls and had given it to a huge dragon to guard and kept all outsiders from his borders. To this one too he said, "Go far away, lest the glory of deeds you falsely claim be far from you, and Jupiter be far from you!"

He added violence to threats and tried with hands to expel him, hesitating and mixing brave words with calm ones. Inferior in strength (for who would be equal to Atlas' strength?), he said, "Well then, since your gratitude for me is small, receive a gift!" And, himself turned backward, from the left side he held forth Medusa's squalid face.

As great as he was, Atlas became a mountain. For his beard and hair went into forests, his shoulders and hands were ridges, what before had been his head was the peak on the mountain's top, his bones became stone. Then, grown tall in all parts, he increased to immense size (thus you, gods, ordained), and all heaven with all its stars rested on him.

Hippotes' son had shut the winds in their Aetnaean prison, and the Morning Star, brightest admonisher of work, had risen high in the sky. He bound wings again to his feet on each side and girded himself with his curved weapon and cut the clear air with moving sandals.

With countless nations left around and below, he saw the Ethiopian peoples and Cepheus' fields. There unjust Ammon had ordered Andromeda to pay undeserved punishment for her mother's tongue. When the Abantid saw her with arms bound to hard rocks—except that light breeze had moved her hair and warm tears flowed from her eyes—he'd have thought she was a marble work. Unknowing, he drew fires and was amazed and, seized by the image of the beauty he saw, he almost forgot to beat his wings in air.

When he stopped, he said, "O maiden not worthy of these chains but of those by which eager lovers are joined to each other, reveal to me asking your name and your land's and why you wear bonds."

At first she was silent and didn't dare address a man, a maiden. With modest hands she'd have hidden her face if she hadn't been bound. She filled her eyes with welling tears as she could. When he insisted more, lest she seem unwilling to confess her own faults, she revealed her name and her land's and how great her mother's confidence in her beauty had been.

She hadn't yet recounted everything when the wave roared and a monster came from the immense sea and loomed and possessed the wide water beneath its chest. The maiden cried out. Her father, mournful, and with him her mother were present—both miserable but she more justly. They brought no help but worthy-for-the-time weeping and lamentation and clung to the bound body.

Then the stranger said, "There can be long time for tears remaining for you. The hour for bringing help is brief. If I, Perseus born of Jupiter and her whom Jupiter, enclosed, filled with fertile gold, Perseus conqueror of the snake-haired Gorgon and one who dared to go through the airy air on beaten wings—if I should seek her, I'd certainly be preferred as son-in-law to all. To such great gifts I try to add merit too, if the gods favor. I bargain that she be mine, saved by my courage."

They accept the terms (for who would hesitate?) and beg and promise beyond that a kingdom as dowry, the parents.

Look—as a ship, driven with fixed prow, furrows the waters, driven by young men's sweating arms, so the beast with its chest's impact pushed waves aside. It was as far from the rocks as a Balearic sling can send lead through the middle of the sky when suddenly the youth, feet pushing from earth, shot high up into the clouds.

When his shadow was seen in the sea's surface, the beast raged at the shadow it saw. As Jupiter's bird, when it's seen a dragon in empty field offering its dark backs to the Sun, seizes it from behind lest it turn back its savage jaws and fixes eager talons in the scaly neck—so, sent headlong through empty space in swift flight, Perseus pressed the beast's back and, on its roaring right shoulder, Inachus' descendant plunged iron up to the curved barb.

Wounded by the heavy wound, now it lifted itself high in air, now it plunged under water, now it turned like a fierce boar that a surrounding crowd of dogs terrifies. He fled the eager bites with swift wings. Where it lay open, now the back covered with hollow shells, now the sides' ribs, now where the tail thinned out into fish, he struck with his curved sword.

The beast vomited mixed waves with red blood from its mouth. His wings grew heavy with spray. Perseus no longer dared trust his soaked sandals. He saw a rock that stood up with its highest peak from the still water, covered by the moved sea. Leaning on it and holding the cliff's first ridge with his left hand, three and four times he drove the repeated iron through its vitals.

Shores and the gods' homes above filled with applause and shouting. They rejoiced and greeted him as son-in-law and helper and savior of their house—Cassiope and father Cepheus confessed it. The maiden walked forth, freed from chains, the prize and cause of his labor.

He himself washed his victorious hands in drawn water. And lest the snake-bearing head harm the hard sand, he softened the ground with leaves and spread shoots born under water and placed Medusa Phorcys' daughter's face upon them.

The fresh shoot, still alive and with absorbent pith, seized the monster's power and at its touch hardened and received new stiffness in branches and leaves. The sea nymphs tried the marvelous thing on many more shoots and rejoiced that the same thing happened, and they repeated seeds cast through the waves. Even now the same nature remained for coral—that they take hardness from air and that what was a shoot in water becomes stone above water.

To three gods he built three altars from turf: the left to Mercury, the right to you, warrior maiden, Jupiter's altar in the middle. A cow was sacrificed to Minerva, a calf to the wing-footed one, a bull to you, highest of gods.

Immediately he seized Andromeda and the reward of such a deed without dowry. Hymenaeus and Amor shake torches before them. Fires are sated with generous fragrances. Garlands hang from roofs, and everywhere lyres and flutes and songs—happy proofs of joyful spirits—sound. Golden halls, opened wide, stand fully open. Beautiful with splendid preparation, Cepheus' nobles enter the king's banquet.

After they'd performed the feast and spread their spirits with generous Bacchus' gift, Lyncides asked about the customs and nature of places and the manner and spirit of the men. When one instructed him, "Now, most brave one," he said, "tell, I pray, Perseus, with what courage and by what arts you bore off the head with snake hair."

The Agenoreid told that beneath cold Atlas there lay a place safe with the protection of solid mass. At its entrance lived twin sisters, the Phorcids, who shared the use of one eye. This he, by clever guile, stealthily captured with substituted hand while it was being passed. Then through remote, hidden places and rocks bristling with rough forests, he reached the Gorgons' homes. And throughout fields and paths he saw shapes of men and beasts changed to flint from seeing Medusa herself.

Yet he himself had looked at horrid Medusa's form in the bronze of the shield his left hand bore, reflected back. While heavy sleep held her and her snakes, he snatched the head from her neck. And wing-swift Pegasus and his brother were born from their mother's blood.

He added too the not-false dangers of his long journey—what seas, what lands he'd seen from on high, and what stars he'd touched with beaten wings. Yet he fell silent before expected.

One of the nobles' number asked, inquiring why alone of the sisters she'd worn snakes mixed in alternating hair. The guest said:

"Since you ask what's worthy of telling, receive the cause of what you've asked. She was most famous in beauty and the envious hope of many suitors. Of all her, no part was more conspicuous than her hair. I met one who said he'd seen her. They say the sea's ruler violated her in Minerva's temple. Jupiter's daughter turned away and covered her chaste face with her aegis. And lest this go unpunished, she changed the Gorgon's hair into foul snakes. Even now, to terrify stupefied enemies with fear, she bears on her opposing chest the snakes she made."