And now the Argonauts were cutting through the sea in their Pagasaean ship. They had seen Phineus, who drags out his wretched old age in perpetual night, and the sons born of the North Wind had driven the bird-women from the old man's face. After enduring many trials under famous Jason, they had finally reached the swift waters of muddy Phasis.

While they approach the king and demand the fleece of Phrixus, and the Argonauts are given a law of terrible labors, meanwhile the daughter of Aeetes conceives a powerful flame. After she struggled for a long time but couldn't defeat her madness with reason, she said: "In vain do you resist, Medea! Some god is working against you. It would be strange if this weren't—or something very like it—what people call love. Why else do my father's commands seem too harsh to me? They are too harsh! Why do I fear that this man—whom I've only just now seen—might die? What's the cause of such great fear? Shake off the flames you've conceived in your virgin heart, if you can, poor girl! If I could, I'd be saner! But a new force drags me against my will, and desire urges one thing, my mind another. I see what's better and approve it, but I follow what's worse. Why do you burn for a stranger, royal maiden, and imagine marriage to someone from another world? This land too can give you someone to love. Whether he lives or dies lies with the gods. Yet let him live! I can pray for that even without love—for what has Jason done wrong? Who, unless cruel, wouldn't be moved by Jason's youth, his lineage, his courage? Who—even if all else were lacking—wouldn't be moved by his face? He's certainly moved my heart. But unless I bring help, he'll be blasted by the breath of bulls, he'll fight against his own crop—enemies born from the earth—or he'll be given as savage prey to the greedy dragon. If I allow this, then I'll confess I was born of a tigress, that I carry iron and rocks in my heart! Why don't I just watch him die and make my eyes guilty by seeing it? Why don't I urge on the bulls against him, the fierce earth-born men, the sleepless dragon? May the gods will better things! Though these aren't things to pray for—these are things for me to do.

"But should I betray my father's kingdom, and some stranger be saved by my help, so that—safe because of me—he can set sail without me and become another woman's husband, while I, Medea, am left to punishment? If he can do this, if he can prefer another to me, let the ingrate die! But there's no such look in him, no such nobility in his spirit, no such grace of form that I should fear betrayal or that he'd forget what I deserve. He'll give his pledge first, and I'll compel the gods to witness our pact. Why do you fear when you're safe? Prepare yourself and banish all delay! Jason will always owe himself to you. He'll join himself to you in solemn ceremony, and you'll be celebrated as savior by crowds of mothers through the Greek cities.

"So shall I leave my sister and brother and father and the gods and my native land, carried off by the winds? Yes—my father is savage, yes—my land is barbarous, my brother is still an infant. The prayers of my sister stand with me, and the greatest god is within me! I won't be leaving great things—I'll be following great things: the glory of saving Greek youth, knowledge of a better land and cities whose fame flourishes even here, the culture and arts of those places, and him whom I'd wish to exchange for all the riches the whole world possesses—the son of Aeson. With him as husband I'll be called blessed, dear to the gods, and I'll touch the stars with my head. What of it, that they say certain mountains clash together in the middle of the waves, and that Charybdis, enemy of ships, now swallows the strait, now spews it back, and that savage Scylla, girdled with fierce dogs, barks in the Sicilian deep? Surely holding what I love, clinging to Jason's embrace, I'll be carried across the long seas. I'll fear nothing while embracing him—or if I fear anything, I'll fear only for my husband."

"Do you call it marriage, Medea, and impose fine names on your guilt? No—look at how great a crime you're undertaking, and, while you can, escape the sin!"

She spoke, and before her eyes stood righteousness and piety and shame, and already defeated Cupid was turning his back.

---

She was going to the ancient altars of Hecate, daughter of Perses, which a shaded grove and secluded forest concealed. Already she was strong, and her passion had been driven back and withdrawn, when she sees the son of Aeson and the extinguished flame flared up again. Her cheeks blushed, and heat kindled in all her face. Just as a spark that lay small beneath banked ash is accustomed to take on fuel from the winds and to grow when stirred and rise again to its old strength, so her now-gentle love, which you would have thought was languishing, when she saw the young man, blazed up at the sight of him in person. And by chance Aeson's son was more beautiful than usual that day—you could forgive the lover. She gazes, and as if seeing his face for the first time, she holds her eyes fixed and, out of her mind, doesn't think she's looking at a mortal face, and she doesn't turn away from him.

When the stranger began to speak and took her hand and begged for help in a submissive voice and promised marriage, she said with flowing tears: "I see what I'm doing. It won't be ignorance of the truth that deceives me, but love. You'll be saved by my gift. Once saved, give me what you promise!" He swears by the sacred rites of the three-formed goddess and by whatever divine power was in that grove, and by the father of his father-in-law who sees all future events, and by his own success and such great dangers. When she believed him, she immediately received the enchanted herbs and learned their use, and went back happily to her dwelling.

---

The next Aurora had driven away the glittering stars. The people gather at the sacred field of Mars and take their places on the ridges. The king himself sits in the middle of the throng, distinguished by his purple robe and ivory scepter.

Look—the bronze-footed bulls breathe fire from their adamantine nostrils, and the grass they touch burns from their vapors. Just as full furnaces are accustomed to roar, or when flint stones dissolved in an earthen forge take on fire from the sprinkling of liquid water, so their breasts, rolling enclosed flames within, and their scorched throats resound. Yet Aeson's son goes to meet them. They turned their terrible faces toward the face of the approaching man, their horns tipped with iron, and they struck the dusty ground with cloven hooves and filled the place with smoke-making bellows.

The Argonauts froze with fear. He goes forward and doesn't feel their panting fires—so much can drugs do! He strokes their hanging dewlaps with a bold hand, forces them under the yoke, compels them to drag the heavy weight of the plow and to break the field unaccustomed to iron. The Colchians marvel. The Argonauts increase their courage with shouts. Then he takes up the bronze helmet and scatters the serpent's teeth in the plowed fields. The earth softens the seeds steeped in powerful poison, and the sown teeth grow and become new bodies. Just as a baby takes on human form in its mother's womb and is put together there through its own stages and doesn't come out into the common air until mature, so when the image of a man was completed in the womb of the pregnant earth, it rises in the fertile field, and—what's more amazing—it shakes the weapons born with it at the same time.

When they saw them preparing to hurl spears with sharpened points at the Haemonian youth's head, the Greeks lowered their faces and spirits in fear. She too was terrified—she who had made him safe. When she saw the young man alone attacked by so many enemies, she grew pale and suddenly sat down cold and bloodless, and lest the plants she gave might be too weak, she sang a helping spell and called upon secret arts.

He hurled a heavy stone into the middle of the enemies and turned the war repelled from himself onto them. The earth-born brothers perish through mutual wounds and fall in civil battle. The Greeks congratulate him and hold the victor and cling to him with eager embraces. You too, barbarian girl, wanted to embrace the victor—shame blocked your intent, but you would have embraced him if reverence for your reputation hadn't held you back. What's permitted, you do: you rejoice with silent feeling and give thanks in songs and to the gods who authored these things.

---

There remains the task of putting to sleep with herbs the ever-watchful dragon, who, distinguished by his crest and three tongues and hooked teeth, was the dreadful guardian of the golden tree. After he sprinkled him with the plant of Lethean juice and spoke three times the words that bring peaceful sleep, which calm the troubled sea and stop rushing rivers, sleep came to eyes that didn't know it, and the Aesonian hero took possession of the gold and, proud of his spoil, carrying with him the giver of the gift—his other spoil—touched as victor the Iolcan harbors with his wife.

---

The mothers of Haemonia brought gifts for their recovered sons, and the aged fathers brought them, and they melted heaped incense in the flame, and the sacrificial victim with gold laid on its horns fell to fulfill vows. But Aeson was absent from those giving thanks, already closer to death and worn out with old age.

Then Aeson's son said: "O wife, to whom I confess I owe my safety—although you've given me everything and the sum of your deserving has exceeded belief—if however your spells can do this (for what can't spells do?), take years from mine and add the taken years to my parent!" And he couldn't hold back tears.

She was moved by the piety of his request, and the mind of abandoned Aeetes entered her thoughts—so different from this. Yet not confessing such feelings, she said: "What crime has fallen from your mouth, husband? So do I seem able to transfer any portion of your life to someone else? Hecate wouldn't allow this, nor do you ask what's fair. But I'll try to give a greater gift than what you ask, Jason. By my art we'll attempt to restore your father-in-law's long life, not by calling back your years—if only the three-formed goddess will help and be present and approve of my great daring."

Three nights were lacking before the horns would come completely together and make a circle. After the moon shone fullest and looked upon the earth with solid image, she goes out of the house dressed in loose robes, her feet bare, her hair spread bare over her shoulders, and she carries wandering steps through the mute silences of midnight, unaccompanied. Deep rest had released people and birds and beasts. The hedges made no murmur. The motionless leaves are silent, the moist air is silent. Only the stars sparkle. Stretching her arms toward them, she turns herself three times, three times sprinkles her hair with water taken from the river, and three times opens her mouth with howls, and kneeling on the hard earth she says:

"Night, most faithful to secrets, and you golden stars who succeed the fires of day along with the moon, and you, three-headed Hecate, who comes as witness to my undertakings and helper to the songs and arts of magicians, and you, Earth, who furnish magicians with powerful herbs, and breezes and winds and mountains and rivers and lakes, and all gods of the groves, all gods of night, be present! By your help, when I wished, rivers have returned to their sources while their banks wondered, I calm the stirred seas and stir the calm with my song, I drive away clouds and bring clouds in, I banish winds and call them forth, I break vipers' jaws with words and spells, and I move living rocks and oaks torn from their earth and forests, and I command mountains to tremble and the ground to bellow and ghosts to come forth from tombs! You too, Moon, I draw down, though Temesaean bronzes labor to diminish your distress. My grandfather's chariot too grows pale from my song, Aurora grows pale from my poisons! You dulled the flames of the bulls for me and pressed their necks—impatient of the burden—under the curved plow, you gave fierce wars to the serpent-born against themselves and put the guardian unaccustomed to sleep to sleep and sent the gold to Greek cities with its protector deceived. Now I need juices by which renewed old age may return to its flower and gather back its first years—and you will give them. For the stars haven't shone in vain, nor has my chariot arrived in vain, drawn by the necks of winged dragons."

The chariot was there, sent down from the sky. As soon as she mounted and stroked the bridled necks of the dragons and shook the light reins with her hands, she was swept aloft and looked down on Thessalian Tempe below and directed the serpents to certain regions. She examines the herbs that Ossa bore and lofty Pelion, and Othrys and Pindus and Olympus greater than Pindus, and she tears up some that please her partly by the root, partly cuts with the curve of a bronze sickle. Many plants from the banks of Apidanus pleased her too, many from Amphrysus, and you weren't exempt, Enipeus. The Peneus waves and the Spercheus waters contributed something too, and the rush-grown shores of Boebe. She plucked also the life-giving grass from Euboean Anthedon, not yet famous for the changed body of Glaucus.

And now the ninth day and ninth night had seen her surveying all the fields with her chariot and the dragons' wings, when she returned. The dragons had not been touched except by the scent, and yet they shed the skin of their aged old age. Arriving, she stopped outside the threshold and doors and is covered only by the sky and avoids male contact. She sets up two altars of turf, one on the right for Hecate, one on the left for Youth. After she garlanded these with verbena and wild forest growth, not far off she dug out two trenches in the earth and performs rites. She plunges knives into the throat of a black-fleeced sheep and drenches the open ditches with blood. Then pouring cups of liquid honey on top and pouring cups of warm milk on top, she utters words at the same time and summons the earthly powers and begs the king of shades with his stolen wife not to hurry to cheat the old man's limbs of his soul.

---

After she placated them with prayers and long murmuring, she ordered Aeson's worn-out body to be brought out into the open air, and she stretched him out, dissolved in deep sleep by her spell, on spread grass, like one lifeless. She orders the son of Aeson to go far from there, orders the attendants to go far, and warns them to remove their profane eyes from the mysteries. They flee as ordered. Medea with streaming hair in the manner of Bacchantes circles the blazing altars and dips the many-cleft torches in the ditch of black blood and lights the blood-stained torches on the twin altars and three times purifies the old man with flame, three times with water, three times with sulfur.

Meanwhile the powerful potion placed in the bronze vessel boils and leaps up and whitens with swelling foam. In it she boils roots cut in a Haemonian valley and seeds and flowers and black juices. She adds stones sought from the farthest East and sands that the ebbing Ocean sea has washed. She adds hoar-frost gathered under the full moon and the infamous wings of a screech owl with the flesh itself, and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf accustomed to change its savage looks into a man's face. Nor was there lacking to these things the scaly thin membrane of a Cinyphian water-snake and the liver of a long-lived deer. To these she adds also the egg and head of a crow that has lived nine generations.

After the foreign woman prepared her purpose beyond mortal limits with these and a thousand other nameless things, she stirred everything together with a dry branch of cultivated olive long since dead and mixed top with bottom. Look—the old stick turned in the hot bronze becomes green first, and in a short time puts on leaves and suddenly is laden with ripe olives. Wherever the boiling spewed foam from the hollow bronze and hot drops fell to earth, the ground springs with new growth, and flowers and soft grass rise up.

As soon as Medea saw this, she opened the old man's throat with drawn sword and, allowing the old blood to flow out, filled him with juices. After Aeson drank them—either received through his mouth or through the wound—his beard and hair, setting aside their whiteness, quickly took on black color. Leanness is driven away and flees, pallor and decay depart, the hollow wrinkles are filled out with added flesh, and his limbs grow robust. Aeson marvels and remembers this was himself forty years before.

---

Bacchus had seen from on high the miracle of such a marvel, and reminded that his nurses' years could be restored to them, received this gift from the Colchian woman.

And lest trickery should cease, Medea the Phasian pretends false hatred with her husband and as a suppliant flees to Pelias' threshold. Since he himself is burdened by heavy old age, his daughters receive her. In a short time the cunning Colchian woman captured them with an image of false friendship. While among her greatest services she tells how she removed Aeson's decline and dwells on this part, hope is planted in Pelias' virgin daughters that their parent can grow young again by similar art, and they ask for this and bid her name a price without limit.

For a brief space she's silent and seems to hesitate and keeps the minds of those asking in suspense with feigned seriousness. Soon when she promised: "So that you may have greater confidence in this gift," she said, "the leader of your flock who's the oldest in years among the sheep will become a lamb by my drug."

Immediately a wool-bearer worn out by countless years is dragged forward, his curved horn bent around his hollow temples. After she pierced his withered throat with a Haemonian knife and barely stained the blade with a little blood, the witch plunges the sheep's limbs at the same time with powerful juices in a hollow bronze vessel. These diminish the body's parts and burn away the horns, and with the horns the years. A tender bleating is heard from the middle of the bronze. And without delay, while they're still marveling at the bleating, a lamb leaps out and frisks in flight and seeks milk-giving udders.

Pelias' daughters are astonished, and after the promises have shown their truth, then they press all the more urgently. Three times Phoebus had unyoked his horses, plunged in the Spanish river, and on the fourth night the glittering stars were shining, when the deceitful daughter of Aeetes placed pure water and herbs without strength on a swift fire. And now the king in a death-like sleep with relaxed body, and with the king his guards, had sleep that her chants and the power of her magic tongue had given. The daughters, as ordered, had entered the threshold with the Colchian woman and stood around the bed.

"Why do you hesitate now, you sluggish girls? Draw your swords," she said, "and drain the old blood so I may fill the empty veins with youthful blood! In your hands lies your parent's life and age. If you have any piety and don't nurture vain hopes, perform your duty to your father and drive out old age with weapons and let out the corruption by plunging in the blade!"

At these urgings, each one—the more dutiful she is—is first to be undutiful, and to avoid being guilty, she commits a crime. Yet not one of them can watch her own blows. They turn back their eyes and, blinded, give wounds with averted savage hands. He, streaming with blood, still raises his body on his elbow and, half-mangled, tries to rise from the bed, and amid so many swords, stretching out his pale arms, he says: "What are you doing, daughters? What arms you for your parent's death?" Their spirits and hands fell. As he was about to speak more, the Colchian woman cut off his throat with his words and plunged the mangled body in the hot waters.

---

If she hadn't gone into the air on winged serpents, she wouldn't have escaped punishment. She flies high and over shadowy Pelion—dwelling of Philyra—and over Othrys and places famous from the fate of ancient Cerambis: here, lifted into the air on wings by the help of nymphs when the heavy earth was buried under the poured-in sea, he escaped unwetted from Deucalion's flood. She leaves Aeolian Pitane on the left side and the stone likeness of a long dragon, and the Idaean grove where Liber hid his son's theft—the calf—under the false image of a deer, and where Corythus' father is buried in a little sand, and the fields that Maera terrified with strange barking, and Eurypylus' city where the Coan mothers bore horns when Hercules' army departed, and Phoebean Rhodes and the Ialysian Telchines, whose eyes—corrupting everything by their very sight—Jupiter hated and buried under his brother's waves.

She passes too the walls of ancient Ceos, Cartheia, where father Alcidamas was going to marvel that a peaceful dove could be born from his daughter's body. From there she sees the lake of Hyrie and Cycnus' Tempe, which the sudden swan made famous. For there Phylius on the command of a boy had given over tamed birds and a savage lion. Ordered also to conquer a bull, he had conquered it, and angry at the love spurned so many times, he denied the bull as the final prize. The other said indignantly: "You'll wish you'd given it," and leaped from a high cliff. Everyone thought he had fallen. Made a swan, he hung in the air on snowy wings. But his mother Hyrie, not knowing he was saved, melted away in weeping and made a pool from her own name.

Near these lies Pleuron, where Combe the Ophian fled on trembling wings from the wounds of her sons. From there she looks upon the fields of Calaurea, belonging to Leto, which saw the king and his wife, both aware, changed into a bird. On the right is Cyllene, where Menephron was going to lie with his mother in the manner of savage beasts. Far from here she looks back on Cephisus mourning the fate of his grandson, changed by Apollo into a swollen seal, and Eumelos' house mourning his son flying in the air.

At last on viperous wings she reached Pirene of Ephyra. Here in the ancient age old tales spread that mortal bodies were produced from rain-born mushrooms. But after the Colchian woman's new bride burned with poisons and both seas saw the king's house in flames, the impious sword is drenched in the blood of her sons, and the wicked mother, avenged, fled Jason's weapons.

---

Carried from here by Titan's dragons, she enters the Palladian citadel, which saw you, most just Phene, and you, old Periphas, flying equally, and Polypemon's granddaughter supported on new wings. Aegeus receives her here—to be condemned for this one deed—and it's not enough to offer hospitality: he joins her in marriage bond too.

And now Theseus had arrived, his parentage unknown to his parent, he who by his courage had pacified the two-sea Isthmus. For his destruction Medea mixes aconite, which she had long ago brought with her from Scythian shores. They tell that this was born from the teeth of the Echidnaean dog. There's a cave, blind with shadowy opening. There's a sloping path by which the Tirynthian hero dragged resisting Cerberus, who twisted his eyes obliquely away from daylight and gleaming rays, bound in chains of adamant. Driven mad with rabid fury, he filled the air equally with triple barkings and spattered the green fields with white foam. They think this congealed and, getting nourishment from the fertile and productive soil, took on the power to harm. Because this grows hardy on hard rock, country people call it aconite.

This, by his wife's cunning, Aegeus himself as parent offered to his son as to an enemy. Theseus had taken the cup given with an unknowing hand, when his father recognized on the ivory hilt of his sword the marks of his lineage and knocked the crime from his mouth. She escaped death by raising mists through spells.

---

But the father, though he rejoices in his son's safety, is nevertheless astonished that so great a crime could have been committed with so small a margin. He honors the altars with fires and fills the gods with gifts, and axes strike the knotted necks of oxen whose horns are bound with ribbons. No day is said to have dawned more celebrated than that one throughout Athens. The fathers hold banquets, and the common people too, and—their talent loosened by wine—they sing songs: "You, greatest Theseus, Marathon marveled at for the blood of the Cretan bull, and that the Cromyonian farmer plows his fields in safety is your gift and work. The Epidaurian land through you saw the club-bearing offspring of Vulcan fall. The Cephisian shore saw cruel Procrustes. Cerealis Eleusin saw Cercyon's death. That Sinis fell, who used his great strength badly, who could bend tree-branches and used to drive pines from on high to earth to scatter bodies far and wide. The road to Alcathoë, Lelegia's walls, lies safe with Sciron defeated, and earth denies a resting place to the robber's scattered bones, the wave denies his bones a place. Tossed about for a long time, they say antiquity hardened them into rocks: the name Sciron clings to the rocks. If we wanted to count up your honors and your years, your deeds would outweigh your years. For you, bravest one, we undertake public vows, we drink Bacchus' draughts to you!"

The palace resounds with the people's approval and the prayers of those favoring him, and there's no sad place in the whole city.

---

Yet (so much is no pleasure unmixed, and something troubling intervenes in joys), Aegeus didn't receive secure joy at his recovered son. Minos prepares for war. Though he's strong in soldiers, strong in fleet, he's most powerful in a father's anger and avenges Androgeus' death with just weapons. But before war, he acquires friendly forces, and powerful in his swift fleet he roams the seas.

He joins to himself Anaphe and Astypaleia's kingdoms (he won Anaphe by promises, Astypaleia's kingdoms by war). From here humble Myconos and the chalky fields of Cimolus and Syros flowering with thyme and flat Seriphos and marbled Paros, and Siphnos—which impious Arne betrayed—and having received the gold that the greedy woman demanded, she was changed into a bird that even now loves gold, a jackdaw black of feet, clothed in black wings.

But Oliaros and Didyme and Tenos and Andros and Gyaros and Parepethos fertile in gleaming olives didn't help the Cnosian ships. From there on the left side Minos seeks Oenopia, the kingdom of Aeacus. The ancients called it Oenopia, but Aeacus himself called it Aegina from his mother's name.

---

The crowd rushes out and desires to know a man of such great fame. Telamon and Peleus—younger than Telamon—and Phocus, the third son, meet him. Aeacus himself also comes out, slow with the weight of old age, and asks what the reason for his coming is. Reminded of his paternal grief, the ruler of a hundred peoples sighs and gives him this answer:

"I ask you to help with arms taken up for my pious son and be part of my dutiful war. I seek solace for the tomb."

The son of Asopus said to him: "You ask in vain, and things not to be done for my city. For no land is more closely allied with the Cecropids: such are our treaties."

Sad, he departs and says: "Your treaties will cost you dearly," and he thinks it more useful to threaten war than to wage it and spend his strength there.

The Lyctian fleet could still be seen from Oenopia's walls when an Attic ship, driven with full sail, arrives and enters the friendly harbor, carrying Cephalus and at the same time his homeland's commands. The sons of Aeacus, though it was long since they had seen him, still recognized Cephalus and gave hands and led him into their father's house. The conspicuous hero advances, still retaining signs of his old beauty, and holds a branch of his native olive and has two younger in age on the right and left—Clytus and Butes, created by Pallas, the older man holds them.

---

After the first greetings exchanged their words, Cephalus the Cecropid completes his commands and asks for help and recalls the treaty and ancestral rights, and adds that the empire of all Achaia is sought. When eloquence had helped the entrusted cause, Aeacus, leaning his left hand on the head of his scepter, said: "Don't ask for help, but take it, Athens, and don't hesitate—consider the forces this island has as yours, and (O may this condition of my affairs remain!) strength doesn't fail me. I have soldiers to spare, and—thanks to the gods—this is a fortunate time and one I can't excuse."

"May it indeed be so," Cephalus said. "I pray your city may grow in citizens. As I came just now I indeed took joy when such beautiful youth, so equal in age, came to meet me. Yet I miss many I once saw when I was received in your city before."

Aeacus groaned and spoke with sad voice: "A lamentable beginning was followed by better fortune. Would that I could tell you about this without that! Now I'll relate it in order, lest a long digression delay you. Those whom you miss with remembering mind lie as bones and ash, and what a portion of my affairs perished with them! A dire plague fell on my people through the anger of hostile Juno, who hated the lands named for her rival. While it seemed a mortal disease and the cause of such great harmful destruction lay hidden, we fought with the art of healing. But the destruction overcame help, which lay defeated.

"First the sky pressed the earth with thick darkness and trapped sluggish heat in clouds. While the moon filled out its circle with horns joined four times, four times waned and unwove the full circle, deadly southern winds breathed with lethal heat. It's established that the corruption came into springs and pools too, and thousands of snakes wandered through the untilled fields and polluted the rivers with their poisons. The power of the sudden disease was caught first in the destruction of dogs and birds and sheep and cattle and wild beasts. The unlucky plowman marvels that his strong bulls collapse in the middle of work and fall in the middle of the furrow. Wool-bearing flocks give sick bleats. The wool falls off spontaneously and their bodies waste away. The spirited horse, once of great fame in the dust, degenerates from his palms, forgets his old honors, and groans at the manger, about to die an inglorious death. The boar doesn't remember to rage, nor the deer to trust in running, nor the bears to attack strong herds. Languor holds everything. In woods and fields and roads foul bodies lie. The air is corrupted with stenches.

"Strange to say: neither dogs nor greedy birds nor gray wolves touched them. They fell apart, melted, and harm by their breath and spread contagion widely.

"The pestilence reached the wretched farmers with greater loss and ruled in the walls of the great city. First the entrails burn, and redness is the sign of hidden flame, and the drawn breath is fiery. The rough tongue swells, and parched mouths gape for the warm winds, and heavy air is sought with gaping mouth. They can't endure blankets or any coverings, but place their bare breasts on the earth. Nor does the body become cool from the ground—the ground grows hot from the body. Nor is there any physician present. The savage plague breaks out against the healers themselves, and arts harm their practitioners. The closer anyone is and the more faithfully he serves the sick, the more quickly he comes to a share of death. As hope of health has departed and they see the end of the disease in death, they indulge their spirits and have no care for what's useful—for nothing is useful. Everywhere, shame set aside, they cling to fountains and rivers and deep wells, and thirst isn't extinguished before life by drinking. Many, too heavy to rise, die in the very waters. Yet someone drinks even those. Such is the loathing of their hateful beds to the wretched that they leap out, or if strength prevents them from standing, they roll their bodies to the ground and flee their homes, each one. Each one's own house seems deadly to him, and because the cause lies hidden, the place is blamed. You could see some half-dead wandering the roads while they had strength to stand, others weeping and lying on the ground and turning their weary eyes in their final movement. They stretch their limbs toward the stars of heaven, breathing out their spirits here and there, wherever death had caught them.

---

"What was my state of mind then? Wasn't it what it should have been—to hate life and wish to be part of my people? Wherever the gaze of my eyes turned, there was a crowd lying strewn about, just as when rotten apples fall from shaken branches and acorns from the shaken oak. You see a temple opposite, raised on long steps. Jupiter holds it. Who didn't give fruitless incense at those altars? How many times while a spouse says words of prayer for spouse, a father for son, did they end their life at altars not entreated, and a portion of incense was found unconsumed in their hand! How many times were bulls, led to temples while the priest conceives vows and pours hard wine between the horns, fallen without waiting for the wound! When I myself was making sacrifice to Jupiter for myself and homeland and three sons, the victim gave out dread bellowings and suddenly collapsed without any blows and stained the knives beneath with scanty blood. Even the diseased entrails had lost the marks of truth and warnings of the gods: sad diseases penetrate to the viscera. I saw corpses thrown down before sacred doorposts, before the very altars—so death would be more hateful. Some close off breath with a noose and flee fear of death with death and of their own will call on coming fate. Bodies sent to death aren't carried with customary funerals (for the gates couldn't hold the funerals): either they lie on earth unburied or are given without gifts to high pyres. And now there's no reverence, and they fight over pyres and burn in others' fires. There are none to weep. The souls of sons and fathers and youths and old men wander unwept. There's no place for tombs, no tree suffices for fires.

---

"Stunned by such great turmoil of miseries, I said: 'O Jupiter, if they don't tell false tales that you lay with Aegina, Asopus' daughter, and, great father, you're not ashamed to be my parent, either give back my people to me or bury me too in the tomb!' He gave a sign with lightning and favorable thunder. 'I accept, and may these be auspicious signs of your will, I pray!' I said. 'What you give me, I take as an omen.'

"By chance there was nearby a sacred oak of Jupiter with wide-spreading branches, from Dodonean seed. Here we noticed grain-carrying ants in a long column bearing a great burden in their small mouths and keeping to their path along the wrinkled bark. While I marvel at their number, I said: 'Best father, give me as many citizens and fill my empty walls!' The tall oak trembled and gave a sound from its branches moved without wind. My limbs had bristled with trembling fear and my hair stood up. Yet I gave kisses to the earth and to the oak, and I didn't confess I was hoping—yet I was hoping and nourished my prayers in my spirit.

"Night comes, and sleep occupies bodies worn out with cares. Before my eyes the same oak seemed to be present and to bear on its branches as many living creatures as there were branches, and likewise to tremble with movement and scatter its grain-bearing army on the fields beneath. Suddenly they seemed to grow and become larger and larger and to raise themselves from the ground and stand with upright trunk, and to put off leanness and their number of feet and black color and put on human form in their limbs.

"Sleep departs. Awake, I complain about my vision and blame the gods for lack of help. But there was a great murmur in the house, and I seemed to hear the voices of men, now unaccustomed to me. While I suspect these too are part of sleep, Telamon comes in a hurry and with doors thrown open says: 'Father, you'll see greater things than your hope and belief: come out!' I come out. Just as in the image of dream I had seemed to see men, I see such in order and recognize them. They approach and greet their king. I pay vows to Jupiter and divide the city among fresh peoples and the fields vacant of their ancient farmers, and I call them Myrmidons and don't cheat the name of its origin. You've seen their bodies. They have now the character they had before: a thrifty race, patient of labors, tenacious of what's sought and preserving what's sought. These will follow you to wars, equal in years and spirits, as soon as the east wind that brought you happily" (for the east wind had brought him) "has changed to the south."

---

With these and other speeches they filled the long day. The final part of daylight was given to the table, night to sleep. Golden Sun had raised his gleam. The east wind was still blowing and held back the sails for return. Pallas' sons, of whom the elder had greater age, come to Cephalus, and Cephalus and those created by Pallas at the same time come to the king. But the king was still held by deep sleep. Phocus, son of Aeacus, receives them at the threshold, for Telamon and his brother were choosing men for war. Phocus leads the Cecropids into the inner space and beautiful recesses, with whom he sat down himself.

He notices the Aeolid carrying a spear made from an unknown tree, whose point was gold. After a few words amid the conversation, he said: "I'm a lover of forests and hunting wild game, yet I've been wondering for a while from what forest you hold the spear-shaft cut. Certainly if it were ash, it would be tawny in color; if it were cornel, a knot would be in it. I don't know where it's from, but our eyes have not seen a more beautiful throwing weapon."

One of the Attic brothers responds and says: "You'll marvel at its usefulness more than its appearance. It hits whatever it aims at, and chance doesn't control where it's thrown, and it flies back bloody without anyone retrieving it."

Then truly the Nereid youth asks everything—why it is and whence given, who the author of such a gift. He tells what he asks, but it's shameful to tell at what price he obtained it. He's silent, and touched by grief at his lost wife, he speaks with tears welling up:

"This weapon makes me weep, son of a goddess (who would believe it?), and will make me weep for long if the fates give us long life. This destroyed me along with my dear wife. Would that I had always lacked this gift!

---

"It was Procris—if perhaps Orithyia has come more to your ears, the sister of stolen Orithyia. If you wanted to compare the looks and character of the two, she herself was more worthy to be stolen. Her father Erechtheus joined her to me, love joined her to me. I was called happy and I was. The gods didn't see it that way, or perhaps I still would be. The second month was passing after our marriage rites, when Aurora with rosy face saw me as I was spreading nets for horned deer on the summit of ever-flowering Hymettus, in the early morning with darkness driven away, and she seized me against my will. May I be allowed to speak truth with respect to the goddess: though she's beautiful to look at with her rosy face, though she holds the boundaries of day and night, though she's nourished on nectar waters—I loved Procris. Procris was in my heart, Procris always on my lips. I kept bringing up the sacred bonds of our bed and our fresh union and our marriage chamber and the first pledges of the bed I'd left. The goddess was moved and said: 'Stop your complaints, ungrateful man! Have Procris!'—and she added—'if my foreseeing mind is right, you won't want to have had her.' And she sent me back to her, angry.

"As I return and go over what the goddess said, fear began that my wife had not kept her marriage vows well. Her face and age commanded me to believe in adultery, her character forbade me to believe it. Yet I had been away, yet she from whom I was returning was an example of the crime. Yet we lovers fear everything. I resolve to seek what would pain me and to test her chaste faith with gifts. Aurora favors this fear and changes my appearance (I seemed to sense it). Unrecognizable, I enter Palladian Athens and go into the house. The house itself was free from fault and gave signs of chastity and was anxious for its stolen master. Scarcely was access made through a thousand tricks to Erechtheus' daughter. When I saw her, I nearly abandoned my planned tests of her faithfulness. I barely restrained myself from confessing the truth, barely from giving—as I should have—kisses. She was sad—but no one could be more beautiful than her in sadness—and she grieved with longing for her stolen husband. Imagine, Phocus, what beauty was in her, whom sadness itself so became!

"Why should I recount how many times her modest character repelled my attempts, how many times she said: 'I'm kept for one man. Wherever he is, I keep my joys for one.' What sane man wouldn't have had great proof enough of faithfulness with those? I'm not content and fight to make my own wounds, speaking that I'd give vast wealth for a night and increasing my gifts, until finally I forced her to hesitate. I cry out, badly victorious: 'Adulteress, a false seducer is present! I was your true husband! You're caught by me as witness, faithless woman.'

"She says nothing. Conquered only by silent shame, she flees the treacherous threshold with her cruel husband. Offended by me, she hated the whole race of men and wandered in the mountains, devoted to Diana's pursuits. Then fire more violent reached my bones when I was deserted. I begged for pardon and confessed I'd sinned, and that I too could have succumbed to fault with gifts given, if such great gifts had been given. After I confessed this, she—having first avenged her injured modesty—was given back to me and we passed sweet years in harmony. Moreover, as if she'd given a small gift by giving herself, she gives me a dog—her gift—which Cynthia, when she handed it over, had said: 'He'll surpass all in running.' She gives at the same time the spear you see, which we hold in our hands.

"Do you ask what fortune the other gift had? Accept the marvel—you'll be moved by the strangeness of the event!

---

"The son of Laius had solved riddles not understood by earlier minds, and the prophet, forgetful of her puzzles, lay headlong, her obscure words fallen. Immediately another pestilence was sent to Aonian Thebes [surely nurturing Themis doesn't leave such things unavenged!], and many country-dwellers feared the beast to their own and their flocks' destruction. The neighboring youth came and we encircled the wide fields with nets. She, swift with light leap, jumped over the nets and passed over the tops of the stakes' ropes. The leashes were slipped from the dogs, which she fleeing eluded and mocked the gathered pack, no slower than a bird.

"I myself was asked for my Laelaps by great consensus (this was the gift's name). He'd been struggling for a long while to free himself from his bonds and was straining against what held him by his neck. Scarcely had he been released, and now we couldn't know where he was. The warm dust held the traces of his feet. He himself had been snatched from sight. No spear more swift than he nor balls hurled by twisted whirl nor light arrow that goes from a Cretan bow. There's a peak of a central hill that looks out over the fields below. I climb there and catch sight of the strange race: now the beast seems caught, now to withdraw from the very wound. Cunning, she doesn't flee in a straight line and into space, but deceives the mouth of the pursuer and returns in a circle so there won't be momentum for her enemy. He presses close and follows, equal, and like one holding, he doesn't hold and works his jaws in empty air.

"I was turning to help with my spear. While my right hand balances it, while I try to fit my fingers to the thong, I turned my eyes away. When I directed them back again to the same spot—marvel!—I see two marble statues in the middle of the field. You'd think one was fleeing, the other seemed to catch. Clearly some god—if any god was present for them—wanted both to be unconquered in the race."

He fell silent to this point, and Phocus said: "What crime is in the spear itself?" He told the spear's crime thus:

---

"The beginning of our grief, Phocus, is joy. Those I'll relate first. It delights me, O son of Aeacus, to remember that blessed time when I was rightly happy for the first years with my wife, and she was happy with her husband. Mutual care and shared love held us two. She wouldn't have preferred Jove's bed to my love, nor was there any woman who could capture me, not even if Venus herself came. Equal flames burned our hearts.

"Usually when the sun's rays were striking the highest peaks, I used to go hunting into the woods in youthful fashion, and neither servants nor horses nor keen-nosed dogs nor knotted nets used to go with me. I was safe with my spear. But when my right hand had been sated with slaughter of game, I would seek the cool and shade and the breeze that came from the cold valleys. I sought the gentle breeze in the middle heat. I waited for the breeze—that was my rest from labor. 'Breeze' (for I remember) I used to sing, 'may you come and help me and enter my embrace, most welcome one, and—as you do—be willing to relieve the heat by which I'm burned!'

"Perhaps I added more endearments (thus my fate was drawing me). I used to say: 'You are great pleasure to me. You restore and cherish me. You make me love the woods and solitary places. That breath of yours is always caught by my mouth.'

"Someone's ear, deceived by ambiguous words, thought the name of breeze so often called was a nymph's name. He believes a nymph is loved by me. Immediately a rash informer of false crime visits Procris and reports in whispered tongue what he'd heard. Love is a credulous thing. Struck by sudden grief, as it's told to me, she fell. After a long time restored, she called herself wretched, called her fate unfair, and complained about my faith and, stirred by empty crime, she fears what is nothing, fears a name without body, and grieves, poor girl, as if over a real mistress.

"Yet she often doubts and hopes most wretchedly to be deceived and denies faith to the informer, and unless she sees herself, she won't condemn her husband's faults. The next daylight had driven away night. I go out and seek the forest and, victorious over the grass, say: 'Breeze, come,' and 'heal my labor!' And suddenly amid my words I seemed to hear I don't know what groans. Still saying 'Come, best one!' when a falling leaf made a slight rustle, I thought it was a beast and threw my flying weapon. It was Procris, and holding the wound in the middle of her breast, she cries out: 'Ah, woe is me!' When I recognized the voice of my faithful wife, I ran headlong and out of my mind toward the voice.

"Half-dead and staining her scattered garments with blood and pulling from her wound her own gift (wretched me!), I find her. I lift in my arms the body dearer to me than mine, tear the garment from her breast, bind her savage wounds, and try to stop the blood flow, and beg her not to leave me, guilty by her death, to desecrate me. She, lacking strength and now dying, was forced to speak these few words: 'By the bonds of our bed and by the gods—I beg as suppliant—the gods above and mine, by whatever I've deserved well from you, and by the love that remains even now as I perish, the cause of my death—don't allow Aura to marry into our marriage chambers!'

"She spoke, and then at last I sensed and understood it was an error of the name. But what did teaching help? She sinks, and her small strength flees with her blood, and while she can look at anything, she looks at me and breathes out her unhappy soul in my face and onto my lips. But she seems to die more secure with better expression."

Weeping, the hero was relating these things with tears, and look—Aeacus enters with his two sons and the new soldiers, whom Cephalus receives with their strong weapons.