Now as Lucifer revealed the shining day and drove away the hours of night, the East wind fell and damp clouds rose. Gentle south winds gave a course to the returning Aeacids and to Cephalus, and, prosperously driven, they held the harbors they sought before they expected.

Meanwhile Minos lays waste the Lelegian shores and tests the strength of his Mars against the city of Alcathoë, which Nisus holds. Among his honored gray hairs, in the middle of his crown, a lock of hair clung, splendid with purple—the confidence of his great kingdom.

The sixth horns of the rising moon kept returning, and still the fortune of war hung in balance, and for a long time Victory flew on doubtful wings between the two sides. There was a royal tower added to the vocal walls, on which they say Apollo's offspring laid down his golden lyre: its sound stuck to the stone. Nisus' daughter used to climb up there often and strike the resonant stones with a little pebble, when there was peace. In wartime too she often used to watch from there the contests of harsh Mars, and now by war's delay she even knew the names of the chiefs and their arms and horses and dress and Cretan quivers. She knew the face of the European leader before the others—more than enough to know. In her judgment, Minos was beautiful in his helmet whether he had hidden his head in a crested helm with plumes. If he had taken up a shield gleaming with bronze, it became him to have taken the shield. When he had hurled the flexible javelin with drawn-back muscles, the maiden praised the art joined with strength. When he had bent the wide bow with arrow fitted, she swore Phoebus stood like that taking up his arrows. But when truly he bared his face with bronze removed and, clad in purple, pressed the white back of his horse adorned with embroidered cloths and controlled its foaming mouth, the Nisian maiden was scarcely in control of herself, scarcely in her sane mind. She called the javelin he touched fortunate, called fortunate the reins he pressed with his hand. She has an impulse—if only it were allowed—to carry her virgin steps through the enemy ranks. She has an impulse to hurl her body from the high towers into the Cretan camp, or to open the bronze gates to the enemy, or whatever else Minos might want.

As she sat gazing at the white tents of the Dictaean king, she said: "Whether I should rejoice or grieve that this tearful war is waged is in doubt. I grieve that Minos is an enemy to me as lover. But unless there were wars, he never would have been known to me! Yet he could lay down the war if he accepted me as hostage. He could have me as companion, me as pledge of peace. If she who bore you, most beautiful of kings, was such as you yourself are, a god justly burned for her. O I'd be three times blessed if, gliding on wings through the air, I could stand in the Cretan king's camp and, confessing myself and my flames, ask at what dowry he'd wish to be bought—so long as he doesn't demand my father's citadel! For may the marriage I hope for perish sooner than that I be powerful through betrayal! Though often the clemency of a peaceful victor has made it useful for many to be conquered. He certainly wages just wars for his son who was killed: both the cause is strong and the arms that defend the cause. We'll be conquered, I think. If that outcome awaits the city, why should his Mars open these walls for him and not my love? Better without slaughter and delay and expense of his own blood he'll be able to conquer. I certainly won't fear that someone might wound your breast, Minos, unknowingly: for who is so hard that he'd dare unwittingly to aim a cruel spear at you?

"The plan pleases me, and my resolve stands to hand over with myself my homeland as dowry and put an end to the war. But to will it is not enough! A guard keeps the entrance, and my father holds the locks of the gates. Him alone I unhappily fear. He alone delays my prayers. Would that the gods make me fatherless! Surely everyone is his own god: Fortune fights against cowardly prayers. Another girl, long since inflamed by such great desire, would rejoice to destroy whatever stood in love's way. And why would any girl be braver than me? I'd dare to go through fires and swords. Yet in this case there's no need for fires or swords. I need my father's hair. That's more precious to me than gold. That purple lock will make me blessed and powerful over my prayer."

---

While she spoke such things, Night, greatest nurse of cares, intervened, and boldness grew in the darkness. The first quiet came, when sleep holds hearts wearied by the day's cares. Silent, she enters her father's bedchamber and—O the crime!—the daughter despoils her own parent of his fateful lock. Possessing the wicked spoil, she goes through the middle of the enemies (such is her confidence in what she's deserved) and reaches the king. She addresses him trembling thus:

"Love urged the crime. I, royal offspring of Nisus, Scylla, hand over to you my father and my household gods. I seek no reward except you. Take this purple hair as pledge of my love—and don't believe I'm handing over hair, but my father's head!" And with guilty hand she held out the gift.

Minos shrank back from what was held out and, disturbed by the sight of the strange deed, replied: "May the gods remove you, O disgrace of our age, from their world, and may land and sea be denied to you! Certainly I won't allow such a monster to touch Crete, cradle of Jupiter, which is my world."

He spoke, and as a most just author of laws, he imposed terms on the captive enemies, ordered the cables of the fleet loosened and the bronze ships driven by oar.

---

After Scylla saw the ships launched to sail on the strait and didn't see the leader give her the rewards of her crime, her prayers exhausted, she passes into violent anger and, stretching out her hands, raging with streaming hair, she cries out: "Where do you flee, leaving behind the author of your successes, you who are preferred to my homeland, preferred to my parent? Where do you flee, cruel one, whose victory is both my crime and my merit? Neither the gift given nor my love moved you, nor that all my hope was heaped up in you alone? For where shall I return, abandoned? To my homeland? It lies conquered! But suppose it remains: it's closed to me by my betrayal. To my father's face? Whom I gave to you? My citizens hate me though I deserve well. My neighbors fear my example. I've made myself exiled from the lands so that Crete alone would be open to me. If you deny me this too and leave me, ingrate, Europa was not your mother, but the inhospitable Syrtes, Armenian tigers, and Charybdis driven by the south wind. Nor are you born of Jove, nor was your mother deceived by the image of a bull. That story of your birth is false! The real bull that fathered you was savage and captivated by no cow's love.

"Exact punishment, father Nisus! Rejoice in my evils, walls I just now betrayed! For I confess I've deserved it and I'm worthy to die. But still, let one of those whom I impiously harmed kill me! Why do you, who conquered by my crime, pursue the crime? This should be a crime to homeland and father, but an obligation to you! She's truly a worthy wife for you, the adulteress who deceived the fierce bull with wood and carried a discordant offspring in her womb. Do my words reach your ears at all, or do the winds carry my empty words and—ingrate!—your ships alike? Now, now it's not surprising that Pasiphaë preferred the bull to you: you had more savagery. Woe is me! He orders haste! The wave struck by oars resounds, and at the same time as me my land recedes. You do nothing, O forgetful of my deserts in vain: I'll follow you against your will and, embracing the curved stern, I'll be dragged through the long seas."

She'd scarcely spoken when she leaped into the waves and followed the ships—desire giving her strength—and she clung as a hated companion to the Cretan ship. When her father saw her (for now he was hanging in the air, just now changed into a tawny sea eagle), he was going to tear at her where she clung with hooked beak. She let go of the stern in fear, and a light breeze seemed to have held her falling, lest she touch the waters. Feathers cover her. Changed into a bird, she's called Ciris, and she got this name from her shorn hair.

---

Minos paid vows to Jupiter with bodies of a hundred bulls after he disembarked on ships and touched the Curetan land, and the palace was decorated with hung spoils. The shame of his race had grown, and the foul adultery of his mother was revealed by the strangeness of the two-formed monster. Minos resolves to remove this bedroom shame and enclose it in a house of many rooms and blind chambers.

Daedalus, most famous for the skill of his craft, sets up the work and confuses the signs and leads sight into error by the wandering of varied passages—not otherwise than liquid Maeander plays in the Phrygian fields and with ambiguous flow both flows back and flows forward, meeting itself and looking at its coming waves, and now turned toward its sources, now toward the open sea, exercises its uncertain waters. So Daedalus fills countless paths with error, and he himself was scarcely able to return to the threshold: such is the deception of the building.

After he shut in there the twin form of bull and youth, and the monster twice fed on Attic blood, the third lot, repeated after nine years, subdued it, and when the difficult door, never retraced by any before, was found by virgin help with thread left behind, immediately the son of Aegeus, seizing the Minoan daughter, set sail for Dia, and cruel on that shore he abandoned his companion. To the deserted one complaining much, Liber brought embraces and help, and so that she would be famous with an eternal star, he took the crown from her forehead and sent it to heaven. It flies through the thin air, and while it flies, the gems are turned into shining fires and take their place with the appearance of a crown remaining, which is between the Kneeler and the one holding the Snake.

---

Meanwhile Daedalus, hating Crete and his long exile and touched by love of his native place, was shut in by the sea. "Though he blocks lands and waves," he said, "yet surely the sky lies open: we'll go that way. Though Minos possesses all, he doesn't possess the air." He spoke and turns his mind to unknown arts and changes nature. For he arranges feathers in order, beginning from the smallest, with shorter following longer, so you'd think they grew on a slope: thus a rustic pipe once rises gradually from unequal reeds. Then he binds the middle ones with thread and the lowest with wax and, arranged thus, he bends them with a slight curve to imitate real birds.

The boy Icarus stood beside him and, unaware he was handling his own danger, with smiling face was now catching feathers that the wandering breeze had moved, now softening yellow wax with his thumb, and with his play was impeding his father's marvelous work. After the final hand was placed on the undertaking, the craftsman balanced his own body on twin wings and hung poised in the stirred air. He instructs his son too: "I warn you to fly in the middle course, Icarus," he says, "lest, if you go too low, the wave weigh down your wings, or if too high, the fire burn them. Fly between both. And I don't order you to look at Boötes or Helice or Orion's drawn sword: take your path with me as guide!"

At the same time he hands over the rules of flying and fits the unfamiliar wings to his shoulders. Amid the work and warnings the old man's cheeks grew wet, and his father's hands trembled. He gave kisses to his son not to be taken again, and lifted on wings, he flies ahead and fears for his companion, like a bird from on high that has led its tender offspring from the nest into the air, and urges him to follow and teaches the dangerous arts and moves his own wings and looks back at his son's wings.

Someone catching fish with trembling reed, or a shepherd leaning on his staff, or a plowman on his plow saw them and was astonished and believed those who could travel through the air were gods. And now Juno's Samos was on the left (Delos and Paros had been left behind), and Lebinthos was on the right and Calymne fertile in honey, when the boy began to rejoice in bold flight and deserted his guide and, drawn by desire for heaven, drove his course higher. The nearness of the swift sun softened the fragrant wax, the bindings of his feathers. The wax melted. He shakes his bare arms, and lacking oarage, he catches no air, and his mouth, crying out his father's name, is seized by the blue water, which took its name from him.

But his father, unhappy, and now no longer a father, said "Icarus," said "Icarus, where are you? In what region shall I seek you?" "Icarus," he was saying—and he saw feathers in the waves. He cursed his arts and placed the body in a tomb, and the land is called from the name of the buried one.

---

As he was placing his wretched son's body in the tomb, a chattering partridge looked out from a muddy hollow and beat its wings and showed joy in song, a unique bird then and not seen in earlier years. Made a bird recently, Daedalus, a long reproach to you. For his sister had handed over her offspring to him for teaching, unaware of the fates—a boy twelve years old, of a mind capable of instruction. He even noticed the spine in the middle of a fish, took it as a model and cut perpetual teeth in sharp iron and discovered the use of the saw. He was also first to bind two iron arms from a single joint, so that with them set at equal distance, one part would stand still, the other would trace a circle.

Daedalus envied him and threw him headlong from the sacred citadel of Minerva, lying that he fell. But Pallas, who favors talent, caught him and made him a bird and covered him with wings in mid-air. But the vigor of his once-swift mind passed into his wings and feet. The name he had before remained. Yet this bird doesn't lift its body high, nor does it make nests in branches and lofty treetops. It flits near the ground and lays eggs in hedges, and mindful of its ancient fall, it fears high places.

---

And now the Aetnaean land held weary Daedalus, and Cocalus, taking up arms on behalf of the suppliant, was considered mild. And now Athens had ceased to pay the lamentable tribute, thanks to Theseus' glory. The temples are garlanded, and they invoke warlike Minerva along with Jupiter and the other gods, whom they honor with vowed blood and given gifts and heaps of incense. Spreading fame had scattered Theseus' name through Argolic cities, and the peoples that rich Achaia held implored his help in great dangers. Calydon, though it had Meleager, with anxious prayer begged his help as a suppliant. The cause of the begging was a boar, servant and avenger of hostile Diana.

---

For they tell that Oeneus, in a year full of success, offered first fruits of grain to Ceres, his wine to Lyaeus, and the yellow liquid of Pallas to fair Minerva. The ambitious honor begun by farmers reached all the gods above. Only Latona's daughter's altars are said to have been passed over and left without incense. Anger touches even gods. "But we won't endure this unpunished, and though unhonored, we won't be called unavenged either," she said, and angry at being scorned, she sent an avenger through the Olenian fields—a boar as much larger than the grassy bulls of Epirus as bulls of Sicilian fields are smaller. His eyes flashed with blood and fire, his neck was rigid and bristly, and his bristles stood up stiff like rigid spear-shafts. Hot foam flowed with harsh hissing across his broad shoulders, his teeth equaled Indian tusks, lightning came from his mouth, and leaves burned from his breath. Now he tramples the growing crops in the grass, now cuts down the ripe prayers of the weeping farmer and intercepts Ceres in the ears. The threshing floor and granaries await the promised harvests in vain. The heavy fruits are laid low with their long vines, and berries with branches of the ever-leafed olive. He rages also against flocks: neither shepherd nor dog nor fierce bulls can defend the herds. The people flee and don't think themselves safe except in the city's walls, until Meleager and a chosen band of youths came together with desire for glory.

---

The twin Tyndarids, one outstanding in boxing, the other with horses, and Jason, builder of the first ship, and Theseus with Pirithous, a blessed partnership, and the two sons of Thestius and Aphareus' offspring, Lynceus and swift Idas, and Caeneus, now no longer a woman, and fierce Leucippus and Acastus distinguished with javelin, and Hippothous and Dryas and Phoenix, son of Amyntor, and the twin sons of Actor and Phyleus sent from Elis. Telamon wasn't absent either, nor the creator of great Achilles, along with Pheretias' son and Hyantean Iolaus, tireless Eurytion and Echion unconquered in running, and Narycius Lelex and Panopeus and Hyleus and fierce Hippasus and Nestor still in his early years, and those whom Hippocoon sent from ancient Amyclae, and Penelope's father-in-law with Parrhasian Ancaeus, and wise Ampyx's son, and Oecles' son still safe from his wife, and the glory of the Tegean grove of Lycaeus.

A polished clasp held together her top garment. Her hair was simple, gathered in a single knot. From her left shoulder hung an ivory quiver, guardian of her arrows, and her left hand also held a bow. Such was her dress. Her face—which you could truly call girlish in a boy, boyish in a girl. The Calydonian hero saw her and at the same time desired her, though the god refused, and he drank in hidden flames and said: "O blessed, if that woman will deem any man worthy!" Neither time nor shame allowed him to say more: a greater work of a great contest urges him.

---

There was a forest thick with trees that no age had cut down. It begins from the plain and looks down on sloping fields. After the men came there, some spread nets, some take off the leashes from dogs, some follow the pressed tracks of feet and desire to find their danger.

There was a hollow valley where rainwater streams were accustomed to flow down. The lowest part of the pool held pliant willow and light sedges and marsh rushes and osiers and small reeds under tall cane. From here the boar, roused, rushes violently into the middle of enemies, like lightning struck from clouds. The forest is laid flat by his charge, and the driven wood gives a crash. The young men shout and hold out weapons in strong hands, vibrating with broad iron. He rushes and scatters the dogs as each one opposes his fury, and he disperses the barking pack with slanting blow.

The spear first hurled by Echion's arm was in vain and gave a light wound to a maple trunk. The next, if it hadn't used too much of the sender's strength, seemed likely to stick in the back aimed at: it goes farther. Jason of Pagasae was the author of the weapon. "Phoebus," said Ampyx's son, "if I have worshiped and worship you, grant me to hit what I seek with sure weapon!" As much as he could, the god nodded to his prayers. The boar was struck by him, but without wound: Diana had taken away the iron from the flying javelin. The wood came without point.

The savage's anger was stirred, and it burned no less than lightning. Fire flashes from his eyes, and flame breathes from his breast too. Just as a mass flies driven by drawn cord when it seeks walls or towers full of soldiers, so with sure impetus the wound-dealing boar rushes at the youths and overthrows Hippalmus and Pelagon, who were guarding the right horn. Their comrades snatched them up as they lay. But Enaesimus, son of Hippocoon, didn't escape lethal blows: as he trembled and prepared to turn his back, his sinews left his cut hamstring failing. Perhaps even the Pylian would have perished before Trojan times, but taking a leap from the effort placed in his spear, he jumped into the branches of a tree that stood nearest and, safe in place, looked down on the enemy he'd fled. The boar, ferocious, grinding his teeth on an oaken stump, looms toward destruction and, confident in his fresh weapons, drank the thigh of great Eurytus' son with hooked snout.

But the twin brothers, not yet celestial stars, both conspicuous, both riding on horses whiter than snow, both were shaking the quivering points of spears vibrated through the air. They would have made wounds if the bristled one hadn't gone among shadowy forests to places passable neither by javelins nor horse. Telamon pursues and, incautious in his eagerness to go, fell flat, held back by a tree root. While Peleus lifts him, the Tegean woman placed a swift arrow on the string and shot it from the bent bow. Fixed under the beast's ear, the arrow grazed the top of his body and reddened the bristles with a little blood. Yet she wasn't more joyful at the success of her shot than Meleager was. He's thought to have been first to see and first to show his companions the blood he'd seen and said: "You'll bear the honor deserved by your courage."

The men blushed and urge themselves on and add spirit with shouts and throw weapons without order. The crowd harms the throws and blocks the blows it seeks. Look—the Arcadian, raging with double ax against his own fates: "Learn, young men, how much manly weapons surpass womanly ones, and yield to my work! Though Latona herself protect him with her weapons, yet my right hand will kill him against Diana's will." Swollen with such boastful words spoken from a big-talking mouth and raising the double ax with both hands, he had stood on tiptoes, suspended for blows. The beast caught the daring one and, where the path to death is nearest, drove his twin tusks into the top of his groin. Ancaeus fell and his coiled intestines slipped out, bathed in much blood. The earth was soaked with gore.

Pirithous, offspring of Ixion, was going toward the enemy foe, shaking his hunting spears in strong hand. To him the son of Aegeus said: "Stay, far off, O you who are dearer to me than myself, part of my soul! The brave may be at a distance. Rash courage harmed Ancaeus." He spoke and hurled the heavy cornel with bronze point, well balanced and capable of achieving his prayer—but a leafy branch from an oak tree blocked the way.

The son of Aeson also threw a javelin, which chance turned from him to the fate of an innocent barking dog and, hurled between the flanks, it was fixed through the flanks to the earth. But the hand of Oeneus' son varies: of two thrown, the first spear stood in the earth, the second in the middle of his back. And without delay, while he rages, while he turns his body in circles and pours out hissing foam with fresh blood, the author of the wound is present and provokes the enemy to anger and buries the shining hunting spear in his opposing shoulder.

His companions show their joy with approving shout and seek to join right hand to victorious right hand. They gaze marveling at the huge beast lying over much earth, and still they don't think it safe to touch him, but nevertheless each one stains his own weapon with blood.

---

He himself, placing his foot on the deadly head, said: "Take the spoil of my right, Nonacrian woman, and let my glory come into part with you." Immediately he gave the hide bristling with stiff bristles and the jaws distinguished with great tusks. She has joy both in the gift and the giver of the gift. The others envied, and there was a murmur through the whole band. From them the sons of Thestius, stretching out their arms with loud voice, shout: "Come, put them down, woman, and don't intercept our honors, and don't let confidence in your beauty deceive you, lest the author captivated by love be far from you," and they take away the gift from her, the right of the gift from him.

Mavortius didn't endure it and, gnashing with swollen anger, said: "Learn, robbers of another's honor, how much deeds differ from threats," and he drained the chest of Plexippus, fearing no such thing, with wicked sword. Toxeus, doubtful what to do, and at once wanting to avenge his brother and fearing his brother's fate, he doesn't let him doubt for long and reheated the blade, warm from the earlier slaughter, with his partner's blood.

---

Althaea was bringing gifts to the temples for her victorious son when she sees her dead brothers carried back. She fills the city with lamentations and mournful shouts and changed her golden clothes for black. But as soon as the author of the death was announced, all grief fell away and was turned from tears to love of punishment.

There was a log which, when Thestian woman lay in childbirth, the three sisters placed in the flame and, spinning the fateful threads with pressed thumb, said: "We give the same time to this wood and to you, O just now born." After the goddesses departed with this song spoken, the mother snatched the burning branch from the fire and sprinkled it with flowing waters. That had long been hidden in the innermost recesses and, kept safe, had kept safe your years, young man. The mother brought it out and orders torches and kindling to be placed, and when placed, she brings hostile fires near. Then four times she tried to place the branch on the flames, four times she held back from what she'd begun. Mother and sister fight, and two names pull one heart in different ways. Often her face grew pale with fear of the future crime, often her fierce anger gave redness to her eyes, and now her expression was somehow cruel and threatening, now one you could believe felt pity. And when fierce passion of her spirit had dried her tears, tears were found nevertheless.

Just as a ship which wind and current contrary to the wind seize feels double force and, uncertain, obeys both, so Thestias wavers with doubtful feelings and in turns lays aside and revives her laid-aside anger. Yet she begins to be better as sister than as parent, and so that she may soothe the bloodied shades with blood, she's pious in impiety. For after the pestilent fire grew strong, she said: "Let this pyre burn my own flesh." And as with dire hand she held the fateful wood, the unhappy woman stood before the funeral altars and said: "Triple goddesses of punishments, Eumenides, turn your faces to these Fury-rites! I avenge and commit wrong. Death must be atoned by death, crime must be added to crime, funeral to funeral. Let the impious house perish through heaped griefs! Or shall happy Oeneus enjoy his victorious son, and Thestius be childless? Better you both will grieve. You only, brotherly shades and fresh souls, feel my duty and accept the offerings prepared for you at great cost, evil pledges of our womb! Alas, where am I carried? Brothers, forgive a mother! My hands fail at what they've begun. I confess he deserved why he should die. The author of death displeases me.

"So shall he go unpunished and alive and victorious and swollen with success itself will hold the kingdom of Calydon, while you lie as scanty ash and cold shades? I certainly won't endure it. Let the criminal perish, and let him drag down his father's hope and kingdom and his homeland's ruin! Where is a mother's mind? Where are the dutiful rights of parents and the labors I endured for twice five months? O would that you had burned in those first fires as an infant, and I had allowed it! You lived by my gift. Now you'll die by your own desert. Take the reward of your deed, and give back the life given twice, first at birth, then when the log was seized, or add me to my brothers' tombs! I both desire and cannot. What shall I do? Now the wounds of my brothers are before my eyes and the image of such great slaughter, now piety and a mother's names break my spirit. Woe is me! You'll badly win, but win, brothers—provided that I follow you, having given you the solace I'll give!"

She spoke and with averted hand, trembling, she threw the deadly brand into the middle of the fires. The log either gave or seemed to give groans as it was seized and burned by unwilling flames.

---

Unaware and absent, Meleager is burned by that flame and feels his entrails scorched by unseen fires, and he overcomes great pains with courage. Yet that he falls by an inglorious death without blood, he grieves, and calls Ancaeus' wounds happy, and with groaning calls on his aged father and brothers and dutiful sisters and his marriage partner with dying voice—perhaps his mother too. The fire and pain increase and languish again. Both are extinguished at once, and gradually his spirit passed into light airs as gradually gray ash covered the coals.

Tall Calydon lies low. Young and old lament, common folk and nobles groan, and the Calydonian mothers of Evenus, hair torn, beat their breasts. His father fouls his gray hair and aged face with dust, stretched on the ground, and reproaches his long age. For the mother, her hand conscious of the dire deed, exacted punishment on herself with blade driven through her vitals. Not if a god gave me a hundred sounding mouths with tongues and all capacity and all Helicon, could I pursue the sad fates of the wretched sisters. Unmindful of decorum, they beat their bruised breasts, and while the body remains, they warm and cherish the body again and again. They give kisses to him himself, give kisses to the bed where he's laid. After the ashes, they press the gathered ashes to their breasts and lie poured over the tomb and, embracing the name marked on stone, pour tears on the name.

These, finally—when Latona was sated with the destruction of Parthaon's house, except Gorge and the wife of noble Alcmena—she raises on wings placed on their bodies and stretches long pinions through their arms and makes their mouths horny and sends them changed through the air.

---

Meanwhile Theseus, having performed his part of the shared labor, was going to the Tritonian citadel of Erechtheus. Achelous blocked his way and made delays for the traveler, swollen with rain: "Come under my roof, famous son of Cecrops," he said, "and don't entrust yourself to the greedy waves. They're accustomed to carry solid beams and roll stones obliquely with great roar. I've seen tall stables near the bank dragged away with flocks. Neither strength helped the herds there, nor speed the horses. This torrent has also drowned many youthful bodies in its swirling eddy when the snows melted from the mountain. Rest is safer until the rivers run in their usual channel, until their own channel holds the slender waves."

The son of Aegeus nodded: "I'll use both your house and advice, Achelous," he replied—and he used both. He enters the hall built of porous pumice and rough tufa. The ground was damp with soft moss. The uppermost ceiling was coffered with alternating murex-shell and conch.

And now when Hyperion had measured two parts of daylight, Theseus and his companions in labors reclined on couches—on this side the son of Ixion, on that side the Troezenian hero, and Lelex, his temples now sprinkled with scattered gray hairs, and others whom the river of Acarnanians had honored with equal honor, most joyful at such a great guest. Immediately bare-footed nymphs set tables and furnished them with feasts, and with dishes removed, placed wine in a gem-studded cup.

---

Then the greatest hero, looking with his eyes at the waters below, said: "What is that place?" (and he pointed with his finger) "And teach me what name that island bears—though it doesn't seem to be just one!" The river said to these words: "What you see is not one thing. Five lands lie there—distance deceives discrimination. And so you may less wonder at the deed done when Diana was scorned, these were Naiads who, when they had sacrificed twice ten bullocks and called the rural gods to the rites, drew festive dances, forgetful of me. I swelled, as great as I'm ever carried when most full, and huge equally in spirit and waters, I tore forests from forests and fields from fields and rolled the nymphs with their place—mindful of me then at last—into the straits. My wave and the sea's divided the continuous land and broke it into as many parts as you see Echinades in the middle waves.

"But as you yourself see, look—far off, far off, one island withdrew, dear to me. Sailors call her Perimele. Her I took away her virgin name, having loved her, which her father Hippodamas bore badly and thrust the body of his daughter about to die from a cliff into the deep. I caught her as she swam and bearing her said: 'O you who are allotted the realms nearest the world, Trident-bearer, of the wandering wave, bring help and—I pray—give place to one drowned by a father's savagery, Neptune, or let her be a place herself!' While I speak, new land embraced her swimming limbs and the island grew heavy with changed members."

The river fell silent from these words. The wonderful deed had moved everyone. He laughs at those who believe, and as he was a scorner of gods and fierce in mind, the son of Ixion said: "You tell fictions and think the gods too powerful, Achelous, if they give and take away forms."

All were astonished and didn't approve such words, and before all Lelex, mature in mind and years, spoke thus: "Immense is heaven's power and has no limit, and whatever the gods above have willed is accomplished.

---

"And so you may doubt less: there's an oak neighboring a linden on Phrygian hills, surrounded by a modest wall. I myself saw the place, for Pittheus sent me to the fields once ruled by his father Pelops. Not far from here is a pool, once habitable land, now waters frequented by mergansers and marsh coots. Jupiter came here in mortal form, and with his parent came the Atlantiad, bearer of the caduceus, wings laid aside. They approached a thousand houses seeking rest and a place to stay. A thousand houses were closed by bars. Yet one received them, small indeed, roofed with thatch and marsh reed, but dutiful Baucis and Philemon of equal age were joined in that cottage in youthful years. They grew old in that cottage and made poverty light by confessing it and bearing it with a not-complaining mind. Nor does it matter whether you seek masters or servants there: the whole house is two people—the same ones obey and command.

"So when the heaven-dwellers touched the humble household gods and entered the low doorpost with lowered head, the old man ordered them to rest their limbs on a seat placed out, over which busy Baucis threw a rough cloth. She stirred the warm ash on the hearth and revived yesterday's fires and nourished them with leaves and dry bark and brought them to flame with an old woman's breath, and she brought down split kindling and dry twigs from the roof and broke them small and brought them near the small bronze pot, and she stripped the leaves from vegetables that her husband had gathered from the watered garden. He with two-pronged fork lifts down a dirty chine hanging from the black beam, long saved, and cut a small part from the chine and softened the cut piece in boiling waters.

"Meanwhile they beguile the middle hours with conversation and shake a mattress of soft river sedge placed on a couch with willow frame and feet. They cover this with fabrics they weren't accustomed to spread except at festival time—but even this was cheap and old cloth, not unworthy of the willow couch. The gods reclined. The old woman, girded and trembling, sets the table—but one leg of the table was unequal: a potsherd made it level. After this, placed beneath, lifted the slope, green mint wiped it level. Here are placed the two-colored berries of sincere Minerva and autumn cornels preserved in liquid lees and endive and radish and a mass of curdled milk and eggs lightly turned in gentle ash—all in clay dishes. After this a crater is set, engraved in the same silver, and cups made of beech, whose hollow parts are coated with yellow wax. A small delay, and the hearth sent hot food, and wine of no great age is brought back again and, moved a little aside, gives place to the second course. Here's a nut, here a fig mixed with wrinkled dates and plums and fragrant apples in wide baskets and grapes gathered from purple vines. In the middle is a white honeycomb. Above all, friendly faces joined them, and a spirit neither inactive nor poor.

---

"Meanwhile they see the crater, as often as it's emptied, refill of its own accord and wine increase by itself. Astonished by the strangeness, they're afraid and with upturned hands, Baucis and timid Philemon conceive prayers and beg pardon for the meal and their lack of preparations. They had one goose, guardian of their tiny farm, which the masters were preparing to sacrifice for their divine guests. Swift on wing, it wearies them, slow with age, and eludes them for a long time and finally seems to have taken refuge with the gods themselves. The gods forbade it to be killed and said: 'We are gods, and the impious neighborhood will pay deserved punishment. It will be granted to you to be immune from this evil. Only leave your home and accompany our steps and go together into the mountain's heights!'

"Both obey and, supported by staffs, they struggle to place their steps on the long slope. They were as far from the summit as an arrow sent once can go. They bent their eyes and see the rest submerged in marsh, only their own house remaining. And while they marvel at this, while they weep the fates of their own people, that old cottage, small even for two masters, is turned into a temple: columns go under the forks, the thatch turns yellow and the roofs seem golden and engraved doors and the ground covered with marble.

"Then the Saturnian spoke with peaceful voice: 'Say, just old man and woman worthy of a just husband, what you wish.' After speaking a little with Baucis, Philemon reveals their common judgment to the gods above: 'We ask to be priests and guard your shrine, and since we've passed harmonious years, may the same hour take both, and may I never see my wife's tomb, nor be buried by her.'

"Faith followed their prayers. They were guardians of the temple as long as life was given. Released by years and age, when they chanced to stand before the sacred steps and were telling the story of the place, Baucis saw Philemon putting forth leaves, old Philemon saw Baucis putting forth leaves. And now as the treetop grew over twin faces, while they could, they gave back mutual words and said at the same time 'Farewell, O spouse,' and at the same time foliage covered their hidden faces. The Bithynian inhabitant there still shows neighboring trunks from the twin body. These things non-lying old men told me (nor was there reason they'd want to deceive). Indeed I saw garlands hanging from the branches and, placing fresh ones, I said: 'Let those cared for by gods be gods, and let those who worshiped be worshiped.'"

---

He had finished, and both the things and their author had moved everyone, Theseus especially. When he wanted to hear the marvelous deeds of gods, the Calydonian river, leaning on his elbow, addressed him with such words: "There are some, O bravest one, whose form was changed once and remained in this renewal. There are those who have the right to pass into many forms—like you, Proteus, inhabitant of the sea that embraces the earth. For now they saw you a youth, now a lion, now you were a violent boar, now a snake which they feared to touch, now horns made you a bull. Often you could be seen as a stone, often as a tree. Sometimes, imitating the appearance of liquid waters, you were a river, sometimes fire contrary to waters.

"No less right has the wife of Autolycus, daughter of Erysichthon. Her father was one who scorned the powers of gods and burned no incense on altars. They say he even violated Ceres' grove with ax and profaned ancient groves with iron. There stood in these an enormous oak with ancient timber, a grove by itself. Ribbons and memorial tablets and garlands girdled its middle, proofs of prayers granted. Often under this dryads drew festive dances. Often too, hands joined, they circled the trunk in order, and the measure of the oak filled fifteen arms, and the rest of the forest was as much below this as grass was below all the forest.

"Yet not for that reason did the Triopian refrain from iron there and ordered his servants to cut down the sacred oak, and when he saw them hesitating at orders, the scoundrel, seizing an ax from one of them, uttered these words: 'Not just beloved of the goddess, but even if it were the goddess herself, now it will touch the earth with leafy top.' He spoke, and while he balanced his weapon for slanting blows, the Deoian oak trembled and gave a groan, and at the same time the leaves, at the same time the acorns began to grow pale and the long branches draw pallor. When his impious hand made a wound in the trunk, blood flowed from the stripped bark no differently than it's accustomed when a huge bull as victim falls before the altars and gore pours from the broken neck.

"All were astonished, and one of all dares to prevent the sacrilege and restrain the savage ax. The Thessalian looks at him and says: 'Take the reward of a dutiful mind!' and turned the iron from the tree into the man and cut off his head and, resuming, cuts the oak. A sound such as this was given from the middle of the oak: 'I am a nymph most pleasing to Ceres under this wood, and dying I prophesy that punishments of your deeds are at hand, a solace of my death.' He pursues his crime, and at last the tree, weakened by countless blows and pulled by ropes, fell and laid low much forest with its weight.

---

"Stunned by the loss of the grove and their own, all the dryads, like sisters, go mourning in black garments to Ceres and pray for Erysichthon's punishment. She nodded to them and with the most beautiful movement of her head shook fields laden with heavy harvests, and she plans a type of punishment pitiable, if he weren't pitiable to none by his own deeds: to tear him with pestilent Famine. But since the goddess herself can't approach her (for the fates don't allow Ceres and Famine to come together), she addresses one rustic oread of the mountain divinity with such words:

"'There is a place in the farthest bounds of icy Scythia, sad soil, sterile earth without grain, without trees. Sluggish Cold dwells there and Pallor and Trembling and starving Famine. Order her to hide herself in the sacrilegious one's vitals, accursed one, and let no abundance of things conquer her and overcome my powers in contest. And lest the distance of the way frighten you, take my chariot, take the dragons you may guide from on high with reins!' And she gave them.

"She, conveyed through the air in the given chariot, came down to Scythia and on the peak of a rigid mountain (they call it Caucasus) took off the necks of the serpents and sought Famine and saw her in a stony field tearing sparse herbs with nails and teeth. Her hair was bristly, her eyes hollow, pallor in her face, lips gray with filth, throat rough with rust, hard skin through which the entrails could be seen. Dry bones stuck out under her bent loins. Where her belly was, there was a place for a belly. You'd think her chest hung and was held only by the cage of her spine. Leanness had enlarged her joints, and the orb of her knees was swollen, and her ankles protruded with excessive knob.

"When she saw her from far off (for she didn't dare approach near), she reports the goddess's commands and, delayed a little, though she was far away, though she'd just come there, she still seemed to have felt hunger, and she turned the dragons back sublimely with turned reins to Haemonia.

"Famine performs Ceres' orders, though her work is always contrary to hers, and carried through air by wind to the ordered house, immediately she enters the sacrilegious one's bedchamber and, released in deep sleep (for it was nighttime), embraces him with twin arms and inspires herself into the man and breathes on his throat and chest and mouth and spreads starvation in his empty veins. Having performed the command, she deserts the fertile world and returns to her accustomed poor caves.

"Still gentle Sleep was soothing Erysichthon with peaceful wings. He seeks feasts under sleep's image and moves his empty mouth and wearies tooth on tooth and deceives his throat with empty food and devours thin air in vain instead of feasts. But when truly rest is expelled, a fire of eating rages and rules through greedy throat and inflamed vitals. Without delay, he demands whatever the sea, whatever land, whatever air produces, and complains of starvation at tables set, and in feasts seeks feasts. What could be enough for cities, what could suffice for a people doesn't suffice for one man, and the more he sends down into his stomach, the more he desires. Just as the strait receives rivers from all the earth and isn't satisfied with waters and drinks foreign streams, and as greedy fire never refuses fuel and burns countless beams and, the more abundance is given, seeks more and is more voracious from the supply itself: so the mouth of profane Erysichthon accepts and demands all feasts at once. All food in him is the cause of food, and always a place becomes empty by eating.

---

"And now by hunger and the chasm of his deep belly he had diminished his paternal wealth, but undiminished still remained dire hunger then too, and the unplacated flame of his gullet flourished. Finally, with wealth sent down into his vitals, a daughter remained, unworthy of that parent. He, needy, sells her too. Noble, she refuses a master and, stretching her hands over the neighboring waters, says: 'Snatch me from a master, you who have the reward of my stolen virginity!' Neptune had this. He, not scorning the prayer, though she'd just been seen by the following master, changes her form and puts on a man's face and clothes suited to those catching fish.

"Her master, looking at her, says: 'O you who conceal the small bronze hook with bait, controller of the reed, so may the sea be calm, so may fish in the wave be trusting and feel no hooks unless fixed: she who just now stood on this shore with disordered clothes and disordered hair (for I saw her standing on the shore)—tell me where she is. For footprints don't extend farther.'

"She sensed the god's gift was succeeding and, glad she was being sought from herself, replied to the one asking: 'Whoever you are, forgive me. I've bent my eyes toward no direction from this water and I've clung, engaged in my pursuit, and so you may doubt less, so may the god of the sea help these arts, that for a while now no one on this shore—except me, however—and no woman has stood.'

"Her master believed and, foot turned, walked on the sand and, deceived, departed. Her own form was returned to her. But when her father sensed his daughter had a body that could transform, often he handed over the Triopid to masters, but she would depart now as a mare, now as a bird, now as a cow, now as a deer, and provided not-just food for her greedy parent.

"Yet when the force of that evil had consumed all substance and new food was lacking for the grave disease, he himself began to tear and rend his own limbs with his bite and, unhappy, nourished his body by diminishing it.

---

"Why do I delay with external things? Even to me indeed there is power, young man, limited in number, to change my body. For now I seem as I am now, now I'm bent into a snake, now as leader of a herd I take strength into my horns—horns, while I could. Now one part lacks the weapon of my forehead, as you yourself see."

Groans followed his words.