Neptune's hero asks the god what caused his groans and his broken-off forehead. To him the Calydonian river, his unkempt hair bound with reed, began thus: "You ask a sad service. For who, conquered, would want to recount his own battles? Yet I'll tell it in order. Nor was it so shameful to be conquered as it was honorable to have contended, and so great a victor gives us great consolation.

"If by any chance the name of Deianira has reached your ears through report—once the most beautiful maiden and the envied hope of many suitors. When I entered the house of the father-in-law I sought along with them, I said: 'Accept me as son-in-law, son of Parthaon.' Alcides said the same. The others yielded to the two of us. He offered to give Jupiter as father-in-law and the fame of his labors, and he cited the commands of his stepmother overcome.

"Against this I said: 'It's shameful for a god to yield to a mortal'—he wasn't yet a god—'you see me as master of waters flowing in winding courses through your realms. Nor will I be a son-in-law sent as a stranger from foreign shores, but a fellow citizen and one part of your affairs. Only let it not harm me that royal Juno doesn't hate me, and all punishment of commanded labors is absent. For you of whom you boast you were begotten, son of Alcmena—either Jupiter is a false father, or he's true through crime. You seek a father by your mother's adultery. Choose—would you prefer Jupiter to be fictitious, or that you were born through disgrace?'

"As I was saying such things, he'd been looking at me for a while with fierce eye, and he doesn't strongly control his kindled anger, and he gives back only these words: 'My right hand is better than my tongue. So long as I conquer in fighting, you win in speaking.' And he comes at me fiercely. I was ashamed to yield after speaking such grand words. I threw off my green garment from my body and positioned my arms and held my palms, hollowed, away from my chest in guard and prepared my limbs for battle.

"He sprinkles me with dust scooped in his hollow palms, and in turn he turns tawny from the touch of the golden sand. Now he grasps for my neck, now for my legs, now for my flanks—or you'd think he grasps—and attacks from every part. My weight defends me and I'm sought in vain—not otherwise than a mass that waves assault with great roar: it stands, and is safe by its own weight. We draw apart a little, and again we come to battle, and we stood in our stance, determined not to yield, and foot was joined with foot, and I was leaning forward with all my chest and pressed fingers to fingers and forehead to forehead. Not otherwise have I seen strong bulls rush together when the most beautiful mate throughout the whole pasture is sought as the prize of battle. The herds watch and fear, not knowing whom the victory of such great kingdom awaits.

"Three times without success Alcides wanted to throw back my chest pressing against him. The fourth time he shakes off my embrace and loosens my drawn-in arms and, with a push of his hand—I'm resolved to confess the truth—immediately turns me away and clings on my back, burdensome. If there's any faith—for I don't seek glory fabricated by voice—I seemed pressed by a mountain placed on me. Yet with difficulty I inserted my arms flowing with much sweat, with difficulty I loosened the hard knots from my body. He presses on me as I gasp and prevents me from recovering strength, and gains possession of my neck. Then at last the earth was pressed by my knee, and I bit the sand with my mouth.

---

"Inferior in strength, I turn to my arts and slip away from the man, shaped as a long snake. After I coiled my body into twisted circles and moved my forked tongue with fierce hissing, the Tirynthian laughed and, mocking my arts, said: 'It's the labor of my cradle to overcome snakes, and though you may conquer other dragons, Achelous, what fraction will you, one snake, be of the Lernaean hydra? She was fertile by her wounds, and no head of the hundred in number was cut off unpunished without the neck being stronger with a double heir. Her I tamed, branching with serpents born from slaughter and growing from harm, and having tamed her I laid her open. What do you think will happen to you, false one who, changed into a snake, move alien weapons, whom a borrowed form conceals?' He spoke and applied bonds to the top of my neck with his fingers. I was choked as if my throat were pressed in a vise, and I fought to tear my jaws from his thumbs.

"Conquered in this way too, there remained a third form—the fierce bull. I resumed battle, my limbs changed to a bull. He threw his arms around my left side and, following as I charged on, dragged me and pressed my hard horns into the ground and laid me flat in the deep sand. Nor was this enough for him: while his savage right hand held my stiff horn, he broke it and tore it from my truncated forehead.

"The Naiads consecrated this, filled with fruits and fragrant flowers, and rich Plenty is wealthy from my horn."

---

He spoke, and a nymph, one of the attendants, girded in the manner of Diana, came in with streaming hair on both sides and brought the whole autumn in the very rich horn, and blessed apples as second course. Light comes, and at the first touch of sun on the peaks, the young men depart. Nor do they wait until the rivers have peace and calm flow and the waters entirely subside. Achelous hid his rustic face and head maimed of horn in the middle waters. Yet the loss of the removed adornment pained him. Otherwise he's sound. He conceals the loss of his head with willow frond or reed placed over it.

---

But you, fierce Nessus, passion for the same maiden destroyed you, pierced through the back by a swift arrow. For the son of Jove, returning with his new wife to his father's walls, had come to the rapid waters of Evenus. Fuller than usual, swollen with winter rains, and frequent with eddies, the river was impassable. As he stands fearless for himself but anxious with care for his wife, Nessus approaches, strong in limbs and knowing the fords, and says: 'She will be placed on that bank by my service, Alcides. You use your strength for swimming.'

"The Aonian hero handed over the pale Calydonian woman, frightened and fearing the river and him himself, to frightened Nessus. Soon, just as he was, heavy with quiver and spoil of the lion—for he had thrown his club and curved bow across the bank—he said: 'Since I've begun, let the rivers be overcome,' and he doesn't hesitate, nor does he seek where the river is most gentle, and he scorns to be carried down by the water's compliance. And now holding the bank, as he was picking up the bow he'd thrown, he recognized his wife's voice and, to Nessus preparing to betray his trust, he shouts: 'Where does vain confidence in your feet carry you, violent one? To you, two-formed Nessus, I speak. Listen, and don't intercept my property. If no reverence for me moves you, at least your father's wheels could have restrained you from forbidden intercourse. Yet you won't escape, though you trust in horse's help. I'll pursue you with a wound, not with feet.'

"The final words he proves by deed, and he pierces the fleeing back with an arrow sent. The hooked iron stuck out from the chest. When this was torn out, blood leaped through both holes, mixed with the poison of the Lernaean beast. Nessus receives this and says to himself: 'Nor will I die unavenged,' and he gives clothing stained with his warm blood as a gift to the stolen woman, as an irritant of love.

---

A long time passed, and the deeds of great Hercules had filled the lands and the hatred of his stepmother. Victorious from Oechalia, he was preparing sacred vows to Cenaean Jove when chattering Rumor, who delights to add false to true and grows from tiny through her lies, preceded to your ears, Deianira, that the Amphitryon's descendant was held in passion for Iole. The lover believes, and terrified by news of new love, she first indulged in tears and, pitiable, poured out her grief by weeping. Soon after she says: 'But why do I weep? My rival will rejoice at these tears. Since she'll arrive, something must be hurried and something new tried while I can and the other doesn't yet hold my marriage chambers. Shall I complain or be silent? Shall I return to Calydon or stay? Shall I leave the house? Or, if nothing more, shall I obstruct? What if, mindful that I'm your sister, Meleager, I prepare some deed, and show how much injury can do and a woman's grief, by killing my rival?'

Her mind goes into various courses. Of all these, she preferred to send the garment stained with Nessus' blood, which would restore strength to failing love. Ignorant of what she's handing over, she herself unknowing hands over her own grief to unknowing Lichas, and most wretched with coaxing words, she commands that he give those gifts to her husband. The hero receives them unaware and puts on his shoulders the poison of the Lernaean hydra.

---

He was giving incense to the first flames and words of prayer, and was pouring wine from a bowl onto marble altars. The power of that evil grew hot and, loosened by flames, spread wide, dissolved through Hercules' limbs. As long as he could, he repressed his groan with his accustomed courage. When patience was conquered by evils, he pushed away the altars and filled wooded Oeta with his cries. Without delay he tries to tear off the deadly garment: where it's pulled, it pulls skin. Foul to tell—either it clings to his limbs, tried in vain to be torn away, or it uncovers mangled limbs and huge bones. His very blood hissed and was cooked in the burning poison, just as a white-hot blade once dipped in cold pool. There's no limit: the greedy flames drink his vitals, and dark blue sweat flows from his whole body, and his sinews sound, burned, and with marrow liquefied by hidden corruption, lifting his hands to the stars, he cries out:

"Feed on my disasters, Saturnia! Feed, and watch this pestilence, cruel one, from on high, and satisfy your savage heart. Or if I'm pitiable even to an enemy—that is, if I am to you—take away my soul, sick with dire torments and hateful and born for labors. Death will be a gift to me. It's fitting that a stepmother give such gifts. So did I tame Busiris who fouled temples with foreign blood? Did I snatch food from his savage parent from Antaeus? Did the triple form of the Spanish shepherd move me, or your triple form, Cerberus? Did you, my hands, press the strong bull's horns? Elis has your work, the Stymphalian waters have it, the Parthenian grove? By your courage was brought back the belt engraved with Thermodontic gold, and the apples guarded by the sleepless dragon? Nor could the centaurs resist me, nor could the boar, devastator of Arcadia? Nor did it profit the hydra to grow through harm and resume double strength? What of when I saw the horses of the Thracian fat with human blood and their mangers full of mangled bodies—saw them and threw them down and killed both their master and them? By these arms the Nemean mass lies crushed. On this neck I bore the sky. The savage wife of Jove is weary of commanding: I'm unwearied in performing. But a new pestilence is here, which can't be resisted by courage or weapons or arms. Devouring fire wanders in my deepest lungs and feeds through all my limbs. Yet Eurystheus thrives! And there are those who can believe gods exist?"

---

He spoke, and wounded he walks through tall Oeta not otherwise than if a bull carried hunting spears fixed in his body, and the doer of the deed had fled. Often you'd see him groaning, often roaring, often trying to tear off all his clothes and overthrowing beams and raging at the mountains or stretching out his arms to his father's sky.

Look—he sees Lichas trembling, hiding in a hollow cliff, and as his pain had gathered all his rage: "Did you, Lichas," he said, "give the deadly gifts? Will you be the author of my death?" He trembles and grows pale with fear and says words of excuse timidly. As he's speaking and preparing to clasp his knees with hands, Alcides seized him and, having spun him three and four times, hurled him with more force than a catapult into the Euboean waves. He hardened as he hung in the airy breezes. Just as they say rains congeal with cold winds and then become snow, and snows too, spun softly, are compressed and a body is rounded in thick hail—so he, hurled through the void by strong arms and bloodless with fear and having no moisture, was turned into rigid flint, ancient tradition declares. Even now in the high Euboean deep a low crag stands out and preserves traces of human form, which sailors fear to tread, as if it could feel, and they call it Lichas.

But you, famous offspring of Jove, having cut trees that lofty Oeta bore and built them into a pyre, order the son of Poeas to carry your bow and spacious quiver and arrows that will see Troy's kingdom again—he by whose service as minister the flame is applied underneath. While the mound is seized by greedy fires, you spread Nemean hide over the heap of wood and recline with your head placed on your club, with no other expression than if you were lying as a guest among full cups of wine, crowned with garlands.

---

And now strong and spread on every side, it sounded and sought his careless limbs and its scorner. The gods feared for earth's champion. Jupiter, sensing this—for he did sense it—addresses them with joyful face: "That fear is my pleasure, O gods above, and I gratefully rejoice with all my heart that I'm called ruler and father of a mindful people and that my offspring too is safe by your favor. For though this is granted to his own huge deeds, I myself am nevertheless obliged. But indeed let not faithful hearts tremble with empty fear! Scorn the Oetaean flames! He who conquered all will conquer the fires you see, and he'll feel Vulcan powerful only in his maternal part. What he drew from me is eternal and exempt and immune from death, and tameable by no flame. This, when it's done with earth, I'll receive on heavenly shores, and I'm confident that my deed will be joyful to all the gods. If anyone, however—if anyone perhaps will grieve that Hercules becomes a god—he won't want the reward given, but he'll know it deserved to be given, and though unwilling, he'll approve it."

The gods assented. The royal consort too seemed to bear the other words not with hard expression, but the last with hard face, and she grieves at being marked out. Meanwhile whatever was able to be destroyed by flame, Mulciber had carried off, and no recognizable image of Hercules remained, and it has nothing drawn from his mother's likeness—it preserves only traces of Jupiter. Just as a new snake is accustomed to luxuriate when it's shed its old skin and shine with fresh scale, so when the Tirynthian put off his mortal limbs, he thrives in his better part and begins to seem greater and to become revered with august majesty. The all-powerful father snatched him up in a four-horsed chariot among hollow clouds and placed him among the shining stars.

Atlas felt the weight. Nor yet had Sthenelus' Eurystheus resolved his anger, and the fierce one exercised his paternal hatred on the offspring.

---

But Argive Alcmena, anxious with long cares, has Iole—where she may set down her aged complaints, to whom she may recount her son's labors witnessed by the world, to whom her own troubles. Hyllus had received her at Hercules' commands, into his marriage chamber and spirit, and had filled her womb with noble seed. To her Alcmena begins thus: "May the gods at least favor you, and may they hasten the delays when, mature, you call on Ilithyia, set over fearful women giving birth, whom Juno's favor made difficult for me. For when the day of birth of labor-bringing Hercules was at hand and the tenth sign was pressed by his star, my weight stretched my womb, and what I carried was so great you could say Jupiter was the author of the burden I concealed. Nor could I endure the labors any further. Indeed even now as I speak, cold horror holds my limbs, and it's a part of pain to remember.

"For seven nights and as many days, worn out by evils, I called on Lucina and the equal Birth-goddesses with loud shout, stretching my arms to heaven. She indeed came, but already corrupted, and wanting to give my life to hostile Juno. When she hears my groans, she sat on that altar before the doors, and with left knee pressed from right leg and fingers joined together in a comb, she held back the birth. She also spoke spells in silent voice, and the spells held the begun birth. I strain, and in my madness I make vain reproaches to ungrateful Jove and desire to die, and I complain words that could move hard rocks. Cadmean mothers are present and take up vows and encourage the suffering woman.

"One of the attendants, from the middle of the common people, golden-haired Galanthis, was there, energetic in performing commands, beloved for her services. She sensed that something hostile was being done by Juno. While she goes out and enters the doors often, she saw the goddess sitting on the altar, holding her arms on her knees with fingers entwined, and she says: 'Whoever you are, congratulate my mistress. Argive Alcmena is delivered and has gained her wish as mother.'

"The goddess powerful over the womb leaped up and, terrified, released her joined hands. I'm freed by the bonds released. They say Galanthis laughed at the deceived divinity. As she laughs, the savage goddess seized her by the hair itself and dragged her, and when she wanted to lift her body from the ground, she prevented it and changed her front arms into feet. Her ancient energy remains, nor have her back parts lost their color—the form is different from before. Because she had helped the woman giving birth with lying mouth, she gives birth by mouth and frequents our house as before."

---

She spoke and, moved by the reminder of her old attendant, groaned. To her grieving, her daughter-in-law thus spoke: "Yet you, mother, are moved by the stolen form of one not of our blood. What if I tell you the wonderful fates of my sister? Though tears and grief impede and prevent me from speaking. She was unique to her mother—my father begot me from another—most famous for beauty among the Oechalian women. After she lacked virginity and endured the force of Delphos' god, who also holds Delos, Andraemon receives her and is considered happy in his wife.

"There's a lake with sloping margin achieving the form of a shore. Myrtles crown the top. Dryope had come here, unaware of the fates, and—so you may be more indignant—bringing garlands for the nymphs. In her bosom she carried a boy who hadn't yet filled his year, a sweet burden, and she nourished him with the help of warm milk. Not far from the pool, a water lotus, imitating Tyrian colors, bloomed with promise of berries. From here Dryope had plucked flowers to hold out as delight to her child, and I seemed about to do the same—for I was there. I saw bloody drops fall from the flower and branches move with trembling horror.

"Clearly, as the slow country people now at last report, the nymph Lotis, fleeing Priapus' obscenity, had transferred herself into this form with changed face, the name preserved.

"My sister hadn't known this. When, terrified, she wanted to go back and depart after worshiping the nymphs, her feet stuck by the root. She fights to tear free and moves nothing except her top parts. Bark creeps up from below and gradually pliant wood presses all her groin. When she saw this, trying with her hand to tear her hair, her hand filled with leaves: leaves held her whole head. But the boy Amphissus (for his grandfather Eurytus had added this name to him) felt his mother's breasts growing stiff, and milky moisture doesn't follow when drawn. I was present watching your cruel fate, and I couldn't bring you help, sister. As much as I could, I delayed the growing trunk and branches by embracing them, and—I confess—I wanted to be hidden under the same bark.

"Look, her husband Andraemon and most wretched father arrive and seek Dryope. To those seeking Dryope I showed the lotus. They give kisses to the warm wood and, poured over it, cling to the roots of their tree. My dear sister had nothing now except her face that wasn't tree. Tears wet the leaves made from her pitiable body, and while her mouth allows a path for voice, she pours such complaints into the air:

"'If there's any faith for the wretched, I swear by these divine powers I haven't deserved wrong. I suffer punishment without crime. I've lived innocent. If I lie, may I lose the leaves I have and, cut by axes, be burned. Yet take this infant from his mother's branches and give him to a nurse, and under my tree often make him drink milk and play under my tree. And when he can speak, make him greet his mother and sadly say: "My mother lies hidden in this trunk." Yet let him fear pools and not pluck flowers from trees, and let him think all bushes are the bodies of goddesses. Farewell, dear husband, and you, sister, and father! If there's any piety, defend my leaves from the wound of the sharp sickle, from the bite of flocks. And since it's not permitted for me to bend down to you, raise yourselves here and come to my kisses while I can still be touched, and lift up my little child! I can speak no more, for now the pliant bark creeps over my white neck, and I'm buried in the highest crown. Remove hands from my eyes. Without your service let the advancing bark cover my dying eyes!'

"Her mouth ceased to speak and to be at the same time, and for a long time the branches grew warm from the changed body."

---

While Iole relates this wonderful deed and while Alcmena dries Eurytus' daughter's tears with applied thumb (she herself weeps too), a strange event checked all the sadness. For there stood on the high threshold, almost a boy, covering his cheeks with doubtful down—Iolaus remade into his first years. Juno's Hebe had given him this gift, conquered by her husband's prayers. When she was preparing to swear she'd give such gifts to no one after this, Themis didn't allow it: "For now Discord is stirring wars in Thebes," she said, "and Capaneus can't be conquered except by Jupiter, and brothers will be made equal in wounding each other, and the prophet, still living, will see his own shade with earth withdrawn, and the son will be dutiful and criminal in the same deed—avenging a parent on a parent—and stunned by evils, an exile from mind and home, he'll be driven by the faces of the Furies and his mother's shade, until his wife demands the fateful gold and Phegeus' sword drinks his kinsman's side. Then at last Calliroe, daughter of Achelous, will beg as great suppliant from Jupiter that he add years to her infant sons and not allow the avenger's death to remain unavenged. Jupiter, moved by these things, will anticipate the gifts of his stepdaughter and daughter-in-law and will make men in their unripe years."

---

After Themis, foreseeing the future, spoke these things with prophetic mouth, the gods above murmured with varied talk, and there was a murmur about why they couldn't give the same gifts to others. Pallas complains that her husband's years are old, mild Ceres complains that Iasion grows gray, Mulciber demands repeated age for Erichthonius, and care for the future touches Venus too, and she bargains to renew Anchises' years. Every god has someone to favor, and turbulent sedition grows from favor, until Jupiter opened his mouth and said: "O! If there's any reverence for me, where do you rush? Does anyone seem so able to himself that he even overcomes fate? By fates Iolaus returned to the years he lived. By fates Calliroe's sons born must grow young, not by ambition or arms. You too—so you may bear this with better spirit—I too am ruled by fates. If I could change them, our Aeacus wouldn't be bent by the years of old age, and Rhadamanthus would have perpetual bloom of life along with my Minos, who because of the bitter weights of old age is despised and doesn't rule in the order he did before."

Jupiter's words moved the gods. Nor does anyone maintain complaint when they see Rhadamanthus and Aeacus worn out with years and Minos, who, while he was whole in age, had terrified great nations by his very name too. Then he was weak and feared Miletus, son of Deion, proud in the strength of youth and in Phoebus as parent, and believing he was rising against his kingdoms, yet he didn't dare drive him from his ancestral household. You fled of your own will, Miletus, and in a swift ship you measured the Aegean waters and established walls in Asian land having the founder's name.

---

Here, while she was following the bends of her father's bank, the daughter of Maeander, who returns so many times to the same place, known as Cyanee, outstanding in beauty of body, gave birth to twin offspring—Byblis and Caunus. Byblis is an example that girls should love what's allowed. Byblis, seized by desire for her Apollonian brother, didn't love him as a sister should, nor as she ought. At first indeed she understands no fires, nor thinks it sin that she joins kisses more often, that she places her arms around her brother's neck, and for a long time is deceived by the false shadow of pretended piety.

Gradually her love declines. She comes dressed to see her brother and desires too much to seem beautiful, and if any woman there is more beautiful, she envies her. But she's not yet manifest to herself, and she makes no prayer beneath that fire, yet still she burns within. Already she calls him master, already she hates the names of blood. Already she prefers that he call her Byblis rather than sister.

Yet she doesn't dare let obscene hopes down into her spirit while awake. Relaxed in peaceful quiet, she often sees what she loves. She even seemed to join her body to her brother and blushed, though she lay asleep. Sleep departs. She's silent for a long time and recalls the image of her own rest and speaks with doubtful mind:

---

"Woe is me! What does this image of silent night mean to itself? How I wish it not be fulfilled! Why have I seen these dreams? He's beautiful, indeed, even to hostile eyes, and he pleases me, and I could love him if he weren't my brother, and he was worthy of me. But it harms me to be a sister. So long as I attempt nothing such while awake, often may sleep return under similar image! Sleep has no witness, and the imitated pleasure isn't absent. O Venus and tender Cupid, winged one with your mother, what joys I had! How manifest desire touched me! How I lay dissolved in all my marrow! How it delights to remember! Though that pleasure was brief and the night was headlong and hostile to my undertakings.

"O if I could be joined with name changed, how well, Caunus, I could be daughter-in-law to your parent! How well, Caunus, you could be son-in-law to my parent! Would that the gods made all things common to us, except our grandparents—I'd wish you more highborn! You'll make some woman a mother, I don't know whom, most beautiful one. But to me, who am badly situated, having obtained the same parents as you, you'll be nothing but brother. What hinders us we'll have as one thing. What do my visions mean to me then? Or do dreams have weight? Do they even have weight? May the gods forbid! The gods indeed had their own sisters. So Saturn took Ops joined to himself by blood, Oceanus took Tethys, the ruler of Olympus took Juno. The gods above have their own laws! Why do I try to measure human customs against heavenly rites and different covenants?

"Either the forbidden passion will be driven from my heart, or—if I can't do this—may I die, I pray, beforehand and be laid out dead on my couch, and may my brother give kisses to me laid out. And yet that affair requires the judgment of two! Suppose it pleases me: it will seem a crime to him.

"Yet the sons of Aeolus didn't fear their sisters' marriage chambers! But how did I know these? Why have I prepared these examples? Where am I carried? Depart far from here, obscene flames! Let my brother be loved only as is right for a sister! Yet if he himself were first captured by love of me, perhaps I could indulge his madness. So shall I, who wouldn't have rejected him seeking, myself seek? Can you speak? Can you confess? Love will compel me—I'll be able! Or if shame will hold my mouth, a letter will secretly confess hidden fires."

---

This pleases her. This opinion conquered her doubtful mind. She raises herself on her side and leans on her left elbow. "Let him see," she says. "Let me confess my insane loves! Alas, to what labor? What fire does my mind conceive?" And with trembling hand she composes the words she'd meditated.

Her right hand holds the iron stylus, her left holds the empty wax. She begins and hesitates, writes and condemns the tablets, and marks and deletes, changes and blames and approves, and in turn puts down what she's taken up and takes up what she's put down. She doesn't know what she wants. Whatever she seems about to do displeases her. Boldness mixed with shame is in her face.

"Sister" had been written. It seemed good to delete "sister" and cut such words in the corrected wax: "She who, unless you give it, won't have health, sends this to you as lover. It shames me—ah, it shames me—to reveal my name! And if you ask what I desire, I'd wish my cause could be pleaded without name, and I not be known as Byblis before hope of my prayers was certain.

"Indeed the index of wounded heart could have been for you: color and leanness and expression and often moist eyes and sighs stirred by no clear cause and frequent embraces, and kisses—if perhaps you noticed—that could be felt to be not sisterly. Yet I myself, though I had a grave wound in my spirit, though inside was fiery madness, I did everything (the gods are my witnesses) that I might at last be saner, and I fought long to flee the violent weapons of Cupid, unhappy one, and I bore more than you'd think a girl could bear. I'm compelled to confess I'm overcome and to demand your help with timid prayers.

"You alone can save or destroy the lover. Choose which you do. No enemy prays this, but one who, though joined most closely to you, desires to be more closely joined and to be bound with you in a nearer bond. Let old men know the laws and inquire what's permitted and forbidden and right, and let them keep the examinations of laws. Rash Venus is fitting for our years. We don't yet know what's permitted, and we believe all is permitted, and we follow the examples of the great gods. Neither harsh father nor reverence for reputation nor fear will impede us. Only let there be a cause for fearing—we'll conceal sweet thefts under a brother's name. I have freedom to speak secretly with you, and we give embraces and join kisses openly. How much is lacking? Pity one confessing love, and one who wouldn't confess unless ultimate passion compelled her, and don't let me be written as the cause on my tomb."

---

When she'd vainly plowed through such words, the full wax left her hand, and the final line stuck to the margin. Immediately she seals her crimes with a pressed gem, which she moistened with tears (moisture had failed her tongue), and, ashamed, she called one of her servants and, having soothed the fearful one, said: "Carry these to our"—and she added after a long time—"brother."

As she was giving them, the tablets slipped from her hands and fell. She's disturbed by the omen, yet she sent them. The attendant, having found a suitable time, approaches and hands over the hidden words. The Maeandrian youth, stunned with sudden anger, throws down the accepted tablets, having read a part for himself, and scarcely restraining his hands from the trembling attendant's mouth, says: "While you can, O scoundrel, author of forbidden lust, flee! Who, if your fate didn't drag my shame with it, would have given me punishment by death."

He flees in fear and reports fierce Caunus' words to his mistress. Byblis grows pale at the rejection heard and her body, seized by icy cold, trembles. Yet as her mind returned, at the same time her madness returned, and her tongue, scarcely striking the air, gave such words:

"And deservedly! For why, rash, did I make evidence of this wound? Why did I entrust to hasty tablets words that should have been hidden? First I should have tested my spirit's judgment with ambiguous words. To see whether he would follow as I went, I should have noticed with some part of sail what sort of breeze there was, and run across a safe sea—I who now filled my sails with winds not explored. Therefore I'm carried onto rocks and, overturned, I'm buried in the whole ocean, and my sails have no retreat.

---

"What of the fact that I was forbidden by certain omens to indulge my love, when, as I was ordering them carried, the wax fell and made our hopes fall? Shouldn't either that day have been changed, or the whole intention—but rather the day should have been changed? The god himself was warning and gave certain signs if I hadn't been insane. And yet I myself should have spoken, and not entrusted myself to wax, and opened my madness in person. He would have seen tears, he would have seen the face of a lover. I could have said more than the tablets held. I could have placed arms around his unwilling neck, and if I were rejected, I could have seemed about to die and embraced his feet and, poured out, begged for life. I would have done everything. If singular things couldn't bend his hard mind, all things together could have.

"Perhaps there was some fault of the attendant sent. He didn't approach suitably, nor—I believe—did he read suitable times, nor did he seek an hour and spirit free. These things harmed me. For he's not born of a tigress, nor does he have rigid flint or solid iron in his chest or adamant, nor did he drink the milk of a lioness. He'll be conquered! He must be tried again, nor will I take any weariness of what I've begun, as long as this breath remains. For first, if it were possible to call back what I've done, it was not to have begun: to storm what's begun is second. Indeed even if I leave off now, he can't always remember what I dared. And because I've stopped, I'll seem to have wanted lightly, or even to have tested him and attacked him with traps, or certainly not to be believed urged and burned by this god—who presses and burns my heart most—but to be overcome by lust. Finally now I can't have done no wrong. I've written and sought. My will is unsealed. Though I add nothing, I can't be called innocent. What remains is much for prayers, small for crimes."

She spoke, and (such is the discord of an uncertain mind) when it grieves her to have tried, it pleases her to try. She exceeds measure and unhappy one commits herself to be often rejected. Soon when there's no end, he flees his homeland and the wrong and establishes new walls in foreign land.

---

Then truly they report the Miletid woman, grief-stricken in all her mind, failed. Then truly she tore her garment from her breast and beat her arms in fury. And now openly she's mad and confesses hope of forbidden love, since indeed she deserts her homeland and hateful household gods and follows the tracks of her fugitive brother. Just as your Bacchantes, moved by your thyrsus, offspring of Semele, celebrate the triennial rites of Ismarus, Byblis is seen to have wailed through the wide fields no otherwise by the Bubasis' daughters-in-law. Leaving them behind, she wanders through Caria and the armed Lelegians and Lycia. Now she had left behind Cragon and Limyre and Xanthus' waves, and the place where Chimaera, on her ridge, had fire in her middle parts, the breast and face of a lioness, a serpent's tail.

The forests fail. When you, worn out with following, collapsed, Byblis, and lay on the hard earth with hair laid down, you press fallen leaves with your mouth. Often the Lelegeid nymphs try to lift her in tender arms, often they advise how to cure love and offer consolation to her deaf mind. Mute she lies and grasps green grass with her nails, Byblis, and wets the grass with a stream of tears. The Naiads are said to have placed beneath these a vein that could never dry. For what greater thing could they have to give? Immediately, just as drops from cut pitch bark, or as tenacious bitumen flows from pregnant earth, or as, at the approach of the gently breathing west wind, water that was frozen by cold softens in the sun—so Phoebean Byblis, consumed by her own tears, is turned into a spring that even now in those valleys has the name of its mistress and flows under a black oak.

---

The fame of the strange marvel would perhaps have filled a hundred Cretan cities if Crete hadn't recently borne nearer miracles in Iphis changed. For once near the Cnosian kingdom, Phaestian land gave birth to Ligdus, unknown by name, a man from the freeborn common people, and his wealth no greater than his nobility, but his life and trust were blameless. He warned the ears of his pregnant wife with these words, when now the birth was near:

"Two things I pray for: that you be relieved with minimum pain, and that you bear a male. The other lot is more burdensome, and fortune denies the strength. Therefore—what I dread—if by chance a female will have been born from your delivery—unwilling I command; piety, forgive!—let it be killed."

He spoke, and tears washed the face of both him who commanded and her to whom commands were given. Yet still Telethusa begs her husband with empty prayers not to place hope in narrow bounds. Ligdus' judgment is certain. And now scarcely could she endure carrying the heavy womb with mature weight, when in the space of midnight, under sleep's image, the Inachian goddess stood—or seemed to stand—before the bed, accompanied by the pomp of sacred things. Lunar horns were on her forehead with ears of grain gleaming with bright gold and royal splendor. With her was barking Anubis and sacred Bubastis and Apis varied with colors, and he who presses voice and urges silence with finger, and there were sistrums, and Osiris never sufficiently sought, and a foreign snake full of sleep-bringing poisons.

Then as if shaken from sleep and seeing clearly, the goddess addressed her thus: "O Telethusa, part of my worshipers, set down heavy cares and deceive your husband's commands. And don't hesitate, when Lucina relieves you in childbirth, to raise up whatever it will be. I'm a goddess who brings aid, and I bring help when entreated. Nor will you complain you worshiped an ungrateful divinity." She warned and withdrew from the chamber. Joyful, the Cretan woman rises from the bed and, suppliant, raising pure hands to the stars, prays that her visions be fulfilled.

---

When pain increased and the weight itself thrust into the air, a girl was born to the unknowing father. The mother, lying, ordered her nourished as a boy. The affair had faith, and no one was aware of the pretense except the nurse. The father paid vows and gave an ancestral name. Iphis was the grandfather. The mother rejoiced at the name because it was common and wouldn't deceive anyone by it. From there the pious deception, begun with fraud, lay hidden. The clothing was a boy's. The face, whether you gave it to a girl or gave it to a boy—either one would have been beautiful.

---

Meanwhile the thirteenth year had succeeded the tenth. When your father betroths to you, Iphis, golden Ianthe, who among the Phaestian women was most praised for beauty's dowry, a maiden born to Dictaean Telestes. Their age was equal, their beauty equal, and they received their first arts, the elements of life, from the same teachers. From this, love touched the untrained heart of both and gave an equal wound to each, but their confidence was unequal. Ianthe expects marriage and the times of the promised torch, and she whom she thinks is a man, she believes will be a man. Iphis loves one she despairs to be able to enjoy, and this very thing increases her flames, and virgin burns for virgin.

Scarcely holding back tears, she says: "What end awaits me, held by a care known to none, how strange and new a care of Venus! If the gods wanted to spare me, they should have spared me. If not, and they wanted to destroy me, they should have given at least a natural evil and from custom. Nor does love for cow burn cow, nor for mares burn mares. The ram burns for ewes, the female follows her deer. So too birds mate, and among all animals, no female is seized by female desire. I wish I were none! Yet so Crete doesn't bear all monsters, the daughter of the Sun loved a bull—a female at least a male. My madness is more furious than that, if we confess truth. Yet she followed hope of Venus. Yet she by tricks and the image of a cow endured the bull, and there was one who was deceived—an adulterer.

"Though cleverness should flow together here from the whole world, though Daedalus himself should fly back on waxed wings, what will he do? Can he make me a boy from a girl with learned arts? Can he change you, Ianthe?

---

"No, rather strengthen your spirit, Iphis, and collect yourself and shake off these foolish and hopeless fires! See what you were born, unless you deceive yourself too, and seek what's right, and love what a woman should! Hope is what makes, hope is what feeds love. Reality takes this from you. No guard keeps you from dear embrace, nor care of cautious husband, nor father's harshness, nor does she herself deny to you asking. Yet she can't be possessed by you, nor, though all things happen, can you be happy, though gods and men labor. Now too no part of my prayers is vain, and the gods who are easy to me have given whatever they could. What I want, my father wants, she herself wants, and her future father-in-law wants. But nature doesn't want it, more powerful than all those, which alone harms me. Look, the desirable time comes, and the wedding day is here, and now Ianthe will be mine—and I won't have her. We'll thirst in the middle of the waters. Why, Juno, patroness of marriage, why, Hymenaeus, do you come to these rites where he who leads is absent, where we're both being married?"

She suppressed her voice from these words. Nor does the other maiden burn less hotly, and she prays that you come quickly, Hymenaeus.

---

What she seeks, Telethusa, fearing, now delays the times, now draws out delay with feigned languor, often she alleges omens and visions as causes. But now she had consumed all material for pretense, and the delayed times of the torch had pressed on, and one day remained. Then she removes the hair ribbon from her head and her daughter's head, and embracing the altar with streaming hair:

"Isis, who dwell in Paraetonium and Mareotic fields and Pharos and the Nile divided into seven horns: bring, I pray," she says, "help and heal our fear! You, goddess, you once and these your emblems I saw and recognized all—the sound and the accompanying bronze of sistrums—and I noted your commands in my remembering mind. That she sees light, that I'm not punished—look!—this is your counsel and gift. Pity us two and help with aid!" Tears followed her words.

The goddess seemed to have moved her altars (and she had moved them), and the temple's doors trembled, and the horns imitating the moon flashed, and the rattling sistrum clattered. Not secure indeed, yet joyful with the favorable omen, the mother leaves the temple. Iphis follows her as companion going, with greater stride than she was accustomed, and the whiteness doesn't remain in her face, and strength increases, and her very expression is sharper, and the measure of her unkempt hair is shorter, and more vigor is present than a woman had. For you who were a woman recently are a boy! Give gifts to the temples and rejoice with not timid faith! They give gifts to the temples and add an inscription too. The inscription had a brief song:

THE GIFTS A BOY IPHIS PAYS WHICH A GIRL IPHIS VOWED

The next daylight had opened the wide world with rays when Venus and Juno and companion Hymenaeus gather for the wedding fires, and the boy Iphis possesses his Ianthe.