A4 Ovid, from the Metamorphoses, c. AD 10. Trans.

A.D. Melville, 1986

The story of Adonis is one of the tales which Orpheus sings ¡®Of boys beloved of gods and girls bewitched/By lawless fires who paid the price of lust¡¯, in book 10 of the Metamorphoses. Ovid tells the story of Venus and Adonis itself quite briefly. It is preceded by a much longer version of the story of Adonis¡¯s mother, Myrrha, and has inset into it a long version of the tale of Atalanta and Hippomenes, which Venus tells to Adonis. Our passage begins as King Cinyras discovers that the girl who has been sharing his bed is his daughter Myrrha.

Dumb in agony, he drew

His flashing sword that hung there. Myrrha fled.

The darkness and the night's blind benison(blessing)

Saved her from death. Across the counryside

She wandered till she left the palm-fringed lands

Of Araby and rich Panchaia¡¯s fields.(Panchaia: a legendary eastern land rich in spices)

Nine times the crescent of the moon returned

And still she roamed, and then she found at last

Rest for her weariness on Saba¡¯s soil.(Saba's soil: Arabia)

She scarce could bear the burden of her womb.

And then, not knowing what to wish, afraid

Of death and tired of life, she framed these words

Of prayer: If Powers of heaven are open to

The cries of penitents, I¡¯ve well deserved-

I¡¯ll not refuse-the pain of punishment,

But lest I outrage, if I¡¯m left alive,

The living, or, if I shall die, the dead,

Expel me from both realms; some nature give

That¡¯s different; let me neither die nor live!'

Some Power is open to a penitent;

For sure her final prayer found gods to hear.

For, as she spoke, around her legs the earth

Crept up; roots thrusting from her toes

Spread sideways, firm foundations of a trunk;

Her bones gained strength; though marrow still remained,

Blood became sap, her fingers twigs, her arms

Branches, her skin was hardened into bark.

And now the growing tree had tightly swathed(wrapped)

Her swelling womb, had overlapped(covered and extended over) her breast,

Ready to wrap her neck. She would not wait,

But sinking down to meet the climbing wood,

Buried her face and forehead in the bark.

Though with her body she had forfeited(lost)

Her former feelings, still she weeps and down

The tree the warm drops ooze. Those tears in truth

Have honour; from the trunk the weeping myrrh

Keeps on men¡¯s lips for aye(forever) the name of her.

The child conceived in sin had grown inside

The wood and now was searching for some way

To leave its mother and thrust forth. The trunk

Swelled in the middle with its burdened womb.

The load was straining, but the pains of birth

Could find no words, nor voice in travail call

Lucina(Roman goddess of childbirth). Yet the tree, in labour, stooped

With groan on groan and wet with falling tears.

Then, pitying, Lucina stood beside

The branches in their pain and laid her hands

Upon them and pronounced the words of birth.

The tree split open and the sundered bark

Yielded its living load; a baby boy

Squalled(suddenly came out), and the Naiads(nymphs presiding over rivers and springs) laid him on soft grass

And bathed him in his mother's flowing tears.

Envy herself would praise his looks; for like

The little naked Loves that pictures show

He lay there, give or take the slender bow.

Time glides in secret and his wings deceive;

Nothing is swifter than the years. That son,

Child of his sister and his grandfather

So lately bark-enswathed, so lately born,

Then a most lovely infant, then a youth,

And now a man more lovely than the boy,

Was Venus' darling (Venus'!) and avenged

His mother¡¯s passion.(a hint that Myrrha's incestuous passion was caused by 'the wrath of Aphrodite') Once, when Venus' son(Cupid)

Was kissing her, his quiver(a portable case or bag for holding arrows) dangling down,

A jutting arrow, unbeknown, had grazed(touched lightly in passing to suffer slight abrasion of) Her breast. She pushed the boy away.

In fact the wound was deeper than it seemed,

Though unperceived at first. Enraptured by

The beauty of a man, she cared no more

For her Cythera¡¯s shores nor sought again

Her sea-girt Paphos nor her Cnidos, famed

For fish, nor her ore-laden Amathus(places sacred to Venus: Cythera is and island near Sparta, Cnidos a city on the coast of Asia Minor, Paphos and Amathus in Cyprus).

She shunned heaven too: to heaven she preferred

Adonis. Him she clung to, he was her

Constant companion. She who always used

To idle in the shade and take such pains

To enhance her beauty, roamed across the hills,

Through woods and brambly boulders(a detached and rounded or worn rock, especially a large one), with her dress

Knee-high like Dian¡¯s, urging on the hounds,

Chasing the quarry(An animal pursued or taken by a hunt with hounds, or by hunters using other means.) when the quarry¡¯s safe-

But keeping well away from brigand(a thief with a weapon) wolves

And battling boars and bears well-armed with claws

Does and low-leaping hares and antlered deer

And lions soaked in slaughter of the herds.

She warned Adonis too, if warnings could

Have been of any use, to fear those beasts.

¡®Be brave when backs are turned, but when they¡¯re bold,

Boldness is dangerous. Never be rash,

My darling, to my risk; never provoke

Quarry that nature¡¯s armed, lest your renown(high esteem)

Should cost me dear. Not youth, not beauty, nor

Charms that move Venus' heart can ever move

Lions or bristly boars or eyes or minds

Of savage beasts. In his curved tusks a boar

Wields lightning; tawny(of a light yellowish-brown color) lions launch their charge(attack)

In giant anger. Creatures of that kind I hate.¡¯ And when Adonis asked her why,

¡®I¡¯ll tell¡¯, she said, ¡®a tale to astonish you

Of ancient guilt and magic long ago.

But my unwonted toil has made me tired

And, look, a poplar, happily at hand,

Drops shade for our delight, and greensward(turf that is green with growing grass) gives

A couch. Here I would wish to rest with you¡¯

(She rested) ¡®on the ground¡¯, and on the grass

And him she lay, her head upon his breast,

And mingling kisses with her words began ...

Venus proceeds to tell the story of Atalanta, Hippomenes, and the golden apples. Atalanta was a brilliant athlete and runner who, having been warned by an oracle that if she married she would ¡®lose herself¡¯, declared that she would marry only the man who could defeat her in a foot race-the loser to be executed. Hippomenes, coming to take his chance in the contest, prayed to Venus, who gave him three golden apples. During the race he threw down each of the apples in turn; Atalanta could not resist swerving to pick them up, and so was beaten, not entirely to her disappointment. But Venus was offended when the triumphant Hippomenes forgot to offer thanks for her help. As the couple departed, she cursed them with a sudden attack of irresistible desire, which drove them to make love, sacrilegiously, in an ancient shrine of the mother-goddess Cybele. Cybele in turn prepares her revenge, and Atalanta¡¯s oracle is fulfilled...

¡® ... The holy statues

Turned their shocked eyes away and Cybele,

The tower-crowned(Cybele was depicted wearing a turreted crown and riding in a chariot drawn by lions) Mother, pondered should she plunge

The guilty pair beneath the waves of Styx.

Such punishment seemed light. Therefore their necks,

smooth before, she clothed with tawny manes,

Their fingers curved to claws; their arms were changed

To legs; their chests swelled with new weight; with tails

They swept the sandy ground; and in their eyes

Cruel anger blazed and growls they gave for speech.

Their marriage-bed is now a woodland lair,

And feared by men, but by the goddess tamed,

They champ(chew by vigorous and noisy action of the jaws)-two lions-the bits of Cybele(the mistress of wild nature symbolized by her constant companion, the lion).

And you, my darling, for my sake beware

Of lions and of every savage beast

That shows not heels but teeth; avoid them all

Lest by your daring ruin on us fall.'

Her warning given, Venus made her way,

Drawn by her silver swans across the sky;

But his bold heart rebuffed her warning words.

It chanced his hounds, hot on a well-marked scent,

Put up(roused from hiding) a boar, lying hidden in the woods,

And as it broke away Adonis speared it-

A slanting hit-and quick with its curved snout

The savage beast dislodged the bloody point,

And charged Adonis as he ran in fear

For safety, and sank its tusks deep in his groin

And stretched him dying on the yellow sand.

Venus was riding in her dainty chariot,

Winged by her swans, across the middle air

Making for Cyprus, when she heard afar

Adonis' dying groans, and thither turned

Her snowy birds and, when from heaven on high

She saw him lifeless, writhing in his blood,

She rent her garments, tore her lovely hair,

And bitterly beat her breast, and springing down

Reproached the Fates: ¡®Even so, not everything

Shall own your sway. Memorials of my sorrow,

Adonis, shall endure; each passing year

Your death repeated in the hearts of men

Shall re-enact my grief and my lament.

But now your blood shall change into a flower:

Persephone of old was given grace

To change a woman¡¯s form to fragrant mint;(her name was Menthe('mint'); according to another account, she was Pluto's mistress, and Persophone jealously trampled her underfoot before changing her into the herb.)

And shall I then be grudged the right to change(grudge: unwilling to allow, give)

My prince?¡¯ And with these words she sprinkled nectar

Sweet-scented, on his blood, which at the touch

Swelled up, as on a pond when showers fall

Clear bubbles form; and ere an hour had passed

A blood-red flower arose, like the rich bloom

Of pomegranates which in a stubborn rind(the outer crust, skin)

Conceal their seeds; yet is its beauty brief,

So lightly cling its petals, fall so soon,

When the winds blow that give the flower its name.(anemone from Greek anemos, wind)