the serpent, who, from deep within the cave
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thrust his head out, hissing at them fiercely:
the pitchers tumble from their frightened hands
as in their veins the warm blood ices over,
and their agitated limbs convulse with tremors.
Twisting his scaly coils in rolling knots,
with a great leap he flexes like a bow,
and then, by more than half his height, he thrusts
himself up through the unresisting air;
so huge he was that if you could have seen
the whole of him, he would have seemed the Snake
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that keeps the Greater from the Lesser Bear.
At once he falls upon the Tyrians,
whether they now prepare to fight or flee
or simply stand there, paralyzed by fear;
those who escape his fangs live but to die
crushed in his coils or poisoned by his breath.
At midpoint now, the sun draws shadows in,
and Cadmus, wondering what keeps his mates,
sets out to find them: his shield, a lion pelt;
his arms, a javelin and thrusting spear;
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no weapon, though, was greater than his courage.
Soon at the grove, he sees their broken bodies,
and towering above them sways their huge
enemy, triumphant, his bloody tongue
licking at their sad wounds. The hero cries,
“Most faithful souls! I will avenge your deaths
or else I’ll join you,” and with his right hand
lifts up a huge rock, straining, and then hurls it.
Such a great blow would easily have toppled
steep walls and lofty towers; but the serpent,
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protected by the armor of his scales
and by his adamantine hide beneath,
repels the stroke unscathed, though not the spear
that slips through writhing coils to pin his spine,
its tip of iron buried in his innards.
Frenzied, he twists his head round to examine
his wounded back, then bites down on the shaft,
and with great effort barely manages
to tear it loose, although the tip stays in,
adding new fuel to the well-banked ire
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of customary rage: the veins throb in his throat,
his gaping horrid jaws are flecked with foam;
buffed by his scales, the bare earth resonates,
and his infernal breath infects the air.
He coils his roundness up into enormous
spirals, then winds out upright, tall as a tree;
and now comes pouring like a stream in flood,
his huge breast sweeping forests on before it.
Cadmus falls back: his shield of lion skin
receives the blows, while he wards off the jaws with sharp spear jabs; enraged, the serpent bites
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into the palate-piercing iron tip;
now blood begins to trickle from his throat,
and spatters the fresh grass with its new color.
The wound is light though, since he keeps retreating,
moving his injured neck back from the spear,
yielding more ground, while he prevents the hero
from working on that wound. Relentlessly
Cadmus engages him, maneuvering
until he gets him right before an oak,
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then thrusts and pins the monster to the tree,
which now bends in the middle from his weight,
and groans in bass, lashed by the serpent’s tail.
And while he stared at his enormous trophy,
the winner heard an unexpected voice,
distinctly clear, but unlocatable:
“Why do you gape at the slain serpent, Cadmus, when you yourself are fated to become a spectacle,
a serpent well worth seeing?”
And for a long time, faint and colorless,
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he stood there, trembling with icy fear,
his hair erect. But look: his patroness
glides down from heaven and stands by his side:
Pallas Athena, who now bids him sow
the agitated earth with the viper’s teeth,
seed of a race to come. Obeying her,
he opens furrows with a plow, then sprinkles
that mortal seed of teeth into the ground.
And then, incredibly, the dull clods stir:
at first only the little tips of spears
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are visible, emerging from the furrows,
but these, almost at once are followed by
the brightly painted waving crests of helmets,
then shoulders, breasts, and arms heavy with weapons,
no different from what you will have seen
on feast days, in the theater, when the curtain
lifts from the pit, and the images of men
painted upon it seem to rise: heads first,
and then the rest of them, little by little,
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drawn up in one unbroken wave until
the tiny figures stand erect onstage,
complete in all respects, from head to feet.
Cadmus, alarmed by this new enemy,
prepared to arm himself: “Don’t take up arms,”
cried one of those created in the earth.
“It’s our civil war—stay out of it!”
And closing in on one of his earthborn
brothers, he hacked him with his rigid sword,
and then was felled by someone else’s spear;
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and just a moment later, that one too
yielded the breath he’d only just received.
Now all of them were equally enraged!
These brothers of a moment slew each other,
until young men, whose lives had just begun,
lay beating the breast of their ensanguined mother.
And now just five remained: one was Echion,
who, warned by Pallas, threw his weapons down,
seeking and giving securities for peace
among his brothers; these were the companions
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Sidonian Cadmus had when he built the city
granted him by the oracle of Phoebus.
Actaeon and Diana
Thebes has been founded now, and even though
an exile still, you might seem fortunate
in having Mars and Venus as your in-laws,
Cadmus; nor is this all, for in addition
are offspring worthy of your noble wife,
your sons and daughters, the pledges of your love,
and grandsons too, already grown to manhood.
But “fortunate”? A judgment best reserved
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for a man’s last day: call no one blest, until
he dies and the last rites are said for him.
Not all your riches could console you, Cadmus,
grieving for the grandson that you lost
when those unlikely horns sprang from his brow,
and his own dogs were sated with his blood.
You’ll find—if you look closely—that the fault
here was with Fortune, not with the young man,
for can it really be a crime to err?
When the sun stood equidistant from its goals
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at shadowless midday, upon a mountain
polluted with the blood of divers beasts,
Actaeon languidly addressed his mates,
who had been hunting in the trackless wood:
“Fortune has been sufficient to the day:
our nets and spears are steeped in beastly gore.
Let us renew our labors when Au
rora
next brings the day back in her saffron car,
for now at midpoint, Phoebus sweats the fields;
stop what you’re doing and take in the nets.”
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They did as he commanded them to do,
and abruptly brought their labors to an end.
There is a grove of pine and cypresses
known as Gargraphie, a hidden place
most sacred to the celibate Diana;
and deep in its recesses is a grotto
artlessly fabricated by the genius
of Nature, which, in imitating Art,
had shaped a natural organic arch
out of the living pumice and light tufa.
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Before this little grotto, on the right,
a fountain burbles; its pellucid stream
widens to form a pool edged round with turf;
here the great goddess of the woods would come
to bathe her virgin limbs in its cool waters,
when hunting wearied her.
She is here today;
arriving, she hands the Armoress of Nymphs
her spear, her quiver, and her unstrung bow;
and while one nymph folds her discarded robe
over an arm, two more remove her sandals,
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and that accomplished Theban nymph, Crocale,
gathers the stray hairs on Diana’s neck
into a knot (we cannot help but notice
that her own hair is left in careless freedom!);
five other nymphs, whose names are Nephele,
Hyale, Rhanis, Psecas, and Phiale,
fetch and pour water from enormous urns.
And while Diana bathes as usual,
see where Actaeon on a holiday,
wandering clueless through the unfamiliar
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forest, now finds his way into her grove,
for so Fate had arranged.
At sight of him
within the misty precincts of their grotto,
the naked nymphs began to beat their breasts
and filled the grove with shrill and startled cries;
in their concern, they poured around Diana,
attempting to conceal her with a screen
of their own bodies, but to no avail,
for the goddess towered over all of them.
The color taken from the setting sun
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by western clouds, so similar to that
which rosy-tinted Dawn so often shows,
was the same color on Diana’s face
when she was seen undressed. And even though
her virgin comrades squeezed themselves around her,
she managed to turn sideways and look back
as if she wished she had her arrows handy—
but making do with what she had, scooped up
water and flung it in Actaeon’s face,
sprinkling his hair with the avenging droplets,
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and adding words that prophesied his doom:
“Now you may tell of how you saw me naked,
tell it if you can, you may!”
No further warning:
the brow which she has sprinkled jets the horns
of a lively stag; she elongates his neck,
narrows his eartips down to tiny points,
converts his hands to hooves, his arms to legs,
and clothes his body in a spotted pelt.
Lastly, the goddess endows him with trembling fear:
that heroic son of Autonoe flees,
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surprised to find himself so swift a runner.
But when he stopped and looked into a pool
at the reflection of his horns and muzzle—
“Poor me!” he tried to say, but no words came,
only a groaning sound, by which he learned
that groaning was now speech; tears streamed down cheeks
that were no longer his: only his mind
was left unaltered by Diana’s wrath.
What should he do? Return home to the palace,
or find a hiding place deep in the woods?
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Shame kept him from one course, and fear, the other.
And while he stands bewildered, he observes
his pack of hunting dogs approaching him
with Tracker and keen Blackfoot in the lead
(Tracker’s a Cretan, Blackfoot’s out of Sparta)
baying the good news to the dogs behind,
the whole pack rushing at him like a storm:
Gazelle and Greedy and Ridge Rover, all
Arcadians, with Killdeer and Tornado,
and sturdy Hunter, fearsome Birdie, Gwen,
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and savage Sylvia (who’d lately been
gored by a boar) and Snap (a wolf, her dam)
and faithful Shepherdess along with Snare
and two of the pups from her last litter;
ravenous Raptor the Siconian,
then Runner, Grinder, Spot, Tigress, Terror,
snow-colored Whitey, Soot as black as ashes,
powerful Sparta, devastating Whirlwind,
Speedy, and Wolf, the Cyprian, her brother,
and Trap (with that distinctive little white patch
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right in the middle of his black brow);
and after them came Blackie, Shag, and two
dogs of mixed Cretan-Spartan ancestry,
Fury and Fang, a little one named Yipper,
and many more too numerous to mention,
all out to taste his blood, all unrelenting;
through steep, and sheer, and inaccessible,
through difficult and through impossible
places, they track him, and he flees the hunt
he has so often led, longing to cry out
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to the pack behind him It’s me! Actaeon!
Recognize your master!” But the words
betray him and the air resounds with baying.
Now Brownie and Buster leap onto his back
while Mountain Climber dangles from one shoulder;
they’d started late but figured out a shortcut
across the hilltop; now he’s held at bay
until the pack can gather and begin
to savage him: torn by their teeth, he makes
a sound no man would make and no stag either,
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a cry that echoes through those well-known heights;
and kneeling like a suppliant at prayer,
he turns toward them, pleading with his eyes,
as a man would with his hands.
But his companions
loudly encourage the ferocious pack,
all unaware: they look around for him,
call out to him as though he weren’t there;
“Actaeon!” “Pity he’s not here with us!”
And hearing his own name, he turns his head: he might wish to be elsewhere, but he’s present,
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and might wish merely to be watching this,
rather than feeling the frenzy of his dogs
who press around him, thrusting pointed snouts into the savaged body of their master,
convinced that he’s a stag.
And it is said
he did not die until his countless wounds
had satisfied Diana’s awful wrath.
Juno, Jove, and Semele
Folks were divided: there were those who found the goddess’s actions cruel and unjust,
while others considered them appropriate
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to the defense of her austere virginity.
As usual, both parties had their reasons.
Jove’s wife alone refrained from passing judgment,
rejoicing as she did when some misfortune
fell upon one of Agenor’s descendents,
for her undying ha
tred of her husband’s
Tyrian mistress had been redirected
more generally against Europa’s kin.
But look: her husband’s at it once again:
Semele’s womb is swollen with the seed
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of almighty Jove, and Juno is dismayed;
this so reminds her of earlier episodes
that a great tirade rises to her lips:
“But when have I won anything by shouting?”
she asked. “No: I must attack and ruin her,
if I am rightly styled as almighty Juno,
if it is right for me to bear the scepter,
if I am certainly the queen of Jove,
his sister, his wife—well, certainly his sister.
“Why bother, though? She’s just a one-night stand,
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a momentary insult to my conjugal rights.
But this one carries shame that can’t be hidden
in her tumescent womb—and that is new;
her fondest wish is to become the mother
of a child by Jove—an honor I’m denied.
“She’s proud of her good looks: I’ll have that pride
betray her; say that I’m not Saturn’s daughter
if that one doesn’t end up in the Styx,
and plunged there by almighty Jove himself!
She left her throne and journeyed to the house
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of Semele, wrapped in a golden cloud,
until she’d made herself into a crone
with whitened hair and wrinkle-furrowed skin
who walked bent over double, tottering
on trembling limbs, and spoke up in a voice
that quavered with old age; as such she seemed
Beroë, Semele’s Epidaurian nurse.
A long, inveigling chat of this and that,
until Jove’s name came up. Nurse sighed and said,
“I hope he’s Jupiter—although I doubt it:
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the divinity plea? An all-too-common ploy
among seducers. Suppose he is, though:
make him provide assurance of his love;
if he’s the real thing, ask him to put on
all of the trappings of his high office
and embrace you, showing such almighty splendor
as when he is received by Lady Juno.”
Thus the goddess schooled the clueless daughter
of Cadmus, who went quickly off to Jove
and asked him for a gift, nature unspecified.
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“Ask it,” he said. “I will deny you nothing!
So that you may believe me all the more,
I’ll swear it by the sacred, roiling Styx,
the god that terrifies the rest of us.”
Tickled to death by her appalling fate
and demanding from her too-indulgent lover
a gift soon to undo her, Semele said,
“Just as you are when Lady Juno receives you
in her embraces and you initiate