take as your own the spirit of the Serpent,
one who slew many; he died in the defense
of his own lair, but you for glory’s sake;
he slew heroes; you must drive off sissies
to keep your nation’s honor bright.
“If fate
denies long life to Thebes, I’d rather see
her walls fall to men and the engines of war,
710
in tumult of iron and fire! Our wretchedness
would be no crime then, we could mourn our lot openly, unshamed by our tears.
“But Thebes has been captured by a sissyboy, untutored in the arts of war, unaided
by spears or cavalry: the city taken
by slicked and scented hair, by tender garlands,
by robes embroidered with rich gold and purple!
“Out of my way! I’ll force him to admit
the truth about his lofty parentage
720
and concocted rites! Didn’t Acrisius
show what he was made of when he banned
this empty deity and closed the gates
of Argos to him and his crowd? Will Pentheus
and all of Thebes take fright at his approach?
Go quickly, slaves, bring me their leader back
in chains: do as I bid without delay!”
His grandfather and Athamas rebuke him,
and all the counselors that press around,
vainly attempting to contain his anger;
730
their warnings, ineffectual, enrage him,
and his wrath increases as they urge restraint.
So I have sometime seen a stream in torrent
make no more than a murmur as it flowed on,
unobstructed; but where it met resistance
from logs and rocks, it boiled and foamed, turning
its waters white with an opposing rage.
But look: his slaves are back, all smeared with blood,
and when he asks for Bacchus, they reply
that even though no Bacchus could be found,
740
they nonetheless have captured his companion,
a Bacchic priest, hauled up before the king
with his arms tightly bound behind his back.
Almost unable to restrain himself,
Pentheus casts a dreadful eye on him:
“You who are about to die, and by your death
serve as a warning to all others, speak:
tell us your name, your ancestry, your nation, and why you devote yourself to these new rites.”
He spoke up fearlessly: “My name’s Acoetes,
750
my land’s Maeonia; my people, humble;
my father didn’t leave me a young bull
to help the cultivation of the fields
he didn’t leave me any of besides;
no herds of sheep, nor any other beasts.
“He was, in fact, a pauper, baiting hooks
and casting out to where the fish were leaping;
that skill was all his wealth and property,
and when he passed it on to me, he said,
‘Accept the only riches that I have,
760
my sole successor, heir of my enterprise.’
“And so it was that my inheritance
consisted totally of liquid assets:
dying, he left me nothing but the water.
“Then, so as not to have to spend my life
forever stuck on one rock and the same,
I added to my repertoire the arts
of navigation: I learned how to steer
and set a course for ships by the positions
of the Goat, the Pleiades, the Hyades, the Bear;
770
I studied the directions of the winds
and learned which ports make the safest harbors.
“Happened one day that as we made for Delos,
we were becalmed and lay to, off the coast
of Chios, until with our practiced oars,
we brought the ship to shore, leapt to wet sand,
and beached her there. And there we spent the night.
“At dawn, I rose and sent the men for water
from a nearby spring I showed them where to find,
while I went up a hill to read the winds,
780
and when I finished, summoned them aboard.
‘All present and accounted for,’ answered Opheltes,
the first of my crew members to return
with booty (as he thought) found in a field:
a little boy formed like a little girl.
“The child seemed to totter, stumbling along as though dulled by sleep. I noted carefully
the refinement of his bearing, the look of him—
nothing I saw there made me think him mortal.
Sensed it at once, and told my crew,
“‘What god
790
impersonates that child I do not know,
but there’s a god in him, I’m sure of that!
Whoever you are, oh, show us grace and favor,
aid our undertakings, and forgive
these men for their offense.’
“‘Don’t pray for us,’
said Dictys, who would scramble like a monkey
into the rigging and right back down again.
Libys concurred with him, as did the lookout,
blond Melanthus; Alcimedon joined in
and Epopeus, who timed the rowers’ strokes,
800
and all the others went along with them,
blinded alike by greediness for plunder.
“‘I won’t allow this ship to be defiled
by profaning acts,’ I said. ‘My own authority
must have the greater weight and precedence.’
I held them back from boarding, but Lycabas,
the most abandoned, most headstrong of that crew,
exiled from Tuscany for manslaughter,
flew at my throat, enraged, in mortal combat;
choked me until I very nearly fainted,
810
and would have sent me flying into the water
had I not grabbed a rope and clung to it.
“The filthy rabble all approved. At last,
Bacchus (for it was he), as though awakened
by our racket, asked, half-drunkenly,
‘What’s going on here, sailors? Why this fuss?
How did I get here? What will you do with me?’
“‘Don’t you fret none,’ said Proreus. ‘Just say
which port you want and we’ll deliver you
straight to whatever land your heart is set on.’
820
“‘Naxos!’ cried Liber: ‘Change your heading to starboard!
That is my home, and there you will be welcomed!’
“Those liars swore by the sea, by all the gods,
it would be so, and ordered me to sail.
Naxos lay to starboard; starboard was my heading,
but men kept coming up to me and muttering,
‘What are you doing, madman?’ ‘What’s gotten into you,
Acoetes?’ ‘Tack to port and hold steady!’
Some made their meaning clear with a nod or wink,
while others whispered openly. I balked:
830
‘Have someone else take over then,’ I said,
letting them know I’d have no part in this.
“They all began to murmur and rebuke me,
and from their midst Aethelion emerged:
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘Sure—as if our safety
depends on one man—you!’ He took the helm
and set sail to port, away from Naxos.
“The god began to toy with them, pretending
he’d only just now seen through their deceit,
and gazing out at the sea from the curved prow
&n
bsp; 840
in feigned tears, he cried, ‘This is not the shore
you promised, sailors, nor the land I sought:
What have I done to you? What glory is gained,
if a boy is tricked by men? Or one by many?’
“I had long been weeping. My indecent crew
laughed at my tears and rowed at double speed.
Now, by the presence of the god himself
(a god more truly present than all others)
I swear that what I tell you next is truth,
though past belief: the ship stood still in the sea—
850
as though it had been lifted up in dry dock!
“The men, although astounded, persevere,
redoubling their strokes and letting sail out,
hoping to break loose one way or another.
But now the oars are tangled up in ivy,
and twining strands of it coil round their bodies,
ascend the mast and decorate the sails
with ivy berries in enormous clusters.
“And now the god reveals himself at last,
his brow festooned with leaves and grapes in bunches,
860
shaking a spear with vine leaves wrapped around it!
About him tigers and the bodiless
forms of lynxes and fierce leopards lie!
“Insanity or terror drives my crew,
and they leap overboard: Medon’s whole body
begins to darken and his spine is molded
in a dramatic curve:
“‘What sort of specimen
is it you’re turning into?’ asks Lycabas,
but even as he speaks his jaws gape wide,
his nose protrudes, his skin gets rough and scaly.
870
And while he leans against unmoving oars,
Libys becomes aware his hands are shrinking
until they aren’t even hands—but fins.
“Another only learns he’s lost his arms
when he attempts to wrap them round a rope:
limbless, he does a back-flip into the sea,
to demonstrate the tail that he now sports,
curved like the crescent horns of a new moon!
“Now they leap up and splash back, frolicking
in the water all around us, everywhere!
880
They carry on like dancers, leaping wildly,
sucking in water and spraying it into the air!
“Out of the twenty men that vessel carried,
I alone was left: trembling, cold with terror,
scarcely myself, until the god encouraged me:
‘Dismiss your fears,’ he said. ‘Set sail for Naxos!’
And since the time of my arrival there,
I’ve been devoted to the god and to his rites.”
“We’ve listened patiently, too patiently,
to this long-winded drivel, meant to dissipate
890
our anger by delaying punishment,”
said Pentheus. “Off with him quickly, boys,
go break his bones and rack him with dread torments
and plunge him lifeless into Stygian gloom!”
At once Acoetes was dragged out and chained
in a thick-walled cell. While they prepared
the instruments of torture and hot irons,
the doors flew open, folks said, on their own,
and just like that, the chains fell from his shoulders!
But Pentheus kept up his opposition.
900
No longer sending others, he himself
went to Cithaeron, the appointed site
for the performance of the mysteries,
and heard the songs and loud cries of Bacchantes;
and as a warhorse, eager for some action,
snorts and whinnies when the brazen trumpet sounds
the charge, and his old love of battle surges,
so Pentheus was roused by their wild cries,
his wrath rekindled by the savage clamor.
Halfway up the mountain was a clearing
910
surrounded by woods, but wholly visible.
And here, as he observed the mysteries
with his profaning eyes, the very first
to sight him and pursue him in a frenzy,
the first to wound him, with the wand she hurled,
was his own mother: “Sisters,” she cried, “come here:
a great boar has blundered into our field,
a boar that I must slay!”
In a seething mass
they rush out after him from every side,
driving him on; and he, now terrified,
920
the autocratic no longer, speaking mildly,
admits to them the error of his ways.
Wounded, he cries out, “Help, Aunt Autonoe,
yield to the spirit of your son, Actaeon!”
But who is this Actaeon he has mentioned?
How would she know? She tears off his right arm,
while Ino in rapture savages the left.
He has no arms to stretch out to his mother,
unlucky man, but cries out, “Mother, look!”
and shows her his torso with its missing limbs.
930
Tossing her hair in frenzy and exulting
at the grim sight, Agave tears her son’s
head from his trunk and fiercely gripping it
in a bloody fist maniacally cries,
“Comrades! The deed, the victory are ours!”
Swift as the wind that tears the last few leaves
clinging to trees touched by autumnal frost,
those impious hands tore him all asunder;
by that example warned, Thebans observe
the new rite, bringing incense to its altars.
940
BOOK IV
SPINNING YARNS AND WEAVING TALES
The daughters of Minyas Pyramus and Thisbe Mars and Venus The Sun and Leucothoë The fountain of Salmacis The daughters of Minyas transformed Juno in Hades; Ino and Athamas Cadmus and Harmonia Perseus and Atlas Perseus and Andromeda Perseus and Medusa
The daughters of Minyas
But not Alcithoë: Minyas’ daughter considers
the rites of Bacchus unacceptable,
and goes so far as to deny that Jove
fathered the new god, an impiety
her sisters also hold.
A priest commands
the people celebrate a festival:
all servant girls to be excused from work;
unbind their hair, wreathe their heads in garlands,
and lift the leafy thyrsus in procession;
10
failure to comply with these instructions,
he prophecies, will move the slighted god
to cruel anger.
Old wives and young comply:
the piles of weaving, baskets full of wool,
all the unfinished business of the day
is thrust aside; incense is burned, and Bacchus
summoned by his many names and titles:
“Great Thunderer! Sweet Bringer of Release!”
“Child whose father was his second mother!”
“Child torn from woman, and reborn of Jove!”
20
“Unshorn Son of Semele Translated!”
“Lenaeus, Planter of the Genial Grape!”
“Nocturnal Orgiast!”
“Father of Cries!”
“Eleleus!”
“Iacchus!
“Euhan!”
“And by whatever other names unmentioned
here in our litany belong to you,
Liber, among the multitudes of Greece:
“O Youth undimmed, Eternal Boy,
Fairest in the heavens;
Without your horns, your countenance
30
Is lovely as a maiden’s;
“Now all the Orient admits
The godhead that is yours,
Even as far as India,
Where the dark Ganges pours;
“Worshipful god, King Pentheus
Died of your great wrath,
And Lycurgus, who swung his axe;
Blasphemers were they both.
“You threw the changed Tyrrhenian
40
Sailors in the ocean,
But you reward your devotees
Who offer their devotion;
“Lynxes in harness draw your car,
Bacchantes and Satyrs follow;
The boxwood flutes begin to wail,
Their music fills the hollow;
“Your revelers collapse in laughter,
As swaying on his mule,
Or staggering drunkenly after,
50
Silenus plays the fool!
“Intoxicating clamor trails
You upon your rambles:
The ululations of your horde,
Their tambourines and cymbals!”
“Be reconciled, be gentle,” cry the Theban
women as they perform the rites demanded;
only the daughters of Minyas keep within,
spoiling the new god’s feast with their untimely
spinning and weaving, the diurnal tasks
60
they and their servants are kept busy with.
One sister, lightly drawing thread, observes,
“Though other women cease their work and has ten to his concocted rites, a superior
divinity has kept us in our places:
Pallas Athena! No reason why we shouldn’t
lighten the useful labor of these hands
by taking our turns at telling stories:
such give and take will pass the time more quickly,
and be a kindness to those listening.”
70
Her joyful sisters bid her to begin,
but which of the many stories that she knows
should she relate? Long she pondered, doubtful:
your story, Babylonian Dercetis?
A woman who, as Syria supposes,
was changed into a scaly thing that swims
now in a little pool? Or how her daughter,
transformed into a dove of purest white,
spent her last years perched on lofty towers?
Or how, by potent herbs and incantations,
80
a nymph changed little boys to fish, until
she underwent the very same conversion?
Or how the mulberry, which once bore white,
bears dark fruit now, since it’s been stained with blood?
That one will please them with its novelty!
And as she weaves, begins to spin her yarn: