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“Pyramus and Thisbe—he,
When it was being built, the wall that each 70 house shared had formed a slender crack. For years, this defect went unseen—but what does love not notice? Lovers, you were first to spot it and used it to converse. Your sweet talk passed through safely with the merest whisper, Thisbe 75 standing on one side, Pyramus the other.
“Pyramus set out later. When he saw the sure tracks of a beast in the deep dust, his face turned pale. He found the blood-stained cloth, exclaiming, ‘This one night will kill two lovers! 115 She ought to have grown old! My soul is guilty. I killed you, wretched girl! I ordered you to come to fearsome places in the night, then failed to get here first. Mangle my body and gnaw my wicked guts with your fierce bite, 120 whatever lions dwell beneath this crag. Only a coward merely hopes for death.’ He carried Thisbe’s veil to the tree’s shade and showered its familiar cloth with tears and kisses.
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When she recognized her veil 155 and saw the empty scabbard, she exclaimed, ‘Your hand and love destroyed you, hapless boy. I have a brave hand too, for this one deed, and love, which will put force into my wounds. I’ll follow you in death! I will be called 160 your death’s most wretched cause and its companion. Only by death could you be torn from me, but death won’t tear you from me. Both of us implore our grieving fathers, mine and his: Do not refuse to let us share a tomb, 165 joined as we are by our unwavering love and by our final moments. Tree, your boughs now shroud one piteous corpse.
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the naiads nursed a son of Mercury and Venus
Aphrodite And hermes had kids?!?!
He looked away, then raised 710 Medusa’s crusted face in his left hand. Atlas becomes a mountain still as huge. His beard and hair are woods; his hand and shoulders, ridges. What was his head becomes the peak. His bones are rock. And then on every side 715 he grew immensely high—you willed this, gods. The sky and all its stars now rest on him.
the Perseus who subdued the snake-haired Gorgon and dared to wing his way through heaven’s air.
Winged sandals!
he piles soft leaves and seaweed on the ground, then lays Medusa facedown on this pillow. 805 The living seaweed’s spongy pith absorbed the monster’s force and hardened at her touch. Its stems and leaves could feel a strange new stiffness. Sea nymphs attempt this wondrous feat on more seaweed, rejoicing when the same thing happens, 810 and often cast the seeds across the waves. Corals retain this nature still and harden when touched by air. What is a pliant plant beneath the waves becomes a stone above
Throughout the fields and paths he could see statues of humans and wild beasts that had been changed 845 to stone when they returned Medusa’s gaze. Yet he had seen Medusa’s looks reflected in his bronze shield, and as she slept he snatched her head clean off. Swift-flying Pegasus sprang, with his brother, from their mother’s blood.
A nobleman asks why she is the only 855 one of her sisters who has snake-twined hair. The guest said: “Since you seek things worth the telling, here is the reason: Once acclaimed for beauty, she was the fervent hope of many suitors. And her most striking feature was her hair. 860 I found a young man who alleged he’d seen it. They say the sea-god[55] raped her in Minerva’s temple. Jove’s daughter turned away, chaste eyes veiled by her aegis. This was not unpunished. She changed the Gorgon’s hair into foul serpents. 865 And even now, to stun her foes with fright, she wears upon her chest those
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Perseus answered: “Craven man, I’ll grant what I am able. Have no fear—this gift is great for one so impotent. No sword will harm you. I’ll make you a monument 240 to last through time. You’ll be on view forever inside the palace of my father-in-law to cheer my wife with her fiancé’s likeness.” He spoke, then moved Medusa round to meet the fearful gaze of Phineus, who tried 245 to look away again. But his neck stiffened; his tears became hard stone. Inside the marble, he still looked timid with a suppliant expression, passive hands, and abject face.
Cold ashell perseus
but why do you, daughters of Acheloüs,[32] have wings and feet like birds, but virgins’ mouths? Was it since, learned Sirens, you attended Proserpina as she picked springtime flowers? 595 After you sought her through the world, in vain, you prayed at once for wings so you might search above the breakers, and the seas might feel your worry. Gods obliged you, and you watched your arms turn yellow instantly with feathers. 600 So you’d not lose your song, which charms the ear, or the great genius of your tongue, you each retained a virgin’s face and human voice.
“ ‘But, torn between his brother and his anguished sister, Jove split the passing year in two. 605 The goddess, shared between two realms, spends six months with her mother, six months with her spouse. At once, the mind and face of Ceres seem to change. Her countenance, which even Dis could see was anguished just before, appeared 610 to bloom, as when the sun comes out again once it dispels the rain clouds that obscure it.
Saturn as a horse sired two-formed Chiron.
The wretched girl can’t bear this, and she ties 145 a noose to her proud throat. But as she hangs, Minerva pities her and takes her down. “Live, wicked girl,” she says, “yet hang. To make you fear the future too, this punishment will be inherited by your whole line.” 150 Then she withdraws, splashing her with the juice of Hecatean drugs. Touched by that loathsome poison, her hair and nose and ears fall off. Her head grows tiny—her whole body shrinks. The rest is belly, from which she, a spider, 155 shoots out a thread to work her ancient webs.
And as he sang and plucked the lyre’s strings, the pale ghosts wept. Tantalus made no try to grasp the ebbing pool. Ixion’s wheel 45 was thunderstruck. The vultures ceased to tear the liver,[10] and the Danaïds laid down their urns. You, Sisyphus, sat on your rock. Then for the first time, as they say, tears wet the Furies’ cheeks—his song had overcome them.
When spring routs winter and Aries takes the place of rainy Pisces, you grow and blossom in the verdant grass.
No, let that wicked family pay with banishment or slaughter— or something in between exile and death. Yes! Punishment through metamorphosis!’
Iphigenia stood before the altar 35 to offer her chaste blood, the priests in tears. The goddess, overcome, obscured their eyes with mist. Amid the hubbub of the rite and praying voices, she exchanged[7] (they say) the Mycenaean virgin with a hind. 40 Now that Diana is appeased by proper bloodshed, her anger and the sea’s subside.
(what’s more amazing) 190 had been born female.” Moved by this new wonder, all ask him to go on. Achilles says, “Speak, eloquent old man, you who advise our generation. We’re all keen to know. Who was this Caeneus? How did he change sex? 195 In what campaign or battle did you learn of him?
Nestor is trans ally!!!
Caenis replies, ‘Such an assault demands a major wish: Make it impossible for me to suffer such a thing again. 220 Make me not female.[17] That is all I want.’ The final words were deeper, like a man’s.
Leaving out others that he killed—there were twelve sons of Neleus, distinguished youths. Hercules slew all twelve—except for me. I could endure the murder of the others, but Periclymenus’ death was shocking. 605 Neptune, who’d fathered Neleus’ line, gave him the power to take any shape.
Amid the bloodbath, he glimpses Paris launching random arrows at nameless Greeks.
SOunds like paris lol
He showed him where the son of Peleus was slaying Trojans with his sword, then helped him aim and guided that unswerving arrow with his death-dealing hand. This deed alone 660 could cheer old Priam after Hector’s death. Achilles, conqueror of such great men, is conquered by a Greek wife’s frightened rapist!
And now Achilles, dread of Trojans, glory and guardian of the Greeks, unbeaten warrior, had burned, cremated by that god who’d armed him.[38] He’s ash, and all that’s left of great Achilles could barely fill a little urn. And yet, 670 his glory lives and fills the whole wide world!
Though Ajax had braved Hector, iron, flames, and Jove, the one thing he can’t brave is rage. Grief crushed an uncrushed man. He grabs his sword. “Is this still mine?” he asks. “Or does Ulysses claim it too? I must use it on myself. 420 This blade, so often steeped in Trojan gore, will now be steeped in its own master’s blood. Let nobody but Ajax conquer Ajax.” He spoke. Into that chest that had not ever endured a wound he drove his deadly sword. 425
“After tall Troy had burned and Pergamum 500 had fed Greek fires and the lesser Ajax had snatched a virgin from the Virgin,[36] bringing on all the pain that only he deserved, we Greeks were scattered, snatched through hostile seas by wind. We suffered lightning, darkness, rain— 505 the wrath of sea and sky.
What was is gone. What is, is not what was. Each moment brings a metamorphosis.
“What? Don’t you see the year pass through four seasons, 215 each with a counterpart in our own lives? In early spring it’s young and milky, like a child. The grass sprouts fresh and soft and tender, and farmers are delighted by its promise. All things are blooming, and the blooming field 220 basks in its colors. Yet the stalks aren’t sturdy. When spring gives way to summertime, the year grows strong and hardy like an adolescent. No other age is stronger or more vibrant or more intense. After youth’s passion fades, 225 autumn ensues—mature and ripe, a time between old age and adolescence,
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Aegeus: King of Athens and father of Theseus. He marries Medea when she comes to Athens after murdering her children, but she flees the city after trying to kill Theseus.
725–26 tongue of her own mother: Cassiope boasts that Andromeda’s beauty surpasses that of the Nereïds, who then complain to Neptune. When he sends a monster to destroy the land of Ethiopia, the oracle of Ammon prophesies that Andromeda must be killed to appease the monster. When Perseus sees Andromeda, she is chained to a rock as a sacrifice.
The most famous of these is the tale of Pluto’s rape of Proserpina, a story familiar from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and told elsewhere by Ovid in the Fasti. Ovid
Orpheus’ mother, the muse Calliope.
The story of Pygmalion has been enormously influential, and its themes continue to pop up in literature (e.g., Frankenstein, Pinocchio
When Bacchus was a baby, Silenus was his tutor.
Ovid finally arrives at the Trojan War material he has spent much of the previous book delaying. He thus commences what is known as the “Little Iliad,” which continues through the middle of Book 13. Yet Ovid’s Trojan tales are not what we might expect—they avoid rehashing material already covered by Homer in his Iliad and offer instead a series of substitutions, such as Achilles’ fight with Cycnus instead of the Trojan prince Hector, the kidnapping of Hippodame instead of Helen, and the fighting of Lapiths and centaurs instead of the Greeks and Trojans.
Ovid omits any mention of Achilles’ own traditional impenetrability or his famous heel (where his mother’s hand held him as she dipped him in the Styx to make his body invulnerable).
The “lesser” son of Atreus is Menelaüs; the “greater,” Agamemnon.
Barf
Ajax here alludes to the long-standing story that Ulysses tried to avoid the war by pretending to be insane. When the Greek Palamedes goes to fetch him, Ulysses yokes a donkey and an ox together to plow his field, which he then begins to sow with salt. His true sanity is revealed when Palamedes sets Ulysses’ baby, Telemachus, down in front of the plow, and Ulysses stops it before overrunning his son. In retaliation, Ulysses later frames Palamedes for treason, for which he is stoned to death.
In Odyssey 10, Odysseus’ ship gets so close to Ithaca that he can see people on it. But he is inopportunely overcome by sleep, and his men open the bag of wind, blowing them back across the sea to Aeolus’ palace.
