Metamorphoses

by Ovid

If poets have vision to prophesy truth, I shall live in my fame.’

weight without motion,

treacherous plots, brute force and a criminal lust for possession.

The demon of madness is holding dominion the wide world over; you’d think that the human race had joined in an evil conspiracy.

mar

cosmos contains,

My arts were purchased too dearly if they have directed the anger [660] of heaven against me.

beauty is always so full of confidence.

CADMUS

But who can detect Jove’s thievish amours?

‘Wait for the final day. Call no man happy until he is dead and his body is laid to rest in the grave.’

The motive for self-destruction

owing nothing to human artifice. Nature had used her talent to imitate art:

Narcíssus. In course of time she consulted the seer; ‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘will my baby live to a ripe old age?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘so long as he never knows himself * –

All that his lovers adored he worshipped in self-adoration.

constraint provoked him to wilder madness and aggravated his fury –

untoward housecraft,

PYRAMUS AND THISBE

I’ll follow you down to the shades and be known as the ill-starred maiden who caused and shared in your fate.

proud anger

Passion

Fronds shot out of the warp, and the purple dye in the tapestry lent its brilliant hue to clusters of deep-coloured grapes.

the mischief that madness can work.

This brew had been boiled [505] in a brazen cauldron and stirred with a stalk of evergreen hemlock.

Slowly admiring the waters which Pegasus’ hoof had created, [265] the goddess surveyed the clusters of grand, primeval trees, mysterious caves and grass bejewelled with myriads of flowers.

Memory’s daughters

“Cease to deceive the uncultured mob with your empty attractions.

He dropped the human guise he’d assumed and reverted to water in order to be united with me.

No mortal shall scoff at my power [5] unpunished.’

Their patterns were also shot with flexible threads of gold, as they each spun out an old tale in the weft of their separate looms.

Their voices too have gone hoarse; their throats are inflated and swollen; their noisy quarrels have stretched their jaws to a hideous width.

an Indian tigress dragging a suckling fawn through the forest thickets,

Force is my natural way. How else are the gloomy storm clouds driven along, the waves churned up, or the knotty oaks overturned, the snows packed hard or the earth’s tracts pounded with hail?

my poisons can rob the Dawn of her colour.

And yet no pleasure is ever unmingled; anxiety always intrudes upon joy. So Aegeus’ delight in his son’s return [455] was marred by disquiet.