our Queen from Dis’s chamber.’

old now, but a god’s old age is fresh and green. Here all the crowd streams, hurrying to the shores, women and men, the lifeless bodies of noble heroes, boys and unmarried girls, sons laid on the pyre in front of their father’s eyes: a

her monstrous shapes of varied creatures, are stabled by the doors, Centaurs and bi-formed Scylla, and hundred-armed Briareus, and the Lernean Hydra, hissing fiercely, and the Chimaera armed with flame, Gorgons, and Harpies, and the triple bodied shade, Geryon. At this, trembling suddenly with terror, Aeneas grasped his sword, and set the naked blade against their approac

When he saw me, he in turn knew me, and weeping spoke in winged words:

‘Away, stand far away, O you profane ones,’ the priestess cried, ‘absent yourselves from all this grove: and you now, Aeneas, be on your way, and tear your sword from the sheathe: you need courage, and a firm mind, now.’

hastened to the ship, and ordered my friends to embark,

Then I caught sight of mighty Heracles, I mean his phantom, since he joys in feasting among the deathless gods, with slim-ankled Hebe for wife, she the daughter of great Zeus and golden-sandaled Hera.

summit

agonising torment

Glorious Odysseus: don’t try to reconcile me to my dying. I’d rather serve as another man’s labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead. Give me news of my son, instead. Did he follow me to war, and become a leader?

, what could your resolute mind devise that exceeds this: to dare to descend to Hades, where live the heedless dead, the disembodied ghosts of men?”

when you arrive there you will take revenge on them for their outrages. When, though, you have killed the Suitors in your palace, by cunning or openly

drew back and sheathed my silver-embossed sword. When he had drunk the black blood, the infallible seer spoke

astern

Good sir,

“Strangers, who are you? Where do you sail from over the sea-roads? Are you on business, or do you roam at random, like pirates who chance their lives to bring evil to others?”’

When we had reached the nearby shore, we saw a deep cave overhung with laurels at the cliff’s edge close to the sea

sacred salt

comrade

choing sea,

libation

when the battle raged at Troy.’ And you will sorrow afresh at those words, lacking a man like me to save you from bondage. May I be dead, and the earth piled above me, before I hear your cries as they drag you away.’

‘Husband, this courage of yours dooms you. You show no pity for your little son or your wretched wife, whom you’ll soon make a widow. The Achaeans must soon join arms against you, and destroy you

doffed

yoke

despoiling

the dread goddess?’

but failed to find white-armed Andromache at home.

6    With this she kissed her son long and tenderly with parted lips then, seeking the nearest strand of tide-swept shore, stepped on rose-tinted feet over the trembling crests of the foaming waves, and stood once more on the crystal surface of the deep. T

Venus, with her words, rousing his natural impudence and wildness to new height

summoned Cupid, that son of hers, a winged and headstrong boy

fame of her beauty spread through the nearby islands, the mainland, and all but a few of the provinces.

blue depths of the sea

Cupid

outstanding beauty.”

O deities

rich wedding feast appeared

she were truly the goddess Venus.

    Day by day rumour gathered pace

Though the elder two were extremely pleasing, still it was thought they were only worthy of mortal praise; but the youngest girl’s looks were so delightful, so dazzling, no human speech in its poverty could celebrate them, or even rise to adequate description.

Nay, even the Fates weep and wail for Adonis, calling upon his name; and moreover they sing a spell upon him to bring him back again, but he payeth no heed to it; yet ‘tis not from lack of the will, but rather that the Maiden will not let him go.

drop for drop

his thigh pierced with the tusk, the white with the white, and Cypris is sore vexed at the gentle passing of his breath; for the red blood drips down his snow-white flesh, and the eyes beneath his brow wax dim; the rose departs from his lip, and the kiss that Cypris shall never have so again, that kiss dies upon it and is gone.

Woe I cry for Adonis and the Loves cry woe again.

Iambē

75) prance along the meadow, satiating their dispositions as they graze on the grass, so also they, hitching up the folds of their lovely dresses, dashed along the rutted roadway, their hair flowin

[peplos]

heifers

she tore off with her own immortal hands

[etētuma].

he said that she would never go to fragrant Olympus, that she would never send up the harvest of the earth, until she saw with her own eyes her daughter, the one with the beautiful looks

But no one was willing to tell her the truth

Lady Mother

view, as also the fish-swarming sea

She was being taken, against her will, at the behest of Zeus

vigor

The one known            by many names.

plaything

ts sweet fragrance spread over the wide skies up above.

She [Gaia] was doing a favor for the one who receives many guests [Hādēs].

crocus,

[noos] of Zeus.

for Zeus had taken away their voice.

Full is the earth of evils, full is the sea.

without wretched diseases that give disasters to men.

 noos t

put inside her a voice, and he called this woman Pandōrā, because all the gods who abide in Olympus

heir beautiful hair, plaited springtime garlands around her head.

Pallas Athena placed on her skin every manner of ornament [kosmos].

to put inside her an intent that is doglike and a temperament that is stealthy.

0 Just as to mortal men high-thundering Zeus gave women as an evil, accomplices of painful toils: another evil too did he provide instead of good; to wit whosoever shunning marriage and the ills that women work, declines to marry, and has come to old age pernicious, 

like to living animals gifted with sounds.

Pandora and the Lineage of Women

“Most glorious Zeus, greatest of ever-living gods, choose which of these your inclination within your breast bids you.”

and she bare white-armed Persephone whom Aidoneus carried off from her mother; but wise Zeus gave her to him

she was wisest among gods and mortal men.

. From his shoulders grew an hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at anothers, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it

, Earth, still more enraged, had intercourse with Tartarus and brought forth Typho

Zeus smote him with a thunderbolt, and Hercules shot him dead with an arrow.

But Zeus forbade the Dawn and the Moon and the Sun to shine, and then, before anybody else could get it,

This conflict was ended by a god and a greater order of nature, since he split off the earth from the sky, and the sea from the land, and divided the transparent heavens from the dense air. When he had disentangled the elements, and freed them from the obscure mass, he fixed them in separate spaces in harmonious peace. The weightless fire, that forms the heavens, darted upwards to make its home in the furthest heights. Next came air in lightness and place. Earth, heavier than either of these, drew down the largest elements, and was compressed by its own weight. The surrounding water took up the last space and enclosed the solid world.

efore there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place. There was no Titan yet, shining his light on the world, or waxing Phoebe renewing her white horns, or the earth hovering in surrounding air balanced by her own weight, or watery Amphitrite stretching out her arms along the vast shores of the world. Though there was land and sea and air, it was unstable land, unswimmable water, air needing light. Nothing retained its shape, one thing obstructed another, because in the one body, cold fought with heat, moist with dry, soft with hard, and weight with weightless things.

I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms. You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world’s first origins to my own time.

To the goat (aeg-) which suckled him Zeus also accorded certain honours, and in particular took from it a surname, being called Aegiochus.33 And when he had attained to manhood he founded a city in Dicta, where indeed the myth states that he was born; in later times this city was abandoned, but some stone blocks of its foundations are still preserved.

For instance, when he was being carried away, while still an infant, by the Curetes, they say that the umbilical cord (omphalos) fell from him near the river known as Triton, and that this spot has been made sacred and has been called Omphalus after that incident, while in like manner the plain about it is known as Omphaleium. And on Mount Idê, where the god was nurtured, both the cave in which he spent his days has been made sacred to him, and the meadows round about it, which lie upon the ridges of the mountain., have in like manner been consecrated to him.

And the Nymphs nurtured the child on a mixture of honey and milk and gave him upbringing at the udder of the goat which was named Amaltheia. And many evidences o the birth and upbringing of this god remain to this day on the island.

Consequently Cronus time and again did away with the children whom he begot; but Rhea, grieved as she was, and yet lacking the power to change her husband’s purpose, when she had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Idê, as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Cronus, entrusted the rearing of him to the Curetes who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Mount Idê. The Curetes bore him off to a certain cave where they gave him over to the Nymphs, with the command that they should minister to his every need.

Regarding the birth of Zeus and the manner in which he came to be king, there is no agreement. Some say that he succeeded to the kingship after Cronus passed from among men into the company of the gods, not by overcoming his father with violence, but in the manner prescribed by custom and justly, having been judged worthy of that honour. But others recount a myth which runs as follows: There was delivered to Cronus an oracle regarding the birth of Zeus which stated that the son who would be born to him would wrest the kingship from him by force.

  And Hera, without having been united in love, brought forth famous Hephaistos, as she was furious and quarrelling with her husband; Hephaistos, distinguished in crafts from amongst all the sky-born.

But by himself, from his head, he produced glancing-eyed Tritonis [Athena], 925 fierce, strife-stirring, army-leading, unsubdued, and awesome, to whom dins, and wars, and battle are a delight.

Thalia; 910 from whose eyelids also as they gazed dropped Love, unnerving limbs, and sweetly too they look from under their brows.

And Zeus, king of the gods, made Mētis first his wife; Mētis, most wise of deities as well as mortal men.

740 a vast chasm, not even for a whole round of a year would one reach the ground, after having first been within the gates: but gusts of wind following one upon the other would bear him onward hither and thither, distressing him, and dreadful even to immortal gods is this prodigy.

missiles

690 he went forth lightening continually, and the bolts close together with thunder and lightning flew duly from his sturdy hand, whirling a sacred flash

having overweening biē

645 that I may speak what my spirit within my breast prompts me to speak. For now a very long space we are fighting, each in opposition to other, concerning victory and power, all our days, the Titan gods and as many of us are sprung from Kronos. 650 Now you must show against the Titans in deadly fight both mighty force and hands invincible, in gratitude for our mild loving-kindness, namely, after how many sufferings you came back again to the light, from afflictive bondage, through our counsels, from the murky gloom.” Thus he spoke; and him in turn blameless Kottos addressed in answer:

. And them indeed did huge Kronos devour,

mighty Hādēs, who inhabits halls beneath the earth, having a ruthless heart; and loud-resounding Poseidon,

And from the beginning this honor has she, and this part has she obtained by lot among men and immortal gods, 205 the amorous converse of maidens, their smiles and wiles, their sweet delights, their love, and blandishment.

But the genitals, as after first severing them with the steel, he had cast them into the heaving sea from the continent, 190 so kept drifting long time up and down the deep, and all around kept rising a white foam from the immortal flesh; and in it a maiden was nourished;

85 she gave birth to stern Furies [Erinyes], and mighty Giants, gleaming in arms, with long spears in hand, and nymphs whom men call Ash-nymphs, [Meliai] over the boundless earth.

but his son from out his ambush grasped at him with his left hand, while in his right he took the huge sickle, long and jagged-toothed, and hastily 180 mowed off the genitals of his father, and threw them backwards to be carried away behind him.

0 straitened as she was; and she devised a subtle and evil scheme

155 they were the fiercest, and were hated by their father from the very first: as soon as any of these was born, he would hide them all, and not send them up to the light, in a cave of the earth, and Sky exulted over the work of mischief, while huge Earth groaned from within,

140 Brontes, and Steropes, and stout-hearted Arges, who gave to Zeus his thunder, and forged his lightnings.

Thea and Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Phoebe with golden coronet, and lovely Tethys. And after these was born, youngest, wily Kronos, most savage of their children; and he hated his vigor-giving father.

120 and Eros [Love], who is most beautiful among immortal gods, Eros that relaxes the limbs, and in the breasts of all gods and all men, subdues their reason and prudent counsel. But from Chaos were born Erebos and black Night; and from Night again sprang forth Aether and Day,