The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Book XII (Fable. 3 and 4)

A truce ensuing, the Grecian chiefs having assembled at a feast, express their surprise at the fact of Cygnus being invulnerable. Nestor, by way of showing a still more surprising instance, relates how the Nymph Cænis, the daughter of Elatus, having yielded to the caresses of Neptune, was transformed by him into a man, and made invulnerable. Cæneus being present at the wedding feast of Pirithoüs, the son of Ixion, where Eurytus was a guest, the latter, being elevated with wine, made an attempt upon Hippodamia, the bride; on which a quarrel arose between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ. After many on both sides had been slain, Cæneus still remained unhurt; on which, the Centaurs having heaped up trunks of trees upon him, he was pressed to death; Neptune then changed his body into a bird.

This toil17 and this combat brought on a cessation for many days; and both sides rested, laying aside their arms. And while a watchful guard was keeping the Phrygian walls, and a watchful guard was keeping the Argive trenches, a festive day had arrived, on which Achilles, the conqueror of Cygnus, appeased Pallas with the blood of a heifer, adorned with fillets. As soon as he had placed its entrails18 upon the glowing altars, and the smell, acceptable to the Deities, mounted up to the skies, the sacred rites had their share, the other part was served up at the table. The chiefs reclined on couches, and sated their bodies with roasted flesh,19 and banished both their cares and their thirst with wine. No harps, no melody of voices,20 no long pipe of boxwood pierced with many a hole, delights them; but in discourse they pass the night, and valour is the subject-matter of their conversation. They relate the combats of the enemy and their own; and often do they delight to recount, in turn, both the dangers that they have encountered and that they have surmounted. For of what else should Achilles speak? or of what, in preference, should they speak before the great Achilles? But especially the recent victory over the conquered Cygnus was the subject of discourse. It seemed wonderful to them all, that the body of the youth was penetrable by no weapon, and was susceptible of no wounds, and that it blunted the steel itself. This same thing, the grandson of Æacus, this, the Greeks wondered at.

When thus Nestor says to them: “Cygnus has been the only despiser of weapons in your time, and penetrable by no blows. But I myself formerly saw the Perrhæbean21 Cæneus bear a thousand blows with his body unhurt; Cæneus the Perrhæbean, I say, who, famous for his achievements, inhabited Othrys. And that this, too, might be the more wondrous in him, he was born a woman.” They are surprised, whoever are present, at the singular nature of this prodigy, and they beg him to tell the story. Among them, Achilles says, “Pray tell us, (for we all have the same desire to hear it,) O eloquent old man,22 the wisdom of our age; who was this Cæneus, and why changed to the opposite sex? in what war, and in the engagements of what contest was he known to thee? by whom was he conquered, if he was conquered by any one?”

Then the aged man replied: “Although tardy old age is a disadvantage to me, and many things which I saw in my early years escape me now, yet I remember most of them; and there is nothing, amid so many transactions of war and peace, that is more firmly fixed in my mind than that circumstance. And if extended age could make any one a witness of many deeds, I have lived two hundred23 years, and now my third century is being passed by me. Cænis, the daughter of Elatus, was remarkable for her charms; the most beauteous virgin among the Thessalian maids, and one sighed for in vain by the wishes of many wooers through the neighbouring cities, and through thy cities, Achilles, for she was thy countrywoman. Perhaps, too, Peleus would have attempted that alliance; but at that time the marriage of thy mother had either befallen him, or had been promised him. Cænis did not enter into any nuptial ties; and as she was walking along the lonely shore, she suffered violence from the God of the ocean. ’Twas thus that report stated; and when Neptune had experienced the pleasures of this new amour, he said, ‘Be thy wishes secure from all repulse; choose whatever thou mayst desire.’ The same report has related this too; Cænis replied, ‘This mishap makes my desire extreme, that I may not be in a condition to suffer any such thing in future. Grant that I be no longer a woman, and thou wilt have granted me all.’ She spoke these last words with a hoarser tone, and the voice might seem to be that of a man, as indeed it was.

“For now the God of the deep ocean had consented to her wish; and had granted moreover that he should not be able to be pierced by any wounds, or to fall by any steel. Exulting in his privilege, the Atracian24 departed; and now spent his time in manly exercises, and roamed over the Peneïan plains. Pirithoüs, the son of the bold Ixion, had married Hippodame,25 and had bidden the cloud-born monsters to sit down at the tables ranged in order, in a cave shaded with trees. The Hæmonian nobles were there; I, too, was there, and the festive palace resounded with the confused rout. Lo! they sing the marriage song, and the halls smoke with the fires;26 the maiden, too, is there, remarkable for her beauty, surrounded by a crowd of matrons and newly married women. We all pronounce Pirithoüs fortunate in her for a wife; an omen which we had well nigh falsified. For thy breast, Eurytus, most savage of the savage Centaurs, is inflamed as much with wine as with seeing the maiden; and drunkenness, redoubled by lust, holds sway over thee. On the sudden the tables being overset, disturb the feast, and the bride is violently dragged away by her seized hair. Eurytus snatches up Hippodame, and the others such as each one fancies, or is able to seize; and there is all the appearance of a captured city. The house rings with the cries of women. Quickly we all rise; and first, Theseus says, ‘What madness, Eurytus, is impelling thee, who, while I still live, dost provoke Pirithoüs, and, in thy ignorance, in one dost injure two?’ And that the valiant hero may not say these things in vain, he pushes them off as they are pressing on, and takes her whom they have seized away from them as they grow furious.

“He says nothing in answer, nor, indeed, can he defend such actions by words; but he attacks the face of her protector with insolent hands, and strikes his generous breast. By chance, there is near at hand an ancient bowl, rough with projecting figures, which, huge as it is, the son of Ægeus, himself huger still, takes up and hurls full in his face. He, vomiting 424 xii. 239-266. both from his wounds and his mouth clots of blood,27 and brains and wine together, lying on his back, kicks on the soaking sand. The double-limbed28 Centaurs are inflamed at the death of their brother; and all vying, with one voice exclaim, ‘To arms! to arms!’ Wine gives them courage, and, in the first onset, cups hurled are flying about, and shattered casks29 and hollow cauldrons; things before adapted for a banquet, now for war and slaughter. First, the son of Ophion, Amycus, did not hesitate to spoil the interior of the house of its ornaments; and first, from the shrine he tore up a chandelier,30 thick set with blazing lamps; and lifting it on high, like him who attempts to break the white neck of the bull with sacrificial axe, he dashed it against the forehead of Celadon the Lapithean, and left his skull mashed into his face, no longer to be recognized. His eyes started out, and the bones of his face being dashed to pieces, his nose was driven back, and was fixed in the middle of his palate. Him, Belates the Pellæan, having torn away the foot of a maple table, laid flat on the ground, with his chin sunk upon his breast, and vomiting forth his teeth mixed with blood; and sent him, by a twofold wound, to the shades of Tartarus.

“As Gryneus stood next, looking at the smoking altar with a grim look, he said, ‘And why do we not make use of this?’ and then he raised an immense altar, together with its fire; and hurled it into the midst of the throng of the Lapithæ, and struck down two of them, Broteus and Orius. The mother of Orius was Mycale, who was known by her incantations to have often drawn down the horns of the struggling moon. On this Exadius says, ‘Thou shalt not go unpunished, if only the opportunity of getting a weapon is given me;’ and, as his weapon, he wields the antlers of a votive stag,31 which were upon a lofty pine-tree. With the double branches of these, Gryneus is pierced through the eyes, and has those eyes scooped out. A part of them adheres to the antlers, a part runs down his beard, and hangs down clotted with gore. Lo! Rhœtus snatches up an immense flaming brand, from the middle of the altar, and on the right side breaks through the temples of Charaxus, covered with yellow hair. His locks, seized by the violent flames, burn like dry corn, and the blood seared in the wound emits a terrific noise in its hissing, such as the iron glowing in the flames is often won't to emit, which, when the smith has drawn it out with the crooked pincers, he plunges into the trough; whereon it whizzes, and, sinking in the bubbling water, hisses. Wounded, he shakes the devouring fire from his locks, and takes upon his shoulders the threshold, torn up out of the ground, a whole waggon-load, which its very weight hinders him from throwing full against the foe. The stony mass, too, bears down Cometes, a friend, who is standing at a short distance; nor does Rhœtus then restrain his joy, and he says, ‘In such manner do I pray that the rest of the throng of thy party may be brave;’ and then he increases the wound, redoubled with the half-burnt stake, and three or four times he breaks the sutures of his head with heavy blows, and its bones sink within the oozing brains.

“Victorious, he passes on to Evagrus, and Corythus, and Dryas; of which number, when Corythus, having his cheeks covered32 with their first down, has fallen, Evagrus says, ‘What glory has been acquired by thee, in killing a boy?’ Rhœtus permits him to say no more, and fiercely thrusts the glowing flames into the open mouth of the hero, as he is speaking, and through the mouth into the breast. Thee, too, cruel Dryas, he pursues, whirling the fire around his head, but the same issue does not await thee as well. Thou piercest him with a stake burnt at the end, while triumphing in the success of an uninterrupted slaughter, in the spot where the neck is united to the shoulder. Rhœtus groans aloud, and with difficulty wrenches the stake out of the hard bone, and, drenched in his own blood, he flies. Orneus flies, too, and Lycabas, and Medon, wounded in his right shoulder-blade, and Thaumas with Pisenor; Mermerus, too, who lately excelled all in speed of foot, but now goes more slowly from the wound he has received; Pholus, too, and Melaneus, and Abas a hunter of boars, and Astylos the augur, who has in vain dissuaded his own party from this warfare. He also says to Nessus,33 as he dreads the wounds, ‘Fly not! for thou shalt be reserved for the bow of Hercules.’ But Eurynomus and Lycidas, and Areos, and Imbreus did not escape death, all of whom the right hand of Dryas pierced right through. Thou, too, Crenæus, didst receive a wound in front,34 although thou didst turn thy back in flight; for looking back, thou didst receive the fatal steel between thy two eyes, where the nose is joined to the lower part of the forehead. In the midst of so much noise, Aphidas was lying fast asleep from the wine which he had drunk incessantly, and was not aroused, and in his languid hand was grasping the mixed bowl, stretched at full length upon the shaggy skin of a bear of Ossa. Soon as Phorbas beheld him from afar, wielding no arms, he inserted his fingers in the strap of his lance,35 and said, ‘Drink thy wine mingled with the water of Styx;’ and, delaying no longer, he hurled his javelin against the youth, and the ash pointed with steel was driven into his neck, as, by chance, he lay there on his back. His death happened without his being sensible of it; and the blood flowed from his full throat, both upon the couch and into the bowl itself.

“I saw Petræus endeavouring to tear up an acorn-bearing oak from the earth; and, as he was grasping it in his embrace, and was shaking it on this side and that, and was moving about the loosened tree, the lance of Pirithoüs hurled at the ribs of Petræus, transfixed his struggling breast together with the tough oak. They said, too, that Lycus fell by the valour of Pirithoüs, and that Chromis fell by the hand of Pirithoüs. But each of them gave less glory to the conqueror, than Dictys and Helops gave. Helops was transfixed by the javelin, which passed right through his temples, and, hurled from the right side, penetrated to his left ear. Dictys, slipping from the steep point of a rock, while, in his fear, he is flying from the pursuing son of Ixion, falls down headlong, and, by the weight of his body, breaks a huge ash tree, and spits his own entrails upon it, thus broken. Aphareus advances as his avenger, and endeavours to hurl a stone torn away from the mountain. As he is endeavouring to do so, the son of Ægeus attacks him with an oaken club, and breaks the huge bones of his arm, and has neither leisure, nor, indeed, does he care to put his useless body to death; and he leaps upon the back of the tall Bianor, not used to bear36 any other than himself; and he fixes his knees in his ribs, and holding his long hair, seized with his left hand, shatters his face, and his threatening features, and his very hard temples, with the knotty oak. With his oak, too, he levels Nedymnus, and Lycotas the darter, and Hippasus having his breast covered with his flowing beard, and Ripheus, who towered above the topmost woods, and Tereus, who used to carry home the bears, caught in the Hæmonian mountains, alive and raging.

“Demoleon could not any longer endure Theseus enjoying this success in the combat, and he tried with vast efforts to tear up from the thick-set wood an aged pine; because he could not effect this, he hurled it, broken short, against his foe. But Theseus withdrew afar from the approaching missile, through the warning of Pallas; so at least he himself wished it to be thought. Yet the tree did not fall without effect: for it struck off from the throat of the tall Crantor, both his breast and his left shoulder. He, Achilles, had been the armour-bearer of thy father: him Amyntor, king of the Dolopians,37 when conquered in war, had given to the son of Æacus, as a pledge and confirmation of peace. When Peleus saw him at a distance, mangled with a foul wound, he said, ‘Accept however, Crantor, most beloved of youths, this sacrifice;’ and, with a strong arm, and energy of intention, he hurled his ashen lance against Demoleon, which broke through the enclosures of his ribs, and quivered, sticking amid the bones. He draws out with his hand the shaft without the point; even that follows, with much difficulty; the point is retained within his lungs. The very pain gives vigour to his resolution; though wounded, he rears against the enemy, and tramples upon the hero with his horse’s feet. The other receives the re-echoing strokes upon his helmet and his shield, and defends his shoulders, and holds his arms extended before him, and through the shoulder-blades he pierces two breasts38 at one stroke. But first, from afar, he had consigned to death Phlegræus, and Hyles; in closer combat, Hiphinoüs and Clanis. To these is added Dorylas, who had his temples covered with a wolf’s skin, and the real horns of oxen reddened with much blood, that performed the duty of a cruel weapon.

“To him I said, for courage gave me strength, ‘Behold, how much thy horns are inferior to my steel;’ and then I threw my javelin. When he could not avoid this, he held up his right hand before his forehead, about to receive the blow; and to his forehead his hand was pinned. A shout arose; but Peleus struck him delaying, and overpowered by the painful wound, (for he was standing next to him) with his sword beneath the middle of his belly. He leaped forth, and fiercely dragged his own bowels on the ground, and trod on them thus dragged, and burst them thus trodden; and he entangled his legs, as well in them, and fell down, with his belly emptied of its inner parts. Nor did thy beauty, Cyllarus,39 save thee while fighting, if only we allow beauty to that monstrous nature of thine. His beard was beginning to grow; the colour of his beard was that of gold; and golden-coloured hair was hanging from his shoulders to the middle of his shoulder-blades. In his face there was a pleasing briskness; his neck, and his shoulders, and his hands, and his breast were resembling the applauded statues of the artists, and so in those parts in which he was a man; nor was the shape of the horse beneath that shape, faulty and inferior to that of the man. Give him but the neck and the head of a horse, and he would be worthy of Castor. So fit is his back to be sat upon, so stands his breast erect with muscle; he is all over blacker than black pitch; yet his tail is white; the colour, too, of his legs is white. Many a female of his own kind longed for him; but Hylonome alone gained him, than whom no female more handsome lived in the lofty woods, among the half beasts. She alone attaches Cyllarus, both by her blandishments, and by loving, and by confessing that she loves him. Her care, too, of her person is as great as can be in those limbs: so that her hair is smoothed with a comb; so that she now decks herself with rosemary, now with violets or roses, and sometimes she wears white lilies; and twice a day she washes her face with streams that fall from the height of the Pagasæan wood; and twice she dips her body in the stream: and she throws over her shoulder or her left side no skins but what are becoming, and are those of choice beasts.

“Their love was equal: together they wandered upon the mountains; together they entered the caves; and then, too, together had they entered the Lapithæan house; together were they waging the fierce warfare. The author of the deed is unknown: but a javelin came from the left side, and pierced thee, Cyllarus, below the spot where the breast is joined to the neck. The heart, being pierced with a small wound, grew cold, together with the whole body, after the weapon was drawn out. Immediately, Hylonome receives his dying limbs, and cherishes the wound, by laying her hand on it, and places her mouth on his, and strives to stop the fleeting life. When she sees him dead, having uttered what the clamour hinders from reaching my ears, she falls upon the weapon that has pierced him, and as she dies, embraces her husband. He, too, now stands before my eyes, Phæocomes, namely, who had bound six lions’ skins together with connecting knots; covered all over, both horse and man. He, having discharged the trunk of a tree, which two yokes of oxen joined together could hardly have moved, battered the son of Phonolenus on the top of his head. The very broad round form of his skull was broken; and through his mouth, and through his hollow nostrils, and his eyes, and his ears, his softened brains poured down; just as curdled milk is won't through the oaken twigs, or as any liquor flows under the weight of a well-pierced sieve, and is squeezed out thick through the numerous holes. But I, while he was preparing to strip him of his arms as he lay, (this thy sire knows,) plunged my sword into the lower part of his belly, as he was spoiling him. Chthonius, too, and Teleboas, lay pierced by my sword. The former was bearing a two-forked bough as his weapon, the latter a javelin; with his javelin he gave me a wound. You see the marks; look! the old scar is still visible.

“Then ought I40 to have been sent to the taking of Troy; then I might, if not have overcome, still have stayed the arms of the mighty Hector. But at that time Hector was not existing, or but a boy; and now my age is failing. Why tell thee of Periphas, the conqueror of the two-formed Pyretus? Why of Ampyx, who fixed his cornel-wood spear, without a point, full in the face of the four-footed Oëclus? Macareus, struck down the Pelethronian41 Erigdupus,42 by driving a crowbar into his breast. I remember, too, that a hunting spear, hurled by the hand of Nessus, was buried in the groin of Cymelus. And do not believe that Mopsus,43 the son of Ampycus, only foretold things to come; a two-formed monster was slain by Mopsus, darting at him, and Odites in vain attempted to speak, his tongue being nailed to his chin, and his chin to his throat. Cæneus had put five to death, Stiphelus, and Bromus, and Antimachus, and Helimus, and Pyracmos, wielding the axe. I do not remember their respective wounds, but I marked their numbers, and their names. Latreus, most huge both in his limbs and his body, sallied forth, armed with the spoils of Emathian44 Halesus, whom he had consigned to death. His age was between that of a youth, and an old man; his vigour that of a youth; grey hairs variegated his temples. Conspicuous by his buckler, and his helmet, and his Macedonian pike;45 and turning his face towards both sides, he brandished his arms, and rode in one same round, and vaunting, poured forth thus many words into the yielding air:—

“‘And shall I put up with thee, too, Cænis? for to me thou shalt ever be a woman, to me always Cænis. Does not thy natal origin lower thy spirit? And does it not occur to thy mind for what foul deed thou didst get thy reward, and at what price the false resemblance to a man? Consider both what thou wast born, as well as what thou hast submitted to: go, and take up a distaff together with thy baskets, and twist the threads46 with thy thumb; leave warfare to men.’ As he is vaunting in such terms, Cæneus pierces his side, stretched in running, with a lance hurled at him, just where the man is joined to the horse. He raves with pain, and strikes at the exposed face of the Phylleian 47 youth with his pike. It bounds back no otherwise than hail from the roof of a house; or than if any one were to beat a hollow drum with a little pebble. Hand to hand he encounters him, and strives to plunge his sword into his tough side; but the parts are impervious to his sword. ‘Yet,’ says he, ‘thou shalt not escape me; with the middle of the sword shalt thou be slain, since the point is blunt;’ and then he slants the sword against his side, and grasps his stomach with his long right arm. The blow produces an echo, as on a body of marble when struck; and the shivered blade flies different ways, upon striking his neck.

“After Cæneus had enough exposed his unhurt limbs to him in his amazement, ‘Come now,’ said he, ‘let us try thy body with my steel;’ and up to the hilt he plunged his fatal sword into his shoulder-blade, and extended his hand unseen into his entrails, and worked it about, and in the wound made a fresh wound. Lo! the double-limbed monsters, enraged, rush on in an impetuous manner, and all of them hurl and thrust their weapons at him alone. Their weapons fall blunted. Unstabbed and bloodless the Elateïan Cæneus remains from each blow. This strange thing makes them astonished. ‘Oh great disgrace!’ cries Monychus; ‘a whole people, we are overcome by one, and that hardly a man; although, indeed, he is a man; and we by our dastardly actions, are what he once was. What signify our huge limbs? What our twofold strength? What that our twofold nature has united in us the stoutest animals in existence? I neither believe that we are born of a Goddess for our mother, nor of Ixion, who was so great a person, that he conceived hopes of even the supreme Juno. By a half male foe are we baffled. Heap upon him stones and beams, and entire mountains, and dash out his long-lived breath, by throwing whole woods upon him. Let a whole wood press on his jaws; and weight shall be in the place of wounds.’

“Thus he said; and by chance having got a tree, thrown down by the power of the boisterous South wind, he threw it against the powerful foe: and he was an example to the rest; and in a short time, Othrys, thou wast bare of trees, and Pelion had no shades. Overwhelmed by this huge heap, Cæneus swelters beneath the weight of the trees, and bears on his brawny shoulders the piled-up oaks. But after the load has increased upon his face and his head, and his breath has no air to draw; at one moment he faints, at another he endeavours, in vain, to raise himself into the open air, and to throw off the wood cast upon him: and sometimes he moves it. Just as lo! we see, if lofty Ida is convulsed with earthquakes. The event is doubtful. Some gave out that his body was hurled to roomy Tartarus by the weight of the wood. The son of Ampycus denied this, and saw go forth into the liquid air, from amid the pile, a bird with tawny wings; which then was beheld by me for the first time, then, too, for the last. When Mopsus saw it with gentle flight surveying his camp, and making a noise around it with a vast clamour, following him both with his eyes and his feelings, he said, ‘Hail! thou glory of the Lapithæan race, once the greatest of men, but now the only bird of thy kind, Cæneus.’ This thing was credited from its assertor. Grief added resentment, and we bore it with disgust, that one was overpowered by foes so many. Nor did we cease to exercise our weapons, in shedding their blood, before a part of them was put to death, and flight and the night dispersed the rest.”

Footnotes:

17. This toil.]—Ver. 146. Clarke translates ‘Hic labor,’ ‘This laborious bout.’

18. Its entrails.]—Ver. 152. The ‘prosecta,’ or ‘prosiciæ,’ or ‘ablegamina,’ were portions of the animal which were the first cut off, for the purpose of becoming as a sacrifice to the Deities. The ‘prosecta,’ in general, consisted of a portion of the entrails.

19. Roasted flesh.]—Ver. 155. We are informed by Servius, that boiled meat was not eaten in the heroic ages.

20. Melody of voices.]—Ver. 157. Plutarch remarks, that that entertainment is the most pleasant where no musician is introduced; conversation, in his opinion, being preferable.

21. Perrhæbean.]—Ver. 172. The Perrhæbeans were a people of Thessaly, who, having been conquered by the Lapithæ, betook themselves to the mountain fortresses of Pindus.

22. Eloquent old man.]—Ver. 176-181. Clarke renders these lines, ‘Come, tell us, O eloquent old gentleman, the wisdom of our age, who was that Cæneus, and why he was turned into the other sex? in which war, or what engagement, he was known to you? by whom he was conquered, if he was conquered by any one?’ Upon that, the old blade replied.’

23. Two hundred.]—Ver. 188. Ovid does not here follow the more probable version, that the age of Nestor was three generations of thirty years each.

24. The Atracian.]—Ver. 209. ‘Atracides’ is an epithet, meaning ‘Thessalian,’ as Atrax, or Atracia, was a town of Thessaly, situated near the banks of the river Peneus.

25. Hippodame.]—Ver. 210. She is called Ischomache by Propertius, and Deidamia by Plutarch.

26. With the fires.]—Ver. 215. These fires would be those of the nuptial torches, and of the altars for sacrifice to Hymenæus and the other tutelary divinities of marriage.

27. Clots of blood.]—Ver. 238. Clarke renders ‘Sanguinis globos,’ ‘goblets of blood.’

28. Double-limbed.]—Ver. 240. Clarke translates, ‘Ardescunt bimembres,’ ‘The double-limbed fellows are in a flame.’

29. Shattered cask.]—Ver. 243. ‘Cadi’ were not only earthenware vessels, in which wine was kept, but also the vessels used for drawing water.

30. A chandelier.]—Ver. 247. ‘Funale’ ordinarily means, ‘a link,’ or ‘torch,’ made of fibrous substances twisted together, and smeared with pitch or wax. In this instance the word seems to mean a chandelier with several branches.

31. A votive stag.]—Ver. 267. It appears that the horns of a stag were frequently offered as a votive gift to the Deities, especially to Diana, the patroness of the chase. Thus in the seventh Eclogue of Virgil, Mycon vows to present to Diana, ‘Vivacis cornua cervi,’ ‘The horns of a long-lived stag.’

32. Cheeks covered.]—Ver. 291. ‘Prima tectus lanugine malas,’ is not very elegantly rendered by Clarke, ‘Having his chaps covered with down, then first putting out.’

33. Nessus.]—Ver. 309. We have already seen how Nessus the Centaur met his death from the arrow of Hercules, when about to offer violence to Deïanira.

34. A wound in front.]—Ver. 312. It has been suggested that, perhaps Ovid here had in his mind the story of one Pomponius, of whom Quintilian relates, that, having received a wound in his face, he was showing it to Cæsar, on which he was advised by the latter never to look behind him when he was running away.

35. Strap of his lance.]—Ver. 321. The ‘amentum’ was the thong, or strap of leather, with which the lance, or javelin, was fastened, in order to draw it back when thrown.

36. Not used to bear.]—Ver. 346. He alludes to the twofold nature, or ‘horse-part’ of the Centaur, as Clarke calls it.

37. The Dolopians.]—Ver. 364. They were a people of Phthiotis and Thessaly.

38. Pierces two breasts.]—Ver. 377. He says this by poetical license, in allusion to the two-fold form of the Centaurs.

39. Cyllarus.]—Ver. 393. This was also the name of the horse which Castor tamed, to which Ovid alludes in the 401st line.

40. Then ought I.]—Ver. 445. Nestor here shows a little of the propensity for boasting, which distinguishes him in the Iliad.

41. Pelethronian.]—Ver. 452. Pelethronia was a region of Thessaly, which contained a town and a mountain of that name.

42. Erigdupus.]—Ver. 453. The signification of this name is ‘The noise of strife.’

43. Mopsus.]—Ver. 456. He was a prophet, and one of the Lapithæ. There are two other persons mentioned in ancient history of the same name.

44. Emathian.]—Ver. 462. Properly, Emathia was a name of Macedonia; but it is here applied to Thessaly, which adjoined to that country.

45. Macedonian pike.]—Ver. 466. The ‘sarissa’ is supposed to have been a kind of pike with which the soldiers of the Macedonia phalanx were armed. Its ordinary length was twenty-one feet; but those used by the phalanx were twenty-four feet long.

46. Twist the threads.]—Ver. 475. The woof was called ‘subtegmen,’ ‘subtemen,’ or ‘trama,’ while the warp was called ‘stamen,’ from ‘stare,’ ‘to stand,’ on account of its erect position in the loom.

47. Phylleian.]—Ver. 479. Phyllus was a city of Phthiotis, in Thessaly.