Book III

. l. 263, and Note.]

[Footnote 33: _Ionian Janus._--Ver. 334. Janus was so called because he was thought to have come from Thessaly, and to have crossed the Ionian Sea.]

[Footnote 34: _Canens._--Ver. 338. This name literally means ‘singing,’ being the present participle of the Latin verb ‘cano,’ ‘to sing.’]

[Footnote 35: _Inflicted wounds._--Ver. 392. The woodpecker is supposed to tap the bark of the tree with his beak, to ascertain, from the sound, if it is hollow, and if there are any insects beneath it.]

[Footnote 36: _Tartessian shores._--Ver. 416. ‘Tartessia’ is here used as a general term for Western, as Tartessus was a city of the Western coast of Spain. It afterwards had the name of Carteia, and is thought to have been situated not far from the site of the present Cadiz, at the mouth of the Bætis, now called the Guadalquivir. Some suppose this name to be the same with the Tarshish of Scripture.]

EXPLANATION.

When names occur in the ancient Mythology, of Oriental origin, we may conclude that they were imported into Greece and Italy from Egypt or Phœnicia; and that their stories were derived from the same sources; such as those of Adonis, Arethusa, Arachne, and Isis. Those that are derived from the Greek languages are attached to fictions of purely Greek origin, such as the fables of Daphne, Galantis, Cygnus, and the Myrmidons; and where the names are of Latin original, we may conclude that their stories originated in Italy: such, for instance, as those of Canens, Picus, Anna Perenna, Flora, Quirinus, and others.

To this rule there are certain exceptions; for both Greece and Italy occasionally appropriated each other’s traditions, by substituting the names of one language for those of the other. Thus it would not be safe to affirm positively that the story of Portumnus and Matuta is of Latin origin, since Greece lays an equal claim to it under the names of Leucothoë and Palæmon, while, probably, Cadmus originally introduced it from Phœnicia, under the names of Ino and Melicerta.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, on the authority of Cato the Censor and Asellius Sempronius, says that the original inhabitants of Italy were a Greek colony. Cato and Sempronius state that they were from Achaia, while Dionysius says that they came from Arcadia, under the command of Œnotrius. Picus is generally supposed to have been one of the aboriginal kings of Italy, who was afterwards Deified. Servius, in his Commentary on the seventh Book of the Æneid, informs us that Picus pretended to know future events, and made use of a woodpecker, which he had tamed, for the purpose of his auguries. On this ground, after his death, it was generally reported that he had been transformed into that bird, and he was ranked among the Dii Indigetes of Latium. Dying in his youth, his wife Canens retired to a solitary spot, where she ended her life, and the intensity of her grief gave rise to the fable that she had pined away into a sound.

It has been suggested that the story took its rise from the oracles of Mars among the Sabines, when a woodpecker was said to give the responses. According to Bochart, it arose from the confusion of the meaning of the Phœnician word ‘picea,’ which signified a ‘diviner.’ It is the exuberant fancy of Ovid alone which connects Picus with the story of Circe.

FABLES VII. AND VIII. [XIV.441-526]

Turnus having demanded succour from Diomedes against Æneas, the Grecian prince, fearing the resentment of Venus, refuses to send him assistance; and relates how some of his followers have been transformed by Venus into birds. An Apulian shepherd surprising some Nymphs, insults them, on which he is changed into a wild olive tree.

Macareus had concluded. And the nurse of Æneas, {now} buried in a marble urn, had {this} short inscription on her tomb:-- “My foster-child, of proved piety, here burned me, Caieta, preserved from the Argive flames, with that fire which was my due.” The fastened cable is loosened from the grassy bank, and they leave far behind the wiles and the dwelling of the Goddess, of whom so ill a report has been given, and seek the groves where the Tiber, darkened with the shade {of trees}, breaks into the sea with his yellow sands. {Æneas}, too, gains the house and the daughter of Latinus, the {son of} Faunus;[37] but not without warfare. A war is waged with a fierce nation, and Turnus is indignant on account of the wife that had been betrothed to him.[38] All Etruria meets {in battle} with Latium, and long is doubtful victory struggled for with ardent arms. Each side increases his strength with foreign forces, and many take the part of the Rutulians, many that of the Trojan side. Nor {had} Æneas {arrived} in vain at the thresholds of Evander,[39] but Venulus came {in vain} to the great city, of the exiled Diomedes. He, indeed, had founded a very great city under the Iapygian Daunus, and held the lands given to him in dower.

But after Venulus had executed the commands of Turnus, and had asked for aid, the Ætolian hero pleaded his resources as an excuse: that he was not wishful to commit the subjects of his father-in-law to a war, and that he had no men to arm of the nation of his own countrymen; “And that ye may not think this a pretext, although my grief be renewed at the bitter recollection, yet I will endure the recital {of it}. After lofty Ilion was burnt, and Pergamus had fed the Grecian flames, and the Narycian hero,[40] having ravished the virgin, distributed that vengeance upon all, which he alone merited, on account of the virgin; we were dispersed and driven by the winds over the hostile seas; we Greeks had to endure lightning, darkness, rain, and the wrath both of the heavens and of the sea, and Caphareus, the completion of our misery. And not to detain you by relating these sad events in their order, Greece might then have appeared even to Priam, worthy of a tear. Yet the care of the armed universe preserved me, rescued from the waves.

“But again was I driven from Argos, {the land} of my fathers; and genial Venus exacted satisfaction in vengeance for her former wound: and so great hardships did I endure on the deep ocean, so great amid arms on shore, that many a time were they pronounced {happy} by me, whom the storm, common {to all}, and Caphareus, swallowed up in the threatening[41] waves; and I wished that I had been one of them. My companions having now endured the utmost extremities, both in war and on the ocean, lost courage, and demanded an end of their wanderings. But Agmon, of impetuous temper, and then embittered as well by misfortunes, said, ‘What does there remain now, ye men, for your patience to refuse to endure? What has Cytherea, (supposing her to desire it), that she can do beyond this? For so long as greater evils are dreaded, there is room for prayers; but where one’s lot is the most wretched possible, fear is {trampled} under foot, and the extremity {of misfortune} is free from apprehensions. Let {Venus} herself hear it, if she likes; let her hate, as she does {hate}, all the men under the rule of Diomedes. Yet all of us despise her hate, and this our great power is bought by us at great price.’

“With such expressions does the Pleuronian[42] Agmon provoke Venus against her will, and revive her former anger. His words are approved of by a few. We, the greater number of his friends, rebuke Agmon: and as he is preparing to answer, his voice and the passage of his voice together become diminished; his hair changes into feathers; his neck newly formed, his breast and his back are covered with down; his arms assume longer feathers; and his elbows curve out into light wings. A great part of his foot receives toes; his mouth becomes stiff and hardened with horn, and has its end in a point. Lycus and Idas, and Nycteus, together with Rhetenor, and Abas, are {all} astounded at him; and while they are astounded, they assume a similar form; and the greater portion of my company fly off, and resound around the oars with the flapping of their wings. Shouldst thou inquire what was the form of these birds so suddenly made; although it was not that of swans, yet it was approaching to that of white swans. With difficulty, for my part, do I, the son-in-law of the Iapygian Daunus, possess these abodes and the parched fields with a very small remnant of my companions.”

Thus far the grandson of Œneus. Venulus leaves the Calydonian[43] realms and the Peucetian[44] bays, and the Messapian[45] fields. In these he beholds a cavern, which, overshadowed by a dense grove, and trickling with a smooth stream, the God Pan, the half goat, occupies; but once on a time the Nymphs possessed it. An Apulian shepherd alarmed them, scared away from that spot; and, at first, he terrified them with a sudden fear; afterwards, when their presence of mind returned, and they despised him as he followed, they formed dances, moving their feet to time. The shepherd abused them; and imitating them with grotesque capers, he added rustic abuse in filthy language. Nor was he silent, before the {growing} tree closed his throat. But from this tree and its sap you may understand {what} were his manners. For the wild olive, by its bitter berries, indicates the infamy of his tongue; the coarseness of his words passed into them.

[Footnote 37: _Son of Faunus._--Ver. 449. The parents of Latinus were Faunus and Marica.]

[Footnote 38: _Betrothed to him._--Ver. 451. Amata, the mother of Lavinia, had promised her to Turnus, in spite of the oracle of Faunus, which had declared that she was destined for a foreign husband.]

[Footnote 39: _Evander._--Ver. 456. His history is given by Ovid in the first Book of the Fasti.]

[Footnote 40: _Narycian hero._--Ver. 468. Naryx, which was also called Narycium and Naryce, was a city of Locris. He alludes to the divine vengeance which punished Ajax Oïleus, who had ravished Cassandra in the temple of Minerva. For this reason the Greeks were said to have been afflicted with shipwreck, on their return after the destruction of Troy.]

[Footnote 41: _Threatening._--Ver. 481. ‘Importunis’ is translated by Clarke, ‘plaguy.’ For some account of Caphareus, see the Tristia, or Lament,