{now} below them; and where of late the slender goats had cropped the grass, there unsightly sea-calves are now reposing their bodies. The Nereids wonder at the groves, the cities, and the houses under water; dolphins get into the woods, and run against the lofty branches, and beat against the tossed oaks. The wolf swims[53] among the sheep; the wave carries along the tawny lions; the wave carries along the tigers. Neither does the powers of his lightning-shock avail the wild 47 boar, nor his swift legs the stag, {now} borne away. The wandering bird, too, having long sought for land, where it may be allowed to light, its wings failing, falls down into the sea. The boundless range of the sea had overwhelmed the hills, and the stranger waves beat against the heights of the mountains. The greatest part is carried off by the water: those whom the water spares, long fastings overcome, through scantiness of food. [Footnote 48:
To place frankincense.--Ver. 249. In those early ages, corn or wheaten flour, was the customary offering to the Deities, and not frankincense, which was introduced among the luxuries of more refined times. Ovid is consequently guilty of an anachronism here.] [Footnote 49:
That a time should come.--Ver. 256. Lactantius informs us that the Sibyls predicted that the world should perish by fire. Seneca also, in his consolation to Marcia, and in his Quaestiones Naturales, mentions the same destined termination of the present state of the universe. It was a doctrine of the Stoic philosophers, that the stars were nurtured with moisture, and that on the cessation of this nourishment the conflagration of the universe would ensue.] [Footnote 50:
The folds of his robe.--Ver. 267. 'Rorant pennae sinusque,' is quaintly translated by Clarke, 'his wings and the plaits of his coat drop.'] [Footnote 51:
Iris.--Ver. 271. The mention of Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, in connection with the flood of Deucalion, cannot 48 fail to remind us of the 'bow set in the cloud, for a token of the covenant between God and the earth,' on the termination of Noah's flood.--Gen. x. 14.] [Footnote 52:
The mouths of their fountains.--Ver. 281. The expressions in this line and in line 283, are not unlike the words of the 11th verse of the 7th chapter of Genesis, 'The fountains of the great deep were broken up.'] [Footnote 53:
The wolf swims.--Ver. 304. One commentator remarks here, that there was nothing very wonderful in a dead wolf swimming among the sheep without devouring them. Seneca is, however, too severe upon our author in saying that he is trifling here, in troubling himself on so serious an occasion with what sheep and wolves are doing: for he gravely means to say, that the beasts of prey are terrified to that degree that they forget their carnivorous propensities.] EXPLANATION. Pausanias makes mention of five deluges. The two most celebrated happened in the time of Ogyges, and in that of Deucalion. Of the last Ovid here speaks; and though that deluge was generally said to have overflowed Thessaly only, he has evidently adopted in his narrative the tradition of the universal deluge, which all nations seem to have preserved. He says, that the sea joined its waters to those falling from heaven. The words of Scripture are (Genesis, vii. 11), 'All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven 49 were opened.' In speaking of the top of Parnassus alone being left uncovered, the tradition here followed by Ovid probably referred to Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark rested. Noah and his family are represented by Deucalion and Pyrrha. Both Noah and Deucalion were saved for their virtuous conduct; when Noah went out of the ark, he offered solemn sacrifices to God; and Pausanias tells us that Deucalion, when saved, raised an altar to Jupiter the Liberator. The Poet tells us, that Deucalion's deluge was to be the last: God promised the same thing to Noah. Josephus, in his Antiquities, Book i., tells us, that the history of the universal deluge was written by Nicolas of Damascus, Berosus, Mnaseas, and other ancient writers, from whom the Greeks and Romans received it. FABLE IX. [I.313-366] Neptune appeases the angry waves; and he commands Triton to sound his shell, that the sea may retire within its shores, and the rivers within their banks. Deucalion and Pyrrha are the only persons saved from the deluge. Phocis separates the Aonian[54] from the Actaean region; a fruitful land while it was a land; but at that time {it had become} a part of the sea, and a wide plain of sudden waters. There a lofty mountain rises towards the stars, with two tops, by name Parnassus,[55] and advances beyond the clouds with its summit. When here Deucalion (for the sea had covered all other places), borne in a little ship, with the partner of his couch, {first} rested; they adored the Corycian Nymphs,[56] and the Deities of the mountain, and the prophetic Themis,[57] who at that time used to 50 give out oracular responses. No man was there more upright than he, nor a greater lover of justice, nor was any woman more regardful of the Deities than she. Soon as Jupiter {beholds} the world overflowed by liquid waters, and sees that but one man remains out of so many thousands of late, and sees that but one woman remains out of so many thousands of late, both guiltless, and both worshippers of the Gods, he disperses the clouds; and the showers being removed by the North Wind, he both lays open the earth to the heavens, and the heavens to the earth. The rage, too, of the sea does not continue; and his three-forked trident {now} laid aside, the ruler of the deep assuages the waters, and calls upon the azure Triton standing above the deep, and having his shoulders covered with the native purple shells;[58] and he bids him blow[59] his resounding trumpet, and, the signal being given, to call back the waves and the streams. The hollow-wreathed trumpet[60] is taken up by him, which grows to a {great} width from its lowest twist; the trumpet, which, soon as it receives the air in the middle of the sea, fills with its notes the shores lying under either sun. Then, too, as soon as it touched the lips of the God dripping with his wet beard, and being blown, sounded the bidden retreat;[61] it was heard by all the waters both of earth and sea, and stopped all those waters by which it was heard. Now the sea[62] {again} has a shore; their channels receive the full rivers; the rivers subside; the hills are seen to come forth. The ground rises, places increase {in extent} as the waters decrease; and after a length of time, the woods show their naked tops, and retain the mud left upon their branches. The world was restored; which when Deucalion beheld to be empty, and how 51 the desolate Earth kept a profound silence, he thus addressed Pyrrha, with tears bursting forth:--"O sister, O wife, O thou, the only woman surviving, whom a common origin,[63] and a kindred descent, and afterwards the marriage tie has united to me, and {whom} now dangers themselves unite to me; we two are the whole people of the earth, whatever {both} the East and the West behold; of all the rest, the sea has taken possession. And even now there is no certain assurance of our lives; even yet do the clouds terrify my mind. What would now have been thy feelings, if without me thou hadst been rescued from destruction, O thou deserving of compassion? In what manner couldst thou have been able alone to support {this} terror? With whom for a consoler, {to endure} these sorrows? For I, believe me, my wife, if the sea had only carried thee off, should have followed thee, and the sea should have carried me off as well. Oh that I could replace the people {that are lost} by the arts of my father,[64] and infuse the soul into the moulded earth! Now the mortal race exists in us two {alone}. Thus it has seemed good to the Gods, and we remain as {mere} samples of mankind." [Footnote 54:
The Aonian.--Ver. 313. Aonia was a mountainous region of Boeotia; and Actaea was an ancient name of Attica, from phphphph, the sea-shore.] [Footnote 55:
By name Parnassus.--Ver. 317. Mount Parnassus has two peaks, of which the one was called 'Tichoreum,' and was sacred to Bacchus; and the other 'Hypampeum,' and was devoted to Apollo and the Muses.] [Footnote 56:
The Corycian Nymphs.--Ver. 320. The Corycian Nymphs were so called from inhabiting the Corycian cavern in Mount 52 Parnassus; they were fabled to be the daughters of Plistus, a river near Delphi. There was another Corycian cave in Cilicia, in Asia Minor.] [Footnote 57:
The prophetic Themis.--Ver. 321. Themis is said to have preceded Apollo in giving oracular responses at Delphi. She was the daughter of Coelus and Terra, and was the first to instruct men to ask of the Gods that which was lawful and right, whence she took the name of Themis, which signifies in Greek, 'that which is just and right.'] [Footnote 58:
The native purple shells.--Ver. 332. 'Murex' was the name of the shell-fish from which the Tyrian purple, so much valued by the ancients, was procured. Some suppose that the meaning here is, that Triton had his shoulders tinted with the purple color of the murex. It is, however, more probable that the Poet means to say that he had his neck and shoulders studded with the shells of the murex, perhaps as a substitute for scales.] [Footnote 59:
He bids him blow.--Ver. 333. There were several Tritons, or minor sea gods. The one mentioned here, the chief Triton, was fabled to be the son of Neptune and Amphitrite, who always preceded Neptune in his course, and whose arrival he was wont to proclaim by the sound of his shell. He was usually represented as swimming, with the upper part of his body resembling that of a human being, while his lower parts terminated with the tail of a fish.] [Footnote 60:
The hollow-wreathed
