Of old the means to win the goodwill of gods for man were spelt and the sparkling grains of pure salt. As yet no foreign ship had brought across the ocean waves the bark-distilled myrrh; the Euphrates had sent no incense, India no balm, and the red saffron’s filaments were still unknown. The altar was content to smoke with savine, and the laurel burned with crackling loud. To garlands woven of meadow flowers he who could violets add was rich indeed. The knife that now lays bare the bowels of the slaughtered bull had in the sacred rites no work to do. The first to joy in blood of greedy sow was Ceres, who avenged her crops by the just slaughter of the guilty beast; for she learned that the milky grain in early spring had been routed up in the loose furrows by the snout of bristly swine. The swine was punished: terrified by her example, billy-goat, you should have spared the vine-shoot. Watching a he-goat nibbling at a vine somebody vented his ill-humour in these words: “Pray gnaw the vine, thou he-goat; yet when thou standest at the altar, the vine will yield something that can be sprinkled on thy horns.” The words came true. Thy foe, Bacchus, is given up to thee for punishment, and wine out-poured is sprinkled on his horns. The sow suffered for her crime, and the she-goat suffered, too, for hers. But the ox and you, ye peaceful sheep, what was your sin? Aristaeus wept because he saw his bees killed, root and branch, and the unfinished hives abandoned.
Scarce could his azure mother soothe his grief, when to her speech she these last words subjoined. “Stay, boy, thy tears! Thy losses Proteus will retrieve and will show thee how to make good all that is gone. But lest he elude thee by shifting his shape, see that strong bonds dc shackle both his hands.” The stripling made his way to the seer, and bound fast the arms, relaxed in slumber, of the Old Man of the Sea. By his art the wizard changed his real figure for a semblance false; but soon, by the cords mastered, to his true form returned. Then lifting up his dripping face and azure beard, “Dost ask,” said he, “in what way thou mayest repair the loss of thy bees? Kill a heifer and bury its carcase in the earth. The buried heifer will give the thing thou seekest of me.” The shepherd did his bidding: swarms of bees hive out of the putrid beeve: one life snuffed out brought to the birth a thousand. Death claims the sheep: shameless it cropped the holy herbs which a pious beldame used to offer to the rural gods. What creature is safe, when even the wool-bearing sheep and ploughing oxen lay down their lives upon the altars? Persia propitiates the ray-crowned Hyperion with a horse, for no sluggard victim may be offered to the swift god. Because a hind was once sacrificed to the triple Diana in room of a maiden, a hind is even now felled for her, though not in a maiden’s stead.
I have seen the entrails of a dog offered to the Goddess of the Triple Roads (Trivia) by the Sapaeans and those whose homes border on thy snows. Mount Haemus. A young ass, too, is slain in honour of the stiff guardian of the country-side: the cause is shameful, but beseems the god. A feast of ivy-berried Bacchus, thou wast wont to hold, O Greece, a feast which the third winter brought about at the appointed time. Thither came, too, the gods who wait upon Lyaeus and all the jocund crew, Pans and young amorous Satyrs, and goddesses that haunt rivers and lonely wilds. Thither, too, came old Silenus on an ass with hollow back, and the Crimson One who by his lewd image scares the timid birds. They lit upon a dingle meet for joyous wassails, and there they laid them down on grassy beds. Liber bestowed the wine: each had brought his garland: a stream supplied water in plenty to dilute the wine. Naiads were there, some with flowing locks uncombed, others with tresses neatly bound. One waits upon the revellers with tunic tucked above the knee; another through her ripped robe reveals her breast; another bares her shoulder; one trails her skirt along the grass; no shoes cumber their dainty feet. So some in Satyrs kindle amorous fires, and some in thee, whose brows are wreathed with pine. Thou too, Silenus, burnest for the nymphs, insatiate lecher! ’Tis wantonness alone forbids thee to grow old. But crimson Priapus, glory and guard of gardens, lost his heart to Lotis, singled out of the whole bevy.
For her he longs, for her he prays, for her alone he sighs; he gives her signs by nodding and woos by making marks. But the lovely are disdainful, and pride on beauty waits: she flouted him and cast at him a scornful look. ’Twas night, and wine makes drowsy, so here and there they lay overcome with sleep. Weary with frolic, Lotis, the farthest of them all, sank to her rest on the grassy ground under the maple boughs. Up rose her lover, and holding his breath stole secretly and silently on tiptoe to the fair. When he reached the lonely pallet of the snow-white nymph, he drew his breath so warily that not a sound escaped. And now upon the sward fast by he balanced on his toes, but still the nymph slept sound. He joyed, and drawing from off her feet the quilt, he set him, happy lover! to snatch the wished-for hour. But lo, Silenus’ saddle-ass, with raucous weasand braying, gave out an ill-timed roar! The nymph in terror started up, pushed off Priapus, and flying gave the alarm to the whole grove; but, ready to enter the lists of love, the god in the moonlight was laughed at by all. The author of the hubbub paid for it with his life, and he is now the victim dear to the Hellespontine god.
Ye birds, the solace of the countryside, ye haunters of the woods, ye harmless race, that build your nests and warm your eggs under your plumes, and with glib voices utter descant sweet, ye were inviolate once; but all that avails not, because ye are accused of chattering, and the gods opine that ye reveal their thoughts. Nor is the charge untrue; for the nearer ye are to the gods, the truer are the signs ye give, whether by wing or voice. Long time immune, the brood of birds was slaughtered then at last, and the gods gloated on the guts of the talebearing fowls. That is why the white dove, torn from her mate, is often burned upon Idalian hearths; nor did his saving of the Capitol protect the goose from yielding up his liver on a charger to thee, daughter of Inachus, goddess demure; by night to Goddess Night the crested fowl is slain, because with wakeful notes he summons up the warm day.
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