Explanation.

Virgil describes Anius as the king of Delos, and the priest of Apollo at the same time. ‘Rex Anius, rex idem hominum Phœbique sacerdos.’ Æneid, Book III. He was descended from Cadmus, through his mother Rhea, the daughter of Staphilus. Having engaged in some intrigue, as Diodorus Siculus conjectures, her father exposed her on the sea in an open boat, which drove to Delos, and she was there delivered of Anius, who afterwards became the king of the island. By his wife Dorippe he had three daughters, who were extremely frugal, and by means of the offerings and presents that were brought to the temple of Apollo, amassed a large store of provisions. During the siege of Troy, the Greeks sent Palamedes to Delos, to demand food for the army; and, as a security for his compliance with these demands, they exacted the daughters of Anius as hostages. The damsels soon afterwards finding means to escape, it was said that Bacchus, who was their kinsman through Cadmus, had transformed them into doves. Probably the story of their transforming every thing they touched, into wine, corn, and oil, was founded solely on their thriftiness and parsimony. Bochart, however, explains the story from the circumstance of their names being, as he conjectures, Oëno, Spermo, and Elaï, which, in the old Phœnician dialect, signified wine, corn, and oil; and he thinks that the story was confirmed in general belief by the fact that large quantities of corn, wine, and oil were supplied from Delos to the Grecian army when before Troy.

In the reign of Orion, Thebes being devastated by a plague, the oracles were consulted, and the Thebans were told that the contagion would cease as soon as the daughters of the king should be sacrificed to the wrath of heaven. The two maidens immediately presented themselves at the altar; and on their immolation, the Gods were appeased, and the plague ceased. This example of patriotism and fortitude filled the more youthful Thebans with so much emulation, that they shook off their former inactivity, and soon became conspicuous for their bravery: which sudden change gave occasion to the saying, that the ashes of these maidens had been transformed into men.

The Poet follows Æneas on his voyage, to gain an opportunity of referring to several other current stories. Among other places, he passes the city of Ambracia, about which the Gods had contended, and sees the rock into which the umpire of their dispute, who had decided in favour of Hercules, was changed. Ambracia was on the coast of Epirus, and gave its name to an adjacent inlet of the sea, called the Ambracian Gulf. Antoninus Liberalis tells us, on the authority of Nicander, that Apollo, Diana, and Hercules disputed about this city, and left the decision to Cragaleus, who gave it in favour of Hercules; on which, Apollo transformed him into a rock. Very possibly the meaning of this may be, that when the people of Ambracia were considering to which of these Deities they should dedicate their city, Cragaleus preferred Hercules to the other two, or, in other words, the feats of war to the cultivation of the arts and sciences. Apollo was said to have turned him into a stone, either because he met with his death near the promontory where a temple of Apollo stood, or to show the stupidity of his decision. Antoninus Liberalis is the only writer besides Ovid that makes mention of the adventure of the sons of the Molossian king; he tells us that Munychus, king of the Molossi, had three sons, Alcander, Megaletor, and Philæus, and a daughter named Hyperippe. Some robbers setting fire to their father’s house, they were transformed by Jupiter into birds. This, in all probability, is a poetical way of saying that the youths escaped from the flames, contrary to universal expectation.

The opinions of writers have been very conflicting as to the origin of the oracle of Dodona. Silius Italicus says that two pigeons flew from Thebes in Egypt, one of which went to Libya, and occasioned the founding of the oracle of Jupiter Ammon; while the other settled upon an oak in Chaonia, and signified thereby to the inhabitants, that it was the will of heaven that there should be an oracle in that place. Herodotus says that two priestesses of Egyptian Thebes being carried off by some Phœnician merchants, one of them was sold to the Greeks, after which she settled in the forest of Dodona, where a little chapel was founded by her in honour of Jupiter, in which she gave responses. He adds, that they called her ‘the dove,’ because being a foreigner they did not understand her language. At length, having learned the language of the Pelasgians, it was said that the dove had spoken. On that foundation grew the tradition that the oaks themselves uttered oracular responses.

Notwithstanding this plausible account of Herodotus, it is not impossible that some equivocal expressions in the Hebrew and Arabian languages may have given rise to the story. ‘Himan,’ in the one language, signified ‘a priest;’ and ‘Heman,’ in the other, was the name for ‘a pigeon.’ Possibly those who found the former word in the history of ancient Greece, written in the dialect of the original Phœnician settlers, did not understand it, and by their mistake, caused it to be asserted that a dove had founded the oracle of Dodona. Bochart tells us that the same word, in the Phœnician tongue, signifies either ‘pigeons,’ or ‘women;’ but the Abbè Sallier has gone still further, and has shown that, in the language of the ancient inhabitants of Epirus, the same word had the two significations mentioned by Bochart.

This oracle afterwards grew famous for its responses, and the priests used considerable ingenuity in the delivery of their answers. They cautiously kept all who came to consult them at a distance from the dark recess where the shrine was situated; and took care to deliver their responses in a manner so ambiguous, as to make people believe whatever they pleased. In this circumstance originates the variation in the descriptions of the oracle which the ancients have left us. According to some, it was the oaks that spoke; according to others, the beeches; while a third account was that pigeons gave the answers; and, lastly, it was said that the ringing of certain cauldrons there suspended, divulged the will of heaven. Stephanus Byzantinus has left a curious account of this contrivance of the cauldrons; he says that in that part of the forest of Dodona, where the oracle stood, there were two pillars erected, at a small distance from each other. On one there was placed a brazen vessel, about the size of an ordinary cauldron: and on the other a little boy, which was most probably a piece of mechanism, who held a brazen whip with several thongs which hung loose, and were easily moved. When the wind blew, the lashes struck against the vessel, and occasioned a noise while the wind continued. It was from them, he says, that the forest took the name of Dodona; ‘dodo,’ in the ancient language, signifying ‘a cauldron.’

Strabo says that the responses were originally given by three priestesses: and he gives the reason why two priests were afterwards added to them. The Bœotians having been treacherously attacked by the people of Thrace during a truce which they had made, went to consult the oracle of Dodona; and the priestess answering them that if they would act impiously their design would succeed to their wish, the envoys suspected that this response had been suggested by the enemy, and burned her in revenge; after which they vindicated their cruelty by saying that if the priestess designed to deceive them, she well deserved her punishment; and that if she spoke with truthfulness, they had only followed the advice of the oracle. This argument not satisfying the people of the district, the Bœotian envoys were seized; but as they pleaded that it was unjust that two women already prejudiced against them should be their judges, two priests were added to decide the matter. These, in return for their being the occasion of putting them in an office so honourable and lucrative, acquitted the Bœotians; whose fellow countrymen were always in the habit from that time of addressing the priests when they consulted the oracle. These priests were called by the name of ‘Selli.’

FABLE VII. [XIII.719-897]

Polyphemus, one of the Cyclops, jealous of Acis, who is in love with Galatea, kills the youth with a rock which he hurls at him; on which, his blood is changed into a river which bears his name.

They make for the neighbouring land of the Phæacians,[68] planted with beauteous fruit. After this, Epirus and Buthrotos,[69] ruled over by the Phrygian prophet, and a fictitious Troy, are reached. Thence, acquainted with the future, all which, Helenus, the son of Priam, in his faithful instructions has forewarned them of, they enter Sicania. With three points this projects into the sea. Of these, Pachynos is turned towards the showery South: Lilybæum is exposed to the soft Zephyrs: but Peloros looks towards the Bear, free from the sea, and towards Boreas. By this {part} the Trojans enter; and with oars and favouring tide, at nightfall the fleet makes the Zanclæan sands. Scylla infests the right hand side, the restless Charybdis the left. This swallows and vomits forth again ships taken down; the other, having the face of a maiden, has her swarthy stomach surrounded with fierce dogs; and (if the poets have not left the whole a fiction) once on a time, too, {she was} a maiden. Many suitors courted her; who being repulsed, she, most beloved by the Nymphs of the ocean, went to the ocean Nymphs, and used to relate the eluded loves of the youths.

While Galatea[70] was giving her hair be to combed, heaving sighs, she addressed her in such words as these: “{And} yet, O maiden, no ungentle race of men does woo thee; and as thou dost, thou art able to deny them with impunity. But I, whose sire is Nereus, whom the azure Doris bore, who am guarded, too, by a crowd of sisters, was not able, but through the waves, to escape the passion of the Cyclop;” and as she spoke, the tears choked her utterance. When, with her fingers like marble, the maiden had wiped these away, and had comforted the Goddess, “Tell me, dearest,” said she, “and conceal not {from me} ({for} I am true to thee) the cause of thy grief.” In these words did the Nereid reply to the daughter of Cratæis:[71] “Acis was the son of Faunus and of the Nymph Symæthis, a great delight, indeed, to his father and his mother, yet a still greater to me. For the charming {youth} had attached me to himself alone, and eight birth-days having a second time been passed, he had {now} marked his tender cheeks with the dubious down. Him I {pursued}; incessantly did the Cyclop me pursue. Nor can I, shouldst thou enquire, declare whether the hatred of the Cylops, or the love of Acis, was the stronger in me. They were equal. O genial Venus! how great is the power of thy sway. For that savage, and one to be dreaded by the very woods, and beheld with impunity by no stranger, the contemner of great Olympus with the Gods {themselves}, {now} feels what love is; and, captivated with passion for me, he burns, forgetting his cattle and his caves.

“And now, Polyphemus, thou hast a care for thy looks, and now for {the art of} pleasing; now thou combest out thy stiffened hair with rakes, {and} now it pleases thee to cut thy shaggy beard with the sickle, and to look at thy fierce features in the water, and {so} to compose them. Thy love for carnage, and thy fierceness, and thy insatiate thirst for blood, {now} cease; and the ships both come and go in safety. Telemus, in the mean time arriving at the Sicilian Ætna, Telemus, the son of Eurymus, whom no omen had {ever} deceived, accosts the dreadful Polyphemus, and says, ‘The single eye that thou dost carry in the midst of thy forehead, Ulysses shall take away from thee.’ He laughed, and said, ‘O most silly of the prophets, thou art mistaken, {for} another has already taken it away.’ Thus does he slight him, in vain warning him of the truth; and he either burdens the shore, stalking along with huge strides, or, wearied, he returns to his shaded cave.

“A hill, in form of a wedge, runs out with a long projection into the sea: {and} the waves of the ocean flow round either side. Hither the fierce Cyclop ascended, and sat down in the middle. His woolly flocks followed, there being no one to guide them. After the pine tree,[72] which afforded him the service of a staff, {but more} fitted for sail-yards, was laid before his feet, and his pipe was taken up, formed of a hundred reeds; all the mountains were sensible of the piping of the shepherd: the waves, {too}, were sensible. I, lying hid within a rock, and reclining on the bosom of my own Acis, from afar caught such words as these with my ears, and marked them {so} heard in my mind: ‘O Galatea, fairer than[73] the leaf of the snow-white privet,[74] more blooming than the meadows, more slender than the tall alder, brighter than glass, more wanton than the tender kid, smoother than the shells worn by continual floods, more pleasing than the winter’s sun, {or} than the summer’s shade, more beauteous than the apples, more sightly than the lofty plane tree, clearer than ice, sweeter than the ripened grape, softer than both the down of the swan, and than curdled milk, and, didst thou not fly me, more beauteous than a watered garden. {And yet} thou, the same Galatea, {art} wilder than the untamed bullocks, harder than the aged oak, more unstable than the waters, tougher than both the twigs of osier and than the white vines, more immoveable than these rocks, more violent than the torrent, prouder than the bepraised peacock, fiercer than the fire, rougher than the thistles, more cruel than the pregnant she-bear, more deaf than the ocean waves, more savage than the trodden water-snake: and, what I could especially wish to deprive thee of, fleeter not only than the deer when pursued by the loud barkings, but even than the winds and the fleeting air.

“‘But didst thou {but} know me well, thou wouldst repine at having fled, and thou thyself wouldst blame thy own hesitation, and wouldst strive to retain me. I have a part of the mountain for my cave, pendent with the native rock; in which the sun is not felt in the middle of the heat, nor is the winter felt: there are apples that load the boughs; there are grapes on the lengthening vines, resembling gold; and there are purple ones {as well}; both the one and the other do I reserve for thee. With thine own hands thou shalt thyself gather the soft strawberries growing beneath the woodland shade; thou thyself {shalt pluck} the cornels of autumn, and plums not only darkened with their black juice, but even of the choicest kinds, and resembling new wax. Nor, I being thy husband, will there be wanting to thee chesnuts, nor the fruit of the arbute tree:[75] every tree shall be at thy service. All this cattle is my own: many, too, are wandering in the valleys: many the wood conceals: many {more} are penned in my caves. Nor, shouldst thou ask me perchance, could I tell thee, how many there are; ’tis for the poor man to count his cattle. For the praises of these trust not me at all; in person thou thyself mayst see how they can hardly support with their legs their distended udders. Lambs, too, a smaller breed, are in the warm folds: there are kids, too, of equal age {to them} in other folds. Snow-white milk I always have: a part of it is kept for drinking, {another} part the liquified rennet hardens. Nor will common delights, and ordinary enjoyments alone fall to thy lot, {such as} does, and hares, and she-goats, or a pair of doves, or a nest taken from the tree top. I have found on the mountain summit the twin cubs of a shaggy she-bear, which can play with thee, so like each other that thou couldst scarce distinguish them. {These} I found, and I said, ‘These for my mistress will I keep.’

“‘Do now but raise thy beauteous head from out of the azure sea; now, Galatea, come, and do not scorn my presents. Surely I know myself, and myself but lately I beheld in the reflection of the limpid water; and my figure[76] pleased me as I saw it. See how huge I am. Not Jove, in heaven, is greater than this body; for thou art wont to tell how one Jupiter reigns, who he is I know not. Plenty of hair hangs over my grisly features, and, like a grove, overshadows my shoulders; nor think it uncomely that my body is rough, thick set with stiff bristles. A tree without leaves is unseemly; a horse is unseemly, unless a mane covers his tawny neck. Feathers cover the birds; their wool is an ornament to the sheep; a beard and rough hair upon their body is becoming to men. I have but one eye in the middle of my forehead, but it is like a large buckler. Well! and does not the Sun from the heavens behold all these things? and yet the Sun has but one eye. And, besides, in your seas does my father reign. Him do I offer thee for a father-in-law; only do take pity on a suppliant, and hear his prayer, for to thee alone do I give way. And I, who despise Jove, and the heavens, and the piercing lightnings, dread thee, daughter of Nereus; than the lightnings is thy wrath more dreadful to me. But I should be more patient under these slights, if thou didst avoid all men. For why, rejecting the Cyclop, dost thou love Acis? And why prefer Acis to my embraces? Yet, let him please himself, and let him please thee, too, Galatea, {though} I wish he could not; if only the opportunity is given, he shall find that I have strength proportioned to a body so vast. I will pull out his palpitating entrails; and I will scatter his torn limbs about the fields, and throughout thy waves, {and} thus let him be united to thee. For I burn: and my passion, {thus} slighted, rages with the greater fury; and I seem to be carrying in my breast Ætna, transferred there with {all} its flames; and yet, Galatea, thou art unmoved.’

“Having in vain uttered such complaints (for all this I saw), he rises; and like an enraged bull, when the heifer is taken away from him, he could not stand still, and he wandered in the wood, and the well known forests. When the savage {monster} espied me, and Acis unsuspecting and apprehensive of no such thing; and he exclaimed:-- ‘I see you, and I shall cause this to be the last union for your affection.’ And that voice was as loud as an enraged Cyclop ought, {for his size}, to have. Ætna trembled at the noise; but I, struck with horror, plunged into the adjoining sea. The hero, son of Symæthis, turned his back and fled, and cried,-- ‘Help me, Galatea, I entreat thee; help me, ye parents {of hers}; and admit me, {now} on the point of destruction, within your realms.’ The Cyclop pursued, and hurled a fragment, torn from the mountain; and though the extreme angle only of the rock reached him, yet it entirely crushed Acis. But I did the only thing that was allowed by the Fates to be done, that Acis might assume the properties of his grandsire. The purple blood flowed from beneath the rock, and in a little time the redness began to vanish; and at first it became the colour of a stream muddied by a shower; and, in time, it became clear. Then the rock, that had been thrown, opened, and through the chinks, a reed vigorous and stately arose, and the hollow mouth of the rock resounded with the waters gushing forth. And, wondrous event! a youth suddenly emerged, as far as the midriff, having his new-made horns encircled with twining reeds. And he, but that he was of larger stature, and azure in all his features, was Acis {still}. But, even then, still it was Acis, changed into a river; and the stream has since retained that ancient name.”

[Footnote 68: The Phæacians.--Ver. 719. The Phæacians were the people of the Island of Corcyra (now Corfu), who were so called from Phæax, the son of Neptune. This island was famous for the gardens of Alcinoüs, which are mentioned in the Odyssey. The Corcyrans were the originators of the disastrous Peloponnesian war.]

[Footnote 69: Buthrotos.--Ver. 721. This was a city of Epirus, not far from Corcyra. It received its name from its founder.]

[Footnote 70: Galatea.--Ver. 738. She was a sea Nymph, the daughter of Nereus and Doris.]

[Footnote 71: Daughter of Cratæis.--Ver. 749. Cratæis was a river of Calabria, in Italy. Symæthis was a stream of Sicily, opposite to Calabria.]

[Footnote 72: The pine tree.--Ver. 782. By way of corroborating this assertion, Boccaccio tells us, that the body of Polyphemus was found in Sicily, his left hand grasping a walking-stick longer than the mast of a ship.]

[Footnote 73: Fairer than.--Ver. 789. This song of Polyphemus is, in some measure, imitated from that of the Cyclop, in the Eleventh Idyll of Theocritus.]

[Footnote 74: Snow-white privet.--Ver. 789. Hesiod says, that Galatea had her name from her extreme fairness; γάλα being the Greek word for milk. To this the Poet here alludes.]

[Footnote 75: Arbute tree.--Ver. 820. The fruit of the arbutus, or strawberry tree, were so extremely sour, that they were called, as Pliny the Elder tells us, ‘unedones;’ because people could not eat more than one. The tree itself was valued for the beauty and pleasing shade of its foliage.]

[Footnote 76: My figure.--Ver. 841. Virgil and Theocritus also represent Polyphemus as boasting of his good looks.]