Metamorphoses

“Yet, if Nature allows this crime to appear to have been committed, I congratulate the Ismarian matrons, and my own division of the globe. I congratulate this land, that it is afar from those regions which produced so great an abomination. Let the Panchæan land be rich in amomum, and let it produce cinnamon, and its zedoary, and frankincense distilling from its tree, and its other flowers, so long as it produces the myrrh-tree, as well. The new tree was not of so much worth as to be a recompense for the crime to which it owed its origin . Cupid himself denies, Myrrha, that it was his arrows that injured thee; and he defends his torches from that imputation; one of the three Sisters kindled this flame within thee, with a Stygian firebrand and with swelling vipers. It is a crime to hate a parent; but this love is a greater degree of wickedness than hatred. On every side worthy nobles are desiring thee in marriage , and throughout the whole East the youths come to the contest for thy bed. Choose out of all these one for thyself, Myrrha, so that, in all that number, there be not one person, namely, thy father .

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 10

Book 10, Line 25ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-10-25