Metamorphoses

“‘Yet, slighting all these, he was attached to one Nymph, whom, on the Palatine hill, Venilia is said once to have borne to the Ionian Janus. Soon as she was ripe with marriageable years, she was presented to Laurentine Picus, preferred by her before all others; wondrous, indeed, was she in her beauty, but more wondrous still, through her skill in singing; thence she was called Canens. She was wont, with her voice, to move the woods and the rocks, and to tame the wild beasts, and to stop the course of the long rivers, and to detain the fleeting birds. While she was singing her songs with her feminine voice, Picus had gone from his dwelling into the Laurentine fields, to pierce the wild boars there bred; and he was pressing the back of his spirited horse, and was carrying two javelins in his left hand, having a purple cloak fastened with yellow gold. The daughter of the Sun, too, had come into the same wood; and that she might pluck fresh plants on the fruitful hills, she had left behind the Circæan fields, so called after her own name.

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 14

Book 14, Line 24ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-14-24