Metamorphoses

With his mind cultivated with precepts such as these and others, they say that Numa returned to his country, and, being voluntarily invited, received the sovereignty of the Roman people. Blest with a Nymph for his wife, and the Muses for his guides, he taught the rites of sacrifice, and brought over to the arts of peace a race inured to savage warfare. After, full of years, he had finished his reign and his life, the Latian matrons and the people and the Senators lamented Numa at his death. But his wife, leaving the city, lay hid, concealed in the thick groves of the valley of Aricia, and by her groans and lamentations disturbed the sacred rites of Diana, brought thither by Orestes. Ah! how oft did the Nymphs of the grove and of the lake entreat her not to do so, and utter soothing words. Ah! how often did the hero, the son of Theseus, say to her as she wept, “Put an end to it; for thy lot is not the only one to be lamented. Consider the like calamities of others, thou wilt then bear thine own better. And would that an example, not my own, could lighten thy grief! yet even my own can do so.”

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 15

Book 15, Line 30ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-15-30