Metamorphoses

“Nor has the wife of Autolycus, the daughter of Erisicthon, less privileges than he . Her father was one who despised the majesty of the Gods; and he offered them no honours on their altars. He is likewise said to have profaned with an axe a grove of Ceres, and to have violated her ancient woods with the iron. In these there was standing an oak with an ancient trunk, a wood in itself alone, fillets and tablets, as memorials, and garlands, proofs of wishes that had been granted, surrounded the middle of it. Often, beneath this tree , did the Dryads lead up the festive dance; often, too, with hands joined in order, did they go round the compass of its trunk; and the girth of the oak made up three times five ells. The rest of the wood, too, lay as much under this oak as the grass lay beneath the whole of the wood. Yet not on that account even did the son of Triopas withhold the axe from it; and he ordered his servants to cut down the sacred oak; and when he saw them hesitate, thus ordered, the wicked wretch , snatching from one of them an axe, uttered these words: ‘Were it not only beloved by a Goddess, but even were it a Goddess itself, it should now touch the ground with its leafy top.’ Thus he said; and while he was poising his weapon for a side stroke, the Deoïan oak shuddered, and uttered a groan; and at once, its green leaves, and, with them, its acorns began to turn pale; and the long branches to be moistened with sweat. As soon as his impious hand had made an incision in its trunk, the blood flowed from the severed bark no otherwise than, as, at the time when the bull, a large victim, falls before the altars, the blood pours forth from his divided neck. All were amazed and one of the number attempted to hinder the wicked design, and to restrain the cruel axe. The Thessalian eyes him, and says, ‘Take the reward of thy pious intentions,’ and turns the axe from the tree upon the man, and hews off his head; and then hacks at the oak again; when such words as these are uttered from the middle of the oak: ‘I, a Nymph, most pleasing to Ceres, am beneath this wood; I, now dying, foretell to thee that the punishment of thy deeds, the solace of my death, is at hand.’

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 8

Book 8, Line 35ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-8-35