Virgil · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| You too, great Pales, I will sing, and you, shepherd from Amphrysus, worthy to be remembered, and you, woods and rivers of Lycaeus. Everything else that might have held idle minds with song is already common knowledge: who does not know harsh Eurystheus, or the altars of infamous Busiris? Who has not told of the boy Hylas, and Latona's Delos, and Hippodame, and Pelops, marked by his ivory shoulder, bold with horses? I must try a path by which I too can rise from the ground and fly victorious on the lips of men. I will be the first, if only life remains to me, to come home to my native land bringing the Muses with me from the Aonian peak; I will be the first to bring back to you, Mantua, the palms of Idumaea, and on the green plain I will build a temple of marble beside the water, where the great Mincius wanders in slow windings and fringes its banks with tender reeds. In the middle I will have Caesar, and he will possess the temple. In his honor I, the victor, conspicuous in Tyrian purple, will drive a hundred four-horse chariots beside the river. All Greece will leave the Alpheus and the groves of Molorchus to compete for me in races and with the rawhide gauntlet.
21| I myself, my head adorned with leaves of trimmed olive, will bring gifts. Even now it is a joy to lead the solemn processions to the shrines and see the bullocks slaughtered, or watch how the scene withdraws as the panels turn, and how the Britons woven into it lift the purple curtain. On the doors I will make in gold and solid ivory the battle of the Ganges people and the arms of victorious Quirinus, and here the Nile surging with war and flowing in full flood, and columns rising with the bronze of ships' beaks. I will add the conquered cities of Asia, Niphates driven back, and the Parthian trusting in flight and arrows shot backward; and two trophies snatched by hand from two different enemies, and nations twice led in triumph from either shore. There will stand Parian marbles too, statues that breathe: the offspring of Assaracus and the great names of the race descended from Jupiter, father Tros, and the Cynthian founder of Troy. Wretched Envy will fear the Furies and the stern river of Cocytus, Ixion's twisted snakes and his monstrous wheel, and the stone that cannot be overcome. Meanwhile let us pursue the woods of the Dryads and their untouched glades — your command, Maecenas, and no easy one:
42| without you my mind begins nothing lofty. Come, break off slow delay: Cithaeron calls with a great shout, and the hounds of Taygetus, and Epidaurus, tamer of horses, and the cry, redoubled by the woods' assent, roars back. Yet soon I will prepare to tell of Caesar's blazing battles and to carry his name in fame through as many years as Caesar is distant from the first birth of Tithonus. Whether someone, admiring the prize of the Olympic palm, breeds horses, or someone breeds bullocks strong for the plough, let him choose above all the bodies of the mothers. The best shape for a fierce-looking cow is an ugly head, a very thick neck, and dewlaps hanging from the chin down to the legs; then there is no limit to her long flank: everything is large, even the foot, with shaggy ears under crooked horns. Nor would I be displeased with one marked with spots and white, or one that refuses the yoke and is sometimes rough with her horn, more like a bull in face, tall all over, and sweeping her footprints with the tip of her tail as she walks. The age for enduring Lucina and lawful mating ends before ten and begins after four years;
62| the rest of her life is neither fit for breeding nor strong for the plough. Meanwhile, while glad youth is still abundant in the herds, let the males loose; be the first to send your cattle to mate, and supply one generation after another by breeding. The best days of life are the first to flee from wretched mortals; diseases creep on, and grim old age and suffering, and the harshness of unrelenting death snatches them away. There will always be some whose bodies you would rather change: so always replace them, and so that you do not miss them when they are gone, act beforehand and choose new stock for the herd every year. The same selection is needed for horses. Only, on those you mean to raise in hope of continuing the breed, spend special care right from their earliest youth. From the start the foal of a noble breed steps higher in the fields and sets down its legs lightly; it is the first to dare to lead the way, to try threatening rivers, and to trust itself to an unknown bridge, and it does not shy at idle noises. It has a high neck and a clean-cut head, a short belly and broad back, and its spirited chest swells with muscles. Bays and grays are good; the worst color is white or dun. Then, if arms clash somewhere far off, it cannot stand still; it pricks its ears, its limbs tremble, and, snorting, it rolls the pent-up fire beneath its nostrils.
86| His mane is thick, and tossed about it settles on his right shoulder; a double spine runs along his loins, and his hoof digs the ground and rings heavily with solid horn. Such was Cyllarus, tamed by the reins of Amyclaean Pollux, and such the pair of horses of Mars, whom the Greek poets remember, and the horses of great Achilles' chariot. Such too was Saturn himself, swift, spreading his mane over a horse's neck at his wife's arrival, and filling high Pelion as he fled with his shrill whinny. This horse too, when he fails, weighed down by sickness or already slower with years, shut away at home, and show no mercy to his shameful old age. An older horse is cold toward Venus, and drags on a thankless labor in vain, and if battle is ever reached, like a great fire in stubble, without strength, it rages to no purpose. So you will note especially their spirit and age; then their other qualities, the offspring of their parents, what pain each feels when beaten, and what glory the palm brings. Do you not see, when the chariots have seized the field in a headlong contest and rush pouring out of the starting gates, when the hopes of the young drivers are lifted high, and pounding fear drains their exultant hearts? They press on with twisted whip and lean forward to give the reins, and the axle flies, glowing with speed;
108| and now they seem to be carried low, and now raised high through the empty air and rising up into the winds. There is no pause and no rest; a cloud of tawny sand rises, and they are wet with the foam and breath of those pursuing: so great is the love of praise, so great the care for victory. Erichthonius was first to dare to yoke four horses to a chariot and stand victorious on the swift wheels. The Lapiths of Pelethronium, mounted on the horse's back, introduced the bridle and the rings of training, and taught the rider in arms to leap on the ground and to gather his proud steps. Each task is equal; the trainers equally look for a young horse that is hot in spirit and keen in running, even though he has often driven off enemies in flight and boasts of Epirus as his homeland and of strong Mycenae, and traces his stock itself to Neptune's origin. With these things observed, as the time approaches they press on and spend all their care to fatten with dense fat the one they have chosen as leader and named as husband of the herd, and they cut flowering grass and supply water and grain, so that he may not fail to survive the pleasing labor, and weak foals not show their fathers' hunger.
129| But the herds themselves, on purpose, they make thin with leanness; and when the now familiar pleasure first stirs them for mating, they deny leaves and keep them from the springs. Often they also shake them with running and tire them in the sun, when the threshing floor groans under heavily beaten grain, and when empty chaff is tossed to the rising west wind. They do this so that too much luxury may not dull the use of the generative field and clog the idle furrows, but that it may eagerly seize Venus and store her deeper. Again, the care of the fathers begins to fall away and that of the mothers to follow. When the pregnant mares wander after their months are done, let no one allow them to pull the yoke on heavy wagons, or to leap across the road, or to crop meadows in swift flight, or to swim rushing rivers. They are pastured in empty glades and beside full rivers, where there is moss and a bank richest in green grass, and caves give cover and rocky shade stretches out. Around the groves of Silarus and Alburnus, green with holm oaks, there flits in great numbers an insect whose Roman name is asilus, which the Greeks have turned into oestrus; it is fierce and has a harsh buzz, and at it whole herds, terrified, scatter through the woods; the sky, shaken, rages with their bellowing, and the woods, and the bank of the dry Tanager.
152| With this monster in former days Juno, plotting destruction for the heifer of Inachus, vented her terrible anger. This pest too (for it presses more fiercely in midsummer heat) you will keep away from the pregnant herd, and you will pasture the cattle when the sun has just risen or when the stars are leading on the night. After birth all care is shifted to the calves; at once they brand them with marks and the names of their stock, and those whom they would rather set aside for breeding the herd, or keep consecrated for the altars, or for breaking the earth and turning over the bristling field in broken clods. The rest of the herd graze on the green grass. As for those you will train for farm work and use, urge the calves on now and start on the way to taming them, while the spirits of the young are easy, while their age is pliant. First fasten loose rings of slender withy around the neck; then, when their free necks have grown used to service, join matched pairs together by the collars themselves, and make the young steers keep pace; and let empty wheels be drawn behind them often over the ground, and mark their tracks in the surface dust.
172| Afterward a beech-wood axle straining under a heavy load groans, and a bronze-rimmed wheel drags the yoked pole along. Meanwhile, for the untamed young horses you will gather not only grass or the tender leaves of willows and marsh sedge, but grain, cut by your own hand from the sown field; nor, as our fathers did, will you fill the milk pails with snow-white milk from calving cows, but let the foals use up all the udder for their own sweet feeding. But if your interest runs more to war and fierce squadrons, or to gliding on wheels past the river Alpheus at Pisa and driving flying chariots in Jupiter's grove, then the horse's first task is to look on the spirit and weapons of warriors, to endure the trumpets, to bear a groaning wheel as it drags, and to hear the clink of bits in the stable. Then more and more let him delight in his trainer's gentle praise and love the sound of his own neck being patted. Let him dare all this soon after he has been weaned from his mother's udder, and let him offer his mouth in turn to soft halters while still weak and trembling, still ignorant of his age. But when three years have passed and the fourth summer has come, let him soon begin to circle at the gallop, to beat out a rhythm with his hooves in measured steps, and to curve his legs in alternating bends, and let him look as if he is working at it. Then let him challenge the winds to a race, and flying over the open plains like a horse set free from the reins, scarcely leave his footprints on the surface of the sand.
196| As when the North Wind swoops down thick from Hyperborean shores and scatters the winters of Scythia and the dry clouds, then the tall cornfields and rippling plains shiver under the gentle gusts, the tops of the woods give out a rushing sound, and long waves press toward the shore; he flies on, sweeping fields and seas together in his flight. From there the horse will either sweat on the turning posts and the vast tracks at Elis and drive foam from his mouth flecked with blood, or he will pull a Belgic war cart better with a supple neck. Only then, when they have been broken in, let their great bodies grow fat on rich fodder; for before they are tamed they will lift up proud spirits, and once caught they will refuse to endure the pliant whip or to obey the hard curb. But no care strengthens their vigor more than keeping them away from sex and the goads of blind love, whether one prefers the use of cattle or of horses. And so they send bulls far away to lonely pastures behind a mountain barrier and across wide rivers, or keep them shut in at full mangers. For the female wears down the male's strength little by little and burns him with the mere sight of her, and with her sweet allurements she lets him remember neither woods nor grass; and often she makes her proud lovers fight it out between them with their horns.
219| The beautiful heifer grazes in the great forest of Sila. The bulls clash in turn in battle with great force and with repeated wounds; dark blood bathes their bodies, and the horns, turned against each other as they strain, are driven together with a vast groaning; the woods and the long sky of Olympus echo. Nor is it the habit of the fighters to stable together, but the one who is beaten goes away and lives in exile in distant, unknown lands, groaning deeply over his disgrace and the blows of the proud victor, and then over the love he lost unavenged; and looking back at his stalls, he has left the kingdom of his ancestors. So he trains his strength with every care, and lies the whole night on hard rocks with no bedding laid beneath him, feeding on rough leaves and sharp sedge; he tests himself and learns to turn his anger into his horns, straining against a tree trunk, and he provokes the winds with blows and rehearses for the fight by scattering sand. Then when his strength has been gathered and his vigor restored, he breaks camp and rushes headlong at the enemy, who has forgotten him: as when a wave begins to whiten in mid-sea, draws its curve from further out in the deep, and, rolling toward the land, roars enormously among the rocks and crashes down no smaller than a mountain itself, while the water below boils up in whirlpools and throws the black sand high.
242| Indeed every kind on earth, of men and of beasts, and the race of the sea, the cattle and the brightly colored birds, rush into frenzy and fire: love is the same for all. At no other time does the lioness, forgetting her cubs, prowl more savagely over the plains, nor do shapeless bears deal out so much death and carnage through the woods; then the boar is fierce, then the tiger is at her worst; ah, it is a bad time then to wander in the lonely fields of Libya. Do you not see how a trembling runs through the whole body of the horses, if only a scent has carried a familiar breath on the breeze? Neither the bridles of men nor cruel whips now hold them back, nor crags and hollow cliffs, nor rivers set in their way that whirl mountains away when they seize them. The Sabine boar himself charges, sharpens his tusks, paws the ground with his foot, rubs his ribs against a tree, and toughens his shoulders on this side and that against wounds. What of the young man, in whose bones harsh love stirs a mighty fire? He swims, late at night in the blind darkness, through seas stirred up by sudden storms; above him the great gate of heaven thunders, and the waves, dashed against the rocks, cry out against him; nor can his unhappy parents call him back, nor the girl who will die over his cruel death.
264| What of the spotted lynxes of Bacchus, the fierce breed of wolves, and of dogs? What of the timid deer, who fight in battle? But of all of them, the madness of mares is the most remarkable; Venus herself gave them this frenzy, at the time when the Potnian mares of Glaucus tore his limbs to pieces with their jaws. Love leads them across Gargara and across the roaring Ascanius; they climb mountains and swim rivers. And as soon as the flame has been put under their eager marrow (more so in spring, because in spring warmth returns to the bones), they all stand on high rocks with their faces turned to the west wind and catch the light breezes, and often, with no mating at all, made pregnant by the wind (wonderful to tell), they scatter over rocks and crags and down into low valleys, not toward your quarter, East Wind, nor toward the sunrise, but toward the North Wind and the Northwest, or where the blackest South Wind is born and saddens the sky with rainy cold. Here at last, what the shepherds rightly call by the name hippomanes, a thick poison drips from the groin, hippomanes, which wicked stepmothers have often gathered and mixed with herbs and harmful spells.
284| But time flies meanwhile, flies beyond recall, while we, captivated by love, wander round each separate topic. This is enough about the herds: the other part of the task remains, to look after woolly flocks and shaggy goats. Here is hard work, and from it you brave farmers may hope for praise. Nor am I in doubt in my own mind how hard it is to master these subjects in words and to add this distinction to such humble matters; but a sweet love carries me over the lonely heights of Parnassus; it is a joy to walk the ridges where no track of earlier poets turns off down a gentle slope to Castalia. Now, revered Pales, now I must sound with a great voice. To begin, I tell you to let the sheep graze on soft grass in their stalls until leafy summer returns, and to spread plenty of straw and bundles of fern on the hard ground beneath them, so that the cold ice does not hurt the tender flock and bring on the scab and foul foot-rot. After this I move on, and tell you to supply the goats with leafy arbutus and to give them fresh running water, and to set their shelters facing away from the winds, toward the winter sun, to the south, when icy Aquarius is setting and sprinkles the last of the year with rain.
305| These animals too must be looked after with no less care, and they will be of no less use, though Milesian fleeces, dyed in Tyrian purple, fetch a high price. From goats come more offspring, and from them an abundant supply of milk; the more the pail has foamed over from an emptied udder, the more the streams will flow, richly, from the pressed teats. Meanwhile they shear the beards and grizzled chins of the Cinyphian he-goat, grizzled chins and shaggy hair for use in camps and as covers for wretched sailors. They graze in the woods and on the heights of Lycaeus, on bristling brambles and on thorn-bushes that love the heights; and they come home of their own accord, remembering their way back to the shelters, and lead their kids, and scarcely get over the threshold with their heavy udders. So, with all the more care, since they need less from human hands, you must keep ice and snow-bringing winds away from them, and bring them food and leafy fodder gladly, and not shut your hayloft for the whole winter. But when happy summer, at the call of the west winds, sends both flocks out to the glades and pastures, let us at the first rising of the Morning Star go out into the cool country, while the morning is new, while the grass is white, and the dew on the tender grass is most welcome to the flock.
327| Then, when the fourth hour of the day has gathered thirst, and the plaintive cicadas break the thickets with their song, I will tell the flocks to drink running water from wells or deep pools, through channels of holm-oak wood; but in the midday heat to look for a shady valley, wherever the great oak of Jupiter, with its ancient strength, spreads its huge branches, or wherever a dark grove of crowded holm-oaks lies with its sacred shade. Then give them thin water again, and feed them again toward sunset, when the cool Evening Star tempers the air, and the dewy moon now restores the glades, and the shores echo with the kingfisher, the thickets with the goldfinch. Why should I follow in verse the shepherds of Libya, and their pastures, and their huts scattered with few roofs? Often day and night and a whole month in order the flock grazes and goes on through long deserts without any lodgings: so vast is the plain that lies open. The African herdsman takes everything with him: his roof, his household god, his weapons, his Spartan dog and his Cretan quiver; just as the tough Roman in his country's arms, when he is on the march under a heavy pack, pitches camp and stands in battle line facing the enemy before he is expected.
349| But it is not so where the tribes of Scythia live, and the waters of Lake Maeotis, and where the muddy Hister rolls its yellow sands, and where Rhodope stretches back toward the middle of the sky. There they keep the herds shut in their stalls, and no grass shows on the plain and no leaves on a tree; but the land lies shapeless under heaps of snow and deep frost, far and wide, and rises to a height of seven ells. It is always winter, always the North-West winds breathing cold; and the Sun never scatters the pale shadows, neither when he is carried on his horses to the high sky, nor when he bathes his plunging chariot in the red water of Ocean. Sudden crusts of ice form on a running river, and soon the water carries iron-rimmed wheels on its back, welcoming first ships, now broad wagons; bronze vessels commonly split, clothes freeze stiff on the body, people hack with axes the wine that was once liquid, whole pools turn to solid ice, and rough icicles harden on uncombed beards. Meanwhile it snows just as heavily through the whole sky: the sheep die, the great bodies of oxen stand wrapped in frost, and the deer, in a packed herd, are numbed by the strange weight and barely show above it with the tips of their antlers.
371| These they hunt, not by setting dogs on them, not with any nets, nor by scaring them with the dread of crimson feathers, but as the deer vainly push with their chests against the mountain of snow in front of them, the hunters kill them at close quarters with the sword, and, as they bellow loudly, cut them down and carry them back with a great, happy shout. The men themselves pass their leisure in safety, deep underground in dug-out caves; they have rolled up piled oak logs and whole elms to their hearths and given them to the fire. Here they spend the night in play, and cheerfully imitate wine with fermented barley and sour service-berries. Such is the unbridled race of men lying under the Hyperborean North, beaten by the Riphaean East Wind, with their bodies wrapped in the tawny hides of animals. If wool is your concern, first, let rough woodland and burrs and thistles be kept away; avoid rich pastures; and from the start choose flocks that are white, with soft fleece. As for a ram, though he himself is brilliant white, if he has a black tongue under his moist palate, reject him, so that he does not darken the fleeces of his newborn lambs with dusky spots; and look around the full field for another.
391| It was by the gift of snow-white wool, if it is right to believe it, that the god Pan of Arcadia deceived you, Moon, and caught you, calling you into the deep woods; and you did not scorn his call. But whoever loves milk should himself bring clover and plenty of lotus and salted herbs to the mangers with his own hand: from this the animals love the rivers more, and swell their udders more, and carry a hidden taste of salt in their milk. Many also keep the kids away from their mothers when weaned, and fasten iron-spiked muzzles on their mouths at first. The milk they draw at sunrise and in the daytime hours they press into cheese at night; what they milk in the dark and at sundown, before dawn: they carry it off in baskets (the shepherd goes into town), or they sprinkle it with a little salt and put it by for winter. Nor should your care for dogs come last, but feed the swift pups of Sparta and the fierce Molossian together on rich whey. With them as guards you will never have to fear a night thief at the stables, or wolves charging, or restless Spaniards at your back. Often too you will chase timid wild asses at a run, and with dogs you will hunt the hare, with dogs the fallow deer;
411| often you will drive wild boars from their forest wallows and unsettle them by barking as you chase, and through high mountains with shouting you will press a huge stag toward the nets. Learn also to burn fragrant cedar in the stalls and to drive off foul water-snakes with the smoke of galbanum. Often under unmoved mangers a viper, dangerous to touch, has lurked and, terrified of daylight, fled; or the snake that is used to creeping under the roof and the shade (the bitter plague of cattle) and spraying poison on the herd, has lain nestled on the ground. Take stones in your hand, take clubs, shepherd, and knock it down as it raises its threats and swells its hissing neck! And now it has hidden its frightened head deep in flight, when the coils in the middle and the rows of the tail's end loosen, and the last curve drags its slow folds. There is also that evil snake in the glades of Calabria, rolling its scaly back, with its breast lifted, and with a long belly spotted with large marks; as long as any rivers burst from springs, and as long as the earth is wet with spring damp and rainy south winds, it haunts the pools and, living on the banks, wickedly fills its black gullet here with fish and with chattering frogs;
432| When the marsh is burnt dry and the earth cracks open with the heat, it leaps out onto dry land and, rolling its flaming eyes, rages through the fields, harsh with thirst and maddened by the heat. May I not then want to take soft sleep under the open sky, or to lie on a wooded ridge among the grass, when it has shed its slough and rolls along, new and glossy with youth, leaving its young or its eggs in their hiding place, rearing up toward the sun and flickering with its three-forked tongue. I will also teach you the causes and signs of diseases. Foul scab attacks sheep when cold rain and winter stiff with white frost have sunk deeper into the quick, or when unwashed sweat has stuck to them after shearing, and bristling brambles have cut their bodies. For this reason the shepherds bathe the whole flock in fresh river water, and the ram, his fleece soaked, is dunked in the pool and sent floating down the current; or after shearing they anoint the body with bitter olive dregs and mix in silver scum, live sulphur, pitch of Ida, wax rich in oil, squill, strong hellebore and black bitumen.
452| Yet no remedy for their troubles is more effective than if someone has been able to cut open with a blade the top of the sore's opening: the sickness is nourished and lives by being covered up, while the shepherd refuses to apply healing hands to the wounds and sits praying the gods for better omens. Indeed even when pain has sunk to the lowest bones of the bleating sheep and rages there, and dry fever feeds on their limbs, it has helped to draw off the burning heat and to cut the throbbing vein in the lowest part of the foot, as the Bisaltae are used to do, and the fierce Geloni, when they flee into Rhodope and the deserts of the Getae, and drink milk curdled with horse blood. Any sheep you notice from a distance going too often into the soft shade, or nibble the tips of the grass with listless mouth and trail at the rear, or lie down in the middle of the field while grazing, and withdraw alone in the late night, at once check the fault with the knife, before the dreadful contagion spreads through the unwary flock. A whirlwind driving a storm does not sweep down on the sea as thick as the many plagues of cattle. Nor do diseases seize single bodies only, but whole summer pastures at once, hope and flock together, and the entire stock from its origin.
474| Anyone would know it, if even now, after so long, he should see the high Alps and the Noric hill-forts on their mounds and the fields of Iapydian Timavus, and the kingdoms of shepherds, empty, and the glades vacant far and wide. Here once a pitiable plague arose from a sickness of the sky and burned through the whole heat of autumn, and gave every kind of cattle to death, every kind of wild beast, and poisoned the lakes and infected the pastures with rot. Nor was the way to death simple; but when a fiery thirst, driven through all the veins, had shriveled the wretched limbs, a watery fluid flowed over again and drew all the bones, collapsed into it by the disease, into itself bit by bit. Often a victim standing at the altar in the midst of the honor paid to the gods, while the woolen fillet was being wound round her with its white ribbon, fell dying among the hesitating attendants; or if the priest had earlier struck one down with the knife, then the altars did not burn with the entrails laid on them, and the seer, when consulted, could not give answers, and the knives placed beneath were barely stained with blood, and the surface of the sand was darkened only with thin matter.
494| From this calves die everywhere in the lush grass and give up their sweet lives at full mangers; from this madness comes to friendly dogs, and a gasping cough shakes the sick pigs and chokes them in swollen throats. The victorious horse, unlucky, forgetful of his efforts and of grass, slips away, turns from the springs and paws the ground often with his hoof; his ears droop, his sweat is irregular, and cold, in those who are about to die; the skin dries and, to the touch of the one handling it, resists hard. These signs they give in the first days before the end: but if as it proceeds the disease begins to grow more harsh, then indeed the eyes burn and the breath is drawn from deep down, sometimes heavy with groaning, and the lowest flanks are stretched with long gasping, black blood runs from the nostrils, and a rough tongue presses on the blocked throat. It helped to pour wine of Lenaeus down through a horn pushed in; that seemed the one salvation for the dying. Soon this very thing was their destruction, and, revived, they blazed with frenzy, and, already in the grip of sickly death (may the gods grant better to the dutiful, and that madness to our enemies!), they tore their own limbs apart with bare teeth.
515| But look: the bull, steaming under the hard ploughshare, collapses, vomits blood mixed with foam from his mouth, and heaves his last groans. The ploughman goes sadly to unyoke the other bullock, grieving for his brother's death, and leaves the plough stuck fast in the middle of the work. No shade of high groves, no soft meadows can stir his spirit, nor the river that rolls over the rocks, purer than amber, as it seeks the plain; but the depths of his flanks go slack, a stupor weighs on his dull eyes, and his neck sinks to the ground with its drooping weight. What good are his toil and his services? What good to have turned the heavy earth with the ploughshare? And yet it was not the Massic gifts of Bacchus, not lavish banquets, that harmed these beasts: they feed on leaves and a diet of simple grass; their drink is clear springs and rivers racing in their course, and no worry breaks their healthy sleep. At no other time, they say, were cows sought in vain in those regions for Juno's rites, and the chariots were drawn to the high temple offerings by mismatched aurochs. So men scratch the earth with hoes, with difficulty, dig in the seed with their own nails, and with straining necks drag the creaking wagons over the high mountains.
537| The wolf does not explore around the sheepfolds for an ambush or prowl around the flocks at night: a sharper care tames him. Timid does and fleeing stags now wander among the dogs and around the houses. Now the waves wash up the offspring of the vast sea and every race of swimming things on the edge of the shore, like shipwrecked bodies; seals flee, against their habit, into the rivers. The viper dies too, protected in vain by its winding hiding places, and the water snakes, stunned, their scales standing on end. The air itself is hostile to the birds, and they fall headlong and leave their lives beneath the high clouds. Besides, it no longer helps to change pastures; the remedies sought out do harm; the masters have given up, Chiron son of Phillyra and Melampus son of Amythaon. Pale Tisiphone, let loose from the Stygian darkness into the light, rages, drives Diseases and Fear before her, and day by day, rising, lifts her greedy head higher. The rivers, the parched banks, and the sloping hills echo with the bleating of flocks and constant lowing. Now she deals out slaughter in droves and heaps up in the very stalls the corpses rotting with foul decay, until men learn to cover them with earth and bury them in pits.
559| For the hides were of no use, and no one could cleanse the flesh with water or master it with fire; they could not even shear the fleeces eaten through with disease and filth, or touch the rotten threads; and if anyone had tried on the hateful garments, burning blisters and a foul sweat ran over his stinking limbs, and before long the sacred fire was devouring his infected body.
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