Part 12 (1/2)
[Footnote 3: _Castalian cave._--Ver. 14. Castalius was a fountain at the foot of Mount Parna.s.sus, and in the vicinity of Delphi. It was sacred to the Muses.]
[Footnote 4: _Sacred to Mars._--Ver. 32. Euripides says, that the dragon had been set there by Mars to watch the spot and the neighboring stream. Other writers say that it was a son of Mars, Dercyllus by name, and that a Fury, named Tilphosa, was its mother. Ancient history abounds with stories of enormous serpents.
The army of Regulus is said by Pliny the Elder, to have killed a serpent of enormous size, which obstructed the pa.s.sage of the river Bagrada, in Africa. It was 120 feet in length.]
EXPLANATION.
Reverting to the history of Europa, it may be here remarked, that Apollodorus has preserved her genealogy. Libya, according to that author, had two sons by Neptune, Belus and Agenor. The latter married Telepha.s.sa, by whom he had Cadmus, Phnix, and Cilix, and a daughter named Europa. Some ancient writers, however, say, that Europa was the daughter of Phnix, and the grandchild of Agenor.
Some authors, and Ovid among the rest, have supposed that Europe received its name from Europa. Bochart has, with considerable probability, suggested that it was originally so called from the fair complexion of the people who inhabited it. Europa herself may have received her name also from the fairness of her complexion: hence, the poets, as the Scholiast on Theocritus tells us, invented a fable, that a daughter of Juno stole her mother's paint, to give it to Europa, who used it with so much success as to ensure, by its use, an extremely fair and beautiful complexion.
FABLE II. [III.35-130]
The companions of Cadmus, fetching water from the fountain of Mars, are devoured by the Dragon that guards it. Cadmus, on discovering their destruction, slays the monster, and, by the advice of Minerva, sows the teeth, which immediately produce a crop of armed men. They forthwith quarrel among themselves, and kill each other, with the exception of five who a.s.sist Cadmus in building the city of Thebes.
After the men who came from the Tyrian nation had touched this grove with ill-fated steps, and the urn let down into the water made a splash; the azure dragon stretched forth his head from the deep cave, and uttered dreadful hissings. The urns dropped from their hands; and the blood left their bodies, and a sudden trembling seized their astonished limbs. He wreathes his scaly orbs in rolling spires, and with a spring becomes twisted into mighty folds; and uprearing himself from below the middle into the light air, he looks down upon all the grove, and is of as large a size,[5] as, if you were to look on him entire, {the serpent} which separates the two Bears.
There is no delay; he seizes the Phnicians (whether they are resorting to their arms or to flight, or whether fear itself is preventing either {step}); some he kills with his sting,[6] some with his long folds, some breathed upon[7] by the venom of his baneful poison.
The sun, now at its height, had made the shadows {but} small: the son of Agenor wonders what has detained his companion and goes to seek his men.
His garment was a skin torn from a lion; his weapon was a lance with s.h.i.+ning steel, and a javelin; and a courage superior to any weapon. When he entered the grove, and beheld the lifeless bodies, and the victorious enemy of immense size upon them, licking the horrid wounds with bloodstained tongue, he said, ”Either I will be the avenger of your death, bodies {of my} faithful {companions}, or {I will be} a sharer {in it}.” {Thus} he said; and with his right hand he raised a huge stone,[8]
and hurled the vast {weight} with a tremendous effort. {And} although high walls with lofty towers would have been shaken with the shock of it, {yet} the dragon remained without a wound; and, being defended by his scales as though with a coat of mail, and the hardness of his black hide, he repelled the mighty stroke with his skin. But he did not overcome the javelin as well with the same hardness; which stood fast, fixed in the middle joint of his yielding spine, and sank with the entire {point of} steel into his entrails. Fierce with pain, he turned his head towards his back, and beheld his wounds, and bit the javelin fixed there. And after he had twisted it on every side with all his might, with difficulty he wrenched it from his back; yet the steel stuck fast in his bones. But then, when this newly inflicted wound has increased his wonted fury, his throat swelled with gorged veins, and white foam flowed around his pestilential jaws. The Earth, too, sc.r.a.ped with the scales, sounds again, and the livid steam that issues from his infernal mouth,[9] infects the tainted air. One while he is enrolled in spires making enormous rings; sometimes he unfolds himself straighter than a long beam. Now with a vast impulse, like a torrent swelled with rain, he is borne along, and bears down the obstructing forests with his breast. The son of Agenor gives way a little; and by the spoil of the lion he sustains the shock, and with his lance extended before him, pushes back his mouth, as it advances. The dragon rages, and vainly inflicts wounds on the hard steel, and fixes his teeth upon the point.
And now the blood began to flow from his poisonous palate, and had dyed the green gra.s.s with its spray. But the wound was slight; because he recoiled from the stroke, and drew back his wounded throat, and by shrinking prevented the blow from sinking deep, and did not suffer it to go very far. At length, the son of Agenor, still pursuing, pressed the spear lodged in his throat, until an oak stood in his way as he retreated, and his neck was pierced, together with the trunk. The tree was bent with the weight of the serpent, and groaned at having its trunk lashed with the extremity of its tail.
While the conqueror was surveying the vast size of his vanquished enemy, a voice was suddenly heard (nor was it easy to understand whence {it was}, but heard it was). ”Why, son of Agenor, art thou {thus} contemplating the dragon slain {by thee}? Even thou {thyself} shalt be seen {in the form of} a dragon.”[10] He, for a long time in alarm, lost his color together with his presence of mind, and his hair stood on end with a chill of terror. Lo! Pallas, the favorer of the hero, descending through the upper region of the air, comes to him, and bids him sow the dragon's teeth under the earth turned up, as the seeds of a future people. He obeyed; and when he had opened a furrow with the pressed plough, he scattered the teeth on the ground as ordered, the seed of a race of men. Afterwards ('tis beyond belief) the turf began to move, and first appeared a point of a spear out of the furrows, next the coverings of heads nodding with painted cones;[11] then the shoulders and the breast, and the arms laden with weapons start up, and a crop of men armed with s.h.i.+elds grows apace. So, when the curtains[12] are drawn up in the joyful theaters, figures are wont to rise, and first to show their countenances; by degrees the rest; and being drawn out in a gradual continuation, the whole appear, and place their feet on the lowest edge {of the stage}. Alarmed with this new enemy, Cadmus is preparing to take arms, when one of the people that the earth had produced cries out, ”Do not take up {arms}, nor engage thyself in civil war.” And then, engaged hand to hand, he strikes one of his earth-born brothers with the cruel sword, {while} he himself falls by a dart sent from a distance. He, also, who had put him to death, lives no longer than the other, and breathes forth the air which he has so lately received. In a similar manner, too, the whole troop becomes maddened, and the brothers {so} newly sprung up, fall in fight with each other, by mutual wounds. And now the youths that had the s.p.a.ce of {so} short an existence allotted them, beat with throbbing breast their blood-stained mother, five {only} remaining, of whom Echion[13] was one. He, by the advice of Tritonia, threw his arms upon the ground, and both asked and gave the a.s.surance of brotherly concord.
The Sidonian stranger had these as a.s.sociates in his task, when he built the city that was ordered by the oracle of Phbus.
[Footnote 5: _As large a size._--Ver. 44. This description of the enormous size of the dragon or serpent is inconsistent with what the Poet says in line 91, where we find Cadmus enabled to pin his enemy against an oak.]
[Footnote 6: _With his sting._--Ver. 48. He enumerates in this one instance the various modes by which serpents put their prey to death, either by means of their sting, or, in the case of the larger kinds of serpent, by twisting round it, and suffocating it in their folds.]
[Footnote 7: _Some breathed upon._--Ver. 49. It was a prevalent notion among the ancients, that some serpents had the power of killing their prey by their poisonous breath. Though some modern commentators on this pa.s.sage may be found to affirm the same thing, it is extremely doubtful if such is the fact. The notion was, perhaps, founded on the power which certain serpents have of fascinating their prey by the agency of the eye, and thus depriving it of the means of escape.]
[Footnote 8: _A huge stone._--Ver. 59. 'Molaris' here means a stone as large as a mill-stone, and not a mill-stone itself, for we must remember that this was an uninhabited country, and consequently a stranger to the industry of man.]
[Footnote 9: _His infernal mouth._--Ver. 76. 'Stygio' means 'pestilential as the exhalations of the marshes of Styx.']
[Footnote 10: _Form of a dragon._--Ver. 98. This came to pa.s.s when, having been expelled from his dominions by Zethus and Amphion, he retired to Illyria, and was there transformed into a serpent, a fate which was shared by his wife Hermione.]
[Footnote 11: _With painted cones._--Ver. 108. The 'conus' was the conical part of the helmet into which the crest of variegated feathers was inserted.]
[Footnote 12: _When the curtains._--Ver. 111. The 'Siparium' was a piece of tapestry stretched on a frame, and, rising before the stage, answered the same purpose as the curtain or drop-scene with us, in concealing the stage till the actors appeared. Instead of drawing up this curtain to discover the stage and actors, according to our present practice, it was depressed when the play began, and fell beneath the level of the stage; whence 'aulaea premuntur,' 'the curtain is dropped,' meant that the play had commenced. When the performance was finished, this was raised again gradually from the foot of the stage; therefore 'aulaea tolluntur,' 'the curtain is raised,' would mean that the play had finished. From the present pa.s.sage we learn, that in drawing it up from the stage, the curtain was gradually displayed, the unfolding taking place, perhaps, below the boards, so that the heads of the figures rose first, until the whole form appeared in full with the feet resting on the stage, when the 'siparium' was fully drawn up.
From a pa.s.sage in Virgil's Georgics (book iii. l. 25), we learn that the figures of Britons (whose country had then lately been the scene of new conquests) were woven on the canvas of the 'siparium,' having their arms in the att.i.tude of lifting the curtain.]
[Footnote 13: _Echion._--Ver. 126. The names of the others were Udeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelor, according to Apollodorus.
To these some added Creon, as a sixth.]
EXPLANATION.