with bronze cymbals and the sound of horses’ hoof-beats.

Charon, dreadful in his squalor, with a mass of unkempt white hair straggling from his chin:

The first came for Cerberus the watchdog of Tartarus,

‘And I saw Sisyphus in agonising torment trying to roll a huge stone to the top of a hill

Know that I saw Minos there, Zeus’ glorious son, seated with the golden sceptre in his hand, passing judgement on the dead as they sat or stood around him, making their case, in the broad-gated House of Hades.

what could your resolute mind devise that exceeds this: to dare to descend to Hades, where live the heedless dead, the disembodied ghosts of men?”

a lawless, aggressive people, who never lift their hands to plant or plough, but rely on the immortal gods.

rosy-fingered Dawn

copious meat and mellow wine

None will send me to Hades before my time: though no man, noble or humble, once born can escape his fate

So saying, he found a way to defile the fallen prince. He pierced the tendons of both feet behind from heel to ankle

but failed to find white-armed Andromache at home.

And they’re so like you, and touched by your semblance, and as often as I see them, my eyes are wet with tears.

Scorned Medea, the helpless exile, speaks to her recent husband,

Why did I take more pleasure than I should in your golden hair, and your comeliness, and the lying favours of your tongue?

“Two different natures, man and bull, were joined in him.”

and because of his passion for Aegle, the daughter of Panopeus, as I have already said,1 he is accused of the desertion of Ariadne, which was not honorable nor even decent;

This is the work of none other of the gods than the wife of Zeus; you are right in that surmise.

O Theseus, did you see this struggle with my children?

[1245] My ship is freighted full with sorrow; there is no room to stow anything further.

Pittheus apparently understood, and persuaded him, or beguiled him, to have intercourse with his daughter Aethra.

The more common report is that Remus contemptuously jumped over the newly raised walls and was forthwith killed by the enraged Romulus

He was struck by lightning and left the crown to his son Aventinus, whose shrine was on the hill which bears his name and is now a part of the city of Rome. He was succeeded by Proca, who had two sons, Numitor and Amulius.

shall bear Mars twins.

Then Romulus will further the race, proud in his nurse the she-wolf’s tawny pelt, and found the walls of Mars,

will wage a mighty war in Italy, destroy proud peoples

And to Cadmus were born daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Semele, Agave, and a son Polydorus.37 Ino was married to Athamas, Autonoe to Aristaeus, and Agave to Echion.

First, I’ll chop off this long plait of yours.

But first, tell me, what is your race?  Where are you from?

If I get to catch this crook anywhere near this palace I’ll make sure I’ll stop his thyrsus-thrashing and his hair-waving once and for all, by separating his torso from his head. 241

Now Leto did not give Apollo, bearer of the golden blade, her breast

because Leto with the lovely tresses was soon to bear a son faultless and strong.

But this saying I fear, and I will not hide it from you, Leto. They say that Apollo will be one that is very haughty and will greatly lord it among gods and men all over the fruitful earth. [70] Therefore, I greatly fear in heart and spirit that as soon as he sees the light of the sun, he will scorn this island —for truly I have but a hard, rocky soil —and overturn me and thrust me down with his feet in the depths of the sea; then will the great ocean wash deep above my head for ever

They [the Olympians] clashed with a mighty tumult, earth rang, and heaven echoed with sound like a trumpet blast

But white-armed Hera saw, and called to Athene: ‘Aegis-bearing Atrytone, child of Zeus, that gad-fly is helping Ares, the mortals’ bane, through the ranks and away from the battle. After her: quickly!’

You share your mother Hera’s intolerable, headstrong spirit; she too will scarcely obey my word.

ambrosia

Book V:4-6 The tale of Cupid and Psyche: the mysterious husband

Book V:4-6 The tale of Cupid and Psyche: the mysterious husband

Though the elder two were extremely pleasing, still it was thought they were only worthy of mortal praise; but the youngest girl’s looks were so delightful, so dazzling, no human speech in its poverty could celebrate them, or even rise to adequate description.

She saw, she marked his irresistible wound, she saw his thigh fading in a welter of blood,

Cytherea

I cry woe for Adonis, the beauteous Adonis is dead.

fragrant

if it had not been for the heedlessness of well-girded Metaneira,

The one with the delicate ankles

There was no medicinal food or ointment or any other mixture, so they just wasted away till they died. Then I showed them how to read the future and which of their dreams would come true. I have explained to them the meanings of incomprehensible voices and the meanings of cross roads. Then I distinguished clearly for them those of the birds with hooked talons that are sinister from those whose nature is auspicious; how they lived, their mutual loves, hatreds and how they pair with one another.

If only he had sent me below the Earth, down into Hades who accepts the dead, down into endless Tartaros, tied with steel that cannot be loosened! At least then neither god nor anyone else would mock me for my suffering. Instead, now, like a scarecrow in the wind, a miserable creature, I must entertain my enemies with my suffering.

Then, Zeus’ winged hound, the ravenous eagle will be coming uninvited all day long to tear off pieces of your liver to feed his savage appetite until your liver turns black. And don’t expect an end to this agony until some god appears to take upon himself your suffering and volunteers to descend into the dark realm of Death in the depths of Tartarus.

to put inside her an intent that is doglike and a temperament that is stealthy.

For that reason he [Zeus] devised plans that were to be baneful for humankind.

But the woman took the great lid off the jar 95 and scattered what was inside.

Just as to mortal men high-thundering Zeus gave women as an evil, accomplices of painful toils: another evil too did he provide instead of good; to wit whosoever shunning marriage and the ills that women work, declines to marry, and has come to old age pernicious, 605 through want of one to tend his final days; he lives not, it is true, in lack of subsistence, but, when he is dead, distant kindred divide his possessions; while to whomsoever, on the other hand, the lot of marriage shall have fallen, and he has had a good wife congenial to his heart, to him then forever ill contends with good to be with him:

placed around her about her head lovely garlands fresh-budding with meadow-flowers

For here, on the one hand, he deposited the flesh and entrails with rich fat on the hide, having covered it with the belly of the ox; and there, on the other hand, he laid down, 540 having well disposed them with subtle craft, the white bones of the ox, covering them with white fat.

Pallas Athene

Zeus, who sits on high and dwells in the aether, swallow her down suddenly

And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at anothers, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed

But when the gods saw him rushing at heaven, they made for Egypt (Links to an external site.) in flight, and being pursued they changed their forms into those of animals.1

From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged1

he culled the simple himself,

This was the Golden Age that, without coercion, without laws, spontaneously nurtured the good and the true.

He had barely separated out everything within fixed limits when the constellations that had been hidden for a long time in dark fog began to blaze out throughout the whole sky. And so that no region might lack its own animate beings, the stars and the forms of gods occupied the floor of heaven, the sea gave a home to the shining fish, earth took the wild a

When whichever god it was had ordered and divided the mass

upbringing at the udder of the goat which was named Amaltheia

his close association with the bees

And the Nymphs nurtured the child on a mixture of honey and milk

Persephone.

But by himself, from his head, he produced glancing-eyed Tritonis [Athena], 925 fierce, strife-stirring, army-leading, unsubdued, and awesome, to whom dins, and wars, and battle are a delight.

because she emerged out of the genitals. And Eros accompanied her and fair Desire followed her, when first she was born, and came into the host of the gods. And from the beginning this honor has she, and this part has she obtained by lot among men and immortal gods, 205 the amorous converse of maidens, their smiles and wiles, their sweet delights, their love, and blandishment.