Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray

With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,

Till all the region with her wrongs o’erflows.

No love, no new desire, constrained his soul:

By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north,

Far steppes to frost Rhipaean for ever wed,

Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice

Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven.

Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames,

Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites

And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb,

And strewed his fragments over the wide fields.

Then too, e’en then, what time the Hebrus stream,

Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled,

Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head,

The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry

“Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!”

With parting breath he called her, and the banks

From the broad stream caught up “Eurydice!”

NARCISSUS

Metamorphoses, Book III

Ovid

Translated by David Raeburn, 2004

A nymph named Liriope gives birth to a son by a river-god named Cephisus. At the beginning of this story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, she consults the prophet Teiresias as to what the future holds for the young boy, Narcissus. ‘Know thyself’ was a famous Greek adage inscribed at the precinct of Apollo at Delphi. But as Teiresias reveals, Narcissus’ very happiness depends upon him not knowing himself.

Liriope gave birth to a child, already adorable,

called Narcissus. In course of time she consulted the seer;

‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘will my baby live to a ripe old age?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘so long as he never knows himself’ –

empty words, as they long appeared, but the prophet was proved right.

In the event, Narcissus died of a curious passion.

Sixteen years went by and already the son of Cephisus

was changing each day from beautiful youth to comely manhood.

Legions of lusty men and bevies of girls desired him;

but the heart was so hard and proud in that soft and slender body,

that none of the lusty men or languishing girls could approach him.

One day he was sighted, blithely chasing the scampering roebuck

into the huntsman’s nets, by a nymph whose babbling voice

would always answer a call but never speak first. It was Echo.

Echo still was a body, not a mere voice, but her chattering

tongue could only do what it does today, that is

to parrot the last few words of the many spoken by others.

Juno had done this to her. The goddess would be all ready

to catch her husband Jupiter making love to some nymph

in a mountain dell, when crafty Echo would keep her engaged

in a long conversation, until the nymph could scurry to safety.

When Saturn’s daughter perceived what Echo was doing, she said to her,

‘I’ve been cheated enough by your prattling tongue. From now on

your words will be short and sweet!’ Her curse took effect at once.

Echo could only repeat the words she heard at the end