In the second century AD the author Antoninus Liberalis assembled an anthology of stories featuring metamorphosis. Myths involving the transformation of mortals into plants, animals or landscape features by angry gods and goddesses were popular throughout antiquity (see also Stories 59 and 64–66). This particular story had originally been published in the now lost Metamorphoses of Nicander, a Greek poet of the second century BC. In this concise retelling, Cerambus, a shepherd, is disturbed from his work on the slopes of Mount Othrys, which lies to the north-east of Lamia in central Greece. Pan, the sylvan god, issues him some advice.

Cerambus, son of Eusirus, who was the son of Poseidon and of Eidothea the nymph of Othreis, lived in the land of the Melians on the spurs of Mount Othrys. He had numerous flocks and herded them himself.

Nymphs would help him since he delighted them as he sang among the mountains. He is said to have been the best singer of those days and was famous for his rural songs. In those hills he devised the shepherd’s pipes and was the first of mankind to play the lyre, composing many beautiful songs.

It is said that because of this the nymphs one day became visible to Cerambus as they danced to the strumming of his lyre. Pan, in goodwill, gave him this advice: to leave Othrys and pasture his flocks on the plain, for the coming winter was going to be exceptionally and unbelievably severe.

Cerambus, with the arrogance of youth, decided – as though smitten by some god – not to drive his beasts from Othrys to the plain. He also uttered graceless and mindless things to the nymphs, saying they were not descended from Zeus, but that Deinó had given birth to them, with the River Spercheius as the father. He also said that Poseidon, for lust of one of them, Diopatra, had made her sisters put down roots and turned them into poplars until, satiated with his desires, he had returned them to their original shapes.

Thus did Cerambus taunt the nymphs. After a short while there came a sudden frost and the streams froze. Much snow fell on the flocks of Cerambus and they were lost to sight as well as were the trees and paths. The nymphs, in anger against Cerambus because of his slanders, changed him into a wood-gnawing Cerambyx beetle.

He can be seen on trunks and has hook-teeth, ever moving his jaws together. He is black, long and has hard wings like a great dung beetle. He is called the ox that eats wood and, among the Thessalians, Cerambyx. Boys use him as a toy, cutting off his head, to wear as a pendant. The head looks like the horns of a lyre made from a tortoiseshell.

FIRST LOVE

Daphnis and Chloe

Longus

Translated by George Thornley, 1657