‘Nec species sua cuique manet, rerumque novatrix
ex aliis alias reparat natura figuras:
nec perit in toto quicquam, mihi credite, mundo,
sed variat faciemque novat, nascique vocatur 255
incipere esse aliud, quam quod fuit ante, morique
desinere illud idem. cum sint huc forsitan illa,
haec translata illuc, summa tamen omnia constant.
‘Nil equidem durare diu sub imagine eadem
crediderim: sic ad ferrum venistis ab auro, 260
saecula, sic totiens versa est fortuna locorum.
vidi ego, quod fuerat quondam solidissima tellus,
esse fretum, vidi factas ex aequore terras;
et procul a pelago conchae iacuere marinae,
et vetus inventa est in montibus ancora summis; 265
quodque fuit campus, vallem decursus aquarum
fecit, et eluvie mons est deductus in aequor,
eque paludosa siccis humus aret harenis,
quaeque sitim tulerant, stagnata paludibus ument.
hic fontes natura novos emisit, at illic 270
clausit, et aut imis commota tremoribus orbis
flumina prosiliunt, aut exsiccata residunt.
sic ubi terreno Lycus est epotus hiatu,
existit procul hinc alioque renascitur ore;
sic modo conbibitur, tecto modo gurgite lapsus 275
redditur Argolicis ingens Erasinus in arvis,
et Mysum capitisque sui ripaeque prioris
paenituisse ferunt, alia nunc ire Caicum;
nec non Sicanias volvens Amenanus harenas
nunc fluit, interdum suppressis fontibus aret. 280
ante bibebatur, nunc, quas contingere nolis,
fundit Anigrus aquas, postquam, nisi vatibus omnis
eripienda fides, illic lavere bimembres
vulnera, clavigeri quae fecerat Herculis arcus.
quid? non et Scythicis Hypanis de montibus ortus, 285
qui fuerat dulcis, salibus vitiatur amaris?
‘Fluctibus ambitae fuerant Antissa Pharosque
et Phoenissa Tyros: quarum nunc insula nulla est.
Leucada continuam veteres habuere coloni:
nunc freta circueunt; Zancle quoque iuncta fuisse 290
dicitur Italiae, donec confinia pontus
abstulit et media tellurem reppulit unda;
si quaeras Helicen et Burin, Achaidas urbes,
invenies sub aquis, et adhuc ostendere nautae
inclinata solent cum moenibus oppida mersis. 295
est prope Pittheam tumulus Troezena, sine ullis
arduus arboribus, quondam planissima campi
area, nunc tumulus; nam (res horrenda relatu)
vis fera ventorum, caecis inclusa cavernis,
exspirare aliqua cupiens luctataque frustra 300
liberiore frui caelo, cum carcere rima
nulla foret toto nec pervia flatibus esset,
extentam tumefecit humum, ceu spiritus oris
tendere vesicam solet aut derepta bicorni
terga capro; tumor ille loci permansit et alti 305
collis habet speciem longoque induruit aevo.
‘Plurima cum subeant audita et cognita nobis,
pauca super referam. quid? non et lympha figuras
datque capitque novas? medio tua, corniger Ammon,
unda die gelida est, ortuque obituque calescit, 310
admotis Athamanas aquis accendere lignum
narratur, minimos cum luna recessit in orbes.
flumen habent Cicones, quod potum saxea reddit
viscera, quod tactis inducit marmora rebus;
Crathis et huic Subaris nostris conterminus oris 315
electro similes faciunt auroque capillos;
quodque magis mirum est, sunt, qui non corpora tantum,
verum animos etiam valeant mutare liquores:
cui non audita est obscenae Salmacis undae
Aethiopesque lacus? quos si quis faucibus hausit, 320
aut furit aut patitur mirum gravitate soporem;
Clitorio quicumque sitim de fonte levavit,
vina fugit gaudetque meris abstemius undis,
seu vis est in aqua calido contraria vino,
sive, quod indigenae memorant, Amythaone natus, 325
Proetidas attonitas postquam per carmen et herbas
eripuit furiis, purgamina mentis in illas
misit aquas, odiumque meri permansit in undis.
huic fluit effectu dispar Lyncestius amnis,
quem quicumque parum moderato gutture traxit, 330
haut aliter titubat, quam si mera vina bibisset.
est locus Arcadiae, Pheneon dixere priores,
ambiguis suspectus aquis, quas nocte timeto:
nocte nocent potae, sine noxa luce bibuntur;
sic alias aliasque lacus et flumina vires 335
concipiunt.++tempusque fuit, quo navit in undis,
nunc sedet Ortygie; timuit concursibus Argo
undarum sparsas Symplegadas elisarum,
quae nunc inmotae perstant ventisque resistunt.
nec quae sulphureis ardet fornacibus Aetne, 340
ignea semper erit, neque enim fuit ignea semper.
nam sive est animal tellus et vivit habetque
spiramenta locis flammam exhalantia multis,
spirandi mutare vias, quotiensque movetur,
has finire potest, illas aperire cavernas; 345
sive leves imis venti cohibentur in antris
saxaque cum saxis et habentem semina flammae
materiam iactant, ea concipit ictibus ignem,
antra relinquentur sedatis frigida ventis;
sive bitumineae rapiunt incendia vires, 350
luteave exiguis ardescunt sulphura fumis,
nempe, ubi terra cibos alimentaque pinguia flammae
non dabit absumptis per longum viribus aevum,
naturaeque suum nutrimen deerit edaci,
non feret illa famem desertaque deseret ignis. 355
‘Esse viros fama est in Hyperborea Pallene,
qui soleant levibus velari corpora plumis,
cum Tritoniacam noviens subiere paludem;
haut equidem credo: sparsae quoque membra venenis
exercere artes Scythides memorantur easdem. 360
‘Siqua fides rebus tamen est addenda probatis,
nonne vides, quaecumque mora fluidove calore
corpora tabuerint, in parva animalia verti?
in scrobe deiecto mactatos obrue tauros
(cognita res usu): de putri viscere passim 365
florilegae nascuntur apes, quae more parentum
rura colunt operique favent in spemque laborant.
pressus humo bellator equus crabronis origo est;
concava litoreo si demas bracchia cancro,
cetera supponas terrae, de parte sepulta 370
scorpius exibit caudaque minabitur unca;
quaeque solent canis frondes intexere filis
agrestes tineae (res observata colonis)
ferali mutant cum papilione figuram.
“Nothing retains its own form; but Nature, the great renewer, ever makes up forms from other forms. Be sure there’s nothing perishes in the whole universe; it does but vary and renew its form. What we call birth is but a beginning to be other than what one was before; and death is but cessation of a former state. Though, perchance, things may shift from there to here and here to there, still do all things in their sum total remain unchanged.
“Nothing, I feel sure, lasts long under the same appearance. Thus the ages have come from gold to iron; thus often has the condition of places changed. I have myself seen what once was solid land changed into sea; and again I have seen land made from the sea. Sea-shells have been seen lying far from the ocean, and an ancient anchor has been found on a mountain-top. What once was a level plain, down-flowing waters have made into a valley; and hills by the force of floods have been washed into the sea. What was once marsh is now a parched stretch of dry sand, and what once was dry and thirsty now is a marshy pool. Here Nature sends forth fresh fountains, there seals them up; and rivers, stirred by some inward quakings of the earth, leap forth or dry up and sink out of sight. So, when Lycus is swallowed up by the yawning earth, he emerges far away and springs forth again with different appearance. So Erasinus is now engulfed and now, gliding along in a hidden stream, reappears as a lordly river in the Argolic fields. And they say that the Mysus, ashamed of his source and former banks, now flows in another region as Caïcus. The Amenanus now flows full over the Sicilian sands, and at times, its sources quenched, is dry. The Anigrus was once wholesome to drink, but now it pours down waters which you would not wish to taste since there (unless all credence is to be denied to bards) the twi-formed centaurs bathed their wounds which the arrows of club-bearing Hercules had dealt. Further, is not the Hypanis, sprung from the Scythian mountains, which once was fresh and sweet, now spoiled with brackish water?
“Antissa and Pharos and Phoenician Tyre were once surrounded by the waters of the sea; but now not one of them is an island. The old inhabitants of that region used to say that Leucas was once a part of the mainland; but now the waves wash clear around it. Zancle also is said to have been a part of Italy until the sea washed away their common boundary and thrust back the land by the intervening water. If you seek for Helice and Buris, once cities of Achaia, you will find them beneath the waves; and the sailors still show you the sloping cities with their buried walls. Near Troezen, ruled by Pittheus, there is a hill, high and treeless, which once was a perfectly level plain, but now a hill; for (horrible to relate) the wild forces of the winds, shut up in dark regions underground, seeking an outlet for their flowing and striving vainly to obtain a freer space, since there was no chink in all their prison through which their breath could go, puffed out and stretched the ground, just as when one inflates a bladder with his breath, or the skin of a horned goat. That swelling in the ground remained, has still the appearance of a high hill, and has hardened as the years went by.
“Though many instances that I have heard of and known suggest themselves to me, I shall tell but a few more. Why, does not even water give and receive strange forms? Thy stream, horned Ammon, at midday is cold, but warm in the morning and at eventide; and they say that the Athamanians set wood on fire by pouring water on it when the moon has reached her last point of waning. The Cicones have a river whose waters, if drunk, turn the vitals into stone, make marble of everything they touch. In our own region the Crathis and near it the Sybaris make hair like amber and gold; and, what is still more wonderful, there are streams whose waters have power to change not alone the body, but the mind as well. Who has not heard of the ill-famed waves of Salmacis and of the Aethiopian lakes? Whoever drinks of these waters either goes raving mad or falls into a strange, deep lethargy. Whoever slakes his thirst from Clitor’s spring shuns the wine-cup and abstemiously enjoys pure water only; whether there is a power in the water which counteracts the heating wine, or whether, as the natives say, Amythaon’s son,1 after he had freed the frenzied daughters of Proetus of madness by his magic songs and herbs, threw into those waters his mind-purifying herbs, and the hate of wine remained in the spring. The Lyncestian river produces an effect the opposite of this; for if one drinks, e’en moderately, of its waters, he staggers in his walk just as if he had drunk undiluted wine. There is a place in Arcadia which the ancients called Pheneus, mistrusted for its uncertain waters. Shun them by night, for, drunk by night, they are injurious; but in the daytime they may be drunk without harm. So lakes and streams have now these, now those effects. There was a time when Ortygia floated on the waves, but now she stands firm. The Argo feared the Symplegades, which at that time clashed together with high-flung spray; but now they stand immovable and resist the winds. And Aetna, which now glows hot with her sulphurous furnaces, will not always be on fire, neither was it always full of fire as now. For if the earth is of the nature of an animal, living and having many breathing-holes which exhale flames, she can change her breathing-places and, as often as she shakes herself, can close up these and open other holes; or if swift winds are penned up in deep caverns and drive rocks against rocks and substance containing the seeds of flame, and this catches fire from the friction of the stones, still the caves will become cool again when the winds have spent their force; or if it is pitchy substances that cause the fire, and yellow sulphur, burning with scarceseen flames, surely, when the earth shall no longer furnish food and rich sustenance for the fire, and its strength after long ages has been exhausted, and greedy Nature shall feel lack of her own nourishment, then she will not endure that hunger and, being deserted, will desert her fires.
“There is a story of certain men in Hyperborean Pallene who gain a covering of light feathers for their bodies after they have nine times plunged in Minerva’s pool. I do not vouch for it, but the Scythian women also are said to sprinkle their bodies with certain magic juices and produce the same effect.
“Still, if credence is to be given to things that have actually been tested, do you not see that, whenever dead bodies by lapse of time or by the liquefying power of heat have become thoroughly putrid, tiny animals are bred in them? Dig a ditcn and bury the carcases of bulls after they have been offered in sacrifice (it is a well-known experiment), and from the putrid entrails everywhere will spring flower-culling bees which, after the fashion of their progenitors, frequent the country fields, are fond of work, and toil in hope of their reward. A horse, which is a warlike animal, buried in the ground will produce hornets. If you cut off the hollow claws of a sea-crab and bury the rest in the ground, from the buried part a scorpion will come forth threatening with his hooked tail. And worms that weave their white cocoons on the leaves of trees (a fact well known to country-folk) change into funereal butterflies.2
Melampus.
The departed soul is sometimes represented on tombstones as a butterfly.