If only words could have followed her tears she’d have begged him for help;
she’d have told him her hame and described her plight. Two letters were all
that could serve for words, two letters traced by a hoof in the dust,
which revealed her name and her sorry transformation.
‘Woe and alas!’ old Inachus replied, as he tenderly fondled
the horns and clung to the snowy neck of the moaning heifer.
‘Woe and alas!’ he repeated. ‘Are you the daughter I searched for
over the whole wide world? My sorrow was not so heavy
when I was unable to find you. You’re silent but cannot reply
to my questions. You only respond with a deep, deep sigh from your heart.
When I speak to you, all you can offer back is a melancholy low.
Blind to the future I busied myself with plans for your wedding,
in hope to gain a new son and soon to become a grandfather.
Now your husband and children must come from a herd of cattle.
If only death could allow me to end this terrible sorrow!
Sadly I have to remain a god and the gates of Hades
are barred to me. Grief must be my companion for ever and ever.’
So the father lamented, but star-eyed Argus discreetly
eased him aside and led the daughter away to more distant
pastures. There he transferred himself to the heights of a mountain
summit, from where he could sit and keep watch in every direction.
From Book I of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Translated by David Raeburn.
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One Comment
Comparing translations actually provides a clarity. From the English Blank Verse translation by J. J. Howard:
“Now from the herd a husband must thou seek,
Now with the herd thy sons must wander forth.
Nor death my woes can finish: curst the gift
Of immortality. Eternal grief
Must still corrode me; Lethé’s gate is clos’d.”
I love the idea of a god cursing his being a god – his inability to die means he will have to live with his grief forever.