MELEAGER AND ATALANTA,

OUT OF THE EIGHTH BOOK OF

OVID'S METAMORPHOSES.

CONNECTION TO THE FORMER STORY.

Qvid, having told how Theseus had freed Athens from the tribute of children, which was imposed on them by Minos king of Crete, by killing the Minotaur, here makes a digression to the story of Meleager and Atalanta, which is one of the most inartificial connections in all the Metamorphoses; for he only says, that Theseus obtained such honour from that combat, that all Greece had recourse to him in their necessities; and, amongst others, Calydon, though the hero of that country, prince Meleager, was then living.

FROM him the Caledonians sought relief;
Though valiant Meleagrus was their chief.
The cause, a boar, who ravaged far and near;
Of Cynthia's wrath, the avenging minister.
For Ŏenius with autumnal plenty blessed,
By gifts to heaven his gratitude expressed;
Culled sheafs, to Ceres; to Lyæus, wine;
To Pan and Pales, offered sheep and kine;
And fat of olives to Minerva's shrine.

Beginning from the rural gods, his hand
Was liberal to the powers of high command;
Each deity in every kind was blessed,

Till at Diana's fane the invidious honour ceased.
Wrath touches even the gods; the Queen of Night,
Fired with disdain, and jealous of her right,
Unhonoured though I am, at least, said she,
Not unrevenged that impious act shall be.
Swift as the word, she sped the boar away,
With charge on those devoted fields to prey.
No larger bulls the Egyptian pastures feed,
And none so large Sicilian meadows breed:
His eye-balls glare with fire, suffused with blood;
His neck shoots up a thick-set thorny wood;
His bristled back a trench impaled appears,
And stands erected, like a field of spears;
Froth fills his chaps, he sends a grunting sound,
And part he churns, and part befoams the ground;
For tusks with Indian elephants he strove,

And Jove's own thunder from his mouth he drove.
He burns the leaves; the scorching blast invades
The tender corn, and shrivels up the blades;
Or, suffering not their yellow beards to rear,
He trampies down the spikes, and intercepts the year.
In vain the barns expect their promised load,
Nor barns at home, nor ricks are heaped abroad;
In vain the hinds the threshing-floor prepare,
And exercise their flails in empty air.

With olives ever green the ground is strowed,
And grapes ungathered shed their generous blood.
Amid the fold he rages, nor the sheep

Their shepherds, nor the grooms their bulls, can keep.
From fields to walls the frighted rabble run,
Nor think themselves secure within the town;
Till Melegarus, and his chosen crew,
Contemn the danger, and the praise pursue.

Fair Leda's twins, (in time to stars decreed,)
One fought on foot, one curbed the fiery steed;
Then issued forth famed Jason after these,
Who manned the foremost ship that sailed the seas;
Then Theseus, joined with bold Pirithous, came;
A single concord in a double name:

The Thestian sons, Idas, who swiftly ran,
And Ceneus, once a woman, now a man.
Lynceus, with eagle's eyes, and lion's heart;
Leucippus, with his never erring dart;
Acastus, Phileus, Phoenix, Telamon,
Echion, Lelex, and Eurytion,

Achilles' father, and great Phocus' son;

Dryas the fierce, and Hippasus the strong,

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With twice-old Iolas, and Nestor then but young;

Laertes active, and Ancæus bold;

Mopsus the sage, who future things foretold;

And t'other seer, * yet by his wife unsold.
A thousand others of immortal fame;

Among the rest, fair Atalanta came,

Grace of the woods: a diamond buckle bound
Her vest behind, that else had flow'd upon the ground,
And shew'd her buskin'd legs; her head was bare,
But for her native ornament of hair,

Which in a simple knot was tied above,-
Sweet negligence, unheeded bait of love!
Her sounding quiver on her shoulder tied,
One hand a dart, and one a bow supplied.
Such was her face, as in a nymph displayed
A fair fierce boy, or in a boy betrayed
The blushing beauties of a modest maid.
The Caledonian chief at once the dame
Beheld, at once his heart received the flame,
With heavens averse. O happy youth, he cried,
For whom thy fates reserve so fair a bribe!

* Amphialus.

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He sighed, and had no leisure more to say;
His honour called his eyes another way,
And force him to pursue the now neglected prey.
There stood a forest on the mountain's brow,
Which overlooked the shaded plains below;
No sounding axe presumed those trees to bite,
Coeval with the world, a venerable sight.
The heroes there arrived, some spread around
The toils, some search the footsteps on the ground,
Some from the chains the faithful dogs unbound.
Of action eager, and intent on thought,
The chiefs their honourable danger sought:
A valley stood below; the common drain
Of waters from above, and falling rain;
The bottom was a moist and marshy ground,
Whose edges were with bending osiers crowned;
The knotty bulrush next in order stood,
And all within, of reeds a trembling wood.

From hence the boar was roused, and sprung amain, Like lightning sudden on the warrior-train; Beats down the trees before him, shakes the ground, The forest echoes to the crackling sound;

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Shout the fierce youth, and clamours ring around.
All stood with their protended spears prepared,
With broad steel heads the brandished weapons glared.
The beast impetuous with his tusks aside
Deals glancing wounds; the fearful dogs divide;
All spend their mouth aloft, but none abide.
Echion threw the first, but missed his mark,
And stuck his boar-spear on a maple's bark.
Then Jason; and his javelin seemed to take,
But failed with over-force, and whizzed above his back.
Mopsus was next; but, ere he threw, addressed
To Phoebus thus: O patron, help thy priest!
If I adore, and ever have adored

Thy power divine, thy present aid afford,

That I may reach the beast!-The god allowed
His prayer, and, smiling, gave him what he could:
He reached the savage, but no blood he drew;
Dian unarmed the javelin as it flew.

This chafed the boar, his nostrils flames expire,
And his red eye-balls roll with living fire.
Whirled from a sling, or from an engine thrown,
Amidst the foes so flies a mighty stone,
As flew the beast: the left wing put to flight,
The chiefs o'erborne, he rushes on the right.
Empalamos and Pelagon he laid

In dust, and next to death, but for their fellows' aid. Onesimus fared worse, prepared to fly;

The fatal fang drove deep within his thigh,

And cut the nerves; the nerves no more sustain The bulk; the bulk unprop'd, falls headlong on the plain.

Nestor had failed the fall of Troy to see,

But, leaning on his lance, he vaulted on a tree;
Then, gathering up his feet, looked down with fear,
And thought his monstrous foe was still too near.
Against a stump his tusk the monster grinds,
And in the sharpened edge new vigour finds;
Then, trusting to his arms, young Öthrys found,
And ranched his hips with one continued wound.
Now Leda's twins, the future stars, appear;
White were their habits, white their horses were ;
Conspicuous both, and both in act to throw,
Their trembling lances brandished at the foe:
Nor had they missed; but he to thickets fled,
Concealed from aiming spears, not pervious to the
steed.

But Telamon rushed in, and happed to meet
A rising root, that held his fastened feet;

So down he fell, whom, sprawling on the ground,
His brother from the wooden gyves unbound.