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Month: January, 2021
_____ In a fair chace a shady mountain stood, chace, chase a fair chace, not far away Well stor’d with game, and mark’d with trails of blood; Here did the huntsmen, ’till the heat of day, Pursue the stag, and load themselves with rey: rey, probably prey, cause rey is nota word, and ray instead of rey would lead to inanities, improbabilities, lead to hunters, huntsmen, bearing branches, or stalks, of flowers at best, at worst, bolts of light When thus Actaeon calling to the rest:
“My friends,” said he, “our sport is at the best, The sun is high advanc’d, and downward sheds His burning beams directly on our heads; let’s take a break, Actaeon says, it’s Call off the dogs, and gather up the toils, And ere to-morrow’s sun begins his race, Take the cool morning to renew the chace.” we’ve gathered sufficient quarry, he continues, let’s wait until to-morrow, for the cool[er] morning , in order to renew the chace They all consent, and in a chearful train The jolly huntsmen, loaden with the slain, Return in triumph from the sultry plain. loaden, laden the slain, the spoils from the hunt Down in a vale with pine and cypress clad, Refresh’d with gentle winds, and brown with shade, The chaste Diana’s private haunt, there stood Diana / Artemis , goddess of the Hunt, Full in the centre of the darksome wood A spacious grotto, all around o’er-grown With hoary moss, and arch’d with pumice-stone.
From out its rocky clefts the waters flow, And trickling swell into a lake below. Nature had ev’ry where so plaid her part, That ev’ry where she seem’d to vie with art. to vie, to contend, to curry forposition, favour Here the bright Goddess, toil’d and chaf’d with heat, Was wont to bathe her in the cool retreat. Here did she now with all her train resort, Panting with heat, and breathless from the sport; Her armour-bearer laid her bow aside, Some loos’d her sandals, some her veil unty’d; Each busy nymph her proper part undrest; While Crocale, more handy than the rest, Gather’d her flowing hair, and in a noose Bound it together, whilst her own hung loose. Five of the more ignoble sort by turns Fetch up the water, and unlade the urns. ignoble, not noble, lacking authority, pedigree, courtly experience unlade, empty an idyll about to unravel stay tuned R ! chard
______ an interesting thing has happened with the story of Cadmus , he is not only a mythical figure, but also a legendary one, which is to say that Cadmus has roots in actual history, he’s not just an imaginary construct like those that until now have peopled Ovid’s text Cadmus appears to have actually founded Thebes , whose origins, however, are lost in antiquity, going back to, it appears, the late Bronze Age , around 2000 BC, goodness stories evidently grew around Cadmus , that transformed him intoour first documented hero, indeed superhero counterparts exist in other traditions, consider David , for instance, whoslew his own dragon, Goliath , before becoming king of the Israelites, 10th Century BCE, at Jerusalem, where he consorted, incidentally, later, with Bathsheba , however illicitly, butthat’s another story King Arthur , late 5th to early 6th Centuries CE , stems from British lore, though his historical actuality has been contested, is also a hero with preternatural capabilities based on some historical accountability in our day, there’s James Bond , based on real, living and breathing, personalities or, dare I say, even Jesus the point here is that actual people are being included in the, however culturally specific, mythologies, which, in each, had earlier consisted of metaphorical constructs merely, the concept of History , in other words, was being born, memorable events were to be remembered, recorded, documented, if only, originally, orally, around, say, campfires, however aggrandized might have been their recollected heroes Cadmus , meanwhile, in our story, is about to establish his own historical, and archeologically confirmed, note, credentials The dire example ran through all the field, The dire example, the dragon’s teeth, grown into men, had begun, if you’ll remember , to slaughter one another
e xample, display The furrows swam in blood: and only five Echion, one of the five survivingbrothers Wisdom, also of War
And with the rest a peaceful treaty makes, the rest, the four other survivors So founds a city on the promis’d earth, promis’d earth, the premonition of the oracles whose counsel Cadmus Here Cadmus reign’d; and now one would have guess’d his exile, from Tyre , Cadmus’ original home, from which his father, Agenor , had sent him, not to return, he’d Long did he live within his new abodes, Ally’d by marriage , at the end of a period of penance for having killed the dragon, which had been sacred to Ares , god of War, the gods gave Concord, to be his wife Ares would eventually exact mightyvengeance, but that’s another story And, in a fruitful wife’s embraces old, even Cadmus , though he might enjoy a long life, and many, a long increase of, children, is not immune to any of the vicissitudes of life either until his own time has come, the poet advises, however ominously and here Ovid also introduces the subject of his next metamorphosis, Actaeon , however early, luring us thereby, deftly, literarily, towards his next instalment, Actaeon’s story, eponymously, there, given its title Actaeon was the first of all his race, Who griev’d his grandsire in his borrow’d face; Condemn’d by stern Diana to bemoan his grandsire, his grandfather, who was the mother of Actaeon
borrow’d face, Actaeon was transformed into a stag by the Hunt, of the Moon, of Chastity, for having seen her naked as she was bathing he now has the face, the visage, of someone, something, he hadn’t been before, borrow’d To shun his once lov’d dogs, to bound away, having been transformed into a stag, or metamorphized, Actaeon would end up hunted, and worse, by his own, once lov’d, dogs And yet consider why the change was wrought, to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time, yet to suffer, however unfairly, the consequences, that, Ovid asks, is the question, the conundrum stay tuned R ! chard
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