Bk XI:1-66 The death of Orpheus
While
the poet of Thrace, with songs like these,
drew to himself the trees, the souls of wild beasts, and the stones that
followed him, see, how the frenzied Ciconian
women, their breasts covered with animal skins, spy Orpheus from a hilltop, as he matches songs
to the sounding strings. One of them, her hair scattered to the light breeze,
called: ‘Behold, behold, this is the one who scorns us!’ and hurled her spear
at the face of Apollo’s poet, as he was
singing. Tipped with leaves, it marked him, without wounding. The next missile
was a stone, that, thrown through the air, was itself overpowered by the
harmony of voice and lyre, and fell at his feet, as though it were begging
forgiveness for its mad audacity. But in fact the mindless attack mounted,
without restraint, and mad fury ruled.
All their missiles would have been frustrated by his song, but the huge clamour
of the Berecyntian flutes of broken
horn, the drums, and the breast-beating and howls of the Bacchantes, drowned the sound of the lyre.
Then, finally, the stones grew red, with the blood of the poet, to whom they
were deaf.
First,
the innumerable birds, the snakes, and the procession of wild animals, still
entranced by the voice of the singer, a mark of Orpheus’s triumph, were torn
apart by the Maenads. Then they set their
bloody hands on Orpheus, and gathered, like birds that spy the owl, the bird of
night, wandering in the daylight, or as in the amphitheatre, on the morning of
the staged events, on either side, a doomed stag, in the arena, is prey to the
hounds. They rushed at the poet, and hurled their green-leaved thyrsi, made for a different use. Some threw
clods of earth, some branches torn from the trees, and others flints. And so
that their madness did not lack true weapons, by chance, oxen were turning the
soil under the ploughshare, and, not far away from them, brawny farm workers
were digging the solid earth, sweating hard to prepare it for use, who fled
when they saw the throng, leaving their work tools behind. Hoes, heavy
mattocks, and long rakes lay scattered through the empty fields. After catching
these up, and ripping apart the oxen, that threatened them with their horns,
the fierce women rushed back to kill the poet. As he stretched out his hands,
speaking ineffectually for the first time ever, not affecting them in any way
with his voice, the impious ones murdered him: and the spirit, breathed out
through that mouth to which stones listened, and which was understood by the
senses of wild creatures – O, God! – vanished down the wind.
The
birds, lamenting, cried for you, Orpheus;
the crowd of wild creatures; the hard flints; the trees that often gathered to
your song, shedding their leaves, mourned you with bared crowns. They say the
rivers, also, were swollen with their own tears, and the naiads and dryads,
with dishevelled hair, put on sombre clothes. The poet’s limbs were strewn in
different places: the head and the lyre you, Hebrus,
received, and (a miracle!) floating in midstream, the lyre lamented mournfully;
mournfully the lifeless tongue murmured; mournfully the banks echoed in reply.
And now, carried onward to the sea, they left their native river-mouth and
reached the shores of Lesbos, at Methymna. Here, as the head lay exposed
on the alien sand, its moist hair dripping brine, a fierce snake attacked it.
But at last Phoebus came, and prevented
it, as it was about to bite, and turned the serpent’s gaping jaws to stone, and
froze the mouth, wide open, as it was.
The ghost of Orpheus sank under the earth, and recognised all those places it had seen before; and,
searching the fields of the Blessed, he found his wife again and held her
eagerly in his arms. There they walk together side by side; now she goes in front, and he follows her; now he leads, and
looks back as he can do, in safety now, at his Eurydice.’
Bk XI:67-84 The transformation of the Maenads
However,
the god, Lyaeus, did not allow such
wickedness by his followers to go unpunished. Grieved by the loss of the poet
of his sacred rites, he immediately fastened down, with twisted roots, all the Thracian women who had seen the sin, since
the path, that each one was on at that moment, gripped their toes and forced
the tips into the solid ground. As a bird, when it is caught in a snare, set by
a cunning wild-fowler, and feels itself held, tightens the knot by its
movement, beating and flapping; so each of the women, planted, stuck fast,
terrified, tried uselessly to run. But the pliant roots held her, and checked
her, struggling. When she looked for where her toenails, toes and feet were,
she saw the wood spreading over the curve of her leg, and, trying to strike her
thighs with grieving hands, she beat on oak: her breasts turned to oak: her shoulders
were oak. You would have thought the jointed arms were real branches, and your
thought would not have been wrong.
