Ovid
Translated by David Raeburn, 2004
Actaeon, a grandson of King Cadmus of Thebes, has enjoyed a day’s hunting when he stumbles upon an unexpected sight. What happens to him next, Ovid assures us, is not his fault: ‘…you’ll find that chance/ was the culprit./ No crime was committed. Why punish a man for a pure/ mistake?’ The artist Titian transformed Ovid’s story into a pair of exquisite narrative paintings for King Philip II of Spain in the mid-sixteenth century.
Picture a mountain stained with the carnage of hounded beasts.
It was now midday, the hour when the shadows draw to their shortest;
the sun god’s chariot was halfway over from east to west.
A band of huntsmen was strolling along through the pathless glades,
when their leader, the young Actaeon, calmly made an announcement:
‘Comrades, our nets are soaked, our spears are drenched in our quarry’s
blood. Our luck is enough for today. When the goddess Aurora
appears tomorrow and shows the gleam of her rosy wheels,
let us all return to the chase. Now Phoebus is halfway over
from east to west and cutting the fields with his burning rays.
Leave off what you’re doing and stow your knotted nets for the moment.’
The men did just as he told them and took a break from their hunting.
Now picture a valley, dense with pine and tapering cypress,
called Gargáphië, sacred haunt of the huntress Diana;
there, in a secret corner, a cave surrounded by woodland,
owing nothing to human artifice. Nature had used
her talent to imitate art: she had moulded the living rock
of porous tufa to form the shape of a rugged arch.
To the right, a babbling spring with a thin translucent rivulet
widening into a pool ringed round by a grassy clearing.
Here the goddess who guards the woods, when weary with hunting,
would come to bathe her virginal limbs in the clear, clean water.
On this occasion she made her entrance and handed her javelin,
quiver and slackened bow to the chosen nymph who carried
her weapons. Another put out her arms to receive her dress
as she stripped it off. Two more were removing her boots, while Crócale,
more of an expert, gathered the locks that were billowing over
her mistress’ neck in a knot, though her own stayed floating and free.
Néphele, Hýale, Rhamis, Psecas and Phíale charged
their capacious urns with water and stood all ready to pour it.
And while the virgin goddess was taking her bath in her usual
pool, as fate would have it, Actaeon, Cadmus’ grandson,
wandered into the glade. His hunting could wait, he thought,
as he sauntered aimlessly through the unfamiliar woodland.
Imagine the scene as he entered: the grotto, the splashing fountains,
the group of nymphs in the nude. At once, at the sight of a man,
they struck their bosoms in horror, their sudden screams re-echoing
through the encircling woods. They clustered around Diana
to form a screen with their bodies, but sadly the goddess was taller;
her neck and shoulders were visible over the heads of her maidens.
Think of the crimson glow on the clouds when struck by the rays
of the setting sun; or think of the rosy-fingered dawn;
such was the blush on the face of Diana observed quite naked.
Although her companion nymphs had formed a barrier round her,
she stood with her front turned sideways and looked at the rash intruder
over her shoulder. She wished that her arrows were ready to hand,
but used what she could, caught up some water and threw it into
the face of the man. As she splashed his hair with revengeful drops,
she spoke the spine-chilling words which warned of impending disaster:
‘Now you may tell the story of seeing Diana naked –
If story-telling is in your power!’ No more was needed.
The head she had sprinkled sprouted the horns of a lusty stag;
the neck expanded, the ears were narrowed to pointed tips;
she changed his hands into hooves and his arms into long and slender
forelegs; she covered his frame in a pelt of dappled buckskin;
last, she injected panic. The son of Autónoë bolted,
surprising himself with his speed as he bounded away from the clearing.
But when he came to a pool and set eyes on his head and antlers,
‘Oh, dear god!’ he was going to say; but no words followed.
All the sound he produced was a moan, as the tears streamed over
his strange new face. It was only his feelings that stayed unchanged.
What could he do? Make tracks for his home in the royal palace?
Or hide in the woodlands? Each was precluded by shame or fear.
He wavered in fearful doubt. And then his dogs caught sight of him.
First to sound on the trail were Blackfoot and sharp-nosed Tracker –
Tracker of Cretan breed and Blackfoot a Spartan pointer.
Others came bounding behind them, fast as the gusts of the storm wind:
Ravenous, Mountain-Ranger, Gazelle, his Arcadian deerhounds;
powerful Fawnkiller, Hunter the fierce, and violent Hurricane;
Wingdog, fleetest of foot, and Chaser, the keenest-scented;
savage Sylvan, lately gashed by the tusks of a wild boar;
Glen who was dropped from a wolf at birth, and the bitch who gathers
the flocks in, Shepherdess; Harpy, flanked by her two young puppies;
River, the dog from Sícyon, sides all taut and contracted;
Racer and Gnasher; Spot, with Tigress and muscular Valour;
Sheen with a snow-white coat and murky Soot with a pitch-black;
Spartan, wiry and tough; then Whirlwind, powerful pursuer;
Swift, and Wolfcub racing along with her Cypriot brother;
Grabber, who sported an ivory patch midway on his ebony
forehead; Sable, and Shag with a coat like a tangled thicket;
two mongrel hounds from a Cretan sire and Lacónian dam,
Rumpus and Whitefang; Yelper, whose howls could damage the eardrums –
and others too many to mention. Spoiling all for their quarry,
over crag, over cliff, over rocks which appeared to allow no approach,
where access was hard and where there was none, the whole pack followed.
Actaeon fled where so many times he had been the pursuer.
He fled from the dogs who had served him so faithfully, longing to shout to them,
‘Stop! It is I, Actaeon, your master. Do you not know me?’
But the words would not come. The air was filled with relentless baying.
Blacklock first inserted his teeth to tear at his back;
Beast-killer next; then Mountain-Boy latched on to his shoulder.
These had started out later but stolen a march by taking
a short cut over the ridge. As they pinned their master down,
the rest of the pack rushed round and buried their fangs in his body,
until it was covered with crimson wounds. Actaeon groaned
in a sound that was scarcely human but one no stag could ever
have made, as he filled the familiar hills with his cries of anguish.
Then bending his legs like a cringing beggar, he gazed all round
with his silently pleading eyes, as if they were outstretched arms.
What of his friends? In ignorant zeal they encouraged the wild pack
on with the usual halloos. They scanned the woods for their leader,
shouting, ‘Actaeon! Actaeon!’, as if he were far away,
though he moved his head in response to his name.
‘Why aren’t you here,
you indolent man, to enjoy the sight of this heaven-sent prize?’
If only he’d not been there! But he was. He would dearly have loved
to watch, instead of enduring, his own dogs’ vicious performance.
Crowding around him, they buried their noses inside his flesh
and mangled to pieces the counterfeit stag who embodied their master.
Only after his life was destroyed in a welter of wounds
is Diana, the goddess of hunting, said to have cooled her anger.