The other animals—arrayed in forms
of such variety—were born of earth
spontaneously; the torrid sun began
to warm the moisture that the flood had left
within the ground. Beneath that blazing heat,
soft marshes swelled; the fertile seeds
were nourished by the soil that gave them life
as in a mother’s womb; and so, in time,
as each seed grew, it took on its own form.
So, when the Nile, the stream with seven mouths,
recedes from the soaked fields and carries back
its waters to the bed they had before,
and slime, still fresh, dries underneath the sun,
the farmers, turning over clods, discover
some who are newly born, who’ve just begun
to take their forms, and others who are still
unfinished, incomplete—they’ve not achieved
proportion; and indeed, in one same body,
one part may be alive already, while
another is a lump of shapeless soil.
For, tempering each other, heat and moisture
engender life: the union of these two
produces everything. Though it is true
that fire is the enemy of water,
moist heat is the creator of all things:
discordant concord is the path life needs.
Latin [409–33]
And when, still muddy from the flood, the earth
had dried beneath the sunlight’s clement warmth,
she brought forth countless living forms: while some
were the old sorts that earth had now restored,
she also fashioned shapes not seen before.
And it was then that earth, against her will,
had to engender you, enormous Python,
a horrid serpent, new to all men’s eyes—
a sight that terrified the reborn tribes:
your body filled up all the mountainside.
That snake was killed by Phoebus; until then
he had not used his fatal bow except
to hunt down deer and goats in flight: he smashed
that monster with innumerable shafts,
a task that left his quiver almost bare
before the Python perished in the pool
of poisoned blood that poured out of his wounds.
To keep the memory of his great feat
alive, the god established sacred games;
and after the defeated serpent’s name,
they were called Pythian. Here all young men
who proved to be the best at boxing or
at running or at chariot racing wore
a wreath of oak leaves as their crown of honor.
The laurel tree did not exist as yet;
to crown his temples, graced by fair long hair,
Phoebus used wreaths of leaves from any tree.