Through all of Thebes, the name of Bacchus now
had gained great fame; his mother’s sister, Ino,
would praise him everywhere, that men might know
the new god and the powers he had shown.
Of all her sisters, it was she alone
who’d not been struck by any grief except
her sorrow for her sisters’ fate. But Juno
could not endure the happiness of Ino:
the pride she took in Athamas, her husband,
and in her children and the god she’d nurtured—
was just too much for Juno. And she thought:
“When he, the bastard son of Semele,
was hurt, he brought his force to bear—transformed
those sailors from Maeonia and plunged
that crew into the sea; he drove a mother
so mad that she could tear apart the guts
of her own son; and he cloaked Minyas’ daughters
with weird wings: and am I to be denied
the force to right a wrong? Am I confined
to nothing more than tears? No, no, it’s he
who teaches me what my response must be
(it’s right to learn from one’s own enemy).”
Beneath the shadows cast by somber yews,
there is a path that, sloping downward, moves
through voiceless silences—the road that leads
to the infernal world, where sluggish Styx
exhales its fog and mists. Those who descend
along that path are phantoms: recent Shades—
those dead whom proper burial has graced.
No thing within that wasteland can escape
the wan and wintry chill. In that vast space,
the new-come souls are slow to find their road
that leads to somber Pluto’s heartless halls—
his palace in the capital of Hell.
Latin [416–38]
That capital is spacious; open gates
are everywhere, a thousand entryways;
and even as the sea ingathers all
the rivers of the earth, so are all Shades
received within that space: it’s not too strait
for any throng—with so much room for all,
it never seems to crowd. These Shades are wan,
lifeless, with neither flesh nor bones; while some
flock to the forum, others fill the halls
of Pluto, king of the abyss; some souls
would imitate the arts and skills they plied
when, in the upperworld, they were alive.
And Juno, Saturn’s daughter, having left
her home in heaven, dared to take that path
down to the underworld—her hate, her wrath
were so intense. She passed the entrance gate,
and there, beneath her sacred body’s weight,
the threshold groaned; and Cerberus, who’d raised
his three heads high, barked loud—three mouths as one.
The goddess summoned the ferocious Furies,
Night’s daughters, unrelenting deities.
Before a prison barred by adamant,
the Furies sat—three sisters combing black
snakes twining through their hair. That place is called
the House of the Harassed. There Tityos
stretches across nine acres, offering
his vitals to the vulture’s rending beak.
You, Tantalus, can never quench your thirst;
and, hanging over you, the fruits elude
your grasp. Ixion whirls upon his wheel—
pursuing and in flight from his own self.
And Danaus’ fifty daughters, those who wed
and killed their fifty cousins, are condemned
to an unending task—again, again
to fetch new water for their riddled jars.
Latin [439–63]
Though Juno’s daughter glares at all of them,
it is Ixion whom she stares at most;
then, as her eyes catch Sisyphus, she asks:
“And why must he endure unending pain,
while Athamas, his brother, can lay claim
to an imposing palace, though he shows,
as does his wife, such endless scorn for me?”
And she explains the reasons for her wrath
and for her visit here—and what she wants:
she’d have the dynasty of Cadmus fall,
she wants the Furies to drive Athamas
insane—she’d have him stained with some foul act.
With mingled prayers and promises, commands,
she spurs the Sisters to abet her cause.
When Juno’s plea was done, Tisiphone—
disheveled as she was—shook her gray locks,
pushed back the snakes that straggled down her face,
and said: “There’s no need to explain at length.
What you would have us do, consider done.
Leave this unpleasant kingdom, and return
to heaven’s air—much sweeter than our own!”
So Juno, glad, went back to her high home.
And just as she reentered heaven, Iris,
daughter of Thaumas, purified the goddess:
she washed away the stains of Styx with rain.
And fierce Tisiphone was quick to act;
at once she seized a torch—it was blood-soaked;
then, putting on a bloodied crimson cloak,
she wrapped a snake around her waist and left.
And at her side went Sorrow, Terror, Dread,
and Madness, with his eyes askew, awry.
She reached the Theban threshold. It is said
the doorposts trembled at the sight of her.
Ino and Athamas were terrified:
they tried to flee. The Fury blocked their way:
she stretched out arms entwined with snakes; she shook
Latin [464–92]
her locks; the serpents stirred and crackled—some
coiled round her shoulders; others, sliding down
her breast, emitted hisses, vomited
their putrid spit, and darted out their tongues.
Then from her hair, the Fury tore a pair
of vipers; and with pestilential care,
she threw them. They began to glide across
the breasts of Ino, chest of Athamas;
the fetid breath they spewed did not inflict
wounds on their bodies, but it did infect
their minds—a dread assault. Tisiphone
had also brought a horrid potion: froth
from Cerberus’ jaws, the Hydra’s venom, wild
hallucinations, dark forgetfulness,
and wrath and tears and love of slaughter—all
of these were mixed and mingled with fresh blood,
then boiled in a bronze caldron as she stirred
the potion with a stalk of green hemlock.
While fear held fast those two, the Fury poured
this brew into their breasts, and it infused
their inmost hearts with madness. Taking up
her torch, she whirled it round—a speeding gyre
where flame met flame to form a wheel of fire.
Her work was done: Tisiphone had won.
Now she returned to Pluto’s spectral realm
and there untied the snake that bound her waist.
Then Athamas, the son of Aeolus,
insane, cried out to all within his halls:
“Come, comrades, spread the nets within these woods!
I’ve seen a lioness with her two cubs!”
And he, in frenzy, tracked his wife as if
she were a wild beast to be chased; he snatched
his son, Learchus, from her breast—the boy
was smiling, arms outstretched. And Athamas
whirled him around as one would whirl a sling,
and then—ferocious—dashed the infant’s head
against a rugged rock. And Ino—crazed
Latin [492–519]
by grief or by the poison that had seeped
into her innards—howled; in disarray,
her hair disheveled, as she fled, she bore
in her bare arms her little Melicerta
and shouted: “Bacchus! Bacchus!” And when Juno
heard Bacchus’ name, she laughed and said: “O Ino,
see if your foster-son can help you now!”
Above the sea there loomed a promontory;
the pounding waves had hollowed out its base—
the waters there were shielded from the rain.
But at its top, the cliff rose high and sharp
and jutted out across the open sea.
And Ino—with the strength that madness brings,
free of all fears—was quick to climb that peak;
and with her young son in her arms, she leaped
down from that height into the deep. Where she
struck hard, the waters whitened with the foam.
But Venus, pitying the unjust fate
that had befallen her granddaughter, Ino,
spoke to her uncle with these suasive words:
“O god of waters, you whose force commands
a kingdom only heaven can surpass,
Neptune, I know I plead for a great kindness;
but may you, in your mercy, pity these—
so dear to me—who now, as you can see,
are cast into the vast Ionian:
receive them as two new sea-deities.
The deep owes something of its own repute
to me—if I was formed from foam in truth,
rising midsea (my name in Greek is proof).”
And Venus’ prayer was answered: Neptune gave
to Ino and her son new names, new shapes;
rid of their mortal parts, they both were changed
into new gods—revered sea-deities.
Palaemon was the name the son received,
and Ino now became Leucothoe.
Latin [520–42]
The Theban women who were Ino’s friends
had followed her as closely as they could;
they saw her final footprints at the edge
of that steep cliff and—sure she had met death—
they mourned the house of Cadmus, beat their breasts,
and tore their hair, their robes; and taking Juno
to task, they said she was unjust, too cruel
in punishing her rival. But the goddess
resented their rebukes. “And now the chief
mementos of my cruelty will be
you Theban women, you yourselves,” she said—
and did. The woman who loved Ino most
cried out: “I’ll follow her—like my dear queen,
I’ll leap into the sea.” But as she tried
to leap, she could not move at all: her feet
were fastened to the rock. A second tried
to beat her breast as she had done before—
but now she felt her lifted arms grow hard.
A third, who’d stretched her hands out toward the waves,
was frozen in that stance, a stony change.
Another, as she gripped her hair and tried
to tear it from her head, could feel her fingers
grow stiff in that same gesture. Each one kept
the pose in which she had been caught. But some
were changed to birds, and even now—along
that stretch of sea—their wingtips skim the waves:
they have been called Ismenides, a name
they take from the Ismenus, Theban stream.