Io, terrified and maddened with dreadful visions, runs over many regions, and stops in Egypt, when Juno, at length, being pacified, restores her to her former shape, and permits her to be worshipped there, under the name of Isis.
Immediately, she was inflamed with rage, and deferred not the time of expressing her wrath; and she presented a dreadful Fury before the eyes and thoughts of the Argive mistress,111 and buried in her bosom invisible stings, and drove her, in her fright, a wanderer through the whole earth. Thou, O Nile, didst remain, as the utmost boundary of her long wanderings. Soon as she arrived there, she fell upon her knees, placed on the edge of the bank, and raising herself up, with her neck thrown back, and casting to Heaven those looks which then alone she could, by her groans, and her tears, and her mournful lowing, she seemed to be complaining of Jupiter, and to be begging an end of her sorrows.
He, embracing the neck of his wife with his arms, entreats her, at length, to put an end to her punishment; and he says, “Lay aside thy fears for the future; she shall never more be the occasion of any trouble to thee;” and then he bids the Stygian waters to hear this oath. As soon as the Goddess is pacified, Io receives her former shape, and she becomes what she was before; the hairs flee from off of her body, her horns decrease, and the orb of her eye becomes less; the opening of her jaw is contracted; her shoulders and her hands return, and her hoof, vanishing, is disposed of into five nails; nothing of the cow remains to her, but the whiteness of her appearance; and the Nymph, contented with the service of two feet, is raised erect on them; and yet she is afraid to speak, lest she should low like a cow, and timorously tries again the words so long interrupted. Now, as a Goddess, she is worshipped by the linen-wearing throng112 of Egypt.
To her, at length, Epaphus113 is believed to have been born from the seed of great Jove, and throughout the cities he possesses temples joined to those of his parent. Phaëton, sprung from the Sun, was equal to him in spirit and in years; whom formerly, as he uttered great boasts, and yielded not at all to him, and proud of his father, Phœbus, the grandson of Inachus could not endure; and said, “Thou, like a madman, believest thy mother in all things, and art puffed up with the conceit of an imaginary father.”
Phaëton blushed, and in shame repressed his resentment; and he reported to his mother, Clymene,114 the reproaches of Epaphus; and said, “Mother, to grieve thee still more, I, the free, the bold youth, was silent; I am ashamed both that these reproaches can be uttered against us, and that they cannot be refuted; but do thou, if only I am born of a divine race, give me some proof of so great a descent, and claim me for heaven.” Thus he spoke, and threw his arms around the neck of his mother; and besought her, by his own head and by that of Merops,115 and by the nuptial torches of his sisters, that she would give him some token of his real father.
It is a matter of doubt whether Clymene was more moved by the entreaties of Phaëton, or by resentment at the charge made against her; and she raised both her arms to heaven, and, looking up to the light of the Sun, she said, “Son, I swear to thee, by this beam, bright with shining rays, which both hears and sees us, that thou, that thou, I say, wast begotten by this Sun, which thou beholdest; by this Sun, which governs the world. If I utter an untruth, let him deny himself to be seen by me, and let this light prove the last for my eyes. Nor will it be any prolonged trouble for thee to visit thy father’s dwelling; the abode where he arises is contiguous to our regions.116 If only thy inclination disposes thee, go forth, and thou shalt inquire of himself.”
Phaëton immediately springs forth, overjoyed, upon these words of his mother, and reaches the skies in imagination; and he passes by his own Æthiopians, and the Indians situate beneath the rays of the Sun,117 and briskly wends his way to the rising of his sire.
Footnotes:
111. The Argive mistress.]—Ver. 726. Clarke renders ‘Pellicis Argolicæ,’ ‘of the Grecian miss.’
112. The linen-wearing throng.]—Ver. 747. The priests, and worshippers of Isis, with whom Io is here said to be identical, paid their adoration to her clothed in linen vestments. Probably, Isis was the first to teach the Egyptians the cultivation of flax.
113. Epaphus.]—Ver. 748. Herodotus, in his second book, tells us, that this son of Jupiter, by Io, was the same as the Egyptian God, Apis. Eusebius, quoting from Apollodorus, says that Epaphus was the son of Io, by Telegonus, who married her.
114. Clymene.]—Ver. 756. She was a Nymph of the sea, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.
115. Merops.]—Ver. 763. He was king of Ethiopia, and marrying the Nymph Clymene, was either the stepfather of Phaëton, or, as some writers say, his putative father.
116. To our regions.]—Ver. 773. Ethiopia, which, in the time of Ovid, was generally looked upon as one of the regions of the East.
117. The rays of the Sun.]—Ver. 778. ‘Ignibus sidereis,’ means here the ‘heat,’ or ‘fire of the sun,’ the sun being considered as a ‘sidus,’ or ‘luminous heavenly body.’
