FROM THE FIFTEENTH BOOK OF
The fourteenth book concludes with the death and deification of Romulus; the fifteenth begins with the election of Numa to the crown of Rome. On this occasion, Ovid, following the opinion of some authors, makes Numa the scholar of Pythagoras, and to have begun his acquaintance with that philosopher at Crotona, a town in Italy; from thence he makes a digression to the moral and natural philosophy of Pythagoras; on both which our author enlarges; and which are the most learned and beautiful parts of the Metamorphoses.
A KING is sought to guide the growing State,
One able to support the public weight,
And fill the throne where Romulus hath sate.
Renown, which oft bespeaks the public voice,
Had recommended Numa to their choice;
A peaceful, pious prince; who, not content
To know the Sabine rites, his study bent
To cultivate his mind; to learn the laws
Of nature, and explore their hidden cause.
Urged by this care, his country he forsook,
And to Crotona thence his journey took.
Arrived, he first inquired the founder's name
Of this new colony; and whence he came.
Then thus a senior of the place replies,
Well read, and curious of antiquities
"Tis said, Alcides hither took his way
From Spain, and drove along his conquered
Then, leaving in the fields his grazing cows,
He sought himself some hospitable house.
Good Croton entertained his godlike guest;
While he repaired his weary limbs with rest.
The hero, thence departing, blessed the place;
'And here,' he said, in time's revolving race,
A rising town shall take its name from thee.'
Revolving time fulfilled the prophecy;
For Myscelos, the justest man on earth,
Alemon's son, at Argos had his birth;
Him Hercules, armed with his club of oak,
O'ershadowed in a dream, and thus bespoke;
'Go, leave thy native soil, and make abode
Where Æsaris rolls down his rapid flood;'
He said; and sleep forsook him, and the God.
Trembling he waked, and rose with anxious
heart;
His country laws forbade him to depart;
What should he do? "Twas death to go away, 35
And the God menaced if he dared to stay.
All day he doubted, and, when night came on,
Sleep, and the same forewarning dream, begun;
Once more the God stood threatening o'er his
head,
With added curses if he disobeyed.
Twice warned, he studied flight; but would
At once, his person and his wealth away.
Thus while he lingered, his design was heard;
A speedy process formed, and death declared.
Witness there needed none of his offence,
Against himself the wretch was evidence;
Condemned, and destitute of human aid,
To him, for whom he suffered, thus he prayed.
"O Power, who hast deserved in heaven a
throne,
Not given, but by thy labours made thy own, 50
Pity thy suppliant, and protect his cause,
Whom thou hast made obnoxious to the laws!'
"A custom was of old, and still remains,
Which life or death by suffrages ordains;
White stones and black within an urn are cast, 55
The first absolve, but fate is in the last.
The judges to the common urn bequeath
Their votes, and drop the sable signs of death:
The box receives all black; but, poured from
thence,
The stones came candid forth, the hue of in
Thus Alimonides his safety won,
Preserved from death by Alcumena's son.
Then to his kinsman God his vows he pays,
And cuts with prosperous gales the Ionian
He leaves Tarentum, favoured by the wind,
And Thurine bays, and Temises, behind;
Soft Sybaris, and all the capes that stand
Along the shore, he makes in sight of land;
Still doubling, and still coasting, till he found
The mouth of Esaris, and promised ground;
Then saw where, on the margin of the flood,
The tomb that held the bones of Croton stood;
Here, by the God's command, he built and
walled
The place predicted, and Crotona called.
Thus fame, from time to time, delivers down
The sure tradition of the Italian town.
"Here dwelt the man divine whom Samos bore, But now self-banished from his native shore, Because he hated tyrants, nor could bear
The chains which none but servile souls will
He, though from heaven remote, to heaven could move,
With strength of mind, and tread the abyss above;
And penetrate, with his interior light,
Those upper depths, which Nature hid from sight;
And what he had observed, and learnt from thence,
Loved in familiar language to dispense.
"The crowd with silent admiration stand, And heard him, as they heard their god's com
While he discoursed of heaven's mysterious
The world's original, and nature's cause;
And what was God, and why the fleecy snows
In silence fell, and rattling winds arose;
What shook the steadfast earth, and whence
begun
The dance of planets round the radiant sun;
If thunder was the voice of angry Jove,
Or clouds, with nitre pregnant, burst above;
Of these, and things beyond the common reach,
He spoke, and charmed his audience with his
speech.
"He first the taste of flesh from tables drove,
And argued well, if arguments could move :-
'O mortals! from your fellows' blood abstain,
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane;
While corn and pulse by nature are bestowed,
And planted orchards bend their willing load;
While laboured gardens wholesome herbs produce, 105
And teeming vines afford their generous juice;
Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,
But tamed with fire, or mellowed by the frost;
While kine to pails distended udders bring,
And bees their honey, redolent of spring;
While earth not only can your needs supply,
But, lavish of her store, provides for luxury;
A guiltless feast administers with ease,
And without blood is prodigal to please.
Wild beasts their maws with their slain brethren
fill,
And yet not all, for some refuse to kill;
Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed,
On browse, and corn, the flowery meadows feed.
Bears, tigers, wolves, the lion's angry brood,
Whom heaven endued with principles of blood, 120
He wisely sundered from the rest, to yell
In forests, and in lonely caves to dwell,
Where stronger beasts oppress the weak by
might,
And all in prey and purple feasts delight.
"O impious use! to Nature's laws opposed, 125 Where bowels are in other bowels closed; Where, fattened by their fellows' fat, they thrive; Maintained by murder, and by death they live. 'Tis then for nought that mother earth provides The stores of all she shows, and all she hides, If men with fleshy morsels must be fed, And chew with bloody teeth the breathing bread. What else is this but to devour our guests, And barbarously renew Cyclopean feasts! We, by destroying life, our life sustain, And gorge the ungodly maw with meats obscene. "Not so the golden age, who fed on fruit, Nor durst with bloody meals their mouths pollute.
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