[Book V]
[Fable I]: Perseus’s marriage feast.
[Fable II]: Minerva and the Muses.
[Fable III]: The song of Calliope.
[Fable IV]: Pluto and Proserpina.
[Fable V]: Ceres searches for Proserpina.
[Fable VI]: Arethusa is changed into a fountain.
[Fable VII]: Lyncus is changed into a lynx; the Pierides are changed into magpies.
[Book VI]
[Fable I]: Arachne and Minerva.
[Fable II]: Niobe and her children.
[Fable III]: Latona and the frogs.
[Fable IV]: Marsyas is flayed alive.
[Fable V]: Tereus, Progne and Philomela.
[Fable VI]: Progne’s son Itys.
[Fable VII]: Boreas and Orithyïa.
[Book VII]
[Fable I]: Jason, the Golden Fleece and Medea.
[Fable II]: Medea restores Æson to youth. The daughters of Pelias.
[Fable III]: Medea in Corinth.
[Fable IV]: Hercules chains Cerberus. Theseus and Medea.
[Fable V]: Minos at Ægina. Cephalus at Ægina.
[Fable VI]: The Myrmidons.
[Fable VII]: Procris becomes a huntress. Œdipus and the Sphinx.
[Fable VIII]: Cephalus accidentally kills Procris.
BOOK THE FOURTH.
[ FABLE I.]
The daughters of Minyas, instead of celebrating the festival of Bacchus, apply themselves to other pursuits during the ceremonies; and among several narratives which they relate to pass away the time, they divert themselves with the story of the adventures of Pyramus and Thisbe. These lovers having made an appointment to meet without the walls of Babylon, Thisbe arrives first; but at the sight of a lioness, she runs to hide herself in a cave, and in her alarm, drops her veil. Pyramus, arriving soon after, finds the veil of his mistress stained with blood; and believing her to be dead, kills himself with his own sword. Thisbe returns from the cave; and finding Pyramus weltering in his blood, she plunges the same fatal weapon into her own breast.
But Alcithoë, the daughter of Minyas,[1] does not think that the rites[2] of the God ought to be received; but still, in her rashness, denies that Bacchus is the progeny of Jupiter; and she has her sisters[3] as partners in her impiety.
The priest had ordered both mistresses and maids, laying aside their employments, to have their breasts IV. 6-19 covered with skins, and to loosen the fillets of their hair, and to put garlands IV. 7-22 on their locks, and to take the verdant thyrsi in their hands; and had prophesied that severe would be the resentment of the Deity, if affronted. Both matrons and new-married women obey, and lay aside their webs and work-baskets,[4] and their tasks unfinished; and offer frankincense, and invoke both Bacchus and Bromius,[5] and Lyæus,[6] and the son of the Flames, and the Twice-Born, and the only one that had two mothers.[7] To these is added the name of Nyseus, and the unshorn Thyoneus,[8] and with Lenæus,[9] the planter of the genial grape, and Nyctelius,[10] and father Eleleus, and Iacchus,[11] and Evan,[12] and a great many other names, which thou, Liber, hast besides, throughout the nations of Greece. For thine is youth everlasting; thou art a boy to all time, thou art beheld as the most beauteous of all in high heaven; IV. 20-42 thou hast the features of a virgin, when thou standest without thy horns. By thee the East was conquered, as far as where swarthy India is bounded by the remote Ganges. Thou IV. 23-46 God, worthy of our veneration, didst smite Pentheus, and the axe-bearing Lycurgus,[13] sacrilegious mortals; thou didst hurl the bodies of the Etrurians into the sea. Thou controllest the neck of the lynxes yoked to thy chariot, graced with the painted reins. The Bacchanals and the Satyrs follow thee; the drunken old man, too, Silenus, who supports his reeling limbs with a staff, and sticks by no means very fast to his bending ass. And wherever thou goest, the shouts of youths, and together the voices of women, and tambourines beaten with the hands, and hollow cymbals resound, and the box-wood pipe, with its long bore. The Ismenian matrons ask thee to show thyself mild and propitious, and celebrate thy sacred rites as prescribed.
The daughters of Minyas alone, within doors, interrupting the festival with unseasonable labor,[14] are either carding wool, or twirling the threads with their fingers, or are plying at the web, and keeping the handmaids to their work. One of them, as she is drawing the thread with her smooth thumb, says, “While others are idling, and thronging to these fanciful rites, let us, whom Pallas, a better Deity, occupies, alleviate the useful toil of our hands with varying discourse; and let us relate by turns to our disengaged ears, for the general amusement, something each in our turn, that will not permit the time to seem long.” They approve of what she says, and her sisters bid her to be the first to tell her story.