The Teachings of Pythagoras, by Ovid

The Teachings of Pythagoras

by Ovid

Excerpted from Metamorphoses, book 15, lines 59-477

translated by Rolphe Humphries

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There was a man here, Samian born, but he

Had fled from Samos, for he hated tyrants

And chose, instead, an exile's lot. His thought

Reached far aloft, to the great gods in Heaven,

And his imagination looked on visions

Beyond his moral sight. All things he studied

With watchful eager mind, and he brought home

What he had learned and sat among the people

Teaching them what was worthy, and they listened

In silence, wondering at the revelations

How the great world began, the primal cause,

The nature of things, what God is, whence the snows

Come down, where lightning breaks from, whether wind

Or Jove speaks in the thunder from the clouds,

The cause of earthquakes, by what law the stars

Wheel in their course, all the secrets hidden

From man's imperfect knowledge. He was first

To say that animal food should not be eaten,

And learned as he was, men did not always

Believe him when he preached "Forbear, O mortals,

To spoil your bodies with such impious food!

There is corn for you, apples, whose weight bears down

The bending branches; there are grapes that swell

On the green vines, and pleasant herbs, and greens

Made mellow and soft with cooking; there is milk

And clover-honey. Earth is generous

With her provision, and her sustenance

Is very kind; she offers, for your tables,

Food that requires no bloodshed and no slaughter.

Meat is for beasts to feed on, yet not all

Are carnivores, for horses, sheep, and cattle

Subsist on grass, but those whose disposition

Is fierce and cruel, tigers, raging lions,

And bears and wolves delight in bloody feasting.

Oh, what a wicked thing it is for flesh

To be the tomb of flesh, for the body's craving

To fatten on the body of another,

For one live creature to continue living

Through one live creature's death. In all the richness

That Earth, the best of mothers, tenders to us,

Does nothing please except to chew and mangle

The flesh of slaughtered animals? The Cyclops

Could do no worse! Must you destroy another

To satiate your greedy-gutted cravings?

There was a time, the Golden Age, we call it,

Happy in fruits and herbs, when no men tainted

Their lips with blood, and birds went flying safely

Through air, and in the fields the rabbits wandered

Unfrightened, and no little fish was ever

Hooked by its own credulity: all things

Were free from treachery and fear and cunning,

And all was peaceful. But some innovator,

A good-for-nothing, whoever he was, decided,

In envy, that what lions ate was better,

Stuffed meat into his belly like a furnace,

And paved the way for crime. It may have been

That steel was warmed and dyed with blood through killing

Dangerous beasts, and that could be forgiven

On grounds of self-defense; to kill wild beasts

Is lawful, but they never should be eaten.

One crime leads to another: first the swine

Were slaughtered, since they rooted up the seeds

And spoiled the season's crop; then goats were punished

On vengeful altars for nibbling at the grape-vines.

These both deserved their fate, but the poor sheep,

What had they ever done, born for man's service,

But bring us milk, so sweet to drink, and clothe us

With their soft wool, who give us more while living

Than ever they could in death?

And what had oxen, Incapable of fraud or trick or cunning,

Simple and harmless, born to a life of labor,

What had they ever done? None but an ingrate,

Unworthy of the gift of grain, could ever

Take off the weight of the yoke, and with the axe

Strike at the neck that bore it, kill his fellow

Who helped him break the soil and raise the harvest.

It is bad enough to do these things; we make

The gods our partners in the abomination,

Saying they love the blood of bulls in Heaven.

So there he stands, the victim at the altars,

Without a blemish, perfect (and his beauty

Proves his own doom), in sacrificial garlands,

Horns tipped with gold, and hears the priest intoning:

Not knowing what he means, watches the barley

Sprinkled between his horns, the very barley

He helped make grow, and then is struck

And with his blood he stains the knife whose flashing

He may have seen reflected in clear water.

Then they tear out his entrails, peer, examine,

Search for the will of Heaven, seeking omens.

And then, so great man's appetite for food

Forbidden, then, O human race, you feed,

You feast, upon your kill. Do not do this,

I pray you, but remember: when you taste

The flesh of slaughtered cattle, you are eating

Your fellow-workers.

Now, since the god inspires me,

I follow where he leads, to open Delphi,

The very heavens, bring you revelation

Of mysteries, great matters never traced

By any mind before, and matters lost

Or hidden and forgotten, these I sing.

There is no greater wonder than to range

The starry heights, to leave the earth's dull regions,

To ride the clouds, to stand on Atlas' shoulders,

And see, far off, far down, the little figures

Wandering here and there, devoid of reason,

Anxious, in fear of death, and so advise them,

And so make fate an open book.

O mortals,

Dumb in cold fear of death, why do you tremble

At Stygian rivers, shadows, empty names,

The lying stock of poets, and the terrors

Of a false world? I tell you that your bodies

Can never suffer evil, whether fire

Consumes them, or the waste of time. Our souls

Are deathless; always, when they leave our bodies,

They find new dwelling-places. I myself,

I well remember, in the Trojan War

Was Panthous' son, Euphorbus, and my breast

Once knew the heavy spear of Menelaus.

Not long ago, in Argos, Abas' city,

In Juno's temple, I saw the shield I carried

On my left arm. All things are always changing,

But nothing dies. The spirit comes and goes,

Is housed wherever it wills, shifts residence

From beasts to men, from men to beasts, but always

It keeps on living. As the pliant wax

Is stamped with new designs, and is no longer

What once it was, but changes form, and still

Is pliant wax, so do I teach that spirit

Is evermore the same, though passing always

To ever-changing bodies. So I warn you,

Lest appetite murder brotherhood, I warn you

By all the priesthood in me, do not exile

What may be kindred souls by evil slaughter.

Blood should not nourish blood.

Full sail, I voyage

Over the boundless ocean, and I tell you

Nothing is permanent in all the world.

All things are fluid; every image forms,

Wandering through change. Time is itself a river

In constant movement, and the hours flow by

Like water, wave on wave, pursued, pursuing,

Forever fugitive, forever new.

That which has been, is not; that which was not,

Begins to be; motion and moment always

In process of renewal. Look, the night,

Worn out, aims toward the brightness, and sun's glory

Succeeds the dark. The color of the sky

Is different at midnight, when tired things

Lie all at rest, from what it is at morning

When Lucifer rides his snowy horse, before

Aurora paints the sky for Phoebus' coming.

The shield of the god reddens at early morning,

Reddens at evening, but is white at noonday

In purer air, farther from earth's contagion.

And the Moon-goddess changes in the nightime,

Lesser today than yesterday, if waning,

Greater tomorrow than today, when crescent.

Notice the year's four seasons: they resemble

Our lives. Spring is a nursling, a young child,

Tender and young, and the grass shines and buds

Swell with new life, not yet full-grown nor hardy,

But promising much to husbandmen, with blossom

Bright in the fertile fields. And then comes summer

When the year is a strong young man, no better time

Than this, no richer, no more passionate vigor.

Then comes the prime of Autumn, a little sober,

But ripe and mellow, moderate of mood,

Halfway from youth to age, with just a showing

Of gray around the temples. And then Winter,

Tottering, shivering, bald or gray, and aged.

Our bodies also change. What we have been,

What we now are, we shall not be tomorrow.

There was a time when we were only seed,

Only the hope of men, housed in the womb,

Where Nature shaped us, brought us forth, exposed us

To the void air, and there in light we lay,

Feeble and infant, and were quadrupeds

Before too long, and after a little wobbled

And pulled ourselves upright, holding a chair,

The side of the crib, and strength grew into us,

And swiftness; youth and middle age went swiftly

Down the long hill toward age, and all our vigor

Came to decline, so Milon, the old wrestler,

Weeps when he sees his arms whose bulging muscles

Were once like Hercules', and Helen weeps

To see her wrinkles in the looking glass:

Could this old woman ever have been ravished,

Taken twice over? Time devours all things

With envious Age, together. The slow gnawing

Consumes all things, and very, very slowly.

Not even the so-called elements are constant.

Listen, and I will tell you of their changes.

There are four of them, and two, the earth and water,

Are heavy, and their own weight bears them downward,

And two, the air and fire (and fire is purer

Even than air) are light, rise upward

If nothing holds them down. These elements

Are separate in space, yet all things come

From them and into them, and they can change

Into each other. Earth can be dissolved

To flowing water, water can thin to air,

And air can thin to fire, and fire can thicken

To air again, and air condense to water,

And water be compressed to solid earth.

Nothing remains the same: the great renewer,

Nature, makes form from form, and, oh, believe me

That nothing ever dies. What we call birth

Is the beginning of a difference,

No more than that, and death is only ceasing

Of what had been before. The parts may vary,

Shifting from here to there, hither and yon,

And back again, but the great sum is constant.

Nothing, I am convinced, can be the same

Forever. There was once an Age of God,

Later, an Age of Iron. Every place

Submits to Fortune's wheel. I have seen oceans

That once were solid land, and I have seen

Lands made from ocean. Often sea-shells lie

Far from the beach, and men have found old anchors

On mountain-tops. Plateaus have turned to valleys,

Hills washed away, marshes become dry desert,

Deserts made pools. Here Nature brings forth fountains,

There shuts them in; when the earth quakes, new rivers

Are born and old ones sink and dry and vanish.

Lycus, for instance, swallowed by the earth

Emerges far away, a different stream

And Erasinus disappears, goes under

The ground, and comes to light again in Argos,

And Mysus, so the story goes, was tired

Of his old source and banks and went elsewhere

And now is called Caicus. The Anigrus

Was good to drink from once, but now rolls down

A flood that you had better leave alone,

Unless the poets lie, because the Centaurs

Used it to wash their wounds from Hercules' arrows.

And Hypanis, rising from Scythian mountains,

Once fresh and sweet to the taste, is salty and brackish.

We must not wander far and wide, forgetting

The goal of our discourse. Remember this:

The heavens and all below them, earth and her creatures,

All change, and we, part of creation, also

Must suffer change. We are not bodies only,

But winged spirits, with the power to enter

Animal forms, house in the bodies of cattle.

Therefore, we should respect those dwelling-places

Which may have given shelter to the spirit

Of fathers, brothers, cousins, human beings

At least, and we should never do them damage,

Not stuff ourselves like the cannibal Thyestes.

An evil habit, impious preparation,

Wicked as human bloodshed, to draw the knife

Across the throat of the calf, and hear its anguish

Cry to deaf ears! And who could slay

The little goat whose cry is like a baby's.

Or eat a bird he has himself just fed?

One might as well do murder; he is only

The shortest step away. Let the bull plow

And let him owe his death to length of days;

Let the sheep give you armor for rough weather,

The she-goats bring full udders to the milking.

Have done with nets and traps and snares and springs,

Bird-lime and forest-beaters, lines and fish-hooks.

Kill, if you must, the beasts that do you harm,

But, even so, let killing be enough;

Let appetite refrain from flesh, take only

A gentler nourishment.