“While these things were brought about on earth because of that fatal oath, and while twice-born Bacchus´s cradle remained afe, they say that Jupiter, expansive with wine, set aside his onerous duties, and relaxing, exchanging pleasantries, with Juno, said ´You gain more than we do from the pleasures of love.´ She denied it. They agreed to ask learned Tiresias for his opinion. He had known Venus in both ways.
Once, with a blow of his stick, he had disturbed two large snakes mating in the green forest, and, marvellous to tell, he was changed from a man to a womanm and lived as such for seven years. In the eight year he saw the same snakes again and said ´Since there is such power in plaguing you that it changes the giver of a blow to the opposite sex, I will strike you again, now.´ He struck the snakes and regained his former shape, and returned to the sex he was born with.
As the arbiter of the light-hearted dispute, he confimed Jupiter´s words. Saturnia, it is said, was more deeplu upset than was justified and than the dispute warranted, and damned the one who had made the judgement to eternal night. But, since no god has the right to void what another god has done, the all-powerfull father of the gods gave Tiresias knowledge of the future, in exchange for his lost sight, and lightenend the punishment with honour.”

“... Near the middle of the mountainside, was a clearing surrounded with remote woods, free of trees, and visible from all sides. Here as he watched the mysteries, with profane eyes, hes mother was the first to see Pentheus, the first roused to run at him madly, the first to wound him, hurling her thyrsus. She shouted ´O you two, sisters, come! That huge boar, who is straying in our fields, that boar is my sacrifice.´ They all rush on him in one maddened crowd: they converge together pursuing the frightened man, frightened now, speaking words free of violence now, cursing himself now, realising his own offence. Stricken, he still shouts ´Help me, aunt Autonoe! Let Actaeon´s shade move your spirit!´
She, not remembering Actaeon, tears away the suppliant´s right arm. Ino, in frenzy, rips off the other. Now, the unhappy man has na limbs to hold out to his mother, but, showing his wounded trunk shorn of its members he cries ´Mother, see!´. Agave howls, and twists her neck about, and thrashes her hair in the air, and tearing off his head, holding it in her bloody hands, shouts ´Behold, sisters, this act marks our victory!´ ...”

“... Far from there, by hidden tracks, and through rocks bristling with shaggy trees, he reached the place where Gorgons lived. In the fields and alongs the paths, here and there, he saw the shapes of men and animals changed from their natures to hard stone by Medusa´s gaze. Nevertheless he had himself looked at the dread form of Medusa reflected in a circular shield of polished bronze that he carried on his left arm. And while a deep sleep held the snakes and herselfs, he struck her head from her neck. And the swift winged horse Pegasus and his brother the warrior Chrysaor, were born from their mother´s blood. ...”

“Pyramus and Thisbe, he the loveliest youth, she the most sought after girl, the East held, lived in neighbouring houses, in the towering city of Babylon, that Semiramis is said to have enclosed with walls of brick. Their nearness and their first childhood steps made them acquainted and in time love appeard. They would have agreed to swear the marriage oath as well, but their parents prevented it. They were both on fire, with hearts equally captivated, something no parent can prevent. They had no one to confide all this to: nods and signs were their speach, and the more they kept the fire hidden, the more is burned.
There was a fissure, a thin split, in the shared wall between their houses, which traced back to when it was built. No one had discovered the flaw in all those years – but what can love not detect? – You loverssaw it first, and made it a path for your voices. Your endearments passed that way, in safety, in the gentlest of murmurs. Often, when they were in place, Thisbe ere, and Pyramus there, and they had each caught the sound of the other´s breath, they said “Unfriendly wall, why do you hinder lovers? How hard would it be for you to let our whole bodies meet, or if that is too much perhaps, to open to the kisses we give each other? No that we are not grateful. We confess that we owe it to you that words are allowed to pass to loving ears.” So they talked, hopelessly, sitting opposite, saying, as night fell, “Farewell”, each touching the wall with kisses that could not reach the other side. ....”

“...With these, and a thousand other nameless things, the barbarian witch pursued her greater than mortal purpose. She stirred it all with a long-dry branch of a fruitful olive, mixing the depths with the surface. Look! The ancient staff turned in the hot cauldron, first grew green again, then in a short time sprouted leaves, and was, suddenly, heavily loaded with olives. And whenever the flames caused froth to spatter from the hollow bronze, and warm drops to fall on the earth, the soil blossomed, and flowers and soft grasses grew.
As soon as she saw this, Medea unsheated a knife, and cut the old man´s throat, and leting the old blood out, filed the dry veins with the juice. When Aeson had absorbrd it, part through his mouth, and part through the wound, the white of his hair and bread quickly vanished, and a dark colour took its place. At a stroke his leanness went, and his pallor and dullness of mind. The deep hollows were filled with rounded flesh, and his limbs expanded. Aeson marvelled, recalling that this was his self of forty years ago.”

“The judgement of the sacred mountain-god satisfied all opinions, and yet Midas´s voice alone challenged it and called it unjust. The god of Delos did not allow such undiscriminating ears to keep their human form, but drew them out and covered them with shaggy grey hair, and made them flexible at the base, and gave them powers of movement. Though the rest was human, he was punished in that sole aspect: he wore the ears of a slow-moving ass. ..”

“Pirithoüs, the daring son of Ixion, married Hippodame, and invited the cloud-born centaurs to take their place at tables, set in lines, in a tree-shaded cave. Caeneus, and the other Thessalian princes were there, and I was there myself. The festive palace echoed with the noisy crowd. See, they were singing the marriage song, and the great hall smoked with fires, and in came the virgin surrounded by a throng of young wives and mothers, conspicuous, in her beauty. We declared Pirithos to be blessed in his bride, which almost betrayed his good fortune. For your heart was heated by the sight of the girl as much as by wine. Eurythus, most savage of the savage Centaurs: and drunkenness twinned with lust ruled it.
A once the tables were overturned and the banquet in turnoil, and the new bride was grabbed by the hair and dragged off by force. Eurythus seized Hippodame: the others whoseoever they wished to, or could, and it Looked like the rape of a city. The palace sounded with women´s cries. ...”

“... Meanwhile, Telemus the augur, Telemus, the son of Eurymus, whom no flight of birds could decieve, came to Sicilian Mount Aetna, addressed grim Polyphemus, and said: “Ulusses will take from you, that single eye in the middle of your forehead.” He laughed, and answered: “O most foolish of seers, you are wrong, another, a girl, has already taken it.” So he scorned the true warning, given in vain, and weighed the coast down, walking with giant tread, or returned weary to his dark cave. ...”