14 The Raven in Ovid (Optional)
Bk II:531-565 The Raven and the Crow
The gods of the sea nodded their consent. Then Saturnia, in her light chariot drawn by painted peacocks, drove up through the clear air. These peacocks had only recently been painted, when Argus was killed, at the same time that your wings, Corvus, croaking Raven, were suddenly changed to black, though they were white before. He was once a bird with silver-white plumage, equal to the spotless doves, not inferior to the geese, those saviours of the Capitol with their watchful cries, or the swan, the lover of rivers. His speech condemned him. Because of his ready speech he, who was once snow white, was now white’s opposite.
Coronis of Larissa was the loveliest girl in all Thessaly. Certainly she pleased you, god of Delphi. Well, as long as she was faithful, or not caught out. But that bird of Phoebus discovered her adultery and, merciless informer, flew straight to his master to reveal the secret crime. The garrulous Crow followed with flapping wings, wanting to know everything, but when he heard the reason, he said ‘This journey will do you no good: don’t ignore my prophecy! See what I was, see what I am, and search out the justice in it. Truth was my downfall.
Once upon a time Pallas hid a child, Erichthonius, born without a human mother, in a box made of Actaean osiers. She gave this to the three virgin daughters of two-natured Cecrops, who was part human part serpent, and ordered them not to pry into its secret. Hidden in the light leaves that grew thickly over an elm-tree I set out to watch what they might do. Two of the girls, Pandrosus and Herse, obeyed without cheating, but the third Aglauros called her sisters cowards and undid the knots with her hand, and inside they found a baby boy with a snake stretched out next to him. That act I betrayed to the goddess. And this is the reward I got for it, no longer consecrated to Minerva’s protection, and ranked below the Owl, that night-bird! My punishment should be a warning to all birds not to take risks by speaking out.
Bk II:566-595 The Crow’s story
And just think, not only had I not asked for her favour, she had sought me out, of her own accord! – Ask Pallas herself: though she is angry, she will not deny it even in anger. The famous Coroneus was my father, in the land of Phocis (it is said to be well known) and I was a royal virgin and wealthy princes courted me (so do not disparage me). But my beauty hurt me. Once when I was walking slowly as I used to do along the crest of the sands by the shore the sea-god saw me and grew hot. When his flattering words and entreaties proved a waste of time, he tried force, and chased after me. I ran, leaving the solid shore behind, tiring myself out uselessly in the soft sand. Then I called out to gods and men. No mortal heard my voice, but the virgin goddess feels pity for a virgin and she helped me. I was stretching out my arms to the sky: those arms began to darken with soft plumage. I tried to lift my cloak from my shoulders but it had turned to feathers with roots deep in my skin. I tried to beat my naked breast with my hands but found I had neither hands nor naked breast.
I ran, and now the sand did not clog my feet as before but I lifted from the ground, and soon sailed high into the air. So I became an innocent servant of Minerva. But what use was that to me if Nyctimene, who was turned into an Owl for her dreadful sins, has usurped my place of honour? Or have you not heard the story all Lesbos knows well, how Nyctimene desecrated her father’s bed? Though she is now a bird she is conscious of guilt at her crime and flees from human sight and the light, and hides her shame in darkness, and is driven from the whole sky by all the birds.’
Bk II:596-611 Coronis is betrayed and Phoebus kills her
To all this, the Raven replied ‘I pray any evil be on your own head. I spurn empty prophecies’ and, completing the journey he had started, he told his master he had seen Coronis lying beside a Thessalian youth. The laurel fell from the lover’s head on hearing of the charge, his expression and colour and the tone of his lyre changed, and his mind boiled with growing anger. He seized his usual weapons, strung his bow bending it by the tips, and, with his unerring arrow, pierced the breast that had so often been close to his own. She groaned at the wound, and as the arrow was drawn out her white limbs were drenched with scarlet blood and she cried out ‘ Oh Phoebus it was in your power to have punished me, but to have let me give birth first: now two will die in one.’ She spoke, and then her life flowed out with her blood. A deathly cold stole over her body, emptied of being.
Bk II:612-632 Phoebus repents and saves Aesculapius
Alas! Too late the lover repents of his cruel act, and hates himself for listening to the tale that has so angered him. He hates the bird that has compelled him to know of the fault that brought him pain. He hates the bow, his hand, and the hastily fired arrow as well as that hand. He cradles the fallen girl and attempts to overcome fate with his healing powers. It is too late, and he tries his arts in vain. Later, when all efforts had failed, seeing the funeral pyre prepared to consume her body, then indeed the god groaned from the depths of his heart (since the faces of the heavenly gods cannot be touched by tears), groans no different from those of a young bullock, seeing the hammer poised at the slaughterer’s right ear, crash down on the hollow forehead of a suckling calf.
Even though she cannot know of it, the god pours fragrant incense over her breast, and embraces her body, and unjustly, performs the just rites. He could not let a child of Phoebus be destroyed in the same ruin, and he tore his son, Aesculapius, from its mother’s womb and from the flames, and carried him to the cave of Chiron the Centaur, who was half man and half horse. But he stopped the Raven, who had hoped for a reward for telling the truth, from living among the white birds.
Source: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by Anthony S. Kline (https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph.htm)