Kalyx Bowler

Actaeon and Diana

Thebes has been founded now, and even though
an exile still, you might seem fortunate
in having Mars and Venus as your in-laws,
Cadmus; nor is this all, for in addition
are offspring worthy of your noble wife,
your sons and daughters, the pledges of your love,
and grandsons too, already grown to manhood.

But “fortunate”? A judgment best reserved
for a man’s last day: call no one blest,
until he dies and the last rites are said for him.

Not all your riches could console you, Cadmus,
grieving for the grandson that you lost
when those unlikely horns sprang from his brow,
and his own dogs were sated with his blood.

You’ll find—if you look closely—that the fault
here was with Fortune, not with the young man,
for can it really be a crime to err?

When the sun stood equidistant from its goals
at shadowless midday, upon a mountain
polluted with the blood of divers beasts,
Actaeon languidly addressed his mates,
who had been hunting in the trackless wood:
“Fortune has been sufficient to the day:
our nets and spears are steeped in beastly gore.

Let us renew our labors when Aurora
next brings the day back in her saffron car,
for now at midpoint, Phoebus sweats the fields;
stop what you’re doing and take in the nets.”

They did as he commanded them to do,
and abruptly brought their labors to an end.

There is a grove of pine and cypresses
known as Gargraphie, a hidden place
most sacred to the celibate Diana;
and deep in its recesses is a grotto
artlessly fabricated by the genius
of Nature, which, in imitating Art,
had shaped a natural organic arch
out of the living pumice and light tufa.

Before this little grotto, on the right,
a fountain burbles; its pellucid stream
widens to form a pool edged round with turf;
here the great goddess of the woods would come
to bathe her virgin limbs in its cool waters,
when hunting wearied her.

She is here today;
arriving, she hands the Armoress of Nymphs
her spear, her quiver, and her unstrung bow;
and while one nymph folds her discarded robe
over an arm, two more remove her sandals,
and that accomplished Theban nymph, Crocale,
gathers the stray hairs on Diana’s neck
into a knot (we cannot help but notice
that her own hair is left in careless freedom!);
five other nymphs, whose names are Nephele,
Hyale, Rhanis, Psecas, and Phiale,
fetch and pour water from enormous urns.

And while Diana bathes as usual,
see where Actaeon on a holiday,
wandering clueless through the unfamiliar
forest, now finds his way into her grove,
for so Fate had arranged.

At sight of him
within the misty precincts of their grotto,
the naked nymphs began to beat their breasts
and filled the grove with shrill and startled cries;
in their concern, they poured around Diana,
attempting to conceal her with a screen
of their own bodies, but to no avail,
for the goddess towered over all of them.

The color taken from the setting sun
by western clouds, so similar to that
which rosy-tinted Dawn so often shows,
was the same color on Diana’s face
when she was seen undressed. And even though
her virgin comrades squeezed themselves around her,
she managed to turn sideways and look back
as if she wished she had her arrows handy—
but making do with what she had, scooped up
water and flung it in Actaeon’s face,
sprinkling his hair with the avenging droplets,
and adding words that prophesied his doom:
“Now you may tell of how you saw me naked,
tell it if you can, you may!”

No further warning:
the brow which she has sprinkled jets the horns
of a lively stag; she elongates his neck,
narrows his eartips down to tiny points,
converts his hands to hooves, his arms to legs,
and clothes his body in a spotted pelt.

Lastly, the goddess endows him with trembling fear:
that heroic son of Autonoe flees,
surprised to find himself so swift a runner.

But when he stopped and looked into a pool
at the reflection of his horns and muzzle—
“Poor me!” he tried to say, but no words came,
only a groaning sound, by which he learned
that groaning was now speech; tears streamed down cheeks
that were no longer his: only his mind
was left unaltered by Diana’s wrath.

What should he do? Return home to the palace,
or find a hiding place deep in the woods?
Shame kept him from one course, and fear, the other.

And while he stands bewildered, he observes
his pack of hunting dogs approaching him
with Tracker and keen Blackfoot in the lead
(Tracker’s a Cretan, Blackfoot’s out of Sparta)
baying the good news to the dogs behind,
the whole pack rushing at him like a storm:
Gazelle and Greedy and Ridge Rover, all
Arcadians, with Killdeer and Tornado,
and sturdy Hunter, fearsome Birdie, Gwen,
and savage Sylvia (who’d lately been
gored by a boar) and Snap (a wolf, her dam)
and faithful Shepherdess along with Snare
and two of the pups from her last litter;
ravenous Raptor the Siconian,
then Runner, Grinder, Spot, Tigress, Terror,
snow-colored Whitey, Soot as black as ashes,
powerful Sparta, devastating Whirlwind,
Speedy, and Wolf, the Cyprian, her brother,
and Trap (with that distinctive little white patch
right in the middle of his black brow);
and after them came Blackie, Shag, and two
dogs of mixed Cretan-Spartan ancestry,
Fury and Fang, a little one named Yipper,
and many more too numerous to mention,
all out to taste his blood, all unrelenting;
through steep, and sheer, and inaccessible,
through difficult and through impossible
places, they track him, and he flees the hunt
he has so often led, longing to cry out
to the pack behind him “It’s me! Actaeon!
Recognize your master!” But the words
betray him and the air resounds with baying.

Now Brownie and Buster leap onto his back
while Mountain Climber dangles from one shoulder;
they’d started late but figured out a shortcut
across the hilltop; now he’s held at bay
until the pack can gather and begin
to savage him: torn by their teeth, he makes
a sound no man would make and no stag either,
a cry that echoes through those well-known heights;
and kneeling like a suppliant at prayer,
he turns toward them, pleading with his eyes,
as a man would with his hands.

But his companions
loudly encourage the ferocious pack,
all unaware: they look around for him,
call out to him as though he weren’t there;
“Actaeon!” “Pity he’s not here with us!”

And hearing his own name, he turns his head:
he might wish to be elsewhere, but he’s present,
and might wish merely to be watching this,
rather than feeling the frenzy of his dogs
who press around him, thrusting pointed snouts
into the savaged body of their master,
convinced that he’s a stag.

And it is said
he did not die until his countless wounds
had satisfied Diana’s awful wrath.