De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, Book I (the allegory of the wedding), part 1 of 2 (about §§ 15-30)
You whom they say, singing at the bridal chambers, were born of the Muse as mother, the sacred union of gods, who, binding with secret bonds things at strife, cherish in sacred embrace discordant things knit together (for you bind the elements in turn and wed the world, and join the breath of mind to bodies by a pleasing compact, under which nature is yoked, reconciling the sexes, and faith beneath love), comely Hymenaeus, who are the greatest care of Cypris—for hence burning desire gleams on your face—whether it pleased you, since Bacchus is your father, to lead the dances, or you have it from your mother to sing at the bridal chambers, or whether the threefold Grace, your kinsman, gave you to adorn the flowering thresholds with spring garlands: Calliope, composing the wedding of the gods, approves your assent by the omen of her song.
While I was singing these little verses of Hymenaeus rather often, contriving I know not what unexpected and untouched thing, my head sprinkled with whitening hair and with the increments of the lustra, Martianus, not enduring that I chatter inept trifles, interposed, saying: ‘What is this, my father, that you hasten to sing of matter not yet commonly known, before you have opened the doors and the entrance? Rather teach what you bring, and to what the aforesaid verses have sounded, the matter being revealed.’ ‘You are surely foolish,’ I said, ‘and, knowing the work most clear, you are wise in what is obscure; and is it not plain to you that the arrangements, with Hymenaeus prefacing, lead to a wedding?’ But if indeed, as a hasty inquirer, you ask from what spring the vein of what I have conceived has flowed, I shall set out for you, unless prolixity dismay me, a little tale which Satira, devising it, taught me in a winter vigil while the lamps grew dim beside us. When sacred marriages were taking place among the gods, with numerous births on every side, and famous children and a heavenly multitude of dear grandchildren, and some of the heaven-dwellers were gaining embrace and alliance among themselves, and especially a conjugal addition blessed the most powerful, and talkative humanity at the crossroads danced to this, devoted to the world, and the poets especially, following the lyre of Oeagrus’s son and the sweet-speaking old age of the Maeonian, made epic and lyric page commonly resound together, and none spoke of anything more famous for Jove, amid heavenly pleasures, than one wife; and to this was added readier faith, which, persuaded by augury, calls aged pontiffs in witness, that when Jupiter, trembling with the winding of cares, denied many a victim to the prayers of men held in suspense, it came to pass, his matron entreating, and whatever he dictated from a prompt decision, with the least of the Fates attesting, was softened by the embraces of his persuasive wife and by her command removed—and not only the king of the supernal ones were they attesting uxorious, but that Dis also had a like purpose, and that it was certain of Portunus, and that Gradivus burned with love of his wife Nerine, and that Aesculapius had no unequal affection. And by a like persuasion Ops, wife of Cybele, soothed the most sorrowful elder of the gods, and Janus admires Argiona with each face. Already the Memphitic queen so depended on her husband that, beset with perpetual grief, she was never content with finding him. Moved and stirred, therefore, by this report and by these alternating loves of the gods, the Cyllenian, and because, while he prepares the affections and bridal chambers of all, he is pleased among many, resolved to take a wife. To this resolve his anxious mother had impelled him when, with her yearly circuit of the Zodiac, she greeted him among the number of the Pleiades, and especially because his body, exercised in the palaestra and in frequent runnings, glowed with the amplitude of brawny muscles to the excellence of youthful strength. And now his downy cheeks did not allow him, half-naked, to go about clad in a little chlamys and veiling the summit of his shoulders with the rest, without great laughter from Cypris. By a rational purpose, therefore, he resolved to put off celibacy. And so, in proportion to the dignity of his industry, he wavers, in the delay of long deliberation, whom it would be fitting to take. For Sophia he himself desired with marvelous ardor, because she is prudent and holy and more undefiled and fairer than all virgins, but because she seemed milk-sister, and friend by an inseparable bond, to her sister, and so to have passed over herself also among the unwed, it did not please him to be joined to her, to the injury of Pallas. A form no less desirable and pleasing had also inflamed him toward Mantice. For the nobility of her race commended her, being the eldest of the daughters of Pronoea, and the provident genius of keen prudence. But in those very days, by chance, in impatience of immense love, she had of her own accord followed the youth and been joined to Apollo. He wished at least to ask for the daughter of Entelechia and the Sun, because she was as beautiful as possible and had been brought up with great care of the gods. For on her very birthday the gods, called to the banquet, had contributed many gifts. Jupiter placed on her head the diadem which he had taken from Eternity, his more honored daughter. Juno also had added to her hair a bond, shining with a vein of purer gold. Tritonia, with her undertunic loosed and her girdle, like flames of scarlet, and with the very cloak of her sacred and prudent breast, a virgin covered the virgin. The Delian also, that she might carry a laurel branch, showed her with the same divining and conjecturing rod the birds and the casting of lightnings and the very course of heaven and the stars. Urania gave a shining mirror, which Sophia had fixed among the gifts in her shrines, in which recognizing herself she might wish to seek out her origin also; she bestowed it with gentle kindness. The Lemnian smith kindled for her the unquenchable little fires of perenniality, that she not be oppressed by darkening shadows and blind night. But Aphrodite applied all allurements about all the senses. For she had taught her, anointed with ointments and crowned with flowers, to be fed and cherished by their breath, and had soothed her with honey, and persuaded her to gape for gold and necklaces and to have her limbs bound, by the desire of lofty honor. Then she supplied rattles and tinklings with which to bring sleep to the infant at rest. Moreover, that no time should run on without allurement and delights, she had applied a pleasure that scratches beneath, at the itch about the lowest parts of the body. But a vehicle and flying wheels, by which she could run about with wondrous speed, the Cyllenian himself had given, although memory burdens her, bound with golden fetters. With these, therefore, the Arcadian of the upper ones desired Psyche, rich and wealthy in gifts and adorned with much contribution of the heavenly ones, for marriage. But Virtue, as she chanced to be attending the Cyllenian, almost weeping announced that she had been seized from his fellowship by the power of the quivered and fluttering superior one and was held captive in adamantine bonds by Cupid. While, concerning these marriages of maidens, the allurements of the lot he had deliberated on frustrate him, and no other readily occurs who might be chosen as a daughter-in-law of the Thunderer in fitting parity, Virtue suggests further deliberation. Nor ought he to decide anything without Apollo’s counsel, nor is it right to stray from his meetings, since the zodiacal hospitality, foretelling him, permits him never to be absent from his monthly precession. It was therefore resolved that, wherever his brother was, he should be approached. And then he permits Virtue to take the flying rod, that she might with equal speed traverse the inner parts of the world and break into the ethereal recesses. He himself ties golden winged sandals on his feet, and now in the shrines, where prophecies were poured out in oblique ambiguities, or where, the slaughter of cattle laid bare, the entrails spoke with offerings of cleft entrails, they search for him with keen investigation. But these summits and caves of the shrines being bereft, apart from a few leaves of withered laurel and half-torn fillets, which in the Cumaean cave, after the Sibyl, the bites of moths and decay were plucking, nothing of him could be found. Through the airy tracts also, in which he was wont to shape both the various flights of birds and the tongues of the oscines and the omens of the swift wing, he is sought in vain. For long since offended by the contagion of those to be admonished, he scorns to be called the Pythian Augur. They likewise seek him at Helicon, Delos, and Lycia. But in one place they found the first laurels and withered ivies, in another a decaying tripod and sandals moldy with neglect and the dried-up memory of presages. At length, Fame announcing it, they learn that the Parnassian rock rejoices in Phoebus, although from there too they said he afterwards migrated to the secret rock of the Indian mountain, shadowed in perpetual cloud; yet they then come to the Cirrhaean retreats and the sacred caves, the talking caverns. There stood around in order whatever hangs over of the ages, the Fortunes of cities, of all nations, of kings, and of the whole people. Some seemed to flee, having measured out their course that was past; others stood in view and very many were arriving, and so for not a few the prolixity vanished apart at a distance, so that it slipped away like the incredible breeze of a smoky darkening. Amid these wonderful spectacles and the courses and motions of the Fortunes, from the whispering lips of the groves too a tuneful modulation crackled with a certain melic impulse. For the higher tops of the tall trees, equally stretched, resounded with a sharp sound. But whatever was bordering on the earth and near with leaning branches, a hoarse gravity shook. But the middle ones, by the connections joined on to them, with doubles and sesquialters, and sesquitertians also, and sesquioctaves too, joined without distinction, sang together, though limmata intervened. So it was that that grove sounded the whole harmony and the song of the heavenly ones with the agreement of its modulations. This indeed, as Cyllenius explained, Virtue learned also in heaven, that the orbs by equal reason either produce concords or agree with them in sounding beneath. Nor is it a wonder that Apollo’s wood agreed with so measured a modulation, since the same Delian modulates the orbs of heaven also in the sun, and hence it is that there he is called Phoebus and here Auricomus. For the august head of the Sun, bathed in rays and driven about by flames, imitates the gilded locks of a ruddy crown. Hence also he is Sagittarius, hence also Wounder, because he can penetrate what is struck by the darts of his rays. Cyllenius moreover showed Virtue certain rivers flowing down from heaven, which he said had to be crossed that they might come to the very god whom it was their care to find. But a many-colored wave of discordant streams was sweeping off these same rivers. For the first, a whirlpool of wider and longer circuit, hesitated, of livid water in misty volume and with cold and very sluggish courses. Inside, another, like milk and white light, mild in all things and quiet in motion, rolled silver waves. The third, indeed, rutilant with excessive red fire, a sulphurous one, panting, twisted its headlong and rugged courses with hurried rapidity. The one that followed it was golden and gleaming and ruddy with flashing flames, but, joined on both sides with the diversity of the rivers, with certain rivulets intermixed, it was tempered as much as moderation weighed. But the inner river shone purer than electrum, which, beyond the others, that standing people of Fortunes sought. Some of these its scent and breath had allured, others the gentle tuneful modulations of its wave had soothed. Very many thirsted for a taste and draught from that same sweetest whirlpool. Nor were there lacking those who desired to be cherished and washed in the same water and to cast themselves into it. Besides these, two more restricted in bay and small in circuit were swept along inside, each of which, according to the neighborhood and confines of the others, being colored, had drawn a small draught of its own savor with much mixing of change. For one, hasty with too great speed, often standing still and slipping back, was borne along. The other, bearing a certain golden gleam of waves, foamed wandering with winding bends from all the seeds of streams. These rivers of different color, then, at first surrounded the aforesaid Fortunes of things and nations with immense bays. Then the diverse and violent rapidity of the waves, urging each one with unforeseen force, drew them in headlong slides through the declivity of the channel in rapid whirlpools, so that one often poured them over into another river, and what that one had vexed, exercised by long collision, the other either gave back to the bank or plunged in the stream. Yet the bloody or the blue whirlpools did not snatch all the Fortunes wrapped up. Often the shining wave of that milky one, suddenly seizing them, bore them up to the summit of its lofty tract. Sometimes also, raised on high and suspended by a higher flood, it cast them back into that surge of bloody likeness, or spat them out into the livid torrent to be devoured by a pitchy gape. By this alternate mixture of rivers that people of Fortunes was driven. For none at all was there that, immune from every assault, was exempt from every whirlpool. Finally Virtue, following Cyllenius, while she alone crossed all of them fearless, though they dashed upon her with great crash, yet could not overwhelm her. At length, beyond the rivers, which were borne to a certain cave of Phoebus, Mercury stood with Virtue. And then they beheld the Latonian sitting on a lofty and high throne, and in his sight four little urns covered, which he uncovered by alternate inspections, formed of different appearance and metals. For one seemed to be of iron, as hard as could be conjectured, another of the more shining stuff of silver, a third of the molten strength of livid lead. But the one nearer the god shone with the sea of transparent glass. Each carried certain seeds and elements of things. For a flame more burning, and drawn from the very Cecaumenian fuel, panted from the aforesaid urn of iron, which however was called the Summit of Mulciber. Another, which was of silver stuff, displayed serene gleams and shone with the temperate air of spring heaven. This they called the Laughter of Jove. That other, full of the heavier metal, of wavy winter and chilling cold and frosts also, was called the Destruction of Saturn. But that of shining glass and set at the right hand of the god himself was filled with the seeds of all air. This they named the Breasts of Juno. From these urns the god drew alternately as much as was sufficient as arranged. For whenever he ministered salubrious breezes of vital breath to the world as it pleased, he tempered them by mixing in the seeds of drawn air from that mildness of silver. But when he threatened dire pestilence to mortals by their deserts, he likewise mixed with the air panting fires or poisons of numbing cold and forced it to go forth to afflict the world. Virtue, admonished by such tempering of the god, and the more when she saw him mixing salutary airs, recalls, Mercury approving, a Greek verse of the blind poet. By this Mercury advised that the pestilence could be driven off if voices were added to his first footsteps: they must, however, be set beneath Clarius sounding on the strings and crowned among laurel garlands with his slippery and entwined hair of fillets. Conferring thus, as the Pythian saw them coming from afar and at first sight recognized the cause of their coming, rising from the throne on which he sat, he bade the Muses meet them. Who, although they seemed to hasten to the service of Maia’s son, were yet moved with measured steps. And then, having received his brother into the sharing of the work and the session, Phoebus began first: ‘With anxious opinion the mortal race wavers amid trembling affairs, uncertain fate fluctuates, or the unknown lot of what is to come; let them consult, and those whom care, needy of truth, makes doubtful, or uncertain hope wearies: but for us foreknowing is free, there is no delay: what the gods willed is allowed; to prefer otherwise from fixed breasts is lacking: so what pleases is also necessary. But since your abiding will has not yet come, you wish to bring my counsel: so ever for every wish you take a companion, and added things make the mind. There is, then, a most learned virgin of ancient stock, conscious on Parnassus, for whom the stars shine in company: whom neither can bars hide, Tartarean recesses, nor the gleaming thunderbolts, the will of Jove, looking like Nereus beneath the wave-born whirlpool, and who knows your returns through the realms of brothers, vigilant, penetrating secrets with immoderate labor, who with learned care can anticipate all that is given to the gods to foreknow: nay, more often she has right over us, urging the gods forced to commands, and what no power of the gods can attempt, she knows can be done against Jove’s will. Let high things stand at great cost: either way she heaps up that she has deserved an equal spouse.’
At these words of Apollo, Virtue, rejoicing that she saw the marriage of so excellent a virgin urged, such that he would consider nothing lost of the dignity of those mentioned above, yet inquires her name. When she learned that it was Philologia of whom the compact was in prospect, she is shaken with such gratulation and alacrity that, descending somewhat from her innate rigor, she was moved even in body. For she recalled that she was a relative and patroness of that praised Mantice, and most generous to Sophia herself in rewarding her with abundant furnishings. For she asserted that Psyche, uncultivated and living in the manner of beasts, had been polished by her, so that whatever of beauty and adornment she bore she had claimed from Philologia’s cultivations: who had bestowed on her so much affection that she always labored to make her immortal. There was therefore to be no delay, since she knew Cyllenius was not slow in doing. But having received Apollo’s utterances, Maia’s son himself replied: ‘It is certain, Laurel-bearer and glory of our gods, that it comes from kindred hearts, and whatever associate divinity stirs, I, joined to it, find approved of things. But never do we differ more from willing, and it is pleasing to abide by commands, than when by care and this judgment we are admonished to go by the Delian utterance. For we think this ambiguity a wrong, and whatever the will was perishes. Therefore with more fitting service the Arcadian, bidden to come to the bridal chambers, gladly obeys the aforesaid utterances. But you, Delian, that the Thunderer’s equal purpose and willing nod may stand, press on: for you, accustomed to stir the heart and watchful to move perverse thoughts, contribute that he favor the commands, that the sacred will may shine upon the undertakings.’ As Mercury said this, Virtue said: ‘Rather let each of you conciliate Jove by voice. For this one is privy to his counsels and you secret to his precept. He knows the mind, you compose the words. Jove is wont to yield to Phoebus when he presses, to open his heart to you alone. I add that it is never fitting for you to be separated, and though this courier is often outstripped by the speed of Apollo’s axle, and, standing in a delaying station, tries at last to outstrip what has hurried on, yet while he follows he so anticipates, being freed, that often, running back in retreat, he rejoices to be overtaken. Unite, therefore, the loving pledges for Jove. For it is certain that he both yields to Phoebus’s splendor with closed eyes, and, walking with Stilbon, is pleased with the bonds of marriages.’ At these words Virtue, shaken by the service of him who preceded and by the breath of Mercury’s rod, is lifted up to go into heaven. The augural birds stood before the Delian’s chariot that whoever wished might ascend, carried. For he had been accustomed to presage future things with them, conforming them for the most part. With cap and winged sandals stirred, Mercury began to go ahead. But as Phoebus mounted, the Muses’ attendant and companion, clinging to him, was borne in a shining and tuneful chariot. Then you could have seen the joys of the whole world assemble. For the Earth shone with flowers, since she had seen the god of spring fly up to Mercury; and, Apollo being seen, the airy temperature shone in serene stretches. The upper globes and sevenfold orbs sounded together with the harmonic tinklings of a certain sweet melody and with a sound sweeter than usual, for they had perceived that the Muses were arriving. These, one by one, when the circles were measured and they had recognized the beat of their own modulation, stood still. For Urania possesses the outermost sphere of the starry world, which was borne along with a sharp sonorous tinkling. Polymnia held the Saturnian circle, Euterpe the Jovian, Erato, entering, modulates the Martian, Melpomene the middle one where the Sun adorns the world with flaming light. Terpsichore is joined to the gold of Venus. Calliope, embracing the Cyllenian orb, and Clio the nearest circle, that is, she placed her lodging in the moon. Who sounded with a heavy beat in hoarser modes. But Thalia alone, because her carrier, the swan, impatient of the burden and also of flying up, had sought the pools of its nursling, was left behind and sat in the very richness of a flowery field. Meanwhile Phoebus had already left the airy tracts, when suddenly the fillet binding him is changed into rays, and the laurel which his right hand held kindled into a lamp of the world’s splendor, and the birds that bore up the Delian chariot become winged things panting with flames. And, with his cloak ruddy and the threshold of the starry pole unlocked, the Sun suddenly flashed forth bright. Cyllenius also is turned into a vibrating star. And so, more beautiful by the metamorphosis, borne through the Twins by a certain property of a familiar sign, they shone in the august heaven and soon sought the palace of the Thunderer. After they had entered and opportunity of speaking had been given before him, when Clarius saw the father clinging in company with Juno, whom he knew to support much and to favor marriages, glad at the first omen and conciliating her herself, in whose judgment he knew the husband’s will to be placed, he thus gently addresses her: ‘I could, with less doubting confidence, approach the Thunderer alone... Who of the gods, being aware, will not wish to ask Juno for bridal chambers? since she will be the future bridesmaid and will surely support the same. Prepare, therefore, the nods of the wedded one, gentle, and persuade him as pleases our efforts. You now, parent and greatest prince and our fate, for the chorus of the Parcae weighs human things, and you the lot of the heavenly ones, and your will is before foreknowledge and you bear in mind whatever will press upon the gods: by whose nod necessity is begotten, whose decree binds future things; and whatever you can will, even late, presses on: you, you therefore, by that divinity by which you are kind, I ask, gentle temperament of heaven and pious summit, who by right are father of the gods, grant to the offspring, that he may advance the number of grandsons, whom the stars vibrate in the heavenly poles, and Maia’s sacred pledge demands, to be joined to the chambers of the most learned virgin. But if pious care of the parent binds you, it is fitting that you, powerful, call together the assembly of the gods, yourself sanctioning the marriage with your wife, so that by the law of offspring the nuptials may stand above and the beauty of the heavenly ones seal a perpetual bond.’