Ocyrhoë

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the story in short –
…
Too late – Apollo is sorry that he has fired an arrow at his lover Coronis who is pregnant with his child and he has accidentally killed her.

He cannot bring her back to life so he takes the child out of her dead body before it is burned on the pyre and, being too busy for actual childcare, he gives the child to Chiron the centaur to look after and Chiron who is famous as a healer is delighted to be chosen to raise the miraculous child.

Chiron already has a daughter who is fully human – at least in appearance and with long red hair – but as well as having learned all her father’s healing arts, she has an unusual talent. She can fortell the future and when she sees the baby, what she sees is so strange that she cannot help prophesying –

She tells the baby that he will be the healer of all the world and be able to restore the dead to life but if ever he pissed off the gods then he would be stuck by a lightning bolt. Then he would be brought back to life so he would end up being born twice.

She adds that her father, Chiron the centaur, although being himself an immortal would come to be poisoned with the venom of the Hydra and subsequently he would be longing for death and she had just begun explaining the circumstances when she felt her throat constricting and found herself prophesying what was happening to herself as she had a desperate craving to eat grass and to race over the wide fields. That is when she realised she was turning into a mare.

She wondered aloud why she was becoming totally horse, it didn’t seem fair when her mother was entirely human shaped and father the centaur was only half and half, but her voice was becoming incomprehensible as it turned into a neigh.

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Bk II:633-675 Chiron and Ocyrhoë’s prophecies

The semi-human was pleased with this foster-child of divine origin, glad at the honour it brought him, when his daughter suddenly appeared, her shoulders covered with her long red hair, whom the nymph Chariclo called Ocyrhoë, having given birth to her on the banks of that swift stream. She was not content merely to have learned her father’s arts, she also chanted the secrets of the Fates.

So when she felt the prophetic frenzy in her mind, and was on fire with the god enclosed in her breast, she looked at the infant boy and cried out ‘Grow and thrive, child, healer of all the world! Human beings will often be in your debt, and you will have the right to restore the dead. But if ever it is done regardless of the god’s displeasure you will be stopped, by the flame of your grandfather’s lightning bolt, from doing so again. From a god you will turn to a bloodless corpse, and then to a god who was a corpse, and so twice renew your fate.

You also, dear father, now immortal, and created by the law of your birth to live on through all the ages, will long for death, when you are tormented by the terrible venom of the Serpent, Hydra, absorbed through your wounded limbs. But at last the gods will give you the power to die, and the Three Goddesses will sever the thread.’ Other prophecies remained to tell: but she sighed deeply, distressed by the tears welling from her eyes, and cried ‘The Fates prevent me, and forbid me further speech. My throat is constricted. These arts are not worth the cost if they incur the gods’ anger against me. Better not to know the future! Now I see my human shape being taken away, now grass contents me for food, now my impulse is to race over the wide fields. I am changing to a mare, the form of my kindred. But why am I completely so? Surely my father is still half human.’ Even as she spoke, the last part of her complaint was hard to understand and her words were troubled. Soon they seemed neither words nor a horse’s neighs, but the imitation of a horse. In a little while she gave out clear whinnying noises, and her arms moved in the grass. Then her fingers came together and one thin solid hoof of horn joined her five fingernails. Her head and the length of her neck extended, the greater part of her long gown became a tail, and the loose hair thrown over her neck hung down as a mane on her right shoulder. Now she was altered in both voice and features, and from this marvellous happening she gained a new name.


https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph2.php#Bktwo633

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