Pegasus

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story in short –
… There is a spring on Mount Helicon where the Muses live.

The waters sprang out of the ground when the winged horse, Pegasus, stroke the rock with his hoof. It is called the Hippocrene (from hippos ‘horse’ + krēnē ‘fountain’) and it is the perpetual spring of Poetry and of Inspiration.

Pegasus was born, along with his brother Chrysaor (warrior with a golden sword), from the blood of the sleeping Medusa when Perseus decapitated her as she lay sleeping beside her gorgon sisters. Her hair had been turned into snakes by Minerva in whose temple she had been a priestess before she was raped in front of the altar by Neptune, god of horses as well as the sea but in that instance (according to Arachne who is usually a reliable narrator) in the shape of a winged bird.

Minerva/Athene was of course furious at this violation of the sanctity of her temple and, of course, took her anger out on the priestess and not on the rapist (a god) and turned Medusa’s hair into writhing snakes on whom nobody could look without turning to stone.

Whether Minerva felt badly about this patently unjust victim-blaming act is not clear but she started to carry a shield with a picture of Medusa’s head on it and the unnatural birth of the twins from Medusa’s severed neck echoes her own birth from the split skull of Jupiter. Except that Jupiter recovered immediately whereas Medusa was turned into a weapon against anyone Perseus didn’t like.

The grotesque unfairness of all this is wearying …. except if you look at it as an exploration of how it is possible to survive in a completely dysphoric and unjust society ruled by the Mafia.

And you could say that Medusa, through the winged horse Pegasus and the Hippocrene spring and although horribly mistreated in her own life, became the ancestor of all Poetry.

Pegasus is the horse that makes possible Bellerophon’s defeat of the Chimera and then he goes on to carry thunderbolts for Jupiter, eventually being placed among the stars.

The Square of Pegasus is easy to find on a summer night in the Northern hemisphere, being behind the W of Cassiopeia

BACK – Medusa NEXT- Proserpine

Bk V:250-293 Minerva on Helicon

Up to this point Tritonian Minerva had given her time, freely, in friendship, to this brother of hers, conceived in a shower of gold, but now, surrounded by vaulted cloud, she vanished from the island of Seriphos, and leaving Cythnus and Gyarus behind on her right, she headed for Thebes, and Mount Helicon, home of the virgin Muses, crossing the sea by whichever way seemed quickest. Reaching it, she alighted there, and spoke to the sisters, learned in song, saying ‘Talk of a new fountain has reached my ears, that gushed out from under the hard hoof of winged Pegasus, born of Medusa. That is the reason for my journey. I wanted to see this wonderful creation. He himself I saw born from his mother’s blood.’

Urania replied ‘Whatever reason brings you here, to see our home, goddess, you are dear to our hearts. But the tale is true: Pegasus is the source of our fountain’, and she led her to the sacred waters. Pallas, having looked in wonder, for a long time, at this stream, made by the blow of the horse’s hoof, gazed around her at the groves of ancient trees, the caves, and the grass, embroidered with innumerable flowers, and said that the daughters of Mnemosyne were equally happy in their home and their pursuits. At which one of the sisters answered, ‘O, Tritonia, who would have been one of our choir, if your virtues had not formed you for greater things, what you say is true, and you rightly approve our arts and our haunts. Our life is happy, if only it were safe. But (nothing is sacred to the wicked), all things frighten virgin minds. Dread Pyreneus’s destruction is in front of my eyes, and my mind has not yet recovered fully.

That fierce man had captured Daulis and the Phocian fields, with his Thracian warriors, and wrongly held the kingdom. We were heading for the shrine on Parnassus. He saw us going by, and his face showing apparent reverence for our divinity, he said (knowing us), “Mnemonides, wait, don’t be afraid, I beg you, to shelter from the rain and the lowering skies” (it was raining): “The gods have often entered humbler homes”. Responding to his words, and the weather, we gave the man our assent, and went into the entrance hall of the palace. The rain stopped, the north wind overcame the south, and the dark clouds fled from the clearing sky. We wished to go. Pyreneus closed the doors, and prepared for violence, and we escaped that only by taking to our wings. He stood on the highest summit, as if he would follow us, saying “Whatever is your way, is also mine”, and foolishly threw himself from the roof of the main tower. He fell headlong, breaking his skull, hammering the ground in dying, and staining the earth with his evil blood.’

Bk V:294-331 The contest between the Pierides and the Muses

The Muse was speaking: wings sounded in the air, and voices in greeting came out of the high branches. The daughter of Jupiter looked up, and questioned where the sound came from, that was so much like mouths speaking, and thought it human, though it was birdsong. Nine of them, magpies, that imitate everything, had settled in the branches, bemoaning their fate. While she wondered, the other began speaking, goddess to goddess, ‘Defeated in a contest, they have been added only recently to the flocks of birds. Pierus of Pella, rich in fields, was their father, and Paeonian Euippe was their mother. Nine times, while giving birth, she called, nine times, to powerful Lucina. Swollen with pride in their numbers, this crowd of foolish sisters came here, to us, through the many cities of Achaia and Haemonia, and challenged us to a singing competition, saying “Stop cheating the untutored masses with your empty sweetness. If you have faith in yourselves, contend with us, you goddesses of Thespiae. We cannot be outdone in voice or art, and we are your equals in numbers. If you want, if you are defeated, you can grant us the Heliconian fountains, Hippocrene, of Medusa’s offspring, and Boeotian Aganippe. Or we will grant you the Emathian plains as far as snow-covered Paeonia! Let the nymphs decide the outcome.”

It was shameful to compete with them, but it seemed more shameful to concede. The nymphs were elected, and swore on their streams to judge fairly, and sat on platforms of natural rock. Then, without drawing lots, the one who had first declared the contest sang, of the war with the gods, granting false honours to the giants, and diminishing the actions of the mighty deities. How Typhoeus, issued forth from his abode in the depths of the earth, filling the heavenly gods with fear, and how they all turned their backs in flight, until Egypt received them, and the Nile with its seven mouths. She told how earth-born Typhoeus came there as well, and the gods concealed themselves in disguised forms. “Jupiter” she said, “turned himself into a ram, the head of the flock, and even now Libyan Ammon is shown with curving horns. Delian Apollo hid as a crow, Bacchus, Semele’s child, as a goat, Diana, the sister of Phoebus, a cat, Saturnian Juno a white cow, Venus a fish, and Cyllenian Mercury the winged ibis.”

Bk V:332-384 Calliope sings: Cupid makes Dis fall in love

‘This much she played on her lute, with singing voice. Then called on us, – but perhaps you are not at leisure, or free to listen to a repetition of our music?’ ‘Do not stop’ said Pallas, ‘but sing your song again as you arranged it!’ and she sat amongst the light shadows of the grove. The Muse renewed her tale ‘We gave our best singer to the contest. Calliope, who rose, with her loose hair bound with ivy, tried out the plaintive strings with her fingers, then accompanied the wandering notes with this song.

“Ceres first turned the soil with curving plough, first ripened the crops and produce of the earth, first gave us laws: all things are Ceres’s gift. My song is of her. If only I could create a song in any way worthy of the goddess! This goddess is truly a worthy subject for my song.

Trinacris, the vast isle of Sicily, had been heaped over the giant’s limbs, and with its great mass oppressed buried Typhoeus, he who had dared to aspire to a place in heaven. He struggles it’s true and often tries to rise, but his right hand is held by the promontory of Ausonian Pelorus, and his left hand by you, Pachynus. Lilybaeum presses on his legs, Etna weighs down his head, supine beneath it, Typhoeus throws ash from his mouth, and spits out flame. Often, a wrestler, he throws back the weight of earth, and tries to roll the high mountains and the cities from his body, and then the ground trembles, and even the lord of the silent kingdom is afraid lest he be exposed, and the soil split open in wide fissures, and the light admitted to scare the anxious dead.

Fearing this disaster, the king of the dark had left his shadowy realm, and, drawn in his chariot by black horses, carefully circled the foundations of the Sicilian land. When he had checked and was satisfied that nothing was collapsing, he relinquished his fears. Then Venus, at Eryx, saw him moving, as she sat on the hillside, and embraced her winged son, Cupid, and said ‘My child, my hands and weapons, my power, seize those arrows, that overcome all, and devise a path for your swift arrows, to the heart of that god to whom the final share of the triple kingdom fell. You conquer the gods and Jupiter himself, the lords of the sea, and their very king, who controls the lords of the sea. Why is Tartarus excepted? Why not extend your mother’s kingdom and your own? We are talking of a third part of the world. And yet, as is evident to me, I am scorned in heaven, and Love’s power diminishes with mine.

Don’t you see how Pallas, and the huntress Diana, forsake me? And Ceres’s daughter too, Proserpine, will be a virgin if we allow it, since she hopes to be like them. But you, if you delight in our shared kingdom, can mate the goddess to her uncle.’ So Venus spoke: he undid his quiver, and at his mother’s bidding took an arrow, one from a thousand, and none was sharper, more certain, or better obeyed the bow. Then he bent the pliant tips against his knee, and with his barbed arrow struck Dis in the heart.”

https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph5.php#Bkfive250

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