History of Monsters. 185

And a little lower down: "Scarcely was her prayer finished when a heavy numbness seized her limbs; her soft breasts were enclosed in thin bark, her hair grew into foliage, and her arms into branches."

Meanwhile, to lighten the sorrow of the river-god Peneus as he wept for his daughter’s unhappy fate, the other rivers gathered—all except Inachus, who was himself mourning the loss of his daughter Io. She was so remarkably beautiful that Jupiter was inflamed with love for her. To hide their union from Juno’s ears, he transformed her into a cow. Ovid explains it thus: "He had sensed his wife’s arrival and had changed the daughter of Inachus into a heifer; as a heifer, she was still a beautiful cow," and so forth.

Juno accepted this beautiful heifer as a gift and handed her over to the shepherd Argus, who was gifted with a hundred eyes, to be guarded. But Jupiter ordered Mercury to kill Argus. After he was slain, Juno turned him into a peacock and adorned the peacock’s tail with his hundred eyes, as we read in the poet: "Argus, you lie dead; the light you held in so many eyes is extinguished, and a single night occupies all hundred. Juno takes them and places them upon the feathers of her own bird, filling the tail with starry gems."

Pan, the god of Arcadia, was also desperately in love with the nymph Syrinx, the most beautiful of the Naiads. Fleeing his embrace with the help of her sisters, she was transformed into a reed. From this, the god Pan fashioned his pipe. Therefore, a certain scholar, alluding to this, sang: "The kisses that Syrinx so stubbornly denied to the Arcadian Pan became her flute."

Some report that Mercury used this pipe to lull Argus into sleep with its sweet sound so that he could then kill him. Regarding the transformation of Syrinx, Ovid says: "She prayed to her sisters of the stream to transform her; and when Pan thought he had already caught Syrinx, he held marsh reeds instead of the nymph’s body."

After Argus was transformed into a peacock, Io, driven by furies, wandered the entire world until she finally reached Egypt. There, Juno's anger was appeased; Io shed her bovine shape and regained her original form, eventually taking the name of the goddess Isis. "Once the goddess was softened, she regained her former features, becoming what she was before," and so on.

From her was born Epaphus, who grew up to be very much like Phaethon, the son of Apollo and Clymene. Phaethon took it hard when Epaphus boasted of being Apollo’s son because of their resemblance. To better display the nobility of his lineage, Phaethon went to his father’s house and obtained permission to drive the chariot of the Sun, drawn by four horses named Pyrous, Eous, Aethon, and Phlegon. When Phaethon climbed into the chariot, the horses, startled by an unfamiliar driver, headed for the lowest part of the world, and thus the entire globe seemed to catch fire. Moved by human prayers, Jupiter struck Phaethon down into the River Po for his boyish audacity.

Because of this, the Heliades—nymphs and sisters of Phaethon—mourned their brother's fall. As they searched for his body in the river, the gods took pity on them and transformed them into poplar trees, while their tears turned into drops of amber. Regarding this transformation, Ovid sings: "...bark encloses their waists, and by degrees it surrounds their bellies, breasts, shoulders, and hands," and so on.

Present at this transformation was Cycnus, son of Sthenelus and King of Liguria, who was joined to Phaethon by maternal blood and great friendship. Grieving on the banks of the Po for the unhappy fate of his friend and kinsman, he eventually flew away as a bird of his own name—the swan. This bird, recoiling from fire, dwells around marshes and pools, emitting a mournful song.