186 Ulisse Aldrovandi

becomes the new bird Cygnus, who, no longer trusting the Heavens or Jupiter, as if remembering the fire unjustly sent by him, seeks out marshes and wide lakes, for he loathes fire.

While Jupiter was surveying the world that had been scorched by Phaethon's madness, he wandered through Arcadia and fell in love with Callisto, the daughter of Lycaon. When he could not win her through any entreaties, he turned to cunning ruses and finally possessed her. He took on the form of Diana, and meeting the girl, he lay with her. As the poet says: "Immediately he put on the face and features of Diana."

However, Juno discovered this and transformed Callisto into a bear. Jupiter later placed her, along with her son Arcas, among the northern stars. Though her form changed, "her old mind remained; even as a bear it remained, and she testified to her sorrows with constant groaning."

Once Callisto had been changed into a bear and her son Arcas into the guardian of the bear (whom the Greeks call Arctophylax), Juno was carried up to Heaven in her own chariot drawn by peacocks. Meanwhile, a raven (*Corvus*) was flying off to report a crime to Phoebus, having caught Coronis—the daughter of King Coroneus of Phocis and Apollo’s lover—in the act of adultery. A chattering crow (*Cornix*) followed him—this was Coronis herself—saying: "Look at me, Raven, and hear how I became a bird and the cause of this calamity."

She told how Minerva had taken Erichthonius, the son of Vulcan who had fallen to earth, and entrusted him to the daughters of Cecrops (Pandrosos, Herse, and Aglauros) inside a sealed chest, warning them not to show him to anyone. But the curious Aglauros uncovered the chest and showed her the boy lying there with a serpent. "I foolishly and immediately shared this with Minerva," the crow continued. "She turned her anger upon me and banished me from the company of the other virgins to the seashore. There, Neptune saw me from afar and fell in love with me; indeed, he was about to force himself upon me, had Minerva not immediately transformed me into a crow."

"I stretched my arms to Heaven," she said, "and my arms began to grow black with light feathers. I tried to cast the garment from my shoulders, but it was a wing, its roots fixed deep into my skin."

Coronis went on to say that her crime was more worthy of pardon than of blame, considering the greater error of Nyctimene, the daughter of Nycteus. Driven by abandoned lust, Nyctimene did not shrink from sleeping with her own father. Enraged by this wickedness, the gods transformed her into an owl, a bird loathed by all others, which hides its unspeakable crime in the nighttime. As the poet explains it:

"Have you not heard how Nyctimene defiled her father’s bed? She is indeed a bird now, but conscious of her guilt, she flees the sight of light and hides her shame in the darkness, expelled by all from the whole sky."

The Raven, not at all moved by the Crow's reasoning, continued the journey he had started and reported to Phoebus that he had observed Coronis lying with a young man. Indignant at these words, Apollo pierced the girl with an arrow while she was carrying Apollo’s own child in her womb. But a little later, when Apollo regretted his deed, he changed the white feathers of the talkative Raven to black. Furthermore, opening the woman’s womb, he snatched out the infant, named him Aesculapius, and sent him to Chiron the Centaur to be raised and educated, especially to learn the medical arts from him. Now, Chiron had a daughter named Ocyroe by Chariclo, who was sometimes seized by a prophetic fury and accustomed to predicting the future. She foretold that Aesculapius would excel in the medical arts, restoring the dead to their former life, but would eventually perish by Jupiter’s lightning. After these prophecies, Ocyroe took on the form of a mare, as the poet sings:

"To him who spoke such things, the end of her lament was barely understood, and her words became confused; soon they seemed neither words nor the sound of a mare, but of one imitating a mare, and in a short time she gave out certain neighs."

After this, Phoebus became a shepherd, and while he was pasturing the herds of King Admetus of Thessaly,