The History of Monsters. 209

of Croton, who had been buried in that place. Pythagoras of Samos, hating the tyranny of his homeland, had retreated there. Among other teachings, he taught that it was a crime to eat animals, for he asserted that the souls of mortals migrated from one body to another. For this reason, during the Golden Age, men abstained from eating animals. Furthermore, he proclaimed that everything changes—the course of time, the ages of man, and even the elements. Our own philosophers also preach this mutual transmutation of elements.

Moreover, Ovid describes many things that do not seem to remain in a fixed state. In Africa, there is the Lake of Jupiter Ammon, which is said to be cold by day and boiling hot by night. Wood immersed in the water of the Athamanian spring catches fire. Among the Cicones, there is a river whose water turns those who drink it into stone. The Crathis and Sybaris rivers in Calabria turn hair gold. The fountain of Salmacis in Caria makes men effeminate. In Ethiopia, there is a lake whose water leads men into either madness or deep sleep. The Clitorian spring in Arcadia makes those who drink it teetotalers, ever since the physician Melampus threw into it the herbs he used to cure the daughters of King Proetus of Argos from insanity. Conversely, the Lyncestian river of Thrace makes those who drink it drunk. In Arcadia, there are waters that flow which are harmful if drunk at night, but beneficial by day. In the Hyperborean city of Pallene, men who dive into the Tritoniac marsh were turned into birds.

The story goes that in Hyperborean Pallene there are men, Whose bodies are usually covered in light feathers, Once they have plunged nine times into the Tritoniac marsh.

Finally, Pythagoras asserted that everything changes over time, and it is well known that this has happened to great cities and empires. Troy, Sparta, Mycenae, Thebes, and Athens, once in a flourishing state, have been reduced to nothing. In turn, Rome grew from humble beginnings into a vast empire, something Helenus, son of Priam, once prophesied to Aeneas. Such is the cycle of all things. When Numa Pompilius had carefully learned this from Pythagoras, he returned to Rome, took up the scepter of the kingdom, and directed the Roman people toward the pious worship of the gods. At last, worn out by old age, he ended his life in death. His wife, the nymph Egeria, afflicted with grief, withdrew to the Arician woods, where Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, tried to console her by telling her of his own misfortunes.

Phaedra, the daughter of Pasiphae and wife of Theseus, had been shamefully infatuated with her stepson Hippolytus. Because of this, he was accused before his father of attempting to violate his stepmother and was driven into exile. While he was being carried along the shore in a chariot, he was killed by seals; however, through the prayers of Diana and the aid of Aesculapius, he was restored to his former life and brought to the Arician grove. There, casting off everything mortal he possessed, he was created the god Virbius.

Life would not have been restored, Except by the powerful medicine of Apollo’s offspring.

And a little later:

...“You who were Hippolytus,” she said, “Now be the same man as Virbius.” Since then, I have inhabited this grove.

But these words of Hippolytus, though full of consolation, carried no weight with Egeria; she wept so long that her constant tears turned into a fountain. At this, Virbius was no less stunned than that Tyrrhenian farmer who, while plowing, saw a clod of earth transform into the boy Tages, who was skilled in prophecy.

He was stunned just as when the Tyrrhenian plowman Beheld the fateful clod in the middle of his fields Moving first of its own accord, stirred by no one, Soon taking on a human shape and losing its earthy form, Opening its new mouth to reveal the fates to come.

Having expounded these myths, the Poet proceeded to record Roman matters so that he might more easily spread the word of Julius Caesar’s metamorphosis and his noble deeds. Thus, when the Romans were oppressed by a heavy plague, on the advice of an oracle, they brought Aesculapius to Rome in the form of a serpent; they later built a magnificent temple to him on the Tiber Island. Aesculapius, however, was a foreign god in Rome, whereas Julius Caesar was established as a god in his own city