Lycaon and the Flood

The time when serpent-footed giants strove to fix their hundred arms on captive Heaven, not more than this event could cause alarm for my dominion of the universe.

Although it was a savage enemy, yet warred we with a single source derived of one.

Now I must utterly destroy this mortal race wherever Nereus roars around the world.

Yea, by the Infernal Streams that glide through Stygian groves beneath the world, I swear it.

Every method has been tried.

The knife must cut immedicable wounds, lest maladies infect untainted parts.

Beneath my sway are demi gods and fauns, nymphs, rustic deities, sylvans of the hills, satyrs.

All of these, unworthy Heaven’s abodes, we should at least permit to dwell on earth which we to them bequeathed.

What think ye, Gods, is safety theirs when I, your sovereign lord, the Thunder-bolt Controller, am ensnared by fierce Lycaon?

Dismiss your cares; he paid the penalty however all the crime and punishment now learn from this:—An infamous report of this unholy age had reached my ears, and wishing it were false, I sloped my course from high Olympus, and—although a God— disguised in human form I viewed the world.

It would delay us to recount the crimes unnumbered, for reports were less than truth.

I traversed Maenalus where fearful dens abound, over Lycaeus, wintry slopes of pine tree groves, across Cyllene steep; and as the twilight warned of night’s approach, I stopped in that Arcadian tyrant’s realms and entered his inhospitable home:

When I showed his people that a God had come, the lowly prayed and worshiped me, but this Lycaon mocked their pious vows and scoffing said;

He prepared to slay me in the night, to end my slumbers in the sleep of death.

So made he merry with his impious proof. But not content with this he cut the throat of a Molossian hostage sent to him, and partly softened his still quivering limbs in boiling water, partly roasted them on fires that burned beneath.

When this flesh was served to me on tables, I destroyed his dwelling and his worthless Household Gods, with thunder bolts avenging.

Terror-struck he took to flight, and on the silent plains is howling in his vain attempts to speak; he raves and rages and his greedy jaws, desiring their accustomed slaughter, turn against the sheep—still eager for their blood.

His vesture separates in shaggy hair, his arms are changed to legs; and as a wolf he has the same grey locks, the same hard face, the same bright eyes, the same ferocious look.

Thus fell one house, but not one house alone deserved to perish.

Over all the earth ferocious deeds prevail,—all men conspire in evil.

Let them therefore feel the weight of dreadful penalties so justly earned, for such hath my unchanging will ordained.”