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Archive name: byblis.txt (MT-teens, inc, nc)
Authors name: Ovid (OedipusAntigone@hotmail.com)
Story title : Byblis and Caunus
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Byblis and Caunus (MF-teens, rom, inc, nc, v, fant)
by Ovid (OedipusAntigone@hotmail.com)
***
An incestuous excerpt from the epic poem, The
Metamorphoses. A tale of explanation for the origins of
a famous spring and the sacrilegious lust of a sister
for her brother that led to its creation. The Roman
poet, Ovid, wrote this poem (an account of Greek legends
that were soon to be lost otherwise) between 43 B.C. and
17 A.D. The Metamorphoses is the foundation upon which
all later epic poets built and is basically a series of
legends about sexual deviance.
***
The Story of Byblis and Caunus, from Book IX of Ovid's
Metamorphoses, translation by Allen Mandelbaum.
***
Now, even Minos' name alone, when he was in his prime,
could terrify great cities. but he had grown infirm with
age -- afraid Miletus, son of Phoebus and Deione, proud
of his parentage and youthful strength, would head an
insurrection, take his place.
Though he was sure of this, he did not dare exile the
youth. But on your own, Miletus, you sailed off in a
rapid ship across the waves of the Aegean; on the coast
of Asia, at the mouth of the Meander, you built a city
that still takes its name from you, its founder. Even as
you wandered along the river's winding banks, you found
Cyanee, the daughter of Meander, whose course so often
turns back on itself. Her body was stupendous; you knew
her.
The nymph gave birth to twins, Byblis and Caunus.
The fate of Byblis teaches us indeed that when girls
love they should love lawfully: for Byblis loved her
brother, Phoebus' grandson, but with a love that was not
sisterly.
In fact, the girl at first was unaware of what fire
burned in her; again, again, she kissed her brother,
twined her arms around his neck--but she could see no
sin in that; she did not know that love can play the
part of simple fondness--she deceived herself.
But step by step, her love takes its own path; and now,
when she prepares to see her brother, she dresses with
great care: she is too eager for him to find her fair;
and if another more lovely than her own self visits
Caunus, Byblis is jealous. But she does not know -- not
even now -- the nature of her throes: for though she
does not plead or pray or wish for a fulfillment, hidden
fires burn within.
Now she begins to call him lord; she hates those names
that speak of their shared blood; she'd have him call
her "Byblis," not "dear sister." And yet, when she's
awake, she does not dare to let her obscene hopes invade
her soul.
But when she's sunk in peaceful sleep, again the girl
can see the one she loves; and when their bodies meet,
she blushes in her sleep. When sleep retreats, the girl
lies still for long and, thinking back on what she'd
seen in dreams -- her mind beset by doubts--begins to
speak:
"What misery is mine! What does it mean, this vision in
the silence of the night, this scene I'd never want to
see in daylight? But why this dream? Yes, he is fair
indeed -- even unfriendly eyes would grant him that; he
pleases me, and I could love him if he weren't my own
brother; he would be most worthy of me. To my grief, I
am his sister! Yet, if I, awake, do not attempt such
things, then let me see that dream again in sleep--the
same beguiling scene.
"In dreams, no one can see you, and delight does not
seem feigned. O Venus, tender mother, with your winged
Cupid at your side, what joy is mine! How true it
seemed--so full, so deep, it reached my marrow! Memory
is sweet, although pleasure that I had was brief and
Night too quick to leave -- she must have envied what we
were doing.
"Oh, if I could change my name, o Caunus, and your
father gain so fine a daughter-in-law, even as mine
would gain in you so fine a son-in-law! Oh, if the gods
had only let us share all things in common--but for our
parentage! I'd have you born of higher lineage!
"Instead, my fairest Caunus, you'll beget a son by
someone else whom you will wed; for me, who had the evil
fate to share your father and your mother, you will be
no more than a brother. All we'll have in common is what
has blocked our love. But then, these scenes that I have
often dreamed --w hat do they mean? Do dreams have any
weight at all? I call upon the blessed gods to curb my
love.... Yet...yet...it is the gods themselves who wed
their sisters: Saturn married Ops, his kin by blood; and
Tethys married Oceanus; and he who rules Olympus married
Juno.
"But gods have their own laws: why do I try to seek
another measure for the rites of humans? Heaven's ways
are different. I can expel this passion from my heart
before I've taken that forbidden course-- but if I lack
such force, may I die first! And as they lay me--dead--
upon the couch, and I lie there, stretched out, may
Caunus come to kiss my lips! But, after all, not one but
two must will such things. What pleases me may be what
hw would deem depravity.
"And yet the sons of Aeolus were not ashamed to wed
their sisters. Why do I bring this to mind? Why do I
cite such things? Where am I veering now? Have done,
have done with these obscene, foul fires; let me love my
Caunus as a sister should. And yet if he had chanced to
be the first of us to feel this flame, I might have
seconded his frenzy. And, if I would not have scorned
his wanting me, should I now seek him out? And can I
speak to him--confess in full? Urged on by love, indeed
I can. Or if my shame won't let me speak, I still can
write a secret letter, and the love I hide will be
revealed to him."
And she decides on this: her mind had wavered--but she
likes this plan; and now she lifts herself and leans on
her left elbow, as she says: "Let him decide! Let me
confess this insane love.
Ah me, where am I bound? What flames erupt within my
mind?" And she begins to write, composing words with
care, though her hand shakes. Her right hand grips the
iron stylus, while her left holds fast a slab of wax--as
yet untouched. And she, unsure, begins; she writes, then
cancels; traces letters, then repents; corrects, is
discontent, and then content; picks up the tablets, lays
them down; and when they are at rest, she picks them up
again. She knows not what she wants; about to act, she
cancels her resolve. Upon her face audacity is plain--
but mixed with shame. She has already written "sister"
on the tablets but decides to blot it out.
She cleans the wax and then inscribes these words:
"Here one who loves you wishes you good fortune, that
fortune she will never gain unless you grant it to her.
I'm ashamed -- yes, yes -- I am ashamed to tell my name.
One thing I've wanted so: to plead my cause but hide my
name--I did not want to let you know that I am Byblis
till I could be sure that what I want--and hope for--was
secured. In truth, the signs of my heart's wound were
clear.
I was so pale, so drawn, so prone to tears;
I sighed but showed no cause; and often I embraced you,
and my kisses were indeed-had you but noticed them!-not
sisterly. But I, despite a wound so harsh, so deep-for
fiery frenzy burned within me-tried by every means (the
gods will testify) so long against tremendous odds: I
sought to flee-in misery-from Cupid's shafts. You'd not
have thought a girl could bear that task.
But now I'm overcome, I must confess:
It is your help that - trembling - I must ask.
"You are the only one who can decide if I'm to be
delivered or destroyed: it's you who now must choose.
Now enemy beseeches you but one who, though already
close-linked to you, longs for still closer ties. Let
those who are our elders seek and find what is
permitted; let them analyze the niceties of law-the
wrongs, the rights. But we are young: it is audacity
that's opportune in love. We've yet to learn what's
licit: we think nothing is forbidden; we take as our
examples the great gods.
"Our father is not harsh; we are not blocked by scruples
for our good name; fear cannot curb us. In fact, what
need we fear? We'll hide our meetings under the sweet
names of sister and brother. I am fully free to meet
alone with you, to speak in secret-we already kiss,
embracing openly.
"What's missing still, can easily be reached. Have mercy
on the one who has confessed her love-who'd not have
written this unless the ardor driving her had been
relentless. Don't let them write upon my sepulcher that
I have died because of you."
Her tablets were full; she had no more on which to trace
her futile message. Byblis had to run the last line she
inscribed along the margin.
At once she seals her sinful words: she takes her ring,
which she can only wet with tears (her tongue is much
too dry to moisten it), and presses it into the wax.
Ashamed, she calls her servant; when he hesitates, she
uses honeyed words to urge this task:
"O you, who've been so faithful, take these tablets to
my..." and here the girl paused long before she added,
"brother." As she handed them to him, the tablets
slipped; down to the ground they fell. That omen
troubled her, and yet she sent them on. The servant left
and, when he found a moment that was suitable, consigned
to Caunus that confessional.
Her brother was astonished, furious; he flings aside the
tablets, just half-read, and even as he finds it hard to
check his hands-he wants to beat the servant-says:
"Be off, before it is too late, foul pimp, you filthy
go-between for lust and sin; for if your death would not
mean my disgrace, your life would be the price I'd make
you pay!"
The messenger runs off-he's terrified-to tell his
mistress of that fierce reply. And when you hear that
Caunus has repulsed your love, pale Byblis, you are
petrified; your body is invaded by chill frost. But when
her mind has been restored, the force of frenzy, too,
returns; and though her voice finds speech is hard
indeed, these are her words:
"This is what I deserve! Why did I rush to bare my
wound, my love? Why did I trust a letter-sent in haste-
to bear what's best left secret? There were better ways
to test his bent: with ambiguities and hints-I could
have spoken. To avoid the risk of his not seconding what
I so wished, at first I should have kept my sails close-
reefed, seen what the wind was like, and faced the deep
only when I was sure I had safe seas; but now I've
spread my sails, and they are filled with winds I did
not chart before I sailed.
"So I am wrecked upon the shoals; the surge has ruined
me, and I can't change my course. But I, in truth, had
been forewarned: that omen-was it not clear that I must
not pursue my love when those wax tablets slipped and
fell, as I was just about to send them off? Did that
mean my hopes had fallen, too? I should have waited for
a later day or sacrificed my hopes-although delay and
not denial is the better way.
"The god himself had warned me, and the signs were
clear-had I not been out of my mind. In any case, I
should not have relied on tablets; to divulge my frenzy
I could have confessed it to him face-to-face: he would
have seen my tears, my loving gaze; I could have told
him more than I inscribed, have thrown my arms around
his neck, despite his protests; and if I was still
denied, I could have seemed like one about to die, and
sunk down to his feet, embracing them and, stretched
along the ground, have begged for life.
"I'd have used all these means: if taken singly, each
might be useless; but they would succeed if I employed
them all together-he could not resist. And, then again,
perhaps some fault lies with the servant I had sent. He
must have made the wrong approach; the time he chose was
- I am sure-inopportune; he did not wait until my
brother's mind was free of other cares.
"That hurt my cause. For, after all, my brother was not
born of some fierce tigress; there is no hard flint, no
rigid iron, and no adamant within his heart; nor did a
lioness give suck to Caunus. I can conquer him! I will
not let him be. As long as I still have some breath of
life, I'll try-and try again. Although I know the best
course was never to have begun, what I have done can't
be annulled; and since I have begun, the next best
choice is, stay until I've won.
"For even if I should renounce my hopes, by now he can't
forget how rash I was. And if I should desist, I would
seem heedless or-worse-insidious, as if I'd tried to
tempt or trap him. And in any case, I'd seem to him no
more than one enslaved by lust-not one who has indeed
obeyed this god who has deployed his tyrant force to
subjugate and to inflame my heart.
"In sum, I cannot act as if I'd done no wrong: I wrote
to him; I sought him out-and sought what's sinful. Even
if I stop at this point, he can't think me innocent. The
way is long if I'd fulfill my hopes; but to sin more,
there's little way to go."
Such were her wavering words; unsure, disturbed, her
mind torn by doubts: while she repents of what she's
done, she wants to try again.
And now the helpless girl has lost all sense of measure;
and she pleads again, again with Caunus, who rejects,
rejects, rejects-until at last, relentlessly harassed...
he flees his native land and her foul pleas and, in a
foreign land, founds a new city.
And now Miletus' daughter, in despair, loses her mind
completely; Byblis tears her robes and bares her breasts
and beats her arms-in frenzy. Byblis openly declares her
sacrilegious love; she rages, raves. Then, having lost
all hope, the girl forsakes her country, leaves the home
that earned her hate; she wants to track the fugitive:
she takes the path her brother took when he escaped.
And, Bacchus, even as in Ismarus your devotees, excited
by the thyrsus, each third year celebrate your
bacchanal, so now, along broad fields, near Bubassus,
the matrons see the wailing Byblis rave, delirious. The
warlike Leleges, the Lycians, and the Cares see her
frenzy.
And she'd already left behind the Cragus, the Limyre,
and Xanthus' stream; she crossed the wooded ridge where
fierce Chimaera lived-that monster with a fire-breathing
midriff, whose head and chest showed her as lioness, but
bore a serpent's tail.
Beyond those woods, you, Byblis, weary of your long
pursuit of Caunus, fell; and there you lay-your hair
streamed out along the hard ground, and your face was
buried in the fallen leaves. Again, again, the Lelegeian
nymphs attempt-so tenderly-to lift her up; again, again,
they try to teach her how to cure her love; they offer
words of comfort, but she can't respond.
She lies there; with her nails she grasps the green
grass; and the meadow now is damp with Byblis' streaming
tears. Upon this flow of tears-they say-the Naiads then
bestowed this gift: it never dries.
What greater gift could they have given Byblis? Just as
pitch drips from a slashed pine-bark; or as, from rich,
drenched earth, bitumen oozes, sticky, thick; or as,
beneath the west wind's gentle breath, the waters winter
froze now melt beneath the sun; just so is Byblis
changed at once into the tears she shed; she has become
a fountain that, within those valleys, still retains
unto this day it's mistress' name: just at the foot of a
dark ilex tree, the never-ending fount of Byblis
streams.
***
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This story was written as an adult fantasy. The author
does not condone the described behavior in real life.
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