IV
LIVRO IV Mitologia Reversa
Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, has just finished telling the long and harrowing story of the rape of Proserpine. She moves on to her concluding and far shorter stories, the first being about Arethusa, who had told Ceres of Pluto’s abduction of Proserpine. Ceres, Proserpine’s mother, is delighted when her daughter is restored to her from the underworld, even if it is only for a period of six months. Ceres thanks Arethusa for her help, and asks how she came to be made into a sacred stream.
John Martin (1789–1854), Alpheus and Arethusa (1832) OIL. DIMENSIONS AND LOCATION NOT KNOWN. / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
John Martin (1789–1854), Alpheus and Arethusa (1832) OIL. DIMENSIONS AND LOCATION NOT KNOWN. / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
Arethusa says that she had been a nymph in Achaea. One day she had been returning from hunting in the heat, and started to bathe in a stream to cool her body off. As she slipped into the clear water, she removed her clothes and hung them from a tree. Alpheus, a river god, suddenly appeared, calling her. She took fright and flight, leaving her clothes behind. At first, Arethusa was able to keep her pursuer at a comfortable distance, but as they ran further, she started to tire and sensed him drawing closer. When she was exhausted, she called on Diana to come to her aid:
John Martin (1789–1854), Alpheus and Arethusa (1832) OIL. DIMENSIONS AND LOCATION NOT KNOWN. / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
John Martin (1789–1854), Alpheus and Arethusa (1832) OIL. DIMENSIONS AND LOCATION NOT KNOWN. / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
‘It moved the goddess, and she gathered up a dense cloud, and encompassed me about. — The baffled River circled round and round, seeking to find me, hidden in that cloud — twice went the River round, and twice cried out, ‘Ho, Arethusa! Arethusa, Ho!’ ‘He watched the cloud and spot, and thus besieged, a cold sweat gathered on my trembling limbs. The clear-blue drops, distilled from every pore, made pools” of water where I moved my feet, and dripping moisture trickled from my hair. —
John Martin (1789–1854), Alpheus and Arethusa (1832) OIL. DIMENSIONS AND LOCATION NOT KNOWN. / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
Antoine Coypel (1661–1722), Alpheus Chasing Arethusa (c 1710) OIL ON CANVAS. DIMENSIONS AND LOCATION NOT KNOWN. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
Much quicker than my story could be told, my body was dissolved to flowing streams. — But still the River recognized the waves, and for the love of me transformed his shape from human features to his proper streams, that so his waters might encompass mine. ‘Diana, therefore, opened up the ground, in which I plunged, and thence through gloomy caves was carried to Ortygia — blessed isle! To which my chosen goddess gave her name! Where first I rose amid the upper air!’
After her transformation into flowing water, Arethusa disappeared into the ground in a rock cleft – what is known in limestone terrain as a swallet hole – to reach Diana’s island of Ortygia, in the centre of the city of Syracuse, on Sicily.
LIVRO IV Š 2017. Fåbio Messias. Todos os direitos reservados.