Carmina

In the meantime with shaking bodies and infirm gesture the Parcae began to intone their truth-naming chant. Their trembling frames were enwrapped around with white garments, encircled with a purple border at their heels, snowy fillets bound each aged brow, and their hands pursued their never-ending toil, as of custom. The left hand bore the distaff enwrapped in soft wool, the right hand lightly withdrawing the threads with upturned fingers shaped them, then twisting them with the prone thumb it turned the balanced spindle with well-polished whirl. And then with a pluck of their tooth the work was always made even, and the bitten wool-shreds adhered to their dried lips, which shreds at first had stood out from the fine thread. And in front of their feet wicker baskets of osier twigs took charge of the soft white woolly fleece. These, with clear-sounding voice, as they combed out the wool, out-poured fates of such kind in sacred song, in song which no age yet to come could tax with untruth.

“O with great virtues augmenting your exceeding honour, mainstay of Emathia, most famous in your issue, receive what the sisters make known to you on this happy day, a truth-naming oracle! But run, you spindles, drawing the thread which the fates follow, run, spindles! “Now Hesperus will come to you bearing what is longed for by bridegrooms, with that fortunate star will your bride come, who steeps your soul with the sway of softening love, and prepares with you to conjoin in languorous slumber, spreading her smooth arms beneath your sinewy neck. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “No house ever yet enclosed such loves, no love bound lovers with such pact, as abides with Thetis, as is the concord of Peleus. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “To you will Achilles be born, a stranger to fear, to his foes known not by his back, but by his strong breast, who, often the victor in the uncertain struggle of the foot-race, will outrun the fire-fleet footsteps of the speedy doe. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “None in war with him may compare as a hero, when the Phrygian streams trickle with Trojan blood, and when besieging the walls of Troy with a long, drawn-out warfare perjured Pelops' third heir lays that city waste. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “Often will mothers attest over funeral-rites of their sons his glorious acts and illustrious deeds, when the white locks from their heads are unloosed amid ashes, and they bruise their discoloured breasts with feeble fists. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “For as the reaper, plucking off the dense wheat-ears before their time, mows the harvest yellowed beneath ardent sun, so will he cast prostrate the corpses of Troy's sons with grim swords. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “His great valour will be attested by Scamander's wave, which ever pours itself into the swift Hellespont, narrowing its course with slaughtered heaps of corpses he shall make tepid its deep stream by mingling warm blood with the water. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “And finally she will be a witness: the captive-maid handed to death, when the heaped-up tomb of earth built in lofty mound receives the snowy limbs of the stricken virgin. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “For instantly fortune will give the means to the war-worn Greeks to break Neptune's stone bonds of the Dardanian city, the tall tomb shall be made dank with Polyxena's blood, who as the victim succumbing beneath two-edged sword, with yielding knees shall fall forward a headless corpse. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “Come then! Conjoin in the longed-for delights of your love. Let the bridegroom receive his goddess in felicitous compact; let the bride be given to her eager husband. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles! “Neither will the nurse returning with morning light succeed in circling her neck with last night's thread. [Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles!], nor need her solicitous mother fear that sad discord will cause a parted bed for her daughter, nor need she cease to hope for dear grandchildren. Run, drawing the thread, run, spindles!”

With such soothsaying songs of yore did the Parcae chant from divine breast the felicitous fate of Peleus. For previously the heaven-dwellers used to visit the chaste homes of heroes and to show themselves in mortal assembly when their worship had not yet been scorned. Often the father of the gods, resting in his glorious temple, when on the festal days his annual rites appeared, gazed on a hundred bulls strewn prone on the earth. Often wandering Liber on topmost summit of Parnassus led his howling Thyiads with loosely tossed locks, when the Delphians tumultuously trooping from the whole of their city joyously acclaimed the god with smoking altars. Often in lethal strife of war, Mavors, or swift Triton's queen, or the Rhamnusian virgin, in person did exhort armed bodies of men. But after the earth was infected with heinous crime, and each one banished justice from their grasping mind, and brothers steeped their hands in fraternal blood, the son ceased grieving over departed parents, the sire craved for the funeral rites of his first-born that freely he might take of the flower of unwedded step-mother, the unholy mother, lying under her unknowing son, did not fear to sully her household gods with dishonor: everything licit and lawless commingled with mad infamy turned away from us the just-seeing mind of the gods. Wherefore neither do they deign to appear at such assemblies, nor will they permit themselves to be met in the daylight.