Triptolemus, whom Ceres commissions to teach mankind husbandry, arrives at the court of Lyncus, King of Scythia, who determines to assassinate his guest during sleep—The fatal weapon is already raised, when the monarch is suddenly changed into a lynx.
The youth o’er Europe and o’er Asia drives, Till at the court of Lyncus he arrives: The tyrant Scythia’s barb’rous empire sway’d; And when he saw Triptolemus, he said: “How camest thou, stranger, to our court, and why? Thy country, and thy name?” The youth did thus reply: “Triptolemus my name; my country’s known O’er all the world, Minerva’s fav’rite town, Athens, the first of cities in renown: By land I neither walk’d, nor sail’d by sea, But hither through the ether made my way; By me the goddess who the fields befriends, These gifts, the greatest of all blessings, sends; The grain she gives if in your soil you sow, Thence wholesome food in golden crops shall grow.”
Soon as the secret to the king was known, He grudged the glory of the service done, And wickedly resolved to make it all his own. To hide his purpose, he invites his guest, The friend of Ceres, to a royal feast, And when sweet sleep his heavy eves had seized. The tyrant with his steel attempts his breast: Him straight a lynx’s shape the goddess gives, And home the youth her sacred dragons drives.
The Muses are unanimously pronounced victorious, and the daughters of Pierus are punished for their presumption by their transformation into magpies.
The chosen muse here ends her sacred lays: The nymphs, unanimous, decree the bays, And give the Heliconian goddesses the praise. Then, far from vain that we should thus prevail. But much provoked to hear the vanquish’d rail. Calliope resumes: “Too long we’ve borne Your daring taunts, and your affronting scorn: Your challenge justly merited a curse, And this unmanner’d railing makes it worse: Since you refuse us calmly to enjoy Our patience, next our passions we’ll employ, The dictates of a mind enraged pursue, And what our just resentment bids us, do.” The railers laugh, our threats and wrath despise, And clap their hands, and make a scolding noise: But in the fact they’re seized: beneath their nails Feathers they feel, and on their faces scales: Their horny beaks at once each other scare; Their arms are plumed, and on their backs they bear Pied wings, and flutter in the fleeting air: Chatt’ring, the scandal of the woods they fly, And there continue still their clam’rous cry; The same their eloquence as maids or birds, Now only noise, and nothing then but words.
Arachne presumes to challenge Minerva to a trial of skill in needlework—Being defeated, she hangs herself in despair, and is changed into a spider by the goddess.
Pallas, attending to the muse’s song, Approved the just resentment of their wrong, And thus reflects: “While tamely I commend Those who their injured deities defend, My own divinity affronted stands, And calls aloud for justice at my hands;” Then takes the hint, ashamed to lag behind, And on Arachne bends her vengeful mind; One at the loom so excellently skill’d, That to the goddess she refused to yield.