Book 8
To which the ready River-God replied:
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“It is not one we see but five are there,
deceptive in the distance. And that you
may wonder less at what Diana did,
those islands were five Naiads.—Long ago,
ten bullocks for a sacrifice they slew;
and when the joyous festival was given,
ignoring me they bade all other Gods.
Indignant at the slight, I swelled with rage
as great as ever when my banks are full,—
and so redoubled both in rage and flood,
I ravished woods from woods, and fields from fields,
and hurled into the sea the very soil,
together with the Nymphs, who then at last
remembered their neglect. And soon my waves,
united with the ocean streams, cut through
the solid soil, and fashioned from the one,
five islands you may see amid the waves,
which men since then, have called Echinades.
“But yet beyond you can observe how one
most beautiful of all is far withdrawn;
and this which most delights me, mariners
have Perimela named. She was so fair
that I deprived her of a precious wealth.
And when Hippodamas, her father, knew,
enraged he pushed her, heavy then with child,
forth from a rock into the cruel sea,
where she must perish,—but I rescued her;
and as I bore her on my swimming tide,
I called on Neptune, ruler of the deep,
‘O Trident-wielder, you who are preferred
next to the god most mighty! who by lot
obtained the empire of the flowing deep,
to which all sacred rivers flow and end;
come here, O Neptune, and with gracious will
grant my desire;—I injured her I save;—
but if Hippodamas, her father, when
he knew my love, had been both kind and just,
if he had not been so unnatural,
he would have pitied and forgiven her.
