Book 8
although it swallows up great rivers drawn
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from lands remote, it never can be filled
nor satisfied. And as devouring fire
its fuel refuses never, but consumes
unnumbered beams of wood, and burns for more
the more 'tis fed, and from abundance gains
increasing famine, so the raving jaws
of wretched Erysichthon, ever craved
all food in him, was on]y cause of food,
and what he ate made only room for more.
And after Famine through his gluttony
at last had wasted his ancestral wealth
his raging hunger suffered no decline,
and his insatiate gluttony increased.
When all his wealth at last was eaten up,
his daughter, worthy of a fate more kind,
alone was left to him and her he sold.
Descendant of a noble race, the girl
refusing to be purchased as a slave,
then hastened to the near shore of the sea,
and as she stretched her arms above the waves,
implored kind Neptune with her tears, “Oh, you
who have deprived me of virginity,
deliver me from such a master's power!”
Although the master, seeking her, had seen
her only at that moment, Neptune changed
her quickly from a woman to a man,
by giving her the features of a man
and garments proper to a fisher-man:
and there she stood. He even looked at her
and cried out, “Hey, there! Expert of the rod!
While you are casting forth the bit of brass,
concealed so deftly in its tiny bait,—
gods-willing! let the sea be smooth for you,
and let the foolish fishes swimming up,
never know danger till they snap the hook!
Now tell me where is she, who only now,
in tattered garment and wind-twisted hair,
was standing on this shore—for I am sure
I saw her standing on this shore, although
