Kitap 13
the fish that I had caught, I laid out those
898
which by good chance were driven into my nets,
or credulous, were caught on my barbed hooks.
“It all seems like a fiction (but what good
can I derive from fictions?) just as soon
as any of my fish-prey touched the grass,
they instantly began to move and skip
as usual in sea water. While I paused
and wondered, all of them slid to the waves,
and left me, their late captor, and the shore.
“I was amazed and doubtful, a long time;
while I considered what could be the cause.
What god had done this? Or perhaps the juice
of some herb caused it? ‘But,’ I said, ‘what herb
can have such properties?’ and with my hand
I plucked the grass and chewed it with my teeth.
My throat had hardly time to swallow those
unheard of juices, when I suddenly
felt all my entrails throbbing inwardly,
and my entire mind also, felt possessed
by passions foreign to my life before.
“I could not stay in that place, and I said
with shouting, ‘Farewell! dry land! never more
shall I revisit you;’ and with those words
upon my lips, I plunged beneath the waves.
The gods of that deep water gave to me,
when they received me, kindred honors, while
they prayed Oceanus and Tethys both
to take from me such mortal essence as
might yet remain. So I was purified
by them and after a good charm had been
nine times repeated over me, which washed
away all guilt, I was commanded then
to put my breast beneath a hundred streams.
“So far I can relate to you all things
most worthy to be told; for all so far
I can remember; but from that time on
I was unconscious of the many things
that followed. When my mind returned to me,
I found myself entirely different
