Met. 1.384-94 – They sat a long time…
Obstipuere diu rumpitque silentia voce
Pyrrha prior iussisque deae parere recusat
detque sibi veniam pavido rogat ore timetque
laedere iactatis maternas ossibus umbras.
interea repetunt caecisque obscura latebris
verba datae sortis secum inter seque volutant.
inde Promethides placidis Epimethida dictis
mulcet et “aut fallax” ait “est sollertia nobis
aut pia sunt nullumque nefas oracula suadent.
magna parens Terra est; lapides in corpore terrae
ossa reor dici; iacere hos post terga iubemur.”
(Met. 1.384-94)
They sat a long time,* and Pyrrha broke the silence
first, and refused to carry out the orders of the goddess,
and with a pale face she begged for pardon, but was afraid
she would offend her mother’s shade by throwing her bones.
Meanwhile, they repeated the obscure
words of the prophesy they had been given in the dark recesses, and discussed them between themselves.
Then, Prometheus’ son calmed the daughter of Epimetheus with calm words
and said, “either our wits have failed us
or the oracle is pious and does not ask us to do anything nefas**.
Our Great Parent is the Earth! The stones buried in her flesh
used to be called bones; we are being told to throw these over our backs.”
Sorry again for taking so long to finish this page. I had to attend to it sparsely while working heavily on my thesis these last few weeks. I’m now back in the USA (Indiana) for a visit with the family over the holidays. We’ll see how this impacts my output, but I’m hoping to get some headway made on comic pages and get updates into a slightly more regular position before the new term starts. Watch this space!
* The Latin literally says, “they were stupified for a long time”. I thought this sounded nicer, and worked idiomatically.
** “Nefas” is usually translated as “sin” or “sinful”, and it has a similar connotation to those English words. I decided to leave it in the Latin, however: it’s a special word, used in context of the Roman religion. It’s the opposite of fas, which I usually like to translate as “right in accordance with the laws of the cosmos”. They are both pretty spectacular words. I wanted to reflect the uniqueness of nefas here.
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