Ovid Asclepius Resurrected

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The centaur was delighted with that child
Of heavenly stock, his honourable charge.
One day his daughter came, her auburn hair
Falling upon her shoulders, whom the nymph
Chariclo once had borne upon the bank
Beside a flowing river, and had named
Ocyrhoe. The girl was not content
To know her father’s art: she prophesied
The Fates’ dark secrets. In the mystic mood
Of prophecy, when hidden in her heart
The heavenly fervour glowed, she fixed her eyes
Upon the child. ‘Grow strong, dear boy,’ she said
‘Healer of all the world. Often to you
Men shall owe health and life, and yours shall be
The right to win again departed souls,
And, though you dare this once in heaven’s despite,
Jove’s bolt will thwart that gift a second time.
You, now divine, shall be a lifeless corpse,
And from a corpse become divine again,
And twice you shall renew your destiny.


- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 2


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When that day also has been received by Galatea in her father’s waters, and all the world is sunk in untroubled sleep, there rises above the horizon the young man blasted by the bolts of his grandsire and stretches out his hands, entwined with twin snakes. Familiar, too, the wrong that Theseus did, when, too confiding, he did curse his son to death. Doomed by his piety, the youth was journeying to Troezen, when a bull cleft with his breast the waters in the path. Fear seized the startled steeds; in vain their master held them back, they dragged him along the crags and flinty rocks. Hippolytus fell from the car, and, his limbs entangled by the reins, his mangled body was whirled along, till he gave up the ghost, much to Diana’s rage. “There is no need for grief,” said the son of Coronis, “for I will restore the pious youth to life all unscathed, and to my leech-craft gloomy fate shall yield.” Straightway he drew from an ivory casket simples that before had stood Glaucus’ ghost in good stead, what time the seer went down to pluck the herbs he had remarked, and the snake was succoured by a snake. Thrice he touched the youth’s breast, thrice he spoke healing words; then Hippolytus lifted his head, low laid upon the ground. He found a hiding-place in a sacred grove and in the depths of Dictynna’s own woodland; he became Virbius of the Arician Lake. But Clymenus and Clotho grieved, she that life’s broken thread should be respun, he that his kingdom’s rights should be infringed. Fearing the example thus set, Jupiter aimed a thunderbolt at him who used the resources of a too potent art. Phoebus, thou didst complain. But Aesculapius is a god, be reconciled to thy parent: he did himself for thy sake what he forbids others to do.


- Ovid, Fasti, Book 6


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