[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.*440 I’ll tell you, too, about diseases, their source and symptoms.You’ll have a flock tormented by the frantic itch of scab, when perishing showershit and run and midwinter’s cruellest frosts cut them to the quick,sweat clots and clings just above the britch wooland jagged briars prick their flesh.That’s why the worthy shepherd dips his stock into fresh water ––and plunges rams into the flow to soak the fleece,where they, let go, go sailing down the river.Or else he’ll rub bitter dregs of olive oil onto the newly shorn and concoct a potion out of litharge, that is ‘silver slag’, mixing it450 with steaming native sulphur, and pine-pitch from Mount Ida, with greasy waxand squills, that is ‘sea onions’, and noxious hellebore and pitch-black bitumen.You’ll find no quicker cure, however, than if you brace yourself to take a knife to lance an open sore,for it’s a fact infections thrive best undetected,while a dithering herd hesitates to put his helping hand onto the woundand instead sits idly by, imploring gods for better fortune.What’s more, when pain pierces to the marrow those that bleat,and rages there, a parching fever gnawing on their limbs, you’ll do well to cut into a vein at the bottom of their feet,lines 460–485Book Three67one that throbs with blood, to steer away the scalding heat, 460as was the custom with the Bisaltae and fierce Gelonians when they roved around the mountain ranges and the outposts of the Getesand drank a mix of clotted milk and horse’s blood.Then, if you happen to catch sight of a ewe that’s seeking refugein a far-off shade or picking listlessly at just the tips of grass, that dilly-dallies way behind the others, or is lying slump down in the middle of the field, or at night slinks off all on her own, waste no time in exscinding that malignance with your blade before the dread disease creeps through your whole unwitting flock.They’re no more plentiful, nor furious, those squalls that 470strike from out at sea,than the onset of these plagues*––it’s not one here, another there,death smites, but all in one fell swoop, the fill of outfields, what is now and what’s to come, the hope of herds, root and branch and blossom.So let him learn by looking, who casts his eye from the apex of the Alpsto the ramparts of Noricum and the plains by the Timavus, how after all that fell the shepherd’s realm is now deserted, and the grazing grounds left to waste, the length and breadth of them.For here it was that once, with its seed in disease that wafted on the wind,a time of misery took hold and festered in the sweat of autumn to decimate all kinds of animals, including savage ones; 480it contaminated drinking water and spoiled the foodstore with a blight.Nor was the road to death straightforward: rather,when thirsts had parched every vein and made each joint shrivel up in agony,there was a second flood of fluids which caused the very bones to crumble, as bit by bit this cancer did them in.68Book Threelines 486–512Indeed, there have been times, mid-ceremony, that the victim of the offeringstanding by an altar, as the snow-white woolly bandeau was being wreathedaround its head, dropped dead before the acolytes could act, or when the priest had struck the sacrificial blow490 the entrails laid out on the altar failed to flare into flame and the best of prophets were defeated in attempts to read and to unravel what’s to come.Stick a knife beneath the skin and the blade’shardly marked; what trickles out barely leaves a blemish in the dirt.There are calves dropping in droves in the middle of rich pastures,giving up the ghost in sight of hay-filled mangers.House-trained dogs go raving mad; a fit of coughing racks the pigs, blocks their swollen windpipes and leaves them bereft of breath.Even that horse, a champion once, falls victim to ill-fortune, and, off both his food and drink, totters as he stamps the floor, 500 his ears fall forward and a fitful sweat surrounds them, the one that signifies the final onslaught.Hard to the touch, his coat you pat, and there’s no give in it.Such are the signs in the early days of being at death’s door ––but if disease proceeds to tighten its grip,then, yes, the eyes begin to flicker, laboured breath is interspersed with moans and groans, a rattleshudders from the groin, blackened blood oozes from the nostrils,clogged passages close in around an arid tongue.Some deemed it a help to drench them with a winey liquid poured through a horn,510 one chance to make the dying well.But soon this too proved useless:they were restored just long enough for fevers to flare up again, and though they were already under a mortal pall (forfend that welines 513–539Book Three69have such a fate, we who stayed true to you; send such ends to our enemies),with their bare teeth they tore their own frayed limbs to shreds.Behold a bull, all hot and heavy, his shoulder to the plough, how he collapses, drooling blood and foam and froth, and with a moanheaves his last.The ploughman goes with heavy heart to untack his mourning mate, then simply walks away and leaves his plough plonk in the middle of the field.Not tall trees’ shade, nor the pleasures of sweet meadows 520proffer consolation, no, nor that river scampering over rocks, more pure than amber, as it makes its way towards the plain.His flanks cave in, a glazed look overcasts his eyes, and his neck’s a stone as it inclines towards the earth beneath the burden of itself.All the work he did, all he contributed –– and to what end?What came of it,his turning of the heavy acres? His like was never once in thrall to winestransported from Campania, nor did they ever dodamage to themselves by indulgence, feast after feast.For them a simple diet of leaves and plain grass, their drink clear springsand running streams; nothing disturbs their sleep, they’ve no 530worries in the world.There was talk that was the only timeyou’d be hard-pressed to find cattle fit for the ritual to Juno, when to the temple front they led mismatched pairs of oxen they hadn’t even broken.No wonder they would scrabble in the ground with mattocks and cut their fingers to the bone planting saplings and strain to drag creaking carts up hill, down dale, and their own necks shouldering the yoke.Wolves no longer lurk in ambush near the foldsnor prowl at night around the flock––more pressing cares have made them tame.You’ll find shy does and timid hinds70Book Threelines 540–566540 straggling in and out among the hounds and in between the houses.Now all the creatures of the deep, indeed everything that swims,lie washed up on the farthest shore as if they were the victims of a shipwreck,and seals escape upriver where they have never been before, the viper meets its end failing to defend its labyrinthine hiding place,as do watersnakes, caught off guard, their scales bristling.The air itself is no fit place for birds; down they plunge and forfeit life somewhere among the clouds above.What’s more, a change of pasture altered nothing.What cures they looked for caused but harm, and they gave up; 550 who were to know it all knew nothing: Chiron, son of Phillyra; Melampus, son of Amythaon.*Unleashed, a pale-faced fury came rampaging –– Tisiphone ––an emissary into light out of hell’s darkness, sowing seeds of distress and disease,and every day, bit by bit, she held her hungry head up higher [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.*440 I’ll tell you, too, about diseases, their source and symptoms.You’ll have a flock tormented by the frantic itch of scab, when perishing showershit and run and midwinter’s cruellest frosts cut them to the quick,sweat clots and clings just above the britch wooland jagged briars prick their flesh.That’s why the worthy shepherd dips his stock into fresh water ––and plunges rams into the flow to soak the fleece,where they, let go, go sailing down the river.Or else he’ll rub bitter dregs of olive oil onto the newly shorn and concoct a potion out of litharge, that is ‘silver slag’, mixing it450 with steaming native sulphur, and pine-pitch from Mount Ida, with greasy waxand squills, that is ‘sea onions’, and noxious hellebore and pitch-black bitumen.You’ll find no quicker cure, however, than if you brace yourself to take a knife to lance an open sore,for it’s a fact infections thrive best undetected,while a dithering herd hesitates to put his helping hand onto the woundand instead sits idly by, imploring gods for better fortune.What’s more, when pain pierces to the marrow those that bleat,and rages there, a parching fever gnawing on their limbs, you’ll do well to cut into a vein at the bottom of their feet,lines 460–485Book Three67one that throbs with blood, to steer away the scalding heat, 460as was the custom with the Bisaltae and fierce Gelonians when they roved around the mountain ranges and the outposts of the Getesand drank a mix of clotted milk and horse’s blood.Then, if you happen to catch sight of a ewe that’s seeking refugein a far-off shade or picking listlessly at just the tips of grass, that dilly-dallies way behind the others, or is lying slump down in the middle of the field, or at night slinks off all on her own, waste no time in exscinding that malignance with your blade before the dread disease creeps through your whole unwitting flock.They’re no more plentiful, nor furious, those squalls that 470strike from out at sea,than the onset of these plagues*––it’s not one here, another there,death smites, but all in one fell swoop, the fill of outfields, what is now and what’s to come, the hope of herds, root and branch and blossom.So let him learn by looking, who casts his eye from the apex of the Alpsto the ramparts of Noricum and the plains by the Timavus, how after all that fell the shepherd’s realm is now deserted, and the grazing grounds left to waste, the length and breadth of them.For here it was that once, with its seed in disease that wafted on the wind,a time of misery took hold and festered in the sweat of autumn to decimate all kinds of animals, including savage ones; 480it contaminated drinking water and spoiled the foodstore with a blight.Nor was the road to death straightforward: rather,when thirsts had parched every vein and made each joint shrivel up in agony,there was a second flood of fluids which caused the very bones to crumble, as bit by bit this cancer did them in.68Book Threelines 486–512Indeed, there have been times, mid-ceremony, that the victim of the offeringstanding by an altar, as the snow-white woolly bandeau was being wreathedaround its head, dropped dead before the acolytes could act, or when the priest had struck the sacrificial blow490 the entrails laid out on the altar failed to flare into flame and the best of prophets were defeated in attempts to read and to unravel what’s to come.Stick a knife beneath the skin and the blade’shardly marked; what trickles out barely leaves a blemish in the dirt.There are calves dropping in droves in the middle of rich pastures,giving up the ghost in sight of hay-filled mangers.House-trained dogs go raving mad; a fit of coughing racks the pigs, blocks their swollen windpipes and leaves them bereft of breath.Even that horse, a champion once, falls victim to ill-fortune, and, off both his food and drink, totters as he stamps the floor, 500 his ears fall forward and a fitful sweat surrounds them, the one that signifies the final onslaught.Hard to the touch, his coat you pat, and there’s no give in it.Such are the signs in the early days of being at death’s door ––but if disease proceeds to tighten its grip,then, yes, the eyes begin to flicker, laboured breath is interspersed with moans and groans, a rattleshudders from the groin, blackened blood oozes from the nostrils,clogged passages close in around an arid tongue.Some deemed it a help to drench them with a winey liquid poured through a horn,510 one chance to make the dying well.But soon this too proved useless:they were restored just long enough for fevers to flare up again, and though they were already under a mortal pall (forfend that welines 513–539Book Three69have such a fate, we who stayed true to you; send such ends to our enemies),with their bare teeth they tore their own frayed limbs to shreds.Behold a bull, all hot and heavy, his shoulder to the plough, how he collapses, drooling blood and foam and froth, and with a moanheaves his last.The ploughman goes with heavy heart to untack his mourning mate, then simply walks away and leaves his plough plonk in the middle of the field.Not tall trees’ shade, nor the pleasures of sweet meadows 520proffer consolation, no, nor that river scampering over rocks, more pure than amber, as it makes its way towards the plain.His flanks cave in, a glazed look overcasts his eyes, and his neck’s a stone as it inclines towards the earth beneath the burden of itself.All the work he did, all he contributed –– and to what end?What came of it,his turning of the heavy acres? His like was never once in thrall to winestransported from Campania, nor did they ever dodamage to themselves by indulgence, feast after feast.For them a simple diet of leaves and plain grass, their drink clear springsand running streams; nothing disturbs their sleep, they’ve no 530worries in the world.There was talk that was the only timeyou’d be hard-pressed to find cattle fit for the ritual to Juno, when to the temple front they led mismatched pairs of oxen they hadn’t even broken.No wonder they would scrabble in the ground with mattocks and cut their fingers to the bone planting saplings and strain to drag creaking carts up hill, down dale, and their own necks shouldering the yoke.Wolves no longer lurk in ambush near the foldsnor prowl at night around the flock––more pressing cares have made them tame.You’ll find shy does and timid hinds70Book Threelines 540–566540 straggling in and out among the hounds and in between the houses.Now all the creatures of the deep, indeed everything that swims,lie washed up on the farthest shore as if they were the victims of a shipwreck,and seals escape upriver where they have never been before, the viper meets its end failing to defend its labyrinthine hiding place,as do watersnakes, caught off guard, their scales bristling.The air itself is no fit place for birds; down they plunge and forfeit life somewhere among the clouds above.What’s more, a change of pasture altered nothing.What cures they looked for caused but harm, and they gave up; 550 who were to know it all knew nothing: Chiron, son of Phillyra; Melampus, son of Amythaon.*Unleashed, a pale-faced fury came rampaging –– Tisiphone ––an emissary into light out of hell’s darkness, sowing seeds of distress and disease,and every day, bit by bit, she held her hungry head up higher [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]