"Cybele comes to Rome"

In the tradition of Dryden’s Vergil, Longfellow’s Dante, and Thoreau’s Pindar, I have adapted into couplets and retold my rather free translation from an excerpt out of Ovid’s Fasti (4.183-281) along with a verse epilogue based on Livy’s prose account (29.10-11, 14) of the same legend.

Erato, my muse, advise me I pray, whence Cybele came,
Or has great Rome always been her home, the same?
“Our mother always loved Dindymus, Cybele, those lofty mounts,
Her Ilian kingdoms, and high Ida’s cool founts.
When Aeneas carried Troy’s sacred gods to the Italian land,
The Lares in his barks, Cybele watched from the strand.
She felt her divine powers not yet called to Latium in turn;
In Phrygia, her accustomed home, stood she firm.

Now mighty, favored Rome has seen five ages of prosperity;
Her legions subdue all the world, now shaking in temerity.
A hallowed old priest hears the fateful Euboean song,
A fated message, laconic, terse, not long.
‘Romans, seek your mother out, I order you, she is absent from your land;
When she comes, receive her – with only a chaste hand.’
The city fathers wonder at the obscure Delphic lot –
‘Which mother, and where is she to be sought?’

Paean Apollo is consulted: ‘Summon the mother of the gods;
Find her on the Idan mountain, its peak in the clouds.’
Roman princes are sent. Phrygia’s held by Attalus the first,
But he denies the Ausonians the right of their birth.
The earth then shook, trembled, with a sounding, violent rumbling;
Thus spake the goddess from her shrines crumbling:
‘I myself wished to be sought. Let there be absolutely no delay.
Rome is a fine place. Forthwith, take me away.’

Attalus quakes in terror and says, ‘Still you, great one, are ours;
It’s from us Dardans that Rome derives her powers.’
Immediately to cut the Ilian pines for wood, countless axes began,
Just as had done Aeneas, as from Troy he ran.
A thousand hands come together to build the ship, a pious task,
Finished in burnt colors, the goddess in her safe cask.
Most guarded, she sails through the waters of Poseidon her son,
First along the great straight of a sister, the Phrixean.

Then by broad Rhoetum, she skirts wide shores, the Sigean home,
Next Tenedos, and the ancient works of Eëtion.
The hardy sailors greet the Cyclades; waves by Lesbos roll,
The fishy waters only broken on the Carystian shoal.
And she crossed the swelling waters where Icarus lost his wings;
His fateful resting place, that sea with his name still rings.
She passes Crete to the left, rocky Peloponnesus on the right,
And seeks out Cythera, home of Venus, love’s might.

Now the seas gird round three-cornered Sicily, a bounteous land,
Where three giants forging white iron eternally stand.
Then by African seas she coasts; Sardinian fiefdoms she spies
But holds for those dear Ausonian lands, her prize.
She reached Ostia, our port where the great Father Tiber divides,
Where ever to greater depths by Latin fields he glides.
Knights, senators mixed with plebs, to the shore comes a throng,
To greet their mother at the Tuscan river’s mouth so long.

Mothers, daughters, and daughters-in-law to the shore proceed,
Along with those Vestals who keep the virgin’s creed.
Men heave and ho with tough ropes stretched ever so taut,
But in the shallow waters the foreign ship is caught.
The Latin land was in a drought; burnt now was the Faliscan grass;
The ship’s weighty keel was trapped in a muddy morass.
Each pious Roman pulled and worked more than his share,
But strong hands loosed not Cybele from her watery lair.

She sat as a steadfast island situated firm in mid-ocean;
The astonished men panic and tremble at the omen.
Claudia Quinta had to Clausus traced back her well-born clan,
Only nobility marked her brow, her face’s entire span.
A chaste Vestal lady through and through, yet not always believed;
Vicious rumor stalked her, of a false crime not reprieved.
With ornate hair and well-dressed she always went about;
This told against her, besides her quick tongue to an old lout.

Her clean conscience laughed at the mendacious rumor,
But we are a crowd who believes in fault sooner.
She then proceeds from the host of venerable mothers so chaste,
Drinking the pure river water, only a taste.
Three times she wets her hair, raises her hands to the sky.
(Anyone would think her mind had gone awry!)
Into the face of the great goddess Cybele she does stare,
On a knee, uttering words, while tossing her hair.

‘Kind, prolific mother of the gods, of your supplicant dear,
Under a condition, accept this simple prayer.
They all deny my chastity. If you do me condemn, I can hold no grudge,
I will punishment deserve, from the goddess as a judge.
Yet, if I am as faultless, blameless as I make the claim to be,
It then must be you, goddess, who will follow me.’
Thus spake she. With little effort on the hempen rope she pulls,
Same task, not doable before, with even the strength of bulls.

The goddess is wrested from the mud; the boat’s movement, Claudia’s praise.
Sounds of joy waft up amongst heaven’s fire-bright rays.
The tired band finally reached the damp Father Tiber’s Hall,
Sitting on a promontory to the left, surveying all.
Night had come; they bind up the rope to an oaken stump,
Giving themselves to sweet sleep, bellies plump.
Light had come; they loosed the rope, undoing their knot,
But before proceeding, burned some frankincense, just a jot.

Here is the place, where into which the slippery Almo flows;
Almo loses her name to the Tiber; he everyone knows.
Here the ancient, aged, sacred priest in his purple toga robed
Washed the goddess in the Almon waters as they flowed.
As he washes her, the priestesses howl out; a furious flute is played;
And soft hands strike drums, across them leather splayed.
Claudia leads the parade, beaming. Hardly believed in her chasteness,
Now with Rome’s first goddess as her witness.
Cybele is faithfully carried to her new home by way of the Porta Capena,
By yoked heifers sprinkled with flowers, to her new arena.”

Epilogue:

As the mysterious Sibylline Books had foretold, in long ages past:
“If ever a foreign enemy descends into Italy, holding her fast,
Bring Magna Mater into Rome, from her Phrygian home
By way of Neptune’s frothing sea foam.”
Cybele saved great Rome from her hated Carthaginian foe,
Always to her a great debt shall we owe.
With the Megalesian games we honor our great protectress still,
Lest ever she decide to depart down the Palatine Hill.
Great Rome, ruler of the world, land of lands, land of light,
Always maintain piety to our mother’s delight!