Prevod

He, loathing wealth, dwelt in the woods and fields, and worshipped Pan, who lives forever in mountain caves. But his wits stayed dull, and once again, as before, his foolish mind was destined to bring its master harm. For Tmolus rises steep and lofty, gazing far across the sea, its spreading slopes bounded by Sardis on one side, little Hypaepa on the other. There Pan, while boasting of his music to the tender nymphs and playing a light tune on reeds bound together with wax, dared to scorn Apollo’s music as inferior to his own, and entered an unequal contest, with Tmolus as the judge.

The aged judge sat down upon his mountain and freed his ears from trees: only oak crowned his dark-blue hair, and acorns hung around his hollow temples. Looking at the god of flocks, he said, “The judge is ready.” Pan sounded his rustic pipes, and with his wild music charmed Midas, who happened to be there as he played. Then sacred Tmolus turned his face toward Phoebus, and his forest followed the turn.

Apollo, his golden head wreathed in Parnassian laurel, swept the ground with a robe steeped in Tyrian purple, and in his left hand held a lyre adorned with jewels and Indian ivory; his other held the plectrum. His very stance proclaimed the artist. Then with practised thumb he stirred the strings, and Tmolus, charmed by their sweetness, bade Pan yield his pipes to the lyre.

The judgment, the sacred mountain’s verdict, pleased everyone; yet one voice challenged it and called it unjust: the voice of Midas alone. The Delian god would not allow such foolish ears to keep their human shape, but stretched them long, filled them with whitish hair, made them loose at the roots, and gave them power to move. The rest remained human: punished in this one part, he wore the ears of a slow-paced little ass.

He longed to hide them, and, ashamed of his disgrace, tried to cover his temples with purple turbans. But the servant who used to cut his long hair with shears had seen it. Though he dared not reveal the shame he had witnessed, he longed to tell it aloud, and could not keep silent. So he went apart, dug a hole in the ground, and told in a low voice what ears he had seen on his master, whispering into the hollow earth.

Then he heaped the soil back over the secret his voice had told, and silently left the filled-in hole. There a thick grove of trembling reeds began to rise, and when a full year had brought it to maturity, it betrayed the man who had planted it: stirred by the gentle south wind, it repeated the buried words and exposed its master’s ears.