Prevod

But if you were to ask Amathus, rich in metals, whether she would claim the Propoetides as her daughters, she would deny them as readily as those whose rugged brows once bore twin horns, from which they took their name, the Cerastae. Before their doors stood an altar to Jupiter, Guardian of Guests; if a stranger, unaware of their crime, had seen it stained with blood, he would have thought that suckling calves and sheep of Amathus were slaughtered there: the victim was a guest. Outraged by these unholy rites, kindly Venus herself was preparing to abandon her cities and the fields of Ophiusa. “But how have these dear places, how have my cities sinned?” she said. “What crime is theirs?

Let this impious race instead pay the penalty of exile, or death, or something midway between death and banishment. And what could that be but the punishment of a changed form?” As she wondered what to turn them into, she looked toward their horns and saw that these might be left them: she transformed their mighty bodies into savage bulls. Yet the shameless Propoetides had dared to deny that Venus was a goddess. For this, through the goddess’s wrath, they are said to have been the first to sell their bodies and their beauty; and when their shame was gone and the blood in their faces hardened, it took little change to turn them into rigid flint.

Because Pygmalion had seen these women passing their lives in wickedness, disgusted by the many faults that nature had bestowed upon the female mind, he lived alone, unmarried, and for years shared his bed with no companion. Meanwhile, with marvelous skill, he successfully carved snow-white ivory, giving it a beauty no woman could be born with; and he fell in love with his own creation.

She had the face of a real maiden, whom you might believe alive and eager to move, if modesty did not restrain her: so completely did his art conceal its art. Pygmalion gazed in wonder, and his heart drank in the fires of love for that imagined body. Often he laid his hands upon his work, testing whether it was flesh or ivory, and still would not admit that it was ivory.

He kissed her and thought his kisses returned; he spoke to her and held her, and believed his fingers sank into the limbs he touched, and feared that bruises might appear where he had pressed. Now he caressed her, now brought her gifts that girls delight in: shells and smooth pebbles, little birds and flowers of a thousand colors, lilies, painted balls, and the tears of the Heliades that fall from trees. He dressed her limbs in clothes, put jewels on her fingers and long necklaces around her neck; light pearls hung from her ears, and chains upon her breast.

Everything became her; nor did she seem less lovely naked. He laid her on a couch dyed with Sidonian purple, called her his companion of the bed, and rested her reclining head on soft down pillows, as though she could feel them. The festival of Venus, celebrated throughout Cyprus, had come, and heifers with gold upon their curving horns had fallen beneath the blow upon their snowy necks, and incense smoked. Having made his offering, Pygmalion stood before the altar and timidly said, “If you gods can grant all things, I pray that my wife may be”—not daring to say “the ivory maiden”— “a woman like my ivory maiden.”

Golden Venus, present at her own festival, understood what his prayer meant; and, as a sign of her favor, the flame flared up three times and sent its tip into the air. When he returned, he sought the image of his maiden and, bending over the couch, kissed her: she seemed warm. He pressed his lips to hers again and felt her breast with his hands: beneath his touch the ivory softened, lost its hardness, and yielded to his fingers, giving way as wax from Hymettus softens in the sun and, worked beneath the thumb, is molded into many shapes, becoming useful through use itself.

Amazed, rejoicing doubtfully, afraid he was deceived, the lover touched his answered prayer again and yet again. It was flesh: beneath his testing thumb the veins pulsed. Then indeed the hero of Paphos poured out the fullest words of thanks to Venus, and at last pressed his lips to lips that were no illusion. The maiden felt his kisses and blushed, and, lifting her timid eyes to the light, saw her lover and the sky together.

The goddess attended the marriage she had made. And when the moon’s horns had nine times joined to form a full round, the bride bore Paphos, from whom the island takes its name.