Book V
Perseus and Andromeda’s wedding feast is interrupted by Phineus, Andromeda’s original betrothed. Cepheus opposes Phineus’s complaint, claiming Perseus deserves Andromeda because of his heroic feat. Phineus throws a spear at Perseus, who then throws it back, but both men miss. Instead, Perseus hits and kills Rhoetus. Chaos breaks out, and many men are killed in the melee, including two young friends, one of whom dies defending the other. Phineus is afraid to approach Perseus, so he continues to fling spears his way. Emathion comes forward to chastise the fighters, goes to an altar to pray, and is swiftly beheaded. The tide turns so that Perseus has no more supporters and must fight on his own. He warns his friends to look away and pulls out Medusa’s head to turn his remaining opponents to stone. Each man attempts to continue fighting, thinking he will not fall victim to the Gorgon. By the time the battle ends, two hundred men have turned to stone. Phineus finally cedes to Perseus, but the hero turns him into a statue that captures his weakness and cowardice.
Perseus and Andromeda return to Argos, where the young hero challenges Proteus, then turns Polydectes to stone because the ruler never paid what Perseus considered his due for his many brave exploits. After supporting Perseus through his trials, Minerva travels to Helicon to visit the Muses. She asks them if it’s true that a fountain has begun to spout water where a piece of land was hit by Pegasus’s hoof, as he was born of Medusa’s blood. Urania confirms the story and takes Minerva to the fountain. The Muses confide in Minerva that they no longer feel safe; recently, an evil tyrant tried to lock them in his palace and sexually assault them. Fortunately, they were able to fly away and escape, but the tyrant chased them, then jumped to his death from the tower. The Muses and Minerva hear the chattering of the magpies, which motivates Calliope to tell the story of the group of sisters, who are daughters of Pierus and were transformed into birds.
The Pierus sisters challenged the Muses to a singing contest, and the sisters began the competition with a song about the Olympian gods being defeated by the Titans. Calliope was then trusted by the Muses to sing for them, and she told the tragic story of the maiden Proserpina. Calliope began by telling of the girl’s mother, Ceres, the goddess of the harvest. She was frustrated by a series of volcanoes, earthquakes, and other disturbances caused by the exile of Typhon under the isle of Sicily. Pluto himself worried that these quakes would cause a tear in the earth and expose his underworld, so he traveled to ensure the earth’s structure is secure.
Meanwhile, Venus and Cupid saw Pluto traveling; Venus decided to have Cupid shoot him with an arrow to make him fall in love so that her reign would hold sway even in the underworld. After he was hit, Neptune lays eyes on Proserpina and is immediately smitten. The god accosted her, tore her dress, then carried her away in his chariot. The nymph Cyane attempted to stop the abduction, but Pluto evaded her; in her grief, Cyane wasted away into the water that she once ruled over. Ceres looked everywhere for her daughter but to no avail. She took refuge at an old woman’s cottage and drank some water; a young boy insulted her “greed,” so she transformed him into a newt.
Ceres goes back to Sicily and visits Cyane’s spring. The nymph would have told Ceres the whole...
(This entire section contains 1084 words.)
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story if she still had the ability to speak, but the evidence is still there in the form of Proserpina’s girdle. The goddess “curse[s] / every region / on earth as ungrateful” of her crops and destroys fields and farms in retaliation for the loss of her daughter. The nymph Arethusa emerges from her waters to tell Ceres to give up her search because she knows where Prosperina is: the underworld. She reports that the maiden is now Pluto’s queen. Ceres goes to Jupiter to protest this development and that the other gods kept this information from her for so long. Jupiter sides with Pluto, claiming his abduction of Prosperina was “an act of love” and that now the two are married. He relents that if Proserpina did not eat any food in the underworld, she can come back to earth with her mother. As it turns out, Proserpina did eat pomegranate seeds, an act that was reported by Ascalaphus, who is punished by Prosperpina by being changed to “a bird of ill /omen,” the screech-owl.
Calliope also mentions the Sirens’ transformation from maidens who sang well to hybrid creatures with bird feathers and human voices. They had witnessed Proserpina’s abduction and wanted to help find her, so they prayed for the gift of flight. Jupiter decides that Proserpina can stay in the underworld for six months and live with her mother above ground for the other six months of each year. The Muse goes back to Arethusa’s story. The nymph tells Ceres that she had attracted the attention of a river god, Alpheus, but she was embarrassed and tried to escape him. She jumped into a stream but was startled by a strange noise in the stream, which was the voice of the river god. Arethusa ran away but was chased by Alpheus; she begged for Diana’s help, and the goddess hid her by turning her into mist. Once Arethusa transformed into water, though, the river god united with her by becoming water himself. Diana drove a crack in the earth to allow Arethusa to escape to Ortygia.
The final part of Calliope’s song tells the story of Triptolemus, who Ceres orders to take her chariot and spread seeds over the earth to replant the crops. The Scythian ruler Lyncus wants to take credit for Ceres and Triptolemus’s work. He invites the young man to stay at his house and tries to stab him in his sleep. To save Triptolemus, she turns Lyncus into a lynx and tells her assistant to leave in the chariot. The Muses win the song competition, but the Pierides insult them, then laugh when threatened with punishment. The women are transformed into magpies, “the scolds of the woodlands,” and are always known for their annoying chatter.
