The Porcupine
I heard, Stymphalus, your famous legend of birds armed
with metal plumes they fired like arrows as they flew,
and I believed that tale of iron feathers nonsense
a long time. Now I change my mind! The porcupine
affirms the birds of Hercules.
His protruding snout
resembles a pig’s. A row of stiff barbs like horns bristle
the length of his forehead. Red coals he has for eyes.
Four stub legs like a puppy’s prop his shaggy torso.
Nature has nonetheless endowed this dwarfish beast
with marvelous defense: his whole hide forms a rigid thicket
of menacing spikes, a painted crop of sharpened lances
ready for battle. Their roots are white and fastened firm
in leathery skin. Their shafts of variegated colors
alternate with black bands and have the length and texture
of feathery quills. Like quills they taper, narrowing
gradually to a tip of needle-fine sharpness.
Yet this beast’s armory, unlike the rural hedgehog’s,
detaches. With thick volleys he can fight afar,
safeguarding his limbs by discharging through the air
a barrage of projectiles his own pelt provides.
Sometimes, like a fleeing Parthian, he feigns retreat
then strikes! Sometimes entrenched in earth like a fortress
he pelts his foe with wave on wave of stinging darts
while new barbs, bristling from within, thicken his flanks.
He fights with his whole body, and his quivering hide
bellows raucously. One thinks a line of soldiers roused
by trumpet blast charged headlong into the enemy,
such racket from this little fellow! Besides his weapons,
he displays a steely battle nerve, a calculating fury
which never wastes a shot, for he is content to threaten
and never fires unless his life is in jeopardy.
He never misses: his missiles always find their target
no matter how far off, for a precise flick of skin
gives his darts the course and velocity he desires.
What human effort, fruit of our sagacious brains,
can match him? Hunters cruelly rob Gortynia’s goats
of horns; they make the hard bone pliable above
a flame’s heat; they can string their bows with cattle gut,
set feathers into arrows tipped with iron heads.
But see this little creature! His body is his weapon!
He is himself all he requires, carries all with him:
he is his quiver, he his arrow, he his bow.
One animal possesses every tool of war!
And if all handiwork man fashions over ages
is imitation, weaponry that strikes a distant foe
derives, I think, from him—he taught Cydonian archers
their marksmanship, the Parthian how to shoot in flight,
both simply pupils of the barb-backed porcupine.
Translation © Carey Jobe. Original:
De hystrice
Audieram memoranda tuas Stymphale volucres
spicula vulnifico quondam sparsisse volatu,
nec mihi credibilis ferratae fabula pinnae
visa diu. datur ecce fides et cognitus hystrix
Herculeas adfirmat aves.
Os longius ille
adsimulat porcum. mentitae cornua saetae
summa fronte rigent. oculis rubet igneus ardor.
parva sub hirsute catuli vestigia dorso.
hanc tamen exiguam miro natura tueri
praesidio dignata feram: stat corpore toto
silva minax, iaculisque rigens in proelia crescit
picturata seges; quorum cute fixa tenaci
alba submit radix, alternantesque colorum
tincta vices, spatiis internigrantibus, exit
in solidae speciem pinnae, tenuataque furtim
levis in extremum sese producit acumen.
Sed non haec acies ritu silvestris echini
fixa manet. crebris propugnat iactibus ultro
et longe sua membra tegit, tortumque per aras
evolat excuse nativum missile tergo.
interdum fugiens Parthorum more sequentem
vulnerat; interdum positis velut ordine castris
terrificum densa mucronum verberat unda
et consanguineis hastilibus asperat armos:
militat omne ferae corpus vibrataque rauco
terga fragore sonant. stimulis accensa tubarum
agmina conlatis credas confligere signis:
tantus in angusto strepitus furit. additur armis
calliditas parcusque sui tumor iraque numquam
prodiga telorum, caute contenta mirari
nec nisi servandae iactus impendere vitae.
error abest: certum sollertia destinate ictum
nil spatio fallente modum, servatque tenorem
mota cutis doctique regit conanima nisus.
Quid labor humanus tantum ratione sagaci
proficit? cripiunt trucibus Gortynia capris
cornua; subiectis cadem lentescere cogunt
ignibus; intendunt taurine viscere nervos;
instruitur pinnis ferroque armature harundo.
ecce brevis propriis munitur bestia telis
externam nec quaerit opem; fert omnia secum:
se pharetra, sese iaculo, sese utitur arcu.
unum animal cunctas bellorum possidet artes.
Quodsi omnis nostrae paulatim industria vitae
fluxit ab exemplis, quidquid procul appetit hostem,
hinc reor inventum, morem hinc traxisse Cydonas
bellandi Parthosque retro didicisse ferire
prima sagittiferae pecudis documenta secutos.
Notes:
Claudius Claudianus (370-404 A.D.) was the great poet of the Roman Empire. His career was short but brilliant. At an early age he became, in effect, court poet for the Emperor Honorius (reigned 393-423 A.D.). He composed a host of praise poems for emperor, court favorites, and generals, invectives against court foes, and many shorter poems that reveal his personal character and an interest in nature, of which The Porcupine is an example. Claudian disappears from history without explanation a few years before the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D.
The Porcupine is composed in Latin dactylic hexameter, the meter of epic, and describes its subject in mock-heroic terms. Stymphalus, mentioned at the beginning of the poem, is a region in the central Peloponnesus of Greece. The birds of Stymphalus, according to Greek mythology, were man-eating raptors dwelling in the marshes of the region that had beaks of bronze and metallic feathers they could shoot at their victims. Killing the Stymphalian birds was one of the Twelve Labors accomplished by Heracles. The Parthians were noted for their skill in shooting arrows over their shoulder while retreating on horseback. Gortynia and Cydonia are both localities in Crete; the archers of Crete were famous in antiquity for their skilled bowmanship.
Carey Jobe