Creation:
Metamorphoses, by Ovid (Book 1.1-51)
My soul is moved to speak of bodies changed into new forms; O gods––you who have changed these forms and your own as well––breathe life into my words and lead my song, in a continuous thread, from the origins of the world down to the present time.
Before the earth and the sea, before the sky
extended over them, the whole entirety of
nature in the world was a single entity, which we call “Chaos.”
A rude, jumbled mass of inert matter; a poorly-combined
host of atoms all seething together without shape.
It was dark; there were no Titans yet, no light-bringer;
nor Phoebe’s glistening pale horns rising each morning;
nor the earth that balances in the air by its own weight; nor
Amphitrite extending her arms along the wide shores of
the globe; and though there was earth, sea, and air, it
was unstable earth, unswimmable sea, and lightless
air. Things struggled one against another, unformed;
everything opposed everything else; cold fought
with hot, wet with dry, soft with hard, matter with the void.
But either a god or primal nature ended this disorder,
drawing boundaries between land and sky, sea and
ground, separating the light air of heaven and the dense
air of earth. After he had disentangled the elements
and freed them from their anarchy, he fixed them
in their rightful places in tranquil peace. The fire
that lights the weightless heavens flew upward and
fixed itself in highest dome of the sky; next came
the air in lightness and locale; and earth, heavier than
either, dragged the dense elements down where they
compressed under their own weight; above it flowed
water, settling between the earth and the air.
When that unknown god had finished the work
ordering these divisions and allotted each element
its own place, he started time by fashioning the earth
into an sphere so that its face was uniform on all sides.
Then he ordered the sea to swell and spread
alongside the swift winds that flowed up the coasts.
He added fountains and standing pools and lakes
and forced sloped banks to gird wide-spread rivers,
some of which are swallowed by the earth, while
others arrive at the sea and enter that expanse of
unrestrained waters, beating at a coastline instead
of a riverbank. He ordered the fields to extend, the
valleys to subside, leaves to clothe the forests, rocks
to rise into mountains, and just as the heavens are
divided into two broad zones at the right, two at the
left, with a fifth hotter between them, thus did this god
adorn the enclosed earth’s face with the same number
and division. The middle zone is too hot to inhabit while
the poles too covered with deep snow; he placed
two regions between poles and equator and gave them
temperate climes, there balancing warm and cool.
Creation:
Original Latin Text
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas)
adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!
Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum
unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe,
quem dixere chaos: rudis indigestaque moles
nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem
non bene iunctarum discordia semina rerum.
nullus adhuc mundo praebebat lumina Titan,
nec nova crescendo reparabat cornua Phoebe,
nec circumfuso pendebat in aere tellus
ponderibus librata suis, nec bracchia longo
margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite;
utque erat et tellus illic et pontus et aer,
sic erat instabilis tellus, innabilis unda,
lucis egens aer; nulli sua forma manebat,
obstabatque aliis aliud, quia corpore in uno
frigida pugnabant calidis, umentia siccis,
mollia cum duris, sine pondere, habentia pondus.
Hanc deus et melior litem natura diremit.
nam caelo terras et terris abscidit undas
et liquidum spisso secrevit ab aere caelum.
quae postquam evolvit caecoque exemit acervo,
dissociata locis concordi pace ligavit:
ignea convexi vis et sine pondere caeli
emicuit summaque locum sibi fecit in arce;
proximus est aer illi levitate locoque;
densior his tellus elementaque grandia traxit
et pressa est gravitate sua; circumfluus umor
ultima possedit solidumque coercuit orbem.
Sic ubi dispositam quisquis fuit ille deorum
congeriem secuit sectamque in membra coegit,
principio terram, ne non aequalis ab omni
parte foret, magni speciem glomeravit in orbis.
tum freta diffundi rapidisque tumescere ventis
iussit et ambitae circumdare litora terrae;
addidit et fontes et stagna inmensa lacusque
fluminaque obliquis cinxit declivia ripis,
quae, diversa locis, partim sorbentur ab ipsa,
in mare perveniunt partim campoque recepta
liberioris aquae pro ripis litora pulsant.
iussit et extendi campos, subsidere valles,
fronde tegi silvas, lapidosos surgere montes,
utque duae dextra caelum totidemque sinistra
parte secant zonae, quinta est ardentior illis,
sic onus inclusum numero distinxit eodem
cura dei, totidemque plagae tellure premuntur.
quarum quae media est, non est habitabilis aestu;
nix tegit alta duas; totidem inter utramque locavit
temperiemque dedit mixta cum frigore flamma.