METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV « Atlas, the time will come when your tree will be spoiled of its gold, and he who gets the glory of this spoil will be Jove's son." Fearing this, Atlas had enclosed his orchard with massive walls and had put a huge dragon there to watch it; and he kept off all strangers from his boundaries. And now to Perseus, too, he said: "Hence afar, lest the glory of your deeds, which you falsely brag of, and lest this Jupiter of yours be far from aiding you." He added force to threats, and was trying to thrust out the other, who held back and manfully resisted while he urged his case with soothing speech. At length, finding him self unequal in strength-for who would be a match in strength for Atlas?-he said: "Well, since so small a favour you will not grant to me, let me give you a boon"; and, himself turning his back, he held out from his left hand the ghastly Medusa-head. Straightway Atlas became a mountain huge as the giant had been; his beard and hair were changed to trees, his shoulders and arms to spreading ridges; what had been his head was now the mountain's top, and his bones were changed to stones. Then he rew to monstrous size in all his parts-for so, O gods, ye had willed it-and the whole heaven with all its stars rested upon his head. Now Aeolus, the son of Hippotas, had shut the winds in their everlasting prison, and the bright morning star that wakes men to their toil had risen in the heavens. Then Perseus bound on lboth his feet the wings he had laid by, girt on his hooked sword, and soon in swift flight was cleaving the thin air. Having left behind countless peoples all around him and below, he spied at last the Ethiopians and Cepheus' realm. There unrighteous Ammon had bidden Andromeda, though innocent, to 225
