Near the city of Babylon of what is called Mesopotamia lived a god-loving and rich man named Kleinis, who had many cattle, asses and sheep. Apollo and Artemis loved him exceptionally, and very often he travelled with these gods to the temple of Apollo of the Hyperboreans and saw them performing sacred sacrifices of asses to him. And after Kleinis returned to Babylon he wanted to worship his god just as among the Hyperboreans, and he set up a hecatomb of asses by the altar. But Apollo appeared and threatened to kill him unless he halted these sacrifices and would slaughter for him instead the customary goats, sheep and cattle, because the sacrifice of asses brought him pleasure [only] among the Hyperboreans. And Kleinis, afraid of the threat, sent the asses away from the altar, and he passed on to his children the instructions he had heard. He had sons, Lykios and Ortygios and Harpasos, and a daughter Artemiche, from their mother Harpes.
After they heard, Lykios and Harpasos were demanding to slaughter the asses and delight in the feast, while Ortygios and Artemiche were urging to obey Apollo, and Kleinis was persuaded more by the latter. But Harpasos and Lykios by force loosened the asses from their bindings and started driving them to the altar. And the god put a fury into the asses, and they began to bite the children, their servants and Kleinis. And as they were dying they cried out to the gods. Poseidon pitied Harpe and Harpasos and changed them into the birds called by those names. And Leto and Artemis wanted to rescue Kleinis, Artemiche and Ortygios, who were not the cause of the sacrilege. Apollo granted Leto and Artemis this favor, and as they were about to die he changed them all into birds.
Kleinis became a sub-eagle, which is second among birds after the eagle, and not difficult to recognize. For [the eagle] is a fawn-eater, dark, large and strong, and the sub-eagle is blacker and smaller. And Lykios was changed into a raven of white color, but later by Apollo’s will he became glossy black, because he was first to report that Koronis, daughter of Phlegyas, had married Alkyoneus. Artemiche became a piphinx, a bird beloved to gods and humans, and Ortygius an aigithallos, because he was persuading his father to slaughter goats (αἶγες) for Apollo instead of asses.
Author: Antoninus Liberalis
Title of Work: Metamorphoses
Location in Work: 20
Date of Work: c. 200 CE
Original Language: Greek (Attic)
Original Text:
Τῆς λεγομένης Μεσοποταμίας περὶ Βαβυλῶνα πόλιν ᾤκησεν ἀνὴρ θεοφιλὴς καὶ πλούσιος ὄνομα Κλεῖνις, ἔχων πολλοὺς βοῦς καὶ ὄνους καὶ πρόβατα. τοῦτον ἐκτόπως ἐφίλησεν Ἀπόλλων καὶ Ἄρτεμις, καὶ πλειστάκις ὁμοῦ τοῖς θεοῖς τούτοις ἀφίκετο πρὸς τὸν ναὸν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος τοῦ ἐν Ὑπερβορέοις καὶ εἶδεν ἱερουργουμένας αὐτῷ τὰς θυσίας τῶν ὄνων. παραγενόμενος δὲ εἰς Βαβυλῶνα καὶ αὐτὸς ἐβούλετο καθάπερ ἐν Ὑπερβορέοις ἱερεύειν τῷ θεῷ καὶ τὴν ἑκατόμβην τῶν ὄνων ἔστησεν παρὰ τὸν βωμόν. Ἀπόλλων δὲ παραγενόμενος ἠπείλησεν ἀποκτενεῖν αὐτόν, εἰ μὴ παύσαιτο τῆς θυσίας ταύτης καὶ κατὰ τὸ σύνηθες αἶγας αὐτῷ καὶ πρόβατα καὶ βοῦς ἱερεύσει[εν]· τὴν γὰρ τῶν ὄνων θυσίαν ἐν Ὑπερβορέοις ἀγομένην [μόνην] αὐτῷ καθ’ ἡδονὴν εἶναι. καὶ ὁ Κλεῖνις δείσας τὴν ἀπειλὴν ἀπῆγεν ἀπὸ τοῦ βωμοῦ τοὺς ὄνους καὶ τὸν λόγον, ὅν ἤκουσεν, ἐξέφερεν πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας. ἦσαν δὲ αὐτῷ παῖδες Λύκιος καὶ Ὀρτύγιος καὶ Ἅρπασος καὶ θυγάτηρ Ἀρτεμίχη παῖδες ἐκ μητρὸς Ἅρπης.
Λύκιος μὲν οὖν καὶ Ἅρπασος ἀκούσαντες ἐκέλευον ἱερεύειν τοὺς ὄνους καὶ τέρπεσθαι τῇ ἑορτῇ, Ὀρτύγιος δὲ καὶ Ἀρτεμίχη πείθεσθαι τῶ Ἀπόλλωνι προσέτασσον, κἀπεὶ τούτοις ὁ Κλεῖνις ἐπείθετο μᾶλλον, Ἅρπασός τε καὶ Λύκιος κατὰ βίαν ἐκλύσαντες τῶν δεσμῶν τοὺς ὄνους ἀπήλαυνον παρὰ τὸν βωμόν. καὶ ὁ θεὸς ἐνέβαλεν τοῖς ὄνοις λύσσαν· οἱ δὲ τούς τε παῖδας καὶ τοὺς θέραπας αὐτῶν καὶ τὸν Κλεῖνιν κατήσθιον. οἱ δὲ ἀπολλύμενοι τοὺς θεοὺς ἐπεβοῶντο. καὶ Ἅρπην μὲν καὶ Ἅρπασον ᾤκτειρε Ποσειδῶν καὶ ἐποίησεν αὐτοὺς ὄρνιθας τῷ αὐτῷ λεγομένους ὀνόματι, Λητὼ δὲ καὶ Ἄρτεμις ἔγνωσαν ἀνασῷσαι τὸν Κλεῖνιν καὶ τὴν Ἀρτεμίχην καὶ τὸν Ὀρτύγιον, ὅτι οὐκ αἴτιοι τῶν ἀσεβημάτων ἦσαν· Ἀπόλλων δὲ Λητοῖ καὶ Ἀρτέμιδι δίδωσι τὴν χάριν καὶ πρόσθεν ἤ ἀποθανεῖν μεταβαλὼν ἐποίησεν πάντας ὄρνιθας.
καὶ ἐγένετο Κλεῖνις μὲν ὑπαίετος· οὗτός ἐστι δεύτερος ὀρνίθων μετὰ τὸν αἰετόν, διαγνῶναι δ’ οὐ χαλεπός· ὁ μὲν γάρ ἐστι νεβροφόνος ἐρεμνὸς μέγας τε καὶ ἄλκιμος, ὁ δ’ ὑπαίετος μελάντερος καὶ ἐλάσσων ἐκείνου. Λύκιος δὲ μεταβαλὼν ἐγένετο κόραξ τὸ χρῶμα λευκός, αὖτις δὲ βουλῇ Ἀπόλλωνος ἐγένετο κυάνεος, ὅτι πρῶτος ἤγγειλε Κορωνίδα τὴν Φλεγύου θυγατέρα γαμηθεῖσαν Ἁλκυονεῖ. Ἀρτεμίχη δ’ ἐγένετο πίφιγξ, θεοῖς τε καὶ ἀνθρώποις προσφιλὴς ὄρνις, Ὀρτύγιος δὲ αἰγιθαλλός, ὅτι τὸν πατέρα Κλεῖνιν ἀνέπειθεν αἶγας ἀντὶ τῶν ὄνων ἱερεύειν Ἀπόλλωνι.
Reference Edition: Papathomopoulos, Les Métamorphoses
Source of Date of Work: Celoria, Metamorphoses, 2
Commentary:
This story’s account of a man somehow traveling with Apollo and Artemis to Hyperborea was likely indirectly influenced by the Arimaspeia, via Simmias of Rhodes, a poet of the early Hellenistic period who in his poem known as Apollo appears to have imitated the Arimaspeia.
There is a note accompanying this chapter of Antoninus Liberalis’ Metamorphoses in the sole extant manuscript saying: ‘Boios tells, book 2, and Simmias of Rhodes, Apollo.’ But the note is probably not the author’s (Celoria, Metamorphoses, 16-17), and though there are good reasons to be confident that much of this story was indeed drawn from a lost work of Boios known as the Ornithogonia, it is much less clear whether Simmias’ Apollo was truly a source for this text, or if Simmias’ Apollo merely included a similar, parallel story.
Boios’ work was a collection of stories that featured people getting turned into birds, and it is also a cited or inferred source of many other chapters of Antoninus’ Metamorphoses (Lightfoot, Ovid Hellenistic, 228). Boios’ work is also thought to have been the main source for a similar Latin work by Aemilus Macer, an elder contemporary of Ovid, also known as the Ornithogonia (Courtney, Fragmentary Poets, 292-299). Ovid mentions in his Tristia (4.10.43) listening to Macer recite his work on birds, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses includes elements of several stories that can be traced to Boios, including a story of a white raven reporting Koronis’ marriage to Apollo and being changed to black as punishment (Lightfoot, op. cit., 229; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2.531-632). An older account of Koronis also features a raven reporting news of her wedding to Apollo (Hesiodic Catalogue, F60), but that account’s extant fragments don’t mention the raven being white or changing to black.
That said, there is good reason to doubt that Antoninus followed Boios closely. Another of the chapters of Antoninus’ Metamorphoses (16), which has an accompanying note similarly stating that Boios told the story, is very different from the version of the story that another writer, Athenaios, tells us that Boios told (Athenaios 9.393e-f; Celoria, Metamorphoses, 150-151). Athenaios has a relatively good, albeit not perfect, reputation among scholars for quoting or paraphrasing his sources accurately.
If Antoninus Liberalis drew from Simmias’ Apollo when composing this story, it seems likely that he drew indirectly via Boios, who might have based his story or part of it on Simmias’ Apollo. Both Boios and Simmias have traditionally been dated to the early Hellenistic period without strong evidence, but for Simmias we have a significant amount of his poetry preserved verbatim to lend some confidence to the dating, whereas the traditional dating of Boios hangs on a thin thread: Athenaios, introducing his summary of the Boios story, wrote: ‘Boios in the Ornithogonia, or Boio, as Philochoros puts it [...]’ – and Philochoros is known to have been a contemporary of Ptolemy II. The Greek Βοῖος (masculine) and Βοιώ (feminine) aren’t easily confused, and though Greek poetesses were very rare, there actually was an early Hellenistic poetess named Boio. So it seems most likely that Philochoros was referring to her, and either she actually wrote the Ornithogonia whose later readers assumed it was written by a man, or Athenaios misread Philochoros who was not referring to the Ornithogonia.
In a fragment of Simmias’ Apollo quoted verbatim by Ioannis Tzetzes, the narrator appears to be describing extracorporeal flight over people and locations that figured in the Arimaspeia. The narrator of Simmias’ Apollo could have been the Kleinis of this story, but it’s impossible to be sure. The elements of this story that seem very likely to have been included in Simmias’ Apollo are a man traveling to Hyperborea, and that man witnessing a sacrifice of asses at the temple to Apollo in Hyperborea. The former is certainly imitative of the Arimaspeia and the latter seems likely to be.
Whether other elements of this story were told by Simmias seems very uncertain: the numerous visits to Hyperborea, the family’s tussle over whether to sacrifice asses, the transformations to birds, and the white raven later being turned black for snitching on Koronis, all seem unrelated to the fragment of Simmias’ Apollo quoted by Tzetzes – and also not much like the Arimaspeia, in which Aristeas’ soul apparently took the form of a raven during at least part of the flight to Hyperborea. On the other hand, Boios’ story of the raven reporting on Koronis surely stems from the Hesiodic Catalogue (F60), and Simmias is known to draw from the Catalogue including in the fragment of Simmias’ Apollo quoted by Tzetzes (see the commentary to that text). So it would not be too surprising if Simmias somehow combined a reworking of the Catalogue’s story of Apollo and raven with a reworking of the Arimaspeia’s story of an Apollo-seized disembodied soul flying in the form of a raven to Hyperborea, perhaps even using the same device of the main character’s errant son that this chapter of Antoninus uses.
J.D.P. Bolton also discussed this text’s relevance to the Arimaspeia (Bolton, Aristeas, 69).
Concordance: Powell, Alexandrina, Simias, F2; Fränkel, De Simia, F2