898Galatea had stopped speaking, and, the gathering breaking up, the Nereids depart and swim through the calm waves. 900Scylla returns (for she does not dare trust herself to the open sea) and either wanders unclothed on the thirsty sand, or, when she is tired, finding a secluded inlet of the water, cools her limbs enclosed in its waves. 904See, cleaving the sea, a new inhabitant of the deep, his limbs lately changed at Euboean Anthedon, Glaucus comes, and, seized with desire at the sight of the maiden, he stops still and speaks whatever words he thinks may delay her flight; 908yet she flees, and, swift with fear, reaches the top of a mountain set near the shore.
910Facing the sea there is a huge peak, gathered into a single point, long and arching beneath its trees out over the waters: here she stood, and, safe in the place, not knowing whether he is monster or god, she marvels at his colour and the hair covering his shoulders and the back beneath, and that a twisting fish takes up his loins at their end. 916He sensed it, and, leaning on the rock that stood nearest, said, 'I am no prodigy nor a wild beast, maiden, but a god of the water: neither Proteus has greater power in the sea, nor Triton, nor Palaemon, son of Athamas. 920Yet before I was mortal, but, devoted, as you may guess, to the deep seas, I busied myself only in them.
922For now I would drag nets that drew in fish, now, sitting on a rock, I would manage line with rod. 924There are shores bordering a green meadow, of which one part is bounded by waves, the other by grass, which neither horned heifers have harmed by grazing, nor have you, gentle sheep or shaggy goats, cropped; 928no bee has carried off from there flowers gathered for their seed, no festive garlands have been given from it for heads, nor have hands bearing sickles ever cut it; 930I was the first to sit on that turf, while I dried my dripping lines, and, so as to count my captive fish in order, I laid out upon it those which either chance had driven into my nets or their own credulity onto my hooks.
935The thing seems like an invention (but what does inventing profit me?): when the grass was touched, my catch began to move and to turn from side to side and to strive on land as if in the sea. 938And while I hesitate and wonder at the same time, the whole crowd flees into its own waves, and they leave their new master and the shore. 940I was amazed and doubt long and seek the cause, whether some god had done this, or the juice of the grass. 942"Yet what herb," I said, "has such powers?", and with my hand I plucked the grass and, once plucked, bit it with my teeth.
944Scarcely had my throat drunk down the unknown juices, when suddenly I felt my heart tremble within me and my breast seized with love of another nature, and I could not resist for long, and "Farewell, land, never to be sought again!" 948I said, and plunged my body beneath the sea. 949The gods of the sea receive me and deem me worthy of honour as their companion, and ask Ocean and Tethys to remove from me whatever mortal nature I bore: I am purified by them, and after a song that purges wrong has been chanted nine times over me, I am ordered to put my breast beneath a hundred rivers; 954at once rivers glide from different directions and whole waters are poured over my head.
956So far I can relate to you events worth recalling, so far I remember them; my mind did not perceive the rest. 958When it returned, I found myself different in my whole body from what I had lately been, and not the same in mind. 960Then for the first time I saw this beard green with rust, and my hair, which I sweep through the long seas, and my huge shoulders and blue arms and my legs curving at their end into a finned fish. 964Yet what does this appearance help, what does it help to have pleased the sea gods, what does it help to be a god, if you are not touched by these things?' 966As he was saying such things, and would have said more, Scylla left the god; 967he rages, and, angered by the rejection, he makes for the marvel-filled halls of Circe, daughter of the Titan.