335So lakes and rivers take on now these powers, now those; and there was a time when Ortygia swam on the waves; now it stands fixed. 337The Argo feared the Symplegades, spattered by the clash of the waves dashed against them, which now stand unmoved and resist the winds. 340Nor will Etna, which burns with sulphurous furnaces, always be fiery, for it was not always fiery either. 342For if the earth is a living creature, and lives, and has breathing-holes exhaling flame in many places, it can change its passages of breath, and, whenever it moves, close these caverns and open those; 346or if light winds are confined in the deepest caves and hurl rocks against rocks and matter that holds the seeds of flame, and it catches fire from the blows, the caves will be left cold when the winds are calmed; 350or if bituminous forces catch fire, or yellow sulphur blazes with slight fumes: surely when the earth no longer gives food and rich nourishment to the flame, its powers used up over long ages, and its devouring nature lacks its own nourishment, it will not endure hunger, and the fire, deserted, will desert it.
356There is a story that in Hyperborean Pallene there are men who are accustomed to have their bodies covered with light feathers, once they have plunged nine times into the Tritonian marsh. 359For my part I do not believe it: Scythian women too, their limbs sprinkled with drugs, are said to practise the same arts. 361But if any credence is to be given to things proven, do you not see that whatever bodies decay through time and melting heat are turned into small animals? 364Go too, bury chosen bulls once slaughtered (the thing is known by experience): from the rotting entrails here and there are born flower-culling bees, which, after the manner of their parents, haunt the countryside, love work and labour in hope; 368a war-horse buried in the ground is the origin of the hornet; 369if you take the hollow claws from a shore crab and put the rest under earth, from the buried part a scorpion will come forth and threaten with its hooked tail; 372and the country caterpillars that are accustomed to weave leaves with white threads (a thing observed by farmers) change their shape into the funereal butterfly.
375Mud holds seeds that generate green frogs, and generates them without feet, soon gives them legs fit for swimming, and so that the same legs may be fit for long leaps, the hinder ones exceed the front ones in length. 379Nor is the cub which a she-bear has just brought forth a cub, but barely living flesh: by licking, the mother shapes it into limbs and brings it into a form like her own. 382Do you not see that the young of honey-bearing bees, which the six-sided wax covers, are born as bodies without limbs and take on feet late and wings late? 385Juno's bird, which carries stars on its tail, and the armour-bearer of Jupiter, and Cytherea's doves, and the whole race of birds — who would think they could be born from the middle parts of an egg, if he did not know that it happens?
389There are those who believe that, when the spine has rotted in the closed tomb, the human marrow is changed into a snake. 391Yet these draw the beginnings of their kind from others: there is one bird that restores and re-sows itself. 393The Assyrians call it the phoenix; 393it lives not on grain or herbs, but on tears of incense and the juice of amomum. 395When it has completed five centuries of its life, it builds itself a nest in the branches of an ilex or at the top of a trembling palm, with its claws and clean beak. 398As soon as it has strewn this with cassia and ears of smooth nard and crushed cinnamon with yellow myrrh, it lays itself on top and ends its life amid the scents.
401From there, they say, a little phoenix, destined to live as many years, is reborn from its father's body. 403When age has given it strength and it is able to bear a burden, it relieves the branches of the tall tree of the weight of the nest, and dutifully carries both its own cradle and its father's tomb, and having reached the city of Hyperion through the light air, lays it down before the sacred doors in the temple of Hyperion. 408Yet if there is anything of wondrous novelty in these things, let us marvel that the hyena alternates its role, and that the one which just now as a female took a male on its back is now a male; 411that animal too which is nourished on wind and air at once imitates whatever colours it has touched.
413Conquered India gave lynxes to grape-crowned Bacchus: whatever their bladder has released, so they say, is turned into stone and hardens on touching the air. 416So too coral hardens at the moment when it first touches the air: beneath the waves it was a soft plant. 418The day will end and Phoebus will dip his panting horses in the deep sea before I could pursue in words all things changed into new shapes: so we see times change, and these nations gain strength, those fall. 422So Troy was great in wealth and men, and could give so much blood for ten years; now, brought low, she shows only her old ruins and, in place of riches, the tombs of her ancestors.
431Now too rumour says that Dardanian Rome is rising, which, close to the waters of the Apennine-born Tiber, lays the foundations of her state beneath a vast mass: she then is changing her form by growing, and one day will be the head of the boundless world. 435So they say the prophets and the fate-telling oracles declare, and, as far as I remember, Helenus, son of Priam, had said to Aeneas, when the Trojan state was tottering, as he wept and despaired of his safety: "Son of the goddess, if you know well enough the forebodings of my mind, while you are safe Troy will not wholly fall! 441Flame and sword will give you a path: you will go, and carry Pergamum, snatched away, with you, until a foreign field, kinder than your native one, falls to Troy and to you.
444I see too a city owed to Phrygian descendants, as great as none is, or will be, or has been seen in earlier years. 446Other leaders through long ages will make it powerful, but one born of Iulus' blood will make it mistress of the world; 448when earth has had the use of him, the heavenly seats will enjoy him, and heaven will be his end."