Just inside the cut, Martin and Mandelbaum face off in what should be an exhilerating match of prowess and manhood. Let's join the action already in progress…

This had me laughing out loud at one point, and I just thought I should share it with all of my 1½ readers.

The following excerpt is from Charles Martin's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book I, the first section on Jove & Io. Io by now has already been turned into a cow by Jove and she's fled and is licking her father's hand and begins to cry. I take up with line 896:

If words would just have come, she would have spoken,
telling them who she was, how this had happened,
and begging their assistance in her case;
but with her hoof, she drew lines in the dust,
and letters of the words she could not speak
told the sad story of her transformation.

"Oh, wretched me," cried Io's father, clinging
to the lowing calf's horns and snowy neck.
"Oh, wretched me!" he groaned. "Are you the child
for whom I searched the earth in every part?
Lost, you were less a grief than you are, found!

"You make no answer, unable to respond
to our speech in language of your own,
but from your breast come resonant deep sighs
and—all that you can manage now—you moo!

"But I—all unaware of this—was busy
arranging marriage for you, in the hopes
of having a son-in-law and grandchildren.
Now I must pick your husband from my herd,
and now must find your offspring there as well!

"Nor can I end this suffering by death;
it is a hurtful thing to be a god,
for the gates of death are firmly closed against me,
and our sorrows must go on forever."

I can see this all in my head—tragic, farcical. It makes me think of British humor. Poor Io, seduced by Jove, is then turned by the king of gods into a cow so that Juno doesn't catch him with his godly knickers down. Io's beautiful voice is now a bovine "moo". She catches up with dear old dad, and is crying and seeking solace and sympathy, and all dad can think about is grandkids, be they gods or cattle. Hillarious! Poor him—he even wishes he could die, meanwhile she's stuck in the shape of a heifer. Moo.

Martin, Charles, trans. Metamorphoses. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005. 41-42.