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Book IX - p. 199 ACHELOUS AND HERCULES THRU TO DRYOPE p.211



Hercules and Achelous in a Roman wall painting from the
Hall of the Augustales.

Achelous is subdued even after changing himself into a snake and then into a Bull. Hercules wins Deianira and marries her. 
============ Time passes here.=========
 Nessus, a centaur, abducts Deianira; Hercules returns after many love affairs, subdues and slays Nessus. But it's a lingering death ( pierced with an arrow). His blood bearing the Hydra's poison soaks Hercules tunic after Nessus has given it to Deianira,
"A talisman, he said, to kindle love...
Long years had passed, and Hercules' great deeds
Had filled the world and sated Juno's hate...'At Cenaeum, when rumour rode ahead--Rumour who talks and loves to tangle true with false, and from near nothing flourishes
On her own lies --and swiftly reaches the ears
Of Deianira, rumour that her lord was held in thrall by love of Iole. 
Her doting heart believed."
Deianira decides...
"To send the shirt imbued with Nessus' blood to fortify her husband's failing love"


==============================================================
Lichas, the servant of Hercules has given Hercules the shirt sealing his death. 

Hercules explodes in flames. He yells out to Juno:
'Feast', he cried, 'Juno! Feast upon my doom!'
Then he recites several of his deeds

Hercules says:
"Lichas!' he cried,
Pain mounting up to madness, 'It was you
Gave me this gift of doom! Yes, you'll be my
Murderer!' Lichas paled and shuddering
In terror tried to stammer his excuse,
And made to clasp his master's knees. But he
Snatched him away and whirled him round and round,
And flung him like a sling-shot out to sea,
The Euboean sea. Along that airy path
He hardened, as in icy winds,* it's said,
Raindrops congeal and turn to snow, and snow,
Soft swirling flakes of snow, combine to form
Round stones of hail; so Lichas, hurled away--"
And turned to flinty rock.

Hercules in death is born again, a god.                                 


"THE BIRTH OF HERCULES   (Transformation)

 'May the gods favour you when your time comes, 
With no long painful waiting when you call 
On Ilithyia,* who attends the pangs
And fears of labour"

 After much pain of child labor, Hercules is born

Priapus - Greek god of fertility.
"Damn what am I going to do now?"



Lotis was a nymph mentioned by Ovid. In his account, at the Liberalia festival, Priapus tried to rape her when everyone had fallen asleep, but she was awakened by a sudden cry of Silenus's donkey and ran off, leaving Priapus in embarrassment ---] In another account, she was changed into a lotus tree to escape Priapus; later,


The story of Priapus and Lotis,
engraving by Giovanni Battista Palumba, c. 1510

Dryope picked a flower off the tree Lotis had become, and was transformed into a black poplar.

This shrub, you see
(Too late the peasants told us), was the nymph Lotis who fled Priapus' lechery
And found changed features there but kept her name.
 Nothing of this my sister knew. She'd said
Prayers to the nymphs and now in terror tried to
Turn away and leave, but found her feet
Rooted.
Sad ending to this tale as she is enveloped in roots, bark and leaves and asks that her son be led to play beneath her tree.

 "Her words, her life, together ceased to flow;
Her changeling boughs long held her body's glow."

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