Metamorphoses book 4, lines 169-189
by Ovid
In Thebes, royal sisters are refusing to join ceremonies celebrating Bacchus. They will come to regret this, but for now they pass the time by weaving, spinning and telling stories instead, including this piece of gossip about Venus’s love-affair with Mars.
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“Hunc quoque, siderea qui temperat omnia luce,
cepit amor Solem: Solis referemus amores.
primus adulterium Veneris cum Marte putatur
hic vidisse deus: videt hic deus omnia primus.
indoluit facto, Iunonigenaeque marito
furta tori furtique locum monstravit. at illi
et mens et quod opus fabrilis dextra tenebat
excidit. extemplo graciles ex aere catenas
retiaque et laqueos, quae lumina fallere possent,
elimat (non illud opus tenuissima vincant
stamina, non summo quae pendet aranea tigno),
utque leves tactus momentaque parva sequantur
efficit et lecto circumdata collocat arte.
ut venere torum coniunx et adulter in unum,
arte viri vinclisque nova ratione paratis
in mediis ambo deprensi amplexibus haerent.
Lemnius extemplo valvas patefecit eburnas
admisitque deos: illi iacuere ligati
turpiter; atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat
sic fieri turpis: superi risere, diuque
haec fuit in toto notissima fabula caelo.”
“Love caught the Sun, too, who warms all creation with his starry light: let us tell the loves of the Sun. He is the God who is thought to have been the first to have caught sight of the adultery of Venus with Mars – he is the God who sees everything first. He was pained by it, and showed Vulcan, Juno’s son and Venus’s husband, that his place in bed had been taken, and where the theft took place. Vulcan lost his grip on reason, and on the piece of work he held in his skilled right hand. Without delay he filed chains, nets and snares of bronze so fine that they could deceive the sight – not the finest thread could outdo that work, not the spider that hangs from the top of the beam – and so made them that they could follow even light contact and tiny movements, and carefully arranged them surrounding the couch. When his wife and her lover both came to bed, they found themselves caught and stuck together right in the middle of making love by the skill of her husband and the bonds that he had made on this new pattern. Straight away, Vulcan threw open his ivory doors and let in the Gods: there they lay, bound together in their shame; and one of the Gods with a sense of humour said that, if this was shame, give him shame! The Gods burst into laughter, and for a long, long time this was the best-known story in heaven.”