Roman Mythology
Ovid: Metamorphoses
1st century BC, Latin, Ancient Roman.
When Aesacus had gained confidence in his new wings and feathers, he soared high into the sky and once more sent himself crashing down into the waves.
Before the fall of Troy, and before Aeneas voyaged to Italy where he was shown the nature of the underworld and the souls waiting to be reborn again into the world, King Priam’s son Aesacus had rejected the city life of Troy and spent his days in the hills, where he fell in love with a nymph, a daughter of the river Cebren. But in pursuing his passion too swiftly he brought about her death and in his grief, tried to take his own life. He threw himself from the top of a rocky crag into the sea; but a goddess of the sea clothed him in feathers as he fell through the water and denied him the finality of death which he craved. Aesacus was angry and resentful that he should be forced to live when all he wanted to do was to die, and that his soul should not be free to leave its prison. So, when he had gained confidence in his new wings and feathers, he soared high into the sky and once more sent himself crashing down into the waves. But for a second time his feathers saved him from drowning. He rose once more into the air, plunging himself again, and then again, and again, into the water, relentlessly, but fruitlessly, seeking a way of bringing about an end to his own life.