Caenis, famous for her beauty, refused all offers of marriage, preferring independence and lonely walks on the beach, until Neptune, god of the oceans, seized and raped her there. Filled with pleasure and in generous mood, he offered to grant her any wish, whatever she wanted most. She replied that her greatest wish was never to be hurt again and therefore not to be a woman. Neptune transformed her into a man and in addition made him impervious to any penetration. Now named Caeneus, he became a celebrated warrior – spears bounced off him, sword blades shattered and left him unwounded. This infuriated his enemy the Centaurs, who were disgraced that their whole army could be mocked by one who had been a woman. In a final battle these giants piled mountains of rocks and uprooted trees upon him until he could not breathe. When he tried to lift his head the mountains shifted as in an earthquake, and from a crevice flew a bird with golden wings, the like of which has never been seen before or since.

When I first read this story, I was struck by how modern it is, by the poignancy of the abused woman who adopts an impervious masculinized self as a form of protection against the world, and by the fear of the unknown that can lead to mob violence. I thought of the horrible ending of the film “Boys Don’t Cry” and the persecution suffered by the Hilary Swank character. I painted Caenis/Caeneus, in which I envisioned Caenis shucking off her male cocoon/disguise as she transforms into the bird, a spirit liberated from her suffocated body.

The painting was exhibited in November 2006, where it was seen by my son Abe Frank, a classics scholar and writer, who was inspired by my reimagining of this tale to send me his own original translation of Ovid’s poem. His words brought out another aspect of the story: the militaristic posturing, the heedless destruction of the landscape, the ruin of war.

My response is the work shown here.

Behold! they rushed, the double-bodied centaurs,
raving with world-wasting screams, and sent
their spears all at once against the lone Caeneus.
Amid the sudden bursts of shafts he stood,
unstruck, unbloodied, the piles of blunted missiles
all about him. The centaurs, weaponless, watched
with voiceless amazement, and then Monychus
snorted out above the seething silence. “Oh,
what a monstrous disgrace! A people surpassed
by one who is barely a man. Yet he
is the man, while we, with our feeble thrusts,
are the woman he once was. What good
are our inhuman limbs, our doubled strength,
the fact that we’re formed of the two
most mighty beasts of the Earth? Are we
not the sons of a goddess, not the sons
of Ixon, whose courage was so strong
that he stole Juno for a mate? While we
are felled by a half-man foe! No –
we shall throw stones and trees above him,
we shall drown him beneath mountains
and wrest his stubborn soul from him with missiles
made from forests! Let sheer mass suffocate,
and weight stand in for wounds.” He raised a hoof
and hurled a tree freshly felled amidst the madness
that had come before. The rest followed him,
and soon they’d stripped the land into a desert
of stumps and snapped-off trunks, a wasteland
stretching shadowless across the sunstained hills.
Buried beneath the monstrous body of trees,
Caeneus rose to the surface, bearing the mass
of oaken branches on his tireless shoulders.
But gradually the tidal wave of trees
grew to cover his lips, his face, and deep
beneath the wooden sea Caeneus gasped
for fleeting breaths and fought to loose
himself from the fresh-made forest, in vain,
although it trembled in the momentary earthquake.
And then there was nothing. The centaurs said
the weight had sped him to the underworld,
but down within that tomb of trees a final
plea spilled from Caeneus, and as he died
he felt the male flesh that had been his mask
begin to crack and peel away like sloughed-
off skin; and still (s)he felt another form
breathing air within his bones. They watched the waste
for signs of Caeneus, but all that rose
from out that rubble was the slender flash
of a gold-winged bird, whose cry was heard
above the inhuman cheers of the bishaped beasts.

© Abraham Frank. 2007