the counsel that would keep her from becoming a tyrant.
When Hupakoë met him, Minos had long since
earned Crete’s hatred with his cruelty,
but Hupakoë heard old people report
that he treasured justice and truth at the start
of his cringeworthy reign. The Cretans themselves
were different then, endowed with all
their king’s innocence. No cow dreaded
the butcher’s goad, and goats received
the worship later lavished on bulls.
But one day Minos went up Ida
and visited the Telchines.
He saw them melting metal from ore
and inditing it with durable words.
He concluded that speech was a clumsy medium,
fumbled by ears and fading in air;
the innocence nurtured in the ears’ nimbus
was lovely enough, but annoyingly light.
He’d make it as dense as the metal whose orange
surface received his listed laws,
which immediately unlatched the legislator’s
once unanimous will and logic.
But the circulation of the laws through Crete
proceeded as slowly as a slug conquest.
The Cretan people craved no luxuries.
They cursed no furrows in fear of winter
but chewed grain plucked off unplanted ears.
They lacked black dye and dug no graves,
so their mothers mourned with a bug’s mildness.
(Eternal death yet tortured no one.)
Unwounded wellsprings were the centers
of their succinct lifetimes. Each swallow was delicious,
and they marred no words with fermented grape pulp.
The nuances of their natural perception
were complex enough. They knew the secrets
of nonviolent sex. The city Minos
was building remained a remote rumor.
Urban living had allured no rats.
aere legebantur, nec supplex turba timebat
iudicis ora sui, sed erant sine vindice tuti.
nondum caesa suis, peregrinum ut viseret orbem,