1 rete, retia, n. = net / cervus, m. = deer

Romans drove animals (wild boar + dear) and poke w/spear

2 nymphe = nymph - minor goddess associated with water

descriptive words of Echo - vocalis (talkative) / nec reticere

(keep quiet) / resonabilis (echoing) / garrula (chatterbox)

3 prius = beforehand / Echo echoes back what people say

4 adhuc = still / et tamen = and yet

6 ut to be brought forward to beginning of clause

reddere = to repeat here / novissima = recent

7 vagari = to wonder / devius = remote

8 incalescere = to fall in love / furtim = secretly /

vestigia = footsteps

9 quo magis = by which the more

10 simile suggests that love is sudden and explosive

13 prex = prayer / blandis = sweet charming

14 sinit (ut) incipiat = allow to begin

15 remittat = she could return (subjunctive)

16 forte = by chance / agmen = group, band

17 ecquis = anyone

20 rursus = again

21 totidem quot = as many as

33 curae = cares

38 sonus est = there was only the sound

46 spectat = he looks at (subj. Narcissus) / sidus = star /

geminum sidus = twin stars / lumen, lumina = light, eye

Translation ...

Answering Echo, a talkative nymph notices this man, driving the frightened deer into nets, who has not learnt to keep quiet when someone is talking, and hasn't learnt to speak first herself. Echo was still a body, not just a voice. (still anticipates change); and although a chatterbox, she enjoyed no more power of speech than she does now, namely that she could repeat from many words, only the recent words. Therefore when she saw Narcissus wondering through the remote countryside and burned with passion, she follows his footsteps secretly, and the more she follows him, she burns with more passion (she burns with a closer flame), just as when sulphur that is quick to ignite smeared around the top of torches, it snatches the flames that are brought close. O how often did she wish to approach him with charming words and to employ gentle prayers. Her condition prevents her nor does her nature allow her to begin; but she is ready to do what nature does allow, to wait for the sounds to which he could return her own words.

By chance, a boy separated from his trusty band of comrades, had said, "Is anyone there?" and "here" Echo had replied. Narcissus was astonished, and as he gazes around in all directions (partes ... in omnes), he shouted in a loud voice, "come here."; she calls the man who was calling. He looks round and again since nobody came he said "Why (quid - unusual) do you flee from me?" and he received as many words as he said. He persists and deceived by the illusion of an answering voice, said "let's meet here (subjunctive as let's)", and Echo who would never make a more willing reply to any sound and she herself was as good as her words and she came out of the woods in order to throw her arms around the hoped for neck. He fled and while fleeing said, "Stop embracing me with your hands; I will die before you get your joy from me." She replied nothing except, "May you have pleasure from me." Having been rejected, she hides in the woods, and covered her embarrased face with foliage, and she lives from that time (line 31 - ex illo) in lonely caves. But yet the love sticked and it grows with the pain of rejection (line 32 - noun). Her cares that keep her awake made her miserable body thin and the thinness shrinks her skin, and her moisture of her whole body goes off into the air, and only her voice and bones remain: and her voice remains: (ferunt - they say), they say that the bones took on the appearance of stone (like fossils). Then she is hidden in the woods and she is seen in no mountain. He is heard by everyone: it is just a sound which lives in her.

<39> Here, the boy, tired out by his enthusiasm for hunting (genitive of gerund) and by the heat, lay down attracted by both the appearance of the place and the spring; and while he desired to quench his thirst (sitim sedare), another thirst grew, and while he was drinking, captivated by the beautiful reflection he saw, he loves hope without body (in love with something he can't get - but falls in love with the hope), he thinks that which is a reflection is a body. <44> He himself is astonished by himself, and not moving, he sticks with the same expression, like a statue shaped from Parian marble. Lying on the ground, he (Narcissus) looks at his own eyes, twin stars and worthy of Bacchus and the hair worthy of Apollo, and his unbearded cheeks and his ivory coloured neck and the beauty of his face and the blush mixed in snow-white (niveus = snow-white) radiance, and he admires everything for which he himself is admired. <51> Unknowing, he desires himself and the one who fancies, is himself is fancied, and while he seeks he is sought, and equally he is set on fire and burns. How often (quotiens) did he give useless (irrita) kisses to the deceitful (fallaci) (promise more than can deliver) fountain! <54> How often did he dip his arms (brachia) in the water embracing the neck that he saw but did not catch himself in them. He does not know what he was seeing, but he is burned by the illusion, and the same illusion that deceives his eyes leads him on.

<58> And these things (quae - connecting relative = which things), as soon as he caught sight of this in the water made clear again, he did not endure it any longer, but, as yellow wax (cerae) is accustomed to melt in the gentle flame, and as morning frost is accustomed to melt, when the sun warms it, thus weakened by love, he wastes away and slowly he is consumed by hidden flame; <63> and his rosy-white complexion now has no glow (color est rubori - possessive dative) (mixto agrees with rubori) [There is no longer colour to his redness mixed with whiteness], nor does he have energy and strength and the things which he had recently seen and were pleasing, nor did his body which Echo had once (quondam) loved. However when se saw this, although she was (quamvis) angry and remembering she grieved, and as often as the wretched boy said "alas", she repeated, with echoing voice,"alas." And when he had struck his own arms with his hands, she also returned the same sound of grief. This was his last utterance as he looked in his accustomed water. "Alas, boy loved in vain!" <72> and the place sent back the same number of words, and when he had said farewell, Echo also said "Farewell." He layed down his tired head on the green grass, death closed his eyes, which wondered at the beauty of their master. Then also, after he was received in the abode of the lower world, he looked at himself in the water of the Styx. His sisters, the Naiads, wailed (planxere) and offered (posuere) their cut hair to their brother, the Dryades also wailed. And Echo responded to the wailing. And now they were prreparing the funeral pyre and shaken torches and bier (wheeled wagon for corpses): the corpse was nowhere; they find a yellow flower in place of the body with its white petals enclosing the middle.