rumor...

Has their ever been a better description of the devestation caused by gossip and rumor than that of our friend Virgil's?

Dido and Aeneas have just consumated their tragic relationship and Fama (Rumor) the goddess of fame and gossip carries the word... (from book four of the Aenied, Fagel's translation)

"Starightway Rumor flies through Libya's great cities,

Rumor, swiftest of all the evils in the world.

She thrives on speed, stronger for every stride,

Slight with fear at first, soon soaring into the air

she treads the ground and hides her head in the clouds.

She is the last, they say, our Mother Earth produced.

Bursting in rage against the gods, she bore a sister

for Coeus and Encladus; Rumor, quicksilver afoot

and swift on the wing,  monster, horrific, huge

and under every feather on her body-what a marvel-

an eye that never sleeps and as many tongues as eyes

and as many raucous mouths and ears pricked up for news,

By night she flies aloft, between the earth and sky,

whirring across the dark, never closing her lids

in soothing sleep. By day she keeps her watch,

crouched on a peaked roof or palace turret,

terrorizing the great cities, clinging as fast

to her twisted lies as she clings to words of truth.

Now Rumor is in her glory, filling Africs's ears

with tale on tale of intrigue, bruiting her song

of facts and falsehoods mingled..."