OVID: HEROIDES
Translated by
A. S.
Kline © 2001 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Contents
Your Penelope sends
you this, Ulysses, the so-long-delayed.
Don’t reply to me
however: come yourself.
Priam, and all of
O I wish, at that time
when he sought
Paris, the adulterer,
had been whelmed beneath angry seas!
I would not have lain
here, cold in an empty bed,
nor be left behind, to
complain, at suffering long days,
nor my hand, bereft,
exhaust me, working all night long
to cause deception,
with my doubtful web.
When have I not feared
dangers worse than all realities?
Love is a thing full
of anxious fears.
I imagined the
Trojans’ violent attacks on you:
often I grew pale at Hector’s name:
if someone told of Antilochus defeated by Hector,
Antilochus was the reason for my fears,
if of Patroclus, dying in Achilles’s
armour,
I wept that tricks
might fail of success.
Tlepolemus warmed the spear of Sarpedon
with blood,
Tlepolemus’s death is then a new cause of anxiety to me.
In short, whoever of
the Greek camp was killed,
the heart of a lover
was chilled like ice.
But the god, who
favours pure love, truly gave protection:
Our generals return to
barbarous gifts are
set before the country’s gods.
Wives give thanks, for
the gift of living husbands:
who sing in turn of
their
upright old men and
trembling girls marvel,
the wife hangs on her
husband’s words as he speaks.
And one seated at
table describes the fierce battle
and draws all of
‘Here was Simois, here Sigean ground,
here stood aged Priam’s towering palace:
here Achilles camped,
here Ulysses,
here mangled Hector
scared the galloping horses.’
Indeed Nestor related
it all to your son Telemachus,
sent to enquire about
you, then he to me.
And he told of Rhesus
and Dolon dead by your sword,
so that one was
betrayed by sleep, the other by guile.
It was brave, oh you,
who are more and more forgetful of your own,
to enter the Thracian
camp, with night’s deception,
and kill so many men,
with the help of one!
Then you were truly
cautious, and thinking first of me!
My heart shook all the
time, with fear, while my dear hero
was depicted, riding
through the army on Ismarus’s horses.
But what benefit to me
if
and the walls that it
possessed are razed to the ground,
if I wait here, as I
waited while
and my husband away,
with no end in sight?
Destroyed for others,
where the victor lives
to plough with captive oxen:
there are fields now,
where
beneath the scythe,
crops densely, rich with Phrygian blood:
half-buried bones of
heroes are struck by the curving plough,
and grass conceals the
ruined houses.
The victor is absent,
and I am not allowed to know,
the reason for his
delay, or in what land he cruelly hides.
Whoever turns his
wandering vessel towards this shore
departs weary of being
questioned by me, about you:
and what he’ll deliver
to you, if he sees you anywhere,
will be letters
surrendered to him, written by my hand.
I sent to Pylos, to the Nelean fields of
ancient Nestor:
doubtful rumours
returned from Pylos:
and I sent to
What land do you live
in, or with whom do you delay so long?
It would be better if
Apollo’s walls still stood:
alas I’m angered
myself by my thoughtless prayers!
I might have known
where you were fighting, and only fear the war,
and my complaints
would then have be joined with many others.
I don’t know what to
fear: I fear everything, insanely,
and my anxieties are
open to wide speculation.
Whether the sea
contains the danger, or the land,
such long delays
equally cause me to suspect.
While I foolishly fear
it, that is your wilfulness,
you could be captive
now to a foreign love.
And perhaps you tell
her, that your wife’s an innocent,
considered to be
almost like raw wool.
Let me be deceived,
and let this charge vanish in thin air
and let your returning
sails not be wilfully absent.
My father Iscarius forces me to leave my empty bed,
and rebukes me for my
continual, endless waiting.
It’s all right for him
to rebuke me continually! I’m yours, I should
be spoken of as yours:
I’ll be Penelope, wife to Ulysses, always.
Yet he weakens knowing
my piety, and my chaste prayers,
and he moderates the
force of it himself.
An insistent crowd of
suitors comes to ruin us,
from Dulichium and
and they rule in your
palace, without restraint:
they tear your
possessions to pieces, and my heart.
What should I say of
how you, shamefully absent, nourish
Pisander, Polybus, cruel Medon, the greedy hands of Eurymachus,
and Antinous, and others: all of them, with your
blood?
Irus and Melanthius
driving in the flocks to be slaughtered
add the final insult
to your ruin.
The unwarlike ones are
three in number: a wife with no strength,
old Laertes, and Telemachus your son.
He, recently, was
almost taken away from me by trickery,
when he prepared to go
to Pylos, against their will.
I pray the gods decree
that, in the natural order of things,
he will close my eyes
in death, and yours!
The faithful guardian
of the filthy sty makes up another three,
along with the
herdsman, and your very ancient nurse:
but Laertes, has no power to hold his own among enemies,
he whose weapons are
useless to him.
Telemachus, if only he lives, will become stronger with
age:
now he ought to be
protected with his father’s help.
I have no strength to
drive these enemies from the house:
you must come quickly,
to your harbour and refuge!
You’ve a son, and I
pray he’ll be one who, in his tender years,
will be educated in
his father’s arts.
Consider Laertes: who keeps death back to the very last day,
so that you might
close his eyes.
You’ll find that I, in
truth, a girl when you went away,
though you soon
return, have become an aged woman.
Phyllis, your Thracian
friend, complains to you, Demophoon,
for being absent
beyond your promised time.
When the moon’s horns
had touched once more, at the full,
you agreed to anchor
by our shores.
Four times the moon
has hidden, four times waxed to the full,
without the Thracian
sea bringing Athenian ships.
If you measure hours
closely, as lovers measure,
my complaint does not
come before due time.
Hope too was long
drawn out. We’re slow to believe what wounds
us, when we do: now
you seem guilty, reluctantly, to your lover.
I often deceived
myself, for you, often I imagined
storms from the south
brought back your white sails.
I cursed Theseus,
because he did not wish to let you go:
or perhaps could not
remember your course.
Now and then I feared
lest, heading for Hebrus’s shallows,
the ship was wrecked,
sunk in the white waves.
Often I have begged,
impiously, of the gods that you be well,
have wished for it in
prayer at incense-burning altars:
often, seeing
favourable winds from sea and sky,
I said to myself: ‘If
he’s well, he will come,’
Lastly, love supposed
you faithful, whatever prevented haste,
and I was imaginative
as to the reasons.
But you are
indifferent, in your absence! No oaths to the gods
bring you back, nor do
you return moved by my love.
Demophoon, you gave words, and sails, to the wind:
I long for the sails’
return, lacking faith in the words.
Tell me what I have
done, except to love unwisely?
Could I have deserved
you, through some crime of mine?
There is only one sin
in me, that I pledged myself to you,
wicked man, but it has
the weight and likeness of justice.
Where now is the pact
of loyalty, hand linked to hand,
and how were so many
oaths in one lying mouth?
Where is that Hymen
now, who, through long years of friendship,
was sponsor and
guarantor to me of marriage?
You swore to me by the
sea, all stirred by winds and waves,
over which you surely
travel, over which you were to go,
you swore by
who calms the waters
roused by the winds,
by Venus, and those
weapons, made so much so to me,
one weapon the bow,
the other the torch,
and by Juno, whose
kindness presides over the marriage bed,
and by the mystic
rites of the torch-bearing goddess:
if each of these many
injured gods took vengeance with their powers,
your life alone would
not be enough, in punishment!
Ah, like a madwoman, I
even had your damaged fleet rebuilt,
so that there was a
sound ship ready for your desertion:
I gave you oars so
that you might abandon me in flight.
Alas! I suffer wounds
from weapons I created!
I believed the
flattering words, of which you had a store:
I believed in your
breeding and your titles:
I believed your tears.
Or might even they be taught to deceive?
Might they have arts
as well, to flow when commanded?
I believed them, too.
Where now those many pledges of ours?
Any one of them was
enough to imprison me.
I am not disturbed
that I helped you with harbour and shelter:
but that should have
been the end of my kindnesses!
I regret that friendship
was shamefully crowned
by the nuptial bed,
and body was entwined with body.
I would rather the
night, before that night, had been my last,
while Phyllis could
still die virtuously.
I hoped for better
things, and thought I deserved them:
whatever hope comes
from kindness, is just.
I cannot believe that
to cheat a girl is anything
to boast of: my
innocence deserved friendship.
The lover and the
woman were deceived by your words:
may the gods let this
be the one thing you are known for!
And let your statue be
set up in the midst of the city,
among the sons of Aegeus: Theseus, your great father,
his honours before
him: Sciron with his bed, grim Procrustes,
and Sinis, and the Minotaur, man and bull joined together,
and
and the blind,
shattered
your statue inscribed
with its title after theirs:
‘Here’s he who stole
love from a stranger by a trick.’
Of all your father’s
many deeds and affairs
only the abandoning of
Ariadne sticks in your mind.
The thing in him
needing to be excused, is the one thing you admire:
your father’s heir,
deceiver: you act out his sin.
She – I don’t begrudge
it –is blessed with a better husband
and rides high above
Bacchus’s team of harnessed tigers.
But the Thracian men I
despised flee from marriage with me,
because I allowed a
man strange to me to be preferred.
And some said: ‘Let
her go to learned
there will be someone
else to rule armed
Outcomes justify
actions.’ I hope that anyone who thinks
what I did is wrong
because of its result, also lacks success.
But if our water does
foam under your oar,
they’ll say now I look out for myself, then my
people.
But I have not looked to myself, and you will
not touch
my shore, or bathe your limbs in Thracian
water.
My eyes cling still to the sight of your going,
when your departing fleet sat in harbour.
You dared to embrace me, and, clinging to my
neck,
poured out a lover’s slow kisses, through long
moments,
and, as your tears mingled with my tears,
you complained at the favourable wind in your
sails,
shouting to me, as you left, at the top of your
voice:
‘Phyllis, make sure you wait for your Demophoon!’
Should I wait, for you who are absent and never
wish to see me?
Should I wait for the
sails that are denied my seas?
And still I wait. Only
return, though late, to your lover,
seeing that your
promise might lapse through time alone!
Why should I beg,
miserably? Perhaps another wife
has you, and that love
which served me so badly, now:
How I’m forgotten by
you, I think: a no-body, the Phyllis you knew.
Ah me! If you ask what
Phyllis this might be, and from where,
I’m she who gave you
shelter and friendship in
you, Demophoon, driven by long wanderings:
I who added my wealth
to you, to whom, rich in effect,
I gave many gifts,
many that I was given:
she who brought you
the wide
scarcely fit to be
ruled in a woman’s name,
where sacred Hebrus extends, from icy Rhodope
to shadowy Haemus, and drives out the gathered waters,
you, who took my
virginity, with sinister omens,
and loosed my chaste
ties, with a deceiving hand.
Tisiphone, in attendance, howled at this marriage,
and the gloomy bird
gave its solitary cry.
Allecto was there, entwined with tiny snakes,
and the lights were changed
to funeral torches.
Though I am gloomy, I
walk the cliffs and tangled shore:
wherever the wide sea
is open to my gaze.
Whether the earth is
warmed by day, or the cold stars shine,
I look to see what
wind stirs the waves.
And whatever sails I
see far-off, approaching,
I take them straight
away as a sign from the gods.
I rush into the fickle
sea, struggling with tenacious waves,
there, where the ocean
breakers extend.
As the sails grow
larger, I am less and less able to stand,
I faint and fall into
my servants’ arms.
The bay is drawn in a
faintly scythe-shaped arc:
the ends of its horns
rise in a sheer cliff.
Here I had a mind to
hurl myself into the swelling waves
- and since you will
go on failing me, I will.
The tide will carry
me, abandoned, to your shore
and your eyes will
meet with my unburied body.
so that, though iron,
and steel, and you, excel in hardness,
you will say:
‘Phyllis, this was not the way to follow me!’
Often I thirst for
poison, often I’d like to die
a bloody death,
pierced by a sword.
My neck too, since
faithless arms offered to encircle it,
I’d like to entangle
in a noose.
Mature thought upholds
tender honour by dying:
there is little point
in delaying the choice of death.
Inscribe the hateful
reason on my tomb,
you’ll be known by these
or similar lines:
‘Demophoon,
the guest, gave loving Phyllis to death:
he offered her reason
to die, by her own hand.
The letter you read
comes from Briseis, a captive:
its Greek, hardly
written well by a barbarian hand.
Whatever you read,
will be blotted with tears:
but still even tears
carry the weight of my voice.
If it’s right to
complain, a little, of you my lover,
and master: of master
and lover, a little, I complain.
It’s not your fault I
was quickly ordered to be handed over,
to King Agamemnon –
however this is your fault:
when Eurybates and Talthybius both
called to take me,
I, your companion, was
given to Eurybates and Talthybius.
Glancing at each
other’s face, they questioned,
silently, where our
love might be.
I could have delayed:
delayed punishment might have been welcome.
Ah me! I gave you no
kiss in leaving!
But I shed tears
endlessly and tore my hair:
I am unhappy finding
myself, once more, a prisoner.
I have often wished I
might return, deceiving my guard:
but whoever might
catch this timid girl, is an enemy.
If I could get right
away, however, I feared I’d be caught at night,
to be sent as a gift
to some woman of Priam’s household.
But I may be given
back, since I was given. I’ve been absent
so many nights, and no
recall. You are idle, and slow to anger.
Patroclus himself, when I was handed over, whispered
in my ear: ‘Why cry, you’ll be here again in a little
while.’
Scarcely thought of:
you disagree with my return, Achilles.
Go, now, and keep your
name as a fond lover!
the one related to you
by blood, the other a friend,
and Ulysses, Laertes’s son: I might be returned through them:
they added many
valuable gifts to their entreaties:
twenty cauldrons made
of yellow bronze,
and seven tripods of
equal weight and art.
Added to that were ten
talents of gold,
and twelve horses,
always accustomed to winning.
And, what were
superfluous, girls of outstanding beauty,
captured when their
and with all this –
but you don’t need a bride –
a bride, one of
Agamemnon’s three daughters.
If I might have been
ransomed to you by Atrides, at a price,
why did you refuse to
accept what you ought to have given?
For what fault of mine did I deserve to become worthless to you, Achilles?
Where has gentle love
gone, fleeing so swiftly, from us?
Or does sad fortune
press hard on the wretched,
and no sweeter hour
may come to my endeavours?
I saw you destroy the
walls of Lyrnessus by your warfare
and I was an important
person in my country.
I saw three brothers
fall, who were born and died together,
whose mother was my
mother also.
I saw my husband, how
dear to me, spilled on the cruel earth,
his bloodstained chest
heaving.
Yet, with so many
lost, you alone made up for them:
you were lord, you
were husband, you were brother to me.
Swearing by your
mother the sea-goddess Thetis’s power,
you said to me that to
have been a captive was useful in itself –
no doubt, so that though I came with a dowry, you might reject me,
and shun me, and what
might have given wealth to you!
Indeed it’s even said
you’ll set full sails to the South wind,
that brings the cloud,
when tomorrow’s dawn shines clear.
What a crime that the
fearful winds of misery touched me,
and the heart of life
was empty of feeling.
You’ll go - O pity me!
– to what violent man do you abandon me?
Who will comfort my
tenderness when I’m deserted?
I pray that I might be
swallowed by some sudden crack in the earth,
or be burned by red
fire hurled out by the lightning,
before Phthian oars whiten the waves without me,
and I see your ships
sail, leaving me behind.
If it’s your return
and your father’s gods that please you now,
I’ll be no great
burden to your fleet.
I’d follow the victor
as his captive, not a husband as his wife:
I could work the wool:
its fitting for my hands.
Far off among the
Greek women the most beautiful bride
will enter your bed,
and she’ll be worthy to be a daughter-in-law
to her father-in-law Peleus, descendant of Jove and
of whom old Nereus well might wish to be a grandfather to the wife.
I’ll be a humble
servant spinning out the day’s work
and thinning the full
distaff into my threads.
I beg you not to let
your wife scold me too much,
not knowing if she
will be at all kind to me,
nor suffer my hair to
be pulled out in your presence,
with you saying
lightly: ‘She too was mine.’
Perhaps suffering’s
better, since I’m indeed contemptible, forsaken:
here fear shakes my
bones – alas the wretchedness!
Still, what do you
wait for? Agamemnon regrets his anger
and lays out all
Conquer your feelings
and anger, you who’ve conquered all else!
Why should Hector
actively destroy the Greek forces?
Take up your arms, Aeacides –but take me back first –
and overcome those
troublesome men aided by Mars!
Your anger was stirred
because of me: through me let it fade,
and let me be the
cause, and end, of your sorrows.
Don’t think it
shameful to yield to my prayers:
Meleager was turned towards war by his wife’s prayer.
It’s a tale I’ve
heard, one known to you: bereaved of her brothers
by her son, her hope
and heir, the mother cursed him.
There was a war: he
proudly withdrew, refusing battle,
and, stubborn of mind,
refused aid to his country.
Only his wife could
persuade the man – happier was she! –
but my words fail, and
carry little weight.
Yet I’m not displeased
that I’ve not performed as a wife,
as a slave I was
summoned more often to my master’s bed.
I remember once some
captive called me mistress –
I said: ‘The weight of
that name adds to the slavery.’
Yet I swear by my
husband’s bones, scarce buried
in a hasty grave: they
are always sacred, to my judgement:
and by the three
spirits of my brave brothers, gods to me,
who died well, for and
with their country,
and by your body and
mine that we joined as one,
and by your swords
known to our weapons,
no Mycenean
has shared the bed with me:
you might wish to
abandon one who deceived.
If I now said to you:
‘Bravest, you too swear to me
you’ve never made love
without me’ – you’d refuse.
Now the Greeks think
you’re grieving – but you play music,
a sweet friend clasps
you to her warm breast.
and if anyone asks why
you decline to fight –
fighting’s harmful,
while Venus, and nights with the lyre, delight.
It’s safer to lie there
in bed, holding a girl tight,
strumming the Thracian
lyre with your fingers,
than bearing a shield
and a sharp-pointed spear in your hands,
and a helmet that
presses down on your hair.
Yet, instead of
safety, conspicuous action pleased you,
and a glorious part in
the fighting was sweet.
Or was it merely that
while you might still capture me,
you approved of fierce
war, and your glory died with my country?
May the gods alter
that! And I pray, that the spear from Pelion,
hurled from a strong
arm, pierces Hector’s side!
Send me to him, you
Greeks! As delegate, I’ll beg my lord,
and mingle many kisses
with your requests.
I’ll achieve more than
more than
It’s something to have
been embraced by familiar arms
and to have recalled
his eyes to oneself in person!
Though you may be
harsher, and fiercer than your mother’s waves,
I’ll suppress my tears
in order to stay silent.
Now too – so that your
father Peleus may complete long years,
so your son Pyrrhus might take up arms under your auspices! –
have regard for
anxious Briseis, mighty Achilles,
don’t oppress the
miserable girl, cruelly, with long delay:
but if your love has
turned to loathing of me,
force me to die, who
am forced to live without you!
Yet you do force me.
My flesh and colour fade:
the one hope I still
have left is that of your feelings.
If I lose that, I’ll
join my husband and my brothers:
why even order it?
Attack my body with your naked sword,
I have blood that
should flow from my pierced breast.
Attack me with that
sword, which, if Thetis had allowed,
would have entered
Agamemnon’ breast!
Ah! Rather, save my
life, your gift to me!
What the conqueror
granted his enemy, I ask as a friend.
You can destroy better
things, those that
to
Only, order me, on my lord’s authority, to come: whether you
prepare your fleet to
be driven by oars, or whether you stay!
The Cretan girl, who
lacks health unless he grants it her,
wishes good health to
the man who’s an Amazon’s son.
Read what is here. How
could reading a letter harm you?
There might even be
something in it that pleases you.
My secrets are
carried, by these letters, over land and sea:
even enemies read letters
received from their enemies.
I’ve tried to speak to
you three times, three times my tongue
clung to my mouth,
three times the sound died on my lips.
It’s right and natural
that shame is mingled with love:
love ordered me to
write, to say what shames me.
Whatever love commands
cannot be wholly denied:
he rules and is a law
among the gods.
He told me to pen
words, in my first confusion:
‘Write! Having
conquered, he’ll give his cruel hand.’
He helps me, and,
seeing that he heats my marrow with greedy fire,
he may also fix your
affections as I wish.
I would not break my
marriage contract through sin –
you can enquire – my
reputation’s free of any stain.
Love that comes late
is deeper. We burn within: we burn:
and our feelings
suffer the secret wounds:
I suppose that, as a
young ox is chafed by the yoke,
and a horse captured
from the herd scarcely suffers the harness,
so with great
difficulty, with rawness, the heart suffers new love.
and this burden does
not lie easy on my spirit.
When guilt’s fully learnt
in early years, it becomes an art:
love that comes with
the claims of time, loves less easily.
You will enjoy a new
libation, one that has been guarded from sin,
and both of us will
become equally guilty.
What’s plucked from
the loaded branches in the orchard
is valuable, and the
rose first gathered by slender fingers.
But even if that first
purity, that I bring you free of sin,
were to be marked by
this unaccustomed stain,
then I would still
accept being burnt by a worthy fire:
a vile adulterer is more
harmful than the adultery.
If Juno yielded me
Jupiter, her husband and brother,
I’d consider Hippolytus preferable to Jove!
Now too – you’ll
scarcely believe this – I take up new arts:
I have the urge to be
among wild creatures:
now my chief goddess is
Diana, known for her curved bow:
in following her I
follow your preference:
I love to pass through
the woods and drive deer into my nets,
urging my swift hounds
over the tops of the hills,
or launch a quivering
spear from my trembling arm,
or throw my body down
on the grassy earth.
Often I delight in
driving a light chariot through the dust,
and twisting the bit
in the mouth of a fleeing horse,
Now I’m swept away,
like the Maenads roused by Bacchic frenzy,
like those who beat
their drums on the slopes of
or those semi-divine
Dryads, and twin-horned Fauns,
who are stunned,
touched by his power.
And then others relate
it all, when the madness abates:
I silently burn,
conscious of love.
Perhaps by my fate I’m
paying for the passions of my race,
and Venus may be
seeking a tribute from all the tribe.
Jupiter loved Europa, as a bull, hiding his godhead,
–
she was
the first origin of our people.
A burden and a
reproach was born from the womb
of my mother, Pasiphae, mounted by a bull she tricked.
Treacherous Theseus,
following the guiding thread
escaped the labyrinth
with the help of Ariadne, my sister.
Indeed, I now, lest I
might be thought no child of Minos,
am the latest to be
subject to the common rules of my tribe.
This was destined too:
one House pleased both of us:
your beauty captivated
me, your father’s my sister.
Theseus and his son
have seized on two sisters:
build twin memorials
to us then in your house!
At the time when I
entered Ceres’s
the soil of
then you above all
pleased me (though you had before):
fierce love clung to
me in the depths of my bones.
You were clothed in
white, your hair surrounded by flowers,
a modest blush tinged
your golden cheeks:
others call your face
grim and severe,
in Phaedra’s judgment
that severity is strength.
Let men who are
adorned like women stay far from me:
beauty loves the
masculine, adorned in moderation.
That severity of yours
suits you, hair placed without art,
and the light dust on
your distinguished face.
I admire it if you
struggle with the arched necks of fiery horses,
forcing them to turn
their hooves in a tight circle:
or if you calmly hurl
the javelin with your strong arm,
your warlike face
turned towards your shoulder:
or grasp the
wide-bladed hunting spear of cornel wood –
in the end whatever
you do delights my eyes.
Only expend your
harshness on the wooded hills:
I’m not a fit subject
to be destroyed by you.
Why delight in the
study of high-girt Diana’s occupation,
and avoid what you owe
to Venus?
What lacks rest now
and then, will not last:
rest renews the
powers, and restores weary limbs.
The bow (indeed, your
weapons imitate Diana’s)
which never ceases to
be strung, grows slack.
Cephalus was distinguished in hunting, and many
creatures
were killed, among the
grasses, by his blows:
yet he didn’t do badly
in yielding to
the discreet goddess
went to him from her aged husband.
The grass beneath the
oak trees often held
Venus and Adonis,
both, lying there relaxed.
And Meleager was on fire for Arcadian Atalanta:
she had the wild
boar’s hide as a token of his love.
We too could soon be
numbered in this throng!
If you take Love away
your woods are uncivilised.
I’ll come myself as
your companion, the hidden rocks
don’t worry me, nor
fear of the boar’s curving tooth.
Two seas pound the
Isthmus with their waves,
and the slender
stretch of land hears both their waters.
There I might live
with you, in Troezen, Pittheus’s
kingdom:
it’s now a country
dearer to me than my own.
Theseus,
Pirithous keeps him there in his country.
Theseus, unless we
deny what’s obvious,
prefers Pirithous to Phaedra, and Pirithous
to you.
That is not all:
injury comes to us from him:
we have both been
wounded deeply, in fact.
Breaking my brother’s
bones with his three-knotted club,
he scattered them over
the soil: left my sister a prey to wild beasts.
Your mother, worthy,
by her energy, of her son, bore you,
she the most
courageous of the axe-wielding Amazon girls.
If you ask where she
is, Theseus pierced her body with his sword:
not even such a child
as you guaranteed her safety!
Indeed she was not
even a bride, experiencing the wedding torch –
why, if not that you,
a bastard, mightn’t hold your father’s kingdom?
Brothers he took from
me, he gave to you. Yet I was not
the reason for taking
them all away, he was.
O I wish the harm done
you, in your heart’s core,
might be ended by the
most beautiful of actions!
Come now, show your
respect for your worthy father’s bed like this:
he who fled, and
himself disowned his deeds.
Nor, because I’d be seen as a stepmother coupling with her stepson,
should you let your
mind fear those empty names.
That old morality was
held to be dying, as far as future ages,
were concerned, by Saturn,
in his primitive kingdom.
Whatever might give
Jupiter pleasure he declared lawful,
and divine law allows
any sister to be married to her brother.
The tie is firm that’s
made by procreation,
those bonds that Venus
herself imposes.
It’s no effort to hide
them, though! Seek the gift from her
of being able to mask
guilt by known kinship.
Let someone see us
embrace: we’ll both be praised,
I’ll be said to be a
stepmother loyal to her stepson.
Not for you the
unbarring of a harsh husband’s gate,
in the shadows, nor
the deceiving of a guardian:
the house will hold as
one, what it held as two.
Open kisses you gave,
open kisses you’ll give.
You’ll be safe with
me, and guilt will earn praise,
even if you are
observed in my bed.
Rid yourself of delay,
and join quickly in a compact!
Love will spare you,
then, that which rages in me now!
I don’t scorn to be a
suppliant, or beg humbly of you.
Ah! Where are pride
and noble words now? Lost!
And I was certain I’d
struggle for a long time –
if Love can be certain
– and not submit to sin.
Conquered, I beg you,
and clasp your knees with royal arms.
No lover thinks about
what’s fitting.
I have no shame, and
shame, fleeing, relinquishes its standards.
Acknowledge the favour
given and conquer your hard heart!
For Minos, who is my father, rules the seas,
the lightning comes
from one grandfather, Jupiter’s raised hand,
the other, Sol, his
forehead fenced with sharp rays,
drives his gleaming
chariot through the heat of day –
Nobility lies here
subject to love: pity my forefathers
and if your power
cannot spare me, spare them!
The
all my kingdom would
serve Hippolytus.
Cruel man, change your
mind! My mother could seduce a bull:
will you be more
savage than that wild bull?
Spare me, I beg you,
by Venus who’s closest to me:
and so may you never
love, what scorns you:
may the nimble goddess
be with you in secret glades,
may the deep woods
offer you creatures for plunder:
may the Satyrs and the
Pans, mountain gods, favour you,
and the wild boar
fall, pierced by your opposing spear:
may the nymphs, though
you’re said to hate the girls,
give you that water
which quenches parching thirst!
I add tears also to
these prayers. You who read
words of prayer,
imagine that you can also see my tears!
The Nymph sends words
you ordered her to write,
from
Will you read them? Or
does your new wife forbid it?
Read! This is not a
letter created by a Mycenean hand.
I, Oenone,
the fountain-nymph, famous in Phrygian woods,
wounded, complain of
you, who are my own if you allow it.
What god opposes my
prayers with his divine will?
Might I be suffering
from some crime of yours that harms me?
Whatever one deserves
to suffer should be borne lightly:
what comes
undeservedly, comes as bitter punishment.
You were not important
as yet, when I was happy
with you as my
husband, I, a nymph born of a mighty river.
You who now are a son
of Priam, (let fear of the truth be absent)
were a slave: the nymph
endured marriage with a slave!
We often rested our
flocks, hidden among the trees,
leaves, mingled with
grass, offered us a bed.
Often lying on straw,
and in the deep hay,
a humble roof
sheltered us from the hoar frost.
Who showed you the
glades that suit the quarry,
and where the wild
beast hides her cubs among the rocks?
Often, as your
companion, I’ve set the wide-meshed nets,
often I’ve led swift
hounds over the long slopes.
The beech trees guard
my name, cut there by you,
and I read ‘Oenone’, written there by your knife:
And as the trunk
grows, my name grows the same:
grow, and rise
straight, in honour of my name!
I remember, a poplar,
rooted by a flowing stream,
on which letters are
carved, testaments to us.
Live, poplar, I pray,
which rooted on the edge of the bank,
that holds this verse
in your wrinkled bark:
‘If
Scamander’s waters
would flow backwards to their source.’
Scamander, rush
backwards, turn your streams around!
That day spoke my
miserable fate, on that evil day
winter began to
transform our love,
when Venus and Juno,
and Minerva, who is more comely armed,
came, naked, to
receive your judgement.
My stunned heart
trembled, and a cold tremor,
ran through solid bone,
as I heard that being told.
I took council (not
afraid of much as yet) with old women
and age-old men: they
agreed it was wrong.
Fir-trees were felled,
and timbers cut, a fleet prepared,
and the blue waves
received the new-caulked vessels.
You wept on leaving.
Don’t deny that, at least:
your love is more
shameful to you than in the past.
You wept and saw my
eyes filled with tears:
we both mixed our
grief and tears together.
The elm’s not
smothered, by the vine, more closely
than I, your arms
entwined with my neck.
Ah how many times,
when you complained the wind
was feeble, your
companions laughed – it was fine.
How many times you
dismissed me repeatedly!
How your tongue could
scarcely bear to say: ‘Farewell!’
The light breeze
stirred slack sails on the firm mast
and the oars whitened
the swirling water.
Unhappy I followed the
departing sail with my eyes,
as is right, and my
tears wet the sand,
and I begged the
sea-green Nereids that you might come back soon –
so, no doubt, you
could return quickly to my harm.
Did you return at my
prayers, returning with another?
Ah me, my flattering
speech was for a rival!
A vast natural cliff
looks down onto the deep,
(once part of the
mountain) and meets the ocean tide:
Here I was first to
recognise the sails of your ships
and I desired to rush
into the waves.
While I hesitated, I
became afraid of royal-purple robes
that gleamed towards
me from the height of the prow:
to wear that was no
fashion of yours.
It grew nearer, and
the boat touched shore with the swift breeze:
with trembling heart I
saw a female face.
As if that was not
enough – why did I still wait there madly? –
your vile mistress
clung to your chest!
Then truly I tore my
clothes, and beat my breast
and scratched my wet
cheeks with sharp nails,
and filled sacred Ida
with howls of complaint
I carried my tears
there among the rocks.
So may Helen grieve
and weep, abandoned by her lover,
let her suffer what
she first brought me!
Now those women suit
you, who leave their rightful husbands
to follow you over the
open sea.
When you were a poor
man, and a shepherd driving the flock,
the poor man had only
his wife Oenone.
I’m not amazed by
wealth, nor does your palace move me,
nor to be spoken of as
one of Priam’s many daughters:
however Priam would not refuse to be father-in-law to a nymph,
nor would that
daughter-in-law be concealed by Hecuba.
I am worthy, and wish,
to become the wife of a powerful man:
I have hands that
might grace a sceptre.
Don’t despise me,
because I lay with you among the beech leaves:
I’m more suited to a
bed of royal purple.
In the end my love is
safe: here no war’s prepared
the waves carry no
vengeful ships.
The fugitive daughter
of Tyndareus needs dangerous weapons:
she comes to your bed
with a magnificent dowry.
Ask your brother
Hector, or Deiphobus or Polydamas,
whether she should be
returned to the Greeks:
consult as to what
grave Antenor, or Priam
himself, would urge,
who have been in
command for many years.
It’s shameful to start
preferring a stolen woman to your country.
It’s a cause of shame
to you: a just husband takes up arms.
Don’t expect the
Spartan to be loyal to you, if you’re wise,
she who fell so
quickly into your embrace.
Like Menelaus who
cries out at the desecration of his marriage bed,
and wounded grieves at
this love for a stranger,
you will also cry.
Wounded chastity is restored
by no art: it remains
lost for ever.
She’s on fire with
your love: just so, she loved Menelaus;
now, too trusting, he
lies there in an empty bed.
Happy Andromache is truly married to a good husband:
take your brother’s
wife as an example.
You are lighter than
leaves, without weight of sap,
flying along, dried by
the fickle winds.
And there’s less
weight in you than a fragile ear of wheat,
that stiffens, parched
by the continual sun.
Your sister Cassandra
once chanted, (now I recall)
prophesying to me,
with her hair unbound:
‘What are you doing, Oenone? Why sow seed in the sand?
Ox, you plough the
shore in vain!
The Greek heifer
comes, who will destroy you house and lands!
Oh prevent her! The
Greek heifer’s coming!
While you can, sink
the obscene vessel in the sea!
Alas! How much Trojan
blood she carries!’
She spoke: her
servants led her away, her madness in full flight,
but my yellow hair
stood on end.
Ah, prophetess, you
were only too right about my woes:
see, the Greek heifer
occupies my field!
Though her beauty is
distinguished, she’s truly adulterous:
captivated by a guest,
abandoning her husband’s gods.
Theseus (unless the
name’s wrong, I’m unsure which Theseus)
stole her away from
her country before.
A young man, and passionate, do we believe she
returned a virgin?
How did I learn all
this, you rightly ask? I love!
You might call it
violence, and hide her crime, by a word:
but she who gets raped
so often, offers herself to rape.
Oeonone remains chaste, though betrayed by her husband
–
and you might have
been betrayed yourself, by your rules:
The swift Satyrs, with
hasty foot, an insolent crowd,
searched for me (I hid
secretly in the woods)
and horned Faunus, his head crowned with bristling pine,
there, where
Noble Tros, who built
he took the prize of
my virginity.
By a struggle too: all
the same, his hair was torn,
and his face was
scratched, by my fingernails.
I didn’t ask gold and
gems for the price of my unchastity:
it’s shameful for
gifts to buy a free-born body.
He entrusted me with
his arts of medicine, certain I was worthy,
and allowed my hands
to use his gifts.
I know every useful
herb, with power to aid,
and every healing
root, growing in the world.
Alas for me, that
love’s not curable with herbs!
The skill in that
art’s lacking from my arts.
The creator of these
gifts himself they say herded
Thessalian cattle: and was wounded by my passion.
What neither the
fruitful earth with its herbs, nor a god,
can create, that help
you can bring to me.
You can and I deserve
it. Pity this worthy girl!
I don’t bring Greeks
and bloodstained weapons.
But I am yours, and I
was yours in our tender years,
and I pray I might be
yours, while time endures.
Hypsipyle of Lemnos, born of
the people of Bacchus,
speaks to Jason: how
much of your heart was truly in your words?
You’re said to have
reached
rich with the fleece
of the golden ram.
I give thanks for your
safety, as much as you might allow:
yet surely the letter
itself should have come from you.
For though you might
not have had the winds, as you wished,
so as not to be driven
beyond the kingdoms I granted:
however adverse the
wind, Hypsipyle was worthy
of being sent a sealed
letter of greeting!
Why does rumour reach
me, with news, before a letter:
the sacred bulls of
Mars going under the yoke,
a crop of warriors
growing from scattered seed
and their deaths not
requiring your efforts,
the watchful dragon
guarding the hide of the ram
yet the golden fleece
snatched by your brave hand?
If I could say this
timidly to the doubters: ‘He himself
wrote this to me’, how
fine that would be!
Why complain at the
sense of duty of an indifferent husband?
If I’m still yours,
I’ve been shown great indulgence.
It’s been said that a
barbarous sorceress came back with you
to be welcomed to that
half of the bed you promised me.
Love’s a credulous
thing. If only it’s thoughtless speech
that has charged a man
with false crimes!
Recently a guest came
to me from Thessalian shores,
and had scarcely
crossed the threshold when I said:
‘How is my Jason
faring?’ He hung there,
shame-faced, his eyes
fixed on the ground.
I leapt up
immediately, and tearing my tunic from my breast,
I shouted: ‘Does he
live, or does death call me, also?’
‘He lives,’ he said
timidly: I forced that timid man to swear it.
I scarcely believe you
live even with a god as witness.
As my reason returns,
I begin to inquire about your deeds:
He tells of your
ploughing with the bronze-footed bulls,
the dragon’s teeth
sown in the earth instead of seed
and the sudden
warriors bearing arms,
an earthborn people
killed in civil war
fulfilling their
life’s destiny in a day.
The dragon defeated.
Again, I ask if Jason lives:
belief alternates with
hope and fear.
While he relates each
tale, he reveals, by his ability,
in the eagerness, and
the flow of his story, my wounds.
Oh, where’s the
loyalty promised? Where’s the marriage oath,
and the torch better
fitted to plunge beneath my funeral pyre?
I was not known to you
secretly. Juno was present at the wedding
and Hymen, his brow
was crowned with garlands.
Yet neither Juno nor
Hymen, but dismal bloodstained Erinys
carried her torches of
ill-luck before me.
What are the Minyans to me? Or ships and Tritons?
Or Tiphys
the Argo’s helmsman, and my country, to you?
There’s no ram here
with a remarkable golden fleece,
nor was
True, at first – but
my evil fate drew me on –
I intended to drive
the stranger away with my army of women
and they know how to
overcome Lemnian men – too much so!
His life was protected
by such a resolute army!
I saw that man into my
city, admitted him to my house and heart.
Here two summers and
two winters passed you by.
It was the third
harvest when you contracted to sail,
mixing words like
these with your tears:
‘I’m dragged away from
you Hypsipyle. May fate only let me return:
I leave here as your
husband, your husband I’ll always be.
But that of mine
that’s hidden in your pregnant womb,
will live, and we
should both be parents to it!’
So you spoke. And,
tears falling from your lying cheeks,
I remember you could
say nothing more to me.
Of the comrades you
embarked last on the sacred Argo:
it sped away, the wind
took your billowing sails.
The dark-blue waves
well up from your driving keel:
The land’s gazed at by
you, the sea by me.
A wide tower, open on
all sides, surveys the waves:
there I suffer and
tears wet my face and breast.
I gaze through tears,
and my eyes see further
than they used to do,
sharpened by loving feelings.
Now, also, add to them
chaste prayers for your safety,
mingled with anxious
vows, to be fulfilled by me.
Shall I fulfil the
vows? Medea may enjoy the fruits of sacrifice!
My heart grieves, and
overflows, with anger mixed with love.
Shall I take gifts to
the temples because Jason lives who I’ve lost?
Should some victim die
at a blow because of the harm to me?
I was anxious, and
always afraid, lest your father
might arrange for a daughter-in-law
from a city of
I feared the Argolid – yet it’s a barbarian rival that harms me!
I never expected to
suffer this wound from your enemy.
It’s not her face or
merits that enchant you, but the charms she knows
and the herbs, cut,
with fearful incantations.
She could labour to
draw the reluctant moon from her course
and hide the horses of
the sun in darkness:
she could hold back
the waters, and halt the falling streams,
she could move woods,
and natural rocks, from their place.
She wanders through
the tombs, clothes loose, hair dishevelled,
and collects
particular bones from tepid funeral pyres.
She bewitches absent
folk: she pierces wax effigies,
and forces fine
needles into their wretched livers.
And what it might be better for me not to have known: wrongly,
love’s sought, and its
nature’s to be bought, by magic practices.
Can you embrace her,
without fear, in the one bed,
enjoying sleep, in the
silence of the night?
I suppose she forced
you to bear the yoke, like those bulls:
and like cruel
dragons, you too are lulled by her powers.
Add that she favours
attributing your long list of deeds to herself
and that the wife’s
name harms the husband’s.
Someone of Pelias’s party could ascribe your successes to poisons,
and there are people
who might believe him, saying:
‘It wasn’t Jason, but Medea of Phasis, Aeetes’s daughter
who stripped the
golden fleece from the Phrixean ram’
Alcimede, your mother, doesn’t approve – seek her
council! –
nor your father: she’s
a daughter-in-law come from the frozen pole.
Let her find a husband
from the Don, or the damp Scythian marshes,
or even from her
homeland of Phasis, for herself.
Fickle son of Aeson, more uncertain than a spring breeze,
why do your words of
promise lack substance?
You who’d gone from
here my husband, didn’t return so from there –
if I might be restored
as your wife, I’d be as before your going.
If high birth and a
noble name move you:
see, I was born the
daughter of Thoas and of Ariadne.
Bacchus was my
grandfather: as Bacchus’s wife she wears a crown,
and her constellation
outshines the lesser stars.
and you shall have me
too with the rest of my dowry.
Now I have given
birth, also. Rejoice for us both, Jason –
sweetly it’s author had
made a burden for my womb.
I’m happy in their
number, as well, and produced twin boys,
favoured by Lucina with a double pledge.
I you ask who they are
like, you’ll be able to identify them:
they don’t know how to
pretend they have any other father.
I nearly gave them up
to be seen as ambassadors for their mother,
but a cruel stepmother
stood in the way of that undertaking.
I feared Medea – a stepmother indeed –
Medea’s hands are made for every wickedness.
She who could scatter
the torn limbs of her brother, Absyrtus,
over the fields, would
she spare my children?
O you, maddened and
confused by Colchian drugs,
do you still say she’s
preferable to Hypsipyles in bed?
Shamefully that girl
knew a man in adultery:
chaste marriage gave
me to you, and you to me.
She betrayed her
father – I snatched my Thoas from death.
She abandoned
What does matter,
then, if wickedness overcomes piety,
if she is endowed by
crime itself, and it earns her a husband?
Jason, I don’t admire
the crime the Lemnian women committed!
However indignation
grants itself a coward’s weapons.
If hostile winds as
they ought had forced you and your friends
to enter my harbour, and I’d come out to meet you with young twins
– surely you’d have asked the earth to swallow you! – say, wretch,
with what look would
you have gazed at me, and your children?
What death would have
been fitting reward for such treachery?
In fact you would have
been safe and sound because of me,
not because you
deserved it, but because I am kind.
I would have drenched
my face with my rival’s blood,
and yours that she
stole with her magic arts.
I would have been Medea to Medea. Why, if he who is on high,
Jupiter the Just,
himself, assists my prayers,
let her grieve herself
for what Hypsipyle bewails, a rival
in my bed, and feel
the effect of her own laws,
and as I am forsaken,
a wife, and mother of two children,
may she be bereaved of
similar children, and her husband!
May she not keep her
evil place for long, and forsake worse:
may she be exiled, and
search the whole world for refuge.
What the sister was to
the brother, the daughter to the unlucky father,
let that harsh woman
be to her husband and her children!
When she’s exhausted
sea and land, let her try the air:
may she wander
helpless, hopeless, bloodied by her crimes.
I, daughter of Thoas, cheated of my husband, beg this:
‘Live man and bride in
an accursed bed!’
Dardanian, receive this song of dying Elissa:
what you read are the
last words written by me.
At fate’s call, the
white swan, despondent on the grass,
sings, like this, to
the waters of
I do not speak because
I hope to move you with prayers:
I offer up my prayers
to a hostile god!
But since I may have
wholly wasted my reputation for merit,
and for chaste body and
spirit, the waste of words is nothing.
You’re still
determined to go, abandoning wretched Dido,
and the same wind will
carry off your sails and promises.
Aeneas, you’re
determined to break your pledge, loose
your ships, to seek
domains in
You are not moved by
New Carthage, its growing walls,
or the supreme power
entrusted to you by the sceptre.
You flee what’s done,
you seek what is to do: yet searching
for another kingdom in
the world, it’s already found.
If you reach that
country who’d surrender it to you?
Who’d give possession
of his fields to an unknown?
Another love’s in
store for you, another Dido,
and another pledge
being given, you’ll again deceive.
Where might you create
a city as good as
and look out on your
people from its high fortress?
If it all came to
pass, and the gods did not delay your hopes,
where would you find a
wife, to love you like this?
I am scorched like wax
torches dipped in sulphur,
like holy incense
added to smoking pyres.
My sleepless eyes
cling, always, to Aeneas:
I’ve Aeneas in my mind
day and night.
It’s true that he’s
ungrateful, and silent about my gifts,
and if I weren’t a
fool, I’d wish to be free.
yet I don’t hate
Aeneas, though he might think badly of me,
though I complain of his
treachery, still I love him more.
Venus, spare your
daughter-in-law, and Love, my brother,
embrace your
hard-hearted brother: let him serve in your ranks.
So I, who began this
love – I don’t scorn indeed to say this –
might offer him the
substance of my affections.
I’m cheated and this
is a false idea I speak of:
he differs from his
mother in disposition.
Begotten by stones, or
hills, or native oaks
on tall cliffs, by
savage beasts, or by the sea
such as you now gaze
on, stirred by the winds:
why do you still
prepare to battle with adverse tides?
Where do you flee to?
Storms obstruct you. The storms’ aid
will benefit me! See
how the wind excites the crashing waves.
The storm I wished for
you, comes to pass without me:
wind and wave are more
just to me than your heart.
I’m not worth so much
that you should perish, unjustly,
by not being stopped
from fleeing me over the wide seas.
You’d be cultivating
constancy and hatred too lavishly,
if, though free of me,
you met a common fate,
Soon the winds will
die, and, evenly, over the level waves,
Triton will drive his
dark-green horses through the waters.
I wish that you too
might be altered like the winds,
and you will, unless
you’re harder than an oak.
Why, unless you’re
ignorant of how furious the seas can be,
do you so often, so
wrongly, trust the waters you’ve tried?
Even, when you loose
the hawsers, persuaded by the tide,
still the wide sea
holds many sorrows.
It’s no use tempting
the waves, when faith’s been violated:
there punishment’s
demanded for treachery,
especially when love
is wounded, because, Venus, it’s said,
the mother of Love,
was born naked from
Lost, I fear lest I
lose, and harm the one who harmed,
lest my enemy,
shipwrecked, drink the salt breakers.
Live, I beg you! Thus
I’d curse you more harshly than if you died,
you’d be more widely
known as the cause of my death.
Come, imagine, if you
were snatched up by a swift whirlwind –
let there be no weight
to that omen – what would be in your mind?
Immediately the
perjury of your false tongue will strike you
and Dido, forced to
die by Phrygian deceit:
the image of the wife
you cheated would stand before your eyes,
in sorrow, and with
loosened bloodstained hair.
However many times you
say: ‘Forgive me, I deserved it all!’
you’ll find each one a
thunderbolt falling on you!
Grant a little space
to your cruelty, and the sea:
a safe path in future
will be the great reward for your delay.
If you’ve no care for
me: spare your child Iulus!
It’s enough for you to
bear notoriety for my death.
Why do that son, Ascanius, and your household gods deserve this?
Shall the waves bury
those gods you rescued from the fire?
But you did not bring
them with you, as you told me, traitor,
nor did your sacred
father straddle your shoulders.
You lied about it all:
for your lying tongue did not
start with me, nor am
I the first one to be punished:
if you ask where Creusa is, the lovely mother of Iulus
–
she died alone,
abandoned by a hard-hearted husband!
You told me this, but
in winning me you suppressed it.
From that minor fault,
came my future punishment.
I’ve no doubt that
your gods condemn you:
storm-ridden for seven
years, by land and sea.
Spewed up by the
waves, I received you to a safe harbour
and, scarce having
heard your name aright, gave you a kingdom.
Yet I wish I’d been
contented with those services
and my reputation not
buried by our union!
That day harmed me,
when a sudden dark rainstorm
forced us to shelter
under the roof of a cave.
I heard a voice: I
thought it the nymphs’ wailing:
it was the Furies
giving warning of my fate.
Exact my punishment,
wounded Honour, and by the violated
laws of my
marriage-bed leave no reputation to my ashes.
And you ghost, and
spirit, and ashes of my Sychaeus
to whom, alas for me,
filled with shame I go.
Sychaeus is honoured by me in a marble shrine:
covered by shadowing
branches, with their white strands of wool.
From it, four times, I
heard his familiar voice, calling me by name:
his tones, faintly,
saying: ‘Elissa, come!’
No delay: I come: I
come to you, a wife in debt –
yet still I am late
through confessing to my shame!
Grant forgiveness of
my sin: he was worthy, he who deceived me:
that it was him
removes the evil from my offence.
His divine mother, Venus, and the son’s pious burden, his old father,
Anchises,
gave me hope he’d be a true husband to me.
If I was mistaken, the
error had an honest cause:
add my loyalty, and
nothing’s to be regretted.
The course of my fate
holds true to the end,
and runs clear to the
last day of my existence:
My husband, Sychaeus, died at the altar of his house
and my wicked brother,
Pygmalion, has the spoils.
Exiled from
and endured harsh
journeys, pursued by enemies.
Escaping my brother
and the sea, I was brought to unknown lands,
and I won this shore,
that I granted to you, faithless man.
I founded
a cause of envy to the
neighbouring peoples.
War broke out. A
stranger, and a woman, they tested me by war,
and I’d barely
prepared the weapons and defences of my
I was flattered by a
thousand suitors, plaintive to wed me,
and I don’t know which
of their marriage beds I preferred.
Why hesitate to
surrender me in chains to Iarba, of the Gaetuli?
I will have offered my
arms up to your wickedness.
There is my brother,
too, whose impious hand demands
to be sprinkled with
my blood, already stained by my husband’s.
Set aside the gods,
and the holy things you profane by touching!
It’s not well for an
impious hand to worship the heavens.
If you were their
future supporter escaped from the fire,
it’s a shame that the
gods themselves escaped the flames.
Wicked man, you
abandon both pregnant Dido
and that part of you
hidden enclosed by my body.
You add the infant’s
death to the unhappy mother’s,
and you’ll be author
of the funeral of your unborn child.
Iulus’s brother will die with his mother,
and one punishment
will destroy the two of us.
‘But the god orders me
to go.’ I wish he had prevented your
coming to
Led by this god, are
you not driven by adverse winds,
and endlessly scoured
by ravening seas?
Returning to
if it were as great as
when Hector was alive.
You don’t seek your
father’s Simois, but
surely, when you reach
the place you wish, you’ll be an enemy.
While the land, you
force yourself on, hides and shuns your ships,
you’ll hardly be able
to touch what you seek until you’re old.
Rather you should
accept this nation, without quibbling,
as my dowry, and the
riches of Pygmalion I brought here.
Transform this happier
Phoenician city into
and rule this place,
and hold the sacred sceptre!
If your mind’s eager
for war, if Iulus asks, what victorious part
might fall to him in
battle, we’ll have no lack of enemies
to offer him, for him
to overcome: here he can cultivate
the conditions for
peace, here too a place for arms.
Only – by your mother
Venus, and your brother’s arms, his arrows,
and the sacred Trojan
gods companions of your flight! –
may whoever of your
race you brought, so conquer,
and cruel Mars bring
an end to your troubles,
and Ascanius fulfil his years in happiness
and old Anchises’s bones rest in peace!
I beg you, spare this
house that surrenders ownership to you!
What crime could you
say was mine except having loved?
I was not born in
my husband and father
did not depend on you.
If it’s shameful to
marry me, call me friend not wife:
so long as Dido is
yours, she’ll endure anything.
I know how the waves
strike the African shore:
and grant or deny a
passage at certain times:
when the wind grants
you way, you may unfurl your sails:
then fickle weeds
enclose your grounded boat.
Trust me to watch for
the right time: you’ll leave more certainly,
and even if you wish
it, I won’t let you stay.
And your companions
need rest, and the sails of your ships,
half-repaired, require
some further delay.
By my kindnesses, if I
am destined for you, beyond this,
by those hopes of
union I beg a little time:
while the seas grow
calmer, while love’s eased by familiarity,
I learn to bear my
sorrows more firmly.
If not, I have the
courage to pour away my life:
your harshness cannot
endure within me long.
I wish you could see
my appearance as I write:
I write, and a Trojan
sword lies in my lap:
and tears fall from my
cheeks onto the naked blade,
which will soon be
stained with tears of blood.
How truly fitting your
gift is for my death,
you prepare my funeral
at little cost.
Nor is this the first
wound, from a weapon, my heart suffers:
that place bears the
wound of cruel love.
Anna, sister, sister
Anna, sadly conscious of my crime,
soon you must give the
last offerings to my ashes.
Do not write ‘Sychaeus’s Elissa’, when I’m
consumed by fire,
let this verse, alone,
appear on my marble tomb:
‘Aeneas offered a
reason to die, and the sword.
Dido killed herself by
her own hand.’
Hermione speaks to one
lately her cousin and husband,
now her cousin. The
wife has changed her name.
Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, proud, in his father’s
image,
holds me imprisoned
contrary to piety and justice.
I have refused what I
could, so as not be held against my will,
a woman’s hand has not
the power to do more.
‘Scion of Aeacus, what are you doing? I’m not without a champion’
I said, ‘to you, Pyrrhus, this girl is under his command!’
Deafer than the sea,
he dragged me under his roof,
my hair unbound, and I
calling on Orestes’s name.
How could I have
endured worse, as a slave in a captured
if a barbarian horde
were to seize a daughter of
Andromache was less abused by victorious Achaia,
when Greek flames
might have burnt the wealth of
But you, Orestes, if
my affectionate care for you moves you,
take possession of me,
without cowardice, as is your right!
You’d surely take up
arms if someone snatched your cattle
from the closed
stable, will you be slower for a captive wife?
Let your
father-in-law, Menelaus, be your example in reclaiming
a lost wife, a girl
who was the cause of a just war:
if my father had wept
in his empty palace like a coward,
my mother would be
married to
Don’t ready a thousand
ships with swelling canvas
or hosts of Greek
warriors: come yourself!
Yet if I too were won back in this way, it’s no shame for a husband
to have endured fierce
war for his dear marriage bed.
Why, since Atreus, Pelop’s son, is our
mutual grandfather,
even if you weren’t my
husband, you’d still be my cousin.
Husband, I beg you,
aid your wife, cousin aid your cousin:
both titles urge you
to perform your duty.
Tyndareus gave me to you, he, my ancestor, heavy with
experience,
and years: the
grandfather decided for the grand-child.
But Menelaus, my
father, made a promise of me, unaware of this act:
yet a grandfather has
more power than a father, being first in rank.
When I married you, my
wedding harmed no one:
if I unite with Pyrrhus, you’ll be hurt by me.
And my father,
Menelaus, may know nothing of our love:
he himself succumbed
to the arrows of the swift-winged god.
The love he allowed
himself, he should pardon in a son-in-law.
My mother appears as
an example to him.
You are to me as my
father was to Helen, my mother. The part
that Paris, a Trojan
stranger, once played, Pyrrhus performs.
He may boast endlessly
about his father’s, Achilles’s, deeds,
you also have your
father’s actions to speak about.
Agamemnon, Tantalus’s
scion, ruled over all, even Achilles:
the latter a soldier,
the former was lord of lords.
You too have Pelops and his father, Tantalus, as ancestors:
if you counted
carefully, you’d be the fifth from Jove.
Nor do you lack worth.
You bore the weapons of hate:
but why might you have
done so? Your father’s fate endowed you.
I wish you might have
had better reasons for courage:
the work was not of
your choosing, the cause was forced on you.
You still fulfilled
your duty: Aegisthus, from his open throat,
stained the house with
blood, as your father had before.
Pyrrhus, scion of Aeacus,
speaks against you, turns praise
to blame, and still
maintains it to my face.
I am violated, and my
face swells with feeling,
and my inflamed
emotions grieve me with hidden fires.
Who has not taunted
Orestes in Hermione’s presence:
I have no power,
there’s no cruel sword here!
Truly I can weep: I
diffuse anger in weeping,
and tears flow like
streams over my breast.
I have only these,
always, and always I pour them out:
they wet my neglected
cheeks, from a perennial fountain.
Surely, by the fate of
my race, that tracks us through the years,
the mothers of
Tantalus’s line are suited to be prey?
I’ll not repeat the
lies of the swan of the river to Leda,
or complain of Jupiter
hiding under its plumage.
Far off where the long
Isthmus divides two seas,
Hippodamia was carried of by the stranger’s, Pelops’s, chariot.
Two sisters, Phoebe
and Hilaeira, were brought back to the city
of Taenarus,
from
Helen was taken from Taenarus, across the sea to Ida, by a stranger,
Paris, on account of
whom the Greeks turned to their weapons.
Of course I can
scarcely remember it. Yet I remember:
everyone grieving,
everyone full of anxious fears.
Grandfather cried, and
aunt Phoebe, and the Twins,
Leda prayed to the
heavens and her Jupiter.
Even then I cut my
hair that was not yet long
calling: ‘Without me,
mother, why do you go without me?’
Now a husband will leave. Lest I may be thought not Pelops’s scion,
see
I was prepared as a prize for Pyrrhus, this Neoptolemus.
I wish Apollo’s bow
had avoided Achilles, son of Peleus!
The father would
condemn the son for his violent deed.
A bereaved husband
crying for his abducted bride
didn’t please Achilles
then, nor would it have pleased him now.
Why do the hostile
heavens cause me injury?
Why must I complain
that a troubled destiny harms me?
My childhood was
motherless: father was at the war:
and while both lived,
I was bereaved of both.
Not for you, my
mother, the charming lispings of those tender years,
spoken by your
daughter’s uncertain mouth.
I did not clasp your
neck with tiny arms,
or sit, a welcome
burden, on your lap.
You didn’t tend my
dress, nor on my marriage
did I enter a new
marriage bed, prepared by my mother.
When you returned I
came out to meet you – I confess the truth –
my mother’s face was
not familiar!
Yet I knew you were
Helen, as you were the most beautiful:
you yourself asked
which child was your daughter.
This alone is mine:
that Orestes is happily my husband:
he too will be taken
from me, if he doesn’t fight for his own.
Pyrrhus has a prisoner, though my father returns
victorious:
and this is the gift
to me from
When the Sun with his
radiant horses holds the heights,
I still enjoy,
unhappily, my little freedom:
when night shuts me in
my room, with crying and bitter groans,
and I sink down on my
sorrowful bed,
tears instead of sleep
are made to spring up in my eyes
and I shrink from my
husband as if from an enemy.
Often I’m stupefied by
my ills and forgetful of things,
and where I am, and,
unaware, I touch a limb from
and I feel the wrong,
and draw away from the body I touched,
in error, and I think
my very hand to be polluted.
Often Orestes’s name escapes me rather than Neoptolemus,
and I love the error
in my speech as if it were an omen.
I swear by my unhappy
tribe and Jove, the father of that tribe,
who shakes the seas
and lands and his own realm:
by your father’s, my
uncle’s, bones, who requires of you
that he might lie
beneath his mound bravely avenged:
that either I shall
die early, and be lost in my first youth,
or I, descendant of
Tantalus, shall be wife to his descendant.
A letter, that shares
her feelings, sent to Alcides
by your wife, if Deianira is your wife.
I give thanks that Oechalia is added to our titles,
I lament that the
victor succumbs to his victory.
A sudden rumour
spreads through the Pelasgian cities
tarnishing, and
denying, your deeds:
you, whom neither Juno
nor her succession of mighty labours
could crush: Iole has placed the yoke on you.
King Eurystheus would enjoy this, the Thunderer’s
sister too,
that stepmother
delighting in the blemish to your career.
But Jupiter would not,
for whom (if it’s to be believed)
one night was not
sufficient to father so great a child.
Venus has harmed you
more than Juno: the latter, burdened you,
and raised you up, the
former holds your neck beneath her foot.
Behold, a world
pacified by your protective strength,
where sea-green Nereus circles the wide earth.
The lands owe their
peace to you, the oceans their safety:
your merits fill the
sun’s two horizons.
The sky where you will
live, you once bore:
Hercules, replacing
Atlas, held up the stars.
What will you have
gained except notoriety for your sad disgrace
if you add a known unchastity to your former deeds?
Do you insist on what
is said, that, in your tender cradle,
you squeezed two
snakes tightly, and were once worthy of Jove?
You started better than you finish: the end’s
inferior
to the beginning: this man differs from that
child.
What a thousand wild beasts, Sthenelus your enemy,
and Juno, could not conquer, Love has
conquered.
But they say I married well, since I’m called
Hercules’s wife,
and my father-in-law is he who thunders through
the heights.
The ox that comes to the plough unequally yoked
is weighed down like the lesser wife of a
greater husband.
It’s a burden not an honour to endure a flawed
splendour,
if you wish to be well married, marry an equal.
My husband’s always away, more like a guest
than a husband,
and he chases after vile monsters and wild
beasts.
I, occupied with my chaste prayers in this
empty house,
torment myself that he’s downed by some
aggressive enemy:
I’m troubled by serpents, wild boars, hungry
lions,
and hounds that cling to him with their triple
jaws.
I’m worried by sacrificial entrails, vain dream
phantoms,
and secret omens searched for in the night.
Unhappy, I try to catch the murmurings of
uncertain rumour:
I’m made fearful by wavering hope, and hope is
killed by fear.
Your mother Alcmena
is absent, and grieves that she pleased the god,
neither your father Amphitryon
nor your son Hyllus are here.
I suffer Eurystheus,
your judge through the cunning of unjust Juno,
and I suffer the endless anger of the goddess.
That is enough to bear: but you add foreign
lovers,
and whichever girl wishes to can become a
mother by you.
I won’t mention Auge,
violated in the valleys of Parthenius,
or your child Tlepolemus
by the nymph Astydameia:
it wasn’t your fault, that crowd of Thespius’s daughters,
of whose company not one was left alone by you.
There’s one recent sin, reported to me, Omphale, the adulteress,
by whom I’m made a stepmother to your Lydian Lamus.
often returning his weary waters back on
themselves,
saw a necklace hanging from Hercules’s neck,
that neck to which the heavens were a small
burden.
Weren’t you ashamed, your strong arms circled
with gold,
and jewels placed on your bulging muscles?
Surely the breath of the Nemean
lion was expelled by those arms,
that pestilential beast whose skin you wear on
your left shoulder.
You dare to crown your long hair with a turban!
White poplar leaves are more fitting for
Hercules.
Aren’t you ashamed at having been reduced to
circling your waist
with a Maeonian belt
like an impudent girl?
Don’t you recall the memory of cruel Diomede,
that savage who fed his horses on human flesh?
If Busiris had seen you dressed like this, surely he’d have been ashamed
o be have been
conquered by such a conqueror!
Antaeus would tear the bands from your strong neck,
lest he regret
surrendering to such a weakling!
They say you held a
basket among the Ionian girls
and were frightened by
your mistress’s threats.
Did your hand not draw
back, assigned its smooth basket,
Alcides, conqueror of a thousand labours,
and did you draw out
the thread with your strong thumb,
and was an equally
handsome weight of wool returned?
Ah! How often, while
your rough fingers twisted the thread,
your over-heavy hand
broke the spindle!
Of course you’ll have
told of deeds, hiding that they were yours:
squeezing savage
snakes by their throats,
entangling your infant
hands in their coils:
how the Tegaean boar would lie in Erymanthian
cypress woods
and damage the earth
with his great weight:
you wouldn’t be silent
about those heads hung on Thracian houses,
nor Diomede’s mares fattened on human bodies,
nor the triple
monster, rich in Spanish cattle,
Geryon, who was three monsters in one:
and Cerberus the hound
with as many bodies split from one,
his hair entangled by
a threatening snake:
the fertile serpent
born again from her fecund wound,
and she herself
enriched by her losses.
and he who hung between
your left arm and left side,
a weary weight as you
crushed his throat,
and the Centaurs’
battered troop on the heights of
trusting wrongly in
their speed and dual form.
Can you speak of that,
marked out by Sidonian dress?
Shouldn’t your tongue
fall silent curbed by your clothing?
Iole, the nymph, daughter of Iardanus,
also wears your arms
and bears a familiar
trophy from her captive hero.
Go on then, excite
your courage and review your great deeds:
swear by that she’s
the hero you should be.
By as much as you are the less, greatest of men, so much the greater
her victory over you,
than yours over those you conquered.
The measure of your
goods goes to her, give up your wealth:
your mistress is the
inheritor of your worth.
O shame! The rough pelt
stripped from the ribs
of a bristling lion
covers her tender flank!
You are wrong and
don’t realise: her spoils aren’t from a lion,
but from you: you’re
the creature’s conqueror, she’s yours.
A woman bears the
black shaft with Lernean poison,
one scarcely fitted to
carry the heavy distaff of wool,
and lifts in her hand
the club that tamed wild beasts,
and gazes at my
husband’s arms in her mirror.
Yet I still had only
heard this: I could ignore the rumours,
and grief came to the
senses gently on the breeze.
Now a foreign rival is
brought before my eyes,
and I cannot hide from
myself what I suffer!
You won’t let me avoid
her: she walks like a captive
through the middle of
the city to be seen by unwilling eyes.
But not with unbound
hair in the manner of a captive:
she confesses her good
fortune by her seemly looks,
walking, visible far
and wide, covered with gold,
just as you yourself
were dressed in
showing her proud face
to the crowd like Hercules’s conqueror:
you’d think Oechalia still stood, with her father living:
and perhaps Aetolian Deianira will be beaten
off,
and Iole will be your wife, dropping the label of mistress,
and wicked Hymen will
join the shameful bodies
of Iole,
Eurytus’s daughter and Aonian
Hercules.
My mind shuns the
idea, and a chill runs through my body,
and my listless hand
lies here in my lap.
You have loved me too
among others, but without sin:
don’t regret I was
twice a reason for you to fight.
Achelous, weeping, lifted his broken horn from the wet
bank,
and immersed his maimed
head in the muddy waters:
Nessus the Centaur sank into the fatal Evenus,
and discoloured its
waves with his equine blood.
But why do I recall
this? Written news comes,
rumour that my
husband’s dying from the poison in his tunic.
Ah me! What have I done?
What madness has my love caused?
Impious Deianira, why do you hesitate to die?
Or shall your husband
tear himself apart on
and you, the cause of
so much wickedness, survive?
If I have had reasons
till now why I should be thought
Hercules’s wife, let
my death be a pledge of our union.
You will recognise a
sister of yours in me too, Meleager!
Impious Deianira, why do you hesitate to die?
Alas for my accursed
house! Agrius sits on
defenceless old age
weighs on forsaken Oeneus:
Tydeus, my brother, is an exile on an unknown shore:
the other, Meleager, was burned by the fatal flame.
Althaea, our mother,
pierced her breast with a blade.
Impious Deianira, why do you hesitate to die?
This one thing I
plead, by the most sacred law of the marriage-bed,
lest I appear to have
plotted for your death:
Nessus, when his covetous breast was struck by the
arrow,
whispered: ‘This blood
has power over love.’
Oh, I sent you the
fabric smeared with Nessus’s poison.
Impious Deianira, why do you hesitate to die?
Now farewell my aged
father, and you, my sister Gorge,
and my land, and my
brother wrenched from that land,
and you the last day’s
light to meet my eyes: and my husband –
but O can he still be
- and Hyllus my son, farewell!
Even now, left to the
wild beasts, she might live, cruel Theseus.
Do you expect her to
have endured this too, patiently?
The whole tribe of
creatures contrive to be gentler than you:
not one have I had
less confidence in than you.
Theseus, what you read has been sent to you from this
land,
from which your sails
carried your ship without me,
in which my sleep, and
you, evilly betrayed me,
conceiving your plans
against me while I slept.
It was the time when
the earth’s first sprinkled with glassy frost,
and the hidden birds
lament in the leaves:
waking uncertainly,
and stirring languidly in sleep,
half-turning, my hand
reached out for Theseus:
there was no one
there. I drew back, and tried again,
and moved my arm
across the bed: no one there.
Fear broke through my
drowsiness: terrified, I rose
and hurled my body
from the empty bed.
Straight away my hands drummed on my breast, and tore at my hair,
just as it was, on
waking, from my confused sleep.
There was a moon: I
looked and saw nothing but the shore:
wherever my eyes could
see, there was nothing but sand.
I ran here and there
without any sense of purpose,
the deep sand slowing
a girl’s feet.
Meanwhile I called: ‘Theseus!’ over the whole beach
your name echoing from
the hollow cliffs
and as often as I
called you, the place itself called too:
the place itself
wished to give aid to my misery.
There was a hill: a
few bushes were visible on its summit:
a crag hangs there
hollowed out by the harsh waves.
I climbed it: courage
gave me strength: and I scanned
the wide waters from
that height with my gaze.
Then I saw – now the
cruel winds were also felt –
your ship driven
before a fierce southerly gale.
Either with what I
saw, or what I may have thought I’d seen:
I was frozen like ice
and half-alive.
But grief allowed no
time for languor. I was roused by it,
and roused, I called
to Theseus at the top of my voice.
‘Where are you going?’
I shouted ‘turn back, wicked Theseus!
Work your ship! You’re
without one of your number!’
So I called. When my
voice failed I beat my breast instead:
my blows were
interspaced with my words.
If you could not hear
at least you might still see:
I made wide signals
with my outstretched hands.
I hung a white cloth
on a tall branch,
hoping those who’d
forgotten would remember me.
Now you were lost to
sight. Then finally I wept:
till then my cheeks
were numb with grief.
What could my eyes do
but weep at myself,
once they had ceased
to see your sails?
Either I wandered
alone, with dishevelled hair,
like a Maenad shaken
by the Theban god:
or I sat on the cold
rock gazing at the sea,
and I was as much a
stone as the stones I sat on.
Often I seek again the
bed that accepted us both,
but it shows no sign
of that acceptance,
and I touch what I can
of the traces of you, instead of you,
and the sheets your
body warmed.
I lie there and,
wetting the bed with my flowing tears,
I cry out: ‘We two
burdened you, restore the two!
We came here together:
why shouldn’t we go together?
Faithless bed, where’s
the better part of me now?
What am I to do? Why
endure alone? The island’s unploughed:
I see no human beings:
I can’t imagine there’s an ox.
The land’s encircled
by the sea on every side: no sailors,
no ship to set sail on
its uncertain way.
Suppose I was given
companions, winds and ship,
where would I make
for? My country denies me access.
If my boat slid gently
through peaceful waters,
calmed by Aeolian
winds, I’d be an exile still.
I could not gaze at
you,
a land that was known
to the infant Jove.
But my father and that
land justly ruled by my father,
those dear names, were
both betrayed by me.
while you, the victor
who retraced your steps, would have died
in the winding
labyrinth, unless guided by the thread I gave you,
Then, you said to me:
‘I swear by the dangers overcome,
that you’ll be mine
while we both shall live.’
We live, and I’m not
yours, Theseus, if you still live,
I’m a woman buried by
the fraud of a lying man.
Club that killed my
brother, the Minotaur, condemn me too!
The promise that you
gave should be dissolved by death.
Now I see not only
what I must endure,
but what any castaway
would suffer.
A thousand images of
dying fill my mind,
and I fear death less
than delay in that penalty of death.
At every moment I
dream it, coming from here or there,
as if wolves tore my
entrails with eager teeth.
Perhaps this land
breeds tawny lions?
Who knows if this
island harbours savage tigers?
And they say that the
ocean throws up huge sea-lions:
and who could prevent
some sword piercing my side?
If only I might not be
a captive, bound with harsh chains,
nor draw out endless
threads with a slave’s hand,
I whose father is Minos, whose mother is the Sun’s daughter,
because of that I
remember the more, that I was bound to you!
If I see the ocean,
the land and the wide shore,
I fear many things on
land, many on the waves.
The sky remains: I
fear visions from the gods:
I’m forsaken, a prey
and food for swift beasts.
If men live here and
cultivate this place, I distrust them:
I’ve thoroughly
learned to fear wounds from strangers.
I wish my brother Androgeos lived and you
hadn’t paid with your
children’s deaths for his impious murder:
and that you, Theseus hadn’t killed the Minotaur, half man, half bull,
wielding a knotted
club in your strong hand:
and that I hadn’t
given you the thread that marked your way back,
the thread so often
received back into the hand that drew it.
I’m not surprised that
victory was yours, and the monster,
prone, lay groaning on
the Cretan earth.
His horns could not
pierce your iron heart:
though you might fail
to shield it, your breast would be safe.
There you revealed
flints and adamants,
there you’ve a Theseus harder than flint.
Cruel sleep, why did
you hold me there, senseless?
Rather I should have
been buried forever in eternal night.
You too cruel winds,
you gales, all too ready
and officious in
bringing tears to me:
cruel right hand that
causes my death, and my brother’s,
and offered the
promise I asked, an empty name:
Sleep, the breeze, the
promise conspired against me:
one girl, I’m betrayed
by three causes.
So it seems I’ll die
without seeing my mother’s tears,
and there’ll be no one
to close my eyes.
My unhappy spirit will
vanish on a foreign breeze,
no friendly hand will
anoint my laid-out body.
The seabirds will hover
over my unburied bones:
these are the
ceremonies fit for my tomb.
You’ll be carried to
where you’ll stand in
the high fortress of your city,
and speak cleverly of
the death of man and bull,
and the labyrinth’s
winding paths cut from the rock:
speak of me also,
abandoned in a lonely land:
I’m not to be dropped,
secretly, from your list!
Your father’s not Aegeus: Aethra, daughter of Pittheus,
is not your mother:
your creators were stone and sea.
May the gods have
ordained that you saw me from the high stern,
that my mournful
figure altered your expression.
Now see me not with
your eyes, but as you can, with your mind,
clinging to a rock the
fickle sea beats against:
see my dishevelled
hair like one who is in mourning
and my clothes heavy
with tears like rain!
My body trembles like
ears of wheat struck by a north wind
and the letters I
write waver in my unsteady fingers.
I don’t entreat you by
my kindness, since that has ended badly:
let no gratitude be
owed for my deeds.
But no punishment
either. If I’m not the cause of your health,
that’s still no reason
why you should cause me harm.
These hands weary of
beating my sad breast for you,
unhappily I stretch
them out over the wide waters:
I mournfully display
to you what remains of my hair:
I beg you by these
tears your actions have caused:
turn your ship, Theseus, fall back against the wind:
if I die first, you
can still bear my bones.
An Aeolid,
who has no health herself, sends it to an Aeolid,
and, armed, these
words are written by her hand.
If the script is full
of errors, with its dark blots,
the letter will have
been stained by a woman’s blood.
My right hand holds a
pen, my left a naked sword
and the paper’s lying
loosely in my lap.
This is the image of Aeolus’s daughter writing to her brother:
it seems in this way I
can appease our harsh father.
I could only wish that
he were here to see my death
and the eyes of its
author contemplate the act
though he’s
uncivilised, and more ferocious than his east wind,
he would gaze at my
wounds with dry cheeks.
How can anything good come of living with
savage winds,
that nature of his
matches his subjects.
He governs south, and
west winds, and Thracian northerlies,
and your wings,
violent easterlies.
Alas he governs the
winds! He cannot govern his swollen anger,
and his kingdom is
smaller than his faults.
What’s the use of my
bandying my ancestor’s names about the sky,
that Jupiter can be
mentioned among my relatives?
Is this blade, my
funeral gift, any less dangerous
because I hold it, not
yarn, in my woman’s hand?
O I wish, Macareus, the hour that made us one
had come later than
the hour of my death!
Brother, why did you
love me more than a brother should,
and why was I not
merely what a sister should be, to you?
I also burnt with it,
in a way I used to hear about,
I don’t know what god
I felt in my loving heart.
The colour fled from
my face, my slender body grew thin,
I took the least food,
forced it into my mouth:
I couldn’t sleep
easily, and the night was a year to me,
and, wounded by no
pains, I gave out groans.
Nor could I give a
reason for why I acted so,
nor knew what a lover
was, but I was one.
My nurse was the first
to sense it, with an old woman’s acuteness:
my nurse first said: ‘Canace, you’re in love!’
I blushed, and shame
sent my eyes down to my lap:
that was enough of a
confession, that silent signal.
Then the burden
swelled in my sinful belly,
and the secret load
weighed on my weak limbs.
What herbs, what
remedies did my nurse not bring
and she applied them
with her rash hand,
in order – I hid this
one thing from you – to expel
the growing burden
from my womb!
Ah! The child, too
much alive, resisted the arts she tried,
and was safe from its
secret enemy.
Now Phoebus’s most
beautiful sister had risen nine times,
and the new Moon drove
her light-bringing horses:
I didn’t know what
caused my sudden pains,
and I was a new
soldier, raw to the part.
I couldn’t lessen my
cries. ‘Why betray your sin?’
my knowing nurse said
covering my wailing mouth.
What can I do, in my
misery? Pain forces me to groan,
but fear and my nurse
and shame forbid it.
I contain my cries,
take back the words that escape me,
and force myself to
swallow the tears I’ve shed.
Death was before my
eyes, and Lucina denied her help
and, if I died
pregnant, death too would be a crime:
when bending over me,
tearing open my tunic, parting my hair,
and pressing my breast
to yours, you revived me,
and you said to me:
‘Live, sister, o dearest sister,
live so that two
aren’t lost in one body. Let a fine hope
give you strength: now
you’ll be your brother’s bride.
he through whom you’ll
be a mother and a wife.
Though I was dead,
believe me, I still revived at your words
and my burden was laid
down, the crime of my womb.
Why do you give thanks?
Aeolus sits mid-palace:
our crimes must be
hidden from our father’s eyes.
My diligent nurse
hides the child among fruits,
and grey olive
branches, and light sacred ribbons,
and pretends she’s
making a sacrifice, says words of prayer:
the people give worship,
the father himself steps aside.
Now she was nearly at
the door. A cry reached our father’s ears
and that betrayed
signs of the child.
Aeolus snatched up my baby and revealed the false
sacrifice.
The palace echoed to
his furious voice.
As the sea trembles,
when touched by a mild breeze,
as the ash twig shakes
in a warm south wind,
so you might have seen
my pale limbs quiver:
the bed was shaken by
the body lying on it.
He forced his way in,
and broadcast my shame by his shouts,
and scarcely kept his
hands from my poor face.
I could do nothing but
modestly pour out tears.
My tongue was frozen,
numbed by icy fear.
And then he ordered
that his little grand-child should be given
to the dogs and birds,
abandoned in a lonely place.
The child began to
scream with misery – could he have understood –
as though he could
beseech his grandfather with his voice.
What do you think my
feelings were, then, my brother,
(now you can collect
your feelings yourself)
when my child was
carried off by my enemy into the deep woods,
to be eaten by wolves
from the mountains?
He left my room, then
at last I beat my breasts
and proceeded to run
my fingers through my hair.
Meanwhile one of father’s attendants came, with a mournful face,
and his mouth uttered
shameful words:
‘Aeolus
sends you this sword’ – he delivered the sword –
‘and orders you to
know his wish from its purpose.’
I know, and will use
the violent weapon bravely:
I will sheathe
father’s gift in my breast.
Do you give me this
gift for my marriage, father?
Father, will your
daughter be rich in this dowry?
Hymen, betrayed, take
your marriage torches far from here,
and flee this impious
house with troubled feet!
Furies bear the black
torches you bear, to me,
and from those fires
light my funeral pyre!
My happy sisters wedded
to a better fate:
be lost to me but
still remember me!
What did the child
commit, in so few hours of life?
Scarcely born, by what
act could he harm his grandfather?
If he can have merited
death, he merited consideration:
ah, poor thing,
punished for what I committed!
Child, your mother’s
grief, a prey to devouring beasts,
ah me, your day of
birth tears you apart,
child, sad pledge of
my less than auspicious love,
this is your first
day, this has been your last.
I could not let my
rightful tears drench you,
nor cut a wisp of your
hair to bear to the tomb:
I could not bend over
you, and snatch an icy kiss:
ravenous wild beasts
tear apart my baby.
I too, wounded, will
follow the shade of my child:
I will not be called
‘mother’ or ‘bereaved’ for long.
Yet you, vain hope of
your unhappy sister,
gather I beg you the
scattered limbs of your son,
and bring them to
their mother, place us in a shared tomb,
and let the narrow urn
have whatever there is of us both!
Live on, remember us,
and weep tears over my wound:
lover, do not shun the
body of your lover.
You, I beg, obey the
requests of the sister you loved too well!
I myself will obey our
father’s order.
Scorned Medea, the helpless exile, speaks to her recent husband,
surely you can spare
some time from your kingship?
Oh, as I remember, the
Queen of Colchis found time
to bring you riches,
when you sought my arts!
Then, the Sisters who
spin mortality’s threads,
should have unwound
mine from the spindle:
Then you might have
died well, Medea! Whatever
life’s brought since
that time’s been punishment.
Ah me! Why was that Pelian ship driven forward
by youthful arms,
seeking the ram of Phrixus?
Why did we of
and your Greek crew
drink the waters of Phasis?
Why did I take more
pleasure than I should in your golden hair,
and your comeliness,
and the lying favours of your tongue?
If not, once your
strange ship had beached on our sands,
and had brought your
brave warriors here,
Aeson’s son might have gone unmindful, unprotected by
charms,
into the fiery breath,
and burning muzzles, of the bulls!
He might have
scattered the seed, and sown as many enemies,
so that the one who
sowed fell prey to his own sowing!
What great treachery
would have died with you, wicked man!
What great evils would
have been averted from my head!
There’s some kind of
delight in reproaching your ingratitude
for my kindness: I’ll
enjoy the only pleasure I’ll have from you.
Ordered to turn your
untried ship towards Colchis,
you entered the lovely
kingdom of my native land.
Medea was, there, what your new bride is here:
as rich as her father
is, my father was as rich.
Her father holds
that lies to the left
of
Aeetes welcomes the young Greek heroes as guests,
and Pelasgian bodies grace the ornate beds.
Then I saw you: then I
began to know what you might be:
that was the first
ruin of my affections.
I saw and I perished!
I burnt, not with familiar fires,
but as a pine torch might
burn before the great gods.
And you were handsome,
and my fate lured me on:
the light of your eyes
stole mine away.
You sensed it,
faithless one! For who can, easily, hide love?
its flame is obvious,
displaying the evidence.
Meanwhile rules were
laid down for you: to yoke the strong necks,
first, of fierce bulls
to the unaccustomed plough.
They were the bulls of
Mars, more cruel than just their horns,
also their exhalations
were terrible with fire,
their hooves were
solid bronze, and bronze coated their nostrils,
and these too were
blackened by their breath.
Besides that, you were
ordered to scatter seed to breed a nation,
through the wide
fields, with dutiful hands,
who would attack your
body with co-born spears:
a harvest hostile to
the farmer.
Your last labour, by
some art, to deceive the guardian
that knows no sleep,
and make its eyes succumb.
So said King Aeetes: all rose sorrowfully,
and the shining
benches were pushed from the high table.
How far, from you,
then was the kingdom, Creusa’s dowry,
and your
father-in-law, and that daughter of great Creon.
You leave, downcast.
My wet gaze follows you as you go,
and my tenuous voice
murmurs: ‘Fare well!’
Though I reached the bed, made up in my room, stricken grievously,
how much of that night
for me was spent in tears.
Before my eyes were
the brazen bulls, the impious harvest,
before my sleepless
eyes was the serpent.
Here is love, here
fear – fear itself increased my love.
It was morning and my
dear sister entered my room
and found me, with
scattered hair, lying face downwards,
and everything
drenched in my tears.
She prays for help for
the Minyans: one asks, the other obtains:
what she requests for Aeson’s son, I give.
There’s a wood, dark
with pine and oak branches,
the sun’s rays can
scarcely reach there:
in it, there is – or
was for certain – a
there a golden goddess
stood made by barbarian hands.
Do you know it, or has
the place been forgotten, along with me?
We came there: you
began to speak first, with false words:
‘Fortune indeed has
given you the means of my salvation
and my life and death
are in your hands.
It’s enough to destroy
me if you were to delight in that:
but it will be more
honour to you to help me.
I beg you by our
troubles, which you can lighten,
by your race, and the
divinity of the all-seeing Sun,
your grandfather, by
Diana’s triple face and sacred mysteries,
and if my people’s
gods have worth, those too:
O Virgin, take pity on
me, take pity on my men,
grant me your services
for all time!
If, perhaps, you do
not scorn to have a Pelasgian husband –
but can it be so
easily granted me, and by which of my gods? –
let my spirit vanish
into thin air, if any bride
enters my bed, unless
that bride be you.
Let Juno share in
this, who oversees holy matrimony,
and that goddess in
whose marble shrine we stand!’
This passion – and how
much of it was words? –
moved a naive girl,
and our right hands touched.
I even saw tears – or
were they partly lies?
So I quickly became a
girl captivated by your words.
And you yoked the
brazen-footed steeds, your body un-scorched,
and split the solid
earth with the plough, as you were ordered.
You filled the furrows
with venomous teeth, instead of seed,
and warriors were
born, armed with swords and shields.
I, who gave you the
charms, sat there pale of face,
when I saw these men,
suddenly born, take up arms,
until the earth-born
brothers – marvellous happening! –
with drawn swords,
joined battle amongst themselves.
Behold the sleepless
guardian, coated with rattling scales,
hissed, and swept the
ground with his writhing body.
Where was the rich
dowry then? Where was the royal bride
for you then, and that
Isthmus splitting the waters of twin seas?
I, the woman who has
come to seem, at last, a barbarian to you,
who am now poor, who
am now seen to be harmful,
subdued those burning
eyes, with sleep-inducing drugs,
and safely gave you
the fleece you carried away.
My father is betrayed,
kingdom and country forsaken,
for which, it is
right, my reward’s to suffer exile,
my virginity becomes
the prize of a foreign thief,
my most dearly beloved
sister, with my mother, lost.
But Absyrtus, my brother, I did not abandon you, fleeing
without me.
This letter of mine is
lacking in one thing:
what I dared to do my
right hand cannot write.
So should I have been
torn apart, but with you!
Yet I had no fear –
what was to be feared after that? –
believing myself a
woman at sea, already guilty.
Where is divine power?
Where are the gods? Justice is near us
on the deep, you
punished for fraud, I for credulity.
I wish that the
clashing rocks, the Symplegades, had crushed us,
so that my bones might
cling to your bones!
Or ravening Scylla
might have caught us, to be eaten by her dogs!
Scylla is destined to
harm ungrateful men.
And Charybdis, who so often swallows and spews out the tide,
should also have
sucked us beneath Sicilian waters!
You return safe to the
cities of Thessaly:
the golden fleece is
placed before your gods.
Why speak of the
daughters of Pelias, piously harming him,
and carving their
father’s body with virgin hands?
Though others blame
me, you must praise me,
you for whom I was
forced to be so guilty.
You dared – oh words
fail themselves, in righteous indignation! –
you dared to say:
‘Depart from Aeson’s house!’
As you ordered, I left
the house, accompanied by our two children,
and, what will pursue
me always, my love of you.
When suddenly the
songs of Hymen came to my ears,
and the torches shone
with illuminating fire,
and the flutes poured
out the marriage tunes for you,
but a mournful funeral
piping for me,
I was afraid, I hadn’t
thought till now so much wickedness could be,
but still I was
chilled through my whole body.
The crowd rushed on,
continually shouting: ‘Hymen, Hymenaee!’
the nearer they came
the worse it was for me.
The servants wept
apart, and hid their tears –
who wants to be the
bearer of such evil news?
It would have been
better for me not to know what happened,
but it was as if I
knew, my mind was sad,
when the younger of
our sons, ordered to be on the lookout,
stationed at the outer
threshold of the double doors, called to me:
‘Mother, come here!
Jason, my father, is leading the procession,
and he’s driving a
team of gilded horses!’
Straightaway, tearing
my clothes, I beat my breasts,
nor was my face safe
from my nails.
My heart urged me to
go, in procession, among the crowd,
and to throw away the
garlands arranged in my hair.
I could scarcely keep
myself from shouting, my hair dishevelled,
‘He’s mine!’ and
taking possession of you.
My wounded father,
rejoice! Colchians, forsaken, rejoice!
My brother’s shade, in
me find offerings to the dead!
I abandon my lost
kingdom, my country, my home,
my husband, who alone
was everything to me.
Thus, I could subdue
serpents and raging bulls,
but I could not subdue
this one man.
And I’ve driven off
wild fires with skilful potions,
but I’ve no power to
turn the flames from myself.
My charms and herbs
and arts forsake me,
nor does the goddess,
sacred Hecate, act with power.
The day does not
please me: I’m awake through nights of bitterness,
and gentle sleep is
absent from my miserable breast.
What cannot make me
sleep made a dragon sleep.
My cures are more use
to others than myself.
My rival clasps that
body that I saved
and she has the fruits
of my labours.
Indeed, perhaps when
you wish to mention married foolishness,
and speak in a way
that suits unjust ears,
you invent new faults
in my face, and my manner.
Let her laugh, and lie
there, lifted up on Tyrian purple –
she’ll weep, and,
scorched, she’ll surpass my fires.
While there are
blades, and flames, and poisonous juices,
no enemy will go
unpunished by Medea.
If by chance my
prayers move your breast of steel
now hear these humble
words from my heart.
I’m as much a
suppliant, to you, as you often were to me,
nor do I hesitate to
throw myself at your feet.
If I’m worthless to
you, consider the children we have:
a dread stepmother, in
my place, will be cruel to them.
And they’re so like
you, and touched by your semblance,
and as often as I see
them, my eyes are wet with tears.
I beg you, by the
gods, by the light of the Sun, my grandfather’s fire,
by my kindness to you,
and by our two children, our pledges,
return to the bed for
which I, insanely, abandoned so many things!
Add truth to your
words, and return the help I gave you!
I don’t beg your help
against bulls, or warriors,
or that a dragon
sleeps conquered by your aid:
I ask for you, whom I
deserve, who gave yourself to me,
a father by whom I was
equally made a mother.
You ask, where’s my
dowry? I numbered it on that field
that was ploughed by
you, in taking the fleece.
My dowry’s that golden
ram known by its thick fleece,
that you’d deny me if
I said to you: ‘Return it.’
My dowry is your
safety: my dowry’s the youth of
Cruel man, go: compare
this to the wealth of
That you live, that
you have a wife and powerful father-in-law,
that you can even be
ungrateful, all that’s due to me.
Indeed, what’s on hand – but why should I be concerned to warn you
of your punishment?
Great anger teems with threats.
I’ll follow where
anger takes me. Perhaps I’ll regret my deeds:
I regret having been
concerned for an unfaithful husband.
Let the god see to
that, who now disturbs my heart.
Assuredly I do not
know what moves my spirit most.
She, who sends this,
wishes loving greetings to go to whom it’s sent:
from Thessaly to Thessaly’s lord, Laodamia to her
husband.
Rumour has it you’re
held at
ah! when you left me,
where were those winds then?
Then the sea should
have obstructed your oars:
that would have been a
useful time for raging waters.
I might have given my
husband more kisses, and more requests,
and there was much I
wanted to say to him.
You were driven
headlong from here and there was a wind that might have been summoned for your
sails, that the sailors loved, not I.
It was a wind fit for
a sailor, not one fit for a lover:
I was freed from your
embrace, Protesilaus, and my tongue,
commissioning you,
left the words unfinished:
it could scarcely say
a sad: ‘Farewell.’
The North Wind leaned
down, and filled your departing sails,
and soon my Protesilaus was far away.
While I could still
see my husband, I delighted in watching
and your eyes were
followed, all the way, by mine:
when I could no longer
see you, I could see your sail,
your sail held my gaze
for a long time.
But once I could not
see you, or your vanishing sail,
and I could look at
nothing except the waves,
the light went with
you too, and suffocating darkness rising,
they say that, my
knees failed, and I sank to the ground.
Your father Iphiclus, and mine, aged Acastus,
and my mother
could scarcely revive
me, with icy water, in my misery.
They went about their
kind action, but vainly for me:
I’m angry I wasn’t
allowed to die in my distress.
When consciousness
returned, my pain returned with it:
a rightful affection
hurts my chaste heart.
I take no care about
displaying my hair neatly combed,
nor does it please me
to cover my body with golden dresses.
I run, here and there,
like one you’d think had been touched
by the rod of the
twin-horned god, just as madness drives me.
The women of Phylace gather round, and they call to me:
‘Put on your royal
garments, Laodamia!’
Of course she should
wear clothes steeped in purple,
while he wars beneath
the walls of
She to comb her hair?
A helmet to weigh his down?
She should bear new
dresses, her husband heavy armour?
Let them say, that as
I can, I imitate your hardships, with harshness,
and, by my
circumstances, act out the sad war.
Paris, son of Priam, harmful to your people through your beauty,
be as cowardly an enemy
as you were an evil guest!
I wish you’d
reproached your Spartan bride for her character,
or that she’d been
displeased with yours.
Menelaus you suffer
too much for the one you lost,
alas! with what
grieving you’ll avenge her.
Gods, I beg you, keep
all dark omens from us
and let my husband
dedicate weapons to Jove, on his return!
But I’m afraid
whenever the miserable war comes to mind:
my tears flow like
snows melting in the sun.
that almost scare me
by their very sound.
That guest would not
have dared to take her, unless
he could defend
himself: he knew his strength.
He came, as rumour has
it, remarkable with all that gold,
bearing the wealth of
powerful in men, and
ships, to wage a war –
and what part, and how
much, of his kingdom follow him?
I suspect these things
conquered you, sister of Leda’s Twins,
I think these things
may bring disaster on the Greeks.
I do not know this
Hector whom I fear:
wages war with a
blood-stained sword in his hand:
If I’m dear to you,
beware Hector, whoever he might be:
have the memory of
that name stamped on your heart!
When you shun him,
remember to shun the others,
and imagine there are
many Hectors there,
and make sure you say,
when you prepare to fight:
‘Laodamia
herself ordered me to forbear.’
If it’s possible for
let it fall without
you receiving any wounds.
Let Menelaus fight and
strain against the enemy:
among enemies, let the
wife be sought by the husband.
Your cause is
different: fight so as to live,
and be able to return
to your wife’s loving breast!
I beg you, Trojans,
spare this one of all your enemies,
don’t let my blood
flow from his body!
He’s not one to charge
into battle with naked blade
and bear savage
feelings towards men.
He’s better suited, by
far, to making love than fighting.
Let others make war:
let Protesilaus love!
Now I confess: I wish
I’d called you back, and shown my feelings:
my tongue was stilled,
for fear of evil omens.
When you wished to
leave your father’s door,
your feet showed signs
of stumbling on the threshold.
When I saw, I groaned,
and said, secretly in my heart:
‘I pray this might be
a sign of my husband’s returning!’
I tell you this now,
so you aren’t too brave in battle.
Make sure all my fears
vanish on the wind!
Also I know not what
unjust death fate promises,
to the first Greek who
touches Trojan soil:
unhappy the woman who
grieves for the first man slain!
I wish the gods might
not make you over-eager!
Among the thousand
ships let yours be the thousandth,
and the last to be
wrecked by the tormenting waters!
This also I forewarn
you of: be the last to leave the vessel!
Where you land is not
your father’s country.
When you return sail
your ship with canvas and oars together,
and reach your own
shore with all speed!
Whether Phoebus hides,
or stands high above the earth,
come quickly to me by
day, or come to me by night:
All the better if you
come at night. Night is pleasing to girls,
whose necks have arms
to embrace them.
I try to grasp
deceitful dreams in my empty bed:
while I’m without true
joys, false ones must give me pleasure.
But why does your pale
image appear to me?
Why do so many
plaintive sounds rise to your lips?
I shake off sleep, and
revere these phantoms of the night:
no altar in
I offer incense, with
tears too, that blazes as it’s scattered,
so that the flames
sputter, as they do when wine’s poured on.
When will I lead you
home again, clasped in my loving arms,
to free my joy from
this listlessness?
When will it be, that,
truly joined with me in the one bed,
you’ll recall the
splendid deeds of your battles?
While you tell me of
them, while listening delights,
you’ll still snatch
many kisses, and give many in return.
Rightly, in their
retelling, the words are stopped:
the tongue’s more
easily refreshed by sweet delay.
But when
firm hope fails,
overcome by anxious fears.
It troubles me too,
that the winds prevent your ship from leaving:
you prepare to go with
the waves against you.
Who would return to
his country, obstructed by the wind?
You sail, from your
country, though the sea denies you!
Neptune himself offers
no road, to his own city,
Where do you rush to?
Go back to your homes!
Where do you rush to,
Greeks? Heed the winds’ denial!
This is no sudden
chance – this is divine delay.
What do you seek by
such warfare but a shameful adulteress?
Ships, from the Inachus, back your sails while you may!
What do I say? Do I
call you back? Let the omen at your going
be recalled, and
gentle winds might favour calm seas.
I’m envious of the
Trojan women, who, though they see
the tearful funerals
of their people, though the enemy are nearby,
the new bride herself,
with her own hands, places the helmet
on her brave husband’s
head, and gives him his Trojan weapons:
gives him his weapons,
and while she does so, snatches a kiss –
that kind of service
will be sweet for both –
and she leads her
husband out, and gives him orders to return,
and says: ‘Be sure you
bring Jove’s weapons back!’
Bearing his lady’s
recent orders with him,
he’ll fight with
caution, and see their home again.
Leading him back, she
takes his shield, loosens his helmet again,
and takes his weary
body to her breast.
We are unsure:
troubled, everything hems us in:
whatever might happen,
fear thinks it fact.
While you bear arms, a
soldier in a remote world,
your wax image recalls
your face to me:
I speak endearments to
it, words that I owe to you,
and it receives my
embrace.
Believe me this image
is more than it seems:
add sound to wax, and
it would be Protesilaus.
I gaze at it, and hold
it to my breast, in place of my true husband
and I complain to it,
as if it might answer back.
By your return, by
your body, by my gods, I swear,
and by the twin
torches of our love and our marriage,
and by your head,
itself, that you might bring back to me again,
so that I might see
its grey hairs grow in time to white,
wherever you call from
to me, I will come to accompany you,
whether what – alas! –
I fear might be, or whether you survive.
Let this letter end
with a last small request:
if you care for me,
let your care be for yourself!
Hypermestra sends this letter to her one cousin of many,
the rest lie dead
because of their brides’ crime.
I’m held prisoner in
this house, confined by heavy chains:
that’s my punishment
because I was virtuous.
Because my hand was
afraid to plunge a blade into a throat,
I’m guilty: I would be
praised if I’d dared to be wicked.
Better to be guilty,
than to have pleased a parent so:
I don’t regret my
hands are free of blood.
Father might burn me,
with the fire I didn’t violate,
and hold in my face
the torches, that were present at my rites.
or cut my throat, with
the sword he wrongly gave me,
so that I might die
the death my husband did not –
he still won’t make my
dying mouth say: ‘I repent!’
It’s not possible to
regret being virtuous!
Wicked Danaus, my father, and my savage sisters should repent:
that’s the customary
thing that follows wicked deeds.
My heart trembles,
remembering the blood of that shameful night,
and a sudden tremor
binds together the bones of my right hand.
The woman, you might
think had the power to perform the murder
of her husband, is
afraid to write of deeds of murder not her own!
But I’ll still try.
Twilight had just begun on earth,
it was the last of
light, and the first of night.
We, scions of Inachus, are led beneath Pelasgus’s
noble roof,
and there the
father-in-law welcomes the armed daughters.
Everywhere lamps,
encircled by gold, are shining:
and incense is
impiously offered to unwilling flames.
The crowd of men
shout: ‘Hymen, Hymenaee!’ He flees their shouts:
Juno herself abandons
her city of
See how, fuddled with
wine, to the cries of many friends,
their drenched hair
crowned with flowers,
they’re carried to the
joyful bedrooms – rooms to be their graves –
and weigh down the
beds, worthy to be their biers.
So they lay there,
heavy with food, and wine, and sleep,
and there was deep
peace throughout carefree
I seemed to hear
around me the groans of dying men
and I did indeed hear,
and what I feared was true.
My colour went, and
mind, and body, lost their warmth,
and I lay there,
chilled, in my new marriage bed.
As slender stalks of wheat
quiver in a mild west wind,
as cold breezes stir
the poplar leaves,
I trembled so, and
more. You yourself lay there,
and were drowsy, as
the wine had made you.
My cruel father’s
order drove away my fear:
I rose, and grasped
the weapon with shaking hand.
I won’t tell a lie.
Three times I lifted the sharp blade,
three times my hand
lowered the sword it wickedly raised.
I confess the truth to
you despite myself: I pointed it
at your throat: still
overcome by cruel terror of my father,
I pointed my father’s
sword at your throat:
but fear and piety
hindered the cruel act,
and my chaste hand
fled the work demanded.
Tearing my purple
robes, tearing at my hair
in a whisper I spoke
these words:
‘You father’s cruel
towards you, Hypermestra: act out
his order: let your
husband join his brothers!
I’m female and a young
girl, gentle by age and nature:
fierce weapons are no
use in tender hands.
Why not act while he
lies there, imitate your brave sisters:
it’s possible all the
husbands have been killed?
If this hand had any
power to commit murder,
it would be bloodied
by the death of its mistress.
They deserved to die
for taking their uncle’s kingdom:
but suppose our
husbands deserved to die, we who
were given to
strangers: what have we ourselves done?
What crime have I
committed that I’m not allowed to be virtuous?
What have I to do with
swords? Or a girl with warlike weapons?
My hands are more
suited to the distaff and wool.’
So I whispered. While
I lamented, tears chased my words,
and fell from my eyes
onto your body.
While you seek my
embrace, and, still asleep, stir your arms,
your hand is almost
wounded by my weapon.
And now I feared my
father, his servants, and the light.
These words of mine
dispelled your sleep:
‘Rise and go, scion of
Belus, sole one of many cousins!
This night will be yours eternally, unless you hurry!’
You rose in terror,
shaking off all the weight of sleep,
you saw the sharp
sword in my timid hand.
You ask why: I say:
‘Flee, while the night allows!’
While night’s darkness
itself allows, you flee, I remain.
It was dawn, and Danaus counted his sons-in-law lying dead,
One’s missing from the
tally of crime.
He takes it badly,
downcast by one among these dead relations,
and complains that the
acts of blood are unfinished.
I’m dragged by my
hair, from my father’s, feet to prison –
is this the reward I
deserve for my virtue?
No doubt Juno’s anger
lasted from the time when Io was changed
from girl to heifer,
till a goddess was made of that heifer –
but Jove’s punishment
was enough, that a tender girl bellowed,
her beauty in no way
able to please him.
The new heifer stood
on the banks of her father’s stream
and saw horns not
hers, in her father’s waves,
and, lowing, tried to
lament with her mouth,
and was frightened by
her form, and by her voice.
Why are you maddened,
unhappy one? Why gaze at yourself
in the water? Why
count the feet formed from your new limbs?
A rival, feared by
that sister of mighty Jupiter,
you ease your great
hunger with leaves and grass:
you drink from
springs, and, stunned, see your shape,
and fear lest the
weapons you bear might kill you.
You were once rich
enough to be fit to be seen even by Jove,
naked you lie on the
naked earth.
You wander by the sea,
and the lands, and their rivers:
the sea, the streams,
the land grant you a way.
What’s the reason for
your flight? Oh, Io! Why wander vast straits?
You can’t escape from
your own features.
Daughter of Inachus, where do you hasten to? The same form
flees and follows:
you’re guide to a follower, follower to a guide.
The
drove out the maddened
heifer from the girl’s face.
Why recall these
earliest things, sung to me by ancient authors?
Behold, my own life
gives me things to lament.
My father and my uncle
wage war: we’re expelled from home
and from our kingdom:
driven to inhabit furthest places.
That warlike one,
alone, is master of solitude and power:
while we wander a
helpless crowd, with a helpless old man.
Of the horde of
cousins the least part remains:
I weep for those given
death, and those who gave it.
For as many cousins as
I lost, I lost as many sisters:
let both groups of
them receive my tears.
But I, because you
live, am kept for punishment’s torment:
what becomes of guilt,
when I’m tormented for things men praise?
Unhappy, I may die with
only one cousin left, I once
a hundredth of a
crowded family.
But you, Lynceus, if you care for your virtuous cousin
and are worthy of the
gift I gave you,
bring me help or bring
me death: and add my body,
when life is gone, to
the secret fires,
and bury my bones,
drenched with your loyal tears,
and let these brief
lines be carved on my tomb:
‘Hypermestra,
an exile, bore the unjust price of virtue,
she who averted death
from her cousin.’
I’d like to write more
to you, but my hand’s dragged down
by the weight of
chains, and fear itself drains my strength.
When these letters,
from my eager hand, are examined
are any of them known
to your eyes, straight away, as mine?
Or would you not know
where this work came from
in short, unless you’d
read the name of its author, Sappho?
Indeed, perhaps you
ask why my lines alternate,
when I’m more suited
to the lyric mode:
my love is weeping:
it’s elegiac verse that weeps:
I don’t set any of my
tears to the lyre.
I’m scorched, as a
cornfield burns, its rich crop set alight
by a wild
south-easterly, bringing lightning.
Phaon frequents the far fields of Typhoeus’s Etna:
passion grips me no
less fiercely than Etna’s fire.
Songs to the
well-tuned strings don’t rise in me:
song is the work of a
mind at leisure.
Nor do the girls of Pyrrha, or Methymna delight me,
nor the rest of the
Lesbian throng.
Worthless is Anactoria, lovely Cydro’s
worthless, to me,
while Atthis isn’t pleasing to my eyes,
nor a hundred others
that I’ve loved guiltily.
Cruel man, one alone
has what was a multitude’s!
Beauty is yours, years
suited to loving,
oh, treacherous beauty
to my eyes!
Take up the lyre, and
archery – you’ll surely become Apollo:
add horns to your head
– it’s Bacchus that you’ll be.
And Phoebus loved
Daphne: Bacchus loved Ariadne,
neither she nor she
knew the lyric mode.
But the Muses compose
the sweetest songs for me:
now, my name is sung
throughout the world:
Alcaeus is not more praised, who shares the lyre
and my country, even
though he may sound more grand.
If nature, being
difficult, denies me beauty,
my genius repays
beauty’s loss.
I’m small. But mine’s
a name that fills every country:
I reveal the measure
of the name itself.
If I’m not pale,
Andromeda pleased Perseus,
dark with the colour
of her father Cepheus’s land.
and often white
pigeons mate with other hues,
and the dark
turtledove’s loved by emerald birds.
If nothing but what’s
possessed by beauty will seem worthy to you,
none will be yours in
future, none will be yours in future!
But when I read my
poems, I seemed beautiful enough, indeed
you swore I was the
only one, fit to speak for ever.
I sang, I remember
(lovers remember everything),
and, while I sang, you
gave me stolen kisses.
Those too you praised,
I pleased you in all ways
but especially there, where
Love’s work was done.
Then you enjoyed my
playfulness more than ever
and endless teasing,
appropriate laughing words,
and when we were both
abandoned to pleasure,
that deepest languor
of our weary bodies.
Now Sicilian girls
come to you as new prizes.
What is Lesbos to me? I wish I were Sicilian.
Oh you Nisean mothers, and Nisean
daughters,
send back the wanderer
from your shores!
Don’t let the lying
endearments of his tongue deceive you:
what he says to you,
he said before to me.
You also Venus, Erycina, who frequents Sicilian hills
(since I am yours)
look to your poet, goddess!
Or must my painful
fate fulfil its tender beginning,
and always be bitter
in its course.
Six birthdays had gone
when my father’s bones, gathered
before his time, drank
of my tears.
Helplessly, Charaxus, my brother, captivated, burnt with love
of a whore, and
suffered disgraceful losses, mixed with shame.
He wanders, poverty
stricken, over the blue sea, with fast oars,
and sinfully seeks
now, the wealth he sinfully lost.
He hates me too,
because, from great loyalty, I warned him, clearly:
that’s what frankness,
and conscientiousness brought me.
And just as what I
miss torments me, endlessly,
so a young daughter
adds to my cares.
You give me a final
reason for complaint:
our ship’s not driven
by favourable winds.
Look, my scattered
hair lies lawlessly about by neck,
no bright jewels clasp
my fingers.
I’m covered by cheap
cloth, no gold’s in my hair,
my tresses hold no
perfumed gifts of Araby.
Unhappy, for whom
should I dress, for whom labour to please?
The sole author of my
adornments has gone.
My heart’s easily
vulnerable, and to slender weapons,
and often the cause is
that I often love,
Either the Fatal
Sisters uttered it as a law, at my birth,
and no thread of
discipline was granted to my life,
or inclination becomes
habit, and my muse Thalia,
my instructress in
art, made my genius prone to love.
Why wonder if men in
their first youth captivated me
and those years in
which a man’s first able to love?
I should fear lest you
steal him away, Aurora, in place of Cephalus!
(and you would, but
your first love holds you!)
If the Moon goddess
should see him, she who sees everything,
it’s Phaon, not Endymion, who’ll be
ordered to remain asleep.
Venus might have
carried him off into the sky, in her ivory chariot,
but she might think
he’d please Mars, himself.
Oh lovely years: not
yet a man, nor still a boy,
Oh honour and great
glory of your age,
come to me, handsome
one, sink into my arms again:
I don’t ask you should
love, only let yourself be loved!
I write, and my eyes
are wet with rising tears:
look at the many blots
here in this place.
If you were so certain
of leaving, you might have behaved better,
and at least have
said: ‘Woman of Lesbos, farewell!’
You carried away no
tears, no kisses of mine:
in short I felt no
fear of the pain that was.
Nothing of you is left
me, only injury. Nor have you
any token of love to
remind you.
I gave you no
requests. Nor truly should I have given any,
except that you should
not be unmindful of me.
I swear, by Love who
is never far from you,
and by the Nine Muses,
my divinities,
when whoever it might
be said to me: ‘Your joys depart’,
I couldn’t cry for
ages, nor could I speak:
tears indeed failed my
eyes, words failed my tongue,
my heart was frozen by
an icy chill.
When grief came to
itself, I was not ashamed
to beat my breast, and
howl as I tore my hair,
no differently than
that holy mother who carries the body,
of her dead son, empty
of life, to the heaped-up pyre.
My brother Charaxus delights in, thrives on, my misery,
and he reappears and
fades before my eyes,
And that the reason
for my grief might seem shameful,
he says: ‘Why grieve
at this? Surely her daughter lives!’
Shame and love do not
come together: all the crowd saw:
I was there with torn
clothes and naked breasts.
You’re my care, Phaon: you’re restored to me in dreams –
dreams brighter than
the beauty of the day.
There I find you,
though you’re far from this sphere:
but the joys of sleep
don’t last for long enough.
often your arms feel
the weight of my neck,
often I seem to place
mine beneath yours.
I recognise the kisses
you engaged in with your tongue,
and used to be ready
to take, and to give.
Now and then I caress
you, and speak words that are almost real,
and my lips alone
guard my thoughts –
I blush to tell more,
but everything takes place –
and I please – and I’m
not allowed to thirst.
But when the Sun shows
himself, and all things along with him,
then I complain that
sleep’s quickly left me:
I seek the caves and
woods, as if the woods and caves
might help me: they
have shared my pleasures.
Then I suffer a vacant
mind that resembles fearful Enyo’s,
goddess of war, with
hair loose about her neck.
I see rough tufa that hangs from the caves,
that to me was the
equal of Phrygian marble:
I find the grove
again, which often offered us a bed,
and hid us with a host
of shadowy leaves.
But I do not find the
lord of woods and me,
the place itself is
worthless – he was its dowry.
I recognise crushed
herbs in the familiar turf:
the grass was bent by
our weight.
I’ve lain down, and
touched the place where you were:
a herb, that welcomed
me before, drinks my tears.
Indeed the very
branches seem to mourn with falling leaves
and there are no birds
sweetly singing.
Only Procne, grief-stricken mother, unholy punisher of her
husband,
as a bird now, sings
of Thracian Itys of Daulis.
The bird sings of Itys: Sappho of forsaken love:
so far, they’re,
otherwise, as silent as midnight.
There’s a sacred
fountain, shining, clearer than any crystal:
many think a divine
spirit lives there.
Over it water-lotus
unfolds its branches, itself a grove,
the earth is green
with tender turf.
Here, when, weeping, I
laid down my weary limbs,
a Naiad stood before
my eyes:
she stood there and
said: ‘Since you burn with the fires of injustice,
Ambracia’s the land to be sought by you.
Apollo on the heights
watches the open sea:
summoning the people
of Actium and Leucadia.
Here Deucalion, fired by love of Pyrrha,
cast himself down,
and struck the sea
without harming his body.
Without delay love
turned and fled, from his slowly sinking
breast: Deucalion was eased of his passion.
The place obeys that
law. Seek out the Leucadian height
right away, and don’t
be afraid to leap from the rock!
As she, as instructing
me, she vanished, with her voice. I rose,
chilled, and the tears
ceased flowing from my eyes.
I’ll go, oh Nymph, and
seek the rock you’ve shown me:
let fear be far from
me, conquered by frantic love.
Whatever comes will be
better than what is. Breeze,
support me – indeed,
my body has no great weight.
You also, sweet Love,
lift me on your wings as I fall,
lest my death be
charged to Leucadia’s waters.
Then I’ll set up my
lyre to Phoebus, the gift we share,
and beneath it this
pair of verses, one below the other:
‘The grateful poetess,
Sappho, sets up this lyre, to you, Apollo:
appropriate to me, it
is appropriate for you.’
Still, why do you send
me, unhappy, to Actium’s shore,
when you yourself
could turn your wandering feet back to me?
You’d be better for me
than Leucadia’s waves:
and you could be
Phoebus to me, in beauty and kindness.
Perhaps if I die, oh
you, fiercer than any cliff or sea,
might bear the infamy
of my death?
Ah how much better to
join my thoughts to yours,
than that they should
be given to the rocks in headlong fall!
These are they, Phaon, which you used to praise
and seemed to you to
be so ingenious.
I wish I was eloquent
now! Pain obstructs art
and my ills put paid
to every talent.
My old powers of song
won’t awaken for me:
the plectrum falls
silent through grief, and silent the lyre.
Lesbian women of the
waves, those to be married: those married,
Lesbian women, names
sung to the Aeolian lyre,
Lesbian women, beloved
women, who made me infamous,
cease to come, in a
crowd, to the melodies of my lyre!
Phaon has stolen what pleased you so before,
ah me! I nearly said,
as once I did: ‘My Phaon.’
Make him return. Your
singer too will return.
He gave my genius
power: he snatched it away.
Do I rouse his savage heart moved by my prayers, or does it freeze,
and the west winds
carry away my fleeting words?
I wish those that
carry them would bring back your sails:
That, if you only knew
it, sluggard, would be the right thing to do.
If you are returning,
and prepare a votive offering for the stern,
why torment my heart
by your delay?
Loose your ship!
Venus, born from the sea, offers the sea to lovers.
The winds will give
you way – only loose your ship!
Cupid himself will
pilot it, settled on the stern:
he’ll furl and unfurl
the sails himself, with his delicate hand.
If you wish to flee
far from Sappho of Greece,
(you’ll still find no
reason why I’m worthy of being shunned)
a harsh letter might
at least speak that misery,
so that death might be
sought by me in Leucadia’s waters.
Daughter of Leda, I,
the son of Priam, send you health,
which I allow that
only you can grant me.
Shall I speak out, or
is there no need to signal known passion,
and is my desire now
visible, perhaps more than I wish?
In fact I’d prefer it
hidden, until the time is granted
when fear might not be
mixed with joy.
But I dissimulate
badly: who in truth could have hidden a fire
that always betrays
itself by its own light?
Still if you expect
it, I’ll add my voice also to the fact:
I burn – now you own
the word that declares my heart.
Spare me for confessing
it, I beg you, and don’t read the rest of this
with a harsh
expression, but rather one suited to your beauty.
I’ve long been
grateful: since the fact that you accepted my letter
gave me hope that, by
that token, you might also accept me.
Let it be so: I hope
Venus, Love’s mother, hasn’t promised you
to me in vain, she
who’s urged me to take this course.
And now I sail, by her
divine command – you shouldn’t sin
not knowing this – and
her great power is with me from the start.
I ask a great reward it’s
true, and not one that is due me:
Cytherea’s promised you for my bed.
Guided by this, I’ve
made my uncertain way over the wide sea,
from Sigeum’s shore, in the ship Phereclus
built.
She brought me a
helpful breeze, and a following wind –
born from the sea, she
no doubt has power at sea.
May she continue, the
passion in my heart exhorts me,
so that I might reach
your harbour, and my wish.
I brought these
desires with me: I didn’t find them here.
They were the reason
for so long a journey.
For neither a wretched
storm, nor some error brought me here:
Don’t think I divided
the waves with my ship carrying goods –
the wealth I have the
gods can keep.
Nor have I come just
to visit the towns of
my kingdom’s cities
are far richer.
I seek you, whom
lovely Venus drives towards my bed:
I wished for you
before you were known to me.
Your face was in my
mind before I saw you with my eyes:
news of your fame
first brought me the wound.
Still it’s no wonder I
love, just as if I’d been struck a blow
by the arrows from a
bow, fired from a distance.
So the Fates are
pleased: lest you try to shy away from them,
accept the words I
tell you, in true honour.
My birth delayed, I
was yet held in my mother’s womb:
by now her belly was
swollen with my full weight.
In the form of a
dream, she saw herself delivered
of a flaming torch
from her pregnant belly.
She woke terrified,
and told the fearful vision of deep night
to old Priam, and he in turn to his seers.
One prophesied that
the torch in my heart,
such as there is now.
The beauty and vigour
of my spirit, though I might have seemed
to have been low-born,
were signs of my secret nobility.
There’s a place in the
midst of the valleys of wooded Ida,
solitary, crowded with
pines and holm-oaks,
where placid sheep,
and she-goats that love the rocks,
and slow oxen, with
open mouths, won’t graze:
There I was, leaning
against a tree, gazing down
on the walls, and high
roofs of
behold, the earth
seemed to me to shake, at the tread of many feet –
I speak the truth,
scarcely having had faith it was true –
Mercury, the
grandchild of mighty Atlas and Pleione,
appeared before my
eyes, driven on his swift wings –
it was lawful to see
it, let it be lawful to say what I saw –
and there was a rod of
gold in the god’s fingers.
And at that same
moment three goddesses, Venus, Athene,
and Hera, set down their tender feet on the grass.
I was stunned, and icy
terror raised my hair on end,
when the winged
messenger said to me: ‘Have no fear!:
you’re a judge of
beauty: end the goddesses’ quarrel,
one beauty is worthy
of conquering the other two.’
Lest I refuse, he
commanded it in Jupiter’s name,
and took himself off
right away, on the sky-path to the stars.
My spirits recovered,
a sudden courage came to me,
and I wasn’t afraid to
observe each one with a look.
They were all worthy
of winning, and as judge I lamented
that all of their
cases couldn’t succeed.
But even then one of
them pleased me more,
she, as you might
guess, is the one by whom love’s stirred.
They so much wanted to
win: they were fired up
to tempt my judgement
with powerful gifts.
Jupiter’s consort
mentioned kingdoms: his daughter valour:
I might wish to think
about power or being brave.
Sweet Venus laughed:
‘Don’t let either of their gifts fool you,
they’re filled with
anxious fear,’ she said:
I’ll give you, what
you should love, the lovelier daughter
of lovely Leda will
indeed enter your embrace.’
She spoke, and, with
her gift and her beauty both approved,
victorious, she
retraced her steps to the sky.
Meanwhile, I believe,
the Fates turned to my prosperity,
I was acknowledged a
son of the king, by proven signs.
The joyful house
increased, accepting a long lost child,
and also, because of it,
Just as I desire you,
women desire me:
you alone can have
what many pray for.
Not just the daughters
of kings and lords seek me,
but I am cared for and
loved by nymphs.
What beauty greater
than Oeneone, in the world, is worthy,
after you, to become a
daughter-in-law of Priam?
But, Helen, the whole
crowd have become loathsome to me,
since I’ve had hopes
of making you my bride.
Waking, my eyes see
you: by night, my mind,
when my eyelids lie
conquered by tranquil sleep.
How can your beauty,
which I’ve not had pleasure in seeing,
be present to me? I
was alight, though the fire was far from me.
I could no longer deny
myself that hope of mine,
rather I sought out my
wish, by the dark-blue roads.
Phrygian pine fell to
the axes of
and wood fit for the
ocean waves:
The tall groves were
stripped from high Gargara,
and Ida yielded me
timbers without number.
Oak is curved for the
foundations of my swift ships,
and their ribs are
pinned to the curving keel.
Yards are added to
masts, and receive the hanging shrouds,
and the raked sterns
receive pictures of the gods:
so that the captain
sails, an ornate goddess standing there
as sponsor of his
union, accompanied by a little Cupid.
After the last hand
had finished work on the fleet,
I was happy to leave
,right away, for Aegean waters.
but father and mother
stopped me, asking for my prayers
and delaying my going
by their pious intent:
and my sister
Cassandra, just as she was, with hair unbound,
cried out, as our
ships were ready to sail:
‘Where are you rushing
to? You’ll bring fire back with you!
You don’t know how
great the flames are you seek in those waters!’
The prophetess was
right: I found the fires she spoke of,
and savage love blazes
in my tender heart.
I left the harbour and
carried by helpful winds
I landed on your
shores, bride, scion of Oebalus.
Your husband welcomes
me as a guest: this too
didn’t happen without
the counsel and will of the gods.
In fact he showed me
whatever in all of
is worthy and
distinguished enough to be shown:
But I desired to see
your much-praised beauty,
there was nothing else
that could captivate my eyes.
When I saw you, I was
stunned, and, astonished,
I felt new love swell
in my deepest heart.
As far as I could
remember, you had such looks
as when Cytherea came to me for judgement.
Equally, if you’d been
in that competition,
Venus winning the palm
would have been in doubt.
Fame in fact has
greatly commended you,
and no land is
ignorant of your beauty.
No other beauty has a
name like yours,
anywhere from
Do you trust me in
this? – Your fame is less than the truth
and fame’s almost
unkind to your beauty.
I find more here than
She promised me,
and your reality
exceeds your fame.
So Theseus,
who knew all this, deserved to be on fire,
and you were seen to
be a prize worthy of such a hero,
when, according to
your people’s custom, you exercised, naked,
in the gleaming
gymnasium, a woman among the naked men.
I praise the fact he
took you: I’m amazed he ever returned you.
a prize so great
should have been held forever.
My head would have
been severed from my blood-stained neck
before I’d have seen
you taken from my bed.
Do you think my hands
could ever wish to let you go?
Do you think that
while I lived I’d let you leave my side?
If you’d had to be
given up, still, before I produced you,
Venus would not have
been entirely idle,
Either I’d have taken
your virginity, or I’d have snatched
what I could, leaving
you still intact.
Only give yourself: so
you’ll know
the flame of my
funeral pyre alone can end these flames.
I preferred you to
kingdoms, that the great wife,
and sister, of Jupiter
once offered me,
and, while I can
encircle your neck with my arms,
the power of Pallas’s
gift’s contemptible to me.
I’ve no regret, nor
does anything I chose seem foolish:
my heart remains firm
in its desire for you.
I only pray my hope is
not allowed to die, oh you,
so worthy, I seek with
so much labour!
I’m not a low-born man
choosing a noble wife,
it would not, trust
me, be shameful to be mine.
If you ask you’ll find
Electra the Pleiad, and Jove in my line,
to say nothing of my
later ancestors.
My father rules
with immense borders
that can scarcely be surveyed.
You’ll see endless
cities, and golden palaces,
and temples you’d say
were fit for the gods.
You’ll see
built by the music of
Apollo’s lyre.
What can I tell you of
the crowds, and the host of warriors?
The earth can scarcely
sustain so many people.
The Trojan women will
come to meet you in a dense throng,
and our halls will not
hold all the daughters of Phyrgia.
O how often you’ll
say: ‘How poor our Achaia is!’
One house will display
the wealth of a city.
But it wouldn’t be
right for me to condemn your
the land where you
were born is rich for me.
But
that place is not
beneficial to your beauty.
That beauty should
enjoy copious adornments, without end,
and it’s fitting that
new delights overflow for you.
When you see the
refinement of our race of men,
what will you consider
the daughters of
Grant only that you
won’t reject a Phrygian husband too easily,
girl born in Therapnaean country.
It’s a Phrygian,
Ganymede, one born of our race,
who mixes nectar now
for the gods.
It’s a Phrygian, Tithonus, who’s
carried him off, she
who prescribes the final border of night.
Anchises, is Phrygian too, whom the mother of the
winged Cupids
loves to lie with on
the ridges of
Nor do I think
Menelaus will be preferred to me, in your mind,
when we’re compared in
age and beauty.
I’ll certainly not
give you Atreus as a father-in-law, who banishes
the light, who makes
the Sun’s terrified horses shy from the feast:
nor is Priam’s father red, with his wife’s father’s murder:
a Pelops,
who stained the Myrtoan waters with his crime:
Nor is Tantalus my
ancestor, snatching fruit in
and seeking moisture
in the midst of the stream.
Shouldn’t it concern
me that one born of those has you?
To think that Jove’s
the father-in-law of this house!
Ah, the crime of it!
All the night that man who’s unworthy of you
holds you in his
embrace, and enjoys you to the full:
but I, in short,
scarcely see you when the tables are set,
and that time too is
full of things that wound me.
May my enemies
experience such feasts as ours,
that I often suffer
when the wine goes round.
I’m sorry I’m a guest,
when I see that boor
put his arms round
your neck, as I watch.
I swell with anger and
envy – why shouldn’t I tell all –
when he fondles your
limbs beneath your clothes.
Truly, when you grant
him gentle kisses in my presence,
I place the cup I’ve
lifted in front of my eyes:
I drop my gaze when
you take his arm,
and the food sticks in
my unwilling throat.
Often I give a groan:
and you, impudent girl, I noticed,
you can’t hold back
your laughter at my groans.
Often I’d have drowned
my passion in wine, but it grew,
and drunkenness was a
fire added to a fire.
Many times, not to see
you, I reclined with my face averted:
but my eyes were
immediately called back to you.
I’m not sure what I’ll
do: it’s a grief to see you,
but a worse grief to
be absent from your face.
As I can and might, I
struggle to hide my passion,
but though I pretend,
my love still shows.
I’m not lying to you:
you feel my wounds, you feel:
and I hope they are
only known to you.
Ah, how often I’ve
turned my face away when tears came,
so he might not see
the reason for my tears.
Ah, how often in drink
I’ve told of some love affair,
repeating every word
that troubles you,
and expressing my
judgment under cover of my tale:
truly I was that
lover, if you didn’t realise.
Indeed, so that I
might use lascivious words,
more than once my
drunkenness was feigned.
I remember your
breasts were exposed, betrayed by your dress,
and gave my eyes an
opening to your nakedness,
breasts whiter than
pure snow, or milk
or Jove, that swan,
who embraced your mother.
While I was stunned,
gazing – as I held a cup tightly –
the handle slipped from
my curving fingers.
If you gave your
daughter, Hermione, kisses, I delighted
right away in taking
them from her tender lips.
And now, reclining
there, I sang of ancient loves,
and now, by nods, I
gave you secret messages.
And I dared to address
your close friends recently,
Clymene and Aethra, in
flattering tones:
who said no more to me
than that they were frightened,
and left me, in the
middle of stating my requests.
The gods should make
you the prize in some great contest,
and the victor might
have you, for his bed,
as Hippomenes
took Atalanta, Schoeney’s
daughter, in the race,
as Hippodamia
came to Phrygian Pelops’s breast,
as Hercules broke Achelous’s horn,
while he sought your
embrace, Deianira.
My courage might have
passed boldly through these trials,
and you would have
been needful of my efforts.
Now there’s nothing
left for me but to beg, my lovely one,
and clasp your ankles,
if you allow it.
O beauty, O present
glory of the Twins,
O woman worthy of Jove
for a husband, if you were not his scion,
either I’ll return to Sigeum’s harbour with you my bride
or, exiled, I’ll be
covered by the earth here, in Taenaria!
My heart’s not been
lightly grazed by the arrow’s point:
the wound has
penetrated to my bones!
Now I recall, that to
be pierced by a heavenly arrow
was the truth that my
sister prophesied.
Helen, forebear to
deny the love we’re given –
so that the gods will
be ready to hear your prayers.
Many things come to
mind: but, to say more in person,
take me to your bed in
the silence of the night.
Perhaps you’re
ashamed, and fear to desecrate the marriage bond
and betray the chaste
rights of your lawful bed?
Ah, I won’t speak
crudely, or too frankly Helen,
but do you think
beauty can ever be free from sin?
You must either alter
your beauty or be less harsh:
Chastity conflicts
with great loveliness.
Jupiter delights in
these intrigues, and lovely Venus:
such an intrigue
surely gave you Jove for a father.
If the forces of love
are in the seed it could hardly be
that the daughter of
Jove and Leda could be chaste.
Still you’d be chaste
while you kept to my
and I ask that I might
be your only crime.
Now we’ll offend in
what our hour of marriage will set right,
if only Venus made me
no idle promises.
But indeed your
husband persuades you to this, voicelessly:
he’s away, that his
guest’s intrigue might not be hindered.
he found no time more
fitting, to see his Cretan kingdom –
oh, what a wonderfully
cunning man!
‘Wife, run my affairs,
and as I’ve asked you,’ he said on leaving,
‘take care of my
guest, in my place.’
I’m a witness, you’ll
slight your absent husband,
if your every care’s
not for your guest.
Do you hope this
thoughtless man, my Tyndaris,
might sufficiently
understand your gift of beauty?
You’re wrong: he’s
ignorant: if he thought that what he held
was some great good,
he wouldn’t trust it to a stranger.
Even if you’re not
stirred by my voice or my ardour,
I’m compelled to seize
the advantage:
if not I’d be as
foolish as indeed he is himself,
in letting such a
carefree time be idly lost.
Your lover’s almost
been led to you, by his hand:
use your husband’s
mandate in all innocence!
You lie alone in your
empty bed, through such long nights:
on my empty couch
indeed I too lie alone.
Let’s join in shared
delights, you with me, and I with you:
Then I’ll swear to you
by whatever gods
and I’ll be bound by
my words according to your rites:
then, unless our
pledge is false,
I’ll make ready for
you to travel to my kingdom.
If you’re ashamed, and
fear lest you’re seen to go with me,
I’ll be the sole
culprit in our crime.
I’ll imitate the deed
of Theseus, and your twin brothers:
I can touch on no more
appropriate example.
Theseus snatched you, the Twins took the daughters of
Leucippus:
I’ll be numbered there
too, as a fourth example.
The Trojan fleet is
here, equipped with arms and men:
soon wind and oar
could send them on their way.
A mighty queen you’ll
go, through the Dardanian cities,
and people will think
you’re a new goddess there,
as you take your
course the flames will burn with cinnamon,
and a victim falling
will strike the blood-stained earth.
My father will bring
you gifts, and my brothers, mother, sisters,
all the daughters of
Ah me! I can scarcely
speak a tiny part of what will be,
more will be given to
you than my letter mentions.
Don’t fear if you’re
snatched away fierce war will pursue us,
and mighty
Of all the abducted
have any been brought back by armies?
Trust me, that
thought’s full of idle fear.
The Thracians seized Orythia, Erectheus’s daughter,
in Boreas’s
name, and Bistonia was safe from war.
Jason of Pagasa took Phasian Medea, in the first ship, the Argo,
and the
Theseus who also took you, snatched the Minoan, Ariadne:
yet Minos did not call on the Cretans to take up arms.
The fear’s often
greater than the risk in these things:
who’s afraid ends up
ashamed, for what they might have lost.
Still, imagine, if you
wish, a mighty war’s begun:
I have warriors, and
my weapons can do harm.
she has a wealth of
men and horses.
Nor does Menelaus, son
of Atreus, have more courage
than
When only a boy, I recovered our stolen herds, slaying the enemy,
and for that reason
bear the name, Alexander, ‘defender’.
When only a boy, I
conquered youths in varied competition,
among whom were Ilioneus and Deiphobus.
Lest you think I’m
only to be feared in hand-to-hand combat,
I can pierce with my
arrow whatever place you choose.
Can you show me deeds
like these, in his early youth:
can you train the son
of Atreus in my arts?
If you grant all that,
can you grant him Hector for a brother?
He alone would be like
having innumerable soldiers.
You don’t know my
worth, and my strength’s deceptive:
you, who’ll be his
future bride, don’t know the man.
So they’ll either
demand you back, without the tumult of war,
or the Greek force
will fall to my army.
Yet I’d not be
displeased to take up arms for such a wife:
great prizes arouse
competition.
You too, if all the
world contends because of you,
you’ll bear a famous
name, to all posterity.
Only trust me:
fearlessly departing, with the gods we favour,
claim my service, as
we swore, in complete faith.
I might indeed retain
your good regard as before.
Now that my eyes have
been troubled by your letter,
I take pride in not
replying lightly.
A chance stranger to
our sacred hospitality you’ve dared
to tamper with the
rightful loyalty of a wife!
When Taenarus’s shore welcomed you, driven by stormy seas,
to its harbour, and, our kingdom held no doors shut against you,
though you come of a
foreign people,
is insult then to be
the reward for such great services?
You who so enter, are
you friend or enemy?
No doubt, in your
judgement, my reproach,
though just, might
indeed be called naive.
Let me be naive, then,
as long as I’m not smeared with shame,
and the course of my
life is free of blemish.
If there’s no sad
expression on my face,
and I don’t sit grimly
with a frown on my brow,
still my reputation’s
spotless, and as yet, without sin,
I entertain myself,
and no adulterer has my approval.
I’m the more surprised
you’ve confidence in your attempt,
and that it’s given
you reason to hope to share my bed.
Perhaps because
once taken I’m thought
worthy of being taken twice?
If I’d been seduced,
the crime would have been mine:
since I was forced,
what was I but unwilling?
He still didn’t get
from his deed the fruits he sought:
I returned untouched
except by fear.
The insolent man only
stole a few kisses:
he had nothing further
from me.
Your wickedness
mightn’t have been content with that.
The gods help me! He
wasn’t like you.
He returned me intact,
and his restraint lessened the crime,
and it’s obvious the
young man repented of his actions.
Did Theseus repent, so that
so that my name would
always be on men’s lips?
Yet I’m not angry –
who’s angered by a lover? –
If only the love you
show for me isn’t false.
Indeed I doubt that
too, not because assurance is lacking,
or that my beauty’s
not well-known to me,
but because
credulity’s usually harmful to girls
and they say your
words lack truth.
It may be said others
sin, and a chaste woman’s rare.
Why is my name
forbidden to be among the rare ones?
Or that my mother
seems suited to you, by whose example
you may think you can
sway me too: it’s an error: my mother
accepted love-making
while under a false illusion:
the adulterer was
hidden by a swan’s plumage.
I can’t pretend
ignorance, if I sin: nor would there be any error
that could screen the
fact of my crime.
She erred in good
faith, and the wrong was redeemed by its author.
For what Jove could I
be said to be happily at fault?
And you mention your
race, forebears, your royal name:
this house is
distinguished enough in its nobility.
Not to speak of
Jupiter, my husband’s ancestor, and all the glory
of Pelops,
Tantalus’s son, and of Tyndareus:
Leda, deceived by the
swan, gave me Jupiter for a father,
she who trustingly
fondled the illusory bird in her lap.
Now go on telling me
of the distant origin of the Phrygian race
and of Priam and his father Laomedon!
I admire them: but he
who’s your greatest glory is fifth in line
from you: Jupiter, who
would be first in line from my name.
Though I suppose your
sceptre to be a power in your land,
yet I don’t think ours
is less mighty.
If indeed the place
outdoes this one in wealth and numbers of men,
certainly yours is a
barbarous country.
It’s true your letter
offers such rich gifts
that they might move
the gods themselves.
But if I wished now to
cross the bounds of modesty,
you yourself would be
a better reason for my sin.
Either I’ll keep my
name forever without stain
or I’ll follow you
rather than your gifts.
While I don’t reject
them, gifts are always the most acceptable
when the author of
them has made them precious.
It’s more that you
love me, that I’m the reason for your labours,
that you come in hope,
over such wastes of water.
Also, persistent man,
I notice what you do now
when the tables are
laid, though I try to pretend –
when you only look at
me with your eyes, impudent, bold,
the gaze which my eyes
can scarcely bear,
and now you sigh, and
now you take the cup nearest me,
and where I drank
from, you drink from that place too.
Ah, how many times
I’ve seen your fingers, how many times,
giving secret signals,
and your eyebrows almost speaking!
And often I’ve been
fearful lest my husband might see it,
and I blushed at the
signs you didn’t sufficiently hide.
Often I’ve whispered
or, not even aloud, I’ve said:
‘This man has no
shame!’ nor did that voice deceive me.
Also I’ve read, on our
corner of the table beneath my name,
what the letters,
composed with wine, spelt: ‘I love.’
I still refused to
believe it, giving a look of denial.
Ah me, now I’ve learnt
how to speak in that manner!
These are the
blandishments, if I’d been sinful, that might
have deflected me:
these might have captured my heart.
It’s also I confess
your rare beauty: and a girl
could want to fall
into your embrace.
But some other might
be made happier, without sinning,
rather than that my
honour fall to a foreign lover.
Only, learn by example
to be able to do without beauty:
virtue is to refrain from
self-indulgent pleasures.
How many young men, do
you think, wish for what you wish for?
Are they wise, or is
Paris the only one with eyes?
You see no more than
them, but you dare more rashly:
you’ve no more
judgement, but less composure.
I wish that your swift
ship had come then,
when a thousand
suitors sought my virginity.
If I’d seen you, you’d
have been first among the thousand:
my husband himself
will pardon my opinion.
You come late, to
delights already taken and possessed:
you hope was tardy:
what you seek another has.
Though I chose to
become your bride in Troy,
Menelaus does not hold
me here unwillingly.
I beg you, stop
tearing my heart apart sweetly with your words,
don’t hurt me, whom
you say you love:
but allow me to keep
the situation fate has granted,
and don’t shamefully
make a prize of my honour.
But Venus agreed this,
and in the deep valleys of Ida
three naked goddesses
showed themselves to you:
and while one offered
a kingdom, and another fame in battle,
the third said: ‘Helen
will be your bride!’
It’s hard to believe,
for my part, that those heavenly bodies
were presented to you
for judgement on their beauty:
if it were true,
certainly the rest is fiction,
that I was said to be
the prize for your judgement.
I don’t have enough
confidence in my body to think that I
might have been the
finest gift the goddess could call on.
I’m content that men’s
eyes approve my beauty:
Venus praising me
would be a cause of envy.
But I won’t refute a
thing: I favour your praise too:
For, heart, why reject
the voice that is desired?
Don’t be angry if my
belief in you comes only with great difficulty:
trust in important
things usually builds slowly.
My prime pleasure is
to have so pleased Venus:
the next, that you saw
me as the greatest prize,
and preferred neither Hera’s nor Athene’s offerings
to the charms of Helen
you had heard of.
So I’m excellence to
you, I’m a noble kingdom?
I’d be made of iron,
if I didn’t love your heart.
Believe me, I’m not of
iron: but I resist loving
he whom I think could
scarcely be mine.
Why plough the wet
sands with curving blade,
or try to chase hopes
that this situation denies?
I’m innocent of the
affairs of Venus, and I never –
may the gods be my
witness! – play tricks on my husband!
Now too, as I entrust
my words to the silent page,
this letter performs a
new service.
Happy, those who are
used to these things! I know nothing of them,
I suspect the path of
sin is difficult.
Fear is itself wrong:
I’m confused now,
and I think all eyes
are on my face.
Nor do I think it
false: I sense the hostile murmurs of the people,
and Aethra brings me news of what they say.
But hide your love,
unless you prefer to end it?
Why end it? You can
dissimulate.
Indulge, but secretly!
I’m given more freedom
though not total,
because Menelaus is away.
In fact business
required him to travel abroad,
there was a great, and
valid, cause for his sudden journey:
or so it seemed to me.
When he hesitated about going,
I said: ‘Go, and
return quickly!’ Pleased by this
he kissed me, saying:
‘Care for the house,
and business, and for
the Trojan guest.’
I could scarcely hold
my laughter, which, with a struggle,
I suppressed, and
could say nothing except; ‘It shall be.’
It’s true he sailed
for Crete with a following wind:
but don’t think
everything is as you’d wish!
When my husband’s away
like this, absent he still guards me,
or don’t you realise a
king’s hands have a long reach?
Also beauty is a
burden: now I’m constantly praised
by your people’s
mouths, he’s rightly more anxious.
That same glory I
delight in, as it now is, harms me,
and it would have been
better to have foregone fame.
Don’t be amazed that
he’s gone, leaving me with you:
he trusts my virtue
and my way of life.
He fears my looks,
relies on my habits:
my goodness makes him
feel secure, my beauty scares him.
You anticipate a later
time beforehand, lest it’s lost,
so as to take
advantage of my foolish husband.
And I both desire and
fear, and my inclination’s not yet clear
enough: my mind
hesitates, with doubt.
And my husband’s away,
and you sleep without a partner,
your beauty captivates
me, mine in turn captivates you:
and the nights are
long, and now we meet to talk,
and you, ah me!
flatter, and we share one house.
And let me perish if
everything does not invite my sin:
I don’t know why I
delay, but for the fear itself.
I wish you could
rightly compel, what you wrongly persuade!
My awkwardness should
have been overcome by force.
Sometimes a wrong
benefits those who suffer it.
so I might have been
compelled to be happy.
While it’s new, we
should fight love’s inception the more!
A fresh flame dies
sprinkled with a little water.
Love’s not certain in
a guest: it wanders, like himself,
and, when you think
nothing’s more certain, vanishes.
Hypsipyle’s a witness, and Ariadne,
the Minoan virgin:
both of them dallied
in illicit beds.
You also, unfaithful
man, have abandoned Oenone,
they say, your delight
for many years.
You have still not
denied it: and if you don’t know
it was my first care
to search out everything about you.
Added to which, if you
wished to stay true in love,
you couldn’t. Your
Phrygians are readying your sails:
while you speak to me,
while you arrange the hoped-for night,
a breeze will come, to
carry you soon to your homeland.
you’ll abandon
complete delight in the midst of its newness:
our love will be gone
with the wind.
Or should I follow, as
you argue, and see the Troy you praise,
and be the
granddaughter-in-law of great Laomedon?
I wouldn’t take the
noise of rumour’s wings so lightly,
if the countries were
full of my unchastity.
What would Sparta say
of me, all Achaia,
the peoples of Asia,
and your Troy?
What would Priam and Hecuba feel about me,
and all your brothers,
and Trojan daughters-in-law?
You too, how could you
hope for me to be faithful
and not be anxious at
your own example?
Every stranger
entering a Trojan port,
would be a source of
troublesome fear to you.
How often, angry with
me, you’d cry: ‘Adulteress!’
forgetting my guilt
also belongs to you!
You’d become at once
the author and critic of the offence.
Before that may the
earth cover my face!
But I’ll enjoy Troy’s
wealth and rich culture
and I’ll bear gifts
more copious than you promised:
I’ll be offered
purple-dyed and precious fabrics,
and I’ll be rich in
heaped weights of gold!
Forgive this
confession! Your gifts aren’t worth that much to me:
I don’t know this land
that would hold me at all.
Who will rush to help
me, if I’m hurt, on Phrygian shores?
Where will I find a
brother or father’s aid?
Jason, the deceiver,
promised Medea everything:
wasn’t she driven out,
no less, from Aeson’s house?
There was no Aeetes, to whom, scorned, she might return,
no mother, Idyia, no sister, Chalciope.
I fear nothing like
that, but nor did Medea fear:
often hope’s deceived
by its own presentiments of good.
You’ll find the sea in
harbour was calm for every ship
that’s now tossed
about in the deep.
That torch of blood
terrifies me too, that your mother saw
born to her, before
your day of birth:
and I fear the seer’s
warning, who prophesied, it’s said,
that Troy would be
burnt by a Pelasgian fire.
And as Venus favours
you, because she triumphed, and holds
the double trophy
through your choice (the apple and her beauty),
so I am afraid of
those other two, if your boast is true,
who, through your
decision, lost their cause:
I’ve no doubt, if I
followed you, war would be prepared.
Our love would travel
among weapons, alas!
Perhaps Hippodamia of Atrax was the cause
that forced
the Thessalian warriors into savage war with the Centaurs:
do you think Menelaus
would be slow to righteous anger
or the Twins, his brothers-in-law,
or Tyndareus?
For all your talk and
tales of brave deeds
your beauty conflicts
with your words.
Your body’s fitter for
Venus than Mars.
Let the brave wage
war, you, Paris, always love!
Command Hector, whom
you praise, to fight for you:
your skills are in
another kind of battle.
If I were to taste of
them, and were a little braver,
I might enjoy them: if
any girl tastes them, she might.
Or perhaps, abandoning
shame, I might taste them
and, hesitation
conquered by time, give you my hand.
I know what you seek:
to tell me this, privately, in person:
what you might attempt
to win, and invite in conversation:
But you’re too hasty,
and as yet green shoots are your harvest.
Perhaps a fond delay
would be to your liking.
Enough: now let these
words, which share the mysteries
of my secret heart,
cease with my weary fingers.
I’ll speak the rest
through my friends Clymene and Aethra,
who are my two
companions, and my counsel.
Hero, accept, from
Leander’s hand, while he himself comes,
what he’d have wished
to bear through the customary waves.
From one of Abydos, greetings, girl of Sestos,
which he’d prefer
to bring to you, if
only the waves would abate.
If the fates are good
to me, if the gods accompany me with love,
you’ll read these
words with indifferent eyes.
But the fates aren’t
kind: why now would they delay my pledge,
not allowing me to
hurry to you through familiar waters?
You yourself can see
the sky blacker than pitch, and the strait
troubled by winds, and
ships hardly venturing the deeps.
One boatman, and he’s
daring, by whom my letter
is delivered to you,
makes his way from harbour.
I’d have embarked with
him, except that when he cast off
the lines from the
stern, he was in view from all Abydos.
I wouldn’t have been
masked from my parents, as before,
and the love we wish
to conceal wouldn’t have been hidden.
As soon as I wrote
this, I said: ‘Go, happy letter!
now she’ll reach out
her lovely hand for you.
Perhaps she’ll even
touch you, with her snow-white teeth,
bringing you to her
lips, when she wishes to break your seal.’
I spoke these words to
myself in a low murmur,
while the rest of the
sheet was indicated by my right hand.
But how I’d prefer
that this hand, that writes, might swim
and carry me
faithfully through familiar waters!
However apt it is as a
servant of my feelings,
it’s better in fact at
making strokes in the placid sea:
For seven nights, a
space of time longer to me than a year,
I’ve been disturbed,
as the troubled ocean raged with cruel waves.
If my mind has seen
gentle sleep through those nights,
may this delay caused
by the raging straits be a long one.
I’m sitting on a rock,
sadly gazing at your other shore
and I’m carried in
mind to where my body cannot go.
Indeed my keen
watchful eye either sees
or thinks it sees the
summit to your tower.
Three times I’ve left
my clothes on the dry sands:
three times, naked,
painfully, I’ve tried to swim the roads:
the swollen sea
opposed my youthful undertaking,
and, swimming against
the waves, my head was submerged.
But you, wildest of
the swift winds, why do you,
with fixed purpose,
wage war against me?
If you don’t see it, Boreas, you rage against me not the waves.
What might you do if
love was not known to you?
Icy though you may be,
cruel one, still, can you deny
that you once glowed
with Greek fire?
What joy in plundering
would you have known
if the airy approaches
had wished to shut you out?
Spare me, I beg you,
and release a more gentle breeze!
And let Aeolus not command anything offensive to you!
I beg in vain: he
roars in answer to my prayers
and holds in check no
part of the waters he’s stirred.
Now I wish Daedalus might give me bold wings!
Though the shores of
the Icarian Sea are not far from here.
I’d suffer whatever
might be, if only my body, that often hangs
above the uncertain
water, might be lifted into the air.
Meanwhile, while winds
and waves deny all,
I agitate my mind with
the first moments of my secret affair.
Night was falling –
indeed I remember the pleasure of it –
when, a lover, I
slipped from my father’s door.
Without delay,
shedding my clothes, and with them my fear,
I calmly slid my arms
into the flowing water.
The moon offered only
a trembling light, to my going,
like an obliging
companion on the road.
I looked up to her,
and said: ‘Favour me, bright goddess,
and let the cliffs of Latmia suggest themselves to your mind.
Endymion would not allow you to be hard-hearted:
I beg you, turn your
face to my secret enterprise!
Goddess, you came down
from the sky to seek a mortal:
may I speak truth! –
She whom I follow is herself a goddess.
Without calling to
mind her virtues, worthy of the gods,
her beauty doesn’t
appear except among true goddesses.
There’s no greater
loveliness than hers, after yours and Venus’s:
if you don’t believe
my words, look for yourself!
By as much as all the
stars yield to your fires
when you shine out,
silver, with clear rays,
so much more beautiful
than all the beauties is she:
if you doubt it,
Cynthia, your eye is blind.’
I spoke these words or
ones not unlike them,
the waters I
shouldered parting before me, of themselves.
The waves shone with
the image of the reflected moon
and it was bright as
day in the silent night.
There was no voice
anywhere: nothing came to my ears,
except the murmur of
the waters, parted by my body.
Halycons alone appeared, lamenting to me,
sweetly, remembering
dear Ceyx.
Then, both my arms
growing weary, at the shoulder,
I raised myself
strongly, high above the waves.
Seeing a distant
light, I said: ‘My fire is in that fire:
that is the shore that
holds my light.’
And sudden strength
returned to my weary arms,
and the waves seemed
calmer to me.
Love aids me, warming
my eager heart,
so I will not be
chilled by the deep cold.
I am more vigorous and
the shore comes nearer,
as the distance grows
less, my joy increases.
When I can see you
clearly, your watching
gives me strength, and
adds to my courage.
Now, to please my
lady, I labour to swim,
and lift up my arms to
catch your sight.
Your nurse can hardly
stop you plunging into the deep.
This I saw too, it was
not something I was told of.
Though she held you
from going, she could not stop you,
nor prevent your feet
being wet by the wave’s edge.
You embrace me, and
join in happy kisses –
kisses, great gods,
worth seeking over the sea!
Then you surrender to
me the shawl from your shoulders,
and dry my hair
drenched by the showers of brine.
The rest night knows,
and we, and the tower that sees,
and the light that
showed me a path through the sea.
The joys of that night
can no more be counted
than the seaweeds in
the waters of Hellespont:
how brief the time
granted us for that secret passion,
how great the care
that it was not wasted.
Soon Aurora, Tithonus’s bride, would chase away the night:
Lucifer paving the
way, was in the sky:
we shower hasty
kisses, quickly, without thought,
and complain how
little the night lingers.
And so, delaying until
the nurse’s cross warning,
leaving the tower, I
seek the cold shore.
We part weeping, and I
re-enter virgin Helle’s waters,
looking back at my
lady, when I can, all the way.
If truth be known,
coming to you from here I was a swimmer,
when I returned, I
seemed to myself like a drowning man.
This too, if you would
believe it: to you the way seemed smooth:
from you returning, a
hill of inert water.
I return, unwillingly,
to my country: who would believe it?
Now truly I linger in
my city unwillingly.
Ah me! Why are our
hearts that joined severed by the waves,
two of one mind but
not of one country?
Your Sestos should take me, or my Abydos
you:
your land pleases me,
as much as mine pleases you.
Why am I troubled,
when the sea is troubled?
How can a slight
cause, the wind, oppose me?
Now the curved
dolphins know of our affairs,
nor do I think I’m
unknown to all the fish.
Now my worn path
through the solitary waves is familiar,
no different to a road
traversed by many wheels.
Before, I complained
that this was the only way for me:
but now I also
complain that I fail because of the wind.
Helle’s waters whiten with unruly waves,
and scarcely a boat
remains safe at its moorings.
I think this sea was
found like this, when first
it took its name from
the drowned virgin.
This place is infamous
enough from Helle’s loss,
and though it spares
me, it has an evil name.
I envy Phrixus, carried safely over stormy seas,
on the golden ram,
with its woolly fleece:
nevertheless I don’t
need the services of a ram, or a boat,
provided these waters
are given me, that my body parts.
Nothing’s done by
artifice: only by the means to swim,
riding the waves, I’m
both sailor and ship,
I don’t follow, Helice, the Great Bear, or Arctos,
the Little Bear
that men of Tyre use:
my love needs no visible stars.
Some other can gaze at
Andromeda, or bright Corona Borealis,
or Callisto’s
Bear shining at the frozen pole:
But it does not please
me for the loves of Perseus,
Bacchus, or Jove, to
be the judges of my dangerous path.
Another light’s more
certain for me: my love,
that guides me,
doesn’t wander in the darkness.
While I gaze on it, I
might swim to Colchis, furthest Pontus,
and where the Thessalian ship, the Argo made its way,
and I might outdo
young Palaemon, and Glaucus
whom a bite of grass
made suddenly a god.
Exhausted, I can
scarcely drag myself through the vast waters,
and often my arms are
wearied by the endless motion.
When I tell them: ‘The
reward for your labours will not be small,
soon it will be
granted you to embrace your lady’s neck,’
they gain strength
right away, and strain for the prize,
like swift horses of Elis, released from the starting gate.
So I serve my
passions, with which I’m burnt,
and follow you the
more, girl worthy of the heavens.
True you are worthy of
the heavens, but linger still on earth,
or tell me which is
indeed the way to the gods!
You are here, and have
only a wretchedly small part of your lover,
and when the sea is
stirred, my mind is stirred.
What good is it to me
that no great width of sea divides us?
Does so narrow a
stretch of water obstruct me less?
I wonder if I’d prefer
to be a whole world distant,
when the hope I have
of my lady is also far away.
Now, because we are nearer,
I burn with a nearer flame,
and the hope, but not
the thing itself, is always near me.
I almost touch what I
love with my hand: it is so near:
but often, alas, that
‘almost’ moves me to tears!
How is it different, I
say, to snatching at intangible fruit,
or chasing the hope of
vanishing water with one’s mouth?
In that way, am I
never to hold you, unless the waves wish it,
and is the storm never
to see me happy,
and, when nothing’s
less permanent than wind or wave,
are my hopes always to
be with wind and water?
It is still summer.
What when the Pleiades, and Bootës,
and Capella’s Kids wound me and the waters?
Either I haven’t
learnt how rash I might be,
or, then too,
incautious Love will send me into the sea:
If you think I vow it
only because the time is not yet ripe,
I’ll give you an
assurance of my promise without delay.
Let the tides be still
as high as now for a few nights more,
and I’ll try to cross
the uninviting waters.
Either I’ll reach
happiness, through courage, in safety,
or death will make an
end of anxious love.
I wish nevertheless to
be thrown on that shore
and my drowned body
reach your harbour.
For you’ll weep, and
think my body worthy to be touched
and you’ll say: ‘I was
the cause of this man’s death!’
No doubt you might be
grieved by an omen of my death,
and this part of my
letter might be hateful to you.
Enough: refrain from
complaint. But let your prayer
agree with mine, I
beg, that the sea indeed ends its wrath.
A brief lull is needed
for me to cross to you:
when I touch your
shore let the storm rage on!
There is the right
harbour for my keel,
and no better waters
exist for my vessel.
There let the North
Wind shut me in, where delay is sweet:
There I’ll be
reluctant to swim, there I’ll be cautious,
I’ll not cry out
against the unheeding waves,
nor complain the sea
is harsh for swimming.
Let both the winds and
your tender arms hold me equally,
and I’ll be hindered
by both causes.
When I’ve suffered the
storm, I’ll use my arms as oars:
only always keep your
light in sight.
Meanwhile let this
stay with you, all night, instead of me,
this letter, that I
pray, myself, to follow, with the least delay.
Come! That I might
have, in fact, the greetings
that you sent to me in
words.
All waiting is long to
us, that delays our joy.
Forgive my confession:
I’m not patient in my love.
We blaze with equal
fire, but I’m unequal to you in strength:
I suspect that a man
is stronger by nature.
Like their bodies, the
wills of tender girls are weaker:
add a little more time
for delay, and I’ll fail.
You men, now hunting,
now farming pleasant country,
spend many hours in
various pastimes.
Either the market
occupies you or, oiled, you’re bent at the skills
of wrestling, or you
guide your horse’s neck with a bridle:
now you trap a bird, now
draw a fish to your hook,
now dilute the wine
that circles in the twilight hours.
These are denied me:
even if I were less fiercely on fire,
nothing remains for me
but to do what I do, to love.
What I do remains, and
you, o my sole delight, I love,
more too than you may
be able to give back to me.
I whisper about you
with my white-haired nurse,
and ponder the reason
for your delayed passage:
or I watch the sea
stirred by hostile winds
reproving the waves
almost with the words you use:
or when the waves slacken
their weight of savagery a little,
I complain, it’s true,
that you can come, but don’t want to:
while I complain tears
trickle from my loving eyes,
and the old nurse, who
knows, dries them with trembling hand.
Often I look to see if
your footprints might mark the shore,
as if the sand might
retain the marks traced there:
and to ask about you
and write to you, I search out, if anyone
might be coming from Abydos, or going to Abydos.
Why recall how many
times I kiss the garments
that you left when you
plunged into the Hellespont’s waters?
So when day’s done,
and night’s more friendly hour
shows its bright
stars, driving away the daylight,
straight away I set
out the unsleeping lights in the tower’s top,
signs and tokens of
your familiar path,
and we beguile the
long wait with feminine art,
twisting the threads
drawn from the turning spindle.
Meanwhile I search for
what to talk of in those long hours:
nothing but Leander’s
name is on my lips.
‘Nurse, do you think
my joy has left his house now,
or perhaps they are
all awake, and he’s afraid of them?
Now do you think
perhaps he slips the clothes from his shoulders,
and rubs olive oil now
over all his limbs?’
She gives a nod: she
doesn’t care about my kisses,
but moves her head,
sleep stealing upon the old woman.
After the slightest
pause, I say: ‘Now he’s swimming, for sure,
and his slow arms are
cleaving the water.’
And, while the few
threads I’ve finished fall to the floor,
I ask if you can have
reached mid-strait perhaps.
And now I look out,
and now I pray in a fearful voice,
that favourable winds
grant you an easy passage:
I hear uncertain cries
and I think that every noise
might be the sound of
your arrival.
So as the larger part
of the night passes for me in illusion,
sleep stealthily
overcomes my weary eyes.
Perhaps, cruel one,
you’ll still sleep with me, unwillingly,
and though not
wishing, yourself, to come, you’ll come.
Now you seem to be
nearer, now I see you swimming,
now my shoulders bear
your briny arms,
now, as I do, I give
the clothes from my breast to your wet limbs,
now, joined to you, I
warm you with my heart,
and much besides is
concealed, by the modest tongue,
that’s ashamed to
speak of things it delights in doing.
Alas! It’s brief and
pleasure is untrue:
for you always leave
me, as sleep does.
Oh, let’s bind our
eager passions more firmly,
so that our joys lack
nothing of faith and truth.
Why do I spend so many
cold, empty nights?
Why are you so often,
lingering slowly, absent from me?
I grant the sea’s not
fit for swimming:
but last night the
wind became more gentle.
Why did you neglect
it? Why didn’t you dare to come?
Why did such a moment
die, and you not seize the time?
May you soon be given
many similar chances,
though this one was
surely better than those before.
But the shape of the
peaceful deep changes quickly.
When you hurried, you
often came in less time than that.
I think if you were to
be caught here you wouldn’t complain
and, with me holding
you, the storm would do you no harm.
Then I’d joyfully
listen to the sounding winds
and I’d pray for the
waters never to be calm.
What’s happened then,
why are you more fearful of the waves,
and are afraid now of
the straits you despised before?
Now I remember, when
the sea was no less, or a little less,
savage and
threatening, you came:
when I cried to you:
‘You are so reckless,
I’ll be mourning your
courage in misery.’
Where’s this new fear
from, and that courage fleeing to?
Where is that great
swimmer scorning the tides?
Still, be rather as
you would be, than as you used to be before,
and make your way here
safely in a calm sea –
Provided that you’re
the same: let us love, so, as you write,
and may its flame
never become cold ashes.
I don’t greatly fear
that the winds will delay my prayers,
but I fear lest your
love strays like the wind,
or that I be not
worthy, and the risk will outweigh my cause,
and the reward appear
less to you than your labour.
At times I’m afraid
lest my race harms me, and a Thracian girl
be considered unfit
for marriage to Abydos.
Still, I could bear
all things patiently, so long as I knew
you didn’t spend your
time with a rival, captive, in idleness,
and no other’s arms
came about your neck,
and no new love was
ending our love.
Ah, let me rather die,
than be wounded by that crime,
and my fate be charged
with guilt before yours!
I don’t say this
because you’ve shown signs of it happening,
or because I’m
distressed by some new rumour.
I fear everything! Who
has ever been secure in love?
And distance creates
more fear, for the absent.
Happy are they, whose
presence commands knowledge
of true guilt, and
prevents fear of falsehood.
So many vain things
move me, wrong that’s done deceives,
and the sting of both
errors equally rouses me.
Oh I wish you would
come! Or let the cause of your delay
be the winds, for
sure, or your father, and not some woman!
If I were to know that
grief, I’d die, believe me:
sin at once if you
seek my death.
But you will not sin,
and I fear it foolishly,
also you don’t come
because you fight a hostile storm.
Ah me! What a tide
pounds this shore,
and the day is hidden,
buried by a dark cloud!
Perhaps Nephele, Helle’s devoted mother,
may have come
to the straits, and
weeps for her drowned child, with the water’s flow:
or Ino,
the stepmother, now a sea-goddess, stirs the sea,
that’s called by the
name of her hated step-daughter?
As it is, this place
is not kind to tender girls:
here Helle perished, here I’m wounded by the waters.
But remember your
love-flames, Neptune,
and love won’t be
hindered by the winds:
if the tale of your
crimes against Amymone, and Tyro,
most praised for her
beauty, are not vain,
and bright Alcyone, and Calyce, and Hecate’s daughter,
and Medusa before her
hair was knotted with snakes,
and golden-haired Laodice, and Celaeno, received in
heaven,
and other names I
remember that I’ve read of.
Surely, the poets sing
of these and more, Neptune,
who have joined their
sweet flanks to yours.
So why have you, who
so often felt the power of love,
closed the familiar
path to us, with storms?
Spare us, proud one,
and embroil yourself in battle out at sea:
this short passage
separates our two lands.
You are suited to
hurling about great ships with your might,
or even being fierce
towards a whole fleet:
It’s shameful for the
god of the sea to terrify a young swimmer,
and the glory’s less
than that of the god of a pond somewhere.
In fact he’s noble and
of a distinguished family,
but he draws nothing
from Ulysses’s race, that you mistrust.
Take pity, and guard
us both. He swims: but the same wave
carries the body of
Leander and my hopes.
The light splutters in
fact – for I write where it’s placed –
it splutters, and
thereby gives me a favourable sign.
See, onto the
auspicious flame my nurse drops wine:
‘Tomorrow,’ she says,
‘ there’ll be more of us’, and drinks the rest.
Make us more, gliding
through the defeated waves,
oh you, received deep
within me, by my whole heart!
Return to this camp,
deserter from mutual love:
why should my body be
left in the centre of the bed?
What I might fear: is
not! Venus herself blesses you with courage,
and, born from the
waves, she smoothes the sea-lanes.
Often I want to travel
the midst of the waves myself,
but these straits are
usually safer for men.
Why, if Phrixus and his sister Helle were
carried over them,
did only the girl give
her name to the desolate waters?
Perhaps you fear
there’ll not be time for you to return,
or you won’t be able
to endure the effort of a double journey.
But let us meet, from
opposite directions, in mid-strait,
and exchange kisses,
as we touch, on the crest of a wave,
and each return, once
more, to the cities we came from:
that would be little,
but better than nothing at all.
I wish this shame,
that forces us to love in secret,
would end, or our
love, fearful of reputation!
Now, the thing’s badly
joined: passion and propriety conflict.
Which to follow’s in doubt: one is proper: the other gives joy.
When Jason, of Pagasa, once entered
Colchis
he swiftly carried Medea away from Phasis, in his
ship:
When Paris, of Ida, once came as an adulterer
to Sparta,
he soon returned with
Helen, his prize.
You, who so often seek
whom you love, as often leave her,
and whenever it’s
difficult for ships to sail, you swim.
In this way, o youth,
conqueror of the swollen waters,
you scorn what the
straits may do, though you fear them.
Ships built with skill
can be sunk by the waters:
do you think your arms
are more capable than oars?
What you desire: to
swim, Leander: is what the sailor fears:
it’s usually the
result for him of his ship being wrecked.
Ah me! I want to
persuade you not to do as I urge,
and pray you’re
stronger than my admonishments:
provided you’d come
and throw those weary arms,
battered often by the
waves, around my shoulders.
But whenever I turn
towards the dark-blue waves
my fearful heart’s
possessed by some unknown chill.
And I’m troubled no
less by last night’s dream,
though I’ve
propitiated the gods with holy rites.
Just before dawn, when
the lamp was sinking,
a time when true
dreams are often experienced,
the slackened thread
fell from my hands in sleep,
and I laid my head on
the supporting pillow.
In it, without doubt,
in true vision, I saw a dolphin
swimming along through
the stormy waves:
then, when the flood had dashed it against the
thirsty sands,
life, and the tide,
together, abandoned the wretched creature,
Whatever it means, I’m
frightened: don’t mock my dream
and don’t trust
yourself to the sea unless it’s tranquil.
If you don’t spare
yourself, spare your beloved girl,
who can never be safe
unless you’re safe too.
Yet there’s hope of
peace near in the weakening waves:
then you must divide
the calm waters with your breast.
Meanwhile, since the
straits are not passable by swimming,
let the letter I send
ease the hateful hours of waiting.
Cydippe, come now, receive despised Acontius –
he who deceived you
with the apple.
Don’t fear! You won’t swear another oath of love because of this:
it’s enough that you
once promised to be mine.
Read on! So may the
illness vanish from your body:
that any part of it is
grieved, is grief to me!
Why blush before you
start? Since I suspect your noble cheeks
have reddened, as they
did in Dian’s temple.
I ask not sin of you,
but marriage and a true contract:
I love as one bound in
marriage, not an adulterer.
You might recall the
message, that the fruit from the tree
brought to your chaste
hands, when I threw it to you:
there you’ll find you
promised that which I’d wish for you,
virgin, rather than
that which the goddess remembers.
Now it’s just the same
(I fear), but yet the same in being stronger:
it grows in power, and
the flame increases with delay,
and what was never
small, is now vast with time,
and love is nurtured
by the hope you’ve given me.
You gave me hope: my
passion trusted you in this.
You can’t deny the
fact, as the goddess is my witness.
There, and in person,
as she was, she noted your words,
and the movement of
her hair seemed to allow them.
You can say you were
deceived, by my trick,
as long as love’s
shown to be the reason for it.
What did my offence
seek except to be made one with you?
What you complain of
is capable of uniting us.
Neither by nature or
custom am I so cunning:
I believe that you
make me clever, girl.
If I’ve achieved
anything, ingenious Love,
joined you to me,
binding you with my words.
I made the betrothal
with words he dictated,
and was a lawyer, advised
by devious Love.
Let the name of the
action be fraud, and let it be called crafty,
if to desire what you
love is held to be craft.
Look, I again write,
and send you, words of pleading!
This letter’s another
offence, and what you complain of, you hold.
I confess, if my love
for you hurts you, I’ll hurt you endlessly,
and I’ll seek you
continually, though you beware my seeking.
Other men have
snatched lovely girls at sword-point:
is this letter I’ve
written, thoughtfully, to be called a crime?
May the gods allow me
to impose more ties on you,
so that your honour is
in no way free.
A thousand wiles
remain: I toil at the base of the hill:
my passion won’t let
anything go untried.
Let it be unsure
whether you can be caught: you’ll be caught for sure.
the outcome’s with the
gods, but it’s still captivity.
Though you flee some
you can’t escape all the nets,
many more than you
think, that Love spreads for you.
If art is not enough,
I’ll turn to arms,
and snatch you away,
borne on my loving breast.
I’m not one who’s
accustomed to criticise Paris’s actions,
nor any man who played
the husband to become one.
I too – but I say no
more. Though death might be the punishment
for taking you, it
would be better than not having you at all.
If you were less
beautiful, then you’d be sought with restraint:
I’m driven to daring
by your charms.
You’ve done this, and
your eyes, whose fires the stars
yield to, you who are
the cause of my passion:
your golden hair has
done this, and your ivory throat,
and your hands, that I
pray will come about my neck,
and your comeliness,
and your modest, and refined appearance,
and your ankles, such
as I suppose Thetis’s scarcely to be.
I would be happier
still, if I might praise the rest,
I don’t doubt, indeed,
the whole is itself of equal art.
It’s no wonder, with
this compelling beauty,
that I wished to hear
you speak that pledge.
When you’re finally
forced to confess you’re caught,
then, be a girl
captured by my trickery.
I’ll suffer, if the
suffering’s granted its prize.
Why should such a crime
fail of its reward?
Telamon took Hesione:
Achilles took Briseis:
certainly each of them
followed her victorious lord.
As much as you may
accuse me and be angered,
your anger would be
allowed, as long as you enjoyed my company.
In the same way as I
cause your anger, I’ll ease it,
a little of you might
bring much reconciliation.
Let me weep before
your eyes,
and add words to those
tears,
so that, like a slave
who fears a savage lashing,
I may stretch my
submissive hands out at your feet!
Forgo your anger: summon
me! Why condemn me in my absence?
Order me now to come
at my lady’s whim.
Be pleased to tear my
hair imperiously,
and let my face be
bruised by your fingers.
I’ll endure anything:
I only fear that your hand
might be wounded by
striking my body so furiously.
But don’t restrain me
with fetters and chains:
I’m enslaved to you by
true love.
When you’ve satisfied
your anger as much as you wish,
you’ll say to
yourself: ‘How patiently he loves!’
You’ll say to
yourself, when you see I endure it all:
‘He who serves so
well, he may serve me!’
Now unhappily I play
the accused in my absence,
and my cause, though
good, is lost, with no defence.
Also, let my letter
have injured you as much as you wish,
you shouldn’t only
complain of what you receive from me.
Diana doesn’t merit
being disappointed as well: if you
don’t wish to repay
your promise to me, repay the goddess.
She was there and she
saw, how you blushed, deceived,
and the memory of your
words remains in her ears.
Let the omens lack
reality! None is more violent than her
when she sees, what I
do not wish, her divinity offended.
The fierce Calydonian Boar is witness, though Althaea, that mother,
will be found to have
been fiercer against Meleager, her son.
And Actaeon is witness, once taken to be a wild creature,
when granted the death
himself, that he’d granted creatures before.
and also that proud
mother, Niobe, her body rising as rock,
stands weeping, now,
on the soil of Lydia.
Ah me! Cydippe, I fear to tell you the truth,
lest my cause appear a
false one to you:
Still it should be
said. I believe, you’re often ill,
thinking about the
moment of marriage.
She protects your interests, she’s anxious lest you perjure yourself,
and the goddess wishes
you intact, your promise intact.
So that whenever you
try to be unfaithful,
she then rectifies
your error.
Beware of provoking
the proud virgin’s cruel bow:
she can still be
gentle, if you’ll allow it.
Beware, I pray, of
wasting your tender body with fevers:
guard your beauty for
my enjoyment.
Let the face, born to
inflame me, be preserved,
and the slow blush of
modesty entering snowy cheeks.
And if any of my
enemies opposes your becoming mine,
let him be as you, in
your weakness, are to me.
I’m tormented equally
whether it’s your marriage or sickness:
I can’t say now which
of them I least desire:
meanwhile I’m
distressed, that I might be a cause of your pain,
and consider you to
have been hurt by my cunning.
I pray that my lady’s
perjury falls on my head:
let her be safe from
my punishment!
Lest I’m ignorant
what’s happening, I often, secretly,
in my anxiety, pass
here and there, before your door:
I follow your maid and
serving-boy, stealthily, asking
if sleep or food has
benefited your health.
Alas for me that I
can’t implement the doctor’s orders
or take your hand, or sit
by your bed!
And more misery, that
when I’m far away from there,
perhaps some other,
whom I’d least wish, is present.
He takes your hand
and, hated by the gods, and by me
as well as the gods,
he sits by you in your illness,
and while he checks
the pulse in your vein with his finger,
under this pretext, he
holds your white arm,
and perhaps he touches
your breast, and kisses you:
that reward is too
much for his services.
Who allowed you to
gather in my crops before time?
Who made a path for
you to another’s hedge?
That breast is mine!
You shamefully steal my kisses!
Take your hand from
the body that was meant for me!
Wretch, take you hand
away! What you touch is to be mine:
If you do that,
shortly, you’ll be an adulterer.
Choose another from
the single girls, one not yet claimed:
if you don’t know:
this object has an owner.
You don’t have to
believe me: have the terms of our contract read:
let her read them,
lest you should say they’re false.
Stranger to our bed I
say, I say to you, leave!
What do you want here?
Leave! This bed’s not free.
Though you have
another contract now with identical words,
your cause is not for
that reason equal to mine.
She first settled this
with me, herself, her father settled with you:
but she’s surely
closer to herself than her father.
Her father promised
it, she swore herself to be in love:
in once case a man, in
the other the goddess is witness.
He fears to be called
a liar, she a perjurer:
do you doubt that the
latter’s a greater fear than the first?
And if you should
compare the risk to each,
look at their state:
she lies sick, and he’s well.
You and I too come to
this struggle with different feelings:
our hopes are not
equal, are fears are not the same.
You venture in safety:
to me rejection’s worse than death,
and I love her, now,
whom you perhaps might.
If justice, or what is
right, was your care,
you’d have conceded to
my greater love.
Now that this cruel
man, Cydippe, fights for his unjust cause,
to what theme should
my letter return?
It’s he who made you
ill, and mistrusted by Diana: given that,
if you’re wise, you
won’t let him approach your threshold.
that you plunge into
so many cruel risks to your life is his doing,
and I wish he who
caused them might die instead of you!
If you immediately
shun one whom the goddess condemns,
and don’t love him, I
will be surely be fine.
Virgin, cease to fear!
Only respect your firm promise, make sure
you worship in the
temple that shares our knowledge:
the gods don’t delight
in sacrificial oxen,
but loyalty that’s
shown, and needs no witness.
Others to be well
suffer steel and flame,
others endure the
dismal aid of bitter juices.
You need none of
these: shun such perjury and you’ll save
yourself, and me, and
the pledge you gave!
Your ignorance of it
will forgive your past sin:
the agreement you
recited slipped from your mind.
Now you’re warned by
my voice, now by this sickness,
that you’re accustomed
to suffer whenever you try to deceive.
Do you think you might
avoid calling on her in childbirth,
pleading that she
might bring you her shining hands?
She’ll hear, and
recalling what she’s heard, she’ll ask
what husband’s given
you this child.
You’ll promise gifts:
she knows your promises are false.
You’ll swear: she
knows that you betray the gods.
I’m not anxious for
myself: I labour at a greater task.
My anxieties are
caused by your love.
Why do your parents,
doubtful for you, just weep in fear,
ignorant of what
constitutes your sin?
And why are they
ignorant? You might tell your mother all.
Your actions, Cydippe, should cause no blushes.
Make sure you tell
her, in order, how you were first known to me
while she performed
the rites of the quiver-bearing goddess:
how suddenly seeing
you, if you clearly noticed,
I halted, my eyes
gazing at your limbs:
and while I marvelled
at you greatly, a sure sign of passion,
my cloak slipped from
my shoulder and fell to the ground:
Presently an apple
came rolling from I know not where,
bearing artful words
in cunning letters:
which, being read out
loud, in sacred Diana’s presence,
made your pledge
binding, with her as divine witness.
Lest your mother’s
still unsure how vital the words might be,
now also repeat what
was once written to you.
She’ll say: ‘I beg you
marry whoever the good gods joined you to:
whom you were sworn
to, he’ll be my son-in-law.
Whoever he is, he’ll
please us, since he pleased Diana before.’
So your mother will
say if she’s truly your mother.
But see to it she
enquires who I might be and what:
let her discover the
goddess is looking out for you.
An island encircled by
the Aegean Sea, is named Cea,
once celebrated for
the Corcyrian nymphs.
That’s my native land:
nor can you condemn my ancestors
as ones to be
despised, if you approve a noble name.
And they are rich, and
their morals without stain:
and if there were
nothing more, Love joined me to you.
You might have desired
such a husband, even without your oath:
having sworn it, even
if he were not such, he must be accepted.
Diana the huntress, in
dream, ordered me to write these words:
Love, awake, ordered
me to write them to you:
I’m already wounded,
by the second one’s arrows,
you, beware lest the
first one’s shafts harm you!
Our well-being is
linked – take pity on yourself, and on me:
Why hesitate to bring
one relief to both?
If you’ll do this,
when the signal’s sounded,
and Delos is drenched
with sacrificial blood,
a golden image of the
fortunate apple will be offered,
and the reason for the
offering will be written in two short lines:
‘With this likeness of
an apple, Acontius bears witness
that what may have
been written on it, has been done.’
Let your fragile body
be wearied no longer by this letter,
and let it be closed
with the usual ending: ‘Farewell!’
Your writing reached
me Acontius, as it is wont to do,
and indeed it almost
set a trap for my eyes.
I was fearful, and
read your letter without a murmur,
lest my tongue
unknowingly swore by some god.
And I think you might
have set out to trap me again, except that,
as you confess
yourself, you know one promise is enough for me.
I wouldn’t have read
it: but if I’d been harsh to you,
perhaps it might have
increased the fierce goddess’s anger.
Though I do
everything, though I burn sacred incense to Diana,
she still takes your
part more than is right, and as you want it
to be thought, mindful
of you, protects you with her anger:
She scarcely did more
for Hippolytus himself.
But she might do
better to favour my virgin years
which I fear she
intends will be all too few.
Yes, weariness clings
to me for no apparent reason,
and my fatigue’s not
helped by any doctor’s cure.
Would you believe with
what difficulty I write this meagre letter
to you now, or ease my
pale limbs from lying in my bed?
Now an added fear,
lest someone other than my knowing nurse
thinks that there’s a
conversation between us.
She sits outside my door,
and on being asked how I am, within,
says: ‘She’s
sleeping,’ so that I can write in safety.
Soon, when sleep, the
best reason for extended privacy,
lacks credibility as
an excuse, through the lengthy delay,
and she sees those
arriving whom it would be hard not to admit,
she coughs and gives
me the sign we agreed on.
So it goes: I
hurriedly leave off my unfinished words,
and hide the letter
I’ve started, against my anxious breast.
Then I weary my
fingers again with repetition:
how much effort these
words of mine are that you read.
May I die if you were
worthy of my speaking truthfully:
but I’m more just to
you than you deserve.
So, is it because of
you my health is so uncertain
and I’m punished, and
have been punished, for your deceit?
Is this the reward that comes, by your praise
of marvellous beauty,
and harms me for
having pleased you?
How I’d prefer it if
I’d seemed deformed to you,
my blameworthy body
would not have needed help:
now I grieve that I
was praised, now you destroy me
with your rivalry, and
I’m wounded by my own charm itself.
And you won’t concede,
nor does he think himself inferior,
you obstruct his
wishes, he obstructs yours.
I’m tossed about like
a boat, that the unerring North Wind
drives out into the
deep, carried back by tide and surge.
And when the day’s
here, that was chosen by my dear parents,
at the same time
unruly passion’s in my body.
Now cruel Persephone
beats harshly on my door,
at the very moment of
my marriage.
Now I fear, and am
ashamed, though not conscious of any guilt,
I don’t seem to have
merited the gods being offended.
Some say this happened
by chance, and others
deny that my husband’s
acceptable to the heavens:
and lest you think
there’s nothing of you too in the talk,
some of them think it
was caused by your poisons.
The cause is hidden,
my illness is obvious: you two
drive away peace, stir
bitter conflict, I’m punished.
Tell me now, and don’t
deceive me, as is your usual custom,
what might you do in
hate, when you hurt me so with love?
If you wound one you
love, you’d be wise to love your enemy:
I pray that, to save
me, you might want to destroy your wish!
Either you’ve, now, no
care for the girl you hoped for,
whom you cruelly allow
to die from a shameful illness,
or, if you’ve asked
the fierce goddess for me in vain,
why throw yourself at
me? You’ll have no thanks.
Choose, as you’ve
wrought: don’t try to appease Diana.
You don’t care about
me: you can’t – she’s on your side.
I’d rather Delos, in
Aegean waters, had never been known –
or at least had not
been known then, to me.
Then my ship was
launched in troubled waters,
and an unlucky hour
saw my journey start.
Why did I take a step?
Why did I cross the threshold?
Why did my feet touch
the painted fabric of that swift vessel?
Yet twice the sails
were backed, in an opposing wind:
I tell a lie, ah
foolish! It was a favourable one.
It was favourable in
reversing my departure
and hindering that
scarcely fortunate journey.
And I wish the sails
had been always set against me!
But it’s stupid to
complain about the fickleness of the breeze.
I hurried to see
Delos, stirred by the fame of the place,
and the journey seemed
to be made in an idle boat.
How often I protested
at the slowness of the oars,
and complained that
too little sail was set for the wind.
And I’d already passed
Andros, Tenos and Myconos,
and bright Delos was
there before my eyes:
when I saw it in the
distance, I said: ‘Island, why do you flee me,
do you wander, as long
ago, on the mighty waters?’
I stood on the island,
as day was nearly done,
and the sun desires to unyoke his bright
horses.
When as usual that
same sun returned to the east,
my mother arranged my
hair as prescribed.
She put rings on my
fingers, gold in my hair,
and herself placed the
robes on my shoulders.
We went straight to
the gods to whom the isle is sacred,
making offerings of
golden incense and wine:
and, while my mother
drenched the altar in sacrificial blood,
and threw the divided
entrails on the smoking fires,
my diligent nurse led
me to the high temple also,
and we wandered with
errant feet through the holy place:
and now I walk in the
colonnades, and now wonder
at the regal gifts and
statues set up everywhere.
I marvel at the altar
made of countless horns,
and the tree near to
which the goddess in labour gave birth,
and whatever else Delos
displays – and I can’t remember,
and I’m unable to
speak of, all I saw there.
Perhaps as I gazed at
this, I was gazed at by you, Acontius,
and my innocence was
seen to be capable of capture.
I turn back into the
temple by its high flight of steps –
can any place be safer
than this?
An apple was thrown at
my feet with this verse on it –
ah me! Now too I
almost swore that oath to you!
My nurse bent down
and, marvelling, said: ‘Read this’.
I read your deceitful
lines, mighty poet.
Reading the word
‘marriage’ I blushed with shame,
I felt the whole of
both cheeks had reddened,
and I held my gaze on
my lap as it if were fixed there.
Cruel man, why do you
rejoice: what glory is there for you?
And why should you
have praise, a man cheating a virgin girl?
I didn’t stand there
armed with shield and axe,
as Penthesilea
was armed on Trojan soil:
nor were you given the
prize of an embossed girdle,
of Amazon gold, like Hippolyte’s.
Why exult in your
words if they deceived me,
I a girl, taken in, scarcely aware of trickery?
An apple caught Cydippe, an apple Atalanta:
surely now you’re a
second Hippomenes?
But it would have been
better, if the Boy held you,
whom you say has all
those torches, to behave
in the way good men
do, not to ruin hope by fraud:
better if winning by
entreaty had been yours, and not snatching.
Why, when you sought
me, did you think it unnecessary
to declare what
required you to be sought by me too?
Why did you wish to
use force, rather than persuasion,
if I was able to be
trapped by only hearing the word marriage?
Why is the law of use
to you now, my needing to swear by rote,
my tongue needing to
call the goddess in person to vouch for it?
It’s the mind that
swears the oath. I swore nothing to her:
she alone can impart
truth to what’s been said.
Intention, and the
mind’s thoughtful judgement, swear oaths,
and unless there’s
judgement the contract has no value.
If you think I wished
to promise you marriage,
then demand the rights
of the promised bed by law.
But if I gave voice to
nothing unless it was without thought,
you have only idle
words bereft of power.
I did not swear, I
read the words of an oath:
my husband is not to
be chosen that way.
Deceive others so, let
your letters follow apples:
if it’s valid, carry
away the riches of the wealthy:
make kings swear
they’ll give their kingdoms to you,
and let whatever on
earth pleases you be yours!
Believe me, this is
far superior to Diana herself,
if your writing really
has such ready power.
Yet though I’ve said
all this, though I’ve firmly rejected you,
though the reason for
my promise has been fully rehearsed.
I confess, I’m afraid
of the anger of Leto’s fierce daughter,
and I suspect my
body’s troubled because of her.
Why, whenever the
ceremonies of marriage are being prepared,
do the weary limbs of
the destined bride give way?
Three times now Hymen,
coming to the altars raised for me,
has fled, and turned
his back on the wedding threshold,
and the slowly
flickering light in his hand is barely rising,
his torch is barely
alight with quivering flame.
Often perfumes have
dripped from his garlanded hair,
and his dragging robe
has been bright with saffron.
When he reaches the
threshold, and finds tears and terror of death,
and everything alien
to his customs,
he throws away the
wreathes, tearing them from his brow,
and wipes the thick
spices from his shining hair:
and he’s ashamed to
stand there, joyful, among the mournful crowd,
and the yellow of his
robe transfers to his blushing cheeks.
But I, alas, am so
wretched! My body burns with fever,
and the ordinary
sheets on my bed feel heavier.
I see my weeping
parents, by my head,
and the funeral torch,
not the wedding torch, is here.
Spare my suffering,
goddess, who delights in the ornate quiver,
and grant me now your
brother’s healing aid.
It’s shameful to you, if
he averts the cause of death,
while you bear the
responsibility for my dying.
Is it that you may
have wanted to bathe in a shaded pool,
and my face, unaware,
came upon you bathing?
Have I neglected your
altars, of all the deities: is it that
my mother’s
ancestress, Niobe, scorned your mother, Leto?
I’ve not sinned at
all, except that I read a false oath aloud,
and was fluent in a
verse that brought me little luck.
You, too, Acontius, if you’re not lying about your love,
bring incense: let the
hands, that harmed me, help me!
Why, if you’re angry
that the girl sworn to you is not yet yours,
do you act in such a
way that she can never be yours?
All your hopes depend
on my living: why should the cruel goddess
take away my life from
me, your hope of me from you?
Don’t think that he,
who’s intended for my husband,
fondles my fevered
limbs, placing his hands there.
Rather he sits here,
as long as he’s allowed to:
but he remembers that
mine is a virgin bed.
Now too something of
what he has felt appears:
now often tears fall
from some hidden cause,
and he praises me less
boldly and gives me fewer kisses,
and calls me his with
a humble expression.
I’m not surprised he
felt that: I’m betrayed by obvious signs:
I turn on my right
side, un-speaking, when he comes,
and pretend to be
asleep with eyes closed,
and, catching his hand
when he touches me, I push it away.
He groans, and sighs
secretly from his heart, and has
me as a cause of
offence, though it’s undeserved.
Ah me, how you delight
in me, how this wish of yours gives you joy!
Ah me, how I feel I’ve
revealed my feelings to you!
You were worthy of me
if anyone was, you, more justly
an object of
indignation, who spread the nets for me.
You write that you’d
like to see this wasted body:
you’re far from me,
and you might still harm me by it.
I wondered why your
name was ‘Acontius’:
that blade which
wounds from far off, has ‘acuteness’.
Certainly I’ve not
recovered from that wound,
that spear of your
letter hurled from a distance.
Why would you still
come here? You’d see a body
in ill health, a
glorious prize for your skills!
I’m enfeebled by
emaciation: my colour is bloodless,
just like your apple
was, I recall to mind.
My face shines white,
unmixed with red.
a statue of fresh
marble looks like this:
the silver set out on
the table is the same,
pale, touched by the chill of iced water.
If you saw me now,
you’d deny you’d seen me before:
you’d say: ‘This was
not what my cunning sought.’
And you’d return my
pledge of faith, lest I be joined to you,
and wish the goddess
had forgotten it.
Perhaps indeed you
might make me swear a contrary oath,
and you might send me
other words to read.
But I still wish you
might see me, as you yourself asked,
and see your promised
bride’s weakened limbs!
Even if your heart
were harder than iron, Acontius,
you would indeed seek
to forgive my words.
But don’t ignore me: I
seek from the god of Delphi, who foretells
our fate, the aid
through which I could be made well again.
Also someone
complains, now that vague rumour whispers it,
that the witnessed
promise has been neglected.
This the god, this his
seer, this his oracle declare:
ah, no power is
lacking to support your wishes!
How have you found
such favour? Unless perhaps a new choice text
has been discovered,
that harnesses the great gods.
And I follow the will
of the gods, gods you are master of,
and willingly give my
captive hands to your wishes:
and full of shame,
with my eyes fixed on the ground,
I told my mother of
the promise my deceived tongue made.
The rest is your
concern, and more than a virgin should do:
with you I’m not
afraid of what my letter declares.
Now I’ve wearied my
sick body with this pen:
and my hand denies
further service, in my illness.
Nothing remains, since
I now desire to join myself with you,
except for me to add, to my letter, this:
‘Farewell!’
The End of the Heroides