OVID: HEROIDES
VIII-XV
Translated by A. S.
Kline ã2001 All Rights Reserved
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Contents
XIII:
Laodamia to Protesilaus.
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 Sparta,
if a barbarian horde
were to seize a daughter of Greece?
Andromache was less
abused by victorious Achaia,
when Greek flames
might have burnt the wealth of Troy.
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 you 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 Paris as before.
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
Messene, by Castor and Pollux, of Amyclae.
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 Troy’s destruction!
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 Scyros:
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.
Maeander, which wanders about so greatly
through that same land,
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 to 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 Thessaly,
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 Phrygia:
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 Mount Oeta,
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 Calydon’s high throne:
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, Crete, split in a hundred cities,
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 Athens, land of Cecrops,
hadn’t payed with your
childrens’ 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 inot 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
Athens, and be received by your homeland,
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 Colchis
ever see the Thessalian Argo,
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
Corinth, between two seas, mine all
that lies to the left
of Pontus, as far as the Scythian snows.
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 temple of Diana:
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 Greece.
Cruel man, go: compare
this to the wealth of Corinth.
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 Aulis by delaying winds:
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 Troy!
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.
Troy and Tenedos,
Simois, Xanthus, Ida, are names
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
Phrygia on his back,
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: Paris said that Hector
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
Troy to fall to the Greek army,
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 Thessaly’s
free from the smoke of my gifts:
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 Troy comes to
mind, so do the winds and seas:
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, Troy.
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 Argos.
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 Argos.
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 Nile flowing to
the sea through seven gates
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.