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!