Ariadne to Theseus, 11. [145] These hands, wearied with beating of my sorrowful breast, unhappy I stretch toward you over the long seas; these locks – such as remain – in grief I bid you look upon! When she shall have no hope more of refuge by the sea or by the land, let her make trial of the air; let her wander, destitute, bereft of hope, stained red with the blood of her murders! Full of fears is love; I made him say it on his oath. 9. I almost gave them to be carried to you, their mother’s ambassadors; but thought of the cruel stepdame turned me back from the path I would have trod. You furnish forth my death at a cost but slight. Ovid is today best known for his grand epic, Metamorphoses, and elegiac works like the Ars Amatoria and Heroides. [7] ‘Twas the time when the earth is first besprinkled with crystal rime, and songsters hid in the branch begin their plaint. By Oeneus, for slaying a brother. The home of Achilles. 7. Antaeus would tear from the hard neck the turban-bands, lest he feel shame at having succumbed to an unmanly foe. Phyllis to Demophoon 3. 1. Scarce had he well touched the threshold, when I cried, “How doth my lord, the son of Aeson?” Speechless he stood in embarrassment, his eyes fixed fast upon the ground. I Penelope to Ulysses II Phyllis to Demophoon III Briseis to Achilles IV Phaedra to Hippolytus V Oenone to Paris VI Hypsipyle to Jason VII Dido to Aeneas Heroides VIII-XV. ‘vir’, ‘virago’, ‘virgo’, ‘virtus’, ‘vis’. Meleager perished when his mother Althea, in revenge for his slaying her brother, finally burned the brand on whose preservation the Fates had said his life depended. 7 Federica Bessone, « Saffo, la lirica, l’elegia: su Ovidio, Heroides 15, » Materiali ediscussioni p ; 5 Nor does Gordon have the opportunity to examine the earlier works of Roman poetry that Ovid evokes in Heroides 15. When was Ovid born? Am I to bear gifts to the shrines because Jason lives, though mine no more? Or make him to whom I have let my love go forth – I first, and with never shame for it – yield me himself, the object of my care! The son of Tantalus was ruler over all, over Achilles himself. Heroides VII by Ovid POP QUIZ! Oft do I come again to the couch that once received us both, but was fated never to show us together again, and touch the imprint left by you – ‘tis all I can in place of you! (Augustus found his rebellious daughter had Ovid's latest book.) [83] Would that Peleus’ son had escaped the bow of Apollo!8 The father would condemn the son for his wanton deed; ‘twas not of yore the pleasure of Achilles, nor would it be now his pleasure, to see a widowed husband weeping for his stolen wife. You are to me what my sire is to my mother, and to the part which once the Dardanian stranger played, Pyrrhus now plays. 8. Canace to Macareus 12. Or, better had I been weighed down once for all by everlasting night. Straight will come rushing to your mind the perjury of your false tongue, and Dido driven to death by Phrygian faithlessness; before your eyes will appear the features of your deceived wife, heavy with sorrow, with hair streaming, and stained with blood. Aeneas my eyes cling to through all my waking hours; Aeneas is my heart through the night and through the day. . The arms you wielded were hateful – but what were you to do? or what constellation shall I complain is hostile to my wretched self? BRISEIS TO ACHILLES. The entrails of slain victims stir my fears, the idle images of dreams, and the omen sought in the mysterious night. As I looked on a sight methought I had not deserved to see, I grew colder than ice, and life half left my body. 6. As for myself, tearing my locks, not yet long, I began to cry aloud: “Mother, will you go away, and will you leave me behind?” For her lord was gone. I could wish that fortune had given you more excellent matter for courage; but the cause that called forth your deed was not chosen – it was fixed. Penelope to Ulysses 2. He was worthy who caused my fall; he draws from my sin its hatefulness. Does not your dress rob from your tongue all utterance? She hath not all her crew!”. 12. Among sepulchres she stalks, ungirded, with hair flowing loose, and gathers from the yet warm funeral pyre the appointed bones. Ovid, Heroides VII. Has anyone in hearing of Hermione said aught against Orestes, and have I no strength, and no keen sword at hand? You are false in everything – and I am not he first your tongue has deceived, nor am I the first to feel the blow from you. Do you ask where the mother of pretty Iulus is? 6. You began better than you end; your last deeds yield to your first; the man you are and the child you were are not the same. [47] What had I with the Minyae, or Dodona’s pine?2 What had you with my native land, O helmsman Tiphys? A woman has borne the darts blackened with the venom of Lerna, a woman scarce strong enough to carry the spindle heavy with wool; a woman has taken in her hand the club that overcame wild beasts, and in the mirror gazed upon the armour of her lord! 11. The one, by crushing you down, has raised you up; the other has your neck beneath her humbling foot. If I have died before you come, ‘twill yet be you who bear away my bones! Could you but see now the face of her who writes these words! where is the faith that was promised me? P. OVIDIVS NASO (43 B.C. Accipe, Dardanide, moriturae carmen Elissae; 1 quae legis a nobis ultima verba legi. There barest thou flint, there barest thou adamant; there hast thou a Theseus harder than any flint! She vows to their doom the absent, fashions the waxen image, and into its wretched heart drives the slender needle – and other deeds ‘twere better not to know. The tempest rises to stay you. 3. 14. If noble blood and generous lineage move you – lo, I am known as daughter of Minoan Thoas! [133] Ah, I could pray the gods that you had seen me from the high stern; my sad figure had moved your heart! ‘Twas Medea I feared. Regret it not – twice you have fought for the sake of men. 4. Hermione to Orestes 9. Is my unhappy soul to go forth into stranger-air, and no friendly hand compose my limbs and drop them on the unguent due? No one could now call the Heroides a neglected part of Ovid’s oeuvre. You, too have ancestors – Pelops, and the father of Pelops; should you care to count more closely, you could call yourself fifth from Jove.4. Let her seek for herself a husband – from the Tanais, from the marshes of watery Scythia, even from her own land of Phasis! Entrust me with the watching of the skies; you shall go later, and I myself, though you desire it, will not let you to stay. [117] By our unhappy line I swear, and by the parent of our line, he who shakes the seas, the land, and his own realms on high; by the bones of your father, uncle to me, which owe it to you that bravely avenged they lie beneath their burial mound – either I shall die before my time and in my youthful years be blotted out, or I, a Tantalid, shall be the wife of him sprung from Tantalus! [151] But if in any way just Jupiter himself from on high attends to my prayers, may the woman who intrudes upon my marriage-bed suffer the woes in which Hypsipyle groans, and feel the lot she herself now brings on me; and as I am now left alone, wife and mother of two babes, so may she one day be reft of as many babes, and of her husband! Canace to Macareus Have they been rescued from fire but to be overwhelmed by the wave? You will go to the haven of Cecrops; but when you have been received back home, and have stood in pride before your thronging followers, gloriously telling the death of the man-and-bull, and of the halls of rock cut out in winding ways, tell, too, of me, abandoned on a solitary shore – for I must not be stolen from the record of your honours! You are mistaken, and know it not – that spoil is not from the lion, but from you; you are victor over the beast, but she over you. 5. Laodamia to Protesilaus Bacchus was my grandsire; the bride of Bacchus, with crown-encircled brow, outshines with her stars the lesser constellations. Base and shameless was the way that mad became your bride; but the bond that gave me to you, and you to me, was chaste. Alone, with hair loose flying, I have either roamed about, like to a Bacchant roused by the Ogygian god, or, looking out upon the sea, I have sat all chilled upon the rock, as much a stone myself as was the stone I sat upon. FROM AENEAS CAME THE CAUSE OF HER DEATH, AND FROM HIM THE BLADE; EPISTLES 1 - 5. 4. Grant I do glide with fortunate keel over peaceful seas, that Aeolus tempers the winds – I still shall be an exile! One land has been sought and gained, and ever must another be sought, through the wide world. It was the third harvest when you were compelled to set sail, and with your tears poured forth such words as these: “I am sundered from thee, Hypsipyle; but so the fates grant me return, thine own I leave thee now, and thine own will I ever be. Heroides 7: Giving and taking (II) The previous post offered the notion that Dido's passion for Aeneas issues in a mode of giving that is complex, implicative, and carries the power of a taking. His poisoned blood is in the robe she sends to Hercules. Are my bones to lie unburied, the prey of hovering birds of the shore? [27] Yet I am said to be well mated, because I am called the wife of Hercules, and because the father of my lord is he who thunders on high with impetuous steeds. O wicked Deianira, why hesitate to die? Your mother is away, and laments that she ever pleased the potent god, and neither your father Amphitryon is here, nor your son Hyllus; the acts of Eurystheus, the instrument of Juno’s unjust wrath, and the long-continued anger of the goddess – I am the one to feel. 5. Medea is more than a stepdame; the hands of Medea are fitted for any crime. Sic ubi fata vocant, udis abiectus in herbis 3 ad vada Maeandri concinit albus olor. 3. The punishment will be less than befits my fault. [65] Can it be some fate has come upon our house and pursued it through the years even to my time, that we Tantalid women are ever victims ready to the ravisher’s hand? 15. Straight then my palms resounded upon my breasts, and I tore my hair, all disarrayed as it was from sleep. As Federica Bessone and Gregson Davis have recently noted, however, Ovid here responds to Horace’s representation of Sappho in Odes 2.13. Thou, Meleager, shalt also see in me a sister of thine own! You, too, were cruel, O winds, and all too well prepared, and you breezes, eager to start my tears. Had Busiris seen you in that garb, he whom you vanquished would surely have reddened for such a victor as you. ‘Tis true he is in ingrate, and unresponsive to my kindnesses, and were I not fond I should be willing to have him go; yet, however ill his thought of me, I hate him not, but only complain of his faithlessness, and when I have complained I do but love more madly still. Medea to Jason She looks straight out at the throng, with head held high, as if ‘twere she had conquered Hercules; you might think Oechalia standing yet, and her father yet alive. In weeping I let pour forth my ire, and over my bosom course the tears like a flowing stream. Phaedra to Hippolytus 5. Wretchedly I catch at the uncertain murmurs of the common talk; my fear is lost in wavering hope, my hope again in fear. Nor may she long keep her ill-gotten gains, but leave them in worse hap – let her be an exile, and seek a refuge through the entire world! Live on, a wife and husband, accursed in your bed! [25] There was a mountain, with bushes rising here and there upon its top; a cliff hangs over from it, gnawed into by deep-sounding waves. (O__O ") o(>_<)o nuuuu! Dido Aeneae. Oenone to Paris. The letter you read comes from Briseis, a captive: its Greek, hardly written well by …