 Section 1 of Ovid's Heroides. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shulif Amalhyam. Section 1 of Ovid's Heroides, translated by an unknown translator, first published in 1813. Penelope to Ulysses. Dear Ulysses, your Penelope sends this epistle to you, so slow in your return home. Write not any answer, but come yourself. Troy is no more. That city's so justly odious to the great endames. Scarcely were Prime and all his kingdom were such a mighty stir. Oh, how I wish that the infamous adulterer, when he sailed for Lassidamen with his fleet, had been swallowed up by the raging seas. I had not then lain cold in a solitary bed, not thus forlorn complaint of the tedious days. The pendulum's web would not then have tied my tender hands, while by such means I sought her to elude the lingering nights. How often has my apprehension magnified your dangers? Love is a passion full of anxiety and fear. I often fancied you to myself assorted by furious Jojans, and unhearing the name of Hector always turned pale. If any one informed me that Antelokas had been slain by that hero, the fate of Antelokas proved the cause of fresh disquiet to me. Or if informed that Patoclas had fallen in counterfeit armor, I lamented that this stratagem should fail of success. Clipolomas had stained the Lyssian's bear with his blood. My anxiety was renewed by the catastrophe of Clipolomas. In finy, as often as any fell in the Grecian camp, my font-hard was chilled with icy fear. But the righteous gods had regarded my chase-flame. My husband lives, and Troy is reduced to ashes. The Grecian chiefs have returned. Our altars Smoke and the spoils of the Barbarians are offered up to our gods. The magents present grateful gifts for the safe return of their husbands. They, in their turn, sing the fate of Troy constrained to yield to their better fortune. The good old men and timorous maids are stricken with admiration, and the eager wife hangs upon her husband's tongue as he relates. Some, ordering a table to be brought, describe upon it the fierce battles in which they were engaged, and with little wine, trace out the Hall of Troy. This way, they say, float simmers. Here is a Sigean field. Here stood the lofty Palace of Old Prime. There was a tent of Achilles, yonder that of Ulysses. Here mangled Hector frighten the foaming horses. For old Nestor related all to your son whom I sent to inquire after you, and he again to me. He told me likewise that Rises and Dolan had been slain, how the one was surprised in his sleep, the other betrayed by Gael. You also, my dear husband, alas, too, too forgetful of your family at home, adventure to enter the Grecian camp by stretcher men the night, and assisted by Diomedes alone, to kill so great a number of men. No doubt you were wonderfully cautious, and did not forget your Penelope before the dangerous attempt. My heart never ceased beating till I heard how you rode victorious through the army of your friends upon Thracian horses. But what does it avail me that Troy has fallen by your hands, and that the spot where formerly its wall stood is now a level plain, if I still continue for lawn as when Troy flourished and my husband is absent never to return. Troy remains to me alone. To others it is destroyed, and the victorious inhabitant tilts it with a captive ox. Now corn grows where once Troy stood, and the ground, fattened by fridge and blood, produces a rich crop that tempts the hand of the reaper. The half-buried bones of heroes are ploughed up by the crooked chair, and rising grass covers the ruins of the houses. Though victorious, you are still absent, nor can I possibly know the cause of your long stay, or in what corner of the world my cruel, eulises lurks. Whatever strained touches upon these coasts is sure to be teased with a thousand questions about you, and when he departs is charged with a letter to deliver to you in whatever region of the world he may chance to see you. We send to Pilots the nearly-owned kingdom of Old Nestor, but we then receive no can besides uncertain report. We send likewise to Sparta, but Sparta, being equally ignorant of the truth, left as uncertain that lands you might be wandering over, or where you could make so long a stay. It would be better for me if the walls of Troy were still standing. Alas, then stable and unhappy, I am offended out of my own wishes. I should know in what part of the world you fought, and read only the dangers of war, nor should I be without companions to join in my complaint. Now I know not what to fear most. I am apt to fancy you exposed to every kind of hazard, and find myself bewildered in a wide field of care. Whatever dangers arise either from sea or land, these I suspect may be the causes of so long a delay. While I thus fondly revolve these things within myself, you, it is possible, are the slave of some foreign beauty, such as the inconstancy of man. Perhaps, too, you divert her by telling what a homely wife you have, who minds only the spindle and the dystaph. But I may be deceived, and this imaginary crime may vanish into mere air and conceit. Nor can I persuade myself that a free-to-return you would be absent from me. My father, Icarious, urges me to leave this widowed state, and never ceases jiding me for my continued delays. Let him jide on. I am yours, and must be called yours. Penelope will ever remain the wife of Ulysses. Yet length is softened by my piety and chaste prayers, and forbears to use its authority. A dissipated set of woes, from delicium, samers, and lofty secantus, tease me without intermission, they reign and control to your palace, and devour your wealth, are very live and support. Why should I mention Pysander, Polybis, Aglomeden, and covetous Eurymachas, and Antinias, besides many others who all in your absence live upon the means gained at the hazard of your life? Indigent iris, and your ghost-herd millennia, serve to finish your disgrace? We are only three in number, unable to defend ourselves. Your wife weak and helpless, loyalties an old man, and telomachas a child. That beloved boy we were lightly in danger of losing, as against all our wills he prepared to go in quest of you to Pylis. May the gods grant, that by the order of fate he may be appointed to close my eyes, to close also yours. The neat-herd, swine-herd, and aged nurse all join in this prayer. Laertes, now unfit for arms, is unable to maintain your ride against such a crowd of enemies. Telomachas, it is true you have spared, will arrive at a more vigorous age, but at present he requires his father's protection. Nor can it be supposed that I am able to drive away this hostile crowd. Come, therefore, speedily, you who are our only defence and sanctuary. You have whom haven't preserved a son whose tender years should have been formed to his father's virtue and prudence. Think of Laertes, and that it is your duty to close his eyes. He now languishes on the verge of dissolution. Surely I, who, when you left me, was but a girl, when your return must appear old and decayed. End of Penelope to Ulysses O demophon, Phyllis, your Thracian hostess, complains of your absence beyond the promised time. You engaged to drop anchor on our coast, when the moon should have completed her orb. Already she had four times waned, four times renewed her full orb, and your Athenian ships do not yet stem the Thracian tide. If you reckoned time in the minute manner we lovers do, this complaint will not appear to have come before its day. Hope forsook me slowly, too. We are unwilling to believe what may be injurious. But now I feel it, and, in spite even of love and myself, must believe. Often have I lied to myself for your sake. Often flattered myself that the raging south winds would drive hither your swelling sails. In my resentment I have cursed Thesias, imagining that he would not suffer you to depart. Yet he perhaps was no cause of your stay. Sometimes I dreaded that, in making towards the shallows of Hebrews, your ship might have been swallowed up by the foaming deep. Often, before the altars with offerings of incense, have I, in a suppliant manner, implored the gods for your safety, O perfidious man. Often seeing the winds favourable, the heavens serene, and the sea calm. Surely, said I to myself, if alive he will come. In fine my indulgent love represented to me all the obstacles that might prevent a speedy return. And I became ingenious at finding out excuses for you. But still you linger, the gods whom you invoked have not restored you to me, nor moved by a sense of my love do you return. O dear Morphin, you have given both your words and sails to the winds. Your sails, alas, have failed to bring you back, and your words were insincere. What have I done, unless perhaps I have loved you to excess? But surely this crime might have rather endeared me to you. My only fault is to have loved and entertained you, fateless man. Yet this fault with you ought to be a merit. Where is now your honour? Where are your oaths and plighted troth? Where are the many gods who dwelled on your purged tongue? Where is now your matrimonial vow of constancy, which was to me the pledge and security of my phasing conjugal hopes? You swore by the tempest-beaten mane which before you had often crossed, and on which you were again to hazard yourself. You swore, too, by your grandsire, if he also is not falsely called so, who soothed the boisterous waves, by Venus doubly armed with her torch and bow, too successful, alas, with both against me. By Juno, who presides over the marriage-bed and the sacred mysteries of the torch-bearing goddess, if each of these wrong powers should be disposed to take vengeance for the dishonour of invoking them falsely, you alone would be insufficient for the deserved punishment. Fool that I was! I even repaired your leaky ships that you might have a trusty fleet wherein to desert me. I supplied you also with rowers to help forward your flight. Ratchet beyond expression to be thus wounded by my own darts. Alas, I foolishly gave credit to your deluding words of what you have such command. I confided in your race and kindred gods. I trusted to your tears. Are these, too, taught to dissemble? Yes, even they have their artifices and often conspire to delude. In fine, I believed your false protestations. Why did you commit so many perjuries to gain credit with me when unhappily I was too willing to trust you? Nor do I repent that I received you into my harbour and kingdom. This ought to have been the utmost bound of my indulgence. I am only ashamed of having crowned my hospitality with the present of my bed and yielded myself up to your embraces. Oh, had that night preceding that fatal one been my last, Phyllis had died chaste and honest. I hoped the best because I was conscious I deserved well of you. Hope, founded upon dessert, is just and unblameable. Surely it is no mighty glory to deceive a credulous maid. My innocent simplicity merited a kind return. You have, by your flattering words, deluded a woman and one that loved you. May the gods grant that this may be your greatest boast. May you stand in the midst of the city among the posterity of ages. May the statue of your father, graced with inscriptions and trophies, stand first. When the stories of Skyrin and stern Procrustus shall be read, Sinus and the Minotaur, Thebes broad under subjection, the Centaurs dispersed, and the dark palace of the infernal god alarmed. May thy hated image bear this inscription. This is he who betrayed his innocent believing hostess. Of all the mighty acts of your father, Ariadne, deserted, seems to please you most. You admire only in him what alone seems to want an excuse, and are the perfidious air of your father's treachery. She, nor do I envy her, enjoys a better match, and rides in state drawn by harnessed tigers. But the treachery youth whom I scorned before now shun my embraces, because I prefer the stranger to my own subjects. Some, in derision, say, let her now repair to learn an Athens. We will find another to rule over warlike thrace. The end proves all things. May heaven deny him success in everything who presumes to judge of actions by the event. For, were your vessels to plow the thracian waves, I should still be said to have studied my own and my people's good. But, alas, I've consulted neither. You think no more of my palace, nor will you ever again bathe your wearied limbs in the thracian lake. Our parting scene still presents itself to my fancy. Your fleet being in readiness to sail, you embraced me, and, falling upon my neck, oft repeated the long-breathed kisses, you mixed your tears with mine and complained that the wind was favourable. Then parting cried, be sure, Phyllis, to expect your demophon. Can I expect one who left me never to return? Can I expect ships never designed to visit these coasts? And yet I still expect you. Return, though late, that your only crime may be too long a stay. Unhappy Phyllis, what do you pray for? He perhaps is detained by another mistress, and a love that banishes all remembrance of thee. Alas, I fear that, since you left me, you have never once thought of Phyllis. Cruel fate, should you be at a loss to know who I, Phyllis, am, and whence, I, who admitted you after a long cause of wandering into our Thracian harbours, and entertained you in so hospitable a manner, who increased your wealth from my own stock, supplied your wants by many gifts, and intended to have enriched you still more, who subjected to your rule the spacious kingdom of Lycurgus, too warlike and fierce to be awed by a female name, even from Herodope, covered with eternal snow, to shady hymns, and where gentle Hebrews rolls his sacred stream, on whom in an unlucky hour I bestowed my virgin love, and whom I suffered with treacherous hands to untie my chaste girdle. Doubtless to Siphony, howled over his in that fatal night, and the wandering owl complained in mournful notes. Electo too was present, her hair wreathed with curling snakes, and lighted the tapers with infernal flame. This consulate I tread the rocks and shore overgrown with shrubs, wherever the white sea lies open to my eyes, whether by day, when earth-relenting feels a genial heat, or by night, when the stars shine and cold dams fall, I am anxious in observing the cause of the winds. If by chance I can aspire a distant sail, forthwith I divine it to be my dipmophon. I run towards the shore, whether the inconstant billows flow, and can scarcely be restrained even by the waves. The nearer they approach, the more my fears increase, till at last, fainting away, I am carried home by my train. Near my present abode is a bay, bent in the manner of a bow, whose sides, running out into the sea, form a precipice of rocks. Hence my despair has often urged me to throw myself headlong into the raging flood, and I am still resolved upon it, because you continue to deceive me. The friendly waves may perhaps waft me over to the Athenian shore, and my unburied remains may there meet your unexpected eyes. Though more hard-hearted than iron or adamant, you're even than yourself, you will in pity say, Alas, Phyllis, you ought not to have followed me thus. Oft I thirst after poisons, oft resolve to pierce my heart, and perish by a bloody death. Sometimes I think of tying a silken knot upon that neck, round which you have so often twined your treacherous arms. It is fixed, I must repair my ruined honour by a speedy death. When a mind is once determined, it is easy to choose the mode of dying. You shall be marked upon my tomb as the cruel cause of my death, and handed down to posterity in these or similar lines. Phyllis died by the cruelty of Dimorphon, a faithful mistress by a perfidious guest. He was the barber's cause, she herself gave the fatal blow. End of Phyllis to Dimorphon. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa. Section 3 of Ovid's Heroides, translated by an unknown translator, first published in 1813. Briseis to Achilles The letter which you now read in broken Greek, written by a foreign hand, comes from captive Briseis. Whatever blots you observe were occasioned by my tears, but even tears are often more prevalent than words. If it may be allowed to complain a little of my lord and husband, I have a few causes of complaint against you, who are both. I do not blame you that I was so tamely delivered up to the king when demanded, and yet even in that point you are not altogether without blame, for those sooner was I demanded by Euribides and Talthybius than I was delivered up to be carried away by those military heralds. Each, regarding the other with a look of surprise, inquired in whispers, where is their so famed love? I might have been detained somewhat longer. Delay of misery would have been grateful. Alas, when torn from you I gave no parting kisses, but my tears flowed without ceasing. I tore my hair and hapless seemed to myself for the second time a captive. I have often thought to deceive my keeper and escape, but trembled at the apprehension of falling into the hands of the enemy. I dreaded that upon leaving the Grecian camp I might again perhaps become a captive and presented to some of the daughters-in-law of Priam. But I was delivered up because so it must be. Though absent many nights, I am not demanded back. You linger and are slow of resenting. Patroclus himself, when I was carried away, whispered in my ear, Why do you weep? Your stay with Agamemnon will be very short. But your neglect of requiring me again from the king is the least part of your crime. You even strive against my return. Weigh now with yourself what right you have to the name of a lover. The sons of Tenamon and Aminto came ambassadors from Agamemnon, the first related to you by blood, the other your friend and guardian. The son also of Laertes came, by whom I might have returned attended. Softening in treaties were added to their costly presence. Twenty shining vessels curiously wrought in Corinthian brass, and seven tripods alike in weight and workmanship. To these were added twice five talents of gold, and twelve spirited steeds matchless in the race, and, what might have well been spared, lesbian girls of exquisite beauty captives of that pillaged island. With these, but what need of this, you had the choice of one of Agamemnon's three daughters for a wife. You refused to accept me with gifts which had Agamemnon consented to my ransom you ought with joy to have carried to him. What have I done thus to merit your neglect Achilles? Wither has your changeable love so soon fled. Does cruel fortune incessantly pursue the wretched? Shall no propitious gales favour my chaste hopes? I saw the walls of Laertes give way to your irresistible attack, nor was I an inconsiderable part of my native country. I saw three fall, brethren in blood as well as in fate, who all sprang from the same mother. I saw my husband, too, stretched upon the bloody plain, and tossing with anguish his breast drenched in gore. Yet all these losses were recompensed in you alone. You were to me instead of a husband, a lord, a brother. You swore to me by the sacred deity of your sea-green mother that it should be my happiness to have fallen a captive into your hands, for instance, to refuse me, though offered to you with a large dowry, and reject the riches which you are urged to accept with me. It is even reported that when returning Aurora guilds the mountains you will open your flaxen sails to the cloud-bearing south winds. Soon as this cruel resolve reached my trembling ears, the blood forsook my breast. I was without life or soul. You will then abandon me. Oh, barbarous man! What misery are you preparing for hapless process? What solace can I expect in my forlorn state? Sooner may the gaping earth swallow me up or the missile-bolts of jove overwhelm me than I, abandoned, be doomed to behold the sea foaming after your Thessalian oars and your ships deserting my distracted view. If you are determined to return and visit again your native fields I can be no very cumbersome load to your fleet. I submit to follow you as a captive subject to her conqueror, not as a spouse accompanying her husband. My hand will not disdain the meanest office. May the fairest of the Grecian dames become the happy partner of your bed, one worthy of such a father-in-law as the grandson of Jupiter and Egeena, to whom Olden Ereus will not disdain to be related. I, her humble handmaid, will diligently ply my task, and the twisted thread shall lessen the loaded distuff. Grant only that your wife, who I fear will regard me as a rival, be not suffered to treat me cruelly. Let her not tear my hair in your presence but unconcerned say, this girl was once dear to me. But I will submit to bear even this rather than be left behind helpless and neglected. The dread of such treatment shakes my wretched frame. What can you wish for more? Agamemnon repents of his anger and disconsolate grease falls at your feet. You who are conqueror everywhere else be master also of yourself and your passions. Why is insulting Hector allowed to triumph over the Grecian troops? Take arms, brave grandson of Erecus, after first receiving me to your embraces, and urge their vanquished troops with a victorious spear. Your resentment was first kindled for my sake. Let it cease also for my sake. May I be both the cause and measure of your disgust. Nor think it dishonorable to yield to my entreaties. Maliega took up arms at the request of his wife. I have it only by hearsay, but you are acquainted with the whole story. Althea's brothers being slain by her son, the unhappy parent devoted him with many implications. A war ensued. He disgusted, laid down his arms, retired and obstinately refused to assist his native country. His wife alone had power to move him. Thrice happy she. But my words, alas, have no weight with you. Yet do I not repine. Nor, though often called to my lord's bed, did I ever boast that I was your wife. One of the captives, I remember, called me Mistress. You only increase, said I, the weight of my servitude by that name. I swear by the slightly buried bones of my husband, those remains which must ever appear venerable to me, by the sacred ghosts of my three undaunted brothers who bravely died for and with their country, by your lips and mine which we have so often joined in love, and by your conquering sword, too well known to my house, that Agamemnon has shared none of the joys of my bed. If I speak falsely, may I be eternally forsaken by you. Were I now to say, do you, too, great hero, swear that you have tasted no joys apart from me, must you not refuse? And yet the Greeks fancy you plunged in grief. You, meanwhile, solace yourself with the harp, resigned to the soft embraces of a fond mistress. Should anyone ask why you so obstinately refuse to fight, you say, war has become hateful. Only night, love, and music charm. It is safer to be content with domestic pleasures, to cherish a beloved mistress and exercise the fingers upon a thration harp than to grasp a target and sharp-pointed spear and load the head with a weighty helmet. Here to fore you preferred the glory of illustrious actions to ease, and the fame acquired in war was all your aim. Could marshal deeds then only please till I was made captive? Is your thirst of praise extinguished by the fall of my country? Heaven forbid! May the Pelian spear urged by your victorious arm pierce the loins of Hector. Send me, O ye Greeks, as your ambassador to solicit my lord. I will enforce your requests with a thousand melting kisses. Trust me, I can do more with him than Phoenix, more than the brother of Tusa, even more than eloquent Ulysses. There is rhetoric in throwing my once familiar arms round his neck, and putting him in mind that it is his Bruceus who urges the request. Though you are cruel and more obdurate than the waves of the sea, my silence and tears must prevail. Now, then, so may your father Pelius measure out his full term of years and Pyrrhus enter upon war with your propitious fortune. Brave Achilles, have respect to your Bruceus, oppressed with a load of anxiety, nor kill her with your cruel delays. Or, if your former love is turned to disdain, rather hasten my fate than force me thus to live without you. And even as it is you hasten it, my beauty and bloom have fled, remaining faint hope of your love alone supports life. If this also should fail, my hard destiny will soon join me to the shades of my brothers and husband, nor will it add to your fame to have occasioned the death of one who loved you. But why, thus torment me by a lingering death? Plunge into my breast your naked pognard, I have still blood enough left to stream from the gaping wound. Let your sword, which had not Minerva interposed, would have reached the heart of Achilles, find its way to mine. Ah, rather preserve a life that is your own gift! I ask no more from my lover than what he formerly granted me when an enemy. The walls of Troy, built by Neptune, will afford more ample matter for your resentment. Hunt ruin in the hostile field! Let me only request, whatever be your design, whether to remain here or navigate your fleet home, that in right of master, you command me to attend you. End of Bresailles to Achilles. Section 4 of Ovid's Heroides. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kalinda. Section 4 of Ovid's Heroides, translated by an unknown translator, first published in 1813. Phadra to Hippolytus. Phadra of Crete wishes to Hippolytus, born of an Amazon, that health, which, if he will not give it, she herself must want. Read this, at least, how can the reading of a letter hurt you? Perhaps, too, you may meet with some things in it that will be agreeable. In this manner, secrets are conveyed over land and sea. Even enemies look at the letters sent from each other. Thrice, I essayed to speak with you. Thrice, my tongue failed. Thrice, the words forsook me at my tongue's end. Modesty is to be joined with love, as far as is possible and convenient. Love commands me to write what I was ashamed to speak. It is not safe to slight the commands of love. He reigns uncontrolled and has power even over the sovereign gods. He first commanded me, when full of doubts and fears, to write. Thrice said he, though hard as steel, he will yield his captive hands. Be present, love, and as you nourish in my bones a wasting fire, fix also in his breast a dart that may soften it towards me. Yet will I not by any crime stain my cannubial vows. My fame, search into it, you will find fair and spotless. Love, the later it seizes us, rages the more. I burn inwardly, I burn and my breast feels the hidden wound. As the tender bull is at first impatient of the yoke, and the young coarser is with difficulty rendered obedient to the rain, so my unconquered heart resists the first attacks of love, and this unusual burden sits heavy on my unpracticed mind. When love is habitual from our cradle, we may learn by art to manage it, but in our ripe years it assaults us with violence. You will taste the first offerings of my spotless fame, and the guilt will be the same in both. There is a pleasure in plucking the ripe apples from loaded branches and gathering with an industrious hand the earliest roses. If yet my chastity, hitherto unstained, must be blotted by an unusual crime, it has happily fallen out that I burn with a noble flame. A worthless partner of my crime, something still worse than the crime itself, cannot in my case be objected. If Juno should resign her brother and husband in my favor, even Jupiter would probably be disregarded in competition with Hippolytus. And now, what you will scarcely believe, my inclinations carry me after new and unaccustomed delights. I long to assault you with the savage breed. Already the dealian goddess, distinguished by the crooked bow, presides in my thoughts. Your judgment in this determines also mine. I am impatient to range the woods to pursue the stage into the toils and cheer the nimble hounds along the rocky cliffs, or lance the trembling dart with a vigorous arm and stretch my wearied limbs on a grassy bank. Often I am pleased to drive the nimble chariot involved in dust and guide the panting steeds with steady rain. Now, wild, I rave as a bacchanal when full of the inspiring god, or like those who on the idian hill urge with redoubled strokes the sounding brass, yea, more wild than those whom the dryads half divine and horned satyrs strike with terror and amazement. For when this fury abates, I am informed of all, and silent feel that conscious love rages in my breast. Perhaps I am urged to this love by the fate of my blood, and Venus exacts this tribute of all our race. Jupiter loved Europa, hence the first rise of our family, disguising the god under the form of a bull. Passive fame, my mother, enjoyed a deluded bull, was in time delivered of her guilty load. Perfidious thesis guided by the faithful thread escaped by my sister's help the deluding labyrinth. Lo, I too, that I might not belie the race of Minos, yield the last to the powerful laws of my blood. Surely it was our destiny, one house gained the inclinations of both. I am charmed with your shape and appearance, my sister yielded to the attractions of your father. Theseus and his son have triumphed over two sister nymphs, raised trophies of your victory over our race. Oh, how I wish that I had been wandering in the fields of Crete when first I saw you enter Ilusis, the city of Ceres. It was then chiefly, yet even before that time you had charmed me, that the penetrating flame of love raged in my bones. White was your robe, your hair was adorned with a garland, a modest blush had overspread your comely face. That countenance which appears to others stern and fierce was in Phaedra's eyes noble and full of manly courage. I hate youths fond of dress and female nicety. A manly form requires little fashioning. That sternness, those careless locks and noble face stained with dust are becoming. Whether you bend in the fiery steed's reluctant neck, I am delighted to see him wheeling in the narrow ring. Or if with vigorous arm you dart the heavy spear, still my eyes watch the manly throw. Or do you brandish the hunting spear of broad pointed steel? In fine everything you do gives me delight. Leave your cruelty to the woods and mountains, nor let me, undeserving of such a fate, perish for your sake. What pleasure can it give to be wholly taken up in the exercises of Diana and deny Venus the vows and engagements due to her? What admits no interval of rest cannot subsist long. Rest renews our strength and refreshes our wearied limbs. The bow and surely the arms of your favourite goddess may furnish an example for your imitation. If always bent will lose its force. Cephalus was famed in the woods. His hand were many wild beasts slain, yet he was no enemy to the delights of love. Aurora wisely forsook old age for him. Oft under a spreading oak were Venus and Adonis seated on the yielding grass. Meliagre, too, burned for Ariadne and Atalanta. She, as a pledge of his love, enjoyed the spoils of the Caledonian boar. Let us also be now first joined to this glorious crowd. The foolish love the forest will be turned into a desert. I will be the partner of your toils. Neither the rocks hideous with dens and caves, nor the fierce aspect of the threatening boar shall terrify me. There is an Isthmus seated between two seas, the rising billows beating against either shore. Here will I meet thee at Trozan, once the kingdom of Pythias. Already it is dearer far than my native country. The hero of Neptune's race is happily absent and will be so long. He is now in the country of his dear Pyrethus. Thesias, unless we dispute what is manifest, prefers Pyrethus both to his Phaedra and to thee. Nor is this the only injury he has offered us, for we have both been wronged in matters of great importance. The bones of my brother, broken with a knotted club, he scattered on the bloody ground. My sister was left to pray to wild beasts. You boast of a mother worthy of the bravery of her son, of distinguished valor among the Amazonian maids. If you inquire after her, Thesias inhumanly stabbed her. Nor could so great a pledge protect the unhappy mother. Nor was she wedded, nor received with the nuptial torch. Why all this but to exclude you from your father's throne? He has added moreover brothers to you by me, who have been bred up by his command rather than mine. I could wish, loveliest of men, that the child who may stand in competition with you had died in the birth. What reverence after all this can be due to your father's bed, which he even shuns himself and has deserted. Nor let vain fears alarm you that this commerce between a son and mother-in-law is infamous. This old-fashioned piety which could not subsist long, suited only the rustic age of Saturn. Jupiter has made pleasure the test of piety and has given us an example in espousing his own sister. That tie of blood is firmest which is strengthened by the bonds of Venus. It will be an easy matter to conceal it. The name of relative will justify our freedoms. Whoever sees our mutual embraces will praise us. I shall be thought of as stepmother, tender of my husband's son. No stubborn gates are to be forced open in the night. No watchful keeper to be deceived. One house served us both. One house will still serve us. You caress me openly and may do so still. Here you will be in safety and our freedoms far from exposing us to blame will gain us praise. Only banish delay and hasten to consummate our mutual loves. So may the tyrant that rages in my breast prove gentle to you. I condescend to address you by prayers and in treaties. Where is now my pride? Where are my wanted boasts? I had resolved to hold out long and not easily yield to a crime if love were capable of any steady resolution. But subdued by its power I turned to prayers and with my royal hands clasp your knees. Lovers alas are seldom awed by a sense of decency. Shame and modesty have fled. Think favorably of my fond confession and pity my sufferings. What though my father holds the empire of the seas and my great-grandsire darts the rapid thunder. What though my grandfather, crowned with pointed rays, guides the resplendent chariot of the day. Nobility gives place to love. Have some regard, however, for my race. And if you undervalue me, yet show respect to mine. The famous island of Crete falls by inheritance to me. Here shall my Hippolytus reign supreme. Conquer that stubborn soul. My mother could even inspire a bull with love and will you be more cruel than a fierce bull? Here, then, for Venus' sake, who is all-powerful with me, so may you never love a scornful fair. So may swift Diana still attend you in the remote forests and the woods offer you the best game. So may the sadders and mountain gods protect you and the boar fall pierced by your quivering spear. So may the kind nymphs, though you are said to hate the softer sex, allay with grateful streams your burning thirst. Many tears accompany these prayers. Think while you read over the words of your Phaedra that you see also the tears streaming from her eyes. End of Phaedra to Hippolytus. Recording by Kalinda in Lüneburg, Germany on March 23, 2009. Section 5 of Overt's Heroides This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shuliva Malikim. Section 5 of Overt's Heroides Translated by an Unknown Translator First published in 1813. Oynoni to Paris May I hope that you will read this? Or, overawed by your new ride, must you treat it with neglect? Read it over, I entreat you. It is no threatening letter sent you from Iquine. I, the nymph Oynoni, famous in the Fridgen moods, complain of injuries received from you, whom I am still fond to call mine, if you permit. What God opposes himself to my wishes? What crime have I committed that I no longer possess your love? Where we suffer deservedly, we ought to bear it with patience, but unmarried calamities that have you upon us. You were yet in no circumstances when I, a nymph sprung from a mighty river, was contented to receive you for my husband. So now, the son of Brian, excuse my freedom, you were then no more than a slave, nor did I disdain to wed you even in that meanest rank. Often under the shade of a tree have he quietly rested amidst the flocks, where the ground strewn with leaves afforded a pleasant couch, often our lowly cottage, secure from hail and freezing winds. Have he contentedly reposed on straw or a bed of hay, who shewed you of the forest best stocked with game, or pointed out of the rocky heavens where the savage dam concealed young? A constant companion of your toils, I often spread the knotted net and cheered your sweeping hounds along the mountain's row. The beaches still preserve my name carved by your hand, and, oinoni, the work of your pruning-knife is read upon their bark, and as the trunks increase, the letter still delayed. Grow on and rise as testimonies of my just claim, there grows a poplar, I remember it, by the riverside on which is carved the motto of our love. Flourish thou poplar, vet by the bordering stream whose furrowed bark bearseth this encryption. Sooner shall succent his hasten back to his source than Paris be able to live without his oinoni. Xanthus flow backward. Backward flow your streams, Paris still lives so fadeless to his oinoni. My misfortunes began from that unhappy day in which Venus, Juno and Minerva, most graceful when clad in shining armour, appointed you judge of the price of beauty. It was then that a black storm overcast my former peace. My heart failed while you repeated the fatal tale and a cold trembling shot through all my bones. I quainted the aged veterans and sages with my just fears, and they all agreed that some misfortune was approaching. Drees are cut down, ships are built, and the sea-green waves bear up your well-appointed fleet. When about to depart you melted into tears. This, at last, you need not be ashamed to own. The present love is far more guilty than the past. You wept and witnessed my melting grief. The mingled tears spoke our mutual sadness. You clasped your arms round my neck, more closely than the curling vines, and raised a towering elm. How did your companion smile when you complained of the unfriendly winds? They favoured, but love detained you. How often at parting did you repeat the ardent kisses while your tongue was scarcely able to utter last farewell? A propitious gale swells your sails ballying from the rigid masts, and the sea foams after the repeated strokes of the oars. Habbless! I pursue with my eyes the lashing canvas and water the sands with my tears. I implore the narrate, or your speedy return, a speedy return indeed to my sorrow. Have them, I praise, brought you back only for the sake of another? And have I solicited the guards on behalf of an injurious harlot? A high rock, formed by nature, overlooks the boundless sea. This recipe opposes itself to the beating waves. Hence I first aspired your swelling sails and hardly could forbid plunging into the deep. As I waited with impatience for your arrival, I discerned upon the deck a purple garment. This made me tremble, as I well knew that it was not your dress. The ship approached, and urged by a favourable gale, reached the land, when with a throbbing heart I aspired my hated rival, whose head, even wide-laid I to leap into the sea, wrested upon your bosom. At this I tore my hair and beat my breast, and urged by despair scratched my face with my inhuman nails. I'd a sacred grove resounded with my mournful complains, and hence I bore them to those caves which were conscious of our former love. So may Helen also complain and mourn like me a faithless spouse. May she too taste of those sorrows which on her account I now so severely feel. You are at present charmed with one who forsakes her lawful husband and follows you over the wide sea. But when a poor shepherd, you attended your little flock, I know, only alone made you an offer of a bed. I have no eye to your riches, nor am I moved by your stately pallours. I have no ambition to be numbered among the daughters of potent Priam. Yet Priam needs not to be ashamed of owning himself the father-in-law of a nymph. Nor need Hacuba to assemble that I am her daughter. I merit, and wish to become the consort of a powerful prince. Nor would a regal scepter ill become my hands. It is no dishonour to have lain with you upon the new fallen leaves. I am the more fit to ascend the bed of state. Add that you are safer, my love. No wars threaten you. No revengeful ships plough the waves. Fugitive Helen is demanded back by her soul-arms, and sees with pride that the war must be her dowry. Ask of Hector, your brother. Polydamus or Diaphobus was assured to be restored. Consult with the sage Antiner and your rage-sire Priam, whom years and long experience have taught wisdom. It is scandalous to prefer remisters to your native country. You engage in a shameful cause. Her husband raises a just war against you. Nor flatter yourself that this lacedemonian will long prove constant. She, who was so easily enticed to your embraces. As young Atreides complains of his dishonoured bed, and warns the injury done to him by a foreign love, so shall you lament in your turn. Chastity, when one solid can never be recovered. One full step ruins it for ever. She now burns for you. Thus she wants of men allows. He, too easy of belief, lies now in a forlorn bed. Happy Andromache, the worthy consort of a faithful spouse. My fidelity merited a like return from you. You are lighter than withered leaves driven by the incontent winds, of them starks of wheat parched by the continual heat of the sun. Hed before your sister, now I recollect, forworn to be your foal, and with her hair disheveled, thus prophesied my approaching fate. What is it you hope for, Oinoni? Why, Barry, is thus your seat in the sand? Why plough you up the shore with unprofitable steers? The Grecian heifer comes, fatal to you, to Troy, and our ancient house. She comes, forbidden heaven, and now, while it may be done, overwhelm the guilty ship. Allow us how as she fraught with frigium blood, she said. Her servants carried her off full of the guard. My hair was erect with fear. Ah, you two truly foretold my wretched fate. This heifer now feeds on my lawns. Though fair to look upon, she has yet a prostitute, whom strangers have easily enticed from her native home. Thus Thiesau's, if I do not mistake the name, won Thiesau's formerly made her a prize. It is likely, no doubt, that she was restored save and untouched by youth, passionate and fond. If you wonder how I obtained knowledge of this story, that I laugh. You may call it violence, and think to hide a fault by a species' name. It is evident that one who has been carried off so often must have contrived this rape. But I know he continues faithful to a perjured spouse, and yet I might have returned the enduring kind. I was pursued by the Thiesau's a lossal crew, and to escape their violence concealed myself in the woods, for once too adorned with garlands of pine-leaves, draped me over either swelling summits. Phobos, the guardian god of Troy, obtained at last by violence, what others had struggled for in vain. I tore his hair and left on his face the marks of my rage. Yet I desired no sword or recompense of jewels or gold, nor would many prostitutes my free charms for hire. He sought me worthy to be entrusted with the healing-art, and rewarded me with the same knowledge for which he is himself so famed. My skill reaches to every herb and healing-root which the fertile earth produces. But unhappy that I am, my art avails not for my own cure, nor are herbs sufficient to heal the wounds of love. Even Phobos, the founder of our art, fed we are tall to the hurt of that meters, nor could he withstand the pointed flames, not have nor earth with all his bounty store can ease my pain. It is from you alone that I expect relief. Paris can relieve, and I have deserved it. Petit maid who marries and loves you. My alliance will bring upon you no dangerous bloody wars. I am yours. And with you innocently past my infant years. Haven't grant that what yet remains of life may be also spent with you. End of Onony to Paris. You are set to have reached the Thessaladian coasts in your returning bark and reached with the prize of the Golden Fleece. I congratulate your safety, as far as I am permitted. But I ought to have known this by a letter from yourself, for though unfavourable winds might have hindered you from landing in my kingdom had you even desired it, yet a letter might have been sealed and sent. Surely a letter from you, surely Hepsipoli deserved this testimony of your love. Why is fame the first messenger of your success? Why did I first hear from report that the bulls sacred to the stern god of war had submitted to the yoke, that harvests of armed men sprang from the sowing of the dragon's teeth, and did not want your right hand to cut them off, that the yellow fleecy spoils, though guarded by a vigilante, dragon, were yet a prey to your valiant arm? If I could assure those who believe with diffidence that all this was confirmed to me by a letter from yourself, how great would be my happiness! Why do I complain that my husband, by so long an absence, has failed in the respect he owes me? If your heart continues mine, I have still all I ask. You are set to have brought with you a barbarian entrantress and admitted her to a share of that bed which you had promised to me. Love is credulous and full of fears. I wish it may be found that I have rashly charged my husband with false crimes. A stranger lately arrived here from Thessaly. Scarcely had he touched the threshold when I inquired how my Jason was. He, overcome with shame, stood silent and fixed his eyes upon the ground. Inpatient I ran up to him. And in wild distraction tearing his coat from his breast, tell me, I cried, does he still live, or has fate determined also to end my days? He lives, said he. I forced the intimidated stranger to confirm the statement by an oath and could scarcely be convinced of your existence even by the testimony of a guard. After recovering from my surprise I began to inquire of your exploits. He tells me how the brazen footed bulls of Mars turned up the furrowed plain, that the teeth of the dragon were thrown into the earth for seed and a sudden crop of armed men sprang up, and that these earth-born heroes cut off by civil broils had filled up the short span of life allotted to them by fate. Upon hearing of the serpent overcome I again asked if Jason still lived, my heart beating alternately with hope and fear. While he proceeds in recounting one thing after another in the current of his discourse he at last discovers the wounds made in your heart. Alas! Where is now your promised faith? Where are now the nuptial ties? And human's torch fitter to have lighted up my funeral pile. I was not known to you by stealth. Juno was witness to our vows and human also having his temples bound with garlands. But neither Juno nor human, but cruel erinus, bore in procession the inauspicious torch. What concern had I with the organets? What with the ship of palace? What did your pilot Tiffus think of touching at this coast? Here was no ram to entice you by his golden spoils. Nor had Aedes his royal palace at Lemnos. I had determined, but my unhappy destiny overruled me, to expel the strangers with a female band. The Lemnian ladies have too glaringly shown themselves an overmatch for man. My life and peace ought to have been defended by so trusty a band. I allowed Jason to enter my city and admitted him into my house and heart. Here two summers and two winters rolled away. It was now the third harvest when, forced to unfold the spreading sails, with tears in your eyes, you uttered these soft and tender words. Alas, I am torn from you, Hepsipoli. But if heaven grant me a safe return, as I depart thine, so will I ever remain thine. Let the pledge of our mutual love, that you now carry about in your teeming womb, be fondly cherished, that it may prove the joy and blessing of its parents. Thus far you spoke, while the tears trickling down your deceitful cheeks grieve deprived you of the power to proceed. You were the last to ascend the sacred ship. She flies, and a favourable wind fills the swelling sails. The sea-green waves recede from before the stemming prow. Your eyes are fixed upon the shore, while mine follow you through the deep. An adjacent tower opens the prospect on all sides towards the sea. Thither I bend my cause, my face and bosom bedued with tears. I view you through my tears, and my eyes, favouring the eagerness of my mind, carry forward my sight beyond its usual bounds. I address heaven with chaste prayers and timorous vows. Vows to be performed now that you are safe. Must I then pay vows for the triumphs of Medea? My heart yields to grief, and my love flames into rage. Shall I carry offerings to the temples, because Jason lives, and lives for another? Are victims to be slain in return for my disappointments? I was indeed always diffident, and dreaded that your father might choose a daughter-in-law from some city of Greece. I fear the Greeks, but suffer from a barbarian harlot, and am wounded by an unexpected hand. She has not charmed you by her beauty or won you by her accomplishments. She holds you by her enchantments and cuts the baneful herbs to the magic sickle. She endeavours to charm the reluctant moon from her orb and involve the chariot of the sun in darkness. She bridles the waves, stops the winding currents, and removes from their seats the woods and banging rocks. She wanders through the tombs with her hair dishevelled and collects bones from the yet-smoking pyres. Her witchcraft affects even the absent. She molds the images of wax and gores the wretched liver with torturing needles. Add a multiplicity of other magic artifices which I am better and acquainted with. Love should be gained by merit and beauty, not by herbs and filtres. How can you receive her into your embraces or quietly trust yourself in her treacherous arms? As formerly the bulls, so has she forced you also to submit to the yoke and bound you with the same fetters where with she before chained the dragons. Add that she boasts of having contributed to your success and that of your companions, and the fame of the wife eclipses that of the husband. Those of the pelion faction ascribe all to sorcery and the malicious world is too ready to believe them. It was not Jason, say they, but Medea of Colchis that bore away the rich fleece of the consecrated ram. If you will be governed by the advice of a mother, she disapproves your choice. Nor does your father relish her bride from the frozen zone. Let her seek a husband from the borders of the Teneis, the marshy fens of Skithia, or her native banks of Faces. In constant Jason, more unstable in the vernal breeze, why are your words without their promised weight? You departed my husband and return wedded to another. But as I was your wife when we parted, let me be still the same since your return. If nobility and great names move you, I boast a descent from Thoas, the grandson of Minos. I have Bacchus, for my grandfather, whose spouse adorned with a radiant crown eclipses the inferior lights by her more refulgent rays. Lemnos is my dowry, a fertile land that crowns the labour of the cultivator, and I myself am not to be overlooked amidst so many noble gifts. I am also a mother and bore the load with pleasure for the father's sake. Let us both rejoice in this auspicious pledge. I am happy too in a number and have brought forth twins a double pledge of Lucina's favour. If you inquire concerning their likeness, you may be known by them. They are indeed strangers to treachery, but in everything else they express image of their father. These have been sent envoys for their mother, but a cruel step they have prevented the intended journey. I dread it, Medea. Medea is more cruel than even cruelty itself. Medea has hands ready for every kind of wickedness. Would she who could scatter the dismembered joins of her own brother scruple to imbue her hands in the blood of these innocent pledges of my love? And yet, O deluded man, intoxicated with the filtres of Colchis, this is the woman for whom you are said to have deserted Hepsipoli. She basely associated with the husband of another. We were chastely united by the hymnial torch. She betrayed her father. I saved mine from destruction. She deserted her native land. I still remain at Lemnos. But what avails it if her wickedness triumphs over my piety and she gains the heart of her husband by her very crimes? Far from admiring the cruelty of the Lemnian ladies, I blame it, Jason, although indignation and resentment stirred them up to arms. Tell me, if driven by inhospitable winds you and your companion had entered my ports when I, accompanied by my twin offspring, had gone out to welcome you, would you not have wished the earth to open and swallow you up? With what face could you have beheld the harmless babes and me, your faithful wife? What punishment could have been inflicted upon you equal to your perfidy and ingratitude? You would indeed have been safe and unheard, not because you deserved it, but in consequence of my softness and good nature. But I would have satiated my eyes with the blood of that harlot and you, the slave of her sorceries, should have beheld the tragedy. I would have been Medea to Medea. If you, O just Jupiter, hear from heaven the prayers of my injured love, may this bays intruder into my chaste bed groan on the same pangs which I now feel and herself experience that treachery of which she has set the first example. And as I, a wife and the mother of twins, am left destitute and forlorn, may she also be ravished from her husband and children. May she soon lose and shamefully abandon these ill-gotten trophies, exiled and wandering a fugitive over all the earth. What sister she was to her brother, what daughter to her parent, such a mother and wife may she prove to her children and husband. When she has traversed the earth and sea, let her attempt the air till destitute and hopeless, she end a miserable life by her own hand. These are the prayers of the disappointed and injured daughter of Thoas. May you live an execrable pair, the partners of a devoted bed. End of Hipsipalee to Jason. Section 7 of Ovid's Heroides. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shaleefa Malikem. Section 7 of Ovid's Heroides, translated by an unknown translator, first published in 1813. Dido to Aeneas. Thus the silver swan, when death approaches, bemoans her fate among the willows on the banks of Meander. Nor do I address you from a hope of being able to move you by my prayers. That, the gods averse to my request forbid. But having lost merit and fame, my honour and myself, why should I fear to lose a few dying words? You are then resolved to depart and abandon an habit, Aido. The same winds will bear away your promises and sails. You are, I say, O Aeneas, resolved to weigh at once your ranker and your vows, and go in quest of Italy, a land to which you are wholly a stranger. Neither my new-built Carthage and herising walls have power to detain you. Nor is the supreme rule which you are in vain urged to accept. You fly a city already built and seek one that is yet to be raised. The one realm is still to be conquered. The other is subject to your command. Even if you are disembarked on the wishful coast, how can the need be induced to resign it? What people will grant the property of their lands to strangers? You must first be so fortunate as to find another love, another affectionate constant Daido. You must again bind yourself by vows which you cannot keep, yet when will you build a city flourishing like Carthage and from your lofty tower survey the crowds below? But where all events to meet your desires so that not even a wish remained unanswered, where will you find a wife to love like me? I burn like wax and torches smeared with sulfur or pious incense cast into the smoking-sensor, anus as ever before my wakeful eyes, the image of anus haunting both by day and night. He indeed is ingrateful and regardless of all my good offices, and I am a fond fool not to tear immensely from my heart. In spite of all this ill usage, I have not the power to hate him. I can only complain of his baseness, and when my complaints are over, love him more than ever. Pity, O Venus, your daughter-in-law, Piers, O Cupid, the unrelenting heart of your brother, and teach him to fight under your banners. Teach me also, who have already begun the pleasing task, right in I had not, and let him prove an object worthy of my tenderness and concern. I rave, and the enchanting image deludes my eager mind, nor does he retain any portion of the softness of his mother. You are certainly the offspring of rocks and mountains, or the hardened oak that rouses out of the hanging cliff, a severed tagress or the tempestuous ocean, such as it is now when sweltered by gathering storms gave thee birth. But whether can you shape your cause, or how stem the falls of opposing billows? You prepare to such sale, a stormy sea forbids. Let me enjoy the blessing which such a rough winter offers. Behold, how the blustering east went raised as the foaming waves. Let me o'er that to a winter and a stormy sea which I would rather owe to your love. The winds and waves have more of justice than you. Of those I'll deserve is to perish, cruel and barbarous men. Yet I am not of such value, that in flying from me you should lose your life. It is a costly hatred, and of too great a mount if you despise death while you endeavor to shun me. Soon the wind will seize, a calm succeed, and triton, drawn by sea-green horses, wheel along the surface of the deep. Oh, how I wish that you may also change with the winds, and surely it will be so, unless you have a hard, harder than the not at oak. What, as if yet an acquainted with the dangers of a raging sea, can you still trust in an element that had so often brewed fatal to you? Where you even to weigh anchor and sail along a level deep, an extensive ocean has still many dangers in store. Waves bear the vengeance of the gods against the violators of vows. It is here that perfidy is overtaken by severe punishment, especially treachery and love. For Venus, the mother of soft and tender desires, is said to have sprung naked from the waters that murmur round the island of Scythera. So lost, I am anxious for your safety, and devoid doing hurt to one who has loaded me with injuries. I am afraid that my enemy shipwrecked may be overwhelmed in the raging sea. For heaven's sake, live! I would rather lose you thus than by the grave. Live, I say, and be rather the cause of my funeral. Suppose you are overtaken by feast whirlwind. For bitty gods, that my words carry in them any omen, what sort of courage will you then exert? The perjuries of your deceitful tongue, and the sort of wretched dydo killed by frigent perfidy will then fly in your face. The mournful image of your forsaken wife will stand before your eyes. This consulate and bloody with haired is hailed. You will then own that you have met with your deserved fate and sink each flesh of lightning aimed at you. Delay for a time you cruel flight, and tempt not the raging sea. The safe voyage will be the certain reward of your stay. If you are regardless of me, yet think of Tandy Euler's. It is enough a year to be branded as a cause of my death. What has Ascanias, what have the gods deserved, that they who have so lately escaped the flames should be exposed to perish amidst the waves? But neither do you bring your gods with you, nor has you falsely boasted, did your shoulders bear these sacred relics, and a father, through flames and danger? You deceived me in all. Or am I the first greadless fool deluded by said perjured tongue, or the first who have suffered from a rash belief? If we ask, after the mother of beautiful Euler's, we find that she felt deserted by cruel and heart-hearted husband. These things you yourself related, and yet they made no impression. Go on to torment me, since I so much deserve it. Your punishment will be less because of my crime. Nor can I doubt that even your own gods are offended. It is now the seventh winter that you have been tossed by land and sea. When the waves have thrown you on the shore, I welcomed you to my kingdom, and entrusted you with the government, scarcely knowing even your name. I most sincerely wish that I had confined myself to these kind offices alone, and that the fame of your having shared my bed were buried in eternal oblivion. That was the unhappy day of my ruin, when a sudden dark storm drove us into a hanging cave. I heard a strange voice, and fancied that the mountain limbs approved. Alas, too late I now find, that a furious breeze saved my unhappy destiny. Exact, o violated chesity, the vengeance due to injured Sicaeus, to whom wretched that I am, I hasten full of shame and anxiety. I preserve in a little chapel of marble a pious statue of Sicaeus. Rizzeth with flowers and white wool. From this doom I seemed to be four times called, and my dear husband, as I imagined, in a low hollow voice said, Dido, come. I will come without delay, I, who am thy wife due to see alone, will come, but with diffidence, because conscience, of the wrong I have done you. Pardon my unhappy error, I was misled by one form to deceive, let his attractions be the excuse of my folly. His mother, a goddess, and the pious load of his aged sire, gave me hopes of a constant and unshaken husband. If I did err, yet my error claims an honourable excuse, supposing faithful, and I might yield up my heart to him without a blush. The same fate, which persecuted me before, continued still to harass me, and Mars is the quiet of my present hours. My husband fell murdered before the altars, and a bloody brother reaped his wealth as a reward of that impious deed. I am banished from my own country, and forced to abandon the dear remains of my husband. Pursued by my enemies, I take shelter in a foreign land. I was wafted to an unknown coast, and having thus escaped from the cruelty of my brother and the dangers of the sea, I purchased the land which I have made over to you. I built a city, and marked out my walls to such an extent as to raise the envy of the neighbouring states. Wars threaten me, though a helpless woman. I am prepared to carry on a war with strangers, and with difficulty fortify my new city, and arm my troops. A thousand rivals make pretensions to my love, while joining, complaining, that they are slighted for the sake of this stranger. Why do you hesitate to deliver me captive to Catole in Yabba's? I have put it in your power to use me thus basely. I have, moreover, a brother whose wicked hands already stained with the blood of my husband may be stained also with mine. Leave your gods and those sacred relics which were polluted by thy touch. An impious right hand ill becomes the worship of the heavenly powers. The gods disdain a sacred religious homage, and to avoid thy worship would willingly return to perish in the Grecian flames. Perhaps, barbarous men, you abandon me in a state of pregnancy, and when a part of you lies hidden in my womb, the unhappy infant will share the fate of its mother, and you will prove the cause of death to one yet unborn. The brother of Euler's will be involved in his parents' unhappy destiny, and one stroke will carry off both at the same time. But a god commands you to be gone. I wish he had forbidden you to touch upon our coast, and that the street of Carthage had never been trodden by the natives of Troy. It is doubtless of the same guide this divinity forsooth that you are now the sport of unfavourable winds and waste the time in traversing tempestuous seas. Scarcely ought you to expose yourself to so many dangers to recover Troy itself, though in the same flourishing condition as when defended by Hector. At present you are not in quest of simus, but the banks of the Tiber, where when you arrive you will be no more than a precarious guest, and as it is far off and you lose your search, it may perhaps remain undiscovered even to your rolled age. It would be better to accept the diary of my kingdom, assure inheritance, and the treasures snatched from cover to speak Malian. You may more happily transfer your Troy to Carthage and sway the sacred scepter with kingly rule. If you are fond of war, if you lose a sensation to gather laurels in the field, that everything may be to your wish he shall find foes to conquer. Here you may taste the blessings of peace or engage in the toils of war. I adore you, by your parent goddess, by the arrows of Cupid your brother, by the gods of Troy, companions of your flight. So may all that you bring with you from Troy survive the attacks of fortune and that war prove the period of your calamities so may Ascanius fill up the measure of his years and the bones of all's enchisous rest in peace. Have pity on me. This fate is in your hand. This only crime is to have loved you too well. I am not of miscine or descended from hostile Achilles, nor did my husband or father ever bear arms against you. If you think we are worthy to be your wife, receive me under the name of your hostess. Didle will submit to anything if she may be yours. The seas that beat against the African shore were well known to me. At certain seasons, they favour and they frown. When the winds invite you to be gone you shall spread the swelling sails. Now the moored ships are surrounded with floating seaweed. Let it be my care to observe the seas improper for sailing. You shall go when you may with safety, nor if you should even desire it, would I suffer you to stay. Your companions will be pleased with the little rest and the shattered fleet, not completely repaired, requires some delay. I also ask a small respite if I have any merit with you, if you value my love or the ties by which I am yours, that a wage and my love may as wage, that by time and use I may learn to bear my sorrows with fortitude. If not, I will end my misery with my life, nor shall it be long in your power to use me thus barbarously. Oh, that you could represent me to yourself as writing this letter. I write, and on my lap lies a drawn sword. The tears flow down my cheeks upon that weapon, which instead of tears will be soon stained with blood. How well are your gifts fitted to my destiny? You raise my sepulchre at an easy rate, nor does this dart now first pierce my breast. It previously felt the wound of cruel love. And you, my dear sister, the confident of my guilty flame shall soon pay the last duty to my unhappy remains. Nor let my monument boast that I was a wife of Sikhaeus. May the marvel bear only this inscription. Aeneas afforded the course and instrument of Dido's death, but she fell by her own hand. End of Dido to Aeneas. Before to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Lauren Lazarus. Section 8 of Avid's Herodes, translated by an unknown translator, first published in 1813. Hermione to Orestes. I, unhappy Hermione, address the man, lately my kinsman and spouse, now my kinsman only, for another possesses the name of husband. Pyrus, the son of Achilles, as impetuous as his sire, forcibly confines me here, contrary to honor and justice. I resisted with all the force which I could exert that I might not be detained, nor was it in the power of female hands to do more. What are you doing, grandson of Aeacus, exclaimed I? Think not that I am without an avenger. The maid whom you injure has a master of her own. But he, more deaf than the raging waves, dragged me by the hair into his hated palace. Calling for aid upon the name of Orestes. What could I have suffered more in the ruin of Lacedaemon, had a troop of barbarians led captive the Gryshin Dames? Triumphant Greece did not so harass unfortunate Andromache when the wealth of Phrygia became the prey of devouring flames. But, oh, Orestes, if you have any care or thought of me, assert with courage and resolution your undoubted right. Will you take up arms if any one should break in upon your sheepfolds, and yet be slow to free your wife from violence? Imitate the example of your father-in-law, who boldly reclaimed his ravished spouse, and thought the injury offered him in a woman a sufficient cause of war. Had Menelaus remained indolent in his deserted palace, my mother would have still continued the wife of Paris as once she was. There is no necessity for a fleet, or powerful army, come only yourself. Not but that I deserve to be demanded back in this manner, nor is it any reproach to a husband to have waged a furious war on for the honor of his nuptial bed. Have we not the same grandfather, Atreus the son of Pilops, and, were you not my spouse, you are still my kinsmen? Both as your wife and kinswoman I beg your aid. Remember that you are under a double tie to this good office. I was given to you by our ancestor Tindarius, considerable for his experience in years, and one who, as my grandfather, had the undoubted disposal of me. But my father, not knowing this, had given his promise to Ayakides. Surely that of Tindarius, as first in authority and time, ought to have the preference. When espoused to you, my flame was just and unexceptionable. But if I should be married to Pyrrhus, you will be injured in me. My father, Menelaus, will easily be brought to approve our love. He himself hath yielded to the winged arrows of the god. He will make such allowance for your love, as he took to himself in his. His attachment to my mother affords an example to excuse ourselves. You are to me what my father was to Helen, and Pyrrhus acts the part of the Trojan guest of old. Let him boast without ceasing of the mighty acts of his father. You also can relate the glorious deeds of yours. The descendant of Tantalus commanded all the Greshan hosts, even Achilles himself. That hero headed only a single troop. Agamemnon was general in chief. You also glory in being of the race of Pilops and Tantalus. And if you reckon farther, are the fifth in a direct line from the father of the gods. Nor are you destitute of courage, but you have borne arms in an invidious cause, constrained to engage in the just revenge of a father's death. Oh, how I wish that you had given proof of your valor in a less direful cause, yet was it not choice but necessity. You yielded to the urgent call and shed the blood of that villain Agisthus, who had so cruelly murdered your father. But Pyrrhus censures it and calls that praiseworthy revenge a crime and even presumes to do it in my presence. I am distracted. My cheeks, as well as my heart, glow with rage, and my breast is scorched with flames pent up. Shall anyone dare to blame Orestes in Hermione's presence? I have indeed neither strength nor arms, but I may shed tears. Tears assuage grief, tears flow from my eyes and floods. These alone I always can command, and these I always shed profusely. My neglected cheeks are watered by a continual stream. By this fate of our race, which reaches down even to the present age, we matrons of the House of Tantalus fall a sure prey to every ravisher. I need not mention the deceit of the swan or how Jupiter lurked under the disguise of feathers. Hippodamia was conveyed by foreign wheels to where the isthmus stretching to a great length divides two seas. Helen was restored to the Emmaclean brothers, Caster and Pollux, from an attic city. Helen, conveyed beyond sea by in a day and stranger, raised in arms the whole power of Greece to recover her. Scarcely do I remember the time, yet young as I was I remember it. All appeared full of grief, all discovered manifest tokens of anxiety and concern. My grandfather wept, as did also her sister and twin brothers. Lita called on the heavenly powers and her own drove. I myself, with tresses torn, which even yet are not long, complained in a mournful voice, Alas, mother, are you gone without me? Have you left me behind? For Menelaus was absent. Lo, I too, that I might not belie the race of Pilops and made the prey of hated Neoptilimus. Oh, that Achilles had escaped the arrows of Apollo! He would doubtless have condemned the insolence of his son. He neither approved formerly nor now would have approved that a forsaken husband should lament the rape of his spouse. What crime of mine has raised the indignation of the gods? Unhappy that I am, what ominous star obstructs my felicity? I was deprived of my mother in my earliest youth. My father was engaged in a foreign war. Thus, though both were alive, I was destitute of both. I did not, oh my mother, in my younger days fondle and flatter you with my prattling tongue. I caught you not round the neck with my infant arms, nor sat a pleasing load upon your knee. You had no care of my education, nor was I led by you to the nuptial bed. I came out to meet you at your return, and to own the truth I could not distinguish my mother's face. I only fancied you to be Helen, because you were the most beautiful. Nor did you know before a friend informed you which was your daughter. My only good fortune was having arrestees for my husband, and he too will be lost unless he should maintain his right by arms. Pyrrhus hath obtained me from my victorious father. It is all I have gained by the fall of Troy. When the sun in his resplendent chariot mounts the mid-heaven, my misfortunes then suffer some remission. But when night conceals me in my chambers, howling and heaving bitter groans, and I have thrown myself upon my mournful couch, instead of being closed by sleep, my eyes overflow with tears, and I shun my husband when I can, as I would an enemy. Oft rendered insensible by my misfortunes, and unmindful of the place and persons, I am apt to stretch over Pyrrhus my unwary hand. But as soon as I recollect my error, I start from the hated touch, and think my hands polluted. Oft, instead of Pyrrhus, the name of my arrestees escapes me, and I am glad to interpret the mistake as a good omen. I swear by our unhappy race and its almighty sire, who shakes the earth and sees in heaven by his nod. By the bones of your father, my uncle, which, bravely revenged by your hand, now rests in a peaceful urn, I will either prematurely die, and be extinguished in my early youth, or, as I am a descendant of Tantalus, be married to one of my own race. End of Hermione II. Section 09 of Ovid's Heroides. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Morgan Scorpion. Section 9 of Ovid's Heroides, translated by an unknown translator, first published in 1813. Deonira to Hercules. I give you joy that the conquest of Eucalia is now added to your other trophies, but I am sorry that the conqueror is forced to submit to the conquered. For a report that tends greatly to your dishonour, and which by your actions you must study to discredit, has been suddenly propagated through all the cities of Greece, that he whom neither the malice of Juno, nor an endless series of toils could subdue, is now a captive to the charms of Ioli. Eurystheus has much longed for this, as has the sister of the thunderer, and your stepmother triumphs in this stain of your character, but it is far from pleasing him to whom, if fame can be believed, one night was not sufficient to beget you, great as you are. Venus has injured you more than Juno. The wife of Jove raised by endeavouring to depress you. The other goddess keeps your neck beneath her footstool. Think how the world lies hushed in peace by your avenging arm, wherever the blue ocean circles this vast tract of earth. To thee the earth is indebted for peace, and the sea for a safe navigation, thy glory has filled both houses of the sun. You previously bore up the heavens, that must at length bear you. Atlas, by your aid, supported the stars. Yet all this tends only to spread abroad your shame, if your former brave deeds are stained by an infamous miscarriage. Are you not said to have wrung to death two horrid snakes when, young and in your cradle, you showed yourself worthy of your father Jupiter? You began with more honour than you are like to end. The last parts of your life fall short of the first. How preposterous to show yourself a man in this, in that, a child. He whom not a thousand monsters, not the son of Stenelus, his obstinate enemy, not implacable Juno could vanquish, is yet vanquished by love. But I am thought honourably wedded, because I am called the wife of Hercules, and boast of him for my father-in-law, who, riding on his fiery steeds, rends the poles with his thunder. As when unequal steers are yoked in the same plough, so does the wife of an inferior degree suffer from her mighty husband. A rank that oppresses is no honour but a burden. She who desires to wed well, will do wisely to wed with her equal. My lord is ever absent, and a stranger is better known to him than his wife. He is always in pursuit of monsters and ferocious beasts. Often I dress heaven with chaste vows, and tremble in my solitary home, lest my husband should fall by some savage enemy. My imagination hurries me amidst serpents, boars, furious lions, and three-headed devouring dogs. The entrails of the sacrifices, the vain phantoms of sleep, and secret omens of night alarm me. I am terrified with every surmise of doubtful fame, and feel the full misery of a breast wracked by alternate hope and fear. Your mother is absent, and complains that ever her charms engage the notice of a powerful god. I have neither the society of your father Amphitrion, nor that of your son Hillis. I feel only Eurystheus, the minister of Juno's unjust rage, and the unwelenting wrath of that goddess. But it is not difficult to bear this. You add also foreign loves, and any one may be a mother by you. I shall not speak either of Orgi deflowered in the veils of Arcadia, or of your offspring by Astademia, the daughter of Orminus. You shall not be reproached with the fifty sisters of the House of Theotrantes, all of whom you debauched in one night. Your late crime I resent in preferring an adulterous to me, by whom I am made stepmother to the Lydian lamus. Miander, which wanders so much in the same plains, whose winding streams flow back by frequent channels, has seen the neck of Hercules adorned with a string of pearls, that neck to which the heavens were an easy load. You have not been ashamed to bind your arms with chains of gold, and deck your solid joints with shining gems, and yet under these arms did the Nemean lion expire, whose skin now formsish covering for your left shoulder. You had the weakness to bind your rude locs with a mitre, a garland of poplar would have better adorned the temples of Hercules. Nor did you think it a dishonour to confine your waist with the girdle of Amphali, after the manner of a wanton maid. The image of barbarous Diomedes, who savagely fed his mares with human flesh, was not then surely in your mind. Had Bucyrus beheld you in that unmanly attire, the conquered would have been ashamed of his conqueror, and Teus would have torn the pearls from your nervous neck, ashamed to submit to so effeminate a victor. You are said to hold the basket amidst the other attendants of Amphali, and tremble at the threats of a mistress. Degenerate Alcides Are you not ashamed to employ in servile offices those nervous hounds which have been victorious over a thousand dangers, to apply your manly sum in fashioning the long thread and measure out the task given you by your fair mistress? How often, while with rough fingers you draw out the slender thread, have your sinewy hands broken the feeble distaffs? You are said, unhappy man, to tremble at the thongs of the whip and, falling for straight at the feet of your mistress, to beg a respite from stripes. You hope to appease her by boasting of your great deeds and pompous triumphs, exploits which, in those circumstances, it would be better to dissemble by relating how, when an infant in your cradle you grasped hideous serpents, not terrified by their extended jaws or forky tongues. How the Arcadian war was slain upon Cyprus bearing Erymanthus and birthed the earth with his enormous weight. You tell also of the heads that were fixed upon Thracian gates and the mares fattened by the blood of men, of Gerion, that threefold monster, rich in Iberian herds, who had three bodies in one. Of Kerberus, forming three dogs from the same trunk, having his hair raised with hissing snakes. Of the astonishing serpent which multiplied by its wounds and gathered strength from the greatness of its losses. Of the enormous berthen which, poised between your left arm and side, you by main strength pressed to death, and the troop of centres, who, vainly trusting to their feet and double-limbed form, were dispersed on the quaggiest summits of Thessaly. Are you not ashamed to recount these exploits when you are clad in Tyrian purple, and is not your tongue restrained by a sense of the unseemly dress? The daughter of Iodinus has moreover adorned herself with your armour and wears the mighty trophies of her captive lover. Raise now your courage and boast of your warlike deeds. She has taken the name of Hero because you were unworthy of it and is as much above you as it was a harder task to subdue you, the greatest of conquerors than those whom you overcame. The glory of your actions redounds to her. Resign your claim of praise, and mistress has become heir to your trophies. For shame, do you suffer the bristly hide torn from the ribs of the savage lion to enfold her feeble limbs? Weak man to be thus deluded. These are not the spoils of the lion, but yours. You have indeed triumphed over the savage monster, but she triumphs over you. A woman, scarcely able to sustain the distal loaded with wool, bears the darts dipped in the poison of the Lonean Hydra. She has armed her right hand with the club which could subdue the most ferocious beasts, and has viewed in a mirror the armour of her spars. These things, indeed, I only heard and was willing to disbelieve common report, but now the mournful tale forces itself upon my senses. A foreign harlot is caressed in my sight, and it is no longer in my power to hide what I suffer. I am not even allowed to be absent. The captive, whom I behold with unwilling eyes, is led through the midst of the city, not in the manner of slaves with her hair dishevelled and hiding her face in token of her disaster, but in triumphal pomp, adorned with shining gold, and clad in the same attire which you wore when in Phrygia. She carries her head high amidst the captives subdued by Hercules, as if her caliast still stood, and her father yet existed. Perhaps, too, laying aside the name of Mistress, she will be received as your spouse, and there nearer of Aetolia be banished from your bed. An impious marriage may join in unchaste bands, Ioli, the daughter of Eurytus, and the infatuated Alcides. My mind sickenes with apprehension. A shivering coldness spreads itself over all my limbs, and my languid hands lie motionless upon my knees. You loved also me among many others, but your love to me was without a crime. Think it no dishonour that twice you fought victorious in my behalf. Achalos gathered his shattered horns upon his oozy banks, and plunged his mutilated temples in the muddy stream. Nessus the Centaur fell near the stream of fatal avenus, and tinged the waters with his unnatural blood. But why do I now mention these things? Even while I write, fame brings me the news that my husband perishes by the poison of the shirt that I sent him. Alas! what have I done? Wither has my despairing love driven me. Impious Deonira, do you yet doubt whether you should die? Shall your husband perish miserably on Mount Orita, and you, the cause of that barbarous crime, survive? If all yet remains to be done by which I may show myself the wife of Hercules, death shall be the confirmation of our union. You also, my Liga, shall own in me a true sister. Impious Deonira, do you yet doubt whether you should die? O ill-fated house! Agrios usurps the lofty throne, and a desolate old age oppresses Onius. My brother Tideas wanders in exile on unknown coasts, the other perished alive in devouring flames. My mother transfixed her heart with steel. Impious Deonira, do you yet doubt whether you should die? It is my only request, by all the most sacred ties of marriage, that I may not be thought to have betrayed you to your fate. Nessus, when his breast was pierced by the flying arrow, said to me, this blood of mine contains the powers of love. I sent you a robe stained with the poison of the centaur. Impious Deonira, do you yet doubt whether you should die? And now, my aged sire and sister Gorgie, Adieu. Farewell, my country, and my brother banished from your native home. Adieu, light of day, the last to my now fading eyes. Farewell, my husband, all that thou couldst farewell. Hillis, my dear Hillis, Adieu. End of Deonira to Hercules.