Greetings and health Haemonian Laodamia sends her Haemonian lord, and desires with loving heart they go where they are sent.
Report says you are held at Aulis by the wind.’ Ah, when you were leaving me behind, when- then was this wind? Then should the seas have risen to stay your oars; that was the fitting time for the floods to rage. I could have given my lord more kisses and laid upon him more behests; and many are the things I wished to say to you. Bid you were swept headlong hence: and the wind that invited forth your sails was one your seamen longed for, not I; it was a wind suited to seamen, not to one who loved. I must needs loose myself from your embrace, Protesilaus, and my tongue leave half unsaid what I would enjoin; scarce had I time to say that sad, Farewell! “
Boreas came swooping down, seized on and stretched your sails, and my Protesilaus soon was far away. As long as I could gaze upon my lord, to gaze was my delight, and I followed your eyes ever displeasure because Agamemnon hail killed A stag in die grove of Diana. with my own; when I could no longer see you, I still could see your sails, and long your sails detained my eyes. But after I descried no more either you or your flying sails, and what my eyes rested on was naught but only sea, the light, too, went away with you, the darkness rose about me, my blood retreated, and with failing knee I sank, they say, upon the ground. Scarce your sire Iphiclus, scarce mine, the aged Acastus, scarce my mother, stricken with grief, could bring me back to life with water icy-cold. They did their kindly task, but it had no profit for me. ’Tis shame I had not in my misery the right to die!
When consciousness returned, my pain returned as well. The wifely love I bore you has torn at my faithful heart. I care not now to let my hair l-dressed, nor does it pleasure me to be arrayed in robes of gold. Like those whom he of the two horns is believed to have touched with his vine-leafed rod, hither and thither I go, where madness drives. The matrons of Phylace gather about, and cry to me: “Put on thy royal robes, Laodamia!” Shall I, then, go clad in stuffs that are saturate with costly purple, while my lord goes warring under the walls of Ilion? Am I to dress my hair, while his head is weighed down by the helm? Am I to wear new apparel while my lord wears hard and heavy arms? In what I can, they shall say I imitate your toils—in rude attire; and these times of war I will pass in gloom.
Ill-omened Paris, Priam’s son, fair al Cost of thine own kin, mayst thou be as inert a foe as thou wert a faithless guest! Would that either thou hadst seen fault in the face of the Taenarian wife, or she had taken no pleasure in thine! Thou, Menelaus. who dost grieve o’ermuch for the stolen one, all me, how many shall shed tears for thy revenge! Ye gods, I pray, keep from us the sinister omen, and let my lord hang up his arms to Jo Safe-Return! But I am fearful as oft as the wretched war comes to my thoughts; my tears come forth like snow that melts beneath the sun. [lion and Tenedos and Simois and Xanthus and Ida are names to be feared from their very sound. Nor would the stranger have dared the theft if he had not power to defend himself; his own strength he well knew. He arrived, they say. sightly in much gold, bearing upon his person the wealth of Phrygia. and potent in ships and men. with which fierce wars are fought—and how great a part of his princely power came with him? With means like these were you overcome, I suspect, O Leda’s daughter, sister to the Twins; these are the things I feel may be working the Danaans woe.
,’ Of Hector, whoe’er he be, if I am dear to you, beware; keep his name stamped in ever mindful heart! When you have shunned him, remember to shun others; think that many Hectors are there: and see that you say, as oft as you make ready for the fight: “Laodamia bade me spare herself.” If it be fated Troy shall fall before the Argolic host, let it also fall without your taking a single wound.’ Let Menelaus battle, let him press to meet the foe; to seek the wife from the midst of the foe is the husband’s part. Your case is not the same; do you fight merely to live, and to return to your faithful queen’s embrace.
O ye sons of Dardanus, spare, I pray, from so many foes at least one, lest my blood flow from that body! He is not one it befits to engage with bared steel in the shock of battle, to present a savage breast to the opposing foe; his might is greater far in love than on the field. Let others go to the wars; let Protesilaus love!
I confess now, I would have called you back, and my spirit strove; but my tongue stood still for fear of evil auspice. When you would fare forth from your paternal doors to Troy, your loot, stumbling upon the threshold, gave ill sign. At the sight I groaned, and in my secret heart I said: ‘ May this, I pray, be omen that my lord return!” Of this I tell you now, lest you be too forward with your arms. See you make this fear of mine all vanish to the winds!
There is a prophecy, too, that marks someone for an unjust doom—the first of the Danaans to touch the soil of Troy. Unhappy she who first shall weep for her slain lord! The gods keep you from being too eager! Among the thousand ships let yours be the thousandth craft, and the last to stir the already wearied wave! This, too, I warn you of: be last to leave your ship; the land to which you haste is not your father’s soil. When you return. then speed your keel with oar and sail at once, and on your own shore stay your hurried pace.
Whether Phoebus be hid, or high above the earth he rise, you are my care by day, you come to me in the night; and yet more by night than in the light of day—night is welcome to women beneath whose necks an embracing arm is placed. I, in my widowed couch, can only court a sleep with lying dreams; while true joys fail me, false ones must delight.
But why does your face, all pale, appear before me? Why from your lips comes many a complaint? I shake slumber from me, and pray to the apparitions of night; there is no Thessalian altar without smoke of mine; I offer incense, and let fall upon it my tears, and the flame brightens up again as when wine has been sprinkled o’er. When shall I clasp you, safe returned, in my eager arms, and lose myself in languishing delight? When will it be mine to have you again close joined to me on the same couch, telling me your glorious deeds in the field? And while you are telling them, though it delight to hear, you will snatch many kisses none the less, and will give me many back. The words of well-told tales meet ever with such stops as this; more ready for report is the tongue refreshed by sweet delay.
But when Troy rises in my thoughts. I think of the winds and sea; fair hope is overcome by anxious fear, and falls. This, too, moves me, that the winds forbid your keels to fare forth—yet you make ready to sail despite the seas. Who would be willing to return homeward with the wind saying nay? Yet you trim sail to leave your homes, though the sea forbids! Neptune himself will open up no way for you against his own city. Whither your headlong course? Return ye all to your own abodes! Whither your headlong course, O Danaans? Heed the winds that say you nay! No sudden chance, but God himself, sends that delay of yours. What is your quest in so great a war but a shameful wanton? While you may, reverse your sails, O ships of Inachus! But what am I doing? Do I call you back? Far from me be the omen of calling back; may caressing gales second a peaceful sea!
I envy the women who dwell in Troy, who will thus behold the tearful fates of them they love, with the foe not far away. With her own hand the newly wedded bride will set the helmet upon her valiant husband’s head, and give into his hands the Dardanian arms. She will give him his arms, and the while she gives him arms will receive his kisses—a kind of office sweet to both—and will had her husband forth, and lay on him the command to return, and say: “See that you bring once more those arms to Jove!” He, bearing fresh in mind with him the command of his mistress, will fight with caution, and be mindful of his home. When safe returned, she will strip him of his shield, unloose his helm, and receive to her embrace his wearied frame.
But we are left Uncertain; we are forced by anxious fear to fancy all things befallen which may befall. None the less, while you, a soldier in a distant world, will be bearing arms, I keep a waxen image to give back your features to my sight; it hears the caressing phrase, it hears the words of love that are yours by right, and it receives my embrace. Believe me, the image is more than it appears; add but a voice to the wax, Protesilaus it will be. On this I look, and hold it to my heart in place of my real lord, and complain to it, as if it could speak again.
By thy return and by thyself, who art my god, I swear, and by the torches alike of our love and our wedding-day, I will come to be thy comrade whithersoever thou dost call, whether that which. alas, I fear, shall come to pass, or whether thou shalt still survive. The last of my missive, ere it close, shall be the brief behest: if thou carest ought for me, then care thou for thyself!
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