Now that your letter has profaned my eyes, the glory of writing no reply has seemed to me but slight. You have dared, stranger, to violate the sacred pledge of hospitality, and to tamper with the faith of a lawful wife! Of course it was for this that the Taenarian shore l’eceived you into its haven when tossed on the windy tides, and that, come though you were from another race, our royal home did not present closed doors to you—for this, that wrong should be the return for kindness so great! You who so entered in, were you guest, or were you enemy?
I doubt not that, just though it is, this complaint of mine is called rustic in your judgment. Let me by all means be rustic, only so I forget not my honour, and the course of my life be free from fault. If I do not feign a gloomy countenance, nor sit with stern brows grimly bent, my good name is nevertheless clear, and thus far I have lived without reproach-, and no false lover makes his boast of inc. For this I wonder the more what confidence inspires your enterprise, and what cause has given you hope to share my couch. Because the Neptunian hero employed violence with me, can it be that, stolen once, I seem fit to be stolen, too, a second time? The blame were mine, had I been lured away; but seized, as I was, what could I do, more than refuse my will? Yet he did not reap from his deed the fruitage he desired; except my fright, I returned with no harm. Kisses only, and few, the wanton took, and those despite my struggles; farther than that, he possesses naught of mine. Such villainy as yours would not have been content with this—ye gods do better by me! he was not a man like you. He gave me back untouched, and moderation lessened his blame; the youth repented of his deed, ’tis plain. Did Theseus repent but for Paris to follow in his steps, lest my name should sometime cease from the lips of men? Yet I am not angered—for who grows offended with a lover?—if only what you profess is not pretended love. For I doubt of this too—not that I lack ground for confidence, or that my beauty is not well known to me; but that quick belief is wont to bring harm upon a woman, and your words are said to lack in faith.
You say that others yield to sin, and the matron is rare that is chaste. Who is to keep my name from being among the rare? For, as to my mother’s seeming to you a fit example, and your thinking you can turn me, too, by citing it, you are mistaken there, since she fell through being deceived by a false outside; her lover was disguised by plumage. For me, if I should sin I can plead ignorance of nothing; there will be no error to obscure the crime
of what I do. Her error was well made, and her sin redeemed by its author. With what Jove shall I be called happy in my fault?
But you boast your birth, your ancestry, and your royal name. This house of mine is glorious enough with its own nobility. To say naught of Jove, forefather of my husband’s sire, and all the glory of Pelops, Tantalus’ son, and of Tyndareus, Leda makes Jove my father, deceived by the swan, false bird she cherished in her trusting bosom. Go now, and loudly tell of remote beginnings of the Phrygian stock, and of Priam with his Laomedon! Them I esteem; but he who is your great glory and fifth from you, you will find is first from our name. Although I believe the sceptres of your Troy are powerful, yet I think these of ours not less than they. If indeed this place is surpassed in riches and number of men, yours at any rate is a barbarous land.
Your letter, to be sure, promises gifts so great they could move the goddesses themselves; but, were I willing to overstep the limit of my honour, yourself would have been a better cause of fault. Either I shall hold forever to my stainless name, or I shall follow you rather than your gifts; and if I do not scorn them, it is because those gifts are ever most welcome whose giver makes them precious. It is much more that you love me, that I am the cause of your toils, that your hope of me has led you over waters so wide.
What you do now when our board has been spread, oh, shameless one! I also note, though I try to feign—when now you look on me, wanton, with those bold eyes which my own can scarcely meet when they assail me, and now sigh, and now again take up the goblet nearest me, and yourself, too, drink from the part where I have drunk. Oh, how often have I noted the covert signals you made with your fingers, how often those from your almost speaking brows! And oft I have been in terror lest my husband see it, and have reddened at the signs you did not well conceal. Oft in lowest murmur, or, rather, with no sound at all, I have said: “He has no shame for anything!” and this word of mine was not false. On the round surface of the table, too, I have read beneath my name, which had been writ with the tracing of wine: i love. I could not believe you, none the less, and signified it with my eyes—ah me, already I have learned that thus one may speak! These are the blandishments, had I been disposed to sin, by which I could be bent; by these my heart could be taken prisoner. Your beauty, too, I confess, is rare, and a woman might well wish to submit to your embrace; but let another be happy without reproach rather than my honour fall before a stranger’s love. Learn from my example how to live without the fair; there is virtue in abstinence from what delights. How many youths, think you, desire what you desire, and yet are wise? Or are you, Paris, the only one with eyes? You see no more clearly: your daring is only more rash; nor have you more spirit, but less of modesty.
I would the time of your swift keel’s coming had been when my maiden hand was sought by a thousand suitors; had I seen you, of the thousand you would have been the first. My husband himself will pardon this judgment of mine. You come late—to joys already seized on and possessed; your hope has been tardy; what you seek, another has. Grant, none the less, that I longed to become your bride at Troy, even so think not Menelaus holds me against my will. Cease, I pray, to pluck with your words at my faltering heart, and do not give pain to her you say you love; but allow me to keep the lot that fortune has given, and do not covet to my shame the spoil of my honour.
You say Venus gave her word for this; and that in the vales of Ida three goddesses presented themselves unclad before you; and that when one of them would give you a throne, and the second glory in war. the third said: “The daughter of Tyndareus shall be your bride!” I can scarce believe that heavenly beings submitted their beauty to you as arbiter: and, grant that this is true, surely the other part of your tale is fiction, in which I am said to have been given you as reward for your verdict. I am not so assured of my charms as to think myself the greatest gift in the divine esteem. My beauty is content to be approved in the eyes of men; the praise of Venus would bring envy on me. Yet I attempt no denial; I am even pleased with the praises you report—for why should my words deny what I much desire? Nor be offended that I am over slow to believe in you; faith is wont to be slow in matters of great moment.
My first pleasure, then, is to have found favour in the eyes of Venus; the next, that I seemed the greatest prize to you, and that you placed first the honours neither of Pallas nor of Juno when you had heard of Helen’s parts. So, then, I mean valour to you, I mean a far-famed throne! I should be of iron, did I not love such a heart. Of iron, believe me, I am not; but I fight against my love for one who I think can hardly become my own. Why should I essay with curved plough to furrow the watery shore, and to follow a hope which the place itself denies? I am not practised in the theft of love, and never yet—the gods are my witnesses—have I artfully made sport of my lord. Even now, as I entrust my words to the voiceless page, my letter performs an office all unwonted. Happy they who are no novices! I, ignorant of the world, dream that the path of guilt is hard.
My very fear is a burden, I am in confusion even now, and think that the eyes of all are on my face. Nor do I think so groundlessly; I have caught the evil murmurs of the crowd, and Aethra has brought back certain words to me. But you—do you feign, unless you choose rather to desist! Yet why should you desist?—you have the power to feign. Keep on with your play, yet secretly! Greater, yet not the greatest, freedom is given me by Menelaus’ absence. He is away, to be sure, on a far journey, for so his affairs compelled; he had great and just cause for his sudden setting forth—or so it seemed to me. ’Twas I, when he was doubting whether to go, that said: “Go, but see that you return as soon as may be!” Glad at the omen, he kissed me, and, “Look you to my affairs, and to the household, and to our guest from Troy,” he says. I scarce could hold my laughter; and, while I struggled to keep it back, could say to him nothing except “I will.”
Yes, he has spread sail for Crete with favouring winds; but think not for this that everything may be as you choose! My lord is away, but in such wise that he guards me, even though away—or know you not that monarchs have far-reaching hands? My fame, too, is a burden to me; for, the more you men persist in your praise of me, the more justly does he fear. The glory that is my delight, just now is a bane as well, and it were better I had cheated fame. Nor let his absence cause you to wonder that I have been left here with you; my character and way of life have taught him trust. My face makes him fearful, my life makes him sure; he feels secure in my virtue, my charms rouse his fear.
You ui’ge on me that opportunity freely offered should not be wasted, and that we should profit by the obliging ways of a simple husband. I both desire it and I am afraid. So far my will is not determined; my heart is wavering in doubt. Both my lord is away from me, and you are without companion for your sleep, and your beauty takes me, and mine in turn you; the nights, too, are long, and we already come together in speech, and you—wretched me!—are persuasive, and the same roof covers us. May I perish if all things do not invite me to my fall; and yet some fear still holds me back! What you basely urge on me, would I hat you could in honour compel me to! You should have cast out by force the scruples of my rustic heart. Wrong sometimes brings gain even to those themselves who suffer it. In this way, surely I could have been compelled to happiness.
While it is new, let us rather fight against the love we have begun to feel. A new-kindled flame dies down when sprinkled with but little water. Uncertain is the love of strangers; it wanders, like themselves, and when you expect nothing to be more sure, ’tis gone. Hypsipyle is witness, witness is the Minoan maid, both mocked in their unacknowledged marriage-beds. You, too, faithless one, they say have abandoned your Oenone, beloved for many years. Nor yet do you yourself deny it; and, if you do not know, to inquire into all concerning you has been my greatest care. Besides, though you should long to remain constant in love, you have not the power. The Phrygians are even now unfurling your sails; while you are speaking with me, while you are making ready for the hoped-for night, already the wind to bear you homeward will be here. In their mid course you will abandon joys yet full of freshness; away with the winds will go your love of me.
Or shall I follow as you urge, and look upon the Pergamum you praise, and be a bride of the grandchild of great Laomedon? I do not so despise the heraldings of the winged talk of men that I would let it fill the earth with my reproach. What will Sparta find to say of me, what all Achaia, what other peoples, what your Troy? What will Priam think of me, what Priam’s wife, and all your many brothers and their Dardanian wives? You, too, how will you be able to hope that I shall keep faith and not be troubled by your own example? Whatever stranger shall have entered the harbours of Ilion will be the cause of anxious fears for you. You yourself, how often in anger will you say to me: “Adulteress!” forgetful that your own reproach is linked with mine! You will be at the same time the censor and the author of my fault. Ere that, I pray, may earth lie heavy o’er my face!
But you say I shall enjoy the wealth of Ilion and a life of all things rich, and shall have gifts more splendid even than your promise; yes, purple and precious webs will be given me, and I shall be rich with heaped-up weight of gold! Forgive me if I say it—your gifts are not worth so much; I know not how, my land itself still holds me back. Who will succour me on Phrygian shores if I meet with harm? Where shall I look for brothers, where for a father’s aid? All things false Jason promised to Medea—was she the less thrust forth from the house of Aeson? There was no Aeetes to receive the scorned maid home, no mother Idyia, no sister Chalciope. Naught like this do I fear—but neither did Medea fear! Fair hope is often deceived in its own augury. For every ship tossed now upon the deep, you will find that the sea was gentle as it left the harbour.
The torch, too, starts my fears—the bloody torch your mother brought forth in vision before the day of her travail; and I shrink at the words of the seers who they say forewarned that Ilion would burn with Pelasgian fire. And, just as Cytherea favours you, because she was victorious and has a twofold trophy won from the verdict you gave, so I fear those two that—if your boast be true—lost their causes by your judging; and I do not doubt that, should I follow you, war would be set on foot. Through swords, ah me! our love will have to make its way. Or did Hippodamia of Atrax compel Haemonia’s men to declare fierce war on the Centaurs—and do you think that Menelaus and my twin brethren and Tyndareus will be slow to act in such righteous wrath?
As for your loud vaunting and talk of brave deeds, that face belies your words. Your parts are better suited for Venus than for Mars. Be the waging of wars for the valiant; for you, Paris, ever to love! Bid Hector, whom you praise, go warring in your stead; ’tis the other campaigning befits your prowess. That prowess, were I wise or something bolder, I would employ; employed it will be by whatever maid is wise—or I perchance, forgetting modesty, shall learn wisdom and, overcome by time, yield in tardy surrender.
You ask that we speak of these things in secret, face to face. I know what it is you court, and what you mean by speech with me; but you are over hasty, and your harvest is still in the green. This delay perhaps may be friendly to your wish.
Thus far now; let the writing that shares the secret of my heart now stay its furtive task, for my hand is wearied. The rest let us say through my companions Clymene and Aethra, the two who attend and counsel me.
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