Tragedy · 49 AD · Rome

Phaedra

Phaedra

Headnote

Phaedra is Seneca’s tragedy of a passion that knows itself to be ruinous and cannot stop, and of the chaste man it destroys. The story is the old one of Phaedra, daughter of Minos of Crete and wife of Theseus of Athens, who conceives a consuming love for her stepson Hippolytus, Theseus’ son by the Amazon Antiope; rejected, she lets the lie that he assaulted her stand, and Theseus, returned from the underworld, calls down on his son one of the three curses his sea-god father Neptune has granted him. Euripides treated the matter twice — the surviving Hippolytus makes the goddess Aphrodite the prime mover and keeps Phaedra modest to the end — but Seneca brings the passion downstage and into the first person. His Phaedra is not a victim of a divine machine but a mind arguing with itself, and the play is the record of that argument: the will-to-be-healed losing, by degrees, to the will-to-have.

The prologue is a hunting hymn — Hippolytus marshalling his dogs and beaters across the Attic countryside and invoking Diana — and it does double work: it fixes him at once as the votary of the virgin huntress, all motion and open air, and sets the woodland world against the shut, sick interior of the palace from which Phaedra will speak. Her first monologue diagnoses her own case with Stoic clarity. She knows the love is a hereditary curse — her mother Pasiphae’s monstrous union with the bull, the whole house of the Sun pursued by a vengeful Venus — and she knows the right course (“the honorable way is to will the good and not slip from it”); she simply cannot take it. The long central exchange with the Nurse is the play’s moral engine. The Nurse argues restraint, the omnipresence of the gods’ sight, the certainty of conscience’s own punishment (“some woman has carried off a crime in safety, none in peace”), and, when argument fails, denies that Love is a god at all — only “base lust, indulging vice,” that gilds its frenzy with a divine title. But the Nurse capitulates as soon as Phaedra threatens suicide, and the woman who counseled chastity becomes the agent of the seduction and, afterward, the author of the false charge.

At the play’s center stands the great debate on the simple life. The Nurse, sent to sound Hippolytus out, urges him to enjoy his youth, to marry, to come down into the city; he answers with a hymn to the woodland and the golden age that turns, by its own logic, into the corpus’s harshest indictment of women and of civilization itself — the boundary-stone, the ship, the ballista, and woman as “the leader of evils.” Into this misogynist’s solitude Phaedra makes her confession, and Seneca stages it with terrible tact: she approaches as suppliant and mother, slides from Theseus’ youthful beauty to its image in his son, and at last names the love outright. Hippolytus’ recoil is total; he draws the sword to kill her, then flings it away as too polluted to keep, and flees — leaving the weapon that the Nurse seizes as the evidence of a crime that never happened.

The catastrophe belongs to Theseus. He returns from the underworld — where he had gone with Pirithous to abduct Proserpina, and from which Hercules has just freed him — into a house of lamentation, and Phaedra, refusing to name her “assailant,” lets the abandoned sword speak. Theseus’ curse is the hinge of the play, the prayer that spends the last of Neptune’s three gifts; and the messenger’s set-piece that answers it — the bull rising from a sea that swells in a windless calm, the panicked horses, Hippolytus dragged and torn through the rocks and brush until “every tree-stump took its part of his body” — is one of the most violent narrations in ancient drama, and a deliberate, grotesque undoing of the beautiful body the chorus has just been praising. The fifth act gives Theseus what he asked for and cannot bear: Phaedra, over the mangled corpse, confesses the lie, kills herself, and consigns him to a grief eternal as the underworld he escaped; and the play ends with the father on his knees fitting the scattered pieces of his son back together, doubting which part is which, while he orders the earth to lie heavy on his wife’s “impious head.” No god intervenes, no order is restored: the chaste youth is dead by his father’s prayer, the guilty woman dies unrepentant of the desire if not the lie, and what is left is the spectacle of a passion that ruins everything it touches, including the innocent.

The translation renders the verse in clear modern English lines, keeping the line structure of the Latin and the line-for-line cut of the stichomythia, and imposing no English meter or rhyme; the anapaestic choral odes — the hunt hymn, the ode on the universal tyranny of Love (“Goddess born of the ungentle sea”), the ode on beauty’s peril, and the ode on Nature’s order against Fortune’s disorder — are left to register through their syntax rather than any English metrical imitation. Section numbers approximate the line numbering by which the play is cited. The gods are kept Roman (Jupiter, Phoebus, Diana, Hecate, Neptune, Dis, Venus, Bacchus), and the dense geography of the choruses — Parnes and the Ilisos, the Araxes and the Hister, the Garamantian and the Sarmatian — is preserved in the body, with the named persons, places, and realia carried in the glossary. Two minor speaker assignments follow the more common editorial division: the gnomic lines after the messenger’s report (“He is not free to rejoice ” and “why are your cheeks wet with weeping?”) are given to the Messenger rather than to the Chorus.

Show Latin alongside the translation Mark as read

Go, ring the shadowy woods and the topmost ridges of the mountain, men of Cecrops! Range with swift foot, roving, over the places that lie beneath rocky Parnes, those the river beats with rushing wave in the Thriasian valleys; climb the hills forever white with Riphaean snow; this way, where the grove of Aegaleos is woven thick with tall alder, where the meadows lie that Zephyr, stroking with dew-bearing breeze, calls forth in their spring grasses, where light Ilisos slips through the slender fields, sluggish, and grazes the barren sands with its grudging stream; you, where Marathon opens its glades by the left-hand track, where the dams, attended by their little flocks, seek their nightly pasture; you, where rugged Acharneus, lying open to the warm south winds, softens the cold. Let one tread the crag of sweet Hymettus, another little Aphidnae: that quarter has long gone untouched, free, where Sunium presses the shores of the curving sea. If the glory of the woodland touches anyone, Phlye calls him: here it roams, the farmers’ dread, the boar now marked by many a wound.

Ite, umbrosas cingite silvas summaque montis iuga, Cecropii! celeri planta lustrate vagi, quae saxosae loca Parnetbo subiecta iacent, quae Thriasiis vallibus amnis rapida currens verberat unda; scandite colles semper canos nive Riphaea; hac, Aegalei qua nemus alta texitur alno, qua prata iacent quae rorifera mulcens aura Zephyrus vernas evocat herbas, ubi per graciles levis Ilisos labitur agros piger et steriles amne maligno radit harenas; vos qua Marathon tramite laevo saltus aperit, qua comitatae gregibus parvis nocturna petunt pabula fetae; vos qua tepidis subditus austris frigora mollit durus Acbarneus. alius rupem dulcis Hymetti, parvas alius calcet Aphidnas: pars illa diu vacat immunis, qua curvati litora ponti Sunion urget si quem tangit gloria silvae, vocat hunc Phlyus: hic versatur, metus agricolis, vulnere multo iam notus aper.

But you, slip the loose leashes to the silent hounds; let the lead hold the keen Molossians, and let the pugnacious Cretans strain the strong bonds on their chafed necks. But the Spartans (a breed bold and greedy for the quarry) tie warily with a closer knot: the time will come when the hollow rocks ring with their baying; now, let loose, with keen nostril let them catch the air and seek the lairs with muzzle pressed low, while the light is still doubtful, while the dewy earth holds the tracks of feet stamped in it.

at vos laxas canibus tacitis mittite habenas; teneant acres lora Molossos et pugnaces tendunt Cretes fortia trito vine ala collo. at Spartanos (genus est audax avidumque ferae) nodo cautus propiore liga: veniet tempus, cum latratu cava saxa sonent; nunc dimissi nare sagaci captent auras lustraque presso quaerant rostro, dum lux dubia est, dum signa pedum roscida tellus impressa tenet.

Let one hurry to carry the wide-meshed nets on his burdened neck, another the smooth-twisted snares. Let the line, painted with crimson feather, pen the beasts with empty terror. For you let the hurling spear be brandished; you, with right hand and left at once, drive home the heavy oak shaft with its broad iron; you, from your ambush, will drive the beasts headlong with shouting; you, the victor now, will loose their entrails with the curved knife.

alius raras cervice gravi portare plagas, alius teretes properet laqueos. picta rubenti linea pinna vano cludat terrore feras. tibi vibretur missile telum, tu grave dextra laevaque simul robur lato dirige ferro, tu praecipites clamore feras subsessor ages; tu iam victor curvo solves viscera cultro.

Be present, then, to your companion, warrior goddess, to whose realm the secret quarter of the earth lies open, by whose unerring shafts is hunted the beast that drinks the icy Araxes and that which sports on the frozen-standing Hister. Your right hand pursues the Gaetulian lions, your hand the Cretan stags; now you pierce the swift gazelle with a lighter touch. To you the dappled tigers offer their breasts, to you the shaggy bison their backs, and the wild aurochs with broad horns. Whatever grazes in lonely fields — whether the Arab knows it in his rich forest or the destitute Garamantian, or the ridges of fierce Pyrene, or the Hyrcanian glades conceal it, and the Sarmatian roaming the empty plains — it fears your bow, Diana.

Ades en comiti, diva virago, cuius regno pars terrarum secreta vacat, cuius certis petitur telis fera quae gelidum potat Araxen et quae stanti ludit in Histro. tua Gaetulos dextra leones, tua Cretaeas sequitur cervas; nunc veloces figis dammas leviore manu. tibi dant variae pectora tigres, tibi villosi terga bisontes latisque feri cornibus uri. quicquid solis pascitur arvis, sive illud Arabs divite silva sive illud inops novit Garamans sive ferocis iuga Pyrenes sive Hyrcani celant saltus, vacuisque vagus Sarmata campis, arcus metuit, Diana, tuos.

If a grateful worshipper has carried your divine power into the glades, the nets have held the beasts bound fast, no feet have burst the snare; the prey is borne off on the groaning wagon; then the dogs carry their muzzles red with much blood, and the rustic crowd heads home in a long triumph.

tua si gratus numina cultor tulit in saltus. retia vinctas tenuere feras, nulli laqueum rupere pedes: fertur plaustro praeda gementi; tum rostra canes sanguine multo- rubicunda gerunt repetitque casas rustica longo turba triumpho.

See, goddess, you favor me: the shrill-voiced hounds have given the signal. I am called to the woods; this way, this way I will press on, by the path that shortens the long road.

en, diva, faves: signum arguti misere canes. vocor in silvas, hac, hac pergam qua via longum compensat iter.

O Crete, great mistress of the vast sea, whose countless ships have held the deep along every shore — all that Nereus, open to prows, cuts as far as the Assyrian land — why do you force me, given as a hostage into a hated house and married to an enemy, to drag out my life in misery and tears? See, my husband is gone, a fugitive, and Theseus shows his wife the faith he is wont to show. Brave through the deep darkness of the pool none returns from, he goes, a soldier in a reckless suitor’s cause, to drag off the wife wrenched from the throne of the king below; he presses on, the partner in another’s madness; no fear nor shame held him back — debauchery and forbidden beds in the depths of Acheron the father of Hippolytus seeks.

O magna vasti Creta dominatrix freti, cuius per omne litus innumerae rates tenuere pontum quicquid Assyria tenus tellure Nereus pervius rostris secat, cur me in penates obsidem invisos datam hostique nuptam degere aetatem in malis lacrimisque cogis? profugus en coniunx abest praestatque nuptae quam solet Theseus fidem, fortis per altas invii retro lacus vadit tenebras miles audacis proci, solio ut revulsam regis inferni abstrahat; pergit furoris socius, haud illum timor pudorque tenuit— stupra et illicitos toros Acheronte in imo quaerit Hippolyti pater.

But another, a greater grief weighs on me in my sorrow. No nightly rest, no deep sleep has freed me from my cares: the evil is fed and grows and burns within, as the vapor boils up from the Aetnaean cave. Pallas’ loom stands idle, and the wool slips from my very hands; it gives me no joy to tend the temples with votive gifts, nor, among the altars, mingled in the dances of the Attic women, to toss the torches that share the silent rites, nor to approach with chaste prayers and pious rite the goddess who guards the land adjudged to her: my delight is to chase the startled beasts at a run and to hurl the stiff javelins with a soft hand.

Sed maior alius incubat maestae dolor, non. me quies nocturna, non altus sopor solvere curis: alitur et crescit malum et ardet intus qualis Aetnaeo vapor exundat antro. Palladis telae vacant et inter ipsas pensa labuntur manus; non colere donis templa votivis libet. non inter aras. Atthidum mixtam choris. iactare tacitis conscias sacris faces, nec adire castis precibus aut ritu pio adiudicatae praesidem terrae deam: iuvat excitatas consequi cursu feras et rigida molli gaesa iaculari manu.

Where are you bound, my soul? Why, raving, do you love the glades? I recognize my poor mother’s fated curse: our love has learned to sin in the woods. Mother, I pity you: seized by an unspeakable affliction you boldly loved the savage leader of a wild herd; grim he was, brooking no yoke, that adulterer, the lord of an untamed drove — yet he loved something. What god, what Daedalus could ease the flames of my misery? Not though he came back himself, mighty in Athenian craft, who shut our monster up in a blind house, could he promise any help for my plight.

Quo tendis. anime? quid furens saltus amas? fatale miserae matris agnosco malum: peccare noster novit in silvis amor. genetrix, tui me miseret: infando malo correpta pecoris efferum saevi ducem audax amasti; torvus, impatiens iugi adulter ille, ductor indomiti gregis— sed amabat aliquid, quis meas miserae deus aut quis iuvare Daedalus flammas queat? non si ipse remeet, arte Mopsopia potens qui nostra caeca monstra conclusit domo, promittat ullam casibus nostris opem.

Venus, loathing the line of the hated Sun, through us avenges the chains of her Mars and her own, and loads the whole race of Phoebus with unspeakable disgraces: no daughter of Minos has come off lightly in love; always the sin is coupled to it.

stirpem perosa Solis invisi Venus per nos catenas vindicat Martis sui suasque, probris omne Phoebeum genus onerat nefandis: nulla Minois levi defuncta amore est, iungitur semper nefas.

Wife of Theseus, bright offspring of Jove, drive the unspeakable thing quickly from your chaste breast, put out these flames, and do not give yourself compliant to a dreadful hope: whoever has withstood love at the first and beaten it back has been safe, and victor; but he who by coaxing has fed the sweet evil refuses, too late, to bear the yoke he has taken on.

Thesea coniunx, clara progenies Iovis, nefanda casto pectore exturba ocius, extingue flammas neve te dirae spei praebe obsequentem: quisquis in primo obstitit pepulitque amorem, tutus ac victor fuit; qui blandiendo dulce nutrivit malum, sero recusat ferre quod subiit iugum.

Nor does it escape me how stubborn, how unused to truth, the royal pride will be, refusing to be bent toward the right; but whatever outcome chance shall bring, I will bear it: freedom, now near, makes an old woman brave.

Nec me fugit, quam durus et veri insolens ad recta flecti regius nolit tumor, quemcumque dederit exitum casus feram: fortem facit vicina libertas senem.

First, the honorable way is to will the good and not slip from it. Second is shame — to know a measure in sinning. Where are you headed, wretched one? Why pile weight on an infamous house and outdo your mother? Your sin is worse than the monster: for monsters you may charge to fate, crimes to character. If, because your husband does not look on the world above, you believe the deed is safe and empty of fear, you are wrong; suppose Theseus held hidden in Lethe’s depths and bearing the everlasting Styx: what of him who presses the seas with his broad realm and renders law to a hundred peoples, your father? Will he let so great a crime lie concealed?

Honesta primum est velle nec labi via. pudor est secundus nosse peccandi modum, quo, misera, pergis? quid domum infamem aggravas superasque matrem? maius est monstro nefas: nam monstra fato, moribus scelera imputes, si, quod maritus supera non cernit loca, tutum esse facinus credis et vacuum metu, erras; teneri crede Lethaeo abditum Thesea profundo et ferre perpetuam Styga: quid ille, lato maria qui regno premit populisque reddit iura centeni», pater? latere tantum facinus occultum sinet?

Watchful is parents’ care. Yet let us grant we cloak so great a sin by craft and guile: what of him who floods all things with his light, your mother’s father? What of him who rocks the world, brandishing the Aetnaean bolt in his flashing hand, the begetter of the gods? Do you believe it can be done — that you lie hidden among forebears who see all things? But suppose the gods’ kind favor screens your unspeakable couplings, and suppose your debauchery wins the trust always denied to great crimes: what of the punishment at hand, the conscious dread of the mind, the spirit full of guilt and afraid of itself? Some woman has carried off a crime in safety, none in peace.

sagax parentum est cura. credamus tamen astu doloque tegere nos tantum nefas: quid ille rebus lumen infundens suum matris parens? quid ille qui mundum quatit vibrans corusca fulmen Aetnaeum manu, sator deorum? credis hoc posse effici, inter videntes omnia ut lateas avos? sed ut secundus numinum abscondat favor coitus nefandos utque contingat stupro negata magnis sceleribus semper fides: quid poena praesens, conscius mentis pavor animusque culpa plenus et semet timens? scelus aliqua tutum, nulla securum tulit.

Quell the flames of unholy love, I beg, the sin no barbarous land has ever committed — not the Getae roaming the plains, not the inhospitable Taurus, nor the scattered Scythian; drive the horror from your mind, made chaste again, and, remembering your mother, dread new couplings.

compesce amoris impii flammas, precor, nefasque quod non ulla tellus barbara commisit umquam, non vagi campis Getae nec inhospitalis Taurus aut sparsus Scythes; expelle facinus mente castifica horridum memorque matris metue concubitus novos.

You make ready to mingle the beds of father and son and to conceive in an unholy womb a confused brood? Go on, then, overturn nature with unspeakable fires — why do the monsters hold off? Why does your brother’s den stand empty? Will the world hear, so many times, of prodigies never known, will nature so many times give way to her own laws, as often as a Cretan woman loves?

miscere thalamos patris et gnati apparas uteroque prolem capere confusam impio? perge et nefandis verte naturam ignibus— cur monstra cessant? aula cur fratris vacat? prodigia totiens orbis insueta audiet, natura totiens legibus cedet suis, quotiens amabit Cressa?

What you recount I know to be true, nurse; but madness compels me to follow the worse course. My spirit goes knowingly over the brink and comes back in vain, grasping after sane counsels. So when the sailor drives his laden ship against the adverse wave, his toil yields to nothing, and the beaten hull is borne off down the sloping tide. What can reason do? Madness has won and reigns, and the powerful god lords it over my whole mind.

Quae memoras scio vera esse, nutrix; sed furor cogit sequi peiora, vadit animus in praeceps sciens remeatque frustra sana consilia appetens. sic cum gravatam navita adversa ratem propellit unda, cedit in vanum labor et victa prono puppis aufertur vado. quid ratio possit? vicit ac regnat furor potensque tota mente dominatur deus.

This winged one, unrestrained, prevails over all the earth and scorches even Jove himself with his untamed flames; warlike Gradivus has felt those torches, the god who forges the three-forked bolt has felt them, and he who forever turns the furnaces on Aetna’s ridges glows hot at so small a fire; and Phoebus himself, who rules the shaft upon the string — a boy pierces him with an arrow sent surer than his own, and flits, a weight on heaven and earth alike.

hic volucer omni pollet in- terra impotens ipsumque flammis torret indomitis Iovem; Gradivus istas belliger sensit faces, opifex trisulci fulminis sensit deus, et qui furentis semper Aetnaeis iugis versat caminos igne tam parvo calet; ipsumque Phoebum, tela qui nervo regit, figit sagitta certior missa puer volitatque caelo pariter et terris gravis.

That love is a god, base lust, indulging vice, invented; and, to be the freer, it added the title of a false divinity to its frenzy. So Erycina sends her son, forsooth, wandering through all the lands; he, flying through the sky, plies his wanton weapons with a tender hand, and, least of the gods, holds so great a kingdom: empty things — a maddened mind has claimed them for itself and feigned Venus’ godhead and a god’s bow.

Deum esse amorem turpis et vitio favens finxit libido, quoque liberior foret titulum furori numinis falsi addidit. natum per omnis scilicet terras vagum Erycina mittit, ille per caelum volans proterva tenera tela molitur manu regnumque tantum minimus e superis habet: vana ista demens animus ascivit sibi Venerisque numen finxit atque arcus dei.

Whoever exults too much in prosperous fortune and overflows with luxury ever craves the unaccustomed. Then that dread companion of great fortune steals in — lust: the wonted feasts no longer please, nor a house of sober ways, nor a cheap cup.

quisquis secundis rebus exultat nimis fluitque luxu, semper insolita appetit. tunc illa magnae dira fortunae comes subit libido: non placent suetae dapes, non tecta sani moris aut vilis scyphus.

Why does this plague more rarely enter the slender household, this pestilence choosing the houses of the dainty? Why does holy Venus dwell beneath humble roofs, and the common throng keep its affections sound and the middling sort hold themselves in check, while the rich, propped on a kingdom, seek more than is right?

cur in penates rarius tenues subit haec delicatae eligens pestis domos? cur sancta parvis habitat in tectis Venus mediumque sanos vulgus affectus tenet et se coercent modica? contra divites regnoque fulti plura quam fas est petunt?

He who can do too much wills to be able to do what he cannot. You see what befits a woman set on a high throne: fear and revere the scepter of your returning husband.

quod non potest vult posse qui nimium potest. quid deceat alto praeditam solio vides: metue ac verere sceptra remeantis viri.

Love’s reign over me I think supreme, and I fear no return: never again has the man touched the upper vault who, once sunk, has gone down to the silent house in perpetual night.

Amoris in me maximum regnum puto reditusque nullos metuo: non umquam amplius convexa tetigit supera qui mersus semel adiit silentem nocte perpetua domum.

Do not trust Dis. Though he has shut his realm and the Stygian dog keeps watch at the dread doors, Theseus alone finds the ways that are denied.

Ne crede Diti. clauserit regnum licet canisque diras Stygius observet fores: solus negatas invenit Theseus vias.

Perhaps he will grant indulgence to our love.

Veniam ille amori forsitan nostro dabit.

He was harsh even to a chaste wife: barbarian Antiope felt his savage hand. But suppose an angry husband can be bent: who will bend this one’s unyielding mind? Hating the very name of woman, he flees it, dedicates his harsh years to a celibate life, shuns wedlock: you would know the Amazon breed.

Immitis etiam coniugi castae fuit: experta saevam est barbara Antiope manum. sed posse flecti coniugem iratum puta: quis huius animum flectet intractabilem? exosus omne feminae nomen fugit, immitis annos caelibi vitae dicat, conubia vitat: genus Amazonium scias.

Him, clinging to the snowy hill-ridges, treading the rough rocks with nimble foot, it is my joy to follow through deep woods, over mountains.

Hunc in nivosi collis haerentem iugis, et aspera agili saxa calcantem pede sequi per alta nemora, per montes placet.

Will he stand and give himself to be caressed, and strip his chaste rites for an unchaste Venus? Will he lay by for you the hatred with which, perhaps, he hounds them all? By prayers he cannot be won.

Resistet ille seque mulcendum dabit castosque ritus Venere non casta exuet? tibi ponet odium, cuius odio forsitan persequitur omnes? precibus haud vinci potest.

Is he wild? We have learned that the wild are won by love.

Ferus est? amore didicimus vinci feros.

He will flee.

Fugiet.

Though he flee across the very seas, I will follow.

Per ipsa maria si fugiet, sequar.

Remember your father.

Patris memento.

I remember my mother too.

Meminimus matris simul.

He shuns the whole sex.

Genus omne profugit.

Then I am free of fear of a rival.

Paelicis careo metu.

Your husband will come —

Aderit maritus—

What, as Pirithous’ companion?

Nempe Perithoi comes?

And your father will be there —

Aderitque genitor,

Gentle, the father of Ariadne.

Mitis, Ariadnae pater.

By these shining white hairs of my old age, a suppliant, by my breast worn with cares and my dear bosom, I beg you: halt this madness, help yourself — to wish to be healed has been part of the cure.

Per has senectae splendidas supplex comas fessumque curis pectus et cara ubera precor, furorem siste teque ipsa adiuva: pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit.

Not all shame has fled my well-born heart. I obey, nurse. Let the love that will not be ruled be conquered. I will not let you, my good name, be stained. This is the one course, the single escape from the evil: let me follow my husband; by death I will forestall the sin.

Non omnis animo cessit ingenuo pudor. paremus, altrix. qui regi non vult amor vincatur. haud te, fama, maculari sinam. haec sola ratio est, unicum effugium mali: virum sequamur, morte praevertam nefas.

Govern, my child, the surges of your unbridled mind, curb your passions. For this I judge you worthy of life — that you declare yourself worthy of death.

Moderare, alumna, mentis effrenae impetus, animos coerce, dignam ob hoc vita reor quod esse temet autumas dignam nece.

Death is decided: the manner of fate is the question. Shall I end my life by the noose, or fall on the sword? Or, flung headlong from Pallas’ citadel, drop down?

Decreta mors est: quaeritur fati genus. laqueone vitam finiam an ferro incubem? an missa praeceps arce Palladia cadam?

Would my old age let you perish so, by a headlong death? Check your frenzied rush. No one can easily be called back to life.

Sic te senectus nostra praecipiti sinat perire leto? siste furibundum impetum. haud quisquam ad vitam facile revocari potest

No reasoning can stop one bound to die, once she has resolved on death and ought to die. So let us arm the hand that vindicates chastity.

Prohibere nulla ratio periturum potest: ubi qui mori constituit et debet mori. proin castitatis vindicem armemus manum.

Sole comfort of my weary years, mistress, if so unruly a frenzy lies upon your mind, scorn reputation — reputation barely favors the truth, kinder to the worse deserver, harsher to the good. Let us try that grim and intractable spirit. That task is mine: to approach the wild youth and bend the savage mind of the unbending man.

Solamen annis unicum fessis, era, si tam protervus incubat menti furor, contemne famam— fama vix vero favet, peius merenti melior et peior bono. temptemus animum tristem et intractabilem. meus iste labor est aggredi iuvenem ferum mentemque saevam flectere immitis viri.

Goddess born of the ungentle sea, whom the twofold Cupid calls mother, how unrestrained, with flames and arrows both, that wanton, gleaming boy aims his shafts from how sure a bow! The frenzy slides into the whole of the marrow, its stealthy fire ravaging the veins. The wound he deals has no broad front, but devours the marrow hidden deep within. There is no peace for that boy: through the world the nimble one scatters his arrows broadcast; the shores that watch the sun being born, the shores that lie toward the western bounds, whatever lies beneath the burning Crab, whatever endures the ever-wandering settlers of the icy Parrhasian Bear — all know these fevers; the fierce flames of the young he kindles, and in the weary old he calls back the heat once quenched, he strikes the breasts of virgins with an unknown fire, and bids the gods above leave heaven and dwell on earth in counterfeit faces.

Diva non miti generata ponto, quam vocat matrem geminus Cupido, impotens flammis simul et sagittis iste lascivus puer et renidens tela quam certo moderatur arcu! labitur totas furor in medullas igne furtivo populante venas. non habet latam data plaga frontem, sed vorat tectas penitus medullas, nulla pax isti puero: per orbem spargit effusas agilis sagittas; quaeque nascentem videt ora solem, quaeque ad Hesperiae iacet ora metas, si qua ferventi subiecta cancro, si qua Parrbasiae glacialis ursae semper errantes patitur colonos, novit hos aestus, iuvenum feroces concitat flammas senibusque fessis rursus extinctos revocat calores, virginum ignoto ferit igne pectus et iubet caelo superos relicto vultibus falsis habitare terras.

Phoebus, herdsman of a Thessalian flock, drove the cattle, and, laying aside his plectrum, called the bulls on an unequal reed. How often has he himself, who leads the sky and the clouds, put on lesser shapes: now as a bird he has moved white wings, sweeter of voice than a dying swan; now, a wanton bullock with lowering brow, he bent his back to the maidens’ play, and through his brother’s waves, a new domain, his hoof mimicking the pliant oars, with breast set against it he mastered the deep, a trembling ferryman for his own plunder. The bright goddess of the dark world burned, and, deserting the night, handed to her brother the shining chariot, to be driven otherwise: he learns to drive the team by night and to wheel in a shorter turn, while the axles tremble under the heavier car; and the nights did not keep their own span, and day came back with a slow dawn.

Thessali Phoebus pecoris magister egit armentum positoque plectro impari tauros calamo vocavit, induit formas quotiens minores ipse qui caelum nebulasque ducit: Candidas ales modo movit alas, dulcior vocem moriente cygno; fronte nunc torva petulans iuvencus virginum stravit sua terga ludo, perque fraternos nova regna fluctus ungula lentos imitante remos pectore adverso domuit profundum, pro sua vector timidus rapina, arsit obscuri dea clara mundi nocte deserta nitidosque fratri tradidit currus aliter regendos: ille nocturnas agitare bigas discit et gyro breviore flecti, dum tremunt axes graviore curru; nec suum tempus tenuere nectes et dies tardo remeavit ortu.

Alcmena’s son laid down his quiver and the menacing spoil of the great lion, let emeralds be fitted to his fingers and a discipline be set on his rough hair; he bound his legs with figured gold, a yellow slipper confining his feet; and with the hand that lately bore the club he drew out the thread on a hurrying spindle. Persia saw it, and Lydia, fierce in her rich kingdom, the hide of the savage lion thrown off, and on the shoulders that had borne up the royal vault of high heaven, a fine cloak of Tyrian weave.

natus Alcmena posuit pharetras et minax vasti spolium leonis, passus aptari digitis zmaragdos et^dari legem rudibus capillis; crura distincto religavit auro. luteo plantas cohibente socco; et manu, clavam modo qua gerebat, fila deduxit properante fuso: Vidit Persis ditique ferox Lydia regno deiecta feri terga leonis umerisque, quibus sederat alti regia caeli, tenuem Tyrio stamine pallam.

Sacred is that fire (believe those it has struck) and too powerful, where the earth is ringed by the deep sea, and where through the very firmament the bright stars run: this realm the pitiless boy holds, whose darts the king of the Nereids feels in the lowest depths, where the waters let him pass, and he cannot ease the flame with all the sea. The winged race feels his fires; goaded by Venus, the bullock boldly takes up war on behalf of the whole herd; if they have feared for their mate, timid stags demand battle.

sacer est ignis (credite laesis) nimiumque potens, qua terra salo cingitur alto quaque per ipsum candida mundum sidera currunt: haec regna tenet puer immitis, spicula cuius sentit in imis pervius undis rex Nereidum flammamque nequit relevare mari. ignes sentit genus aligerum; Venere instinctus suscipit audax grege pro toto bella iuvencus; si coniugio timuere suo, poscunt timidi proelia cervi.

The Punic lions toss their necks when Love has stirred them, and with a roar give signs of the frenzy conceived within. Then the swarthy Indian shudders at the striped tigers; then the boar whets his wounding tusks and is all foam at the mouth; then the wood groans with a savage murmur. The monster of the raging sea loves, and the Lucanian oxen: nature claims all for her own, nothing is exempt from her, and hatred dies when Love has commanded: old angers yield to his fires.

Poeni quatiunt colla leones cum movit Amor. et mugitu dant concepti signa furoris. tunc virgatas India tigres decolor horret; tunc vulnificos acuit dentes aper et toto est spumeus ore; tum silva gemit murmure saevo. amat insani belua ponti Lucaeque boves: vindicat omnes natura, sibi nihil immune est, odiumque perit, cum iussit Amor: veteres cedunt ignibus irae.

Why should I sing of more? Love conquers even the cruel stepmother.

quid plura canam? vincit saevas cura novercas.

Nurse, tell us what news you bring; where stands the queen? Is there any measure to the cruel flames?

altrix, profare quid feras; quonam in loco est regina? saevis ecquis- est flammis modus?.

No hope that so great an evil can be soothed, and no end will there be to the mad flames. She is scorched by a silent heat, and though shut in and covered over, the frenzy is betrayed by her face; fire breaks from her eyes, and her weary cheeks refuse the light; nothing pleases the wavering one for long, and a restless pain throws her limbs this way and that.

Spes nulla tantum posse leniri malum, finisque flammis nullus insanis erit. torretur aestu tacito et inclusus quoque, quamvis tegatur, proditur vultu furor; erumpit oculis ignis et lassae genae lucem recusant, nil idem dubiae placet artusque varie iactat incertus dolor, nunc ut soluto labitur moriens gradu

Now, as her step gives way, she sinks down dying and can scarcely hold her head on the swaying neck, now she gives herself to rest and, forgetful of sleep, drags out the night with laments; she bids her body be raised and laid down again, her hair be loosed and dressed once more: ever impatient with herself, her aspect keeps changing. No care for food now comes to her, nor for her health; she walks with uncertain foot, her strength already failed: not the same vigor, not the rosy flush that tinged her shining face; care wastes her limbs, her steps now tremble and the soft grace of her bright body has fallen away. And the eyes that once bore the signs of Phoebus’ torch flash with nothing of their kindred, nothing of their father. Tears fall down her face, and her cheeks are watered with a ceaseless dew, as on the ridges of Taurus the snows grow wet, struck by a mild rain.

et vix labante sustinet collo caput, nunc se quieti reddit et. somni immemor, noctem querelis ducit; attolli iubet iterumque poni corpus et solvi comas rursusque fingi: semper impatiens sui mutatur habitus, nulla iam Cereris subit cura aut salutis; vadit’ incerto pede, iam viribus defecta: non idem vigor, non ora tinguens nitida purpureus rubor; populatur artus cura, iam gressus tremunt tenerque nitidi corporis cecidit decor. et qui ferebant signa Phoebeae facis oculi nihil gentile nec patrium micant. lacrimae cadunt per ora et assiduo genae rore irrigantur, qualiter Tauri iugis tepido madescunt imbre percussae nives. Sepone questus: non levat miseros dolor; agreste placa virginis numen deae.

But see, the heights of the palace open wide. She herself, reclining on the couch of her gilded seat, rejects, with mind unsound, her wonted attire.

Sed en, patescunt regiae fastigia. reclinis ipsa sedis auratae toro solitos amictus mente non sana abnuit.

Take away, maidens, the garments smeared with purple and gold; far off be the red of Tyrian murex, and the threads the far-off Seres gather from the branches: let a short girdle bind my dress to leave me free, my neck bare of necklace, and let no snowy stone, the gift of the Indian sea, weigh down my ears; let my hair go free, unsprinkled with Assyrian scent. So, tossed at random, let my tresses pour over my neck and the tops of my shoulders, and, stirred by swift running, follow the winds; my left hand will hold the quiver, my right brandish a Thessalian spear. Such was the mother of stern Hippolytus. Such as, leaving behind the tracts of the frozen Pontus, she drove her squadrons, beating the Attic soil — the woman of the Tanais, or Maeotis — and bound her hair in a knot, then loosed it, her flank shielded by a crescent buckler: so will I bear myself into the woods.

Removete, famulae, purpura atque auro inlitas vestes, procul sit muricis Tyrii rubor, quae fila ramis ultimi Seres legunt: brevis expeditos zona constringat sinus, cervix monili vacua, nec niveus lapis deducat auris, Indici donum maris; odore crinis sparsus Assyrio vacet, sic temere iactae. colla perfundant comae umerosque summos, cursibus motae citis ventos sequantur, laeva se pharetrae dabit, hastile vibret dextra Thessalicum manus. talis severi mater Hippolyti fuit. qualis relictis frigidi Ponti plagis egit catervas Atticum pulsans solum Tanaitis aut Maeotis et nodo comas coegit emisitque. lunata latus protecta pelta: talis in silvas ferar.

Queen of the woodlands, who alone haunt the mountains and alone, a goddess, are worshipped on the lonely mountains, turn for the better the grim threats of the omens. O great goddess among the woods and groves, bright star of heaven and glory of the night, by whose alternating course the world shines back, three-formed Hecate, come now, favoring our undertaking: subdue the stiff spirit of grim Hippolytus; let him lend a willing ear; soften his savage breast: let him learn to love, let him bear the fires returned. Bend his mind: grim, averse, fierce, let him come back into the rights of Venus. Here turn your power: so may the shining face attend you, and, the cloud torn away, may you go with pure horns, so, as you guide the reins of the nightly sky, may Thessalian chants never drag you down, and may no shepherd carry off glory from you.

Regina nemorum, sola quae montes colis et una solis montibus coleris dea, converte tristes ominum in melius minas, o magna silvas inter et lucos dea claramque caeli sidus et noctis decus, cuius relucet mundus alterna vice, Hecate triformis, en ades coeptis favens. animum rigentem tristis Hippolyti doma: det facilis aures: mitiga pectus ferum: amare discat, mutuos ignes ferat. inflecte mentem: torvus aversus ferox in iura Veneris redeat, huc vires tuas intende: sic te lucidi vultus ferant et nube rapta cornibus puris eas, sic te regentem frena nocturni aetheris detrahere numquam Thessali cantus queant nullusque de te gloriam pastor ferat, ades invocata, iam fave votis, dea:

Be present, invoked; now favor my prayers, goddess: I see the man himself worshipping at the solemn rite, with none at his side — why do you hesitate? Chance has given the time and the place: we must use our arts. Do we tremble? It is no easy thing to dare a crime on command; but whoever fears a sovereign’s orders, let him lay aside all sense of honor and drive it from his mind: a poor servant of a king’s command is shame.

ipsum intuor solemne venerantem sacrum nullo latus comitante— quid dubitas? dedit tempus locumque casus: utendum artibus, trepidamus? haud est facile mandatum scelus audere, verum iussa qui regis timet, deponat omne et pellat ex animo decus: malus est minister regii imperii pudor.

Why do you toil here, weary, with aged steps, o faithful nurse, wearing a troubled brow and sad of face? Surely my father is safe, and Phaedra safe, and the pair of her children?

Quid huc seniles fessa moliris gradus, o fida nutrix, turbidam frontem gerens et maesta vultu? sospes est certe parens sospesque Phaedra stirpis et geminae iugum?

Set fear aside; the kingdom stands in a prosperous state and the house flourishes, thriving in a happy lot. But you — be gentler amid these blessings: for an anxious care for you troubles me, that you tame yourself, your own enemy, with heavy punishments. He whom the fates compel is wretched, and pardoned; but if a man offers himself willingly to evils and tortures himself, he deserves to lose the goods he does not know how to use. Rather, mindful of your years, relax your mind: on festal nights lift the torch high, let Bacchus unburden your heavy cares; enjoy your age: it flees on a swift course. Now the heart is at ease, now love is sweet to a young man: let your spirit leap. Why do you lie in a widowed bed? Release your gloomy youth; now seize the course, fling loose the reins, do not let the best days of life flow away. God has assigned to each its own duties and led our life through its stages: joy befits the young, a grave brow the old. Why do you hold yourself in check and kill your true nature? That crop will give the farmer a great yield which, tender, runs riot in its glad sowings, and the tree will overtop the grove with its high crown which no grudging hand cuts back or prunes: upright natures rise the better into praise, if a lively freedom feeds the noble spirit.

Metus remitte, prospero regnum in statu est domusque florens sorte felici viget. sed tu beatis mitior rebus veni: namque anxiam me cura sollicitat tui, quod te ipse poenis gravibus infestus domas. quem fata cogunt, ille cum venia est miser; at si quis ultro se malis offert volens seque ipse torquet, perdere est dignus bona quis nescit uti. potius annorum memor mentem relaxa: noctibus festis facem attolle, curas Bacchus exoneret graves; aetate fruere: mobili cursu fugit, nunc facile pectus, grata nunc iuveni Venus: exultet animus, cur toro viduo iaces? tristem iuventam solve; nunc cursus rape, effunde habenas, optimos vitae dies effluere prohibe, propria descripsit deus officia et aevum per suos duxit gradus: laetitia iuvenem, frons decet tristis senem. quid te coherces et necas rectam indolem? seges illa magnum fenus agricolae dabit quaecumque laetis tenera luxuriat satis, arborque celso vertice evincet nemus quam non maligna caedit aut resecat" manus: ingenia melius recta se in laudes ferunt, si nobilem animum vegeta libertas alit.

Will you, grim and woodland-wild and ignorant of life, spend a joyless youth with Venus forsaken? Do you believe this the task assigned to men — to endure hardships, to break horses to the course, and wage savage wars with bloody Mars? How many kinds of death drag down the mortal throng and pluck it away — the sea, the sword, and treachery!

truculentus et silvester ac vitae inscius tristem iuventam Venere deserta coles? hoc esse munus credis indictum viris, ut dura tolerent, cursibus domitent equos et saeva bella Marte sanguineo gerant? quam varia leti genera mortalem trahunt carpuntque turbam, pontus et ferrum et doli!

That greatest parent of the world made provision, when he saw how grasping were the hands of Fate, that loss should always be repaired by new offspring. But suppose the fates were to fail us: even so we make for black Styx of our own accord. Let a barren youth approve the celibate life: all that you see will be the throng of a single age, and will rush upon itself.

providit ille maximus mundi parens, cum tam rapaces cerneret Pati manus, ut damna semper subole repararet nova. sed fata credas desse: sic atram Styga iam petimus ultro, caelibem vitam probet sterilis iuventus: hoc erit, quicquid vides, unius aevi turba et in semet ruet.

Come, let Venus withdraw from human affairs, she who supplies and restores the exhausted race: the world will lie foul in squalid neglect, the empty sea will stand without any fish, birds will be missing from the sky and beasts from the woods, and the air will be a thoroughfare for the winds alone.

excedat agedum rebus humanis Venus, quae supplet ac restituit exhaustum genus: orbis iacebit squalido turpis situ, vacuum sine ullis piscibus stabit mare, alesque caelo derit et silvis fera solis et aer pervius ventis erit.

So follow nature as the guide of life: frequent the city, cultivate the gathering of citizens.

proinde vitae sequere naturam ducem: urbem frequenta, civium coetum cole.

No other life is more free and free of vice, none that better keeps the ancient ways, than the life that, leaving the city walls, loves the woods. No frenzy of a greedy mind inflames the man who, guiltless, has dedicated himself to the mountain ridges, nor the breath of the people, nor the mob untrue to the good, nor pestilent envy, nor brittle favor; he is no slave to a kingdom, nor, gaping after a kingdom, does he chase empty honors or fleeting wealth, free of hope and of fear; no black and gnawing spite assails him with degenerate tooth; the crimes sown among the peoples and the cities he does not know, nor, guilty, does he start at every sound or invent lies; he does not seek to be roofed, rich, by a thousand columns, nor, insolent, plate his beams with heavy gold; no lavish blood floods his pious altars, nor, sprinkled with meal, do a hundred snow-white oxen bow their necks for the rite;

Non alia magis est libera et vitio carens ritusque melius vita quae priscos colat, quam quae relictis moenibus silvas amat. non illum avarae mentis inflammat furor qui se dicavit montium insontem iugis, non aura populi et vulgus infidum bonis, non pestilens invidia, non fragilis favor;.non ille regno servit aut regno imminens vanos honores sequitur aut fluxas opes, spei metusque liber, haud illum niger edaxque livor dente degeneri petit; nec scelera populos inter atque urbes sata novit nec omnes conscius strepitus pavet aut verba fingit; mille non quaerit tegi dives columnis nec trabes multo insolens suffigit auro; non cruor largus pias inundat aras, fruge nec sparsi sacra centena nivei colla summittunt boves:

but he holds the open country and the open air and wanders harmless. Only to lay cunning snares for the beasts he knows, and, worn with heavy toil, he bathes his body in the snow-cold Ilisos; now he skirts the bank of the swift Alpheus, now he measures out the dense places of the deep grove, where cold Lerna shines clear with its pure shallows, and he shifts his resting-place: here the querulous birds cry out and the manna-ash, lightly struck by the winds, trembles, and the ancient beeches. It is sweet to have pressed the banks of a wandering stream, or on the bare turf to have drawn light sleep, whether a generous spring pours down its swift waters, or through fresh flowers a sweet sound murmurs from a fleeting brook. Apples shaken from the woods keep hunger in check, and strawberries plucked from low thickets furnish an easy meal. His impulse is to flee far from royal luxuries: the proud drink from anxious gold; how sweet it is, with bare hand, to have caught up the spring! A surer sleep weighs down the man who turns his limbs, secure, on a hard couch.

sed rure vacuo potitur et aperto aethere innocuus errat, callidas tantum feris struxisse fraudes novit et fessus gravi labore niveo corpus Iliso fovet: nunc ille ripam celeris Alphei legit, nunc nemoris alti densa metatur loca, ubi Lerna puro gelida perlucet vado, sedesque mutas: hinc aves querulae fremunt ornique ventis lene percussae tremunt veteresque fagi. iuvit aut amnis vagi pressisse ripas, caespite aut nudo leves duxisse somnos, sive fons largus citas defundit undas sive per flores novos fugiente dulcis murmurat rivo sonus. excussa silvis poma compescunt famem et fraga parvis vulsa dumetis cibos faciles ministrant, regios luxus procul est impetus fugisse: sollicito bibunt auro superbi; quam iuvat nuda manu captasse fontem! certior somnus premit secura duro membra versantem toro.

Not in a recess, not on a dark couch does the shameless man seek his stolen pleasures and, fearful, hide himself in a manifold house: he seeks the open air and the light and lives with heaven for witness. In this manner, I think, lived those whom the first age poured forth, mingled with gods. For them there was no blind greed for gold, no sacred boundary-stone in the field divided the lands as arbiter among the peoples; not yet did trusting ships cut the sea: each man knew only his own waters; not with a vast rampart and crowded towers had cities drawn out their flank; no soldier fitted savage arms to his hand, nor had the twisted ballista shattered shut gates with a heavy stone, nor, bidden to endure a master, did the earth bear servitude with the yoked ox: but the fields, fruitful of themselves, fed the peoples who asked nothing; the woods had given their natural wealth and the shady caves their natural homes.

non in recessu furta et obscuro improbus quaerit cubili seque multiplici timens domo recondit: aethera ac lucem petit et teste caelo vivit, hoc equidem reor vixisse ritu prima quos mixtos deis profudit aetas, nullus his auri fuit caecus cupido, nullus in campo sacer divisit agros arbiter populis lapis; nondum secabant credulae pontum rates: sua quisque norat maria; non vasto aggere crebraque turre duxerant urbes latus; non arma saeva miles aptabat manu nec torta clausas fregerat saxo gravi ballista portas, iussa nec dominum pati iuncto ferebat terra servitium bove: sed arva per se feta poscentes nihil pavere gentes, silva nativas opes et opaca dederant antra nativas domos.

The unholy madness for gain broke the covenant, and headlong anger, and lust that drives inflamed minds; there came the bloody thirst for empire, the weaker made the prey of the stronger: force stood for right. Then first they made war with bare hand, and turned stones and rough boughs into weapons: there was no light cornel-shaft armed with slender iron, no sword girding the side with its long blade, no helmets crested far off with their plumes: grief was forging the weapons. Warlike Mavors invented new arts and a thousand forms of death. From this, blood, shed, stained all the lands, and the sea grew red.

rupere foedus impius lucri furor et ira praeceps quaeque succensas agit libido mentes; venit imperii sitis cruenta, factus praeda maiori minor: pro iure vires esse. tum primum manu bellare nuda saxaque et ramos rudes vertere in arma: non erat gracili levis armata ferro cornus aut longo latus mucrone cingens ensis aut crista procul galeae comantes: tela faciebat dolor. invenit artes bellicus Mavors novas et mille formas mortis, hinc terras cruor infecit omnis fusus et rubuit mare.

Then crimes, with all limit removed, went through every house, and no impiety lacked its precedent: brother by brother, the parent by the son’s right hand fell, the husband lies slain by his wife’s steel, and unholy mothers destroy their own young; of stepmothers I say nothing: nothing is gentler than wild beasts. But woman is the leader of evils: she, the artificer of crimes, besieges men’s minds; through her unchaste debaucheries so many cities smoke, so many nations wage war, and so many kingdoms, overturned from the foundation, crush their peoples.

tum scelera dempto fine per cunctas domos iere, nullum caruit exemplo nefas: a fratre frater, dextera gnati parens cecidit, maritus coniugis ferro iacet perimuntque fetus impiae matres suos; taceo novercas. mitius nil est feris sed dux malorum femina: haec scelerum artifex obsedit animos, huius incestis stupris fumant tot urbes, bella tot gentes gerunt et versa ab imo regna tot populos premunt.

Let the rest be passed over: Aegeus’ wife alone, Medea, will prove women a dreadful race.

sileantur aliae: sola coniunx Aegei, Medea, reddet feminas dirum genus.

Why is the crime of a few made the fault of all?

Cur omnium fit culpa paucarum scelus?

I detest them all, I shudder, I flee, I curse them. Be it reason, be it nature, be it dreadful frenzy: to hate them is my resolve. Sooner will you join water to fire, sooner will the treacherous Syrtis promise ships a friendly shoal, sooner will Hesperian Tethys raise the bright day from the farthest gulf, and wolves offer kindly faces to the does, than I, conquered, bear a gentle mind toward woman.

Detestor omnis, horreo fugio execror. sit ratio, sit natura, sit dirus furor: odisse placuit, ignibus iunges aquas et amica ratibus ante promittet vada incerta Syrtis, ante ab extremo sinu Hesperia Tethys lucidum attollet diem et ora dammis blanda praebebunt lupi, quam victus animum feminae mitem geram.

Often Love puts reins on the stubborn and changes their hatreds. Look at your mother’s realm: those fierce women feel the yoke of Venus; you bear witness to it, the one boy of your race.

Saepe obstinatis induit frenos Amor et odia mutat, regna materna aspice: illae feroces sentiunt Veneris iugum; testaris istud unicus gentis puer.

One comfort for my lost mother I carry: that now I am free to hate all women.

Solamen unum matris amissae fero. odisse quod iam feminas omnis licet.

As a hard crag, intractable on every side, withstands the waves and flings the assailing waters far back, so he spurns my words. But Phaedra approaches headlong, brooking no delay. Where will fortune turn? Where will the frenzy incline? Suddenly her lifeless body falls to the ground and a death-like color spreads over her face. Lift your eyes, break off your silence: look, child — your Hippolytus holds you.

Vt dura cautes undique intractabilis resistit undis et lacessentes aquas longe remittit, verba sic spernit mea. Sed Phaedra praeceps graditur, impatiens quo se dabit fortuna? quo verget furor? terrae repente corpus exanimum accidit et ora morti similis obduxit color, attolle vultus, dimove vocis moras: tuus en, alumna, temet Hippolytus tenet.

Who gives me back to grief and restores the heavy fever to my heart? How well I had slipped away from myself!

Quis me dolori reddit atque aestus graves reponit animo? quam bene excideram mihi!

Why do you flee the sweet gift of light restored?

Cur dulce munus redditae lucis fugis?

Dare, my soul, attempt it, carry through your charge. Let your words stand fearless: he who asks timidly teaches refusal. The greater part of my crime was done long ago; shame comes too late for me: I have loved unspeakable things. If I follow through what I began, perhaps I will hide the guilt with the marriage torch. Success makes certain crimes honorable. Come, begin, my soul! — Lend me a little, I beg, a private ear. If there is any companion here, let him withdraw.

Aude, anime, tempta, perage mandatum tuum. intrepida constent verba: qui timide rogat docet negare, magna pare sceleris mei olim peracta est; serus est nobis pudor: amavimus nefanda, si coepta exsequor, forsan iugali crimen abscondam face: honesta quaedam scelera successus facit— en incipe, anime!— Commodes paulum, precor, secretus aures, si quis est abeat comes.

See, the place is free, empty of every witness.

En locus ab omni liber arbitrio vacat.

But my lips deny passage to the words I began; a great force sends the voice out, and a greater holds it back. I call you all to witness, gods of heaven: this thing that I want — I do not want.

Sed ora coeptis transitum verbis negant; vis magna vocem mittit et maior tenet, vos testor omnis, caelites, hoc quod volo— me nolle

Can the mind, longing to speak something, not utter it?

Auimusne cupiens aliquid effari nequit?

Light cares speak; great ones are struck dumb.

Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent.

Entrust your cares to my ears, mother.

Committe curas auribus, mater, meis.

The name of mother is too proud and too powerful: a humbler name befits my feeling; call me sister, Hippolytus, or handmaid — handmaid rather: I will bear any servitude. Should you bid me go over the high snows, I would not balk at treading the frozen ridges of Pindus; should you bid me go through fire and hostile ranks, I would not hesitate to give my breast to the ready swords. Take up the scepter entrusted to you, take me as your handmaid: it befits you to wield command, me to carry out your orders. It is no woman’s task to guard the kingdoms of cities; you, who flourish in the first flower of youth, rule your citizens, strong, with your father’s power; take me, a suppliant and a slave, into your bosom and shelter me. Pity a widow —

Matris superbum est nomen et nimium potens: nostros humilius nomen affectus decet; me vel sororem, Hippolyte, vel famulam voca, famulamque potius: omne servitium feram, non me per altas ire si iubeas nives, pigeat gelatis ingredi Pindi iugis; non, si per ignes ire et infesta agmina, cuncter paratis ensibus pectus dare. mandata recipe sceptra, me famulam accipe: te imperia regere, me decet iussa exequi muliebre non est regna tutari urbium; tu qui iuventae flore primaevo viges cives paterno fortis imperio rege, sinu receptam supplicem ac servam tege. miserere viduae—

May the highest god avert this omen. My father will be here, safe, before long.

Summus hoc omen deus avertat, aderit sospes actutum parens.

The lord of the grasping realm and the silent Styx has made no way back to the upper world for those left behind: will he release the ravisher of his own marriage-bed? Unless perhaps even Pluto sits indulgent to love.

Regni tenacis dominus et tacitae Stygis nullam relictos fecit ad superos viam: thalami remittet ille raptorem sui? nisi forte amori placidus et Pluton sedet.

Him, indeed, the just gods will grant a return. But while the god holds our prayers in doubt, I will cherish my dear brothers with the devotion owed, and I will see to it that you do not think yourself a widow, and I myself will fill a parent’s place for you.

Illum quidem aequi caelites reducem dabunt, sed dum tenebit vota in incerto deus, pietate caros debita fratres colam et te merebor esse ne viduam putes ac tibi parentis ipse supplebo locum.

O credulous hope of lovers! O deceiving Love! Have I said enough? I will press on with prayers brought near. Pity me, hear the prayers of my silent heart — I long to speak, and I am ashamed.

O spes amantum credula, o fallax Amor! satisne dixi? precibus admotis agam. Miserere, tacitae mentis exaudi preces— libet loqui pigetque.

What is this trouble of yours?

Quodnam istud malum est?

A trouble you would scarcely believe could fall upon a stepmother.

Quod in novercam cadere vix credas malum.

You throw out tangled words in an ambiguous voice. Speak openly.

Ambigua voce verba perplexa iacis: effare aperte,

A burning vapor and love scorch my maddened breast. A wild fire seethes deep within my inmost marrow and runs through my veins, the fire sunk in my flesh and lurking in my veins, as the nimble flame races through high beams.

Pectus insanum vapor amorque torret. intimis fervet ferus penitus medullas atque per venas meat visceribus ignis mersus et venas latens ut agilis altas flamma percurrit trabes.

You rave, surely, with chaste love for Theseus?

Amore nempe Thesei casto furis?

Hippolytus, it is so: I love Theseus’ face — that earlier face he bore once as a youth, when the first beard marked his pure cheeks and he saw the blind house of the Cnossian monster and gathered the long thread along the winding way. How he shone then! Fillets had bound his hair and a golden modesty tinged his tender face; in his soft arms were strong muscles; he had the face of your Phoebe, or of my Phoebus —

Hippolyte. sic est: Thesei vultus amo illos priores quos tulit quondam puer. cum prima puras barba signaret genas monstrique caecam Gnosii vidit domum et longa curva fila collegit via. quis tum ille fulsit! presserant vittae comam et ora flavus tenera tinguebat pudor: inerant lacertis mollibus fortes tori; tuaeque Phoebes vultus aut Phoebi mei.

or rather yours: such, just such he was when he charmed his enemy; so he held his head high. In you the unkempt beauty shines the brighter. Your father is wholly in you, and yet some part of your fierce mother mingles its grace in equal measure: in a Greek face the Scythian’s hardness shows. Had you entered the Cretan strait with your father, for you, rather, my sister would have spun the thread.

tuusque potius— talis, en talis fuit cum placuit hosti, sic tulit celsum caput: in te magis refulget incomptus decor; est genitor in te totus et torvae tamen pars «aliqua matris miscet ex aequo decus: in ore Graio Scythicus apparet rigor. si cum parente Creticum intrasses fretum. tibi fila potius nostra nevisset soror.

You, you, my sister, in whatever part of the starry sky you shine, I call upon for a like cause: one house has seized two sisters — you the father, but me the son. See, a suppliant lies, fallen at your knees, the offspring of a royal house.

te te, soror, quacumque siderei poli in parte fulges, invoco ad causam parem: domus sorores una corripuit duas, te genitor, at me gnatus. en supplex iacet adlapsa genibus regiae proles domus.

Spattered by no stain, untouched, innocent, I am changed for you alone. Resolved, I have come down to prayers: this day will make an end either of my grief or of my life. Pity one who loves —

respersa nulla labe et intacta, innocens tibi mutor uni. certa descendi ad preces: finem hic dolori faciet aut vitae dies. miserere amantis—

Great ruler of the gods, so slow you hear of crimes? so slow you see? And when will you send the bolt from your savage hand, if now the sky is clear? Let all the heavens, struck, come crashing down and bury the day in black clouds, and let the stars, turned backward, drive their slanting courses, wrenched aside. And you, starry head, radiant Titan, do you look upon the outrage of your own line? Drown your light and flee into the dark. Why, ruler of gods and men, is your right hand idle, and why does the world not blaze with the three-forked torch?

Magne regnator deum, tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides? et quando saeva fulmen.emittes manu, si nunc serenum est? omnis impulsus ruat aether et atris nubibus condat diem, ac versa retro sidera obliquos agant retorta cursus, tuque, sidereum caput, radiate Titan, tu nefas stirpis tuae speculare? lucem merge et in tenebras fuge. cur dextra, divum rector atque hominum, vacat tua nec trisulca mundus ardescit face?

Thunder against me, strike me, let the swift fire pierce and burn me through. I am guilty, I have deserved to die: I have pleased a stepmother. Am I, look, fit for debaucheries? For so great a crime did I alone seem to you ready material? Did my austerity earn this?

in me tona, me fige, me velox cremet transactus ignis— sum nocens, merui mori: placui novercae, dignus en stupris ego?. scelerique tanto visus ego solus tibi materia facilis? hoc meus meruit rigor?

O you who outdo in crime the whole female sex, O you who have dared a worse evil than your monster-breeding mother, worse than the dam that bore you! She defiled herself with debauchery alone, and yet the crime, long silent, the birth made plain by its two-formed mark, and the mother’s sin the grim-faced, ambiguous infant laid bare — that womb bore you.

o scelere vincens omne femineum genus, o maius ausa matre monstrifera malum genetrice peior! illa se tantum stupro contaminavit, et tamen. tacitum diu crimen biformi partus exhibuit nota scelusque matris arguit vultu truci ambiguus infans— ille te venter tulit.

O thrice and four times given a happy fate, those whom hatred and treachery drank up and destroyed and gave to death — father, I envy you: this is a greater evil than the Colchian stepmother, greater.

o ter quaterque prospero fato dati quos hausit et peremit et leto dedit odium dolusque— genitor, invideo tibi: Colchide noverca maius haec, maius malum est.

I too know the fates of my house: I seek what should be fled; but I am not master of myself. I will follow you through fire, through the mad sea, through crags and rivers that the torrent’s wave sweeps away; wherever you carry your steps, there, frantic, I will be driven — again, proud one, I throw myself at your knees.

Et ipsa nostrae fata cognosco domus: fugienda petimus; sed mei non sum potens. te vel per ignes, per mare insanum sequar rupesque et amnes, unda quos torrens rapit; quacumque gressus tuleris hac amens agar— iterum, superbe, genibus advolvor tuis.

Away with your shameless touch, far from my chaste body — what is this? Does she even rush into my embrace? Let the sword be drawn, let it exact the punishment deserved. See, by the twisted hair I have bent back her shameless head with my left hand: never was juster blood given to your altars, goddess of the bow.

Procul impudicos corpore a casto amove tactus— quid hoc est? etiam in amplexus ruit? stringatur ensis, merita supplicia exigat. en impudicum crine contorto caput laeva reflexi: iustior numquam focis datus tuis est sanguis, arquitenens dea.

Hippolytus, now you make me possessed of my wish: you heal my madness. This is beyond my prayer — that, with my honor safe, I die at your hands.

Hippolyte, nunc me compotem voti facis: sanas furentem. maius hoc voto meo est, salvo ut pudore manibus immoriar tuis.

Begone, live — lest you win anything by begging — and let this sword, defiled by your touch, leave my chaste side. What Tanais will wash me clean, or what Maeotis, leaning with barbarian waves on the Pontic sea? Not the great Father himself, with all his Ocean, could expiate so much guilt. O woods! O wild beasts!

Abscede, vive ne quid exores, et hic contactus ensis deserat castum latus. quis eluet me Tanais aut quae barbaris Maeotis undis Pontico incumbens mari? non ipse toto magnus Oceano pater tantum expiarit sceleris, o silvae, o ferae!

The guilt is caught out. My soul, why stand stunned and sluggish? Let us turn the charge back on him and accuse him first of unholy lust. Crime must be cloaked with crime: when you are afraid, the safest course is to attack. Whether we dared the outrage first, or only suffered it — since the guilt is secret, what witness will know?

Deprensa culpa est. anime, quid segnis stupes? regeramus ipsi crimen atque ultro impiam Venerem arguamus: scelere velandum est scelus: tutissimum est inferre, cum timeas, gradum. ausae priores simus an passae nefas, secreta cum sit culpa, quis testis sciet?

Come, Athenians! Faithful band of servants, bring help! Hippolytus, the ravisher of unspeakable lust, presses and bears down, threatens the fear of death, terrifies a chaste woman with the sword — see, he flees headlong and, stunned, in his trembling flight has left his sword behind.

Adeste, Athenae! fida famulorum manus, fer opem! nefandi raptor Hippolytus stupri instat premitque, mortis intentat metum, ferro pudicam terret— en praeceps abit ensemque trepida liquit attonitus fuga.

We hold the pledge of his crime. First revive this grieving woman. Let her dragged hair and torn locks stay as they are, the marks of so great an outrage. Carry the word into the city. Recover your senses now, mistress. Why, tearing at yourself, do you flee the sight of all? It is the mind that makes a woman unchaste, not chance.

pignus tenemus sceleris, hanc maestam prius recreate, crinis tractus et lacerae comae ut sunt remaneant, facinoris tanti notae, perferte 4n urbem, recipe iam sensus, era. quid te ipsa lacerans omnium adspectus fugis? mens inpudicam facere, non casus solet.

He flees, like a maddened storm, swifter than the cloud that the North-West wind heaps up, swifter than the flame that snatches its course along, when a star, driven on by the winds, streams out its long fires.

Fugit insanae similis procellae, ocior nubes glomerante Coro, ocior cursum rapiente flamma, stella cum ventis agitata longos porrigit ignes.

Let the fame that marvels at the elder age set against you all the beauty of old: by so much the lovelier your form shines, brighter, by as much as the full orb glitters when, with the horns drawn together, Phoebe has joined her fires, and all night long, her chariot hurrying, the rosy moon puts forth her face, and the lesser stars no longer hold their place; such is he — bringing back the first darkness, the herald of night, just bathed in the waters, the evening star, and, when the dark is driven off again, the same as morning star.

Conferat tecum decus omne priscum fama miratrix senioris aevi: pulchrior tanto tua forma lucet, clarior quanto micat orbe pleno cum suos ignes coeunte cornu iunxit et curru properante pernox exerit vultus rubicunda Phoebe nec tenent stellae faciem minores; talis est. primas referens tenebras, nuntius noctis, modo lotus undis Hesperus, pulsis iterum tenebris Lucifer idem.

And you, Liber, thyrsus-bearer, from India, youth of the unshorn, ever-flowing hair, who frighten the tigers with your vine-clad shaft and bind your horned head with a turban — you will not outdo the stiff locks of Hippolytus. Do not admire your own face too much: through all the peoples the tale has spread of the one whom Phaedra’s sister preferred to Bromius.

Et tu. thyrsigera Liber ab India. intonsa iuvenis perpetuum coma, tigres pampinea cuspide territans ac mitra cohibens cornigerum caput, non vinces rigidas Hippolyti comas. ne vultus nimium suspicias tuos: omnis per populos fabula distulit, Phaedrae quem Bromio praetulerit soror.

A doubtful good for mortals is beauty, a brief gift of a little time, how swiftly you slip away on your nimble foot! Not so does the heat of the hot summer strip the meadows that are lovely in the new spring, when, at the solstice, midday rages and the nights wheel by on their short circuits. As the leaves grow faint and the lilies pale: so the locks that grace the head fail us, and the gleam that shines on tender cheeks is snatched in a moment, and no day has not borne off the spoil of a fair body. Beauty is a fleeting thing: what wise man would trust in a fragile good? Use it, while you may. Time silently undermines you, and an hour ever worse than the one just past steals on.

Anceps forma bonum mortalibus," exigui donum breve temporis, ut velox celeri pede laberis! Non sic prata novo vere decentia aestatis calidae despoliat vapor, saevit solstitio cum medius dies et noctes brevibus praecipitant rotis languescunt folio et lilia pallido: ut gratae capiti deficiunt comae et fulgor teneris qui radiat genis momento rapitur nullaque non dies formonsi spolium corporis abstulit. res est forma fugax: quis sapiens bono confidat fragili? dum licet, utere. tempus te tacitum subruit. horaque semper praeterita deterior subit.

Why seek the lonely places? Beauty is no safer in trackless spots: when Titan has set midday, in the hidden grove a wanton throng will ring you, the shameless Naiads, wont to shut fair boys away in their fountains, and the playful goddesses of the woods will lay snares for your sleep, the Dryads who hunt the mountain-roaming Pans. Or the star born after the ancient Arcadians, looking down on you from the star-bearing pole, will not be able to steer her shining chariot.

Quid deserta petis? tutior aviis non est forma locis: te nemore abdito, cum Titan medium constituit diem, cingent turba licens Naides improbae, formonsos solitae claudere fontibus, et somnis facient insidias tuis lascivae nemorum deae Panas quae Dryades montivagos petunt, aut te stellifero despiciens polo sidus post veteres Arcadas editum currus non poterit flectere candidos.

And lately she blushed, and no cloud, darker, stood against her bright face: but we, anxious for the troubled goddess, thinking her dragged down by Thessalian songs, raised a clashing of bronze: you were the cause, you were the reason of her delay; the goddess of the night, while she gazed on you, held back her swift courses.

et nuper rubuit, nullaque lucidis nubes sordidior vultibus obstitit: at nos solliciti numine turbido, tractari! Thessalicis carminibus rati, tinnitus dedimus: tu fueras labor et tu causa morae, te dea noctium dum spectat celeres sustinuit vias.

Let the frosts harass this face more sparingly, let this face seek the sun more rarely: it will shine brighter than Parian marble. How pleasing is a face, grim with a manly grimness, and the grave weight of an old-fashioned brow! You may compare your shining neck to Phoebus’: him a flowing hair, that knows no binding, adorns and covers, pouring over his shoulders; you a shaggy brow becomes, you the shorter hair lying by no rule; you may dare the rough and warlike gods with your strength and outmatch them by your great body’s span: for, young as you are, you equal Hercules’ thews, broader in the chest than warlike Mars, and, should it please you to ride on a horse’s back, nimbler with the rein than Castor’s hand, you could rule the Spartan Cyllarus. Stretch the throwing-thong on your forefingers and aim the javelin with all your force: so far, skilled to fix their darts, the Cretans will not send their slender shaft. Or, if it please you to scatter arrows Parthian-fashion into the sky, none will come down without its bird, each lodged in a warm body, and will bring you plunder from the midst of the clouds.

Vexent hanc faciem frigora parcius, haec solem facies rarius appetat: lucebit Pario marmore clarius, quam grata est facies torva viriliter et pondus veteris triste supercili! Phoebo colla licet splendida compares: illum caesaries nescia colligi perfundens umeros ornat et integit; te frons hirta decet, te brevior coma nulla lege iacens; tu licet asperos pugnacesque deos viribus audeas et vasti spatio vincere corporis: aequas. Herculeos nam iuvenis toros, Martis belligeri pectore latior, si dorso libeat cornipedis vehi, frenis Castorea mobilior manu Spartanum poteris flectere Cyllaron. ammentum digitis tende prioribus et totis iaculum dirige viribus: tam longe, dociles spicula figere, non mittent gracilem Cretes harundinem. aut si tela modo spargere Parthico in caelum placeat, nulla sine alite descendent, tepido viscere condita praedam de mediis nubibus afferent.

To few men (look through the ages) has beauty gone unpunished. May a kinder god pass you by unharmed, and may your noble form show, in the end, the image of deformed old age.

Raris forma viris (saecula perspice) inpunita fuit. te melior deus tutum praetereat formaque nobilis deformis senii monstret imaginem.

What does a woman’s headlong frenzy leave undared? She prepares unspeakable charges against the innocent youth. Behold the crimes! With torn hair she seeks belief, she throws into disarray all the beauty of her head, she wets her cheeks: the snare is fitted out with every womanly wile.

Quid sinat inausum feminae praeceps furor? nefanda iuveni crimina insonti apparat. en scelera! quaerit crine lacerato fidem, decus omne turbat capitis, umectat genas: instruitur omni fraude feminea dolus.

But who is this, bearing in his face a royal beauty and lifting his head high on a tall neck? How like in face he is to young Pirithous, were it not that his cheeks are white with a languid pallor and an unkempt squalor stands stiff in his hair. See, Theseus himself, restored to the earth, is here.

Sed iste quisnam est, regium in vultu decus gerens et alto vertice attollens caput? ut ora iuveni paria Perithoo gerit, ni languido pallore canderent genae staretque recta squalor incultus coma. en ipse Theseus redditus terris adest.

At last I have escaped the region of eternal night and the vault that roofs the shades with its vast prison, and my eyes can scarcely bear the daylight they longed for. Now Eleusis reaps Triptolemus’ gift for the fourth time, and as often the Balance has made the day its equal, while the doubtful struggle of an unknown lot held me between the evils of death and of life. One part of life remained to me, though dead: the feeling of my woes; the end was Alcides, who, when he was dragging the dog torn from Tartarus, bore me too, along with him, up to the seats above. But my worn courage lacks its old strength and my steps falter. Ah, how great the toil to seek the far-off air from the depths of Phlegethon and at once to flee death and to follow Alcides!

Tandem profugi noctis aeternae plagam vastoque manes carcere umbrantem polum, et vix cupitum sufferunt oculi diem. iam quarta Eleusin dona Triptolemi secat paremque totiens libra composuit diem, ambiguus ut me sortis ignotae labor detinuit inter mortis et vitae mala. pars una vitae mansit extincto mihi: sensus malorum; finis Alcides fuit, qui cum revulsum Tartaro abstraheret canem, me quoque supernas pariter ad sedes tulit. sed fessa virtus robore antiquo caret trepidantque gressus, heu, labor quantus fuit Phlegethonte ab imo petere longinquum aethera pariterque mortem fugere et Alciden sequi.

What mournful clamor has struck my ears? Let someone explain. Grief, and tears, and pain, a sorrowing lament on the very threshold? Omens worthy, truly, of a guest from the underworld.

Quis fremitus aures flebilis pepulit meas? expromat aliquis, luctus et lacrimae et dolor, in limine ipso maesta lamentatio? auspicia digna prorsus inferno hospite.

Phaedra holds stubborn to her resolve of death and spurns our weeping and presses toward dying.

Tenet obstinatum Phaedra consilium necis fletusque nostros spernit ac morti imminet.

What cause of death? Why does she die when her husband returns?

Quae causa leti? reduce cur moritur viro?

That very cause has brought on her early death.

Haec ipsa letum causa maturum attulit.

These tangled words cloak some great thing I cannot grasp. Speak openly: what grief weighs down her mind?

Perplexa magnum verba nescio quid tegunt. effare aperte quis gravet mentem dolor.

She reveals it to no one; grieving, she hides her secret and has resolved to carry to the grave the evil she dies of.

Haut pandit ulli; maesta secretum occulit statuitque secum ferre quo moritur malum.

Now go on, I beg, go on: there is need of haste.

iam perge, quaeso, perge: properato est opus.

Unbar the shut doors of the royal house.

Reserate clausos regii postes laris.

O partner of my bed, is it thus that you receive your husband’s coming, the face of the longed-for spouse? Will you not free your right hand of the sword and give me back my spirit, and disclose whatever drives you from life?

0 socia thalami, sicine adventum viri et expetiti coniugis vultum excipis? quin ense viduas dexteram atque animum mihi restituis et te quicquid e vita fugat expromis?

Alas, by the scepter of your sovereignty, great-hearted Theseus, by the nature of our children and by your return, and by my ashes soon to be, allow me death.

Eheu, per tui sceptrum imperi, magnanime Theseu, perque natorum indolem tuosque reditus perque iam cineres meos, permitte mortem,

What cause compels you to die?

Causa quae cogit mori?

If the cause of death is told, its fruit is lost.

Si causa leti dicitur, fructus perit.

No one else but me, at least, will hear it.

Nemo istud alius, me quidem excepto, audiet.

A chaste woman fears her husband’s ears alone.

Aures pudica coniugis solas timet.

Speak out: in a faithful breast I will hide your secrets.

Effare: fido pectore arcana occulam.

What you would have another keep silent, keep silent first yourself.

Alium silere quod voles, primus sile.

No means of death will fall to you.

Leti facultas nulla continget tibi.

To one who wills to die, death can never be wanting.

Mori volenti desse mors numquam potest.

Tell me the offense that must be atoned by death.

Quod sit luendum morte delictum indica.

That I live.

Quod vivo.

Do my tears not move you?

Lacrimae nonne te nostrae movent?

Best of deaths is to perish mourned by one’s own.

Mors optima est perire lacrimandum suis.

She persists in silence. There is need of the lash and chains; the nurse will betray whatever this one refuses to tell. Bind her with iron. Let the force of the lash drag out the secrets of her mind.

Silere pergit, verbere ac vinclis opus; altrixque prodet quicquid haec fari abnuit. vincite ferro, verberum vis extrahat secreta mentis,

I will speak myself now. Wait.

Ipsa iam fabor. mane.

Why do you turn your grieving face away, and the tears that suddenly well on your cheeks hide behind your lifted robe?

Quidnam ora maesta avertis et lacrimas genis subito coortas veste praetenta optegis?

You, you, creator of the heavenly gods, I call to witness, and you, the glittering radiance of the ethereal light, from whose rising our house derives: assailed by prayers, I held out; to sword and threats my spirit did not yield: yet my body suffered force. This stain on my honor my own blood will wash away.

Te, te, creator caelitum, testem invoco et te, coruscum lucis aetheriae iubar, t ex cuius ortu nostra dependet domus: temptata precibus restiti; ferro ac minis non cessit animus: vim tamen corpus tulit. labem hanc pudoris eluet noster cruor.

Who, tell me, was the destroyer of our honor?

Quis, ede, nostri decoris eversor fuit?

The one you would least suppose.

Quem rere minime,

Who it is I am eager to hear.

Quis sit audire expeto.

This sword will tell, which the ravisher, frightened in the uproar, left behind, fearing the citizens’ onrush.

Hic dicet ensis quem tumultu territus liquit stuprator civium accursum timens.

What crime, alas, do I behold? What monstrous thing do I look upon? The royal ivory of my father, rough with its devices, gleams on the hilt — the glory of the Attic race. But he himself — where did he escape to?

Quod facinus, heu me, cerno? quod monstrum intuor? regale patris asperum signis ebur capulo refulget, gentis Actaeae decus. sed ipse quonam evasit?

These servants saw him, trembling in flight, driven off with swift foot.

Hi trepidum fuga videre famuli concitum celeri pede.

O holy Piety, O helmsman of the sky, and you who stir the second realm with the waves, whence came this plague of an unspeakable breed? Did Greek soil rear him, or Scythian Taurus and Colchian Phasis? The stock reverts to its founders, and degenerate blood recalls its first lineage. This is the very frenzy of that weapon-bearing race — to hate the bonds of Venus and long to prostitute a body, chaste till now, to the peoples. O loathsome breed, conquered by no law of a kinder soil! Even the wild beasts themselves shun the outrage of Venus, and an untaught modesty keeps the laws of kind.

Pro sancta Pietas, pro gubernator poli et qui secundum fluctibus regnum moves, unde ista venit generis infandi lues? hunc Graia tellus aluit an Taurus Scythes Colchusque Phasis? redit ad auctores genus stirpemque primam degener sanguis refert. est prorsus iste gentis armiferae furor, odisse Veneris foedera et castum diu vulgare populis corpus, o tetrum genus nullaque victum lege melioris soli! ferae quoque ipsae Veneris evitant nefas, generisque leges inscius servat pudor.

Where now that face, that feigned majesty of a man, that bristling garb, affecting the old and ancient ways, the grim austerity of manners, the grave bearing? O treacherous life, you carry hidden feelings and clothe foul souls in a fair face: modesty cloaks the shameless, calm the reckless, piety the unspeakable; the false praise the true and the soft counterfeit the hard. You woodland-dweller, that savage, chaste, untouched, unschooled one — do you save yourself for me? From my bed first, and with so great a crime, did you choose to begin to be a man?

ubi vultus ille et ficta maiestas viri atque habitus horrens, prisca et antiqua appetens,’ morumque senium triste et affectus graves? o vita fallax, abditos sensus geris animisque pulchram turpibus faciem induis: pudor impudentem celat, audacem quies, pietas nefandum; vera fallaces probant simulantque molles dura. silvarum incola ille efferatus castus intactus rudis, mihi te reservas? a meo primum toro et scelere tanto placuit ordiri virum?

Now, now I give thanks to the power above, that Antiope fell, struck by my hand, that, going down to the Stygian caves, I did not leave your mother to you. A fugitive, far off, range through unknown nations: though a land removed to the world’s edge sunder you by the tracts of Ocean, and you dwell on the globe set against the soles of our feet, though, hidden in the innermost, farthest recess, you cross beyond the dread realms of the lofty pole and, set above the winters and the white snows, leave behind the roaring ruin of frozen Boreas raging at your back — you will pay the penalty for your crimes.

iam iam superno numiui grates ago, quod icta nostra cecidit Antiope manu, quod non ad antra Stygia descendens tibi matrem reliqui, profugus ignotas procul percurre gentes: te licet terra ultimo summota mundo dirimat Oceani plagis orbemque nostris pedibus obversum colas, licet in recessu penitus extremo abditus horrifera celsi regna transieris poli hiemesque supra positus et canas nives gelidi frementes liqueris Boreae ruinas post te furentes, sceleribus poenas dabis.

A fugitive, relentless, through every hiding-place I will hound you: far places, closed, secret, remote, pathless, I will traverse; no place will stand in my way. You know from where I return. Where weapons cannot be sent, there I will send my prayers. My sea-god father granted that I conceive three prayers to the god who fulfills them, and he ratified this gift, the Styx invoked.

profugum per omnis pertinax latebras premam: longinqua clausa abstrusa diversa invia emetiemur, nullus obstabit locus: scis unde redeam, tela quo mitti haud queunt, huc vota mittam, genitor aequoreus dedit ut vota prono terna concipiam deo. et invocata munus hoc sanxit Styge.

Come, fulfill the grim gift, ruler of the strait! Let Hippolytus see the bright day no more and let the youth go to the shades, angry at his father. Bring now your abominable aid to your son, father: never would I spend the last gift of your divinity, did not great evils press me hard: amid the depths of Tartarus and dread Dis and the looming threats of the king below, I spared my prayer. Now render the faith you pledged, father. You delay? Why are the waves still silent?

En perage donum triste, regnator freti! non cernat ultra lucidum Hippolytum diem adeatque manes iuvenis iratos patri, fer abominandam nunc opem gnato, parens: numquam supremum numinis munus tui consumeremus. magna ni premerent mala: inter profunda Tartara et Ditem horridum et imminentes regis inferni minas, voto peperci: redde nunc pactam fidem, genitor, moraris? cur adhuc undae silent?

Now, with the winds driving the black clouds, weave night beneath, snatch away the stars and the sky, pour forth the sea, rouse the multitude of the deep, and, swelling, summon the waves from the depths of Ocean.

nunc atra ventis nubila impellentibus subtexe noctem, sidera et caelum eripe, effunde pontum, vulgus aequoreum cie fluctusque ab imo tumidus Oceano voca.

O Nature, great parent of the gods, and you, ruler of fiery Olympus, who whirl the stars scattered through the swift world and snatch along the wandering courses of the constellations and turn the poles on their rapid pivot, why is it so great a care to you to drive forever the paths of the high air, so that now the cold of hoary winter strips the woods bare, now the shade comes back to the thickets, now the neck of the summer Lion ripens the grain with its great heat, and the year tempers its own strength?

O magna parens, Natura, deum tuque igniferi rector Olympi, qui sparsa cito sidera mundo cursusque vagos rapis astrorum celerique polos cardine versas, cur tanta tibi cura perennes agitare vias aetheris alti, ut nunc canae frigora brumae nudent silvas, nunc arbustis redeant umbrae, nunc aestivi colla leonis Cererem magno fervore coquant viresque suas temperet annus?

But why is it that you, who govern such great things, beneath whom the balanced masses of the vast world lead round their orbits, are absent, too careless of mankind, not anxious to help the good, to harm the wicked?

sed cur idem qui tanta regis, sub quo vasti pondera mundi librata suos ducunt orbes, hominum nimium’ securus abes, non sollicitus prodesse bonis, nocuisse malis?

Human affairs, in no order, Fortune rules, and has scattered with a blind hand her gifts, favoring the worse; dread lust conquers the holy, fraud reigns in the lofty hall.

res humanas ordine nullo Fortuna regit sparsitque manu munera caeca, peiora fovens; vincit sanctos dira libido, fraus sublimi regnat in aula.

The people rejoice to hand the rods of office to the base, and revere and hate the same men. Grim virtue has carried off, all perverted, the wages of the right: mean poverty dogs the chaste, and the adulterer, strong in his vice, reigns: O empty modesty and false honor!

tradere turpi fasces populus gaudet, eosdem colit atque odit. tristis virtus perversa tulit praemia recti: castos sequitur mala paupertas vitioque potens regnat adulter: o vane pudor falsumque decus!

But why does a messenger hasten with quickened step and water his mournful face with grieving cheeks?

Sed quid citato nuntius properat gradu rigatque maestis lugubrem vultum genis?

O bitter and harsh lot, heavy servitude, why does chance summon me to an unspeakable message?

O sors acerba et dura, famulatus gravis, cur me ad nefandum nuntium casus vocat?

Do not fear to tell out bravely the harsh disaster: I bring a heart not unprepared for sorrows.

Ne metue cladis fortiter fari asperas: non imparatum pectus aerumnis fero.

My tongue denies grief the words of woe.

Vocem dolori lingua luctificam negat.

Speak out what fate weighs down our shattered house.

Proloquere quae sors aggravet quassam domum.

Hippolytus, alas, lies fallen in a piteous death.

Hippolytus, heu me, flebili leto occubat.

That my son was dead, I, his father, knew long since: now the ravisher is dead. Tell out the order of his death.

Gnatum parens obisse iam pridem scio: nunc raptor obiit, mortis effare ordinem.

When, a fugitive, he left the city with hostile step, unrolling his swift course with quickened strides, he yoked the horses at once to the high car and bound their mouths, tamed, with the tightened reins. Then, saying much to himself, and cursing again and again his native soil, he calls upon his father, and, fierce, with the reins let loose, shakes the leather:

Vt profugus urbem liquit infesto gradu celerem citatis passibus cursum explicans, celso sonipedes ocius subigit iugo et ora frenis domita substrictis ligat. tum multa secum effatus et patrium solum abominatus saepe genitorem ciet acerque habenis lora permissis quatit:

when suddenly the vast sea thundered from the deep and rose toward the stars. No wind breathes upon the brine, no quarter of the calm sky roars, and a storm of its own drives the placid sea. Not so great a South Wind disturbs the Sicilian straits, nor does the Ionian gulf rise up so raging when the North-West reigns, when the rocks tremble with the surge and the white foam strikes the height of Leucate.

cum subito vastum tonuit ex alto mare crevitque in astra, nullus inspirat salo ventus, quieti nulla pars caeli strepit placidumque pelagus propria tempestas agit. non tantus Auster Sicula disturbat freta nec tam furens Ionius exsurgit sinus regnante Coro, saxa cum fluctu tremunt et cana summum spuma Leucaten ferit.

The huge sea rises into a vast mound, and the deep, swollen with a monster, rushes upon the land. Nor is so great a plague built up against ships: it threatens the land. The wave rolls forward with no light course. With its laden belly the heavy swell carries something I know not what. What land shows a new head to the stars? Does a new Cyclad arise? The rocks lay hidden, sacred to the god of Epidaurus, and the crags famed for Sciron’s crime, and the land that is pressed between two straits.

consurgit ingens pontus in vastum aggerem, tumidumque monstro pelagus in terras ruit. nec ista ratibus tanta construitur lues: terris minatur; fluctus haud cursu levi provolvitur: nescio quid onerato sinu gravis unda portat, quae novum tellus caput ostendit astris? Cyclas exoritur nova? latuere rupes numine Epidauri dei et scelere petrae nobiles Scironides et quae duobus terra comprirnitur fretis.

While, stunned, we ask these things, behold, the whole sea bellows, all the cliffs around resound; the topmost peak drips with the spray flung off, it foams and vomits the waters by turns, as the capacious whale, borne through the deep straits of Ocean, spouts the wave back from its mouth. The shaken globe of waters bristled, broke itself apart, and brought to the shore an evil greater than our fear. The sea rushes upon the land and follows its own monster — a trembling shakes my lips.

haec dum stupentes quaerimus, totum en mare immugit, omnes undique scopuli adstrepunt; summum cacumen rorat expulso sale. spumat vomitque vicibus alternis aquas qualis per alta vehitur Oceani freta fluctum refundens ore physeter capax., inhorruit concussus undarum globus solvitque sese et litori invexit malum maius timore, pontus in terras ruit suumque monstrum sequitur— os quassat tremor.

What was the look of that vast body! A bull, holding high his sea-blue neck, raised a tall mane on his greening brow; his shaggy ears stand up, his eyes’ rings varied in color — both such as the lord of a wild herd might have and such as one born beneath the waves: from here his eyes vomit flame, from here they gleam, marked with sea-blue; his rich neck lifts up its towering muscles, and his wide nostrils roar with gaping draughts; his chest and dewlap are green with clinging moss, his long flank is sprinkled with red weed;

quis habitus illi corporis vasti fuit! caerulea taurus colla sublimis gerens erexit altam fronte viridanti iubam; stant hispidae auris, orbibus varius color, et quem feri dominator habuisset gregis et quem sub undis natus: hinc flammam vomunt oculi, hinc relucent caerula insignes nota; opima cervix arduos tollit toros naresque hiulcis haustibus patulae fremunt; musco tenaci pectus ac palear viret, longum iubente spargitur fuco latus;

then behind, the hindmost part gathers into a monster’s shape, and the huge scaly beast trails an immense length. Such, on the farthest sea, is the sea-monster that gulps down or shatters swift ships.

tum pone tergus ultima in monstrum coit facies et ingens belua immensam trahit squamosa partem, talis extremo mari pistrix citatas sorbet aut frangit rates.

The lands trembled, the stunned herds fled this way and that through the fields, and the shepherd forgot to follow his own bullocks; every beast fled from the glade, every hunter, drained of blood with cold fear, shudders. Alone, untouched by fear, Hippolytus holds his horses with the tight reins and rouses the frightened beasts with the urging of his familiar voice.

tremuere terrae, fugit attonitum pecus passim per agros nec suos pastor sequi meminit iuvencos; omnis e saltu fera diffugit, omnis frigido exsanguis metu venator horret, solus immunis metu Hippolytus artis continet frenis equos pavidosque notae vocis hortatu ciet.

There is a high road to the fields, where the hills are broken, touching the neighboring stretches of the sea that lies below; here that great mass whets itself and makes ready its rage. When it had gathered its spirit, and, testing itself enough, had prepared its fury in rehearsal, it darts out in headlong course, its quickened step scarcely touching the surface of the ground, and, grim, stood before the trembling chariot.

est alta ad agros collibus ruptis via, vicina tangens spatia suppositi maris; hic se illa moles acuit atque iras parat. ut cepit animos seque praetemptans satis prolusit irae, praepeti cursu evolat, summam citato vix gradu tangens humum, et torva currus ante trepidantes stetit.

Against it, your son, rising up, menacing with fierce face, does not change his looks, and thunders aloud: ‘This empty terror does not break my spirit: for it is my father’s task, and mine, to conquer bulls.’

contra feroci gustus insurgens minax vultu nec ora mutat et magnum intonat: ’haud frangit animum vanus hic terror meum: nam mihi paternus vincere est tauros labor.’

At once the horses, disobedient to the rein, snatched off the chariot, and now straying from the road, wherever their frightened frenzy carried them, raging, that way they press on and drive themselves over the crags.

inobsequentes protinus frenis equi rapuere currum iamque derrantes via, quacumque rabidos pavidus evexit furor, hac ire pergunt seque per scopulos agunt.

But he, as a helmsman on a stormy sea holds back his ship, lest it give its side aslant, and by skill cheats the wave, in just such a way governs the swift chariot: now he drags their mouths, drawn tight with the reins, now, frequent, he checks their backs with the twisting lash. The companion follows close at hand, now keeping equal pace, now wandering across to meet him, on every side stirring terror.

at ille, qualis turbido rector mari ratem retentat, ne det obliquum latus, et arte fluctum fallit, haud aliter citos currus gubernat: ora nunc pressis trahit constricti frenis, terga nunc torto frequens verbere cohercet. sequitur adsiduus comes, nunc aequa carpens spatia, nunc contra obvius oberrat, omni parte terrorem movens.

No further flight was allowed: for full in their path, the horned horror of the sea charged with all its face. Then indeed the horses, roused in their frightened minds, shake off command and struggle to tear themselves from the yoke, and, rearing on their feet, fling off their load.

non-licuit ultra fugere: nam toto obvius incurrit ore corniger ponti horridus. tum vero pavida sonipedes mente exciti imperia solvunt seque luctantur iugo eripere rectique in pedes iactant onus.

Flung headlong on his face, he tangled in his fall his body in the clinging noose, and the more he fights, the tighter he binds the pursuing knots. The beasts felt the deed, and, with the car now light, none mastering it, they rush where fear has bidden. So once, through the air, not recognizing its own load, and indignant that the day had been trusted to a false Sun, the chariot shook Phaethon out of his wandering course.

praeceps in ora fusus implicuit cadens laqueo tenaci corpus et quanto magis pugnat, sequaces hoc magis nodos ligat. sensere pecudes facinus— et curru levi, dominante nullo, qua timor iussit ruunt. talis per auras non suum agnoscens onus Solique falso creditum indignans diem Phaethonta currus devio excussit polo.

Far and wide he bloodies the fields, and his battered head rebounds on the rocks. The brambles tear off his hair, and the hard stone ravages his beautiful face, and his ill-starred beauty perishes in many a wound. The swift wheels roll his dying limbs around; and at last a charred stake of a tree-trunk caught him as he was dragged, driven through the middle of his groin, the stock holding fast, and for a little the chariot stood, its master pinned.

late cruentat arva et inrisum caput scopulis resultat; auferant dumi comas, et ora duras pulchra populatur lapis peritque multo vulnere infelix decor. moribunda celeres membra pervolvunt rotae: tandemque raptum truncus ambusta sude medium per inguen stipite ingesto tenet, paulumque domino currus affixo stetit.

The yoked pair stuck fast at the wound — and at once they break both the delay and their master. From there the thickets cut his half-living body, the rough briars with their sharp brambles, and every tree-stump took its part of his body.

haesere biiuges vulnere— et pariter moram dominumque rumpunt, inde semanimem secant virgulta, acutis asperi vepres rubis omnisque truncus corporis partem tulit.

The mournful band of servants wanders through the fields, through those places where Hippolytus, torn apart, marks a long track with a bloody trace, and the grieving dogs track their master’s limbs. Not yet has the busy toil of the mourners been able to make the body whole.

errant per agros funebris famuli manus, per illa qua distinctus Hippolytus loca longum cruenta tramitem signat nota, maestaeque domini membra vestigant canes. necdum dolentum sedulus potuit labor

Is this the glory of his beauty? He who lately, the bright partner of his father’s rule and his sure heir, but now shone like the stars, is gathered, piece by piece, for the last pyre and made ready for his funeral.

explere corpus, hocine est formae decus? qui modo paterni clarus imperii comes et certus heres siderum fulsit modo, passim ad supremos ille colligitur rogos et funeri confertur.

O too powerful Nature, by how strong a bond of blood you hold parents, how we revere you, even against our will! I wished to kill the guilty one; I weep for him, lost.

O nimium potens, quanto parentes sanguinis vinclo tenes. natura, quam te colimus inviti quoque: occidere volui noxium, amissum fleo.

He is not free to rejoice in what he himself willed.

Gaudere non est ipse quod voluit potens.

Indeed I count this the greatest heap of woes, if chance makes things to be loathed into things to be wished.

Equidem malorum maximum hunc cumulum reor, si abominaiida casus optanda efficit.

And if you keep your hatred, why are your cheeks wet with weeping?

Et si odia servas, cur madent fletu genae?

I weep not that I killed him, but that I lost him.

Quod interemi non, quod amisi fleo.

How great the chances that spin human affairs! Fortune rages less among the small, and the god strikes the slighter things more lightly; obscure repose keeps the peaceful safe and the cottage keeps its old folk free of care.

Quanti casus humana rotant! minor in parvis Fortuna furit leviusque ferit leviora deus; servat placidos obscura quies praebetque senes casa securos.

Roofs brought near the seats of heaven catch the East Winds, catch the South Winds, the threats of mad Boreas and the rain-bearing North-West.

Admota aetheriis culmina sedibus Euros excipiunt, excipiunt Notos, insani Boreae minas imbriferumque Corum.

The moist valley suffers few strokes of the lightning: huge Caucasus trembled at the bolt of high-thundering Jove, and the Phrygian grove of mother Cybele: fearing for the high sky, Jupiter strikes what stands near it; the common house of a humble roof never takes the great upheavals.

Raros patitur fulminis ictus umida vallis: tremuit telo Iovis altisoni Caucasus ingens Plirygiurnque nemus matris Cybeles: metuens caelo Iuppiter alto vicina petit; non capit umquam magnos motus humilis tecti plebeia domus.

Around thrones he thunders.

circa regna tonat

On wavering wings the fleeting hour flies, and swift Fortune keeps faith with no one. This man, who, having left death behind, looks on the stars of the bright world and the shining day, mourns, grieving, his sorrowful return, and finds the welcome of his native home more to be wept than Avernus itself.

Volat ambiguis mobilis alis hora, nec ulli praestat velox Fortuna fidem, hic qui clari sidera mundi nitidumque diem morte relicta. luget maestos tristis reditus ipsoque magis flebile Averno sedis patriae videt hospitium.

Pallas, to be revered by the Attic race, because your Theseus looks on the sky and the gods above and has escaped the Stygian marshes, you owe nothing, chaste one, to your grasping uncle: the count stands full for the tyrant below.

Pallas Actaeae veneranda genti, quod tuus caelum superosque Theseus spectat et fugit Stygias paludes, casta nil debes patruo rapaci: constat inferno numerus tyranno.

What mournful voice sounds from the high roofs, and what does frenzied Phaedra make ready with drawn sword? What madness goads you, stricken with grief? What does that sword mean, what the outcry and the beating of the breast over a hated body?

Quae vox ab altis flebilis tectis sonat strictoque vaecors Phaedra quid ferro parat? Quis te dolore percitam instigat furor? quid ensis iste quidve vociferatio planctusque supra corpus invisum volunt?

Me, me, savage lord of the deep strait, assail, and against me send the monsters of the blue sea, whatever Tethys bears in her inmost gulf, whatever Ocean, enfolding in his wandering waves, covers with his farthest flood. O Theseus, ever harsh, O never to your own returned in safety: son and father have paid for your returns with death. You overturn your house, ever harming, by love of your wives or by hatred.

Me, me, profundi saeve dominator freti, invade et in me monstra caerulei maris emitte, quicquid intimo Tethys sinu extrema gestat, quicquid Oceanus vagis complexus undis ultimo fluctu tegit, o dure Theseu semper, o numquam ad tuos tuto reverse: gnatus et genitor nece reditus tuos luere; pervertis domum amore semper coniugum aut odio nocens. Hippolyte, tales intuor vultus tuos

Hippolytus, is it such a face of yours I look upon, and such have I made it? What savage Sinis, or what Procrustes scattered your limbs, or what Cretan bull, two-formed, fierce with its horned face, filling the Daedalian prison with its vast bellowing, tore you apart? Alas, where has your beauty fled, and your eyes, our star? You lie lifeless? Be present a little while and hear out my words — I speak nothing shameful: with this hand I will pay the penalty to you and drive the steel into my unspeakable breast, and strip Phaedra at once of her life and of her crime, and through the waves and the Tartarean pools, through Styx, through the rivers of fire, frantic, I will follow you.

talesque feci? membra quis saevus Sinis aut quis Procrustes sparsit aut quis Cresius, Daedalea vasto claustra mugitu replens, taurus biformis ore cornigero ferox divulsit? heu me. quo tuus fugit decor oculique nostrum sidus? exanimis iaces? ades parumper verbaque exaudi mea— nil turpe loquimur: hac manu poenas tibi solvam et nefando pectori ferrum inseram animaque Phaedram pariter ac scelere exuam, et te per undas perque Tartareos lacus. per Styga, per amnes igneos amens sequar.

Let us appease your shade: take the spoils of my head, receive the lock cut from my torn brow. It was not granted to join our souls; but surely it is granted to have joined our fates. Die, if you are chaste, for your husband; if unchaste, for your love. Shall I seek the marriage-bed of a spouse defiled by so great a crime? This impiety alone was wanting — that, with the bed avenged, you should enjoy it, holy and safe.

placemus umbras: capitis exuvias cape laceraeque frontis accipe abscisam comam. non licuit animos iungere, at certe licet iunxisse fata. morere, si casta es, viro; si incesta, amori, coniugis thalamos petam tanto impiatos facinore? hoc derat nefas, ut vindicato sancta fruereris toro.

O death, sole assuagement of love’s evil, O death, greatest glory of an injured honor, we flee to you: open your appeased embrace.

o mors amoris una sedamen mali, o mors ^pudoris maximum laesi decus, confugimus ad te: pande placatos sinus.

Hear me, Athens, and you, father, more deadly than the deadly stepmother: I told falsehoods, and the outrage that I myself, mad, had drunk down in my unsound heart, I lyingly invented. You punished an empty charge, father, and the chaste youth lies dead under an incestuous accusation, pure, guiltless — take back now your own true nature. My impious breast lies open to the just blade, and my blood pays funeral-offerings to the holy man.

Audite, Athenae, tuque, funesta pater peior noverca: falsa memoravi et nefas, quod ipsa demens pectore insano hauseram, mentita finxi. vana punisti pater, iuvenisque castus crimine incesto iacet, pudicus, insons— recipe iam mores tuos. mucrone pectus impium iusto patet cruorque sancto solvit inferias viro.

What you, a father, should do for a son snatched away, learn from a stepmother: to hide myself in the regions of Acheron.

Quid facere rapto debeas gnato parens. disce a noverca: condere Acherontis plagis.

Pale jaws of Avernus, and you, caverns of Taenarus, water of Lethe welcome to the wretched, and you, sluggish pools, seize the impious one and, sunk down, crush him with endless woes. Now come, savage monsters of the sea, now vast deep, whatever Proteus hides in the farthest gulf of the waters, and snatch me, exulting in so great a crime, into the deep eddies.

Pallidi fauces Averni vosque, Taenarei specus, unda miseris grata Lethes vosque, torpentes lacus, impium rapite atque mersum premite perpetuis malis, nunc adeste, saeva ponti monstra, nunc vastum mare, ultimo quodcumque Proteus aequorum abscondit sinu, meque ovantem scelere tanto rapite in altos gurgites,

And you, father, ever ready to assent to my anger, I am not worthy of an easy death — I who, with a strange slaughter, scattered my son piecemeal through the fields, and who, while I pursued a false outrage, a stern avenger, fell into a true crime. I have filled the stars and the shades and the waves with my crime: no further lot remains; the three realms know me.

tuque semper, genitor, irae facilis assensor meae, morte facili dignus haud sum qui nova natum nece segregem sparsi per agros quique, dum falsum nefas exsequor vindex severus, incidi in verum scelus. sidera et manes et undas scelere complevi meo: amplius sors nulla restat; regna me norunt tria.

For this did I come back? Did the way to the sky open, that I might see two funerals and a double death, that, wifeless and childless, I might burn on one torch the pyres of my child and of my marriage? Giver of black daylight, Alcides, send back to Dis your gift; restore to me the shades snatched away. Impious, in vain I call back on the death I left behind. Cruel contriver of slaughter, who devised deaths unwonted and savage, now exact upon yourself the just punishments.

In hoc redimus? patuit ad caelum via, bina ut viderem funera et geminam necem, caelebs et orbus funebres una face ut concremarem prolis ac thalami rogos? donator atrae lucis, Alcide, tuum Diti remitte munus; ereptos mihi restitue manes, impius frustra invoco mortem relictam— crudus et leti artifex, exitia machinatus insolita effera, nunc tibimet ipse iusta supplicia irroga.

Let a pine, its top forced down to touch the ground, then loosed to the sky, split me into two beams; or let me be flung headlong over the Scironian rocks? Heavier things I have seen, which Phlegethon bids the guilty, shut in, suffer, ringing them with its fiery flood: what punishment and what abode await me, I know.

pinus coacto vertice attingens humum caelo remissum findat in geminas trabes, mittarve praeceps saxa per Scironia? graviora vidi, quae pati clausos iubet Phlegethon nocentes igneo cingens vado: quae poena memet maneat et sedes, scio.

Guilty shades, give way, and on these, these shoulders, let the stone laid there weigh down my weary hands, the everlasting toil of the Aeolian old man; let the river mock me, lapping at my lips nearby; let the savage vulture leave Tityos and fly across to me, and let my liver ever grow again for the punishment; and you, father of my Pirithous, take your rest: let the wheel, that never stops as its circle turns, carry these limbs on its driving whirls.

umbrae nocentes, cedite et cervicibus bis, his repositum degravet fessas manus saxum, seni perennis Aeolio labor-, me ludat amnis ora vicina alluens; vultur relicto transvolet Tityo ferus meumque poenae semper accrescat iecur; et tu mei requiesce Perithoi pater: haec incitatis membra turbinibus ferat numquam resistens orbe revoluto rota.

Gape open, earth; receive me, dread chaos, receive me — this is the juster road for me to the shades: I follow my son — do not fear, you who rule the dead: I come chaste. Receive me into your eternal home, never to leave. My prayers do not move the gods; but if I were asking for crimes, how ready they would be!

dehisce tellus, recipe me dirum chaos, recipe, haec ad umbras iustior nobis via est: gnatum sequor— ne metue qui manes regis: casti venimus; recipe me aeterna domo non exiturum, non movent divos preces; at si rogarem scelera, quam proni forent.

Theseus, eternal time remains for laments: now pay the rites to your son, and quickly hide away the limbs foully scattered by the savage mangling.

Theseu, querelis tempus aeternum manet: nunc iusta nato solve et absconde ocius dispersa foede membra laniatu effero.

Here, here bring the remains of the dear body, and give me the weight and the limbs heaped together at random. Is this Hippolytus? I recognize my crime: I destroyed you. And lest I be guilty only once or alone, a father about to dare a crime, I called upon my father. See, I enjoy a father’s gift. O bereavement, bitter evil to my broken years! Embrace his limbs, and what is left of your son, poor wretch, leaning on him, warm with your grieving breast.

Huc, huc reliquias vehite cari corporis pondusque et artus temere congestos date. Hippolytus hic est? crimen agnosco meum: ego te peremi; neu nocens tantum semel solusve fierem, facinus ausurus parens patrem advocavi. munere en patrio fruor, o triste fractis orbitas annis malum! complectere artus, quodque de nato est super, miserande, maesto pectore incumbens fove.

Father, set in order the scattered limbs of the torn body, and restore to their place the wandering parts: here is the place for the strong right hand, here the left hand, skilled in handling the reins, must be laid: I know the marks of the left side.

Disiecta genitor membra laceri corporis in ordinem dispone et errantes loco restitue partes: fortis hic dextrae locus, hic laeva frenis docta moderandis manus ponenda: laevi lateris agnosco notas.

How great a part is still missing from my tears! Endure, trembling hands, the mournful office, and stay your copious weeping, dry cheeks, while a father counts out the limbs to his son and shapes the body. What is this, lacking form and foul, broken everywhere by many a wound? What part of you it may be I doubt; but it is a part of you: here, lay it here — not in its own place, but an empty one.

quam magna lacrimis pars adhuc nostris abest! Durate trepidae lugubri officio manus, fletusque largos sistite, arentes genae, dum membra nato genitor adnumerat suo corpusque fingit, hoc quid est forma carens et turpe, multo vulnere abruptum undique? quae pars tui sit dubito; sed pars est tui: hic, hic repone, non suo, at vacuo loco.

Is this that face, shining with starry fire, turning its hostile eyes aside? To this has the beauty fallen? O dread fates, O savage favor of the powers! Thus does a son return to his father, as prayed for? Here, take these last gifts of your father, you who must be borne to burial again and again; meanwhile let the fires receive these.

haecne illa facies igne sidereo nitens, inimica flectens lumina? huc cecidit decor? o dira fata, numinum o saevus favor! sic ad parentem natus ex voto redit? en haec suprema dona genitoris cape, saepe efferendus; interim haec ignes ferant.

Throw open the house, bitter with deadly slaughter: let all Mopsopia ring with loud laments. You, make ready the flame of the royal pyre; but you, through the fields, search out the wandering parts of the body. As for her, let the earth press her, buried deep, and let the soil lie heavy on her impious head.

Patefacite acerbam caede funesta domum: Mopsopia claris tota lamentis sonet, vos apparate regii flammam rogi; at vos per agros corporis partes vagas inquirite. istam terra defossam premat, gravisque tellus impio capiti incubet.

S eneca Entire

Phaedra

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