PROPERTIUS
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[1] It was Cynthia first with
her sweet little eyes that took me captive, poor wretch, previously assailed by
no shafts of desire. Then did Love cast down my looks of stubborn pride, and
trod my neck beneath his feet, till he taught me in his shamelessness to
despise chaste girls, and to live without a plan. And now even after a whole
year this madness of mine flags not, though I am forced to have the gods
against me. Milanion, Tullus, by shrinking from no toils, Tullus, crushed the
savagery of the harsh daughter of Iasus. For sometime he roamed madly in the
rocky glens of Parthenius, and went to brave the shaggy wild beasts. He too,
stricken by a wound from the club of Hylaeus, groaned wounded among the rocks
of Arcadia. Therefore was he able to tame the swift girl. Such is the power of
prayers and good deeds in love.
[3] As the girl from Cnossos
[Ariadne] lay relaxed in sleep on the deserted shore, while Theseus' ship
sailed away; and as Cepheus' daughter Andromeda reclined in her first sleep,
freed now from the harsh rocks; and as a Thracian woman, no less wearied by her
continual dancing, has fallen down on the grassy bank of the Apidanus: so
Cynthia appeared to me to be breathing softly in her sleep, resting her head on
outsprawled hands, when I came staggering in with drunken step, and the boys
were waving their torches late at night. Not yet wholly robbed of my senses, I
tried to go to her and lay myself gently upon her couch; and although I was seized
with two passions and was being urged on one side by Love, on the other by Wine
- each a hard god - to slip my hand gently beneath her as she lay, and
[bringing up my hand] to steal a kiss and venture a caress, still I dared not
disturb my mistress' rest, fearing the reproaches of a rage I had already
experienced; but I kept back, my eyes intently fixed on her, like Argus at the
first sight of the horns of Inachus' daughter. And now I was loosening the
chaplets from my forehead and placing them on your temples, Cynthia; and now I
was finding delight in shaping your disordered hair; now in my cupped hands I
was stealthily offering gifts of fruit; and all my gifts I was bestowing on
thankless sleep, gifts that often rolled away from your sloping lap; and each
time you heaved a sigh with a rare movement, I was terrified, believing the
empty omen, that some vision might be bringing you strange fears, or that
someone might be forcing you against your will to be his: until the moon,
gliding by the windows opposite - the officious moon with light that would have
lingered - with gentle beams opened her shut eyes. Thus she spoke, resting her
elbow on the soft couch: "Has another woman's harshness brought you back
at last to my bed and driven you from her closed doors? Where have you spent
the long hours of my night, wearied now, when the stars, alas, have run their
course? I pray that you, reprobate, may live through such nights as you always
bid me pass in sorrow! For now I tried to hold off sleep by my purple embroidery,
and again, though weary, by the music of Orpheus' lyre; sometimes, alone and to
myself, I softly complained of your long and frequent lingering in another's
embrace: until I sank down and sleep touched me with his pleasing wings. That
was the final remedy for my tears.