Читать книгу Ars Amatoria; or, The Art Of Love онлайн | страница 10

Her chamber abandoned, the queen is borne over the groves and the forests, just as a Bacchanal impelled by the Aonian God. Alas! how oft with jealous look does she eye a cow, and say, "Why is she thus pleasing to my love? See how she skips before him on the tender grass! I make no doubt that the fool thinks that it is becoming to her." Thus she spoke, and at once ordered her to be withdrawn from the vast herd, and, in her innocence, to be dragged beneath the bending yoke; or else she forced her to fall before the altars, and rites feigned for the purpose; and, with joyous hand, she held the entrails of her rival. How often did she propitiate the Deities with her slain rivals, and say, as she held the entrails, "Now go and charm my love!" And sometimes she begged that she might become Europa, sometimes Io; because the one was a cow, the other borne upon a bull. Still, deceived by a cow made of maple-wood, the leader of the herd impregnated her; and by the offspring was the sire 754 betrayed.

If the Cretan dame 755 had withheld from love for Thyestes (alas! how hard it is for a woman possibly to be pleasing to one man only!) Phoebus would not have interrupted his career in the midst, and, his chariot turned back, retreated, with his returning steeds, to the morn. The daughter, who spoiled 756 Nisus of his purple locks, presses beneath her thigh and groin the raving dogs. The son of Atreus, who escaped from Mars by land, and Neptune on the waves, was the mournful victim of his wife. By whom have not been lamented the flames 757 of the Ephyrean Creusa? Medea, the parent, too, stained with the blood of her children? Phoenix, the son of Amyntor, 758 wept with his blinded eyes; you, startled steeds, tore Hippolytus in pieces. Why, Phineus, dost thou tear out the eyes of thy guiltless sons? 759 That punishment will revert to thy own head.

All these things have been caused by the passion of females. It is more violent than ours, and has more frenzy in it. Come then, and doubt not that you can conquer all the fair: out of so many, there will be hardly one to deny you. What they yield, and what they refuse, still are they glad to be asked for. Even if you are deceived, your repulse is without danger. But why should you be deceived, since new pleasures are delightful, and since what is strange attracts the feelings more than what is one's own? 760 The crop 761 of corn is always more fertile in the fields of other people; and the herds of our neighbours have their udders more distended.