Epistulae

many artifices. You would gladly release me from the promise I made of being joined to you for ever, and wish that the Goddess herself might also cease to exact the performance. Perhaps too you might endeavour to make me swear the contrary of my former oath, and throw at me another form of words, to be in like manner read over. Yet I could wish that according to your request you might see me, and learn the feeble condition of one whom you wish for your bride. Had you a heart, Acontius, more hard than steel, yet you could not forbear addressing the Gods in my behalf. But not to keep you ignorant of the only means left to restore me to my health, recourse has been had to the God who predicts futurity at Delphi. He also, as fame reports, complains of broken vows. This a God, this a poet, this even my own lines proclaim. But nothing of that kind is wanting to give force to your wishes. Whence all this favor to you? unless perhaps you have found the secret to bind the Gods themselves by a new form of words. If you thus find the Gods propitious, it is fit that I submit to their will, and, as they have made you their choice, make you also mine. I have already acquainted my mother with the vow into which you artfully betrayed me; keeping my eyes, full of shame, fixed all the time upon the ground. The rest must be left to your care: it is even more than becomes a virgin, that I have thus ventured to make known my sentiments to you by a letter. My feeble fingers are now sufficiently tired by the pen, and my sickly hand is unable to bear longer fatigue. What remains for me to write, but that it is now my wish to be for ever thine? Farewell.