Epistulae

flying from me you should lose your life. It is a costly hatred, and of too great amount, if you despise death while you endeavour to shun me. Soon the winds will cease, a calm succeed, and Triton, drawn by sea-green horses, wheel along the surface of the deep.

Oh! how I wish that you may also change with the winds! and surely it will be so, unless you have a heart harder than the knotted oak. What? as if yet unacquainted with the dangers of a raging sea, can you still trust in an element that has so often proved fatal to you? Were you even to weigh anchor, and sail along a level deep, an extensive ocean has still many dangers in store. Waves bear the vengeance of the Gods against the violators of vows; it is here that perfidy is overtaken by severe punishment; especially treachery in love; for Venus, the mother of soft and tender desires, is said to have sprung naked from the waves, that murmur round the island of Cythera. Though lost, I am anxious for your safety, and avoid doing hurt to one who has loaded me with injuries; I am afraid that my enemy shipwrecked may be overwhelmed in the raging sea. For Heaven's sake live; I would rather lose you thus than by the grave. Live, I say, and be rather the cause of my funeral. Suppose you are overtaken by a fierce whirlwind, (forbid, ye Gods, that my words carry in them any omen!) what thought or courage will you then exert? The perjuries of your deceitful tongue, and the thought of wretched Dido killed

by Phrygian perfidy, will then fly in your face. The mournful image of your forsaken wife will stand before your eyes, disconsolate and bloody, with hair disheveled. You will then own that you have met with your deserved fate, and think each flash of lightning aimed at you. Delay for a time your cruel flight, and tempt not the raging sea: a safe voyage will be the certain reward of your stay. If you are regardless of me, yet think of tender Iulus. It is enough for you to be branded as the cause of my death. What has Ascanius, what have the Gods deserved, that they who have so lately escaped the flames, should be exposed to perish amidst the waves? But neither do you bring your Gods with you; nor, as you falsely boasted, did your shoulders bear these sacred reliques, and a father, through flames and danger. You deceived me in all; nor am I the first credulous fool deluded by that perjured tongue, or the first who have suffered from a rash belief. If we ask after the mother of beautiful Iulus, we find that she fell deserted by a cruel and hard-hearted husband. These things you yourself related, and yet they made no impression: go on to torment me, since I so much deserve it; your punishment will be the less, be-

cause of my crime. Nor can I doubt that even your own Gods are offended: it is now the seventh winter that you have been tossed by land and sea. When the waves had thrown you on the shore, I welcomed you to my kingdom, and intrusted you with the government, scarcely knowing even your name. I most sincerely wish that I had confined myself to these kind offices alone, and that the fame of your having shared my bed were buried in eternal oblivion! That was the unhappy day of my ruin, when a sudden dark storm drove us into a hanging cave. I heard a strange voice, and fancied that the mountain Nymphs approved: alas! too late I now find, that the Furies presaged my unhappy destiny. Exact, O violated chastity, the vengeance due to injured Sichæus, to whom (wretch that I am!) I hasten full of shame and anxiety.

I preserve, in a little chapel of marble, a pious statue of Sichæus, wreathed with flowers and white wool. From this dome, I seemed to be four times called, and my dear husband (as I imagined) in a low hollow voice said, "Dido, come." I will come without delay. I who am thy wife, due to thee alone, will come; but with diffidence, because conscious of the wrong I have done you. Pardon my unhappy error:

I was mis-led by one formed to deceive. Let his attractions be the excuse of my folly. His mother a goddess, and the pious load of his aged sire, gave me hopes of a constant and unshaken husband. If I did err, yet my error claims an honorable excuse; suppose him faithful, and I might yield up my heart to him without a blush. The same fate which persecuted me before, continues still to harass me, and mars the quiet of my present hours. My husband fell murdered before the altars; and a bloody brother reaped his wealth, as the reward of that impious deed. I am banished from my own country, and forced to abandon the dear remains of my husband: pursued by my enemies, I take shelter in a foreign land. I was wafted to an unknown coast; and, having thus escaped from the cruelty of my brother and the dangers of the sea, I purchased the lands which I have made over to you. I built a city, and marked out my walls to such

an extent, as to raise the envy of the neighbouring states. Wars threaten me, though a helpless woman. I prepare to carry on a war with strangers, and with difficulty fortify my new city, and arm my troops. A thousand rivals make pretensions to my love, who all join in complaining, that they are slighted for the sake of this stranger. Why do you hesitate to deliver me a captive to Getulian Iarbas? I have put it in your power to use me thus basely. I have moreover a brother, whose wicked hands, already stained with the blood of my husband, may be stained also with mine. Leave your Gods, and those sacred reliques which were polluted by thy touch. An impious right-hand ill becomes the worship of the heavenly powers. The Gods disdain a sacrilegious homage: and, to avoid thy worship, would willingly return to perish in the Grecian flames. Perhaps, barbarous man, you abandon me in a state of pregnancy, and when a part of you lies hidden in my womb. The unhappy infant will share the fate of its mother; and you will prove the cause of death to one yet unborn. The brother