Amores II.14

Of what avail to fair woman to rest free from the burdens of war, nor choose with shield in arm to march in the fierce array, if, free from peril of battle, she suffer wounds from weapons of her own, and arm her unforeseeing hands to her own undoing?

She who first plucked forth the tender life deserved to die in the warfare she began. Can it be that, to spare your bosom the reproach of lines, you would scatter the tragic sands of deadly combat?

If vicious ways like this had found favour with mothers of olden time, the race of mortal men would have perished from the earth, and someone must have been found to cast abroad a second time in the vacant world the stones that were the first beginnings of our kind. Who would have crushed the might of Priam if divine Thetis of the waves had refused to bear the burden hers by due? Had Ilia slain the twins in her swelling bosom, 'twould have been doom to the founder of the City that rules the earth; had Venus laid rash hand to Aeneas in her heavy womb, the world to come would have been orphaned of its Caesars. You, too, though you were to be born fair, would have perished had your mother tried what you have tried; and I myself, though a death through love was to be my better fate, would never have seen the day had my mother slain me.

Why cheat the full vine of the growing cluster, and pluck with ruthless hand the fruit yet in the green? What is ripe will fall of its self — let grow what has once become quick; a life is no slight reward for a short delay. Ah, women, why will you thrust and pierce with the instrument, and give dire poisons to your children yet unborn? The maid of Colchis stained with the blood of her children, we condemn, and lament the murder of Itys by the mother who brought him forth : but each was a cruel parent, each had tragic reasons for avenging herself on the husband by shedding blood that she shared with him. Tell me, what Tereus provokes you on, what Jason, to pierce your bodies with aggrieved hand? This neither the tigress has done in jungles of Armenia, nor has lioness had the heart to destroy her unborn young; yet tender woman does it — but not unpunished; oft she who slays her own in her bosom dies herself. She dies herself, and is borne to the pyre with hair unloosed, and all who behold cry out : " 'Tis her desert! "

But may the words I am saying to you be carried away on the winds of heaven, and may my ominous speech have no ill end! Ye gods of mercy, grant she has sinned this once in safety, 'tis all I ask; for a second fault, let her bear her punishment.