LP0088 -XIV ARGNONAUTS- Canace & Medea, from Ovid's Heroides

Legendary Passages #0088 -XIV ARGNONAUTS- Canace & Medea, from Ovid's Heroides. Previously, Medea helped Jason win the golden fleece, they got married, and lived happily ever after. In this passage, however, with their marriage at an end, Medea recounts their first fateful meeting. But first, a letter to Marcareus from Canace, son and daughter of King Aeolus, and star-crossed lovers as well. Their forbidden love yields a son that they try to sneak out of the palace. But the newborn cries out and Canace is confronted by her father. King Aeolus orders the babe abandoned in the woods, and sends his daughter an honor blade to end her life. She bids Marcareus, brother and husband both, to bury her with their son, and then to remember her, and live on. Medea's letter to Jason begins several years after they moved to Corinth and had children. Leaving her by the wayside, Jason decides to marry the daughter of Creon. Medea, having betrayed her own family and country on Jason's behalf, is justifiably upset. She bitterly recalls their first encounter, lamenting her love at first sight. http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12 Canace & Medea, a Legendary Passage from, Publius Ovidius Naso, HEROIDES EPISTLES XI-XII, trans. by GRANT SHOWERMAN XI. CANACE TO MACAREUS If aught of what I write is yet blotted deep and escapes your eye, ‘twill be because the little roll has been stained by its mistress’ blood. My right hand holds the pen, a drawn blade the other holds, and the paper lies unrolled in my lap. This is the picture of Aeolus’ daughter writing to her brother; in this guise, it seems, I may please my hard-hearted sire. I would he himself were here to view my end, and the deed were done before the eyes of him who orders it! Fierce as he is, far harsher than his own east-winds, he would look dry-eyed upon my wounds. Surely, something comes from a life with savage winds; his temper is like that of his subjects. It is Notus, and Zephyrus, and Sithonian Aquilo, over whom he rules, and over thy pinions, wanton Eurus. He rules the winds, alas! but his swelling wrath he does not rule, and the realms of his possession are less wide than his faults. Of what avail for me through my grandsires’ names to reach even to the skies, to be able to number Jove among my kin? Is there less deadlines in the blade – my funeral gift! – that I hold in my woman’s hand, weapon not meet for me? Ah, Macareus, would that the hour that made us two as one had come after my death! Oh why, my brother, did you ever love me more than brother, and why have I been to you what a sister should not be? I, too, was inflamed by love; I felt some god in my glowing heart, and knew him from what I sued to hear he was. My colour had fled from my face; wasting had shrunk my frame; I scarce took food, and with unwilling mouth; my sleep was never easy, the night was a year for me, and I groaned, though stricken with no pain. Nor could I render myself a reason why I did these things; I did not know what it was to be in love – yet in love I was. The first to perceive my trouble, in her old wife’s way, was my nurse; she first, my nurse, said: “Daughter of Aeolus, thou art in love!” I blushed, and shame bent down my eyes into my bosom; I said no word, but this was sign enough that I confessed. And presently there grew apace the burden of my wayward bosom, and my weakened frame felt the weight of its secret load. What herbs and what medicines did my nurse not bring to me, applying them with bold hand to drive forth entirely from my bosom – this was the only secret we kept from you – the burden that was increasing there! Ah, too full of life, the little thing withstood the arts employed against it, and was kept safe from its hidden foe! And now for the ninth time had Phoebus’ fairest sister risen, and for the tenth time the moon was driving on her light-bearing steeds. I knew not what caused the sudden pangs in me; to travail I was unused, a soldier new to the service. I could