This letter your Penelope sends to you, Ulysses, who are slow to return; It is of no use that you write back to me: come yourself!
Troy surely lies in ruins, hated by the Greek girls; Priam and the whole of Troy were scarcely worth so much.
Oh, would that then, when he was seeking Lacedaemon with his fleet, the adulterer had been overwhelmed by the raging waters!
§1.7Non ego deserto iacuissem frigida lecto, §1.8Nec quererer tardos ire relicta dies; §1.9Nec mihi quaerenti spatiosam fallere noctem §1.10Lassaret viduas pendula tela manus.
Then I would not have lain cold in a deserted bed, nor, left behind, would I complain that the slow days go by; nor, as I seek to beguile the vast night, would the hanging web weary my widowed hands.
§1.11Quando ego non timui graviora pericula veris?
When did I not fear dangers heavier than the real ones?
§1.12Res est solliciti plena timoris amor.
Love is a thing full of anxious fear.
I imagined the violent Trojans would rush against you; At the name of Hector, I was always pale.
§1.15Sive quis Antilochum narrabat ab hoste revictum, §1.16Antilochus nostri causa timoris erat; §1.17Sive Menoetiaden falsis cecidisse sub armis, §1.18Flebam successu posse carere dolos.
Whether someone told that Antilochus was conquered by the enemy, Antilochus was the cause of our fear; or that the son of Menoetius had fallen in false armor, I wept that wiles could lack success.
Tlepolemus had warmed the Lycian spear with his blood; by the death of Tlepolemus my anxiety was renewed.
In short, whoever was slain in the Achivan camp, the breast of your lover was colder than ice.
§1.23Sed bene consuluit casto deus aequus amori.
But a just god well consulted for a chaste love.
§1.24Versa est in cineres sospite Troia viro.
Troy is turned to ashes, while my husband is safe.
The Argive leaders have returned, the altars smoke; foreign spoil is laid before our ancestral gods.
Young wives bring grateful gifts for their safe husbands; they sing of the Trojan fates conquered by their own.
Righteous old men and trembling girls marvel; the wife hangs on the lips of her narrating husband.
§1.31Atque aliquis posita monstrat fera proelia mensa, §1.32Pingit et exiguo Pergama tota mero: §1.33'Hac ibat Simois; haec est Sigeia tellus; §1.34Hic steterat Priami regia celsa senis.
And someone, the table being set, shows the fierce battles, and paints all Pergama with a little wine: 'Here went the Simois; this is the Sigean land; here had stood the lofty palace of old Priam.
§1.35Illic Aeacides, illic tendebat Ulixes; §1.36Hic lacer admissos terruit Hector equos. ' §1.37Omnia namque tuo senior te quaerere misso §1.38Rettulerat nato Nestor, at ille mihi.
There the descendant of Aeacus, there Ulysses pitched his tent; here mangled Hector terrified the galloping horses.' For the elderly Nestor had related all these things to your son, who was sent to seek you, and he in turn to me.
He related also that Rhesus and Dolon were slain with the sword, and how the former was betrayed by sleep, the latter by guile.
§1.41Ausus es — o nimium nimiumque oblite tuorum! — §1.42Thracia nocturno tangere castra dolo §1.43Totque simul mactare viros, adiutus ab uno!
You dared — oh, too, too forgetful of your own! — to enter the Thracian camp with nightly guile, and to slaughter so many men at once, aided by only one!
§1.44At bene cautus eras et memor ante mei!
Yet you were very cautious and mindful of me beforehand!
My heart trembled continually with fear, until as a victor you were said to have gone through the friendly camp with Ismarian horses.
§1.47Sed mihi quid prodest vestris disiecta lacertis §1.48Ilios et, murus quod fuit, esse solum, §1.49Si maneo, qualis Troia durante manebam, §1.50Virque mihi dempto fine carendus abest?
But what does it profit me that Ilios has been demolished by your arms, and that what was a wall is now flat ground, if I remain just as I remained while Troy was standing, and my husband is absent, to be lacked by me without end?
Pergama has been destroyed for others, but for me alone it remains, which the victorious settler plows with captured oxen.
§1.53Iam seges est, ubi Troia fuit, resecandaque falce §1.54Luxuriat Phrygio sanguine pinguis humus; §1.55Semisepulta virum curvis feriuntur aratris §1.56Ossa, ruinosas occulit herba domos.
Now there is a crop where Troy was, and to be cut down by the sickle, the soil, fertile with Phrygian blood, grows luxuriantly; the half-buried bones of men are struck by curved plows, and the grass covers the ruined homes.
As a victor you are absent, nor is it allowed to me to know what is the cause of your delay, or in what part of the world you, unfeeling man, are hiding!
§1.59Quisquis ad haec vertit peregrinam litora puppim,
Whoever turns his foreign ship to these shores,