Reading on Theseus and Ariadne
Catullus 64 (trans. T. Banks)
These lines come from a description of the wedding tapestry at the
marriage of Peleus and Thetis (again with the weaving!)
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This cloth, adorned with humanity's pristine images,
shows
with stunning art the greatness of heroes.
Yes, looking
out from the surf-booming shore of island Dia--
at Theseus
departing with his swift fleet--is gazing
Ariadne,
carrying uncontrollable rage in her heart.
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Not yet
does she believe she sees what she sees--
since
she, just then first aroused from treacherous sleep,
discovers
herself abandoned, pitiful, on lonely sand.
Yet, unmindful,
the youth pushes the waves with his oars;
escaping;
leaving his worthless word to the laughing gale.
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The Minoan
girl, at seaweed's edge, stares far, far out at him
with suffering
eyes. Like a Bacchante's stone statue she stares out--
how sad!--and
she swirls in great billows of hurt:
blond
hair not in place under delicate scarf,
bosom
not covered by thin outer dress,
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milk-white
breasts not bound under smooth inner dress.
All cloth,
from her whole body fallen,
the salt
tide sports with at her feet.
But not
then for the fate of her scarf, not then for her swirling dress
does she
care, Theseus: with all her heart, with all her spirit,
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with all
her mind the forlorn girl needs you.
Ah, poor
girl, with what ceaseless griefs rough Venus
threw
you down. She sowed in your heart the nettles of hurt
on that
day--from that day--when fierce Theseus
left the
curved shores of Piraeus, Athenian harbor,
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and reached
the Cretan palace of unjust King Minos.
Once, they say, King Cecrops' Athens was forced by cruel
plague
to pay the price for Androgeos' murder: was accustomed
to give
chosen youths and the loveliness of unwed maids
together
as feast for the Minotaur.
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Since
his narrow city walls were shaken by these evils,
Theseus
himself, for the sake of his dear Athenians, yearned
to put
forth his own body, rather than let such living dead
of Cecrops'
land be borne to Crete.
Thus,
then, firm in the light ship, in gentle breezes,
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he came
to proud Minos and his haughty palace.
No sooner
did Princess Ariadne gaze at him with glowing eye--
she whom
her chaste little bed that sighed sweet scents
had raised
in her mother's soft embrace
(scents
like the myrtles the streams of River Eurotas engender
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or like
the spectrum of colors the spring breeze brings forth)--
no sooner
did she lower from him her incandescent eyes
than she
conceived throughout her body a flame,
and totally,
to the center of her bones, she burned.
Alas,
while you stirred her pitiful ragings with a pitiless heart,
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O divine
Cupid, boy who mixes humans' joys with hurts,
and you,
Venus, who reign over the Golgi and leafy Idalium,
on what
billows you tossed the girl, her mind aflame,
sighing
over and over for her blond guest!
How great
the fears she bore in her barely beating heart,
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how much
paler than the gleam of gold she turned
when he,
desiring to battle the fierce Minotaur,
sought
either death or the rewards of honor.
She, not displeasingly to the gods, but still in vain,
put forth
her little offerings, lit her votives, silent-lipped.
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Just as
on the peak of Mount Taurus the untameable tornado,
twisting
with its blast the strength of the limb-tossing oak,
or of
the cone-bearing, pitch-oozing pine,
wrenches
it out, and strewn far and from the root
it falls
headlong, shattering anything in its way,
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even thus
did Theseus fell the beast, its body tamed,
goring
its horns through empty winds to no avail.
Safe,
then, and in high honor, he reversed himself.
He guided
his wandering steps with Ariadne's thin thread
so that,
as he left labyrinthine bends,
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invisible
deception would not delude him.
Why, though, would I depart from my poem's first theme
to describe
still more... to describe how the daughter left behind
her sire's
gaze, her sister's embrace, and at last her mother's
(the mother
rejoicing so futilely in her poor child)--
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how over
all these Ariadne chose the sweet love of Theseus?
Or how
she came by ship to Island Dia's surf and shore?
Or how
her husband, going away with a heedless heart, left her
while
her bright eyes were conquered by sleep?
Many times
she, insane, they say, from her burning passion
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poured
out words that howled from her deepest heart;
that she
in her sadness would then climb the steep mountains
to extend
her gaze across the huge seethings of the ocean;
that then
she ran out to the incoming waves of the shimmering
salt sea,
lifting soft skirts above her bare calves,
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pitiful,
and make her last accusations
her face
wet, fighting shivering sobs.
"So you've left me--you traitor! Me, taken from my family
altars--you
traitor! On a deserted beach! Theseus!
So you
go away, the power of the gods ignored,
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heedless--ah,
accursed the false promises you are bringing home.
Could
no fact bend your cruel mind's plan?
Was there
no mercy in you at all
--vicious!--so
your heart might pity me?
But this
isn't what you once promised me
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with your
seductive voice. You didn't urge me to hope for this!
You said
a happy marriage! You said our longed-for wedding!
All of
those mockeries the wind and air are shredding.
From now
on let no woman believe a man's sworn promises.
From now
on let no woman hope a man's talk is true.
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So long
as their desiring minds are eager to get something,
they swear
to anything. No promise do they spare .
But as
soon as the lust in their desirous intent is gratified,
they remember
nothing they said, they care nothing for their lies.
"Naturally I saved you, when you were involved in the center
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of death's
tornado. I decided to lose my own brother
before
I'd let you down in your ultimate crisis--you liar.
In return
for that, I'm given to the beasts and birds to be torn apart:
carrion,
without burial, without even the ritual handful of earth.
What lioness
was it that birthed you beneath a desert cliff?
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What sea
spat your fetus forth from its foaming waves?
What quicksand
Syrtis? What snatching Scylla? What monstrous
Charybdis?--you
giving gifts like these in return for sweet life!
If our
wedding was not to your heart's liking
because
you shied from a stern father's principles,
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well,
you still could have brought me into your palace
to be
a household slave for you in welcome labor,
to soothe
your white soles with clear spring waters,
to spread
your bed with crimson cover.
"But why do I, prostrated by evil, complain vainly to unknowing
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winds
which, not gifted with senses,
cannot
hear or answer the words I send?
But that
man by now involves himself in the middle of the sea.
There's
no human in sight on this empty beach.
Savage
luck, all too triumphant in my last hour,
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begrudges
ears for my wailings.
All-powerful
Jupiter, how I wish from the start
the Athenian
ships had never touched the Cretan shores!
That the
traitorous sailor, bringing deadly payment to Minos'
untamed
bull, had never tied his mooring on Crete!
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That this
bad man hiding cruel plans under his sweet appearance
had never
rested in our palace--a guest!
But where
am I to go? Doomed, what sort of hope do I hold to?
Am I to
try for the Idaean mountains of Crete? No, severing me
by wide
abyss, the nasty swell of the sea comes between.
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Am I to
hope for father's help, when I myself left him
and followed
a young man spattered with my brother's gore?
Am I to
console myself with my husband's faithful love--
the one
who is running away, arching lithe oars in the abyss?
So then:
a lone island, planted with no shelter.
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No passage
away from sea lies open, since the waves surround.
There's
no idea of escape, no hope. All is mute.
All is
empty. All points to extinction.
Yet my
eyes will not cloud in death,
feeling
will not leave my exhausted body,
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before
I--betrayed!--demand just vengeance by the gods
and entreat
the good faith of those above in my last hour.
Therefore,
you that punish with avenging price men's crimes,
Furies,
Eumenides, whose brows, bound with serpents for tresses,
announce
the rages of your panting chests,
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Be here!
Be here! Respond to my complaints
which
I--pitiful I--am forced to bring out from my very bones,
helpless,
burning, blind with mindless rage.
Since
those are true-born from my deepest heart,
do not
allow my suffering to gutter out.
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Goddesses,
may the same intent that left me behind, alone,
defile
Theseus himself and his own with death."
After she
poured out these words from her aching heart--
demanding,
though scared, punishment for savage crimes--
the ruler
of gods, with his unconquerable godhead,
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nodded
assent. With that nod the earth and the rough sea
shook.
The cosmos brandished flaming meteors.
Then great Theseus, with blinding smoke planted in his mind,
dropped
from his forgetful heart all orders
which
before he had held in constant mind.
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He did
not raise for his sad parent the sweet symbols
to show
that he called safe at Erechtheus' port.
For they say that once, as Aegeus entrusted to the winds
his child
who was leaving goddess Athena's walls by ship,
he embraced
the young man and gave him these orders.
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"My only child and more pleasure to me by far than life,
child
that I'm forced to send into uncertain perils,
child
only now come back at the last of my old age:
Since
my luck, and your hot bravery,
snatch
you from me against my will--my dimming eyes not yet
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filled
with my son's dear form--
not rejoicing
with happy heart shall I send you,
nor shall
I let you carry symbols of favorable luck,
but first
I shall wring from my heart many laments,
befoul
my white hair with earth and the pouring of dust.
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Then I
shall hang stained sails from the swaying mast,
as what
befits my griefs and torched intent
is linen
sailcloth dark with rust-red Iberian dye.
But if
Athena, templed at holy Itonus, who before has nodded assent
to defend
our lineage and the throne of Erechtheus,
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grants
you may splatter your right arm with the blood of the bull,
then see
that these orders stay strong, secured in your mindful heart,
and let
no span of time blot them out.
Immediately
when your eyes look again on our hills,
let your
yard-arms lower the cloth defiled with mourning,
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let the
twisted ropes raise sails gleaming white
so with
happy heart I may discern my joy as soon as it can be,
when a
fortunate time will bring you restored from exile."
These orders left Theseus--though he'd held them before
in constant
mind--as clouds beaten by the blast of the winds
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leave
a snow-capped mountain's airy summit.
His father,
seeking a glimpse from the top of the citadel,
using
up his worried eyes in endless weeping,
no sooner
spotted the cloth of the wind-filled sail,
than he
threw himself headlong from the height of the cliff,
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believing
Theseus lost to pitiless fate.
Thus fierce Theseus, entering the halls of his father's house
now stained
with death, received for himself the sort of grief
he had
brought with unmindful heart to the Minoan girl.
She, then,
pitifully looking out at the receding boat,
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wounded,
was spinning convoluted cares in her mind.
Then came swooping from somewhere Bacchus in his prime
with his
cult of Satyrs, with his mountain-born Sileni,
seeking
you, Ariadne, aflame with love for you.
Then too
came raving, quick and everywhere, molten of mind,
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with a
"Bacchus!" the Bacchantes, with a "Bacchus!" convulsing
their
heads. Some brandished ivy spears with leafy points.
Some tossed
pieces of a ripped-apart bullock.
Some wreathed
themselves with coiled snakes.
Some with
deep baskets were celebrating mysterious rites,
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rites
that the uninitiate desire in vain to hear.
Others
were striking drums, their palms raised high
or were
stirring shrill chimes with polished brass cymbals.
Horns
were blowing hoarse blasts from many mouths
and primitive
flutes squealed a bristling tune.