Collected Works

We believed your tears: or are they taught to feign?
These too have their arts: they go wherever they are bidden.
We believed the gods too: what use are so many pledges to us now?
I could have been taken by any part of my fate.
Nor am I moved that I helped you with a harbor and a place:
This should have been the sum of my merit.
I regret having shamefully filled the guest-chamber with a marriage bed:
And having pressed my side against your side.
I would that the night before that one had been my last:
While I, Phyllis, could have died honorable.
I hoped for better: because I thought you had deserved it.
Whatever hope comes from merit, comes justly.
It is no laborious glory to deceive a trusting girl:
My simplicity was worthy of favor.
I have been deceived, both as a lover and as a woman, by your words.
May the gods grant that this be the sum of your praise.
And may you be set up in the middle of the city among the original: "aegidas" statues of heroes/demigods.
May your father stand before it, magnificent in his titles:
When Sciron has been read, and grim Procrustes,
And the border, and the man with the bull’s mixed form the Minotaur.
And Thebes conquered by war, and the double-limbed ones routed the Centaurs:
And the dark king’s blind palace struck the Underworld.
May your image be marked with this title after them:
"Here is he, by whose deceit a loving hostess was captured."
Of such a great crowd of deeds, and of your parent’s acts:
The girl from Crete Ariadne has settled in your mind.
The only thing you imitate in him is what he excuses.
You act as the heir to your father's treacherous fraud.
She (and I do not envy her) enjoys a better husband:
And she sits high, drawn by harnessed tigers.
But my Thracians flee from a despised marriage:
Because it is said that I preferred a foreigner to my own people.
And someone says, "Now let him go to learned Athens;
There will be another to rule warlike Thrace."
The outcome proves the deeds: I pray that he lacks success,
Whoever thinks that deeds are to be judged by their outcome.
But if our seas were foaming with your oar:
Then I would be said to have looked after my people.
But I have not looked after them, nor does my kingdom touch you:
And you will wash your weary limbs in Bistonian water.
That image of you departing clings to my eyes:
When the fleet about to leave pressed against my harbors.
You dared to embrace me: and infused into the neck of your lover