Collected Works

Twenty tawny basins made of worked bronze:
And seven tripods, equal in weight and art.
Added to these were ten talents of gold:
And fourteen horses, always accustomed to win.
And what is superfluous, twelve women of Lesbos,
Of outstanding form, captured from their overturned home.
And with all these: but you have no need of a wife:
One girl, a wife from the three Agamemnonian women.
If I had to be redeemed by you at a price from the son of Atreus:
Why do you refuse to accept what you ought to have given?
By what guilt have I deserved to become cheap to you, Achilles?
How did light love flee from us so quickly?
Or does sad fortune tenaciously press the wretched?
And does no softer breeze come to my beginnings?
I saw the Lernean walls Lyrnessus pulled down by your war:
And I had been a great part of my country.
I saw three comrades, equal in both birth and death, fall:
Three for whom my mother was the same.
I saw my husband, how great he was, poured out on the bloody earth:
His chest heaving in blood.
Yet for so many lost, I compensated with you alone:
You were my master: you were my husband: you were my brother.
You yourself, sworn by the powers of my watery mother Thetis,
Used to say it was useful to have been captured.
Is it so that, although I come endowed, I might be repelled?
And that you flee with me, and the wealth that is given to you?
Moreover, there is a rumor that when tomorrow's hour shines,
You will give sails full to the cloud-bearing south winds.
When that wickedness reached my fearful ears, poor wretch that I am:
My chest was void of blood and spirit.
You will go: and, oh, to whom do you leave me, violent man?
Who will be a gentle relief for me, deserted?
I pray that I be devoured by a sudden gap in the earth:
Or burned by the red fire of a sent lightning bolt:
Before the seas turn white with Phthian oars without me:
And I see your ships go, left behind.
If returns and your ancestral hearths already please you:
I am not a heavy burden for your fleet.
I will follow the victor as a captive: not as a wedded wife.
I have a hand apt for softening wool.
And among the Achaean mothers, far the most beautiful,
A wife will go into your bridal chambers, and let her go:
A daughter-in-law worthy of your father-in-law, the grandson of Jove and Aegina,