306I congratulate this land, that it lies far from those regions which gave birth to such an outrage. 307Let the Panchaean land be rich in amomum, let it bear its cinnamon and its costus and incense sweated from the wood and other flowers, so long as it bears the myrrh-tree too: the new tree was not worth so much. 311Cupid himself denies that his arrows harmed you, Myrrha, and clears his torches of that crime. 313One of the three sisters breathed on you with a Stygian brand and swollen vipers. 314It is a crime to hate a parent: this love is a greater crime than hatred. 315Chosen nobles desire you from every side, and the youth of the whole East is here to contend for your bed.
317Out of them all choose one man, Myrrha: so long as the one man is not among them all. 319She indeed is aware of it and fights against her foul love, and says to herself, 'Where is my mind carrying me? 320What am I attempting?' 320she says: 'Gods, I pray, and duty and the sacred rights of parents, forbid this outrage and stand in the way of my crime — if indeed this is a crime. 323But duty, it is said, does not condemn this love, and other animals mate without any wrong. 325Nor is it held shameful for a heifer to bear her father on her back; his own daughter becomes a horse's mate, the goat goes in to the flocks he has fathered, and the bird herself conceives by him from whose seed she was conceived.
329Happy are they to whom such things are allowed! 329Human care has made spiteful laws, and what nature allows, jealous rules forbid. 331Yet there are said to be peoples among whom both mother is joined with son and daughter with father, so that duty grows with doubled love. 334Wretched me, that it was not my lot to be born there, and I am harmed by the chance of place! 335— Why do I keep turning to such thoughts? 336Forbidden hopes, be gone! 336He is worthy to be loved, but as a father. 337— So if I were not the daughter of great Cinyras, I could lie with Cinyras; 339as it is, because he is already mine, he is not mine, and my very nearness is my loss: as a stranger I should have more power.
341I want to go far from here and leave the borders of my country, so long as I escape crime. 342A wicked passion holds me back as I love, so that I may see Cinyras face to face, and touch him and speak to him and kiss him, if nothing more is granted. 345But can you look for anything more, impious girl? 346And you feel how many laws and names you are confounding! 347Will you be both your mother's rival and your father's mistress? 348Will you be called sister of your son and mother of your brother? 349And will you not fear the sisters with black snakes for hair, whom guilty hearts see thrusting cruel torches at eyes and faces?
351But you, while you have not suffered the outrage in your body, do not conceive it in your mind, nor defile the covenant of mighty nature with a forbidden union. 354Suppose you were willing: the thing itself forbids it. 354He is dutiful and mindful of right custom — and oh, how I wish there were a like madness in him!' 356She had spoken, but Cinyras, whom a worthy abundance of suitors makes uncertain what to do, names them and asks her herself whose wife she wishes to be. 359She is silent at first, and, fixing her eyes on her father's face, she burns and floods her eyes with warm dew.
361Cinyras, believing this to be maidenly fear, tells her not to weep, dries her cheeks and kisses her. 363Myrrha rejoices too much at what is given: and when asked what kind of husband she would wish to have, she said, 'One like you.' 364But he praises her words, not understanding them, and says, 'Always be so dutiful.' 366At the word duty the girl, conscious of her crime, lowered her eyes. 368It was the middle of the night, and sleep had loosened cares and bodies. 369But Cinyras' daughter, wide awake, is consumed by an unconquerable fire and goes back over her mad desires. 371And now she despairs, now she wishes to try, and she is ashamed and desires, and cannot find what to do.
372And as a huge tree-trunk wounded by the axe, when the last blow remains, is uncertain where it will fall and is feared on every side: so her mind, weakened by varied wounds, sways lightly this way and that and takes impulse from either side. 377And no limit or rest for her love is found, except death. 378Death appeals. 378She rises and resolves to bind her throat in a noose, and, tying her girdle to the top of a door-post, 'Farewell, dear Cinyras, and understand the cause of my death!' 381she said, and was fitting the noose to her pale neck. 382They say the murmur of her words reached the faithful ears of her nurse, who was guarding the threshold of her foster-child.
384The old woman rises and unbars the door, and seeing the instruments of the death prepared, she cries out in the same moment, strikes herself, tears her clothes, and snatches the noose from her neck and rips it to pieces. 387Then at last there was time to weep, then to embrace her and ask the cause of the noose. 389The girl is silent, mute, and gazes motionless at the ground, and, caught, grieves at her attempt at a death too slow. 391The old woman presses on, and baring her white hairs and her empty breasts, begs her by her cradle and her first nourishment to entrust to her whatever grieves her.
393She turns away from her pleading and groans. 394The nurse is determined to find out, and not to promise loyalty only: 'Tell me,' she says, 'and let me bring you help; 396my old age is not sluggish. 397If it is madness, I have a woman who can heal it with charms and herbs; if someone has harmed you, you will be purified by a magic rite; if it is the anger of the gods, anger can be appeased by sacrifice. 400What more should I think? 400Surely your fortune and house are safe and prospering; your mother and father are alive.' 402Myrrha, hearing the word father, drew sighs from deep in her breast.
403Not even now does the nurse conceive any outrage in her mind, yet she senses some love; 405and holding to her purpose, she begs her to reveal to her whatever it is, and lifts her, weeping, onto her aged lap, and so embracing her limbs in her weak arms, says, 'I have perceived it: you are in love! 408but in this too my zeal (put away your fear) will serve you, and your father will never know of it.' 410She leapt from her lap in frenzy, and pressing her face into the couch, 'Go away, I beg you, and spare my wretched shame!' 412she says. 412When the nurse pressed her, she said, 'Go away, or stop asking what grieves me: it is a crime that you are striving to know.' 414The old woman shudders, and stretches out hands trembling with years and fear, and falls as a suppliant at her foster-child's feet, and now coaxes her, now, if she is not let into the secret, frightens her; 417and she threatens to reveal the noose and the attempted death, and promises her services to the love once it is confided.
419She raised her head and filled her nurse's breast with welling tears; 420and often trying to confess, she often checks her voice, and covered her ashamed face with her clothes, and said, 'O mother, happy in your husband!' 423That far, and she groaned. 423A chill tremor runs through the nurse's limbs and bones (for she understood), and her white hair stood on end over her whole head, bristling and stiff. 426And she added much, to drive out, if she could, the dreadful love: but the girl knows she is being given no false advice, yet she is resolved to die if she cannot have her love. 429'Live,' says the nurse, 'you shall have your —' and, not daring to say 'father', she fell silent, and confirms her promise by the gods.
431Married women were celebrating the yearly festival of kindly Ceres, at which, their bodies veiled in snow-white robes, they offer garlands of wheat-ears as the first-fruits of their crops, and for nine nights count love and the touch of a man among forbidden things. 435In that throng is Cenchreis, the king's wife, and she attends the secret rites. 437So, while the bed was empty of its lawful wife, the nurse, wickedly zealous, finding Cinyras heavy with wine, reveals a true love under a false name and praises the girl's looks. 440When he asked the girl's age, she said, 'The same as Myrrha's.' 441When she had been told to bring her, and had returned home, she said, 'Rejoice, my foster-child: we have won.' 443The unhappy girl does not feel joy in all her heart, and her foreboding breast grieves; 445but yet she rejoices too: so great is the discord in her mind.
446It was the hour when all things are silent, and among the Triones Bootes had turned his wain with its slanting pole: she comes to her crime. 448The golden moon flees from the sky, black clouds cover the hiding stars: night lacks its own fires. 450You, Icarus, are the first to hide your face, and Erigone, made sacred by her dutiful love for her father. 452Three times she was called back by the omen of a stumbling foot, three times the funereal owl gave an omen with its deadly song: yet she goes, and the darkness and black night lessen her shame; 455she holds the nurse's hand with her left, and with the other, groping, explores the blind way.
456Now she reaches the threshold of the chamber, now opens the doors, now is led inside: but her knees trembled and gave way beneath her, and both colour and blood fled, and her spirit leaves her as she goes. 460And the nearer she is to her crime, the more she shudders, and she repents of her daring, and would wish to be able to turn back unrecognised. 462As she hesitates, the aged woman leads her by the hand, and as she brought her to the high bed and handed her over, said, 'Take her, Cinyras, she is yours,' and joined the accursed bodies. 465The father receives his own flesh in the obscene bed, and soothes her girlish fears and encourages her as she trembles.
467Perhaps, because of her age too, he said 'daughter', and she said 'father', so that names might not be missing from the crime. 469Full of her father, she leaves the chamber and carries impious seed in her dreadful womb, and bears the crime she has conceived. 471The next night doubles the outrage. 471Nor is that the end: when at last Cinyras, eager to know his lover after so many unions, brought in a light and saw both the crime and his daughter, his words held back by grief, he snatches his gleaming sword from the scabbard hanging by him. 476Myrrha flees, and by the darkness and the gift of blind night is rescued from death: and wandering through the broad fields she left behind the palm-bearing Arabs and the Panchaean countryside; 479and she roamed through nine horns of the returning moon, when at last, weary, she rested in the Sabaean land; 481and she could scarcely carry the burden of her womb.
481Then, not knowing what to pray for, and between fear of death and weariness of life, she framed such prayers as these: 'O gods, if any of you are open to those who confess, I have deserved it and do not refuse a sad punishment. 485But so that I do not, surviving, defile the living, or, dead, the dead, drive me out of both realms, and change me, and deny me both life and death.' 488Some godhead is open to those who confess: certainly her last prayers found their gods. 489For as she speaks, earth comes over her legs, and through her bursting nails a slanting root stretches out, the support of a long trunk; 492her bones grow into hard wood, and while the marrow remains in the middle, her blood turns into sap, her arms into large branches, her fingers into small ones, her skin hardens into bark.
495And now the growing tree had bound her heavy womb, and buried her breast, and was preparing to cover her neck; she did not endure the delay, and sinking down to meet the coming wood, plunged her face in the bark. 499Though she has lost her former feelings along with her body, she weeps nonetheless, and warm drops flow from the tree. 501There is honour even in those tears, and the myrrh distilled from the trunk keeps its mistress's name and will be silent in no age. 503But the child, ill-conceived, had grown beneath the wood and was seeking a way by which to leave its mother and come forth: the pregnant belly swells in the middle of the tree.
506The burden strains the mother: and her pains have no words, nor can Lucina be called with the voice of one giving birth. 508Yet the tree is like one straining, and, bending, gives frequent groans and is wet with falling tears. 510Gentle Lucina stood by the suffering branches, and laid her hands on them, and spoke the words of childbirth. 512The tree splits, and through the cleft bark it yields its living burden, and the boy wails; 513the naiads laid him on soft grass and anointed him with his mother's tears. 515Even Envy would have praised his beauty. 515For such as are the bodies of naked Cupids painted on a panel, such was he: but, so that dress may make no difference, either give him light quivers or take theirs away.