Whichsoever of them it might be, he was certainly gifted with extraordinary power for tormenting me to an extreme degree. Therefore this did not befall me on account of any sin I had committed. If, indeed, it was the gods who visited me with such infinite punishment for such a fault, they would be acting against their righteous judgment and their usual custom, for they would not be making the punishment to fit the sin, but rather inflicting a punishment that was beyond measure greater than the sin.
Whoever compares the sin of Jocasta and its punishment with my sin and its punishment, will surely come to the conclusion that her punishment was very light, and that mine will be notorious for its excessive severity. And let not any lady cling to a different opinion, saying:
“She lost her kingdom, her sons, and, finally, her life, while this lady lost only her lover.”
Certainly, I confess that all this is true. But, then, my fortunes were so bound up with this lover that when he forsook me all happiness forsook me as well. For everything that seemed to render me happy in the eyes of men was to me, on the contrary, a source of misery and not of happiness; seeing that my husband, kinsfolk, wealth, and other such things were all an exceedingly heavy weight on my spirits and the direct opposite to that for which I yearned.
If my lover, as soon as he carried me off, had carried off all these things, there would yet remain to me a most open way to the satisfaction of my desire, and, if there were not, a thousand different modes of dying would have presented themselves to my mind, any one of which I could employ to end my woes. Therefore, I have proved that my punishment has been much more grievous than that of any of the afore-mentioned ladies, and this opinion of mine is based on sound judgment.
Then came to my mind Hecuba, and meseemed that her fate, too, was dolorous beyond measure. It was her ill-starred destiny to behold the ruined and most lamentable remains of a great kingdom; to behold an illustrious city become the abode of wretchedness; to behold a noble spouse slaughtered before her eyes, and many fair sons, and beautiful daughters, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, all slain or taken captive; and to witness great wealth destroyed, and grandeur vanishing, and allied kings cut to pieces, and other cruel deeds, and her scattered people, and the falling temples, and the fugitive gods! How often must she have recalled to her tortured mind in her old age the mighty Hector, and Troilus, and Deiphobus, and Polydorus, and many others of her brave sons!
And what anguish must have been hers when she brooded over their fate, recollecting that she had seen them all die, that she had witnessed the blood of her husband bespattering her very bosom, had looked on while Troy, filled with lofty palaces and with a noble people, was being burned with Grecian fire and all leveled with the ground! Her daughter Polyxene was cruelly slaughtered by Pyrrhus on the tomb of his father! Oh, what a bleeding heart must she not be thought to have had when she surveyed all this! Certainly I am quite convinced her agony was extreme. Ay, but then it was brief.
Her feeble and aged spirit, unable to endure such scenes, became disordered, and madness seized her, as might be plainly discerned from the fact that she coursed across the fields, barking like a dog. But I, on the contrary, have a firm and retentive memory, and, to my great misfortune, am in full possession of my judgment (Oimè! would that I were not!), and so I can plainly discriminate between the causes of my disastrous condition. Now, in my judgment, an affliction that continues for a very long period, no matter how light that affliction may seem to be, is much more grievous—and this I have often said already—than any affliction, however heavy, which ends and is over in a short time; this I know to be true beyond any doubt.
Sophonisba, dazed between the gloom of her widowhood and the gayety of her nuptials, found herself at one and the same moment in sorrow and in joy, at once prisoner and spouse, despoiled of a kingdom and winning a kingdom, and yet withal, in a brief time, compelled to quaff the cup of poison sent her by her second husband. In sooth, she has always appeared to me to have had her full share of anguish. She saw herself at first a most glorious Numidian queen; then when the prospects of her kindred turned out disastrous, she saw her husband, Syphax, a captive in the hands of Masinissa, and, immediately after she had lost her royal state, behold that king at once restored it by making her his wife!
Oh, how indignant must her soul have been as she gazed on these mutations of destiny! What changes must she not have imagined that fickle Fortune had still in store for her when she celebrated that new marriage with a sad heart, not being at all sure of the future! And Io! a day had scarcely elapsed after her espousals, when, before she had time to become as habituated to the new love of Masinissa as she had been to the old love of Syphax, she received the fatal draught from a servant sent by her second spouse, and, first uttering a few scornful words, fearlessly drank it, breathing her last sigh after a few moments! How bitter would have been her sufferings if she had been allowed time to meditate upon them!
But she was not: she had very little time given her for grieving. Now, if it be but considered that death came to her almost immediately and cut short her sadness, it must be admitted that her lot was far happier than mine, seeing that death has refused to come to me, albeit I have suffered such a length of time, and still refuses to come near me, and will continue to refuse to come near me, eagerly as I desire it, with the evident intent of protracting my sufferings.
Melancholy as was the case of Sophonisba, Cornelia seems to me to have approached her in misfortune. She had attained to a position of great dignity and splendor, being first the wife of Crassus and then of Pompey the Great, who by his surpassing worth had almost acquired the supreme governance of Rome. But, Fortune having changed her destiny, she had to fly, with her husband, first from Rome, then from all Italy, closely pursued by Cæsar; her wanderings involved her in many calamities. Finally he left her in Lesbos, and there she received him after that defeat in Thessaly wherein all his forces were utterly shattered by his adversary.
Yet he, still in hopes of restoring his power with the aid of the conquered East, arrived in Egypt, after plowing the deep, and sought the help of its youthful King, who owed the kingdom to his kindness. And there his hapless spouse beheld his headless trunk tossed by the waves of the sea on the strand. All these things combined and all these things singly we must imagine to have afflicted her bitterly. But the sound advice of Cato of Utica, and the impossibility of ever having her Pompey with her again, in a short time greatly mitigated her grief.
I, on the contrary, filled with vain hopes which I am unable to banish from my breast, do nothing but continue to weep, without counsel of comfort, save what I may, haply, receive from my old nurse, who is conscious of my miseries. Her I now know to be more faithful than wise, for often when she fancies she is proposing a remedy for my misfortunes, she is really doing her best to add to my wretchedness.
There are many who may be inclined to believe that Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, suffered a greater punishment than mine, and that, indeed, her anguish must have been insupportable, especially when, after reigning in the enjoyment of ample power and wealth, she was deprived of these and shut up in prison by her brother. Such a calamitous downfall must certainly have occasioned her excessive grief. But her confident hope of that which eventually happened, no doubt helped her to bear up easily under that grief.
Afterward, when she was liberated from her prison and became the mistress of Caesar for a while, and was then forsaken by him, there are those who think that her affliction at being so unworthily treated must have been exceeding bitter. But those who think thus forget that there was no steady affection in either to hinder them from growing tired of each other, and that she had no difficulty in withdrawing her love from one and giving it to another, as, indeed, she often afterward showed she was able to do with great facility.
But God forbid that that sort of consolation should ever happen to me! There never has existed, and there never shall exist, a man who could say or who can say
