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Book IV.7:1-96

CYNTHIA: FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

Propertius

There are Spirits, of a kind: death does not end it all, and the pale ghost escapes the ruined pyre. For Cynthia, lately buried, beside the roadway’s murmur, seemed to lean over my couch, when sleep was withheld from me, after love’s interment, and I grieved at the cold kingdom of my bed. The same hair she had, that was borne to the grave, the same eyes: her garment was charred against her side, and the fire had eaten the beryl ring from her finger, and Lethe’s waters had worn away her lips. She sighed living breath, and speech, but her brittle hands rattled their finger-bones.

‘Faithless man, from whom no girl can hope for better, can sleep already have power over you? Are the tricks of sleepless Subura now forgotten, and my windowsill, worn by nocturnal guile? From which I so often hung on a rope let down to you, and came to your shoulders, hand over hand. Often we made love at the crossroads, and, breast to breast, our cloaks made the roadways warm. Alas for the silent pact whose false words the uncaring South-West Wind has swept away!

No one cried out at the dying light of my eyes: I would have won another day if you’d recalled me. No watchman shook his split reeds for me: and, jostled, a broken tile cut my face. Who, at the end, saw you, bowed at my graveside, who saw your funeral robe hot with tears? If you disliked to go beyond the gate, you could have ordered that my bier travelled there more slowly. Ungrateful man, why didn’t you pray for a wind to fan my pyre? Why weren’t my flames redolent of nard? Was it indeed such an effort to scatter cheap hyacinths, or honour my tomb with a shattered jar?

Let Lygdamus be branded, let the iron be white-hot for the slave of the house: I knew him when I drank the pale and doctored wine. And crafty Nomas, let her destroy her secret poisons: the burning potsherd will reveal her guilty hands. She who was open to the common gaze, through worthless nights, now leaves the track of a golden hem on the ground: and, if a talkative girl speaks of my beauty unjustly, repays it with heavier spinning tasks. Old Petale is chained to a foul block of wood, for carrying garlands to my tomb: Lalage is whipped, hung by her entwined hair, since she dared to make a request in my name.

You allowed the woman to melt down my golden image, so she might have her dowry from my blazing pyre. Still, though you deserve it, I’ll not criticize you, Propertius, my reign was a long one in your books. I swear by the incantation of the Fates, that no one may revoke, so may three-headed Cerberus bark gently for me, that I have been faithful. If I am lying, may vipers hiss on my mound, and lie coiled above my bones.

There are two places assigned beyond the foul stream, and the whole crowd of the dead row on opposing waters. One carries Clytemnestra’s unfaithfulness, another the monstrous framework of the lying Cretan cow: see, others are swept onwards in a garlanded boat, where sweet airs caress Elysian roses, where tuneful lutes, where Cybele’s cymbals sound, and turbaned choirs to the Lydian lyre.

Andromeda and Hypermestre, blameless wives, tell their story, with accustomed feeling: the first complains her arms are bruised, with the chains of her mother’s pride, and that her hands were un-deserving of the icy rock. Hypermestre tells how her sisters were so daring, her mind incapable of committing such a crime. So with the tears of death we heal the desires of life: I conceal the many crimes of your unfaithfulness.

But now I give this command to you, if perhaps you are moved, if Chloris’s magic herbs do not wholly entrance you: don’t let Parthenie, my nurse, lack anything in her years of weakness: she was known to you, was never greedy with you. And don’t let my lovely Latris, who was named for her role, hold the mirror for some fresh mistress.

And burn whatever verses you made about my name: cease to sing my praises.

Drive the ivy from my mound that, with grasping clusters, and with tangled leaves, binds my fragile bones; where fruitful Anio broods over fields of apple-branches, and ivory never fades, because of Hercules’s power.

Write, on a column’s midst, this verse, worthy of me but brief, so that the traveller, hurrying, from the city, might read:

HERE IN TIBUR’S EARTH LIES CYNTHIA THE GOLDEN:
ANIO FRESH PRAISE IS ADDED TO YOUR SHORES.

Don’t deny the dreams that come through sacred gateways: when sacred dreams come, they carry weight. By night we suffer wandering, night frees the imprisoned spirits, and, his cage abandoned, Cerberus himself strays. At dawn the laws demand return to the pools of Lethe: we are carried across, the ferryman counts the load he’s carried.

Now, let others have you: soon I alone will hold you: you’ll be with me and I’ll wear away bone joined with bone.’

After she had ended, in complaint, her quarrel with me, her shadow slipped from my embrace.