Cupido Cruciatus

praef. Ausonius to his son Gregorius, greeting. Have you ever seen a picture painted on a wall? You have surely seen one, and you remember. For at Trier, in the dining-room of Zoilus, this painting is daubed: the loving women fasten Cupid to a cross — not those of our age, who sin of their own will, but those heroines of old, who pardon themselves and punish the god. A part of them our Maro enumerates in the Mourning Fields. This picture I admired for its appearance and its theme. Then I transferred my admiring wonder to the ineptitude of versifying. To me nothing pleases except the subject; but I commend to you my error: we love our own moles and scars, and, not content to have sinned by our own fault alone, we strive to be loved for it. But why do I zealously defend this eclogue? I am sure that, whatever you know to be mine, you will love; which I hope for more than that you should praise. Farewell, and love your father.

1. Cupid Crucified. In the airy fields which the Muse of Maro records, where the myrtle grove shades the love-maddened lovers, the heroines were celebrating their rites, and each bore the tokens of her own death, as once they had fallen — wandering in the great wood and under a grudging light, among the reedy tresses and the heavy poppy, by the silent, stainless pools, and the streams without a murmur: along whose banks droop, in the misty light, the flowers, the wept-for names of kings and boys of old — Narcissus the self-admirer, and Hyacinthus son of Oebalus, and golden-haired Crocus, and Adonis painted with purple, and Salaminian Aias (Ajax), inscribed with a tragic groan; all of which, anxious with tears and sad loves, ply, remembering, the griefs of a death already met, and call the heroines back again into the age they have lost. Semele, deceived in childbirth, weeps for her lightning-born offspring, and, tearing the scorched cradle through the void, fans the idle fire of the counterfeit thunderbolt, lamenting the unavailing gifts. Caenis, having rejoiced in the male sex, mourns, recalled to her ancient form. Procris still dries her wounds, and loves the skilled hand of Cephalus, even though smitten by it. The headlong maiden of Sestos (Hero) bears the smoking light of her lamp from the tower; and masculine Sappho, about to perish by the Lesbian shafts (of love), threatens the leap from cloudy Leucate. Sad Eriphyle refuses the ornaments of Harmonia, unhappy in her son and unfortunate in her husband. The whole Minoan tale of airy Crete too quivers, like a picture, under a faint image: Pasiphae follows the footprints of the snowy bull; deserted Ariadne carries the wound thread gathered in her hand; despairing Phaedra looks back at her cast-down tablets. This one bears a noose, that the semblance of an empty crown; this one is ashamed to have entered the lurking-place of the Daedalian heifer. Laodamia laments through her vain joys the two nights snatched from her, of her husband living and dead. In another quarter, fierce, all with drawn blades — Thisbe and Canace and Sidonian Elissa (Dido) — shudder: this one bears her husband's sword, this her father's, this her guest's. And she herself wanders, the two-horned Moon, such as once, over the rocks of Latmos, she was wont to court the slumbers of Endymion, with her torch and her star-bearing diadem. A hundred others, recalling the wounds of their old loves, cherish their torments with sweet and sad complaints. Into the midst of these, thoughtless Cupid, with whirring wings, scattered the shadow of the dark gloom. All recognized the boy, and with a mindful return felt him their common culprit, although the moist clouds about him, and the belts gleaming with golden studs, and the quiver, and the fire of his ruddy torch, darkened the sight. They recognize him, nevertheless, and begin to brandish a vain vigour, and, the one enemy having reached a place not his own, while he was driving his sluggish flight under the thick night, they press him with a made-up cloud; and, as he trembles and prepares vain escapes, they drew him into the gathering, into the midst of the throng. A most well-known myrtle in the sad grove is chosen, hateful for the gods' punishments; there once Proserpina, scorned, had tortured Adonis, who remembered Venus. To the lofty trunk of this they fasten Love, hung up, his hands bound behind his back and his feet drawn together with cords, mourning, while they afflict him with no moderation of punishment. He is a defendant without a charge; Love is accused with no judge. Each is eager to absolve herself, that she may transfer her own faults onto another's crimes. All, reproaching him with the marks of the death they suffered, make ready: these they think their weapons, this a sweet revenge — that each should strive to punish her grief by that whereby she perished. This one holds a noose, this presses on him the empty semblance of a sword; that one the hollow rivers and the broken crag, the terror of the mad sea, and the flood without waves. Some shake their flames and, trembling, threaten with their hissing torches that have no fire. Myrrha tears open her swollen womb with shining tears, and, at the trembling boy, hurls the gemmed amber of her tear-bearing trunk. Some, under the show of pardoning, wish only mockeries, that the slender stylus, with the point of its prick, may draw forth that tender blood from which the rose was born, or that they may bring the wanton lights of the lamp near his loins. His mother too, the kindly Venus, herself liable to a like fault, penetrates, untroubled, those great tumults. Nor, hastening to give her surrounded son her vote, does she double his terror and inflame the doubtful furies with bitter goads, and turn her own disgrace into accusations against her son — that she bore the unseen chains of her husband when Mars was caught; that with shameful loins the form of Hellespontine Priapus is laughed at; that Eryx was cruel, that Hermaphroditus was a half-man. Nor is it enough in words: golden Venus strikes the mourning boy, who dreads heavier things, with a rosy garland; from him the sewn rose, by frequent blows, pressed out a purple dew upon his beaten body — which, dyed before, drew a more ruddy stain, being now afire. Thereupon the fierce threats fell, and the vengeance, seeming greater than its own crime, about to make Venus guilty, the heroines themselves intervene, and each had rather ascribe her own death to a cruel fate. Then the pious mother gives thanks that the grieving ones have yielded, and let go the faults pardoned to the boy. Such phantoms, in nocturnal shapes, once ply trembling rest with an empty terror. Which, after Cupid had endured them through much of the night, he escapes, the gloom of sleep being at last driven off, and flies up to the gods above, and goes out by the ivory gate.