Hypsipyle of Lemnos, born of the people of [Dionysus],

speaks to Jason: how much of your heart was truly in your words?

You’re said to have reached Thessaly’s shore in your returning ship,

rich with the fleece of the golden ram.

I give thanks for your safety, as much as you might allow:

yet surely the letter itself should have come from you.

For though you might not have had the winds, as you wished,

so as not to be driven beyond the kingdoms I granted:

however adverse the wind, Hypsipyle was worthy

of being sent a sealed letter of greeting!

Why does rumour reach me, with news, before a letter:

the sacred bulls of [Ares] going under the yoke,

a crop of warriors growing from scattered seed

and their deaths not requiring your efforts,

the watchful dragon guarding the hide of the ram

yet the golden fleece snatched by your brave hand?

If I could say this timidly to the doubters: “He himself

wrote this to me,” how fine that would be!

Why complain at the sense of duty of an indifferent husband?

If I’m still yours, I’ve been shown great indulgence.

It’s been said that a barbarous sorceress came back with you

to be welcomed to that half of the bed you promised me.

Love’s a credulous thing. If only it’s thoughtless speech

that has charged a man with false crimes!

Recently a guest came to me from Thessalian shores,

and had scarcely crossed the threshold when I said:

“How is my Jason faring?” He hung there,

shame-faced, his eyes fixed on the ground.

I leapt up immediately, and tearing my tunic from my breast,

I shouted: “Does he live, or does death call me, also?”

“He lives,” he said timidly: I forced that timid man to swear it.

I scarcely believe you live even with a god as witness.

As my reason returns, I begin to inquire about your deeds:

He tells of your ploughing with the bronze-footed bulls,

the dragon’s teeth sown in the earth instead of seed

and the sudden warriors bearing arms,

an earthborn people killed in civil war

fulfilling their life’s destiny in a day.

The dragon defeated. Again, I ask if Jason lives:

belief alternates with hope and fear.

While he relates each tale, he reveals, by his ability,

in the eagerness, and the flow of his story, my wounds.

Oh, where’s the loyalty promised? Where’s the marriage oath,

and the torch better fitted to plunge beneath my funeral pyre?^[1]

I was not known to you secretly. [Hera] was present at the wedding

and Hymen, his brow was crowned with garlands.

Yet neither [Hera] nor Hymen, but dismal bloodstained Erinys

carried her torches of ill-luck before me.

What are the Minyans to me? Or ships and Tritons?

Or Tiphys the Argo’s helmsman, and my country, to you?

There’s no ram here with a remarkable golden fleece,

nor was Lemnos the kingdom of old Colchian King Aeetes.

True, at first – but my evil fate drew me on –

I intended to drive the stranger away with my army of women

and they know how to overcome Lemnian men – too much so!

His life was protected by such a resolute army!

I saw that man into my city, admitted him to my house and heart.

Here two summers and two winters passed you by.

It was the third harvest when you contracted to sail,

mixing words like these with your tears:

“I’m dragged away from you Hypsipyle. May fate only let me return:

I leave here as your husband, your husband I’ll always be.

But that of mine that’s hidden in your pregnant womb,

will live, and we should both be parents to it!”

So you spoke. And, tears falling from your lying cheeks,

I remember you could say nothing more to me.

Of the comrades you embarked last on the sacred Argo:

it sped away, the wind took your billowing sails.

The dark-blue waves well up from your driving keel:

The land’s gazed at by you, the sea by me.

A wide tower, open on all sides, surveys the waves:

there I suffer and tears wet my face and breast.

I gaze through tears, and my eyes see further

than they used to do, sharpened by loving feelings.

Now, also, add to them chaste prayers for your safety,

mingled with anxious vows, to be fulfilled by me.

Shall I fulfil the vows? Medea may enjoy the fruits of sacrifice!

My heart grieves, and overflows, with anger mixed with love.

Shall I take gifts to the temples because Jason lives whom I’ve lost?

Should some victim die at a blow^[2] because of the harm to me?

I was anxious, and always afraid, lest your father

might arrange for a daughter-in-law from a city of Argolis.

I feared the Argolid – yet it’s a barbarian rival that harms me!

I never expected to suffer this wound from your enemy.

It’s not her face or merits that enchant you, but the charms she knows

and the herbs, cut, with fearful incantations.

She could labour to draw the reluctant moon from her course

and hide the horses of the sun^[3] in darkness:

she could hold back the waters, and halt the falling streams,

she could move woods, and natural rocks, from their place.

She wanders through the tombs, clothes loose, hair dishevelled,

and collects particular bones from tepid funeral pyres.

She bewitches absent folk: she pierces wax effigies,

and forces fine needles into their wretched livers.

And what it might be better for me not to have known: wrongly,

love’s sought, and its nature’s to be bought, by magic practices.

Can you embrace her, without fear, in the one bed,

enjoying sleep, in the silence of the night?

I suppose she forced you to bear the yoke, like those bulls:

and like cruel dragons, you too are lulled by her powers.

Add that she favours attributing your long list of deeds to herself

and that the wife’s name harms the husband’s.

Someone of Pelias’s party could ascribe your successes to poisons,

and there are people who might believe him, saying:

“It wasn’t Jason, but Medea of Phasis, Aeetes’s daughter

who stripped the golden fleece from the Phrixean ram.”

Alcimede, your mother, doesn’t approve – seek her council! –

nor your father: she’s a daughter-in-law come from the frozen pole.^[4]

Let her find a husband from the Don [River], or the damp Scythian marshes,

or even from her homeland of Phasis, for herself.

Fickle son of Aeson, more uncertain than a spring breeze,

why do your words of promise lack substance?

You who’d gone from here my husband, didn’t return so from there –

if I might be restored as your wife, I’d be as before your going.

If high birth and a noble name move you:

see, I was born the daughter of Thoas and of Ariadne.

[Dionysus] was my grandfather: as [Dionysus]’s wife she wears a crown,

and her constellation outshines the lesser stars.

Lemnos will be my gift to you: a land ripe for cultivation:

and you shall have me too with the rest of my dowry.

Now I have given birth, also. Rejoice for us both, Jason –

sweetly it’s author had made a burden for my womb.

I’m happy in their number, as well, and produced twin boys,

favoured by [Hera] with a double pledge.

If you ask who they are like, you’ll be able to identify them:

they don’t know how to pretend they have any other father.

I nearly gave them up to be seen as ambassadors for their mother,

but a cruel stepmother stood in the way of that undertaking.

I feared Medea – a stepmother indeed –

Medea’s hands are made for every wickedness.

She who could scatter the torn limbs of her brother, Absyrtus,

over the fields, would she spare my children?

O you, maddened and confused by Colchian drugs,

do you still say she’s preferable to Hypsipyles in bed?

Shamefully that girl knew a man in adultery:

chaste marriage gave me to you, and you to me.

She betrayed her father – I snatched my Thoas from death.

She abandoned Colchis – I have my Lemnos.

What does matter, then, if wickedness overcomes piety,

if she is endowed by crime itself, and it earns her a husband?

Jason, I don’t admire the crime the Lemnian women committed!

However indignation grants itself a coward’s weapons.

If hostile winds as they ought had forced you and your friends

to enter my harbour, and I’d come out to meet you with young twins –

surely you’d have asked the earth to swallow you! –

say, wretch, with what look would you have gazed at me, and your children?

What death would have been fitting reward for such treachery?

In fact you would have been safe and sound because of me,

not because you deserved it, but because I am kind.

I would have drenched my face with my rival’s blood,

and yours that she stole with her magic arts.

I would have been Medea to Medea. Why, if he who is on high,

[Zeus] the Just, himself, assists my prayers,

let her grieve herself for what Hypsipyle bewails, a rival

in my bed, and feel the effect of her own laws,

and as I am forsaken, a wife, and mother of two children,

may she be bereaved of similar children, and her husband!

May she not keep her evil place for long, and forsake worse:

may she be exiled, and search the whole world for refuge.

What the sister was to the brother, the daughter to the unlucky father,

let that harsh woman be to her husband and her children!

When she’s exhausted sea and land, let her try the air:^[5]

may she wander helpless, hopeless, bloodied by her crimes.

I, daughter of Thoas, cheated of my husband, beg this:

“Live man and bride in an accursed bed!”