When yesterday at dinner the messenger arrived announcing that your father would not return to Troezen until next winter I rejoiced at the delay and, hoping that you would too, I waited in vain for your glance across the tables. Why are you torturing me and yourself so cruelly? Why cannot we meet and talk, at least talk, if you still refuse to comfort my misery with your kisses? I know you love me, or perhaps I should say that I knew it, while it was still spring. For no one had ever embraced me as you did those first mild nights this season, when the moon was full and red.

But your love, dearest, waned with the moon, and you faded away with her from my presence, as if you had been infatuated by her and not by me. Yet it was towards me that you addressed the most tender words I ever heard, and it was in my bed you uttered them, not once but seven times. For there was nothing that could keep you from coming to me night after night to quench your thirst for love. And I let you drink, giving you more than I own and the whole of myself. Yet, since you delivered your pompous farewell speech that wretched morning on the eighth day when I was gathering my flowers in the back yard, you refuse me both your eyes and your words.

Is it too much to ask? Not to be treated as a stranger after having shared my bed with you? You tell me that it is your wish to protect your father's honor, which you were the first to compromise. Yet you care little for your own; for what is a man's honor worth if neither his words nor his deeds can be trusted? No; I say that a man's honor is his own business, and that in trying to give Theseus his honor back, you lose your own. For only yesterday you covered me with caresses and kisses, whereas today you grudge even in words, hiding every sweet semblance of yourself, as if I were your enemy.

You tell me that you are his son and you might need to ascend the throne; that our love is debauchery and treason, and that you now feel that the state itself may depend on your loyalty. Yet you should remember that neither Theseus nor the Athenian lords, would ever allow the son of a barbarian woman to succeed him. And you should also bear in mind that we share, besides our secret, the contempt that all of them, and first of all your father, feel towards both of us. You, dearest, having my love, should not long for the throne, even less when you see me holding in greater esteem to be called a whore and a traitor in your arms than to sit on it and be revered as Queen of Athens. For your father—and listen to the mother of his children—does not count you as his son and would never hesitate in cursing or murdering you, if he found it convenient.

You tell me that I am his wife and the mother of his children. Too well I know that! But should I, still almost a child myself, love the children that are the fruit of your father's violences on me? Have not these children endangered me even more? Are you not yourself endangered by them? How long will it take before Theseus, having obtained the heirs he wished and tired of me, turns me into a corpse? Did he not murder my sister Ariadne, although she saved him, arguing that a traitor should always be put to death? Am I not myself here by force, a victim of the machinations of your father and my own hateful brother Deucalion? And who goes safe under his sceptre? No one, I dare to say; and least of all those young virgins, whom your father and the false priest Pirithous abduct in foreign cities and then rape and murder at Eleusis during the celebration they have fancied to call "the wedding of Persephone". Athens is dishonoured by its own king and not by our love; and mark my words, these outrages will lead to war. For not only the gods abhor your father, and rumours say that the Spartan Dioscuri, nurturing great hate for him and his evil deeds, are assembling a mighty contingent of horsemen in order to punish him in his own home.

You tell me that from now on you will honor Artemis, living in chastity. How easy for you, once you have tasted love, to suddenly become pure! Or is it perchance that you, son of your father, grew hastily tired of me and, lacking the courage to tell me, put a goddess between us, feigning devotion? Ah! how convenient are the gods! Yet they have seen you in my bed, sighing by my side. So, who among them will you delude? For if you came to me just to fill your cup of lust, will they accept that you pour libations from the same cup, disguising your lust with devotion? No; I say the gods punish those who use their names and shrines to conceal misdeeds and secret wishes.

You ask me to join you in your offerings to Artemis, but I would not attempt to delude the gods, who know my heart. Aphrodite has opened my eyes, and if I must perish let her be my destroyer, who also gave me life. He who changes loyalties, as you do my love, earns disdain and prays for destruction. And your time to be pure was before you came into my bed; for no matter how much you now spruce your chastity up, neither Theseus, if he knew, nor the goddesses, who know, could ever trust you.

Your pretences of purity have no strength either and cannot stand by themselves; for they depend on my silence, you see. And if I told Theseus that you entered my bed, you would have to become a liar before him and the gods. Do not be deluded by the weakness of women; for my love gives me enough strength to take great risks and perform such deeds that would frighten a warrior and surprise your shame. I know you love me; but I love you even more, and he who loves more has all the rights.

I shall tomorrow go to Aphrodite's new temple and offer her a crown, resembling the myrtle crown you put on my head the third night you came to see me. Please, be with me then! I will not eat and I will not drink until you talk to me again.

Carlos Parada
Lund, April 2000