Hypermnestra

Section fourteen of Ovid's Heroides translated by an unknown translator, first published in eighteen thirteen.

Hypermnestra to Lyncus.

Hypermnestra sends to the only survivor of so many brothers: The rest have all perished by the crime of their wives.

I am closely confined and loaded with the weight of chains.

My piety is the sole cause of my punishment.

I can never repent that my hands are unstained with murder.

Should my father torture me with the flames that I have not dared to violate, or throw in my face the torches used at the nuptial rites; should he pierce me with the very sword which he gave me for an inhuman purpose, and destroy the wife by the death from which he saved her husband, yet would all his cruelty be insufficient to make my dying lips own repentance.

Hypermnestra is not one who will repent of her piety.

Section 14 of Ovid's Heroides, translated by an unknown translator, first published in 1813.

Hypermnestra to Lenkius hypomanestra sends to the only survivor of so many brothers the rest have all perished by the crime of their wives i am closely confined and loaded with the weight of chains my piety is the sole cause of my punishment I am deemed guilty, because my hand trembled to urge the sword to my husband's throat.

Had I dared to commit the bloody deed, I should have been extolled.

It is better to be thus deemed guilty, than please a father by an act of barbarity.