Remedia amoris
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
441.465
If to excess you find your passion rise,
441.466
I would at once two mistresses advise:Love when divided is always least violent. This remedy is not so sure as it is dishonourable.
441.467
Divided care will give your mind relief;
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What nourish'd one may starve the twins of grief.
441.469
Large rivers, drain'd in many streams, grow dry;
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Withdraw its fuel, and the flame will die.
441.471
What ship can safely with one anchor ride ?
441.472
With several cables she can brave the tide.
441.473
Who can at once two passions entertain,
441.474
May free himself at will from either chain.
441.475
If treated ill by her whom you adore,
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A kinder nymph your freedom must restore.
441.477
No sooner Minos did fair Procris view,Procris or Plotis, and not Prognis, as it is in some editions; this Procris was a very beautiful virgin, with whom Minos fell in love. After which he turned off Pasiphae, who out of revenge or want prostituted herself most scandalously, as the commentator in Pindar, cited by Merula, tells us. She was the daughter of the sun, and in the fable is famous for her falling in love with a bull, and bringing forth the Minotaur.
441.478
But scandal on Pasiphae's fame he threw.
441.479
From his first charmer soon Alcmaen fled,
441.480
Callirhoe once admitted to his bed.
441.481
Oenone still had Paris' mistress been,She was the daughter of the river Troas, according to Apollodorus, and of Xanthus, according to others. Her story is told more at large in the fifth of Ovid's historical Epistles. When Hecuba, Priam's wife and Paris's mother, was with child of him, she dreamed she had a firebrand in her womb which would consume Troy to ashes. To prevent Priam's making him away, Hecuba sent him to Mount Ida to be bred up in the mean condition of a shepherd, and when he grew up he married Oenone. There he had a vision of the three naked goddesses, and was made arbiter of their beauties, and gave the golden apple, upon which was written detur pulchriori, to Venus, who promised him the fairest woman in the world if he decided the dispute in her favor; Pallas tempted him with wisdom, and Juno with power, both which he slighted, and preferred pleasure. His father afterwards coming to the knowledge of him, and admitting him to court, he from thence went to Sparta, stole Helen, and Hecuba's dream proved but too true.
441.482
Had Paris fairer Helen never seen.
441.483
So Progne's beauty, tho' a wife, endear'd
441.484
Her Tereus, till Philomel appear'd.
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But I too long on dry examples dwell,
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Some new desire your former must expel.
441.487
A fruitful mother with one child can part,
441.488
The rest surviving to support her heart;
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But she's impatiently of one bereft,
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Who has, alas! no second comfort left.
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But lest you think that I new laws decree
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(Tho' proud of the invention I could be),
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The same long since wise Agamemnon saw;
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(What saw he not who held all Greece in awe!)
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The beauteous captive to himself he kept;Her name was Astynome and her father's Chryses. He was Apollo's priest; and the god, to revenge the insult offered him in the person of his priest, sent a plague among the Greeks for Agamemnon ravishing her, which was not taken off until that king of kings restored the young lady to her father by Calchus's advice. The story is described at large in the first book of Homer's Iliad, as is also the rape of Briseis, Achilles' mistress, who was so disgusted at Agamemnon for taking her from him, that he refused to fight, and kept himself close in his tent; until hearing his friend Patroclus, to whom he had lent his arms, was killed, he returned to the battle and slew Hector.
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Her father fondly for his daughter wept.
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Why dost thou grieve, old sot? thy daughter's blest!
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A royal whore. But, to assuage the pest,
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When with his mistress he was forced to part,
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The prudent prince ne'er laid the loss to heart.
441.501
Achilles keeps as fair a lass as she,
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Their form, their very names, almost agree.
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"Let him," said he "resign her by consent,
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Or he shall feel my kingly power's extent;
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If to my subjects this shall give offence,
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The name of monarch is a vain pretence.
441.507
Rather than reign and have my love confin'd,
441.508
My throne shall to Thersites be resign'd."Thersites was the ugliest among the Greeks, and a great talker, of whom Homer speaks in his second Iliad; he was one-eyed, hunch-backed, and lame. Juvenal in his eighth satire adds, he was also bald.
441.509
He said: and, for a charming mistress lost,
441.510
Repair'd his sufferings at another's cost.
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Do you this royal precedent pursue,
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And quench your former passions by a new.