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Notes Do not display Latin text Display Dutch text | Ovid XIV Chapter 20: 829-851 The deification of his wife Hersilia | Next chapter Return to index Previous chapter |
His wife, Hersilia, was mourning him as lost, when royal Juno ordered Iris to descend to her, by her rainbow path, and carry these commands, to the widowed queen: 'O lady, glory of the Latin and Sabine peoples, worthy before to have been the wife of so great a hero, and now of Quirinus, dry your tears, and if it is your desire to see your husband, follow me and seek the grove, that flourishes on the Quirinal hill and shades the temple of Rome's king.' Iris obeyed, and gliding to earth along her many-coloured arch addressed Hersilia as she had been ordered. She, hardly raising her eyes, replied, modestly: 'O goddess (since it is not easy for me to say who you are, but it is clear you are a goddess), lead on: O, lead on, and show me my husband's face. If only the fates allow me to see him once, I shall declare I have been received in heaven.' Without delay, she climbed to Romulus' hill, with Iris, the virgin daughter of Thaumas. There a star fell, gliding from sky to earth, and Hersilia, hair set alight by its fire, vanishes with the star in the air. The founder of the Roman city receives her in his familiar embrace, and alters her former body and her name, and calls her Hora, who, a goddess now, is one with her Quirinus. Event: Apotheosis of Hersilia |
Flebat ut amissum coniunx, cum regia Iuno Irin ad Hersilien descendere limite curvo 830 imperat et vacuae sua sic mandata referre: 'o et de Latia, o et de gente Sabina praecipuum, matrona, decus, dignissima tanti ante fuisse viri coniunx, nunc esse Quirini, siste tuos fletus, et, si tibi cura videndi 835 coniugis est, duce me lucum pete, colle Quirini qui viret et templum Romani regis obumbrat'; paret et in terram pictos delapsa per arcus, Hersilien iussis conpellat vocibus Iris; illa verecundo vix tollens lumina vultu 840 'o dea (namque mihi nec, quae sis, dicere promptum est, et liquet esse deam) duc, o duc' inquit 'et offer coniugis ora mihi, quae si modo posse videre fata semel dederint, caelum accepisse fatebor!' nec mora, Romuleos cum virgine Thaumantea 845 ingreditur colles: ibi sidus ab aethere lapsum decidit in terras; a cuius lumine flagrans Hersilie crinis cum sidere cessit in auras: hanc manibus notis Romanae conditor urbis excipit et priscum pariter cum corpore nomen 850 mutat Horamque vocat, quae nunc dea iuncta Quirino est. |