My masterpiece. But what is this? Why, why should poisons brew’d by me Less potent than Medea’s be, By which, for love betray’d, beguiled, On mighty Creon’s haughty child She wreaked her vengeance sure and swift, And vanish’d, when the robe, her gift, In deadliest venom steep’d and dyed, Swept off in flames the new-made bride? No herb there is, nor root in spot However wild, that I have not; Yet every common harlot’s bed Seems with some rare Nepenthe spread, For there he lives in swinish drowse, Of me oblivious, and his vows! He is, aha! protected well By some more skilful witch’s spell! But, Varus, thou (doom’d soon to know The rack of many a pain and woe!) By potions never used before Shalt to my feet be brought once more. And ’tis no Marsian charm shall be The spell that brings thee back to me! A draught I’ll brew more strong, more sure, Thy wandering appetite to cure; And sooner ’neath the sea the sky Shall sink, and earth upon them lie, Than thou not burn with fierce desire For me, like pitch in sooty fire!” On this the boy by gentle tones No more essay’d to move the crones, But wildly forth with frenzied tongue These curses Thyestean flung. “Your sorceries, and spells, and charms To man may compass deadly harms, But heaven’s great law of Wrong and Right Will never bend before their might. My curse shall haunt you, and my hate No victim’s blood shall expiate. But when at your behests I die, Like the Fury of the Night will I From Hades come, a phantom sprite— Such is the Manes’ awful might.” * * * * * The Roman poet Vergil (70 B.C.–19 B.C.) depicts, in one of his pastoral Eclogues, a love episode that involves magic rites for the purpose of winning the love of Daphnis: Scarce had night’s cold shade parted from the sky, just at the time that the dew on the tender grass is sweetest to the cattle, when leaning on his smooth olive wand Damon thus began: Rise, Lucifer, and usher in the sky, the genial sky, while I, deluded by a bridegroom’s unworthy passion for my Nisa, make my complaint, and turning myself to the gods, little as their witness has stood me in stead, address them nevertheless, a dying man, at this very last hour. Take up with me, my pipe, the song of Maenalus.