Reverting to the beginning of this epistle we shall find also what suggested the fifth and sixth lines of the stanza quoted last, in
“Mitius iuveni quam te genus omne ferarum.”
The difficulties also anticipated by Olympia in the XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, and XXXIVth stanzas, where she asks whither she can go, if any ship should bear her off, are all of the same nature, and put precisely in the same manner as those enumerated by Ariadne. Thus,
“Finge dari comitesque mihi ventosque ratemque;
“Quid sequar? accessus terra paterna negat.
* * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
“Non ego te, Crete, centum digesta per urbes,
“Aspiciam, puero cognita terra Jovi, &c. &c. &c.”
Oh! may I but escape the wild corsair,
Nor taken be, and after sold for slave.
Stanza xxxiii. lines 1 and 2.
“Tantum ne religer dura captiva catenâ.”
Tossing her head with streaming tresses, run;
And seemed like maid beside herself, and who
Was by ten fiends possessed, instead of one.
Stanza xxiv. lines 2, 3, 4.
Here again we have a touch of the original picture spoiled by the exaggeration of the copy. Ovid makes Ariadne say:
. . . “ego diffusis erravi sola capillis,
“Qualis ab Ogygio concita Baccha Deo.”
But he had better have copied from Catullus.
