Scene 1. Outside the city of Megara. Enter Minos, king of Crete; Feniso, a captain, and soldiers.
Minos: Of the glories reached by human pleasure, Feniso, the first is vengeance, and the second is victory. Today I have had both: victory over Niso and vengeance for Androgeo.
The Athenians killed my son, and now holy Jupiter wishes my sorrows to be consoled by this other thing. My child was given to death: but your child killed you, Niso; and with this act she has given me the strongest and noblest city of Greece.
Since we first encircled its walls, the sun ran three laps from Aries to Pisces: But if for a thousand centuries the sun ran from the Golden Fleece to the Silver Scales, spreading the rays of his treasure it, I would not be enjoying vengeance now, had treason not given us the gate.
The parricide Cila killed her father the king for me, and I gave her a promise it would be unworthy to fulfill. She promised to surrender me the city, and she kept her promise, but I did not think she would have done it so cruelly. No love can be right that would send such a woman to Crete. A cruelty so great is not the duty of love’s subjects.
We have entered the city, and although she has given me the gate, I owe her nothing. We kings love victory, the important thing – whether given by treason or loyalty – but it is only natural to hate the traitor.
Feniso: Undefeated king, had Cila misled by her love, not opened the door, it would not have been possible to conquer the city. Because gallant Teseo, and all the other full-blooded Greeks, guarded it, greedy to win honour and spoils.
Believing she would be your wife, Cila gave you in one day the city, victory, and vengeance.
Now, I do not know if it is good for you to leave her waiting like this.
Minos: Everything is the work of the Gods, including our happiness: Nemesis, angry goddess of vengeance, wished that Cila lose her senses in madness and love, and that I be avenged for the death of Androgeo.
Feniso: Then you have left her desire sufficiently mocked, because, without love, there is nothing good in human life.
Enter Cila, a lady
Cila: Is the king here?
Feniso: Here she is.
Minos: What will I do?
Feniso: Hear her out, my Lord.
Cila: King Minos, master of the high walls of Crete, now victorious over the intolerable men of Athens: well do you know– and I can testify the same – that you would not have been able to catch a sight of those famous gates for many years. Your armed camp would remain outside Megara, without power to attack it, like the sun remains from when the dawn begins to give life to all those things that are hidden in the shadows, until the time the stars come making a crown of stars for the dark night, putting diamonds for its head; in the freezing cold winter, in warm sleepy days of summer, like the sun your camp would remain.
Not until I saw from the wall – to my true misfortune – a gallant on a warhorse dashing back and forth, as they paint Mars in the Fifth Sphere, armoured in glossy gorget and golden shinguards. I would give the many-feathered white helmet to those brilliant aspects and to his swift wings. You were playing with my affections with such grace, that you only had to turn your face for you to carrry away with you half my soul, leaving the other part for your return, as obedient to your eyes as your horse to the spur. With this vision I passed a thousand whole nights, finding my soul in dangerous war, until love conquered my reason and my strength, and I offered to give you, Minos, the city and my open soul if you were to take me with you.
And you, as if there were no gods to punish vice and reward virtue, would speak false words to me, broken words that speak to me, words that you break and give to the winds .
But guard yourself, you go into dangerous storms: they are in my sighs and in the sea of my eyes. For you, while he slept – what bloody cruelty! – I cut my own father’s throat and poured out his blood, the same blood he gave to my veins. I gave you the keys, and you entered the city, from which you could plunder more gold than the dawn sees when she combs herself with ivory.
Now you repay me well for a love so great: you would leave me in the land I have sold you, land that is soaked in the blood of my father. You will not do it. You were not born in the Libyan forests, nor suckled by wild beasts in the mountains of Thessaly. But if you were to go, like these, one thing comforts me: there is no misery in life that will be in death.
Minos: Cila, this grieves me very much. In short, for me you have betrayed everything, I hear you.
I wanted revenge on Athens, but not such a harsh one; I would have had a better vengeance that was not bound up with infamy. The truth is I gave my word, and I would have kept it if you had done your part in a better way. I never wished for you to kill the king; in doing so, you have lost all that you hoped to accomplish. What tale would the world tell of me, Cila, if I took you to Crete, but that I was giving you new weapons and new murderous instructions? Is it just that I call you wife, and bring such infamy on such a glorious captain because of your whims? No, Cila, I am not going to make myself infamous for your sake, nor would it be fair to divorce Pasife, my wife. Beyond that, if I carried your treacherous heart in my ship, it would cause the sea to tremble. Better you endure the land that raised you, not the sea; for the sacred sea will not consent. I will take my Gods with me, and they will also be angry.
Cila: What justice they give me with this insane punishment! So at the end, you leave me?
Minos: I cannot take you with me. I want calm seas to sail to my homeland without fear, Cila.
Cila: May the heavens show their anger such that you will never see such a chance, nor your homeland, nor see the fierce sea calm. O winds, leave your dark cave, and disturb both the waters,[1] until the moon is not secure in her blue mantle. You go to your beautiful daughters in relation, not in person, or you would take off your crown to be their vile vassal. And although you have gained these walls and been given your glorious vengeance, this memory dishonours the glory of your past. And if absence is often the subtle thief of honour, you are the vilest man ever born of woman. You cannot count all your offenses; all men would be ashamed to have so many. As men who deserve women, they would not accompany you without coming to despise you.
She goes.
Minos: What fierce anger!
Feniso: An angry woman indeed. What does she hope to achieve?
Minos: Infamy and dishonour is a disgrace to women, and she thinks that it must be of men as well, captain; and though absences can breed love, they never have for me.
Call upon the leaders of Athens, so that we may treat with them and leave them in liberty, but with the same condition: that they have acknowledged me as Lord.
Feniso: Such tribute will be the fruit of this venture.
Minos: With this I think to return to the homeland that feels my absence so harshly.
Feniso: For three years, great Lord, it has missed your presence.
Scylla rejected by Minos after killing her father.
Enter Polineces.
Polineces: Where is Minos?
Minos: Here, O renowned Polineces! Did you have a good journey from Crete?
Polineces: Thanks be to the heaven that that puts my mouth at your feet.
Minos: Get up. What about Crete?
Polineces: It is in peace, on the shoulders of your fame.
Minos: My daughters?
Polineces: Apollo can see no more beautiful in all of Asia.
Minos: The queen? You turn your face away? Why have you shut up? What is this? Answer me.
Polineces: My lord, it is not possible for me to answer you.
Minos: Why do you say this?
Polineces: I’m afraid, my Lord.
Minos: Is she dead?
Polineces: Would it please heaven!
Minos: I have remarkable suspicions of some wild accident.
Polineces: From pole to pole, a greater misfortune has not been seen.
Minos: The queen! Worse than death? What? Speak.I give you license, even if her case is the most outrageous in all the world.
Polineces: Your anger gives you strength, and it is not possible for me to make more excuses. I will break the , though love would be mute, honor deaf, the world blind, the sun without light, so as not to go crazy.
Know that Pasife -heavens above! – went for a short time to a forest on a certain day. On this day your cowherds were leading down the cows to where the glassy waters of a courtly stream murmur about some elms, where with lazy steps they could put off their thirst amid the shoots of grass. Pasife set her eyes upon a white and red bull, less than three years old, more tame than sullen, painted with various marks on his backs, more beautiful than anything but the stars and the sun. Points like the waning-moon on his face, a short nose and neck, eyes of emerald; with a red swirl like a riotous skein of gold where he had not tested the yoke.
Pasife fell in love with this animal, giving amazement to Crete, and there are opinions that it is mighty Jupiter, coming again as he came to the beautiful Europa, who gave her heroic name to the third part of the world, having fallen in love but stealthily coming in the form of a white bull. For certain, only he could find in his desires to perform in such a way. Pasife, anyway, has given birth – if it is Jupiter’s – to a monster half bull and half man.
It is a public scandal, and from various parts men come to see this frightening prodigy of nature, but all are agreed that it is the son of Jupiter-being through some prodigious effect made himself known to Pasiphae in the form of a white bull. So it is well understood by the wise and by the learned philosophers. Such is the force that has the imagination of all. It has grown in two years so large, so fierce and so severe, like a bull in how it writes its jealousy on the green trees, striking blows that shake them and make the thicket echo.
Jupiter can insult anyone: that’s why I named Jupiter the owner of this feat; if it was not to be his, I would shortly lose sense and life. No one less than Jupiter could have, in the form of strong Anfitrión, defeated the chastity of Alcmene and begotten the son who has won such high spoils, the great Theban Hercules, who before the down had grown on his lip is said had done such valorous deeds greater than his father’s.
Minos: Say no more of my disgrace and misfortune, tragic ambassador. My country has been good to me, and I have never seen it ungrateful, and the owner of my evil is Jupiter. Eclipsing the sun’s pure fire, turning off the lamp of Phoebe,[2] because it is impossible to see a moral man staining my honour eternally with such a monster. That fantasy of a white bull, in which Jupiter came transformed to Pasife, a shock to royal propriety, and you say has begotten the monster on her, that fantasy is a treasure that removes offence and saves the divine honour. But the vulgar have never judged well, and chose to see everything in the most discreditable light. I have had my vengeance, I have defeated Athens, but I will have to cry for my shame.
Feniso: Here are their strongest defenders.
Enter Teseo, Albante, and Fineo servant of Teseo.
Teseo: Here you have us, great Minos, the vanquished.
Albante: Here you have us, Lord, your vassals.
Minos: Valourous Teseo, noble Albante, do not call me your vanquisher. For heaven has taken victory from my hands with an event full of portents. In my house a monster is born in my absence. In the absence of a husband, Athenians. And without one how can a monster be born? How many evils are born in the world, cruel children of absence. You are avenged because Pasife has born a child half-human and half-bull, an infamous feat attributed to lecherous Jupiter, scandalous deity of such high name, but it has the baseness of a work of man. If a king made such a mistake they would say he was unworthy of the sceptre. If I did not arrange to have the lascivious God of the heavens transformed into a bull, I would have quit the honourable life of sacred honour: because when adultery is secret, it cannot bring about such condemnation
But do not think that does not concern us here; for in tribute I wish you to give ten of your men each your, to be devoured and eaten by this monster of Pasife.
Teseo: You will be obeyed as you have commanded.
Minos: On returning from this prison to your own walls, deliver to your homeland the tale of my wretchedness, as hard as it is to comprehend such a hard life.
They leave, but Teseo, Albante, and Fineo stay.
Probably the most decorous picture I could find of Pasiphae and the bull.
Teseo: Well, that was strange.
Albante: Strange. And that he takes vengeance on us for something that was not our fault.
Fineo: Ten men for a wild beast, a beastly tribute for a year: ask that he resolve on one, as there is not much sense in a tribute so importunate.
Albante: He will not have it; he shows no feeling in setting out this way.
Fineo: So that lady, his wife, fell in love with a white bull without propriety; would it not be better to want tribute in gold? What fault is that of Athens? Oh, women! What won’t you do?
Teseo: Respect the good ladies, fool.
Fineo: Now bulls run about, full of strange cravings? Oh, my Lord, such are the harms done under the cape of religion! They say Gods pretend to be bulls. A cute invention! It’s the same as going to the temple. I go to the temple, I contemplate, I give offerings, and inside the temple it is all vice and error, as it is told in this example.
Teseo: We need to think how a man could give such a thing, when we reach that place, but I do not think we will find that we can buy a life for money.
Fineo: Why not? You will find thousands- like the deaf, say -who will prefer a short and fat life, like a pig’s, and you will be able to pay them. There are those who use their lives only in vice, who will not amount to anything whether they live a long time or a short time, who are only good for fullfilling what is wanted. I’ve seen a man so bad that for a month of pleasure he sells six years of life.
Teseo: Those who seek such lives, I call beasts.
Albante: It seems to me, Teseo, that to minimise[3] the deaths from this ugly tribute, lots should be cast so that all would face the same chance.
Teseo: Well said; in general, all men will have hope that way, and the law will be the same, for it is not law if it does not reach both commoners and nobles.
Fineo: By heaven, no man will stick around in Athens!
Teseo: I will, for the law is greater than everyone.
Fineo: Minos is a fool.
Albante: He will love taking vengeance.
Teseo: Taking vengeance is possible.
Fineo: Would it not be wiser for this Minos, or Cumin-os,[4] to kill this angry monster, for isn’t he concerned for his reputation if it hangs about? Is he crazy?
Teseo: Possibly he is.
Fineo: He will do well through his wife’s weakness; because of that bull he must have weapons on his head. And today it is known that through this white bull, the unfortunate husband who has been cuckolded, is turned into a bull.
They leave.
***
Scene 2. The Palace of Minos. Oranteo, Prince of Lesbos, and Ariadna ,daughter of Minos, enter.
Ariadna: I cannot express my pain more strongly.
Oranteo: I am not complaining of love, for love cannot injure; I am complaining, not of that high subject; but because I was not sensible in loving so confidently, a cause that has never stopped producing such effects.
Ariadna: If my father wants to give me as wife to Feniso, because of how he has served him, it would be better pay him with my death. The best I can hope for.now is to suffer the penalty that I have attained through my foolish confidence, but, in my excuse, love and hope have always been as good as blind men are as guides. Father writes that they will give me to this fierce captain for his services in the wars, banishing all my peace. If Minos, my father, makes this mistake, I know the effect it will have at once. As obedience is commanded, I’ll obey; but in your absence I promise my life will be short. It is not possible to resist, but I am not afraid; for if I can not resist, I know well that I can die instead. Without you I do not want to live, as well you can believe me, for when there is love, there is no strength greater than that of the thinnest woman.
Oranteo: My beautiful Ariadna, pure as the dawn, beautiful, centre of the happy soul that has you for its sky! Now my joy is over and my sadness has begun. Firmly I set myself to endure your grievances, for who will live without the sight of your rare beauty? I am so grateful to see that you feel this way, but my torment grows as even my duty grows. You would not feel so strongly, seeing me in this sad state, if you were going to forget me.
Ariadna: Then does it sorrow you, sir, that you owe me this love?
Oranteo: What can I owe you, but what I have paid? Your display has disconcerted my senses, my lady. Feeling these hurts so sure and certain, comes as news of what has been. Who has lost so much good in this unjust change, who will have confidence staying on this occasion, who believed they had possession of it with a bare hope? But if this is my destiny, that you and I are to be divided, then to withdraw from you my whole life will but prolong my death. All my troubles are arranged: it is not possible for their angers to triumph with such spoils, once I took the palm. There is more left in your soul than is set aside in your eyes.Contrary fortune intends to use me to show her power, which has no power to make what it does not want eternally for you: Always the absent owner who is absent, as you have always been to it, and for consolation I will have that you and are suffering the same, that nothing can be a greater woe after having lost you.
On these fears that are killing me, swear that you hold me in your soul, and that when you are near to forgetting me, remember how much good you could give me, you who put me in this state, Today I remain unpromised, and my happiness is fretful. I was not as happy as I am unhappy.
He goes.
Ariadna: Where do you go with such threatening absence, owner of my venturesome soul? Forgetfulness is so obstinate, perhaps because memory has no patience. Your presence threatens insolently: but sight is turned aside, it returns to your strong love, which cold blood has no taste to resist. Love, when it has given spoils, does not change the passion moving the heavens: they see the souls if they do not see the eyes. Those who play at love are sleepless, but in absence there is nothing for anger, except for that which turns love to jealousy.
Enter Fedra , sister of Ariadna.
Here is a picture of Fedra.
Fedra: You care about such things? Did you not hear the salute given at the sea today at dawn?
Ariadna: Tell me in the evening. What can come to me to equal the good that I have lost on parting with Oranteo, or to satisfy the desire?
Phaedra: What if they say it’s the king?
Ariadna: A very great evil, if Feniso comes with him!
Phaedra: Love’s law never holds over his own blood.
Ariadna: Oh, Fedra, there is no consolation for such a grave pain, because Oranteo’s absence is to love like a burning bolt out of heaven to a tree! Just like a tree is changed from green hope to something bare of its leaves and branches, scorched with flames, in the same way when love is struck with absence, though there are icy fires, it turns the green of hope into the blue of jealousy.
Fedra: I am sorry to see you in such a state. But if this beastly absence can overcome the resistance of love, the same will happen to you: if he forgets you, you will forget him.
Ariadna: Love judges what is present, and I presume that in absence I will love more, grieving more. What voices are those?
Fedra: I believe the King approaches.
Ariadna: I hope and wish it were my death coming instead.
Enter Minos, Feniso, soldiers and commoners.[5]
Minos: Cast those flags on the ground, befitting a captain without honour.
Feniso: Do not give offence to heaven, in presuming Zeus means your dishonour.
Ariadna: I hope your daughters can give you comfort, father and lord, whose honourable neck and arms have conquered so many kingdoms.
Minos: I come victorious, my honour lost.Where is the cruel woman?
Fedra: Fleeing your fury.
Minos: Daughters, I come as you see me. It is right for love to forgive, as it right for honour to be offended.
Ariadna: She has nothing to relieve your disgust.
Minos: Leave me here while I undertake revenge; not on the All-Powerful, no, that is not my place, but on the cruel woman who has offended me…
Feniso: Beware of heaven.
Minos: I do not ask for life anymore. Hail! Call Daedalus to me!
Fedra: Here comes the engineer who is most respected in all Greece – nor has any greater been seen in Asia.
Daedalus: May the Gods give prosperity to your deeds.
Minos: Daedalus, friend, how can you expect prosperity for the deeds of an unhappy man, when to console his sorrows they blame All-Powerful Jupiter for them, while it was Mars, envious of my arms and victories, who took revenge to cast a shadow over my glories? Have you seen the monster that has dishonoured the beautiful Pasife, contrary to nature, and is now here so ugly, savage, and deformed?
Daedalus: Yes, great lord.
Minos: How do I make a building to enclose this beast, of such subtle ingenuity and artifice, that one who goes into it cannot come out again?
Daedalus: After you wrote me to say that was your intention, that you wanted to confine this ferocious monster, famed as the bull of Minos, or Minotaur, I made and studied various designs, and of such models and artifacts I have selected these to present to you, as you had forewarned, so if you find any of these designs depicted agreeable, you can have them executed in stone and wood.
A curtain is carried in on which is a canvas showing the plan of the labyrinth, with the Minotaur within.
Minos: By the Gods, this is something worthy of your ingenuity! Tell me, is this the fate of the fierce monster?
Daedalus: Yes, my Lord, the monster is portrayed here, in the middle of this square. This is the gate, but there is no way to find it again once it is entered.
Minos: Well! To execute this design, peerless Daedalus, is a thing that will give you fame the world over as the most supreme and ingenious artificer – and me fame as the most unhappy man.
Daedalus: Soon you will walk these corridors and see them.
Minos: I would kill the Minotaur – but I fear the wrath of great Jupiter, if the beast is his child. As far as I care it makes no difference: it is child of envy and misfortune.
They leave.
The Labyrinth, a plan therof, by Daedalus Esq.
***
Scene 3. Athens. Teseo and Fineo enter.
Fineo: I don’t want to console you.
Teseo: There is no consolation for this evil.
Fineo: You are angry at heaven.
Teseo: Today they have commanded me to embark.
Fineo: That of more than six thousand different names, yours is picked!
Teseo: Strong evil! Strong misfortune!
Fineo: You may have the good luck to hide.
Teseo: It would not be fitting, nor would they thank me for it. Oh, for evil, for so much evil, has my name been picked.
Fineo: How can it be that a man so valiant and so noble goes to be fodder for a beast?
Teseo: Because the republic is just, just because I am more valuable it must not do an unjust thing simply. Here in Athens, with equal justice and sparing none, good and evil are dealt on rich and poor alike. These ways of government differ from others, unjust and odious, where the powerful get away with what they want. Woe to the kingdom where the poor must suffer force, and the rich have the power to twist the law!
Fineo: I do not understand what this thing called justice is: surely with those who are noble, there are just exceptions.
Teseo: You must be speaking mischief.
Fineo: It’s only natural. There is a wise saying, that only in death is there equal justice for all. Anyway, what do you think of setting out to die?
Teseo: If it suits his homeland, a nobleman has an obligation to die.
Fineo: It is inevitable that your lively courage will accompany you..
Teseo: You are a loyal servant, Phineus, noble and spirited. At least, if fate has fitted me to die, my kindness has been the cause of my death. Let us go, the ship awaits, and the sea promises a calm journey.
Fineo: Better it should be troubled with all known storms…
Teseo: I will not reach salvation, since there is such a wind.
Fineo: Travelling to evil, no one has ever lacked for a fair wind.
They leave.
***
Scene 4. The palace at Lesbos. Enter Oranteo and Lauro.
Lauro: What did you ask me, what unjust thing are you complaining about?
Oranteo: I am complaining of having lost my dear wife! I am complaining of the stars, which do not care if they forget. Oh, Lauro! I lived in Crete, in love with Ariadna, waiting for the day when the cruel Minos grew weary of the military government, and my hope was he would give me all he possessed. The tyrant writes that he has given her to Feniso in marriage. Feniso, from whose hand he owes his glorious reputation, with the intent to make him king of Crete, exchanging the captain’s lance for a sceptre. Minos did wrong, to ignore my love, I who am Prince of Lesbos and descendant of the divine Gods.
Lauro: I understand that, if you want to play it safe, this is the end of your hopes of conquest.
Oranteo: Lauro, if she is married, what hope remains to me? I am dead. May it please the angry heaven, to suck down their ships at harbour, and pour the raging waves over their victorious flags!
Lauro: They are short curses, but the heavens have a greater, for if you look at what has come in the post you will see that a monster of dishonour has come to Crete.
Oranteo: I have seen that fierce and frightening Minotaur, Lauro. For it they have made a Labyrinth – for that is the name given to that site where its infamy lies, and also the eternal fame of that great master, distinguished Daedalus, skilled in all arts – and in its intricate circles men are lost, unable to find the exit, condemned to death, served up to the beast to provide it sustenance and life. I have had clear warning of the monster from a host of people.
Now to the Labyrinth tall ships will go to destroy it, in so many words. I will quit this life and rob Feniso of his jewel, as the Greeks came as thieves to Troy. Come, and we will give a voice to fame, canvas to the sea, a subject to Mars, and to the fire of love more fuel.
Lauro: And advice is all you have to help you.
Oranteo: Giving advice to one in love, is like giving life to a flame by blowing on it.
They leave.
***
Scene 5. Outside the Labyrinth of Crete. Enter Minos, Ariadna, Fedra, Feniso and Daedalus.
Minos: The construction is excellent.
Ariadna: It is impossible to find its equal in all of Greece.
Fedra: And as news of it spreads to various nations, the wings of its fame will be given new feathers.
Daedalus: I think, undefeated Lord, that the Labyrinth were not a less impressive thing than the Minotaur, that monster of nature.
Minos: I will have you given a proper award for the work you have done – and I think, also to Icarus, your son.
Fedra: Undefeated King, here comes an ambassador from Athens.
Enter Teseo and Fineo.
Teseo: I am not an ambassador, though I suppose my nobility might give occasion to my homeland to charge me with such an important office. I am Teseo, and though I was a rich Duke among my people, fate has fitted me to be the vilest of my country. I have come to die, and with that it can be said that I am nothing. If I am more, it is by the esteem of losing my life for my countrymen: those citizens who gave you sure and certain word that they would give you each year in tribute ten men for this beast. I am, King Minos, one of these, and I tell you that out of loyalty I make no defense. And it is my honour to present myself on foot to you, for my life weighs on me, and by risking this I am counting on heaven giving me something. What do you want of me?
Minos: Teseo, you could not show more clearly the strength of the heart that beats in your noble chest. I am sorry that it is you, who the past wars have made illustrious in my estimation; but Athens desires it, and you are loyal to her. Feniso, take the Duke to a tower, while the monster sustains his arrogance.
Teseo: I’m glad to know that you mean to conceal your dishonour in such a way.
Teseo goes, and Ariadna clutches at Fineo.
Ariadne: Tell, who is that?
Fineo: Who?
Ariadna: Who just passed by, what should I call him?
Fineo: Oh, my most beautiful queen! When has my mouth deserved to kiss the happy sand where you set your feet, although it is mixed up with pearls?
Ariadna: Is this Duke Teseo?
Fineo: This is he of whom they recounts such dreadful deeds; this is he who went with Jason on the proud sea to Colchis to rob Medea; this is he who entered Hell with Hercules, the Greek, and presented diverse things to the beautiful Proserpina: for the heat that one always has in the summer festivals, a splendid little fan, and because she was disposed to dress in the spanish fashion, six cuffs like little bucklers, for in Hell they also like to uncover their wrists; this is he who helped to kill the centaurs, at the wedding table of the wedding of Hipodamia, this…
Ariadna: Enough, this is Teseo, of whose fame there has been no little news in Greece. I pity to see his youth, his fairness and his gentleness.
Fineo: God have pity on your soul for this piety, for through it can be known, great Lady, your goodness and nobility.And certainly it is wrong to throw a man to a beast, or to a fool, which I think amounts to the same thing. There will be no easy remedy, because he is taking on his conscience by killing a young man to be a morsel, like he was setting a donkey loose in a field of melons.
Ariadna: Oh, sister, who could give life to this young man!
Fineo: Well, you might, if you try it.
Ariadna: I will try it without hesitation.
Fineo: Yes, by God! For this you have a loving slave to your loveliness and your beauty.
Ariadna: Is he married?
Fineo: No, he is not married. They say God does not wish that he should see such sickness. I say sickness, a sickness of patience.
Ariadne: Come talk to me tonight.
Fineo: Man has no good that does not come from the hands of woman. May you be blessed a thousand times! But when the tail of Mars is turned, and the devil is released, every man save his face, I mean to say, his head.
***
[1] “tantos las aguas”. I think this may refer to the oceans above and below the world in the ancient Greek cosmology
[2] That is, the moon.
[3] ‘excusar’. I can’t find any historical meaning that makes sense, but I think it has to be something like this.
[4] ‘cominos’ ‘Cumin’ was the first translation I found; there is a word ‘comino’, meddler, but that would have to be ‘unos cominos’, some meddlers, to make sense, and it recurs later in a context that makes it obvious that it does mean cumin here. Lope de Vega has probably written it just to make sure we know Fineo is the wacky sidekick, and as an example of a running gag that isn’t funny.
[5] ‘cajas’. I cannot find this word anywhere meaning anything but ‘boxes’, or, very recently, ‘fighter planes’, and would just leave it as ‘boxes’ here, except Minos uses it much later addressing some villagers.