Ah! hapless mother, Pasiphae, wife of Minos, deceived by Aphrodite into a fatal passion for a bull. Cf. Verg. Aen. vi. ad init., also Ovid Metam., viii, 131 sqq. what a love was thine! Nurse Her love for the bull? daughter, or what meanest thou? Phaedra And woe to thee! my sister, Ariadne, deserted by Theseus in the isle of Naxos, where Dionysus found her. bride of Dionysus. Nurse What ails thee, child? speaking ill of kith and kin. Phaedra Myself the third to suffer! how am I undone! Nurse Thou strik’st me dumb! Where will this history end? Phaedra That love has been our curse from time long past. Nurse I know no more of what I fain would learn. Phaedra Ah! would thou couldst say for me what I have to tell. Nurse I am no prophetess to unriddle secrets. Phaedra What is it they mean when they talk of people being in love? Nurse At once the sweetest and the bitterest thing, my child.