Helen Undecided

Ovid: Heroides
From the Letter of Paris to Helen:

Though I can think of many more things to write,
only welcome me into your bed
in the silence of the night and we can speak
together, lying there face to face.
Perhaps you are ashamed and afraid to break
the bonds of married love and be false
to a bed's purity that is yours by law.
But that is too simple, even crude;
Helen, can you still think beauty like yours
can ever remain in chastity?
You must change, either your beauty or your firm
resolution; beauty and virtue
are in contention. Jove and Venus both have
found their delight in the sins of stealth,
and such a secret sin made Jove your father.
If character is conveyed by seed,
the child of Jove and Leda could not be chaste.
But you can be chaste, though not until
you have safely come within my Trojan walls;
let your sin, I pray, be mine alone.
We will sin together now, but sin will be
undone in the hour of our marriage.
My only prayer now is that the promise
Venus once made to me will be true.
Your husband himself forces you to this by
his actions, though hardly by his words:
that the guest may steal, he has removed himself.
This was the only time he could find
to visit his kingdom on Crete. Surely he
is a husband wonderfully shrewd.
'In my place, I commend to your care all of
my affairs and our guest from Ida,'
he said, preparing to leave. I swear to you,
if you neglect the stated wishes
of your master, you do not care for your guest.