Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/159

loyal, one whose faithful affection merited these tears, and whose spirit knew a freedom that no line of ancestry could give. Check not thy weeping, feel no shame; let that day of thy lament know no restraining, if the Fates are so cruel—’tis a man thou bewailest, Ursus,—alas! myself I fan thy sorrow!—a man who was thine own, ready to find service sweet, never sullen, eager to give orders to himself. Who would curb the grief that bursts forth at such a death? The Parthian laments his steed slain in the fight, the Molossians their trusty hounds, even birds have had their pyres, and the hind its Maro.^[1] What if he were no real slave? Myself I saw and marked his bearing, how he would have thee only for his lord; but nobler yet was the spirit in his face, and breeding showed clear in his youthful blood. Eagerly would Grecian and Latin dames desire and pray that such a son were theirs. Less comely was proud Theseus, when the cunning maid of Crete drew him back with her anxious thread, or Paris, when in haste to see his Spartan^[2] bride he launched, a shepherd lad, the unwilling pines upon the main. ’Tis truth I tell, nor does wonted licence sway my song: I have seen him, ay, and see him yet, outmatching Achilles when Thetis hid him singing of wars upon the maiden’s strand, or Troilus, when the lance from the Haemonian hero’s arm^[3] caught him as he fled round cruel Phoebus’ walls. How fair thou wert! lo! comelier far than all, lads and men alike, and surpassed only by thy lord!^[4] His glory alone exceeded thine, as the bright moon exceeds the lesser fires, and as Hesper outshines the other