Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/173

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SILVAE, II. vii. 82–109

the torches of wedlock[1] will bestow on thee a poetess suited to thy genius, for beauty, simplicity, graciousness, wealth, lineage, charm, and loveliness worthy of kindly Venus’ or of Juno’s giving, and myself will chant before your gate the festal marriage-hymn. Alas! ye Fates, too stern and cruel! Alas! that the highest never long endure! Why are lofty things most prone to fall? Why by a cruel chance doth greatness ne’er grow old? Even so is the son of the Nasamonian Thunderer,[2] whose lightning flashed from rising to setting sun,[3] confined in a narrow tomb at Babylon. Even so did Thetis swoon to see Pelides fall, pierced by the hand of coward Paris. Even so did I upon the banks of murmuring Hebrus follow the head of Orpheus not mute in death. Even so on thee—ah! the impious[4] frenzied tyrant!—bidden while singing of battles and with lofty utterance solacing the mighty dead to plunge in Lethe’s rushing stream—O crime. O most foul crime!—on thee too shall silence fall.” She spoke, and with shining quill brushed away her lightly-falling tears.

But[5] thou, whether uplifted in the soaring chariot of fame through the whirling vault of heaven, whither rise more puissant souls, thou lookest down upon the

  1. ↑ The construction is paralleled by Plautus, Miles 619 “neque te decora neque tuis virtutibus.”
  2. ↑ Alexander the Great, who proclaimed himself the son of the Libyan god Ammon (= Jupiter).
  3. ↑ Or “after his lightning-swift rise and setting.” But “fulmen” is commonly used in poetry of a warlike hero, as “duo fulmina belli” of the Scipios by Virgil, and Sidonius seems to be imitating Statius in “paterno actum fulmine pervolasse terras” (ix. 50), and in “vitam fulminibus parem peregit” (xxiii. 96).
  4. ↑ Postgate takes “nefas” in apposition to “tu,” “a reproach to the frenzied tyrant,” i.e. Lucan is to be a reproach to the tyrant Nero.
  5. ↑ Cf. the opening of Phars. ix.

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