Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/213

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SILVAE, III. iii. 79–101

son. Who that fears the gods was ever suffered to serve so many temples, so many altars? The winged Arcadian is the messenger of supreme Jove; Juno hath power over the rain-bringing Thaumantian;[1] Triton, swift to obey, stands ready at Neptune’s bidding: thou hast duly borne unharmed the yoke of princes, changed so many times, and thy little boat has weathered every sea.

And now from on high a light illumined his loyal home, and Fortune towering to her loftiest entered apace. Now was entrusted to him alone the controlling of the sacred treasure, wealth drawn from every race, the revenue of the mighty world. All that Iberia hews from out her gold-mines,[2] the glittering metal of Dalmatian hills, the produce of African harvests: all that is threshed on the floors of sultry Nile, or gathered by the divers who search the Eastern seas: the tended flocks of Lacedaemonian Galaesus, frozen crystals, Massylian citron-wood, the glory of the Indian tusk: all is committed to his charge and subject to him alone, all that the North wind and fierce East wind and the cloudy South bring with them; sooner would you count the winter rains or forest leaves. Watchful too is he and shrewd of mind, and quick to reckon what the Roman arms beneath every sky demand, how much the tribes[3] and the temples, how much the lofty aque-

  1. ↑ Mercury and Iris.
  2. ↑ See Pliny, N.H. xxxiii. 78, for the mines of Spain; the gold-mines of Dalmatia are also mentioned iv. 7. 13; cf. also the simile in Theb. vi. 880. Since Tiberius mining rights were vested in the Emperor. The Imperial fiscus also derived income from African wheat, from pearl-fisheries, and considerable wealth from Egypt, which was the Emperor’s own domain.
  3. ↑ “tribus,” probably the supplies of free corn, distributed by tribes; “propugn. aeq.,” perhaps the care of harbours rather than fortresses; “quod domini,” etc., Domitian had recently built a new palace on the Palatine; “quae divum,” etc., the general supervision of statues of the Emperors (= “divum”), and of the Mint.

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