Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/231

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SILVAE, III. iv. 97—v. 13

therein, and leave thy likeness here for ever.” He spoke, and shut the mirror, imprisoning the image.

But the peerless boy stretched forth his hands to heaven, and cried: “Most gentle guardian of men, vouchsafe in reward for my gift, if I so deserve, to keep our prince in the freshness of undying youth, and save him for the world. The sky, the sea, and the earth join with me in my prayer. May he live, I pray, through the years of a Priam and a Nestor both, and rejoicing see his own home and the Tarpeian shrine grow to old age with himself.” He spoke, and Pergamus marvelled that her fanes were shaken.

V. THE POET TO HIS WIFE CLAUDIA


The poet pleads with his wife to fall in with his plan to return from Rome to Naples, his birthplace.


Why are you sad, my wife, in the day-time and in the nights we share together? Why do you sigh for anxiety and wakeful sorrow? I have no fear lest it be unfaithfulness and a rival passion in your heart; you are safe against all poisoned shafts, ay—though the Rhamnusian[1] hear my words and frown—safe indeed! Even were I torn from my native shores and after twenty years of war and seafaring a wanderer still, you would repel unharmed a thousand wooers;[2] nor would you plan to weave again the unravelled web, but would be frank and open, and even with arms deny your chamber. But say, whence comes this sullen brow, this clouded countenance? Is it that, broken in health, I purpose to return to my Euboean home, and to settle in old age on my

  1. ↑ i.e., Nemesis, from Rhamnus, a town in Attica, which possessed a statue of that goddess.
  2. ↑ Like Penelope.

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