Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/255

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SILVAE, IV. ii. 60—iii. 11

abide in thy palace! Many a time mayst thou fling wide the threshold of the year, and many a time with new lictors offer thy greetings to Janus, many a time renew the garlanded festival of the quinquennial games![1] The day whereon thou didst vouchsafe to me the sacred blessings of thy feast and board came to me after long time as glorious as that when beneath the hills of Trojan[2] Alba I sang now of German wars, now of Dacian battles, and thy hand set the golden circlet of Pallas[3] on my brow.

III. THE DOMITIAN ROAD


The Via Domitiana, built in 95, replaced the old, very bad road along the coast from Sinuessa to Naples; the Appian Way struck inland at Sinuessa, and a long detour was necessary, if travellers to Naples wished to avoid the bad road. The new road thus effected a considerable shortening of the journey.


What fearful sound of hard flint and heavy iron fills the stony Appian way where it draws nigh the sea? Certainly no Libyan[4] hordes are thundering, no foreign chieftain scours restlessly the Campanian fields in treacherous warfare, nor is Nero hewing a canal,[5] and making a way for squalid meres through cloven mountains. Nay, he who encircles the warlike threshold of Janus with justice and courts of law,[6] he who restores to innocent Ceres acres long

  1. ↑ The Capitoline contest.
  2. ↑ See note on iii. 5. 28.
  3. ↑ The prize was a golden olive-wreath.
  4. ↑ The reference is to Hannibal’s army, and to the bad faith (“punica fides”) of that commander.
  5. ↑ The reference is to Nero’s attempt to make a canal from Lake Avernus to the mouth of the Tiber, which meant cutting through two mountain ridges, see Tac. Ann. xv. 42. “paludes,” probably the Pomptine marshes.
  6. ↑ Probably the Forum Transitorium, see iv. 1. 13 n., and the new Janus Quadrifrons. Cf. Mart. x. 28. 5.

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