Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/271

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SILVAE, IV. iv. 40–65

and the return of the harvest has emptied the forum. Defendants no more throng thy chambers, no querulous clients pray thee to come forth. Idle is the spear that rules the Hundred Judges,[1] before whom even now, in all the brilliance of high renown, thy eloquence is pre-eminent and outstrips thy youthful years. Happy thou in thy labours, who carest not for the chaplets of Helicon nor for unwarlike bays from Parnassus’ summit, but thy intellect is keen, and thy mind girt up for mighty deeds endures whatever may befall: we beguile a leisured life with song, and seek the fickle delights of fame. Lo! I myself, in quest of sleep and that genial shore where the stranger Parthenope[2] found refuge in an Ausonian haven, pluck at my frail strings with feeble fingers, and seated by the threshold of Maro’s shrine take heart and make melody at the mighty master’s tomb.[3] But thou, if Atropos gives thee a long span of life—and ’tis my prayer she may, and that the godhead of the Latian prince may so appoint, whose zealous worshipper, ay even before the Thunderer, thou art, and who adds another duty to thy year of office, and bids thee renew the hilly courses of the Latin Way—thou perchance shalt go to curb the cohorts of Ausonia, or ’tis thy task to guard the peoples of the Rhine or dark Thule’s shores, or Ister and the dread approaches of the Caspian gate. For it is not only the gift of powerful eloquence that is thine: thou hast limbs that are made for war, and

  1. ↑ The Centumviri were an important court of civil jurisdiction. Its emblem was the spear, originally set up at sales of property captured from the enemy, as questions of property, e.g. inheritance, often came before it.
  2. ↑ According to the legend the Siren of that name threw herself into the sea after being foiled by Ulysses and was washed up in the harbour of Naples, which was called after her. For another legend see iv. 8. 48 n.
  3. ↑ Virgil’s tomb was on the road from Naples to Puteoli, about two miles out from Naples, and was the object of the pious worship of Silius Italicus and many others.

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