Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/275

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SILVAE, IV. iv. 91—v. 4

glades of Helicon has thrown incense on the festal flames and the entrails of a virgin heifer, and hung up my chaplets on a votive tree. And now another band new twined encircles my vacant locks: ay, ’tis Troy I am attempting and great Achilles,[1] but the Sire that wields the bow calls me elsewhere and points me to the mightier arms of the Ausonian chief. Long since has impulse urged me thither, but fear holds me back. Will my shoulders sustain so great a burden, or will my neck yield under the weight? Tell me, Marcellus, shall I essay the task? or must my bark that knows but lesser seas not yet be trusted to Ionian perils[2]?

And now farewell, and let not regard for the poet who is wholly devoted to thee pass from thy mind; for neither was the Tirynthian chary of warm-hearted friendship; to thee shall yield the fame of loyal Theseus, and of him who to comfort his slain friend dragged Priam’s mangled son around the walls of Troy.

V. A LYRIC ODE TO SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS


An Alcaic ode in the Horatian manner to his friend Septimius, a young man of equestrian family, who, like the future Emperor of that name, was born in Leptis in Africa. He had been a fellow-pupil of Vitorius Marcellus.


Happy amid the glories of my small estate, where ancient Alba dwells in her Trojan home, I salute in unwonted strains the brave and eloquent Severus.

  1. ↑ See the prelude to the Achilleid; it was conventional flattery to suppose that one’s real ambition was to sing of the exploits of the Emperor.
  2. ↑ The Ionian and Adriatic seas were proverbially dangerous for ships that preferred to hug the shore.

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