Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/283

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SILVAE, IV. vi. 13–38

persuaded us to sit out a winter’s night and to banish soft sleep from our eyes, until the other Twin[1] looked forth from Elysium, and Tithonia laughed at yesterday’s banquet. O night of bliss! would it had been Tirynthian, with moon added to moon![2] a night to be marked with the Erythraean gems[3] of Thetis, a night to be long told of, a night whose spirit[4] will live for ever! There and then did I learn of a thousand beauties of bronze and ancient ivory, and deceiving shapes of wax on the verge of speech. For who ever rivalled the keen glance of Vindex in recognizing the hand of an old master and telling the author of an untitled work? ’Tis he who will show you on what bronzes cunning Myron spent anxious vigils, what marbles the chisel of untiring Praxiteles has made to live, what ivories the thumb of the Pisaean[5] has smoothed, what statues have been bidden breathe in Polyclitus’ furnaces, what lines confess from afar the old Apelles; for this, whensoe’er he puts his lyre from him, is his leisure, this passion calls him from Aonian[6] dells.

Amid these treasures was a Hercules, the deity and guardian of his frugal board, with which I fell deeply in love; nor, though long I gazed, were my eyes sated with it; such dignity had the work, such majesty, despite its narrow limits. A god was he, ay, a god! and he granted thee to behold him, Lysippus, small to the eye, yet a giant to the mind! And though his stature be marvellously confined

  1. ↑ Castor and Pollux were allowed to live on alternate days; Tithonia is the Dawn.
  2. ↑ i.e., such a night as that wherein Hercules was begotten, of twice the usual length.
  3. ↑ i.e., pearls, fetched from the Erythraean sea; an improvement on the usual “chalk,” as a means of marking a “white” day. Thetis was a sea-goddess.
  4. ↑ For “genius” see note on ii. 7. 132.
  5. ↑ Phidias, famed for his chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia (Pisa).
  6. ↑ i.e., of the Muses (= Boeotian).

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