Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/285

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SILVAE, IV. vi. 39–62

within a foot’s height, yet will you be fain to cry, as you cast your eyes o’er his limbs: “This is the breast that crushed the ravager of Nemea, these the arms that bore the deadly club, and broke the oars of Argo.”[1] To think that a tiny frame should hold the illusion of so mighty[2] a form! What preciseness of touch, what daring imagination the cunning master had, at once to model an ornament for the table and to conceive in his mind mighty colossal forms! No such work could Telchines in the caves of Ida, or dull Brontes or the Lemnian[3] who makes bright the armour of the gods have playfully fashioned from some small lump of metal. No wrathful likeness was it, unsuited to the gaiety of the feast, but in such mood as the home of thrifty Molorchus[4] marvelled to behold, or the Tegean priestess[5] in Alea’s groves; or as when, sent heavenward from Oeta’s ashes, he joyfully drank the nectar, though Juno still frowned: with even so kindly a countenance, as if rejoicing from his heart, doth he cheer the banquet. One hand holds his brother’s tipsy goblet, but the other forgets not his club; a rocky seat supports him, and the Nemean lionskin drapes the stone.

So divine a work had a worthy fate. It was a deity revered at the merry banquets of the Pellaean monarch,[6] and alike in East and West it bore him company; gladly did he set it before him, with that same hand that had given crowns and taken them

  1. ↑ This appears to be a direct reference to the “crab” caught by Hercules in the Argo through the breaking of his oar (see the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, iii. 476).
  2. ↑ “magna” by hypallage for “magnae”; the same idea is expressed in lines 37 and 45, i.e. the artist’s skill in making a small image convey the impression of giant form.
  3. ↑ Vulcan.
  4. ↑ The cottager who entertained Hercules when about to slay the lion of Nemea.
  5. ↑ Auge, for whom see note on iii. 1. 40.
  6. ↑ Alexander the Great.

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