Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/321
SILVAE, V. i. 186–212
their power to harm. Do thou go gladly on in the path thou hast entered, and love unfailingly the sacred presence, the spirit of our Prince. Now—a behest after thine own heart—give to the temple on the Capitol gold that endures for ever, that the countenance of sacred Caesar may gleam in a statue that weighs a hundred pounds, and prove his constant votary’s love. So shall I behold neither Furies nor dire Tartarus, but be admitted, a blessed soul, to Elysian regions.” Thus with failing strength she speaks, and clings to her consort’s arms, and unrepining breathed out her lingering soul into her husband’s lips, and closed her eyes with the hand she loved.
But the heart of her spouse was ablaze with passionate grief; now he fills the bereaved home with frenzied crying, now would fain set free the steel, now climbs to lofty heights—scarce can his friends restrain him—now broods o’er his lost one with mouth joined fast to mouth, and savagely excites the grief that is hidden in his heart: even as the Odrysian bard[1] seeing his wife’s corpse fell dazed and horror-struck, and flinging down his quill on Strymon’s bank in songless sorrow mourned the pyre. He too had courageously cut short the term of life, that thou shouldst not go uncompanioned to Tartarean gloom, but loyalty to his Prince forbids, loyalty that roused the wonder of the Sacred Monarch, and a yet greater love.[2]
Who could recount in worthy song the obsequies and funeral gifts of that unhappy train? There heaped together in long array is all the liquid wealth of Arabian and Cilician springs, Sabaean blooms and Indian produce destined for the flames, and incense,
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