Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/335

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SILVAE, V. ii. 95–119

berus from that timid shade, ay, more swiftly grant thy ghost the waters of forgetfulness!”

A blessing on thy heart, O youth! yet the greater grows thy mother’s crime. Not devotion only, but high courage also has been thy aim. Lately when thy friend grew pale at a false charge and unmerited ill-fame, and the Julian law awoke the Courts,[1] and girt with her train of justices arose and shook her lightning-brand of chastity: thou, although without experience of trials or stern laws, but ever hidden in the silence of thy studious shade, yet didst take upon thee to avert his fears, and, thyself an unarmed recruit, to repel the bolts that threatened thy terror-stricken friend. Never before did Romulus and our Dardanian ancestor[2] behold so young a combatant wage gowned warfare in mid-forum. The fathers were amazed at so brave a venture and at thy daring and even the innocent feared thee.[3] In thy limbs too is the same vigour, and thy strength ever ready for valiant deeds is sufficient for thy courage and obedient to high behests. Myself I saw thee of late on Tiber’s bank, where the Tyrrhenian wave foams against Latian shallows, speeding on thy course, and with naked heel goading the flank of thy mettled steed, with threatening hand and visage:—as I speak truth, I stood aghast, and thought thee armed for battle—; so fair to see rode Ascanius on a Gaetulian horse a-hunting into his stepmother’s fields, brandishing Trojan shafts, and made hapless

  1. ↑ The charge was probably one of adultery, which would be dealt with under the Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus.
  2. ↑ Romulus and Aeneas, i.e. their statues in the Forum.
  3. ↑ I adopt this interpretation with a good deal of hesitation (“nec reus ipse = et ipse is qui non erat reus”). I do not, however, think there is a lacuna here. Prof. Hardie adopts Prof. Slater’s suggestion that nec te is a corruption of vecti, i.e. Crispinus himself, and reads after 109—
    ipse etiam stupuit tanti modo criminis auctor
    conatusque tuos, Vecti,—reus ipse—timebat.

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