Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/347

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SILVAE, V. iii. 59–77

neither Cerberus with all his mouths nor Orpheus’ cruel bond could keep thee. There as I sang of thy goodness and thy deeds perchance thy love had deemed me not second to Homer’s mighty utterance, ay, would even fain hold me equal to Maro’s solemn chant.

^[1]Why does the mother who sits bereaved by her son’s still-glowing pile assail the gods and the Sisters’ brazen threads more bitterly than I? Why she who looks upon the flames that consume her youthful spouse, and breaks through the hands that stay her and the resisting crowd, to die, do they but suffer her, upon her husband’s blazing corpse? More fiercely even than theirs, perchance, does my reproach strike Tartarus and the gods;^[2] perchance even alien eyes find sorrow in the funeral train. Ay, not Nature only nor Affection have lent themselves to my grief for these sad rites: for to me, O father, thou wert cut off on manhood’s earliest threshold, and in the prime of life didst enter cruel Tartarus. For neither did the Marathonian maid lament Icarius’ death, that savage countrymen wrought, more sparingly than his mother mourned Astyanax hurled down from the Phrygian tower. Nay, Erigone stifled her sobs in the noose that took her life; but

↑ The idea running through this passage is that to him his father is as one untimely dead, and that therefore this bitterness is added to the grief felt by natural affection; Erigone is an example of the same thing. She bewailed her father Icarius no less bitterly than Andromache mourned Astyanax her son; Erigone slew herself, while Andromache became the slave of Pyrrhus.
↑ The construction seems to be “perhaps fiercer than these in my reproach I strike,” etc.; “invidia” is strictly the feeling of bitterness against a person, often of the bereaved towards the gods, cf. Theb. ix. 723; Silv. v. 5. 78. The sympathy of onlookers is often referred to as being aroused especially by cases of untimely death, cf. ii. 1. 175, v. 1. 217.

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[1] The idea running through this passage is that to him his father is as one untimely dead, and that therefore this bitterness is added to the grief felt by natural affection; Erigone is an example of the same thing. She bewailed her father Icarius no less bitterly than Andromache mourned Astyanax her son; Erigone slew herself, while Andromache became the slave of Pyrrhus.

[2] The construction seems to be “perhaps fiercer than these in my reproach I strike,” etc.; “invidia” is strictly the feeling of bitterness against a person, often of the bereaved towards the gods, cf. Theb. ix. 723; Silv. v. 5. 78. The sympathy of onlookers is often referred to as being aroused especially by cases of untimely death, cf. ii. 1. 175, v. 1. 217.

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