Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/351

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SILVAE, V. iii. 99–118

wantoning, or to maim of one foot the heroic tenor of their lay.[1] For all measures in the broad path of eloquence did thy mind embrace, in all wert thou a master, whether it pleased thee to bind thy utterance in poesy, or to fling it wide in unfettered speech and rival the rainstorms by the unbridled torrent of thy words.

Lift up, Parthenope, lift up thy head half-buried from the dust that suddenly whelmed thee, lay thy tresses merged beneath the mountain’s exhalations upon the tomb of thy great departed son: than whom neither the Munychian towers[2] nor learned Cyrene nor Sparta’s valiant spirit[3] gave birth to aught more excellent. Wert thou lacking in lineage, humble and unrenowned, with nought of thine own race to show, his citizenship would prove thee Grecian and sprung from Euboea by ancestral blood. He, whene’er he celebrated the solemn quinquennial feast[4] in famous verse, as often offered his temples to receive thy laurel-prize, surpassing the utterance of Pylian sage and Dulichian prince alike,[5] and binding the likeness of either on his brow. No mean birth of blood obscure was thine, nor was thy family without distinction (though expenses straitened thy parents’ means); for it was in rich pomp that Infancy

  1. ↑ On the MS. reading Vollmer remarks: “kühn nennt der Dichter die Verse, welche die wie Löwen kämpfenden Helden darstellen, selbst ‘leones.’” Tragedy, comedy, and elegy are denoted in ll. 96–99.
  2. ↑ Athens.
  3. ↑ Callimachus from Cyrene, Alcman from Sparta.
  4. ↑ The Augustalia at Naples.
  5. ↑ Nestor and Ulysses are referred to, both of whom were eloquent speakers.

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