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SILVAE, V. iii. 264–289

lamentation did I make! Pardon me, O shades; father, I may say it with truth: thou wouldst not have wept more for me! Happy was he who grasped his sire with ineffectual arms; ay, he would fain have snatched him away, though set in Elysium, and carried him once more through Danaan darkness:[1] and when he made essay and strove to walk with living steps to the underworld, the aged priestess of Diana, goddess of the dead, conducted him. Even so a lesser cause brought the Odrysian lyre to sluggish Avernus: so was it with Admetus in the land of Thessaly.[2] If one day brought back the shade of Protesilaus,[3] why should thy harp or mine, O father, win no request of the underworld? Might I but touch the face of my sire, might I but grasp his hand with mine, let any law that will o’ertake me!

But do ye, O monarchs of the dead and thou, Ennean Juno,[4] if ye approve my prayer, send far away the Furies’ brands and snaky locks! Let the warder of the gate make no fierce barking, let distant vales conceal the Centaurs and Hydra’s multitude and Scylla’s monstrous horde, and, scattering the throng,—let the ferryman of the dead invite to the bank the aged shade, and lay him gently to rest amid the grasses. Go, spirits of the blest and troops of Grecian bards, shower Lethaean garlands on the illustrious soul, and point him to the grove where no Fury disturbs, where there is day like ours and air most like to the air of heaven. Thence mayst thou pass to where the better gate of horn o’ercomes the envious ivory,[5] and in the semblance of a dream teach me what thou wert ever wont to teach. Even so

  1. ↑ The allusion is to Aeneas, who carried his father through the darkness of the night when the Greeks took Troy; he embraced his phantom in the underworld.
  2. ↑ Orpheus sought Eurydice, Hercules sought Alcestis.
  3. ↑ See note on ii. 7. 122.
  4. ↑ Proserpine, carried off from the fields of Enna.
  5. ↑ See Virg. Aen. vi. 894.

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