Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/379

This page has been validated.

THEBAID

BOOK I[1]


My spirit is touched by Pierian fire to recount the strife of brethren, and the battle of the alternate reign fought out with impious hatred, and all the guilty tale of Thebes. Whence, O goddesses, do ye bid me begin?—Shall I sing the origins of the dreadful race, the Sidonian rape and the inexorable terms of Agenor’s law, and Cadmus searching o’er the main?[2] Far backward runs the story, should I tell of the anxious husbandman of hidden war, sowing battles in the unhallowed soil, and, searching to the uttermost, relate with what song Amphion bade the Tyrian mountains move to form a city’s walls, whence came Bacchus’ grievous wrath against his kindred towers; what deed fierce Juno wrought; against whom unhappy Athamas caught up his bow, and why with Palaemon in her arms his mother quailed not to leap into the vast Ionian sea.[3] Nay rather here and now I will suffer the sorrows and the joys of Cadmus to have gone by: let the troubled house of Oedipus set a limit to[4] my song, since not yet may I venture to

  1. ↑ For the situation at the opening of the Epic and its plot see [[../../Introduction/]].
  2. ↑ Cadmus, son of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, was sent by his father in search of Europa when carried off by Zeus in the form of a bull; he subsequently founded Thebes, and sowed the dragon’s teeth there; hence “anxious husbandman,” etc.
  3. ↑ Juno’s jealousy caused the death of Semele, mother of Bacchus; Athamas went mad and slew his son Learchus, Ino leapt with Palaemon into the sea. Ino and Semele were daughters of Cadmus.
  4. ↑ Or, “be the track, the course of.”

341

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.