Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/387

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THEBAID, I. 94–119

phantoms gives way before her, fearing to meet their queen; then, journeying through the shadows and the fields dark with trooping ghosts, she hastens to the gate of Taenarus,[1] whose threshold none may cross and again return. Day felt her presence, Night interposed her pitchy cloud and startled his shining steeds; far off towering Atlas shuddered and shifted the weight of heaven upon his trembling shoulders. Forthwith rising aloft from Malea’s vale she hies her on the well-known way to Thebes: for on no errand is she swifter to go and to return, not kindred Tartarus itself pleases her so well. A hundred horned snakes erect shaded her face, the thronging terror of her awful head;[2] deep within her sunken eyes there glows a light of iron hue, as when Atracian[3] spells make travailing Phoebe redden through the clouds; suffused with venom, her skin distends and swells with corruption; a fiery vapour issues from her evil mouth, bringing upon mankind thirst unquenchable and sickness and famine and universal death. From her shoulders falls a stark and grisly robe, whose dark fastenings meet upon her breast: Atropos and Proserpine herself fashion her this garb anew. Then both her hands are shaken in wrath, the one gleaming with a funeral torch, the other lashing the air with a live water-snake.

She halted, where the sheer heights of vast Cithaeron rise to meet the sky, and sent forth from her green locks fierce repeated hisses, a signal to the land, whereupon the whole shore of the Achaean gulf and the realm of Pelops echoed far and wide. Parnassus also in mid-heaven heard it, and turbulent Eurotas; with the din Oete rocked and staggered,

  1. ↑ A promontory in Laconia, which had a cave supposed to be an entrance to the underworld.
  2. ↑ Edd. who keep “minor” explain either as the lesser half of the crowd of snakes, or as the small fry, compared with the big snake in the Fury’s hand (113).
  3. ↑ i.e., Thessalian. Thessaly was famous for magic spells and witches, cf. iii. 140.

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