Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/389

and Isthmos scarce withstood the waves on either side. With her own hand his mother snatched Palaemon from the curved back of his straying dolphin steed and pressed him to her bosom.^[1]

Then the Fury, swooping headlong upon the Cadmean towers, straightway cast upon the house its wonted gloom: troubled dismay seized the brothers’ hearts and the madness of their race inspired them, and envy that repines at others’ happiness, and hate-engendering fear; and then fierce love of power, and breach of mutual covenant, and ambition that brooks not second place, the dearer joy of sole supremacy, and discord that attends on partnered rule. Even so would a farmer fain unite under the plough-yoke two picked bullocks of the savage herd, but they indignant—for not yet has the frequent coulter bowed those arching necks to the sinewy shoulders—pull contrariwise and with strength well-matched break harness and confound the furrows with divers tracks: not otherwise does furious discord enrage the proud brothers. ’Twas agreed to change rule for exile by the ordinance of the alternate year. By a grudging law they bade their fortunes change, so that a new claimant should ever embitter the monarch’s fast-expiring term. No other bond united the brethren, this was their sole stay from arms, nor destined to endure to a second reign. Yet then no ceilings glittered with thick plates of yellow gold, nor did quarried Grecian pillars bear aloft vast halls that could freely spread the serried mass of clients; no spears kept guard o’er a monarch’s troubled slumbers, no sentinels groaned at the recurring duty of the watch; they thought not to entrust precious stones to the wine-cup, nor to soil gold with food; ’twas for