Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/435

and the green earth and the pure river-springs, yet more sadly wilt return again to this darkness.”

Cerberus lying on the murky threshold perceived them, and reared up with all his mouths wide agape, fierce even to entering folk; but now his black neck swelled up all threatening, now had he torn and scattered their bones upon the ground, had not the god with branch Lethaean soothed his bristling frame and quelled with threefold slumber the steely glare.

There is a place—named Taenarum by the Inachian folk—where foaming Malea’s dreaded headland rises into the air, nor suffers any vision to reach its summit. Sublime stands the peak and looks down serene on winds and rain, and only to weary stars affords a resting-place. There tired winds find repose, and there the lightnings have their path; hollow clouds hold the mountain’s midmost flanks, and never beat of soaring wing comes nigh the topmost ranges nor the hoarse clap of thunder. But when the day inclines towards its setting, a vast shadow casts its fringes wide over the level waters, and floats upon mid-sea. Around an inner bay Taenaros curves his broken shore-line, not bold to breast the outer waves. There Neptune brings home to haven his coursers wearied by the Aegean flood; in front their hooves paw the sand, behind, they end in fishy tails beneath the water. In this region, so ’tis said, a hidden path conducts the pallid ghosts, and dowers with many a death the spacious halls of swarthy Jove.^[1] If Arcadian husbandmen speak truth, shrieks