Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/445

judge at yesterday’s banquet. Many a one, with throne and wide-extending sway to boast of, has desired them—’twere long to tell the tale of Pheraean and Oebalian princes^[1]—and mothers also throughout the towns of Achaea, for hope of posterity; nor did Oeneus thy own father despise more proffered unions, nor the sire of Pisa’s bride with his terrible chariot-reins.^[2] But none of Spartan birth nor of them that hail from Elis may I choose for my daughters’ consorts: to you doth ancient destiny pledge my blood and the guardianship of my halls. The gods are gracious, in that ye come to me so high in birth and spirit that I rejoice in their oracles. This is the prize that the night’s sufferings have won, this is your reward for the blows ye bore.”

They heard him, and for a while held their eyes fixed in mutual gaze, seeming to yield each other place of speech. But Tydeus, in every deed more daring, begins: “O how sparingly doth thy sage mind impel thee to proclaim thy own renown, and how greatly by worth dost thou outdo all fortune’s favour! To whom should Adrastus yield in power? Who knows not that thou, when driven from thy ancestral Sicyon’s throne, didst give law to turbulent Argos? and would that thou wert willing, O just Jupiter, to entrust to these hands the races that Dorian Isthmus contains within the interior lands, and those which it removes beneath its other bound! The interrupted light would not have fled from dire Mycenae,^[3] nor would the vales of Elis have groaned at the fierce contests,^[4] nor divers Furies afflicted divers kings, nor happened all