Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/473

band; leaning on their spears and with grounded arms held ready, they await their haughty foe, and set strong guard around the wood.

Night had begun to shroud the sunlight in her dewy pall, and had cast over the earth her dark shadow. The hero drew nigh the woods, and from a lofty mound sees the red gleam of warriors’ shields and plumed helmets, where the forest boughs leave an open space, and through the opposing shade the flickering moonlight plays upon the brazen armour. Appalled at the sight he yet went onward; he but draws to him his spiky darts, and the sword sheathed to the hilt. Then first he makes question, in no base terror: “Whence are ye, men, what mean ye lurking thus armed?” No voice made answer, the suspicious silence holds no sure pledge of peace. Lo! a spear, hurled by the mighty arm of Chthonius, the leader of the band, flies through the dusky air; but heaven and fortune lent no aid to his venture. Yet through the covering of Olenian boar and the black bristly hide it sped, over his shoulder, near drawing blood, and widowed of its point strikes harmless on his throat. With hair erect and blood frozen about his heart he looks this way and that, fiercely alert and pale with rage, nor deems so large a troop to be equipped against him: “Come forth against me! out with you into the open! why such timorous daring, such arrant cowardice? alone I challenge you, alone!” Nor waited they; but when he saw them, more than he thought, swarming up from countless lurking places, some issuing from the ridges, others in ever-growing numbers coming from the valley-depths, nor few upon the plain, as when the first cry drives the encircled quarry into the open, and the road all lit