Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/475

by gleams of armour, he makes for the heights of the dire Sphinx—the only path of safety in his bewilderment—and tearing his nails upon the sheer cliff he scales the dreadful steep and gains mastery of the rock, where he has security behind and a clear downward range of harm. Then he tears away from the rocks a huge boulder, that groaning bullocks scarce with full strength could move from the ground and drag up to the wall; then heaving with all his force he raises and strives to poise the deadly mass: even as great-hearted Pholus lifted the empty mixing-bowl against his Lapith foes. Right in death’s path, aghast they view him high aloft; the mountain falls hurtling, and whelms them; at once human limbs and faces, weapons and armour lie in mingled ruin. Four men in all groan mangled beneath that one rock; straightway the host flees panic-stricken, dashed from their enterprise. For no cowards were they who lay there dead: Dorylas of the lightning stroke, in glowing valour a match for princes, and Theron of the seed of Mars, proudly confident in earth-born ancestors, Halys, second to none in swaying at will his reined steed, but fallen on those fields in dismounted fight, and Phaedimus, who drew his birth from Pentheus, and found thee, Bacchus, still his foe.^[1] But when he saw the band in terror and disordered rout from the sudden fate of these, he hurls two javelins—these alone did he carry, and had leant them against the mountain—and sends them after the fugitives. Soon, lest darts should fall on his exposed breast, of his own will he leapt down swiftly to the level plain, and seized the shield which he saw had rolled away when Theron was crushed down, and with his wonted covering of