Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/495

delay not.” Already the fierce king’s anger was stirred, and blood lights up his scowling visage. Then Phlegyas and Labdacus, who never dallied at evil work—the realm’s armed might was in their keeping—prepare unbidden to go and assault him with violence. But already the great-souled seer had bared his blade, and looking now at the truculent tyrant’s face, now at his sword: “Never shalt thou have power upon this blood of mine nor strike the breast that great Tydeus spared; I go, yea exultant, and meet the fate whereof he robbed me; I am borne to the shades of my expectant comrades. As for thee, to the gods and thy brother———” Even as he spoke, the sword was in his side to the hilt, cutting short his words; he fights against the agony, and with a strong effort doubling himself over the mighty blow sinks down, and the blood, sped by the last gaspings of his life, comes forth now from his mouth, now from the wound. The chiefs are stricken with dismay, the councillors mutter in alarm; but he, with visage set and grim in the death his hand accomplished, is borne to his house by his wife and trusty kinsmen, who have had no long joy of his return. But the mad rage of the impious ruler cannot so long be stayed; he forbids that the corpse be consumed with fire, and in vain defiance bars the peace of the tomb from the unwitting shades.

But thou, so noble in thy death and in thy constancy, thou who wilt never suffer oblivion—such is thy due reward—thou who daredst scorn a monarch to his face, and thus hallow the path of ample freedom: by what strain of sufficing utterance can I add due renown to thy high prowess, augur beloved by the gods? Not in vain did Apollo teach thee all his