Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/537

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THEBAID, III. 636–659

you, of what hap awaits our arms, when cometh the black day of doom, what heralds the common fate—and mine! I call to witness the mysteries of the universe I questioned, and the speech of birds, and thee, Thymbraean, never before so pitiless to my supplication, what presagings of the future I endured: I saw a mighty ruin foreshown, I saw gods and men dismayed and Megaera exultant and Lachesis with crumbling thread laying the ages waste. Cast away your arms! behold! heaven, yea, heaven withstands your frenzy! Miserable men, what glory is there in drenching Aonia and the fallows of dire Cadmus with the blood of vanquished foes? But why do I warn in vain? why do I repel a fate foredoomed? I go to meet it—” Here ceased the prophet, and groaned. To him Capaneus yet once more: “To thyself alone utter thy raving auguries, that thou mayst live empty and inglorious years, nor ever the Tyrrhenian clangour[1] resound about thy temples. But why dost thou delay the nobler vows of heroes? Is it forsooth that thou in slothful ease mayst lord it over thy silly birds and thy son and home and women’s chambers, that we are to shroud in silence the stricken breast of peerless Tydeus and the armed breach of covenant? Dost thou forbid the Greeks to make fierce war? then go thyself an envoy to our Sidonian foe: these chaplets will assure thee peace. Can thy words really coax from the void of heaven the causes and hidden names of things? Pitiable in sooth are the gods, if they

  1. ↑ i.e., of the trumpet; the Etruscans excelled in bronze work, and this epithet of the trumpet is as old as Aeschylus (Eum. 567).

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