Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/549

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THEBAID, IV. 46–67

quails at Charadros foaming down his valley’s length, Cleonae with her piled mass of towers, and Thyrea[1] destined one day to reap a harvest of Spartan gore. To them are joined men who remember the king sent thence in early days,[2] men who cultivate the rocky heights of Drepanum and olive-bearing Sicyon, and whom Strangilla laves with lazy, silent stream, and Elisson winding through his curving banks. An awful privilege has that river: it cleanses, so ’tis said, with its austere waters the Stygian Eumenides; here are they wont to dip their faces and the horned snakes that gasp from drinking Phlegethon, whether they have ruined Thracian homes[3] or Mycenae’s impious palace or Cadmus’ dwelling; the river itself flees from them as they bathe, and its pools grow livid with countless poisons. Ephyre, who consoled the weeping Ino,[4] lends her company, and Cenchreae, where the river, struck by the Gorgon-quelling steed, owns the presence of the bard, and where Isthmos lies athwart the deep and wards off from the land the sloping seas. This troop, in all three thousand, followed in Adrastus’ train exultant; some bore pikes in their hand, some stakes long hardened in the fire—for neither blood nor custom are shared by all their bands—some are wont to whirl firmly-woven slings and gird the air with a trackless circle.

  1. ↑ A district on the borders of Argolis and Laconia, which was the subject of constant fighting between Argives and Spartans down to as late as a hundred years after Statius’s time.
  2. ↑ Adrastus was originally ruler of Sicyon, having fled thither from Argos owing to a feud, but subsequently returned to Argos; cf. ii. 179.
  3. ↑ Probably refers to the madness sent upon Lycurgus, king of Thrace, by Dionysus.
  4. ↑ She bewailed her son Palaemon at Lechaeum, port of Corinth (Ephyre). Cenchreae was the port on the Saronic Gulf; the spring struck out by the hoof of Pegasus was usually placed on Helicon (Hippocrene), but was sometimes identified with Pirene, the fountain at Corinth, cf. Silvae, ii. 7. 2.

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