Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/553

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THEBAID, IV. 95–120

limb,[1] so soon as the first bugles sounded: even so a slippery snake raises itself from the deep earth at the coaxing breath of the vernal sun, freed of its eld and the unsightly years put off, and gleams, a bright green danger, in the lush herbage; unhappy the husbandman who meets its gaping mouth in the grass, and spoils its fangs of their new venom! To him also the rumour of war brings present help of warriors from the Aetolian cities; rocky Pylene heard the tidings, and Pleuron of Meleager, wept for by his sister-birds;[2] steep Calydon, and Olenos whose Jove doth challenge Ide,[3] and Chalcis, welcome haven from Ionian billows, and the river[4] whose face the athlete Hercules did mar: even yet scarce dares he raise his stricken visage from the waters’ depth, but mourns with head sunk far below in his green cave, while the river-banks pant and sicken with dust. All these defend their bodies with bronze-bound targes, and bear fierce halberds in their hands, while native Mars stands erect upon their helms. Chosen youths surround the great-hearted son of Oeneus, high-spirited for battle and in all the glory of his well-known scars; no meaner he in threatening ire than Polynices; ’tis doubtful even for whom the war is waged.

But mightier comes thereon the Dorian[5] array new-armed, they whose numerous ploughs turn up thy banks, Lyrcius, and thy shores, Inachus, prince of Achaean streams—for no more tempestuous torrent flows forth from Persean[6] land, when he has drunk deep of Taurus[7] or the watery Pleiades, foam-

  1. ↑ i.e., after his wounds received at Thebes in the ambush.
  2. ↑ The sisters of Meleager wept for him until Artemis turned them into guinea-fowl, hence called “meleagrides.”
  3. ↑ Olenos was an Aetolian town called after a king of that name who was a son of Zeus. The Ida referred to is the mountain in Crete, which boasted of having given birth to Zeus.
  4. ↑ The Achelous.
  5. ↑ i.e., Peloponnesian.
  6. ↑ i.e., Argive.
  7. ↑ Taurus, the sign of the Zodiac, mentioned as rainy, because the Hyades were in it (cf. Plin. N.H. ii, 110).

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