Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/565

enshrined in rivers, what nymphs of the glade hath he not fired with consuming passion? Diana herself, when she saw the boy beneath the shade of Maenalus stepping youthful o’er the grass, forgave her comrade, so they say, and with her own hand fitted to his shoulders the Dictean^[1] shafts and Amyclean quiver. Smitten by dauntless love of war he dashes to the front, burning to hear the clash of arms and bray of trumpets, to soil his fair hair with the dust of battle, and to ride home on a foeman’s captive steed. He is weary of the woodlands, and ashamed that he knows not the arrows’ baneful boast of human blood. Foremost he shines, ablaze with purple and gold, his streaming cloak furrowed by Iberian cords,^[2] and his innocent shield adorned with his mother’s Calydonian battles; fierce sounds the bow at his left side, and on his back, plumed with feathery shafts, rattles the quiver set with pale electrum and brilliant Eastern jasper, full of Cydonian arrows. His charger, accustomed to outstrip the flying stags, was covered with two lynxes’ hides, and marvelled at his armed master’s heavier weight; him he loftily bestrode, comely to look upon from the pleasant flush of youth upon his cheeks. To him the Arcadians^[3] an ancient people, older than the moon and stars, give trusty cohorts; they were born, ’tis said, of the hard trunks of forest trees, when the wondering earth first bore the print of feet; not yet were fields or houses or cities or ordinance of marriage: oaks and laurels suffered rude child-birth, and the shady