Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/569

Mycenae, neighbour though she was, helped with no soldiery; for then was the deadly banquet and the sun’s midday withdrawing, and there, too, was a feud of warring brothers.^[1]

And now the tidings had filled the ears of Atalanta, that her son was going a captain to the war, and rousing all Arcadia; her steps faltered and the darts fell by her side; swifter than the winged wind she fled from the woodland, o’er rocks and brimming rivers that would stay her, just as she was, with snatched-up raiment and fair hair streaming behind her on the breeze; even as a tigress, bereft of her cubs, fiercely tracks the horse of him that robbed her. When she halted and pressed her bosom on the reins that met her (he pale, with eyes downcast): “Whence comes this mad desire, my son, whence this reckless valour in thy young breast? Canst thou drill men to war, canst thou bear the burdens of Mars and go among the sword-bearing companies? Yet would that thou wert able! Lately I paled to see thee plying thy hunting-lance in close conflict with a struggling boar, forced back upon bent knee and almost fallen, and had I not drawn my bow and sped an arrow, where now would be thy wars? Nought will my shafts avail thee, nor my shapely bows, nor this black-spotted steed in whom thou trustest; mighty are the endeavours to which thou hastenest, and thou a boy scarce ripe for the embraces of Dryads or the passions of Erymanthian Nymphs. Omens tell true: I wondered why Diana’s temple seemed to me of late to tremble, and the goddess herself to frown upon me, and why the votive spoils fell from her roof; this it was that made my archery slack and my hands to falter and never to strike sure. Nay,