Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/573

Like is he to a wolf that has forced an entrance to a rich fold of sheep, and now, his breast all clotted with foul corruption and his gaping bristly mouth unsightly with blood-stained wool, hies him from the pens, turning this way and that his troubled gaze, should the angry shepherds find out their loss and follow in pursuit, and flees all conscious of his bold deed.

Disturbing Rumour heaps panic upon panic: one says that scattered cavalry of Lerna wander upon Asopus’ bank, one tells of thy capture, Cithaeron of the revels, another reports Teumesos taken, and Plataeae’s watch-fires burning through the darkness of the night. And to whom throughout the land hath not knowledge, yea sight been granted, of the Tyrian^[1] walls a-sweat and Dirce stained with blood, of monstrous births and Sphinx yet once more speaking from her rock? And to crown all, a new fear confounds their anxious hearts: of a sudden the queen of the woodland dance^[2] is seized by frenzy, and scattering the sacred baskets runs down to the plain from the Ogygian heights, and bloodshot-eyed waves fiercely to and fro a triple pine-torch, and fills the alarmed city with wild distracted cries: “Almighty Sire of Nysa,^[3] who long hast ceased to love thy ancestral nation, swift-borne beneath the frozen North thou art shaking warlike Ismara now with thine iron-pointed thyrsus, and bidding the vine-groves creep over Lycurgus’^[4] realm, or thou art rushing in mad and flaring triumph by swelling Ganges and the farthest confines of red Tethys^[5] and the Eastern lands, or issuing golden from the