Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/575

springs of Hermus. But we, thy progeny, have laid aside our country’s weapons^[1] that do thee festal honour, and have our portion of war and tears, and terror and kindred crime, the cruel burdens of this unrighteous reign. Rather, O Bacchus, take and set me among the eternal frosts, beyond Caucasus that rings with the war-cry of the Amazons, than that I should tell the horrors of our rulers and their unnatural brood. Lo! thou drivest me! far different was the frenzy I vowed to thee, O Bacchus: I behold two similar bulls engage, alike in honour and sharing one inherited blood; with butting foreheads and lofty horns they close in fierce struggle, and perish in the violence of their mutual wrath. Thou art the villain! do thou give way, who wrongfully seekest all alone to hold ancestral pastures and the hills ye both do own. Ah! miserable and wicked! such bloodshed have your wars cost you, and another champion is master of your meadow.” So spake she, and as the god withdrew his presence fell mute with ice-cold face.

But the king, affrighted by the portent and a prey to various terrors, in sick despair—such is the way of those who fear they know not what—seeks aid from the long-lived seer and the clear-sighted blindness of Tiresias. He replies that heaven shows not its will so clearly by lavish slaughter of steers or nimble feathered wing or the truthful leap of entrails, not by means of garlanded tripod or star-determined numbers, or by the smoke that hovers about the altar’s frankincense, as by the ghosts called up from Death’s stern barrier; then he prepares the rites of Lethe,^[2] and makes ready beforehand to evoke the monarch sunk below the confines of Ismenos where