Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/579

Here the aged seer—for well suited is the ground to Stygian rites, and the soil, rich with living gore, delighted him—bids dark-fleeced sheep and black oxen be set before him, all the finest heads that the herds can show; Dirce and gloomy Cithaeron wailed aloud, and the echoing valleys shuddered at the sudden silence. Then he entwined their fierce horns with wreaths of dusky hue, handling them himself, and first at the edge of that well-known wood he nine times spills lavish draughts of Bacchus into a hollowed trench, and gifts of vernal milk and Attic rain^[1] and propitiatory blood to the shades below; so much is poured out as the dry earth will drink. Then they roll tree trunks thither, and the sad priest bids there be three altar-fires for Hecate and three for the maidens born of cursed Acheron; for thee, lord of Avernus, a heap of pinewood though sunk into the ground yet towers high into the air; next to this an altar of lesser bulk is raised to Ceres of the underworld; in front and on every side the cypress of lamentation intertwines them. And now, their lofty heads marked with the sword and the pure sprinkled meal, the cattle fell under the stroke; then the virgin Manto, catching the blood in bowls, makes first libation, and moving thrice round all the pyres, as her holy sire commands, offers the half-dead tissues and the yet living entrails, nor delays to set the devouring fire to the dark foliage. And when Tiresias heard the branches crackling in the flames and the grim piles roaring—for the burning heat surges before his face, and the fiery vapour fills the hollows of his eyes—he exclaimed, and the pyres trembled, and the flames cowered at his voice: