Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/581

“Abodes of Tartarus and awful realm of insatiable Death, and thou, most cruel of the brothers,^[1] to whom the shades are given to serve thee, and the eternal punishments of the damned obey thee, and the palace of the underworld, throw open in answer to my knocking the silent places and empty void of stern Persephone, and send forth the multitude that lurk in hollow night; let the ferryman row back across the Styx with groaning bark. Haste ye all together, nor let there be for the shades but one fashion of return to the light; do thou, daughter of Perses,^[2] and the cloud-wrapt Arcadian with rod of power lead in separate throng the pious denizens of Elysium; but for those who died in crime, who in Erebus, as among the seed of Cadmus, are most in number, be thou their leader, Tisiphone, go on before with snake thrice brandished and blazing yew-branch, and throw open the light of day, nor let Cerberus interpose his heads, and turn aside the ghosts that lack the light.”

He spoke, and together the aged man and Phoebus’ maiden waited in rapt attention. Nought feared they, for their hearts were inspired of the god; only the son of Oedipus was overcome by a great terror, and in agony he grasps, now the shoulders, now the hands and sacred fillets of the seer as he chants his awful strain, and would fain leave the rites unfinished. Even so a hunter awaits a lion roused by long shouting from his lair in the brushwood of a Gaetulian forest, steeling his courage and holding his spear in a perspiring grip; his face is frozen in terror and his steps tremble; “what beast approaches?” he