Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/585

rolls down his streams of murky flame, and Styx interfluent sets a barrier to the sundered ghosts. Himself I behold, all pale upon his throne, with Furies ministering to his fell deeds about him, and the remorseless chambers and gloomy couch of Stygian Juno.^[1] Black Death sits upon an eminence, and numbers the silent peoples for their lord; yet the greater part of the troop remains. The Gortynian judge^[2] shakes them in his inexorable urn, demanding the truth with threats, and constrains them to speak out their whole lives’ story and at last confess their extorted gains. Why should I tell thee of Hell’s monsters, of Scyllas and the empty rage of Centaurs, and the Giants’ twisted chains of solid adamant, and the diminished shade of hundredfold Aegaeon?” “Even so,” said he, “O guide and strength of my old age, tell me not things well known. Who knows not the aye-returning rock, and the deceiving waters, and Tityos food of vultures, and Ixion swooning on the long circlings of the wheel? I myself in the years of stronger manhood beheld the hidden realms with Hecate as my guide, before heaven whelmed my vision, and drew all my light within my mind. Rather summon thou hither with thy prayers the Argive and the Theban souls; the rest, my daughter, bid thou with milk four times sprinkled to avert their steps, and to leave the dreary grove. Then tell me, pray, the dress and countenance of each, how great their desire for the spilled blood, which folk draw nigh more haughtily, and thus of each several thing inform my darkness.”

She obeys, and weaves the charm wherewith she disperses the shades and calls them back when scattered; potent (but without their crimes) as the