Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/593

in years, why was I chosen, first out of so many shades, to speak augury and to foretell what shall befall? ’Tis enough to have remembrance of the past. Seek ye my counsel, illustrious grandsons? nay, shame upon you! Him summon ye, him, to your unhallowed rites, who gladly pierces his father with the sword, who turns him to the place of his begetting, and casts back upon his innocent mother her own dear pledge of love. And now he wearies the gods and the dark councils of the Furies, and supplicates my shade for the coming strife. But if I have found such favour as a prophet of these times of woe, I will speak, so far as Lachesis and grim Megaera suffer me: War cometh from every side, war of countless hosts, Gradivus sweeps on the sons of Lerna^[1] before the goads of fate; them there await portents of the earth, and weapons of heaven, and glorious deaths, and unlawful withholdings from the final fire.^[2] Victory is sure for Thebes, doubt it not, nor shall thy fierce kinsman have thy realm; but Furies shall possess it, and twofold impious crime, and alas, in your unhappy swords your cruel father triumphs.” So speaking he faded from their sight, and left them in doubt at his mazy riddling words.

Meanwhile the sons of Inachus with scattered troop had reached cool Nemea and the glades that witness to Hercules’ renown; already they burn with eagerness to drive off Sidonian plunder, to destroy and ravage homesteads. Say thou, O Phoebus, who turned them from their path of anger, whence came their staying, and how in mid course they wandered from the way; to us but scant beginnings of the tale remain.