Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/597

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THEBAID, IV. 677–703

By craft will I contrive delay; hasten then thither, ho! my comrades, thither to yon plain!” At the signal the Hyrcanian[1] team pricked up their crests, and, the word scarce spoken, he halted at his goal.

It was the hour when panting day uplifts the sun to the mid summit of the world, when the languid heat hangs over the gaping fields, and all the groves let in the sky.[2] He summons the spirits of the waters, and as they throng round him in silence he begins: “Ye rustic Nymphs, deities of the streams, no small portion of my train, fulfil the task that I now do set you. Stop fast with earth awhile the Argolic river-springs, I beg, and the pools and running brooks, and in Nemea most of all, whereby they pass to attack our walls, let the water flee from the depth; Phoebus himself, still at the summit of his path, doth aid you, so but your own will fail not; the stars lend their strong influence to my design, and the heat-bringing hound of my Erigone[3] is foaming. Go then of your goodwill, go into the hidden places of earth; afterwards will I coax you forth with swelling channels, and all the choicest gifts at my altar shall be for your honour, and I will drive afar the nightly raids of the shameless horn-footed ones, and the lustful rapine of the Fauns.”

He spoke, and a faint blight seemed to overspread their features, and the moist freshness withered from their hair. Straightway fiery thirst drains dry the Inachian fields: the streams are gone, fountains and lakes are parched and dry, and the scorched mud hardens in the river-beds. A sickly drought is upon the soil, the crops of tender springing wheat droop low; at the edge of the bank the flock stands

  1. ↑ The Hyrcanians were a people on the Caspian; the name is often used by the poets = “wild, savage.”
  2. ↑ Because the sun pierces through them.
  3. ↑ Named Maera, and set in the heavens as the Dog-star, after the death of Erigone from grief for her father Icarius.

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