Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/81

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SILVAE, I. iii. 48–70

and metals that lived in manifold forms. A labour is it to tell of the shapes of gold, the ivories and the gems worthy to adorn a finger, and of all that the artist’s hand first playfully wrought in silver or smaller bronze, and made trial of huge colossal forms. While I wandered gazing and cast my eyes on all, I was treading on riches unaware. For the radiance down-streaming from on high and the tiles that reflected the brilliant light displayed to me the floor, where the ground rejoices in manifold skill of painting, and with strange shapes surpasses the Unswept Pavement[1]: awe held my steps.

Why should I now marvel at the central buildings, or at the outer wings each with its upper story[2]? why at thee, preserved in the very heart of the house, thou tree that risest up through roof and roof-beam to the pure air above, and under any other lord wouldest endure the cruel axe? Even now, though thou[3] knowest it not, some lissome Naiad or Hamadryad perchance doth owe to thee the life that no stroke has severed.

Why should I tell of feasts held now on this bank, now on that, of white-gleaming pools and springs deep-hidden ’neath the flood, or of thee, O Marcia,[4] that glidest athwart the river’s depths and in bold lead dost cross its channels? Shall only the river of Elis come safe by an unsalt path to Aetna’s haven beneath Ionian waves?[5] There Anio himself, leaving

  1. ↑ A famous mosaic floor by one Sosus in Pergamum, so-called because it represented the scraps and leavings of a banquet (see Plin. N.H. xxxvi. 184).
  2. ↑ The term in Greek means a building of three stories; here and in Spartianus (Pesc. Nig. xii. 4) it seems to mean the upper story or stories of a house. The word is used nowhere else in classical Latin: in Paulinus of Nola in the Greek sense, “trichora altaria” (Ep. xxxii. 10).
  3. ↑ i.e., Vopiscus: the change of person addressed is awkward, unless we understand Statius’s habit of apostrophizing, cf. i. 4. 3, 38, 106.
  4. ↑ One of the aqueducts that supplied Rome with water.
  5. ↑ See note on i. 2. 204.

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