Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/87

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SILVAE, I. iv. 3–25

for pious folk, and comes back reconciled with Jove, and Gallicus beholds the stars he doubted e’er to see again. Beloved of heaven art thou, divine Germanicus,[1] who can deny it? Fortune was ashamed to rob thy empire of so great a minister. Those shoulders with their immense burden rise once more next to thine, and have cast off the ruinous doom of eld and revive more vigorous yet for many a year. Therefore let the brisk cohorts[2] that venerate the City’s eagles, and the laws that ofttimes take refuge in thy bosom, complaining of the courts’ confusion, and the cities of the toga wheresoe’er they be, that with far-travelling pleas implore thy Justice—let them vie in their rejoicing, and let our own hill[3] duly join its shouts to theirs, and the mutterings of ill report be silent. For he abides, and long will abide in his new span of life, in whose merciful hand is placed the guardianship of fearless Rome. No such grave reproach will the new age lay upon the fates, nor will the altar of Tarentum,[4] late restored, so deeply sin.

But I will call neither on Phoebus, although my quill is mute without him, nor on the Aonian goddesses with Pallas the tenth Muse, nor on the gentle sons of Tegea and of Dirce[5]: come thou thyself and bring new strength and spirit, thou that art my theme; for not without genius heaven-sent wert thou so mighty to shed great glory upon the Ausonian gown and to give judgement and understanding to the Hundred.[6] Though god-possessed Pimplea shut

  1. ↑ One of the titles of the Emperor Domitian.
  2. ↑ The four urban cohorts, directly under the Praefectus urbi; the Prefect’s court was the supreme court of criminal jurisdiction, and appeals from Italian towns came to him.
  3. ↑ Sometimes explained as Helicon, cf. “nostras” l. 30; sometimes as Rome. Slater suggests Alba.
  4. ↑ Tarentum was the name given to a depression in the Campus Martius near the Tiber, where there was an altar.
  5. ↑ Mercury and Bacchus.
  6. ↑ The Centumviral court, prominent under the Empire, was a court of civil jurisdiction; its numbers, originally 105 (3 from each tribe) had been raised to 180. Cf. Silv. iv. 4. 43.

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