Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v2.djvu/19

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THEBAID, V. 43–69

we set in long array the columns of our van—nor does Nemea readily allow a broad host to draw clear, so closely hemmed is she by woodland and entangling shade—tell us of the crime, and of thy praiseworthy deed and the sufferings of thy people, and how cast out from thy realm thou art come to this toil of thine.”

Pleasant is it to the unhappy to speak, and to recall the sorrows of old time. Thus she begins: “Set amid the encircling tides of Aegean Nereus lies Lemnos, where Mulciber draws breath again from his labours in fiery Aetna; Athos hard by clothes the land with his mighty shadow, and darkens the sea with the image of his forests; opposite the Thracians plough, the Thracians, from whose shores came our sin and doom. Rich and populous was our land, no less renowned than Samos or echoing[1] Delos or the other countless isles against which Aegon[2] dashes in foam. It was the will of the gods to confound our homes, but our own hearts are not free from guilt; no sacred fires did we kindle to Venus, the goddess had no shrine. Even celestial minds are moved at last to resentment, and slow but sure the Avenging Powers creep on. She, leaving ancient Paphos and her hundred shrines, with altered looks and tresses,[3] loosed, so they say, her love-alluring girdle and banished her Idalian doves afar. Some, ’tis certain, of the women told it abroad that the goddess, armed with other torches and deadlier weapons, had flitted through the marriage chambers in the darkness of midnight with the sisterhood of Tartarus about her, and how she had filled every secret place with twining serpents and our bridal thresholds with dire terror, pitying not the people of her

  1. ↑ Some explain “with oracles,” but the more likely meaning is “with dashing waves,” as in the next line.
  2. ↑ i.e., the Aegean Sea.
  3. ↑ lit., “not as she previously was in respect of . . .” Cf. xi. 459, “non habitu, quo nota prius, non ore sereno.”

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