Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v2.djvu/83

all his host, amid wild clamour comes the bier. The Lernean chieftains encircle Lycurgus, a female company are gathered about the queen, nor does Hypsipyle go unattended: the Inachidae,^[1] not unmindful, surround her close, her sons support her bruised arms, and suffer their new-found mother to lament.

There, as soon as Eurydice came forth from her ill-starred palace, she bared her breast and cried aloud, and with beating of her bosom and prelude of long wailings thus began: “I never thought, my son, to follow thee with this encompassing train of Argive matrons, nor thus did I picture in my foolish prayers thy infant years, nought cruel did I expect; whence at my life’s end should I have fear for thee from a Theban war, whereof I knew not? What god has taken delight in joining battle with our race? Who vowed this crime against our arms? But thy house, O Cadmus, has not suffered yet, no infant do Tyrian crowds lament. ’Tis I that have borne the first-fruits of grief and untimely death, before even trumpets brayed or sword was drawn, while in indolent neglect I put faith in his nurse’s bosom and entrusted to her my babe to suckle. Why should I not? She told a tale of the cunning rescue of her sire and her innocence. But look! this woman, who alone, we must think, abjured the deadly deed she vowed, and alone of her race was free from the Lemnian madness, this woman here—and ye believe her, after her daring deed!—so strong in her devotion, cast away in desolate fields, no king or lord, but, impious one! another’s child, that is all! and left him on a path in an ill-famed wood, where not merely poisonous snake—what need, alas, of so huge a slayer?—but a strong tempest only, or a bough broken by the