Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v2.djvu/87
THEBAID, VI. 185–208
thus in my day of ruin?” Thus spake she and fell silent, and her complainings ceased. Even so when a wild beast has seized or shepherd borne away to the cruel shrine a bullock cheated of its first milk, whose strength is yet but frail and whose vigour is drawn but from the udder, the despoiled mother stirs now the valley, now the streams, now the herds with her moanings, and questions the empty meads; then it irks her to go home, and she leaves the desolate fields the last of all, and turns unfed from the herbage spread before her.
But the father hurls with his own hand upon the pyre his glorious sceptre and the emblems of the Thunderer, and with the sword cuts short the hair that fell o’er back and breast, and with the shorn tresses covers the frail features of the infant where he lies, and mingles with tender tears such words as these: “Far otherwise, treacherous Jupiter, did I once consecrate these locks to thee, and held me to my vow, shouldst thou have granted me to offer therewith my son’s ripe manhood at thy shrine;[1] but the priest confirmed it not, and my prayer was lost; let his shade, then, who is worthier, receive them!” Already the torch is set to the pyre, and the flame crackles in the lowest branches; hard is it to restrain the frenzied parents. Danaans are bidden stand and with barrier raised of weapons shut out afar from their vision the awful scene. The fire is richly fed: never before was so sumptuous a blaze; precious stones crack, huge streams of molten silver run, and gold oozes from out the embroidered
- ↑ “genas,” here “cheeks,” that would be in the flush of manhood; “viridis” often = “in the prime of age.” The clause “si dedisses” is not the protasis to “dicaram,” but expresses the content of the vow, i.e. implies an ellipse: “I had, previously, promised (that I would give you the lock) if you should have, etc.” “dicaram” is not “vivid” for “dicassem”; cf. vi. 609–610.
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