BOOK Σ ∞≤Ω
trembled as they leaped o√ their ship’s high stern,
eminent, elegant, nobly born—and now
424
that fear and rage did not disfigure them,
their faces shone, and their demeanor spoke.
‘‘They say the gods emerge through secret doors
• to visit Aethiopia’s Red Sea shores,
the houses where they feast at minor banquets,
and all the rivers and the mountains ease
their passage and the lap of earth rejoices;
there Atlas, who sustains the heavens, rests.
‘‘We saw proud Theseus, who had recently
• freed Marathon. We saw the North Wind’s children,
431
• brothers from Thrace, whose temples sang with feathers
• like red wings, and we saw Admetus, one
whom Phoebus granted precedence, and then
Orpheus, mild, unlike the other Thracians.
• We saw the son of Calydon, then Peleus,
the son-in-law of Nereus. The twin
• Oebalidae deceived our sight with their
confusing ambiguity: both Castor
and Pollux wore a purple cloak and carried
javelins, and they each exposed their shoulders;
their cheeks were shaved; their hair shone like twin stars.
• Young Hylas tried to match the mighty stride
of Hercules, whose bulk made him move slowly.
He managed with some di≈culty, bearing
Lernaean weapons, proud he could perspire
under the burden of a massive quiver.
‘‘Venus, as a result, returned, and Cupid
445
with silent flames aroused love in
the hard hearts of the women left on Lemnos.
Juno allowed our minds to dwell on thoughts
of noble arms and manly dress, the signs
of breeding and distinction. We competed
to open up our doorways to these strangers.
We lit our altars and forgot the crimes
that for so long preoccupied our minds.
We feasted and slept well through quiet nights.
∞≥≠ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
‘‘We women told what happened, and the gods
452
protected us, I think. O gentlemen,
perhaps my destiny would interest you!
My error was excusable. I swear
upon the ashes and the Furies of my family,
I did not light a stranger’s marriage torch
because of my desire or ill intent.
The gods know it was Jason’s charming manner
that bound another virgin in his chains.
He broke the law in Phasis, spilling blood.
• In Colchis, he discovered other love.
‘‘Soon frost had melted, and the stars were warmed
459
by longer days. The rapid year revolved.
Women made vows in childbirth, and a new,
unlooked-for generation cried in Lemnos.
‘‘Brought to the marriage bed by force, and made
463
a mother by a brutal foreigner,
I bore twin sons, and I named one for his
grandfather. What their fortune is, or if
the Fates have let them live, who knows? Four times
the span of sixty months has passed since I
left them in Lemnos in Lycaste’s care.
–?–?–?–
‘‘A milder, southern breeze allured the sails.
468
The spirit of the sea grew calm. The ship
disparaged quiet haven and delay;
she strained against the rock that held her chain.
The Argonauts were set to leave, and that vile
Jason assembled his adventurers.
I wish that waves had borne him past our shores,
for Jason never loved his children or
respected promises. His fame in faro√
nations is well known: he won the fleece,
the one that Phrixus carried overseas.
‘‘On the appointed day, the sun set west;
476
Tiphys, the helmsman, sensed the coming breeze;
BOOK Σ ∞≥∞
Phoebus descended to his scarlet bed.
Women lamented. It was night again.
‘‘The order for departure came from Jason,
479
on his high deck, when day had hardly broken.
That leader was the first to lash the sea.
‘‘From cli√s and from the highest mountain summits
481
we watched them cleave the foaming main’s expanse
till light deceived our eyes and heaven seemed
to merge into the margin of the surface;
it blended in the distance with the ocean.
‘‘There was a rumor running in the port
486
that said my father Thoas crossed the seas
• to Chios, to his brother, where he ruled;
that I had spared my parent; that the bier
I burned was empty. Driven crazy by
their sense of guilt, the common women called
for punishment and shamelessly complained.
The rabble’s secret whisperings increased:
‘Why must we mourn our dead while she alone
491
kept faith and saved her family? Were not
these things commanded by the gods and fate?
Why should that wicked woman rule our city?’
‘‘Terrified by their murmurings—my royalty
493
useless against impending retribution—
I left the bloody walls and, unaccompanied,
wandered along the pathless shores in secret—
the route that I had followed with my father.
No Bacchus met me this time. I was seized—
I did not scream—by pirates on the beach,
who brought me to your shores to be a slave.’’
–?–?–?–
These words, addressed to those Lernaean leaders,
499
allowed the Lemnian exile to assuage
her grief, but she forgot her absent baby.
The fault lay in the stars! Weary from playing,
∞≥≤ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
he lay his heavy eyes and languid face
along the ground and fell asleep, while grasping,
within his little hand, a clump of grass.
• Meanwhile, a dragon born of earth, the sacred
506
curse of Achaean groves, appeared. He moved
with tract indented on the ground. He drew
his bulk first forward, then behind his torso.
Blue flames burned in his eyes, his jaws foamed green
with venom, three tongues flickered from curved teeth
arranged in triple rows, and from his brow
of burnished gold a gruesome crest protruded.
Along the Inachus the farmers say
511
he’s sacred to the Thunderer, whom they
worship at woodland shrines in their small way,
and he protects them. Now the serpent slid
and looped around the temples of the gods;
his loose folds ravaged forests, crushing oaks,
huge ash trees, and his serpentine, coiled length
lay over rivers, bank to bank, which once
bubbled beneath his scales as he cut trenches.
But now, as Bacchus had commanded, all
the land was panting and the nymphs of streams
lay hidden in the dust. The serpent twisted
his convoluted curves on crumbling ground
and burned up with the heat of drying venom.
He wound and wande
red where old swamps had been,
522
on burning lakes and buried springs, through valleys
empty of rivers. Now he raised his head,
uncertain, and he licked the liquid air.
The serpent scraped through groaning fields; he slid
along his belly on the ground in search
of fresh grass, and whichever way he turned
his scalding breath, fields died and pastures withered.
• His size recalled the dragon that divides
529
the Great Bear from the northern pole of heaven
and reaches to the other world’s south winds,
BOOK Σ ∞≥≥
or him whose coils contained the sacred horns
of Mount Parnassus, until you, Apollo,
pierced him a hundred times with wooden arrows.
Why has God given you, o little one,534
by accident, the weight of such misfortune?
Were you, who had just reached the gates of life,
doomed by your enemy? Is this why you
for centuries were sacred to the Grecians
and why you earned so great a funeral?
The serpent did not know, but its long tail538
struck you and killed you, child! At once
sleep left your limbs; you opened up your eyes,
only to die, but first your frightened cries
were carried through the air, and when they ceased,
your voice fell silent, as occurs in dreams.
Hypsipyle was listening; she breathed
544
softly, too sick to run; her knees grew weak.
Convinced that something awful, some ill omen,
had happened, she looked everywhere; she crossed
the fields repeating words the infant knew
but found no sign of him. The child was gone.
Meanwhile, her sluggish enemy, the dragon,
549
stretched over several acres in a circle
of venom, with his neck back on his belly,
unmoving, unafraid, despite the screams
of awful fear resounding through the forest.
The Argives’ ears, however, heard her wails
554
of misery, and the Arcadian,
Parthenopaeus, at his leader’s urging,
took o√ at once, then brought back his report.
And now the dragon turned his scaly neck
556
toward flashing weapons and the sounds of men.
With great strength, huge Hippomedon uplifted
a boundary marker stone and hurtled it
∞≥∂ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
through empty air, just as a catapult
casts balanced boulders at a city’s doors
in wartime. But the hero’s strength was useless.
The dragon drew its head back. It avoided
the blow, which tore a pathway through the forest
of tangled branches till it struck the earth.
‘‘Even if giants join you and assault me,
you won’t avoid myblows,’’ cried Capaneus,
565
who held his ash spear out and faced the serpent,
‘‘wherever you inhabit fearful groves
or entertain the gods—oh, yes, those gods!’’
His quivering weapon took advantage of
570
the monster’s open jaws; it flew inside
and slit the sinews of its triple tongues;
it exited his brilliant head and crest,
draining black blood and brains, and pierced the earth.
The pain had scarcely reached its total length,
when it threw rapid coils around the spear,
extracted it, and took it to its cave,
the temple of the god, where all was dark.
There its great bulk collapsed; the creature sighed,
lay down before its master’s shrine, and died.
Lerna’s swamps (kindred spirits) mourned the serpent,
579
as did the Nemean fields where it had crawled
and Nymphs whose vernal flowers covered it.
O woodland Fauns, you groaned and dashed your pipes!
Jupiter—even he, in his high heaven—
584
gathered the clouds of winter, called for weapons,
but then dismissed his anger. Capaneus
must be preserved for greater punishment.
One lightning bolt, however, cut the air
and blew aside his towering helmet crest.
Already the unhappy Lemnian
588
had wandered over many fields in which
the serpent once had dwelled; then she beheld,
not far away, a grass knoll stained with blood.
BOOK Σ ∞≥Σ
Carried away by grief, her face grown pale,
591
she hurried there, and when she recognized
the tragedy, she tumbled, thunderstruck,
on the o√ending earth, incapable
of weeping or of speaking, only seeking
life in the baby’s limbs, still warm. She leaned
over him, giving kiss on kiss, although his skin
was rent, and she could not distinguish his
face or his chest. She viewed his tender bones—
his fresh blood dripped in beads along his tendons—
as when a bird returns to her holm oak
599
within whose shady leaves a tedious snake
has ravaged her young brood and torn her nest;
she marvels at the quiet of her home;
she hovers, in confusion; then, dismayed
and horrified, she drops the food her beak
has carried; she sees blood around her tree
and floating feathers drape her captured nest.
When she upheld his torn limbs to her breast
605
and veiled him with her tresses, she expressed
her grief and let her groans form words. At last:
?’’Archemorus, sweet image of my sons!
You were a solace for my loneliness,
my country, all I’d lost. You were my one
reward for servitude. What guilty gods
have murdered you, my joy, whom I had left
playing and crawling, worrying the grass?
Where are your star-bright eyes? those words you half
613
pronounced? your laughter and your murmurings
only I understood? How many times
did I discourse of Lemnos and the Argo
and sing you lulling songs so you would sleep?
You were my consolation, little one!
I nursed you at my breast. Now you are gone;
my milk comes down in vain; it trickles on
your injuries like melancholy rain!
‘‘I recognize the workings of the gods.
620
My dreams have been portentous, fearful nightmares.
The Thebaid Page 23