the bed on which he would be burned—was wrapped
• with branches and young cypress. Country fruits
54
lay deep and green upon that site, beneath
a more painstaking layer of woven grass,
a colored mound of flowers that will fade.
A third layer was arranged of eastern spices,
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the riches of Arabia, white glebes
of incense, and Egyptian cinnamon.
Gold crinkled in the canopy they raised,
62
soft cloth of Tyrian purple, which displayed,
among acanthus leaves and polished jewels,
• an infant Linus and the hounds of death—
ill omens that his mother always hated.
Despite its craft, she would avert her gaze.
The pyre was circled by ancestral arms
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and relics—monuments of glory dimmed
by su√ering and family defeats—
as if the weight of great, enormous limbs
were borne within the co≈n, not an infant.
The mourners celebrated him despite
his nonaccomplishments and barren fame
and with their pomp enhanced the infant’s shade.
And thus with joyful sorrowing, with tears
72
of exaltation, they bore gifts for burning
more precious than his years. His prayers too hasty,
his father had already dedicated
a quiver and a small-scale spear to him
and arrows that knew no impieties
∞∂∂ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
and stabled horses of the best-known breeds:
he’d kept these in his name with belts of bells
and armor that would wait till he grew strong.
His mother’d had great expectations also:
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what clothes had she not ordered, in her zeal,
cut out of purple cloth, inwoven with
royal insignia? She’d even chosen
a little scepter. Now her cruel husband
ordered it all conveyed to those dark flames,
as if this desecration could erase
the misery that made his mind feel crazed.
–?–?–?–
Elsewhere the Argive army, at the urging
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of its wise augur, built an airy pyre
high as a mountain, made of fallen forests
and trunks of trees, to burn away their guilt—
they’d killed a sacred snake!—and to appease
• the deities for their ill-fated war.
They lay the groves of shady Nemea
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to earth, and with their e√orts, they exposed
its valleys to the sun; they now cut down
a virgin forest, ancient growth no ax
had ever touched, whose shades were thicker than
in any vale between the Argolis
and Mount Lycaeos, where trees reach the stars.
• Sacred it stood, divine with age. They say
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not only ancestors of men, but nymphs
and flocks of fauns dwelled there in olden days.
The metamorphosed ones remained, but ruin
and misery now overcame the forest;
the wild beasts fled; fear drove birds from warm nests;
great beeches fell, as did old oaks and cypresses
that winter does not harm. Pitch pines were hewn
to feed the funeral flame; and mountain ash
and trunks of holm oak, yews with poison sap,
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and those ash trees that drink cursed blood in wars
as well as oaks impervious to rot.
They cleaved the daring firs, the pines whose wounds
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are scented, vine-propped elms, and alder trees
that lower to the earth their unshorn branches.
• Earth groaned, and more trees fell than on Ismara
when Boreas escapes his broken cave;
the trees fell faster than nocturnal flames
incited by the roll of southern winds.
• Hoar Pales, deity of shepherds, left
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the pleasant leisure of the groves. So did
• Silvanus, king of shadows, and the flocks
of demigods, and as they went, the forest
despaired and moaned, for trees could not release
the nymphs from their embrace. It was as when
a leader gives the signal to his troops
to sack a conquered town. The victors scarcely
hear it before the city disappears.
Without restraint they enter, raze, take flight:
they bear o√ loot with more noise than they fight.
Their work produced two pyres of equal size,
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one for sad ghosts, one heaven’s deities.
Then the low murmur of a spiral flute—
the Phrygian custom when an infant dies—
signaled the start of mourning. It is said
King Pelops instituted this sad chant
and funeral ritual, the same used when
Niobe brought twelve urns to Sipylus,
• where she mourned when two quivers had undone her.
Grecian commanders carried o√erings
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on platters, sacrifices for the flames.
Their titles and their honorable names
served as a testament, and then the bier,
after a lengthy interval, was borne
upon the shoulders of young men the king
∞∂Π STATIUS, THE THEBAID
himself selected from his multitudes.
The clamor was ferocious. Lernaean
princes enclosed Lycurgus. Gentle women
walked with his queen; nor was Hypsipyle
without her followers; the Argive women
protected her and showed consideration;
her sons held her bruised arms, and they endured
the lamentations of their newfound mother.
At that point, having left her fatal palace,
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Eurydice, breast bare, began to speak,
a prelude to more moans and longer wailings:
‘‘I never, son, in my most foolish dreams
imagined anything this horrible:
to follow you, surrounded by a train
of Argive matrons! How could I have known
at this time in my life that I would need
to worry you’d be harmed by war in Thebes?
To which god is it sweet to make us bleed
in battle? Who has sworn to harm our army?
‘‘The house of Cadmus has not yet known grief
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for any Tyrian infant born in Thebes!
The first to su√er tears and bitter death—
before the horns have played, before a sword
is drawn—is me, for I am she who trusted
a nurse to take my baby to her breast!
‘‘Why not? The woman told us how her tricks
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had saved her father from an evil mob,
and we believed that she alone abjured
the ritual of death—that she, alone,
was guiltless of the madness that seized Lemnos.
‘‘Can you believe that one so brave, so pious,
152
could be so reckless as to leave behind
in unattended fields a lord and king—
as well as someone else’s child? She was
so negligent! She left him on a path
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of peril in the forest, where he might
be killed not only by an awful serpent—
whose mass more than su≈ced to cause his death—
but by strong breezes, falling limbs
when north
winds blow, or baseless fears. I am bereft,
but I blame nobody except the nurse
who cast on me this long, unhealing curse!
‘‘My son, you liked her best, knew only her.
161
I never shared the joys of motherhood.
Hers was the voice you heard; mine was unknown.
That impious woman knew your laughter, cries,
and tears; she heard the sound of your first words;
she was your mother while you were alive.
Now I am she—and miserable that I
can’t punish her as she deserves! Great men,
why do you bear these o√erings, these empty
gifts to the fire? His ghost demands no less
than her—his nurse. I ask, I plead! you leaders,
by this first death of war, the son I bore,
sacrifice her to me (the murdered mother)
and to his ashes. Let Ogygian matrons
mourn at their funerals as I have mourned!’’
She tore her hair, and she renewed her prayer:
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‘‘Bestow her, but don’t call me cruel or say
I seek her blood. I will go down to death—
let us be cast within a single fire—as long
as I can satisfy my eyes that she
feels punishment!’’ Her voice resounded; she
made gestures at Hypsipyle, who grieved
elsewhere, far o√ (for she too tore her hair
and beat her breast). Indignant that she shared
her pain, Eurydice continued, ‘‘Grant
180
me this, at least, great men! Behold this woman,
who flung away the treasure of my marriage:
banish her from these rites, and keep her distant,
far from our sight! Why should that woman’s presence
pollute our mourning and o√end a parent?’’
∞∂∫ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
She spoke. At once her lamentations ceased,
185
and she was like the mother of a calf
that still sucked milk from which it drew its strength,
however little. When her calf is captured
by some wild beast or shepherd for his altar,
the lonely mother wanders over valleys
and mourns beside the rivers; now she asks
the herds for news; she questions empty pastures
and lingers in the fields of desolation,
which she is last to leave; she can’t endure
her stable and refuses food before her.
Father Lycurgus, though, was strong enough
193
to cast his finest scepter in the flames
along with badges of the Thunderer.
His long hair, which hung back and down his chest,
he cut o√ with a knife and let the locks
drop on the tender limbs of his dead son,
and doing so he mingled words with tears:
‘‘Perfidious Jupiter, I dedicated
my hair to you for other reasons, when
I vowed to make a present to your temple—
if you consented—of my son’s first beard.
I prayed in vain; the priest did not respond.
My son’s ghost merits these tufts more than you!’’
The first torch lit the faggots. Flames exploded.
202
Sti√ task to hold the frenzied parents back!
Danaans under orders raised their weapons
to bar the dreadful sight and maintain distance.
There never was a fire as opulent;
the flames grew rich: jewels popped, massed silver melted;
embroidered needlework exuded gold;
over piled logs Assyrian nectars dripped;
hot honey hissed pale sa√ron; foaming bowls
of wine were overturned, and vessels poured
dark blood and fresh-drawn milk the lost boy welcomed.
Greek kings, their arms reversed, led seven squadrons—
a hundred horsemen rode in each—according
BOOK Π ∞∂Ω
to custom, in a leftward ring, beside
tall flames, and they kicked dust upon the pyre.
Three times they made their circle, then they struck
217
their weapons on their weaponry four times,
causing a horrid crash of armor while
four times the women’s forearms beat soft breasts.
The other altar burned half-living flocks
220
and breathing animals. Amphiaraus,
the prophet, ordered lamentations cease,
because he recognized the signs, the true
omens of future funerals. The riders
wheeled to the right and shook their spears. Each one
removed a token from his armament
to throw into the fire—the shadowing
crest of a lofty helmet, reins, a bridle.
• [Surrounding fields emit concordant groans.
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Sharp trumpets strike the ear. Their clamor
frightens the forests. Horns uproot the standards
of battle. Rage is not yet hot, or swords
reddened by blood. The first face of the war
is that of honor. Mars sits on high clouds,
uncertain of which side he will support.]
And then it ended. Mulciber, the god
234
of fire, exhausted, turned to pliant cinders.
The flames were beaten out; the pyre was drenched
with water. Men worked wearily till sunset
and scarcely finished as the shadows lengthened.
• Nine times had Lucifer already chased
238
damp stars from heaven. He had heralded
moonlight and changed his horses and had not
deceived the conscious stars, who understood
that he who rose and set were one, the same.
It was a miracle how fast they worked.
They made a monument of stone—a great
∞Σ≠ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
temple to hold the ashes—and incised
the history of what had happened. Here
Hypsipyle shows weary Greeks a river;
there is the infant they will weep for, crawling,
then sleeping, as the scaly serpent digs
through earth around a hillside. You’d expect
to hear its bloody mouth hiss as it winds
itself around a marble spear and dies.
–?–?–?–
Now Rumor called the multitudes away
249
from field and city, people keen to view
• the unarmed contests, those whom youth or age
kept home, who did not know the horror of war.
They came—more than would gather for
the Isthmian or the Olympian games.
There was a vale surrounded by a ridge
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