The First Book of Statius’s Thebais
Fraternal rage, the guilty Thebes’ alarms,
Th’ alternate reign destroyed by impious arms,
Demand our song; a sacred fury fires
My ravished breast, and all the muse inspires.
O goddess, say, shall I deduce my rhymes5
From the dire1 nation in its early times,
Europa’s rape, Agenor’s stern decree,
And Cadmus searching round the spacious sea?
How with the serpent’s teeth he sowed the soil,
And reaped an iron harvest of his toil?210
Or how from joining stones the city sprung,
While to his harp divine Amphion sung?3
Or shall I Juno’s hate to Thebes resound,
Whose fatal rage th’ unhappy monarch found?4
The sire against the son his arrows drew,15
O’er the wide fields the furious mother flew,
And while her arms a second hope contain,
Sprung from the rocks and plunged into the main.
But waive whate’er to Cadmus may belong,
And fix, O muse! the barrier of thy song20
At Œdipus: from his disasters trace
The long confusions of his guilty race:
Nor yet attempt to stretch thy bolder wing,
And mighty Cæsar’s5 conqu’ring eagles sing;
How twice he tamed proud Ister’s rapid flood,25
While Dacian mountains streamed with barb’rous blood;
Twice taught the Rhine beneath his laws to roll,
And stretched his empire to the frozen pole;
Or long before, with early valour, strove,
In youthful arms, t’ assert the cause of Jove.630
And thou, great heir of all thy father’s fame,
Increase of glory to the Latian name,
Oh! bless thy Rome with an eternal reign,
Nor let desiring worlds entreat in vain.
What though the stars contract their heav’nly space,35
And crowd their shining ranks to yield thee place;
Though all the skies, ambitious of thy sway,
Conspire to court thee from our world away;
Though Phœbus longs to mix his rays with thine,
And in thy glories more serenely shine;40
Though Jove himself no less content would be
To part his throne and share his heaven with thee;
Yet stay, great Cæsar! and vouchsafe to reign
O’er the wide earth, and o’er the wat’ry main;
Resign to Jove his empire of the skies,45
And people heav’n with Roman deities.7
The time will come, when a diviner flame8
Shall warm my breast to sing of Cæsar’s fame:
Meanwhile permit, that my preluding muse
In Theban wars an humbler theme may chuse:50
Of furious hate surviving death, she sings,
A fatal throne to two contending kings,
And fun’ral flames that, parting wide in air,
Express the discord of the souls they bear:9
Of towns dispeopled, and the wand’ring ghosts55
Of kings unburied in the wasted coasts;
When Dirce’s fountain blushed with Grecian blood,10
And Thetis, near Ismenos’11 swelling flood,
With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep,
In heaps, his slaughtered sons into the deep.1260
What hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate?13
The rage of Tydeus,14 or the prophet’s fate?15
Or how, with hills of slain on ev’ry side,
Hippomedon repelled the hostile tide?16
Or how the youth17 with ev’ry grace adorned65
Untimely fell, to be for ever mourned?
Then to fierce Capaneus thy verse extend,
And sing with horror his prodigious end.18
Now wretched Œdipus, deprived of sight,
Led a long death in everlasting night;70
But while he dwells where not a cheerful ray
Can pierce the darkness, and abhors the day,
The clear reflecting mind presents his sin
In frightful views, and makes it day within;
Returning thoughts in endless circles roll,75
And thousand furies haunt his guilty soul:
The wretch then lifted to th’ unpitying skies
Those empty orbs from whence he tore his eyes,
Whose wounds, yet fresh, with bloody hands he strook,19
While from his breast these dreadful accents broke.80
“Ye gods! that o’er the gloomy regions reign,
Where guilty spirits feel eternal pain;
Thou, sable Styx! whose livid streams are rolled
Through dreary coasts, which I though blind behold:
Tisiphone,20 that oft hast heard my pray’r,85
Assist, if Œdipus deserve thy care!
If you received me from Jocasta’s womb,21
And nursed the hope of mischiefs yet to come:
If leaving Polybus, I took my way,22
To Cirrha’s temple23 on that fatal day,90
When by the son the trembling father died,
Where the three roads the Phocian fields divide:
If I the Sphinx’s riddles durst explain,
Taught by thyself to win the promised reign:24
If wretched I, by baleful furies led,95
With monstrous mixture stained my mother’s bed,
For hell and thee begot an impious brood,
And with full lust those horrid joys renewed;
Then self-condemned to shades of endless night,
Forced from these orbs the bleeding balls of sight:100
Oh hear! and aid the vengeance I require,
If worthy thee, and what thou mightst inspire.
My sons their old, unhappy sire despise,
Spoiled of his kingdom, and deprived of eyes;
Guideless I wander, unregarded mourn,105
Whilst these exalt their sceptres o’er my urn;
These sons, ye gods! who with flagitious pride
Insult my darkness, and my groans deride.
Art thou a father, unregarding Jove!25
And sleeps thy thunder in the realms above?110
Thou fury, then some lasting curse entail,
Which o’er their children’s children shall prevail:26
Place on their heads that crown distained with gore,
Which these dire hands from my slain father tore;27
Go! and a parent’s heavy curses bear; }115
Break all the bonds of nature, and prepare28 }
Their kindred souls to mutual hate and war. }
Give them to dare, what I might wish to see
Blind as I am, some glorious villainy!
Soon shalt thou find, if thou but arm their hands,120
Their ready guilt preventing29 thy commands:
Couldst thou some great, proportioned mischief frame,
They’d prove the father from whose loins they came.”
The fury heard, while on Cocytus’30 brink
Her snakes untied, sulphureous waters drink;125
But at the summons rolled her eyes around,
And snatched the starting serpents from the ground.
Not half so swiftly shoots along in air
The gliding lightning, or descending star.
Through crowds of airy shades she winged her flight,130
And dark dominions of the silent night;
Swift as she passed the flitting ghosts withdrew,31
And the pale spectres trembled at her view:
To th’ iron gates of Tænarus32 she flies,
There spreads her dusky pinions to the skies.135
The day beheld, and sick’ning at the sight,
Veiled her fair glories in the shades of night.
Affrighted Atlas, on the distant shore,
Trembled, and shook the heav’ns and gods he bore.33
Now from beneath Malea’s34 airy height140
Aloft she sprung, and steered to Thebes her flight;
With eager speed the well-known journey35 took,
Nor here regrets the hell she late forsook.
A hundred snakes her gloomy visage shade,
A hundred serpents guard her horrid head,145
In her sunk eye-balls dreadful meteors glow:36
Such rays from Phœbe’s bloody circle flow,
When lab’ring with strong charms, she shoots from high
A fiery gleam, and reddens all the sky.
Blood stained her cheeks, and from her mouth there came150
Blue steaming poisons, and a length of flame:
From ev’ry blast of her contagious breath
Famine and drought proceed, and plagues, and death.
A robe obscene was o’er her shoulders thrown,
A dress by fates and furies worn alone.155
She tossed her meagre arms; her better hand37
In waving circles whirled a fun’ral brand:
A serpent from her left was seen to rear
His flaming crest, and lash the yielding air.38
But when the fury took her stand on high,160
Where vast Cithæron’s top salutes the sky,
A hiss from all the snaky tire went round: }
The dreadful signal all the rocks rebound, }
And through th’ Achaian cities send the sound. }
Œte, with high Parnassus, heard the voice;165
Eurotas’ banks remurmured to the noise;
Again Leucothea shook at these alarms,
And pressed Palæmon closer in her arms.39
Headlong from thence the glowing fury springs,
And o’er the Theban palace spreads her wings,40170
Once more invades the guilty dome, and shrouds
Its bright pavilions in a veil of clouds.
Straight with the rage of all their race possessed, }
Stung to the soul, the brothers start from rest, }
And all their furies wake within their breast. }175
Their tortured minds repining envy tears,
And hate, engendered by suspicious fears;
And sacred thirst of sway; and all the ties
Of nature broke;41 and royal perjuries;
And impotent desire to reign alone,180
That scorns the dull reversion of a throne;42
Each would the sweets of sov’reign rule devour,
While discord waits upon divided power.
As stubborn steers by brawny plowmen broke,
And joined reluctant to the galling yoke,185
Alike disdain with servile necks to bear
Th’ unwonted weight, or drag the crooked share,
But rend the reins, and bound43 a diff’rent way,
And all the furrows in confusion lay:
Such was the discord of the royal pair,190
Whom fury drove precipitate to war.
In vain the chiefs contrived a specious way,
To govern Thebes by their alternate sway:
Unjust decree! while this enjoys the state,
That mourns in exile his unequal fate,195
And the short monarch of a hasty year
Foresees with anguish his returning heir.
Thus did the league their impious arms restrain,
But scarce subsisted to the second reign.
Yet then, no proud aspiring piles were raised,200
No fretted roofs with polished metals blazed;
No laboured columns in long order placed,
No Grecian stone the pompous arches graced;
No nightly bands in glitt’ring armour wait44
Before the sleepless tyrant’s guarded gate;205
No chargers45 then were wrought in burnished gold,
Nor silver vases took the forming mold;
Nor gems on bowls embossed were seen to shine,
Blaze on the brims, and sparkle in the wine.46
Say, wretched rivals! what provokes your rage?210
Say, to what end your impious arms engage?
Not all bright Phœbus views in early morn,
Or when his ev’ning beams the west adorn,
When the south glows with his meridian ray,
And the cold north receives a fainter day;215
For crimes like these, not all those realms suffice,47
Were all those realms the guilty victor’s prize!
But fortune now (the lots of empire thrown)
Decrees to proud Eteocles the crown:
What joys, oh tyrant! swelled thy soul that day,220
When all were slaves thou couldst around survey,48
Pleased to behold unbounded power thy own,
And singly fill a feared and envied throne!
But the vile vulgar, ever discontent,49
Their growing fears in secret murmurs vent;225
Still prone to change, though still the slaves of state,
And sure the monarch whom they have, to hate;
New lords they madly make, then tamely bear,
And softly curse the tyrants whom they fear.50
And one of those who groan beneath the sway230
Of kings imposed, and grudgingly obey,
(Whom envy to the great, and vulgar spite
With scandal armed, th’ ignoble mind’s delight,)
Exclaimed—“O Thebes! for thee what fates remain,
What woes attend this inauspicious reign?235
Must we, alas! our doubtful necks prepare, }
Each haughty master’s yoke by turns to bear, }
And still to change whom changed we still must fear? }
These now control a wretched people’s fate,
These can divide, and these reverse the state:240
Ev’n fortune rules no more!—O servile land,
Where exiled51 tyrants still by turns command.
Thou sire of gods and men, imperial Jove!
Is this th’ eternal doom decreed above?
On thy own offspring hast thou fixed this fate,245
From the first birth of our unhappy state;
When banished Cadmus, wand’ring o’er the main,
For lost Europa searched the world in vain,
And fated in Bœotian fields to found
A rising empire on a foreign ground,250
First raised our walls on that ill-omened plain,
Where earth-born brothers were by brothers slain?52
What lofty looks th’ unrivalled53 monarch bears!
How all the tyrant in his face appears!
What sullen fury clouds his scornful brow!255
Gods! how his eyes with threat’ning ardour glow!
Can this imperious lord forget to reign,
Quit all his state, descend, and serve again?
Yet, who, before, more popularly bowed?
Who more propitious to the suppliant crowd?260
Patient of right, familiar in the throne?
What wonder then? he was not then alone.
O wretched we, a vile, submissive train,
Fortune’s tame fools, and slaves in ev’ry reign!
As when two winds with rival force contend,265
This way and that, the wav’ring sails they bend,
While freezing Boreas, and black Euros blow,
Now here, now there, the reeling vessel throw:
Thus on each side, alas! our tott’ring state
Feels all the fury of resistless fate,270
And doubtful still, and still distracted stands,
While that prince threatens, and while this commands.”
And now th’ almighty father of the gods
Convenes a council in the blest abodes:
Far in the bright recesses of the skies,275
High o’er the rolling heav’ns, a mansion lies,
Whence, far below, the gods at once survey }
The realms of rising and declining day, }
And all th’ extended space of earth, and air, and sea. }
Full in the midst, and on a starry throne,280
The majesty of heav’n superior shone;
Serene he looked, and gave an awful nod,54
And all the trembling spheres confessed the god.
At Jove’s assent the deities around
In solemn state the consistory crowned.55285
Next a long order of inferior pow’rs
Ascend from hills, and plains, and shady bow’rs;
Those from whose urns the rolling rivers flow;
And those that give the wand’ring winds to blow:
Here all their rage, and ev’n their murmurs cease,56290
And sacred silence reigns, and universal peace.
A shining synod of majestic gods
Gilds with new lustre the divine abodes;
Heav’n seems improved with a superior ray,
And the bright arch reflects a double day.295
The monarch then his solemn silence broke,
The still creation listened while he spoke,
Each sacred accent bears eternal weight,
And each irrevocable word is fate.
“How long shall man the wrath of heav’n defy,300
And force unwilling vengeance from the sky!
Oh race confed’rate into crimes, that prove
Triumphant o’er th’ eluded rage of Jove!57
This wearied arm can scarce the bolt sustain,
And unregarded thunder rolls in vain:305
Th’ o’erlaboured Cyclops from his task retires,
Th’ Æolian forge exhausted of its fires.58
For this, I suffered Phœbus’ steeds to stray,
And the mad ruler to misguide the day;
When the wide earth to heaps of ashes turned,310
And heaven itself the wand’ring chariot burned.
For this, my brother of the wat’ry reign }
Released th’ impetuous sluices of the main: }
But flames consumed, and billows raged in vain. }
Two races now, allied to Jove, offend;315
To punish these, see Jove himself descend.
The Theban kings their line from Cadmus trace,
From godlike Perseus those of Argive race.
Unhappy Cadmus’ fate who does not know,
And the long series of succeeding woe?320
How oft the furies, from the deeps of night,
Arose, and mixed with men in mortal fight:
Th’ exulting mother, stained with filial blood;59
The savage hunter and the haunted wood;
The direful banquet why should I proclaim,60325
And crimes that grieve the trembling gods to name?
Ere I recount the sins of these profane, }
The sun would sink into the western main, }
And rising, gild the radiant east again. }
Have we not seen (the blood of Laius shed)330
The murd’ring son ascend his parent’s bed,
Through violated nature force his way,
And stain the sacred womb where once he lay?
Yet now in darkness and despair he groans,
And for the crimes of guilty fate atones.335
His sons with scorn their eyeless father view,
Insult his wounds, and make them bleed anew.
Thy curse, oh Œdipus, just heav’n alarms,
And sets th’ avenging thunderer in arms.
I from the root thy guilty race will tear,340
And give the nations to the waste of war.
Adrastus61 soon, with gods averse, shall join
In dire alliance with the Theban line;
Hence strife shall rise, and mortal war succeed;
The guilty realms of Tantalus shall bleed;345
Fixed is their doom; this all-rememb’ring breast
Yet harbours vengeance for the tyrant’s feast.”62
He said; and thus the queen of heav’n returned;
(With sudden grief her lab’ring bosom burned)
“Must I, whose cares Phoroneus’63 tow’rs defend,350
Must I, oh Jove, in bloody wars contend?
Thou know’st those regions my protection claim,
Glorious in arms, in riches, and in fame:
Though there the fair Egyptian heifer fed,
And there deluded Argus slept, and bled;64355
Though there the brazen tower was stormed of old,65
When Jove66 descended in almighty gold:
Yet I can pardon those obscurer rapes,
Those bashful crimes disguised in borrowed shapes;
But Thebes, where shining in celestial charms360
Thou cam’st triumphant to a mortal’s arms,
When all my glories o’er her limbs were spread,
And blazing light’nings danced around her bed;67
Cursed Thebes the vengeance it deserves, may prove:
Ah why should Argos feel the rage of Jove?365
Yet since thou wilt thy sister-queen control,
Since still the lust of discord fires thy soul,
Go, raze my Samos, let Mycene fall,
And level with the dust the Spartan wall;68
No more let mortals Juno’s pow’r invoke, }370
Her fanes no more with eastern incense smoke, }
Nor victims sink beneath the sacred stroke; }
But to your Isis all my rites transfer,
Let altars blaze and temples smoke for her;
For her, through Egypt’s fruitful clime renowned375
Let weeping Nilus hear the timbrel sound.
But if thou must reform the stubborn times,
Avenging on the sons the father’s crimes,
And from the long records of distant age
Derive incitements to renew thy rage;380
Say, from what period then has Jove designed
To date his vengeance; to what bounds confined?
Begin from thence, where first Alpheus hides }
His wand’ring stream, and through the briny tides }
Unmixed to his Sicilian river glides.69 }385
Thy own Arcadians there the thunder claim,
Whose impious rites disgrace thy mighty name;70
Who raise thy temples where the chariot stood
Of fierce Œnomaus, defiled with blood:71
Where once his steeds their savage banquet found,390
And human bones yet whiten all the ground.
Say, can those honours please; and canst thou love
Presumptuous Crete that boasts the tomb of Jove?72
And shall not Tantalus’s kingdoms share
Thy wife and sister’s tutelary care?395
Reverse, O Jove, thy too severe decree,
Nor doom to war a race derived from, thee;73
On impious realms and barb’rous kings impose
Thy plagues, and curse ’em with such sons74 as those.”
Thus, in reproach and pray’r, the queen expressed400
The rage and grief contending in her breast;
Unmoved remained the ruler of the sky,
And from his throne returned this stern reply:
“’Twas thus I deemed thy haughty soul would bear }
The dire, though just, revenge which I prepare }405
Against a nation thy peculiar care: }
No less Dione might for Thebes contend,
Nor Bacchus less his native town defend;
Yet these in silence see the fates fulfil
Their work, and rev’rence our superior will.410
For by the black infernal Styx I swear,
(That dreadful oath which binds the thunderer)
’Tis fixed; th’ irrevocable doom of Jove;
No force can bend me, no persuasion move.
Haste then, Cyllenius,75 through the liquid air;415
Go, mount the winds, and to the shades repair;
Bid hell’s black monarch my commands obey,
And give up Laius to the realms of day,
Whose ghost yet shiv’ring on Cocytus’ sand,
Expects its passage to the further strand:420
Let the pale sire revisit Thebes, and bear
These pleasing orders to the tyrant’s ear;76
That from his exiled brother, swelled with pride
Of foreign forces, and his Argive bride,
Almighty Jove commands him to detain425
The promised empire, and alternate reign:
Be this the cause of more than mortal hate:
The rest, succeeding times shall ripen into fate.”
The god obeys, and to his feet applies
Those golden wings that cut the yielding skies.430
His ample hat his beamy locks o’erspread,
And veiled the starry glories of his head.
He seized the wand that causes sleep to fly,
Or in soft slumbers seals the wakeful eye;
That drives the dead to dark Tartarean coasts,435
Or back to life compels the wand’ring ghosts.
Thus, through the parting clouds, the son of May
Wings on the whistling winds his rapid way;
Now smoothly steers through air his equal flight,
Now springs aloft, and tow’rs th’ ethereal height;440
Then wheeling down the steep of heav’n he flies,
And draws a radiant circle o’er the skies.
Meantime the banished Polynices roves
(His Thebes abandoned) through th’ Aonian groves,
While future realms his wand’ring thoughts delight,445
His daily vision and his dream by night;
Forbidden Thebes appears before his eye,
From whence he sees his absent brother fly,
With transport views the airy rule his own,
And swells on an imaginary throne.450
Fain would he cast a tedious age away,
And live out all in one triumphant day.77
He chides the lazy progress of the sun,
And bids the year with swifter motion run.
With anxious hopes his craving mind is tost,455
And all his joys in length of wishes lost.
The hero then resolves his course to bend }
Where ancient Danaus’ fruitful fields extend,78 }
And famed Mycene’s lofty towers ascend, }
(Where late the sun did Atreus’ crimes detest,460
And disappeared in horror of the feast.)79
And now by chance, by fate, or furies led,
From Bacchus’ consecrated caves he fled,
Where the shrill cries of frantic matrons sound,
And Pentheus’ blood enriched the rising ground.80465
Then sees Cithæron tow’ring o’er the plain,
And thence declining gently to the main.
Next to the bounds of Nisus’ realm repairs,
Where treach’rous Scylla cut the purple hairs:81
The hanging cliffs of Sciron’s rock explores,470
And hears the murmurs of the diff’rent shores:82
Passes the strait that parts the foaming seas,
And stately Corinth’s pleasing site surveys.
’Twas now the time when Phœbus yields to night,83
And rising Cynthia sheds her silver light,475
Wide o’er the world in solemn pomp she drew
Her airy chariot hung with pearly dew;84
All birds and beasts lie hushed; sleep steals away
The wild desires of men, and toils of day,
And brings, descending through the silent air,480
A sweet forgetfulness of human care.85
Yet no red clouds, with golden borders gay,
Promise the skies the bright return of day;
No faint reflections of the distant light
Streak with long gleams the scatt’ring shades of night:485
From the damp earth impervious vapours rise,
Encrease the darkness, and involve the skies.
At once the rushing winds with roaring sound
Burst from th’ Æolian caves, and rend the ground,
With equal rage their airy quarrel86 try,490
And win by turns the kingdom of the sky:
But with a thicker night black Auster shrouds
The heav’ns, and drives on heaps the rolling clouds,
From whose dark womb a rattling tempest pours,
Which the cold north congeals to haily show’rs.495
From pole to pole the thunder roars aloud,
And broken lightnings flash from ev’ry cloud.
Now smoaks with show’rs87 the misty mountain-ground,
And floated fields lie undistinguished round.
Th’ Inachian streams with headlong fury run,500
And Erasinus88 rolls a deluge on:
The foaming Lerna swells above its bounds,
And spreads its ancient poisons89 o’er the grounds:
Where late was dust, now rapid torrents play,
Rush through the mounds, and bear the dams away:505
Old limbs of trees from crackling forests torn,
Are whirled in air, and on the winds are borne:
The storm the dark Lycæan groves displayed,
And first to light exposed the sacred shade.90
Th’ intrepid Theban hears the bursting sky,510
Sees yawning rocks in massy fragments fly,91
And views astonished, from the hills afar,
The floods descending, and the wat’ry war,92
That, driv’n by storms, and pouring o’er the plain,
Swept herds, and hinds, and houses to the main.93515
Through the brown horrors of the night he fled,
Nor knows, amazed, what doubtful path to tread;
His brother’s image to his mind appears,
Inflames his heart with rage, and wings his feet with fears.94
So fares a sailor on the stormy main,520
When clouds conceal Boötes’ golden wain,
When not a star its friendly lustre keeps,
Nor trembling Cynthia glimmers on the deeps;
He dreads the rocks, and shoals, and seas, and skies,
While thunder roars, and lightning round him flies.525
Thus strove the chief, on every side distressed,
Thus still his courage, with his toils increased;
With his broad shield opposed, he forced his way
Through thickest woods, and roused the beasts of prey,
Till he beheld, where from Larissa’s95 height530
The shelving walls reflect a glancing light:
Thither with haste the Theban hero flies; }
On this side Lerna’s pois’nous water lies, }
On that Prosymna’s grove and temple rise:96 }
He passed the gates, which then unguarded lay,535
And to the regal palace bent his way;
On the cold marble, spent with toil, he lies,
And waits till pleasing slumbers seal his eyes.
Adrastus here his happy people sways,
Blest with calm peace in his declining days;540
By both his parents of descent divine,
Great Jove and Phœbus graced his noble line:
Heaven had not crowned his wishes with a son,
But two fair daughters heired97 his state and throne.
To him Apollo (wondrous to relate!545
But who can pierce into the depths of fate?)
Had sung—“Expect thy sons98 on Argos’ shore,
A yellow lion and a bristly boar.”
This long revolved in his paternal breast,
Sate heavy on his heart, and broke his rest;550
This, great Amphiaraus, lay hid from thee,
Though skilled in fate, and dark futurity.
The father’s care and prophet’s art were vain,
For thus did the predicting god ordain.99
Lo hapless Tydeus, whose ill-fated hand555
Had slain his brother, leaves his native land,100
And seized with horror in the shades of night,
Through the thick deserts headlong urged his flight:
Now by the fury of the tempest driv’n,
He seeks a shelter from th’ inclement heav’n,560
Till, led by fate, the Theban’s steps he treads,
And to fair Argos’ open court succeeds.101
When thus the chiefs from diff’rent lands resort
T’ Adrastus’ realms, and hospitable court;
The king surveys his guests with curious eyes,565
And views their arms and habit with surprise.
A lion’s yellow skin the Theban wears,
Horrid his mane, and rough with curling hairs;
Such once employed Alcides’ youthful toils,
Ere yet adorned with Nemea’s dreadful spoils.102570
A boar’s stiff hide, of Calydonian breed,
Œnides’ manly shoulders overspread.
Oblique his tusks, erect his bristles stood,
Alive, the pride and terror of the wood.
Struck with the sight, and fixed in deep amaze,575
The King th’ accomplished oracle surveys,
Reveres Apollo’s vocal caves, and owns
The guiding godhead, and his future sons
O’er all his bosom secret transports reign,
And a glad horror103 shoots through ev’ry vein.580
To heav’n he lifts his hands, erects his sight,
And thus invokes the silent queen of night.
“Goddess of shades, beneath whose gloomy reign
Yon spangled arch glows with the starry train:
You who the cares of heav’n and earth allay, }585
Till nature quickened by th’ inspiring ray }
Wakes to new vigour with the rising day: }
Oh thou who freest me from my doubtful state,
Long lost and wildered in the maze of fate!
Be present still, oh goddess! in our aid;590
Proceed, and firm104 those omens thou hast made.
We to thy name our annual rites will pay,
And on thy altars sacrifices lay;
The sable flock shall fall beneath the stroke,
And fill thy temples with a grateful smoke.595
Hail, faithful Tripos! hail, ye dark abodes
Of awful Phœbus: I confess the gods!”
Thus, seized with sacred fear, the monarch prayed;
Then to his inner court the guests conveyed;
Where yet thin fumes from dying sparks arise, }600
And dust yet white upon each altar lies, }
The relics of a former sacrifice. }
The king once more the solemn rites requires,
And bids renew the feasts, and wake the fires.105
His train obey, while all the courts around605
With noisy care and various tumult sound.
Embroidered purple clothes the golden beds;
This slave the floor, and that the table spreads;
A third dispels the darkness of the night,
And fills depending lamps with beams of light.610
Here loaves in canisters are piled on high,
And there in flames the slaughtered victims fry.106
Sublime in regal state Adrastus shone,
Stretched on rich carpets on his iv’ry throne;
A lofty couch receives each princely guest;615
Around, at awful distance, wait the rest.
And now the king, his royal feast to grace,
Acestis calls, the guardian107 of his race,
Who first their youth in arts of virtue trained,
And their ripe years in modest grace maintained;620
Then softly whispered in her faithful ear,
And bade his daughters at the rites appear.
When from the close apartments of the night,
The royal nymphs approach divinely bright;
Such was Diana’s, such Minerva’s face;625
Nor shine their beauties with superior grace,
But that in these a milder charm endears,
And less of terror in their looks appears.
As on the heroes first they cast their eyes,
O’er their fair cheeks the glowing blushes rise,630
Their downcast looks a decent shame confessed,
Then on their father’s rev’rend features rest.
The banquet done, the monarch gives the sign
To fill the goblet high with sparkling wine,
Which Danaus used in sacred rites of old,635
With sculpture graced, and rough with rising gold.
Here to the clouds victorious Perseus flies, }
Medusa seems to move her languid eyes, }
And, ev’n in gold, turns paler as she dies.108 }
There from the chace Jove’s tow’ring eagle bears,640
On golden wings, the Phrygian to the stars:109
Still as he rises in th’ ethereal height,
His native mountains lessen to his sight;
While all his sad companions upward gaze,
Fixed on the glorious scene in wild amaze;645
And the swift hounds, affrighted as he flies,
Run to the shade, and bark against the skies.
This golden bowl with gen’rous juice was crowned,
The first libations sprinkled on the ground,
By turns on each celestial pow’r they call;650
With Phœbus’ name resounds the vaulted hall.
The courtly train, the strangers, and the rest,
Crowned with chaste laurel, and with garlands dressed,
While with rich gums the fuming altars blaze,
Salute the god in num’rous hymns of praise.655
Then thus the king: “Perhaps, my noble guests,
These honoured altars, and these annual feasts
To bright Apollo’s awful name designed,
Unknown, with wonder may perplex your mind.
Great was the cause; our old solemnities660
From no blind zeal, or fond tradition rise;
But saved from death, our Argives yearly pay
These grateful honours to the god of day.
“When by a thousand darts the Python slain
With orbs unrolled lay cov’ring all the plain,110665
(Transfixed as o’er Castalia’s streams he hung,
And sucked new poisons with his triple tongue)111
To Argos’ realms the victor god resorts,
And enters old Crotopus’ humble courts.
This rural prince one only daughter blest,670
That all the charms of blooming youth possessed;
Fair was her face, and spotless was her mind,
Where filial love with virgin sweetness joined.
Happy! and happy still she might have proved,
Were she less beautiful, or less beloved!675
But Phœbus loved, and on the flow’ry side
Of Nemea’s stream, the yielding fair enjoyed:
Now, ere ten moons their orb with light adorn,
Th’ illustrious offspring of the god was born;
The nymph, her father’s anger to evade,680
Retires from Argos to the sylvan shade;
To woods and wilds the pleasing burden bears,
And trusts her infant to a shepherd’s cares.
“How mean a fate, unhappy child! is thine?
Ah how unworthy those of race divine?685
On flow’ry herbs in some green covert laid,
His bed the ground, his canopy the shade,112
He mixes with the bleating lambs his cries, }
While the rude swain his rural music tries }
To call soft slumbers on his infant eyes. }690
Yet ev’n in those obscure abodes to live,
Was more, alas! than cruel fate would give,
For on the grassy verdure as he lay,
And breathed the freshness of the early day,
Devouring dogs the helpless infant tore,695
Fed on his trembling limbs, and lapped the gore.
Th’ astonished mother, when the rumour came,
Forgets her father, and neglects her fame;
With loud complaints she fills the yielding air,
And beats her breast, and rends her flowing hair;700
Then wild with anguish to her sire she flies:
Demands the sentence, and contented dies.
“But touched with sorrow for the dead too late,
The raging god prepares t’ avenge her fate.
He sends a monster, horrible and fell,113705
Begot by furies in the depths of hell.114
The pest a virgin’s face and bosom bears; }
High on a crown a rising snake appears, }
Guards her black front, and hisses in her hairs: }
About the realm she walks her dreadful round,710
When night with sable wings o’erspreads the ground,
Devours young babes before their parents’ eyes,
And feeds and thrives on public miseries.115
“But gen’rous rage the bold Chorœbus warms,
Chorœbus, famed for virtue, as for arms;715
Some few like him, inspired with martial flame,
Thought a short life well lost for endless fame.
These, where two ways in equal parts divide, }
The direful monster from afar descried; }
Two bleeding babes depending at her side; }720
Whose panting vitals, warm with life, she draws,
And in their hearts embrues her cruel claws.
The youths surround her with extended spears;
But brave Chorœbus in the front appears,
Deep in her breast he plunged his shining sword,725
And hell’s dire monster back to hell restored.
Th’ Inachians116 view the slain with vast surprize,
Her twisting volumes and her rolling eyes,
Her spotted breast, and gaping womb embrued
With livid poison, and our children’s blood.730
The crowd in stupid wonder fixed appear,
Pale ev’n in joy, nor yet forget to fear.
Some with vast beams the squalid corpse engage,
And weary all the wild efforts of rage.
The birds obscene, that nightly flocked to taste,735
With hollow screeches fled the dire repast;
And rav’nous dogs, allured by scented blood,
And starving wolves ran howling to the wood.
“But fired with rage, from cleft Parnassus’ brow }
Avenging Phœbus bent his deadly bow, }740
And hissing flew the feathered fates below: }
A night of sultry clouds involved around
The tow’rs, the fields, and the devoted ground:
And now a thousand lives together fled, }
Death with his scythe cut off the fatal thread,117 }745
And a whole province in his triumph led. }
“But Phœbus, asked why noxious fires appear,
And raging Sirius blasts the sickly year,
Demands their lives by whom his monster fell,
And dooms a dreadful sacrifice to hell.750
“Blest be thy dust, and let eternal fame
Attend thy manes, and preserve thy name,
Undaunted hero!118 who divinely brave,
In such a cause disdained thy life to save;
But viewed the shrine with a superior look,755
And its upbraided godhead thus bespoke:
“With piety, the soul’s securest guard,
And conscious virtue, still its own reward,
Willing I come, unknowing how to fear;
Nor shalt thou, Phœbus, find a suppliant here.760
Thy monster’s death to me was owed alone,
And ’tis a deed too glorious to disown.
Behold him here, for whom, so many days,
Impervious clouds concealed thy sullen rays;
For whom, as man no longer claimed thy care,765
Such numbers fell by pestilential air!
But if th’ abandoned race of human kind
From gods above no more compassion find;
If such inclemency in heav’n can dwell, }
Yet why must unoffending Argos feel }770
The vengeance due to this unlucky steel? }
On me, on me, let all thy fury fall,
Nor err from me, since I deserve it all:
Unless our desert cities please thy sight,
Or fun’ral flames reflect a grateful light.775
Discharge thy shafts, this ready bosom rend,
And to the shades a ghost triumphant send;
But for my country let my fate atone,
Be mine the vengeance, as the crime my own.
“Merit distressed, impartial heav’n relieves:780
Unwelcome life relenting Phœbus gives;
For not the vengeful pow’r, that glowed with rage,
With such amazing virtue durst engage.
The clouds dispersed, Apollo’s wrath expired,
And from the wond’ring god th’ unwilling119 youth retired.785
Thence we these altars in his temple raise,
And offer annual honours, feasts, and praise;
These solemn feasts propitious Phœbus please;
These honours, still renewed, his ancient wrath appease.”
“But say, illustrious guest,” adjoined the king,790
“What name you bear, from what high race you spring?
The noble Tydeus stands confessed, and known
Our neighbour prince, and heir of Calydon.
Relate your fortunes, while the friendly night
And silent hours to various talk invite.”795
The Theban bends on earth his gloomy eyes,
Confused, and sadly thus at length replies:
“Before these altars how shall I proclaim,
O gen’rous prince! my nation, or my name,
Or through what ancient veins our blood has rolled?800
Let the sad tale for ever rest untold!
Yet if propitious to a wretch unknown,
You seek to share in sorrows not your own;
Know, then, from Cadmus I derive my race,
Jocasta’s son, and Thebes my native place.”805
To whom the king (who felt his gen’rous breast
Touched with concern for his unhappy guest)
Replies: “Ah! why forbears the son to name
His wretched father, known too well by fame?
Fame, that delights around the world to stray,810
Scorns not to take our Argos in her way.
Ev’n those who dwell where suns at distance roll,
In northern wilds, and freeze beneath the pole;
And those who tread the burning Lybian lands,
The faithless Syrtes and the moving sands;815
Who view the western sea’s extremest bounds,
Or drink of Ganges in their eastern grounds;
All these the woes of Œdipus have known,
Your fates, your furies, and your haunted town.
If on the sons the parents’ crimes descend,820
What prince from those his lineage can defend?
Be this thy comfort, that ’tis thine t’ efface, }
With virtuous acts, thy ancestor’s disgrace, }
And be thyself the honour of thy race. }
But see! the stars begin to steal away,825
And shine more faintly at approaching day;
Now pour the wine; and in your tuneful lays
Once more resound the great Apollo’s praise.”
“O father Phœbus!120 whether Lycia’s coast121
And snowy mountain, thy bright presence boast;830
Whether to sweet Castalia122 thou repair,
And bathe in silver dews thy yellow hair;
Or pleased to find fair Delos float no more,
Delight in Cynthus,123 and the shady shore;
Or choose thy seat in Ilion’s proud abodes,835
The shining structures raised by lab’ring gods;124
By thee the bow and mortal shafts are borne;
Eternal charms thy blooming youth adorn:
Skilled in the laws of secret fate above,
And the dark counsels of almighty Jove,840
’Tis thine the seeds of future war to know,125
The change of sceptres, and impending woe,
When direful meteors spread, through glowing air,
Long trails of light, and shake their blazing hair.
Thy rage the Phrygian felt, who durst aspire845
T’ excel the music of thy heav’nly lyre;126
Thy shafts avenged lewd Tityus’ guilty flame,
Th’ immortal victim of thy mother’s fame;127
Thy hand slew Python, and the dame who lost
Her num’rous offspring for a fatal boast.128850
In Phlegyas’ doom thy just revenge appears,
Condemned to furies and eternal fears;
He views his food, but dreads, with lifted eye,
The mould’ring rock that trembles from on high.129
“Propitious hear our prayer, O pow’r divine!855
And on thy hospitable Argos shine;
Whether the style of Titan130 please thee more,
Whose purple rays th’ Achæmenes adore;
Or great Osiris,131 who first taught the swain
In Pharian fields to sow the golden grain;860
Or Mitra, to whose beams the Persian bows,
And pays, in hollow rocks, his awful vows;
Mitra, whose head the blaze of light adorns,
Who grasps the struggling heifer’s lunar horns.”132
Footnotes
1 “Dire,” in the Latin sense of ill-omened.
2 When Jupiter had carried off Europa, her father, Agenor, sent her brother Cadmus to seek her, and commanded him not to return without his sister. Unable to find her he settled at Thebes, and built the city. He slew the dragon, which guarded a neighbouring well, and a portion of the armed men, who sprung up from its teeth, were reputed to be the ancestors of the Thebans.
3 A second legend ascribed the building of the city to the wonder-working music of Amphion, which caused the stones to pile themselves together. Both legends were subsequently blended, and Cadmus had the credit of the upper part of the city, and Amphion of the lower.
4 Juno visited Athamas, king of Thebes, with madness, and in his frenzy he shot his own son, Learchus, whom he took for a young lion. Upon this his wife, Ino, who was a daughter of Cadmus, fled with her second son, Melicertes, and threw herself and her boy into the sea.
5 Domitian. The panegyric on this timid and cruel tyrant was disgraceful flattery. The boasted victories over the Dacian’s were in reality defeats. They compelled the emperor to sue for an inglorious peace which was only purchased by the promise of an immediate ransom and an annual tribute. Most of his pretended triumphs were of a similar character, and led Pliny the younger to remark, that they were always the token of some advantage obtained by the enemies of Rome.
6 During the contest between Vespasian and Vitellius for the empire, Domitian, at the age of eighteen, took refuge in the temple of the Capitol to escape from the fury of the soldiers opposed to his father. It was self-preservation and not daring which impelled him, and when the temple of Jupiter was set on fire he again fled, and hid himself until the party of Vespasian prevailed.
7 This line is very obscure. There is nothing corresponding to it in the Latin.
8 From the translation of Stephens:
The time may come when a divinor rage.
9 Pope is closer to Stephens than to the original:
funeral flames
Divided, like the souls they carry.
The rival brothers ultimately engaged in single combat, and both fell. The body of Polynices was placed by mistake upon the funeral pile of Eteocles, and the flames rose upwards in diverging currents.
10 Stephens’s translation:
When Dirce blushed, being stained with Grecian blood.
11 The dirce ran on one side of Thebes, the Ismenus on the other, and they afterwards united in a common stream. Both were mere watercourses, which were only filled by the rains of winter.
12 The Thebans are subsequently represented by Statius as driven into the Ismenus by the Greeks, and the hosts which were killed or drowned were carried by the river into the sea.
13 What hero, that is, of the famous seven who went up against Thebes to dispossess Eteocles for violating the compact to reign alternately with Polynices. The five persons whom Statius enumerates as joining with Polynices and Adrastus, king of Argos, are Tydeus, Amphiaraus, Hippomedon, Parthenopæus, and Capaneus.
14 When Tydeus had received his death-wound from a javelin hurled by Menalippus, he gathered up his failing strength, and flung a dart by which he mortally wounded Menalippus in turn. Full of revengeful spite Tydeus begged that the head of Menalippus might be brought to him. He grasped it with his dying hand, gazed at it with malignant joy, gnawed it in his frenzy, and refused to relinquish his hold. This was “the rage of Tydeus,” which Statius says the Greeks themselves condemned as exceeding the recognised latitude of hate.
15 The prophet was Amphiaraus, who predicted that all who took part in the expedition, except Adrastus, would be destroyed. The earth opened while Amphiaraus was fighting, and swallowed up him and his chariot. Statius paints him sinking calmly into the yawning gulf, without dropping his weapons or the reins, and with his eyes fixed on the heavens.
16 Hippomedon is made by Statius the hero of the conflict in the river Ismenus, where he at last succumbs to the god of the river. The piles of dead formed a dike, which turned back the waters.
17 Parthenopæus.—Pope.
18 He declared that Jupiter himself should not keep him from ascending the walls of Thebes. Jupiter punished his defiance by setting him on fire with lightning on the scaling ladder, and he was burnt to death.
19 Œdipus did not strike his wounds. He struck the ground, which was the usage in invoking the infernal deities, since their kingdom was in the bowels of the earth.
20 One of the three principal furies or avengers of crime, who inhabited the world of condemned spirits.
21 The great difference between raising horror and terror is perceived and felt from the reserved manner in which Sophocles speaks of the dreadful incest of Œdipus, and from the manner in which Statius has enlarged and dwelt upon it, in which he has been very unnaturally and injudiciously imitated by Dryden and Lee, who introduce this most unfortunate prince not only describing but arguing on the dreadful crime he had committed.—Warton.
22 Laius, king of Thebes, warned by the oracle that he would be killed by his own offspring, exposed his son Œdipus on Mount Cithæron. The infant was found by a shepherd, and carried to Polybus, king of Corinth, who adopted him. Arrived at man’s estate, he too was informed by the oracle that he would take the life of his father, and commit incest with his mother. Believing that the king and queen who brought him up were his parents, he determined not to go back to Corinth, and in attempting to avert his destiny, he fulfilled it. As he journeyed towards Thebes he met his real father, Laius, and slew him in a conflict which grew out of a dispute with his charioteer.
23 Or the temple at Delphi, where Œdipus went to consult the oracle.
24 The Sphinx sat upon a rock near Thebes propounding a riddle to every one who passed by, and destroying all who were unable to explain it. The Thebans proclaimed that whoever would rid the kingdom of this scourge should marry the widow of Laius, and succeed to the vacant throne. Œdipus, by solving the riddle, drove the Sphinx to commit suicide, and in accepting the reward, he unconsciously verified the remainder of the oracle.
25 Œdipus behaves with the fury of a blustering bully, instead of that patient submission and pathetic remorse which are so suited to his condition.—Warton.
26 In the first edition he had written
Which shall o’er long posterity prevail.
The more forcible phrase which he substituted for “long posterity,” was from Dryden’s Virg. Æn. iii. 132:
And children’s children shall the crown sustain.
27 This couplet follows closely the translation of Stephens:
Put on that diadem besmeared with gore
Which from my father’s head these fingers tore.
28 Dryden’s Virg. Æn. iii. 78:
Broke ev’ry bond of nature and of truth
29 Pope uses “preventing” in the then common but now obsolete sense of “anticipating.”
30 A river in the lower world.
31 Great is the force and the spirit of these lines down to verse 183; and indeed they are a surprising effort in a writer so young as when he translated them. See particularly lines 150 to 160.—Warton.
32 The entrance to the infernal regions was said to be through a cave in the Tænarian promontory, which formed the southern extremity of Greece.
33 Pope has judiciously tamed the bombast image “caligantes animarum examine campos,” “the plains darkened with a swarm of ghosts.” “Lucentes equos,” he translates, “fair glories,” omitting the image entirely. To mount Atlas he has added an idea which makes the passage more ridiculous than sublime. It is poorly expressed in the original; in the translation it is ludicrous; “and shook the heavens and gods he bore.” There are many images which if indistinctly seen are sublime; if particularised they become quite the contrary. However, the translation is certainly wonderful, when the age of the author is considered. It shows his powers of metrical language, at so early a period of his poetical studies, though it is very unfaithful in particular passages.—Bowles.
34 Pope’s acquaintance with Latin prosody, from his confined education, was probably very small, or he would not have used Malēa, instead of Malěa, with the line of Statius before him.—Bowles.
35 “Well-known,” because the Fury had before visited the Theban palace to instigate the crimes and passions of which it had been the scene. The haste with which she goes, and her preference for the terrestrial journey, even over the haunts of her own Tartarus, indicate the signal malevolence of the mission. Hence the delight she takes in it.
36 The original is more forcible and less extravagant. The sunken eyes of the Fury glared with a light like that of red-hot iron—ferrea lux.
37 This expression, which is not in Statius, is common with Dryden, as in his Virg. Æn. x. 582:
And from Strymonius hewed his better hand.
38 Statius depicts the frenzied virulence of the Fury, by saying that she lashed the air with the serpent. Pope has marred the description by representing the lashing of the air as the act of the serpent itself.
39 After Ino had drowned herself and her son Melicertes, they became marine divinities, and their names were changed to Leucothea and Palæmon. Statius is more picturesque than Pope. When the apparition of the Fury announced terrible evils to come, the sea was stirred to its depths. On the outburst of the tempest, Palæmon was sailing about on the back of a dolphin, and it was then that his mother snatched him up in her alarm, and pressed him to her bosom. To convey an idea of the tremendous nature of the storm, Statius says that the Corinthian isthmus could hardly resist the violence of the waves which dashed against each of its shores. This circumstance is justly styled by Pope “most extravagantly hyperbolical,” but a translator should not have omitted it.
40 A great image, and highly improved from the original, “assueta nube.”—Warton.
The first edition had a feeble prosaic line in place of the image which Warton admired:
Headlong from thence the fury urged her flight,
And at the Theban palace did alight.
41 “Ruptæque vices” in the original, which Pope translates, “and all the ties of nature broke,” but by vices is indicated the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by Eteocles.—De Quincey.
42 The felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing, and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words,—
jurisque secundi
Ambitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unum
Stare loco,—
than by Pope’s couplet, which most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection.—De Quincey.
43 “Bound” is an improper verb as applied to “steers”; besides the simile is not exactly understood. There is nothing about “reins” or “bounding” in the original. What is meant is that the steers do not draw even. Pope confounded the image of the young bullocks with that of a horse, and he therefore introduces “reins” and “bounding.”—Bowles.
44 For “armour wait,” the first edition had “arms did wait.”
45 “Charger” is used in its old sense of a dish.
46 Statius, to point the folly of the criminal ambition, goes on to represent, that the contest was only for naked unadorned dominion in a poverty-stricken kingdom,—a battle for which should cultivate the barren territory on the banks of a petty stream,—and for this empty privilege the brothers sacrificed everything which was of good report in life or death. Pope weakened the moral of Statius, and the lines which follow to the end of the paragraph are also very inferior in force to the original.
47 In the first edition,
Not all those realms could for such crimes suffice.
Pope might have done more to improve this prosaic couplet.
48 Pope borrowed from the translation of Stephens:
How wast thou lost
In thine own joys, proud tyrant then, when all
About thee were thy slaves.
49 It should be “discontented.”—Warton.
50 This couplet was interpolated by Pope and seems to have been suggested by his hostility to the revolution of 1688. Nor does Statius call the populace “vile,” or say that they are always “discontented,” or that they are “still prone to change, though still the slaves of state.” Neither does he say that they “are sure to hate the monarch, they have,” but he says that their custom is to love his successor, which is a sentiment more in accordance with experience.
51 “Exiled” because the king who was not reigning had to leave the country during his brother’s year of power.
52 The warriors who were the produce of the dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus fought among themselves till only five were left.
53 “Unrivalled,” as the context shows, is not here a term of commendation, but merely signifies that the monarch had no equal in rank or power.
54 “Placido quatiens tamen omnia vultu,” is the common reading. I believe it should be “nutu,” with reference to the word “quatiens.”—Pope.
55 Pope was manifestly unable to extract any sense from the original. It is there said that Jupiter at his first entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but that the other gods did not presume to sit down “protinus,” that is, in immediate succession to Jupiter, and interpreting his example as a tacit license to do so, until, by a gentle wave of his hand, the supreme father signifies his express permission to take their seats. In Pope’s translation, the whole picturesque solemnity of the celestial ritual melts into the vaguest generalities.—De Quincey.
De Quincey was mistaken in his inference that Pope was unable to understand the passage, for he had the assistance of the translation of Stephens, which gives the meaning correctly:
Anon
He sets him down on his bespangled throne.
The rest stand and expect: not one presumed
To sit till leave was beckoned.
56 The winds would have been inconvenient members of a deliberative assembly if they had taken to howling, whistling, and sighing. Nevertheless their propensity to blow was so inveterate that, in Statius, they are only kept quiet by their fear of Jove.
57 Our author is perpetually grasping at the wonderful and the vast, but most frequently falls gradually from the terrible to the contemptible.—Warton.
By “our author” Warton meant Statius, and the expression, he criticised as hyberbolical was the “eluded rage of Jove,”—an exaggeration for which Pope alone was responsible.
58 Hiera, one of the Æolian islands in the neighbourhood of Sicily, was supposed to be the workshop of Vulcan. The island was volcanic, and the underground noises were ascribed to Vulcan, and his assistants, the Cyclopes, as they plied their trade. The circumstance that the fires of the Æolian forge were exhausted was doubtless introduced by Statius because in his day the eruptions had ceased in Hiera.
59 Agave, the daughter of Cadmus. Her son Pentheus appeared among the women who were celebrating the Bacchic revelries on Mount Cithæron, and his mother, mistaking him in her frenzy for a wild beast, like a wild beast tore him to pieces.
60 There is no mention of “the direful banquet” in the original. “The savage hunter” alludes to Athamas chasing and slaying his son under the delusion that he was a lion.
61 The king of Argos.
62 Tantalus, king of Argos, invited the gods to a banquet, and served up the boiled flesh of his own son, Pelops.
63 Phoroneus was commonly reputed to have been the founder of the city of Argos.
64 Juno employed Argus to keep guard over Io, transformed by Jupiter into a cow. Mercury, being sent by Jupiter to rescue Io, lulled Argus to sleep by melodious airs on the flute, and then cut off his head.
65 An oracle announced to Acrisius, king of Argos, that he would die by the hands of his grandson. The king endeavoured to escape his fate by imprisoning his daughter, Danae, in a brazen tower, but Jupiter obtained access to her in the shape of a shower of gold, and she became the mother of Perseus, who fulfilled the prediction, according to the established legendary usage.
66 The force of this taunt is weakened in Pope’s translation by the change from the second person to the third, as though the invectives of Juno had not been addressed to Jupiter himself.
67 Jupiter visited Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, in all the majesty of the thunderer, and she was consumed by the lightning.
68 Homer makes Juno say that there are three cities pre-eminently dear to her—Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ. Samos had no less title to the distinction. It was one of the localities which contended for the renown of having given her birth, and was, with Argos, the principal seat of her worship. Virgil ranks Samos second among the places she delighted to honour.
69 The river Alpheus, which takes its rise in Arcadia, loses itself underground in parts of its course, and again reappears. This suggested the fiction that it ran in a subterranean channel, below the bottom of the sea, to the fountain of Arethusa in Sicily, where it once more emerged to day. Pope had less regard to the text of Statius than to Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s lines on the same legend in Ecl. x. 5:
So may thy silver streams beneath the tide,
Unmixed with briny seas, securely glide.
70 The Arcadians celebrated the worship of Jupiter with human sacrifices.
71 He was king of Pisa in Elis, where was the celebrated Olympia, with its temple of Jupiter. Œnomaus had ascertained from an oracle that he would perish by the agency of his son-in-law, and he was anxious, in self-defence, to keep his daughter, Hippodamia, from marrying. As he possessed the swiftest horses in the world he required her suitors to contend with him in a chariot-race, which allowed them no chance of success. The prize of victory was to be his daughter; the penalty of defeat was death, and the bones which laid unburied in the neighbourhood of Jupiter’s temple were those of the lovers of Hippodamia.
72 The Cretans claimed to possess both the birth-place and burial-place of Jupiter.
73 “Derived from Jove,” inasmuch as Perseus, one of the kings of Argos, was the son of Jupiter and Danae.
74 Eteocles and Polynices.—Pope.
75 Mercury, so called because he was born upon Mount Cyllene.
76 Eteocles.
77 Stephens’s translation:
This were such a day
He’d spend an age to see ’t.
78 To Argos, of which Danaus had been king, whence the Argives were also called Danai.
79 Atreus, king of Mycenæ, murdered the two sons of his brother Thyestes, and feasted their father with dishes made of their flesh.
80 Bacchus forced the Theban women to assemble, and give loose to the wild rites by which he was celebrated. It was on this occasion that Pentheus was massacred by his mother.
81 Nisus was king of Megara when it was besieged by Minos. The king’s daughter, Scylla, conceived a passion for Minos, and to ensure him the victory she plucked from her father’s head a purple hair upon which depended the preservation of himself and the city.
82 Statius says that when Polynices was in the middle of the isthmus of Corinth he could hear the waves beat against both its shores. “This,” remarked Pope, “could hardly be; for the isthmus of Corinth is full five miles over,” and he calls the introduction of the circumstance “a geographical error.” It was his own geography that was at fault. The width of the isthmus is only three miles and a half. Pope spoilt the incident when he transferred it to the Scironian rock. Sciron was a robber and murderer, who compelled his victims to wash his feet upon the cliff, and while they were engaged in the operation he kicked them over into the sea.
83 “We have scarcely in our language eight more beautiful lines than these, down to human care,” ver. 481.—Warton.
84 Pope owed some happy expressions to the translation of Stephens:
The silent world does view
Her airy chariot pearled with drops of dew.
85 He again borrowed from Stephens:
And nodding through the air brings down in haste
A sweet forgetfulness of labour passed.
86 A very faulty expression; as also below, verse 501,—“rolls a deluge on.”—Warton.
He copied Dryden’s Virg. Æn. iv. 638:
As when the winds their airy quarrel try.
He was indebted to a second couplet in the same translation, Æn. ii. 565:
Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try,
Contending for the kingdom of the sky.
87 “Showers” is an inappropriate word to denote the deluge of rain which flooded the earth, and “swept herds, and hinds, and houses to the main.”
88 The Inachus, and the Erasinus were rivers in the plain of Argos.
89 The waters of the Lerna were infected by the venom from the serpent Hydra, which Hercules slew.
90 The storm, by blowing down trees or branches, made an opening in the dense foliage through which the sun had never penetrated.
91 In the first edition:
The prince with wonder did the waste behold,
While from torn rocks the massy fragments rolled.
92 Dryden’s Virg. Æn. ii. 413:
The shepherd climbs the cliff, and sees from far
The wasteful ravage of the wat’ry war.
93 Dryden’s Virg. Geor. i. 652:
Bore houses, herds, and lab’ring hinds away.
94 Statius represents Polynices as terrified by the tempest. Pope appears to have thought that this was derogatory to the character of the fugitive king, and he calls him, when gazing on the ravages caused by the storm, “the intrepid Theban,” which conveys the impression that he was undaunted by the spectacle. In the same spirit Pope at ver. 527, has the line, “Thus still his courage with his toils increased,” where the original says that the stimulus which urged him on was fear. But while Pope has obliterated the alarm which was generated by the tempest he has introduced in its place an alarm which had no existence. In the midst of the havoc worked by the elements the recollection of his brother “wings the feet” of the intrepid Theban “with fears,” though he is beyond his brother’s reach, and has no suspicion at present that he designs to break the compact to reign alternately. The influence which the remembrance of Eteocles exercised over the mind of the wanderer is expressly distinguished by Statius from the fear, and means no more than that since Polynices was an exile from Thebes, he was compelled to proceed onwards till he could find an asylum in another state.
95 A mountain on which stood the citadel of Argos.
96 The temple at Prosymna was dedicated to Juno.
97 Pope took the expression from Dryden, Virg. Æn. vii. 79:
One only daughter heired the royal state.
And ver. 367:
Only one daughter heirs my crown and state.
98 Strictly his sons-in-law.
99 That is, he ordained that the oracles should be incapable of interpretation before it was fulfilled.
100 Calydon, of which his father Œneus was king.
101 The mode in which the two fugitives became known to the king and gained admission to the palace, is not told by Pope, who has left upwards of seventy lines untranslated, and by the mutilation rendered the incidents improbable. Polynices reaches the palace first and lies down, worn out, on the pavement of the vestibule. Tydeus arrives at the same spot, and Polynices is unwilling that he should share the shelter. A quarrel ensues, and from words they proceed to blows. The king is disturbed by the uproar; he issues forth from the palace with attendants and torches to ascertain the cause; explanations follow, and these result in Tydeus and Polynices becoming the guests of Adrastus. “There is an odd account,” Pope says to Cromwell, “of an unmannerly battle at fisty-cuffs between the two Princes on a very slight occasion, and at a time when, one would think, the fatigue of their journey, in so tempestuous a night, might have rendered them very unfit for such a scuffle. This I had actually translated, but was very ill satisfied with it, even in my own words, to which an author cannot but be partial enough of conscience.”
102 Before the victory of Hercules over the Nemean lion, he is said by Statius to have worn the skin of a lion which he slew in the neighbourhood of Mount Temessus.
103 “Horror” at the thought of the dreadful forebodings which had been suggested by the literal language of the oracle; “glad” because of the manner in which the prediction was verified. Jortin, in a note on another passage of the Thebais, says, “Statius could not help falling into his beloved fault of joining contraries together. He is too apt to seek this opposition in his words. He never indeed misses this favourite figure when he can bring it in.”
104 “Firm” for confirm was sanctioned by the frequent example of Dryden, from whose translation of Virg. Æn. viii. 107, Pope has borrowed the entire couplet:
But oh! be present to thy people’s aid,
And firm the gracious promise thou hast made.
105 In the first edition this verse was an Alexandrine, ending with “and wake the sleeping fires,” which Pope took from Dryden, Virg. Æn. viii, 720:
And on his altars waked the sleeping fires.
106 “Fry” was the reading of all the editions till that of 1736, when “fly” was substituted by an evident error of the press, and has been retained ever since.
107 “Tutress” in the first edition. Acestis had been the nurse, and was now the duenna of the two daughters of Adrastus.
108 The gorgon, Medusa, changed every one who saw her to stone. Perseus avoided the penalty by only looking at her reflection in a mirror as he cut off her head while she slept. Being the grandson of a king of Argos he was an Argive hero, whence his triumph was engraved upon the royal goblet. The artist had selected the moment when Perseus is darting into the air with the head of the gorgon, which, newly separated from the body, still retained the traces of expiring life.
109 On account of the beauty of Ganymede, Jove sent an eagle to convey him from the earth to the habitations of the gods. There he was appointed cup-bearer, which rendered the incident appropriate to a drinking-vessel.
110 He has omitted some forcible expressions of the original: Septem—atris—terentem—nigro—centum per jugera,—all of them picturesque epithets.—Warton.
Statius says, that the huge serpent while alive encircled Delphi seven times with its dark coils, and that when dead and barely unrolled, its body spread over a hundred acres.
111 The water was not itself poisonous, but it turned to venom in the serpent.
112 Stephens is more literal, and at the same time more poetical:
earth prepares thy room
Garnished with flow’ry beds, and thatched above
With oaken leaves close woven; whilst the grove
Lends bark to make thy garments.
113 Much superior to the original.—Warton.
114 Sandy’s translation of Ovid’s Met. bk. vi.
And calls the furies from the depth of hell.
115 Pope copied Stephens:
devouring some
With rav’nous jaws before their parents’ eyes,
And fats herself with public miseries.
116 Inachus, according to one tradition, built the city of Argos. After his descendants had reigned for some generations, the throne was seized by Danaus.
117 Death cutting off the fatal thread with a scythe, is not a very sublime or congruous image. Pope has blended modern ideas with classical: in the original it is “ense metit;”—“mows with his sword.” Pope has introduced a “scythe,” to preserve more accurately the metaphor, but it has a bad effect.—Bowles.
118 Chorœbus.
119 Statius states that Chorœbus withdrew, having obtained his end, and says nothing of his being “unwilling,” by which Pope seems to mean that he was unwilling to accept his life. This deviation from the original destroys the generous heroism of Chorœbus, for if he was weary of his existence there was no merit in his braving death. Statius, indeed, had previously said that Apollo granted Chorœbus the “sad boon of life” out of admiration for his magnanimity; but this phrase only signifies that life is sorrowful, and not that Chorœbus would have preferred to die.
120 Some of the most finished lines he has ever written, down to verse 854.—Warton.
121 Apollo was specially worshipped by the Lycians.
122 The celebrated fountain sacred to Apollo on Parnassus.
123 Apollo was surnamed the Cynthian, from Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos, which was the place of his birth, and the most revered of all the localities set apart for his worship. The island, which had previously floated over the ocean, was, according to one version of the legend, rendered stationary by Jupiter when Apollo was born; according to another version, it was subsequently fixed by Apollo himself.
124 The walls of Troy were the work of Apollo and Neptune.
125 In the first edition it was
Thou dost the seeds of future wars foreknow.
126 The Phrygian was Marsyas, who contended on the flute against Apollo with his lyre. When the umpires decided in favour of the god, he flayed Marsyas for his presumption.
127 Tityus assaulted the mother of Apollo, and her son shot the offender.
128 Niobe, because she had seven sons and seven daughters, thought herself superior to Latona, who had only one son, and one daughter,—Apollo and Diana. These divinities, in revenge, destroyed the fourteen children of Niobe.
129 In the first edition:
He views his food, would taste, yet dares not try,
But dreads the mould’ring rock that trembles from on high.
Apollo intrigued with Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas. Her enraged father retaliated by firing the temple of Apollo, and was consigned for his rebellion to perpetual torture in the infernal regions. His terror lest the impending rock should crush him is a circumstance interpolated by Pope from Virgil’s description of the punishment of Pirithous and Ixion, and the expression “mould’ring rock” is taken from Dryden’s translation of the passage, Æn. vi. 816:
High o’er their heads a mould’ring rock is placed
That promises a fall, and shakes at ev’ry blast.
The revolting nature of the food itself is the reason assigned by Statius why Phlegyas forebore to partake of it, and preferred to endure the pangs of hunger.
130 After Apollo, in the later mythology, had been identified with the sun, all the names personifying the sun, of which Titan was one, became applicable to Apollo.
131 Diodorus maintained that the Osiris of the Egyptians was their god of the sun, and Statius has adopted this erroneous view. According to the statement of Herodotus, Osiris answered to the Grecian Bacchus, and there is little doubt that the old historian was right.
132 Mithras was the Persian god of the sun. He was worshipped in caves, or, as Pope has it, in “hollow rocks,” because the spherical form of the cave symbolised the universe, of which Mithras was the maker. The “blaze of light which adorns his head” in Pope’s version, makes no part of the description in the original. The final line is explained by several ancient works of art, in which a man, wearing a Phrygian cap, is depicted cutting the throat of a bull he has flung to the ground. The man is said by an old scholiast on Statius to typify the sun, the bull the moon, and the intention, he states, is to represent the superiority of the sun over the moon. Statius speaks of the bull as indignant at being compelled to follow Mithras,—an idea which suits ill with the tranquil aspect of the moon as it floats through the heavens.