Claudian, volume 2 (of 2): With an English translation by Maurice PlatnauerClaudianus, Claudius
General
Claudian, volume 2 (of 2): With an English translation by Maurice Platnauer
Claudianus, Claudius
Claudianus, Claudius -- Translations into English
Behind her hasten Diana, fair queen of Arcadian Lycaeus, and Pallas
who, with her spear, protects the citadel of Athens--virgins both;
Pallas, cruel goddess of war, Diana bane of wild creatures. On her
burnished helmet the Triton-born goddess wore a carved figure of
Typhon, the upper part of his body lifeless, the lower limbs yet
writhing, part dead, part quick. Her terrible spear, piercing the
clouds as she brandished it, resembled a tree; only the Gorgon’s
hissing neck she hid in the spread of her glittering cloak. But mild
was Diana’s gaze and very like her brother looked she; Phoebus’ own
one had thought her cheeks and eyes, her sex alone disclosed the
difference. Her shining arms were bare, her straying locks fluttered
in the gentle breeze, and the chord of her unstrung bow hung idle, her
arrows slung behind her back. Her Cretan tunic, gathered with girdles
twain, flows down to her knees, and on her waving dress Delos wanders
and stretches surrounded by a golden sea.
Between the two Ceres’ child, now her mother’s pride, so soon to be
her sorrow, treads the grass with equal pace, their equal, too, in
stature and beauty; Pallas you might have thought her, had she carried
a shield, Diana, if a javelin. A brooch of polished jasper secured her
girded dress. Never did art give happier issue to the shuttle’s skill;
never was cloth so beautifully made nor embroidery so lifelike. In it
she had worked the birth of the sun from the seed of Hyperion, the
birth, too, of the moon,
* * * * *
Page 322
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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