Ah! what a day was that for thee, fierce heart, when, sitting alone amid thy courtiers, thy brother gone from thee, thou sawest thyself enthroned above all men, with all things in thy power, without a peer. Less poetical, but scarcely less effective, is the description of the compact between the brothers (i. 138): alterni placuit sub legibus anni exsilio mutare ducem. sic iure maligno fortunam transire iubent, ut sceptra tenentem foedere praecipiti semper novus angeret heres. haec inter fratres pietas erat, haec mora pugnae sola nec in regem perduratura secundum. It was resolved that in alternate years the king should quit his throne for exile. Thus with baneful ordinance they bade fortune pass from one to the other, that he who held the sceptre on these brief terms should ever be vexed by the thought of his successor's coming. Such was the brothers' love, such the sole bond that kept them from conflict, a bond that should not last till the kingship changed. But far beyond all other portraits in Statius is the description of Jocasta as she approaches the Argive camp on her mission of reconciliation (vii. 474): ecce truces oculos sordentibus obsita canis exsangues Iocasta genas et bracchia planctu nigra ferens ramumque oleae cum velleris atri nexibus, Eumenidum velut antiquissima, portis egreditur magna cum maiestate malorum. Lo! Jocasta, her white hair streaming unkempt over her wild eyes, her cheeks all pale, her arms bruised by the beating of her anguished hands, bearing an olive-branch hung with black wool, came forth from the gates in semblance like to the eldest of the Eumenides, in all the majesty of her many sorrows. In this last line we have one of the very few lines in Statius that attain to real grandeur. In the lack of such lines, and in the lack of real breadth of treatment lies Statius' chief defect as a narrator. All that dexterity can do he does; but he lacks the supreme gifts, the selective eye and the penetrating imagination of the great poet. Of his actual diction and ornament little need be said. Without being precisely straightforward, he is not, as a rule, obscure. But his language gradually produces a feeling of oppression. He can be read in short passages without this feeling; the moment, however, the reader takes his verse in considerable quantities, the continued, though only slight, over-elaboration of the work produces a feeling of strain. Throughout there runs a vein of artificiality which ultimately gives the impression of insincerity. He can turn out phrases of the utmost nicety. Nothing can be more neatly turned than the description of the feelings of Antigone and Ismene on the outbreak of the war (viii. 614): nutat utroque timor, quemnam hoc certamine victum, quem vicisse velint: tacite praeponderat exsul;