Prayer to Minerva

Tydeus has just killed single-handed the fifty men sent to ambush him, and is offering Minerva a thanksgiving sacrifice on a field heaped with corpses.

The goddess is described to match the occasion: "the Gorgon grows raw with sprinkled blood". The image on the aegis quickens at fresh blood as at an offering. In Statius the deity does not observe the slaughter, she feeds on it.

"Nor did Mavors and spear-bearing Bellona drive the blazing trumpets of battle harder" — praise by belittling rivals: Minerva is more warlike than the war-gods themselves. The device is standard, but here it prepares the request of a soldier, not of a sage.

Then the list of places where the goddess might be found: Pandion's mount (the Athenian acropolis), Aonian Itone in Boeotia, the Libyan Triton where she washes and combs her hair. The same device as in Psyche's plea to Juno (juno-001): three sanctuaries instead of an address.

Minerva loved Tydeus and in the eighth book will come to make him immortal — and will turn away on finding him gnawing the skull of a slain enemy. This prayer will be heard, and the reward withdrawn.

The card cited lines 715-742; its English renders only the opening of the vow.