Letters & Poems 1

POEM ONE. PREFACE TO THE PANEGYRIC SPOKEN FOR ANTHEMIUS AUGUSTUS, TWICE CONSUL. When Nature set the youthful Jove above the stars, and the new god took up the ancient realms, the divinities strove to venerate their own deity, and in unequal modes the equal sages sang. Mars with blaring trumpet uttered his father's praises, and lauded the thunderbolts with thunderous sound. The Arcadian and the bow-bearer resounded with tuneful strings, the one more skilled in the cithara's beats, the other in the lyre's. And the chorus of the Muses applauded with varied melody—in songs, in reed-pipes, in thumb, in voice, in foot. But after the heaven-dwellers, the god is said to have endured even the middling songs of the demigods. Then the Dryads, matched with fauns, and the Bacchantes with satyrs, a rustic throng, poured forth their rough hill-melodies.

The pipe-playing Pans left lofty Maenalus, and after the lyre the hoarse reed-pipe pleased Jove. Among these Chiron, dancing to the sounding plectrum, wittily bent the ungainly limbs of his horse-half: the half-man earned a hearing and earned to please, though while he sang he gave forth a whinny. Thus both rich and poor tongue offered sacrifice, and then the highest victim of the vow was song. So we too, O Caesar, greatest hope of our age, after the great nobles offer our little incense, boldly singing before the learned Victor, who is wont to speak either with Phoebus's mouth or with yours. Though he be your quaestor in the eternal hall, to us he will forever be a master. Therefore let the offering of a manifold tongue worship you, prince: for you make our hearts new temples to yourself. POEM TWO.

THE PANEGYRIC WHICH SIDONIUS SPOKE AT ROME FOR ANTHEMIUS AUGUSTUS, TWICE CONSUL. Under favorable auspice and for the second time, Augustus, raise up the fasces, and, gleaming with the mass of your consular robe's metal, unfold the new year, veteran consul, and without pride let yourself be written twice in the annals; though you go with your hair crowned by the diadem, and the Tyrian cloak enclose your shoulders after the manner of your predecessors, let the beaten purple of the togas captivate you more: for it is always, from of old, a rare thing—a frequent consul. And you, O Janus, to whom the yearly laurel is owed, shake off your sloth and bind your locks with whatever foliage, and tremble not at the sudden radiance of the prince, nor believe that the elements of the world are shaken. Nature makes nothing new: this sun too comes from the east. This is he, O nobles, whom Roman valor sought from afar, and whom your love sought:

to whom the republic, like a ship conquered by storms and lacking a helmsman, brought herself, shattered, to be better steered by a worthy master, lest she fear the tempests, or you, pirate. The countryman sought you with prayer, the treaty-bound ally with assent, the camp with trumpets, the senate with applause; the tribes wrote you down with their ballots, and your colleague sent you to us, and the sovereignty to you; the votes are as many as the world can gather. I confess, we all trembled lest your pious colleague be unwilling to grant our public prayers to your wish; posterity to come will believe that, though over us all things are thus permitted to you, prince, over yourself not everything was permitted to you. You surpass the deeds of former men, Augustus Leo; for he stands above kingdoms who commands another to reign; better will your republic now be more one, which has thus been made the possession of two.

Hail, pillar of scepters, queen of the East, Rome of your own world; now that a prince has been sent to me, you are a seat of empire no longer to be venerated by the Eastern citizen alone, but more precious in that you stand forth as the mother of empire. The land of the Thracians, which bears Rhodope and Haemus, is yours—a shore fertile in heroes. Here ice receives the newborn, and the native snow hardens the soft limbs of infants straight from the mother's womb. Scarcely is anyone nourished at the breast, but, drawn from the teat, drinks rather of the horse through its wound: thus, milk abandoned, the whole nation drinks in valor; they grow a little, then play at battle with javelins; the wound-nurse supplies them these sports; the boys, fit for hunting, empty the lairs of the beasts; youth, prolonged by plunder, cultivates the law of the sword; and they are not ashamed to end their completed old age by the sword:

with such an order of life the citizens of Mars pass their days. But you, flowed around by the sea of Europe and of Asia, enjoy the tempered climate joined from both sides; for the nearby trumpet of the Chalcidic East wind gradually softens the Bistonian blasts of the North wind. Meanwhile Susa trembles at you, and the Achaemenid Persian bends his crescent tiara in suppliant homage. The Indian, his hair drenched with fragrant balsam, for your profit disarms the throat of his savage nurslings, that the curved ivory may be paid down: thus the elephant, inglorious, carries back its mutilated mouth as tribute to the Bosphorus. You stretch out a vast city with spacious walls, which nonetheless the populace makes cramped: men go forth into the deep with piers, and new land contracts the old waves.

For the dust of Dicarchean sand, transported, is solidified once the waters enter it, and the hardened mass sustains fields carried out upon the foreign flood. Thus laid out as you are, gazing on harbors on every side, walled about by the sea, the goods of all lands encircle you. Fortunate enough, having shared the triumphs of Rome. And now we complain no longer—let the division of the realm prevail: the pans of the scale agree; while you take up our weights, you have made them equal. You, a citizen from such a city, shine forth with Procopius as your father:

whose ancient lineage comes down from imperial ancestors, whom it is not granted to describe with worthy eloquence—not even if he should now rise from Avernus who by his song moved the rocks, and with tuneful fingers compelled the eared woods to run to the plectrum, when the waters of Hebrus stood still, and, the river's course bound, the astonished wave thirsted rather for his song. To him once, a young man, was entrusted the restoration of Assyrian peace: the Parthian was amazed that in his earliest years he bore not an old man's counsel; every satrap who sits beneath the king clung terrified; so had the envoy's genius bound them all; the Median fields trembled, and Babylon, dragon-born, who had not shut her gates against the enemy, then at last seemed to herself to lie too open. But after the new formula established a treaty for the parties, Procopius dictating to the Magi;

fire and water are sworn by them as god; and moreover, that the pacts might stand firm for the future, he here calls his divine ancestors to witness. The Chaldean elder, in the entrails, after the manner of pontiffs, performed the secret murmurs; the king himself, clasping the jeweled bowl, bowed low and poured the goblets upon the incense-burning altars. Hence, upon his return, the summit of doubled honor receives him: a patrician, and master too of foot and horse, he is set over the camps, where, confining the barriers of Taurus and by war's terror banishing the roving Ethiopians, he might behold the Orontes a servant with its flood pacified. His father-in-law Anthemius, prefect and consul likewise, ruled the peoples by his judgments and the year by his name. Fortune ever attends purple-clad men with the Tyrian dye; only this one thing is altered in them, that he now reigns who had been consul;

but we pass them all over. Now come you to my strains, you whose hair, worn thin by the helmet, has come to the diadem; to whom, the breastplate laid aside, the ruddy purple of Caesar is given, and the hand emptied of its sword-point is to be filled with the scepter; your cradle shone with the marks of empire, and the prescient earth, its produce transformed, promised golden ages. At your birth, they say, the rivers lingered, honey welling in their sweetened shallows, and streams of oil ran through the astonished presses while the berry hung unpressed. The field brought forth a waving crop without seed, and the vine-shoot envied the grapes born without it. Winter roses blushed red, and, scorning the cold, lilies exulted amid the mingled frosts. As often as Lucina releases such a birth, the custom of the elements yields, and by the newness of things faith in a reign to come is born;

thus nature declares that blessed gods have come; coaxing flames licked the soft hair of lingering Iulus. Astyages, doomed to be driven out by his grandson Cyrus, was terrified by a grape-cluster spread from a vine at his groin. The teeming she-wolf offered her teats to fearless Quirinus. Julius came into the light while the laurel blazed. Great Alexander, and Augustus too, are held conceived by a serpent-god; and they divided Phoebus and Jove between them: for one of them sought his father beneath the Cinyphian Syrtis, while the other rejoiced to be held Phoebus-born by the marks upon his mother, boasting the Epidaurian signs of the Paeonian serpent. Eagles have girded many, and over a sudden circuit the attendant wing played out crowns to come.

But that this man, noble lords, was summoned to the scepters, it was then given to know by fate, when at his father's hearth a cut-back vine-branch put forth shoots that were now not its own. That was the spring of empire; under the image of foliage, all things flourished upon the right hand through a withered twig. But after the infant had passed his earliest years, he crept over his father's arms: though the tight plate galled his neck, clasping it with both arms he pressed forward to the livid kisses with the crest-plumes loosened. It was the boy's game to handle with a swift hand the arrows seized from the foe, and through captured bows to force the reluctant strings back against the curving tips.

Now to whirl the quivering javelin with his tender arm, and, with a lance's weight, to shift at a leap the donned mail-chains of steel onto the back of a snorting horse; to drive the wild beasts he found and to seek those hiding in the foliage, now to enclose the caught in close-drawn nets, now to pierce them with the twisted spit; then often to be applauded with the crash of his comrades, when the gnashing beast bore the iron and the weapons went out through its pierced shoulders. Put away your titles, Pelethronian, eager boy and huntsman, son of Aeacus: though, pressing the back of your tutor set beneath you and therefore roaming the lairs in safety, you were carried rather by your steed; not better than our prince did Paean, standing over the Python, aim his darts, when, troubled with his quiver almost empty, he transfixed those numerous coils with countless shafts.

Nor less, amid all this, was it his to hear the ancient sages. What you, Thales, born of Miletus, blame in standing surety; what you, Cleobulus of Lindus, sing—'let measure be best'; all that you, Periander, ponder from Ephyra; or what you, Attic Solon, teach, well regarding life's end; what you, Bias of Priene, say—that the crowd of the wicked is the greater; what you, Pittacus, sprung from Lesbos, advise—to know the fitting time; what you, Chilon from Lacedaemon, would have—that all should know themselves. Besides, he learned the several schools, their newer doctrines: whatever Anacharsis praised in the Scythian fields, whatever Sparta accomplished through law-giving Lycurgus, whatever the throng of Cynics rolls over in the Erechthean gymnasia, imitating your comrades, Epicurus:

whatever the twofold Academy, establishing nothing as true, proclaims; whatever Cleanthes tastes with gnawed nail; whatever Pythagoras kept silent, Democritus laughed at, Heraclitus wept over; whatsoever the genius of Plato, which dwelt in the citadel, teaches in its threefold order. Or what Aristotle, dividing the parts of speech, sets as nets in his argumentative syllogisms. Whatever Anaximenes, Euclid, Archytas, Zeno, Arcesilas, Chrysippus, and Anaxagoras handed down; and the Socratic soul, living after death in the Phaedo, looking down on the vast chains upon his wasted leg, when death itself trembled at the accused, and the lictor's pale right hand bore the poison, the master untroubled. Besides, whatever the ancient age strove to set in Latin books, he was wont to run through it all:

what battle-lines and perils of the deep Mantua sported with, imitating the Smyrnaean trumpets; whatever aid of eloquence the Arpinate consul gives; the man born of a smith who spoke without end, whose tongue, though his father was scorned as base, was the more polished with eloquence; or whatever into eternity the Paduan volumes send forth on Euganean pages; with what brevity Crispus pleases, with what weight Varro, with what genius Plautus, with what thunderbolt Quintilian, with what pomp Tacitus, never to be named without praise. Him, formed by these studies, sprung of noble birth, imbued with good character, the prince—to whom the world from East to West then gave the scepter, whose marriageable and only daughter owed him purple-born grandsons—chose as son-in-law; yet not that, content in slothful luxury with his father-in-law's fortune and courting ease, he should owe nothing to his own merit:

but, the rank of count once received, he circles the banks of the Danube and the stretch of the broad frontier; he exhorts, arranges, examines, arms. Thus, under his father, Pius ruled his parent's camps, and thus Marcus while Pius lived—both destined afterward to give laws—commanded innumerable legions. Hence, on his return, every honor is given him, and as master of both services and consul he shines: the joined power of the patriciate; and with swift step he ran through the heights of private office, and, a boy, climbed the curule chair of elders, and, a young man, sat as a veteran in the honored gold. And now his parent was among the gods; but in you there was no lust for empire: the diadem, having long suffered refusal, chose a distinguished man, whom then, as he chose you in turn, you could not spurn;

to you alone Fortune conferred this honor, although the due order was demanding you, so that you might appear a prince chosen rather than one left over. After your father-in-law, you reign as Augustus; but the purple did not come to you through the bridal chamber, and your royal consort was the glory rather than the cause of your reign; for by the reins of law the republic chose not a son-in-law but a nobleman. I am deceived, unless the world approves the matter by its fourfold hinge. The West wind courts you, the East wind appoints you ruler, toward the North you make war, and toward the South you are dreaded. Yet before your colleague made you his partner, it is fitting to touch briefly on what triumphs the Illyrian shore beheld—that shore which, hewn down by the arms of Valamir, was bewailing itself deserted, by the chance fault of our own general.

Not otherwise than when Caepio, once slain, gave up the Ausonian strength, sudden ruin compelling it. The republic, about to choose a leader after Jugurtha's throat was broken, and terrified, set against the raging Cimbrian the Arpinate sutler, avenger of the Calpurnian treaties. Here, as soon as the province saw your eagles, it ceased at once to dread the enemy's dragon-standards. Straightway, subdued in war and stripped of booty, soon they themselves lie as your booty: but we pass these over as mere plunderers; I rather unroll the greater deeds of war. This war no small band prepared, nor did you, Spartacus, bound for the gladiatorial ring with your prison broken, prepare it:

but a roving throng of the Scythian region, abounding in savagery, dread, rapacious, violent, barbarous even to the barbarian peoples there, whose leader and fellow-citizen alike was Hormidac—to whom such is the soil, the walls, and the race. Where the white Tanais, driven through Hyperborean valleys, falls from a Riphaean crag, there lies, beneath the pole of the Bear, a race menacing in spirit and in limb: so their very own horror is set in the faces of the infants; the round mass rises into a narrow head; beneath the brow, sight is present in twin caverns though the eyes are absent; the light, driven into the vault of the brain, scarcely reaches the receding orbs, yet leaves them not shut: for though the arch is not spacious, they see wide spaces, and the clear pupils, in their deep wells, make up for the use of a greater light.

Then, lest the double channel grow out over the cheeks, an encircling band blunts the tender nostrils, that they may give way to the helmets. Thus a mother's love, for the sake of battles, deforms those she bears, because the stretched surface of the cheeks becomes broader when no nose is set between. The rest of the men's form is comely; their broad chests stand out, their shoulders are notable, the belly girt tight beneath. Their stature, indeed, is middling for a footman, but stands out tall if you view them as horsemen; thus they are often thought tall, if they are seated. Scarcely has the infant, leaving its mother, stood upright, when the steed offers its back; you would think the men's limbs kindred to the horse, so ever, as if fixed, the rider clings to it. Another race is carried on the back of the horn-hoofed; this one dwells there. Polished bows and darts are dear to them;

terrible and unerring their hands, and a fixed sureness of death to be dealt by their javelins, and a frenzy taught to err beneath a stroke that never errs. That nation, suddenly bursting forth and carried on wheels across the solid Ister, had come, and its wheel-track had cut the divided waters. This horde, wandering through the Dacian fields, you, sent forth, hem in, assail, overcome, enclose; and as soon as Serdica saw you, the space of your camp measured out, you press it with a siege; the city long marveled that you, stationed on the rampart, kept such discipline that the soldier went into the fields on neither licensed nor stealthy raids. Though often grain and always wine were lacking to him, discipline nonetheless was not lacking; and thus, with the foe nearby, they feared their leader the more;

so at last it came about that a man then by chance your ally, soon a traitor, turned his back to them in vain when the battle was joined: for when he now fled, wheeling his flank and baring the wings, you stood alone in the line; the band, scattered by its fleeing leader, sought you; the horseman kept seeking you as you sweated in the foot-soldier's fight; following your standards, the soldier did not feel himself deserted in the contest. Go now, hoary age of the fathers, and bring forth the praises of ancient Tullus, because with fair exhortation he lyingly concealed the wavering treaties of the fleeing Mettius. There is nothing similar here, and it does not please you that your enemy be deceived. Then the soldier conquered while he thought he would be helped; here he conquered after he learned that he was abandoned. The leader flees, you pursue; he renews the fight, you win; he is shut in, you storm; he slips away, you overwhelm;

and you set his death as the price of Sarmatian peace. Obedience is rendered; the deserter has now undergone the ordered death, and your victim fell by a foreign sword. Behold again, antiquity—contend, if you please: that fierce Hannibal, sought perchance for punishment, even if he had not the right of life, at his last end surely had the right of death; he whom the blind prison and the hook awaited, and whom the lictor watched, about to break his throat, drank down the poison, steadier than his Bebrycian host. For he who fled you, destroyed by an ordered death, perished not so much by the mouth of a victor as of a judge. Now be present, O Paean, for whom skilled curb-bits bind with laurel the hook-beaked griffins, as often as through leafy reins you turn the wing-bearing shoulders with two-colored ivy; hither turn your lyre;

it is not now the time to tell of the slain Python, nor to sound the twice-seven wounds of the children of Tantalus, whose deaths song preserves for you, and whose deaths live on in eternal verse. You too, Castalian sisters, reveal in few words by what divine power Anthemius came to us, with the treaty of a twofold realm: the peace of the world sent him, to govern its wars. Augustus Severus had, by the law of nature, increased the number of the gods; and when Oenotria soon beheld that fall, as from the crags of the airy Apennine she proceeds to the glassy halls of dark-blue Tiber, her cheeks not enclosed by a helmet, nor did a stitched ring weave her a corselet with driven hooks, but bare-headed;

instead of hair, a cluster-bearing vine-branch comes forth, binding many towns across her brow; and over her smooth shoulders and gleaming arms the hanging studs of a jeweled boss bit into the linen garments. He walks more slowly with age, and, holding his venerable limbs, he bends the vine-tressed staff toward an elm in place of a support: yet plenty follows him; wherever he draws near, he makes the path fruitful by his going, and, accompanying his step, the glad vintage bedews the imprinted footprints. Straightway she enters the cavern of the Tiberine flood. The river ran as he reclined, and a wood of tall reed, of matching hue, floated upon his green hair. The water falling from his chin gives a sound, though the beard, bristly with the reeds set beneath, much stilled the din.

From his breast he belched forth waters, and with swift gliding the now-rushing channel furrowed his wet belly; he is startled at the goddess's coming, and with slackened hands his oar and urn fall: then, as he prepared words of apology, she first said: 'I come—if it please you—to bend, through your aid, by my tears, Rome, now widowed of our chief; let her seek the regions of the dawn, and, pride laid aside, let her grant this one thing here—let her now deign to be loved the more. Instruct her what forces she should seek, and tell her in what quarter of the world she should demand a head for the prostrate world: whomever, born under my sky, she has created, in him the fortune of empire has at once broken its wheels: hence the Vandal foe presses, and every year with a numerous fleet wages war for our destruction; and, the order of fate reversed, torrid Dyrsa brings against me Caucasian furies.'

'Besides, unconquered Ricimer, on whom the public destinies look, alone scarcely repels by his own warfare the pirate roving through the countryside, who, shunning battles, plays the fugitive to his conqueror: who could endure a foe who refuses both peace and battle? For he makes no treaties with Ricimer. Hear why he hates him overmuch. That one boasts of an uncertain father, though his mother is a certain slave; now, that he may be a king's son, he trumpets his mother's adultery; then he is galled that two kingdoms call Ricimer to royalty—for by his father a Suevian, by his mother a Goth; and at once he recalls this: that in the Tartessian lands this man's grandfather Vallia laid low the Vandal squadrons and the Alans of allied warfare, and corpses covered western Calpe. Why relate the old routs, why the losses of earlier men?'

'He recalls the losses of the Agrigentine field. Thence he rages, because this man has proved himself sufficiently the grandson of that man at whose sight, Vandal, you always turned your back: for not more illustrious do you, Marcellus, return from the Sicilian fields, through whom by land and sea our arms pressed the Syracusan homes; nor you, Metellus, to whom it fell to outdo the chariot of Curtius, displaying to us the frequent elephant, when the black herd covered the white yoke-steeds with its bulk, and the triumph's pomp hid its own author. Because Noricum holds back the Ostrogoth, this man is feared; because Gaul binds the war of the Rhine, this man is a terror. Because the Vandal foe plundered me while my Alan kinsman went ravaging, this man avenged it by his own arms.'

'But still he is only one man, and cannot alone remove such great perils, but only defer them: now we have need of an armed prince who, after the manner of our forefathers, does not merely command but wages the wars himself; at whom, as he moves the standards, land or sea may tremble, so that at last, our right recovered, the Roman war-trumpets may govern the unaccustomed fleets.' That prayer the father heard, and at once assented; they go straightway to the City; he himself beholds the goddess, bows low and adores, and his horns touched her breast and bared bosom. Thence he bears the entrusted prayers, which the goddess, following, prepares to go the way: grimly she binds her loosened hair, and the towers, enclosed in a helmet, hid themselves. A laurel was her fillet; rough with enemy studs, a baldric fastens on her left the up-rising sword. Her victorious hand is thrust into the shield;

the war-born figures fill its orb—the she-wolf, Tiber, love, Mars, Ilia. A brooch catches with its biting tooth the garments receding from her breast; her menacing spear flashes, and the oak, curved with trophies, quivers, and wearies the goddess beneath its peaceful burden. Her sole stands on perpetual ground, but the binding stops at her first toes; the thumb, from the bound arch, sends forth two straps in opposite directions for the buskins, to bind the sandals fast, and, with the meeting loops of the bindings, to weave spreading chains along the legs. So, just as she was, carried through the clear upper air, she sought the warm risings of the new-born Hyperion. There is a place of ocean, nearest to the far Indians, beneath the Eastern pole, stretched toward the Nabathaean East wind, where spring is unbroken, and the ground, interrupted by no frosts, does not grow pale;

but, painted with unfading flower, the fields know no foreign frosts. The countryside breathes with roses, and fragrance is scented across the boundless fields; violet, clover, wild thyme, privet, lilies, narcissi, cassia, colocasia, marigolds, costus, malobathron, myrrh, balsam-juice, and incense the fields bring forth; and moreover, when old age presses upon it, hence the neighboring phoenix, reborn, seeks the cinnamon. Here is the house of Aurora, crusted with ruddy metal, rough-set, it displays smooth gems like berries. Diverse things ravish the eyes, and by masterly art each thing surpasses whatever you see; but all its beauty is hidden in its mistress's presence, and by the excessive redness of the gems it loses their varied fires, because she possesses them. Her combed hair poured forth saffron hues, and with bent arm the lowered comb dressed her yellow temples.

Her eyes poured forth rays, their color fiery, yet there was no burning: although the dews, caught up from shaken-off night, are wont to feign her sweat. Two girdles gird her breasts, and the bosom itself makes envy against the small nipples; the outermost part of her robe carries down purple folds to her reddening legs. So the queen sits upon her throne; in place of a scepter, a torch's shaft fills her right hand; night stands nearest the goddess, her feet already turned to flee, and behind the tribunal light, scarcely perceived, puts forth its topmost peak. Then, seeing Rome coming by a clear path, she leapt up hastily and first began with gentle words. 'Why, O head of the world,' she said, 'do you revisit my realms? Or what do you command?' She, silent a little, mingling harsh things with mild, thus began:

'I come—cease to be troubled, and tremble not overmuch—not that the curbed Araxes should flow for me beneath an imposed bridge, nor that in the ancient fashion the Indian Ganges be drunk from an Ausonian helmet; nor that a consul, exulting, should lay waste Caspian Artaxata through the quivered fields of tiger-bearing Niphates. I pray not now for the realms of Porus, nor that a battering-ram, driven by these arms, should shatter the Hydaspean Red-shores. I am not borne against Bactra, nor do I seek the Arsacid houses that join battles, nor is the watchword given in the camp against Ctesiphon: this whole region we have yielded to you—and do I not even so deserve that you guard our old age? All that lies between Euphrates and Tigris you alone have long held: it is a thing bought for me by the blood of Crassus:'

'at Carrhae I wrote out the price, nor did I remain unavenged, or did the field thus bought perish; if I lie, you proved it, Sapor, slain by Ventidius; nor does that suffice: Armenia and Pontus I gave—by what warfare they were sought, let Sulla tell you; perhaps one man is not believed: consult Lucullus. I say nothing now of all the Cyclades. Crete, won by my Metellus, serves you. I transferred the Cilicians: these Magnus once routed. To Syria I added the Isaurians, whom you now govern: these too Servilius subdued beneath our arms. I granted the ancient Aetolians and the Acheloian fields; too trusting, I handed over the Attalid testament. Epirus you retain; you know what Pyrrhus owes it. I look to your sending laws into Illyricum and the lands of the Macedonians: and you, Paulus, have your descendants.'

'The grain of Egypt I gave; once Agrippa had conquered it for me in the Leucadian straits. Judaea is held under your sway, as though you yourself had sent thither the distinguished Titus with his father. To you the Cyprian merchandise is brought; I, though poor, praise the warlike Catos; the Dorian land and the Achaean domains tremble at you, and you extend your fortunate realms to twin-sea'd Corinth: say, what Byzantine Mummius did the deed for you there? But if perchance it please to lull the old complaints, grant me Anthemius; let there be for these parts an Augustus, and for long may Leo reign; let him whom I have sought govern my domains; let her father's divine star rejoice that his daughter Euphemia is clothed in the ancestral purple. Add moreover a private alliance to the public one. Let the Augustus, as father-in-law, be blessed with Ricimer as son-in-law; they shine with nobility:'

'you have a royal maiden, and that man is royal to me; if in concord you assent to this, soon you will grant me to hope for Libya: look round upon the ancient wedding-torches—no such match is so ready to your hand. Let Greece bring forth here, if it feels no shame, the bridal-chambers of old won through peril: let Pisa, her chariots restored, raise up Oenomaus, whom, falling by his daughter's treachery, the waxen linchpin failed when the axles came loose. Let the Colchian maiden come forward, known to her husband by her crime before her sex; let Atalanta watch her pale suitors from the barrier of the circus, and gather the apples of comely Hippomenes now not for gold alone. Let Deianira, sleek from the Acheloian wrestling-ground, illumine your torches, and let the foe, pressed by panting Hercules, cherish his wearied rival with rival streams.'

'However much I recall the marriages of the ancient age, these men here surpass the heroes, those women there the heroines. These nuptials, Ricimer, virtue as your bridal-matron demands for you, and the martial laurel bestows the Dionaean myrtle. Come then: hand over a man who cherishes no sluggish ease, nor is heavy with luxuries; but one whom just now the seaman's heat scorches, and the bay of Abydos, and the Sestian shore clamored round by Hellespontine storms: which straits of the sea I would not believe even that one to have held thus, for whom Athos was cloven, for whom, with Median oarsman, the swollen sails ran through the wooded Alp. Nor, were these straits girded with Lucullan keels, was he idle, when the enemy sat before famous Cyzicus; who, compelled by hunger, chewing kindred corpses, lived by his own death. But why do I delay my prayers? Hand him over, rather.'

Then Tithonus' consort replies in a few words: 'Come now, holy mother, though I have made the greatest use of the unconquered and supreme leader — provided you show yourself the gentler, and provided we guide the reins together and not divided. For if it please you to recall the toils of old, and him who fought for our Julius' fatherland — to say no more — I was the first to send Memnon hither.' They had finished: concord joined the two parties, since Rome at last obtains the prince she has chosen. 'Now I wish that you, O antiquity, so garrulous, had read of some men with like affection — envy that is never absent from the highest and most deserving. Against the arms of Brennus set Camillus, brought back from exile; against Caeso driven out bring the axes to Cincinnatus, and summon the weeping father from the plough to the rostra, and in the wretched tumult first drive off those whom, once conquered, you would seek.'

If the Carthaginian should breach the Alps, run back to the afflicted and the condemned. That the wicked Metaurus may blush red with the Carthaginian slaughter, let a punished consul lead them — he who, pouring out the thousands of Hasdrubal and forging for himself a gleaming sword, himself carries the severed head; far otherwise is the favour of our judgement: though unharmed, he knows himself beloved. But already excessive winds drive on my sails. Cease, O Muse, your slender measures, and now, as I seek the harbour, let the anchor of my song rest for me upon a calm bed. Yet, O prince, what a fleet and arms are now handled by you, how great deeds you do, and in how short a time — if God prolongs my prayers, in due order I shall soon call you twice a father-in-law, or thrice a consul.

For now the festivals summon us, and the forums of Trajan call for you; you shall bestow liberty on those Quirites whose glad cheeks receive the ceremonial blow. Go forward, father of the fatherland: happy, and with fair omen, about to bind new captives, release the old. POEM III. PREFACE OF THE PANEGYRIC, EDITION TO PETER. What makes the crops rejoice, what season is to be loved for harvests, and for flocks, for vines, and for bees — these were once published under the name of Maecenas; hence, Maro, you afterward dared to speak of arms and the man. But for me Peter shall be the Maecenas of this age, for by his star I sail the sea of fame. If he approves, he sends it forth; if he condemns, he hides the songs, nor brands me with his snorting rhinoceros-nose. Go, little book: this man, believe me, guards my modesty. With this censor even to have displeased is pleasing.

POEM IV. PREFACE OF THE PANEGYRIC SPOKEN TO MAJORIAN AUGUSTUS. As Tityrus once, beneath the covering of a spreading beech, rolled murmurs of song through his swelling reeds — Caesar granted to the afflicted man the right of life and of his field, nor did his loftier wrath halt at the humble accused: but while in a generous prince he praises the granted farmland, his rustic Muse gave heaven in place of earth. Nor was it a lesser thing to return Apollo's gifts: this man had made a lord, and that one made also a god; and to you, Flaccus, who followed the battle-lines of Brutus and Cassius, the author of your song was he who was also the author of your pardon. So to me, lately falling under an adverse war, you, the victor, bade me be of tranquil mind; therefore let the tongue of the saved poet serve you, and let your praise be the price of my life.

I will not now gnaw at Maro with biting tooth, nor, Sabine land, will I carp at your citizen. My theme is lesser than my talent, but greater than Caesar: let them conquer in eloquence, provided we conquer in our lord. POEM V. PANEGYRIC SPOKEN TO JULIUS VALERIUS MAJORIAN AUGUSTUS. Conceive in your mind, O commonwealth, the triumphs of the past: now the empire has a consul whom the purple covers no more than the cuirass, whose brows the diadems veil not by luxury but by law, and after the palm of merit's labours comes the palm-embroidered robe: all the glories of royalty the fasces heap up, and from a consul the prince grows greater. Therefore exultant Europe sounds forth 'bravo!' to your name — in sky, in countryside, in cities, on the waters — because you are held for ruler, you who had been victor.

I confess, the world had trembled while you willed not to have conquered for yourself, and with excessive modesty grieve that you should deserve the kingship, and, undismayed by the sad rebuff, take up what you thought must be defended. Warlike Rome had seated herself, with breast bared, her towered head crested; behind, from her capacious helmet, her slipping hair pours over her back. Gravity befits her gladness, and her terror grows with modesty, and, though against her will, comeliness outdoes her valour. The weave of her purple-dyed robe a biting brooch with twisted tooth devours; then whatever covering her bosom pours out, this a gem encloses in its open recess. A ruddy boss with spacious circuit props her left side.

Here you might see, poured in thick metal, the cave of Rhea and the teeming she-wolf, whom, with jaws laid bare, it was a terror even to fawn upon, though she — depicted — fears to devour the sons of Mars; the nearest part portrays the Tiber; here, stretched out beneath the pumice of the rough tufa, he breathed forth a moist slumber through his grey-green throat. A mantle covers his breast, which Ilia his consort had woven, who, joined to her flowing couch, wishes to raise murmurs with the waters and to guard the sleep of her billowy husband. These things gleam upon her shield; the spear-point rises on an ivory shaft, drunk with the slaughter of men: beside it Bellona builds a trophy, and bends the oak beneath the captive weight. Her throne rises of stones cut and falling from the reddening mountain of the Ethiopians, where, with the sun close by, a native purple has breathed upon the scorched crags.

Here Syene-stone is joined, there Numidian marble is added, feigning ancient ivory; then, cautiously, an order of Laconian marble, grassy in hue, glimmers green between. So, when she gave herself into the midst of the throne, all the earth at once flies to her; then each province displayed its own fruits: India brings ivory, Chaldaea balsam, Assyria gems, the Seres fleeces, the Sabaean incense, Attica honey, the Phoenix palms, Sparta olive-oil, Arcadia horses, Epirus mares, the Gaul cattle, the Chalybian arms, the Libyan grain, the Campanian wine. The Lydian gold, the Arab spice, Panchaia myrrh, Pontus castoreum, Tyre purple-dye, Corinth bronze. Sardinia silver, Spain ships and the thunder-stone; the darting lightning-bolt smites the crags, and the fecund wrath of the gods weds the kindled flint.

As often as the heaven stirs itself there, the more the earth avails in that place. Suddenly Africa, weeping, fell prostrate, her dark cheeks torn, and, bowing her brow, broke upon her head the ears of grain — now ill-fruitful. And thus she began to speak: 'I come, the third part of the world, unhappy through one who is fortunate; once a slave-born man, here a plunderer, and, with the lords extinguished, long now holds a barbarian sceptre upon my soil, and, raging with nobility utterly put to flight, the alien loves not what he is not. O drowsy vigour of Latium, he laughs that your walls have yielded to his ambushes: do you not shake the spear? Do you feel no grief, even for me, a captive? Surely your destiny is thought to rise by evils, and to be loftier by ruin. But it is better where the terror departs: now it remains to conquer, if you fight, as, conquered, you are wont.'

'When Porsenna, hurling proud Tarquin against you, once filled the Janiculum with Tuscan soldiery — yet while he prepared by siege to break through the gates, he bore your whole might upon Cocles alone in his shield; many thousands of men pressed the ground upon a hanging way; nor when the bridge was loosed and he fell, did he fall in defeat. That same king, at last admonished by the death of his scribe, learned that wars were being stirred against him not only when there was open war; soon, peace being sought, he returned into his realm, put to flight not so much by the smiter as by the burning man: for Scaevola had stood with heart of ice, and had condemned his right hand to the fire set beneath it — more blessed by the sinning hand, when by chance the attendant fell, while the accused stood firm, and he who was the torturer fled the torments of the captive. Brennus you feared afterward, when you were the better.'

'Whatever is yours, whatever you are called — now the Tarpeian rock alone was left; yet one man again then repelled the whole battle-line, while the garrulous goose announced the Senones, and your shrine kept watch without a soldier. Me too — grant me pardon, that we once waged war — after the Trebia and Cannae you subdue; and Hannibal thundered before Rome's roofs sooner than Scipio saw ours. What have I deserved? By the fates I am compelled to stir up wars against you, whether I wish it or not: the trembling foe terrifies you, yet safe with the sea shutting him in, like a bristly boar lying near the high wastes, who, shut up, tapers his black snout, heavy with white weapons, and a huge throng of hounds barks around him, should he chance to wish to close in battle on the field.'

'He, through the brambles set against him, swells and grows haughty, slight in strength yet strong by his position, while the huntsman nearby sounds his cry from the hill: the known voice of the master restores his wearied rage; then blind fury disdains to feel its wounds. Why do you defer the battles? Why do you dread the sea, for whose triumphs the very heaven is often wont to fight? What of the fact that you now have a prince most excellent, whom the foreseeing ages proclaim shall come to the ruin of Libya, who, third from me, shall receive a name? This the fates owe to your toil, Majorian: were you to bid me board the fleet and enter my ports and approach the city, why I should desire it, I will tell in a few words in order. It is told that where warlike Acincum flourishes in Pannonia, his grandfather ruled the Illyrian soil with the tracts of the Ister.'

'For when Theodosius at Sirmium took the name of Augustus, this man had Majorian as master of both branches of the militia, when he was about to come to the eastern parts of the realm. The deeds of the leader are recorded in the Latin annals: how often did the war-trumpets, brought against the Scythian settlers, press hard upon the Hypanis, and the camp-follower, saluting the frosts on the ridged Peuce, mocked the snows! This man's father held him as father-in-law, an illustrious man, and, content always with no lofty height of soldiery, followed his single friend as a comrade in doubtful chances. More than once, with fasces offered, Aetius tried to snatch him for his own court; but that man stood firm, greater than the honoured: he began to be more precious, so that his fidelity was not caught by a price.'

'He was what he once had been — quaestor to the consuls; he handled the public treasury by his own right, and kept such measure that rumour told he was even sparing his son's estate. But the leader's now envious wife had by chance perceived this; that the boy's fame was being increased, and, suffused with bile, she had brewed within her barbarian heart an inward venom. At once she scans the sky, and runs through all mathematics with vowed numbers, questions the shades, searches the lightning-bolts, examines the entrails, rejoicing on every side to have snatched a secret from God: so grim, on the stern-ornament, had the Colchian woman of the Pelasgians stood, with her husband trembling, about to scatter Absyrtus for their father, and about to work, by the slaying of her brother, a wickedness worse than death, while in the death-rite she fights, and makes for herself a brother into weapons.'

'Or when she overwhelmed the fire of the Bulls, herself glowing more, and clothed the trembling man with a cold flame, whom, with the venom defending him, they say chilled amid the blazing bullocks — so this woman, long impatient of soul, after she heard that empire and long rule were decreed for that boy, tearing her arms, enters where the man's bed is spread, and with these words burst forth her raving voice: You lie secure, forgetful of your own, O sluggish one, and Majorian shall be prince of the world (so the ages demand); the stars proclaim this by their signs, men by their prayers: for him why do I seek the stars, whom another destiny has made by love? Nothing is braver than he. And a boy is never covetous, but sparing of possession. Poor as yet, already he scatters gold, urges vast counsels, and follows them; all that he plots is lofty. What he hopes for presses him.'

'If perchance I unfold his sport, one single day of his has consumed whatever you may think done with javelins: three arrows made the serpent, the stag, the boar tremble before him; not so did he balance the darts against the foe who, with his son's body encircled by a serpent, feared the more while he came to the rescue, while by those same casts he might give death and life, and hold his hand steady with trembling heart, and go forth wholly into his craft, his fear diminished by the nearer hope, dealing amid the limbs of two the death of one alone. Should it please him to contend with the boxing-glove, Sicilian Eryx yielded, nor did Sparta flourish in like art, when in the Therapnaean wrestling-ground the fat pugilist Amycus, laid low on the Bebrycian sands, looked up. What vigour in his feet!'

'In vain did Opheltes' son grant himself the palm of Sicania, nor so did the swift Arcadian lift his proud soles through parched Nemea, whose fleeting mother in the Aetolian dust Hippomenes shuddered at — she who, sent ahead in contempt over much turf of the circus, when from the cave of the barrier the nimble maiden-warrior flashed forth amid the trembling people, about to touch nothing in her whole stride, while pale he looked back to see the field's midst shrink behind him, and the long ways toward the goal-posts, and, pressed by the near breath, ran anxious now in the hostile shadow, until, near the turning of the goal, now all but abandoned, thrice with the scattered apple she broke her hastened steps.'

'Whoever sees this man as horseman scorns the Ledaean nursling and the youth, your Sthenoboea's youth, to whom antiquity grants the back of a winged horse and the Lycian Chimaera, which it tells he overcame, when with one wound he took away three lives: had the fates then given you life, fierce Majorian, you would have forbidden Castor to know the reins, Pollux the boxing-glove, Alcon the javelins, and would leap upon the Bellerophontean spoils. Should he take up the shield, he conquers the son begotten of Telamon, who among the Grecian sterns, against Hector's fire, defended even the fleet of faithless Ulysses. Should you ask with how great weight he hurls the missile — more sluggishly, trembling for the burden of his inserted Camilla, did Metabus fling the weapon, nor with so great a whirl did the whistling ash-spear of Achilles go forth against Troilus.'

'Nor so did the Attic son of Aegeus, with the Marathonian oak, break Creon who delayed the burial of the heroes: nor so did the avenger of the violated priestess of Phoebus hurl the twisted lightning-bolt against the Danaans, when Greece held the night of Troy and a like torch, and Oileus, fixed to the Caphareus rocks amid the waters, belched forth the flame. I speak of small things: what of the fact that, as often as wars are waged for you, a disciple, not a soldier, is present? And he shapes a foster-son, a rival who on the contrary looks on? What you have conquered he hates, and whom you conquer he loves: wholly Alexander the Great drowses toward that man, whom his father's glory tormented. What shall I do, unhappy? What realms shall I prepare for my son, shut out from Getic sceptres, if the commonwealth passes me by, and little Gaudentius, over and above this, is trampled by that man's destiny?'

'That man Gaul already praises, and whatever is throughout Europe: the Rhine washes him with its rigid waves, the Arar, the Rhone, the Meuse, the Marne, the Seine, the Loue, the Clitis, the Elaris, the Aude, the Vachalis, and the Loire, which he drinks, hewn into fragments by the axe; when, as they feared war, he defended the Turones, you were absent: afterward, in a short time, you fought together, where the Frank Chlogio had overrun the open lands of the Atrebates: here, as the roads converged, they closed the narrow ways, and by a bridge a rampart had carried across the village Vicus Helena, subdued by the arch, and the river at once beneath a long causeway, its joints propped by set-in beams. There, with you posted, Majorian fought as horseman beneath the very bridge: by chance, on the hill near the bank, the barbaric wedding-hymn resounded, and to Scythian dances a new bride, like a blond, was wedded to her flaxen-haired husband.'

'These, then, as they relate, he laid low; the helmet rattled at the blows, and the breastplate warded off the strokes of the spears with its opposed scales, until the enemy, put to flight, turned his back: you might see the festive channels of the barbaric marriage-couch gleam red upon the wagons, and dishes flung about everywhere, and captive banquets, and, with the perfumed lock, the garlanded cauldrons bearing fragrant wreaths. At once Mars swells, and, more ardent, Bellona shatters the pleasures of the marriage-chamber as you lie there.'

'The victor seizes the chariots and the bride, the son's wife; not so did the Semelean Evan mingle the Pholoetic monsters and the Pelethronian Lapiths, while the orgies inflame the Haemonian mothers and rouse Venus and Mars, and first consume their bloody feasts for war, and, with Bacchus whirled about, think their cups weapons, when, as the tumult grew fierce, the blood of the Centaurs polluted Haemonian Othrys. Nor let the quarrels of the cloud-born brothers be more celebrated. This man too tames monsters, from the peak of whose ruddy brain the hair, drawn to the forehead, lies, and the bared nape shines through the loss of its bristles; then with a grey-green light the watery gaze glimmers pale, and, with their faces shaved on every side, thin crests are furrowed with the comb in place of a beard. More tightly sewn garments constrain the men's tall limbs.'

'The hollow of the knee lies bare where the covering is drawn up, and a belt suspends their side and narrow belly. To hurl the swift double-axes through the vast void, and to foresee the place of the wound, and to whirl the shields, is their sport, and to precede the twisted spears with leaps, and to have come upon the foe first: in boyish years there is a ripe love of war; if by chance they are pressed, whether by number or by the position of the ground, death overwhelms them, not fear; unconquered they stand firm, and survive in spirit now almost after the soul is gone. Such men, with you as witness, he put to flight, and, praising, praised the men: who could endure it? With you he does all things; without you he does much. Many fight for the prince — I fear lest that man now fight for himself; if he shall hold the realm, for him you conquer whatever you subdue; the fates leave nothing here in the middle: for if you refuse to be a striker, you shall be a slave.'

'Surely, if the Chaldaean keeps the stars on a straight track; if the Colchian knows herbs, if the Tuscan draws forth lightnings, if the Thessalian summons shades, if the Lycian lots have wisdom, if by their flight our birds speak our fates, if Hammon with learned bleatings groans holy beneath the Syrtis, if, in short, Phoebus, Themis, and Dodona sing the truth — after our times this man shall be Julius Augustus. Moreover, he is joined in love to a youth whom the great spirit of a royal grandfather arms: whither will you turn? This man bears fame to the summit of the world, both bear spirit: rise up, and together assail the unwary; you will be able to slaughter neither, should you bid one alone to die; but weave crafty blandishments for the one, yet let that one be sought with the sword. Why do I speak in vain? There is nothing that we so guard against, that he may reign: he is destined to live as victor.'

'Moved to wrath, Aetius replies thus in few words: Restrain the impious vows of your raging soul; I shall be able to decree death — should I be silent about our own men — of an innocent man? Does anyone pray that a crime be made of being nobly born, without crimes? Who would summon the fates to punishment? Shall I seek your inward parts with the sword, Majorian? If Phoebus shines by night, the Moon by day, if the twofold Parrhasian wain is renewed upon the sea, if the Tanais beholds Atlas, if Bagrada the Caucasus, if the boat woven of the Hercynian forest's timber furrows the Nabathaean Hydaspes in place of the Rhine, if the Spaniard drinks the Ganges, and from the charming Erythraean shores to the Tartesian Iberus comes the Indian water-drawer: if Castor bathes himself in the blood of Pollux.'

'Should the mad hand of Pirithous have slain his Theseus, or of Orestes his Pylades — when the matricide, dutiful, was seizing the Tauric rites. But lest perchance I seem to have scorned your grief: let him live, and for a little while lack military service; alas for us, he could — had you not thought it grievous — have owed his fortune to us. So he speaks, and bids that man in his ancestral countryside change his accustomed toils, as the wheel of the fates runs on, that in the field he might learn what awaits a landholder, what manners at last the civil law prepares, lest he should bring to empire the soldier's art alone.'

'The veteran youth had at once hung up his arms, making the fastings of the barren earth fruitful with the ploughshare — so once, O bent consul, you used to turn the fields, if only, peace intervening, you had for a little loosed the war-trumpets, you whose brave left hand guided the plough-handle after the eagles, while, joined to the earthen hearth, the palm-clad ploughman drank in the smoke of a victor. Meanwhile, by a prince's sword, Aetius had closed his lamentable fate: whose great troops, that he might more safely join to the Palatine squadrons, he summons this man by entreaties; but the penalty of shed blood does not delay for itself; he had gathered the number, not the spirit, of the people; he unbound with the sword the evil crimes of the sword, and fell the more to our ruin. Even then the golden fates were unrolling the good empire of the present prince as a whole.'

'But public losses fled from the man's envy: whoever were chosen to the name of Augustus held the throne left to the Caesars: after you, taken captive, labour, this man has made what he holds. Nerva summoned Trajan when the pledge was already victor; that he might be Germanicus in titles, by merits he had been so; the matter runs in due order; whoever so begins courts this fame. Once, after the Capreae of Tiberius, after the foul divinities of Gaius, the censorship of Claudius, the cithara and marriage-chambers of Nero, after the pageant of the monstrous mirror in which that man beheld himself base here — because Otho was fair — after the five thousand of Vitellius, condemned to the pit of a notorious belly: chosen prince by these titles, and for a like toil, was Vespasian.'

'But lest perhaps you think me shut in by the courage of the robber, he consumed in that man the strength of his race, the vice of his life: his Scythian ferocity not his strengths but his lusts blunt, and, having gained immense spoils, he has now lost all his vigour to luxury, whereby he prevailed while he was poor; my own inward parts he now arms against me on his behalf; I am torn, captured through so many years, by his right, by my valour; and, fruitful in punishments, I bring forth those whom I suffer; with his own arms he accomplishes nothing — he is feared as sluggish by the Gaetulians, the Numidians, the Garamantes, the Autololes, the Arzuges, the Marmaridae, the Psylli, the Nasamones, and now he knows not iron from vast gold. But he himself is of bloodless colour, whom the surfeit vexes, and pale fatness holds, and, pressed by perennial gluttony, his stomach does not release the souring vapour. Their life is like their swine.'

'Not so did Barcan Hannibal perish at rich Capua, when Baiae softened bodies brave in war amid its delights, and where Gaurus slopes into the Lucrine waters, the Massylian swimmer tossed his black arms. And therefore restore to me, I pray, at least after so many ages, this man as lord and avenger, lest Carthage fight further against Italy. So she spoke, groaned with grief, and aided her prayers with rising tears. To these things Rome replies thus: Gird up your long complaints, O you devoted to me: your avenger, in the name of the gods, shall be Majorian; but in few words I shall unfold a few things. From the time that Theodosius restored the common laws to the brother of the routed author — whose throat a hand, soon to turn against itself, broke — my Gaul, still ignorant of the lords of affairs, and unknowing, serves.'

'From then much perished, because, the prince being shut up, whatever there was of the wretched world in its various parts, it became customary to lay waste: what life could please, when the ruler himself had to be governed? For so many years despised nobility lay prostrate: the commonwealth carried off, as the price of the theft, only hatred. Our prince corrects all these things, and, adding strength from the nations, comes to your war through wars; for it is the greatest labour to have gone, not to have fought: why do we waste the time in words? He arrives and conquers. With such discourse the council was concluded, and, at the goddess's words, with metal serving them, the concordant sisters drew the golden threads. These labours of Rome and Libya, which I have sung, the prayers of men taught me to speak.'

Now it is time to bear my foot toward those things which, even were Apollo mute, your War must speak for me in place of the Muses. The fierce Alaman had climbed the Alps, and, led through long silences over the ridge of the Rhaetians, had gone forth after laying waste the Roman folk, and through the plains once called after the name of the Dog he had let loose nine hundred foes for plunder: and now you were master; you direct Burco thither with a small escort accompanying; but that suffices, when you bid them fight; sure is the victory for our men that you have commanded the battle-lines; fortune completes the triumph, not for the people but for love of you; I do not wish the ranks on the field, because you send too few; that happy issue of war regards you: it was contended by the right of the master, by the destiny of Augustus. Lately the enemy was wandering slowly over the open sea.

As soon as, in order, every rank had given you the kingdom — the people, the senate-house, the soldiery, and your colleague together — entering the Campanian land while the south winds blew, secure with a Moorish soldier, he assails the husbandman; the fat Vandal sat upon the thwarts, awaiting the booty which he had bidden to be dragged thither by the captive who takes the captive; but suddenly your troops had thrown themselves between the two enemies on the plains which cut both sea and hill, and make a harbour by the withdrawn winding of the river. Terrified at first, the throng seeks the mountains, and, shut in by the abandoned timbers, became the prey of prey; then, roused with all his line, the pirate comes together for battle.

Part, in the hollowed boat, now sets forth the docile horses; part is clothed in iron mail of matching hue; part unbends the smooth bows and the darts, iron-tipped, about to bear an infused venom, which strike twice though sent but once; now the woven serpent runs to and fro through either battle-line, whose throat swells with the west winds driven in; with its gaping maw the painting counterfeits an angry hunger, and the breeze makes fury of the cloth, as often as the whirling back thickens with the blasts, and its belly now holds not the excessive void. But the trumpet, hoarse, blared grave with earth-sounding din, the shout answers the war-clarions, and courage suddenly rages, though slight, in the cowardly; on every side the iron falls, yet hence into the throats. This one the whirled falarica passes by in its cast, scarcely to cease for a second death.

This one the pike whirls with its blow; that one falls, pierced by the horseman's javelin from his horse; another by the spit; here one lies at once by the winged weapon, having suffered an absent right hand; part, with the ham cut, lives to the reproach of death; and part of the brain this one carries off with part of the helmet, and with mighty arm cleaves the wretched crown of the head with a two-edged sword. As soon as the Vandal turns his back with reversed arms, slaughter follows with no distinction of battle. They are strewn everywhere on the plains, and idle terror, in trembling flight, did all things brave; pale, he enters the sea, and the horseman passes through the ships, and by a shameful swim returned from the deep to the skiff. So was the third battle of Pyrrhus once, when Dentatus pressed him with slain thousands.

He scarcely dragged the fragments of his mangled fleet into Epirus — he who had scattered the Chaonians and Molossians, the bands of the Thracians and Macedonians, along our shores, and whose forces pale Oenotria dreaded, and Tarentum herself, the very thing she had sought, had trembled at the wave. The enemies expelled, it is now free to survey the field which stands greatest of all: you might see here, beneath that carnage, the spirits of both sides; none but was smitten in the breast, whoever was yours; none but was pierced in the back, of theirs whoever he was; this the wounds proclaim of the foremost — of the plunderers' leader by chance, to whom the sister of the greedy king is said to have wed, who, shut in by the blinding dust and crushed by javelins, still bears the base tracks of a shameful flight; so your ranks hold the field with the spoils, and enjoy the war-god.

Meanwhile, while you weave a fleet along the double shore, on the inner and the upper sea, every forest falls into the water for you, and — too long cut back on either side of the Apennine, and rich in ship-timber — you send no less of the groves into the deep than of the waters. Though Gaul be wearied by continual tributes, she desires to please by this reckoning, nor feels the burdens which she proves to be of profit: not with so great ships did the greater son of Atreus cover the Carpathian sea, when the Doric foe, about to snatch the wealth of Sigeum, shut up Rhoetean Pergama; nor was so great the fleet of Xerxes, about to join Sestos to Abydos, when he strewed the swelling waves, and put the sea beneath a bridge, when he burst upon the pools with proud, profaning step, and the crowded squadrons pranced over the Hellespontine deep.

Nor so did the Mareotic fleet hide the Actian waters in the Leucadian harbour, when to the husband's wars came from Pharian Canopus the dowered throng: when fierce Cleopatra, girt with her ancestral sistrum, and having laden her tawny keels with pitch-black soldiery, pressed the far-spread Doris with Ptolemaic treasure. You fight not with this array, but after the manner of the ancients, richer rather in iron, to which gold, the merit of the wealthy sluggard, rightly lies subject: scorn not such rebels, and, if not battle-lines, yet these things adorn triumphs. Nor shall it irk me to have recalled the Lagean stock as an example of an enemy like yours: for I augur a like fortune to the same realms, since the luxury in that quarter is equal, nor is the Caesar worse in this. At once you assail what no Augustus in our time could.

You snatch to arms the rigid host of the sevenfold Ister; for whatever the languid pole brings forth beneath the Sithonian hinge, whatever the bear travails under Parrhasis, all this dreads your standards: the Bastarna, the Suevian, the Pannonian, the Neurian, the Hun, the Getan, the Dacian, the Alan, the Bellonothus, the Rugian, the Burgundian, the Vesian, the Alites, the Bisaltan, the Ostrogoth, the Procustes, the Sarmatian, the Moschian — after your eagles they came; for you the whole Caucasus fights, and the Tanaitic drinker of the Scythian wave. What can a man's fortune do? Whatever hands it threatens, at these Rome has now trembled: only under you as prince let her not fear, she thinks small things near at hand, unless she serve that man whom she dreaded while another reigned. Now you were moving your camp, and thousands thronged you with diverse standards.

One nation refuses obedience, which lately from the Ister brought back its untamed host, fiercer than usual, which lacks lords through wars, and Tuldila, with a haughty people, supplies to the battles a wrath that must be punished. Here you, having scarcely laid down your arms, again take up arms. As when the Bistonian women of the Cicones by chance fill the frosts with Ogygian revels, whether in the fields of the Strymon, or through Rhodope, or where cloudy Ismarus, on the Hyperborean crags, rolls the Hebrus into the sea: the wandering throng gives itself to sleep, and at once the wearied orgies grow still, and the flute re-echoes not at the double-mouthed blast. Scarcely is there rest: now they bind at the bridge, the inspired Dassaris whirls the thyrsus, and, bristling with the spots of the Erythraean fawn-skin, rouses the Odrysian initiates to the languid drums.

Yet you defer this punishment; but you were the author of greater bloodshed even while you spared. That more prudent hand endured it no longer for your sake, and spurned your shame on your behalf; whoever had been a rebel falls as the first victim of the war. The plunder too you divide among those whose minds had been loyal, who, terrified by the example, now serve, yet rejoice in the reward. Caesar, marching for the Pharsalian fields, checked his sudden fury with the sword; but, cutting his own limbs and compelled by the weight of his cause, he wept for those he slew. This mutiny profits your own arms: whatever you command, unless the barbarian obeys, here he falls, that the soldier may learn to fear.

Now in the season of midwinter you are first to tread with your foot the marble Alps, the crags that meet the vaulted sky, cliffs of glassy ice, and the parched clefts that threaten rain, and with a pole thrust before you steady your slippery steps. At the middle of the rock, where the throng is thickest, it had begun to grow harsh with inward frost, which on the steep hillside, hemmed within the narrowed paths, could not creep forward, rolled back upon the frozen ground. By chance one man from that column, whose wheel had ground the singing Ister, cries out: 'I would rather have swords, and the cold that comes gently from a quiet death; a numbness binds my limbs with sluggish stiffness; my body perishes, scorched as by a fire of frost; endlessly we follow the young leader who presses on to toil.'

'Whoever is bravest of all, whether king or people, but lately shut within the camp, lies in the sun or beneath a hide: we are overturning the custom of the year. What this man commands shall be law for all; never is he swayed by gifts received, and he counts it loss if he so much as fears the wrath of the season, even at the price of losses. Of what race shall I say he was born, whom even I, a Scythian, cannot endure? What infant drank the milk of a tigress beneath a Hyrcanian cliff? What land heavier than my own sky brought him forth? Behold, upon the topmost peak he musters his freezing squadrons and laughs at the cold, while alone he burns the more in spirit. When I followed the trumpets of the Northern king, the arms of the Roman prince, I had heard that the imperial court lay drowsing in unending luxury: it profits nothing that former lords went before, if this king too was brave.'