Letters & Poems 1 part 6/7

Rather come now, that Spirit whom I invoke — I who am to sing of your bishop, you who entered the breast of ancient Miriam, snatching up the timbrels, when dry Israel went through the hollow of the suspended flood, walled in by ramparts of water, and through the midst of the waves the dust-covered throng proclaimed your triumph. And you who aided the hand of Judith striking the neck of Holofernes, when, his throat cut through, the trunk lay prostrate, and the frail sex lay well hidden in a mighty blow. And you who, filling the skin from the wrung fleece, and then wetting the untouched fleece while leaving the earth dry, made Gideon firm, being inserted into the tuneful trumpets, O Spirit; and by the song alone came the victory.

And you who also breathed upon the chosen king taken from the flock of shepherd-rich Jesse, when, placing the ark of the covenant upon a cart, no herdsman guiding it, he betrayed the shameful disease in the swollen hinder part. And you who once sounded in the throat of the three boys, whom, set in the furnace of the Chaldean tyrant, the dewy flame moistened when the furnace was burnt. And you who filled Jonah as he roamed in the rolling passages of the belly, while the entrails of the monster resound within as the food sings psalms, or the burdens of the fasting stomach — full nonetheless with the undefiled prophet — the raw hunger belches forth; and the beast, hungering, with sobbing bowels vomited him up with reluctant bite.

And you who once came twofold into the breast of Elisha, when the fiery chariot was lifting up the aged Tishbite, and, leaving the torn skin as a gift, the shaggy charioteer entered the burning reins. And you who, about to send Elijah a second time to the earth, appeasing, bound the tongue of just Zechariah, while the wrinkled matron in labour became a father late in life — signifying that the prophet who was bidden to be silent should hold his peace, when grace shone forth, that the law might know itself to be about to fall silent. And you who also, being born of a virgin with no seed, God before all time and Christ in time, so far as pertains to the body, created your very self.

You who were wont to restore sight to the blind, and gait too to the lame, hearing to the deaf, and to loosen speech for the mute, came also to this end: that dead limbs might rise again from the couch, the bier, the tomb. And you who also bore the penalties in the flesh you had assumed, enduring blows, mockeries, scourgings, thorns, the lot cast, chains, the cross, nails, gall, the missile, vinegar, and at last death — yet destined to rise again, you went to meet it, snatching away whatever the ancient foe had transferred into his right by our crime, when the first woman, dissolving the commandment, bound us fast with perpetual guilt. And when he sought you for destruction, and found not in you anything that could convict as his own, he lost all that Eve had given by her fall: that bond wherewith man was seized, this recompense broke it.

Free from sin, for sinners you become an ample ransom, and new, you snatch old Adam from death by the exchange of a loan, while you die; thus death is dead, thus by the snares which it had itself made, it deceived itself. For while it indiscriminately assails both the innocent and the guilty, it brought it to pass that even those bound in crime might be absolved. And you who bade the just ashes rise for a time together with you, when, after a long span of time, hastening salvation broke into their coverings, and, poured in swiftly, shook off from the tombs the ashes solidified into life. Grant me to praise your Faustus, grant me to render the thanks which it delights me to owe even afterward. You, great priest, this our lyre sings, though with unequal quill.

This, then, is the first cause or occasion of praise: that my brother, while his slippery age rolls on, is proven, preserved with you through the Lord's gifts, his modesty with no wavering of report; this — such good as it is — regards you; a reward will be owed to him, and he to you; let the praise be his, if he was unwilling to fall: for what he could not do, wholly redounds by right to you. Moreover, that lately, as I was coming to Riez, when Procyon raged, when the scorching fire of the sun wrote furrows upon the thirsting fields with pliant cracks, you being my host, straightway received our heats: peace, home, shade, water, blessing, table, couch. Yet more than all these does that avail, that you willed me also to approach the holy threshold of a holy mother.

I stiffened, I confess, conscious of my own state, and suddenly reverence tinged my adoring face with dread. Nor did I tremble otherwise than as if by chance Israel were leading me to Rebecca, or long-haired Samuel to Hannah. Wherefore, worshipping you with vows without end, we confess a great affection through small songs. Whether the flaming Syrtes and inhospitable wastes hold you, or a marsh with greening mud, or black rocks in some untilled recess, where, the sun removed, hollow caves keep an age-long darkness; or whether the Alps, stretched out on their steep crags, tremble at you, an anchorite offering your girt slumbers upon the frozen turf — the Alps which, though they bear frost, never give the conceived warmth of Christ.

Thither now Elijah, now John bids you go, now the two Macarii, now the hero Paphnutius, now Or, now Ammon, now Sarmata, now Hilarion; now naked Antony calls you in that tunic which the kindly hand of the master made from palm-leaves. Or whether Lerins has embraced you, its ancient parent, where you, now broken, often come to serve the disciples in exchange for great repose; and scarcely taking the leisure of sleep, scarcely your cooked food, you lead an abstemious life, and paint your fasts with inserted psalms, teaching the brethren how many mountains that flat island has sent into heaven: what was the holy life of aged Caprasius, and of the youth Lupus; what grace remained with father Honoratus.

What manner of man that Maximus was, whose city and monks you, as bishop and abbot, twice succeed and administer; celebrating too with those praises the coming journey of Eucherius as he arrives, and of Hilarius as he returns. Or whether the people committed to you hold you, and the lesser dares, with you as mediator, to scorn the puffed-up manners of the greater. Or whether, anxious, you take thought by what food the sick, by what the pilgrim may live, and what may feed even him whose slippery legs the prison wastes away beneath the shackle. Or whether, your mind rather distracted with the burying of the dead, if the livid bones of a deceased pauper turn green, you yourself, undisgusted, bear the corpse to the pyre. Or whether the busy foot stands about you, about to preach from the conspicuous steps of the venerable altar, that it may drink through the ears the medicine of the expounded law.

Whatever you do, wherever you are, always to me be Faustus, always Honoratus, always Maximus too. CARMEN XVII. HE INVITES OMMATIUS, A MAN OF SENATORIAL RANK, TO THE BIRTHDAY OF HIS OWN. Four days before the first light of scorching August brings forth its ear-bearing head upon the world, my birthday, the sixteenth, will be observed — a happy one that seeks to become so by your coming. No banquets will be set for you on jewelled tables, nor will the Assyrian murex give you a couch. Nor through the manifold recesses of a gleaming sideboard will I bury weights of black silver. Nor will a goblet be given here whose incrusted side, of ruddy metal perchance, a twisted handle might clasp. Our dishes are modest, not so made that grandeur of measure might make up for the cost.

The rustic table of your Gallus will not receive the loaves wont to grow golden on the Libyan Syrtis. My wines are not Gazetic, Chian, Falernian, nor such as you might drink sent from the Sareptan vine-shoot. The cups here are not illustrious with the name of a village, such as the Triumvir himself set upon our fields. Nor will a goblet be given here. Yet we ask that you come: Christ will give all things — Christ, who here has made me a fatherland for love of you. CARMEN XVIII. ON THE BATHS OF HIS VILLA SET ABOVE THE LAKE. If any of you deign to visit our Avitacum, let it not displease you: if there be anything you have that pleases, let it please. The gables are raised, rivalling the Baian cone, and the peak gleams with buskined summit to match. The chattering wave murmurs more than the Gauran streams, gliding down from the brow of the neighbouring hill.

Rich Campania would not want the Lucrine pool, if it beheld the waters of our lake. That shore is adorned with crimson sea-urchins; among our fish, guest, you see both alike. If it please you, and you share the joys with a placid heart, whoever you are who are present, you make a Baiae here in your mind. CARMEN XIX. A TETRASTICH ABOVE THE FISHPOND. Enter the chill waters after the scorching baths, that the cool water may firm the skin heated with warmth. And though you plunge your limbs in this water alone, throughout our pool your eyes swim. CARMEN XX. TO HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW ECDICIUS. Our birthday admonishes that the Nones of November are at hand: I do not ask, but command that you meet me. Let your wife be with you, hasten now, you two; but this we wish — that a third come after a year. CARMEN XXI.

On fish caught by night. First the night stitched these four fishes upon the hooks. Of them I kept two; do you also take two. Those I have sent are the larger — a most just arrangement, methinks — for you were the greater portion of my soul. Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius to Pontius Leontius, greeting. While I was weaving delays at Narbo, once called Martius but of late made so in deed, it came into my mind to fashion certain hexameters in keeping with my affection for you, upon reading which you would fully know that, although each of us dwells in his household seat somewhat more than moderately far apart in place, yet our minds are not so far divided from one another as is our homeland. Here, then, you have Dionysus languishing amid the delights of his Indian triumph;

you have also Phoebus, whom by poetic right it is agreed has been made your lodger out of a deity: that Phoebus, namely, the close intimate of my Anthedius, in whose fellowship that man surpassed in the art of discoursing not only every musician, but even the geometers, arithmeticians, and astrologers. Indeed I would judge that no one has more exactly ascertained what the oblique stars of the zodiac, what the wandering planets, what the scattered exotic ones avail. For in these limbs of philosophy, if I may so speak, he shines so brightly that he seems to me to have learned Julius Firmicus, Sammonicus, Julianus Vertacus, and Fullonius Saturninus, those most skilled founders in the books of astrology, without any interpreter, his native talent alone availing. We, bearing witness

and adoring the learning of that very man, confess ourselves a hoarse goose before a melodious swan. Why do I detain you longer? Your Burgus I have made mine, as by right befits a friend, well knowing that either the subject will please you, even if the poem as a whole should displease. POEM XXII: THE BURGUS OF PONTIUS LEONTIUS. The stall of the Bistonian king, the altars of Busiris, the tables of Antiphates, and the Tauric realm of Thoas, and the Cyclops cheated of his light by Ithacan cunning, bearing over the field of his brow, through the hollows of the mountain, well-nigh the equal of a pierced-through dark cavern of light — approach these, O guest, whoever you are that have come to Burgus meaning to keep silent. And though Phoebus does not everywhere slacken the reins into song, and here does not spread out all the sails of speech;

yet whoever you are that gaze upon such mighty household gods without praising them with your lips, you yourself are gazed upon: the will resounds without a voice, for your very silences cry aloud that you, though mute, are livid with wonder. Come then, Erato, strike for me the Pierian strings: let the Satyrs answer, and moving finger and foot, let them sport and not break off their songs with a tremulous leap. Whatever the Dryad, or whatever the Hamadryad, joined with her Napaeae, ever applauded as a festal thing, let them now pay it out to you, O Burgus; or let the kindly chorus of the Nereids there teach the Naiads, when perchance you come hither on the returning Garonne and furrow the sea within the river. Unfold, then, Erato, the causes, and tell what genius belongs to this dwelling: so great a summit is not without its presiding spirit.

By chance Evan, having laid waste arrow-bearing Erythrae, was driving to his chariot tigers haltered with the vine: where the cluster-bearing pole entered the double bow of the yoke, he himself sits languid in the car; his lofty neck is wet with the dew of sweated wine; golden horns burst from his head and dart forth the native fire of the thunderbolt. This he had taken up first at his birth, when once he passed from his mother into his father's thigh; each season brings the wealth of spring, and the vintage binds his ruddy blossoms. The cantharus and the thyrsus are borne in his right hand and his left; nor does his robe cover his bared arms, but grazes them. Sweetly swim his eyes, which, should chance turn them upon a foe, the Indian, thunderstruck, is made drunk merely by beholding. Then, as often as the axle, leaping over the ruts, shakes itself, everywhere the wheel-track is drenched with falling must.

Silenus was teaching the Bassarids, Satyrs, Pans, and Fauns to sport, now full of the godhead of his foster-child, yet trim as to his head; for with bald crown he strives to excuse his lost locks with garlands. Thence horned Ganges becomes the pageant of the new triumph. Bowed low he stood with unkempt face and dripping mouth, and aided his parched waters with glassy tears. His hands, cast into chains, the vine-shoot bound behind his back; here, gradually poured back with the captive moisture, of its own accord the palm-branch grows green again along his dewy arms. Nor is his consort lacking there, bound, the wife of the ravished lord; she goes with saffron cheeks cast down, her torch forbidden to be hidden, when Dawn was reddening with the sun's rays. Here too was present, after its cinnamon lost, the Phoenix, dreading that no second death remains for it.

A captive band comes next, bearing litters laden with their own treasures: here ivory, and ebony, or gold, and snowy pearls torn from a pitch-black breast are carried; whoever bears no fragrance is cast into bonds. Here you might see the very punishments give pleasure, and green chains breathe with violets. Last of all the black elephants march as booty. Shapeless is the form of that herd; the bristly hide stiffens upon the back, scarce able to endure iron: for the wicked spears do not pierce that native wickerwork, and their backs, drawn in and stretched by turns, crackle at the beasts, and by their practised guarding they drive off the hurled missile with their shaken wrinkles. And now the victor was making his way to Thebes through the great air, and had raised his rites to the highest clouds, when he sees the Delian coming from the Aonian citadel. He too holds griffins;

the laurel binds their curved faces with its foliage as a curb, and, with ivies too clasped about, the hanging reins grow green; gently the winged one flies up the airy and earthly ways, lest perchance with the quickened noise of its wings it snap the woody reins. He himself shines eternal in the cheeks; his temples have grown with clusters, and his hair, of one hue, sweeps the gilded axle. In his left he holds a lyre hoarse with vast sweetness, with Python engraved thereon; his right hand holds arrows, and strings resounding with another murmur. The Pimplean maidens went along beside him, and standing about the midst they shadowed the car with their nine-fold train. Over the smooth tripods hangs the Epidaurian serpent, diffused with holy healing venom along his salubrious neck. Here too Pegasus joined his crested wings, bearing eloquent Creon on his learned-speaking leg.

When the choirs had joined, each rises into his brother's embrace; but Evan a little slower, while he is ashamed, should he rise, to betray his unsteady soles. Then Phoebus: 'Whither goest thou?' he says. 'Dost thou perchance, Bacchus, seek guilty Thebes? He that is sprung of Echion surely denies thee to be a god; leave, I pray, those walls, leave them; and rather turn thy wheels with me. Agave scorned to worship thee, and Niobe us; therefore she stands stiff and proud, suffering as many wounds as she looks upon pledges of her womb, and though she longs to die, clemency has more grievously fixed her. To spare is often an evil, and to bring feeling upon grief. But she herself, the Penthean mother, her son slain, that she may rage the more — will she not be made mad?'

'Therefore we cannot dwell upon the Aonian hills, since an adulterer shall possess the bridal-chamber of the slain father, to be held brother of the sons, husband of the mother, his own stepfather. If it be thy heart's desire to join thy step, I will tell in what land we may equally set our seat. There is a place where the Garonne is turned back by the watered cliff, and thou, who, hastening with like glide, goest forth into the deep, curved with mossy ballast, gradually mingle thy now-sluggish streams. Here the sea runs against them, and with much recoil spurns and speeds forth the waves the rivers roll. But when Garonne himself, thrust back by the lunar swellings, gathers his tides again upon his back, he returns headlong in swift flood, and seems to go into his source now not flowing back but flowing down.'

'Then he receives the water — though the lesser — from his stagnant lesser brother, and himself swells with Ocean, and makes his own banks into shores. Between these rivers, nearer to the one whence a mountain, breaking the ether, rises, ye shall behold on the other height, destined to have loftier heroes and a springlike senate. This mountain Paulinus Pontius, prince of the race, one day, when Latium shall hold sway over the fatherland, shall gird with high walls, and lofty towers shall transmit the air. Upon whose summits let there sit, glittering, a common pageant or defence; those walls neither engine, nor ram, nor high siege-pile, or the near-set mound, nor the catapult that hurls whirring millstones, nor yet the tortoise, nor the mantlet, nor the running wheel, shall ever avail to shake, though the ladders be at last set up.'

'Now I seem to discern what shall be thine, O Burgus. Thus shalt thou be renowned; for the houses rise straight from the river, and the shining baths sit along the battlements. Here when the parched pumice is vexed by pitch-black north winds, the rugged rock begins to bark with roughened brink; but the leaping torrent is flung on high from the broken crags, and rains upon the very roofs with its spray, and lifts up the mariners, and often makes sport with a jesting shipwreck; for when the storm is spent, ebbing back it strands the fleets sent into the baths. But by how great, by what columns are the baths themselves upheld? Let the precious livid vein yield in the Punic grotto of Synnas, and the hill of the Numidians that bears ivory-like stones, and the marbles that grow green with grassy veins. Now I want not white Paros, now I want not Carystos.'

'Dearer is the purple that hangs upon the red rock. And lest posterity should doubt who is the founder, a stone is fixed at the entrance: this marks the names of the builders; but near it the water, and the pressed footprints which it snatches away, and with poured flood it wipes off the mire. The wall, encrusted with cut slabs, comes up to the golden roofs, to be too far hidden beneath the tawny metal. For the rich fortune of the house, not enduring to lie hidden, betrays its wealth even while thus it conceals its own summits. After this rises a portico, and comes over the double hall, itself double, unknown to a double wain. Of these one, drawn up to a soft curved crown, the wings regard a little with their horns turned toward each other. It itself beholds the newborn day with its right curve, seeing the midday in front, and about to see it setting on the left.'

'It loses nothing of the threefold hinge of heaven, and keeps the whole sun throughout its moon-shaped halls. Here the father of Pharnaces plunges into the deep the sacred herds of trident-bearing Jove; you would think the bodies of the horn-footed steeds, struck by the axe, and the sure wounds, redden with a bloody dew; the horror of the wound stands there true, and the painting lives in the slaughtered four-horse teams. Here the Pontic ruler shuts up Cyzicus with numerous arms; but there the consul Lucullus brings aid to the allies, and, forced to undergo the utmost perils of famine, the Mithridatic soldier envies the besieged foe. Here the ardour of the Roman soldier swims forth from the sea, and carries dry the letter across upon his soaking body.'

'Above, the granaries rise with roofs stretched out lengthwise, and straiten the halls with their ample stores. Hither shall come as much as Africa reaps in her warm lands, as much as the Calabrian, as much as the keen Apulian tills, as great a harvest as swells in the Leontine heap, as much as Gargara commits to the Mygdonian threshing-floor, as much as Attic Eleusis — which, worshipping Ceres with silent dances, was storing up for her citizen Triptolemus — gathered, when once, the tribes of men leaving the acorn behind, the golden ages of golden grain now bestowed would pass away. Here the summer portico lies open toward the cold north. Hence a harmless warmth issues from the winter baths, and the season softens the place; for that part is fitter for cold; for what flees the face of the Lion thence ill endures the rage of the Lycaonian Bear.'

'But to the baths of the citadel a far loftier stream is brought, and falls upon the mountain, and, driven through open channels, carries the enclosed river round about through hollow divergings. Toward the setting sun, behind the granaries, rises the shadowy house that serves the masters as winter-quarters; here a goodly flame roars, having fed upon the beams set to it; the wave of the burning globe, bent within the furnace, perishes, and, its lash broken, scatters the slackened vapour over all the roofs. Then, unbroken thereafter, you may see the weaving-rooms that the founder dared to raise, rivals to the temples of Pallas.'

'Here the venerable consort of lofty Leontius — than whom no Pontian bride ever rejoices more, illustrious in the lot of her husband — shall be celebrated in the hall, whether for having emptied the Syrian distaffs, or for having twisted the silken threads through light reeds, or with the tawny thread of the teeming spindle for spinning the softened metal. Behind this, from joined walls, glows the structure that bears the origins of the circumcised Jews. Perpetual the painting gleams, nor over long time do the worn pigments disfigure their figures. Do you turn to the left? An ample portico receives you, curved with straight ways; where at the topmost edge it hangs, and a stony forest stands with straitened columns. Hence a lofty dining-hall lies open with revolving folding-doors. Nearby is a molten channel;'

'the water falls from above before the doors with a suspended pool, and the swimming fishes, having followed the vein, find watery dining-rooms. Close by rises either the first tower or the outermost. It will be death to the masters to set here the winter sigma; seated on this tower's conspicuous crown, often shall I behold the mountain of laurel, dear at once to our Muses and to our she-goats; I shall walk among these leaves, and here shall fancy that trembling Daphne entrusts herself to me. But if perchance you turn your steps toward the twin Bears, to come into the temple of the god who is the greatest, the storeroom and the larder are fragrant with delicacies joined together. Here you shall be much a brother. Now divide the dwelling, ready to yield me my fountain, which, flowing from the mountain, a many-hollowed arch overshadows with spacious sweep. This place needs no adornment; nature has given it its grace.'

'It pleases that nothing feigned has pleased; no pomp through any art, no hammer adorns the stones with rebounding stroke, nor shall marbles fill up the eaten-away tufa. Here the fount of Castalia suffices us in the stead of its water. Have the rest, O rich man: let the hills tremble at your rule. Here loose your captives, and along the ridges of Burgus let the chains of the freed become glad vineyards.' Silenus, now well-nigh sober, confirms this utterance, and the favouring choirs sang together. Farewell, Nysa, to Bromius, and, two-peaked Parnassus, to Phoebus. Let not Naxos require the one, nor Cyrrha the other; but rather let Burgus, destined to please for ever, be sought. Behold, whenever it shall please you to gladden your banquet with more capacious bowls, [I ask] only that among your cups and your deep draughts you read this.

You will have come to the aid of my modesty, if these lines do not come to sober ears; nor do I demand this unjustly or otherwise than is fair, since indeed for my Bacchus, who is to undergo a decemviral judgment, a tribunal is set up more untimely than is fitting. But if anyone should judge a rather prolix poem blameworthy on this ground, that it has exceeded the scantiness of an epigram, it is clearly plain that such a one has read neither the Baths of Etruscus, nor the Hercules of Surrentum, nor the tresses of Flavius Earinus, nor the Tibur of Vopiscus, nor anything at all of the little Silvae of our Papinius:

all which descriptions that most highly esteemed man confines not within the narrows of distichs or tetrastichs, but rather, as the lyric Flaccus prescribes in the volume of the Art of Poetry, with many purple patches of common themes decently extends the matters once begun. Let it suffice that I have set this down as a specimen of my defence, lest this very apology for length should itself seem long. Farewell. POEM XXIII: NARBO. TO CONSENTIUS, MOST ILLUSTRIOUS MAN, CITIZEN OF NARBONNE. When now, according to your merits, Consentius — pillar and glory of good character — I was preparing to spend the song of a poor reed-pipe upon the praises of your hospitality, of your own accord, opening the trumpet into song, in reversed order you summoned by your verses your comrade, more wont to sport thus. The Muse obeys you;

but hence she will move her shameless stylus much more warily. For when you eloquently call for songs, you urge me to write, yet make me hold my peace. Lately, when with spurred and galloping steed you were journeying to Phocis and the Sextian Baiae, cities illustrious for their titles and their battles — through the two trophies of consuls (for the one bore Mars, namely Julianus, and with Brutus as leader waged a naval war; but this one bore the bloody Teutonic fights, and Marius raised up as the Cimbrian fell) — you sent me a manifold poem, learned, noble, strong, delicate. The hexameters marched along proudly, and their joined footsteps, but smaller, ran on through five feet. You sent also the metre of the triple trochee, with spondee and dactyl attending, sweet hendecasyllables, and with kindly usury you have bound your Sollius.

Interest is both demanded of us and repaid by us. For what I repay by my song in exchange for yours is but the hundredth part of your praises. What shall I first venerate and honour on your behalf? Unless I err, your fatherland, and your father next. Who, though he might justly claim for himself the highest place, yet needs must yield to her that bears the parents. Hail, Narbo, mighty in salubrity, good to behold in city and country alike — in walls, citizens, circuit, taverns, gates, porticoes, forum, theatre, shrines, capitols, mints, baths, arches, granaries, markets, meadows, fountains, islands, salt-pans, ponds, river, merchandise, bridge, and sea. You alone by right worship the gods — Lenaeus, Ceres, Pales, Minerva — with ears of grain, vine-shoot, pastures, and oil-presses.

Trusting in men alone, and not seeking the aid of Nature, with the mountains left far off, you raise your summit higher; no gaping ditch, no rampart crowns you with a bristling barrier of stakes. You fix not upon your walls marbles, gold-leaf, and glass, nor the sheen of Indian tortoise-shell, nor, if the shattered beaks of the Marmaric elephant gave beams of ivory, do you set these on your walls, or adorn golden gates with mosaic gems. But through your half-ruined citadels, proud, showing the glory of an ancient war, you bear millstones shattered by blows, more precious for your praiseworthy ruins. Let other cities be menacing in their site, which humble strengths shelter amid the heights, and let walls set upon precipitous crests boast that they were never cut down. You please by being battered, and the siege you have suffered has published abroad your steadfast loyalty.

Hence that Martial ruler, and — greater than his mighty father — the glory of the Getae, the pillar and salvation of the Roman race, Theodoric, loves you, and has proved you faithful to himself of old, throughout adverse tumults. Yet do not for this seem base perchance, because the frequent engine has pierced you. For in the body of brave men the scar is the greater, the greater praise. In the camps of Marathon, to have had no wound while deserving is a great disgrace. Among the Publicolae fierce of hand, Mucius stands eminent with his maimed arm. When Magnus was pressing Caesar's rampart, amid so many faces safe from the foe, one-eyed Scaeva was the more comely. It is a lofty praise to endure hard things. Against the cowardly, the timid, and the disapproved, idle valour snarls much in its leisure.