Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars. Lucan

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       Who brought not to the camp some proof of crime.

       How dread that day when conquering Marius seized

       The city's ramparts! with what fated speed

       Death strode upon his victims! plebs alike

       And nobles perished; far and near the sword

       Struck at his pleasure, till the temple floors

       Ran wet with slaughter and the crimson stream

       Befouled with slippery gore the holy walls.

       No age found pity men of failing years,

       Just tottering to the grave, were hurled to death;

       From infants, in their being's earliest dawn (4),

       The growing life was severed. For what crime?

       Twas cause enough for death that they could die.

       The fury grew: soon 'twas a sluggard's part

       To seek the guilty: hundreds died to swell

       The tale of victims. Shamed by empty hands,

       The bloodstained conqueror snatched a reeking head

       From neck unknown. One way of life remained,

       To kiss with shuddering lips the red right hand (5).

       Degenerate people! Had ye hearts of men,

       Though ye were threatened by a thousand swords,

       Far rather death than centuries of life

       Bought at such price; much more that breathing space

       Till Sulla comes again (6). But time would fail

       In weeping for the deaths of all who fell.

       Encircled by innumerable bands

       Fell Baebius, his limbs asunder torn,

       His vitals dragged abroad. Antonius too,

       Prophet of ill, whose hoary head (7) was placed,

       Dripping with blood, upon the festal board.

       There headless fell the Crassi; mangled frames

       'Neath Fimbria's falchion: and the prison cells

       Were wet with tribunes' blood. Hard by the fane

       Where dwells the goddess and the sacred fire,

       Fell aged Scaevola, though that gory hand (8)

       Had spared him, but the feeble tide of blood

       Still left the flame alive upon the hearth.

       That selfsame year the seventh time restored (9)

       The Consul's rods; that year to Marius brought

       The end of life, when he at Fortune's hands

       All ills had suffered; all her goods enjoyed.

      "And what of those who at the Sacriport (10)

       And Colline gate were slain, then, when the rule

       Of Earth and all her nations almost left

       This city for another, and the chiefs

       Who led the Samnite hoped that Rome might bleed

       More than at Caudium's Forks she bled of old?

       Then came great Sulla to avenge the dead,

       And all the blood still left within her frame

       Drew from the city; for the surgeon knife

       Which shore the cancerous limbs cut in too deep,

       And shed the life stream from still healthy veins.

       True that the guilty fell, but not before

       All else had perished. Hatred had free course

       And anger reigned unbridled by the law.

       The victor's voice spake once; but each man struck

       Just as he wished or willed. The fatal steel

       Urged by the servant laid the master low.

       Sons dripped with gore of sires; and brothers fought

       For the foul trophy of a father slain,

       Or slew each other for the price of blood.

       Men sought the tombs and, mingling with the dead,

       Hoped for escape; the wild beasts' dens were full.

       One strangled died; another from the height

       Fell headlong down upon the unpitying earth,

       And from the encrimsoned victor snatched his death:

       One built his funeral pyre and oped his veins,

       And sealed the furnace ere his blood was gone.

       Borne through the trembling town the leaders' heads

       Were piled in middle forum: hence men knew

       Of murders else unpublished. Not on gates

       Of Diomedes (11), tyrant king of Thrace,

       Nor of Antaeus, Libya's giant brood,

       Were hung such horrors; nor in Pisa's hall

       Were seen and wept for when the suitors died.

       Decay had touched the features of the slain

       When round the mouldering heap, with trembling steps

       The grief-struck parents sought and stole their dead.

       I, too, the body of my brother slain

       Thought to remove, my victim to the peace

       Which Sulla made, and place his loved remains

       On the forbidden pyre. The head I found,

       But not the butchered corse.

      "Why now renew

       The tale of Catulus's shade appeased?

       And those dread tortures which the living frame

       Of Marius (12) suffered at the tomb of him

       Who haply wished them not? Pierced, mangled, torn —

       Nor speech nor grasp was left: his every СКАЧАТЬ