Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars. Lucan

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       Maimed, hacked and riven; yet the fatal blow

       The murderers with savage purpose spared.

       'Twere scarce believed that one poor mortal frame

       Such agonies could bear e'er death should come.

       Thus crushed beneath some ruin lie the dead;

       Thus shapeless from the deep are borne the drowned.

       Why spoil delight by mutilating thus,

       The head of Marius? To please Sulla's heart

       That mangled visage must be known to all.

       Fortune, high goddess of Praeneste's fane,

       Saw all her townsmen hurried to their deaths

       In one fell instant. All the hope of Rome,

       The flower of Latium, stained with blood the field

       Where once the peaceful tribes their votes declared.

       Famine and Sword, the raging sky and sea,

       And Earth upheaved, have laid such numbers low:

       But ne'er one man's revenge. Between the slain

       And living victims there was space no more,

       Death thus let slip, to deal the fatal blow.

       Hardly when struck they fell; the severed head

       Scarce toppled from the shoulders; but the slain

       Blent in a weighty pile of massacre

       Pressed out the life and helped the murderer's arm.

       Secure from stain upon his lofty throne,

       Unshuddering sat the author of the whole,

       Nor feared that at his word such thousands fell.

       At length the Tuscan flood received the dead

       The first upon his waves; the last on those

       That lay beneath them; vessels in their course

       Were stayed, and while the lower current flowed

       Still to the sea, the upper stood on high

       Dammed back by carnage. Through the streets meanwhile

       In headlong torrents ran a tide of blood,

       Which furrowing its path through town and field

       Forced the slow river on. But now his banks

       No longer held him, and the dead were thrown

       Back on the fields above. With labour huge

       At length he struggled to his goal and stretched

       In crimson streak across the Tuscan Sea.

      "For deeds like these, shall Sulla now be styled

       'Darling of Fortune', 'Saviour of the State'?

       For these, a tomb in middle field of Mars

       Record his fame? Like horrors now return

       For us to suffer; and the civil war

       Thus shall be waged again and thus shall end.

       Yet worse disasters may our fears suggest,

       For now with greater carnage of mankind

       The rival hosts in weightier battle meet.

       To exiled Marius, successful strife

       Was Rome regained; triumphant Sulla knew

       No greater joy than on his hated foes

       To wreak his vengeance with unsparing sword.

       But these more powerful rivals Fortune calls

       To worse ambitions; nor would either chief

       For such reward as Sulla's wage the war."

       Thus, mindful of his youth, the aged man

       Wept for the past, but feared the coming days.

      Such terrors found in haughty Brutus' breast

       No home. When others sat them down to fear

       He did not so, but in the dewy night

       When the great wain was turning round the pole

       He sought his kinsman Cato's humble home.

       Him sleepless did he find, not for himself

       Fearing, but pondering the fates of Rome,

       And deep in public cares. And thus he spake:

       "O thou in whom that virtue, which of yore

       Took flight from earth, now finds its only home,

       Outcast to all besides, but safe with thee:

       Vouchsafe thy counsel to my wavering soul

       And make my weakness strength. While Caesar some,

       Pompeius others, follow in the fight,

       Cato is Brutus' guide. Art thou for peace,

       Holding thy footsteps in a tottering world

       Unshaken? Or wilt thou with the leaders' crimes

       And with the people's fury take thy part,

       And by thy presence purge the war of guilt?

       In impious battles men unsheath the sword;

       But each by cause impelled: the household crime;

       Laws feared in peace; want by the sword removed;

       And broken credit, that its ruin hides

       In general ruin. Drawn by hope of gain,

       And not by thirst for blood, they seek the camp.

       Shall Cato for war's sake make war alone?

       What profits it through all these wicked years

       That thou hast lived untainted? This were all

       Thy meed of virtue, that the wars which find

       Guilt in all else, shall make thee guilty too.

       Ye gods, permit not that this fatal strife

       Should stir those hands to action! When the clouds

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