I sing war, far more than civil, on the field

Of Thessaly, law yielded as a spoils to crime,

A proud, a potent race that shoved with its own fist

A blade into its bowels. Now ranks of kin are foes.

In evil hurled together. Flag at hostile flag.

One eagle meets another, spear to threatening spear.

What raging outbreak, citizens, of so much iron

Is this? Hated tribes are offered Latin blood?

Trophies? Wanders unavenged our Crassus’ shade?

Now does it please you wage a war that has no honor?

But oh, how much of land and sea might we have gained

With that same blood which clings to every neighbor’s hand.

With stars, where mid-day rages in its scorching hours,

Or winter, hardening, mindless of the spring’s return,

Binds with a Scythian cold the ice-encumbered sea!

Now under yoke were Seres and the cruel Araxes,

O then, when all the world is under Latin sway,

Then only, Rome, if love of vicious war so tempts,

Turn hand to self. You have not yet a lack of foes.

For here the walls of half wrecked houses lean in all

Scattered lie. Our houses have no occupants,

The rare itinerant squats in these ancient towns.

Our western land, untilled for years and filled with thorns,

Begs hands to satisfy its importuning fields.

You, Hannibal: no sword of yours will reach so far.

Much deeper lie the wounds of civil war’s right hand.

And yet, if fate could not contrive a different path

To Nero’s advent – for eternal kingdoms come

The Thunderer until a war with savage giants –

Nothing have we to complain of, O you gods.

No. Crime itself and evil at this price are sweet.

Pharsalia’s dire fields let fill, let ghosts of Carthage

Let Caesar to these fearful things Perusian famine

Add. And struggle in Mutina, ships destroyed

Near bitter Leucas, slave-fought wars by flaming Aetna.

All considered, Rome should thank its civil wars;

Long hence, your deeds complete, at last you’ll seek the stars.

No palace royal in heaven but with joy will greet you.

Scepter you may wield, or mount the flaming carriage

Phoebus owns and help to light with wandering flame

To you by every high one ceded, and your right

By nature granted: which god do you wish to be?

And where to place your earthly reign. Yet neither in

The arctic world select your throne, nor opposite

At Rome. If on one single side you press, the very

Structure of the sky in its immensity

Will feel your heft. Then balance heaven with your weight;

Take up that halcyon place there readied for you, vacant.

Nor let any clouds obstruct our Caesar. Then,

Let people love in turn and peace spread through the world.

The iron door of angry Janus, see it shut.

No, even now you are a deity to me,

So as a seer if I take you in my heart

You suffice in making virile Roman verse.

My spirit moves me to set out the origins

Of such great things. A task immense, to tell why arms

Should have impelled a raging folk, why peace deserts

A fall from height. Not long stands an excessive weight,

Nor yet could Rome. And thus, all human bonds dissolved,

A final hour has gathered all the ages of the world.

Once again the ancient chaos, all things jumbled.

Will seaward drop, and earth refuse protective shore

To check the straits. An angry moon will scorn the sun

Her brother. She will drive her own team cross the day.

Dissension rampant will unmake all covenants

Great things fall in upon themselves, the gods have placed

On prosperous events, as they arise, such limits.

Fortune therefore need not loan to other folk

Her fury at the power of a race that ruled

Made by triple leaders. Never fatal pact

Sent kingdom to such ruin. So much blind ambition.

Evil concord, how could that contrivance be,

To poise a world between three? While the land will yet

Still endures, and night shall follow day through all

The zodiac, faith never is ‘mong those who share

A kingdom. Power will not tolerate a partner.

Don’t look elsewhere, nor unearth arcane example:

And then not all of earth and ocean was the prize

For violent frenzy: only a disputed refuge.

One narrow moment this concord of discord held,

And there was peace despite the generals; it was only

A fragile Isthmus cuts the ocean waves in two,

Permits no confluence of straits; but if the land

Recedes, Ionian breaks on the Aegean sea.

Just so, in parting argument twixt these two, Crassus.

Parthian hurt loosed all our vicious Roman rage,

O, Arsacidae, damage more than you supposed.

Your triumph visited a civil war upon us,

Our nation cut in two by sword. Alas that rule

Enclosed, was not a fortune big enough for two.

Next, pledges of united blood, just like the baleful

Torches on her omened pyre, Julia took,

By savage destiny cut down, into the shades.

But longer, you alone might still have quelled the rage

Of husband and of father, joined their weaponed hands,

Their iron beat aside. Just as the Sabine women

Mediated spouse and parent. In your death

Magnus, you were fearful lest new deeds obscure past triumph,

Pirate laurels yielded to the gallic victor .

You - the other - bolstered by so much success,

Would never bend to fortune, offered second place.

Pompey any equal. Who had better claim

Is vicious to enquire: each thought justice his.

The winner’s enterprise pleased God, the loser’s Cato.

Equal they were not. One had with years declined.

He had in peace unlearned his generalship. He sought

For fame, to heap gifts on the crowd, to be urged on

By vulgar praise, rejoice in clapping at his theatre.

Newer strengths neglecting, trusting in those fortunes

As elevated oak in fruited field that bears

Old trophies of the nation, dedicated gifts

From generals, but not clinging firm with healthy roots,

Fixed rather by its weight, and putting out bare branches

And though it nod as it would fall with the first wind,

Though many trees of firmer wood around the forest

Rise, yet it alone is cherished. Caesar had

Not only name, renown of leadership, but scorn

To conquer whom he fought. Indomitable, stark

Whenever hope or anger bid him lift his hand.

He spared his sword for outrage never, forced advance,

Culled favor with the gods, impediments destroying,

He - as if a bolt burst through beclouded sky

With thunderclap impelled and crashing of the world -

Broke open day and terrified the quaking people,

Brilliance concentrated in a slanting flame.

In the fall immense, also immense returning.

Ruin brings, then re-collects its scattered fire.

These things drove the leaders; there were also social

Seeds of war, to potent nations often fatal.

And, after that, a loss of our ancient truths.

The spoils and gains of war persuaded luxury:

There was no limit, not in gold nor building. Scorned

Were meals once hunger craved. Men took to clothes

Austerity, the nurse of manhood. Through the globe

Whatever ruined other nations we imported.

Fields were joined, the furrows that Camillus plowed

And knew the antique spade of many Curio,

This populace contained not him who valued peace,

Not him who nourished liberty, unmoved to arms.

Now rose those quick to anger; and when need excused a

Crime - no notice taken. Greatly honored he

Force became the measure of all justice. Laws

And statutes of the people were suppressed. Now tribunes,

Even consuls trampled rights. For sale high office.

Favor auctioned off, solicitation toxic,

Here voracious dealing, usury and greed,

Faith shaken. And, to many, war a useful thing.

By now had Caesar swiftly passed the frozen Alps;

His mind revolved the war to come and movements large.

A fearful semblance of the Roman country rose

Before the awe-filled general – real and tangible

Despite the night’s obscurity – its features sad.

From towered front the white hair falls with mangled tresses.

“Where farther do you go, where lead my flags and men?

If you come lawfully as citizens, no farther.”

Horror seized the general’s limbs, his hair arose,

And weakness kept his footsteps to the farther bank.

The city’s great walls overlook, you, Thunderer,

And Trojan gods of Julian race, and Quirinus

Your stolen mysteries, add Latin Jupiter,

Residing on high Alba, Vestal flames. O Rome,

I do not pursue you furious in arms.

Here Caesar, victor over land and sea, am I,

Your faithful soldier now and always as allowed;

The guilt is his who makes me ever foe of yours.”

On Libya’s ruthless heat-filled ground a lion waits

With foe nearby, crouch’d watchful, gathering full rage,

But soon with whip of savage tail himself goads on.

His mane upstands, and through vast maw a weighty roar

Or spears should enter chest or side with all their steel,

Untroubled now by any wound, though great, he goes.

With modest rush and small impulse the crimson river

Rubicon runs down, and glows in steamy heat.

The fields of Gaul from those of our colonists.

Now winter had provided strength, for rainy moon

Passed thrice with heavy horn, and winds from the south east,

Their moisture blowing on the Alps, had swelled its streams.

Receiving all the water’s brunt, and then the others ford –

A crowd through easy waves of that now broken river.

Caesar reached the far shore, raging waters conquered,

Stood upon Hesperia’s forbidden pastures:

And all peace. I follow, fortune, you. Far off

Be treaties now. My faith is destiny. Now war

Will arbitrate.” He spoke. In shades of night

The leader spurred his troops, unwearied and more swift

Ariminum he took and threatened all surrounding.

Lucifer excepted, stars had fled the sun,

And now the first days of this war were to be seen,

Tumultuous. Perhaps the gods’, or else the winds’

As soon as he arrived within the captured square

He ordered soldiers to display his ensign at the gate;

With bray of trumpets, cry of horns, impious sounds

Of raucous brass he tore away the people’s quiet.

240Waked, from household gods near which their arms were laid

The young men grabbed them up, but years of peace had told:

The shields denuded to the frame, and javelins

Whose points were bent, swords scabrous and black with rust.

Then they perceived the glaring eagles, Roman banners,

Terror stiffened them, and fear filled frozen joints.

In every secret breast revolved a mute complaint:

“Alas that our walls were founded so near Gaul,

O sad and wretched place! Deep peace, tranquility

War’s first stop. Far better, fortune, had you sent

Us to the east or given us the frozen north -

As nomads even; not the gates of Latium.

We first were witness to the Senones’ advance

Teutonic fury. Fortune when she would shake Rome

Through us gives war its path.” So each with silent groan,

Not daring to be openly afraid. No voice

Is lent to grievance. Much as birds in clutch of winter

Such the stillness. Night, illumined, chased away

All frigid shades; now see how martial torches add

An urgent stimulus to war in doubtful mind.

And fates destroy his hesitance of moderation.

Good cause for war: in breach of law, the senate barred

with threats dissenting tribunes from the fractured city,

Called them Gracchi. These now sought the general’s standards.

Venal and audacious Curio went along.

Love liberty and lend arm’d power to the crowd.

But now he looked upon the general, whose mind

Turned over different plans, and said: “While yet my voice

Could help your interests, even though the senate balked,

The floor and brought to you those Quirites wavering.

But afterward all law was silenced by this strife.

Expelled from our ancestral homes we now endure

A chosen exile; but your victory will make

And doubtful and dispersed, cast off delay. It’s wrong

To pause when ready. Your risk and labor are the same,

But now a greater prize is offered. Gaul has held you

Ten years warring - a small portion of the earth!

For you. No pomp of triumph greets your passing now.

The capitol has no intent to bless your laurels.

Livid envy would deny you everything.

Your very conquests will be blamed, you will be sent

You can't part the earth. But you can have it all.”

Already so much bent for war, he is inflamed

To greater anger by this counsel. Thus with clamor

An Olympian steed, confined before the race,

At once he gathers his armed men around the standards,

Close and crowding. First the state of anxious uproar

Settles, then with face and hand he orders silence:

“O companions of so many wars,” he urges,

These ten years of conquest. At what price your blood

That saturated Artois’ fields, and wounds and deaths

And winters passed beneath the Alps? Not differently

Is Rome with war’s great summons shaken now than if

With sturdy new recruits their cohorts swell, the forests

All are felled for ships. By land and sea the order:

Capture Caesar. What? Had they done this if war’s

Mishap had downed my standards, vicious Gauls pursuing

For power’s height. Let us be tried. Let Pompey come -

Unmanned by his long peace, an unexpected soldier.

Martial minions dressed in togas, loud Marcellus,

Cato’s empty name. At last will Pompey’s scattered

A king who drives the chariot despite his years?

These stolen honors will he never, ever forfeit?

How can I not cry the farmland everywhere

Annexed and made to serve a famine? Who can fail to

Swords surrounded justice, harsh and threatening.

And then to break into a trial with reckless soldiers,

Pompey’s standards closing around Milo’s law suit?

Now, as to avoid the torpor of old age

Horrific war. Did Sulla teach him crime? He seems

To have surpassed his teacher. Just as feral tigers,

Once they feed on gore of slaughtered cattle, never

Put aside their rage as they go den to den,

So, Magnus, you, so used to licking Sulla’s sword,

Still thirst. Once poisonous blood is in his throat

None ever slackens. Where’s the end that should be found

For power held so long? What measure comes to crime?

Long after wandering pirates, after Pontic broils –

A listless king whom barb’rous poison hardly stopped –

Shall Caesar be the final province Pompey takes?

Because I would not lower my victorious eagles?

Those now leaderless, pay them who served through such

Long wars. These men would triumph under anyone.

Yet now, in age and bloodless after war, what rest?

What home for those who fought? What plots distributed

Or, Magnus, would you rather give our land to pirates?

Raise, long used to victory, your standards. Raise them!

What we have, that must we use. So by our arms

He forfeits all who hinders right. The gods approve.

We throw down such lords as would enslave the city.”

He spoke. But with a doubtful murmur the uncertain

Army muttered ‘mongst themselves. Both reverence

For home, for country, and fierce aptitude to slaughter -

As well as fear of Caesar they recalled themselves.

Then, first for service of the spear, Laelius spoke,

Most senior, bearing oak leaves for the life he saved:

“Leader best of Roman name, if it be lawful

that with such gentle patience you restrained your powers.

Is it that you lost all confidence in us?

While hot blood moves in breathing bodies still, and while

Strong arms can manage still to hurl their javelins,

Is’t so much misery to win a civil war?

Through Scythian peoples, general, lead us. Or through Syrtis’

Shores. Through burning sands of thirsty Libya.

This band, that it might leave behind a conquered world,

And tamed the foaming, whirling, northern Rhine.

As you believe it needed, order me to do it.

This man’s no Roman, against whom your trumpet’s call

I’ll shortly hear. By standards of your ten campaigns

If sword to plunge in brother’s chest, in father’s throat

Let you command me it. In laden viscera

Of pregnant wife. All this I will although I would not.

Gods I’ll rob, or I’ll bring fire to their temples.

And you put camps above the waves of Tuscan Tiber

I’ll dare come and measure the Hesperian fields.

Whatever walls you would tear down upon the plain

I am your ram, with these arms all the stones be scattered.

Rome itself.” To these words all the cohorts joined

At once, and arms raised high each lent his voice for war,

Their hands they pledged in such a clamor to the sky

As when a Thracian northerly invades the cliffs

Then turns them back and skyward in the pressured wood.

When Caesar found how fixed his soldiers were for war

And sees the fates would lift him, then, lest weak delay

Stay fortune, throughout Gaul he summons scattered troops.

Deserted are the tents pitched in Lemanus’ caves,

All bare those camps on curving peaks of Vosge that check

The furious Lingona with their painted arms.

And left behind Isara’s flood which swirls and travels

And so takes alien name into the ocean’s waves.

Released from their long watch the yellow haired Rutheni;

Gentle Atax, freed from bearing Latin keels;

The Varus, left at Italy’s now wider border.

Presses into craggy hollows; northern gales

Have no rights there, nor yet Zephyrus. Only local

Winds embroil its banks, ensuring safety to

Monaco’s port. Deserted all that dubious coast

Where ocean first pours in, and then streams out with wave

Retracted. Is it wind from distant sea turns thus

The water’s axis - filling and deserting? Is it

Lunar motion, galaxies pursuing, that

Titan draw aloft the waves that nourish him,

Lift oceans up, lead water to the stars? They can

Enquire who are piqued by worldly musings. Me

Let you preserve from knowledge of your god-directed

of Nemetes, Aturus banks, where on a curving

Coast the calm Tarbellian water closes entrance.

At their foe’s departure Santoni rejoice,

Suessones; Leuci, Rhemi fearsome both

With javelin; Sequani best in breaking horses;

Belgae skilled in driving their beaked chariots;

Averni who dare call us kin through blood of Trojans;

With the slaughtered Cottae. Those who copy you,

Sarmatians, in their flowing trousers, Vangiones;

Harsh Batavi whom the blasts of recurved trumpets

Rouse; and where the Cinga roams in eddies, where

With rapid current Rhone bears captured Arar seaward.

Live hanging from the cliffs; Pictones free to tend

Their fields; not any longer hemmed by camps surrounding,

Turonas. Drowse, Andus, in your mists; derided

Meduana, now restored by Liger’s placid waves.

Trevirians rejoice as well, relieved of broils.

Now too the tonsured Ligur, once adorned with hair

That spilled upon their necks, in locks surpassing all.

Relieved those foul ones who placate with blood the grim

To gruesome Hesus. Altars of Tarani, harsh

As those to Scythian Diana. Likewise you,

O bards who send ahead in song to endless time

The praise of mighty spirits, those brave men war felled.

Your sacrifices barbarous and spells profane.

You only, it is said, know gods and powers,

Or that there are none. In forests deep you live,

Unlit, remote. By your command the dead avoid

His pallid realm. Unchanged, your spirits reign in other

Worlds and over other limbs. Death but the mid point

(If you sing the truth) of an enduring life.

Barely feel that greatest of all fears, the dread

Of death. Their men are bent on sword and rage, high

Spirited for death and slow to spare a life

Will only live again. Last, you seek Rome who had

detained with war the curly headed troops of Caycos.

So Caesar with a gathered power of great strength

In daring faith to try yet greater things soon spreads

Himself through all of Italy and takes its cities.

Now had baseless rumor turned to urgent fear

Promising, false messengers of war as speedy criers

Hurry on to loose innumerable tongues.

It’s said that in bull-bearing Mevania’s land

Barbarian troops, bold under cruel Caesar, charge

Pours out its waters into river Tiber’s course.

That he, his eagles raised and flags, goes pillaging

In constant marches and with densely crowded camps.

Not as remembered is he seen. More savage seeming

It’s said that from the northern borders of their homelands

Torn, the peoples all between the Rhine and Alps

Are following behind; the city will be raped

By bestial tribes, a Roman watching. So does fear

They fear what they invent. Not only commoners

Struck so by senseless terror; Senators and Fathers

Leapt up from their seats. The senate fleeing pressed on

Consuls odious decrees for sudden war.

What left alone as to be feared. And now the urge

To flight seized each and drove the population headlong;

Ranged in clumps the mob rushed on insatiate.

Nefarious torches, you would think, had fired all

So with frantic stride a madded crowd throughout

The city raging. Their best hope, afflicted thus,

Seemed only to escape paternal walls. Just as

A wild south storm sweeps from an off-shore bar

Now only dangled weight, while to the waves with all

His sailors from deserted deck the captain leaps.

Each one, before the keel should crack, abandons ship.

So, city emptied, all its people flee to war.

Nor with tears a wife her husband, nor ancestral

Gods persuade delay as prayers are said for safety.

None clings long to threshold, even for, perhaps

The final view of a beloved city: now

Give greatness, and its use how greatly they encumber!

Filled with tribes and clans this city and its captured

Populace - a space sufficient for the whole

Of earth - with coward hands at Caesar’s coming made

From home and ringed with danger, in a shallow foxhole

Under heaped protection of a pile of clods,

Takes to an easy slumber in his tent, secure.

But you so much as hearing the word war, O Rome,

Yet pardon must be given, pardon for a fear

So great: with Pompey fled they feared. Then too, lest hope

Assuage their anxious minds, the fates had manifested

Signs of worse to come with menacing appearance,

Dark nights held constellations never known before,

The burning axis all aflame, and cross the void

Of heaven soaring fires slant, the tail of boding

Star and comet prophesy new reigns on earth.

In heavy air these fires forming different shapes.

With steady light, a javelin leapt in the sky;

With light now scattered, lamps appeared. Bolts silent,

With no clouds at all. Flames fetching from the north

Stars, accustomed to run through the void of night

Instead came in mid-day. With horn constrained now Phoebe,

Though she should with her whole orb reflect her brother,

Paled at once, struck by the shadow of the earth.

Hid in gloomy dark his chariot of flame,

Involving the whole world in shadow while its nations

All despair of day. Thus, when the sun flew back

Past dawn, Thyestes of Mycenae brought on night.

Raised its flames not to the sky but, whirling, bent.

Its fire fell onto the flank of Italy.

Charybdis turned the seabed bloody. Savage dogs bayed

Mournfully. The fire torn from Vestal altar.

Is sheared apart and in twin spires ascends, most like

Those Theban funerals. Then did the earth slip from

Its axis, and the Alps amid tall quaking peaks

Shook off its ancient snows. With greater waves now Tethys

Native deities are said to mourn and household

Gods to sweat and grieve the city. It is said

That gifts fall from the altars, that horrific birds

Befoul our days, and, covered by the night, that beasts

Now tongues of cattle take to human utterance.

Come birth of humans monstrous in their limbs, the number

And the shape; her new born terrifies its mother.

Horrid songs from Cumae’s prophetess spread out

By fierce Bellona instigated, cry the gods,

Sad Galli tossing bloody hair with loud lament.

Urns full with settled bones emitted mourning sounds.

Then clash of arms, great voices heard in the remotest

Whoever tilled fields by the farther city walls

Dispersed, for Erinnys that awful fury rings

The city, brandishing extended pine aflame,

And whirls about her hissing tresses. So Eumenis

Of fierce Lycurgus. So Megaera, who on Juno’s

Unjust order frightened Alcides, though he'd

Seen hell. The trumpets’ bray, and clamor as when cohorts

Come together, so much night sent darkly forth

Bleak Sulla's ghost recited heavy prophecies.

The farmers fled from Marius, his tomb burst open,

As he raised his head at Anien's cold stream.

With such, the need as anciently was for a seer

Long a resident of empty Lucca, wise in

Motions of a thunderbolt, the fibrillating

Vein, and portents of all airborne wheeling wings.

At once he orders seized the monsters nature bore

Any fetus from unwholesome uterus.

And then he bids a quaking populace walk round

The city, orders priests with gifted sacred powers

Purge the walls in festal brightness, all along

Togas tightly wrapped in Gabine fashion. Wreathed,

The priestess lead a Vestal chorus, those whose eyes

Alone may see Minerva, brought from Ilium.

Then they who serve the utterances of the gods,

Accompany the Cybell after yearly bathing.

Next the augur, who can read birds sinister,

The Seven, happy in their feasts, Titii, and

The Salii, who bear with joy their sacred shields,

The emptied city, long in circumscription, Aruns

Found, and with sad words interred, whatever lightning

Struck and gave a name to all those sacred spots.

He brought a goat picked for the altar and began

The victim struggled long, resisting sacrifice.

At last attendants had to force him with bent knee

'Til finally he offered up his conquered neck.

Yet gore alone did not gush from that gaping wound,

At such a sacrifice astonished, Aruns paled,

In torn out entrails looked for signs of heaven’s anger.

Viscera whose color terrified the seer,

Ugly markings overspread those pallid organs,

He sees the liver wet with poison. Threat’ning veins

Lie in the foe’s part of the cut. The fibers are

invisible in gasping lungs, and synapses

Between all vital parts too tight. The heart lies still,

Fat displayed, which in no organ is benign.

Look now, he sees the liver’s head grow second head

Upon its substance. One part weak and wilted hangs,

One agitates and moves dynamic greedy veins.

Fated, crying: "How can it be right, you gods,

That I tell everything you warn of to the people.

Can I have made this sacrifice to you, most worthy

Jupiter, or do infernal gods inhabit

But greater fears will come to be. Gods, soften these

things seen, let entrails lie, let patron Tages feign."

And now the Tuscan chants his omens indirectly,

Bent, and wrapped in doubt. But Figulus, whose care

Whose acumen in reading stars Egyptian Memphis

Would not match, spoke: "Either our lawless world

Strays endlessly through time, stars random in their motion,

Or, if fate does move us, to the city and

Split open, city sink? Or fiery air remove

All temperance? Will faithless fields deny us corn?

Will all the streams be mixed with poisonous infusions?

Downfall of what kind, you gods, with what plague sent

Of many meet at once. If in the highest heaven

Saturn's frigid star had struck flames black and mortal,

Aquarius would have poured rains like Deucalion saw

And all the earth been hidden under spreading water.

Nemean lion, all the world would flow in fire.

The kindled air beside your chariot would burst in flame.

Such fires hold off; but you who burn the Scorpion,

His looming tail and claws, with fiery flames, what mighty

Mild Jupiter declines, and Venus’ healthful star

Grows dim, while Mercury quick-motioned lags behind.

And only Mars controls the heavens. Why do signs

Abandon their true passage, darkly borne aloft?

This threatens rage of arms. The power of the blade

Will thwart the right on every hand, and vicious crime

Will take on virtue’s name. For many years this furor

Must endure. What use to beg the gods an end?

Live your endless chain of ills and woe through times

Prolonged. In civil war you find your only freedom."

These predictions frightened much a trembling people,

But things even greater pressed. As if on Pindus'

Matron dragged through the astonished city, voiced

As one whose breast Apollo had inhabited.

"Where, Phoebus, am I borne? To what land do you snatch me,

Hostage as I am upon the ether? That’s

Under a broad cliff, Philippi. Speak, Apollo,

Why this fury, how can spears and Roman hands

Be mixed in battle lines, how war without a foe?

Where now? You lead me to the east and to the sea

I know that man, that deformed trunk, who lies upon

The sand. Now over Libya's parched expanse I think

I am, where sad Erinnys brought Emathian troops.

Now over cloudy Alpine peaks I'm wrest away,

Of my paternal city, there see impious violence

Acted in the senate. Factions rise again.

Back through the world he leads. Apollo, make me know

Another shore, new ground. I have already seen