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.O sorrowful Fates!Airborne plagues that infect the breath, wasting diseases,maddening famine and cities abandoned to flames,crowded walls demolished flat by earthquakes—these might equal the men whom Fortune hauled infrom everywhere to pitiful death; displaying the gifts 490of a long age and snatching them away, she stood uppeoples and their leaders together on the fieldto show you, Rome, through them, as you toppled,how mighty was your fall.Who has possessedthe world more widely, or through fate’s successesraced so quickly? Each war gave you nations,every year the Titan Sun watched your advancetoward both the poles.Just a small stretch of earthremained in the east, until the night was yours,all day was yours, the heavens would run for you, 500and all the wandering stars beheld would be Roman.But your fates went backward equal to all your yearsthat lethal day in Emathia.In its blood-soaked lightit made India feel no horror at Latin rods,and now no consul stops the Dahae’s wanderingand leads them inside walls, then girds himself upto mark out Sarmatian colonies with the plow;and Parthia owes you, as always, harsh penalties,and fleeing civil horrors, never to return,Liberty has withdrawn beyond the Rhine and Tigris, 510and though we’ve sought her often with our throats,she wanders, a blessing to Germans and Scythians,no longer looking back on Ausonia.How I wishour people never knew her! Ever since Romulusfounded your walls when a vulture flew by on the leftand filled them with men from that grove of infamy,down to your collapse in Thessaly, Rome,you should have remained in slavery.I blame youfor Brutus, Fortune.Why did we have an era of lawswith years named for the consul? Happy are Arabs 520and Medes and Eastern lands, whom fate has keptperpetually under tyrannies.Out of all peopleswho bear the rule of kings our lot is lowest:we are ashamed to be slaves!In fact, there are no powersover us; blind chance ravages the centuries;we say “Jove reigns,” we’re lying.Would he beholdThessaly’s bloodbaths from high heaven and stillhold back his lightning bolts? So he himself indeedwould blast Pholoë and Oeta with fire, along withthe innocent groves of Rhodope and pines of Mimas— 530and Cassius is the assassin? He brought down the starson Thyestes and doomed Argos to sudden night.Will he grant daylight to Thessaly, which also wieldedswords of brothers and fathers? No god has ever caredfor mortal affairs.Yet for the calamity we havevindication, as much as gods consent to give:the civil wars will make gods equal to those above.Ghosts will be adorned with lightning bolts, sun rays,and stars, and in gods’ temples Rome will swear by shades.THE BATTLE OF PHARSALUSAs their rapid advance devoured the space delaying 540the climax of Fate, when only a patch of earth divides them,the men see where their spears will fall or what hand thereis holding their own fates, and now they recognizewhat atrocities they soon would be committing:in the enemy’s vanguard they saw their fathers,their brothers’ weapons ready for combat, and did not careto shift their positions.Still, every heart went numband tightened, the blood ran cold and froze inside themas family duty was overthrown, and all the cohortslong held back their spears, ready and waiting 550on arms stretched taut…Crastinus! May the godsdamn you not to death (the punishment waiting for all)but to feel pain after death, because your hand heavedthe lance that started the battle and first stained Thessalywith Roman blood [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]