Book 6
No murmur issued; he had power alone
1
When questioned to reply. 'Speak,' quoth the hag,
As I shall bid thee; great shall be thy gain
If true thine answers, freed for evermore
From all Haemonian art. Such burial place
Shall now be thine, and on thy funeral pyre
Such fatal woods shall burn, such chant shall sound,
'That to thy ghost no more or magic song
Or spell shall reach, and thy Lethaean sleep
Shall never more be broken in a death
' From me received anew: for such reward
' Think not this second life enforced in vain.
' Obscure may be the answers of the gods
' By priestess spoken at the holy shrine;
' But whoso braves the oracles of death
' In search of truth, should gain a sure response.
' Then speak, I pray thee. Let the hidden fates
' Tell through thy voice the mysteries to come.'
Thus spake she, and her words by mystic force
Gave him his answer; but with gloomy mien,
And tears swift flowing, thus he made reply:
'Called from the margin of the silent stream
I saw no fateful sisters spin the threads.
'Yet know I this, that 'mid the Roman shades
'Reigns fiercest discord; and this impious war
'Destroys the peace that ruled the fields of death.
'Elysian meads and deeps of Tartarus
'In paths diverse the Roman chieftains leave
'And thus disclose the fates. The blissful ghosts
Bear visages of sorrow. Sire and son
'The Decii, who gave themselves to death
'In expiation of their country's doom,
'And great Camillus, wept; and Sulla's shade
'Complained of fortune. Scipio bewailed
'The scion of his race about to fall
' In sands of Libya: Cato, greatest foe
' To Carthage, grieves for that indignant soul
' Which shall disdain to serve. Brutus alone
' In all the happy ranks I smiling saw,
' First consul when the kings were thrust from Rome.
