Book 7
Snatched from Hesperian nations ruddy gold,
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And all the riches of the Orient world,
Are piled within the tents. The wealth of kings
And of Pompeius here awaits its lords.
Haste, soldiers, and outstrip the flying foe;
E'en now the vanquished of Pharsalia's field
Anticipate your spoils.' No more he said,
But drave them, blind with frenzy for the gold,
To spurn the bodies of their fallen sires,
And trample chiefs in dashing on their prey.
What rampart had restrained them as they rushed
To seize the prize for wickedness and war
And learn the price of guilt? And though they found
In ponderous masses heaped for need of war
The trophies of a world, yet were their minds
Unsatisfied, that asked for all. Whate'er
Iberian mines or Tagus bring to day,
Or Arimaspians from golden sands
May gather, had they seized; still they had thought
Their guilt too cheaply sold. When pledged to them
Was the Tarpeian rock, for victory won,
And all the spoils of Rome, by Caesar's word,
Shall camps suffice them? Then plebeian limbs
On senators' turf took rest, on kingly couch
The soldier wretch; and there the murderer lay
Where yesternight his brother or his sire.
In maddened dreams the fury of the fight
Still raged, and in their sleep the guilty hand
Still wrought its deed, of blood, and restless gripped
The phantom sword-hilt. Thou hadst said that groans
Issued from all the plain, that parted souls
Had breathed a life into the guilty soil,
That earthly darkness teemed with gibbering ghosts
And Stygian terrors. Victory foully won
Thus claimed its punishment. The slumbering sense
Already heard the hiss of vengeful flames:
There troop the ghostly slain: a slaughtered sire
Tortures the breast of one; a brother's shape
There haunts his murderer's couch: each sees the form
Of him whose life he took. But all the dead
