Book 7
' Of exercise and wrestling For the contempt here expressed for the Greek gymnastic schools, see also Tacitus, 'Annals,' 14, 21. It is well known that Nero instituted games called Neronia which were borrowed from the Greeks; and that many ofthe Roman citizens despised them as foreign and profligate. Merivale, chapter liii., cites this passage. send us here
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' Their chosen darlings to await your swords;
' And scarcely armed for war, a dissonant crowd
' Barbaric, that will start to hear our trump,
' Nay, their own clamour. Not in civil strife
' Your blows shall fall-the battle of to-day
' Sweeps from the earth the enemies of Rome.
' Dash through these cowards and their vaunted kings:
' One stroke of sword and all the world is yours.
' Make plain to all men that the crowds who decked
'Pompeius' hundred pageants scarce were fit
'For one poor triumph. Shall Armenia care
'Who leads her masters, or barbarians shed
'One drop of blood to make Pompeius chief
'O'er our Italia? Rome, 'tis Rome they hate,
'Their lord and master: yet they hate the most
'Those whom they know. My fate is in the hands
'Of you, mine own true soldiers, proved in all
'The wars we fought in Gallia. When the sword
'Of each of you shall strike, I know the hand:
'The javelin's flight to me betrays the arm
'That launched it hurtling: and to-day once more
'I see the faces stern, the threatening eyes,
'Unfailing proofs of victory to come.
'E'en now the battle rushes on my sight;
'Kings trodden down and scattered senators
'Fill all th' ensanguined plain, and peoples float
'Unnumbered on the crimson tide of death.
'Enough of words-I but delay the fates;
'And you who burn to dash into the fray,
'Forgive the pause. I tremble with the hopeThus paraphrased by Dean Stanley: I tremble not with terror, but with hope, As the great day reveals its coming scope; Never in earlier days, our hearts to cheer, Have such bright gifts of Heaven been brought so near, Nor ever has been kept the aspiring soul By space so narrow from so grand a goal. Inaugural address at St. Andrews, 1873, on the 'Study of Greatness.'
'Thus finding utterance. I ne'er have seen
'The mighty gods so near; this little field
'Alone dividing us; their hands are full
'Of my predestined honours: for 'tis I
'Who when this war is done shall have the power
'O'er all that peoples, all that kings enjoy
'To shower it where I will. But has the sky
'Swerved from its course, has some high star of heaven
'Turned backwards, that such mighty deeds should pass
