Book 8
Defeated and the barbarous Northern tribes;
1
Write that from arms he ever sought the robe;
Write that content upon the Capitol
Thrice only triumphed he, nor asked his due.
What mausoleum were for such a chief
A fitting monument? This paltry stone
Records no syllable of the lengthy tale
Of honours: and the name which men have read
Upon the sacred temples of the gods,
And lofty arches built of hostile spoils,
On desolate sands here marks his lowly grave
With characters obscure, such as erect
No traveller could read, and Roman guest
Without a hand to guide would pass unseen.
Thou land of Egypt, doomed to bear a part
In civil warfare, not unreasoning sang
High Cumae's prophetess, when she forbad This warning of the Sibyl is also alluded to by Cicero in a letter to P. Lentulus, Proconsul of Cilicia. (Mr. Haskins's note. See also Mommsen, vol. iv., p. 305.) It seems to have been discovered in the Sibylline books at the time when it was desired to prevent Pompeius from interfering in the affairs of Egypt, in B.C. 57.
The stream Pelusian to the Roman arms,
And all the banks which in the summer-tide
Are covered by his flood. What grievous curse
Shall I call down upon thee? May the Nile
Turn back his water to his source, thy fields
Want for the winter rain, and all the land
Crumble to desert wastes! We in our fanes
Have known thine Isis and thy hideous gods,
Half hounds, half human, and the drum that bids
To sorrow, and Osiris, whom thy dirge That is, by their weeping for his departure they treated him as a mortal and not as a god. Osiris was the soul of Apis (see on line 545), and when that animal grew old and unfit for the residence of Osiris the latter was thought to quit it. Then began the weeping, which continued until a new Apis appeared, selected, of course, by Osiris for his dwelling-place. Then they called out 'We have found him, let us rejoice.' For a discussion on the Egyptian conception of Osiris, and his place in the theogony of that nation, see Hegel's 'Lectures on the Philosophy of History,' Chapter on Egypt.
Proclaims for man. Thou, Egypt, in thy sand
Our dead containest. Nor, though her temples now
Serve a proud master, has Rome yet required
Pompeius' ashes: in a foreign land
Still lies her chief. But though men feared at first
The victor's ire, now, Rome, at length receive
Thy Magnus' bones, if still the restless wave
Has not prevailed upon that hated shore.
Shall men have fear of tombs and dread to move
The dust of those who should be with the gods?
0, may my country place the crime on me,
If crime it be, to violate such a tomb
Of such a hero, and to bear his dust
