Kitap 2
' On the forbidden pyre. The head I found,
1
' But not the butchered corse.
' The tale of Catulus's shade appeased?
' And those dread tortures which the living frame
' Of Marius The brother of the Consul. suffered at the tomb of him
' Who haply wished them not? Pierced, mangled, torn-
' Nor speech nor grasp was left: his every limb
' Maimed, hacked and riven; yet the fatal blow
' The murderers with savage purpose spared.
''Twere scarce believed that one poor mortal frame
' Such agonies could bear ere death should come.
' Thus crushed beneath some ruin lie the dead;
' Thus shapeless from the deep are borne the drowned.
' Why spoil delight by mutilating thus,
' The head of Marius? To please Sulla's heart
' That mangled visage must be known to all.
' Fortune, high goddess of Praeneste's fane,
' Saw all her townsmen hurried to their deaths
' In one fell instant. All the hope of Rome,
' The flower of Latium, stained with blood the field
' Where once the peaceful tribes their votes declared.
' Famine and Sword, the raging sky and sea,
' And Earth upheaved, have laid such numbers low :
' But ne'er one man's revenge. Between the slain
' And living victims there was space no more,
' Death thus let slip, to deal the fatal blow.
' Hardly when struck they fell; the severed head
' Scarce toppled from the shoulders; but the slain
' Blent in a weighty pile of massacre
' Pressed out the life and helped the murderer's arm.
' Secure from stain upon his lofty throne,
' Unshuddering sat the author of the whole,
' Nor feared that at his word such thousands fell.
'At length the Tuscan flood received the dead
' The first upon his waves; the last on those
' That lay beneath them; vessels in their course
' Were stayed, and while the lower current flowed
' Yet to the sea, the upper stood on high
Dammed back by carnage. Through the streets meanwhile