Kitap 8
' Of our great deeds of glory in the past
1
' Shall now protect us, and the world unchanged
'Still love its hero. Weigh upon the scales
Ye chiefs, which best may help the needs of Rome,
'In faith and armies; or the Parthian realm
'Egypt or Libya. For myself, I keep
'No secret thoughts apart, but thus advise.
'Place no reliance on the Pharian king:
'Faith, to be constant, needs a riper age;
'Nor on th' unstable cunning of the Moor,
Who vain of Punic blood, and of descentJuba was of supposed collateral descent from Hannibal. (Haskins, quoting 'The Scholiast.')
'Supposed from Hannibal, is swollen with pride
'At Varus' prayer for aid, and sees in thought
Rome's fates beneath his own. Then, comrades, seek
'At speed, the Eastern world. Those mighty realms
'Euphrates severs from us, and the gates
'Called Caspian; on another sky than ours
' There day and night revolve; another sea
' Of different hue is parted from our own.Confusing the Red Sea with the Persian Gulf.
' Rule is their wish, nought else: and in their plains
' Taller the war-horse, stronger twangs the bow;
' There fails nor youth nor age to wing the shaft
' Fatal in flight. Their archers first subdued
' The lance of Macedon and Bactra's Balkh of modern times. Bactria was one of the kingdoms established by the successors of Alexander the Great. It was, however, subdued by the Parthians about the middle of the third century B.C. walls,
' Home of the Mede; and haughty Babylon
' With all her storied towers: nor shall they dread
' The Roman onset; trusting to the shafts
' By which the host of fated Crassus fell.
' Nor trust they only to the javelin blade
' Untipped with poison: from the rancorous edge
'The slightest wound deals death. Would that my lot
' Forced me not thus to trust that savage race
' Of Arsaces! Dion could not believe it possible that Pompeius ever contemplated taking refuge in Parthia, but Plutarch states it as a fact; and says that it was Theophanes of Lesbos who dissuaded him from doing so. ('Pomp.,' 76.) Mommsen (vol. iv., pp. 421-423) discusses the subject, and says that from Parthia only could Pompeius have attempted to seek support, and that such an attempt, putting the objections to it aside, would probably have failed. Lucan's sympathies were probably with Lentulus. Yet now their emulous fate
' Contends with Roman destinies: the gods
' Smile favouring on their nation. Thence I'll pour
' On Caesar peoples from another earth
' And all the Orient ravished from its home.
' But should the East and barbarous treaties fail,
' Fate, bear our shipwrecked fortunes past the bounds
' Of earth, as known to men. The kings I made
