34
PHARSALIA
Book II
'Of prison wore his weak and aged frame,
'And lengthened squalor: thus he paid for crime
'His punishment beforehand; doomed to die
'Consul in triumph over wasted Rome.
'Death oft refused him; and the very foe, 90
'In act to murder, shuddered in the stroke
'And dropped the weapon from his nerveless hand.
'For through the prison gloom a flame of light
'He saw; the deities of crime abhorred;
'The Marius to come. A voice proclaimed
'Mysterious, 'Hold! the fates permit thee not
'"That neck to sever. Many a death he owes
'"To time's predestined laws ere his shall come;
'"Cease from thy madness. If ye seek revenge
'"For all the blood shed by your slaughtered tribes to 100
'"Let this man, Cimbrians, live out all his days."
'Not as their darling did the gods protect
'The man of blood, but for his ruthless hand
'Fit to prepare that sacrifice of gore
'Which fate demanded. By the sea's despite
'Borne to our foes, Jugurtha's wasted realm
'He saw, now conquered; there in squalid huts
'Awhile he lay, and trod the hostile dust
'Of Carthage, and his ruin matched with hers:
'Each from the other's fate some solace drew, 110
'And prostrate, pardoned heaven. On Libyan soil[1]
'Fresh fury gathering,[2] next, when Fortune smiled
'The prisons he threw wide and freed the slaves.
'Forth rushed the murderous bands, their melted chains
'And lengthened squalor: thus he paid for crime
'His punishment beforehand; doomed to die
'Consul in triumph over wasted Rome.
'Death oft refused him; and the very foe, 90
'In act to murder, shuddered in the stroke
'And dropped the weapon from his nerveless hand.
'For through the prison gloom a flame of light
'He saw; the deities of crime abhorred;
'The Marius to come. A voice proclaimed
'Mysterious, 'Hold! the fates permit thee not
'"That neck to sever. Many a death he owes
'"To time's predestined laws ere his shall come;
'"Cease from thy madness. If ye seek revenge
'"For all the blood shed by your slaughtered tribes to 100
'"Let this man, Cimbrians, live out all his days."
'Not as their darling did the gods protect
'The man of blood, but for his ruthless hand
'Fit to prepare that sacrifice of gore
'Which fate demanded. By the sea's despite
'Borne to our foes, Jugurtha's wasted realm
'He saw, now conquered; there in squalid huts
'Awhile he lay, and trod the hostile dust
'Of Carthage, and his ruin matched with hers:
'Each from the other's fate some solace drew, 110
'And prostrate, pardoned heaven. On Libyan soil[1]
'Fresh fury gathering,[2] next, when Fortune smiled
'The prisons he threw wide and freed the slaves.
'Forth rushed the murderous bands, their melted chains
- ↑ The Governor of Libya sent an officer to Marius, who had landed in the neighbourhood of Carthage. The officer delivered his message, and Marine replied, ‘Tell the Governor you have seen Caius Marius, a fugitive sitting on the ruins of Carthage,' a reply in which he not inaptly compared the fate of that city and his own changed fortune. (Plutarch, ‘ Marius,' 40.)
- ↑ In the ‘gathering of fresh fury on Libyan soil,' there appears to be an allusion to the story of Antæus, in Book IV.
