62
PHARSALIA
Book III
'With busy fingers all their needful task
'Could scarce accomplish, and the threads of fate
'Dropped from their weary hands. With me thy wife,
'Thou, Magnus, leddest happy triumphs home:
'New wedlock brings new luck. Thy concubine,
' Whose star brings all her mighty husbands ill,
'Cornelia, weds in thee a breathing tomb.[1]
'Through wars and oceans let her cling to thee
'So long as I may break thy nightly rest: 30
' No moment left thee for her love, but all
'By night to me, by day to Caesar given.
'Me not the oblivious banks of Lethe's stream
'Have made forgetful; and the kings of death
'Have suffered me to join thee; in mid fight
'I will be with thee, and my haunting ghost
'Remind thee Caesar's daughter was thy spouse.
'Thy sword kills not our pledges; civil war
'Shall make thee wholly mine.' She spake and fled.
But he, though heaven and hell thus bode defeat, 40
More bent on war, with mind assured of ill,
'Why dread vain phantoms of a dreaming brain?
'Or nought of sense and feeling to the soul
'Is left by death; or death itself is nought.'
Now fiery Titan in declining path
Dipped to the waves, his bright circumference
So much diminished as a growing moon
Not yet full circled, or when past the full;
When to the fleet a hospitable coast
Gave access, and the ropes in order laid, 50
The sailors struck the masts and rowed ashore.
When Cæsar saw the fleet escape his grasp
And hidden from his View by lengthening seas,
'Could scarce accomplish, and the threads of fate
'Dropped from their weary hands. With me thy wife,
'Thou, Magnus, leddest happy triumphs home:
'New wedlock brings new luck. Thy concubine,
' Whose star brings all her mighty husbands ill,
'Cornelia, weds in thee a breathing tomb.[1]
'Through wars and oceans let her cling to thee
'So long as I may break thy nightly rest: 30
' No moment left thee for her love, but all
'By night to me, by day to Caesar given.
'Me not the oblivious banks of Lethe's stream
'Have made forgetful; and the kings of death
'Have suffered me to join thee; in mid fight
'I will be with thee, and my haunting ghost
'Remind thee Caesar's daughter was thy spouse.
'Thy sword kills not our pledges; civil war
'Shall make thee wholly mine.' She spake and fled.
But he, though heaven and hell thus bode defeat, 40
More bent on war, with mind assured of ill,
'Why dread vain phantoms of a dreaming brain?
'Or nought of sense and feeling to the soul
'Is left by death; or death itself is nought.'
Now fiery Titan in declining path
Dipped to the waves, his bright circumference
So much diminished as a growing moon
Not yet full circled, or when past the full;
When to the fleet a hospitable coast
Gave access, and the ropes in order laid, 50
The sailors struck the masts and rowed ashore.
When Cæsar saw the fleet escape his grasp
And hidden from his View by lengthening seas,
- ↑ I take 'tepido busto' as the dative case; and as referring to Pompeius, doomed, like Cornelia's former husband, to defeat and death.
