pascimur arbitrio Mauri nec debita reddi, 70
and the might of Rome? To what a shadow of our former glory are we by gradual decline arrived! Time was when my men bore arms and my greybeards met in council; mistress of the world was I and lawgiver to mankind. From rising to setting sun I sped in triumph. When proud Caesar had transferred my people’s power to himself, when manners became corrupt and forgetful of war’s old discipline I declined into the servile lap of peace, the emperors rewarded me with Africa and Egypt that they might nourish the sovereign people and the Senate, arbiter of peace and war, by means of summer-sped fleets, and that the winds, blowing alternately from either shore, should fill our granaries with corn. Our provisioning was secure. Should Memphis perchance have denied us food, I would make up for the failure of Egypt’s harvest by the African supply. I saw competition between grain-bearing vessels, and where’er I looked I beheld the fleet of Carthage strive in rivalry with that of the Nile. When a second Rome arose and the Eastern Empire assumed the toga of the West, Egypt fell beneath that new sway. Africa remained our only hope and scarcely did she suffice to feed us, whose corn-ships none but the south wind wafted across. Her promise for the future was insecure, as, ever helpless, she demanded the loyalty of the wind and of the season.[64] This province, too, Gildo seized towards the close of autumn. Anxiously and prayerfully we scan the blue sea to glance a coming sail in the fond hope that perchance a sense of shame has extorted somewhat from the powerful tyrant, or the conqueror left some corner unconquered. We are fed at the pleasure of the Moor,
[64] Claudian means that the African corn-supply was not always to be relied upon because (1) there might be a bad season, (2) there might be unfavourable winds.
sed sua concedi iactat gaudetque diurnos
ut famulae praebere cibos vitamque famemque
librat barbarico fastu vulgique superbit
fletibus et tantae suspendit fata ruinae.
Romuleas vendit segetes et possidet arva 75