adventare ferant; geminantur vera pavoris 470
ingenio: longe spectari puppibus urbes
accensas, lucere fretum ventoque citatas
omnibus in pelago velis haerere favillas.
Hos inter strepitus funestior advolat alter
[121] I print Birt’s text; but unless pulsatus be taken as a substantive (Baehrens’ suggestion, cf. P. Lat. Min. v. p. 120 l. 169) it is untranslatable. Emendations proposed are pulsu Cos … icta Barthius; pulsatus aper strepit Buecheler; cultri sus or pulpae ius Birt. The sense demands, however, some such word as Bosporus to make a parallelism with Calchedona. Possibly the line ended pulsatur Bosporus ictu, perstrepit being a gloss on pulsatur and eventually ousting Bosporus.
stuffing will be needed to fill the empty skin. The work of preparation goes on apace, Bosporus echoes to many a blow and the savoury smell envelops Chalcedon.
Suddenly a gentle breeze stirs the foliage behind Leo’s back. He thinks it an arrow, and terror, taking a missile’s place, does duty for a wound. Untouched and stricken only by fear he breathes his last. Degenerate Roman, by whose advice didst thou exchange the comb for the sword, thine ancestral calling for the field of battle? How much better to praise in safety the work of the weavers at their looms and keep out the cold by means of morning feasts. Here thou hast suffered a wretched death; here, while thou soughtest to shirk thy spinning, the Fates have at last spun for thee the final thread.
Now spreading rumour shakes the palace, pale with terror upon terror. It told how that the army was destroyed, the troops butchered, the plain of Maeonia red with slaughter, Pamphylia and Pisidia o’errun by the enemy. On all sides rings the dread name of Tarbigilus. He is now said to be bearing down upon Galatia, now to be meditating an attack on Bithynia. Some say he has crossed the Taurus and is descending upon Cilicia, others that he has possessed himself of a fleet and is advancing both by land and sea. Truth is doubled by panic’s fancy; they say that from the ships far cities are seen ablaze, that the straits are aglow and that ashes driven by the wind catch in the sails of every ship at sea.