irato vindicta fuit vel quaestus Achilli.
tu neque vesano raptas venalia curru 100
funera nec vanam corpus meditaris in unum
saevitiam; turmas equitum peditumque catervas
to Serena. Merit alone had to decide; through camps, through cities, through nations roamed his poised and hesitating thoughts. But thou wast chosen, thus in the opinion and judgement of him who selected thee surpassing all the candidates of the whole world and becoming a son-in-law in the imperial family where thou wast shortly to become a father-in-law. The marriage-bed was ablaze with flashing gold and regal purple. The maiden steps forth accompanied by her parents clad in scarlet. On one side stood her sire, famed for his triumphs, on the other was the queen, fulfilling a mother’s loving office and ordering the bridal veil beneath a weight of jewels. Then, so men say, the horses of the sun and the stars of heaven danced for joy, pools of honey and rivers of milk welled forth from the earth. Bosporus decked his banks with vernal flowers, and Europe, entwined with rosy garlands, uplifted the torches in rivalry with Asia.
Happy our emperor in his choice; he judges and the world agrees; he is the first to value what we all see. Ay, for he has allied to his children and to his palace one who never preferred ease to war nor the pleasures of peace to danger, nor yet his life to his honour. Who but he could have driven back the savage Visigoths to their wagons or overwhelmed in one huge slaughter the Bastarnae puffed up with the slaying of Promotus[186]? Aeneas avenged the slaughter of Pallas with the death of Turnus, Hector, dragged behind the chariot-wheels, was to wrathful Achilles either revenge or gain; thou dost not carry off in mad chariot dead bodies for ransom nor plot idle savagery against a single corpse; thou slayest at thy friend’s tomb whole
[186] Promotus, who had rescued Theodosius from an ambush in his war against the Visigoths in 390, lost his life in the same war the year after. Stilicho succeeded to his command.
hostilesque globos tumulo prosternis amici;