Meanwhile, as it fell out, father Eridanus in his watery home beneath the crystal caverns, ignorant as yet of what had happened, was pondering weighty cares. What, he wondered, would be the outcome of the war: would Jove approve empire and law and Rome’s days of peace, or would he, abhorring order, condemn future ages to the primal ways of brute beasts? As he anxiously ponders such things one of the Naiads with hair unbound came and embraced her sire and said, “Alaric is other now than once we saw him in his hour of triumph: thou wilt wonder at the pallor of his countenance. Joy it will be to reckon up his army and number the remains of so great a host. Frown no more nor complain; let my sister nymphs once more enjoy their dances.”
So spake she and he lifted his gracious head above the gliding stream and on his dripping forehead
[28] Claudian did not live to see the next “reversal of fortune,” Alaric’s capture of Rome six years later.
aurea roranti micuerunt cornua vultu.
non illi madidum vulgaris harundine crinem
velat honos; rami caput umbravere virentes
Heliadum totisque fluunt electra capillis.
palla tegit latos umeros, curruque paterno 165
intextus Phaëthon glaucos incendit amictus.