omnibus oppeterem fama maiore perustis!
et certe moriens propius te, Roma, viderem, 295
ipsaque per cultas segetes mors nostra secuto
victori damnosa foret. sed pignora nobis
from that which had prospered his advance. Then with a single whisper he made war, with an outstretched spear lightly overthrew walls, making a mock of precipices; now deserted and in despair he offered a just spectacle to the mountains he had so scornfully crossed. Then looking up at the sky of Italy he said: “Land of death for the Getae, trod by me with such omens of disaster, let thy wrath be now appeased by the sacrifice of so many of the guilty; let my sufferings at last excite thy compassion. Behold me, once lord of the world, the friend of fortune till I invaded thee; now, like an exile or an adjudged criminal, I feel upon my back the nearer breath of my pursuers. Alas! which of my disasters shall I lament first, which last? Not thou, Pollentia, nor ye, my captured treasures, have thus tortured me; be that destiny’s harsh lot or the chance of war. I had not then lost all my forces; with troops still at my back, with my cavalry intact, I retired with the remnant of my army to the hills they call the Apennines. Its inhabitants told me that this mountain stretched from the confines of Liguria as far as the promontory of Pelorus in Sicily and embraced all the peoples of Italy, dividing with its unbroken chain the two seas that wash their country’s two coasts. If I had pursued the plan that anger first dictated to me and had in my desperation continued my march along its crest, what lay beyond? Giving everything to the flames I might have died with loftier fame. Ay, and my dying eyes had beheld thee, Rome, from not so far away, and my very death would have cost the victor dear as he pursued me over the well-tilled cornfields. But Rome held my
Romanus carasque nurus praedamque tenebat.
hoc magis exertum raperem succinctior agmen.
“Heu, quibus insidiis, qua me circumdedit arte 300