restituat priscum per te iam gloria morem
verior, et fructum sincerae laudis ab hoste
Triton, with his conquered waters and his head crowned with Minerva’s sacred reeds; crowds of slaves with upgirt dresses bore a figure of trembling Atlas cast in bronze; Gildo himself, destined to undergo in prison the punishment once meted out to Jugurtha, offered his stubborn neck to the yoke, Gildo fallen a captive to the arms of Rome, not to the treachery of a Bocchus and a Sulla.[36]
“But I pass over what has been. Can the present triumph, too, of the Getic war escape me? Does any spot give ampler room to so great renown? The very blessings thou hast bestowed beg thee not to delay, and thy generosity, constrained by its own fair deeds, must needs love those whom it has saved. Now for a hundred summers the reaper’s sickle has gathered the yellow harvest of Gargarus; already the consul has introduced the games that occur but once in a century and upon which no man looks twice. During these years which number twice ten lustres, I have but thrice[37] seen an emperor enter my walls in triumph; all at different times but for the same reason—civil war. Did they come in their pride that I should see their chariots stained with Italy’s blood? Can any think a mother finds joy in the tears of her offspring? The tyrants were slain, but even they were my children. Caesar boasted him of his victories over the Gauls; he said nought about Pharsalia. Where the two sides bear the same standards and are of one blood, as defeat is ever shameful so victory brings no honour. See thou to it that now a truer glory crown our arms; give me back the joy, long a stranger to me, of honest
[36] Bocchus, king of Mauretania, treacherously delivered up his kinsman Jugurtha to Marius. Sulla acted as the agent of the Roman general in this matter.
[37] In a century so replete with civil war as the fourth it is hard to say which particular three instances Claudian has in mind. One is no doubt Constantine’s defeat of Maxentius, after which we know that he entered Rome in triumph; the other two may refer to Theodosius’ victories over Eugenius and Maximus.
desuetam iam redde mihi iustisque furoris 405
externi spoliis sontes absolve triumphos.