et Mario claris ducibus, tegit Itala tellus. 646
discite vesanae Romam non temnere gentes.”
of Greece from Corinth and Sparta were, forsooth, not good enough now for so great a lady. But Nemesis, the goddess worshipped at Rhamnus, she whose pleasure it is to check unbridled desire, was wroth and turned her wheel; harsh poverty overwhelms the vanquished, and in one day Rome’s arm requites all that we have lost in thirty years.
Thy glory, Pollentia, shall live for ever; worthy is thy name to be celebrated by my song, a fit theme for rejoicing and for triumph. Fate pre-ordained thee to be the scene of our victory and the burial-place of the barbarians. Full often have thy fields and plains seen ample vengeance exacted for aggression against the descendants of Romulus. ’Twas there, in that same countryside, that the Cimbric hordes, bearing down upon Rome from Ocean’s farthest shore and crossing the Alps by another pass, suffered their final defeat. The coming generation should mingle the bones of these two races and engrave with this one inscription the monument which records our double victory: “Here beneath the soil of Italy lie the bodies of brave Cimbri and Getae: their death they owed to our famous generals Marius and Stilicho. Learn, presumptuous peoples, not to despise Rome.”
CARMINUM MINORUM CORPUSCULUM
I. (XIII.)
Ad Stilichonem.
Solitas galea fulgere comas,