Now that I have lost thy favour I am become a prey to grinding poverty, my house is desolate, my friends reft from me. Death with torture is the fate of one, exile of another. What further losses can I suffer? What more cruel plagues can befall me?
The power to despoil and kill softens anger. Wild beasts turn away from their stricken prey, and fierce lions, eager to destroy, abandon the dead victim, and with a nobler hunger riot only in the flesh of the warlike steer. Envy has snapped the thread of my prosperity and turned my happiness into mourning. I am fordone with punishment and my pride is broken; look on me again with favour. Is a humble client worth so heavy a weight of anger? Aeolus makes not trial of himself where the sea’s waters are shallow; no lowly hill encounters Boreas’ blasts; ’tis the Alps he shakes, the summit of Rhodope he harasses. Never doth the lightning
[74] Alexander is called the founder of Claudian’s country (Egypt) because the first Ptolemy was one of his generals and became king of Egypt on Alexander’s death.
nec parvi frutices iram meruere Tonantis:
ingentes quercus, annosas fulminat ornos. 40
Hoc pro supplicibus ramis, pro fronde Minervae,
hoc carmen pro ture damus. miserere tuorum.
me, precor, heu, me redde mihi gravibusque medere
vulneribus vitamque iube famamque reverti.