Why do you wonder if a woman entwines my life and brings a man enslaved under her rule? Why fabricate charges of cowardice against my person, because I can’t break my yoke and snap the chains? The sailor can best foretell his future fate, the soldier is taught by his wounds to nurture fear. I once boasted like you when I was young: now let my example teach you to be afraid.
The witch of Colchis drove the fiery bulls in a yoke of steel, and sowed civil war in the warrior-bearing soil, and closed the serpent guard’s fierce jaws, so that the Golden Fleece would reach Aeson’s halls. Amazon Penthesilea once dared to attack the Danaan fleet with arrows fired from horseback: she whose bright beauty conquered the conquering hero, when the golden helmet laid bare her forehead.
Omphale the Lydian girl bathing in Gyges’s lake gained such a name for beauty that Hercules who had established his pillars in a world at peace, drew out soft spinner’s tasks with hardened hands. Semiramis built Babylon, the Persian city, so that it rose a solid mass with ramparts of baked brick, and two chariots might set out on the walls, in opposite directions, without their axles touching and sides scraping: she diverted the River Euphrates through the centre of the city she founded, and commanded Bactra to bow its head to her rule.
Why should I seize on heroes, why gods who stand accused? Jupiter shames himself and his house. Why Cleopatra, who heaped insults on our army, a woman worn out by her own attendants, who demanded the walls of Rome and the Senate bound to her rule, as a reward from her obscene husband? Noxious Alexandria, place so skilled in deceit, and Memphis so often bloody with our grief, where the sand robbed Pompey of his three triumphs. Rome, no day will ever wipe away the stain. Better for you Pompey, ill at Naples, if your funeral procession had crossed the Phlegraean Plain, or that you had bowed your neck to Caesar, your father-in-law.
Truly that whore, queen of incestuous Canopus, a brand burned by the blood of Philip, dared to oppose our Jupiter with yapping Anubis, and forced Tiber to suffer the threats of Nile, and banished the Roman trumpet with the rattle of the sistrum, and chased the Liburnian prow with a poled barge, and spread her foul mosquito nets over the Tarpeian Rock, and gave judgements among Marius’s weapons and statues.
The city, high on its seven hills, that directs the whole Earth, was terrified of a woman’s power and fearful of her threats. What’s it worth now to have shattered Tarquin’s axes, whose life branded him with the name of ‘Proud’, if we have to endure a woman? Celebrate a triumph Rome, and saved by Augustus beg long life for him! You fled then to the wandering mouths of frightened Nile: your hands received Romulus’s chains. I saw your arms bitten by the sacred asps, and your limbs draw sleep in by a secret path. And your tongue spoke overpowered by endless wine: ‘This was not as much to be feared, Rome, as your fellow-citizen!’
Curtius closing the Forum’s chasm, created his monument, and Decius’s cavalry charge shattered the battle-line, Horatius’s Way attests to the holding of the bridge, and there’s one to whom the raven, Corvus, has given a name. The gods founded them, may the gods protect these walls: with Caesar alive, Rome need scarcely fear Jove.
Where are Scipio’s ships now, where are Camillus’s standards, or Bosphorus lately captured by Pompey’s might, or Hannibal’s spoils, or conquered Syphax’s Libyan trophies, or Pyrrhus’s glory trampled under our feet?
Apollo of Actium will speak of how the line was turned: one day of battle carried off so vast a host. But you, sailor, whether leaving or making for harbour, be mindful of Caesar through all the Ionian Sea.
The witch of Colchis drove the fiery bulls in a yoke of steel, and sowed civil war in the warrior-bearing soil, and closed the serpent guard’s fierce jaws, so that the Golden Fleece would reach Aeson’s halls. Amazon Penthesilea once dared to attack the Danaan fleet with arrows fired from horseback: she whose bright beauty conquered the conquering hero, when the golden helmet laid bare her forehead.
Omphale the Lydian girl bathing in Gyges’s lake gained such a name for beauty that Hercules who had established his pillars in a world at peace, drew out soft spinner’s tasks with hardened hands. Semiramis built Babylon, the Persian city, so that it rose a solid mass with ramparts of baked brick, and two chariots might set out on the walls, in opposite directions, without their axles touching and sides scraping: she diverted the River Euphrates through the centre of the city she founded, and commanded Bactra to bow its head to her rule.
Why should I seize on heroes, why gods who stand accused? Jupiter shames himself and his house. Why Cleopatra, who heaped insults on our army, a woman worn out by her own attendants, who demanded the walls of Rome and the Senate bound to her rule, as a reward from her obscene husband? Noxious Alexandria, place so skilled in deceit, and Memphis so often bloody with our grief, where the sand robbed Pompey of his three triumphs. Rome, no day will ever wipe away the stain. Better for you Pompey, ill at Naples, if your funeral procession had crossed the Phlegraean Plain, or that you had bowed your neck to Caesar, your father-in-law.
Truly that whore, queen of incestuous Canopus, a brand burned by the blood of Philip, dared to oppose our Jupiter with yapping Anubis, and forced Tiber to suffer the threats of Nile, and banished the Roman trumpet with the rattle of the sistrum, and chased the Liburnian prow with a poled barge, and spread her foul mosquito nets over the Tarpeian Rock, and gave judgements among Marius’s weapons and statues.
The city, high on its seven hills, that directs the whole Earth, was terrified of a woman’s power and fearful of her threats. What’s it worth now to have shattered Tarquin’s axes, whose life branded him with the name of ‘Proud’, if we have to endure a woman? Celebrate a triumph Rome, and saved by Augustus beg long life for him! You fled then to the wandering mouths of frightened Nile: your hands received Romulus’s chains. I saw your arms bitten by the sacred asps, and your limbs draw sleep in by a secret path. And your tongue spoke overpowered by endless wine: ‘This was not as much to be feared, Rome, as your fellow-citizen!’
Curtius closing the Forum’s chasm, created his monument, and Decius’s cavalry charge shattered the battle-line, Horatius’s Way attests to the holding of the bridge, and there’s one to whom the raven, Corvus, has given a name. The gods founded them, may the gods protect these walls: with Caesar alive, Rome need scarcely fear Jove.
Where are Scipio’s ships now, where are Camillus’s standards, or Bosphorus lately captured by Pompey’s might, or Hannibal’s spoils, or conquered Syphax’s Libyan trophies, or Pyrrhus’s glory trampled under our feet?
Apollo of Actium will speak of how the line was turned: one day of battle carried off so vast a host. But you, sailor, whether leaving or making for harbour, be mindful of Caesar through all the Ionian Sea.
