Page:An Account of Corsica (1769).djvu/55

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OF CORSICA.
45

vere demeanour, he did not escape the Emperour's jealousy, but being accused as one of the many gallants with whom the profligate Julia had been guilty of adultery, he was banished to Corsica, where he remained for seven years; and where in the province of Capo Corso they still shew an old ruin called 'Il torre di Seneca, Seneca's Tower.' Here he composed his books De Consolatione to Polybius, and to his mother Helvia, with several other works; and here he indulged his fretted imagination in the following epigrams,

Corsica Phocaeo tellus habitata colono,
Corsica quae Graio nomine Cyrnus eras:
Corsica Sardinia brevior, porrectior Ilva;
Corsica pilcofis peria fluminibus:
Corsica terribilis quum primum incanduit aeftas;
Saevior, oftendit quum ferus ora canis:
Parce relegatis, hoc est, jam parce sepultis,
Vivorum cineri sit tua terra levis.

O sea-girt Corsica! whole rude domains,
First own'd the culture of Phocaean swains;
Cyrnus, since thus the Greeks thy isle express.
Greater than Ilva, than Sardinia less;
O Corsica! whose winding rivers feed,
Unnumber'd as their sands, the sinny breed: