36
PHARSALIA
Book II
'Encircled by innumerable bands
'Fell Bæbius, his limbs asunder torn,
'His vitals dragged abroad. Antonius too,
'Prophet of ill, whose hoary head[1] was placed,
'Dripping with blood, upon the festal board.
'There headless fell the Crassi; mangled frames
''Neath Fimbria's falchion: and the prison cells
'Were wet with tribunes' blood. Hard by the fane
'Where dwells the goddess and the sacred fire, 150
'Fell aged Scævola, though that gory hand[2]
'Had spared him, but the feeble tide of blood
'Still left the flame alive upon the hearth.
'That selfsame year the seventh time restored[3]
'The Consul's rods; that year to Marius brought
'The end of life, when he at Fortune's hands
'All ills had suffered; all her goods enjoyed.
'And what of those who at the Sacriport[4]
'And Colline gate were slain, then, when the rule
'Of Earth and all her nations almost left 160
'This city for another, and the chiefs
'Who led the Samnite hoped that Rome might bleed
'More than at Caudium's Forks she bled of old?
'Then came great Sulla to avenge the dead,
'And all the blood still left within her frame
'Fell Bæbius, his limbs asunder torn,
'His vitals dragged abroad. Antonius too,
'Prophet of ill, whose hoary head[1] was placed,
'Dripping with blood, upon the festal board.
'There headless fell the Crassi; mangled frames
''Neath Fimbria's falchion: and the prison cells
'Were wet with tribunes' blood. Hard by the fane
'Where dwells the goddess and the sacred fire, 150
'Fell aged Scævola, though that gory hand[2]
'Had spared him, but the feeble tide of blood
'Still left the flame alive upon the hearth.
'That selfsame year the seventh time restored[3]
'The Consul's rods; that year to Marius brought
'The end of life, when he at Fortune's hands
'All ills had suffered; all her goods enjoyed.
'And what of those who at the Sacriport[4]
'And Colline gate were slain, then, when the rule
'Of Earth and all her nations almost left 160
'This city for another, and the chiefs
'Who led the Samnite hoped that Rome might bleed
'More than at Caudium's Forks she bled of old?
'Then came great Sulla to avenge the dead,
'And all the blood still left within her frame
- ↑ The head of Antonius was struck off and brought to Marins at supper. He was the grandfather of the triumvir.
- ↑ Scævola, it would appear, was put to death after Marius the elder died, by the younger Marius. He was Pontifex Maximus, and slain by the altar of Vesta.
- ↑ B.C. 86, Mariius and Cinna were Consuls. Marius died seventeen days afterwards, in the seventieth year of his age.
- ↑ The Battle of Sacriportus was fought between Marius the younger and the Sullan army in B.C. 82. Marius was defeated with great loss, and fled to Præneste, a town which afterwards submitted to Sulla, who put all the inhabitants to death (line 216). At the Colline gate was fought the decisive battle between Sulla and the Samnites, who, after a furious contest, were defeated.
