Page:The Pharsalia of Lucan; (IA cu31924026485809).pdf/76

'The highest point a citizen can reach
'And leave his people free, is mine: a throne
'Alone were higher; whoso would surpass
'Pompeius, aims at that. Both Consuls stand
'Here; here for battle stand your lawful chiefs:
'And shall this Cæsar drag the Senate down?
'Not with such blindness, not so lost to shame
'Does Fortune rule. Does he take heart from Gaul: 640
'For years on years rebellious, and a life
'Spent there in labour? or because he fled
'Rhine's icy torrent and the shifting pools
'He calls an ocean? or unchallenged sought
'Britannia's cliffs; then turned his back in flight?
'Or does he boast because his citizens
'Were driven in arms to leave their hearths and homes?
'Ah, vain delusion! not from thee they fled:
'My steps they follow—mine, whose conquering signs
'Swept all the ocean,^[1] and who, ere the moon 650
'Twice filled her orb and waned, compelled to flight
'The pirate, shrinking from the open sea,
'And humbly begging for a narrow home
'In some poor nook on shore. 'Twas I again
'Who, happier far than Sulla, drave to death^[2]
'That king who, exiled to the deep recess
'Of Scythian Pontus, held the fates of Rome
'Still in the balances. Where is the land
'That hath not seen my trophies? Icy waves
'Of northern Phasis, hot Egyptian shores, 660
'And where Syene 'neath its noontide sun
'Knows shade on neither hand:^[3] all these have learned

1. In B.C. 67, Pompeius swept the pirates off the seas. The whole campaign did not last three months.
2. From B.C. 66 to B.C. 63, Pompeius conquered Mithridates, Syria, and the East, except Parthia.
3. Being (as was supposed) exactly under the Equator. Syene (the