LITMIR.BIZ

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death than centuries of life

       Bought at such price; much more that breathing space

       Till Sulla comes again (6). But time would fail

       In weeping for the deaths of all who fell.

       Encircled by innumerable bands

       Fell Baebius, his limbs asunder torn,

       His vitals dragged abroad. Antonius too,

       Prophet of ill, whose hoary head (7) 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,

       Fell aged Scaevola, though that gory hand (8)

       Had spared him, but the feeble tide of blood

       Still left the flame alive upon the hearth.

       That selfsame year the seventh time restored (9)

       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 (10)

       And Colline gate were slain, then, when the rule

       Of Earth and all her nations almost left

       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

       Drew from the city; for the surgeon knife

       Which shore the cancerous limbs cut in too deep,

       And shed the life stream from still healthy veins.

       True that the guilty fell, but not before

       All else had perished. Hatred had free course

       And anger reigned unbridled by the law.

       The victor's voice spake once; but each man struck

       Just as he wished or willed. The fatal steel

       Urged by the servant laid the master low.

       Sons dripped with gore of sires; and brothers fought

       For the foul trophy of a father slain,

       Or slew each other for the price of blood.

       Men sought the tombs and, mingling with the dead,

       Hoped for escape; the wild beasts' dens were full.

       One strangled died; another from the height

       Fell headlong down upon the unpitying earth,

       And from the encrimsoned victor snatched his death:

       One built his funeral pyre and oped his veins,

       And sealed the furnace ere his blood was gone.

       Borne through the trembling town the leaders' heads

       Were piled in middle forum: hence men knew

       Of murders else unpublished. Not on gates

       Of Diomedes (11), tyrant king of Thrace,

       Nor of Antaeus, Libya's giant brood,

       Were hung such horrors; nor in Pisa's hall

       Were seen and wept for when the suitors died.

       Decay had touched the features of the slain

       When round the mouldering heap, with trembling steps

       The grief-struck parents sought and stole their dead.

       I, too, the body of my brother slain

       Thought to remove, my victim to the peace

       Which Sulla made, and place his loved remains

       On the forbidden pyre. The head I found,

       But not the butchered corse.

      "Why now renew

       The tale of Catulus's shade appeased?

       And those dread tortures which the living frame

       Of Marius (12) suffered at the tomb of him

       Who haply wished them not? Pierced, mangled, torn —

       Nor speech nor grasp was left: his every limb

       Maimed, hacked and riven; yet the fatal blow

       The murderers with savage purpose spared.

       'Twere scarce believed that one poor mortal frame

       Such agonies could bear e'er death should come.

       Thus crushed beneath some ruin lie the dead;

       Thus shapeless from the deep are borne the drowned.

       Why spoil delight by mutilating thus,

       The head of Marius? To please Sulla's heart

       That mangled visage must be known to all.

       Fortune, high goddess of Praeneste's fane,

       Saw all her townsmen hurried to their deaths

       In one fell instant. All the hope of Rome,

       The flower of Latium, stained with blood the field

       Where once the peaceful tribes their votes declared.

       Famine and Sword, the raging sky and sea,

       And Earth upheaved, have laid such numbers low:

       But ne'er one man's revenge. Between the slain

       And living victims there was space no more,

       Death thus let slip, to deal the fatal blow.

       Hardly when struck they fell; the severed head

       Scarce toppled from the shoulders; but the slain

       Blent in a weighty pile of massacre

       Pressed out the life and helped the murderer's arm.

       Secure from stain upon his lofty throne,

       Unshuddering sat the author of the whole,

       Nor feared that at his word such thousands fell.

       At length the Tuscan flood received the dead

       The first upon his waves; the last on those

       That lay beneath them; vessels in their course

       Were stayed, and while the lower current flowed

       Still to the sea, the upper stood on high

       Dammed back by carnage. Through the streets meanwhile

       In headlong torrents ran a tide of blood,

       Which furrowing its path through town and field

       Forced the slow river on. But now his banks

       No longer held him, and the dead were thrown

       Back on the fields above. With labour huge

       At length he struggled to his goal and stretched

       In crimson streak across the Tuscan Sea.

      "For deeds like these, shall Sulla now be styled

       'Darling of Fortune', 'Saviour of the State'?

       For these, a tomb in middle field of Mars

       Record his fame? Like horrors now return

       For us to suffer; and the civil war

       Thus shall be waged again and thus shall end.

       Yet worse disasters may our fears suggest,

      

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