Nor blazed so oft the comet's fire of bale.
Therefore a second time 1 Philippi saw
The Roman hosts, with kindred weapons rush
To battle, nor did the high gods deem it hard
That twice Emathia 2 and the wide champaign
Of Haemus & should be fattening with our blood.
Ay, and the time will come when thereanigh,
Heaving the earth up with his curved plough,
Some swain will light on javelins by foul rust
Corroded, or with ponderous harrow strike
On empty helmets, while he gapes to see
Bones as of giants from the trench untombed.

JAMES RHOADES.

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35

ITALY

(Georgics, II., 136-176.)

BUT no, not Mede-land with its wealth of woods,
Fair Ganges, Hermus thick with golden silt,
Can match the praise of Italy; nor Ind,
Nor Bactria,5 nor Panchaia, one wide tract
Of incense-teeming sand. Here never bulls
With nostrils snorting fire upturned the sod
Sown with the monstrous dragon's teeth, nor crop
Of warriors bristled thick with lance and helm ;
But heavy harvests and the Massic juice

1 Virgil's geography is vague. The decisive battle between Caesar and Pompey had been fought at Pharsalia in Thessaly. Philippi, where Brutus and Cassius were defeated by Octavian and Antony, was in Macedonia.

2 A part of Macedonia.

8 The Balkan range.

4 A river in Aeolis in Asia Minor.

5 Properly Bactra, the capital of the province of Bactriana in Asia.

6 The fabulous spice-isle off the coast of Arabia.

7 Mons Massicus in Campania was famous for its vineyards.

Of Bacchus fill its borders, overspread
With fruitful flocks and olives.

Hence arose

The war-horse stepping proudly o'er the plain;
Hence thy white flocks, Clitumnus,1 and the bull,
Of victims mightiest, which full oft have led,
Bathed in thy sacred stream, the triumph-pomp
Of Romans to the temples of the gods.

10

15

Here blooms perpetual spring, and summer here
In months that are not summer's; twice teem the

flocks;

Twice doth the tree yield service of her fruit.
But ravening tigers come not nigh, nor breed
Of savage lion, nor aconite betrays

Its hapless gatherers, nor with sweep so vast
Doth the scaled serpent trail his endless coils
Along the ground, or wreathe him into spires.
Mark too her cities, so many and so proud,
Of mighty toil the achievement, town on town
Up rugged precipices heaved and reared,
And rivers undergliding ancient walls.
Or should I celebrate the sea that laves

20

25

29

Her upper 2 shores and lower? 3 or those broad lakes?
Thee, Larius, greatest and, Benacus,5 thee
With billowy uproar surging like the main?
Or sing her harbors, and the barrier cast

6

Athwart the Lucrine, and how ocean chafes

With mighty bellowings, where the Julian wave

35

1 A river of Umbria, in the neighborhood of which a famous breed of white cattle was reared.

2 The Adriatic Sea.

4 Lago di Como.

8 The Tyrrhenian Sea.
5 Lago di Garda.

6 Lucrinus and Avernus were two small lakes on the Campanian coast, connected with the sea and with one another by a channel, and used as a harbor. A strong breakwater had been built by Octavian on the strip of land that separated Lucrinus from the sea.

Echoes the thunder of his rout, and through
Avernian inlets pours the Tuscan tide?
A land no less that in her veins displays
Rivers of silver, mines of copper ore,
Ay, and with gold hath flowed abundantly.
A land that reared a valiant breed of men,
The Marsi1 and Sabellian youth, and, schooled
To hardship, the Ligurian, and with these
The Volscian javelin-armed, the Decii 2 too,
The Marii and Camilli, names of might,
The Scipios, stubborn warriors, ay and thee,
Great Caesar, who in Asia's 3 utmost bounds

3

With conquering arm e'en now art driving back
The unwarlike Indian from the heights of Rome.
Hail, land of Saturn, mighty mother thou
Of fruits and heroes; 't is for thee I dare
Unseal the sacred fountains, and essay
Themes of old art and glory, as I sing

The song of Ascra 5 through the towns of Rome.

JAMES RHOADES.

40

45

50

THE BATTLE OF THE BEES

(Georgics, IV., 67-85.)

BUT if to battle they have hied them forth
For oft 'twixt king and king with uproar dire

1 The Marsi, Sabelli, and Volscians belonged to the Umbrian stock. The Ligurians were of doubtful origin.

2 Here and in the names that follow the reference is to distinguished Roman families.

8 After the battle of Actium Octavian made a triumphal progress through Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor.

4 Saturn was said to have dwelt in Italy during the Golden Age.

5 A town in Boeotia, the native place of Hesiod, whose Works and Days had a strong influence upon Virgil's Georgics.

Fierce feud arises, and at once from far
You may discern what passion sways the mob,
And how their hearts are throbbing for the strife;
Hark! the hoarse brazen note that warriors know
Chides on the loiterers, and the ear may catch
A sound that mocks the war-trump's broken blasts;
Then in hot haste they muster, then flash wings,
Sharpen their pointed beaks and knit their thews,
And round the king, even to his royal tent,
Throng rallying, and with shouts defy the foe.
So when a dry spring and clear space is given,
Forth from the gates they burst, they clash on high;
A din arises; they are heaped and rolled
Into one mighty mass, and headlong fall,
Not denselier hail through heaven, nor pelting so
Rains from the shaken oak its acorn-shower.
Conspicuous by their wings, the chiefs themselves
Press through the heart of battle, and display
A giant's spirit in each pigmy frame,
Steadfast no inch to yield till these or those
The victor's ponderous arm has turned to flight.

5

10

15

20

JAMES RHOADES.

AENEAS' DESCENT INTO HADES

(Aeneid, VI.)

WEEPING he spake, then gave to his flying vessels the rein,

Gliding at last on the wind to Euboean Cumae's1 plain.

1 On the coast of Campania. It was colonized from Chalcis in Euboea.

Seaward the bows are pointed, an anchor's hook to

the land

Fastens the ships, and the sterns in a long line border the strand.

Troy's young warriors leap with exultant hearts from

the bark

5

Forth upon Italy's soil. Some look for the fiery

spark

Hid in the secret veins of the flint; some scour the

profound

Forest, and wild beasts' cover, and show where waters abound.

While the devout Aeneas a temple seeks on the

height,

Phoebus's mountain throne, and a cavern vast as the

night,

10

Where in mysterious darkness the terrible Sibyl1 lies, Maiden upon whose spirit the Delian seer 2 of the skies

Breathes his immortal thought, and the knowledge of doom untold.

Soon they arrive at Diana's grove and her palace of gold.

Flying, as legends tell, from the thraldom of Minos 3 the king,

15

Daedalus, trusting the heavens, set forth on adventurous wing;

Sailed for the ice-bound north by a way unimagined and strange;

Airily poising at last upon this Chalcidian range,

4 The famous artisan of Attic and Cretan mythology.