Pharsalia [92]
Pompeius' ashes: in a foreign land
Still lies her chief. But though men feared at first
The victor's vengeance, now at length receive
Thy Magnus' bones, if still the restless wave
Hath not prevailed upon that hated shore.
Shall men have fear of tombs and dread to move
The dust of those who should be with the gods?
O, may my country place the crime on me,
If crime it be, to violate such a tomb
Of such a hero, and to bear his dust
Home to Ausonia. Happy, happy he
Who bears such holy office in his trust! (25)
Haply when famine rages in the land
Or burning southern winds, or fires abound
And earthquake shocks, and Rome shall pray an end
From angry heaven -- by the gods' command,
In council given, shalt thou be transferred
To thine own city, and the priest shall bear
Thy sacred ashes to their last abode.
Who now may seek beneath the raging Crab
Or hot Syene's waste, or Thebes athirst
Under the rainy Pleiades, to gaze
On Nile's broad stream; or whose may exchange
On the Red Sea or in Arabian ports
Some Eastern merchandise, shall turn in awe
To view the venerable stone that marks
Thy grave, Pompeius; and shall worship more
Thy dust commingled with the arid sand,
Thy shade though exiled, than the fane upreared (26)
On Casius' mount to Jove! In temples shrined
And gold, thy memory were viler deemed:
Fortune lies with thee in thy lowly tomb
And makes thee rival of Olympus' king.
More awful is that stone by Libyan seas
Lashed, than are Conquerors' altars. There in earth
A deity rests to whom all men shall bow
More than to gods Tarpeian: and his name
Shall shine the brighter in the days to come
For that no marble tomb about him stands
Nor lofty monument. That little dust
Time shall soon scatter and the tomb shall fall
And all the proofs shall perish of his death.
And happier days shall come when men shall gaze
Upon the stone, nor yet believe the tale:
And Egypt's fable, that she holds the grave
Of great Pompeius, be believed no more
Than Crete's which boasts the sepulchre of Jove. (27)
ENDNOTES:
(1) Comp. Book VI., line 407.
(2) Comp. Book III., line 256.
(3) Canopus is a star in Argo, invisible in Italy. (Haskins.)
(4) Sextus.
(5) Tetrarch of Galatia. He was always friendly to Rome, and in
the civil war sided with Pompeius. He was at Pharsalia.
(6) A Scythian people.
(7) Pompeius seems to have induced the Roman public to believe
that he had led his armies to such extreme distances, but he
never in fact did so. -- Mommsen, vol. iv. p. 147.
(8) Juba was of supposed collateral descent from Hannibal.
(Haskins, quoting "The Scholiast.")
(9) Confusing the Red Sea with the Persian Gulf.
(10) Balkh of modern times. Bactria was one of the kingdoms
established by the successors of Alexander the Great. It
was, however, subdued by the Parthians about the middle of
the third century B.C.
(11) Dion could not believe it possible that Pompeius ever
contemplated taking refuge in Parthia, but Plutarch states
it as a fact; and says that it was Theophanes of Lesbos who
dissuaded him from doing so. ("Pompeius", 76). Mommsen
(vol. iv., pp. 421-423) discusses the subject, and says that
from Parthia only could Pompeius have attempted to seek
support, and that such an attempt, putting the objections to
it aside, would probably have failed. Lucan's sympathies
were probably with Lentulus.
(12) Probably Lucius Lentulus Crus, who had been Consul, for B.C.
49, along with Caius Marcellus. (See Book V., 9.) He was
murdered in Egypt by Ptolemy's ministers.
(13) That is, be as easily defended.
(14) Thus rendered by Sir Thomas May, of the Long Parliament:
"Men used to sceptres are ashamed of nought:
The mildest governement a kingdome finds
Under new kings."
(15) That is, he reached the most eastern mouth of the Nile
instead of the western.
(16) At Memphis was the well in which the rise and fall of the
water acted as a Nilometer (Mr.