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.May it be sudden, whatever you devise.Letthe minds of men be blind to future fate.Leave them free to hope within their fears.CITY IN MOURNINGSo when they had conceived what great disastersthe steadfast powers above had resolved to levyon the world, all city business ceased as for a funeral.20Signs of honor were cloaked in plebeian dress,and no lictors’ rods went accompanied by purple.They stifled their laments, but sorrow deepand speechless drifted everywhere.Just as deathfirst strikes a house with silence, before the corpseis laid out and mourned, or the mother, hair unbound,has ordered her handmaids to madly beat their breasts—but when she clutches his body, stiff from vanished life,his face devoid of soul, his eyes menacing in death,it is not yet grief, but fear has left her.Mindless 30she broods, and wonders at the loss.The matrons put offtheir former dress, and attend the shrines in sad patrols.Some bathe the gods in tears, others beat hardtheir breasts upon the floor and, frantic, tear their hairand scatter it over the sacred threshold, assailwith teeming wails ears more used to hearing prayers.Not all lay prone in the lofty Thunderer’s temple.They distributed the gods so that no altar lackeda mother displaying hostility.One whose cheekswere torn and wet, her arms black and blue from blows, 40said:“O mothers of misery, bruise your breasts now—now mangle your hair! Do not hold back your anguishfor the final disasters! We have the power to weep nowwhile fortune still wavers—when one of the leaders winswe will have to rejoice.” So she prods and goads,spurring on their grief.Nor did the men heading offto war and to opposite camps hold back a floodof just complaints to the cruel wills of the gods:“What a pitiful lot to not be born in the timesof the Punic Wars, to fight at Cannae and Trebia!” 50“Gods, we don’t want peace—enrage foreigners!Excite some savage cities! Let the world conspirein arms, squads of Medes stream down from Susaof the Achaemenids, the Scythian Danube not hinderthe Massagetae, or for blond Suebi to be poured outby the Elbe and untamed headwaters of the Rhinein northern extremes—”“Make us the enemiesof each and every people—just turn away civil war!”“May Dacians and Getae press us on each side—let one leader attack the Spaniards, and let the other 60turn his standards against the arrows of the East—no hand would be free to strike at Rome.”“Or, if it pleasethe gods for Hesperia’s name to perish, let the whole skysettle it—gather fire and strike the earth with lightning.Cruel father, strike both parties and leaders at once,while neither yet deserves it!”“Do they have to producesuch a crop of new crimes, to see who will rule the city?Hardly worth the price of civil wars, if neitherone should win.”Such were the complaints arousedby piety that was dying.ELDERS RECALL MARIUS AND SULLASad parents had their own troubles: 70they detest the heavy fate of persisting old ageand their years, saving them for second civil wars.So one seeks out examples for his great fear, and speaks:“This is like the upheavals the Fates contrivedwhen the Teutons’ conqueror, after his Libyan triumphs,in exile Marius hid his head in swampy reeds.Stagnant quicksand and wide marshlands concealedyour hopeless property, Fortune.And later, iron shackleswore down the old man, dirty from long imprisonment—he would die, a happy consul, in the city he’d ruined, 80and was paying for his crimes in advance—even deathoften fled from him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.May it be sudden, whatever you devise.Letthe minds of men be blind to future fate.Leave them free to hope within their fears.CITY IN MOURNINGSo when they had conceived what great disastersthe steadfast powers above had resolved to levyon the world, all city business ceased as for a funeral.20Signs of honor were cloaked in plebeian dress,and no lictors’ rods went accompanied by purple.They stifled their laments, but sorrow deepand speechless drifted everywhere.Just as deathfirst strikes a house with silence, before the corpseis laid out and mourned, or the mother, hair unbound,has ordered her handmaids to madly beat their breasts—but when she clutches his body, stiff from vanished life,his face devoid of soul, his eyes menacing in death,it is not yet grief, but fear has left her.Mindless 30she broods, and wonders at the loss.The matrons put offtheir former dress, and attend the shrines in sad patrols.Some bathe the gods in tears, others beat hardtheir breasts upon the floor and, frantic, tear their hairand scatter it over the sacred threshold, assailwith teeming wails ears more used to hearing prayers.Not all lay prone in the lofty Thunderer’s temple.They distributed the gods so that no altar lackeda mother displaying hostility.One whose cheekswere torn and wet, her arms black and blue from blows, 40said:“O mothers of misery, bruise your breasts now—now mangle your hair! Do not hold back your anguishfor the final disasters! We have the power to weep nowwhile fortune still wavers—when one of the leaders winswe will have to rejoice.” So she prods and goads,spurring on their grief.Nor did the men heading offto war and to opposite camps hold back a floodof just complaints to the cruel wills of the gods:“What a pitiful lot to not be born in the timesof the Punic Wars, to fight at Cannae and Trebia!” 50“Gods, we don’t want peace—enrage foreigners!Excite some savage cities! Let the world conspirein arms, squads of Medes stream down from Susaof the Achaemenids, the Scythian Danube not hinderthe Massagetae, or for blond Suebi to be poured outby the Elbe and untamed headwaters of the Rhinein northern extremes—”“Make us the enemiesof each and every people—just turn away civil war!”“May Dacians and Getae press us on each side—let one leader attack the Spaniards, and let the other 60turn his standards against the arrows of the East—no hand would be free to strike at Rome.”“Or, if it pleasethe gods for Hesperia’s name to perish, let the whole skysettle it—gather fire and strike the earth with lightning.Cruel father, strike both parties and leaders at once,while neither yet deserves it!”“Do they have to producesuch a crop of new crimes, to see who will rule the city?Hardly worth the price of civil wars, if neitherone should win.”Such were the complaints arousedby piety that was dying.ELDERS RECALL MARIUS AND SULLASad parents had their own troubles: 70they detest the heavy fate of persisting old ageand their years, saving them for second civil wars.So one seeks out examples for his great fear, and speaks:“This is like the upheavals the Fates contrivedwhen the Teutons’ conqueror, after his Libyan triumphs,in exile Marius hid his head in swampy reeds.Stagnant quicksand and wide marshlands concealedyour hopeless property, Fortune.And later, iron shackleswore down the old man, dirty from long imprisonment—he would die, a happy consul, in the city he’d ruined, 80and was paying for his crimes in advance—even deathoften fled from him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]