Bella per Emathios plus quam civilia campos
Iusque datum sceleri canimus, populumque potentem
In sua victrici conversum viscera dextra,
Cognatasque acies, et rupto foedere regni,
5Certatum totis concussi viribus orbis
In commune nefas, infestisque obvia signis
Signa, pares aquilas, et pila minantia pilis.
Quis furor, o cives, quae tanta licentia ferri,
Gentibus invisis Latium praebere cruorem?
10Cumque superba foret Babylon spolianda tropaeis
Ausoniis, umbraque erraret Crassus inulta,
Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos?
Heu quantum terrae potuit pelagique parari
Hoc, quem civiles hauserunt, sanguine, dextrae,
15Unde venit Titan, et nox ubi sidera condit,
Quaque dies medius flagrantibus aestuat horis,
Et qua bruma, rigens ac nescia vere remitti,
Adstringit Scythico glacialem frigore pontum!
Sub iuga iam Seres, iam barbarus isset Araxes,
20Et gens si qua iacet nascenti conscia Nilo.
Tunc, si tantus amor belli tibi, Roma, nefandi,
Totum sub Latias leges cum miseris orbem,
In te verte manus: nondum tibi defuit hostis.
At nunc semirutis pendent quod moenia tectis
25Urbibus Italiae, lapsisque ingentia muris
Saxa iacent, nulloque domus custode tenentur
Rarus et antiquis habitator in urbibus errat,
Horrida quod dumis multosque inarata per annos
Hesperia est, desuntque manus poscentibus arvis,
30Non tu, Pyrrhe ferox, nec tantis cladibus auctor
Poenus erit: nulli penitus discindere ferro
Contigit: alta sedent civilis vulnera dextrae.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Click on a word to bring up parses, dictionary entries, and frequency statistics
Pharsaliae Libri X. M. Annaeus Lucanus. Carolus Hermannus Weise. Leipzig. G. Bassus. 1835.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.