I sing of war, far worse than civil war,
waged in the nasty fields of Thessaly,
of crime gone legal, of a powerful state
that disemboweled itself with victory's sword,
of family front lines; how when the pact
of tyranny imploded, all the forces
of a concussed world clashed in combat, leaving
a nation guilty of abomination;
the citizen who marched against the city,
the Roman spear faced with the Roman spear.
Countrymen! What insanity was this?
This orgy of sick swords! Did you enjoy it,
treating barbarian peoples that detest us
to a spectacle of savage Roman bloodsport,
when you by all rights should have been despoiling
proud Parthia of her Italian trophies
in fit retaliation? Why so willing
to wage entropic wars that stood no chance
of triumph, while k**ed Cra**us' grisly ghost
roamed unavenged abroad?
Can you conceive
how much land, how much sea might have been ours
through the Roman blood that Roman blades have squandered -
where Day's sun rises, where Night stows her stars,
where southern midday seethes in scorching hours,
where rigid Winter that no Spring can thaw
fetters the Scythic sea in chains of ice,
by now we'd have the wild Armenians
and the Chinese beneath our potent yoke,
as well as that race (if there even is one)
that knows the secret of the Nile's true source.
Then, if you still so lust for heinous warfare
once you've wrenched all the world to Latin law,
only then, Rome, may you take up the sword
of suicide. Not while you have enemies.
Now in Italy's cities walls are crumbling,
the buildings teetering half-demolished, ramparts
reduced to huge heaps of wrecked rock, the houses
have no one to guard them. Only the odd squatter
wanders the ancient emptied cities' streets.
Now Italy's countryside is overrun
with brambles, her soil unploughed for year on year,
no hands left for the work the fields cry out for.
It wasn't you, fierce Pyrrhus, nor the savage
Hannibal who achieved such devastation.
No, foreign steel could not gore us like this.
The deepest wounds are dealt by citizen swords.
But if the Fates could find no other way
to gift us Nero, if an everlasting
kingdom cost the gods dear, if Jupiter
the Thunderlord could hold no throne on high
before a war with vicious worldborn Giants,
then, gods, I'll not complain. The hideous crimes
and rank abominations were all worth it.
So heap Pharsalia's dread fields high with corpses,
glut the brute Punic ghost with Latin blood,
let the final combat clash at fateful Munda.
Add to those ma**acres, O Caesar Nero,
starvation at Perugia, Mutina's hardships,
the armada overwhelmed at lethal Leucas
and blood of slave-wars under Etna's slopes
ablaze. Rome owes so much to civil war
as all was done to bring us you, O Caesar.
And when your reign is done for, when you seek
the stars at last, with reveling in the sky,
you will be more than welcome in heaven's palace
on any seat you choose. Whether you want
to seize Jove's scepter, or Apollo's blazing
chariot to circle earth with roving fire,
the world won't fear the transference of suns.
All gods will yield their place to you, and Nature
will let you choose which god to be, and where
in the cosmos to rule from. Only do not
set your throne cold up in the Arctic North
nor at the polar opposite where skies
turn sweltering around the Southern vertex.
Your star would look on Rome with sidelong light.
If you put all your weight on either side
of the unbounded ether, the sky's vault
would buckle in your gravity's great moment.
Stay rather at the midpoint of the heavens
keeping the spheres in equilibrium.
And let that stretch of sky stay clear and blue,
let not one cloud ever stand in Caesar's way.
That day, let humankind sheathe all its swords
to take care of itself, and every nation
love every other. Peace shall flutter proud
over the earth, and shut forevermore
the iron temple-gates of two-faced war.
But you're a force of heaven to me already
and if you breathe your genius through my breast
giving me visionary strength of verse,
why would I trouble that old god who stirs
the mysteries of Delphic seers, or call
Bacchus from sacred Nysa? I need nothing
but Nero to give life to Roman song.
And now my spirit moves me to set forth
the cause of great events. The mind has opened
before me an enormous task, to tell
what drove a people mad, drove them to arms
of battle, and drove peace out of the world.
It was that jealous nemesis, the chain
of fate, the law that nothing stays on top
for long, the hard fall of the mighty: Rome
had grown too great for her own self to bear.
It was as it will be when the final hour
that ends the cycles of the universe,
sunders the cosmic structure and all things
are regressed to primeval chaos: burning
stars will shoot straight into the ocean, earth
refusing to lie flat fling all the waters
up and away, the moon turn to her brother
demanding rule of daylight, tired of driving
her chariot in waxing, waning orbit.
And the whole broken universe's machine
in discord will overthrow the rule of nature.
Great things implode upon themselves. This limit
of growth the gods ordain for all success.