To him a sumptuous feast Was hunger conquered, and the lowly hut, Which scarce kept out the winter, was a home Equal to palaces: a robe of price Such hairy garments as were worn of old: The end of marriage, offspring.

To the State Father alike and husband, right and law He ever followed with unswerving step: No thought of selfish pleasure turned the scale In Cato's acts, or swayed his upright soul.
Meanwhile Pompeius led his trembling host To fields Campanian, and held the walls First founded by the chief of Trojan race (17).
These chose he for the central seat of war, Some troops despatching who might meet the foe Where shady Apennine lifts up the ridge Of mid Italia; nearest to the sky Upsoaring, with the seas on either hand, The upper and the lower.

Pisa's sands Breaking the margin of the Tuscan deep, Here bound his mountains: there Ancona's towers Laved by Dalmatian waves.

Rivers immense, In his recesses born, pass on their course, To either sea diverging.

To the left Metaurus, and Crustumium's torrent, fall And Sena's streams and Aufidus who bursts On Adrian billows; and that mighty flood Which, more than all the rivers of the earth, Sweeps down the soil and tears the woods away And drains Hesperia's springs.