Does he take heart from Gaul: For years on years rebellious, and a life Spent there in labour?
or because he fled Rhine's icy torrent and the shifting pools He calls an ocean?
or unchallenged sought Britannia's cliffs; then turned his back in flight?
Or does he boast because his citizens Were driven in arms to leave their hearths and homes?
Ah, vain delusion! not from thee they fled: My steps they follow -- mine, whose conquering signs Swept all the ocean (29), and who, ere the moon Twice filled her orb and waned, compelled to flight The pirate, shrinking from the open sea, And humbly begging for a narrow home In some poor nook on shore.

'Twas I again Who, happier far than Sulla, drave to death (30) That king who, exiled to the deep recess Of Scythian Pontus, held the fates of Rome Still in the balances.

Where is the land That hath not seen my trophies?
Icy waves Of northern Phasis, hot Egyptian shores, And where Syene 'neath its noontide sun Knows shade on neither hand (31): all these have learned To fear Pompeius: and far Baetis' (32) stream, Last of all floods to join the refluent sea.
Arabia and the warlike hordes that dwell Beside the Euxine wave: the famous land That lost the golden fleece; Cilician wastes, And Cappadocian, and the Jews who pray Before an unknown God; Sophene soft -- All felt my yoke.

What conquests now remain, What wars not civil can my kinsman wage ?" No loud acclaim received his words, nor shout Asked for the promised battle: and the chief Drew back the standards, for the soldier's fears Were in his soul alike; nor dared he trust An army, vanquished by the fame alone Of Caesar's powers, to fight for such a prize.
And as some bull, his early combat lost, Forth driven from the herd, in exile roams Through lonely plains or secret forest depths, Whets on opposing trunks his growing horn, And proves himself for battle, till his neck Is ribbed afresh with muscle: then returns, Defiant of the hind, and victor now Leads wheresoe'er he will his lowing bands: Thus Magnus, yielding to a stronger foe, Gave up Italia, and sought in flight Brundusium's sheltering battlements.
Here of old Fled Cretan settlers when the dusky sail (33) Spread the false message of the hero dead; Here, where Hesperia, curving as a bow, Draws back her coast, a little tongue of land Shuts in with bending horns the sounding main.
Yet insecure the spot, unsafe in storm, Were it not sheltered by an isle on which The Adriatic billows dash and fall, And tempests lose their strength: on either hand A craggy cliff opposing breaks the gale That beats upon them, while the ships within Held by their trembling cables ride secure.
Hence to the mariner the boundless deep Lies open, whether for Corcyra's port He shapes his sails, or for Illyria's shore, And Epidamnus facing to the main Ionian.

Here, when raging in his might Fierce Adria whelms in foam Calabria's coast, When clouds tempestuous veil Ceraunus' height, The sailor finds a haven.
When the chief Could find no hope in battle on the soil He now was quitting, and the lofty Alps Forbad Iberia, to his son he spake, The eldest scion of that noble stock: "Search out the far recesses of the earth, Nile and Euphrates, wheresoe'er the fame Of Magnus lives, where, through thy father's deeds, The people tremble at the name of Rome.
Lead to the sea again the pirate bands; Rouse Egypt's kings; Tigranes, wholly mine, And Pharnaces and all the vagrant tribes Of both Armenias; and the Pontic hordes, Warlike and fierce; the dwellers on the hills Rhipaean, and by that dead northern marsh Whose frozen surface bears the loaded wain.
Why further stay thee?
Let the eastern world Sound with the war, all cities of the earth Conquered by me, as vassals, to my camp Send all their levied hosts.