Hard by the fane Where dwells the goddess and the sacred fire, Fell aged Scaevola, though that gory hand (8) Had spared him, but the feeble tide of blood Still left the flame alive upon the hearth.
That selfsame year the seventh time restored (9) The Consul's rods; that year to Marius brought The end of life, when he at Fortune's hands All ills had suffered; all her goods enjoyed.
"And what of those who at the Sacriport (10) And Colline gate were slain, then, when the rule Of Earth and all her nations almost left This city for another, and the chiefs Who led the Samnite hoped that Rome might bleed More than at Caudium's Forks she bled of old?
Then came great Sulla to avenge the dead, And all the blood still left within her frame Drew from the city; for the surgeon knife Which shore the cancerous limbs cut in too deep, And shed the life stream from still healthy veins.
True that the guilty fell, but not before All else had perished.

Hatred had free course And anger reigned unbridled by the law.
The victor's voice spake once; but each man struck Just as he wished or willed.

The fatal steel Urged by the servant laid the master low.
Sons dripped with gore of sires; and brothers fought For the foul trophy of a father slain, Or slew each other for the price of blood.
Men sought the tombs and, mingling with the dead, Hoped for escape; the wild beasts' dens were full.
One strangled died; another from the height Fell headlong down upon the unpitying earth, And from the encrimsoned victor snatched his death: One built his funeral pyre and oped his veins, And sealed the furnace ere his blood was gone.
Borne through the trembling town the leaders' heads Were piled in middle forum: hence men knew Of murders else unpublished.

Not on gates Of Diomedes (11), tyrant king of Thrace, Nor of Antaeus, Libya's giant brood, Were hung such horrors; nor in Pisa's hall Were seen and wept for when the suitors died.
Decay had touched the features of the slain When round the mouldering heap, with trembling steps The grief-struck parents sought and stole their dead.
I, too, the body of my brother slain Thought to remove, my victim to the peace Which Sulla made, and place his loved remains On the forbidden pyre.

The head I found, But not the butchered corse.
"Why now renew The tale of Catulus's shade appeased?
And those dread tortures which the living frame Of Marius (12) suffered at the tomb of him Who haply wished them not?
Pierced, mangled, torn -- Nor speech nor grasp was left: his every limb Maimed, hacked and riven; yet the fatal blow The murderers with savage purpose spared.
'Twere scarce believed that one poor mortal frame Such agonies could bear e'er death should come.
Thus crushed beneath some ruin lie the dead; Thus shapeless from the deep are borne the drowned.
Why spoil delight by mutilating thus, The head of Marius?
To please Sulla's heart That mangled visage must be known to all.
Fortune, high goddess of Praeneste's fane, Saw all her townsmen hurried to their deaths In one fell instant.