But Caesar cried: "Hold back your weapons, soldiers, from the foe, Strike not the breast advancing; let the war Cost me no blood; he falls not without price Who with his life-blood challenges the fray.
Scorning their own base lives and hating light, To Caesar's loss they rush upon their death, Nor heed our blows.

But let this frenzy pass, This madman onset; let the wish for death Die in their souls." Thus to its embers shrank The fire within when battle was denied, And fainter grew their rage until the night Drew down her starry veil and sank the sun.
Thus keener fights the gladiator whose wound Is recent, while the blood within the veins Still gives the sinews motion, ere the skin Shrinks on the bones: but as the victor stands His fatal thrust achieved, and points the blade Unfaltering, watching for the end, there creeps Torpor upon the limbs, the blood congeals About the gash, more faintly throbs the heart, And slowly fading, ebbs the life away.
Raving for water now they dig the plains Seeking for hidden fountains, not with spade And mattock only searching out the depths, But with the sword; they hack the stony heights, In shafts that reach the level of the plain.
No further flees from light the pallid wretch Who tears the bowels of the earth for gold.
Yet neither riven stones revealed a spring, Nor streamlet whispered from its hidden source; To water trickled on the gravel bed, Nor dripped within the cavern.

Worn at length With labour huge, they crawl to light again, After such toil to fall to thirst and heat The readier victims: this was all they won.
All food they loathe; and 'gainst their deadly thirst Call famine to their aid.

Damp clods of earth They squeeze upon their mouths with straining hands.
Where'er on foulest mud some stagnant slime Or moisture lies, though doomed to die they lap With greedy tongues the draught their lips had loathed Had life been theirs to choose.

Beast-like they drain The swollen udder, and where milk was not, They sucked the life-blood forth.