Wert, Thracia, thou.
Our only battlefield, no sailor's hand Upon thy shore should make his cable fast; No spade should turn, the husbandman should flee Thy fields, the resting-place of Roman dead; No lowing kine should graze, nor shepherd dare To leave his fleecy charge to browse at will On fields made fertile by our mouldering dust; All bare and unexplored thy soil should lie, As past man's footsteps, parched by cruel suns, Or palled by snows unmelting! But, ye gods, Give us to hate the lands which bear the guilt; Let not all earth be cursed, though not all Be blameless found.
'Twas thus that Munda's fight And blood of Mutina, and Leucas' cape, And sad Pachynus, (30) made Philippi pure.
ENDNOTES: (1) "It is, methinks, a morning full of fate! It riseth slowly, as her sullen car Had all the weight of sleep and death hung at it!" ...
And her sick head is bound about with clouds As if she threatened night ere noon of day." -- Ben Jonson, "Catiline", i., 1.
(2) See Book VI., 577.
(3) As to the sun finding fuel in the clouds, see Book I., line 471.
(4) Pompeius triumphed first in 81 B.C.for his victories in Sicily and Africa, at the age of twenty-four.

Sulla at first objected, but finally yielded and said, "Let him triumph then in God's name." The triumph for the defeat of Sertorius was not till 71 B.C., in which year Pompeius was elected Consul along with Crassus.

(Compare Book IX., 709.) (5) These two lines are taken from Ben Jonson's "Catiline", act v., scene 6.
(6) The volcanic district of Campania, scene of the fabled battle of the giants.

(See Book IV., 666.) (7) Henceforth to be the standards of the Emperor.
(8) A lake at the foot of Mount Ossa.

Pindus, Ossa, Olympus, and, above all, Haemus (the Balkans) were at a long distance from Pharsalia.