Defeat at Pharsalus Bellum Civile 7.617-46
When all a world is dying, it is shameful
to squander tears on countless deaths, to track
individual destinies and ask
whose guts each kill-stroke skivered, whose feet trampled
his own intestines spilled across the ground,
who looked his enemy in the face while forcing
the sword out of his throat with dying breath;
who crumpled at the first strike, who stood tall
as his hacked limbs fell round him, who allowed
the javelin to run him clean through, whom
the spear pinned wriggling to the plain, whose blood
exploded from his veins into the air
drenching an enemy combatant's armor,
who speared his brother's breast then kicked away
the severed head to pick the kin corpse clean,
who mutilated his own father's face
with such demented rage to convince watchers
the man he'd butchered wasn't his own parent.
No single death deserves its own lament,
No time to mourn the individual.
Pharsalus was unlike all prior battles'
catastrophes. There Rome fell with men's fates,
here with entire peoples'. Soldiers died there
but here whole nations perished. Here blood streamed
from Greek, Assyrian and Pontic veins,
which might have congealed on the field in one
cross-ethnic scab, but for a huge deluge
of Roman gore.
In that unholy battle
upon the stinking plains of Thessaly,
the peoples all sustained a deeper wound
than their own era could endure. Much more
than life and safety were lost there. We were
made prostrate for eternity. Every age
that suffers slavery fell to those swords.
But what did grandsons and great-grandsons do
to deserve birth in an autocracy?
Were ours the blades that fell with fear? Did we
snivel behind our shields and hide our throats?
The penalty of others' cowardice
is hung around our necks today.
O Fortune,
since then you've only given us more tyrants!
Why not at least give us a chance to fight?