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.The whole contraption of the world ripped apartshall riot, confounding its treaties in discord.Great things rush to ruin: the powers that give bountyhave set this limit on increase.Not to any foreignnations did Fortune lend her envy to use 90against the people ruling on land and sea.Made slaves of three masters, you caused the damage,Rome, with fatal bonds of tyranny never beforeloosed against the crowd.Foul concord! Blindedby depths of greed! What use to unite your strengthto hold the world in common? As long as earthshall light on sea and air on earth, and laborskeep the Sun revolving, night following daythrough the same sum of signs, no pledge to reignas peers will hold.All power is impatient of equals.100Don’t search the foreign nations for examplesto prove that this is fate.A brother’s bloodsoaked Rome’s first walls.Nor were land and seathe prize then for such fury: a measly asylumunited its lords in a strife that divided them.Their discordant concord held out for a time—peace in spite of the chiefs.The only delayon certain war was Crassus in the middle.Just as Corinth’s isthmus cuts the waves, and keepsthe twin Greek seas apart, not allowed to meet, 110but take that stretch away and the Ionianwould pummel the Aegean; so, too, the savagearms of chiefs that Crassus parted, when he methis miserable doom—he poured his Latin bloodout in Carrhae, staining that Assyrian land—the Parthian defeat unleashed Roman furies.(So your ranks achieved more than you believed,Arsacides: you gave those you beat a civil war.)Iron divided the kingdom.The fortuneof a people—so powerful they possessed 120both lands and sea, the whole entire world—just wasn’t big enough for two.The marriage vows,the torches made funereal by a dire omen,were null and void when Julia joined the shades,cut off by the cruel hand of the Fates.Becauseif they had let you linger longer in the light,you alone might have held in check your fatherand your raging husband, joined their hands—though armed,their swords put down—as when the Sabine womenstood in between and joined fathers to sons-in-law.130Your death broke the faith; the chiefs could start the war.Their rivalry in valor gave them motives:Magnus, you fear your former triumphs might be dimmedby novel exploits, that your laurels for the piratesmight give way before the conquered Gauls.And youare being roused by skill, your series of spoils,and a fortune that cannot stand to be second place.Caesar could bear none better, Pompey no equal.Which one took up arms more justly? Knowing thatis not allowed—a high judge acquits each one: 140Gods favored the victor, but Cato the lost cause.Nor were the rivals peers.One verged on old age,was calmer, more sedate from wearing the toga;in peace he’d unlearned leadership, now seekingpopular fame through benefactions, moved byshifting fashions, pleased by applause in his theater.Trusting bygone fortune, he never recruitedany fresh forces.He stands in his great name’s shadow.Like a mighty oak in a bountiful field,weighed down with a people’s old war spoils 150and gifts devoted by leaders, its strong rootsno longer holding it, just its sheer fixed mass,spreading its naked branches through the air,its trunk and not its boughs now casting shadow.And though it nods, about to fall in the breeze,and many strong young trees rise up around it,it alone is honored.Whereas with Caesar,no mere name and leader’s fame was his, but valorthat could not stay in place, and not to conquerin war was his only shame; sharp, intractable, 160responsive to his prospects and his rages,never afraid a drawn sword might be reckless;he followed up successes, pressed the favorof his star, shoved hard obstructions to his goal—making his way with ruin was his joy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]