Book III, Elegy 11

Why marvellest thou that a woman sways my life and drags my manhood captive beneath her rule? Why falsely dost thou hurl at me the foul taunt of cowardice, because I cannot snap my chains and break my yoke? 'Tis the mariner best foretells his coming doom, 'tis wounds that teach the soldier fear. I once spake boasts like thine in my past youth: now let my example teach thee to be afraid.

The witch of Colchis drove the fiery bulls beneath the adamantine yoke and sowed battles in the warrior-bearing earth, and closed the fierce, gaping jaws of the guardian snake, that the fleece of gold might go to Aeson's halls. Maeotian Penthesilea once dared on horseback to assail the Danaan ships with her arrows, even she whose bright beauty conquered the conquering hero, when the helm of gold laid bare her brow. Omphale, the maid of Lydia, bathed in the Gygean lake, rose to such renown of beauty that he, who had set up his pillars in the world he had tamed to peace, with horny hands plucked soft tasks of wool. Semiramis stablished Babylon, the Persian's city, in such wise that it rose a solid mass with wall of brick, and two chariots might be sent to meet each other nor graze their sides with touching axles; and through the midst of the citadel which she founded she led Euphrates, and bade Bactra bow its head to her sway.

Why should I tell of heroes, why taunt the gods with sin? Jove brings shame on himself and on his house. Why should I tell of her that of late heaped insults on our arms, that woman who found lovers even among her slaves, and claimed the walls of Rome and the Senate enslaved to her tyranny as a fee from her foul paramour? Guilty Alexandria, land most skilled in guile, and Memphis so often bloodstained with our woe, where the sand robbed Pompey of his three triumphs! No day shall ever free thee of this stain, O Rome! Better for thee, Pompey, had thy funeral gone forth on the Phlegrean plain, or hadst thou been doomed to bow thy neck to thy wife's father! Forsooth the harlot queen of unchaste Canopus, the one disgrace branded on Rome by the race of Philip, dared to match barking Anubis against our Roman Jove, to force Tiber to endure the threats of Nile, to drive out the Roman trumpet with rattling sistrum and with poled barge to pursue the Liburnian galley, to stretch her foul curtains on the Tarpeian rock, and to give judgment amid the arms and statues of Marius. The city high-throned on the seven hills, the queen of all the world, was terrified by a woman's might and feared her threats! What boots it now to have broken the axes of Tarquin, whose proud life brands him with the name of "proud," if we must needs endure a woman's tyranny? Rome, take thy triumph and, saved from doom, implore long life for Augustus. Yet didst thou fly, O queen, to the wandering streams of timorous Nile! Thy hands received the chains of Rome. I saw her arms bitten by the sacred asps, I saw her limbs drink in slumber as it worked its secret way. "Thou needst not have feared me, Rome, with such a citizen to guard thee!" so spake even the tongue that deep draughts of wine had enslaved.

Curtius closed the gulf and made himself an everlasting memorial: Decius brake the battle-line with charging steed; the path of Cocles still tells of the cutting of the bridge: and one there is who won his name from a raven. The gods founded these walls, and the gods protect them; while Caesar lives scarce should Rome fear the wrath of Jove! Now where are Scipio's fleets, where the standards of Camillus, or thou, O Bosporus, so lately captured by the might of Pompey? Where are the spoils of Hannibal and trophies of conquered Syphax, and Pyrrhus' glory broken beneath our feet? Leucadian Apollo shall tell how the hosts were turned to flight: one day of war swept away so vast an armament! But do thou, O mariner, whether thou seekest or leavest the haven, remember Caesar o'er all the Ionian main.