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ll. 460–514.] ghastly comets so often blaze. Therefore a second time Philippi saw Roman lines meet in shock of equal arms, and our lords forbade not that Emathia and the broad plains of Haemus should twice be fattened with our blood. Surely a time too shall come when in those borders the husbandman, as his crooked plough labours the soil, will find spears eaten away with scaling rust, or strike on empty helms with his heavy mattock, and marvel at mighty bones dug up from their tombs. Gods of our fathers, of our country, and thou Romulus, and Vesta, mother who keepest Tuscan Tiber and the Roman Palatine, forbid not at least that this our prince may succour a ruined world! Long enough already has our life-blood recompensed Laomedon's perjury at Troy; long already the heavenly palace, O Caesar, grudges thee to us, and murmurs that thou shouldst care for human triumphs, where right and wrong are confounded, where all these wars cover the world, where wickedness is so manifold and the plough's meed of honour is gone; the fields thicken with weeds, for the tillers are marched away, and bent sickles are forged into the stiff swordblade: here the Euphrates, there Germany heaves with war; neighbouring cities rush into arms one against another over broken laws: the merciless War-God rages through all the world: even as when chariots bursting from their barriers quicken lap by lap, and, vainly tugging at the curb, the driver is swept on by his horses, and the car hearkens not to the rein.