Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/265

 gained by battle in Leucas ; as much as Octavius won by his blood-dripping sword on the plains of Thessaly ; but then Rome was yet free when she styled him the Parent and Father of his country! Another son of Arpinum used to work for hire upon the Volscian hills, toiling behind a plough not his own; after that, a centurion's knotty staff would be broken over his head if his pick were slow and sluggish in the trench. Yet it is he who faces the Cimbri, and the mightiest perils; alone he saves the trembling city. And so when the ravens, who had never before seen such huge carcasses, flew down upon the slaughtered Cimbri, his high-born colleague is decorated with the second bay.

Plebeian were the souls of the Decii, plebeian were their names; yet they were accepted by the Gods beneath and by Mother Earth in lieu of all the Legions and the allies, and all the youth of Latium, for the Decii were more precious than the hosts whom they saved.

It was one born of a slave who won the robe and diadem and fasces of Quirinus—the last he of our good Kings —whereas the Consul's own sons, who should have dared some great thing for endangered liberty—some deed to be marvelled at by 179