trength the young manhood of Rome now despises, and staggers

In bearing the booty heaped up by its efforts: behold how

They lavish their spoils! Wealth run mad now brings down their
destruction.

They build out of gold and their palaces reach to the heavens;

The sea is expelled by their moles and their pastures are oceans;

They war against Nature in changing the state of creation.

They threaten my kingdom! Earth yawns with their tunnels deep
driven

To furnish the stone for their madmen's foundations; already

The mountains are hollowed and now but re-echoing caverns;

While man quarries marble to serve his vainglorious purpose

The spirits infernal confess that they hope to win Heaven!

Arise, then, O Chance, change thy countenance peaceful to warlike

And harry the Romans, consign to my kingdom the fallen.

Ah, long is it now since my lips were with blood cooled and
moistened,

Nor has my Tisiphone bathed her blood-lusting body

Since Sulla's sword drank to repletion and earth's bristling harvest

Grew ripe upon blood and thrust up to the light of the sunshine!'"

CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIRST.

"He spake ... and attempted to clasp the right hand of Fortuna,

But ruptured the crust of the earth, deeply cloven, asunder.

Then from her capricious heart Fortune made answer: 'O father

Whom Cocytus' deepest abysses obey, if to forecast

The future I may, without fear, thy petition shall prosper;

For no less consuming the anger that wars in this bosom,

The flame no less poignant, that burns to my marrow All favors

I gave to the bulwarks of Rome, now, I hate them. My

Gifts I repent! The same God who built up their dominion

Shall bring down destruction upon it. In burning their manhood

My heart shall delight and its blood-lust shall slake with their
slaughter.

Now Philippi's field I can see strewn with dead of two battles

And Thessaly's funeral pyres and Iberia mourning.

Already the clangor of arms thrills my ears, and rings loudly:

Thou, Lybian Nile, I can see now thy barriers groaning

And Actium's gulf and Apollo's darts quailing the warriors!

Then, open thy thirsty dominions and summon fresh spirits;

For scarce will the ferryman's strength be sufficient to carry