ce. Phasis has now been despoiled

Of birds, its littoral silent, no sound there is heard

Save only the wind as it rustles among the last leaves.

Corruption no less vile is seen in the campus of Mars,

Our quirites are bribed; and for plunder and promise of gain

Their votes they will alter. The people is venal; corrupt

The Senate; support has its price! And the freedom and worth

Of age is decayed, scattered largesse now governs their power;

Corrupted by gold, even dignity lies in the dust.

Cato defeated and hooted by mobs, but the victor

Is sadder, ashamed to have taken the rods from a Cato:

In this lay the shame of the nation and character's downfall,

'Twas not the defeat of a man! No! The power and the glory

Of Rome were brought low; represented in him was the honor

Of sturdy Republican Rome. So, abandoned and wretched,

The city has purchased dishonor: has purchased herself!

Despoiled by herself, no avenger to wipe out the stigma

Twin maelstroms of debt and of usury suck down the commons.

No home with clear title, no citizen free from a mortgage,

But as some slow wasting disease all unheralded fastens

Its hold on the vitals, destroying the vigor of manhood,

So, fear of the evils impending, impels them to madness.

Despair turns to violence, luxury's ravages needs must

Repaired be by bloodshed, for indigence safely can venture.

Can art or sane reason rouse wallowing Rome from the offal

And break the voluptuous slumber in which she is sunken?

Or must it be fury and war and the blood-lust of daggers?"

CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTIETH.

"Three chieftains did fortune bring forth, whom the fury of battles

Destroyed; and interred, each one under a mountain of weapons;

The Parthian has Crassus, Pompeius the Great by the waters

Of Egypt lies. Julius, ungrateful Rome stained with his life blood.

And earth has divided their ashes, unable to suffer

The weight of so many tombs. These are the wages of glory!

There lies between Naples and Great Puteoli, a chasm

Deep cloven, and Cocytus churns there his current; the vapor

In fury escapes from the gorge with that lethal spray laden.

No green in the aututun is there, no grass gladdens the meadow,

The supple twigs