with a despot. Draw thou out thy chain
Of lengthening slaughter, and (for such thy fate)
Make good thy liberty through civil war."

The frightened people heard, and as they heard
His words prophetic made them fear the more.
But worse remained; for as on Pindus' slopes
Possessed with fury from the Theban god
Speeds some Bacchante, thus in Roman streets
Behold a matron run, who, in her trance,
Relieves her bosom of the god within.

"Where dost thou snatch me, Paean, to what shore
Through airy regions borne? I see the snows
Of Thracian mountains; and Philippi's plains
Lie broad beneath. But why these battle lines,
No foe to vanquish -- Rome on either hand?
Again I wander 'neath the rosy hues
That paint thine eastern skies, where regal Nile
Meets with his flowing wave the rising tide.
Known to mine eyes that mutilated trunk
That lies upon the sand! Across the seas
By changing whirlpools to the burning climes
Of Libya borne, again I see the hosts
From Thracia brought by fate's command. And now
Thou bear'st me o'er the cloud-compelling Alps
And Pyrenean summits; next to Rome.
There in mid-Senate see the closing scene
Of this foul war in foulest murder done.
Again the factions rise; through all the world
Once more I pass; but give me some new land,
Some other region, Phoebus, to behold!
Washed by the Pontic billows! for these eyes
Already once have seen Philippi's plains!" (28)

The frenzy left her and she speechless fell.

ENDNOTES:

(1) 'The great Emathian conqueror' (Milton's sonnet). Emathia
was part of Macedonia, but the word is used loosely for
Thessaly or Macedonia.
(2) Crassus had been defeated and slain by the Parthians in B.C.
53, four years before this period.
(3) Mr. Froude in his essay entitled "Divus Caesar" hints that
these famous lines may have been written in mockery.
Probably the five years known as the Golden Era of Nero had
passed when they were written: yet the text itself does not
aid such a suggestion; and the view generally taken, namely
that Lucan was in earnest, appears preferable. There were
many who dreamed at the time that the disasters of the Civil
War were being compensated by the wealth and prosperity of
the empire under Nero; and the assurance of universal peace,
then almost realised, which is expressed in lines 69-81,
seems inconsistent with the idea that this passage was
written in irony.