Page:The Pharsalia of Lucan; (IA cu31924026485809).pdf/70
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46
PHARSALIA
Book II
Upsoaring, with the seas on either hand,The upper and the lower. Pisa's sandsBreaking the margin of the Tuscan deep,Here bound his mountains: there Ancona's towersLaved by Dalmatian waves. Rivers immense,In his recesses born, pass on their course,To either sea diverging. To the leftMetaurus, and Crustumium's torrent, fallAnd Sena's streams and Aufidus who burstsOn Adrian billows; and that mighty flood 460Which, more than all the rivers of the earth,Sweeps down the soil and tears the woods awayAnd drains Hesperia's springs. In fabled loreHis banks were first by poplar shade enclosed:[1]And when by Phæthon the waning dayWas drawn in path transverse, and all the heavenBlazed with his car aflame, and from the depthsOf inmost earth were rapt all other floods,Padus still rolled in pride of stream along.Nile were no larger, but that o'er the sand 470Of level Egypt he spreads out his waves;Nor Ister, if he sought the Scythian mainUnhelped upon his journey through the worldBy tributary waters not his own.But on the right hand Tiber has his source,Deep-flowing Rutuba, Vulturnus swift,And Sarnus breathing vapours of the nightRise there, and Liris with Vestinian waveStill gliding through Marica's shady grove,And Siler flowing through Salernian meads: 480And Macra's swift unnavigable stream
- ↑ Phaethon's sisters, who yoked the horses of the Sun to the chariot for their brother, were turned into poplars. Phaethon was flung by Jupiter into the river Po.