Page:The Pharsalia of Lucan; (IA cu31924026485809).pdf/91

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Book III
MASSILIA
67
No hand had touched: all that the Punic foeAnd Perses and Philippus conquered gave,And all the gold which Pyrrhus panic-struckLeft when he fled: that gold,[1] the price of Rome,Which yet Fabricius sold not, and the hoardLaid up by saving sires; the tribute sentBy Asia's richest nations; and the wealthWhich conquering Metellus brought from Crete,And Cato[2] bore from distant Cyprus home;And last, the riches torn from captive kingsAnd borne before Pompeius when he cameIn frequent triumph. Thus was robbed the shrine, 190And Cæsar first brought poverty to Rome.Meanwhile all nations of the earth were movedTo share in Magnus' fortunes and the war,And in his fated ruin. Græcia sent,Nearest of all, her succours to the host.From Cirrha and Parnassus' double peakAnd from Amphissa, Phocis sent her youth:Boeotian leaders muster in the meadsBy Dirce laved, and where Cephisus rollsGifted with fateful power his stream along: 200And where Alpheus, who beyond the sea[3]In fount Sicilian seeks the day again.Pisa deserted stands, and Œta, lovedBy Hercules of old; Dodona's oaksAre left to silence by the sacred train,
  1. ↑ That is, the gold offered by Pyrrhus, and refused by Fabricius, which, after the final defeat of Pyrrhus, came into the possession of the victors.
  2. ↑ See Plutarch, 'Cato,' 34, 39.
  3. ↑ It was generally believed that the river Alphāus of the Peloponnesus passed under the sea and reappeared in the fountain of Arethusa at Syracuse. A goblet was said to have been thrown into the river in Greece, and to have reappeared in the Sicilian fountain. See the note in Grote's 'History of Greece,' Edition 1862, vol. ii., p. 8.
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