inpendisse pudet lacrimas in funere mundi
mortibus innumeris, ac singula fata sequentem
quaerere letiferum per cuius uiscera uolnus
exierit, quis fusa solo uitalia calcet, 620
ore quis aduerso demissum faucibus ensem
expulerit moriens anima, quis corruat ictus,
quis steterit dum membra cadunt, qui pectore tela
transmittant aut quos campis adfixerit hasta,
quis cruor emissis perruperit aera uenis 625
inque hostis cadat arma sui, quis pectora fratris
caedat et, ut notum possit spoliare cadauer,
abscisum longe mittat caput, ora parentis
quis laceret nimiaque probet spectantibus ira
quem iugulat non esse patrem. mors nulla querella 630
digna sua est, nullosque hominum lugere uacamus.
non istas habuit pugnae Pharsalia partes
quas aliae clades: illic per fata uirorum,
per populos hic Roma perit; quod militis illic,
mors hic gentis erat: sanguis ibi fluxit Achaeus, 635
Ponticus, Assyrius; cunctos haerere cruores
Romanus campisque uetat consistere torrens.
Pharsalia. 7.617-637.
Nell Gardiner
It shames me to have wasted tears on countless deaths
While the world attends her funeral,
And to ask, as I trace individual fates,
Through whose insides the fatal wound went,
Who tramples the vitals levelled to the earth,
Who releases the buried sword from their throat
With their final breath,
Who stumbles at the blow,
Who wavers while their limbs fall,
Who endures arrows in their chest
Or is ploughed by a spear into the plains?
Whose blood from whose veins slices the air,
Falling onto their enemy’s weapons,
Who mangles their brother’s chest
And so not to know the corpse they pick at,
Sends the severed head afar,
Who torments their parent’s face,
Proving by their weight of anger to those watching
That they murder not a father?
No death is worthy of its own lament,
I leave no time to grieve individuals.
Pharsalia is not like other disasters:
There, Rome perished by her men,
Here by her people.
There it was a soldier’s death,
Here, a nation’s loss.
There, Achaea, Pontus, Assyria let their blood:
The Roman flood forbade all other kinds
To cling to the fields and settle.
