James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
August 30The Death of Cleopatra
By Horace (65 B.C.8 B.C.)Ode XXXVII
(Died August 30, 30
D
With joyous footstep beat the earth,
And spread before the War-God’s shrine
The Salian feast, the sacrificial wine.
Strong draughts of Cæcuban long stored,
Till now forbidden. Fill the bowl!
For she is fallen, that great Egyptian Queen,
With all her crew contaminate and obscene,
Who, mad with triumph, in her pride,
The manly might of Rome defied,
And vowed destruction to the Capitol.
With beak unerring strikes the dove,
Or as the hunter tracks the deer
Over Hæmonian plains of snow,
Thus Cæsar came. Then on her royal state
With Mareotic fumes inebriate,
A shadow fell of fate and fear,
And thro’ the lurid glow
From all her burning galleys shed
She turned her last surviving bark and fled.
She sought her doom: far nobler ’twas to die
Than like a panther caged in Roman bonds to lie.
The sword she feared not. In her realm once more,
Serene among deserted fanes,
Unmoved mid vacant halls she stood;
Then to the aspic gave her darkening veins,
And sucked the death into her blood.
To bow her haughty head to Roman scorn,
Discrowned, and yet a Queen; a captive chained;
A woman desolate and forlorn.