Defeat at Pharsalus (Bellum Civile 7.617-46) Lyrics by Lucan
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When all a world is dying, it is shameful to squander tears on countless deaths, to track individual destinies and ask whose guts each kill-stroke skivered, whose feet trampled his own intestines spilled across the ground, who looked his enemy in the face while forcing the sword out of his throat with dying breath; who crumpled at the first strike, who stood tall as his hacked limbs fell round him, who allowed the javelin to run him clean through, whom the spear pinned wriggling to the plain, whose blood exploded from his veins into the air drenching an enemy combatant's armor, who speared his brother's breast then kicked away the severed head to pick the kin corpse clean, who mutilated his own father's face with such demented rage to convince watchers the man he'd butchered wasn't his own parent. No single death deserves its own lament, No time to mourn the individual. Pharsalus was unlike all prior battles' catastrophes. There Rome fell with men's fates, here with entire peoples'. Soldiers died there but here whole nations perished. Here blood streamed from Greek, Assyrian and Pontic veins, which might have congealed on the field in one cross-ethnic scab, but for a huge deluge of Roman gore. In that unholy battle upon the stinking plains of Thessaly, the peoples all sustained a deeper wound than their own era could endure. Much more than life and safety were lost there. We were made prostrate for eternity. Every age that suffers slavery fell to those swords. But what did grandsons and great-grandsons do to deserve birth in an autocracy? Were ours the blades that fell with fear? Did we snivel behind our shields and hide our throats? The penalty of others' cowardice is hung around our necks today. O Fortune, since then you've only given us more tyrants! Why not at least give us a chance to fight?
About “Defeat at Pharsalus (Bellum Civile 7.617-46)” by Lucan
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