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Georgics 1.461–514
Virgil
(Translated by Kimberly Johnson)
(click here for the pdf version)
What the lingering dusk declares, whence
the wind drives sun-tipped clouds, what the sodden southwind
plots—of all, the sun will give you signs. Who dares
to call the sun a liar? It’s often he who warns
that dark insurrection lurks, that perfidy and covert wars ferment.
It’s he who, pitying Rome when Caesar’s flame was snuffed,
shrouded his dazzling head with bloody gloom
and an impious generation feared eternal night.
But in that season the earth too, and the sea’s expanse,
and baleful dogs, and troublous birds
gave signs. How often saw we over Sicilian fields
Aetna to boil, gushing forth from ruptured furnaces,
churning out globs of flame and molten rocks!
Germany heard the crash of arms throughout the sky.
The Alps shook with strange disturbances.
A voice sounded vastly through silent groves, and
sallow specters of astonishing fashion were sighted
under dim nightfall, and beasts—it is unspeakable—
took voice! Rivers halted, land rifted wide,
woeful the ivory wept in temples, and bronzes sweat.
Whirling in frenzied vortices, Eridanus king of rivers
swamped the forests, and through all the downs
swept herds away with their stables. Nor that season
did menacing fibrils cease to show in grim entrails
nor blood to run in wells, nor towered cities
through the night to echo with wolven howls.
Never dropped from fair sky more lightning
nor so often flared dire comets.
Thus Phillipi again saw Roman troops
clash sword with fellow sword among themselves,
and to heaven it was meet that twice Emathia and the wide
steppes of Thrace should glut upon our blood.
Surely time will come when in those fields
the farmer drudging soil with his curved plow
will turn up scabrous spears corroded by rust
or with his heavy hoe strike empty helmets,
and gape at massive bones in upturned graves.
Gods of my fathers, heroes of the land, Romulus
and mother Vesta, protectress of the Tuscan Tiber
and the regnant Roman hill, at least do not forbid
this noble stripling to succor a turvied age.
We’ve long ago atoned with ample blood
for Laomedon’s perjury at Troy, and long the courts
of heaven have begrudged you here among us,
Caesar, grumbling that you overprize your mortal triumphs.
For good and ill have been transposed—so many wars
throughout the world! so massed the forms of sin!
No rightful honor to the plow; the croppers commandeered,
soil weeds to rot; and hooked sickles are forged to rigid swords.
Here Euphrates roils up war, there Germany.
Their mutual treaties shattered, neighbored
cities take up arms. The impious war-god savages the earth,
as when from the starting gate chariots surge
gaining speed lap by lap, and hauling vainly on the leathers
the teamster’s hurtled onward by his horses, and the rig heeds not the reins.
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