Give peace its laws; respect the prostrate foe;
Abase the lofty, and exalt the low."
One personal sketch the poet's art had reserved to the last. Anchises points out to his visitor the shade that is to be the great Marcus Marcellus, five times consul—the "Sword of Rome," as Fabius was said to be its Shield, in the long wars with Carthage, and the conqueror of Syracuse. By his side moves the figure of an armed youth, tall and beautiful, but whose face is sad, and his eyes fixed on the ground. The company of shadows crowd round him, murmuring their admiration. Who is it? Æneas asks. It is the young Marcellus of the Empire, the hope and promise of Rome—the son of Octavia, sister of Augustus, and destined, as many thought, to be his successor. Unwillingly Anchises replies to his son's question:—
"Ah son! compel me not to speak
The sorrows of our race!
That youth the Fates but just display
- ↑ But none of the recognised translations seem to come so near the spirit of the original as Lord Macaulay's paraphrase—for of course it is only a paraphrase—in his lay of "The Prophecy of Capys:"—
"Leave to the sons of Carthage
The rudder and the oar;
Leave to the Greek his marble nymphs
And scrolls of wordy lore:
Thine, Roman, is the pilum;
Roman, the sword is thine;
The even trench, the bristling mound,
The legion's ordered line."
