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| Hannibal's celebrated feat inwards crossing the Alps with war elephants passed into European legend: detail of a fresco past times Jacopo Ripanda, ca. 1510, Capitoline Museums, Rome. |
Put Hannibal inwards the scales: how many pounds volition that peerless
General grade upwards today? This is the homo for whom Africa
Was also small-scale a continent, though it stretched from the surf-beaten
Ocean shores of Kingdom of Morocco due east to the stormy Nile,
To tribal Ethiopia, together with novel elephants’ habitats.
Now Espana swells his empire, similar a shot he surmounts
The Pyrenees. Nature sets inwards his path
High Alpine passes, blizzards of snow: only he splits
The really rocks asunder, moves mountains amongst vinegar.
Now Italia is his, yet nevertheless he forces on:
‘We convey accomplished nothing,’ he cries,’ till nosotros convey stormed
The gates of Rome, till our Carthaginian standard
Is laid upwards inwards the City’s heart.’ H5N1 fine sight it must convey been,
Fit dependent champaign for caricature — the one-eyed commander
Perched on his monstrous beast! Alas, alas for glory,
What an goal was here: the defeat, the ignominious
Headlong flying into exile, everyone gawping at
The once-mighty Hannibal turned humble hanger-on,
Sitting exterior the door of a piffling Eastern despot
Till His Majesty deign to wake. No sword, no spear,
No battle-flung stone was to snuff the fiery spirit
That i time had wrecked a world: those crushing defeats,
Those rivers of spilt blood were all wiped out past times a
Ring, a poisoned ring. On, on, you lot madman, drive
Over your brutal Alps, to thrill immature schoolboys
And provide a topic for speech-day recitations!
-- Juvenal, Satire X, lines 147-67 (Translated past times Peter Green)
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