第58章

What erst was of a price, becomes at last A discard of no honour; whilst another Succeeds to glory, issuing from contempt, And day by day is sought for more and more, And, when 'tis found, doth flower in men's praise, Objects of wondrous honour.

Now, Memmius, How nature of iron discovered was, thou mayst Of thine own self divine.Man's ancient arms Were hands, and nails and teeth, stones too and boughs-Breakage of forest trees- and flame and fire, As soon as known.Thereafter force of iron And copper discovered was; and copper's use Was known ere iron's, since more tractable Its nature is and its abundance more.

With copper men to work the soil began, With copper to rouse the hurly waves of war, To straw the monstrous wounds, and seize away Another's flocks and fields.For unto them, Thus armed, all things naked of defence Readily yielded.Then by slow degrees The sword of iron succeeded, and the shape Of brazen sickle into scorn was turned:

With iron to cleave the soil of earth they 'gan, And the contentions of uncertain war Were rendered equal.

And, lo, man was wont Armed to mount upon the ribs of horse And guide him with the rein, and play about With right hand free, oft times before he tried Perils of war in yoked chariot;And yoked pairs abreast came earlier Than yokes of four, or scythed chariots Whereinto clomb the men-at-arms.And next The Punic folk did train the elephants-Those curst Lucanian oxen, hideous, The serpent-handed, with turrets on their bulks-To dure the wounds of war and panic-strike The mighty troops of Mars.Thus Discord sad Begat the one Thing after other, to be The terror of the nations under arms, And day by day to horrors of old war She added an increase.

Bulls, too, they tried In war's grim business; and essayed to send Outrageous boars against the foes.And some Sent on before their ranks puissant lions With armed trainers and with masters fierce To guide and hold in chains- and yet in vain, Since fleshed with pell-mell slaughter, fierce they flew, And blindly through the squadrons havoc wrought, Shaking the frightful crests upon their heads, Now here, now there.Nor could the horsemen calm Their horses, panic-breasted at the roar, And rein them round to front the foe.With spring The infuriate she-lions would up-leap Now here, now there; and whoso came apace Against them, these they'd rend across the face;And others unwitting from behind they'd tear Down from their mounts, and twining round them, bring Tumbling to earth, o'ermastered by the wound, And with those powerful fangs and hooked claws Fasten upon them.Bulls would toss their friends, And trample under foot, and from beneath Rip flanks and bellies of horses with their horns, And with a threat'ning forehead jam the sod;And boars would gore with stout tusks their allies, Splashing in fury their own blood on spears Splintered in their own bodies, and would fell In rout and ruin infantry and horse.

For there the beasts-of-saddle tried to scape The savage thrusts of tusk by shying off, Or rearing up with hoofs a-paw in air.

In vain- since there thou mightest see them sink, Their sinews severed, and with heavy fall Bestrew the ground.And such of these as men Supposed well-trained long ago at home, Were in the thick of action seen to foam In fury, from the wounds, the shrieks, the flight, The panic, and the tumult; nor could men Aught of their numbers rally.For each breed And various of the wild beasts fled apart Hither or thither, as often in wars to-day Flee those Lucanian oxen, by the steel Grievously mangled, after they have wrought Upon their friends so many a dreadful doom.

(If 'twas, indeed, that thus they did at all:

But scarcely I'll believe that men could not With mind foreknow and see, as sure to come, Such foul and general disaster.- This We, then, may hold as true in the great All, In divers worlds on divers plan create,-Somewhere afar more likely than upon One certain earth.) But men chose this to do Less in the hope of conquering than to give Their enemies a goodly cause of woe, Even though thereby they perished themselves, Since weak in numbers and since wanting arms.

Now, clothes of roughly inter-plaited strands Were earlier than loom-wove coverings;The loom-wove later than man's iron is, Since iron is needful in the weaving art, Nor by no other means can there be wrought Such polished tools- the treadles, spindles, shuttles, And sounding yarn-beams.And nature forced the men, Before the woman kind, to work the wool:

For all the male kind far excels in skill, And cleverer is by much- until at last The rugged farmer folk jeered at such tasks, And so were eager soon to give them o'er To women's hands, and in more hardy toil To harden arms and hands.