So for no higher cause you waged your wars? You, too, youths, fought for masters, and you were No Roman force, but only Pompey’s band? Since not for royalty you’re toiling now, Since for yourselves, not for your leaders’ gain You live and die, since not for any man You seek to gain the world, since now for you ’Tis safe to conquer, you shrink back from wars, And seek a yoke to press your empty necks, And know not how to live without a king! Yet now you have a cause worth risk for men. Your blood could be for Pompey shed in streams, And do you now refuse your country’s call For lives and swords when liberty is nigh? Of three lords Fortune now has left but one. O shame! The royal palace of the Nile And Parthian soldier’s bow have more than you Upheld the Roman laws. Go now, despise The merit Ptolemy by arms has won! Degenerate soldiers! Who will think that e’er Your hands were red with any battle’s blood? He will believe you quickly turned your backs In flight before him; he will think that you Fled first from dire Philippi’s Thracian field. So go in safety! You have saved your lives, In Cæsar’s judgment, not subdued by arms, Nor yet by siege. O base, unmanly slaves! Your former master dead, go to his heir! Why will you not earn more than life and more Than pardon? Let great Pompey’s wretched wife And let Metellus’ offspring o’er the waves Be borne in chains; take captive Pompey’s sons; Let Ptolemy’s deserts be less than yours! My own head, too, whoever brings and gives The hateful tyrant, reaps no mean reward. Those men will know by my head’s price that they Served no mean standard when they followed mine. Then come, and by great slaughter gain deserts. Mere flight is a base crime.[94]