What must then have been thy despair, Alaric, when ruin overwhelmed thy wealth and all that gear that years of robbing had won thee, when there struck thine ear the cries of that wife of thine who, too confident in her long unconquered husband, demanded in her madness the jewelled necklaces of Italian matrons for her proud neck and Roman girls for her tire-women! The fair girls [59] At Adrianople, Aug. 9, 378; see Introduction, p. vii. * * * * * Page 172 scilicet Argolicas Ephyreiadasque puellas coeperat et pulchras iam fastidire Lacaenas. 630 sed dea quae nimiis obstat Rhamnusia votis ingemuit flexitque rotam: domat aspera victos pauperies, unoque die Romana rependit quidquid ter denis acies amisimus annis. O celebranda mihi cunctis Pollentia saeclis! 635 o meritum nomen! felicibus apta triumphis! virtutis fatale solum, memorabile bustum barbariae! nam saepe locis ac finibus illis plena lacessito rediit vindicta Quirino. illic Oceani stagnis excita supremis 640 Cimbrica tempestas alias emissa per Alpes isdem procubuit campis. iam protinus aetas adveniens geminae gentis permisceat ossa et duplices signet titulos commune tropaeum: “hic Cimbros fortesque Getas, Stilichone peremptos et Mario claris ducibus, tegit Itala tellus. 646 discite vesanae Romam non temnere gentes.” * * * * * Page 173 of Greece from Corinth and Sparta were, forsooth, not good enough now for so great a lady. But Nemesis, the goddess worshipped at Rhamnus, she whose pleasure it is to check unbridled desire, was wroth and turned her wheel; harsh poverty overwhelms the vanquished, and in one day Rome’s arm requites all that we have lost in thirty years. Thy glory, Pollentia, shall live for ever; worthy is thy name to be celebrated by my song, a fit theme for rejoicing and for triumph. Fate pre-ordained thee to be the scene of our victory and the burial-place of the barbarians. Full often have thy fields and plains seen ample vengeance exacted for aggression against the descendants of Romulus. ’Twas there, in that same countryside, that the Cimbric hordes, bearing down upon Rome from Ocean’s farthest shore and crossing the Alps by another pass, suffered their final defeat. The coming generation should mingle the bones of these two races and engrave with this one inscription the monument which records our double victory: “Here beneath the soil of Italy lie the bodies of brave Cimbri and Getae: their death they owed to our famous generals Marius and Stilicho. Learn, presumptuous peoples, not to despise Rome.” * * * * * Page 174 CARMINUM MINORUM CORPUSCULUM I. (XIII.) _Ad Stilichonem._