THE COVER DESIGN IS BY ELIHU VEDDER UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME LAODICE AND DANAË _Play in Verse_ By _Gordon Bottomley_ IMAGES--OLD AND NEW _Poems_ By _Richard Aldington_ THE ENGLISH TONGUE AND OTHER POEMS By _Lewis Worthington Smith_ FIVE MEN AND POMPEY _Dramatic Portraits_ By _Stephen Vincent Benét_ HORIZONS _Poems_ By _Robert Alden Sanborn_ THE TRAGEDY _A Fantasy in Verse_ By _Gilbert Moyle_ FIVE MEN AND POMPEY _A Series of Dramatic Portraits_ BY STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT [Illustration] BOSTON THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY 1915 _Copyright, 1915, by_ THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY THE FOUR SEAS PRESS BOSTON AND NORWOOD CONTENTS THE LAST BANQUET 9 LUCULLUS DINES-- 17 THE FORLORN CAMPAIGN 23 AD ATTICUM 31 DE BELLO CIVILI 37 AFTER PHARSALIA 45 THE LAST BANQUET THE LAST BANQUET [SERTORIUS SPEAKS. B. C. 72] Twelve years! Twelve years of striving! and at last My power is--secure? Still Pompey lives And has an army and Metellus strives To wipe out his defeats. The net is cast: Cast, and draws ever tighter: and my men Grumble and mutter, near to mutiny. Perpenna stirs up treason: like a fen Of black and quaking marshes, my own camp Boils up all foulness, gapes to swallow me. The black death-chariot waits, the coursers stamp-- Yet I have made a law, have curbed the tribes, Built up a senate, founded schools, withstood For twelve long years the iron arm of Rome. I have not spared my time, my gold, my blood. And now all vanishes in plots and gibes-- I love this warm, brown land; it is my home. And yet--to see the Forum once again! Ah, Nydia! Nydia! Had you not died I could have crossed the Alps, have crushed these men, These unclean vultures, tearing at Rome’s side; I could have brought back the Republic--then. You died. I still fight on, but I am old. Pompey is young, and though I beat him now, He will be victor, as the end will show. Ah, Plancus, enter! Is the night so cold That you need shroud yourself in that great cloak? You too, Perpenna, Cimon, you who broke So bravely through the foe, you fear a draught? Be seated, friends!