Their votes they will alter. The people is venal; corrupt The Senate; support has its price! And the freedom and worth Of age is decayed, scattered largesse now governs their power; Corrupted by gold, even dignity lies in the dust. Cato defeated and hooted by mobs, but the victor Is sadder, ashamed to have taken the rods from a Cato: In this lay the shame of the nation and character's downfall, 'Twas not the defeat of a man! No! The power and the glory Of Rome were brought low; represented in him was the honor Of sturdy Republican Rome. So, abandoned and wretched, The city has purchased dishonor: has purchased herself! Despoiled by herself, no avenger to wipe out the stigma Twin maelstroms of debt and of usury suck down the commons. No home with clear title, no citizen free from a mortgage, But as some slow wasting disease all unheralded fastens Its hold on the vitals, destroying the vigor of manhood, So, fear of the evils impending, impels them to madness. Despair turns to violence, luxury's ravages needs must Repaired be by bloodshed, for indigence safely can venture. Can art or sane reason rouse wallowing Rome from the offal And break the voluptuous slumber in which she is sunken? Or must it be fury and war and the blood-lust of daggers?" CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTIETH. "Three chieftains did fortune bring forth, whom the fury of battles Destroyed; and interred, each one under a mountain of weapons; The Parthian has Crassus, Pompeius the Great by the waters Of Egypt lies. Julius, ungrateful Rome stained with his life blood. And earth has divided their ashes, unable to suffer The weight of so many tombs. These are the wages of glory! There lies between Naples and Great Puteoli, a chasm Deep cloven, and Cocytus churns there his current; the vapor In fury escapes from the gorge with that lethal spray laden. No green in the aututun is there, no grass gladdens the meadow, The supple twigs never resound with the twittering singing Of birds in the Springtime. But chaos, volcanic black boulders Of pumice lie Happy within their drear setting of cypress. Amidst these infernal surroundings the ruler of Hades Uplifted his head by the funeral flames silhouetted And sprinkled with white from the ashes of corpses; and challenged Winged Fortune in words such as these: 'Oh thou fickle controller Of things upon earth and in heaven, security's foeman, Oh Chance! Oh thou lover eternally faithful to change, and Possession's betrayer, dost own thyself crushed by the power Of Rome? Canst not raise up the tottering mass to its downfall Its strength the young manhood of Rome now despises, and staggers In bearing the booty heaped up by its efforts: behold how