They lavish their spoils! Wealth run mad now brings down their destruction. They build out of gold and their palaces reach to the heavens; The sea is expelled by their moles and their pastures are oceans; They war against Nature in changing the state of creation. They threaten my kingdom! Earth yawns with their tunnels deep driven To furnish the stone for their madmen's foundations; already The mountains are hollowed and now but re-echoing caverns; While man quarries marble to serve his vainglorious purpose The spirits infernal confess that they hope to win Heaven! Arise, then, O Chance, change thy countenance peaceful to warlike And harry the Romans, consign to my kingdom the fallen. Ah, long is it now since my lips were with blood cooled and moistened, Nor has my Tisiphone bathed her blood-lusting body Since Sulla's sword drank to repletion and earth's bristling harvest Grew ripe upon blood and thrust up to the light of the sunshine!'" CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIRST. "He spake ... and attempted to clasp the right hand of Fortuna, But ruptured the crust of the earth, deeply cloven, asunder. Then from her capricious heart Fortune made answer: 'O father Whom Cocytus' deepest abysses obey, if to forecast The future I may, without fear, thy petition shall prosper; For no less consuming the anger that wars in this bosom, The flame no less poignant, that burns to my marrow All favors I gave to the bulwarks of Rome, now, I hate them. My Gifts I repent! The same God who built up their dominion Shall bring down destruction upon it. In burning their manhood My heart shall delight and its blood-lust shall slake with their slaughter. Now Philippi's field I can see strewn with dead of two battles And Thessaly's funeral pyres and Iberia mourning. Already the clangor of arms thrills my ears, and rings loudly: Thou, Lybian Nile, I can see now thy barriers groaning And Actium's gulf and Apollo's darts quailing the warriors! Then, open thy thirsty dominions and summon fresh spirits; For scarce will the ferryman's strength be sufficient to carry The souls of the dead in his skiff: 'tis a fleet that is needed! Thou, Pallid Tisiphone, slake with wide ruin, thy thirsting And tear ghastly wounds: mangled earth sinks to hell and the spirits.'" CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SECOND. "But scarce had she finished, when trembled the clouds; and a gleaming Bright flash of Jove's lightning transfixed them with flame and was gone. The Lord of the Shades blanched with fear, at this bolt of his brother's, Sank back, and drew closely together the gorge in Earth's bosom. By auspices straightway the slaughter of men and the evils