Good laws enacting on a peaceful throne;
The scales of heavenly justice holding high,
With steady hand, and a discerning eye.
Then vaults upon his car, and to the spheres,
Swift, as a flying shaft, Rome’s founder bears.
The parts more pure, in rising are refined,
The gross and perishable lag behind.
His shrine in purple vestments stands in view;
He looks a god, and is Quirinus now.
Assumption of Hersilia
A seat in the celestial mansions is assigned to Hersilia, the wile of Romulus, who assumes the name of Ora.
Ere long the goddess of the nuptial bed,
With pity moved, sends Iris in her stead
To sad Hersilia. Thus the meteor maid:
“Chaste relict! in bright truth to heaven allied,
The Sabines’ glory, and the sex’s pride;
Honour’d on earth, and worthy of the love
Of such a spouse, as now resides above,
Some respite to thy killing griefs afford;
And if thou wouldst once more behold thy lord,
Retire to yon steep mount, with groves o’erspread,
Which with an awful gloom his temples shade.”
With fear the modest matron lifts her eyes,
And to the bright ambassadress replies:
“Oh goddess, yet to mortal eyes unknown,
But sure thy various charms confess thee one:
Oh quick to Romulus thy votress bear,
With looks of love he’ll smile away my care:
In whate’er orb he shines, my heaven is there.”
Then hastes with Iris to the holy grove;
And up the Mount Quirinal as they move
A lambent flame glides downward through the air,
And brightens with a blaze Hersilia’s hair.
Together on the bounding ray they rise,
And shoot a gleam of light along the skies.
With opening arms Quirinus met his bride,
Now Ora named, and press’d her to his side.
Book XV
Pythagorean Philosophy
The Pythagorean system of philosophy, which is here minutely described, is adopted and taught by Numa, who is chosen by the Romans to be the successor of Romulus.
A king is sought to guide the growing state,
One able to support the public weight,
And fill the throne where Romulus had sate.
Renown, which oft bespeaks the public voice,
Had recommended Numa to their choice:
A peaceful pious prince; who not content
To know the Sabine rites, his study bent
To cultivate his mind; to learn the laws
Of nature, and explore their hidden cause.
Urged by this care, his country he forsook,
And to Crotona thence his journey took.
Arrived, he first inquired the founder’s name
Of this new colony, and whence he came.
Then thus a senior of the place replies:
(Well read, and curious of antiquities:)
“ ’Tis said, Alcides hither took his way
From Spain, and drove along his conquer’d prey;
Then, leaving in the fields his grazing cows,
He sought himself some hospitable house;
Good Croton entertain’d his godlike guest;
While he repair’d his weary limbs with rest.
The hero, thence departing, bless’d the place;
‘And here,’ he said, ‘in lime’s revolving race,
A rising town shall take his name from thee.’
Revolving time fulfill’d the prophecy.
For Myscelos, the justest man on earth,
Alemon’s son, at Argos had his birth.
Him Hercules, arm’d with his club of oak,
O’ershadow’d in a dream, and thus bespoke:
‘Go, leave thy native soil, and make abode
Where Aesaris rolls down his rapid flood.’
He said; and sleep forsook him, and the god.
Trembling he waked, and rose with anxious heart;
His country laws forbade him to depart.
What should he do? ’twas death to go away,
And the god menaced if he dared to stay.
All day he doubted, and when night came on,
Sleep, and the same forewarning dream, begun:
Once more the god stood threatening o’er his head:
With added curses if he disobey’d.
Twice warn’d, he studied flight; but would convey
At once his person and his wealth away:
Thus while he linger’d his design was heard;
A speedy process form’d, and death declared.
Witness there needed none of his offence;
Against himself the wretch was evidence:
Condemn’d, and destitute of human aid,
To him for whom he suffer’d thus he pray’d:
“ ‘Oh power, who hast deserved in heaven a throne,
Not given, but by thy labours made thy own,
Pity thy suppliant, and protect his cause,
Whom thou hast made obnoxious to the laws.’
“A custom was of old, and still remains,
Which life or death by suffrages ordains:
White stones and black within an urn are cast;
The first absolve, but fate is in the last.
The judges to the common urn bequeath
Their votes, and drop the sable signs of death;
The box receives all black, but, pour’d from thence,
The stones came candid forth the hue of innocence.
Thus Alemonides his safety won,
Preserved from death by Alcumena’s son:
Then to his kinsman god his vows he pays,
And cuts with prosperous gales the Ionian seas:
He leaves Tarentum favour’d by the wind,
And Thurine bays, and Temises, behind;
Soft Sybaris, and all the capes that stand
Along the shore, he makes in sight of land;
Still doubling, and still coasting, till he found
The mouth of Aesaris, and promised ground;
Then saw, where, on the margin of the flood,
The tomb that held the bones of Croton stood:
Here, by the gods’ command, he built, and wall’d
The place predicted; and Crotona call’d.
Thus fame, from time to time, delivers down
The sure tradition of the Italian town.
“Here dwelt the man divine, whom Samos bore,
But now self-banish’d from his native shore,
Because he hated tyrants, nor could bear
The chains, which none but servile souls will wear.
He, though from heaven remote, to heaven could move,
With strength of mind, and tread the abyss above;
And penetrate, with his interior light,
Those upper depths which nature hid from sight:
And what he had observed and learn’d from thence,
Loved in familiar language to dispense.
“The crowd with silent admiration stand,
And heard him as they heard their god’s command;
While he discoursed of Heaven’s mysterious laws,
The world’s original, and nature’s cause;
And what was God; and why the fleecy snows
In silence fell, and rattling winds arose;
What shook the steadfast earth, and whence begun
The dance of planets round the radiant sun;
If thunder was the voice of angry Jove,
Or clouds with nitre pregnant, burst above;
Of these, and things beyond the common reach,
He spoke, and charm’d his audience with his speech.
“He first the taste of flesh from tables drove,
And argued well, if arguments could move:
‘Oh mortals, from your fellows’ blood abstain,
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane.
While corn and pulse by nature are bestow’d,
And planted orchards bend their willing load;
While labour’d gardens wholesome herbs produce,
And
