War+Literature+-+A

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Let the boy toughened by military service

learn how to make bitterest hardship his friend,

and as a horseman, with fearful lance,

go to vex the insolent Parthians,

spending his life in the open, in the heart

of dangerous action. And seeing him, from

the enemy’s walls, let the warring

tyrant’s wife, and her grown-up daughter, sigh:

‘Ah, don’t let the inexperienced lover

provoke the lion that’s dangerous to touch,

whom a desire for blood sends raging

so swiftly through the core of destruction.’

It’s sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

Yet death chases after the soldier who runs,

and it won’t spare the cowardly back

or the limbs, of peace-loving young men.

Virtue, that’s ignorant of sordid defeat,

shines out with its honour unstained, and never

takes up the axes or puts them down

at the request of a changeable mob.

Virtue, that opens the heavens for those who

did not deserve to die, takes a road denied

to others, and scorns the vulgar crowd

and the bloodied earth, on ascending wings.

And there’s a true reward for loyal silence:

I forbid the man who divulged those secret

rites of Ceres, to exist beneath

the same roof as I, or untie with me

the fragile boat: often careless Jupiter

included the innocent with the guilty,

but lame-footed Punishment rarely

forgets the wicked man, despite his start.

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