Now, my companions, is the time to carouse, now to beat the ground with
a light foot: now is the time that was to deck the couch of the gods
with Salian dainties. Before this, it was impious to produce the old
Caecuban stored up by your ancestors; while the queen, with a
contaminated gang of creatures, noisome through distemper, was preparing
giddy destruction for the Capitol and the subversion of the empire,
being weak enough to hope for any thing, and intoxicated with her
prospering fortune. But scarcely a single ship preserved from the flames
bated her fury; and Caesar brought down her mind, inflamed with Egyptian
wine, to real fears, close pursuing her in her flight from Italy with
his galleys (as the hawk pursues the tender doves, or the nimble hunter
the hare in the plains of snowy Aemon), that he might throw into chains
this destructive monster [of a woman]; who, seeking a more generous
death, neither had an effeminate dread of the sword, nor repaired with
her swift ship to hidden shores. She was able also to look upon her
palace, lying in ruins, with a countenance unmoved, and courageous
enough to handle exasperated asps, that she might imbibe in her body the
deadly poison, being more resolved by having pre-meditated her death:
for she was a woman of such greatness of soul, as to scorn to be carried
off in haughty triumph, like a private person, by rough Liburnians.
* * * * *