Heaven grant thou mayest be our perpetual consul and outnumber Marius[168] and old Augustus. Happy universe that shall see the first down creep over thy cheeks, and the wedding-night that shall lead forth for thee the festal torches. Who shall be consecrated to such a couch; who, glorious in purple, shall pass, a queen, to the embraces of such a husband? What bride shall come to be the daughter of so many gods, dowered with every land and the whole sea? How gloriously shall the nuptial song be borne at once to farthest East and West! O may it be mine to sing thy marriage-hymn, mine presently to hail thee father! The time will come when, thou victorious beyond the mouths of the Rhine, and thy brother Arcadius laden with the spoil of captured Babylon, ye shall endow the year with yet more glorious majesty; when the long-haired Suebian shall bear the arms of Rome and the distant Bactrian tremble beneath the rule of thyself and thy brother.
[168] Marius was consul seven, Augustus thirteen, times.
PANEGYRICUS DICTUS MANLIO THEODORO CONSULI
Audebisne, precor, tantae subiecta catervae, inter tot proceres, nostra Thalia, loqui? nec te fama vetat, vero quam celsius auctam vel servasse labor vel minuisse pudor? an tibi continuis crevit fiducia castris 5 totaque iam vatis pectora miles habet? culmina Romani maiestatemque senatus et, quibus exultat Gallia, cerne viros. omnibus audimur terris mundique per aures ibimus. ah nimius consulis urget amor! 10 Iuppiter, ut perhibent, spatium cum discere vellet naturae regni nescius ipse sui, armigeros utrimque duos aequalibus alis misit ab Eois Occiduisque plagis. Parnasus geminos fertur iunxisse volatus; 15 contulit alternas Pythius axis aves. Princeps non aquilis terras cognoscere curat; certius in vobis aestimat imperium. hoc ego concilio collectum metior orbem; hoc video coetu quidquid ubique micat. 20
PANEGYRIC ON THE CONSULSHIP OF FL. MANLIUS THEODORUS[169] (A.D. 399)
Wilt dare to sing, my Muse, when so great, so august an assembly shall be thy critic? Does not thine own renown forbid thee? ’Tis greater now than thou deservest; how hard then to enhance, how disgraceful to diminish it! Or has thine assurance grown through ever dwelling in the camp, and does the soldier now wholly possess the poet’s breast? Behold the flower of the Roman senate, the majesty, the pride, the heroes of Gaul. The whole earth is my audience, my song shall sound in the ears of all the world. Alack! Love for our consul constrains too strongly. Jove, ’tis said, when he would fain learn its extent (for he knew not the bounds of his own empire) sent forth two eagles of equal flight from the East and from the West. On Parnassus, as they tell, their twin flights met; the Delphic heaven brought together the one bird and the other. Our Emperor needs no eagles to teach him the magnitude of his domains; yourselves are preceptors more convincing. ’Tis this assembly that gives to me the measure of the universe; here I see gathered all the brilliance of the world.
