Translated by A. Z. Foreman - Opening to his Epic on the Civil War (Bellum Civile 1.1-82) lyrics

I sing of war, far worse than civil war, waged in the nasty fields of Thessaly, of crime gone legal, of a powerful state that disemboweled itself with victory's sword, of family front lines; how when the pact of tyranny imploded, all the forces of a concussed world clashed in combat, leaving a nation guilty of abomination; the citizen who marched against the city, the Roman spear faced with the Roman spear. Countrymen! What insanity was this? This orgy of sick swords! Did you enjoy it, treating barbarian peoples that detest us to a spectacle of savage Roman bloodsport, when you by all rights should have been despoiling proud Parthia of her Italian trophies in fit retaliation? Why so willing to wage entropic wars that stood no chance of triumph, while k**ed Cra**us' grisly ghost roamed unavenged abroad? Can you conceive how much land, how much sea might have been ours through the Roman blood that Roman blades have squandered - where Day's sun rises, where Night stows her stars, where southern midday seethes in scorching hours, where rigid Winter that no Spring can thaw fetters the Scythic sea in chains of ice, by now we'd have the wild Armenians and the Chinese beneath our potent yoke, as well as that race (if there even is one) that knows the secret of the Nile's true source. Then, if you still so lust for heinous warfare once you've wrenched all the world to Latin law, only then, Rome, may you take up the sword of suicide. Not while you have enemies. Now in Italy's cities walls are crumbling, the buildings teetering half-demolished, ramparts reduced to huge heaps of wrecked rock, the houses have no one to guard them. Only the odd squatter wanders the ancient emptied cities' streets. Now Italy's countryside is overrun with brambles, her soil unploughed for year on year, no hands left for the work the fields cry out for. It wasn't you, fierce Pyrrhus, nor the savage Hannibal who achieved such devastation. No, foreign steel could not gore us like this. The deepest wounds are dealt by citizen swords. But if the Fates could find no other way to gift us Nero, if an everlasting kingdom cost the gods dear, if Jupiter the Thunderlord could hold no throne on high before a war with vicious worldborn Giants, then, gods, I'll not complain. The hideous crimes and rank abominations were all worth it. So heap Pharsalia's dread fields high with corpses, glut the brute Punic ghost with Latin blood, let the final combat clash at fateful Munda. Add to those ma**acres, O Caesar Nero, starvation at Perugia, Mutina's hardships, the armada overwhelmed at lethal Leucas and blood of slave-wars under Etna's slopes ablaze. Rome owes so much to civil war as all was done to bring us you, O Caesar. And when your reign is done for, when you seek the stars at last, with reveling in the sky, you will be more than welcome in heaven's palace on any seat you choose. Whether you want to seize Jove's scepter, or Apollo's blazing chariot to circle earth with roving fire, the world won't fear the transference of suns. All gods will yield their place to you, and Nature will let you choose which god to be, and where in the cosmos to rule from. Only do not set your throne cold up in the Arctic North nor at the polar opposite where skies turn sweltering around the Southern vertex. Your star would look on Rome with sidelong light. If you put all your weight on either side of the unbounded ether, the sky's vault would buckle in your gravity's great moment. Stay rather at the midpoint of the heavens keeping the spheres in equilibrium. And let that stretch of sky stay clear and blue, let not one cloud ever stand in Caesar's way. That day, let humankind sheathe all its swords to take care of itself, and every nation love every other. Peace shall flutter proud over the earth, and shut forevermore the iron temple-gates of two-faced war. But you're a force of heaven to me already and if you breathe your genius through my breast giving me visionary strength of verse, why would I trouble that old god who stirs the mysteries of Delphic seers, or call Bacchus from sacred Nysa? I need nothing but Nero to give life to Roman song. And now my spirit moves me to set forth the cause of great events. The mind has opened before me an enormous task, to tell what drove a people mad, drove them to arms of battle, and drove peace out of the world. It was that jealous nemesis, the chain of fate, the law that nothing stays on top for long, the hard fall of the mighty: Rome had grown too great for her own self to bear. It was as it will be when the final hour that ends the cycles of the universe, sunders the cosmic structure and all things are regressed to primeval chaos: burning stars will shoot straight into the ocean, earth refusing to lie flat fling all the waters up and away, the moon turn to her brother demanding rule of daylight, tired of driving her chariot in waxing, waning orbit. And the whole broken universe's machine in discord will overthrow the rule of nature. Great things implode upon themselves. This limit of growth the gods ordain for all success.