Woe! Oh, burned once before, you my home, Ilios my strong-walled mother, aflame beside the bitter boats, torched by that little dog-maned beast whose greed could not be content had he been spat out after one night's ravaging, but yet demanded a brutish wrestling -- the glut of three starless nights -- just for its conception, that once gorged the worm-dog of Zeus' brother and my sweet-songed sunlit ravager as vengeful debt-fodder: as if gods needed payment!
Who slid the serpent's greasy swallow, that writhed in its pot broiling only on flameless ash, that tore the sea-worm's stinking gore from within its belly; that killer of its own loins' fruit, that home-wrecker, the razor of my fathers' lands, indebted wretch; that would add to its tally proxy matricide, would that the deathless permitted, slicing the teat at which it had suckled. That snatched even Zeus, father-god, from the steeps of Olympus where giant Ischenus foams the mouths of brave horses even in death; that slaughterer of sharp-eyed Scylla who feared nothing, nor even Leptynis, she-shade of Hades whom her father brought again to life by the rituals of fire and pain of brands to guard again Ausonia's narrow strait.
Only that a dead man brought you down. Man. Unlike you, who the poet named puny. And ugly. Killed by a corpse.
Only that a dead man brought you down. Man. Unlike you, who the poet named puny. And ugly. Killed by a corpse.
