Horace Ode 1.37

THE FALL OF CLEOPATRA

Nunc est bibendum, nun pede libero

pulsanda tellus, nunc Saliaribus

ornare pulvinar deorum

tempus erat dapibus, sodales.

Antehac nefas depromere Caecubum

cellis avitis, dum Capitolio

regina dementis ruinas,

funus et imperio parabat

contaminato cum grege turpium

morbo virorum, quidlibet impotens

sperare fortunaque dulci

ebria. Sed minuit furorem

vix una sospes navis ab ignibus,

mentemque lymphatam Mareotico

redegit in veros timores

Caesar, ab Italia volantem

remis adurgens, accipiter velut

mollis coumbas aut leporem citus

venator in campis nivalis

Haemoniae, daret ut catenis

fatale monstrum. Quae generosius

perire quaerens nec muliebriter

expavit ensem nec latentis

classe cita reparavit oras;

ausa et iacentem visere regiam

vultu sereno, fortis et asperas

tractare serpentes, ut atrum

corpore combiberet venenum,

deliberata morte ferocior;

saevis LIburnis scilicet invidens

privata deduci superbo

non humilis mulier triumpho.

 

Now we must drink,

now the earth must be beat by us with a free foot,

now it was the time to decorate the seat of honor of the gods

at the Salian  feats, comrades.

For it was a crime to bring out Caecuban wine from

the ancestral cellars, while the queen was preparing

demented destruction for the capital and ruin for the empire

with the crowd of men contaminated from a disease,

having no control to hope for anything at all and drunk wit sweet fortune.

But one ship

scarcely safe and sound from the fires

diminished her madness, and Caesar pursuing her flying from

Italy with horrors, reduced her mind having been crazy with 

Mareotic wine into true fears,

just as a hawk pursues soft doves or

just as a swift hunter pursues a rabbit 

in the plains of snowy Haemonia,

in order that he might give that destructive monster to chains.

Seeking to perish with more dignity,

she feared the sword not like a woman,

and she did not acquire shores

lying hidden with swift fleet;

having dared to see both her palace lying in destruction with

a calm face and brave to handle fierce serpents

in order that she might drink dark poison with her body.

 

She was fiercer with a determined debt,

clearly begrudging to be let down in Liburnian gallies

as a private citizen in a proud triumph, not as a humble woman.