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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Greek and Roman writers on war and peace
Virgil: On war and on peace
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Virgil
From Georgic II
Translated by Theodore Chickering Williams
Meanwhile the husbandman upturns the glebe
With well-curved share, inaugurating so
The whole year’s fruitful toil, by which he feeds
His native land, his children’s children too,
His flocks and herds, and cattle worth his care…
The livelong year His gathered children to his kisses cling.
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Such way of life the ancient Sabines knew,
And Remus with his twin; thus waxed the power
Of the Etrurian cities; thus rose Rome
The world’s chief jewel, and with towering wall
Compassed in one her hills and strongholds seven.
Yea, and before the Cretan King assumed
The sceptre of the skies, ere impious man
Began on murdered flocks to feast his kind,
Such life on earth did golden Saturn show.
None heard the trumpet’s blast, nor direful clang
Of smitten anvils loud with shaping swords.
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