Showing posts with label Pompey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pompey. Show all posts

Saturday, March 10, 2012

64. Julius Caesar

The sun came home
From his mighty conquests
People feared another ambitious man.
Instead Pompey reasoned with them
Making Crassus and Caesar suns themselves.
To make this bonding deal last
Pompey made a few business deals
To keep everything in the family.
On her head Pompey placed his three-star crown
Hoping Rome would stay that way
But one of those stars
Felt that his position
Was too small for his ambition
Julius Caesar, one such star
Weeping tears of Alexandrian dreams
Packed his bags,
Gathered his comrades
Setting off to conquer Gaul.
Many fell to Caesar’s legion
As he continued his way north.
Neptune stopped him with a storm
When he tried to finish off the Celts.
Caesar came back to Rome
With offerings of jewels to his people.
He adorned Rome like a goddess
To the dismay of Pompey and his peers.
Crassus died.
New people were brought in.
The senate asked Caeser to disband
As he came to the shores of Rubicon.
That was where they drew the line
As tensions weakened government.
When neither side refused to back down
Ambition caused a river to be crossed
Civil war was declared.
Caesar, with his laurels of hubris
Seduced an Egyptian queen.
A second river then was crossed
When, with three little words,
“Vini Vidi Vici,”
Caesar declared himself Emperor.
“Beware my king,”
The soothsayer said,
“For you will cross one last river.”
Beware the ides of March.
He couldn’t hear the soothsayer’s warning
His hubris laurels were worn too proudly.
Many senators thought them gaudy
So they plotted and found behind their backs
Some help across the third river.

Friday, March 9, 2012

63. The Steps to Empire

With Carthage defeated
Rome was now an unstoppable force on the world stage.
She grew rich and fat with decadence
But still retained her Republican machine.
Soon people started getting greedy.
They became too ambitious
For the Republic to survive.
The Gracchi of Rome Came to power
Under the guise of helping the lower class.
Men who fight and die for Italy
Enjoy nothing but air and light.
The first of the Gracchi broke tradition
On tribunal entrance
They killed him for it
Rolling up their togas
Taking out their clubs.
Murder found a place in politics.
The second did the same
Bringing horse riders
To judge corruption.
“No man who rides a horse will ever judge me!”
Said the senators to the Gracchi.
Take all measures necessary to defend the republic.
The second of the Gracchi died.
Rome faced more problems.
Her blue gown of republic
Slowly withered
Eaten by factions of moths.
Ripped by large thorny dictators.
Marius seized power by force
But gave it up when the war was over.
Sulla took advantage of civil and foreign war
Forsaking tradition
He staged a coup
Giving birth to the proconsulate
But retired
Because of a prophecy of death.
Generals came
Seeking power and might
Ruling the people as their king
But, as Pompey said to Sulla,
People worship the rising, not the setting sun.
Pompey’s sun rose
After Spartacus died
And the pirates left the sea.
He sent his woman, Rome,
To eat Anatolia and Syria.
As a present to his powerful wife,
He gave her Jerusalem’s treasures.