Whose act of surviving genius would through future centuries make them great,
What monument of their millennium would be left to remember,
From the fire that once blazed, would there be an inextinguishable ember?
Scipio and Caesar would recount their Legions’ famed iron wrought victories
That bent submissive Carthaginian, Celt, Greek, and Gaul upon their proud knees,
With bowed heads their bodies in sacrifice given to the wisdom and swords of Rome,
Who ruled in might the seas and shores of the Mediterranean alone.
Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, men of letters, would contest their well versed words,
Surviving the empire, spreading to lands far beyond by translating birds.
Octavian declaring Pax Romana, ascending to deity,
A faithful nephew, spreading Rome’s empiric rule beyond the shores and sea.
A host of successors, often mean conniving men of lesser talent
Justly, proudly pleased at having attained the Roman-Byzantine balance,
Would boast of having suspended the sun’s light against approaching night.
But some saw the later Caesars as the lesser powers of Roman might.
The older fathers, men of the republic’s early days, who foretold the fate,
Would praise the foundations and laws and glories that once made Italy great.
Horatious and Regulus, and others like them, who shed blood of self and foe,
Would have themselves and the brave dead who fought for Rome honored for us to know.
Architect and engineer would debate which had the better claim,
As would senators, gladiators, and governors recalling their fame.
What legacy stands midst crumbling aqueducts and broken statuary?
What has stood the centuries that moderns could neither surpass nor bury?
Some cold demented and tortured soul raises all eyes to Rome's greatest glory,
A man forgotten, who yet devised judgment so perfect and gory.
The legacy of Rome that affixes the empire’s greatest position
Was when Rome blindly saved the evil world by devising crucifixion.
From Dirt Roads and Confederates
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