671Amid these scenes the image of the swelling sea ran far and wide in gold, but the blue foamed with white-crested waves; 673and all round, bright in silver, dolphins in a circle swept the waters with their tails and cut through the surge. 675In the middle one could see bronze-beaked fleets, the battle of Actium, and you would have seen all Leucate seething with war arrayed, and the waves ablaze with gold. 678On this side Augustus Caesar, leading the Italians into battle with the senators and people, with the household gods and the great gods, standing on the high stern; 680his joyful temples pour forth twin flames, and his father's star dawns above his head.
682Elsewhere Agrippa, with winds and gods favouring, towering high, leading his column; 683his temples, proud emblem of war, gleam with the beaked naval crown. 685On that side, with barbaric wealth and motley arms, Antony, victor from the peoples of the Dawn and the Red Sea shore, brings with him Egypt and the forces of the East and furthest Bactra, and there follows him (oh, shame!) his Egyptian wife. 689All rush on together, and the whole sea foams, torn up by the drawn-back oars and the three-pronged beaks. 691They make for the open sea: you would think the Cyclades, uprooted, were swimming on the deep, or high mountains clashing with mountains, with such mass do the men press on in their towered ships.
694Flaming tow is flung by hand, and flying steel from weapons; Neptune's fields grow red with fresh slaughter. 696The queen in their midst summons her columns with her native sistrum, and does not yet look back at the twin snakes behind her. 698Monstrous gods of every kind, and barking Anubis, hold their weapons against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva. 700In the middle of the struggle rages Mars, engraved in iron, and the grim Furies from the sky, and Discord strides rejoicing in her torn mantle, and Bellona follows her with bloody whip. 704Seeing this, Actian Apollo was bending his bow from above: in terror at this all Egypt and the Indians, all the Arabs, all the Sabaeans were turning their backs.
707The queen herself was seen to call on the winds, to set sail, and to be letting loose the slackened ropes at any moment. 709Her the Lord of Fire had made, amid the slaughter, pale with coming death, borne on by the waves and the west-north-west wind; and opposite, the Nile, mourning with his great body, opening wide his folds and with all his robe calling the conquered into his blue lap and his sheltering streams. 714But Caesar, borne into the walls of Rome in triple triumph, was dedicating to the gods of Italy his immortal vow, three hundred great shrines throughout the whole city. 717The streets roared with rejoicing and games and applause; 718in all the temples there was a chorus of mothers, in all there were altars; 719before the altars slain bullocks strewed the ground.
720He himself, seated on the snowy threshold of shining Phoebus, reviews the gifts of the peoples and fits them to the proud doorposts; 722the conquered nations walk in long procession, as varied in their tongues as in their dress and arms. 724Here Mulciber had portrayed the race of Nomads and the loose-robed Africans, here the Leleges and Carians and the arrow-bearing Geloni; 726the Euphrates was flowing, now gentler in its waves, and the Morini, furthest of men, and the two-horned Rhine, and the untamed Dahae, and the Araxes, resenting its bridge.