LPiA-25 Nov. 23

[busker]

"Dignitas Catilinae"

Frost creeps over tents, a slow accusation,
settling on cloaks of men led by conscience.
In uneven rows they sleep at their station,
curled round dead hopes, breath thin as silence.

Soon comes the dawn, and with it, a Republic
that pretends it still remembers virtue.
What else is left for me but to mimic
bold Leonidas' last stand? It is my due.

Cicero. That prancing puppet of the rich.
He spits out poison, cries "conspirator"
beneath the rostra, spewing lies he stitched
from his ambition, drunk on his own awe.

The ground is iron. My sword rests on my knees,
the leather grip worn by a thousand vows.
Its edge carries each oath I've kept, still keen;
Its weight, the lies he whispered into law.

Let him have his triumph. I could have bargained,
begged for exile, traded my name for breath,
sold my honour for that viper’s pardon;
A coward clings to life, and earns his death.

I'll greet them on the field, without debate,
my back straight, my lips disdainfully curled
in patrician sneer, eyes unturned from fate.
Death is the last truth a man gives the world.

Rome demands my death and crucifies my name;
She shall have them both, but not my shame.

I started by writing a prose piece, chopped and squeezed it roughly into pentameter, then contorted the grammar to make it rhyme, and I am not sure that last stage was a good idea. I think the rhymes do not add much, and weaken the story by adding ambiguities, perhaps I will work on the blank verse version some more. A lot of effort wasted, oh well.

Enjoyed this one greatly. Thanks.
On your footnote - I think it makes sense for it to rhyme.
I’m not sure what you gain by blank verse. We aren’t steeped in a classical education and so the themes of Catiline’s revolt, Crassus and Cicero, knowing the fates of these actors also, don’t quite resonate.
It is a period piece, and the rhyme is needed