After this, when he supposed he had advanced far enough, he led his entire army uphill, and still wavering in mind, in order to waste time, opened his ranks.

He saw them, as we have already seen them, the helpless victims of ambition and avarice, ever, like Sisyphus, rolling the stone uphill and never reaching the summit.[540] Of cruelty and bloodshed in civil strife that age had seen enough, and on this too the poet dwells with bitter emphasis; on the unwholesome luxury and restlessness of the upper classes, and on their unrestrained indulgence of bodily appetites.