Horace, Ode 37

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero...

Brothers, let's get drinking like pirates
and stomp around like we can dance.
There's no time like the present
for collapsing on the sofa beneath a pint.
Let's do the thing we've waited so long to do:
give thanks, take credit and tempt fate.

That bitch Cleopatra finally gave up. It's our world again.
She kept coming on and coming on,
it seemed her pockets were depthless,
her weapons seemed to mate
and bring forth endless new arms,
each one advanced bloodthirstiness.

The half‑men she employed, ugly and sick
like dying plants, dissolved between our fingers
when Julius Caesar gave us strength, they left
the pulpy black canker of rot on us,
but otherwise we were undamaged:

let hands drift in the waters beside and all will fall away.

Caesar followed her and flushed her out
like a nervous rabbit on its big strong feet.
He set his teeth as if already gnawing on her,
riding on the swelling waves,
gaining on her every moment, her sail in sight.
As if his moment had come.

But she was one fierce bitch.
If it was time for her to die she had a dark glass
in her hand where she herself could read that time,
and the snakes came out eagerly
like black blooms and she held them to her face.

She would never walk through Rome in chains.