bone-idle sit you there when will you find some guts

you boys not men ashamed of every other place’s thought

not you cowards sitting pretty in a land at peace

o no we are at war on our own soil you know not

even when you’re dying let them feel your spear

a great good thing it is to fight the enemy

lest your children perish and your land

and your wife for death will come when spinning

Destinies will so go straight on ahead

to the front and raise your spear behind your shield

striking them down in the first clash of arms

when you die you die there’s no escaping

death even a son of the gods who know not death

if you run from the fight and all the spears thrown far

you’ll find it when you wouldn’t expect at home

and you’ll be forgotten no-one to love you dead

but all the great and small will be sorry for a grave in battle

let the hero be mourned by everyone he knows or not

when he dies a blessing from the gods alive

they look at him as though he were a fortress

he’s an army that way fighting all alone

Callinus
tr. after Lattimore