“Like is he to a wolf that has forced an entrance to a rich fold of sheep, and now, his breast all clotted with foul corruption and his gaping bristly mouth unsightly with blood-stained wool, hies him from the pens, turning this way and that his troubled gaze, should the angry shepherds find out their loss and follow in pursuit, and flees all conscious of his bold deed.”
Source: Thebaid, Book IV, Line 363 (tr. J. H. Mozley)
Original
Ille velut pecoris lupus expugnator opimi, pectora tabenti sanie grauis hirtaque saetis ora cruentata deformis hiantia lana, decedit stabulis huc illuc turbida versans lumina, si duri comperta clade sequantur pastores, magnique fugit non inscius ausi.
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Statius 93
Roman poet of the 1st century AD (Silver Age of Latin liter… 45–96Related quotes
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 59.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 271.

“The sailor tells of winds, the ploughman of bulls,
the soldier counts his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.”
Navita de ventis, de tauris narrat arator,
Enumerat miles vulnera, pastor oves.
II, i, 43–4.
Elegies

Leigh Hunt Table-Talk (1851) pp. 147-8.
Criticism