Occidit occidit
Horace Ode 4.4.69–72: Hannibal laments the death of Hasdrubal in the Battle of the Metaurus (207 BC).
Karthagini iam non ego nuntios
Mittam superbos. occidit, occidit
Spes omnis et fortuna nostri
Nominis Hasdrubale interempto.
No more shall I send proud heralds to Carthage: Fallen, fallen is all hope and the fortune of our name, now that Hasdrubal is slain.
People say that occidit spes has its parallel at Plautus Mostellaria 350. But the passage is even more similar to something Juno says at Aeneid 12.828, when she finally gives up hope for a Latin victory against the Trojans, and asks Jupiter at least to prevent the invaders from imposing their name and language on Italy:
Occidit occideritque sinas cum nomine Troia.
Troy has fallen; allow her to have fallen with her name.
I have seen commentators say some silly things about these two verses, for instance that Horace was making an ‘ironic evocation’ of Virgil. In my opinion, what links the two is not any kind of literary allusion, but merely the poets’ independent use of the phrase “occidit occid[er]it”. This may well have been a current formula in Latin, predating both Horace and Virgil. Cicero’s occīdi occīdi (“I slew, I slew”) at Pro Milone 27.72 could be considered another instance of it, even though the verb is different and the accents fall on different syllables. However, just as with the formula arma virum, there is not necessarily any semantic or emotional congruity among its various occurrences. Horace puts it in the mouth of a despairing Hannibal; in the Aeneid, Juno says it in a discussion with her husband about geopolitics. Even the grammatical structure is different. Hannibal’s occidit occidit is a pure reduplication of the same verb, but Juno’s occidit and occideritque form two separate predicates.
Maybe it’s a pure coincidence anyway. That is certainly true of an apparent Biblical parallel to occidit occidit, at Isaiah 21.9:
יֹּ֗אמֶר נָֽפְלָ֤ה נָֽפְלָה֙ בָּבֶ֔ל וְכָל־פְּסִילֵ֥י אֱלֹהֶ֖יהָ שִׁבַּ֥ר לָאָֽרֶץ
He said, “Babylon has fallen, fallen,” and he has dashed all the idols of her gods to the ground.
This was quoted in Revelation 18.2 as ἔπεσεν ἔπεσεν Βαβυλών: “Babylon has fallen, fallen”.
Was Virgil making an ironic allusion to Isaiah? No, it’s simply that a dire word like fallen is apt to be duplicated in an emotionally charged speech. Quintilian (9.3.28) mentions this phenomenon, listing Cicero’s occidi occidi and Virgil’s Ah Corydon Corydon as an examples of “adjection”: the first done for the sake of rhetorical emphasis, and the second as an expression of pity. Adjection happens quite often in piteous speeches in the Bible: think of Oy Ariel Ariel at Isaiah 29.1 or Absalom my son my son etc. at 2 Sam 18.33. It’s nothing surprising if one such instance happens to coincide with a similar phenomenon in Latin poetry.