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- Herausgeber: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Lucan was a Roman poetand republican patriot. He is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period, known in particular for his epic Pharsalia. The Bellum civile, better known as the Pharsalia because of its vivid account of that battle, is remarkable as the single major Latin epic poem. His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets. Contents: The Civil War The Translations PROSE TRANSLATION by J. D. Duff VERSE TRANSLATION by Edward Ridley The Latin Text
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The Complete Works of Lucan
Illustrated
The Civil War
Lucan was a Roman poetand republican patriot.
He is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period, known in particular for his epic Pharsalia. The Bellum civile, better known as the Pharsalia because of its vivid account of that battle, is remarkable as the single major Latin epic poem.
His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets.
The Translations
THE CIVIL WAR
PROSE TRANSLATION by J. D. Duff
BOOK I
OF war I sing, war worse than civil, waged over the plains of Emathia, and of legality conferred on crime; I tell how an imperial people turned their victorious right hands against their own vitals; how kindred fought against kindred; how, when the compact of tyranny was shattered, all the forces of the shaken world contended to make mankind guilty; how standards confronted hostile standards, eagles were matched against each other, and pilum threatened pilum.
What madness was this, my countrymen, what fierce orgy of slaughter? While the ghost of Crassus still wandered unavenged, and it was your duty to rob proud Babylon of her trophies over Italy, did you choose to give to hated nations the spectacle of Roman bloodshed, and to wage wars that could win no triumphs? Ah! with that blood shed by Roman hands how much of earth and sea might have been bought — where the sun rises and where night hides the stars, where the South is parched with burning airs, and where the rigour of winter that no spring can thaw binds the Scythian sea with icy cold! Ere this the Chinese might have passed under our yoke, and the savage Araxes, and any nation that knows the secret of Nile’s cradle. If Rome has such a lust for unlawful warfare, let her first subdue the whole earth to her sway and then commit self-slaughter; so far she has never lacked a foreign foe. But, if now in Italian cities the houses are half-demolished and the walls tottering, and the mighty stones of mouldering dwellings cumber the ground; if the houses are secured by the presence of no guard, and a mere handful of inhabitants wander over the site of ancient cities; if Italy bristles with thorn-brakes, and her soil lies unploughed year after year, and the fields call in vain for hands to till them, — these great disasters are not due to proud Pyrrhus or the Carthaginian; no other sword has been able to pierce so deep; the strokes of a kindred hand are driven home.
Still, if Fate could find no other way for the advent of Nero; if an everlasting kingdom costs the gods dear and heaven could not be ruled by its sovran, the Thunderer, before the battle with the fierce Giants, — then we complain no more against the gods: even such crimes and such guilt are not too high a price to pay. Let Pharsalia heap her awful plains with dead; let the shade of the Carthaginian be glutted with carnage; let the last battle be joined at fatal Munda; and though to these be added the famine of Perusia and the horrors of Mutina, the ships overwhelmed near stormy Leucas and the war against slaves hard by the flames of Etna, yet Rome owes much to civil war, because what was done was done for you, Caesar. When your watch on earth is over and you seek the stars at last, the celestial palace you prefer will welcome you, and the sky will be glad. Whether you choose to wield Jove’s sceptre, or to mount the fiery chariot of Phoebus and circle earth with your moving flame — earth unterrified by the transference of the sun; every god will give place to you, and Nature will leave it to you to determine what deity you wish to be, and where to establish your universal throne. But choose not your seat either in the Northern region or where the sultry sky of the opposing South sinks down: from these quarters your light would look aslant at your city of Rome. If you lean on any one part of boundless space, the axle of the sphere will be weighed down; maintain therefore the equipoise of heaven by remaining at the centre of the system. May that region of the sky be bright and clear, and may no clouds obstruct our view of Caesar! In that day let mankind lay down their arms and seek their own welfare, and let all nations love one another; let Peace fly over the earth and shut fast the iron gates of warlike Janus. But to me you are divine already; and if my breast receives you to inspire my verse, I would not care to trouble the god who rules mysterious Delphi, or to summon Bacchus from Nysa: you alone are sufficient to give strength to a Roman bard.
My mind moves me to set forth the causes of these great events. Huge is the task that opens before me — to show what cause drove peace from earth and forced a frenzied nation to take up arms. It was the chain of jealous fate, and the speedy fall which no eminence can escape; it was the grievous collapse of excessive weight, and Rome unable to support her own greatness. Even so, when the framework of the world is dissolved and the final hour, closing so many ages, reverts to primeval chaos, then [all the constellations will clash in confusion,] the fiery stars will drop into the sea, and earth, refusing to spread her shores out flat, will shake off the ocean; the moon will move in opposition to her brother, and claim to rule the day, disdaining to drive her chariot along her slanting orbit; and the whole distracted fabric of the shattered firmament will overthrow its laws. Great things come crashing down upon themselves — such is the limit of growth ordained by heaven for success. Nor did Fortune lend her grudge to any foreign nations, to use against the people that ruled earth and sea: the doom of Rome was due to Rome herself, when she became the joint property of three masters, and when despotism, which never before was shared among so many, struck its bloody bargain. Blinded by excess of ambition, the Three joined hands for mischief. What boots it to unite their strength and rule the world in common? As long as earth supports the sea and air the earth; as long as his unending task shall make the sun go round, and night shall follow day in the heavens, each passing through the same number of signs — so long will loyalty be impossible between sharers in tyranny, and great place will resent a partner. Search not the history of foreign nations for proof, nor look far for an instance of Fate’s decree: the rising walls of Rome were wetted with a brother’s blood. Nor was such madness rewarded then by lordship over land and sea: the narrow bounds of the Asylum pitted its owners one against the other.
For a brief space the jarring harmony was maintained, and there was peace despite the will of the chiefs; for Crassus, who stood between, was the only check on imminent war. So the Isthmus of Corinth divides the main and parts two seas with its slender line, forbidding them to mingle their waters; but if its soil were withdrawn, it would dash the Ionian sea against the Aegean. Thus Crassus kept apart the eager combatants; but when he met his pitiable end and stained Syrian Carrhae with Roman blood, the loss inflicted by Parthia let loose the madness of Rome. By that battle the Parthians did more than they realise: they visited the vanquished with civil war. The tyrants’ power was divided by the sword; and the wealth of the imperial people, that possessed sea and land the whole world over, was not enough for two. For, when Julia was cut off by the cruel hand of Fate, she bore with her to the world below the bond of affinity and the marriage which the dread omen turned to mourning. She alone, had Fate granted her longer life, might have restrained the rage of her husband on one side and her father on the other; she might have struck down their swords and joined their armed hands, as the Sabine women stood between and reconciled their fathers to their husbands. But loyalty was shattered by the death of Julia, and leave was given to the chiefs to begin the conflict. Rivalry in worth spurred them on; for Magnus feared that fresher exploits might dim his past triumphs, and that his victory over the pirates might give place to the conquest of Gaul, while Caesar was urged on by continuous effort and familiarity with warfare, and by fortune that brooked no second place. Caesar could no longer endure a superior, nor Pompey an equal. Which had the fairer pretext for warfare, we may not know: each has high authority to support him; for, if the victor had the gods on his side, the vanquished had Cato. The two rivals were ill-matched. The one was somewhat tamed by declining years; for long he had worn the toga and forgotten in peace the leader’s part; courting reputation and lavish to the common people, he was swayed entirely by the breath of popularity and delighted in the applause that hailed him in the theatre he built; and trusting fondly to his former greatness, he did nothing to support it by fresh power. The mere shadow of a mighty name he stood. Thus an oak-tree, laden with the ancient trophies of a nation and the consecrated gifts of conquerors, towers in a fruitful field; but the roots it clings by have lost their toughness, and it stands by its weight alone, throwing out bare boughs into the sky and making a shade not with leaves but with its trunk; though it totters doomed to fall at the first gale, while many trees with sound timber rise beside it, yet it alone is worshipped. But Caesar had more than a mere name and military reputation: his energy could never rest, and his one disgrace was to conquer without war. He was alert and headstrong; his arms answered every summons of ambition or resentment; he never shrank from using the sword lightly; he followed up each success and snatched at the favour of Fortune, overthrowing every obstacle on his path to supreme power, and rejoicing to clear the way before him by destruction.
Even so the lightning is driven forth by wind through the clouds: with noise of the smitten heaven and crashing of the firmament it flashes out and cracks the daylight sky, striking fear and terror into mankind and dazzling the eye with slanting flame. It rushes to its appointed quarter of the sky; nor can any solid matter forbid its free course, but both falling and returning it spreads destruction far and wide and gathers again its scattered fires.
Such were the motives of the leaders. But among the people there were hidden causes of war — the causes which have ever brought down ruin upon imperial race. For when Rome had conquered the world and Fortune showered excess of wealth upon her, virtue was dethroned by prosperity, and the spoil taken from the enemy lured men to extravagance: they set no limit to their wealth or their dwellings; greed rejected the food that once sufficed; men seized for their use garments scarce decent for women to wear; poverty, the mother of manhood, became a bugbear; and from all the earth was brought the special bane of each nation. Next they stretched wide the boundaries of their lands, till those acres, which once were furrowed by the iron plough of Camillus and felt the spade of a Curius long ago, grew into vast estates tilled by foreign cultivators. Such a nation could find no pleasure in peace and quiet, nor leave the sword alone and grow fat on their own freedom. Hence they were quick to anger, and crime prompted by poverty was lightly regarded; to overawe the State was high distinction which justified recourse to the sword; and might became the standard of right. Hence came laws and decrees of the people passed by violence; and consuls and tribunes alike threw justice into confusion; hence office was snatched by bribery and the people put up its own support for auction, while corruption, repeating year by year the venal competition of the Campus, destroyed the State; hence came devouring usury and interest that looks greedily to the day of payment; credit was shattered, and many found their profit in war.
And now Caesar had hastened across the frozen Alps and had conceived in his heart the great rebellion and the coming war. When he reached the little river Rubicon, the general saw a vision of his distressed country. Her mighty image was clearly seen in the darkness of night; her face expressed deep sorrow, and from her head, crowned with towers, the white hair streamed abroad; she stood beside him with tresses torn and arms bare, and her speech was broken by sobs: “Whither do ye inarch further? and whither do ye bear my standards, ye warriors? If ye come as law abiding citizens here must ye stop.” Then trembling smote the leader’s limbs, his hair stood on end, a faintness stopped his motion and fettered his feet on the edge of the river-bank. But soon he spoke: “O God of thunder, who from the Tarpeian rock lookest out over the walls of the great city; O ye Trojan gods of the house of lulus, and mysteries of Quirinus snatched from earth; O Jupiter of Latium, who dwellest on Alba’s height, and ye fires of Vesta; and thou, O Rome, as sacred a name as any, smile on my enterprise; I do not attack thee in frantic warfare; behold me here, me Caesar, a conqueror by land and sea and everywhere thy champion, as I would be now also, were it possible. His, his shall be the guilt, who has made me thine enemy.” Then he loosed war from its bonds and carried his standards in haste over the swollen stream. So on the untilled fields of sultry Libya, when the lion sees his foe at hand, he crouches down at first uncertain till he gathers all his rage; but soon, when he has maddened himself with the cruel lash of his tail, and made his mane stand up, and sent forth a roar from his cavernous jaws, then, if the brandished lance of the nimble Moor stick in his flesh or a spear pierce his great chest, he passes on along the length of the weapon, careless of so sore a wound.
The ruddy river Rubicon glides through the bottom of the valleys and serves as a fixed landmark to divide the land of Gaul from the farms of Italy. Issuing from a modest spring, it runs with scanty stream in the heat of burning summer; but now it was swollen by winter; and its waters were increased by the third rising of a rainy moon with moisture laden horn, and by Alpine snows which damp blasts of wind had melted. First the cavalry took station slantwise across the stream, to meet its flow; thus the current was broken, and the rest of the army forded the water with ease. When Caesar had crossed the stream and reached the Italian bank on the further side, he halted on the forbidden territory: “Here,” he cried, “here I leave peace behind me and legality which has been scorned already; henceforth I follow Fortune. Hereafter let me hear no more of agreements. In them I have put my trust long enough; now I must seek the arbitrament of war.” Thus spoke the leader and quickly urged his army on through the darkness of night. Faster he goes than the bullet whirled from the Balearic sling, or the arrow which the Parthian shoots over his shoulder. Ariminum was the nearest town, and he brought terror there, when the stars were fleeing from the sunlight and the morning star alone was left. So the day dawned that was to witness the first turmoil of the war; but clouds veiled the mournful light, either because the gods so willed or because the stormy South wind had driven them up. When the soldiers halted in the captured forum and were bidden to lay down their standards, the blare of trumpets and shrill note of clarions together with the boom of horns sounded the alarm of civil war. The inhabitants were roused from sleep. Starting from their beds, the men snatched down the arms that hung beside the household gods — such arms as the long peace supplied: they lay hold on shields that are falling to pieces with framework exposed, javelins with their points bent, and swords roughened by the bite of black rust. But when they recognised the glitter of the Roman eagles and standards and saw Caesar mounted in the midst of his army, they stood motionless with fear, terror seized their chilly limbs, and these unuttered complaints they turn over in their silent breasts: “Alas for our town, built with Gaul beside it and doomed by its unlucky site to misfortune! Over all the earth there is profound peace and unbroken quiet; but we are the booty and first bivouac of these madmen. Fate would have been kinder if she had placed us under the Eastern sky or the frozen North, and made us guard the tents of nomads rather than the gates of Italy. We were the first to witness the movement of the Senones, the onrush of the Cimbrian, the sword of Hannibal, and the wild career of the Teutones : whenever Fortune attacks Rome, the warriors take their way through us.” This was each man’s muffled groan; none dared to utter his fear aloud, nor was any voice lent to their grief; such is the silence of the country when winter strikes the birds dumb, and such the silence of mid-ocean in still weather. When light had banished the cold shades of night, lo! destiny kindled the flame of war, applying to Caesar’s hesitating heart the spur that pricked him to battle, and bursting all the barriers that reverence opposed. Fate was determined to justify Caesar’s rebellion, and she found excuse for drawing the sword. For the Senate, trampling on the laws, had menaced and driven out the wrangling tribunes from the distracted city, and boasted of the doom of the Gracchi; and now the fugitives made for Caesar’s camp, already far advanced and close to Rome. With them came Curio of the reckless heart and venal tongue; yet once he had been the spokesman of the people and a bold champion of freedom, who dared to bring down the armed chiefs to the level of the crowd. When Curio saw Caesar turning over shifting counsels in his heart, he spoke thus: “Caesar, while my voice could serve your side and when I was permitted to hold the Rostrum and bring over doubting citizens to your interest, I prolonged your command in defiance of the Senate. But now law has been silenced by the constraint of war, and we have been driven from our country. We suffer exile willingly, because, your victory will make us citizens again. While your foes are in confusion and before they have gathered strength, make haste; delay is ever fatal to those who are prepared. The toil and danger are no greater than before, but the prize you seek is higher. Twice five years Gaul kept you fighting; but how small a part of the earth is Gaul! Win but two or three battles, and it will be for you that Rome has subdued the world. As it is, no long triumphal procession awaits your return, nor does the Capitol demand your consecrated laurels; gnawing envy denies you all things, and you will scarce go unpunished for your conquest of foreign nations. Your daughter’s husband has resolved to thrust you down from sovereignty. Half the world you may not have, but you can have the whole world for yourself.” Eager for war as Caesar was already, these words of Curio increased his rage and fired his ardour none the less; so the race-horse at Olympia is encouraged by the shouting, although he is already pressing against the gates of the closed barrier and seeking to loosen the bolts with his forehead. At once Caesar summoned his armed companies to the standards; his mien quieted the bustle and confusion of the assembling troops, his right hand commanded silence, and thus he spoke: “Men who have fought and faced with me the peril of battle a thousand times, for ten years past you have been victorious. Is this your reward for blood shed on the fields of the North, for wounds and death, and for winters passed beside the Alps? The huge hubbub of war with which Rome is shaken could be no greater, if Carthaginian Hannibal had crossed the Alps. Cohorts are raised to their full strength with recruits; every forest is felled to make ships; the word has gone forth that Caesar be chased by land and sea. What would my foes do if my standards lay prostrate in defeat and the tribes of Gaul were rushing in triumph to attack my rear? As it is, when Fate deals kindly with me and the gods summon me to the highest place, my foes challenge me. Let their leader, enervated by long peace, come forth to war with his hasty levies and un warlike partisans — Marcellus, that man of words, and Cato, that empty name. Shall Pompey forsooth be glutted by his vile and venal minions with despotic power renewed so often without a break? Shall Pompey hold the chariot reins before reaching the lawful age? Shall Pompey cling for ever to the posts he has once usurped? Why should I next complain that he took into his own hands the harvests of the whole world and forced famine to do his bidding? Who knows not how the barrack invaded the frightened law-court, when soldiers with the grim glitter of their swords stood round the uneasy and astonished jurors? how the warrior dared to break into the sanctuary of justice, and Pompey’s standards besieged Milo in the dock? Now once again, to escape the burden of an obscure old age, Pompey is scheming unlawful warfare. Civil war is familiar to him: he was taught wickedness by Sulla and is like to outdo his teacher. As the fierce tiger, who has drunk deep of the blood of slain cattle when following his dam from lair to lair in the Hyrcanian jungle, never after loses his ferocity, so Magnus, once wont to lick the sword of Sulla, is thirsty still. When blood has once been swallowed, it never permits the throat it has tainted to lose its cruelty. Will power so long continued ever find an end, or crime a limit? He is never content; but let him learn one lesson at least from his master, Sulla — to step down at this stage from his unlawful power. First came the roving Cilicians, and then the lingering warfare with the King of Pontus — warfare hardly completed by the infamy of poison; shall I, Caesar, be assigned to Pompey as his crowning task, because, when bidden lay down my victorious eagles, I was disobedient? But, if I am robbed of the reward for my labours, let my soldiers at least, without their leader, receive the recompense of their long service; and let them triumph, be their leader who he may. What harbour of peace will they find for their feeble old age, what dwelling-place for their retirement? What lands will my veterans receive to till, what walls to shelter their war-worn frames? Shall Magnus give the pirates preference as colonists? Lift up, lift up the standards that have long been victorious! We must employ the strength we have created. He who denies his due to the strong man armed grants him everything. Nor will the favour of Heaven fail us; for neither booty nor empire is the object of my warfare: we are but dislodging a tyrant from a State prepared to bow the knee.”
Thus he spoke; but the men wavered and muttered doubtfully under their breath with no certain sound. Fierce as they were with bloodshed and proud of heart, they were unnerved by love of their country and their country’s gods, till brought to heel by horrid love of slaughter and fear of their leader. Then Laelius, who held the rank of chief centurion and bore the decoration of a well-earned badge — the oak-leaves which are the reward for saving a Roman’s life — cried out thus: “Mightiest captain of the Roman nation, if I have leave to speak and if it be right to confess the truth, our complaint is, that you have borne too much and restrained your strength too long. Was it confidence in us that you lacked? While the warm blood gives motion to these breathing frames, and while our muscles have strength to hurl the pilum, will you submit to the disgrace of wearing the toga and to the tyranny of the Senate? Is it so wretched a fate to be victorious in a civil war? Lead us straightway through the tribes of Scythia, or the inhospitable shore of the Syrtes, or the burning sands of thirsty Libya — that we might leave a conquered world at our backs, these hands tamed with the oar the swelling waves of Ocean and the foaming eddies of the northern Rhine — I must have as much power as will to follow where you lead. If I hear your trumpet sound the charge against any man, he is no countryman of mine. By your standards, victorious in ten campaigns, and by your triumphs I swear, whoever be the foe whom you triumph over — if you bid me bury my sword in my brother’s breast or my father’s throat or the body of my teeming wife, I — will perform it all, even if my hand be reluctant. If you bid me plunder the gods and fire their temples, the furnace of the military mint shall melt down the statues of the deities; if you bid me pitch the camp by the waters of Etruscan Tiber, I shall make bold to invade the fields of Italy and there mark out the lines; whatever walls you wish to level, these arms shall ply the ram and scatter the stones asunder, even if the city you doom to utter destruction be Rome.” To this speech all the cohorts together signified their assent, raising their hands on high and promising their aid in any war to which Caesar summoned them. Their shout rose to heaven: as loud as, when the Thracian North wind bears down upon the cliffs of pine-clad Ossa, the forest roars as the trees are bent towards earth, or again as they rebound into the sky.
When Caesar saw that war was so eagerly welcomed by the soldiers, and that Fate was favourable, he would not by any slackness delay the course of destiny, but summoned his detachments scattered through the land of Gaul and moved his standards from every quarter for the march on Rome. The soldiers left their tents pitched by Lake Leman among the mountains, and the camp which crowned the winding bank of the Vosegus, and controlled the warlike Lingones with their painted weapons. Others left the fords of the Isara — the river which travels so far with its own waters and then falls into a more famous stream, losing its name before it reaches the sea. The fair-haired Ruthenians were freed from the garrison that long had held them; the gentle Atax, and the Varus, the boundary of Italy enlarged, rejoiced to carry no Roman keels; free was the harbour sacred under the name of Hercules, whose hollow cliff encroaches on the sea — over it neither Corus nor Zephyrus has power: Circius alone stirs up the shore and keeps it to himself and bars the safe roadstead of Monoecus; and free the strip of disputed coast, claimed in turn by land and sea, when the enormous Ocean either flows in or withdraws with ebbing waves. Does some wind from the horizon drive the sea thus on and fail it as it carries it? Or are the waves of restless Tethys attracted by the second of the heavenly bodies and stirred by the phases of the moon? Or does fire-bearing Titan, in order to quaff the waves that feed him, lift up the Ocean and draw its billows skyward? I leave the enquiry to those who study the workings of the universe: for me, let the cause, whatever it be, that produces such constant movements, remain, as the gods have wished it to remain, for ever hidden. Gone are the soldiers who held the region of the Nemes and banks of the Atyrus, where the Tarbellians hem in the sea that beats lightly against the winding shore. The departure of their foe brings joy to the Santoni and Bituriges; to the Suessones, nimble in spite of their long spears; to the Leuci and Remi who excel in hurling the javelin, and to the Sequani who excel in wheeling their bitted steeds; to the Belgae, skilled in driving the war-chariot invented by others, and to the Arvernian clan who falsely claim descent from Troy and brotherhood with Rome; to the Nervii, too prone to rebel against us and stained by breach of their treaty with slaughtered Cotta; to the Vangiones, who wear loose trousers like the Sarmatians, and to the fierce Batavians, whose courage is roused by the blare of curved bronze trumpets. There is joy where the waters of Cinga stray, where the Rhone snatches the Arar in swift current and bears it to the sea, and where a tribe perches on the mountain heights and inhabits the snow-covered rocks of the Cevennes. The Treviri too rejoiced that the troops were moved; so did the Ligurians with hair now cropped, though once they excelled all the longhaired land in the locks that fell in beauty over their necks; and those who propitiate with horrid victims ruthless Teutates, and Esus whose savage shrine makes men shudder, and Taranis, whose altar is no more benign than that of Scythian Diana. The Bards also, who by the praises of their verse transmit to distant ages the fame of heroes slain in battle, poured forth at ease their lays in abundance. And the Druids, laying down their arms, went back to the barbarous rites and weird ceremonies of their worship. (To them alone is granted knowledge — or ignorance, it may be — of gods and celestial powers; they dwell in deep forests with sequestered groves; they teach that the soul does not descend to the silent land of Erebus and the sunless realm of Dis below, but that the same breath still governs the limbs in a different scene. If their tale be true, death is but a point in the midst of continuous life. Truly the nations on whom the Pole star looks down are happily deceived; for they are free from that king of terrors, the fear of death. This gives the warrior his eagerness to rush upon the steel, his courage to face death, and his conviction that it is cowardly to be careful of a life that will come back to him again.) The soldiers also set to keep the long-haired Cayci away from the Belgae, left the savage banks of the Rhine and made for Rome; and the empire was left bare to foreign nations.
When Caesar’s might was gathered together and his huge forces encouraged him to larger enterprise, he spread all over Italy and occupied the nearest towns. False report, swift harbinger of imminent war, was added to reasonable fears, invading men’s minds with presentiments of disaster, and loosing countless tongues to spread lying tales. The messengers report that horsemen are charging in fierce combat on the wide plains that breed Mevania’s bulls; that the foreign cavalry of fierce Caesar are riding to and fro where the Nar joins the Tiber; and that their leader, advancing all his collected eagles and standards, is marching on with many a column and crowded camps. Men’s present view of him differs from their recollection: they think of him as a monster, more savage than the foe he has conquered. Men say that the tribes which dwell between the Rhine and the Elbe, uprooted from their northern homes, are following in his rear; and that the word has gone forth that Rome, under the eyes of the Romans, shall be sacked by savage nations. Thus each by his fears adds strength to rumour, and all dread the unconfirmed dangers invented by themselves. Nor was the populace alone stricken with groundless fear. The Senate House was moved; the Fathers themselves sprang up from their seats; and the Senate fled, deputing to the consuls the dreaded declaration of war. Then, knowing not where to seek refuge or where to flee danger, each treads on the heels of the hastening population, wherever impetuous flight carries him. Forth they rush in long unbroken columns; one might think that impious firebrands had seized hold of the houses, or that the buildings were swaying and tottering in an earthquake shock. For the frenzied crowd rushed headlong through the city with no fixed purpose, and as if the one chance of relief from ruin were to get outside their native walls. So, when the stormy South wind has driven the vast sea from the Syrtes of Libya and the heavy mast with its sails has come crashing down, the skipper abandons the helm and leaps down with his crew into the sea, and each man makes shipwreck for himself before the planks of the hull are broken asunder. Thus Rome is abandoned, and flight is the preparation for war. No aged father had the power to keep back his son, nor weeping wife her husband; none was detained by the ancestral gods of his household, till he could frame a prayer for preservation from danger; none lingered on his threshold ere he departed, to satiate his eyes with the sight of the city he loved and might never see again. Nothing could keep back the wild rush of the people. How ready are the gods to grant supremacy to men, and how unready to maintain it! Rome that was crowded with citizens and conquered peoples, Rome that could contain the human race assembled, was left by coward hands an easy prey to invading Caesar. When the Roman soldier is closely besieged by the foeman in a distant land, he defies the perils of the night behind a slender palisade; hastily he throws up the sods, and the protection of his mound lets him sleep untroubled in his tent. But Rome is abandoned as soon as the word “war” is heard; her walls are no safeguard for a single night. Yet such panic fear must be forgiven; Pompey in flight gives cause for terror. Then, that no hope even for the future might relieve anxiety, clear proof was given of worse to come, and the menacing gods filled earth, sky, and sea with portents. The darkness of night saw stars before unknown, the sky blazing with fire, lights shooting athwart the void of heaven, and the hair of the baleful star — the comet which portends change to monarchs. The lightning flashed incessantly in a sky of delusive clearness, and the fire, flickering in the heavens, took various shapes in the thick atmosphere, now flaring far like a javelin, and now like a torch with fan-like tail. A thunderbolt, without noise or any clouds, gathered fire from the North and smote the capital of Latium. The lesser stars, which are wont to move along the sunless sky by night, now became visible at noon. The moon, when her horns were united in one and she was reflecting her brother luminary with her disk at the full, suddenly was smitten by the earth’s shadow and grew dim. The sun himself, while rearing his head in the zenith, hid his burning chariot in black darkness and veiled his sphere in gloom, forcing mankind to despair of daylight; even such a darkness crept over Mycenae, the city of Thyestes, when the sun fled back to where he rose. In Sicily fierce Mulciber opened wide the mouths of Etna; nor did he lift its flames skyward, but the fire bowed its crest and fell on the Italian shore. Black Charybdis churned up waves of blood from the bottom of the sea, and the angry bark of Scylla’s dogs sank into a whine. From Vesta’s altar the fire vanished suddenly; and the bonfire which marks the end of the Latin Festival split into two and rose, like the pyre of the Thebans, with double crest. The earth also stopped short upon its axis, and the Alps dislodged the snow of ages from their tottering summits; and the sea filled western Calpe and remotest Atlas with a flood of waters. If tales are true, the national deities shed tears, the sweating of the household gods bore witness to the city’s woe, offerings fell from their place in the temples, birds of ill omen cast a gloom upon the daylight, and wild beasts, leaving the woods by night, made bold to place their lairs in the heart of Rome. Also, the tongues of brutes became capable of human speech; and women gave birth to creatures monstrous in the size and number of their limbs, and mothers were appalled by the babes they bore; and boding prophecies spoken by the Sibyl of Cumae passed from mouth to mouth. Again, the worshippers who gash their arms, inspired by fierce Bellona chanted of heaven’s wrath, and the Galli whirled round their gory locks and shrieked disaster to the nations. Groans came forth from urns filled with the ashes of dead men. The crash of arms was heard also, and loud cries in pathless forests, and the noise of spectral armies closing in battle. From the fields nearest the outside walls the inhabitants fled in all directions; for the giant figure of a Fury stalked round the city, shaking her hissing hair and a pine-tree whose flaming crest she held downwards, Such was the Fury that maddened Agave at Thebes or launched the bolts of fierce Lycurgus; and such was Megaera, when, as the minister of Juno’s cruelty, she terrified Hercules, though he had seen Hell already. Trumpets sounded; and dark nights, when winds were still, gave forth a shouting loud as when armies meet. The ghost of Sulla was seen to rise in the centre of the Campus and prophesied disaster, while Marius burst his sepulchre and scattered the country-people in flight by rearing his head beside the cool waters of the Anio.
Therefore it was resolved to follow ancient custom and summon seers from Etruria. The oldest of these was Arruns who dwelt in the deserted city of Luca; the course of the thunderbolt, the marks on entrails yet warm, and the warning of each wing that strays through the sky, had no secrets for him. First, he bids the destruction of monsters, which nature, at variance with herself, had brought forth from no seed, and orders that the abominable fruit of a barren womb shall be burned with wood of evil omen. Next, at his bidding the scared citizens march right round the city; and the pontiffs, who have licence to perform the ceremony, purify the walls with solemn lustration and move round the outer limit of the long pomerium. Behind them come the train of inferior priests, close-girt in Gabine fashion. The band of Vestals is led by a priestess with a fillet on her brows, to whom alone it is permitted to set eyes on Trojan Minerva; next are those who preserve the prophecies of the gods and mystic hymns, and who recall Cybele from her bath in the little river Almo; then the Augurs, skilled to observe birds flying on the left, the Seven who hold festival at banquets, the Titian guild, the Salii who bear the Shields in triumph on their shoulders, and the Flamen, raising aloft on his highborn head the pointed cap. While the long procession winds its way round the wide city, Arruns collects the scattered fires of the thunderbolt and hides them in the earth with doleful muttering. He gives sanctity to the spot, and next brings near to the holy altar a bull with neck chosen for the sacrifice. When he began to pour wine and to sprinkle meal with slanting knife, the victim struggled long against the unacceptable sacrifice; but when the high-girt attendants thrust down its formidable horns, it sank to the ground and offered its helpless neck to the blow. No red blood spouted forth from the gaping wound, but a slimy liquid, strange and dreadful, came out instead. Appalled by the funereal rite, Arruns turned pale and snatched up the entrails, to seek there the anger of the gods. Their very colour alarmed him: the sickly organs were marked with malignant spots, coloured with congealed gore, and chequered all over with dark patches and blood-spots. He saw the liver flabby with corruption and with boding streaks in its hostile half. the extremity of the panting lung is invisible, and a puny membrane divides the vital organs. The heart is flattened, the entrails exude corrupted blood through gaping cracks, and the caul reveals its hiding-place. And lo! he sees a horror which never yet was seen in a victim’s entrails without mischief following: a great second lobe is growing upon the lobe of the liver; one half droops sickly and flabby, while the other throbs fast and drives the veins with rapid beat. When thus he had grasped the prediction of great disaster, “Scarce may I,” he cried aloud, “reveal to men’s ears all the ills that the gods are preparing. Not with mightiest Jupiter has this my sacrifice found favour; but the infernal gods have entered into the body of the slaughtered bull. What we fear is unspeakable; but the sequel will be worse than our fears. May the gods give a favourable turn to what we have witnessed! May the entrails prove false, and may the lore of our founder Tages turn out a mere imposture!” Thus the Tuscan told the future, veiling it in obscurity and hiding it with much ambiguity.
Figulus also spoke, Figulus, whose study it was to know the gods and the secrets of the sky, Figulus, whom not even Egyptian Memphis could match in observation of the heavens and calculations that keep pace with the stars. “Either,” said he, “this universe strays for ever governed by no law, and the stars move to and fro with course unfixed; or else, if they are guided by destiny, speedy destruction is preparing for Rome and for mankind. Will the earth gape and cities be swallowed up? Or will burning heat destroy our temperate clime? Will the soil break faith and deny its produce? Or will water everywhere be tainted with streams of poison? What kind of disaster are the gods preparing? What form of ruin will their anger assume? The lives of multitudes are doomed to end together. If Saturn, that cold baleful planet, were now kindling his black fires in the zenith, then Aquarius would have poured down such rains as Deucalion saw, and the whole earth would have been hidden under the waste of waters. Or if the sun’s rays were now passing over the fierce Lion of Nemea, then fire would stream over all the world, and the upper air would be kindled and consumed by the sun’s chariot. These heavenly bodies are not active now. But Mars — what dreadful purpose has he, when he kindles the Scorpion menacing with fiery tail and scorches its claws? For the benign star of Jupiter is hidden deep in the West, the healthful planet Venus is dim, and Mercury’s swift motion is stayed; Mars alone lords it in heaven. Why have the constellations fled from their courses, to move darkling through the sky, while the side of sword-girt Orion shines all too bright? The madness of war is upon us, when the power of the sword shall violently upset all legality, and atrocious crime shall be called heroism. This frenzy will last for many years; and it is useless to pray Heaven that it may end: when peace comes, a tyrant will come with it. Let Rome prolong the unbroken series of suffering and draw out her agony for ages: only while civil war lasts, shall she henceforth be free.”
These forebodings were enough to alarm and terrify the populace; but worse was close at hand. For, as a Bacchanal, filled with Theban Lyaeus, speeds down from the summit of Pindus, in such guise a matron rushed through the appalled city, revealing by these cries the pressure of Phoebus upon her bosom: “Whither am I borne, O Paean, in haste across the sky? In what land do you set my feet? I see Pangaeus white with snow-clad ridges, I see Philippi spread out beneath the crag of Haemus: say, Phoebus, what madness is this that drives Romans to fight Romans; what war is this without a foe? Whither next am I borne to a different quarter? You take me to the far East, where the waters of Egyptian Nile stain the sea: him I recognise, that headless corpse lying on the river sands. The grim goddess of war has shifted the ranks of Pharsalia across the sea to treacherous Syrtis and parched Libya: thither also am I carried. Next I am spirited away over the cloud-capped Alps and soaring Pyrenees. Back I return to my native city, where the civil war finds its end in the very Senate House. Again the factions raise their heads; again I make the circuit of the earth. Grant me, Phoebus, to behold a different shore and a different land: Philippi I have seen already.” So she spoke and fell down, abandoned by the frenzy that now was spent.
BOOK II
AND now heaven’s wrath was revealed; the universe gave clear signs of battle; and Nature, conscious of the future, reversed the laws and ordinances of life, and, while the hurly-burly bred monsters, proclaimed civil war. Why didst thou, Ruler of Olympus, see fit to lay on suffering mortals this additional burden, that they should learn the approach of calamity by awful portents? Whether the author of the universe, when the fire gave place and he first took in hand the shapeless realm of raw matter, established the chain of causes for all eternity, and bound himself as well by universal law, and portioned out the universe, which endures the ages prescribed for it, by a fixed line of destiny; or whether nothing is ordained and Fortune, moving at random, brings round the cycle of events, and chance is master of mankind — in either case, let thy purpose, whatever it be, be sudden; let the mind of man be blind to coming doom; he fears, but leave him hope.
