Lucan, Civil War Book 1 Translated by H. T. Riley (1853) Formatted and by C. Chinn (2008) WARS worse than civil upon the Emathian plains, and license conceded to lawlessness, I sing; and a powerful people turning with victorious right-hand against its own vitals, and kindred armies engaged; and, the compact of rule rent asunder, 5 a contest waged with all the might of the shaken earth for the universal woe, and standards meeting with hostile standards, the eagles alike, and darts threatening darts. What madness, this, O citizens! what lawlessness so great of the sword, while nations are your hate, for you to shed the Latian blood? 10 And, while proud Babylon was to be spoiled of the Ausonian trophies, and the shade of Crassus was wandering unavenged, has it pleased you that wars, doomed to produce no triumphs, should be waged? Alas! how much of land and of sea might have been won with that self-same blood which the right-hands of fellow-citizens have shed. 15 Whence Titan makes his approach, and where the night conceals the stars, and where the mid-day intensely burns with its scorching moments; where too, the winter, frozen and unused to be relaxed by the spring, binds fast the icy ocean with Scythian cold! By this beneath the yoke should the Seres, by this the barbarian Araxes, have come, 20 and the race, if any there be, that lies situate contiguous to the rising Nile. Then, Rome, if so great thy love for an accursed warfare, when thou hast subjected the whole earth to Latian laws, turn thy hands against thyself; not as yet has a foe been wanting to thee. But now that the walls are tottering with the dwellings half overthrown 25 throughout the cities of Italy, and, the fortifications falling away, vast stones are lying there, and the houses are occupied by no protector, and but few inhabitants are wandering amid the ancient cities, that Hesperia has remained unsightly with brambles and unploughed for many year, and that hands are wanting for the fields requiring them— 30 no thou, fierce Pyrrhus, nor yet the Carthaginian, will prove the cause of ruin so great; to no sword has it been allowed to penetrate the vitals; deep seated are the wounds of the fellow citizen’s right hand. But if the Fates have decreed no other way for Nero to succeed, and at a costly price eternal realms are provided 35 for the Gods, and heaven could only obey its own Thunderer after the wars of the raging Giants; then in no degree, O Gods above, do we complain; crimes themselves, and lawlessness, on these conditions, are approved; let Pharsalia fill her ruthless plains, and let the shades of the Carthaginians be sated with blood; 40 let the hosts meet for the last time at tearful Munda. To these destined wars, Caesar, let the famine of Perusia and the struggles of Mutina be added, the fleets, too, which rugged Leucadia overwhelmed, and the servile wars beneath burning Aetna; still, much does Rome owe to the arms of her citizens, since for 45 thy sake these events have come to pass. When, thy allotted duties fulfilled, thou shalt late repair to the stars, the palace of heaven, preferred by thee, shall receive thee, the skies rejoicing; whether it please thee to wield the scepter, or whether to ascend the flaming chariot of Phoebus and with thy wandering fire to survey the earth, in no way alarmed 50 at the change of the sun; by every Divinity will it be yielded unto thee, and to thy free choice will nature leave it what God thou shalt wish to be, where to establish the sovereignty of the world. But do thou neither choose thy abode in the Arctic circle, nor where the sultry sky of the south behind us declines; 55 whence with thy star obliquely thou mayst look upon Rome. If thou shouldst press upon one side of the boundless aether, the sky will be sensible of the burden. Keep thy weight in the mid sphere of the balanced heavens; may all that part of the aether with sky serene be free from mist, and my no clouds interpose before Caesar. 60 Then, arms laid aside, may the human race consult its own good, and may all nations love one another; may Peace, sent throughout the world, keep close the iron thresholds of the warlike Janus. But to myself already art thou a Divinity; and, if I, a bard, receive thee in my breast, I could not wish to invoke the God who moves 65 the mystic shrines of Cirrha, and to withdraw Bacchus from Nysa. Sufficient art thou to supply inspiration for Roman song. My design leads me to recount the causes of events so great, and a boundless task is commenced upon; what it was that impelled a frantic people to arms—what that drove away Peace from the world. 70 The envious course of the Fates, and the denial of what is supreme to be of long duration; the heavy fall, too, beneath a weight too great; and Rome that could not support herself. So when, its structure dissolved, the last hour shall have closed so many ages of the universe, all things shall return once more to former chaos; constellations 75 shall rush on against mingled constellations; fiery stars shall fall in to the deep; earth shall refuse to extend her shores, and shall case away the ocean; Phoebe shall come into collision with her brother, and, disdaining to guide her two-horsed chariot in its sidelong course, will demand the day for herself; and the whole 80 mechanism, discordant, will confuse the ties of the universe rent asunder. Mighty things fall of themselves; this limit to increase have the Deities assigned to a prosperous state. Nor yet to the advantage of any other nations does Fortune turn her hate against a people all-powerful by land and by sea. Thou, Rome, wast the cause of thy own woes, 85 becoming the common property of three masters; the fatal compact, too, for sway never successfully entrusted to a number. O ye, disastrously concordant, and blinded by desires too great, why does it please you to unite your strength and to share the world in common? While the earth shall support the sea, and the air 90 the earth, and his long courses shall whirl on Titan in his career, and night shall succeed the day through signs as many, no faith is there in partners in rule, and all power will be impatient of a sharer. And believe not any nations, nor let the examples of this fatality be sought from afar; 95 the rising walls of Rome were steeped with a brother’s blood. Nor was the earth and the ocean then the reward of frenzy so great; an humble retreat brought into collision its lords. This discordant concord lasted for a short time; and peace there was, through no inclination of the chieftains. For Crassus, interposing, 100 was the sole impediment to the destined war. Just as the narrow Isthmus which cleaves and barely divides the two seas, nor yet allows them to meet together; if the earth were to withdraw, the Ionian would dash itself against the Aegean main; so, when Crassus, who kept asunder the ruthless arms of the chieftains, by a fate much 105 to be deplored stained Assyrian Carrhae with Latian blood, the Parthian misfortunes let loose the frenzy of Rome. More, ye descendants of Arsaces, was effected by you in that battle than you suppose; civil warfare you conferred upon the conquered. The sway is cut asunder by the sword; and the fortunes of a powerful 110 people, which embrace the sea, the land, the whole earth, brook not two leaders. For Julia, but off by the ruthless hand of the Destinies, bore away to the shades below the ties of allied blood, and the marriage torches, with direful omen, portentous of woe. But if the Fates had allowed thee 115 a longer sojourn in life, thou alone hadst been able to restrain on the one side the husband and on the other the parent, and, the sword dashed down, to join the armed hands, just as the Sabine women, interposing, united the sons-in-law with the fathers-in-law. By thy death is friendship rent asunder, and license granted to the chieftains 120 to commence the warfare. The ambition of rivalry adds its spur. Thou, Magnus, art afraid lest recent exploits should eclipse former triumphs, and the laurels gained from the pirates should be eclipsed by the conquest of the Gauls; thee, Caesar, does the continuance of thy labors and thy experience gained by them now elevate, and Fortune that cannot brook a second place. 125 Neither can Caesar now endure any one his superior, nor Pompey anyone his equal. Who with the more justice took up arms it is not permitted us to know; each one defends himself with a mighty abettor; the conquering cause was pleasing to the Gods, but the conquered one to Cato. Nor did they meet on equal terms; the one, with his years tending downward 130 to old age, and grown tranquil amid a long practice of the arts of peace, had now in tranquility forgotten the general; and, an aspirant for fame, had been wont to confer upon the public many a largess; solely to be wafted on by the popular gales, and to exult in the applause of a theatre his own; not to recruit his strength afresh, and principally to rely upon his 135 former successes. There stood the shadow of a glorious name: just as the lofty oak, in a fertile field, which bears the spoils of an ancient people and the consecrated gifts of chieftains, now no longer standing fast by its firm roots, is fixed by its own weight; and sending forth its bared branches 140 into the air, with its trunk, and not its leaves, forms a shade; and although it threatens to fall at the first eastern blast, and trees so many around it lift themselves with firmly-rooted strength, still it alone is venerated. But in Caesar not only was there a name as great, and the fame of the general; but a valor that knew not 145 how to rest in one place, and a shame only felt at not conquering in war. Fierce and unrestrained; ready to lead his troops whither hope and whither vengeance should summon, and never to spare fleshing his sword; to press on his own advantages, to rely on the favour of the Deity; bearing down whatever opposed himself as he sought 150 the summit, and rejoicing amid ruin to have made his way. Just as the lightning forced by the winds through the clouds flashes forth with the echoes of the riven aether and with a crash throughout the universe, and overwhelms the light of day, and terrifies the alarmed nations, dazzling the eyes with its sidelong flame. 155 It rages against temples its own; and, no matter impeding its going forth, both falling, it sends vast, and returning, vast devastation far and wide, and collects again its scattered fires. These were the motives secretly existing with the chieftains; but there were public grounds for the warfare, which have ever overwhelmed mighty nations. 160 For when, the world subdued, Fortune introduced wealth too great, and the manners gave way before prosperity, and booty and the spoils of the enemy induced luxurious habits; no moderation was there in gold or in houses; hunger, too, disdained the tables of former times; dresses hardly suitable for the matrons to wear, 165 the males seized hold upon; poverty fruitful in men was shunned; and that was fetched from the entire earth by means of which each nation falls. Then did they join the lengthened boundaries of the fields, and the extended lands once turned up by the hard ploughshare of Camillus, and which had submitted to the ancient mattocks of the Curii, lay far 170 and wide beneath the charge of husbandmen unknown to their employers. This was not the people whom tranquil peace might avail, whom its own liberty might satisfy with arms unmoved. Thence arose ready broils, and the contemptible wickedness which poverty could prompt; and the great honor, and one worthy to be sought with the sword, 175 to have been able to do more than one's own country; might, too, was the measure of right; hence laws and decrees of the people1 constrained, and Tribunes confounding their rights with Consuls. Hence the Fasces snatched up at a price, and the populace itself the vendor of its own applause, and canvassing fatal to the city, 180 bringing round the annual contests on the venal Plain of Mars; hence devouring usury, and interest greedy for each moment, and credit shaken, and warfare profitable to the many. Now had Caesar in his course passed the icy Alps, and revolved in his mind the vast commotions and the 185 future war. When he had arrived at the waves of the little Rubicon, the mighty image of his trembling country distinctly appeared to the chieftain in the darkness of the night, bearing marks of extreme sadness on her features, letting loose the white hair from her tower-bearing head, with her long locks dishevelled, standing with her arms all bare, and uttering 190 these words, mingled with sighs: "Whither beyond this do you proceed? Whither, ye men, do you bear my standards? If rightfully you come, if as citizens, thus far you may." Then did horror smite the limbs of the chieftain, his hair stood on end, and a languor that checked his course withheld his steps on the verge of the bank. 195 Soon he exclaims, "O Thunderer, who dost look down upon the walls of the mighty city from the Tarpeian rock, and ye Phrygian Penates of the Julian race, ye secret mysteries, too, of Quirinus borne away, and Jove of Latium, who dost reside in lofty Alba, and ye Vestal hearths, and thou, O Rome, equal to a supreme 200 Deity, favour my designs! With no fatal arms am I pursuing thee; lo! here am I, Caesar, the conqueror by land and by sea, everywhere (if only it is permitted me) thine own soldier even still. He will it be, he the guilty one, who shall make me thy foe!" Then did he end the respite from the warfare, and swiftly bore the standards 205 through the swollen stream. Just as when in the parched plains of sultry Libya a lion, his enemy perceived at hand, crouches undecided until he collects all his fury; soon as he has aroused himself by the lashings of his infuriate tail, and has raised his mane erect, and from his vast throat the loud roar 210 reechoes; then, if the light lance of the Moor, hurled, pierces him, or the hunting spears enter his broad chest, amid the weapons, careless of wounds so great, he rushes on. From a small spring rises the ruddy Rubicon, and, when fervid summer glows, is impelled with humble waves, 215 and through the lowly vales it creeps along, and, a fixed boundary, separates front the Ausonian husbandmen the Gallic fields. At that time winter1 gave it strength, and now the showery Cynthia with her blunted horn for the third time had swollen the waves, and the Alps were thawed by the watery blasts of the eastern breeze. 220 First of all the charger is opposed obliquely to the stream, to bear the brunt of the floods; then the rest of the throng bursts through the pliant waves of the river, now broken in its course, across the easy ford. When Caesar, the stream surmounted, reached the opposite banks, and stood upon the forbidden fields of Hesperia; 225 "Here," said he, "here do I leave peace, and the violated laws behind; thee, Fortune, do I follow; henceforth, far hence be treaties! The Destinies have we trusted; War as our umpire we must adopt." Thus having said, the active leader in the shades of night hurries on his troops, and swifter than the hurled charge of the Balearic sling, 230 and the arrow shot behind the back of the Parthian; and threatening he surprises Ariminum. Lucifer left behind, the stars fled from the fires of the sun, and now arose the day doomed to behold the first outbreak of the war. Whether by the will of the Gods, or whether the murky 235 south wind impelled them, clouds obscured the saddened light. When in the captured Forum the soldier halted, commanded to pitch his standard, the clash of clarions and the clang of trumpets sounded the ill-omened signals together with the hoarse-sounding horn. The rest of the people was broken, and, aroused from their beds, 240 the youth snatched down the arms fixed up near the hallowed Penates, which a prolonged peace still afforded; they laid hold of shields decaying with the frames now bare, and darts with blunted points, and swords rough with the cankering of swarthy rust. When the well-known eagles glittered, and the Roman standards, 245 and Caesar mounted aloft was beheld in the midst of the ranks, they grew chilled with alarm, icy dread bound fast their limbs, and they revolved these silent complaints within their speechless breasts:-- "O walls ill founded, these, with the Gauls for their neighbors! O walls condemned to a hapless site! Profound peace and tranquil repose 250 is there throughout all nations, we are the prey and the first encampment for these thus frenzied. Far better, Fortune, wouldst thou have afforded an abode in an eastern clime, and under the icy north, and wandering abodes, rather than to have to protect the threshold of Latium. We were the first to behold the commotions of the Senones, the Cimbrian, 255 too, rushing on, and the hosts of Libya, and the career of the Teutonic rage. As oft as Fortune aims a blow at Rome, this is the passage for the warfare." Thus with a secret sigh spoke each, not venturing to express his alarm aloud; no voice was entrusted to anguish; but in the same degree in which, when the winter keeps in the birds, 260 the fields are silent, and the mid ocean without a murmur is still, thus profound was the silence. Light has now dispelled the cold shades of night; lo! the Fates supply to his wavering mind the torches of war and inducements provoking to battle, and rend asunder all the pauses of moderation; Fortune struggles that the movements 265 of the chieftain shall be justified, and discovers pretexts for his arms. The threatening Senate, the law violated, expelled from the divided city the differing Tribunes, the Gracchi being thrown in their teeth. These now repairing to the standards of the chieftain moving onward and in their vicinity, the daring Curio, with his venal tongue, accompanies; 270 a voice that once was the people's, and that had dared to defend liberty, and to place armed potentates on a level with the lower classes. And when he beheld the chieftain revolving his various cares in his breast, he said, "While, Caesar, thy party could be aided by my voice, although against the will of the Senate, then did we 275 prolong thy rule, so long as I had the liberty to occupy the Rostra, and to bring over to thee the wavering Quirites. But after the laws, coerced by warfare, were dumb, we were driven from our paternal homes, and of our own accord we endured exile; 't is thy victory will make us citizens again. 280 While, strengthened with no support, the factions are still in doubt, away with delay! it always injures men prepared to procrastinate. Equal labors and anxieties are being sought for a greater reward. Gaul has kept thee engaged in war for twice five years, a portion of the earth how trifling! If with a happy result 285 thou hast fought a few battles, Rome for thee will subdue the world! Now neither does the procession of the lengthened triumph receive thee returning, nor does the Capitol demand the consecrated laurels. Cankering envy denies thee everything; and hardly wilt thou escape with impunity having subdued the foe; it is the determination of the son-in-law 290 to deprive the father-in-law of the sway. Thou canst not share the earth; alone thou mayst possess it." After he had thus spoken, and had aroused in him, though eager already for the war, much anger still, and had inflamed the chieftain, in the same degree as the Elean courser is urged on by the shouts, although, the starting place now closed, 295 he struggles against the door, and headlong loosens the bolts. Forthwith he summons the armed maniples to the standards, and when, the multitudes collecting, he has well calmed their hurrying tumultuousness, with his countenance and his right hand he enjoins silence: "O companions in war!" he exclaims, "who together with me have experienced 300 the thousand hazards of battle, now in the tenth year that you have conquered, has your blood, shed in the regions of the north, deserved this, and wounds and death, and winters passed at the foot of the Alps? Not otherwise is Rome convulsed by the vast tumultuous preparations for war, than if the Punic Hannibal were descending from the Alps. 305 With stout recruits the cohorts are being filled; for the fleet every forest is falling; and both by sea and by land is Caesar ordered to be expelled. What, if my standards had lain prostrate in adverse warfare, and if the fierce nations of the Gauls had been rushing close on our backs? Now, when Fortune acts with me in prospering 310 circumstances, and the Gods are summoning us to the mastery, we are challenged. Let him come to the war, the chieftain, enfeebled by prolonged peace, with his soldiery so hastily levied, his toga-clad partisans, too, and the loquacious Marcellus, the Catos as well, mere idle names. Will, forsooth, men from afar3 and purchased dependants 315 still associate Pompey with the sway for years so many? Is he to be guiding the triumphal chariot, his years not yet permitting it? Is he never to resign the honors which he has once usurped? Why need I now complain of the fields placed under restraint throughout the whole earth, and how that starvation at his command has become his slave? Who does not know how the 320 camp has been intermingled with the trembling Forum? When the swords ominously threatening surrounded the terrified judgment seat with an unwonted array, and, the soldiery presuming to burst in upon the midst of the legal proceedings, the standards of Pompey closed around the accused Milo. Now, too, lest an old age spent in privacy should await him in his feebleness, 325 he is preparing for contests accursed, accustomed to civil warfare, and, trained by crimes, to surpass his master Sulla. And as the fierce tigers never lay aside their fury, which, in the Hyrcanian forest, while they haunted the lairs of their dams, the blood deep-drawn of the slain herds has nurtured; 330 so too, Magnus, does thy thirst survive to thee accustomed to lick the sword of Sulla. Once received within the lips, no blood allows the polluted jaws to become satiated. Still, what end will power meet with, thus prolonged? What limit is there to crimes? At least, dishonorable man, let this 335 Sulla of thine teach thee now to dismount from this supreme sway. Shall then, after the wandering Cilicians, and the Pontic battles of the exhausted monarch, with difficulty ended through barbarian poison, Caesar be granted to Pompey as a last province, because, commanded to lay down my conquering eagles, 340 I did not obey? If from myself the reward of my labours is torn away, to these, at least, let the rewards of their prolonged service be granted, though not with their general; under some leader, whoever he is, let these troops enjoy their triumph. Whither, after the wars, shall pallid old age betake itself? What settlement is there to be for those who have served their time? What lands 345 shall be granted for our veterans to plough? What walls for the invalided? Or, Magnus, shall pirates, in preference, become the settlers? Victorious already, raise, arise your standards; the might we must employ, which we have acquired; to him who wields arms does he surrender everything who refuses what is his due. The Deities, too, will not forsake us; 350 for neither is plunder nor sovereignty sought by my arms; we are tearing away its tyrants from a City ready to be enslaved." Thus he speaks; but the hesitating ranks mutter among themselves words of indecision in whispers far front distinct; duty and their paternal Penates check their feelings although rendered fierce with carnage, and their 355 swelling spirits; but through ruthless love of the sword and dread of their general, they are brought back. Then Laelius, who held the rank of first centurion, and wore the insignia of the decoration won in service, the oak that bespoke the reward for saving a citizen, exclaimed: "If it is lawful, O greatest guardian of the Roman fame, 360 and if it is allowed to utter the accents of truth— that a patience so long enduring has withheld thy might, do we complain. Was it that confidence in us was wanting to thee? So long as the warm blood imparts motion to these breathing bodies, and so long as stalwart arms have might to hurl the javelin, wilt thou be submitting 365 to the degenerate arts of peace, and the sovereign sway of the Senate? Is it so very dreadful to prove the conqueror in civil war? Come, lead us amid the tribes of Scythia, amid the inhospitable shores of Syrtis, amid the sultry sands of thirsting Libya. This army, when it left the conquered world behind its back, 370 stilled the swelling waves of Ocean with its oars, and subdued the foaming Rhine at its northern mouth. To me, in following thy commands, it is as much a matter of course to do, as it is to will. And no fellow-citizen of mine, Caesar, is he against whom I shall hear thy trumpet-signal. By the prospering standards of thy ten campaigns 375 I swear, and by thy triumphs gained over every foe; if thou shouldst bid me bury my sword in the breast of my brother, in the throat too of my parent, and in the entrails of my wife teeming with her burden, still, though with unwilling right hand, I will do all this; if to despoil the Gods, and to set fire to the Temples, 380 the flames of thy camp shall envelope the Divinity of Juno Moneta; if to pitch the camp above the waves of Etrurian Tiber, a bold marker-out of the encampment will I enter upon the Hesperian fields. Whatever walls thou shalt desire to level with the plain, impelled by these arms the battering-ram shall scatter the stones far and wide; 385 even though that city which thou shouldst order to be utterly razed should be Rome herself." To these words the cohorts at once shout assent, and pledge themselves with hands lifted on high, for whatever wars he shall summon them to. An uproar ascends to the skies as vast, as, when the Thracian Boreas beats against the crags of 390 pine-bearing Ossa, the trunks bending of the woods bowed down, or returning again upright into the air, the roar of the forests arises. Caesar, when he perceives that the war is embraced by the soldiers thus heartily, and that the Fates are favoring, that by no indecision he may impede his fortune, summons forth the cohorts scattered throughout the Gallic fields, 395 and with standards moved from every direction marches upon Rome. They deserted the tents pitched by the cavity of Lemanus, and the camp which soaring aloft above the curving rock of Vogesus used to overawe the pugnacious Lingones with their painted arms. Those left the shallows of Isara, which running with its own flood 400 through such an extent, falling into a stream of greater fame, bears not its own name down to the ocean waves. The yellow-haired Ruteni are relieved from the prolonged garrison; the placid Atax rejoices at no longer bearing the Latian keels; the Varus, too, the limit of Hesperia, her boundaries now extended; 405 where, too, beneath the divine authority of Hercules, the consecrated harbor adjoins the sea with its hollowed rocks; no Corus holds sway over it, nor yet the Zephyr; alone does Circius disturb the shores his own, and withholds the ships from the safe harbour of Monœcus. Where, too, the doubtful coast extends, which land and sea claim 410 at alternate periods, when the vast ocean is poured forth upon it, or when with ebbing waves it retreats. Whether it is that the wind thus rolls on the sea from distant climes, and bearing it on there leaves it; or whether the waves of wandering Tethys, influenced by the second of the heavenly bodies, flow at the lunar hours; 415 or whether the flaming Titan, that he may quaff the refreshing waves, uplifts the ocean, and raises the billows to the stars— do you enquire, whom the economy of the universe engages; but to me, thou Cause, whatever thou art, that dost govern movements thus regular, as the Gods of heaven have willed it so, for ever lie concealed! Then does he, 420 who occupies the fields of Nemetis and the banks of the Aturus, where on the curving shore, flowing by Tarbela, it encloses the sea gently flowing in, move his standards, and the Santonian exults, the enemy removed; the Biturigian, too, and the active Suessones with their long arms; the Leucan and the Rheman, most adroit in extending the arm with the poised javelin; 425 the Sequanian race most adroit with the reins guided in the circle; the Belgian, too, the skilful guide of the scythed chariot; the Arverni, likewise, who have presumed to pretend themselves of Latian brotherhood, descended from the race of the people of Ilium; the Nervian, also, too fatally rebellious, and defiled by the broken treaty with the slaughtered Cotta; 430 the Vangiones, too, who imitate thee, Sarmatian, with the loosely-flowing trousers; the fierce Batavians, too, whom the harsh-sounding trumpets of crooked brass inflame to war; where Cinga flows around with its tide; where the Rhone bears to the sea the Arar, swept along with its impetuous waves; where the race dwells upon the heights on the 435 mountain summits, the Gebennae precipitous5 with their snow-white crags. [The Pictones, left at liberty, cultivate their fields; and no more does the camp pitched around keep in check the fickle Turones. The Andian disdaining, Meduana, to pine amid thy fogs, is now refreshed by the placid stream of Liger; 440 from the squadrons of Caesar renowned Genabos is set free.] Thou, too, Trevirian, overjoyed that the course of warfare is turned back; and thou, Ligurian, now shorn, in former times with thy locks hanging adown thy graceful neck, preferred to the whole of long-haired Gaul; those, too, by whom the relentless Teutates is appeased by direful 445 bloodshed, and Hesus, dreadful with his merciless altars; and the shrine of Taranis, not more humane than that of Scythian Diana. You, too, ye Bards, who, as poets, hand down in your praises to remote ages spirits valiant, and cut off in war, freed from alarm, did then pour forth full many a strain; 450 and you, Druids, after arms were laid aside, sought once again your barbarous ceremonials and the ruthless usages of your sacred rites. To you alone has it been granted to know the Gods and the Divinities of heaven, or alone to know that they do not exist. In remote forests do you inhabit the deep glades. On your authority the shades seek not 455 the silent abodes of Erebus, and the pallid realms of Pluto in the depths below; the stone spirit controls other limbs in another world; death is the mid space in a prolonged existence, if you sing what is ascertained as truth. Assuredly the nations whom the Northern Bear looks down upon are happy in their error, whom this, the very greatest 460 of terrors, does not move, the fear of death. Thence have the people spirits ever ready to rush to arms, and souls that welcome death; and they deem it cowardice to be sparing of a life destined to return. You, too, stationed to prevent the Cauci, with their curling locks, from warfare, repair to Rome, and desert the savage banks 465 of the Rhine, and the world now laid open to the nations. Caesar, when his immense resources, with their collected strength, had created confidence for daring still greater things, spread throughout all Italy, and filled the neighboring fortified towns. Idle rumors, too, were added to well-founded fears, and burst upon 470 the feelings of the public, and presented to them the destined slaughter, and, a swift forerunner of the hastening warfare, let loose tongues innumerable to false alarms. Some there are who, where Mevania displays itself in the plains that rear the bulls, aver that the audacious squadrons are pushing onward 475 to the combat, and that, where Nar flows on to the stream of Tiber, the barbarian troops of the ruthless Caesar are spreading far and wide; that he himself, leading all his eagles and his collected standards, is advancing with no single column, and with a camp densely thronged. And not such as they remember him do they now behold him; both more terrible and 480 relentless does he seem to their imaginations, and more inhuman than the conquered foe. That after him the nations lying between the Rhine and the Alps, torn from the Arctic regions and from their paternal homes, are following close, and that the City has been ordered, a Roman looking on, to be sacked by barbarous tribes. Thus, by his fears, does each one 485 give strength to rumour; and no one the author of their woes, what they have invented they dread. And not alone is the lower class alarmed, smitten by a groundless terror; but the Senate house, and the Fathers themselves rush forth from their seats, and the Senate taking to flight gives its hateful decrees for the warfare into the charge of the Consuls. 490 Then uncertain what to seek as safe, and what to leave as worthy to be feared, whither the anxiety for flight directs each one, it urges the populace headlong, and the throng, connected in one long line, bursts forth. You would suppose either that accursed torches had set fire to the abodes, or that now, the ruins shaking, the nodding houses were 495 tottering to their fall; thus does the panic-stricken multitude at random rush throughout the City with precipitate steps, as though there had been but one hope in their ruined fortunes, to desert their paternal walls. Just as, when the stormy south wind has repulsed from the Libyan Syrtes the boundless ocean, 500 and the broken mass of file sail-bearing mast has sent forth its crash, and the pilot, the ship deserted, leaps into the waves, the seaman, too, and thus, the structure of the vessel not yet torn asunder, each one makes a shipwreck for himself; so the City forsaken, do they fly unto the warfare. The parent, now weakened with old age, 505 was able to call no one back; nor yet the wife her husband with her tears; nor did the household Lares detain them, while they were breathing prayers for their safety thus doubtful; nor did any one pause at the threshold, and then, filled with perhaps his last glimpse of the beloved City, take his departure; not to be called back, the crowd rushes on. 510 O Deities, ready to grant supreme prosperity, and loth to preserve the same! The cowardly throngs left the City a prey on Caesar's approach, filled with the people and with conquered nations, and able to hold the human race, if the multitude were collected together. When, in foreign regions, 515 the Roman soldier, pressed by the foe, is hemmed in, he escapes the dangers of the night by a simple trench; and the rampart suddenly formed with the protection of some clods torn up affords secure slumbers within the tents. Thou Rome, on the name only of war being heard art being deserted; 520 a single night has not been trusted to thy walls. Still, pardon must be granted, yes, must be granted for alarms thus great. Pompey flying, they were in dread. Besides, that even no hope in the future might cheer their failing spirits, there was added the disclosed assurance of a still worse future, and the threatening Gods 525 of heaven filled with prodigies the earth, the seas, the skies. The gloomy nights beheld stars unknown, and the sky burning with flames, and torches flying obliquely through the expanse along the heavens, and the train of a fear-inspiring meteor, and a comet threatening tyranny to the earth. 530 Incessant lightnings flashed in the deceptive clear sky, and the fire described various forms in the dense atmosphere; now a javelin, with a prolonged flame, and now a torch, with a scattered light, flashed in the heavens. Lightning in silence without any clouds, and bringing its fires from the Arctic regions, smote 535 the Capital of Latium; the lesser stars, too, that were wont to speed onwards in the still hours of the night, came in the middle of the day; and, her horns closed, when Phœbe was now reflecting her brother on her whole orb, struck by the sudden shadow of the earth she turned pale. 540 Titan himself when he was raising his head in mid Olympus, concealed his glowing chariot in dense darkness, and enwrapped the earth in shade, and forced the nations to despair of day; just as, the Sun retreating by the east, Mycenae of Thyestes brought on the night. 545 Grim Mulciber opened the mouths of Sicilian Etna; nor did it raise its flames to the heavens, but with its crest bending low the flame fell downwards on the Hesperian side. The black Charybdis stirred up from her depths sea of the color of blood; the savage dogs barked in dismal tones. The fire was torn from the Vestal 550 altars; and the flame that showed that the Latin rites were completed was divided into two parts, and rose with a twofold point, resembling the funeral piles of Thebes. Then did the Earth withdraw from her axis, and, their ridges quaking, the Alps shook off their ancient snows. With billows more mighty Tethys did overwhelm 555 Hesperian Calpe and the heights of Atlas. We have heard how that the native Deities wept, and how with sweat the Lares attested the woes of the City, how, too, that the presented gifts fell down in their Temples, and birds of ill omen polluted the day; and how that the wild beasts, emboldened, the woods at nightfall 560 deserted, made their lairs in the midst of Rome. Then were the tongues of cattle adapted to human accents; monstrous births, too, there were of human beings, both as to the number and the formation of the limbs, and her own infant struck the mother with horror; the fatal lines, too, of the Pro phetess of Cumae were repeated 565 among the populace. Then did those, whom with their hacked arms the savage Bellona inspires, sing of the Gods enraged; and tossing their blood-stained hair, the Galli howled forth sad accents to the throng. Urns filled with bones laid at rest sent forth groans. Then arose the crash of arms, and loud voices were heard 570 amid the remote parts of the groves, and ghosts came nigh to men. Those, too, who till the fields adjacent to the extremities of the walls, fled in all directions; the mighty Erinnys was encompassing the City about, shaking her pitch-tree torch down-turned with flaming top, and her hissing locks; such as when the Fury impelled the Theban 575 Agave, or whirled in air the weapons of the savage Lycurgus; or such as, when, by the command of the unjust Juno, Pluto now visited, Alcides shuddered at Megaera. Trumpets resounded, and black night, amid the silent shades, sent forth an uproar as loud as that with which the cohorts are mingled 580 in combat. The shade of Sulla, too, seeming to arise in the middle of the Plain of Mars, uttered ill-boding prophecies; and the husbandmen fled from Marius raising his head at the cold waves of Anio, his sepulcher burst asunder. By reason of these things it seemed good that, according to the ancient usage, 585 the Etrurian prophets should be summoned. Of whom, Aruns, the one most stricken in years, inhabited the walls of deserted Luca, well-skilled in the movements of the lightnings, and the throbbing veins of the entrails, and the warnings of the wing hovering in the air. In the first place he orders the monsters, which revolting nature 590 has produced from no seed, to be seized, and then bids them burn the accursed progeny of the barren womb in ill-omened flames. Then next he orders the whole City to be perambulated by the trembling citizens, and the priests, who purify the walls at the festive lustrum, to whom is granted the power to perform the rite, to go round about 595 the lengthened spaces without the walls, at the extreme boundaries. The inferior throng follows, tightly girt in the Gabinian fashion, and the filleted priestess leads the Vestal choir, to whom alone it is permitted to behold the Trojan Minerva. Next, those who have charge of the decrees of the Gods and the mystic 600 prophecies, and who reconduct Cybele, when bathed, from the little Almo: the Augur, too, skilled in observing the birds on the left hand; and the Septemvir, joyous at the festivals, and the fellowship of the Titii,-- the Salian, likewise, carrying the ancilia on his exulting neck; and the Flamen, who wears the tuft3 upon his noble head. 605 And while in prolonged circuit they go round about the emptied City, Aruns collects the dispersed objects struck by flames of lightning, and with a lamenting murmur buries them in the earth, and bestows a name upon the consecrated spots. Then does he urge onward to the altar a male, with selected neck. Now had he begun to pour the wine, 610 and to place on it the salted corn, with knife pointed downwards; and long was the victim impatient of the rites not grateful to him; when the aproned attendants pressed upon the threatening horns, sinking on his knees he presented his subdued neck. And no blood as usual spurted forth; but from the gaping wound 615 there was black venom poured forth instead of ruddy gore. Astounded at the ill-omened rites Aruns turned pale, and sought the wrath of the Gods of heaven in the torn-out entrails. The very color alarmed the prophet; for a pervading lividness streaked with spots of blood the pallid vitals, 620 tinted with foul spots and gorged with congealed blood. He perceives the liver reeking with corruption, and beholds the veins threatening on the enemy's side. The fibers of the panting lungs lie concealed, and a narrow line separates the vital parts. The heart lies still; and through gaping clefts the vitals 625 emit corrupt matter; the cauls, too, disclose their retreats; and, shocking sign! that which has appeared with impunity in no entrails, lo! he sees growing upon the head of the entrails the mass of another head--a part hangs weak and flabby, a part throbs and with a rapid pulsation incessantly moves the veins. When, by these means, 630 he understood the fated allotment of vast woes, he exclaimed, "Hardly is it righteous, Gods of heaven, for me to disclose to the people what you warn me of! nor indeed, supreme Jupiter, have I propitiously offered unto thee this sacrifice; and into the breast of the slaughtered bull have the infernal Deities entered! Things not to be uttered do we dread; but things still greater than our apprehensions 635 will come to pass. May the Gods grant a prosperous result to what has been seen, and may there be no truth in the entrails; but rather may Tages, the founder of the art, have fondly invented all these things!" Thus did the Etrurian, obscuring the omens and concealing them in much perplexing doubt, utter his prophecies. But Figulus, to whom it was a care to know the Gods and the secrets 640 of the heavens, whom not Egyptian Memphis could equal in the science of the stars and in the principles which regulate the heavenly bodies, exclaimed: "Either this world wanders without any laws throughout all ages, and the Constellations run to and fro with uncertain movements; or else, if the Fates hold sway, a speedy destruction is preparing for the City 645 and the human race. Will the earth yawn, and cities be swallowed up? Or will the glowing atmosphere deprive us of all moderate temperature? Will the faithless earth refuse her crops of corn? Will all the water be mingled with poison infused therein? What kind of ruin, O Gods of heaven, with what plagues do you furnish 650 your vengeance? At the same instant the closing days of many have met. If the cold star of Saturn, with its evil influence in the lofty heaven, had lighted up its dusky fires, Aquarius would have poured forth showers worthy of Deucalion, and the whole earth would have been concealed in the ocean spread over it. 655 If, Phœbus, thou wast now urging the fierce Nemean lion with thy rays, flames would be making their way over the whole world, and, set on fire by thy chariot, the sky would be in a blaze. Those fires pause: thou, Gradivus, who dost inflame the threatening Scorpion with his burning tail, and dost scorch his claws, 660 why dost thou make preparations thus mighty? For with his remote setting propitious Jupiter is going down, and the healthful star of Venus is dim, and the Cyllenian Deity, rapid in his movements, is retarded, and Mars occupies the heavens alone. Why have the Constellations forsaken their courses, and why in obscurity are they borne along throughout the universe? 665 Why thus intensely shines the side of the sword-girt Orion? The frenzy of arms is threatening; the name for unspeakable crime will be virtue; and the might of the sword shall confound all right by force; and for many a year shall this madness prevail. And what avails it to ask an end from the Gods of heaven? 670 That peace comes with a tyrant alone. Prolong, Rome, the continuous series of thy woes; protract for a length of time thy calamities, only now free during civil war." These presages greatly alarm the trembling multitude, but greater ones confound them. For just as on the heights of Pindus 675 the Edonian female, filled with the Ogygian Lyaeus, hurries along, so likewise is a matron, borne along through the astounded City, disclosing by these words how Phœbus is exciting her breast: "Whither, O Paean, am I being borne? In what land art thou placing me, hurried along amid the skies? I see Pangaeum, white with its snowy 680 ridges, and extended Philippi beneath the crags of Haemus. What frenzy this is, O Phoebus, tell me; why do Roman armies mingle their weapons and their bands? Without an enemy is there war? Torn away, whither am I being borne? Thou art conducting me to the distant east, where the sea is changed by the stream of the Nile of Lagus. 685 Him who is lying a hideous trunk on the river's sand, do I recognize. Over the seas am I borne to the shifting Syrtes and the parched Libya, whither the direful Erinnys has transferred the ranks of Emathia. Now above the heights of the cloud-capped Alps and the aerial Pyrenees 690 am I torn away. To the abodes of my native City I return, and in the midst of the Senate impious warfare is being waged. Factions again arise, and once more throughout all the earth do I proceed. Permit me to behold fresh shores of the sea, and fresh lands; now, Phœbus, have I beheld Philippi!" 695 Thus she said; and exhausted by her wearied frenzy she laid her down.