Lucan, Civil War Book 7 Translated by H. T. Riley (1853) Formatted and by C. Chinn (2008) NEVER more tardy from the ocean than the eternal laws demand, did mournful Titan speed on his steeds along the heavens; and he checked his chariot, as the skies whirled him along. He was both ready to endure eclipse, and the grievance of light 5 withdrawn; and he attracted clouds, not as food for his flames, but lest he might shine serenely upon the regions of Thessaly. But the night, the last portion of fortunate existence for Magnus, deceived his anxious slumbers with vain prospects. For he seemed to himself, in the seat of the Pompeian Theatre, 10 to behold forms innumerable of the commonalty of Rome, and his own name raised with joyous voices to the stars, and the resounding tiers contending in applause. Such were the looks and the shouts of the applauding populace, when formerly, a young man, and at the period of his first triumph, 15 after the nations which the rushing Iberus surrounds were subdued, and the arms which the flying Sertorius urged on, the West having been reduced to peace, revered as much in his white toga as in that which adorned the chariot, the Senate giving applause, he sat, as yet but a Roman knight. Whether, at the end 20 of successes, anxious for the future, sleep flew back to joyous times, or whether, prophesying, by its wonted perversions, things contrary to what is seen, it bore the omens of great woe; or whether to thee, forbidden any more to behold thy paternal abodes, Fortune in this fashion presented Rome. Break not his slumbers, 25 ye sentinels of the camp; let no trumpet resound in his ears. The rest of the morrow, direful, and saddened with the image of the day, will from every quarter bring the bloodstained ranks, from every, side the war. Whence canst thou then obtain the slumbers of the populace and a happy night? O blessed, if even thus thy Rome could behold thee! 30 Would that, Magnus, the Gods of heaven had granted a single day to thy country and to thee, on which either, assured of destiny, might have enjoyed the last blessing of affection so great. Thou goest as though destined to die in the Ausonian city. She, conscious to herself of her assured wishes in behalf 35 of thee, has not believed that this evil ever existed in destiny; that thus she is to lose the tomb even of Magnus. Thee, with mingling griefs, would both old men and youths have bewailed, and the child untaught. The female throng, their locks disheveled, would, as at the funeral of Brutus, have torn their breasts. 40 Now even, although they may fear the darts of the unscrupulous victor, although Caesar himself may bring word of thy death, they will weep; but, while they are bringing frankincense, while laurel wreaths to the Thunderer. O wretched people, whose groans devour their griefs! who equally lament thee in the Theatre no longer full! 45 The sunbeams had conquered the stars, when, with the mingled murmur of the camps the multitude resounded, and, the Fates dragging on the world to ruin, demanded the signal for combat. The greatest part of the wretched throng, not destined to behold the day throughout, murmurs around the very tent of the general, and, inflamed, with vast 50 tumult, urges on the speeding hours of approaching death. Direful frenzy arises; each one desires to precipitate his own destinies and those of the state. Pompey is called slothful and timorous, and too sparing of his father- in-law, and attached to his sway of the world, in desiring to have at the same moment so many nations 55 from every part under his own control, and being in dread of peace. Still more, both the kings and the eastern nations, too, complain that the war is prolonged, and that they are detained at a distance from their native land. Is it your pleasure, O Gods of heaven, when it is your purpose to overthrow all things, to add to our errors this crime? We rush on 60 upon slaughter, and roans that are to injure ourselves we demand. In the camp of Pompey, Pharsalia is an object of desire! Tullius, the greatest author of Roman eloquence, beneath whose rule and Consular toga the fierce Catiline trembled at the axes, producers of peace, enraged with 65 the warfare, while he longed for the Rostra and the Forum, having, as a soldier, submitted to a silence so prolonged, reported the language of all. Eloquence added its powers to the feeble cause: "Fortune requests this only of thee, Magnus, in return for favours so numerous, that thou wilt be ready to make use of her; both we, the nobles 70 in thy camp, and thy kings, with the suppliant world pressing around thee, entreat that thou wilt permit thy father-in-law to be overcome. Shall Caesar for so long a time be cause of war to mankind? With reason is it distasteful to nations subdued by thee when speeding past them, that Pompey should be slow in victory. Whither has thy spirit 75 fled, or where is thy confidence in destiny? Dost thou have apprehensions, ungrateful man, as to the Gods of heaven? And dost thou hesitate to trust the cause of the Senate to the Deities? The troops themselves will tear up thy standards, and will spring forward to the combat. Let it shame thee to have conquered by compulsion. If by thee as our appointed leader, if by 80 us wars are waged, be it their right to meet upon whatever field they please. Why dost thou avert the swords of the whole world from the blood of Caesar? Hands are brandishing weapons; with difficulty does each await the delaying standards; make haste that thy own trumpet-call may not forsake thee. Magnus, the Senate long to know whether they are to follow thee as soldiers 85 or whether as companions." The leader groaned, and perceived that this was a subterfuge of the Gods, and that the Destinies were opposed to his own feelings."If this is the pleasure of all," he said; "if the occasion requires Magnus as a soldier, not a general, no further will I delay the Fates. In one ruin let Fortune involve the nations, 90 and let this day be to a large portion of mankind the very last. Still, Rome, I call thee to witness, that Magnus has received, the day on which all things came to ruin. The labor of the war might have cost thee no wound; it might have delivered up the leader, subdued without slaughter and a captive, to violated peace. 95 What frenzy is this in crimes, O ye, blind to fate? Do they dread to wage a civil war, so as not to conquer with blood? The earth we have wrested from him, from the whole ocean we have excluded him; his famishing troops we have compelled to premature rapine of the crops; and in the enemy have we wrought the wish to prefer 100 to be slaughtered with swords, and to mingle the deaths of his partisans with my own. A great part of the warfare has been accomplished in those measures, by which it has been brought about that the raw recruit is in no dread of the combat, if only under the excitement of valor and in the heat of resentment they demand the standards to be raised. The very fear of an evil about to come 105 has committed many a one to extreme dangers. He is the bravest man, who, ready to endure what is deserving of fear, if it impends close at hand, can also deter it. Is it your pleasure to abandon this so prosperous state of things to Fortune, to leave the hazard of the world to the sword? They wish rather for their leader to fight than to conquer. 110 Fortune, thou hadst granted me the Roman state to rule; receive it still greater, and protect it amid the blindness of warfare. War will be neither the crime nor the glory of Pompey. Before the Gods of heaven, thou dost conquer me, Caesar, by thy hostile prayers. The battle is now fought. What an amount of crimes, and of evils an extent 115 how vast will this day bring upon nations! how many kingdoms will lie in ruin! How turbid will Enipeus run with Roman blood! I could wish that the first dart of this lamentable warfare would strike this head, if without the ruin of the state and the downfall of the party, it were about to fall; for not more joyous to Magnus will victory prove. 120 To nations, this slaughter perpetrated, Pompey will be this day either a hated or a pitied name. Every woe that the allotted destiny of things shall bring will belong to the conquered, to the conqueror every crime." Thus he speaks, and allows the combat to the nations, and gives loose rein to them as they rage 125 with anger; and just as the mariner, overpowered by the boisterous Corus, leaves the rudder to the winds, and, skill abandoned, a sluggish burden, the ship is borne along. Confused, with an anxious murmuring the camp resounds, and bold hearts throb against then breasts with uncertain palpitations. On the countenances of many is the paleness 130 of approaching death, and an aspect strongly indicating their destiny. It is clear that the day is come, which is to bestow a fate for everlasting upon human affairs, and it is manifest, that in that combat it is sought what Rome is to be. His own dangers each man knows not, distracted with greater fears. Who, beholding the shores 135 overwhelmed by sea, who, seeing the ocean on the summits of mountains, and the sky, the sun hurled down, falling upon the earth, the downfall of things so numerous, could feel fear for himself? There is no leisure to have apprehensions for one's self; for the City and for Magnus is the alarm. Nor have they confidence in their swords, unless the points shine sharpened 140 with the whetstone. Then is every javelin pointed against the rock; with better strings they tighten the bows; it is a care to fill the quivers with chosen arrows. The horseman increases the spurs, and fits on the thongs of the reins. If it is lawful to compare the labors of men with the Gods of heaven, 145 not otherwise, Phlegra supporting the furious Giants, did the sword of Mars grow warm upon the Sicilian anvils; and a second time the trident of Neptune grew red with flames, and, Python lying prostrate, Paean renewed his darts, Pallas scattered the locks of the Gorgon upon her Aegis, 150 and the Cyclops moulded anew the Pallenaean thunderbolts of Jove. Fortune, however, did not forbear by various marks to disclose the woes about to ensue. For while they were repairing to the Thessalian fields, the whole sky opposed them as they come, and in the eyes of the men the lightnings rent asunder the clouds; 155 and torches meeting them, and columns of immense flames, and the sky presented serpentine forms, greedy of the waves, with fiery meteors intermingled, and with hurled lightnings dimmed their eyes. The crests it struck off from their helmets, and dissolved the hilts of their melted swords, and liquefied the darts tom away, 160 and made the hurtful weapon to smoke with sulphur from the skies. Moreover, the standards, covered with swarms innumerable, and with difficulty tom up from the ground, bowed the head of the standard-bearer, weighed down with an unusual burden, soaking with tears, even as far as Thessaly the standards of Rome and of the republic. 165 The bull, urged onward for the Gods above, flies from the spurned altar, and throws himself headlong along the Emathian fields; and for the sad rites no victim is found. But thou, Caesar, what heavenly Gods of criminality, what Eumenides, didst thou with due ceremonials invoke? What Deities of the Stygian 170 realms, and what infernal fiends, and monsters steeped in night, didst thou propitiate, so ruthlessly about to wage the impious warfare? Now (it is matter of doubt whether they believed the portents of the Gods, or their own excessive fears), Pindus seemed to many to meet with Olympus, and Haemus to sink in the deep valleys, 175 Pharsalia to send forth by night the din of warfare, flowing blood to run along Ossaean Boebeis; and in turn they wondered at their features being concealed amid gloom, and at the day growing pale, and at night hovering over their helmets, and their departed parents and all the ghosts of their kindred 180 flitting before their eyes. But to their minds this was one consolation, in that the throng, conscious of their wicked intentions, who hoped for the throats of their fathers, who longed for the breasts of their brothers, exulted in these portents and the tumultuous feelings of their minds, and deemed the sudden portents to be omens of their impious deeds. 185 What wonder, that nations, whom the last day of liberty was awaiting, trembled with frantic fear, if a mind foreknowing woes is granted to mankind? The Roman, who, a stranger, lies adjacent to Tyrian Gades, and he who drinks of Armenian Araxes, beneath whatever clime, beneath whatever Constellation 190 of the universe he is, is sad, and is ignorant of the cause, and chides his flagging spirits; he knows not what he is losing on the Emathian plains. An augur, if there is implicit creditto be given to those who relate it, sitting on the Euganean hill, where the steaming Aponus arises from the earth, and the waters of Timavus of Antenor are dispersed in various channels, 195 exclaimed: "The critical day is come, a combat most momentous is being waged, the impious arms of Pompey and of Caesar are meeting." Whether it was that he marked the thunders and the presaging weapons of Jove, or beheld the whole sky and the poles standing still in the discordant heavens; or whether the saddening light in 200 the sky pointed out the fight by the gloomy paleness of the sun. The day of Thessaly undoubtedly did nature introduce unlike to all the days which she displays; if, universally, with the experienced augur, the mind of man had marked the unusual phenomena of the heavens, Pharsalia might have been beheld by the whole world. 205 O mightiest of men, the indications of whom Fortune afforded throughout the earth, to whose destinies all heaven had leisure to attend! These deeds, both among future nations and the races of your descendants, whether by their own fame alone they shall come down to remote ages, or whether the care of my labors is in any degree able as well 210 to profit mighty names, when the wars shall be read of, will excite both hopes and fears, and wishes destined to be of no avail; and all, moved, shall read of thy fate as though approaching and not concluded, and still, Magnus, shall wish thee success. The soldiers, when, gleamed upon by the opposite rays of Phoebus, 215 descending, they have covered all the hills with glittering brightness, are not promiscuously sent forth upon the plains; in firm array stand the doomed ranks. To thee, Lentulus, is entrusted the care of the left wing, together with the first legion, which then was the best in war, and the fourth; to thee, Domitius, valiant, with the 220 Deity adverse, is given the front of the army on the right. But the bravest troops redouble the strength of the center of the battle, which, drawn forth from the lands of the Cilicians, Scipio commands, the chief commander in the Libyan land, a soldier in this. But near the streams and the waters of the flowing Enipeus, 225 the mountain cohorts of the Cappadocians, and the Pontic cavalry with their loose reins, take their stand. But most of the positions on the dry plain Tetrarchs and Kings and mighty potentates held, and all the purple which is obedient to the Latian sword. Thither, too, did Libya send her Numidians, and Crete her 230 Cydonians; thence was there a flight for the arrows of Ituraea; thence, fierce Gauls, did you sally forth against your wonted foe; there did Iberia wield her contending bucklers. Tear from the victor the nations, Magnus, and, the blood of the world spilt at one moment, cut short for him all triumphs. 235 On that day, by chance, his position being left, Caesar, about to move his standards for foraging in the standing corn, suddenly beholds the enemy descending into the level plains, and sees the opportunity presented to him, a thousand times asked for in his prayers, upon which he is to submit everything to the last chance. 240 For, sick of delay, and burning with desire for rule, he had begun, in this short space of time, to condemn the civil war as slow-paced wickedness. After he saw the fates of the chieftains drawing nigh, and the closing combat at hand, and perceived the falling ruins of destiny tottering, 245 this frenzy even, most eager for the sword, flagged in a slight degree, and his mind, which his own fortunes did not permit to fear, nor those of Magnus to hope, bold to engage for a prosperous result, hesitated in suspense. Fear thrown aside, confidence sprang up, better suited for encouraging the ranks: 250 "O soldiers, subduers of the world, the stay of my fortunes, the opportunity for the fight so oft desired is come. No need is there for prayers; now hasten your destinies by the sword. You have in your own power how mighty Caesar is to prove. This is that day which I remember being promised me 255 at the waves of Rubicon, in hope of which we took up arms, to which we deferred the return of our forbidden triumphs. This is that same which is this day to restore our pledges, and which is to give us back our household Gods, and, your period of service completed, is to make you tillers of the land. This the day, which, fate being the witness, is to prove who the most righteously 260 has taken up arms; this battle is destined to make the conquered the guilty one. If for me with sword and with flames you have attacked your country, now fight valiantly, and absolve your swords from blame. No hand, the judge of the warfare being changed, is guiltless. Not my fortunes are at stake, but that you yourselves may be a 265 free people do I pray, that you may hold sway over all nations. I, myself, anxious to surrender myself to a private station, and to settle myself as an humble citizen in a plebeian toga, refuse to be nothing until all this is granted to you. With the blame my own do you obtain the sway. And with no great bloodshed do you 270 aspire to the hope of the world: a band of youths selected from the Grecian wrestling schools, and rendered effeminate by the pursuits of the places of exercise, will be before you, and wielding their arms with difficulty; the discordant barbarism, too, of a mingled multitude, that will not be able to endure the trumpets, nor, the army moving on, their own shouts. 275 But few hands with them will be waging a civil war; a great part of the combat will rid the earth of these nations, and will break down the Roman foe. Go onward amid dastard nations and realms known by report, and with the first movement of the sword lay prostrate the world; and let it be known that the nations which, so numerous, Pompey 280 at his chariot led into the City, are not worth a single triumph. Does it concern the Armenians to what chieftain the Roman sway belongs? Or does any barbarian wish to place Magnus over the Hesperian state, purchased with the least bloodshed? All Romans they detest, and most do they hate the rulers 285 whom they have known. But me Fortune has entrusted to bands of whom Gaul has made me witness in so many campaigns. Of which soldier shall I not recognize the sword? And when a quivering javelin passes through the air, I shall not be deceived in pronouncing by what arm it has been poised. 290 And if I behold the indications that never deceived your leader, both stern faces and threatening eyes, then have you proved the victors. Rivers of blood do I seem to behold, and both Kings trodden under foot, and the corpses of Senators scattered, and nations swimming in boundless carnage. But I am 295 delaying my own destinies in withholding you by these words from rushing upon the weapons. Grant me pardon for procrastinating the combat. I exult in hopes; never have I beheld the Gods of heaven about to present gifts so great, so close at hand for me; at the slight distance of this plain are we removed from our wishes. I am he who shall be empowered, the 300 battle finished, to make donations of what nations and monarchs possess. By what commotion in the skies, by what star of heaven turned back, ye Gods above, do ye grant thus much to the Thessalian land? This day, either the reward of the warfare or the punishment is awarded. Behold the crosses for Caesar's partisans; behold the chains! 305 this head, too, exposed on the Rostra, and my torn limbs, and the criminal doings at the voting-places, and the battles in the enclosed Plain of Mars. With a chieftain of Sulla's party are we waging civil war. It is care for you that moves me. For a lot, free from care, sought by my own hand, shall await myself; he who, the foe not yet 310 subdued, shall look back, shall behold me piercing my own vitals. Ye Gods, whose care the earth and the woes of Rome have drawn down from the skies, let him conquer, who does not deem it necessary to unsheathe against the conquered the ruthless sword, and who does not think that his own fellow-citizens, because they have 315 raised hostile standards, have committed a crime. When he enclosed your troops in a blockaded place, your valour forbidden to be employed, with how much blood did Pompey glut the sword! Still, youths, this do I ask of you, that no one will be ready to smite the back of the foe; he who flies, let him be a fellow-citizen. 320 But while the darts are glittering, let not any fiction of affection, nor even parents beheld with adverse front, affect you; mangle with the sword the venerated features. Whether one shall rush with hostile weapon against a kinsman's breast, or whether with his wound he shall violate no ties of relationship, 325 let him attack the throat of an unknown foe, just the same as incurring the criminality of slaughtering a relative. Forthwith lay the ramparts low, and fill up the trenches with the ruins, that in full maniples, not straggling, the army may move on. Spare not the camp; within those lines shall you pitch your tents, from which the army is coming doomed to perish." Caesar having 330 hardly said all this, his duties attract each one, and instantly their arms are taken up by the men. Swiftly they forestall the presage of the war, and, their camp trodden under foot, they rush on; in no order do they stand, with no disposition made by their general; everything they leave to destiny. If in the direful combat you had placed so many fathers-in-law 335 of Magnus, and so many aspiring to the sway of their own city, not with course so precipitate would they have rushed to the combat. When Pompey beheld the hostile troops coming forth straight on, and allowing no respite for the war, but that the day was pleasing to the Gods of heaven, with frozen heart 340 he stood astounded; and for a chieftain so great thus to dread arms was ominous. Then he repressed his fears, and, borne on a stately steed along all the ranks, he said: "The day which your valor demands, the end of the civil warfare which you have looked for, is at hand. Show forth all your might; the last work of the sword 345 is at hand, and one hour drags on nations to their fate. Whoever looks for his country and his dear household Gods; who looks for his offspring, and conjugal endearments, and his deserted pledges of affection, let him seek them with the sword; everything has the Deity set at stake in the midst of the plain. Our cause the better one bids us hope for the Gods of heaven as favoring; 350 they themselves will direct the darts through the vitals of Caesar; they themselves will be desirous with this blood to ratify the Roman laws. If they had been ready to grant to my father-in-law kingly sway and the world, they were able, by fatality, to hurry on my old age. It is not the part of the Gods, angered at nations and the City, to preserve 355 Pompey as their leader. Everything that could possibly conquer have we contributed. Illustrious men have of their own accord submitted to dangers, and the veteran soldier, with his holy resemblance to the heroes of old. If the Fates at these troublous times would permit the Curii and the Camilli to come back, and the Decii, who devoted their lives to death, 360 on this side would they take their stand. Nations collected from the remote East, and cities innumerable, have aroused bands to battle so mighty as they never sent forth before. At the same moment the whole world do we employ. Whatever men there are included within the limits of the heavens that bear the Constellations, 365 beneath Notus and Boreas, here are we, arms do we wield. Shall we not with our wings extended around place the collected foe in the midst of us? Few right hands does victory require; and many troops will only wage the warfare with their shouts. Caesar suffices not for our arms. Think that your mothers, hanging over the summits of the walls 370 of the City, with their disheveled hair, are encouraging you to battle. Think that a Senate, aged, and forbidden by years to follow arms, are prostrating at your feet their hallowed hoary leeks; and that Rome herself, dreading a tyrant, comes to meet you. Think that that which now is the people, and that which shall be the people, are 375 offering their mingled prayers. Free does this multitude wish to be born; free does that wish to die. If, after pledges so great, there is any room for Pompey, suppliant with my offspring and my wife, if with the majesty of command preserved it were possible, I would throw myself before your feet. I, Magnus, unless you conquer, an exile, 380 the scorn of my father-in-law, your own disgrace, do earnestly deprecate my closing destinies, and the disastrous years of the latest period of my life, that I may not, an aged man, learn to be a slave.” At the voice of their general uttering words so sad their spirits are inflamed, and the Roman valor is aroused, and it pleases them to die if he is in fear of the truth. 385 Therefore on either side do the armies meet with a like impulse of anger; the fear of rule arouses the one, the hope of it the other. These right hands shall do what no age can supply, nor the human race throughout all ages repair, even though it should be free from the sword. This warfare shall overwhelm future nations, and 390 shall cut short to the world the people of ages to come, the day of their birth being torn away from them. Then shall all the Latin name be a fable; the ruins concealed in dust shall hardly be able to point out Gabii, Veii, and Cora, and the deserted fields shall hardly show the homes of Alba and the household Gods of Laurentum, 395 which the Senator would not inhabit, except upon the night ordained, with reluctance, and complaining that Numa has so ordained. These monuments of things devouring time has not consumed, and has left still crumbling away; the crime of civil war we behold, cities so many deserted. To what has the multitude of the human race 400 been reduced? We nations who are born throughout the whole world are able to fill neither the fortified places nor the fields with men; one City receives us all. By the chained delver are the corn-fields of Hesperia tilled; moldering with its ancestorial roofs stands the house, about to fall upon none; and Rome, thronged with no citizens 405 of her own, but filled with the dregs of the world, did we surrender to that extent of slaughter that thenceforth for a period so long no civil war could possibly be waged. Of woes so great was Pharsalia the cause. Let Cannae yield, a fatal name, and Allia, long condemned in the Roman annals. 410 Rome has marked these as occasions of lighter woes, this day she longs to ignore. Oh shocking destinies! The air pestilential in its course, and shifting diseases, and maddening famine, and cities abandoned to flames, and earthquakes about to hurl populous cities headlong, 415 those men might have repaired, whom from every side Fortune has dragged to a wretched death, while, tearing away the gifts of lengthened ages, she displays them, and ranges both nations mad chieftains upon the plains; through whom she may, Rome, disclose to thee, as thou dust come to ruin, how mighty thou dust fall. The more widely she has 420 possessed the world, the more swiftly through her prospering destinies has she run. Throughout all ages, has every war given subdued nations unto thee; thee has Titan beheld advancing towards the two poles. Not much space was there remaining of the eastern earth, but what for thee the night, for thee the entire day, for thee the whole heavens should speed on, 425 and the wandering stars behold all things belonging to Rome. But the fatal day of Emathia bore back thy destinies, equal to all these years. On this blood-stained morn was it caused that India does not shudder at the Latian fasces, and that she does not lead the Dahae into walled cities forbidden to 430 wander, and that no tightly-girt Consul presses on a Sarmatian plough. This is the cause that Parthia is ever owing to thee a cruel retribution; that flying from civil strife, and never to return, Liberty has withdrawn beyond the Tigris and the Rhine, and, so oft sought by us at hazard of our throats, still wanders abroad, a blessing to 435 Germany and Scythia, and no further looks back upon Ausonia. Would that she had been unknown to our people, and that thou, Rome, from the time when first Romulus filled the walls founded at the left-hand flight of the vultures from the guilty grove, even unto the Thessalian downfall, hadst remained enslaved. 440 Fortune, of the Bruti do I complain. Why have we framed the periods of our laws, or why made the years to take their name from the Consul? Happy the Arabians, and the Medes, and the Eastern lands, which the Fates have kept under continued tyrants. Of the nations which endure rule our lot is the last, who are 445 ashamed to be slaves. Assuredly we have no Divinities; whereas ages are hurried along by blind chance, we falsely allege that Jupiter reigns. Will he look down from the lofty skies upon the Thessalian carnage, while he is wielding the lightnings? Will he, forsooth, hurl at Pholoë, hurl at Oeta with his flames, 450 the groves, too, of the guiltless Rhodope, and the pine-woods of Mimas, shall Cassius, in preference, smite this head ? The stars against Thyestes did he urge on, and condemn Argos to sudden night; shall he afford the light of day to Thessaly that wields the kindred swords so numerous of brothers and of parents? Mortal affairs are eared 455 for by no God. Still for this slaughter do we obtain satisfaction, as much as it is proper for the Deities to give to the earth. The civil wars will create Divinities equal to the Gods of heaven. The shades will Rome adorn with lightnings and with rays and stars; and in the temples of the Gods will she swear by the shades of men. 460 When with a rapid step they have now passed over the space that delays the closing moments of destiny, separated by a small strip of ground, thence do they look upon the bands and seek to recognize their features, where their javelins are to fall, or what fate is threatening themselves, what monstrous deeds they are to perpetrate. Parents they behold 465 with faces fronting them, and the arms of brothers in hostile array, nor do they choose to change their positions. Still, a numbness binds all their breasts; and the cold blood, their feelings of affection smitten, congeals in their vitals; and whole cohorts for a long time hold the javelins in readiness with outstretched arms. 470 May the Gods send thee, Crastinus, not the death which is prepared as a punishment for all, but after thy end sensation in thy death, hurled by whose hand the javelin commenced the battle, and first stained Thessaly with Roman blood. O headlong frenzy, when Caesar withheld the darts, 475 was there found any hand more forward! Then was the resounding air rent by clarions, and the battle call given by the cornet; then did the trumpets presume to give the signal; then did a crash reach the skies, and burst upon the arched top of loftiest Olympus, from which the clouds are for removed, and whither no lightnings last 480 to penetrate. With its re-echoing valleys Haemus received the noise, and gave it to the caves of Pelion again to redouble; Pindus sent forth the uproar, and the rocks of Pangaeum resounded, and the crags of Oeta groaned, and the sounds of their own fury did they dread re-echoed throughout all the land. 485 Darts innumerable are scattered abroad with various intents. Some wish for wounds, some to fix the javelins in the earth, and to keep their hands in purity. Chance hurries everything on, and uncertain Fortune makes those guilty, whom she chooses. But how small a part of the slaughter is perpetrated with javelins 490 and flying weapons! For civil hatred the sword alone suffices, and guides right hands to Roman vitals. The ranks of Pompey, densely disposed in deep bodies, joined their arms, their shields closed together in a line; and, hardly able to find room for moving their light hands and their darts, 495 they stood close, and, wedged together, kept their swords sheathed. With headlong course the furious troops of Caesar are impelled against the dense masses, and, through arms, through the foe do they seek a passage. Where the twisted coat of mail presents its links, and the breast, beneath a safe covering, lies concealed, 500 even here do they reach the entrails, and amid so many arms it is the vitals which each one pierces. Civil war does the one army suffer, the other wage; on the one hand the sword stands chilled, on Caesar's side every guilty weapon waxes hot. Nor is Fortune long, overthrowing the weight of destinies 505 so vast, in sweeping away the mighty ruins, fate rushing on. When first the cavalry of Pompey extended his wings over the whole plain, and poured them forth along the extremities of the battle, the light-armed soldiers, scattered along the exterior of the maniples, followed, and sent forth their ruthless bands against the foe. 510 There, each nation is mingling in the combat with weapons its own; Roman blood is sought by all. On the one side arrows, on the other torches and stones are flying, and plummets, melting in the tract of air and liquefied with their heated masses. Then do both Ituraeans, and Medians, and Arabians, a multitude 515 threatening with loosened bow, never aim their arrows, but the air alone is sought which impends over the plain; thence fall various deaths. But with no criminality of guilt do they stain the foreign steel; around the javelins stands collected all the guiltiness. With weapons the heaven is concealed, 520 and a night, wrought by the darts, hovers over the fields. Then did Caesar, fearing lest his front rank might be shaken by the onset, keep in reserve some cohorts in an oblique position behind the standards, and on the sides of his line, whither the enemy, scattered about, was betaking himself, he suddenly sent forth a column, his own wings unmoved. 525 Unmindful of the fight, and to be feared by reason of no sense of shame, they openly took to flight; not well was civil warfare ever entrusted to barbarian troops. As soon as the charger, his breast pierced with the weapon, trod upon the limbs of the rider hurled upon his head, 530 each horseman fled from the field, and, crowded together, turning bridle, the youths rushed on upon their own ranks. Then did the carnage lose all bounds, and it was no battle that ensued, but on the one hand with their throats, on the other with the sword, the war was waged; nor was the one army able to lay low as many as were able 535 to perish on the other side. Would that, Pharsalia, for thy plains that blood which barbarian breasts pour forth would suffice: that the streams might be changed by no other gore; that this throng might for thee cover whole fields with bones; or if thou dost prefer to be glutted with Roman blood, 540 spare the others, I entreat; let the Galatians and Syrians live, the Cappadocians and the Gauls, and the Iberians from the extremity of the world, the Armenians and the Cilicians; for after the civil wars these will form the Roman people. Once commenced, the panic reaches all, and to the Fates is an impulse given in favour of Caesar. 545 They had now come to the strength of Magnus and the mid ranks. The war, which, in its wandering course, had strayed over whole fields, here paused, and the fortune of Caesar delayed. On this spot no youths collected by the aid of kings are waging the war, and no alien hands wield the sword; 550 this spot contains their brothers, this spot their fathers. Here is frenzy, here frantic rage; here, Caesar, are thy crimes. My soul, fly from this portion of the warfare, and leave it to the shades of night, and, myself the Poet of woes so great, let no age learn how great is the license in civil warfare. 555 Perish rather these tears, and perish these complaints. Whatever, Rome, in this battle thou hast done, upon it I will be silent. Here Caesar, the prompting fury of his people, and the exciter of their rage, lest upon any side his guilt may prove unavailing, goes to and fro around the troops and adds flames to their fired hearts; 560 he examines the swords, too, which ones are dripping all over with gore, which ones are shining stained with blood just at the point only, which hand falters in pressing home the sword, who it is that bears his weapons but languidly, who tightly grasped, who with alacrity wages the war at command, who takes a pleasure in fighting, who changes countenance on a fellow-citizen 565 being slain; he surveys the carcasses strewed over the wide plains. The wounds of many, about to pour forth all their blood, he himself stanches, by placing his hand against them. Wherever he roves, just as Bellona, shaking her bloodstained whip, or Mars inciting the Bistonians, if with severe lashes he urges on his chariot steeds 570 frightened by the Aegis of Pallas, a vast night of crimes and slaughters ensues, and groans like one immense cry, and arms resound with the weight of the falling breast, and swords shivered against swords. He himself with his own hand supplies falchions, and provides darts, 575 and bids them mangle the opposing faces with their weapons. He himself urges on the ranks; and onward drives the backs of his own men; those slackening he forces on with blows of his lance reversed. He forbids their hands to be directed against the common people, and points out the Senators. He knows well which is the blood of the state, which are the vitals 580 of the republic; in which direction he is to speed on to Rome, in which spot stands to be smitten the final liberty of the world. Mingled with the second rank, the nobles and the venerated bodies are pressed upon by the sword; Lepidi they slay, Metelli, too, they slay, Corvini as well, and those with the names of Torquatus, often 585 the rulers of kings, and the chiefs of men, thee, Magnus, excepted. There, concealing thy features in a plebeian helmet, and unknown to the foe, what a weapon, Brutus, thou didst wield! O honor to the state, O final hope of the Senate, last name of a race for ages so renowned, rush not too rashly through 590 the midst of the foe, and hasten not for thyself too soon the fatal Philippi, doomed to perish in a Thessaly of thy own. Nothing there dost thou avail by aiming at Caesar's throat; not yet has he arrived at the summit of power, and having surpassed that human elevation, by which all things are swayed, 595 has by the Fates been made deserving of so noble a death. Let him live, and that he may fall the victim of Brutus, let him reign. Here perished all the glory of thy native land; in large heaps patrician corpses lay on the plain, the vulgar not intermingled. Still, however, amid the slaughter of illustrious men the death of the 600 valiant Domitius was distinguished, whom the Destinies led through every reverse. Never did the fortunes of Magnus fail without him; conquered by Caesar so oft, his liberty saved, he dies. Then joyously did he fall amid a thousand wounds, and he rejoiced to have been spared a second pardon. 605 Caesar beheld him rolling his limbs amid the clotted blood, and, upbraiding him, exclaimed, "Now, my successor, Domitius, thou dost abandon the arms of Magnus; without thee now is the warfare waged." He spoke, but the breath of Domitius struggling in his breast sufficed him for a voice, and he thus opened his dying lips: 610 "Beholding thee, Caesar, not yet in possession of the direful reward of thy crimes, but doubtful of thy fate, and less mighty than thy son-in-law, I go to the shades free and void of care, Magnus being my leader: for thee to be subdued in the ruthless warfare, and to be about to pay a heavy penalty to Pompey and to us, 615 while I die, it is allowed me to hope." Life fled from him having said no more, and dense shades pressed upon his eyes. I scruple to expend tears at the downfall of the world upon deaths innumerable, and, tracing them out, to enquire into individual fates; through whose vitals the deadly wound made 620 its way; who it was that trod upon entrails scattered on the ground; who, the hostile sword being thrust into his jaws, dying, breathed forth his soul; who fell down at the blow; who, while his limbs dropped down, lopped off, stood upright; who received the darts right through the breast, or whom the lance pinned to the plain; 625 whose blood, the veins being severed, gushed through the air, and fell upon the arms of his foe; who pierced the breast of his brother, and that he might be able to spoil the well-known carcass, threw afar the head cut off; who mangled the features of a parent, and by his extreme fury would prove to lookers-on that he 630 whom he stabbed was not his father. No death is deserving of a lament its own, and no individuals have we the leisure to mourn. Pharsalia had not those features of combat which other slaughters had; there did Rome perish by the fates of individuals, here by multitudes; that which was there the death of a soldier, 635 was here that of a nation; there flowed Achaean blood, Pontic and Assyrian; the gore of all did the Roman torrent forbid to remain and stagnate upon the plain. Greater wounds do nations receive from this battle-field than their own times can endure; that which perishes is more than life 640 and safety; to all ages of the world are we laid prostrate; by these swords is every generation conquered which shall be a slave. How have the succeeding race, or how the grandchildren, deserved to be born to thraldom? Did we wield arms with fear? Or did we cover up our throats? The punishment of others' fears sits 645 heavy upon our necks. If, Fortune, to those born after the battle thou dost give a tyrant, thou shouldst have given warfare as well. Now had the wretched Magnus perceived that the Gods and the destinies of Rome had forsaken him; hardly prevailed upon by the whole slaughter to rebuke his own fortune. He stood upon a rising ground 650 of the plain, on high, whence he could behold all the carnage scattered over the Thessalian fields, which, while the battle hindered, lay concealed. With weapons so many he beheld his destinies attacked, so many bodies lying prostrate, and himself perishing with bloodshed so great. Nor yet, as is the way of the unfortunate, does he take pleasure in dragging, together 655 with himself, everything to sink, by involving nations in his own ruin; that after himself the greatest part of the Latian multitude may survive, he endures even yet to deem the inhabitants of heaven worthy of his prayers, and reflects upon this solace of his misfortune. "Forbear, ye Gods of heaven," he says, "to lay all nations prostrate; 660 the world still existing and Rome surviving, Magnus can possibly be wretched. If still more wounds of mine please you, I have a wife, I have sons; so many pledges have I given to the Fates. Is it too little for a civil war if myself and mine thou dost overwhelm? Is our downfall a trifle, the world being exempted? 665 Why dost thou rend everything; why dost thou strive to destroy all things? Now, Fortune, nothing is my own." Thus he speaks, and he rides around the arms and the standards and the smitten troops on every side, and he calls them back as they rush upon a speedy death, and denies that he is of value so great. Nor to the chieftain is courage wanting 670 to rush upon the swords, and to submit to death with throat or with breast; but he fears lest, the body of Magnus laid low, the soldiers may not fly, and over the chieftain the earth may fall; or else from Caesar's eyes he wishes to remove his death. In vain. Unhappy man, to thy father-in-law, willing to behold it, 675 must the head be shown in some place. But thou, too, his wife, art the cause of his flight, and thy features, so well remembered; and by the Fates has it been decided that he shall die in thy presence. Then, spurred on, the charger bears Magnus away from the combat, not fearing the darts at his back, and showing magnanimity amid this extremity of fate. 680 No, sighing, no weeping, is there, and his grief is deserving of respect, its dignity preserved, such as, Magnus, it becomes thee to show for the woes of Rome. With countenance not changed thou dost look upon Emathia; neither shall the successes of war behold thee proud, nor its losses see thee dejected; and as much as 685 faithless Fortune has proved below thee when exulting in three triumphs, so much has she when unfortunate. Now, the weight of fate laid aside, free from care thou dost depart; now thou hast leisure to look back upon joyous times; hopes never to be fulfilled have gone; what thou wast thou now hast the opportunity to know. Fly from direful battles, 690 and call the Gods to witness, that not one who continues in arms now, Magnus, dies for thee; just as Africa to be lamented with her reverses, and just as fatal Munda, and the carnage on the Pharian stream, so too, after thy departure is the greatest portion of the Thessalian fight. No longer now shall Pompey's name be revered by nations throughout the world, 695 nor be the prompter of the war; but the pair of rivals which we always have, will be Liberty and Caesar; and thyself expelled thence, the dying Senate shows that it was for itself it fought. Driven afar, does it not give thee pleasure to have left the warfare, and not to have beheld those horrors, the troops drenched 700 in gore? Look back upon the rivers clouded by the influx of blood, and have pity upon thy father-in-law. With what breast shall he enter Rome, made more happy by these fields? Whatever, an exile alone in unknown regions, whatever, placed in the power of the Pharian tyrant, thou shalt endure, 705 believe the Gods, believe the lasting favour of the Fates, to conquer was still worse. Forbid lamentations to resound, prevent the people from weeping; forego tears and mourning. As much shall the world venerate the woes of Pompey as his successes. Free from care, with no suppliant features behold potentates; 710 behold cities won by thee, and kingdoms bestowed, Egypt and Libya, and select a region for thy death. Larissa, as the first witness of thy downfall, beholds thy head, noble and unconquered by the Fates. With all her citizens does she pour forth her entire strength through the walls; weeping they send before to thee, 715 as though successful, gifts to meet thee on thy way; their temples, their houses they open; themselves they wish to be partners in thy reverses. It is clear that much of thy illustrious name is left; and less than thy former self alone, thou canst again urge all nations to arms, and again resort to the fatality of war. 720 But, "What need has a conquered man of nations or of cities?" he says; "put faith in the conqueror." Thou, Caesar, still on the high heap of carnage art wading amid the entrails of thy country; but now does thy son-in-law present the nations unto thee. The charger bears Pompey away from there; sighs and tears follow him; and many a 725 rebuke of the multitude against the relentless Gods. Now, Magnus, to thee is granted real experience of the love which thou didst seek, and its reward. While prosperous one knows not that he is beloved. Caesar, when he beheld that the fields had sufficiently overflowed with Hesperian blood, now thinking that he ought to spare the swords 730 and the hands of his men, left the troops to live as though worthless lives, and about to perish for no purpose. But, that the camp may not invite them back when routed, and rest by night dispel their fears, forthwith he resolves to attack the entrenchments of the enemy, while Fortune waxes hot, while terror effects everything, 735 not fearing lest this command may prove harsh to soldiers wearied and overpowered with the battle. Through no great exhortation are the soldiers to be led to the plunder: "Men, we have an abundant victory," says he; "for our blood the reward is now, remaining, which it is my office to point out; for I will not call it bestowing that which 740 each one will give unto himself. Behold, the camp, filled with all kinds of metal, is open; here lies the gold torn from the Hesperian nations, and the tents are covering the treasures of the East. The collected wealth of so many kings and of Magnus together, waits for possessors; make haste, soldiers, to get before those 745 whom you pursue; and let the wealth be torn from the conquered which Pharsalia has made your own." And no more having said, he urged them on frantic and blinded with greed for gold, to rush over swords, and upon the carcases of parents, and to tread under foot the slaughtered chieftains. What trench, what rampart 750 could withstand them seeking the reward of war and of crimes? Onward they flew to know for how great wages they had been guilty. They found indeed, the world having been spoiled, full many a mass of bullion heaped up for the expenses of the wars; but it did not satisfy minds craving for everything. 755 Though they should seize whatever gold the Iberian digs up, whatever the Tagus yields, whatever the enriched Arimaspian gathers from the surface of the sands, they will think that this criminality has been sold at a trifling price. When the victor has bespoken for himself the Tarpeian towers, when he has promised himself everything in hopes of the spoil of Rome, 760 he is deceived in plundering a camp alone. The unscrupulous commonalty take their slumbers upon the Patrician sods; the worthless private soldier presses the couches left empty by kings; and on the beds of fathers, and on those of brothers the guilty men lay their limbs; whom a frenzied rest, and frantic slumbers agitate; 765 wretched, they revolve the Thessalian combat in their breasts. The ruthless bloodshed stands before them all in their sleep, and in all their thoughts they brandish arms, and, the hilt away, their hands are in motion. You would suppose that the plains were groaning, and that the guilty earth had exhaled spirits, and that the whole air 770 was teeming with ghosts, and the night above with Stygian horrors. Of them, wretched men, does victory, demand a sad retribution, and sleep presents hissings and flames; the shade of the slaughtered fellow-citizen is there; his own image of terror weighs heavy upon each. This one sees the features of aged men, that one the figures of youths; 775 another one do the carcasses of brothers affright throughout all his slumbers; in this breast is a father; with Caesar are the ghosts of all. No otherwise, not purified as yet at the Scythian altar, did Orestes, descendant of Pelops, behold the features of the Eumenides; nor, when Pentheus raved, or when Agave had ceased to rave, 780 were they more sensible of astounding tumults in their minds. Him do all the swords, which either Pharsalia has beheld or the day of vengeance is destined to behold, the Senate unsheathing them, upon that night oppress; him do the monsters of hell scourge. Alas! how vast a punishment does his conscience-stricken mind inflict upon him 785 in his wretchedness, in that, Pompey surviving, he beholds Styx, in that he beholds the shades below, and Tartarus heaped upon him in his slumbers! Still, having suffered all these things, after the bright day has unveiled to him the losses of Pharsalia, not at all does the aspect of the place call away his eyes riveted upon the fatal fields. He beholds rivers swollen 790 with gore, and he looks upon bodies equaling in heaps the lofty hills, and piles flattened down in corrupted gore, and he counts the people of Magnus; and that spot is made ready for a banquet, from which he may recognize their features and faces as they lie. He is delighted not to see the Emathian ground, 795 and to survey with his eyes the plains lying hid beneath the carnage; in the blood does he behold Fortune and the Gods of heaven his own. And that in his fury he may not lose the joyous spectacle of his crimes, he denies the fires of the pile to the wretched slain, and exposes Emathia to a noisome atmosphere. Not him do the Carthaginian burier 800 of the Consul, and Cannae, lighted up with the Libyan torch, instruct how to observe the customs of men with regard to his foes; but he remembers, his wrath not yet satiated with slaughter, that they were his own fellow-citizens. Not individual graves, and separate funeral piles do we ask; grant but one fire to whole nations; 805 and in no distinct flames let the bodies be burned. Or if vengeance on thy son-in-law pleases thee, heap up the groves of Pindus; pile up the woods raised aloft with the oaks of Oeta; let Pompey from the main be¬ hold the Thessalian flames.Nought by this wrath dost thou avail; whether putrefaction, or whether the pile 810 destroys the carcasses, it matters not; nature receives back everything into her placid bosom, and an end of themselves to themselves do the bodies owe. These nations, Caesar, if now the fire does not consume them, with the earth it will consume, with the waters of the deep it will consume. One pile in common is left for the world, destined to mingle the stars 815 with its bone. Whithersoever Fortune shall summon thine own, thither these souls as well are wending. Not higher than they shalt thou ascend into the air, not in a more favored spot shalt thou lie beneath Stygian night. Death is secure from Fortune; the earth receives everything which she has produced; he who has no urn is covered by the heavens. 820 Thou, to whom nations are paying the penalty by a death ungraced with burial, why dost thou fly from this slaughter? Why dost thou desert the carnage-smelling fields? Quaff these waters, Caesar; inhale, if thou canst, thin air. But from thee do the putrefying nations snatch the Pharsalian fields, and, the victor put to flight, possess the plains. 825 Not only the Haemonian, but the Bistonian wolves came to the direful banquet of the war, and the lions left Pholoë, scenting the carnage of the bloody combat. Then did bears desert their dens, obscene dogs their abodes and homes, and whatever besides with acute scent was 830 sensible of the air impure and tainted by carrion. And now the fowls of the air, that long had followed the civic warfare, flocked together. You, birds, who are wont to change the Thracian winters for the Nile, departed later than usual for the balmy south. Never with vultures so numerous did the heavens 835 cover themselves, or did wings more numerous beat the air. Every grove sent forth its fowls, and every tree dripped with gouts of gore from the blood-stained birds. Full oft upon the features of the victor and the impious standards did either blood or corrupt matter flow down from the lofty sky, 840 and from its now weary talons the bird threw down the limbs. And thus, not all the people were reduced to bones, and, torn to pieces, disappeared in the beasts of prey; the entrails within they cared not for, nor were they greedy to suck out all the marrow; they lightly tasted of the limbs. Loathed, the greatest part of the Latian 845 multitude lay; which the sun, and the showers, and lapse of time, mingled, when decomposed, with the Emathian earth. Thessaly, unhappy land, with what guilt so great hast thou offended the Gods of heaven, that thee alone with deaths so numerous, with the fetal results of crimes so numerous, they should afflict? What length of time 850 is sufficient for forgetful antiquity to pardon thee the calamities of the warfare? What crop of corn will not rise discolored with its tinted blade? With what ploughshare wilt thou not wound a Roman ghost? First shall fresh combats ensue, and for a second crime shalt thou afford the fields not yet dry from this bloodshed. 855 Should it be allowed us to overthrow all the tombs of our ancestors, both the sepulchers that stand, and those which beneath the ancient roots have emptied their urns, their structures burst asunder; ashes more numerous are ploughed up in the furrows of the Haemonian earth, and more bones are struck against by the harrows that cultivate the fields. 860 No mariner would have loosened the cable from the Emathian shore, nor any ploughman have moved the earth, the grave of the Roman race; the husbandmen, too, would have fled from the fields of the ghosts; the thickets would have been without flocks; and no shepherd would have dared to allow 865 to the cattle the grass springing up from our bones; and, as though uninhabitable by men either by reason of the tract of unendurable heat, or of freezing, bare and unknown thou wouldst have lain, if thou hadst not only first, but alone, been guilty of the criminality of the warfare. O Gods of heaven, be it allowed us to hate this hurtful land! 870 Why do ye render guilty the whole, why absolve the whole world? The carnage of Hesperia, and the tearful wave of Pachynus, and Mutina, and Leucas, have rendered Philippi free from guilt.