Lucan, Civil War Book 6 Translated by H. T. Riley (1853) Formatted and by C. Chinn (2008) AFTER the chieftains, now nearing each other with an intention of fighting, had pitched their camps on the hills, and arms were brought hand to hand, and the Gods beheld their equals, Caesar scorned to take all the towns of the Greeks, and now refused to be indebted to the Fates 5 for any prosperous warfare except against his son-in-law. In all his prayers he asks for the hour so fatal to the world, that is to bring everything to a crisis. The die of destiny that is to sink the head of the one or the other alone pleases him. Three times on the hills he draws out all his troops and his standards that threaten battle, 10 testifying that he is never wanting to the downfall of Latium. When he beholds that his son-in-law can be aroused by no alarms to battle, but confides in his close entrenchments, he moves his standards, and, sheltered by a path through fields overspread with woods, with headlong haste he marches to seize the towers of Dyrrhachium. 15 This march Magnus forestalls by following the sea-line, and the hill which the native Taulantian calls Petra he pitches upon with his camp, and guards the walls of Ephyre, defending a city safe even in its towers alone. No work of the ancients or bulwark erected defends this city, 20 or human labor, liable, though it should elevate on high, to yield either to wars or to years that move everything; but it has fortifications able to be shaken by no iron, the nature and the locality of the spot. For, enclosed on every side by the deep sea and by rocks that discharge the waves, 25 it owes to a small hill that it is not an island. Rocks terrible to ships support the walls; and when the raging Ionian sea is raised by the boisterous south wind, the ocean shakes temples and houses, and sends its foam to their summits. Hither did lawless hopes attract the mind of Caesar, greedy 30 of the warfare, that he might surround the enemy unawares dispersed on the vast hills, with bulwarks of entrenchments described afar. The ground he surveys with his eyes; and not content with frail turf alone to construct the walls so suddenly raised, he carries across vast rocks, and stones dug up from quarries, and the 35 houses of the Greeks, and the walls torn asunder. A wall is built up, which not the ruthless battering-ram, nor any engine of destructive warfare, is able to throw down. Mountains are broken down, and Caesar draws the work on a level right through lofty hills, and he opens fosses, and disposes towered castles 40 on the highest ridges, and with a great circuit enclosing boundaries, thickets, and woody lonesome spots, and forests and wild beasts, with a vast net he shuts them in. Fields are not wanting, pastures are not wanting to Magnus, and, surrounded by the bulwarks of Caesar, he shifts his camp 45 at pleasure. Rivers so many rising there, and ceasing there, exhaust their course; and that he may revisit the most distant of the works, Caesar, wearied, abides in the midst of the fields. Now let ancient story raise the Ilian walls, and ascribe them to the Gods; let the flying Parthians admire the walls 50 of Babylon, surrounded with frail pottery. Lo, as much as Tigris, as much as swift Orontes surrounds, as much as suffices for their realms to the Assyrian nations in the eastern world, does a work, suddenly formed and hurried on amid the tumult of warfare, enclose. There perish labours as mighty. 55 Hands thus many had been able to unite Sestos to Abydos, and, by heaping earth into it to exclude the sea of Phryxus, or to sever Ephyre from the wide realms of Pelops, and to cut short for shipping the circumnavigation of the lengthy Malea, or to change any spot of the world, although Nature should forbid it, 60 for the better. The quarters of the warfare are contracted; here is nourished blood destined to flow in all lands; here both the Thessalian and the Libyan slaughters are kept in store. The civil fury rages on a narrow slip of sand. First indeed, on rising, the structure of the works escapes 65 Pompey; just as he who, safe in the fields of mid Sicily, knows not that ravening Pelorus is barking; or as, when roaming Tethys and the Rutupian shores are raging, the waves aroused escape the ears of the Caledonian Britons. When first he beholds the earth enclosed with a vast rampart, 70 he himself also leading forth his troops from secure Petra scatters them over the different hills, that he may weaken the arms of Caesar, and extend his line, as he hems him in, with his soldiers spread far and wide; and as much of the land enclosed in the trenches does he claim for himself, as little Aricia of the grove, consecrated 75 to Diana of Mycene, is distant from lofty Rome; and the distance at which Tiber, gliding by Rome, descends into the sea, if it were not to wind in its course. No trumpet-call re-echoes, and, contrary, to orders, the darts roam; and full oft, while the arm tries the javelin, is a crime committed. 80 Greater anxieties deter the chieftains from engaging in arms. Pompey care deters by reason of the land being exhausted for affording fodder, which the horseman in his course has trodden down, and with quickened steps the horny hoof has beaten down the shooting field. The warlike charger wearied in the fields cropped short, 85 while the full racks are holding the sedge that has been brought, falls dying, requiring for his mouth fresh grass, and cuts short with faltering knees the exercises of the ring in the midst of them. While consumption wastes their bodies and relaxes their limbs, the close atmosphere contracts the contagion of the floating 90 pestilence in a dense cloud. With such an exhalation does Nesis send forth the Stygian air from its clouded rocks, and the caves of file deadly Typhon puff forth his rage. Thence do the multitudes perish, and the water, more ready than the air to contract all infection, hardens the entrails with mud collecting there. 95 Now the blackened skin grows hard, and bursts the distended eyes, fiery throughout the features, and glowing with erysipelas, the disease breaks out, and the weary head refuses to support itself. Now more and more suddenly does destiny sweep away everything, nor do intervening diseases separate life and death, 100 but the weakness comes on with death; and by the multitude of the perishing is the pestilence increased, while the bodies are lying unburied, mingled with the living. For to throw the wretched citizens outside of the tents is their burial. Still, these woes, the sea at their backs, and the air stirred by the north winds, and the sea-shore 105 and the ships filled with foreign harvests, relieve. But ranging upon the expansive hills the enemy is not distressed by pent-up air or stagnant water; but he endures cruel famine, as though surrounded in strict siege. The blades not as yet rising to a crop, 110 the wretched multitude he sees falling down to the food of cattle, and gnawing the shrubs, and spoiling the grove of its leaves, and tearing from unknown roots doubtful herbs that threaten death. Whatever they are able to soften with flames, whatever to pull asunder by biting, 115 and whatever to put into their stomachs through their chafed throats, that they devour, and the soldiers tearing asunder many a thing before this unknown to human tables, still besiege a well-fed foe. When first, the barriers burst, it pleased, Pompey to escape, and to open to himself all lands, he did not 120 choose for himself the obscure hours of stealthy night, and he disdained a march stolen by theft, the arms of his father-in-law delaying; with ruin brought upon him he sought to come forth, and, the trenches attacked, to break down the towers, and amid all his swords, and where by slaughter a way must be made. 125 However, apart of the entrenchment close at hand seems fit, which they call the tower of Minutius, and a shrubbery rough with trees thick set conceals. Hither, betrayed by no dust, he speeds his band, and suddenly comes to the walls. At the same moment so many Latian birds shine from the plain, 130 so many trumpets sound. That victory might not be owing anything to the sword, fear had stricken the astounded foe. What valor alone could effect, slain they lay, on the spot where they should be standing; those to endure the wounds were now wanting, and the cloud that bore darts so many was of no avail. 135 Then did the hurled torches roll down pitchy fires; then did the shaken towers nod and threaten their fall; the bulwark groaned at the frequent blows of the oak battered against it. Now over the heights of the lofty entrenchment had Pompey's eagles gone forth; now was the rule of the world open to him. 140 That place which not with a thousand troops together, nor with the whole force of Caesar, Fortune had been able to take away, a single man snatched from the victors and forbade to be captured; and, himself wielding arms, and not yet laid prostrate, he denied that Magnus was the conqueror. Scaeva was the name of the hero; he had served in the ranks of the camp 145 before the fierce nations of the Rhone; there, amid much bloodshed, promoted in the lengthened rank, he wielded the Latian vine; ready for all daring, and one who knew not in civil warfare how great criminality is valor. He, when, the war now left behind, he beheld his companions 150 seeking the safety of flight, said : "Whither does an unduteous fear drive you and one unknown to all the arms of Caesar? O base slaves, servile beasts, do you, without bloodshed, turn your backs upon death? Are you not ashamed to be wanting in the heap of heroes, and to be sought in vain for the tomb among the carcasses? 155 Will you not, youths, through anger at least, duty set aside, come to a stand? Out of all, through whom the enemy might sally forth, have we been chosen. With cost of no little blood to Magnus shall this day pass. More happily before the face of Caesar could I seek the shades. Him as a witness Fortune has denied; 160 Pompey praising me, I shall fall. Break their weapons by opposing your breasts, and with your throats blunt the sword. Now does the dust reach him from afar, and the sound of the ruin, and the crash has broken upon the unsuspecting ears of Caesar. We conquer, O companions; he will come to avenge these towers 165 while we die." That voice arouses fury as great as the trumpet-call, not at the first signal, inflames; and wondering at the hero, and eager to behold, the youths follow him to know whether valor, exceeded in numbers and in position, can give anything more than death. On the falling rampart 170 he takes his stand, and first of all rolls down carcasses from the tower full of them, and overwhelms the foes with dead bodies as they come on; the whole of the ruins, too, afford weapons to the hero; both wood, and heavy masses, and himself does he threaten to the foe. Now with stakes, now with a sturdy pole, he thrusts down opposing 175 breasts from the walls, and with the sword he cuts off the hands that cling to the upper parts of the rampart; heads and bones he dashes to pieces with stones, and knocks out brains uselessly defended by a frail construction, of another the flame sets on fire the hair and the cheeks; their eyes burning, the fires crackle. 180 As soon as, the heap increasing, the carcasses made the wall level with the ground, a leap brought him down and threw him upon their arms in the midst of the troops, not less nimble than that which hurries the swift leopard on the tops of the hunting spears. Then, compressed amid the dense masses and hemmed in 185 by all the war, whatever foe he looks upon he conquers. And now, the point of the sword of Scaeva, blunted and through clotted blood no longer sharp, bruises the smitten foe, and wounds him not. The sword loses its use, and breaks limbs without a wound. Him does the entire mass aim at, at him do all the weapons aim; 190 no hand is unerring, no javelin not fortunately aimed, and Fortune beholds a new pair of combatants meeting together, an army and a man. The stout shield resounds with frequent blows, and the compressed fragments of the hollow helmet bruise his temples; nor does anything now protect his exposed vitals, 195 except the darts that protrude on the surface of his bones. Why now, madmen, with javelins and light arrows do you waste wounds that will never attach to the vital parts ? Let either the wild-fire hurled from the twisted cords overwhelm him, or masses of vast stone torn from the walls; 200 let the battering-ram with its iron head, and the balista remove him from the threshold of the gate. He stands, no frail wall for Caesar's cause, and he withstands Pompey. Now he no longer covers his breast with arms, and, fearing to trust his shield and to be inactive with the left hand, or to live by his own remissness, alone he submits to the wounds 205 so many of the warfare, and, bearing a dense thicket of darts on his breast, with now flagging steps he chooses an enemy on whom to fall. Like was he to the monsters of the deep. Thus the beast of the Libyan land, thus the Libyan elephant, overwhelmed by dense arms, breaks every missile as it bounds off from his rough back, 210 and moving his skin shakes forth the darts that stick there; his entrails lie safe concealed within, and without blood do the darts stand in the pierced wild beast; wounds made by arrows so many, by javelins so many, suffice not for a single death. Behold! afar, a Gortynian shaft is aimed against Scaeva 215 by a Dictaaean hand, which, more unerring than all expectation, descends upon his head and into the ball of the left eye. He tears away the impediment of the weapon and the ligaments of the nerves, fearlessly plucking forth the arrow fastened in the eye-ball hanging to it, and tramples upon the weapon together with his own eye. 220 Not otherwise does the Pannonian she-bear, more infuriate after a wound, when the Libyan has hurled the javelin retained by the slender thong, wheel herself round upon the wound, and infuriate seek the dart she has received, and run round after the weapon as it flies together with herself. His fury has now destroyed his features, with the bloody stream his 225 face stands disfigured; a joyous shout of the conquerors re-echoes to the sky; a wound beheld on Caesar would not have caused greater joyousness to the men by reason of a little blood. He, concealing the pangs deeply seated in his mind, with a mild air, and, fury from his features entirely removed, 230 says: "Spare me, fellow-citizens; far hence avert the war. Wounds now will not contribute to my death; that requires not weapons thrust in, but rather torn away from my breast. Lift me up, and alive remove me to the camp of Magnus; this do for your own general; let Scaeva be rather 235 an instance of Caesar deserted, than of a glorious death." The unhappy Aulus believed these deceitful words, and did not see him holding his sword with the point upright; and, about to bear away both the body of the prisoner and his arms, he received his lightning blade in the middle of his throat. 240 His valor waxed hot, and by one slaughter refreshed, he said: "Let him pay the penalty, whoever has hoped that Scaeva is subdued; if Magnus seeks for peace from this sword, let him, Caesar being entreated, lower his standards. Do you think me like yourselves, and afraid of death? 245 Less is the cause of Pompey and of the Senate to you, than is the love of death to me." At the same moment he thus says, and the dust raised on high attests that Caesar's cohorts are at hand. He removed from Magnus the shame and the disgrace of the war, that whole troops, Scaeva, had fled from thee; who, the warfare 250 withdrawn, dost sink; for while blood was being shed, the combat gave thee strength. The throng of his comrades raise him as he falls, and are delighted to bear him exhausted on their shoulders; and they adore as it were a Divinity enclosed in his pierced breast, and a living instance of transcendent valor; they strive 255 with one another to tear out the weapons fixed in his limbs, and they adorn the Gods and Mars with his naked breast, Scaeva, with thy weapons' happy in the glories of this fame, if the hardy Iberian, or if the Cantabrian with his small, or the Teutonian with his long weapons, had turned his back on thee. 260 Thou canst not adorn with the spoils of warfare the Temples of the Thunderer, thou canst not shout aloud in the joyous triumph. Wretched man, with valour how great didst thou obtain a tyrant! Nor yet, repulsed from this part of the camp, did Magnus rest, the war being deferred, within the entrenchments, any more than the sea is wearied, 265 when, the east winds arousing themselves, the billows dash against the rock that breaks them, or the wave eats away the side of the lofty mountain, and prepares a late ruin for itself. On the one side, attacking the fortresses adjacent to the placid deep with the onset of a twofold warfare he seizes them; and he scatters 270 his arms far and wide, and expands his tents upon the open plain; and the liberty of changing their ground delights them. Thus does the Padus, swelling with full mouth, run over its shores protected with embankments, and confound whole fields; if anywhere the land gives way and yields, not resisting 275 the raging volume of water, then with all its stream it passes on, and with its flood opens fields to itself unknown. These owners the land forsakes; on these husbandmen are additional fields bestowed, the Padus bestowing the gift. Hardly was Caesar aware of the combat, of which a fire elevated from a look-out gave notice. 280 The dust now laid, he found the walls beaten dream; and when he discovered the now cold marks, as though of ancient ruin, the very quietude of the spot inflamed him, and the rest of the partisans of Pompey and their slumbers, Caesar overcome. He hastens to speed on even into slaughter, so long as he may disturb their joyousness. 285 Then does he rush, threatening, upon Torquatus; who not less speedily perceives the arms of Caesar, than does the sailor, as the mast totters, take in all his sails against the Circeian storm; his troops, too, he withdraws within a more limited wall, that in a small compass he may more densely dispose his arms. 290 Caesar had crossed the ramparts of the outer trenches, when Magnus sent down his troops from all the hills above, and poured forth his ranks upon the blockaded foe. Not thus does he who dwells in the valleys of Aetna dread Enceladus, the south wind blowing, when Aetna utterly empties 295 its caverns, and, flowing with fire, streams down upon the plains; as do the soldiers of Caesar, conquered by the thickening dust already before the battle, and alarmed beneath a cloud of blinded fear, meet the enemy as they fly, and by their alarm rush on to destruction itself. Then might all the blood have been shed for the civil warfare, 300 even to the procuring of peace; the chieftain himself restrained the raging swords. Happy and free, Rome, under thy laws, mightst thou be, and thy own mistress, if on that occasion a Sulla had conquered for thee. We lament, alas! and ever shall lament, that the greatest of thy crimes is successful for thee, 305 to have fought with a duteous son-in-law. O sad fate! Then Libya would not have bewailed the slaughter of Utica, and Spain of Munda, nor would the Nile, polluted with shameful blood, have borne along a carcase more noble than the Pharian king; nor would the naked Juba have pressed the Marmaric sands, 310 and Scipio appeased the ghosts of the Carthaginians by pouring forth his blood; nor would life have been deprived of the hallowed Cato. This might, Rome, have been the last day of woe to thee; Pharsalia might have been wrested from the midst of the Fates. The spot occupied against the will of the Divinities Caesar 315 forsakes, and with his mangled troops seeks the Emathian lands. His followers, by their exhortations, attempt to dissuade Magnus, about to pursue the arms of his father-in-law, wherever he may fly; that he may repair to his native land and Ausonia now free from the enemy. "Never," said he, "will I, after the example 320 of Caesar, betake myself again to my country, and never shall Rome behold me, except returning, my forces dismissed. Hesperia I was able, the war commencing, to hold, if I had been willing to entrust my troops in the temples of my country, and to fight in the midst of the Forum. So long as I could withdraw the war, 325 I would march on to the extreme regions of the Scythian frosts, and the burning tracks. Victorious, shall I, Rome, deprive thee of repose, who, that battles might not exhaust thee, took to flight? Oh! rather, that thou mayst suffer nothing in this warfare, may Caesar deem thee to be his own." Thus having said, he turns his 330 course towards the rising of Phoebus, and, passing over trackless regions of the earth, where Candavia opens her vast forest ranges, he reaches Emathia, which the Fates destined for the warfare. The mountain rock of Ossa bounds Thessaly, on the side on which Titan in the hours of winter brings in the day. 335 When the summer with its higher rising brings Phoebus to the zenith of the sky, Pelion opposes his shadow to the rising rays. But the midday fires of heaven and the solstitial head of the raging Lion the woody Othrys averts. Pindus receives the opposing Zephyrs and Iapyx, 340 and, evening hastening on, cuts short the light. The dweller, too, on Olympus, not dreading Boreas, is unacquainted throughout all his nights with shining Arctos. Between these mountains, which slope downwards with a valley between, formerly the fields lay concealed amid marshes extending far and wide, 345 while the plains retained the rivers, and Tempe, affording a passage through, gave no outlet to file sea; and their course was as they filled a single standing water to increase it. After that, by the hand of Hercules, the vast Ossa was divided from Olympus, and Nereus was sensible of the onward rush of the water thus sudden; better destined to remain beneath 350 the waves, Emathian Pharsalus, the kingdom of the sea-descended Achilles rose forth, and Phylace that touched with the first ship the Rhoetean shores, and Pteleus, and Dorion lamenting the wrath of the Pierides; Trachyn, and Meliboea, brave with the quiver of Hercules, the reward of the direful torch; 355 and once-powerful Larissa; where they now plough over Argos once renowned; where story speaks of ancient Thebes of Echion; where once the exiled Agave bearing the head and neck of Pentheus committed them to the closing fire, complaining that this alone of her son she had recovered. 360 The marsh then, burst asunder, divided into numerous streams. On the west Aeas thence flows clear into the Ionian sea, but with a small stream; nor stronger with his waves does the father of ravished Isis flow, and, Oeneus, he, almost thy son-in-law covers the Echinades with mud from his turbid waves; 365 and Evenus, stained with the blood of Nessus, cuts through Calydon, the city of Meleager. Spercheus, with hastening course, cleaves the Malian waters; and with pure stream Amphrysus waters the pastures where Phoebus served as shepherd; Anauros, too, who neither breathes forth damp fogs, nor air moistened with dew, nor light breezes; 370 and whatever stream of itself not known presents its waves in the Peneus to the ocean; with violent flood flows the Apidanus; said the Enipeus never swift unless mingled. Asopus takes his course, and Phoenix, and Melas. Alone does Titaresos, where he comes into a stream 375 of another name, keep distinct his waters, and, gliding from above, uses the stream of Peneus as though dry fields. The report is that this river flows from the Stygian marshes, and that, mindful of his rise, he is unwilling to endure the contact of an ignoble stream, 380 and preserves the veneration of the Gods for himself. As soon as the fields were open to the rivers sent forth, the rich furrow divided beneath the Bebrycian ploughshare; then, pressed by the right hand of the Lelegians, the plough sank deep. The Aeolian and Dolopian husbandmen cleared the ground, both the 385 Magnetes, a nation known by their horses, and the Minyae, by their, oars. There did the pregnant cloud pour forth in the Pelethronian caverns, the Centaurs sprung from Ixion, half beasts; thee, Monychus, breaking the rugged rocks of Pholoë, and thee, fierce Rhoetus, hurling beneath the heights of Oeta 390 the mountain ashes, which hardly Boreas could tear up; Pholus, too, the host of great Alcides; and thee, treacherous ferryman over the river, destined to feel the arrows tipped with Lernaean venom, and thee, aged Chiron, who, shining with thy cold Constellation, dost drive away the greater Scorpion with the Haemonian bow. 395 In this land first shone the seeds of fierce warfare. From the rocks, struck with the trident, first did the Thessalian charger, an omen of direful wars, spring forth; first did he champ the steel and the bit, and foam at the unwonted reins of the Lapithan subduer 400 from the Pagasaean shore. The first ship cleaving the ocean, exposed earth- born man upon the unknown waves. Itonus, the ruler of the Thessalian land, was the first to hammer masses of heated metal into form, and to melt silver with the flames and stamp gold 405 into coin, and liquefy copper in immense furnaces. There was it first granted to number riches, a thing which has urged on nations to accursed arms. Hence did Python, that most huge serpent, descend, and glide along the fields of Cyrrha; whence, too, the Thessalian laurels come to the Pythian games. 410 Hence the impious Aloeus sent forth his progeny against the Gods of heaven, when Pelion raised itself almost to the lofty stars, and Ossa, meeting the constellations, impeded their course. When upon this land the chieftains have pitched the camps destined by the Fates, their minds, presaging the future warfare, 415 engage all, and it is clear that the momentous hour of the great crisis is drawing nigh. Because their fates are now close approaching, degenerate minds tremble, and ponder on the worst. A few, courage preferred, feel both hopes and fears as to the event. But mingled with the timid multitude 420 is Sextus, an offspring unworthy of Magnus for a parent, who afterwards, roving, an exile, on the Scyllaean waves, a Sicilian pirate, polluted his triumphs on the deep, who, fear spurring him on to know beforehand the events of fate, both impatient of delay and faint-hearted about all things to come, 425 consults not the tripods of Delos, not the Pythian caves, nor does he choose to enquire what sounds Dodona, the nourisher on the first fruits, sends forth from the brass of Jove, who from the entrails can reveal the fates, who can explain the birds, who can observe the lightnings of heaven and search the stars with Assyrian care, 430 or if there is any method, secret, but lawful. He had gained a knowledge of the secrets of the ruthless magicians detested by the Gods above, and the altars sad with dreadful sacrifices, and the aid of the shades below and of Pluto; and to him, wretched man, it seemed clear that the Gods of heaven knew too little. The vain and direful 435 frenzy the very locality promotes, and, adjoining to the camp, the cities of the Haemonian women, whom no power over any prodigy that has been invented can surpass, whose art is each thing that is not believed. Moreover, the Thessalian land produces on its crags both noxious herbs, and rocks that are sensible to the magicians as they 440 chant their deadly secrets. There spring up many things destined to offer violence to the Deities; and the Colchian stranger gathers in the Haemonian lands those herbs which she has not brought. The impious charms of the accursed nation turn the ears of the inhabitants of heaven that are deaf to peoples so numerous, to nations so many. 445 That voice alone goes forth amid the recesses of the heavens, and bears the stringent words to the unwilling Deities, from which the care of the skies and of the floating heavens never calls them away. When the accursed murmur has reached the stars, then, although Babylon of Perseus and mysterious Memphis 450 should open all the shrines of the ancient Magi, the Thessalian witch to foreign altars draws away the Gods of heaven. Through the charms of the Thessalian witches a love not induced by the Fates has entered into hardened hearts; and stern old men have burned with illicit flames. And not only do noxious 455 potions avail; or when they withdraw the pledges swelling with its juices from the forehead of the mother about to show her affection. The mind, polluted by no corruption of imbibed poison, perishes by force of spells. Those whom no unison of the bed jointly occupied binds together, and influence of alluring beauty, 460 they attract by the magic whirling of the twisted threads. The courses of things are stayed, and, retarded by lengthened night, the day stops short. The sky obeys not the laws of nature; and on hearing the spells the headlong world is benumbed; Jupiter, too, urging them on, is astounded that the poles of heaven do not 465 go on, impelled by the rapid axles. At another time, they fill all places with showers, and, while the sun is hot, bring down the clouds; the heavens thunder, too, Jupiter not knowing it. By those same words, with hair hanging loose, have they scattered abroad far and wide soaking clouds and showers. The winds ceasing, the sea 470 has swelled; again, forbidden to be sensible of the storms, the south wind provoking it, it has held its peace; and bearing along the ship the sails have swelled against the wind. From the steep rock has the torrent hung suspended; and the river has run not in the direction in which it was descending. The summer has not raised the Nile; 475 in a straight line the Maeander has urged on his waters; and the Arar has impelled headlong the delaying Rhone; their tops lowered, mountains have levelled their ridges. Olympus has looked upwards to the clouds, and with no sun the Scythian snows have thawed, while the winter was freezing. Impelled by the stars, the shores protected, 480 the charms of the Haemonian witches have driven Tethys back. The earth, too, has shaken the axle of her unmoved weight, and, inclining with the effort, has oscillated in her mid regions. The weight of a mass so vast smitten by their voice, has gaped open, and has afforded a prospect through it of the surrounding heavens. 485 Every animal powerful for death, and produced to do injury, both fears the Haemonian arts and supplies them with its deadly qualities. Them do the ravening tigers and the magnanimous wrath of the lions fawn upon with gentle mouth; for them does the serpent unfold his cold coils, and is extended in the frosty field. 490 The knots of the vipers unite, their bodies cut asunder; and the snake dies, breathed upon by human poison. What failing is this of the Gods of heaven in following after enchantments and herbs, and what this fear of disregarding them? Of what compact do the bonds keep the Deities thus bound? Is it obligatory, or does it please them 495 to obey? For an unknown piety only do the witches deserve this, or by secret threats do they prevail? Have they this power against all the Gods of heaven, or do these imperious charms sway but a certain Deity, who, whatever he himself is compelled, can compel the world, to do? There, too, for the first time were the stars 500 brought down from the headlong sky; and serene Phoebe, beset by the dire influences of their words, grew pale and burned with dusky and earthy fires, not otherwise than if the earth hindered her from the reflection of her brother, and interposed its shade between the celestial flames; 505 and, arrested by spells, she endures labours so great, until, more nigh, she sends her foam upon the herbs situate beneath. These rites of criminality, these spells of the direful race, the wild Erictho has condemned as being of piety too extreme, and has applied the polluted art to new ceremonies. 510 For to her it is not permitted to place her deadly head within a roof or a home in the city; and she haunts the deserted piles, and, the ghosts expelled, takes possession of the tombs, pleasing to the Gods of Erebus. To hear the counsels of the dead, to know the Stygian abodes and the secrets of the concealed Pluto, 515 not the Gods above, not a life on earth, forbids. Leanness has possession of the features of the hag, foul with filthiness, and, unknown to a clear sky, her dreadful visage, laden with uncombed locks, is beset with Stygian paleness. If showers and black clouds obscure the stars, then does the Thessalian witch stalk forth 520 from the spoiled piles, and try to arrest the lightnings of the night. The seeds she treads on of the fruitful corn she burns up, and by her breathing makes air noxious that was not deadly before. She neither prays to the Gods of heaven, nor with suppliant prayer calls the Deity to her aid, nor does she know of the propitiating 525 entrails; upon the altars she delights to place funereal flames, and frankincense which she has carried off from the lighted pile. Her voice now first heard as she demands, the Gods of heaven accede to all the wickedness, and dread to hear a second address. Souls that live, and still rule their respective limbs, she buries 530 in the tomb; and death reluctantly creeps on upon those who owe lengthened years to the Fates; the funeral procession turning back, the dead bodies she rescues from the tomb; corpses fly from death. The smoking ashes of the young and the burning bones she snatches from the midst of the piles, and the very torch which 535 the parents have held; the fragments, too, of the funereal bier that fly about in the black smoke, and the flowing robes does she collect amid the ashes, and the embers that smell of the limbs. But when corpses are kept within stone, from which the moisture within is taken away, and, the corruption withdrawn, the marrow has grown 540 hard; then does she greedily raven upon all the limbs, and bury her hands in the eyes, and delight to scoop out the dried-up balls, and gnaw the pallid nails of the shrunken hand; with her mouth she tears asunder the halter and the murderous knots; the bodies as they hang she gnaws, 545 and scrapes the crosses; the entrails, too, smitten by the showers she rends asunder, and the parched marrow, the sun's heat admitted thereto. Iron fastened into the hands, and the black corruption of the filthy matter that distils upon the limbs, and the slime that has collected, she bears off, and hangs to the bodies, as the sinews hold fast her bite. 550 Whatever carcass, too, is lying upon the bare ground, before the beasts and the birds of the air does she sit; nor does she wish to separate the joints with iron and with her hands, and about to tear the limbs from their parched jaws, she awaits the bites of the wolves. Nor do her hands refrain from murder, if she requires the 555 life-blood, which is the first to spring from the divided throat. Nor does she shun slaughter, if her rites demand living gore, and her funereal tables demand the quivering entrails. So, through the wounds of the womb, not the way in which nature invites, is the embryo torn out, about to be placed upon the glowing altars. 560 And as often as she has need of grim and stalwart shades, she herself makes the ghosts; every kind of death among mankind is in her employ. She from the youthful body tears the down of the cheek; she with her left hand from the dying stripling cuts off the hair. Full often, too, at her kinsman's pile has the dire Thessalian witch 565 brooded over the dear limbs, and imprinting kisses, has both cut off the head, and torn away the cheeks pressed with her teeth, and biting off the end of the tongue as it cleaves to the dried throat, has poured forth murmurs into the cold lips, and has dispatched accursed secrets to the Stygian shades. 570 When the rumours of the spot brought her to the notice of Pompey, amid the depths of the night of the sky, at the time when Titan is bringing the midday beneath our earth, along the deserted fields he takes his way. The faithful and wonted attendants upon his crimes, wandering amid the ruined tombs and graves, 575 beheld her afar, sitting upon a lofty crag, where Haemus, sloping down, extends the Pharsalian ridges. She was conning over spells unknown to the magicians and the Gods of magic, and was trying charms for unwonted purposes. For, fearing lest the shifting warfare might remove to another region, 580 and the Emathian land be deprived of slaughter so vast, the sorceress has forbidden Philippi, polluted with spells and sprinkled with dreadful potions, to transfer the combats, about to claim so many deaths as her own, and to enjoy the blood of the world; she hopes to maim the corpses of slaughtered 585 monarchs, and to turn to herself the ashes of the Hesperian race, and the bones of nobles, and to obtain ghosts so mighty. This is her pursuit, and her sole study, what she is to tear away from the corpse of Magnus when exposed, what limbs of Caesar she is to brood over. Her does the degenerate offspring of Pompey first address: "O thou honor 590 to the Haemonian females, who art able to reveal their fates to nations, and who art able to turn them away from their course when about to come to pass, I pray thee that it may be permitted me to know the assured end which the fortune of war provides. Not the lowest portion am I of the Roman multitude; the most renowned offspring of Magnus, 595 either ruler of the world, or heir to a fall so great. Smitten with doubts, my mind is in alarm, and again is prepared to endure the fears that spring from certainty. This power do thou withdraw from events, that they may not rush on sudden and unseen; either extort it from the Deities, or do thou spare the Gods, and force the truth from the shades below. 600 Unlock the Elysian abodes, and Death herself, called forth, compel to confess to thee whom of us it is that she demands. Not mean is the task; it is worthy for even thee to have a care to seek which way inclines the hazard of destinies so mighty." The impious Thessalian witch rejoices at the mention of her fame thus spread 605 abroad, and answers on the other hand: "O youth, if thou wouldst have influenced more humble destinies, it had been easy to force the reluctant Gods to any action thou mightst wish. To my skill it is granted, when with their beams the constellations have urged on death, to interpose delays; and although every star would make 610 a man aged, by drugs do we cut short his years in the midst. But together does the chain of causes work downward from the first origin of the world, and all the fates are struggling, if thou shouldst wish to change anything, and the human race stands subject to a single blow; then do we, the Thessalian throng, confess, 615 Fortune has the greater might. But if thou art content to learn the events beforehand, paths easy and manifold will lie open to truth; earth, and sky, and Chaos, and seas, and plains, and the rocks of Rhodope, will converse with us. But it is easy, since there is a supply so vast of recent deaths, 620 to raise a single body from the Emathian plains, that, with a clear voice, the lips of a corpse just dead and warm may utter their sounds, and no dismal ghost, the limbs scorched by the sun, may send forth indistinct screeching." Thus she says; and, the shades of night redoubled by her art, 625 wrapped as to her direful head in a turbid cloud, she wanders amid the bodies of the slain, exposed, sepulchers being denied. Forthwith the wolves take to flight, their talons loosened, the birds fly unfed, while the Thessalian witch selects her prophet, and, examining the marrow cold in death, 630 finds the fibres of the stiffened lungs standing without a wound, and in the dead body seeks a voice. Now stand in doubt destinies full many of men who have been slain, which one she is to choose to recall to the world above. If she had attempted to raise whole armies from the plains, and to restore them to the war, 635 the laws of Erebus would have yielded, and a people dragged forth by the powerful miscreant from Stygian Avernus, would have mingled in fight. A body selected at length with pierced throat she takes, and, a hook being inserted with funereal ropes, the wretched carcass is dragged over rocks, over stones, 640 destined to live once again; and beneath the lofty crags of the hollowed mountain, which the dire Erictho has destined for her rites, it is placed. Downward sloping, not far from the black caverns of Pluto, the ground precipitately descends, which a wood covers, pale with its drooping foliage, and with no lofty tops looking upwards to 645 the heavens, and a yew-tree shades, not pervious to the sun. Within is squalid darkness, and moldiness pallid within the caves amid the lengthened gloom; never, unless produced by charms, does it receive the light. Not within the jaws of Taenarus, the baleful limit of the hidden world, and of our own, does the air settle 650 thus stagnant; whither the sovereigns of Tartarus would not fear to send forth the shades. For although the Thessalian witch uses violence against destiny, it is matter of doubt whether she beholds the Stygian ghosts because she has dragged them thither, or whether because she has descended to Tartarus. A dress, of various colors and fury-like with varied garb, 655 is put on by her; and her locks removed, her features are revealed, and, bristling, with wreaths of vipers her hair is fastened round. When she perceives the youth's attendants alarmed, and himself trembling, and, casting down his eyes with looks struck with horror, she says: "Banish the fears conceived in your timid mind; 660 now anew, now in its genuine form shall life be restored, that even tremblers may endure to hear him speak. But if I can show the Stygian lakes, and the shores that resound with flames; if, I being present, the Eumenides can be beheld, and Cerberus shaking his necks shaggy with 665 serpents, and the Giants chained with their hands to their backs, what dread is there, cowards, to behold the frightened ghosts?" Then in the first place does she fill his breast, opened by fresh wounds, with reeking blood, and she bathes his marrow with gore, and plentifully supplies venom from the moon. 670 Here is mingled whatever, by a monstrous generation, nature has produced. Not the foam of dogs to which water is an object of dread, not the entrails of the lynx, not the excrescence of the direful hyena is wanting, and the marrow of the stag that has fed upon serpents; not the sucking fish, that holds back the ship in the midst of the waves, 675 while the eastern breeze stretches the rigging; the eyes of dragons, too, and the stones that resound, warmed beneath the brooding bird; not the winged serpent of the Arabians, and the viper produced in the Red Sea, the guardian of the precious shell; or the slough of the horned serpent of Libya that still survives; 680 or the ashes of the Phoenix, laid upon an eastern altar. With this, after she has mingled abominations, vile, and possessing no names, she added leaves steeped in accursed spells, and herbs upon which, when shooting up, her direful mouth had spat, and whatever poisons she herself gave unto the world; 685 then, a voice, more potent than all drugs to charm the Gods of Lethe, first poured forth its murmurs, discordant, and differing much from the human tongue. The bark of dogs has she, and the howling of wolves; she sends forth the voice in which the scared owl, in which the screech 690 of the night, complain, in which wild beasts shriek and yell, in which the serpent hisses, and the wailing of the waves dashed upon the rocks; the sounds, too, of the woods, and the thunders of the bursting cloud. Of objects so many there is the voice in one. Then afterwards in a Haemonian chant she unfolds the rest, and her voice penetrates to Tartarus: 695 "Eumenides, and Stygian fiends, and penalties of the guilty, and Chaos, eager to confound innumerable worlds; and thou, Ruler of the earth, whom the wrath of the Gods, deferred for lengthened ages, does vex; Styx, and the Elysian fields, which no Thessalian sorceress is deserving of; Persephone, who dost detest heaven 700 and thy mother, and who art the lowest form of our Hecate, through whom the ghosts and I have the intercourse of silent tongues; thou porter, too, of the spacious abodes, who dost scatter our entrails before the savage dog; and you, Sisters, about to handle the threads renewed, and thou, O ferryman of the burning stream, 705 now, aged man, tired with the ghosts returning to me; listen to my prayers, if you sufficiently I invoke with mouth accursed and defiled, if, never fasting from human entrails, I repeat these charms, if full oft I have given you the teeming breasts, and have smothered your offerings with warm brains; 710 if any infant, when I have placed its head and entrails on your dishes, had been destined to live; listen to my entreaty. A soul we ask for, that has not lain hid in the caves of Tartarus, and accustomed long to darkness, but one just descending, the light but lately withdrawn; and which still delays at the 715 very chasm of pallid Orcus. Although it may listen to these spells, it shall come to the shades once again. Let the ghost of one but lately our soldier repeat the destinies of Pompey to the son of the chieftain, if the civil warfare deserves well at your hands." When, having said these things, she lifted up her head and her 720 foaming lips, she beheld the ghost of the extended corpse standing by, dreading the lifeless limbs and the hated place of its former confinement. It was dreading to go into the gaping breasts, and the entrails torn with a deadly wound. Ah wretch! from whom unrighteously the last privilege of death 725 is snatched, to be able to die! Erictho is surprised that this delay has been permitted by the Fates, and, enraged with death, with living serpents she beats the unmoved body; and through the hollow clefts of the earth, which with her charms she opens, she barks forth to the shades below, and breaks the silence of the realms:-- 730 "Tisiphone, and Megaera, heedless of my voice, are ye not driving the wretched soul with your ruthless whips through the void space of Erebus? This moment under your real name will I summon you forth, and, Stygian bitches, will leave you in the light of the upper world; amid graves will I follow you, amid funereal rites, your watcher; 735 from the tombs will I expel you, from all the urns will I drive you away. And thee, Hecate, squalid with thy pallid form, will I expose to the Gods, before whom in false shape with other features thou art wont to come, and I will forbid thee to conceal the visage of Erebus. I will disclose, damsel of Enna, under the boundless bulk 740 of the earth, what feasts are detaining thee, upon what compact thou dost love the gloomy sovereign, to what corruption having submitted, thy parent was unwilling to call thee back. Against thee, most evil ruler of the worlds, into thy burst caverns will I send the sun, and with sudden daylight thou shalt be smitten. Are you going to obey? 745 Or will he have to be addressed, by whom never, when named, the shaken earth fails to tremble, who beholds the Gorgon exposed to view, and with his stripes chastises the quailing Erinys, who occupies depths of Tartarus by you unseen; in whose power you are, ye Gods above; who by the Stygian waves forswears." 750 Forthwith the clotted blood grows warm, and nourishes the blackened wounds, and runs into the veins and the extremities of the limbs. Smitten beneath the cold breast, the lungs palpitate; and a new life creeping on is mingled with the marrow so lately disused. Then does every-joint throb; 755 the sinews are stretched; and not by degrees throughout the limbs does the dead body lift itself from the earth, and it is spurned by the ground, and raised erect at the same instant. The eyes with their apertures distended wide are opened. In it not as yet is there the face of one living, but of one now dying. His paleness and his stiffness remain, 760 and, brought back to the world, he is astounded. But his sealed lips resound with no murmur. A voice and a tongue to answer alone are granted unto him. "Tell me," says the Thessalian witch, "for a great reward, what I command thee; for, having spoken the truth, by the Haemonian arts I will set thee free in all ages 765 of the world; with such a sepulcher will I grace thy limbs, with such wood will I burn them with Stygian spells, that thy charmed ghost shall hearken to no magicians. Of such great value be it to have lived once again; neither charms nor drugs shall presume to take away from thee the sleep of Lethe prolonged, 770 death being bestowed by me. Obscure responses befit the tripods and the prophets of the Gods; well assured he may depart whoever asks the truth of the shades, and boldly approaches the oracles of relentless death. Spare not, I pray. Give things their names, give the places, give the words by which the Fates may converse with me." She added 775 a charm as well, by which she gave the ghost the power to know whatever she consulted him upon. Sad, the tears running down, the corpse thus said: "Called back from the heights of the silent shores I surely have not seen the sad threads of the Destinies; but, what from all the shades it has been allowed me to learn, 780 fierce discord agitates the Roman ghosts, and impious arms disturb the rest of hell. Coming from different spots, some chieftains have left the Elysian abodes, and some the gloomy Tartarus; what fate is preparing these have disclosed. Sad was the countenance of the spirits 785 of the blessed. The Decii I beheld, both son and father, the souls that expiated the warfare, and Camillus weeping, and the Curii; Sulla, too, Fortune, complaining of thee. Scipio is deploring his hapless descendant, doomed to perish in the Libyan lands. The elder Cato, the foe of Carthage, 790 bemoans the destiny of his nephew who will not be a slave. Thee, Brutus, first Consul, the tyrants expelled, alone rejoicing did I behold among the pious shades. Threatening Catiline, his chains burst asunder and broken, exults, the fierce Marii, too, and the Cethegi with their bared arms. 795 I beheld the Drusi exulting, names beloved by the populace; the Gracchi, exorbitant with their laws, and who dared such mighty exploits. Hands, bound with the eternal knots of iron, and in the dungeon of Dis, clap in applause, and the guilty multitude demands the fields of the blessed. The possessor of the empty realms 800 is opening the pallid abodes, and is sharpening rocks torn off, and adamant hard with its chains, and is preparing punishment for the conqueror. Take back with thee, O youth, this comfort, that in their placid retreat the shades await thy father trod thy house, and in the serene quarter of the realms are 805 preparing room for Pompey. And let not the glory of a short life cause thee anxiety; the hour will come that is to mingle all chieftains alike. Make ye haste to die, and proud with your high spirit go down though from humble graves, and tread under foot the ghosts of Romans deified. 810 It is sought to know which tomb the wave of the Nile, and which that of the Tiber is to wash, and only is the combat among the chieftains as to their place of burial. Seek not thou to know thy own destiny; the Fates, while I am silent, will declare; a prophet more sure, Pompey himself, thy sire, will declare all things to thee in the Sicilian fields; 815 he, too, uncertain whither he shall invite thee, whence warn thee away, what regions to bid thee avoid, what Constellations of the world. Wretched men, dread Europe, and Libya, and Asia; according to your triumphs does Fortune distribute your sepulchers. O wretched house, nothing throughout the whole earth wilt thou behold 820 more safe than Emathia." After he has thus revealed the Fates, gloomy with speechless features he stands, and demands death once again. Magic incantations arc needed, and drugs, that the carcass may fall, and the Fates are unable to restore the soul to themselves, the law of hell now once broken. Then, with plenteous wood 825 she builds up a pile; the dead man comes to the fires; the youth placed upon the lighted heap Erictho leaves, permitting him at length to die; and she goes attending Sextus to his father's camp. The heavens wearing the aspect of light, until they brought their footsteps safe within the tents, 830 the night, commanded to withhold the day, afforded its dense shades.