Pharsalia 9781501731938

Table of contents :
Contents
General Introduction
Chronology
Lucan's Pharsalia
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
BOOK VI
Book VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X
Glossary
Select Bibliography

Citation preview

LUCAN

PHARSALIA

MASTERS OF LATIN LITERATURE EDITORS: FREDERICK AHL, DISKIN CLAy' DouGLAss PARKER, joN STALL WORTHY

This series aims to help reestablish the importance and intrinsic interest of Latin literature in an age which has rejected the Latin literary model in favor of the Greek. We plan to make available, in modern English-language versions, influential Latin works, especially poetry, from the third century B.C. to the eighteenth century of our own era. By "influential works" we mean not only those commonly read in the classroom today, either in the original or in translation, but also those which shaped literature in their own and in subsequent times, yet have now either lost or been dismissed from their places among the "Great Books" of our culture. ALSO IN THE SERIES:

Plautus. Three Comedies. Translated by Peter L. Smith. Seneca. Three Tragedies. Translated by Frederick Ahl.

LUCAN

PHARSALIA TRANS LA TED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

Jane Wilson Joyce

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 1993 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1993 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1993 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lucan, 39-65. [Pharsalia. English] Pharsalia I Lucan ; translated and with an introduction by Jane Wilson Joyce. p. em. -(Masters of Latin literature) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 978-0-8014-8137-6 (paper: alk. paper) 1. Pharsalus, Battle of 48 B. C.-Poetry. 2. Epic poetry, Latin-Translations into English. 3- Rome-History-Civil War, 49-48 B.C.-Poetry. L Title. II. Series. PA6479.E5)686 1993 873'.01-dczo 93-25129

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of non-wood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

5 7 9

Paperback printing

10 8 6

for my mother

Contents

General Introduction Chronology

IX

xxvu

Lucan's Pharsalia Glossary Select Bibliography

287

33 I

General Introduction

POET Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) was born 3 November 39 c. E. at Cordoba, son of the Spanish financier Marcus Annaeus Mela and member of a remarkable family. 1 His grandfather Lucius Annaeus Seneca ("the Elder"), a successful businessman, wrote a history of Rome, now lost, beginning with the civil war that forms the subject of Lucan's Pharsalia; blessed with longevity (he lived to be nearly a hundred) and a phenomenal memory, a keen critic of Roman rhetoric, he could quote at length even from speeches heard in boyhood; some ofhis work on oratory is extant. One of Lucan's two uncles, Lucius Annaeus Gallio (later adopted and renamed Lucius Iunius Novatus Gallio), is the Gallio who, as governor of Achaea in 52 c. E., threw out the Jews' case against St. Paul in Acts 18:12ff. The other, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, was Rome's richest citizen, the most popular living author of his day, and, for a short while, virtual co-ruler of the Roman world. Within a few months of Lucan's birth, his father moved the family to Rome; he then retired to a house deep in the country. While it is possible that Lucan received his early education at home in the old Roman style, all indications are that he was educated at Rome. Perhaps he lived there with his uncle Gallio while attending a grammar school. Here he would have learned to read and write both Latin and Greek until he was about eleven (51 c. E.); then, for the next five years, he would have studied grammar and literature and other subjects intended to give pupils a good general education and a 1 The Latin sources for Lucan's life are gathered in W. E. Heitland's Introduction to C. E. Haskins' edition of Lucan's epic, xiii-xx. Frederick M. Ahl gives a detailed analysis of the sources in the first chapter and in the Appendix of Lucan: An Introduction (Cornell University Press, 1976). Dates for events in Lucan's life (other than birth and death) are conjectural, based on Ahl, pp. 36-47 and 333-353.

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General Introduction foundation for advanced study of rhetoric. In 49, a shift in the kaleidoscope of Roman imperial politics and intrigue brought his uncle Seneca home from exile on Corsica, and Seneca may well have taken an interest in his gifted nephew's education. An exceptional student, Lucan continued his studies under the tutelage of Lucius Annaeus Cornutus (born circa 20 c. E.). Possibly related to Lucan or in some other way connected with his family, this young Stoic teacher of rhetoric and philosophy was author of works in both Greek and Latin, including a critique of Vergil's poetry and a handbook of Stoic allegorical interpretations of Greek mythology. In the classroom with Lucan was another gifted young poet, Persius, whose satires still exist. After two or three years' study under Cornutus, Lucan went abroad sometime in the late 50s c. E. for a final year of schooling at Athens. According to Suetonius' biographical sketch of Lucan, it is at this point that the poet's life intertwines with that of the emperor Nero, who summoned Lucan home to make him a member of the "cadre of friends" (cohors amicorum). 2 It seems highly likely, however, that poet and emperor had become well acquainted much earlier, for, from 49 to 54, Lucan's uncle Seneca served as Nero's tutor. What would have been more natural than that he bring the two youths together in those years? They were almost of an age, Lucan being only about eleven months younger than Nero, and they shared a passionate interest in literature. Indeed, in 60 C.E., Nero established games patterned on Apollo's Pythian Games, with contests for poets as well as for athletes and horsemen; Lucan won top honors in these games with a poem praising Nero (Laudes Neronis). The cordial, even friendly, relations implied by these events continued. In 62 or 63 c. E., Nero appointed Lucan quaestor and augur both. The normal age for a quaestorship (the lowest rung of the Roman political ladder) was twenty-five. Even if we accept the later date, Lucan, who turned twentyfour only in November, was still too young to hold such an office; in fact, early appointment to the quaestorship was an honor usually reserved for members of the imperial family. The augurate, too, was an honor: the College of Augurs was restricted to sixteen members. The motives of princes, however, are notoriously difficult to read, and it is well to remember that, also in 62, Seneca had begged permission to cede the bulk of his huge fortune to Nero and to be allowed to go into retirement. While refusing the first request for a while, Nero granted the second.3 2 Most easily found in English translation in ]. C. Rolfe's Suetonius in the Loeb Classical Library series (Harvard University Press, 1959), vol. 2, pp. soo-503. 3 See Tacitus Annales 14.5 2-56.

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General Introduction Considering the reckless course of action Nero had set himself in the late 50s (the infamous murder of his mother occurred in 59), it is unlikely that Seneca's retirement was an entirely simple matter. Seneca may have been maneuvered into making the request, or he may have felt himself in danger and hoped to avoid trouble. In any case, it is possible that, despite the honors accorded him, Lucan was beginning to feel uneasy about Nero's friendship; it is equally possible that his own friendly feelings were fading. Nor should we overlook the possibility that Nero was using the nephew to get at the uncle. The dual honors awarded to Lucan carried with them dual responsibilities. As quaestor, he became a member of the Senate and organized a show of gladiatorial games; as augur, he had many ceremonial functions to perform. In the meantime, he kept up his writing-something that can be said of few Roman authors, who tended either to be uninvolved in official duties or to postpone literary activity until their political careers had ended. Though only his unfinished epic remains, we know the titles of many more works by Lucan. Among those on mythological themes were I/iacon (Song of Troy), Catachthonion (Trip to the Underworld), Orpheus, Medea (an unfinished tragedy), and libretti for fourteen pantomimes (Salticae Fabulae). There were ten books of occasional verse (called Silvae), a collection of epigrams, another of Saturnalia, and a third of Letters from Campania; we hear of an Address to Polla (Lucan's wife) and of a pair of speeches in the declamatory style-one for, one against Octavius Sagitta (involved in 58 c. E. in a sex-and-murder scandal recounted by Tacitus in Annales 13.44). In addition to the Laudes Neronis (In Praise of Nero) already mentioned, a poem titled About the Burning of the City (De Incendio Urbis) is also listed. Vacca, Lucan's only ancient biographer other than Suetonius, says that these works were all extant in his day (four or five centuries after Lucan's death). While some titles may refer to juvenilia, the output is nonetheless prodigious; equally, we should note their longevity. And even if some works date as early as 55, or even 52 c. E., still we must be impressed by a writer who produced so much in little more than a decade. The strands of literature and politics in Lucan's life become more tightly interwoven from this point on. Indeed, it may have been in 62 or 63 that he set to work on the Pharsalia, though chronology for events in the last two or three years ofhis life is hazy. We hear from Vacca that up through the year of his quaestorship, relations between poet and emperor were friendly; then things changed drastically as Lucan incurred Nero's envy and hatred (equidem hactenus tempora habuit secunda. quae autem sequuntur mutata invidia et odio Neronis . .. ). Like Vacca, Suetonius suggests that Nero's jealousy of Lucan created the Xl

General Introduction rift between them. He sees the turning point in an act of deliberate humiliation. While Lucan was giving a public reading, Nero suddenly called a meeting of the Senate and departed, his sole intention being to give Lucan "the freeze" (nulla nisi refrigerandi sui causa). Suetonius goes on to say that Lucan read a "libelous poem" (carmen famosum) in which he gave both the emperor and his most powerful friends a severe tongue-lashing; it is at least possible that Suetonius is referring to Lucan's De Incendio Urbis, which, if it was about the Great Fire at Rome, would have to have been written sometime after July 64 c. E. Towards the end of that same year, according to Tacitus, Dio, and Vacca, Nero imposed a ban on all Lucan's public speaking. (Suetonius makes no mention of such a ban. )4 Early in 65 c. E., Lucan joined a conspiracy of senators headed by Calpurnius Piso and sworn to assassinate Nero. 5 Vacca says Lucan was led astray by the older senator (deceptus est), while Suetonius describes him as the virtual standard-bearer of the group (paene signifer). The conspiracy was discovered, and Lucan, along with his uncles Seneca and Gallio, was forced to commit suicide. When his father came forward to claim Lucan's property, he, too, was compelled to kill himself. 6 Lucan's relationship with Nero traces a meteoric trajectory-a steep climb to the heights swiftly followed by a plunge into oblivion. Throughout his life run twin themes ofliterature and politics, the two elements gradually drawing together and intermingling until, in the end, Lucan the political conspirator, compelled by Nero to die, sends his father corrections of verses in the Pharsalia before ordering the surgeon to open his veins. He died 30 April 65 C.EJ

* * * For most of the twentieth century, Lucan has been a shadowy literary presence, an author little read and largely ignored. Yet, as we have seen, his literary output was vast; his talent was recognized in his own day; and his many works were all still available long after his death. A brief history of Lucan's fluctuating literary reputation is in order here, beginning with his reputation as author in his lifetime. 4 For ancient

62.29·4·

testimony to the ban, see Tacitus Annales I 5.49; Vacca, vv. 24-32 (Heitland); Dio

5 Member of a family which had long demonstrated strong Republican feelings, Calpurnius Piso had already come into conflict with Gaius (Caligula) in 40 c. E. over the deification of his wife. 6 Tacitus describes the discovery of the Pisonian conspiracy at Annales I 5· 54-57 and the suicides ofLucan (15.70), Seneca (I5.60-64), Gallio (I5.73), and Mela (r6.I7). 7 See Suetonius' Life of Lucan, pp. 502-503 (Loeb).

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General Introduction In the ancient world, the first step in publication was often the public reading. Who listened when Lucan read his Pharsalia? The emperor did, for one. In his Life of Lucan, as we have seen, Suetonius tells us that Nero walked out of one of Lucan's recitations; ergo, he was there. Clearly, if the emperor was present, then the audience must have been large and prestigious. Given Nero's passion for the arts, even those with little genuine interest in poetry would have felt compelled to feign interest, would have wanted to see and be seen at such gatherings. So it seems likely that Lucan could have counted on a large audience of distinguished and well-educated men and women-or at least he could before the break with Nero. What would such a reading have been like? The Younger Pliny, whose letters are our principal source of information, tells us that an author, having decided to give a reading, would issue invitations. 8 One can imagine that an invitation from the well-connected Lucan must have been much sought after. Readings could last an afternoon or continue over the space of several days. Poetry, especially epic and tragedy, was most commonly the type of work presented. It was also the author's responsibility to hire a hall or theater for his recitation, and he had to supply the seating and platform as well-no problem for the wealthy Lucan, although these expenses must often have been prohibitive for a man of limited means. 9 Once his guests had assembled, the author spoke a few words, then sat to read from his new work. At intervals, the audience cheered or even rose to its feet if especially stirred. (Occasionally an author would ensure the stirring by judicious disbursements of money beforehand.) Such readings were very much a feature of the social landscape in Lucan's day and had been so since their inception in the 30s B.C. E. Asinius Pollio, friend of Vergil and Horace, and founder of Rome's first public library, started the fashion. 10 Juvenal, writing a generation after Lucan, complains of the large number and low quality of these public readings (Satires I. I and J.9). It seems likely, than, that Lucan, the courtier shown preferential treatment by the emperor, nephew of the emperor's chief counselor, and a wealthy senator and augur in his own right, could have counted on a glittering assembly of senators and knights, their womenfolk and hangers-on, even had his work been mediocre. But, in addition to his political connections, Lucan the author seems to have been popular. Statius, in his poem in honor 8 See

his Letters 7. 17. II-12 and 9·34-2. See Tacitus Dialogus de Oratoribus (Dialogue about Orators) par. 9. 10 Lucan's grandfather Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 55 B.C. E. to c. E. 37) tells us this in the preface (par. 2) to his fourth book of Controversiae (Debates), a collection of school exercises in oratory, debating imaginary cases before the law court. 9

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General Introduction of Lucan's birthday (Silvae 2. 7), has the mother of Orpheus, the Muse Calliope, make an implicit comparison between her mythological son and the infant Lucan; leaning over the baby's cradle, she predicts: No stream, no herds of wild creatures will you stir with your plectrum, nor yet the Getic ash-trees, but the Seven Hills, Mars' river Tiber, learned Knights and the Senate clad in purplethese you'll charm and lead with your eloquent song ... (vv. 43-47) The implication is clearly that Lucan will be an urban, a specifically Roman, Orpheus. In addition to full-blown public performances, there were also private readings, to which, after Nero imposed the ban, Lucan may have resorted. Perhaps we should think ofhis uncle's well-appointed villa (where Seneca, too, may have presented private readings or even productions of his tragedies). And, if the author was Lucan and the text his Pharsalia, very private indeed such readings must have been, for, with Nero's ban in effect, both reader and listener were subject to the treason laws. Certainly the overt and violent hostility to Caesarism expressed in Pharsalia Seven would not have been safe for public recitation at any time, even in the heyday of Lucan's intimacy with Nero.

* * * Lucan's influence since his death has been variable. In the decades immediately afterward, as in much of the twentieth century, interest in his work was muted; but in the centuries between-especially in the Middle Ages-it was considerable. Presumably, Lucan's papers, including the manuscript of the Pharsalia, came into the hands ofPolla Argentaria after the deaths ofher husband, his uncles, and his father in 6 5 c. E. It might seem more appropriate that the poet's former master of rhetoric, rather than his widow, should have become Lucan's literary executor; after all, Cornutus filled that role for his other famous pupil, Persius. But Cornutus would seem not to have been a candidate for literary executor, since it is unclear when or ifhe ever returned from exile after his banishment in the early 6os c. E. At the end ofhis Life ofLucan, Suetonius says that he can recall public lectures on the Pharsalia, and he mentions that several copies, some of them better than others, were available at the booksellers' stalls in his day (c. 100 c.E.). The poet Martial, in an XIV

General Introduction unflattering epigram published about the same time, confirms that sales of the Pharsalia were brisk. 11 Though his epic was recognized to be ground-breaking, though he was an author much admired during most of his short life, Lucan found no imitators, no poets in his audience ready to take up his principles. In antiquity, it was not his poetry or his rhetoric that stopped Lucan's contemporaries from following his innovative lead in the creation of epic: it was his politics and his death. Although the influence of Lucan's epic may be discerned in the Punica of Silius Italicus (composed c. 88-98 c. E.), in the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus (composed c. 80-92 c.E.), and in Statius' Thebaid (also composed in the 8os), none of these imperial epics could be said to have been modelled on the Pharsalia; only the Punica uses history rather than mythology as its subject, but even so, the Second Punic War was safely in the distant and glorious past. Silius Italicus, despite his historical subject, joins the other two poets in reverting to the traditional epic device of divine machinery. As Frederick M. Ahl has put it, "IfVergil proved to be a poet the Flavian writers could not rival, Lucan was one they dared not rival." 12 The clearest indication that this was the tenor of the times is the criticism levelled at the Pharsalia in Petronius' Satyricon (paragraphs 118-124), published (perhaps) shortly after Lucan's death. Although Lucan is never mentioned by name, Petronius clearly means that he is the poet who would profit from a study of the sample Civil War sketched out there. Petroni us, a literary conservative, is alarmed and a little affronted by Lucan's innovativeness. In particular, Petronius advocates in his sample epic a return to traditional use of the gods to explain motivation and events. Other notices about Lucan and his work from the next generation were equally unflattering. In his Dialogue on the Roman literary tradition, Tacitus-never a friend of Lucan-has one of his less-imposing characters praise Lucan, only to be outdone in the debate by a more traditionalist speaker. Quintilian, the eminent teacher of rhetoric, has left us a famous assessment of the Pharsalia: "Lucan is intense and keyed up and best known for his epigrams; also, speaking for myself, he is a model more useful to orators than to poets" (Lucanus ardens et concitatus et sententiis clarissimus et, ut dicam quod sentio, magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus). But after this flurry of interest on the part ofLucan's younger contemporaries, there was a period of silence lasting nearly two and a half centuries. Then, in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, Lucan came into his own. Around 350 c. E., a learned commentary was composed on the Phar11 Martial Epigrams 14. 104; see also 7.23 and 25. 12 Ahl,

Lucan: An Introduction, p. 80.

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General Introduction salia; it survives, with many later additions, in two separate manuscriptsthe Commenta Bernensia and the Adnotationes super Lucanum. Early in the 400s, the poets Claudian and Prudentius were great admirers of Lucan; Vacca probably wrote his Life of Lucan in the fifth or sixth century. In the ninth through eleventh centuries, what are now the major manuscripts of the Pharsalia were copied and circulated, and from the mid-tenth century to the qoos, Lucan was listed in the top category of meritorious pagan authors, along with Terence, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Statius, Juvenal, Persius, and Sallust. A little later, Lucan's epic seems to have been readily available for classroom use. The most important admirer of the Pharsalia in medieval Europe was Dante, who, guided by Vergil ("the Prince of Poets") to the First Circle of Hell, sees a brilliant band of pagan poets: Homer, Horace, Ovid-and Lucan. As Dante-Pilgrim says: ... I saw gathered at the edge of light the masters of that highest school whose song outsoars all others like an eagle's flight. (Inferno, Canto IV, 94-96)13 The Renaissance, too, evinced interest in the Pharsalia. Thus, Lucan's epic is the only poem from the classical era included among the editiones principes, classical texts printed between 1465 and 1469, the first five years of the printing press. Montaigne often quotes from and makes favorable mention of Lucan's epic. Translations into French, Italian, and Spanish appeared from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth century. 14 Christopher Marlowe's splendid translation of the first book of Lucan's poem was published in I6oo.ts Again, the eighteenth century, which began in a period of literary classicism and which ended with the reactionary Romantics, was-despite its diverse tastes-friendly to Lucan throughout. Nicholas Rowe's translation of the epic appeared in 17 I 8 and was hailed near the end of the century by Dr. l3 Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Mentor Books/New American Library, 1954), p. 52· 14 Some examples of translations made of the Pharsalia in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries include: P. Le Rouge's French prose paraphrase of7.62ff. (Paris, 1490, 1500), Michel de Marolles' translation (1623), and Brebeuf's French verse translation (1655); Montechiello's Italian version of 1492, Giulio Morigi's of 1579, and Alberto Campani's of 1640; in Spanish we have Juan de Jauregui's Farsalia (trans., 1614; pub. 1684). 15 See Marlowe's Poems, L. C. Martin, ed. (New York: Gordian Press, Inc., 1966), pp. 26!295·

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General Introduction Johnson as "one ofthe greatest productions of English poetry." 16 In I8I5, Shelley wrote to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, twice, indicating his preference for Lucan over Vergil (probably on political rather than poetic grounds).17 Later, in I 82 I, Shelley still expressed admiration for Lucan, this time in the "sincerest form of flattery": in a passage from the Adonais strikingly reminiscent of Pompey's apotheosis in the opening lines of Pharsalia Nine, Shelley links Lucan with Thomas Chatterton and Sir Philip Sidney; as the souls of poets who died young, they will greet the spirit ofJohn Keats as it enters the fiery non-material world above (Adonais 45). In contrast, the climate of the modern world has not been favorable to Lucan. For much of the twentieth century, the word "rhetorical" has been devalued in popular idiom to the extent that it now means little more than "bad (and probably deceitful)." Classical scholars themselves have too often been among the first to close Lucan out. This exclusion seems surprising, for, whatever one may think of the literary merits of the work, it is a document from antiquity; more than this, it is a rare example of an ancient work in progress as well as an indicator of the political sentiments of a suppressed opposition. Fortunately, in recent years, Lucan has received more of the attention he deserves.

POEM At one level, Lucan's poem is about the battle of Pharsalus, the decisive conflict of 48 B.C. E. fought on the Emathian fields ofThessaly in northern Greece and pitting forces led by Julius Caesar against those led by his kinsman Pompey Magnus; it recounts events that prefigure Pharsalus, the battle itself, and the aftermath; it also portrays the dominant personalities of the time-Caesar, Pompey, and Cato. This battle, according to the more traditional view, ushers in the last chapter in the long, ugly chronicle of Roman civil war which stretches back nearly a century. Although it was decisive, the battle ofPharsalus was by no means the end of this struggle, for the war raged on until JI B.C.E., when Octavian (later the emperor Au16 In his Life of Nicholas Rowe (in Lives of the Poets, I779), Samuel Johnson (himself partial to Lucan) goes on to say: "There is, perhaps, (no other translation] that so completely exhibits the genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophick dignity . . . full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines." And Johnson goes on to commend Rowe's translation further for its melody and force and its adherence to the original. 17 See Letters 254 and 257 in The Complete Works ofPercy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 9, edited by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (New York: Gordian Press, 1965), pp. I I6 and I I9.

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General Introduction gustus) won out. Equally, although Pharsalus is the first major engagement after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it was but one battle of many fought by Roman factions in the last century of the Republic. For Lucan, however, more than any previous or subsequent episode in the civil war, Pharsalus was the death scene of the Roman Republic. At another level, the poem is about Lucan's Rome, how Roman folly and disaster led to the establishment of the Julio-Claudian dynasty; it is about the price paid to purchase Nero. At its deepest level, the poem is a meditation on liberty in the state and free will in the individual. Lucan wrestles with questions of courage and patriotic ideals, even tyrannicide. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the poem is how it seems to reveal the poet's own swings of mood, his ups and downs during the last years of his life, the period ofhis involvement in the Pisonian conspiracy. The poem, then, is not so much an account of historical events as it is a study of politics and psychology, of disastrous patterns of behavior and the compulsion to repeat them, the compulsion of Rome to destroy itself. In Lucan's poem, Pharsalus stands for all such acts of political self-destruction; it is the pure "type," the gladiatorial match between Liberty and a Caesar. Pharsalus is to Lucan a doomsday; that day, almost a century before his birth, changed Lucan's world for the worse. As the surrealistic vision of the battlefield at the end of Book Seven clearly shows, Pharsalus was for Lucan the event that brought the forces of death and destruction to power at Rome. It is because the battle ofPharsalus holds such sway in Lucan's imagination that Bellum Civile seems a less satisfactory choice for the title of the poem than Pharsalia. Lucan's poem is not only about the civil war between Caesar and the Senate: it is about bella plus quam civilia (1. 1), "wars worse than civil"; it is about the day Romans brought the Roman Republic to an end, the day the world turned its sword against its own vitals.

* * * The Pharsalia is undoubtedly an epic poem; equally certainly, it is a quirky one. First and foremost (by ancient standards at any rate) among those characteristics of a traditional epic which the Pharsalia does maintain is its use of dactylic hexameters, the definitive meter of epic poetry from Homer on. Second, with its ten books averaging 8oo lines each, the Pharsalia is long. Third, it is a continuous narrative. Fourth, the style is generally elevated. Lucan's choice of subject matter naturally dictates his choice of characters, accounting, to some extent, for one of the more radical aspects of Lucan's epic-the presence of not one but three heroes. Or rather, one anti-hero, one XVlll

General Introduction would-be-again hero, and one philosopher-hero whom Lucan seems not to like very much. Caesar, Pompey, and Cato have all had their share of critics to say that he is the one true hero of the epic. Rather, Lucan's point seems to be that no one man is the center ofhis epic; he prefers to concentrate on the self-destruction of Rome at Pharsalus and the brood of evils hatched there. The fact that the subject matter of the Pharsalia is drawn not from myth but from history-and fairly recent history at that-is not without precedent: Naevius (third century B. c. E.) wrote an epic in native Italian verseform about the First Punic War, which had dominated his youth and early manhood; soon after, Ennius ("the Father of Roman Poetry") wrote an epic in hexameters called the Annales in which he traced Roman history from the Fall of Troy down through the war with Hannibal (the Second Punic War). Although Lucan's use of a severely restricted chronological focus represents a new development in the course of Roman epic, his choice of historical subject matter does not. But subject matter alone cannot account for the spirit of innovation which suffuses Lucan's Pharsalia. There is no getting round the fact that this poem, while it is recognizably an epic, is deeply, radically new and different. We might call it a "slant epic" as "road" and "read" would be called a "slant rhyme." Perhaps the most noticeable difference between Lucan's epic and a traditional epic is the drastically diminished role played by members of the old Greco-Roman pantheon; no gods as puppeteers here, no Jupiter with the scroll of destiny on his knees, no solicitous Venus or Juno to whisk a beloved son out of danger. In fact, in a sequence of three parallel scenes (in Books Five, Six, and Nine), Lucan makes it abundantly clear that these deities are moribund and that supernatural power has passed into the hands ofThessalian witches and foreigners' gods. When Appius goes to Apollo's Delphic oracle (5.65-236) to learn his future, he finds the place shut down; when Sextus approaches the witch Erictho to learn his future (6.570-830), she is only too willing and able to oblige. The third scene, in which Cato refuses to consult Ammon's flourishing African oracle when urged by Labienus to do so (9.511-586), seems designed to suggest that Romans have driven away the old simple gods or become too corruptly sophisticated for them. A few men, true Stoics of the Roman school like Cato, heirs to the ideals preserved in their exemplary tales, have that philosophy to sustain them. Ordinary Romans, however, represented by Appius, Sextus, and Labienus, lump oracles and witchcraft together as mildly amusing carnival tricks and possible sources of information useful to themselves personally. The usual reason given for Lucan's shift away from the Olympians is that the events he narrates are too recent to make their inclusion plausible. It does XIX

General Introduction make literary sense to leave out the (dilapidated) divine machinery, to use the exotic African oracle as a means of displaying Cato's Stoic virtues in yet another light. But the negligible role ofJupiter, Juno & Co. also points up a political message. In the first place, Lucan's avoidance of traditional divine machinery emphasizes one of his major premises in the Pharsalia, namely, that Caesar's defeat of the Republican forces proves that, if there are gods, either they are not omnipotent or they do not have Rome's best interests at heart. In the second place (and here Lucan is putting effect before cause), the attitude of ordinary Romans to divinity and the supernatural is, Lucan seems to say, directly attributable to the Julio-Claudian practice of emperor deification. If godhood may be conferred on a mortal man by decree of a fawning Senate, then bona fide gods are devalued, and the fabric of belief weakened or destroyed. Philosophy is the only alternative. In the address to Nero (1.3366), Lucan suggests that his emperor, when deified, will enter Olympus as a usurper or as an actor choosing a role to play; by contrast, the apotheosis of Pompey (9.1-18) takes the form of a soul soaring through a Platonic universe. The divine and the supernatural are not entirely absent from the Pharsalia. On the contrary, omens and clairvoyants abound, especially in the first six books. In a satiric reenactment of Aeneas' encounter with Venus (Aeneid 1.305ff.), Caesar experiences a visitation from Roma (Pharsalia 1.183-203). In Africa, that simpler and purer country, Lucan finds a congenial setting for his accounts of Hercules and Antaeus (4.581-66o), of Hercules and the Apples of the Hesperides (9. 348-367), of Perseus and Medusa (9.619-699). Above all, the forces of fortune and fate (sometimes appearing in mythological form as the Three Sisters) rule the Lucanian universe. Fate was a force in the Aeneid, too, but Vergil's concept was one ofharmony between fate and Roman destiny; Lucan's contrasting outlook is summed up in his pithy observation In se magna ruunt-"Great things fall in on themselves" (1.81). As when we first learn that the Parthenon was intended to be not merely virginal white marble, but marble resplendent with paint and ornament, so we may be taken aback to find that, while the Pharsalia is an epic, it is not all solemnity and high-mindedness. In fact, some parts of it are downright funny. Take Book Five, for example: what of the scene with the Pythia trying to fob Appius off with a simulated trance (vv. 120-161)? Having given a long, admiring description of the oracle and having lamented its decline, Lucan presents the Roman Senator Appius determined at the outbreak of hostilities to use the oracle to find out his own personal fortunes in the war ahead. First, the reluctant Pythia (who has grown fond of retirement) thinks up a dozen reasons why the shrine is out of order, each more pseudoXX

General Introduction scientific than the one before. Then, when forced into the shrine, she hangs back at the door and fakes a prophecy-a ruse the not-too-shrewd Appius notices only after the poet has given him eight lines of hints. Or take Caesar's scene with the poor fisherman (5.510-559), an episode that reads like a fractured fairy tale. Caesar slips out of his camp at night, disguised as a commoner, and goes in search of a ship to take him from Greece back to Italy (he's tired of waiting for Antony and wants to hurry him up). When Caesar, larger than life, knocks at the door of a fisherman's hut (shades of Odysseus at the door of Eumaios the swineherd!), he makes the roof tiles rattle; nor is Caesar (in actuality, renowned for his mastery of the plain style) able to stop himself from speaking in a high, not to say highhanded, style. The poor fisherman gives Caesar sixteen hexameters explaining why the voyage is impossible on such a night, then says with comic abruptness, "But, if you must go, we'll go-either we'll get there or we won't" (vv. 557-559). Later in Book Five, we have another example ofLucan's wry humor-the send-up of Caesar as Hero Toss'd Upon Stormy Seas (vv. 577-596). Having described a ferocious storm at sea, Lucan has Caesar make a similarly blustering speech of self-aggrandizement, whereupon Lucan unleashes a storm of even greater ferocity. And yet, after fifty lines oflashing winds and crashing waves, all that happens is that Caesar is gently deposited on the very shore from which he set out (vv. 672-678).

* * * We have seen how closely linked politics and literature are in the life of Lucan. There is a similar interweaving of intent in his epic. The Pharsalia is the vehicle for Lucan's political as well as his literary ideas. Lucan excels at the deft mixture of humor and horror, as in his long description of the witch Erictho (6.507-569) or in the retelling of the myth of Medusa (9.624-629). A particularly effective example of this aspect of the Pharsalia occurs at 6. 564-569, where Lucan gleefully describes the witch engaged in necrophilia. Indeed, Lucan seems spurred to increasingly wild and grotesque flights of fancy as he describes the witch. In a sense, Erictho becomes for him an image of himself as poet, for she is able to mimic all animals and forces of nature. He says of her, Tot rerum vox una Juit ("One voice was all ofNature." See 6.685-693). Like Erictho, Lucan has simulated many voices; like her, he is attempting to raise up the dead and make them speak-but not just Caesar and Pompey and their generation: Lucan is trying to reanimate the corpse of the Republic. As this comparison implies, antiestablishment politics is the most potent XXI

General Introduction force in the Pharsalia; not surprisingly, then, the most noticeable type of humor in Lucan's epic is political satire. Lucan's uncle Seneca had a flair for this genre, too: he wrote a farcical account (wickedly entitled the Apocolocyntosis or "Gourdification") of the arrival in Olympus of the emperor Claudius, recently deceased, recently deified, and depicted by Seneca as a drooling idiot. The best example of political satire in the Pharsalia is perhaps the zombie's description of insurrection in the underworld (6. 777-802), with Elysian Romans pitted against Tartarean; but the episode in Book Nine (vv. 950-979) where Caesar, accompanied by an overzealous guide, tours the dusty briar patch that once was Troy, runs a close second. Both these passages stand Vergil's Aeneid on its head-yet another example of Lucan's habit of seeing politics and literature as two sides of a single coin. Caesar is not the only major figure to serve as a target for Lucan's barbs; Cato gets his, too. For example, in Book Two (vv. 350-380), Lucan (like a disdainful society editor) gives us a catalogue of all the refinements that Cato's remarriage to Marcia lacked: there was no fancy clothing (the bride wore black), no elaborate ceremony, no guests or toasts or bawdy jokes, and no resumption of conjugal rights, either. The fun Lucan pokes at Pompey is much milder: Pompey's dream at the beginning of Book Seven, for instance, is more sad than funny, and if we smile at moments during Cordus' hasty burial of Pompey at the end of Book Eight, then Pompey's spirit joins us in that smile at the opening of Book Nine. In fact, Lucan's most startling innovation as epic poet may hinge on his outlook: more than its multiplicity of heroes or its paucity of gods, ultimately what sets the Pharsalia apart is mood. This difference shows up most clearly in contrast to the Aeneid. Vergil's poem is the work of a gentle but gloomy optimist; Lucan's, of a witty but angry pessimist. While anger is the poem's pervasive, underlying mood, its surface displays many tones. It is tender and elegiac in scenes between Pompey and Cornelia, eerie and evocative in its descriptions of deserted farmlands and ghost towns, lush and exotic at Cleopatra's banquet, and so on. Each scene has its own flavor. The poem may owe its tonal diversity to the poet's nature as much as to his education. Perhaps, too, he is indebted to Ovid, whose Metamorphoses is similarly an epic remarkable for its constantly shifting tone and mood. The pervasive anger of the Pharsalia, though often in the cloak of satiric humor, is black and bitter nonetheless. Why must his generation pay with its liberty for the cowardice and ineffectiveness of previous generations? This sense of personal grievance and the conviction that the world died at Pharsalus nearly a century before he was born account in large measure for the quirkiness of Lucan's Pharsalia. xxn

General Introduction TRANSLATION Living in an age of rhetorical elegance and ebullience, Lucan was a member of a family especially noted, even in that age, for its literary skill and sophistication. Lawyer, politician, courtier, conspirator, and poet, Lucan was accustomed to turn the phrase that could turn heads. While we, who read silently and to ourselves, eyes flicking down a printed page, are accustomed to think of poetry as a private experience, Lucan and his contemporaries read aloud; to them, poetry, especially epic poetry, was a public experience; indeed, it was often a public performance and, as such, demanded the language of declamation. In the case of the Pharsalia, this purpose is heightened since Lucan meant to persuade his listeners to look at their recent history anew and to reassess life under the Caesars. We see the workings of all these factors in Lucan's poem. We see what Lucan's audience heard. In translating, I have tried to keep in mind always the paramount importance to Lucan of the spoken word, the heard image. Working in a six-beat line, I have tried to match his content line for line, to maintain the shapes of his sentences, and to preserve his rhetorical figures, including the many apostrophes. I have tried to give some sense of alliteration and other poetic devices, and also to honor his choice of word at key points in the lines (most notably at the beginnings and ends). I have also tried to keep to his sequence of images. Most of all I have tried to produce a translation that follows natural English rhythms, while still conveying some sense of the Latin rhetoric. Ideally, I want mine to be a translation that can be read aloud. But, because our culture is so oriented toward seeing words rather than hearing them, I have "translated" some rhetorical effects by various typographical means: ( 1) Some sections of the poem, where Lucan or a character is thinking to himself, or where the poet suddenly steps either into or out of his narrative, appear in italics to indicate the changed tone. (2) I have followed Robert Fitzgerald's lead (Odyssey, 1961; Iliad, 1974; Aeneid, 1981) in making free use of paragraphing and formal divisions within the books to highlight change of speaker or focus and to point up structure. (3) For the catalogues and more lyrical passages, I have broken up the six-beat lines as Richmond Lattimore did in his translation ofHesiod's poems (1968). Let me stress, however, that none of these devices is present in the original Latin text. They are purely typographical elements which I am using to suggest changes in tempo, voice, or emphasis, changes which would have been readily apparent to a listening audience, and which still could affect us if we heard rather than saw the poem. XXlll

General Introduction

* * * I have followed the justly famous text of A. E. Housman (I927) with one exception: I am indebted to Peter Green for the reading disturbavisti at I. 86. Line numbers refer to the Latin text, although they do also match the English text fairly closely. Line numbers marked with an asterisk point up lines deleted or rearranged by Housman; any deviation from his text is indicated in the notes. To make Lucan's poem most readily accessible to a general audience, I have decided on the following practices: (I) For stylistic reasons, I have not used "silent glosses"; Lucan's style is densely allusive, and to bring such a wealth of additional material up into the body of the text would have made it too clotted. (2) I have tried to help with pronunciation of Greek and Latin names that might possibly be unfamiliar to non-classicists by placing a circumflex above the vowel in any sounded syllable that an English reader might not guess should be sounded (for example, "Agave" -three syllables, not two); in the case of two vowels, both of which are sounded, I have placed an umlaut over the second vowel in the usual way ("Phaethon," for example); very rarely, I have indicated a stressed syllable with an acute accent. (3) In most cases I have used modern place names if they derive from the ancient, but in some instances I have rather arbitrarily decided to keep the ancient name even if the modern name is a derivative ("Marseilles," for example, seemed to set up too many inappropriate associations to use in place of"Massilia"); but generally speaking, the modern names are used. (4) There is an extensive glossary at the end of the poem to help with the myriad allusions to people and places. (5) I have tried to keep footnotes to a minimum; after the first reference to any one item, no further notes are given unless absolutely necessary. (6) Each individual book has a preface which gives a brief synopsis and addresses a few literary questions; in addition, some glossary entries suggest literary sources and antecedents. (7) All dates throughout are Before the Common Era (B. c. E.) unless otherwise specified.

* * * I have alluded to the debt I owe the translations of Richmond Lattimore and Robert Fitzgerald, but let me acknowledge directly that I feel myself much influenced by their work. I have had to look rather far afield for guidance because translators of Lucan's poem are not very thick on the ground; in fact, the versions by Peter Widdows (1988) and by Susan H. Braund (1992) are only the fifth and sixth full-scale English versions since Nicholas Rowe's translation into heroic couplets was published in 1718. I XXlV

General Introduction have found the prose renderings by J. D. Duff (1928) and Robert Graves (1956) the handy references they were intended to be; the translation by Ridley ( r 896) I have largely avoided; my own translation was completed before the versions by Widdows and Braund were published. In fact, as classicists will be well aware, my translation owes more to scholarly commentary and analysis than to a specific tradition of translations ofLucan. In particular, I should like to mention how helpful I found the work ofM. P. 0. Morford, 0. C. Phillips, and Robert Rowland, Jr., and, on Book Eight, the excellent commentary by R. Mayer. My greatest debt, however, and my deepest thanks are due to Frederick M. Ahl: this would be true even if I had known him only through his scholarship. As it happens, I was a member of a class he taught on Lucan while he was at work on his book Lucan: An Introduction, and his enthusiasm then and his exceptional gifts as a teacher inspired a lasting interest in Lucan. During the years that I have been at work on this translation, he has been most encouraging, and I thank him for his role in making this book a reality. Peter Green has helped me immeasurably with his scrupulous, exacting, and witty comments on the penultimate draft. He wielded the fine-toothed comb with great patience and skill, and I cannot express how grateful I am for the care and time he lavished on my work. In addition, I owe thanks to many kind colleagues ~nd friends for assistance with this project. The Centre College community has supported me with grants of time and money. I was honored by appointment as a Visiting Associate Professor of Classics to the faculty at Indiana University, where I had a most productive year. Those who read and criticized sections of the manuscript in its various stages have my special thanks: A. J. Boyle, Mark Damen, Elaine Fantham, Carin Green, Stanley Lombardo, and George Ella Lyon. Needless to say, none of these readers is responsible for blunders, lapses, and errors that remain. The staff of the Grace Doherty Library in Danville and that of the University Libraries in Bloomington have been most helpful. Derek Vint was endlessly patient and cheerful in the preparation of the text of the translation; Hilda Hunstad, Patsy McAfee, Belinda Morgan, and Elaine Sparks assisted in the final, most trying stages of its preparation.

XXV

Chronology

MYTHOLOGY AND SAGA Creation Era of the Titans Birth ofJupiter Creation of Humankind Titanomachy Gigantomachy The Flood Age of Heroes B.C. E.

II84 Fall ofTroy 753 Romulus founds Rome 715-673 Reign ofNuma at Rome 510 Brutus expels Rome's seventh king; the Republic begins

HISTORY The Early Republic 390 (?387) Gallic victory at the River Allia and sack of Rome led by Brcnnus

Romans defeated by Samnites at the Caudine Forks War with Pyrrhus 264-241 First Punic War 250 Arsaces founds kingdom ofParthia 218-201 Second Punic War zr8-2r6 Hannibal's victories at River Trebbia, Late Trasimene, and Cannae 202 Scipio Africanus the Elder defeats Hannibal at Zama

321

280-275

XXVll

Chronology 200-I96 Second Macedonian War; Philip V defeated 149-I46 Third Punic War; Carthage destroyed 13 3 Pergamum bequeathed to Rome; Tiberi us Gracchus elected tribune I23 Gaius Gracchus elected tribune II2-I05 War withjugurtha 106 Pompey (Pompeius Magnus) born 102-IOI Marius defeats Gallic tribes Roman Civil Unrest

100 Caesar born; Marius' sixth consulship 95 Cato the Younger born

9I Drusus the Younger elected tribune and murdered 90 Sulla drives Marius from Rome 88 Sulla marches on Rome; Marius flees to Africa 88-82 Wars with Mithridates 87 Return of Marius and massacre at Rome; Sulla's proscriptions 8 I Dictatorship of Sulla 8I-72 Sertorius leads revolt in Spain 74-63 Third war with Mithridates 73-7I Revolt of slaves and gladiators led by Spartacus 70 Pompey and Crassus elected consuls; birth of Vergil 67 Pompey given command against the pirates 66-63 Pompey given command against Mithridates and power to arrange settlements in the East 63 Cicero elected consul; conspiracy of Catiline 6o First Triumvirate: Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus 59 Caesar elected consul 58-5 I Caesar's conquest of Gaul; the Rhine established as Rome's northern boundary 55 Pompey builds Rome's first stone theater 54 Death ofJulia 53 Crassus defeated and killed at Carrhae 5 I Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII ascand the throne in Egypt so The tribune Curio bribed by Caesar 49 Caesar crosses the Rubicon 48 Caesar victorious at Pharsalus; death of Pompey 46 Caesar's victory at Thapsus; suicides of Petreius and Juba; suicide of Cato at Utica 45 Caesar's victory at Monda (Munda) 44 Caesar elected perpetual dictator; assassinated I 5 March 43 Second Triumvirate: Antony, Octavian (later Augustus), and Lepidus; death of Cicero; birth of Ovid 42 Battle of Philippi; deaths of Brutus and Cassius XXVlll

Chronology 41 Pewgia (Perusia) besieged and sacked by Octavian 36 Octavian victorious over Sextus Pompey and Lepidus 3 r Battle of Actium: Ocatavian and Agrippa defeat Antony and Cleopatra

The Principate of the Julio-Claudians 27 Reign of Augustus (Octavian) begins 19 Death ofVergilleaves the Aeneid unfinished C.E.

5 Ovid: Metamorphoses 14 Death of Augustus; reign of Tiberius begins 18 Death of Ovid 37 Death ofTiberius; reign ofCaligula (Gaius) begins; 15 December Nero born 39 (3 November) LucAN born 40 Oune/july) LUCAN's family moves to Rome from Cordova 41 Death of Caligula; reign of Claudius begins 47 LucAN's schooling begins 49 Seneca recalled as Nero's tutor 51 LucAN's rhetorical training begins 54 Death of Claudius; reign of Nero begins with Burrus and Seneca counseling 55 LucAN studies under Cornutus 58 LucAN recalled from Athens by Nero 59 Murder of Agrippina 6o LUCAN's poem In Praise of Nero wins at the first Neronia 62 treason laws reinstituted; three wealthy nobles executed; death of Burrus; "retirement" of Seneca; (5 December) LucAN awarded a quaestorship and augurate 63 LUCAN begins the Pharsalia; publication of Books I-III; Nero walks out of a reading by LUCAN 64 Ouly) the Great Fire at Rome (August) LucAN reads a poem About the Burning of the City; Nero imposes the ban; Pharsalia Book VII composed 65 Pisonian conspiracy discovered; (30 April) LucAN commits suicide

XXIX

LUCAN

PHARSALIA

Book I

INTRODUCTION In the proem, the first lines of the first book of a traditional epic, the poet announces his theme and introduces his hero. Though Lucan follows suit, he announces his theme paradoxically ("wars worse than civil"), and he introduces no specific hero. In the third line, we do find what will prove to be one of Lucan's major images for civil war, namely, suicide-a nation's "swordhand turned to strike its own vitals." Of particular interest and controversy in the opening section of the Pharsalia is the passage addressed to Nero (vv. 33-66). Is the passage meant to be, or only to seem, eulogistic? Ifit is satirical, is Lucan mocking the emperor, or only teasing his friend and former schoolfellow? In any case, Lucan clearly intends this passage as his "invocation to the Muses"-another standard element at the outset of an epic. Book One falls into three roughly equal divisions: first, following introductory material (vv. I-66), come preliminary historical and political observations (vv. 67-182), including (vv. 129-157) sketches of the first pair of protagonists, Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus (the two similes here are remarkably fine). The second section focuses on Caesar and his army in the early stages of hostilities, at the Rubicon (vv. 183-227) and at Rimini (vv. 228-391), followed by a roll call of Caesarean legions (vv. 392-465). This roll call, presented in the form of a traditional epic catalogue, gives a good example of Lucan's particular slant on both literary and political conventions, for, instead of a Homeric roster of Roman legions, Lucan lists the barbaric Gallic tribes left unguarded by Caesar's reallocation of Roman troops. Finally, in the third section of Book One (vv. 469ff.), we see the reactions

Pharsalia

in Rome to these developments, as well as a flurry of omens (vv. 526-583) and three prophets of doom (vv. 584 ad fin.). The last of these three prophets, a respectable Roman matron possessed by Apollonian frenzy, sees a headless corpse on the banks of the Nile; she recognizes it as the corpse of Pompey (vv. 684-685). And yet the only way she (and we, too) could recognize this decapitated body is by recalling Vergil's description ofPriam's death in Aeneid Two (vv. 506-558). The fictive Vergilian scene was based on the actual assassination ofPompey-and, when Lucan comes to describe Pompey's assassination in Book Eight (vv. 59571 1), we shall see that, as so often, Vergil's lines were much in his mind.

2

BOOK I Wars worse than civil we sing, waged on Emathia's plains; Justice given over to crime; a powerful people, its conquering sword-hand turned to strike its own vitals; kindred front lines; and, after tyranny's pact had shattered, all the stricken world's forces locked in a struggle, rivals in evil; standards charging belligerent fellowstandards; duelling eagles, and javelin menacing javelin.

5

What frenzy was this, 0 citizens? what unleashing of steel? Did it please you to show the races that hate us a Latin bloodbath? While arrogant Babylon stood, yet to be stripped of Ausonian trophies; while Crassus strayed, his ghost unavenged, was it your pleasure to wage wars that could yield no Triumphs? Ah! what a wealth of land and ocean we could have bought with this, the blood that civil sword-hands have squanderedwhere Sun comes up, and where Night lays the stars to rest, where the sky at noon shimmers with puffs of burning air, and where Winter, freezing and heedless of Spring's approach, laces the icy Black Sea with Scythian cold. By now the Chinese, by now the barbaric Aras too, would have passed beneath our yoke-and the race (if any there be) which knows where the Nile is born. Rome, if you have such love of evil war, wait until you have forced all the globe to submit to Latin laws-then turn your hand against yourself: never yet have you wanted for foes!

IO

IS

20

Nowadays, their roofs half-ruined, dwellings stand swaying in Italy's towns and, where ramparts have toppled, huge

25

4 tyranny's pact: See "Triumvirate." ro Babylon: See "Carrhae." Ausonian/trophies: the Roman eagles lost by Crass us at Carrhae.

3

Pharsalia blocks of stone lie about; houses have no one to guard them; only the odd squatter strays through the ancient towns; uncultivated year after year, Hesperia bristles with thorn-trees, her needy fields crying out for hands: yet you, fiery Pyrrhus, are not to blame for this wasteland, nor is the Punic captain. It needed no foreign steel to strike so deep; we are cut to the quick by one of our own. Still, if the Fates have found no other way for Nero's advent, if an everlasting dynasty costs the Gods dear, if Heaven could not serve her Thunderer until after the wars of the savage Earth-born Giantsthen, 0 Gods Above, we make no further complaint: even such crimes and evil are not too high a price for this purchase: let Pharsalia soak its dreadful plains, and let the Punic ghost be glutted with blood; let the final battles clash at fatal Monda; to these massacres, Caesar, let Perugia's starving and Modena's trials be added, and fleets that stormy Lefkas sent below, and the slave wars fought near smoldering Etna; Rome is nonetheless much indebted to civil arms, since all was done for you! When, your watch completed, you seek the stars at last, 3 r the Punic captain: Hannibal. 35 Thunderer: title ofJupiter. 39 Punic ghost: Hannibal. The battle of Thapsus is meant.

4

30

35

40

45

Book I the palace you choose in heaven will greet you withjoyful skies: would you like to wield the scepter? or climb aboard the flame-laden car of Phoebus and, with Earth all unafraid of an altered sun, sweep round in a rush of sparks? For you, every divinity will make way, and Nature will leave to your discretion what God you would be, where you will place your throne on high. But please, do not choose to take your seat in the Arctic zone, nor yet at the opposite pole where the hot southern sky curves down; from those you would squint with star aslant at your own dear Rome! If you burden the measureless ether all on one side, the axis will feel your weight; keep the scales of heaven balanced mid-sphere; may that side of the tranquil ether be crystal clear, and our view of Caesar free from clouds! Then let the human race down arms and look to itself; let all nations love one another; let Peace, sent forth to all lands, shackle the iron gates of warlike Janus.

so

55

6o

But to me, you are already divine: if I, a seer, have you in my heart, I would wish neither to rouse the God

47 scepter: emblem ofJupiter. 49 an altered sun: See "Phaethon."

5

Pharsalia who rules Cirrhan rites nor to draw Bacchus from Nysa; you are enough to make Roman poetry vital! My chief care is to show what caused these momentous events; a measureless task unfolds-what drove our frenzied nation to take up arms; what made the world shake off Peace; the hateful chain of the Fates; standing for long on the heights of success forbidden; the massive collapse of too much weight; Rome grown top-heavy-just the way, once the world's framework loosens and its final hour, drawing all time to a close, seeks out ancient chaos once more, fiery stars will hurtle seaward and Earth, refusing to flatten her shores, will shake off the waves; running head-on at her brother, Phoebe will sneer at steering her team along her slanted track and will claim the day for her own; the whole discordant cosmic machine will fly apart, its laws confounded. Great things fall in on themselves: this limit Divinity sets on the growth of prosperous states. To no foreign nations does Fortune delegate her hatred of the people powerful on land and sea. You caused these evils, Rome, when you served yourself up to three masters, nor have you ever dismantled the sepulchral pact of tyranny.

Men in evil accord, blind with excessive avarice! why does it please you to join forces and hold the globe in common? So long as earth uplifts the sea, and air the earth; while his lengthy labors roll Titan along, and night follows day through all the same celestial signs, allies in tyranny will harbor no trust, and all power will chafe at a partner. Look to no foreign nations, nor need you search far afield for a parallel doom! A brother's blood wetted our city's earliest wallsand at that time, land and sea were not the prize for such frenzy: those masters clashed over a robbers' hideout. 85 three masters: the First Triumvirate. 95 A brother's blood: See "Remus."

6

65

70

73* 75

8o

85

90

95

Book I

* * * A brief season's discordant accord held, and there was peace-though not by the leaders' will; for, acting as buffer, Crassus was imminent war's one barrier. Think how the slender roo Isthmus, which cuts the waves and keeps the two seas separate, not letting them mingle their waters, would-if the land drew backdash Ionian Sea at Aegean. Like this, Crassus kept the leaders' savage arms apart; when, with his grim death, he stained Assyrian Carrhae with Latin blood, 105 the losses Parthia inflicted loosed Roman frenzy.

(You accomplished more in that battle than you suppose, sons of Arsaces! you gave the defeated a civil war . .. ) Tyranny was split by steel, and the wealth of a powerful peoplewho controlled the sea, controlled the land, controlled the whole globedid not hold two men. For, cut off by the Fates' savage strength, Julia bore away to the Dead pledges of their joined blood and, bleakly ominous, marriage torches turned funereal. Because, if the Spinners had given you

longer to live, you alone had power to check, this side your frenzied husband, that side your father and, when once the steel was shaken loose, to join hands that had taken up swords as, once on a time, the Sabine women, stepping between, joined sons- to their fathers-in-law. By your death was trust dispersed and the leaders permitted to start the war.

1 15

Jealous honor plied the lash: you, Magnus, fear fresh deeds may eclipse your old Triumphs, and that your pirate laurels may yield to conquered Gauls; now what arouses you, Caesar, is your long career and knowledge of war-and a fortune impatient of second place.

120

Caesar can no longer abide a superior, nor can Pompey a match. To know which man more justly took up

125

101

114

Isthmus: the isthmus of Corinth. the Spinners: See "Fates."

7

Pharsalia

arms is forbidden: each side claims a high authoritythe conquering cause pleased the Gods, but the conquered pleased Cato. Nor were they evenly matched.-The one, with his years dipping towards dotage, grown slack with wearing the toga too long, had now, with peace, forgot the leader's role; chasing fame, he lavishes gifts on the rabble; his whole being responds to popularity's veering winds; applause in his own theater thrills him; he does not replenish his strength anew, but puts much trust in his previous fortune. Magnus is become a Great Man's, a great name's shadow. Imagine a towering oak tree in a lush field of wheat, decked with a nation's ancient trophies, gifts her leaders have consecrated; clinging with roots no longer healthy; it stands fixed by its own weight; naked branches splay leafless across the sky; only its trunk casts a shadow; and though it totters, doomed to fall with the first East wind, though all around it spinneys of sound timber rise, yet it alone is worshipped. Though Caesar had no such name or fame as leader, his courage had no thought of standing still; he only blanched at a bloodless victory. Fierce and uncontrollable, where hope or anger called him, he turned his hand and never spared his probing steel, but piled success on success, followed up strokes of luck, sweeping before him any who stood in his path as he strove for supremacy, thrilled when he won his way by devastationjust as winds will snap a lightning bolt out through the clouds: with ·a crash of shivered ether, a din to crack the cosmos, it glitters, then crazes the bright sky, terrorizing the dazed nations, dazzling their eyes with its slanting flame; it storms its own domain; no substance can stop its course; both plunging to earth and rushing back up its path, it wreaks havoc far and wide, collecting its scattered fires.

I

30

I35

I40

I45

I

50

I55

These the causes due to the leaders; but the public, too, hid seeds of war-those which swamp a powerful people: 128 Cato: the third protagonist in the Pharsalia, to be introduced in Book Two (vv. 234fi).

dotage: in 49, Pompey was fifty-nine, only eight years older than his father-in-law Caesar. 133 theater: Pompey built the first permanent theater at Rome in 55·

130

8

Book I

for, when Fortune imported gross wealth from a world 160 sent under the yoke and morals declined with prosperity, loot and enemy spoils coaxed men to extravagance. Neither gold nor dwellings have limits, and hunger spurns its former meals; males snatch up garments hardly decent for hussies to wear; Poverty, the breeding ground of heroes, 165 is put to flight, the whole globe ransacked for what brings each nation down; they begin to buy up adjoining farms, and from land that Camillus' sturdy plow once furrowed, land that felt the bygone mattocks of men like Curius, they create sprawling country estates tilled by strangers. 170 This was not a people whom serene peace delighted, who flourished with freedom when their arms were out of action. Thus, their anger was quick, and any crime urged by Need was shrugged off; it was great renown-worth seeking with the swordto gain control of one's country; the measure of justice was 175 force. Hence the laws and plebiscites passed by violence, and justice in turmoil caused by Consuls and Tribunes alike; hence the Rods snatched up by a bribe, the people selling its favor at auction, fraud and corruption wrecking the City, stirring up annual brawls on the mercenary Campus; 180 hence voracious usury, interest intent on repayment, shattered credit, and a generally profitable war.

* * * By now Caesar had swept across the frozen Alps and had, in his mind, pictured widespread rebellions and certain war. When they arrived at the little Rubicon's waves, there appeared to the leader a huge image-his fearful motherland shining through the dark night, her face stricken with grief; towers crowned her head, and her gray hair was streaming loose, strands torn out; her shoulders were bare. She stood close by, and sobs interrupted her speech: "Where are you going from here? where are you taking my standards, men? If you come as citizens, under the law, here you must stop." At this, a shiver flickered along the leader's limbs, his scalp prickled, numbness stopped him in his tracks; he stood rooted to the riverbank. At last he spoke: 9

185

190

Pharsalia

"0 God, Thunderer, who watch the great City's walls from Tarpeia's Rock; and Phrygian Hearth-gods ofJulus' line; also you mysteries of rapt Quirin us; and Jove, Father of Latium, at home on lofty Alba; Vesta's fires; and 0 Thou peer of highest divinity, Rome: bless this venture! I am not hunting You down with frenzied arms-behold! Here am I, victor on land and sea, Caesar, everywhere-now as always, if allowed-Your soldier. He shall be guilty, he who has made me Your foe." Then he loosed the restraints of war and through the swollen stream carried the standards in haste. Imagine the parched savannahs of sweltering Libya: a lion has sighted a nearby foe; he crouches down, hesitant, while he rouses his anger; and soon, when he has whipped himself up with his savage tail, with mane erect and a throaty grumble from gaping jaws, he lets out a roar; then, if a lance flung by a Moor should pierce him, or hunting spears sink in his broad chest, he runs on despite the steel, ignoring his grievous wound. From a modest spring the ruby-red Rubicon falls and flows with shallow waters when summer burns white-hot; it creeps through the valley-bottoms, a clear boundary marking Gallic meadows off from Ausonian farmland. But now, winter was boosting its strength and, three nights running, the Huntress' horn, heavy with rain, had increased its waters, as had the Alps, thawed by gusts of warm, moist air. First the chargers were ranged slantwise across the stream to take the brunt of the current; then, the ford made passable, the rest of the crowd splashed through waves the breakwater slowed. When he had swept across the torrent and touched the opposite bank, Caesar came to a halt on Hesperia's forbidden soil. "Here" (he said) "here I leave peace and the trespassed laws behind. Fortune, I follow you! Let there be no more talk of pacts! have trusted them enough. Our judge now must be war."

195

200

205

210

215

220

225

197 ]ulus: son of Aeneas, and traditionally the founder of the Julian clan, of which Caesar was a

member.

198 Father of Latium: See "Jupiter." 218 the Huntress' horn: the goddess Diana is a huntress; the moon is her horn. 10

Book I The leader spoke thus, then raced his troops through the night shadows at the double, faster than a Balearic sling's whizzing pellet or a Parthian's parting arrow. 230 He swooped down, menacing nearby Riminijust as the sun's fires were chasing away all but the morning star. And soon the day dawned that would see the war's first turmoil. Whether by the will of the Gods, or whether a storm-wind had driven them up from the South, clouds blocked the grieving light. When his soldiers had seized the square, stationed themselves, and planted his standards as ordered, shrill fifes and raucous horns-blaring bugles, too-all bawled an impious call to arms, rudely waking the populace. Roused from their beds, the men snatched down from walls, where they hung near the sacred Hearth-gods, arms such as lengthy peace supplies: they ran to find shields peeling with frames laid bare, javelins with points bent back, and swords flaking, eaten away with soot-blackened rust. But, when the well-known eagles and Roman standards flashed and, amid his troops, they spotted Caesar, astride his mount, they stiffened w!th fright, panic clutched their ice-cold limbs and, in their silent hearts, stifled complaints whirled round:

"Oh how unlucky these walls are, built too near Gaul! how cursed by their grim location! Peace and drowsy quiet lie deep on all other townships; we are the booty of madmen, their first bivouac. Better, Fortune, had you granted a site beneath an Eastern sky, or the ice-cold North and nomadic abodes, rather than Latium's gates to guard! We were the first to see the Senones' revolt, the Cimbri's onslaught, Libya's War-god, also thejlood of Teutonic frenzy-however often Fortune ravaged Rome, this was the route of war." Thus, in secret, each man groaned; no one dared reveal his dread, no voice was found for grief. Remember how, when winter restrains the birds, fields fall silent and, without their cries, the wide sea stills?

245

2 50

255

260

230 parting arrow: See "Parthians." 255 Libya's War-god: Hannibal.

I I

Pharsalia

Like that, their hush. Dawn had melted night's cold shadows, and look! the Fates are brandishing torches of war, lashes goading the leader's wavering thoughts toward battle; they burst decency's every restraint; Fortune struggles to justify his revolution; she contrives excuses for war! With the City split, the Senate expelled disruptive tribunesa breach oflaw-boasting they'd brought down the Gracchi, too. These tribunes now ran for Caesar's standards-lately moved and now close by. One who came with these was Curio, an outrageous rogue, a man whose tongue was for sale; erstwhile Voice of the People and Champion of Liberty, he had dared to restore the chiefs-despite their arms-to private life. When now he observed his leader, doubtful still and debating with anxious mind, he said: "While your side was able to use my voice, Caesar, despite the Senate's unwillingness, we prolonged your command, since I could then lawfully hold the Rostra and win over to you the fickle Quirites. But now that the laws, constrained by war, are silent, we are expelled from our native homes-yet willingly suffer our exile. Your victory shall make us citizens! While the opposition is shaken, bolstered by no support, toss off restraints! Delay is the bane of preparedness. Struggle and anguish the same, the prize aimed at is greater: Gaul has held you, warring, for a double lustral cyclea dot on the map. Fight but a few skirmishes, easily won, and it will be for you Rome subdued the world! "As it is, no long Triumphal procession awaits your return, nor does the Capitol call for sacred laurel. Gnawing envy denies you everything-you conquered the hordes but will barely avoid reprisals. The son-in-law is resolved to depose his father-in-law. You cannot halve the globe; you can hold it alone." This said, though Caesar was 266 27I

265

270

275

280

285

290

tribunes: See "Antony," "Cassius," "Curio." the chiefs: i.e., Pompey and Caesar; in 52 (when he was still hostile to the triumvirs), Curio had proposed that Pompey and Caesar lay down their arms simultaneously.

282 Housman deletes this line unnecessarily. 289 son-in-law: Pompey; see vv. 1 I I - 120. L. will regularly refer to Pompey thus. 12

Book I was already leaning toward war, Curio fuelled his anger, set him ablaze-as an Elean racehorse is put on his mettle by cheering, although he is already leaning against the bars of the locked starting gate, butting and jostling the linch-pins loose. 29 5 Straightway, he rallied his armed squadrons around their standards and, when he had duly quelled the assembling companies' clamor and clatter with a glance, with a gesture he called for silence: "Comrades in arms, who have faced a thousand hazards of war with me," (he said) "you are now in your tenth year of conquest: is this the reward for blood spilled on frozen fields, for wounds, and deaths, and winters spent beyond the Alps? Rome is in an uproar, no less shaken by the war than if it were Punic Hannibal himself crossing the Alps-cohorts are raised to full strength with raw recruits, every grove is felled for ships; the order is, 'Drive Caesar from land and sea.' What would they do if the War-god had scowled and my standards were falling, if fierce hordes of Gauls were close on my heels? But now, since Fortune deals kindly with me, as do the Gods Above who beckon me higher, we are challenged. Let the leader long used to peace come with his slap-dash militia and bring his toga-swathed band to war-babbling Marcellus and empty names like Cato! Shall his 'clients'-creatures he purchased, more like!-shall they sate Pompey with term after term of continuous tyranny? Shall he play at king in a Triumph when still under age? Shall he never part with the posts he usurped all at once? Why should I gripe about crops commandeered all over the globe and famine ordered to serve him? Who does not know how his camp crowded the timorous Forum, when grimly glittering blades cordoned the horrified court-an unlooked-for audience? how, when bold soldiers broke in on the due process oflaw, Pompeian standards closed round the defendant, Milo? "Now yet again, lest retiring old age should keep him inactive, he plots a lawless war; well trained in civil arms, this apt student of evils has outstripped Sulla, his tutor. You know how wild tigers-cubs in Hyrcania's jungles still haunting their mothers' lairs-never leave off ferocity, 293

300

305

3 IO

315

320

325

Elean: See "Elis."

13

Pharsalia once they have guzzled the lifeblood of slaughtered bullocks. So it is with him, addicted to licking Sulla's steelMagnus, you thirst for it yet! Once swallowed, blood never allows jaws thus sullied to grow gentle again. "What end will power-now so long retained-regard? What limit does his evil have? Time to abdicate, jackal! Let your sweet Sulla teach you this at least! After the roving Cilicians and the jaded king's Pontic struggles (eventually polished off by barbarian's poison), shall Caesar be given to Pompey, his finest assignment, just because, when ordered to lay my victorious eagles down, I disobeyed? "If I am robbed of my labors' reward, at least compensate my men, apart from their leader, for years of war; under any banner you likeit matters not-let the soldier have his Triumph! After the war, where will his withered old age be spent? What home will pensioners have? What farmland will be granted to veterans of ours? what walled town for our worn-out men? Or will you, Magnus, do better by your pirate-settlers?

330

335

340

345

"Raise your long-victorious standards, raise them high! The strength we have made must be used! Whoever denies an armed man his due gives him everything. "Nor will the Gods fail us, 3so for the aim of my arms is neither spoils nor kingship: we drag masters off from a city resigned to slavery." He had spoken. But the doubtful crowd muttered, whispering together uncertainly. Duty, homeland, and Gods of the Hearth cracked resolve and spirit, however savage and puffed-up with slaughter. But their hideous love of the sword recalled them, as did fear of their leader: at that moment, the first javelin, Laelius-who bore the badge of an honor well deserved, the oak-leaf crown, awarded for saving a citizen's lifecalled out: "If you will permit, greatest pilot of the Roman 336 Pontic I struggles: the Third Mithridatic War. See "Mithridates." 356 first javelin: chief officer of a century. See "Legion." 357 Laelius: whether fictional or not is unknown.

14

355

Book I name, and if it is meet and right to speak piain truths, what we're all grumbling about is how your long-suffering mildness has held your forces in check! Did you lack faith in us? While hot red blood activates our breathing bodies, and while hard muscles have strength to send a javelin flying, will you suffer the unworthy toga, the Senate's tyranny? To conquer in civil war-is that so miserable? Lead on-past Scythia's peoples, past the inhospitable shores of Sidra, past thirsting Libya's red-hot sands! So as to leave at their backs a conquered world, this band has shackled the Ocean's swelling waves with the oar, has bridged and broken the Rhine with its arctic torrents and foaming spray. To me, 'I can follow your orders' means 'I will.' "Nor is he my countryman, Caesar, once I have heard your trumpets against him. By your banners, winners in ten campaigns, by your Triumphs over what foe you will, I swear: if you command me to plunge my blade in my brother's breast, or my father's throat, or into my pregnant wife's belly, though my hand be unwilling, yet will I do it all; if you bid me plunder the Gods and torch their temples, idols will melt in the flame to mint coins for soldiers; if you bid me pitch my tent by Etruscan Tiber's waves, I will step, a bold surveyor, into Hesperia's fields. Whatever ramparts you want spilled and levelled, the battering ram swung by these arms will scatter the stones, even should the city you bid me eradicate be Rome." All the cohorts agreed to this in unison, pledging the fists they brandished aloft to whatever wars he might call them. A roar goes up to the skies, loud as the noise a wind-swept wood makes when Thracian Boreas leans on the crags of pine-dad Ossa, bending trees to the ground, loud as when they spring erect once more.

360

365

370

375

3So

385

390

* * * When Caesar saw the war welcomed by troops so eager and favored by Fate, wanting no sloth on his part to hamper Fortune, he called out cohorts scattered all over the Gallic country and headed for Rome with standards rallied from everywhere.-

15

Pharsalia They came from tents pitched by hill-cupped Lake Leman and the camp which, high above the scoured flank of the Vosges, controlled the combative Lingones, men with enamelled weapons. Others left the !sere, which drops in its own channel by a series of shallows (once it flows into the better-known nver, it fails to convey its name to the ocean waves). The flaxen Ruteni were freed of their long-standing garrison. The mild Atax rejoiced to carry no Latin keelsas did the Var, Hesperia's bound when the border was moved. They left the port sacred to "Hercules the Solitary," where hollowed crags crowd the sea; neither North-west nor West wind commands that placeonly the roistering mistral patrols these coasts, barring fleets from the safe haven of Monaco. Men came from the stretch of disputed coast which land and sea claim turn and turn about, when vast Ocean sweeps in or again, when it recedes and whitecaps take to their heels.

400

410

(Does wind from beyond the horizon roll the sea in like this, then ebb and bear it away?

the better-known/river: the Rhone. the port: at Monaco. 409 the stretch of disputed coast: the area around Genoa or the Belgian coast, the dispute being whether it is more properly thought of as land or sea.

400

405

16

Book I or, lured by the lesser star, does the restless salt sea form tides in phase with the moon? or does flame-laden Titan, to guzzle nourishing waves, heave the Ocean aloft and draw the sea up to the stars? Find out, if the workings of Nature excite you; for me, always, you Cause-whatever you arewho create such quick shifts, lie hid, as the Gods intended.)

415

Next to up stakes were Romans guarding the Adour banks and Nemetes' land where the winding Tarbellian coast gentles the sea into pools and bays; the Santoni exult when their foe moves offlikewise Biturices, nimble Suessones with long-shafted spears; Leuci and Remi, known for the strength of their throwing arms; Sequani, tribesmen known for wheeling their tight-reined mounts; those skilled handlers of foreign chariots of war, the Belgians; people of Auvergne, so bold as to style themselves "Latium's brothers," linked by Ilian bloodlines; notorious rebels, the Nervii, stained by the treaty made with massacred Cotta; and the men who imitate you, Sarmatia, loose-trousered Vangiones; Batavi, ruffians roused by the coiled brass of blaring horns.

420

425

430

427 people of Auvergne: See "Aedui."

17

Pharsalia There is joy where the Cinga meanders in its course, where the Rhone captures the Arar with racing waters and bears it off to the sea; where high on mountain peaks a tribe makes its home on the jutting, snow-capped Cevennes. You, too, are delighted the fighting is transferred, men of Treves, and you Ligurians, now dose-cropped, once peerless in all Long-haired Gaul for luxuriant locks tumbling down your necks; also the men who propitiate ruthless Teutates with dreadful bloodshed, detestable Esus with altars uncivilized, and Taranis, whose cult is no milder than Scythian Diana's. You, too, poets who sing the praises of stalwart souls claimed by war and who make them known to remote eras: unrestricted, you Bards poured forth your many songs and, laying aside your weaponry, you Druids turned back to your barbarous rites and the baleful ways of your worship. (Only you are allowed to knowor else know nothing ofthe Gods and heaven's divinities; you dwell in deep woods, in groves far away;

435* 441

445

450

432 Cinga: a river in Spain, which seems out of place here; possibly, Lucan meant the Sequana

(Seine).

435* The Latin of verses 431-440 is considered spurious by many, as are some others of these

verses: scribes eager to see their local district represented were tempted to insert hexameters of their own. 444 Teutates: See "Esus."

!8

Book I

according to you, our shades do not seek the silent mansions of Ere bus or the glimmering realms of Dis: the self-same spirit rules our limbs in some other world; death, if you sing simple truth, exists amid continuous life. Surely the people the Pole-star surveys are lucky to be so misledthey are not harassed by the greatest of terrors, fear of dying. Hence, their men are bent on charging at swords; their minds readily accommodate death, and, since life will return, caution to them is cowardice.)

455

And you men, posted to keep the bushy-haired Cayci away from the Belgians, you head for Rome and desert the bellicose banks of the Rhine, opening our world to our foes. Caesar, because his countless troops' collective strength gave him the courage for bolder exploits, scattered his men over all Italy, filling nearby fortified towns.

* * * Idle Rumor further magnified well-founded fears, invaded the nation's awareness, and raised presentiments of devastation; swift herald of hastening war, Rumor set countless tongues wagging with cockeyed reports. One version held that, where Bevagna's bull-breeding fields unfold, roughneck squadrons were galloping into the fray and, where the Nera glides into Tiber's current, savage Caesar's barbarian horsemen sped to and fro; that, bringing up all his eagles and rallied standards, he himself advances-not with a single column of men, 19

470

475

Pharsalia but with army after army in close formation. Nor do they see the man they remember: hulking, beastlike, he stalks through their thoughts, more monstrous than the foe he conquered. Men say that the tribes who live between Rhine and Elbe, torn from their northern borders and native soil, fall in behind him; that he has ordered the City sacked by wild hordes while Romans look on ... So each man's panic augments Rumor, and all dread the unconfirmed dangers which they have imagined. Not only the commoners paled, rocked by groundless terror: the Curia, too, and even the Elders leapt from their seats, and the Senate, already in flight, hands over to Consuls power to make grim declarations of war; then, unsure where to find safety, where to avoid danger, they chased the stampeding populace, each where headlong flight propelled him, and burst forth in a steady stream, an army pressed close together. You would have thought treacherous firebrands had torched the rooftops or else that, with tremors still shaking them, houses were nodding and swaying. Thus, aimless, berserkas if their one hope in times of trouble was putting their native walls behind them-the mob went rushing through the City at breakneck speed like a stormy South wind that drums the measureless ocean back from Libyan Sidra: down crashes the shattered weight of a sail-laden mast; the pilot leaps into the waves, his helm abandoned; the crew follows, and though the hull's ribs have not yet split, each man makes his own shipwreck. So, deserting the City, they.flee into war. No parent now feeble with age, no wife in tears could recall husband or son, nor did ancestral Hearth-gods hold them the time it took to frame a prayer for possible safety. No man paused at his threshold; all left, blind to what might be their last glimpse of the City they loved. The mob rushed out and could not be recalled.

(How swifi the Gods are to grant men supremacy, how slow to save it!) The City, thronged with her own and conquered peoples, spacious enough for the whole human race gathered 480 the foe: the Gauls. 20

480

485

490

495

500

505

510

Book I together-cowardly hands left her, easy prey for inexorable Caesar. When, beset by foes, the Roman soldier is isolated in distant lands, he wards off the perils of night with a flimsy barricade, and a hasty entrenchment with rampart of tossed-up sods holds out for him, there in his tent, prospects of sound sleep. But you, Rome, at the merest mention of war, you are deserted! Your walls are not trusted a single night! One must, however, one must forgive this widespread panic: Pompey's flight alarmed them. Then, that no hope of a future, none, should alleviate terrified minds, unmistakeable proof of worse to come was added; the lowering Gods Above filled land, air, and sea with evil omens:

51 5

520

525

Nights of impenetrable darkness saw unknown planets, sky lit with flames and, shooting slantwise across heaven's vault, fireballs, or a baleful meteor's streaming hair, and the star that alters earthly power of kingsthe comet. Flashes of lightning glittered thick and fast in the false calm, and their fire changed shape in the heavy airnow a lance as the light streaked by; now, as it flickered and flared, a torch. Noiseless, in a sky without a single cloud, glittered a thunderbolt: snatching up fire from points North, it stabbed the peak of Latin Alba. Lesser stars, that run their regular course through night's blank arena, shone in the middle of the day while Phoebe, her horn-tips just touching, reflected her brother with disk a full circle;

530

535

21

Pharsalia she dimmed and vanished, snuffed by Earth's sudden shadow. Titan himself, when he raised his head to the height of heaven, hid his fiery chariot in dismal wrappings of mist, swathed his orb with shadows, and so made the nations despair of daylight. Just such a night, with the sun fleeing back to the East, fell when Thyestes ruled Mycenae. The fierce Blacksmith God opened the vents of Sicilian Etna but did not direct its flames heavenward; rather, the fire dipped its crest and fell on Hesperia's flank. Black Charybdis churned up blood-red brine from the sea-floor; Scylla's curs howled and whined. The flame was snatched away from Vesta's altar, and the bonfire marking the end of the Latin Festival split in two, spurting up in a double peakthe exact image ofTheban pyres. Earth juddered to a halt on its axis; Alpine peaks swayed, loosing an avalanche of ancient snow. With vast tidal waves, Tethys swamped the Hesperian Pillars of Hercules and outermost Atlas.

540

545

550

555

We have heard how the nation's Gods wept and household idols 549 flame: tradition held that if this fire were extinguished, Rome would fall. See "Vesta." 552 Theban pyres: See "Oedipus."

22

Book I sweated, attesting to the City's woe; how offerings dropped to temple floors; how ill-omened owls defiled the light; how beasts of prey, leaving the woods just at nightfall, sauntered in and bedded down in the heart of Rome; then farm animals loosed their tongues in human mutterings. Women gave birth to monsters with limbs deformed or wrong in number, and newborns filled their own mothers with dread, while the grim oracles of Cumae's Sibyl spread by word of mouth. Then the worshippers savage Bellona goads to gash their arms hymned the Gods and, whirling their bloody topknots, the Galli gabbled to people about calamity. Burial urns with charred bones packed to their rims groaned aloud. Then the clash of weapons and battle cries echoed from trackless forest groves as ghosts swarmed into combat. All who tilled the fields adjoining the outer walls fled: a gargantuan Erinys strode around them, brandishing a pitch-pine, tip down, in a swirl of flame, her tresses hissingthe Fury who spurred Theban Agave, the one who helped savage Lycurgus launch his spears

560

570

575

566 Galli: self-castrated priests. See "Cybele."

23

Pharsalia were just like thisor Megaera, bidden by ruthless Juno to terrify Hercules after the harrowing of Hell. Trumpets blared and black night let out a roar as loud as the shout when cohorts clash, though the wind was utterly silent. Seen to rise from the middle of Mars's Field, Sulla's ghost intoned oracular words of doom; farmers who lived on the banks of the icy Anio scattered when Marius, his tomb burst open, reared up his head. Therefore, it was resolved, in accordance with ancient custom, to fetch in Etruscan seers. Of these, the most august was Arruns, who occupied Lucca's deserted walls, steeped in lore of the lightning bolt's vagaries, the smoking channels of entrails, the warning a wing will scribble on the sky. His first order: Seize monsters that Nature, gone awry, has birthed without sperm-also the barren womb's abominable embryos; burn them on .fires stoked with sinister fuels. His next order: The panicky citizens must march round the whole City; also, asperging the walls in the rite appointed, the Pontiffs must pace the long line of the sacred boundary, for to them has been entrusted this sacred obligation.

580

585

590

595

A throng of subordinates follows, kilted in Gabine style; the band of Vestals is led by a priestess in fillets-she who alone has the right to gaze upon Trojan Minerva. 586 While Arruns is not known to have been a historical figure, the name is Etruscan. 591 sinisterfuels: only the wood of certain trees was considered appropriate for burning corpses and "abominations." 594 L. now catalogues, by priestly college, participants in the ritual purification of the city; such a lustration occurred at Rome in 55 c. E. (see Tacitus Annals 13.24). the sacred boundary: (Lat. pomerium) the magico-religious city limit, not necessarily the same as that marked by the city wall or occupied by the citizens of outlying districts. 598 Trojan Minerva: the Palladium. See "Pallas."

24

Book I Then come keepers of the Gods' pronouncements and mystic hymns who escort Cybele home from her bath in the little Almo; 6oo the Augurs, skilled at reading the flight of birds on the left; the Seven Servers of ritual feasts; the Tatian Guild; and the Leaping Priests who rejoice to sling the Shields from their necks; and, wearing the peaked cap on his highborn brow, the Flamen. 605

And while they circle the City's outskirts in a long, winding procession, Arruns gathers a lightning bolt's scattered fires and consigns them to Earth with gloomy mutterings, consecrating the site; then, he leads to the sacred altar a choice bull with heavy dewlaps. When he tried to pour wine and, with knife poised, to sprinkle salt meal on its poll, the victim again and again resisted the doomed sacrifice. Attendants in belted robes bore down on its dangerous horns; its knees buckled, and the bull offered its defeated throat. No ordinary blood gushed from its gaping wound but, in place of crimson gore, a spew of disgusting slime. Aghast at the ritual's hideous significance, Arruns blanched and, frantically seeking the Gods' anger, seized.the entrails.

610

615

Their very color alarmed the seer: grayish, the organs were mottled with stinking blotches, crusted with loathsome scabs, speckled with flecks of blood, pied with numerous bruises. He spied the liver slicked with pus, found ominous streaks on its hostile lobe. One lung's inflatable sac had collapsed; the merest membrane partitioned the vital organs. The heart lay hidden, but viscera pumped putrefaction through widening slits, and the caul disclosed its hiding place. And a horror diviners know bodes infallible evillook! he sees, protruding from one lobe of the liver, the bulge of a second: one side, sickly and flaccid, droops; the other glistens, shaking its veins with rapid, relentless throbbing. Once he perceived the imminence of widespread devastation, he cried: "0 Gods Above, it is scarcely meet or right for me to reveal to the people all that You intend;

620

625

630

599 the keepers: the College of Fifteen. See "Quindecimviri."

617 entrails: See "Prophecy."

25

Pharsalia

for with this, my offering, I have not won Your goodwill, mighty Jupiter: Gods of the World Below have invaded the slaughtered hull's chest. I must not say what I dread, but worse will come than my fear. "May the Gods amend these signs, may the entrails prove false, may Tages, founder of my craft, prove a charlatan!" So the Tuscan, foretelling, bent and blurred the omens with veiling layers of vagueness. Figulus, too: concerned to know the Gods and Heaven's secrets, a man Egyptian Memphis could not match in observation of stars and accurate reckonings of planets, he said: "Either this universe strays ungoverned from age to age, and the stars skitter about in random motion; or else, if the Fates direct them, swift destruction is set for City and humankind. Will the earth yawn open and cities subside? or will fiery heat sweep away our climate? will the soil break faith and withhold its harvests? or will all our water be tainted with rivers of poison? What manner of calamity, 0 Gods Above? with what plague do You plot Your assault? Many will meet their final hour at the same instant. "If, at the height of heaven, the freezing, baleful planet Saturn were kindling his inky fires, Aquarius would have spilled a Deucalean flood of rains and all the earth would have disappeared in the spreading sea. If, Phoebe, You were close on the heels ofNemean Leo, whose beams are fierce, flames would stream over all the world and, catching fire from Your chariot, the ether would blaze. But these rays draw back. "You! Soldier-god! what are You plotting? Although the sting in his tail is erect, You set Scorpio on fire and roast his Claws. Also, soothing Jupiter sinks far down the West, the benevolent planet Venus dims, and nimble Cyllenus stumbles and stops short, while Mars has the sky to himself. Why have the Zodiac's signs departed their pathways and turned their dark sides to the world? 653

Deucaleanflood: See "Deucalion."

26

635

640

645

650

655

66o

Book I

Why does Orion's sword-hung waist glitter so brightly? Frenzy of combat hangs over us, the might of the sword will confound all right by main force, unspeakable crimes will go by the name 'courage,' and this madness will last for years. "And what is the use of begging the Gods to stop it? Peace brings with her a master. Prolong the sequence of evils, Rome, without pause; make the slaughter drag on year after year-now you are free only so long as we have civil war!"

665

670

These forebodings had frightened the panicking people enough, but worse was to come. Imagine the summit ofPindus: down it comes running a Maenad, brimming with Bacchic ecstasy; not Maenad but matron is whirled through the thunderstruck City, revealing with words like these how Phoebus is goading her breast: "Where am I carried, 0 Paean? You whirl me above the etherin what land do You set me down? I see Pangaea glistening with snowy peaks and, spread beneath Haemus' crag, Philippi. What frenzy is this, 0 Phoebus-tell me-where Roman legions exchange weapons and blows in a war without enemies? Where am I carried-You turn me and guide me far to the East where the sea is dyed by the swirl of Egyptian Nile ... This man who lies, a shapeless trunk, on the sandy bank-1 know him. . . I am carried across the seas to treacherous Sidra, to burning Libya, where grisly Enyo has transferred the armies that fought at Emathia ... Now down across the Alps, their heads cloud-capped, and away I am whirled above the soaring Pyrenees ... We return to the site of my homeland, my city, and the impious war is finished there in the very Senate ... Once more factions arise and around the whole world I go yet again ... Give me new shores to look at, a new country, Phoebus-! have already seen Philippi."

675

68o

685

690

She said this, then fell, deserted by weary Frenzy. 675 Maenad: normally, the antithesis of a matron. 684 this man: Pompey's corpse was left headless and unburied on the Egyptian shore (8. 595ff.), an atrocity alluded to in Vergil's description of Priam's death (Aeneid 2.506ff.). 687 In quick succession, the matron alludes to events after Pharsalus: the battle of Thapsus fought in Libya (46), the battle of Monda fought against Pompey's sons in Spain (45), the assassination of Caesar in the Curia at Rome (44), the battle of Philippi (42).

27

Book II

INTRODUCTION The second book is a companion to the first; indeed, its opening scenes constitute a continuation of the last scene of Book One, as more omens appear at Rome, and as we see the reactions of women and men. One oldtimer gives an eyewitness account of the terrible days of Marius and Sulla (vv. 67-233), a speech which closes out this first of four sections. Anonymous reporters appear elsewhere in the Pharsalia, too, but none has so chilling a tale to tell as does this survivor of an earlier holocaust. Lucan's use here of an eyewitness to the horrors of civil war in a previous generation is of particular interest if we consider that he himself, writing of events that took place a scant hundred years before, might easily have had access to the memories of an eyewitness to the struggle between Caesar and Pompey in the form of recollections passed on to a child or grandchild still alive in Lucan's day. The second section of Book Two (vv. 234-39I) introduces Cato who, together with Pompey and Caesar, is the third protagonist, but who will remain offstage until Book Nine. In his discussion of the ethics of the war (vv. 286-323) and in his remarriage with his former wife, Marcia (vv. 350ff.), Cato represents the severe, old-fashioned Roman Stoic. The third section of Book Two (vv. 392-525) contrasts Pompey's operations at Capua with those of Caesar in Northern Italy. It is here (vv. 397-438) that we find the first major geographical excursus in the Pharsalia, a kind of literary detour, as Lucan hymns the natural beauty of Italy, especially her rivers. Here, too, Lucan introduces Domitius (vv. 478ff.), first of many minor characters to step briefly into the limelight. In the final section of the book (vv. 526ff.), the focus returns to Pompey as

Book II he outlines his strategy for winning the civil war, namely, a withdrawal from Italy and reliance on his Eastern allies. The book closes with a race against time as Caesar hurries to trap Pompey in Brindisi. The final image of Pompey (vv. 719-736, esp. vv. 728-730) is meant to remind us of Aeneas leaving Troy at the close of Aeneid Two.

29

BOOK II

Now the anger of the Gods was revealed, the cosmos produced clear portents of war; laws and covenants of the universe farsighted Nature upended-in a moil of monstrous births she proclaimed unholy war. Why, Ruler of Olympus, did You see fit to add this dread to mortal woes, that men through awful signs should learn of disasters to come? Either the Architect of the Universe, in the act of scooping shapeless realms and raw matter out of the failing flames, fixed causes for time eternal, binding, constraining allHimself, too-with a Law, and apportioned the cosmos, which brings ordered ages forth as inflexible Fate wills; or else, nothing is set: Chance, off balance, blunders about, working change after change, while Accident sways things mortal. Let it be sudden, whatever You plan! Let the mind of man be blind to future fate, allow the fearful to hope! Thus, when they grasped how many disasters it would cost the world, this truthfulness of the Gods, there was mourning City-wide; lawcourts closed; politicians skulked about, muffied in commoners' cloaks-no purple robes attended the Rods. At that stage, people still checked their sobs; over them all drifted a vast, inexpressible grief. Like a deathbed scene: thunderstruck household all hushed at first, corpse unlamented as yet, growing cold; nor has the mother, her hair unknotted, called for her slave-girls to bruise their arms with savage grief-blows, but still she sits, stroking the limbs that stiffen as life ebbs, the now motionless face; in death his eyes look defiant. Grief she has yet to feel; dread is behind her. For now, she leans forward, her mind numb, stunned at her loss. Matrons discarded 4 Ruler of Olympus: See 'Jupiter."

30

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10

I

5

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Book II

ordinary dress, sorrowing women thronged the shrines; some splashed the Gods with their tears, some battered their breasts on the stone floors; thunderstruck, they left clumps of hair drifting across the holy threshold; keening cries, a constant staccato, stabbed eardrums used to the summons of litany.

30

And not just in the Almighty Thunderer's temple did women kneel; no, they parcelled the Gods out, so not one altar lacked 35 a mother to cry shame. Of these, one who had clawed her streaming cheeks, whose arms were bruised black with grief-blows, cried: "Now is the time to pummel your breasts, mournful mothers, tear your hair out now! Do not delay this grief or save it for evils much worse! Now we can choose to weep, 40 while the leaders' fortunes sway but, once one of them wins, we will have to rejoice." With such stings, Grief goaded itself. Likewise the men, heading for war and opposite camps, poured out upon savage deities their just complaints: "How wretched is our lot! for we were not alive, did not fight in the Punic days ofCannae and Trebbia!"

45

"We don't plead for peace, 0 Gods: make the nations rage, rouse the barbarians-now! let the whole world ally itself for war!" "Send lines of Medes swooping down from Persian Susa, let Massagetae cross the Scythian Hister!"

50

"Let the unbowed heads of Elbe and Rhine pour forth Suebians, flaxen-haired men from the Far North!" "Make us every nation's enemy, but avert civil war!" "Let Dacians strike this side, Goths the other! Caesar can march against the Iberians, Pompey attack Eastern archers; leave no hand free for you, Rome!" 34 55

55

Thunderer: Jupiter. Iberians: Spaniards.

31

Pharsalia "Or, Gods Above, if You do mean to erase Hesperia's name, let the sky, swirled into fire, shower the earth with lightning bolts." "0 savage Parent, both factions and both their leadersbefore they've earned it-destroy them! Are they using this crop of fresh horrors to decide who shall command the City?"

6o

"Scarcely worth starting a civil war, just to shut them both out!" Such the complaints that waning Patriotism aired. But a particular anguish choked wretched elders: they resented the vigorous fate of burdensome old age, the years that had saved them up for another civil war. Someone, rummaging in his memory for like terrors, spoke up now: "No different, the troubles the Fates prepared that time Marius, the exiled victor-after his German and Libyan Triumphs-hid his head in the slimy sedge. Bogs of sucking mud and spongy swamp concealed the pledge you put there, Fortune; soon, chains of iron chafed the old man-and a stretch in prison filth. Consul and millionaire, he would die in a humbled City: he paid for his crimes in advance. "Death itself fled the man-and often: in vain was a bitter foe granted access to Marius' blood-at point of murder, the assassin froze and dropped the steel from out his fumbling hand. He had seen, in the prison shadows, a great light; had seen the terrible Gods of Crime, and the Marius yet to be; had heard, trembling: 'The right to touch this neck is not for you. This man owes to the laws of time many deaths before his own! Discard your futile rage.' Cimbri! keep this old man safe, if you seek to revenge your butchered tribe's obliteration. Not by favor of Heaven has he been shielded from wrath of Gods Above; 61 the City: Rome. 69 that time: Marius' dramatic flight to Africa in 88. 76 a bitter foe: one of the Cimbri, a German tribe defeated by Marius.

32

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75

8o

Book II a brutal man but, with Fate lusting for Rome's ruin, a useful one. "This same Marius, transported across rough seas to a hostile land and chased through deserted towns, lurked in the desolate realms of vanquished Jugurtha and bedded down on Punic ashes. Carthage and Marius both found consolation for their fate: brought equally low, they forgave the Gods. "There he nursed a Libyan hatred. As soon as his luck returned, he liberated squads of slaves; convicts, their irons melted down and reforged, saluted with savage fists. The leader's standards were borne by none but men who, long since inured to crime, infested the camp with evil. "By God, what a day, what a day that was when Marius the victor wrecked our walls! with what long strides savage Death came running! Noble perished alongside peasant, far and wide the sword flickered, and from no breast was the steel recalled. Blood stood in the temples; pavements glistened, slippery, slicked red with wholesale slaughter. Age exempted no one. An old man in his fading years? No shame to speed his last day-nor yet to snap the budding future of a pitiful infant just at the brink oflife. What crime could have earned the little ones execution? Enough that newborns can die. The very rush of his frenzy swept a man on-to trump up charges looked soft; many perished to fill a quota; the blood-soaked victor snatched up a head hacked from a random neck, ashamed to go about empty-handed. The one hope of safety was to print the reeking sword-hand with tremulous kisses. (Though a thousand blades should follow Death's new standardsoh villainous people!-it scarce becomes a man to have earned a reprieve centuries long by such means, let alone the brief disgrace of a lull-life till Sulla returns!) "Who has leisure to mourn commoners' losses? Scant time for you, Baebius: 9 I Punic ashes: ashes of Carthage. See "Punic Wars." 93 a Libyan hatred: such as Hannibal felt for Rome. I I8 Sui/a: absent from Rome 87-83.

33

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95

roo

105

110

I I

5

Pharsalia a ring of countless hands plucked at your limbs, disembowelled and pulled you to pieces. Scant time for you, Antony, who foretold these evils: a camp orderly, swinging your head by its torn white hair, set it down on a banquet table, dripping. Fimbria ripped torsos of two Crassi open. Cruelly pointed stakes soaked up tribunician gore. And Scaevola, you were forsaken by violated Vesta: before the very shrine of the Goddess, Her ever-glowing Hearth, you were butchered-but your withered old age loosed a mere dribble of blood from your throat, sparing Her flames.

I20

"A seventh year in office came next, the Rods resumed; this marked the end of Marius' life. All that bad luck can bring, he suffered, but also enjoyed all that good luck bestows; he took the measure of every human destiny.

I30

"Then, how many corpses crumpled at Sacriportus, how many heaps of troops the Colline Gate endured that time when Rome, mistress of all mankind, was overrun, almost losing her place at the world's head, and the Samnite hoped Roman wounds would outnumber those at the Caudine Forks!

I25

I

35

"Sulla actually augmented the endless slaughter-what scant blood remained in the City, he drained in his reprisals; I 40 and while he deftly amputated gangrenous limbs, his surgery outstripped caution, his hand too freely followed where putrefaction led it. The guilty perished, yes, but by that time, all those left alive were guilty. Vendettas then were granted license; released from the reins I45 oflaw, rage bolted. Crimes were not done to please Sulla; each man settled old scores of his own. At a stroke, the conqueror had ordered it all: house-slaves thrusting unspeakable blades deep in their masters' guts; sons, wet with paternal blood, wranglingeach claiming the right to hack through their parent's neck; I 50 brothers falling prey to bounty-hunting brothers. Tombs filled up with refugees, and living bodies Antony: the Triumvir's grandfather. See "Antonius." Crassi: the Triumvir's father and brother. See "Crassus." 125 tribunician gore: since tribunes were sacrosanct, their murder would be sacrilege. 126 Scaevola: actually slain later.

121

124

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Book II

mixed with interred; wild beasts' lairs were in short supply. One man knotted a noose at his throat and broke his neck; another, hurling himself with headlong force, splattered I 55 the stones when he struck the flinty ground-they snatched their deaths out of the reeking victor's grasp. A man stacked logs for his own pyre and, before all his lifeblood had gushed forth, he plunged into the flames, claiming his fires while he could. Captains' heads were paraded on pikes through the shivering City 1 6o and piled in the heart of the Forum-you went there to discover who lay dead elsewhere. Thrace never saw such horrors dangling from the Bistonian tyrant's stables nor, from Antaeus' doors, did Libya; nor did Greece, in grief, bewail so many hacked limbs in the courtyard at Pisa. I65 Though the heads had begun to stream with putrefaction and, with long passage of time, had lost their features, had grown unrecognizable, still, wretched parents with work-worn hands, trembling thieves, collected them, and the relics vanished. I remember how I myself, desperate to lay my butchered brother's mouldering features on the pyre, on the flames I 70 forbidden him, prowled round the corpses of Sulla's peace, searching through all those bodies for the stump that fit his severed head . . . "Why bother to speak of Catulus' ghost, bought off with blood? of the other Marius, sacrificed in a grim rite held for possibly disapproving shades, I75 paying unthinkable penance near the insatiate tomb? of how we saw his flesh gashed, with a wound allotted to each limb? Even though his body was everywhere hacked, no blow they dealt was mortal; the loathsome form their vile savagery took was to cheat an expiring man of death. I8o Wrenched off, his hands fell away; his lopped tongue, still pulsing, beat the open air, its motion mute. One man cropped his ears, one cut away hooked nose and nostrils, a third gouged the eyeballs out of their hollow sockets and, last of all, skewered the eyes that had watched the body. I 85 People will scarcely believe so savage a crime-one head 163 Bistonian tyrant: king ofThracc who owned man-eating mares. See "Diomedes." 164 Antaeus: murderous African Giant. 165 Pisa: kingdom of a third such villain. See "Oenomaus." 174 the other Marius: the consul's nephew. See "Marius Gratidianus."

35

Pharsalia sustaining all that punishment! He looked like a victim smashed by a building's collapse, pulped under its crushing weight; no less misshapen than what washes ashore-trunks of men dead at sea. Why did they mutilate Marius' face like a cheap doll's and throw their advantage away? If they meant to display their vile crime and curry Sulla's favor, he had to be recognizable! "Fortune saw her settlers at Praeneste all put to the sword at the same instant, the whole populace perishing in the span of a single death. Then the flower of Hesperia, her last remaining youth, fell together and stained the 'Sheepfold' in grief-stricken Rome. So many young men at once, suffering violent death-! Famine might do this, or a storm at sea, a building's collapse, or plagues of earth and air, or wartime combat-but not (till then!) execution! Among the ranks of men crowded together, squadrons paling as death was unleashed, victors could scarcely maneuver and, once the killing ended, the dead could scarcely fall, but swayed, heads lolling. Others were pinned beneath the weighty mound, as cadavers helped in the massacre: heavy trunks crushed living bodies. Remorseless, unshaken by slaughter below him, Sulla sat and watched; he had no qualms at having ordered so many thousands of wretched people to die. "The Tiber's current received all the heaps ofSulla's cadavers; the first fell into water, the last into corpses. Boats heading downstream stuck. Broken up by the bloody mound, the leading stretch of water flowed on to the sea while, at this dam, the following wash backed up. Blood pooled. Soon, its pressure made a path, poured out over the plain and, rushing down by a headlong channel into the Tiber's currents, swelled the stalling waters; soon, neither bed nor banks restrained it-blood restored the dead to dry land; at last, having struggled out to the Tyrrhene waves, the stream cut a wide, blood-red swath across the sky-blue sea. "For this, Sulla deserved to be hailed 'Nation's Savior'? for this, hailed 'Lucky'? for this, to raise his tomb in the Field of Mars? The same things wait to be suffered again, will march to war in the same order; civil arms will effect the same end.

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Book II

And yet, our fears forebode far worse; this time, the human race collides in battle, with damage far more grievous. For the Marian exiles, the ultimate prize was Rome recaptured; Sulla's victory gained no more for him than the chance to wipe out a hated faction. But Fate summons Pompey and Caesar elsewhere: they dash, two powers long established; neither of them would start civil war for what made Sulla content." Thus did dolorous old age weep, aware of the past, apprehensive about the future.

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* * * But terror did not beat in the breast of noble-souled Brutus nor, in that widespread panic of trembling distraction, was he one of the people wailing. No, in the drugged night, while Parrhasian Helice turned her wagon aslant, he knocked at the narrow door of his kinsman Cato, found him brooding in sleepless anxiety over public affairshuman destinies, the City's future-fearful for all, unconcerned for himself Brutus approached and said: "From all lands expelled and long since chased away, Courage relies on you alone-noneofFortune's whirlwinds will shake her faith in you! My resolve is slipping: guide me! I waver: with your oaken sureness, brace me! While others may follow Magnus, or Caesar's arms, the only leader for Brutus will be Cato. Do you guard peace and, in a wavering world, keep your steps unswerving? or do you side with the arch-criminals leading our crazed nation on to disaster, and thus absolve them of civil war?

23 5

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"Private reasons sweep each man into heinous battle: some think of a sullied name and laws fearful in peacetime; some need steel to escape starvation; some, the world's downfall to conceal bad debts. Not one is driven to arms by madnessthey join a camp, swayed by a hefty bribe: do you alone choose war for itself? What did it get you, enduring

255

227 Marian exiles: Marius and his supporters who fled when Sulla marched on Rome in 88,

returning the next year in his absence.

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Pharsalia

all those years, untouched by the ways of a vicious age? You will achieve this one reward for long-lived courage: the war will uncover the guilt of others; yours, it will cause. "Do not, 0 Gods on high, grant this to the deadly weaponsbar them from rousing these hands, too! Cato, no javelins hurled by your strength will fly in the blind cloud of shafts. Lest such abundant courage go to waste, every fortune of war will stampede at you: who will not wish to die by your sword and, reeling from another's stroke, to burden your conscience? Better that you live unarmed, in peace and quiet, alone: so the heavenly stars, ever unswerving, wheel down their gliding arc; the air nearer to Earth is set ablaze by bolts of lightning, flat stretches ofland are swept by gales and glittering streaks of flame; high above, clearing the stormdouds, soars Olympus. By the Gods' decree, discord keeps the lowliest in turmoil; the lofty obtain tranquility. "How happily Caesar will learn that a citizen so esteemed has entered the fray! For he will never resent your preference for the rival camp of General Magnus: if Cato but nod at the war, he beams on Caesar! Most of the Senate, including one Consul, other notable men as well, going to war with a civilian leader-how they entice me! Add Cato to those under Pompey's yoke-soon in all the world the only free man will be Caesar! But, if you decide, for the law of the land, to take up arms and guard Liberty, the Brutus you have now will be-not Pompey's, not Caesar's, but, after the war, the victor's foe!" Unto him from his inmost breast, Cato then spake these sacred words: "The greatest evil, Brutus, is civil war, I grant; but where the Fates beckon, fearless Courage will follow. The crime of the Gods will be that they made me guilty, too. Who would want to watch the stars and cosmos fall, feeling no dread himself? who'd want to sit, hands folded,

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278 Consul: L. seems to mean Lentulus; his fellow consul, Caius Marcellus, while originally on

the side of Pompey, stayed behind in Italy, received Caesar's pardon, and retired.

Book II

while the fiery firmament tumbled and Earthjuddered with the jumbled weight of the crashing cosmos? Will unknown lands and kings cut off by the waves beneath some alien star play a part in Hesperian frenzy and the Roman wars? Shall I alone live at ease? Ward off this frenzy, 29 5 0 Gods, that Rome, whose doom will shake Goths and Dahae, should fall, leaving me unaffected! Think how his anguish will prompt a parent, bereaved by the death of sons, to lead a long cortege to the tombs; him it soothes to thrust his hands into the bleak fires and, once the pyre-mound is raised, to hold 300 the bleak torch himself: likewise, I will not be hauled back before I embrace you, lifeless Rome! I will walk to your grave, Liberty, mourn your name, your insubstantial shade. "So be it: let the heartless divinities have Roman atonements in full, let us not cheat the war of its blood! Oh that my head, consigned to the Gods of Heaven and Hell, might be granted the right to make all expiations! Enemy troops bore the zealous Decius down: let it be me the twin armies stab, me the Rhine's barbarous horde targets with darts; I want to stand in the path of each spear and intercept the wounds of the whole war. Let my blood redeem the nations, my death cancel any debt incurred by Roman immortality. Why do peoples readily yoked, eager to suffer savage regimes-why should they perish? Strike me with your steel-me alone!as I keep futile watch over laws and empty justice. My throat-mine!-will bring Hesperia's people peace and end their woes. With me dead, a would-be ruler will have no need of war. "So: why do I not follow Pompey's lead and Republican standards? Yet, it is no secretFortune favoring him, he, too, expects to dominate the whole world. Therefore, let him conquer with me in his ranks, lest he think he conquered for himself." So speaking, he plied indignation's stinging lash, and all too successfully roused the young man's choler to passion for civil war. Meanwhile, as Phoebus chased away chilly shadows, 39

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Pharsalia there came a knock, and through Cato's door burst-straight from Hortensius' funeral pyre-the worthy Marcia in mourning. In the past, as a girl wedded and bedded by Cato, Marcia rapidly reaped the dues and reward of marriagethree children; then, pregnant again, she was given to fill Hortensius' hearth and to knot their two households with her mother-blood. But now, having sealed Hortensius' ashes in an urn, she hastened back in her pitiable statespilled crown of hair dishevelled, her breast bruised with rapid blows, streaked with soot from the sepulcher. No other looks would her first husband have found alluring. Distraught, she cried: "While I had the blood, had the maternal vitality, I · did your bidding, Cato: I bore the young of two husbands. Bone-weary, worn out with childbearing, I return at last-not to be handed on to another! Give me the bond of my first marriage bed, give me the mere empty name of spouse: allow me to carve on my gravestone 'CATO'S MARCIA.' Let no doubt nag in a distant age-' When she relit the wedding torch, was she forced out or handed on?'

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"Me you take as ally, but not in joys or prosperity; I lay claim to woes, a share of hardship. Let me follow your camp! Why am I left behind in safety and peace? Why is Cornelia nearer the civil war?" These words swayed her husband. Although the times were wrong for wedding torches, with Fate shrieking To war!, they still planned a plain exchange of vows, a ceremony stripped of idle display, with the Gods to witness their holy rites. No festive wreaths dangled from the garlanded lintel, nor were the door-posts swagged with criss-crossing white ribands; no customary brands; no marriage couch standing atop ivory risers, no gold-embroidered spread on show; no matron-of-honor, brow weighted with a towered crown, fretting lest the sole ofher shoe should brush the threshold as she stepped across. No sheer flame-yellow gauze, worn to screen shy demureness, veiled the bride's face when she lowered her gaze;

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352 a plain exchange: suited to the circumstances and to Cato's Stoicism. See "Wedding."

40

Book II no belt studded with gemstones clasped cascades of drapery; no gold collar adorned her throat, no filmy linen scarves clung to her shoulder-tips, hung in wisps down her bare arms. Just as she was-she kept the gloom of her widow's weeds365 she embraced her bridegroom, hugged him as she would her boys; a swirl of her funereal wool engulfed his purple. No traditional ribaldries, nor, in Sabine fashion, did the solemn bridegroom bandy boisterous jests. None of his closest family, no kinsmen congregatedthey were joined in silence, content with Brutus' ministry. Cato's stern features registered no delight, nor did he clear his august face of its bristling whiskers-the day he first had seen lethal weapons upraised, he had suffered his grizzled hair to inch down his reverend brow untrimmed, had begun to grow on his cheeks the beard of grieving: only he-lacking both zeal and hatred-was really free to lament the human race. Nor were the rights of their first marriage bed resumed; lawful passion, too, he stubbornly resisted. This was the manner, this the unshakeable creed of stern Cato-to seek the mean and fix a limit, to respect Natural Order and repay his land with his life, to believe he was born to serve not himself, but the whole world. To his mind, a feast meant staving off hunger; a great house, banishing winter with a roof overhead; costly garb, throwing over his limbs, in the manner of Romans of old, a homespun toga; to him, sex had a single objectprogeny. He was the City's father, the City's bridegroom, guardian ofJustice, rigorous Honesty's champion, a man all men thought good; into none of Cato's deeds did selfindulgence worm its way, in none did it play a role.

* * * Meanwhile, marching down to the plains, an anxious Magnus occupied Capua's walls. This Dardan colony was chosen as base of operations; from here, his headquarters, 38o the unshakeable creed: (Roman) Stoic doctrine. 393 Dardan: Trojan.

41

370

375

380

385

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Pharsalia he would send out forces, scattershot, to rush the foe at the point where, with shady slopes, the Apennines ruck central Italy.With no other peak has Earth heaved herself up higher or risen nearer heaven. Mountains stretch midway between the twinning waters of Seas Lower and Upper. The slopes have their limits: Pisa, whose strand divides the Tyrrhene deep one side; Ancona, akimbo in Dalmatian waves the other. From vast springs the mountains beget measureless rivers, dashing their currents along the twin oceans' watershed. Falling away to the left we have: the wide, swift Metaro; turbulent Crustumium; Savio mixed with Isaurus; Sen a; Ofanto, lashing the waves of the Adriatic; also "Eridanus of the Amber Isles"the Po, into which, more than any other, Earth releases her soil: down to the sea it trundles splintered forests and drains Hesperia's waters. (The story goes, this

395

400

410

405 to the left: L. begins the catalogue of Italy's rivers with those flowing west. 406 Crustumium: a river in the district north ofRimini; the Sena is probably the name of a town

there, and the Isaurus looks like an error for Pisaurus, at whose mouth is Pisaro (anc. Pisaurum). 407 Eridanus: the Greek name for the Po; amber is the fossilized resin of poplar trees; while the Po has no islands, it may have been part of the amber trade route. 410 the story: See "Phaethon."

42

Book II

river was first to shade its banks with a poplar throng, and when, driving the steep day down a tilted track, Phaethon kindled the ether with blazing bridle-reins till rapids vanished and Earth was scorched to its very core, this river equalled Phoebuswaves against flames.) A river as great as the Nile, were it not that across Egypt's low-lying plains, the Nile floods the Libyan sands! a river as great as the Danub~, but that, roaming the globe, gathering waves that would otherwise plunge into diverse oceans, the Danube herds them into the Scythian waves!

415

420

Waters seeking the right-hand slopes create: Tiber; Roya, boisterous in its gorge; from here devolves swift Vulturno; and, sending up mists by nightfall, Sarno, also Liris, rushed through shady Marica's realms by Vestine tributaries; grazing Salerno's heights, Silano; Magra, too meager to lure a single keel, goes skittering into the waters of nearby Luna.

425

Further north, where the range heaves skyward with spine humped, it sees Gallic farmland 420

the Scythian waves: the Black Sea.

43

Pharsalia and crowds the sheer Alps. To the south, orchards of Marsi and Umbrians, and, tamed by the Samnite plow, pine-wooded bluffs embracing all Latium's indigenous peoples; nor does the range desert Hesperia till it is sheared off by Scylla's waves; it thrusts its bluffs as far as Juno Lacinia's precinctsand extended beyond Italy, until the shouldering ocean wore its contours down, and the sea drove back the land; even then, with earth eaten away by the double deep, hi11s hunched up, far to the south, forming Sicily's Pelorus. Caesar, mad for war, rejoices that he has no choice but bloodshed, for no stretch of Hesperian soil he treads is free of foes, and the fields he invades are far from deserted; not even his marching goes to waste-he fights battles other battles have sparked. City-gates flung wide displease himhe likes smashing them; nor would he ruin an unprotesting plowman's acres, if he could ravage with steel and fire. He scorns unguarded roads and the good citizen's role. Meanwhile, Latium's cities waver, sympathies swinging, undecided. Ready to yield at onrushing war's first alarm, nonetheless, they strengthen their walls with massive ramparts, gird them all round with steep-sided trenches; they stock the battlements' high towers with stone balls and any missiles they can fire at the foe from above. The people favor Magnus, but loyalty struggles with crowding terror-just the way a sirocco grips the sea. Gales howl, the whole ocean surface responds; 434 Juno Lacinia's precincts: in southern Italy.

44

430

435

440

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455

Book II if then, the Earth, opened by a blow from Aeolus' trident, hurls an East wind onto the swollen billows-then, in spite of the new gale's battering, the waters keep to the old and, while sky has succumbed to the storm-freighted East wind, waves proclaim the South Wind's power. But how adroitly terror 460 sways opinion! Events sweep wavering loyalty aside. Libo's panicky flight leaves Tuscan folk exposed; Thermus is routed, so Umbria loses autonomy early; failing to wage civil war with his father's luck, young Sulla turns tail when he hears the name Caesar. 465 When wings of cavalry swoop and strike Osimo, Varus runs out the opposite gate where no hostile guards patrol, bolting for cover of copse and crag. They drive Lentulus down from Asculum's stronghold; as the troops give ground, the victor harasses and cuts them off; from that vast host, only 470 the leader escapes-standards he has, but no ranks to lead. You, too, Scipio: you abandon Nuceria, the stronghold entrusted to you, even though the stoutest troops were based there-men long since transferred from Caesar's ranks at the time of the Parthian crisis, that legion Magnus 47 5 sent to replace men lost in Gaul, Roman blood on loan to his father-in-law till Magnus should call them back to war. But Corfinium's roof-tops, ringed with sturdy walls, protect you, feisty Domitius! Troops that obey your bugles were once, as recruits, arrayed against bloodstained Milo. When, off in the distance, he spies an immense dust-cloud swirling, battalions ablaze with sunlight glancing off burnished weapons, Domitius cries: "Comrades! run down to the river's banks and sink the bridge beneath its waters! And River! rush forth now in spate from Your mountain springs! bring all Your waters, churning and foaming, that, when its pilings 462 465 468 472 475

Here begins a list of Pompeian generals who deserted their Italian posts. young Sui/a: son of the dictator, Sulla "Felix" ("the Lucky"). Lentulus: Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther. See "Lentulus." Scipio: Metellus Scipio, Pompey's (current) father-in-law. that legion: in 53, Pompey lent Caesar a legion which, in so, was recalled to Italy. 479 Caesar referred to the presence of these troops at Milo's trial at I.JI9-J2J. 484 the river: Aternus (mod. Pescara).

45

480

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Pharsalia

collapse, You may sweep the timbers away! At this line bring the war up short; on this riverbank let our enemy loiter, frittering hours away in idleness! Halt the headlong leader! Caesar brought to a standstill-here, first-that will be victory for us." Saying no more, he unleashes a torrent of troops from the walls; but in vain, for, out on the plains, seeing at a glance that, with the river bridgeless, his march is stalled, Caesar bellows in fury: "Not enough, is it, to lurk near your walls in cowardice? You block off the plains and plan a barricade of rivers? Dimwits! Were the Ganges itself, with torrents rampaging, to rise up against me, Caesar stops for no stream after the Rubicon's waters! Squadrons of cavalry, charge! On the double, infantry-storm the bridge before it falls." At these orders, the light horse took off at full gallop, onto the plain with hooves drumming, and hard-muscled arms sent missiles flying across the bank like driving rain. Caesar routed the rearguard, forded the stream as it cleared, and forced the enemy back inside his sheltering fortress. And now he erected the towers that catapult huge weights, and the mantlet crept up to the intervening walls. Look! wartime's shame: through gates unbarred, Domitius' troops have hauled out a captive-their leader! The citizen halts before his ruthless opponent's feet. But still, he scowls; a nobleman, proud and stiff, he asks to be put to the sword.

490

495

sao

505

510

Knowing he wants execution and dreads release, Caesar spoke thus: "Live, though you have no wish to! and, by my bounty, bask in the sun. Be your now-conquered friends' good hope, show them what I'm like. Or, if you prefer, take up arms once more; for this boon, should you conquer, I shall expect no return." 5r 5 Caesar paused, then ordered the manacles loosed, the bound wrists freed. (Ah! how much better, even were Domitius killed-Fortune had the power!-to spare Roman pride!)

Book II Domitius finds his punishment harsh: for joining the camp of his homeland, led by Magnus and all the Senate-for this he is pardoned! He swallows his galling anger, shrugs off fear, and thinks: 'Will you head for Rome, some tranquil nook to retire to,

520

disgraced? Do you mean NOT to wade into the thick of war's frenzy-you who have lived near death so long? Plunge right in, break every bond of light and life-spurn Caesar's bounty!'

525

* * * Unaware ofhis officer's capture, Magnus meanwhile prepared arms-his added strength to aid his supporters. And now, intending his bugles to signal with next day's dawn, bent on testing his soldiers' mettle before they marched, he spoke to his hushed forces in the voice they revered:

530

"Avengers of crime, men who follow the nobler standards! You truly Roman troops, called to arms not by one man, but by the Senate: when you pray, beg for battle! Hesperia's fields are burning with ruthless devastation, · Gallic fury is pouring across the glacial Alps, already blood has stained Caesar's tainted swords. By the Gods' mercy, the war's first casualties were ours: let sacrilege start on his side! Soon I shall presidelet Rome sue for damages and retribution! "Don't call the battles ahead 'just'-rather, 'the righteous nation's wrath'; nor is this any more a war than when Catiline readied brands to torch our houses, as did his comrades in madness, Lentulus and the crazed brawn of bare-armed Cethegus.

53 5

540

"Oh, pity their leader! when the Fates are willing that you, Caesar, should mix with Camilli and mighty Metelli, you sink to the likes of Cinna and Marius. You will topple as surely as Lepidus dropped before Catulus; Carbo,

545

543

Lentulus: not the Lentulus just mentioned (468), but Publius Lentulus Sura, involved in Catiline's conspiracy. 545 Camilli and mighty Mete/li: two outstanding Roman families, each with many well-known members.

47

Pharsalia

now housed in a tomb on Sicily-he felt our axe-blades! as did exiled Sertorius, who roused the fierce Iberians. "And yet, to tell you the truth, Caesar, I detest linking you with these men; I hate it that Rome must use my hands to stop your raving. I wish that, after his Parthian campaigns, safe and victorious, Crassus had left the Scythian shores so that you might likewise fall to the foe of Spartacus! But, since Heaven has decreed that you, too, shall add to my list of titles, my hand still has the vigor-see!to send a javelin flying; my heart's blood is fierce once more, and hot. You'll learn they're not shy of war, these men who had patience with peace! "Though Caesar calls me 'decrepit' and 'feeble,' let my age not disturb you: what matter if your leader is older? He has graybeards as soldiers! As high as a free people can raise a citizen, I have risen; no higher rung is left me other than royal power. Who plans to outstrip Pompey in the Roman state has boundless ambition. Here, both Consuls will stand, here stand regiments of generals: will Caesar be the Senate's conqueror? Fortune, you do not draw forth events in a rush so blind! you're not so thoroughly shameless! Have his decades of scuffling with Gallic rebels, a life spent in the struggle, made him so brash? or his flight from the Rhine's icy waves? Was it the wild raid on Britain-calling unknown salt marsh 'The Ocean'! a few shots, then he showed them his panicky heels! Or have his foolish threats stepped up since his rumored madness drove the City forth in arms from her ancestral site? All things flee you? Poor lunatic! No, they follow me! "When, with my gleaming standards, I scoured the ocean, before the Moon had concealed her twice replenished orb, the fearful pirate turned his back on the billowing sea and begged me for homesteads on a narrow stretch of dry land. I forced Mithridates, the 'unconquerable' king who blocked Roman destiny, to flee to the Black Sea's isthmus, and,

550

555

560

565

570

575

580

569 Gallic rebels: Pompey here denigrates Caesar's conquest of Gaul (58-5 r), his establishment of the Rhine as Rome's northern border, and his expedition against Britain. 571 unknown salt marsh: the North Sea.

Book II luckier than Sulla, I drove him to meet his death. No part of the world is clear of me, but all the Earth, whatever the sky it lies beneath, bears my trophies; from here to the Phasis' icy waves, lands of the North call me thei~ conqueror; I know the torrid zone in sweltering Egypt and Syene where the shadows never slant; the West fears my laws, as does Iberian Baetis, the last river of all to slap the ebbing brine. Mastered Arabs, belligerent Heniochi, and the race famed for the pilfered Fleece, the Colchians-they all know me. Cappadocians fear my standards; Judaea, too, worshipping her unknown God; also, effeminate Sophene, Armenians, fierce Cilicians, the Taurus-all subdued by me! What war have I left my father-in-law but a civil one?" No shout from his supporters greeted the leader's words, no prompt bugles clamored for the proposed campaign. Magnus could smell their fear. He decided to pull his standards back and not thrust into such a crucial battle troops already cowed by talk of a Caesar as yet unseen. Imagine a bull, driven from the herd in his first contest: he seeks out forest retreats and, in fallow fields, an exile, tests his horns by charging at tree-trunks; nor does he go back to pasture until his neck has healed and his bunching muscles please him; then, victorious, he leads his recovered herd-cows and bulls-to the glades he likes best, defying the herdsman. Like this, Magnus, defeated, handed Hesperia over and, racing down through Apulian farmland, withdrew to Brindisi's watchful towers. Cretan refugees settled this city long ago, colonists carried across the Aegean by ships from Athens whose black sails deceived, declaring Theseus worsted. Here the already cramped mass of Hesperia, squeezing into the strait, flicks out at the sea a slender tongue, which forks and crooks, enclosing the Adriatic waves. And even so, the sea these narrow headlands admit would form no bay, were it not for an island which bars the wild South winds with its reefs, rolling back the thwarted waves. But on either hand, Nature has matched cliffs with rocky crags against the open sea and has warded off squalls, 49

585

590

595

6oo

605

6ro

615

620

Pharsalia that boats might ride at anchor, moored by swaying cables. From here, one scans the whole sweep of ocean, whether sails are bound for your bays, Corcyra, or whether the goal is Illyrian Epirus, sloping into Ionian waves. Here is a haven for sailors, when the Adriatic heaves with all its might, when Ceraunia disappears in mist, and Calabria's isle of Saseno is sluiced with spumy brine. And so, distrusting the situation he left behind, unable to shift the war onto the hardy Iberians (since the Alps with their measureless tracts lay in his path), Magnus addressed the heir of his noble line, his elder son: "I order you to probe the world's outposts: rouse the Euphrates, also the Nile-wherever a rumor of our name has reached, in every town where they know of Rome in the wake of campaigns I led. Farmers scattered across the countryside, former Cilician pirates-send them back to the sea! Rally the rulers of Pharos; Tigranes, toohe is my creature. Don't forget Pharnaces' forces, I warn you, nor the nomad tribes of the two Armenias, nor the fierce clans that crowd the shores of the Black Sea, Riphaean hordes, and those upheld when Maeotis' sluggish ooze freezes solid, where Scythian wagons trundle, and-but why delay you further? Across all the East you'll carry my war; son, you will rouse all the towns I have conquered: let those I have defeated flock to my camp!

625

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640

"But you who stamp the Latin calendar with your names, the first North Wind must bear you to Epirus; from there, across the farms of Greek and Macedon, muster fresh troops while winter gives us time for peace." This said, they all obeyed his orders, launching their hollow ships from the shore.

645

But, never a man to endure peace and lengthy postponement of arms, anxious lest the Fates should work some change,

650

631 639 640 645

his elder/son: Gnaeus Pompeius. See "Pompey." the two Armenias: Armenia Major, east of the Euphrates and, west of that, Armenia Minor. Riphaean hordes: people of northernmost Scythia. you who stamp: i.e., you consuls, Lentulus and Caius Marcellus. See "Calendar."

50

Book II Caesar pursued his son-in-law, tracking his spoor. Others might be content with so many bastions breached at first assault, so many watchtowers surprised and foes expelled, and war's priceless prize, the very head of the world-Rome herselfl-taken with ease. But Caesar, in all things headlong, counting nothing done if anything remained to be done, Caesar pressed on, ferocious, and, though he controlled all Italy, still was resentful: because Magnus was camped at land's-end, they shared the country between them. Then again, not wanting his foe roaming the open sea, he blocked the waves with moles, the wide bay with toppled crags. Into the deep his work sank, wasted: the sea, voracious, swallowed boulders, hid mountains under its sandy floor. Consider: iflofty Erice were tossed into the waves in the middle of Aeolus' sea, not one peak would emerge; likewise, if, with its summit wrenched off, Gaurus should plumb the uttermost depths of stagnant Lake Averno.

65 5

660

665

So, as not one of his moles steadied its mass on the sea-bed, he made up his mind to forge links of felled timber, 670 to lash a sweep of oak trees together with endless chains. Epic tells us how the blustering Persian constructed such a highway when, with his bridges, he made so bold as to shift Europe towards Asia, Sestos towards Abydos; 675 heedless of East winds and West, he crossed the swirling strait of the Hellespont, dryshod, for he sailed his galleys and ships through the heart of Mount Athos. Like this, the sea's mouth narrowed as groves were felled; then, in a mighty pile, Caesar's work rose; high above the whitecaps, a line of towers nodded. Pompey, watching the harbor-mouth pursed by this new-made land, felt his spirit strangled by gnawing anxietieshow will he unbar the ocean? how scatter the war overseas? Again and again, with the wind astern, their rigging taut, his ships crashed through the ocean barriers, splintering tips of the mole in the brine, clearing passage for the rest of the fleet.

68o

68 5

672 the Persian: See "Xerxes." 677 Mount Athos: (mod. Monte Santo) a high mountain in Macedon opposite Lemnos Is.; here L. indicates the entire peninsula by naming its most prominent feature.

51

Pharsalia Wound up in the dark by burly arms, catapults volleyed bristling fire-brands. At last they agreed on the timetable for their stealthy escape. Magnus warned his lieutenants that, lest the noise of setting sail alarm the shores, no bugle must sound the hours, no trumpet summon alerted crews out onto the sea. Time passed: the last stars of Virgo had begun to rise; behind them the Claws, which bring the sun. In silence, they cast off: no anchor rouses a shout as its flukes are hoisted clear of the clutching sands. While yardarms dip like scales, while soaring pine-tree masts are stepped, jittery skippers keep the fleet quiet. Dangling sailors draw the furled canvas down, not shaking the stout cordage out, lest it make the wind whistle. In his prayers, their leader begs only this of Fortune: "If You forbid me to hold Italy, at least permit me to leave her!" The Fates agree-just: with an echoing roar, slapped by his prows, the sea booms; a wave heaves up; with the wakes of so many keels cross-hatched, the waves churn and, boiling and raging, slam onto the beaches. And then, the foe was admitted within the city wallsLoyalty, switching sides with Fortune, had opened the gates. Pell-mell along the horns of the angled pier, Caesar's men rush for the mouth, cursing as waves sweep the fleet away.

690

69 5

700

703 703a 705

(Shame! is Magnus, put to flight, too slight a victory?) Narrow the channel that loosed his ships onto the high seas, tighter than Euboea's channel where waters pound Chalcis. Here, two boats stuck fast. Detachments lying in wait for the fleet grappled them; the shipboard war was hauled to shore. Here Nereus first reddened with a spill of civil blood.

710

69r Historically, P. crossed the Adriatic in March (see Cicero ad Atticum 9.2. I and J.Z.), not in late September. 692 Claws: i.e., it is dawn; however, Caesar says P. set sail at nightfall (Bellum Civile 1.28). 703a Housman added this line.

52

Book II

The rest of the fleet departs, stripped of its rear most vesselslike Jason's craft: when she sailed for the waters of Phasis, Earth thrust up out of the sea the Cyanean Crags; clipped of her stem, a shorter Argo shot clear of the cliffs, and the Clashing Rocks thudded in vain upon empty ocean, rebounded, and froze. Soon the altered color of eastern air warns that Phoebus is on his way and, not yet white, the light reddens and steals their flames from nearby stars; now the Pleiades dim; now wheeling Bootes' Wain, fading, merges once more in the sweep of clear sky. The larger stars vanish, and the very Dawn-star flees before the blaze of day. At last, Magnus, you gain the waves, but your luck is not what it was long ago, when you scoured the high seas of pirates: bored with your Triumphs, Fortune has turned faithless. Driven out with your wife and son, you go, dragging all your Hearth-gods into battle, a giant still, with nations at your side, an exile. A distant site is sought for your undeserved downfall. Do the Gods want to deprive you of a tomb in the homeland? Is that why Pharian sands are condemned to be your pyre-site? No, rather to spare Hesperia. Far off, in a separate world, Fortune would hide her infamy; Roman soil must be unstained, safe from the blood of her own beloved Magnus

53

715

720

725

730

735

Book III

INTRODUCTION The opening scene of the third book is a continuation of the closing scene of the second, thus effectively bridging a break in the narrative. We see Pompey's isolation and loss as Italy falls astern; then, Pompey is visited by a dreadful nightmare, the vengeful ghost of his former wife Julia. Again, we are reminded of Aeneas departing Troy, for it was there that Creusa's ghost appeared to Aeneas (Aeneid 2.768 ff.). The scene shifts away from Pompey's departing fleet to Caesar's army in Rome, where the general's intention to plunder the state treasury is momentarily thwarted (vv. 71-168). Both here and later, in the Druids' grove (vv. 299-452), we see how Caesar's resolve to make civil war has hardened; contrast with these scenes Caesar at the Rubicon and on the outskirts of Rimini in Book One (vv. 183-391). There he wavered, here he charges ahead. The catalogue of the Eastern allies of Pompey (vv. 169-297) is a companion-piece to the equally exotic catalogue of Caesar's Gallic legions in Book One. The final two-thirds of Book Three is devoted to Caesar's attack on Massilia (modern Marseilles). Lucan depicts the siege as an inverted Fall of Troy, with descendants of Aeneas attacking the walled city of descendants of the Greeks. As at Troy, a rolling engine of war is featured; however, Caesar's troops are unsuccessful on land and so turn to an all-out naval battle. Here, Caesar's forces win their first victory at sea. Book Three closes with a series of vignettes in which the civil war-a suicidal sundering of the body politic-is visualized in terms of individual deaths, each of which involves dismemberment of a body or the rending of a family. As in both preceding books, here, too, one of the final images is of a headless corpse, prefiguring yet again Pompey's assassination in Book Eight. 54

BOOK III As the South Wind, leaning into the yielding sails, drove the fleet forward, and the ships skimmed out to open sea, everyone on board gazed ahead at Ionian waves: only Magnus did not turn his eyes from Hesperia's lands, until he saw his home harbors, saw the shoreline 5 (that, for him, will neve¥ come into view again!), saw the hilltops, shawled with haze, fade ... then, wavering, the mountains ... In time, the leader's weary limbs succumbed to a doze bringing deep sleep. Then, filled with horror, a nightmare image appeared-a ghastly head upreared through gaping earth, and Julia stood, Fury-like, on her blazing pyre.

ro

"Driven forth from Elysian dwellings and Fields of the Blest, I am dragged" (she said) "at the outbreak of civil war to the Stygian gloom infested with guilty ghosts. I saw the Kind Ones myself, holding brands which they shake at your forces. 15 The Boatman of scorched Acheron is getting countless ferries ready; Tartarus makes room for myriad punishments; the Three Sisters, despite their clever fingers' speed, scarcely suffice for the task-snapping life-threads tires the Parcae. "When I was your wife, Magnus, you led joyful Triumphs: your fortunes have changed with your bedfellow! Condemned by Fate always to drag her powerful husbands down to disaster,

12

14 15

16

r8

Ionian waves: the Ionic Sea. Elysian dwellings: See "Elysium." Stygian gloom: See "Styx." the Kind Ones: See "Eumenides." Boatman of Acheron: Charon. the Three Sisters: See "Fates."

55

20

Pharsalia your whore Cornelia wed you while my ashes were warm. She can stick close to your standards in war or at sea, so long as I have the right to break in on your notuntroubled dreams and to leave you no time for lovemakingno! let Caesar lay claim to your days and Julia your nights! "The River Lethe's oblivious banks have not made me forget you, my husband. The Silent Kingdom's rulers have allowed me to follow you. When you wage war, I shall haunt your central battle-line. Never, Magnus, will the shades, will my own ghost let you forget whose son-in-law you are! In vain do you slash your plighted troth with the steel: civil war shall make you mine!" With these words, she fled away, a shadow that slipped from her trembling husband's twining arms. Though Gods and ghosts were threatening him with doom, Magnus, greater than ever, raced into arms, convinced of calamity. He said: "Why do we fear a wraith in a silly dream? Either nothing of our emotions is left our souls at death, or death is itself nothing." Low over the waves, the Sun, now departing, had dipped as much ofhis fiery disk as the Moon will miss of hers when she is not yet full or has just been full. It was then that a welcoming land offered the ships easy berth; with sheets hauled in, masts unstepped and stowed, the men rowed ashore.

25

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35

40

45

* * * When the winds snatched the surging fleet from Caesar's grasp and sea's curve concealed their sterns, he stood on the beach, Hesperia's only leader, Magnus driven outa glory that brought him no joy; he fretted to see his enemy sailing safely away. htdeed, good luck never sated this headlong man, nor did winning make it worth deferring the war. At once, he drove from his heart the concerns of war; peace received his full attentionthat, and how he might garner the people's fickle love,

50

Book III aware how, in causes of anger and heights of favor, food is what tips the balance. (He's right! only hunger frees enslaved states. Fear is the purchase when princes feed the idle mob; starving, the rabble knows no dread.)

55

Curio is ordered to cross to the cities of Sicily, where the sea either overran a land-bridge with upthrust waves or severed it, making beaches of what once was inland. There the ocean's force is violent, its waters always working to keep the broken cliffs from reforming their line.

6o

War is also scattered along Sardinia's shores. Both islands are noble providers, their fields fertile. Other lands, with their distant harvests, cannot feed Hesperia or fill Rome's granaries so early or so abundantly. Their rich loam rivals Libya's-even when siroccos drop, North winds rush thunderheads to the torrid zone and, after torrential rains, it produces a bumper crop. When Caesar had taken these precautions, then, as victor, leading troops who bore no arms but wore the guise of peace, he made for hearth and homeland. Alas, had he returned to the City with only Gallic tribes and the North subdued, what a Triumph he could have had, what a long line cif spoils! what scenes of war-Caesar fitting chains to Rhine and Channel, Caesar's lofty war-chariot followed by Gallic chieftains walking with flaxen-haired Britons. Oh what a Triumph he lost by further conquest!

75

Towns and villages watched him marching home, not with cheering throngs, but in silent alarm: nowhere did a crowd come out to meet the leader. Still, he revelled to cause the people such fear-he would not wish to be loved. Soon he had left Anxur's fortress heights behind, marching past the muddy path that parts the Pomptine Marsh, past

So

85

59 Curio: first met at 1.269.

57

Pharsalia Scythian Diane's upland grove, past her holy realm, past the road where Latin Rods lay claim to high Alba. From a lofty crag he at last surveyed, far off, the City he had not seen in all the time of his northern war; he admired his City's walls and spoke to them like this: "Have you, the Gods' abode, been abandoned by men who flee when Mars is at ease? What city will they fight for? Gods be praised that, at this hour, no Eastern frenzy has fallen upon the Latin coast, no swift Sarmatians flanked by Pannonians, no Dacians allied with Goths! Seeing you have so spineless a leader, Rome, Fortune has spared youluckily, this war is civil." He spoke thus, then approached the panic-stricken City. For people believe he will seize Rome's walls with pitchy fires and scatter her Gods, as if she were captive. The measure of their fear is this: they think, 'What he wills, he can do!' No festive shouts, no feigning voices to sham a glad racket-they hardly have it in them to hate him. Patricians thronged Palatine Phoebus' shrine; though none had the right to convene the Senate, they had been hauled out ofhiding. No splendid Consuls graced the sacred chairs; no Praetor (next in line by law) was present; empty benches of office were not in place. Caesar was all. The Curia watched while a private citizen spoke; the Fathers sat in session, ready to ratify any decree-rule by kings, temples for Caesar, the Senate yoked and banished. Luckily, there were more things he blushed to command than Rome blushed to endure. And yet, in one instance, anger flared; Liberty tested, through a single man, whether Right had strength to resist Might: Feisty Metellus, seeing Saturn's treasury-temple stormed by a massed

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103 Palatine Phoebus' shrine: the Senate meets in a temple, being required to gather in a place at once public and consecrated; under normal circumstances, it was convened by magistrates or tribunes, all of whom have fled in the panic. I I 4 Mete/Ius: Lucius Caecilius Metellus Creticus.

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Book III and massive force, sprints up and, breaking through Caesar's ranks, takes up his stand before the still-unopened doors-

(Ever and always, only the love ofgold is free from fear of steel and death! The laws perish, thrown away with indifference, but oh! Riches, the meanest thing ofall, you have stirred up a struggle!) -and, forbidding rapine, Tribune Metellus addresses the victor in ringing tones:

120

"Only over my dead body shall your blows open this temple! The only riches you carry off will be splashed with sacred blood. Thief! Know that my power of office, if defiled, seeks out the Gods at once! A Tribune's curse followed Crassus to war and embroiled him in savage battles! Draw your sword-go on! You need not worry that a crowd will witness your crimes-we stand in a City deserted. No criminal soldier will draw his pay from our treasury! There are nations for you to plunder, citadels to dole out; peace doesn't make you poor, make you despoil denuded Rome: war, Caesar, is ready to hand!" At these words, the victor blazes up in great anger: "You cherish a vain hope of glorious death! I would not sully my hand with your blood, Metellus! No office, no honor will make you worthy of Caesar's wrath. Are you the guardian in whose care Liberty is left? Not yet has that still-distant Day so jumbled sublime with petty that, if Metellus' voice could save the Laws, they'd not rather have Caesar annul them!" Silence. The Tribune failing to step away from the doors, fiercer anger flares: Caesar looks about for sharp swords, forgetting his guise as the toga-dad man of peace. Cotta tries to convince Metellus to halt this reckless attempt: 125

138 144

sacred blood: Tribunes were sacrosanct. Day: the apocalyptic final day of creation. Cotta: Lucius Aurelius Cotta.

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125

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35

q.o

Pharsalia "People whom tyranny coerces lose Liberty by taking liberties: you will at least preserve her shadow if you do what you are ordered to willingly. We, the conquered, have obeyed all things unjust; our shame, our vile panic has one excuse: in no case had we the power to refuse. May Caesar's removal of grim war's seeds be speedy! Fines affect a people under its own jurisdiction; a slave's poverty grieves not the slave but his master." Straightway, Metellus is shoved aside; the temple lies open; at once, the Tarpeian Rock re-echoes, testifying with a great groan that the temple doors have been thrown back. From deep within, treasures of the Roman people, stored untouched for many years, are rooted out-what the Punic Wars and Perseus, too, had yielded; booty from conquered Philip; gold the panicky Gaul left behind in his flight, 0 Rome, and the king's bribe which failed to tempt Fabricius to sell You; all that the ways of our thrifty ancestors saved up; what Asia's opulent peoples sent us as tribute, what Minos' Crete handed over to conquering Metellus; what Cato carried across the wide seas from Cyprus. And the latest trove of the Orient's captive kings, Persia's royal hoard which headed Pompey's Triumph-that, too, is fetched out. This sorry looting despoiled the temple, and Rome was then, for the first time, poorer than a Caesar.

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50

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55

160

165

* * * Meanwhile, all over the world, Magnus' fortune had drawn into battle the nations doomed to fall with him:Greece, the nearest, lent her support to her neighbor's war. Amphissa sent her Phocian bands; craggy Cirrha and both Mount Parnassos' peaks 158 Perseus: not the mythological hero, but the last king of Macedon. Philip: Philip V of Maredon. 159 Gaul: See "Brennus." 163 Metellus: Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus, not the tribune, Lucius, who appeared above (v. 114).

6o

Book III were left deserted. Boeotian leaders gatheredmen the tireless Cephissos rings with oracular waters, men of Cadmean Dirce; bands from Pisa, from the Alpheus, hurling its waters under the seas to Sicilian folk. And then Arcadians left Mount Maenalos; troops from Trachis, from Hercules' Oeta, Thesprotians, Dryopes came running, and venerable Selloi left the silent oaks atop Chaonia's ridge. Althogh recruitment emptied all Athens, only the sketchiest fleet sailed into the harbor at Apolloniaa mere three keels to lend credence to tales of Salamis.

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180

Next, Cretebeloved of Jove, ancient Isle of a Hundred Cities-entered the fray: Knossos, skilled at handling bowmen's gear, and Gortyna, rival of Eastern archers.

185

Then came those who dwell in Dardan Erikho, nomadic Athamanes scattered in upland woods; Encheliae, whose age-old name recalls Cadmus' death and transformation; Medea's island, Absyrtos, lashed by the Adriatic; men who till Peneus' banks, r 76 Pisa: the Greek, not the Italian city. 190 Absyrtos: whether river or island is not clear; more important for L. is the evocation of myth. See "Medea."

61

Pharsalia and those by whose toil Thessalian plowshares furrow Haemonian Iolcos. (From there men first assaulted the sea, when primitive Argo, scorning the shore, mingled stranger-tribes and first pitted the human race against gales and Ocean's raging breakers; that sailing ship added a singular form of death to the ones ordained!) Men abandoned Mount Haemus in Thracc and Pholoe, storied haunt of the biform breed. Men deserted the Strymon, that sends its Bistonian cranes to the warm Nile each winter; so too, barbarous Cone, where one mouth of the many-branching Danube loses its Sarmatian waters and laps brine-splattered Peud~. Mysia, too; also the land flooded by icy Caicus, Idalos' land; and Arisbe, whose soil is so shallow; and men who till Pitane, and Celaenae, which laments Your gift, Pallas, land condemned by victorious Phoebus, where the Marsyas-swift cascade between steep banksjoins the wandering Meander and, 198 Pholoe: a haunt of centaurs. 199 200

Bistonian: Thracian. See "Bistones." Cone: apparently an island at the mouth of the Danube; otherwise unknown.

62

195

200

205

Book III so mixed, doubles back; also the land that allows Pactolos to flow from its goldyielding mines, where the Hermus-no less rich-splits the fields.

2IO

Ilium's ill-fated troops likewise sought out Pompey's standards and doomed camp, undeterred by the tale of Troy or by Caesar, the self-styled 'Son of Phrygian Julus.' Syria's peoples joined; men deserted the river Orontes, also Nineveh, known for prosperity, windy Damascus, Gaza, as well as Idume's wealth of date-palm groves, and tottering Tyre, and Sidon's precious beds of murex. By no indirect sea-path did these ships sail to war; for them more than for all other fleets, the Pole-star was sure.

2I5

(Phoenicians firstif we credit the tale-dared to make words permanent, using signs and crude characters, long before Memphis had learnt to weave her river-reeds, while she was still carving birds and beasts, hieroglyphics scratched on stones, to preserve her spells and priestly sayings.)

220

Men deserted Taurus' groves and Persean Tarsos, 217

225

The region around Tyre is subject to earthquakes.

63

Pharsalia the cave of Corycusempty chamber in hollowed rocks; Mallos and far-off Aegae echoed with dockyard sounds; Cilicia, no longer piratic, launched lawful warships. News of the war roused the Eastern hinterlands, too: tilled lands by the Gangesthe only river on earth that dares direct its open mouth straight at Phoebus' nsmg, driving its waves head-on into Eastern galesthe place where Pella's general stopped and, waters of Tethys behind him, confessed himselfbeaten by Earth's expanse; lands where the Indus flings its rushing stream down a forked channel, paying no heed when Hydaspes' waters join its flood; lands where men suck sugary juices from tender cane, tinge their hair with saffron dye, tie up the spill of their billowing robes with strings of bright-colored gems, build their own pyres and, still alive, climb up onto their blazing biers. (By God, what glory it is for a race to have taken death in its hand and, sated with life, given what remains to the Gods!) Cappadocians came, ferocious pirates 233

Pella's general: Alexander the Great.

230

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Book III turned farmers of stony Amanus; Armenians, too, who hold rock-strewn Niphates' slopes. Choatrae departed forests that brush the uppermost air. You Arabs arrived in a world you found unfamiliar, marvelling at trees whose shadows fail to fall to the left. Then the Roman frenzy roused remote Orestae and Carmanian chieftains, men whose sky has begun to curve southwards and who watch at least part of Arctos sink, there where Bootes shines, short-lived, for a few briefhours a night; it roused Ethiopian lands (which no star in the Zodiac would touch, did not hunched Tauruswith one hind-leg doubled under himstretch out the tip of a single hoof); war roused the land where, with the rushing Tigris, mighty Euphrates raises his head. (Persia produces these streams from springs not far apart; if the land mingled the rivers, it's a moot point which name would dominate their waters; but, flooding the fields, fertile Euphrates functions much as Pharian waves do, while Tigris, gone underground, swallowed by a sudden chasm, covers its secret courses; 248 260

to the left: i.e., to the west; L. means they come from south of the equator. Pharian waves: the Nile. See "Pharos."

245

250

255

260

Pharsalia over and over, this river, reborn, wells up anew; Earth cannot block its seaward path.) Between Caesar's battalions and the ranks opposed to him, pugnacious Parthians made no distinction but sat back, happy they'd cut the number of rivals to two. Scythians dipped their arrowheads in poisonnomads enclosed by the Bactros and H yrcania, cold current and desolate forests. From one quarter came: Lacedaemonian Heniochi (a rough-riding tribe); Sarmatians (kin to the harsh Moschi); men from where Phasis slices Colchians' golden acres; from where Halys flows, fatal to Croesus; from where the Don, plunging down the Riphaean ridge, tags its banks with the names of two worldsfor it serves as the boundary of Asia and Europe, too, keeping the borders of Earth's center distinct; where it winds, it enlarges first one world, then the other; men from where the Black Sea drains the waves of Maeotis through seething straits, filching glory from Hercules' Pillars since people deny that only Cadiz lets in the Ocean. 266 rivals: See "Triumvirate."

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Book III

From another quarter, Essedonian tribesmen, and you, men of Arimaspis, who loop up your gold-twined braids; from elsewhere came brave Arians and Massagetae, men who make war on Sarmatia, then break their long fast by bleeding the horses they fled on; from a third region came the Geloni. Not Cyrus who led his battalions down from the kil"l:gdoms of morning; not the Persian who swooped with a host tallied by gauging the stream of lances they loosed; not the cuckold's vengeful brother who launched a thousand shipsnot one had so many kings in his train. Never have troops so mismatched joined forces, tribes so far from having a common tongue. All nations were rallied by Fortune, called to serve as endless Disaster's escorts, a worthy cortege in Magnus' funeral procession. Horn-crowned Ammon did not skimp when he sent Marmaric squadrons to war-what troops parched Libya could field, from Moors who live where the sun sets

280 284 285 286 293

Essedonian tribesmen: See "Essedones." Cyrus: either Cyrus I or II. the Persian: Xerxes; Herodotos (7.60) says that Xerxes' army numbered I,7oo,ooo. cuckold: See "Menelaus." Marmaric squadrons: Africans. See "Marmarica."

280

285

Pharsalia to Paraetonian Sidra away on the eastern shores.

295

Lest fortunate Caesar fail to receive all things at once, Pharsalia gave him the world to conquer at one fell swoop.

* * * When Caesar departed the ramparts of trembling Rome, he flew back by forced march and recrossed the cloud-capped Alps. Though other townsfolk went pale with fright at this news, Phocaean Massilians, with most un-Greek steadfastness, dared in those risky times to uphold their sworn oath of allegiance, to follow not Chance but Right. At first, they tried to temper the man's ungovernable frenzy and hard resolve with pacific speech. When their enemy drew near, they made their pleas, bearing before them a sprig of Minerva's olive: "Whatever chapter in Latin annals one consults plainly shows that, when in the past your people have warred against outsiders, Massilia always shared their fortunes. Even now, if your quest is Triumphs in worlds unknown, enlist our sworn sword-hands in your foreign campaigns. But, if in discord you intend calamitous strife and heinous battles, we weep for your civil armsand stand aside. Let no hands other than yours traffic in impious wounds. "Should frenzy drive the Heaven-dwellers to take up arms, should Earth-born Giants assail the stars, human piety would nonetheless not dare to assist Jove with either arms or prayers, and the mortal race, not knowing the Gods' fates, would only guess from His lightning that Heaven still acclaimed as its king the Thunderer. "Besides, countless nations come running from every side, nor does the slack world so shrink from the taint of atrocities that civil war should have need of conscripted blades! 295

Paraetonian Sidra: See "Paraetonium."

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Book Ill

"If only all men would have the resolve to reject your destiny, and no foreign soldier would join your war! Whose right arm will not falter at sight ofhis own father? Will brother not halt the shower of barbs aimed against brother? The evil is soon finished if you do not enlist the arms it is right to enlist. "Here is what we most pray for: that you should leave your fierce eagles and menacing standards far from our city and freely entrust yourself to our wallsallow us to let Caesar in and shut warfare out! Spare this site your crimes, keep it safe for Magnus and you; then, if Fate should pardon your unconquered city, should peace be your choice, you would have a place to come to unarmed.

J2 5

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335

"Again, since grave crises of war call you to Spain, why turn your hasty steps here? We carry no weight in affairs, we tip no scales-a band never known for its luck in arms, banished exiles from our country's age-old seat, defending ourselves, after the ramparts of charred Phocis 340 were carted away, with meager walls on an alien shore, illustrious only for honesty. "If you prepare to ring our walls with siege-works and smash through our gates, we are prepared to let your firebrands and shafts land on our roof-tops; to scrape up scant swallows of water from choked springs and, 345 when we are thirsty, to lick the fresh-cut clay of trenches; if Ceres runs short of grain, we will foul and smear our mouths with things loathsome to look at, disgusting to touch. "Nor is the populace here afraid, for Liberty's sake, to endure all that beleaguered Saguntum bore in the Punic War: infants tugging at nipples dry with starvation, torn from their mothers' breasts, will be thrust into the flames; the wife will plead for her own death at her dear husband's hands; brothers will, if forced, exchange mortal wounds and wage a civil war more to their taste." Thus the Greeks ended their speech; at once, Caesar's wrath-already betrayed 340 Phocis: L. means Asian Phocaea, not Greek Phocis.

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355

Pharsalia by his stormy expression-declared its outrage in words: "Vain reliance on our need for haste inspires these Greeks. Although we're speeding off to the world's westernmost clime, there is time to raze Massilia. Rejoice, my cohorts: by Fate's generosity, we meet with war en route! Just as a wind-if no woods dense with timber oppose itloses its vigor, blows itself out over empty space; just as a great blaze dies down if nothing stands in its path; so do I fret for want of a foe. We reckon our arms wasted if those we could conquer fail to rebel. But if I should go-alone, demeaned, my army disbandedthen their village awaits me! In fact, they want not so much to shut me out as to have me shut in! But they say they want to avoid war's dread 'taint': you'll pay for your peaceseeking and learn there's nothing safer while I'm alive than war under my command!" This said, he wheeled his army against the fearless town-and finds its walls sealed with barricades, crowned with a crowd of fighting men. Not far from the walls was a knoll, ground swelling to some height, its top flattened, levelled off, forming a little plateau; this the leader deemed defensible-belted with fortifications, it would prove a safe campsite. The nearest city quarter rose to a lofty fortress level with this knoll; between lay a deep valley. And so a plan was formed, one that would cost much laborto join the two hills together with vast earthworks.

360

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3So

But first, so as to close off the city completely on its landward side, Caesar extended a line of works from his high camp down to the sea, and once his trenches had clipped lowland springs and fields of grain and fodder, he stretched out arms of sod and raw earth, their tops crowded with merlons.

Truly this one deed suffices to bring the Greek town glory forever worth telling: she was not stampeded nor Jelled by mere fright, but held up the headlong rush of engulfing war; though Caesar swept all else away, 70

390

Book III her conquest alone delayed him. VVhat a feat! to cheat Fate in her race to make one man world ruler! to cost Fortune even a few days! Then, far and wide, every last grove came crashing down and forests were stripped of their timber; for, since the works had a core ofloose dirt and brushwood, logs were needed to bind the soil and brace it with lateral scaffolding, lest the mound give way beneath the towers' weight. There was a grove from a bygone age, never ravaged, caging within its laced branches dusky gloom and icy shadows; high above, the banished sun. Here no rustic Pan holds sway, no powers of the forestSilvani or Nymphsbut, barbarous in its ritual, a cult of Gods: altars heaped with hideous gifts, every tree around them splattered with human gore.

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405

If Antiquity, awed by the Gods Above, has earned our trust, in those branches birds feared to perch, and beasts were afraid to lie in lairs there; neither wind nor lightning, snapped out from black clouds, elbowed those woods aside, and, although the trees held out their leaves in a breathless calm, each of its own volition shivered. Then, from dark springs, multiple ripples cascaded. The Gods' images, grim and crudely fashioned, started forth, rough-hewn, from felled trunks.

410

71

Pharsalia

The very earth, the pallor ofheartwood long since rotted down to powder, left men thunderstruck. Divinities consecrated in common shapes can never cause fear like thisso much does it add to human terror not to know the Gods we fear! An old tale told how frequent earthquakes made the hollow caverns bellow; how, though they'd fallen full-length, yewtrees flourished anew; how conflagrations blazed in a wood that was not burning, and how, wreathed around sturdy boles, pythons writhed. The people never thronged that place injostling worship, but left it to its Gods. Whether Phoebus gleamed at zenith, or black Night held sway in the skies, the very priest trembled to enter, fearing to trouble the Lord of the Grove. This wood he bade his unleashed .steel to fell, for it stood near his siege-works. Untouched in previous wars, it seemed all the more dense, standing among hills stripped bare. But brave hands shook; awed by the place, its venerable air of majesty, they believed, if they struck the holy heartwood, their hatchets would surely rebound against their own limbs. When Caesar saw his cohorts freeze,

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Book Ill

their hands paralyzed, he dared be the first to snatch up a double-headed axe, heft it and, with its blade, chunk sky-high oak. Leaving the blade sunk deep in the ravaged bole, he intoned: "Lest any of you hesitate longer to overthrow a wood, assign me the sacrilege." Then the whole troop obeyed his orders, not unanxious, panicky still, but ... they had weighed the anger of Gods Aboveand of Caesar.

435

Full-length now the ashtrees fall; gnarled holmoaks crash, and mantic oak of Dodona; alder, adept at skimming the waves; cypress, witness when nobles grieve at graveside: all then, for the first time, laid down their leafy heads and, topped, let in daylight; flung down, the wood used its dense timber to prop itself up as it fell.

440

They groaned to see thisthe Gallic tribes; but, enclosed by their walls, the Massilians cheeredfor who would imagine that Gods could be wounded without reprisal? (Fortune protects many a culprit, and only on the wretched do Deities visit Their wrath.) When the men had felled enough of the grove, they scoured the farms for carts to remove it; the soil cries out for the crooked plow,

445

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73

Pharsalia for oxen, too, were taken. Farmers wept for their crops. But the leader, impatient at prospects of a lengthy siege, went to his Spanish legions at the ends of the earth, leaving orders to carry on. With stars oflatticed scaffolding, the mound climbs higher and matches the height of the city walls with twin towers: no stout posts dowelled this pair to the earth; rather, they crawl by invisible means along a causeway. Seeing the Roman edifice nodding, the Gauls believed wind was pounding Earth's pockets of empty space, seeking to burst forth, and they were amazed their walls stood firm. From the towers, missiles fell into the city's lofty citadel. But Greek steel did greater harm to Roman bodies: for their barrage-not launched by man's unaided muscles, but shot by the catapult's tight-wound force-did not come to rest, content to have ripped through a single ribcage but, cutting a swath through corselet and bone, flew on, leaving death in its wake: this weapon wounded with strength to spare. Every time a stone is lobbed by the cable's tremendous action-the way blasts of wind in league with passage of time will wrench a boulder clean away from a mountain-peakit smashes all in its rushing path, not just crushing life from flesh but wiping out limbs and blood altogether. Even so, courage-beneath a snug testudo-moved up under the hostile walls: those in fro11t lapped shields, rim over rim, and this extended boss, held high, roofed their helmets. Missiles which, when shot long-range, had done them damage, now fell to their rear. No easy job for the Greeks, to adjust trajectory, alter the range of their "twister" -an engine designed to fire bolts at distant marks; but trusting to weight alone, they rolled out stones with their bare hands. Just as a roof, pelted with harmless hail, merely rattles, so the Roman shields, while still interlocked, repelled all weapons; but, no sooner did the men's valor 460

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470

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480

wind: one theory held in antiquity suggested that earthquakes resulted from winds blowing in underground caverns; see Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones, 6.25.1.

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Book III 48 5

waver, as soldiers flagged, than the solid carapace caved in; one by one, the shields gave way to continuous blows. And now the mantlet moved up, thinly coated with clay. Soldiers screened by its light panels and plated exterior prepared to sap the foundations and topple the walls with crowbars. And now, the ram-whose heavy, swinging rhythm of blows augments its force-tried to jar the bulwark's fabric loose, to dislodge from the masonry one stone block. But, from above, flames and chunks of the mighty parapet, a flurry of stakes and blows from fire-hardened oak poles pounded the mantlets; legions gave ground, their effort spent in vain, and each soldier, drained, retired to his tent.

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The most the Greeks had prayed for was that their walls should stand: now they planned to take the offensive. At night, hiding flickering torches behind their shields, courageous troops sallied forth. Neither spear nor the deadly bow, 500 but fire served as their weapon: wind, catching the flames, swept them along the Roman works in a swift stream. Though it wrestled with green wood, the fire was far from slow to show its strength; spurting away from every torch, it chased after billowing scrolls of black smoke; 505 the blaze destroyed not only forests but vast cragsjagged boulders melted away into grit and gravel. The mound crashed; it looked larger, lying flat on the ground.

* * * Hope for victory on land was lost; the Romans decided to try their luck on the deep sea.No glossy figureheads glittered on warships tricked out with bright-painted wood, but rough-hewn timber straight from its hillside felling was lashed together-a steady deck for naval warfare.

510

By now, the fleet that sailed behind Brutus' turreted flagship had come down to the sea on the flood of the Rhone; 514

515

Brutus: Decimus Brutus, not the tyrannicide. See "Brutus."

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Pharsalia

they anchored off coastal islands. The Greek troops were no less willing to trust all their strength to Fortune. They armed aged grandsires and mixed them in with cadets. Troops not only boarded the fleet that rode at anchorthey also scoured the dockyards for tubs slated for scrap.

520

Phoebus scattered his morning rays across the calm sea, splintering them on the waters; the air was free of douds; North Wind dropped, South Winds held their peace; the sea lay calm, dead calm, set aside for war. From every anchorage, each captain's vessel sprang forth. With rival strength, 525 Caesar's ships on one side, the Greek fleet on the other rose on their drumming oars; urged forward, the hulls shuddered; staccato strokes sent the tall ships tearing along. The Roman fleet formed up-a crescent with craft of every sort at its tips: stout triremes and those propelled by a four-tiered bank of rowers, and ships that dip even more oars in the brine. This force was placed blocking the way to the open sea. In such lunate formations, Liburniansfast craft content with a mere two banks-are the ones to hang back. But, taller than all the other craft, Brutus' flagship, driven by six banks of slapping blades, advances its bulk over the deep, her topmost oars groping for distant water.

530

53 5

When only as much of the sea lay between them as each fleet could rush across with a single beat of the blades, countless voices rose and swirled in the wide clear air, 540 drowning the sound of the oars' percussion till no bugle's notes could be heard. Then-! the rowers swept the blue, leaning back on the thwarts, thumping their breastbones with oar-hafts. As soon as beaks collided and crunched opposing beaks, 545 the ships backed water, moving stern-first; hurled lances hid first the sky, then, as they fell, the empty sea. And now, the tips of the crescent spread as prows drew apart; gaps in the new formation admitted enemy ships. Think how, whenever the surf battles East Wind and West, waves run one way, the ocean mass another: like this,

550

Book III when the ships drew by-passing wakes in the furrowed sea, water that oars of one ship pulled, those of another pushed back. Now the Greeks had light, maneuverable craft that darted in to attack or swooped away in flight, quick to change course with a tight turn, not slow to answer a swing of the tiller; but the Roman ships provided stable footing, a surface with purchase fighting men liked as well as dry land.

55 5

Then, to his steersman stationed on the poop beside the ensign, Brutus said: "Why permit our lines to wander the deep? Is this a contest of seamen's skill? Close in at once! Expose our craft broadside to the Phocaean beaks!" The man obeyed, and offered the foe his ship side-on.

560

Thereafter, any vessel that tried Brutus' strength stuck fast, beaten by her own blow, the rammed flagship's captive; grapples and smooth-linked chains caught other boats, or they fouled their own oars. The sea was solid wood: war at a standstill. And now, bunched muscles cease to send javelins flying nor, when steel is hurled, do distant wounds rain down: men fight hand-to-hand. In this naval battle, the sword performs most deeds. Each man stands on his own ship's deck, leaning out to strike his foes; none who were hit fell on their own ships. Slicking the waves, a swill of gore foams up; the ocean-swells are encased in a crust of blood, and those ships snagged by chains of grappling iron cannot be hauled alongside for the bumping clumps of corpses. Still half alive, some men sink into the fathomless depths and choke on salt water mixed with their own blood. Others, drawing breath that wrestles with slow death, perish in the sudden breakup of their vessels. Barbs that miss their shipboard marks pick off men in the water, and any steel that falls short, its impact cheated, is intercepted-it finds its wound in mid-ocean.

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One Roman ship is walled in by Phocaean craft: her crew splits up, port and starboard, to defend both sides 77

Pharsalia with balanced warfare. While Catus is fighting on this ship's high poop deck and-bold man!-is grasping a Greek stern-ornament, he is pierced, back and chest alike, by two spears thrown simultaneously. Inside his chest, iron collides, and his blood stops, undecided from which wound it should flow, until copious gore thrusts out both javelins at once, dividing his soul and splitting his death between two wounds. Here, too, poor Telo pilots his craft with dexterity: ships in a raging sea never heeded another more quickly; none more likely to forecast tomorrow's weather aright when he squinted up at the Sun or the Moon's horns to discover how to arrange his sails for approaching gales. Telo would have rammed the Latin craft and shattered its frame, had not javelins, quivering, made their way into his chest. The dying pilot's right hand slipped from the tiller. Gyareus thought to clamber aboard from a friendly ship; as he shinnied up, he took a grappling hook in the groin; pinned to the ship by one fastening claw, there he dangled. Here stand identical twins, their fecund mother's pride, boys birthed from the same womb-but for such different ends! Merciless Death took one twin: now the wretched parents cannot mistake the identity of the one remainingand so they weep endless tears. He keeps their grief ever before them, ever recalling the lost brother they mourn.

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When raking oars crossed and locked, the luckless twin had dared to grasp a Roman ship from his Greek stern; 6ro a heavy downward blow lopped off his hand; it clung on still, grew stiff in death, its grip as hard as when, clutching with knotted muscles, it first laid hold. In these straits, the man's courage burgeoned; he showed a nobler rage as amputee. He renewed battle with his brave left hand 615 and, meaning to take back his right, leaned out over the sea. This hand, too, and his whole arm were hacked away at the shoulder. Now, though he lacked both shield and shafts, he did not cower 585 Catus: Catus and the other characters in the following scenes are fictional; many of the names, however, appear in the cavalry battle in Aeneid Eleven.

Book III

below decks, but stood exposed, screening his brother's armor with his own naked chest, now pierced by countless spearheads. He stopped shafts that would have dropped many friends, long after he had earned his death. Then, into his spent limbs he gathered the life that was seeping away through many a wound; with all the energy he had left, he tensed his body and, although his muscles lacked strength, he leaped aboard the enemy ship, meaning to wound with his weight alone. Full of crewmen's corpses in heaps, awash with blood, this Greek vessel suffered a battery of blows broadside and, after her seams had burst, she took on water, filled up to the tops of her hatches, and sank beneath the waves, sucking the sea on all sides into a tight-coiled whirlpool. Calm waters drew back, split apart as the vessel vanished: where the ship had been, the sea fell in. And many and strange were the forms death took on the sea that day.A grappling iron, digging its hooks into a ship, snagged Lycidas. He would have been dragged overboard, had his friends not prevented it, hanging on tight to his ankles. He was ripped apart. Blood from burst veins did not ooze as from a wound: this was a geyser, a downpour falling everywhere. The gap in life-force, pulsing still through divided limbs, was filled with salt water. No other man's life was released through a channel so wide. The lower half of his body gave death those portions containing no vital organs; but where the swelling lungs lie, where the guts steam, there death was balked for a long time and, struggling hard with this part of the man, barely succeeded in getting him all.

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The over-aggressive crew of one ship was leaning on her dipping rail and had left her deck unmanned on the side empty of foes. Because of their massed weight, the ship flipped, kennelling sea and sailors beneath her hollow hull; 650 swimmers could not flail across the width of the vast deep but, in their enclosed sea, perished. And then, a most singular form of horrible death was observed when, by chance, two ships from opposite sides rammed their beaks through a swimming soldier. 79

Pharsalia With blows so forceful, his chest vanished halfway down: his bones were ground to powder, his frame had not the strength to stop bronze clashing on bronze; his belly was crushed; blood mixed with intestines squirted in gouts from every orifice. After the warships reversed and drew back their beaks, his body dropped into the sea with chest cleft, sluicing water through its wounds. Most of one crew, shipwrecked, wrestling with death, arms flailing, surged all in a body towards the aid a sister ship offered. But, when these men, despite warnings, clutched the ship's side high up and the boat rocked, ready to sink if so many were taken on board, then the ruthless crew on deck cut off their arms at the elbow. These forearms, left behind, dangled from the Greek ship's rail as men fell away from their own hands: the waves no longer sustained their heavy torsos atop the tide.

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At length, every shaft had been fired and all were defenceless. 670 Now frenzy invented weapons: one man flung his oar at the foe; others, strong-armed, a whole stern-ornament; rowers were shoved aside, their benches torn up and hurled. For this sea fight, men broke up their boats. They snared butchered bodies settling to the bottom and stripped cadavers of steel. 675 Many in need of a missile to fire in return tugged free from their own wounds a lethal javelin and, with the left hand, shovelled their guts back in, that their blood might give them strength to strike and not flow till the hostile spear had gone flying. But, in this sea fight, no plague begot more slaughter than the element least like water: fire, wreathing torches of resinous pine, enlivened by the sulphur it mantled, soon spread everywhere; and, quick to supply fuel, the hullssmeared with pitch and slathered with wax-exploded in flames. Nor did waves combat the blaze: like a wild thing, fire pounced on wreckage from vessels already littering the sea. One man deliberately let in the waves- Put out flames with brine! Others, to avoid drowning, clung to blazing spars. Death in a thousand forms, but only one was fearfulthe one they'd begun to die of. 8o

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Not all the shipwrecked lost heart: some retrieve spears dropped in the sea and hand them up to crews, or aim unsteady hands to deliver feeble blows from the waves; again, if the stock of steel runs low, they press the sea into service-foe embraces savage foe and, grinning, they sink with limbs entwined, glad to die drowning an enemy. One man in this fight was Phoceus, famed for holding his breath under water, a deepsea diver who'd look for objects sunk in the sand; and when an anchor failed to respond to a tug on its cable, he'd yank loose the tooth of its deeply embedded fluke. Phoceus had grabbed an enemy and dragged him down deep; now he was swimming back up to the top, the unharmed victor. He thought he was rising through open water; in fact, he cracked his skull on a keel and never surfaced again. Some men flung their bodies across the enemy's oars and blocked the ship's flight. That their death not go to waste was their chief concern. Many a man, wounded and dying, lashed himself to his ship's stern to fend off ramming beaks. High above on his lofty prow stood Tyrrhenus. Lygdamus, skilled at winding the Balearic sling, took aim, fired a whizzing pellet, and shattered his hollow temples with solid lead. Squeezed from their sockets when blood burst all their moorings, his eyes shot out. Light vanished. He stood thunderstruck; then he thought: 'This is the darkness of death.' But, once he sensed that his limbs retained their vigor, he said: "You! Comrades! Set me up, just as you would your 'twisters,' aimed in the right direction for hurling spears. Tyrrhenus must spend what is left of his life in all war's hazards. He has a soldier's one outstanding service still to perform: though he is now largely a useless cadaver, he can be killed in a living man's stead." With this, he hurled shafts at the foe. His aim was blind-but not ineffective; Argus, a lad of noble blood, caught one of his spears just beneath the navel, where belly and groin meet, and assisted the steel by pitching forward with all his weight.

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Pharsalia In the opposite end of the now conquered ship stood Argus' hapless father-a man who, at the height of his powers, would yield to none in Phocaean arms; bowed by time, his strength had waned; now, weary with years, he was heroic but not a soldier. When he saw that deathblow, stumbling in haste against rowers' benches, the old man scrambled the length of the warship and found his son was still breathing. Tears did not fall down his cheeks, he did not beat his breast, but threw up his hands as his whole body went rigid. Night stole up, and immense shadows sealed his eyes and, though he knew poor Argus was there, he could not see him. The son, his neck drooping now, lifted his lolling head at sight of his father. No voice escaped his parted lips; only the boy's beseeching glances begged for a kiss and asked that his father's right hand should close his eyes. When the old man shook off his faintness, and cruel grief began to take hold, he said: "I'll not waste what time the savage Gods have granted! No, I'll slash my old throat from ear to ear. Forgive your poor father, Argus, that I have fled your embraces, fled your final kiss. Not yet has the warm lifeblood seeped out of your wounds. You lie there half alive and can survive me still!" With these words, he drove his sword into his own guts; though he stained it up to the hilt, still he dove into the sea headfirst. In his haste to die before his son, he did not trust his soul to a single means of death. Soon the leaders' destinies tipped; the battle's outcome was no longer in doubt. The Greek fleet was, in large part, sunk. What ships remained had changed their crews; now they had their captors on board; only a few gained the dockyards in headlong retreat. How the tears of Massilian parents flowed! how the mothers, lining the shore, beat their breasts! Many times a wife, clasping a corpse, imagined it bore

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Book III her husband's face, for the surf had rubbed out its features. While pyres burned, father fought anguished father for a body without a head. But still, Brutus' victory at sea was the first to add maritime glory to Caesar's arms.

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Book IV

INTRODUCTION Book Four picks up the account of Caesar's activities, which broke off in the previous book at the point when he left the siege of Massilia to his subordinates and departed for Spain (vv. 453-455). Caesar and his style of command are sharply contrasted with the two Pompeian generals fighting against him; whereas Caesar's passion for sole power is one of the causes of the civil war, Afranius and Petreius share a joint command in complete harmony. The landscape contributes a visual element to this contrast, for on two occasions, the armies camp atop adjacent hills. Remembering Lucan's family connections with Spain lends his depiction of the countryside some added interest. Perhaps in all the Pharsalia, no episode so poignantly illustrates the unnaturalness of civil war as Lucan's description of the fraternization between the two camps at Lerida (ancient Herda). In the remaining half of Book Four (vv. 402ff. ), Lucan gives us two further military episodes, one at sea and one again on land. The first of these is a minor incident in the overall sweep of events: Pompeian forces trap a raftload of Gauls loyal to Caesar and, in an act of misguided courage, the Gauls commit mass suicide rather than submit to capture (vv. 402-581). Then the scene shifts to Libya, where the Caesarian Curio engages Pompey's lieutenant Varus and defeats him, only to be defeated in his turn by the wily African, Juba. But, before Curio meets his end, he hears the myth of Antaeus and Hercules as told by an anonymous local inhabitant (vv. 59366o); unfortunately, Curio fails to apply the lesson of the myth to his own situation. In all three episodes, the Spanish campaign, the Gallic suicide pact, and the African campaign (or four, if we separate the recounting of the Antaeus myth), Lucan displays his narrative powers. Settings, characters, action are all superb.

BOOK IV But far away in a land at the ends of the earth, Caesar savagely roused Mars; guilty oflittle bloodshed, the War-god was ready to load the leaders' fatal scales with iron weights. In Spain, balanced authority: Afranius governed the camp with Petreius; their concord led them to split their joint command equally, share and share alike, and the watchful sentry patrolling their rampart obeyed the orders of each in turn. Besides their Latin troops, they had brisk Asturians, nimble Vettones, and offshoots from the ancient tribe of Gauls-Celts, who merged the Iberians' name with their own. Loamy soil mounds in a gentle hill, and its height mounts in an easy slope. Topping it rises Lerida, founded by men of old; before it glides the tranquil stream of the Segre-not least among Iberian riversspanned by the stony embrace of a bridge with a vast arch, ready to withstand winter floods. A nearby bluff held Magnus' standards, and Caesar made camp on a hill no less high; between them, dividing their tent-grounds, the river. Beyond, the land spreads out, unfolding wide plains as far as the eye can see-plains that you confine, rapacious Cinca, forbidden to dash your own current at Ocean's waves and shores, for your torrent is mixed with the Ebro, that gives this land its name and robs you of yours. The first day of warfare sidestepped the bloody War-god, parading the leaders' strength and numerous troops in a show

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Pharsalia of force. The horrors of war repulsed these frenzied men; shame stalled their arms-they gave fatherland and shattered laws one day's respite. As the sky tipped towards nightfall, Caesar encircled his legions with a hasty trench, dug while his front lines stood to arms; he hoodwinked his enemy and shifted his camp up close while squadrons kept him covered. By dawn light he called for a sortie to scale the hill which stood between his camp and the town, keeping Lerida safe. Terror and shame alike drove his foe to match his move, and, by marching fast, they took the hill first. Courage and swords promised the mound to one side; to the other, their position did. In full kit, Caesar's men struggled up the bluffs. Tilted back, infantry clung to the rock-face in danger of overbalancing, held erect by the shields of those behind. No man's weapons were free for action: slipping and sliding, each used his spear to secure his footing, clutched at outcrops and saplings and, ignoring the foe, hacked a path with his sword. The leader saw his companies sway on the brink of disaster, and called his cavalry in to take the brunt of the onslaught by wheeling left so as to place their protected flank between his men and the foe. This way, the troops were easily rescued, pursuit was forestalled, and the winners, deprived of battle, held their ground-baffled.

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* * * So far, arms had determined events; the remaining fortunes of war were due to shifting patterns of fitful weather. Winter set in with stupefying cold, and dry North winds froze the ether, imprisoning rain in the clouds. Snow flared on the mountains while, down on the low-lying plains, hoarfrost never outlasted its first glimpse of the sun, and all the earth near where heaven immerses the stars grew thirsty and hard beneath a serene winter sky. 37 full kit: See "Legion." 54 where heaven immerses the stars: i.e., to the north.

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But later, in spring, looking back at the other Signs, the Ram Helle fell from felt Titan's heat; thereafter, once the hours had evened out again in level Libra's scales, day drew ahead. Then, deserting the sun, Cynthia gleamed, a crescent at first, faintly discernible; shunning the North Wind, she caught fire at the East Wind's breath.

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Any clouds the East Wind discovered in his domain he sent scudding westward with Nabataean blasts, together with mists that Arabs perceive and those the Ganges' 65 land exhales, whatever the wind that darkens the sky to the East had herded in, whatever was shading the Indus. The clouds' removal made day in the Orient blaze, nor could they dump their burden of storms at Earth's equator, but whirled them along in their flight. The North was drought-stricken, as was the South; moist air flowed to Spain alone. Here, where the West begins, where the furthest edge of sky meets the sea, the clouds, forbidden to run beyond, rolled into massive balls; the space that separates earth from ether scarcely had room for the conglomeration of slate-black air. 75 Soon, crushed up against the sky, they condense into heavy downpours; squeezed tight, they gush. Lightning cannot keep its flames lit, though it flickers ceaselessly-cloudbursts douse the thunderbolts. Now a rainbow embraces the sky, its arc broken, almost monochromatic, the light is so dim; it drinks So from the Ocean, gulping waves and pumping them back up to the clouds, replenishing moisture released from the heavens. Soon, on the Pyrenees, snows that Titan had never had strength to thaw poured down the mountains; the rock-face streamed as the ice 85 broke up. And then, water that normally flowed from springs had no channel, so vast was the influx that every current received from over its banks. Soon, Caesar's troops are shipwrecked, swimming on the plain, and their camp, smashed by the deluge, 57 Ram: L. indicates first a change in the season, then (vv. 59ff.) in the weather. See "Aries." 60 Cy1Jtlzia: the moon; L. personifies the natural elements, treating them as a love triangle, at the same time indicating a reddish moon and shifting wind. See "Diana''

Pharsalia washes away, and rivers form lakes behind his high walls. Rounding up flocks is impossible; the drowned furrows yield no food; foragers, scattered across the farmlands they cannot see, mistake their way on submerged and treacherous roads. Soon, the constant and prompt companion of widespread woes appeared-cruel Famine. Although no enemy besieged him, the soldier starved; though not a wastrel, he gave all he had for a handful of grain. (Dear God! The gray plague cif avarice! One glint cifgold, and there's no shortage offamished vendors.) Now the hummocks and hills lie hidden, now one swamp has gulped all rivers, swallowed them down its great gullet, gobbled up crags and devoured the dens of wild animals, sucked in the animals as well, swirled its roaring waters into unexpected whirlpools, and, stronger than Ocean, repelled the tides. Night flung her web across Heaven, sensing Phoebus would fail to rise; the ugly look of the sky, its uninterrupted shadows, blur Nature's distinctions. Like this, the coma in which Antarctica lies, that snowy zone oppressed by perpetual winter; it sees not a star in the sky, nothing bears fruit in that glacial sterility; but with its ice it eases the fire of the torrid Signs.

Like this, 0 supreme Father of the World! keep it like this, Ruler of the Second Realm, Neptune of the Briny Trident! May You overhang the air with perpetual stormclouds, and may You forbid what tides You sent forth to ebb again! Let rivers have no channels sloping down to the shores, but be flung back by the ocean's waters. Let Earth shake streambeds loose-may the Rhine wash over these Spanish plains, and the Rhone, too-let rivers run back to their vast springs! Melt Riphaean snows in this land, here pour out pools and lakes and sluggish swamps, wherever they lie: snatch up the piteous lands, save them from civil war.

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But Fortune, content to have frightened her favorite a little, returned in force, and the Gods smiled and were more than usually gracious-to earn his pardon! Soon the air brightened and Phoebus, a match for the waters, had scattered the dense clouds into fleece, and nights blushed red as the dawn's light approached; natural order was now restored, moisture drew back from the stars, and what rain was left aloft fell on the sea. Forests began to lift up their leaves, hills to emerge from pools; the sun peeped out, and valley floors grew firm. As soon as the Segre, departing the plains, resumed its banks, silvery willows were polled, osiers soaked and woven into little punts which, covered with dressed oxhides, took on passengers and went skimming about on the swollen river. Compare the Venetian navigating the flooded Po, the Briton his wide North Sea; compare, when the Nile tops all, how a Memphis skiff is plaited of thirsty papyrus. Ferried across in these boats, the troops on either bank scrambled to axe trees, bow and break them; fearing the fierce river's increased strength, they did not build their bridge close to the banks but extended it out to distant fields. And, to prevent the Segre from bold attempts with renewed waters, they split it into channels, its current diverted-ditches punish the water's uprising. Seeing how everything goes to advance Caesar's destiny, Petreius deserts Lerida's heights; spurning the known world's forces, he seeks out untamed populations, men whose desire for death makes them exult in the sword: he makes his way to the ends of the earth.

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Surveying the bare hills and deserted campsite, Caesar gave orders to grab weapons and, rather than head for bridge or ford, to cross the river using their own strong arms. I 50 He is obeyed: men rushing to battle pelt down a path which, in flight, they would have balked at. Soon they are drying drenched limbs and strapping on gear once more; bodies the torrent had chilled

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her favorite: i.e., Caesar. ditches I punish: Herodotos tells a similar story about Cyrus punishing the river Gyndes (1.!89).

Pharsalia grew warm as the soldiers strode along till their shadows shortened with day rising towards noon; and now, his cavalry nip at the enemy's heels. Hesitant to flee or to fight, they halt. A pair of crags rear up their stony peaks from the plain with a valley cupped between; from here rugged country raises a range of steep hills among which, winding and shaded, a track lies safely concealed. Caesar sees at a glance that, should his foe be swallowed up by that gorge, the War-god would take to the wilds among savage tribes. He says:

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"Go-break ranks-and turn back the battle they snatch by their flight! Force them to look at the face and menacing features of war! Don't let those shivering curs die cowards' deaths-see to it I65 that these runaway slaves encounter your steel full in the chest!" So he spoke and reached the mountains before the enemy. There they set up their camps, quite close together, with sketchy fortifications. When, with no distance to dull their sight, their eyes met and men beheld well-known faces, then the horror of civil war sprang out at them. Just at first, from fear, they held their tongues, only saluting their kinsmen with nods and waves of the sword. But soon, as glowing love urged them more fiercely, discipline snapped. Soldiers boldly clambered over the ramparts, reaching out to embrace with arms wide. One man shouts a friend's name, another hails his neighbor, boyhood school-fellows reunite: the man was not Roman who did not recognize a foe. They soak their weapons with tears, sobs interrupt their kisses, and, though not yet stained with a drop of blood, the soldier dreads the deeds he could have done. Why do you beat your breast? Why groan aloud, poor fool, and pour out useless tears? Why not confess that you choose to obey the command of crime? Do you so fear the man you yourself made fearsome? If his bugles signal battle, ignore their savage blare; if his standards advance, halt: in a flash, civil fury will fade; private citizen once more, Caesar will love his son-in-law.

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Book IV Guardian of life, of a world in harmony, braiding, binding all things together, 0 Concordia, come to us now, sacred Love Universal! These men have a choice, crucial to future ages: all shadows concealing these crimes have vanished, no excuse for our guilty people- THEY KNOW THESE MEN ARE THEIR KIN!

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Oh, the evil cunning of Fate, to use this brief respite to make such enormities worse! There was peace. Soldiers mingled and strolled about in both camps; atop the hard turf ramparts, working in harmony, they set out convivial meals, libations of mingled wine; hearths of grassy sod burned bright; reclining side by side, they spun out sleepless nights with stories of warwhich was their first battlefield, how forceful had been their lance-throw. While they tossed out tales of exploits performed and gainsaid many more, the wretches renewed trust-which was all that Fate desired!-and the whole coming atrocity worsened with their love. For, when Petreius heard of this peace treaty, and saw that he and his camp had been betrayed and disgraced, he raised a force of his personal slaves for a heinous attack and, flanked by this throng, he swept weaponless foes from his camp; men with their arms entwined he split with the sword, and with much shedding of blood dismantled peace. His ferocious rage added a speech likely to spark battle: "Oblivious of fatherland, forgetting your standards! Soldiers, if you cannot offer this to the Senate's causeto march home as champions, Caesar's defeaters-then surely, you can offer to be defeated? While you have your swords, a fate unsettled, and blood to flow from many a wound, will you run to a master, take up standards you once despisedand will you beg Caesar to think no less of you 91

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Pharsalia than his other slaves? Did you also plead for your leaders' lives? Never shall our safety be the price and wages of unspeakable treason! Civil war is not fought that we may live. We are dragged away in the name of peace. Nations would not haul up iron from shafts that run deep underground, no fortifications would barricade towns, the valiant charger would not go to war, nor the fleet to sea, ready to strew the ocean with turreted ships, were it at all proper to trade liberty for peace! "Apparently, sworn oaths bind my foes to unspeakable crime, while you consider your vow less valid than theirs, since men who fight on the side of justice are granted the right to hope-even for pardon! Oh the hateful demise of honor! "Magnus! ignorant of your fate, you are, at this moment, raising levies all over the world, rallying kings who rule far-flung lands-though perhaps by our 'treaty' you are already promised your safety!" His words struck home in every mind, leading them back to their love of crime. Think how wild animals, long used to the forests, grow tame in cramped cages, set their menacing demeanor aside, and learn to submit to man; but, if a drop of blood once touches their fiery chops, frenzy and fury return, jaws aroused by the taste of gore swell, and anger boils up, only just held in check by the shaken trainer. Every evil was tried, and monstrous deeds that Fortune, to spite the Gods, might have brought about in the blind night ofbattle, were done by Duty. Amid tables and couches they gashed the flesh which but lately they'd held and caressed; though at first they groaned as they drew the steel from its sheath, once the hilt fitted itself to their grasp, the blade seduced them from justice; while they struck, they loathed their own kin, spurred faltering purpose with thrusts. Soon the camp boiled with mayhem. As if secret crime were worthless, they made sure their leaders saw their every monstrosity; their guilt made them gleeful.

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You, Caesar, though stripped of many a soldier, you knew the Gods' handiwork when you saw it. For you had no such luck on Emathia's fields or on the waves ofPhocian Massilia, nor did you fare so well on Egypt's shore since, by this one criminal act of the civil war, yours became the better cause. The joint command dared not trust their troops, now stained with unspeakable slaughter, to camp close by; they began to retreat, back to lofty Lerida's walls. Cavalry intercepted, cutting them off from the plains entirely, driving them up to the arid hills. Now Caesar was eager to seal them up in their waterless state with a steep-sided trench, to forbid their camp to reach the river or fling up walls to embrace bountiful springs. When they saw how their path led on to death, their fear changed to headlong rage. The soldiers butchered their horses-such aid was of no use to prisoners. Forced at last to abandon hope and renounce flight, they made up their minds to die and attacked their foes. When Caesar saw them pouring outmen pledged to fight, come what may, facing certain deathhe said: "Hold back your barbs for now, soldiers, refuse these suicides your steel. May the war cost me not one drop of blood! Victory is no bargain when the foe taunts you with throat bared. Look, these lads coming at you hold themselves cheap-they despise life! They're ready to die-now!-at my expense. They'll feel no blow, they'll fall on your blades, they'll cheer when their blood pours Let fervor drain from their minds, let the mindless assault falter, let them lose the will to die." Thus, by denying them battle, he let their bravado burn down and drift vaguely away, while Phoebus sank and Night lit her own lamps in his stead. Then, when no chance was granted to mingle in mortal combat, little by little, their fierce rage escaped and their minds cooled, just as gladiators, gashed in the chest, display greater courage while pain and wound are fresh, while hot blood furnishes 257 Egypt's shore: i.e., site of Pompey's assassination. See "Pharos."

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Pharsalia muscles with force and agility, before their bones have tugged the skin taut; if, knowing his sword has struck home, the winner stops, dropping his hands at his sides, then the loser's strength ebbs, and icy numbness knots limbs and spirit both, after the clotting blood has puckered his dried wounds shut. And now, in need of water, they first entrenched the earth, seeking hidden springs and undiscovered rivers. They dug up the meadows not only with shovels and sturdy picksswords, too, got pressed into service. Through the pocked hill, a well was bored down to the level of the stream-fed plainpallid miners, Asturians delving for gold, will not sink themselves so deep nor so far withdraw from daylight. But no rivers gurgled in underground channels, no springs came bubbling up when they tapped the porous stone; caves sweating a scanty dew yielded no drop of moisture, nor was the gravel they scraped aside stirred by the least rivulet. Then the men, exhausted and soaked with sweat, were hauled up to the surface, worn out by the grim and flinty mineshafts. And oh, how the search for water had robbed them of strength to withstand the parching heat! Nor did the tired men nourish their spent bodies with food: rejecting the meals set before them, they made an ally of hunger. Where slightly softer ground promised dampness, they squeezed spongy clods with both hands over their mouths; if a stagnant pond lay choked, scummed with black muck, every soldier fell on the foul drink eagerly-dying, he swallowed water he would have spurned on the verge of victory. In the manner of wild animals, they milked swollen flocks, and when there was no milk left, they sucked clotted blood from drained and empty udders. Next, they pulped grasses and leaves; they tore down the branches of trees dripping with dew and, if any of these had green shoots or tender pith, they extracted the juices.

0 happy the men lefi strewn over the fields by hostile barbarians who, as they fled, fouled the springs with poison! Though Caesar should dump the gore and offal of wild animals into the streams, adding pallid aconite gathered from Dicte's rocks-and do so openly-these Roman soldiers, fully aware, will gulp it down. 94

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Book IV Their guts caught fire, their arid mouths felt gritty and stiff to their scaly tongues. 325 Soon, their blood vessels shrivelled; with no moisture, their lungs hardened and choked off the regular respiration of air; their palates cracked, and each rasping breath was agony: still they opened their mouths and swallowed the air that so hurt them. They longed for rain-which but lately had pelted down and left 330 everything swimming! They fastened their gaze on the arid clouds. And, that their craving for water might wear the wretches down even more, they had camped-not beyond burning Meroe under the sign of Cancer where naked Garamantes plow but, trapped between flooded Segre and swirling Ebro, the thirsty battalion had both rivers in clear view. At last, the worsted leaders gave way. Afranius urged that they sue for peace-he now despaired of arms. Suppliant, dragging his half-dead squadrons into the enemy camp, he stood before the victor's feet. Pleading, he still preserved his dignity-bad luck did not break him. Between his previous fortune and current plight, he bore all that a conquered man must but, a general still, asked for mercy with equanimity: "Had the Fates brought me down before an unworthy foe, I did not want for a firm sword-hand to grasp my death. But now I have one reason to ask for safe conduct: I believe that you, Caesar, are worthy to grant me my life. We are not driven by partisan zeal, nor did we take up arms in hostile response to your policies. Civil war, as it happens, found us in command and, while it was possible, we were loyal to the prior regime. By no means do we hinder destiny: lands to the West we surrender, open the way to the East, free you from worry about the region left at your rear. No blood poured out on the plains has ended this war for you, no steel or exhausted sword-hands. Forgive your foes this one fact-that you are the winner. "Nor do we ask for muchrest for the weary, permission for those you spare to live a life free from warfare. Think of our troops as men 333

Meroe: L. uses Cancer to indicate both position (south) and climate (hot).

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Pharsalia killed in action-for it's not sound practice to mix ill-fated 360 arms with lucky ones, giving men you've captured a share in your Triumph. This army has lived out its destiny. This we ask-that you not force the conquered to conquer with you." His speech ended, and Caesar-agreeable, expression calm-was won over: he freed them from combat duty and punishment both. As soon as the leaders had settled the terms of formal accord, infantry raced to the unguarded rivers, flung themselves down on the banks, and churned up the streams that they now could reach. Many men found that an excess of water, hastily gulped, choked them, blocked off their breath, and stopped air flowing into empty blood-vessels. Nor did the feverish malady subside even then, but-insatiable sickness!-demanded fluids though bellies were already waterlogged. In time, strength and vigor returned to muscle and man. (0 prodigal Waste! Luxury, never content with things that cost little, known for your ostentatious appetite for foodstu.ffs culled on land and sea, your pride in a lavish table! Learn how little it takes to sustain life, what a morsel Nature requires! It was not some noble vintage, casked in the year of a Consul now forgot, that revived these ailing mennor did they drink from goblets ofgold or agate: their life flowed from a pure stream. Men can live on water and grain.)

Pity the wretches who carry on fighting! These soldiers, leaving their swords for the victor, stripped of their breastplatesthese are safe! Innocent men and free ofhardships, they fan out, heading for home. Oh, how they regret-now that peace is theirsever having exerted their strength to send the steel spinning, ever having suffered thirst, or pleaded in vain for the Gods' aid in battle! Surely, for those Mars favored, there remain all hazards of war,

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Book IV woe all over the world. That capricious Fortune may never slip from success, they must conquer again and again, must soak every land with their blood, must follow Caesar through all his twists offate.

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Happy the man who knew in advance, as the world swayed and crashed, the spot where he would fall! No battles summoned these weary soldiers, no trumpets shattered their pleasant dreams. Now their wives and tender children, their humble cottages and native soil welcome them homeno colonies for them! Still another burden Fortune lifts from these carefree mentaking sides is no longer a worry of theirs. One general sees to their safety, the other once led them: so they alonehappy men!watch civil warfore with no need to pray.

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* * * During the war, Fortune was not constant the world over, but dared put up a little resistance to Caesar's side. Where the waves of the Adriatic slap straggling Salona and where, amid mild zephyrs, the warm Iader flows out, there, relying on the Curictes (a bellicose race of men bred on the island lapped round by the Adriatic), Antony was trapped. He pitched his camp on the shore, sheltered

405

397 colonies: victorious generals often paid off their troops with holdings in the conquered land, thus securing the new territory with settlements of veterans. 405 Iader: an Illyrian town of this name is known, but not a river. 408 Antony: Gaius Antonius, Mark Antony's brother; a Caesarian. See "Antonius."

97

Pharsalia from all war's assaults but one-the one that stalks and outfights strongholds: Famine. The soil sent up no fodder for grazing horses, golden Ceres yielded not one harvest. Soldiers had stripped the plain of grass and, since the poor wretches had already shorn the fields with their teeth, they now wrenched dried weeds from the sod walls of their camp. The moment they saw allied troops on the hostile mainland-'Basilus at their head-they devised a novel scheme for escape over the deep: they neither laid long keels nor built high decks in the usual way, but pegged stout planks together-a clumsy design but able to bear great weight. At either end, empty barrels buoyed the platform, a line of them lashed together with lengths of chain, arranged in double rows to support the transverse boards. Nor did this craft carry her rowers on an open deck, exposed to shafts, but, palisading the men who churned up the sea, she posed a puzzle-miraculous locomotion!since she bore no sails nor visibly oared the deep. Then, they watched the waters until the tide ran with waves sloping away and sands were bared as the tide flowed out; soon the beach began to widen as the sea slid back. The raft was launched and moved off, gliding on smooth waters, two sister craft with her. Rearing high above each, a steep tower shuddered, bristling with raised merlons. Octavius, posted to guard the Illyrian "'aters, chose not to attack the raft at once, but stayed his swift corsairs till the prey should increase after a lucky passage; with a peaceful sea, he enticed them, bravely embarked, to risk a second crossing. The hunter, too: until he has cornered stags that his feathered scare has alarmed-for they fear its scent on the breeze-, or until he has raised his poles and rigged his nets, the hunter will muzzle his fast Molossian's belling jaws,

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Basi/us;· also Caesarian; Pompey's forces hold the coast. 433 Octavius: not the future emperor Augustus, but Marcus Octavius, commander of Pompey's Illyrian fleet. 440 Molossia11: breed ofhunting dog. See "Dogs."

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Book IV

tie up his Spartan and Cretan hounds, trusting no dog in the woods but the one who tracks spoor with snout well down, with never a thought ofbarking, the dog content-even when prey is found-to point lairs with a tug at his leash. Without delay, the rafts fill up; eager men rush on board, deserting the island just at dusk, when the last light of day interferes with the first shadows of night. But, on Pompey's side, Cilicians prepare to weave an ocean snare-an ancient skill of theirs: leaving the sea surface smooth, they sling cables underwater across the straits and let them float there slackly, rope-ends belayed to rocky Illyrian cliffs. Neither the first raft, nor the one that followed next was arrested, but the third barge-stopped cold when it snapped taut-followed the cable in to the cliffs.

445

Hollowed crags overhang the sea; always about to topple, their mass stays put-a wonder!-and shadows the sea with woods. Here the tide often brings ships, wrecked by northern gales, and drowned bodies, thrusting them deep into unseen caverns. The sea within returns these prizes and, when the caves spew forth their waters, the waves of this eddying whirlpool outdo the seething fury of Sicily's own Charybdis.

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Here the barge, loaded with Gauls from settlements north of the Po, came to rest. Warships unhitched from every mooring-place had her surrounded; other men crowded the cliffs and beaches. Vulteius spotted the treachery lurking beneath the sea -he captained the raft-and attempted in vain to slash their bonds with his sword, roaring for battle the while; he had not a hope, unsure when he was turning his back, when his breast toward attack. But even in this calamity, caught off guard, valor did what it could: between the many thousands surrounding the captured raft and the men on board (not quite a full cohort), battle raged-but not for long: night soon hid the faltering light with its shadow, and darkness enforced peace. Then Vulteius steadied his horrified cohort, so fearful of imminent doom, with an uplifting speech like this:

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cohort: theoretically, six hundred men but more typically three hundred; it seems likely that, historically, Vulteius had only six men with him.

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Pharsalia "Free for only the length of this little night! Lads, take thought in these few, brief hours for ultimate concerns. No man's life is too short if it affords him time to contrive his own death. Nor does it diminish the glory of suicide, lads, to select it when fate is upon you. Since the tally of days yet to come is a mystery to all, there is equal merit both in forfeiting years you thought would be yours and in snapping off the last second of life, provided you die by your own hand. No one is forced to want to die. No escape beckons; on all sides our countrymen stand, ready to fly at our throats. Make death your choice, and all fear vanishes. Love what is forced upon you. "Still, we need not fall in the blind storm of battle or when their own weapons envelop clashing battalions in darkness. When heaps of corpses litter the field, any one death is merged in the count, valor is drowned, lost. The Gods have set us on board ship in sight of friends and foes alike. The sea will supply us with witnesses; Earth, too-mainland and craggy island will grant them; from their separate shores, they'll be watching us-both sides, both factions. "I know not what mighty and memorable lesson You plan to draw from our deaths, Fortune: whatever records Loyalty has preserved through the ages and those that Duty has kept of the sword in active service-our troop could have beaten them! For, Caesar, we know that to fall on our swords in your cause, counts for little; but, besieged as we are, greater deeds elude us-deeds we would dedicate, pledges of deep devotion. Hateful Chance has cut away much of our praiseworthiness, since we are not held captive with our old men and children. Let the enemy learn that heroes have no masters, let him fear our courage-so reckless and ready to die! Let him rejoice that he failed to ensnare more rafts! "They'll be planning to lure us with offers of truce, they'll want to bribe us with shameful life: oh how I wish-so our peerless death might gain more famethat they would promise forgiveness, that they would bid us hope for pardon-so that, when we skewer our guts with warm steel, they'll not think we despaired! With thousands dead, it will need great valor to make Caesar call the loss of a few 100

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Book IV

a damaging blow. Suppose the Fates should grant us release and respite-I would not choose to avoid what tomorrow holds. 5r5 I have cast life aside, my friends-I'm wholly aroused by the sting of immediate death-a kind of frenzy ... Only those whose onrushing fate is already upon them are granted the revelation: those who will go on living-the Gods keep them in the dark, that they may endure to live on: death is a blessing!" So his ardor uplifted every 520 mind among the wavering troop. Although, before their leader's words, they had all gazed at the starry sky with streaming eyes, trembling as the Wain's pole swung round, these same men-now that his sermon had entered their stout heartsprayed for the dawn. Nor at that season was heaven slow 525 to plunge its stars in the ocean; for the sun was in Gemini, his light at the zenith with Cancer close by; night was then brief, hard on the heels ofThessaly's Archer. Dawn disclosed Spaniards standing along the cliff-tops and, on the sea with the Greek fleet, Liburnian fighting men. First, with hostilities suspended, they tried to cozen the Gauls with treaties, thinking trapped men would find death's delay sweeter than actual life. The devoted troop stood firm, life already renounced, fierce and unconcerned by the fight, since they had pledged a suicide pact. No onslaught shook these heroes-their minds were made up to meet the worst; their few withstood countless foes, an attack launched by land and sea. Such is the confidence death inspires.

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And when it seemed sufficient blood had flowed in battle, they turned their frenzy away from the foe. The raft's captain first, Vulteius himself, demanding his doom, now bared his throat, saymg: "Does any lad here have a sword-hand worthy of my blood? who, wounding me, will declare in no uncertain terms that he is willing to die?" His eloquence went no further:

525 528

that season: the night of the summer solstice (c. Thessaly's Archer: See "Sagittarius."

22 June),

540

the shortest night of the year.

IOI

Pharsalia not one sword-dozens whipped round and pierced his gut. He praised them all, but the man to whom he owed his first wound he killed-dying and grateful, dealt him a mortal blow. The others clashed: they, a single faction, enacted war's every horror. Think of the men who sprang from the seed ofCadmus-Dirce's cohort, felled by wounds received from their own kinsmen, a hideous omen for Theban brothers. Think of Earthborns, bred on the banks of the Phasis from sleepless dragon's fangs: when magic incantations fanned their rage, they made Jason's furrows brim with kindred blood; Medea herself paled at this, the first horror worked by her untried herbs. Like these, the young men fell, each one pledged to kill the others, finding, as brave men died, that their own deaths called for bravery least. They simultaneously dealt and died oflethal blows; no man's right hand failed him, though he struck while strength seeped away. No wound was due to the sword's thrust-steel was rammed by breastbone, and jugulars pressed against deathstrokes. Although, in this gruesome arrangement, brothers were slaughtering brothers and sons the men who had sired them, no right hand ever trembled; men drove their swords home with all their weight. Executioners had one way to show loveno man asked for his death twice. Soon, half-dead men were dragging their spilled guts across the broad platform, letting their blood stream into the sea. Eyeing the light they had spurned, glaring with scorn at the victors, well aware of their own demise, they were exultant. Soon, the raft is seen to be heaped with reeking carnage; the victors consign the corpses to pyres for burning, leaders marvelling how any man could hold his leader so dear. Scurrying over the globe, Fame prattled louder and longer of this vessel than of any other.

545

Yet despite the lessons these heroes taught, cowardly nations will not perceive that it is no arduous feat to escape slavery by one's own hand; they Jtur tyranny because of its sword, and Liberty shrinks from savage steel. They forget that weapons were granted that none need live as slave.

575

5so Dirc€'s cohort: See "Spartoi." 551 Theban brothers: the Theban fratricides, Eteocles and Polyneices. See "Oedipus." 102

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Book IV

sso

Death, I wish that you would scorn to claim men who live in fear, that courage alone would bestow you!

* * * No less brisk the battle that blazed up now-in Libyan fields. For swashbuckling Curio launched his ships from Sicily's shore, his sails filled with wind-not strong, but from due North, and he gained a beachhead between Clipea's well-known anchorage and the half-ruined fortress of mighty Carthage. His first camp he pitched inland, far from the foaming sea, where the Bagrada inches forward, furrowing dry sand. From there he sought the uplands, a ring of beetling crags which custom with some reason calls "Antaeus' Kingdom." Since he was curious to learn the source of this ancient name, a local rustic imparted the tale told by his forebears:

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"Still not barren after birthing the Giants, Earth conceived a terrible progeny deep in Libya's caves, nor did the Primeval Mother have such cause to boast of Typhon, Tityus, or fierce Briareus. She spared Heaven when she failed to send Antaeus out to Phlegra's battlefield! On her dear offspring's already mountainous strength, Earth piled this further boonthat, whenever he touched his mother, his limbs, though long since wearied, would freshen, their vigor renewcd.

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"This cave served as his lair; men say that he lurked at the foot of this soaring crag, that the game he grabbed for his larder was lion. For sleeping, his practice was

103

Pharsalia not to spread animal skins for a couch nor boughs for bedding, but, by lying on bare ground, to replenish his vigor. The tillers of Libya's fields he killed, killed, too, the men that the sea washed ashore. For a long time, his courage had no need of the help that falling gave, and he spurned Earth's gift; though he stood upright, none surpassed him in strength. "Finally, widespread word of this bloody menace brought Hercules to Libya's shores, the greathearted man who was ridding both land and sea of monsters. Hercules threw aside the hide of the Nemean Lion; Antaeus, a Libyan lionskin. Next the stranger sleeked his limbs with oil, the way Olympic wrestlers do; the Giant, anxious about the slight aid gained by touching his feet to his mother, rubbed his limbs with burning sand. They locked hands and forearms together in a complex knot; for a long time, brawny shoulders tested necksuseless: each man held his head up, stock still, with scowling brow, surprised to have met his match. "Now Hercules took care not to use up all his strength in the early stage of the contest, and thus wore his man outwhich the other's ragged breathing betrayed, 104

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Book IV as did the icy sweat on his sagging body. First his aching neck begins to shake; next, chest is crushed to chest; then his legs give way, knocked out from under him by a sideways jerk. Soon the victor had his opponent's yielding back pinned and, gripping his loins, squeezed his midriff; shoving his feet between the Giant's, he stretched his thighs wide, laying Antaeus out full length. "Arid earth soaked up Antaeus' sweat: his veins fill with a rush ofhot blood, his muscles bunch, all his sinews tauten, and, tingling from head to toe, he breaks Hercules' burly holds. "Hercules sprang to his feet, astonished at such vigor. He had been less afraid in Lerna's swamps, despite his raw youth, seeing the Hydra he'd beheaded refurbished with serpents. "They squared off, a matched pair: one drew strength from Earth, one from himself. Never did the cruel stepmother have greater cause for hope: she saw sweat drench his limbs and heroic neckdry the day he held up the heavens! A second time, he grappled, despite his limbs' fatigue; Antaeus, 637 cruel stepmother: Juno, Hercules' lifelong enemy. 639 held up the heavens: See "Atlas." 105

Pharsalia anticipating his enemy's use of force, fell on purpose, received new strength, and rose refreshed. Any vitality deep in the soil was rushed up to his tired limbs and, on her wrestling son's behalf, Earth labored. "At length, when Hercules understood what his opponent gained from touching his mother, he said: 'You must stand up! No more contact with the soil! You're barred from lying on Earth! You'll stick close, up against my chest, with your limbs squeezed tight: here's where you'll fall, Antaeus!' He spoke, then hoisted the athlete who strained to roll in the dust. Though her child was dying, Earth was powerless to pump energy into his veins: Hercules blocked her, uplifting the torso now strapped with icy torpor, long reluctant to trust his foe to the dust. "Hence the guardian of time past, storied Antiquity, her own greatest admirer, settled on this name for the land. But Scipio gave these hills a grander appellation when he forced the Punic enemy's recall from Latium's citadel; for this was his campsite when first he took over the Libyan land. 656 Scipio: Scipio Africanus, victor of Zama. 657 Punic enemy: See "Hannibal."

ro6

Book IV

There you see traces of old entrenchments. Here, on these plains, Roman victory first gained a foothold."

66o

Curio was smug, fancying the luck of the site would wage his war and continue for him previous leaders' good fortune; in this happy place he pitched his hapless tents, gratified by this ground, stripping the hills of their magic; for he, with strength out-matched, challenged a savage foe.

665

Such regions of Africa as had bowed to Roman standards were then commanded by Varus. Although he put his trust in his Latin troops, he still called up Juba's widespread forces- Libyan tribes, battalions from the ends of the earth that followed the king as their own. Never was so much land mastered by one man: at its broadest point, his kingdom had as its westernmost boundary Mount Atlas, near neighbor of Cadiz; on the east, bordering Sidra, Ammon's oasis. At its fullest length, the burning sweep of his vast kingdom split off Ocean from parched tracts of equatorial heat. Tribes inhabit throughout. All flock to Varus' camp: Autoleans, Numidian nomads, Gaetulian bareback riders ready at a moment's notice; Moors dark as Indians, needy Nasamones, Garamantes burnt by the sun mixed together with fast-flying Marmaridae; Mazaces who match Parthian archers when hurling their humming spears; also Massylian tribesmen, riding bareback, guiding with a tap of the crop-their horses have never been bridled; also African hunters, who travel light, taking their tents with them and who, when they lose faith in their spears, will fling a voluminous cloak over the head of a charging lion.

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Nor did partisan zeal alone prompt Juba to take up arms, but private resentments, too, roused him to give battle. 667 Varus: Pompeian commander first met in Italy, 2.466. 687 partisan zeal: Juba's father owed his throne to Pompey. 688 private resentments: In contrast, Juba had grudges against both Caesar and Curio: the former had interfered in Numidian affairs; the latter had, as tribune in 50, introduced legislation to make Numidia a Roman province.

107

Pharsalia That year when Curio wronged both Gods Above and men, he had also tried, with a tribune's law, to oust Juba from his ancestral throne and to wrest Libya from her monarchwhile making Rome a vassal! Recalling the insult, Juba reckoned this war was sweet reward for keeping his throne; Curio thus had cause to shiver at news of the king. Further, his legions had never been fanatic supporters of Caesar: these soldiers had not been seasoned on the banks of the Rhine but held captive in Corfinium's citadel. False to their previous leader, distrusted by Curio now, they counted both sides legitimate. Seeing the slackness sluggish fear induced-night patrol of the rampart shirked, guard posts deserted-in some alarm, he addressed his staff: "Daring disguises panic: I shall seize the offensive, take up arms first. Have the men march down to level groundwhile they are still mine! Idleness always encourages doubt: root out rebellion with battle! Once sadistic pleasure swells at the sword's heft, once visors disguise the blush of shame, who thinks to judge his leaders or weigh the worth of causes? Men back th.e side they're on. In Games at the deadly arena, same thing: no long-standing feud makes gladiators clashthey hate whoever steps into the ring." With that, he deployed his ranks on the open plains, and smiling Fortune of War, planning betrayal and future disasters, welcomed him now, for he drove Varus from the field, routed his rearguard, put them all to disgraceful flight and, until they reached camp, cut them down. But when Juba heard the grim news that Varus had lost the battle, he exulted because the glory of winning was kept for his army. He moved his troops up in secret and flung a veil of enforced silence over his maneuvers, fearing one thing on the part of his reckless foe-caution.

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689 That year: 50. 692 Rome a vassal: the irony L. sees is that Curio lobbied for legislation that would free Africa from her tyrant Ouba) while working to put republican Rome in Caesar's power. 697 Corfinium: See 2.478ff. 698 their previous leader: i.e., Domitius Ahenobarbus.

108

Book IV Sabbura, second-in-command ofNumidian troops, was sent with a small detachment: mission-Attack the foe, provoke a fight, make him think he's met his full opposition. In a deep valley, Juba would hide with the kingdom's main forcemuch as the wily mongoose teases Egyptian vipers with its tail, driving them into a rage with its dancing shadow, till the serpent has spent its venom on empty air; then, head angled, the mongoose bites his enemy's throat in safety, too close to be harmed by the poison; at last, the lethal fluid is squeezed out, and its jaws drip with impotent toxin.

720

Fate smiled on this stratagem, long before swaggering Curio, without reconnoitering· his hidden enemy's strength, ordered his cavalry to sally forth from the camp by night and gallop far and wide over the unknown plains. He himself, at the first stirrings of dawn, sounded his army's advance out of the camp, repeatedly warned-but in vain!to suspect Libyan stratagems, the Punic penchant always being for war tainted with guile. Fortune, flanked by Doom, had betrayed the young men to their deaths; civil war was luring its architect to his ruin. He was leading his troops up steep cliffs, up stony crags by a broken trail when, far from the mountain heights, hostile forces were sighted. As planned, Sabbura pulled back a little till Curio, lured from his eyrie, should trust his straggling troops to open ground. Ignorant of their deceptive skill, he believed their mock flight; as if victory were his, he raced his troops down to fields below. In a flash, the ruse was revealed: Numidian light horse occupied the heights and completely enclosed Curio's army; no less than his doomed troops, the leader himself was dumbfounded. Cowards made no move to flee, nor brave men to fight.

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750 In fact, when roused by the bugles' blare, chargers neither made stones fly from under their hooves nor champed the hard bits chafing their mouths, nor tossed their manes, nor pricked up their ears, nor bucked and reared with a blurred flurry of footwork. No, their weary necks drooped, their flanks were lathered with effort; tongues protruded from parched mouths grown scaly with thirst; 755 their heaving sides rasped, worked by rapid, shallow bre~_ths, and slow, deep-seated shudders convulsed their exhausted flanks; 109

Pharsalia saliva dried, caking their bloodstained, saw-toothed curbs. Now their pace slackened, despite the urging of fist and whip, despite the command delivered by drumming spurs. Jabbing with the sword did drive the horses on-but no one gained by delaying his mount's recovery of wind, for no galloping charge ensued; the rider was only brought in range and, presenting an easy target, saved his foe a long shot. But, when the African skirmishers flung their mounts at theline, then the plains shook with the sound. Topsoil was cut to powder. Like devils that Thracian twisters kick up, swirling dust curtained the air with its cloud, dragging darkness down.

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But, for the legions, when the appalling doom of battle loomed up before them, there was, in the War-god's hazardous game, 770 never a moment's doubt. From beginning to end of the fight, death held the field: they had no chance to rush forward and come to grips. And so, hedged on all sides, the young men were slaughtered by spears thrust in at close range and by those 775 hurled from afar-and not destroyed by wounds and bloodshed alone but, in that storm of missiles, by sheer weight of metal. Thus the great army was crammed into a narrow radius where, if a panicky man crept into the thick of the troop, he could scarce turn round unhurt among his fellows' swords, 780 and the crush increased each time the front line fell back, packing the circle tighter. Soon, there was not room for the crowded men to maneuver their weapons; pinned limbs ground together while ribs, crushed against armored ribs, cracked. Just how sweet the spectacle was that Fortune was granting, the Moorish victor failed to perceive: he saw no rivers of gore, no twitching limbs, no bodies pitching down on the ground: pressed by the throng, each cadaver stood upright.

Let Fortune summon the hated shades ofgrim Carthage to this fresh sacrifice! Let the Punic ghosts and blood-soaked Hannibal accept these grim rites of expiation! That a Roman debacle on Libyan soil should prqfit Pompey and the Senate's plans-! you Gods Above, what disgrace! Better that Africa beat us for her own sake! IIO

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Book IV When Curio saw his legions strewn on the plains-when the dust, damped down with their blood, allowed him to gauge the extent of the carnage, he had no thoughts ofbowing before adversity or pinning his hopes on escape: he fell dead on a heap ofhis men, quick to die, and brave-though his courage was forced upon him.

What does it prcifit you now to have rocked the Rostra and Forumthat stronghold of tribunes where you, waving the people's banner, armed the nations? What do you gain from Senate's rights betrayed, from son- and fother-in-law commanded to clash in battle? Dead before grim Pharsalia can make the two leaders square off, you are denied the spectacle of civil war! Such, men ofpower, is the bargain you strike with your wretched Cityyour life's-blood, your jugulars given in exchange for war! 0 happy Rome, mistress of a long line of prosperous citizens, were Gods Above as pleased to preserve her freedom as They are to avenge it! But see! noble carrion, Curio feasts Libya's birds, sheltered by no tomb. . .

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But, since we gain nothing from silence about those deeds which, by their glory, laugh all Time's corrosion to scorn, we give you the praise you deserve, soldier, for the good you did: Never did Rome produce a citizen of such promise, nor one to whom her laws owed more, while he steered aright. But his was the ruinous age that worked the City's downfall, when Ambition and Luxury and Wealth with its power to corrupt had swept his wavering purpose away on a treacherous tide; history altered its course when Curio, captivated by the spoils of Gaul and Caesar's gold, altered his. Powerful Sulla, ferocious Marius, bloodstained Cinna,

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III

Pharsalia and the line of Caesars may have forged for themselves the right to hold their swords at our throats; but who among these wielded power like his? While they all bought Rome, Curio sold it.

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BookV

INTRODUCTION In Book Five, Caesar and Pompey step into the limelight once more. The opening scene of Book Five (vv. I -236, which should perhaps be regarded as the opening of the second panel of a triptych, if Lucan planned the Pharsalia as a twelve-book poem) takes place on New Year's Day, 48 B.C.E.; the Roman Senate meets in exile, and votes to put the command of the Republican forces into Pompey's hands. One of the senators hurrying away from this meeting is Appius, who rushes to Delphi, seat of the famed but largely defunct oracle of Apollo; here he forces a prediction from a reluctant priestess. The last scene of the book (vv. 722-815) likewise pairs a reluctant woman and an insistent man: this time we see Pompey and his wife, Cornelia, together in bed, arguing over his decision to leave her behind on Lesbos for the duration of the war. He does take her to the island, and the book closes with a sensitive portrait of Cornelia's first night sleeping without Pompey by her side. The rest of the book is dominated by Caesar. Here, appropriately enough, the keynote is turbulence. (Remember the simile in Book One comparing Caesar to a lightning bolt.) Caesar's troops mutiny, and Caesar encounters the worst literary storm at sea since the one in the first book ofVergil's Aeneid (vv. 81-123). Such a description was a tour de force, and, while Lucan rises to meet the challenge, he seems to mock it, too; for his convulsive storm achieves exactly nothing, delivering Caesar back where he started.

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BOOKV Thus, by turns, the two leaders suffered the wounds of war. In the Macedonians' land, mingling bad luck with good, Fortune detained her gladiators. Winter had strewn Haemus with snow, the Pleiades had slipped from the icy sky, and the day drew near that grants the calendar new names, the first feast-day of Janus, who leads the seasons in. While the last days of their dwindling term yet remained, the two Consuls summoned to Greek Epirus the Fathers scattered by wartime duties. Outlandish and squalid chambers received the Roman elders; the Curia heard matters of State business as guests beneath a foreign roof.

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(And who would call those Axes, those Rods unsheathed in accord with law, a camp? That reverend body taught the nations it was not on Magnus' side-HE had sided with THEM.) As soon as silence had laid hold of the gloomy assembly, Lentulus, high on the consuls' raised dais, addressed them: "If you have in your hearts the sternness befitting your Latin birth and noble bloodlines, ignore what land we meet in, ignore how far off we sit from the roofs of our captured City! Do but regard the pomp of your gathering! Although you will issue a thousand commands, decree this first-no puzzle to kingdoms and peoples: Fathers, we are the Senate! For whether beneath the icy Wain of the Arctic Bear, or in the zone where tropical air, sticky with heat-haze, 5 the day: 1 January 48. See "Calendar." 8 the Consuls: Marcellus and Lentulus Crus. the Fathers: the Senators. See "Curia." 12 Axes: emblems of military power. See "Rods."

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Book V

allows neither nights nor days to grow over-longwherever Fortune leads, the State follows us, Power escorts us. When Gallic torches set our Tarpeian meetinghouse ablaze and Camillus moved to Veii, that was Rome. Never has this body lost its rights by changing its site. Caesar has possession of sorrowing halls and vacant houses, the silenced laws and the Forum, closed for this grim holiday: that Curia sees only those Fathers it banished when Rome teemed with Romans; all who were not cast out from our august body are here. Heedless of evil and lulled as we were by long-lived peace, war's first frenzy dispersed us: but now the body politic is reassembled. "See how the Gods Above make up Hesperia's weight with the whole world's strength! Our enemy lies drowned in Illyrian waves; on Libya's scorching plains Curio fell, that mainstay of Caesar's Senate. Hoist your standards, generals! hasten destiny's course! Show the Gods your good hope, and may Fortune bestow upon you mettle to equal that which our cause bestowed when we fled the foe! "The year has run out, our term draws to a close; but you, whose authority never comes to an end, consider the common good, Fathers: command Magnus to be the leader." With joyful shouts the Senate hailed his name and charged Magnus with the nation's fate and their own. Then, to kings and meritorious peoples commendations were given: Rhodes, queen of the seas and home of Apollo, was honored, as were the rugged troops of icy Taygetus; Athens of ancient fame was praised; and, for Massilia's sake, Phocis, her mother city, was freed.

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Next they commended Sadalas, brave Cotys, and Deiotarus, faithful ally; also King Rhascypolis, Lord of the Frozen Coast; and Libya, by the Senate's decree,

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38 our enemy: Vulteius and his Gauls (4.404ff.). so Rhodes: contributed to the Republican navy. 53 Phocis: See j.298ff.

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Pharsalia must bow to Juba's scepter. And oh, irony of Fate! you, too-the man most worthy to rule a faithless raceyou, Ptolemy, Fortune's shame and the Gods' disgrace, you they allow to crown and crush your curls with the Macedonian diadem! The boy takes up a sword his people will rue, and oh, that only his people had! The throne of La gus was made a gift; with it came Magnus' throat. The sister was robbed of her realm, the father-in-law ofhis crime. At last, assembly adjourned, the group took up arms. While peoples and leaders prepared-their chances unsure and their lot in doubtone man alone feared to face the War-god's hazardous game: Appius wheedled the Gods Above to reveal to him the final outcome, unbarring what had for many a year been bolted shut-oracular Phoebus' Delphic shrine.

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From Hesperia's bounds as distant as from the Dawn's, Parnassos rakes the air with double peaks, holy mount of Phoebus and Bromios where, for godheads commingled, Theban Bacchants hold their Delphic triennial festival. When the Great Flood washed over the earth, only this crag stood clear, a bold mark dividing sea from stars. And even you, Parnassos, lapped by those wide waters, could scarce uphold your crown. As it was, one peak lay hid.

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63 the sister: Cleopatra VII. 64 thejiuher-iu-law: Caesar; his crime is the assassination of Pompey carried out by (agents of) Ptolemy. 68 Appius: See "Claudius." 71 distam: Delphi was thought to be the geographic center of the world.

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Book V An avenger came this way, one whose mother was banished, though unborn twins weighted her belly: Paean's unpracticed shafts pierced Python, when Themis had tenure of tripod and realm. Paean, seeing how the Earth's enormous chasms breathed forth divine truth, how the soil exhaled loquacious vapors, enshrined himself in the sacred caves; brooding over the sanctum, he there became prophetic Apollo.

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Which of the Gods Above lies hidden here? What deity, forced from ethereal realms, deigns to dwell in viewless caverns? A God of heaven earthbound? Which of Them endures this, keeping all secrets of ever-flowing Time, telling the world its future, ready to show Himself to our race, to suffer the touch of man? A God mighty and strong, one who sings us our fate? or, if by His song He bids it, one who creates it? Perhaps, planted here to rule the world, holding the globe aloft arzd poised in the void of space, a large part of the Whole, ofjove, escapes through Cirrha's caves and is there it1haled, though knit to the heavenly Thunderer.

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When this divine essence has filled a virgin's bosom, battering the human soul, it roars and bursts from the prophet's lips-just as, with heaving flames, Sicilian Etna's peak erupts, or as Typhon, pinned beneath Inarime's ageless mass, struggles and makes the stones of Campania steam.

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Though his shrine is open to all and to none denied, this godhead alone still avoids the poison of human frenzy: there, no wicked prayers take shape in wordless 79 1\11 at•e11ger: Apollo. See "Leto." 93 Perhaps ... : this speculation arises from the Stoic doctrine of the world soul (a11imus mrmdi).

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Pharsalia whispers, for He, singing things fixed, that none can alter, forbids mortals to plead. Kindly to honest men, He has often provided a site when a whole city emigrated, as He did for Tyre; has helped to dispel the menace of war, as the Salamis Strait remembers; has eased the woe of barren land, shown how to end it; has rolled away fever-laden air. No greater gift of the Gods is lost to our generation: the Delphic shrine has fallen silent, now that kings have come to fear the future and have banned the speech of Gods. But the vatic sisters of Cirrha feel no grief that their voice is stopped-they rejoice that the temple is closed. For, once God enters the breast, premature death is the price for grace received-or else its reward; for indeed, at the sting and flood of that frenzy, the human frame falls to pieces, and the God's hammer-strokes shatter delicate souls. And thus, the tripod so long unshaken, the vast mountaintop's silence were troubled at last when Appius came to pry into Hesperia's ultimate doom. When ordered to open the venerable shrine and usher the trembling prophetess in before the Gods, the priest who stood at the door seized Phemonoe, straying, aimless and happy, near the Castalian Springs and woodland groves; he thrust her inside the doors of the temple. The threshold filled her with dread; fearing to stand there, the Phoebas plans with futile guile to frighten the leader, to blunt his passion to know the future. She says: "Roman! What brazen desire for truth affiicts you? The chasm is mute; Parnassos, hushed, has smothered its God. Perhaps the spirit,

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Tyre: when the Tyrians, having suffered numerous earthquakes, consulted the Delphic oracle, they were advised to found colonies; or again, L. might be referring to the myth of the foundation