Book II

And now heaven's wrath was revealed; the universe gave clear signs of battle; and Nature, conscious of the future, reversed the laws and ordinances of life, and, while the hurly-burly bred monsters, proclaimed civil war. Why didst thou. Ruler of Olympus, see fit to lay on suffering mortals this additional burden, that they should learn the approach of calamity by awful portents? Whether the author of the universe, when the fire gave place and he first took in hand the shapeless realm of raw matter, established the chain of causes for all eternity, and bound himself as well by universal law, and portioned out the universe, which endures the ages prescribed for it, by a fixed line of destiny; or whether nothing is ordained and Fortune, moving at random, brings round the cycle of events, and chance is master of mankind — in either case, let thy purpose, whatever it be, be sudden; let the mind of man be blind to coming doom; he fears, but leave him hope.

Therefore, when men perceived the mighty disasters which the truthfulness of the gods would cost the world, business ceased and gloom prevailed throughout Rome; the magistrates disguised themselves in the dress of the people; no purple accompanied the lictors' rods. Moreover, men restrained their lamentations, and a deep dumb grief pervaded the people. (So, at the moment of death a household is stunned and speechless before the body is lamented and laid out, and before the mother with dishevelled hair summons her maidens to beat their breasts with cruel arms: she still embraces the limbs stiff with the departure of life, and the inanimate features, with eyes fierce in death. Fear she feels no longer, but grief not yet: incapable of thought she hangs over her son and marvels at her loss.) The matrons put off their former garb and occupied the temples in mournful companies. Some sprinkled the images with their tears; others dashed their breasts against the hard floor; in their frenzy they shed their torn locks over the consecrated threshold and struck with repeated shrieks the ears accustomed to be addressed with prayer. Nor did they all prostrate themselves in the temple of the supreme Thunderer: they parted the gods among them, and no altar lacked a mother to call down shame upon it. One of them, whose cheeks were wet and torn, and her shoulders black and discoloured by blows, spoke thus: 'Now, wretched mothers, now is the time to beat your breasts and tear your hair. Do not delay your grief, nor keep it for the crowning sorrows. Now we have power to weep, while the destiny of the rival leaders is undecided; but, when either is victorious, we must perforce rejoice" Thus grief works itself up and fans its own Hame. — The men also, setting out for the war and for the camps of the rivals, poured out just complaints against the cruel gods: ''Wretched is our lot, that we were not born into the age of the Punic wars, that we were not the men who fought at Cannae and the Trebia. We do not pray the gods for peace: let them put rage into foreign nations and rouse up at once barbarian countries. Let the whole world band itself together for war; let armies of Medes swoop down from Persian Susa; let the northern Danube fail to bar the Massagetae; let the Elbe and the unconquered mouth of the Rhine send out swarms of fair-haired Suebians from the uttermost North; make us foes to every nation — but let civil war pass from us I Let the Dacians attack us on one side, the Getae on the other; let one of the rivals confront the Spaniards, and the other turn his standards against the quivers of the "East; let every Roman hand grasp a sword. Or, if it be heaven's purpose to destroy the Roman race, let the mighty firmament gather itself in flame and fall down on earth in the shape of thunderbolts. O ruthless Author of the universe, strike both parties and both rivals at once with the same bolt, while they are still innocent! Must they produce such a monstrous crop of crime, in order to settle which of the two shall be master of Rome? Civil war were a price almost too high to pay for the failure of both." Such were the complaints poured forth by patriotism that was soon to pass away. Unhappy parents too were tortured by a sorrow of their own: they curse the prolongation of grievous old age, and lament that they have lived to see a second civil war. And thus spoke one of them who sought precedents for his great fear: "As great were the disturbances prepared by Fate, when victorious Marius, who had triumphed over the Teutones and the African, was driven out to hide his head in the miry sedge. Engulfing quicksands and spongy marshes hid the secret that Fortune had placed there; and later the old man's flesh was corroded by iron fetters and the squalor of long captivity. He was yet to die as Fortune's favourite, as consul in Rome which he had ruined; but first he suffered for his guilt. Death itself often fled from him. When power to take his hated life was granted to a foeman, naught came of it; for, in beginning the deed of slaughter, the man was palsied and let the sword slip from his strengthless hand. A great light shone in the prison darkness; he saw the awful deities that wait on crime, and he saw Marius as he was yet to be; and he heard a dreadful voice — 'You are not permitted to touch that neck. Before he dies himself, Marius must, by the laws that govern the ages, bring death to many. Lay aside your useless rage.' If the Cimbri wish to avenge the extinction of their slaughtered race, they should let the old man live. No divine favour, but the exceeding wrath of heaven, has guarded the life of that man of blood, in whom Fortune finds a perfect instrument for the destruction of Rome. — Next he was conveyed over an angry sea to a hostile soil, where he was chased through deserted villages; he couched down in the devastated realm of Jugurtha who had graced his triumph, and the ashes of Carthage were his bed. Carthage and Marius both drew consolation for their destiny; both alike prostrate, they pardoned Heaven. In Africa he nursed a hate like Hannibal's. As soon as Fortune smiled again, he set free bands of slaves; the prisoners melted down their fetters and stretched forth their hands for slaughter. He suffered none to bear his standards, except men already inured to crime, men who brought guilt with them to the camp. Shame upon Fate! How dread that day, the day when victorious Marius seized the city! With what mighty strides cruel death stalked abroad! High and low were slain alike; the sword strayed far and wide; and no breast was spared the steel. Pools of blood stood in the temples; constant carnage wetted the red and slippery pavement. None was protected by his age: the slayer did not scruple to anticipate the last day of declining age or to cut short the early prime of a hapless infant in the dawn of life. How was it possible that children should deserve death for any crime? But it was enough to have already a life to lose. The violence of frenzy was itself an incentive; and it was deemed the part of a laggard to look for guilt in a victim. Many were slain merely to make up a number; and the bloodstained conqueror seized a head cut off from a stranger's shoulders, because he was ashamed to walk with empty hands. Those alone were spared who pressed their trembling lips on that polluted hand. How degenerate a people! Though a thousand swords obey this new signal of death, it scarce would befit brave men to buy centuries of life so dear, far less the short and shameful respite — till Sulla returns. None could find time to lament the deaths of the multitude, and hardly to tell how Baebius was torn asunder and scattered piecemeal by the countless hands of the mob that divided limb from limb; or how the head of Antonius, prophet of evil, was swung by the torn white hair and placed dripping by a soldier upon the festal board. The Crassi were mutilated and mangled by Fimbria; and the blood of tribunes wetted the cruel wood. Scaevola too found no protection from outraged Vesta: they sacrificed the old man before the very shrine and ever-burning hearth of the goddess, but the scanty stream of blood that issued from his aged throat suffered the fire to burn on. These things were followed by the seventh year in which Marius resumed the rods of office. And that was the end of his life: he had suffered every blow that evil fortune can inflict, and enjoyed every gift that good fortune can bestow; he had measured the full extent of human destiny. — Again, how many corpses fell at Sacriportus! What heaps of slain encumbered the Colline Gate on that day when the capital of the world and the government of mankind was nearly transferred to a different seat, and the Samnites hoped to inflict on Rome a heavier blow than the Caudine Forks! And then, to crown the infinite slaughter, came Sulla's vengeance. What little blood was left at Rome he shed; and while he lopped off too fiercely the limbs that were corrupt, his surgery went beyond all bounds, and his knife followed too far on the path whither disease invited it. The men slain were guilty, but it was a time when there were none but guilty to survive. Licence was granted then to private hatred; and anger, freed from the curb of law, rushed headlong on. The deeds done were not all done for the sake of one man; but each committed outrage to please himself. The conqueror had once for all issued his orders which included every crime. The servant drove the accursed sword to the hilt through his master's body; sons were sprinkled with their father's blood and strove with each other for the privilege of beheading a parent; and brother slew brother to earn rewards. The tombs were filled with fugitives, and the bodies of the living consorted with buried corpses; and the lairs of wild beasts were crowded with men. One man tied a noose round his throat and broke his neck; another hurled himself down headlong and was dashed to pieces against the hard ground; and thus they robbed the bloodstained conqueror of their deaths. Another piled up wood for his own pyre, and then, before all his blood had run out, sprang down into the flame and made haste to burn himself before he was prevented. The heads of the chief men were borne on pikes through the terrified city and piled in the centre of the forum; the victims slaughtered in all places were displayed there. Thrace never saw so many murdered corpses in the stables of the Bistonian king, nor Africa at the doors of Antaeus; nor did mourning Greece lament so many mutilated bodies in the courtyard of Pisa. When the heads, dissolving in corruption and effaced by lapse of time, had lost all distinctive features, their wretched parents gathered the relics they recognised and stealthily removed them. I remember how I myself, seeking to place on the funeral fire denied them the shapeless features of my murdered brother, scrutinised all the corpses slain by Sulla's peace: round all the headless bodies I went, seeking for a neck to fit the severed head. Why tell of the bloody atonement made to the ghost of Catulus? A Marius was the victim who paid that terrible offering, perhaps distasteful to the dead himself, that unspeakable sacrifice to the insatiate tomb. We saw his mangled frame with a wound for every limb; we saw every part of the body mutilated and yet no death-stroke dealt to the life; we saw the terrible form taken by savage cruelty, of not suffering the dying to die. The arms, wrenched from the shoulders, fell to the ground; the tongue, cut out, quivered and beat the empty air with dumb motion; one man cut off the ears, another the nostrils of the curved nose; a third pushed the eye-balls from their hollow sockets and scooped the eyes out last of all when they had witnessed the fate of the limbs. Few will believe such an atrocity, or that a single frame could be large enough for so many tortures. Such are men's limbs when broken and pounded under the huge weight of a fallen building; and the dead, who have perished in mid-ocean and drifted to the shore, are not more disfigured. What made them waste their advantage and obliterate the features of Marius, as if they were of no account? They ought to have been recognisable; then the crime would find favour with Sulla and the murder would be proved.. The Fortune of Praeneste saw all her citizens put to the sword together, and her population slain In the time it takes one man to die. The flower of Italy also, the only Roman soldiers left, were slaughtered and stained with their blood the Sheepfold of Rome. The violent death of so many strong men at once has often been caused by famine, or stormy sea, or sudden crash of buildings, or plague of earth and sky, or havoc of war, but never before by execution. So thick was the crowd of men, of faces that grew pale when death was let loose upon them, that the conquerors could scarce ply their weapons: even when the slaughter was done, the dead could scarce fall down but swayed with drooping necks; and the survivors were weighed down by the heaps of corpses; for the dead took their share in dealing death, and the living were crushed by the weight of the slain. Without a qualm Sulla sat at ease to witness the awful deed from his lofty seat; he feared. not to pass sentence of death on so many thousands of undistinguished wretches. The bodies of Sulla's victims were all piled up and thrown into the Etruscan river; the first of them fell upon the water, the last upon other carcasses. Ships going down the stream stuck fast; the front part of the river was cut off by the heaps of dead and so flowed down to the sea, while the part behind was blocked at the barrier. But soon the river of blood made a way for itself: it flooded all the plain; it rushed in rapid channel to the Tiber and swelled the impeded current, till its bed and banks could not contain the stream; and the river brought the corpses back to land, and at last forced its way with difficulty to the Tyrrhene sea, where it parted the blue expanse with a torrent of blood. Were these the deeds that entitled Sulla to be called the saviour of his country and the favourite of Fortune, and to rear himself a tomb in the centre of the Campus? Those same woes we must endure again; through that sequence of warfare we must pass; such is the issue appointed to every civil war. And yet our fears forebode still worse, and much greater damage to mankind will come of this conflict in arms. To Marius and his exiles the recovery of Rome was the great prize - they fought for, and to Sulla victory brought no more than the extermination of the party he hated; but the rivals of to-day have long been supreme, and they are summoned by destiny to a different goal. If either were content with what satisfied Sulla, he would not stir up civil war." Such were the laments of sorrowing elders, as they recalled the past and dreaded the future.

But the heart of noble Brutus was shaken by no fear, and amid that mighty dread of awful change he was not one of the mourning populace. In the slumbrous night, when Arcadian Helice was turning her wain aslant, he knocked at the humble dwelling of his kinsman, Cato. He found the great man pondering in sleepless anxiety over the destiny of the nation and the plight of Rome, careless of his own safety but fearful for mankind; and thus he addressed him: "Virtue, long ago driven out and banished from every land, finds in you her one remaining support, and will never be dislodged from your breast by any turn of fortune; do you therefore guide my hesitation and fortify my weakness with your unerring strength. Let others follow Magnus or Caesar's arms — Brutus will own no leader but Cato. Are you the champion of peace, keeping your path unshaken amid a tottering world? Or have you resolved to stand with the arch-criminals and take your share in the disasters of a mad world, and so clear the civil war of guilt? Each man is carried away to wicked warfare by motives of his own — some by crimes of private life and fear of the laws if peace be kept; others by the need to drive away hunger by the sword and to bury bankruptcy under the destruction of the world. None has been driven to arms by mere impulse: they have been bought by a great bribe to follow the camp; do you alone choose war for its own sake? What good was it to stand firm so many years, untouched by the vices of a profligate age? This will be your sole reward for the virtue of a lifetime - that war, which finds others already guilty, will make you guilty at last. Heaven forbid that this fatal strife should have power to stir your hands also to action. Javelins launched by your arm will not hurtle through the indistinguishable cloud of missiles; and, in order that all that virtue may not spend itself in vain, all the hazard of war will hurl itself upon you; for who, though staggering beneath another's stroke, will not wish to fall by your sword and make you guilty? Fitter than war for you is peaceful life and tranquil solitude; so the stars of heaven roll on for ever unshaken in their courses. The part of air nearest earth is fired by thunderbolts, and the low-lying places of the world are visited by gales and long flashes of flame; but Olympus rises above the clouds. It is heaven's law, that small things are troubled and distracted, while great things enjoy peace. What joyful news to Caesar's ear, that so great a citizen has joined the fray! He will never resent your preference of his rival, of Pompey's camp to his own; for, if Cato countenances civil war, he countenances Caesar also more than enough. When half the Senate, when the consuls and other nobles, mean to wage war under a leader who holds no office, the temptation is strong; but, if Cato too submit like these to Pompey, Caesar will be the only free man left on earth. If, however, we resolve to bear arms in defence of our country's laws and to maintain freedom, you behold in me one who is not now the foe of either Caesar or Pompey, though I shall be the foe of the conqueror when war is over." So Brutus spoke, and Cato from the sacred shrine of his heart made this reply: "Brutus, I allow that civil war is the worst wickedness; but Virtue will follow fearless wherever destiny summons her. It will be a reproach to the gods, that they have made even me guilty. Who would choose to watch the starry vault falling down and to feel no fear himself? or to sit with folded hands, when high heaven was crashing down and earth shaking with the confused weight of a collapsing firmament? If nations unknown, if kings who reign in another clime beyond the seas, join the madness of Italy and the standards of Rome, shall I alone dwell in peace? Heaven keep far from me this madness, that the fall of Rome, which will stir by her disaster the Dahae and the Getae, should leave me indifferent! When a father is robbed of his sons by death, grief itself bids him lead the long funeral train to the grave; he is fain to thrust his hands into the doleful fires, and himself to hold the smoky torch where the lofty pyre rises. So never shall I be torn away before embrace the lifeless body of my country; and I will follow to the grave the mere name and empty ghost of Freedom. So be it! Let Rome pay atonement in full to the pitiless gods, and let no man's life be denied to the claim of war! But would it were possible for me, condemned by the powers of heaven and hell, to be the scapegoat for the nation! As hordes of foemen bore down Decius when he had offered his life, so may both armies pierce this body, may the savages from the Rhine aim their weapons at me; may I be transfixed by every spear, and may stand between and intercept every blow dealt in this war! Let my blood redeem the nations, and my death pay the whole penalty incurred by the corruption of Rome. If the nations are willing to bear the yoke and resent not harsh tyranny, why should they die? Aim your swords at me alone, at me who fight a losing battle for despised law and justice. My blood, mine only, will bring peace to the people of Italy and end their sufferings; the would-be tyrant need wage no war, once I am gone. Why should I not follow the standard of the nation and Pompey as my leader? And yet I know full well that, if fortune favour him, he too looks forward to mastery over the world. Let me then serve in his victorious army, and prevent him from thinking that he has conquered for himself alone." Thus Cato spoke, filling the younger man with strong incentives to battle and prompting his high spirit to excessive desire for civil war.

Meanwhile the sun was dispelling chilly night, when a loud knocking was heard at the door, and in rushed the matron, Marcia, mourning for Hortensius whose pyre she had just left. As a maiden she had first been wedded to a nobler husband; then, when she had received the reward and fee of wedlock in the birth of a third child, she was given to another household, to populate it with her fruitfulness and to ally the two houses by the maternal blood. But now, when she had laid the ashes of Hortensius in their final urn, she hastened hither in piteous guise: torn and disordered was her hair, and her breast bruised with repeated blows; she was covered with the funeral ashes. Not otherwise could she have found favour with Cato. And thus she spoke sorrowing: While there was warm blood in these veins and had power to be a mother, I did your bidding, Cato: I took two husbands and bore them children. Now I return wearied and worn-out with child-bearing, and I must not again be surrendered to any other husband. Grant me to renew the faithful compact of my first marriage; grant me only the name of wife; suffer men to write on my tomb, Marcia, wife of Cato'; let not the question be disputed in after time, whether I was driven out or handed over by you to a second husband. You do not receive me to share in happiness or for prosperous times: I come to take my part in anxiety and trouble. Suffer me to follow the camp. Why should I be left behind in peace and safety, and be kept further away than Cornelia from civil war?"

Her words moved her husband. Though the time when Fate called men to arms was ill-suited for a marriage, they resolved to tie the knot simply and perform the rite with no useless display; the gods alone should be present to witness the ceremony. No festal garlands, no wreath, hung from the lintel; no white fillet ran this way and that to each post of the door. The customary torches; the high couch supported on ivory steps and displaying a coverlet of gold embroidery; the matron, wearing on her head a towered crown, and careful not to touch the threshold when her foot crosses it — all these are absent. No saffron veil, intended lightly to screen the bride's shy blushes, hid the downcast face; no belt bound the flowing raiment with jewels, no fair circlet confined the neck, nor did a scarf, clinging to the tip of the shoulder, surround the bare arms with narrow band. Marcia made no change but kept the solemnity of her widow's weeds, and embraced her husband just as she did her sons. The purple band was covered and concealed by wool of funereal colour. The customary light jesting was silent, nor was the sullen husband greeted by the ceremonial abuse in Sabine fashion. No members of the family and no kinsmen assembled: their hands were joined in silence, and they were satisfied with the presence of Brutus as augur. The husband refused to remove the shaggy growth from his reverend face; nor did his stern features grant access to joy. (Ever since he saw the weapons of ill-omened war raised up, he had suffered the grey hair to grow long over his? stern brow and the beard of the mourner to spread over his face; for he alone, free from love and free from hate, had leisure to wear mourning for mankind.) Nor did he seek to renew the former relations with his wife: that iron nature was proof even against wedded love. Such was the character, such the inflexible rule of austere Cato — to observe moderation and hold fast to the limit, to follow nature, to give his life for his country, to believe that he was born to serve the whole world and not himself. To him it was a feast to banish hunger; it was a lordly palace to fend off hard weather with a roof over his head; it was fine raiment to draw over his limbs the rough toga which is a Roman's dress in time of peace. In his view the sole purpose of love was offspring; for the State he became a husband and father; he worshipped justice and practised uncompromising virtue; he reserved his kindness for the whole people; and there was no act of Cato's life where selfish pleasure crept in and claimed a share.

Meanwhile Magnus marched away in haste and occupied the Campanian walls founded by the Trojan. Capua was chosen as the seat of war; he resolved to make Capua the base of his chief campaign, and from there to disperse and extend his forces in order to meet the enemy where Apennine raises up the centre of Italy in wooded hills; nor is there any peak at which earth rises higher and approaches closer to the sky. Midway between the two seas, the Lower and the Upper, the mountains stretch; and the range is bounded on the west by Pisa, where her beach breaks the Tyrrhene sea, and on the east by Ancona, which faces the Dalmatian billows. From vast springs the mountain engenders mighty rivers and scatters their streams along the water-sheds that lead to two seas. (Eastward flow the swift Metaurus and rushing Crustumium, the Sapis together with the Isaurus, the Sena, the Aufidus which buffets the waves of the Adriatic; and there the Po, as mighty a river as any which earth discharges, snaps off forests and sweeps them down to sea and drains the soil of Italy. As legend tells, this was the first river whose banks were shaded by a ring of poplars; and when Phaethon drove the sun downwards athwart its appointed course and kindled the sky with his burning reins, till the waters vanished and earth was burnt to its core, this river had streams sufficient to match the sun's fire. The Nile would not be greater, did it not flood the Libyan desert over the flats of low-lying Egypt; the Danube would be no greater, did it not, in its course over the globe, receive waters that might otherwise fall into any sea, and carry them with it into the Scythian main. But the waters that run down the western slopes of Apennine give birth to the Tiber and the Rutuba in its deep channel; and also from there swift Vulturnus flows down, and the Sarnus that sends forth exhalations by night; the Liris, driven by Vestinian waters through the haunts of the wood-nymph, Marica; the Siler that grazes the rugged country of Salernum; and the Macra, whose shallow stream delays no ships and speeds forward into the sea of Luna near at hand.) Where the Apennines taper out and rise skywards with lofty ridge, they look on the land of Gaul and come close to the foot-hills of the Alps. Further south, the range bears harvests for the Umbrians and Marsians, and is tamed by the Samnite ploughshare; its pine-clad cliffs embrace all the native races of Italy, never leaving the land till barred by the waters of Scylla, and stretching as far as Lacina's temple. The ridge was once longer than Italy is now, before the pressure of the sea sundered the isthmus and the water drove back the land; but when the earth was crushed out by the two seas, that end of the Apennines was surrendered to Pelorus in Sicily.

Caesar, frantic for war, rejoices to find no passage except by shedding blood; it pleases him that the land of Italy on which he tramples supplies him with a foe, that the fields which he assaults are not undefended, and that even his marches are not wasted, but battle follows battle with no interval between. He would rather burst a city gate than find it open to admit him; he would rather ravage the land with fire and sword than overrun it without protest from the husbandman. He scorns to advance by an unguarded road, or to act like a peaceful citizen. In this hour the towns of Italy, hesitating and wavering in their sympathy for this side or that, though ready to yield at the first alarm of war's onset, nevertheless strengthen their walls with many a rampart and surround them on all sides with steep palisades; and round stones and missiles to strike the enemy from above are fitted to the high towers of the walls. The inhabitants favour Magnus more, and loyalty contends with the menace of danger. So, when the roaring blast of the South wind is master of the sea, all the main is swayed by it; and even if the earth, opened again by Aeolus with his trident, lets loose the East wind on the swollen waves, the ocean, though smitten by the second wind, remains true to the first; and, though the sky surrenders to the rainy East wind, the sea asserts the power of the South. But danger was quick to change men's minds, and the turn of events swept away wavering allegiance.

The men of Etruria are left defenceless by the hasty flight of Libo, and the rout of Thermus has already taken from Umbria the power of free action. Sulla, too, has not the fortune of his father in civil war, but turns to flight on hearing the mere name of Caesar. Varus, when the advancing cavalry knocked at the gates of Auximum, rushed through the opposite gate where the foe had left the rear unguarded, and fled through forests and hills. Lentulus was dislodged from the fortress of Asculum, and the conqueror, pressing hard on their retreat, cut off the army: alone of all the force the general escaped, and the standards that brought no troops behind them. Scipio too abandons the stronghold of Nuceria and leaves his charge defenceless though here were encamped stalwart soldiers, withdrawn long ago from Caesar's army because of the Parthian peril; with these Magnus once made good the losses in Gaul, and granted a loan of Roman lives to his kinsman, until he himself should summon them to war.

But Domitius, eager for battle, lay behind strong walls in the city of Corfinium; and under his command were the men who, as recruits, had been arrayed against bloodstained Milo. When Domitius saw far away a vast cloud of dust rising from the plain, and the glitter of a host whose weapons were struck by the sunlight, "Comrades," he cried "speed down to the river banks and sink the bridge beneath the water. I call on the stream at once to issue forth in might from its springs in the mountains and bring hither all its waters, to carry down with foaming current the planks of the shattered structure. At this point must the war be stayed; on these banks let the foe waste time in idleness! Check ye his headlong haste; it will be a victory to us if Caesar is first brought to a halt here." Without another word he hurried the soldiers down from the walls, but in vain. Caesar got the start of him: from the plain he saw that they were letting loose the river to interrupt his march; and in hot anger he cried out: "Cowards! not content with seeking a hiding-place behind walls for your fear, do you barricade the plains and seek to keep me off by means of rivers? After crossing the Rubicon, never again will Caesar be stopped by any stream, not even if the Ganges blocked his way with its swollen, flood. Let the squadrons of horse gallop forward and the infantry also advance; and mount the bridge ere it falls." When thus he spoke, the light horse charged in full gallop across the plain, and strong arms hurled javelins like heavy rain over the bank. Driving back the guard, Caesar occupies the undefended stream, and the enemy are forced back to the safety of the citadel. Next Caesar erects to vers to launch huge masses of stone, and the penthouse creeps up to the walls that divide the armies. But see! — abomination of war! — the gates are opened and the soldiers drag their general a prisoner. Domitius halted in the presence of his arrogant equal; yet with threatening mien and neck unbent, his lofty soul demanded death by the sword. But knowing that he sought punishment and feared pardon, Caesar addressed him: '' Live on, against your will, and see the sun by my generosity. Be an earnest of hope to your friends when they are conquered, and enable them to judge of me; even, if you choose, draw the sword again; and, if you prove victorious, I make no bargain for myself on the strength of mercy shown to you." With these words he bids the bonds be loosened from the fettered hands. How much better, if he had been slain outright, would Fortune have respected the honour of a Roman! This surpasses all other penalties, that for joining the army of his country — an army led by Magnus and including the whole Senate — a patriot should be pardoned! Unterrified, Domitius hid his grievous wrath, and thus addressed himself: "Will you, thus disgraced, seek peaceful retirement at Rome? Haste rather to the centre of war's horrors and die as soon as may be. Speed straight to your mark, snap every tie that binds you to life, and escape Caesar's generosity!

Magnus meanwhile, unaware that Domitius had been made prisoner, was taking the field, in order to encourage his adherents by an addition of strength. On the following day he intended to bid his trumpets sound, and now thought fit to test the ardour of his men before they marched. There was silence in the ranks as that august voice addressed them:' Avengers of crime and followers of the rightful standards, Romans indeed, whom the Senate has armed to defend your country, declare now your eagerness for battle. The fields of Italy are on fire with savage devastation, the fury of Gaul is pouring over the wintry Alps, blood has already touched and defiled the swords of Caesar. I thank Heaven that we first have borne the losses of war; be it so! let the wickedness begin with the other side; but now must Rome, under my leadership, demand the penalty and inflict the punishment. For the battles you must fight should not be called battles but the wrath and vengeance of our country. This is net war, any more than it was when brands to burn our houses were prepared by Catiline, and by Lentulus, his partner in wickedness, and by the frantic hand of Cethegus-the man of the naked arm. What pitiable madness is Caesar's! Though Fortune is ready to raise him to the height of a Camillus or great Metellus, he joins the ranks of such as Marius and Cinna. His defeat is certain, just as Lepidus was overthrown by Catulus, and as Carbo, who now lies in a Sicilian grave, was beheaded by my orders; and so Sertorius fell, who in exile stirred the fierce Spaniards to war. And yet, upon my honour, I am loth to couple Caesar even with these, and I grieve that Rome has set my arm to stop his madness. Would that Crassus had returned after battle with the Parthians alive and victorious from the borders of Scythia, that Caesar, not less guilty than Spartacus, might be overthrown by the same antagonist. But if Heaven has ordained that he too should add to my fame, see! this right hand has strength to hurl the pilum, the blood about this heart has kindled to a glow once again; he shall learn that men who were able to put up with peace are no cowards in war. Though he call me feeble and worn out, you must not be disquieted by my age: that I am older than Caesar matters not, provided his soldiers are older than mine. I have risen as high as a free people could exalt a citizen, and above me nothing remains save tyranny. Whoever schemes to rise above Pompey in the Roman State covets too much for a mere subject. On my side both consuls will take their stand, and on my side an army made up of generals. Shall Caesar defeat the Senate? No! Fortune does not bring on the course of events so blindly; she is not so utterly shameless. What emboldens Caesar? Is it Gaul, which twice five years have not tamed? Is it a lifetime devoted to the task? Is it because he fled from the cold waters of Rhine, and gave the name of Ocean to the pools of a sea that was neither sea nor land, and turned his back in panic to the Britons whom he went out of his way to attack? Or have his idle threats risen high, because the report of his madness has driven the people forth in arms from their native city.'' Poor madman! It is not you before whom all things flee, but I whom all things follow. When I bore the standards that shone over all the sea, before the moon had twice filled out her disk and hidden it again the pirates, scared from the sea and abandoning every creek, begged for a narrow plot of dry land to live on. Again, when the indomitable king obstructed Rome's destiny, I drove him in flight along the isthmus of the Scythian sea; and I, more fortunate than Sulla, forced him to die. No part of the world have I left untouched: the whole earth, beneath whatever clime it lies, is occupied by my trophies. On one side, the North knows my victories by the icy waters of the Phasis; the torrid zone is known to me in sultry Egypt and Syene where the shadows fall perpendicular; my power is dreaded in the West, and where Spanish Baetis, remotest of all rivers, beats back the ebbing tide. The Arab owns me his conqueror; so do the warlike Heniochi, and the Colclnans famous for the fleece they were robbed of. My standards overawe Cappadocia, and Judaea given over to the worship of an unknown god, and effeminate Sophene; I subdued the Armenians, the fierce Cilicians, and the range of Taurus. I have left my kinsman no war to wage, except civil war."

The general's speech was followed by no applause from his supporters, nor did his men demand at once the signal for the promised battle. Magnus himself was conscious of their fear; and it was decided to recall the standards, rather than expose to the hazard of a decisive engagement an army already beaten by the rumour of Caesar before they saw him. When a bull is driven from the herd by his first defeat, he seeks the recesses of the forest, or spends his solitary banishment in the fields; there he tests his horns upon the tree-trunks for opponents; nor does he return to the pasture till he has recovered strength and approves of his starting muscles; but when he has conquered his rival and got back his herd, he leads them, accompanied by the bulls, to what glades he will, and defies the herdsman. Thus Pompey surrendered Italy to his stronger rival, and fled through the open country of Apulia till he found a safe retreat in the fortress of Brundisium.

Of yore this city was occupied by men of Dicte — Cretan exiles, who were borne across the sea on Athenian ships with the sails that falsely told that Theseus had been conquered. At this point Italy grows narrow, and her straitened border puts forth a slender tongue of land into the sea — a tongue which encloses waters of the Adriatic within curving horns. Yet the water that makes its way through the narrow entrance would be no harbour, but for an island, which confronts the fierce northern gales with a barrier of rock and repels the wearied waves. On both sides Nature has set masses of craggy cliff to meet the open sea, and has kept off the blasts, 'that ships might ride there at anchor, content with a swaying cable. From here all the sea is visible far and wide, whether the ship is bound for the ports of Corcyra or turns to the left, where Illyrian Epidamnos slopes down towards the Ionian sea. Here the mariner takes refuge, when the Adriatic puts forth all its might, when the Ceraunian mountains are lost in cloud, and when Sason in Calabria is drenched with spray.

Pompey felt no confidence in the success of the cause he had left behind him: nor could he transfer the war to the land of the hardy Spaniards, because the vast extent of the Alps lay between; and therefore he thus addressed the elder of his noble sons:' I bid you explore the ends of the earth. Stir up the Euphrates and the Nile — every region where the glory of my fame penetrates, every city where the name of Rome became famous alter my exploits. Bring back to the sea the Cilician colonists now dispersed over the land; next rouse up the sovereigns of Egypt and Tigranes whom I made king. I bid you pay heed also to the army of Pharnaces, the nomad races of the two Armenias, the savage nations along the shores of the Black Sea, the Carpathian hordes, and the men whom the sluggish Maeotian mere, trodden by Scythian waggons, maintains on its frozen expanse. But why detain you longer.' Carry through all the East the standard of your sire, and rouse to arms the cities I have conquered all the world over: let all over whom I have triumphed repair to my camp. Next, you two who date by your names the Roman calendar, the first North wind must waft you to Epirus. Thence seek fresh strength in the lands of Greece and Macedon, while winter grants time for peace." Thus Pompey spoke, and they all obeyed his bidding and loosed their hollow ships from the shore.

But Caesar, ever impatient of peace or long cessation from warfare, and fearing that Fortune might have power to work some change, follows close and dogs the steps of his son-in-law. Others might be content after seizing so many cities at the first assault, after surprising so many strongholds and dislodging their garrisons, and after seeing Rome itself, the capital of the world and the chief prize of war, an easy prey; but Caesar, headlong in all his designs, thought nothing done while anything remained to do. He pressed fiercely forwards; and, though he was master of all Italy, he resented that the land was still shared between them; for Magnus retained a foothold on the margin of the sea. But unwilling, on the other hand, that the enemy should range freely over the deep, he blocks the sea with masonry and casts down rocks into the wide waters. In vain the endless labour was carried on; for the greedy main swallowed down every boulder and mingled the huge heaps with her sands. So, if Mount Eryx were thrown down into the midst of the Aeolian sea, or if Gaurus, with summit wrenched from its place, were sunk deep down into the Avernian pool, nevertheless no cliffs would emerge from the surface of the waters. Therefore, when no pile of stone stood steady on the bottom, Caesar next resolved to fell trees and bind them together, and to make fast a wide expanse of timber with long chains. Such, by the report of fame, was the road built over the sea by the proud Persian, when, greatly daring, he brought Europe near to Asia and Sestos to Abydos by his bridges, and passed on foot over the straits of fast-flowing Hellespont; East wind and West wind had no terrors for him, since he conveyed his ships under sail to the centre of Mount Athos. Thus the egress to the deep was straitened by the felling of the forest; soon the work rose high with many a mound of earth, and high towers swayed above the sea.

When Pompey saw his exit to the sea narrowed by new-made land, his mind was racked with distress and doubt how he might unbar the deep and spread his forces over the main. Again and again his vessels, driven along before the wind with straining cordage, passed right through the obstacle that barred the sea and threw down the ends of the boom into the water, thus giving sea-room to the fleet; often in the darkness of night, his machines, wound up by stalwart arms, launched a shower of cleft firebrands. When at last he had fixed a day for secret flight, he gave orders to his men that no shouting of the crews should alarm the shore, that no signal should mark the watches, nor any trumpet forewarn the sailors and recall them to the fleet. Silently they loosed their vessels when the last part of the Virgin had begun to rise in front of the Scales, which at their rising would bring the sun with them. No shout was raised when the anchor-flukes were wrenched from the thick sand; the captains of the fleet were anxious and silent, while the yards of the mast were bent and the tall mast itself was hoisted; the sailors, dangling in the air, pulled down the furled sails without shaking the stout cordage, that the wind might not whistle through it. The leader even prays to Fortune, that she will suffer him at least to abandon the Italy which she forbids him to retain. Fortune scarcely grants his request; for the sea, smitten by the prows, gave forth a confused roaring, the waves rose, and the billows, churned up by the mingled wakes of so many hulls, boiled and raged as they struck the shore.

Therefore the enemy, admitted within the walls and through the gates — for the loyalty of the citizens had changed sides together with fortune and thrown all the gates open — rushed in eager haste along the branching piers of the winding harbour towards its mouth, angry that the sea should be accessible to the ships. Shame on them that the flight of Magnus is not victory enough! Narrow was the channel that let the ships out to sea, narrower than the water of Euboea that beats on Chalcis. Here two ships ran aground and were taken by bands of soldiers lying in wait for the fleet. Then the fighting was transferred to the shore, and here the sea was first incarnadined with the blood of civil war. Robbed of its rearmost ships, the rest of the fleet put forth. So, when the Argo sailed from Thessaly to the river Phasis, earth launched forth the Cyanean Rocks upon the deep; but the ship was rescued from the shock, though her stern was carried away: and the Clashing Rocks struck the empty sea in vain, recoiled, and remained at rest for ever. And now the changing hue of the Eastern sky gave warning that the sun was near his rising; and the ruddy light, not white as yet, stole their fire from the nearer stars; now the Pleiads were growing dim, the wain of circling Bootes grew faint and merged into the indistinguishable aspect of the sky, the greater stars went out, and Lucifer himself fled before the heat of day. By this time Magnus had gained the open sea; but the fortune which attended him when he hunted the pirates all over the deep was no longer his; good luck, wearied out by his triumphs, now proved untrue. Driven forth with his wife and sons, taking his whole household with him to war, still mighty in banishment, he goes forth with nations in his train. Destiny is seeking a distant scene for the destruction of her innocent victim. The sands of Egypt are doomed to be his grave, not because the gods preferred to rob him of a tomb in his native land, but in mercy to Italy: let destiny hide that tragedy far away in a distant region, and let Roman soil be kept unstained by the blood of Rome's darling Magnus.