Book VI

Thus the leaders, with minds now made up for battle, had pitched their camps on neighbouring heights, the armies were brought face to face, and the gods saw their pair of combatants before them; and Caesar, too proud to take city after city of the Greeks, refused to accept from fate any further victory except over his kinsman. All his prayers were for that hour, fatal to the worlds that should stake all on a cast of the die; he chose the hazard of destiny that must destroy one head or the other. Thrice he deployed upon the hills all his squadrons and warlike standards, and proved that he was never backward in the overthrow of Rome. But when he saw that Pompey, trusting to his ring of entrenchments, could not be drawn forth to battle by any demonstrations, he struck his camp and marched in haste to seize the fortress of Dyrrachium through a wooded country that concealed his movements. Pompey forestalled this march by following the coast-line; encamping on the hill which the Taulantians call Petra, he protected the Corinthian city — a city which its cliffs alone keep safe. No work of ancient times protects it, nor masonry piled by men's hands, which, though it raise its structures high, falls an easy prey to the besieger or all-destroying time; its natural position is a protection that no engine can shatter. On all sides it is surrounded by sea deep up to the sliore, and by cliffs that spout forth the sea-water; and only a hill of moderate size prevents it from being an island. Precipices dreaded by ships support its walls; and the raging Ionian sea, when lifted up by Southern gales, shakes its temples and houses, and hurls the spray to its highest roofs.

Here Caesar's mind, eager for war, was caught by an extravagant design: though the enemy's forces were scattered over a wide extent of hills, he planned to draw a distant line of entrenchments and surround them without their knowing it. He used his eyes to survey the ground; and, not content merely to rear hasty walls of crumbling turf, he carries for his use huge boulders and blocks torn from the quarries, whole houses of the natives and dismantled citywalls. A structure rose, that no fierce battering-ram nor any engine of forceful war could overthrow. The mountains were broken through, and Caesar carried his works of even height across the hills; he opens up trenches and builds turreted forts at intervals on the tops of ridges; with a wide concave line he takes in territories and upland lawns, wooded wastes and forests, and encloses the wild animals with farflung snare. Magnus had plains and fodder in abundance, and shifted his camp within the circle of Caesar's lines; within that space many rivers take their rise and run their restless course down to the sea; and, when Caesar wishes to inspect his most distant works, he rests a while from his weariness when half-way round.

After this, let ancient legend praise the walls of Troy and ascribe the building to the gods; let Parthians, who fight retreating, marvel at the brick walls round Babylon. Behold! a space as great as is surrounded by the Tigris or swift Orontes — a space large enough to form a kingdom for the Assyrian nations of the East — is here enclosed by works hastily thrown up in the stress of war. But all that labour was wasted. Such an army of busy hands might have joined Sestos to Abydos, piling up soil till the sea of Phrixus was forced from its place; they might have torn Corinth loose from the wide realm of Pelops, so as to save ships from the long circuit of Cape Malea; or they might, in defiance of Nature, have changed for the better some other region of earth. The field of war was now contracted; here is preserved the blood that will flow hereafter over every land; here the victims of Thessaly and the victims of Africa are penned up; the madness of civil war seethes within narrow lists.

The construction of these works passed unnoticed by Pompey when first they rose: so he who dwells safe in the centre of Sicily knows not that the mad dogs of Pelorus are barking; or when the tides of Ocean and the Rutupian shore are raging, the stormy waves are not heard by the Britons of the North. But as soon as he saw that his position was shut in by a wide entrenchment, he too led down his forces from the protection of Petra and scattered them upon different heights, hoping to relax the pressure of Caesar's army, and to put a strain upon him, as he carried on the blockade with scattered troops. For himself he claims a space surrounded by a palisade — a space equal to the distance that divides lofty Rome from little Aricia with its grove, sacred to Diana of Mycenae; and in the same distance Tiber that flows by the walls of Rome would reach the sea, if the stream made no bend at any point. No war-note sounds; missiles fly to and fro unbidden, and many a murder is done when the arm is merely testing the javelin. A more pressing anxiety restrains the leaders from joining battle. Pompey was prevented by the failure of the district to provide fodder: the horsemen in their speed had trodden it down, when the horny hoofs galloped over the grassy plain and tore it up. The war-horse flagged on the close-cropped fields; and though the well-filled mangers offered him imported hay, he neighed for fresh grass as he fell down to die, and stopped short with quivering haunches in the act of wheeling. While their bodies rotted away and parted limb from limb, the stagnant air drew up the infection of that putrefying plague into a murky cloud. With such an exhalation Nesis sends forth a deathly atmosphere from her misty rocks, while the caverns of Typhon breathe forth death and madness. The men were stricken next; and the water, ever readier than air to absorb poison, made hard their inward parts with its foulness. Now the skin grew tight and hard, causing the straining eyes to start out, and the fiery plague, inflamed with erysipelas, moved to the face; and the heavy head refused to carry its own weight. Swift death, ever more and more, swept all away; no interval of sickness divided death from life, but death kept pace with the ailment; and the pestilence was made worse by the crowd of victims, because unburied bodies lay in contact with the living. For to cast out the corpses of their hapless countrymen beyond the circle of tents was all the burial that men gave. Nevertheless, these calamities were lessened by the sea at their backs and the air set in motion by the North wind, by the shore and the ships laden with foreign corn. Caesar's army, on the other hand, encamped on spacious heights and free to range the earth, was not troubled by stifling air or stagnant waters; but they suffered from the pinch of hunger like men closely besieged. The corn-blades were not yet swelling to the height of harvest; and therefore Caesar saw his wretched men lying on the ground to eat the food of beasts, plucking the bushes, rifling the trees of their leaves, and culling from strange roots suspicious plants that threatened death. The men fought for food — whatever they could soften with fire, or break with their teeth, or swallow down with rasped gullets, and many things never tried before for human consumption; and yet they went on besieging a well-fed foe.

When Pompey first saw fit to burst his barriers and sally forth, and to allow himself the range of all the earth, he did not seek the darkness and cover of night, but scorned to steal a march while Caesar's army rested. He desired to pass out through a wide breach, overthrowing the ramparts and breaking down the towers; to face every armed foe and take a path that bloodshed must open up. Yet a section of the rampart that lay near seemed to suit his purpose; here the fortress of Minicius afforded an open space, and the broken wooded ground screened him with a covering of trees. Hither he marched his men; no cloud of dust betrayed him and he reached the wall unexpected. Then all at once the Roman eagles glittered from the plain, and his trumpets all sounded. That his victory might owe nothing to the sword, the alarm and surprise had already disposed of the enemy. All that valour could do they did: they lay dead at the post where duty bade them stand. There were no longer any men to be wounded, and the tempest that bore those many darts was wasted. Then torches were hurled, rolling smoky fires; then the battered towers reeled and threatened to fall; and the mound echoed under the repeated blows of the timber hurled against it. Now Pompey's eagles had passed out over the top of the high rampart; now the freedom of the whole world was before them. But though Fortune with a thousand squadrons combined and all Caesar's might could not make good the post, one man snatched it from the conquerors and forbade its capture: "While I still wield my weapons and have not yet been laid low, Magnus has not yet been victorious," he cried. Scaeva was his name; he served in the ranks before the fierce tribes of the Rhone were heard of; there he got promotion by shedding much of his blood and carried the Roman vine-staff in the long line of centurions. Ready for any wickedness, he knew not that valour in civil war is a heinous crime. When he saw his comrades' drop their arms and seek safety in flight,' Whither," he cried, "has fear driven you — disloyal fear that no soldier of Caesar's has ever felt? Do you turn your backs on death? Are you not ashamed that you are not added to the heap of gallant dead, and that you are missing among the corpses? If duty be disregarded, will not rage at least make you stand your ground, ye soldiers? The enemy has chosen us out of all the army to sally forth through our ranks. This day shall cost Magnus not a little blood. I should die happier with Caesar watching; as chance has denied me his presence, Pompey shall praise me as I fall. Dash your breasts against their weapons till you break them; blunt the edge of their steel with your life-blood. Already the dust and noise of destruction are rolling far away, and the ear of Caesar, fearing no danger, has been smitten by the crashing sound. We are conquerors, my comrades: while we are dying, he will come to assert his right to the stronghold." His words roused greater fury than the war-note kindles with its first blast: marvelling at Scaeva and eager to watch him, the soldiers follow, to find out whether valour, outnumbered and entrapped, could give them aught more than death. Taking his stand on the tottering mound, Scaeva first rolled out the corpses that filled the towers, and buried the assailants under dead bodies. All the falling fabric supplies him with weapons: he threatens the foe with wooden beams, blocks of stone, and his own body. Now with stakes, now with tough poles, he dislodges from the wall the breasts of the adversaries; his sword cuts off the hands that clutch the battlements; with a stone he crushes one man's head and skull, scattering the brains ill protected by their brittle covering: he sets fire to the hair and beard of another, and the flames crackle as the eyes burn.

The heap of dead rose till it made the ground level with the wall; at once he sprang off and hurled himself over their weapons into the centre of the foe, swift as a leopard springs over the points of the spears. Then wedged tight among the ranks and encompassed by a whole army, he slays a man whom he looks behind to see. No longer can his sword-point do the duty of a sword: dulled and blunted by coagulated blood, it bruises but cannot wound. All the host and all the weapons make him their sole object; no hand missed its aim, no lance failed of its mark; and Fortune sees a new pair meet in combat — a man against an army. The stout boss of his shield rings with repeated blows; his hollow helmet, battered to pieces, galls the forehead which it covers; and nothing any longer protects his exposed vitals except the spears which stick fast when they reach his bones.

Fools! why waste your shots of light javelins and arrows? They can never reach the seat of life. To crush him, you must use either a missile sped by twisted cords, or the wall-battering weight of a huge boulder; to drive him from the threshold of the gate, an iron battering-ram and a catapult are needed. He stands fast, a stone wall in defence of Caesar, and keeps Pompey at bay. He ceases to guard his breast with his armour; and fearing to have it thought that his left hand and shield are idle, or that he is to blame for surviving, he meets single-handed all the wounds of war and carries in his breast a thick forest of spears, and chooses, with gait grown weary, an enemy to crush in his fall. So the African elephant, when attacked by a throng of assailants, breaks all their missiles rebounding from his horny hide, and twitches his skin to dislodge the spears sticking in his body; his vital parts are safe and hidden far below, and the weapons that pierce him and stick fast draw no blood from the animal; the wounds of countless arrows and countless javelins are too few to end one life. But see! a Gortynian shaft, aimed from a distance at Scaeva by a Cretan archer, lights on his head and pierces the ball of his left eye — a surer shot than any archer could pray for. Together with the steel that hampers him, Scaeva breaks off the ligaments of the muscles; boldly he pulls out the clinging arrow with the eye hanging to it, and treads upon arrow and eye together. Even so, when the Libyan has sped his javelin straight by means of a little thong, the Pannonian bear, infuriated by the wound, whirls round towards the injured part; in her rage she attacks the weapon that has struck her, and pursues in a circle the spear that flies along with her. Mad rage had destroyed his features; his mutilated face was one mass of streaming gore. A shout from his conquerors made the welkin ring; a wound seen upon Caesar's self would not have delighted them more, by reason of a little blood. Then Scaeva suppressed his rage and hid it deep in his heart; banishing martial ardour far from his features, he said with an air of mildness: "Spare me, fellow-citizens; take far away your steel. Wounds can no longer do aught to kill me; what is needed is not to hurl fresh weapons but to pluck forth from my breast what stick there already. Take me up and place me in the camp of Magnus before I die; do this service for your leader; let me set an example of desertion from Caesar, and not of glorious death." Ill-fated Aulus was taken in by this guileful speech; he saw not that Scaeva was holding his sword with point ready to thrust; he was in act to lift the captive's body and his weapons together, when the sword, swift as lightning, struck him full in the throat. Scaeva's ardour rose: the slaughter of a foe was the sole remedy for his plight: "if any believed that Scaeva was conquered, let him pay the penalty," he cried; "if Magnus wants peace from my sword, first let him bow his head and sink his standards before Caesar. Think you that I am like yourselves and unwilling to die? Death is dearer to me than Pompey and the Senate's cause are to you." Even as he spoke these words, a pillar of dust showed that cohorts of Caesar's were near; and it saved Magnus from shameful defeat and from the reproach of having his whole force routed by Scaeva singlehanded. When the enemy withdrew, Scaeva collapsed; for his blood was all spent, and only fighting gave him strength. Friends, crowding round, caught him as he fell and joyfully raised his fainting body on their shoulders; they worshipped the deity that seemed to dwell in that mutilated breast, and the living semblance of the great goddess. Valour. They vie with one another in plucking the weapons forth from his pierced limbs, and they use his armour to deck the statues of the gods and of Mars with naked breast. Happy had he been in this title to fame, had he routed hardy Iberians or Cantabrians with their targets or Teutons with their long shields. But Scaeva can never deck the Thunderer's temple with his trophies nor shout for joy in the triumph. Unhappy wretch, how bravely you fought that a tyrant might rule over you!

But though he was beaten back at this point of the lines, Magnus did not postpone war or stay idle within his enclosure, any more than the sea grows weary, when it is driven by rising winds against a cliff that breaks the tide, or when its waves gnaw the side of a high mountain and so prepare an avalanche for themselves in time to come. He turned his arms against the forts that lay near the calm sea, attacking them on both elements at once; he scattered his forces far and wide, enlarging his bivouac on the broad plain, and taking advantage of the opportunity to shift his ground. Thus the river Po, swollen with brimming estuary, overflows its banks though defended by dykes, and oversets whole districts; if the earth anywhere gives way and collapses, unable to withstand the stream raging with its crest of waters, the whole river passes over and drowns plains which it never knew before; some owners their land deserts, while others gain new acres by the river's gift. Caesar had hardly been aware of the fighting; the news of it was conveyed to him by a fire-signal from a lofty tower. He found the walls overthrown and the dust already laid; the signs of destruction that met him were cold, as if it had happened long ago. His rage was kindled and stirred by the very peacefulness of the scene, by the fact that the Pompeians were idle and took their rest after defeating Caesar! He rushed on even into disaster, provided he could disturb their rejoicing. He flew on to threaten Torquatus; but Torquatus bestirred himself at sight of Caesar's troops, as briskly as the sailor furls every sail on his quivering mast before the gale that blows off Circeii; so Torquatus led back his men behind an inner wall, that he might marshal them in closer ranks and a narrower ring. Caesar had already passed the defences of his outmost palisade, when Magnus launched his army against him from all the heights and poured out his forces upon a foe entrapped. When the South wind blows and Etna discharges all her caverns and runs as a river of fire over the plains, the dwellers in the vale of Henna dread Enceladus; but direr dread was felt then by Caesar's soldiers, conquered before the battle by the rolling dust, and quaking under a cloud of blind terror; flight brings them face to face with the foe, and they rush straight on death by retreating. Civil war might then have shed its last drop of blood, and peace might even have followed; but Pompey himself kept back his furious soldiers. Rome might have been saved, free from tyrants and mistress of her own actions, if a Sulla had won that victory for her. Grievous alas! is it, and ever will be, that Caesar profited by his worst crime — his fighting against a kinsman who had scruples. Out upon cruel destiny! Libya and Spain would not have lamented the disasters at Utica and Munda; the Nile, defiled by horrid bloodshed, would not have borne a corpse nobler than the King of Egypt; the naked body of Juba would never have fallen on African sands; Scipio would not have bled to appease the Carthaginian dead, nor would the land of the living have lost the stainless Cato — that day might have ended Rome's agony, and Pharsalia might have been blotted out from the central scroll of destiny.

Caesar abandoned a position he had occupied against the will of Heaven, and made for the land of Thessaly with his battered forces. Magnus intended to pursue Caesar's army along the line of their flight, whatever it might be; and when his officers tried to turn him from his purpose and urged him to return to his native land of Italy, now that no foe was there, Never," he replied, "shall I go back to my country in Caesar's fashion; never shall Rome see me return before I have disbanded my soldiers. When the troubles began, I might have held Italy, had I been willing to join battle in the Roman temples and fight in the centre of the Forum. To keep war far away, I would go beyond the uttermost region of Scythian cold, beyond the torrid zone. Shall I, who fled from Rome to save her from war's horrors, rob her of peace now that I am victorious? Nay, to spare her from suffering in this contest, rather let Caesar reckon her as his own." Thus Pompey spoke, and gave orders for marching eastwards; and following a devious route, where Candavia opens out its huge defiles, he reached Thessaly — the land which destiny was preparing for the war, Thessaly is bounded by the peak of Ossa in the quarter where the sun rises in winter; and when advancing summer makes the sun move through the zenith, Pelion confronts the rising beams with its shade. But wooded Othrys repels the southern fires of the sky and the head of the parching Lion at midsummer; and Pindus faces and meets the West and North-west winds, and shortens day by hastening on evening; the dweller at the foot of Olympus never dreads the North wind, and knows nothing of the Bear, though it shine all night. The land which lies low in the depression between these mountains was once covered over with continuous swamps; for the plains detained the rivers, nor did the outlet of Tempe suffer them to reach the sea; they filled a single basin, and their only way of running was to rise. But when the weight of Ossa was severed from Olympus by the hand of Hercules, and the sea first felt a sudden avalanche of waters, then Thessalian Pharsalos, the realm of sea-bom Achilles, rose above the surface — better had it remained drowned for ever! And other cities rose: Phylace, whose bark was first to land on the shores of Troy; Pteleos, and Dorion that laments the wrath of the Muses; Trachis, and Meliboea, strong with the quiver of Hercules that paid for the funeral torch; Larisa, powerful in ancient times; and the place where the plough now passes over what once was famous Argos, where legend points out the older Thebes of Echion, and where Agave, then an exile, once bore the head and neck of Pentheus and gave them up to the funeral fire, lamenting that she had carried off no more from her son's body.— In this way the swamp was parted and broken up into many rivers. From there the Aeas, clear but of little volume, flows westward to the Ionian sea; with no stronger stream glides the father of ravished Isis; and he who came near to marrying the daughter of Oeneus and silts up with his muddy waves the Echinad islands; and there the Euhenos, stained with the blood of Nessus, runs through Meleager's Calydon. There the swift stream of the Spercheos strikes the waves of the Maliac gulf, and the pure waters of the Amphrysos irrigate the pastures where Apollo herded cattle. Here the Asopos starts its course, the Phoenix, and the Black river; and the Anauros, which breathes out neither moist vapours nor dew-drenched air nor light breezes. Then there are the rivers which the sea knows not in their own shape, and which give their waters to the Peneus: the Apidanus, robbed of its stream; the Enipeus, which never hastens until it mingles with the Peneus; and the Titaresos, which alone, after taking the name of the other river, guards its waters: gliding on the surface, it treats the flood of the Pencils as if it were dry land. For legend tells that this river flows from the Stygian pool, and, mindful of its source, spurns admixture with a common stream, and retains the awe that the gods feel for it. As soon as the rivers flowed off and the land was revealed, the fertile furrows were cleft by the plough-shares of the Bebryces; and next the hands of the Leleges drove the plough deep. The soil was broken by Aeolidae and Dolopians, by Magnesians famous for horses and Minyae famous for ships. There the cloud, pregnant by Ixion, brought forth in the caves of Pelethronium the Centaurs, half men and half beasts — Monychus who broke with his hoofs the hard rocks of Pholoe; bold Rhoecus who uprooted ash-trees for missiles beneath Oeta's crest, ash-trees that the North wind could hardly overset; Pholus, who entertained great Alcides; presumptuous Nessus,who ferried passengers across the river and was doomed to feel the arrows of Hercules; and old Chiron, whose star shines in the winter sky and aims his Thessalian bow at the Scorpion, larger than himself.

In this land the seeds of cruel war first sprang to life. From her rocks, smitten by the trident of the sea, leaped forth first the Thessalian charger, to portend dreadful warfare; here he first champed the steel bit, and the bridle of his Lapith tamer, unfelt before, brought the foam to his mouth. The shore of Pagasae launched the ship that first cleft the sea and flung forth man, a creature of the land, upon the untried waves. lonos, a king of Thessaly, was the first to hammer into shape ingots of molten metal; he melted silver in the fire, and broke up gold and stamped it, and smelted copper in vast furnaces; there it became possible to count wealthy and this drove mankind into the wickedness of war. From Thessaly the Python, hugest of serpents, came down and glided on to the land of Cirrha; for which reason also the laurels for the Pythian games are brought from Thessaly. From here the rebel Aloeus launched his sons against Heaven, when Pelion raised its head almost to the height of the stars, and Ossa, encroaching upon the planets, stopped their courses.

When the rivals had pitched their camps in this accursed country, every heart was disturbed by presentiments of war; it was plain that the stern hour of final decision was at hand, and that doom was drawing nearer and nearer. Base minds quaked and dwelt upon the worst; a few, fortifying themselves beforehand for the uncertain issue, felt hope as well as fear. Among the helpless throng was Sextus, the unworthy son of Magnus, he who later as an exile infested the waters of Scylla, and stained by piracy in Sicily the glory his father had gained from the sea. Fear urged him on to learn beforehand the course of destiny; he was impatient of delay and distracted by all that was to come. But he sought not the tripods of Delos nor the caverns of Delphi: he cared not to inquire what sound Dodona makes with the cauldron of Jupiter — Dodona that grew the food of primitive man; he asked not who could read the future by means of entrails, or interpret birds, or watch the lightnings of heaven and investigate the stars with Assyrian lore — he sought no knowledge which, though secret, is permissible. To him were known the mysteries of cruel witchcraft which the gods above abominate, and grim altars with funeral rites; he knew the veracity of Pluto and the shades below; and the wretch was convinced that the gods of heaven are ignorant. The place itself fed his false and cruel delusion: the camp was near the habitation of those Thessalian i witches, whom no boldness of imaginary horror can outdo, and who practise all that is deemed impossible. Moreover, the land produces baneful herbs on her heights, and her rocks yield to the deadly spell chanted by her wizards. Full many a plant grows there that can put constraint upon the gods; and the Colchian stranger gathered on Thessalian soil herbs she had not brought with her across the sea. The profane spells of that ill-omened race compel the attention of the gods, who turn a deaf ear to so many peoples and nations. Their voice alone speeds through the remote parts of heaven, and conveys the words that bind the reluctant deity, whom no care for the sky and revolving firmament ever distracts from listening. When her hideous hum has reached the stars, then, even though Persian Babylon and weird Memphis unlock every shrine of their ancient magicians, the Thessalian witch will call the gods away from all altars but her own. By their spells love steals into insensible hearts against the decree of destiny, and austere old age burns with forbidden passion. And not only their baleful philtres have power, or their act when they steal from the mare the sign that she will love her foal — the sign that grows, swollen with juice, upon its forehead; but even when defiled by no horrid draught of poison, men's minds are destroyed by incantations. Those whom no bond of wedlock and no attraction of alluring beauty can bind together are compelled by the mystic twirling of the twisted thread. The natural changes cease to operate: daylight lingers and is delayed by the length of night; the ether is disobedient to its law; listening to their spells, the swift firmament is arrested, and Jupiter, while driving on the heavens that speed on their swift axles, marvels that they stand still. At one time they drench the world with rain and veil the hot sun with clouds, and the heavens thunder while Jupiter knows nothing of it; and also by spells they disperse the canopy of watery vapour and the dishevelled tresses of the storm-clouds. Though the winds are still, the sea rises high; or again it is forbidden to be affected by storms, and is silent while the South wind blusters, and the sails that speed a vessel belly out against the breeze. The waterfall is arrested on the steep face of the cliff; and the running river forsakes its downward channel. The Nile fails to rise in summer; the Maeander straightens its course; the Arar hurries on the sluggish Rhone; the mountains lower their tops and level their ridges; Mount Olympus sees the clouds above it; and the Scythian snows thaw without any sun in winter's cold. When the tide is driven on by the moon, the spells of Thessalian witches drive it back and defend the shore. The earth too throws the poles of her stable mass out of gear, and the pressure that tends to the centre of the sphere becomes unsteady. Smitten by a spell, that mighty weight parts asunder and reveals to sight the stars revolving around it. Every creature that has power to kill and was born to do mischief dreads the Thessalian witches and provides their skill with the means of death. The fierce tiger and the angry lion, king of beasts, lick their hands and fawn upon them; for them the snake unfolds his chilly coils and stretches at full length on the frosty ground; knotted vipers split apart and unite again; and the serpent dies, blasted by human poison. — Why do the gods trouble to heed these spells and herbs, and fear to despise them? What mutual bond puts constraint upon them? Must they obey, or do they take pleasure in obedience? Is this subservience the reward of some piety unknown to us, or is it extorted by unuttered threats? Has witchcraft power over all the gods, or are these tyrannical spells addressed to one special deity who can inflict upon the world all the compulsion that he suffers himself? — By these witches the stars were first brought down from the swiftlymoving sky; and the clear moon, beset by dread incantations, grew dim and burned with a dark and earthy light, just as if the earth cut her off from her brother's reflection and thrust its shadow athwart the fires of heaven. Lowered by magic, she suffers all that pain, until from close quarters she drops foam upon the plants below.

These criminal rites and malpractices of an accursed race fierce Erictho had scouted as not wicked enough, and had turned her loathsome skill to rites before unknown. To her it was a crime to shelter her ill-omened head in a city or under a roof: dear to the deities of Erebus, she inhabited deserted tombs, and haunted graves from which the ghosts had been driven. Neither the gods of Heaven, nor the fact that she was still living, prevented her from hearing the speechless converse of the dead, or from knowing the abodes of Hell and the mysteries of subterranean Pluto. Haggard and loathly with age is the face of the witch; her awful countenance, overcast with a hellish pallor and weighed down by uncombed locks, is never seen by the clear sky; but if storm and black clouds take away the stars, then she issues forth from rifled tombs and tries to catch the nocturnal lightnings. Her tread blights the seeds of the fertile cornfield, and her breath poisons air that before was harmless. She addresses no prayer to Heaven, invokes no divine aid with suppliant hymn, and knows nothing of the organs of victims offered in sacrifice; she rejoices to lay on the altar funeral fires and incense snatched from the kindled pyre. At the first sound of her petition the gods grant every honor, dreading to hear a second spell. She buries in the grave the living whose souls still direct their bodies: while years are still due to them from destiny, death comes upon them unwillingly; or she brings back the funeral from the tomb with procession reversed, and the dead escape from death. The smoking ashes and burning bones of the young she snatches from the centre of the pyre, and the very torch from the hands of the parents; she gathers up the pieces of the bier, fluttering in the black smoke, and the grave-clothes as they crumble into ashes, and the cinders that reek of the corpse. But, when the dead are coffined in stone, which drains off the internal moisture, absorbs the corruption of the marrow, and makes the corpse rigid, then the witch eagerly vents her rage on all the limbs, thrusting her fingers into the eyes, scooping out gleefully the stiffened eyeballs, and gnawing the yellow nails on the withered hand. She breaks with her teeth the fatal noose, and mangles the carcass that dangles on the gallows, and scrapes the cross of the criminal; she tears away the rain-beaten flesh and the bones calcined by exposure to the sun. She purloins the nails that pierced the hands, the clotted filth, and the black humour of corruption that oozes over all the limbs; and when a muscle resists her teeth, she hangs her weight upon it. Whenever any corpse lies exposed on the ground, she sits by it before beast or bird can come; but she will not mangle the limbs with the knife or her bare hands; she waits for the wolves to tear it, and means to snatch the prey from their unwetted throats. Nor is she slow to take life, if such warm blood is needed as gushes forth at once when the throat is slit, and if her ghoulish feast demands still palpitating flesh. In the same way she pierces the pregnant womb and delivers the child by an unnatural birth, in order to place it on the fiery altar; and whenever she requires the service of a bold, bad spirit, she takes life with her own hand. Every death of man serves her turn. She tears off the bloom of the face on the young man's body, and her lett hand severs the lock of hair on the head of the dying lad. Otten too, when a kinsman is buried, the dreadful witch hangs over the loved body: while kissing it, she mutilates the head and opens the closed mouth with her teeth; then, biting the tip of the tongue that lies motionless in the dry throat, she pours inarticulate sound into the cold lips, and sends a message of mysterious horror down to the shades of Hell.

The rumour of the country told Pompeius of Erictho, and he took his way through deserted fields when night was high in heaven — at the hour when the sun ushers in the noonday beneath our earth. Men who were wont to act as the trusted instruments of her wickedness went to and fro about the rifled graves and the tombs, till they sighted her far away sitting on a steep rock, where the Balkan slopes down and extends its range to Pharsalia. She was framing a spell unknown to wizards and the gods of wizardry, and inventing an incantation for a special purpose. She feared that the war might stray away to some other region, and that the land of Thessaly might miss so great a carnage; and therefore the witch forbade Philippi, defiled by her spells and sprinkled with her noxious drugs, to allow the warfare to change its place. Then all those dead would be hers, and the blood of the whole world would be at her disposal. She hopes to mutilate the corpses of slaughtered kings, to plunder the ashes of the Roman nation and the bones of nobles, and to master the ghosts of the mighty. One passion only and one anxiety she feels — what part may she snatch from the exposed body of Magnus, and on what limbs of Caesar may she pounce?

The unworthy son of Pompey spoke first and addressed her. "Famous among Thessalian women, you who have power to reveal the future to mankind and to turn aside the course of events, I pray you that I may be allowed certain knowledge of the issue which the hazard of war is preparing. Not the meanest among Romans am I, but the renowned offspring of Magnus, and I shall be either lord of the world or inheritor of an awful doom. My heart quakes and is overcome by uncertainty, but is ready on the other hand to endure definite dangers. Take away from calamity the power of swooping down suddenly and unforeseen. Either put the gods to the question, or leave them alone and extort the truth from the dead. Unbar the gates of Elysium, summon Death himself, and force him to reveal to me which among us must be his prey. It is no mean service that I ask of you; even in your own interest, it is worth your pains to enquire, which way the hazard of so great an issue inclines." Proud of her wide-spread fame, the wicked witch thus replied: "If you sought to alter a lesser decree of fate, it would have been easy, young man, to force the gods to any course of action at your desire. When the planets by their shining bear down a single soul to death, witchcraft has power to interpose a respite; and, though all the stars promise a man old age, we cut short his life half-way by our magic herbs. But in some cases the chain of causes comes down from the creation of the world, and all destinies suffer if it is sought to make a single change, and the same blow affects the whole of mankind; and there Fortune has more power than all the witches of Thessaly, and we admit it. If, however, it is enough for you to learn calamity before it comes, the ways of approaching the truth are many and will prove easy of access: earth and sky and the abyss, the seas and the plains and the cliff's of Rhodope, will find a tongue for us. But, since there is such abundance of recent slaughter, the simplest plan is to lift one dead man from the Thessalian fields; then the mouth of a corpse still warm and freshly slain will speak with substantial utterance, and no dismal ghost, whose limbs are dried up by the sun, will gibber sounds unintelligible to our ears."

Thus she spoke and made dark night twice as dark by her magic. Then, with her gruesome head veiled in a hideous mist, she moved here and there among the bodies of the slain that were thrown out and denied burial. At once the wolves took flight, the vultures sheathed their talons and flew away ungorged; meanwhile the witch picks out her prophet, prying into the inmost parts cold in death, till she finds the substance of the stiffened lungs unwounded and still firm, and seeking the power of utterance in a corpse. The destiny of many victims of battle is hanging now in the balance — which of them will she decide to restore to the upper world? Had she tried to raise up the whole army on the plain and make them fight again, the laws of Erebus would have yielded to her, and a multitude, brought up from Stygian Avernus by the power of the fiend, would have taken the field. At last she chose a corpse and drew it along with the neck noosed, and in the dead man's noose she inserted a hook. The hapless body was dragged over rocks and stones, to live a second time, and was laid beneath a high rock of the hollow mountain which cruel Erictho had condemned to witness her rites.

There the ground fell in a sheer descent, sinking almost to the depth of the invisible caverns of Pluto. A dim wood with forward-bending trees borders it, and yew-trees shade it — yew-trees that the sun cannot penetrate, and that turn no tops towards the sky. In the caves within dank darkness reigns, and the colourless mould caused by unbroken night; the only light there is due to magic. Even in the gorge of Taenarus the air is less dead and stagnant; it is the gloomy boundary between the unseen world and ours; and the Rulers of Tartarus would not fear to let the dead travel thus far. For, though the Thessalian witch tyrannises over destiny, it is doubtful whether she sees the lost souls because she has haled them to her cave, or because she has gone down to Hell herself. She put on motley raiment, whose parti-coloured woof was fit for a fiend to wear; she threw back her hair and revealed her face; and she looped up her bristling locks with festoons of vipers. When she saw that the companions of Pompeius were afraid, and that he himself trembled, with staring eyes and lifeless features, "Lay aside," she said, "the fears which your fluttering hearts have framed. A new life shall soon be restored to him — life in its familiar aspect, so that even those who fear can hear him speaking. Even if I were to display the pools of Styx and the bank that crackles with fire — if my consent should bring before your eyes the Furies, and Cerberus shaking his mane of snakes, and the chained bodies of the Giants, why dread, ye cowards, to behold the dead who fear me?"

Then she began by piercing the breast of the corpse with fresh wounds, which she filled with hot blood; she washed the inward parts clean of clotted gore; she poured in lavishly the poison that the moon supplies. With this was blended all that Nature inauspiciously conceives and brings forth. The froth of dogs that dread water was not wanting, nor the inwards of a lynx, nor the hump of a foul hyena, nor the marrow of a stag that had fed on snakes; the echenais was there, which keeps a ship motionless in mid-ocean, though the wind is stretching her cordage; eyes of dragons were there, and stones that rattle when warmed under a breeding eagle; the flying serpent of Arabia, and the viper that is born by the Red Sea and guards the precious pearl-shell; the skin which the horned snake of Libya casts off in its lifetime, and ashes of the Phoenix which lays its body on the Eastern altar. These ordinary banes that bear names she added to her brew; and next she put in leaves steeped with magic unutterable, and herbs which her own dread mouth had spat upon at their birth, and all the poison that she herself gave to the world; and lastly her voice, more powerful than any drug to bewitch the powers of Lethe, first uttered indistinct sounds, sounds untunable and far different from human speech. The dog's bark and the wolfs howl were in that voice; it resembled the complaint of the restless owl and the night-flying screech-owl, the shrieking and roaring of wild beasts, the serpent's hiss, the beat of waves dashing against rocks, the sound of forests, and the thunder that issues from a rift in the cloud: in that one voice all these things were heard. Then she went on to speak plainly in a Thessalian spell, with accents that went down to Tartarus: "I invoke the Furies, the horror of Hell, the punishments of the guilty, and Chaos, eager to blend countless worlds in ruins; I cry to the Ruler of the world below, who suffers age-long pain because gods are so slow to die; to Styx, and Elysium where no Thessalian witch may enter; to Persephone who shuns her mother in heaven, and to her, the third incarnation of our patron, Hecate, who permits the dead and me to converse together without speech; I call on the custodian of the spacious dwelling, who casts the flesh of men to the ravening hound; on the Sisters, who must spin a second thread of life; and on the ancient ferryman of the fiery river, whose arms are weary of rowing the dead back to me — hear ye my prayer. If these lips that address you have enough of horror and pollution; if never chant these spells when fasting from human flesh; if I have often chopped up bosoms inhabited by the divinity, and washed them with warm brains; if any infant would have lived when his head and inner organs were laid upon your platters — then comply with my petition. I ask not for one who lurks in the depths of Tartarus and has long been accustomed to the darkness, but for some soul that is just going down and leaving the light behind him; he still lingers at the entrance of the chasm that leads to gloomy Orcus, and, though he obey my spells now, he will go down but once to the shades. Let the ghost of a Pompeian, who but lately was alive, foretell all the future to Pompey's son, if ye owe gratitude to the civil war."

When she had spoken thus, she raised her head and foaming mouth, and saw beside her the ghost of the unburied corpse. It feared the lifeless frame and the hateful confinement of its former prison; it shrank from entering the gaping bosom, the vital parts, and the flesh divided by a mortal wound. Hapless wretch! unjustly robbed of death's last gift — the inability to die a second time. Erictho marvelled that fate had power to linger thus. Enraged with death, she lashed the passive corpse with a live serpent; and through the chinks into which the earth was split by her spells she barked like a dog at the shades and burst the silence of their kingdom: "Tisiphone, and Megaera heedless of my voice, will you not drive with your cruel scourges that wretched soul through the waste of Erebus? Soon will I summon you forth by your real names, and leave you, hounds of Hell, helpless in the light of the upper world; through graves and burials I shall follow you and mark you; I shall drive you from tombs, and banish you from all urns of the dead. And you, Hecate, wasted and pale of aspect, who are wont to make up your face before you visit the gods above, I shall show you to them as you are and prevent you from putting off the hue of Hell. I shall tell the world the nature of that food which confines Proserpina beneath the huge weight of earth, the bond of love that unites her to the gloomy king of night, and the defilement she suffered, such that her mother would not call her back. And on you, worst of the world's Rulers, I shall launch the sun's light, bursting open your den; and the sudden light shall blast you. Do ye obey me? Or must I appeal to Him, at the sound of whose name the earth ever quakes and trembles. He looks on the Gorgon's head unveiled; He lashes the cowering Fury with her own scourge; He dwells in a Tartarus beneath your view; to Him ye are the gods above; He swears by the Styx, and breaks his oath." — Instantly the clotted blood grew warm; it warmed the livid wounds, coursing into the veins and the extremities of the limbs. Struck by it, the vital organs thrilled within the cold breast; and a new life, stealing into the inward parts that had lost it, wrestled with death. Next, the dead man quivered in every limb; the sinews were strained, and he rose, not slowly or limb by limb, but rebounding from the earth and standing erect at once. His mouth gaped wide and his eyes were open; he looked as if he were not yet alive but already like a man dying. The pallor and stiffness remained; and he was dazed by his restoration to this world. The mouth was fettered and gave forth no sound: voice and utterance were given him but only for the purpose of reply." Speak at my command," said the witch, "and great shall be your reward; for if you speak truth, I shall make you safe from witchcraft throughout all time. On such a pyre and with such fuel shall I burn your body, chanting a Stygian spell the while, that your ghost shall remain deaf to the incantation of all sorcerers. Consider a second life a price worth paying for this: neither herbs nor spells will dare to break your long sleep of oblivion, once you receive death from me, A riddling answer befits the oracles and prophets of the gods; but if any man seeks to know the truth from the dead and has courage to approach the oracles of stern death, let him depart assured. Be not grudging, I pray: give events their names, their places; and provide a voice by which Fate may communicate with me." Then she added a spell, which enabled the ghost to know all that she asked. The dead man spoke in sorrow, and his tears flowed fast: "Brought back from the high bank of the silent river, I saw not the cruel Fates at their spinning; but this I was able to learn from all the shades — that furious strife prevails among the Roman dead, and that civil war has shattered the peace of the infernal world. From opposite quarters the mightiest Romans have left Elysium and gloomy Tartarus; and they have made clear what fate has in store. For the blessed dead wore a sorrowful aspect: I saw the Decii, the father and son who devoted their lives to the gods in battle, and Camillas, and Curius; they all wept, and Sulla railed against Fortune. Scipio was grieved that the unhappy scion of his race should fall on Libyan soil; and Cato, a still fiercer foe of Carthage, lamented the death which his descendant prefers to slavery. Only one of the blest I saw rejoicing — it was Brutus, the first consul after the kings were thrown down. But formidable Catiline had snapped and broken his fetters, and was exulting, together with fierce Marius and Cethegus of the naked arm; I saw the delight of Drusus, the demagogue and rash legislator, and of the Gracchi, whose boldness knew no limit. Their hands, fettered by everlasting links of steel and by Pluto's prison-house, clapped for joy; and the wicked claimed the plains of the blessed. The lord of that stagnant realm throws wide his dim abode; he sharpens his steep rocks and the hard steel for fetters, preparing punishment for the victorious rival. Take back this consolation with you, Pompeius, — that the dead look to welcome your father and his family in a peaceful retreat, and are keeping a place for him and his in the bright portion of their kingdom. Let not short-lived glory trouble you: the hour will soon come that makes all the leaders equal. Make haste to die; proud of your high hearts, go down from graves however humble, and trample on the ghosts of the gods of Rome. By whose grave shall flow the Nile, and by whose the Tiber — that is the question; and the battle of the rivals settles nothing but their place of burial. For yourself, enquire not concerning your destiny; the Fates will enlighten you, with no words from me; for your father himself, a surer prophet, will tell you all in the land of Sicily; and even he knows not whither to summon you and whence to warn you away, what region or clime he must bid you avoid. Ill-fated house! you must fear Europe and Africa and Asia; Fortune divides your graves among the lands you have triumphed over; you shall find no place in all the world less dangerous than Pharsalia." — When he had ended thus his prophecy, he stood still in silence and sorrow, demanding to die once more. Spells and drugs were needed before the corpse could die; and death, having exerted all its power already, could not claim the life again. Then the witch built up a great pyre of wood; the dead man walked to the fire; and Erictho left him stretched upon the lighted pile, and suffered him at last to die. Together with Sextus she went to his father's camp. The sky was now taking on the hue of dawn; but, at her bidding, night held back day and gave them thick darkness until they should set foot in safety within the encampment.