Book VII

Unpunctual to the summons of eternal law, the sorrowing Sun rose from Ocean, driving his steeds harder than ever against the revolution of the sky, and urging his course backwards, though the heavens whirled him on; fain would he have suffered eclipse and the pain of losing his light; and he drew clouds towards him, not to feed his flames, but to prevent him from shining unsullied in the region of Thessaly.

That night, the end of happiness in the life of Magnus, beguiled his troubled sleep with a hollow semblance. He dreamed that he was sitting in his own theatre and saw in a vision the countless multitudes of Rome; and that his name was lifted to the sky in their shouts of joy, while all the tiers vied in proclaiming his praise. Such was the aspect of the people, sucli was their loud applause, in his distant youth, at the time of his first triumph: he had conquered the clans surrounded by the swift Hiberus, and defeated every force that Sertorius had hurled against him in guerilla warfare; he had given peace to the West, and now he sat and was cheered by senators, himself no more as yet than a Roman knight, but no less worshipped in his plain robe of white than in that which adorns the triumphal car. Perhaps his dreams took refuge in happier days because they feared the future and because prosperity was ended; perhaps sleep indirectly, as her custom is, presaged the opposite of his dream and foretold a great lamentation; or else Fortune brought Rome before him thus, because it was ordained that he should never see his home again. Break not his sleep, watchmen of the camp; let no trumpet beat upon his ear. To-morrow his sleep will be haunted: saddened by visions of the day, it will present nothing but the fatal field, nothing but war. Would that the Romans could have had a night of happiness and such a sleep as his! Fortunate had been the Rome he loved, if she had seen him even in a dream. One day at least the gods should have granted to him and to his country, on which each, with full knowledge of the future, might have snatched the last enjoyment of their great love for one another. He goes forth, believing that he is destined to die at Rome; and Rome, knowing that her prayers for him had always been answered, refused to believe that this horror was written in the book of destiny — that she should thus lose even the grave of her beloved Magnus. Young and old, blending their grief, would have mourned for him, and even children uncompelled; the crowd of women would have let down their hair and torn their breasts, as when Brutus was buried. Even as it is, though men dread the arms of the tyrannous conqueror, though Caesar himself announce the death, weep they will, even while oifering incense and laurel wreaths to the Thunderer. Unhappy Romans! whose groans swallowed down their grief, and who could not all together make lamentation for Pompey in the crowded theatre.

Sunshine had conquered the stars when the soldiery raged with confused muttering and demanded the signal for battle; Fortune was haling the world to destruction. Most of that hapless throng were fated not to see the day out; but they crowded close to the leader's tent and murmured; in heat and great disorder they brought nearer the hasting hour of imminent death. A dreadful frenzy comes over them; each is eager to hurry on his own fate and the fate of his country. They call Pompey slow and cowardly and too indulgent to his kinsman; he is seduced, say they, by the sovereignty of the world; he wishes to keep under his own sway so many nations from every quarter; and he dreads a peace. The kings and peoples of the East also complain that the campaign drags on too long, and that they are detained far from their own countries. Ye gods, when it is your set purpose to ruin all things, does it please you to add guilt on our part to mere mistakes? We rush upon disaster, and clamour for battle that will destroy us; and in Pompey's camp men pray for Pharsalia. The protests of the multitude were conveyed by Cicero, the chief model of Roman eloquence, Cicero, beneath whose civilian authority fierce Catiline dreaded the axes of peace. Longing for the rostrum and the Forum, and muzzled so long by military service, he detested war. His eloquence gave force to an unsound argument. make use of her; and we, the chief men of your army, and the kings you made, together with the whole world upon its knees, now prostrate ourselves at your feet and ask that you will consent to the conquest of your father-in-law. Shall Caesar remain for ever the cause of war to mankind? Nations whom Pompey subdued while he hurried past them have a right to resent his slowness to conquer now. What has become of your eager haste, or of your confidence in your star? Are you ungrateful enough to doubt Heaven's favour? Do you hesitate to trust the cause of the Senate to the gods? The soldiery, of their own accord, will wrench up your standards and rush forward; you should blush to have victory forced upon you. If we have appointed you to lead us, and if the war is waged for our benefit, then let the men have leave to fight on whatever field they will. Why do you keep away the swords of all mankind from Caesar's throat? Arms are brandished, and scarce can any man bear to wait for the lagging signal; make haste, or else your own trumpets will leave you behind. The senators would fain know this, Magnus, whether they follow you in order to fight or merely to escort you where you go." The leader groaned: he perceived that the gods were playing him false, and that destiny was thwarting his purpose. "If this," said he, "is the desire of all, and if the crisis needs me, not as a commander but as a soldier, I will keep doom at bay no longer. Let Fortune whelm the nations in a single overthrow, and let yonder light be the last for half mankind. At least I call Rome to witness that the day of universal destruction has been forced upon me. The toil of war might have cost Rome no bloodshed; I might have won a bloodless victory over Caesar and handed him over, a captive, to the peace he has outraged. What guilty madness, what blindness is this! Men about to wage civil war are actually afraid of winning a bloodless victory. We have wrenched the land from the enemy, and expelled him utterly from the sea; we have forced his starving ranks to snatch the corn ere it was ripe; we have made him pray to fall rather by the sword and to mingle the corpses of his soldiers with the corpses of mine. By the strategy, thanks to which my recruits have no fear of battle, the campaign is half won already, if indeed the spur of valour and the heat of pugnacity make them demand the signal for action. But many are driven to utmost peril by the mere dread of coming danger. He is truly brave, who is both quick to endure the ordeal, if it be close and pressing, and willing also to let it wait. It is resolved to hand over our present prosperous condition to chance, and to let the sword decide the doom of the world; men had rather see their leader fight than conquer. Fortune gave me the Roman State to rule; I give it back now greater than I received it, and I call upon her to guard it in the hurly-burly of war. The act of fighting will never bring either reproach or glory to me. In the court of Heaven Caesar's prayers for evil prevail over me; and battle there is to be. How much crime and how much suffering this day will bring to the nations! How many thrones will be upset! How dark the Enipeus will flow with Roman blood I The first missile hurled in this fatal war is welcome to find its billet in my head, if that head could fall without influence on the issue and without the destruction of our cause; for to me victory is no more welcome than defeat. When to-day's carnage is complete, the name of Pompey will be one for the world either to hate or to pity: every woe that utter ruin brings will the vanquished suffer, and every horror will the conqueror commit." With these words he suffers the nations to arm, and gave a loose to their frenzied passion; so the sailor, when mastered by the fury of the gale, makes no use of his skill, but leaves the steering to the winds, and is swept along, an ignominious burden of his vessel. The camp hums with the confusion of haste and disorder, and fierce hearts beat with irregular throbbing against the breasts that contain them. The pale flag of coming death appeared on many faces; and their aspect was the very picture of doom. It was clear to all that a day had come which must settle the destiny of mankind for ages, and that this battle must decide what Rome was to be. Each man ignores his personal danger, appalled by a mightier fear. Who that saw the shore covered by the sea and the waves reaching the mountaintops, the sky falling down upon the earth and the sun dashed from his place, could regard with selfish fear such wide destruction? Men's minds are not at leisure to fear for themselves: they tremble for Rome and for Magnus. The soldiers put no trust in their swords, unless the whetted points struck fire from the grindstone; every lance too was sharpened against the stone, bows were strung with better cords, and care was taken to fill the quivers with picked arrows. The horseman enlarged his spurs and tightened the straps of his bridle. Even so, if it is permissible to compare the activity of men to that of gods — even so, when Phlegra upreared the furious Giants, the sword of Mars was heated on the anvils of Etna; the trident of Neptune glowed in the flame a second time; Apollo smelted again the arrows which had unwound the coils of Python; Pallas scattered the Gorgon tresses over all her aegis; and the Cyclopes made for Jupiter new thunderbolts for use at Pallene.

Fortune, however, did not forbear from revealing the future by means of divers signs. When the army made for Thessaly, the whole sky set itself against their march: it hurled down meteors in their faces, and huge columns of fire, and whirlwinds that suck up water, together with fireballs; it dashed lightning at them and so closed their eyes; it knocked the crests off their helmets, it flooded the scabbards with the molten blades, it tore the javelins from their grasp and fused them; and the guilty sword smoked with the sulphur of the sky. The standards could scarce be plucked out of the ground; their increased weight bowed down the head of the standard-bearer; and they shed tears— -down to the time of Pharsalia they belonged to Rome and to the State. A bull, when brought forward for sacrifice, upset the altar and fled, rushing headlong into the fields of Thessaly; and no victim was forthcoming for the ill-omened rite. (But Caesar — what powers of darkness, what fiends did he invoke without let or hindrance.'' what deities of the Stygian realm, what Horror of Hell, and Madness shrouded in gloom? Though he was soon to fight an infamous battle with such cruelty, his prayer was heard.) Whether men were convinced by divine portents or their own excessive terror, who can tell? But many also believed that they saw Pindus collide with Olympus, and the Balkan subside in precipitous hollows, while Pharsalia sent forth the din of battle by night, and a torrent of blood spread over lake Boebeis beside Ossa. Men gaze with wonder at each other's faces veiled with darkness, at the dimness of the light, at the blackness that brooded over the helmets, at the ghosts that moved to and fro before their sight — ghosts of parents dead and of kindred. But their souls had this one solace: the host, conscious of their own horrible desire, and hoping to pierce a father's throat or a brother's bosom, took pleasure in the portents, believing that the ferment of their minds and their sudden madness boded success to their crimes.

If the power to presage misfortune has been granted to mankind, what wonder that those whose last day was at hand quaked with panic fear? Whether he be a sojourner by Tyrian Gades or drink of the Araxes in Armenia, whatever his clime and whatever the star of heaven beneath which he lives — every Roman grieves and knows not why and chides himself for his sadness; for he knows not what loss he is sufferini? now in the land of Thessaly. If those who tell the tale may be believed, an augur sat that day on the Euganean hills, where the smoking spring of Aponus issues from the ground and the Timavus, river of Antenor, splits into channels; and he cried: "The decisive day has come; the great battle is being fought; the armies of Pompey and Caesar meet in unnatural conflict." Either he observed the thunder and the warning bolts of Jupiter; or he saw that all the firmament and the poles were at strife with the warring sky; or else the sorrowing deity in heaven signified the battle by the dimness and obscurity of the sun. At least it is certain that Nature made the day of Pliarsalia pass unlike all other days which she reveals; if hiunan intelligence, by means of skilled augurs, had observed all the strange signs in heaven, then the battle might have been watched all the world over. How great were these men, whose fortunes were advertised over the whole world, and to whose destiny all heaven was attentive! Even in later ages and among posterity, these events, whether their own fame alone immortalises them or I too, by my pains and study, can do some service to famous men, will excite hope and fear together and useless prayers, when the story of battle is read; and all men will be spell-bound as they read the tragedy, as if it were still to come and not past; and all will still take sides with Magnus.

When the soldiers came down, lighted up by the sunbeams facing them, the glitter of their arms flooded all the hills. They were not launched at random upon the plain: the doomed army was stationed according to a definite plan. Lentulus had charge of the left wing with two legions— the first, which was then the most fit for war, and the fourth; the right wing of the host was entrusted to Domitius, that brave but ill-starred warrior. The main strength of the centre was in the close ranks of brave men whom Scipio, their general, had brought from Cilicia; here he was but a combatant but was yet to hold the chief command in Africa, Then by the channel of the Enipeus and the pools of its overflow rode the horsemen of the Cappadocian hills and the riders of Pontus with loose reins. Of the dry ground most was occupied by the tetrarchs and kings and mighty potentates, and all wearers of the purple who bow before the Roman steel. Thither Libya sent Numidians, and Crete her Cydonians; from there the arrows of the Ituraeans took their flight; from there the fierce Gauls went forth against their familiar foe; and there the Spaniards brandished their shields for battle. Let Magnus rob the conqueror of the subject i)eoples and use up on one day all the means of future triumphs by shedding the blood of all mankind!

It happened on that day that Caesar had left his position, and was about to march his men to plunder the cornfields, when suddenly he saw his enemy come down to the level plains. Before him lay the opportunity he had prayed for a thousand times — the opportunity of staking all his fortunes on a final cast. For sick of delay and burning with desire for a regal throne, he had begun to loathe the short space of the civil war as a crime which took too long in the doing. But when he saw that the ordeal of the rivals and the decisive battle was drawing near, and when he perceived that the crash which fate must bring was nodding to its fall, even that wild desire for instant slaughter waxed faint for a time; his heart, ever ready to vouch for victory, hesitated now: how was fear possible, when he viewed his own career? how was hope, when he thought of Pompey's.'' Fear sank down, and boldness sprang forth — a better means for inspiriting his men: "Soldiers, who have conquered the world, and on whom my destiny depends, behold the chance of battle you have so often prayed for. Prayer is no longer needed; with your swords you must now summon fate. The greatness of Caesar is yours to determine. That day has come, which, as I remember, you promised me by the waters of the Rubicon, the day which encouraged us to take up arms, the day to which we postponed the triumphant return denied us; and this day must decide, on the evidence of destiny, which of the two combatants had justice on his side: this battle will pronounce the guilt of him who loses it. If in defence of me you have attacked your native land with fire and sword, fight fiercely to-day and use your swords to clear your guilt. Not one of you has guiltless hands, if I be no longer the judge of war. It is not my fortunes that are at stake: my prayer is for you — that you, for your freedom's sake, may bear rule over all nations. My own desire is to return to private life, to wear the people's dress, and to play the part of an ordinary citizen; but provided you are all-powerful, I am willing to accept any position; yours be the kingly power, mine the discredit! Nor will the world you hope to win cost you much bloodshed: you will meet an army enlisted from the training-schools of Greece, enfeebled by the practice of the wrestling-ground, and scarce able to carry the weight of their arms; or else barbarians with disordered ranks and discordant tongues, who will not endure the sound of the trumpet or even the noise of their own march. Few of you will lift their hands against Romans: most of the fighting will rid the world of inferior races and crush underfoot the enemies of Rome. Make your way through these cowardly nations and kingdoms of evil fame; lay a whole world low with the first stroke of the steel; reveal to all that the peoples who so often followed Pompey's triumphal car to Rome are not material enough for even a single triumph. Do the Armenians care which among rivals has power at Rome? Or would any barbarian give a drop of his blood in order to set Magnus over Italy? They hate all Romans and resent their domination; but they hate most the Romans they know. But me Fortune has entrusted to the hands of my own soldiers; and full many a war in Gaul made me the witness of their prowess. I shall know again the sword of every fighter; and when the lance flies quivering through the sky, I shall make no mistake in naming the arm that hurled it. But if I see those tokens that never play your leader false — fierce countenances and threatening eyes — then victory is yours. Methinks I see rivers of blood, kings trodden under foot together, mangled bodies of senators, and whole nations weltering in unlimited carnage. But I delay the course of my destiny, when these words of mine detain you — you who are frantic for the fray. Pardon me for putting off the battle; my hopes unsettle me; never have I seen the gods so near me and ready to give so much; only a little strip of land divides us from all we pray for. I am the man, who, when the fighting is over, will have power to give away all that now belongs to nations and kings. What shift has taken place in the sky, what star in heaven has suffered change, that the gods grant such a privilege to Thessaly.'' To-day either the reward or the penalty of war is before us. Picture to yourselves the cross and the chains in store for Caesar, my head stuck upon the Rostrum and my limbs unburied; think of the crime of the Saepta and the battle fought in the enclosed Campus: the general, against whom we carry on civil war, is Sulla's pupil. My anxiety is for you; I shall win safety for myself by suicide; if any man looks back before the foe is beaten, he will see me stabbing my own vitala. Ye gods, whose attention has been drawn away from heaven by the agony of Rome on earth, give victory to him who does not feel bound to draw the ruthless sword against beaten men, and does not believe that his fellow-citizens committed a crime by fighting against him. When Pompey held fast your ranks in a narrow space where your valour had no power to move, he glutted his sword with rivers of blood. But this is my prayer to you, soldiers: none of you must smite a foe in the back, and every fugitive must pass for a countryman. But while their weapons glitter, no thought of natural affection, no sight of your sires in the front rank of the foe, must weaken your purpose; mangle with the sword the faces that demand reverence. If any man smite the breast of a kinsman with ruthless steel, let him claim credit for his crime; or, if his blow does violence to no tie of kinship, still let him claim credit for the death of an unknown foe, as if it were a crime. Level the rampart without delay and fill up the trench with the wreckage, that the army may pass out with full ranks and in solid formation. Be not careful of your camp; you will find quarters behind the rampart from which the doomed army is coming." Almost before Caesar had ceased to speak, each went to his appointed task; in haste they armed and took food. Accepting the omen of victory, they tread down the fortifications and rush on, with no ordered ranks, no tactics on their leader's part; they leave all to destiny. Had each man drawn up on the fatal field been the kinsman of Magnus, and each been ambitious to reign over his country, they could not have rushed with such headlong speed to the fray.

When Pompey saw the hostile army sally forth directly opposite him, to force on a battle without delay, and realised that this was the day fixed by Heaven, he stood appalled with frozen blood; and to so great a general it was an evil omen that he should thus dread a conflict. But soon he suppressed his fears and rode all along the line on his tall war-horse. '' Behold the day," he said, "which your courage demands; behold the welcome end of the civil war. Put forth your whole strength; there remains but one last effort of arms; a single hour is dragging all nations into conflict. If any man yearns for his country and loved home, for wife and children and dear ones left behind, he must strike to gain them: Heaven has set all the prizes in the open field. Our better cause bids us expect the favour of the gods: they themselves will guide our weapons through Caesar's heart, they themselves will wish to ratify the Roman constitution by his blood. If they intended to give my kinsman rule over the world, it was in their power to hurry this grey head into the grave; and, since they have preserved my life to command the army, surely they are not wrath with the nations 'and with Rome. We have brought together all that could make victory secure. Famous men have volunteered to face the danger; and our army has the august aspect of past times. A Curius and a Camillus, and the Decii who devoted their lives to death, if destiny restored them to our age and brought them back to earth, would stand on our side. The nations of the far East and countless cities have gathered together, and summoned to battle such hordes as were never seen before; the whole world is at our disposal at one time. Our force includes every man, up to the verge of South and North, who lives enclosed within the bound of the Zodiac. Shall we not shut in the whole hostile army, outflanking them with our wings? Victory requires but a handful of combatants: shouting is the only service that most of our squadrons will perform: Caesar's force is too small for ours to deal with. Imagine that the matrons of Rome are hanging over the topmost walls of the city with dishevelled hair, and urging you to battle; imagine that aged senators, whose years prevent them from following the camp, lay at your feet their venerable grey hairs, and that Rome herself, in her fear of a master, comes to meet you. Imagine that both generations, the present and the future, address their joint entreaties to you: the one would fain be born, and the other die, in freedom. If after such solemn appeals there is room for my own name, then, together with my wife and sons, on my knees I would grovel at your feet, if I could do it without sullying the dignity of my command. Unless you conquer, I, Magnus, am an exile, scorned by my kinsman and a disgrace to you, and I pray to escape that utmost misery — shame in the closing years of life, and learning in old age to bear the yoke." Thus mournful was his speech; and his voice kindled bheir courage till Roman valour rose high; and they resolved to die, if his fears proved true. Therefore the armies rushed forward, each inspired with tile same passionate ardour, the one eager to escape a tyranny, the other to gain it. These hands will bring it to pass that, whatever the ninth century unfolds, it shall be free from warfare. This battle will destroy nations yet unborn; it will deprive of their birthtime and sweep away the men of the generation coming into the world. Then all the Latin race will be a legend; dust-covered ruins will scarce be able to indicate the site of Gabii and Veii and Cora, the houses of Alba and the dwellings of Laurentum — a depopulated country, where no man I dwells except the senators who are forced to spend one night there by Numa's law which they resent. It is not the tooth of time that has wrought this destruction and consigned to decay the memorials of the past: in all these uninhabited cities we see the guilt of civil war. How far reduced are the numbers of the human race! All the people born on earth cannot supply inhabitants for town or country; a single city contains us all. The corn-fields of Italy are tilled by chained labourers; the ancient roof-tree is rotten and ready to fall, but none dwell beneath it; Rome is not peopled by her own citizens but swarms with the refuse of mankind, and we have sunk her so low, that civil war, for all her many inmates, is no longer possible. Pharsalia is the cause of so great a mischief. The fatal names of Cannae and of Allia, cursed long ago by the Roman Calendar, must give place to Pharsalia. Rome has marked the date of lighter calamities, but has decided to ignore this day. O cruel destiny! Air fatal to inhale, and epidemic disease; maddening famine, cities consigned to the flames, and earthquakes that could bring to ruin populous cities— all these might be glutted by the men whom Fortune drew from every quarter to premature death, snatching away the gifts of long ages even while she displayed them, and arraying nations and chiefs upon the battle-field; by them she wished to show to collapsing Rome, what greatness fell with her. What city ever possessed a wider empire, or ran more quickly from success to success? Each war added nations to Rome; each year the sun saw her move forward towards either pole; a small part of the East excepted, night, and day from beginning to end, and all the sky revolved for Rome, and the stars in their courses saw nothing that was not hers. But the fatal day of Pharsalia reversed her destiny and undid the work of all the past. Thanks to that bloody field, India dreads not the Roman rods, no Roman consul arrests the nomad Dahae and makes them dwell in cities, or leans on the plough in Sarmatia with his robe looped up; it is owing to Pharsalia that Parthia still owes us stern retribution, and that Freedom, banished by civil war, has retreated beyond the Tigris and the Rhine, never to return; often as we have wooed her with our life-blood, she wanders afar, a blessing enjoyed by Germans and Scythians, and never turns an eye on Italy: would that our nation had never known her I Ever since Romulus founded his city by the flight of a vulture on the left, and peopled it with the criminals of the Asylum, down to the catastrophe of Pharsalia, Rome ought to have remained in slavery. I have a grudge against Fortune on the score of the Bruti. Why did we enjoy a period of lawful government, or years named after the consuls? Fortunate are the Arabs and Medes and Eastern nations, whom destiny has kept continuously under tyrants. Of all the nations that endure tyranny our lot is the worst, because we blush for our slavery. In very truth there are no gods who govern mankind: though we say falsely that Jupiter reigns, blind chance sweeps the world along. Shall Jupiter, though he grasps the thunderbolt, look on idly from high heaven at the slaughter of Pharsalia? Shall he forsooth aim his fires at Pholoe and Oeta, at the pines of Mimas and the innocent forest of Rhodope, and shall Cassius, rather than he, strike Caesar down? He brought night upon Thyestes and doomed Argos to premature darkness; will he then grant daylight to Pharsalia that sees the guilt as great, of so many swords wielded by brothers and fathers? Man's destiny has never been watched over by any god. Yet for this disaster we have revenge, so far as gods may give satisfaction to mortals: civil war shall make dead Caesars the peers of gods above; and Rome shall deck out dead men with thunderbolts and haloes and constellations, and in the temples of the gods shall swear by ghosts.

When they had traversed at speed the ground that delayed the fiat of destiny, and were parted only by a little space, each looked to see where his own javelin would light, or whose hand on the other side destiny threatened to use against him. That they might learn what horrors they were about to commit, they saw their fathers' faces over against them and their brothers' weapons close beside them; hut they cared not to shift their ground. Nevertheless a numbness froze eacli bosom and the blood gathered cold at each lieart, from the shock to natural affection; and whole companies long held their javelins in rest with rigid muscles. Heaven punish Crastinus! and not with death alone, for that is a punishment in store for all mankind alike; but may his body after death keep the power to feel, because a lance that his hand brandished began the battle and first stained Pharsalia with Roman blood. What headlong frenzy! When Caesar grasped weapons, was any hand found to anticipate his? Then a strident blast broke from the trumpets, and the war-note was sounded by the horn; then the clarions dared to give the signal; then the uproar mounted skyward and assailed the dome of furthest Olympus — Olympus, from which the clouds keep far away, and whither no thunders reach. The Balkan took up the noise in its echoing valleys and gave it to the caves of Pelium to repeat; Pindus roared, the Pangaean rocks echoed, and the cliffs of Oeta bellowed, till the armies were terrified by the sound of their own madness repeated from all the earth. Countless javelins were hurled, but with different desires: some pray to deal wounds, and others to bury their points in the ground and keep their hands unstained; but chance and haste are supreme, and random Fortune makes whom she will guilty. Next, the Ituraeans and Medes and free Arabs, formidable archers, shot their arrows at no mark, aiming only at the sky overhead; and from the sky death came down; but the archers stained their foreign steel with no guilt — all the weight of wickedness was confined to the Roman javelins. The air was veiled with steel, and darkness made by interlacing missiles hung over the plain. But not much of the slaughter was wrought by the flying steel of the javelins: the sword alone can gratify the hate of civil war, and leads the hand to the hearts of Romans. Pompey's soldiers, closely packed in serried ranks, had joined their shields boss against boss, to form an unbroken line; they scarce had room, as they stood, to ply their hands and weapons, and their close order made their swords a danger to themselves. With headlong speed and fury Caesar's men charged the close-packed columns, forcing a way through shields and through soldiers. Where the plaited breastplate presents its heavy rings and the breast is concealed under the protection of the cuirass, even there the heart was reached, and what lies beneath all the armour is the mark of every thrust. One army endures, and the other inflicts, civil warfare: on Pompey's side the swords are cold and idle, but every guilty blade on Caesar's side is hot. And Fortune, taking little time to work such a mighty reversal, swept away the vast wreck with the flood of doom.

When Pompey's cavalry drew their wings apart over the whole plain and extended them beyond the flanks of the fighters, at once his light-armed troops in loose order pressed on through the outmost ranks and launched fierce hordes against Caesar's troops. There each people engaged with its native weapon, but all alike sought Roman blood; they discharge volleys of arrows, firebrands and stones, and bullets, melted by passing through the air and fused by their heated weight. But Caesar, fearing that his front line might be shaken by their attack, moved the cohorts which he kept at an angle to his front behind the standards, and suddenly sent them forward, while the wings stood still, to that part of the field where the enemy was fighting in disorder. Forgett ul of battle, unashamed of cowardice, the cavalry fled headlong, proving that it is never safe to trust civil warfare to barbaric hordes. When the first charger, stabbed in the chest, threw his rider headlong and trampled on his body, all the horsemen fled from the field: turning their horses round, they rushed furiously in a dense cloud against their own ranks. Unlimited slaughter followed: there was no battle, but only steel on one side and throats to pierce on the other. The one army cannot lay low all of the other that can be slain. Would that the blood shed by foreign breasts could content the plain of Pharsalia, that her springs could be dyed with no gore but theirs, that their numbers could clothe all her fields with skeletons! Or, if she prefers to be glutted with Roman blood, then let her spare the lives of these — Galatians and Syrians, Cappadocians and Gauls and remotest Iberians, Armenians and Cilicians; for after the civil war these will be the Roman people. Panic, when once it began, spread to all; and free course was given to destiny in Caesar's favour.

It was now the turn of Pompey's centre, where his main strength lay. The fight which had ranged at random all over the field was concentrated here, and Caesar's fortune received a check. The men who fought here and plied their weapons were not brought from many quarters or borrowed by aid of the kings: here stood the brothers and fathers of the slayers. This place comprised the rage and madness and wickedness of Caesar. Let my pen turn away from this phase of the war and leave it to darkness; I refuse to tell such horrors, and no age shall learn from me the full licence of civil war. Rather let our tears be shed in vain, and our complaints be uttered in vain: of the part that Rome played in this battle I shall say nothing. Here Caesar, maddening the men and stirring up their frenzy, moved to and fro round the ranks and added fuel to the fire of their passion, in order that wickedness might not anywhere be wrought in vain: his eye marks whether their blades stream with blood from point to hilt, or glitter still with only the points reddened; whose hand trembles as it grasps the sword; whose arm is slack and whose braced; who merely obeys the order to fight, and who delights in it; and who changes countenance when he has slain a countryman. He visits the corpses that sprawl on the wide plain; with his own hand he staunches the wound that would otherwise pour out all the blood of many a man. Wherever he moves, like Bellona brandishing her bloody scourge, or like Mars urging on the Bistones, when with fierce blows he lashes on his steeds terrified by the aegis of Pallas, a mighty darkness of crime and slaughter arises, and a groaning like one great cry, and a rattle of the breastplate when a man falls heavily, and a snapping of blade against blade. His hand supplies fresh swords and provides missiles; his voice bids them hack with the steel the faces of the foe. In person he advances the fighting line and urges on his rearguard; he rouses the laggards with blows from the butt-end of his spear. Bidding them spare those of low degree, he points out the senators. For he knows where the blood of the empire runs, the pulse of the machine; he knows in what quarter Rome must be struck, and the vulnerable points of Liberty now making her last stand on earth. Senators mixed with kniglits are borne down by the steel, and noble corpses lie low; they slay Lepidi and Metelli, they slay Corvini together with the stock of Torquatus — often leaders of the State, and raised above all men, Magnus alone excepted. But what did Brutus there, sword in hand and hiding his face from the foe in the disguise of a common soldier's helmet.' O glory of Rome, last hope of the Senate and last scion of a house famous throughout our history, rush not too rashly through the midst of the enemy, nor seek to anticipate the doom of Philippi: death will come to you in a Pharsalia of your own. Your design against Caesar's life is bootless here: not yet has he attained the tyrant's stronghold; not yet has he risen beyond the lawful summit of human greatness that dwarfs all other things; and therefore he has not earned from destiny so glorious a death. Let him live to reign; and then let him fall a victim to the dagger of Brutus. All the glory of our country fell there: the corpses of the patricians lay in a great heap upon the field, with no plebeians among them. Yet one death was most noticeable in that carnage of famous men — the death of that stubborn warrior, Domitius. Fate led him from defeat to defeat; never was he absent when Pompey's cause was worsted. Though conquered so often by Caesar, he died without losing his freedom. Now he fell gladly under a thousand wounds, and rejoiced not to be pardoned a second time. Caesar saw him weltering in a pool of blood and taunted him thus: "Domitius, inheritor of my province, you are now deserting Pompey's cause; you have no part henceforward in the war." Thus he spoke; and the breath that heaved the other's breast was enougli for speech, and he opened his dying hps: "Caesar, you have not grasped the fatal reward of your guilt: your fate remains uncertain and you are inferior to your son-in-law; and seeing your plight, I go free and untroubled to the Stygian shades, and Pompey is still my leader. Though I die, I still can hope that you, borne down in fierce battle, will pay a heavy reckoning to Pompey and to me." Before he could say more, life left him and thick darkness closed his eyes.

Where a whole world died, it were shame to spend tears upon any of a myriad deaths, or to follow the fate of individuals and ask, through whose vitals the death-dealing sword passed, who trod upon his own entrails poured out upon the ground, who faced the foe and dying drove out with his last gasp the blade buried in his throat. Some fell to earth when stricken; others stood upright while their arms were lopped off; the weapon passed right through the breasts of some, while others were pinned to the ground by the spear; the blood of some, pouring from the veins, spouted through the air and fell on the armour of their foes; one man pierced a brother's breast, and then cut off the head and hurled it to a distance, that he might be able to rob the kindred corpse, while another mangled his father's face and tried by excess of fury to convince the eye-witnesses that his victim was not his father. But no death deserves a lament to itself, and we have no leisure to mourn any individual. Pharsalia played a different part in battle from all other defeats: in them Rome suffered by the death of men, but here she was destroyed by the death of nations; a people died here, for every soldier there; here the blood of Achaea, Pontus, and Assyria was poured out, and all that bloodshed the torrent of Roman gore forbids to linger and stagnate on the field. A blow too heavy for their own age to bear was dealt to all nations by this battle: more was lost there than mere life and existence: we were overthrown for all time to come; all future generations doomed to slavery were conquered by those swords. For what fault of their own were the sons or grandsons of the combatants at Pharsalia born to slavery.' Did we play the coward in battle or screen our throats from the sword? The penalty of cowardice not our own is fastened upon our necks. To us, born after that battle. Fortune gave a master; she should have given us also the chance to fight for freedom.

By now Magnus, unhappy man, was aware that Heaven and the destiny of Rome had gone over to the enemy, though the full extent of the disaster could scarce compel him to despair of his fortunes. Far off on a rising ground he stayed, to see from there the carnage spread through the land of Thessaly, which the battle had hidden from his sight; he saw all the missiles aimed at his life, and all the prostrate corpses; he saw himself dying with all that bloodshed. But he desired not, as the wretched often do, to draw all things in destruction after him and make mankind share his ruin. Deigning to consider Heaven even yet worthy of his prayers, he consoled himself in calamity by praying that the most of the Romans might survive him. "Stop here, ye gods," he said, "and refrain from destroying all nations. The world may remain and Rome survive, though Magnus is doomed. If you desire to add to my afflictions, I have a wife, I have sons; all these hostages have I given to fortune. Is civil war still unsatisfied, if it destroy me and mine? Is our overthrow not enough, unless the world be added? Why does Fortune mangle all things and seek universal destruction? Nothing is left now of my own." Thus he spoke, and rode round his army and the standards and the troops now shattered on every hand, recalling them from rushing upon instant death, and saying that he was not worth the sacrifice. He lacked not the courage to confront the swords and offer throat or breast to the fatal blow; but he feared that, if he lay low, his soldiers would refuse to flee and the whole world would be laid upon the body of their leader; or else he wished to remove his death from Caesar's sight. Vain hope, alas! If his kinsman desires to look upon that head, it must be presented to him in any and every land. And there was another cause for his flight — his wife and her loved face, and the decree of fate that he should not die with part of himself absent. Then Magnus rode swiftly from the field, fearing not the missiles behind him but moving with high courage to his final doom. There was no lamentation nor tears — only a noble sorrow with no loss of dignity, such a sorrow as the calamities of Rome deserved to receive from Magnus. With countenance unchanged he beholds Pharsalia; victory never saw him lifted up, and defeat shall never see him cast down; and treacherous Fortune, who found him her superior at the time of his three triumphs, is as far beneath him now in his fall. He goes away free from care, having laid down the burden Fate put upon him; now he has leisure to look back at past happiness; and hope, never to be fulfilled, has departed; now he can realise what once he was. Let him flee from the fatal field, and call Heaven to witness that those who continue the fight are no longer giving their lives for Pompey. Like the woeful losses in Africa, like guilty Munda and the slaughter by the Nile, so most of the fighting at Pharsalia, after Pompey's departure, ceased to represent the world's love of Pompey or the passion for war: it was the never-ending contest between Freedom and Empire; and when Pompey had fled from Pharsalia, the senators proved by dying that they had fought in their own quarrel.

Is it not happiness to you, Pompey, to have withdrawn defeated from the battle, without witnessing that horror to its close? Look back on the ranks reeking with carnage, and the rivers darkened by the inrush of blood, and then pity your kinsman. With what feelings will he enter Rome, owing his good fortune to yonder field? Whatever you have yet to endure, as a lonely exile in strange lands or at the mercy of the Egyptian king, take the word of Heaven and Fortune so long favourable: victory was worse than defeat. Forbid the sound of lamentation and stop the mourning of mankind; forgo their tears and grief. The world must bow before Pompey in his misfortune as they bowed before his success. Calmly and with no petitionary aspect look upon the kings, look upon the cities you took and the thrones of Egypt and Africa which you gave, and choose a land to die in.

Larisa was the first witness of his fallen greatness — the first to behold that noble head unconquered by disaster. She poured out all her population through her gates, and met him like a conqueror with all her inhabitants; with tears they promise gifts, they open their temples and houses, they pray to share his defeat. In truth much remains of that boundless fame; with no superior except his former self, he might again rouse all nations to battle and resume his victorious course. But he refused: "What need i-has a conquered man of nations or cities? Offer your loyalty to the conqueror." While Caesar is still treading on corpses piled high and marching over the very life of his country, he receives from his kinsman nations as a gift. When Pompey rode away from Larisa, the cries and tears of the people followed him, and many a reproach against the cruelty of Fleaven. That day gave proof to Pompey of the favour he had gained, and gave him enjoyment of it: the prosperous are never sure that they are loved for themselves.

When Caesar saw that the fields were flooded deep enough with Italian blood, he thought it time to. restrain the sword in the hands of his soldiers, and suffered to survive the worthless lives by whose death he had nothing to gain. But fearing that their camp would rally the fugitives, and that a night's rest would dispel their fears, he decided to march at once up to the enemy's rampart, and to strike while the iron was hot and panic irresistible. remains is the reward for our blood; and that reward it is for me to point out — I shall not speak of bestowing what each of you will give to himself. Before you lies their camp, filled with all precious metals: the gold robbed from the Western nations is piled there, and their tents are crammed with the treasures of the East. The wealth of so many kings and the wealth of Magnus are here gathered together, waiting for owners. Make haste to outstrip the fugitives; all the riches that Pharsalia has made yours are being seized by the vanquished." What trench, what rampart, could withstand men who sought the reward of victory and crime? They are wild to know what the wages of their wickedness amount to. They found indeed many a mass of metal, collected from a plundered world to defray the cost of war; but these could not glut their boundless avarice. Even if they seized all the gold mined by Spaniards or thrown up by the Tagus or gathered from the surface of the sand by rich Arimaspians, still they would consider their crime poorly paid. They counted on the Tarpeian citadel as their own in case of victory; they had promised their utmost to their leader in hope of sacking Rome; and they are disappointed by the pillage of a mere camp. Base-born and bloodstained, they slept on the turf piled for patricians; the infamous rank and file lay down on couches prepared for kings; and the guilty rested their limbs where their fathers and brothers had slept. But a night of madness disturbed their rest, and frenzied dreams kept the battle of Pharsalia ever before their tortured minds. Their pitiless crime is awake in every heart, their whole mind is busy with battle, and their hands that grasp no hilt are never still. I can well believe that the battle-field sent forth a cry, and that the guilty soil breathed its airs upon them; that all the sky was tainted by the dead, and the night of the upper world darkened with the terrors of Hell. Their victory justly demands grim retribution; sleep brings flames and hissing of serpents against them. The ghost of a slain countryman stands by the bed; each man has a different shape of terror to haunt him: one sees the faces of old men, another the forms of youths; one is disturbed all night by his brother's corpse, another's breast is weighed down by his father's ghost, but all the ghosts alike attack Caesar. Even so Pelopean Orestes beheld the faces of the Furies, before he was purified at the Scythian altar; nor did Pentheus in his madness, or Agave, when she had returned to her senses, feel more horror and disturbance of mind. All the swords that Pharsalia saw, and all that the day of vengeance was to see drawn by the Senate, were aimed at Caesar's breast that night; and the monsters of Hell scourged him. And yet his guilt excused the wretch great part of his penalty; for when Caesar beheld the Styx and its ghosts and all Hell let loose upon his sleep, Pompey was still alive. All this he suffered; and yet, when daylight revealed the casualties of Pharsalia, no feature of the land recalled his eyes from dwelling on the fatal field. He sees rivers running fast with gore, and heaps of corpses like high hills; he beholds the piles of dead settling down into corruption, and counts the nations that followed Magnus; and a spot, from which he can recognise the faces and features of the dead, is prepared for his feasting. He rejoices that he cannot see the soil of Emathia, and that the plain which his eyes pass over is hidden by carnage. In bloodshed he sees his victorious fortune and the favour of Heaven. And in his madness, loath to lose the welcome sight of his wickedness, he denies the wretches a pyre and thrusts the sight of Pharsalia upon the guilty gods. When the Carthaginian buried a consul, Cannae was lit up by African torches; but that example did not move Caesar to observe the rule of humanity in treatment of the foe: hifi rage is not yet glutted with the slaughter, and he remembers that the men are his own countrymen. We ask not a pyre for each or a separate burning: provide a single fire for all; let the bodies be burnt with one continuous flame; or, if you wish to punish your kinsman, pile up the timber from Pindus and build aloft all the oak-trees from Oeta's forests, that Pompey may see from his ship the blaze of Pharsalia. But Caesar's rage is bootless: it matters not whether the corpses are burnt on the pyre or decompose with time; nature finds room for them all in her gentle arms, and the dead owe their end to themselves alone. If fire does not consume this host now, it will consume them hereafter, together with the earth and the waters of the sea; there remains a conflagration which will destroy all the world and bring the stars and dead men's bones together. Whithersoever destiny summons your spirit, Caesar, there the spirits of these men are also: you will not soar higher than they, you will not find any better place, if you lie in Stygian darkness. The dead are free from Fortune; Mother Earth has room for all her children, and he who lacks an urn has the sky to cover him. But you, who punish the nations by refusing them burial, why do you flee this carnage and abandon these pestilential fields? Drink this water, Caesar, and breathe this air, if you can. No: the nations that turn to corruption there rob you of Pharsalia: they have routed the conqueror and possess the field.

The Bistonian wolves came to the grisly feast afforded by the battle in Thessaly, and the lions left Pholoe when they scented out the corruption of the slain. And not they alone; but bears left their dens, obscene dogs came from the dwellings and houses of men, and every creature that perceives by the power of scent air that is unwholesome and tainted with death. The birds that long had followed the armies of civil war now flocked together. The cranes that each year leave the Thracian winter for the Nile were late in migrating to the warm south. Never did the sky clothe itself with such a host of vultures; never did more wings beat the air. Every wood sent its birds, and when the birds were bloodstained, every tree dripped with a crimson dew. Rotting flesh or drops of blood often fell from the sky upon the face and accursed standards of the conqueror, when the birds grew weary and dropt the dead limbs from - their talons. But even so not all that host was picked to the bones or torn and devoured by beasts: bird and beast pay no heed to the inmost organs, and are not eager to suck all the marrow of the bones; they merely taste the limbs. Most of the Roman dead they left to lie unheeded; but sun and rain and time dissolved their bodies and blended them with the soil of Thessaly.

Unhappy land of Thessaly! what sin of yours offended the gods so grievously that they visited you beyond other lands with such a holocaust of victims and such a myriad of deaths in civil war? No lapse of time is long enough to make posterity forget and forgive the losses which your battle wrought; each crop will rise discoloured and with tainted blades from your soil; and all your plough-shares will do violence to Roman dead. Meanwhile, fresh armies will meet, and you will offer your plains for a second crime before this blood has dried off them. Though we empty out all the tombs of our ancestors — both those that are still erect, and those which, when their masonry was split by ancient roots, spilt their urns—yet the plough turns up more relics in the furrows of Thessaly, and the harrows that till those fields strike against more bones. No sailor would fasten his cable to the shore of Thessaly; no ploughman would stir the soil where the Roman people lies buried; the husbandmen would flee from the haunted plains; the thickets would shelter no flocks, and no shepherd would dare to let his sheep crop the grass that grows from Roman bones — Thessaly would be an unknown desert, as if icy cold or the zone of oppressive heat made it unfit for habitation, if it had been the only land, and not merely the first, to be the scene of civil war. Ye gods, give us the power to curse the country that is guilty. Why do ye condemn all the world, and so acquit it all? The slaughter in the West and the mournful sea of Pachynum, Mutina and Leucas, have washed away the guilt of Philippi.