Complete works of lucan, p.104
Complete Works of Lucan, page 104
nec magis hac Magnus castrorum parte repulsus
intra claustra piger dilato Marte quieuit,
quam mare lassatur, cum se tollentibus Euris 265
frangentem fluctus scopulum ferit aut latus alti
montis adest seramque sibi parat unda ruinam.
hinc uicina petens placido castella profundo
incursu gemini Martis rapit, armaque late
spargit et effuso laxat tentoria campo, 270
mutandaeque iuuat permissa licentia terrae.
sic pleno Padus ore tumens super aggere tutas
excurrit ripas et totos concutit agros;
succubuit siqua tellus cumuloque furentem
undarum non passa ruit, tum flumine toto 275
transit et ignotos operit sibi gurgite campos:
illos terra fugit dominos, his rura colonis
accedunt donante Pado. uix proelia Caesar
senserat, elatus specula quae prodidit ignis:
inuenit inpulsos presso iam puluere muros, 280
frigidaque, ut ueteris, deprendit signa ruinae.
accendit pax ipsa loci, mouitque furorem
Pompeiana quies et uicto Caesare somnus.
ire uel in clades properat dum gaudia turbet.
Torquato ruit inde minax, qui Caesaris arma 285
segnius haud uidit, quam malo nauta tremente
omnia subducit Circaeae uela procellae;
agminaque interius muro breuiore recepit,
densius ut parua disponeret arma corona.
transierat primi Caesar munimina ualli, 290
cum super e totis immisit collibus arma
effuditque acies obsaeptum Magnus in hostem.
non sic Hennaeis habitans in uallibus horret
Enceladum spirante Noto, cum tota cauernas
egerit et torrens in campos defluit Aetna, 295
Caesaris ut miles glomerato puluere uictus
ante aciem caeci trepidus sub nube timoris
hostibus occurrit fugiens inque ipsa pauendo
fata ruit. totus mitti ciuilibus armis
usque uel in pacem potuit cruor: ipse furentis 300
dux tenuit gladios. felix ac libera regum,
Roma, fores iurisque tui, uicisset in illo
si tibi Sulla loco. dolet, heu, semperque dolebit
quod scelerum, Caesar, prodest tibi summa tuorum,
cum genero pugnasse pio. pro tristia fata! 305
non Vticae Libye clades, Hispania Mundae
flesset et infando pollutus sanguine Nilus
nobilius Phario gestasset rege cadauer,
nec Iuba Marmaricas nudus pressisset harenas
Poenorumque umbras placasset sanguine fuso 310
Scipio, nec sancto caruisset uita Catone.
ultimus esse dies potuit tibi Roma malorum,
exire e mediis potuit Pharsalia fatis.
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.
deserit auerso possessam numine sedem
Caesar et Emathias lacero petit agmine terras. 315
arma secuturum soceri, quacumque fugasset,
temptauere suo comites deuertere Magnum
hortatu, patrias sedes atque hoste carentem
Ausoniam peteret. ‘numquam me Caesaris’ inquit
‘exemplo reddam patriae, numquamque uidebit 320
me nisi dimisso redeuntem milite Roma.
Hesperiam potui motu surgente tenere,
si uellem patriis aciem committere templis
ac medio pugnare foro. dum bella relegem,
extremum Scythici transcendam frigoris orbem 325
ardentisque plagas. uictor tibi, Roma, quietem
eripiam, qui, ne premerent te proelia, fugi?
a potius, nequid bello patiaris in isto,
te Caesar putet esse suam.’ sic fatus in ortus
Phoebeos condixit iter, terraeque secutus 330
deuia, qua uastos aperit Candauia saltus,
contigit Emathiam, bello quam fata parabant.
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.
Thessaliam, qua parte diem brumalibus horis
attollit Titan, rupes Ossaea coercet;
cum per summa poli Phoebum trahit altior aestas, 335
Pelion opponit radiis nascentibus umbras;
at medios ignes caeli rapidique Leonis
solstitiale caput nemorosus summouet Othrys.
excipit aduersos Zephyros et Iapyga Pindus
et maturato praecidit uespere lucem; 340
nec metuens imi Borean habitator Olympi
lucentem totis ignorat noctibus Arcton.
hos inter montis media qui ualle premuntur,
perpetuis quondam latuere paludibus agri,
flumina dum campi retinent nec peruia Tempe 345
dant aditus pelagi, stagnumque inplentibus unum
crescere cursus erat. postquam discessit Olympo
Herculea grauis Ossa manu subitaeque ruinam
sensit aquae Nereus, melius mansura sub undis
Emathis aequorei regnum Pharsalos Achillis 350
eminet et, prima Rhoeteia litora pinu
quae tetigit, Phylace Pteleosque et Dorion ira
flebile Pieridum; Trachin pretioque nefandae
lampados Herculeis fortis Meliboea pharetris
atque olim Larisa potens; ubi nobile quondam 355
nunc super Argos arant, ueteres ubi fabula Thebas
monstrat Echionias, ubi quondam Pentheos exul
colla caputque ferens supremo tradidit igni
questa quod hoc solum nato rapuisset Agaue.
ergo abrupta palus multos discessit in amnes. 360
purus in occasus, parui sed gurgitis, Aeas
Ionio fluit inde mari, nec fortior undis
labitur auectae pater Isidis, et tuus, Oeneu,
paene gener crassis oblimat Echinadas undis,
et Meleagream maculatus sanguine Nessi 365
Euhenos Calydona secat. ferit amne citato
Maliacas Spercheos aquas, et flumine puro
inrigat Amphrysos famulantis pascua Phoebi.
accipit Asopos cursus Phoenixque Melasque 374
quique nec umentis nebulas nec rore madentem 369
aera nec tenues uentos suspirat Anauros,
et quisquis pelago per se non cognitus amnis
Peneo donauit aquas: it gurgite rapto
Apidanos numquamque celer nisi mixtus Enipeus;
solus, in alterius nomen cum uenerit undae, 375
defendit Titaresos aquas lapsusque superne
gurgite Penei pro siccis utitur aruis.
hunc fama est Stygiis manare paludibus amnem
et capitis memorem fluuii contagia uilis
nolle pati superumque sibi seruare timorem. 380
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-born 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 Peneus 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.
ut primum emissis patuerunt amnibus arua,
pinguis Bebrycio discessit uomere sulcus;
mox Lelegum dextra pressum descendit aratrum,
Aeolidae Dolopesque solum fregere coloni
et Magnetes equis, Minyae gens cognita remis. 385
illic semiferos Ixionidas Centauros
feta Pelethroniis nubes effudit in antris:
aspera te Pholoes frangentem, Monyche, saxa,
teque sub Oetaeo torquentem uertice uolsas,
Rhoece ferox, quas uix Boreas inuerteret ornos, 390
hospes et Alcidae magni Phole, teque, per amnem
inprobe Lernaeas uector passure sagittas,
teque, senex Chiron, gelido qui sidere fulgens
inpetis Haemonio maiorem Scorpion arcu.
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.
hac tellure feri micuerunt semina Martis. 395
primus ab aequorea percussis cuspide saxis
Thessalicus sonipes, bellis feralibus omen,
exiluit, primus chalybem frenosque momordit
spumauitque nouis Lapithae domitoris habenis.
prima fretum scindens Pagasaeo litore pinus 400
terrenum ignotas hominem proiecit in undas.
primus Thessalicae rector telluris Ionos
in formam calidae percussit pondera massae
fudit et argentum flammis aurumque moneta
fregit et inmensis coxit fornacibus aera. 405
illic, quod populos scelerata inpegit in arma,
