Complete works of lucan, p.21
Complete Works of Lucan, page 21
Last scion of the line of Lagus, doomed and degenerate king, who must surrender your crown to your incestuous sister, though you preserve the Macedonian in consecrated vault and the ashes of the Pharaohs rest beneath a mountain of masonry, though the dead Ptolemies and their unworthy dynasty are covered by pyramids and mausoleums too good for them, Pompey is battered on the shore, and his headless body is tossed hither and thither in the shallows. Was it so troublesome a task to keep the whole body for his kinsman to see? So true to her bargain, did Fortune continue to the end the prosperity of Magnus; so true to her bargain, she summoned him at his death from his pinnacle of glory, and ruthlessly made him pay in a single day for all the disasters from which she protected him for many years; and Pompey was the only man who never experienced good and evil together: his prosperity no god disturbed, and on his misery no god had mercy. Fortune held her hand for long and then overthrew him with one blow. He is tossed on the sands and mangled on the rocks, while his wounds drink in the wave; he is the plaything of Ocean, and, when all shape is lost, the one mark to identify Magnus is the absence of the severed head.
But before Caesar could reach the sands of Egypt, Fortune devised a hasty burial for Pompey, that he might not lack a tomb, or that he might not have a better. In fear and haste Cordus came down from his hiding-place to the sea; as quaestor he had made the ill-starred voyage with Magnus from the Icarian shore of Cyprus, where Cinyras once reigned. Under cover of darkness he dared to come, and forced his fear, mastered by duty, to seek the body amid the waves, and draw it to land and drag Magnus to the shore. A sad moon shed but scanty light through thick clouds; but the headless body was visible by its different colour in the foaming waves. He grasped his leader tight against the snatching of the sea; then, unequal to that mighty burden, he waited for a wave and then pushed on the body with the sea to help him. When it came to rest above the water-line, he cast himself upon Magnus, pouring tears into every wound; and thus he addressed Heaven and the dim stars: “No costly pyre with heaped-up incense does your favourite, Pompey, ask of you, Fortune; he does not ask that the rich smoke should carry to the stars Eastern perfumes from his limbs; that devoted Romans should bear on their shoulders the dear father of his country; that the funeral procession should display his former trophies; that the Forum should be filled with mournful music; or that a whole army, with dropped arms, should march mourning round the burning pile. But grant to Magnus the paltry bier of a pauper’s burial, to let down the mutilated body on the unfed fires; let not the hapless corpse lack wood or a mean hand to kindle it. Be content with this, ye gods, that Cornelia does not lie prostrate with dishevelled hair — does not embrace her husband and bid the torch be applied; that his unhappy wife, though still not far distant from the shore, is not here to pay her last tribute to the dead.” When the youth had spoken thus, he saw at a distance a feeble fire that was burning a corpse uncared for and unguarded. Thence he took fire in haste and drew the charred logs from beneath the body. “Whoever you are,” he said, “uncared for and unloved by any of your kin, but yet more fortunate after death than Pompey, pardon the stranger hand that robs your pyre once laid. If aught of feeling survives death, you willingly resign your pyre and permit this robbery of your grave; and you are ashamed, when the body of Pompey is divided, to find cremation yourself.” Thus he spoke, and having filled his lap with the burning embers he flew back to the body, which, as it hung upon the shore, had nearly been carried back by a wave. He scraped away the surface of the sand, and hastily laid in a narrow trench the pieces of a broken boat which he had gathered at a distance. No wood supports that famous corpse, on no pile are the limbs laid; the fire that receives Magnus is not laid beneath him but beside him. Sitting near the fire, Cordus said: “Mighty captain and unequalled glory of the Roman people, if this pyre is more distressful to you than to be tossed by the sea, or than no burial at all, then turn away your spirit and your mighty ghost from the service I render; the wrong of Fate makes this right; that no sea monster or beast or bird or wrath of cruel Caesar may make bold, accept all that is possible for you — this scanty flame; a Roman hand has kindled your corpse. If Fortune grant us a return to Italy, not here will these sacred ashes rest; but Cornelia will recover you, Magnus, and will transfer them from my hand to an urn. Meanwhile, let me mark the place on the shore with a small stone to be a token of your grave; if any man haply desires to make atonement to your spirit and give you your due of funeral honours, let him find the ashes of the body, and recognise the strand to which he must restore your head.” Having spoken thus, he brightens the feeble flame with a fresh supply of fuel. Slowly the body of Magnus is consumed and melts into the fire, feeding the flame with the dissolving flesh. But by now the daylight which precedes the dawn had smitten the stars; and he broke off the rites and sought in terror his hiding-place upon the shore. What punishment do you dread, poor fool, for your crime, because of which the voice of Fame has made you welcome for all time to come? His unnatural kinsman will approve the burial of Pompey’s bones. Nay go, secure of pardon, confess that you buried him, and demand the head. — Duty compels him to complete his service. He snatched the charred bones not yet entirely parted from the muscles, and quenched them, full of the scorched marrow, with sea water; then he piled them together and hid them beneath a handful of earth. Next, lest a light breeze should bare and scatter the ashes, he planted a stone in the sand; and that no sailor might disturb the tomb by mooring his bark there, he used a charred stick to write the sacred name upon it: “Here Magnus lies.” Is it the will of Fortune to call this the grave of Pompey — this grave which Caesar preferred for his son-in-law to no burial at all? Rash hand, why do you thrust a tomb on Magnus, and imprison the spirit that roams free? His burial-place extends as far as the most distant land that floats on the circling stream of Ocean; the Roman name and all the Roman empire are the limit of Pompey’s grave. Away with that stone, eloquent in reproach of Heaven! If all Oeta belongs to Hercules, and the hills of Nysa own no lord but Bacchus alone, why is there but a single stone in Egypt for Magnus? He can fill all the kingdom of Lagus, if his name were fixed upon no grave. Then mankind would be in doubt, and, from fear to tread on the ashes of Magnus, we should avoid altogether the sands of Nile. But, if you think the stone worthy of that sacred name, then add his great achievements and the records of his mighty deeds; add the rising of fierce Lepidus and the Alpine war; the victory over Sertorius, when the consul was recalled, and the triumph which he celebrated while yet a knight; write of commerce made safe for all nations, and of the Cilicians scared from the sea. Tell how he subdued the barbarian world, and nomad peoples, and all the rulers of East and North. Say that ever after war he donned again the citizen’s gown, and that, content with three triumphal pageants, he excused his country many triumphs. What tomb has room for all this? There rises a pitiful gravestone, rich with no records or long roll of offices; and the name of Pompey, which men were wont to read upon lofty temples of the gods and upon arches reared with spoils of our foes, — that name is little raised above the lowly sand, and set so low upon the grave that a stranger must stoop to read it, and a visitor from Rome would pass it by if it were not pointed out.
O land of Egypt, guilty of the destinies of civil war, with good reason did the Sibyl of Cumae warn us in her verse, that no Roman soldier should visit the mouths of the Nile in Egypt, and those banks which the summer floods. What curse can I invoke upon that ruthless land in reward for so great a crime? May Nile reverse his waters and be stayed in the region where he rises; may the barren fields crave winter rains; and may all the soil break up into the crumbling sands of Ethiopia. Though we have admitted to Roman temples your Isis and your dogs half divine, the rattle which bids the worshipper wail, and the Osiris whom you prove to be mortal by mourning for him, yet you, Egypt, keep our dead a prisoner in your dust. Rome too, though she has already given a temple to the cruel tyrant, has not yet claimed the ashes of Pompey, and his ghost still lies in exile. If the first generation dreaded Caesar’s threats, now at least let her welcome the bones of her beloved Magnus, if they still remain in that hated land and are not yet washed away by the sea. Who will fear to trouble the tomb, and dread to remove the dead so worthy of worship? Oh, that Rome would bid me do this wrong, and deign to make use of my arms! Happy, too happy, should I be, if it were mine to unearth the remains and convey them to Italy, and to violate a tomb so unworthy of them. Perhaps, when Rome shall pray from Heaven a cure for barren fields or pestilential winds or excessive heats or earthquake, then, at the advice and bidding of the gods, you will pass, Magnus, to your loved city, and the chief Pontiff will bear your ashes. Even now, if any man travels to Syene, parched by flaming Cancer, and to Thebes, unwetted even under the rain-bearing Pleiads, in order to behold the Nile; if any man seeks the quiet waters of the Red Sea or the ports of Arabia to traffic in Eastern wares — that gravestone, and those ashes, perhaps disturbed and lying on the surface of the sand, will call him aside to worship, and bid him appease the spirit of Magnus, and give it the preference over Casian Jupiter. That grave will never mar his fame; the dead would be less precious if buried in temples and gold. Fortune, lying in this tomb, is now at last a supreme deity; prouder than all Caesar’s altars is the sea-beaten stone on the shore of Africa. Many, who deny to the deities of the Capitol the incense which is their due, worship the thunderbolt fenced in by the augur’s turf. One day it will prove a gain that no lofty pile of massive marble was raised here to last for ever. For a short space of time will scatter the little heap of dust; the grave will fall in; and all proof of Pompey’s death will be lost. A happier age will come, when those who point out that stone will be disbelieved, and perhaps our descendants will consider Egypt as false in her tale of Pompey’s tomb as Crete when she claims the tomb of Jupiter.
BOOK IX
BUT the spirit of Pompey did not linger down in Egypt among the embers, nor did that handful of ashes prison his mighty ghost. Soaring up from the burning-place, it left the charred limbs and unworthy pyre behind, and sought the dome of the Thunderer. Where our dark atmosphere — the intervening space between earth and the moon’s orbit — joins on to the starry spheres, there after death dwell heroes, whose fiery quality has fitted them, after guiltless lives, to endure the lower limit of ether, and has brought their souls from all parts to the eternal spheres: to those who are coffined in gold and buried with incense that realm is barred. When he had steeped himself in the true light of that region, and gazed at the planets and the fixed stars of heaven, he saw the thick darkness that veils our day, and smiled at the mockery done to his headless body. Then his spirit flew above the field of Pharsalia, the standards of bloodthirsty Caesar, and the ships scattered over the sea, till it settled, as the avenger of guilt, in the righteous breast of Brutus, and took up its abode in the heart of unconquerable Cato.
While the issue remained uncertain, and none could tell whom the civil war would make master of the world, Cato hated Magnus as well as Caesar, though he had been swept away by his country’s cause to follow the Senate to Pompey’s camp; but now, after the defeat of Pharsalia, he favoured Pompey with his whole heart. When his country had no guardian, he took her in charge; he revived the trembling limbs of the nation, and replaced the swords that coward hands had thrown down; and he carried on the civil war, without either seeking to be a tyrant or fearing to be a slave. He did naught in arms to serve his own ends; after the death of Magnus the whole party was the party of freedom. But they were scattered round the coasts; and, that victorious Caesar might not pick them all up in his rapid progress, Cato sought the retirement of Coreyra and carried away with him in a thousand ships the wreck of the disaster at Pharsalia. Who would have believed that an army, conveyed on so many vessels, was in flight, or that the sea had proved too narrow for a vanquished fleet?
Next he went to Malea of the Dorians and Taenarus where the dead may rise, and thence to Cythera. As the North wind sped on his keels, he shunned the shore of Greece and sailed along the coast of Crete, and the waves gave way before them. Then, when Phycus dared to close its harbour against the fleet, he overthrew it and laid in ruins a town which deserved to be sacked without mercy. Gentle breezes wafted him along the sea from here to the coast of Palinurus (for his memory is preserved not only in Italian waters, and Africa bears witness that her peaceful harbour found favour with the Trojan steersman). Then the sight of ships sailing far out at sea kept them in suspense: were those crews partners in misfortune or enemies?
The speed of Caesar makes everything dreadful, and they are convinced of his presence on every ship. No, these vessels were freighted with mourning and lamentation, and with a sorrow that might draw tears even from stern Cato.
For after Cornelia’s prayers had fruitlessly stayed the flight of the sailors and her stepson, lest haply the corpse might be driven out to sea from the Egyptian shore, and when the flame revealed the pyre of those maimed rites, then she reproached Fortune: “Unworthy then was I to kindle my husband’s pyre, to bend over the cold limbs, and throw myself upon the body; unworthy to burn my torn tresses, to gather the limbs of Magnus scattered in the sea, to pour a flood of tears into every wound, and to fill my bosom with the bones and warm ashes, with the purpose of sprinkling in the temples of the gods whatever I might gather from the extinguished flame. The pyre burns on with no funeral honours; perhaps some Egyptian hand proffered this service which the dead resents. Well is it that the remains of the Crassi lie unburied; the fire that was granted to Pompey show’s greater spite on the part of Heaven. Shall my sad lot ever repeat itself? Shall I never be allowed to give due burial to a husband? Shall I never mourn over an urn that contains ashes? But what need is there of a grave, or why does grief require any trappings? Do I not, undutiful wife, carry Pompey in my whole breast? Does not his image cling to my inmost heart? Let a wife who intends to survive her husband seek his ashes. But now this fire, which shines far away with scanty light, as it rises from the Egyptian shore, still shows me some part of you, Magnus. The flame has now died down, and the smoke that carries Pompey away fades at sunrise, and the hated winds are stretching the sails of my ship. With sorrow (if my words may be believed) I leave the coast of Egypt. More welcome is it to me than any conquered country which provided Pompey with triumphs, more welcome than the car which rolled over the pavement of the lofty Capitol. The Magnus of prosperous days has passed from my memory; the Magnus I require is he whom the Nile possesses; and I complain that I may not cling to the guilty land; its very guilt endears the strand to me. I bid you, Sextus, face the hazards of war and carry on your father’s warfare over all the world. For Pompey left this message for his sons, and it is treasured up in my memory: ‘When the destined hour shall have condemned me to death, I bid you, my sons, take over civil war; and never, while any scion of my stock remains on earth, let the Caesars reign in peace. Rouse up by the glory of our name either kings or States that are strong in their own freedom; I leave you this part to play and these resources. A Pompey who takes to the sea will always find fleets, and my successor shall rouse all nations to war; only let your hearts be ever tameless and mindful of your father’s power. Cato, and Cato alone, you may fitly obey, if he shall rally a party in defence of freedom.’ I have fulfilled my promise to Magnus and done his bidding; his device has been successful, and thus deceived I lived on, that I might not break faith and carry to the grave the words of his message. But now I will follow my husband through empty chaos and through Tartarus, if such a place there be. How distant the death to which I am doomed, I know not; ere it comes, I shall punish my life for lasting too long. It had the heart to see Magnus murdered and not to take refuge in death: it shall end, bruised by blows from my hands; it shall melt away in tears; never shall I resort to the sword or noose or a headlong fall through the air; shame to me if I — cannot die of grief alone, when he is dead.” When she had spoken thus, she covered her head with a mourning veil; determined to endure darkness, she hid in the hold of the ship, and, clasping closely her cruel sorrow, she makes tears her joy and loves her grief in place of her husband. Heedless of the waves, of the East wind that howled in the rigging, and of the shouting that rose higher as the danger grew, she lay in the attitude of death; what the frightened sailors prayed to escape, she prayed to suffer; and she took the side of the storms.
Cyprus with its foaming waves first received their ship; and then the East wind, still ruling the sea but with less fury, drove them to the land of Libya and Cato’s camp. From the shore young Magnus looked in sorrow, for the mind that fears intensely forebodes evil, at his brother and the companions of his father; then he rushed headlong right into the waves. “Brother, say where is our father. Is the head and crown of the world still standing, or are we destroyed, and has Magnus taken with him to the shades all that was Rome?” Thus Gnaeus spoke; and his brother answered him: “Happy are you, whom destiny drove to other lands, and who only hear the horror: my eyes are guilty, brother, because they looked on at my father’s death. He did not fall by Caesar’s arms, and no worthy hand laid him low. In the power of the foul monarch who rules the land of Nile, relying on the gods of hospitality and on the great boon he had conferred upon the dynasty, he fell, to atone for having given to them the crown. These eyes saw them hacking at the breast of our noble father; and, not believing that the king of Egypt had possessed such power as that, I supposed that Caesar already stood on the shore of the Nile. But the blood and wounds of our aged sire moved me less than the carrying of his head through the city: I saw it borne aloft on a pike driven through it; men said that it was being kept for the cruel conqueror to view, and that the king desired proof of his crime. As to the body, I know not whether the dogs and greedy vultures of Egypt tore it to pieces, or whether it was destroyed by the surreptitious fire that we saw. Whatever outrage of destiny made away with those limbs, I pardon Heaven for that crime; but I complain of the part that was preserved.” When young Magnus heard such a tale, he did not pour forth his grief in groans or tears; but, maddened by rightful love for a father, he cried: “Hurry down your ships, ye sailors, from the dry land; driven by the rowers, let the fleet burst out in the teeth of the wind: and go forth with me, ye leaders — nowhere was so great a prize offered to the fighters in civil war — to inter the unburied body of Magnus and appease his anger with the blood of the effeminate king. Shall I not drag forth the body of Alexander from its shrine and sink it, together with the Macedonian city, beneath the sluggish waters of Lake Mareotis? Shall I not hale out Amasis and the other kings from their tombs in the Pyramids, and send them swimming down the current of the Nile? Let all their tombs make atonement to Magnus who has none at all. I shall rifle the grave of Isis, now worshipped over the world; the limbs of Osiris, swathed in linen, I shall scatter in the public streets; I shall lay the gods as fuel whereon to burn my father’s head. And the land I shall punish too; I shall leave their fields with none to till them; the Nile shall rise, and there shall be none to use it; men and gods shall be expelled from Egypt, and you, my father, alone shall possess the land.” Thus he spoke, and sought in his rage to launch the ships with speed; but Cato, while praising the youth, restrained his fury.
