The Complete Works of Lucan. Illustrated (eBook)

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

Therefore, when men perceived the mighty disasters which the truthfulness of the gods would cost the world, business ceased and gloom prevailed throughout Rome; the magistrates disguised themselves in the dress of the people; no purple accompanied the lictors’ rods. Moreover, men restrained their lamentations, and a deep dumb grief pervaded the people. (So, at the moment of death a household is stunned and speechless, before the body is lamented and laid out, and before the mother with dishevelled hair summons her maidens to beat their breasts with cruel arms: she still embraces the limbs stiff with the departure of life, and the inanimate features, with eyes fierce in death. Fear she feels no longer, but grief not yet: incapable of thought she hangs over her son and marvels at her loss.) The matrons put off their former garb and occupied the temples in mournful companies. Some sprinkled the images with their tears; others dashed their breasts against the hard floor; in their frenzy they shed their torn locks over the consecrated threshold and struck with repeated shrieks the ears accustomed to be addressed with prayer. Nor did they all prostrate themselves in the temple of the supreme Thunderer: they parted the gods among them, and no altar lacked a mother to call down shame upon it. One of them, whose cheeks were wet and torn, and her shoulders black and discoloured by blows, spoke thus: “Now, wretched mothers, now is the time to beat your breasts and tear your hair. Do not delay your grief, nor keep it for the crowning sorrows. Now we have power to weep, while the destiny of the rival leaders is undecided; but, when either is victorious, we must perforce rejoice” Thus grief works itself up and fans its own flame. — The men also, setting out for the war and for the camps of the rivals, poured out just complaints against the cruel gods: “Wretched is our lot, that we were not born into the age of the Punic wars, that we were not the men who fought at Cannae and the Trebia. We do not pray the gods for peace: let them put rage into foreign nations and rouse up at once barbarian countries. Let the whole world band itself together for war; let armies of Medes swoop down from Persian Susa; let the northern Danube fail to bar the Massagetae; let the Elbe and the unconquered mouth of the Rhine send out swarms of fair-haired Suebians from the uttermost North; make us foes to every nation — but let civil war pass from us! Let the Dacians attack us on one side, the Getae on the other; let one of the rivals confront the Spaniards, and the other turn his standards against the quivers of the; let every Roman hand grasp a sword. Or, if it be heaven’s purpose to destroy the Roman race, let the mighty firmament gather itself in flame and fall down on earth in the shape of thunderbolts. O ruthless Author of the universe, strike both parties and both rivals at once with the same bolt, while they are still innocent! Must they produce such a monstrous crop of crime, in order to settle which of the two shall be master of Rome? Civil war were a price almost too high to pay for the failure of both.” Such were the complaints poured forth by patriotism that was soon to pass away. Unhappy parents too were tortured by a sorrow of their own: they curse the prolongation of grievous old age, and lament that they have lived to see a second civil war. And thus spoke one of them who sought precedents for his great fear: “As great were the disturbances prepared by Fate, when victorious Marius, who had triumphed over the Teutones and the African, was driven out to hide his head in the miry sedge. Engulfing quicksands and spongy marshes hid the secret that Fortune had placed there; and later the old man’s flesh was corroded by iron fetters and the squalor of long captivity. He was yet to die as Fortune’s favourite, as consul in Rome which he had ruined; but first he suffered for his guilt. Death itself often fled from him. When power to take his hated life was granted to a foeman, naught came of it; for, in beginning the deed of slaughter, the man was palsied and let the sword slip from his strengthless hand. A great light shone in the prison darkness; he saw the awful deities that wait on crime, and he saw Marius as he was yet to be; and he heard a dreadful voice— ‘You are not permitted to touch that neck. Before he dies himself, Marius must, by the laws that govern the ages, bring death to many. Lay aside your useless rage.’ If the Cimbri wish to avenge the extinction of their slaughtered race, they should let the old man live. No divine favour, but the exceeding wrath of heaven, has guarded the life of that man of blood, in whom Fortune finds a perfect instrument for the destruction of Rome. — Next he was conveyed over an angry sea to a hostile soil, where he was chased through deserted villages; he couched down in the devastated realm of Jugurtha who had graced his triumph, and the ashes of Carthage were his bed. Carthage and Marius both drew consolation for their destiny ; both alike prostrate, they pardoned Heaven. In Africa he nursed a hate like Hannibal’s. As soon as Fortune smiled again, he set free bands of slaves; the prisoners melted down their fetters and stretched forth their hands for slaughter. He suffered none to bear his standards, except men already inured to crime, men who brought guilt with them to the camp. Shame upon Fate! How dread that day, the day when victorious, Marius seized the city! With what mighty strides cruel death stalked abroad! High and low were slain alike; the sword strayed far and wide; and no breast was spared the steel. Pools of blood stood in the temples; constant carnage wetted the red and slippery pavement. None was protected by his age: the slayer did not scruple to anticipate the last day of declining age, or to cut short the early prime of a hapless infant in the dawn of life. How was it possible that children should deserve death for any crime? But it was enough to have already a life to lose. The violence of frenzy was itself an incentive; and it was deemed the part of a laggard to look for guilt in a victim. Many were slain merely to make up a number; and the bloodstained conqueror seized a head cut off from a stranger’s shoulders, because he was ashamed to walk with empty hands. Those alone were spared who pressed their trembling lips on that polluted hand. How degenerate a people! Though a thousand swords obey this new signal of death, it scarce would befit brave men to buy centuries of life so dear, far less the short and shameful respite — till Sulla returns. None could find time to lament the deaths of the multitude, and hardly to tell how Baebius was torn asunder and scattered piecemeal by the countless hands of the mob that divided limb from limb; or how the head of Antonins, prophet of evil, was swung by the torn white hair and placed dripping by a soldier upon the festal board. The Crassi were mutilated and mangled by Fimbria; and the blood of tribunes wetted the cruel wood. Scaevola too found no protection from outraged Vesta: they sacrificed the old man before the very shrine and ever-burning hearth of the goddess, but the scanty stream of blood that issued from his aged throat suffered the fire to burn on. These things were followed by the seventh year in which Marius resumed the rods of office. And that was the end of his life: he had suffered every blow that evil fortune can inflict, and enjoyed every gift that good fortune can bestow; he had measured the full extent of human destiny. — Again, how many corpses fell at Sacriportus! What heaps of slain encumbered the Colline Gate on that day when the capital of the world and the government of mankind was nearly transferred to a different seat, and the Samnites hoped to inflict on Rome a heavier blow than the Caudine Forks! And then, to crown the infinite slaughter, came Sulla’s vengeance. What little blood was left at Rome he shed; and while he lopped off too fiercely the limbs that were corrupt, his surgery went beyond all bounds, and his knife followed too far on the path whither disease invited it. The men slain were guilty, but it was a time when there were none but guilty to survive. Licence was granted then to private hatred; and anger, freed from the curb of law, rushed headlong on. The deeds done were not all done for the sake of one man; but each committed outrage to please himself. The conqueror had once for all issued his orders which included every crime. The servant drove the accursed sword to the hilt through his master’s body; sons were sprinkled with their father’s blood and strove with each other for the privilege of beheading a parent; and brother slew brother to earn rewards. The tombs were filled with fugitives, and the bodies of the living consorted with buried corpses; and the lairs of wild beasts were crowded with men. One man...