Pharsalia (eBook)

BOOK VI  THE FIGHT NEAR DYRRHACHIUM.  SCAEVA'S EXPLOITS.  THE WITCH OF THESSALIA

 Now that the chiefs with minds intent on fight Had drawn their armies near upon the hills And all the gods beheld their chosen pair, Caesar, the Grecian towns despising, scorned To reap the glory of successful war Save at his kinsman's cost.  In all his prayers He seeks that moment, fatal to the world, When shall be cast the die, to win or lose, And all his fortune hang upon the throw. Thrice he drew out his troops, his eagles thrice, Demanding battle; thus to increase the woe Of Latium, prompt as ever: but his foes, Proof against every art, refused to leave The rampart of their camp.  Then marching swift By hidden path between the wooded fields He seeks, and hopes to seize, Dyrrhachium's (1) fort; But Magnus, speeding by the ocean marge, First camped on Petra's slopes, a rocky hill Thus by the natives named.  From thence he keeps Watch o'er the fortress of Corinthian birth Which by its towers alone without a guard Was safe against a siege.  No hand of man In ancient days built up her lofty wall, No hammer rang upon her massive stones: Not all the works of war, nor Time himself Shall undermine her.  Nature's hand has raised Her adamantine rocks and hedged her in With bulwarks girded by the foamy main: And but for one short bridge of narrow earth Dyrrhachium were an island.  Steep and fierce, Dreaded of sailors, are the cliffs that bear Her walls; and tempests, howling from the west, Toss up the raging main upon the roofs; And homes and temples tremble at the shock.

Thirsting for battle and with hopes inflamed Here Caesar hastes, with distant rampart lines Seeking unseen to coop his foe within, Though spread in spacious camp upon the hills. With eagle eye he measures out the land Meet to be compassed, nor content with turf Fit for a hasty mound, he bids his troops Tear from the quarries many a giant rock: And spoils the dwellings of the Greeks, and drags Their walls asunder for his own.  Thus rose A mighty barrier which no ram could burst Nor any ponderous machine of war. Mountains are cleft, and level through the hills The work of Caesar strides: wide yawns the moat, Forts show their towers rising on the heights, And in vast circle forests are enclosed And groves and spacious lands, and beasts of prey, As in a line of toils.  Pompeius lacked Nor field nor forage in th' encircled span Nor room to move his camp; nay, rivers rose Within, and ran their course and reached the sea; And Caesar wearied ere he saw the whole, And daylight failed him.  Let the ancient tale Attribute to the labours of the gods The walls of Ilium: let the fragile bricks Which compass in great Babylon, amaze The fleeting Parthian.  Here a larger space Than those great cities which Orontes swift And Tigris' stream enclose, or that which boasts In Eastern climes, the lordly palaces Fit for Assyria's kings, is closed by walls Amid the haste and tumult of a war Forced to completion.  Yet this labour huge Was spent in vain.  So many hands had joined Or Sestos with Abydos, or had tamed With mighty mole the Hellespontine wave, Or Corinth from the realm of Pelops' king Had rent asunder, or had spared each ship Her voyage round the long Malean cape, Or had done anything most hard, to change The world's created surface.  Here the war Was prisoned: blood predestinate to flow In all the parts of earth; the host foredoomed To fall in Libya or in Thessaly Was here: in such small amphitheatre The tide of civil passion rose and fell.

At first Pompeius knew not: so the hind Who peaceful tills the mid-Sicilian fields Hears not Pelorous (2) sounding to the storm; So billows thunder on Rutupian shores (3), Unheard by distant Caledonia's tribes. But when he saw the mighty barrier stretch O'er hill and valley, and enclose the land, He bade his columns leave their rocky hold And seize on posts of vantage in the plain; Thus forcing Caesar to extend his troops On wider lines; and holding for his own Such space encompassed as divides from Rome Aricia, (4) sacred to that goddess chaste Of old Mycenae; or as Tiber holds From Rome's high ramparts to the Tuscan sea, Unless he deviate.  No bugle call Commands an onset, and the darts that fly Fly though forbidden; but the arm that flings For proof the lance, at random, here and there Deals impious slaughter.  Weighty care compelled Each leader to withhold his troops from fight; For there the weary earth of produce failed Pressed by Pompeius' steeds, whose horny hoofs Rang in their gallop on the grassy fields And killed the succulence.  They strengthless lay Upon the mown expanse, nor pile of straw, Brought from full barns in place of living grass, Relieved their craving; shook their panting flanks, And as they wheeled Death struck his victim down. Then foul contagion filled the murky air Whose poisonous weight pressed on them in a cloud Pestiferous; as in Nesis' isle (5) the breath Of Styx rolls upwards from the mist-clad rocks; Or that fell vapour which the caves exhale From Typhon (6) raging in the depths below. Then died the soldiers, for the streams they drank Held yet more poison than the air: the skin Was dark and rigid, and the fiery plague Made hard their vitals, and with pitiless tooth Gnawed at their wasted features, while their eyes Started from out their sockets, and the head Drooped for sheer weariness.  So the disease Grew swifter in its strides till scarce was room, 'Twixt life and death, for sickness, and the pest Slew as it struck its victim, and the dead Thrust from the tents (such all their burial) lay Blent with the living.  Yet their camp was pitched Hard by the breezy sea by which might come All nations' harvests, and the northern wind Not seldom rolled the murky air away. Their foe, not vexed with pestilential air Nor stagnant waters, ample range enjoyed Upon the spacious uplands: yet as though In leaguer, famine seized them for its prey. Scarce were the crops half grown when Caesar saw How prone they seized upon the food of beasts, And stripped of leaves the bushes and the groves, And dragged from roots unknown the doubtful herb. Thus ate they, starving, all that teeth may bite Or fire might soften, or might pass their throats Dry, parched, abraded; food unknown before Nor placed on tables: while the leaguered foe Was blessed with plenty.

      When Pompeius first Was pleased to break his bonds and be at large, No sudden dash he makes on sleeping foe Unarmed in shade of night; his mighty soul Scorns such a path to victory.  'Twas his aim, To lay the turrets low; to mark his track, By ruin spread afar; and with the sword To hew a path between his slaughtered foes. Minucius' (7) turret was the chosen spot Where groves of trees and thickets gave approach Safe, unbetrayed by dust.

           Up from the fields Flashed all at once his eagles into sight And all his trumpets blared.  But ere the sword Could win the battle, on the hostile ranks Dread panic fell; prone as in death they lay Where else upright they should withstand the foe; Nor more availed their valour, and in vain The cloud of weapons flew, with none to slay. Then blazing torches rolling pitchy flame Are hurled, and shaken nod the lofty towers And threaten ruin, and the bastions groan Struck by the frequent engine, and the troops Of Magnus by triumphant eagles led Stride o'er the rampart, in their front the world.

Yet now that passage which not Caesar's self Nor thousand valiant squadrons had availed To rescue from their grasp, one man in arms Steadfast till death refused them; Scaeva named This hero soldier: long he served in fight Waged 'gainst the savage on the banks of Rhone; And now centurion made, through deeds of blood, He bore the staff before the marshalled line. Prone to all wickedness, he little recked How valourous deeds in civil war may be Greatest of crimes; and when he saw how turned His comrades from the war and sought in flight A refuge, (8) "Whence," he cried, "this impious fear Unknown to Caesar's armies?  Do ye turn Your backs on death, and are ye not ashamed Not to be found where slaughtered heroes lie? Is loyalty too weak?  Yet love of fight Might bid you stand.  We are the chosen few Through whom the foe would break.  Unbought by blood This day shall not be theirs.  'Neath Caesar's eye, True, death would be more happy; but this boon Fortune denies: at least my fall shall be Praised by Pompeius.  Break ye with your breasts Their weapons; blunt the edges of their swords With throats unyielding.  In the distant lines The dust is seen already, and the sound Of tumult and of ruin finds the ear Of Caesar: strike; the victory is ours: For he shall come who while his soldiers die Shall make the fortress his."  His voice called forth The courage that the trumpets failed to rouse When first they rang: his comrades mustering come To watch his deeds; and, wondering at the man, To test if valour thus by foes oppressed, In narrow space, could hope for aught but death. But Scaeva standing on the tottering bank Heaves from the brimming turret on the foe The corpses of the fallen; the ruined mass Furnishing weapons to his hands; with beams, And ponderous stones, nay, with his body threats His enemies; with poles and stakes he thrusts The breasts advancing; when they grasp the wall He lops the arm: rocks crush the foeman's skull And rive the scalp asunder: fiery bolts Dashed at another set his hair aflame, Till rolls the greedy blaze about his eyes With hideous crackle.  As the pile of slain Rose to the summit of the wall he sprang, Swift as...