Book 7
In Caesar's dreams were visioned. In such guise
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Orestes saw the Furies, ere he fled
To purge his sin within the Scythian bounds;
Such fierce convulsions raged within the soul
Of Pentheus mad; and in Agave'sBook VI., 420. mind
When she had known her son. Before his gaze
Flashed all the javelins which Pharsalia saw,
Or that avenging day when drew their blades
The Roman senators; and monstrous shapes
Scourged all his frame. 'Tis thus the wretch shall find
In guilty conscience punishment most dire:
He saw the Styx before his rival died:
And goblin horrors from the depths of Hell
Unveiled the butchery of Pharsalia's field The whole of this passage is foreign to Caesar's character, and unfounded in fact. 15,000 Pompeians perished on the field, and 24,000 were taken prisoners. When Caesar passed over the field he is recorded to have said in pity, 'They would have it so; after all my exploits I should have been condemned to death had I not thrown myself upon the protection of my soldiers.' - Plutarch, 'Caesar,' 46; Duruy, 'History of Rome,vol. iii., p. 311.
He shrank not from its horror, nor withdrew
His feasting gaze. There rolled the streams in flood
With crimson carnage; there a seething heap
Rose shrouding all the plain, now in decay
Slow settling down; there numbered he the host
Of Magnus slain; and for the morn's repast
That spot he chose whence he might watch the dead,
And feast his eyes upon Emathia's field
Concealed by corpses; of the bloody sight
Insatiate, he forbad the funeral pyre,
And cast Emathia in the face of heaven.
Nor by the Punic victor was he taught,
Who at the close of Cannae's fatal fight
Laid in the earth the Roman consul dead,
To find fit burial for his fallen foes;
For these were all his countrymen, nor yet
His ire by blood appeased. Yet ask we not
For separate pyres or sepulchres apart
Wherein to lay the ashes of the fallen:
Burn in one holocaust the nations slain;
Or should it please thy soul to torture more
Thy kinsman, pile on high from OEta's slopes
And Pindus' top the woods: thus shall he see
While fugitive on the deep the blaze that marks
