Book 7
Strange sights were seen; or caused by hands divine
1
Or due to fearful fancy. Haemus' top
Plunged headlong in the valley, Pindus met
With high Olympus, while at Ossa's feet
Red ran Boebeis,A lake at the foot of Mount Ossa. Pindus, Ossa, Olympus, and, above all, Haemus (the Balkans) were at a long distance from Pharsalia. Comp. Book VI., 678. and Pharsalia's field
Gave warlike voices as in depth of night.
Now darkness came upon their wondering gaze,
Now daylight pale and wan, their helmets wreathed
In pallid mist; the spirits of their sires
Hovered in air, and shades of kindred dead
Passed flitting through the gloom. Yet had the host,
Conscious of guilty prayers, and of the hope
To do to death their brothers and their sires,
One solace: that they found in hearts amazed
With horrors, and in earth and air distraught,
A happy omen of the crimes to come.
Was't strange that peoples whom their latest day
Of happy life awaited (if the mind
Of man foreknows) should tremble with affright?
Romans who dwelt by far Araxes' stream,
And Tyrian Gades,Gades (Cadiz) is stated to have been founded by the Phoenicians about 1000 BC. in whatever clime,
'Neath every sky, struck by mysterious dread
Were plunged in sorrow-yet rebuked the tear,
For yet they knew not of the fatal day.
Thus on Euganean hills This alludes to the story told by Plutarch ('Caesar,' 47), that, at Patavium, Caius Cornelius, a man reputed for skill in divination, and a friend of Livy the historian, was sitting to watch the birds that day. 'And first of all (as Livius says) he discovered the time of the battle, and he said to those present that the affair was now deciding and the men were going into action. Looking again, and observing the signs, he sprang up with enthusiasm and called out, "You conquer, Caesar."' (Long's translation.) where sulphurous fumes
Disclose the rise of Aponus The Fontes Aponi were warm springs near Padua. An altar, inscribed to Apollo Aponus, was found at Ribchester, and is now at St. John's College, Cambridge. (Wright, 'Celt, Roman, and Saxon,' p. 320.) from earth,
And where Timavus broadens in the meads,
An augur spake: 'The last great day is come;
' To-day in battle meet the impious arms
' Of Caesar and of Magnus.' Or he saw
The bolts of Jupiter, predicting ill;
Or else the sky discordant o'er the space
Of heaven, from pole to pole; or else perchance
The sun was sad and misty in the height
And told the battle by his wasted beams.
By Nature's fiat that Thessalian day
Passed not as others; if the gifted sense
Of reading portents had been given to all,
All men had known Pharsalia. Gods of heaven!
How do ye mark the great ones of the earth!
