Both generals were minded now towards war, and after

They camped near each other, arms ranged point to point,

The gods could view them equally. Disdaining nearby

Grecian cities, Caesar shunned all fights that fortune

Bent on that fatal hour for the world when all

Would fall at once, when by fate’s die-cast one or other

Of their heads would be interred. Three times he sent

His army to the hills, his flags that threatened war,

Slaughter. When he sees his relative could not

By any means be coaxed to fight, but trusted to

His narrow trenches, then concealed by paths through wooded

Pastureland he headed for Dyrrhachium

Anticipates that route to set his camp upon

A hill Taulantians call Petra. He protects

Corinthian walls, defends a city safe already

In its own defense. Not trusting built up mounds

Prodigious easily can be consumed by wars

Or passing time - but a defense that will not yield

To any steel lies in its natural location: closed

On all sides by deep sea and precipices thrown

An island. Fearful rockface guards the walls from ships,

And when Ionian seas, enraged with southern wind,

Rise up, the temples and the houses shake, roofs drenched

With ocean. Here a plan unrighteous seized the greedy

Dispersed in those vast hills, and at a distance

Heap an earthwork, they unknowing. With his eyes

He measured the terrain. Unwilling to use fragile

Sod alone to raise these stealthy walls, he brought in

Homes. Built strong so brutal rams and violent martial

Engines could not fell them. Mountains were deformed

And through steep places Caesar worked a level plane.

Entrenchments he extends, disposing castellated

And in a wide and circular embrace he closes

All within his net: expanses, brush filled wastes,

Woods, borderlands, and beasts. Surrounded thus

With Caesar’s mounds still Magnus lacks no fields, no pastures

Rise here, here exhaust their courses in the sea.

When he would visit his remotest works it is

A tired Caesar rests between in fields halfway.

Now let the ancient tale of Ilium be told,

Let them admire Babylonian walls of fragile

Clay. But see how great the Tigris and how much

The swift Orontes demarcates, so much that for

Assyrian peoples of the east it makes a kingdom;

In war’s distraction. Yet great labors pass away.

So many hands might well have served to graft Abydos

Onto Sestos and with earthen fill exclude

The sea of Phryxus. Or to break off Corinth

The long route round Malea. Or to tackle any

Task on earth that nature would forbid, and change

That place for better. Here the fields of war in little,

Here is nourished all the blood that is to flow,

In this narrow space burns civil frenzy. Pompey

Unaware at first of rising mounds, as he who

Safe in Sicily’s interior knows nothing

Of Pelorus’ frantic barking; or when wandering

Is hidden from the Scots in Briton. When first he sees

These giant works enveloping the landscape

He too, leading troops from Petra’s safety to disperse them

Among far flung hills, would thin out Caesar’s arms

In fields entrenched as separates exalted Rome

From small Aricia, its grove made sacred to

Diana of Mycenae. Or as far as gliding

Tiber from the walls of Rome would fall into

No trumpet calls; spears fly

At random; often there are crimes, the javelin

In hand. But circumstances and grave cares detain

The generals from mixing arms in outright battle.

Pompey was in want of fodder from exhausted

As callused, urgent hoofs destroyed the growing plain.

In fields thus shorn the warlike steed, exhausted − although

Stables offer hay aplenty − languishing, about

To die and begging new grown grass to eat, with trembling

Decay and limbs grow slack, the torpid sky draws up

Contagion as a floating plague into dark clouds.

Such exhalation of the air as Stygian Nesis

Sends abroad from vapor laden rock, as Typhon’s

And water, readier to bear infection than

The air, congeals all their internal organs with

Disease. Now blackened skin grows stiff, distended eyes

Break open, faces are on fire, and a burning

A weary head refuses to support itself.

Now more and more fate rushes headlong; life and death

Are separated by no illness; dissolution

Follows weariness; the fallen swelled the plague,

To fling their miserable neighbors out beyond

The tents was funeral enough. However, these

Travails were lessened by the sea behind and brace

Of northern winds, and shores and foreign harvests in

And free of movement, not oppressed by evil air

Or stagnant water suffers − as it were a siege,

Both crushing and circumferential – savage famine.

Rising sheafs of grain not yet mature, he sees

Food, grab thorns and rob the wood of leaves; they clutch

By unknown roots at doubtful plants that threaten death;

What flames could soften, biting fragment, and whatever

They could cram into their bodies through raw throats.

Yet they besieged a well fed enemy.

When Pompey

First would break from his imprisonment and gain

The land surrounding, he does not choose shady night,

Disdains a march in stolen secrecy while Caesar’s

And ruinous, to shatter tower while attacking

Trench, and only thus, with sword and blood, would he

Pursue his path. A stretch of the entrenchments seen

Conveniently nearby was called Minucius’ castle;

Here, not raising any dust, he brought his army,

Falling of a sudden on the walls. So many

Eagles from the Latin camp flash all together,

Trumps so many sound. Lest victory be owing

Surprised. No matter what their courage, they lay killed

Where duty bid them stand; and now a lack of men

To suffer wounds. Their cloud of spears, though many, vain.

They rolled and tossed brands made with fiery pitch. But then

The bulwark groaned with constant blows of battering wood.

And now, in heights above the steep entrenchment, Pompey’s

Eagles; justice for the world made visible.

That place which fortune could not safeguard with a thousand

Forbade these victors capture it. With his own arms,

As yet he stood, and would not grant that Magnus conquer.

Scaeva this man’s name. Among the common soldiers

He distinguished himself facing Rhone’s wild tribes,

Centurion with added troops. He was adept

In crime, for he knew not how great a crime is courage

In a civil war. Now when he sees his comrades

Seeking safety, war neglected, in retreat

Never known in Caesar’s army. O, base slaves

And servile cattle, do you turn your back on death,

Your blood unshed? Have you no shame that from the mound

You will absent yourself, be sought for on the pyres

Mind your duty − make you stand? We have been chosen

By the foe as those they would burst through. This day

Will pass, O Magnus, with no little blood. Much rather

Would I seek the shades in Caesar’s presence; fortune

Destroy spears with your breasts, beat iron back with throats.

Now far away dust stirs and sounds of ruin pummel

Caesar’s unsuspecting ears. We triumph, friends;

He comes who will avenge the towers while we die.”

Reiterated. Spellbound by this man, the youth

Pursue him, keen to see and learn if, overmatched

In numbers and position, courage can yield more

Than death. He stands upon the ruined mound and first

The enemy below with corpses. All those ruins

Yield him spears; he threatens foe with clubs and clods

And his own person; swinging stake or hardened pike

He flings back chests that broach the wall and cuts off hands

He strews brains, ill defended in their feeble case;

He sets aflame the beard and hair of one, the fire

Crackling, eyes on fire. Now, the mound grown level

To the wall from heaps of dead, a leap sends him

Reluctant than fleet leopard springs above the hunter’s

Spears. Among tight ranks, surrounded all by war,

The foe he sees he slays. And now, point gone and caked

In blood, you lose your edge, blade − Scaeva’s blows more batter

And not wound the body. Every spear assails him,

All the mound. No hand untrue, no spear but sure;

And fortune sees a novelty: in even match

A man and war. Shield rings with blows repeated, pieces

Nothing guards his vital organs but the shafts

That stick into his bones. You fools, why do you waste

With your mere spear and arrow blows that never will

Search vital parts? Let quaking missiles wrapped in flaming

Torn from foundations. Let a ram of iron and the

Hurling engine move him from the threshold there.

He stands no feeble wall for Caesar, holding Pompey back.

Yet now no longer will he cover chest nor look

It were a fault to live, looks only inward on

His wounds of war, the thick wood carried in his chest.

And now with weary step elects which enemy

To ruin falling. So the Libyan elephant,

Bounding from his thick skinned back and shatters clinging

Spears with shaking of his hide. His viscera

Lie safe and deep while spears stand in the beast but draw

No blood. So many spears, so many darts − wounds insufficient

Its Cretan arrow, which from far and truer than

All expectation struck the head of Scaeva, his left

Eye. Now bravely tearing that fixed arrow, that

Obstructing iron − sinews and attachments all −

The shaft with his own eye. As the Pannonian bear does

After savage blow, when with his slender strap

The Libyan hurls a spear; she twists upon the wound,

Infuriated lashes at the point embedded,

His rage destroyed his face; he stood in raining blood,

Deformed. The victors’ happy cries rose to the sky.

That wound and that man’s petty blood if seen in Caesar

Could have brought no greater joy. He, covering

Put aside, said: “Citizens, refrain. Take weapons

Hence. My death is not to be obtained in any

Further wounds; it needs no spears thrown more, but those

Within my chest torn out. Alive take me to Magnus’

Scaeva, let him be example of deserting

Caesar, not of noble death.” Unhappy Aulus

Credited this simulated sentiment−

He saw no clutched sword, point erect. About to bear

Middle of his throat a flashing blade. Now courage

Glowing warm, refreshed with that one death, he speaks:

“Any hoping Scaeva conquered, let him pay;

If Magnus seeks a peace from this my sword then let him

Do you think me loathe to die, like you? The cause

Of Pompey and the senate are far less to you

Than is the love of death to me.” Just as he spoke

Raised dust declared that Caesar’s cohorts had arrived.

From Magnus that his armies fled from you alone.

War lessening, he sank, for fighting lent him power

After blood was gone. His fellows raised him failing,

Gladly bore him wearied on their shoulders, and

They reverenced a living image of great courage,

Vying to remove the spears fixed in his body;

With your weapons, Scaeva, they bedecked the gods

And chest of naked Mars. Fame had been joyful in this

Or Cantabrians with long had given you

Their backs. But these feats do not let you grace with spoils

The temple of the Thunderer, or shout your triumphs.

With how much of valor did you aid a tyrant!

Repulsed from that part of the camps, his war delayed −

Than does the sea grow weary when with raised east winds

Its torrent breaks upon a fracturing crag or gnaws

The side of some great mountain, shaping future ruin.

In twin maneuvers, weapons wide dispersed. He looses

On the plane his spreading tents, delighted in

Free license to select the ground. So the Padus with

Full head runs over settled, mounded banks disrupting

To fury of these gathered waves and, overspread,

Gives way, then all the river passes over, plains

It never knew lie open to the flood. Now land

Flees from its owners; acres added also onto

Hardly had become aware of these alarms -

A lookout post raised signal fire. There he found

Walls levelled, all in dust, and signs of ruin, cooled

As they were old. The peacefulness of this place kindled

His rage, that they should sleep and Caesar crushed. He would

Have hurried into doom so he disturbed their joy.

Now threatening he fell upon Torquatus - no more

Slack in spotting Caesar’s arms than is the sailor

Blasts. Confining troops within a tighter wall,

He placed his soldiers more compactly in a circle.

Caesar had just crossed his trench defenses when

From all the hilltops Magnus sent a force that poured

Sends more fear into the folk that live near Aetna

When the south winds fill up all its caves and down from

Aetna fiery torrents fall upon the plain.

So Caesar’s troops now feared, unmanned before the fight

Distraught beneath a cloud of blinding dread they flee, but

Run toward their foe, and in their terror fate

Runs down upon them. All the blood of civil war

Might there have been exhausted, even unto peace,

In laws and rights, Rome, happy had you been and free

If only Sulla in that place had conquered for you.

Grievous now and always. Grievous, Caesar, that

Your worst crime paid so well: to have made war upon

Never would have wept at Utica, nor Spain

At Munda; Nile, stained with that awful blood, would not

Have carried body nobler than the Pharoah. Nor would

Naked Iuba strike the Marmarican sands,

Sacred Cato. Rome, this might have been your final

Day of woe, Pharsalia plucked out of fate's nexus.

Caesar left that camp the gods disfavored, with his

Battered army sought the land of Thessaly,

Might flee, though with their urging his associates

Would have him seek the homeland in an Italy

Now free of enemies. “I never will return,”

He said, “to our land as Caesar did, nor ever

I might, when war commenced, have held Hesperia

If I had wished to placed my fighting men in temples

Of our land and wage war in the forum. I would

Cross a world of Scythian cold and burning wastes

Rome, now as victor, who once fled to spare you war?

Ah, better that you suffer no more in this fight;

Let Caesar think you his.” He spoke and turns to Phoebus’

Rising, crosses rugged lands Candavia opens,

Which now fate had primed for battle.

Ossa's cliffs

Bound Thessalia; Titan rises there in winter.

When the summer sun draws toward the highest pole

With rays new born, comes Pelion’s shadow interposed.

And the solstice’ raging lion’s head. When evening

Ripens, Pindus captures adverse winds of Zephyr

And the Lapyx, as light dissipates. Those dwelling

At Olympus’ base fear no north wind, and through

All those mountains hug a valley where, unbroken,

Central swamps once reached the fields. The land retaining

All its water, Tempe’s riverbed leads nowhere

To the sea; it stood a single pool that merely

Hand of Hercules was severed from Olympus

Then the ocean sensed a sudden fall of water.

How much better had it stayed beneath the waves,

But Thessaly’s Pharsalus rises, realm of water-

By Phylacian ship; Peleos rose and mournful

From the muses' anger Dorion; Trachin too,

And mighty with the Herculean quiver − gifted

For a pyre's torching − Meliboea; potent

Ploughed under, where tales speak of Echion’s old Thebes.

For there it was Agave, exiled, brought the head

And neck of Pentheus to final fire, grieving

That such only had she taken of her son.

Aeas pure in flow but small in stream falls thence

To the Ionian seas; no stronger glides the father

Of abducted Isis; you, Oeneus, and your

Would-be son in law, who strews the Echinads

That cuts Meleagra’s Calydon. With rapid current

Sperchios strikes the Malian river. Pure in flow,

Amphrysus waters pastures Phoebus tended once.

Anaurus sends no moistened clouds, nor air bedewed,

Through Peneus to the ocean. Apidanus

Whirling. Enipeus swift except when mixed.

Aesopus courses, Phoenix, Melas. Titaresus

Only keeps its name in joining other waters.

And ran above it as upon a dusty field.

It’s said this river, mindful of its source in Stygian

Marshes, shuns contagion of inferior streams,

Keeps for itself the heavens’ awe. When first these rivers

By the Boebrican plough; soon Lelegian hands

Employed the share. Aeolidae and Dolopian

Farmers broke the ground, Magnetes known for horse,

Minyae for the oar. Here fertile clouds filled up

You, Monychus, breaking Pholoes’ hard stones,

And you, fierce Rhoetus, hurling under Oeta wrenched-out

Mountain ash that north winds scarce uproot. The host

Of great Alcides, Pholus; you, too, sinful boatman

Bright, cold constellation driving larger scorpio

With Haemonian bow. War’s seeds in this land quivered

First. And first, from stone-struck trident, sprung a steed

Of Thessaly portending war, and, steel bit champing,

From Pagassae’s shore the first pine ship cut through

The strait and launched men of the earth on waves unknown.

The Thessalian ruler Itonos first pounded

Out weighed portions of a heated mass, poured silver

In giant furnaces. Here was it first conceived

To count up wealth – and that incited human kind

To evil wars. The Python slithered down from here,

A serpent of great size that glided across Cyrrha’s

From Thessaly. Hence too the blasphemous Aloeus

Sent his progeny against the gods when Pelion

Raised itself, approaching heaven’s stars, and Ossa

Blocked the path of constellations. Such then was

Both looking out upon a war that was to be.

Now minds are stirred, for plainly there approached an hour

Grave and of decisive import. Nearer now

The fates are come, and souls less noble, fearing, mull

Bring hope along with fear. Mixed in the stricken crowd

Was Sextus, Magnus’ child, unworthy of his parent.

He, soon exiled, loitering in Scyllaean waters,

Cheapened seaborn triumphs as Sicilian pirate.

Ahead, impatient of delay, consumed by all

Things future, he did not approach the Delphic tripod

Nor the Pythian cave. He never asked Dodona,

Mother to first fruits, what sound Jove’s brass emits,

Those reading fires of heaven or the constellations

With Assyrian patience – he consulted nothing

Hidden that is also lawful. Mysteries

Of brutal magic, things abhorrent to the gods

That swore faith to infernal powers and to demons.

It was clear to this poor wretch that gods know little.

Madness vain and wild the place itself encouraged;

Near the camp were towns where Thessalian witches

Lived; none bested them for libertine and monstrous

In Thessaly bear noxious plants from crags? Bear stones

That feel the singing warlocks’ awful craft? There many

Things arise to harm the power of the gods;

A Colchian guest collects in Thessaly the plants

The ears of heaven-dwellers deaf to clans and nations

Else. This voice alone, although its words unwelcome,

Carry through the airy regions to a god’s

And when this hum unspeakable attains the stars,

Then let the Persians’ Babylon and secret Egypt

Show the inmost sanctuaries of their wizards,

Still does Thessaly draw gods to alien altar.

They brought unbidden love; severe old men were kindled

With illicit flame. Not only their fell cups

Have power, nor extracted juice of mother’s swollen

Forehead − surety that she will love her young.

Health − succumb. No bond of couch or pleasing

Force of beauty bound those two, but twisted threads

From magic spinning drew them in. The course of things

Ceased; day clung onto night with long delay. The sky

And Jupiter amazed that, with its rapid axles

And his urging on, revolving heaven slackened.

Now they fill all things with rain and bring out clouds,

Though Phoebus burns, and thunder in the sky − all this

Unbound they send out wetting fogs and drenching rain

Storms. Even though all winds have ceased the ocean swells.

Conversely, while a south wind howls the sea lacks impress

Of these squalls and holds its peace as they fill sails

A crag and rivers run not as they should. The Nile

Neglects to rise with summer heat. Maeander straightens,

Arar urges on the sluggish Rhone; now peaks

Unmade, the mountains smooth their crags. Olympus looking

Absent any sun, the Scythian snowpack melts.

Defending their own shores, Haemonian charms rebuff

High oceanic swells. Land too assaults the center

Of its own fixed weight, and middle regions waver

Retires at their voice; perspectives circling

Olympus open wide. Each animal that’s lethal

And was born for hurt fears the Haemonian sisters

And supplies their art with mortal items. Greedy

The lion noble in his wrath. For them in icy

Field the snake unwraps his chilly coils and stretches.

Vipers now cohere in knots, and now − their body

Split - those serpents die from breath of human poison.

Chants and herbs, this fear of disrespecting them?

What interchange of pact binds those above? Is there

A need to spare them or a benefit? Has some

Strange merit recommended or some threat prevailed?

Almighty spells aim at a certain god who can

Command the world, just as he is commanded? There

It was the stars first were brought down from whirling heaven;

Tranquil Phoebe, taking in the poison of their

Fires − not otherwise than if the earth had blocked

Her brother’s image, lodged its shade before the flames

Of heaven. Many hardships from this evil charm

She suffers until, brought more near, she casts her foam

Spells horrific of this fearful tribe Erichtho

Judged as too much piety; she moved that art

To practice even more polluted and arcane.

It is to her disgusting that she place her fatal

She haunts deserted graves and pyres of ghosts expelled −

Sites pleasant to the gods of hell. To hear the silent

Intercourse and know the Stygian homes and secrets

Of mysterious Dis not gods above nor her own

Owns her filthy visage, never seen in pleasant

Day. A hellish pallor graves her awful face,

Beset with uncombed hair. When stormy, blackened clouds

Obscure the stars this Thessalian witch departs

Seeds burn up beneath her tread, her breath benights

The harmless air. She voices neither prayer to gods

Nor plea for help, nor seeks out omen sacrificial.

But she joys to put funereal flames on altars,

Voice makes gods concede all evil action, fearing

Further magic. Souls alive that yet rule bodies

She inters in graves − a death compelled subdues

Those fated still to years of life; yet too, perverted

Death. From pyres she absconds with fuming ashes

Of the young, bones burning still, the very torch

From parents’ hand. In blackened smoke the flying fragments

Of a funeral couch, the streaming ashy clothes

But if she finds a crypt of stone that drains the moisture −

Marrow hardens as corruption is withdrawn −

Then greedily she ravages in every joint.

Her hand delves into sockets of the eye, exults

Hand gnaw on the dry excrescence of its nails.

Her mouth breaks open knots of hangman’s noose; she reaps

The bodies of the hanged. She scrapes the gore from crosses:

Rips the rain soaked organs, sun bleached marrow, steals

Rot from limbs, and all collections poisonous −

If sinews can withstand her bite she drapes her weight

Upon them. When a corpse lies on the naked earth,

She sits by birds and beasts, but uses neither steel

To bite, that she may grab the joint from their unsated

Jaws. Her hands are not at all averse to slaughter,

Looking for the vivid blood that first springs from

An opened throat or when her rite begs living gore,

And not as nature would, the fetus dragged and set

Upon a burning shrine. How often does her work

Require strong and savage ghosts that she creates.

All human death is her affair. She tears the bloom

From young men dying. Often too, at the sad pyre

Of a relative, this dismal witch has pressed

Herself upon beloved limbs; and, in her kiss

Beheads at once, and forcing open with her teeth

Gullet, she poured murmurs onto frozen lips,

Conveyed repulsive secrets to the Stygian ghosts.

Local fame revealed her to the son of Pompey.

Deepest in the night, when Titan brings the day

His true and frequent acolytes in evil, winding

Through the ransacked tombs and graves, caught sight of her

Far off atop a steep and pointed rock where sloping

Haemus forms Pharsalia’s peaks. There was she trying

Casting spells in untried uses. For she feared

That wandering war might choose a distant world and take

Away from Thessaly so great a massacre.

The witch with spells and with her juices poisonous

So many dead to be her own, a world of blood

For her own use. She hopes to tear apart dead bodies

Of slain kings and plunder ashes of Hesperia,

The bones of nobles, to acquire ghosts not few.

Magnus’ cast out corpse and which of Caesar’s limbs

To seize. Whom Pompey’s shameful offspring now exhorts:

“ O famed amongst Haemonians, who can unfold

Their doom to nations and divert what is to come,

The end of this war fate prepares. Not least of Romans,

I am Magnus' greatest child and must be lord

Of all or heir to funeral immense. My smitten

Mind grows pale with doubts and is prepared to bear the

Events that they not rush on blind and quick. From gods

Wrest truth or, sparing them, compel the shades; unlock

Elysium’s dwellings, and force death herself to tell,

Now summoned, which of us she seeks. And no mean task

Where the die be weighted.” Then Thessalia’s witch,

Well pleased to hear her name is known, replies: Young man,”

She said, “If lesser fates had moved you it were easy

To enact your wish, despite unwilling gods.

My art is given this: that I may interpose

Delay. Likewise, though every star should grant old age,

With herbs we break it off in middle years. But if

A series of causations fall together from

Any change that might be urged should strike all human

Kind. We Thessalians are less strong, I do

Confess, than fortune. Yet if it suffice to know

An outcome only, access to that truth by many

And the air, and realms below, and sea, fields, stones

Of Rhodope. Convenient, since we have a wealth

Of new made corpses, from Emathian fields to raise

One up − but freshly dead, a warm cadaver in whose

Shade with sun baked members groan uncertainly

In our ears.” She spoke, and by her skill night darkened

Twice as dark. That dire head, wrapped in foul mists,

Browsed corpses killed and tossed aside without a tomb.

Torn away, until the witch select her prophet.

Looking over stiffened innards, searching for

Surviving fibers of a hardy lung unhurt,

Now sought a voice in one dead man, while fates of many

Above. Had she but thought to raise entire armies

On the field, renew their fighting, all the laws

Of Erebis had ceased and by that monster’s strength

A multitude upraised from Stygian Avernus

Its throat, and with a hook and noose the wretched body

Over rocks and stones is dragged – about to live −

And placed deep in a hollow mountain’s crag Erichtho

Chose for dismal rites; laid low, not far at all

A pallid wood surrounding − foliage bent, no treetop

Viewing heaven, mantled by the yew and to

The sun impervious. Within are feeble shadows,

Sallow under caverns placed in endless night.

Not in Taenarus' jaws, placed at the hidden world’s

Extreme and ours, does air sit thus becalmed. In that

Place kings of hell fear not to send their shades, and though

This Thessalian seer render violence to

To rise up or if she went down to hell herself.

She draped herself in garish, furious garments, face

Bared, hair pulled to the side, those bristling strands tied up

With winding serpents. When she sees the young man’s friends

She said: “Dismiss all fearful thoughts and troubled mind.

Now life returns − remade but in familiar form,

So even those afraid may hear him speaking. Truly,

If I spread before you Stygian lakes, shores roaring

When I am near, if Cerebrus, his scraggy neck

Alive with serpents, shaking, and if giants bound

Behind, then – cowards – what the fear in seeing shades

Who are themselves afraid?” With reeking blood then first

With a viscous gore and lunar poison freely

Pours. Whatever nature birthed unnaturally

Is added to the mixture. Lacks no froth of rabid

Dog, nor lynx entrails, the neckbone of a fierce

On serpent’s flesh. Nor the remora, holding back

A ship when southeast winds make taut her lines, nor dragon

Eyes, and stones which crack beneath the warm and brooding

Wing; not flying serpent nor that viper native

The skin a Libyan horn snake sheds yet stays alive,

The ashes of a Phoenix placed on eastern altar.

After she conjoined vile, nameless plagues and soaked

With spells of infamy their saturated leaves -

Adding all the poisons she herself had given

To the world, then only did her voice; more potent

To bewitch Lethaean gods than all these herbs

First pour its murmurs harsh and most discordant with

It has; and what the fevered horned owl, what the night-bred

Screech owl wail, what beasts in ululation, and what

Serpent hisses it includes, the plaint of beaten

Wave on rock, of sounding woods, of thundering broken

Thessalian manner she intoned the rest;

It reached to Tartarus from her tongue: “You Furies! Stygian

Evil. Scourges of the vicious. Chaos, eager

To suffuse innumerable worlds. Earth’s lord,

And Styx. Elysian fields, not merited by any

Thessalian dame. Persephone, who hated

Heaven and her mother. And my Hecate,

Last of her forms, by whom the shades and I have commerce

Who strews our entrails for the savage dog. And sisters

Who must now twist second thread. And you, O boatman

Of the flaming wave, old man fatigued with bringing

Back these shades to me. Now hear my prayers! If I

And defilement, if I never sung enchantments

Abstinent from human flesh, if often I gave

Fulsome beasts, bathed offerings in heated brains,

If any child, when I placed head and organs on your

For one hid long in the caves of Tartarus

And grown used to the days of shadow, but for him

Whose soul descending only now has fled the light

And clings still to the entryway of pallid Orcus.

To shadow. Let a soldier, recently of us,

A shade of Pompey’s, sing the story of its leader

To the son – that is, if civil war has pleased you.

Then she raised her head with foaming mouth and saw

It feared the lifeless limbs, the loathed embrace of his

Old prison, feared to go into that gaping chest,

Its flesh torn open with a deadly wound. Ah wretch,

From whom unjustly death’s last gift is ripped away: