On the occurrence of that season and time prophecies and forecasts of the evils that were ahead of them were shown to the Romans; for the heaven above them, and the earth below them, and the sea at every airt around them were filled with strange and wondrous portents, and with vast sure signs, foretelling and predicting the Civil War that would be fought by them.
These are the signs that were seen by the Romans:
In those nights there appeared unknown stars that had never before appeared in the sky, and their like in size and number and horror had never come in sight.
Then they beheld the blue, crystalline plain of the heavenly firmament as a fringe of flame and fire above their heads.
They beheld a certain star there, with brightest rays and fiery tresses spreading from it: that is the Comet; and never has it appeared save at the shaking of a dominion, or defeat in battle, or death of an overking. Those three things were then foretold in Rome, for Pompey was shaken out of his dominion by Caesar, and the Great Battle on the plain of Thessaly was also lost by Pompey; and through the occasion of that battle Pompey died, and even Caesar after a time.
They beheld fiery torches and blazing lamps and the diversity of various forms of luminous lightnings throughout the air from every point. One of these lightnings shone there, which surpassed all other fires of heaven in size and splendour and swiftness. Out of the north it came southwards to Rome. It gathered and collected all the other aerial fires, so that they crashed around the head of the royal Capitol and the temple of Jove in Rome. Thereby this was foretold, that Caesar was coming from the north of the world to capture Rome.
The nocturnal stars appeared in the midst of midday. The eclipse of the moon was seen by them in the full light of the fifteenth (day).
At the very middle of the day they beheld darkness upon the splendid rays of the sun; and so great was that darkness that they did not expect day with its full brightness even to shine to them.
Mount Etna vomited a river of red-rushing fire on the side nearest to the land of Italy, so that it inflicted slaughter on men and cattle. Then for the space of a day and a night the hue of blood appeared on the whirlpools of the Tyrrhene sea.
The flame of the eternal fire, which used to be in the temple of the goddess Vesta, was scattered and divided into two fragments. This is what was foretold thereby, that the Roman dominion should be parted in twain between Pompey and Caesar.
A great trembling and strong commotion arose in the foundations and in the bases of the earth, so that a vast earthquake grew from it; and such was the greatness of that earthquake that the Alps shook off all the ancient snowy heaps in the clefts of their mountains and in the forks of their hills, so that they (the avalanches) all fell thence simultaneously on the wild plains and on the sloping glens of the country that was nearest thereto.
There arose a movement of a huge storm, the like or semblance of which had never been found in the bosom of the Tyrrhene sea, so that the strong burst of the flood tide and the summit of its blue-browed, bright-sided billows filled the tops of the high mountains that are about it on each side, to wit, Mount Calpe in Italy leg. Spain, and Mount Atlas in the countries of Africa.
The forms and images of the adored gods were seen wailing and shedding tears. Great floods of sweat were seen flowing out of the sides and walls of every house in Rome, figuring (thereby) the great trouble which they would afterwards endure.
There came a great trembling of arms in all the temples of the gods in Rome, so that there was neither spear nor sword nor battle-shield on rack therein that did not fall against the floor of earth.
The nocturnal birds were seen flying in the light of day throughout the City, namely the écthach and the bat and the horned owl. Deer and the savage wild beasts of the neighbouring deserts used to come every night and make lairs and sleeping-places in the midst of Rome. The dogs and hounds and wolves of Italy used to utter great howls throughout the City every night. The cattle used to speak with a human voice, for it is told in the histories that when a certain Roman was urging his ox with its load of corn upon it, the ox spoke to him and said: ‘Why art thou driving me on, thou youth? for the Romans will perish sooner than they consume all the corn they have (already).’
Many monstrous births were at that time brought forth in Rome, with (unnatural) bulk of body, and number of hands and feet and heads, so that fear and horror filled their own mothers on seeing them.
The beating together of the bones amid the coffins in all the burial-places of the City is heard every night. Loud awful voices and terrible cries were heard in the woods and sacred groves of Italy, and whoso used to cause that was unseen.
The shades and the phantoms and the ghosts of hell were seen every night around Rome, so that the market-folk and the foreign inhabitants of the town left their abodes and their houses from horror and terror at the appearances that were revealed to them.
The Badb of battle Erinnys was seen every night, with her torch of pine red-flaming in her hand, and her snaky, poisonous tresses rattling around her head, urging the Romans to battle.
In the night they heard the trumpets resounding, the clashing of the shields, the whistling of the javelins, the smiting of the swords, the clamour of the battalions coming together: and no one saw what was causing that.
The ghost manes of Sulla was heard by them, prophesying the Civil War.
Certain shepherds who were on the marches of the river Anio saw Marius raising (his) head out of the sepulchre. Thereby it was foretold that the like of the civil war which had been waged between Marius and Sulla would be wrought again by the Romans.
The priests of the gods and the goddesses began to lament and wail throughout the City, and to entreat the gods, asking for the lightening of that plague upon them. This is what every man in Rome was saying: ‘Now is the fulfilment of the prophecy of the prophetess Sibyl to the Romans’; for this is what she foretold, the destruction of the Roman dominion after a time.
Great dread and terror grew in Rome at the appearance of those prodigies therein, and by the folk of the City counsel
So Tuscan soothsayers were then fetched, so that they were in Rome. The Romans bade them declare through their augural sciences what great evils were foretold by the awful prodigies that had appeared. With the soothsayers were two famous chief prophets, named Aruns and Figulus. Of these Aruns was the nobler and bolder, and as to age he was the elder. Luca was the name of his dwellingplace. Three of the nine kinds of augury he possessed; for there are nine kinds of augury, four of them in connection with the four mundane elements, to wit, fire and earth, water and air. The fifth kind was ascertainment by the flashings of lightnings; the sixth, by the entrails of animals in fires; the seventh, by the flight of birds; the eighth, by the voices of birds; the ninth, by the courses of the stars and constellations. Of those the three that Aruns possessed were ascertainment by the movements of lightnings, by the flight of birds, and by entrails of animals.
This is what that man then told the Romans: to build a tower of red-rushing fire and a hill-flame, and to burn up in that fire all the monstrous births that were brought forth in Rome. He also ordered them to make a lustration and circumambulation of their City, and to carry round it the figures and images of the gods.
So then all the inhabitants of Rome came around, in their bands and crowds, with the priests and priestesses of the gods and the goddesses along with them. While the folk of Rome were circumambulating their city in that wise, Aruns collected all the relics of the lightning that he found throughout the town, and he sang chants and wizards' spells over them, and hid them afterwards in the depth of the earth.
A certain rounded, thick-shouldered bull was brought to him to be sacrificed to the gods. Then Aruns began to perform on the bull the dues of sacrifice, to wit, pouring wine into the holes of his ears, and between his horns, and into his nostrils. Then he practised on him every other due that was meet to practise on a sacrificial bull. The bull then began to struggle violently against the sacrificial attendants, and that they deemed an evil sign. So Aruns himself slew the bull. No streams of crimson blood, such as usually spurt forth from the freshly severed necks, dropped out of the wounds, but pools of black darksome blood, with the look of impurity and great virulence upon them. Great horror seized the augur when he beheld the many symptoms which appeared on the entrails of the bull, for those that were not pale green were dark green; and he deemed all that an evil token.
He disparted and divided the bull's entrails into two portions. The first portion he assigned to Pompey and the senate: the other portion to Caesar and his soldiery. Greatly did he marvel at the manner in which those portions of the entrails behaved, for never before had entrails behaved more unduly. For the part which had been assigned to Pompey began to shrivel and dwindle, to shrink and to wither: it grew poor and empty; it sank down against the earth, so that neither strength nor stoutness appeared therein. But (as to) Caesar's
When Aruns saw those fearful signs and the forecasts of great evil that accompanied the sacrifice, he began to wail and complain to the gods, and he said: ‘O righteous, all-golden gods’, quoth he, ‘hardly is it meet or right for me to declare the prophesied things to the folks that have invited me to them. For though unto thee, O Jove, I proposed to make this sacrifice, the infernal demons came and filled the entrails of the sacrificial bull.’
‘Great is the dread that we suffer therefrom, so that we dare not set forth the evils that have been foretold to us; but alas! the evils will be greater than our fear. It were good news that what we all say is false, and that the signs which the prophet Tages left on the entrails of animals are deceptive.’
That Tages, then, if anyone should ask, was he who invented the science of augury. He had neither father nor mother, but was found alive under the sods of the plough.
So far the prognostications of Aruns the Tuscan, and his forecasts by means of the entrails of animals.
The other chief prophet whom they had, to wit, Figulus, was (skilled) in understanding the decrees of the gods and the secret things of heaven, in diligently gazing at the firmament, and in the courses of the stars and constellations, so that never in the lands of Egypt was there found one equally wise in the arrangements of heaven. 'Tis in Egypt the men of that science were most numerous, because the firmament is clearer and less cloudy to them than to the folk of the rest of the earth.
That man resorted to his prophetic science. He began to gaze aloft at the clear, bright firmament and the radiant stars of the fair, speckled-cloudy heaven on every airt, until he had seen them, as he deemed, enough. This he said to the Romans: ‘There is’, quoth he, ‘one of two things on those arrangements that I see: the motion of the firmament and the stars from this land past every land is greatly astray, so that our prognostications are not rightly therein. Or if it be through the medium of the Fates comes the great diversity which I see, the gods are ripe and ready to cause quickly the perishing and destruction and depopulation of the human race. The adored gods know,’ saith he, ‘the means by which this great calamity will come, namely, is it an earthquake that is caused there? i.e. whether it is the earth that will open its bowels to swallow up the cities and castles of the whole world, together with their inhabitants? Or whether it is the heavy-dense tearshedding of the Flood, which will again pour upon the face of the earth to drown the children of Adam? Or whether it will be the scorching of fiery lightnings and heat of air that will come to burn up the world? Or whether it will the heavy-sodded earth that will refuse her growth and her corn and her increase, and not let her fruits through, so that all the human race will perish by famine?’
‘I know not what kind of plague will be there, or what disease through which it comes. But this I know, that that plague will be the stopping of the life of a multitude.’
‘Now there is another kind of these observations, namely: if the easy planet of Saturn were at this time in watery Aquarius the punishment of a flood would be inflicted to destroy the world. If the Sun should be at this time in flamy Leo, the glow of the air and the burning would set the world on fire. Howbeit meseems that it is not evil from them that is there; but it is the star of Mars, the great battler, that is in Scorpio, and of the stars which would be able to restrain his
‘A woeful thing’, quoth he, ‘these stars are foretelling in the stations which they occupy, to wit, madness of battle, rising of heroes, ardour of wielding weapons in warriors' hands, concussion of furious, high-spirited soldiers and champions, cessation of peace and good-will, raising up warfare between friends, mustering of foreign tribes, flood-tide of anger of fierce and haughty kings in a field of battle and conflict, ramparts of bodies of nobles under the feet of wolves and dogs.’
‘Why am I concealing it?’ quoth he; ‘for what is foretold there will come at last, to wit, the Civil War. Great evils will arise in Rome because of that, for in it everyone will be strong by dint of his might and his valour. Neither law nor justice will be preserved therein by them. The killing of his father will be praised by the son: the killing of his son by the father. Whoever then spares (another) from gossipred or friendship will be blamed. For many years it will be thus in Rome, until the lordship of one king shall come over it; and meseems that the Romans do not prefer that to the Civil War.’
So far the predictions of the Tuscan augurs.
The presages of the war that till then had appeared were enough to impose fear and dread on the Romans. But there came to them a cause of terror which was not less than that:
It was clear to the Romans that the wrath and rage of the adored gods were then against them, for all the mundane elements gave them manifest signs and sure presages of the Civil War.
When all of them had conceived in their minds the knowledge that the awful prodigies which had appeared to them were foretelling vast slaughters and battle-breaches, both freeman and serf yielded themselves to grief and gloom and sorrow. Their nobles and their high lords cast off their royal ornaments and their honoured robes. They all clad themselves in wretched garments in token of mourning and sorrow. They were still and silent, concealing that grief while his inward trouble was in the heart of everyone, and nevertheless as yet they did not display it. Just as the households of honorable kings, when their lords go to death, are at first in hidden grief, so long as concealment of the tidings is possible.
Their wives and their mothers, their soldiers and their champions, their elders and their old men entered the temples of the gods and goddesses. Therein they loosed their hair, and beat their breasts with their hands. They began sorrowing and weeping, wailing together and lamenting in the presence of the images and altars of the adored gods.