Page:The Pharsalia of Lucan; (IA cu31924026485809).pdf/48

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PHARSALIA
Book I
Bellona's priests with bleeding arms, and slavesOf Cybele's worship, with ensanguined hair,Howled chants of havoc and of woe to men.Arms clashed; and sounding in the pathless woodsWere heard strange voices; spirits walked the earth:And dead men's ashes muttered from the urn.Those who live near the walls desert their homes,For lo! with hissing serpents in her hair,Waving in downward whirl a blazing pine, 630A fiend patrols the town, like that which erstAt Thebes urged on Agavé,[1] or which hurledLycurgus' bolts, or that which as he cameFrom Hades seen, at haughty Juno's word,Brought terror to the soul of Hercules.Trumpets like those that summon armies forthWere heard re-echoing in the silent night:And from the earth arising Sulla's[2] ghostSang gloomy oracles, and by Anio's waveAll fled the homesteads, frighted by the shade 640Of Marius waking from his broken tomb.In such dismay they summon, as of yore,The Tuscan sages to the nation's aid.Aruns, the eldest, leaving his abodeIn desolate Luca, came, well versed in allThe lore of omens; knowing what may meanThe flight of hovering bird, the pulse that beatsIn offered victims, and the levin bolt.All monsters first, by most unnatural birthBrought into being, in accursèd flames 650He bids consume.[3] Then round the walls of Rome
  1. ↑ Book VI., 420.
  2. ↑ Sulla was buried in the Campus Martius. (Plutarch, ‘Sulla,' 38.) The corpse of Marius was dragged from his tomb by Sulla's order, and thrown into the Anio.
  3. ↑ Such a ceremonial took place in A.D. 56 under Nero, after the temples
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