sed malus interpres rerum metus omne trahebat
augurium peiore via, truncataque membra
nutricemque lupam Romae regnoque minari.
tunc reputant annos interceptoque volatu 265
vulturis incidunt properatis saecula metis.
Solus erat Stilicho, qui desperantibus augur
sponderet meliora manu, dubiaeque salutis
fires destroying houses from no known cause, a comet—ne’er seen in heaven without disaster—which first rose where Phoebus lifts his rosy morning beam and old Cepheus shines together with starry Andromeda, his spouse; then it withdrew little by little to the constellation of Lycaon’s daughter[51] and with its errant tail dimmed the stars of the Getic Wain until at last its dying fires grew feeble and vanished.
But what terrified men’s minds still more was the portent of the two slaughtered wolves. Ay, before the Emperor’s face as he practised his cavalry upon the plain two wolves savagely attacked his escort. Slain by darts they disclosed a horrid portent and a wondrous sign of what was to be. In each animal, on its being cut open, was found a human hand, in the stomach of one a left hand, in that of the other a right was discovered, both still twitching, the fingers stretched out and suffused with living blood. Wouldest thou search out the truth, the beast as messenger of Mars foretold that the foe would fall before the emperor’s eyes. As the hands were found to be living when the stomachs were cut open, so, when the Alps had been broken through, the might of Rome was to be discovered unimpaired. But fear, ever a poor interpreter, read disaster in the portent; severed hands, ’twas said, and nursing wolf threatened destruction on Rome and her empire. Then they reckoned up the years and, cutting off the flight of the twelfth vulture, tried to shorten the centuries of Rome’s existence by hastening the end.[52]