Ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae,
Addunt in spatia, et frustra retinacula tendens
Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas[381].
This state of alarm is shown to be connected with the great national crime which Rome was still atoning,—the murder of Julius Caesar. The episode arises immediately out of the enumeration of the signs of the weather, which, from their importance to the husbandman, are treated of at considerable length in the body of the poem. As the sun is the surest index of change in the physical, so is he said to be in the political atmosphere. The eclipse which occurred soon after the murder of Caesar is regarded as a sign of compassion for his fate and of abhorrence of the crime. Then follows an enumeration of other omens which accompanied or preceded that event,—some of them violations of natural law, such as those which occur in the narrative of Livy, when any great disaster was impending over the Roman arms,—
pecudesque locutae,
Infandum—
Et maestum inlacrimat templis ebur, aeraque sudant[382]:—
others arising out of a great sympathetic movement among the spirits of the dead,—
Vox quoque per lucos volgo exaudita silentis
Ingens, et simulacra modis pallentia miris