nations then present on both sides were merely a kind of complement of the citizen army):  but the people at once gained the mastery over and fell into subjection to itself; it defeated itself and was defeated; and in that effort it exhausted the democratic element and strengthened the monarchical.  I do not say that the people’s defeat at that time was not beneficial. (What else can one say regarding those who fought on both sides than that the Romans were conquered and Caesar was victorious?) They were no longer capable of concord in the established form of government; for it is impossible for an unadulterated democracy that has grown to acquire domains of such vast size to have the faculty of moderation.  After undertaking many similar conflicts repeatedly, one after another, they would certainly some day have been either enslaved or ruined.

[-40-] We may infer also from the portents which appeared to them on that occasion that the struggle between them was clearly tremendous.  Heaven, as it is ever accustomed to give indications before most remarkable events, foretold to them accurately both in Rome and in Macedonia all the results that would come from it.  In the City the sun at one time appeared diminished and grew extremely small, and again showed itself now huge, now tripled in form, and once shone forth at night.  Thunderbolts descended on many spots, and most significantly upon the altar of Jupiter Victor; flashes darted hither and thither; notes of trumpets, clashing of arms, and cries of camps were heard by night from the gardens of Caesar and of Antony, located close together beside the Tiber.  Moreover a dog dragged the body of a dog to the temple of Ceres, where he dug the earth with his paws and buried it.  A child was born with hands that had ten fingers, and a mule gave birth to a prodigy of two species.  The front part of it resembled a horse, and the rest a mule.  The chariot of Minerva while returning to the Capitol from a horse-race was dashed to pieces, and the statue of Jupiter at Albanum sent forth blood at the very time of the Feriae from its right shoulder and right hand.  These were advance indications to them from Heaven, and the rivers also in their land gave out entirely or began to flow backward.  And any chance deeds of men seemed to point to the same end.  During the Feriae the prefect of the city celebrated the festival of Latiaris,[34] which neither belonged to him nor was ordinarily observed at that time, and the plebeian aediles offered to Ceres contests in armor in place of the horse-race.  This was what took place in Rome, where certain oracles also both before the events and pertaining to them were recited, tending to the downfall of the democracy.  In Macedonia, to which Pangeaum and the territory surrounding it are regarded as belonging, bees in swarms pervaded the camp of Cassius, and in the course of its purification some one set the garland upon his head wrong end foremost, and a boy while carrying a Victory in some procession, such as the soldiers inaugurate, fell down.[35] But the thing which most of all portended destruction to them, so that it became plain even to their enemies, was that many vultures and many other birds, too, that devour corpses gathered only above the heads of the conspirators, gazing down upon them and squawking and screeching with terrible and bloodcurdling notes.