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61At last, after they had carried on an evenly-balanced struggle for a very long time and many on both sides alike had fallen or been wounded, Pompey, since the larger part of his army was Asiatic and untrained, was defeated, even as had been made clear to him before the action. 2For thunderbolts had fallen upon his camp, a fire had appeared in the air over Caesar’s camp and had then fallen upon his own, bees had swarmed about his military standards, and many of the victims after being led up close to the very altar had run away. 3And so far did the effects of that contest extend to the rest of mankind that on the very day of the battle collisions of armies and the clash of arms occurred in many places. In Pergamum a noise of drums and cymbals rose from the temple of Dionysus and spread throughout the city; 4in Tralles a palm tree grew up in the temple of Victory and the goddess herself turned about toward an image of Caesar that stood beside her; in Syria two young men announced the result of the battle and vanished; and in Patavium, which now belongs to Italy but was then still a part of Gaul, some birds not only brought news of it but even acted it out to some extent, 5for one Gaius Cornelius drew from their actions accurate information of all that had taken place, and narrated it to the bystanders. These several things happened on that very same day and though they were, not unnaturally, distrusted at the time, yet when news of the actual facts was brought, they were marvelled at.
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