6. But only intermittent, fearful firesflashed through upon them;And in their terror they thought beholding these was worsethan the times when that sight was no longer to be seen.
7. And mockeries of their magic art failed,and there was a humiliating refutation of their vaunted shrewdness.
8. For they who undertook to banish fears and terrors from the sick soulthemselves sickened with ridiculous fear.
9. For even though no monstrous thing frightened them,they shook at the passing of insects and the hissing of reptiles,
10. And perished trembling,reluctant to face even the air that they could nowhere escape.
11. For wickedness, of its nature cowardly, testifies in its own condemnation,and because of a distressed conscience, always magnifies misfortunes.
12. For fear is nought but the surrender of the helps that come from reason;
13. and the more one’s expectation is of itself uncertain,the more one makes of not knowing the cause that brings on torment.
14. So they, during that night, powerless though it was,since it had come upon them from the recesses of a powerless Hades,while all sleeping the same sleep,
15. Were partly smitten by fearsome apparitionsand partly stricken by their souls’ surrender;for fear overwhelmed them, sudden and unexpected.
16. Thus, then, whoever was there fellinto that prison without bars and was kept confined.
17. For whether one was a farmer, or a shepherd,or a worker at tasks in the wasteland,Taken unawares, each served out the inescapable sentence;
18. for all were bound by the one bond of darkness.And were it only the whistling wind,or the melodious song of birds in the spreading branches,Or the steady sound of rushing water,
19. or the rude crash of overthrown rocks,Or the unseen gallop of bounding animals,or the roaring cry of the fiercest beasts,Or an echo resounding from the hollow of the hills—these sounds, inspiring terror, paralyzed them.