I was astonished, my hair stood on end, and my voice caught in my throat. (Virgil)
I am not a good naturalist (so they say) and hardly know by what means fear acts on us; but it is certainly a strange passion: and doctors say that there is none that so soon upsets our judgment. Indeed, I have seen many people driven mad by fear: and to the most jaded, it is certain that, while its access lasts, it engenders terrible delusions. I shall leave aside the vulgar, to whom it represents sometimes their great-grandfathers risen from the grave, wrapped in shrouds, sometimes werewolves, goblins and chimeras.
But even among the soldiers, where she should find less room, how many times has she changed a flock of sheep into a squadron of cuirassiers? Or reeds and canes into men-at-arms and lancers? Or our friends into our enemies? And the white cross into the red one?
When Monsieur de Bourbon took Rome, an ensign, who was on guard of the town of Saint Peter, was seized with such terror at the first alarm that, through the hole of a ruin, he threw himself, ensign in fist, out of the town, straight at the enemies, thinking to shoot towards the inside of the town. Hardly had he finished, seeing the troops of Monsieur de Bourbonse forming up to support him, thinking that it was an sortie that those of the city were making, he recognized his mistake and, turning around, re-entered by the same hole, through which he had come out, more than three hundred paces back into the company.
It did not go at all so well for Captain Juille, when S. Pol was taken from us by the Count of Bures and Monsieur du Reu: for, being so overcome with fear as to throw himself and his entire company out of the city in a gunboat, he was cut to pieces by the assailants. And in the same siege there was a memorable fright which gripped, seized and chilled the heart of a gentleman so much that he dropped dead on the ground at the breach, without any wound.
A similar fear seized a whole multitude at times. In one of Germanicus’s encounters against the Germans, two large troops took fright and took opposite routes, one fleeing from where the other was setting out. Sometimes it gives us wings on our heels as well as on our feet; sometimes it pins our feet to the ground and hinders us, as we read of the Emperor Theophilus, who, in a battle he lost against the Agarenes, became so astonished and so transfixed that he could not bring himself to flee:
So much fear even frightens the helpers. (Quintus Curtius)
until Manuel, one of the main leaders of his army, having pulled and shaken him, as if to wake him from a deep sleep, said to him: If you do not follow me, I will kill you; for it is better that you lose your life than that, if you are taken prisoner, you lose the Empire.
At that moment she summoned up her last strength, and, in her service to us, she repelled us with the valor that she drew from our duty and our honor. In the first just battle that the Romans lost against Hannibal, under the consul Sempronius, a troop of at least ten thousand footmen, having taken fright, seeing no other way to make a passage for their cowardice, threw itself at full speed into the midst of the enemy. It broke through with a marvelous effort, with great slaughter of the Carthaginians, buying a shameful flight at the same price it would have had of a glorious victory.
This is what I fear most, fear itself. It also overcomes all other accidents with bitterness. What affection can be more bitter and more just than that of Pompey’s friends, who were on his ship, spectators of this horrible massacre? Yet the fear of the Egyptian sails, which were beginning to approach them, did not suffocate them. Instead, they thanked God that their fear only hurried the sailors to speed up, allowing them to flee by rowing. Until they arrived in Tyre, free from fear, they had no choice but to turn their thoughts to the loss they had just suffered, and to give free rein to the lamentations and tears that this other stronger passion had suspended.
Then fear saps all wisdom from my mind. (Ennius, quoted by Cicero)
Those who have been well scrubbed in some war, all still wounded and bloodied, are led back the next day to the charge. But those who have been given a good scare by the enemy, you wouldn’t even let them look them in the face. Those who are in constant fear of losing their property, of being exiled, of being subjugated, live in constant anguish, losing their food, drink and rest: whereas the poor, the banished, the serfs often live as happily as the others.
And so many people who, out of impatience with the big names of fear, have hanged, drowned and thrown themselves downhill. They have taught us well that it is even more troublesome and unbearable than death. The Greeks recognize another species which, in addition to being the error of our discourse, comes, they say, without apparent cause and from a celestial impulse.
Entire peoples are often seized by it, and entire armies. Such was the one that brought a wonderful desolation to Carthage. One heard only screams and frightened voices. The inhabitants could be seen leaving their houses as if in alarm and charging at each other, wounding and killing one another, as if enemies had come to occupy their city. Everything was in disorder and turmoil until, through prayers and sacrifices, they had appeased the wrath of the gods. They call this the Panic of Terrors.