Petreius gives an account of the Success of the battle.
The End
The straits and needs of Catiline being such
As he must fight with one of the two armies
That then had near inclos'd him. It pleas'd Fate
To make us the object of his desperate choice
Wherein the danger almost peised the honour.
And as he riss the day grew black with him;
And Fate descended nearer to the earth,
As if she meant to hide the name of things
Under her wings, and make the world her quarry.
At this we rous'd lest one small minutes stay
Had left it to be enquir'd what Rome was.
And (as we ought) arm'd with the confidence
Of our great cause, in form of battle stood.
Whilst Catiline came on, not with the face
Of any man but of a public ruin:
His countenance was a Civil war itself
And all his host had standing in their looks.
The paleness of the death that was to come.
Yet cried they out like vultures, and urge'd on
As if they would precipitate our Fates.
Nor stayed we longer for 'em but himself
struck the first stroke, and with it fled a life.
which cuts it seemed a narrow neck of land
Had broke between two mighty seas and either
Flow'd into other. For so did the slaughter:
And whirl'd about as when two violent tides
Meet and not yield. The Furies stood on hills,
Circling the place and trembling to see men
Do More than they: whilst pity left the field
Grieved for that side, that in so bad a cause.
They knew not what a crime their valour was
The sun stood still and was behind the cloud
The battle made seen sweating to drive up
His fright'd horse, whom still the noise drove backward
And now had fierce Enyo like a flame
consum'd all it could reach, and then itself;
Had not the fortune of the commonwealth
Come Pallas-like to every Roman thought.
Which Catiline seeing, and that now his troops
Cover'd the earth they had fought on with their trunks
Ambitious of great fame to crown his ill
collected all his fury and ran in.
Arm'd with a glory high as his despair
into our battle like a Libyan lion
upon his Hunters scornful of our weapons.
Careless of wounds, plucking down lives about him
Till he had circled in himself with death
Then fell he to t'embrace it where it lay
And as in that rebellion 'gainst the gods
Minerva holding forth Medusa's head
One of the giant brethren felt himself
Grow marble at the killing sight and now
almost made stone began t'enquire what flint
what rock it was that crept through all his limbs
And ere he could think more was that he fear'd
So Catiline, at the sight of Rome in us
Became his tomb: yet did his look retain
Some of his fierceness, & his hand still mov'd
As if he laboured yet to grasp the state
With those rebellious part.
By Petreius, in Catiline (5.5.210-271), Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 26r