351
when, shocked to hear the news, she leaped up madly,
her hair unbound, and beat her face and breasts
and ripped, in her despair, her sea-green dress.
She rises from the waves. She cries, she cries
again. Her trembling voice repeats, ‘‘Crenaeus!’’
Nothing is seen except a shield, a sign—
it floats upon the waves—known all too well
by his despairing parent, while far o√,
where Ismenos begins to change and mix
his waters with the greater sea, he lies.
Thus often Alcyone groans, abandoned,
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over her wandering and dripping home
when savage Auster wafts away her fledglings
and envious Thetis swamps neglected nests.
The childless mother once again submerged
363
and deep beneath the hidden waters searched
down many currents for her sad son’s corpse.
She wept as she pursued translucent roads.
BOOK Ω ≤∂Σ
Sometimes the bristling river blocked her way
and floating clouds of blood obscured her vision,
yet on she hurried, over swords and weapons,
reaching her hand inside of helmets, turning
prone bodies over. When she reached the sea
• she did not enter Doris’ salty waters
but stayed until the Nereids took pity
and pushed the body, which had been possessed
by weltering waves, against the mother’s breast.
She carried him as if he were alive
373
and lay him on the cushioned riverbank.
She dried his wet face with her tender hair
and mournful, she complained: ‘‘Is this the fate
your parents—demigods—and your immortal
grandfather gave? Is this how you will rule
our river? Alien, discordant lands
would be more kind, my miserable boy—
even the sea, which brought your body back,
as if expecting your bereaving parent.
‘‘Is this my face? these your fierce father’s eyes?
381
the billows of your grandsire in your hair?
You were the pride of forest and of stream;
I was a greater goddess while you lived
and far and wide known as the queen of Nymphs!
Where is the crowd of woodland deities
385
who sought to serve, who ringed your mother’s doorway?
Why do I bring you here, in sad embrace,
to benefit your tomb and not myself ?
I would be better in the savage deep,
Crenaeus! O cruel father, is not such
a death a shameful thing, and to be pitied?
What deep morass and mirey river bottom
hides you, where neither my laments nor news
of your dead grandson’s body penetrate?
Hippomedon is raging, and he brags
393
that he controls your stream, whose waves and banks
tremble before him—he whose dolorous stroke
≤∂Π STATIUS, THE THEBAID
allowed the river to consume our blood.
You slave for fierce Pelasgians! Are you lazy?
At least, cruel man, come take a final look
at one of your own people’s ashes, for
it is not just a grandson you must burn!’’
Moans mingled with her words. She beat her breast
399
bloody, though guiltless, and her sea-blue sisters
echoed her lamentations, just as when
Leucothea, not yet a Nereid,
lamented, so they say, in Corinth’s harbor,
as her cold infant vomited fierce seas.
–?–?–?–
Father Ismenos, who resided in
404
his secret cavern where the clouds and winds
imbibe, and where he feeds rain-bearing bows,
and where the Tyrian fields’ good years are grown,
could hear, despite the roarings of his own,
the distant lamentations and the groans
he knows must be his daughter’s. He uplifted
his moss-grown neck, his heavy frozen hair.
His lengthy sta√ of pine escaped his grasp
and he ungripped his urn, which rolled away.
The forests and the minor rivers stared
from on the shore as he upraised his face,
rugged with ancient mud, and then emerged
out of the swollen stream. He lifted up
his foaming head, and from his sea-blue beard
sonorous droplets trickled down his chest.
One of his daughters met him, and the nymph
416
showed him her groaning sister and explained
his grandson’s fate. She pointed out the man
who did this bloody deed and pressed his hand.
Ismenos stood up tall within his stream;
his horns were interwoven with green sedge;
he struck them with his fists and struck his cheeks;
he was disturbed; his voice was low. He spoke:
BOOK Ω ≤∂π
‘‘Is this, o ruler of the gods, the wage
421
for one who often welcomed and observed
your doings? These I fear not to recall—
• the guilty horns you wore on your false face;
forbidding Phoebe to unyoke her cart;
the marriage pyre: deceptive lightning bolts!
I raised your firstborn sons: are they ungrateful?
• Tirynthius first crawled beside this stream;
I quenched, in these waves, flaming Bromius.
Observe how many dead are in the river,
429
what bodies I must bear, the constant flow
of weapons, and the heaps that cover me.
My currents are beset by constant warfare,
and every wave inhales impiety.
The old dead sink; the newly vanquished loom;
my banksides are connected by their gloom.
I am acclaimed by sacred incantations;
the tender thyrsus and the horns of Bacchus
are laved in my pure streams, but now the dead
constrict me so, I cannot reach the sea.
No such amount of blood fills impious Strymon;
Hebrus foams not so red when Mars makes war.
The stream that raised you now admonishes
you and your followers, o Liber—you
who have forgotten who your parents were!
Was India so easy to subdue?
But you, Hippomedon, so pu√ed by spoils,
442
proud to have spilled a guiltless young man’s blood,
won’t leave this river to return as victor
to mighty Inachus or fierce Mycenae,
unless Iam the mortal one, and you
inherited your blood from deities!’’
He spoke and ground his teeth and gave
446
signs to the madding waves, and cold Cithaeron
sent mountain reinforcements, age-old snows,
and ordered forward river-feeding frosts.
Asopos, brother of Ismenos, mixed
those currents with his unfamiliar strength,
sending his rivers up from open veins.
≤∂∫ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
Meanwhile Ismenos searched throughout the depths
and hollows of the underworld to wake
desolate swamps and pools and stagnant lakes.
He raised his eager visage to the skies
and sucked the humid clouds and heavens dry.
Now he was flowing over either bank
455
&n
bsp; with mounds of water, and Hippomedon,
who even then was towering midstream,
dry in his arms and shoulders, was impressed
to see the river swell, himself grow less.
The river flooded, and an angry storm
459
surged like the seas that tug the Pleiades
or fling Orion’s night on frightened sailors.
Similarly Teumesia’s water wracked
Hippomedon with oceanic streams
and bounded o√ the boss by his left shoulder.
Black foaming billows overwhelmed his shield,
broke into waves, grew larger, then surged back.
The mass of liquid overwhelmed the stream,
which plucked up trunks that held the crumbling banks,
rolled boulders from the depths, and swirled gnarled trees.
Human and river waged an even contest.
Much to the god’s dismay, Hippomedon
470
never retreated; he ignored all threats;
he stubbornly opposed the rushing flow
and shoved his target hard against the current.
The ground gave way, but he maintained his place;
his hamstrings strained, his knees flexed, but he held
his balance on the slipping stones and slime
that undermined his feet and made them slide.
The hero cried, ‘‘Tell me, Ismenos, why
476
are you so angry? From what source have you
drawn strength? You serve a peaceful god;
your only blood comes from the women’s chorus
when maddened matrons play their Bacchic pipes
three times a year and stain your festive rites!’’
BOOK Ω ≤∂Ω
The god attacked as soon as he had finished.
481
His face was wet and dark with swimming sand.
His weapons were not words, but one oak trunk
with which he rammed three times and then a fourth.
Swollen with anger and divinity,
he flowed and struck. At last Hippomedon
slipped o√ his feet, his shield fell from his arm,
and he revolved and slowly turned around.
Waves inundated him; the joyous stream
pursued him as he groped; and Tyrians
tortured the man with stones and iron hail
that struck him and repulsed him from both banks.
What could he do, besieged by wave and war?
The poor man could not flee, or die, with glory.
Along the riverbank an ash tree grew
492
and leaned out from the turf. You could not say
if it belonged to dry land or the waves.
It overhung the river with its shade
and o√ered to Hippomedon a place
that he could reach, a hook for his right hand.
Where else along the river would he land?
But it could not withstand his downward pull,
the ponderous weight that overcame its hold
and ripped branched roots that clawed the arid earth.
The tree was thrown over the trembling man
and chunks of bank fell too and made a dam,
a bridge constructed from the stream’s debris.
Here the waves gathered, and they formed a pit
of endless mud and hollow, swirling pools
that rose and fell around the warrior,
reaching his shoulders now, and now his neck,
until he was defeated and confessed
his time had come.
He said, ‘‘O mighty Mars!
506
Must I endure the shame of drowning? Will
this river take my soul? Shall I be choked
beneath slow-moving lakes and stagnant fens
like some custodian of sheep flocks caught
≤Σ≠ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
by rising waters from a sudden storm?
Don’t I deserve to die on someone’s sword?’’
Juno, moved by his prayers, accosted Jove:
510
‘‘How far do you intend, progenitor,
to press the poor Inachians? How far?
Pallas already hates her Tydeus! Delphi
is silent, since its seer was seized! And my
Hippomedon, whose household gods were Argive,
whose race rose in Mycenae and who worships
Juno above the other deities,
sinks in the sea, the prey of monstrous fish.
Is this how I reward my followers?
You used to give the victors mounds and pyres:
where are the flames of Theseus, the Athenian
custom of burning bodies after battle?’’
Jove was not scornful. Juno’s plea was just.
519
His quick eyes turned upon the towers of Cadmus.
The river saw his nod and drained away.
–?–?–?–
Those weary shoulders and that battered chest
522
emerged above the waters, like a cli√
or shores long sought by sailors when a storm
tempers the fury of its winds, and seas
retreat and leave the deadly rocks revealed.
What did the riverbanks avail him now?
On every side Phoenician cohorts pressed
with clouds of weapons, and they threatened death.
He did not have a bit of armor left;
his wounds, which had been staunched beneath the stream,
flowed in the open air; frail veins released;
his steps gave way; cold water numbed his feet.
So down he fell, just as an oak tree falls
532
on Getic Haemon from the north wind’s fury
or feeble age. Its branches, which stood high
and framed the heavens, now will leave a void,
and as it nods, the mountain and its groves
BOOK Ω ≤Σ∞
tremble in fear for where the oak will fall.
What copses will its great length overwhelm?
No one yet dared to touch his sword or helmet.
537
They stared in disbelief. The giant body
thrilled them as they approached with weapons drawn.
Hypseus, at last, approached the corpse. He took
540
the pommel from its grasp and then unlaced
the head gear from that awe-inspiring face.
He raised that helmet on his shining sword
and pranced as he displayed it to the Thebans:
‘‘This is the terrible Hippomedon,
544
ruthless defender of unspeakable Tydeus,
the warrior who quelled the savage stream!’’
Listening from far away, oppressed by grief,
546
greathearted Capaneus flexed his arm;
he weighed a mighty javelin and prayed:
The Thebaid Page 39