Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  BOOK II

  The second has Typhon’s battle ranging through the stars, and lightning, and the struggles of Zeus, and the triumph of Olympos.

  And so Cadmos Agenorides remained there by the ankle of the pasturing woodland, drawing his lips to and fro along the tops of the pipes, as a pretended goatherd; but Zeus Cronides, unespied, uncaught, crept noiseless into the cave, and armed himself with his familiar fires a second time. And a cloud covered Cadmos beside his unseen rock, lest Typhoeus might learn this crafty plan, and the secret thief of the thunderbolts, and wise too late might kill the turncoat herdsman. But all the Giant wanted was, to hear more and more of the mind-bewitching melody with its delicious thrill. When a sailor hears the Siren’s perfidious song, and bewitched by the melody, he is dragged to a self-chosen fate too soon; no longer he cleaves the waves, no longer he whitens the blue water with his oars unwetted now, but falling into the net of melodious Fate, he forgets to steer, quite happy, caring not for the seven starry Pleiades and the Bear’s circling course: so the monster, shaken by the breath of that deceitful tune, welcomed with delight the wound of the pipes which was his escort to death.

  [20] But now the shepherd’s reed breathing melody fell silent, and a mantling shadow of cloud his the piper as he cut off his tune. Typhoeus rushed head-in-air with the fury of battle into the cave’s recesses, and searched with hurried madness for the wind-coursing thunderbolt and the lightning unapproachable; with inquiring foot he chased the fire-shotten gleam of the stolen thunderbolt, and found an empty cave! Too late he learnt the craft-devising schemes of Cronides and the subtle machinations of Cadmos: flinging the rocks about he leapt upon Olympos. While he dragged his crooked track with snaky foot, he spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperfish bristles of his high head; as he marched, the solid earth did sink, and the steady ground of Cilicia shook to its foundations under those dragon-feet; the flanks of craggy Tauros crashed with a rumbling din, until the neighbouring Pamphylian hills danced with fear; the underground caverns boomed, the rocky headlands trembled, the hidden places shook, the shore slipt away as a thrust of his earthshaking foot loosened the sands.

  [42] Neither pasture nor wild beasts were spared. Rawravening bears made a meal for the jaws of Typhaon’s bear-heads; tawny bodies of chest-bristling lions were swallowed by the gaping jaws of his own lion-heads; his snaky throats devoured the cold shapes of earthfed serpents; birds of the air, flying through untrodden space, there met neighbours to gulp them down their throats – he found the eagle in his home, and that was the food he relished most, because it is called the Bird of Zeus. He ate up the plowing ox, and had no pity when he saw the galled neck bloody from the yoke-straps.

  [53] He made the rivers dust, as he drank the water after his meal, beating off the troops of Naiads from the river-beds: the Naiad of the deeps made her way tripping afoot as if the river were a roadway, until she stood, unshod, with dry limbs, she a nymph, the creature of watery ways, and as the girl struggled, thrusting one foot after another along the thirsty bed of the stream, she found her knees held fast to the bottom in a muddy prison.

  [60] The old shepherd, terrified to descry the manifold visage of this maddened monster, dropt his pipes and ran away; the goatherd, seeing the wide-scattered host of his arms, threw his reed flying to the winds; the hard-working plowman sprinkled not the new-scored ground with corn thrown behind him, nor covered it with earth, nor cut with earthshaking iron the land furrowed already by Typhon’s guiding hand, but let his oxen go loose. The earth’s hollows were bared, as the monster’s missile cleft it. He freed the liquid vein, and as the chasm opened, the lower channel bubbled up with flooding springs, pouring out the water from under the uncovered bosom of the ground, and rocks were thrown up, and falling from the air in torrential showers were hidden in the sea, making the waters dry land: and the hurtling masses of earth rooted themselves firmly as the footings of new-made islands. Trees were levered up from the earth by the roots, and the fruit fell on the ground untimely; the fresh-flowering garden was laid waste, the rosy meadows withered; the West Wind was beaten by the dry leaves of whirling cypresses. Phoibos sang a dirge in lamentable tones for his devastated iris, twining a sorrowful song, and lamented far more bitterly than for his clusters of Amyclean flowers, when the laurel by his side was struck. Pan in anguish uplifted his fallen pine; Grayeyes, remembering Moria, groaned over her broken olive-tree, the Attic nymph who brought her a city. The Paphian also wept when her anemone was laid in the dust, and mourned long over the fragrant tresses of flowercups from her rosebed laid in the dust, while she tore her soft hair. Deo mourned over the half-grown corn destroyed and no longer celebrated the harvest home. The Hadryad nymphs lamented the lost shade of their yearsmate trees.

  [94] One Hamadryad leapt unveiled from the cloven shaft of a bushy laurel, which had grown with her growth, and another maiden stepping out of her pine-tree appeared beside her neighbour the exiled nymph, and said: “Laurel Hamadryad, so shy of the marriage bed, let us both take one road, lest you see Phoibos, lest I espy Pan! Woodmen, pass by these trees! Do not fell the afflicted bush of unhappy Daphne! Shipwright, spare me! cut no timbers from my pine-tree, to make some lugger that may feel the billows of Aphrodite, Lady of the Sea! Yes, woodcutter, grant me this last grace: strike me with your axe instead of my clusters, and drive our unmarried Athena’s chaste bronze through my breast, that I may die before I wed, and go to Hades a virgin, still a stranger to Eros, like Pitys and like Daphne!”

  [109] With these words, she contrived a makeshift kirtle with the leaves, and modestly covered the circle of her breast with this green girdle, pressing thigh upon thigh. The other seeing her so downcast, answered thus: “I feel the fear inborn in a maiden, because I was born of a laurel, and I am pursued like Daphne. But where shall I flee? Shall I hide under a rock? No, thunderbolts have burnt to ashes the mountains hurled at Olympos; and I tremble at your lustful Pan, who will persecute me like Pitys, like Syrinx – I shall be chased myself until I become another Echo, to scour the hills and second another’s speech. I will haunt these clusters no longer; I will leave my tree and live in the mountains which are still half to be seen, where Artemis also hunts, and she loves a maiden. – Yet Cronion won the bed of Callisto by taking the form of Artemis! I will plunge into the briny deep – what is marriage to me? – Yet in the sea, Earthshaker chased Asterië in the madness of his passion. O that I had wings to fly! I will traverse the heights, and take the road which the winds of the air do travel! But perhaps racing wings are also useless: Typhoeus reaches the clouds with highclambering hands!

  [130] “But if he will force me by violence, I will change my shape, I will mingle with the birds; flitting as Philomela, I will be the swallow dear to Zephyros in spring-time, harbinger of roses and flowery dew, prattling bird that sings a sweet song under the tiles, dashing about her nest with dancing wings. And, you, Procne, after your bitter sufferings, – you may weep for your son with mournful notes, and I will groan for my bridal. – Lord Zeus! make me no swallow, or angry Tereus on the wing may chase me, like Typhoeus! Air, mountain, sea, I may tread none of them: I will hide me deep in the earth. No! the water-snakes of the monster’s viperfish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison! May I be a fountain of water in the country, like Comaitho, mingling her newly flowing water with her father Cydnos – no, not to suit the story, because I shall then have to join my virgin water with the out-gushings of a lovesick maid. But where shall I flee? Shall I mingle with Typhon? Then shall I bear a son like the father – an alien, multiform! Let me be another tree, and pass from tree to tree keeping the name of a virtuous maid; may I never, instead of laurel, be called that unhallowed plant which gave its name to Myrrha. Yes, I beseech thee! let me be one of the Heliades beside the stream of mourning Eridanos: often will I drop amber from my eyelids; I will spread my leaves to entwine with the dirge-loving clusters of my neighbourin
g poplar, bewailing my maidenhood with abundant tears – for Phaëthon will not be my lament. Forgive me, my laurel; I shrink from being another tree after the tree of my former wood. I also will be a stone, like Niobe, that wayfarers may pity me too, a groaning stone. – But why be the shape of one with that ill-omened tongue? Be gracious, Leto! Perish the god-defiant name of a nymph unhappy to be a mother!”

  [163] While she spoke, Phaëthon had left he rounded sky, and turned his car towards setting: silent Night leapt up from earth into the air like a high-stretching cone, and wrapped heaven about in a starry robe spangling the welkin. The immortals moved about the cloudless Nile, but Zeus Cronides on the brows of Tauros awaited the light of toil-awakening Dawn.

  [170] It was night. Sentinels stood in line around Olympos and the seven zones, and as it were from the summit of towers came their nightly alarms; the calls of the stars in many tongues were carried all abroad, and the moon’s turning-mark received the creaking echo from Saturn’s starting-point. Now the Seasons, guardians of the upper air, handmaids of Phaëthon, had fortified the sky with a long string of covering clouds like a coronal. The stars had closed the Atlantean bar of the inviolable gates, lest some stealthy troop should enter the heavens while the Blessed ones were away: instead of the noise of pipes and the familiar flute, the breezes whistled a tune with their wings through the night. Old Oxherd was on guard with unsleeping eyes, in company with the heavenly Serpent of the Arcadian Bear, looking out from on high for some nightly assault of Typhon: the Morning Star watched the east, the Evening Star the west, and Cepheus, leaving the southern gates to the Archer, himself patrolled the rainy gates of the north.

  [188] Watchfires were all around: for the blazing flames of the stars, and the nightly lamp of unresting Selene, sparkled like torches. Often the shooting stars, leaping through the heights of Olympos with windswept whirl from the ether, scored the air with flame on Cronion’s right hand; often the lightning danced, twisting about like a tumbler, and tearing the clouds as it shot through, the uncertain brilliance which runs to and fro, now hidden, now shining, in alternating swing; and the comet twined in clusters the long strands of his woven flame, and made a ragged light with his hairy fire. Stray meteors were also shining, like long rafters stretching across the sky, shooting their long fires as allies of Zeus; and the rain’s comrade, the bow of Iris, wove her many colours into a rounded track, and shone bent under the light-shafts of Phaëthon opposite, mingling pale with dark, and light with rosy.

  [205] Zeus was alone, when Victory came to comfort him, scoring the high paths of the air with her shoe. She had the form of Leto; and while she armed her father, she made him a speech full of reproaches, with guileful lips: “Lord Zeus! stand up as champion of your own children! Let me never see Athena mingled with Typhon, she who knows not the way of a man with a maid! Make not a mother of the unmothered! Fight, brandish your lightning, the fiery spear of Olympos! Gather once more your clouds, lord of the rain! For the foundations of the steadfast universe are already shaking under Typhon’s hands: the four blended elements are melted! Deo has renounced her harvests. Hebe has left her cup, Ares has thrown down his spear, Hermes has dropped his staff, Apollo has cast away his harp, and taken a swan’s form, and flown off on the wing, leaving his winged arrows behind! Aphrodite, the goddess who brings wedlock to pass, has gone a-wandering, and the universe is without seed. The bonds indissoluble of harmony are dissolved: for bold Eros has flown in panic, leaving behind his generative arrows, he the adorner of brides, he the all-mastering, the unmastered! And your fiery Hephaistos has left his favourite Lemnos, and dragging unruly knees, look how slow he keeps his unsteady course! See a great miracle – I pity your Hera, though she hates me sure enough! What – is your begetter to come back into the assembly of the stars? May that never be, I pray! Even if I am called a Titaness, I wish to see no Titans lords of Olympos, but you and your children. Take your lordly thunderbolt and champion chaste Artemis. What – do I keep my maiden for a bridegroom who offers no gifts but only violence? What – is the dispenser of childbirth to see childbirth of her own? Will she stretch out her hands to me, and then what gracious Eileithyia shall I call for the Archeress, when Eileithyia herself is in childbed?”

  [237] So she spoke: and Sleep beating his shady wing sent all breathing nature to rest; but Cronion alone remained sleepless. Typhoeus stretched out his sluggish back and lay heavy upon his bed, covering his Mother Earth; she opened wide her bosom, and lurking lairs were hollowed out in a grinning chasm for the snaky heads which sank into the ground.

  [244] The sun appeared, and many-armed Typhoeus roared for the fray with all the tongues of all his throats, challenging mighty Zeus. That sonorous voice reached where the root-fixt bed of refluent Oceanos surrounds the circle of the world and its four divided parts, girdling the whole earth coronet-wise with encircling band; as the monster spoke, that which answered the army of his voices, was not one concordant echo, but a babel of screaming sounds: when the monster arrayed him with all his manifold shapes, out rang the yowling of wolves, the roaring of lions, the grunting of boars, the lowing of cattle, the hissing of serpents, the bold yap of leopards, the jaws of rearing bears, the fury of dogs. Then with his midmost man-shaped head the Giant yelled out threats against Zeus”

  [258] “Smash the house of Zeus, O my hands! Shake the foundation of the universe, and the blessed ones with it! Break the bar of Olympos, self-turning, divine! Drag down to earth the heavenly pillar, let Atlas be shaken and flee away, let him throw down the starry vault of Olympos and fear no more its circling course – for I will not permit a son of Earth to be bowed down with chafed shoulders, while he under-props the revolving compulsion of the sky! No, let him leave his endless burden to the other gods, and battle against the Blessed Ones! Let him break off rocks, and volley with those hard shots the starry vault which he once carried! Let the timid Seasons, the Sun’s handmaids, flee the heavens under the shower of mountains! Mix earth with sky, water with fire, sea with Olympos, in a litter of confusion!

  [273] “I will compel the four winds also to labour as my slaves; I lash the North Wind, I buffet the South, I flog the East; I will thrash the West, with one hand I will mix night with day; Oceanos my brother shall bring his water to Olympos aloft with many-fountained throat, and rising above the five parallel circles he shall inundate the stars; then let the thirsty Bear go wandering in the water with the Waggon’s pole submerged!

  [281] “Bellow, my bulls, shake the circle of the equator in the sky, break with your notched horns the horns of the fiery Bull, your own likeness! Let Selene’s cattle change their watery road, fearing the heavybooming bellow of my heads! Let Typhaon’s bear open wide his grim gaping jaws, and worry the Bear of Olympos! Let my lion face the heavenly Lion, and drive him reluctant from the path of the Zodiac! (Little do I care for Zeus,) with only a few lightning to arm him! Ah, but my swords are the maddened waves of the sea, the tors of the land, the island glens; my shields are the hills, the cliffs are my breastplates unbreakable, my halberds are the rocks, and the rivers which will quench the contemptible thunderbolt. I will keep the chains of Iapetos for Poseidon; and soaring round Caucasos, another and better eagle shall tear the bleeding liver, growing for ever anew, of Hephaistos the fiery: since fire was that for which Prometheus has been suffering the ravages of his self-growing liver. I will take a shape the counterpart of the sons of Iphimedeia, and I will shut up the intriguing son of Maia in a brazen jar, ‘Hermes freed Ares from prison, and he was put in prison himself!’ Let Artemis break the untouched seal of her maidenhood, and become the enforced consort of Orion; Leto shall spread her old bedding for Tityos, dragged to wedlock by force. I will strip murderous Ares of his ragged bucklers, I will bind the lord of battle, and carry him off, and make him Killer the Gentle; I will carry off Pallas and join her to Ephialtes, married at last; that I may see Ares a slave, and Athena a mother.

  [314] “Cronion also shall lift the spinning heavens of Atlas, and bear the load
on weary shoulders – there shall he stand, and hear the song at my wedding, and hide his jealousy when I shall be Hera’s bridegroom. Torches shall not lack at my wedding. Bright lightning shall come of itself to be selfmade torch of the bride-chamber; Phaëthon himself instead of pine-brands, kindled at the light of his own flames, shall put his radiance at the service of Typhoeus the Bridegroom; the stars shall sprinkle their bridal sparks over Olympos as lamps to my loves, the stars, lights of evening! My servant Selene, Endymion’s bed-fellow, along with Aphrodite the friend of marriage, shall lay my bed; and if I want a bath, I will bathe in the waters of starry Eridanos. Come now, ye circling Seasons! You prepared the bed of Zeus, build now the bower of love for Typhoeus; you also, Leto, Athenaia, Paphian, Charis, Artemis, Hebe, bring up form Oceanos his kindred water for Typhon the Bridegroom! And at the banquet of my table, with bridal quill Apollo my menial shall celebrate Typhoeus instead of Zeus.

  [334] “I long for no stranger’s demesne; for Uranos is my brother, a son of Earth like myself; the star-dappled heaven which I shall rule, the ehaven which I shall live in, comes to me through my mother. And cannibal Cronos I will drag up once more to the light, another brother, to help me in my task, out of the underground abyss; I will break those constraining chains, and bring back the Titans to heaven, and settle under the same roof in the sky the Cyclopes, sons of Earth. I will make more weapons of fire; for I need many thunderbolts, because I have two hundred hands to fight with, not only a pair like Cronides. I will forge a newer and better brand of lightning, with more fire and flashes. I will build another heaven up aloft, he eighth, broader and higher than the rest, and furnish it with brighter stars; for the vault which we see close beside us is not enough to cover the whole of Typhon. And after those girl children and the male progeny of prolific Zeus, I will beget another multiparous generation of new Blessed Ones with multitudinous necks. I will not leave the company of the stars useless and unwedded, but I will join male to female, that the winged Virgin may sleep with the Oxherd and breed me slave-children.”