Works of Nonnus

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by Nonnus


  [497] “But I will not speak of all that – why should I inflict a second pain? or I may cause you to groan again even in sleep. Often you passed that tree where lies what is left of Actaion; often you went by those pitiable bones of a dappled fawn, disjointed, scattered on the ground far apart, torn from the flesh by many eaters. But I will tell you another sign of my death which you will believe. You will see my quiver and bow near the tree where the trouble began, unless the winged arrows have been transformed also, unless Artemis in her anger has changed my bow back to its native wood and transformed the quiver. Otos was happy, that he became no wandering fawn. The dogs did not rend Orion the dogmaster. Would that a scorpion had killed Actaion also with a sharp sting! I was a fool – empty rumour deceived my mind. I heard that Phoibos, the Archeress’s brother, slept with Cyrene and begat my father, and I thought to draw Artemis to marriage in the family. I heard again that shining Dawn carried off Orion for a bridegroom, and Selene Endymion, and Deo embraced a mortal husband Iasion, and I thought the Archeress’s mind the same.

  [520] “I beg you, father, give burial to the changeling stronghorned shape, let it not be a toy for other dogs! And if you cover what is left of me in the hollowed earth, grant me this boon also: fix my bow and arrows beside my tomb, which is the honour due to the dead. But no, father, never mind bow and arrows, because the Archeress delights in shafts and bends a curving bow. And ask a skilful artist to carve my changeling dappled shape from neck to feet, but let him make only my face of human form, that all may recognize my shape as false. But do not inscribe my fate, father; for the wayfarer cannot shed a tear for fate and shape together.”

  [533] So spoke in the dream the intelligent pricket, and without warning it was flown and gone. Autonoë’s husband leapt up, and threw off the wing of this revealing sleep. He aroused his wife much disturbed, and described her boy’s stronghorned animal form, and recounted the story which the intelligent fawn had told. Then there was more lamentation. The bride of Aristaios went on the search again, and passed often through the heart of the longbranching bush; sadly treading the difficult circuits of the rocky ways, she found with pains that fatal growth, she found even the quiver and bow beside a lonely trunk. With much trouble the mother gathered the fallen relics, bones scattered here and there over the strewn earth. She clasped the sweet horn with loving hand, and kissed the hairy lips of the bloodstained fawn. Wailing loudly the mother entombed the dead, and carved along the tomb all that the voice in a dream of the night had told Actaion’s father.

  [552] At the time when mourning resounded in the hall of Aristaios, fairbosomed Agauë brought forth to Echion the Earthborn a bold god-assaulting son: he was named Pentheus, the man of sorrows, from the sorrow arising for the newly slain.

  [556] After the bridals of Nephele of the earlier marriages, maiden Ino went with revels to the bridal chamber of Athamas. She bore Learchos destined to woe, and Melicertes. She was afterwards to find a home in the sea, as cherishing nurse for the childhood of Bromios: to both she gave one common breast, Palaimon and Dionysos.

  [562] Semele was kept for a more brilliant union, for already Zeus ruling on high intended to make a new Dionysos grow up, a bullshaped copy of the older Dionysos; since he throught with regret of the illfated Zagreus. This was a son born to Zeus in the dragonbed by Persephoneia, the consort of the blackrobed king of the underworld; when Zeus put on a deceiving shape of many coils, as a gentle dragon twining around her in lovely curves, and ravished the maidenhood of unwedded Persephoneia; though she was hidden when all that dwelt in Olympos were bewitched by this one girl, rivals in love for the marriageable maid, and offered their dowers for an unsmirched bridal. Hermes had not yet gone to the bed of Peitho, and he offered his rod as a gift to adorn her chamber. Apollo produced his melodious harp as a marriage-gift. Ares brought spear and cuirass for the wedding, and shield as a bride-gift. Lemnian Hephaistos held out a curious necklace of many colours, newmade and breathing still of the furnace, poor hobbler! for he had already, though unwilling, rejected his former bride Aphrodite, when he spied her rioting with Ares; he displayed her to the Blessed and the womanthief who had robbed his bed, when by information from Phaëthon he had entangled them in a spider’s net, naked Ares with naked Aphrodite.

  [586] And Father Zeus was much more bewitched by Persephoneia. When Zeus spied the virgin beauty of her shape, his eye ran ahead of him to guide all the Loes, and could not have enough of Persephone; in his heart storms of unsleeping passion raged without ceasing, and gradually a greater furnace of the Paphian was kindled from a small spark; the gaze of lovemaddened Zeus was enslaved by the lovely breast of the goddess. Once she was amusing herself with a resplendent bronze plate, which reflected her face like a judge of beauty; and she confirmed the image of her shape by this free voiceless herald, testing the unreal form in the shadow of the mirror, and smiling at the mimic likeness. Thus Persephone gazed in the selfgraved portrait of her face, and beheld the selfimpressed aspect of a false Persephoneia. Once in the scorching steam of thirsty heat, the girl would cease the loomtoiling labours of her shuttle at midday to shun the tread of the parching season, and wipe the running sweat from her face; she loosed the modest bodice which held her breast so tight, and moistened her skin with a refreshing bath, floating in the cool running stream, and left behind her threads fixt on the loom of Pallas.

  [609] But she could not escape the allseeing eye of Zeus. He gazed at the whole body of Persephoneia, uncovered in her bath. Not so wild his desire had been for the Cyprian, when craving but not attaining he scattered his seed on the ground, and shot out the hot foam of love self-sown, where in the fruitful land of horned Cyprus flourished the two-coloured generation of wild creatures with horns. He – so mighty! the ruler of the universe, the charioteer of heaven, bowed his neck to desire – for all his greatness no thunderbolts, no lightnings helped him against Aphrodite in arms: he left the house of Hera, he refused the bed of Dione, he threw away the love of Deo, he fled from Themis, he deserted Leto – no charm was left for him but only in union with Persephoneia.

  BOOK VI

  Look for marvels in the sixth, where in honouring Zagreus, all the settlements on the earth were drowned by Rainy Zeus.

  Not the Father alone felt desire; but all that dwelt in Olympos had the same, struck by one bolt, and wooed for a union with Deo’s divine daughter. Then Deo lost the brightness of her rosy face, her swelling heart was lashed by sorrows. She untied the fruitful frontlet from her head, and shook loose the long locks of hair over her neck, trembling for her girl; the cheeks of the goddess were moistened with self-running tears, in her sorrow that so many wooers had been stung with one fiery shot for a struggle of rival wooing, by maddening Eros, all contending together for their loves. From all the bounteous mother shrank, but specially she feared Hephaistos to be her daughter’s lame bedfellow.

  [15] She hastened with quick foot to the house of Astraios the god of prophecy; her hair flowed behind her unbraided and the clusters were shaking in the fitful winds. Eosphoros saw her and brought the news. Old Astraios heard it and arose; he had covered the surface of a table with dark dust, where he was describing in traced lines a circle with the tooth of his rounding tool, within which he inscribed a square in the dark ashes, and another figure with three equal sides and angles. He left all this, and rose and came towards the door to meet Demeter. As they hastened through the hall, Hesperos led Deo to a chair beside his father’s seat; with equal affection the Winds, the sons of Astraios, welcomed the goddess with refreshing cups of nectar which was ready mixt in the bowl. But Deo refused to drink, being tipsy with Persephone’s trouble: parents of an only child ever tremble for their beloved children.

  [33] But Astraios was one of sweet words, who possessed mind-bewitching Persuasion, and with great pains he persuaded Deo to consent while still denying. Then the ancient prepared a great spread, that he might dispel Demeter’s heart-piercing cares by his tables. The four Winds fitted aprons round their waists as
their father’s waiters. Euros held out the cups by the mixing-bowl and poured in the nectar, Notos had the water ready in his jug for the meal, Boreas brought the ambrosia and set it on the table, Zephyros fingering the notes of the hoboy made a tune on his reeds of spring-time – a womanish Wind this! Eosphoros plaited garlands of flowers in posies yet proud with the morning dew; Hesperos held aloft the torch which is wont to give light in the night, and spun about with dancing leg while he tossed high his curving foot – for he is the escort of the Loves, well practised in the skipping tracery of the bridal dance.

  [50] After the banquet, as soon as the goddess had had enough of the dance, she threw off the heavy goad of mindmaddening care and inquired of the seer’s art. She laid her left hand on the knees of the kindly ancient, and with her right touched his deepflowing beard in supplication. She recounted all her daughter’s wooers and craved a comfortable oracle; for divinations can steal away anxieties by means of hopes to come.

  [58] Nor did old Astraios refuse. He learnt the details of the day when her only child was new born, and the exact time and veritable course of the season which gave her birth; then he bent the turning fingers of his hands and measured the moving circle of the ever-recurring number counting from hand to hand in double exchange. He called a servant, and Asterion lifted a round revolving sphere, the shape of the sky, the image of the universe, and laid it upon the lid of a chest. Here the ancient got to work. He turned it upon its pivot, and directed his gaze round the circle of the Zodiac, scanning in this place and that planets and fixed stars. He rolled the pole about with push, and the counterfeit sky went rapidly round and round in mobile course with a perpetual movement, carrying the artificial stars about the axle set through the middle. Observing the sphere with a glance all round, the deity found that the Moon at the full was crossing the curved line of her conjunction, and the Sun was half through his course opposite the Moon moving at his central point under the earth; a pointed cone of darkness creeping from the earth into the air opposite to the Sun hid the whole Moon. Then when he heard the rivals for wedded love, he looked especially for Ares, and espied the wife-robber over the sunset house along with the evening star of the Cyprian. He found the portion called the Portion of the Parents under the Virgin’s starry corn-ear; and round the Ear ran the light-bearing star of Cronides, father of rain.

  [86] When he had noticed everything and reckoned the circuit of the stars, he put away the ever-revolving sphere in its roomy box, the sphere with its curious surface; and in answer to the goddess he mouthed out a triple oracle of prophetic sound: “Fond mother Demeter, when the rays of the Moon are stolen under a shady cone and her light is gone, guard against a robber-bridegroom for Persephoneia, a secret ravisher of your unsmirched girl, if the threads of the Fates can be persuaded. You will see before marriage a false and secret bedfellow come unforeseen, a half-monster cunning-minded: since I perceive by the western point Ares the wife-stealer walking with the Paphian, and I notice the Dragon rising beside them both. But I proclaim you most happy: for you will be known for glorious fruits in the four quarters of the universe, because you shall bestow fruit on the barren soil; since the Virgin Astraia holds out her hand full of corn for the destined lot of your girl’s parents.”

  [103] This said, he let the oracular voice sleep in his mouth. But when Demeter Sicklebearer heard the hope of coming fruits, and how one uninvited and unbetrothed was to ravish her beloved maiden girl, she groaned and smiled at once, and hastening by the paths of high heaven she entered her own house with despondent step. Then beside the dragon-manger she balanced the curved yoke over the two necks of the monsters, and fastened the untamed crawlers with the yokestrap, pressing their jaws about the crooktooth bit. So goldenbrown Deo in that grim car conveyed her girl hidden in a black veil of cloud. Boreas roared like thunder against the passage of the wagon, but she whistled him down with her monster-driving whip, guiding the light wings of the quick dragons as they sped horselike along the course of the wind, through the sky and round the back-reaching cape of the Libyan Ocean. She heard the music of the helmeted Cretan troop resounding in Dicte, as they danced about with the tumbling steel thundering heavy upon their oxhide shields. The goddess passed them by, looking for a stony harbourage; and she alighted among the Pelorian cliffs of Threepeak Sicily near the Adriatic shores, where the restless briny flood is driven towards the west and bends round like a sickle, bringing the current in a curve to southwest from the north. And in the place where that River had often bathed the maiden Cyane, pouring his water in fountain-showers as a bridegift, she saw a neighbouring grotto like a lofty hall crowned and concealed by a roof of stone, which nature had completed with a rocky gateway and a loom of stone tended by the neighbouring Nymphs.

  [134] The goddess passed through the dark hall, and concealed her daughter well-secured in this hollow rock. Then she loosed the dragons from the winged car; one she placed by the jutting rock on the right of the door, one on the left beside the stone-pointed barrier of the entry, to protect Persephoneia unseen. There also she left Calligeneia, her own fond nurse, with her baskets, and all that cleverhand Pallas gives to make womankind sweat over their woolspinning. Then she left her rounded chariot for the Nymphs to watch, in their lonely home among the rocks, and cut the air with her feet.

  [145] The girl busied herself in carding fleeces of wool under the sharp teeth of the iron comb. She packed the wool on the distaff, and the twirling spindle with many a twist and jerk ran round and round in dancing step, as the threads were spun and drawn through the fingers. She fixed the first threads of the warp which begins the cloth, and gave them a turn round the beam, moving from end to end to and fro with unresting feet. She wove away, plying the rod and pulling the bobbin along through the threads, while she sang over the cloth to her cousin Athena the clever Webster.

  [155] Ah, maiden Persephoneia! You could not find how to escape your mating! No, a dragon was your mate, when Zeus changed his face and came, rolling in many a loving coil through the dark to the corner of the maiden’s chamber, and shaking his hairy chaps: he lulled to sleep as he crept the eyes of those creatures of his own shape who guarded the door. He licked the girl’s form gently with wooing lips. By this marriage with the heavenly dragon, the womb of Persephone swelled with living fruit, and she bore Zagreus the horned baby, who by himself climbed upon the heavenly throne of Zeus and brandished lightning in his little hand, and newly born, lifted and carried the thunderbolts in his tender fingers.

  [169] But he did not hold the throne of Zeus for long. By the fierce resentment of implacable Hera, the Titans cunningly smeared their round faces with disguising chalk, and while he contemplated his changeling countenance reflected in a mirror they destroyed him with an infernal knife. There where his limbs had been cut piecemeal by the Titan steel, the end of his life was the beginning of a new life as Dionysos. He appeared in another shape, and changed into many forms: now young like crafty Cronides shaking the aegis-cape, now as ancient Cronos heavy-kneed, pouring rain. Sometimes he was a curiously formed baby, sometimes like a mad youth with the flower of the first down marking his rounded chin with black. Again, a mimic lion he uttered a horrible roar in furious rage form a wild snarling throat, as he lifted a neck shadowed by a thick mane, marking his body on both sides with the self-striking whip of a tail which flickered about over his hairy back. Next, he left the shape of a lion’s looks and let out a ringing neigh, now like an unbroken horse that lifts his neck on high to shake out the imperious tooth of the bit, and rubbing, whitened his cheek with hoary foam. Sometimes he poured out a whistling hiss form his mouth, a curling horned serpent covered with scales, darting out his tongue from his gaping throat, and leaping upon the grim head of some Titan encircled his neck in snaky spiral coils. Then he left the shape of the restless crawler and became a tiger with gay stripes on his body; or again like a bull emitting a counterfeit roar from his mouth he butted the Titans with sharp horn. So he fought for his life, until Hera with jealous throa
t bellowed harshly through the air – that heavy-resentful stepmother! and the gates of Olympos rattled in echo to her jealous throat from high heaven. Then the bold bull collapsed: the murderers each eager for his turn with the knife chopt piecemeal the bull-shaped Dionysos.

  [206] After the first Dionysos had been slaughtered, Father Zeus learnt the trick of the mirror with its reflected image. He attacked the mother of the Titans with avenging brand, and shut up the murderers of horned Dionysos within the gate of Tartaros: the trees blazed, the hair of suffering Earth was scorched with heat. He kindled the East: the dawnlands of Bactria blazed under blazing bolts, the Assyrian waves set afire the neighbouring Caspian Sea and the Indian mountains, the Red Sea rolled billows of flame and warmed Arabian Nereus. The opposite West also fiery Zeus blasted with his thunderbolt in love for his child; and under the foot of Zephyros the western brine half-burnt spat out a shining stream; the Northern ridges – even the surface of the frozen Northern Sea bubbled and burned: under the clime of snowy Aigoceros the Southern corner boiled with hotter sparks.

  [224] Now Oceanos poured rivers of tears from his watery eyes, a libation of suppliant prayer. Then Zeus calmed his wrath at the sight of the scorched earth; he pitied her, and wished to wash with water the ashes of ruin and the fiery wounds of the land.

  [229] The Rainy Zeus covered the whole sky with clouds and flooded all the earth. Zeus’s heavenly trumpet bellowed with its thunderclaps, while all the stars moved in their appointed houses: when the Sun in his four-horse chariot drove shining over the Lion’s back, his own house; the Moon of threefold form rolled in her onrunning car over the eightfoot Crab; Cypris in her equinoctial course under the dewy region had left the Ram’s horn behind, and held her spring-time house in the heavenly Bull which knows no winter; the Sun’s neighbour Ares possessed the Scorpion, harbinger of the Plow, encircled by the blazing Bull, and ogled Aphrodite opposite with a sidelong glance; Zeus of nightfall, the twelvemonth traveller who completes the lichtgang, was treading on the starry Fishes, having on his right he round-faced Moon in trine; Cronos passed through the showery back of Aigoceros drenched in the frosty light; round the bright Maiden, Hermes was poised on his pinions, because as a dispenser of justice he had Justice for his house.

 

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