Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [210] Father Zeus now deceitfully changed his form, and in his love, before the due season, he flew above River Asopos, the father of a daughter, as an eagle with eye sharp-shining like the bird, as he were now presaging the winged bridal of Aigina. He left the sky, and approaching the bank of the near-flowing river he scanned the naked body of the girl with her lovely hair. For he was not content to see from afar; he wished to come near and examine all the pure white body of the maiden, though he could send that eye so great – such an eye! ranging to infinity all round about, surveying all the universe, yet he thought it not enough to look at one unwedded girl.

  [222] Her rosy limbs made the dark water glow red; the stream became a lovely meadow gleaming with such graces. An unveiled Naiad espying the nymph in wonder, cried out these words: “Can it be that Cronos, after the first Cypris, again cut his father’s loins with unmanning sickle, until the foam got a mind and made the water shape itself into a selfperfected birth, delivered a younger Aphrodite from the sea? Can it be that the river has rivalled the deep with a childbirth, and rolled a torrent of self-pregnant waves to bring forth another Cypris, not to be outdone by the sea? Can it be that one of the Muses has dived from neighbouring Helicon into my native water, and left another to take the honeydripping water of Pegasos the horse, or the stream of Olmeios! I spy a silverfooted maiden stretched under the streams of my river! I believe Selene bathes in the Aonian waves on her way to Endymion’s bed on Latmos, the bed of a sleepless shepherd; but if she has prinked herself out for her sweet shepherd, what’s the use of Asopos after the Ocean stream? And if she has a body white as the snows of heaven, what mark of the Moon has she? A team of mules unbridled and a mule-cart with silver wheels are there on the beach, but Selene knows not how to put mules to her yokestrap – she drives a team of bulls! Or if it is a goddess come down from heaven – I see a maiden’s bright eyes sparkling under the quiet eyelids, and it must be Athena Brighteyes bathing, when she threw the skin back at him after the old victory over Teiresias. This girl looks like a divine being with her rosy arms; but if she was the glorious burden of a mortal womb, she is worthy of the heavenly bed of Cronion.”

  [255] So spoke the voice from under the swirling waters. But Zeus shaken by the firebarbed sting of desire watched the rosy fingers of the swimming girl. Unrestingly he moved his wandering glance, now gazing at the sparkling rosy face, now bright eyes as full as a cow’s under the eyelids, now the hair floating on the breeze, and as the hair blew away he scanned the free neck of the unclad maid; but the bosom most of all and the naked breasts seemed to be armed against Cronides, volleying shafts of love. All her flesh he surveyed, only passed by the secrets of her lap unseen by his modest eyes. The mind of Zeus left the skies and crept down to swim beside swimming Semele. Enchanted he received the sweet maddening spark in a heart which knew it well. All father was worsted by a child: little Eros with his feeble shot set afire this Archer of Thunderbolts. Not the deluge of the flood, not the fiery lightning could help its possessor: that huge heavenly flame itself was vanquished by the small fire of unwarlike Paphia; little Eros faced the shaggy skin, his magical girdle faced the aegis; the heavy-booming din of the thunderclap was the slave of his lovebreeding quiver. The god was shaken by the heartbewitching sting of desire for Semele, in amazement: for love is near neighbour to admiration.

  [280] Zeus could hardly get back to his imperial heaven, thinking over his plans, having now resumed his divine shape once more. He resolved to mount Semele’s nightly couch, and turned his eye to the west, to see when sweet Hesperos would come. He blamed Phaëthon that he should make the afternoon season so long, and uttered an impatient appeal with passionate lips:

  [286] “Tell me, laggard Night, when is envious Eos to set? It is time now for you to lift your torch and lead Zeus to his love – come now, foreshow the illumination of night-ranging Lyaios! Phaëthon is jealous, he constrains me! Is he in love with Semele himself and grudges my desire? Helios, you plague me, though you know the madness of love. Why do you spare the whip when you touch up your slow team? I know another nightfall that came very quickly! If I like, I will hide you and the daughter of the mists together in my clouds, and when you are covered Night will appear in the daytime, to speed the marriage of Zeus in haste; the stars will shine at midday, and I will make rising Hesperos, instead of setting Hesperos, the regular usher of the loves. Coem now, draw your own forerunner Phosphoros to his setting, and o grace to your desire and mine; enjoy your Clymene all night long, and let me go quick to Semele. Yoke your own car, I pray, bright Moon, send forth your rays which make the trees and plants to grow, because this marriage foretells the birth of plant-cherishing Dionysos; rise over the lovely roof of Semele, give light to my desire with the star of the Cyprian, make long the sweet darkness for the wooing of Zeus!”

  [308] Such was the speech of Zeus, even such commands as desire knows. But when in answer to his eagerness, a huge cone of darkness sprang up from the earth and ran stretching into the heights, bringing a shadow of darkness opposite to setting Eos, Zeus passed along the starry dome of the sky to Semele’s bridal. Without leaving a trace of his footsteps, he traversed at his first bound the whole path of the air. With a second, like w wing or a thought, he reached Thebes; the bars of the palace door opened of themselves to let him through, and Semele was held fast in the loving bond of his arms.

  [319] Now he leaned over the bed, with a horned head on human limbs, lowing with the voice of a bull, the very likeness of bullhorned Dionysos. Again, he put on a shaggy lion’s form; or he was a panther, as one who begets a bold son, driver of panthers and charioteer of lions. Again, as a young bridegroom he bound his hair with coiling snakes and vine-leaves intertwined, and twisted purple ivy about his locks, the plaited ornament of Bacchos. A writhing serpent crawled over the trembling bride and licked her rosy neck with gentle lips, then slipping into her bosom girdled the circuit of her firm breasts, hissing a wedding tune, and sprinkled her with sweet honey of the swarming bees instead of the viper’s deadly poison. Zeus made long wooing, and shouted “Euoi!” as if the winepress were near, as he begat his son who would love the cry. He pressed love-mad mouth to mouth, and beaded up delicious nectar, an intoxicating bedfellow for Semele, that she might bring forth a son to hold the sceptre of nectareal vintage. As a presage of things to come, he lifted the careforgetting grapes resting his laden arm on the firebringing fennel; or again, he lifted a thyrsus twined about with purple ivy, wearing a deerskin on his back – the lovesick wearer shook the dappled fawnskin with his left arm.

  [344] All the earth laughed: a viny growth with self-sprouting leaves ran round Semele’s bed; the walls budded with flowers like a dewy meadow, at the begetting of Bromios; Zeus lurking inside rattled his thunderclaps over the unclouded bed, foretelling the drums of Dionysos in the night. And after the bed, he saluted Semele with loving words, consoling his bride with hopes of things to come:

  [352] “My wife, I your bridegroom am Cronides. Lift up your neck in pride at this union with a heavenly bedfellow; and look not among mankind for any child higher than yours. Danaë’s wedding does not rival you. You have thrown into the shade even the union of your father’s sister with her Bull; for Europa glorified by Zeus’s bed went to Crete, Semele goes to Olympos. What more do you want after heaven and the starry sky? People will say in the future, Zeus gave honour to Minos in the underworld, and to Dionysos in the heavens! Then after Autonoë’s mortal son and Ino’s child – one downed by his dogs, one to be killed by a sonslaying father’s winged arrow – after the shortlived son of mad Agauë, you bring forth a son who shall not die, and you I will call immortal. Happy woman! you have conceived a son who will make mortals forget their troubles, you shall bring forth joy for gods and men.”

  BOOK VIII

  The eight has a changeful tale, the fierce jealousy of Hera, and Semele’s fiery nuptials, and Zeus the slayer.

  With these words Zeus returned to Olympos; but in the highroofed hall his mind stil
l wandered near his bride, empassioned for Thebes more than for heaven. For to Cronides Semele’s house was lovely heaven, and the quickfoot Seasons of Zeus became the attendants in the palace of Cadmos.

  [6] By the espousal drop of the divine union Semele’s body swelled laden with a heavy burden. In witness of the birth of garlandloving Dionysos she took delight in wreaths. She plaited into her flowerdecked hair the natural tendrils of the maddening ivy like a prophetess of the Bassarids, and provided for the nymphs who were soon to be born, the later title of the ivy. As she carried the heavy burden of the divinely conceived child, if some old shepherd made melody with his panspipes, and she heard the tune repeated by countryloving Echo near, clad in tunic alone she went rushing wildly out of the house. If the mountainranging tones of the double pipe was to be heard, she leapt up, and out of the lofty halls went shoeless, uncalled, to the lonely woods on the hills. If there was clashing of cymbals, she tripled with dancing foot and shuffled a sidelong shoe in winding paces. If she heard the bellow of a broadhorned bull, her throat bellowed mimicry of the creature in reply. Oft on some hillside pasture she sang with Pan in maddened voice, and played harmonious Echo to him; she answered the tones of the herdsman’s pipe of horn by bending her steps to the dance, and the fruit of her womb (sensible, though yet unborn!) joined in his mother’s dance as if he also were maddened by the pipes, and although only half-made sounded a self-taught echo of tune from within her. So in the burden of the manchilding womb grew the messenger of merryhearted cheer, that understanding baby; and round about the boy, Cronion’s attendants the Seasons went their rounds about the sky.

  [34] Now Envy, surveying the bed of lofty Zeus and Semele’s labour in the divine birth, was jealous of Bacchos while yet in the womb, Envy self-tormenting, loveless, stung with his own poison. In that crafty heart he conceived a crooked plan. He put on the false image of a counterfeit Ares, with armour like his; he scored the front of the shield with a liquid of his own made from a poisonous flower, to imitate smears of blood. He dipt his deceitful fingers in vermilion dye, staining his hands with red stuff which pretended to be gore (which it resembled) from his slain enemies. He belched out from his throat through his horrible mouth a nine-thousand power roar, a man-breaking voice indeed! He provoked Athena with seductive whispers, and goaded jealous Hera yet more to wrath, and irritated them both; and these are the words he said:

  [50] “Find another bridegroom in the sky, Hera, yes another! for Semele has stolen yours! For her sake he renounces the sevenzoned sky and treads the bridal floor of sevengated Thebes! In your place he holds in his arms an earthly bride with child, and is happy! What has become of my mother’s jealousy! Has even Hera’s wrath become unmanned for this marriage with Semele? Where are the stings of your merciless gadfly? No heifer is now driven in seapanic over the deep – no herdsman Argos with a thick crop of eyes watches the latest bed of lecher Cronides?

  [61] “But what is this palace of Olympos to me? I will go down to earth, I will leave my father’s heaven and live in my own Thrace, I will no longer look on at my unhappy mother’s wrongs and Zeus the wife-spoiler! If he ever comes to my country because he wants a Bistonian girl, he shall know what Ares is like when he is angry. I will take my Titan-destroying deathdealing spear and chase womanmad Cronion out of Thrace! I will use the excuse that he drags this maiden to his bed, I will be avenger selfappoited of the bed where I was born, because he has frequented earthborn brides and filled the bespangled heavens with his loves!

  [73] “Goodbye Heaven – where mortals are at home! Shall I climb the pole? But Callisto circles about Olympos, and there shines the ring named after the highcrested Arcadian Bear. I hate the seven Pleiads in their courses – for in Olympos it irks me that Electra shows her light with Selene. Now why are you quiet? You persecuted Apollo in the womb of his mother Leto, and you leave Dionysos in peace? Hephaistos, you helped in the painful birth of Tritogeneia, and Zeus shall be his own midwife for the bastard son of a drab, more mighty still than Athena, and he shall produce him from his manly thigh – no need now for the pole-axe! Give place, Athena! Cease to cry up that rounded forehead as your birthbed! Dionysos puts into the shade the clever delivery of that teeming head! Sprung form a mortal stock, he shall be an Olympian like Athena, but self-delivered, and eclipsing the boast of Pallas the motherless.

  [88] “But I am ashamed myself far more, when some mortal man shall say: `Zeus granted battles to Ares, and merry-hearted cheer to Dionysos.’ Well, I will leave the sky to the bastard brats of Cronides, and quit the heavens a banished god. Let Istros with his frozen flood receive its homeless monarch, before I see Ganymedes come here to pour the wine, that long-haired cowdrover, first in Pergamos then domiciled in Olympos, usurping the untouched cup of heavenly Hebe; before I can see Semele and Bacchos denizens of Olympos, and Ariadne’s crown translated to the stars to run its course with Helios, to travel with misty Dawn. There I will stay, that I may never behold the sea-monster, the sickle of Perseus, the figure of Andromeda, the glare of Gorgon Medusa, whom Cronides will establish in Olympos by and by.”

  [103] He spoke, and disquieted the mind of selfborn Athena, and the more increased the wrath of jealous Hera. Swift leapt up envy, and wagging his crooked knees passed on his sidelong roads through the lower air: he moved like smoke to human eyes and thoughts, arming his boggart’s mind for deceit and mischief.

  [109] Nor did the consort of Zeus abate her heavy anger. She stormed with flying shoe through the heaven bespangled with its pattern of shining stars, she coursed through innumerable cities with travelling foot, seeking if anywhere she could find Deceit the crafty one. But when high above Corybantian Dicte she beheld the childbed water of neighbouring Amnisos, the fickle deity met her there on the hills; for she was fond of the Cretans because they are always liars, and she used to stay by the false tomb of Zeus. About her hips was a Cydonian cincture, which contains all the cunning bewitchments of mankind: trickery with its many shifts, cajoling seduction, all the shapes of guile, perjury itself which flies on the winds of heaven.

  [124] Then subtle-minded Hera began to coax wily Deceit with wily words, hoping to have revenge on her husband: “Good greeting, lady of wily mind and wily snares! Not Hermes Hoaxthewits himself can outdo you with his plausible prattle-prattle! Lend me also that girdle of many colours, which Rheia once bound about her flanks when she deceived her husband! I bring no petrified shape for my Cronion, I do not trick my husband with a wily stone. No! a woman of the earth compels me – whose bed makes furious Ares declare that he will house in heaven no more! What do I profit by being a goddess immortal? A worthless mortal woman has taken my husband, whom Leto a goddess could not steal. Zeus and his rain did not sleep a second time with Danaë; after the seals of the ironbound prison the bride went a-sailing and had to blame her golden wedding for her lovegift of the brine – her hutch sailing with her on the sea floated where the shifting winds did blow! After Crete the Olympian bull did not swim again, he did not see Europa after the bed; but Io was soaked in the wet, and swam with horns on her head plagued by the gadfly!

  [144] “Even the goddess did not have a smooth course for her wedding; she also, Leto herself, carried the unborn babe by many a turn and twist, while she gazed at the shifting slopes of many a floating island, and the flood of the inhospitable sea that never stood still. Hardly at last she espied the wild olive-tree which harboured her childbed. All that Leto suffered, and her mate could not help her; but for the bed of one shortlived mortal woman he has renounced the couch of Hera his heavenly sister.

  [152] “I am afraid Cronides, who is called my husband and brother, will banish me from heaven for a woman’s bed, afraid he may make Semele queen of his Olympos! If you favour Zeus Cronion more than Hera, if you will not give me your all-bewitching girdle to bring back again to Olympos my wandering son, I will leave heaven because of their earthly marriage, I will go to the uttermost bounds of Oceanos and share the hearth of primeval Tethys; thence I will pass to the house
of Harmonia and abide with Ophion. Come then, honour the mother of all, the bride of Zeus, and lend me the help of your girdle, that I may charm my runaway son furious Ares, to make heaven once more his home.”

  [165] When she had finished, the goddess replied with obedient words: “Mother of Enyalios, bride first enthroned of Zeus! I will give my girdle and anything else you ask me; I obey, since you reign over the gods with Cronion. Receive this sash; bind it about your bosom, and you may bring back Ares to heaven. If you like, charm the mind of Zeus, and if it is necessary, charm Oceanos also from his anger. Zeus sovereign in the heights will leave his earthly loves and return selfbidden to heaven – he will change his mind by my guileful girdle. This one puts to shame the heartbewitching girdle of my Paphian!”

  [176] This said, the wily-minded deity was off under the wind, cleaving the air with flying shoe.

  [178] Now Hera left the shieldbeswingled cave of the Dictaean rock and the cavern where the goddess of childbirth was born, and came full of guile to Semele’s chamber, puffing with jealousy. She made herself like a honeyvoiced old dame, like the loving nurse whom Agenor himself had chosen to care for his children, and made much of her – gave her a holding, found her a husband as if she had been his daughter; and she paid him back for his care, nursed Cadmos at her own breast and dandled baby Europa in her loving arms. This was what Hera looked like when she passed into the house, hating Semele and Cypris, and Dionysos who had not yet seen the light; and as she came to the chamber of the recent bridal, she turned face and eyes away to the opposite wall, that she might not see the bed of Zeus. She was led and seated on a chair by Semele’s attendant Peisianassa, a maid of Tyrian race, and Thelxinoë spread the rugs over the gleaming seat. There sat the goddess close beside her, weaving her plot. She noticed how the girl carried a burden of ripening fruit; a birth which touched not yet the moon of delivery, but a pale cheek an the pallor of limbs once rosy told of a womb no longer sealed. As treacherous Hera sat, a simulated palsy passed over her false body, and the old neck bowed downwards, nodding over the bent shoulders. Scarce finding an excuse, she groaned aloud and wiped the well-feigned tear from her face, as she spoke her false words in heart-enchanting tone: