Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [99] None the less he went with the lovely boy to the mountains, to the flats, to the course of their familiar hunting. Bacchos still delighted to look at him; for loving eyes are never sated with looking. Often as Bromios sat with him at table, the youth would pipe a new strange music, and confused all the notes of his reeds. Even if he broke the tune of his melody, Bacchos made as if the boy were playing well, and sprang from the ground with airy leaps, clapped and clattered with hands together, as the boy yet sang pressed his own lips to his mouth, embraced him lovingly for his beautiful song, as he said, and swore by Zeus that melodious Pan had never sung such another tune nor the clear voice of Apollo.

  [113] But Ate, the deathbringing spirit of Delusion, saw the bold youth straying on the mountains away from Lyaios during the hunt; and taking the charming form of one of his agemate boys, she addressed Ampelos with a coaxing deceitful speech – all to gratify the stepmother of Phrygian Dionysos.

  [118] “Your friend, fearless boy, is called Dionysos for nothing! What honour have you got from your friendship? You do not guide the divine car of Lyaios, you do not drive a panther! Your Bromios’s chariot has fallen to Maron’s lot, his hand manages the beast-ruling whip and the jewelstudded reins. What gift like that have you gotten from Lyaios of the thyrsus? The Pans have their cithern and their melodious tootling pipes; the Satyrs have the round loudrattling tomtom from your patron Dionysos; even the mountainranging Bassarids ride on the backs of lions. What gifts have you received worthy of your love, you, loved for nothing by Bacchos the driver of panthers? Atymnios has often been seen on high in the chariot of Phoibos cutting the air; Abaris also you have heard of, whom Phoibos through the air perched on his winged roving arrow. Ganymedes also rode an eagle in the sky, a changeling Zeus with wings, the begetter of your Lyaios. But Bacchos never became a lovebird or carried Ampelos, lifting your body with talons that would not tear. The Trojan winepourer had the better of you – he is at home in the court of Zeus. Now my boy, look here: but you are still kept waiting for the chariot, so just refuse to drive a nervous colt on the road – a horse goes rattling along like a tempest on a whirlwind of legs, and shakes out the driver. Glaucos’s horses went mad and threw him out on the ground. Quickwing Pegasos threw Bellerophontes and sent him headlong down from the sky, although he was of the seed of the Earthshaker and the horse himself shared the kindred blood of Poseidon.

  [146] “Come this way, do, to the herd, where are the clear-piping drovers and lovely cattle – get on a bull, and I will make you conspicuous on his back as the man who can ride a wild bull! Then your bullbody king Dionysos will applaud you more loudly, if he sees you with a bull between your knees! There is nothing to fear in such a run; Europa was a female, a young girl, and she had a ride on bullback, held tight to the horn and asked for no reins.”

  [155] This appeal persuaded him, and the goddess flew up into the air. And there was a stray bull suddenly running down from the rocks! His lips were open, and the tongue hung out over his jaws to show his thirst. He drank, then stood looking at the boy just as if he knew him, as if his own keeper were by. He did not hold his horn sideways, but as the mighty bull again and again belched up the drink into his roomy mouth a shower of drops sprinkled the youth, as prophetic of what was to come: for oxen trudging round and round on the ground in everlasting circumambulation about one capstan, irrigate the vinestock with their water.

  [167] The bold boy stood over the bull’s brow stroking the curved horns with fearless hand; and excited by a sweet sting of desire for the woodland creature, he longed to ride the mountainranging bull untamed. He pulled up long leafy shoots by a meadow deepset with rushes, and plaited a sort of whip from the fresh withies with sharper twigs, then bent and twisted some bundles into something like a bridle. He decked out the bull’s body with fresh dewy leaves, wreathed red roses about his back, lifted lilies and daffodils over his brow and hung a ring of purple anemone on his neck; he dipt his hands deep in the neighbouring river and brought up handfuls of yellow mud, to gild the two horns on either side. He laid a dappled skin over his backbone, and mounted the bull. He swung his makebelieve whip on the bull’s flanks and flogged his mount as if he were a longmaned colt.

  [185] Then he shouted boldly to the bullfaced Moon – “Give me best, Selene, horned driver of cattle! Now I am both – I have horns and I ride a bull!”

  [188] So he called out boasting to the round Moon. Selene looked with a jealous eye through the air, to see how Ampelos rode on the murderous marauding bull. She sent him a cattlechasing gadfly; and the bull, pricked continually all over by the sharp sting, galloped away like a horse through pathless tracts.

  [194] The youth when he saw the untamed bull driven by these maddening stings to dash on and on over the highcrested hills, afraid of impending fate, made his prayer in mournful tones: “Stop for to-day, my bull, you shall have a quick run to-morrow! Don’t kill me high on these deserted rocks, or let me die so that Bacchos never hears of my fate! Don’t be angry that I gilded your horns, dear bull; do not grudge that Bacchos keeps my love. But if you must kill me and flout Dionysos, if you have no pity for your sorrowful rider because I am young, because I am friend to Lyaios, take me back to the Satyrs and you shall destroy me there, that when I am dead there I may have many tears on my ashes. Yes I beseech you, dearest Bull! I shall feel consolation if unweeping Dionysos laments my death. If you are traitor to your horned rider, who has a shape like your bullfaced form, get a voice and tell my death to Lyaios. O Bull – enemy of your Demeter and Dionysos both – when Bromios is grieved, bounteous Deo is grieved with him!”

  [214] So spoke the rosy boy, so near to Hades, unhappy one! Up to the pathless tops of the mountain leapt the infuriated bull on his cloven hooves, and threw the youth headlong off his back. He fell on his head rolling in a hunched-up heap, and broke his bent neck with a little crack; the bull bowled him over and over on the ground, and pinned him to the earth with the sharp point of his horn. He lay there a headless corpse; his white body unburied was stained with ruddy gore.

  [224] One of the Satyrs caught sight of lovely Ampelos lying in the dust on the ground, and brought the bad news to Bacchos. The god on hearing it ran there swift as the wind. Heracles made no such running, when the Nymphs had hidden dainty Hylas in their envious waters, a bridegroom kept safely for the greedy watersprite, as Bacchos did then while he bounded over the mountain roads; he groaned when he saw the boy lying in the dust as if alive. He clothed the breathless body, laid a fawnskin over his shoulder and cold chest, put buskins on his feet though he was dead; he sprinkled roses and lilies upon his body, and hung a garland on his hair of the soonperishing anemone flowers, as for one fallen too early by a cruel blow. In his hand he placed a thyrsus, and covered him with his own purple robe; from his own uncut head he took one lock, and laid it on the body as a last gift and token. He brought ambrosia from Mother Rheia and poured it into the wounds, whence Ampelos when he took his new shape passed the fragrant ambrosia to his fruit.

  [244] No pallor spread on the rosy skin of the charming body which lay there stretched on the ground. The charming curls of that head so lovely, of one who had died so young, strayed over his face as the gentle breezes blew. He was a ravishing sight even in the dust. Around the body Seilenoi lamented, the Bacchoi mourned. His beauty left him not although he was dead. But like a Satyr the body lay, with a lifelike smile on his face, as if for ever he were pouring his honeysweet voice from those silent lips.

  [253] Dionysos also uttered a voice of sorrow when he saw the body, nevermourning Dionysos with no smile now on his face: “Let the Fates drop their envious thread! Are even bulls jealous of boys as the breezes are? What Zephyros is this who has attacked Dionysos too after Apollo? Happy is Phoibos Atymnios!– for he took that name from the boy. He consoles himself by making to rise the flower named after his Therapnaian youth, and scoring upon the iris-leaves the word Alas! What garland have I on my hair? What speaking petals do I also wave to comfort me in my so
rrow for the boy? But I will avenge your death, untimely dead, and drag to slaughter over your tomb that runaway bull. I will not fell your murderer with an axe, to let him share the lot of bulls killed with shattered skull; but I will tear open all the bull’s hateful belly with the point of my horn, because he mangled you with that long horny spike of his. Happy is Earthshaker! He loved a Phrygian boy, a neighbour to my own boy’s country, and he carried him to the golden house of Zeus and gave him a home in Olympos; and when the boy was eager for the loverace with chariots, he lent his own unsinking car to honour Hippodameia’s wedding.

  [276] “I only have had a boy who died untimely. For lovely Ampelos knew no life-refreshing marriage; this youth never yoked my car for his ride to the bridal chamber: no, he died, and left grief for Dionysos who cannot grieve. Persuasion has not yet left your tongue, my well-loved boy, but although you are dead she abides on those breathless lips. Although you are dead, those cheeks are still bright with bloom, those eyes are laughing still, your arms and two hands are snowy-white, your lovely curls move in the whistling wind; the hour of death has not blanched the roses of your limbs – all these are preserved untouched.

  [287] “Woe’s me for Love! What need was there for you to ride on a cruel bull? If some passion for stormfoot horses excited you, why did you not tell me? I could have brought you here a chariot from neighbouring Ida, and got your horses of the ancient heavenly breed of Tros: I could have robbed the country of Ganymedes, who was bred on Ida and had beauty like yours – but Zeus saved him from man-murdering bulls, and flew into the heights carrying him with gentle claws. If you really wanted to kill wild bests in the mountains, why did not you tell me that you had need of a car? You might have driven my rolling wagon without hurt; you might have held the untouchable reins of my Rheia, and flogged a team of tame dragons unstaggering!

  [301] “You sing no longer your song with Satyrs over the wine; no longer your marshal the love-rattle Bassarids; no longer you go a-hunting with Dionysos on the chase. Alas, that Hades is never kind! and does not for a corpse accept any glorious gifts of rich metals, that I may make dead Ampelos alive once more. Alas, that Hades is inexorable! If he will consent, I rob the trees by river Eridanos and present him with all their gleaming wealth; I will bring him the flashing Erythraian stone of the Indies, and all the silver of rich Alybe– I will give him all golden Pactolos for my dead boy.”

  [313] So he lamented his beloved dead; and looking again upon him as he lay in the dust he cried again to Zeus with mournful voice: “Father Zeus! If you love me, and if you know the trouble of love, give speech again to Ampelos only for one hour, that he may only speak once more to me for the last time and say - `Why do you sigh for me, Dionysos, when no sighing will wake me? Ears I have, but I hear not the caller; eyes I have, but I see not him that sighs. Dionysos nevermourning, shed no tears over me. Nay, leave your mourning; the Naiads may sigh by that fountain of death, but Narcissus hears not; Phaëthon knows not the sorrowful pains of the Heliads.’

  [325] “Alas, that my father begat me not a mortal, that I might be playfellow with my boy even in Hades, that I might not leave Ampelos my darling to fall in Lethe alone! Apollo is more blest in the youth he loved that he bears the boy’s beloved name; O that also I might be Ampeloian, as Apollo is Hyacinthian! How long will you sleep, my dear? Not dancing any longer? Why do not you go to-day to the river stream with a fine pitcher to fill with water? The time has come round again for your familiar dance in the woodland glade. If you are angry with lovestricken Dionysos, darling boy, speak to the Seilenoi that I may just hear your voice.

  [337] “If a lion killed you, I will destroy them all, yes all that the slopes of Tmolos hold; I will not spare the lions of my own Rheia, but I will kill them, if they were your murderers with their grim jaws. If a panther brought you down, you flower of love! I will no longer drive my speckled team of panthers; there are other wild beasts, and Artemis Sovran of all creatures drives an antlered car drawn by stags. I will wear a fawnskin and drive a team of fawns. If merciless boars have killed you, I will grasp all together and kill them, and no one boar will I leave alive for the Archeress. If a presumptuous bull killed you, with the point of my thyrsus I will annihilate the whole generation of bulls root and branch.”

  [351] So he lamented. But Eros came near in the horned shape of a shaggy Seilenos, holding a thyrsus, with a dappled skin draped upon him, as he supported his frame on a fennel stalk, for a staff the old man’s friend; and he spoke comfortable words to groaning Bacchos: “Let loose on another love the sparks of this love of yours; turn the sting upon another youth in exchange, and forget the dead. For new love is ever the physic for older love, since old time knows not how to destroy love even if he has learnt to hide all things. If you need a painhealing medicine for your trouble, court a better boy: fancy can wither fancy. A young Laconian shook Zephyros; but he died, and the amorous Wind found young Cyparissos a consolation for Amyclaian Hyacinthos. Ask the gardener, if you like; when a countryman sees a flower on the ground lying in the dust, he plants another new one to comfort him for the dead one.

  [369] “Listen while I tell you a story of the men of old. There was a dainty boy, superior to all his yearsmates, who lived beside the stream of Maiandros, that manybranching river. Tall and delicate he was, swift of foot, with long straight hair, no down on his chin; on both cheeks was a natural grace playing over his face with its modest eyes; a farshooting radiance ever flowed from his eyelids and his arrows of beauty. He had skin all like milk, but over the white the rose showed upon the surface, two glowing colours together. His own father called him Calamos: his father Maiandros, lurking in the secret places with his water in the lap of earth – who rolls deep through the earth and drags his crooked stream toward the light, crawling unseen and travelling slantwise underground, until he leaps up quickly and lifts his neck above the ground.

  [384] “Such was lovely Calamos, the quick one. The rosy-armed youth was fond of a charming playfellow Carpos, who had such beauty for his lot as mortal man never had. For if this youth had lived in the older generations, he would have been bridegroom of Eos Fairtress; since he shone lovelier than Cephalos, was handsomer of face than Orion, he alone outdid them with his rosy skin. Deo would not have embraced Iasion as bridegroom with her fruitful arm, nor Selene Endymion. No – this youth with his nobler beauty would soon have espoused both goddesses, one husband for two: he would have taken on the couch of Goldilocks Deo rich in harvests, he would have had beside him also the jealous Mene. Such was the charming friend of Calamos, the flower of love, a real beauty: both comrades of one age were playfellows on the bank of that river of many windings hard by.

  [400] “They had a double racecourse, winding out and back, and there they held races. Calamos ran like the wind. He set an elm for starting-point and an olive-tree for turning-point, and ran from point to point on the edges of the river – but nimbleknee Calamos fell on purpose, and left the victory to charming Carpos of his own will. When the boy bathed, the lad bathed and played with him. Again they had another race in the water like the first; Calamos swam slowly in the current and let Carpos go ahead, that he might cut the flood paddling behind and come in second beside the ankles of swimming Carpos, while he watched the free shoulders of the lad in front. The race began from its watery starting-point; the match was, which could beat which to swim there and back while their hands paddled them, passing round at the turning-points on each bank, first one, then crossing to the other side. The flowing water was their way; Calamos kept close beside his brined as they swam, watching his rosy fingers and sparing the vigour of his own moving hand. Calamos again in the lead checked his speed and gave way to his young friend; the boy handpaddled storming along, and lifting his neck above the water. And now Carpos would have got out of the waves, and safe on the shore would have won the river-race as he won the land-race, but a wind beat full in his face and drove a great wave into his open mouth, and drowned the dear boy without pity.

 
[427] “Calamos avoided the blasts of the jealous wind, and made the nearest shore without his friend. He could neither see him nor get any answer to his cries, so full of love he called out in a lamentable voice: `Speak, Naiads! What Wind has caught up Carpos? Yes, I pray, grant me this last grace – go to another fountain, leave my father’s fatal water, drink not of the stream which murdered Carpos! My father never killed the boy! That wind had a grudge against Calamos after Phoibos, and he killed Carpos; no doubt he desired him and struck him with a jealous gale – first the quoit, then for this youth the counterblast! My star sank in the stream and has not yet risen, my Phosphoros has not yet shone again! Carpos is drowned in the river, and what care I to see the light any longer?

  [442] “`Speak, Naiads! Who has quenched the light of love? How long you are, my boy! Why do you like the water so much? Can you have found a better friend in the water, have you thrown to the winds the love of poor Calamos that you may stay with him? If one nymph of the Naiads enamoured has carried you off, tell me, and I will make war on them all! If wedded love is your pleasure, and you want my sister for a wife, do but say so and I will build you a bridechamber in the stream. Have you passed me, Carpos, forgetting the familiar shore? I have shouted till I am tired, and you do not hear my call. If Notos blew on you, if bold Euros, let him go off wandering without dances by himself, the barbarous enemy of love! If Boreas overwhelmed you, I will go to Oreithyia. If the wave covered you and had no pity for your beauty, if my father carried you off in the mericiless rush of his wave, let him receive his son also in those manslaying waters, let him hide Calamos near to dead Carpos. Where Carpos wandered and died, I will fall headlong, I will quench my burning love with a draught of water from Acheron.’