Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [279] He asked the prophetic interpreter of God’s will: to the question, he foretold a succession of dumb children to come, like the voiceless generation of the deep sea. And the seer bade him to hide the prophetic oracle, that he might propitiate the longwinged son of Maia, governor of the tongue, guide of intelligent speech.

  [285] Laobie was brought to bed, and in one birth after another brought forth children equal in number to the sow’s young ones, and dumb like fishes. After the victory, Lord Bacchos had pity on these, and loosed the tie of the tongue in their dumb throats, drove away the silence which had been their companion from birth, bestowed upon each a voice perfected at last.

  [291] Along with these were mustered shieldbearing warriors: those who dwelt in Pylai, and those who possessed a habitation in Eucolla, the district of warlike Eos near the East Wind, and divine Goryandis with soil well fitted for seed.

  [295] After these came armed those who possessed the curves of Oita, woody mother of longliving elephants, to which nature has granted to live through two hundred rolling years, rounding so often the turning-point of eternal time, or even three hundred. Black they are from the point of the foot to the head, and they feed side by side. Each has projecting teeth on his long jaws, two of them, hooked like a reaper’s sickle, sharp and cutting, and he marches through the ranks of trees on his long legs; he has a curved neck like a camel, and on his capacious back he carries an innumerable swarm of riders in rows, swinging a firm foot with unbending knees. He has a short curved neck, and a wide forehead shaped like a snake. The eyes on his face are like the little eyes of a pig. He is towering, enormous: as he rolls along, the skinny ears close to the temple on each side, move like fans in the lightest breath of air. A thin little restless waving tail whips the body with a continual regular movement. Often in battle the mountainous beast shakes a tusk and attacks a man like a pilking bull, striking with the borrowed sharptoothed sickle on each side of his mouth and swinging natural spears on both cheeks. Often when he has pierced a man, he lifts him straight up with greedy throat, armour and shield and all; or he throws one down with sharp-pointed tusk, picks up the body as it rolls helpless in a swirl of dust and throws it hurtling through the air at random; he throws about this way and that way the jagged ring of teeth in his crooked jaw, beside the tusks ranged in strings like the backbone of a snake, and stretches down to his feet the sharp sword of the tusks.

  [329] These creatures after the Indian war Lord Dionysos led to the Caucasian district by the Amazonian River, and scattered those helmeted women, as he sat on the back of a mountainous elephant. But this was after the war. In this conflict, when Deriades sent out his summons to war with Lyaios, the chieftain Pyloites joined him driving a straightlegged elephant into the fray. He was the warlike blood of the race which produced Marathon, one blessed in his children; and he was followed to the conflict by a neighbouring people of different speech, from Eristobareia with her lovely coronals.

  [339] Tribes of Derbices were there with Deriades, Ethiopians and Sacai and various nations of Bactrians, and a great host of woolly-headed Blemyes. The Ethiopians follow a peculiar and clever fashion in battle. They wear the top of a dead horse’s head, hiding in this disguise the true shape of their faces. Thus they fasten another face on the human head, and join the dead to the living. So in the battle they startle the unwitting foe with this bastard head; and their chieftain lets out a deceitful sound from his mouth, and gives vent to a horse’s neigh with his manly voice.

  [350] These were the hosts which gathered at their king’s call. The whole army was led to battle by the emperor of the Indians, son of Hydaspes the watery lover in union with Astris daughter of Helios, happy in her offspring — men say that her mother was Ceto, a Naiad daughter of Oceanos — and Hydaspes crept into her bower till he flooded it, and wooed her to his embrace with conjugal waves. He had the genuine Titan blood; for from the bed of primeval Thaumas his rosyarm consort Electra brought forth two children — from that bed came a river and a messenger of the heavenly ones, Iris quick as the wind and swiftly flowing Hydaspes, Iris travelling on foot and Hydaspes by water. Both had an equal speed on two contrasted paths: Iris among the immortals and Hydaspes among the rivers.

  [366] So great then, was the host there assembled. The city was crammed with people; helmeted crowds were surrounded by favourite young squires till they filled the circle of the streets that ran all four ways in the city, some thick at the three ways, some in the moat, some on the height of the walls, while others lay quietly on the turrets and slept under arms. The company of leaders was entertained by Deriades in his own hall, and all touched the same table as their hospitable king in turns on rows of seats. Feasting engaged them in the evening, the wing of sleep in the night: the army slumbered under arms on the eve of battle, and slumbering they had to do with battlestirring dreams, as they fought against shadows like Satyrs.

  BOOK XXVII

  The twenty-seventh deals with the array in which Cronion musters the dwellers in Olympos for battle to help Dionysos.

  Now warbreeding Dawn had just shaken off the wing of carefree sleep and opened the gates of sunrise, leaving the lightbringing couch of Cephalos. Dark Ganges was whitened as he met the touches of Phaëthon, and the cone of gloom newly cleft apart fled away torn by his beams; the crops were bathed in the spring morning by the drops of dew from his car.

  [8] Then came tumult. Phaëthon, blazing shepherd of the everflowing years, checked the course of his firebred steeds, when he heard the sound of flash-helm Ares rattling close by, and summoned the host to spearthrust, shooting a rosy ray with witnessing torch: Rainy Zeus poured down from heaven a rain of blood, a strange shower which foretold bloodshed for the Indians. The thirsty back of black dust on the Indian ground was reddened with those gory drops of battle-shower; the sheen of newburnished steel glittered against the beams of Helios.

  [19] Now the battalions of Indians were seen:

  Deriades the presumptuous made them arm for battle, and encouraged his soldiers as he uttered this menacing speech:

  [22] “Fight, my servants, and look for our wonted victory! The bold hornbearing son of Thyone, as they call him, you must make the lackey of Deriades, who also bears horns on his head! Kill me those Pans also with devastating steel. Or if they are gods, and it is not permitted to pierce the body of unwounded Pan with cutting steel, then I make prey of the mountainranging Pans, and they shall tend herds of elephants in the wilderness. There are plenty of wild beasts here also, with which I will join the wildbeast Centaurs and Pans of hillranging Dionysos; or I will make them a swarm of attendants for my daughter, and waiters upon the festal table of Morrheus.

  [34] “Many a Phrygian soldier in the train of wine-face Bacchos will bathe his body in the streams of the Indian river, and call Hydaspes home instead of Sangarios; many a soldier who has come from Alybe with Dionysos shall here be a serf — let him forget the water of his silvern river and drink of the goldgleaming Ganges.

  [40] “Give place to me, Dionysos! flee from the spear of Deriades! We have a vast sea here also; then let ours also receive you, after the Arabian waves! Ours is a wider deep which spouts its wild waters, enough to swallow Satyrs and Bacchants and ranks of Bassarids. Here no friendly Nereus, no Indian Thetis will receive you and save you, like those hospitable waves, when you flee a second time; for our Thetis dreads the deep rumbling Hydaspes of my home. But you will say: ‘I have in me Cronion’s Olympian blood. But Earth produced the sky dotted with its troop of stars: you have your birth from heaven, but my Earth shall cover you up. Cronos himself, who banqueted on his own young children in cannibal wise, was covered up in Earth’s bosom, son of Heaven though he was. I am chief of a spearbold army; I am stronger than Lycurgos, who drove you away and your unwarlike Bacchant women. Your divine birth does not trouble me, for I have heard of the firestruck nuptials of your ill-fated Semele. Speak not of the lightning which attended upon the bed of Zeus, boast not of Cronion’s head or his manly thigh. The chil
dbed of Zeus in labour does not trouble me; I have often seen my own wife in labour. Let your father help you, if he likes, your father Zeus self-delivered, by arming female Athena, whom they call Victory, to help you the male: only that I may break off cliffs, and make the head of Pallas bloody with a cutflesh rock or a daring spear, and hit with an arrow from my bow of horn the thigh of threatening Dionysos, while he leads his horned Satyrs; and when he is wounded may fasten disgrace upon Zeus and Bromios and Pallas! And if the Hobbler shall arm to support them both, Hephaistos the artist is the one I want, to make all sorts of armour in his smithy for Deriades also. I fear not the female chieftain: — if she brandishes her father’s lightning, I have my father’s water.

  [75] “Bold Aiacos also, who is of kindred blood with Lyaios as they say, offspring of heavenly Zeus, I will smash and send to Hades, the Zeus of the underworld; Zeus will not fly through the air and carry him off. Indeed I hear that many sons of Zeus have been struck down in the past. Dardanos was sprung from Zeus, and he perished; Minos died, and the bullfaced marriage of Zeus did not save him — if he is a judge still in Hades, what do Indians care if Aiacos does become a judge among the dead? If he likes, let him be king of the corpses and monarch of the pit! Do not kill the Earthborn Cyclopeans who touch Olympos with their long limbs, do not transfix them with a spearpoint in belly or neck, let the heavy stroke of bronze pierce their one round eye. — No, kill not the Cyclopeans of the earth, for I want them too: they shall sit in an Indian smithy! Brontes shall make me a heavyrumbling trumpet to mock the thunder’s roar, that I may be an earthly Zeus; Steropes shall make here on earth a new rival lightning: I will try it in fighting against Satyrs that Cronides may be jealous, and tear his heart yet more to see Deriades thundering and lightening — he shall fear the Indian chieftain hurling a newmade fiery thunderbolt!

  [99] “Who can begrudge it, if I provide my warrior hand with the fiery whirlwind? My mother’s father, governor of the flaming stars, Phaethon, is himself a potentate all of fire; and if on my father’s side I have the blood of a river, I will fight even with watery missiles and make watery war upon Dionysos, drowning the heads of my enemy Bacchants in river floods. Go and cut down the Telchines of the deep with devastating steel, bury their bodies in the neighbouring sea and let Poseidon their father look after them, and bring to Deriades, as trophies of victory from the sea, the blue harness of their finewrought car and all their seafaring horses! Burn with your blazing torch the burgher heavychained of the city of maiden Athena, the offspring of fiery Hephaistos whom they call Erechtheus; for he too has the blood of that illustrious Erechtheus, whom unmothered Pallas once nursed at her breast, she the virgin enemy of wedlock, secretly guarding him by the wakeful light of a lamp: let him remain hidden in a shining Indian box, and enclosed in an empty cell of her darksome maiden chamber.

  [120] “Disarm me the Corybants also and lead them captive; let Lemnian Cabeiro unveiled lament the death of her two sons; let sooty Hephaistos throw down his tongs, and see the destroyer of his race sitting in the car of the Cabeiroi, see Deriades driving the bronzefoot horses!

  [126] “I will slay the sons of Zeus! I do not grudge Morrheus to conquer Aristaios, that son of Phoibos who hunts the hare and scatters the poor pugnacious bees. Go you and slay the battalions of soft Bassarids with your sickles and twoedged swords; but the highhorned son of Zeus shall fall to the horned son of a river. Let no one shrink when he sees him riding a lioness, or mounted like a champion on the loins of a wild bear, let none shrink from the grim jaws of wild beasts under the yoke: for who will run before leopard or lion with armed elephants on his side?”

  [136] After this oration of their king, the Indians went to battle, some on the backs of steelclad elephants, some upon stormfoot horses beside them. Close behind came an infinite host of footmen, armed with pikes or shields or capped quiver: one man carried a sickle of beaten bronze like a harvester of war, another marched lifting a buckler and quick bow and windswift arrows.

  [144] So they rushed forth into the plain, and opened the fray near the mouth of the Indus. But from the trees of the forest Dionysos, thyrsus in hand, armed his warriors with shields and swords and invincible leafage. He divided his army of Bacchants into four parts, and posted them facing the dawn in the direction of the four winds. The first was among the thick trees by the feet of the circling Bear, where the skyfallen water of many scattered rivers comes pouring down from the Caucasos mountains, in that very place where heavyrumbling Hydaspes brings his flood eddying in his endless course. The second battalion he placed where twimouth Indus bends his flood, curving through the mountains towards the western district of the land between, and surrounds Patalene with his waters. The third he drew up where in the southern gulf the southern sea rolls with ruddy waves. The fourth mailed army the king posted towards the land of sunrise, whence Ganges moves watering the reedbeds with his fragrant waves. The host thus divided and under arms, he appointed four helmeted leaders, and addressed a rousing oration to them all:

  [167] “Dance here also, you Bassarids! Slay the barbarian tribes of your enemies, match thyrsus against spear, against sword also; let my harp become a trumpet which stirs war for the Satyrs, instead of its familiar banqueting-table. May the green leafy vintage strike down the steel, may it conquer the sharpened spear! Instead of the nightly dancings of Dionysos, let my pipes take another tune and sing the battle-hymn — let them leave the supper-tune of mindcharming Bromios.

  [176] “If Hydaspes would bend a submissive knee to me, and never again arm his rebellious flood against the Bacchoi, I will treat him kindly; I will change all his glorious water into Euian wine with streams from the winepress, making his waters strong, I will crown the peaks of his wild forest with my leaves and make it all vine: but if ever again he shall help with his protecting flood the falling Indians and his son Deriades, taking the horned river-shape in a mans body, then make a dam over the presumptuous river, and cross the thirsty water as on a highroad with unwetted feet, and let the hoof of fine horses tread on a dry Hydaspes with bare sand and scrape the dust there.

  [189] “If the terrified chief of warmad Indians is sprung from Phaethon’s heavenly race, and if Phaethon should set up fiery war against me to honour his daughter’s horned offspring, I will arm once more my Cronion’s brother against Phaethon’s attack, a quencher for his fire from the watery sea. I will go to the island of Thrinacia, where are the sheep and oxen of the fireflashing heavenly Charioteer, and drag the sun’s daughter Lampetie under the yoke of slavery, to bow the knee like a girl captured by the spear. Then let Astris wander away to the mountains, to bewail her son Deriades a slave in heavy chains: let her go, if she likes, to settle in the Celtic land, that she also may turn into a tree with the Heliads and weep often in floods of sorrowful tears.

  [204] “Make haste, I pray, and whiten the round blackskin faces of the captive Indians with the initiate’s chalk; and bring me the bold king swathed in clusters of vine; throw a fawnskin about Deriades in his coat of mail. Let the Indian king bend a slave’s knee to Bromios after my victory, and throw his corselet to the winds, covering his body in a better corselet of fur. Let him press his foot into purple buskins, and leave his silver greaves to the breezes. After his deadly arrows and the deeds of battle which he knows, let him learn the nightdancing rites of Dionysos, and shake his curls of barbarian hair over the winepress. Bring enemy heads as trophies of victory to breezy Tmolos, pierced with the witnessing thyrsus. Many long lines of Indians I will bring away from the war alive after fighting is done, and I will fix on a Lydian gatehouse the horns of mad Deriades.”

  [221] With this speech he gave them courage. The Bacchant women made haste, the Seilenoi shouted the tune of the battle-hymn, the Satyrs opened their throats and shouted in accord; the sound of the beating drum rang out, beating time with its terrifying boom, the rattling women clanged their double strokes with alternate hands; the shepherd’s syrinx piped out its Phrygian notes to summon the host.

  [
231] In front of the army, pushing to the fray, the Mygdonian torch shone leaping through the air, proclaiming the fiery birth of Bacchos. The horned brow of old Seilenos sparkled with light; snakes were twined in the unplaited hair of the hillranging Bacchant women. The Satyrs also fought; they were whitened with mystic chalk, and on their cheeks hung the terrifying false mask of a sham voiceless face. One lashing a maddened tiger against his foes scattered the cars of linked elephants. Hoary Maron was armed with a clustering shoot, and pierced the bodies of fighting Indians with a branch of garden-vine.

  [241] All the inhabitants of Olympos were sitting with Zeus in his godwelcoming hall, gathered in full company on golden thrones. As they feasted, fair-hair Ganymedes drew delicious nectar from the mixing-bowl and carried it round. For then there was no noise of Achaian war for the Trojans as once there was, that Hebe with her lovely hair might again mix the cups, and the Trojan cupbearer might be kept apart from the immortals, so as not to hear the fate of his country. Now Zeus Allwise addressed the assembly, and spoke to Apollo and Hephaistos and Athena:

  [252] “Prophetic sovereign of the prophetic axle of Pytho, Prince of Archery, lightbringer, brother of Bacchos, remember Parnassos and your Dionysos! You did not fail to see Ampelos who lived but a day; you know also the double mystic torch of the double peaks. Come now, fight for Lyaios your brother! Bend your Olympian bow to help the Bassarids. Glorify the cliff of your Parnassos common to both, where the Bacchant woman holding revel has raised her voice in song to you and sleepless Dionysos, and kindled one common Delphian flame for both. Remember your lionslaying Cyrene, illustrious Archer! Be gracious to Agreus and Dionysos both: as the Herdsman, fight for the generation of Satyr herdsmen. Repel the heavyhearted jealousy of Hera, that the stepmother of Apollo may not laugh to see Dionysos run! She always cherishes jealousy and resentment for my loves, and attacks my children. I will not remind you of your mother’s tribulation in childbirth, when Leto carried her twin burden and had to wander over the world, tormented with the pangs of childbirth; when the stream of Peneios fled from her, when Dirce refused your mother, when Asopos himself made off dragging his lame leg behind him — until Delos gave help to her labour, until the old palmtree played the midwife for Leto with her poor little leaves.