Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [423] “Inform me, Astrochiton, what god built this city in the form of a continent and the image of an island? What heavenly hand designed it? Who lifted these rocks and rooted them in the sea? Who made all these works of art? Whence came the name of the fountains? Who mingled island with mainland and bound them together with mother sea?”

  [428] He spoke, and Heracles satisfied him with friendly words:

  [429] “Hear the story, Bacchos, I will tell you all. People dwelt here once whom Time, bred along with them, saw the only agemates of the eternal universe, holy offspring of the virgin earth, whose bodies came forth of themselves from the unplowed unsown mud. These by indigenous art built upon foundations of rock a city unshakable on ground also of rock. Once on their watery beds among the fountains, while the fiery sun was beating the earth with steam, they were resting together and plucking at the Lethean wing of mind-rejoicing sleep. Now I cherished a passion of love for that city; so I took the shadowed form of a human face, and stayed my step overhanging the head of these earthborn folk, and spoke to them my oracle in words of inspiration:

  [443] “‘Shake off idle sleep, sons of the soil! Make me a new kind of vehicle to travel on the brine. Clear me this ridge of pinewoods with your sharp axes and make me a clever work. Set a long row of thickset standing ribs and rivet planks to them, then join them firmly together with a wellfitting bond — the chariot of the sea, the first craft that ever sailed, which can heave you over the deep! But first let it have a long curved beam running from end to end to support the whole, and fasten the planks to the ribs fitted about it like a close wall of wood. Let there be a tall spar upright in the middle held fast with stays. Fasten a wide linen cloth to the middle of the pole with twisted ropes on each side. Keep the sail extended by these ropes, and let it belly out to the wind of heaven, pregnant by the breeze which carries the ship along. Where the newfitted timbers gape, plug them with thin pegs. Cover the sides with hurdles of wickerwork to keep them together, lest the water leak through unnoticed by a hole in the hollow vessel. Have a tiller as guide for your craft, to steer a course and drive you on the watery path with many a turn — twist it about everywhere as your mind draws you, and cleave the back of the sea in your wooden hull, until you come to the fated place, where driven wandering over the brine are two floating rocks, which Nature has named the Ambrosial Rocks.

  [469] “‘On one of them grows a spire of olive, their agemate, selfrooted and joined to the rock, in the very midst of the waterfaring stone. On the top of the foliage you will see an eagle perched, and a well-made bowl. From the flaming tree fire selfmade spits out wonderful sparks, and the glow devours the olive tree all round but consumes it not. A snake writhes round the tree with its highlifted leaves, increasing the wonder both for eyes and for ears. For the serpent does not creep silently to the eagle flying on high, and throw itself at him from one side with a threatening sweep to envelop him, nor spits deadly poison from his teeth and swallows the bird in his jaws; the eagle himself does not seize in his talons that crawler with many curling coils and carry him off high through the air, nor will he wound him with sharptoothed beak; the flame does not spread over the branches of the tall trunk and devour the olive tree, which cannot be destroyed, nor withers the scales of the twining snake, so close a neighbour, nor does the leaping flame catch even the bird’s interlaced feathers. No — the fire keeps to the middle of the tree and sends out a friendly glow: the bowl remains aloft, immovable though the clusters are shaken in the wind, and does not slip and fall.

  [493] “‘You must catch this wise bird, the highflying eagle agemate of the olive, and sacrifice him to Seabluehair. Pour out his blood on the seawandering cliffs to Zeus and the Blessed. Then the rock wanders no longer driven over the waters; but it is fixed upon immovable foundations and unites itself bound to the free rock. Found upon both rocks a builded city, with quays on two seas, on both sides.’

  [501] “Such was my prophetic message. The Earthborn awaking were stirred, and the divine message of the unerring dreams still rang in the ears of each. I showed yet another marvel after the winged dreams to these troubled ones, indulging my mood of founding cities, myself destined to be City-holder: out of the sea popped a nautilus fish, perfect image of what I meant and shaped like a ship, sailing on its voyage selftaught. Thus observing this creature so like a ship of the sea, they learnt without trouble how to make a voyage, they built a craft like to a fish of the deep and imitated its navigation of the sea. Then came a voyage: with four stones of an equal weight they trusted their balanced navigation to the sea, imitating the steady flight of the crane; for she carries a ballast-stone in her mouth to help her course, lest the wind should beat her light wings aside as she flies. They went on until they saw that place, where the rocks were driven by the gales to navigate by themselves.

  [521] “There they stayed their craft beside the seagirt isle, and climbed the cliffs where the tree of Athena stood. When they tried to catch the eagle which was at home on the olive tree, he flew down willingly and awaited his fate. The Earthborn took their winged prey inspired, and drawing the head backwards they stretched out the neck free and bare, they sacrificed with the knife that selfsurrendered eagle to Zeus and the Lord of the waters. As the sage bird was sacrificed, the blood of prophecy gushed from the throat newly cut, and with those divine drops rooted the seafaring rocks at the bottom near to Tyre on the sea; and upon those unassailable rocks the Earthborn built up their deepbreasted nurse.

  [535] “There, Lord Dionysos, I have told you of the soilbred race of the Earthborn, selfborn, Olympian, that you might know how the Tyrian breed of your ancestors sprang out of the earth. Now I will speak of the fountains. In the olden days they were chaste maidens primeval, but hot Eros was angered against their maiden girdles, and drawing a shaft of love he spoke thus to the marriage-hating nymphs: ‘Naiad Abarbarie, so fond of your maidenhood, you too receive this shaft, which nature has felt. Here I will build Callirhoe’s bridechamber, here I will sing Drosera’s wedding hymn — But you will say, Mine is a watery race, I came selfborn from the streams, and my nurse was a fountain. — Yes, Clymene was a Naiad, and the offspring of Oceanos; but she yielded to wedlock, she also was a bride, when she saw Seabluehair the mighty a lackey of Eros, and shaken with the passion of Cypris. Primeval Oceanos, who commands all rivers and waters, knows love for Tethys and a watery wedding. Make the best of it, and endure as Tethys did. Another sprung from the sea so great and not from a little fountain, Galateia, has desire for melodious Polyphemos; the deepsea maiden has a husband from the land, she migrates from sea to land, enchanted by the lute. Fountains also have known my shafts. I need not teach you of love in the waters; you have heard of the watery passion of Syracusan Arethusa, that lovestricken fountain; you have heard of Alpheios, who in a watery bower embraces the indwelling nymph with watery hands. You — the offspring of a fountain — why are you pleased with the Archeress? Artemis did not come from the water like Aphrodite. Tell that to Callirhoe, do not hide it from Drosera herself. You ought rather to please Cypris, because she herself bent her neck to Eros even though she is nurse of the loves. Accept the stings of desire, and I will call you by birth one waterwalking, by love sister of Aphrodite.’ So he spoke; and from his backbent bow let fly three shots. Then in that watery bower he joined in love sons of the soil to the Naiads, and sowed the divine race of your family.”

  [574] So much Heracles leader of heaven said to Bacchos in pleasant gossip. He was delighted at heart by the tale, and offered to Heracles a mixing-bowl of gold bright and shining, which the art of heaven had made; Heracles clad Dionysos in a starry robe.

  [579] Then Bacchos left the Starclad god, cityholder of Tyre, and went on to another district of Assyria.

  BOOK XLI

  The forty-first tells how Aphrodite bore Amymone a second Cypris to the son of Myrrha.

  ALREADY he had planted in the earth the clustering vintage of his glorious fruit under the beetling crags of Lebanon, and intoxicated a
ll the winebearing bottoms of the land. He saw the wedding-chamber of Paphia; there with newgrown shoots of the gardenvine he roofed a deep-shaded grove, then presented the viny gift to Adonis and Cythereia. There was also a troop of Graces; and from the luxuriant coppice high leapt the ivy in his girdle of cultivated vine, and climbed aloft embracing the cypress.

  [10] Come now, ye Muses of Lebanon on the neighbouring land of Beroe, that handmaiden of law! recite the lay of Amymone, the war between Cronides of the deep and well-besung Lyaios, the war of waters and the strife of the vine.

  [13] There is a city Beroe, the keel of human life, harbour of the Loves, firmbased on the sea, with fine islands and fine verdure, with a ridge of isthmus narrow and long, where the rising neck between two seas is beaten by the waves of both. On one side it spreads under the deepwooded ridge of Assyrian Lebanon in the blazing East, and there comes for its people a lifesaving breeze, whistling loud and shaking the cypress trees with fragrant winds. There the ancient shepherd shared his domain and made his music along with the fisherman; there was the dwelling of the farmers, where often near the woodland, Deo sickle in hand met Pan playing on his pipes; and the husbandman bending his neck over the plowpole, and showering the corn behind him into the newcut furrows with backturned wrist, the bowed plowman gripping his yoke of bulls, had converse with his neighbour the shepherd along the foothills of the woodland pasture. The other part by the seas the city possesses, where she offers her breast to Poseidon, and her watery husband embraces the girl’s pregnant neck with wet arm, putting moist kisses on the bride’s lips; his bedfellow in her well-accustomed bosom accepts Poseidon’s familiar bride-gifts from his hand out of the deep, the sea-bred flocks of the waters, the fishes of many colours for her banqueting-table, which dance on the table of Nereus in the brine, in the region of the Bear, where the northerly coast receives the deep waves into its long channel. About the southern neck of this delightful country sandy roads lead to the southern hills and the Sidonian land, where are all manner of trees and vines thick with foliage in the gardens, and a highway stretches that no traveller can miss, overshadowed with long leafy branches. The sea bending its course beats on the shore about the darkfaced west, while the bight of Libya is fanned by the dewy whistle of Zephyros as he rides with shrill-sounding heel over the western channels, where is a flowery land, where nurseries bloom hard by the sea, and the fragrant forest pervaded by humming winds sings from its leafy trees.

  [51] Here dwelt a people agemates with the Dawn, whom Nature by her own breeding, in some unwedded way, begat without bridal, without wedding, fatherless, motherless, unborn: when the atoms were mingled in fourfold combination, and the seedless ooze shaped a clever offspring by commingling water with fiery heat and air, and quickened the teeming mud with the breath of life. To these Nature gave perfect shape: for they had not the form of primeval Cecrops, who crawled and scratched the earth with snaky feet that spat poison as he moved, dragon below, but above from loins to head he seemed a man half made, strange in shape and of twyform flesh; they had not the savage form of Erechtheus, whom Hephaistos begat on a furrow of Earth with fertilizing dew; but now first appeared the golden crop of men brought forth in the image of the gods, with the roots of their stock in the earth. And these dwelt in the city of Beroe, that primordial seat which Cronos himself builded, at the time when invited by clever Rheia he set that jagged supper before his voracious throat, and having the heavy weight of that stone within him to play the deliverer’s part, he shot out the whole generation of his tormented children. Gaping wide, he sucked up the storming flood of a whole river, and swallowed it in his bubbling chest to ease his pangs, then threw off the burden of his belly; so one after another his pregnant throat pushed up and disgorged his twiceborn sons through the delivering channel of his gullet.

  [77] Zeus was then a child, still a baby methinks; not yet the lightning flashed and cleft the hot clouds with many a dancing leap, not yet bolts of Zeus were shot to help in the Titans’ war, not yet the rainy sound of thunderclaps roared heavily with bang and boom through colliding clouds: but before that, the city of Beroe was there, which Time with her first appearing saw when born together with her agemate Earth. Tarsos the delight of mankind was not then, Thebes was not then, nor then was Sardis where the bank of Pactolos sparkles with opulent ooze disgorged, Sardis agemate of Helios. The race of men was not then, nor any Achaian city, nor yet Arcadia itself which came before the moon. Beroe alone grew up, older than Phaethon, from whom Selene got her light, even before all the earth, milking out from Helios the shine of his newmade brightness upon her allmothering breast and the later perfected light of unresting Selene Beroe first shook away the cone of darkling mist, and threw off the gloomy veil of chaos. Before Cyprus and the Isthmian city of Corinth, she first received Cypris within her welcoming portal, newly born from the brine; when the water impregnated from the furrow of Uranos was delivered of deepsea Aphrodite; when without marriage, the seed plowed the flood with male fertility, and of itself shaped the foam into a daughter, and Nature was the midwife — coming up with the goddess there was that embroidered strap which ran round her loins like a belt, set about the queen’s body in a girdle of itself. Then the goddess, moving through the water along the quiet shore, ran out, not to Paphos, not to Byblos, set no foot on land by the dry beach of Colias, even passed by Cythera’s city itself with quicker circuit: aye, she rubbed her skin with bunches of seaweed and made it purpler still; paddling with her hands she cleft the birthwaters of the waveless deep, and swam; resting her bosom upon the sea she struck up the silent brine, marking it with her feet, and kept her body afloat, and as she cut through the calm, pushed the water behind her with successive thrusts of her feet, and emerged at Beroe. Those footsteps of the goddess coming out from the sea are all lies of the people of Cyprus.

  [119] Beroe first received Cypris; and above the neighbouring roads, the meadows of themselves put out plants of grass and flowers on all sides; in the sandy bay the beach became ruddy with clumps of roses, the foamy stone teemed with sweetsmelling wine and brought forth purple fruit on its rocky bosom, a shadowing shower of dew with the liquor of the winepress,... a white rill bubbled with milky juice: the fragrant breeze wafted upwards the curling vapours of scent, selfspread, and intoxicated the paths of the air. There, as soon as she was seen on the brows of the neighbouring harbourage, she brought forth Mild Eros, first seed and beginning of generation, quickening guide of the system of the universe; and the quickleg boy, kicking manfully with his lively legs, hastened the hard labour of that body without a nurse, and beat on the closed womb of his unwedded mother; then a hot one even before birth, he shook his light wings and with a tumbling push opened the gates of birth. Thus quickly Eros leapt into his mother’s gleaming arms, and pounced at once upon her firm breasts spreading himself over that nursing bosom. Untaught he yearned for his food; he bit with his gums the end of the teat never milked before, and greedily drank all the milk of those breasts swollen with the pressure of the lifegiving drops.

  [143] O Beroe, root of life, nurse of cities, the boast of princes, the first city seen, twin sister of Time, coeval with the universe, seat of Hermes, land of justice, city of laws, bower of Merryheart, house of Paphia, hall of the Loves, delectable ground of Bacchos, home of the Archeress, jewel of the Nereids, house of Zeus, court of Ares, Orchomenos of the Graces, star of the Lebanon country, yearsmate of Tethys, running side by side with Oceanos, who begat thee in his bed of many fountains when joined in watery union with Tethys — Beroe the same they named Amymone when her mother brought her forth on her bed in the deep waters!

  [155] But there is a younger legend, that her mother was Cythereia herself, the pilot of human life, who bore her all white to Assyrian Adonis. Now she had completed the nine circles of Selene’s course carrying her burden: but Hermes was there in time on speedy foot, holding a Latin tablet which was herald of the future. He came to help the labour of Beroe, and Themis was her Eileithyia — she made a way throug
h the narrow opening of the swollen womb for the child, and unfolded the wrapping, and lightened the sharp, pang of the ripening birth, with Solon’s laws in hand. Cypris under the oppression of her travail leaned back heavily against the ministering goddess, and in her throes brought forth the wise child upon the Attic book, as the Laconian women bring forth their sons upon the round leather shield. She brought forth her newborn child from her motherly womb with Hermes the Judge to help as man-midwife. So she brought the baby into the light. The girl was bathed by the four Winds, which ride through all cities to fill the whole earth with the precepts of Beroe. Oceanos, first messenger of the laws for the newborn child, sent his flood for the childbed round the loins of the world, pouring his girdle of water in an everflowing belt. Time, his coeval, with his aged hands swaddled about the newborn girl’s body the robes of Justice, prophet of things to come; because he would put off the burden of age, like a snake throwing off the rope-like slough of his feeble old scales, and grow young again bathed in the waves of Law. The four Seasons struck up a tune together, when Aphrodite brought forth her wonderful daughter.

  [185] The beasts were wild with joy when they learnt of the Paphian’s child safely born. The lion in playful sport pressed his mouth gently on the bull’s neck, and uttered a friendly growl with pouting lips. The horse rattled off, scraping the ground with thuds of galloping feet, as he beat out a birthday tune. The spotted panther leaping on high with bounding feet capered towards the hare. The wolf let out a triumphal howl from a merry throat and kissed the sheep with jaws that tore not. The hound left his chase of the deer in the thickets, now that he felt a passion strange and sweet, and danced in tripping rivalry with the sportive boar. The bear lifted her forefeet and threw them round the heifer’s neck, embracing her with a bond that did no hurt. The calf bending again and again in sport her rounded head, skipt up and licked the lioness’s body, while her young lips made a half-completed moo. The serpent touched the friendly tusks of the elephant, and the trees uttered a voice.