Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [253] Such was the answer of the goldenrein deity to Bromios. But while Bacchos yet conversed with circling Mene, even then Persephone was arming her Furies for the pleasure of Dionysos Zagreus, and in wrath helping Dionysos his later born brother.

  [258] Then at the grim nod of Underworld Zeus, the Furies assailed the palace of Pentheus. One leapt out of the gloomy pit swinging her Tartarean whip of vipers; she drew a stream from Cocytos and water from Styx, and drenched Agaue’s rooms with the infernal drops as if with a prophecy of tears and groanings for Thebes; and the deity brought that Attic knife from Attica, which long before murdered Itylos, when his mother Procne with heart like a lioness, helped by murderous Philomele, cut with steel the throat of the beloved child of her womb, and served up his own son for cannibal Tereus to eat. This knife, the channel of bloodshed, the Fury held, and scratching up the dust with her pernicious fingernails she buried the Attic blade among the hillgrown roots of a tall fir, among the Mainads, where Pentheus was to die headless. She brought the blood of Gorgon Medusa, scraped off into a shell fresh when she was newly slain, and smeared the tree with the crimson Libyan drops. This is what the mad Fury did in the mountains.

  [278] Now with darkling steps night-illuminating Dionysos entered the palace of Cadmos, wearing the head of a bull, cracking Pan’s Cronian whip of madness, and put madness into the unbridled wife of Aristaios. He called Autonoe and cried in wild tones —

  [283] “Autonoe, happier far than Semele — for by your son’s late marriage you can rival Olympos itself! You have seized the honours of the skies, now Artemis has got Actaion for her dainty leman, and Selene Endymion! Actaion never died, he never took the shape of a wild creature, he had no antlered horn of a dappled deer, no bastard shape, no false body, he saw no hounds hunting and killing him. No, these were all herdsmen’s lies, empty-minded fables of malicious tongues about your son’s fate, because they hated the bridegroom of an unwedded goddess. I know where this invention came from: women are jealous about marriage and love in others. Come, leap up with stormy shoe! Make haste, speed into the mountains! There you shall see Actaion beside Lyaios on the hunt, with Artemis not far off, woven nets in his hands and hunting-boots on his feet, fingering his quiver. Happier far than Semele, Autonoe! for a goddess came to you for marriage, a goddess became your gooddaughter, the Archeress herself! More blessed than that mother Ino proud of her son, for your son got the bed of a goddess, which proud Otos never got. Bold Orion was never bridegroom of the Archeress. Your Cadmos is young again with joy for your son’s bride, and holds revel beside their bridal bed in the mountains, with his snowy hair fluttering in the airy breeze. Wake up, and make one in the marriage company, happy mother! This is a proper love, for holy Artemis has a brother’s son for bridegroom, not a stranger husband. And when the goddess who hated marriage brings forth a child, you shall dandle the son of the chaste Archeress in your cherishing arms and make Agaue jealous at the sight! Why should not the huntress be pleased to bear a son in her bridal chamber, a hunter himself and a marksman, like Actaion, or Cyrene who loved the mountains, and let him ride behind his mother’s team of swift deer?”

  BOOK XLV

  See also the forty-fifth, where Pentheus binds the bull instead of stronghorn Lyaios.

  WHEN Bromios had spoken, the nymph rushed from the house possessed by joyous madness, that she might see Actaion as bridegroom seated beside the Archeress; along with her as she hastened swift as the wind sped Agauë to the mountain, with staggering steps, unveiled, frenzied, the sting of the Cronian whip flogging her wits, while she poured out these heedless words from her maddened lips:

  [8] “I rebel against that ridiculous Pentheus, to teach him what a bold Amazon is Agauë the daughter of Cadmos! I too am chockfull of valour. If I like, I will tame all Pentheus even with my bare hands, and I will destroy his well-armed host with no weapon in my hand! I have a thyrsus; ashplant I want not, no spear I shake — with viny lance I strike the spearshaking man! I wear no corselet, but I will tame the man who wears the best. Shaking my cymbals and my tambour which I beat on both sides I magnify the son of Zeus, I honour not Pentheus. Give me the Lydian drums — why do ye delay, ye hours of festival? I will come to the hills, where Mainads, where women of like years, join the hunt of hunting Lyaios. O Dionysos, I am jealous of Cyrene lionslayer! Spare me Bromios, O thou rebel against heaven — spare him, O Pentheus! I will come at speed into the hills, that I too may sing Euios and twirl a dancing foot. No longer I refuse the rites of grapegod Bacchos, no longer I hate the Bassarids’ dance; but I too stand in awe of Dionysos, offspring of the bed incorruptible, bathed by thunderbolts from Zeus on high. Swift will my shoes go, as I carry nets beside the Archeress, no longer the skeins of Athena.”

  [31] So crying she flew away, a new skipping Mimallon, practising the Euian leap of the winepress, calling Euoi to Bacchos and lauding Thyone — aye, and she called to Semele, wife of Zeus the highest, and loudly sang the brightness of those bridal lightnings.

  [36] Then there was great dancing on the hills. The rocks resounded all about, a thousand new noises rolled round the land of sevengate Thebes; the one concordant chorus of the singers filled Cithairon with heavy-echoing din; the dewy salt sea roared; one could see trees making merry, and hear voices from the rocks. Many a maiden ran out of her room to foot it in the dance, when the pipe of horn tootled through its drilled holes, and the double blows on the raw hide made the girls go mad, and drove them from their well-built halls to be Bacchants in the wilderness of the lofty mountains. Many a maiden driven crazy shook her hair loose and rushed with stormy shoe from her chamber, leaving loomcomb and Athena with her craft, cast away the veil unheeded from her hair, mingled with Bassarids — and lo! Aionian turned Bacchant!

  [52] Teiresias built an altar to Protecting Dionysos and sacrificed there, that he might prevent the defiance of Pentheus and avert the wrath of Lyaios yet unappeased; but his prayers were in vain, since the thread of Fate was there. The wise seer called Semele’s father also, that they might share the dance of Dionysos. With heavy feet ancient Cadmos danced, crowning his snowy hair with Aonian ivy, and Teiresias his old comrade wheeled a sluggish foot, beating a Phrygian revelstep for Mygdonian Dionysos; so he joined the eager efforts of Cadmos hastening to the dance, and supported his old arm on a pious fennel stalk. Pentheus the hothead saw old Teiresias and Cadmos there together, and looking askance at them cried out —

  [66] “Why this madness, Cadmos? What god do you honour with this revel? Tear the ivy from your hair, Cadmos, it defiles it! And drop that fennel of Dionysos, the deluder of men’s wits! Take up the bronze of Athena Oncaia, which makes men sane. Foolish Teiresias to wear that garland! Throw these leaves to the winds, that false chaplet on your hair. Take up rather the Ismenian laurel of your own Phoibos, instead of a thyrsus. I respect your old age, I honour the hoary locks that witness to the years of your life, as old as theirs. But if this old age and this your hair did not save you, I had twisted galling bonds about your hands and sealed you up in a gloomy cell.

  [78] “I understand what is in your mind. You have a grudge against Pentheus, and you make a man into a bastard god by lying oracles — that Lydian impostor has bribed you by promising plenty of gold from the famous golden river. But you will say, Bacchos has invented the wine-fruit. — Yes, and what wine always does is to drag drunken men into lust; what vine does is to excite an unstable man’s mind to murder. But he wears the shape and garments of Zeus his father! — Golden robes are what Lord Zeus wears, not fawnskins, when he thunders in the heights among the Blessed; when Ares fights with men, he carries a spear of bronze, not a thyrsus of vineleaves in his hand; Apollo is not horned with bull’s horns. Was it a River that wedded Semele? did the bride bear a horned bastard to her bullhorned husband? But you will say, Brighteyes Pallas Athena marches to battle with men, holding the spear and shield that were born with her.... Then you should hold the aegis of your father Cronides.”

  [95] When Pentheus ended, the vis
e seer replied:

  [96] “Why do you persecute Dionysos, begotten by Zeus the Lord on high, whom Cronides brought forth from a pregnant thigh, whom Rheia mother of the gods nursed with her cherishing milk, who halfcomplete, with a whiff of his mother still about him, was bathed by lightnings which burnt him not? This is the only rival to Demeter mother of harvest, with his fruit of grapes against the corn! Nay, beware of the wrath of Bromios. About impiety, I will tell you, if you wish, my son, a Sicilian story.

  [105] “Sons of the Tyrsenians once were sailing on or possibly his hair (one way of dressing the hair was called “the horn”). the sea — wandering mariners, murderers of the stranger, pirates of the rich, stealing from every side the flocks of sheep near the coast. Many an old sailor man from the ships which they captured here and there was rolled half dead to his fate in the waters; many a stout shepherd fighting for his herd dyed his grey hairs in his red blood. If any merchant then sailed the seas, if any Phoinician with sea-purple stuffs from Sidonian parts for sale, the Tyrsenian pirate caught him suddenly out at sea, and set upon his vessels laden with riches; and so many a man lost infinite cargo without a penny paid, and the Phoinician was carried to Sicilian Arethusa in chains, far from home, his fortune stolen and gone. But Dionysos disguised himself in a deceptive shape, and outwitted the Tyrsenians.

  [120] “He put on a false appearance, like a lovely boy with smooth chin, wearing a gold necklace upon his neck; about his temples was a chaplet shining with selfsped gleams of a light unquenchable, broad green emeralds and the Indian stone,” a scintillation of the bright sea. His body was clad in robes streaked with dye from the Tyrian shell more brilliant than the circling Dawn, when she has just been marked with lines. He stood on the brow of the shore, as if he wished to embark in their ship. They leapt ashore and captured the radiant son of Thyone in his guile; they stript him of his possessions, and tied Dionysos’s hands fast with ropes running behind his back. Suddenly the lad grew tall with wonderful beauty, as a man with horned head rising up to Olympos, touching the canopy of aerial clouds, and with booming throat roared as loud as an army of nine thousand men. The long hawsers became trailing snakes, changed into live serpents twisting their bodies about, the stayropes hissed, up into the air a horned viper ran along the mast to the yard in trailing coils: near the sky, the mast was a tall cypress with a shade of green leaves; ivy sprang up from the mastbox and ran into the sky wrapping its tendrils about the cypress of itself, the Bacchic stem popped out of the sea round the steering-oars all heavy with bunches of grapes; over the laden poop poured a fountain of wine bubbling the sweet drink of Dionysos. All along the decks wild beasts were springing up over the prow: bulls were bellowing, a lion’s throat let out a fearsome roar.

  [152] “The Tyrsenians shrieked and rushed wildly about goaded with fear. Plants were sprouting in the sea: the rolling waves of the waters put out flowers; the rose grew there, and reddened the rounded foaming swell upon it as if it were a garden, lilies gleamed in the surge. As they beheld these counterfeit meadows their eyes were bewitched. The place seemed to be a hill thick with trees, and a woodland pasturage, companies of countrymen and shepherds with their sheep; they thought they saw a tuneful herdsman playing a tune on his shepherd’s pipes; they thought they heard the melody from the loud pipes’ holes, and saw land while still sailing upon the boundless sea; then deluded by their madness they leapt into the deep and danced in the quiet water, now dolphins of the sea — for the shape of the men was changed into the shape of fish.

  [169] “So you also, my son, should beware of the resourceful anger of Lyaios. But you will say — I have mighty strength, I have in my nature the blood of the terrible giants that sprang of themselves from the sown Teeth. Then avoid the divine hand of Dionysos Giantslayer, who once beside the base of Tyrsenian Peloros smashed Alpos, the son of Earth who fought against gods, battering with rocks and throwing hills. No wayfarer then climbed the height of that rock, for fear of the raging Giant and his row of mouths; and if one in ignorance travelled on that forbidden road whipping a bold horse, the son of Earth spied him, pulled him over the rock with a tangle of many hands, entombed man and colt in his gullet! Often some old shepherd leading his sheep to pasture along the wooded hillside at midday was gobbled up. In those days melodious Pan never sat beside herds of goats or sheepcotes playing his tune on the assembled reeds, no imitating Echo returned the sounds of his pipes; but prattler as she was, silence sealed those lips which were wont to sound with the pipe of Pan never silent, because the Giant then oppressed all. No cowherd then came, no band of woodmen cutting timbers for a ship troubled the Nymphs of the trees, their agemates, no clever shipwright clamped together a barge, the woodriveted car that travels the roads of the sea, until Bacchos on his travels passed by that peak, shaking his Euian thyrsus. As Lyaios passed, the huge son of Earth high as the clouds attacked him. A rock was the shield the Alps in some way; the syllable alp-is found in other place-names. upon his shoulders, a hilltop was his missile; he leapt on Bacchos, with a tall tree which he found near for a pike, some pine or planetree to cast at Dionysos. A pine was his club, and he pulled up an olive spire from the roots to whirl for a quick sword. But when he had stript the whole mountain for his long shots, and the ridge was bare of all the thick shady trees, then Bacchos thyrsus-wild sped his own shot whizzing as usual to the mark, and hit this towering Alpos full in the wide throat — right through the gullet went the sharp point of the greeny spear. Then the Giant pierced with the sharp little thyrsus rolled over half dead and fell in the neighbouring sea, filling the whole deephollowed abyss of the bay. He lifted the waters and deluged Typhaon’s rock, flooding the hot surface of his brother’s bed and cooling his scorched body with a torrent of water. Nay, my son, be careful, that you too may not see what the sons of Tyrsenia saw, what the bold son of Earth saw.”

  [216] He spoke, but could not convince; and so with undaunted shoe he hurried to the high mountains with Cadmos, that he might share the dance. But Pentheus in flashing helm, shield on arm, cried to his armed warriors —

  [220] “My servants, make haste through the city and the depth of the woods — bring me here in heavy chains that weakling vagabond, that flogged by the repeated lashes of Pentheus he may cease to bewitch women with his drugged potion, and bend the knee instead. Bring back also out of the hills my fond mother Agaue now gone mad, separate her from the sleepless wandering dance — drag her by the hair now snoodless in her frenzy!”

  [228] At this command, Pentheus’s men with swift foot ran to the rugged ridge of leafy woodland seeking the tracks of hillranging Dionysos. With difficulty the soldiers found the thyrsus-maddened god near a lonely rock; they rushed upon him and wound straps about Bromios’s hands, binding him fast — that is how they meant to imprison invincible Dionysos! But he disappeared — gone in a flash, untraceable, on his winged shoes. The men stood silent — speechless, cowed by divine compulsion, shrinking before the wrath of Lyaios unseen, terrified. And Bacchos in the likeness of a soldier with shield in hand, seized a wild bull by the horn, making as if he were one of the servants of Pentheus, crying out upon this false horned Dionysos. He put on a look of rage and came near to mad Pentheus where he sat, and mocked at the proud boasts of the frenzied king as he spoke unsmiling these deceitful threatening words:

  [246] “This is the man, your Majesty, who has sent your Agaue mad! This is the man who covets the royal throne of Pentheus! Take this horned vagabond Bacchos full of tricks — bind in galling fetters the pretender to your throne — and beware of the bull’s horns of Dionysos’s head, or he may catch you and pierce you with the long point of his horn!”

  [252] When Bromios had finished, god-defiant Pentheus uttered reckless words, his mind being possessed by the delirium of Bromios:

  [254] “Bind him, bind him, the robber of my throne! This is the enemy of my sceptre, this is he that comes coveting the royal seat of Semele and her father! A fine thing for me to share my honour with Dionysos, the son of an i
llicit bed, a bull in human form, with a shape of borrowed glory upon his oxhorned face, whom Semele perhaps mothered for a bull, like another Pasiphae, mated with a grazing horned bedfellow!”

  [262] He spoke, and bound fast the legs of the wild bull in galling shackles. Taking him for Lyaios he led him shackled near the horses’ manger, thinking his captive Semele’s bold son and no bull. He tied together with ropes the hands of all the ranks of Bassarids, sealed them up in a mouldy dungeon, a vaulted cavern, a house of joyless constraint, whence none could escape, dark as the Cimmerians, far from the light of day, these followers of Bromios in the revels; their arms were bound in a clasp of galling straps, chains of bronze were sealed on their legs.

  [273] But when the time came for the quickturning dance, then danced the Mainads. The Bacchants like a storm shook loose the wrappings of their straps unbroken and circled quickly in tripping step, rattling a free Euian noise with rhythmic claps, while the turning of their feet broke the thick heavy fetters of bronze round their legs. A heavensent radiance filled the dark dungeon of the Bassarids, diffused over the gloomy roof; the doors of the darksome den opened of themselves; the jailers were stupefied at the cries and the ferocious foaming teeth of the Bassarids, and their leaping feet, and fled in terror.