The Thebaid
Page 22
and Epopeus, while playing with wreathes on couches,
was barbarously slaughtered by his mother.
Lycaste, who cast down her weapon, wept
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• for Cydimos, her twin, as she beheld
a face like hers, but in a body that
must die. His cheeks glowed. She herself had woven
gold through his hair. But her fierce mother, who
had killed her husband, hovered over her,
made threats, and forced the girl to seize her sword.
Then like a beast that has unlearned its madness
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under a kindly master—it is slow
to skirmish, to resume old habits—she
fell on her fallen brother. She absorbed
his life-blood in her bosom as it flowed
and pressed her shredded hair where he was gored.
‘‘Alcimede was carrying the head
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she severed from her parent. It still murmured.
I felt fierce horror and my hair stood up,
because that could have been myfather, Thoas;
her dreadful right hand could have been my own.
Greatly dismayed, I sought my father’s chambers,
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where, in the meantime, he was wondering
what caused this uproar, why these sounds at night,
why, in a time of quiet, so much noise?
Our house stood in a side part of the city;
his worry nonetheless kept him awake.
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I told him a disordered story of
impieties, complaints, and female valor.
‘‘I urged the miserable man to follow me:
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nothing could stop the madness; women raged,
and he and I would die if we remained.
My words aroused my father from his bed;
dark hid us as we traced the empty town
through alleys, and we saw enormous mounds
of those who died that night, men who lay down
to sleep in sacred groves that awful evening.
One could see cushioned couches pressing faces,
sword-handles sticking up from riven breasts,
the splinters of great spears, clothes torn by knives,
overturned chalices. The food from banquets
floated in blood that spilled from open throats,
mingled with wine, and trickled into goblets.
Here there were adolescents, there old men
whom weapons should not threaten, also small
children who sobbed away their trembling souls,
abandoned, on their fathers’ moaning faces.
‘‘Not wilder are the feasts the Lapithae
• hold on cold Ossa where the cloud-born gods
grow hot from stoops of wine, then, pale with anger,
rise suddenly and overturn their tables.
?’’We were in fear, when Bacchus—called Thyoneus—
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made himself visible to us that night.
He shone with sudden light as he assisted
Thoas, his son, to face this deadly crisis.
I recognized the god, although no garlands
adorned his bloated temples, no white grapes
set o√ his hair. His eyes dripped angry tears;
his mood was melancholy, and he said:
‘‘ ‘When you ruled Lemnos, as the Fates decreed,
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and made her feared abroad, I never ceased
to be solicitous in your just cause,
but those sad Destinies, my son, have sheered
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your threads without remorse. I poured out tears
and supplicated Jove, but I could not
avert disaster. He has granted this
despicable endearment to his daughter,
to Venus; therefore you must guide your father—
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o dutiful young girl, my progeny—
along the city’s twin walls to the sea.
You might imagine that those gates are peaceful,
but murderous Venus stands there, girt with steel,
assisting maddened women. Where did she
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acquire such force and such a warlike heart?
Commit your father to the wide, deep seas.
I will attend your worries.’
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So he spoke,
then he dissolved in air. But he was kind:
when shadows took our sight, he gave us light.
I followed where he signaled us to go
and hid my father in a ship’s curved hold.
Aegeaon, who surrounds the Cyclades,
the winds, and other sea gods had my faith.
We never would have ceased our sad farewell
had Lucifer not set the eastern stars.
At last, but very much afraid, I left
the murmur of the sea. My steps were quick
but fear crept through my breast. I scarcely trusted
Bacchus Lyaeus, who relieved our cares.
There was a sunrise, but I could not rest.
I gazed upon the sea from every cli√.
‘‘Day broke, ashamed. Titan unveiled the skies
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and shone across from Lemnos. Though he veiled
his horses in an intervening cloud,
the madness of the night was manifest.
First light made everyone afraid. They felt
their infamy at once and shared their guilt.
They buried their impieties, their crimes,
or burned them over fast-devouring fires.
The Furies who possessed the city left,
and Venus, too, departed, anger slaked.
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‘‘The women now could know what they had dared;
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their eyes were wet with tears; they tore their hair.
This island, rich in fields, possessions, men
and arms, this notable locality,
just now made wealthy by its Getic triumph,
had lost—not to eroding seas, foul weather,
or enemy invasion—all its native
men. It lay desolate, alone, bereft;
nobody plowed the fields or sailed the seas;
houses were silent, deep in blood, and smeared
with lucent, thick red gore. Except for ghosts
who breathed along the city walls, we lived
alone, ringed by the lofty towers of Lemnos.
‘‘Inside a central room, I lit a fire,
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like other women, and I threw my father’s
scepter and armor in the mounting flames,
his royal robes and well-known clothes, while I
stood mournfully beside the pyre, my hair
disheveled, with a bloody sword, afraid
my fraud—his empty bier—would be discovered.
Meanwhile, I prayed it would not be an omen
of death, either for me or for my father.
‘‘Deception—my false crime—had won belief
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and earned me this reward: the throne and kingdom
my father’d held were reassigned to me.
What punishment! Could I deny what women
insisted on? So I accepted: I
frequently prayed the gods to witness my
good faith and guiltless hands. My power was ghastly—
bloodless dominion, Lemnians lamenting
lost husbands, as our sorrows more and more
tormented sleepless senses. Women were
in mourning and grew conscious of their crimes,
and gradually Polyxo was despised.
‘‘Now prayers were granted to the buried ashes;
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now spirits of the dead accepted shrines.
&n
bsp; The same occurs when female cattle tremble
to see the leader of their herd, their husband—
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he who defeated other bulls and ruled
• their pasture—torn apart by a Massylian
lion: the maimed herd moves along, dishonored,
in silence, grieving for its king, whose loss
even the fields and rivers also mourn.
‘‘Yet now the bronze prow of the son of Pelias,
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the pinewood ship of Jason, cut the seas.
He came, a stranger, to our unknown waters.
• The Minyans, those Argonauts, rowed hard:
twin waves of foam turned white the ship’s high bulwarks.
You would have thought Ortygia moved, torn from
her roots, or that a mountainside reached shore.
The oars stopped, and the sea was silent. Then
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a voice came from the middle of the ship,
sweeter than that of swans before they die,
or Phoebus’ harp. The seas themselves drew nigh.
There Orpheus, Oeagrus’ son, was singing,
leaning against a mast amid the rowers,
persuading them to end their many labors.
Their path was north, toward Scythia. They were
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the first to pass the Black Sea’s tight approach
• between the islands called Symplegades.
This we learned later. At the time we thought
that they were warriors who came from Thrace.
We fled like birds to reach our homes. We ran
in various directions, like stampeding
cattle. Where were our Furies now, our anger?
‘‘We climbed the lofty towers and the walls
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that ring the port and shore where we could view
the open sea. Here anxious women brought
boulders and sharpened stakes, swords stained with blood,
the melancholy arms of men, and, unashamed,
they put on woven corselets and slipped helmets
over their faces as Athena watched.
She blushed at these audacious women. Mars
laughed on Mount Haemus, opposite—then our
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rash madness ended, and our minds were freed.
We thought we saw the justice of the gods,
not just a ship, and we believed it sailed
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the seas to punish us. Its distance from
the shore was what Gortynian arrows fly,
when Jupiter produced a heavy cloud
and set dark rain above the Greek ship’s halyards.
The seas swelled high, and shadows veiled the sun,
and soon the missing sunlight dimmed the waves.
Winds slashed at concave clouds and rent the sea.
Black whirlpools stirred wet sand. The waters hung
suspended by opposing northern blasts;
high arching breakers almost reached the stars.
The vessel was uncertain of its course;
it tottered, and the Triton on its rostrum
drove deep into the sea or aimed at heaven.
The wild mast whipped the ship from side to side;
it heeled the gunwales underneath the swells
and forced men’s chests against their useless oars.
The sailors faced fierce seas and southern winds—
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those demigods, those heroes, lost their strength—
while we hurled weapons with weak arms from walls,
from every rock and hill. What did our hands
not dare? We aimed at Telemon and Peleus.
Hercules was a target of our arrows.
Because they fought the sea and fought a war,
some of them flanked the ship with banks of shields
while others bailed out water from below.
Some battled, but their bodies barely moved;
even a slight exertion drained their strength.
‘‘We doubled our attack. Our iron rain
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contended with the weather. Fire-hard stakes,
pieces of boulders, arrows, flaming missiles
that streamed like comets hit the ship and shore.
The covered vessel echoed, and the floorboards
within the battered ship’s hold groaned, just as
when Jupiter lets northern snowfalls lash
farmlands of crops, and all the field beasts perish
along the plains: birds drop, caught by surprise;
frost ruins harvests; mountains roar; streams rise.
‘‘But then, indeed, a lightning bolt, sent down
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by Jupiter, tore through the clouds; its flash
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revealed the great size of those mariners,
and our hearts stopped; our unaccustomed weapons
dropped from our falling hands, and we felt horror.
The nature of our sex returned to us.
?’’We saw the sons of Aeacus: Telamon
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and Peleus. We saw immense Ancaeus
threatening our walls, and Iphitus, who batted
boulders away with his long spear. But most
remarkable among that wondrous host
was Hercules, whose heavy weight inclined
the ship to either side. He seemed prepared
to leap into the sea. And there was Jason,
as yet unknown, who had not hurt me yet.
He moved with speed among the rowers’ benches,
the oars and straining backs of comrades, shouting
encouragements and signaling commands
• to Meleager, Idas, and Talaus,
• and, dripping white sea foam, Tyndareus’s son,
and Calais (Boreas’ son), who worked aloft
inside his father’s freezing clouds to reef
the sails along the mast. He and his sailors
attacked our walls and rowed, but those white waters
never subsided, and their spears bounced back.
?’’Tiphys himself grew weary as his helm
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could not control the ship. He struggled with
the stormy sea, grew pale, and many times
he had to counteract his own commands.
He steered the vessel left and right through crests
and turned the prow from rocks where it would wreck.
‘‘Finally, the son of Aeson held the branch
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of Pallas on the pointed bow, extending
the olive worn by Mopsus as a garland.
He asked for peace despite objections from
his friends; his words were overwhelmed by winds,
but then the weary weather quieted,
the fighting ended, and the sun returned
to heaven’s clouds. The fifty moored their vessel
according to their custom, and the shore