The Thebaid
Page 38
soldiers and horses suddenly perspired.
The goddess wept and said, ‘‘You work in vain,
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despite your greatness, to protect dead comrades
and the unburied bodies of the Greeks.
What do we fear? Why do we care for tombs?
The Tyrians have captured King Adrastus!
He lifts his voice and hands and calls your name;
he crawls through blood; his crown has been torn o√,
his white hair flows behind him. Turn your gaze:
look at those soldiers; see, their dust comes closer!’’
The anxious hero paused and weighed his worries.
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Tisiphone was harsh and badgered him:
‘‘Why wait? Are we not going? Do you cling
to this dead body? Is the living king
worth no more than a corpse?’’ At last Hippomedon
ordered his men to take his place, and he
abandoned his best friend, but still looked back
to see if someone called for his return.
He followed the stern goddess’s wild footsteps
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and hurried aimlessly he knew not where
≤≥∫ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
until the sea-green Fury dropped her shield
and countless snakes broke through her wicked helmet.
Her shadow dissipated; he’d been duped.
He saw Adrastus’ chariot, poor man,
and he could see the calm Inachians.
Now Tyrians controlled the corpse of Tydeus
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and rising voices testified their joy,
but their victorious cries struck other ears
and other hearts, which secretly lamented.
Such was the hard severity of Fate
that the great Tydeus—he for whom of late
great spaces would be left on either side
as he pursued the Theban battle lines—
whether on foot or holding loosened reins—
was dragged on hostile soil, where no hand
or weapon was quiescent; there no man
showed pity for his features, sti√ in death.
The troops rejoiced as with impunity
they stabbed the face they’d feared; the strong, the meek
shared this desire to validate their lives,
and they preserved their weapons, stained with blood,
to show their little children and their wives.
It was as when a lion has wreaked havoc
• in Moorish fields and forced the guardians
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of flocks to keep them penned, to stand on watch
until the weary comrades of the shepherds
subdue the beast, and everyone rejoices:
farmers approach, shout loudly, and they pluck
the lion’s mane and open massive jaws
and tell what they had su√ered, even as
their victim hangs suspended from some roof
or dangles proudly in an ancient grove.
Although the fierce Hippomedon now knew
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his help was useless, that he came too late
to battle for the body they had taken,
he nonetheless advanced, unstoppable,
and blindly swung his weapon. Nothing blocked
BOOK Ω ≤≥Ω
his progress, neither friends nor enemies.
He killed indi√erently, until the ground
grew slick with recent victims, dying men,
armor, and broken chariots, despite
his left thigh, which impeded him. Eteocles
had hurt him with his spear, but he ignored it,
either because he fought away the pain
or else he had not noticed he was lame.
He found a horse when he saw mournful Hopleus,
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great Tydeus’ faithful friend and helpless squire,
who held his master’s rapid-footed steed.
It seemed the horse complained; it hung its neck;
it did not understand its rider’s fate,
and it disdained Hippomedon’s new weight,
for it had only known one person’s hand
since being broken years before. The man
controlled it, nonetheless, and he consoled it:
‘‘Why balk, unhappy horse, at your new fate?
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No longer will you know your proud king’s burden
or exercise along Aetolian plains
or let the Achelous wash your mane!
All that remains for you is to avenge
his cherished ghost or, like him, die, lest you
be captured and o√end his spirit further
when you bear some proud man who makes this boast,
that he bestrides the horse that Tydeus rode!’’
That steed was so incensed that you would think
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it understood him. Like a lightning bolt
it carried him away and less disdained
the hands, like those of Tydeus, on its reins,
just as a Centaur, half a man, half horse,
descends from airy Ossa to the plains:
its human portion makes the high groves shake;
its horse half frightens fields. Hippomedon,
thus mounted, overwhelmed the panting sons
of Labdacus with terror as he mowed
≤∂≠ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
their unprotected necks and left behind
the bodies of the soldiers he had slain.
He reached the river, where Ismenos flowed
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fuller than usual, an evil sign.
There he paused briefly, as the timid lines
directed their withdrawal from the field.
They stunned the stream, which welcomed warriors
and glistened as bright armor lit dark waves.
To their astonishment, Hippomedon
galloped on horseback through the hostile current
as if he had no time to drop his reins,
only to fix his weapons in the bank
and leave them leaning on a poplar trunk.
His terrified opponents tossed their own
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into the stream, which carried them away.
Some threw their helmets o√ and tried to hide
as long as possible beneath the river,
like cowards. Others tried to swim across,
but harnesses constrained them, heavy belts
weighed down their bodies, and their water-soaked
hauberks hung heavy. They were drawn o√ course,
as sea-blue fishes in a swollen sea
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flee from the terror of a searching dolphin
whom they have seen prospecting through the deep.
Fear drives them to the deepest, darkest parts,
where they are crowned by iridescent weeds
and do not reemerge until they see
the dolphin’s arching back resurfacing
as he decides to chase a passing keel.
Just so, Hippomedon, with lance and steed,
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uplifted by his horse’s rowing feet,
pursued the scattered soldiers through the flood.
Its swimming hooves, accustomed to the land,
now paddled nimbly, now touched sunken sand.
Chromis killed Ion. Antiphon killed Chromis.
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Hypseus killed Antiphon, then he attacked
Astyages, then Linus, who was leaving
BOOK Ω ≤∂∞
the river in retreat, but fate forbade:
his thread of life cut short, he died on shore.
Hippomedon attacked the Theban lines;
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Asopian Hypseus drove Danaans back;
both scared the river, muddied it with gore,
but nei
ther one was destined to emerge.
Torn limbs bobbed down the river as it flowed,
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and severed heads and arms rejoined torn trunks.
The current carried darts, light shields, slack bows.
Plumed crests kept casques from sinking. On the surface,
the stream was strewn with weapons; in its depths,
men floated, and the river pushed their breath
back in their mouths as bodies battled death.
From the swift stream young Argipus had seized
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an elm that grew along the riverside,
but fierce Menoeceus saw his arms extend
and cut them o√ by sword. This was his end:
he struggled and he fell and he could see
his arms still clinging to the branching tree.
Sages was transfixed by the spear of Hypseus:
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his blood resurfaced; Sages stayed below.
Agenor, bankside, dove to save his brother;
he held him, but the wounded man weighed down
the poor soul who embraced him: strong Agenor
could have resurfaced, but he held his brother.
A swirling whirlpool sucked Capetus under,
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yet his right hand arose and threatened thunder.
The water hid his face first, then his hair,
then his good arm, and then his sword descended.
A thousand forms of death produced one fate
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for all those wretched men. A Mycalesian
spearpoint was buried in Agyrtes’ back.
He looked but saw no source: the current had
carried the flowing spear that caused his hurt.
≤∂≤ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
Hippomedon’s Aetolian horse was hit
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through its strong shoulders, and the shock of death
made it rear up and hang and beat the air.
Hippomedon was undisturbed, but took
pity, pulled free the spear, and then complained
because he had to lay aside his reins.
He moved with greater confidence on foot,
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surer of hand, as he resought the fray.
He killed slow-moving Nomius, the strong
• Mimas, the Thisbaean Lichas, and Lycetus
• the Anthedonian, then one of twins—
Thespiades—whose brother, named Panemus,
begged for a similar fate. To him he said:
‘‘You will remain alive, and when you go
back to the walls of your unlucky Thebes,
your parents will no longer be deceived!
Thanks to the gods, Bellona’s bloody hand
has pushed this battle to the rapid stream
that washes cowards down their native waters
where they will feed the monsters of the deep.
The ghost of Tydeus will not fly and screech
about their pyres. He for whom we weep
lies naked and unburied on the ground,
where he will stay till he returns to dust.’’
And so he overwhelmed his enemies
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and made their wounds more bitter with his words.
Now he was furious and swung his sword;
now he plucked floating javelins to hurl.
He punctured Theron, chaste Diana’s friend;
the rural Gyas; riverman Erginus;
Herses, whose hair was never cut, and Cretheus,
contemner of the deep, who often sailed
his tiny vessel through Euboean storms
• around the cloudy peak of Caphereus.
What may not fortune do? A lance transfixed
his breast, alas, and he was shipwrecked here,
carried away along the river’s waves.
BOOK Ω ≤∂≥
You too, Pharsalus, lost your horses to
a spear that knocked you over as you swam
the river in your lofty chariot
and tried to join your friends. The savage stream
swept them away; it drowned the harnessed steeds.
Now learned Sisters, grant that I may know315
what exploit overcame Hippomedon
among the swollen waves, and why Ismenos
entered the fray himself . It is your task
to brush old age from fame, to travel back.
• The son of Faunus and the nymph Ismenis—
tender Crenaeus—loved to fight in war
upon his mother’s waves: Crenaeus, who
first saw the light in that protective stream
whose green banks cradled him, his native river.
• The Sisters of Elysium, he thought,
would have no power there, and so he crossed
his welcoming grandfather, bank to bank,
now here, now there. The water lifts his steps,
whether he moves across or down the stream,
nor does the current stay him when he goes
upriver, for it then reverses flow.
The sea does not more gently touch the waist
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of Glaucus—he of Anthedon—nor Triton
extend himself more high from summer waves,
nor does Palaemon seek his mother’s kiss
with greater speed when he spurs his slow dolphin.
His shoulders shone with armor: his great scutcheon,
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bright gold, on which his people’s origins,
the stories of Aonia, were etched.
• Here the Sidonian maiden rode the white
back of a fawning bull, safe from the sea—
no need for her soft palms to hold his horns;
the water played around her dangling feet.
You would believe they traveled on the shield
and that the bull was slicing through the waves—
the sea, the stream, the main were proper shades.
≤∂∂ STATIUS, THE THEBAID
Equally bold with weapons, proud of voice,
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he called Hippomedon: ‘‘These waters are
not venomous, like Lerna’s, nor do Hydras
of Hercules imbibe them. They are sacred—
this stream is sacred, wretch, and you will learn
the river you invade has nourished gods!’’
Hippomedon said nothing, but approached him.
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The stream swelled higher up and slowed his hand,
yet he, despite the waves, conveyed a blow
that carried to the chambers of his life.
The stream took fright at this impiety.
You wept, o woods on either shore, and cries
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rang loudly all along the hollow banks.
The last word from his dying mouth was ‘‘Mother!’’
as water overwhelmed his plaintive sounds.
His mother was encircled by a band
• of silvery sisters in a vitreous vale