Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [132] Here behind the many keys and seals of the palace allseeing Hera spied him with her infallible eyes, guarded by Mystis in that hidden corner of the house. Then she swore by the infernal water of afteravenging Styx, that she would drown the house of Ino in a flood of innumerable woes. Indeed she would have destroyed the son of Zeus; but Hermes caught him up and carried him to the wooded ridge where Cybele dwelt. Moving fast, Hera ran swiftshoe on quick feet from high heaven; but he was before her, and assumed the eternal shape of firstborn Phanes. Hera in respect for the most ancient of the gods, gave him place and bowed before the radiance of the deceiving face, not knowing the borrowed shape for a fraud. So Hermes passed over the mountain tract with quicker step then hers, carrying the horned child folded in his arms, and gave it to Rheia, nurse of lions, mother of Father Zeus, and said these few words toe the goddess mother of the greatest:

  [149] “Receive, goddess, a new son of your Zeus! He is to fight with the Indians, and when he has done with earth he will come into the starry sky, to the great joy of resentful Hera! Indeed it is not proper that Ino should be nurse to one whom Zeus brought forth. Let the mother of Zeus be nanny to Dionysos – mother of Zeus and nurse of her grandson!”

  [155] This said, Hermes rose quicknee to the sky, rounding his wings under the rushing breezes. There he put off the higher shape of selfborn Phanes and put on his own form again, leaving Bacchos to grow a second time in the Mother’s nurture.

  [160] The goddess took care of him; and while he was yet a boy, she set him to drive a car drawn by ravening lions. Within that godwelcoming courtyard, the tripping Corybants would surround Dionysos with their childcherishing dance, and clash their swords, and strike their shields with revounding steel in alternate movements, to conceal the growing boyhood of Dionysos; and as the boy listened to the fostering noise of the shields he grew up under the care of the Corybants like his father.

  [169] At nine years old the youngster went a-hunting his game to the kill. He passed the coursing hare with feet quicker still; following after the strong pricket’s speed, he would lift with childish hand the dappled fawn and carry it over his neck; he would hold lightly aloft stretched on his shoulders a bold fellstriped tiger unshackled, and brought in hand to show Rheia the cubs he had torn newborn from the dam’s milky teats. He dragged horrible lions all alive, and clutching a couple of feet in each hand presented them to the Mother that she might yoke them to her car. Rheia looked on laughing with joy, and admired the manliness and doughty feats of young Dionysos; his father Cronion laughed when he saw with delighted eyes Iobacchos driving the grim lions.

  [184] The time of boyhood just come, Euios draped furry tunics upon his body, and carried to cover his shoulders the dappled skin of a stag, imitating the sky spotted with stars. He drove lynxes to his stables in the Phrygian plain, and yoked speckled panthers to his cart as if to make it look the place where his father dwelt. Often he stood in the chariot of immortal Rheia, and held the flowing reins in his tenderskin hand, and checked the nimble team of galloping lions. The boldness of Zeus high and mighty grew in his heart, until he stretched his right hand to the snout of a mad she-bear and laid fearless fingers on the terrible jaws, playful fingers: gentle stood the beast, and left her mouth a slave of youthful Lyaios, and kissed Bacchos’s fingers with rough kisses.

  [200] Thus he grew up beside cliffloving Rheia, yet a boy in healthy youth, mountainbred. Circles of Pans among the rocks came about the dancebeating son of Thyone, skipping around the crags on shaggyknee legs and crying “Euoi!” to Bacchos; and the goatfoot hooves rattled in their capers, as they went round and round in the dance.

  [206] And Semele in Olympos, with a breath of the thunderbolts still about her, lifted a proud neck and cried with haughty voice – “Hera, you are ruined! Semele’s son has beaten you! Zeus brought forth my son, he was the mother in my place! The father begot, the father brought forth his begotten. He brought forth a child from a makeshift womb of his own, and forced nature to change. Bacchos was stronger than Enyalios; your Ares he only begot, and never childed with his thigh! Thebes ahs eclipsed the glory of Ortygia! For Leto the divine was chased about, and brought forth Apollo on the sly; Leto brought forth Phoibos, Cronion had no labour for him; Maia brought forth Hermes, her husband did not deliver him; but my son was brought forth openly by his father. Here’s a great miracle! See Dionysos in the arms of your own mother, he lies on that cherishing arm! The Dispenser of the eternal universe, the first sown Beginning of the gods, the Allmother, became a nurse for Bromios; she offered to infant Bacchos the breast which Zeus High and Mighty has sucked! What Cronides was ever in labour, what Rheia was ever nurse for your boy? But this Cybele who is called your mother brought forth Zeus and suckled Bacchos in the same lap! She dandled them both, the son and the father. No fatherless Hephaistos could rival Semele’s child, none unbegotten of a father whom Hera brought forth by her own begettomg – and now he limps about on an illmatched pair of feeble legs to hid his mother’s bungling skill in childbirth! Maia was not quite like Semele; for her son, crafty, armed himself like Ares, and looking like him, deluded Hera until he sucked the milk of her breast. Give place to me all! for Semele alone had a husband, who got and groaned for the same child. Semele is happiest, because of her son: for my Dionysos will come without scheming into the company of the stars; he will dwell in his father’s heaven, because he drew milk from the godnursing teat of that mighty goddess. He will come selfsummoned into the heavens; he needs not Hera’s milk, for he has milked a nobler breast.”

  [243] She spoke exulting even in the sky; but the angry consort of Zeus fell heavily in surprise upon the house of Athamas and scared Ino into flight. She still resented the childhood of Dionysos.

  [247] Ino, unhappy wife, escaped from her chamber and fled, rushing unshod over the rough mountains and searching for a trace of Dionysos, but without tidings. The nymph wandered passing from hill to hill, until she entered the ravine of Delphian Pytho. At last after intolerable wanderings she turned her step into the dragonbreeding copse. She tore the shift from her naked breast in token of mourning, and roamed madly about: the shepherd trembled to hear her distracted lamentation in a language he did not know. Often she seized the serpent which coiled thrice around the divine tripod-seat, and wreathed it in spirals on her squalid hair, fastening the long tresses about the delicate head with a snaky ribbon. She drove away the maidens of the temple service: nor more libations, nor more public worship, no man of Delphoi danced near the temple – the women were scourged with limbscoring tangles of longplaited ivy. The huntsmen who saw Ino running on the hills left the traps of string on their stakes and fled. The goatherd drove his goats under cover of a hole in the towering rocks; the old plowman as he drove the sweating oxen under the yoke shivered at Ino’s leaps. The Pythian prophetess herself choked down the foreign sounds of the underworld voice and ran into the mountains, with her customary Panopeian laurel shaking upon her head: she plunged between the deepkneed peaks of the ravine, and took refuge in the Delphic cavern, in her fear of maddened Ino.

  [275] But Apollo Allseeing did not miss the woman, as she went through the twinings and twistings of the open forest where she sojourned. He pitied her, and came quickly near the grove. Taking the shape of a man he approached Ino, and with gentle hands wreathed her head with leaves of clever laurel, and brought sleep upon her. Then he anointed with ambrosia the whole body of mourning Ino in her sleep, bathing her maddened limbs in the grief-assuaging drops. Long she remained there in the Parnassian wood, until the fourth lichtgang. Then she founded dances for Bacchos yet a young boy, hard by the rock of prophecy, by the oracle of Phoibos; with unsleeping torches the Corycian Bacchants followed their fragrant rites, and gathered healing drugs with their divine hands, and healed the woman of her madness.

  [290] Meanwhile at the call of Athamas the servants had been scattered, hunting everywhere for Ino. The women wandered over the hills like her, passing by many a winding path in search of any footstep
of their missing lady, who moved leaving neither trace nor tidings. The women wept and wailed, cruel nails tore the reddened cheeks, willing fingers attacked the rosy breasts. The house plunged in mourning and sorrow cried aloud, and sent the loud sound of lamentation through the city. Most of all the inventive mind of Mystis felt the hard oppression, for she had a double grief, when unhappy Ino was still lost with all her troubles to bear, and Dionysos was stolen away.

  [302] However, Athamas did not mourn his afflicted bride. He forgot his fickle passion for untraced Ino, and after the bed of his first wife Nephele had given him two children, he sought the luxurious couch of deepbosomed Themisto, and took as a third wife the daughter of Hypseus – and thus threw off Ino’s love. Once as he played prettily nurse-like to comfort Melicertes calling for papa, lifting and throwing him up and up in the air with high somersaults, when the boy cried for the milky teat, he offered his man’s breast and made him forget his mother.

  [312] From the bed of Athamas, Themisto bred two warrior sons, a sure defence against battle, Schoineus and Leucon, a fine new manly breed, the fruit of her first births. After these two, the mother bore twin offspring of one common birth, and nursed at her rich breast Porphyrion and Ptoios, boyish blossoms of foe-defying youth both beloved and of one gage: these boys Themisto herself destroyed in later days, like stepmother’s children, believing them to be the twin offspring of Ino the glorious mother.

  BOOK X

  In the tenth also, you will see the madness of Athamas and Ino’s flight, how she fled into the swell of the sea with newborn Melicertes.

  So the murderous mother killed her sons in madness. Athamas their father, under the punishment which attested that he had beside his hearth Themisto the destroyer of her own offspring, was tormented by the maddening lash of Pan; he rushed among his flocks, and harried the innocent troops of woolly bleaters while he believed himself to be flogging his servants. One he lifted, thinking her to be his wedded wife – it was a nannygoat he found, with a pair of newborn kids at her milky udder. He tied her hairy legs tight with two ropes; and undoing the belt that ran round his loins, he flogged the body of the false Ino there held fast, without noticing the changeling form, for always in his ear sounded the thuds of the lash of Cronian Pan. Often he leapt from his seat restless, hearing with terrified ears the hiss of serpents. Many a time he bent his bow, and setting an arrow to the drawn string, he drew at an imaginary mark and struck the unwounded air. He would see the serpentine image of the goddess of Tartaros, and leap up scared at the many-coloured vision of the spectre, spitting snowy foam to witness his frenzy, rolling eyes drunken and full of threats. His eyes grew bloodshot as he stared about under vagrant impulses; inside his wagging head the flimsy brains rolled about behind his brows.

  [25] A third part of his soul was lost; steady thoughts were gone from his crazy brain; the glances of the maddened man went wildly round with flickering movements; the hair of his untended head shook disordered over his back. His mouth moved stammering; when he opened his lips he sent out into the air meaningless words of strange outlandish sound. The blasts of the Eumenides had carried away the troubles of mortal life, and his tongue was laden with the cries of madness. When he moved his face about he saw as his forehead turned a false transformed shape of the unseen Megaira. So the madman shook with a distracted spasm, and tried to tear the whip of snakes from the grim hand of the reason-destroying goddess; he bared his sword in the face of the Avenger, and tried to cut the viper-curls of Tisiphone. And he babbled nonsense to the wall before him, for he saw a shadow-shape, a deceitful phantom of the shape of Artemis; this empty form his eyes beheld and the imitated shapes made him want to go hunting.

  [45] At last after the fourth year, after many tears, Ino returned to her home; but when the wife saw husband mad, and Themisto mother of men children, she received a double shock. The husband did not know his wife when he saw Ino, recovered after so long a time; but in his passion for the staghunting chase, he was off to the heights nimbleknee with stormswift boot. He saw his son as if he were an antlered beast; holding the bow ready bent he leapt unchecked on Learchos, whom he saw in the false form of a stag with lofty antlers, his limbs like a wild beast. The boy fled in fear running with quicker knees; the father with frenzied hands drew and shot through the air, and stopt his young son with childslaying bolt. He cut off the head with his knife and knew it not, turned stag by his fancy; laughing he felt the hair at the top of the bloodstained cheek of the face unmarked, and pawed over his game, as he thought, then rushed with mad leaps and rolling eyes to find the mother, while the boy Learchos was gasping still, and still unburied. None of the servants came near him; with quick foot he went wandering through the seven chambers of his house, calling aloud for the son whom he had killed. In the hall he espied little Melicertes who had just been brought in, and setting a cauldron over the hearth, a steaming cauldron, he laid his son in it: the fire blazed up, the murderous cauldron bubbled with boiling water.

  [72] His son called out for “papa!” but none of the servants could help. Ino his mother came in like a stormwind, and snatched him from the cauldron parboiled and half consumed. Then she ran out bounding with wild-roaming feet swift as the wind; she traversed the dust of the White Plain, and for that reason she was named after it Leucothea, the White Goddess.

  [77] Athamas mad was out of the hall, stirring his knees like the wind and pursuing Ino over the hills in vain, – she was too quick for him. But when the raving husband with restless staggering foot caught her up, at that moment the unhappy woman had halted by the sea which washed her foot, moaning in plaintive tones over her crying child, while she upbraided Cronion and Maia’s son his messenger:

  [85] “A fine reward you have given me, Flashthunderbolt, for the care of Bacchos! See this boy, Lyaios’ agemate, half burnt to death! If it please you, strike down with your merciless bolt mother and son together, the little one I nursed in one bosom with your divine Dionysos! Child, Necessity is a great god! – where will you flee? What mountain will receive you, now you have fled to the sea? What Cithairon will hide you in a dark hollow? What mortal man will pity you, when your father has no mercy? Either sword or water shall receive you: if needs must, better to perish in the sea than by the sword.

  [96] “I know where this disaster came from, rolling upon your mother: I know! It is Nephele sends the Erinyes after me, that I may die in this sea where maiden Helle fell. I have heard that Phrixos was carried through the air to the Colchian country, guiding aloft the Ram who took him off, and he still lives in a distant land. O that my son Melicertes too might escape to another country, and travel the high path of the goldfleece ram! O that Poseidon, the hospitable friend of Glaucos, might save you, pitying your Ino as once he pitied Phoibos! I fear that after the fate of unburied Learchos I may see you also dead, unburied, unwept, undone, panting under the bloody knife of your father. Make haste! escape from mad Athamas, and then you will not see the father who murdered his child, murder the mother.

  [111] “Receive me you too, O sea! I have done with earth. Receive Melicertes also with hospitable hand, O Nereus, as you received Perseus! Receive Ino, as once Danaë in her floating hutch! I have been justly punished for my impiety. As I made seedless the earth’s lifegiving furrow, so Cronion has made my family seedless. A kind of stepmother, I planned to mow down the bastard plants of Athamas, and Hera, the real stepmother of newly nurtured Dionysos, is angry with me.”

  [120] She spoke, and with trembling feet sprang into the sea, swiftly diving with her son. Seabluehair opened his arms to receive Leucothea, and took her into the divine company in the deep waters. She helps ever sine the seamen who lose their way, and now she is Ino of the Sea, a Nereïd who has charge of untumultuous calm.

  [126] So Cronides pointed her out to the mother of Lyaios, because she owed it to Bromios that she was a goddess. Semele in her joy addressed her seafaring sister in mockery: “Ino, you have the sea, Semele has gained the round heavens! Give me place! I had
an immortal husband in Cronides the plower of my field, who brought forth the fruit of my birth instead of me; but you were wedded to a mortal mate Athamas, the murderer of your family. Your son’s lot is the sea, but my son will come to the house of Zeus to dwell in the sky. I will not compass heavenly Dionysos with Melicertes down in the water!”

  [137] That is how Semele the heavenly bride yelled out in mockery of her sister Ino’s life who dwelt in the sea.

  [139] Meanwhile Dionysos, in the latitude of Lydia’s fields, grew into a youthful bloom as tall as he wished, shaking the Euian gear of Cybeleïd Rheia. To escape the midday lash of Helios moving on high, he cleansed his body in the stream of the Meionian River bubbling gently; Pactolos glad to gratify Lyaios murmured as he poured the goldsowing water upon the purple sands, and the gilded fish went swimming in wealthy soundings where the rich ore lay deep. Playful Satyrs lifted their heels in air, and tumbled plunging headover into the river; one selfpropelled swam with paddling hands prone on the waves, and imprinted a footstep on the swell, as he pushed with backstretching legs and cut the water rolling in riches; one dived deep down in to the underwater caves and hunted for speckled fishy prey down below, stretching a groping hand over the swimming fry – left the deeps again and offered to Bacchos the fish purpled with the slime of the opulent river. Seilenos the old vagabond, challenging a Satyr, entwined hands and feet together, and rolling himself into a ball stooped and dived head first into the stream, from the heights into the deeps, till his hair stuck in the slime; then he trod his two feet firmly into the glittering sand hunting for good nuggets of ore in the river. Another left shoulder unwetted and showed his back out of the water in the air as he stood in the deep stream over the hips, immovable. Another lifted the ears bare and plunged the shaggy thighs in the transparent flood, while the tail flogged the water in circles of its own.