Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [324] The hillranging god marvelled, as he saw the snake and his chin dabbled with trickling wine; the speckled snake saw Euios, and went coiling away with his spotty scales and plunged into a deep hole in the rock hard by. When Bacchos saw the grapes with a bellyful of red juice, he bethought him of an oracle which prophetic Rheia had spoken long ago. He dug into the rock, he hollowed out a pit in the stone with the sharp prongs of his earth-burrowing pick, he smoothed the sides of the deepening hole and made an excavation like a winepress; then he made his sharp thyrsus into the cunning shape of the later sickle with curved edge, and reaped the newgrown grapes.

  [337] A band of Satyrs was with him: one stooped to gather the clusters, one received them into an empty vessel as they were cut, one pulled off the masses of green leaves from the bibulous fruit and threw away the rubbish. Another without thyrsus or sharpened steel crouched bending forwards and spying for grapes, and put out his right hand towards the branches to pluck the fruit at the ends of the tangled vine, then Bacchos spread the fruitage in the pit he had dug, first heaping the grapes in the middle of the excavation, then arranging them in layers side by side like cornheaps on the threshingfloor, spread out the whole length of the hole. When he had got all into the hollowed place and filled it up to the brim, he trod the grapes with dancing steps. The Satyrs also, shaking their hair madly in the wind, learnt from Dionysos how to do the like. They pulled tight the dappled skins of fawns over the shoulder, they shouted the song of Bacchos sounding tongue with tongue, crushing the fruit with many a skip of the foot, crying “Euoi!” The wine spurted up in the grapefilled hollow, the runlets were empurpled; pressed by the alternating tread the fruit bubbled out red juice with white foam. They scooped it up with oxhorns, instead of cups which had not yet been seen, so that ever after the cup of mixed wine took this divine name of Winehorn.

  [363] And one went bubbling the mindcharming drops of Bacchos as he turned his wobbling feet in zigzag jerks, crossing right over left in confusion as he wetted his hairy cheeks with Bacchos’s drops. Another skipt up struck with a tippler’s madness when he heard the horrid boom of the beaten drumskin. One again who had drunk too deeply of caredispelling wine purpled his dark beard with the rosy liquor. Another, turning his unsteady look towards a tree espied a Nymph half-hidden ,unveiled, close at hand; and he would have crawled up the highest tree in the forest, feet slipping, hanging on by his toenails, had not Dionysos held him back. Near the fountains, another driven by the insane impulse of drunken excitement, chased a naked Naiad of the waters; he would have seized her with hairy hand as she swam, but she gave him the slip and dived into deep water. To Dionysos alone had Rheia given the amethyst, which preserves the winedrinker from the tyranny of madness.

  [382] Many of the horned Satyrs joined furiously in the festive dancing with sportive steps. One felt within him a new hot madness, the guide to love, and threw a hairy arm round a Bacchanal girl’s waist. One shaken by the madness of mindcrazing drink laid hold of the girdle of a modest unwedded maid, and as she would have no lovemaking pulled her back by the dress and touched her rosy thighs from behind. Another dragged back a struggling mystic maiden while kindling the torch for the god’s nightly dances, laid timid fingers upon her bosom and pressed the swelling circle of her firm breast.

  [394] After the revels over his sweet fruit, Dionysos proudly entered the cave of Cybeleïd goddess Rheia, waving bunches of grapes in his flowerloving hand, and taught Maionia the vigil of his feast.

  BOOK XIII

  In the thirteenth, I will tell of a host innumerable, and champion heroes gathering for Dionysos.

  Father Zeus sent Iris to the divine halls of Rheia, to inform wakethefray Dionysos, that he must drive out of Asia with his avenging thyrsus the proud race of Indians untaught of justice: he was to sweep from the sea the horned son of a river, Deriades the king, and teach all nations the sacred dances of the vigil and the purple fruit of the vintage.

  [8] She paddled her way with windswift beat of wings, and entered the echoing den of stabled lions. Noiseless her step she stayed, in silence voiceless pressed her lips, a slave before the forest queen. She stood bowing low, and bent down her head to kiss Rheia’s feet with suppliant lips. Rheia unsmiling beckoned, and the Corybants served her beside the bowl of the divine table. Wondering she drank a sop of the newfound wine, delighted and excited; then with heavy head the spirit told the will of Zeus to the son of Zeus:

  [19] “O mighty Dionysos! Your father bids you destroy the race of Indians, untaught of piety. Come, lift the thyrsus of battle in your hands, and earn heaven by your deeds. For the immortal court of Zeus will not receive you without hard work, and the Seasons will not open the gates of Olympos to you unless you have struggled for the prize. Hermeias hardly could win his way to heaven, and only when he killed with his rod Argos the cowherd, sparkling with eyes from his feet to the hair of his head, and when he had set Ares free from prison. Apollo mastered Delphyne, and then he came to live in the sky. Even your own father, chief of the Blessed, Zeus Lord in the Highest, did not rise to heaven without hard work, he the sovereign of the stars: first he must bind fast those threatenders of Olympos, the Titans, and hide them deep in the pit of Tartaros. You also do your work, after Apollo, after Hermaon, and your prize for your labours will be a home in your father’s heaven.”

  [35] With these words the goddess returned to Olympos. At once Rheia Allmother sent out her messenger to gather the host, Pyrrhichos, the dancer before her loverattle timbrel, to proclaim the warfare of Lyaios under arms. Pyrrhichos, gathering a varied army for Dionysos, scoured all the settlements of the eternal world; all the races of Europe and the nations of the Asiatic land he brought to rendezvous in the land of the livedainty Lydians.

  [43] But the heroic breed of farscattered champions, the hairy Satyrs, the blood of the Centaur tribe, the bushyknee ancient and his phalanx of the Seilenoi, the regiment of Bassarids – do you sing me these, O Corybantic Muses! For I could not tell so many peoples with ten tongues, not if I had ten mouths pouring a voice of brass, all those which Bacchos gathered for his spearchasing. Yet I will loudly name their leaders, and I will call to my aid Homer, the one great harbour of language undefiled, since mariners lost astray call on Seabluehair to save them from their wandering ways.

  [53] First of all, to obey the summons of Dionysos with his fine thyrsus, Actaion quickly came, in respect for their kindred blood, and left the sevenmouth soil of his native Aonia. Boiotia’s battalions came in a flood: those who dwelt in wellwalled Thebes and Onchestos, Earthshaker’s place of sojourn, Peteon and Ocalae, and Erythrai, vineclad Arne so proud of Dionysos; and those who inhabited Mideia nad the celebrated towns of Eilesion and Scolon and Thisbe based upon the brine, dovehaunted harbour of Aphrodite our Lady of the Sea, and the levels of Schoinos, and leafy Eleon; and the glorious soil of Copai, where I hear still remains the famous lake of that name, the nurse of eels; and shaggy Medeon, and those that held the fine pastures of Hyle, long-stretching fostermother of Tychios the leathercraftsman; and the land of broad threshing-floors kept for the underworld oracle, to bear the name of Amphiaraos and his chariot in later days; and the city of Thespiae and deepsloping Plataiai and moist Haliartos, separated from Helicon by the stream of a mountain river between; and they who possessed Anthedon, the last place down by the sea, the little town of Glaucos the immortal fisherman who lives in the waters; and those of inclement Ascra, the laureate home of the farmer whose name is on every tongue; and the sacred citadel of Graia, and Mycalessos with broad dancing-lawns, named to remind us of Euryale’s throat; and the land of Nisa, and the city named after Coronos – all these were led by Actaion to the eastern clime, and laurelled Apollo the Seer, his father’s father, sneezed victory for the young man.

  [83] A second host of Boiotians was led by finehair Hymenaios with unmarked chin, young and fresh, beloved by Bromios. As Guardian for the boy came a hoary chieftain named Phoinix; like Laocoön who long ago embarked in the Argo, Iason’s ship,
and sailed with Meleagros to the Colchian land, his comrade in the battlefield. Such another boy was this in the prime of youth, Hymenaios, with his luxuriant hair curving round either cheek, never cut since he was born, on the way to the Indian War. Shieldmen bare him company, who dwelt in the stronghold of Aspledon, and the dancebeaten precinct of the loves, Orchomenos city of Minyas, which the Graces never leave; those who dwelt in Hyria, that hospitable land which entertained the gods named after hospitable Hyrieus; where that huge giant born of no marriage-bed, threefather Orion, sprang up from his mother earth, after a shower of piss from three gods grew in generative fruitfulness to the selfmade shape of a child, having impregnated a wrinkle of a fruitful oxhide. Then a hollow of the earth was midwife to earth’s unbegotten son. Those also came who possessed the place where the assembling Achaians found refuge, rocky Aulis, pavement of the Archeress: where the goddess in heavy resentment received at her altar in the mountains the offering of a pretended Iphigeneia, and a wild pricket of the hills was burnt in a blameless fire, changeling shape of the true Iphigeneia who had been carried away. She it was that cunning Odysseus brought to be Achilles’ bride before the trouble, and hence Aulis has the name of matchmaker for Iphigeneia who never married at all; for a guiding wind whistled over the Argive ships, and brought a rescuing breeze for the fawnslayer king. But the girl passed at last on high to the Taurian land, and there she was taught the inhospitable law of their horrible kettles, in cutting up men for meat; but beside the murderous altar she saved the life of her seabeaten brother Orestes.

  [120] Such was the infinite host of Boiotian men who went with Hymenaios to the Indian War.

  [122] These were joined by comrades marching from Phocis near the wise Delphian rock: those who held the settlement of Cyparissos and the land of Hyampolis, taking its name as I hear from the Aonian Sow, which lifted a proud neck and challenged Tritogeneia to a beautymatch. There were also those who had Python and the gardens among the precipices, famous Crisa, and Daulis, and Panopeus, neighbour of Bacchos, for laurelled Apollo had made common with his brother Dionysos twopeak Parnassos his domain; as the peoples gathered, the Pythian rock uttered the inspired voice of God, and the tripod spoke of itself, and the babbling rill of Castalia that never silent spring, bubbled with wisdom in its waters.

  [135] The Euboian battalions were ruled by shieldbearing Corybants, guardians of Dionysos in his growing days: who in the Phrygian gulf beside mountainranging Rheia surrounded Bacchos still a child with their drumskins. They found him once, a horned baby, covered with a cloak the colour of purple wine, lying among the rocks where Ino had left him in charge of Mystis the mother of Corymbos. All these came then from the famous island: Prymneus, and Mimas Waddlefoot, and Acmon the forester, Damneus and Ocythoös the shieldman; and with them came flash-helm Melisseus as comrade to Idaios, whom their father Socos under the insane goad of impiety had once cast out of their brinegirt country along with Combe the mother of seven. They escaped and passed to Cnossian soil, and again went on their travels from Crete to Phrygia, and foreign settlers and hearthguests until Cecrops destroyed Socos with avenging blade of justice; then leaving the land of brineflooded Marathon turned their steps homewards to the sacred soil of the Abantes, the earthborn stock of the ancient Curetes, whose life is the tune of pipes, whose life is the goodly noise of beaten swords, whose heart is set upon rhythmic circling of the feet and the shieldwise dancing. To the army came also warrior sons of the Abantes, whose lot was in the beetling brows of Eretria, whose lot was both Styra and Cerinthos, and the settlements of farfamed Carystos, and the barren land of Dion, those who held the shore, that boisterous shore of Geraistos never silent, and Styx and the Cotylaian fort and the habitation of Siris, the stretches of Marmarion and the domain of ancient Aige. With these ranged themselves those whose country was Chalcis, mother city of the Ellopians with backflowing hair. Seven captains armed this host, but all of one temper for war: with blazing altar they propitiated the tenants of the Zodiac path, committing their campaign to the planets of equal number.

  [171] The Cecropides were mustered by Erechtheus, the glutton of battle. – He had in him the golden blood of Erechtheus father of glorious sons, whom once the Virgin selfborn nursed at her manly breast in the recess of her torchlit maiden chamber, Brighteyes unwedded turned nursemaid, and shamefast clasped with her inexperienced maiden arm that son of Hephaistos, when Crookshank unhappy in his wife split his seed in unnatural love, and the hot foam of love fell of itself on the earth. – This was the Erechtheus who came as captain of the Athenians, with Siphnos to share his task, chief of that same city: those whose lot was in the fertile land of Oinoë, and the bee-frequented vales on the heights of neighbouring Hymettos, and the deep woody borders of oliveplanted Marathon, and the city of Celeos; and those from the harbour of Athens, Brauron near the sea, the empty barrow of Iphigeneia, and the ground of Thoricos, and teeming Aphidna; and those who hold the Eleusinian land of daughterproud Deo, initiates of the Basket and the goodfruit goddess, those born of the blood of Triptolemos: who once on a time drove Deo’s chariot and serpents through the air, with their load of cornears, and lashed the serpents’ backs. Many an old man of Acharnai came, flourishing his armour of steel about and holding it out to his sons equipping themselves. The ranks of Attica came to join; with spears and with sword the burghers hastened to make the fray, on to the fray fine helmet on head came Athens ranging along, the harbour of Phaleron resounded with men hurrying to war; many a golden cicada was made fast in the plaited hair to proclaim their ancient indigenous race.

  [201] Aiacos also left his native land, whom the sham bird begot, mingling with the daughter of Asopos whom he carried off, the eagle, highsoaring of Zeus the feathered husband of Aigina. He was named Aiacos from this marriage; and most of all he was eager to help his brother Dionysos. He mustered his companies of Myrmidons with competent skill. These once were ants crawling over the earth with their many busy feet, until Zeus in the Highest changed them from their insignificant clayborn shape to a better body, and up grew an armed host: for in a moment a speechless swarm of ants bred in the clay changed their shape and nature into mortals with speech. These were the host that Aiacos led as captain, and he graved on his wellwrought shield, as a token of their origin, Zeus the sham bird with a mind, carrying a woman in gentle talons. Near it was a river god on fire, and a girl beside him sad and downcast, even if she was a lifeless image; she turned her eye aside as if mourning for her father stiffknee Asopos, and she seemed to be crying – “A fine bridegift you have brought me, in destroying my father!”

  [222] Crete with its peoples of many tongues was commanded by Asterios, one of brilliant beauty, one as lovely as he was strong, both together; his mother was Phaistian Androgeneia, who loosed the girdle of maiden modesty for Minos, and bore her son in a Cydonian bed. He came bringing the people of the hundred cities for wineface Bacchos to honour the blood of his own father’s family; for Minos was cousin of Semele and of Cadmos’s kin. All the farscattered warriors gathered to one stirring leader; men of war from Cnossos, other from Lyctos joined with troops from Miletos. With them was a large body of armed burghers from hilly Gortyn, and others from Rhytion and fertile Lycastos, and the country of Nodaian Zeus and the habitations of Boibe and the lands of Cisamos and the fair cities of Cytaios. Such was the captain from Crete; and as he came the star of Ares shone upon his starry namesake Asterios, first harbinger of victory to come, pouring forth a prophetic radiance with hotter beams. But after victory in battle he conceived a bastard passion for the strange country, being hard of heart. For after the Indian War he was not to see his native land the cave of the Idaian mount shimmering with helmets; he preferred a life of exile, and instead of Dicte he became a Cnossian settler in Scythia. He left greyheaded Minos and Androgeneia; the civilized man joined the barbaric tribes of guest-murdering Colchians, called them Asterians and gave a Cretan name to Colchians whose nature provided them with outlandish customs. He left his own country and the Cret
an river of Amnisos which nourished his childhood, and with shamefast lips drank the foreign water of Phasis.

  [253] Aristaios came slow by himself, last of all those who dwelt in the regions round about the Hellenic land. He lifted high his neck, proud of the sweet honey from his riddled hives. He had challenged Dionysos with his wine, and vainly hoped for the victory of his sweet honey. All the denizens of Olympos judged between them. Phoibos’s son offered the new-flowing juice from his hives to the immortals; but he failed to win the victory, because when the gods took the thick juice from the plantloving bee, they soon had enough and tired of the liquid. A third rummer was more than enough for the Blessed; when the cup came round with the fourth brew they would not taste it, thirsty though they were. But when Bacchos ladled out his glorious dewy drops, they were delighted, and drank his flowing wine all day long unceasing. Even drunken they admired the sweet wine, and called for cup after cup one after another with jolly glee, full of hearty good cheer for the bewitching stuff. Zeus admired Aristaios’s gift, the product of the honeydroppping bee and the curious artwork of the hiveloving brood, but he gave the first prize for troublesoothing victory to Dionysos and his wine. That is why Aristaios came slow to the Indian War. After so long he had only just quieted his old grudge of his greedy youth, and left Hermeias’s cave in Cyllene; for he had not yet migrated to the island formerly called Meropis: he had not yet brought there the lifebreathing wind of Zeus the Defender, and checked the fiery vapour of the parched season; he had not stood steelclad to receive the glare of Seirios, and all night long repelled and calmed the star’s fiery heat – and even now the winds cool him with light puffs, as he lances his hot parching fire through the air from glowing throat. But he still dwelt in the land of Parrhasia.