Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [244] So she mocked the timid mind of Bacchos, and vanished into her coeval tree. But on the hills, Dionysos impatient followed the wild girl with love-mad feet; and the swift-shod Amazon, ever on the move, scoured the topmost heads of difficult mountain-paths, hiding her track from the searcher Lyaios.

  [250] But the dry lips of the thirsty girl were parched as Phaethon scourged her skin with his blazing fire, and knowing not the trick of womanmad Dionysos, she noticed the brown water of the tipplers’ river, and drank the sweet liquid, whence the skin-scorched Indians had drunk. With her brain on fire, the girl revelled in her intoxication, and tossed her head to match her double motions; when she turned her eyes to the wide yawning lake, she thought to see two lakes; then as her head grew heavy, she beheld the ridges of the beastfeeding hill double themselves; and with trembling feet, slipping in the dust, she was drawn unconsciously under the wing of Sleep who was not far away. So the bride heavy at knee, was spellbound by her wedding slumber.

  [263] Eros espied her sleeping, and pointed her out to Bacchos, pitying Hymnos; Nemesis laughed at the sight. And sly Dionysos with shoes that made no noise crept soundless to his bridal, placing his footsteps with care. He came near the girl: and softly with gentle hand undid the end of the knot which guarded the girdle of innocence, that sleep might not let the maiden go.

  [270] Earth unfolded her teeming fragrance, and brought forth a plot of plants, to do pleasure to Dionysos. Tangled poles of spreading vine lifted a wide covering laden with clusters of grapes, and shaded the bed with its leaves; a selfgrown arbour of vinery embowered the couch with its rich growth, and many a bunch of purple fruit swayed to and fro above it, under the Cyprian’s breezes. It screened them both, while in crinkling clumps a lovely sapling of the wine-plant entangled intoxicated the wreaths of ivy which climbed over the growing fruit.

  [281] It was a stolen bridal, like bed in a dream with Sleep for helper. The maiden lost her maidenhood, slumbering still; she saw Sleep as marshal of the loves, and as servant of winedeceived nuptials. The breeze, unresting, self-sounding, interwove the hymn of love with caperings, high among the branches of the jubilant forest: and the melody of the mountain bridal, passing on the winds, was answered in modest tones by maiden Echo, Pan’s following voice; dancing over the ground the pipes tootled out loudly “Hymen Hymenaios”; the forest fir resounded, “A blessing on this bridal!”

  [292] Then the soul of the herdsman, passing on the winds, started up and taunted the sleeping maiden in dreams of the night:

  [294] “A lover also has his avenging spirits, happy bride! If you refused Hymnos as a bridegroom, Dionysos has made you a bride! You are a crooked judge, you matchmaking maiden bride! you kill the lover, you pursue him that weds not! Maiden, a brazen sleep ° you gave to your impassioned Hymnos: — maiden, a honeyed sleep lost you your maidenhood! The dead herdsman’s piteous blood you saw with a laugh; there was worse piteous groaning when you saw the blood of your maidenhood.”

  [302] So speaking, away like misty smoke went the soul of the lovesmitten herdsman weeping, and passed beyond pursuit into the courtyard of Tartaros, allcomers’ hostel, full of envy for Bacchos and his drinkdeceiving espousals.

  [306] Pan also piped a bridal tune on the shrill reeds, hiding secret envy deep in his heart, Pan the master of music; and made a defaming lay for the unnatural union. And one of the lovemad Satyrs in a thicket hard by, staring insatiate upon the wedding, a forbidden sight, declaimed thus, when he saw the bed of Bacchos with his fair maiden:

  [312] “Horned Pan, still running alone after Aphrodite? When will you too be a bridegroom, for Echo whom you chase? Will you ever bring off a trick like this, to aid and abet you in your nuptials never consummated? Become a gardener too instead of herdsman, my dear Pan; forswear your shepherd’s cudgel, leave oxen and sheep among the rocks — what will herdsmen do for you? Wake up! and plant another vine, which provides love’s wedding.”

  [320] Not yet had his words ended, when goatherd Pan cried out:

  [321] “I wish my father had taught me the trick of that matchmaking wine! I wish I could be lord of the mindtripping grape, like Bacchos! Then I should have seen that cruel maiden Echo, asleep and well drunken! then I should have achieved my love, which like a gadfly sends me gadding afar! Farewell to this pasturage! for while I water my sheep here by a neighbouring spring, Dionysos draws intractable nymphs to marriage by means of his tipplers’ river! He has invented a medicine for Eros — his plant: away with the goat’s milk, away with the milk of my ewes! for that cannot bring sleep to desire, nor a maiden to marriage. I alone, Cythereia, must suffer. Alas for love! Syrinx escaped from Pan’s marriage and left him without a bride, and now she cries Euoi to the newly-made marriage of Dionysos with melodies unasked: while Syrinx gives voice, and to crown all, Echo chimes in with her familiar note. O Dionysos, charmer of mortals, shepherd of the bridal intoxication! you alone are happy, because when the nymph denied, you found out wine, love’s helper to deck out the marriage!”

  [339] Such were the words of Pan, in sorrow for his thwarted desire, and in envy and love of Lyaios, the achiever of marriage.

  [341] And Dionysos, having achieved his love, and the desires of that wayside bed, rose up with unnoted boot. But the nymph awaking reproached the river spring, indignant against Hypnos and Cypris and Dionysos, bathed in a flood of tears; in her pain, she heard still the remnants of the Naiads’ nuptial song; and she saw that bed, herald of the couch of lovesick Lyaios, shadowed over with garden vine-leaves, and piled thick with the bridal fawnskins of Dionysos, which gives its own message of Lyaios’s lovestricken passion, which told the tale of the furtive bed; she saw her own maiden zone wet with the wedding dew. Then she tore her rosy cheeks, and slapt both thighs, and moaned with piercing voice:

  [354] “Alas for maidenhead, stolen by the Euian water! alas for maidenhead, stolen by the sleep of love! Alas for maidenhead, stolen by that vagabond Bacchos! A curse on that deceitful water of the Hydriads, a curse on that bed! Hamadryad nymphs, whom shall I blame? for Sleep, Eros, trickery and wine, are the robbers of my maiden state! Artemis has deserted her own maidens. But Echo herself the enemy of the bed — why did not Echo tell me the whole scheme? Why did not Pine whisper in my ear, too low for Bacchos to hear? why did not Daphne the Laurel speak out— ‘Maiden, beware, drink not the deceiving water!’?”

  [365] She spoke, and flooded her face with a shower of tears. And now she thought to set a sword in her throat, again she would have cast herself rolling off a cliff, to fall headlong in the dust at last; she thought to destroy the nuptial fountain of which she had drunk, but already the stream had got rid of its Bacchic juice, and bubbled out clear water, no longer the liquid of Lyaios. Then she besought Cronides and Artemis to fill the Naiads’ grottoes with dust and thirsty soil. Often she strained her eye over the mountains, if anywhere she might find an unsteady footstep of unseen Dionysos, that she might shoot him with her arrows, a woman shoot a god! that she might vanquish the deity of the grapes; yet more she desired to destroy with blazing fire all that marriage-vine. Often, when she saw tracks of Bacchos over the mountains, she let off storms of arrows into the air; often she lifted her lance, and cast at a mark, hoping to strike the body of unwounded Dionysos: but in vain she cast, and hit no Lyaios. And she was angry with the river, and swore never to drink the deceitful water of the fountain with thirsty lips; swore to keep her eyes awake through the night, swore not to enjoy sweet sleep again on the mountains. She blamed also the watchdogs, because not even they then attacked the womanmad Lyaios. She sought a remedy in death by the hanging noose, and encircled her neck with a choking throttling loop, to avert the malice of her mocking yearsmates. Unwilling she left the ancient beastbreeding forest, being ashamed after that bed to show herself to the Archeress.

  [395] Now lined with the divine dew, the seed of Lyaios, she carried a burden in her womb; and when the time came for her delivery, the lifewarming Seasons played the midwives to a female child, and con
firmed the nine-circled course of Selene. From the marriage of Bromios a god-sent girl grew to flower, whom she named Telete, one ever rejoicing in festivals, a night-dancing girl, who followed Dionysos, taking pleasure in clappers and the bang of the double oxhide.

  And the god built a city of fine stone beside the tipplers’ lake, Nicaia, City of Victory, which he named after the nymph Astacia and for the victory which brought the Indians low.

  BOOK XVII

  In the seventeenth, I celebrate war’s firstfruits, and the waters of a honey-trickling river turned to wine.

  AFTER he had made captive the Indian nation, shackled in sleep by their potations, immovable, without a wound, Dionysos did not commit his quarrel to the forgetful winds, but once more lifted his Phrygian thyrsus; for he went in haste at the challenge of highcrested Deriades, and left forgotten behind him the trick he had played on the Amazonian girl, the drunken passion and the drowsy nuptials.

  [8] The god led the van, wearing a heavenly radiance on his shining face, to proclaim him the son of Zeus. Around the Lydian chariot of giantslaying Dionysos were lines of thyrsus-bearers; he was ringed about with warriors on either side, conspicuous in the midst, and shone in splendour like another heaven. In beauty he threw all into the shade: to see him you might have said it was fiery Helios in the midst of farscattered stars. The lord of the host had brought Enyo without the steel trappings of war; for he carried no sword and no deathdealing ashen lance, but for bronze he had his own invincible spear, the ivy; this he wielded in the cities of Asia, this he planted in the soil of Asia, as he drove the savage — car of divine Cybele, with a broad rein of grapevine, under the shadow of ivy, the vine’s fellow, touching up his travelling team with a blossoming whip — he made drunken the regions of the East with the Maronian fruit. To share the enterprise of Bromios came the whole company of Bacchoi, full of confidence from the first battle, when Seilenos happy-mad, unarmed, picked up in his linked arms a living corpse unspeaking, an Indian in full armour, and marched off heavy-kneed, a sluggish wayfarer: when the Bacchant Mimallon woman, unveiled and revelling, and bounding in cadence on her two feet, rattled her cymbals over an Indian still asleep, and running a rope round his neck hurried away, with the war-plunder that she had been seeking thrown into her hands.

  [32] From city to city he went, till he came not far off to the rich country of the Alybe, where neighbouring Geudis rolls the wealthy waves of its heavensent flood white with the current of its watery treasures, and cuts a hollow through the silvern soil.

  [37] There as the company of footmen with the horned Satyrs travelled beside the richly stored rocks, Bacchos on his march was entertained by a countryman in a lonely hut, Brongos, dweller in the highland glens where no houses are built. Beside the unquarried wall of these giant strongholds he dwelt, in a house that was no house. The hospitable shepherd milked a goat, and drew a potion snowy-white, to seek the favour of the giver of jolly good cheer with his milky draught in country cups, with common vittles. He brought out a fleecy sheep from the fold, as an offering for Dionysos, but the god stayed him. The old man obeyed the immutable bidding of Bacchos, and leaving the sheep untouched he set shepherd’s fare before willing Lyaios. So he served a supper no supper, board without beef, such as they say in Cleonai Molorcos once provided for Heracles on his way to fight the lion. Brongos like that kind-hearted shepherd set on the board plenty of the autumn fruit of the olive swimming in brine, and brought fresh curdled cheese in wickerwork baskets, juicy and round. The god laughed when he saw the countryman’s light supper, and turning a gracious eye on the hospitable shepherd, he partook of the humble fare, munching greedily. All the time he was reminded of the frugal banquet on that bloodless table, when there was a meal for his Mother, Cybele of the highlands. And he wondered at the stone doors of the round courtyard, how industrious nature had carved a house, how without art the cliffs were rounded in answering proportion.

  [67] But when Lord Bacchos had eaten his fill of shepherd’s fare, then Brongos the countryman was moved by the divine inspiration of Bacchos; he played Pan’s wellknown tune on his pipes, and pressed his fingers on Athena’s double tube in honour of Dionysos; who was pleased at heart with the music, and mixing the new liquor of the winepress in the bowl, he said:

  [74] “Accept this gift, gaffer, to drink all cares away! You want no more milk when you have this fragrant dew, the image of heavenly nectar brought down to earth, like that which Ganymedes ladles out to rejoice great Zeus in Olympos. Forget your wish for your old-fashioned milk: the snowy-white drops pressed from the udders of goats that have just kidded do not make men happy or drive their cares away.”

  [81] So saying, he gave his gift of gratitude for the shepherd’s table, the fine fruitage of grapes, the mother of wine, sorrow’s comforter. And the Lord taught him the flowerloving work of the vineyard — to bend the slips of the plants over into fertilizing pits, and to cut the top shoots of an old vine, that new shoots of winegendering grapes may grow.

  [87] Leaving the herdsman and the ridge of the wild forest, he now hasted to a new conflict with Indians in the mountains. Bidding the Satyrs who were with him to go on at full speed by the upland tracks, he joined himself again to his wild attendant Bacchants. Thirsting for blood and battle under his thyrsus, he took in hand the loudbraying trumpet of the Tyrhenian Sea, and boomed a note on his conch for battle as he gathered the people. He intoxicated the stout warriors, and drew the men on to war with hotter spirit, to destroy the race of Indians that knew not Bacchos.

  [97] So Lord Dionysos marshalled these for the Indian War. But Astraeis went unpursued to Orontes, and told him the Indian tribes were enslaved, speaking with sorrowful voice:

  [100] “Hear me, battle-staunch goodfather of spear-bold Deriades! and while you listen be not angry; and I will tell you the drugged victory of Dionysos unarmed! Indians and Satyrs came to blows: bang went the Bassarids’ hands, and my people armed them against Lyaios with flashing shields. The cunning man of Lydia shivered to see my warriors lance in hand; he stood at the head of his unwarlike Satyrs, bearing no warspear in his hand, holding no naked sword, no arrow on string drawn at the mark to fly straight through the air. What he held was an oxhorn, and in the hollow of that horn a distilled drug; he lifted it and poured out all the deceitful dew into the stream of the silvery river, and turned the water sweet and red with the juice. The swarthy Indians thirsting in the heat of the battle drank, and all that drank went mad, though still in their senses, and struck up a dance. Then a fatal sleep came over them: unrouted, after the wild revel they fell asleep on their leathern shields. Others lay along the unbedded earth, committing their sluggish bodies to unresting sleep, at the mercy of Dionysos and his weak women. These, without war and the sharp blade, were dragged captive with loaded limbs by the women to fetters and slavery with heavy limbs. Warriors were slung over the shoulders of their foes like living corpses; others, still sputtering the deceitful sap of Bacchos, unwarlike Satyrs made their slaves by main force when maddened by the drugged river. From the battle I alone was left; for I had not touched the deadly dew, I left the deceitful water with unwetted lips. Eschew that potion, my shakespear! After this cheating victory of Lyaios without a blow, without blood, let not some other trick in the war capture what is left of the Indians!”

  [133] Orontes furious already was more angry than ever at these words, and quickly returned to the battlefield; for the conflict was only half done, and the foundations were being laid for a second combat.

  [136] While Ares was arming the Indian host along the mountains, the Bassarids up in the winding glens of Tauros were hastening to the battle, and with them marched Bacchoi with arms and the Pheres without arms. These last began the battle by attacking the enemy; they tore up the foundations of the ravines and cast them, or some crag from the top of the hills. Showers of splintered rocks were hurled rolling on the heads of the Indians. The Pans madly made battle skipping with light foot over the peaks. One of them gript an enemy’s neck t
ight in encircling hands, and ript him with his goat’s-hooves, tearing through flank and strong corselet together. Another caught a fugitive Indian and ran him through his middle where he stood, then lifting him on the curved points of his two longbranching antlers, sent him flying high through the airy ways, rolling over himself like a tumbler. Another waved in his hand the strawcutting sickle of sheafbearing Deo, and reaped the enemy crops with clawcurved blade, like cornears of conflict, like gavels of the battlefield. There was a revel for Ares, there was harvest-home for Dionysos, when the enemy’s heads were cut! He offered the curved blade to watching Bacchos, dabbled with human dew, and so poured a bloodlibation to Dionysos, and made the Fates drunken with the battlecup he filled for them. Another man was standing, when one goatfoot Pan twined both hands interlacing about his neck, and struck his wellcorseleted enemy with his horn, tearing his flank with the double point. Another met a fellow rushing on him with a blow from his cudgel, and smashed his forehead right between the ends of his eyebrows.

  [168] Now bold Orontes encouraged his Indian army, and with proud voice poured out these threatening words:

  [170] “This way, friends, open fight against the Satyrs! Fear not the warfare of Shirkbattle Dionysos! Not a man of you must drink of the yellow water, not one be tricked by the sweet fountains of madness with its maddening drug! Or sleep will destroy you also, after the cruel fate of our Indians, after so many heads have been brought low by Lyaios’s hand! This way! Let us fight again and fear not! Could unwarlike Bacchos ever hold front against me in open field? If he is able, let the runaway champion stand up to me, that I may teach him what champions Deriades arms for the fray! Let him fight with leaves, I will use flashing steel! While I hold a metal spear, what can a Lydian do to me with a bunch of twigs, a volley of vegetables? This warrior! I will truss up the feeble coward in heavy fetters and drag him along, this womanmad Dionysos, to be a lackey for Deriades. You there, you with the soft skin of a woman! Leave all those Indians and fight a duel with one, Orontes. Simple soul! how he waves those long flowing locks round and round! A simple soul is the charming champion of the Bassarids! yes, the women do just the same — pretty looks are the shafts in their quiver. I will match your championesses with amorous Indians — they shall be hauled off to bed as brides won by the spear!”