Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [123] They leapt about dancing on the Indian crags, along the rocky paths; then they built shelters undisturbed in the dark forest, and spent the night among the trees.... Some went deerhunting with dogs after the long-antlered stags: the Hydriad water-nymphs of plantloving Dionysos mingled with the Hamadryads of the trees. Groups of Bassarids in this Erythraian wilderness suckled cubs of a mountain lioness, and the juicy milk flowed of itself out of their breasts. One searched the hills for the holes of poisonous serpents to satisfy her longing for a wreath of vipers, and showed how well she could hunt.

  One cast her wand and hit a stormfoot fawn. One approached unseen, and ran down a mad she-bear with maddened leaps. One clutched at the back of some elephant of the mountains, and climbed on the nape of the blackskinned beast. Sometimes an archer fitted a shaft to the string of his rounded bow and shot at an elmtree, or aimed at an olivetree, another hit a pine; showers of arrows went whizzing and buzzing through the air at the firtrees hard by.

  [143] While the noise of their revels resounded among the hills, Thureus returned unhappy to King Deriades with bad tidings. His tears told the carnage of the Indians without words, but at last he let his sorrowful voice be heard:

  [147] “May it please your Majesty, Deriades our King, and divine offspring of Enyo! We went as commanded to the opposite hill, and in the forest glades we found the neighbouring thickets empty. There we laid our ambush and waited for thyrsusmad Dionysos to come. When Bacchos came near, the pipes were sounded, the raw drumskin was beaten, on either side was the noise of beaten brass and the wail of the syrinx. The whole forest trembled, the oaktrees uttered voices and the hills danced, the Naiads sang alleluia. I put the men under arms, led them to battle hesitating, trembling, unwilling. And the god, as they call him, shaking the sharpened wand, sent volleys of ignoble leaves upon the Indian nation, slew an infinite host on the plain pierced by the sharp wands, and destroyed what was left of us in the wild waters.

  [162] “Come now, let us ask our learned Brahmans, that you may learn if this be a god come against us or a mortal man. Do not stir up a useless war by night, do not destroy your hosts fighting in the darkness. Already the misty gloom is stretched over us; there is the evening star clear before our eyes, shining to check the conflict. If your desire is set upon this formidable fray, hold back the Indians to-day and to-morrow you lead them to battle.”

  [170] His words convinced Deriades, though loath to be convinced. No weakness made him consent; he yielded not to Lyaios, he blamed the setting sun. Proud Deriades retreated mad with sorrow, seated on the neck of his retreating elephants, and withdrew the Indian host from the river. Along with their gigantic king, the Indians everywhere made haste to take refuge in the city, hearing behind their walls of the victory of warmad Dionysos.

  [179] For already a lamentable rumour was flying through the city, which told of the late massacre of their kinsmen Indians. There was infinite wailing then. Dirgefond women tore their cheeks with their nails in mourning; they rent off the garments from their bodies and bared their chests, beating their circled breasts with this hand and that until the blows made the blood flow. That gray old man on the threshold of old age cut off his snowy hair with the knife of sorrow, when he heard how four sons had perished in their prime, a pitiable death indeed, brought low by Aiacos and his terrible sword alone. Women in heavy affliction mourned one her brother, and one her father; there was a bride bathed in tears lamenting her bridegroom lately wedded with dancing, another Laodameia with her Protesilaos: the newmade bride unveiled, unkempt, tore the clusters of her hair.

  [196] One Indian wife, despairing at her husband’s fall, when the full time of her labour was near and she saw now the delivering circle of the tenth moon, sorrowed with many tears for her man’s death in the water, and cried out in lamentable tones against the hateful river:

  [201] “Never again will I drink the bitter Hydaspes of my country! Never will I walk beside his water, never — woe’s me — will I touch the river which drowned your body! I swear it by you, and your burden which I carry in my womb, I swear by you and the love which time cannot wither! Who will take me and bring me where my dead husband fell, that I may embrace the dripping body, that the wave may swallow me too and drown me beside my man! O that I had born a son and reared him! But woe is me, my womb still carries the ripening burden. And if I ever do bear a son, and he asks for his father, how can I point to his father when the boy cries for daddy?”

  [213] So she lamented the husband who could not hear. Another mourned for a bridal never hallowed, her wooer lost, who never saw the happy hour of wedding decked with the bridegroom’s garland, who never heard in the bridal chamber the sweet music of love’s quickening pipes.

  [218] So they sorrowed and wailed. But in the forest, Bacchos held a feast with his Satyrs and Indian-slaying warriors: bulls were slaughtered, rows of heifers were struck with axes and cut up with knives, whole flocks of sheep were killed from the captured Erythraian herds. Seilenoi and Satyrs settled in companies round the table with the god of the thyrsus, all with multitudinous hands partook of the same food. Infinite wine was drunk by all in order; the servers emptied endless fragrant jars as they drew the nectarean juice of the perfect grape.

  [230] So they rejoiced, while Leucos the selftaught Lesbian singer wove his lay beside the mixing-bowl, how the older Titans armed themselves against Olympos. He sang the true victory of Zeus potent in the Heights, how broadbeard Cronos sank under the thunderbolt, and Zeus sealed him deep in the dark Tartarean pit, armed in vain with the watery weapons of the storm.

  [237] Lapethos, a dweller in the unarmed Cyprian land, sat next to the inspired minstrel, and he passed him a fat portion of meat, begging him to sing a pleasant story that never-silent Athens loves, the weaving-match between Athena and Cythereia.

  [242] So he struck up his harp and began to sing of Cypris, how she once felt the sting of ambition and fell in love with the distaff, how she tried Athena’s loom with unpractised hands and lifted the shuttle, no longer the girdle of love. The Paphian spun a coarse thread, like the long cord of twisted withies which the old roper makes by his craft in long stretches, to tighten the gaping planks of a ship newly finished. Then all day and all night long by the loom she undid the work of Pallas, and roughened her soft hands with a strange unwonted labour; she hung the dangling stone from the beam, and parted the threads of the stuff with the comb’s many teeth, and wove the cloth with her shuttle, and so Cypris turned Athena. There was no laughing over that task; but as the cloth was woven, the monstrous thread pulled across swelled out and thickened the stuff, so that the warpthreads burst of themselves. Witnesses for the double labour of her skill were the Sun, and the lamp, and the Moon of her necessity. The dancers of Orchomenos who were attendants upon the Paphian had no dancing then to do; but Pasithea made the spindle run round, Peitho dressed the wool, Aglaia gave thread and yarn to her mistress. And weddings went all astray in human life. Time, the ancient who guides our existence, was disturbed, and lamented the bond of wedlock used no more; Eros unhonoured loosed his fiery bowstring, when he saw the world’s furrow unplowed and unfruitful. Then the harp made no lovely music, the syrinx did not sound, the clear pipes did not sing in clear tones Hymen Hymenaios the marriage-tune; but life dwindled, birth was hardsmitten, the bolts of indivisible union were shot back.

  [274] Industrious Athena saw the Paphian hard at work. Anger and laughter commingled came over her, as she beheld the long rough cords of inexperienced Cythereia. She told the immortals; and in a passion of jealousy reproached both Cypris and her father:

  [279] “So there are changes and chances in your gifts, Heavenly Father! I no longer manage the gift of the Fates, for your daughter Aphrodite has taken to weaving and stolen my lot. Athenaia has been robbed of her lot not by Hera the Queen, the sister and consort of my Zeus; but the mistress of the bedchamber, that soft goddess, affronts one armed with shield from her birth, Ageleia the plunderer! When has your cowardly Cythereia fo
ught for Olympos? what Titans has she destroyed with that womanish girdle, that she comes fresh from her battles to outrage me? Yes, and you, Archeress — tell me this, when have you seen Athena in your forest ° shooting arrows or hunting game? Who calls upon Brighteyes, when women are in labour?”

  [292] When she had spoken, the gods of Olympos came thronging to see Aphrodite working the loom. They gathered round and stared at the labours of the divine fumbler, amazed at her bungling work; and Hermes, who loved his joke, said laughing, “You have the loom, Cythereia, leave Athena your girdle! If you handle the thread and throw the shuttle, then raise also the furious spear and the aegiscape of Tritogenia. Ah, Cythereia, I know why you weave at the rattling loom. I understand your secret: no doubt your bridegroom Ares begs from you fine dress for the wedding. Weave your stuff for Ares, but don’t embroider a shield in the new cloth. What does Aphrodite want with shields? Put in Phaethon, the shining witness of your loves, who told tales of the furtive robber of your bed; if you like, put those old nets of yours in the pattern, and let your hand, if it can for shame, make a picture of the god who was the husband’s proxy. And you, Eros, leave your bow and help your mother in her passion for the distaff, twirl the spindle for her and spin the thread. Then I may call you weaver instead of winger, I may see the fiery god pulling the spool past the warp, instead of the arrows on the leather bowstring. Make Ares of gold beside golden Aphrodite; let him hold a shuttle instead of waving a shield, and embroider a double cloth with industrious Cythereia.

  [317] “No, Cythereia goddess, throw your threads to the winds out of those distaff-enamoured hands and use your stitched girdle. Take care once more of marriage; for the ancient nature of the world has all been going astray since you have been weaving cloth.”

  [321] As he finished, all the Olympians smiled. Then Cythereia thus put to shame before Brighteyes threw down the stuff of the cloth half finished, and away she went to her own Cyprus to be nurse of the human race; and Eros once more ordered all the varied forms of life by the girdle, sowing the circle of the well-plowed earth with the seed of generation.

  [327] Such was the melodious lay which Leucos wove, celebrating how Aphrodite untaught of the distaff, set up her great contest with industrious Athena.

  [330] But when they had surfeit of this table so well furnished with liquor, they fell on their beds in the wilderness spluttering wine: dropping on dappled fawnskins, or on spreads of leaves, or just spreading goatskins on the ground amid the deep dust. Some stretched their armoured bodies in the soldier’s sleep, and held traffic with battlerousing dreams, where one struck some Indian sitting on horseback, one pierced an Indian’s throat, one slew a footman with his sword, one wounded Deriades, one shot his bolt high in the air and wounded some huge elephant with his dream-arrow.

  [342] Tribes of leopards and wild packs of lions and hunting-dogs took turns in guarding Dionysos in the wilderness with sleepless eyes; all night they kept vigil in the mountain forest, that no assault of black Indians might approach him. Long lines of torches flashed up to Olympos, the lights of the dancing Bacchants which had no rest.

  BOOK XXV

  In the twenty-fifth you have the struggle of Perseus and the comparison of Heracles with the valour of Dionysos.

  O MUSE, once more fight the poets war with your thyrsus-wand of the mind: for not yet has Eastern Ares bent a servile knee and calmed the sevenyear conflict. The nestlings of the Indian planetree are shrinking again in horror at the dragon’s jaw-point, and thus they foretell war with Bacchos. I will not sing the first six lichtgangs, while the Indian army remained behind walls; I will make my pattern like Homer’s and sing the last year of warfare, I will describe that which has the number of my seventh sparrow. For sevengate Thebes I will brew my bowl of poesy, for she also dances wildly about me, baring her breast nymph-like over her robe in sorrow while she remembers Pentheus; old Cithairon urges me to sing, stretching out his mourning hand, fearing lest I proclaim the unhallowed bed or the fatherslaying son, the husband who lay beside her who bore him. I hear the twang of the Aonian lyre: tell me, Muses, what new Amphion is pulling dead stones to a run? I know where that sound comes from: surely it is the Dorian tune of Pindar’s lyre sounding for Thebes.

  [22] Once more let us slay the race of Erythraian Indians: for Time never saw before another struggle like the Eastern War, nor after the Indian War in later days has Enyo seen its equal. No such army came to Ilion, no such host of men. But I will set up the toils and sweat of Dionysos in rivalry with both new and old; I will judge the manhood of the sons of Zeus, and see who endured such an encounter, who was like unto Bacchos.

  [31] Nimbleknee Perseus, waving his winged feet, held his course near the clouds, a wayfarer pacing through the air, if he really did fly. But what was the good if he swung his ankles and swam the winds with that strange oarage of legs? and then crept up on tiptoe, keeping his footfall noiseless, and with hollowed hand and robber’s fist caught the roving eye of Phorcys’ unsleeping daughter, then shore off the snaky swathe of one Medusa, while her womb was still burdened and swollen with young, still in foal of Pegasus; what good if the sickle played the part of childbirth Eileithyia, and reaped the neck of the pregnant Gorgon, firstfruits of a horsebreeding neck? There was no battle when swiftshoe Perseus lifted the lifeless token of victory, the snaky sheaf of Gorgon hair, relics of the head dripping drops of blood, gently wheezing a half-heard hiss through the severed throats: he did not march to battle with men, no din of conflict was there then on land, no maritime Ares on the sea with battle-rousing winds bellied the sails of ships of war against a warrior Perseus, no Libyan Nereus was reddened with showers of blood, no fatal water swallowed a dead body rolling helplessly. No! Perseus fled with flickering wings trembling at the hiss of mad Sthenno’s hairy snakes, although he bore the cap of Hades and the sickle of Pallas, with Hermes’ wings though Zeus was his father; he sailed a fugitive on swiftest shoes, listening for no trumpet but Euryale’s bellowing — having despoiled a little Libyan hole! He slew no army of men, he burnt no city with fiery torch.

  [61] Far other was the struggle of Bromios. For Bacchos was no sneaking champion, crawling along in his armour; he laid no ambush for the sentinel eye of Phorcys, the ball of the sleepless eye that passed from hand to hand, giving each her share under the wing of sleep in turn; he won no womanish match over a Medusa unarmed. But he cut the lines of his enemies in a double victory, battle on land and tumult at the ford; he soaked the earth with gore, he mingled the waves with blood, he dyed the Nereids purple in their reddened streams, as he killed the barbarian hordes. Great was the harvest of highcrested Indians buried headless in mother earth; shoals of dead Indians slain by the sharp thyrsus floated at random and voyaged over the deep, a multitude! I pass by that billowy warfare, when the battlestirring river hurled his waves against invincible Lyaios, when the blazing torch of Bacchos kindled the barbarian stream with a damp spark, and watery Hydaspes with waves boiling hot puffed out smoke from his depths.

  [80] But you will say, “Perseus killed a monster of the sea; with the Gorgon’s eye he turned to stone a leviathan of the deep!” What was the good, if Polydectes, looking upon deadly Medusa’s eye, changed his human limbs to another kind and transformed himself into stone? The terrible exploits of Bacchos were not one Gorgon, not an airsoaring sea-beaten cliff, not a Polydectes. No, Bacchos reaped the stubble of snakehaired giants, a conquering hero with a tiny manbreaking wand, when he cast the battling ivy against Porphyrion, when he buffeted Encelados and drove off Alcyoneus with a volley of leaves: then the wands flew in showers, and brought the earthborn down in defence of Olympos, when the coiling sons of Earth with two hundred hands, who pressed the starry vault with manynecked heads, bent the knee before a flimsy javelin of vineleaves or a spear of ivy. Not so great a swarm fell to the fiery thunderbolt as fell to the manbreaking thyrsus.

  [98] Let us compare them, friends. Helios marvelled when he saw the sweat of Dionysos, as he slew Indians on the eastern soi
l: over the western gulf, Selene in the evening saw Perseus on wings outspread, after he had had a small task to do with a curving piece of bronze: as much as Phaethon has glory above the Moon, so much better than Perseus I will declare Bacchos to be. Inachos was witness of both, when the heavy bronze pikes of Mycenai resisted the ivy and deadly fennel, when Perseus sickle in hand gave way to Bacchos with his wand, and fled before the fury of Satyrs crying Euoi; Perseus cast a raging spear, and hit frail Ariadne unarmed instead of Lyaios the warrior. I do not admire Perseus for killing one woman, in her bridal dress still breathing of love.

  [113] Is he proud of the golden wooing of Zeus? But rainy Zeus did not raise Danae to his heaven, to glorify a few loving drops of creative dew in that furtive union. Semele did mount into heaven to touch one table with Zeus and the Blessed, to sit beside her son Dionysos of the vine; but Danae received no home in Olympos. She the bride of Zeus went voyaging in a chest over the sea, regretting the deceitful rain of wedded love, after the unstable happiness of a passing shower.

  [123] I know that Andromeda is to be seen in Olympos; but she is unhappy still even in the sky. Often the poor creature thus complained with reproachful voice:

  [126] “What good was it, bridegroom Perseus, that you brought me into the sky? A precious bridegift was your Olympos to me! The Seamonster chases me even here among the stars! After earth and all that terror of the sea, I still have chains like the old ones, even among the stars! Your heavenly sickle has not saved me. In vain Medusa’s eye softens for me in Olympos as it shines among the stars. The Monster chases me still, and you do not stretch your light wings! my mother Cassiepeia is vexed and presses me, because the poor thing must dive herself through the air into the brine, trembling at the Nereids and she deems the Bear happy in his course, never drenched in the Ocean never touching the sea; old Cepheus is unhappy still, when he sees Andromeda’s fear, and the Monster of Olympos coming, after what happened here on earth!”