Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [278] “And you, Pallas, fearless daughter, for whom Zeus was father and mother both, help your brother, the ornament of your country! Save your people who are following Dionysos, do not look on while the sons of your Marathon perish! Glorify the growth of your Athenian olive, which gave you a city. Grant this grace to old Icarios, for one day Dionysos will give his rich bunches of fruit to him also. Remember Triptolemos and the good plowman Celeos, and do not insult the fruitful baskets of Metaneira. For Zeus your fruitful father bore the birthpangs of the helper, your Bacchos of the vine, in his pregnant thigh, and you, the girl-child, in his head. Come now, raise the lance born along with you, shake your goatcape the aegis, the governor of war, be helper to my Satyrs, because they also wear hairy skins of the mountain goats; the god of countrymen himself, lord of the shepherd’s pipes, goatfoot Pan, needs your aegis-cape. He once helped to defend my inviolable sceptre and fought against the Titans, he once was mountainranging shepherd of the goat Amaltheia my nurse, who gave me milk; save him, for he in the aftertime shall help the Athenian battle, he shall slay the Medes and save shaken Marathon. Shake your aegis-cape and protect Lyaios, your brother in his black goatskin-cape, who shall drive out the Boiotian captain and save your country; then the citizen of Eleutho shall sing a hymn of salvation, calling Euoi for Apaturios the faithful son of Thyone, if Athens shall celebrate together in Phrygian tune, after her Limnaian Bacchos, Dionysos of Eleusis.

  [308] “O you family of Olympos, facing all ways! Ah, here is a great marvel! Hera of Argos stands by Deriades the foreigner; Athena of Attica renounces the warriors of Cecrops; my own Ares of Thrace true to his mother deserts my son Bacchos, and the Thracian host which follows Dionysos, and saves an Indian horde! But I alone fight for Dionysos with my blazing fire, one against all, until Bacchos shall destroy the black nation root and branch. And you Hephaistos, lover of the Maiden, bridegroom of creative Earth, do you sit still and care nothing for Marathon, where the wedding torch of the unwedded goddess is shining? I will not remind you of the mystical sparks of your everburning light. Remember the casket in that childcherishing maiden chamber, in which was the son of Earth, in which the Girl nursed your selfbegotten offspring with her manly breast. Lift up your axe that played the midwife, to save the people of your Athena with your delivering hatchet! Do you sit still, Hephaistos, and will not you save your children? Lift your accustomed torch to defend the Cabeiroi; turn your eye and see your ancient bride, your Cabeiro, reproaching you in love for her sons. Valiant Alcimacheia of Lemnos needs your valour!”

  [331] After this appeal the gods who dwelt in Olympos departed in haste. Athenaia and Apollo united together as helpers, and fiery Hephaistos went along with Tritogeneia. Hera joined herself to the other party of immortals, leading Ares by the hand, and wideflowing Hydaspes, to help the enemy with equal ardour. Rout and Terror went in their company, and with them cornbearing Deo, the rival of Bacchos, being jealous of lifegiving Dionysos who loved the grapes because he had discovered the beverage of wine; and this dimmed the pride of ancient Zagreus, the god who first of all had the name of Dionysos.

  BOOK XXVIII

  Look at the twenty-eighth also, where you will see a great fiery fight of Cyclopians.

  Now there was implacable conflict; for both Phaunos and Aristaios fought side by side, and Aiacos joined them, doing deeds worthy of Zeus his father, shaking the shield over his back, that shield of bronze curiously wrought on its disc with many patterns of fine art, which the Lemnian anvil had made.

  [7] And the host came armed in all its many forms, hastening in troops to the Indian War. One with his fleshcutting ivy stormed into battle, guiding a fine car with a team of panthers; one yoked lions of the Erythraian hills to his chariot, and drove the grim pair bristling under the yokestrap. Another sat tight on an unbridled bull, and amused himself by lashing its flanks, as he cast his javelins furiously among the black Indian ranks. Another leapt on the back of a bear of Cybele, and attacked the enemy, shaking the vinewrapt thyrsus and scaring the drivers of long-legged elephants. Another shot at the foe with fleshcutting ivy; no sword he had, no round buckler, no deadly spear of battle, but shaking clustered leaves of plants he killed the mailed man with a tiny twig. Thunder crashed like sounding pipes: the Seilenoi shouted, the Bacchant women came to battle with fawnskins thrown across their chests instead of a corselet. And a Satyr of the mountains sat astride on the back of a lioness, as if he were riding a colt.

  [27] The Indians on their part raised their warcry, and the barbarian pipes of war sounded to summon the host and assemble the fighting men. Garlands knocked against helmets, corselet against goatskin, thyrsus rushed upon spear, greaves were matched against buskins; rows of shields pressed against each other as the ranks which carried them met together, footmen against footmen; Pelasgian helmet pushed Mygdonian helmet with highnodding plume.

  [35] Many and various were the fates of the fighting men. One bounded high in air with the Bacchic dance; one lay groaning upon the ground; one merrily stamped his shoon; one gasped under a wound; one skipt in honour of Lyaios. Another let out the warcry from his lips, and sang of Ares’ lance, another of the festival of Dionysos; the warshout resounded together with the worship of Bromios, Euian tambours roared, trumpet blared with harp leading the combat and gathering the people, mingled gore with libation, confused bloodshed with dance.

  [45] There well to the front lightly poised on his foot, Phaleneus cast a spear straight at Deriades and struck the unbreakable coat of mail; the deadly point thus cast did not reach the flesh, but glanced off and stuck in the ground. Mighty Corymbasos noticed the enemy as he rushed at Deriades, and madly attacked him — struck his neck as he charged and sheared it through with his sword, mowing off the head: at the shearing stroke, Phaleneus headless and bathed in blood fell to the ground.

  [55] About him rose a tumultuous din. Dexiochos grazed the forehead of Phlogios, and his blade cleft the helmet and cut the brow: the wounded man, startled, moved back step by step and took shelter behind his brother’s great shield, as Aias used to receive his kinsman Teucros, that shooter of arrows against the Dardanian nation, under his sevenhide shield, and sheltered his brother and comrade under his father’s targe. In a moment, Corymbasos drew sword from sheath, and cut through the neck of Dexiochos with his blade. Quickly with a mad leap over the palpitating body came Clytios, a leader of the footmen, and raging wildly cast at high-crested Deriades; but Hera turned the spear away from the man, for she hated Clytios and Indian-slaying Dionysos both. Yet the warrior’s quick shot did not miss; it pierced the monstrous throat of the straightlegged elephant which Deriades rode, and killed the furious beast. The mountainous creature in agony cleverly shook the whole car which he carried on his black neck; and shooting out the trunk which curved round his face, disengaged the bloodstained ropes of his yokepads. The driver quickly dived under the famous yoke, and sword in hand, cut the mass of knotted straps which held the yoke over the neck; then Celaineus brought a new one hightowering from the wide stables and got it ready.

  [81] Now Clytios grew bold with hope of victory undisputed. He challenged the slayer of Dexiochos in a madman’s voice, and uttered fatal words with insulting tongue:

  [84] “Stand, dog! Flee not from me, Corymbasos! I will show you what javelin-throwers are the servants of Lyaios! I will lead you all captive into Phrygia — this my spear shall devastate the cities of India — after the Indian-slaying victory I will make Deriades the lackey of Dionysos! The virgin shall loose her maidenhood without bridegifts — she shall accept a shaggychested Satyr for husband, an Indian ravished beside Mygdonian Hermos!”

  [92] Corymbasos was infuriated by these words. Clytios was too late — the other shore through his throat as he spoke. The head bounded high with a leap of fate, raining drops of blood on the dust.

  [96] Corymbasos left the dead body dancing and rolling on the ground, and scattered the Seilenoi, Corymbasos chief of the Indians pre-eminent for valour next to Morrheus and their kin
g. He struck Sebes the spearman above the circle of his breast, and drove the spear of bronze into the flesh, drew out the bloody spear and left him there in a heap of dust. He leapt upon Oinomaos: he was retreating quick as the wind with startled foot towards the army of Bromios, but the other saw him and pursued, and thrust his spear into the middle of his back — the point leapt in and went through the belly with the thrust and out at the midnipple. The man transfixed with the bloody steel and new-slain sprawled flat on his face in the dust; the mist of death came down on his eyelids. But the prodigious hero did not cease from slaughter. Four helmeted warriors were killed by this one slayer, Tyndarios and Thoon and Autesion and Onites.

  [113] Many a dead man also was there, just slain, yet he fell not forward to the ground, he lay not stretched out on his back: no, though dead he stood firmly on the earth, like a warrior fighting in the front, as if poising a spear, as if drawing bow and aiming a quick shot at a mark. The valiant dead, yearning for battle after fate had found him, compelled the threads of the Fates, like one casting a light spear, pierced from head to foot with arrows from countless bows, a standing image of Ares. The warriors gazed with wondering eyes at the dead spearman, who still held his spear and had not dropt his oxhide, a spearman corpse, a targeteer without life.

  [126] One struck an Athenian, and shore off his right arm with the dreadful steel, cutting through the top of the shoulder; the limb just cut off with shoulder attached, fell rolling in the dance of death and scoring along a stretch of yellow dust. The man would have pulled the long spear out of the rolling hand and made fight again with a long throw, battling with spear throwing left instead of right; but an enemy blocked his way and got in first, cutting off the left at the shoulder in its turn. The arm fell to the ground, and a farshot spout of bloody dew struck the slayer and drenched him with crimson drops; on the ground the poor hand went madly rolling and jumping, reddened with blood, while the curved fingers caught a good handful of earth in its imprisoning clutch, as if gripping again the shieldstrap. The man shed a soldier’s tears, and spoke:

  [144] “What I want is another hand, that with three hands I may do deeds worthy of Tritogeneia! Never mind — I will pursue the enemy, if I leave my hands behind. So much remains for my valour! Then all may tell a double-handed glory for Athens, how her sons are heroes when their hands are cut off and they have nothing but feet!”

  [150] So saying, he rushed like the wind into the battle, and attacked his destroyer unarmed. The enemy stared at him in amazement one and all, and surrounded the half-soldier on all sides; he quite alone received stab after stab, as the steel struck again and again with merciless blows, until at last he fell to the ground, a warlike image preserving the memory of the progenitor for a citizen of later days.

  [158] Not only those who fought on foot were cut down; there was death for the horsemen too. On they went, one bringing fate for another. Rider caught rider, piercing his back with a spear as he fled before, or striking him face to face on the breast; he shook him away in the dust, new-slain, as he sat his horse. One horse struck by an arrow in the flank, shook off his rider headlong upon the ground, even as Pegasos flying high in the air as swift in his course as the wandering wind, threw Bellerophontes.

  Another in terror slipt off the horse’s back and fell to the ground at full length over the horse’s belly and hung by his side like a tumbler, and rolled along dragging his head on the ground with his feet on the horse’s back.

  [172] Now the grim Cyclopes, allies of Zeus, surrounded the fighters. Argilipos lifted a shining torch and shed light on the throng through the dark clouds. He was armed with a firebarbed thunderbolt from the underworld, and fought with firebrands: the swarthy Indians trembled, amazed at that fire so like the heavenly firebursts. A champion all of fire he was, and the sparks of earthborn lightning showered upon the enemies’ heads. The Cyclops conquered ash-pikes and countless swords, shaking his hot missiles and his flashing points, with brands for his arrow’s: one upon another, countless, he burnt the Indian men with the blazing shafts, chastising with pretended thunderbolt not one Salmoneus alone, slaying not only one enemy of God; not one Euadne alone groaned, or only one Capaneus was scorched up.

  [187] Steropes also was armed with a mimic lightning, which he brandished like the lightningflash of the sky, but an extinguishable brand, the child of Western flame, seed of Sicilian fire and that smoky forge; a dark pall covered it like a cloud, and beneath it he now hid the light, now showed it, in alternating movements, just like the flashes in the sky; for the lightning comes in flashes and goes again.

  [195] Brontes also was in the battle, rattling a noisy tune with a din like rolling thunderclaps: he poured an earthborn shower of his own with strange drops falling through the air, and lasting but a moment — an unreal Zeus he was, with imitated raindrops and no clouds. Then leaving the artificial noise of this mock thunder, he armed himself with Sicilian steel against the enemy; swinging the iron hammer high over his shoulders he smashed many an enemy head, and struck the dusky ranks right and left, with a clang like the blows as if he were ever striking on the hammerbeaten anvil of Etna.

  [206] Next he broke off a crag from a farspreading rock, and rushed upon Deriades with this stony spear. He hurled the huge rock with merciless hand against the blackskin king who stood ready, and struck his hairy chest with its rocky point. The king was wholly staggered with the heavy blow of this huge millstone full on his chest, like a drunken man; but Hydaspes rescued his stricken son from death. The bold king, crushed by the blow, dropt the furious spear from his never-tiring hands, the twentycubit spear of bronze, and threw his shield on the ground out of his shamed grasp, with little breath left in him; struck on the round of his breast by the pointed stone, he fell down headlong out of his lofty car like a tall high-crested firtree, which falling encompasses a vast space of wide earth. The Indians crowded round him and lifted him into the car, fearing that the ugly Cyclops might get another crag of some lofty hill and throw again, and slay their king with the rough missile — for he was as tall as highcrested Polyphemos. In the middle of this grim champion’s forehead glared the light of one single round eye; the blackskin Indians shook with wonder and fear when they saw the eye of the grim Cyclops; they thought Olympian Selene must have come down from the sky and risen in the earth-born Cyclops’s face, shining with her full orb, to defend Lyaios.

  [233] Father Zeus, seeing how the Cyclops imitated his own noise, laughed on high in the clouds that the earth was then flooded with a strange kind of shower from earthclouds upon its bosom, a new experience, while the thirsty air had no downpour through its bare dry expanse.

  [238] Trachios also reared his head: and Elatreus, marching beside his brother, held and shook a shield like a towering crag, and held a long firtree high in the clouds, sweeping off the enemies’ heads with his treespear.

  [241] Euryalos reared his head. He cut off a large body of fugitives in the battle, away from the plain and down towards the sea, shutting the Indian companies into the fishgiving gulf; so he conquered his foes over the lancebearing main as he thrust his twenty-cubit blade through the water. Then with long poleaxe he split off a rock near the brine, and threw it at his adversaries; many then felt the threads of Fate in double fashion without burial, struck with the jagged missile, and brinedrowned in watery strife.

  [257] Another Cyclops of the tribe went raging and scattering his foes, the prime warrior Halimedes, a monster with towering limbs; guarding himself he held before his great round eye a bossy oxhide shield. Then Phlogios the avenger of the slain Indians saw him; he rounded his bow, and drew back the windswift shaft to pierce the eye in that forehead — and he would have done it, but as he aimed, the highheaded Cyclops saw the coming attack, and dodged the blow of the flying arrow by shifting aside. Then the other poised a rock and threw the rough missile at Phlogios; but he retreated and stood by the car of oxhorned Deriades, and thus just evaded the sharp stone flying through the air, and there he remained. But Halime
des, angry that Phlogios had retreated, opened his deadly throat, and with one loud roar slew twelve men by pouring out one man-destroying boom of his furious voice.

  [274] The warcries of the Cyclopes made Olympos ring with their terrible sounds; and the dancers of battle, the Dictaian Corybants, joined in the battle.

  [277] Damneus fought and pursued the enemy tribes.... On the plain the warcry sounded. Prymneus succoured the excited Bacchant women, like a fair wind which blows astern and saves the mariner riding with the gales; full welcome he came to the army, as Polydeuces brings calm to buffeted ships when he puts to sleep the heavy billows of the galebreeding sea.

  [278] Ocythoos with light quick step scared away the warriors. Many he slew with speedy fate, bringing down one with spear in stand-up fight, one with a shot at a distant view, cutting down another with horrid knife; another still running onwards and flying like to the breezes the furious pursuer caught, plying his knees and feet quick as the wind — as good a runner as Iphiclos, who used to skim the untrodden calm only touching the surface with the soles of his feet, and passed over a field of corn without bending the tops of the ears with his travelling footsteps. Ocythoos was like him windfooted.

  [288] Mimas was in the thick of the fray, making a dance of battle with woven paces and frightening the host, swinging a capering sword, the dancer-at-arms skipping in dead earnest with knowing leaps; as once the pyrrhic dance raised a noise in the ears of Cronos, and clanged sword on shield on Mount Ida, and rang out a valiant din to deceive the enemy, as he screened the stealthy nurture of growing Zeus. So mailclad Mimas brandished his spear in air in mimicry of the dance-at-arms, as he cut down the heads of his foes, an iron harvest of battle; so he offered the firstfruits of the enemy to witnessing Bacchos with Indianslaying axe and doublebiting sword; so he poured his libation of blood and gore to Dionysos, instead of the sacrifice of cattle and the wonted drinkoffering of wine.