Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [382] Then Dionysos dispersed his entangling fruit, and broke off the fettering grapes from Deriades; then shedding the twines of ivy, he undid the wreathing garland of garden-vines from the yoked elephants’ necks. Yet Deriades, now free from the woody bonds of the long branching clusters crawling of themselves, and the constraint which threatened him, did not desist from his wonted threats and boasts. Once more he was the chieftain defying the gods; he only hesitated whether to slay Bacchos or to make him a slave.

  [391] But darkness surrounded both armies and put a stop to the fight. Night past, the battle began again; when they awoke from sleep and bed, the succeeding dawn armed them once more.

  [394] Not yet was it the end of conflict for impatient Dionysos; yet first there must be many cycles of rolling years while the trumpet blazed the tune of war in vain; but after the varied course of so many battle-stirring years, now the conflict of Bacchos grew more violent for the end.

  [399] Now the Rhadamanes of Dicte did not neglect the command of warmad Dionysos, nor left it for the forgetful winds to care for; but with one accord they built ships of war for Lyaios. Through the woods they were busy, some here, some there. One was turning pegs, one worked at the middle of the keel, one fitted the planks straight over the pairs of ribs, and fastened the long sideplanks fixed to the ribs making the vessel’s wall; an Arabian shipwright raised upright in the middle of the deep mastbox the mast amidships, reserved for the spreading sail; and skilled workmen of deft Hephaistos and Athena rounded the wooden yard for the top.

  [412] So they wrought ships for Bacchos with really incomparable art. And Dionysos amid the anxieties of war remembered the prophecy of his own Rheia: that the end of the war would be seen, when Bacchants fought by sea against Indians.

  [417] Lycos appointed by irrevocable command of Dionysos to serve as commander on the surface of the sea, drove his seachariot undrenched travelling upon its way to the place, where the Rhadamanes, those clever voyagers into foreign parts, had built the ships for seafaring Dionysos. And then circling Time, rolling the wheel of the fourseason year, was whirling along for the sixth year. King Deriades summoned to assembly the blackskin nation of Indians; the herald with hurrying steps went gathering the people and cried his call in their different languages. At once the many tribes of Indians assembled, and sat down in companies on rows of benches, and prince Morrheus addressed the assembly:

  [430] “You all know, I think, my friends, what labours I went through among the mountain strongholds, until the Cilician land and the Assyrian nation bowed their necks as slaves under the yoke of Deriades. You know also what I have done in resisting Dionysos, fighting Satyrs, and cutting off the hateful heads of that oxhorned generation with shearing steel, when I dragged away and delivered to Deriades that fettered swarm of Bassarids, the prizes of war; and how the paved streets of the city were purpled by their gore as they were massacred, how others had a dance in the air with their necks choked in a throttling noose, how others were swallowed in a deepdug hollow pit and learnt what a watery death is like. But again I weave a better notion still for our people. I hear that the Rhadamanes have built ships for Dionysos the runaway by some woodcutter’s art of theirs. However, I fear not the seafighting tree! When was it known in war that women with paltry leaves kill a man in a ship full of shields? When will highhorn Pan, the crazy ranger of the hills, tear Indian ships to pieces with sharp claws? No Seilenos can row’ over the loudrumbling waters, and sink a ship of war with a peaceful ferule, leaping to bloody dance with frenzied foot, striking up a chant with death in it; in the sea he will never transfix a man with his bullhorns, and get near enough to cut him in two at the waist and vanquish him. No! one blow shall send him headlong, and he shall lie in the billow where he will find no tomb; the Bacchant women struck down with long spears shall sink into the depths of the sea soiled in blood. And the ships of Dionysos I will destroy, thrusting a twentycubit seafighting spear through the hulk!

  [462] “Come on, friends, fight with all confidence. Let no one shrink when he sees opposed to us the ships of Bacchos in line; for Indians are used to fighting by sea, indeed they have more prowess when they fight by sea than by land. My invincible steel shall not take many Satyrs; but instead of two hundred warriors I will drag home one by the hair alone, womanmad Dionysos, to be the servant of Deriades.”

  [470] With this appeal, Morrheus, cunning man, persuaded implacable Deriades. The people all cheered loudly and applauded the speech: one concordant cry resounded from all throats like the noise of stirring waves. The king dismissed the assembly. The herald was sent to Bromios to declare war by sea against willing Bacchos.

  [476] But both men agreed to forbid war and make a truce for three circuits of the moon, until they should do the solemn burial rites for the host of the dead who had fallen. So for a short time there was peace, never far from war, spreading abroad a calm that was pregnant with strife.

  BOOK XXXVII

  When the thirty-seventh takes its turn, there are contests about the tomb, the men competing for prizes.

  So the Indians, now sensible and busy with friendship, threw their Bacchic war to the winds, and buried their dead with tearless eyes, as prisoners now set free from the earthy chains of human life, and the soul returning whence it came, back to the starting-place in the circling course. So the army of Bacchos had rest.

  [7] When Dionysos saw friendly calm instead of war, early in the morning he sent out mules and their attendant men to bring dry wood from the mountains, that he might burn with fire the dead body of Opheltes.

  [11] Their leader into the forest of pines was Phaunos who was well practised in the secrets of the lonely thickets which he knew so well, for he had learnt about the highland haunts of Circe his mother. The woodman’s axe cut down the trees in long rows. Many an elm was felled by the long edge of the axe, many an oak with leaves waving high struck down with a crash, many a pine lay all along, many a fir stooped its dry needles; as the trees were felled far and wide, little by little the rocks were bared. So many a Hamadryad Nymph sought another home, and swiftly joined the unfamiliar maids of the brooks.

  [22] Parties coming up would often meet, men on the hills traversing different mountain-paths. One saw them up aloft, out in front, coming down, crossing over, with feet wandering in all directions. The sticks were packed in bundles with ropes well twisted and fastened tight and trim, and laid on the mules’ backs; the animals set out in lines, and the hooves rang on the mountain-paths as they hurried along, the surface of the sandy dust was burdened by heavy logs dragged behind. Satyrs and Pans were busy; some cut wood with axes,... some pulled it from tree after tree with their hands,... or lifted trunks with untiring arms and rattled over the rocks with dancing feet. All this woodmen laid out upon the earth, where Euios had marked a place on the ground for the tomb of Opheltes.

  [37] There was a great swarm of men from different cities. Over the body they cut the tress of mourning with the steel of sadness. Groaning for him, they streamed one after another, and covered the whole body with their hair each in his turn. Bacchos lamented the dead with unmournful face and tearless eyes, and cutting one lock from his uncropt head he laid it upon Opheltes as his gift.

  [44] The Idaian servants of mountainbred Dionysos built the pyre a hundred feet this way and that way, and on the middle of the pyre they laid out the body.

  Asterios of Dicte drew the sword that hung by his side, and cut the throats of twelve swarthy Indians over the body, then brought and laid them in a close orderly circle around it. There also he placed jars of honey and oil. Many oxen and sheep of the flock were butchered in front of the pyre; he heaped the bodies of the slain cattle round the body, together with rows of newly slaughtered horses, taking from each of them in turn all the fat which he laid like a rich girdle all round the body.

  [56] Now fire was wanted. So Phaunos the son of rock-loving Circe, the frequenter of the wilderness, who dwelt in the Tyrsenian land, who had learnt as a boy the works of his wild
mother, brought from a rock the firebreeding stones which are tools of the mountain lore; and from a place where thunderbolts falling from heaven had left trusty signs of victory, he brought the relics of the divine fire to kindle the pyre of the dead. With the sulphur of the divine bolt he smeared and anointed the hollows of the two firebreeding stones. Then he scraped off a light dry sprig of Erythraian growth and put it between the two stones; he rubbed them to and fro, and thus striking the male against the female, he drew forth the fire hidden in the stone to a spontaneous birth, and applied it to the pyre where the wood from the forest lay.

  [70] But the fire kindled would not run round the dead man’s pyre; so the god came near, and fixing his eye on Phaethon, called upon Euros the eastern wind to bring him a breeze to blow on his pyre and help. As Bromios called, the Morning Star hard by heard his appeal, and sent his brother to Lyaios, to make the pyre burn up by his brisker breath.

  [77] The Wind left the rosy chamber of Dawn his mother, and fanned the blazing pyre all night long, stirring up the windfed leaping fire; the wild breezes, neighbours of the sun, shot the gleams into the air. Along with sorrowing Lyaios, Asterios of Dicte who was one of his kindred, holding a twohandled cup of sweet fragrant wine, made the dust of the earth drunken in honour of the soul of Arestor’s son now carried on the wind.

  [86] But when morning, the harbinger of Dawn’s dewy car, scored the night with his ruddy gleams, then all awoke, and quenched their comrade’s pyre with cups of Bacchos’s juice in turn. Then the hot wind returned on quick pinions to the lightbringing mansion of Helios. Asterios collected the bones, and wrapping them in folded fat laid the relics of the dead in a golden urn. Then the whirling Corybants, since their lot was cast in the haunts of Ida, gave burial to the body as an inhabitant of one country, a true-born son of Crete, and digging the foundations deep they made his round tomb in a hollow dug in the earth, and last of all they poured foreign dust over Opheltes. They built up his barrow with taller stones, and engraved these lines on this monument of their recent sorrow: “Here lies Arestor’s son who untimely died: Cnossian, Indianslayer, comrade of Bromios, Opheltes.”

  [103] Then the god of the vine brought the funeral prizes. He kept the people there, and marked out a wide space for games with the goal for a chariot-race. There was on the ground a stone of a fathom’s width, rounded into a half-circle, like the moon, well smoothed on its two sides, such as an old craftsman has fashioned and rounded with industrious hands wishing to make the statue of a god. A giant Cyclops lifted this in his hands and set it in the earth for a stone turning-post, and fixed another like it at the opposite end. There were various prizes, cauldron, tripod, shields, horses, silver, Indian jewels, cattle, Pactolian silt.

  [116] The god offered prizes of victory for the charioteers. For the first, a bow and Amazonian quiver, a demilune buckler, and one of those warlike women, whom once as he walked on the banks of Thermodon he had taken while bathing and brought to the Indian city. For the second, a bay mare swift as the north wind, with long mane overshadowing her neck, still in foal and gone half her time and her belly swollen with the burden her mate had begotten. For the third, a corselet, and a shield for the fourth. This was a masterpiece made on the Lemnian anvil and adorned with gold patterns; the round boss in the middle was wrought with silver ornaments. For the fifth, two ingots, treasure from the banks of Pactolos. Then he stood up and encouraged the drivers:

  [131] “My friends, whom Ares has taught citystorming war, to whom Seabluehair has given the racer’s horsemanship! You whom I urge are men not unacquainted with hardship, but used to heavy toils; for our warriors hold dear all sorts of manly prowess.

  If one is of Lydian birth from Tmolos, he will do deeds worthy of the victorious racing of Pelops. If one comes from the land of Pisa, nurse of horses, a man of Elis with its fine chariots, a countryman of Oinomaos, he knows the sprigs of Olympian wild olive: but this is not the race of Oinomaos, our drivers here have not the goad of a marriage fatal to strangers — this is a race for honour and free from the Foamborn. If one has the land of Aonia or the blood of Phocis, he knows the Pythian contest honoured by Apollo. If he holds Marathon, rich in olives, the home of artists, he knows those jars teeming with rich juice. If one is a habitant of the fruitful land of Achaia, he has learnt of Pellene, where men wage a shivery contest for the welcome prize of a woollen cloak, a coat to huddle up their cold limbs in winter. If he has grown up to live in sea-girdled Corinth, he knows the Isthmian contest of our Palaimon.”

  [154] He spoke, and the leaders came hastening up and ran round each to his chariot. First Erechtheus brought his horse Bayard under the yoke, and if they are from the regions near Delphi (144), they are neighbours of the Pythian Games (that these were not founded till centuries later does not seem to trouble Nonnos). If they are from the Isthmus of Corinth (152-153) they are to remember that the Games there are in honour of Palaimon (cf ix. 90). Apparently a chronological scruple prevents him naming the Nemean Games, said to have been founded by the Seven champions on their way to Thebes. Of the minor Games, the prizes for which were not wreaths but objects of value, he mentions (146) the (Heracleia at) Marathon, but obviously confuses them with the Panathenaia, for the Marathonian prizes were silver goblets (schol. Find. 01. xiii. 110), oil being the prize of the Panathenaia. In 148-149 the allusion is to the Hermaia at Pellene in Achaia, where the prize was a woollen cloak. Probably he had his information from Pindar and his scholiast. fastened in his mare Swiftfoot; both sired by North-wind Boreas in winged coupling when he dragged a stormfoot Sithonian Harpy to himself, and the Wind gave them as loveprice to his goodfather Erechtheus when he stole Attic Oreithyia for his bride.

  [162] Second, Actaion swung his Ismenian lash. Third was speedyfoal Scelmis, offspring of Earthshaker lord of the wet, who often cut the water of the sea driving the car of his father Poseidon. Fourth Phaunos leapt up, who came into the assembly alone bearing the semblance of his mother’s father, with four horses under his yoke like Helios; and fifth Achates mounted his Sicilian chariot, one insatiable for horsemanship, full of the passion which belongs to the river that feeds the olivetrees of Pisa. For he lived in the land of the nymph loved by hapless Alpheios, who brings to Arethusa as a gift of love his garlanded waters untainted by the brine.

  [174] Bold Actaion was led away from the crowd by his father, who addressed these loving injunctions to his eager son:

  [176] “My son, your father Aristaios has more experience than you. I know you have strength enough, that in you the bloom of youth is joined with courage; for you have in you the blood of Apollo my father, and our Arcadian mares are stronger than any for the race. But all this is in vain, neither strength nor running horses know how to win, as much as the driver’s brains. Cunning, only cunning you want; for horseracing needs a smart clever man to drive.

  [185] “Then listen to your father, and I will teach you too all the tricks of the horsy art which time has taught me, and they are many and various. Do your best, my boy, to honour your father by your successes. Horseracing brings as great a repute as war; do your best to honour me on the racecourse as well as the battlefield. You have won a victory in war, now win another, that I may call you prizewinner as well as spearman. My dear boy, do something worthy of Dionysos your kinsman, worthy both of Phoibos and of skilful Cyrene, and outdo the labours of your father Aristaios. Show your horsemastery, win your event like an artist, by your own sharp wits; for without instruction one pulls the car off the course in the middle of a race, it wanders all over the place, and the obstinate horses in their unsteady progress are not driven by the whip or obedient to the bit, the driver as he turns back misses the post, he loses control, the horses run away and carry him back where they will. But one who is a master of arts and tricks, the driver with his wits about him, even with inferior horses, keeps straight and watches the man in front, keeps a course ever close to the post, wheels his car round without ever scratching the mark. Keep your eyes open, please, and tighten the
guiding rein swinging the whole near horse about and just clearing the post, throwing your weight sideways to make the car tilt, guide your course by needful measure, watch until as your car turns the hub of the wheel seems almost to touch the surface of the mark with the near-circling wheel. Come very near without touching; but take care of the stone, or you may strike the post with the axle against the turning-post and wreck both horses and car together. As you guide your team this way and that way on the course, act like a steersman; ply the prick, scold and threaten the whip without sparing, press the off horse, lift him to a spurt, slacken the hold of the bit and don’t let it irk him. Manage your car like a good steersman; guide your car on a straight course, for the driver’s mind is like a car’s rudder if he drives with his head.”

  [224] With this advice, he turned away and retired, having taught his son the various tricks of his trade as a horseman, which he knew so well himself.

  [226] One after another as usual each put a blind hand into the helmet, turning away his face, and hoping to get the uncertain lot in his favour, as one who shakes his fingers for a throw of the doubtful dice far from him. So the leaders in turn took their lots. Horsemad Phaunos, offspring of the famous blood of Phaethon, was first by lot, and Achates was second, next came the brother of Damnamenes, and next to him Actaion; but the best racer of all got the last lot, horsewhipper Erechtheus.

  [236] Then the drivers lifted their leather whips, and stood in a row each in his chariot. The umpire was honest Aiacos; his duty was to view the crown-eager drivers turning the post, and to watch with unerring eyes how the horses ran. He was the witness of truth, to settle quarrels and differences.

  [242] The race started from the barrier. Off they went — one leading in the course, one trying to catch him as he raced in front, another chasing the one between, and the last ran close to the latter of these two and strove to graze his chariot. As they got farther on driver caught driver and ran car against car, then shaking the reins forced off the horses with the jagged bit. Another neck and neck with a speeding rival ran level in the doubtful race, now crouching sideways, now stretching himself, now upright when he could not help it, with bent hips urging the willing horse, just a touch of the master’s hand and a light flick of the whip. Again and again he would turn and look back for fear of the car of the driver coming on behind: or as he made speed, the horse’s hoof in the spring of his prancing feet would be slipping into a somersault, had not the driver checked his still hurrying pace and so held back the car which pressed him behind. Again, one in front with another driver following behind would change his course to counter the rival car, moving from side to side uncertainly so as to bar the way to the other who pressed him close. And Scelmis, offspring of the Earthshaker, swung Poseidon’s sea-whip and drove his father’s team bred in the sea; not Pegasos flying on high so quickly cut the air on his long wings, as the feet of the seabred horses covered their course on land unapproachable.