Works of Nonnus

by Nonnus

  [654] When he had ended, he went on fighting: the Bacchants fell to, the Satyrs joined the battle. Over the head of Bromios Perseus flew in the air, flapping his light wings; but Iobacchos lifted his body and rose wingless on high near to the heavens with larger limbs over flying Perseus, and brought his hand near the sevenring sky, and touched Olympos, and crushed the clouds: Perseus quivered with fear as he saw the right hand of Dionysos out of reach and touching the sun, catching hold of the moon.

  [664] So he left Dionysos and fought with the mad Bacchants. He shook in his hand the deadly face of Medusa, and turned armed Ariadne into stone. Bacchos was even more furious when he saw his bride all stone. He would have sacked Argos and razed Mycene to the ground and mowed down the whole host of Danaans, yes even wounded invulnerable Hera herself, who was fighting unrecognized in the false borrowed shape of a mortal, a seer, and Swiftshoe Perseus would have perished, fate or no fate, — but Hermes appeared behind him with winged shoes and pulled him back by his golden hair, and calmed him with friendly words to avert the ruin:

  [676] “Trueborn offspring of Zeus, if bastard for jealous Hera! You know how I saved you from the fires that fell from heaven, and entrusted you to those Nymphs, the daughters of river Lamos, when still a little child; how again I carried you in my arms to the house of Ino your fostering nurse. Then show gratitude, my brother, to your saviour the son of Maia, and still this feud of brothers — for both Perseus and Dionysos are offspring of one sire. Do not reproach the people of Argos, nor the sickle of Perseus, for he arms not willingly for this war. But Hera has armed him, and she is fighting openly in the shape of the seer Melampus. Retire and leave the strife, or Hera irreconcilable may overwhelm you again in her might. But you will urge the fate of your bride. She has died in battle, a glorious fate, and you ought to think Ariadne happy in her death, because she found one so great to slay her, one sprung from heaven and of no mortal stock, one who killed the seamonster and beheaded horsebreeding Medusa. The Fates’ threads obey not persuasion. For Electra died, the bedfellow of heavenly Zeus; Europa herself disappeared after the Olympian bed, the sister of your Cadmos, she who was wedded to Zeus; your mother perished too, while she still carried you in her womb; Semele entered not the gates of Olympos before death, but after she had received her fate. And your bride even in death shall enter the starspangled sky, and she will be seen near Maia my mother among the seven travelling Pleiads. What could Ariadne wish more welcome than to live in the heavens and give light to the earth, after Crete? Come now, lay down your thyrsus, let the winds blow battle away, and fix the selfmade image of mortal Ariadne where the image of heavenly Hera stands. Do not sack the city where the stock of your parents remains, but still your thyrsus, and respect the country of cowhorn Io. You will praise the women of Achaia by and by, when they shall build an altar to bullface Hera and your charming bride.”

  [713] So he spoke, and leaving Argos the land of horses returned to the sky, after he had mingled a league of friendship between Perseus and Dionysos. Nor did Argive Hera remain long in that place; but putting off her pretended mortal body she took her divine form and returned to Olympos. Then old Melampus addressed the Icarian host, he the offspring of divine Pelasgian Lynceus founder of the race: —

  [721] “Obey your seer, and shake your tambours in honour of wineface Bacchos, shake your bronze tambours and the Euian cymbals of Rheia, that he may not wipe out the whole Inachian race, that he may not destroy the young men after the little children, that he may not kill the wives after their offspring. Come, do sacrifice to Bacchos and Zeus, and please the gods heart, and dance before Perseus and Dionysos.”

  [727] They did as he bade them. The people gathered together, and struck up a song with nightly dances for Bacchos and performed the holy rites: in the pious dance the tambours rattled, the feet beat the ground, the torches blazed. All the people in company smeared their cheeks with white mystic chalk. Kettledrums rattled, the double tap sounded as the bronze was beaten. Altars were red with bulls slaughtered in rows one after another, a multitude of sheep were killed. At the burning altar men made their peace with Bacchos, women won his grace. Women’s voices resounded in the air echoing in turn the song of salvation; Inachian women and Mainad women cast their deluding fury to the winds.

  BOOK XLVIII

  In the forty-eighth, seek the blood of the giants, and look out for Pallene and the son of sleeping Aura.

  Now Bacchos quitted the horsebreeding soil of ancient Phoroneus, and mounted in his round car behind the team of panthers passed in revelry over the Thracian land. But Inachian Hera had not softened her rancorous rage for Argos maddened; she remembered the frenzy of the Achaian women and prepared again to attack Bacchos. She addressed her deceitful prayers to Allmother Earth, crying out upon the doings of Zeus and the valour of Dionysos, who had destroyed that cloud of numberless earthborn Indians; and when the lifebringing mother heard that the son of Semele had wiped out the Indian nation with speedy fate, she groaned still more thinking of her children. Then she armed all round Bacchos the mountainranging tribes of giants, earth’s own brood, and goaded her huge sons to battle:

  [15] “My sons, make your attack with hightowering rocks against clustergarlanded Dionysos — catch this Indianslayer, this destroyer of my family, this son of Zeus, and let me not see him ruling with Zeus a bastard monarch of Olympos! Bind him, bind Bacchos fast, that he may attend in the chamber when I bestow Hebe on Porphyrion as a wife, and give Cythereia to Chthonios, when I sing Bright-eyes the bedfellow of Encelados, and Artemis of Alcyoneus. Bring Dionysos to me, that I may enrage Cronion when he sees Lyaios a slave and the captive of my spear. Or wound him with cutting steel and kill him for me like Zagreus, that one may say, god or mortal, that Earth in her anger has twice armed her slayers against the breed of Cronides — the older Titans against the former Dionysos, the younger Giants against Dionysos later born.”

  [31] With these words she excited all the host of the Giants, and the battalions of the Earthborn set forth to war, one bearing a bulwark of Nysa, one who had sliced off with steel the flank of a cloud high precipice, each with these rocks for missiles armed him against Dionysos; one hastened to the conflict bearing the rocky hill of some land with its base in the brine, another with a reef torn from a brinegirt isthmus. Peloreus took up Pelion with high towering peak as a missile in his innumerable arms, and left the cave of Philyra bare: as the rocky roof of his cave was pulled off, old Cheiron quivered and shook, that figure of half a man growing into a comrade horse. But Bacchos held a bunch of giants bane vine, and ran at Alcyoneus with the mountain upraised in his hands: he wielded no furious lance, no deadly sword, but he struck with his bunch of tendrils and shore off the multitudinous hands of the Giants; the terrible swarms of ground bred serpents were shorn off by those tippling leaves, the Giants’ heads with those viper tresses were cut off and the severed necks danced in the dust. Tribes innumerable were destroyed; from the slain Giants ran everflowing rivers of blood, crimson torrents newly poured coloured the ravines red. The swarms of earthbred snakes ran wild with fear before the tresses of Dionysos viper-enwreathed.

  [56] Fire was also a weapon of Bacchos. He cast a torch in the air to destroy his adversaries: through the high paths ran the Bacchic flame leaping and curling over itself and shooting down corrosive sparks on the Giants’ limbs; and there was a serpent with a blaze in his threatening mouth, half-burnt and whistling with a firescorched throat, spitting out smoke instead of a spurt of deadly poison.

  [63] There was infinite tumult. Bacchos raised himself and lifted his fighting torch over the heads of his adversaries, and roasted the Giants’ bodies with a great conflagration, an image on earth of the thunderbolt cast by Zeus. The torches blazed: fire was rolling all over the head of Encelados and making the air hot, but it did not vanquish him — Encelados bent not his knee in the steam of the earthly fire, since he was reserved for a thunderbolt. Vast Alcyoneus leapt upon Lyaios armed with his Thracian crags; he lifted over Bac
chos a cloud high peak of wintry Haimos — useless against that mark, Dionysos the invulnerable. He threw the cliff, but when the rocks touched the fawnskin of Lyaios, they could not tear it, and burst into splinters themselves. Typhoeus towering high had stript the mountains of Emathia (a younger Typhoeus in all parts like the older, who once had lifted many a rugged strip of his mother earth), and cast the rocky missiles at Dionysos. Lord Bacchos pulled away the sword of one that was gasping on the ground and attacked the Giants’ heads, cutting the snaky crop of poisonspitting hair; even without weapon he destroyed the selfmarshalled host, fighting furiously, and using the treeclimbing longleaf ivy to strike the Giants.

  [87] Indeed he would have slain all with his manbreaking thyrsus, if he had not retired of his own will out of the fray and left enemies alive for his Father.

  [90] Then he would quickly have gone to Phrygia with speeding foot, but another task held him back; that after so many had died he might kill one murderous creature, Pallene’s deathdealing father. He once had an unlawful passion for his daughter; he used to thwart her marriage and hinder every match. Wooers innumerable who would have wed her he killed, a great harvest of them; the places of wrestling were noisy with their murders and red with their blood, until Bacchos came as the champion of Justice. There was Pallene, ever so near to wedlock, and her father full of unholy passion: Bacchos came near, and proposed to make the wicked match with his horrible daughter, offering all manner of gifts. To this request of Lyaios, the dreadful man declared how wrestling must win the bride. He led him into the place of contest, so ill-omened for strangers, where the audacious girl stood ready spear in hand bearing her bridal shield on her shoulders.

  [106] Then Cypris presided over the ring. In the midst was Eros naked, holding out to Bacchos the bridal wreath. Wrestling was to win the bride: Peitho clad her delicate body in a silvery robe, foretelling victory for Lyaios’s wooing. The girl stript the clothes off her muscular limbs; she laid down the fierce wedding-spear. There stood the daughter of Sithon, daintier now, unshod, unveiled, unarmed, revealed a woman, but a red band girt the rounded curve of her firm breasts. Her body was uncovered, but for the long tresses of the abundant hair which flowed loose over the girl’s neck. Her legs were visible, and the curve of her thighs uncovered with the part above the knee bare, but a white wrap fitted close over the thighs to cover her nakedness. Her skin had been well rubbed with fat oil, and her arms more than all, that she might slip out easily if her body were pressed in a grasp too strong to loosen.

  [124] She came up to Lyaios her eager wooer with rough threatening words, and threw her two arms with a swing linking them round his neck; Bacchos just threw back his neck with the woman’s fetters about it, and shook it loose again, throwing off the girl’s tender fingers. Then he put his two arms round her waist like a girdle, and shook her from side to side by movements of his feet. He grasped a rosy palm, and felt comfort for his love as he squeezed the snow white hand. He did not wish so much to give the maid a throw as to touch the soft flesh, entranced with his delightful task; he used all his guile, panting with labouring breath, as if he were a mortal, delaying victory on purpose. Lovely Pallene tried a trick of the ring to lift the body of Lyaios, but her woman’s arms were not equal to raise that great weight; she tired, and let go the masculine limbs of Dionysos immovable. Then the god took a like hold of the lovely girl, and joining his two arms about his adversary lifted her as if she were his own wand, and threw her aslant round and over his shoulder; then with gentle hand swung off the sturdy girl and laid her at full length quiet on the ground. He let his eyes furtively wander, scanning the limbs of the girl covered with her glorious hair in the dust, the luxurious tresses of the untidy head dabbled in dirt.

  [150] But the girl jumped up again from the dust and stood up steady on her feet once more. Then Dionysos with an agile movement mercilessly set his knee against Pallene’s belly, and holding her tried to roll her over on the ground with a sideways heave, changed his arms to a grasp round her waist, bent his head to one side and shifted his fingers behind to the middle of her back, and tried to hook ankle or shin, or to catch the knee. At last the god fell back of himself rolling on the ground and let a feeble hand conquer him: a charming physic it was for his love, when he lay beautiful in that happy dust on his back, bearing upon his own belly that lovely burden — he lay still, and did not throw off the girl, but held her fast with soulconsoling bonds of desire. She pulled herself from the manly hands of love mad Dionysos, and lifted herself to her feet with a twist of her legs in a quick supple movement; but the god with a slight effort simply rolled over and laid the rosy girl flat on the ground. So there lay the girl on the ground stretching her arms abroad, and as she lay along the ground he joined his arms neatly in a clasp about her neck.

  [172] Then with swift feet her father leapt between them. The girl wanted to try again, but he held her back, and put an end to this wedding-contest for a bride by yielding love’s victory to Dionysos, for fear he might kill her in that immovable grip. So after the victory in this contest, with the consent of Zeus, Eros crowned his brother with the cluster that heralds a wedding; for he had accomplished a delectable wedding-bout. It was indeed a contest like that when Hippomenes once conquered flying Atalanta, by rolling golden marriage-gifts in front of her feet.

  [183] But when Bacchos had ended the wrestling-match for his bride, still dripping with the sweat of his wedding contest he struck down Sithon with a stab of his sharp thyrsus, Sithon the murderer of wooers; and as the father rolled in the dust he gave his daughter the thyrsus that slew him, as a love-gift. That was however the right to pursue in his own chariot and spear the suitor if he could catch him. In one version of the story of Pallene (Parthenios vi. 3-4), chariots are introduced also, though it is said that the competitors for her hand (cf note on 93) were to fight from them, not race in them, a very odd archaism, since fighting in (as opposed to from) chariots was already obsolete in the days of Homer. This suggests that here again a pursuit (not a race in the ordinary sense) may have been the original contest. Atalante also, in a version preserved by Hyginus (Fab. 185. 2, see Rose ad loc.), did not race with her suitors, but ran after them, killing them if she caught them before they got to the goal. Now if we compare the curious ritual of Orchomenos (Plutarch, Quaest. Grace. 38), in which the priest of Dionysos pursued with a sword certain women, and might kill any one of them he caught, it seems in no way impossible that all these stories, or some of them at least, represent a ritual flight and pursuit (a common enough ceremony in itself) with a real or pretended killing involved. That such a performance should be confused with a ritual combat, also a fairly common proceeding, is natural enough. a wedding of many songs: the bridechamber was never silent, Seilenoi chanted, Bacchants danced, drunken Satyrs wove a hymn of love and sang the alliance which came of this victorious match. Companies of Nereids under the foothills of the neighbouring isthmus encircled Dionysos with wedding dances and warbled their lay; beside the Thracian sea danced old Nereus, who once had Bromios for a guest; Galateia tript over the wedding-sea and carolled Pallene joined with Dionysos; Thetis capered although she knew nothing of love; Melicertes crowned the seagirt wedding-reef of the isthmus chanting Euoi for Pallene’s bridal; many a Hamadryad of Athos kindled a Thracian torch for the bridal in fiery Lemnos close by. And while the bride mourned her father, the Euian bridegroom comforted her with lover’s tender talk: —

  [205] “Maiden, lament not for your father so wicked in his love! Maiden, lament not for one that wooed your maidenhood! What father ever begat and then married his own daughter? Leave your empty mourning, because now that Sithon your father is slain Justice dances and laughs, and kindles a wedding-torch with her virgin hands; she who knows not marriage still is singing your marriage, as she beholds a new Oinomaos dead. Oinomaos died indeed, but although her father had perished, Hippodameia took her joy with her husband newly-wedded. Then you too must throw to the winds your regret for your father, and take your joy un
ited with your vinegod lover, now that you have escaped a father’s disgrace. I need not tell you of Sithon’s hateful love and your marriage delayed; how he took in hand a murderous blade to kill your wooers, and let you grow old without a taste of Aphrodite, scattered your hopes of a husband and left your bed solitary. Look at the rotting relics of your pretenders’ bodies, whom the Paphian adorned and the furious Avenger slew! See those heads hung before your doors like first-fruits of harvest, still dripping with the gore of those inhospitable bridal feasts! You are no mortal daughter of Sithon. I believe a heavenly being begat you, your own Thracian Ares. I believe Cythereia brought you to birth; and you have marks of both parents imprinted, the temper of Ares and the radiance of Aphrodite. Or I believe your father was Lord Hermes of the ring, when he entered the delicate bed of Peitho who brings marriage to pass, and he taught you the wrestling which leads the way to love.”

  [234] So he consoled her with words that healed her sorrow, and stilled the lovely tears of the mourning maiden. And he lingered for some time beside his wedded bride, taking his joy in the love of this new marriage.

  [238] Then he left the halls of Pallene and Thracian Boreas, and went on to Rheia’s house, where the divine court of the prolific Cybele stood on Phrygian soil. There grew Aura the mountain maiden of Rhyndacos, and hunted over the foothills of rocky Dindymon. She was yet unacquainted with love, a comrade of the Archeress. She kept aloof from the notions of unwarlike maids, like a younger Artemis, this daughter of Lelantos; for the father of this stormfoot girl was ancient Lelantos the Titan, who wedded Periboia, a daughter of Oceanos; a manlike maid she was, who knew nothing of Aphrodite. She grew up taller than her yearsmates, a lovely rosy-armed thing, ever a friend of the hills. Often in hunting she ran down the wild bear, and sent her swift lance shooting against the lioness, but she slew no prickets and shot no hares. No, she carried her tawny quiver to shoot down hillranging tribes of ravening lions, with her shafts that were death to wild beasts. Her name was like her doings: Aura the Windmaid could run most swiftly, keeping pace with the highland winds.