by Nonnus
καὶ ποδὶ φοιταλέῳ Ληλαντιὰς ἄνθορε κούρη
ἄγριον ἦθος ἔχουσα δασυστέρνοιο λεαίνης,
ἠερίαις δ᾽ ἀκίχητος ἀνηκόντιζεν ἀέλλαις
920 θηρείων ἕνα παῖδα διαρπάξασα γενείων:
καὶ πάις ἀρτιλόχευτος ἐνὶ στροφάλιγγι κονίης
ἠερόθεν προκάρηνος ἐπωλίσθησεν ἀρούρῃ:
καί μιν ἀφαρπάξασα φίλῳ τυμβεύσατο λαιμῷ,
δαινυμένη φίλα δεῖπνα. καὶ ἀστόργοιο τεκούσης
925 ταρβαλέη τέκος ἄλλο λεχωίδος ἥρπασεν Αὔρης
παρθένος ἰοχέαιρα, διαστείχουσα δὲ λόχμην
παιδοκόμῳ κούφιζεν ἀήθεϊ κοῦρον ἀγοστῷ.
[917] Then Lelantos’s daughter sprang up with wandering foot in the mid temper of a shaggycrested lioness, tore one child from the wild beast’s jaws and hurled it like a flash into the stormy air: the newborn child fell from the air headlong into the whirling dust upon the ground, and she caught him up and gave him a tomb in her own maw — a family dinner indeed! The maiden Archeress was terrified at this heartless mother, and seized the other child of Aura, then she hastened away through the wood; holding the boy, an unfamiliar burden in her nursing arm.
καὶ Βρομίου μετὰ λέκτρα, μετὰ στροφάλιγγα λοχείης
μῶμον ἀλυσκάζουσα γαμήλιον ἀγρότις Αὔρη,
930 ἀρχαίης μεθέπουσα σέβας φιλοπάρθενον αἰδοῦς,
Σαγγαρίου σχεδὸν ἦλθεν: ὀπισθοτόνῳ δ᾽ ἅμα τόξῳ
εἰς προχοὰς ἀκόμιστον ἑὴν ἔρριψε φαρέτρην,
καὶ βυθίῳ προκάρηνος ἐπεσκίρτησε ῥεέθρῳ
ὄμμασιν αἰδομένοισιν ἀναινομένη φάος Ἠοῦς,
935 καὶ ῥοθίοις ποταμοῖο καλύπτετο: τὴν δὲ Κρονίων
εἰς κρήνην μετάμειψεν: ὀρεσσιχύτοιο δὲ πηγῆς
μαζοὶ κρουνὸς ἔην, προχοὴ δέμας, ἄνθεα χαῖται,
καὶ κέρας ἔπλετο τόξον ἐυκραίρου ποταμοῖο
ταυροφυές, καὶ σχοῖνος ἀμειβομένη πέλε νευρή,
940 καὶ δόνακες γεγαῶτες ἐπερροίζησαν ὀιστοί,
καὶ βυθὸν ἰλυόεντα διεσσυμένη ποταμοῖο
εἰς γλαφυρὸν κευθμῶνα χυτὴ κελάρυζε φαρέτρη.
[928] After the bed of Bromios, after the delirium of childbirth, huntress Aura would escape the reproach of her wedding, for she still held in reverence the modesty of her maiden state. So she went to the banks of Sangarios, threw into the water her backbending bow and her neglected quiver, and leapt headlong into the deep stream, refusing in shame to let her eyes look on the light of day. The waves of the river covered her up, and Cronion turned her into a fountain: her breasts became the spouts of falling water, the stream was her body, the flowers her hair, her bow the horn of the horned River in bull-shape, the bowstring changed into a rush and the whistling arrows into vocal reeds, the quiver passed through to the muddy bed of the river and, changed to a hollow channel, poured its sounding waters.
καὶ χόλον ἰοχέαιρα κατεύνασεν: ἀμφὶ δὲ λόχμῃ
ἴχνια μαστεύουσα φιλοσκοπέλοιο Λυαίου
945 ἤιεν, ἀρτιλόχευτον ἀειρομένη βρέφος Αὔρης,
πήχεϊ κουφίζουσα νόθον βάρος: αἰδομένη δὲ
ὤπασεν ἄρσενα παῖδα κασιγνήτῳ Διονύσῳ.
[943] Then the Archeress stilled her anger. She went about the forest seeking for traces of Lyaios in his beloved mountains, while she held Aura’s newborn babe, carrying in her arms another’s burden, until shamefast she delivered his boy to Dionysos her brother.
Νικαίῃ δ᾽ ἑὸν υἷα πατὴρ πόρε, μαιάδι νύμφῃ:
ἡ δέ μιν ἠέρταζε, καὶ ἀκροτάτης ἀπὸ θηλῆς
950 παιδοκόμων θλίβουσα φερέσβιον ἰκμάδα μαζῶν
κοῦρον ἀνηέξησε. λαβὼν δέ μιν ὑψόθι δίφρου
νήπιον εἰσέτι Βάκχον ἐπώνυμον υἷα τοκῆος
Ἀτθίδι μυστιπόλῳ παρακάτθετο Βάκχος Ἀθήνῃ,
εὔια παππάζοντα: θεὰ δέ μιν ἔνδοθι νηοῦ
955 Παλλὰς ἀνυμφεύτῳ θεοδέγμονι δέξατο κόλπῳ:
παιδὶ δὲ μαζὸν ὄρεξε, τὸν ἔσπασε μοῦνος Ἐρεχθεύς,
αὐτοχύτῳ στάζοντα νόθον γλάγος ὄμφακι μαζῷ.
καί μιν Ἐλευσινίῃσι θεὰ παρακάτθετο Βάκχαις:
ἀμφὶ δὲ κοῦρον Ἴακχον ἐκυκλώσαντο χορείῃ
960 νύμφαι κισσοφόροι Μαραθωνίδες, ἀρτιτόκῳ δὲ
δαίμονι νυκτιχόρευτον ἐκούφισαν Ἀτθίδα πεύκην:
καὶ θεὸν ἱλάσκοντο μεθ᾽ υἱέα Περσεφονείης,
καὶ Σεμέλης μετὰ παῖδα, θυηπολίας δὲ Λυαίῳ
ὀψιγόνῳ στήσαντο καὶ ἀρχεγόνῳ Διονύσῳ,
965 καὶ τριτάτῳ νέον ὕμνον ἐπεσμαράγησαν Ἰάκχῳ.
καὶ τελεταῖς τρισσῇσιν ἐβακχεύθησαν Ἀθῆναι:
καὶ χορὸν ὀψιτέλεστον ἀνεκρούσαντο πολῖται
Ζαγρέα κυδαίνοντες ἅμα Βρομίῳ καὶ Ἰάκχῳ.
[948] The father gave charge of his son to Nicaia the nymph as a nurse. She took him, and fed the boy, pressing out the lifegiving juice of her childnursing breasts from her teat, until he grew up. While the boy was yet young, Bacchos took into his car this Bacchos his father’s namesake, and presented him to Attic Athena amid her mysteries, babbling “Euoi.” Goddess Pallas in her temple received him into her maiden bosom, which had welcome for a god; she gave the boy that pap which only Erechtheus had sucked, and let the alien milk trickle of itself from her unripe breast. The goddess gave him in trust to the Bacchants of Eleusis; the wives of Marathon wearing ivy tript around the boy Iacchos, and lifted the Attic torch in the nightly dances of the deity lately born. They honoured him as a god next after the son of Persephoneia, and after Semele’s son; they established sacrifices for Dionysos late born and Dionysos first born, and third they chanted a new hymn for Iacchos. In these three celebrations Athens held high revel; in the dance lately made, the Athenians beat the step in honour of Zagreus and Bromios and Iacchos all together.
οὐδὲ Κυδωναίων ἐπελήσατο Βάκχος Ἐρώτων,
970 ἀλλὰ καὶ ὀλλυμένης προτέρης ἐμνήσατο νύμφης:
καὶ Στέφανον περίκυκλον ἀποιχομένης Ἀριάδνης
μάρτυν ἑῆς φιλότητος ἀνεστήριξεν Ὀλύμπῳ,
ἄγγελον οὐ λήγοντα φιλοστεφάνων ὑμεναίων.
[969] But Bacchos had not forgotten his Cydonian darling, no, he remembered still the bride once his, then lost, and he placed in Olympos the rounded crown of Ariadne passed away, a witness of his love, an everla
sting proclaimer of garlanded wedding.
καὶ θεὸς ἀμπελόεις πατρώιον αἰθέρα βαίνων
975 πατρὶ σὺν εὐώδινι μιῆς ἔψαυσε τραπέζης,
καὶ βροτέην μετὰ δαῖτα, μετὰ προτέρην χύσιν οἴνου
οὐράνιον πίε νέκταρ ἀρειοτέροισι κυπέλλοις,
σύνθρονος Ἀπόλλωνι, συνέστιος υἱέι Μαίης.
[974] Then the vinegod ascended into his father’s heaven, and touched one table with the father who had brought him to birth; after the banquets of mortals, after the wine once poured out, he quaffed heavenly nectar from nobler goblets, on a throne beside Apollo, at the hearth beside Maia’s son.
The Biography
‘Lycurgus, driven mad by Dionysos, attacks his wife’ by the ‘Lycurgus Painter’, 350-340 BC. The scene takes places in Book 21 of ‘The Dionysiaca’
INTRODUCTION TO NONNUS by W. H. D. Rouse
Nonnos is a name common in Asia Minor, and not unknown in Egypt, apart from the poet; but little is known of him. He was born at Panopolis (the Greek name of Chemmis in the Thebaïd) some time in the fifth century, and composed his poem probably before 500.
The poem professes to be the history of Dionysos, but Nonnos manages to include all the stories of Greek mythology he could find in earlier collections. This is his chief claim to attention; but he interests us also by his treatment of the hexameter, since he managed to find a way of reconciling to some extent the ancient quantitative verse with the later accentual verse, the musical accent having already given way to stress, long and short vowels having become confused in speech, and their sounds being confused also. For this topic I refer to Wifstrand, Von Kallimachos zu Nonnos (Gleerup, 1933), and a summary in Pauly’s Real-Encyclopädie under “Nonnos,” 912.
Nonnos also paraphrased St. John’s Gospel in the same metre and style. Some have inferred, therefore, that he was converted to Christianity in later life, but we know nothing at all about the matter.
My interest in Nonnos began about fifty years ago, when W. Robertson Smith was planning a series of “Sources” of mythology, and asked me to collate the Florentine manuscript, which I did; but his untimely death put an end to this project.
This is the first English translation of Nonnos, and there are no others in any language except the Latin and French, and quite lately, one in German hexameters. The Latin pretends to be a word-for-word construe, and sometimes it is useful, but it contains many blunders, some ridiculous ones. The French is more an elegant paraphrase, suited for a Parisian salon, and never forgetting the proprieties; it is graceful and pleasing to read, but not very close to the Greek. The German is extraordinarily close, by its bold use of compound words. It is a translation for the eye rather than the ear, for it is not possible to speak it metrically without gabbling, but it is a great feat.
Readers who are interested in the text must go to Ludwich’s edition. We use his text, by consent of Messrs. Teubner, and note only the few variations, including one or two conjectures (as γύναιο, for λύαιο, which I hope will commend itself, xlvi. 231). Dr. L. R. Lind’s Appendix gives a list of later emendations. [Omitted from this edition. G.P.G.]
Laurentianus XXXII 16 in Florence, paper, written a.d. 1280, is the chief and most ancient ms. Others are:
· M — in Munich.
· N — in Naples, II F. 19, paper.
· O — Ottobonianus 51, Vatican, paper.
· P — Palatinus, paper, 16th century.
· S — Reginensis 81, Vatican, paper, written in 1551.
· f — Codex Falkenburgii, whence the editio princeps was taken.
I have to thank Professor H. J. Rose, who adds the mythological notes, and Dr. Lind, for kindly scrutinizing and improving the translation. I thank the Reader also for his extreme care and patience.
W. H. D. Rouse
October 2nd, 1939
MYTHOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION
The mythology of the Dionysiaca is interesting as being the longest and most elaborate example we have of Greek myths in their final stage of degeneracy. As early as the beginning of the Alexandrian age the traditional stories of the doings of gods and heroes had ceased, save perhaps as allegories, to command belief among educated people, the only class for whom the Alexandrian authors wrote. There remained therefore simply their literary value as picturesque tales. As the tendency of the age, both in literature and art, was on the whole towards realism, the myths were so handled as to make the actors in them thoroughly, often undignifiedly human. Thus, in the Argonautica of Apollonios of Rhodes, when Hera and Athena call on Aphrodite to help them, we have no conference of goddesses but a humorous sketch of great ladies, constrained to recognize the existence of and even be deferential to a woman neither socially nor morally their equal, who for her part is delighted and a little malicious at the thought of getting a footing in such respectable society. Besides this, another tendency had long been at work. The old and familiar stories, however re-handled, were too well known, and the poets, ever on the lookout for anything which savoured of originality, caught eagerly at fresh material, while their great learning put such material at their disposal, in the form of numerous obscure and local legends never before treated in any well-known work of literature. This is why so many stories are known to us only from Alexandrians, or from late compilers who obviously drew on Alexandrian poetry for information. A third factor was the prevalence of the romantic and amatory interest. Psychology had been in the air, so to speak, ever since Euripides and Menander, and one of the most obvious ways to show the human character at its most interesting is to draw a man or woman in love. Therefore stories of the love, not so much, as in the preceding centuries, of a man for a younger member of his own sex, but rather of a young man for a maid, were extremely popular, and nearly all the famous love-stories of the world either have an Alexandrian origin or are modelled on some tale first given literary form by one of these writers. Finally, rhetoric was a master interest with everyone who sought literary elegance, and the most characteristic rhetorical exercise was to compose a speech expressing the feelings of a given person in given circumstances. Mythology abounded in situations calculated to stir the strongest passions, and so no poet was even an apprentice in his art until he had put into the mouth of a Medeia, an Agamemnon, or a Scylla, an artistic and clever expression of the feelings of an outraged wife, a father torn between ambition and parental affection, or a daughter who must choose between overwhelming love and her duty towards her family and her country. The greatest surviving master of this sort of literature is no Greek, but the Latin Ovid, whom there is some reason to say Nonnos knew; at all events, he was a late representative of the same school.
Thus for something like seven hundred years to the time when Nonnos wrote, mythology had been the raw material of realistic sketches, new and startling narratives, amatory and rhetorical descriptions. It had also had plenty of time to become stale and exhausted, as even the richest material must if handled too long, always in the same way, by men who are clever but not inspired. Now arose a writer who undertook to compose an epic on wholly mythological themes, the labours and ultimate triumph of Dionysos. It is little to be wondered at that he gives us neither living figures nor even a gallery of pleasing portraits or statues, but rather a faded and overcrowded tapestry, moving a little now and then as the breath of his sickly and unwholesome fancy stirs it.
His Dionysos is an utterly detestable character, or would be if it were possible to believe in him for one moment. The original god, Phrygian or Thraco-Phrygian, whose position was fully established among the official Greek cults by about the seventh century b.c., was an impressive deity, the product of naive reaction to great and vaguely-felt forces. He was a god of fertility, especially the fertility of food-plants, on which the very life of simple communities in the Mediterranean and surrounding areas depends, since, in days of little
wealth and poor communications, a failure of the harvests in any neighbourhood must mean, not suffering and hardship only, but death. He was a god also of animal fertility, lord of beasts as well as men, or even rather than men, and, as such, was powerful in the wild places where wild things live. For these reasons, while beneficent and desirable, he could be very terrible, especially as his realm included the fruit of the vine with its mysterious effects. He could kill as well as make alive, send madness as well as prosperity and mirth. His ritual consisted largely, before Greeks tamed and civilized it, of wild orgiastic dancing on the hills and in places outside the little cultivated areas, tabu places we may say, where the unsophisticated felt themselves in uncanny as well as unfamiliar surroundings, as indeed the most blasé member of our present-day urban communities may feel for a moment, at least in youth, if he will “let himself go” by vigorous movement in a solitary place in strong fresh air. Besides all this, there is some evidence that the sacrifices made to this god were of the nature of a mystic communion, in which the worshippers did not merely kill a beast and make a banquet at which the deity was a guest, but slay and devour the god himself in bestial form, thus absorbing into themselves his godhead. It is no wonder, then, that there gathered around Dionysos many stories of his terrible wrath against the impious and presumptuous, of his fantastic sufferings, his marvellous gifts and graces, and of his activities as a giver of fertility to plants, animals, and on occasion human beings.
Many centuries had passed since the existence of these beliefs and practices had impressed the sophisticated mind of Euripides and inspired him to write his wonderful Bacchae. By Nonnos’s time, a Dionysiac orgy was a thing one might read about in old books; new cults had long ago wrested from his religion its old place in popular favour, and the stories about him had been contaminated on the one hand with the too human romantic interest already touched upon, on the other with a curious political development. Dionysos, who as early as Euripides’ day was thought of as a great conqueror (he came from the East, he had established himself in face of opposition in Hellas; therefore it was natural to assume that he had conquered the Eastern peoples) was assimilated to a human conqueror, Alexander, and the romantic tales of that great statesman and warrior took from quite early days something of a Dionysiac flavour, which grew more pronounced as time went on. Hence also the conquering Dionysos tended to become an Alexander. The result of this, to one for whom Alexander was a dim and legendary figure of the long distant past, was that Dionysos developed into the sort of world-conqueror likely to be imagined by a mind wholly alien to the least notion of political motives, a person who for no particular reason goes about subduing nation after nation in huge and bloody battles, in which his personal prowess (this was a remnant of the genuine epic tradition, the fruit of days in which tactics were in their infancy, armies small, and the strength and valour of one well-armed man often of real importance) is a decisive factor. The other tales had degenerated into accounts of how the god made people mad, drunk or both, and seduced women, — poor survivals of the Dionysos of older, less sophisticated and at the same time more understanding days. The Dionysos of Euripides one can at least fear; nothing but unbelieving contempt can be aroused by the dastardly assailant of Aura and the monotonously successful wizard who kills large numbers of incredible but mostly inoffensive Indians. Never has it been more patent that an imaginative writer, if he is to impress his audience, must have at least an imaginative belief in his own story. But the ancient tales of how the great god had shown his power in wrath, mercy or the blessing of increase had become matter for paradoxes, and the old merriments (for the cult certainly had its jovial side) brought a snigger now instead of a laugh. To the student of religion or mythology, as opposed to the degenerescence of literature, Nonnos has here nothing to offer except the telling after his fashion of a few stories not to be found elsewhere, as the fight between Dionysos and Perseus (bk. xlvii. 475 ff.), of which traces can be seen in earlier art but not many in literature. It is of rather more importance that he has some knowledge, of course purely literary, of Orphism, a system which originated in or about the sixth century b.c., had a most curious mythology and theology of its own, and had by Nonnos’s time died out, though not without leaving traces on Christian art. The figure of Zagreus is old, probably of the original stratum of Orphism, for he is well known to Pindar in his Orphic context. How and when he became identified with Dionysos to the extent to which he is in Nonnos we do not know; the strangeness of the tale (the younger god is begotten by Zeus after having swallowed the heart of the older Zagreus) suggests something quite alien to ordinary Greek thought, and so akin to the abnormal ideas of Orphism itself.
