Book 1

1. The first book holds the son of Cronos, the light-bringing ravisher of a maiden, and the vault of stars battered by the hands of Typhon.

Tell, goddess, of the lightning, the courier of the fiery blaze of the son of Cronos, the breath of the thunderbolt that brought to birth with a bridal spark, the flash that served as bridal-chamber for Semele; tell too of the begetting of Bacchus, twice-born, whom Zeus drew dripping out of the fire, a half-completed infant of a mother whom no midwife delivered, and, scoring with cautious hands an incision in his thigh, brought to birth in a male womb, at once father and lady mother, well aware of another such birth, since once from his teeming head, bearing in his pregnant temple an unsown, unbelievable burden, he shot forth Athena flashing in her armour.

Bring me the fennel-wand, clash the cymbals, you Muses, and put into my hand the thyrsus of Dionysus, the god I sing. But near the neighbouring island of Pharos set before me, joining the dance, shifting Proteus of many turns, that he may appear wearing his shape of many forms, since I hammer out a hymn of many forms. For if he should creep forward as a serpent coiling along its track, I will sing the divine ordeal, how with the ivied thyrsus the dreadful tribes of the snake-haired Giants were cut to pieces. If as a lion he should bristle, shaking the mane upon his neck, I will hail Bacchus with the cry "euoi" upon the arm of grim Rhea, stealing the breast of the goddess who suckles lions. If, lifted high on a stormy leap of his feet, a leopard should dart, changing into a richly varied shape, I will hymn the son of Zeus, how he destroyed the race of the Indians, riding down their elephants upon his car of leopards. If his body should match the figure of a boar, I will sing the son of Thyone desiring boar-slaying Aura, fit for marriage, the Cybelean mother of Bacchus, the third and late-born. If he should become mimicking water, I will sing Dionysus plunging into the lap of the sea as Lycurgus armed against him. If as a plant he should quiver, stretching out a counterfeit whisper, I will recall Icarius, how beside the frenzied wine-press the cluster was crushed by the trampling rivalry of feet.

Bring me the fennel-wand, you Mimallones, and bind upon my breast the dappled fawnskin torn from the kill in place of my accustomed tunic, full of the fragrance of nectar-sweet Maronian wine; let the heavy sealskin be kept in the deep for Eidothea and Homer and Menelaus. Give me the wild rattles and the goatskin shields, but to another hand over the double-voiced sweet-singing pipe, lest I anger my own Phoebus; for he refuses the breathing echo of reeds, ever since, convicting the god-defying pipe of Marsyas, he hung up the skin of the flayed herdsman upon a tree, bellying out in the breezes, stripping bare every limb.

But, goddess, begin with Cadmus, the wandering searcher. Once upon the Sidonian shore Zeus, a high-horned bull, counterfeited a lovely lowing from his disguised throat and felt the sweet sting of desire; and as he carried off the woman, little Eros, circling his hands about, lightened her round the waist with a double bond, and near at hand the bull that crossed the water, bending low his curved neck beneath the girl who rode him, crouching slantwise and stretching out his slackened back, lifted Europa up; and as the bull rushed onward his swimming hoof scored the silent water of the passable sea with sparing tracks. Over the deep the girl, quivering with fear, voyaged upon the bull's back, unshaken and unwetted; and seeing her one might well have said she was either Thetis or Galatea or the bedfellow of the Earth-shaker, or Aphrodite seated upon the crest of Triton. The dark-haired Earth-shaker marvelled at that voyage on hooves, and Triton, hearing the deceitful lowing of Zeus, bellowed a song answering the son of Cronos upon his conch, singing the wedding hymn; and Nereus, mixing wonder with fear, pointed out to Doris the woman borne aloft, seeing the strange horned sailor. Riding the bull that floated keel-deep, the bull-decked bride sailed on, and trembling at the high-leaping course of her watery passage she gripped the horn as a rudder, and Desire became her sailor. And crafty Boreas, sick with love, bellied out the whole robe shaken by the bridal breeze, and against both, stealing his jealous look, hissed at her unripe breast.

As when one of the Nereids, peering up out of the sea, seated on a dolphin, breaks the smooth calm of the waters, and as she rises her wet hand is set in motion, the very image of one swimming, and bearing her unwetted by the brine the moist traveller is borne half-seen through the water, arching his back, while creeping over the deep the forked tail of the fish writes its outermost path: so the bull lifted his back; and as the bull strained on, Eros the herdsman lashed his enslaved neck with the love-girdle, and lifting the bow on his shoulder like a herdsman's staff, he shepherded with the Cyprian crook the bridegroom of Hera, driving him into the watery pasture of Poseidon. And in shame motherless Pallas blushed her virgin cheek as she watched the wife who drove the son of Cronos.

And as Zeus sped along the watery track of his course, the sea did not quench his desire, since the heavenly furrow made the water, big with child, give birth to a deep-dwelling Aphrodite; and the girl was both the steersman of the surge-free bull's passage, his freight and his sailor. And gazing on the swift-kneed, sentient ship of the sea that mimicked one, the Achaean sailor, faring about, cried out such words:

"My eyes, what is this marvel? From where, cleaving the waves with his feet, does a field-roaming bull swim through the barren water? Is the son of Cronos making the land navigable? Through the sea is a wet wagon-track being scored across the brine-soaked water? I scan along the wave this counterfeit voyage. Is it Selene who, holding her unyoked bull, travels the sea after the heavens? Or does deep-dwelling Thetis steer this watery course? The sea-bull has not got a shape like the land-bull —for it has a fishy body—; and instead of bare-backed, a strange-seeming Nereis with trailing robe drives over the waters an unbridled bull that walks on land, a creature unaccustomed. If it is Demeter of the grain-rich hair, and with her water-faring bull's hoof she splits the grey-green back of the sea, then you too, Poseidon, after the surge of the deep, as a wanderer go on foot, a ploughman, over the thirsty back of the land, cutting Demeter's furrow with a ship of the sea, making a passable voyage on dry land with landward winds.

Bull, you have strayed off course, an exile; Nereus is no herdsman, Proteus no ploughman, Glaucus no field-hand, there is no marsh, no meadows in the swell, but sailing upon the barren sea they cut the unploughed harbour-water with the rudder and do not split it with iron; the servants of the Earth-shaker do not sow furrows, but the plant of the sea is seaweed and its seed is water, the sailor a field-roamer, the voyage its furrows, the ship its plough-handle. But from where do you pursue some maiden? Is it that bulls themselves also, maddened with love, carry off women? Has deceitful Poseidon seized the girl, wearing the horned shape of a river-bull? Has he woven yet another trick after the bed of Tyro, as he did but yesterday, when as a watery bedfellow the false Enipeus murmured with imitating streams?"

Such words the Greek sailor uttered as he passed, in amazement. And the girl divined her bull-wedding, and tearing her tresses she broke into a wailing cry:

"Deaf water, voiceless breakers, tell the bull, if bulls can hear: be merciless no longer, pitiless one—spare the girl. Tell, you breakers, for me to my child-loving father: Europa, leaving her fatherland, sits upon some bull, a ravisher and a sailor and, as I think, a bedfellow. Carry these locks of mine to my mother, you circling breezes. Yes, I beseech you, Boreas, as you carried off the Attic bride, take me up on your wings into the air. Stop, my voice, lest after the bull I should think Boreas too maddened with love."

So she spoke as the girl was ferried on the bull's spine.

It was from there that Cadmus, faring about, walking from land to land, followed the restless tracks of the bride-stealing bull. He came even to the murderous cave of the Arimoi, at the time when the roving hills were battering the gates of unbreakable Olympus, when the winged gods, high above the storm-free Nile, mimicked the unreachable journey of birds, oaring their strange path through the airy breeze, and the seven-zoned vault was scourged. For going to the bed of Plouto, Zeus son of Cronos, borne thither to beget Tantalus, the foolish thief of the cups of heaven, had set the gear of the upper air hidden in a hollow of the rock and concealed his lightning. And as the thunderbolts beneath the roof belched smoke, the white crag was blackened, and with the hidden spark of the fire-pointed shaft the springs grew warm, and with the steam of its ravine-channels the foaming Mygdonian gorge resounded.

And stretching out his hands at the nod of his mother Earth, Cilician Typhoeus stole the snowy weapons of Zeus, the weapons of fire; and spreading the rank of his heavy-thundering throats he raised a clamour of every cry of beasts speaking with one voice: serpents grown together darted upon the face of leopards, and licked the grim manes of lions, and they girdled the horns of bulls in coils with their twisting tails, and mingled the venom hurled from their long-tongued jaws with the foam of boars. Setting the gear of the son of Cronos beneath the cavernous rock, he stretched up to the air the harvest of his towering hands; and with skilful array round the very ankle of Olympus, gripping the Cynosurid Bear on this side and pressing on that the mane of the Parrhasian Bear leaning on its axle, he hauled it back, and seizing Bootes with another hand he checked him, and with another dragged the Morning Star; and in vain beneath the circling turning-post the early-rising sound of the heavenly lash hissed. He dragged at the dawn-born star, and as the Bull was held back the unfinished, untimely Hour of the chariot grew weary; and with the shadowy locks of his viper-haired heads the light was mingled with mist, and by day Selene, rising together with the sun, shone bright.

Nor did the Giant cease: with a backward course from the North to the South, leaving one pole he stood at the other; and gripping the Charioteer with his long hand he lashed the back of the hail-bringing Goat, and dragging the twin Fishes from the sky toward the sea he shook the Ram, the navel-star of mid-Olympus, high above the neighbouring fiery spring-circle, that balances the day in equal poise within its mist. On his coiling feet Typhoeus was lifted up close to the clouds; and spreading the wide-scattered nation of his palms he covered the silvery radiance of the cloudless air, shaking the crooked army of his snakes. Of these one ran upright along the rim of the axled circle, and leapt upon the spine of the heavenly Dragon, hissing at Ares; another, close to the maiden daughter of Cepheus, coiling with its starry hands a circle of equal yoke, fettered the bound Andromeda with a second bond, slanting beneath its coils; another, a horned serpent, coiled around the matching horn-tip of the Bull, maddened, writhing above the brow of the Bull against the answering Hyades, the image of horned Selene, with jaws gaping; and the venom-shooting bands of the interwoven serpents girdled Bootes about. And another, bold, sprang up, seeing another Serpent of Olympus, leaping about the snaky arm of Ophiuchus, and weaving another wreath round the wreath of Ariadne, arching its neck, it writhed with the trailing of its belly. And shaking the girdle of Zephyrus and the wing of opposing Eurus, many-armed Typhoeus ranged about toward both turning-posts, after the Morning Star dragging the Evening Star and the crest of Atlas. And in the weed-grown gulf often gripping the Poseidonian chariot of the sea he dragged it from the depths to the land; and by the brine-soaked hair he hauled up again the stalled horse from its submarine manger and flung the wandering colt up to the heavenly rim, hurling at Olympus; and as his car was lashed the circling horses of the Sun neighed beneath the yoke; and often, snatching up the bull of the field, ceased from the plough-pole, bellowing, and brandishing it in his threatening arm, he hurled down the very likeness of Selene's own, and stayed its course; and pulling back with the bridle the white yoke-straps of the goddess's bulls he made them whirl, pouring out the deadly hiss of his venom-spitting viper.

Nor did Titanic Mene yield to the armed Giant: fighting against the matching horned heads of the Giant she scored the light-bringing circle of her bull's horn; and the gleaming oxen of Selene lowed, struck with awe at the gaping chasm of the Typhaonian throat.

The fearless Hours armed the starry battalions, and the ranks of the heavenly Spirals flashed for battle in their guiding circle; and the shifting army hissed with fire, raving through the air—those who hold Boreas, and the western back of Libos, and those who got the rim of Eurus, and the southern corners; and in their common-zealed turmoil the unshaken choir of the fixed stars was driven from its place, and met the wandering ones across the way; and the upright axle, pierced through the heavenly hollow and fixed at the middle, roared with sound; and watching the nations of the beasts, Orion, hunter and rouser of dogs, drew his sword, and as the bearer was armed the bright back of the Tanagraean blade flashed; and shaking the flame of his fire-hot throat, the thirsty starry Dog seethed in his throat, sending forth a hot baying, and instead of his accustomed hare he belched at the Typhaonian beasts the steam of his teeth.

And the vault thundered; and answering, the sky itself with its seven zones, from throats equal in number to the Pleiades, the seven-mouthed echo cried aloud, and the wandering stars thundered back an equal din.

And seeing the terrible snaky shape of the Giant, gleaming Ophiuchus shook from his evil-averting hands the grey-green backs of his fire-nurtured serpents, hurling his dappled crooked dart; and round the flame whirlwinds hissed, and the slanting snaky arrows were shot, raving through the air; and bold Sagittarius, running the course with the fishy Goat, sent his shaft; and in the wagon-circle the Dragon, shown mid-sky and parted between the twin Bears, whirled the gleaming track of his heavenly spine; and neighbouring Erigone's driver, fellow-traveller of the Wain, Bootes, brandished his crook with shining arm; and at the knee of the Phantom and beside the near-faring Swan the starry Lyre prophesied the victory of Zeus.

And Typhoeus, seizing the heads of Corycus, shook them, and pressing the stream of the Cilician river with its dweller he gathered Tarsus and Cydnus together in one fist; and shooting at the ranks of the brine with rocky missiles he removed them to the cliffs, lashing the sea after the air; and as the Giant moved with the trailing of his brine-soaked foot his loins were shown bare and unwetted through the water, and round his middle thigh the heavy-roaring water boomed; and the swimming serpents, hissing Ares from their sea-loud throats, made war upon the sea, spitting out venom; and as Typhon stood in the fishy deep within his weed-grown hollow, his feet were fixed in the depth, and his belly mingled with the air, pressed by the clouds; and the sea-lion, hearing the dreadful roar of the high-crested lions of the Giant's head, hid himself in the muddy gulf; and the whole battalion of sea-monsters was straitened in the sea, for the earth-born one filled the whole brine, greater than the land, with his flood-free flanks; and the seals lowed, and the dolphins hid themselves in the deep sea; and weaving its interwoven coil in crooked spirals, the wily-minded octopus fixed itself to its accustomed rock, and the ravine-formed shape became the image of his limbs. No creature was without trembling: even she who came in pursuit, the love-maddened moray, longing for the serpent's bed, shuddered at the god-defying breath of the sea-faring serpents.

The sea was towered up and consorted with Olympus in its towering floods; and on the air-faring stream the bird of the air, unwetted, bathed in the neighbouring sea.

And Typhoeus, holding the likeness of the deep-sea trident, cutting with his immeasurable hand in an earth-shaking heave an island, a fragment torn from the brine-founded margin of the land, hurled it back-whirling, rolling it whole into a ball; and as the Giant fought in the air, the palms that border the stars, shadowing the sun, were arrayed against Olympus, the hurlers of the towering crag.

And after the depth's limit, after the kindly earth's seat, the false Zeus armed his hand with the fire-pointed thunderbolt; and lifting the gear of the son of Cronos with his unconquerable hands—two hundred of them—the monster Typhoeus laboured under its weight; yet the son of Cronos lightens it with a single palm. And on the dry palms of the cloudless Giant the thunder sent forth a dull song of soundless echo, buzzing faintly, and scarcely, in the drought of the air, a thirsty dew of dripless snow distilled upon him; and the lightning dimmed, and like smoke-coloured fume a thin fire shone with a downcast gleam; and the thunderbolts, knowing the hands of their untried bearer, holding their male fire, were unmanned, and slipping often from his measureless hands with leaps of their own; and the fires strayed away, longing for the accustomed hand of their heavenly bearer.

As when some horseman, a stranger and untaught, lashing an unruly colt that spits out the bit, toiled often in vain, while the bold beast, with knowing spirit, recognized the false hand of the unaccustomed driver, and goaded leapt up, and rising high upright fixed firm the unshaken hoof of its hind foot, and lightened its jutting forelegs, brandishing its knees, and lifted its crest, and on both its shoulders the spreading mane was shaken loose, hanging from its neck: so the Giant laboured, lifting with alternate hands the sun-fleeing flash of the wandering thunderbolt.

While Cadmus the wanderer was faring among the Arimoi, meanwhile, above the Dictaean shore, the water-faring bull laid down its girl from its mane, unwetted.

And Hera, seeing the son of Cronos shaken with desire, in jealous madness joined her voice with mocking spite:

"Phoebus, stand by your father, lest some ploughman take Zeus and drag him to the earth-shaking plough-handle. Would that he took and dragged him, so that I might shout this to Zeus: 'Endure the double goads, both of the field-hands and of the Loves.' As Nomios, glorious archer, shepherd your sire, lest the cattle-driving Selene should yoke the son of Cronos, lest, hastening to look upon the bed of the herdsman Endymion, she should brand the back of Zeus with her unsparing lash. Lord Zeus, when Io was a horned heifer she failed, in that she never saw you as such a mate, that she might bear some bull of equal form to her horned bedfellow. Beware of Hermes, the cattle-thief of accustomed craft, lest taking you like a bull he steal his own father, and grant the lyre once again to your son Phoebus, an heirloom of the ravisher now ravished. But what shall I do? Would that Argus, with his whole body shining with sleepless eyes, were still alive, that, dragging Zeus into a pathless pasture, the herdsman of Hera might strike his flank with the crook."

So she spoke; and the son of Cronos, leaving his bull-faced shape, like a youth ran round the unyoked girl; and he touched her limbs, and from the bride's breast first he loosed the girdle that ran about her, and as though unwilling he pressed the swollen circle of her unyielding breast, and kissed the edge of her lip, and unfolding in silence the sacred knot of her unwedded maidenhood, kept till then, he plucked the unripe fruit of the Cyprian Loves.

And her belly, swelling with twin seed, grew big with the wave of birth; and Zeus the husband left his bride, pregnant with a divine birthing, to Asterion, her wealthy consort; and rising beside the ankle of the Charioteer the starry bridegroom, the Bull of Olympus, gleamed, keeping his dew-loving back for the springtime Sun, rising crouched and slanting; and half-dipped he stretches his jutting right foot toward Orion and appears, and treading the western rim more swiftly he passes the Charioteer who rises beside him.

So the Bull was fixed in heaven. But Typhoeus was not to keep his hold on the weapons of Zeus much longer; for with the archer Eros, Zeus son of Cronos, leaving the whirling vault, met the wandering Cadmus, the roving searcher, upon the mountain, and contrived a shared and crafty plan, stitching for Typhon the threads of the ill-spinning Fate. And Pan the goatherd, fellow-traveller of all-ruling Zeus, gave oxen and sheep and ranks of fair-horned goats; and weaving a hut of reeds with a coiling bond he fixed it over the ground, and in some unknown shape, fastening a herdsman's dress upon the skin of Cadmus, clothed the false herdsman in imitating garments; and bearing a crafty pipe he gave to the knowing Cadmus the steersman of Typhaon's destruction.

And calling the false herdsman and driver of his lineage, winged Zeus shaped a single plan with him:

"Cadmus, dear friend, pipe, and the sky will be fair-weathered; you delay, and Olympus is scourged; for with my heavenly weapons Typhoeus is helmeted and armed. The aegis alone is left to me; but what will my aegis do, striving against the thunderbolt of Typhon? I fear lest old Cronos should laugh, and I shrink from the proud neck of my adversary, lordly Iapetus; I fear story-breeding Hellas the more, lest some Achaean should call Typhon the rain-giver and the high-ruling or the supreme one, defiling my name. Become an oxherd for a single dawn, and piping with mind-stealing music rescue with your shepherd's pipe the shepherd of the universe, lest I hear the sound of Typhoeus the cloud-gatherer, lest I hear the thunder of another, a false Zeus, but that I may stop him warring with lightnings and casting the thunderbolt. And if you have got the blood of Zeus and the race of Inachian Io, with the evil-averting song of your cunning pipe charm the mind of Typhon. And I will give you gifts worthy of your toils, a double gift: for I will make you the saviour of the harmony of the universe, and the consort of Harmonia. And you, first-sown beginning of marriage that brings offspring to fulfilment, stretch, Eros, your bow, and the universe wanders no more. If all things come from you, loving shepherd of life, draw one more arrow, that you may save the whole: since you are fiery, arm yourself against Typhon, and the fire-bearing thunderbolts may return from him to my hand. All-subduer, strike one alone with your fire, and let your charmed arrow capture him whom the son of Cronos has not conquered; and let him have the sting of Cadmus' heart-charming song as much as I had longing for the wedding of Europa."

So speaking, he sped away, the very image of a horned bull, from where the mountain Taurus took its name. And drawing out sharply the deceitful echo of his harmonious reeds, leaning his back beneath a neighbouring oak of the wild wood, and wearing the country garb of a true herdsman, Cadmus sent a guileful hymn to the ears of Typhaon, sending a thin breath from his swollen cheek.

There the song-loving Giant, with the snaky trailing of his foot, sprang up, listening to the cunning melody; and within the cave leaving the flaming weapons of Zeus beside his mother Earth, he sought out the neighbouring strain of the delightful pipe, following the music; and seeing him near the thicket Cadmus, as though afraid, hid beneath a cleft rock. But the high-headed Typhoeus, marking him as he shrank away, the monster called him with speechless nods, and did not recognize the clear-voiced guile; and to the answering herdsman he stretched out one right hand, not knowing it was the net of his destruction; and with his middle blood-red face, laughing with human voice, he broke into vainglorious speech:

"Goatherd, why do you tremble at me? Why do you cover your eyes with your hand? A fine thing it is for me to pursue a mortal man after the son of Cronos, a fine thing for me to lift a pipe along with my lightnings! What has reeds in common with the smoky thunderbolt? Keep your pipe to yourself, since Typhoeus has got another Olympian instrument that sounds of itself; and seated with soundless hands, bereft of his accustomed noise, cloudless Zeus has need of your pipe. But let him have the clatter of your few little reeds; for worthless unplaited reeds I do not roll in rows with reeds, but joining rolling clouds with clouds I send a din yoked to the crashes of heaven. I will set up, if you wish, a friendly contest: but you, singing, send forth your reedy melody, while I hammer out the thunder; for with breath you, holding your jutting cheek swollen, blow with your mouths, while, lashed by the breath of Boreas the blower, the thunderbolts roar for me. Oxherd, you shall have a reward for your pipe; for when I, sceptred in place of Zeus, drive the heavenly throne, following me from earth to the upper air I will carry you too, together with your very pipe and, if you wish, with your flock as well; nor shall you be parted from your herd; for of matching form I will fix your goats above the spine of Capricorn, or near the Charioteer, who in Olympus stretches out the Olenian shining She-Goat with his gleaming arm; and I will set beside the broad neck of the rain-breeding Bull your starry oxen, rising over Olympus, or beside the dewy turning-post, where with life-warming throat the oxen of Selene send forth their windy lowing. Nor shall you have need of your little hut; but in place of the thicket let your flock flash with the airy Kids in the sky. And I will make the likeness of another manger, that it too, of equal form, may shine beside the neighbouring Manger of the Asses. Be starry too, after your oxherding, where Bootes appears, and you too, stretching out a starry crook, become the Arctic driver of the Lycaonian Wain. Hearth-fellow of heavenly Typhon, blessed shepherd, play today on earth, and tomorrow within Olympus. And as gifts worthy of your music, beside the star-shining circle I will fix your Olympian face, and your sweet-voiced pipe I will join to the heavenly Harp. To you, if you wish, I will grant the holy marriage of Athena; and if the grey-eyed one does not please you, take Leto, or a Grace, or Cytherea, or Artemis, or marriage with Hebe; only do not seek the bed of my own Hera. And if you have got a horse-driving brother skilled in the chariot, let him receive the fiery four-yoked car of the Sun; and if you long, as a goatherd, to brandish the aegis of Zeus, I will give you this gift. And I will journey to Olympus, caring nothing for the weaponless son of Cronos; for what could Athena, being female, do to me with her armour? But strike up, oxherd, the song of Typhon's victory, hymning me as the true new sceptred lord of Olympus, bearing the sceptre of Zeus and the lightning-flashing tunic."

He spoke, and Adrasteia recorded all his words.

But when Cadmus knew that the son of earth had been carried willingly, by the thread of Fate, into the net of capture, struck by the sweet sting of the delightful reeds, unsmiling he uttered a cunning voice:

"You marvelled at the slight sound of my pipe when you heard it; tell me, what would you do when I sing of your throne, hammering out the victory-hymn of my seven-toned lyre? For even with heavenly plectra I once strove and outran Phoebus with my harp, and my sweet-sounding strings the son of Cronos crushed to dust with the thunderbolt, doing a favour to his defeated son; but if ever I find my sinews swelling again, stretching a song with the plectra, I will charm all the trees and the mountains and the minds of beasts; and the self-coiling crown, yoke-fellow of the agemate earth, the Ocean that hastens, ever back-whirling, I will hold to drive its circling water round the same turning-post, and the battalion of the fixed stars and the running wanderers I will stay, and Phaethon and the plough-pole of Selene. But striking the gods and Zeus with your fiery shaft, leave only the glorious archer alone, so that round the dinner of the table, while Typhon feasts, I and Phoebus may contend, which of us, singing of great Typhon, shall conquer the other. Do not kill the dancing Pierides, that they too, when Phoebus leads the revel, or your own herdsman, may weave a female song in concert with the male music."

He spoke; and Typhoeus nodded with his glaring brows, and shook his locks; and from his belching hair the hills were sprinkled with snaky venom.

And swiftly he hastened to his cave; and from there, lifting the sinews of Zeus, he gave them as a guest-gift to crafty Cadmus, the sinews that once fell to the earth in the Typhaonian combat. And the deceitful shepherd praised the ambrosial gift; and he handled them, and as a string to be fitted to his harp he hid them in the hollow rock, kept for Zeus the slayer of Giants. And with sparing breath, sending a thin blast from his closed lips, stealing the tone of the echo from the pressed reeds, he uttered a sweeter melody; and stretching out his many ears Typhon listened to the harmony, and did not understand.

And to the charmed Giant the false shepherd piped a tune as if singing of the flight of the immortals on his pipe, and made music of the coming neighbouring victory of Zeus, singing the doom of Typhon to seated Typhon; and he roused a greater frenzy. And as a young man with the sweet sting of love, delicate and love-maddened, is charmed by a maiden of his age, and now at the silvery circles of her graceful face, now at the wandering cluster of her deep-curled hair, he gazes, now at her rose-coloured hand, now at the rim of her rosy breast bound tight by the girdle he watches, peering at her bared neck, and round her form he is charmed, casting his insatiate gaze now here, now there, and never wishes to leave the maiden: so Typhoeus gave his whole mind, charmed by the music, to Cadmus.