Book 13

13. In the thirteenth book I will tell of the numberless army and the champion heroes gathering to Dionysus.

Now Zeus the father sent down to the marvellous halls of Rhea

Iris to bear his message to Dionysus, rouser of battle,

that with his avenging thyrsus he should drive from Asia

the arrogant race of the Indians, untaught in justice,

mowing down the horned, sea-fighting son of the river,

King Deriades, and teach all the nations

the rites that dance by night and the wine-dark fruit of autumn.

She, with a windy beating of her plied wings,

sank into the echoing recess of the lion-nursing cave

and set down a soundless tread; and in voiceless silence,

binding her servant lips close to the mountain queen,

she stood there stooping, and with bowed head

with suppliant lips she clasped the feet of Rhea.

But the Corybantes, at a stern nod from holy Rhea,

made her welcome beside the mixing-bowl of the table;

and astonished, drinking the pour of new-made wine,

she rejoiced in her revelry. And the goddess, her head heavy,

bellowed out the will of Zeus to the present son of Zeus:

"Mighty Dionysus, your father commands you

to make an end of the Indian race, untaught in piety;

but lifting the warring thyrsus in your hands

do deeds worthy of heaven, for the immortal court of Zeus

will not receive you without toils, nor will the Seasons

fling open the gates of Olympus to you while you have not yet striven.

Hermes came to heaven only with hardship, when with his wand

he slew the herdsman Argos, flashing with eyes from feet to hair,

and loosed Ares from his bonds;

Apollo too tamed Delphyne, and then dwelt in the sky;

nor did your own father, lord of the blessed, high-ruling Zeus,

climb to heaven, that leader of the stars, without his labours,

unless he first bound the threateners of Olympus,

hiding the Titans away in the Tartarean pit.

And you, after Apollo and after Hermes, by your toil

shall win as wage of your labours your father's heaven to dwell in."

So speaking, the goddess went toward Olympus; and at once Rhea,

mother of all, sent forth her army-gathering messenger,

Pyrrhichus, dancer of the loud-clashing oxhide,

to proclaim the war of Lyaeus arming for battle.

And gathering for Dionysus a host of many shapes,

Pyrrhichus ranged over the dwellings of the everlasting world;

the offspring of Europe and the nations of the land of Asia

he led, all of them, and came home to the country of the luxurious Lydians.

But the heroic stock of the far-scattered champions,

and of the shaggy Satyrs, blood of the Centaur breed,

and the phalanx of Sileni of the rough-shanked elder,

and the line of Bassarids—tell me, Corybantian Muses;

for I could not sing so many tribes with ten tongues,

nor with ten mouths pouring out a brazen-throated sound,

all that spear-shaking Bacchus mustered; but clear-voiced

I will call the leaders, and Homer to help me,

the whole haven of fine speech, since wandering sailors

call on the dark-haired one as helper of their wandering.

First, when fair-thyrsus Dionysus called him,

swift Actaeon came, honouring his kindred blood,

leaving the seven-mouthed soil of his fatherland Aonia.

And the phalanxes of the Boeotians flowed in, those who dwelt

in the land of well-towered Thebes, and Onchestus,

the seat of the Earthshaker, Peteon and Ocalea and Erythrae,

and clustering Arne, glorying in Dionysus,

and those who dwelt in Mideia, and the famous little towns

Eilesion and Scolus and Thisbe of the sea-foundations,

the dove-haunted harbour of Aphrodite of the sea,

and the ground of Schoenus and well-foliaged Eleon

and Copae, splendid soil, where I hear is still renowned

the lake that bears its name, nurse of the eels,

and shaggy Medeon, and those who hold Hyle good for grazing,

long-shanked nurse of Tychius the leather-cutter,

and the plain of Euryalus, guarded by an oracle of the earth,

named for the late-born chariot of Amphiaraus,

and the city of the Thespians and deep-shanked Plataeae

and watery Haliartus, parted in two by the middle streams

of the mountain-poured river of Helicon,

and those who held outermost Anthedon, neighbour of the sea,

the little fishing-town of ever-living

Glaucus of the watery life, and those storm-vexed who held Ascra,

the laurel fatherland of the unsilent shepherd,

and the holy city of Graea and broad-spaced Mycalessus,

named for the likeness of the throat of Euryale,

and the Nisaean land and the city named for Coronus.

For these as they went to the eastern region of the earth

Actaeon was the leader; and over the young man's victory

his great-grandsire, the laurelled prophet Apollo, sneezed good omen.

But another company of the Boeotians was led on

by fair-haired Hymenaeus, with cheeks still unmarked by down,

freshly blossoming, beloved of Bromius; and as he went,

following the youth came a grey-haired leader, his guardian,

Phoenix by name, the very likeness of Laocoon, who long ago

boarding Argo, the ship of Jason, and coming to the land of the Colchians

sailed as comrade beside Meleager arming for war.

Such while he was still a boy, with the bloom of boyhood,

soft-haired Hymenaeus put on the battle of the Indians,

twirling on either cheek the hair of his own age;

and there followed him fellow shield-bearers of his own years,

those of the city of Aspledon, and the one Charis never leaves,

Orchomenus of Minyas, dance-trodden grove of the Loves,

and those who dwelt in Hyria, the god-receiving soil of the field,

bearing the name of Hyrieus the host-receiver,

where the boundless Giant, from a bed that knew no marriage,

Orion of the three fathers, sprang up from his mother Earth,

when, made to grow by the seed of three races of gods,

a flow of urine was shaped into a self-made birth,

wedding the furrow of the birth-bringing oxhide,

and the hare's-bed of the soil delivered an unsown son of Earth;

and those who held the hospitable ground where the Achaeans gathered,

rocky Aulis, the seat of the Arrow-pourer,

where the heavy-wrathed goddess at the mountain-dwelling altar

received the sacrifice of the false Iphigeneia,

and a mountain-roaming hind was burnt with no faulty torch

when the true Iphigeneia's bastard shape was snatched away,

she whom wily Odysseus brought, as if to be the bride

of Achilles before the battle—from which Aulis is called

the bridal-decker of the unwedded Iphigeneia;

and over the ships of the Argives a guiding wind whistled,

lashing soundlessly the surface of the holding calm,

bringing to the fawn-slaying king a breeze come back again;

but the girl, late arriving in the land of the Tauri,

was taught the dread customs of the cauldrons that wrong their guests,

carving up a man, and at the man-slaying altar

she gave new life to her sea-terrified brother Orestes.

So great a host of the countless Boeotian men came,

following Hymenaeus to the Indian war.

With these served as fellow-soldiers, beside the wise Delphic rock,

the close-neighbouring Phocians, gathered together, who held

the seat of Cyparissus and the land of Hyampolis, which I hear

is named for the soil of the Aonian sow, that for beauty

lifted up her proud neck and vied with Tritogeneia;

and those who had Pytho for their lot and the cliff-girt orchard,

famous Crisa and Daulis and Panopeus,

having Bacchus for neighbour, since laurelled Apollo

shared his own portion with his brother Dionysus,

two-peaked Parnassus; and for the gathering peoples

the oracular, prophet-voiced Pythian rock rang out

and the self-sounding tripod, and of the unsilent spring

of Castalia the babbling swell foamed with wise current.

The phalanxes of the Euboeans were marshalled by shield-bearers,

the child-nursing Corybantes of the growing Dionysus,

who, holding the Phrygian gulf beside Rhea who haunts the mountains,

ringed about with oxhides Bacchus while still an infant,

him whom once, wrapped in a purple wine-dark robe,

they found among the crags, a horned babe, where Ino

handed him to Mystis, the child-nurse, the mother of Corymbus.

These all came then from the famous island,

Prymneus and roll-foot Mimas and hill-running Acmon,

Damneus and shield-wielding Ocythous, with whom marching

came helmet-flashing Melisseus, running beside Idaean.

These once, armed with the senseless goad of impiety,

Socus, father of the sea-girt land, banished from their fatherland

after their mother Combe of the seven children; and fleeing

they came to the soil of Cnossus, and back again were wanderers

into Phrygia from Crete, from Phrygia to Athens,

foreign dwellers at one hearth, until Cecrops

destroyed Socus with the avenging bronze of Justice,

and leaving the land of sea-washed Marathon

they bent their homing track to the holy soil of the Abantes,

the earthly race of the earlier Curetes, who knew the song of pipes,

whose life was the loud-ringing clash of swords, who to a certain rhythm

set the wheeling of their feet and the shield-bearing dance.

With these served as fellow-soldiers the warring sons of the Abantes,

who had for their lot brow-frowning Eretria, and who had both

Styra and Cerinthus, and the seats of famous Carystus

and the harsh ground of Dion, and those who held the headland,

the wave-beaten headland of unsilent Geraestus,

and Styx and the seat of Cotylaeum and the dwelling of Siris

and the ridge of Marmarium and the Ogygian plain of Aegae;

and with these came a people of one expedition, whose fatherland

was Chalcis, mother-city of the long-back-haired Ellopians.

Seven leaders armed the host, but all had a single

spirit for war; and on the blazing altar they propitiated the stars,

the dwellers of the Zodiac road,

entrusting the war to wanderers of equal number.

The sons of Cecrops were armed by Erechtheus, insatiate of battles—

bearing the golden blood of Erechtheus of the glorious children,

him whom once in the recess of the torch-bearing maiden-chamber

a maiden self-delivered reared at a male breast,

the child-nursing grey-eyed unploughed one; and in shame

she cradled the boy in her virginal, unaccustomed arm,

the son of Hephaestus, when the lame, ill-married god

with a strange love sowed his seed in the field,

shooting forth the hot, self-rushing foam of the Loves;

such came Erechtheus, leader of the Athenian army,

having Siphnus as fellow-toiler, a leader of the same city—

those who had for their lot the fertile plain of Oenoe, and those of the peaks

of neighbouring Hymettus, the bee-haunted dwellings,

and the deep-wooded precinct of olive-clad Marathon,

and those of the city of Celeus, and those who had the harbour of Athens,

sea-side Brauron, the empty tomb of Iphigeneia,

and the ground of Thoricus and well-bearing Aphidnae,

and those who held the Eleusinian land of Deo of the glorious child,

the celebrants of the basket and the fruitful goddess,

born of the blood of Triptolemus, who once, guiding

through the air Deo's serpent chariot,

lashed the dappled backs of the corn-bearing serpents;

and there a man came in age, brandishing iron armour

here and there, an Acharnian, holding it out to his arming sons;

and the lines of Attica came as comers, and with spear,

with swords of the hasting townsmen rousing the war,

into battle the well-helmeted Athenians ran in revel,

and as they rushed to war the harbour of Phalerum echoed;

and many a man, proclaiming his earlier earth-born stock,

bound up his locks in fine braids with a golden cicada.

His fatherland too Aeacus left, whom a bastard bird begot,

mingling with the snatched Asopid nymph,

an eagle, the winged, high-flying husband of Aegina, Zeus;

and from that marriage Aeacus was named; and beyond all others

he was eager to help his brother Dionysus;

and with skilled craft he marshalled the phalanxes of the Myrmidons,

who once were ants creeping over the field,

busy on their many-scattered feet, until from their

worthless bodies their earth-born shape was changed,

and high-ruling Zeus moulded them into another, better form,

and an armed host sprang up; for suddenly

an alien-shaped, voiceless, unsown swarm of the field,

the ant, was shaped into a speaking mortal body.

Their leader Aeacus held command, and on his well-made oxhide

he had drawn Zeus as the cunning bastard bird, a token of his birth,

lifting up a woman in sparing talons,

and a river of fire was near, and beside it a girl

in piteous dejection; and though it was a breathless image,

she strained a sidelong eye, as if lamenting her father

heavy-kneed Asopus, and seemed to cry out this:

"You won me a fair bride-gift by overcoming my own begetter."

Of Crete the leader was, of the many-tongued dwellers,

Asterius, with a bright-faced body, and both—

as much as he was lovely, so much was he strong—whom once a nymph

untying for Minos the knot of her chaste maidenhood,

Phaestian Androgeneia, bore in a Cydonian bed;

he then, leading a hundred-citied people to wine-dark Bacchus,

came, honouring the kindred blood of his stock,

of his own father; for Minos was cousin of Semele,

shared offspring of Cadmus; and far-scattered warriors

all flowed together to one eager leader,

some warriors from Cnossus, some from Lyctus,

joined to the armies of Miletus; with whom many

citizens of high-crested Gortyn were armed,

and dwellers of Rhytion and well-bearing Lycastus . . .

and the land of Nodaean Zeus and the seats of Boebe

and the plain of Cisamus, and the fair cities of Cytaeum.

Such a leader came from Crete; and as he went,

pouring a prophetic radiance with warmer rays,

there shone for Asterius the star of like name to Ares,

first herald of the victory to come; but in the battle,

though he conquered, he came to know the bastard frenzy of an unfamiliar field,

merciless one; for he was not destined, after the Indian war,

to see his ancestral helmet-flashing cave of the Idaean crag,

but chose a life that abandoned his city, and instead of Dicte

he was a settler-citizen of Cnossus in Scythia,

and leaving grey Minos and Androgeneia behind,

the wise man came to the barbarous nations of the guest-slaying Colchians,

and named them Asterians and gave the Colchians a Cretan name,

to whom nature gave foreign customs; and leaving

his ancestral Cretan stream of nursing Amnisus

with shamefaced lips he drank the bastard water of Phasis.

Aristaeus alone came slow, last of all,

of all who dwelt in the land bordering on the land of Greece,

he who from the many-holed hives of sweet honey

lifted his proud neck, and with wine-pouring Dionysus

vied in a vain hope of honey-sweet victory;

and for both gave judgment all the dwellers of Olympus;

but the son of Phoebus, offering the newly-flowing streams of the hives

to the immortals, missed the honey-sweet victory,

because the gods, receiving the thick stream of the sprig-loving bee,

held a sharp surfeit of the joyless dew;

and the surfeit of the blessed ones was at the third cup, and they did not

taste a fourth mixed cup of the returning goblet,

though they thirsted greatly; but when Bacchus drew

and delighted their minds with a fine-dropping shower of dew,

for a whole day they drank the untiring pour of wine;

and drunk with the sweet wine each marvelled, one after another,

longing from one for another cup with glad heart,

holding an insatiate joy of mind-charming wine;

and Zeus marvelled at the works of the honey-dropping bee,

the cunning birth-pang of the honeycomb-loving travail,

the gift of Aristaeus, and to wine-pouring Dionysus

he granted to bear the first-fruits of toil-loosing victory.

From there Aristaeus came slow into the Indian war,

late, having first laid to rest the anger of his ravished prime,

leaving the Cyllenian seat, the dwelling of Hermes;

for not yet had he settled on the earlier island of the Meropes,

not yet had he stayed the fiery breath of the thirsting season,

bringing the life-giving breeze of Zeus the averter of ills,

nor, iron-clad, watching for the radiance of the star

Sirius, holding back the smouldering fever,

had he soothed it by night—the fire still thirsting,

shooting its hot heat through the air with a blazing throat,

cooled by the winds with their slender breaths;

but still he dwelt in the Parrhasian plain. And as he went

a people was armed, the acorn-eating Arcadian wanderer,

those who held Lasion and the fair groves of Lycaeus

and rocky Stymphalus, and the famous little town

Rhipe and Stratie and Mantinea and Enispe

and well-wooded Parrhasia, where is the goddess's plain,

untrodden, still the childbed of primeval Rhea,

and the ground of Pheneus and the father of the dance,

Orchomenus rich in sheep, the seat of the Apidanes,

and those who held Arcadia, city of Arcas, whom his mother

Callisto once bore to Zeus, and his father, fixing him

in the vault of the stars, called him hailstorm-bringing Bootes;

so great a host did Aristaeus arm with Arcadian spear,

drawing into battle, with men fighting, his nomad hounds—

Aristaeus, whom once Cyrene, another Artemis hunting deer,

a lion-slaying nymph, bore in love to Phoebus,

when over sandy Libya fair Apollo

led her, a settler, on the ravishing bridal car.

And as he hastened, leaving his prophetic laurel,

his father Apollo himself armed him with his own hands;

he gave the boy a bow, and fitted to his hand an oxhide

cunningly wrought, and the deep quiver let down across his back

he fastened with a shoulder-strap.

To him from Sicily came far-darting Achates,

and there followed him fellow shield-bearers of his own years,

a great host of Cillyrians and Elymians, and those who held

the seat of the Palici, and those who dwelt by the lake of Catane,

the city near the Sirens, whom to Achelous

rosy Terpsichore bore from the ox-horned bed,

joined to her storm-swift consort;

and those who held Camarina, where with echoing stream

Hipparis, unstable, belches up its crooked water,

and the holy city of Hybla, and those who dwelt near Etna,

where the craters of fire, kindled from the rock,

spout up the hot blaze of Typhon's bed,

and those who shared their homes by frowning Pelorus,

and the island plain of sea-roaring Pachynus,

and Sicilian Arethusa, where a settler creeps,

Alpheus the wanderer, with hair crowned by a Pisan garland,

ferrying his passable swell, and through the topmost sea

drawing the higher, undrenched water, slave of Love,

holding a hot fire that touches through the cold water.

After these came Faunus, leaving the fire-sealed

Pelorian foot of the three-crested Sicilian crag,

him whom Circe bore, joined to Cronion of the deep,

sister of Aeetes, the many-throned, who beside the thicket

dwelt in the deep-shaded circle of a rocky hall.

And the Libyans served in arms by the western region of the earth,

dwelling in the cloud-near cities of wandering Cadmus;

for there, carried by the breezes of opposing winds,

Cadmus dwelt for a time, having the Sithonian nymph

as his fellow-voyager, Harmonia still a maiden, for whose beauty's sake

war-breeding rumour armed the hostile neighbours,

she whom the Libyan host renamed Charis—for more delicate

than the Bistonian grace there had blossomed another earthly grace,

from whom is the hill of the Graces in Libya—for whose beauty

the dread barbarian Ares, stirred to a ravishing battle by senseless goad,

armed himself in love-madness,

the desert-roaming Maurusian host; but brandishing

in his woman-mad hands the spear of Libyan Athena,

her bridegroom-consort fought, shielding Harmonia,

and routed the whole race of the western Ethiopians

together with armed Zeus, with Ares and Cytherea;

there too, as they tell, beside the Tritonian lake

the wanderer Cadmus lay beside rosy Harmonia,

and the Hesperid nymphs wove a song, from whose garden

Cypris together with the Loves adorned the well-married bed,

hanging the golden fruit above the chamber,

a bride-gift worthy of her love, from whose leaves

Harmonia and Cadmus beside the wealth-keeping bridal couch

bound up their hair with rich clusters

instead of the bridal rose; and the bride was more delicate

bearing golden gifts, the prize of golden Aphrodite;

and rousing a revelling song of the starry lyre

her grandsire, ball-like with his dancing feet,

Libyan Atlas, bent low, whirled the heaven about,

and made the song of harmony with neighbouring voice;

and as memorials of the wedded love of his bride

Cadmus gave footings of feet to the Libyan field,

building a hundred cities, and to each he gave

walls hard to climb, raised on stony towers.

Keeping that man in mind the warriors went to war,

shield-bearers of fighting Bromius, champions of Enyo,

dwelling in the seats neighbouring the new-born Moon

and the southerly dwellings of Asbystian Zeus,

the prophet horned one, where often Ammon,

bearing the thrice-coiled likeness of a ram's horn,

with oracular lips prophesied as Hesperian Zeus;

and those who held the stream of Chremetes and those who by the water of Cinyps

dwelt on the sandy edge of parched field,

Auschisae and Bacales joined together, whom more than others,

delighting in Ares, the Zephyrian bend nurtured.

So great a host it was, of a hundred cities; and as the throng

came on, Crataegonus led them, whom once the girl

Anchiroe, daughter of Chremetes, beside the flats of her father,

bore to light-minded Psyllus in a short-lived bed,

a god-fighting bridegroom in her arms, whose crops

once the hot wind Notus burnt with thirsting breath;

but he, arming the helmet-flashing Ares of the ships,

gathered a sea-fighting swarm, that by an avenging ordinance

he might raise Enyo against the airy winds,

eager to kill fiery Notus; and near the island

of Aeolia came his shield-wielding host, but at the man's

madness the spear-throwers in a storm-swift uproar,

lashing his ship, the winds armed themselves,

stirring a confederate helper, a fellow-breathing breeze,

and entombed both the army and Psyllus in the sea.

Of Thracian Samos the shield-bearers flowed together,

whom their lord sent forth, he of the deep-flowing beard,

Emathion the heavy-kneed, with snowy hair,

like the limbs of the Titans, and those who held both

sea-side Myrmex and flowery Saoce,

and the land of Teumerus and the groves of well-meadowed Phesias

shaded by the wooded thicket,

and holy Zerynthus, foundation of the sleepless Corybantes,

the building, as men say, of the Perseid maiden, where

the crags hold revel-bands of mystic torches,

and those who beneath the many-pointed base of the field

dwelt about Brontion, and those whom by the neighbouring sea

I hear named the Paths of Poseidon of the deep.

So many lines came as comers; and of primeval

Electra they confirmed their kindred birth;

for there Ares, Zeus, Cytherea gave Harmonia,

born of the sky, blood of the sea, to Cadmus the gods' helper,

as a wedded wife without bride-gift.

For these as they armed with fair-thyrsus Dionysus

Electra's seventh star rose through the sky,

a right-hand sign of battle, and over the victory

the answering echo of the Pleiades' shout cried out,

granting favour to Dionysus who bore his sister's blood,

and gave the army a like courage; and as they came

Oeagrus led them on to war, a second Ares,

Oeagrus the high-headed, with the likeness of the Giants;

his whole body was unbending, and from his head

and the sinew of his neck, over his back-haired shoulders,

locks like the spine-bearing hedgehogs

flowed down as far as his loins; and he had a neck

long, of vast measure, like the neck of a rock,

keeping his ancestral barbarous nature; and none

came braver than he to the eastern war of the Indians

except Dionysus; and he swore an oath by Victory

to lay waste the whole Indian land with his spear alone.

And the bold son of Ares, leaving his own Pimpleia,

Oeagrus of Bistonia, revelled as a townsman of the field,

leaving Orpheus on the knees of Calliope,

an infant, still cared for at the newly-streaming breast.

The phalanxes of Cyprus were marshalled by lordly Litros

and fair-haired Lapethus; and many were armed,

those who had for their lot Sphecia, the sea-beaten rim of the island,

Cyprus, the god-receiving island of well-winged Loves,

named for self-born Cypris, whose Cyprus's

headland Nereus once outlined, tracing with the deep prong of his trident

a shape like a dolphin—

for when, fertile and streaming with male gore,

Urania shaped the childbed foam, the dew,

and brought Paphia to birth, into the land of horned Cyprus

a dolphin ran over the swell with thinking heart,

lifting Aphrodite seated on its mane—

and those who held the plain of Hylates and the seats of Sestus

and Tamasos and Tembros and the little town of Erythrae

and the deep-wooded precinct of mountain-dwelling Panacrus;

and from Soli a great host was armed, and from Lapethus,

which afterwards they called by the name of its leader,

who then gathered the people, and in the fair-thyrsus uproar

died and was buried and left his name to the citizens.

And those of the city Cinyreia, still named for the rock

of primeval Cinyras, and the plain of the seat of Urania,

named for the airy hollow, because it reared its citizens

flashing like the likeness of the heavenly stars,

and those who held Crapasia, the sea-crowned soil of the field,

and Paphos, the garland-bearing harbour of soft-haired Loves,

the landing-step of Aphrodite rising from the waters,

where is the bridal water of sea-born Paphia,

lovely Setrachus, where often, taking a garment,

Cypris cloaked anew the bathed son of Myrrha,

and the city of primeval Perseus, where once Teucer,

leaving Salamis when Telamon was angered,

built a younger, famous Salamis.

And the delicate throng of the Lydians flowed in, those who held both

pebbly Cimpsus and brow-frowning Itone,

and those of broad Torebium, and those of the nurses of wealth,

Sardis of the fair childbed, of an age with the dawn,

and the Bacchic land that nurses the cluster, where to his mother

vine-clad Dionysus, holding a cup full of wine,

first mixed it for Rhea, and named the city Cerassae,

and the peaks of Oanus, and those who had for their lot the stream of Hermus

and watery Metallon, where the Pactolian mud,

spitting it out, glitters as the golden wealth of the dew;

and from Stataloi a great host was armed, where Typhoeus,

spouting hot the fire-nursed breath of the thunderbolt,

burnt the neighbouring ground, and in a storm-swift smoke

of blazing Typhon the crags were turned to ash,

his heads withering with the limb-devouring spark;

but leaving the fragrant temple of Lydian Zeus

an iron-less priest fought with goading speech,

with speech for his javelin, and not with cutting iron,

restraining with his tongue the obedient son of the field,

his weapon a fierce mouth, his word a sword, his shield his voice,

pouring out this speech with god-summoning throat:

"Stand, wretch"; and the fiery Giant by the mystic craft

of unbreakable speech was held fast in a wise bond,

dreading a man armed with thoughtful spear,

a foot-fetter without iron in his avenging speech;

nor did the vast-armed dread Giant tremble so

at the archer of the thunderbolt as at the man-breaking initiate

shooting with his tongue a babbling shaft; and he gave way, worn out,

pierced with speaking wounds by the sharp word;

and having a wound of fire, pierced by a hot weapon,

Typhoeus suffered from another hotter, mental fire,

and by necessity rooted firm, unshaken, immovable,

his serpent-foot fixed fast to his mother Earth,

wounded with an unmarked, bloodless point in his bloodless body.

But all this an age long past brought among earlier men.

Those who beat the earth clear-ringing with rhythmic foot

both Stabius and Stamnus armed for the Indian fray;

and seeing the dancer host leaping all around

you would speak such a word, that the leader is leading

into a dance, not into war, bringing an armed man;

for as they came, striking up a dance,

the Mygdonian, battle-rousing lyre roared toward the fray,

sending out, instead of a dance, the host-rousing din of war;

and the war-trumpets were the pipes of the Loves,

and the twin Berecyntian flutes, yoke-fellows, sounded,

and a double-beating clatter from loud-crashing hands,

with brazen clashings the oxhides bellowed.

And the Phrygians served in arms beside the war-rousing line of the Lydians,

those who had for their lot Budeia, and the famous little town

tree-clad Temeneia, the well-shaded grove of the field,

and those who dwelt in Dresie and Obrimus, which by the streams

of crooked Maeander sets its own water,

and the plain named for Doias, and those who dwelt in Celaenae

of the golden roofs, and the images of the Gorgon;

with these served also those who had for their lot to dwell in the cities

neighbouring Sangarius, and the seats of the land of Hellespont.

Their leader led them on, leaving snaky Dirce,

Priasus, a settler-townsman of the Aonian field;

for when rainy Zeus flooded the plain of Phrygia,

pouring down with rain-seas the high-running water,

and the oaks were hidden, and in the thorn-bearing glens

the thirsty hills surged like rivers,

then leaving his sodden house, covered by the rain,

and the air-roaming stream, the javelin-thrower of halls,

Priasus migrated to the bosom of the Aonian field,

shunning the death-bearing rain-water of Zeus;

and ever among foreign men shedding tears

he remembered Sangarius and sought his accustomed spring,

drinking the alien water of the Aonian river;

but late Zeus the highest soothed the snow-swollen swell

and the watery constraint, and from the heads of Sipylus

he drove back again the water of flooded Phrygia;

and the Earthshaker with his trident moved the whole stream

into the deep hollows of the trackless sea,

and the crags were stripped bare of the roaring snow-flood;

and then leaving the soil of Boeotia, returning,

Priasus, late in counsel, slipped into his own fatherland,

and his heavy-kneed begetter with a harmless pull of his arm

he embraced returning, whom for the sake of pious works

great Zeus saved from the rainy destruction,

him whom they call Brombius; and from the Phrygian gulf

the proud warriors ringed about Priasus.

When Asterius had departed apart from his own begetter,

freshly-blossoming Miletus came as fellow-traveller to Bacchus,

having Caunus as fellow-toiler, his brother, who then

leading a people of the Carians, still a boy, put on the Indian war;

for not yet did he weave the love-sick, wile-plotting song,

holding the frenzy of his unknowing sister, nor of herself

did he sing—of an answering love on rival beds—

Hera his sister joined to Zeus,

about the Latmian cattle-yard of the sleepless herdsman,

blessing under love the bridegroom Endymion, beloved of the neighbouring rock,

darling of love-stricken Selene;

but still Byblis was maiden-loving, and still the hunt

Caunus, ignorant of kindred loves, was learning;

not yet, when her soft-haired brother had fled,

rained upon with tears, did the girl shape her body anew,

and well up the watery stream of a mourning spring.

With him together the bold warriors hastened on,

those who dwelt in Mycale, and those who had for their lot the crooked water

into the land of the sinking, back-returning river,

crooked Maeander, creeping through the dwellings.

So many lines came; and with one-eager journey

of the gathering peoples the Cybelean halls resounded,

and the streets of the Mygdonian city were ringed about.