Book 22

22. The second-and-twentieth book sings the strife of Bromius and the deeds that Aeacus accomplished on the plain and at the Hydaspes.

But when the company of Bacchus came on foot to the ford of the pebble-strewn river, there where, in its deep-eddying gulf, the Indian Hydaspes pours out its sailable water like the Nile, then the women's song of the Bassarids made melody, striking up the Phrygian revel-rout for Lyaeus the Lord of Night, and the chorus of shaggy Satyrs roared with the mystic voice; all the earth laughed, and the rocks lowed in answer, the Naiads raised the ritual cry, and over the river the Nymphs girdled themselves in spiral coils with the silent streams and sang in tune the partnered measure of the Sicilian song, such as the hymn-singing Sirens used to strike up from their honey-tongued throats; and the whole thicket quivered, and the wise oaks uttered a melody like the pipe, and the Hamadryads shrilled, and on a leafy spray a Nymph, half-seen, peered over a cluster and sang. With snow-white milk the welling spring turned pale, though it was all of water, and in the ravine's hollow the Naiads bathed in milky streams, and drank the white milk; and from its reddening breast the hard rock blushed, belching out wine, spurting new must from the unplanted hill in pleasant-to-drink trickles; and from self-flowing bosoms poured the sweet gifts of the honey-dripping bee with no need of hives; and from bushes new-born the apple of the sharp-haired thorn ran up downy; and as oil flowed of itself over the topmost boughs, the tree of Athena was bathed in unpressed moisture. And hares embraced the dancing hounds; the long serpents reveled in the dance, licking the footprints of viper-haired Dionysus, bending their necks aside, and one over another belched out a gentle hiss from its rejoicing throat; the delighted serpent kept then a measured rhythm, and the coiling trail of its long spine wound about as it leapt around the fearless feet of Dionysus. Spiraling and bounding over the Indian crag the tigers sported; and within the thicket a great swarm of mountain-roaming elephants sprang up. And then over the rugged glens the wandering Pans ran across the unwalkable mountains on slender hooves, the shuddering heights, where no bold light bird flew as wayfarer . . . he measured the high-pathed wings with twin beating and, tossing the loose tress beside his throat, the lion as comrade danced opposite the leaping boar; and the birds cried aloud the likeness of human song, filching its imitating, half-finished strain, prophesying the victory of the India-slaying struggle, and over their green limbs they shook out at length the upright trailing tail; and in the same eager dance the leopard, high-leaping, ran beside the bear as its running-mate. And Artemis reined back the rush of her dappled whelps when she saw the gentle lioness make its dance-treading leap; ashamed, she unstrung her well-curved bowstring, that she might not shoot with shafts the beasts at their delight. And one who beheld the strange marvels of Bacchus, casting his eye through the topmost dense cluster, folding the leaves about the watching circle of his sight, let himself see only so much as a man peers around with painted eyes peering through a helmet's slot, or as when a man skilled in the tragic chorus, holding a fearful bellow from his long-sounding throat, strains his inmost eye through a fashioned eye, wearing the false semblance of a mortal face. So he, hiding from all the marvels beneath the shady wood, watched unseen with a face that stole its glances; and he reported to the foe; and Thoureus quivered with fear, finding fault with Morrheus and with senseless Deriades. The Indian host trembled, and heedless of battle shook from their fearful hands the bronze armor, gazing at the trees shaken by the frenzied rush. And now the Indian host would have taken from the neighboring bank the gray olive-bough, witness of supplication, and bent a slavish neck to unconquered Dionysus; but Hera of many devices, changing her shape, emboldened the enemy and deceived the chief of the Indians, fastening upon Dionysus a Thessalian magic hymn, and the brew of Circe with god-summoning incantations, such as the enchantment of a river beyond all enchanting. And she persuaded the foe, quick to obey; and she told each that no one, held fast by burning thirst, should ever stumble by drinking the beguiled water of the mind-stealing river. And now, leaping out from the unseen river-bed, the fiery Indians would have fallen on the feasting armies; but a Hamadryad Nymph, peering over a wind-stirred cluster, sprang up from the leafy hollow; holding a thyrsus in her hand, in form she seemed a Bacchant, her hair wreathed in mimic ivy of the oak; and telling of the foes' guile, with a silence that signals treachery, she whispered into the ears of clustering Lyaeus: "Vine-clad Dionysus, plant-tending lord of fruits, your plant will grant grace and beauty to the Hamadryads; I was not born a Bassarid, I am no comrade of Lyaeus, only in my hand I lift a counterfeit thyrsus; I am not from Phrygia, your fatherland, nor do I dwell in the land of the Lydians by the stream of the wealth-flowing river; I am a fair-leaved Hamadryad, here where the warriors, your foes, lie in ambush; and, careless of my own country, I will save your army from death; for to your Satyrs I bring loyalty, Indian though I am, and instead of Deriades I am of one mind with Dionysus; for I will grant you the grace I owe, because the moist pangs of his streams, and the oaks he ever nourishes with rainy drops, great father Zeus the Rain-giver supplies. Give me your leaves, and here I will plant them; give me your clusters, which loosen cares. But, dear one, do not hasten to cross the river's flood, lest the neighboring Indians press upon you in the water; turn your eye to the trees, and beside the leafy thicket spy out unforeseen the ambush of men in hiding. Yet what will the cowards within the thicket do to you? The foes live only while you still hold back your thyrsus. Be silent on our account, lest the enemy hear nearby, lest Hydaspes report it to the hidden Indians." So saying, the Hamadryad Nymph turned back and departed, like a wing or a thought, and changing her form, like a bird she ran through the wood of her lair, darting up to her own oak; while in silence he mingled with the Bassarids, and of the Hamadryad goddess spoke the word into the ears of each of his champions, nodding with his glances, and in thoughtful silence bade them, armed in their gear, to feast among the oaks, and told of the guile of the hidden, plot-weaving Indians, lest the warriors press upon them unarmored, while they still feasted through the host; and they obeyed Lyaeus when he called, and were ready for battle beside the silent dinner of the spear-bearing table. And after the swift meal the shield-bearers flowed in from the neighboring river to drink the after-dinner water, at the divine nods of all-clever Dionysus, lest drink and slumber and darkness lull the host to sleep. And here and there the army fell on a war-loving bed, snatching a little sleep upon the shield of battle. But father Zeus, turning aside the guileful mind of the Indians, checked the evening battle with a bellowing roar, pouring out the boundless din of an all-night rain. But when snow-footed Dawn, scoring the darkness away, gathering the morning, blushed upon the dewy rock, the foes, peering over the topmost screen of the battle-rousing wood, rushed forward in a mass; and Thoureus led them, the monstrous champion of the Indian war, like in his charge to towering Typhon darting down at the thunderbolt. And the armies, at the cunning nod of wise Bacchus, held a feigned fear, undismayed, and from the battle withdrew of their own will, willingly, until the Indians poured out into the plain, having left the cover of the thicket. In rich armor the Lydian man was arrayed, bearing the gold-gleaming likeness of Lycian Glaucus, proclaiming his own land, where on the bank of the Pactolus the bright wealth of the reddening dew glitters, and he flashed with rosy gleams facing the Dawn, shaking the golden front of his wealth-flowing helmet, that Lydian man, far-conspicuous, and from the breast of the bearer a radiance shone from his reddening tunic; and shaking the gleaming helm upon his temple, another champion from Alybe, excelling for Dionysus, displayed his fatherland's wealth, and from his bright head the marble gleam of the silver helmet shone, casting a light equal to the snowy Moon. And the god, never standing still, terrified all the warriors of the foe, holding no bared sword, brandishing no spear, but borne through the midst of the champions, like the breezes, he wheeled the right wing of the battle from the left, hurling the long-shadowing thyrsus, with the flower of the earth, cleaving the cloud of Indians with his ivy-spear. Neither did high-headed, so-mighty Thoureus drive him back, nor the host, nor any other champion; poured upon one another they gave way here and there before onrushing Dionysus. And Oeagrus shook up the dark War-goddess, insatiate, mowing the ranks of close-pressed men, cutting the helmet-glancing harvest with his Bistonian spear. As when a river, pouring forth its stormy strength, restless, comes down from the crag in a ravine-cut stream, borne onto the plain, and not even the vineyards themselves with unbroken fences hold it back as it scrapes the midst of a stone bridge's back; many a pine was rolled along, and many a fallen high-seen fir, torn up by the roots, was dragged in the flood; so he ranged the army of the foes, one after another, slaying the footmen as he turned about with his Sithonian lance, and they ringed him round, and built up about him what the warriors call the mimic tortoise of shields; foot was set firm to foot, and shield leaned against shield, in turn each neighbor's shield crowding the next, and crest nodded to crest, and near at hand man touched man; and as the dust rose the warriors whitened with the hooves of horses. There whom first, whom last, sending to Hades, did Oeagrus, citizen of the Bistonian soil, reap, slaying one here and another there, having fulfilled for his wife the deeds, said to fall short of the famed Calliope? This one above the breast with his swift spear, that one cleaving with the hilted sword across the neck, and another maddened foe he pierced beside the navel, and from the deadly wound he drew out his spear, and as it was dragged he tore out the warm bowels with the bloody iron; and at another's fighting he ran down dragging his sword, and with the keen blade he cut off the hand, and it, falling, blood-soaked, quivered upon the ground, the leaping hand; and the hand was severed, yet did not let go the shield, gripping at the edge the dusty shield-strap; and the wind-roving soul, leaping up from the dead man, longed for the wonted vigor of the body it had clasped. Another he crushed, striking with his unsparing spear, piercing the tips of the arm with the whetted point, and with the sword he struck the shield, and as it was beaten by the iron the unbroken, central-bossed back of the oxhide rang. But he, shaken by the raging frenzy of battle, brandished his spear, shifting it with circling craft either on both sides of the flank, or of the neck, or near the shoulder; and shaking here and there the back-whirling point, he cut through the midst of the crowded battle-press, swift, seated high upon his crest-lifting horse. As when, after the dark season of chill winter, the air appears, stripped bare of unsheltered clouds, receiving the clear gleam of the springtime light; so he, reveling, the fearless man, stripped bare the middle battle of the splitting Indians' close ranks. And then one, driving his bronze against a champion's mouth, struck the right jaw-beard with his ghastly knife; and one, hurling a din against the foes through the air, sent a wandering stone toward a high-pathed mark, and the air-roving rock crashed upon a head, and dashed away the crest of a well-helmed plume, when the neck-fastening bond was loosed beside the throat; and as it rolled the head of the bearer was laid bare. Not the men alone roared then, but the very horses, bronze-clad, crashed in War, trumpeting Ares with their warlike neighing. And the maiden of the later voice, from the mountain-dwelling throats, answering their din with her rocky mouths, imitating Echo neighed the war-song. And many a newly-slaughtered corpse rolled on the fields, spitting out the warm stream of blood; and as men perished, some hung dead upon their sides, one, struck, writhed with his gashed flank, another rolled over the ground in the poured dust, another was propped beside the navel, and one upon the earth leapt over the head of a quivering man, and one, falling, cried out, struck in the throat, and twisted his feet about in the dance of death; and another lay face-down, and as though wroth with his slayer, wide-mouthed he clenched the earth with maddened tooth. As another was struck by the long-barbed iron, the white tunic reddened with gore from the spearman; as another fought, from the stretched bows his blood-soaked thigh was grazed by the winged arrow. And one, pressing his trumpet vainly to his lips, that hostile man, sounded the strain of battle-rousing echo, drawing his shrinking, fleeing host into the fray. And the Indians, hearing the cry, streamed to the tumult. Emboldened, they laid hold of the returning struggle, ashamed to appear before their king outside the victory. And many a well-armored warrior, crown-like in one place, ringed round Aeacus where he sped. But he, hemmed in their midst, was overborne—not by helmet, not trusting in shields nor in the breastplate of battle; but, sheathed instead of iron in his father's gift, Athena walled him round wholly with unbreakable clouds, with which once she quenched the drought of the rainless field, bringing life-giving water to the thirsty earth when Zeus rained, and of the sheaf-bearing earth the well-laboring furrows were wedded to the plow; and in the midst of his foes, ringed round, the inspired man crushed some with his swift spear, some with the sword, some with hard stones; and the ground reddened with gore as the Indians were slain, and by the unbending man's spear lay a heap of widely-scattered corpses, of whom one half-dead still quivered, another, beating the ground with his feet, on his back, self-rolling, kept company with a neighbor's doom; and they crowded the ground, and corpse leaned on corpse laid down by measure, and from the freshly-cut throat the cold body was warmed by the reddening gore; and the slaughter was unspeakable, and as men fell one upon another the earth grew dark, drenched with the channel of blood, and pitying her sons, in a ravine-voice she spoke: "Son of Zeus, life-giving, blood-stained—for you rule too over the fruit-bearing rain and over the bloody snowfall— with rain you watered all the teeming vineyard of Hellas, but the Indian furrow you flooded with gore; once sheaf-bearing, now death-bearing; for the husbandmen your snowfall found the ear of grain, but you reaped the Indian host, mowing men like a harvest; and you bring both: from Zeus you lead the rain, from Ares you snow with blood." So spoke life-bearing Earth. But the son of Cronus roared from heaven, and to the slaughter of the Indians the trumpet of Zeus summoned Aeacus with thunderous crashes. And one among the foes, stretching his eye toward Aeacus, sent a shaft, and Athena turned aside the arrow, which but grazed the thigh, only so much as to scratch the skin's surface. But still more, painless, Aeacus fought into the midst of the Indians, never standing still, since the shaft touched his thigh like a man's slender fingernail, when it scratches the skin's edge. And one man, unovertaken, withdrew, a footman wayfarer, on swifter feet, and wished to plunge into the neighboring thicket where before he had hidden; and pursuing him Erechtheus drove his wind-footed horse in the chase; but when he had reached him by as much as the upright rush of a flying spear stretches when a champion has cast it, then, throwing himself behind his back, the footman stood facing him, awaiting the horseman; but he, bending, fixed his left foot to the earth on bent knee, aslant upon his flanks, and of his back-strained ankle he raised the sole high in the air, stretching upright the toes of his right foot fixed firm to the ground, holding an Indian shield of seven oxhides, the likeness of a tower, holding a bared sharp sword; and thrusting before his face his bronze-backed shield, the proud Indian rushed on, either to die, or to strike the man, or to drive off the horse with daring blade; and with the bossed iron, aslant, checking the horse's jaw across its path, on foot he shook the horseman above him; and now he would have flung to the ground the citizen of motherless Athena, but Erechtheus pierced him with his spear beside the navel's edge, and the man, transfixed through the middle by the deadly sharp bronze, he hurled to the ground; and he, in whirling rushes, slid headlong from the air into the dust, turning his head like a tumbler in a dancer's leap. Leaving him gasping, turning his horse's course, the citizen of Athena charged upon other foes. . . . bending his bow, and laying upon the string upright the arrow stretched to the very iron tip, he drew the shaft toward the mark; and to the noble-bearing bride Calliope he entrusted all the hope of victory. Nine long-barbed arrows he sent forth, and slew nine men; and there was an equal number of arrows sent and of warriors slain; of these the wandering shaft split the brow's edge of one, of another it scored the rim of the shaggy-breasted nipple, another above the loins, and another, falling on the belly, was borne into the very midst of the gashed flank, and one ran through the side, and one, fixed upright in the storm-swift sole of a fleeing man's feet, pinned his foot to the ground with a binding fetter. And he drew out the wind-roving shaft; and from his quiver another being sent after another, one upon another, a downpour of arrows rushed in an airy whirl. As when a man driving bronze on a bronze anvil with tireless hammer sends out a fire-roaring sound, striking the neighboring lump of metal, and many leap forth, bounding sparks from the beaten iron, warming the air, and with alternate blows one was foremost, one near, another, leaping up, overtakes another still leaping with fiery bound; so he, shooting at the host of Indians facing him as they fought, scattered them from his unwearying bow, slaying one here, another there, with arrow upon arrow. And as the middle phalanx shrank from the cloud of shafts the space was laid bare, the likeness of the horned Moon shining on both sides, when, gleaming a little from her horn, she has filled the two tips with new-born radiance and with leaning rays scores the middle of her circle, divided by twofold soft fire; and the middle of the still-gashed Moon's disk was seen laid bare. Nor did Aeacus cease from battle, fighting beside Dionysus, undismayed, and he reveled in the tumult, slaying here and there; and pursuing them from the plain he led the wandering folk into the river's mouths. United, the warriors ringed round a single man struck with swords, yet heeding neither blade nor winged shaft; and with blow upon blow the swift man mowed the iron harvest of the dark battle and fought against all, some on the banks, others below in the river, slaughtering with warlike hand; and he filled all the stream with corpses; and as men perished, murmuring with blood, the white Hydaspes reddened. And one man, fleeing the windy rush of the champion, headlong, self-rolling, slid into the stream, and many a freshly-slaughtered corpse, by the spearman's iron, was dragged, borne in the wavy flood, its limbs swollen; and in the gore beneath the water the Naiads bathed in the blood-red stream, and the black water was reddened with bloody trickles. And many in the river-mouths, casting away their points, showed forth supplication, unarmed, one on the banks, one stretched out beside the sands, and one on the ground upright on bent knee, bending his curving neck; but Aeacus refused their prayers with face uplifted, raising unbending wrath against his foes; and the spearman without iron, still touching prayer, not one Lycaon alone he slew, but his foes, rolling on the ground with unarmored hands, he slaughtered without number, defiling the river's stream; and the Hydaspes received many an Asteropaeus as a corpse. Nor was it without a god that Aeacus too made war; for his foes, as the father of Peleus, slaughtering within the river, he held a watery battle and a watery War, as though prophesying about the flood of the river Scamander the half-finished struggle to come for Achilles; and the battle of the grandsire foretold the battle of the grandson. And one Nymph in the river-mouths cried out, sandalless, a Naiad without veil, peering over the streams: "Kinsman of the Naiads, bearing Zeus-descended blood, pity the holy water of the Zeus-fallen river. Your spear has slain Indians enough; cease for the Nymphs to rouse tears in the tearless Naiads; a watery Naiad was your mother too; for I hear that your Aegina is the daughter of a river. Remember who bore you, and no longer defile the stream. I will go to another stream undefiled, I go into the sea. And sea-Thetis receives me; but let this bloody stream be the care of the Fury and of Dionysus."