Book 26

26. The twenty-sixth has the deceitful shape of Athena and the great battle-rousing host of the gathering Indians.

To Deriades, sleeping high upon his downcast bed, came rushing Athena, bringing faithful tidings to Bacchus, and devised for her kinsman another victory yet to be; and, changing her form into the very likeness of Orontes, she mimicked the son-in-law of high-crested Deriades; and as he had cast off the murderous sting of Enyo, the mimic vision of a deceitful dream beguiled him, crying aloud such a word, and over the fate of the slain she emboldened the fearful man to the battle of Dionysus: 'You sleep, Deriades; and I blame you; for it is alien to city-guarding kings to take an all-night sleep; the counsellor keeps the measure of sleep. About the towers the foes press hard, and you do not lift your rushing spear, you do not hear the rushing din of the drums, nor the song of pipes, nor do you hear the army-rousing sound of the murderous trumpet. But pity your young daughter, the mourning widow, Protonoe, lamenting her husband, and do not leave your Orontes unavenged, sceptered king. Slay my destroyers, the unarmored; for though your son-in-law, swift-fated, is dead, his slayers still live. Look at my breast, struck by the sharp thyrsus; alas, that warlike Lycurgus does not dwell here, alas, that you rule not over the overbearing Arabs; Dionysus was no god, who, pursuing into the swell of the sea a mortal man, made him a wanderer beneath the waters. I saw Deriades putting to flight the womanish Enyo. Be a fearless lion, since, fleeing the bronze-clad man, fawn-clad Dionysus became like a fawn. He did not slay the war-mad race of the Indians, but your own father slew them; for in the wars, seeing your champions in flight, Hydaspes destroyed them. You are not like other men; for the heavenly blood of your grandfather, blazing Phaethon's daughter, you bear; you have no mortal body; no sword nor weapon will master you, bearing down upon Lyaeus.' So saying, much-counseling Athena went to Olympus, changing the shape of her dream-borne face. And Deriades at dawn, from cities, from islands, bade his heralds gather the far-scattered nation; and many a herald, here and there with stormy sandal, went from city to city, mustering the host along the eastern shore; and the war-mad fighters gathered from every side at the king's summons. First the helmsmen of Enyo armed themselves, Agraeus and Phlogios, leaders who came together, after the newly-completed tomb of their lately-perished father, the two sons of Eulaeus; and there campaigned with them the peoples, all who dwelt in Cyra and, beside the broad barbarian water of the Indian river, Baedion of Ombelos, and well-towered Rhodoe, the plain of the war-mad Indians, and rugged Propanison, and all who held the round of the island of the Graiai, where the children, instead of their usual mother, have the male breast of a milk-bearing sire, stealing the dew with their uttermost lips; and those who held steep Sesindion, and those who, with a flax-fenced circle, towered Gazos with thread-woven dwellings, unbreakable, well-made with well-spun foundations, an unbending bulwark of war, and never has a hostile man with bronze broken the rank of the linen-cloaked towers. And against these marched bold warriors, the Dardae and the armies of the Prasioi, and the tribes of the Salangoi who bear gold, whose wealth is shared in their homes, whose custom it is always to eat the pulse-fruit as their daily living; and instead of grain they grind it with the wheeling circle of the mill; and the ranks of the crooked-haired Zabioi, whose prudent champion was Palthanor, who loathed Deriades, agreeing in his pious ways with Dionysus; him lord Dionysus, leading after the battle of the Indians, gave as a foreign dweller to lyre-built Thebes; and he abode with Justice, leaving his native Hydaspes, having drunk the Ismenian water of the Aonian river. And against these, exulting, Morrheus armed a boundless army, the son of Didnasos, fellow-traveler of his father, who then, holding a grief mingled with woeful old age, took up the battle, brandishing the much-wrought shield with his aged hand and shaking his chin shadowed by a hoary meadow, the unbidden herald of long time, still groaning for his short-lived son, Indian Orontes— Didnasos of the shifting tears; and lord Morrheus followed him, holding the upright avenging spear, that he might master the whole host of Bromius, and he wished alone to contend with brother-slaying Bacchus, and the unwounded son of Thyone he longed to wound, the slayer of his kinsman. And there followed them the race of the many-tongued Indians, those who held the city of the Sun, fair-built Aethra, the foundation of a cloudless soil, and those who held both the thicket of Anthene and the reed-bed of Orycie, and fiery Nesaea and storm-free Melaenae, and the well-whirling plain of sea-girdled Patalene; and against these the close ranks of the Dyssaeoi, with whom too the dread tribes of the shaggy-breasted Sabeiroi armed themselves, who have shaggy hairs upon their hearts, for whose sake always they hold courage of soul and do not cower before Enyo. With these campaigned also the Ear-sleeper men, whose custom is to slumber upon their long ears; to them came Phringos and Aspetos, drawing them to battle, and proud Danyclos their comrade, with whom, marching together, far-shooting Morrheus went as fellow-laborer of Hippouros; and, holding a single purpose, the whole Ear-sleeper host five bloodthirsty leaders marshaled. Tektaphos came far-shooting to the battle, who once, from his daughter's hungry lips drew, as defenses against doom, the streams of her father-nursing, guileful breast— Tektaphos, withered, dry of skin, a prudent corpse— when the sceptered king, holding a loveless threat, Deriades, pressing him with many-woven cords, shut him bound in a musty pit, unfed, squalid, his body worn out with hunger, deprived of the sun and the well-rounded moon. And the man was hidden, fettered, in an earthy depth, bringing no drink, no food, beholding no man, but beneath the hollow rock of his ground-dug flanks he lay suffering; and with long hunger he wasted away, stretching out the feeble breath of his hungry lips, breathing yet, like the breathless; and as from a corpse foul breezes blew from his withered skin. And there was a guard of watchmen keeping the imprisoned man, whom then his cunning daughter, with deceiving speech, beguiled; and she cried a heavy-groaning, suppliant voice, shaking her treacherous robes, the newly-delivered bride: 'Do not kill me, guardians; I carry nothing, I came bringing no drink and no food to my father; tears, tears only I bring to my father; my hands declare them free; if your minds, if your minds are distrustful, loose my blameless girdle, cast aside my veils for me, shake my tunic with your hands; I came bringing no life-sustaining drink. But hide even me myself with my father in the underground pit; I am no terror, no terror, even if the sceptered king should hear; who is angered at one who pities a corpse? At a wretchedly-fated dying man, who is wrathful? Who does not pity the breathless? And I will close the drooping eyes of the prisoner; hide me; what envy is there in death? Let one tomb receive us both as we perish, father and child.' So saying, she persuaded them. And the girl ran into the recess, a light-bearer to the dark prisoner; and in the pit she poured into her father's mouth the milk of her evil-averting breasts, fearless; and hearing the deed of the god-fearing Heavenly one, Deriades marveled; and, like the image of the over-thoughtful girl, he loosed her father from his bonds; and a far-shouted rumor was heard, and the host of the Indians praised the guileful breast of the evil-averting bride. He then was conspicuous among the Bolingoi, as, amid the stars, the Evening Star gleams, brightening the air, the Evening Star, herald of the lightless gloom that follows. And high-headed Gingles and high-stepping Thyraeus and high-clouded Hippalmos, from beyond the last edge of earth, armed the glancing tribes of the spear-bold Arachotoi and the comrade phalanxes of the Dersaioi, who with iron hide in heaped dust those slain in war by iron (they entombed in dust those slain in the strife). And, having mustered the curved-bow army of allies, slow Habrathoos came; and ashamed of his newly-cut locks he armed himself, nursing wrath and grief at the ox-horned king, since in foolish madness overbearing Deriades had shorn off his whole hair, a bitter reproach to the Indians. And the constrained warrior came scarcely to the battle, and with high-crested helmet he hid the mangled, hairless circle of his head, keeping hidden wrath in his heart; and in the battles by day he fought, but ever in the all-night hour he sent to Bacchus a faithful attendant, a messenger announcing the designs of Deriades; and secretly he was armed for Deriades and openly for Dionysus. And the wild tribes of the Xouthoi and the battle-rousing Arienoi and the offspring of the Zoaroi he armed, and the tribe of the Earoi and the breed of the Kaspeiroi and Arbis, and those who held Hyspor itself, gleaming with its radiant stream, haired with electrum from its deep-rich veins, and those who held sunny Arsanie, where the women in a single dawn, at the wonted loom of Pallas, with swift hands complete a whole tunic. And against these were arrayed in the tumbling battle the Kyraioi, skilled in the sea-beaten round of the islands, knowers of sea-warfare; but water-faring merchant-ships they do not know, but on untanned oxhide they sail in a skillful copy of wooden ships; with skins they steer a bastard voyage, in which the sailor sits, faring over the waveless swells, scoring the sea's back with mimic merchant-ships. These Thyamis marshaled, and Holkasos, the leader of men, the two sons of Tarbelos, the spear-bearing father. And a great swarm came, leaving Areizanteia, nurse of strange wooden honey, where the trees, having drunk the airy, life-giving Eastern watering of dew, their leafy boughs, honey-flowing, as from hives, bring forth the cunning travail of the wise bee, the green drink of the self-born petals; for into the plain the newly-appeared Sun, when he bathes in Ocean, shakes off the nourishing moisture of his Eastern hair, sprinkling the plant-nursing furrow of the life-bearing earth. Such honey Areizanteia bears, in which delighting, swimming on its wings, dancing above the petal, the boundless bird flies; and a certain crooked serpent, creeping, girdling itself in coils, entwined with the sweet tree, draws the lily moisture with its seizing throat, licking with its lips the sweet travail of the clusters; and the dragons, gushing up the tree-dew, pour out sweet honey, and they spit out a wandering venom not so bitter as the bee's sweet stream is sweet; where, upon the honey-dripping branches, sings the orion-bird, the sweet bird, like a sensible swan; it strikes up no note in chorus with the Zephyr's breeze, sending a windy whistle of hymn-bearing wings, but with wise mouth it sings, like some man striking a bridal hymn on the bride-tending lyre. And the katreus foretells the coming pour of rain, golden-formed, clear-voiced; and from its eyelids the radiance is sent in morning beams, matched against Dawn; and often, singing clear above the windy tree, in chorus with the orion-bird it wove a neighboring song, adorned with crimson wings; and perhaps you would say, hearing the singing katreus chant its eastern hymn, that a morning, glancing-throated nightingale wove a revel. There too was the host of the battle-rousing mortals, whom for combat fearless Pyloites, son of Hippalmos, armed, holding his brother Billaeos, a fellow leader. And against these were armed the Sibai and the people of Hydarkes, and another army came, leaving the city Karmina; of these together Kyllaros was lord, and Astraeis, champion of the Indians, the twin sons of Brongos, honored by Deriades. And another fleet came from three hundred islands, which lie ranked one beyond another, each in turn neighbors to one another, where, in a far-stretching channel, the two-mouthed Indus, bearing its wandering, curving water, creeping little by little from the Indian reed-bed, slanting over the soil beside the mouth of the Eastern sea, goes self-rolling above the Aethiopian ridge; where, raised in the coil of its summer-born waters, with self-born streams it grows cubit upon cubit, and the watery consort embraces the rich earth, delighting the thirsty bride with moist kisses, holding the many-cubited frenzy of his sheaf-bearing wedlock, in alternate measure begetting ever-renewed streams— the Nile in Egypt and the eastern Indus, Hydaspes. There, scoring the black-pebbled stream with its hoof, swims the watery river-horse, the wanderer, such as, scoring the summer-born swell of my Nile, dwells, a watery wayfarer through the deep water, with its long jaws; and onto the beach it walks, splitting the ridge of the wood with its jagged-toothed point, and, holding its wet, unscarred jaw, a snatcher of crops, with a mimic sickle it cuts the grain-bearing harvest, an ironless reaper of the sheaf-bearing birth; such things they say the Indian river bears, a might like the seven-channeled Nile. And those who left the curving rounds of the islands and the seats of the neighboring Indus, the warlike men armed themselves, whose champion man, Rhigbasos, led, holding the likeness of the Giants. Nor did old Aretos fail Deriades when he called to battle, a heavy man; but, fastening the bronze-heavy tunic upon his shaggy breast, he lifted the oxhide over his aged back, hanging the strap about his bent neck. And the constrained warrior armed his army with his five sons, Lycos and his comrade Myrsos, Glaucos and Periphas and the late-born Melaneus. And, binding his hoary lock fast with the helmet, he took the left wing of the well-wheeling battle, leaving the right horn of the war to his sons, whom nature had sealed with the bond of voiceless mouths, binding their tongue, the channel-cutter of wise speech; for when, dancing beside the doorposts of the bridal chamber, Aretos pledged Laobie by the law of yoking marriage, consorting in child-begetting wedlock, a divine portent came to pass, since beside the marriage altar, toiling at the bride-tending sacrifice to Aphrodite, the newly-dancing bridegroom—in the well-hymned hall a many-bearing sow, croaking aloud the birth-din of her throat, a prophet of things to come, was burdened, lifting a strange and unbelievable delivery, and bore the bastard race of finned creatures, and from her flanks she cast up a wet, fish-like offspring, having borne, instead of an earthly birth, a birth of the brine. And of the fish-bearing sow many-mouthed Rumor flew, gathering the people; and the far-scattered citizens gazed at the many-childed earthly offspring, a likeness equal in nature to a sea-born delivery. And he questioned the prophet, the spokesman of the god; and to his asking he declared a coming rank of voiceless children, the image of the tongueless sea-born offspring. And then the prophet said to hide the fore-announcing oracles, that he might appease the long-winged son of Maia, the leader of the tongue, the guide of wise speech. And Laobie was in labor, and with an alternate delivery she bore, equal in number to the sow's young, a rank of children, like the voiceless fishes, whom after the victory lord Bacchus pitied, and from their voiceless throats he loosed the bond of the tongue, and drove away their coeval silence, and joined to each a late-accomplished voice. With these campaigned shield-bearing warriors, those who dwelt in Pylai and those who held, near Eurus, inhabited Eukolla, the abode of warlike Dawn, and sacred Goryandis, the well-sown furrow of the earth. And against these were armed all who held the borders of Oite, the tree-bearing mother of the measureless-lived elephants, to whom nature granted to live the rounds of two hundred years in the much-bending course of ever-flowing time, or of three hundred; and one grazes upon another, from the tip of its foot to its head, black-skinned; holding in its long jaws projecting tusks, twin, in the reaping fashion of the curved-claw sickle, a sharpened cutter, it traverses the rank of trees with its long-shanked feet; and holding the likeness of camels and an arched crest, on its capacious back it bears a countless swarm of crowded riders, wheeling its standing step in the unbending track of its knee, and the broad-browed shape of a snaky head, holding a small, arched neck; and it has a slender likeness of a swine's face, with eyes of the same form, high-appearing, vast in measure; and as it moves on its way its fleshless ears, dangling beside its neighboring temple, are fanned by the small breeze of slender winds; and, often scourging its body with a guiding quiver, its slender, scanty tail shakes restlessly. And often in wars, shaking its projecting jaw, the towering bull-headed beast assailed a man, bearing a strange, jagged-toothed, double-mouthed sickle, wheeling on either side the innate point of its chin; and often a well-armored, uplifted shield-bearer it raised upright, pierced by its seizing throat, and laid the man low with its jagged-toothed point, and hurled the self-rolled corpse, the wanderer turned about, from on high into the whirl of dust, tossing in coils the rim of its crooked chin, jagged here and there beside the projecting teeth, answering in spirals the snaky spine, stretching to its feet the scored sword of its teeth. These lord Dionysus, leading after the battle of the Indians, beside the Caucasian shore of the Amazonian river, roused to terror the well-helmeted women, seated upon the crests of the towering elephants. But these things were after the strife. To the battle of Lyaeus, when Deriades summoned, then came champion Pyloites, driving the straight-footed elephant through the tumult, the war-mad blood of the fair-childed race of Marathon; and to the battle there followed him, his other-tongued neighbor, the people, leaving fair-veiled Eristobareia. And the offspring of the Derbikes followed Deriades, the Aethiopians and the Sakai and the varied nations of the Bactrians, and a great army of woolly-haired Blemyes. And a strange-seeming fashion the Aethiopians use, a cunning device of battle: for, bearing the rim of a dead horse's head, deceiving, they hide the true circle of their face, and bind a mortal head with another face, having shaped the breathless into the breathing; and in the battles they harry the foe who knows it not with the bastard head; and the champion sends from his mouth a deceitful sound, pouring a horse's neigh in a human voice. These were mustered at the king's summons. And over all the lord of the Indians led the way to battle, whom in wet love his father Hydaspes begot, having consorted in the well-travailing wedlock of Astris, the daughter of the Sun. And there is a tale that his mother, a Naiad, the offspring of Ocean, Keto bore, whom once, creeping about the seething bridal chamber, the bridegroom Hydaspes embraced in watery wedlock, bearing the true Titanian blood; for from the primal bed of Thaumas, rosy-armed Electra his consort bore a twin race, and from her bed both a river sprang and a messenger of the Heavenly ones, stormy Iris and swift-flowing Hydaspes, the one quickening the course of her feet, the other of his streams; and both pursue an equal, opposite-going journey, Iris among the immortals and Hydaspes among the rivers. So great, then, was the army that came; and the city was straitened with the host; and the well-helmeted ranks were girdled with comrades, filling in the city the rounds of the four-fold roads; some at the crossways, thronging, some in trenches, others before the towering wall, others upon the towers slept sweet sleep on spear-bearing beds. And the phalanxes of the leaders Deriades entertained in his own hall, and all, upon alternating seats, touched one table with the host-receiving king. For them there were evening meals and the wing of nightly Sleep to care for, and the army slept armed, neighbor of war; and as they slept they kept company with a battle-rousing dream, raising a mimic Enyo against the Satyrs.