Book 28

28. Survey the twenty-eighth, where you may behold the Cyclopes' fiery War-rage rolling abundant.

There a strife arose past all soothing; for the two,

Faunus and Aristaeus, drove one common War,

and Aeacus marched beside them, doing deeds worthy

of Zeus his own father, stretching across his back

a bronze shield of cunning workmanship, in whose round

many marvels were studded, the labour of the Lemnian anvil.

And the host had armed itself, of many fashions, for the fray with the Indians

who pressed on in their droves; one, guiding his richly wrought car

swiftly into the conflict with flesh-cutting ivy,

mounted upon leopards; another, with bristling harness,

yoked the mountain-ranging chariot of Erythraean lions

and drove the grim pair; and another, dismayed by none,

hurling at the dark ranks of the Indians,

unshaken, took joy in lashing an unbridled bull,

and one, springing up onto the back of Cybele's bear,

charged at the foe, and whirling his wine-dark thyrsus

put to flight the drivers of the long-shanked elephants;

another, casting at the host with flesh-cutting ivy,

held neither sword nor round shield, nor the deadly

spear of battle, but, shaking the curling leaves of plants,

slew a bronze-clad man with a slender frond.

And a thunderous din crashed out, like a pipe's blast;

the Sileni shouted; the Bacchant women advanced to war,

flinging fawnskins like breastplates across their bosoms.

And one of the mountain-roaming Satyrs, as though driving a colt,

with legs astride sat upon the back of a lioness.

The Indians raised their answering war-cry, and, mustering its fighters,

the barbarian pipe of War, host-gathering, blared aloud;

garlands were on their helmets, breastplate clashed on aegis,

the thyrsus rioted against the spears, and against the buskins

stood matched the answering greaves; and of the yoke-fellow bearers

the lines of oxhide shields leaned one against another,

and footmen against footmen, and against the high-crested head

the Pelasgian helmet thrust the Mygdonian helmet.

And there was a turmoil of champions, each in his own kind: one, lifting himself,

whirled the airborne leap of the Bacchic dance,

one, fallen, groaned, another beat time with his sandal,

one, struck, gasped out his life, another bounded for Lyaeus;

another, hurling a martial sound from his lips,

sang the spear of Ares, while one sang the banquet of Dionysus;

and War crashed in concert with the rite of Bromius,

the euhan rattles rang out, and, leader of the tumult,

the trumpet, mustering the people, sounded with the lyre,

mixed gore with the libation, and stirred slaughter into the dance.

There by far the first, light on his own foot springing forth,

Phalineus hurled his javelin against Deriades,

and struck the unbreakable iron tunic;

yet the deadly point, for all its straining, did not touch the flesh,

but, glancing aside, fixed itself in the ground; and in his fury

valiant Corymbasus, marking the foe rushing close

upon Deriades, came upon him, and as he sped on

severed his throat full in the middle, striking with his blade,

and reaped off his head; and as the skull was cleft

Phalineus, blood-stained and headless, fell to the ground.

And about him a clamorous battle rose; the very tip

of Phlogius' brow Dexiochus shaved away with bronze,

striking the brow's edge as the helmet split in two;

but he, in terror, shifting his knee a little from his knee,

sheltered beneath the long oxhide of his brother,

as when Ajax received his brother, the archer Teucer

of Dardanian stock, into his sevenfold shield,

hiding the kinsman who shared his toil behind a father's buckler.

At once Corymbasus, drawing his sword from the sheath,

flung Dexiochus headlong with a stroke across the neck;

and swiftly, leaping upon the gasping corpse, ran about it

frenzied Clytius, leader of the footmen; and high-plumed,

quick and dismayed, he hurled at Deriades;

but Hera turned the champion's spear aside,

angered both at Clytius and at India-slaying Dionysus;

yet the swift leader did not wholly miss; for, piercing

the monstrous throat of the irresistible beast,

he slew the straight-standing elephant of Deriades;

and, labouring in its anguish, the towering beast, ambidextrous,

shook the whole car with its dark neck;

and tossing the crooked jaw that juts before its face,

blood-stained, it strained back the bonds of the yoking harness;

but the swift-handed driver, bending the well-fastened yoke

with his sword, cut the team-binding traces

of the neck-straps; and from the broad stall

Celaeneus took another, high to view, and yoked it new.

And Clytius was bold, in the hope of unreproached victory;

he called out to the slayer of Dexiochus in a raving voice,

pouring a deadly word upon the insolent throat:

"Stand, dog, do not flee, Corymbasus, and I will teach you

what manner of javelin-men attend on Lyaeus.

You I will carry off as spoil to Phrygia, and the cities of the Indians

this spear of mine shall ravage, and after India-slaying victory

I will make Deriades the servant of Dionysus;

let some unwooed girl loose her maidenhood,

receiving the shaggy-breasted wedlock of a Satyr,

an Indian woman defiled beside the Mygdonian Hermus."

So he spoke, and Corymbasus was wroth, and while Clytius

uttered his late-battle words, he sheared through his throat;

and the head flew up aloft at the leap of Fate,

sprinkling the dust with bloody drops.

And, leaving the dancing corpse to whirl back again,

Corymbasus put the Sileni to flight, foremost of the Indians,

foremost in manhood after Morrheus and the king.

And striking the spearman Sebes above the rim of the breast

he drove the bronze spear into his flesh, and as the bloody

shaft was dragged out he laid him in the heaped dust.

Then he rushed at Oenomaus; he, fleeing like the winds,

withdrew to the host of Bromius with terrified foot;

and marking him, Corymbasus pursued behind, and in his back

full in the middle drove the spear; rushing in its onset,

the point sprang out by the navel through the belly's far side;

and he, pierced about with the bloody iron,

fell forward, freshly slain, and slid into the dust;

and over his eyelids the death-bringing darkness covered him.

Nor did the monstrous champion cease from battle; but four

well-helmeted fighters were slain by one slayer,

Tyndarius and Thoon and Autesion and Onites.

And many a freshly slaughtered corpse there was, not falling

forward to the ground, nor stretched supine on the floor;

but, dead, unshaken, it propped itself upon the earth,

altogether like a champion still fighting, as though brandishing a spear,

as though stretching the swift bow and drawing the shaft at its mark.

And a valiant corpse, longing for War even after its doom,

forced the threads of the Fates, like a light spear

poised to strike, pierced from the scattered bows

by their shafts from head to the very feet,

an upright image of Ares; and the fighters gazed

with marvelling eyes upon the spearman who was dead,

still gripping his spear and not casting away his shield,

a dead javelin-man and a breathless shield-bearer.

And one, struck by the Athenian's grim iron,

reaped off his right hand, smiting the arm's end;

and the hand, tumbling in a dancing leap of slaughter,

fell freshly severed, entwined with its fellow shoulder,

streaking the streaming back with tawny dust.

And now, drawing the long spear of the leaping hand,

with far-flung shaft he would have had his War recovered,

and the left hand, spear-wielding, fought in turn its match;

but the hostile man, coming from the opposite path, forestalled him,

and with answering blade struck the left hand off at the root;

and the palm fell to the ground, and, casting at the slayer,

the far-flung stream of bloody dew sprinkled it

in crimson drops, and over the floor the wretched hand,

self-rolling in its leaps, bounded in its frenzy,

reddened with blood, and its curved fingers upon the ground

it locked with deft middle and hooked-nail grip,

as though clasping again the strap of the oxhide shield.

And it spoke a word, shedding the tears of Ares:

"Yet another hand I long for, that I may accomplish

with three palms deeds worthy of Tritogeneia;

even without hands I will pursue the hostile man;

this is the remnant of my manhood still left, that one may tell

the dexterous boast of the Athenians, that they too,

excelling even with their feet, fight on when their hands are cut away."

So speaking, he ran upon the champions like the winds,

making ready, weaponless, a battle for the destroyer.

And they, beholding him, marvelled each at the other,

and the fighters ringed the half-finished champion about

in throngs; but he alone received with unsparing blade

the alternating stroke of iron answering iron;

and hardly did he fall to the ground; he was a likeness of Ares,

guarding for a late-born dweller the memory of a father.

Not then alone was the company of foot-travellers cut down,

but among the horsemen too was slaughter; one marched on

bringing doom to another; driver overtook driver,

either cleaving with his spear the back of one who fled before,

or striking on the breast one who came against him near,

and thrust him from his horse, freshly slain, into the dust.

And a horse, struck above the flank by an arrow,

flung headlong to the ground its hurled-off driver,

just as the swift-flying Pegasus, companion of the wandering breeze,

borne aloft, shook off Bellerophon;

another, in his terror, from the slippery back,

upright, falling through the horse's belly to the ground,

stuck head-foremost, hanging, and about the earth,

casting his head, rolled, leaving his feet upon the horse's back.

And the mighty Cyclopes ringed the fighters about,

helpers of Zeus; and against the misty host

Argilipus blazed, lifting a light-bringing brand.

And he was armed with the earth-born, fire-pointed thunderbolt,

fighting with torches; and the swarthy Indians trembled,

astounded at the fire that answered the heavenly bolt;

and a fiery champion he was; upon the heads of his foes

the sparks of the earth-born thunderbolt were shot;

and the Cyclops conquered ash-spears and countless swords,

shaking hot bolts and the smoking point,

holding the brand for a bow; and one Indian after another,

countless, he burned up, the man, with his archer's flame,

no single Salmoneus, but with a bastard thunderbolt he confounded them;

not one god-fighter alone did he slay; not for one alone

did Evadne lament, as her Capaneus withered away.

And Steropes had armed himself, whirling a mimic flash,

bringing against the lightnings of heaven an answering gleam,

holding a quenchable glitter, which the Western flame begot,

seed of Sicilian fire and of the smouldering hearth;

and he had a covering like a cloud, and in its inmost depths

hid and again revealed his flash with a double quiver,

bearing the likeness of the heavenly light; for the lightning,

coming, holds its gleam fleeting yet recovered again.

And Brontes fought, striking out a ringing strain,

pouring an answering echo with thunderous crashes;

and with the strange drops of an earth-born snowfall,

shedding a made, short-lived, fair-weather water

in mimic streams, he became a bastard Zeus without clouds.

And, leaving the cunning crash of his counterfeit thunder,

he armed himself with Sicilian iron for the slaughter of the foe,

and, brandishing his hammer aloft above his shoulders,

he battered the heads of his enemies thick and fast with the iron;

he struck the dark ranks turn and turn about, as ever

he beats the forge-wrought anvil with Aetna's clangour.

And, breaking off the crag of a long-based watch-rock,

with a rocky spear he charged down upon Deriades;

and hurling a vast stone with unsparing hand

against the black-skinned king as he armed for battle,

he struck his shaggy breast with the ravine-point;

and he, drunk with so great a millstone of a rock,

was weighed down over all his breast; and Hydaspes warded off

the slaughter of his stricken son. But the bold one, faint from his wound,

shook from his tireless hands his rushing spear,

the bronze, twenty cubits long, and flung his shield to the ground

with shame-filled palms; and drawing a feeble breath,

struck on the rim of the breast by the marble point,

he fell head-foremost from his lofty car

like a vast, towering fir—and the fir, falling,

runs about the boundless bosom of the wide plough-land—.

And the Indians, pouring round him, lifted him into the chariot,

fearing the misshapen Cyclops, lest with some cast

he take up yet another high-stretched crag of the hill

and slay the king with the rugged bolt,

having a length equal to that of high-crested Polyphemus.

And in the middle of the grim champion's brow blazed

the round flash of his single-eyed face;

and, cowering before the grim Cyclops' glance,

the dark-skinned Indians were shaken with astonished fear,

thinking from heaven that the Olympian Moon,

rising against the face of the earth-born Cyclops,

flashed at the full, shielding Lyaeus.

And father Zeus, beholding the Cyclops' mimic battle-rage,

high in the clouds laughed, because, receiving from the earthly clouds

a strange rain through an untried bosom,

the earth was snowed upon then, yet the thirsty air,

bearing its naked back unwetted, held no streaming dew.

And Hypsachis armed himself; marching beside his brother,

shaking with a towering hand a shield as great as a cliff,

high in the clouds Elatreus held a vast fir-tree,

cutting the heads of foes with his tree of a spear.

Euryalus armed himself; and, cleaving in the tumult

the great host that fled the plain as far as the sea,

penning the ranks of the Indians into the fishy gulf,

he conquered the foe across the spear-bearing deep,

whirling his sword, twenty cubits long and upright, through the water;

and with his long ox-cleaver, cutting a sea-neighbouring rock,

he flung it at the foe; and many of the unburied

learned the nets of a twofold, sea-drenched Fate,

by the surging War and by the jagged bolt.

With them another kinsman, excelling, Halimedes,

a monstrous Cyclops, raged in Bacchic frenzy with his towering limbs,

and put the foe to flight; and guarding his face

he held before it the bossed back of his round oxhide shield.

And, marking him, Phlogius, avenger of the slain Indians,

bent his bow, and, drawing a winged shaft, was minded

to strike him full in the middle with the arrow;

but, learning of the onset aimed straight at him,

the high-headed Cyclops, swerving sidelong, avoided

the cast of the rushing arrow; and he, shaking a crag,

flung the rugged bolt at Phlogius; but he, fleeing,

stood beside the car of ox-horned Deriades,

and hardly avoided the air-roaming marble point,

staying there; and, wroth at Phlogius' escape,

Halimedes, splitting open his deadly throat,

slew twelve men with one bellow of his voice,

pouring forth the man-destroying roar of his raving cry.

And the Cyclopes' war-shout crashed upon Olympus

with terrible tongues. And the dancers of War,

the Dictaean Corybantes, advanced to the tumult.

Damneus made war, pursuing the hostile tribes . . .

and on the plain was the war-cry; and to the troubled Bacchants

Prymneus came, calm, like a stern-wind breeze

that saves a sailor riding the road with the storms;

and much-prayed-for he came to the host, as comes

to the storm-tossed ships the calm Polydeuces,

lulling the heavy wave of the storm-breeding sea.

And with lighter feet Ocythous startled the fighters;

many he slew with a swift doom,

one mastering with his spear in close fight, one with a bolt

from afar, another cutting down with his grim blade;

another still running before, fled like the winds,

the frenzied one overtook, plying his wind-swift knees,

in his running altogether like Iphiclus, who, hastening

the soles of his feet, grazed the surface of the untrodden calm,

and held his airborne course above the ears of corn,

treading the topmost unbending path of the asphodel with his feet.

Such a storm-foot was Ocythous. And in the tumult

Mimas set up the whirling-foot of rhythmic War,

and startled the host, whirling his dance-beating sword,

holding the mirthless armed leap with knowing foot,

as when, rousing a din in the ears of Cronus,

Pyrrhichus, beating his Idaean shield with the swords,

raised the battle-cheering strain of lying Echo,

stealing away the hidden, again-grown youth of Zeus;

with such a mimic armed leap of the dance

bronze-clad Mimas whirled his airy lance;

and, cutting the heads of foes, the iron harvests of battle,

with India-slaying axes and the double-striking blade,

he held up the first-fruits of the enemy, with Bacchus for witness,

and, in place of the ox-sacrifice and the wonted wine,

pouring a libation of blood upon Dionysus.

And, wheeling on his restless foot with knowing tread,

helmet-flashing Acmon went, the comrade of Ocythous;

he fought unshaken, like a forge-wrought anvil,

lifting his Corybantic shield, in the midst of which

often the infant Zeus slept his sleep upon the mountains;

and the house of Zeus was a little cave, where that

holy goat nursed him with her false, milky teat,

welling up the strange wise milk, while the oxhide,

with theft-hiding crashes, made the shield-wielding Echo roar,

struck in the midst of its back by the tumbling iron.

For which cause Rhea, fashioning a false stone,

set it as the antidote for the son of Cronus on Cronus' table.

And bright-eyed Idaeus entered the revel of War,

a dancer of battle, whirling his nimble step,

irresistible, driven by the goad of India-slaying strife.

And Melisseus startled the whole dark rank,

with unshaken courage; and, keeping faith with his name,

he mimicked the dread stings of an armed bee;

and aiming his marble at the javelin-man of the dappled Curete,

at his match Melisseus, Morrheus missed,

he missed; for it is not fitting to destroy the Corybantes with a millstone.

And, coming together into one, the dancers of joyless Ares

held a common yoke of War; and about the car

they wreathed Deriades round with oxhide shields, garland-wise,

clashing their armour, and in the rhythmic tumult

they ringed a tower about him with shield-bearing dances.

And the air-roaming echo ran up to the halls of Zeus,

and the fair-footed Hours feared the din of both.