Book 35
Late Antiquity Nonnus of Panopolis Greek- In the thirty-fifth book look for the Love that is Morrheus' foe, and the slaughter of the Bassarids, and the warfare of women. Deriades, immense, fought in the raving battle, and the lord of the Indians rushed upon the servants of Bromius, now hurling with his long spear, now hewing with his hilted sword, and with rough-edged darts he was carried on shooting, and with sharper arrows. So the women were driven in rout through the city, within the towers, by the spear of Deriades; and in the many-tongued din the clash of both was heard; and with reddening gore the well-paved streets of the city were stained crimson as the women were slain with a clamour throughout the town. Unbending, the old men upon the high-crested towers watched the battle; and over the rooftops the women too gazed upon the whole thyrsus-bearing rank; and one, leaning over the hall against her nurse, a maiden of trailing robe, beheld the women's war, and, heavy with tears, wept over a slain girl of her own age. Nor did any man seize and force a lovely bride, because the king had commanded his woman-mad peoples to shun the hostile beds of spear-won weddings, lest, heeding the Paphian, they should be careless of war. And one, leaping over the ground in the dust, a maiden, was stripped bare; and as her tunic was dragged off she was armed with splendour, and the warrior who longed for her she wounded, wounded herself—her form became her dart, and dying she conquered; and against her foe her bare thighs were armed, archers of the Loves. And now, having a breathless corpse for his desire, like Achilles, marking another Penthesilea upon the ground, he would have kissed the cold lips of the dust-covered bride, had he not dreaded the weight of Deriades' threat. And he gazed at the flesh of the bare, refusing girl, and marked her white ankles and the folds of her uncovered thighs, and touched her limbs, and again and again laid hold of her breast, swelling and rosy, still like an apple; he longed too to mingle in love; and, worn out at last, he belched up such a lovely, senseless cry: “Rose-armed maiden, your luckless-loving slayer you have wounded, though wounded; dead, you subdue the living, and you too shoot your destroyer with your eyes. My spear was conquered by your beauty; the flashings of your face rout me as much as the points of javelins; you have a breast like a bow, since more than arrows your breasts prevail, archers of the Loves. Strange and unbelievable is the desire I hold, that I pursue the dead love of a girl, a wedding that has perished; a breathless sting holds me, the breathing one; if it is right to say it, let these lips become voiced and breathing again, that I may hear, maiden, a word from your sweet mouth. . . .” Crying such a word, the maiden as she rolled upon the ground, whom you slew, whom you despoiled, reckless one, he left behind; “Whom your bronze cut down, do not touch my tunic; why do you grip the flank you wounded? Cease, wretch, from fingering my wound, which you gave me. Let the spear go to ruin, let the boldness of my hand go to ruin, for, leaving the Sileni bristling beneath their grey hair and the whole misshapen race of the Satyrs, instead of old men, instead of shaggy-breasted creatures, it subdued a tender woman.” “But, fingering the wound of your love-stricken flesh, what plant, passing along the ridge of a flowering forest, shall I call to your aid, a helper for your wound, aged life-giving Cheiron? Or whence shall I find drugs, the mysteries of the toil-loosing art of Paeon? I would I had what they call the Centaur's herb, that, twining a pain-killing flower over your limbs, I might save you living from Hades whence none return. What magic hymn have I, or starry song, that I may pour out a strain in a god-summoning, pleasing voice and lull the blood of your wounded flank? I would I had near here the life-bringing spring, that, casting the pain-killing water upon your limbs, I might soothe your lovely wound, that even your very soul I might bring back to you, recovered. Glaucus, who roll the whirling round of countless years, if it is permitted, leaving the recess of the barren sea, show me the life-preserving plant, show me that one of which once you tasted with your lips, and you draw an immortal life, wheeling in the course of ever-flowing time.” So speaking, he passed by, hiding the dead love in his heart. And the bride leapt up, avenger of her slain husband, Protonoe, mourning still her dead Orontes; and she crossed the women's phalanx; one might have thought her another man-opposing Atalanta of the Red Sea. And Cheirobie, taking up the shield and spear of Morrheus, rushed upon the Bassarids, and was like Gorge, who once, when well-towered Calydon was shaken, brandishing the ox-hide shield of her brother Toxeus, fought, woman though she was, against angry Meleager. And Orsiboe, appearing with her battle-rousing husband, imitated the courage of warlike Deianira, when by the inhospitable rock of Parnassus she armed against the Dryopes and became a woman Amazon. Many were hemmed in within the wide-spaced halls, and boundless was the groaning of the battle beneath the roofs; and another plunged into the fighting along the streets, a maiden rousing the fray; and over the rooftops still others, the women, armed themselves with missiles of stone; and the inmost phalanxes thundered the war. While Ares roared throughout the battle-rousing city, hewing down the Lydian, mountain-running tribes of the Bassarids, meanwhile Chalcomede stood alone before the wall, having turned back her homeward course from the battle, awaiting frenzy-maddened Morrheus, if from anywhere he should come; and then, straining his much-coiling, love-maddened eye, when he marked the maiden, wind-footed Morrheus came, flinging his swift knees into a lovely race. And of her, as she fled, the wind lifted her robe; and he was charmed still more by the unclad beauty of her form, gazing at the white, unfilleted maiden running before him. But she beguiled him, and spoke with a bashful voice, cowering before Morrheus' swifter course: “If you truly seek my bed, bridegroom Morrheus, lay aside your iron corslet, even as Ares dances to a wedding in soft raiment when he mingles with Cypris, clad in snow-white garb, like Apollo, so that Desire and Cypris may yoke under one bond us both, mounting the marriage bed, Morrheus to furious Love, and Chalcomede to Aphrodite. I will not receive a brazen husband upon my bed, crimson with blood and grimed with dust; but cleanse your body in the stream, that you may appear like Phaethon bathed in the outpourings of Ocean; cast away your warlike shield, cast away your point, lest your death-bringing spear should ever strike me; lay aside for me the dread helmet of your hair, for the crest unnerves me when your helmet is shaken; let me not see the false shape of your iron face; what desire gladdens me when your form is hidden? No longer will I set foot in Maeonia; nor in the bridal chamber will I receive, if you wish it, Bacchus as bedmate after Morrheus; I too will be an Indian woman, my friend; and instead of the Lydian, I will honour with offerings the Aphrodite of the Red Sea, the secret bedmate of Morrheus; and in the battles let an Indian man have me, fighting at the side of Aphrodite; for sending equal shafts, and double ones, even into me, Desire has joined one anguish upon us both, into the heart for Morrheus and into the mind for Chalcomede. I have toiled, hiding my desire for you; for a husband a modest maiden does not challenge to Aphrodite.” So speaking, the woman won over the luckless-loving warrior with her falsehood; and laughing, unhappy-in-love Morrheus said: “It is no shame that Morrheus, the well-helmed warrior, should hold a brazen spear in the bridal chamber of Chalcomede, that I may embrace you, rightly named, lifting my bronze; yet I refuse the bloody spear, nor do I touch the shield; but as you wish, washed, I dance to you with bloodless hands, and I will be another kind of bedmate, a naked Ares after the fray, holding naked Aphrodite. I refuse the daughter of Deriades; I myself will drive my jealous bride unwilling from the halls; no longer will I arm against the Bassarids, if you bid me, but I will fight against my own dear townsmen; I will destroy the Indian, holding the wine-dark thyrsus, not lifting the brazen spear; I will cast away all my arms and shake the delicate flowers, fighting at the side of your king Dionysus.” So speaking, Morrheus shook the ash-spear from his hand, and unfastened the helmet from his sweating head, and let drop the baldric of his dripping ox-hide, bathed with the toil-drops of his wonted shoulder; he loosed the brazen tunic too from his breast, the bloody corslet. And the arms, lying on the ground, of longing Morrheus, Cypris showed to Ares, conquered by the unarmoured form of Chalcomede; and she spoke a word, and goaded her own bedmate: “Ares, you are despoiled; Morrheus has renounced wars, wearing no corslet and no sword; but a lovely woman, longing for her, he has shaken the arms from his hands. You too, refuse your furious spear, and you too in the sea wash yourself, stripped of your shields; for unwarlike Cypris excels Ares more, and has no need of a shield, nor ever lacks a spear; for both at once my beauty was my spear, and my form became my sword, and the rays of my eyes are arrows to me; a breast shoots farther than a spear; for lovely Morrheus became a bridegroom of the bower instead of bold with the spear. Do not set foot in Sparta, where the warlike citizens have a brazen image of Aphrodite under arms, lest she, wielding a spear, should strike you with her iron. You do not wield the spear so much as the brows do; not so much do spears wound men, as glances strike; look upon your servants, the underlings of the Loves, and bow your bold neck to unconquered Cytherea. Ares, you are conquered, since, letting go the brazen spear, Morrheus has slipped on the bridal fawnskin of Chalcomede.” So spoke laughter-loving Aphrodite, mocking the battles, taunting Ares, marshal of weddings; and beside the sea, leaving his tunic untended upon the shore, warmed by sweet cares, Morrheus bathed, being naked; and he cleansed his body in the cold sea, holding the warm little dart of the Paphian; and in the streams he prayed to the Aphrodite of the Red Sea, the Indian one, hearing that Cypris is offspring of the sea; and having washed, he came up dark again; he kept the form that nature had brought forth, and the brine did not change the man's body, nor altered his colour, ruddy though it was. And on an empty hope he washed his flesh; for snow-white, lovely, he yearned to appear to the unwedded girl; and he adorned his body with a linen, snow-white robe, such as warriors ever wear beneath the corslet. And, standing speechless upon the shore, she kept silence, crafty Chalcomede; and turning aside the girl drew her chaste glances from the cloakless Morrheus, ashamed at the man's uncovered body; for to look upon him the maiden, being a woman, shrank, the bathed man. But when she saw a lonely place, fit for a bed, stretching a bold hand to the bashful bride, of the chaste girl's untouched garment he laid hold; and now, grasping the girdled maiden in a strong embrace, with the bridal spark he would have forced the raving girl; but a serpent leapt up from her undefiled bosom, a helper of the unwedded, unmarried maiden, and about her girdle the ample creature coiled, with a guarding sweep around her waist; and as it hissed sharply from its never-silent throats the rocks bellowed; and Morrheus quivered with fear, hearing the neck-borne bellow of the false trumpet, gazing at the champion of the unwedded maidenhood; and the all-coiling guardian terrified the warrior, winding its crook-circling tail about the man's neck, its spear a greedy mouth; and many were shot at him, the viperous arrows hurling their venom; some, darting from her unfilleted hair, some from her serpent-tressed waist, some from her bosom, hissing war, the warriors raved. While Morrheus stood before the high-crested city, dragging crafty Chalcomede to a fruitless marriage, meanwhile the well-armed warfare of the Bassarid host escaped the spear of unwearied Deriades. For, leaping down from Olympus, swift-winged Hermes, bearing the counterfeit likeness of Bromius' face, summoned the whole Bacchic rank with a mystic voice; and when the women heard the divine, Euian cry, they came to one place; and gathering from the crossroads, the whole nation of the Maenads, into the winding circles of the road the swift-sandalled god led them, until he drew near the towers; and over the guards in their ranks, with their sleepless eyes, he poured sweet sleep with his all-charming wand, furtive Hermes, the captain of the night; and suddenly for the Indians there was darkness, but for the unseen Bacchants there was an unlooked-for light; and of the noiseless women wingless Hermes led the secret way through the city; and with a divine hand the heavy bolt of the towering gates he opened, and there was a sun for the Bacchants. And when light-bringing Hermes drove the night by day, overweening Deriades, with his threat unfulfilled, sought the city-leaving, road-faring swarm of the Bassarids. As when one in the night, amid deep-wealthy dreams, delights in fruitless hopes, lifting with rich hands the heaped wealth of a fleeting moment, feeding the deceitful hope of sleep-born treasures; but when, at the appearing of rosy dawn, the vision of the dream of riches, dissolved, slips away, with empty hands he wakes, lifting nothing, having flung away the shadowy delight of mind-stealing dreams; so then Deriades, while darkness held the streets, delighted, thinking he held a self-yielded prey of the Bassarids penned within the closed gates, holding a false, profitless, shadowy victory; but when the light shone, and he beheld the Bacchants no longer, like a dream all ran away, and he cried with a mournful voice. As if at Zeus and Phaethon he raged, and at Dionysus, seeking the fugitive Maenads. And about the towers the Bassarids cried out, unfilleted, with their Euian voice. Deriades pursued a second time, and Zeus awoke on the peaks of Caucasus, casting off the wing of Sleep; and learning the beguiling guile of malign Hera, he marked the Sileni in flight, he saw the Bacchants hastening in herds from the crossroads, from the towers, and Deriades shearing the Satyrs and reaping the women, he marked behind them, the chief of the Indians, and his son lying upon the ground; and about him the nymphs were near in a circle; and he in the whirl of dust lay heavy-headed, drawing a feeble gasp, flinging up snow-white foam, witness of his frenzy. And he convicted the ill-wrought guile of envious Hera, and reproached his crafty consort with a goading word; and now into the misty pit he would have locked the sleep of dark Iapetus, his housemate, had not Night entreated, the subduer of gods and men. And scarcely lulling his deadly wrath, he cried to Hera: “You have not yet had your fill of my Semele, hard-fighting Hera, but are you still, perhaps, angry even with the dead? Did not the bridal flame itself soothe your endless wrath, the flame that scattered the bed of Zeus-stricken Thyone? How long will you press upon Indian-slaying Dionysus? Beware your former anvils again; those still, those helpers are still at hand for me, with which I bound and fettered your feet; and you, unstable above the earth, held aloft in air and clouds an inescapable constraint; and bold Ares saw you in the clouds, entangled high above earth, bound, and he did not help his mother; fiery Hephaestus did not avail; for he cannot endure a single spark of the smouldering thunderbolt. I will bind your hands again with the wonted golden chain; and Ares I will fetter with unbreakable bonds upon a self-rolling wheel, running its round, such as the wanderer Tantalus, the air-roaming, or Ixion the exile; and I will scourge him all over with wounds that never heal, until my son shall conquer the sons of the Indians. But you will do a favour to your Cronion, if you drive away the panic-stricken frenzy of the scourged Dionysus, and do not leave your husband angry, but, coming to the well-pastured woodland of the unapproachable Indian crag, give Bacchus the breast, after my mother Rhea, that with his now more perfect lips he may draw your holy drop, the forerunner of Olympus, and make heaven passable for earth-treading Dionysus; and anointing the body of Lyaeus with your milk, quench the foul defilements of the mind-robbing disease. And I will fit out for you a worthy gift; for in your honour I will set in Olympus a circle like the dew, named after Hera's milk, that I may glorify the dear-to-all moisture of your evil-averting breast; only guard yourself against the child-loving threat of Zeus, and do not fit out yet another guile against Dionysus.” So speaking, he sent the relenting consort Hera by necessity to ward off the affliction of the Bacchant, gracious, well-met, to terrified Dionysus, that with milk-dews she might anoint the body of Bromius with her hand from her god-nourishing breasts. And Hera did not neglect it; with the pain-healing teat, with its divine drop, anointing the body of Lyaeus, she shook off the savage defilements of the demonic frenzy; and she kept a twofold envy, with a face that hid it, beholding the manhood and the splendour of Dionysus, and with envious hands she touched the maddened Bacchus; and drawing up her tunic at her lips she bared her breast full of ambrosia, squeezing it, gushing a flood from her jealous teat; and she revived him; and of long-tressed Lyaeus with her long eyes she measured all that bloom, whether ever an earthly womb had borne so great a form, whether so great was spear-wielding Ares, or so great Hermes, whether Phaethon was such, or sweet-voiced Apollo; and she yearned to have him in heaven as the bridegroom of Hebe, had not high-ruling Zeus, after a time, granted her fated Heracles, who wrought twelve labours, as bedmate. She, having warded off the maddening affliction of Bacchus, high-shining, mounted a second time to the choir of the stars, lest she should look upon the ironless army of Dionysus fighting with fennel-rod and clustering vine, and the champions slain by the little, man-breaking thyrsus. Nor did the son of Zeus neglect the fight, but, having armed his warriors, turned back and cried an army-rousing voice, twirling in his Giant-slaying hand the flesh-cutting ivy: “Fight boldly a second time; for in the wars Zeus again stands forth as our champion, gracious to his son Bacchus, and from heaven, as the shield of Dionysus, the choir of the immortals has come, and Hera rages no more. Who will fight against the lightning of the son of Cronus? Or when do cowardly foes await the arming of the thunderbolt? I will appear the equal of my father; for in the wars my Cronion conquered the earthborn Titans, and I too will conquer the earth-born race of the Indians. Today you will behold, after the cluster-bearing victory, Deriades a suppliant, slow to be persuaded, and the choir of the Indians bowing the neck to a serene Dionysus, and the river bearing the drunken-staggering Euian water; and you will see our foes beside the mixing-bowl of Lyaeus drinking yellow water from the wine-flowing river, and the bold Indian king, held fast by the wine-dark ivy, entangled in leaves and clustering vine, bearing bonds like those which, after the surges of frenzy, the god-fearing Nysian Nymphs still proclaim, witnesses of our valour, when with the noose of ivy my bold-working harvest, binding the god-fighting man with a throttling bond, put Arabia to flight, Lycurgus forced down with a knot of clusters. But after so great a wheeling round of battle has rolled by, despoil the plunder of the foe and the treasures of the sea, the gleaming pebbles, and to my mother Rhea remove the women dragged by the hair; and avenge the fallen champions, over whose doom I am worn with sharp cares; and in my heart I both rage and grieve at once, because I behold Deriades living and Opheltes unburied, reproaching, after his doom, the idle hand of Lyaeus; no longer does Codone arm herself, no longer does poor Alcimacheia, the spearwoman, fight; but even Aebialus himself was slain, and still I hold back the thyrsus. I am ashamed before Arestor after the fray, lest he should hear that, dying, the dead Opheltes found no helper; I cannot pass through the city of Corybantic Crete, lest his father Agelaus should bewail his perished child, hearing the unavenged slaughter of Antheus who was slain; I am ashamed to appear before Minos; for in his tent Asterius lies stricken, whom more than the others I will rescue; for he draws his race from Europa; but, saving him sound and homeward, I will bring back to his father my kinsman after the fray, that Cadmus may not hear that Asterius lacked Dionysus, who left the battle. But fight again, and in this one thing I will help you all, by slaying that one single destroyer of so many.”