Book 36
Late Antiquity Nonnus of Panopolis Greek- In the thirty-sixth, after the defilements of frenzy, Bacchus arms against Deriades, changing his shape. So speaking, he heartened his rejoicing leaders; and Deriades on the other side armed his warriors. And to either phalanx the gods who dwell on Olympus, divided, came as pilots of the war, some the helpers of Deriades, some of Lyaeus. Zeus, lord of the blessed, high-throned above Cerne, held the scales of war apart; and from heaven the watery dark-haired one challenged the fiery sun, Ares challenged the grey-eyed goddess, Hephaestus Hydaspes; and against Hera stood Artemis of the mountains; and to the war came well-rodded Hermes against Leto's son. And the twin-clashing echo of the holy battle roared for both bands of the blessed; and as they rushed into the fray Ares, seven roods broad, fought with Tritogeneia, and flung his furious spear; and at the unwounded goddess he struck the middle of her aegis, and from her unscathed head he drove the serpent harvest of her Gorgon hair, wounding the shaggy shield of Pallas; and the sharp point of the unbending spear, sent with a whirr, scored the fashioned tress of the counterfeit Medusa. And the war-rousing maiden, charging in her turn, motherless Pallas, lifted against Ares her kindred spear, that one which, wearing it at her birth with bronze of her own age, she leapt forth from her father's child-completing head. And the towering Ares, struck, bent his knee to the ground; but Athena, setting him up again, whirled him round and gave him unwounded after the fray to her dear mother Hera. Against Hera contended, as the fellow-fighter of mountain-roaming Dionysus, mountain Artemis, and her straight-stretched bow she bent; and in the rivalrous din Hera, taking a cloud of Zeus packed about her shoulders, held it like an unbreakable shield; and Artemis, shaft after shaft, sending through the airy circle the wandering arrow at the useless target, emptied her quiver, and packed the whole unbreaking cloud with arrows; and it was like the air-roaming form of cranes flying in a ring, in a wheeling round one after another; and the arrows were fixed in the shadowy cloud; and the uncut veil kept the wounds bloodless. And Hera lifted a hard, wind-borne missile, and whirling in her hand the packed mass of hail she battered Artemis with the ravine-rough bolt; and the marble point shattered the curved circles of the bow; nor did the wife of Zeus break off the fight; but Artemis' breast she struck full in the midmost; and she, struck with the icy spear, poured her quiver to the ground. And mocking her, the bride of Zeus spoke: “Artemis, strike beasts; why do you match yourself with your betters? Climb the crags; what is battle to you? Wearing your worthless hunting-boots, leave the greaves to Athena; and shake your guileful nets; for beast-slaying dogs hunt for you, not winged arrows; you do not wield the lion-slaying shaft; for of your feeble toils the sweat is but cowardly hares; care for your deer and your fair-horned car, care for your deer; why should you honour the son of Zeus, the driver of leopards and charioteer of lions? But if you wish, keep the bow, since Eros bends the bow; maiden who flee the bed, helper of birth-pangs, the ferryman of the Loves, the girdle you ought to have, the helper of childbed, with the Paphian, with Eros; for you rule over birth. But, pilot of the race that completes generation, go to the bridal chamber of child-bearing women, and shooting women with the arrows of childbed be like a lion beside the bride in labour, a helper of birth-pangs instead of a lover of war. But of your own chastity cease to boast for the sake of a chaste girdle, since, taking the likeness of your limbs, high-ruling Zeus weds unwedded maidens; still that image of yours the Arcadian woods proclaim as a bed-thief, the wedding-maker of unwedded Callisto, and your witness, the sentient bear, the hills still bewail, blaming the false, love-mad shape of the Archeress, when a female bedmate entered a woman's bed. But, casting away your useless quiver, leave the fight to your better, Hera; and if you wish, as a birth-goddess make war on marriage-completing Cytherea.” She spoke, and Hera passed by the worn-out Artemis. Her, drunk with fear, carrying her from the tumult, Phoebus embraced with both his downcast arms, and leading her, set her within a desert thicket; and returning, unapproached, he joined the divine battle. And the fiery champion stood against the champion of the deep, Phoebus, in conflict with the lord of Poseidon; and on his string he set an arrow, and lifted a brand of Delphic pine in either hand, ambidextrous, that he might arm radiance against the wavy sweep and arrows against the trident. And the smouldering point and the watery arrows fell upon one another; and as Phoebus armed, the ancestral Ether of Ares thundered its strain, a thundering peal; and the stormy trumpet, the echo of the sea, rang upon the ears of Phoebus; and broad-bearded Triton boomed on his wonted conch, half-man, unfinished, from the loins a green-grey fish; and the Nereids shouted; and rising above the sea, as the trident was shaken, Arab Nereus bellowed. And hearing the louder din of the heavenly phalanx, the nether Zeus cried out, lest the Earth-shaker, smiting the earth, lashed by the floods with an earth-shaking quake, should heave the harmony of the cosmos out of place with his trident, lest ever, moving the foundation of the nether pits, he should make visible the seat of the unseen earth, lest he should rend every vein of the channels of the deep, pouring migrant water into the Tartarean recess, flooding the nether, mouldering gateway. So great a din, then, arose as the gods met in strife, and the nether trumpets thundered; and both gentle Hermes, lightly wielding his wand, reined back; and to the three immortals he joined one voice: “Brother and son of Zeus, you, far-famed archer, leave to the storms your brand and bow, and you the point of your trident, lest the Titans laugh at the battle of the blessed, lest, after the Cronian war that threatened Olympus, Ares be a second time a kinsman-foe to the immortals, lest I see another fight after the rout of Iapetus, and lest, after Zagreus and over latter-born Bacchus, Zeus in his anger burn the whole earth with his fire and flood the rim of the everlasting cosmos a second time, raining waters on the molten ether; nor let me see the chariot of the Moon drenched in airy seas; let not Phaethon hold again a cold fiery gleam. But yield to the elder pilot of the sea, granting a grace to your father's brother, since the Earth-shaker, lord of the sea, honours your sea-girt Delos; let not the love of the palm and the memory of the olive leave you. Who again, Earth-shaker, is a Cecrops here to judge, who again, another Inachus, has cried up his city to Hera, that you arm against Apollo too, as against Athena, and hold another fight after your former quarrel with Hera? And you too, horned father of great Deriades, beware the flame of Hephaestus, after the torch of Bacchus, lest he burn you up with his fire-pointed thunderbolt.” So speaking, he checked the kindred war of the gods. And then the frenzied Deriades, heavy in wrath, took up again the renewed battle, when he saw the Bacchants unharmed; and watching the war of restored Dionysus, he goaded his fugitive leaders to the fray; and a threat common to foot and horse, barbarous, he thundered from his deep-voiced throat: “Today either I will drag Dionysus by the hair, or the Bacchic war will blot out the race of the Indians. Set against the Satyrs a constraint to ward them off; and let Deriades arm against Dionysus. Burn the leaves of the vine and the manifold instruments of Bacchus, and set the tents ablaze; and the Maenads bring as slave-women to lordly Deriades; and with fire wither the hostile thyrsi; and of the ox-horned Sileni and the manifold heads of the Satyrs, reaping the harvest with the threshing iron, wreathe all the halls with the bull-horned heads. Let not Phaethon yoke his fire-bright horses for the setting before I bring the Satyrs and Bacchus in chains, bound, and dappled, mangled by my spear, wearing a torn tunic over his breast, having flung away the thyrsus; and of the long-tressed women reduce the vine-decked hair to ashes with my brand. Be bold, and after the Indian battle sing the man-ennobling victory of Deriades, that even an army of later-born men may shudder to contend with the unconquered earthborn Indians.” He spoke, and going from one champion to another, he goaded the drivers of the measureless-living elephants, and set the leaders of the foot among the throng fighting tower-fashion. And in the rivalrous din thyrsus-mad Dionysus drove the rank of desert-roaming beasts into the fray; and the mountain-bred warriors raved roaring beneath the divine whip, and many a maddened beast was armed from the mouths; and the serpents, spitting from their raw-eating fangs, sent forth far-shooting jets of venom into the air with the hissing chasm of the bellowing throat, leaping sideways; and darting upon the foe, the viperous arrows had their target of themselves; and with crooked coils the bodies of the Indians were girdled as they were wound, and a rope bound their mortal feet as they rushed into the run. And the war-mad women imitated the battle of serpent-shooting Phidaleia, who once, holding the goad of women's battle, conquered her foes with viperous clusters. . . . And one, hurling from her mouth a far-shadowing spear, spat the venom-darting shaft at Deriades, and with the murderous spray the steel corslet was wetted. And the corpse lay on the ground, struck by a living missile, breathless, holding a breathing dart. And on the straight-footed, humped ridge of the elephants, leaping up, a leopard hung aloft with a bound of its paws; and again and again it fastened on the beast's head, and held aloft the course of the long-legged elephants. And a great swarm fell, hearing from deep-thundering throats the dread roar of the desert-roaming lions; and one was conquered, trembling at the bellowing of a bull, and beholding the grim point of the ox's horn as it hurled itself sideways into the air; and frantic, another rushed to flight, shuddering at the jaw of a bear; and one, in chorus with the bestial cries, beast after beast, the dog of unconquered Pan bayed with its throat, and the dark Indians dreaded the howl-loud battle. And the war was shared, yoked alike upon both; and the earth, thirsting, was steeped in the gore of slaughter as men were slain on either side, and as the manifold fell with so great a multitude of the dead Lethe was thronged; and Hades, heaving up the dark bar with his hand, opened the wider gateways of his halls as men were slain on either side, and as they rushed to the pit the banks of Charon thundered a Tartarean bellow. And great was the battle-rousing din, and of the foes the wounds of the slain were of differing kinds: of these one slipped from his horse, struck in the throat, and one in the breast, in the rounded circle of the nipple, and one, pierced through the middle flank, fell from his car; another, beside the navel's tip with a sharp arrow struck, self-rolling, kept company with a neighbour's doom, and one, struck above the midmost rim, and one through the shoulder and another, fleeing, fell, his spine pierced by a spear, on foot, leaving his storm-swift horse stricken; and one, fallen, beardless, mourned for his coeval youth; and one, his liver scored by an unhealing arrow, headlong from his elephant crashed into the dust, laying his head on the ground, and twining his hands he embraced the bloody earth with a downcast arm. And one man stood aslant against a horseman, and filled the hollow of his shield with poured dust, and fixed his foot in the ground, awaiting the man's onset; and with a bold hand stretching out his richly-wrought shield he sprinkled all the horse's eye with sand; and tossing its head, with face nodding upward, the horse reared, shaking its dust-covered mane, and spat out the curved tips of the well-pebbled bit; chafing its crook-toothed jaw, sprinkled with foam, it was shaken, stretched high, and tossing its neck upright, goaded, unbridled, it propped itself on the ground with its hind feet, and shaking up the dust with its hoof it flung to the ground its fallen charioteer. But the jag-toothed man ran swiftly to the fallen one, holding his bare, swift sword; and as the dark champion lay stretched upon the ground, he severed his throat. Another wandering colt, panic-stricken, drew back, awaiting the crack of the neighbouring charioteer's whip, trampling its own pitiable, dying driver, who lay newly slain, quivering in the dust. And Colletes, immense, of towering form, hard to fight, nine cubits, like Alcyoneus, raged through the midst of the Bacchic battle; and after the rout he wished to drag the phalanx of the Bassarids to a giftless bed of constrained weddings, and on an empty hope he warred, that mighty man, such as was bold Otus, treading the untrodden ether, longing for the holy bed of the unwed Archeress, such as Ephialtes, loving the wedding of pure Athena, high in the clouds, hurling himself at Olympus; Colletes was such, more towering, a neighbour of the ether, bearing the god-fighting blood of his earthborn ancestor, the first-begotten Indian; and he was strong enough in form to bind furious Ares, after the sons of Iphimedeia; but, great as he was, a woman slew him with a sharp stone, Charopeia, the pilot of the Bacchic dance. And one, seeing the high-necked girl excelling in battle, mixing wonder with wrath, uttered a trembling voice: “Ares, Ares, leave your bow and shield and lance, Ares, you are despoiled, leave Caucasus; for man-slaying Amazons of a new kind Dionysus drags into the fray; the unshielded rout the armed; for it was not from your Thermodon that he brought his women. A strange and unbelievable form I have seen: no shield on their shoulders, no furious spear have the Amazons of Dionysus; the well-corsleted women of Caucasus do not so excel; but the Bacchants, from their branch-loving hands, wield leaves, and have no need of iron. Alas for maddened Deriades, that women with their nails split open brazen tunics.” He spoke, marvelling at the hard missile with which, seizing it, a Bacchant slew so great and lofty-headed a man. And Deriades, unapproached, ran upon the raving Bacchants, and pursued stone-hurling Charope; but she, fleeing, fought boldly, standing beside Dionysus, hurling her flower-loving thyrsus in the Euian battle. And Deriades crushed Orithallus with the iron, of the Curetes' tribe, a townsman of the Abantian land. And in wrath at the fall of his comrade, the chief of the Abantes, Melisseus, laid low the king of the Carminians, Cyllarus, striking his neck with the sharp sword, and Logasides, who alone, since he was a skilled warrior, was Deriades' care beyond the spear-bold Indians, and the king loved him next after Morrheus; and often with Orsiboe herself and the king he touched one table, a housemate of the king's daughters; for in both with spear and with mind he surpassed his coeval youth. There many a champion vied with champion; high-shining, high-footed Halimedes warred with Peucetius, and Maron armed against Phlogius and Leneus against Thoureus. And father Cronion tipped the scales of battle; and Dionysus fought with mighty Deriades, mixing thyrsus with spear; and to the javelin-bearing warrior, now as he hurled his spear, changing his shifting shape, he put on the richly-wrought phantoms of every form; now a stormy, raving flame rose up, flashing its curved gleam with dancing smoke. Now, surging, he flowed as deceitful water, liquid, shooting a watery dart; and putting on the equal likeness of a lion's face he held aloft his throat upright on high, pouring a rough roar from his thick-haired neck and the thundering peal of his loud-crashing father; and bearing the richly-wrought form of shadowy autumn he took an alien shape, and like a shoot of the earth, self-grown, unapproached, he ran up, smiting the ether, like a pine, like a plane; and as his head changed he made his hair into a false forest with mimic leaves, his belly a towering thicket; and his hands he made into branches, and his garments into bark, and rooted his feet; and clashing his boughs he whispered at the face of the fighting king; and weaving a mimic shape with dappled limbs a high-flying leopard ran up with a bound of its paws, and trod upon the ridge of the high-crested elephants, stepping lightly; and the elephant, swinging the car askew, flung to the ground the god-fighting charioteer, shaking the gleaming harness and the curved circles of the bit. Nor, fallen, did the monstrous champion neglect the fight, but with Lyaeus transformed he fought, and wounded the leopard with his spear. But again the god changed his body; for, high-shining, warming the air, a wandering flame whirled, flashing its fiery dart with the winds, and about the nipples it ran around the hairy breast of Deriades in a circle; and receiving the leaps of the high-faring smoke the Arab corslet blackened on its white flanks, struck by the spark; and of the fire-smitten wearer the helmet, half-burnt, grew warm with its glowing crest. . . . And out of a grim lion appeared a wandering boar, widening the great chasm of its shaggy throat, and bringing its ridge close to the belly of Deriades it stood upright, propped on the spring of its hind foot, scoring his middle flank with whetted claws. And overweening Deriades fought with a dumb phantom, borne on an idle hope; and he wished ever to seize the unattainable image with untouching arms; and into the answering lion he fixed his spear, full in the brow, pouring a threatening word at the many-shaped Bacchus: “Why do you cower, Dionysus? Why guile instead of battle? Dreading Deriades, do you change your richly-wrought shape? A leopard does not rout me, the leopard of war-fleeing Dionysus; I shoot the bear, and cut down the tree with my sword; and the flank of your lying lion I will score. But I arm against you the wise, unarmed Brahmans; for they are naked, and with god-summoning incantations often the air-roaming Moon, like an unyoked bull, drawing her down from heaven, they have charmed, and often, as Phaethon rides on his hastening car, the unsteady, they have halted his course.” He spoke, gazing at the shifting phantoms of Bacchus; and he kept an incredulous mind; and with unbewitched purpose, stitching a drug-craft against Dionysus, he hoped to conquer the son of Zeus by his mystic art. There, leaping up, unapproached, he ran high above the cars; and the god, watching the foolish, god-fighting man, made a vine grow up, a helper in the battle. And a god-driven tendril of the fair-clustered vine, creeping little by little to the silver-wheeled car, bound Deriades fast with its threatening cluster, fettered all around; and shaking the fresh-blossoming clustered cluster, vine-shoot upon vine-shoot, wandering, shadowing the face of the maddened king, it shook, having girdled the whole man; and Deriades the self-grown coil made drunk with its fragrant fruit; and it wove an ironless fetter about his pair of feet, and rooted the feet of the yoked elephants . . . with unbreakable ivy; and not so much a ship of the sea do the sharp tips of the entwining sucking-fish's jaws hold fast in the sea with their jag-toothed bond; such was the likeness. And vainly urging on the elephants, the driver whirled his heavy-thudding whip, scoring with sharper goads their disobedient backs. And the Indian king, so great, whom no boundless spear had slain, the vine-tendril champion conquered; and holding fast his throat in the grip of the vine-shoot, Deriades was choked, crushed by the crooked coil. And toiling, unshaken, he writhed with a frenzied voice, keeping a thin shriek in his god-fearing throat, shedding suppliant tears with speechless gestures; and he stretched out a voiceless hand, with witnessing silence crying all his toil; and the tear became his voice. And Dionysus, scattering his many-fettering harvest, drew up the fair-clustered fetter from Deriades, and driving away the coiling ivy of the vine-garland he loosed the bound neck of the yoked elephants. Yet, though he had escaped the woody bond of the long-shooted cluster and the self-coiling constraint that threatened him, Deriades did not renounce his wonted boast of threat, but was again a god-fighting champion; and he held a twofold purpose, either to seize Bacchus or to make him a slave. But the encircling darkness of battle checked them both. And there was war after the night, and from their sleeping beds answering Dawn armed once more the men who woke. Nor was there an end of battles for hastening Dionysus, but after the rolling rounds of so many years the trumpet vainly boomed the rhythm of war. And now, at the much-winding turning-post of the battling years, the late-completed Bacchic war raged the more. Not unsparing of war-mad Dionysus did the Dictaean Rhadamanes, of one mind, leave the matter to the forgetful winds; but for Lyaeus they fashioned warlike ships; and about the thickets they busied themselves, one here, one there: one rounded the pegs, one laboured about the middle keel, and another, weaving the upright decks about the alternating timbers, made the ship's side, and joining the long gunwales fixed them fast, and in the deepening mast-block the Arab carpenter set up the midmost mast in view to be kept by the spread sail; and at the top they rounded the curved wooden yard, skilled in the deft craft of both Hephaestus and Athena. So they, toiling with an inimitable craft, made ships for Bacchus. And vexed by the war, Dionysus remembered the prophecy of his Rhea, that an end of the war would appear when the Bacchants should raise a sea-battle against the Indians. And Lycus, leading the way through the topmost swell, serving the unbending behests of Dionysus, guided the unwetted, road-faring chariot of the sea, where the wise Rhadamanes, sea-wandering migrants, fashioned ships for sea-faring Dionysus. And then, rolling the whirl of the four-portioned time, riding his sixth year, curved Aeon wheeled round . . . To the assembly Deriades the sceptred king called the race of the dark-skinned Indians; and with hastening sandal the herald went, gathering the people with his foreign cry. At once the ranks of the manifold Indians assembled, seating themselves in order on the alternating benches; and to the gathered peoples lord Morrheus made a speech: “You know, friends, all of you well by now, what I wrought upon the towers, until the Cilician land and the race of Assyrian men bowed their slave neck beneath the yoke of Deriades; you know too all that I accomplished, warring against Dionysus, fighting the Satyrs, and with the reaping iron cutting the hostile heads of the ox-horned breed, when I dragged the fettered swarm of the Bassarids and gave them to Deriades, a prize of war, beneath whose gore the well-paved streets of the city were stained crimson as they were slain; and others, about the lofty dance, were strangled, their entwined necks crushed in a deadly bond; and others made trial of a watery destruction, hidden in the recess of an earth-dug hollow. But again I weave for the townsmen a better plan. I hear of the Rhadamanes, that with some woodcutter's craft they have fashioned ships for war-fleeing Dionysus; yet I do not dread the ship-fighting spear; for in wars when do women ever slay with worthless leaves a man, helmeted with shield-bearers, high upon the ships? Or when will frenzied, mountain-running, high-horned Pan with whetted claws cleave the ships of the Indians? A Silenus cannot, beating the heavy-thudding water with his unwarlike fennel-rod, hide a warlike ship, leaping into the bloody dance with frenzied foot, striking up a death-bringing revel; nor in the sea can he master a man pierced by the bull's horns, close at hand, cleaving his midmost flank in two, but, struck headfirst by some unburied fate, he will lie among the surges; and the Bacchants will slip, struck by our long spears, into the murderous deep of the brine, as they are smitten; and I will blot out the ships of Dionysus, whirling a twenty-cubit ship-fighting spear through the hull. But, friends, fight with confidence; and of the foes let no one cower, watching the rank of the Bacchic ships; for the Indians are wonted to battle by sea too, and they excel rather in the sea than fighting on land. And with unconquered iron I will not plunder many Satyrs, but by their hair instead of two hundred champions one alone I will drag, woman-mad Dionysus, the squire of Deriades.” So speaking, crafty-counselled Morrheus persuaded unsoftened Deriades; and the peoples shouted, approving his speech; and from their like-tongued throats, with their stirred swells, an equal-sounding echo roared. And the king dissolved the assembly. And to Bromius a herald was sent, announcing the sea-battle to compliant Bacchus. And the two, coming to one accord that the war should be stayed, made a delay for three circles of the Moon, until they should bury the rank of the war-slain dead; and there was a short-lived peace, a neighbour to war, spreading a calm over the war that was in labour.