Book 2

2. Meanwhile the winged son of Maia, bearing the commands of great Jove, returns from the icy shades; on every side the sluggish clouds forbid his going, and the turbid air entangles him. Nor did the west winds quicken his pace, but the foul breath of the silent pole. On one side Styx, flowing round its nine fields, on the other the opposing fires of torrents bar the ways. Behind, old Laius follows with trembling shade, still slow with his wound; for the impious sword went past his throat more deeply than the hilt, when by a kindred stroke it pierced his life through, and he bore the first wraths of the Furies; yet he goes on, and steadies his steps with the healing wand. Then the barren groves, the fields possessed by the dead, and the iron-gray wood stand astonished, and the Earth herself marvels that the way has opened backward; nor did the livid corruption of envy, though they were dead and now bereft of light, fail there. One among the rest, whose will was ever sinister, even toward those above — hence too his grievous end of life — who loved to insult misfortune and to sicken at glad things, 'Go,' he said, 'O fortunate, to whatever uses you are summoned, whether by Jove's command, or whether a greater Fury drove you to walk against the day, or whether the maddened Thessalian priestess bids you depart from your secret tomb, ah, to look upon the sweet skies and the abandoned sun, the green lands and the rivers clear at their springs, yet sadder still, again to enter into these shadows.' When Cerberus, reclining on the blind threshold, felt them, he raised all the gaping mouths of his heads, fierce even at the people entering; already his black neck swelled in menace, already he had scattered and stirred the bones on the ground, had not the god, soothing the bristling beast with a Lethaean branch, tamed his iron eyes with threefold sleep.

There is a place — the Inachian peoples have called it Taenarus — where the dreaded head of foaming Malea goes up into the airs and admits no gaze to its summit; the lofty peak stands serene, and looks down on the winds and the rains, and is only beset by the weary stars. There the exhausted winds have laid their couches, and there is a path for the lightnings; the hollow clouds have taken up the mountain's middle flank, and neither the clapping of the swift wing reaches the highest hills, nor do the hoarse thunders beat upon them. But when day is sloping, it casts long shadows over the seas, and a vast shade swims in the midst of the deep, Taenarus curves in its inner bay the breaking shores, not bold to climb the open waves. There, in the Aegean gulf, Neptune leads his weary horses down into harbor; the foremost hoof drinks up the sands, the hindmost fish-tails dissolve into the sea. In this place, as fame tells, a byway path drives the pale shades, and enriches the empty halls of dark Jove with the dead. If the Arcadian settlers tell the truth, there is the hissing and the groaning of punishments, and the field seethes with black tumult; often the voices and hands of the Eumenides have sounded into the broad day, and the doorkeeper of triple-formed Death, heard, has driven the farmers from the fields.

Here too then the winged god, covered with a dusky shade, leaps up to those above, and from his face shakes off the infernal clouds, and clears his features with the living breaths. Then through Arcturus and the silences of the mid-moon he travels over fields and peoples. Sleep, meeting him, was driving the horses of Night, and rises up trembling in honor of the deity, and gives way from the straight path of heaven; his shade flies lower than the god, who notes the stars forestalled and his own beginning; and now he looks down on lofty Cirrha and on Phocis, polluted with his own tomb. He had come to Thebes; near the threshold of his son Laius groaned, hesitating to enter the familiar household, but when he saw the yoke of his own car propped on the lofty columns, and the chariot still stained with blood, disturbed, he almost turns back: neither the highest commands of the Thunderer nor the breaths of the Arcadian wand hold him.

And then it chanced to be the day marked by the well-known thunderbolt of the Thunderer, when, tender Euhius, your birth, torn untimely, passed you to your father. To the Tyrian settlers this was a cause to draw out the sleepless night in eager play; poured out here and there through the houses, through the fields, amid garlands and bowls drained of wine, panting they breathed out the god under the dawn; then there was much boxwood pipe, and bronze cymbals overcoming with their din the beating of bulls. Cithaeron himself too, rejoicing through the wooded byways, had driven the sane mothers on with a kinder Bacchus; such banquets, in a maddened gathering, the Bistones set along Rhodope, or in the valleys of mid-Ossa. For them it is luxury to have a half-living beast and feasts shaken from the lions' mouth, and to have tamed their frenzy with new milk: but if ever the cruel scent of Ogygian Iacchus breathed upon them, then it is a fine thing to hurl stones with the hand, then the cups, and, with the undeserved blood of their fellows spilled, to renew the day and set the festal tables again.

That was the night when the winged Cyllenian, gliding on the silent air, sank to the bed of the Echionian king, where, huge, he had spread his limbs on the high couch piled with Assyrian tapestries. O mortal hearts, ignorant of their own fate! He takes the feast, he has his slumber. Then the elder does what he was bidden, and, lest the image of the night might seem false, he puts on the shadowy features of the aged prophet Tiresias, his voice and well-known fleece; the hair remained, and the white beard combed down upon the chin, and his own pallor; but a false fillet ran through the locks, and woven with gray-green olive came forth the honor of the bands: then he seemed to touch the breast with a branch and to utter these words of the fates: 'This is no time for sleep, slothful one, who in the deep night, heedless of your brother, lie idle; great deeds long since call you, and the grave preparations of affairs, you sluggard. You, just as if, when the south winds were already raising the great Ionian sea, the helmsman should lie beneath a black cloud, forgetful of his rigging and of the rudder that turns the waters, you delay. And now that other — Fame knows it — exults in a new marriage and prepares the strength by which to seize the kingdom, to deny it to you, and destines for himself old age in your hall. His father-in-law Adrastus, fated by augury, gives him courage, and Argos given as dowry; nor any less, into a bond for life, did Tydeus, stained with a brother's blood, find favor. Hence comes his pride, and as an exile he promises long things to your brother. The very father of the gods, pitying you, sends me from on high: hold Thebes, and your brother, blind with greed of the kingdom and ready to dare the same, drive him out; nor any longer, as he gapes for his brother's death, suffer him to trust to his undertaken frauds, or to bring imperious Mycenae against Cadmus.' He spoke, and drawing near — for now the horses of light were scattering the pale stars — he tore the branches and fleece from his brow, confessing the grandsire, and lay down upon his dread grandson's bed, then bares the throat gaping with slaughter, and drenches the sleep with the welling wound. His rest is broken; he raises his limbs and is snatched from the bed, full of monstrous sights, and shaking off the unreal gore, at once shudders at his grandsire and seeks his brother, as a tiger, when she has heard the murmur of hunters, bristles into her stripes and shakes off her sluggish slumbers; she longs for war, and loosens her jaws and tempers her claws, then rushes upon the squadrons and bears in her mouth a still-breathing man as food for her bloody young: so, roused by wrath, the leader spends his battles upon his absent brother.

And now, risen from her Mygdonian couches, Aurora had scattered the icy darkness high in the sky, shaking out her dewy locks and red with the much-following sun; for her, rosy through the clouds, the Morning Star turns his late flames and quits the alien aether on his slow horse, until the fiery father should fill the orb and forbid the rays even to his own sister: when the elder son of Talaus, and, after no long delay, the Dircaean and the Acheloian hero alike snatched their steps from their beds; those two, weary after the blows and the storm they had received, Sleep had drenched with all his horn; but for the Inachian king, beneath his breast a thin rest was drawn out, while in his mind he turns over the gods and the begun hospitality, and ponders what the fates may be, taken up with the kin he has found, after in the midst of the hall's seats they met and joined right hands in turn, and chose a place where it was fit to broach and unfold their secret cares, and sat down; first Adrastus addresses the doubtful ones thus: 'Excellent of young men, whom not without divine will the night with auspicious hand has brought into my realms, for whom my own Apollo, through the rains mingled with lightnings and the unseasonable Thunderer, made footsteps all the way to these dwellings, I do not think it obscure to you and to the Pelasgian people with what great zeal the crowd of suitors seek our marriage-ties; for to me two daughters — happy in grandchildren — grow up under an equal star. How great their honor and how great their modesty, believe not their father; even over yesterday's tables you could perceive it. These the proud men have desired, by their throne and by arms widely ruling — it were long to count up the Pheraean and Oebalian chiefs — and through Achaean towns the mothers, the hope of their race; nor did your Oeneus despise more treaties, a father-in-law to be feared with the Pisaean reins. But it is not lawful for me to join as sons-in-law men born of Sparta nor sent from Elis: for you this blood and the care of my hall are promised by a long order of fate. The gods are good, that you come of such stock and such spirit that the oracles are pleasing: this is the honor born in the time of the harsh night, this is that reward that came after the blows.' They had heard, and a little while held their eyes fixed on each other's faces, and seemed between themselves to yield in the order of speaking; but Tydeus, bolder in all his acts, begins: 'O how a ripe mind drives you, sparing of your own proclamation of fame, and how you tame with virtue the fortune that carries you! To whose commands would Adrastus yield? Who does not know that you, summoned from the throne of ancestral Sicyon, set unbridled Argos in order with your laws? And would that, just Jupiter, you might be willing to entrust to these hands the peoples that the Doric Isthmus binds within and that it sets apart below with its alternating shore! The broken light would not flee from dread Mycenae, nor would the Elean valleys groan with cruel contests, nor Furies upon Furies under different kings, and what you, Theban, have more cause to lament: but we indeed are willing and laid bare in spirit.' So he broke in, and the other adds: 'Would anyone refuse such fathers-in-law to draw near? Though for us, exiles driven from our country, Venus is not yet glad, yet all sadness has settled from the heart, and the griefs fixed in our mind have given way. Nor any the less gladly do we draw this solace, than if a ship, wrenched apart by the headlong south wind, should sight its friendly land; it gladdens us, having entered upon the happy omens of the kingdom, that whatever remains of fate and of life's labors should pass over by your fortune.' And delaying no more they rise; the Inachian father heaps up more lavishly with his words every promise, and pledges that he will be their aid and lead them back as restored to their fathers' realms.

Therefore Argos is eager: the rumor spread through the city that sons-in-law had come to the leader, and that at the first wedding-rites the noble Argia, and Deipyle, second to her in no praise of beauty, were now to be wedded in their swelling maidenhood; they prepare joy in their minds; Fame goes through the allied cities, and is stirred through the neighboring fields, far away as the Lycaean and Parthenian glades and over the Ephyraean lands; nor any less does the same turbulent goddess leap upon Ogygian Thebes, drenches these walls with her whole wings, and, in harmony with the night sent before, terrifies the Labdacian leader: the hospitality, the marriages, the bond of the kingdom, the mingled race — what such license has the monster, what madness? — and now she sings of war.

The awaited day had spread itself over Argos: the royal halls are filled with a glad gathering; one may behold the faces of the ancestors close at hand, and the bronze that vies with living features. That hands dared to bring such things to pass! The father Inachus himself, two-horned, sits leaning forward on his sloping urn on the left; him the aged Iasus covers, and placid Phoroneus, and the warrior Abas, and Acrisius, indignant at the Thunderer, and Coroebus bearing his head on a naked sword, and the grim image of Danaus now plotting his crime; then a thousand chiefs. Then through the proud doors the released wave of the crowd roars; every band of nobles, and they whose rank is nearer to the high king, stand in the first row in order. The inner hall grows warm with the rites and resounds with feminine tumult; the Argive women have girt the mother with a chaste crowd; some, poured around the maidens on every side, arrange the new bonds and soothe their fear. They went, conspicuous in face and in reverend bearing, crimson modesty poured over their white faces, and their cheeks downcast; silently there steals upon them that last love of maidenhood, and the modesty of the first fault confounds their faces; then their cheeks are wetted with honorable showers, and the tears gladdened their tender parents. Not otherwise than if, slipped down together from the heavenly gate, Pallas and the harsher sister of Phoebus, each with weapons, each grim of cheek and with a knot on her golden crown, the one should lead her companions on Cynthus, the other on Aracynthus; then, if it were lawful for the eyes, never by long gazing could you make out to which more honor, which more pleasing, or who has more of Jove. And should they wish to take on each other's exchanged dress, both the quivers would suit Pallas, and the crests the Delian.

The Inachidae contend in joy and weary the gods with vows, each according to his house and the means for sacrifice. These make offering with entrails and life, these with the bare turf; nor any the less, if the heart be accepted, are they heard to deserve the gods with incense, and they screen their thresholds with broken boughs. Lo, by a sudden fear — so hard Lachesis bade — their minds are struck, and joy is shaken from the father, and the day is troubled. They were approaching the unwedded Pallas on her threshold, to whom Argive Larissa, with its Monychian ridges, has not preferred any city: here, after the manner of their parents, the children of Iasus, when chaste youth ripened for the bridal-chamber, were used to dedicate their maiden locks and to make excuse for their first beds; as they were climbing the lofty citadel, the bronze disk, the spoil of Arcadian Euhippus, slips from the height of the topmost temple and falls upon the steps, and overwhelms the torches sent before, the festal fire for the brides, and from the remote shrines at the same time a huge trumpet, heard, terrified those who dared not yet steady their step. All, in their first dread, turned toward the king, then deny they heard it; yet upon all the dire omens of events work, and they increase their fear with various talk. No wonder: for then, your husband giving them, you wear, Argia, the ill-omened ornaments and the dread necklace of Harmonia. Long is the chain, but I will trace the known course of the evils, whence so cruel a power in the new gifts. The Lemnian wrought this, as the old faith holds, long grieving over the thefts of Mars; after, when no punishment stands in the way of his caught love, nor avenging chains chastised it, he had built, as Harmonia's dowry-glory, this for the bridal day. At this, though they labor at greater things, the skilled Cyclopes toil, and the Telchines, famed for their works, with friendly hand contended to help; but most of all his own sweat was spent. There he rings emeralds blooming with secret fire, and adamant, stamped with ill-omened figures, and Gorgon-orbs and the ashes of the last thunderbolt left on the Sicilian anvil, and the gleaming manes of green serpents from the forehead; here the mournful seed of the Hesperides, and the dire gold of the Phrixean fleece; then he weaves in various plagues, and a leader snatched from the black hair of Tisiphone, and what worst force approves of the cestus; this all around he cunningly anoints with lunar foam and steeps in a merry poison. Not Pasithea, first of the winsome sisters, not Beauty, nor the Idalian boy, but Grief and Wraths and Pain and Discord pressed it with her whole hand. The first proof of the work: Harmonia, having accompanied fallen Cadmus, her complaints turned to dread hissings, furrowed the Illyrian plains with her long breast. Soon wicked Semele scarcely put the harmful gifts upon her neck, and deceitful Juno entered her threshold. And you too, unhappy one, they say, Jocasta, possessed the lovely sin; with this glory she adorned her face, for what beds, alas, alas, she was to please! After it, a longer order. Then Argia shines with the gifts, and the worthless adornment of her sister, decked with sacred gold, comes over. The wife of the prophet doomed to perish had seen this, and before all the altars and the feasts she was secretly brewing a savage envy, whether at some time it might be granted her to possess the cruel adornments. Alas, in nothing helped by her near auguries. What groans she desires, what great calamities the impious one craves! Worthy indeed; but what did the deceived arms of her wretched husband, what did her innocent sons deserve of her frenzies?

After twelve days had closed the royal feasts and the joys of the people, the Ismenian hero began to look back toward Thebes and now to seek his own kingdom, for that day steals upon his mind, on which, by his brother's kindly lot, he had stood a private man in the Echionian hall, beholding the gods departed and his companions in trembling tumult scattered, all his flank bared, and the flight of fortune; for one sister alone dared to bring forth the mournful ways of the sad exile; even her he had left at the first threshold, and shut in his tears with mighty wrath. Then those he left glad as he went out, what was the chief adornment of the unjust leader, and which men, as he fled, he himself had marked to have groaned for him, through the night and under every day he reckons up: grief and mad wrath have eaten his spirit, and — than which no heavier care has been given to mortals — hope, when it comes after long delay; turning beneath his breast such a cloud of counsel, he prepares to go to Dirce and the denied homes of Cadmus, like a leader-bull, deprived of his loved valley, whom the herdsman, driven from his accustomed grass, has bidden bellow far from the heifer torn away, when, fleeing, his strength pleases him, and his neck returns great with recovered blood, and the oaks are broken upon his chest, he longs for war and demands back his pastures and the captured herd, now better with his foot, now with his horn — the victor himself dreads his returning, and the astonished masters scarcely knew him —: not otherwise did the Teumesian youth sharpen his silent wraths in his mind, but his faithful wife had felt his ways and his secrets; and as she lay, embracing her husband on the bed in the first paleness of dawn, 'What stirrings, cunning one, or what flight do you contrive?' she said: 'nothing escapes lovers. I feel it; sleepless sighs sharpen your complaints, never in peace is your sleep; how often do I catch this face swimming with weeping and your breast baying with great cares when I bring my hand near? Nothing, by the broken bond or by our marriage, moves me beyond, nor by a widowed youth, even though our love is raw, and the beds after the bridal torches have not yet grown warm throughout: it is your safety, I will hasten to confess it, that wrings me, beloved. Will you, unaccompanied, unarmed, seek the kingdom, and will you be able to depart your own Thebes, if he refuses? And fame, ever skilled to catch out leaders, tells that he is swollen and proud of what he snatched, and hard toward you: he has not yet spent the year. Me too now the seers, now the entrails threatening the gods, or the falling of birds, or the turbid image of night terrify, and — ah, I remember — never has Juno come to me false through the shadows. Where do you bend your way? Unless a conscious passion leads you, and a better father-in-law is at Thebes.' Here at last the Echionian youth smiled a little, and, consoling his wife's tender grief with an embrace, set timely kisses on her mournful cheeks and stayed her tears: 'Free your mind of fears; it will be granted, believe me, by the counsels of the deserving, a tranquil day; care too strong for your years does not yet become you. May the Saturnian father one day know these fates, and whatever eyes Justice cares to send down from the pole and to defend the right upon the earth: perhaps that light will come for you, on which you will see the walls of your husband, and go a queen through the twin cities.' So he speaks, and swiftly brings himself from the dear threshold.

Now Tydeus, already a partner in his undertakings, already with faithful heart matching his cares — so great a love, after their quarrels, bound their minds — he, sad, addresses his father-in-law Adrastus. There is delay in the counsel, when, as they move many things, one resolution at last sat better than all: to test the brother's faith and, by entreating, to explore safe approaches to the kingdom. Boldly does Tydeus take up this office of his own accord; nor any the less did Deipyle, with much weeping, try to delay you, most valiant of the Aetolian race; but the commands of her father, and the safety of his return in an envoy, and the just prayers of her sister prevailed.

And now, having measured the journey hard through woods and shore, where the Lernaean marsh and the hydra, burned deep in the shallows by the guilty, grows warm, and where Nemea, scarce with a rare song, sounds at length, the shepherds not yet daring, where the flank of Ephyre that slopes toward the eastern east winds, and the Sisyphean harbors lie, and the curving wave, angry at the land, is shut off by Palaemonian Lechaeum: sailing past from here, he leaves Nisus and you, gentle Eleusis, on his left, and now he enters the Teumesian fields and the Agenorean citadels; there he beholds harsh Eteocles lofty on his throne and hedged round with bristling arms. Fierce, he was giving laws to the people beyond the law and the seasons of his reign, now in his brother's part: he sits ready for every crime, and complains that faith is so late demanded back.

He stood in the midst — the olive branch shows the envoy — and, asked the causes of his journey and his name, declared them; and as he was ever rude in speech and prone to passion, yet mingling harsh things with just, he began: 'If plain faith and care for the treaty's word remained with you, it had been more just, the year completed, for envoys to go from here to your brother, and that you, in fixed order, should put off your fortune and gladly come down from the throne, so that he, long a wanderer and having suffered things unworthy through unknown cities, might at last succeed to the agreed hall. But because the love of the kingdom is sweet and power flattering, you are required: the swift circle has already turned the star-bearing orb, and the lost shadows have returned to the mountains, since your destitute brother through unknown towns drives out his sad fortunes as an exile; and it is now time for you to bear the days under the open sky, and to lead through your limbs the chill of the earth, and humbled to court a stranger's household. Set a limit to your joys; rich enough in purple and gold, conspicuous, you have mocked the meager year of your poor brother; I warn you, unlearn for yourself the joys of kingdoms, and patient of exile earn the right to return.' He had spoken; but in him long since beneath his silent breast the fiery heart roars, as a fierce serpent, struck by a thrown stone, rears up close at hand, in whose empty hidden depths beneath a long thirst, stirred through all its frame, summons the venom into its jaws and scaly neck: 'If my brother's quarrels had been known to me before by doubtful signs, and the clear secrets of his hatred had not lain open, even faith alone would suffice, by which, grim and bearing him too in his mind, as a new besieger now loosens the walled ramparts and the war-trumpets make his squadrons enemies, you are raging. If at close quarters you had carried your speech among the Bistones, or the Geloni pale with the retreating sun, you would have begun more sparing of eloquence and more reverent of the middle fair. Nor would I charge you with the crime of a furious mind: you bear another's commands. Now, since all is full of threats, and you demand the scepter neither in faith nor with peace as mediator, and your hand is closer to the hilt, carry back these words, spoken to the Argive king — not yet equal to yours — in my turn: the lot that is just to me, the scepter that an honor not unowed to my years has dedicated, I hold and will long hold. With you let the Inachian palace, given as the dowry of your wife, and the wealth of Danae — for why should I envy greater deeds? — be heaped up; under happy auspices may you rule Argos and Lerna; for us the rough pastures of Dirce and the shores cramped by Euboean waves, not having scorned to call wretched Oedipus our father: yours the ample nobility — Pelops and Tantalus your founders! — and a nearer Jove may flow to you from joined blood. Or will the queen, accustomed to her father's luxury, bear this hearth? For whom should our sisters by right draw the anxious wool-tasks, or the mother, foul with long mourning, and that holy old man, perhaps heard from the lowest shadows, offend her? Already the hearts of the crowd are used to the yoke; it shames me, alas, both of commons and of fathers, lest so often they should bear uncertain rule and, groaning, change it, and be loath to obey a doubtful tyrant. A brief reign does not spare its peoples; consider how great the dread, and how the citizens are astonished at our crisis! Shall I, then, leave these men, for whom under you as leader the penalty is sure? Angry, brother, you come; suppose you are willing: not even the fathers, if only my love is known and the grace of my desert, will suffer me to give back the kingdom.' He suffered no more, and threw his words across into the midst of the speech: 'You will give it back,' he repeats, 'you will give it back: not if an iron rampart should ring you round, or if Amphion, heard with another song, should drive triple walls for you, shall any weapons or fires prevent you from paying for your daring, and beneath our arms, dying, from beating the ground with your captive diadem, you justly; but I pity these men, whom, cheap of blood, torn from their wives and children to unspeakable battles, you cast forth, good king, to ruin. O what great funerals will Cithaeron, and you, bloody Ismenos, roll in your floods! This is your piety, this your great faith! Nor do I indeed hold the crimes of your race a marvel: so was the first author of the blood, and the incestuous beds of the fathers; but the origin is deceptive: you alone were of Oedipus — these rewards of your character and crime you will bear, while he looks on! We ask for the year; but I delay.' These things, bold, still on the threshold, crying out backward, headlong then through the thronged ranks he flies forth. So that avenger of Oenean Diana, bristling with hairs and with the lightning of his curved jaw, when the Pelopian phalanx pressed him, rolling the rocks before him and the Acheloian thickets broken from the dug-through banks, now leaving Telamon on the ground, now Ixion laid low, comes upon you, Meleager: there at last he stuck in the broad spear-point and slackened his rage on the resisting shoulder. Such did the Calydonian hero leave the still-trembling council, gnashing his teeth, as though the kingdom were denied to himself, and hastens his way, and casts away the entreating branch of olive; from the topmost threshold of the dwellings the astonished mothers look on, and pray unspeakable things against the cruel son of Oeneus, and, in their silent breast, against the king at once.

Nor is the leader, ready in the genius of crime and of unspeakable fraud, in want. The faithful of his youths, bodies most choice for war, now with reward, now blazing with their own urgings, he stirs up with words, and cruelly arranges a battle by night, and to invade the name, holy to peoples through the ages, of an envoy with treachery and silent steel — what is not cheap to kingdoms? — he longs; what arts he would seek, Fortune, if you gave him his brother! O blind counsels of the guilty! O ever-fearful crime! The people goes out, sworn by the steel, against a single head; as if to assault a camp it makes ready, or to bring down the lofty flank of a city by the frequent blows of the ram: so, a column made, fifty are poured out in order from the high gates. A blessing on your spirit, worthy to be trusted with such great arms!

A nearer way leads through the thickets, where by a hidden path they hasten ahead and choose the shortcuts of the dense wood. A seat is chosen for the treachery: far from the city, twin hills press close with their malign gorges, which the shade of the lofty mountain and the leafy ridges shut in with their curving woods — nature has built ambush in the place and a blind aid for hiding — and a rough path cuts the rocks artfully between, beneath which the plains and the lands sloping in broad spaces lie; opposite is an unwelcome ledge, the home of the winged thing of Oedipus; here the wild beast once, with her pale cheeks upraised and her eyes suffused with gore, her feathers clotted with unspeakable blood, embracing the remains of men and pressing to her bare breast the half-eaten bones, stood, and with a terrible gaze scanned the fields, if any guest dared to contend with her unsolved sayings, or any traveler to go hand to hand and join an exchange with her dire tongue; nor was there delay, but at once, sharpening her outthrust claws and her livid hands and her teeth drawn for wounds, with a terrible clapping she rose around the stranger's face; and her wiles lay hidden, until from the bloody rock — alas! — caught by a man like these, her wings failing, sad she dashed her unsatisfied belly upon the crags. The wood points out the abomination: the bullocks dread the neighboring grass, the greedy flock keeps from the accursed herbs; the shade pleases not the choirs of Dryads, nor is it fit for the rites of the Fauns, and even the dire birds have fled the portentous grove. Driven here with silent steps the cohort doomed to perish comes down, and, against the proud foe, leaning on their javelins and holding their arms laid on the ground, they wait, and crown the wood with a dense outpost.

Night had begun to weave Phoebus with her damp robe and had poured the dark-blue shade over the lands; he was drawing near the woods, and from the high bank sees the shields of men and the helmets with their crests redden. Where the branches loosen the wood, and in the shade facing him a flame-colored quiver of the moon wanders over the brazen arms, he was amazed at the sight; yet he went on; only he brings up his bristling spear and the sword enclosed up to the hilt, and first, 'Whence, men, or why hidden in arms?' he asks with no humble dread; nor is a voice returned against him, and the suspicious silences deny a trustworthy peace. But lo, hurled from the vast arm of Chthonius, on whom the cohort relied as leader, a spear flies through the dusky air; but the god and fortune withdrew from him as he dared. Yet through the covering of Olenian boar's-hide and the back black with bristles, above his left shoulder, near to dying, it escaped, and struck his throat in vain with the widowed wood. Then his hair stood up and his blood was frozen in his heart. Bearing his spirit fierce this way and that, and his face pale with wrath — nor does he think so great a war prepared for him —: 'Bring your steps against me and burst out into the open field! What fear of daring, what such cowardice? Alone, alone I call to arms.' Nor in this is there delay: when he sees them, more than he had reckoned, run out from countless lairs, these advancing from the ridges, those from the lowest valleys growing up, and not a few in the plain, and the whole way gleaming with arms, as the first voice brings forth into the open the beasts shut in by the net, when the way of healing is troubled and confused by reason alone, he seeks the heights of the dread Sphinx, and breaking the lines on the sheer cliffs, surmounts the dire ridges, and, master of a crag, whence far behind is dread and a sloping way of harming, a huge rock, which the groaning bullocks could scarcely turn from the ground with full neck and bring to the walls, he tears from the rocks; then, straining with all his blood, he holds it up, seeking to balance the monstrous ruin, as great-souled Pholus raised the empty mixing-bowl against the Lapiths who faced him. The throng, doomed to death, stands amazed at him standing over them, and is overwhelmed by the whirlwind of the loosed mountain; at once the faces of the men, at once their arms and hands, and the broken breasts, settled mingled with the iron. Four here, scattered beneath one mass, groaned together; the column, straightway shaken with terror, is thrown by flight from its undertaking, for the funerals that lay there were not to be despised: lightning-like Dorylas, whom a blazing valor matched with kings, and Theron of the seed of Mars, trusting in his earth-born grandsires, and Halys second to none in turning the reins — but now he lies a footman in the fields — and Phaedimus, dragging Pentheus, not yet your equal, Bacchus, in race. When the squadrons, terrified by these sudden fates, saw the disordered band loosen its throng, the two javelins alone which he had fixed, holding them in his hand, leaning against the mountain, he hurls and adds to the fleeing. Soon he gladly is carried headlong down with a leap onto the plain, lest the weapons should fall on his bare breast, and seizes the disk which he had seen rolled far off when Theron was crushed, and, hedged about back and crown with the well-known coverings, and defending his breast with the enemy's shield, he took his stand. Then again the children of Ogyges gather densely into one and steady their step; more swiftly Tydeus draws his Bistonian sword, the Martial gift of great Oeneus, and, divided alike into all parts, goes against these and those, and with his steel strikes down the flashing weapons; they hinder themselves by their number, and their own arms in turn press on one another, nor is there any force in their efforts, but their very hands stray against their fellows, and the bodies, slipping, are wrapped in their own throng; he, narrow amid them, abides the rushing weapons, and stands unconquerable in the way, not otherwise — if it is lawful to believe in Getic Phlegra — than immense Briareus stood against the armed aether, on this side the quivers of Phoebus, on that the serpent of grim Pallas, thence the Pelethronian pine of Mars with its fixed point, and on this side scorning the bolts changed by weary Pyracmon, when, beset in vain by all Olympus, he complains that so many hands are idle: no less keenly does Tydeus burn, thrusting his shield this way and that, and, withdrawing, he himself circles round; at times he meets the trembling foes and presses, plucking out the darts which, many over his whole shield, stick quivering and arm the man, though often he suffers harsh wounds; but he can hope for no entrance into the secret parts of life, nor for death. He himself whirls raging Deilochus, and bids Phegeus go a companion to him beneath the shades, threatening war with raised axe, and Dircaean Gyas and Echionian Lycophontes. Now, fearful, they seek and number themselves, nor is the love of slaughter the same, and they grieve that so great a throng grows thin.

Lo, Chromis, descended from the line of Tyrian Cadmus — him once, when her womb was heavy, the Phoenician Dryope, suddenly snatched from the choirs and forgetful of her burden, was bearing, and while she dragged the bull by its caught horns for you, Euhan, the infant fell forth, driven out by her too-great efforts — he then, bold with javelins and in the hide of a captured lion, was brandishing the pine-strength of his knotted club, chiding: 'Shall one man, men, one man alone, through so many slaughters go exulting to Argos? Scarce will fame believe him returned! Ho, comrades, will no hands, no arms avail? Was this promised to the king, Cydon, was this, Lampus, what we gave?' While he cries, the Teumesian spear enters his hollow mouth, nor do his jaws prevent it; and his tongue, cut off, swims in the ready blood with his voice still filling it. He stood yet, until, death sent through his limbs, he slips down and, falling, fell dumb upon the bitten spear. You too, sons of Thespius, why should I, denying it, bar you from honored fame? Periphas was lifting his brother's dying limbs from the ground — nothing was brighter than that nature nor in piety — with his left hand holding up the drooping neck and his right the side; grief drains his straitened breastplate with sobs, nor do the fastenings restrain his helmet welling with weeping, when, as he groans much, a heavy lance from behind breaks through his curving ribs. It goes out even into the brother, and joins the kindred breasts with its weapon; he checks his eyes, still swimming in the light, and at the sight of his brother's death is undone. But he in whom life was fresh and strength still in the wound, 'These embraces, these kisses,' he says, 'let your sons give you.' They fell down equal in their fates, a pitiable wish of death, and closed each other's eyes with an alternating hand.

Straightway the same man, of his own accord, with javelin and shield was driving back Menoetes, pressing his steps backward with trembling paces, until, slipping on the treacherous ground, he failed, and, torn apart into both hands, he prays, and holds off from his throat the straining spear: 'Spare me, by these shadows with the stars gliding between, by the gods above and by your night; allow me, a messenger, to carry the sad deeds to Thebes, and through the mouths of the trembling crowd to sing of you, the king despised: so let our weapons fall vain, and let no breast be penetrable to your steel, and may you be carried back a victor to a longing friend.' He had spoken; that other, his face nothing changed: 'You waste vain tears,' he says, 'and you too, unless I am deceived, promised my neck to the unjust leader: now cast away your arms and the day; why do you pursue the shortcuts of a timid life? Wars await you.' Even as he says this, the weapon, thick with blood, now returns; he, made hostile over his bitter words, pursues the conquered: 'This triennial night does not come to you after your fathers' manner, nor do you behold the orgies of Cadmus, nor the greedy mothers profaning Bacchus; did you think to carry fawn-skins and frail wands to an unwarlike sound, and, to males unknown for true ones, to join foul Celaenaean battles with the boxwood pipe? Here are other slaughters, another frenzy: go beneath the shades, O timid and few!' This he thunders; yet still his limbs refuse him, and the weary blood beats upon his vitals, now his raised hand falls upon empty blows, and his steps are slowed, nor does the boss sustain his shield changed for spoils; a cold rain falls from his panting breast, then his hair and burning face drip with bloody dews and the foul sprinkling of the dying: as a lion, who in the plains, the guard long driven off, has fed on Massylian sheep, when his hunger has rioted in much blood, and his neck and mane, weighed down with gore, have settled, stands amid the slaughter sick, gaping and conquered by his food; nor any longer do his wraths grow raw: he only strikes the air with his empty jaws and licks the soft fleeces with his lolling tongue.

He too, full of spoils and blood, would have gone to Thebes and, exulting, would have shown himself to the astonished people and leader, had not you, Tritonian maiden, deemed worthy of your counsel the man blazing and full of the great darkness of his work: 'Born of the race of proud Oeneus, to whom we have long since granted to conquer absent Thebes, now set a limit, and spare too much the favoring gods: in this labor one faith is to be wished for. Having used fortune enough, depart.' There remained, of his own will a survivor over the bitter funerals and the band of comrades — he had foreseen these things, learned in the omens of the air and deceived by no bird — Maeon, son of Haemon, nor afraid to forbid the leader; but the fates, as he warned, deprived him of credence. Pitiable, he is condemned to an inactive life; to the trembling man Tydeus gives harsh commands: 'Whoever you are of the Aonidae, whom tomorrow's Aurora, by our gift, will see snatched from the midst of the dead, these things I bid you carry to your leader: gird the gates with a rampart, make new weapons, look round at your walls frail with age, above all remember to pack your men close and to multiply your dense battle-lines! Behold this field, smoking far and wide with my sword: in such wise have we come to war.'

This he says, and prepares for you, Pallas, a fair honor, deserved, from the bloody slaughter, and gladly gathers the lying spoil and reckons up his vast deeds. There was an oak that had already long forgotten its tender youth in the midst of the plain's bank, which a thick bark girds with bent foliage and rough wood. On this, bearing them, he sets the smooth helmets and the arms pierced with many a wound; on this he binds the swords broken by blows, and the spears drawn from still-breathing limbs; then, standing over the bodies and arms heaped together, he begins — to him as he prays the night and the long ridges echo back —: 'Fierce goddess, glory and genius of your great parent, mighty in war, for whom the helmet grim upon your cheeks with comely dread, and the Gorgon grows raw with sprinkled blood, nor would Mars more, nor spear-armed Bellona, urge on the blazing trumpets of battle, grant your favor to this sacrifice, whether you come to visit our nights from the Pandionian mountain, or whether glad with choirs you turn aside from Aonian Itone, or whether you, in the Libyan Triton, have washed and combed back your locks, where the winged axle of the unbroken mares snatches you raging on the two-yoked chariot: now to you we dedicate the broken spoils of men and the shapeless trappings; but if I am borne into the ancestral fields of Parthaon and Martial Pleuron lies open to me returning, then I will dedicate to you golden temples in the midst of the city's hills, where it will be sweet to look down on the Ionian storms, and where, lifting the sea with its golden crest, the turbid Achelous goes out among the Echinades it has thrust forth. There I will fashion the battles of my ancestors and the fearful faces of the great-souled kings, and will fix the arms on the proud domes, both those which I myself have brought back, sought with my own blood, and those you will give from captured Thebes, Tritonia. There a hundred Calydonian women, vowed at the maiden altars, will duly bind for you the Actaean torches, and from the chaste tree the purple bands with a snow-white parting, and a long-lived priestess will nourish the fire ever-wakeful on the hearths, never to scorn the secret modesty. You in war, you in peace will bear, after the custom, frequent first-fruits of our works, with Diana not indignant.' He had spoken, and was renewing his journey to sweet Argos.