Book 3

3. But the treacherous ruler of the Aonian hall, beneath the doubtful night, though under the dewy stars a long labor remained until the dawn, takes no ease of sleep: his cares keep watch in his mind, and sitting, prepared, they exact their punishment; then most of all the worst augur in doubtful things, fear, turns over much. 'Ah me,' he cries, 'whence this delay?' — for, thinking Tydeus an easy prey for so many arms, nor weighing his valor and spirit against their number — 'Is the region of his way otherwise? Has a band been sent from Argos to his aid? Or has fame of the crime gone through the neighboring cities? Did we, father Gradivus, choose too few in number or unworthy of hand? But indeed the bravest were there, both Chromis and Dorylas and the sons of Thespius, equal to our towers — they would have torn all Argos from me utterly, yet that man, I think, not impenetrable to my arms, not bearing arms of bronze, nor with limbs sprung from solid adamant, had come; alas, the sluggards, whose labor sticks on a single man, if the hands were locked together.' So, turbid with shifting passion, he is wrung, and blames himself above all things, that he did not strike down the envoy as he pleaded in the midst of the assembly with his sword, and openly glut his foul wraths. Now he is ashamed of the undertaking, now repents, and like one given as helmsman of a Calabrian boat on the Ionian waves — not unskilled in the seas, but a clearer rising of the Olenian star drove him in vain to leave the friendly harbors —, when the sudden crash of wintry Jove, all the bars of the world thunder, and Orion in his fullness bends the poles, he himself would rather the land and fights to return, but the great south wind bears him from the stern; then, his skill abandoned, he groans and follows the blind waves, now ignorant of his course: such is the Agenorean leader, and he chides Lucifer delaying in the sky and the late rising, to those who mourn.

Lo, beneath the now westward-turned reins of Night and the setting of the stars, when first the mightiest Tethys drove the lingering Hyperion into the Eastern sea, the ground trembled, its lowest weights lashed — a mournful sign of evils — and Cithaeron, shaken, made its ancient snows go down: then the rooftops seemed to be lifted and the sevenfold gates to clash together on their ridge, and the causes are near: by the icy dawn there returned, angry at the fates and sad at the death denied him, the son of Haemon; not yet do his features show, and, doubtful to be marked, he gave signs of a great ruin, manifest from afar, by his beating of the breast and his groaning; for at once all his tears he had poured out. Not otherwise is a shepherd, bereft, turned aside in his leap from the nocturnal slaughter of the country wolves, whose master's flock an unexpected storm drove off into the woods and the windy summits of the dark moon: by light the slaughters lie open; he himself fears to carry to his master the recent disasters, and, shapeless, having scooped up the sand, fills the fields with his complaints, and hates the silence of the great stable, and calls his lost bulls in a long roll-call.

When the mothers, crowded at the threshold of the gates, saw him alone — abomination! — no companies around him, no great-souled leaders, daring to ask nothing they raise a cry, such as is the last in war when cities are thrown open, or when the keel is now sinking in the sea, as soon as eager opportunity for the hated king was given: 'This unhappy life fierce Tydeus gives back to you from so great a band, whether this was the resolve of the gods, or whether it was fortune; or, what in his wrath he is ashamed to confess, the unconquered force of the man. I scarcely believe it, and a messenger: all have fallen, all — I call to witness the wandering lights of night and the shades of my comrades, and you, evil bird, on whose flight I return — that I did not deserve this by tears nor by craft, this cruel pardon and the gift of dishonored light, but the commands of the gods, and Atropos, who knows not to be moved by what pleases, and the door of death not granted me of old, snatched my slaughter away; and now, that you may behold me prodigal of life and shuddering at nothing at the last in extreme death: an unspeakable war and a battle-line denied by the omens you have set in motion, deadly one; while you drive out the laws, and, proud, you long to reign with your kinsman an exile, the line of bereaved houses, cut down, with its ceaseless laments, and the fifty souls flying about with dire horror will assail you by nights and by days; for I myself do not delay.' Already the savage king had stirred his wraths, and his grim face glows with blood, then of their own accord Phlegyas and Labdacus, no delayer of injustice — theirs the kingdom's steel — make ready to go and to thrust him aside with the hand, but already the great-souled prophet had bared his sword, and now beholding the face of the fierce tyrant, now the steel: 'Never over this blood shall you have right, nor strike unpierced the breast set against great Tydeus; I go indeed exulting, and pursue the fates snatched from me, and am borne, awaited, to the shades of my comrades, leaving you to the gods above and to your brother—' and now, cutting off the middle of his speech, he had buried in his side the blade up to the hilt; he struggles against the pain, and, doubled in his effort upon the great stroke, falls; and, wandering with the last sobs of his breath, the blood comes now from his mouth, now from the wound by turns. The minds of the nobles are shaken, and the troubled councils murmur low; but him his wife and faithful parents, keeping his look stern even in death accomplished, not long rejoicing in his return, were carrying into the dwellings. But the rabid wraths of the unspeakable leader cannot stand at this point; he forbids him to be taken by fire, and the peace of the tomb, impious, he keeps in vain from the unknowing shades.

You, however, excellent in fate and mind, and never — so it is fitting — to suffer decay, who at close quarters dared to go against despised kings, and, where ample liberty might come, to sanctify the way: with what song worthy, with what mouth enough, shall I add fame to your virtues, augur beloved of the gods? Not in vain did Apollo teach you the heavenly things and deem you worthy of his own laurel, and Dodona, parent of groves, and the Cirrhaean maiden will rejoice to hold the peoples in suspense by silent Phoebus. Now too, far divided from Tartarean Avernus, go, take the Elysian regions, where the unwilling axle of the Ogygian ghosts and the unjust commands of the guilty tyrant have no power; your garb and limbs endure unviolated by the bloody beasts, and as you lie beneath the bare sky both the wood and the sad reverence of the birds preserve you.

But the brides, lifeless, and the boys, and the sick parents, poured out from the walls through the plains, through the pathless ways, everywhere each runs eager to his own tears, a pitiable contest, whom, as they go, thousands accompany with crowded step in zeal to console: some burn to see the deeds of one man and his great labors in the night; the way seethes with groaning, and the fields cry back with lamentations. But when they came to the infamous crags and the unspeakable wood, as though no laments before, nor the black showers, had streamed forth, so a most wretched roar arises from one mouth, and the throng, kindled at the bloody sight, rages: there stands, his cloak torn with blood, grim Grief, and with his slain breast invites the mothers, they search the helmets of the cold dead and point out the found bodies, fallen over both strangers' and their own; these press their hair into the gore, these mark the eyes and bedew the deep wounds with tears; some draw the darts with a right hand that spares in vain, some gently fit the severed arms to their place and set the faces back upon the necks.

But wandering through the thickets and in the dust of the empty field, the great mother of youths, of a twofold funeral now, Ide, lifting her squalid hair and pressing her livid face with her nail — nor is she now unhappy and pitiable, but truly there is terror in her tears — through both arms and bodies everywhere, rolling her unkempt white hair in the dire earth, helpless seeks her sons, and on every body beats her breast. The Thessalian woman, no otherwise, having rejoiced in fresh war, whose ancestral wickedness it is to renew man by chanting, raising her many-cleft light of ancient cedar, enters the fields by night and turns over in the blood the dead crowd, and explores the shades, over which she may command most by the tomb to come to those above: the souls' sad councils complain, and the father of black Avernus is indignant.

They in their retreat were lying together beneath the rock, happy, whom one day, one hand took away, their breasts joined, pierced by wounds, in the middle of one beam. When she saw them, and her eyes opened with poured-out tears: 'Are these the embraces, these the kisses, my sons, that I, your mother, look on? So has the cruel genius of death bound you in your last end? What wounds shall I handle, what faces shall I first press? Were you that power of your mother, you the fortune of my womb, by which I thought to touch the gods and to go before the Ogygian parents in titles? But how much better are those joined in a luckier lot, whose marriage-chambers were barren, and Lucina, wailed over by no grief, looked back upon their house! For me indeed the cause of evils is my labor; but you, not conspicuous to the fates in the open light of wars, nor having dared things eternal for the nations, sought a memorable wound for your wretched mother, but suffered an obscure death and funerals to be numbered; alas, how much blood by stealth, and you lie without praise! Nay, I would not dare to part your right hands from their wretched embraces, and to break the partnership of so great a death: go, long brothers, and undistinguished in the last fires, mingle your dear shades in the urn!'

Nor any the less meanwhile, the slaughter of their own being sorted out, here the wife of Chthonius, here Astyoche, the mother of Pentheus, calls out, and the untaught boys, your offspring, Phaedimus, learned of their lost father, and Marpessa of her betrothed Phylleus, and the sisters wash bloody Acamas, then with the steel they uncover the woods, and lop the aged crown of the neighboring hill, which, conscious of the deeds of the night, looked also upon the groans; there, older in years, before the pyres, while each cannot be torn from his own fire, Aletes soothed the unhappy gathering with these words: 'Often indeed has our race been unhappy and tried by the varied sport of the fates, ever since the Sidonian stranger cast iron seed into the Aonian furrows, whence new offspring and fields dreaded by their own settlers. But neither when the palace of old Cadmus sank into a thunder-struck ash by the counsels of unjust Juno, nor when unhappy Athamas, having won a funereal renown, came from the trembling mountain, bearing — alas — Learchus half-alive with a glad shout, was the groaning here at Thebes, nor at that time more loudly did the Phoenician houses sound, when, weary, Agave conquered her frenzy and shuddered at the tears of her companions. One day was like this in fate and equal in the look of evils, on which the impious daughter of Tantalus paid for her great-spoken boasts, when, surrounded by countless ruins, the earth snatched away so many bodies, sought so many fires. Such was the state of the crowd, and thus, the city abandoned, the young and the old and the long swarm of mothers beat their breasts in resentment at the gods, and in wretched tumult thronged twin funerals through the huge gates. And I myself remember — though my age was not yet fit for labors — that I wept, and in my groaning matched my parents. Yet those things, ye gods above — nor that, Delia, the Molossian hounds, in their madness, knew nothing of their master, slipped into the chaste fonts and profaned the watchful gaze — would I weep for more, or that the queen flowed in altered blood into sudden pools: so the hard wool-tasks of the Sisters gave, and so it seemed good to Jove. Now for the crime of an unjust king so many citizens guiltless toward their country, so many crowns, have we stripped off, nor yet does fame of the trampled treaty of Argos draw near, and already we grieve at the extremes of war. How great for horses and how great for men the sweat in the thick dust! Ah, how great, you rivers, will you redden cruelly! Let the band green in war behold these things; but let me be given to my own fire, while it is allowed, and be laid out on my ancestral earth!' These things the old man, and he heaps up much the wickedness of Eteocles, calling him cruel and unspeakable and one who will pay the penalty; whence that freedom? Near to him is the end, and his age all behind him, and he would wish to add glory to his late death.

These things the sower of the stars, long since from the summit of the world looking forth, and beholding the nations steeped in first blood, bids Gradivus be summoned in haste; he, having laid waste the raging Bistones and the Getic cities with slaughters, turbid, was driving his chariot to the ethereal heights, striking the crested gleam of his helmet with lightning and his arms grim in gold, animated with the terrifying figures of monsters: the pole thunders with his axle, and the bloody light of his shield glows red, and the rival orb strikes the sun from afar. When Jupiter sees him still breathing out the Sarmatian labors and drenched throughout his breast with the storm of war: 'Such, my son, go through Argos for me, such go, thus dripping with the sword, clouded with this wrath. Let them drive out their idle bridles, and, loathing all things, let them desire you, let them devote to you their headlong lives and hands; snatch up the lingerers, and throw into confusion the treaties to which we gave power; for you it is right to inflame with war even the heaven-dwellers themselves and my peace. The seeds of battle I myself have already given: Tydeus returns, bearing immense deeds dared, the leader's crime, and — base beginnings of war — the ambushes and frauds, which avenged in his own arms. Add credence, O you gods above, my blood in order, that you strive not to fight against my hatreds, nor to tempt me by praying; thus the Fates and the black distaffs of the Sisters have sworn to me: this day, fixed from the origin of the world, remains for war, and peoples born for battles. But if you do not suffer me to sanction the punishments of old evils upon the nations and to punish the dire descendants — I call to witness this eternal citadel, the shrines of our race, and the Elysian fonts, deities even to me — I myself with my hand will shake Thebes and its seized walls to their foundations, and pour the towers, overturned to the ground, upon the Inachian dwellings, or sweep all into the blue pools with a flood thrown over, though Juno herself, in the whirlwind of things, should labor, embracing her own hills and temple.' He spoke, and astonished at his commands — you would believe their hearts mortal — so all kept their voices and their spirits. Not otherwise than when the sea, loosed by a long peace of the winds, and where the shores recline in unwarlike sleep, and idle summer soothes the foliage of the woods and the clouds, the blast driven away; then the pools and the sounding lakes have sunk, and the rivers, dried up by the suns, are silent.

He rejoices, exulting, at the commands, and with the chariot-pole still warm, fervid, Gradivus twisted the reins to the left. And now he held the last stretch of his way and the steeps of heaven, when Venus before his very face, with no dread, fixes the steps of his horses; they gave way backward, and now, stiffening, suppliantly laid down their manes. Then her breast leaned on the high yoke, and her face turned, dewy, sidelong, she begins — meanwhile, near their mistress's footsteps, the yoke-mates, bending down, champ their foaming adamant —: 'Wars even against Thebes, O most beautiful father-in-law, wars do you yourself prepare, and to destroy your descendants with the steel? Does neither the race of Harmonia nor your festal marriage in heaven, nor these tears at all, raging one, stay you? Is this the reward of my crime? Is this what fame and the forsaken shame, is this what the Lemnian chains have earned for me from you? Go gladly; but Vulcan's compliance toward us is not the same, and yet the wrath of an injured husband serves me! If I should bid him sweat for me at the perpetual forges and pass wakeful nights at the work, he would rejoice, and labor for you new ornaments and arms; but you — yet I am preparing to bend rocks and brazen hearts by praying; this only, anxious, this only I implore: why were you giving my dear offspring to a Tyrian husband and to ill-omened marriages? While you boast that the Tyrians will be illustrious in arms and breasts vigorous in affairs, sprung from the serpent's blood, and a race descended from the line of Jove, ah! how much rather would I have wished my Sithonian maiden to wed beneath the Northern Bear, across Boreas and your Thracians. Have we suffered too few unworthy things, that the daughter of divine Venus long creeps and casts forth her venom upon the Illyrian grasses? Now an undeserving race—' the War-mighty no longer endured her tears; he takes the spear into his left hand and, from the high chariot, without delay, leaped down, and, received upon his shield, he hurts her in his embrace, and thus soothes her with friendly words: 'O my rest from wars and sacred delight and sole peace to my spirit! You alone, to whom is such great power of gods and of men, to come against my weapons unpunished, and, even in the midst of slaughter, to make these horses, though raging, stand still, and to wrest this sword from my right hand, neither the genial bonds of Sidonian Cadmus nor your dear faith — rejoice not to assail me with false charges! — have fallen from me: sooner may I, a god, be plunged into my uncle's lower pools and be driven, disarmed, to the pale shades. But now, warned by the fates and bidden to perform the mind of my supreme father — for Vulcan's hand is not fit to be chosen for such a command — with what heart should I go against Jove and be the equal to scorn the dictated laws, I, before whom but now — what power! — the lands and the sky and the sea trembled as I entreated, and I saw so many gods in turn hide themselves? But conceive not in your heart the supreme fears for me, dear one! Since no power is given to change these things — when now beneath the Tyrian walls both nations shall war, I will be present and aid the allied arms. Then you will see me, on the bloody field, boil over far and wide beyond the Argive cause, not so cast down; this is my right, nor do the fates forbid it.' So having begun, into the open he sent his blazing horses, no swifter falls to earth the wrath of high Jove, when sometimes he has set foot on snowy Othrys and the icy head of Northern Ossa and armed his hand in the cloud: the fiery mass flies, bearing the savage commands of the god, and terrifies all heaven with its three-forked hair, long since either to give signs to the rich fields or to whelm wretched sailors in the sea.

And now, the journey retraced, Tydeus with weary step treads the Danaean fields and the slopes of green Prosymna, terrible to behold: his hair stands propped with dust, a squalid sweat falls from his shoulders into the deep wounds, and a redness rouses his sleepless eyes, and a panting thirst unfastens his mouth backward; his mind breathes deep honor, conscious of his deeds, as a warrior bull returns to his known pastures, whose neck and shoulders swim with the enemy's and his own blood, and his torn dewlaps; then too his weary valor swells, and he is much proud in his despised breast; the enemy lies on the empty sand, groaning shamefully, and forbids him to feel the raw labors. Such was he; he did not even leave off, in the cities between, whatever lies between the Asopus and old Argos, inflaming them with hatreds, and much and everywhere unweaving that he, an envoy of the Grecian race, had gone about seeking the kingdom for the exile Polynices, but thence had suffered force, night, crime, arms, frauds — such treaties of the Echionian king; that his brother's rights were denied him; ready is the belief among peoples; the War-mighty god persuades them to believe all, and fame doubles the dreads received.

And when, having entered the gates — and by chance the reverend father Adrastus himself was gathering the leaders in council — he is there unforeseen, now from the doorposts of the hall crying out: 'Arms, arms, men, and you, best leader of Lerna, if there is in you any blood of great-souled ancestors, prepare your arms! Nowhere is piety, nor among the nations just right or care of Jove; better had I gone as an envoy to the rabid Sauromatae and the bloody keeper of the Bebrycian grove, nor do I blame your commands nor regret my office: it gladdens me to have gone, it gladdens me, and to have explored guilty Thebes with my hand; with war, believe me, with war, as a strong tower or a city close-knit in its joints, men chosen for ambush and equipped with all arms by night and by craft shut me in, naked and ignorant of the places, in vain; they lie mingled in blood before the empty city; now, O now is the time against the foe, while they are trembling and bloodless with fear, while they bear their funerals, now, father-in-law, while this hand has not failed; I myself, weary, with those fifty monstrous shades of heroes, and bearing these wounds unhealed with rotting gore, straightway seek to go!' Trembling from their seats stand the Inachidae, and before all the Cadmean hero runs up, his face cast down, and 'O I, hated by the gods and guilty toward life, do I behold these wounds unhurt myself! Were these the returns, brother, you were preparing for me? On me these weapons of mine! O foul greed of life! Unhappy, I denied my brother so great a deed, and now indeed let your walls remain quiet in peace, nor let me be the cause to you of so great a tumult, a guest still, I know — nor has prosperity so far lifted me — how hard to be torn from children, how sad from the bridal-chamber, how sad from one's country; let no anxious household of any blame me, nor let the grim mothers eye me with a sidelong gaze; I will go gladly and sure to die, though my best wife and my father-in-law, heard again, recall me; this throat to Thebes, this, brother, I owe to you, and to you, mighty Tydeus.' So with various words he tries their hearts and bends his prayers, and their wraths, moved by his complaints, and his grief mingled with tears, grew hot; upon all, of their own accord, not the young men only, but breasts cold and inert with age, one mind comes: to widow their households, to summon the neighboring forces, and now to go. But the father, deep in counsels and not unskilled to turn the mass of empire: 'Leave those things, I pray, to be healed by the gods above and by my care, nor will your brother bear the scepter with you unavenged, nor are we eager to promise war. But now receive the noble Oeneus-son, exulting in such great blood, and let a late repose relax his spirited breast: for us, grief will not be in want of reason.'

At once the troubled comrades and his pale wife throng around Tydeus, weary with war and journey, all of them. Glad, in the midst of the hall's seats he took his stand, and, his back received against a huge column, while Epidaurian Idmon washes his wounds with waters, now swift with the steel, now gentler with warm herbs, he himself, withdrawn in deep thought, narrates again the beginnings of the wraths, and what each in turn began, what place for the ambush, what times for the silent war, who against him and how great the leaders, where his greatest sweat, and he sets forth Maeon, saved by his sad indication, to whom the faithful band and the nobles and his father-in-law stand amazed as he tells, and the exile is inflamed against the Tyrians.

The Sun had loosed his blazing horses on the downward edge of the Hesperian sea, and was washing his ruddy hair beneath the font of Ocean, to whom the throng of the deep Nereus and the Hours run up with swift steps, and tear off the reins and the lofty woven garland of his golden crown, loosen with the hot thongs the breasts moist with sweat; some turn the deserving yoke-mates to the soft grass, and tilt back the chariot with its pole upraised. Night came on, and laid to rest the cares of men and the stirrings of beasts, and wrapped the poles in a black cloak, mild indeed to all, but not to you, Adrastus, and to the Labdacian leader: for Tydeus a lavish sleep held, drenched with a great image of his valor, and now among the night-wandering shades the arms-bearing god, from above, strikes the bounds of Arcadia and the Nemean fields and the Taenarian peak and Apolline Therapnae with the thunder of arms, and fills their trembling hearts with love of himself. Frenzy and Wrath array his crests, the squire Panic ministers the bridles to his horses, but watchful Fame, girt with all sound, the empty tumults of things, flies before the chariot, and, driven by the breath of the groaning wing-footed steeds, with a dense murmur shakes out her trembling plumes: for the charioteer urges with veteran goads to speak things done and undone, and, hostile, from his high chariot the father chides the goddess's back and hair with his Scythian spear, as when, the Winds released from the Aeolian prison, Neptune the leader drives before him, and stirs the willing ones over the great Aegean; a sad escort goes with him about the reins, and the Storm-clouds roar, and the deep Tempests, the Clouds, and the Tempest foul with the torn-up floor of the lands: the wavering Cyclades, their roots stirred, stand in the way; you yourself, Delos, fear to be torn from your Myconos and Gyaros, and call to witness the wrongs done to your great foster-children.

The seventh Aurora now carries on the lands and to the gods the bright day with her crimson face, when the Persean hero, the elder, first brought himself forth from the secret hall, much distraught over the war and the swelling pride of his race, and uncertain of mind, whether he should give laws to arms and strike new goads into the nations, or whether he should hold the reins of their wraths and bind back the swords stirred by their locks, on this side the tranquil things of peace move him, and on that a foul repose is a shame, and the peoples are hard to be bent by the new sweetness of battle; at last, in his doubt, a tardy resolve pleases him: to move the minds of the seers and the rites of the gods provident of truth. To you is given the skilled care of the future, Amphiaraus, and beside you, born of Amythaon, now an elder — but green in mind and in Phoebus — Melampus he joins as a companion: it is doubtful to which Apollo, favorable, filled the mouth more lavishly with the Cirrhaean wave. First in the entrails and in the blood of the beasts they search out the gods; even then the spotted hearts of the sheep deny it to the fearful, and the vein threatening dire abomination. Yet it is resolved to go and to seek omens in the empty sky.

There was a mountain, withdrawn into the air with a bold ridge — the Lernaean settlers tell that its name is Aphesas —, once sacred to the Argolic nations; thence they used to say that swift Perseus had grazed the clouds with suspended flight, when his mother, terrified, beheld from the rock the snatched steps of the boy, and almost followed. Hither the twin seers, their holy hair white with the foliage of the singing olive and their brows adorned with snowy fillets, come up together, when the bright sunrise loosened the moist fields and the cold frosts with its sun, and first the son of Oecles wins the wonted deity with prayer: 'Jupiter almighty — for we receive that you add counsel to swift wings and fill the birds with the future and bring down all things and the hidden causes to the sky —, not Cirrha would promise the god more surely from her cavern, nor the leaves of the grove which fame says sounded for you, Chaonian, to the Molossians: though dry Hammon may envy and the Lycian lots make ready to contend, and the Nile-herd, and Branchus, equal to his father's honor, and the Pan whom the rustic dweller of watery Pisa hears by night in the Lycaonian shade, richer in mind is he to whom you, Dictaean, made manifest, shall have driven the favorable birds. Wondrous, whence, but of old this honor was to the birds, whether the founder of the upper hall so gave it, weaving the outpoured chaos into new seeds, or because, changed and from our origin with turned bodies, they came under the south winds, or whether a purer sky and the wickedness removed and the rare treading upon the lands teach them truth; to you, highest sower of earth and of gods, it is allowed to know; suffer us to foreknow from the sky the beginnings of the Argolic battle and the labor to come. If it is granted, and this resolve sits firm with the hard Fates, to loose the Echionian gates with the Lernaean spear, bear the signs, and thunder on the left; then let every bird in the stars sing concord with auspicious murmurs from a secret tongue; if you forbid, here weave delays, and with birds on the right veil over the deep day.' So he spoke, and on the high crag sets his limbs; then he joins more and unknown deities, and enjoys the darkness of the immense world.

After in due rite they had long divided the stars and read them over with all their minds, and with following eyes the airs, then the Amythaonian seer, after a long time: 'Do you not, beneath the lofty bound of the breathing sky, Amphiaraus, see how no bird drives its serene courses, and, embracing the pole with a liquid passage, hangs, or, fleeing, has wailed an appeasable omen? No obscure attendant of the tripods, no blazing bearer of the lightning is present, nor the sounding hook-clawed bird of golden Minerva; none better for auguries comes; nay, the vulture and from on high the hawks have exulted in their lofty rapines, monsters fly, the dire birds shriek in the cloud, and the nocturnal screech-owls groan, and the owl, singing deadly losses, which first portents of the gods are we to follow? Are these to be given the sky, Thymbraean? At once they cut their faces with curved claw, and with wings imitating lamentation they stir up the west winds and beat their feathered breasts.' He, at this: 'Indeed, father, the omens of varied Phoebus I have often borne: even then, when the Thessalian pine was leading me, green in my first youth, among the demigod kings, here, as I sang the chances of the earth and its evils, the leaders were amazed, nor more often was Mopsus heard by Jason in doubt than I, telling things to come. But never before have I had a like fear, nor marked stars more prodigious; though greater things are prepared. Hither turn your mind: in a bright region of the deep aether countless swans set up their lines, whether Boreas cast these out from the Strymonian Bear, or the fertile mildness of placid Nile brings them back. They have fixed their courses: think these are Thebes in the image; for, unmoved, in their circle and silent in peace, they hold as with walls and rampart, but, lo, a stronger cohort comes through the void; seven in tawny order, the armor-bearers of highest Jove, with an exulting band I behold: take these to you as the Inachian kings. They have invaded the orb of the snowy flock, and spread their hooked mouths for new slaughters, and press with drawn claws. Do you see the winds dewing with unfamiliar blood, and the day dripping from the feathers? What savage wrath of sinister Jove suddenly drives the victors to death? This one, seeking the heights, took fire from a sudden flame of the sun and let down his courage; that one, the tender wings let fall, attacked by the steps of greater birds. This one, entangled with the foe, rushes down alike; this one flight rolls backward, driving him as he leaves the fate of the allied band. This one, gathered in a cloud, perishes; this one, while dying, is fed on by a living swift bird; the blood sprinkles the hollow clouds.' Why do you weep by stealth? 'Him who falls, venerable Melampus, I recognize.' So, by the mass of the future, the seers, trembling, and having now suffered all things under a sure image of events, are held by terror; it grieves them to have burst into the councils of the flying ones and to have thrust their mind into a forbidding sky, and, having heard, they hate the gods. — Whence did this, first through the world, sickly love of the future grow up in wretched living things? Should you call this the gift of the gods, or do we ourselves, a greedy race and never resting content with what is got, dig it out — what the first day, where the end of life, what that good father of the gods, what iron Clotho plots? Hence the entrails and the speech of birds through the clouds and the changes of the stars and the counted seeds of the moon and the Thessalian wickedness; but not that earlier golden blood of our grandsires, nor the races sown from the rocks or from the oak, used these minds: it was one love to have subdued the woods and the soil with the hand; what the morrow's age might unroll, it was wickedness for man to know; we, a depraved and tearful crowd, search out the gods deeply: hence pallor and wraths, hence crime and ambush and no modesty of prayer.

Therefore with his hand the priest tears off the fillets and the condemned garlands from his head, and, casting away the foliage, dishonored, returns from the hateful mountain; now wars and trumpets are close at hand, and absent Thebes roars beneath his breast; he can endure neither the sight of the crowd nor the trusty colloquies of the tyrant nor the gatherings of the nobles, but in a black seat to be hidden, and, shut up, refuses to confess the deeds of the gods: you, shame and cares retain through the country, Melampus. For twelve days he closes his mouth, and draws out the people and the leaders in uncertainties, and now the supreme commands of the Thunderer roar, and lay waste the fields with men and the aged towns; the war-mighty god before him snatches up his columns everywhere by the thousand; they have left their homes and their loved marriages, glad, and their children weeping on the first threshold: so great a god has fallen upon the astonished. To tear the arms from the ancestral doorposts and the chariots fixed at the inner shrines of the gods is their love; then the spears, weary with rotting rust, and the swords clinging with mold, against savage wounds they renew, and force to grow young again on the worn stone. These try on their breasts the smooth helmets and the bronze sewings of great breastplates and the tunics of steel rattling with rust, others bend the Gortynian horns; now the sickles and plows in greedy forges, the rakes and the savage curved mattocks have reddened, nor is it a shame to cut strong spears from holy stocks, nor to clothe the shield with the worn-out bullock. They have burst into Argos, and at the threshold of the mournful king they roar war in their spirits, war with their mouths; the clamor goes to the airs, as great as the groan of the Tyrrhenian sea, or where Enceladus tries to change his side; above, the fiery mountain thunders from its caverns, the peaks overflow and Pelorus draws in the waves, and the broken land hopes to return.

And here Capaneus, roused by a great love of Mars and long since swelling with a heart that resented the long peace — to him indeed ample nobility of ancient blood, but he himself, having surpassed by his hand the deeds of his ancestors, long with safety a despiser of the gods and impatient of justice and prodigal of his life, if only wrath should counsel —, alone, like a dweller from the woods of shady Pholoe and a match to rise against the Aetnaean brothers, before the doors, where the throng of leaders and the roaring crowd, 'What such cowardice,' he cries, 'Amphiaraus, is this of yours, sons of Inachus, and you, O Achaeans of allied blood? At the plebeian threshold of one citizen — alas, the shame! — do we, so many nations girt with the steel and ready in spirit, hang waiting? Not if Apollo himself beneath the hollow peak of Cirrha, whoever he is, so seen by the timid and by fame, should bellow, shut deep within his mad cavern, could I bear to wait until the pale maiden announces the dread riddles; my deity is valor and the sword that I hold! And now let this priest with his timid fraud come forth, or today I will make trial what such great power the birds have.' The Achaean band roars glad, and fills the raging man with its assent; at last driven to break forth, the son of Oecles: 'With another tumult of cares agitating me, not indeed, young man, by the unbridled clamor of the profane nor by the fear of your words — though here he threatens insane things — am I drawn from the shadows; for me by another fate is owed the last day, and that I am forbidden to be given to mortal arms; but your love and Phoebus drive me to declare the secrets in the storm-clouds; to you, sad, I go to unfold the things to come and all that lies beyond; for that you, madman, should be moved beforehand is wickedness, and to you alone our Apollo is silent. Whither, wretched ones, with the fates and the gods withstanding, arms, whither do you snatch them? What scourges of the Furies drive you, blind? Are you so weary of your lives? And do you hate Argos? Is nothing sweet at home? Are no omens a care? Why did you make me go with trembling step to the secret heights of the Persean mountain and to burst into the gatherings of the gods? I might equally have not known what chance is in arms, where the black day, what the beginnings of fate for all, what for me. I call to witness the inner places of the consulted world and the addresses of the birds, and you, Thymbraean, never so savage to me calling as now, what signs of the future I have borne: I have seen the portents of a huge ruin, I have seen the fears of men and of gods, and merry Megaera, and Lachesis emptying the ages with a rotting thread. Cast away the arms from your hand: lo, a god withstands the raging, lo, a god! Wretched ones, what is fine in conquering with blood Aonia and glutting the shipyards of dire Cadmus? But why do I sing vain things, why ward off the fixed chances? We will go—' here the priest groaned once with closed mouth, and Capaneus again upon him: 'Let your frenzy, O, prophesy those things to you alone, that you may keep your empty years inglorious and that no Tyrrhenian clang ever go round your temples. Why do you delay the better vows of men? Doubtless that, by your vain birds, you may possess your son and home and bridal-chamber, lying still, shall we be silent, unavenged, of the noble Tydeus' pierced breast and the arms of the broken treaty? But if you forbid the Greeks to bear savage wars, go as an envoy to the Sidonian foe: these garlands will give you peace. Do your words wholly draw out the causes and the hidden names of things from the empty sky? I pity the gods, if songs are their care and human prayers! Why bear an inert breast? Fear first in the world made the gods! And for you in safety now let that frenzy go; but at the first trumpet-calls, when now we shall drink the hostile Ismenos and Dirce with our helmets, do not then, I warn, when I am willing for clarions and arms, come to meet me, or, by the vein or the seen bird, put off the day of war: far from you will be this soft fillet and the madness of the terrifying Phoebus: there I will be the augur, and with me whoever is ready to rave with the hand.' Again the huge crash thunders of those urging, and beneath flies to the stars in a vast tumult. As a swift torrent, to which the spring breezes minister courage, and the mountains stripped of their frozen cold, when, wandering, it goes out into the plains, the barriers vainly forbidding, the dwellings, the fields, the herds, the men resound with the mingled whirl, until, lessened, the troublesome one stood on the high hill and found its banks on the great mound: this night, flowing between, parted the alternating leaders.

But Argia, bearing the groans of her husband with no longer an even heart, and in her mind pitying the shared grief, just as she was, long since disfigured with torn hair and her cheeks marked with weeping, to the lofty dwellings of her reverend father was going, and beneath her dear breast she bore little Thessandrus to his grandsire, now in the last night before the new sunrise, when the Bear alone, surviving in her wain, grudges the Ocean to the fleeing stars. And when she entered the doors and was poured down before her great parent: 'Why with tears, sad and without my mournful husband, a suppliant, should I seek your threshold by night, though I myself might cease to speak, you know, my father; but I call to witness the genial rights of the gods and you, father, that not he bids me, but my sleepless anguish; ever since first Hymen and ill-omened Juno moved the sinister torch, my rest, always troubled by tears and near groaning, not if the horror of a tigress and the sea-rocks should stiffen over my heart, could I bear; you alone the help, you hold the highest rights of healing; give war, father, and behold the humble fortunes of your fallen son-in-law, and behold, father, this offspring of the exile; in him is one day the honor of the race; O where now the first hospitalities and the right hands joined with the deity witnessing! This is surely he whom the fates gave, whom Apollo named; I myself stole no silent heats of Venus, nor a blameworthy torch: your reverend commands and your warnings I loved. Now with what fierceness should I despise the complaints of my grieving one? You know not, best father, you know not how great is a chaste woman's love to have wed a wretched husband. And now indeed, mournful, a grave and joyless gift, that I should fear and grieve, I ask; but a mournful day will break off our kisses, when the trumpets give to the departing arms their hoarse signals and you will gleam, your cheeks with cruel gold, ah me! dear father, perhaps I will ask again.' Her father, taking kisses from her moist face: 'I would never indeed blame these complaints, daughter; lay aside your fears; what you ask is praiseworthy and not worthy of denial, but to me much do the gods — nor do you cease to hope for what you urge — much do fear and the rolling weight of the kingdom suggest to my mind. There will come, daughter, a measure owed to those things, nor complaining that you have wept in vain. Do you console your husband, nor let the costs of just delay be hard: we delay, daughter, great preparations. Progress is made in war.' As he says such things, the rising light warns him, and his cares bid him rise up to his great task.