Book 7

7. And on those Tyrians, lingering at the war's first beginnings, Jupiter looked down with no kindly heart upon the Pelasgians, and shook his head, by which motion the lofty stars labour and Atlas cries out that a weight is added to his neck, then thus addressed the swift nursling of Tegea: 'Go, glide on rapid bound midway through the North, Bistonian boy, even to the homes and axle of the snowy constellation, where the Parrhasian, forbidden the fire of Ocean, feeds on wintry clouds and on our rain, and there, whether Mavors breathes with his spear laid by, though that rest is hateful, or, as I think, holds insatiate his arms and trumpets and revels in the blood of a dear people: speedily proclaim the father's warning and his wrath, sparing nothing, since long ago he was bidden to kindle the lines of Inachus and all that the Isthmian shield-boss parts asunder and round which the wrath of hoarse Malea thunders: for those youths, scarce out beyond the walls and threshold, keep holy rites; you would think they had come back from war, so they press with applause, and sit, an offence, at the tomb's due games. Is this your fury, Gradivus? The discus sounds with the world struck back, and the Oebalian gauntlets close in combat, but if his madness and the insane lust of the sword, with which he swells, will give to ash the guiltless cities, bearing fire and steel, and lay low on the ground the peoples imploring the Thunderer, and drain the wretched world, let now the gentle wrath of war and ours be remitted. And unless he hastens the battles, and at the word of him who bids swifter dashes the Danaan ranks against the Tyrian walls — nothing cruel, indeed, do I threaten — let him be a mild and good divinity, and let his unbridled ways be loosed into ease, let him give me back his horses and his sword, nor shall there be any further right of blood: I will look upon the lands and command peace for all; Tritonia will suffice for the Ogygian war.'

He had spoken, and the Cyllenian was approaching the Thracian fields; and as he glided down from the hinge of the Arctic gate, the eternal tempest of that region and the marshalled clouds stretched across the sky and the first gapings of Aquilo bear him this way and that: his golden mantle crackles with much hail, nor does the shadow of his Arcadian cap protect him well. Here he marks the barren woods, the shrine of Mavors — and he shudders to look — where, girt with a thousand frenzies, the untamed house lies beneath averted Haemus. The frame of the sides is iron, of iron are wrought the doors made fit, the roofs lean on ironclad columns. The radiance of Phoebus is hurt against it, the very light fears the place, and a harsh glitter saddens the stars. A garrison worthy of the spot: from the first doors leaps frantic Onset, and blind Crime, and reddening Wrath, and bloodless Fears, and with hidden swords there stand Treacheries, and Discord holding a double blade. The hall rings with countless Threats; saddest Valour stands in the midst, and joyful Frenzy, and with bloody face armed Death sits; on the altars is only the blood of wars and the fire snatched from burning cities, the spoils of lands round about, and the gables of the temple marked captured nations, and chiselled in iron fragments of gates and warlike keels, and empty chariots and faces crushed by chariots, almost even groans: so all the violence and every wound, himself everywhere, but nowhere with relaxed face, could be discerned: such had Mulciber by divine art brought forth; not yet, betrayed by the sunbeams, had the adulterer paid for his foul wedlock on the chained couch.

The Maenalian winged one had scarcely begun to seek the king of those temples, when behold the ground trembles, and horned Hebrus bellows with his waters broken; then the herd useful for war that infested the valley, foaming through the startled grass, the signs of his approach, and the doors, closed with eternal adamant, sprang apart. In Hyrcanian blood beautiful, he himself comes on by chariot, and with dread sprinkling changes the broad fields, spoils behind him and weeping bands: the woods and the deep snow give place; black Bellona guides the yoked steeds with bloody hand, and wearies them with her long spear. The Cyllenian offspring stiffened at the sight and lowered his eyes: there is reverence even for the father himself, should he be near, to take away the threats nor lay such commands. 'What command of Jove, what do you bring from the great upper air?' The Mighty-in-Arms forestalls him: 'For not of your own will, brother, do you come beneath this pole and these winters of mine, you to whom dewy Maenala lies near and the milder breeze of summery Lycaeus.' He relates the father's counsels, and, delaying not long, just as they were panting, flying with sweat joined, Mars drives his horses to battle, himself also indignant at the sluggish Greeks: the high father saw it, and now lighter in wrath was bending his face with slow weight: as when at times the East Wind rushes and leaves the waters warred-down, peace itself still swells and the storm, now lifeless, rolls the prostrate sea: not yet are all the sails upon the keels, nor do the sailors breathe with full breast.

The funeral honour had ended the unarmed contests, nor yet were the gatherings gone, and, while all were silent, the hero Adrastus, pouring wine on the ground, was appeasing the ash of Archemorus: 'Grant, little one, that through many a triennial feast your day be renewed, nor let wounded Pelops prefer to approach the Arcadian altars, and beat upon the Elean temples of ivory with his hand, nor let the serpent of the Castalian altars, nor let his own shade swim more to pine-clad Lechaeum. For you, boy, we deny to mourning Avernus, and we join your sad solemnities to the everlasting stars, now a hurrying band, but if you grant us to overturn the Boeotian roofs with the sword, then worthier of great altars, then a god, and not only worshipped through the cities of Inachus, you shall be sworn by even in captive Thebes.' The leader vowed this on behalf of all, and each the same for himself.

Now Gradivus with steeds bent forward was pressing the Ephyrean shores, where lofty Acrocorinth lifts its head into the topmost air and with alternate shadow shields the twin sea, and from there he bids one of the dread company of his comrades, Panic, to go before the horses: no other is fitter to instill the breathless dreads and turn the strength from the mind; countless are the monster's voices and hands and whatever face he wishes; a good author to make all believed, and to madden cities with horrific assaults, should he urge that there are twin suns and stars about to fall, or that the ground nods or the ancient woods come down, ah! the wretched men think they have seen it: then he was renewing his keen genius: with false dust he raised the Nemean plain; thunderstruck, the leaders looked back at the dark cloud from the height; with false outcry he swells the uproar, and imitates the arms of men and the beating of horses, and scatters a terrible howling into the wandering breezes. Their spirits leapt up, and the doubtful crowd hangs in murmur: 'Where is that crash? unless our ears deceive us. But whence do the stars stand in a globe of dust? Surely the Ismenian soldier of his own accord? So it is: they come, but is there such boldness in Thebes? Or would they hesitate — come! — while we honour the dead and the tombs?' This Panic to the thunderstruck; and varied faces through the ranks he puts on, now one out of the Pisaean thousands, now a Pylian, now Laconian of face, and swears the foe is near and confounds the squadrons with empty fear. Nothing is false to the trembling, but, when he himself fell upon them, truly maddened, and round the gable of the sacred valley borne in rapid whirlwind, thrice he raised his spear, thrice shook his horses, thrice struck his shield against his breast: 'To arms, to arms,' the frantic men, each his own and unknown weapons, with no order seizes, they change their helmets and force strange steeds to alien yokes; fierce in every breast rages the love of death and slaughter, nothing withstands the burning men: they hasten and buy off delays, so the shores roar with the wind beginning, when the harbour is fled; everywhere the sails stream, everywhere the loosened ropes are flung; and now the oars swim, every anchor swims on the surface of the sea, now the sweet land in the gulf's mid current is looked back upon, and the comrades left behind on the stern.

Bacchus had seen the swift Inachian companies massing their march; he groaned, turned toward the Tyrian city, and remembers his nursing home and his fathers' fires, his purple face troubled with sad breast: not his hair, not his garlands in place, and the thyrsus left his right hand, and the untouched grapes fell from his horns. So, as he was, unhonoured with tears and slipped robe, before Jove — and then by chance he held the pole apart — he stood, never seen with such a look — nor was the cause hidden from his father — and a suppliant he spoke: 'Do you destroy your own Thebes, best father of the gods? Is your wife so savage? Have you no pity for the beloved land and the deceived hearth and my ashes? Granted that once you hurled the unwilling fire from the clouds — I believe it — : lo, again you bring black burnings to those lands, neither sworn by Styx, nor asked through a rival's art. What measure is there? Or, both as father wrathful and as kind, do you hold the thunderbolt? But not such will you go to the Danaan thresholds and the Parrhasian grove and the Ledaean Amyclae. Surely of all your sons I am the most neglected offspring? I, indeed, who was a sweet burden to her who bore me, to whom you deigned to give the thresholds of life and the journey snatched away and the maternal months, add too, that a warlike crowd, untrained and exercised in few camps, makes up my lines, knowing only my battles, to weave their hair with leafage and to whirl to the breathed-on boxwood pipes: they dread the thyrsi of brides and the battles of mothers, how should they endure trumpets and War, which behold, all aglow, how great things he prepares? What if he led your Curetes into arms and bade them fight it out with harmless shields? Nay, even hateful Argos — was the foe so lacking? — you choose! O father, you lay commands heavier than the very perils: we, your stepmother's, pay to enrich Mycenae! I yield indeed; yet whither, with the rites and rituals of a destroyed people, and what, if the ill-fertile mother left aught to the proud, do you bid me go? To Thrace and the woods of Lycurgus? Or shall I flee, a captive, to the conquered Indians? Give a seat to the fugitive! Latonia's brother was able to fix the rocks of Delos — nor do I grudge it — and to commend them to the deepest straits; Tritonis removed from her dear citadel the hostile waters; I myself saw Epaphus, powerful over the Eastern nations, give laws, nor does any trumpet trouble secret Cyllene or the Minoan Ida: why, alas, are you so offended at my altars? Here for you — since now my power is lessened — are the Herculean nights and the pleasing ardour of the wandering daughter of Nycteus, here the Tyrian race and, more fortunate than my fire, the bull: protect at least the descendants of Agenor.'

The father smiled at his jealousy, and now as he bent the knee and laid down his hands, calmly raised him to a kiss, and in turn made his quiet beginning: 'These things are not of your wife's counsels, as you think, boy, nor was I so exposed to her savage asking: by an unmoved orb of the fates are we drawn down; old and long-deferred are the causes for these battles. For who has such rest from wrath, or so sparing a use of human blood? The heavens see, and that house eternal through the age sees with me, how often, when my bolts are hurled, I lay them by, how seldom this fire rules upon the earth. Nay, unwilling I gave to Mars the Lapiths to storm, who had suffered great things to be avenged, or ancient Calydon to Diana: that loss is a grief, and it irks me to change so many lives, to give back so many bodies to life. But to abolish the Labdacids and the grandsons from the stock of Pelops is slow for me; you yourself know — to leave aside the Doric crimes — how ready Thebes is to assail the gods; you too — but, since the old wrath has fallen, I will be silent. Yet neither Pentheus, sprinkled with his father's blood, nor charged with defiling his mother's bed or with begetting brothers in crime, filled your haunts with mangled slaughter: where then these tears, where then so great an art of praying? But not for my own grief do I spend the dread sons of Oedipus: this the earth asks and the heaven, and piety and wounded faith and nature, and the very ways of the Eumenides; but you, over your own city forbear to be moved: not under this season have I appointed the downfall of the Aonian state; a more suspect age will come and other avengers: now let royal Juno complain.' Hearing these things, he recovered his mind and his bearing; as when under an evil sun and a grievous south wind the rose-beds hang scorched, if a bright day and the breath of zephyrs restores the heaven, all their honour returns, and the sent-forth buds shine and their own glory adorns the shapeless stems.

For long already a messenger to the thunderstruck ears of Eteocles, bringing what he had explored, told that in a long column the Greek leaders were marching, and would now not be far from the Aonian fields; wherever they entered, all the people of Thebes trembled and pitied them; who by stock, he reports, who by name and arms, that man, hiding his fear, demands to hear and hates the teller; thence he resolves to spur on his allies with words and to measure his own resources. Mars had roused all Aonia and Euboea and the fields of neighbouring Phocis, so it was sweet to Jove; far flies in order the swift watchword: they drive forward the lines, and show themselves under arms; they come down to the plain which, nearest the city and doomed to wars, lies open and awaits the frenzies. Not yet are the foes opposite, yet with trembling column the mothers mount the walls, and there show the gleaming arms of their sons and their dread fathers beneath the helmet.

On a lone tower, not yet permitted to be seen by the people, Antigone is defended, her tender cheeks shaded by black veil; and beside her, as companion, the armour-bearer with whom Laius once went; then the maiden queen reveres the old man. She thus began first: 'Are these the banners, father, that will withstand the Pelasgians? We hear that all the nations of Pelops are coming down: tell, I beg, the foreign columns of kings; for I see what standards our Menoeceus, what arms our Creon may govern, how high Haemon goes forth through the great Homoloidan gates with his bronze Sphinx.' So spoke unschooled Antigone, to whom the elder Phorbas thus: 'A thousand archers from the hill of cold Tanagra behold Dryas brings forward; this one, whose snowy arms have a trident and a rough thunderbolt of gold, is no false descendant in valour of lofty Orion: far off, I pray, may his father's omen and the old wrath of unwed Diana pass away. They join themselves to the camp and take the king's name — Ocalea and Medeon, and Nisa thickest with groves, and Thisbe loud around with the doves of Dione. Next is Eurymedon, who imitates the pastoral arms of his father Faunus and the horse-manes with pine, terrible in the woods: I think that in bloody War too such he will be. The Erythrae rich in flocks attend him, who hold Scolus and Eteonus dense on its hard ridges, who hold the short shore of Hyle and the Atalantaean Schoenus of the proud, and dwell on the tracks of the famous plain; in their fashion they brandish the ashen pikes of the Macedonians, and the shields hard for grievous wounds to pierce. But behold, with a shout the Neptunian commons rush from Onchestus: those whom Mycalessos in its pine fields and Palladian Melas and Hecataean Gargaphie in its stream nurtures, and at whose new harvests Haliartus is envious, and overtops the glad crops with too rank grass. Their weapons are rude tree-trunks, their helmets the empty mouths of lions, the hollows of trees give them shields; these, lacking a king, behold our Amphion leads — easy to know, maiden — distinguished by his lyre, his helmet, his ancestral bull. Bless your spirit, young man, who prepares to go among the swords and to set your bare breast for the dear walls. You too, Heliconian throng, come to add help to our cause; and you, O Permessus, and you, O Olmius, happy in your tuneful streams, have armed your nurslings, sluggish in wars; you hear the flock exult in their fathers' harmonies, such as, when pale winter yields, the swans lead down the shining Strymon. Go briskly: never shall your honours die, and the Muses will recall your wars in perpetual song.' He had spoken, and a little the maiden broke in upon him as he talked: 'But those — by what origin are they joined as brothers? So surely are their arms alike, so rises into the air the equal crest of the helmet; would that this concord were ours!' To her the elder, smiling: 'You are not deceived by first error of sight, Antigone: many — for the age deceives — have called these brothers; he is father and son, but they have confused the measures of their years: a nymph, Dercetis, violated the boy Lapithaon, untried in the bedchamber and unripe for the marriage-fires before his day, with eager love, shameless of wedlock; nor long after, and fair Alatreus was born, and in the flower of his first youth overtakes his father, draws out his marks, and mingles their years, and now so the brothers rejoice in a feigned name, the father more; once this delights him and the coming old age, as father of three hundred and as son of as many he drives horsemen into battles: these are said to have left poor Glisas and Coronia, fertile in harvest Coronia, tending Glisas for Bacchus. But rather look at this man casting his shadow far and wide, Hypseus, with his four-horse team, the shield's seven-fold bull on his left, thrice with iron stitched in his breast is guarded, his breast: for in his back is never fear; his spear is the ancient glory of the woods, to which arms and bodies are always pervious, and never is his hand frustrate of its prayer. Asopus is given for his sire, and worthy then to seem a father, when most torrential he rushes forth with bridges swept away, or when, swollen, avenger of his maiden daughter, he shook his streams, indignant at the Thunderer for a son-in-law. For they say that Aegina, snatched from her father's waves, hid in the embrace of Jove: the river rages and, hostile to the stars, prepares to war — not yet were such things lawful even for the gods — ; he stood, poured out in bold wraths, and joined battle, nor had he any whom he might implore, until, scarce thrust back by thunder and the three-forked fire, he yielded; still spirited in his banks, his gulf, with panting breath, the thunderous ash and the marks of his great punishment rejoices in, and breathes Aetnean vapours up to heaven. Such on the Cadmean plain shall we marvel at Hypseus, if only happy Aegina has appeased the Thunderer. He leads the Itonian and Alalcomenaean lines of Minerva, whom Midea and whom moist Arne supply, who sow Aulis and Graea and the green Plataeae, and tame Peteon with the furrow and the back-flowing channel of Euripus, which is ours, and you, last in the tract, Anthedon, where from the grassy shore Glaucus burst the longed-for waters, already blue in hair and cheeks, and feared the fish mixed at his groins. With acorns and with the twisted sling to cut the zephyrs is their care: their javelins shall outstrip the Cydonian arrows. You too, Cephisus, might have given the form so famous, Narcissus, but in the Thespian fields already pales the fierce boy; bereft, father, you bathe the flower with your wave. Who could unfold for you the lines of Phoebus and ancient Phocis? Those who hold Panope, who Daulis, who Cyparissus, and your valleys, Lebadia, and Hyampolis propped on a sharp crag, or those who lay back both Parnassus or Cirrha for bulls, and Anemoria, and the Corycian grove, and Lilaea, where the icy head of Cephisus drives forth, where Python was wont to bear his panting thirst and turn the river back to the sea, on all, mingled, look above their helmet-crests at the laurels, and their arms bearing either Tityos or Delos, or those quivers which here the god emptied in countless slaughter. Iphitus, harsh, leads them, whose father was lately taken, Naubolus son of Hippasus, your friend, O most gentle Laius; still I held the chariot and the unworried reins, when under the horses your neck lay, torn by bloody blows — O would that it had been with my own blood! —' As he spoke, his cheeks grew wet, and over all his face pallor went, and a sudden sob cut off the open path of his voice; the nursling warms the cold friendly breast of the old man; he revives and faintly speaks: 'O my anxious glory and my last delight, Antigone! shamelessly I delay for you the late-coming shades, perhaps about to see the same crimes and ancestral slaughters, until I deliver you up, fit and whole, to the bridal chamber: this is enough, and dismiss me weary of life, you Fates. But while I idly toil, how many — now behold, I look back — leaders have passed by: Clonis, and the Abantiades long-haired behind, I did not name, nor you, rocky Carystus, nor the lowly Aegae and high Caphereus. And now my blunted sight refuses, and all halt, and behold your brother bids silence among the armed.' Scarce had the old man said this from the tower, when the ruler began from the rampart:

'Great-souled kings, whom I would not refuse to obey, though I be leader, and as a soldier myself defend my Thebes, I would not seek to spur you on — for free into arms is your onset, and of your own will you have sworn into deserved wraths — nor shall I suffice to praise enough and repay worthy thanks — the gods will requite, and your hands, when the foe is subdued — you have come to defend a city of a kindred race, which no ravager from other shores, no warrior born from foreign soil, but a native foe assails, ruling a camp set against the one in which his father, his mother, his sisters joined by blood, his brother too, were here, see, wherever, unspeakable one, you contrive the ruin of your ancestors: willing have come the Aonian peoples, nor have I been left to you, savage one; what this band wants, you too ought to feel: they forbid the giving back of the kingdom.' So he spoke, and all in order he disposes, who shall wage the wars, who guard the walls, what hands he shall set in the front, what in the middle strength. So the shepherd, when the gates are clear with light, lifts the wattled barriers, while the earth is fresh; he bids in the first order the leaders go, in the midst the mothers are crowded by the common throng; he himself lifts the heavy ones and the udders of the parents about to break the ground, and carries the failing lambs to their mothers.

Meanwhile the Greeks under arms night and day, again the night and again the day — so wrath bore them on — redouble: rest is scorned, scarce did sleep or feasting make delay for them; they hasten against the foe as in flight, nor do the portents hold them, which most thickly weaves the prodigy-singing chance, the foreteller of fixed fate. For dread warnings are sown by birds and beasts and stars and rivers reversed in their courses, and the father thunders hostile and evil lightnings shine; and there are terrifying voices from the shrines, and the doors of the gods open of their own accord; now a bloody, now a stony rain, and sudden ghosts and meetings of weeping ancestors, then the oracles of Apollo's Cirrha fell silent, and Eleusis howled all night long in months unaccustomed, and Sparta, foreboding, in her opened temples saw the Amyclaean brothers — a crime! — clash together. The Arcadians say that the mad shades of Lycaon bark in the silent night; that Oenomaus runs down the savage plain his own Pisa relates; the wandering Acarnan was defaming Achelous, deformed by either horn. And Mycenae beseeches the sad image of Perseus, and the troubled ivory of Juno; the farmers say that mighty Inachus bellowed, and the dweller of the twin sea relates that Theban Palaemon mourned over the whole deep. These things the Pelopean phalanx hears, but warlike zeal withstands counsels and forbids that they be feared.

Now they had come to your banks, Asopus, and the Boeotian streams; the wings dared not at once cross over the hostile river; by chance too it was descending vast upon the trembling fields, whether the rain-bearing bow gave it spirit, or a mountain cloud, or whether that was the river's mind, and the father, set against the ford, forbade their arms. Then fierce Hippomedon, with a great fragment of the bank, flung down his lingering horse, and, leaving the leaders, from mid current, hung upon his bridle and his arms, 'Go, men,' he cries, 'thus I vow to be first to lead you into the walls, thus to break through the barred-up Thebes.' All plunge into the river, and those who followed were ashamed. And as when at times a shepherd drives his herds through an unknown river, the flock stands sad, the further land is far off for all, and broad in the midst is fear: but when the leader bull goes in and makes the ford, then softer is the wave, then easy the leaps, and the banks seem to draw near.

Not far from there they mark a ridge and fields fit for a safe camp, whence they might see even the city and the Sidonian towers; the site pleased them, a trusty retreat, along a high hill with open top, beneath which in an open bosom lie the fields, nor do views from other mountains threaten any; nor did harsh toil add long defences: nature herself wondrously favoured the place. Rocks raised into a rampart, and slopes level with the ditches, and battlements drawn fourfold by a chance-made mound; the rest they themselves supply, until the sun crept up over all the mountains and sleep gave ease to their weary affairs.

Who could in words show forth the thunderstruck Thebes? The city, in sight of war preparing its last extremities, black night terrifies, sleepless, and threatens the day. They run about the walls; nothing is fenced under that horror, nothing trusty enough, and weak are the citadels of Amphion, rumour everywhere announces other and more foes, and fear announces greater ones; they look at the tents opposite, the Inachian, and foreign fires upon their own mountains. Some with prayers and complaint beseech the gods, some urge on the Martial weapons and the warlike horses, some press the dear breasts with weeping and, wretched, commission the pyres and the morrow's funerals, if a thin sleep has let down their eyes, they wage wars; now the gains of delay, now the weariness of life to the thunderstruck, and they fear the light and pray for the light. Tisiphone, shaking her twin serpent, runs raving through both camps; brother to this one, brother to that she throws, or to each the father: far off, that one, roused from the inmost household gods, implores the Furies and demands back his eyes.

Now the first day had drunk up cold Phoebe and the darkening stars, when now Ocean swells with the coming fire, and the sea, far and wide unbarred by the new Titan, sinks down beneath the rays of the panting horses: behold, with fierce eyes, covered with squalid grey hair, her cheeks bloodless, Jocasta, bearing arms black with beating and a branch of olive bound with knots of dark wool, like the most ancient of the Eumenides, from the gates goes forth with great majesty of woes, on this side and that her daughters, the better sex now, support her aged limbs as she rushes headlong and goes more than she can. She came before the foes, and with bare breast she beats the barriers opposite and with trembling howls begs to be admitted: 'Unbar the way! the impious mother of war asks it; in these camps there is some accursed right for this womb.' The trembling companies feared her, seen and more, heard; now the messenger sent to Adrastus returns: they receive her, bidden, and through the midst of the swords give passage. She, as soon as she beheld the Achaean leaders, loosed a dread outcry, made frantic by grief: 'Argive chiefs, will anyone show me the foe whom I bore? Where shall I find, tell me, my son beneath the helmet?' The Cadmean hero came to her, thunderstruck, to meet her, and fills her, snatched up, with glad tears, and consoles her, holding her, and amid each word 'mother,' 'mother' he repeats, now pressing her, now the dear breasts of his sisters, while the old woman roughens her weeping with mingled wrath: 'Why do you feign soft tears and venerable names for me, Argive king? Why do you wind your neck with embraces and rub against your hated mother with iron breast? Are you that man, a wanderer in exile and a pitiable guest? Whom would you not move? Your long cohorts await your orders, and your side flashes with many a sword. Ah, wretched mothers! Did I weep for you, this you, nights and days? But if you deign to heed the words and warnings of your own, while the camp is silent and piety, in suspense, shudders at the war, your mother both bids and begs: go with me, and see your fathers' gods and the roofs at least about to burn, and your brother — why do you turn away your eyes? — your brother address, and demand the kingdom now with me as judge: either he will give it, or you will resume the sword in a better cause. Or do you fear lest perhaps there be guile, and I, a knowing mother, deceive you? Not so has all right fled the wretched household gods: you would scarce fear with Oedipus leading. I married indeed and bore an abomination, but I love such ones — ah, grief! — and even now I excuse your frenzies. But if you persist so, of my own accord, savage one, I have brought you your triumph: bind your captive sisters behind your back, cast bonds on me: your father too, however he can, shall be brought hither; to your shame I now turn my groans, Inachidae, for you have left both little ones and old and these tears, each in his home: trust your own flesh to a mother! If to you in this short space he is dear — and may he be, I pray — what, I ask, befits me, or these, Pelasgians, this bosom? From Hyrcanian or Odrysian kings they would have borne this, and any who have conquered our frenzies. Assent, or, having embraced my son, with the war surviving, here will I die.' Her words were breaking the swollen cohorts, and you would see the helmets of the men nodding and the arms sprinkled with pious tears. As when lions, having laid low the weapons and strength of a breast with the rush of their madness, straightway their wrath is less, and they rejoice over the captured body to put off, secure, their hunger: so the bent hearts of the Pelasgians waver, and the steel-greedy ardour had grown tame.

He himself too, turned now to his mother's kisses, now to those of unschooled Ismene, now to Antigone praying more tearfully, and with the various storm troubling his mind, had let the kingdom fall away: he longs to go, and mild Adrastus forbids not; here Tydeus, mindful of his just wrath, breaks in: 'Set me rather, allies — me, who lately tested the faithful Eteocles, and was no brother — set me against the king, whose excellent peace and good treaties I still bear in this breast, where then were you, mother, the pledge of faith and peace, when your night detained me with fair hospitalities? Surely you drag your son to these dealings? Lead him into the plain, which, fat with your blood, still breathes, and fat with mine. And will you further follow, alas too mild and too forgetful of your own? Surely, when the hostile right hands all around you bare their swords, will this woman weep and the arms be still? Will that man, alas you fool, once enclosed within the walls and possessed by his hatreds, send you back to the Argive camp? Sooner than this shall the spear leaf out, its iron shaken off, sooner shall Inachus go backward and our Achelous depart. But mild address and peace are sought with savage arms: this camp too lies open, nor have we yet deserved to be feared. Or am I suspect? I withdraw and give away my wounds. Let him enter: here too is the same mother and the sisters between, but imagine him won over by the pact to leave the kingdom, will you then give it back again?' Again, their counsels changed, the lines are drawn aside: as suddenly by a whirlwind of heaven the South Wind, meeting it head-on, has carried off the sea from Boreas, arms again and frenzies please; the fierce Fury seizes the time and contrives the seeds of the first battle.

Twin tigresses were wandering by the Dircaean streams, a mild yoke, once the ravager of the Eastern war, Liber's chariot, but lately victor from the Erythraean shores had let them go into the deserving Aonian fields, those whom the god's throng and the priest, elder by custom, careful, forgetful of blood and smelling of Indian herbage, adorns with ripe vine-shoot and various clusters and binds their spots between with alternate purple, and now the very hills, the very herds — who would believe it? — loved them, and the heifers dared to low around them; for hunger ravaged not at all: a ready hand feeds them, and they catch up the food, and dread, throw back their faces poured full of wine, in roaming country ease; if ever with kindly step they entered the city, every house and all the temples grow warm with rites, and they believe Lyaeus himself has entered. When the Fury had driven these, each touched thrice with viperous lash, back into frenzy and the former temper, they burst forth from the unrecognizing fields. As if two thunderbolts from a divided heaven alike should fall, broken, and drag a long mane through the clouds: not otherwise, swift in their course and roaring monstrously, they will cross the plains, and the charioteer with vast onset, Amphiaraus, yours — nor was the omen lacking, by chance he, their master's, was first leading the horses to the neighbouring pools — they seize; soon they press Idas the Taenarian, who was nearest, and Acamas the Aetolian: grim is the flight through the fields of the steeds, until, inflamed by the seen slaughter of men, Aconteus, whose wont was valour to lay low wild beasts — he was an Arcadian — , follows with dense weapons them now turned to the trusty walls, and many times taking up his spear-shaft, thrice, four times, with weapon drawn through their backs, through their flanks he runs them through. But they, with a long track of poured-out blood, drag to the gates on both sides the protruding spears, half-alive, and with a groan imitating complaints, lean their wounded breasts against the beloved walls, you would think the temples and the city were seized and with unspeakable torches the Sidonian homes were burning, so the outcry on the open walls arises; they would rather the cradle of great Hercules or Semele's chamber or the inner shrine of Harmonia had fallen. The Bacchic worshipper Phegeus seeks Aconteus, now empty of weapons and exulting in the twin slaughter, with the sword at close quarters; the Tegean youth come up in aid, too slow: now above the sacred bodies of the beasts the young man lies, a vengeance to mourning Bacchus.

The Greek council is broken by a sudden uproar through the camp; Jocasta flees through the foes, their swords drawn, now not daring to pray; they thrust back her daughters and herself, those so mild just now, and headlong Tydeus uses the moment: 'Go now, hope for peace and faith! Could you not at least put off the unspeakable thing or delay, until the mother, dismissed, returns?' So having spoken, with bared sword he calls his allies; savage now is the outcry, and wraths grow hot on this side and that; in no order the war comes, and the leaders are confounded with the common throng, and the commands of the rulers neglected; together the horsemen are mingled and the bands of foot and the rapid chariots; the disordered host presses the rushing men, nor is there leisure to show themselves nor to know the foe, so in sudden masses the Theban and Argive youth clashed; behind, the standards and the trumpets and the clarions, following, found the war at their backs, so great a War swells up cruel from a little blood! As a wind builds within the clouds its first strength, gentle as yet, and bears leaves and the open treetops, soon it snatched the grove and laid bare the shadowy mountains.

Now come, Pierian sisters, no far-off things do we ask of you: tell of your own battle-lines and your own Aonia; for you saw, while in the near War the Heliconian quills bristle at the Tyrrhenian uproar. The unfaithful steed in arms carries off the Sidonian Pterelas, breaking his bridle, through the scattered lines, now free, so wearied is the hand: the spear comes through the shoulders of Tydeus and pierces through the young man's left groin and fastens him, falling, to his horse; that one flees, locked with his slain master, and, holding no more his arms or reins, still bears him: as a Centaur, not yet bereft of either life, dying, sinks back upon his own haunches, the work of iron contends: in turn the raging slay, Hippomedon Sybaris, Menoeceus Periphas the Pylian, Parthenopaeus Itys: Sybaris lies by the bloody sword, Periphas grim by the spear-point, Itys by the ambushing arrow. Martial Haemon snatches with the iron the neck of Inachian Caeneus, whose gaping eyes seek the trunk across the divided body, his spirit the head; the arms of the fallen Abas was now snatching: caught by an Achaean horn he let go, dying, the shield, both the foe's and his own.

Who persuaded you, Eunaeus, to leave the Bacchic worship, who the groves, in which the priest feared to have stayed too long, and to change the accustomed frenzy for one due to Bromius? Whom could you frighten? The pierceable web of your shield pale ivies and Nysaean garlands crown, a white fillet is bound beneath your vine-clad spear, your shoulders hide in hair, your cheeks grow with down, and your unwarlike corselet blushes with Tyrian thread, your arms in sleeves and the laces of your painted soles and the linen folds, and a smooth buckle of gold with tawny jasper bit the Taenarian mantle, above which, on your back, a swift quiver-case and bow and pendant quivers sound with gilded lynx-skin. With the god maddening him, he goes amid the thousands, crying loud and long: 'Hold your hands, these walls with favouring omen Apollo of Cirrha showed by a heifer; spare them, into these rocks of their own accord came willing. We are a hallowed race: Jupiter is son-in-law to this city and Gradivus father-in-law; we lie not in calling Bacchus our nursling and great Alcides.' To him vainly boasting such things, turbulent on his airy spear Capaneus came against him, as when a lion in the morning has roused his first fury from his black lair and from the savage cave watches either a stag or a bullock not yet fighting with its brow, he goes rejoicing in his roar, though the arms and packs of the hunters provoke him, he sees the prey and knows not his own wounds: so then Capaneus, rejoicing in the unequal meeting, balanced the cypress shaft about to come with great mass. Yet first, 'Why do you frighten men with womanish howlings, you about to die?' he says. 'Would that he himself came, for whom you rave! Sing these things to the Tyrian mothers!' and at once the spear he hurled; it, flying, as if no force opposing might stay it, scarce sounded on the shield and now left the back behind, the arms flow loose, and the gold rattles with long sobs, and the burst gore overcame the folds; you fall, bold one, you fall, boy, the second care of Aonian Lyaeus. For you wilting Ismara mourned with broken thyrsi, for you Tmolus, for you Nysa fertile and Thesean Naxos and Ganges, sworn in fear into the Theban orgies.

Nor did the Argive squadrons feel a sluggish Eteocles, more sparing against the citizens bristled the sword of Polynices. Before the others now, while the horses dread the fields, Amphiaraus stands forth, and with much dust turns the plain that complains: a vain glory the mournful god adds to his servant, and lights up his last deaths; Apollo even sets his shield and helmet ablaze with an honouring star; nor slowly, Gradivus, did you give to your brother, that no hand might harm the seer, that no mortal weapons in war might wound him: holy and venerable to Dis let the funeral go. Such into the midst of the foes he is borne, sure himself of death too, his trust in dying supplies his strength; thence the man has larger limbs, and a day more glad, and never so great an experience of heaven, if there were leisure: valour, on the border of death, turns aside death; he burns with the unfilled love of savage Mars, and enjoys his right hand and exults with blazing soul. Is this the man, so often, to soothe the chances of men and take away from the Fates their rights? How suddenly different from that one who was learned to follow the tripods and the laurels, who in every cloud to know the bird when Phoebus was saluted! The countless commons with the iron, like a death-bringing year or the grievous beam of a hostile star, he sacrifices to his own shades: with javelin Phlegyas, and with javelin proud Phyleus, with his scythed chariot Clonis and Chremetaon he reaps near at hand, this one standing, this one cut at the knee, with thrust not hurled Chromis and Iphinous and Sages and unshorn Gyas and Lycoreus sacred to Phoebus — unwilling: he had already let down the ashen strength of his spear, and, when the crest was struck off, the fillet appeared —, Alcathous with a stone, who, around the pools of Carystus, had both home and wife and sons loving the shores, and had long lived a poor searcher of the waters, the land deceived; dying, he praises the storms and the south winds and the better-known perils of the proven sea.

Asopian Hypseus for long now beholds from afar these slaughters of the scattered men, and burns to turn the battle aside, though he himself no less pours forth from his chariot the Tirynthian strength; but at the seer's sight the present blood is less: him he desires in arms and in spirit, but the flank of the wedge, locked in an uneven column, kept him off; thence, proud, he drew out a missile chosen from his father's banks, and first: 'Asopus, rich bestower of the Aonian waters, bright even now with the Giants' embers, give power to my right hand: this your son asks, and the oak, nursling of your ford; it is right that I too scorn Phoebus, if compared with you is the father of the gods, I will sink all the arms in your founts and the sad fillets without their seer.' The father had heard: Phoebus forbids the willing river to indulge him, and turns the cast aside upon the charioteer Herses. He falls: the god himself succeeds to the wandering reins, feigning Lernaean Haliacmon with false face, then truly against the burning one no standards try to stand, they fall by terror alone, and short of wounds death, idle, comes upon the trembling, and to one who watched it doubtful whether the weight had pressed the hostile yokes or driven them on, so when the cloud-bearing side of a mountain, or the new storm loosens with winds, or age, conquered by decay, did not bear it up, a dreadful terror leaps down upon the plain, fields and men in more than one path, and the long-lived oaks with it hurling headlong, and at last, worn out by the wearied whirl, either hollows out a valley or intercepts the mid streams. Not otherwise, weighed down by the huge man and the great god, the pole now in this, now in that blood grows hot, he himself sitting attends both to the weapons and to the reins, the Delian; he himself teaches the casts and turns aside the opposing darts, and takes their fortune from the spears that come, laid low on the earth are Melaneus on foot, Antiphus, nothing defended by his high horse, and Actaeon, born of a Heliconian nymph, and Polites, infamous for his slain brother, and Lampus, who tried to touch on her couch the filleted Manto: against him Phoebus himself gave his sacred arrows, and now the trembling steeds, breathing back their dying bodies, root in the earth, and over all the limbs is a furrow, and the deep wheel-track grows red in the cut members, these now unknowing the impious axle grinds, but those, half-dead from a wound — nor was there power to avoid — see it coming over their faces; now the reins are slippery with gore, nor does the soaked pole give footing, and the wheels are hard with blood, and slower the hoof in the trenched entrails: then he himself, raging, plucks out the darts left in death and the spears standing forth from the midst of the bones, the lives shriek and follow the chariot.

At last Apollo, confessing himself supreme to his servant: 'Use your own light,' he says, 'and put on long fame, while Death, irrevocable, fears me joined to you. We are conquered: you know the Parcae unwind no threads; go, long promised to the Elysian peoples as a delight, surely not to endure Creon's commands, nor to be cast naked into a forbidden tomb.' He answers in return, and breathes a little from his arms: 'Long ago, Cirrhaean father, I felt you sitting, ready to perish, at the yoke — what so great honour to the wretched? — on the trembling axle; how long will you delay the threatening shades? I hear now the course of swift Styx and the black streams of Dis and the three-fold gapings of the evil guardian. Take the honour entrusted to my head, take the laurels, which to bring to Erebus is unlawful; now with my last voice, if any gratitude is owed to a seer about to depart, I commend to you, Phoebus, my deceived hearth and the punishment of my unspeakable wife and the fair frenzy of my son.' Mourning, Apollo leaped down and turned away his tears: then truly the chariots groaned and the yoke-steeds and the orb. Not otherwise in the blind whirlwind of nightly Corus the ship knows it will perish, when now the canvas, condemned by the sister's fire, the Therapnaean brothers have fled.

And now the earth, about to recede, began little by little to shudder and its highest surfaces to be shaken, and the dust, heavier, to seethe up; with infernal murmur the plain now bellows. The trembling men think it war, and that this is the crash of war, and they urge on their steps; another tremor sways the arms and strength and the wondering horses; now the leafy summits nod, now the walls, and Ismenus, his banks laid open, flees away; their wraths fell from them, they drive the nodding weapons to the ground, and the wanderers lean on their doubtful spears at close quarters and in turn, at the seen pallor, draw back. So when Bellona mixes naval battles over the waters, the sea despised, if perchance a kindly storm comes, each takes care for himself, and another death puts up the swords, and shared fears have made a peace, such was on the plain the image of the wavering war, whether the labouring earth, having conceived a blast, cast out the madness of the winds and the shut-up frenzy, or whether the lurking wave ate the rotten ground and wore it by bearing, or whether the engine of the rolling heaven pressed down, or whether the Neptunian spear moved all the sea and turned the deep more heavily upon the outermost shores, or whether that crash was given to the seer, or the earth threatened the brothers: behold, on high the ground, headlong, with deep mouth splits apart, and in turn the stars and the shades feared, him a huge cavern drinks down and the horses, as they prepare to cross, it plunges; he loosed not his arms from his hand, nor his reins: just as he was, he carries his chariot upright into Tartarus, and falling looked back at the sky, and groaned that the plain closed together, until a lighter tremor again mixed the parted fields and shut out the light from Avernus.