Book 9

9. The reported madness of bloody Tydeus enrages the Aonians; even the Inachidae themselves groaned less for him fallen, and they blame the man and complain that he broke the sacred law of hatred; nay, even you, most relentless of the gods, though then your chief work was slaughter, Gradivus, as you raged, they say were offended by such valour, and did not turn your own face near at hand, but turned aside even your trembling steeds. So the profaned funeral of Melanippus, with its bitter wound, the Cadmean youth rise to avenge with no other goads than if the bones of their fathers, troubled in the tombs, and the urns given over to cruel monsters. The king himself adds fuel from above: 'Is anyone to the Pelasgians still mild and bears himself a man? Now with hooked bites — the madness! — so far have we sated our weapons! — their limbs they tear apart. Do you not think you war with Hyrcanian tigers, or go against the savage lions of Libya? And now that one lies there — O fair solace of death! — holding the hostile head in his mouth, and unspeakable dies upon the sweet gore; ours is the merciless steel and torch, theirs naked hatreds, and their savagery now needs no arms. So let them go on, rabid, and enjoy this bright praise, while you may see these things, highest father. But behold, the fields gape, they have lamented, and they marvel at the flight of the earth; or shall even their own ground bear those men?' So having spoken, with a great rush and roar he drove the men, the same frenzy in all to seize the spoils of hated Tydeus and to gain the snatched body, not otherwise than the flocks of foul birds weave their threads beneath the stars, to whom from afar the breeze has borne the guilty air and the deserted, unburied dead; to that place, greedy, with a cry they rush, the high aether sounds with the beating of wings, and the lesser birds yielded the sky.

Rumour, wandering through the Aonian plain with rapid murmur, is scattered among the squadrons, a swifter herald than its wont when it bears tidings to be mourned, until, to him to whom in the telling it carries the greatest losses, it slipped to the trembling ears of Polynices. The youth stiffened, and the tears that were ready stuck, and his trust hesitated; for the too-well-known valour of the son of Oeneus both persuades and forbids the death to be believed. But after the disaster was found out by no doubtful author, night seizes his eyes and mind; then, his blood frozen, his limbs together, his arms together fall: the high helmet now drips with weeping, and his greaves received the falling shield. He goes mournful, dragging his sick knees and his trailing spear, as one heavy with a thousand wounds and over all his limbs wounded; his comrades stand off and point him out, groaning. At last he, his arms cast aside, scarce those he had carried, naked over the now-empty body of his excellent friend falls down, and with such a voice poured out his tears: 'Are these the thanks for you, O last hope of my arms, son of Oeneus, are these the worthy rewards I repaid, that you should lie naked on the hated land of Cadmus while I am safe? Now I am an exile and forever a fugitive, since another and a better brother has been taken from wretched me. Nor now do I seek the old allotment and the perjured diadem of the guilty kingdom: why was joy bought at such a price for me, or a sceptre which your right hand will not hand over? Go, men, and leave me alone to my fierce brother; there is no need to try arms further and to waste deaths; go, I pray; what greater thing will you give me at last? I have used up Tydeus! By what death shall I atone for this? O father-in-law, O Argos! and the good quarrels of that first night, and the alternate hands, and the brief wrath, pledge of a long love; not with your sword then, greatest Tydeus, — and you could have — was I slain on the threshold of our Adrastus! Nay, even for my sake you went, willing, to Thebes and the impious roof of my brother, whence no other would have returned, as though about to bring back to yourself the sceptre and your own honours, now fame fell silent of pious Telamon, now of Theseus — and behold, how you lie! Which wounds shall I first marvel at? Which is your blood here, which from the foe? What columns or what countless masses laid you low? Do I not err, and did the father himself envy you, and did Mars drive home with his whole spear?' So he speaks, and mourning still wipes with his tears the man's lips slippery with gore, and lays them in place with his right hand. 'Did you, hating my foes thus far, and beyond that am I safe?' Turbulent, he had drawn the sword from its sheath and was fitting it to his death: his comrades held him, and his father-in-law chides him, and, reviewing the turns of war and the fates, consoles his swollen heart, and far from the dear body little by little, whence came the grief and the spirited will to die, he moves him away, and silently amid his words lays the steel aside. He is led like a bull who, the partner of his toils lost, deserts the begun furrow amid the acres, sluggish, and with slack neck drags part of the misshapen yoke, while the weeping ploughman holds up the rest.

But lo, urged by Eteocles and following his arms, a chosen band, young men whom neither Tritonia in war nor Mavors with spear nearly joined would have scorned, approach; against them, as he had fixed his gathered breast to his buckler and stretched out his spear far before him, there clings towering Hippomedon: as a rock facing the waves, which neither has fear from heaven, and the broken seas yield, stands unmoved at all threats, the sea itself flees the rigid thing and from the deep the wretched keels have learned to know it. Then first the son of Aon — at once he chooses a strong spear — 'Is it no shame to defend these ghosts, these funerals that weaken war, before the gods and with heaven looking on? Surely it is an excellent sweat and memorable valour to entomb this beast, lest he go, to be wept by mourning Argos in obsequies, and on a soft bier spit out his unspeakable gore! Lay aside your care; no birds, no impious monsters, nor even the pious fire, should we grant it, will devour him.' No more, but a huge javelin he hurls, which, lodged in the hard bronze and yet passed through, stood in the second orb of the shield. Then Pheres and keen Lycus; but the spear of Pheres returns empty, Lycus with lofty terror grazes the plumed helmet; torn far by the point, the plumes scattered, and the helmet lay open inglorious; he himself goes neither backward, nor leaps roused into the arms before him, but in the same tracks always facing all he advances himself and draws back, nor ever indulges his right hand too far, and through all his movements loves his body, guarding his body, and round about and above he turns, not so does a mother, just then having calved, embracing an unwarlike bullock, guard it from a threatening wolf, and carry her horns about in a doubtful ring; she herself, fearing nothing and forgetful of her lesser sex, foams and, a female, imitates the huge bulls. At last, the cloud of the hurlers having ceased, there was power to return weapons; and now Sicyonian Alcon too had come to his aid, and the squadron of swift Idas of Pisa comes up and fills the wedge; glad against the foes he himself casts the Lernaean beam, it flies, equal in flight to arrows, and, in nothing delaying, runs through Polites in the midst and, wicked, hollows the shield of joined Mopsus. Then Phocian Cydon and Tanagraean Phalanthus and Eryx, this one turned backward and seeking weapons, while there was no hope of death, he fixes through the hairy crown; that one, dying, marvels that the spear was received in his hollow throat, not his mouth, and alike full of murmur his blood and his teeth, knocked out by the point, leaped forth. Leonteus had dared by stealth to throw out his right hand, hiding behind the men and arms, and was dragging away the laid head by the seized hair: Hippomedon saw it, though on every side thick, before his face, the threats, and with savage sword the impudent hand he carried off; at once he cries: 'This Tydeus, Tydeus himself, snatches from you; and after, fear the finished fates of men, and, wretch, shun to touch the great ghosts!' Thrice the Cadmean phalanx drew off the grim corpse, thrice the Greeks drag it back: as a Sicilian ship, anxious in the sea's mutiny, with the master vainly resisting, wanders and returns into its tracks with the sail turned about.

Not there could the Sidonian hands have availed to drive Hippomedon from his undertaking, not impacted siege-engines would have moved him as he stood, and, dreaded by the proud towers, the blows would have come back, the boss tried in vain. But mindful of the Elysian king, and reckoning the harms to Tydeus, into the midst by craft comes the impious Tisiphone: the lines felt it, and a sudden sweat ran over the horses and sweat over the men, though with relaxed face, the Inachian Halys she was choking; nowhere her impious fire and lashes, and her hair, commanded, kept silence; she bears arms and beside the fierce Hippomedon's flank comes, coaxing in cheeks and voice; yet he, as she spoke, dreaded her looks and wonders at his own fear. She, weeping, 'You now, famed one, in vain,' she says, 'protect the lifeless comrades and the unburied bodies of the Greeks — surely that is our fear, or now our care for the tomb? — ; your own Adrastus, captured by a Tyrian hand, is dragged off, and you before others, you with voice and hand he calls upon; alas, how I saw him slip in his blood, his grey hairs stripped, his diadem torn! Nor far from here, turn your eyes; where that thickest dust, where that mass.' A little the anxious hero stood and weighed his fears; the harsh maiden presses: 'Why do you cling? Do we go? Or do these ghosts hold you, and is he the cheaper who survives?' A wretched task he commits to his comrades, and his own battles, and goes, the deserter of his like-souled friend, yet looking back, ready, should they by chance recall him. Thence following the troubled tracks of the grim goddess he rushes here and there in vain, gone astray, until the impious Eumenis, her blue buckler cast back from his eyes, flees, and countless serpents broke from her helmet. The unhappy man beholds, the cloud dispersed, quiet the Inachidae and the chariot of Adrastus fearing nothing.

And now the Tyrians have the body, now great joys loud voices attest, and the victorious howl wanders to his ears and strikes his heart with hidden grief. He is dragged by a hostile — O hard power of fate! — that Tydeus, on the ground, but lately to whom, when the Theban lines pursued, whether he poured forth his step or his reins, a huge path was given on either side; never do his arms and hands rest, no fierceness of the man: it delights to assail with impunity the face stiff in death and the dreaded countenance. This is their love, by this alone the timid and the brave seek to ennoble their hands, and the weapons stained with blood they keep to show their wives and their little sons, so when a lion that long ravaged the Moorish fields, for whose sake both the flocks are penned and the herdsmen watch, the wearied cohorts of shepherds have warred down: the field rejoices, with great clamour the farmers come up, and crop off his mane and lay open his monstrous jaws and recount their losses, whether now, fixed beneath the roof, he keeps watch, or whether the glory hangs in an ancient grove.

But fierce Hippomedon, though now he feels his aid empty and the fight late for the snatched body, goes nonetheless and whirls his blind sword, irrevocable, scarce distinguishing comrades and foes, so nothing delay his going; but with new slaughter the ground now slippery and arms and half-dead men and loosened chariots hinder him, and his left thigh, which, fixed by the spear-point of the Echionian king, but, burning, he had dissembled, or there had not known of. At last he sees mournful Hopleus; this one, the faithful comrade of great Tydeus and but now in vain his squire, with bent neck held the wing-footed horse, ignorant of its master's fate and chafing only that it stood idle and that the bolder man went into the lines on foot; this horse, spurning new weights on its swollen back — for it had known one hand only from its tamed years — he seizes and addresses: 'Why, O unhappy steed, do you refuse new fates? Never was the proud king's burden sweet to you; no more shall you be sated on the Aetolian field and loose your joyful mane through the Acheloian pools. What remains, go, at least avenge the dear ghosts or follow them, lest you too, a captive, harm the banished shade and bear a swollen horseman after Tydeus.' You would think it had heard and was kindled: by this thunderbolt snatched it bore him off, and disdains less the like reins. As such a Centaur, half-beast, from airy Ossa leaps down into the valleys, the deep groves themselves tremble, the plain at the horse; trembling in their panting course gather the Labdacids, that one presses above, and reaping the unlooked-for necks with steel leaves trunks falling behind his back. He had come to the river; then fuller than its wonted bed — signs of evil — with great mass Ismenos drove himself on. That was a brief respite; to it the timid lines drove their weary flight from the fields; the war-host's stranger wave is dazed at the men, and is kindled by the bright shadow of arms. They leaped into the shallows, and with great crash the loosened bank and the opposite shores hid in dust. He too with a greater leap through the hostile waves rushed in upon the astonished men — long to let go the reins — just as he was, only for a moment in the green turf fixing his spear-point, he entrusts it to a poplar trunk. Then truly, lifeless, they give up to the snatching shallows their arms of their own accord: some, their helmet lowered, as far as the efforts of their breath could stretch beneath the waves, basely hide; many, having set themselves to cross the river by swimming, but their bonds hold and the belt fights against the side and the soaked corselet drags down the breast, as is the terror to the sea-blue fish beneath the swollen gulf, whenever they see a dolphin searching the slopes of the secret deep; the whole throng flees into the lowest pools and crowds for fear into the green weed, nor sooner do they emerge than the bend flashes over the surface of the waters and it prefers to vie with the keels it has seen: such drives the scattered men, and in the midst of the waves the hero guides his reins with his hand alike, alike his arms, whom the oarage of his feet sustains, his horse; and, accustomed to the field, it floats and its light hoof seeks the sunken sands. Chromis lays low Ion, Antiphus Chromis, Hypseus Antiphus, Hypseus Astyages and Linus, who would have escaped the river, did not the fates forbid, and that he die, taken from the earth at his first thread. Hippomedon presses the Theban lines, Asopian Hypseus troubles the Greeks: the river fears both, with thick blood each changes the shallows, and from the river to neither is it fated to return. Now mangled limbs roll in the downward currents, and faces and severed right hands come back upon their breasts, now the spears and the light shields and the loosened bows the wave bears, and the crests forbid the helmets to descend: the surface of the streams is strewn far and wide with wandering weapons, the depths with men; there the bodies struggle with death, and the river, meeting them, presses back their out-breathing souls.

The boy Argipus had grasped an elm of the river-bank as the shallows tore it; his marked shoulders fierce Menoeceus cuts off with the sword; he, falling, his effort not yet taken away, a trunk, gazes at his own arms in the lofty boughs. The spear of Hypseus plunged Tages in a vast wound, that one stays in the depths, his blood returned for his body, Agenor leaped from the banks to snatch his brother, alas, wretch, and held him, but, wounded, that one as he lifts him weighs him down with his embrace: Agenor, loosed, might have emerged from the shallows, it irked him to return without his brother. As Capetus rose with his right hand and threatened a wound, the rapid eddy was swallowing him in a knotted gulf; now by his face, now by his hair he is hidden, now his right hand nowhere, last the snatched sword goes down into the waves, in a thousand modes of death one death wearies the wretched. A Mycalesian spear-point clothes Agyrtes from behind; he looked back: nowhere was the author, but, driven by the drag of the gulf, the fleeing spear had found his blood.

The Aetolian steed too is fixed in its strong shoulders, and leaped high with the force of death, and hanging beats the air; yet the leader was not troubled by the thunderbolt, but pities his horse, and from the great wound the weapon he himself draws out, groaning, and of his own accord let go the reins. Thence on foot he seeks the battles again, surer of step and of hand, and sluggish Nomius and brave Mimas and Thisbaean Lichas and Anthedonian Lycetus he joins one after another with the steel, and one of the twin brothers, the son of Thespius; to Panemus asking the same fate: 'Live, survivor,' he says, 'and to the walls of dread Thebes go alone, you who will not deceive your wretched parents. The gods do well, that bloody Bellona cast the battles into the rapid stream with her own hand: the wave drags the fearful in their native gulf, nor, a naked and tearful shade, shall unburied Tydeus hiss at your fires; you will go, cruel food for the monsters of the sea, him the earth bears and will dissolve into his own first elements.' So he presses the foes and embitters their wounds with words, and now rages with the sword, now catching the floating weapons he hurls them: Theron, companion of unwed Diana, and Gyes the field-dweller with wave-wandering Erginus, and unshorn Herses and Cretheus, despiser of the deep, who often had fled across the cloudy citadel of Caphereus and the Euboean storms in a little boat. What can the fates not do? Pierced through the breast with steel he rolls into the waves, alas, shipwrecked of what a wave! You too, swimming the streams in a lofty chariot, while you seek your comrades, Pharsalus, the Doric spear-point casts back, your horses taken; them the violence of the savage gulf and the unhappy concord of their yoke plunges down.

Now come, which toil bowed great Hippomedon in the swollen waves, why Ismenos himself was roused to arms, grant me to know, learned sisters: yours is the task to go back and drive off the age of fame. Born of Faunus and the Ismenian nymph there rejoiced, tender, to war in his mother's waves, Crenaeus, Crenaeus, whose first day was in the faithful gulf, and the ford his birthplace and the green banks his cradle. Therefore, thinking the Elysian Sisters could do nothing there, glad, fawning, now from this margin, now from that he crosses his grandsire: the wave lifts his steps, whether it flow down, or go aslant; nor, when it comes against him, did the pools give any delays, and at once the river turns back. The sea covers the loins of the Anthedonian guest no more kindly, nor more does Triton in the summer flood thrust himself forth, or, hastening to the kisses of his dear mother when he returns, Palaemon strikes the slow dolphin. Arms befit his shoulders, and his shield, notable and bright with gold, is chased with the origin of the Aonian race. Here the Sidonian maid over the white back of the coaxing bullock, now careless of the sea, now with tender palms holds no longer the horns, the waters playing at her outermost soles; you would think the bullock went on the shield and cut the waves. The wave aids the likeness, and the river not unlike the sea in hue. Then bold alike with weapons and with insolent voice he seeks Hippomedon: 'This is not Lerna teeming with venom, nor waters drunk by the serpents of Hercules: a sacred river, sacred — and, wretch, you shall feel it! — and waters that nursed gods you break into.' He nothing, but went to close quarters; the river set itself against him, denser in a heap, and slowed his hand, yet that wound, held back, he carried through, and sat in the whole inmost parts of the soul. The wave shuddered at the horror, you wept, both groves, and the hollow banks sounded heavier murmurs. That last sound emerged from his dying mouth: mother! into this cry the wretched streams fell.

But his mother, girt with a band of grey-green sisters, struck at once by the evil, from the glassy valley with loosened hair leaped forth raving, and with frequent blow torn she rent her face and breast and green raiment, and as she burst from the waters and again and again redoubles the trembling sound of 'Crenaeus': nowhere is he, but a sign from above — alas, too well to be known by the wretched parent — his buckler floats; he himself lies far off, where, mingled, the borders of farthest Ismenos change at the first edge of the sea. So often her wave-wandering home and her dripping household gods deserted Alcyone bewails, when savage Auster has snatched her pledges and envious Thetis her chill nests, plunged in, bereaved again, and deep, hidden under the waves by more than one path, where below the one who goes the liquid way gleams, the wretched funeral of her son she nowhere tracks, and yet she beats her breast; often the rough river withstands her, and her sight grows dark with the spread-over blood, yet she, headlong, strikes against the weapons and the swords and searches with her hand the helmets and bends down the prone bodies; nor, removed from the sea, did she enter the bitter Doris, until, now possessed by the deep waves, the cohort of the Nereids, pitying, drove him to his mother's breast; she, embracing him as though alive, bears him back and lays him on a couch of the banks and dries his wet face with her soft hair, and these things she adds to her howls: 'Did your half-divine parents grant you this gift, and a grandsire not mortal? Do you thus reign in our gulf? Kinder is this discordant and alien land to the wretch, kinder the wave of the sea, which beside the river brought back the body and seemed to have awaited the wretched parent. Hence my face? these the eyes of your grim father? this the hair of your flowing grandsire? You, once the noble glory of the waters and the groves, by whose safety I was held a greater goddess and far the queen of the Nymphs. Alas, where now that thronging suit but lately about the thresholds of his mother, and the Napaeae praying to serve you? Why now do I bear you, Crenaeus, who had better stayed in the savage deep, in wretched embrace to the tomb, not to me? And are you not ashamed, alas, and do you not pity so great a ruin, hard parent? What deep and inescapable marsh in the lowest river has hidden you, which now neither the raw funeral of your grandson nor our laments can break through? Behold, he rages and tosses himself, greater in your gulf, Hippomedon, at him the banks and waves tremble, by his driving the wave drinks our blood: you are sluggish and ready to serve the savage Pelasgians. To the ashes at least and the last rites of your own, savage one, come, who here alone will not kindle your grandson.' With these she mingles her beatings and much beats her unworthy breast bloody, the sea-blue sisters answer her laments: as in the Isthmian harbour, not yet a Nereid, they say Leucothea bewailed, while with panting breast the cold infant spat back the savage sea against his mother.

But the father Ismenos, residing in his secret cave, whence the breezes and clouds drink and the rain-bearing bow is fed and a better year comes into the Tyrian fields, when the laments from afar, though he himself roars over them, and the new groans of his daughter he received, lifts his neck rough with moss and his hair heavy with frost, and the grown pine fell, loosed from his hand, and the dismissed urn rolls away. Him, thrusting forth along the banks his crag-like face of aged mud, the woods and the lesser rivers marvel at: so great he rises from the swollen gulf, lifting his foaming crest, and with sounding fall his breast streaming with rivulets from his sea-blue beard. One of the Nymphs, meeting him, teaches her father the kindred groans and the fall of his grandson, and points out the bloody author and presses his right hand: he stood towering in the deep river, and shaking with his hand his cheeks and his horns bound with green sedge, thus turbulent with deep mouth he begins: 'Is this the honour, ruler of the gods above, for me, that, so often both host to your deeds and conscious of them — nor is it fear to recall — I saw the false, impudent horns upon your brow, now Phoebe forbidden to unyoke her chariot, the dowered pyres and the deceived thunderbolts, and reared the chief of your sons? Or is even to them gratitude cheap? To this river surely the Tirynthian crept, in this water we quenched blazing Bromius for you. Behold what slaughters, what funerals I bear in my stream, continuous with weapons and covered with another heap. Every ford the chain of war holds, every wave pants with crime, beneath and above fresh souls wander and join the twin banks with darkness. I, that river called upon in sacred howls, who am said to wash the soft thyrsi and the Bacchic horns in my pure fount, crammed with slaughters seek narrow ways into the sea; not so do the impious pools of Strymon swim with so much blood, not more deeply does foaming Hebrus redden when Gradivus wars, nor does the nursing wave warn you, and your own hands, long since forgetful of your parents, Liber? Or is Eastern Hydaspes better pacified? But you, who, swollen, rejoice in the spoils and blood of a guiltless boy, not from this river, victor, will you bear back mighty Inachus or savage Mycenae, unless I am mortal and your blood led from the aether.' So he speaks, gnashing, and of his own accord to the raging waves gave the signal: cold Cithaeron sends down its mountain aid and its ancient snows, and bids the winter's pastures go; the brother Asopos to him as he goes reconciles his silent strength and supplies streams from gaping veins. He himself searches the bowels of the hollow earth and the pools and the torpid lakes and the sluggish marshes he shakes out, and, lifting his greedy face to the stars, he drains the dripping mists and dries the air. And now over his banks he went, taller on either mound, now Hippomedon, who but now had overcome the mid river untouched by the waters in shoulders and hands, marvels that the ford has grown and that he is the lesser, on this side and on that swollen waves and a spirited tempest rises like the sea, when it drinks down the Pleiades or dashes black Orion against the trembling sailors, not otherwise the Teumesian river tosses Hippomedon on its sea-like swell, and ever by the left boss he is lifted, and the swell with its blackening surge overruns his shield, foaming as it leaps, and the broken wave pours back and returns with a greater heap; nor content with its liquid mass it tears the crumbling trees that guard the rotten banks and the aged beams, and rolls the stones cast up from the bottom, the fight stands unequal, of the river and the man, the god indignant; for he neither gives his back nor by any threats is broken, and meeting the coming waves he enters and drives apart the streams with his opposed buckler, his steps stand though the earth flees, and with knee braced he holds the slippery rocks, and pressing on his knees and clinging he keeps his footing, undermined by the treacherous slime, thus even chiding: 'Whence is this, Ismene, suddenly your wrath? Or from what gulf have you drawn these strengths, servant of an unwarlike god, and knowing blood only from the women's dances, when the Bacchic boxwood lows and the mad mothers stain the triennial feast?' He had spoken; and the god of his own accord presented himself, turbulent in cheeks with rain and a cloud of swimming sand, nor rages in words, but with a lopped oak his breast thrice, four times he drove, as far as wrath and the god availed, rising up against the man: at last he bent his footing, and the covering struck from his hand, and slowly turning his back he bears it off, the waves press and the river follows the staggering man, exulting; nor do the Tyrians fail with stones and a hail of iron from above to assail him, and with the twin mound repel him; what should he do, besieged by wars and waves? Now there is for the wretch no flight, nor leave for a great death.

There stood, jutting from the grassy ledge of the bank, at the boundary of waters and earth, but friendlier to the waters, an ash, and had possessed the ford with its huge shadow; its help — for by what way should he invade the lands? — with hooked right hand he seized: nor did it bear him as he dragged; but, overcome by a greater weight than that on which it stood, it is loosed, and where with its root it enters the pools and with which it bit the dry ground, sent down from above it cast itself upon the trembling man and the bank, nor further allowing the man to pass, it walled it with a bridge of sudden ruin. Hither the waves come together, and inescapable in mire and in hollow whirlpools a pit settles and grows; and now the winding chasm circles the leader's shoulders, now his neck: here at last conquered to confess the worst he cries out: 'In a river — for shame! — famed Mars, will you drown this life, and shall I go beneath the sluggish lakes and pools like the guard of a flock, intercepted by the unjust waters of a sudden torrent? Did I so deserve not to fall by the steel?' At last, moved by his prayers, Juno approaches the Thunderer: 'How far, famed sower of the gods, the wretched Inachidae, how far will you press them? Now both Pallas hates Tydeus, now, the augur snatched, Delphi has fallen silent: behold my Hippomedon, whose race's origin is Mycenae and the Argive household gods and, before all, the power of Juno — am I thus faithful to my own? — shall he go, a prey to the cruel beasts of the sea? Surely you used to give the swollen ones and the last rites to the conquered; where, after the battles, the Cecropian flames, where is the fire of Theseus?' He does not scorn the fair prayers of his wife, and lightly to the walls of Cadmus turned his eyes, and at the seen nod the streams subsided. His bloodless shoulders and pierced breast lie open: as when a tempest, lifted high by the winds, has settled, the crags rise and the land sought by the sailors, and the seas descend from the threatening rocks. What does it avail to have held the banks? On every side a cloud of weapons the Phoenician cohort presses, nor is there any cover for his limbs, and all lies open to death; then the wounds flow, and the blood that long stood numb beneath the river, in the bare air is loosed, and relaxes the thin gapings of the veins, and his steps falter, uncertain from the cold of the waters, he falls, as on Getic Haemus falls either by the furies of Boreas or its rotten timber an oak that mingled its locks with heaven, and looses a vast space of air: at it, nodding, the grove and the very mountain tremble, on what ground it shall fall, what woods in order it shall overwhelm. Yet there is for none the daring to touch his sword or helmet; scarce do they trust their eyes, and shudder at the huge funeral, and approach close with arms drawn tight. At last Hypseus came up and from him, holding the hilt in death, draws it and loosed the grim face from the helmet; and he goes through the Aonians, showing on high on his gleaming point the hung helmet, and exults with a shout: 'Here is fierce Hippomedon, here the dread avenger of unspeakable Tydeus and the conqueror of the bloody gulf!' Far off great-souled Capaneus knew him and pressed down his grief, and a huge weapon on his arm, balancing, he urges himself: 'Be present, O to me, my right hand, only you present in wars and an inescapable power, you I call, you alone, despiser of the gods above, I adore.' So he speaks, and makes himself master of his own vow, the trembling fir goes through the shield and the bronze webs of the corselet, and at last beneath the great breast catches the soul: he falls with no other crash than a lofty tower when, shaken deep within by countless blows, it slips and opens the broken city to the victors, standing over whom: 'We do not deny the honour of death,' he says; 'turn your eyes hither, I am the author of your wound; go glad and much prouder than the other shades!' Then he snatches the sword and helmet and tears off the shield of Hypseus; and holding it over lifeless Hippomedon: 'Receive,' he says, 'at once the hostile spoils, great leader, and your own, the honour will come to your ash and its own order to your ghost; meanwhile, while we render the just fires, this avenger Capaneus covers your limbs with this tomb.' So, doubtful by war's hard turn, mutual to the Greeks and the Sidonians alike, Mavors wove their wounds: here fierce Hippomedon, there no less nimble Hypseus is wept, and the alternate griefs give solaces.

Meanwhile, her sleep troubled by sad shapes, the grim mother of the arrow-bearing Tegean youth, her hair let down everywhere and her soles, by custom, bare, before day was going to the cold waters of Ladon to purge the evil dream in the living river, for through nights stunned by the weight of cares often she had seen both the spoils, slipped from the shrine she herself had dedicated, and herself wandering among unknown tombs, exiled from the groves and put to flight from the company of Dryads, often that her son's new triumphs had returned from war, and the arms and the wing-footed horse she knew and the comrades she saw, never himself; now that the quivers had slipped from his shoulders, and her own effigies and known images burned. But chief terrors that night seemed to portend to the wretched woman, and roused the mother with all her breast. Through the Arcadian woods there was an oak of happy strength, which she herself had consecrated to Trivia, chosen from the crowd of the grove, and by worship had made it a power: here she was wont to lay up her bow and her wearied weapons, and to fix her curved arms and the backs of emptied lions and horns rivalling the huge woods. Scarce was there room for the branches, so do all the rustic spoils gird them, and the gleam of iron hinders the green shadow. This, as by chance she returned from the ridges, wearied by long hunting, just then fierce, bearing the snatched face of an Erymanthian bear, she sees, torn by many a wound, to have laid down its leafage and, its boughs dripping with blood, to breathe out upon the ground; to her asking, a Nymph said the bloody Maenads and the enemy Lyaeus had raged. While she groans and surrounds her breast with vain beating, her eyes broke off the night, and from her mournful couch she leaps, and through her eyes seeks the false weeping.

Therefore, when in the river she had thrice purged the horror, her hair plunged, and added words to console the anxious cares of mothers, she rushed to the shrine of armed Diana beneath the Eastern dew, and the known woods in order and the oak, glad, she sees; then at the goddess's threshold she stood and with such a voice prays in vain: 'Maiden mighty over the groves, whose not soft standards and grim warfare, disdaining my sex, I follow in no Greek fashion — nor have the harsh Colchians by their rite nor the Amazonian bands worshipped you more — : if to me there was never a thiasus or the sport of an insolent night, and, though defiled by a hated couch, yet I bore neither the rounded thyrsi nor the soft spinning, but in the gloomy haunts and after my marriage thus too a huntress, and unwed I remained in spirit: nor was it my care to hide my fault beneath secret caves, but I showed my offspring and laid him trembling before your feet, confessing; nor was he degenerate from my blood, and at once he crept upon my bows, the boy demanded weapons with tears and his first voice: him to me — what do the troubled nights and the dream threaten? — him, I pray, who now to the battles with a bold vow, alas trusting too much in you, has gone, grant me to see the war's victor, or, if I ask too much, grant me only to see him! Here let him sweat and bear your arms, press down the dire signs of evils; why in our woods, woodland Delia, do the enemy Maenads and the Theban powers reign? Ah me! why deep — and may I be an augur empty of the future! — why do I interpret the oak with a deep and great omen? But if sleep sends true presages to the wretched, by your mother's toils, gentle Dictynna, and your brother's glory, drive with all your arrows this unhappy womb; let him hear first the funeral of his wretched mother!' She said, and, dissolved in weeping, she sees the stone of snowy Diana too has grown wet.

The fierce goddess leaves her, still on the sacred threshold laid out and sweeping the cold altars with her hair, and over leafy Maenalus, amid the stars, she rises in a leap and aims her step to the walls of Cadmus, where the inner path of heaven gleams for the gods alone, and, lofty, she sees all the lands beside her. And now she held nearly the middle of her journey, past the leafy neck of Parnassus, when she sees her brother in a gleaming cloud with no wonted look: he was returning from the Echionian arms, mournful, mourning the funeral of the drowned augur. The region of heaven reddened with the star's mingling, and at the sacred meeting the radiance blazed alike on both sides, and their bows met and their quivers answered. He first: 'I know, sister, the Labdacian cohorts and the too-brave Arcadian who has dared the battles you seek. A faithful mother asks: would that the fates granted to indulge her praying! Behold, I myself — for shame! — saw, helpless, the arms of my worshipper and the sacred foliage go down to empty Tartarus, and his face turned upon me as it descended; nor did I hold the chariot and force back the broken earth, savage I and undeserving of worship. You behold the mourning caverns, sister, and the silent homes: this alone I repay as gifts to my pious comrade; nor do you stir doomed aids, and go on with your mournful labours in vain. The end is near for the youth, this fate is not changeable, nor do your brother's oracles deceive you about doubtful things.' 'But the last honour at least,' confused in turn the maiden replies, 'and one may seek solaces for a true death, nor shall he escape punishment, whoever has stained his unspeakable right hand, impious, with the blood of a guiltless boy, and let it be right to rage with our arrows.' So having spoken she moves her steps, and to her brother more sparingly offered her lips to be touched, and sought Thebes in hostility.

But the battle, the kings snatched away from both sides, grows fiercer, and vengeance rouses alternate frenzies. On this side the squadrons of Hypseus and the host desolate of their master, but on this the bereaved cohort roars more heavily for Hippomedon taken away; struggling they offer their bodies to the steel, the same ardour in the rabid to drink foreign blood and to have poured out their own, nor do they change their tracks: the line stands fixed in a wedge, and to the bloody foe they give their lives and deny their backs: when, slipped through the air, swift Latonia stood on the summit of the Dircaean mountain; the hills know her, and the wood trembles at the known goddess, where once, thrust forth with savage arrows, she had consumed fertile Niobe with her wearied bow.

Him, proud amid the lines, the slaughter now begun, ignorant of arms and then enduring the first reins, a hunter's horse bore along, which a dappled tigress girds and beats his shoulders with gilded claws, his neck sits in knots, and the chastised liberty of his mane, and the known crescents of the grove upon his breast's front toss in snow-white tooth. He himself, his mantle twice steeped in Oebalian purple and his tunics bright with gold — this one work his mother had spun — gathered at the flanks with a thin band, had let down his shield on the left shoulder of his steed, heavy with too great a sword: the golden buckle with rounded bite delights him, the girdle hanging round his rough sides, and to hear the sound of the scabbard and the trembling murmur of the quiver and the chains sent from his cone-crest down his back; sometimes, glad, to toss his plumed crest and the jewelled radiance of his helmet, but where the battle heats the panting headpiece, his crown loosed, bare he rises forth: then sweet his hair, and trembling with the rays sweet his looks gleam, and his cheeks, which he himself grieves to delay, not yet changed with the rosy down, nor does the praise of his beauty please him, and with stern threats he much roughens his face, but the comely wrath keeps the honour of his brow. Of its own accord the Theban youth gives ground, mindful of their own sons, and turn back their aimed weapons, but he presses and hurls savage spears at those who pity, and him, warring through the Teumesian ridges, the Sidonian Nymphs, pleasing with his very sweat and dust, praise, and with a silent vow draw their sighs.

To gentle Diana, beholding such things, grief steals deep into her high heart, and, her cheeks marred with weeping, 'What now, a faithful goddess, shall I seek for you, as an escape from near death? Did you of your own accord hasten into these battles, savage and pitiable boy? Alas, your raw and hasty valour counselled it, and the glory that urged your spirited death. Surely, the years now long pressing, the Maenalian grove was too narrow for you, little one, and through the caves of beasts your ways were scarce safe without your mother, whose woodland weapons and bow you, forward one, could not yet fill. And now she beats at my altars over your huge jealousy and wearies the deaf doors and thresholds: you rejoice in the sweet clarions and the howled battles, happy, and about to die only to your wretched parent.' Yet, lest in vain she should have been present at the last honour of the dying, she comes into the midst, hedged with dusky darkness, and first, having stolen light arrows, fills the quiver on the bold boy's back with heavenly weapons, of which none fell without blood; then she sprinkles his limbs with ambrosial liquid, sprinkles his horse, lest his body be seen with a pious wound before death, and mingles sacred songs and conscious murmurs, which in secret caves she herself by night teaches the Colchian women and shows the fierce herbs to those who seek.

Then truly, fiery, with bow drawn forth he flies about, nor rules himself in mind, of country and mother and self forgetful, and uses the heavenly arms too much: as a lion, to whom small his Gaetulian mother herself supplies the bloody food, when first he felt his neck grow with mane and grimly looked back at his new claws, disdains to be fed, and at last, pouring forth, free, loves the open fields and knows not to return to the caves. Whom, come, do you lay low, wicked boy, with your Parrhasian horn? The first arrow troubled Tanagraean Coroebus, sent through a narrow way at the helmet's edge and the buckler's outer margin; the wave of blood stands in his throat, and his face reddens with the fire of the sacred venom. More savagely Eurytion, into whose left eye's orb the cunning point hid itself with triple barbs. He, drawing the full arrow with his slipping eye, went against the author: but what can the strong weapons of the gods not do? Another wound, doubled with his other eye, filled out his darkness; yet the wicked one follows the foe, where he remembers, until, slipping, he fell on the prostrate Idas: here the wretch amid the funerals of savage war quivers and prays for death from comrades and from foes. He adds the Abantiades, Argus marked by his hair, and Cydon, ill-loved by his wretched sister. This one's twin temple he ran through with a slanting arrow, on this side the iron leaped out, on that the swift feather stayed: blood flowed on both sides, the harsh weapons of death give pardon to none, not beauty saved Lamus, not the fillet Lygdus, not his downy years protected Aeolus: Lamus is driven in the face, Lygdus is wounded in the groin, pierced by the weapon you groan, Aeolus, for your snowy brow, you headlong Euboea bore, you fair Thisbe had sent, this one the green Erythrae you will not receive. Never is his hand empty, no missile fled without a power, nor is there rest for his right hand, and to the former's sound the following arrow joins, who would believe it one bow or one hand that raged? Now he directs his strokes, now on the alternate side, doubtful, he changes his attempts, now he flees those who press and looks back with his bow alone.

And now, marvelling and indignant, the Labdacids gathered, and first of the bright blood of Jove, Amphion, still ignorant what funerals on the fields that one was dealing: 'How far will you gain a delay of fate, O boy about to bereave your much-deserving parents? Nay, even pride and boldness swell in your mind, while no one deigns your meetings and your lesser fight worthy of war, and you are left below their wrath; go, seek Arcadia again, and there mingled with your equals, while here fierce Mavors rages in true dust, play battles at home: but if the mournful fame of a tomb moves you, we will give you to death, to die by men!' For long against him the grim son of Atalanta burns with heavier goads — nor yet had that one ceased — and begins: 'Late even against Thebes, whose army this is, I bring my arms; who then is so much a boy as to refuse to war with such men? You see the stock of Arcadia and the fierce seed of a race, not Theban: not under the silent night did a Thyiad mother, servant to Echionian Lyaeus, bring me forth; never have we put on the misshapen mitres on our heads and shaken the base spear in our hand, at once I learned to creep across the icebound rivers and to enter the dread homes of great beasts and — why should I say more? — the steel and the bow always my mother holds, your fathers strike the hollow drums.' Amphion did not bear it, and at his face and at the mouth of the speaker whirls a huge weapon; but, troubled by the dire gleam of the iron, his steed twisted itself and its master to the side and turned aside the greedy spear; the keener for this Amphion sought the youth with drawn point, when Latonia in the midst of the field cast herself and stood before his eyes, meeting all his face.

There clung to the youth, bound by a chaste love, Maenalian Dorceus, to whom his mother had entrusted the wars and her own fear and the bold years of the boy. Then, dissembled in his face, the goddess declares: 'Thus far enough to have harried the Ogygian bands, Parthenopaeus, enough; now spare your wretched parent, spare the gods, whoever favour you.' Nor terrified he: 'Let me — I will ask no more — most faithful Dorceus, lay this man low on the ground, who bears weapons rivalling my weapons and like attire, and tosses his sounding reins. His reins I will rule, his attire you shall hang on the lofty threshold of Trivia, his mother I will present with the captive quivers.' Latonia heard, and laughed with weeping mingled. This had seen, for long now in a remote part of heaven, Venus, embracing Gradivus, and while, anxious, she recalls Thebes and Cadmus to the man and the grandsons of dear Harmonia, she stirs the grief pressed beneath her silent heart in season: 'Do you not see this insolent one, Gradivus, in her virginity bearing herself in the midst of the gatherings of men? And how she tempers the bold lines and the Martial standards? Behold, she even gives and offers to be slain so many men of our race, to her is valour entrusted, to her frenzy? It remains for you to shoot the rustic does.' Roused by the just complaints, into arms leaped down the War-mighty one, to whom alone, as he rushes through the wandering void, Wrath is companion, the rest of the Furies sweat at the wars, nor delay, when, standing by, with harsh warning he chides the mournful daughter of Leto: 'These battles the father of the gods does not give you; unless at once, shameless one, you desert the arm-bearing field, you shall know that not even Pallas is equal to this hand.' What should she do against him? On this side the Martial spear-point presses, on this your mother's full distaff, little one, on this the face of stern Jove: she departs, after these things conquered by shame alone.

But the father Mavors looks round at the Ogygian wings and stirs dread Dryas, whose blood's author was turbulent Orion, and to hate the comrades of Diana (thence he rages) is his inheritance; this one with the sword seizes the troubled Arcadians and disarms their leader; in a long column falls the people of Cyllene and the dweller of shady Tegea, and the Aepytian leaders and the Telphusian phalanxes, but he trusts to lay low the youth himself even with wearied hand, nor saves his strength: for now, weary, here and there he was changing the squadrons; a thousand presages of a funeral press, and the clouds of black death go before, and now the wretch saw his comrades few and the true Dorceus, now he felt his strength slip away little by little, felt too his quivers drained on his lighter shoulder; now less and less he bears his arms, and seems a boy even to himself, when, dread, with the grim light of his shield Dryas blazed up against him: a sudden trembling twisted the face and the bowels of the Arcadian; and as the white swan, when above it it has looked back at the bearer of the fierce thunderbolt, longs for the bank of Strymon to gape and draws its trembling wings into its breast: so on the youth, the mass of savage Dryas seen, now no wrath comes, but the horror of death's herald, yet his arms, the gods and Trivia prayed in vain, he labours, pale, and gets ready his deaf bow, and now he presses with weapons and, slantwise into either arm, touches the horns with his point and his breast with the string, when the spear of the Aonian leader, sped with a great whirl, is borne against him, and cuts the slanting bonds of the sounding string: the strokes perish, and with hands relaxed the vain darts fell from the upturned bow. Then the wretch, troubled, let go both reins and arms, unable to bear the wound, which had entered the cover of his right shoulder and the easy skin: a second spear-point comes up and stops the flight of his steed, its hamstring cut, then Dryas himself falls — a wonder — never of his wound aware: one day the author of the weapon and the cause will appear.

But the boy, laid in his comrades' arms, to a remote part of the field is borne — alas, simple age! — and dying he wept for the horse that lay there; his face fell, his helmet loosed, and a sick grace breathes out through his trembling looks, and his neck, shaken thrice and four times by his seized hair, refuses to stand, and — a thing pitiable even to Thebes — the purple blood went from his snowy breast, at last with broken sobbing he says these words: 'I am slipping; go, Dorceus, console my wretched parent. She indeed, if cares bear true presages, has seen the sad horror either in sleep or by an omen, yet you, by pious art keep the trembler in suspense and long deceive her; nor come suddenly, nor while she holds arms, and at last, when now you are forced to confess, say: I have deserved it, mother; unwilling, take your punishment; a boy, I snatched arms, nor with you holding me back was I still, nor at last, with you anxious amid the wars, did I spare you. Live therefore, and rather be wrathful at my spirit, and now lay aside your fears; in vain from the hill of Lycaeus anxious you look out, if any far off through the clouds either a sound or dust raised from our column: cold I lie on the bare earth, nor anywhere are you near, who would hold my face and out-breathing mouth. This hair at least, bereaved parent,' and to be cut he offered it with his right hand, 'this hair you will take in place of my whole body, which in vain, I disdaining, you were wont to comb, to this you will give the obsequies, and among the rites remember that none blunt my weapons with untried arms or drive my beloved dogs in any caves more. But these arms, unhappy in my first campaigns, burn, or hang them up as the reproach of ungrateful Diana.'