Book 10

10. Damp night, hastened on by the commands of Jove, buried the Sun behind the western gate; nor in pity for the camp of the Pelasgians or the wealth of Tyre, but grieving that beyond the lines so many guiltless nations should be cut down by the sword, the field lies open, hideous with measureless blood: there they leave their arms and the horses they once rode in pride, and corpses robbed of pyres and limbs cast aside. Then a dishonoured company, their standards torn, set apart their stricken ranks; and the gates, too narrow for the throng that marched out armed, took back the returning few in their width. The grief on either side was equal; yet to Thebes there came a comfort, the four wandering troops of the Danaans left without a leader: as when widowed ships are steered across a swelling sea, governed only by god and chance and the storms. Then the Tyrians resolved no longer to guard their own camp, but rather to watch the enemy's flight, lest perchance, content to have returned, they should make for Mycenae: the tally gives the signal to the watches, and the turns are set; the leaders of the covered night, Meges by lot and Lycus of his own will, and now in ordered rank they bring their arms, their feast, their fire; the king steadies them as they go:

'Conquerors of the Danaans — for tomorrow's light is not far off, nor will the darkness that has come between you and the cowards last forever — lift up your courage, and bear hearts worthy of the favouring gods. All the glory of Lerna lies low, and her chief band: Tydeus has gone down to avenging Tartarus, Death is amazed at the black augur's sudden shade, Ismenos swells, having snatched the spoils of Hippomedon, and to count the Arcadian among warlike trophies is a shame. The reward is in your hands; nowhere now are the lofty heads of the war, nor the marked crests of the chiefs through the seven columns; no doubt Adrastus' old age, and his brother's youth that is worse, and Capaneus, to be feared in his raving arms, are left. Come then, and ring the besieged with a wakeful flame! No man need fear the enemy: you are guarding plunder and wealth that are now your own.' So he fills the savage sons of Labdacus with his exhortations, and it pleases them to take up again their spent toils: just as they were — dust and sweat and blood still mingled on their limbs — they turned their steps; scarcely suffering the talk that met them, they shook off even the embraces and the right hands of their own people from their shoulders; then dividing front and rear and the curves of the flanks, on every side they girdle the rampart with hostile fires, as when in a great pack wolves come together toward nightfall, whom in all the fields hunger, daring everything, has wasted with long-drawn gaping: already they press the very folds, vain hope twists their jaws, the trembling bleating and the rich scents from the sheepfolds drive them on; what is left, they break their claws against the hard doorposts, and grind their breasts and dry teeth upon the threshold.

But far off, suppliant on the margin of the Argive temple, the throng, and the daughters of Pelops, poured out before their fathers' altars, beg the help and the return of their own from sceptre-bearing Juno, and they wear away the painted doors and the cold stone with their faces, and they teach their little sons to bow down. Their prayers had already buried the day; the night that follows joins their cares, and the altars keep watch with heaped-up flames. A robe too they bring as a gift, whose marvellous weaving no barren hand had turned, nor any hand parted from a husband, a veil not to be despised, from the baskets of the chaste goddess, where purple in many fashions blooms abundant and kindles, mixed with gold. There the goddess herself, betrothed to the chamber of the mighty Thunderer, still without wedlock and about to lay aside, in fear, the name of sister, with downcast gaze sips the kisses of the boy Jove, simple, not yet offended by her husband's thefts; with this veil the Argive matrons had then clothed the holy ivory, and with tears and lament they prayed:

'Look upon the sacrilegious towers of the Cadmean rival, queen of the starry pole, and scatter the rebel mound, and against Thebes — you can — hurl another bolt.' What should she do? She knows the Fates are set against her Greeks, and Jove turned away; yet she would not have such prayers and such gifts come to nothing; still, chance set in her path the moment for great help: she sees from the high heaven the walls mocked, and the rampart held by a sleepless watch: she shuddered at the goads of her anger, and her hair, shaken, disordered the dread diadem: no more fiercely did she burn when she resented in the empty stars the Thunderer's burden, his Herculean offspring and his twin nights of love. So she resolves to give the Aonians, caught in the sweet charm of sleep, to death, and bids her Iris gird herself with her accustomed orbits, and entrusts to her the whole task. The bright goddess obeys the commands and leaves the pole, and over the earth is suspended on her long arch.

Above the misty bed of the western night and the other Ethiopians, where no star can pierce, there stands a sluggish grove, and beneath it, in the hollow rocks, a deep cave runs empty into the mountain, where idle Nature has set the halls of sluggish Sleep and his untroubled home; shadowy Quiet and slow Oblivion guard the threshold, and torpid Sloth with a face that never wakes. Ease in the forecourt, and Silence, mute, with folded wings, sit and drive the rough winds from the roof, and forbid the branches to stir, and take the murmur from the birds; here is no roar of the sea, though all the shores cry out, nor any crash of heaven; the very river, fleeing through the deep valleys nearest to the cave, falls silent among the rocks and crags: round about the dark herds, all the cattle lie upon the ground, and the new shoots droop, and the breath of the earth bends down the grass. A thousand images of the god the burning Mulciber had carved within: here clings to his side garlanded Pleasure, here his companion Toil, sinking into rest; in one place is the couch shared with Bacchus, in another the cushion that belongs to Love, the offspring of Mars; deeper, in the lofty inner chambers of the dwelling, he lies even with Death, and that grim image is seen by no one. These are the shapes; but the god himself, beneath the moist caverns, lies upon coverlets piled with sleep-bringing flowers; his garments exhale a vapour, and beneath his sluggish body the bedding grows warm, and above the couch a black mist breathes out from his panting mouth; one hand sustains the hair fallen from his left temple, the other has let slip, forgotten, the horn; around him stray the countless Dreams with their wandering faces, true mingled with false, and grim with soothing, the shadowy host of night, and they cling to the beams and doorposts, or lie on the ground; faint, where the gleam circles the hall, is the light and feeble, and the languid lamps that lure on the first slumbers breathe out from their sinking flames.

Here from the blue ether the many-coloured maiden balanced herself down: the woods shine out, the shadowy Tempe smiled upon the goddess, and the house, struck by her gleaming girdle, awakes; but he himself, stirred neither by the bright lamp nor the sound nor the goddess' voice, lies in the same posture, until the daughter of Thaumas drove all her rays upon him and sank deep into his idle eyes. Then thus the tawny mother of the storm-clouds began to speak:

'Gentlest of the gods, Sleep, Juno bids you fasten down the Sidonian leaders and the people of savage Cadmus, who now, puffed up by the issue of the war with the Achaeans, wakeful guard their rampart and refuse your sway. Grant so great a prayer; rarely is such a power to be had, to win Jove appeased, with Juno on your right hand.' She spoke, and rousing his languid breast with her right hand, lest her words be lost, she warned him again and again; he, with the same nodding face, assented to the goddess' commands; heavier now, Iris departs from the dark caverns and wakes her dimmed brightness with a heavy rain.

He too quickened his winged step and his windy temples, and filled the cloak that curved with the chill of the dim sky, and on his silent course through the air he is borne, and far over the Aonian fields hangs heavy. His breath unstrings birds and beasts and herds upon the ground, and deep within, over whatever circle of the world he flies, the languid seas sink from the cliffs, the clouds hang fixed, the woods let down their highest tops, and more stars fell from the loosened sky. First the plain felt the god draw near in sudden gloom, and the countless voices and murmurs of the men lowered their sound; but when on his moist wings he settled, and a shadow never thicker than pitch entered the camp, their eyes wander and their necks go slack, and the words half-uttered are left in the midst of speech, and soon they let fall their gleaming shields and the cruel spears from their hands, and weary their faces sink upon their breasts, and now all is silent: now the horn-hoofed steeds themselves refuse to stand, and a sudden ash has carried off their very fires.

But the same drowsiness does not persuade ease upon the anxious Greeks, and the gentle power of the night-wandering god keeps his clouds from their neighbouring camp: everywhere they stand in arms, indignant at the foul night and at the proud watchers, when lo, as the gods crazed his mind, a sudden horror comes over Thiodamas, and with dread tumult bids him unfold the fates, whether it was the daughter of Saturn or good Apollo that goaded this new companion, he leaps into their midst, dreadful to see and hear, unable to bear the god, whom his frail mind, receiving, cannot hold: the goads spill over, and naked across his face stands frenzy, and it stretches his trembling cheeks with uncertain blood and drains them — his gaze strays here and there — and the garlands mingled in his hair he lashes over his scattered locks, as the Idaean mother draws her bloodstained Phrygian from the shrine with her terrors, and forbids him to know his arms consumed by the iron; he beats the sacred pines against his breast, and whirls his bloody hair, and exhausts his wounds in his running: all the field is afraid, and the tree that tends it is spattered, and the astonished lions raise the car. They came to the inmost place of council and the dread house of the standards, where, long sick with great disasters, moving the last resorts of fortune, Adrastus took counsel in vain. The hastily summoned chiefs stand round, each as he was nearest to the slain, and they guard the places left desolate by the great kings, not glad, and grieving that they have risen to this, just as when, the helmsman lost, a ship has broken its course in mid-passage, and to the rudderless tiller's guidance comes either the guard of the flanks, or he who held the prow facing the sea: the very vessel is dazed, and slowly the gear obeys, nor does its safety come to a lesser master. So the eager augur thus uplifts the trembling Achaeans:

'Great commands of the gods, leaders, and dread warnings I bring; these are no words from my own breast: he sings them, to whom your trust compelled me to be servant and to take the fillets, with no protest from himself. A night fruitful in deeds, and fit for a noble stratagem, is opened by the gods' augury; manhood calls us to the venture, and Fortune demands our hands; the legion of the Aonians lies overwhelmed in sleep: now is the time to avenge the deaths of the kings and that wretched day; seize your arms and break the delay of the gates: this is to set the flames beneath our comrades, this is to bury our own. Indeed both this and in the day's warfare, while our cause was broken and we fell back routed — I swear it by the tripods and the new fate of my snatched master — I saw, and the favourable birds applauded around me. But now my faith is sure: just now, beneath the silent night, he himself, he, rising again, the earth loosened, just as he was — only the shade had stained his yoked horses — Amphiaraus came to me: not the visions of empty rest nor what I learned in sleep do I speak; "Will you," he said, "endure to let so great a night be lost, you idle son of Inachus — give me back these Parnassian garlands, give me back my gods — degenerate one? Was it I myself that taught these secrets of heaven and the wandering courses of the stars? Go, come, avenge us at least with the sword!" he said, and seemed to drive me toward this threshold with raised spear and with his whole car. Therefore come, the gods must be used; not hand to hand must the enemy be laid low: the war lies still, and the power to rage is ours. Will there be any who would not be loath to lift themselves to mighty fame, while the fates permit? Look, again the birds of the kindly night; I follow, and though the columns of comrades hang back, I go alone! And see, he comes himself and shakes the reins.'

Crying out such things he disturbed the night, and the chiefs went, kindled, no otherwise than if the same god were in all their hearts: they burn to go with him and to share his fortunes; thirty in number, the strength of the squadrons, by his order he himself chooses; around, the rest of the youth murmur, indignant, asking why they should stay in camp and keep cowardly ease: some cry out their high birth, some the deeds of their kin, some their own, and others demand the lot, on every side they demand the lot, Adrastus rejoices in adversity and his spirit rises. So on Pholoe's summit the breeder of swift horses, when the springtime's brood has renewed his teeming herd, rejoices, seeing some strain up the steep of the mountain, some swim the fords, others contend with their parents; then in his quiet heart he turns over which is fit to bear the gentle yoke when broken, which has a good back, which is born for arms and the trumpet, which is the better to rise to the Elean palms: such was the long-lived leader of the Achaean troop. Nor does he fail his undertakings: 'Whence this so late and sudden favour of the gods? What powers have you returned, broken, to Argos? Is there yet unhappy valour here? And a blood surviving its race, and do the seeds of spirit endure in our misery? I praise you indeed, noble youths, and I enjoy this fair mutiny of my own; but we are preparing a deception and a hidden battle, movements to be concealed: a crowd is never fit for secret guile. Keep your courage, look, the avenging day comes against the enemy; then arms openly, then we shall all go.' At these words at last the youths' valour, curbed, grew quiet: no otherwise than if father Aeolus, his cave stirred, should again with the imperious rock press shut the gate and bar every way, when now the winds were hoping for the seas.

Besides, the seer joins to himself Hercules' Agylleus and Actor: this one apt to persuade, this one boasts in strength that he has not yielded to his father; three sets of ten comrades in rank, a column dreadful to the Aonians and to those who stand against them, he himself, going to the new stealth of a Mavortian war, lays aside the worshipped, the Phoebean leaves, the insignia of his brow, and entrusts to the old leader's bosom the honour of his forehead, and takes on the breastplate and helmet offered by Polynices' welcome gift; fierce Capaneus weighs Actor down with a great sword, while he himself, deigning not against the foe to go by guile or to follow the gods, Agylleus exchanges the arms of savage Nomius: for what would the bow and the Herculean arrows have profited in war among the deceiving shadows?

Then through the broken battlements from the rampart of the camp, lest the heavy groan of the brazen gate cry out, they hurl themselves in a leap; nor long, and at once a vast plunder lies on the ground, as if already lifeless and finished off by many a sword. 'Go, my comrades, wherever the pleasure of unexhausted slaughter draws you, and with the gods favouring, I pray, do your full part!' the priest now urges with a clear voice, 'Do you see the cohorts laid out in shameful rotting? For shame! Did these dare to besiege the Argive gates, these to guard their men?' So he spoke, and drew his lightning sword, and with swift hand passed through the dying ranks; who could count the slaughters, or mark by name the lifeless throng? He comes on with no order and leaves the backs and breasts and the murmurs shut within helmets, and mingles the wandering shades in blood: this one carelessly stretched on his bedding, this one with steps slow and slack stumbling against his shield and ill-holding his weapons, these lying in the midst of their gatherings among wine and arms, others leaning on their shields, as each, bound fast, unhappy sleep upon the ground and the last cloud had overwhelmed him. Nor is the divine power absent: armed Juno, shaking in her outstretched right hand a moon-lamp, opens the way and steadies his spirit and shows him the bodies, he feels the goddess near, but Thiodamas in silence hides his joy; now his hand is slow, now his iron weary, and his anger dimmed with too much success. Not otherwise the Caspian tigress, amid the slaughter of great bullocks, when her rage, appeased by measureless blood, has wearied her jaws, and, foul with thick gore, has blurred her stripes, looks at her deeds and grieves that her hunger has failed: so the augur, conquered, strays among the Aonian slaughters; now let him wish for a hundred arms and a hundred hands for war; now it wearies him to empty out his idle threats, and he would rather the enemy rose against him.

Elsewhere the offspring of great Hercules lays waste the sluggish Sidonians, and Actor elsewhere; its own crowd meets each man along a bloody path: the grass stands in pools, blackening with gore, the tents drip with rivers of blood; the ground steams, and the breath of sleep and of death together rolls forth; not one of those who lie there lifted his face or his eyes: with such a shade the winged god broods over the wretches, and only looses their dying gazes. Ialmenus, sleepless, had drawn out with lyre and play the last stars, never to see another dawn, singing a Sidonian paean; his languid neck, as the god forces it, lay leftward, and across his lyre his throat was folded back: through his breast Agylleus drives the iron, and strikes the hand fitted to the hollow shell, and the fingers trembling among their own strings. The dreadful liquor overturns the tables: on every side flow waters mingled with blood, and Bacchus into the deep bowls and cups returns; fierce Actor seizes Thamyris entangled with his brother, Tagus drains Echetlus, the garlanded man, from behind; Danaus cuts off the head of Hebrus: unknowing, alas, he is snatched by the fates, and his life flees cheerful to the shades, having gained the agonies of a fierce death. Stretched on the cold ground beneath the faithful yokes and wheels, Calpetus, with his breath, was frightening the Aonian horses as they grazed on his native turf: his soaking mouth overflows, and the sleep kindled by wine seethes; lo, the Inachian seer pierces the throat of the man as he lies, and a vast gush of gore drove out the wine, and a broken murmur perished in the blood. That rest was perhaps prophetic for him, and weighed down he saw in his sleep black Thebes and Thiodamas.

The fourth watch of the sleep-bringing night remained, when the clouds were empty and not all the stars had their honour, and Bootes, with his greater wain, fled away from his blast, and now the very work failed, when provident Actor calls Thiodamas: 'Enough of this unlooked-for joy for the Pelasgians: hardly any, I think, of so great a host have escaped this savage death, save those whom their misshapen life hides among the deep blood, degenerate ones; set a limit to success: even dread Thebes has her own divine powers. Perhaps the gods who favoured us a moment ago withdraw.' He obeyed, and lifting his dripping palms to the stars: 'Phoebus, the spoils, the rewards of the night you showed, not yet washed in water — for to you I made this sacrifice — I, a savage soldier of the tripods and faithful priest, deliver them, if I have not disgraced your commands and have borne the god that pressed me; come often, often deign to burst into this mind. Now to you a raw honour, the maimed arms and the blood of men: but if ever, Paean, you grant me my native home and the longed-for temples, Lycian one, so many rich gifts upon your consecrated doorposts and as many bulls, mindful of my vow, exact.' He had spoken, and called his comrades back from their glad slaughter.

Among these had come, by fate, Calydonian Hopleus and Maenalian Dymas, both beloved of kings, both companions of kings, who after their deaths, grieving, chafe at their own life. First Hopleus rouses the Arcadian: 'Have you no care for the shade of your slain king, illustrious Dymas — whom perhaps even now the birds and the Theban dogs may hold? What then will you carry back to your country, Arcadians? Look, against your return comes a stern mother. Where is the funeral? But in my breast forever Tydeus rages, robbed of a tomb, though more patient in his limbs, and not so lamentable for his years cut short, yet it is my pleasure to go and search the field at random, in savage fashion, or to burst into the midst of Thebes.' Dymas takes up his words: 'By these wandering stars I swear, by the straying shades of my leader, which are to me as a god's power, the same purpose is in me, wretched as I am; long has my mind, humble in grief, looked round for a companion, but now I will go first' — and the way he begins, and turning to the sky with a sorrowful face he thus speaks: 'Cynthia, ruler of the secret night, if they say your power varies with threefold shapes and that you descend into the woods with another face, that companion lately, the famous nursling of the groves, that boy of yours, Diana — now at least look back — is sought,' he says; the goddess kindles with her downturned horns the kindly star, and bringing her car near showed the corpses. The plains appear, and Thebes, and high Cithaeron: so when with thunder evil Jupiter shatters the nocturnal air, the clouds spring apart and in the clear flash the stars lie open, and a sudden world is shown to the eyes. Hopleus too received the rays, and, struck by the same, sees Tydeus by that light; from afar through the shadows they give each other signs, rejoicing, and each one, the dear weight, as if of men restored to life and sent back from cruel death, lifts upon their bowed necks; nor did they dare for words, nor to weep long: near at hand the savage day and the judging sunrise threaten; they go silent through the mournful stillness with great strides, and grieve that the spent shadows pale.

The fates are jealous of the dutiful, and chance is a rare companion of great enterprises; already they see the camp and draw near in spirit, and the burden grows lighter, when a shadow of sudden dust and a sound behind them: at his leader's bidding Amphion was driving the keen horsemen, set to scout the night and the watched camp, and first through the trackless plain far off — not yet had the light loosed all the shadows — he sees something doubtful to the sight, set ablaze, in motion, and bodies moving; then, the trick discovered, at once he cries out: 'Halt your step, whoever you are! But that they are enemies is plain': the wretched men go on, fearing to lead the way and afraid not for themselves; then he threatens death to the trembling pair and hurls his spear, and lifts his vain strokes high from afar, making his hand seem to stray; it stood before the eyes of Dymas, who by chance was first and checked his step. But the great-souled Aepytus did not care to waste his cast, and with fixed weapon pierces Hopleus through the back and grazed even the shoulders of Tydeus as he hung, Hopleus sinks, not yet forgetful of his noble leader, and dies still holding him — happy, if he does not know the body is taken from him — and so descends to the savage shades. Dymas, turned about, had seen this and feels the columns joined behind him, doubtful whether to meet the pressing foe with prayers or with arms; his anger gave him arms, his fortune to pray, not to dare, commanded him: confidence in neither course; his anger put off his prayers; he sets the pitiable body before his feet, and the heavy tiger-skin which by chance he wore upon his back, he twists onto his left arm and stands in the way, thrusting out his drawn sword against them, and turned to every weapon, ready for slaughter and for death close beside: as a lioness, whom in her savage lair, having whelped, the hunting Numidians have surprised, stands erect over her young with a mind made up and yet uncertain, grinding her teeth grim and pitiable; she indeed could scatter their bands and break their weapons with her bite, but love of her offspring conquers her cruel breast, and amid her wrath she looks round at her cubs. And now the man's left hand is wrenched away, though Amphion forbade his men to rage, and the boy is dragged by the hair, his face turned upward, and then at last, a late suppliant, lowering his sword, he begs: 'More gently, I pray, lead him, by the cradle of the lightning-born Bacchus, by Ino's flight and the years of your own Palaemon! If any of you has at home the joys of children, if any here is a father, grant the boy a draught of scant dust and a small torch! He asks, lo, he himself asks, with silent face: I would rather glut the unspeakable birds, yield me to the beasts; it was I who forced the daring of war.' 'Nay,' says Amphion, 'if so great a longing is yours to bury the king, tell the Pelasgians what mind the timid have for war, what the broken and bloodless are preparing; bring all out quickly, and depart, granted your life and your leader's tomb.' The Arcadian shuddered, and at once filled his heart to the hilt: 'Was this lacking,' he says, 'to crown my disasters, that I, a traitor, should disgrace afflicted Argos? We buy nothing at such a price, nor would he himself wish to be burned so.' So he spoke, and the breast, torn open with a great wound, he flung upon the boy, and rolling out his last murmurs: 'Yet meanwhile possess this tomb with me.' So both, in the longed-for embrace of their kings, a pair alike in spirit, the Aetolian and the renowned Arcadian, breathe out their noble souls and take their fill of death. You too, made sacred, though my songs rise from a lesser lyre, mindful of you, shall outlast the years. Perhaps even Euryalus will not scorn you as companion shades, and the glory of Phrygian Nisus will admit you.

But fierce Amphion sends men exulting to carry the deeds back to the king and tell of the stratagem and give back the captive bodies; he himself presses on to exult over the shut-in Pelasgians and to show the severed faces of their comrades. Meanwhile from the height of the walls the Greeks see Thiodamas returning, and no longer hide their bursting joy, as they mark the bared swords and the arms red with fresh slaughter; a new clamour leaps to the great sky, and from the top of the rampart the columns hang, eager each to recognize his own. So a flock of new fledglings, when it has spied its mother far off returning in the air, longs to go to meet her, and from the edge of its high nest juts out, gaping, and would now, now fall, did not the mother with her whole breast bar them, open-winged, and chide them with her loving wings. And while they count the secret work and the gains of silent warfare, and fill their own with glad embraces, and ask for Hopleus and lament the slow Dymas: lo, hard by, the swift leader of the Dircaean squadron had come, Amphion; not for long rejoicing in fresh slaughter he sees the earth seething with countless bands and a whole people perishing in a single ruin, that trembling which a touch of heaven's drawn lamp brings; here he transfixed the young man, and under a single horror together his voice, his sight, his blood fail, and as he begins his groan his very horse turns him away; the squadron flees, their dust whirled back, not yet were they nearing the barriers of Thebes, and already the Argive cohort, trusting in their nocturnal triumph, leaps into the fields; over the arms and the limbs of the fallen and the foul heap on the soil and the half-living blood the horn-hoofed steeds and the men themselves rush: the heavy hoof grinds the limbs, a bloody rain washes and clogs the axles. Sweet it is to the men to go this way, as if they trampled the proud Sidonian roofs and Thebes itself in blood. Capaneus exhorts them: 'Long enough, Pelasgians, has valour lain hidden and concealed: now, now it is glorious for me to conquer with the day as witness; come with me openly, in clamour and dust, youths, in the open: I too have foretelling omens in my right hand and the dread fury of a drawn sword.' So he speaks; eager Adrastus kindles the blazing men, and the Argive son-in-law, and the augur follows now more grim, and now they press the walls — and still Amphion tells of fresh deaths — and they would at once have entered the wretched city, had not Megareus swiftly cried from the high watchtower: 'Close, watchman, the enemy come, close the gates on every side!'

There is a case where excessive fear gives strength: more swiftly every gate comes together; while Echion alone, more slowly, closes the Ogygian gate, the Spartan youth, bold in spirit, burst in, and the slain fall on the first threshold, Panopeus, dweller of Taygetus, and the stiff swimmer Oebalus of Eurotas; and you, watched in all the wrestling-grounds and lately fortunate in the Nemean dust, Alcidamas, whom Tyndareus himself had bound with your first gloves, dying you look back to the vault of your shining master: equally with the turning of his star the god sets; you the Oebalian grove, you the slippery bank of the Laconian maiden and the stream sung of by the false swan shall weep; you the Amyclaean nymphs of Trivia shall mourn, and the mother who schooled you in the laws and the brave precepts of war shall complain that you learned too well. Such is Mars raging on the Echionian threshold.

At last Acron, straining with his shoulders, and Ialmenides, bent forward with his whole breast, turned the oaken bulk of the bronze-bound gate: with as great a groaning neck together the bullocks break through the long-unploughed Pangaean fields. The cost of the work matched its gain, for, the enemy shut in, they shut out their own; within the walls the Greek Ormenus falls, and as Amyntor stretches forth his arms and pours out his prayers, deep in his loosened neck his words and face fall to the ground, and the torque, fair on his neck, fell through the wound onto the hostile sands. Meanwhile the rampart is loosed, and the first delays refuse to stand; now the bands of footmen have joined themselves to the walls: but to cross the wide ditches at a leap is a horror to the horses, the trembling beasts hold back and, dreading the chasm, marvel that it should be crossed; now an onset goes from the very edge, now of themselves they shrink against the rein. These tear up the defences fixed in the soil, while those lessen the barriers of the gates and sweat to heave back the iron bars, and with beams and ringing bronze drive the stones from their place; some exult that the torches flung at the rooftops have caught, some assail the foundations and search the hollow towers with a blind tortoise-roof. But the Tyrians, their one safety, crown every head of the walls, and dark stakes and javelins bright with iron and bullets that will burn through the empty sky and stones torn from their very walls they hurl against the foe: the battlements overflow with a savage storm, and the armed windows vomit hissing weapons, just as above Malea or high Ceraunia the clouds settle, lingering, and are set upon the dark hills, and sudden squalls leap upon the sails: so the Argive army is overwhelmed by Agenor's arms; the dread rain bends neither the faces nor the breasts of the men, they hold their gazes straight upon the walls, heedless of death and seeing only their own weapons. Antheus, sweeping along the walls in his scythed car, the heavy onset of an Ogygian spear struck down from above; the reins were shaken from his hand, and rolled back onto his shoulders, his half-living limbs hang, held by his greaves; a marvel to see, the crime of war: the arms are dragged, the smoking wheels furrow the earth, and a third furrow the spear ploughs; the wandering neck follows in a long trail of dust, and the broad track of his upturned hair lies open.

But the trumpet beats the city with mournful blasts and breaks through the barred doors with its bitter sound, they have divided the approaches, and on every threshold the savage standard-bearer, before all others, carrying his own loss and joy, a dread sight within; scarcely could Mars himself rejoice to see it; the city, maddened with insane horrors, they tear apart with various discord, Grief and Frenzy and Panic and Flight wrapped in blind darkness; you would think the war had entered: the citadels seethe with running to and fro, the streets are confounded with clamour, on every side they see iron and fire in their minds, in their minds they have taken the savage chains, fear has consumed what is to come: now they have filled the houses and the temples, and the thankless altars are walled with lamentation. One and the same terror comes upon all the years: the old men ask for death, the youth burns and turns pale, the halls tremble, wailed over with women's complaints, the boys weep and cannot learn the causes of their weeping, stunned and only trembling at their mothers' laments, love drives the women, and the desperate have no shame: they themselves hand weapons to the men, they themselves supply wrath and courage, they exhort, and rush together, and groaning cease not to show the ancestral thresholds and their little sons: so when the shepherd, about to plunder from the pumice cave, has roused the armed bees, the rough cloud roars, and in turn they exhort one another with their hum, and all fly at the enemy's face; soon, their wings failing, they embrace their golden home and lament the captive honey, and press the wrought wax to their breasts.

Nor does the divided will of the wavering crowd cease to fight and sow discordant movements: these bid them give back the brother — nor do they mutter it, but openly with voice and loud uproar — to give back the kingdom; the reverence for the king has perished in the anxious: 'Let him come and reckon here the bargained year, and let the exile, unhappy, greet the Cadmean home and his native darkness; but why should I atone with blood for the frauds and the perjured crimes of a king's guilt?' Then others: 'That loyalty is too late, now he prefers to conquer.' Others beg Tiresias with tears and a suppliant throng, and what is the one solace in their hard straits, they ask to know the future; he holds shut and presses down the fates of the gods: 'Was it not because our leader well trusted my counsels and warnings before, when I forbade the faithless wars? You, however, unhappy and doomed Thebe,' he says, 'if I keep silent, I cannot, wretched, hear you fall and drink the Argive fire with my empty eyes, let us be conquered, Piety; come, lay out the altars, maiden, let us seek the gods.' She does it, and with keen gaze the bloody points of the flames and the double fire upon the altar and yet the clear summit of light arising in their midst he points out; then in the empty shape of a serpent he shows the redness rolled in a doubtful coil and broken, faltering, and he lights up his father's darkness, he has long since embraced the crowned fires, drinking in the prophetic vapour with his burning face. His hair stands grim with horror, and his frenzied locks lift up the fillets that press them: you would think his torn-open eyes and the brightness, long consumed, had returned to his cheeks. At last he gave words to the overflowing frenzy:

'Hear, O guilty ones, the last offerings of the gods, sons of Labdacus: kindly safety comes, but by a hard road. The serpent of Mars demands funeral offerings and savage rites: let whoever is last surviving of the viper's brood fall; only by this bargain is victory given. Happy is he who shall leave the light at so great a price.' Near the savage altars of the prophetic seer there stood, mournful, mourning as yet only the common fate of his country, Creon: the great stroke of the sudden bolt, no otherwise than if his breast were pierced by a hurled point, lifeless he receives, and feels Menoeceus demanded. For fear shows it and persuades; the anxious father is stunned, his heart freezing with deep dread: as the Trinacrian shore takes the sea recoiling from the Libyan tide, soon he begs the seer, full of Phoebus and bidding him hasten, now humbly clasping his knees, now begging the prophet in vain to keep silent his lips as they chant; already rumour, embracing the consecrated voice, flies, and Thebes cried the oracle aloud.

Now come, who gave the goads and the joys of a glorious death to the youth — for never has this mind been transmitted to man by absent gods — begin, mindful Clio, since the ages and ordered antiquity are in your keeping.

A goddess, companion close beside the throne of Jove, from whom over the world it is wont to be given rarely and to fall to earth, Virtue, whether the almighty father grants her or she herself has chosen to enter capacious men, how then she sprang down, rejoicing, from the heavenly tracts! The bright stars give place to her as she passes, and the fires she herself had fixed in the pole. And now she presses upon the earth, her face not far from the sky; but she chose to change her features, and becomes prophetic Manto, that full faith might be given to the response; and her former face she puts off by deception, the horror and the vigour have gone from her eyes, a little grace and a gentler honour remained, and laying aside the iron she put on the prophets' insignia; her robes flow down, and with a fillet her grim hair is bound — for it had been laurel — yet the harsh face betrays the goddess, and her too-great stride; so the Lydian wife laughed at Amphitryon's son, stripped of his bristling hide, ruining the Sidonian garments on his shoulders and tangling the distaff and breaking the timbrels with his hand.

But she found you not unsightly for the rites and worthy to be bidden such things, Menoeceus, as you stood before the Dircaean tower; the threshold of the vast gate thrown open, you were laying the Danaans low, and beside you Mavortian Haemon. But though you are kinsmen and brothers in all things, you are the first: round about lifeless heaps are piled; every weapon strikes home, no stroke is without slaughter — not yet was the goddess at hand — neither mind nor right hand rests, nor do the greedy arms stand idle; the very Sphinx, the guardian of his helmet, seems to rage, and quickened by the sight of blood the image leaps and the scattered bronze gleams: when the goddess checked the hilt and the right hand of the fighter:

'Great-souled youth, than whom Mars would not have recognized any more surely of the arms-bearing seed of Cadmus, leave these humble battles, this is not the valour owed by you: the stars call you, and you shall send your soul to heaven; conceive higher things; long has your father reveled in this at the glad altars, this the fires and the entrails will, this Apollo urges: they ask the earthborn one for all the blood of the fatherland, rumour sings the warnings, the Cadmean people rejoice, sure of you; seize the gods in your mind, seize the noble fate. Go, I pray, hasten, lest Haemon next forestall you.' So she speaks, and with her great right hand stroked silently the breast of him as he hesitated, and left herself within his heart, no more swiftly does the cypress, breathed on by the rays of the bolt, drink in the hostile flames at root and crown, than the youth, possessed in his breast by the great power, lifted up his senses and seized upon the love of death. But when he marked the gait and bearing of the goddess turned away and saw Manto suddenly grow from the earth into the clouds, he was struck dumb. 'We follow, whoever of the gods you have summoned, nor do we obey slowly,' he says; and now drawing back he yet transfixed the Pylian Agreus, who pressed against the rampart, his squires receive him spent; then the crowd, as he went, acclaimed him, the author of peace and the saviour and the god, rejoicing, and fills him with honourable fires, and now in his haste, breathless with running, he holds his way to the walls and rejoices to have escaped his wretched parents, when his father — and both stood still, and the voice stuck in each, and their cheeks fell, at last the father spoke first: 'What new chance has snatched you from the arms you had begun? What worse than war do you prepare? Tell me, son, your suppliant, why is your gaze grim? Why this fierce pallor on your face, and why do your eyes not stay upon your father's face? You have heard the response, it is plain. By you and yours, son, I pray, and by my years, and by the breasts of your wretched mother, do not trust the seer, do not, boy! Do the gods deign to goad a profane old man, whose sight is empty and his orbs put out, and his punishment most like to dread Oedipus? What if by ambush and crafty fraud the king is acting, to whom in our last fate your nobility and your valour, famous before the leaders, are a fear? Perhaps these are his words, which we think the gods'; he gives the warning! Do not give your rein to a hot mind, give space and a slight delay; ill does impulse manage all things; this, I pray, grant to your father as a gift. So may your temples be marked with the white of ripe years, and may you yourself be a father, and to this same fear, spirited one, may you come: do not go on to bereave my house. Do strangers' fathers, then, and alien pledges touch you? If you have shame, first pity your own. This is piety, this true honour; there is only glory and windy renown and titles hidden in death. Nor as a fearful father do I bend you: go, join the battles, go against the Danaan lines and through the swords that meet you; I do not hold you: only let me, wretched, wash your trembling wounds and dry the welling blood with my tears, and send you again and again to the savage wars, this Thebes prefers.' So he held his neck and hands, clinging; but neither tears nor words moved the youth, vowed to the gods; nay, while they pointed it out, with silent guile he comes upon his father and turns away his fear: 'You are deceived, alas, and know not your true fears, best of fathers, no warnings stir me, nor the utterances of raving seers, nor do empty things move me: let cunning Tiresias chant those things to himself and his daughter; not if Apollo himself, the shrines unbarred, should rave at me hand to hand, but a grievous mishap of my dear brother carries me of my own will to the city: Haemon groans to me, wounded by an Inachian spear; scarcely could I bring him from the mid-dust of battle between the two lines, with Argos now, now holding him — but I delay; go, restore the doubtful, or to the crowd that bears him say, let them obey and carry him gently; I will seek Aetion, skilled to bind wounds and to call back the flight of the last blood.' So speaking his unfinished words he fled; in him, his breast plunged in black gloom, his senses were confounded; his piety wavers uncertain and his fears are at odds, the Fates impel him to believe.

Meanwhile turbulent Capaneus drives over the level field the warlike bands coming from the broken gates, now the wings of horsemen, now the wedges of footmen, and the cars that trample down the dead of their drivers; the same man with stones and frequent whirlwind loosens the high towers, the same drives the squadrons and steams in blood, now he scatters new wounds, hurling with the swift lead, now whirls his javelin high with his outflung arm, and there is no rooftop's height his spear does not reach, bringing down a man and returning drenched with slaughter. Now neither Oeneus' son nor Hippomedon, slain, nor the seer does the Pelopean phalanx, nor the Arcadian, believe him to be: nay, that the souls of the comrades have come together and all stand in a single body, so wholly does he fill all things; no man's age, no dress, no beauty moves him; he rages alike against fighters and suppliants; no one withstands him, none tries the changes of war: from afar they shudder at the arms of the raging man, his terrible plumes, and the front of his helmet.

But dutiful Menoeceus, on a chosen part of the walls, now sacred to behold and more august than his wont in face, as if suddenly let down to earth from the heavenly height, took his stand, his helmet removed, clearly to be known, and looked down on the lines of men, and with a deep cry turned the field and bade silence upon the war: 'Gods of arms, and you, Phoebus, who with so great a death grant me to die, give joy to Thebes, which I have bargained for and bought, lavish, with all my blood. Bear back the war and dash against captured Lerna its base remnants, and nursing their transfixed backs may father Inachus turn away from his dishonoured sons. But to the Tyrians give back temples, fields, homes, marriages, children, by my death: if I, the welcome victim, have helped you, if not with stunned ears did I receive the seer's counsels and drank them down with Thebes not yet believing, pay these things for me to the Amphionian dwellings, and, I pray, by your prayers win over my deceived father.' So he speaks, and with his flashing sword seizes his noble soul, that long since disdained his limbs and grieved to be held, and with a single wound he breaks the soul he sought, then with his blood he sprinkles the towers and hallows the walls, and over the midst of the lines, his sword not yet sheathed, he cast himself and tried to fall upon the savage Achaeans. But Piety and Virtue, embracing him, bore his body gently to the earth; for his spirit long since asks itself a place before Jove and the topmost peak among the stars.

And now within the walls, recovered with no toil, they bear the hero, rejoicing: of its own will the venerated band of Tantalus' kin had withdrawn; he comes in a long column between the necks of the young men, and with glad acclaim by all the people he is sung above Cadmus and Amphion, as founder; some heap his limbs, loosed in death, with garlands, some with the honour of spring, and lay the adored body in its native place. Soon, his praises ended, they take up the war again; here the father, tearful, his anger conquered, groans aloud, and at last the mother is given power to weep: 'Was it as a lustral victim for savage Thebes, illustrious boy, and a devoted head, that I, a worthless mother, reared you? What crime did I contrive, to whom of the gods so hateful? I did not, turned back to a monstrous union, make over my pledges anew, nor as a mother bear deadly grandsons to a son. What does it matter? Jocasta enjoys her sons and sees them leaders and ruling: I give savage expiations to the war, that in turn — does this please you, author of the bolt — the Oedipodean brothers may exchange their diadems! Why do I complain of gods or men? You, savage Menoeceus, you above all have hastened to extinguish your wretched mother. Whence this love of death? What sacred madness in your mind? What conceptions, or what ill-omened pledges did I bring forth, so unlike myself? Doubtless the serpent of Mars, and the earth that flowered with the new arms of our forefathers — hence these grim spirits and too much of Mars in your breast, and nothing of your mother; of your own will and unbidden, slain, you burst into the mournful Fates, though they were unwilling. But I dreaded the Danaans and the weapons of Capaneus: this, this was the hand and the iron to be feared, which, mad, I gave you myself. Do you see how the sword has spent itself in your throat? No Danaan would have driven the point deeper.' The unhappy woman would have spoken still more, and filled all things with her complaints: her companions and the handmaids lead her away, loathing them, consoling, and hold her in her chamber; she sits, her cheeks gouged with much nail; she heeds not the day, not the words of those who pray, nor turns the gaze she has left fixed on the ground, now bereft of voice, now of mind; so the fierce tigress, her young snatched away, abandoned beneath a Scythian cave, lies and licks the traces of the warm rock; nowhere her wrath, the savagery and hunger of her raging mouth has settled; the untroubled herds and flocks pass by: she looks at them as she lies; for where, on what shall she feed her teats, or whom, awaited, shall she crush with her huge prey?

Thus far arms, trumpets, iron, and wounds: but now Capaneus must be raised hand to hand into the star-bearing heights. No longer must I sing in the customary manner of the seers; a greater madness must be sought from the Aonian groves: dare it all with me, you goddesses! Whether that frenzy was sent from the deep night, and the Stygian sisters, following Capaneus' standards, snatched arms against Jove, or whether his valour passed all measure, or his glory was headlong, or whether a great death was given by the fates, or whether glad beginnings of evil, and the kindly wraths of the gods toward mortals.

Now earthly things grow base to the man, and he wearies of the deep slaughter, and at last, his missiles spent both of the Greeks and his own, he looked back at the sky with a wearied hand; soon he measures the lofty heights with a grim gaze, the countless steps, the side closed in by twin beams of wood, and carries himself an airy path, and, dreadful from afar, brandishes a many-cleft oak with a blazing light; his arms glow together and a fire is kindled on his shield. 'This way,' he says, 'to Thebes, this way lofty valour bids me go, where the tower is slippery with Menoeceus' blood; I will test what the sacred rites avail, or whether Apollo is false.' He speaks, and with alternate step rises, exulting, into the captured walls: as the heaven amid the clouds saw the Aloïds, when the impious earth was growing to look down upon the gods, and not yet had monstrous Pelion come, and Ossa was already touching the trembling Thunderer.

Then indeed, astonished at the highest hinge of the fates, as if the final plague should come upon the city, and Bellona, about to level the towers to the ground with bloody torches, were entering, from all the roofs they vie to whirl huge stones and oaks and the strong thongs of the Balearic sling — for whence is hope in javelins and arrows wandering in the sky? — but eagerly they whirl their engines too and press with masses. He, never dragged down by the weapons hurled before or following upon his back, and hanging in the empty air as if treading the level ground with sure footsteps, strains on and climbs against the vast ruin that meets him: as a river, pressing against the timbers of an old bridge, assails them with ceaseless waters, now the stones crack and the beams are dislodged; so much the more violent he — for he feels it — shakes and drags with a greater surge the sick mass, until the swift channel cuts off all its bonds, and the victor breathes again in his open course; and when, lofty, he rose above the long-sought heights and, rising, looked down upon the trembling city and terrified Thebes with his huge shadow, he upbraids the astonished men: 'The humble citadels of Amphion, for shame! These walls, pliant and following an unwarlike song, these, the long-lying fable of Thebes? And what glory to lay low walls built by a soft lyre?' At once, insulting with foot and hand, he savagely pulls down the wedges and planking that bar his way: the bridges leap apart, and the stony stays of the pressing roof give way, and using again the broken-down mound, he hurls the shattered crags upon the temples and houses and breaks the city with its own walls.

And now around Jove the Argive and the Tyrian gods raged with divided zeal; the father, just to both, beholds their great wraths near at hand, ablaze, and sees himself stand in their way, he groans with his stepmother looking on, Liber, and looking back at his father with sidelong eye: 'Now where is your savage hand, and, alas, my flame's cradle, the bolt — ah, where is the bolt?' he says. Apollo groans for the homes that he himself gave; mournful, the Tirynthian weighs Lerna against Thebes and hesitates with bent bow; the winged son of Danaë laments his mother's Argos; Venus weeps for the people of Harmonia, and, fearing her husband, stands afar and looks back at Gradivus with silent wrath. Bold Tritonia upbraids the Aonian gods, furious silences torment Juno, who keeps still. Yet these things do not trouble the peace of Jove: lo, the quarrels have ceased, when Capaneus is heard amid the stars. 'Do you stand, you powers, for trembling Thebes?' he cried. 'Where are the sluggish nurslings of that unspeakable land, Bacchus and Alcides? It shames me to provoke the lesser ones. You rather come — for who is worthier to clash with us? Look, the ashes and the tomb of Semele are held — now come, now strive against me with all your flames, Jupiter! Or are you braver to trouble timid girls with thunder and to raze the towers of Cadmus, your father-in-law?'

The grief of the gods groaned at his words; Jove himself laughed at the raving man, and shaking the mass of his sacred hair: 'What hope is there for men after the battles of swelling Phlegra! Must you too be struck?' he says. On every side the crowd of gods presses the slow one, gnashing, and demands the avenging weapons, nor does his wife now dare, troubled by the fates, to withstand, the heavenly palace itself, the signal not yet given, of its own accord thunders, the very clouds gather without wind and the rains hurry up: you would think Iapetus had broken his Stygian chains, or that bound Inarime or Aetna were being lifted to the upper vaults; the dwellers of heaven are ashamed to fear these things; but when amid the whirl of the world they see the man stand and demand his mad battles, they marvel in silence and grow pale at the doubtful bolt. Above the heights of the Ogygian tower the pole had begun to bellow secretly, and the sky to be taken in darkness: yet he holds the citadels he does not see, and as often as the lightnings flashed from the grinding storms, 'This way,' he says, 'to Thebes, with these fires now it is fit to use, hence to renew the brands and kindle my weary oak.' As he spoke such things, the bolt, driven with all of Jove, seized him: his foremost crests fled into the clouds, and the black boss of his shield falls, and now all the limbs of the man shine. The lines give way, and on both sides the terror, where he may rush, what squadrons he may strike with his burning body, he feels the brand hiss within him, his helmet and his hair, and trying with his right hand to thrust off the burning breastplate, he handles the ash of the iron beneath his breast. Yet he stands, and turned toward the stars he breathes his last, and thrusts his smoking breast against the hated walls, that he might not fall: but his earthly limbs leave the man, and his spirit is put off; if a little more slowly his limbs had given way, he might have hoped for a second bolt.