BOOK XXXII

In the thirty-second are battles, and the bed of sleeping Zeus, and the madness of Bacchos. APHRODITE was won. The mistress of wiles obeyed the cunning request, and drawing the cestus up from her bosom she bestowed it upon willing Hera, and thus she spoke and described the witchery of the shall charm all in one with this cestus, the guide to all desire—Sun and Zeus and the company of stars, and the evermoving stream of boundless Ocean.” Assyrian Libanos. But Hera passed to the starscattered circle of Olympos. Quickly she decked out her allwhite body. Often she guided the straying clusters of floating hair and arranged them in even rows down to her forehead ; she touched up the plaits with sweetscented oil—stir it, and the farspreading scent of the unguent intoxicates heaven and sea and the whole earth. She put on her head a coronet of curious work, set with many rubies, the servants of love ; when they move, the Cyprian flame sends out bright sparklings. She wore also that stone which draws man to desire, which has the bright name of the desire-struck Moon; and the stone which is enand it is of course associated with Myrrha. Cf. Pausanias amoured of iron the loveproducing ; and the Indian stone of love,® offspring itself of the waters and akin to the Foamborn; and the deep blue sapphire still beloved of Phoibos. About her hair she twined that herb“ of passion which Cythereia loves as much as the rose, as much as the anemone, which she wears when she is about to mingle her love with Myrrha’s son.@ She bound the unaccustomed cestus about and about her flanks ὁ: but the embroidered robe she wore was her oldest, still bearing the bloodmarks of maidenhead left from her bridal, to remind her bedfellow of their first love when she came to her brother a virgin in that secret union. She washed her face, and wrapt about her a shining robe and clasped it with a brooch to lock up her tunic. Having thus adorned herself and surveyed all in the mirror, Hera sped through the air, swift as a bird, swift as a thought.’ Highest and Mightiest saw her, the goading cestus whipt him to hotter love. As Zeus looked upon her, his eyes were enslaved, and staring hard Cronides clime ? What need has brought you?) Why are you here to-day ? Are you again full of wrath and armed against Bacchos of the vine? Do you desire to help yet mad with jealousy, answered, deluding her my own. I came not to concern myself with others’ troubles, warlike Indians and Indianslaying Dionysos, but I hasten to visit the blazing court of the East near to Helios. For Eros is on the wing beside the waters of Tethys, struck with passion for Rhodope Ocean’s daughter, and he has renounced his matchmaking !

So the order of the universe is out of joint, life is worthless when wedlock is gone. I have been to summon him, and here I am on the way back. For you know I am called the Lady of Wedlock, because my hands hold the accomplishment of childbirth.” Dionysos cut down root and branch those Indians who will have no Bacchos, and goodbye to him! But let a bridebed receive us both! Not for any mate, neither mortal woman nor goddess, was I ever so charmed in soul at the touch of the cestus; no, not even when I had Tejgete Atlas’s daughter, from whose bed was born Lacedaimon the ancient prince— not so did I love Niobe,’ the daughter of primeval Phoroneus beside Lerna—not so did I love Inachos’s Io, the wandering heifer, from whom beside the Nile came the line begun by Epaphos and primeval Ceroessa—not so did I desire the Paphian, for whose sake I dropt seed in the furrow of the plowland and begat the Centaurs,° as I now feel sweet desire for you! And so you shoot your own husband with district Lacedaemon are provided with eponyms.

nexion with the daughter of Tantalos. Cyprian shafts, being the Lady of Wedlock and queen clouds like a wall, he arched them eddying above like a round covering dome. It was something in the shape of a bridal chamber, so contrived that the purple manicoloured bow of heavenly Iris was then round it like a crown. Thus there was a natural covering for the loves of Zeus and his fairarmed bride as they mated there in the open hills, and there was the shape of a couch self-formed to serve their gracious marriage, Earth unfolded her teeming perfumes and crowned the marriage bed with lovely flowers : there sprouted Cicilian saffron, there grew bindweed, and wrapt his male leaves about the female plant by his side, as though breathing desire, and himself a dainty mate in the world of flowers. So the double growth adorned the bed of the pair, covering Zeus with saffron and Hera his wife with bindweed ; lovely iris leaping upon anemone portrayed by a meaning silence the sharp love of Zeus.

No immortal then beheld the shaded bed of the divine ones, not the Nymphs of the neighbourhood, not Phaéthon allseeing, not even the soft eye of Selene herself saw that imperishable bed; for the couch was covered with thick shady clouds round about, and Sleep the servant of the Loves had charmed the eyes of Zeus. flowers, holding his wife in his arms on that bed unseen, the Fury of many shapes wandering among the hills armed herself against Dionysos by Hera’s commands. She made a great rattling over Lyaios’s eyes, loudly cracking her snaky whip ; she shook her head, and a deadly hiss issued from her quivering serpenthair, terrible, and fountains of poison drenched the rocky wilderness. . . . At times, again, she showed a face like some wild beast ; a mad and awful lion with thick bristles upon his neck, threatening Dionysos with bloody gape. mind-marauding madness, and would have driven the madness away, but Hera with heavy noise aloft cast a burning brand at her and scared her off. The mistress of the hunt gave way in anger to her stepmother. But she did protect maddened Bacchos a little ; she held back her wild beasts with threatenings, and shackled the hunting dogs, fastening straps round and round their necks that they should not hurt the flesh of delirious Dionysos.

back into the darkness, and sent out many spectral visions to Lyaios. Showers of poison-drops were shot upon the head of Bromios and big fat sparks ; ever in his ears was the whistling sound of the hellish whip which robbed him of his senses. paced the pathless mountains with wandering foot, shaken by terrible pantings. Like a mad bull, he dashed his horns against the rocks, and a harsh bellow came from his maddened throat. Echo left Pan and mimicked his tune no more, but bellowed an ugly sound in frenzied tone, repeating the wild noise of Dionysos. He swift as the storm chased the dappled deer and shaggy lionesses, plying his highland hunt. No lion so bold as to come near him; the bear appalled and scared hid in a secret cave, fearing the menacing madness of Lyaios, hearing the sound of the god in her rough ears. With pitiless thyrsus he cut through long pythons lying on a stone and gently licking him: he shook the rocks with longpointed horn: he killed troops of lions, unyielding beasts but now seeking mercy: he rooted up trees from the fruitful soil, he chased the Hadryads, he volleyed the cliffs and drove the Naiad nymphs out of the river homeless. Bassarids went scattering and would not come within touch of Lyaios, Satyrs shivered and hid in the sea; they would not come near him, dazed at the threatening onset, lest he dash at them letting out that outlandish roar, spitting snowy foam, the witness of attacked the Bacchant women, while Dionysos was being shaken at the command of Hera. As when the sea bellowing with the rush of wintry surge, unnavigable, is driven wildly by contrary winds, and floods the soaking air with waves mountain-high : the blasts have parted the stern-hawsers in the pitiless assault of the billows, the violent wind has tangled up the canvas with its breath and made a cloak of girdling sails round the bending mast, the yard is askew, the sailors in despair have thrown hope to the sea —so the Indian Ares threw into confusion the whole Bacchic army.

came an unequal fight, a one-sided struggle ; for brazen Ares came back unwearied to awaken the conflict. He took the form of the champion Modaios, more than all others unsated with battle, whose Joy was joyless carnage, whom bloodshed pleased better than banquets. On the shield he bore the graven image of Medusa with her bush of hair, like the viperine tresses of the Gorgon’s head, and he was equal to Deriades, of the same colour. So then Ares took on Modaios’s terrible shape and the copy of his unsmiling face, his curly hair and the blazon of his shield, and furiously raging rushed amid the fray to scatter the people, giving courage to his warriors. With one voice the Indians fearlessly roared their warcry, now Bacchos was not there, and deathly Ares shouted as loud as nine thousand,? with Discord moving by his side to support him; in the battle he placed Rout and Terror” to wait upon Deriades. So the army of Dionysos, absent in the wilderness, was driven pellmell by Deriades, and his comrade Ares, and the slumber of Zeus.

common ardour girded the whole company of Bassarids with a ring of steel; many were slain by one slayer in their flight, smitten by swords. O ye Muses of Homer! Tell me who died, who fell to the spear of Deriades! Aibialos and Thyamis, Ormenios and Opheltes, Criasos Argasides, Telebes and Lyctian Antheus, Thronios and Aretos, Moleneus with his ashplant and Comarcos in his might—a host were laid out dead one upon another by the spear of Deriades. They fell as they were slain, one stretched out on the ground ; one swam in the water enduring trouble amid the waves; one drowned in the sea ex that he was a of C probably originally he a beautiful statue of a woman, fell in love with it and successfully begged Aphrodite to make it live is the hard by, whom Arabian Nereus buried in the waves newly wounded by the pursuing spear ; another ran over the hills with stormswift sole fleeing his fate ; another left the lance planted in the middle of his back and crawled into the heart of the bushes, longing for absent Dionysos to save him.

crushed by the manbreaking rock from gigantic Morrheus : he was a Cyprian, with the down fresh around his cheeks. He lay then like a palm spire with a head of leaves ; but in the battle he rushed about shaking his torch, a tender lad with uncropt hair, until he was struck on the top of the hip, where nature had fitted the axle in the cup of the thigh to grow together with the flesh of his body. He died holding the mystic pine still alight, and in his convulsions burnt his head to ashes with his own torch, setting fire to the braided hair with the smoking brand. Then Morrheus triumphed over him and which is called your nurse—Echelaos lad, you have belied your birth as a Cyprian! You are not sprung from Pygmalion,? to whom Cypris gave a long course of life and many years. Ares the bridegroom of your Paphian did not save you. Your Cythereia did not grant you infinite circles of revolving years and a car that stumbled not, that you might escape your only well-known story concerning him. From this passage it appears that the goddess also granted him long life and that she gave him a carriage (not a war-chariot, for it was drawn by mules) which carried him safely out of all dangers. Lines 216-218 must refer to some tale concerning Pygmalion, for they are quite inappropriate to Echelaos, who evidently had been fighting on foot.

fate on that fatefending waggon, as you ever drove a kneeheavy run of mules !—Wrong ! you do come from Cyprus. Fate caught you also quick when Ares vanquished you just like Myrrha’s son.” @ thrust again at the footmen. He caught waddling Bilithos and killed Denthis, cut off the head of Erigbolos the dancer and put the Phrygian warriors to flight with farcast spear. Sebeus he brought down with a jagged stone ; he chased Actaion and the company of Thebans, and killed Eubotes, who dwelt in the Cadmeian country, a companion of Actaion. One common shriek arose as a multitude fleeing before the infinite might of Deriades in utter rout slipt into the meshes of one common fate, dying in heaps under the blows of one man and his murderous destroying steel, falling over each other and lying in rows on the Thargelos Iaon: Coilon tumbled among them slain, Cyes rolled over in bloody death a corpse. The carnage was infinite: the steel cut them down, the thirsty soil accepted this foreign shower of war’s torrents, and gladly bathed in the enemies’ footmen were shaken and ran, the horsemen checked their jewelled bridles to flee and escape. So one made for the hills and into a cave in the rocks, one crept into the bushes on the hillside and sat hidden under the leaves, one entered the cave of lions, another the den of a savage bear, one slunk over a high cliff and traversed the uplands with hillranging feet. A him is now and then said to have been Ares in disguise.

Bacchant passed by the lair of a wild beast with a litter, and trod the uplands with timid shoe ; now she wanted no longer a lion’s rocky den, but she found a harbourage of weak deer in her craven mood—for she had changed her former heart into a deer’s heart instead of a lioness. One of the stormswift Satyrs was running like the quick winds, unshod, with frightened foot, to escape the impious weight of Deriades’ threats. Anold Seilenos wandered scouring the cliffs. Often he sank with stumbling feet upon heavy knees, and fell to the ground and covered his face with dirt ; then he lifted his hairy form again, but instead of fighting he hid among the hills, and with difficulty kept clear of helmeted Morrheus with his spear. The spear of Euios, the thyrsus, he was obliged to throw away for the peaceful winds to take care of. Erechtheus retired slowly with reluctant feet, turning again and again his round eyes backwards, for he was ashamed to think of Athena the warlike patron of his city.

Aristaios hit by an arrow in the left shoulder, unwillingly refused to take further part in Mainad battle on behalf of Bacchos. Melisseus was avoiding the company of spearbold Corybants ; he was pierced through his hairy chest and the Erythraian spear had gone through the nipple. The grim merciless Cyclopians hastened to flee discomfited with quick foot, and with them Phaunos also fled from the Indian battle though unshaken. An ancient Parrhasian Pan, himself a runaway, led to flight the whole horned company, and with silent feet plunged into the shadowy forest, that restless Echo might not see him escaping over the hills and mock him and call him coward. who was left there alonein the battle fighting on, though he needed the presence of unconquered Dionysos. Nevertheless there he stayed. The Nymphs from the rocks had hidden in the deep hall of some Naiad ; these joined the nymphs of Hydaspes, those fled to neighbouring Indos and lodged in his waters, others went to the Sydros, others washed off the fresh gore in the Ganges—these were many, they came in herds to the watery channels, and the silverfoot Naiad stood at her hospitable door to welcome them into the watery retreat of her virginal palace. Others hid under the shady branches of a Hamadryad or slipt into open holes in the trees. Many Bassarids were beside the watersprings near the rock shedding fountains of tears ; and the deep fountain itself, filled with the showers of tears newly shed upon her sorrowful countenance, grew all dark lamenting the heavy mourning of nevermourning Dionysos.