V souboru nejsou zahrnuty texty, které máte v seznamu povinné četby k předmětu. (Ty lze sehnat
poměrně snadno v českém překladu). Takže prosím nezapomeňte, že do poezie tohoto  období patří i
další skvělé epigramy (sem jsem vám dala jen výběr z kolekce Řecká lyrika), které máte v povinné
četbě a určitě si je přečtěte :-)

Epigramy


Epigramy ofoceny z knihy Řecká lyrika. Přel. Ferdinad Stiebitz. Praha: SNKLHU, 1954, 316, 318nn.,
324nn.

Bajky


Přiloženo ve zvláštním souboru (nemusíte číst všechno, vyberte si pár).


Písně náboženského charakteru


Greek Magical Papyri Texts

https://archive.org/stream/Papyri_Graecae_Magicae/Papyri_Graecae_Magicae_djvu.txt


xxvii. Prayer to Selene for Any Spell

[Since several aspects of this ritual are contrary to modern Pagan and Wiccan ethics and practice,
I had some misgivings about including it in this collection, but decided to do so, because the hymn
is so beautiful, so moving and so empowering. It has been discussed by K. Kerenyi, "Die Goettin
Natur," Eranos-Jahrbuch 14 (1947), 39-86.]


"Come to me, O Beloved Mistress, Three-faced

Selene; kindly hear my Sacred Chants;

Night's Ornament, young, bringing Light to Mortals,

O Child of Morn who ride upon the Fierce Bulls,

O Queen who drive Your Car on Equal Course

With Helios, who with the Triple Forms

Of Triple Graces dance in Revel with

The Stars. You're Justice and the Moira's Threads:

Klotho and Lachesis and Atropos

Three-headed, You're Persephone, Megaira,

Allekto, Many-Formed, who arm Your Hands

With Dreaded, Murky Lamps, who shake Your Locks


Of fearful Serpents on Your Brow, who sound

The Roar of Bulls out from Your Mouths, whose Womb

Is decked out with the Scales of Creeping Things,

With Pois'nous Rows of Serpents down the Back,

Bound down Your Backs with Horrifying Chains


Night-Crier, Bull-faced, loving Solitude,

Bull-headed, You have Eyes of Bulls, the Voice

Of Dogs; You hide Your Forms in Shanks of Lions,

Your Ankle is Wolf-shaped, Fierce Dogs are dear

To You, wherefore they call You Hekate,


Many-named, Mene, cleaving Air just like

Dart-shooter Artemis, Persephone,

Shooter of Deer, night shining, triple-sounding.

Triple-headed, triple-voiced Selene

Triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked.

And Goddess of the Triple Ways, who hold

Untiring Flaming Fire in Triple Baskets,

And You who oft frequent the Triple Way

And rule the Triple Decades, unto me

Who'm calling You be gracious and with Kindness

Give Heed, You who protect the Spacious World

At night, before whom Daimons quake in Fear

And Gods Immortal tremble. Goddess who

Exalt Men, You of Many Names, who bear

Fair Offspring, Bull-eyed, Horned, Mother of Gods

And Men, and Nature, Mother of All Things,

For You frequent Olympos, and the broad

And boundless Chasm You traverse. Beginning

And End are You, and You Alone rule All.


For All Things are from You, and in You do

All Things, Eternal One, come to their End.

As Everlasting Band around Your Temples

You wear Great Kronos' Chains, unbreakable

And unremovable, and You hold in

Your Hands a Golden Scepter. Letters 'round

Your Scepter Kronos wrote Himself and gave

To You to wear that All Things stay steadfast:

Subduer and subdued. Mankind's Subduer,

And Force-subduer; Chaos, too. You rule.

Hail, Goddess, and attend Your Epithets,

I burn for You this Spice, O Child of Zeus,

Dart-shooter, Heav'nly One, Goddess of Harbors,

Who roam the Mountains, Goddess of Crossroads,

O Nether and Nocturnal, and Infernal,

Goddess of Dark, Quiet and Frightful One,

O You who have Your Meal amid the Graves,

Night, Darkness, Broad Chaos: Necessity

Hard to escape are You; You're Moira and

Erinys, Torment, Justice and Destroyer,

And You keep Kerberos in Chains, with Scales

Of Serpents are You dark, O You with Hair

Of Serpents, Serpent-girded, who drink Blood,

Who bring Death and Destruction, and who feast

On Hearts, Flesh Eater, who devour Those Dead

Untimely, and You who make Grief resound

And spread Madness, come to my Sacrifices,

And now for me do You fulfill this Matter."


Orfické hymny

https://www.theoi.com/Text/OrphicHymns1.html

THE ORPHIC HYMNS are a collection of 87 short religious poems composed in either the late
Hellenistic (C3rd or C2nd B.C.) or early Roman (C1st to C2nd A.D.) era. They are based on the
beliefs of Orphism, a mystery cult or religious philosophy which claimed descent from the teachings
of the mythical hero Orpheus.

The Hymns of Orpheus. Translated by Taylor, Thomas (1792).
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. (Current edition).

The 1792 translation by Taylor with his notes is still available in print. However a much more
accurate, modern translation by A. Athanassakis has since been released. See the booklist (left
below) for details of these two volumes and other related works on Orphism.

Formatting notes:
1. I have compacted each of Taylor's verse couplets into a single line to shorten the page and make
the information easier to print.
2. Taylor has translated most of the Greek names to their Latin equivalents. For the sake of
clarity I have reinserted the Greek names from the source text in square brackets.



29: To Bachcus (Dionysos)

The Fumigation from Storax.
Bacchus [Dionysos] I call, loud-sounding and divine, fanatic God, a two-fold shape is thine:
Thy various names and attributes I sing, O, first-born, thrice begotten, Bacchic king:
Rural, ineffable, two-form'd, obscure, two-horn'd, with ivy crown'd, euion, pure.
Bull-fac'd, and martial, bearer of the vine, endu'd with counsel prudent [Eubouleos] and divine:
Triennial, whom the leaves of vines adorn, of Jove [Zeus] and Proserpine [Persephoneia], occultly
born.
Immortal dæmon, hear my suppliant voice, give me in blameless plenty to rejoice;
And listen gracious to my mystic pray'r, surrounded with thy choir of nurses fair.

Kléméns Alexandrijský. Hymnus na spasitele Krista

Čtěte až od nadpisu „Clement of Alexandria“ (předchází mu úplně jiná píseň)

https://hymnary.org/hymn/HPEC1908/21



Řehoř z Nazianzu, Básně o dogmatu 59

Ty, jenž jsi nade vše

Ty, jenž jsi nade vše, o čem jiném lze zpívat než o tobě?

Jak by však slovo mohlo opěvovat tebe? Vždyť tebe nemůže žádné slovo vyslovit.

A jak tě mysl bude moci nazírat? Vždyť tebe nemůže žádná mysl pojmout.

[Ty jediný jsi nevyslovitelný. Vždyť z tebe pochází vše, o čem lze hovořit.]

Ty jediný jsi nepoznatelný. Vždyť z tebe pochází vše, nač lze pomyslet.

[Vše – nadané řečí i němé – zpívá o tobě.]

Vše – nadané rozumem i bez něj – oslavuje tebe.

[Vše touží po tobě, veškeré bolestné úsilí směřuje k tobě.]

K tobě se vše modlí, na tebe vše,

co chápe tvou složenou podstatu, pěje svůj mlčenlivý hymnus.

V tobě jediném vše trvá. K tobě vše společně kvapně spěje.

Ty jsi završením všeho. Jsi jeden, jsi vším a nikým,

a přitom nejsi jeden a nejsi vším. Máš všechna jména. Jak tě mám nazvat,

když jsi jako jediný nevyslovitelný? [Která nebeská mysl

pronikne nadoblačným závojem?] Buď milostiv.

Ty, jenž jsi nade vše, o čem jiném lze zpívat než o tobě?


Epika


Orfická Argonautica

Přiloženo ve zvláštním souboru (opět nemusíte číst všechno, stačí po str. 10)-


Nonnos z Panopole. Dionýsiaka

https://www.theoi.com/Text/NonnusDionysiaca1.html

NONNUS OF PANOPOLIS was a Greek poet who flourished in Egypt in the C5th A.D. He was the author of
the last of the great epic poems of antiquity, the Dionysiaca in 48 books. The work relates the
story of Dionysos, centred around his expedition against the Indians.

H. J. Rose aptly summarises the mythology of Nonnus's Dionysiaca as "interesting as the longest and
most elaborate example we have of Greek myths in their final stage of degeneracy," but cautions
that "anyone who uses Nonnos as a handbook to any sort of normal and genuinely classical mythology
will be grievously misled," nevertheless he goes on to say "the searcher into sundry odd corners
will be rewarded for his pains, and even those who are studying the subject more generally cannot
afford to neglect this belated product of the learned fancy of Hellenized Egypt."

Nonnus, Dionysiaca. Translated by Rouse, W H D. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 344, 354, 356.
Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1940.

These three volumes are still in print and are available new from Amazon.com (click on image right
for details). In addition to the translation, the book contains the source Greek texts,
introductions by Rouse, Rose and Lind, footnotes written by H. J. Rose, and an index of proper
names.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

DIONYSIACA CONTENTS

BOOK 1

Love of Zeus & Europa
Typhoeus & Cadmus

BOOK 2

Battle of Zeus & Typhoeus

BOOK 3

Cadmus on Samothrace

BOOK 4

Winning of Harmonia
The Founding of Thebes

BOOK 5

Wedding of Harmonia
Death of Actaeon

BOOK 6

Birth & Death of Zagreus
The Great Deluge

BOOK 7

Love of Zeus & Semele

BOOK 8

Death of Semele

BOOK 9

Birth & Fostering of Dionysus
Madness of Ino

BOOK 10

Madness of Athamas
Love of Dionysus & Ampelus

BOOK 11

Death of Ampelus
Love of Calamus & Carpus

BOOK 12

Tablets of Phanes
Discovery of Wine

BOOK 13

Human Army of Dionysus

BOOK 14

Divine Army of Dionysus

BOOKS 15 - 48

Dionýsiaka 1

(Překlad: W. H. D. ROUSE)

The first contains Cronion, light-bearing ravisher of the nymph, and the starry heaven battered by
Typhon’s hands.

[1] Tell the tale, Goddess, of Cronides’ courier with fiery flame, the gasping travail which the
thunderbolt brought with sparks for wedding-torches, the lightning in waiting upon Semele’s
nuptials; tell the naissance of Bacchos twice-born, whom Zeus lifted still moist from the fire, a
baby half-complete born without midwife; how with shrinking hands he cut the incision in his thigh
and carried him in his man’s womb, father and gracious mother at once – and well he remembered
another birth, when his own head conceived, when his temple was big with child, and he carried that
incredible unbegotten lump, until he shot out Athena scintillating in her armour.

[11] Bring me the fennel, rattle the cymbals, ye Muses! put in my hand the wand of Dionysos whom I
sing: but bring me a partner for your dance in the neighbouring island of Paros,^1 Proteus of many
turns, that he may appear in all his diversity of shapes, since I twang my harp to a diversity of
songs. For if, as a serpent, he should glide along his winding trail, I will sing my god’s
achievement, how with ivy-wreathed wand he destroyed the horrid hosts of Giants serpent-haired. If
as a lion he shake his bristling mane, I will cry “Euoi!” to Bacchos on the arm of buxom Rheia,
stealthily draining the breast of the lionbreeding goddess. If as a leopard he shoot up into the
air with a stormy leap from his pads, changing shape like a master-craftsman, I will hymn the son
of Zeus, how he slew the Indian nation, with his team of pards riding down the elephants. If he
make his figure like the shape of a boar, I will sing Thyone’s son, love-sick for Aura the
desirable, boarslayer, daughter of Cybele, mother of the third Bacchos late-born.^2 If he be mimic
water, I will sing Dionysos diving into the bosom of the brine, when Lycurgos^3 armed himself. If
he become a quivering tree and tune a counterfeit whispering, I will tell of Icarios,^4 how in the
jubilant winepress his feet crushed the grape in rivalry.

[34] Bring me the fennel, Mimallons!^5 On my shoulders in place of the wonted kirtle, bind, I pray,
tight over my breast a dapple-back fawnskin, full of the perfume of Maronian nectar^6; and let
Homer and deep-sea Eidothea keep the rank skin of the seals for Menelaos. Give me the jocund
tambours and the goatskins! but leave for another the double-sounding pipe with its melodious
sweetness, or I may offend my own Apollo; for he rejects the sound of breathing reeds, ever since
he put to shame Marsyas^7 and his god-defiant pipes, and bared every limb of the skin-stript
shepherd, and hung his skin on a tree to belly in the breezes.

[45] Then come now, Goddess, begin with the long search and the travels of Cadmos.

[46] Once on the Sidonian beach Zeus as a high-horned bull imitated an amorous bellow with his
changeling throat, and felt a charming thrill; little Eros heaved up a woman, with his two arms
encircling her middle. And while he lifted her, at his side the sea-faring bull curved his neck
downwards, spread under the girl to mount, sinking sideways on his knees, and stretching his back
submissive, he raised up Europa; then the bull pressed on, and his floating hoof furrowed the water
of the trodden brine noiselessly with forbearing footsteps. High above the sea, the girl throbbing
with fear navigated on bullback, unmoving, unwetted. If you saw her you would think it was Thetis
perhaps, or Galateia, or Earthshaker’s bedfellow,^8 or Aphrodite seated on Triton’s neck. Aye,
Seabluehair^9 marvelled at the waddle-foot voyage^10; Triton heard the delusive lowing of Zeus, and
bellowed an echoing note to Cronos’ son with his conch by way of wedding song; Nereus pointed out
to Doris^11 the woman carried along, mingling wonder with fear as he saw the strange voyager and
his horns.

[65] But the maiden, a light freight for her bull-barge, sailed along oxriding, with a horn for
steering-oar, and trembled at the high heaving of her watery course, while Desire was the seaman.
And artful Boreas bellied out all her shaking robe with amorous breath, love-sick himself, and in
secret jealousy, whistled on the pair of unripe breasts. As when one of the Nereids has peeped out
of the sea, and seated upon a dolphin cuts the flooding calm, balanced there while she paddles with
a wet hand and pretends to swim, while the watery wayfarer half-seen rounds his back and carries
her dry through the brine, while the cleft tail of the fish passing through the sea scratches the
surface in its course, – so the bull lifted his back: and while the bull stretched, his drover Eros
flogged the servile neck with his charmed girdle, and lifting bow on shoulder like a pastoral
staff, shepherded Hera’s bridegroom with Cypris’ crook, driving him to Poseidon’s watery pasture.
Shame purpled the maiden cheek of Pallas unmothered,^12 when she spied Cronion ridden by a woman.
So Zeus clove the course with watery furrow, but the deep sea did not quench his passion – for did
not the water conceive Aphrodite by a heavenly husbandry, and bring her forth from the deeps? Thus
a girl steered the bull’s unboisterous passage, herself at once both pilot and cargo.

[90] One saw this mimic ship of the sea, alive and nimble-kneed, – an Achaian seaman passing by,
and he cried out in this fashion: “O my eyes, what’s this miracle? how comes it that he cuts the
waves with his legs, and swims over the barren sea, this land-pasturing bull? Navigable earth – is
that the new creation of Cronides? Shall the farmer’s wain trace a watery rut through the
brine-sprent deep? That’s a bastard voyage I descry upon the waves! Surely Selene^13 has gotten an
unruly bull, and leaves the sky to traipse over the high seas! Or no – deepwater Thetis drives a
coach on a floating racecourse! This sea-bull is a creature very different from the land-bull, has
a fishlike shape; must be a Nereïd with other looks, not naked now, but in long flowing robes,
driving this bull unbridled to march afoot on the waters, a new fashion that! If it is Demeter
wheatenhaired, cleaving the gray back of the sea with waterfaring oxhoof, then thou, Poseidon, must
have turned landlubber and migrated to the thirsty back of earth, afoot behind the plow, and cut
Demeter’s furrow with thy sea-vessel, blown by land-winds, tramping a voyage on the soil! Bull, you
are astray out of your country; Nereus is no bulldrover, Proteus no plowman, Glaucos^14 no
gardener; no marshground, no meadows in the billows; on the barren sea there’s no tillage, but
sailors cut the ship-harbouring water with a steering-oar, and do not split with iron;
Earthshaker’s hinds do not sow in the furrows, but the sea’s plant is seaweed, sea’s sowing is
water, the sailor is the farmer, the only furrow is the ship’s grain and wake,^15 the hooker is the
plow.

[118] “But how came you to have dealings with a maid? Do bulls also go mad with love, and ravish
women? Has Poseidon played a trick, and ravished a girl under the shape of a horned bull like a
river-god? Has he woven another plot to follow the bedding of Tyro, just as he did the other day,
when the watery paramour came trickling up with counterfeit ripples like a bastard Enipeus?” ^16

[125] So the Hellenic sailor spoke his amazement as he passed by. Then the girl presaged her union
with the bull; and tearing her hair, she broke out in lamentable tones: “Deaf Water, voiceless
Coasts! Say to the Bull, if cattle can hear and hearken, ‘Merciless, spare a girl!’ Ye Coasts, pray
tell my loving father that Europa has left her native land, seated upon a bull, my ravisher, my
sailor, and I think, my bed-fellow. Take these ringlets to my mother, ye circling Breezes. Aye
Boreas, I conjure thee, receive me on thy pinions in the air, as thou didst ravish thine Athenian
bride!^17 But stay, my voice! or I may see Boreas in love, like the Bull!” So the girl spoke, as
the bull ferried her on his back.

[137] Then Cadmos, passing in his travels from land to land, followed the never-staying tracks of
the bull turned bridesman. He came to the bloodstained cave of Arima,^18 when the mountains had
moved from their seats and were beating at the gate of inexpugnable Olympos, when the gods took
wing above the rainless Nile, like a flight of birds far out of reach, oaring their strange track
in the winds of heaven, and the seven zones of the sky^19 were sore assailed.

[145] This was the reason. Zeus Cronides had hurried to Pluto’s bed,^20 to beget Tantalos, that mad
robber of the heavenly cups^21; and he laid his celestial weapons well hidden with his lightning in
a deep cavern. From underground the thunderbolts belched out smoke, the white cliff was blackened;
hidden sparks from a fire-barbed arrow heated the watersprings; torrents boiling with foam and
steam poured down the Mygdonian gorge, until it boomed again.

[154] Then at a nod from his mother, the Earth, Cilician Typhoeus stretched out his hands, and
stole the snowy tools of Zeus,^22 the tools of fire; then spreading his row of rumble-rattling
throats, he yelled as his warcry the cries of all wild beasts together: the snakes that grew from
him waved over his leopards’ heads, licked the grim lions’ manes, girdled with their curly tails
spiral-wise round the bulls’ horns, mingled the shooting poison of their long thin tongues with the
foam-spittle of the boars.^23

[163] Now he laid the gear of Cronides in a cubby-hole of the rock, and spread the harvest of his
clambering hands^24 into the upper air. ^165 ff And that battalion of hands! One throttled
Cynosuris^25 beside the ankle-tip of Olympos; one gripped the Parrhasian Bear’s mane as the rested
on heaven’s axis, and dragged her off^26; another caught the Oxdrover and knocked him out; another
dragged Phosphoros, and in vain under the circling turning-post sounded the whistling of the
heavenly lash in the morning; he carried off the Dawn, and held in the Bull, so that timeless,
half-complete, horsewoman Season rested her team. And in the shadowy curls of his serpenthair heads
the light was mingled with gloom; the Moon shone rising in broad day with the Sun.

[176] Still there was no rest. The Giant turned back, and passed from north to south; he left one
pole and stood by the other. With a long arm he grasped the Charioteer, and flogged the back of
hailstorming Aigoceros; he dragged the two Fishes out of the sky and cast them into the sea; he
buffeted the Ram, that midnipple star of Olympos, who balances with equal pin day and darkness over
the fiery orb of his spring-time neighbour.^27 With trailing feet Typhoeus mounted close to the
clouds: spreading abroad the far-scattered host of his arms, he shadowed the bright radiance of the
unclouded sky by darting forth his tangled army of snakes. One of them ran up right through the rim
of the polar circuit and skipt upon the backbone of the heavenly Serpent, hissing his mortal
challenge. One made for Cepheus’s daughter,^28 and with starry fingers twisting a ring as close as
the other, enchained Andromeda, bound already, with a second bond aslant under her bands. Another,
a horned serpent, entwined about the forked horns of the Bull’s horned head of shape like his own,
and dangled coiling over the Bull’s brow, tormenting with open jaws the Hyades opposite ranged like
a crescent moon. Poison-spitting tangles of serpents in a bunch girdled the Ox-drover. Another made
a bold leap, when he saw another Snake in Olympos, and jumped around the Ophiuchos’s arm that held
the viper; then curving his neck and coiling his crawling belly, he braided a second chaplet about
Ariadne’s crown.

[202] Then Typhoeus manyarmed turned to both ends, shaking with his host of arms the girdle of
Zephryos and the wing of Euros opposite, dragging first Phosphoros, then Hesperos and the crest of
Atlas. Many a time in the weedy gulf he seized Poseidon’s chariot, and dragged it from the depths
of the sea to land; again he pulled out a stallion by his brine-soaked mane from the undersea
manger, and threw the vagabond nag to the vault of heaven, shooting his shot at Olympos – hit the
Sun’s chariot, and the horses on their round whinnied under the yoke. Many a time he took a bull at
rest from his rustic plowtree and shook him with a threatening hand, bellow as he would, then shot
him against the Moon like another moon, and stayed her course, then rushed hissing against the
goddess, checking with the bridle her bulls’ white yoke-straps, while he poured out the mortal
whistle of a poison-spitting viper.

[219] But Titan Mene^29 would not yield to the attack. Battling against the Giant’s heads,
like-horned to hers, she cared many a scar on the shining orb of her bull’s horn^30; and Selene’s
radiant cattle bellowed amazed at the gaping chasm of Typhaon’s throat. The Seasons undaunted armed
the starry battalions, and the lines of heavenly Constellations in a disciplined circle came
shining to the fray. A varied host maddened the upper air with clamour and with flame: some whose
portion was Boreas, others the back of Lips in the west, or the eastern zones or the recesses of
the south. The unshaken congregation of the fixt stars with unanimous acclamation left their places
and caught up their travelling fellows. The axis passing through the heaven’s hollow and fixt
upright in the midst, groaned at the sound. Orion the hunter, seeing these tribes of wild
beasts,^31 drew his sword; the blade of the Tanagraian brand sparkled bright as its master made
ready for attack; his thirsty^32 Dog, shooting light from his fiery chin, bubbled up in his starry
throat and let out a hot bark, and blew out the steam from his teeth against Typhaon’s beasts
instead of the usual hare. The sky was full of din, and, answering the seven-zoned heaven, the
seven-throated cry of the Pleiads raised the war-shout from as many throats; and the planets as
many again banged out an equal noise.

[244] Radiant Ophiuchos, seeing the Giant’s direful snaky shape, from his hands so potent against
evil shook off the gray coils of the fire-bred serpents, and shot the dappled coiling missile,
while tempests roared round his flames – the viper-arrows flew slanting and maddened the air. Then
the Archer^33 let fly a shaft, – that bold comrade of fish-like Aigoceros^34; the Dragon, divided
between the two Bears, and visible within the circle of the Wain, brandished the fiery trail of the
heavenly spine; the Oxherd, Erigone’s neighbour, attendant driver of the Wain, hurled his crook
with flashing arm; beside the knee of the Image^35 and his neighbour the Swan, the starry Lyre
presaged the victory of Zeus.

[258] Now Typhoeus shifted to the rocks, leaving the air, to flog the seas. He grasped and shook
the peak of Corycios,^36 and crushing the flood of the river that belongs to Cicilica, joined
Tarsos and Cydnos together in one hand; then hurled a volley of cliffs upon the mustered waves of
the brine. As the Giant advanced with feet trailing in the briny flood, his bare loins were seen
dry through the water, which broke heavy against his mid-thigh crashing and booming; his serpents
afloat sounded the charge with hissings from brine-beaten throats, and spitting poison led the
attack upon the sea. There stood Typhon in the fish-giving sea, his feet firm in the depths of the
weedy bottom, his belly in the air and crushed in clouds: hearing the terrible roar from the
mane-bristling lions of his giant’s head, the sea-lion lurked in the oozy gulf. There was no room
in the deep for all its phalanx of leviathans, since the Earthborn monster covered a whole sea,
larger than the land, with flanks that no sea could cover. The seals bleated, the dolphins hid in
the deep water; the manyfooted squid, a master of craft, weaving his trailing web of crisscross
knots, stuck fast on his familiar rock, making his limbs look like a pattern on the stone. All the
world was a-tremble: the love-maddened murry herself,^37 drawn by her passion for the serpent’s
bed, shivered under the god-desecrating breath of these seafaring serpents. The waters piled up and
touched Olympos with precipitous seas; as the streams mounted on high, the bird never touched by
rain found the sea his neighbour, and washed himself. Typhoeus, holding a counterfeit of the
deep-sea trident, with one earthshaking flip from his enormous hand broke off an island at the edge
of the continent which is the kerb of the brine, circled it round and round, and hurled the whole
thing like a ball. And while the Giant waged his war, his hurtling arms drew near to the stars, and
obscured the sun, as they attacked Olympos, and cast the precipitous crag.

[294] Now after the frontier of the deep, after the well-laid foundation of the earth, this bastard
Zeus armed his hand with fire-barbed thunderbolt: raising the gear of Zeus was hard work for the
monster Typhoeus with two hundred furious hands, so great was the weight; but Cronion would lightly
lift it with one hand. No clouds were about the Giant: against his dry arms, the thunder let out a
dull-sounding note booming gently without a clap, and in the drought of the air scarcely did a
thirsty dew trickle in snowflakes without a drop in them; the lightning was dim, and only a softish
flame shone sparkling shamefacedly, like smoke shot with flame. The thunderbolts felt the hands of
a novice, and all their manly blaze was unmanned. Often they slipped out of those many many hands,
and went leaping of themselves; the brands went astray, missing the familiar hand of their heavenly
master. As a man beats a horse that loathes the bit, – some stranger, a novice untaught, flogging a
restive nag, as he tries again and again in vain, and the defiant beast knows by instinct the
changeling hand of an unfamiliar driver, leaping madly, rearing straight into the air with
hind-hooves planted immovable, lifting the forelegs and pawing out to the front, raising the neck
till the mane is shaken abroad over both shoulders at once: so the monster laboured with this hand
or that to lift the fugitive flash of the roving thunderbolt.

[321] Well, at the very time when Cadmos paid his visit to Arima in his wanderings, the seafaring
bull set down the girl from his withers, quite dry, upon the shore by Dicte^38; but Hera saw
Cronides shaken with passion, and mad with jealousy she called out with an angry laugh:

[326] ^39 “Phoibos, go and stand by your father, or some plowman may catch Zeus and put him to some
earth-shaking plowtree. I wish one would catch him and put him to the plow! Then I could shout to
my lord – ‘Learn to bear two goads now, Cupid’s (Eros’s’) and the farmer’s! You must be verily Lord
of Pastures, my fine Archer, and shepherd your parent, or cattle-driver Selene may put Cronides
under the yoke, she may score Zeus’s back with her merciless lash when she is off to herdsman
Endymion’s bed in a hurry! Zeus your Majesty! it is a pity Io^40 did not see you coming like that
to court her, when she was a heifer with horns on her forehead! she might have bred you a little
bull as horny as his father! Look out for Hermes! The professional cattle-lifter may think he is
catching a bull and steal his own father! He may give his harp once again to your son Phoibos, as
price for the ravisher ravished.^41 But what can I do? If only Argos were still alive, shining all
over with sleepless eyes, that he might be Hera’s drover, and drag Zeus to some inaccessible
pasture, and prod his flanks with a crook!’”

[344] So much for Hera. But Cronides put off his bull-faced form, and in the shape of a young man
ran round the innocent girl. He touched her limbs, loosed first the bodice about the maid’s bosom,
pressed as if by chance the swelling circle of the firm breast, kissed the tip of her lip, then
silently undid the holy girdle of unwedded virginity, so well guarded, and plucked the fruit of
love hardly ripe.

[352] Soon her womb swelled, quick with twin progeny; and Zeus the husband passed over his bride
with the divine offspring in her womb, to Asterion,^42 a consort of rich fortune. Then rising
beside the Charioteer’s ankle the bridegroom Bull of Olympos sparkled with stars, he who keeps his
dewloving back for the Sun in the springtime, crouching upon his hams across the path as he rises:
half submerged in the sea, he shows himself holding out his right foot towards Orion, and at
evening quickens his pace into the circle and passes the Charioteer who rises with him to run his
course.^43 So he was established in the heavens.

[363] But Typhoeus was no longer to hold the gear of Zeus. For now Zeus Cronides along with Archer
Eros left the circling pole, and met roving Cadmos amid the mountains on his wandering search; then
he devised with him an ingenious plan, and entwined the deadly threads of Moira’s spindle for
Typhon. And Goatherd Pan who went with him gave Zeus Almighty cattle and sheep and rows of horned
goats. Then he built a hut with mats of wattled reeds and fixed it on the ground: he put on Cadmos
a shepherd’s dress, so that no one could know him in disguise, when he had clad his sham herdsman
in this make-believe costume; he gave clever Cadmos the deceiving panpipes, part of the plot to
pilot Typhaon to his death.

[377] Now Zeus called the counterfeit herdsman and the winged controller of generation,^44 and
disclosed this one common plan: “Look alive, Cadmos, pipe away and there shall be fine weather in
heaven! Delay, and Olympos is scourged! for Typhoeus is armed with my heavenly weapons. Only the
aegis-cape is left me; but what will my aegis do fighting with Typhon’s thunderbolt? I fear old
Cronos may laugh aloud, I am shy of the proud neck of my lordly adversary Iapetos! I fear Hellas
even more, that mother of romances – what if one of that nation call Typhon Lord of Rain, or
Highest, and Ruling in the Heights,^45 defiling my name! Become a herdsman for one day-dawn; make a
tune on your mindbefooling shepherd’s pipes, and save the Shepherd of the Universe, that I may not
hear the noise of Cloud-gatherer Typhoeus, the thunders of a new^46 impostor Zeus, that I may stop
his battling with lightnings and volleying with thunderbolts! If the blood of Zeus is in you, and
the breed of Inachian Io,^47 bewitch Typhon’s wits by the sovereign remedy of your guileful pipes
and their tune! I will give you ample recompense for your service, two gifts: I will make you
saviour of the world’s harmony, and the husband of the lady Harmonia. You also, Love, primeval
founder of fecund marriage, bend your bow, and the universe is no longer adrift. If all things come
from you, friendly shepherd of life, draw one shot more and save all things. As fiery god, arm
yourself against Typhon, and by your help let the fiery thunderbolts return to my hand.
All-vanquisher, strike one with your fire, and may your charmed shot catch one whom Cronion did not
defeat; and may he have madness from the mind-bewitching tune of Cadmos, as much as I had passion
for Europa’s embrace!”

[408] With these words Zeus passed away in the shape of the horned Bull, from which the Tauros
Mountain takes its name.

[409] But Cadmos tuned up the deceitful notes of his harmonious reeds, as he reclined under a
neighbouring tree in the pasturing woodland; wearing the country garb of a real herdsman, he sent
the deluding tune to Typhaon’s ears, puffing his cheeks to blow the soft breath. The Giant loved
music, and when he heard this delusive melody, he leapt up and dragged along his viperish feet; he
left in a cave the flaming weapons of Zeus with Mother Earth to keep them, and followed the notes
to seek the neighbouring tune of the pipes which delighted his soul. There he was seen by Cadmos
near the bushes, who was sore afraid and hid in a cleft of the rock. But the monster Typhoeus with
head high in air saw him trying to hide himself, and beckoned with voiceless signs, nor did he
understand the trick in this beautiful music; then face to face with the shepherd, he held out one
right hand, not seeing the net of destruction, and with his middle face, blood-red and human in
shape, he laughed aloud and burst into empty boasts:

[427] “Why do you fear me, goatherd? Why do you cover your eyes with your hand? A fine feat I
should think it to pursue a mortal man, after Cronion! A fine feat to carry off panspipes alone
with the lightning! What have reeds to do with flaming thunderbolts? Keep your pipes alone, since
Typhoeus possesses another kind of organ, the Olympian, which plays by itself! There sits Zeus,
without his clouds, hands unrumbling, none of his usual noise – he could do with your pipes. Let
him have your handful of reeds to play. I don’t join worthless reeds to other reeds in a row and
wave them about, but I roll up clouds upon clouds into a lump, and discharge a bang all at once
with rumblings all over the sky!

[439] “Let’s have a friendly match, if you like. Come on, you make music and sound your reedy tune,
I will crash my thundery tune. You puff our your cheek all swollen with wind, and blow with your
lips, but Boreas is my blower, and my thunderbolts boom when his breath flogs them. Drover, I will
pay you for your pipes: for when I shall hold the sceptre instead of Zeus, and drive the heavenly
throne, you shall come with me; leave the earth and I will bring you to heaven pipes and all, with
your flock too if you like, you shall not be parted from your herd. I’ll settle your goats over the
backbone of Aigoceros, one of the same breed; or near the Charioteer, who pushes the shining
Olenian She-goat^48 in Olympos with his sparkling arm.^49 I’ll put your cattle beside the rainy
Bull’s broad shoulder and make them stars rising in Olympos, or near the dewy
turning-piont^50 where Selene’s cattle send out a windy moo from their life-warming throats. You
will not want your little hut. Instead of your bushes, let your flock go flashing with the ethereal
Kids: I will make them another crib, to shine beside the Asses’ Crib and as good as theirs. Be a
star yourself instead of a drover, where the Ox-driver is seen; wield a starry goad yourself, and
drive the Bear’s Lycaonian wain. Happy shepherd, be heavenly Typhon’s guest at table: tune up on
earth to-day, to-morrow in heaven! You shall have ample recompense for your song: I will establish
your face in the starlit circle of heaven, and join your tuneful pipes to the heavenly Harp. If you
like, I will give you Athena for your holy bride: if you do not care for Grayeyes,^51 take Leto, or
Charis, or Cythereia, or Artemis, or Hebe to wife. Only don’t ask me for my Hera’s bed. If you have
a horse-master brother who can manage a team, let him take Helios’ fiery four-in-hand. If you want
to wield the goatskin cape of Zeus, being a goatherd, I will make you a present of that too. I mean
to march into Olympos caring nothing for Zeus unarmed; and what could Athena do to me with her
armour? – a female! Srike up ‘See the Conquering Typhon comes,’ you herdsman! Sing the new lawful
sovereign of Olympos in me, bearing he sceptre of Zeus and his robe of lightning!”

[481] He spoke, and Adrasteia^52 took note of his words thus far. But when Cadmos understood that
the son of Earth had been carried by Fate’s thread into his hunting-net, a willing captive, struck
by the delightful sting of those soul-delighting reeds, unsmiling he uttered this artful speech:

[486] “You liked the little tune of my pipes, when you heard it; tell me, what would you do when I
strike out a hymn of victory on the harp of seven strings, to honour your throne? Indeed, I matched
myself against Phoibos with his heavenly quill, and beat him with my own harp, but Cronides burnt
to dust my fine ringing strings with a thunderbolt, to please his beaten son! But if ever I find
again the swelling sinews,^53 I will strike up a tune with my quills to bewitch all the trees and
the mountains and the temper of wild beasts. I will drag back Oceanos, that coronet self-wreathed
about the earth and old as earth herself,^54 I will make him hasten and bring his stream rolling
back upon himself round the same road. I will stay the army of fixed stars, and the racing planets,
and Phaëthon,^55 and Selene’s carriage-pole. But when you strike Zeus and the gods with your
thunderbolt, do leave only the Archer, that while Typhon feasts at his table, I and Phoibos may
have a match, and see which will beat which in celebrating mighty Typhon! And do not kill the
dancing Pierides, that they may weave the women’s lay harmonious with our manly song when Phoibos
or your shepherd leads the merry dance!”

[507] He finished; and Typhoeus bowed his flashing eyebrows and shook his locks: every hair belched
viper-poison and drenched the hills.^56 Quick he returned to his cave, took up and brought out the
sinews of Zeus,^57 and gave them to crafty Cadmos as the guest’s gift; they had fallen on the
ground in the battle with Typhaon.

[513] The deceitful shepherd thanked him for the immortal gift; he handled the sinews carefully, as
if they were to be strung on the harp, and hid them in a hole in the rock, kept safe for Zeus
Giant-slayer. Then with pursed-up lips he let out a soft and gentle breath, pressing the reeds and
stealing the notes, and sounded a tune more dainty than ever. Typhoeus pricked up all his many ears
and listened to the melody, and knew nothing. The Giant was bewitched, while the false shepherd
whistled by his side, as if sounding the rout of the immortals with his pipes; but he was
celebrating the soon-coming victory of Zeus, and singing the fate of Typhon to Typhon sitting by
his side. So he excited him to frenzy even more; and as a lusty youth enamoured is bewitched by
delicious thrills by the side of a maiden his agemate, and gazes now at the silvery round of her
charming face, now at a straying curl of her thick hair, now again at a rosy hand, or notes the
circle of her blushing breast pressed by the bodice, and watches the bare neck, as he delights to
let his eye run over and over her body never satisfied, and never will leave his girl – so Typhoeus
yielded his whole soul to Cadmos for the melody to charm.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

1. The island (now part of Egypt) on which Menelaos caught Proteus, Od. iv. 351 ff. Nonnus came
from Panopolis in neighbouring Egypt.
2. Thyone is one of the names of Semele. Aura, for whom see inf., xlviii. 238 ff., was one of the
nymphs of Artemis, hence a huntress. There are many traditions about the birth and birthplace of
Dionysos, and hence it came to be thought that there were several deities confused. Diodorus (iii.
63) gives five, Cicero three (Nat. Deor. iii. 23). The third here is Iacchos.
3. A Thracian king who persecuted Dionysos; see inf., xx. 182 ff.
4. An Athenian hero to whom Dionysos taught the cultivation of the vine; see inf., xlvii. 34 ff.
5. Macedonian name of the bacchants.
6. Maron was a fine wine, from Maroneia in Thrace; cf. Hom. Od. ix. 197. Menelaos and the seals,
Hom. Od. iv. 406.
7. Athena invented the pipes, but threw the instrument away. Marsyas picked it up, and was so
pleased with it that he challenged Apollo to a musical contest. Apollo won, and flayed Marsyas
alive.
8. Amphitrite.
9. Poseidon.
10. eilipous, Homer’s word for the waddling gait of cattle, “skew-the-dew” as the English call it.

11. Respectively the father of the Nereids and one of his daughters.
12. So called because she was born from the head of Zeus.
13. Very occasionally the Moon-goddess drives or rides a bull, because the astrological exaltation
(hupsôma) of the Moon is in Taurus.
14. Of Potniai in Boeotia, a fisher who was changed by a magic herb into a merman.
15. If a line be drawn along the ship’s course, the part ahead is called the grain, the part astern
is the wake.
16. Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, loved by the river-god Enipeus; Poseidon took his shape (hence
“horned,” for all river-gods have bulls’ horns), and so got access to her. Compare Hom. Od. xi.
238.
17. Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens.
18. A mountain range in Asia Minor under which the monster Typhoeus was said to be laid, according
to one story. Compare Hom. Il. ii. 783.
19. The course of the seven planets about the pole.
20. Pluto (not Pluton), daughter of Cronos and mother of Tantalos.

21. Tantalos stole the divine (food and) drink and gave it to men.
22. Odd, but intelligible; lightning is a sign of coming snow, Il. x. 7. But in Nonnos, niphetos is
often a storm, or showers of rain.
23. The hundred heads of the monster had the shapes of all kinds of animals: hence sumphuees. He
had two hundred hands. Compare Hesiod, Theogony 825 ff.
24. i.e. his hands which were as numerous as cornstalks in a field.
25. A variant of Cynosura.
26. Callisto.
27. For the Ram and spring-time, see xxxviii. 269.
28. Andromeda.
29. The Moon.
30. Nonnos pictures the moon as Isis-Hathor, with horns and a disk between them.

31. The heads of Typhoeus. Before becoming a constellation Orion was a Boeotian (hence loosely
Tanagraian) hunter. [Orion was born at Hyrai, in the territory of Tanagra.]
32. Because it rises in the dog-days.
33. Sagittarius.
34. Capricorn, represented as a fish-tailed goat.
35. A kneeling man, called now Hercules, but by the Greeks eidolon aiston, or Eggonasin, Latinized
as Engonasin.
36. A rock on the coast of Asia Minor, near Erythrai. The Cydnos runs through the city of Tarsos.
37. The loves of the murry, or lamprey, and viper are told by Aelian (Hist. An. i. 50).
38. A mountain in Crete.
39. Hera’s speech is a mass of allusions. Apollo has the title Nomios, He of the Pastures (330),
having been in all probability a god of herdsmen originally. For Selene’s ox-team (331), cf. note
on 97; she loved Endymion of Latmos and visited him while he slept.
40. Io, daughter of the Argive River Inachos, was loved by Zeus, who turned her into a heifer to
hide her from Hera; the latter set Argos to watch her with his unsleeping eyes, which he did till
Hermes killed him. Hermes, the day he was born, stole Apollo’s cattle, and made his peace with the
elder god by giving him the lyre which he had just invented.

41. See the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.
42. King of Crete.
43. Imitated closely from Aratos 174-178.
44. Eros.
45. The first two epithets are well-known titles of Zeus.
46. The other one presumably was Salmoneus, see Virgil, Aen. vi. 585 ff.
47. Zeus = Io –– Epaphos –– Libye –– Belos –– Agenor = Argiope –– Cadmos.
48. Amaltheia, who gave milk to the infant Zeus and was placed among the stars. She came from
Olenos in the Peloponnese. [The goat stands on the left (olenos) shoulder of Auriga].
49. The allusion are to the constellations Capricorn, Aurgia, Capella, Haedi, the two Asses and the
faint little group of stars between them known as the Manger, the arctic constellations already
mentioned above, 165, and finally (467) to Lyra.
50. “The spring equinox,” see vi. 237. The puzzling word nussa is discussed by
Stegemann, Astrologie, p. 30.

51. The standing epithet of Athena.
52. Nemesis.
53. See 512; this is just mentioned by the way.
54. Oceanos is conceived as a river running round the earth at its limit.
55. Here, as often, the sun.
56. A memory of Hom. Il. i. 528 ê kai kuaneêsin ep’ ophrusi neuse Kroniôn, ambrosiai d’ ara chaitai
eperrôsanto anaktos kratos ap’ athanatoioi megan d’ elelizen Olumpon.
57. The story is obscurely told, and probably Nonnos did not understand it; it is obviously old. By
some device or by a well-aimed blow, Typhon had evidently cut the sinews out of Zeus’ arms, thus
disabling him; Cadmos now gets them back by pretending that he wants them for harp-strings. So
fantastic a tale may well be genuinely Oriental, as fits the locality, not Greek at all; there are
in various parts of the world tales, mostly savage, of a similar loss and recovery of important
parts of the body.

165 ff. Nonnos is fond of displaying his very inaccurate astronomical learning. Here Cynosuris is
Cynosura, in the constellation Ursa Minor; but as Typhon reaches for it with one hand while the
other grasps the Great Bear and Nonnos describes it as being “by the ankle of the sky” [probably
because the Bear appears to turn around the pole by its ankle]. The Parrhasian Bear is Callisto,
daughter of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, in which Mt Parrhasion lies; she was turned by Zeus into the
constellation Ursa Major. Boötes, the Ox-driver, otherwise Arctophylax, the Bearward, is
immediately behind her. Phosphoros was the morning star, the planet now called Venus, which rising
on the horizon before the sun is said to be under the “circling turning-post” of the sky, i.e.
drives around the edges of it; the nussa, Latin meta, was the post around which the chariots turned
in a race. The heavenly bodies are quite commonly spoken of as riding or driving. The Bull being
one of the signs of the Zodiac, if Typhon was interfering with it the sun could not pass through,
and so the season (late spring) could not be completed. By grasping at once Aurgia and Capricorn, –
the latter is “hailstorm” because it is the sign of the winter solstice, – the Giant reaches clean
across the sky from east to west, 178-179. The Ram is the “mid-navel” of the heavens, not because
it is anywhere near the Pole, but because it is the sign from which the astronomical year
conventionally stars; its fiery neighbour is the Sun, which is theoretically in Aries in spring.
The “heavenly serpent” (189) is the constellation Draco, near the Pole; Cepheus’ daughter is here
the constellation Andromeda. The serpent which is attacking the Bull, i.e. the constellation Taurus
(194), since it is hanging from his horns, has its head somewhere near the Hyades, the little
crescent-shaped group of stars near his nose. The “other snake” of 199 is not Draco, but he serpent
which Ophiuchus holds. Ariadne’s, or the Northern, crown is the wedding-wreath of Ariadne, daughter
of Minos, made a constellation by Dionysos to celebrate her union with him. In 206 the crest of
Atlas (the mountain) is dragged along with the evening star to the morning star (Nonnos did not
know, or had forgotten, that the two are one and the same), because it represents the extreme west
for most Greek geographers and, being the metamorphosed head of the Titan who supported the sky,
could be brought in along with the stars themselves. For an explanation of 215, see note on 97.



Dionýsiaka 2

(Překlad: W. H. D. ROUSE)

The second has Typhon’s battle ranging through the stars, and lightning, and the struggles of Zeus,
and the triumph of Olympos.

[1] And so Cadmos Agenorides remained there by the ankle of the pasturing woodland, drawing his
lips to and fro along the tops of the pipes, as a pretended goatherd; but Zeus Cronides, unespied,
uncaught, crept noiseless into the cave, and armed himself with his familiar fires a second time.
And a cloud covered Cadmos beside his unseen rock, lest Typhoeus might learn this crafty plan, and
the secret thief of the thunderbolts, and wise too late might kill the turncoat herdsman. But all
the Giant wanted was, to hear more and more of the mind-bewitching melody with its delicious
thrill. When a sailor hears the Siren’s perfidious song, and bewitched by the melody, he is dragged
to a self-chosen fate too soon; no longer he cleaves the waves, no longer he whitens the blue water
with his oars unwetted now, but falling into the net of melodious Fate, he forgets to steer, quite
happy, caring not for the seven starry Pleiades and the Bear’s circling course: so the monster,
shaken by the breath of that deceitful tune, welcomed with delight the wound of the pipes which was
his escort to death.

[20] But now the shepherd’s reed breathing melody fell silent, and a mantling shadow of cloud his
the piper as he cut off his tune. Typhoeus rushed head-in-air with the fury of battle into the
cave’s recesses, and searched with hurried madness for the wind-coursing thunderbolt and the
lightning unapproachable; with inquiring foot he chased the fire-shotten gleam of the stolen
thunderbolt, and found an empty cave! Too late he learnt the craft-devising schemes of Cronides and
the subtle machinations of Cadmos: flinging the rocks about he leapt upon Olympos. While he dragged
his crooked track with snaky foot, he spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain
torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperfish bristles of his high
head; as he marched, the solid earth did sink, and the steady ground of Cilicia shook to its
foundations under those dragon-feet; the flanks of craggy Tauros crashed with a rumbling din, until
the neighbouring Pamphylian hills danced with fear; the underground caverns boomed, the rocky
headlands trembled, the hidden places shook, the shore slipt away as a thrust of his earthshaking
foot loosened the sands.

[42] Neither pasture nor wild beasts were spared. Rawravening bears made a meal for the jaws of
Typhaon’s bear-heads; tawny bodies of chest-bristling lions were swallowed by the gaping jaws of
his own lion-heads; his snaky throats devoured the cold shapes of earthfed serpents; birds of the
air, flying through untrodden space, there met neighbours to gulp them down their throats – he
found the eagle in his home, and that was the food he relished most, because it is called the Bird
of Zeus. He ate up the plowing ox,^1 and had no pity when he saw the galled neck bloody from the
yoke-straps.

[53] He made the rivers dust, as he drank the water after his meal, beating off the troops of
Naiads from the river-beds: the Naiad of the deeps made her way tripping afoot as if the river were
a roadway, until she stood, unshod, with dry limbs, she a nymph, the creature of watery ways, and
as the girl struggled, thrusting one foot after another along the thirsty bed of the stream, she
found her knees held fast to the bottom in a muddy prison.

[60] The old shepherd, terrified to descry the manifold visage of this maddened monster, dropt his
pipes and ran away; the goatherd, seeing the wide-scattered host of his arms, threw his reed flying
to the winds; the hard-working plowman sprinkled not the new-scored ground with corn thrown behind
him, nor covered it with earth, nor cut with earthshaking iron the land furrowed already by
Typhon’s guiding hand, but let his oxen go loose. The earth’s hollows were bared, as the monster’s
missile cleft it. He freed the liquid vein, and as the chasm opened, the lower channel bubbled up
with flooding springs, pouring out the water from under the uncovered bosom of the ground, and
rocks were thrown up, and falling from the air in torrential showers were hidden in the sea, making
the waters dry land: and the hurtling masses of earth rooted themselves firmly as the footings of
new-made islands. ^80 ff Trees were levered up from the earth by the roots, and the fruit fell on
the ground untimely; the fresh-flowering garden was laid waste, the rosy meadows withered; the West
Wind was beaten by the dry leaves of whirling cypresses. Phoibos sang a dirge in lamentable tones
for his devastated iris, twining a sorrowful song, and lamented far more bitterly than for
his^2 clusters of Amyclean flowers, when the laurel by his side was struck. Pan in anguish uplifted
his fallen pine^3; Grayeyes, remembering Moria,^4 groaned over her broken olive-tree, the Attic
nymph who brought her a city.^5 The Paphian also wept when her anemone^6 was laid in the dust, and
mourned long over the fragrant tresses of flowercups from her rosebed laid in the dust, while she
tore her soft hair. Deo mourned over the half-grown corn destroyed and no longer celebrated the
harvest home. The Hadryad nymphs lamented the lost shade of their yearsmate trees.

[94] One Hamadryad^7 leapt unveiled from the cloven shaft of a bushy laurel, which had grown with
her growth, and another maiden stepping out of her pine-tree appeared beside her neighbour the
exiled nymph, and said: “Laurel Hamadryad, so shy of the marriage bed, let us both take one road,
lest you see Phoibos, lest I espy Pan! Woodmen, pass by these trees! Do not fell the afflicted bush
of unhappy Daphne! Shipwright, spare me! cut no timbers from my pine-tree, to make some lugger that
may feel the billows of Aphrodite, Lady of the Sea! Yes, woodcutter, grant me this last grace:
strike me with your axe instead of my clusters, and drive our^8 unmarried Athena’s chaste bronze
through my breast, that I may die before I wed, and go to Hades a virgin, still a stranger to Eros,
like Pitys and like Daphne!” ^9

[109] With these words, she contrived a makeshift kirtle with the leaves, and modestly covered the
circle of her breast with this green girdle, pressing thigh upon thigh. The other seeing her so
downcast, answered thus: “I feel the fear inborn in a maiden, because I was born of a laurel, and I
am pursued like Daphne. But where shall I flee? Shall I hide under a rock? No, thunderbolts have
burnt to ashes the mountains hurled at Olympos; and I tremble at your lustful Pan, who will
persecute me like Pitys,^10 like Syrinx – I shall be chased myself until I become another
Echo,^11 to scour the hills and second another’s speech. I will haunt these clusters no longer; I
will leave my tree and live in the mountains which are still half to be seen,^12 where Artemis also
hunts, and she loves a maiden. – Yet Cronion won the bed of Callisto by taking the form of
Artemis!^13 I will plunge into the briny deep – what is marriage to me? – Yet in the sea,
Earthshaker chased Asterië^14 in the madness of his passion. O that I had wings to fly! I will
traverse the heights, and take the road which the winds of the air do travel! But perhaps racing
wings are also useless: Typhoeus reaches the clouds with highclambering hands!

[130] “But if he will force me by violence, I will change my shape, I will mingle with the birds;
flitting as Philomela,^15 I will be the swallow dear to Zephyros in spring-time, harbinger of roses
and flowery dew, prattling bird that sings a sweet song under the tiles, dashing about her nest
with dancing wings. And, you, Procne, after your bitter sufferings, – you may weep for your son
with mournful notes, and I will groan for my bridal. – Lord Zeus! make me no swallow, or angry
Tereus on the wing may chase me, like Typhoeus! Air, mountain, sea, I may tread none of them: I
will hide me deep in the earth. No! the water-snakes of the monster’s viperfish feet crawl into the
caverns underground, spitting poison! May I be a fountain of water in the country, like
Comaitho,^16 mingling her newly flowing water with her father Cydnos – no, not to suit the story,
because I shall then have to join my virgin water with the out-gushings of a lovesick maid. But
where shall I flee? Shall I mingle with Typhon? Then shall I bear a son like the father – an alien,
multiform! Let me be another tree, and pass from tree to tree keeping the name of a virtuous maid;
may I never, instead of laurel, be called that unhallowed plant which gave its name to
Myrrha.^17 Yes, I beseech thee! let me be one of the Heliades^18 beside the stream of mourning
Eridanos: often will I drop amber from my eyelids; I will spread my leaves to entwine with the
dirge-loving clusters of my neighbouring poplar, bewailing my maidenhood with abundant tears – for
Phaëthon will not be my lament. Forgive me, my laurel; I shrink from being another tree after the
tree of my former wood. I also will be a stone, like Niobe,^19 that wayfarers may pity me too, a
groaning stone. – But why be the shape of one with that ill-omened tongue? Be gracious, Leto!
Perish the god-defiant name of a nymph unhappy to be a mother!”

[163] While she spoke, Phaëthon had left he rounded sky, and turned his car towards setting: silent
Night leapt up from earth into the air like a high-stretching cone, and wrapped heaven about in a
starry robe spangling the welkin. The immortals moved about the cloudless Nile, but Zeus Cronides
on the brows of Tauros awaited the light of toil-awakening Dawn.

[170] It was night. Sentinels stood in line around Olympos and the seven zones, and as it were from
the summit of towers came their nightly alarms; the calls of the stars in many tongues were carried
all abroad, and the moon’s turning-mark received the creaking echo from Saturn’s
starting-point.^20 Now the Seasons, guardians of the upper air, handmaids of Phaëthon, had
fortified the sky with a long string of covering clouds like a coronal.^21 The stars had closed the
Atlantean bar of the inviolable gates, lest some stealthy troop should enter the heavens while the
Blessed ones were away: instead of the noise of pipes and the familiar flute,^22 the breezes
whistled a tune with their wings through the night.^23 Old Oxherd was on guard with unsleeping
eyes, in company with the heavenly Serpent of the Arcadian Bear, looking out from on high for some
nightly assault of Typhon: the Morning Star watched the east, the Evening Star the west, and
Cepheus, leaving the southern gates to the Archer, himself patrolled the rainy gates of the north.

[188] Watchfires were all around: for the blazing flames of the stars, and the nightly lamp of
unresting Selene, sparkled like torches. Often the shooting stars, leaping through the heights of
Olympos with windswept whirl from the ether, scored the air with flame on Cronion’s^24 right hand;
often the lightning danced, twisting about like a tumbler, and tearing the clouds as it shot
through, the uncertain brilliance which runs to and fro, now hidden, now shining, in alternating
swing; and the comet twined in clusters the long strands of his woven flame, and made a ragged
light with his hairy fire. Stray meteors were also shining, like long rafters stretching across the
sky, shooting their long fires as allies of Zeus; and the rain’s comrade, the bow of Iris, wove her
many colours into a rounded track, and shone bent under the light-shafts of Phaëthon opposite,
mingling pale with dark, and light with rosy.^25

[205] Zeus was alone, when Victory came to comfort him, scoring the high paths of the air with her
shoe. She had the form of Leto; and while she armed her father, she made him a speech full of
reproaches, with guileful lips: “Lord Zeus! stand up as champion of your own children! Let me never
see Athena mingled with Typhon, she who knows not the way of a man with a maid! Make not a mother
of the unmothered!^26 Fight, brandish your lightning, the fiery spear of Olympos! Gather once more
your clouds, lord of the rain! For the foundations of the steadfast universe are already shaking
under Typhon’s hands: the four blended elements are melted! Deo has renounced her harvests. Hebe
has left her cup, Ares has thrown down his spear, Hermes has dropped his staff, Apollo has cast
away his harp, and taken a swan’s form, and flown off on the wing, leaving his winged arrows
behind! Aphrodite, the goddess who brings wedlock to pass, has gone a-wandering, and the universe
is without seed. The bonds indissoluble of harmony are dissolved: for bold Eros has flown in panic,
leaving behind his generative arrows, he the adorner of brides, he the all-mastering, the
unmastered! And your fiery Hephaistos has left his favourite Lemnos, and dragging unruly knees,
look how slow he keeps his unsteady course! See a great miracle – I pity your Hera, though she
hates me sure enough! What – is your begetter to come back into the assembly of the stars? May that
never be, I pray! Even if I am called a Titaness,^27 I wish to see no Titans lords of Olympos, but
you and your children. Take your lordly thunderbolt and champion chaste Artemis. What – do I keep
my maiden for a bridegroom who offers no gifts but only violence? What – is the dispenser of
childbirth to see childbirth of her own? Will she stretch out her hands to me, and then what
gracious Eileithyia^28 shall I call for the Archeress, when Eileithyia herself is in childbed?”

[237] So she spoke: and Sleep beating his shady wing sent all breathing nature to rest; but Cronion
alone remained sleepless. Typhoeus stretched out his sluggish back and lay heavy upon his bed,
covering his Mother Earth; she opened wide her bosom, and lurking lairs were hollowed out in a
grinning chasm for the snaky heads which sank into the ground.

[244] The sun appeared, and many-armed Typhoeus roared for the fray with all the tongues of all his
throats, challenging mighty Zeus. That sonorous voice reached where the root-fixt bed of refluent
Oceanos surrounds the circle of the world and its four divided parts, girdling the whole earth
coronet-wise with encircling band; as the monster spoke, that which answered the army of his
voices, was not one concordant echo, but a babel of screaming sounds: when the monster arrayed him
with all his manifold shapes, out rang the yowling of wolves, the roaring of lions, the grunting of
boars, the lowing of cattle, the hissing of serpents, the bold yap of leopards, the jaws of rearing
bears, the fury of dogs. Then with his midmost man-shaped head the Giant yelled out threats against
Zeus”

[258] “Smash the house of Zeus, O my hands! Shake the foundation of the universe, and the blessed
ones with it! Break the bar of Olympos, self-turning, divine! Drag down to earth the heavenly
pillar, let Atlas^29 be shaken and flee away, let him throw down the starry vault of Olympos and
fear no more its circling course – for I will not permit a son of Earth to be bowed down with
chafed shoulders, while he under-props the revolving compulsion of the sky! No, let him leave his
endless burden to the other gods, and battle against the Blessed Ones! Let him break off rocks, and
volley with those hard shots the starry vault which he once carried! Let the timid Seasons, the
Sun’s handmaids, flee the heavens under the shower of mountains! Mix earth with sky, water with
fire, sea with Olympos, in a litter of confusion!

[273] “I will compel the four winds also to labour as my slaves; I lash the North Wind, I buffet
the South, I flog the East; I will thrash the West, with one hand^30 I will mix night with day;
Oceanos my brother shall bring his water to Olympos aloft with many-fountained throat, and rising
above the five parallel circles he shall inundate the stars; then let the thirsty^31 Bear go
wandering in the water with the Waggon’s pole submerged!

[281] “Bellow, my bulls, shake the circle of the equator in the sky, break with your notched horns
the horns of the fiery Bull, your own likeness! Let Selene’s cattle change their watery road,
fearing the heavybooming bellow of my heads! Let Typhaon’s bear open wide his grim gaping jaws, and
worry the Bear of Olympos! Let my lion face the heavenly Lion, and drive him reluctant from the
path of the Zodiac! (Little do I care for Zeus,)^32 with only a few lightning to arm him! Ah, but
my swords are the maddened waves of the sea, the tors of the land, the island glens; my shields are
the hills, the cliffs are my breastplates unbreakable, my halberds are the rocks, and the rivers
which will quench the contemptible thunderbolt. I will keep the chains of Iapetos^33 for Poseidon;
and soaring round Caucasos, another and better eagle shall tear the bleeding liver, growing for
ever anew, of Hephaistos the fiery: since fire was that for which Prometheus has been suffering the
ravages of his self-growing liver. I will take a shape the counterpart of the sons of
Iphimedeia,^34 and I will shut up the intriguing son of Maia^35 in a brazen jar, ‘Hermes freed Ares
from prison, and he was put in prison himself!’ Let Artemis break the untouched seal of her
maidenhood, and become the enforced consort of Orion; Leto shall spread her old bedding for Tityos,
dragged to wedlock by force. I will strip murderous Ares of his ragged bucklers, I will bind the
lord of battle, and carry him off, and make him Killer the Gentle; I will carry off Pallas and join
her to Ephialtes, married at last; that I may see Ares a slave, and Athena a mother.

[314] “Cronion also shall lift the spinning heavens of Atlas, and bear the load on weary shoulders
– there shall he stand, and hear the song at my wedding, and hide his jealousy when I shall be
Hera’s bridegroom. Torches shall not lack at my wedding. Bright lightning shall come of itself to
be selfmade torch of the bride-chamber; Phaëthon himself instead of pine-brands, kindled at the
light of his own flames, shall put his radiance at the service of Typhoeus the Bridegroom; the
stars shall sprinkle their bridal sparks over Olympos as lamps to my loves, the stars, lights of
evening! My servant Selene, Endymion’s bed-fellow, along with Aphrodite the friend of marriage,
shall lay my bed; and if I want a bath, I will bathe in the waters of starry Eridanos.^36 Come now,
ye circling Seasons! You prepared the bed of Zeus, build now the bower of love for Typhoeus; you
also, Leto, Athenaia, Paphian, Charis, Artemis, Hebe, bring up form Oceanos his kindred^37 water
for Typhon the Bridegroom! And at the banquet of my table, with bridal quill Apollo my menial shall
celebrate Typhoeus instead of Zeus.

[334] “I long for no stranger’s demesne; for Uranos is my brother, a son of Earth like myself; the
star-dappled heaven which I shall rule, the ehaven which I shall live in, comes to me through my
mother. And cannibal^38 Cronos I will drag up once more to the light, another brother, to help me
in my task, out of the underground abyss; I will break those constraining chains, and bring back
the Titans to heaven, and settle under the same roof in the sky the Cyclopes, sons of Earth. I will
make more weapons of fire; for I need many thunderbolts, because I have two hundred hands to fight
with, not only a pair like Cronides. I will forge a newer and better brand of lightning, with more
fire and flashes. I will build another heaven up aloft, he eighth, broader and higher than the
rest, and furnish it with brighter stars; for the vault which we see close beside us is not enough
to cover the whole of Typhon. And after those girl children and the male progeny of prolific Zeus,
I will beget another multiparous generation of new Blessed Ones with multitudinous necks. I will
not leave the company of the stars useless and unwedded, but I will join male to female, that the
winged Virgin may sleep with the Oxherd and breed me slave-children.”

[356] So he shouted; Cronides heard, and laughed aloud. Then the din of battle resounded on both
sides. Strife was Typhon’s escort in the mellay, Victory led Zeus into battle. No herds of cattle
were the cause of that struggle, no flocks of sheep, this was no quarrel for a beautiful woman, no
fray for a petty town: heaven itself was the stake in the fight, the sceptre and throne of Zeus lay
on the knees of Victory as the prize of combat.

[364] Zeus flogging the clouds beat a thundering roar in the sky and trumpeted Enyo’s call, then
fitted clouds upon his chest in a bunch as protection against the Giant’s missiles. Nor was
Typhoeus silent: his bull-heads were self-sounding trumpets for him, sending forth a bellow which
made Olympos rattle again; his serpents intermingled whistling for Ares’ pipes. He fortified the
ranks of his high-clambering limbs, shielding mighty rock with rock until the cliffs made an
unbroken wall of battlements, as he set crag by crag uprooted in a long line. It looked like an
army preparing for battle; for side by side bluff pressed hard on bluff, tor upon tor, ledge upon
ledge, and high in the clouds one tortuous ridge pushed another^39; rugged hills were Typhon’s
helmets, and his heads were hidden in their beetling steeps. In that battle, the Giant had indeed
one body, but many necks, but legions of arms innumerable, lions’ jaws with well-sharpened fangs,
hairbrush of vipers mounting over the stars. Trees were doubled up by Typhaon’s hands and thrown
against Cronides, and other fine leafy growths of earth, but all these Zeus unwilling burnt to dust
with one spark of thunderbolt cast in heavy throw. Many an elm was hurled against Zeus with first
coeval, and enormous plane-trees and volleys of white poplar; many a pit was broken in earth’s
flank.

[391] The whole circuit of the universe with its four sides was buffeted. The four winds, allied
with Cronion, raised in the air columns of sombre dust; they swelled the arching waves, they
flogged the sea until Sicily quaked; the Pelorid shores resounded and the ridges of Aitna, the
Lilybaian rocks bellowed prophetic of things to come, the Pachynian promontory crashed under the
western wave. Near the Bear,^40 the nymph of Athos wailed about her Thracian glen, the forest of
Macedon roared on the Pierian ridge; the foundations of the east were shaken, there was crashing in
the fragrant valleys of Assyrian Libanos.

[403] Aye, and from Typhaon’s hands were showered volleys against the unwearied thunderbolts of
Zeus. Some shots went past Selene’s car, and scored through the invisible footprints of her moving
bulls; others whirling through the air with sharp whiz, the winds blew away by counterblasts. Many
a stray shot from the invulnerable thunderbolts of Zeus fell into the welcoming hand of Poseidon,
unsparing of his earthpiercing trident’s point; old Nereus brought the brine-soaked bolts to the
ford of the Cronian Sea,^41 and dedicated them as an offering to Zeus.

[414] Now Zeus armed the two grim sons of Enyalios, his own grandsons, Rout and Terror his
servant,^42 the inseparable guardsmen of the sky: Rout he set up with lightning, Terror he made
strong with the thunderbolt, terrifying Typhon. Victory lifted her shield and held it before Zeus:
Enyo countered with a shout, and Ares made a din. Zeus breasting the tempests with his
aegis-breastplate swooped down from the air on high, seated in Time’s chariot with four winged
steeds, for the horses that drew Cronion were the team of the winds. Now he battled with
lightnings, now with Levin; now he attacked with thunders, now poured out petrified masses of
frozen hail in volleying showers. Waterspouts burst thick upon the Giant’s heads with sharp blows,
and hands were cut off from the monster by the frozen volleys of the air as by a knife. One hand
rolled in the dust, struck off by the icy cut of the hail; it did not drop the crag which it held,
but fought on even while it fell, and shot rolling over the ground in self-propelled leaps, a hand
gone mad! as if it still wished to strike the vault of Olympos.

[436] Then the sovereign of the heavens brandished aloft his fiery bolt, and passing from the left
wing of the battle to the right, fought manifest on high. The many-armed monster hastened to the
watery torrents; he intertwined his row of fingers into a living mat, and hollowing his capacious
palms, he lifted from the midst of the wintry rivers their water as it came pouring down from the
mountains, and threw these detached parcels of he streams against the lightning. But the ethereal
flame blazed with livelier sparks through the water of the torrents which struck it; the thirsty
water boiled and steamed, and its liquid essence dried up in the red hot mass. Yes – to quench the
ethereal fire was the bold Giant’s plan, poor fool! he knew not that the fire-flaming thunderbolts
and lightnings are the offspring of the clouds from whence the rain-showers come!^43

[451] Again, he cut straight off sections of the torrent-beds, and designed to crush the breast of
Zeus which no iron can wound; the mass of rock came hurtling at Zeus, but Zeus blew a light puff
from the edge of his lips, and that gentle breath turned the whirling rock aside with all its
towering crags. The monster with his hand broke off a rounded promontory from an island, and rising
for the attack circled it round his head again and again, and cast it at the invincible face of
Zeus; then Zeus moved his head aside, and dodged the jagged rock which came at him; but Typhon hit
the lightning as it passed on its hot zigzag path, and at once the rock was white-patched at the
tip and blackened with smoke – there was no mistake about it. A third rock he cast; but Cronion
caught it in full career with the flat of his infinite open hand, and by a playful turn of the
wrist sent it back like a bouncing ball, to Typhon. The crag returned with many an airy twist along
its homeward path, and of itself shot the shooter. A fourth shot he sent, higher than before: the
rock touched the tassel-tips of the aegis-cape, and split asunder. Another he let fly: storm-swift
the rock flew, but a thunderbolt struck it, and half-consumed, it blazed. The crags could not
pierce the raincloud; but the stricken hills were broken to pieces by the rainclouds.

[475] Thus impartial Enyo held equal balance between the two sides, between Zeus and Typhon, while
the thunderbolts with booming shots held revel like dancers of the sky. Cronides fought fully
armed: in the fray, the thunder was his shield, the cloud his breastplate, he cast the lightning
for a spear; Zeus let fly his thunderbolts from the air, his arrows barbed with fire. For already
from the underground abyss a dry vapour diffused around rose from the earth on high,^44 and
compressed within the cloud was stifled in the fiery gullet, heating the pregnant cloud. For the
lurking flame curshed within rushed about struggling to find a passage through; over the smoke the
fire-breeding clouds rumble in their agony seeking the middle path; the fires dares not go upwards:
for the lightning leaping up is kept back by the moist air bathed in rainy drops, which condenses
the seething cloud above, but the lower part is parched and gapes and the fire runs through with a
bound. As the female stone is struck by the male stone,^45 one stone on another brings flame to
birth, while crushed and beaten it produces from itself a shower of sparks: so the heavenly fire is
kindled in clouds and murk crushed and beaten, but from earthy smoke, which is naturally thin, the
winds are brought forth. There is another floating vapour, drawn from the waters, which the sun
shining full on them with fiery rays milks out and draws up dewy through the boiling track of air.
This thickens and produces the cloudy veil; then shaking the thick mass by means of the thinner
vapour, it dissolves the fine cloud again into a fall of rain, and returns to its natural condition
of water. Such is the character of the fiery clouds, with their twin birth of lightnings and
thunders together.^46

[508] Zeus the father fought on: raised and hurled his familiar fire against his adversary,
piercing his lions, and sending a fiery whirlwind from heaven to strike the battalion of his
innumerable necks with their babel of tongues. Zeus cast his bolt, one blaze burnt the monster’s
endless hands, one blaze consumed his numberless shoulders and the speckled tribes of his serpents;
heaven’s blades cut off those countless heads; a writhing comet met him front to front discharging
a thick bush of sparks, and consumed the monster’s hair. Typhon’s heads were ablaze, the hair
caught fire; with heaven’s sparks silence sealed the hissing tresses, the serpents shrivelled up,
and in their throats the poison-spitting drops were dried. The Giant fought on: his eyes were burnt
to ashes in the murky smoke, his cheeks were whitened with hoar-frost, his faces beaten with
showers of snow. He suffered the fourfold compulsion of the four winds. For if he turned flickering
eyes to the sunrise, he received the fiery battle of neighbouring Euros. If he gazed towards the
stormy clime of the Arcadian Bear, he was beaten by the chilly frost of wintry whirlwinds. If he
shunned the cold blast of snow-beaten Boreas, he was shaken by the volleys of wet and hot together.
If he looked to the sunset, opposite to the dawn of the grim east, he shivered before Enyo and her
western tempests when he heard the noise of Zephyros cracking his spring-time lash; and Notos, that
hot wind, round about the southern foot of Capricorn flogged the aerial vaults, leading against
Typhon a glowing blaze with steamy heat. If again Rainy Zeus poured down a watery torrent, Typhoeus
bathed all his body in the trouble-soothing showers, and refreshed his benumbed limbs after the
stifling thunderbolts.^47

[540] Now as the son was scourged with frozen volleys of jagged hailstones, his mother the dry
Earth was beaten too; and seeing the stone bullets and icy points embedded in the Giant’s flesh,
the witness of his fate, she prayed to Titan Helios with submissive voice: she begged of him one
red hot ray, that with its heating fire she might melt the petrified water of Zeus, by pouring his
kindred^48 radiance over frozen Typhon. She herself melted along with his bruised body; and when
she saw his legion of highclambering hands burnt all round, she besought one of the tempestuous
winter’s blasts to come for one morning, that he might quench Typhon’s overpowering thirst by his
cool breezes.

[553] Then Cronion inclined the equally balanced beam of the fight. But Earth his Mother had thrown
off her veil of forests with her hand, and just then was grieving to behold Typhaon’s smoking
heads. While his faces were shrivelling, the Giant’s knees gave way beneath him; the trumpet of
Zeus brayed, foretelling victory with a roll of thunder; down fell Typhoeus’s high-uplifted frame,
drunk with the fiery bolt from heaven, stricken with a war-wound of something more than steel, and
lay with his back upon Earth his mother, stretching his snaky limbs in the dust and belching flame.
Cronides laughed aloud, and taunted him like this in a flood of words from his mocking throat:

[565] “A fine ally has old Cronos found in you, Typhoeus! Earth could scarcely bring forth that
great son for Iapetos! A jolly champion of Titans! The thunderbolts of Zeus soon lost their power
against you, as I see! How long are you going to wait before taking up your quarters in the
inaccessible heavens, you sceptred impostor? The throne of Olympos awaits you: accept the robes and
sceptre of Zeus, God-defying Typhoeus! Bring back Astraios^49 to heaven; if you wish, let Eurynome
and Ophion return to the sky, and Cronos in the train of that pair! When you enter the dappleback
vault of highranging stars, let crafty Prometheus leave his chains, and come with you; the bold
bird who makes hearty meals off that rejuvenescent liver shall show him the way to heaven. What did
you want to gain by your riot, but to see Zeus and Earthshaker footmen behind your throne? Well,
here you have Zeus helpless, no longer sceptre-bearer of Olympos, Zeus stript of his thunders and
his clouds, holding up no longer the lightning’s fire divine or the familiar thunderbolt, but a
torch for Typhaon’s bower, groom of the chamber of Hera the bride of your spear, whom he eyes with
wrath, jealous of your bed: here you have Earthshaker with him, torn from the sea for a new place
instead of the deep as waiter at your table, no trident in his hand but a cup for you if you are
thirsty! Here you have Ares for a menial, Apollo is your lackey! Send round Maia’s son, King’s
Messenger, to announce to the Titans your triumph and your glory in the skies. But leave your smith
Hephaistos to his regular work in Lemnos, and he can make a necklace to adorn your newly wedded
bride, a real work of art, in dazzling colours, or a fine pair of brilliant shoes for your wife’s
feet to delight her, or he can build another Olympian throne of shining gold, that your
golden-throned Hera may laugh because she has a better throne than yours! And when you have the
underground Cyclopes domiciled in Olympos, make anew spark for an improved thunderbolt. As for
Eros, who bewitched your mind by delusive hopes of victory, chain him with golden Aphrodite in
chains of gold, and clamp with chains of bronze Ares the governor of iron!

[605] “The lightnings try to escape, and will not abide Enyo! How as it you could not escape a
harmless little flash of lightning? How was it with all those innumerable ears you were afraid to
hear a little rainy thud of thunder? Who made you so big a coward? Where are your weapons? Where
are your puppyheads? Where are those gaping lions, where is the heavy bellowing of your throats
like rumbling earthquake? Where is the far-flung poison of your snaky mane? Do not you hiss any
more with that coronet of serpentine bristles? Where are the bellowings of your bull-mouths? Where
are your hands and their volleys of precipitous crags? Do you flog no longer the mazy circles of
the stars? Do the jutting tusk of your boars no longer whiten their chins, wet with a frill of
foamy drippings? Come now, where are the bristling grinning jaws of the mad bear?

[620] “Son of Earth, give place to the sons of heaven! For I with one hand have vanquished your
hands, two hundred strong. Let three-headland Sicily receive Typhon whole and entire, let her crush
him all about under her steep and lofty hills, with the hair of his hundred heads miserably
bedabbled in dust. Nevertheless, if you did have an over-violent mind, if you did assault Olympos
itself in your impracticable ambitions, I will build you a cenotaph, presumptuous wretch, and I
will engrave on your empty tomb, this last message: ‘This is the barrow of Typhoeus son of Earth,
who once lashed the sky with stones, and the fire of heaven burnt him up.’”

[631] Thus he mocked the half-living corpse of the son of Earth. Then Cilician Tauros brayed a
victorious noise on his stony trumpet for Zeus Almighty, while Cydnos danced zigzag on his watery
feet, crying Euoi! in rolling roar for the victory of Zeus, Cydnos visible in the midst, as he
poured the flood upon Tarsos which had been there ever since he had been there himself. But Earth
tore her rocky tunic and lay there grieving; instead of the shears of mourning,^50 she let the
winds beat her breast and shear off a coppice for a curl; so she cut the tresses from her
forest-covered head as in the month of leaf-shedding, she tore gullies in her cheeks; Earth wailed,
as her river-tears rolled echoing through the swollen torrents of the hills. The gales eddying from
Typhaon’s limbs lash the waves, hurrying to engulf^51 the ships and riding down the sheltered calm.
Not only the surges they invade; but often over the land sweeps a storm of dust, and overwhelms the
crops growing firm and upright upon the fields.

[650] Then Nature, who governs the universe and recreates its substance, closed up the gaping rents
in earth’s broken surface, and sealed once more with the bond of indivisible joinery those island
cliffs which had been rent from their beds. No longer was there turmoil among the stars. For Helios
replaced the maned Lion, who had moved out of the path of the Zodiac, beside the Maiden who holds
the corn-ear^52; Selene took the crab, now crawling over the forehead of the heavenly Lion, and
drew him back opposite cold Capricorn, and fixt him there.

[660] But Zeus Cronides did not forget Cadmos the mastersinger. He dispersed the cloud of darkness
which overshadowed him, and calling him, spoke in this fashion: “Cadmos, you have crowned the gates
of Olympos with your pipes! Then I will myself celebrate your bridal with heaven’s own Harp.^53 I
will make you goodson to Ares and Cythereia; gods shall be guests at your wedding-feast on the
earth! I will visit your house: what more could you want, than to see the King of the Blessed
touching your table? And if you wish to cross life’s ferry on a calm sea, escaping the uncertain
currents of Chance, be careful always not to offend Ares Dircaian,^54 Ares angry when deprived of
his brood.^55 At dead of night fix your gaze on the heavenly Serpent, and do sacrifice on the altar
holding in your hand a piece of fragrant serpentine; and calling upon the Olympian Serpent-holder,
burn in the fire a horn of the Illyrian deer with many tines: that so you may escape all the bitter
things which the wreathed spindle of apportioned Necessity has spun for your fate, - if the threads
of the Portioners every obey!

[679] “Let pass the memory of your angry father Agenor, fear not for your wandering brothers^56;
for they all live, though far apart. Cepheus journeyed to the regions of the south, and he has
found favour with the Cephenes of Ethiopia^57; Thasos went to Thasos, and Cilix is king over the
Cilicians round about the snowy mount of high-peaked Tauros; Pineus came with all speed to the
Thracian land. As for him, I will make him proud with his deep mines of riches, and lead him as
goodson to Oreithyia and Thracian Boreas, as prophetic bridegroom of garlanded Cleopatra. For you,
the Portioner’s thread weighs equal with your brothers; be king of the Cadmeians, and leave your
name to your people. Give up the back-wending circuits of your wandering way, and relinquish the
bull’s restless track; for your sister has been wedded by the law of love to Asterion of Dicte,
king of Corybantian Ida.^58

[696] “So much I will myself foretell for you, the rest I will leave to Phoibos. And now, Cadmos,
do you make your way to the midnipple of the earth, and visit the speaking vales of Pytho.” ^59

[699] With these words, Zeus Cronides dismissed Agenor’s son, and swiftly turned his golden chariot
toward the round of the ethereal stars, while Victory by his side drove her father’s team with the
heavenly whip. So the god came once more to the sky; and to receive him the stately Seasons threw
open the heavenly gates, and crowned the heavens. With Zeus victorious, the other gods came home to
Olympos, in their own form come again, for they put off the winged shapes which they had taken on.
Athena came into heaven unarmed, in dainty robes with Ares turned Comus, and Victory for Song^60;
and Themis displayed to dumbfounded Earth, mother of the giants, the spoils of the giant destroyed,
an awful warning for the future, and hung them up high in the vestibule of Olympos.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

1. An act of impiety: the plow-ox was exempted from sacrifice by Attic law, Aelian, V.H. v. 14.
2. Hyacinthos, the beloved of Apollo, was buried in Amyclai. The plant is really a flag or iris.
3. See note on 108.
4. This refers to the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the city. Each was to offer a gift;
Poseidon gave the horse, Athena the olive. A moria is a sacred olive tree, Zeus Morios was the
guardian of them.
5. Unknown: not the one of xxv. 481.
6. Adonis was turned into one.
7. The word favoured by Nonnos, Hadryas, means the same as Hamadryas (ha copulative), the nymph who
grows up along with the tree (sunchronos, hêlix).
8. “Our” Athena, because, like the nymphs, she is virgin; the bronze is hers either because she is
a warlike goddess or from her Spartan title Chalcioicos, She of the Bronze House. Since edge-tools
and weapons were really of bronze in Homer’s day, the word remains in poetical use in that sense
even some 1400 years later; the best part of a millennium before Nonnos, Pindar, Pyth. xi. 20, had
spoken of “grey bronze,” really meaning a steel or iron weapon, as the epithet shows.
9. Pitys, beloved of Pan, fled from him and was changed into a pine-tree: Propertius i. 18. 20.
Daphne suffered a like fate in fleeing from Apollo: Ovid, Met. i. 452.
10. For Pitys, see preceding note. Syrinx (Panpipe) was also pursued by Pan in an amorous mood, and
turned into a bed of reeds, from which he made his pipe.

11. Echo was once a nymph, who for keeping Hera talking and so delayed her from spying on Zeus’
amours was deprived by her of the power to do more than repeat the words of another.
12. Reading hêmiphanê with all MSS.: Ludwich conjectures hupsiphanê. But the meaning is that the
flood had not quite covered them.
13. This is Ovid’s story, Met. ii. 401 ff., but there are other versions.
14. Asterië is the nymph of Delos, and leaped into the sea to avoid the attentions of Zeus. That
she was then pursued by Poseidon seems to be an invention of Nonnos; at all events, no other
surviving author has heard of it.
15. Reading philomêlê with the MSS. Philomela, here as elsewhere in Greek, is the swallow. She and
Procne were sisters, Athenian princesses; Tereus, king of Thrace, married Procne, by whom he had a
son Itys, or Itylos; Tereus afterwards, on some pretext, fetched Philomela from Athens, violated
her and cut out her tongue. Managing to communicate with her sister by means of a piece of
embroidery which she sent her, on which she had portrayed her story, she was helped to escape from
the prison where Tereus had put her; by way of revenge, Procne served to Tereus at a banquet the
flesh of their child, and when he pursued the women, all three were turned into birds, Procne
becoming a nightingale, Philomela a swallow, Tereus a hoopoe, and, in some late and uncertain
accounts, Itys also a bird of some sort. This is why the nightingale’s song is mournful (she is
lamenting for Itys) and the swallow chatters and does not sing (she has no tongue). A familiar
variant of the story makes Philomela the nightingale, and Procne the swallow. The swallow is as
regularly and proverbially the messenger of spring in Greek as in English (mia chelidôn ou poiei
ear, one swallow does not make a spring).
16. Daughter of King Pterelaos. She was in love with Amphitryon, and gave him the golden hair from
his father’s head wherein his life lay. Amphitryon put her to death, and she was turned into a
fountain. The story of Nisos and Scylla was similar.
17. Daughter of Cinyras and mother of Adonis. She had an incestuous love for her own father and
managed by a trick to satisfy it. When he found it out, she was saved from him by becoming a tree
which bears her name (this is why it weeps), and Adonis was born from the tree.
18. Sisters of Phaëthon, who mourned their brother beside that stream until they grew into poplars.
19. Because Niobe, wife of Tantalos and mother of six sons and six daughters, boasted herself
superior to Leto with only two children, Apollo and Artemis, these killed all her family, and she
mourned until she turned into a stone from grief.
20. The celestial watch-word is passed along from the outermost of the seven (ancient) planets,
which include the sun and moon, to the one nearest the earth.

21. Cf. not on i. 165.
22. An allusion to Il. x. 13, where Agamemnon hears “noise of flutes and pipes and hum of men” from
the Trojan camp at night.
23. For the astronomy, including the blunder about morning and evening star, cf. note on i. 165 ff.
24. Apparently Cronion here is the planet Jupiter, since Zeus is sitting waiting on Mt. Tauros, see
168; it is not the only passage in which astral and mythological gods give Nonnos some trouble.
25. He probably means by the dark, violet and indigo; and pale, yellow and orange. Naturally there
is and can be no black in a rainbow; perhaps Nonnos thinks of it as showing against a dark cloud.
26. Having no mother, but only a father, Athena, whose emissary is here speaking (Victory is her
constant attendant), is “wholly of the Father” and approves of men in every way except as
husbands, cf. Aeschylus, Eumenides 737 ff.
27. Leto is meant, being daughter of Coios and Phoibe.
28. Eileithyia is often identified with, or her name used as a title of, Artemis in her capacity of
goddess of childbirth.
29. Cf. on i. 165 ff.
30. Reading cheiri miê with L and all MSS.

31. The Bear is “thirsty” because it never sets (a common-place with every poet from Homer on).
32. Koechly marks a lacuna; as the next line manifestly refers to Zeus, I have introduced his name.
33. Typhon wants to reverse all the old judicial decisions of the gods. Iapetos, father of
Prometheus, is chained with the other rebellious Titans; Prometehus was chained to a rock in the
Caucasus by order of Zeus, for stealing fire and giving it to man, Hephaistos performing the work
of fastening him; an eagle tore continually at his liver, which grew as continually. Iphimedeia’s
two giant sons, Otos and Ephialtes, imprisoned Ares, till Hermes, after thirteen months, effected
his release, see Il. v. 385, Od. xi. 305 (Maia was Hermes’ mother). Orion (306) was killed by
Artemis for trying to violate her (or for saying he was a better hunter than she); Tityos (307) is
punished in Tartaros for a like attempt on Leto. Ares, Typhon sarcastically says, is to be tamed
till he loses his own title of Slayer and deserves one of his father’s epithets, Meilichios, “easy
to be entreated” (with an allusion to the cult of Zeus Meilichios at Athens and elsewhere).
Ephialtes, in one version of his legend, wanted to marry Hera; Nonnos would seem to know of another
in which he aspired after Athena, if 311 ff. is to have any point.
34. Otos and Ephialtes, who shut up Ares in a brazen jar: Hom. Od. xi. 305, Il. v. 385.
35. Hermes.
36. A bath is part of the regular ritual of marriage; Eridanos, a mysterious western river, is here
the constellation of that name.
37. Oceanos, like Typhon, is a son of Earth: Hesiod, Theogony 126-136.
38. Because he swallowed his children.
39. This passage is in imitation of Hom. Il. xvi. 215 aspis ar’ aspid’ epeide, korus korun, anera
d’anêr.
40. The north.

41. The North Sea with the Baltic and perhaps even the Arctic Ocean; Pliny, N.H. iv. 94,
104, cf. Plut. De def. orac. 420A.
42. The construction of opaona is very like Euripides, I.T. 3-4 Atreôs de pais Menelaos Agamemnôn
te.
43. A common theory of ancient physicists.
44. The word is an invention of Hesiod’s (Works and Days 775) as though “high-flying,” a
misunderstanding of Homer’s aersipous, “foot-lifting.”
45. It is somewhat unusual to distinguish two stones as male and female in this manner; nothing is
commoner, however, than to make such a distinction with fire-sticks, the harder one which bores or
rubs being the male, or husband, and the softer stick of plank against which it is pressed the
female or wife; see Frazer, Golden Bough, index under “Fire-sticks.”
46. A page from the poet’s handbook of natural science.
47. kekaphêota thumon “panting forth one’s life” is the epic phrase. Nonnos seems to hear this
meaning, and also an echo of kamnô. Hesychius glosses tethnêke.
48. Because both came of the same stock.
49. A Titan, husband of Eos. In the Orphic cosmogony, Eurynome and Ophion had ruled in Olympos
before Cronos and Rhea, but Cronos turned them out.
50. Shears for cutting off the hair in mourning.

51. Lectius translates: Continuatae vero Calypsae naves tranquillae contra equitant serenitatis: a
riddle indeed.
52. Virgo, in the Zodiac: the brightest star was Stachus, the Ear of Corn.
53. The constellation Lyra.
54. That is, Theban, from the fountain of Dirce in Thebes. It is rather too soon to give him that
epithet, for there was no Thebes as yet and no Dirce.
55. See next note. Lochos is “birth” in Aesch. Ag. 136, and here apparently “offspring.” All
Cadmos’s troubles in later life came from killing the dragon, son of Ares, which guarded the spring
near the site of Thebes, Zeus advises him to make friends with the celestial Dragon, also with
Ophiuchos, as being presumably an expert in dealing with reptiles, and to accompany his prayers
with fumigations of two of the most approved specifics against earthly serpents, serpentine, which
if pulverized will cure their bite, Orph. Lithica 338 ff., and hart’s horn; for the stag is so
deadly an enemy to all snakes that even to burn a piece of his antler will effectually drive them
away, Pliny, N.H. viii. 118.
56. They were all sent in search of Europa.
57. Cepheus was son of Belos and therefore cousin of Cadmos, according to Apollodorus. He became
king of Ethiopia, and the people took his name.
58. Dicte, a mountain in Crete; Ida, the chief mountain of Crete. The Cretan Dactyloi or Curetes,
who waited upon the infant Zeus, are often called Corybantes, although that name belongs to the
Phrygian priests of Rhea.
59. Delphi, where the priestess spoke oracles.
60. The deities are embodiments of the revels, by a sort of mystical fusion. Comus, so familiar to
us through Milton, is not really a mythological figure at all, but a late personification; see
Philostratus, Imagines 2.

80 ff. The plants mentioned seem all to have stories attached. The cypress was once a beautiful
boy, Cyparissos, beloved by Zephyros [actually Apollo]; the hyacinthus (not hyacinth, perhaps iris,
fritillary or gladiolus) is connected in mythology with the pre-hellenic god Hyacinthos of Amyclai
in Laconia, worshipped along with Apollo there. He is said to have been a boy favourite of the god,
who, being accidentally killed by him, was turned into the flower which bears his name; hence it is
blood-red and the markings on its petals spell ai ai (alas, alas). The laurel was once a chaste
nymph, Daphne, who, loved and pursued by Apollo, prayed to the Earth to help her and was turned
into a laurel (daphnê), which thus became the god’s sacred tree. Pan had a like experience with
Pitys, who to avoid his attentions was turned into the pine-tree, pitus. Moria (clearly the nymph
of the sacred olives of Attica, that being the meaning of her name) is unknown save for this
passage; she has nothing to do with the Moria of xxv. 481 ff. The olive “brought a city” to Athena,
because by making it spring from the ground she won her contest with Poseidon for the city of
Athens. The Paphian, i.e. Aphrodite, goddess of Paphos, is particularly concerned for the anemone
because that is the flower which sprung from the dead body of her beloved Adonis, or from the tears
she shed for him; another story makes the rose, which in any case is sacred to her, spring from his
body. Deo is Demeter, and being corn-goddess (her name means “spelt-mother”) she naturally is
interested in the fate of corn-stalks


....


Dionýsiaka 14

(Překlad: W. H. D. ROUSE)

Turn your mind to the fourteenth: there Rheia arms all the ranks of heaven for the Indian War.

[1] Then swiftshoe Rheia haltered the hairy necks of her lions beside their highland manger. She
lifted her windfaring foot to run with the breezes, and paddled with her shoes through the airy
spaces. So like a wing or a thought^1 she traversed the firmament to south, to north, to west, to
the turning-place of dawn, gathering the divine battalions for Lyaios: one all-comprehending
summons was sounded for trees and for rivers, one call for Naiads and Hadryads, the troops of the
forest. All the divine generations heard the summons of Cybele, and they came together from all
sides. From high heaven to Lydian land Rheia passed aloft with unerring foot, and returning lifted
again the mystic torch in the night, warming the air a second time with Mygdonian^2 fire.

[15] Now once more, ye breaths of Phoibos, after the tale of mortal heroes and warriors teach me
also the host divine!

[17] First from the firepeak rock of Lemnos the two Cabeiroi in arms answered the stormy call
beside the mystic torch of Samos,^3 two sons of Hephaistos whom Thracian Cabeiro had borne to the
heavenly smith, Alcon and Eurymedon well skilled at the forge, who bore their mother’s tribal name.

[23] From Crete came grim warriors to join them, the Idaian Dactyloi, dwellers on a rocky crag,
earthborn Corybants, a generation which grew up for Rheia selfmade out of the ground in the olden
time. These had surrounded Zeus a newborn babe in the cavern which fostered his breeding, and
danced about him shield in hand, the deceivers, raising wild songs which echoes among the rocks and
maddened the air – the noise of the clanging brass resounded in the ears of Cronos high among the
clouds, and concealed the infancy of Cronion with drummings. The chief and leader of the dancing
Corybants was Pyrrhichos and shake-a-shield Idaios; and with them came Cnossian Cyrbas, and armed
his motley troops, their namefellow.

[36] The spiteful Telchines came also to the Indian War, gathering out of the cavernous deeps of
the sea. Lycos came, shaking with his long arm a very long spear; Scelmis came, following
Damnameneus, guiding the seachariot of his father Poseidon. These were wanderers who had left
Tlepolemos’s land^4 and taken to the sea, furious demons of the waters, who long ago had been cut
off reluctant from their father’s land by Thrinax with Macareus and glorious Auges, sons of Helios;
driven from their nursing-mother they took up the water of Styx with their spiteful hands, and made
barren the soil of fruitful Rhodes, by drenching the fields with water of Tartaros.

[49] After them came the gentle^5 tribe of twiform Centaurs. Beside Pholos in horse’s form was
Cheiron, himself of that strange nature, untamed, with mouth unbridled.

[52] Battalions of Cyclopians came like a flood. In battle, these with weaponless hands cast hills
for their stony spears, and their shields were cliffs; a peak from some mountain-ravine was their
crested helmet, Sicilian sparks were their fiery arrows.^6 They went into battle holding burning
brands and blazing with light from the forge they knew so well – Brontes and Steropes, Euryalos and
Elatreus, Arges and Trachios and proud Halimedes. One alone was left behind from the war,
Polyphemos, tall as the clouds, so mighty and so great, the Earthshaker’s own son; he was kept in
his placee by another love, dearer than war, under the watery ways, for he had seen
Galateia^7 half-hidden, and made the neighbouring sea resound as he pouredc out his love for a
maiden in the wooing tones of his pipes.

[67] The rockdwellers came also from their selfvaulted caves, bearing all the name of Pan their
father the ranger of the wilderness, all armed to join the host; they have human form, and a shaggy
goat’s-head upon it with horns. Twelve horned Pans there were, with his changeling shape and
hornbearing head, who were begotten of the one ancestral Pan their mountainranging father. One they
named Celaineus, Blackie, as his looks bore witness, and one Argennos, Whitely, after his colour;
Aigicoros was well dubbed Goatgluts, because he glutted himself with goat’s-milk which he pressed
from the nannies’ udders in the flock. Another masterly Pan was called Longbear Eugeneios, from a
throat and chin which was a thick meadow of hair. Daphnoineus the Bloody came along with Omester,
Eatemraw; Phobos the Frightaway with shaggy-legged Philamnos the Lamb’s Friend. Glaucos came with
Xanthos, Glaucos glaring like the bright sea, with a complexion to match. Xanthos had a mane of
hair like a bayard, which gave that name to the horned frequenter of the rocks. Then there was bold
Argos with a shock of hair as white as snow. With these were two other Pans, the sons of Hermes,
who divided his love between two Nymphs: for one he visited the bed of Sose, the highland
prophetess, and begat a son inspired with the divine voice of prophecy, Agreus, well versed in the
beast-slaying sport of the hunt; the other was Nomios, whom the pasturing sheep loved well, one
practised in the shepherd’s pipe, for whom Hermes sought the bed of Penelope, the country
Nymph.^8 Along with these came Phorbas to join the march, savage and insatiate.

[96] Old Seilenos also was ready for the fray, holding the fennel-stalk, that horned son of the
soil with twiform shape. He brought three festive sons: Astraios was armed for battle; Maron came
too, and Leneus followed, each with a staff to support the hands of their old father in his travels
over the hills. These ancients already weak had vinebranches to support their slow bodies; many
were the years of their time, from these had sprung the hot twiform generation of the muchmarried
Satyrs.

[105] And the horned Satyrs were commanded by these leaders: Poemenios and Thiasos, Hypsiceros and
Orestes, and Phlegraios with horned Napaios. There was Gemon, there was bold Lycon armed; playful
Phereus followed laughing tippling Petraios, hillranging Lamis marched with Lenobios, and Scirtos
tripping along beside Oistos.^9 With Pherespondos walked Lycos the loudvoiced herald, and Pronomos
renowned for intelligence – all sons of Hermes, when he had joined Iphthime^10 to himself in secret
union. She was the daughter of Doros, himself sprung from Zeus and a root of the race of Hellen,
and Doros was ancestor whence came the Achaian blood of the Dorian tribe. To these three,
Eiraphiotes^11 entrusted the dignity of the staff of the heavenly herald, their father the source
of wisdom. The whole tribe of Satyrs is boldhearted while they are drunken with bumpers of wine;
but in battle they are but braggarts who run away from the fight – hares in the battlefield, lions
outside, clever dancers, who know better than all the world how to ladle strong drink from the bull
mixing-bowl. Few of these have been men of war, to whom bold Ares has taught all the practice of
the fray and how to manage a battalion. Here when Lyaios prepared for war, some of them covered
their bodies with raw oxhides, others fortified themselves with skins of shaggy lions, others put
on the grim pelts of panthers, others equipped themselves with long pointed staves, others girt
about their chests the skins of long-antlered stags dappled like stars in the sky. With these
creatures, the two horns on the temples right and left lengthened their sharp points, and a scanty
fluff grew on the top of the pointed skull over the crooked eyes. When they ran, the winged breezes
blew back their two ears, stretched out straight and flapping against their hairy cheeks: behind
them a horse’s tail stuck out straight and lashed round their loins on either side.

[143] ^12 Another kind of the twiform Centaurs also appeared, the shaggy tribe of the horned
Pheres, to whom Hera had given a different sort of human shape with horns. These were sons of the
water-naiads in mortal body, whom men call Hyads, offspring of the river Lamos. They had played the
nurses for the babe that Zeus had so happily brought forth, Bacchos, while he still had a breath of
the sewn-up birth-pocket. They were the cherishing saviours of Dionysos when he was hidden from
every eye, and then they had nothing strange in their shape; in that dark cellar they often dandled
the child in bended arms, as he cried Daddy to the sky, the seat of his father Zeus, still a child
a play, but a clever babe. Of the would mimic a newborn kid; hiding in the fold, he covered his
body with long hair, and in this strange shape let out a deceptive bleat between his teeth, and
pretended to walk on hooves in goatlike steps. Of the would show himself like a young girl in
saffron robes and take on the feigned shape of a woman; to mislead the mind of spiteful Hera, he
moulded his lips to speak in a girlish voice, tied a scented veil on his hair. He put on all a
woman’s manycoloured garments: fastened a maiden’s vest about his chest and the firm circle of his
bosom, and fitted a purple girdle over his hips like a band of maidenhood.

[168] But his guile was useless. Hera, who turns her all-seeing ye to every place, saw from on high
the ever-changing shape of Lyaios, and knew all. Then she was angry with the guardians of Bromios.
She procured from Thesalian Achlys^13 treacherous flowers of the field, and shed a sleep of
enchantment over their heads; she distilled poisoned drugs over their hair, she smeared a subtle
magical ointment over their faces, and changed their earlier human shape. Then they took the form
of a creature with long ears, and a horse’s tail sticking out straight from the loins and flogging
the flanks of its shaggy-crested owner; from the temples cow’s horns sprouted out, their eyes
widened under the horned forehead, the hair ran across their heads in tufts, long white teeth grew
out of their jaws, a strange kind of mane grew of itself, covering their neck with rough hair, and
ran down from the loins to the feet underneath.

[186] Twelve captains commanded them all: Spargeus and Gleneus the dancer, and beside Eurybios the
strange figure of Ceteus the winedresser; Petraios with Rhiphonos, Aisacos the deep drinker and
Orthaon, with whom marched both Amphithemis and Phaunos,^14 and Nomeion side by side with
wellhorned Phanes.

[193] Another tribe of twiform Centaurs was ready, the Cyprian. Once when Cypris fled like the wind
from the pursuit of her lascivious father, that she might not see an unhallowed bedfellow in her
own begetter, Zeus the Father gave up the chase and left the union unattempted, because unwilling
Aphrodite was too fast and he could not catch her: instead of the Cyprian’s bed, he drops on the
ground the loveshower of seed from the generative plow. Earth received Cronion’s fruitful dew, and
shot up a strangelooking horned generation.

[203] These combatants were joined by the Bacchai, some coming from the Meionian rocks, some from
the mountain above the precipitous peaks of Sipylos. Nymphs hastened to join the soldiers of the
thyrsus, the wild Oreads with hearts of men trailing their long robes. Many a year had they seen
roll round the turning-point as they lived out their long lives. Some were the Medlars who lived on
the heights near the shepherds; some were from the woodland glades and the ridges of the wild
forest, nymphs of the mountain Ash coeval with their tree. All these pressed onwards together to
the fray, some with brassbacked drums, the instruments of Cybelid Rheia, others with overhanging
ivy-tendrils wreathed in their hair, or girt with rings of snakes. They carried the sharpened
thyrsus which the mad Lydian women then took with them fearless to the Indian War.

[219] Stronger than these then came the nurses of Dionysos, troops f Bassarids well skilled in
their art: Aigle and Callichore, Eupetale and Ione, laughing Calyce, Bryusa companion of the
Seasons, Seilene and Rhode, Ocynoë and Ereutho, Acrete and Methe, rosy Oinanthe with Harpe and
silverfoot Lycaste, Stesichore and Prothoë; last of all came ready for the fray Trygië too, that
grinning old gammer, heavy with wine.^15

[228] Each army was brought to Bacchos by its own separate leader, but the commander-in-chief was
Eiraphiotes,^16 roaring with fire, flashing, all-conspicuous. Dancing to battle he came, holding no
shield, no furious lance, no sword on shoulder, no helmet on his untrimmed locks, or metal to cover
his inviolate head. He only tied his loose tresses with serpent-knots, a grim garland for his head;
instead of fine-wrought greaves, from ankle to thigh he wore purple buskins on his silvery feet. He
hung a furry fawnskin over his chest, a chestpiece dappled with spots like stars, and he fitted a
golden kilt round his loins. In his left hand he held a horn full of delicious wine, cunningly
wrought of gold; from this pitcher-horn poured a straight stream of flowing wine. In his right hand
he bore a pointed thyrsus wound about with purple ivy, at the end a heavy bronze head covered with
leaves.

[247] As soon as Dionysos had donned the well wrought golden gear of war in the Corybantian
courtyard, he left the peaceful precincts of danceloving Rheia and went past Meionia: the warriors
with the hillranging Bacchants hastened to meet the lord of the vine. The drivers of wheeled wagons
carried shoots of the new plant of Bacchos. Many lines of mules went by, with jars of the viney
nectar packed on their backs: slow asses had loads of purple rugs and manycoloured fawnskins on
their patient backs. Winedrinkers besides carried silver mixingbowls with golden cups, the
furniture of the feast. The Corybants were busy about the bright manger of the panthers, passing
the yokestraps over their necks, and entrusted their lions to ivybound harness when they had
fastened this threatening bit in their mouths. One Centaur with a bristling beard stretched his
neck into the yoke willingly, unbidden; and the man mingled with horse half and half, craving the
delicious wine even more than a Satyr, whinnied eager to carry Dionysos on his withers.

[269] The god seated at the rail of his leaf-entwined car passed the stream of Sangarios, passed
the bosom of the Phrygian land, passed the mourning rock of stony Niobe^17; and the stone, seeing
the Indian host warring against Lyaios, shed tears and spoke again with human voice: “Make not war
against a god, foolish Indians! the son of Zeus! lest Bacchos turn you also, threatening battle,
into stone, as Apollo did to me; lest you have to lament a shape like my stony shape; lest you see
the goodson of Deriades, Indian Orontes, fallen beside the stream of the river that bears his name.
Rheia in wrath is stronger than the Archeress. Flee from Bacchos, Apollo’s brother! It would be a
shame, if I must see Indians being slain and weep for strangers!”

[283] So the stone spoke, then silence sealed it again.

[284] Now the vinegod left the Phrygian plain, and entered Ascania. All the people gathered there,
to whom Iobacchos offered his fruitage, accepted his rites and welcomed his dances, bowing the neck
to invincible Dionysos, wishing for the quietude of peace without bloodshed. So mighty was the
horned host of Bacchos, with the Bacchant women beside them armed for war. But Lyaios kept vigil;
all night long heaven thundered, threading fiery streaks among the stars; since Rheia then foretold
with witnessing flash the bloodshed of the Indian victory.

[295] In the morning, the god went forth to war, driving before him the violence of the black men,
that he might free the neck of the Lycians and those who dwelt in Phrygia and Ascania from the yoke
of cruel tyranny. Then Bacchos sent two heralds to give proclamation of war, either to fight or to
fly: and with them went goatfoot Pan, his long-haired beard shadowing his whole-chest.

[303] But swiftshoe Hera, likening herself to an Indian, the curly-headed Melaneus, warned
Astraëis, the spearshaking captain of men, not to uplift the thyrsus nor to heed the yell of
drunken Satyrs, but to raise war to the death against Dionysos. She spoke these words to move the
Indian chief: “You’re a nice one, to fear a feeble troop of women! Fight, Astraëis! Arm yourself
too, Celaineus, and take a sharp blade to cut down Dionysos and his ivy-bunches! Thyrsus is no
match for spear! No, no, look out for Deriades! He will be mad, and make an end of you, if you
shrink from a weak unarmed woman!”

[315] She spoke, the stepmother furious against indomitable Dionysos. The goddess got her way, and
hid in darkness.

[317] Then the heralds of Bromios departed, for Astraëis drew near them contemptuous, with pitiless
menace on his tongue. Furiously he chased away Pan, and the oxhorned Satyrs, despising the heralds
of Dionysos when he was gentle. They turned with timid foot, and made their way back in flight to
Dionysos now in warlike mood.

[323] No Bacchos made ready his army against the hostile troops of Indians. Nor did swarthy
Celaineus fail to see the womanish warriors. He leapt up with all speed and called to arms the
whole Indian host; while bold Astraëis with ever-growing martial rage took his stand beside the
murmuring waves of the Astacid lake, and awaited the attack of Dionysos the vinegod.

[329] When the captains of the two armies of the two peoples had mustered their troops in two
opposing lines, the swarthy Indians advanced to battle with loud cries: like Thracian cranes, when
they fly from the scourge of winter and floods of stormy rain to throw their great flocks against
the heads of pygmies round the water of Tethys, and when with sharp beaks they have destroyed that
weak helpless race, they wing their way like a cloud over the horn of Ocean.

[338] ^18 On the other side, the fighting host madly rushed at the call, the unbending servants of
warstirring Dionysos. The battalions of Bassarids also moved like a flood. As they gathered, one
twined a rope of snakes about her head, one knotted her hair with scented ivy; another madly caught
up her bronze-headed thyrsus, another let down loose tresses of long hair over her neck, a Mainalid
unveiled, while the wind blew the unbound locks over her shoulders; another clapped the pair of
brazen cymbals, and shook the ringlets upon her head; another driven by the impulse of madness,
beat the heavybooming drumskin with her hands, and sounded a loud echo of the battle-din. Then
thyrsus did for spear, and hidden under vineleaves was the metal head of the shaft. Another
yearning for bloody battle, bound round her neck a rope of raw-fed serpents. One again covered her
chest with the spotted skin of a panther, another put on like tunic the dappled skins of mountain
fawns, and wrapt herself round with the gay dress which had covered a deer. Another held the cub of
a shaggy lioness, and gave it a milky human breast in exchange. There was one who coiled a serpent
thrice round under her breast unharmed, a girdle next the skin, while it gaped at her thigh so
close, hissing gently, and sleepless gazed at the maiden secrets of the girl who was sleeping off
her wine. Another went barefoot over the hills, treading on brambles and sharp bristling thorns,
and standing firm on a prickly pear. One attacked a longlegged camel, and sheared through its
curving neck with a sweep of her thyrsus: then half to be seen, went stumbling over the path with
blind feet the headless body of the camel staggering about in winding ways, until a hoof sank into
a slippery hole and the creature rolled over helpless on its back in the dust. Another turned her
step to a stretch of pasture in the forest, and caught hold of the fell of a maddened bull, then
scoring the bull’s neck with savage nails tore off the impenetrable skin, while another tore away
all his bowels. You might have seen a girl unveiled, unshod, leaping about on the jagged rocks
above a precipice; no fear had she of the sheer fall, no sharp point of stone scratched the girl’s
naked foot.

[386] At the mouth of the Astacid lake many a son of India was cut up by the steel of the Curetes.
The warriors surrounded the battalions of the foe with blow for blow, and imitated the rhythms of
the armour-dance in the wheeling movements of their feet. Leneus broke off a crested peak from a
mountain, and lifting this in his hairy hand, he cast the jagged mass among the enemy: the Bacchant
yelled in triumph, the Bassarid cast her vinewreathed point, the heads of many men in that
blackskin crowd were brought down by the womanish thyrsus. Eupetale was ready, and pierced a bold
man with her deadly shaft, then let fly her pointed ivy covered with vineleaves to smash the steal.
Stesichore with her bunches of grapes skipt into the mellay, and shooed off a tribe of enemies with
manbreaking bullroarer, waving a brazen pair of loudclashing cymbals.

[403] There was hard fighting on both sides. Thee was the sound of the syrinx – the syrinx awaking
the battle! There was drooling of pipes – the shepherd’s pipes calling to war! There were the
Bassarids’ howlings: and as the turmoil arose, the black air bellowed with thunderclaps from Zeus,
presaging victory for Bromios to come. A great swarm fell; all the thirsty earth was reddened with
running blood, and the mouth of the Astacid lake was a bubbling bloodbath mingled with Indian gore.

[411] But the god pitied his foes in his heart of merry cheer, and he poured the treasure of wine
into the waters. So he changed the snowywhite waters to yellow, and the river swept along bubbling
streams of honey intoxicating the waters. When this change came upon the waters, the breezes blew
perfumed by the newly-poured wine, the banks were empurpled. A noble Indian drank, and spoke his
wonder in these words:

[419] “Here is a strange and incredible drink I have seen! This is not the white milk of goats, not
dark like water, nor is it like what I have seen in the riddled hives, what the buzzing bee brings
forth with sweet wax. No – this delights the mind with a fragrant scent. A man is thirsty in the
steam of this sultry heat – but if he scoops up a few drops of running water in his palms, he
shakes off at once the whirlwind of parching thirst! Honey surfeits you sooner – O here’s a great
miracle! When I drink this I want to drink more! For this had both merits – it is sweet, and it
does not surfeit. Hebe, come this way! take up your pitcher, and bring your Trojan cupbearer who
serves with cups the divine company – let Ganymedes draw honeyed drops from this river and fill all
the mixing-bowls of Zeus! This way, friends, have a taste of a honeydistilling river! Here I see an
image of the heavens; for that nectar of Olympos which they say is the drink of Zeus, the Naiads
are pouring out in natural streams on the earth!”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________

1. From Hom. Od. vii. 36; cf. bk. vii. 316.
2. Lydian.
3. Samothrace.
4. Rhodes. The Telchines are gnomes or dwarfs, who lived in Rhodes till they were driven out, but
no two authors tell their story alike. Tlepolemos has nothing to do with them; he was the leader of
the Dorian colonists on the island.
5. The epithet does not fit Centaurs and the construction is loose. Probably the text is corrupt.
Perhaps trêcheia (E.H. Warmington).
6. They had their forge under Etna.
7. A sea-nymph with whom he fell in love. Polyphemos the shepherd-Cyclops and Brontes the
smith-Cyclops have really nothing to do with each other.
8. Usually identified with Odysseus’s wife; it is doubtful if they really have anything but the
name in common.
9. Many of these names have no mythogical or other importance and need be due to nothing except
Nonnos’s own fancy. Here and elsewhere he finds names appropriate to the nature of the beings who
bear them; thus, the first four satyrs are called Pastoral, Cult-association, Tall-horn and
Mountain-dweller, the last name giving incidentally Nonnos’s opinion of what the famous name
Orestes meant.
10. Otherwise unknown.

11. Dionysos.
12. No one but Nonnos seems to have heard of this and the next class of Centaurs, and where he got
the stories of their origins, or if he invented them himself, is unknown.
13. Here a witch; in Hesiod, Shield 264 ff., a personification of grief.
14. Faunus in another guise, cf. xiii. 327.
15. All these names mean something: as Shiny and Dancer, Petalled and Viola, Flowercup, Teeming,
Mooney and Rosy, Sharpwit and Belchy, Neatwine and Drinky, Vineflower and Sickler and Thorny (?),
Dancemistress and Runout, and old Leesdame.
16. A name of Bacchos.
17. See on xii. 79.
18. Another Homeric paraphrase, this time from Il. iii. 1 ff. It is to be remembered that Nonnos
was above all things a rhetorician, and variation, the saying of the same thing in as many ways as
possible, was one of their favourite exercises