But Titan Mene on not yield to the attack. Battling against the Giant’s heads, like-horned to hers, she carved many a scar on the shining orb of her bull’s horn; 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 drew his sword; the blade of the Tanagraian brand sparkled bright as its master made ready for attack ; his thirsty 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.
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 let fly a shaft, —that bold comrade of fish-like Aigoceros; 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 and his neighbour the Swan, the starry Lyre presaged the victory of Zeus.
Now Typhoeus shifted to the rocks, leaving the air, to flog the seas. He grasped and shook the peak of Corycios, and crushing the flood of the river that belongs to Cilicia, 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 many-footed 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, drawn by her passion for the serpent’s bed, shivered under the god-descerating 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 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.
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 shoulders at once : so the monster laboured with this hand or that to lift the fugitive flashing of the roving thunderbolt.
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 ; but Hera saw Cronides shaken with passion, and mad with jealousy she called out with an angry laugh :
Phoibos, go and stand by your father, or some plowman may catch Zeus and put him to some earthshaking plow-tree. 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 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 Fodymion’s bed ina hurry! Zeus your Majesty it is a pity 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 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!”
Cite This Text