In the thirteenth, I will tell of a host innumerable, and champion heroes gathering for Dionysos. Famous Zeus sent Iris to the divine halls of Rheia, to inform wake-the-fray Dionysos, that he must drive out of Asia with his avenging thyrsus the proud race of Indians untaught of justice: he was to sweep from the sea the horned son of a river, Deriades the king, and teach all nations the sacred dances of the vigil and the purple fruit of vintage.
She paddled her way with windswift beat of wings, and entered the echoing den of stabled lions. Noiseless her step she stayed, in silence voiceless pressed her lips, a slave before the forest queen. She stood bowing low, and bent down her head to kiss Rheia’s feet with suppliant lips. Rheia unsmiling beckoned, and the Corybants served her beside the bowl of the divine table. Wondering she drank a sop of the newfound wine, delighted and excited ; then with heavy head the spirit told the will of Zeus to the son of Zeus :
“O mighty Dionysos! Your father bids you destroy the race of Indians, untaught of piety. Come, lift the thyrsus of battle in your hands, and earn heaven by your deeds. For the immortal court of Zeus will not receive you without hard work, and the Seasons will not open the gates of Olympos to you unless you have struggled for the prize. Hermes hardly could win his way to heaven, and only when he killed with his rod Argos the cowherd, sparkling with eyes from his feet to the hair of his head, and when he had set Ares free from prison ; Apollo mastered Delphyne, and then he came to live in the sky. Even your own father, chief of the Blessed, Zeus Lord in the Highest, did not rise to heaven without hard work, he the sovereign of the stars : first he must bind fast those threateners of Olympos, the Titans, and hide them deep in the pit of Tartaros. You also do your work, after Apollo, after Hermaon, and your prize for your labours will be a home in your father’s heaven.”
With these words the goddess returned to Olympos. At once Rheia Allmother sent out her messenger to gather the host, Pyrrhichos, the dancer before her love-rattle timbrel, to proclaim the warfare of Lyaios under arms. Pyrrhichos, gathering a varied army for Dionysos, scoured all the settlements of the eternal world ; all the races of Europe and the nations of the Asiatic land he brought to rendezvous in the land of the livedainty Lydians,
But the heroic breed of farscattered champions, the hairy Satyr, the blood of the Centaur tribe, the bushy-knee ancient and his phalanx of Seilenoi, the regiment of Bassarids—do you sing me these, O Corybantic Muses ! For I could not tell so many peoples with ten tongues, not if I had ten mouths pouring a voice of brass, all those which Bacchos gathered for his spear-chasing. Yet I will loudly name their leaders, and I will call to my aid Homer, the one great harbour of language undefiled, since mariners lost astray call on Seabluehair to save them from their wandering ways.
First of all, to obey the summons of Dionysos with his fine thyrsus, Actaion quickly came, in respect for their kindred blood, and left the seven mouth soil of his native Aonia. Boeotia’s battalions came in a flood : those who dwelt in well-walled Thebes and Onchestos, Earthshaker’s place of sojourn, Peteon and Ocalea and Erythrai, vineclad Arne so proud of Dionysos ; and those who inhabited Mideia and the celebrated towns of Eilesion and Solon and Thisbe based upon the brine, dove-haunted harbour of Aphrodite our Lady of the Sea, and the levels of Schoinos, and leafy Eleon ; and the glorious soil of Copai, where I hear still remains the famous lake of that name, the nurse of eels ; and shaggy Medeon, and those that held the fine pastures of Hyle, long-stretching foster-mother of Tychios the leathercraftsman ; and the land of broad threshing floors kept for the underworld oracle, to bear the name of Amphiaraos and his chariot in later days; and the city of Thespiai and deep-sloping Plataiai and moist Haliartos, separated from Helicon by the stream of a mountain river between ; and they who possessed Anthedon, the last place down by the sea, the little town of Glaucos the immortal fisherman who lives in the waters ; and those of inclement Ascra, the laureate home of the farmer whose name is on every tongue ; and the sacred citadel of Graia, and Mycalessos with broad dancing-lawns, named to remind us of Euryale’s throat; and the land of Nisa, and the city named after Cronos—all these were led by Actaion to the eastern clime, and laurelled Apollo the Seer, his father’s father, […] victory for the young man.
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