But the cruel mellay was not ended yet: the struggle was only half done, the conflict unfinished. Indian Ares appeared on high and shouted loud ; Bacchos’s mad Enyo marshalled them for another bout, belching a load of frenzied Lydian threats in the renewed battle, hurling on the foe volleys of deadly garlands, furious for war. The enemies of vineloving Lyaios were slain with bloody wounds from the wooden steel. Bronze-clad Indians marvelled, when steel was cleft by the viny spear of an unarmed Bacchant woman, and their chests were bared and freshly wounded by the sharp ivy ; for those who wore the corselet were shot down more easily than the unprotected. Death took many shapes in that indescribable carnage on the Tauros, where the coats of the fighting men were sliced open by twigs and reddened with gore. The Bacchant women unconquerable surrounded in a ring the Indians huddled together, and the bold hoboy sang the call to kill. In that combat the Bacchoi, servants of unwarlike Dionysos, stood like a stone wall unhurt all by the blows of axes and two-edged swords ; but their curlyheaded enemies were killed by little bunches of leaves. There were the Indian shafts stuck thick in rows on the tall-branching trees. The fir was pricked by the far-hurled spear, the pine was hit, the laurel though Phoibos’s tree was pierced by shots, and hid under its leaves in shame the cloud of feathered arrows flying upon it, that Apollo might not see how the shots hit it. A Bacchant woman without shield and without steel, shook her rattle with naked hand, and a shielded man fell; the drums banged, and the warriors danced ; the cymbals clanged, and a man of India bent his neck to beg mercy of Lyaios. On a little fawnskin the unbreakable points of the arrows were bent; the heavy helmet of unyielding metal was cut through by a leaf. A leader of the warmad Satyrs threw Euian leafage and hit a man: his coat of mail was split by the ivy and vine, and the wearer was wounded. Astraéis saw the scale of war was dipping to one side and foretelling the victory of Lyaios the Indianslayer, so he fled untouched and saved his life, cowed by the long leafy spear of Dionysos.
Then Aristaios spread lifegiving simples on all the wounds of the Bassarids, and healed them by - the art of Phoibos. For one he put centaury-plant on the cuts ; for another in distress, he pressed with his fingers about the blood and cleaned away the gory dew. If a Bacchant whimpered, he pounded all manner of herbs to heal the girl’s wounds, of foot or hand or breast or flanks as it might be. If a warrior had been struck and blood drawn by an arrow, he pulled out the sharp point, and squeezing the wound with his hand discharged the drops of blood little by little. Another struck by a poisoned arrow he laid hold of, and lanced the wound cutting out the infected surface, with just a touch of the hand and gentle fingers. He mingled the artistic produce of the healbane bee with fresh flowers of the lifesufficing earth, and poured in Bacchos’s painkilling sap. Other wounded men he made whole by some charm of Phoibos, humming over an awful ditty full of names which he knew among the secrets of his father’s life-saving art.
So he cured the diverse kinds of wounds. By this time the barbarian goddess Enyo had quieted her voice among the fighters, and the Bassarids had led away from the battlefield their crowd of captive warriors; many more of the enemy had left the Tauros mountains and returned, their hopes unfulfilled, to the mansion of Deriades in the Indian regions, crowds of men driving their longlived elephants. And herdsman Pan sang loudly, pouring out his victorious note, drawing on the Satyrs to dance drunkenly after their war.
Now woollyhead Blemys, chief of the Erythraian Indians, bent a slavish knee before Dionysos Indianslayer, holding the suppliant’s unbloodied olivebranch. And the god when he saw the man bowed upon the earth, took his hand and lifted him up, and sent him far away with his polyglot people, putting a distance between him and the swarthy Indians, now hating the lordship and the manners of Deriades, away to the Arabian land, where beside the sea he dwelt on a rich soil and gave his name to his people. Blemys quickly passed to the mouth of sevenstream Nile, to be the sceptred king of the Ethiopians, men of colour like his. The ground of Meroé welcomed him, where it is always harvest, a chieftain who handed down his name to the Blemyes of later generations.
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