Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca 18.196–267: Book 18: Dionysos arms; Staphylos' gifts and the tale of Campe

Such was the dream Dionysos had seen. Rising from his bed, he donned about his chest the starspangled corselet of bronze stained with Indian blood, and entwined his hair with a circlet of writhing snakes, and wedged his feet in the reddened boots, took thyrsus in hand—that flowery spear of Enyo— and called a servant Satyr. Prince Botrys, hearing the echoing call from the divine lips of Bacchos hard by, roused himself, put on his own dress, and called to sleeping Pithos. When Methe heard the voice, she reluctantly lifted her heavy head, and letting it fall lazily, went to sleep again; all through the morning the queen still remained with her eyes gathering the most sweet bloom of sleep. At last she left her bed with slow unwilling foot.

Staphylos the grapelover attended upon Lyaios, offering him the guest’s gifts as he was hasting for his journey : a two-handled jar of gold with silver cups, from which hitherto he used always to quaff the milk of milch-goats ; and he brought embroidered robes, which Persian Arachne beside the waters of Tigris had cleverly made with her fine thread. Then the generous king spoke to Bromios :

“Fight away, Dionysos, and do deeds worthy of your sire! Show that you have the blood of Cronides in you! For your father in his first youth battered the earthborn Titans out of Olympos, when he was only a boy: on then and do your part in the struggle, destroy the overweening nation of earthborn Indians! I remember a tale which once my father heard from his father, Assyrian Belos the sovereign of my country ; this I will tell to you.

“Cronos still dripping held the emasculating sickleblade, after he had cut off the manly crop of his father’s plow and robbed him of the Mother’s bed to which he was hastening, and warred against your sire at the head of the Titans. Broadbeard Cronos fanned the flame of Enyo as he cast icy spears against Cronion, shooting his cold watery shafts : sharp pointed arrows of hail were shot from the sky. But Zeus armed himself with more fires than Helios, and melted the petrified water with hotter sparks. Whip up now ravening lions to the Indian War; fear not their elephants! For your Zeus ruling in the heights destroyed highheaded Campe with a thunderbolt, for all the many crooked shapes of her whole body.

‘A thousand crawlers from her viperish feet, spitting poison afar, were fanning Enyo to a flame, a mass of misshapen coils. Round her neck flowered fifty various heads of wild beasts: some roared with lion’s heads like the grim face of the riddling Sphinx ; others were spluttering foam from the tusks of wild boars; her countenance was the very image of Scylla with a marshalled regiment of thronging dogs’ heads. Doubleshaped, she appeared a woman to the middle of her body, with clusters of poison-spitting serpents for hair. Her giant form, from the chest to the parting-point of the thighs, was covered all over with a bastard shape of hard sea-monsters’ scales. The claws of her wide-scattered hands were curved like a crooktalon sickle. From her neck over her terrible shoulders, with tail raised high over her throat, a scorpion with an icy sting sharp-whetted crawled and coiled upon itself.

“Such was manifoldshaped Campe as she rose writhing, and flew roaming about earth and air and briny deep, and flapping a couple of dusky wings, rousing tempests and arming gales, that blackwinged nymph of Tartaros: from her eyelids a flickering flame belched out far-travelling sparks. Yet heavenly Zeus your father killed that great monster, and conquered the snaky Enyo of Cronos. Show yourself like your father, that I may call you also destroyer of the earthborn next to Cronides, when you have reaped the enemy harvest of earthborn Indians.