So he remained in the hall deep down in the waves, with the broad main for his dwelling, a visitor under the waters, and he lay sprawled among the seaweed in Thetis’s bosom ; he embraced never satisfied Cadmos’s daughter, Ino his nurse, mother of a noble son, sister of his own mother, and often he held in the loving prison of his arms Palaimon his yearsmate, his foster-brother. The Mimallon with quiet shoe no longer trod the noisy turns of the dance, for Bacchos was not there; she was hunting for tracks of Lyaios now under the sea. The Satyr so full of energy showed a face unsmiling, and languished in sorrow strange to him. The Pans wandered wild through the woods with hillranging hoof, Pans in search of Dionysos, and heard no word of him. Seilenos danced no more, threw away his cymbals unheeded, lay with downcast looks. Cronian Macris the nurse of nevermourning Dionysos trilled her lament, she who used to share the basket of the well-spoked car of Bacchos. So they were all restless and sad. But Scelmis left the caves of the waveless deep, and drove his father’s unwetted car, to tell them the tidings in their sorrow that Dionysos was coming back.
While Bacchos enjoyed the hospitality of the sea, the windfoot courier of vineplanting Bromios traversed the Caucasos mountains to the Indian city. He had the shape of a bull, a borrowed form bearing horns, the very image of the horns of Selene; the skin of a mountain goat was thrown over his body, and hung over one shoulder from the collar-bone draping his right side down to the fork of the thigh ; he shook a pair of long ears like the ears of an ass beside his two cheeks, and he was covered with hair, with a self-wagging tail that grew out from between his loins.
The swarthy Indians crowded about him laughing, until he approached the place where huge Deriades, that king of men, sat in his chariot- and-pair. He checked the steps of his towering elephants, and laughing spoke to the Satyr in words of raillery :
“‘What doubleshaped men bullform Dionysos sends to Deriades! what playthings for a soldier! Monsters, not creatures having a wholly human shape! ‘They have the form of beasts! for with a double shape they are bastards, bulls and men at once—they have the bull’s body and the man’s face.”
So he spoke, and made the summoning signal for war, by striking a hearty blow with his sword upon the round boss which was seen in the middle of his richly-ornamented shield: the metal struck boomed out a sound of havoc from the oxhide.
Then the swiftcoursing herald of Bromios opened his amazed lips, and gave his message to the grim king :
“Deriades, sceptred king, the god Dionysos commands the Indians to accept the wine of his care-forgetting vintage, and to pour libations to the immortals, without war, without battle. If they refuse, he takes up arms, until Hydaspes bend a servile knee to the wands of the Bassarids. You have heard a truthful message: now give some answer to my address, which I may deliver to Dionysos.”
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