Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca 24.179–241: Book 24: Lament in the Indian city; the feast and the request for a song

For already a lamentable rumour was flying through the city, which told of the late massacre of their kinsmen Indians. There was infinite wailing then. Dirgefond women tore their cheeks with their nails in mourning ; they rent off the garments from their bodies and bared their chests, beating their circled breasts with this hand and that until the blows made the blood flow. That gray old man on the threshold of old age cut off his snowy hair with the knife of sorrow, when he heard how four sons had perished in their prime, a pitiable death indeed, brought low by Aiacos and his terrible sword alone. Women in heavy affliction mourned one her brother, and one her father; there was a bride bathed in tears lamenting her bridegroom lately wedded with dancing, another Laodameia with her Protesilaos : the newmade bride unveiled, unkempt, tore the clusters of her hair.

One Indian wife, despairing at her husband’s fall, when the full time of her labour was near and she saw now the delivering circle of the tenth moon, sorrowed with many gears for her man’s death in the water, and cried out in lamentable tones against the hateful river :

Never again will I drink the bitter Hydaspes of my country! Never will I walk beside his water, never—woe’s me—will I touch the river which drowned your body! I swear it by you, and your burden which I carry in my womb, I swear by you and the love which time cannot wither! Who will take me and bring me where my dead husband fell, that I may embrace the dripping body, that the wave may swallow me too and drown me beside my man! O that I had born a son and reared him! But woe is me, my womb still carries the ripening burden. And if I ever do bear a son, and he asks for his father, how can I point to his father when the boy cries for daddy ?”’

So she lamented the husband who could not hear. Another mourned for a bridal never hallowed, her wooer lost, who never saw the happy hour of wedding decked with the bridegroom’s garland, who never heard in the bridal chamber the sweet music of love’s quickening pipes.

So they sorrowed and wailed. But in the forest, Bacchos held a feast with his Satyrs and Indianslaying warriors: bulls were slaughtered, rows of heifers were struck with axes and cut up with knives, whole flocks of sheep were killed from the captured Erythraian herds. Seilenoi and Satyrs settled in companies round the table with the god of the thyrsus, all with multitudinous hands partook of the same food. Infinite wine was drunk by all in order ; the servers emptied endless fragrant jars as they drew the nectarean juice of the perfect grape.

So they rejoiced, while Leucos the selftaught Lesbian singer wove his lay beside the mixing-bowl, how the older Titans armed themselves against Olympos. He sang the true victory of Zeus potent in the Heights, how broadbeard Cronos sank under the thunderbolt, and Zeus sealed him deep in the dark Tartarean pit, armed in vain with the watery weapons of the storm.

Lapethos, a dweller in the unarmed Cyprian land, sat next to the inspired minstrel, and he passed him a fat portion of meat, begging him to sing a pleasant story that never-silent Athens loves, the weaving-match between Athena and Cythereia.