In the twenty-fifth you have the struggle of Perseus and the comparison of Heracles with the valour of Dionysos.
O Muse, once more fight the poet’s war with your thyrsus-wand of the mind: for not yet has Eastern Ares bent a servile knee and calmed the sevenyear conflict. The nestlings of the Indian planetree are shrinking again in horror at the dragon’s jaw-point, and thus they foretell war with Bacchos. I will not sing the first six lichtgangs, while the Indian army remained behind walls; I will make my pattern like Homer’s and sing the last year of warfare, I will describe that which has the number of my seventh sparrow. For sevengate Thebes I will brew my bowl of poesy, for she also dances wildly about me, baring her breast nymph-like over her robe in sorrow while she remembers Pentheus ; old Cithairon urges me to sing, stretching out his mourning hand, fearing lest I proclaim the unhallowed bed or the father-slaying son, the husband who lay beside her who bore him. I hear the twang of the Aonian lyre: tell me, Muses, what new Amphion is pulling dead stones to a run? I know where that sound comes from: surely it is the Dorian tune of Pindar’s lyre sounding for Thebes.
Once more let us slay the race of Erythraian Indians : for Time never saw before another struggle like the Eastern War, nor after the Indian War in later days has Enyo seen its equal. No such army came to Ilion, no such host of men. But I will set up the toils and sweat of Dionysos in rivalry with both new and old; I will judge the manhood of the sons of Zeus, and see who endured such an encounter, who was like unto Bacchos.
Nimbleknee Perseus, waving his winged feet, held his course near the clouds, a wayfarer pacing through the air, if he really did fly. But what was the good if he swung his ankles and swam the winds with that strange oarage of legs and then crept up on tiptoe, keeping his footfall noiseless, and with hollowed hand and robber’s fist caught the roving eye of Phorcys’ unsleeping daughter, then shore off the snaky swathe of one Medusa, while her womb was still burdened and swollen with young, still in foal of Pegasus ; what good if the sickle played the part of childbirth Eileithyia, and reaped the neck of the pregnant Gorgon, firstfruits of a horsebreeding neck? There was no battle when swiftshoe Perseus lifted the lifeless token of victory, the snaky sheaf of Gorgon hair, relics of the head dripping drops of blood, gently wheezing a half-heard hiss through the severed throats: he did not march to battle with men, no din of conflict was there then on land, no maritime Ares on the sea with battle-rousing winds bellied the sails of ships of war against a warrior Perseus, no Libyan Nereus was reddened with showers of blood, no fatal water swallowed a dead body rolling helplessly. No! Perseus fled with flickering wings trembling at the hiss of mad Sthenno’s hairy snakes, although he bore the cap of Hades and the sickle of Pallas, with Hermes’ wings though Zeus was his father; he sailed a fugitive on swiftest shoes, listening for no trumpet but Euryale’s bellowing—having despoiled a little Libyan hole! He slew no army of men, he burnt no city with fiery torch.
Far other was the struggle of Bromios. For Bacchos was no sneaking champion, crawling along in his armour ; he laid no ambush for the sentinel eye of Phorcys, the ball of the sleepless eye that passed from hand to hand, giving each her share under the wing of sleep in turn; he won no womanish match over a Medusa unarmed. But he cut the lines of his enemies in a double victory, battle on land and tumult at the ford ; he soaked the earth with gore, he mingled the waves with blood, he dyed the Nereids purple in their reddened streams, as he killed the barbarian hordes. Great was the harvest of highcrested Indians buried headless in mother earth; shoals of dead Indians slain by the sharp thyrsus floated at random and voyaged over the deep, a multitude! I pass by that billowy warfare, when the battlestirring river hurled his waves against invincible Lyaios, when the blazing torch of Bacchos kindled the barbarian stream with a damp spark, and watery Hydaspes with waves boiling hot puffed out smoke from his depths.
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