I know also the boar of the Arcadian mountains ; but for Lyaios, boars and the brood of lions were the playthings of childhood.
What good did bold Heracles do, if he took all that trouble to liberate some little snaky brook like Lerna, by cutting down the selfgrowing firstfruits of the lurking serpent, as that plentiful crop of snake-heads grew spiking up? If only he had done the killing alone! instead of calling in his distress for Iolaos, to destroy the heads as they grew afresh, by lifting a burning torch, until the two together managed to get the better of one female serpent. I do not see how to praise two fellows fighting with a miserable viper, and one job divided between two. But Euios wand in hand cut down the snaky sons of Earth alone—that champion of Zeus! attacked them all, with huge serpents flowing over their shoulders equally on both sides much bigger than the Inachian snake, while they went hissing restlessly about among the stars of heaven, not in the pool of Lerna. Forgive me Iolaos, for you burnt the hydra’s body, and Heracles, only Heracles, grabbed the name of victory.
No humble Nemea Bacchos my champion saved from loud-roaring throats, no paltry Lerna,; by cutting down a bush of heads which ever grew again on so many necks ; he took for heralds of his fourfold victory West Wind and South Wind, the feet of the North and the wing of the East, and filled Ocean, land and sea with his exploits. If a serpent brings fame to a man, if lurking snakes, these are the birthday garlands of Bacchos, these are the terrible serpentine fillets of his snaky hair, ever since he left the teeming fold of his father’s thigh.
I will say nothing of the pricket with golden horns ; I will not disparage great Heracles as the slayer of a single deer. Forget the timid deer: for killing of fawns and hunting of prickets is a only little play for the Bacchant woman.
Let pass the Cnossian labour of Heracles. I cannot admire just a mad bull which he chased, and how shaking that great club he knocked off a little horn. One woman alone has often done as much ; and a Bacchant woman, the least of the servants of oxhorn Dionysos, has often butchered a vast herd of horned bulls. Often if a mad ox showed fight with his horns, she has pulled back the sharp curved horns and brought down to his knees a bull that has lightly tossed lions.
Leave aside also the heads of threecrested Geryones ; for my Dionysos with his fleshcutting ivy shore through Alpos, that godfighting son of Earth, Alpos with a hundred vipers on his head for hair, who touched the Sun, and pulled back the Moon, and tormented the company of stars with his tresses.
The labours of Heracles, who was son of immortal Zeus, when for three moonlights he possessed the fruitful bed of Alemene, were a petty job in the mountains: but the exploits of Bacchos, whether Giant of many arms or chief of the highcrested Indians, were not a deer, no herds of oxen, no shaggy boar, no dog or bull, no goldglinting fruit and its roots, no dung, no random wandering bird with silly wing-shafts not made of steel, no horse’s man-eating teeth, no little belt of Hippolyta. The victory of Dionysos was huge Deriades and twentycubit Orontes.
Q brilliant son of Meles, deathless herald of Achaia, may your book pardon me, immortal as the Dawn! I will not speak of the Trojan War ; for I do not compare Dionysos to Aiacides, or Deriades to Hector. Your Muse ought to have hymned so great and mighty a struggle, how Bacchos brought low the Giants, and ought to have left the labours of Achilles to other bards, had not Thetis stolen that glory from you. But breathe into me your inspired breath to sing my lay; for I need your lovely speech, since I make nothing of the sweat of Dionysos, the fatal foe of India, when I hymn so great a war.
Then bring me, O goddess, into the midst of the Indians again, holding the inspired spear and shield of Father Homer, while I attack Morrheus and the folly of Deriades, armed by the side of Zeus and Bromios ! Let me hear the syrinx of Bacchos summon the host to battle, and the ceaseless call of the trumpet in Homer’s verse, that I may destroy what is left of the Indians with my spear of the spirit.
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