The twenty-sixth has the counterfeit shape of Athena, and the great assembly of the Indian host to stir up battle.
While Deriades slept on his mournful bed, bold Athena approached, faithful to Bacchos, and wooing a second victory for her brother. She had changed her shape to one like Orontes, and imitated the goodson of highcrested Deriades. So although he had thrown off the murderous ardour for war, scared by the fate of those who had perished, he was deceived by the counterfeit vision of a false dream, which encouraged him again to make war against Dionysos, in these words : “You sleep, Deriades, but I blame you: for it is not proper that princes who rule a city should sleep all the night. The sleep of the Counsellor is - measured. About your walls the enemy are thronging ; and you raise not the soldier’s spear, you hear not the surging noise of drums or the sound of pipes, or the voice of the murderous trumpet summoning the host. Pity your daughter Protonoé, a young widow mourning a husband, and leave not, O King, your Orontes unavenged! Slay my unarmed slayers —the murderers of your goodson untimely dead— who yet live! See my breast pierced by a sharp thyrsus-wand. Alas that brave Lycurgos dwells not here ! Alas that you rule not the proud Arabs! Dionysos was no god, when a mortal man chased him and made him migrate below the sea! I have beheld Deriades running away before battling women! Be a fearless lion, for a man in armour made Dionysos in his tunic of fawnskins run like a fawn! Not he destroyed that nation of warlike Indians—your own father destroyed them: for Hydaspes saw your champions in flight, and he brought them low! You are not like other men, for you have in you the heavenly blood of a daughter of Phaéthon, your blazing grandfather. Your body is not mortal: neither sword nor spear shall bring you low when you throw yourself on Lyaios.”’
So spoke artful Athena, and returned to Olympos, when she had put off the shape of the dream.
In the morning, Deriades sent heralds to summon his farscattered troops from cities and from islands. Many a herald went this way and that way on stormswift shoe to gather the people from the various cities of the eastern region; warriors mad for war gathered from every side at the summons of their king.
First to arm themselves were those pilots of warfare, Agraios and Phlogios, the two sons of Eulaios, partners in leadership, after the burial lately made of their father newly dead. With them came all the people who dwelt in Cyra and Baidion beside the broad barbarian stream of Indian Ombelos; those from castellated Rhodoé, a place of warmad Indians, and rocky Propanisos, and those who held the round island of the Graiai, where children use the manly breast of a milch father, and steal thence their drink with pouting lips in place of the usual mother. Others came from steep Sesindion, and those who had fortified Gazos with a rampart of linen built with blocks of plaited threads, impregnable, wellmade with wellspun foundations, a steadfast fortress of Ares : no enemy hand has ever broken with bronze that line of linenclad towers.
After them followed those warriors bold, the Dardian and Prasian armies, and the tribes of gold-wearing Salangoi, where Wealth is a family friend. Their way it is to eat pulse as their fruit of life ; this they grind with round millstones instead of corn. Then a procession of curlyheaded Zabioi; their leader was wise Palthanor, a man of godfearing ways, who hated Deriades and was of one mind with Dionysos. After the war, Dionysos took this man with him and settled him as a foreign settler in lyrebuilt Thebes ; there he remained beside Dirce, and drank the Ismenian water of the Aonian river, having left his native Hydaspes.
Next came Morrheus Didnasides, proud of his vast armed host. His father Didnasos came with him to the war, his old age embittered with sorrow. He bore a buckler of wonderful work upon his aged arm ; a heath of hoary white spread shadows over his chin, proclaiming of itself how many and how long were his years. He still mourned his son untimely dead, Indian Orontes. There was Didnasos dropping tears ; King Morrheus followed, holding upright his avenging spear, ready to slay the whole host of Bromios—indeed he was resolved to fight alone with Bacchos who slew his brother, he meant to wound the unwounded son of Thyone, his brother’s murderer! With them came a polyglot host of Indians : those who dwelt in fairbuilded Aithra, the city of the Sun, founded upon a cloudless plain ; those who dwelt both in the jungles of Anthene and the reedbeds of Orycié, in blazing Nesaia, and winterless Melainai, and the round seagirt district of Patalene. Next came thick companies of Dyssaioi, and with them terrible armed hordes of shaggybreast? Sabeiroi —thick hair is upon their hearts, wherefore they always have boldness of soul and shrink not from battle.
With them marched the Uatocoitai, the Earsleepers, men whose way it is to sleep lying upon their long ears. These were led to the war by Phringos and Aspetos and haughty Danyclos, who came together, and with them Hippuros Horsetail and his farshooting comrade Morrheus: thus the whole host of Earsleepers moved by one purpose were commanded by five bloodthirsty chieftains.
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