A great swarm had come from Areizanteia, nurse of the strange tree-honey ; where the trees drink the fruitful moisture of morning dew, and their leaves run honey, and so they produce the neat travail of the clever bee as if from a hive, the yellow juice born of the leaves alone. For Hyperion, just appearing after his bath in the Ocean, scatters upon the plain the wholesome juice of his hair in the morning, and waters the plant-growing furrows of earth the giver of life. Such honey Areizanteia brings : rejoicing in this, great flocks of birds swim on their wings and dance above the leaves ; or a coiling serpent creeps along, and girdles the sweet tree with enfolding loops, while he sucks the delicate juice with greedy mouth and licks with his lips the sweet travail of the clusters. So snakes dribble out the treejuice and drop delicious honey, they spit out abroad more of the sweet sap of the bee than their own bitter scattering poison. There on the honeydropping branches is that sweet bird the horion, singing like the inspired swan. He does not strike up in tune with the west wind whirring in the air with musical wings ; but he sings a lay with understanding beak, like a man twangling the strings for a wedding hymn to wait upon a bride. There the catreus foretells a shower of rain to come, goldenyellow, clearintoning ; sparkles flash from his eyes like the morning gleams of Dawn. Often trilling upon a treetop in the air he weaves a song in tune with the horion beside him, splendid with purple wings; if you hear the catreus singing his early hymn, you might almost say it was the nightingale pouring her morning music from her changeful throat. There also dwelt the battlestirring host which Pyloites the fearless son of Hippalmos had armed for the war, and with him was Billaios his brother and fellow-leader.
Next came the Sibai under arms, and the Hydarean people, with another host from the city of Carmina. Their joint leaders were Cyllaros and Astraéis the Indian prince, two sons of Brongos honoured by Deriades.
Another host came from three hundred islands, scattered here and there, or in groups together, which lie about that place where the Indos on an endless course pours out its winding travelling stream by two enclosing mouths, after creeping in its slow curving course from the Indian reedbeds over the plain to its mouth by the Eastern sea, after first rolling down the heights of the Ethiopian mountains: swollen by the mass of summerbegotten waters it increases cubit by cubit with selfrising floods, and embraces the rich land like a watery husband, who rejoices a thirsty bride with his moist kisses and enfolds her in many passionate arms for a sheafbearing bridal, while he begets in his turn other ever-recurrent streams: so Nile in Egypt, and the eastern Hydaspes in India. There swims the travelling riverhorse through the waters, cleaving with his hoof the blackpebble stream, just like the dweller in my own Nile, who cuts the summerbegotten flood and travels through the watery deeps with his long jaws. He mounts the shores, splitting the woody ridges with sharp-pointed tooth ; with only a wet ungraven jaw to ravage the fruits, he cuts the cornbearing harvest with this makeshift sickle, reaper of sheafbearing crops without steel.
Such are said to be the doings of the mighty Indian river like sevenmouth Nile. These men of war then, from the rounded shores of the islands and from the settlements of the Indos, now came under arms: their leader was Rhigbasos, one of gigantic stature.
Nor was old Aretos missing when Deriades summoned all to war. A heavy man he was; but he fitted a heavy bronze corselet over his hairy chest, and carried an oxhide shield on his aged back, slung by a strap over his bent neck. He also armed his force under compulsion for the war, he and five sons, Lycos and Myrsos together, Glaucos and Periphas and Melaneus the lateborn. He covered his gray - curly hairs with a helmet, and repaired to the left wing of his battle circuit, leaving the right to his sons.
These were men whose lips nature had closed with the seal of silence, having tied each tongue, the channel of intelligent speech. For when at the doorposts of the bridal chamber in the sacred dance Aretos pledged his troth to Laobié, according to the rites of lawful marriage, joining with her in wedlock for the begetting of children, a miracle divine was wrought. The bridegroom, fresh from his own wedding dance, had been busy at the marriage-altar sacrificing to Aphrodite the Lady of Brides; and while the hall resounded with hymns, a sow big with young in her pain shrieked out the cry of labour from her throat, prophetic of things to come, and dropt an uncanny incredible litter—a bastard brood of marine creatures, a shoal of wet fish she shot out of her womb, spat of the brine not spat of the land! Rumour flew abroad with many mouths, telling of the fishmother sow and gathering the people ; farscattered burghers came to stare at this numerous generation of land-creatures, the very image of seaborn spawn.
He asked the prophetic interpreter of God’s will: to the question, he foretold a succession of dumb children to come, like the voiceless generation of the deep sea. And the seer bade him to hide the prophetic oracle, that he might propitiate the long-winged son of Maia, governor of the tongue, guide of intelligent speech.
Laobié was brought to bed, and in one birth after another brought forth children equal in number to the sow’s young ones, and dumb like fishes. After the victory, Lord Bacchos had pity on these, and loosed the tie of the tongue in their dumb throats, drove away the silence which had been their companion from birth, bestowed upon each a voice perfected at last.
Along with these were mustered shieldbearing warriors : those who dwelt in Pylai, and those who possessed a habitation in Eucolla, the district of warlike Eos near the East Wind, and divine Goryandis with soil well fitted for seed.
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