Now the grim Cyclopes, allies of Zeus, surrounded the fighters. Argilipos lifted a shining torch and shed light on the throng through the dark clouds. He was armed with a firebarbed thunderbolt from the underworld, and fought with firebrands : the swarthy Indians trembled, amazed at that fire so like the heavenly firebursts. A champion all of fire he was, and the sparks of earthborn lightning showered upon the enemies’ heads. The Cyclops conquered ash-pikes and countless swords, shaking his hot missiles and his flashing points, with brands for his arrows : one upon another, countless, he burnt the Indian men with the blazing shafts, chastising with pretended thunderbolt not one Salmoneus alone, slaying not only one enemy of God; not one Euadne alone groaned, or only one Capaneus was scorched up.
Steropes also was armed with a mimic lightning, which he brandished like the lightningflash of the sky, but an extinguishable brand, the child of Western flame, seed of Sicilian fire and that smoky forge; a dark pall covered it like a cloud, and beneath it he now hid the light, now showed it, in alternating movements, just like the flashes in the sky ; for the lightning comes in flashes and goes again.
Brontes also was in the battle, rattling a noisy tune with a din like rolling thunderclaps : he poured an earthborn shower of his own with strange drops falling through the air, and lasting but a moment— an unreal Zeus he was, with imitated raindrops and no clouds. Then leaving the artificial noise of this mock thunder, he armed himself with Sicilian steel against the enemy ; swinging the iron hammer high over his shoulders he smashed many an enemy head, and struck the dusky ranks right and left, with a clang like the blows as if he were ever striking on the hammerbeaten anvil of Etna.
Next he broke off a crag from a farspreading rock, and rushed upon Deriades with this stony spear. He hurled the huge rock with merciless hand against the blackskin king who stood ready, and struck his hairy chest with its rocky point. The king was wholly staggered with the heavy blow of this huge millstone full on his chest, like a drunken man ; but Hydaspes rescued his stricken son from death. The bold king, crushed by the blow, dropt the furious spear from his never-tiring hands, the twentycubit spear of bronze, and threw his shield on the ground out of his shamed grasp, with little breath left in him; struck on the round of his breast by the pointed stone, he fell down headlong out of his lofty car like a tall highcrested firtree, which falling encompasses a vast space of wide earth. The Indians crowded round him and lifted him into the car, fearing that the ugly Cyclops might get another crag of some lofty hill and throw again, and slay their king with the rough missile— for he was as tall as highcrested Polyphemos. In the middle of this grim champion’s forehead glared the light of one single round eye; the blackskin Indians shook with wonder and fear when they saw the eye of the grim Cyclops; they thought Olympian Selene must have come down from the sky and risen in the earth-born Cyclops’s face, shining with her full orb, to defend Lyaios.
Father Zeus, seeing how the Cyclops imitated his own noise, laughed on high in the clouds that the earth was then flooded with a strange kind of shower from earthclouds upon its bosom, a new experience, while the thirsty air had no downpour through its bare dry expanse.
Trachios also reared his head: and Elatreus, marching beside his brother, held and shook a shield like a towering crag, and held a long firtree high in the clouds, sweeping off the enemies’ heads with his treespear.
Kuryalos reared his head. He cut off a large body of fugitives in the battle, away from the plain and down towards the sea, shutting the Indian companies into the fishgiving gulf; so he conquered his foes over the lancebearing main as he thrust his twentycubit blade through the water. Then with long poleaxe he split off a rock near the brine, and threw it at his adversaries ; many then felt the threads of Fate in double fashion without burial, struck with the jagged missile, and brinedrowned in watery strife.
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