In the thirtieth, Eurymedon sends Tectaphos slain to Hades, into the lowest house of constraint.
So Ares rose to the sevenzone sky, jealous, heavy with rancour. But Dionysos danced boldly into the battle and assailed the swarthy people, now leaping upon the first ranks with earthshaking bound, now right in the midst of the forefighters. With his darting thyrsus he mowed the firstfruits of his black harvest, and furiously cut down the tribes of the enemy throng. When he saw that Ares had abandoned the Indian contest, he cheered on the Satyrs to attack Deriades, and each outdid the other. Aristaios left to Dionysos the boisterous right wing of the clusterbearing host, and ran to the left of the battle.
Now when Morrheus saw the servants of Bromios still fighting with leaves and flowery shafts, he called out in great amazement to foolish Deriades—
“What is this marvel, Deriades ? My warriors fall, struck with a thyrsus or rubbishy leaves—the shieldless slay the armed! Nothing shakes the Bassarids; strike them with axe or two-edged sword, they remain unwounded ! You do the same, if I may say so, my lord king—let be your bronze-beaten spear and lift a vinethyrsus, if you would shed blood, since the enemy are much more triumphant with their bunches of twigs than steel. I never saw a conflict of this kind: the rubbishy thyrsus in volleys is better than our javelins.
“Give me too a green weapon to shake! for our arrows have been beaten by the unwarlike fennel. Give me yellow boots to wear, since even our unbreakable greaves have given way to the buskins. What good is it if I have a brazen shield, when women are more triumphant unarmed, and swing their cymbals in battle, while warriors collapse, while helmets yield to garlands and corselet to fawnskin ? Often I have met unwounded Dionysos and thought to tear through his unbreakable flank : I have let fly my spear with good aim, and when it touched Dionysos, the unbending sharp point of the bronze was bent !
When he finished, the bold monarch smiled, and looked askance at his goodson in silent witnessing anger ; then he broke out into bold menacing words :
“Why do you tremble at unarmed Dionysos, you fool Morrheus? A nice thing to fear Satyrs playing at battle !”’
This fearless boast encouraged his goodson. The prodigious Morrheus attacked the warriors of Bromios. He wounded Eurymedon, cut through the groin with his blood-stained spear: the mad point ran through the thigh and tore the skin from the fat flesh ; collapsing he fell on his knee to the ground. Mailclad Alcon did not neglect his brother’s fall; but lifting spear and round buckler he made for the fallen man, and covered the warrior well, holding the shield tower-like over his body, and thrusting right and left his unresting spear, brother protecting brother against the foe. He straddled across the wounded man, as a lion over his cubs, shouting loud and letting out mad Corybantic cries from his lips. When Morrheus saw him moving with neat steps about his brother, defending the fallen Cabeiros, the monster went raging like Typhon and attacked both brothers, that Cabeiro might shed her tears for two dead sons, slain in one day with one spear. And now he would have dealt equal destruction to both, but Eurymedon called upon his Lemnian father with voice that gasped and strained from his mouth :
“O Father, firebreathing lord of our laborious art ! Grant me the boon once earned, when Deo of the threshing-floor alone seized threecliff Sicily, as sightingprize for Persephoneia hidden there, and knocked over your windblown bellows in the west and your wide forge and gripping tongs: but I defended my father and scared her off, protecting your anvil. You owe it to me that the air is black and hot with your Sicilian sparks! Then save your son I pray, whom savage Morrheus has wounded !
At these words fiery Hephaistos leapt down from heaven, and sent a flame leaping and fluttering with many tongues about his son, whirling in his hand a shoot of fire. About Morrheus’s neck the flame crawled and curled of itself as if it knew what it was doing, and rolled round his throat a necklace of fireblazing constraint ; the blazing throat once encircled, it ran down with a springing movement to the end of his toes, and wove a plait of fiery threads over the warrior’s foot, and there firmly fixt on the earth scattered its dancing sparks—the helmet caught fire and his head was hot enough! And now he would have fallen flat, struck with the fiery shot, had not Deriades’ father Hydaspes come to the rescue. For he sat watching the battle high on rock, his bull-form having a false guise of human shape. He poured a quenching stream and saved the man’s life, cooling the hot blast from the firebeaten face, brushing off the ashes and dirt from the helmet. Then he caught up Morrheus wrapt in a darksome cloud, covered and hid his limbs in a livid mist ; that the firebearing Crookshank might not destroy him with his blazing shower of deadly Lemnian flame ; that old Hydaspes, the tender-hearted father, might not see another goodson of Deriades perish after the first, and lament the death of Morrheus along with Orontes.
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