Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca 31.0–69: Book 31: Hera appeals to Persephone against Dionysos

In the thirty-first, Hera propitiates Sleep for Cronides, and Persephone for Bacchos.

So struck by the spell of the Indian conflict, Bacchos sped about the bosom of the Erythraian land, shaking the golden locks against his snow-white cheeks.

But Hera, swelling with jealous passions, scored the air with menacing sole, when she beheld the host of scattered Indians beaten like corn in the threshing where they stood, by the manslaying thyrsus of Lyaios. Again she awakened a new resentment, seeing the heap of Andromeda’s broken chains beside the Erythraian sea, and that rock lying on the sand, Earthshaker’s monstrous lump. Bitterly she turned her eye aside, not to glimpse by the sea the bronze-forged sickle of Gorgonslaying Perseus.

For Perseus already was ferrying across to the thirsty stretches of Libya, swimming on his wings and circling in the air a quickfoot knee. He had taken the travelling eye of Phorcys’s old one-eyed daughter unsleeping ; he dived into the dangerous cave, reaped the hissing harvest by the rockside, the firstfruits of curling hair, sliced the Gorgon’s teeming throat and stained his sickle red. He cut off the head and bathed a bloodstained hand in that viperish dew ; then as Medusa was slain, the neck was delivered of its twin birth, the Horse and the Boy with the golden sword.

Then jealous resentment boiled up in Hera’s breast, and she belched spleen against Perseus and Dionysos ; and she purposed to enchant the eyes and heart of Cronides in deceitful love, under the wing of sweet sleep that is brought on after the bed, that while Zeus yet slumbered she might find some cunning trick to crush Lyaios.’ Away she went to the gloomy all-welcoming court of Hades; there she found Persephone, and told her a crafty tale :

“Most happy I call you, that you dwell so far from the gods! You have not seen Semele at home in Olympos. I fear I may yet see Dionysos, one born of a mortal womb, master of the lightning after Zagreus, or lifting the thunderbolt in earthborn hands. Cornbringer, you have been robbed! Beside the Nile with his harvests they hold festival for another, instead of your sheafbearing mother Demeter; they tell of a spurious bountiful Deo, bullbred, horned, Inachos’s daughter Io.

“And Ares, the one I brought forth, born of a heavenly womb, my own son, was shackled tight inglorious in earthly fetters in a jar, where Ephialtes had hidden him. Nor did heavenly Zeus my husband help him—but he rescued Semele’s son from the flaming fire, he saved Bacchos from the thunderbolt, while still a baby brat, his bastard son half-finished ! But Zagreus the heavenly Dionysos he would not defend, when he was cut up with knives!

“What made me angrier still, was that Cronides gave the starry heaven to Semele for a bridegift,—and Tartaros to Persephoneia! Heaven is reserved for Apollo, Hermes lives in heaven—and you have this abode full of gloom! What good was it that he put on the deceiving shape of a serpent, and ravished the girdle of your inviolate maidenhead, if after the bed he was to destroy your babe ?

“Lord Zeus holds the starry hall on Olympos ; he has given the briny sea to his brother the water king for his prerogative ; he has given the cloudy house of darkness to your consort. Come now, arm your Furies against wineface Bacchos, that I may not see a bastard and a mortal king of Olympos. Pity the wife of Zeus who prays to you, pity Deo, pity praying Themis the immaculate, that the Indians may have a little space to breathe while Dionysos is shaken. Be the avenger of my sorrow, because Cronion has given nectar to Bacchos and the blood of battle to Ares! Let not Athens sing hymns to a new Dionysos, let him not have equal honour with Eleusinian Dionysos, let him not take over the rites of Iacchos who was there before him, let not his vintage dishonour Demeter’s basket!”