In the thirty-fifth, seek the love of Morrheus for the enemy, and the battle and bloodshed of Bassarid women.
Deriades, the gigantic Indian chieftain, was fighting furiously in the mad battle and attacking the servants of Bromios, now casting a long spear, now striking with the hilted sword ; or he rushed about throwing boulders from the mountain torrents and shooting arrows sharper still.
In this manner the women within the walls were harried by the spears of Deriades; and there was a din from both sides of many tongues. The paved streets of the city were empurpled by the red gore, as the women were slain therein amid great tumult. The old men were seated unmoving upon the high precipitous walls, watching the fray ; the women also upon the rooftops gazed at the whole thyrsusbearing throng, and many a longrobed maiden from her chamber above leaning upon her nurse marked this female warfare, and lamented with tears the slaughter of some girl of her own years. But no man took and forced any lovely nymph; for the king had commanded his womanmad people to eschew meddling or marrying with the captives of the spear, lest in rage of the Paphian they should be slack in the fight.
But a girl rolling upon the ground was bared, her dress was pulled aside, and armed with her own radiance, wounded she wounded her lusting slayer ; her beauty was her bolt, and dying she conquered ; her naked thighs were as weapons, and sped the arrows of the Loves against her slayer. Then he would have felt desire for a lifeless corpse, as Achilles did—seeing a new Penthesileia on the ground, he would have kissed the cold lips of the girl, prostrate in the dust, had he not feared the weight of the threat of Deriades. He looked at the skin of the naked girl denied him, he gazed at her white ankles, at the parting of the uncovered thighs, touched her limbs, handled often the swelling rosy breast even now like an apple; he would even have mingled with her in love—but at last, tired, he let these foolish words of desire escape him :
“Maiden of the rosy arms, wounded yourself you have wounded your lovesick slayer, slain you conquer the living, you pierce your own destroyer with the arrows of your eyes! The spear has been conquered by your beauty ; for the radiance of your face deals confusion as much as the barbs of javelins. Your bosom is as a bow, since your breasts are more potent archers of the Loves than arrows are. A strange incredible desire is in me, when I pursue a girl’s dead love to attain a perished wedlock! A thing without breath goads me, the breathing. If I dare ask it, let those lips have breath and speech, maiden, that I may hear a word from your sweet mouth, speaking something like this: ‘You killed me, you plundered me, rolling upon the ground ! Then let a girl be, scoundrel. Touch not my tunic, when your steel has cut me! Why do you hold the side which you have wounded ? Stroke no more the cruel wound which you gave me!’ Away my spear, away the boldness of my hand, because it left alone Seilenoi with hoary bristling hair and all the ugly generation of Satyrs, and instead of old men, instead of shaggy chests, it vanquished a tender girl! But now I touch the wound in your so desirable flesh, what ridge of the pasturing woodlands must I traverse to summon old lifebringing Cheiron to help your wound or where can I find medicines, the secrets of the Healer’s painassuaging art?) Would that I had what they call the herb centaury, that I might bind the flower of no-pain upon your limbs, and bring you back safe and living from Hades whence none returns! What magic hymn have I, or song from the stars, that I may chant the ditty with Euian voice divine, and stay the flow of blood from your wounded side? Would I had here beside me the fountain of life, that I might pour on your limbs that painstilling water and assuage your adorable wound, to bring back even your soul to you again! O Glaucos, guiding the revolutions of innumerable years, if it be lawful, leave the abyss of the barren sea, and show me the life-sufficing plant, show that which you tasted once with your lips, and now enjoy life incorruptible, circling with the course of infinite time !
This said, he passed on, hiding in his heart his desire for the dead.
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