But darkness surrounded both armies and put a stop to the fight. Night past, the battle began again ; when they awoke from sleep and bed, the succeeding dawn armed them once more.
Not yet was it the end of conflict for impatient Dionysos ; yet first there must be many cycles of rolling years while the trumpet blazed the tune of war in vain ; but after the varied course of so many battle-stirring years, now the conflict of Bacchos grew more violent for the end.
Now the Rhadamanes of Dicte did not neglect the command of warmad Dionysos, nor left it for the forgetful winds to care for ; but with one accord they built ships of war for Lyaios. Through the woods they were busy, some here, some there. One was turning pegs, one worked at the middle of the keel, one fitted the planks straight over the pairs of ribs, and fastened the long sideplanks fixed to the ribs making the vessel’s wall” ; an Arabian shipwright raised upright in the middle of the deep mastbox the mast amidships, reserved for the spreading sail ; and skilled workmen of deft Hephaistos and Athena rounded the wooden yard for the top.
So they wrought ships for Bacchos with really incomparable art. And Dionysos amid the anxieties of war remembered the prophecy of his own Rheia : that the end of the war would be seen, when Bacchants fought by sea against Indians.
Lycos appointed by irrevocable command of Dionysos to serve as commander on the surface of the sea, drove his seachariot undrenched travelling upon its way to the place, where the Rhadamanes, those clever voyagers into foreign parts, had built the ships for seafaring Dionysos. And then circling Time, rolling the wheel of the fourseason year, was whirling along for the sixth year. King Deriades summoned to assembly the blackskin nation of Indians ; the herald with hurrying steps went gathering the people and cried his call in their different languages. At once the many tribes of Indians assembled, and sat down in companies on rows of benches, and prince Morrheus addressed the assembly :
“You all know, I think, my friends, what labours I went through among the mountain strongholds, until the Cilician land and the Assyrian nation bowed their necks as slaves under the yoke of Deriades. You know also what I have done in resisting Dionysos, fighting Satyrs, and cutting off the hateful heads of that oxhorned generation with shearing steel, when I dragged away and delivered to Deriades that fettered swarm of Bassarids, the prizes of war ; and how the paved streets of the city were purpled by their gore as they were massacred, how others had a dance in the air with their necks choked in a throttling noose, how others were swallowed in a deepdug hollow pit and learnt what a watery death is like. But again I weave a better notion still for our people. I hear that the Rhadamanes have built ships for Dionysos the runaway by some woodcutter’s art of theirs. However, I fear not the seafighting tree ! When was it known in war that women with paltry leaves kill a man in a ship full of shields ? When will highhorn Pan, the crazy ranger of the hills, tear Indian ships to pieces with sharp claws ? No Seilenos can row over the loudrumbling waters, and sink a ship of war with a peaceful ferule, leaping to bloody dance with frenzied foot, striking up a chant with death in it ; in the sea he will never transfix a man with his bullhorns, and get near enough to cut him in two at the waist and vanquish him. No ! one blow shall send him headlong, and he shall lie in the billows where he will find no tomb ; the Bacchant women struck down with long spears shall sink into the depths of the sea soiled in blood. And the ships of Dionysos I ill destroy, thrusting a twentycubit seafighting spear through the hulk !
“Come on, friends, fight with all confidence. Let no one shrink when he sees opposed to us the ships of Bacchos in line ; for Indians are used to fighting by sea, indeed they have more prowess when they fight by sea than by land. My invincible steel shall not take many Satyrs ; but instead of two hundred warriors I will drag home one by the hair alone, womanmad Dionysos, to be the servant of Deriades.”
“With this appeal, Morrheus, cunning man, persuaded implacable Deriades. The people all cheered loudly and applauded the speech : one concordant cry resounded from all throats like the noise of stirring waves. The king dismissed the assembly. The herald was sent to Bromios to declare war by sea against willing Bacchos.
But both men agreed to forbid war and make a truce for three circuits of the moon, until they should do the solemn burial rites for the host of the dead who had fallen. So for a short time there was peace, never far from war, spreading abroad a calm that was pregnant with strife.
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