Thus lamented the wife with heavy tears, and Protonoe wailed a second time. Their mother rested an arm on each and dolorously cried —
The hopes of our country have perished ! No longer I see Deriades my husband, no longer Orontes my son. Deriades is dead ; the city of the Indians is plundered. The unbreakable citadel of my country has fallen : would that I myself may be taken by Bacchos and slain with my dead husband ! May he seize and cast me into the swift-flowing Hydaspes, for I refuse the earth. Let my goodfather’s water receive me, may I see Deriades even in the waters ; may I not see Protonoe following Dionysos perforce, may I never hear another piteous groan from Cheirobie while she is dragged to a captive wedlock ; may I not see another husband after Deriades, my man. May I dwell with the Naiads, since Seabluehair received Leucothea also living and she is called one of the Nereids ; and may I appear another watery Ino, no longer white, but blackfooted.”
Such were the lamentations of the longrobed women, standing in a row upon the loud-echoing battlements.
But the Bacchoi rattled their cymbals, having now made an end of warring, and they cried with one voice : “We have won great glory ! we have slain the Indian chieftain !
And Dionysos laughed aloud, trembling with the joy of victory. Now resting from his labours and the bloody contest, he first gave their due to the crowd of unburied dead. He built round the pyre one vast tomb for all alike with a wide bosom, a hundred feet long. Round about the bodies the melodious Mygdonian syrinx sounded their dirge, and the Phrygian pipers wove their manly tune with mournful lips, while the Bacchant women danced and Ganyctor trolled his dainty song with Euian voice. The double Berecyntian pipes in the mouth of Cleochos drooned a gruesome Libyan lament, one which long ago both Sthenno and Euryale with one manythroated voice sounded hissing and weeping over Medusa newly gashed, while their snakes gave out voice from two hundred heads, and from the lamentations of their curling and hissing hairs they uttered the manyheaded dirge of Medusa.”
Now resting from his labours, he cleansed his body with water, and assigned a governor for the Indians, choosing the godfearing Modaios ; they now pacified touched one table with banqueting Bacchoi over a, common bowl, and drank the yellow water from the winebreeding river. There was dancing without end. Many a Bassarid skipt about, tapping the floor with wild slipper ; many a Satyr stormed the resounding ground with heavy foot, and revelled with side-trippings of his tumbling feet as he rested an arm on the neck of some maddened Bacchant. The foot-soldiers of Bromios danced round with their oxhides and mimicked the pattern of the shieldbearing Corybants, wildly circling in the quick dance under arms. The horsemen in their glancing helmets also stood up for the dance, acclaiming the all vanquishing victory of Dionysos. Not a soul was silent — the Euian tones went up to the sevenzone sky with shouts of triumph from every tongue.
But when the revels of the carefree feast were over, and Dionysos had gathered all the spoil after his Indian War, he remembered the land of his ancient home, now he had swept away the foundations of that seven years’ conflict. The whole wealth of the enemy was given to the army as their plunder. One got an Indian jasper, one the jewel of Phoibos’s patterned sapphire and the smooth green emerald ; another hurried under the lofty peaks of broad-based Imaios the straight-legged elephants which he had captured by his spear. Here was one by the deepcavemed mountain of Hemodos driving to exile a team of Indian lions, in triumph ; there was another pulling a panther to the Mygdonian shore with a chain fast about its neck. A Satyr rushed along with a striped tiger before him, which he flogged in his wild way with a handful of tippling-leaves. Another returned with a gift for his Cybeleid bride, the fragrant plants of seagrown reeds and the shining stone which is the glory of the Erythraian brine. Many a blackskin bride was dragged out of her chamber by the hair, her neck bound fast under the yoke of slavery, spoil of war along with her newly wedded husband. The Bacchant woman god-possessed returned to the hills of Tmolos with hands full of streaming riches, chanting Euoi for the return of Dionysos.
“So Dionysos distributed the spoils of battle among his followers, after the Indian War, and sent returning home the whole host who had shared his labours. The people made haste to go, laden with shining treasures of the Eastern sea and birds of many strange forms. Their return was a triumphal march with universal acclaim to Dionysos the invincible; all revelled, for they left behind them all memory of that toilsome war, to blow away with the north wind, and each came returning home at last with his thank-offerings for victory. Asterios alone did not now return to his own country ; instead, he settled near the footunwashen Bears,” about the river Phasis in a cold land by the Massagetic Gulf,’ where he dwelt under the snowburdened feet of his father’s father, Tauros the Bull, translated to the stars. He avoided the Cnossian city and the sons of his family, hating Pasiphae and his own father Minos, and preferring Scythia to his own country. But Bacchos, followed only by his Satyrs and the Indianslaying Bacchant women, after a war in the Caucasos beside the Amazonian River, visited Arabia the second time, where he stayed and taught the Arabian people who knew not Bacchos to uplift the mystic fennel, and crowned the Nysian hills with the vineclusters of his fruitful plant.
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