So spoke Dionysos ; and Seabluehair replied in threatening tones and mocked at him :
“I am ashamed to confront you, Dionysos, because you want to fight the swinger of the trident, when you fled from Lycurgos’s poleaxe ! Look here, Thetis ! Here is a fine return for fife and safety that your fugitive Dionysos gives to the hospitable sea ! I am not surprised, Torchbearer : fire killed your mother when you were born, so you act like the fire.
Up my dear Tritons, help — tie up the Bacchants and make them seafarers ! May the cymbals that mountainharboured Seilenos holds be swallowed up in the sea, may the wave drag him along, may the Satyr float on the swelling flood and his Euian pipe toss on the rolling water ; may Bassarids lay the bed for me instead of Lyaios in my watery hall. — Nay, I want no Satyrs, I drag no Mainads to the deep : Nereids are better. But let the Mimallones quench their thirst in the sea and drown there ; instead of flowing draughts of wine let them drink my salt water. Let many a Bassarid driven by the wet pike of Proteus drift and toss aimlessly on the sea, tripping the dance of death for Lyaios. Drag down companies of Ethiopians and ranks of Indians as spoil for the Nereids ; bring the daughters of nymph Cassiepeia, that tongue of evil, as slaves for Doris in tardy expiation. Let Oceanos banish viny Seirios from Olympos, the leader of that unresting dance in the winepress, and bathe in his resistless flood the fiery star of Maira.
“And you, Lydian Bacchos, leave your miserable thyrsus and seek you another weapon ; put off your speckled fawnskins, the scanty covering of your limbs. If in that marriage the wooing flame of Zeus was your midwife, now fight with fire, O fireborn ! now battle with the thunderbolt of your father against the helmsman of the trident, hurl the lightning and wield your father’s aegis. No champion Deriades faces you now : this is no contest with Lycurgos, no little Arabian fight, but your adversary is the sea so mighty. Heaven still trembles at my spear of the deep, Heaven knows what a battle with the sea is like. Champion Phaethon too in his celestial course felt the point of my trident, when the deep waged formidable war in that starry battle for Corinth. The sea rose to the sky, the thirsty wain bathed in the Ocean, Maira’s dog found salt water at hand to bathe in and cooled his hot chin ; the deep bottom of the waters was uplifted in towering waves, the dolphin of the sea met the dolphin of the sky amid the lashing surges !
As he spoke, he shook with his trident the secret places of the sea, roaring surf and swelling flood flogged the sky with booming torrents of water. The army of the brine took up their wet shields. Under the water beside the brinesoaked manger of Cronion, Melicertes shook the spear of the deep, and yoked the Isthmian team ; he slung to the side of the seaborne car the spear of the seafaring king, and scored the back of the water with its triple prong — he yoked the Isthmian team, and the roar of Indian lions resounded along with the neighing of the horses.
He drove his watery course ; as the car sped, the hoof unwetted, unmoistened, scored only the surface. The broadbearded Triton sounded his note for the mad battle — he has limbs of two kinds, a human shape and a different body, green, from loins to head, half of him, but hanging from his trailing wet loins a curving fishtail, forked. So Glaucos yoked beside their manger in the sea the team that travels in the swift gale, and as they galloped along dryfoot he touched up the necks of the horses with dripping whip, and chased the Satyrs. In the loud sea-tumult horned Pan, lightly treading upon the untrodden waters and splashing up the brine with his goats-hooves himself unwetted, skipt about quickly beating the sea with his crook and whistling the tune of war on his pipes ; then hearing on the waves the shadow of a counterfeit sound carried by the wind, he ran all over the sea with his hillranging feet seeking the other sounds — and so the sea-echo produced by his pipes in the wind was hunted itself. Some one else tore up a firmbased island cliff and threw it at the Hydriads — the rock missed the Nereids and shook the hall of Palaimon among the seaweed.
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