In the forty-eighth, seek the blood of the giants, and look out for Pallene and the son of sleeping Aura.
Now Bacchos quitted the horsebreeding soil of ancient Phoroneus, and mounted in his round car behind the team of panthers passed in revelry over the Thracian land. But Inachian Hera had not softened her rancorous rage for Argos maddened ; she remembered the frenzy of the Achaian women and prepared again to attack Bacchos. She addressed her deceitful prayers to Allmother Earth, crying out upon the doings of Zeus and the valour of Dionysos, who had destroyed that cloud of numberless earthborn Indians ; and when the lifebringing mother heard that the son of Semele had wiped out the Indian nation with speedy fate, she groaned still more thinking of her children. Then she armed all round Bacchos the mount ainranging tribes of giants, earth’s own brood, and goaded her huge sons to battle : “My sons, make your attack with hightowering rocks against clustergarlanded Dionysos — catch this Indianslayer, this destroyer of my family, this son of Zeus, and let me not see him ruling with Zeus a bastard monarch of Olympos ! Bind him, bind Bacchos fast, that he may attend in the chamber when I bestow Hebe on Porphyrion as a wife, and give Cythereia to Chthonios, when I sing Brighteyes the bedfellow of Encelados, and Artemis of Alcyoneus. Bring Dionysos to me, that I may enrage Cronion when he sees Lyaios a slave and the captive of my spear. Or wound him with cutting steel and kill him for me like Zagreus, that one may say, god or mortal, that Earth in her anger has twice armed her slayers against the breed of Cronides — the older Titans against the former Dionysos, the younger Giants against Dionysos later born.”
With these words she excited all the host of the Giants, and the battalions of the Earthborn set forth to war, one bearing a bulwark of Nysa, one who had sliced off with steel the flank of a cloudhigh precipice, each with these rocks for missiles armed him against Dionysos ; one hastened to the conflict bearing the rocky hill of some land with its base in the brine, another with a reef torn from a brinegirt isthmus. Peloreus took up Pelion with hightowering peak as a missile in his innumerable arms, and left the cave of Philyra bare : as the rocky roof of his cave was pulled off, old Cheiron quivered and shook, that figure of half a man growing into a comrade horse. But Bacchos held a bunch of giantsbane vine, and ran at Alcyoneus with the mountain upraised in his hands : he wielded no furious lance, no deadly sword, but he struck with his bunch of tendrils and shore off the multitudinous hands of the Giants ; the terrible swarms of groundbred serpents were shorn off by those tippling leaves, the Giants’ heads with those viper tresses were cut off and the severed necks danced in the dust. Tribes innumerable were destroyed ; from the slain Giants ran everflowing rivers of blood, crimson torrents newly poured coloured the ravines red. The swarms of earthbred snakes ran wild with fear before the tresses of Dionysos viperenwreathed.
Fire was also a weapon of Bacchos. He cast a torch in the air to destroy his adversaries : through the high paths ran the Bacchic flame leaping and curling over itself and shooting down corrosive sparks on the Giants’ Limbs ; and there was a serpent with a blaze in his threatening mouth, half-burnt and whistling with a firescorched throat, spitting out smoke instead of a spurt of deadly poison.
There was infinite tumult. Bacchos raised himself and lifted his fighting torch over the heads of his adversaries, and roasted the Giants’ bodies with a great conflagration, an image on earth of the thunderbolt cast by Zeus. The torches blazed : fire was rolling all over the head of Encelados and making the air hot, but it did not vanquish him — Encelados bent not his knee in the steam of the earthly fire, since he was reserved for a thunderbolt. Vast Alcyoneus leapt upon Lyaios armed with his Thracian crags ; he lifted over Bacchos a cloudhigh peak of wintry Haimos — useless against that mark, Dionysos the invulnerable. He threw the cliff, but when the rocks touched the fawnskin of Lyaios, they could not tear it, and burst into splinters themselves. Typhoeus towering high had stript the mountains of Emathia (a younger Typhoeus in all parts like the older, who once had lifted many a rugged strip of his mother earth), and cast the rocky missiles at Dionysos. Lord Bacchos pulled away the sword of one that was gasping on the ground and attacked the Giants’ heads, cutting the snaky crop of poison-spitting hair ; even without weapon he destroyed the selfmarshalled host, fighting furiously, and using the treeclimbing longleaf ivy to strike the Giants.
Indeed he would have slain all with his manbreaking thyrsus, if he had not retired of his own will out of the fray and left enemies alive for his Father.
Then he would quickly have gone to Phrygia with speeding foot, but another task held him back ; that after so many had died he might kill one murderous creature, Pallene’s deathdealing father.” He once had an unlawful passion for his daughter ; he used to thwart her marriage and hinder every match. Wooers innumerable who would have wed her he killed, a great harvest of them ; the places of wrestling were noisy with their murders and red with their blood, until Bacchos came as the champion of Justice. There was Pallene, ever so near to wedlock, and her father full of unholy passion : Bacchos came near, and proposed to make the wicked match with his horrible daughter, offering all manner of gifts. To this request of Lyaios, the dreadful man declared how wrestling must win the bride. He led him into the place of contest, so ill-omened for strangers, where the audacious girl stood ready spear in hand bearing her bridal shield on her shoulders.
Then Cypris presided over the ring. In the midst was Eros naked, holding out to Bacchos the bridal wreath. Wrestling was to win the bride : Peitho clad her delicate body in a silvery robe, foretelling victory for Lyaios’s wooing. The girl stript the clothes off her muscular limbs ; she laid down the fierce wedding-spear. There stood the daughter of Sithon, daintier now, unshod, unveiled, unarmed, revealed a woman, but a red band girt the rounded curve of her firm breasts. Her body was uncovered, but for the long tresses of the abundant hair which flowed loose over the girl’s neck. Her legs were visible, and the curve of her thighs uncovered with the part above the knee bare, but a white wrap fitted close over the thighs to cover her nakedness. Her skin had been well rubbed with fat oil, and her arms more than all, that she might slip out easily if her body were pressed in a grasp too strong to loosen.
She came up to Lyaios her eager wooer with rough threatening words, and threw her two arms with a swing linking them round his neck ; Bacchos just threw back his neck th the woman’s fetters about it, and shook it loose again, throwing off the girl’s tender fingers. Then he put his two arms round her waist like a girdle, and shook her from side to side by movements of his feet. He grasped a rosy palm, and felt comfort for his love as he squeezed the snowwhite hand. He did not wish so much to give the maid a throw as to touch the soft flesh, entranced with his delightful task ; he used all his guile, panting with labouring breath, as if he were a mortal, delaying victory on purpose. Lovely Pallene tried a trick of the ring to lift the body of Lyaios, but her woman’s arms were not equal to raise that great weight ; she tired, and let go the masculine limbs of Dionysos immovable. Then the god took a like hold of the lovely-girl, and joining his two arms about his adversary lifted her as if she were his own wand, and threw her aslant round and over his shoulder ; then with gentle hand swung off the sturdy girl and laid her at full length quiet on the ground. He let his eyes furtively wander, scanning the limbs of the girl covered with her glorious hair in the dust, the luxurious tresses of the untidy head dabbled in dirt.
But the girl jumped up again from the dust and stood up steady on her feet once more. Then Dionysos with an agile movement mercilessly set his knee against Pallene’s belly, and holding her tried to roll her over on the ground with a sideways heave, changed his arms to a grasp round her waist, bent his head to one side and shifted his fingers behind to the middle of her back, and tried to hook ankle or shin, or to catch the knee. At last the god fell back of himself rolling on the ground and let a feeble hand conquer him : a charming physic it was for his love, when he lay beautiful in that happy dust on his back, bearing upon his own belly that lovely burden — he lay still, and did not throw off the girl, but held her fast with soulconsoling bonds of desire. She pulled herself from the manly hands of lovemad Dionysos, and lifted herself to her feet with a twist of her legs in a quick supple movement ; but the god with a slight effort simply rolled over and laid the rosy girl flat on the ground. So there lay the girl on the ground stretching her arms abroad, and as she lay along the ground he joined his arms neatly in a clasp about her neck.
“Then with swift feet her father leapt between them. The girl wanted to try again, but he held her back, and put an end to this wedding-contest for a bride by yielding love’s victory to Dionysos, for fear he might kill her in that immovable grip. So after the victory in this contest, with the consent of Zeus, Eros crowned his brother with the cluster that heralds a wedding; for he had accomplished a delectable wedding-bout. It was indeed a contest like that when Hippomenes once conquered flying Atalanta, by rolling golden marriage-gifts in front of her feet.
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