Nonnus Flood

After the first Dionysos had been slaughtered, Father Zeus learnt the trick of the mirror with its reflected image. He attacked the mother of the Titans with avenging brand, and shut up the murderers of horned Dionysos within the gate of Tartaros: the trees blazed, the hair of suffering Earth was scorched with heat. He kindled the East: the dawnlands of Bactria blazed under blazing bolts, the Assyrian waves set afire the neighbouring Caspian Sea and the Indian mountains, the Red Sea rolled billows of flame and warmed Arabian Nereus. The opposite West also fiery Zeus blasted with his thunderbolt in love for his child; and under the foot of Zephyros the western brine half-burnt spat out a shining stream; the Northern ridges – even the surface of the frozen Northern Sea bubbled and burned: under the clime of snowy Aigoceros the Southern corner boiled with hotter sparks.

Now Oceanos poured rivers of tears from his watery eyes, a libation of suppliant prayer. Then Zeus calmed his wrath at the sight of the scorched earth; he pitied her, and wished to wash with water the ashes of ruin and the fiery wounds of the land.

The Rainy Zeus covered the whole sky with clouds and flooded all the earth. Zeus’s heavenly trumpet bellowed with its thunderclaps, while all the stars moved in their appointed houses: when the Sun in his four-horse chariot drove shining over the Lion’s back, his own house; the Moon of threefold form rolled in her onrunning car over the eightfoot Crab; Cypris in her equinoctial course under the dewy region had left the Ram’s horn behind, and held her spring-time house in the heavenly Bull which knows no winter; the Sun’s neighbour Ares possessed the Scorpion, harbinger of the Plow, encircled by the blazing Bull, and ogled Aphrodite opposite with a sidelong glance; Zeus of nightfall, the twelvemonth traveller who completes the lichtgang, was treading on the starry Fishes, having on his right he round-faced Moon in trine; Cronos passed through the showery back of Aigoceros24 drenched in the frosty light; round the bright Maiden, Hermes was poised on his pinions, because as a dispenser of justice he had Justice for his house.

Now the barriers of the sevenzoned watery sky were opened, when Zeus poured down his showers. The mountain-torrents roared with fuller fountains of the loudsplashing gulf. The lakes, liquid daughters cut off from Oceanos, raised their surface. The fountains shot spouts of the lower water of Oceanos into the air. The cliffs were besprinkled, the dry thirsty hills were drenched as with rivers streaming over the heights: the sea rose until Nereïds became Oreads on the hills over the woodland. O poor thing! Maid Echo had to swim with unpractised hands, and felt a new fear for that old maiden zone – Pan she had escaped, but she might be cause by Poseidon! Sea-lions now leaped with dripping limbs in the land-lions’ cave among rocks they knew not, and in the depths of a mountain-torrent a stray boar met with a dolphin of the sea. Wild beasts and fishes navigated in common stormy floods that poured from the mountains. The many-footed squid dragged his many coils into the hills, and pounced on the hare. The dripping Tritons at the edge of a secret wood wagged their green forked tails against their flanks, and hid in the mountain vaults where Pan had his habitation, leaving their familiar speckled conchs to sail about with the winds. Nereus on his travels met rock-loving Pan on a submerged hill, the rock-dweller left his sea and changed it for the hill, leaving the waterlogged pan’s-pipes that floated; while he took to the watery cave where Echo had sheltered.

Then the bodies of poor fellows swollen in their watery death were buried in the waters. Heaps of corpses were floating one upon another carried along by the rolling currents; there fell the lion, there fell the boar into the roaring torrent, with open throat gulping draughts of the cascades that poured from rocks and mountains. With mingling streams, lakes and rivers, torrents of rain, waters of the sea were all combined together, and the four winds united their blasts in one, to flog the universal inundation.

Earthshaker saw from the deep the earth all flooded, while Zeus alone with stronger push made it quake under his threatening torrents: he threw away his prongs, wondering in his anger what earth now he could heave with a trident! Nereïds in battalions swam over the flooding waves; Thestis travelled over the water riding on the green hip of a Triton with broad beard; Agauë on a fish’s back drove her pilotfish in the open air, and an exile dolphin with the water swirling round his neck lifted Doris and carried her along. A whale of the deep sea leaped about the hills and sought the cave of the earthbedded lioness.

Then Pan well soaked saw Galateia swimming under a neighbouring wavebeaten rock, and sang out: “Where are you going, Galateia? Have you given up sea for hills? Perhaps you are looking for the love-song of Cyclops? I pray you by the Paphian, and by your Polyphemos – you know the weight of desire, do not hide from me if you have noticed my mountainranging Echo swimming by you? Does she also sit on a dolphin of Aphrodite the sea-goddess, my own Echo navigating like Thetis unveiled? I fear the dangerous waves of the deep may have startled her! I fear the great flood may have covered her! How cruel for her, poor thing! She has left the hills and moves restless over the waves. Echo once the maid of the rocks will show herself as the maid of the waters. Come, leave your Polyphemos, the laggard! If you like, I will lift you upon my own back and save you. The roaring flood does not overwhelm me; if I like I can mount to the starry sky on my goatish feet!”

He spoke, and Galateia said in reply: “My dear Pan, carry your own Echo through the waves – she knows nothing of the sea. Don’t waste your time in asking me why I am going here this day. I have another and higher voyage which Rainy Zeus has found me. Let be the song of Cyclops, though it is sweet. I seek no more the Sicilian sea; I am terrified at this tremendous flood, and I care nothing for Polyphemos.”

With these words, she passed away from the lair of waterfaring Pan.

As the irresistible torrent swelled on and on, every city, every nation was a flood; not one corner was undrenched, not one hill was then bare – not the peak of Ossa, not the top of Pelion. Under the three peaks roared the Tyrrhenian Sea; the Adriatic rocks rebounded with Sicilian waters in showers of foam from the flogging sea. The sparkling rays of Phaëthon in his airy course became soft and womanish in the torrents. Selene in her seventh zone over the low rim of the earth cooled her light in the mounting waves, and checked her cattle with drenched and soaking necks. The rainwater mixed with the starry battalions, and made the Milky Way whiter with foam.

The Nile, pouring his lifegiving stream through his seven mouths, went astray and met love-sick Alpheios. His wish was to creep through the fruitful soil, and delight his thirsty bride with watery kisses; but the other had lost the familiar road of his old-time hunt, and rolled along in sorrow, until seeing Pyramos the lover moving by his side he cried out and said – “Nile, what am I to do? Arethusa is hidden! Pryamos, why this haste? You have left your companion Thisbe – to whom? Happy Euphrates! He has not felt the sting of love. Jealousy and fear possess me together. Perhaps Cronos’s watery son has slept with lovely Arethusa! I fear he may have wooed your Thisbe in his flowings! Pyramos is a consolation of Alpheios. The rain of Zeus has not stirred us so much as the arrow of the Foamborn. Follow me the lover, I will seek the tracks of Syracusan Arethusa, and do you, Pramos, hunt for Thisbe.

“But you will say – the earth quakes, the sky attacks us, the sea compels us, the unnavigable upper air itself swells in a foaming flood! I care not for the wild deluge. See what a great miracle! The blazing earth, the flaming sea, the rivers – all have been swept clean by the downpour of Zeus, only one trifle it has not quenched, the Paphian fire of Alpheios! However, if the great flood confounds me, if I suffer from fire, there is one small medicine for my pain, that tender Adonis is wandering too and vexing Aphrodite.”

His tale was not yet ended, when fear conquered his voice. Then also Deucalion passed over the mounting flood, to navigate far out of reach on a sky-traversing voyage; and the course of his ark selfguided selfmoving, without sheet and without harbour, scored the stormy waters.

Then the whole frame of the universe would have been unframed, then all-breeding Time would have dissolved the whole structure of the unsown generations of mankind: but by the divine ordination of Zeus, Poseidon Seabluehair with earthsplitting trident split the midmost peak of the Thessalian mountain, and dug a cleft through it by which the water ran sparkling down. Earth shook off the stormy flood which travelled so high, and showed herself risen again; the streams were driven into the deep hollows and the cliffs were laid bare. The sun poured his thirsty rays on the wet face of earth, and dried it; the water grew thick under the hotter beams, and he mud was dried again as before. Cities were fashioned by men with better skill and established upon stone foundations, palaces were built, and the streets of the new-founded cities were made strong for later generations of men. Nature laughed once more; the air once more was paddled by the wings of birds that flew in the winds.


- Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Book 6