第8章 The Cageing Of Ares(1)

[Iliad, v. V. 385 - Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]

How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed At sight of her boy Giants on the leap Each over other as they neighboured home, Fronting the day's descent across green slopes, And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.

Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess, Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft, It signalled some adventurous master-trick To set Olympians buzzing in debate, Lest it might be their godhead undermined, The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high On shoulders of his brother Otos waved For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news, Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees, With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, Burst the hot story out of throats of both, Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils, Signification marvellous she caught, Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last Subsided, and the serious naked deed, With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around, Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized, These two made up of lion, bear and fox, Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy, Still by the reckoning infants among men, Had done the deed to strike the Titan host In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:

These two combining strength and craft had snared, Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;

The barren furrower of anointed fields;

The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, Her hated enemy, too long her scourge:

Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth When they had seized on his implacable spear, Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite His godlike fury startled from amaze.

For he had eyed them nearing him in play, The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there On Earth's original fisticuffs they called For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God, Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms, Good servitors of Ares they would be, And ply the pointed spear to dominate Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced Amusedly he watched them, and as one The lusty twain were on him and they had him.

Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!

Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!

Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!

Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him, Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;A desolating fire to blind the sight With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.

Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, And tumbled down the cave. But rather look -Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!