Epeisodion 4
Messenger
At the Homoloian gates Tydeus had his post,
a lion’s skin with shaggy mane upon his shield, while the Titan Prometheus bore a torch in his right hand, to fire the town.
1120
Your own Polyneices led the battle against the Fountain gate; upon his shield for a device
were the colts of Potniae galloping at frantic speed, revolving by some clever contrivance on pivots by the handle, so as to appear distraught.
1125
At Electra’s gate Capaneus brought up his company, bold as Ares for the battle;
this device his shield bore upon its iron back: an earth-born giant carrying on his shoulders a whole city which he had wrenched from its base, a hint to us of the fate in store for Thebes.
1130
Adrastus was at the seventh gate;
a hundred vipers engraved on his shield, as he bore on his left arm the hydra the boast of Argos, and serpents were carrying off in their jaws the sons of Thebes from within our very walls. Now I was able to see each of them,
1135
as I carried the watch-word along to the leaders of our companies.
1140
To begin with, we fought with bows and thonged javelins, with slings that shoot from far and crashing stones; and as we were conquering, Tydeus and your son suddenly cried aloud:
You sons of Danaus, before you are torn to pieces by their attack, why delay to fall upon the gates with all your might, light-armed and cavalry and charioteers? No loitering then, soon as they heard that call; and many fell with bloody head,
1145
and many of us you could have seen thrown to the earth like tumblers before the walls, breathing their last, bedewing the dry ground with streams of blood.
1150
Then Atalanta’s son, who was not an Argive but an Arcadian, hurling himself like a hurricane at the gates, called for
fire and picks to raze the town; but Periclymenus, son of the ocean-god, stayed his wild career, heaving on his head a wagon-load of stone, the coping from the battlements; and it shattered his head with yellow hair and
1155
crashed through the seams of the skull, dabbling with blood his fresh cheek; and he will never go back alive to his mother with her lovely bow, the maid of Maenalus.
1160
Your son then, seeing these gates secure, went on to the next, and I followed him.
I saw Tydeus and his thick rows of targeteers hurling their Aetolian spears into the opening at the top of the turrets, so that our men fled and left the battlements; but your son rallied them once more, as a huntsman cheers his hounds,
1165
and stationed them at the towers again. And then we hastened to other gates, after stopping the affliction there. As for the madness of Capaneus, how can I describe it? He was going about with a long scaling-ladder, and boasting
1170
that even the holy fire of Zeus would not hold him back from giving the city to utter destruction. And even as he spoke, he climbed up beneath the hail of stones, crouched under the shelter of his shield, rung by smooth rung going up the ladder.
1175
But, just as he was scaling the parapet of the wall, Zeus smote him with a thunderbolt; the earth re-echoed, and fear seized everyone; for from the ladder his limbs were slung far apart, his head toward Olympus, his blood toward earth,
1180
