They say that Lyaios came this way,
in the days when terrible battle raged
between Gods and Giants. He whose wine
washes away all cares wished to avoid the fighting,
and so fled to his Grand Dame’s domain, the three-corned island.
Thunderer had given it her as bride-price,
for he sought to woo broad-bosomed Chthonie, his sister,
who sat beneath the tree weaving a robe of many colours and expert skill,
depicting on it the entire world, with hints of what was to come.
The place was wild, uninhabited by man as yet;
the beasts roamed free, and the nymphs had nothing to fear
from the terrible, double-headed bull-smiter.
Fruit there was in great abundance,
and Hybla’s hounds were busy harvesting gold from flowers.
The Bacchic One loved this place as nowhere else on earth
and danced the Crane and Pyrrichios to express his boundless joy.
The thunderclap of his worthy feet roused the sleeper,
Gaia-sprung Alpos the vanquisher.
The mountains shook, sending boulders raining down
as he staggered to his feet and stretched his mighty frame,
chasing dream from his lake-like eyes with rocky fists.
He grinned a jagged grin exposing sharp and yellow igneous teeth and said,
“I hunger and you, whelp of Zeus, will make a tasty treat!”
Dionysos laid aside his pinecone-tipped thyrsos and his always-full rhyton
and drew from the goatskin pouch that hung at his side gleaming knucklebone dice
with which he rolled the Dog. Alpos howled as he crashed down on his bulging knees,
left femur utterly shattered. “What did you do to me?” He bellowed,
but the white-faced child made no response. Instead he brought out
a little ball of variegated leather and red thread, roughly stitched together,
a hoop with jangling trinkets, a whipping top and a doll head with sorb apples stuffed in the eye sockets.
And he began to juggle.
The Giant tore a broad pine, roots and all, up from the black soil
and swung this deadly mace like a maddening bullroarer,
but instead of smiting that buffoonish upstart prince of the starry ones
– the toys tumbled to the earth and Alpos followed,
felled by a self-inflicted wound, the tree’s trunk penetrating his pulsing heart.
His bulk drove the wooden shaft deeper in, as the earthborn fell face-first into the muck
which soon was mixed with red froth as Alpos choked out his last, and grew cold.
The living God knelt and retrieved the ten tokens of his sovereignty
and continued on his way through wide Sicily, whistling a jaunty tune.
So shall it be with you, snake-legged Typhaon you flamer, full of yourself and hot air!
Every time you try to wriggle free you make mount Aetna tremble
and drive these good people into frightful frenzies
but I am cloud-gathering Empedokles
– it is me you should be scared of!
I was going to wait for you to show your piggish snout,
but by Herakles’ finger enough is enough – I’m sick of your terrorist ways.
So I’m leaping into this crater and I’ll swim through the magma to find you.
I’ll make you squeal like a slavegirl of the Kikones, and make you like it too.
You’ll never again get it in your head to disturb these gentle-souled folk,
who will erect a monument to my unsurpassed greatness.
Healer, they will hail me as, and deliverer from woes,
hero of the fortunate isle and triumphant in Turin.
