These were the forces of Endymion. They all
had the same equipment—helmets of beans (their
beans are large and tough); scale-corselets of
lupines (they sew together the skins of lupines to
make the corselets, and in that country the skin of
the lupine is unbreakable, like horn); shields
and swords of the Greek pattern.

 
When the time
came, they took position thus; on the right wing,
the Vulture Dragoons and the king, with the bravest
about him (we were among them); on the left, the
Grassplumes; in the centre, the allies, in whatever
formation they liked. The infantry came to about
sixty million, and was deployed as follows. Spiders
in that country are numerous and large, all of them
far larger than the Cyclades islands. They were



 

commissioned by the king to span the air between
the Moon and the Morning Star with a web, and as
soon as they had finished and had made a plain, he
deployed his infantry on it. Their leaders were
Owlett son of Fairweather, and two others.

 


As to the enemy, on the left were the Ant
Dragoons, with whom was Phaethon. They are very
large beasts with wings, like the ants that we have,
except in size: the largest one was two hundred feet
long.
 Herodotus (3, 102) tells of ants bigger than foxes. 
They themselves fought, as well as their
riders, and made especially good use of their feelers.
They were said to number about fifty thousand. On
their right were posted the Sky-mosquitoes,
numbering also about fifty thousand, all archers
riding on large mosquitoes. Next to them were the
Sky-dancers, a sort of light infantry, formidable
however, like all the rest, for they slung radishes at
long range, and any man that they hit could not hold
out a moment, but died, and his wound was
malodorous. They were said to anoint their missiles
with mallow poison. Beside them were posted the
Stalk-mushrooms, heavy infantry employed at close
quarters, ten thousand in number. They had the
name Stalk-mushrooms because they used mushrooms
for shields and stalks of asparagus for spears. Near
them stood the Puppycorns, who were sent him by
the inhabitants of the Dog-star, five thousand dogfaced men who fight on the back of winged acorns.

 Herodotus (4, 191) tells of dog-headed men and of
headless men with eyes in their breasts. 


 

It was said that there were tardy allies in Phaethon’s
tase, too—the slingers whom he had summoned from
the Milky Way, and the Cloud-centaurs. The latter
to be sure, arrived just after the battle was over
(if only they had not!); but the slingers did not put
in an appearance at all. On account of this, they
say, Phaethon was furious with them and afterwards
ravaged their country with fire.

 

This, then, was the array with which Phaethon
came on. Joining battle when the flags had been
flown and the donkeys on both sides had brayed (for
they had donkeys for trumpeters), they fought. The -
left wing of the Sunites fled at. once, without even
receiving the charge of the Vulture Horse, and we
pursued, cutting them down. But their right wing got
the better of the left on our side, and the Sky-mosquitoes advanced in pursuit right up to the infantry.
Then, when the infantry came to the rescue, they
broke and fled, especially as they saw that the forces
on their left had been defeated. It was a glorious
victory, in which many were taken alive and many
were slain; so much blood flowed on the clouds that
they were dyed and looked red, as they do in our
country when the sun is setting, and so much also
dripped down on the earth that I wonder whether
something of the sort did not take place in the sky
long ago, when Homer supposed that Zeus had sent
a rain of blood on account of the death of Sarpedon.1
 Il. 16, 459.