Nonnus Apollo VS Poseidon

So Hera spoke, and passed on, leaving Artemis discomfited and drunken with fear. Phoibos threw both his arms about her in pity, and brought her out of the turmoil; he left her in a lonely coppice, and returned unnoticed to join the battle of the gods.

And now a fiery chief stood up to the champion of the deep, Phoibos, to fight with Poseidon. He set shaft on string, and also lifted a brand of Delphic fir in each hand doubledextrous, to use fire against the surging sweep of water, and arrows against the trident. Fiery lance and watery arrows crashed together: while Phoibos defended, his home the upper air rattled a thunderclap for a battlesong; the stormy trumpet of the sea brayed in the ears of Phoibos — a broadbeard Triton boomed with his own proper conch, like a man half-finished, from the loins down a greeny fish — the Nereids shouted the battlecry — Arabian Nereus pushed up out of the sea and bellowed, shaking his trident.

Then Zeus of the underworld rumbled hearing the noise of the heavenly fray above; he feared that the Earthshaker, beating and lashing the solid ground with the earthquake-shock of his waves, might lever out of gear the whole universe with his trident, might move the foundations of the abysm below and show the forbidden sight of the earth's bottom, might burst all the veins of the subterranean channels and pour his water away into the pit of Tartaros, to flood the mouldering gates of the lower world.

So great was the din of the gods in conflict, and the trumpets of the underworld added their noise. But Hermes lifted his rod as peacemaker and checked both parties, and addressed one speech to three of the immortals:

"Brother of Zeus, and you his son — you, famous Archer, throw to the winds your bow and your brand, and you, your pronged trident: lest the Titans laugh to see a battle among the gods. Let there not be intestine war in heaven once again, after that conflict with Cronos which threatened Olympos: let me not see another war after the affray with Iapetos. Let not Zeus be angry again for lateborn Bacchos as for Zagreus, and set the whole earth ablaze with his fire a second time, and pour down showers of rain through the air to flood the circuit of the eternal universe. I hope I may not behold the sea in the sky and Selene's car soaking; may Phaethon never again have his fiery radiance cooled!

"You then yield to your elder, the ruler of the sea; do this grace to your father's brother, because Earthshaker the ruler of the brine honours your seagirt Delos: cease not to love your palmtree, to remember your olive. And Earthshaker, what second Cecrops will be judge here? What second Inachos ' has awarded her city to Hera that you take arms against Apollo as well as Athena, and seek a second quarrel after your quarrel with Hera? — And you, horned one, father of great Deriades, beware of the fire of Hephaistos after the torch of Bacchos, or he may consume you with his firepronged thunderbolt."

This appeal put an end to the gods' intestine strife.


- Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Book 36