392 THE FIGHT BETWEEN MARDUK AND TIAMAT 



How pigmy in comparison with Tiamat appears the decadent 

 sea-dragon mentioned by Ignatius, on whose gut, 120 feet long, 

 in the Hbrary of Constantinople were written in letters of gold 

 the Iliad and the Odyssey ! 



Allied with Tiamat in her ftght were — • 



" Spawned sea-serpents, 

 Sharp of teeth and cruel of fang." 



" With poison instead of blood she has filled their bodies, 

 And mighty tempests, and the fishman,^ and the ram,^ 

 They bear merciless weapons without fear of the fight." 



Beowulf in his famous battle with the Dragon stands out 

 as nobler and braver than Marduk, inasmuch as he, a man, 

 to free his country from the Dragon's toll of death and ravage, 

 of his own volition seeks out the monster. He " attacks alone, 

 for being altogether fearless he scorned to take an army against 

 the foe," whereas Marduk — the god — was compelled to the 

 duel, since he was unable to enlist a single god. Beowulf 

 " counted not the worm's warring for aught," whereas Marduk 

 among his preparations, 



" Made a net to enclose the inward parts of Tiamat 

 And the four winds he set so that nothing of her might escape." 



The protagonists (literally protagonists, for behind Marduk 

 cowered the shrinking gods, and behind Tiamat her spouse 

 and her spawned monsters) on meeting consume time, quite 

 in the grand Homeric manner, by launching taunts and re- 

 proaches at each other. 



Eventually Marduk, after spreading out his net to catch 

 her, seems to have anticipated the gassing tactics of the Huns 

 by many millenniums, and owing to the absence of a mask 

 with even greater success, for — 



" The evil wind, that was behind, he let loose in her face,' 

 As Tiamat opened her mouth to its full extent. 

 He drove in the evil wind, while she had not yet shut her lips. 



^ Aquarius. 



* Capricorn. 



' Similarly in the Gigantomachy as figured on the Siphnian Treasury 

 at Delphi, jEoIus, god of the winds, helps the deities against the giants by 

 deflating two bags of wind. He is represented by an Ionian sculptor as 



