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 library of Constantinople were written in letters of gold 
the Idad and the Odyssey ! 
Allied with Tiamat in her fight 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. 
1 Aquarius. 
2 Capricorn. 
3 Similarly in the Gigantomachy as figured on the Siphnian Treasury 
at Delphi, Holus, god of the winds, helps the deities against the giants by 
deflating two bags of wind. He is represented by an Ionian sculptor as 
