How the battle in which the good Bacchus overthrew the Indians was
represented in mosaic work.
In the next place we saw the representation of the good Bacchus’s
engagement with the Indians. Silenus, who led the van, was sweating,
puffing, and blowing, belabouring his ass most grievously. The ass
dreadfully opened its wide jaws, drove away the flies that plagued it,
winced, flounced, went back, and bestirred itself in a most terrible
manner, as if some damned gad-bee had stung it at the breech.
The satyrs, captains, sergeants, and corporals of companies, sounding the
orgies with cornets, in a furious manner went round the army, skipping,
capering, bounding, jerking, farting, flying out at heels, kicking and
prancing like mad, encouraging their companions to fight bravely; and all
the delineated army cried out Evohe!
First, the Maenades charged the Indians with dreadful shouts, and a horrid
din of their brazen drums and bucklers; the air rung again all around, as
the mosaic work well expressed it. And pray for the future don’t so much
admire Apelles, Aristides the Theban, and others who drew claps of thunder,
lightnings, winds, words, manners, and spirits.
We then saw the Indian army, who had at last taken the field to prevent the
devastation of the rest of their country. In the front were the elephants,
with castles well garrisoned on their backs. But the army and themselves
were put into disorder; the dreadful cries of the Bacchae having filled
them with consternation, and those huge animals turned tail and trampled on
the men of their party.
There you might have seen gaffer Silenus on his ass, putting on as hard as
he could, striking athwart and alongst, and laying about him lustily with
his staff after the old fashion of fencing. His ass was prancing and
making after the elephants, gaping and martially braying, as it were to
sound a charge, as he did when formerly in the Bacchanalian feasts he waked
the nymph Lottis, when Priapus, full of priapism, had a mind to priapize
while the pretty creature was taking a nap.
There you might have seen Pan frisk it with his goatish shanks about the
Maenades, and with his rustic pipe excite them to behave themselves like
Maenades.
A little further you might have blessed your eyes with the sight of a young
satyr who led seventeen kings his prisoners; and a Bacchis, who with her
snakes hauled along no less than two and forty captains; a little faun, who
carried a whole dozen of standards taken from the enemy; and goodman
Bacchus on his chariot, riding to and fro fearless of danger, making much
of his dear carcass, and cheerfully toping to all his merry friends.
Finally, we saw the representation of his triumph, which was thus: first,
his chariot was wholly lined with ivy gathered on the mountain Meros; this
for its scarcity, which you know raises the price of everything, and
principally of those leaves in India. In this Alexander the Great followed
his example at his Indian triumph. The chariot was drawn by elephants
joined together, wherein he was imitated by Pompey the Great at Rome in his
African triumph. The good Bacchus was seen drinking out of a mighty urn,
which action Marius aped after his victory over the Cimbri near Aix in
Provence. All his army were crowned with ivy; their javelins, bucklers,
and drums were also wholly covered with it; there was not so much as
Silenus’s ass but was betrapped with it.
The Indian kings were fastened with chains of gold close by the wheels of
the chariot. All the company marched in pomp with unspeakable joy, loaded
with an infinite number of trophies, pageants, and spoils, playing and
singing merry epiniciums, songs of triumph, and also rural lays and
dithyrambs.
At the farthest end was a prospect of the land of Egypt; the Nile with its
crocodiles, marmosets, ibides, monkeys, trochiloses, or wrens, ichneumons,
or Pharoah’s mice, hippopotami, or sea-horses, and other creatures, its
guests and neighbours. Bacchus was moving towards that country under the
conduct of a couple of horned beasts, on one of which was written in gold,
Apis, and Osiris on the other; because no ox or cow had been seen in Egypt
till Bacchus came thither.