BACCHUS--ARIADNE
BACCHUS
Bacchus was the son of Jupiter and Semele. Juno, to gratify her
resentment against Semele, contrived a plan for her destruction.
Assuming the form of Beroe, her aged nurse, she insinuated doubts
whether it was indeed Jove himself who came as a lover. Heaving a
sigh, she said, "I hope it will turn out so, but I can't help
being afraid. People are not always what they pretend to be. If he
is indeed Jove, make him give some proof of it. Ask him to come
arrayed in all his splendors, such as he wears in heaven. That
will put the matter beyond a doubt." Semele was persuaded to try
the experiment. She asks a favor, without naming what it is. Jove
gives his promise, and confirms it with the irrevocable oath,
attesting the river Styx, terrible to the gods themselves. Then
she made known her request. The god would have stopped her as she
spake, but she was too quick for him. The words escaped, and he
could neither unsay his promise nor her request. In deep distress
he left her and returned to the upper regions. There he clothed
himself in his splendors, not putting on all his terrors, as when
he overthrew the giants, but what is known among the gods as his
lesser panoply. Arrayed in this, he entered the chamber of Semele.
Her mortal frame could not endure the splendors of the immortal
radiance. She was consumed to ashes.
Jove took the infant Bacchus and gave him in charge to the Nysaean
nymphs, who nourished his infancy and childhood, and for their
care were rewarded by Jupiter by being placed, as the Hyades,
among the stars. When Bacchus grew up he discovered the culture of
the vine and the mode of extracting its precious juice; but Juno
struck him with madness, and drove him forth a wanderer through
various parts of the earth. In Phrygia the goddess Rhea cured him
and taught him her religious rites, and he set out on a progress
through Asia, teaching the people the cultivation of the vine. The
most famous part of his wanderings is his expedition to India,
which is said to have lasted several years. Returning in triumph,
he undertook to introduce his worship into Greece, but was opposed
by some princes, who dreaded its introduction on account of the
disorders and madness it brought with it.
As he approached his native city Thebes, Pentheus the king, who
had no respect for the new worship, forbade its rites to be
performed. But when it was known that Bacchus was advancing, men
and women, but chiefly the latter, young and old, poured forth to
meet him and to join his triumphal march.
Mr. Longfellow in his "Drinking Song" thus describes the march of
Bacchus:
"Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow, supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.
"Round about him fair Bacchantes,
Bearing cymbals, flutes and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves of Zante's
Vineyards, sing delirious verses,"
It was in vain Pentheus remonstrated, commanded, and threatened.
"Go," said he to his attendants, "seize this vagabond leader of
the rout and bring him to me. I will soon make him confess his
false claim of heavenly parentage and renounce his counterfeit
worship." It was in vain his nearest friends and wisest
counsellors remonstrated and begged him not to oppose the god.
Their remonstrances only made him more violent.
But now the attendants returned whom he had despatched to seize
Bacchus. They had been driven away by the Bacchanals, but had
succeeded in taking one of them prisoner, whom, with his hands
tied behind him, they brought before the king. Pentheus, beholding
him with wrathful countenance, said, "Fellow! you shall speedily
be put to death, that your fate may be a warning to others; but
though I grudge the delay of your punishment, speak, tell us who
you are, and what are these new rites you presume to celebrate."
The prisoner, unterrified, responded, "My name is Acetes; my
country is Maeonia; my parents were poor people, who had no fields
or flocks to leave me, but they left me their fishing rods and
nets and their fisherman's trade. This I followed for some time,
till growing weary of remaining in one place, I learned the
pilot's art and how to guide my course by the stars. It happened
as I was sailing for Delos we touched at the island of Dia and
went ashore. Next morning I sent the men for fresh water, and
myself mounted the hill to observe the wind; when my men returned
bringing with them a prize, as they thought, a boy of delicate
appearance, whom they had found asleep. They judged he was a noble
youth, perhaps a king's son, and they might get a liberal ransom
for him. I observed his dress, his walk, his face. There was
something in them which I felt sure was more than mortal. I said
to my men, 'What god there is concealed in that form I know not,
but some one there certainly is. Pardon us, gentle deity, for the
violence we have done you, and give success to our undertakings.'
Dictys, one of my best hands for climbing the mast and coming down
by the ropes, and Melanthus, my steersman, and Epopeus, the leader
of the sailor's cry, one and all exclaimed, 'Spare your prayers
for us.' So blind is the lust of gain! When they proceeded to put
him on board I resisted them. 'This ship shall not be profaned by
such impiety,' said I. 'I have a greater share in her than any of
you.' But Lycabas, a turbulent fellow, seized me by the throat and
attempted to throw me overboard, and I scarcely saved myself by
clinging to the ropes. The rest approved the deed.
"Then Bacchus (for it was indeed he), as if shaking off his
drowsiness, exclaimed, 'What are you doing with me? What is this
fighting about? Who brought me here? Where are you going to carry
me?' One of them replied, 'Fear nothing; tell us where you wish to
go and we will take you there.' 'Naxos is my home,' said Bacchus;
'take me there and you shall be well rewarded.' They promised so
to do, and told me to pilot the ship to Naxos. Naxos lay to the
right, and I was trimming the sails to carry us there, when some
by signs and others by whispers signified to me their will that I
should sail in the opposite direction, and take the boy to Egypt
to sell him for a slave. I was confounded and said, 'Let some one
else pilot the ship;' withdrawing myself from any further agency
in their wickedness. They cursed me, and one of them, exclaiming,
'Don't flatter yourself that we depend on you for our safety;'
took any place as pilot, and bore away from Naxos.
"Then the god, pretending that he had just become aware of their
treachery, looked out over the sea and said in a voice of weeping,
'Sailors, these are not the shores you promised to take me to;
yonder island is not my home. What have I done that you should
treat me so? It is small glory you will gain by cheating a poor
boy.' I wept to hear him, but the crew laughed at both of us, and
sped the vessel fast over the sea. All at once--strange as it may
seem, it is true,--the vessel stopped, in the mid sea, as fast as
if it was fixed on the ground. The men, astonished, pulled at
their oars, and spread more sail, trying to make progress by the
aid of both, but all in vain. Ivy twined round the oars and
hindered their motion, and clung to the sails, with heavy clusters
of berries. A vine, laden with grapes, ran up the mast, and along
the sides of the vessel. The sound of flutes was heard and the
odor of fragrant wine spread all around. The god himself had a
chaplet of vine leaves, and bore in his hand a spear wreathed with
ivy. Tigers crouched at his feet, and forms of lynxes and spotted
panthers played around him. The men were seized with terror or
madness; some leaped overboard; others preparing to do the same
beheld their companions in the water undergoing a change, their
bodies becoming flattened and ending in a crooked tail. One
exclaimed, 'What miracle is this!' and as he spoke his mouth
widened, his nostrils expanded, and scales covered all his body.
Another, endeavoring to pull the oar, felt his hands shrink up and
presently to be no longer hands but fins; another, trying to raise
his arms to a rope, found he had no arms, and curving his
mutilated body, jumped into the sea. What had been his legs became
the two ends of a crescent-shaped tail. The whole crew became
dolphins and swam about the ship, now upon the surface, now under
it, scattering the spray, and spouting the water from their broad
nostrils. Of twenty men I alone was left. Trembling with fear, the
god cheered me. 'Fear not,' said he; 'steer towards Naxos.' I
obeyed, and when we arrived there, I kindled the altars and
celebrated the sacred rites of Bacchus."
Pentheus here exclaimed, "We have wasted time enough on this silly
story. Take him away and have him executed without delay." Acetes
was led away by the attendants and shut up fast in prison; but
while they were getting ready the instruments of execution the
prison doors came open of their own accord and the chains fell
from his limbs, and when they looked for him he was nowhere to be
found.
Pentheus would take no warning, but instead of sending others,
determined to go himself to the scene of the solemnities. The
mountain Citheron was all alive with worshippers, and the cries of
the Bacchanals resounded on every side. The noise roused the anger
of Pentheus as the sound of a trumpet does the fire of a war-
horse. He penetrated through the wood and reached an open space
where the chief scene of the orgies met his eyes. At the same
moment the women saw him; and first among them his own mother,
Agave, blinded by the god, cried out, "See there the wild boar,
the hugest monster that prowls in these woods! Come on, sisters! I
will be the first to strike the wild boar." The whole band rushed
upon him, and while he now talks less arrogantly, now excuses
himself, and now confesses his crime and implores pardon, they
press upon him and wound him. In vain he cries to his aunts to
protect him from his mother. Autonoe seized one arm, Ino the
other, and between them he was torn to pieces, while his mother
shouted, "Victory! Victory! we have done it; the glory is ours!"
So the worship of Bacchus was established in Greece.
There is an allusion to the story of Bacchus and the mariners in
Milton's "Comus," at line 46, The story of Circe will be found in