From Bulfinch's Mythology: Bacchus (Dionysus) - anthology.
Publié le 12/05/2013
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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 howto 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 hadfound 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 wassomething 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 comingdown 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 ofgain! 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 ofyou.' 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 restapproved 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 tocarry 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 himfor 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 oneof them, exclaiming, 'Don't flatter yourself that we depend on you for our safety,' took my 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 shoresyou 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.' Iwept 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 themid 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 invain.
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 alongthe sides of the vessel.
The sound of flutes was heard and the odour of fragrant wine spread all around.
The god himself had a chaplet of vine leaves, and bore in hishand 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 ormadness; some leaped overboard; others preparing to do the same beheld their companions in the water undergoing a change, their bodies becoming flattened andending 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,endeavouring 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 andswam 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 sacredrites 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 theattendants 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 chainsfell 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 withworshippers, 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 firstamong 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 bethe 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 andimplores pardon, they press upon him and wound him.
In vain he cries to his aunts to protect him from his mother.
Autonoë seized one arm, Ino the other, andbetween 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 [17th-century English poet John] Milton's 'Comus,' at line 46.…
'Bacchus that first from out the purple grapesCrushed the sweet poison of misused wine,After the Tuscan mariners transformed,.
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