And a new miracle was then seen since young Cissos in his play, climbing […] across the branches high in a leafy tree, changed his form and took the air as another plant ; he became the twining ivy plant which bears his name, and encircled the newgrown orchard of tame vines with slanting knots.
Then Dionysos triumphant covered his temples with the friendly shady foliage, and made his tresses drunken with the toper’s leaves. Now the boy-grown plant was quickly ripening, and he plucked a fruit of the vintage. The god untaught, without winepress and without treading, squeezed the grapes firml with hand against wrist, interlacing his fingers until he pressed out the inebriating, and disclosed the newflowing load of the purple fruitage, and discovered the sweet potation : Dionysos Tapster found his white fingers drenched in red! For goblet he held a curved oxhorn. Then Bacchos tasted the sweet sap with sipping lips, tasted also the fruit and both so delighted his heart, that he broke out into […] with proud throat :
Ampelos, this is the nectar and ambrosia of my Zeus which you have made! Apollo wears two favourite plants, but he never ate laurel fruit or drank of the iris! Corn brings forth no sweet potation, by your leave, Deo! I will provide not only drink but food for mortal men! Your fate also is enviable, O Ampelos ! Verily even Moira’s threads have been turned womanish for you and your beauty ; for you Hades himself has become merciful, for you Persephone herself has changed her hard temper, and saved you alive in death for brother Bacchos. You did not die as Atymnios is dead ; you saw not the water of Styx, the fire of Tisiphone, the eye of Megaira. You are still alive, my boy, even if you died. The water of Lethe did not cover you, nor the tomb which is common to all, but earth herself shrank from covering your form! No, my father made you a plant in honour of his son ; Lord Cronion changed your body into sweet nectar. Nature has not graven Alas upon your tearless leaves, as on the inscribed clusters of […]. You keep your colour, my boy, even on your shoots. Your end proclaims the radiance of […] ; your blushing body has not left you yet.
I will never cease avenging your death ; I will pour your wine in libation to your murderous […], the wine of his victim! Your lovely petals put the Hamadryads to shame ; the juice of your fragrant bunches brings round me a breath of your love. Can I ever mix the apple-fruit in the bowl? Can I drop fig-juice in the cup of nectar? Fig and […] have their grace as far as the teeth: but no other plant can rival your grapes—not the rose, not the tinted daffodil, not anemone, not lily, not iris is equal to the plant of Bacchos. For with the newfound streams of your crushed fruitage your drink will contain all flowers : that one drink will be a mixture of all, it will combine in one the scent of all the flowers that blow, your flowers will embellish all the spring-time herbs and grass of the meadow. Give me best, Lord of Archery, because you […] your unmourning hair with your mourning chaplet of dolorous petals Alas ! alas ! graven on those leaves of yours ; and if the Lord of Archery wears his wreath in the garden, ladle my sweet wine, I put on a lovely wreath, absorb all Ampelos to be at home in my heart by that delicious draught. Brighthelm, give place to Finegrapes! The bloody pours out gore to Ares, the Viny pours to Dionysos the ruddy dew of the wine-soaked grape !
Deo, you are defeated with Pallas! For olives do not bring forth merry cheer of heart, corn does not bewitch a man! The pear has a honey-sweet fruit, the myrtle grows fragrant flowers, but they have no heart-bewitching fruit to shoot man’s cares to the winds! I am better than you all; for without my wine there is no pleasure in the table-feast, without my wine the dance has no bewitchment. Brighteyes, drink the fruit of your olive if you can! My fruitage with its glorious gifts has beaten your tree. With your oily olive athletes rub their bodies, without delight ; but the sadly afflicted who has given a wife or a daughter to the common fate, the man who mourns children dead, a mother or a father, when he shall taste of delicious wine will shake off the hateful burden of ever-increasing pain.
Ampelos, you rejoice the heart of Bacchos even after death! I will soak your drink through all my limbs. All the trees of the forest bow their heads around, as one in prayer bends low the neck. The ancient palmtree inclines his soaring leaves, you stretch your feet round the apple-tree, you clasp your hands about the figtree and hold fast ; they support your fruitage as slave-women their mistress, while you climb over the shoulder of your maids with your tendrils pushing and winding and quivering, while the winds blow in your face the delicate manycoloured leaves of so many neighbouring trees with their widespread clusters, as if you slept and they cooled you with gentle breath. So the serving-woman waves a light fan as in duty bound, and makes a cool wind for her king. If you bring with you Phaethon’s midday threats, yet the Etesian wind comes before your grapes, lulling the thirsty star of burning Maira, when the course of the summer season warms your ripening juice with the steam of Seirios.”
So he spoke in his pride, and threw off his earlier cares, now he had found the fragrant fruitage as allheal for the youth,
That is the song I sing about the grape-cluster, how it got its name from the young man. But the poets have another and older legend, how once upon a time fruitful Olympian ichor fell down from heaven and produced the potion of Bacchic wine, when the fruit of its vintage grew among the rocks selfgrown, untended. It was not yet named grape vine ; but among the bushes, wild and luxuriant with many-twining […]-clusters, a plant grew which had in it good wine-stuff to make wine, being full to bursting with its burden of dewy juice. There was a great orchard of it springing up in rows, where bunch on bunch the grapes swung swaying and reddening in disorder. They ripened together, one letting its half-grown nursery increase with different shades of purple upon the fruit, one spotted with white, in colour like foam ; some of golden hue crowded thick neighbour on neighbour, others with dark bloom all over like pitch—and the wine-teeming foliage intoxicated all the olives with their glorious fruit which grew beside them, Others were silvery white, but a dark mist newly made and selfs seemed to fruitage to the laden clusters. The twining growth of the fruit crowned the opposite pine, shading its own sheltered growth by its mass of twigs, and lighted the heart of Pan; the pine swayed by Boreas brought her branches near the bunches of grapes, and shook her fragrant leafage soaked in the blood A serpent twisted his curving backbone about the tree, and sucked a strong draught of nectar trickling from the fruit; when he had milked the Bacchic potation with his ugly jaws, the draught of the vine turned and trickled out of his throat, reddening the creature’s beard with purple drops.
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