The hill-ranging god marvelled, as he saw the snake and his chin dabbled with trickling wine ; the speckled snake saw Euios, and went coiling away with his spotty scales and plunged into a deep hole in the rock hard by. When Bacchos saw the […] with a bellyful of red juice, he bethought him of an oracle which prophetic Rheia had spoken long ago. He dug into the rock, he hollowed out a pit in the stone with the sharp prongs of his earth-burrowing pick, he smoothed the sides of the deepening hole and made an excavation like a winepress ; then he made his sharp thyrsus into the cunning shape of the later sickle with curved edge, and reaped the […] grapes.
A A A A A A band of Satyrs was with him : one stooped to gather the clusters, one received them into an empty vessel as they were cut, one pulled off the masses of green leaves from the bibulous fruit and threw away the rubbish. Another without thyrsus or sharpened steel crouched bending forwards and […] for grapes, and put out his right hand towards the fruit at the ends of the tangled vine ; then Bacchos spread the fruitage in the pit he had dug, first heaping the grapes in the […] of the excavation, then arranging them in layer side by side like cornheaps on the threshing-floor.
out the whole length of the hole. When he had got all into the hollowed place and filled it to the […], he trod the grapes with dancing steps. The Satyrs also, shaking their hair madly in the wind, learnt from Dionysos how to do the like. They pulled tight the dappled skins of fawns over the shoulder, they shouted the song of Bacchos sounding tongue with tongue, crushing the fruit with many a skip of the foot, crying Euoi ! The wine spurted up in the grape-filled hollow, the runlets were empurpled by the alternating tread ; the fruit bubbled out red juice with white foam. They scooped it up with ox-horns, instead of cups which had not yet been seen, so that ever after the cup of mixed wine took this divine name of […] And one went bubbling the mindcharming drops of Bacchos as he turned his wobbling feet in zigzag crossing right over left in confusion as he wetted hairy cheeks with Bacchos’s drops. Another […] struck with a […] madness when he heard […] boom of the beaten drum-skin, One […] who had drunk too deeply of care-dispelling wine purpled his dark beard with the rosy liquor. Another, turning his unsteady look towards a tree espied a Nymph half-hidden, unveiled, close at hand; and he would have crawled up the highest tree in the forest, feet slipping, hanging on by his toenails, had not Dionysos held him back. Near the fountains, another driven by the insane impulse of drunken excitement, chased a naked Naiad of the waters ; he would have seized her with hairy hand as she swam, but she gave him the slip and dived into deep water. To Dionysos alone had Rheia given the amethyst, which preserves the wine-drinker from the tyranny of madness.
Many of the horned Satyrs joined furiously in the festive dancing with sportive steps. One felt within him a new hot madness, the guide to love, and threw a hairy arm round a Bacchanal girl’s waist. One shaken by the madness of mind-crazing drink laid hold of the girdle of modest unwedded maid, and as she would have no lovemaking pulled her back by the dress and touched her rosy thighs from behind. Another dragged back a struggling mystic maiden while kindling the torch for the god’s nightly dances, laid timid fingers upon her bosom and pressed the swelling circle of her firm breast,
After the revels over his sweet fruit, Dionysos proudly entered the cave of the Cybeleid goddess Rheia, waving bunches of grapes in “his flower-loving hand, and taught Maionia the vigil of his feast.
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