So speaking, away like misty smoke went the soul of the lovesmitten herdsman weeping, and passed beyond pursuit into the courtyard of Tartaros, allcomers’ hostel, full of envy for Bacchos and his drinkdeceiving espousals.
Pan also piped a bridal tune on the shrill reeds, hiding secret envy deep in his heart, Pan the master of music ; and made a defaming lay for the unnatural union. And one of the lovemad Satyrs in a thicket hard by, staring insatiate upon the wedding, a forbidden sight, declaimed thus, when he saw the bed of Bacchos with his fair maiden :
“Horned Pan, still running alone after Aphrodite? When will you too be a bridegroom, for Echo whom you chase? Will you ever bring off a trick like this, to aid and abet you in your nuptials never consummated ? Become a gardener too instead of herdsman, my dear Pan ; forswear your shepherd’s cudgel, leave oxen and sheep among the rocks— what will herdsmen do for you?) Wake up! and plant another vine, which provides love’s wedding.”
Not yet had his words ended, when goatherd Pan cried out :
“I wish my father had taught me the trick of that matchmaking wine! I wish I could be lord of the mindtripping grape, like Bacchos ! Then I should have seen that cruel maiden Echo, asleep and well drunken! then I should have achieved my love, which like a gadfly sends me gadding afar! Farewell to this pasturage! for while water my sheep here by a neighbouring spring, Dionysos draws intractable nymphs to marriage by means of his tipplers’ river! He has invented a medicine for Eros —his plant : away with the goat’s milk, away with the milk of my ewes! for that cannot bring sleep to desire, nor a maiden to marriage. I alone, Cythereia, must suffer. Alas for love! Syrinx escaped from Pan’s marriage and left him without a bride, and now she cries Euoi to the newly-made marriage of Dionysos with melodies unasked : while Syrinx gives voice, and to crown all, Echo chimes in with her familiar note. O Dionysos, charmer of mortals, shepherd of the bridal intoxication! you alone are happy, because when the nymph denied, you found out wine, love’s helper to deck out the marriage !
Such were the words of Pan, in sorrow for his thwarted desire, and in envy and love of Lyaios, the achiever of marriage.
And Dionysos, having achieved his love, and the desires of that wayside bed, rose up with unnoted boot. But the nymph awaking reproached the river spring, indignant against Hypnos and Cypris and Dionysos, bathed in a flood of tears; in her pain, she heard still the remnants of the Naiads’ nuptial song ; and she saw that bed, herald of the couch of lovesick Lyaios, shadowed over with garden vine-leaves, and piled thick with the bridal fawnskins of Dionysos, which gives its own message of Lyaios’s lovestricken passion, which told the tale of the furtive bed ; she saw her own maiden zone wet with the wedding dew. ‘Then she tore her rosy cheeks, and slapt both thighs, and moaned with piercing voice :
“Alas for maidenhead, stolen by the Euian water! alas for maidenhead, stolen by the sleep of love! Alas for maidenhead, stolen by that vagabond Bacchos! A curse on that deceitful water of the Hydriads, a curse on that bed ! Hamadryad nymphs, whom shall I blame ? for Sleep, Eros, trickery and wine, are the robbers of my maiden state! Artemis has deserted her own maidens. But Echo herself the enemy of the bed—why did not Echo tell me the whole scheme ? Why did not Pine whisper in my ear, too low for Bacchos to hear ? why did not Daphne the laurel speak out—‘Maiden, beware, drink not the deceiving water !’?”
She spoke, and flooded her face with a shower of tears. And now she thought to set a sword in her throat, again she would have cast herself rolling off a cliff, to fall headlong in the dust at last ; she thought to destroy the nuptial fountain of which she had drunk, but already the stream had got rid of its Bacchic juice, and bubbled out clear water, no longer the liquid of Lyaios. Then she besought Cronides and Artemis to fill the Naiads’ grottoes with dust and thirsty soil. Often she strained her eye over the mountains, if anywhere she might find an unsteady footstep of unseen Dionysos, that she might shoot him with her arrows, a woman shoot a god! that she might vanquish the deity of the grapes; yet more she desired to destroy with blazing fire all that marriage-vine. Often, when she saw tracks of Bacchos over the mountains, she let off storms of arrows into the air; often she lifted her lance, and cast at a mark, hoping to strike the body of unwounded Dionysos: but in vain she cast, and hit no Lyaios. And she was angry with the river, and swore never to drink the deceitful water of the fountain with thirsty lips ; swore to keep her eyes awake through the night, swore not to enjoy sweet sleep again on the mountains. She blamed also the watchdogs, because not even they then attacked the womanmad Lyaios. She sought a remedy in death by the hanging noose, and encircled her neck with a choking throttling loop, to avert the malice of her mocking yearsmates. Unwilling she left the ancient beastbreeding forest, being ashamed after that bed to show herself to the Archeress.
Now lined with the divine dew, the seed of Lyaios, she carried a burden in her womb; and when the time came for her delivery, the lifewarming Seasons played the midwives to a female child, and confirmed the nine-circled course of Selene. From the marriage of Bromios a god-sent girl grew to flower, whom she named Telete, one ever rejoicing in festivals, a night-dancing girl, who followed Dionysos, taking pleasure in clappers and the bang of the double oxhide.
And the god built a city of fine stone beside the tipplers’ lake, Nicaia, City of Victory, which he named after the nymph Astacia and for the victory which brought the Indians low.
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