In the seventeenth, I celebrate war’s firstfruits, and the waters of a honey-trickling river turned to wine.
After he had made captive the Indian nation, shackled in sleep by their potations, immovable, without a wound, Dionysos did not commit his quarrel to the forgetful winds, but once more lifted his Phrygian thyrsus ; for he went in haste at the challenge of highcrested Deriades, and left forgotten behind him the trick he had played on the Amazonian girl, the drunken passion and the drowsy nuptials.
The god led the van, wearing a heavenly radiance on his shining face, to proclaim him the son of Zeus. Around the Lydian chariot of giantslaying Dionysos were lines of thyrsus-bearers ; he was ringed about with warriors on either side, conspicuous in the midst, and shone in splendour like another heaven. In beauty he threw all into the shade: to see him you might have said it was fiery Helios in the midst of farscattered stars. The lord of the host had brought Enyo without the steel trappings of war; for he carried no sword and no deathdealing ashen lance, but for bronze he had his own invincible spear, the ivy ; this he wielded in the cities of Asia, this he planted in the soil of Asia, as he drove the savage ear of divine Cybele, with a broad rein of grapevine, under the shadow of ivy, the vine’s fellow, touching up his travelling team with a blossoming whip—he made drunken the regions of the East with the Maronian fruit. To share the enterprise of Bromios came the whole company of Bacchoi, full of confidence from the first battle, when Seilenos happy-mad, unarmed, picked up in his linked arms a living corpse unspeaking, an Indian in full armour, and marched off heavy-kneed, a sluggish wayfarer : when the Bacchant Mimallon woman, unveiled and revelling, and bounding in cadence on her two feet, rattled her cymbals over an Indian still asleep, and running a rope round his neck hurried away, with the war-plunder that she had been seeking thrown into her hands.
From city to city he went, till he came not far off to the rich country of the Alybe, where neighbouring Geudis rolls the wealthy waves of its heavensent flood white with the current of its watery treasures, and cuts a hollow through the silvern soil.
There as the company of footmen with the horned Satyrs travelled beside the richly stored rocks, Bacchos on his march was entertained by a countryman in a lonely hut, Brongos, dweller ‘in the highland glens where no houses are built. Beside the unquarried wall of these giant strongholds he dwelt, in a house that was no house. The hospitable shepherd milked a goat, and drew a potion snowy-white, to seek the favour of the giver of jolly good cheer with his milky draught in country cups, with common vittles. He brought out a fleecy sheep from the fold, as an offering for Dionysos, but the god stayed him. The old man obeyed the immutable bidding of Bacchos, and leaving the sheep untouched he set shepherd’s fare before willing Lyaios. So he served a supper no supper, board without beef, such as they say in Cleonai Molorcos once provided for Heracles on his way to fight the lion. Brongos like that kind-hearted shepherd set on the board plenty of the autumn fruit of the olive swimming in brine, and brought fresh curdled cheese in wickerwork baskets, juicy and round. The god laughed when he saw the countryman’s light supper, and turning a gracious eye on the hospitable shepherd, he partook of the humble fare, munching greedily. All the time he was reminded of the frugal banquet on that bloodless table, when there was a meal for his Mother, Cybele of the highlands. And he wondered at the stone doors of the round courtyard, how industrious nature had carved a house, how without art the cliffs were rounded in answering proportion.
But when Lord Bacchos had eaten his fill of shepherd’s fare, then Brongos the countryman was moved by the divine inspiration of Bacchos ; he played Pan’s wellknown tune on his pipes, and pressed his fingers on Athena’s double tube in honour of Dionysos ; who was pleased at heart with the music, and mixing the new liquor of the winepress in the bowl, he said :
Accept this gift, gaffer, to drink all cares away ! You want no more milk when you have this fragrant dew, the image of heavenly nectar brought down to earth, like that which Ganymedes ladles out to rejoice great Zeus in Olympos. Forget your wish for your old-fashioned milk : the snowy-white drops pressed from the udders of goats that have just kidded do not make men happy or drive their cares away.”’
So saying, he gave his gift of gratitude for the shepherd’s table, the fine fruitage of grapes, the mother of wine, sorrow’s comforter. And the Lord taught him the flowerloving work of the vineyard— to bend the slips of the plants over into fertilizing pits, and to cut the top shoots of an old vine, that new shoots of winegendering grapes may grow.
Leaving the herdsman and the ridge of the wild forest, he now hasted to a new conflict with Indians in the mountains. Bidding the Satyrs who were with him to go on at full speed by the upland tracks, he joined himself again to his wild attendant Bacchants. Thirsting for blood and battle under his thyrsus, he took in hand the loudbraying trumpet of the Tyrhenian Sea, and boomed a note on his conch for battle as he gathered the people. He intoxicated the stout warriors, and drew the men on to war with hotter spirit, to destroy the race of Indians that knew not Bacchos.
Cite This Text