So horned Seilenos wove his web with neat-handed skill, and his right hand ceased to move. Then fixing his gaze on the sky, he leapt into the air with bounding shoe. Now he clapt both feet together, then parted them, and went hopping from foot to foot ; now over the floor he twirled dancing round and round upright upon his heels and spun in a circling sweep. He stood steady on his right foot holding a toe of the other foot, or bent his knee and caught it in his clasped hands, or held an outstretched thigh with the other leg upright, the heavyknee Seilenos! He lifted the left foot coiling up to the side, to the shoulder, twining it behind him and holding it up until he brought the sole round his neck. Then with a quick turn of the back-swerving dance, he artfully bent himself over, face up, in a hoop, showing his belly spread out and curved up towards the sky, while he spun round and round on one unchanging spot. His head hung down as he moved, as if it were always touching the ground and yet not grazing the dust. So Seilenos went scratching the ground with hairy foot, restlessly moving round and round in his wild caperings.
At last his knees failed him ; with shaking head he slipt to the ground and rolled over on his back. At once he became a river: his body was flowing water with natural ripples all over, his forehead changed to a winding current with the horns for waves, the turbulent swell came to a crest on his head, his belly sank into the sand, a deep place for fishes. As Seilenos lay spread, his hair changed into natural rushes, and over the river his pipes made a shrill tune of themselves as the breezes touched them.
But Maron crowned himself with the sweets of victory, and held in his arms the mixer stuffed with delicious wine ; he took the silver bowl, the prize of Seilenos now a flood, and threw it into the river as a libation, where it intoxicated the currents of the dancing river. And so the place was named from the Mixer, and men still speak of the Euian water of murmuring Seilenos full of sweet drink. Then Maron addressed these words to the running stream :
‘“Maron does you no harm, Seilenos. I will cast the ruddy wine into you and call you the Cellarer. Accept your drink, tippler never satisfied, accept the silver bowl of Bacchos, and you shall have silvery eddies. Seilenos Twirlthefoot, you dance even in your current, you keep the spinning of your feet even in your waves, you revel still in your watery shape. Then be gracious to Bacchants and Satyrs and winegiving vintage, and guard the Seilenoi of your own race. Be generous to Maron who drinks no heeltaps, and let me never see that you still keep a secret grudge among the rivers. Rather let your waters increase the wine of Maron’s vintage, and be of one mind with Dionysos even among the rivers.
“Foolish one, who taught you to strive with your betters? Another Seilenos there was, fingering a proud pipe, who lifted a haughty neck and challenged a match with Phoibos ; but Phoibos tied him to a tree and stript off his hairy skin, and made it a windbag. There it hung high on a tree, and the breeze often entered, swelling it out into a shape like his, as if the shepherd could not keep silence but made his tune again. Then Delphic Apollo changed his form in pity, and made him the river which bears his name. Men still speak of the winding water of that hairy Seilenos, which lets out a sound wandering on the wind, as if he were still playing on the reeds of his Phrygian pipe in rivalry.
“So you also have changed your shape by challenging one better than you, just like the earlier Seilenos. You must no longer seek a barefoot Bacchant for your bride as before, that Bacchant of the mountains with flowing locks ; you have now for your pleasure the innumerable tribe of Naiads with flowing hair. Seek no longer the snaky wreaths of Lyaios ; eels are what you have to do with, the wriggling travail of the streams, and instead of serpents there are fishes with closefitted speckled scales crawling in your streams. And if you have parted from Dionysos and his grapes, I hold you the happier; for you really make the grapes to grow! What more could you want, when you have after Bacchos now Zeus to feed your streams, the Father of all creation? Instead of your Satyrs you have your regiments of rivers ; instead of the winepress you dance on the back of murmuring Ocean. Even in the waters you are like what you were: it is proper that Seilenos, once proud of his horned forehead, as a river should have the horned shape of a bull.”
So Maron spoke ; and all wondered to see the winding waters of Seilenos the tumbling flood, the ever-turning river which was his very likeness.
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