Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca 20.120–181: Book 20: Pithos and the vat; the cruelty of Lycurgos

So Botrys quitted his father’s palace and estate, clad in his purple, and driving his chariot-and-four by the side of grapeloving Dionysos, with slaves following behind. Methe his mother was in a mule-cart with silver wheels, and beside her was a white-robed maiden Phasyleia, who guided the team, flicking a golden whip over the mules’ necks. Pithos the broadhead followed behind in his own car, to serve both Botrys and Dionysos. Nor was he left without reward. Lord Bacchos took him away into Lydia, and there set him over a winepress teeming with the heady liquor, to receive the poured produce of the juicy vintage in vessels fit to hold wine. And so the name Pithos was given to the purple hollow of the vat, which to this day stands close to a winepress to receive the Euian gifts of Bacchos, a memorial of the ancient Pithos. If it had human voice it would bellow such words as these to the Satyrs when it heard the revel :

“I am Pithos, named after the old one, and here beside the winepress I receive the sweet juice of the garden-grapes. I was the servant of Assyrian Staphylos and Botrys; I was the old nurse who cared for them both as children, and I still carry them both upon my hips, as if they were still alive.”

But this Lord Bacchos was not to do for a long time to come. Now he marched past Tyros and Byblos, and the wedded water of the scented river of Adonis, and the rocks of Libanos where Cyprogeneia loves to linger. He climbed into Arabia, and under the frankincense trees he wondered at the ridge of Nysa with its dense forest, and the city built on the steep, the nurse of spearmen.

There lived a bloodthirsty ruffian, the ferocious Lycurgos, a son of Ares and like his father in his own horrid customs. He used to drag innocent strangers to death against all right, and cut off with steel human heads, which he hung over his gateway in festoons. He was like Oinomaos and of the same -age. Oinomaos kept his unhappy daughter unmarried in his house, without husband, growing old and yet unacquainted with wedded love, until Tantalides came scoring the highroad of the deep in Earthshaker’s fourhorse chariot unwetted. Then came his race for a bride ; then cunningminded Myrtilos got him a stolen victory, by making for the wheel a sham axle of wax to deceive—for he was himself in love with sorrowful Hippodameia and pitied her. So the race was useless : under the burning chariot of Helios the waxmoulded model grew warm in the heat, the shortlasting axle melted and shot off the wheel.

Lycurgos was one of the same kind. Often when he met wandering wayfarers at the crossroads with loads on their backs, he had them bound and dragged to his house, and then sacrificed them to Enyalios his father; they were cut to pieces with knives, and he took their extremities to decorate his inhospitable gates. As a man who returns at last spear in hand from war with his enemies, and hangs up in the hall shields or helmets as trophies of a new victory, so on the blood-stained portals of Lycurgos the feet and hands of dead men were hung. It was massacre: at the neighbouring altar of Zeus, the Strangers’ God, groaning strangers were cut piecemeal like so many oxen and sheep, and the altars were drenched in the blood of the slain, the dust was spotted with red gore about the gates of the dwelling. The people under this tyranny made haste to sacrifice to Lycurgos instead of Zeus.