The forty-second web I have woven, where I celebrate a delightful love of Bacchos and the desire of Earthshaker.
He obeyed her request ; treading on Time’s heels hot Love swiftly sped, plying his feet into the wind, high in the clouds scoring the air with winged step, and carried his flaming bow ; the quiver too, filled with gentle fire, hung down over his shoulder. As when a star stretches straight with a long trail of sparks, a swift traveller through the unclouded sky, bringing a portent for a warhost or some sailor man, and streaks the back of the upper air with a wake of fire — so went furious Eros in a swift rush, and his wings beat the air with a sharp whirring sound that whistled down from the sky. Then near the Assyrian rock he united two fiery arrows on one string, to bring two wooers into like desire for the love of a maid, rivals for one bride, the vinegod and the ruler of the sea.
Meanwhile one came from the deep waters of the sea-neighbouring roadstead, and one left the land of Tyre, and among the mountains of Lebanon the two met in one place. Maron loosed the panther sweating from the yoke of his awful car, and brushed off the dust and swilled the beasts with water of the fountain, cooling their hot scarred necks. Then Eros came quickly up to the maiden hard by, and struck both divinities with two arrows. He maddened Dionysos to offer his treasures to the bride, life’s merry heart and the ruddy vintage of the grape ; he goaded to love the lord of the trident, that he might bring the sea-neighbouring maid a double lovegift, seafaring battle on the water and varied dishes for the table. He set Bacchos more in a flame, since wine excites the mind for desire, and wine finds unbridled youth much more obedient to the rein when it is charmed with the prick of unreason ; so he shot Bacchos and drove the whole shaft into his heart, and Bacchos burnt, as much as he was charmed by the trickling honey of persuasion. Thus he maddened them both ; and in the counterfeit shape of a bird circling his tracks in the airy road as swift as the rapid winds, he rose with paddling feet, and cried these taunting words : “If Dionysos confounds men with wine, I excite Bacchos with fire !
The vinegod turned his eye to look, and scanned the tender body of the longhaired maiden, full of admiration the conduit of desire ; his eye led the way and ferried the newborn love. Dionysos wandered in that heartrejoicing wood, secretly fixing his careful gaze on Beroe, and followed the girl’s path a little behind. He could not have enough of his gazing ; for the more he beheld the maid standing there, the more he wanted to watch. He called to Helios, reminding the chief of stars of his love for Clymene, and prayed him to hold back his car and check the stalled horses with the heavenly bit, that he might prolong the sweet light, that he might go slow to his setting and with sparing whip increase the day to shine again. Pressing measured step by step in Beroe’s tracks the god passed round her as if noticing nothing ; while Earthshaker stole from Lebanon with lingering feet, and departed with steps slow to obey, turning again and again, his mind shifting like the sea and rippling with billows of ever-murmuring care.
Unsated, in the delicious forests of Lebanon, Dionysos was left alone beside the lonely girl. Dionysos was left alone ! Tell me, Oreiad Nymphs, what could he wish for more lovely than to see the maiden’s flesh, alone, and free from lovesick Earthshaker ? He kissed with a million kisses the place where she set her foot, creeping up secretly, and kissed the dust where the maiden had trod making it bright with her shoes of roses. Bacchos watched the girl’s sweet neck, her ankles as she walked, beauty which nature had given her, the beauty which nature had made : for no ruddy ornament for the skin had Beroe smeared on her round rosy face, no meretricious rouge put a false blush on her cheeks. She consulted no shining mirror of bronze with its reflection a witness of her looks, she laughed at no lifeless form of a mimic face to estimate her beauty, she was not for ever arranging the curls over her brows, and setting in place some stray wandering lock of hair by her eyebrows with cunning touch. But the natural beauties of a face confound the desperate lover with far sharper sting, and the untidy tresses of an unbedizened head are all the more dainty, when they stray unbraided down the sides of a snow-white face.
Sometimes athirst when beaten by the heat of the fiery Dog of heaven, the girl sought out a neighbouring spring with parched lips ; the girl bent down her curving neck and stooped her head, dipping a hand again and again and scooping the water of her own country to her mouth, until she had enough and left the rills. When she was gone, Dionysos would bend his knee to the lovely spring, and hollow his palms in mimicry of the beloved girl : then he drank water sweeter than selfpoured nectar. And the unshod deep -bosomed nymph of the spring, seeing him struck by the sting of desire, would say ;
“Cold water to drink, Dionysos, is of no use to you ; for all the stream of Oceanos cannot quench the thirst of love. Ask your own father ! Europa’s bridegroom traversed that wide gulf and yet did not quench the fire of longing, but he suffered still more on the waters. Witness wandering Alpheios, whom you see the servant of waterfaring love, in that trailing water through water in all those floods he escaped not hot love, though he was a watery traveller !
So said the unveiled Naiad, and laughed at Lyaios, diving into her spring, which had one colour with her body. And the god grudging at Poseidon ruler of the waves felt fear and jealousy, since the maiden drank water and not wine. He uttered his voice to the unhearing air, as if the girl were there to hear and obey :
“Maiden, accept the nectar — leave this water that maidens love ! Avoid the water of the spring, lest Seabluehair steal your maidenhood in the water — for a mad lover and a crafty one he is ! You know the love of Thessalian Tyro and her wedding in the waters ; then you too take care of the crafty flood, lest the deceiver loose your girdle just as the wedding-thief Enipeus did. O that I also might become a flood, like Earthshaker, and murmuring might embrace my own Tyro of Lebanon, thirsty and careless beside the lovestricken spring !
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