So the god spoke ; and changing his form for another he plunged into the shady thicket where the maiden was, Euios wholly like a hunter ; in a new and unknown aspect he joined the softhaired unyoked maid, like a youth, moulding a false image of modesty with steady looks on his face. Now he surveyed the peak of a lonely rock, now he spied into the longbranching trees on the uplands, turning an eager eye on a pine or again inspecting a firtree, or an elm — but with cautious countenance and stolen glances he watched the girl so close to him, lest she should turn and run away ; for beauty and the eyes of a girl of his own age have little consolation to a lad who gazes at her for the loves which the Cyprian sends.
He came near to Beroe and would have spoken a word, but fear held him fast. God of jubilation, where is your manslaying thyrsus ? Where your frightful horns ? Where the green snaky ropes of earthfed serpents in your hair ? Where is your heavy-booming bellow? See a great miracle — Bacchos trembling before a maid, Bacchos before whom the tribes of the giants trembled ! Love’s fear has conquered the destroyer of giants. He mowed down all that warmad nation of the Indians, and he fears one weak lovely girl, fears a tender woman. On the mountains he quieted the terrifying roar of lions with his beast-ruling fennel, and he trembled before a woman’s threat. A word strayed into his trembling mouth to the tip of his tongue close behind the lips — it came from his heart and crept back to his heart again, but the bittersweet fear held it in shamefast silence, and drew back the voice, as it tried to issue into the light. Too late he spoke, and hardly then, when he burst the chain of shame from his lips and undid the procrastinating silence, and asked Beroe in a voice of pretence,
“Artemis, where are your arrows ? Who has stolen your quiver ? Where did you leave the tunic you wear, just covering the knees ? Where are those boots quicker than the whirling wind ? Where is your company in attendance ? Where are your nets ? Where your fleet hounds .” You are not making ready for chase of the pricket, for you do not wish to hunt where Cypris is sleeping beside Adonis.”
So he spoke, feigning astonishment, and the maiden smiled in her heart ; she lifted a proud neck in unsuspicious pleasure, rejoicing in her youthful freshness, because she, a mortal woman, was likened to a goddess in beauty, and did not see the trick of mindconfusing Dionysos. But Bacchos was yet more affected, because the girl in her childish simplicity knew not desire ; he wished she might learn his own overpowering passion, since when the girl knows, there is always hope for the lad that love will come at last, but when women do not notice, man’s desire is only a fruitless anxiety.
“Thus day after day, midday and afternoon, morning and evening, the god Lingered in the pinewood, waiting for the girl and ever willing to wait ; for men can have enough of all things, of sweet sleep and melodious song, and when one turns in the moving dance — but only the man mad for love never has enough of his longing ; Homer’s book did not tell the truth ! Dionysos suffered and moaned in silence, struck with the divine whip, stewing the hidden wound of love in his restless heart. As an ox goes scampering over the flats past the well-known swarm of hillranging bulls, driven from the herd when a gadfly has pierced his hide with sharp sting under the leafy trees unnoticed : how small the sting that strikes, how vast the bulk of the routed beast ! he lifts the tail straight over his back and lashes back, bends and scratches his chine on the rocks, and darts a sharp horn at his side striking only the unwounded elastic air — so Dionysos, crowned so often with victory, was pricked by little Love and his allbewitching sting.
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