With these words Hermes was off into the unapproachable, twirling in the air the windswift soles of his shoes. And Ino was not disobedient. With loving care she held the motherless Bacchos in her nursing arm, and laying out the pair, the two children, upon it offered her two breasts to Palaimon and Dionysos, She gave the baby in charge to Mystis her attendant maid, Mystis the fine-haired Sidonian, whom Cadmos had brought up from a girl to attend in Ino’s chamber. She then took Bacchos away from those god-feeding breasts, and hid him from all eyes in a dark pit. […] a brilliant light shone from his face, declared of itself the offspring of Zeus: the gloomy walls of the house grew bright, and the light of unseen Dionysos hid the darkness. All night long Ino sat beside Bromios as he played. Often Melicertes jumped up with wavering steps and pressed his lips to pull at the other breast, as he crawled close to Bacchos babbling Euoi
Mystis also nursed the god after her mistress’s breast, watching by the side of Lyaios with sleepless eyes. The clever handmaid taught him the art that bears her name, the mystic rites of Dionysos in the night. She prepared the unsleeping worship for Lyaios, she first shook the rattle, and clanged the swinging cymbals with the resounding double bronze ; she first kindled the night-dancing torch to a flame, and cried Euoi to sleepless Dionysos ; she first […] the curving growth of ivy-clusters, and tied flowing hair with a wreath of vine ; she alone entwined the thyrsus with purple ivy, and wedged on the top of the clusters an iron spike, covered with leaves that it might not scratch Bacchos. She thought of fitting plates of bronze over the naked breast, and fawnskins over the hips. She taught Dionysos to play ; with the mystical casket teeming with sacred […] of worship, and to use them as his childish toys. She first fastened about her body a belt of braided vipers, where a serpent coiling round the belt on both sides with encircling bonds was twisted into a snaky knot.
Here behind the many keys and seals of the palace allseeing Hera spied him with her infallible eyes, guarded by Mystis in that hidden corner of the house. Then she swore by the infernal water of after-avenging Styx, that she would drown the house of Ino in a flood of innumerable woes. Indeed she would have destroyed the son of Zeus ; but Hermes caught him up, and carried him to the wooded ridge where Cybele dwelt. Moving fast, Hera ran swift shoe on quick feet from high heaven: but he was before her, and assumed the eternal shape of first-born Phanes. Hera in respect for the most ancient of the gods, gave him place and bowed before the radiance of the deceiving face, not knowing the borrowed shape for a fraud. So Hermes passed over the mountain tract with quicker step than hers, carrying the horned child folded in his arms, and gave it to Rhea, nurse of lions, mother of Father Zeus, and said these few words to the goddess mother of the greatest : Receive, goddess, a new son of your Zeus ! He […] to fight with the Indians, and when he has done with earth he will come into the starry sky, to the great joy of resentful Hera! Indeed it is not proper that Ino should be nurse to one whom Zeus brought forth. Let the mother of Zeus be nanny to Dionysos, mother of Zeus and nurse of her grandson !” This said, Hermes rose quick-knee to the sky, rounding his wings under the rushing breezes. There he put off the higher shape of selfborn Phanes and put on his own form again, leaving Bacchos to grow a second time in the Mother’s nurture,
The goddess took care of him ; and while he was yet a boy, she set him to drive a car drawn by ravening lions. Within that godwelcoming courtyard, the tripping Corybants would surround Dionysos with their child-cherishing dance, and clash their swords, and strike their shields with rebounding steel in alternate movements, to conceal the growing boyhood of Dionysos ; and as the boy listened to the fostering noise of the shields he grew up under the care of the Corybants like his father,
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