At nine years old the youngster went a-hunting his game to the kill. He […] the coursing hare with feet quicker still ; following after the strong pricket’s speed, he would […] with childish hand the dappled fawn and carry it over his neck he would hold lightly aloft stretched on his shoulders a bold fell-striped tiger unshackled, and brought in hand to show Rhea the cubs he had torn newborn from the dam’s milky teats. He dragged horrible lions all alive, and clutching a couple of feet in each hand presented them to the Mother that she might yoke them to her car. Rhea looked on laughing with joy, and admired the manliness and doughty feats of young Dionysos ; his father Cronion laughed when he saw with delighted eyes Iobacchos driving the grim born,
The time of boyhood just come, Euios draped furry tunics upon his body, and carried to cover his shoulders the dappled skin of a stag, Imitating the sky spotted with stars. He drove lynxes to his stables in the Phrygian plain, and yoked speckled panthers to his cart as if to make it like the place where his father dwelt. Often he stood in the chariot of immortal Rheia, and held the flowing reins in his tender-skin hand, and checked the nimble team of galloping lions. The boldness of Zeus high and mighty grew in his heart, until he stretched his right hand to the snout of a mad she-bear and laid fearless fingers on the terrible jaws, playful fingers ; gentle stood the beast, and left her mouth a slave of youthful Lyaios, and kissed Bacchos’s fingers with rough kisses.
Thus he grew up beside cliff-loving Rhea, yet a boy in healthy youth, mountainbred. Circles of Pans among the rocks came about the dance-beating son of Thyone, skipping around the crags on shaggy: knee legs and crying Euoi !” to Bacchos ; and goatfoot hooves rattled in their capers, as they went round and round in the dance,
And Semele in Olympos, with a breath of the thunderbolts still about her, lifted a proud neck and cried with haughty voice—
“Hera, you are ruined ! Semele’s son has beaten you! Zeus brought forth my son, he was the mother in my place! The father begot, the father brought forth his begotten. He brought forth a child from a makeshift womb of his own, and forced nature to change. Bacchos was stronger than Enyalios ; your Ares he only begot, and never childed with his thigh! Thebes has eclipsed the glory of Ortygia ! For Leto the divine was chased about, and brought forth Apollo on the sly; Leto brought forth Phoibos, Cronion had no […] for him ; Maia brought forth Hermes, her husband did not deliver him ; but my son was brought forth openly by his father. Here’s a great miracle ! See Dionysos in the arms of your own mother, he lies on that cherishing arm! The Dispenser of the eternal universe, the first sown Beginning of the gods, the Allmother, became a nurse for Bromios ; she offered to infant Bacchos the breast which Zeus High and Mighty has sucked ! What Cronides was ever in labour, what Rheia was ever nurse for your boy ? But this Cybele who is called your mother brought forth Zeus and suckled Bacchos in the same lap! She dandled them both, the son and the father. No fatherless Hephaistos could rival Semele’s child, none unbegotten of a father whom Hera brought forth by her own begetting—and now he limps about on an illmatched pair of feeble legs to hide his mother’s bungling skill in childbirth! Maia was not quite like Semele ; […] for her son, crafty, armed himself like Ares, and looking like him, deluded Hera until he sucked the milk of her breasts. Give place to me all, for Semele alone had a husband, who got and groaned for the same child. Semele is happiest, because of her son: for my Dionysos will come without scheming into the company of the stars: he will dwell in his father’s heaven, because he drew milk from the god-nursing teat of that mighty goddess. He will come self-summoned into the heavens ; he needs not Hera’s milk, for he has milked a nobler breast.”
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