XVI. Kal. 17th
The third day after the Ides is a very popular celebration of Bacchus. O Bacchus, be gracious to thy bard while he sings of thy festival. But I shall not tell of Semele; if Jupiter had not brought his thunderbolts with him to her, thou hadst been a puny unarmed wight. Nor shall I tell how, in order that thou mightest be born as a boy in due time, the function of a mother was completed in thy father’s body. It were long to relate the triumphs won by the god over the Sithonians and the Scythians, and how he subdued the peoples of India, that incense-bearing land. I will say naught of him who fell a mournful prey to his own Theban mother, nor of Lycurgus, whom frenzy drove to hack at his own knee. Lo now, fain would I speak of the Tyrrhenian monsters, men suddenly transformed into fish, but that is not the business of this song; the business of this song is to set forth the reasons why a vulgar old woman hawks cakes to the people. Before thy birth, Liber, the altars were without offerings, and grass grew on the cold hearths. They tell how, after subjugating the Ganges and the whole East, thou didst set apart first-fruits for great Jupiter. Thou wert the first to offer cinnamon and incense from the conquered lands, and the roast flesh of oxen led in triumph. Libations (libamina) derive their name from their author, and so do cakes (liba), because part of them is offered on the hallowed hearths. Cakes are made for the god, because he delights in sweet juices, and they say that honey was discovered by Bacchus. Attended by the satyrs he was going from sandy Hebrus (my tale includes a pleasant jest), and had come to Rhodope and flowery Pangaeus, when the cymbals in the hands of his companions clashed. Lo, drawn by the tinkle, winged things, as yet unknown, assemble, and the bees follow the sounding brass.
Liber collected the stragglers and shut them up in a hollow tree; and he was rewarded by the discovery of honey. Once the satyrs and the bald-pated ancient had tasted it, they sought for the yellow combs in every grove. In a hollow elm the old fellow heard the humming of a swarm; he spied the combs did kept his counsel. And sitting lazily on the back of an ass, that bent beneath his weight, he rode the beast up to the elm, where the bark was hollow. Then he stood on the ass, and leaning upon a branching stump he greedily reached at the honey stored in the bole. Thousands of hornets gathered, and thrust their stings into his bald pate, and left their mark on his snub-nosed face. Headlong he fell, and the ass kicked him, while he called to his comrades and implored their help. The satyrs ran to the spot and laughed at their parent’s swollen face: he limped on his hurt knee. Bacchus himself laughed and taught him to smear mud on his wounds; Silenus took the hint and smudged his face with mire. The father god enjoys honey, and it is right that we should give to its discoverer clear honey infused in hot cakes. The reason why a woman should knead the cakes is plain enough: Bacchus rouses bands of women by his thyrsus. You ask why it is an old woman who does it. That age is more addicted to wine, and loves the bounty of the teeming vine. Why is she wreathed with ivy? Ivy is most dear to Bacchus. Why that is so can also soon be told. They say that when the stepmother was searching for the boy, the nymphs of Nysa screened the cradle in ivy leaves.
‘’ It remains for me to discover why the gown of liberty is given to boys, fair Bacchus, on thy day, whether it be because thou seemest ever to be a boy and a youth, and thy age is midway between the two; or it may be that, because thou art a father, fathers commend to thy care and divine keeping the pledges that they love, their sons; or it may be that because thou art Liber, the gown of liberty is assumed and a freer (liberior) life is entered upon under thine auspices. Or as it because, in the days when the ancients tilled the fields more diligently, and a senator laboured on his ancestral land, when a consul exchanged the bent plough for the rods and axes of office, and it was no crime to have horny hands, the country folk used to come to the city for the games (but that was an honour paid to the gods, not a concession to popular tastes, the discoverer of the grape held on his own day those games which now he shares with the torch-bearing goddess); and the day therefore seemed not unsuitable for conferring the gown, in order that a crowd might gather round the novice? Thou Father God, hither turn thy horned head, mild and propitious, and to the favouring breezes spread the sails of my poetic art!
“On this day, if I remember aright, and on the preceding day, there is a procession to the Argei. What the Argei are, will be told in the proper place. The star of the Kite slopes downwards towards the Lycaonian Bear: on that night it becomes visible. If you would know what raised the bird to heaven, Saturn had been dethroned by Jupiter. In his wrath he stirred up the strong Titans to take arms and sought the help the Fates allowed him. There was a bull born of its mother Earth, a wondrous monster, the hinder part whereof was a serpent: him, at the warning of the three Fates, grim Styx had shut up in gloomy woods enclosed by a triple wall. There was an oracle that he who should burn the inwards of the bull in the flames would be able to conquer the eternal gods. Briareus sacrificed him with an axe made of adamant, and was just about to put the entrails on the fire: Jupiter commanded the birds to snatch them away; the kite brought them to him and was promoted to the stars for his services.
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