CHAPTER XXI.
BACCHUS- ARIADNE.
BACCHUS.
BACCHUS was the son of Jupiter and Semele. Juno, to gratify her
resentment against Semele, contrived a plan for her destruction.
Assuming the form of Beroe, her aged nurse, she insinuated doubts
whether it was indeed Jove himself who came as a lover. Heaving a
sigh, she said, "I hope it will turn out so, but I can't help being
afraid. People are not always what they pretend to be. If he is indeed
Jove, make him give some proof of it. Ask him to come arrayed in all
his splendours, such as he wears in heaven. That will put the matter
beyond a doubt." Semele was persuaded to try the experiment. She
asks a favour, without naming what it is. Jove gives his promise,
and confirms it with the irrevocable oath, attesting the river Styx,
terrible to the gods themselves. Then she made known her request.
The god would have stopped her as she spake, but she was too quick for
him. The words escaped, and he could neither unsay his promise nor her
request. In deep distress he left her and returned to the upper
regions. There he clothed himself in his splendours, not putting on
all his terrors, as when he overthrew the giants, but what is known
among the gods as his lesser panoply. Arrayed in this, he entered
the chamber of Semele. Her mortal frame could not endure the
splendours of the immortal radiance. She was consumed to ashes.
Jove took the infant Bacchus and gave him in charge to the Nysaean
nymphs, who nourished his infancy and childhood, and for their care
were rewarded by Jupiter by being placed, as the Hyades, among the
stars. When Bacchus grew up he discovered the culture of the vine
and the mode of extracting its precious juice; but Juno struck him
with madness, and drove him forth a wanderer through various parts
of the earth. In Phrygia the goddess Rhea cured him and taught him her
religious rites, and he set out on a progress through Asia, teaching
the people the cultivation of the vine. The most famous part of his
wanderings is his expedition to India, which is said to have lasted
several years. Returning in triumph, he undertook to introduce his
worship into Greece, but was opposed by some princes, who dreaded
its introduction on account of the disorder and madness it brought
with it.
As he approached his native city Thebes, Pentheus the king, who
had no respect for the new worship, forbade its rites to be performed.
But when it was known that Bacchus was advancing, men and women, but
chiefly the latter, young and old, poured forth to meet him and to
join his triumphal march.
Mr. Longfellow in his "Drinking Song" thus describes the march of
Bacchus:
"Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow, supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.
"Round about him fair Bacchantes,
Bearing cymbals, flutes and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves of Zante's
Vineyards, sing delirious verses."
It was in vain Pentheus remonstrated, commanded and threatened.
"Go," said he to his attendants, "seize this vagabond leader of the
rout and bring him to me. I will soon make him confess his false claim
of heavenly parentage and renounce his counterfeit worship." It was in
vain his nearest friends and wisest counsellors remonstrated and
begged him not to oppose the god. Their remonstrances only made him
more violent.
But now the attendants returned whom he had despatched to seize
Bacchus. They had been driven away by the Bacchanals, but had
succeeded in taking one of them prisoner, whom, with his hands tied
behind him, they brought before the king. Pentheus, beholding him with
wrathful countenance, said "Fellow! you shall speedily be put to
death, that your fate may be a warning to others; but though I
grudge the delay of your punishment, speak, tell us who you are, and
what are these new rites you presume to celebrate."
The prisoner, unterrified, responded, "My name is Acetes; my country
is Maeonia; my parents were poor people, who had no fields or flocks
to leave me, but they left me their fishing rods and nets and their
fisherman's trade. This I followed for some time, till growing weary
of remaining in one place, I learned the pilot's art and how to
guide my course by the stars. It happened as I was sailing for Delos
we touched at the island of Dia and went ashore. Next morning I sent
the men for fresh water, and myself mounted the hill to observe the
wind; when my men returned bringing with them a prize, as they
thought, a boy of delicate appearance, whom they had found asleep.
They judged he was a noble youth, perhaps a king's son, and they might
get a liberal ransom for him. I observed his dress, his walk, his
face, There was something in them which I felt sure was more than
mortal. I said to my men, 'What god there is concealed in that form
I know not, but some one there certainly is. Pardon us, gentle
deity, for the violence we have done you, and give success to our
undertakings.' Dictys, one of my best hands for climbing the mast
and coming down by the ropes, and Melanthus, my steersman, and
Epopeus, the leader of the sailor's cry, one and all exclaimed, 'Spare
your prayers for us.' So blind is the lust of gain! When they
proceeded to put him on board I resisted them. 'This ship shall not be
profaned by such impiety,' said I. 'I have a greater share in her than
any of you.' But Lycabas, a turbulent fellow, seized me by the
throat and attempted to throw my overboard, and I scarcely saved
myself by clinging to the ropes. The rest approved the deed.
"Then Bacchus (for it was indeed he), as if shaking off his
drowsiness, exclaimed, 'What are you doing with me? What is this
fighting about? Who brought me here? Where are you going to carry me?'
One of them replied, 'Fear nothing; tell us where you wish to go and
we will take you there.' 'Naxos is my home,' said Bacchus; 'take me
there and you shall be well rewarded.' They promised so to do, and
told me to pilot the ship to Naxos. Naxos lay to the right, and I
was trimming the sails to carry us there, when some by signs and
others by whispers signified to me their will that I should sail in
the opposite direction, and take the boy to Egypt to sell him for a
slave, I was confounded and said, 'Let some one else pilot the
ship;' withdrawing myself from any further agency in their wickedness.
They cursed me, and one of them, exclaiming, 'Don't flatter yourself
that we depend on you for our safety,' took my place as pilot, and
bore away from Naxos.
"Then the god, pretending that he had just become aware of their
treachery, looked out over the sea and said in a voice of weeping,
'Sailors, these are not the shores you promised to take me to;
yonder island is not my home. What have I done that you should treat
me so? It is small glory you will gain by cheating a poor boy.' I wept
to hear him, but the crew laughed at both of us, and sped the vessel
fast over the sea. All at once- strange as it may seem, it is true,-
the vessel stopped, in the mid sea, as fast as if it was fixed on
the ground. The men, astonished, pulled at their oars, and spread more
sail, trying to make progress by the aid of both, but all in vain. Ivy
twined round the oars and hindered their motion, and clung to the
sails, with heavy clusters of berries. A vine, laden with grapes,
ran up the mast, and along the sides of the vessel. The sound of
flutes was heard and the odour of fragrant wine spread all around. The
god himself had a chaplet of vine leaves, and bore in his hand a spear
wreathed with ivy. Tigers crouched at his feet, and forms of lynxes
and spotted panthers played around him. The men were seized with
terror or madness; some leaped overboard; others preparing to do the
same beheld their companions in the water undergoing a change, their
bodies becoming flattened and ending in a crooked tail. One exclaimed,
'What miracle is this!' and as he spoke his mouth widened, his
nostrils expanded, and scales covered all his body. Another,
endeavouring to pull the oar, felt his hands shrink up and presently
to be no longer hands but fins; another, trying to raise his arms to a
rope, found he had no arms, and curving his mutilated body jumped into
the sea. What had been his legs became the two ends of a
crescent-shaped tail. The whole crew became dolphins and swam about
the ship, now upon the surface, now under it, scattering the spray,
and spouting the water from their broad nostrils. Of twenty men I
alone was left. Trembling with fear, the god cheered me. 'Fear not,'
said he; 'steer towards Naxos.' I obeyed, and when we arrived there, I
kindled the altars and celebrated the sacred rites of Bacchus."
Pentheus here exclaimed, "We have wasted time enough on this silly
story. Take him away and have him executed without delay." Acetes
was led away by the attendants and shut up fast in prison; but while
they were getting ready the instruments of execution the prison
doors came open of their own accord and the chains fell from his
limbs, and when they looked for him he was nowhere to be found.
Pentheus would take no warning, but instead of sending others,
determined to go himself to the scene of the solemnities. The mountain
Citheron was all alive with worshippers, and the cries of the
Bacchanals resounded on every side. The noise roused the anger of
Pentheus as the sound of a trumpet does the fire of a war-horse. He
penetrated through the wood and reached an open space where the
chief scene of the orgies met his eyes. At the same moment the women
saw him; and first among them his own mother, Agave, blinded by the
god, cried out, "See there the wild boar, the hugest monster that
prowls in these woods! Come on, sisters! I will be the first to strike
the wild boar." The whole band rushed upon him, and while he now talks
less arrogantly, now excuses himself, and now confesses his crime
and implores pardon, they press upon him and wound him. In vain he
cries to his aunts to protect him from his mother. Autonoe seized
one arm, Ino the other, and between them he was torn to pieces,
while his mother shouted, "Victory! Victory! we have done it; the
glory is ours!"
So the worship of Bacchus was established in Greece.
There is an allusion to the story of Bacchus and the mariners in
Milton's "Comus," at line 46. The story of Circe will be found in
Chapter XXIX.
"Bacchus that first from out the purple grapes
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine,
After the Tuscan mariners transformed,
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore as the winds listed
On Circe's island fell; (who knows not Circe,
The daughter of the Sun? whose charmed cup
Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,
And downward fen into a grovelling swine.)"
ARIADNE.
We have seen in the story of Theseus how Ariadne, the daughter of
King Minos, after helping Theseus to escape from the labyrinth, was
carried by him to the island of Naxos and was left there asleep, while
the ungrateful Theseus pursued his way home without her. Ariadne, on
waking and finding herself deserted, abandoned herself to grief. But
Venus took pity on her, and consoled her with the promise that she
should have an immortal lover, instead of the mortal one she had lost.
The island where Ariadne was left was the favourite island of
Bacchus, the same that he wished the Tyrrhenian mariners to carry
him to, when they so treacherously attempted to make prize of him.
As Ariadne sat lamenting her fate, Bacchus found her, consoled her,
and made her his wife. As a marriage present he gave her a golden
crown, enriched with gems, and when she died, he took her crown and
threw it up into the sky. As it mounted the gems grew brighter and
were turned into stars, and preserving its form Ariadne's crown
remains fixed in the heavens as a constellation, between the
kneeling Hercules and the man who holds the serpent.
Spenser alludes to Ariadne's crown, though he has made some mistakes
in his mythology. It was at the wedding of Pirithous, and not Theseus,
that the Centaurs and Lapithae quarrelled.
"Look how the crown which Ariadne wore
Upon her ivory forehead that same day
That Theseus her unto his bridal bore,
Then the bold Centaurs made that bloody fray
With the fierce Lapiths which did them dismay;
Being now placed in the firmament,
Through the bright heaven doth her beams display,
And is unto the stars an ornament,
Which round about her move in order excellent."
Next: CHAPTER XXII. The Rural Deities- Erisichthon- Rhoecus- The Water Deities- The Camenae- The Winds.
