Text
Minyeides
Alcithoe, daughter of
King Minyas,
consents not to the orgies of the God;
denies that
Bacchus is the son of Jove,
and her two sisters join her
in that crime.
'Twas festal-day when matrons and their maids,
keeping it sacred, had forbade all
toil.—
And having draped their bosoms with wild skins,
they loosed their long hair
for the sacred wreaths,
and took the leafy thyrsus in their hands;—
for so the
priest commanded them. Austere
the wrath of Bacchus if his power be
scorned.
Mothers and youthful brides obeyed the priest;
and putting by their wickers and their
webs,
dropt their unfinished toils to offer up
frankincense to the God; invoking
him
with many names:—“O Bacchus! O
Twice-born!
O Fire-begot! Thou only child Twice-mothered!
God of all those who
plant the luscious grape!
O Liber!” All these names and many
more,
for ages known—throughout the lands of Greece.sp:
invo: bacchus
“Thy youth is not consumed by wasting time;
and lo,
thou art an ever-youthful boy,
most beautiful of all the Gods of Heaven,
smooth as a virgin virginalwhen
thy horns are hid.—
The distant east to tawny India's clime,
where rolls
remotest Ganges to the sea,
was conquered by thy might.—O Most-revered!
Thou
didst destroy the doubting Pentheus,
and hurled the sailors' bodies in
the deep,
and smote Lycurgus, wielder of the ax.sp:
invo: bacchus
“And thou dost guide thy lynxes, double-yoked,
with
showy harness.—Satyrs follow thee;
and Bacchanals, and
old Silenus, drunk,
unsteady on his staff; jolting so rough
on
his small back-bent ass; and all the way
resounds a youthful clamour; and the
screams
of women! and the noise of tambourines!
And the hollow cymbals! and
the boxwood flutes,—
fitted with measured holes.—Thou art implored
by all
Ismenian women to appear
peaceful and mild; and they perform thy
rites.”sp:
invo: bacchus
Only the daughters of King Minyas
are carding wool
within their fastened doors,
or twisting with their thumbs the fleecy yarn,
or
working at the web. So they corrupt
the sacred festival with needless toil,
keeping their hand-maids busy at the work.
And one of them, while drawing out the thread
with nimble thumb, anon began to speak;
“While others loiter and frequent these rites
fantastic, we the
wards of Pallas, much
to be preferred, by speaking novel thoughts
may lighten labour. Let us each in turn,
relate to an attentive audience,
a
novel tale; and so the hours may glide.”
it pleased her sisters, and they
ordered her
to tell the story that she loved the most.
So, as she counted in her well-stored mind
the many tales she knew, first doubted
she
whether to tell the tale of Derceto,—
that Babylonian, who, aver
the tribes
of Palestine, in limpid ponds yet lives,—
her body changed, and scales upon her
limbsphysical;
or how her daughter, having taken wingsphysical,
passed her declining years in whitened
towers.
Or should she tell of Nais, who with herbs,
too potent, into
fishes had transformed
the bodies of her lovers, till she met
herself the same sad
fate; or of that tree
which sometime bore white fruit, but now is changed
and
darkened by the blood that stained its roots.—
Pleased with the novelty of this, at
once
she tells the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe;—
and
swiftly as she told it unto them,
the fleecy wool was twisted into threads.