When Dionysus led his host against the men of Ind (surely there is nothing to prevent my telling you a tale of Bacchus !), he was held at first in such contempt, they say, by the people there, that they laughed at his advance ; more than that, they pitied him for his hardihood, because he was certain to be trampled under foot in an instant by the elephants if he deployed against them. No doubt they heard curious reports about his army from their scouts: “His rank and file are crack-brained, crazy women, wreathed with ivy, dressed in fawn-skins, carrying little headless spears which are of ivy too, and light targes that boom if you do but touch them”—for they supposed, no doubt, that the tambours were shields. ‘A few young clodhoppers are with them, dancing the can-can without any clothes on; they have tails, and have horns like those which start from the foreheads of new-born kids.

As for the general himself, he rides on a car behind a team of panthers; he is quite beardless, without even the least bit of down on his cheek, has horns, wears a garland of grape clusters, ties up his hair with a ribbon, and is in a purple gown and gilt slippers. He has two lieutenants. OneSilenus is a short, thick-set old man with a big belly, a flat nose and large, up-standing ears, who is a bit shaky and walks with a staff (though for the most part he rides on an ass), and is also in a woman’s gown, which is yellow; he is a very appropriate aide to such a chief! The otherPan is a misbegotten fellow like a goat in the underpinning, with hairy legs, horns, and a long beard; he is choleric and hot-headed, carries a shepherd’s pipe in his left hand and brandishes a crooked stick in his right, and goes bounding all about the army. The women are afraid of him; they toss their hair in the wind when he comes near and cry out ‘Evoe.’ This we suppose to be the name of their ruler. The flocks have already been harried - by the women, and the animals torn limb from limb while still alive; for they are eaters of raw meat.”

On hearing this, the Hindoos and their king roared with laughter, as well they might, and did not care to take the field against them or to deploy their troops ; at most, they said, they would turn their women loose on them if they came near. They themselves thought it a shame to defeat them and kill crazy women, a hair-ribboned leader, a drunken little old man, a goat-soldie? and a lot of naked dancers— ridiculous, every one of them! But word soon came that the god was setting the country in a blaze, burning up cities and their inhabitants and firing the forests, and that he had speedily filled all India with flame. (Naturally, the weapon of Dionysus is fire, because it.is his father’s and comes from the thunderbolt.Zeus, the father of Dionysys, revealed himself to Semele, his mother, in all his glory, at her own request. Killed by his thunderbolt, she gave untimely birth to Dionysus, whom Zeus stitched into his own thigh and in due time brought into the world.) Then at last they hurriedly took arms, saddled and bridled their elephants and put the towers on them, and sallied out against the enemy. Even then they despised them, but were angry at them all the same, and eager to crush the life out of the beardless general and his army.

When the forces came together and saw one another, the Hindoos posted their elephants in the van and moved forward in close array. Dionysus had the centre in person; Silenus commanded on the right ‘wing and Pan on the left. The Satyrs were commissioned as colonels and captains, and the general watchword was ‘ Evoe.’ In a trice the tambours were beat, the cymbals gave the signal for battle, one of the Satyrs took his horn and sounded the charge, Silenus’ jackass gave a martial hee-haw, and the Maenads, serpent-girdled, baring the steel of their thyrsus-points, fell on with a shriek. The Hindoos and their elephants gave way at once and fled in utter disorder, not even daring to get within range. The outcome was that they were captured by force of arms and led off prisoners by those whom they had formerly laughed at, taught by experience that strange armies should not have been despised on hearsay.

“But what has your Dionysus to do with Dionysus?”’ someone may say.οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον· ἐπὶ τῶν τὰ μὴ προσήκοντα τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις λεγόντων. Explained by Zenobius as said in the theatre, when poets began to write about Ajax and the Centaurs and other things not in the Dionysiac legend. See Paroemiographi Graeci i. p. 137. This much: that in my opinion (and in the name of the Graces don’t suppose me in a corybantic frenzy or downright drunk if I compare myself to the gods!) most people are in the same state of mind as the Hindoos when they encounter literary novelties, like mine for example. Thinking that.what they hear from me will smack of Satyrs and of jokes, in short, of comedy—for that is the conviction they have formed, holding I know not what opinion of me—some of them do not come at all, believing it unseemly to come off their elephants and give their attention to the revels of women and the skippings of Satyrs, while others apparently come for something of that kind, and when they find steel instead of ivy, are even then slow to applaud, confused by the unexpectedness of the thing. But I promise confidently that if they are willing this time as they were before to look often upon the mystic rites, and if my booncompanions of old remember “the revels we shared in the days that are gone”The source of the anapaest κώμων κοινῶν τῶν τότε καιρῶν is unknown. and do not despise my Satyrs and Sileni, but drink their fill of this bowl, they too will know the Bacchic frenzy once again, and will often join me in the “Evoe.”

But let them do as they think fit: a man’s ears are his own! As we are still in India, I want to tell you another tale of that country which “has to do with Dionysus,” like the first, and is not irrelevant to our business. Among the Machlaean Indians who feed their flocks on the left banks of the Indus river as you look down - stream, and who reach clear to the Ocean—in their country there is a grove in an enclosed place of no great size; it'is completely sheltered, however, for rank ivy and grapevines overshadow it quite. In it there are three springs of fair, clear water: one belongs to the Satyrs, another to Pan, the third to Silenus. The Indians visit the place once a year, celebrating the feast of the god, and they drink from the springs: not, however, from all of them, indiscriminately, but according to age. The boys drink from the spring of the Satyrs, the men from the spring of Pan, and those of my time of life from the spring of Silenus.

What happens to the boys when they drink, and what the men make bold to do under the influence of Pan would make a long story; but what the old do when they get drunk on the water is not irrelevant. When an old man drinks and falls under the influence of Silenus, at first he is mute for a long time and appears drugged and sodden. Then of a sudden he acquires a splendid voice, a distinct utterance, a silvery tone, and is as talkative as he was mute before. Even by gagging him you couldn’t keep him from talking steadily and delivering long harangues. It is all sensible though, and well ordered, and in the style of Homer’s famous orator ;Odysseus: Il. 3, 222, where he and Menelaus are compared. for their words fall “like the snows of winter.” You can’t compare them to swans on account of their age ; but like cicadas, they keep up a constant roundelay till the afternoon is far spent. Then, when the fumes of the drink leave them at last, they fall silent and relapse into their old ways. But I have not yet told you the strangest part of it. If an old man is prevented by sunset from reaching the end of the story which he is telling, and leaves it unfinished, when he drinks again another season he takes up what he was saying the year before when the fumes left him!

Permit me this joke at my own expense, in the spirit of Momus. I refuse to draw the moral, I swear; for you already see how the fable applies to me. If I make any slip, then, the fumes are to blame, but if what I say should seem reasonable, then Silenus has been good to me.