Chapter XVI: Book THE THIRD: Fable I. Iii.1-34 (2)

If, however, we should endeavor to base the story upon purely
historical grounds, we may suppose that it took its rise from some
Nymph, who wandered so far into the woods as to be unable to find her
way out again; and from the fact that those who went to seek her,
hearing nothing but the echo of their own voices, brought back the
strange but unsatisfactory intelligence that the Nymph had been
changed into a voice.

FABLE VII. [III.402-510]

Narcissus falls in love with his own shadow, which he sees in a
fountain; and, pining to death, the Gods change him into a flower,
which still bears his name.

Thus had he deceived her, thus, too, other Nymphs that sprung from the water or the mountains, thus the throng of youths before {them}. Some one, therefore, who had been despised {by him}, lifting up his hands towards heaven, said, “Thus, though he should love, let him not enjoy what he loves!” Rhamnusia[74] assented to a prayer so reasonable. There was a clear spring, like silver, with its unsullied waters, which neither shepherds, nor she-goats feeding on the mountains, nor any other cattle, had touched; which neither bird nor wild beast had disturbed, nor bough falling from a tree. There was grass around it, which the neighboring water nourished, and a wood, that suffered the stream to become warm with no {rays of the} sun. Here the youth, fatigued both with the labor of hunting and the heat, lay down, attracted by the appearance of the spot, and the spring; and, while he was endeavoring to quench his thirst, another thirst grew {upon him}.

While he is drinking, being attracted with the reflection of his own form, seen {in the water}, he falls in love with a thing that has no substance; {and} he thinks that to be a body, which is {but} a shadow. He is astonished at himself, and remains unmoved with the same countenance, like a statue formed of Parian marble.[75] Lying on the ground, he gazes on his eyes {like} two stars, and fingers worthy of Bacchus, and hair worthy of Apollo, and his youthful cheeks and ivory neck, and the comeliness of his mouth, and his blushing complexion mingled with the whiteness of snow; and everything he admires, for which he himself is worthy to be admired. In his ignorance, he covets himself; and he that approves, is himself {the thing} approved. While he pursues he is pursued, and at the same moment he inflames and burns. How often does he give vain kisses to the deceitful spring; how often does he thrust his arms, catching at the neck he sees, into the middle of the water, and yet he does not catch himself in them. He knows not what he sees, but what he sees, by it is he inflamed; and the same mistake that deceives his eyes, provokes them. Why, credulous {youth}, dost thou vainly catch at the flying image? What thou art seeking is nowhere; what thou art in love with, turn but away {and} thou shalt lose it; what thou seest, the same is {but} the shadow of a reflected form; it has nothing of its own. It comes and stays with thee; with thee it will depart, if thou canst {but} depart thence.

No regard for food,[76] no regard for repose, can draw him away thence; but, lying along upon the overshadowed grass, he gazes upon the fallacious image with unsatiated eyes, and by his own sight he himself is undone. Raising himself a little {while}, extending his arms to the woods that stand around him, he says, “Was ever, O, ye woods! any one more fatally in love? For {this} ye know, and have been a convenient shelter for many a one. And do you remember any one, who {ever} thus pined away, during so long a time, though so many ages of your life has been spent? It both pleases me and I see it; but what I see, and what pleases me, yet I cannot obtain; so great a mistake possesses one in love; and to make me grieve the more, neither a vast sea separates us, nor a {long} way, nor mountains, nor a city with its gates closed; we are kept asunder by a little water. He himself wishes to be embraced; for as often as I extend my lips to the limpid stream, so often does he struggle towards me with his face held up; you would think he might be touched. It is a very little that stands in the way of lovers. Whoever thou art, come up hither. Why, {dear} boy, the choice one, dost thou deceive me? or whither dost thou retire, when pursued? Surely, neither my form nor my age is such as thou shouldst shun; the Nymphs, too, have courted me. Thou encouragest I know not what hopes in me with that friendly look, and when I extend my arms to thee, thou willingly extendest thine; when I smile, thou smilest in return; often, too, have I observed thy tears, when I was weeping; my signs, too, thou returnest by thy nods, and, as I guess by the motion of thy beauteous mouth, thou returnest words that come not to my ears. In thee ’tis I, I {now} perceive; nor does my form deceive me. I burn with the love of myself, and both raise the flames and endure them. What shall I do? Should I be entreated, or should I entreat? What, then, shall I entreat? What I desire is in my power; plenty has made me poor. Oh! would that I could depart from my own body! a new wish, {indeed}, in a lover; I could wish that what I am in love with was away. And now grief is taking away my strength, and no long period of my life remains; and in my early days am I cut off; nor is death grievous to me, now about to get rid of my sorrows by death. I wish that he who is beloved could enjoy a longer life. Now we two, of one mind, shall die in {the extinction of} one life.”

{Thus} he said, and, with his mind {but} ill at ease, he returned to the same reflection, and disturbed the water with his tears; and the form was rendered defaced by the moving of the stream; when he saw it {beginning} to disappear, he cried aloud, “Whither dost thou fly? Stay, I beseech thee! and do not in thy cruelty abandon thy lover; let it be allowed me to behold that which I may not touch, and to give nourishment to my wretched frenzy.” And, while he was grieving, he tore his garment from the upper border, and beat his naked breast with his palms, white as marble. His breast, when struck, received a little redness, no otherwise than as apples are wont, which are partly white {and} partly red; or as a grape, not yet ripe, in the parti-colored clusters, is wont to assume a purple tint. Soon as he beheld this again in the water, when clear, he could not endure it any longer; but, as yellow wax with the fire, or the hoar frost of the morning, is wont to waste away with the warmth of the sun, so he, consumed by love, pined away, and wasted by degrees with a hidden flame. And now, no longer was his complexion of white mixed with red; neither his vigor nor his strength, nor {the points} which had charmed when seen so lately, nor {even} his body, which formerly Echo had been in love with, now remained. Yet, when she saw these things, although angry, and mindful {of his usage of her}, she was grieved, and, as often as the unhappy youth said, “Alas!” she repeated, “Alas!” with re-echoing voice; and when he struck his arms with his hands, she, too, returned the like sound of a blow.

His last accents, as he looked into the water, as usual, were these: “Ah, youth, beloved in vain!” and the spot returned just as many words; and after he had said, “Farewell!” Echo, too, said, “Farewell!” He laid down his wearied head upon the green grass, {when} night closed the eyes that admired the beauty of their master; and even then, after he had been received into the infernal abodes, he used to look at himself in the Stygian waters. His Naiad sisters lamented him, and laid their hair,[77] cut off, over their brother; the Dryads, too, lamented him, {and} Echo resounded to their lamentations. And now they were preparing the funeral pile, and the shaken torches, and the bier. The body was nowhere {to be found}. Instead of his body, they found a yellow flower, with white leaves encompassing it in the middle.

[Footnote 74: _Rhamnusia._--Ver. 406. Nemesis, the Goddess of
Retribution, and the avenger of crime, was the daughter of
Jupiter. She had a famous temple at Rhamnus, one of the ‘pagi,’ or
boroughs of Athens. Her statue was there, carved by Phidias out of
the marble which the Persians brought into Greece for the purpose
of making a statue of Victory out of it, and which was thus
appropriately devoted to the Goddess of Retribution. This statue
wore a crown, and had wings, and holding a spear of ash in the
right hand, it was seated on a stag.]

[Footnote 75: _Parian marble._--Ver. 419. Paros was an island in
the Ægean sea, one of the Cyclades; it was famous for the valuable
quality of its marble, which was especially used for the purpose
of making statues of the Gods.]

[Footnote 76: _Regard for food._--Ver. 437. ‘Cereris.’ The name of
the Goddess of corn is here used instead of bread itself.]

[Footnote 77: _Laid their hair._--Ver. 506. It was the custom
among the ancients for females, when lamenting the dead, not only
to cut off their hair, but to lay it on the body, when extended
upon the funeral pile.]

EXPLANATION.

If this story is based upon any historical facts, they are entirely
lost to us; as all we learn from history concerning Narcissus, is the
fact that he was a Thespian by birth. The Fable seems rather to be
intended as a useful moral lesson, disclosing the fatal effects of
self-love. His pursuit, too, of his own image, ever retiring from his
embrace, strongly resembles the little reality that exists in many of
those pleasures which mankind so eagerly pursue.

Pausanias, in his Bœotica, somewhat varies the story. He tells us that
Narcissus having lost his sister, whom he tenderly loved, and who
resembled him very much, and was his constant companion in the chase,
thought, on seeing himself one day in a fountain, that it was the
shade of his lost sister, and, thereupon, pined away and died of
grief. According to him, the fountain was near a village called
Donacon, in the country of the Thespians. Pausanias regards the
account of his change into the flower which bears his name as a mere
fiction, since Pamphus says that Proserpina, when carried away, long
before the time of Narcissus, gathered that flower in the fields of
Enna; and that the same flower was sacred to her. Persons sacrificing
to the Furies, or Eumenides, used to wear chaplets made of the
Narcissus, because that flower commonly grew about graves and
sepulchres.

Tiresias, who predicted the untoward fate of Narcissus, was, as we are
informed by Apollodorus, the son of Evenus and Chariclo, and was the
most renowned soothsayer of his time. He lost his life by drinking of
the fountain of Telphusa when he was overheated; or, as some suppose,
through the unwholesome quality of the water. As he lived to a great
age, and became blind towards the end of his life, the story, which
Ovid mentions, was invented respecting him. Another version of it was,
that he lost his sight, by reason of his having seen Minerva while
bathing. This story was very probably based either upon the fact that
he had composed a Treatise upon the Animal Functions of the Sexes, or
that he had promulgated the doctrine that the stars had not only souls
(a common opinion in those times), but also that they were of
different sexes. He is supposed to have lived about 1200 years before
the Christian era.

FABLE VIII. [III.511-733]

Pentheus ridicules the predictions of Tiresias; and not only forbids
his people to worship Bacchus, who had just entered Greece in triumph,
but even commands them to capture him, and to bring him into his
presence. Under the form of Acœtes, one of his companions, Bacchus
suffers that indignity, and relates to Pentheus the wonders which the
God had wrought. The recital enrages Pentheus still more, who
thereupon goes to Mount Cithæron, to disturb the orgies then
celebrating there; on which his own mother and the other Bacchantes
tear him to pieces.

This thing, when known, brought deserved fame to the prophet through the cities of Achaia;[78] and great was the reputation of the soothsayer. Yet Pentheus,[79] the son of Echion, a contemner of the Gods above, alone, of all men, despises him, and derides the predicting words of the old man, and upbraids him with his darkened state, and the misfortune of {having lost} his sight. He, shaking his temples, white with hoary hair, says: “How fortunate wouldst thou be, if thou as well couldst become deprived of this light, that thou mightst not behold the rites of Bacchus. For soon the day will come, and even now I predict that it is not far off, when the new {God} Liber, the son of Semele, shall come hither. Unless thou shalt vouchsafe him the honor of a temple, thou shalt be scattered, torn in pieces, in a thousand places, and with thy blood thou shalt pollute both the woods, and thy mother and the sisters of thy mother. {These things} will come to pass; for thou wilt not vouchsafe honor to the Divinity; and thou wilt complain that under this darkness I have seen too much.”

The son of Echion drives him away as he says such things as these. Confirmation follows his words, and the predictions of the prophet are fulfilled. Liber comes, and the fields resound with festive howlings. The crowd runs out; both matrons and new-married women mixed with the men, both high and low, are borne along to the {celebration of} rites {till then} unknown. “What madness,” says Pentheus, “has confounded your minds, O ye warlike men,[80] descendants of the Dragon? Can brass knocked against brass prevail so much with you? And the pipe with the bending horn, and these magical delusions? And shall the yells of women, and madness produced by wine, and troops of effeminate {wretches}, and empty tambourines[81] prevail over you, whom neither the warrior’s sword nor the trumpet could affright, nor troops with weapons prepared {for fight}? Am I to wonder at you, old men, who, carried over distant seas, have fixed in these abodes a {new} Tyre, and your banished household Gods, {but who} now allow them to be taken without a struggle? Or you, of more vigorous age and nearer to my own, ye youths; whom it was befitting to be brandishing arms, and not the thyrsus,[82] and to be covered with helmets, not green leaves? Do be mindful, I entreat you, of what race you are sprung, and assume the courage of that dragon, who {though but} one, destroyed many. He died for his springs and his stream; but do you conquer for your own fame. He put the valiant to death; do you expel the feeble {foe}, and regain your country’s honor. If the fates forbid Thebes to stand long, I wish that engines of war[83] and men should demolish the walls, and that fire and sword should resound. {Then} should we be wretched without {any} fault {of our own}, and our fate were to be lamented, {but} not concealed, and our tears would be free from shame. But now Thebes will be taken by an unarmed boy, whom neither wars delight, nor weapons, nor the employment of horses, but hair wet with myrrh, and effeminate chaplets, and purple, and gold interwoven with embroidered garments; whom I, indeed, (do you only stand aside) will presently compel to own that his father is assumed, and that his sacred rites are fictitious. Has Acrisius[84] courage enough to despise the vain Deity, and to shut the gates of Argos against his approach; and shall this stranger affright Pentheus with all Thebes? Go quickly, (this order he gives to his servants), go, and bring hither in chains the ringleader. Let there be no slothful delay in {executing} my commands.”

His grandfather,[85] {Cadmus}, Athamas, and the rest of the company of his friends rebuke him with expostulations, and in vain try to restrain him. By their admonition he becomes more violent, and by being curbed his fury is irritated, and is on the increase, and the very restraint did him injury. So have I beheld a torrent, where nothing obstructed it in its course, run gently and with moderate noise; but wherever beams and stones in its way withheld it, it ran foaming and raging, and more violent from its obstruction. Behold! {the servants} return, all stained with blood; and when their master inquires where Bacchus is, they deny that they have seen Bacchus. “But this one,” say they, “we have taken, who was his attendant and minister in his sacred rites.” And {then} they deliver one, who, from the Etrurian nation, had followed the sacred rites of the Deity, with his hands bound behind his back.

Pentheus looks at him with eyes that anger has made terrible, and although he can scarcely defer the time of his punishment, he says, “O {wretch}, doomed to destruction, and about, by thy death, to set an example to others, tell me thy name, and the name of thy parents, and thy country, and why thou dost attend the sacred rites of a new fashion.” He, void of fear, says, “My name is Acœtes; Mæonia[86] is my country; my parents were of humble station. My father left me no fields for the hardy oxen to till, no wool-bearing flocks, nor any herds. He himself was {but} poor, and he was wont with line, and hooks, to deceive the leaping fishes, and to take them with the rod. His trade was his {only} possession. When he gave that calling over {to me}, he said, ‘Receive, as the successor and heir of my employment, those riches which I possess;’ and at his death he left me nothing but the streams. This one thing alone can I call my patrimony. {But} soon, that I might not always be confined to the same rocks, I learned with a steadying right hand to guide the helm of the ship, and I made observations with my eyes of the showery Constellation of the Olenian she-goat,[87] and Taygete,[88] and the Hyades,[89] and the Bear, and the quarters of the winds, and the harbors fit for ships. By chance, as I was making for Delos, I touched at the coast of the land of Dia,[90] and came up to the shore by {plying} the oars on the right side; and I gave a nimble leap, and lighted upon the wet sand. When the night was past, and the dawn first began to grow red, I arose and ordered {my men} to take in fresh water, and I pointed out the way which led to the stream. I myself, from a lofty eminence, looked around {to see} what the breeze promised me; and {then} I called my companions, and returned to the vessel. ‘Lo! we are here,’ says Opheltes, my chief mate; and having found, as he thought, a prize in the lonely fields, he was leading along the shore, a boy with {all} the beauty of a girl. He, heavy with wine and sleep, seemed to stagger, and to follow with difficulty. I examined his dress, his looks, and his gait, {and} I saw nothing there which could be taken to be mortal. I both was sensible of it, and I said to my companions, ‘I am in doubt what Deity is in that body; but in that body a Deity there is. Whoever thou art, O be propitious and assist our toils; and pardon these as well.’ ‘Cease praying for us,’ said Dictys, than whom there was not another more nimble at climbing to the main-top-yards, and at sliding down by catching hold of a rope. This Libys, this the yellow-haired Melanthus, the guardian of the prow, and this Alcimedon approved of; and Epopeus[91] as well, the cheerer of their spirits, who by his voice gave both rest and time to the oars; {and} so did all the rest; so blind is the greed for booty. ‘However,’ I said, ‘I will not allow this ship to be damaged by this sacred freight. Here I have the greatest share of right.’ and I opposed them at the entrance.

“Lycabas, the boldest of all the number, was enraged, who, expelled from a city of Etruria, was suffering exile as the punishment for a dreadful murder.[92] He, while I was resisting, seized hold of my throat with his youthful fist, and shaking me, had thrown me overboard into the sea, if I had not, although stunned, held fast by grasping a rope. The impious crew approved of the deed. Then at last Bacchus (for Bacchus it was), as though his sleep had been broken by the noise, and his sense was returning into his breast after {much} wine, said: ‘What are you doing? What is this noise? Tell me, sailors, by what means have I come hither? Whither do you intend to carry me?’ ‘Lay aside thy fears,’ said Proreus, ‘and tell us what port thou wouldst wish to reach. Thou shalt stop at the land that thou desirest.’ ‘Direct your course then to Naxos,’[93] says Liber, ‘that is my home; it shall prove a hospitable land for you.’

“In their deceit they swore by the ocean and by all the Deities, that so it should be; and bade me give sail to the painted ship. Naxos was to our right; {and} as I was {accordingly} setting sail for the right hand, every one said for himself, ‘What art thou about, madman? What insanity possesses thee, Acœtes? Stand away to the left.’ The greater part signified {their meaning} to me by signs; some whispered in my ear what they wanted. I was at a loss, and I said, ‘Let some one else take the helm;’ and I withdrew myself from the execution both of their wickedness, and of my own calling. I was reviled by them all, and the whole crew muttered {reproaches} against me. Æthalion, among them, says, ‘As if, forsooth, all our safety is centred in thee,’ and he himself comes up, and takes my duty; and leaving Naxos, he steers a different course. Then the God, mocking them as if he had at last but that moment discovered their knavery, looks down upon the sea from the crooked stern; and, like one weeping, he says: ‘These are not the shores, sailors, that you have promised me; this is not the land desired by me. By what act have I deserved this treatment? What honor is it to you, if you {that are} young men, deceive a {mere} boy? if you {that are} many, deceive me, {who am but} one?’ I had been weeping for some time. The impious gang laughed at my tears, and beat the sea with hastening oars. Now by himself do I swear to thee (and no God is there more powerful than he), that I am relating things to thee as true, as they are beyond all belief. The ship stood still upon the ocean, no otherwise than if it was occupying a dry dock. They, wondering at it, persisted in the plying of their oars; they unfurled their sails, and endeavored to speed onward with this twofold aid. Ivy impeded the oars,[94] and twined {around them} in encircling wreaths; and clung to the sails with heavy clusters of berries. He himself, having his head encircled with bunches of grapes, brandished a lance covered with vine leaves. Around him, tigers and visionary forms of lynxes, and savage bodies of spotted panthers, were extended.

“The men leaped overboard, whether it was madness or fear that caused this; and first {of all}, Medon began to grow black with fins, with a flattened body, and to bend in the curvature of the back-bone. To him Lycabas said, ‘Into what prodigy art thou changing?’ and, as he spoke, the opening of his mouth was wide, his nose became crooked, and his hardened skin received scales upon it. But Libys, while he was attempting to urge on the resisting oars, saw his hands shrink into a small compass, and now to be hands no longer, {and} that now, {in fact}, they may be pronounced fins. Another, desirous to extend his arms to the twisting ropes, had no arms, and becoming crooked, with a body deprived of limbs, he leaped into the waves; the end of his tail was hooked, just as the horns of the half-moon are curved. They flounce about on every side, and bedew {the ship} with plenteous spray, and again they emerge, and once more they return beneath the waves. They sport with {all} the appearance of a dance, and toss their sportive bodies, and blow forth the sea, received within their wide nostrils. Of twenty the moment before (for so many did that ship carry), I was the only one remaining. The God encouraged me, frightened and chilled with my body all trembling, and scarcely myself, saying, ‘Shake off thy fear, and make for Dia.’ Arriving there, I attended upon the sacred rites of Bacchus, at the kindled altars.”

“We have lent ear to a long story,”[95] says Pentheus, “that our anger might consume its strength in its tediousness. Servants! drag him headlong, and send to Stygian night his body, racked with dreadful tortures.” At once the Etrurian Acœtes, dragged away, is shut up in a strong prison; and while the cruel instruments of the death that is ordered, and the iron and the fire are being made ready, the report is that the doors opened of their own accord, and that the chains, of their own accord, slipped from off his arms, no one loosening them.

The son of Echion persists: and now he does not command others to go, but goes himself to where Cithæron,[96] chosen for the celebration of these sacred rites, was resounding with singing, and the shrill voices of the votaries of Bacchus. Just as the high-mettled steed neighs, when the warlike trumpeter gives the alarm with the sounding brass, and conceives a desire for battle, so did the sky, struck with the long-drawn howlings, excite Pentheus, and his wrath was rekindled on hearing the clamor. There was, about the middle of the mountain, the woods skirting its extremity, a plain free from trees, {and} visible on every side. Here his mother was the first to see him looking on the sacred rites with profane eyes; she first was moved by a frantic impulse, {and} she first wounded her {son}, Pentheus, by hurling her thyrsus, {and} cried out, “Ho! come, my two sisters;[97] that boar which, of enormous size, is roaming amid our fields, that boar I must strike.” All the raging multitude rushes upon him alone; all collect together, and all follow him, now trembling, now uttering words less atrocious {than before}, now blaming himself, now confessing that he has offended.

However, on being wounded, he says, “Give me thy aid, Autonoë, my aunt; let the ghost of Actæon[98] influence thy feelings.” She knows not what Actæon {means}, and tears away his right hand as he is praying; the other is dragged off by the violence of Ino. The wretched {man} has {now} no arms to extend to his mother; but showing his maimed body, with the limbs torn off, he says, “Look at this, my mother!” At the sight Agave howls aloud, and tosses her neck, and shakes her locks in the air; and seizing his head, torn off, with her blood-stained fingers, she cries out, “Ho! my companions, this victory is our work!”

The wind does not more speedily bear off, from a lofty tree, the leaves nipped by the cold of autumn, and now adhering with difficulty, than were the limbs of the man, torn asunder by their accursed hands. Admonished by such examples, the Ismenian matrons frequent the new worship, and offer frankincense, and reverence the sacred altars.

[Footnote 78: _Cities of Achaia._--Ver. 511. Achaia was properly
the name of a part of Peloponnesus, on the gulf of Corinth; but
the name is very frequently applied to the whole of Greece.]

[Footnote 79: _Pentheus._--Ver. 513. He was the son of Echion and
Agave, the daughter of Cadmus.]

[Footnote 80: _Warlike men._--Ver. 531. ‘Mavortia.’ Mavors was a
name of Mars, frequently used by the poets. The Thebans were
‘proles Mavortia,’ as being sprung from the teeth of the dragon,
who was said to be a son of Mars.]

[Footnote 81: _Tambourines._--Ver. 537. ‘Tympana.’ These
instruments, among the ancients, were of various kinds. Some
resembled the modern tambourine; while others presented a flat
circular disk on the upper surface, and swelled out beneath, like
the kettle-drum of the present day. They were covered with the
hides of oxen, or of asses, and were beaten either with a stick or
the hand. They were especially used in the rites of Bacchus, and
of Cybele.]

[Footnote 82: _The thyrsus._--Ver. 542. The thyrsus was a long
staff, carried by Bacchus, and by the Satyrs and Bacchanalians
engaged in the worship of the God of the grape. It was sometimes
terminated by the apple of the pine, or fir-cone, the fir-tree
being esteemed sacred to Bacchus, from the turpentine flowing
therefrom and its apples being used in making wine. It is,
however, frequently represented as terminating in a knot of ivy,
or vine leaves, with grapes or berries arranged in a conical form.
Sometimes, also, a white fillet was tied to the pole just below
the head. We learn from Diodorus Siculus, and Macrobius, that
Bacchus converted the thyrsi carried by himself and his followers
into weapons, by concealing an iron point in the head of leaves.
A wound with its point was supposed to produce madness.]

[Footnote 83: _Engines of war._--Ver. 549. ‘Tormenta.’ These were
the larger engines of destruction used in ancient warfare. They
were so called from the verb ‘torqueo,’ ‘to twist,’ from their
being formed by the twisting of hair, fibre, or strips of leather.
The different sorts were called ‘balistæ’ and ‘catapultæ.’ The
former were used to impel stones; the latter, darts and arrows. In
sieges, the ‘Aries,’ or ‘battering ram,’ which received its name
from having an iron head resembling that of a ram, was employed in
destroying the lower part of the wall, while the ‘balista’ was
overthrowing the battlements, and the ‘catapulta’ was employed to
shoot any of the besieged who appeared between them. The ‘balistæ’
and ‘catapultæ’ were divided into the ‘greater’ and the ‘less.’
When New Carthage, the arsenal of the Carthaginians, was taken,
according to Livy (b. xxvi. c. 47), there were found in it 120
large and 281 small catapultæ, and twenty-three large and fifty-two
small balistæ. The various kinds of ‘tormenta’ are said to have
been introduced about the time of Alexander the Great. If so,
Ovid must here be committing an anachronism, in making Pentheus
speak of ‘tormenta,’ who lived so many ages before that time. To
commit anachronisms with impunity seems, however, to be the poet’s
privilege, from Ovid downwards to our Shakspere, where he makes
Falstaff talk familiarly of the West Indies. We find the
dictionaries giving ‘tormentum’ as the Latin word for ‘cannon;’ so
that in this case we may say not that ‘necessity is the mother of
invention,’ but rather that she is ‘the parent of anachronism.’]

[Footnote 84: _Acrisius._--Ver. 559. He was a king of Argos, the
son of Abas, and the father of Danaë. He refused, and probably
with justice, to admit Bacchus or his rites within the gates of
his city.]

[Footnote 85: _His grandfather._--Ver. 563. Athamas was the son of
Æolus, and being the husband of Ino, was the son-in-law of Cadmus;
who being the father of Agave, the mother of Pentheus, is the
grandfather mentioned in the present line.]

[Footnote 86: _Mæonia._--Ver. 583. Colonists were said to have
proceeded from Lydia, or Mæonia, to the coasts of Etruria. Bacchus
assumes the name of Acœtes, as corresponding to the Greek epithet
ἀκοίτης, ‘watchful,’ or ‘sleepless;’ which ought to be the
characteristic of the careful ‘pilot,’ or ‘helmsman.’]

[Footnote 87: _Olenian she-goat._--Ver. 594. Amalthea, the goat
that suckled Jupiter, is called Olenian, either because she was
reared in Olenus, a city of Bœotia, or because she was placed as a
Constellation between the arms, ὠλέναι, of the Constellation
Auriga, or the Charioteer. The rising and setting of this
Constellation were supposed to produce showers.]

[Footnote 88: _Taygete._--Ver. 594. She was one of the Pleiades,
the daughters of Atlas, who were placed among the Constellations.]

[Footnote 89: _Hyades._--Ver. 594. These were the Dodonides, or
nurses of Bacchus, whom Jupiter, as a mark of his favor, placed in
the number of the Constellations. Their name is derived from ὕειν,
‘to rain.’]

[Footnote 90: _Dia._--Ver. 596. This was another name of the Isle
of Naxos. Gierig thinks that the reading here is neither ‘Diæ’ nor
‘Chiæ,’ which are the two common readings; as the situation of
neither the Isle of Naxos nor that of Chios, would suit the course
of the ship, as stated in the text. He thinks that the Isle of
Ceos, or Cea, is meant, which Ptolemy calls Κια, and which he
thinks ought here to be written ‘Ciæ.’]

[Footnote 91: _Epopeus._--Ver. 619. He was the κελεύστης,
‘pausarius,’ or keeper of time for the rowers.]

[Footnote 92: _A dreadful murder._--Ver. 626. They seem to have
been composed of much the same kind of lawless materials that
formed the daring crews of the buccanier Morgan and Captain Kydd
in more recent times.]

[Footnote 93: _Naxos._--Ver. 636. This was the most famous island
of the group of the Cyclades.]

[Footnote 94: _Ivy impeded the oars._--Ver. 664. Hyginus tells us,
that Bacchus changed the oars into thyrsi, the sails into clusters
of grapes, and the rigging into ivy branches. In the Homeric hymn
on this subject we find the ship flowing with wine, vines growing
on the sails, ivy twining round the mast, and the benches wreathed
with chaplets.]

[Footnote 95: _To a long story._--Ver. 692. Clarke renders this
line, ‘We have lent our ears to a long tale of a tub.’]

[Footnote 96: _Cithæron._--Ver. 702. This was a mountain of
Bœotia, famous for the orgies of Bacchus there celebrated.]

[Footnote 97: _My two sisters._--Ver. 713. These were Ino and
Autonoë.]

[Footnote 98: _Ghost of Actæon._--Ver. 720. He appeals to Autonoë,
the mother of Actæon, to remember the sad fate of her own son, and
to show him some mercy; but in vain: for, as one commentator on
the passage says, ‘Drunkenness had taken away both her reason and
her memory.’]

EXPLANATION.

Cicero mentions two Deities of the name of Bacchus; while other
authors speak of several of that name. The first was the son of
Jupiter and Proserpina; the second was the son of the Nile, and the
founder of the city of Nysa, in Arabia; Caprius was the father of the
third. The fourth was the son of the Moon and Jupiter, in honor of
whom the Orphic ceremonies were performed. The fifth was the son of
Nisus and Thione, and the instituter of the Trieterica. Diodorus
Siculus mentions but three of the name of Bacchus; namely, the Indian,
surnamed the bearded Bacchus, who conquered India; the son of Jupiter
and Ceres, who was represented with horns; and the son of Jupiter and
Semele, who was called the Theban Bacchus.

The most reasonable opinion seems to be that of Herodotus and
Plutarch, who inform us, that the true Bacchus, and the most ancient
of them all, was born in Egypt, and was originally called Osiris. The
worship of that Divinity passed from Egypt to Greece, where it
received great alterations; and, according to Diodorus Siculus, it was
Orpheus who introduced it, and made those innovations. In gratitude to
the family of Cadmus, from which he had received many favors, he
dedicated to Bacchus, the grandson of Cadmus, those mysteries which
had been instituted in honor of Osiris, whose worship was then but
little known in Greece. Diodorus Siculus says, that as Semele was
delivered of Bacchus in the seventh month, it was reported that
Jupiter shut him up in his thigh, to carry him there the remaining
time of gestation. This Fable was probably founded on the meaning of
an equivocal word. The Greek word μηρὸς signifies either ‘a thigh,’ or
‘the hollow of a mountain.’ Thus the Greeks, instead of saying that
Bacchus had been nursed on Mount Nysa, in Arabia, according to the
Egyptian version of the story, published that he had been carried in
the thigh of Jupiter.

As Bacchus applied himself to the cultivation of the vine, and taught
his subjects several profitable and necessary arts, he was honored as
a Divinity; and having won the esteem of many neighboring countries,
his worship soon spread. Among his several festivals there was one
called the Trieterica, which was celebrated every three years. In that
feast the Bacchantes carried the figure of the God in a chariot drawn
by two tigers, or panthers; and, crowned with vine leaves, and holding
thyrsi in their hands, they ran in a frantic manner around the
chariot, filling the air with the noise of tambourines and brazen
instruments, shouting ‘Evoë. Bacche!’ and calling the God by his
several names of Bromius, Lyæus, Evan, Lenæus, and Sabazius. To this
ceremonial, received from the Egyptians, the Greeks added other
ceremonies replete with abominable licentiousness, and repulsive to
common decency. These were often suppressed by public enactment, but
were as often re-established by the votaries of lewdness and
immodesty, and such as found in these festivals a pretext and
opportunity for the commission of the most horrible offences.

The story of the unfortunate fate of Pentheus is supposed by the
ancient writers to have been strictly true. Pentheus, the son of
Echion and Agave, the daughter of Cadmus, having succeeded his
grandfather in his kingdom, is supposed, like him, to have opposed
those abuses that had crept into the mysteries of Bacchus, and went to
Mount Cithæron for the purpose of chastising the Bacchantes, who were
celebrating his festival; whereupon, in their frantic madness, the
worshippers, among whom were his mother and his aunt, tore him in
pieces. Pausanias, however, says that Pentheus really was a wicked
prince; and he somewhat varies his story, as he tells us that having
got into a tree to overlook the secret ceremonies of the orgies,
Pentheus was discovered by the Bacchantes, who punished his curiosity
by putting him to death. The story of the transformation of the
mariners is supposed by Bochart to have been founded on the adventure
of certain merchants from the coast of Etruria, whose vessel had the
figure of a dolphin at the prow, or rather of the fish called
‘tursio,’ probably the porpoise, or sea-hog. They were probably
shipwrecked near the Isle of Naxos, which was sacred to Bacchus, whose
mysteries they had perhaps neglected, or even despised. On this
slender ground, perhaps, the report spread, that the God himself had
destroyed them, as a punishment for their impiety.