Greek and Roman Parallel Stories (19)

To Dionysus alone did Cyanippus, a Syracusan, omit to sacrifice. The god was angry and cast upon him a fit of drunkenness, in which he violated his daughter Cyanê in a dark place. She took off his ring and gave it to her nurse to be a mark of recognition. When the Syracusans were oppressed by a plague, and the Pythian god pronounced that they should sacrifice the impious man to the Averting Deities, the rest had no understanding of the oracle; but Cyanê knew, and seized her father by the hair and dragged him forth; and when she had herself cut her fathers throat, she killed herself upon his body in the same manner. So Dositheüs in the third book of his Sicilian History.

When the Bacchanalian revels were being celebrated at Rome, Aruntius, who had been from birth a water-drinker, set at naught the power of the god. But Dionysus cast a fit of drunkenness upon him, and

he violated his daughter Medullina. But she recognized from a ring his relationship and devised a plan wiser than her years; making her father drunk, and crowning him with garlands, she led him to the altar of Divine Lightning,[*] and there, dissolved in tears, she slew the man who had plotted against her virginity. So Aristeides in the third book of his Italian History.