Dionysus: an Introduction (5-6)

“But what has your Dionysus to do with Dionysus?”’ someone may say.[*] 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”[*] 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,”