“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.