Dionysus: an Introduction (6-8)

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;[*] 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.