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 ; Odysseus: Il. 3, 222, where he and Menelaus are compared. 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.