Excerpta Vaticana (15-17)

Icarus, in the grip of youthful impetuosity and recklessness, seeking unreasonable things, and being excitable in his mind, lost hold of reality, came adrift from all reason, and was carried down into a sea of unfathomable affairs. The Greeks tell this story in another way and create the Icarian Gulf from it.

Io, the daughter of Arestor, was a priestess of Hera. When her father discovered that she was pregnant while still unmarried (for she no longer appeared virginal but seemed larger and prettier than usual because of her sexual maturity, so that the Argives called her ‘cow’), he was enraged. He put her under guard and appointed an uncle, Argos, to watch over her. Argos, because he did not sleep but remained ever-vigilant and never allowed her the opportunity to escape, was given the name ‘Panoptes’ [‘all eyes’]. But, at Io’s request, a local man named Hermaon killed Argos without being seen. Io, now free, fled with her accomplices and boarded a merchant ship. She was carried by a storm over that sea which is now called ‘Ionian’, and she passed many places until she came safely to Aeria, where she was thought a goddess on account of her beauty. So says Charax in his Hellenica.

Charax says that Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, is said to have fallen pregnant while still unmarried. During the birth a thunderbolt struck; she disappeared but the baby survived. The people imagined her to have obtained divine honours, as is said of those struck by lightning, and they called her ‘Thyone’ [‘Offering’]. Cadmus argued that the child was divine because he had been rescued from the fire, and gave him the patronymic of the Egyptian Dionysus.

Alexander of Aphrodisias says the following in his Physica: It is not without reason that they tell these stories: the Bacchant follows Dionysus because dancing results from wine, Satyrs because of lightness of movement, Lydians because some find release through him and a leopard because of the vividly coloured hallucinations experienced in drunkenness: for under the influence of wine each person has his own different, variegated reasoning, and the pelt of the animal is, likewise, densely dappled. A single Bacchant, raving, committed murder since many, intoxicated, also kill. Dionysus is naked because wine provokes the disclosure of drinkers’ thoughts. He lusts after Aphrodite and Ariadne because drinkers are commonly struck by extreme desire for women. He has with him a bald man because large quantities of wine greatly empty the brain and harm and wither the body, and because of this they also call him ‘Maron’. [ . . . ] He was struck with a thunderbolt and placed in a thigh: this means that often wine which has been placed in the sun is then brought to perfection in its blending and strength while hidden in jars. He has four women as his sisters because wine progresses through four changes and transformations.