Age of Fable or Beauties of Mythology

by Thomas Bulfinch

  aged nurse, she insinuated doubts whether it was indeed Jove himself who came as a

  lover. Heaving a sigh, she said, "I hope it will turn out so, but I can't help being afraid.

  People are not always what they pretend to be. If he is indeed Jove, make him give

  some proof of it. Ask him to come arrayed in all his splendors, such as he wears in

  heaven. That will put the matter beyond a doubt." Semele was persuaded to try the

  experiment. She asks a favor, without naming what it is. Jove gives his promise, and

  confirms it with the irrevocable oath, attesting the river Styx, terrible to the gods

  themselves. Then she made known her request. The god would have stopped her as

  she spake, but she was too quick for him. The words escaped, and he could neither

  unsay his promise nor her request. In deep distress he left her and returned to the

  upper regions. There he clothed himself in his splendors, not putting on all his terrors,

  as when he overthrew the giants, but what is known among the gods as his lesser

  panoply. Arrayed in this he entered the chamber of Semele. Her mortal frame could

  not endure the splendors of the immortal radiance. She was consumed to ashes.

  Jove took the infant Bacchus and gave him in charge to the Nysaean nymphs,

  who nourished his infancy and childhood, and for their care were rewarded by Jupiter

  by being placed, as the Hyades, among the stars. When Bacchus grew up he

  discovered the culture of the vine and the mode of extracting its precious juice; but

  Juno struck him with madness, and drove him forth a wanderer through various parts

  of the earth. In Phrygia the goddess Rhea cured him and taught him her religious

  rites, and he set out on a progress through Asia teaching the people the cultivation of

  the vine. The most famous part of his wanderings is his expedition to India, which is

  said to have lasted several years. Returning in triumph he undertook to introduce his

  worship into Greece, but was opposed by some princes who dreaded its introduction

  on account of the disorders and madness it brought with it.

  As he approached his native city Thebes, Pentheus the king, who had no respect

  for the new worship, forbade its rites to be performed. But when it was known that

  Bacchus was advancing, men and women, but chiefly the latter, young and old poured

  forth to meet him and to join his triumphal march.

  Mr. Longfellow in his Drinking Song thus describes the march of Bacchus: -

  "Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;

  Ivy crowns that brow, supernal

  As the forehead of Apollo,

  And possessing youth eternal.

  "Round about him fair Bacchantes,

  Bearing cymbals, flutes and thyrses,

  Wild from Naxian groves or Zante's

  Vineyards, sing delirious verses."

  It was in vain Pentheus remonstrated, commanded, and threatened. "Go," said

  he to his attendants, "seize this vagabond leader of the rout and bring him to me. I will

  soon make him confess his false claim of heavenly parentage and renounce his

  counterfeit worship." It was in vain his nearest friends and wisest counsellors

  remonstrated and begged him not to oppose the god. Their remonstrances only made

  him more violent.

  But now the attendants returned whom he had despatched to seize Bacchus.

  They had been driven away by the Bacchanals, but had succeeded in taking one of

  them prisoner, whom, with his hands tied behind him, they brought before the king.

  Pentheus beholding him with wrathful countenance said, "Fellow! you shall speedily be

  put to death, that your fate may be a warning to others; but though I grudge the delay of

  your punishment, speak, tell us who you are, and what are these new rites you presume

  to celebrate."

  The prisoner unterrified responded, "My name is Acetes; my country is Maeonia;

  my parents were poor people, who had no fields or flocks to leave me, but they left me

  their fishing rods and nets and their fisherman's trade. This I followed for some time, till

  growing weary of remaining in one place, I learned the pilot's art and how to guide my

  course by the stars. It happened as I was sailing for Delos, we touched at the island of

  Dia and went ashore. Next morning I sent the men for fresh water and myself mounted

  the hill to observe the wind; when my men returned bringing with them a prize, as they

  thought, a boy of delicate appearance, whom they had found asleep. They judged he

  was a noble youth, perhaps a king's son, and they might get a liberal ransom for him. I

  observed his dress, his walk, his face. There was something in them which I felt sure

  was more than mortal. I said to my men, 'What god there is concealed in that form I

  know not, but some one there certainly is. Pardon us, gentle deity, for the violence we

  have done you, and give success to our undertakings.' Dictys, one of my best hands for

  climbing the mast and coming down by the ropes, and Melanthus my steersman, and

  Epopeus the leader of the sailors' cry, one and all exclaimed, 'Spare your prayers for us.'

  So blind is the lust of gain! When they proceeded to put him on board I resisted them.

  'This ship shall not be profaned by such impiety,' said I. 'I have a greater share in her

  than any of you.' But Lycabas, a turbulent fellow, seized me by the throat and attempted

  to throw me overboard, and I scarcely saved myself by clinging to the ropes. The rest

  approved the deed.

  "Then Bacchus (for it was indeed he) as if shaking off his drowsiness exclaimed,

  'What are you doing with me? What is this fighting about? Who brought me here?

  Where are you going to carry me?' One of them replied, 'Fear nothing; tell us where you

  wish to go and we will take you there.' 'Naxos is my home,' said Bacchus; 'take me there

  and you shall be well rewarded.' They promised so to do, and told me to pilot the ship to

  Naxos. Naxos lay to the right, and I was trimming the sails to carry us there, when some

  by signs and others by whispers signified to me their will that I should sail in the opposite

  direction, and take the boy to Egypt to sell him for a slave. I was confounded and said,

  'Let some one else pilot the ship;' withdrawing myself from any further agency in their

  wickedness. They cursed me, and one of them exclaiming, 'Don't flatter yourself that we

  depend on you for our safety,' took my place as pilot, and bore away from Naxos.

  "Then the god, pretending that he had just become aware of their treachery,

  looked out over the sea and said in a voice of weeping, 'Sailors, these are not the shores

  you promised to take me to; yonder island is not my home. What have I done that you

  should treat me so? It is small glory you will gain by cheating a poor boy.' I wept to hear

  him, but the crew laughed at both of us, and sped the vessel fast over the sea. All at

  once - strange as it may seem, it is true, - the vessel stopped, in the mid sea, as fast as

  if it was fixed on the ground. The men, astonished, pulled at their oars, and spread more

  sail, trying to make progress by the aid of both, but all in vain. Ivy twined round the oars

  and hindered their motion, and clung to the sails, with heavy clusters of berries. A vine,

  laden with grapes, ran up the mast, and along the sides of the vessel. The sound of

  flutes was heard and the odor of fragrant wine spread all around. The god himself had a

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p; chaplet of vine leaves, and bore in his hand a spear wreathed with ivy. Tigers crouched

  at his feet, and forms of lynxes and spotted panthers played around him. The men were

  seized with terror or madness; some leaped overboard; others preparing to do the same

  beheld their companions in the water undergoing a change, their bodies becoming

  flattened and ending in a crooked tail. One exclaimed, 'What miracle is this!' and as he

  spoke his mouth widened, his nostrils expanded, and scales covered all his body.

  Another endeavoring to pull the oar felt his hands shrink up and presently to be no

  longer hands but fins; another trying to raise his arms to a rope found he had no arms,

  and curving his mutilated body, jumped into the sea. What had been his legs became

  the two ends of a crescent-shaped tail. The whole crew became dolphins and swam

  about the ship, now upon the surface, now under it, scattering the spray, and spouting

  the water from their broad nostrils. Of twenty men I alone was left. Trembling with fear,

  the god cheered me. 'Fear not,' said he; 'steer towards Naxos.' I obeyed, and when we

  arrived there, I kindled the altars and celebrated the sacred rites of Bacchus."

  Pentheus here exclaimed, "We have wasted time enough on this silly story. Take

  him away and have him executed without delay." Acetes was led away by the attendants

  and shut up fast in prison; but while they were getting ready the instruments of

  execution, the prison doors came open of their own accord and the chains fell from his

  limbs, and when they looked for him he was nowhere to be found.

  Pentheus would take no warning, but instead of sending others, determined to go

  himself to the scene of the solemnities. The mountain Citheron was all alive with

  worshippers, and the cries of the Bacchanals resounded on every side. The noise

  roused the anger of Pentheus as the sound of a trumpet does the fire of a war-horse.

  He penetrated through the wood and reached an open space where the chief scene of

  the orgies met his eyes. At the same moment the women saw him; and first among them

  his own mother, Agave, blinded by the god, cried out, "See there the wild boar, the

  hugest monster that prowls in these woods! Come on, sisters! I will be the first to strike

  the wild boar." The whole band rushed upon him, and while he now talks less arrogantly,

  now excuses himself, and now confesses his crime and implores pardon, they press

  upon and wound him. In vain he cries to his aunts to protect him from his mother.

  Autonoe seized one arm, Ino the other, and between them he was torn to pieces, while

  his mother shouted, "Victory! Victory! we have done it; the glory is ours!"

  So the worship of Bacchus was established in Greece.

  There is an allusion to the story of Bacchus and the mariners in Milton's Comus,

  at line 46. The story of Circe will be found in Chapter XXIX.

  "Bacchus that first from out the purple grape

  Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine,

  After the Tuscan mariners transformed,

  Coasting the Tyrrhene shore as the winds listed

  On Circe's island fell; (who knows not Circe,

  The daughter of the Sun? whose charmed cup

  Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,

  And downward fell into a grovelling swine.)"

  Ariadne.

  We have seen in the story of Theseus how Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos,

  after helping Theseus to escape from the labyrinth, was carried by him to the island of

  Naxos and was left there asleep, while the ungrateful Theseus pursued his way home

  without her. Ariadne on waking and finding herself deserted abandoned herself to grief.

  But Venus took pity on her, and consoled her with the promise that she should have an

  immortal lover, instead of the mortal one she had lost.

  The island where Ariadne was left was the favorite island of Bacchus, the same

  that he wished the Tyrrhenian mariners to carry him to, when they so treacherously

  attempted to make prize of him. As Ariadne sat lamenting her fate, Bacchus found her,

  consoled her and made her his wife. As a marriage present he gave her a golden

  crown, enriched with gems, and when she died, he took her crown and threw it up into

  the sky. As it mounted the gems grew brighter and were turned into stars, and

  preserving its form Ariadne's crown remains fixed in the heavens as a constellation,

  between the kneeling Hercules and the man who holds the serpent.

  Spenser alludes to Ariadne's crown, though he has made some mistakes in his

  mythology. It was at the wedding of Pirithous, and not Theseus, that the Centaurs and

  Lapithae quarrelled.

  "Look how the crown which Ariadne wore

  Upon her ivory forehead that same day

  That Theseus her unto his bridal bore,

  When the bold Centaurs made that bloody fray

  With the fierce Lapiths which did them dismay;

  Being now placed in the firmament,

  Through the bright heaven doth her beams display

  And is unto the stars an ornament,

  Which round about her move in order excellent"

  Chapter XXII: Rural Deities

  The Rural Deities.

  Pan, the god of woods and fields, of flocks and shepherds, dwelt in grottos,

  wandered on the mountains and in valleys, and amused himself with the chase or in

  leading the dances of the nymphs. He was fond of music, and, as we have seen, the

  inventor of the syrinx, or shepherd's pipe, which he himself played in a masterly

  manner. Pan, like other gods who dwelt in forests, was dreaded by those whose

  occupations caused them to pass through the woods by night, for the gloom and

  loneliness of such scenes dispose the mind to superstitious fears. Hence sudden

  fright without any visible cause was ascribed to Pan, and called a Panic terror.

  As the name of the god signifies all, Pan came to be considered a symbol of the

  universe and personification of Nature; and later still to be regarded as a

  representative of all the gods and of heathenism itself.

  Sylvanus and Faunus were Latin divinities, whose characteristics are so nearly

  the same as those of Pan that we may safely consider them as the same personage

  under different names.

  The wood-nymphs, Pan's partners in the dance, were but one class of nymphs.

  There were beside them the Naiads, who presided over brooks and fountains, the

  Oreads, nymphs of mountains and grottos, and the Nereids, sea-nymphs. The three

  last named were immortal, but the wood-nymphs, called Dryads or Hamadryads, were

  believed to perish with the trees which had been their abode, and with which they had

  come into existence. It was therefore an impious act wantonly to destroy a tree, and in

  some aggravated cases was severely punished, as in the instance of Erisichthon,

  which we are about to record.

  Milton, in his glowing description of the early creation, thus alludes to Pan as the

  personification of Nature: -

  ". . . Universal Pan,

  Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,

  Led on the eternal spring."

  And describing Eve's abode: -

  ". . . In shadier bower,

  More sacred or sequestered, though but feigned,

  Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph

  Nor Faunus haunted."

  Paradise Lost, B. IV.

  It was a pleasing trait in the o
ld Paganism that it loved to trace in every operation

  of nature the agency of deity. The imagination of the Greeks peopled all the regions of

  earth and sea with divinities, to whose agency it attributed those phenomena which our

  philosophy ascribes to the operation of the laws of nature. Sometimes in our poetical

  moods we feel disposed to regret the change, and to think that the heart has lost as

  much as the head has gained by the substitution. The poet Wordsworth thus strongly

  expresses this sentiment: -

  ". . . Great God, I'd rather be

  A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn.

  So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

  Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

  And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

  Schiller, in his poem Die Gotter Griechenlands, expresses his regret for the

  overthrow of the beautiful mythology of ancient times in a way which has called forth an

  answer from a Christian poet, Mrs. E. Barrett Browning, in her poem called The Dead

  Pan. The two following verses are a specimen: -

  "By your beauty which confesses

  Some chief Beauty conquering you,

  By our grand heroic guesses

  Through your falsehood at the True,

  We will weep not! earth shall roll

  Heir to each god's aureole,

  And Pan is dead.

  "Earth outgrows the mythic fancies

  Sung beside her in her youth;

  And those debonaire romances

  Sound but dull beside the truth.

  Phoebus' chariot course is run!

  Look up, poets, to the sun!

  Pan, Pan is dead."

  These lines are founded on an early Christian tradition that when the heavenly

  host told the shepherds at Bethlehem of the birth of Christ, a deep groan, heard through

  all the isles of Greece, told that the great Pan was dead, and that all the royalty of