“Semele of the flowing hair,
Who died in Thunder’s crashing flame,
To deified existence came.”
Prior.
The infant Bacchus was first intrusted to the care of his aunt Ino, the second wife of Athamas, King of Thebes, who nursed him as tenderly as if he had been her own child. But all her love could not avail to screen him from the effects of Juno’s persistent hatred: so Jupiter, fearing lest some harm might befall his precious son, bade Mercury convey him to the distant home of the Nysiades,—nymphs who guarded him most faithfully.
Juno, not daring to continue her persecutions, wreaked all her anger upon poor Ino and her unhappy household by sending the Fury Tisiphone to goad Athamas to madness. In a fit of deluded frenzy, he pursued his wife and children as if they were wild beasts. One of his sons, Learchus, fell beneath his arrows; and, to escape his murderous fury, Ino plunged headlong into the sea with her second child in her arms. The gods, in pity for her sufferings, changed her into the goddess Leucothea, and her son into a sea deity by the name of Palæmon.
Bacchus’ attendants.
When still but a youth, Bacchus was appointed god of wine and revelry, and intrusted to the guidance of Silenus, a satyr, half man and half goat, who educated him, and accompanied him on all his travels; for he delighted in roaming all over the world, borne by his followers, or riding in his chariot drawn by wild beasts, while his tutor followed him, mounted on an ass, supported on either side by an attendant.
BACCHUS. (Vatican, Rome.)
“And near him rode Silenus on his ass,
Pelted with flowers as he on did pass.”
Keats.