And in our mother tongue resound his praise."
Virgil.
As Bacchus was the god of vintage, of wine and of drinkers, he is generally represented crowned with vine and ivy leaves, with a thyrsus in his hand. His figure is that of an effeminate young man, to denote the joys which commonly prevail at feasts; and sometimes an old man, to teach us that wine taken immoderately, will enervate us, consume our health, render us loquacious and childish, like old men, and unable to keep secrets.
Bacchus is sometimes represented like an infant, holding a thyrsus and clusters of grapes, with a horn.
His beauty is compared to that of Apollo, and like him, he is represented with fine hair, flowing loosely down his shoulders; the roundness of his limbs and visage, evidence the generous life he leads; while his smiling countenance and laughing eye, are meant to indicate the merry thoughts that are inspired by the juice of the grape. All writers agree in their delineation of the wild madness which distinguished his festivals: witness the following description of a pedestal, on which was an imitation of an altar to Bacchus.
"Under the festoons of fruits and flowers that grace the pedestal, the corners of which are ornamented by the sculls of goats, are sculptured some figures of mœnads, under the inspiration of the God. Nothing can be conceived more wild and terrible than their gestures, touching, as they do, the verge of distortion, into which their fine limbs and lovely forms are thrown. There is nothing, however, which exceeds the possibility of nature, though it borders on its utmost line.
"The tremendous spirit of superstition, aided by drunkenness, producing something beyond insanity, seems to have caught them in its whirlwinds, and to bear them over the earth, as the rapid volutions of a tempest have the everchanging trunk of a waterspout; or as the torrent of a mountain river whirls the autumnal leaves resistlessly along, in its full eddies.
"The hair, loose and floating, seems caught in the tempest of their own tumultuous motion; their heads are thrown back, leaning with a kind of delirium upon their necks, and looking up to heaven, whilst they totter and stumble, even in the energy of their tempestuous dance.
"One represents a faun, with the head of Pentheus in one hand, and in the other a great knife. Another has a spear with its pine cane, which was the thyrsus; another dances with mad voluptuousness; the fourth is beating a kind of tambourine.
"This was indeed a monstrous superstition, even in Greece, where it was alone capable of combining ideal beauty, and poetical and abstract enthusiasm, with the wild errors from which it sprung. In Rome it had a more familiar, wicked, and dry appearance; it was not suited to the severe and exact apprehensions of the Romans, and their strict morals were violated by it, and sustained a deep injury, little analagous to its effect upon the Greeks, who turned all things—superstition, prejudice, murder, madness—to beauty."
Shelley.
