ALCITHOE

oil on canvas (50 x 100 cm)

€ 700,00

Ovid, Metamorphoses book IV.

[1] Alcithoe, daughter of King Minyas, consents not to the orgies of the God; denies that Bacchus is the son of Jove, and her two sisters join her in that crime. 'Twas festal-day when matrons and their maids, keeping it sacred, had forbade all toil.—And having draped their bosoms with wild skins, they loosed their long hair for the sacred wreaths, and took the leafy thyrsus in their hands;—for so the priest commanded them. Austere the wrath of Bacchus if his power be scorned. Mothers and youthful brides obeyed the priest; and putting by their wickers and their webs, dropt their unfinished toils to offer up frankincense to the God; invoking him with many names:—“O Bacchus! O Twice-born! O Fire-begot! Thou only child Twice-mothered! God of all those who plant the luscious grape! O Liber!” All these names and many more, for ages known—throughout the lands of Greece. Thy youth is not consumed by wasting time; and lo, thou art an ever-youthful boy, most beautiful of all the Gods of Heaven, smooth as a virgin when thy horns are hid.—The distant east to tawny India's clime, where rolls remotest Ganges to the sea, was conquered by thy might.—O Most-revered! Thou didst destroy the doubting Pentheus, and hurled the sailors' bodies in the deep, and smote Lycurgus, wielder of the ax. And thou dost guide thy lynxes, double-yoked, with showy harness.—Satyrs follow thee; and Bacchanals, and old Silenus, drunk, unsteady on his staff; jolting so rough on his small back-bent ass; and all the way resounds a youthful clamour; and the screams of women! and the noise of tambourines! And the hollow cymbals! and the boxwood flutes,—fitted with measured holes.—Thou art implored by all Ismenian women to appear peaceful and mild; and they perform thy rites.”

[32] Only the daughters of King Minyas are carding wool within their fastened doors, or twisting with their thumbs the fleecy yarn, or working at the web. So they corrupt the sacred festival with needless toil, keeping their hand-maids busy at the work. And one of them, while drawing out the thread with nimble thumb, anon began to speak; “While others loiter and frequent these rites fantastic, we the wards of Pallas, much to be preferred, by speaking novel thoughts may lighten labour. Let us each in turn, relate to an attentive audience, a novel tale; and so the hours may glide.” it pleased her sisters, and they ordered her to tell the story that she loved the most. So, as she counted in her well-stored mind the many tales she knew, first doubted she whether to tell the tale of Derceto,—that Babylonian, who, aver the tribes of Palestine, in limpid ponds yet lives,—her body changed, and scales upon her limbs; or how her daughter, having taken wings, passed her declining years in whitened towers. Or should she tell of Nais, who with herbs, too potent, into fishes had transformed the bodies of her lovers, till she met herself the same sad fate; or of that tree which sometime bore white fruit, but now is changed and darkened by the blood that stained its roots…