Orationes 4
Orationes 4 Imperial Aelius Aristides Greek- Let Asclepius himself, who revealed the dream, be our leader; let Dionysus himself, to whom we must dance, be our leader, and Apollo the leader of the Muses, of the one the father, of the other the brother, as the story goes. The complete hymns and discourses concerning Dionysus, then, let us leave to Orpheus and Musaeus and the ancient lawgivers; but let us ourselves, as it were for a token that we were not among the uninitiated, address the god with a measured voice. And in any case both lengths and brevities and whatever is in nature are dear to him. And somehow the things from the dream too fall out, that one must be of many devices concerning discourses. Zeus
- consorts with Semele; and when Semele was pregnant, Zeus, wishing to be himself both to Dionysus, father and mother, conveys Semele from the earth to Olympus through fire, while he himself, taking up his own offspring and having sewn it into his thigh, bore it for ten months from the beginning, keeping his abode in Nysa beyond Ethiopia. And when it was come to term, calling the Nymphs, he loosens the stitching, and so Dionysus comes to be, related to his father on both sides. So very surpassingly did Zeus honour him above all gods and men. For neither did he himself stand in this double relation to anyone else, nor did any other to anyone else. For this reason, then, the god is both male and female, they say, because his father too shared in either nature toward him. And I have already heard from some another account about these things, that Zeus himself is Dionysus. And what could you say beyond this? And in nature he is like him in form as well. For he is, as it were, altogether a twin to himself. For among youths and among maidens . . . and again, as among males, beardless and Briseus, and both warlike and peaceful beyond the other gods. And they give him Pan too as a dancer, being the most perfect dancer of the gods, as Pindar hymns and the priests in Egypt learned. And indeed they say of Hera that he alone of the gods reconciled her to her son, bringing Hephaestus unwilling up into heaven, and this moreover by setting him upon an ass. And that there is a riddle in the story is plain, and plain too is where the riddle ends: that the power of the god is great and irresistible, and that he could give wings even to asses, and not only to horses—just as a certain Laconian poet ascribed to him the milking of lions' milk; and that nothing, then, will be so firmly bound, not by disease, not by anger, not by any fortune, that it will not be possible for Dionysus to loose it. But even the man who was lately an enemy becomes a fellow-drinker, and the old man will grow young again, and will drink when the god stirs him. These things again the Sileni
- bear witness to, and the dancers about him; and the ease of his power is shown by the fennel-stalks provided him in place of a spear, and the fawnskin in place of the lion's hide, and the cup in place of the hollow shield, as though for Dionysus to fight and to drink were the same thing. And there is not much between the contest and the songs of victory. And they say that he subdued the Indians and the Tyrrhenians, hinting, as it seems to me, by the Tyrrhenians at the parts toward the west, and by the others at the region of the earth toward the east, as ruling over the whole of it. And the Bacchae, going before him in place of horsemen and archers, in keeping with the equipment which we hymned just now, also set their seal at the same time upon this: that it belonged to the polity of Dionysus that there should be women's armies together with the men's, and that to make the women into the rank of men is no less Dionysiac than to make the men womanish. So great and so manifold and all-harmonious is he. And it is plain from this too. For sharing with Aphrodite he opens theatres and becomes the leader of banquets and revel-bands; and coming to the same point with Ares he becomes armed; and indeed he becomes fiery together with Athena and Hephaestus. And the heralds and the Eumolpidae set him as assessor to the Eleusinian goddesses, an overseer of crops and of nourishment for men. And what seems to me fitting to add to this is that he alone of the sacred apparitions went forth in the Persian peril. So humane is he in all things that he inclines toward the Greeks. Blended, then, with the Nymphs, he has danced and dances among men in many and manifold ways, laying hold of what is within more exactly than Eurycles, and he makes a dancer even of one who was before unmusical. And the man leaps and sports and wishes to sing, and this too from his bed and pallet. So apt by nature is the god to do everything. And the wondrous tyrant of men, Love, drawing from the springs of Dionysus, goes over all the earth using Dionysus for his guide, and for him too there are neither seats apart from this god, nor works, nor couches. He watches, then, over the bounds of night and day, by
- day himself becoming the torch-bearer and leader of sight, but by night yielding to others; yet not idle even so, but ever in motion and movement he passes through the age. And being the eldest of the gods, he is himself also the youngest, the friend of whatever season and portion is ever present. And now let me bid farewell to him who is called Iacchus and by these many names. For the loving-cup is now full to the brim.