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They, trusting to their woollen mail, their shields, and belts, which 

 neither his powerful teeth, nor iron claws, can penetrate, persevere 

 unremittingly in their hostile attacks. He is beset on all sides, like a 

 warrior who after many desperate acts of valour is encircled by the 

 foe and compelled to yield. He distils his bloody foam on the ground, 

 casts down his eyes ashamed to be overcome, — and at length falls 

 like the pugilist who, after many victories, is forced to yield to the 

 superior fortune of his antagonist. He suffers himself to be bound, 

 and to be lifted up as quietly as an vuu'esisting ram. 



In a similar manner are panthers and thoes taken. Panthers, 

 though now a wild race of beasts, were once a beautiful blue-eyed 

 race of women, crowned with flowers, the nurses of Bacchus. Him 

 they lodged in a mountain cave, in a cradle covered with fawn-skin, 

 and adorned with bunches of grapes ; and danced around him, 

 beating their tympana, and striking their cymbals. They were 

 the first to celebrate the sacred mysteries of the god. Having de- 

 parted from the Boeotian land, they placed the ark which bore him 

 on the back of an ass,^ and coming to the banks of the Euripus, 

 supplicated an old fisherman to ferry them over. He received 

 them into his boat, and immediately the benches and stern were 

 covered with ivy and the vine. The fisherman, struck with 

 terror, sprang into the sea. Aristaeus, to whose mansion they 

 were conducting the god, had taught men the arts of hus- 

 bandry and pasturage, — to press the berries of the oliv^e, — coa- 

 gulate milk, and enclose bees in skeps. He received Bacchus 

 from the women, and educated him in a cave with the Dryads 

 and Apiarian nymphs. — When the child began to play among 

 the boys, he was wont to strike the rocks with a rod, and they 

 gushed with wine. Sometimes he cut the lambs into small pieces, 

 and again conjoined them so ingeniously that they revived, and 



