62 THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 



vines, the making also and use of wine ; for which, 

 becoming famous and renowned, he subjugated the 

 world even to the uttermost bounds of India. He 

 rode in a chariot drawn by tigers. There danced 

 about him certain deformed hobgoblins called Cobali, 

 Acratus, and others, yea, even the muses also were 

 some of his followers. He took to wife Ariadne, 

 forsaken and left by Theseus. The tree sacred unto 

 him was the ivy. He was held the inventor and 

 institutor of sacrifices and ceremonies, and full of 

 corruption and cruelty. He had power to strike 

 men with fury or madness; for it is reported, that 

 at the celebration of his orgies, two famous worthies, 

 Pentheus and Orpheus, were torn in pieces by cer 

 tain frantic women, the one because he got upon a 

 tree to behold their ceremonies in these sacrifices, 

 the other for making melody with his harp ; and for 

 his gods, they are in a manner the same with 

 Jupiter s. 



There is such excellent morality couched in this 

 fable, as that moral philosophy affords not better ; 

 for under the person of Bacchus is described the 

 nature of affection, passion, or perturbation, the 

 mother of which, though never so hurtful, is nothing 

 else but the object of apparent good in the eyes of 

 appetite : and it is always conceived in an unlawful 

 desire, rashly propounded and obtained, before well 

 understood and considered ; and when it begins to 

 grow, the mother of it, which is the desire of 

 apparent good by too much fervency, is destroyed 

 and perisheth : nevertheless, whilst yet it is an im- 



