Greek
The divine force here turns men into beasts and a ship into a vineyard. The world must know that this god embodies the miraculous metamorphic power which is fertility and life.
[After the child had been nursed] (or before, in some accounts), Zeus transformed him into a kid in order to hide him from the jealous Hera. Hermes then carried him to the nymphs of Nysa, a mountain that different writers have located in Thrace, Asia, and Africa. Some accounts identify these nymphs as the Hyades, formerly called the Dodonidae, and add that Dionysus later placed them in the stars out of gratitude. Whoever they were, the Nysaean nymphs reared the goat-child in a cave on the mountain. Later, when Dionysus had returned to human form, they became his followers, the maenads, and shared much of the persecution to which the god was subjected. When they grew old, Dionysus persuaded Medea to rejuvenate them, no doubt by boiling them with herbs in her ever-handy cauldron. Some say that Dionysus’ principal nurse was the Euboean nymph Macris.
For some reason the “nurses” (as his female votaries seem to have been called) were not at hand on the day that Dionysus was kidnapped from the island of Icaria by piratical Tyrrhenian sailors. (This event, like many other trials of Dionysus, has been blamed on Hera.) Some say that the nurses were waiting for him on the island of Naxos, or that he had other reasons for wanting to go there. In any case, although he was a mere boy, he asked the sailors for passage to the island. They agreed and took him aboard, for they believed him to be the son of some wealthy family who would pay them well. Greed overcame them and they steered the ship off course, planning to hold the lad for ransom. Some add that he was so handsome that they also tried to rape him. The helmsman, Acoetes, did his best to save the passenger, for he sensed that he was more than an ordinary mortal, but the other sailors threatened or manhandled him for interfering.
Suddenly, in spite of a stiff breeze in its sails, the ship stood still. A sound of flutes was heard. Ivy and grapevines twined themselves about the oars and masts, or the oars turned to snakes. The astonishment of the sailors turned to terror as wild beasts—panthers, lions, and bears—appeared on the deck. Some say that the captain was eaten by a lion, others that he ordered Acoetes to turn back to the proper course, but it was too late. In a frenzy of fear the sailors leaped into the sea, where they were changed into dolphins. Acoetes would have followed, but Dionysus restrained him, assuring him that he had won his favor by his attempts to save him. As for the dolphins, having once been human themselves, they ever afterward remained friendly to human beings. Dionysus placed one of them among the stars to commemorate his triumph and, no doubt, as a warning to pirates.
In a variant of this tale, Dionysus and some of his followers sailed together in the pirate ship. When he was bound by the sailors he told his friends to sing. They did so, and the sailors began a wild dance. It was so wild, in fact, that they danced off the boat into the sea, leaving the god and his company in full command.
(Edward Tripp, ed., Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Mythology, pp. 204-205.)
World History
