Ovid – Minyads

But not Alcithoe, one of Minyas' daughter’s;
She rejected the god's orgiastic rites,
Even denied that Bacchus was Jupiter's son,
And her sisters shared her impiety.
The priest had ordered a Bacchic festival,
With female servants to be released from work,
And their mistresses to wear animal skins,
Loosen their hair and weave it with flowers
And have in hand a vine-wreathed thyrsus.
And he prophesied that the wrath of the god
Would be severe if he were slighted.
Matrons and young wives all obeyed, setting aside
Their looms and baskets and unfinished wool
To burn incense and summon Bacchus, calling him
Bromius, Lyaeus, son of heaven's fire, twice-born
Son of two mothers, Nyseus, unshorn Thyoneus,
Lenaeus, genial vine planter, Nyctelius,
P:tther Eleleus, Iacchus, Euhan,
And all the names you have throughout Greece,
O Liber. For yours is youth without end,
You are the child eternal, most lovely in heaven,
Your head most pure when you appear without horns,
Conqueror of the East even unto the bounds
Where brown India is bathed by the Ganges.
You killed Pentheus, O Lord, and axe-wielding Lycurgus,
Blasphemers both, hurled the Tuscan sailors
Into the sea.You drive a chariot drawn
By lynxes harnessed in bright-colored reins.
Maenads and satyrs follow behind, and that old man,
Drunk. with wine, staggers along with a staff,
Clinging weakly to a rickety jackass,
Wherever you go you are cheered by the young,
And women 's voices blend with the sounds,
Of tambourines, of drums and long reed flutes.
"O, be with us, most merciful and mild,"
The Theban women pray as they perform the rites.
Minyas' daughters alone remain inside,
Unsettling the festival with the untimely work
Of the goddess Minerva, spinning wool,
Thumbing the thread as it turns, staying close
To the loom, and keeping the women on task.
One of the sisters, deftly drawing out thread,
Says to the others,

"While other women
Are neglecting their work and running in droves
To those so-called rituals, why don't we,
Devotees of Pallas, a truer divinity,
Lighten the useful work of our hands
And make the time go by telling stories?
We could all take turns."

Her sisters agree
And ask her to start. She thought for a while
Of which story to tell, for she knew quite a few.
Perhaps she should tell the tale about you,
Decretis of Babylon, who the Palestinians say
Changed into a fish all covered with scales
And swam in a pool; or how her daughter spent
The last years of her life perched on towers,
Clad in white feathers; or how a certain naiad
Used incantations and powerful herbs
To turn boyish bodies into mute fish
And finally became one herself; or how a tree
That once bore white fruit now yields fruit darkened
With the stain of blood. She liked this last one
Because it was not yet well known, and so she began,
Telling her yarn while her wool spun into thread.
[The Minyads tell a series of mythical stories about love and transformation]

The story was over, but the daughters of Minyas
Worked on, spurning the god and his festal rites.
Suddenly, unseen timbrels assaulted their ears
With raucous sound, along with curved cornel flutes
And tinkling bronze. Saffron and myrrh
Scented the air, and, straining belief,
The warp on the loom turned green; the hanging cloth
Changed into ivy, part into grapevines; threads
Became tendrils; the weft sprouted grape leaves,
And clusters of grapes empurpled the fabric.

The day was already at an end, a time
That you could not say was either bright or dark,
Night's borderland perhaps, but still with some light.
Suddenly the house's rafters seem to tremble,
The oil lamps flare up, the whole building
Blazes with ruddy flames, and ghost animals
Fill the rooms with their howls. The sisters
Scatter to hide in the smoke-filled house,
Scurrying to different rooms to escape
The glaring flames, and while they seek cover,
A membrane spreads over their slender limbs,
Sheathing their arms with papery wings. The darkness
Prevents them from knowing how they have changed.
They have no feathers, yet they are borne aloft,
Sustaining themselves on translucent pinions.
They try to speak, but their tiny voices match
Their shrunken bodies, and they squeak with anguish.
They inhabit houses, not forests, and hating
The light of the sun they flit about in the
Twilight creatures that are called vesper bats.