cchus; while other
authors speak of several of that name. The first was the son of
Jupiter and Proserpina; the second was the son of the Nile, and the
founder of the city of Nysa, in Arabia; Caprius was the father of the
third. The fourth was the son of the Moon and Jupiter, in honor of
whom the Orphic ceremonies were performed. The fifth was the son of
Nisus and Thione, and the instituter of the Trieterica. Diodorus
Siculus mentions but three of the name of Bacchus; namely, the Indian,
surnamed the bearded Bacchus, who conquered India; the son of Jupiter
and Ceres, who was represented with horns; and the son of Jupiter and
Semele, who was called the Theban Bacchus.

The most reasonable opinion seems to be that of Herodotus and
Plutarch, who inform us, that the true Bacchus, and the most ancient
of them all, was born in Egypt, and was originally called Osiris. The
worship of that Divinity passed from Egypt to Greece, where it
received great alterations; and, according to Diodorus Siculus, it was
Orpheus who introduced it, and made those innovations. In gratitude to
the family of Cadmus, from which he had received many favors, he
dedicated to Bacchus, the grandson of Cadmus, those mysteries which
had been instituted in honor of Osiris, whose worship was then but
little known in Greece. Diodorus Siculus says, that as Semele was
delivered of Bacchus in the seventh month, it was reported that
Jupiter shut him up in his thigh, to carry him there the remaining
time of gestation. This Fable was probably founded on the meaning of
an equivocal word. The Greek word +meros+ signifies either 'a thigh,'
or 'the hollow of a mountain.' Thus the Greeks, instead of saying that
Bacchus had been nursed on Mount Nysa, in Arabia, according to the
Egyptian version of the story, published that he had been carried in
the thigh of Jupiter.

As Bacchus applied himself to the cultivation of the vine, and taught
his subjects several profitable and necessary arts, he was honored as
a Divinity; and having won the esteem of many neighboring countries,
his worship soon spread. Among his several festivals there was one
called the Trieterica, which was celebrated every three years. In that
feast the Bacchantes carried the figure of the God in a chariot drawn
by two tigers, or panthers; and, crowned with vine leaves, and holding
thyrsi in their hands, they ran in a frantic manner ar