to the dance and the song,
and exciting civic strife.'[103] There remains, Daphnaeus, one more kind
of madness in man, neither obscure nor tranquil, as to which I should
like to ask Pemptides here,

'What god it is that shakes the fruitful thyrsus?'

I refer to that love-fury for modest boys and chaste women, which is
far the keenest and fiercest passion of all. For have you not observed
how the soldier, when he lays aside his arms, ceases from his warlike
fury, as the poet says,

'Then from him
Right gladly did his squires remove the armour,'[104]

and sits down a peaceful spectator of others?[105] The Bacchic and
Corybantic dances one can also modulate and quell, by changing the metre
from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the
Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul
in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man
and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no
change of place; but present they burn, absent they desire, by day they
follow their loves about, by night they serenade them, sober call for
them, and drunken sing about them. And he who said that poetic fancies,
owing to their vividness, were dreams of people awake, would have more
truly spoken so of the fancies of lovers, who, as if their loves were
present, converse with them, greet them, chide them. For sight seems to
paint all other fancies on a wet ground, so soon do they fade and recede
from the memory, but the images of lovers, painted by the fancy as it
were on encaustic tiles, leave impressions on the memory, that move, and
live, and speak, and are permanent for all time. The Roman Cato, indeed,
said that the soul of the lover resided in the soul of the loved one,
and I should extend the remark to the appearance, the character, the
life, and the actions, conducted by which he travels a long journey in a
short time, as the Cynics say they have found a short cut and, as it
were, forced march to virtue, for there is also a short cut to
friendship and love when the god is propitious. To sum up, the
enthusiasm of lovers is not a thing uninspired, and the god that guides
and governs it is none other than the god whose festival we are now
keeping, and to whom we are now sacrificing. Nevertheless, as we judge
of a god mainly from his power and usefulness (as among human advantages
we reckon and call these two the most