THE METAMORPHOSES OF PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO

262 P. OVIDII NASONIS LIBER IV
duique senex ferula titubantes ebrius artus
Sustinet; et pando non fortiter hzeret asello.
Quacunque ingrederis, clamor juvenilis, et una
Fceminese voces, impulsaque tympana palmis,
NOT^E.
When Bacchus, with his strange army, in
vaded India, the natives at the first formed such
a contemptuous idea of him, that they turned
both himself and his enterprise into ridicule, or
rather pitied him for his presumption, whom
they, if he HI good earnest meant to attack them,
saw by anticipation ulreacly with Jiis whole
troop trort under foot by their elephants. In
triUlk according to the intelligence they received
from their spies, they could entertain no great
opinion of a conqueror who was marching
against ihem with so ridiculous an army.
The flower of his troops, it is said, consisted
of a few regiments of half-naked mad women,
and these women had, instead of armor and
weapons, ivy-wreaths about their brows, aprons
of doe-skin round their waist, short spears
twined with ivy, unarmed wilh iron, in their
hands, and light round shields on their arms,
which, 011 being struck, gave a dull sound; for
they held, ns >ou see, the thyrsus of the Mffi-
nadcs for javelins, and their labreia for a sort
of shield. They had likewise with them, they
say, a parcel of sturk-nnked rustics, with tails
to their bucks, and buddinjj horns, as they sprout
from kids, on their foreheads, making the most
ludicrous caperings and gesticulations. The
general of this spruce band (Uacchus) had so
little heard, that not the ftlighest tra