To Dionysus alone did Cyanippus, a Syracusan,
omit to sacrifice. The god was angry and cast upon
him a fit of drunkenness, in which he violated his
daughter Cyanê in a dark place. She took off his
ring and gave it to her nurse to be a mark of recognition. When the Syracusans were oppressed by a
plague, and the Pythian god pronounced that they
should sacrifice the impious man to the Averting
Deities, the rest had no understanding of the oracle ;
but Cyanê knew, and seized her father by the hair
and dragged him forth; and when she had herself
cut her fathers throat, she killed herself upon his
body in the same manner. So Dositheüs in the third
book of his Sicilian History.
When the Bacchanalian revels were being celebrated at Rome, Aruntius, who had been from birth a
water-drinker, set at naught the power of the god.
But Dionysus cast a fit of drunkenness upon him, and
[p. 287]
he violated his daughter Medullina. But she recognized from a ring his relationship and devised a plan
wiser than her years ; making her father drunk,
and crowning him with garlands, she led him to the
altar of Divine Lightning,1 and there, dissolved in
tears, she slew the man who had plotted against her
virginity. So Aristeides in the third book of his
Italian History.
1 Fulgora; cf. Moralia, 499 b-c. The garlands marked him as a victim for sacrifice.