thyrsus he came dancing on, and behind him, leaping and shouting, a train
of men and women, all excited to the verge of folly, singing, hollooing,
and dancing.

Garlands of vine, ivy and asphodel fluttered from a hundred heads;
poplar, lotus, and laurel wreaths overhung their heated brows; panther-
skins, deer and goatskins hung from their bare shoulders and waved in the
wind as their bearers hurried onwards. This procession had been first
formed by some artists and rich youths returning with some women from a
banquet, with a band of music; every one who met this festal party had
joined it or had been forced to enlist with it. Respectable citizens and
their wives, laborers, maid-servants, slaves, soldiers and sailors,
officers, women flute-players, artisans, ship-captains, the whole chorus
of a theatre invited by a friend of art, excited women who dragged with
them a goat that was to be slaughtered to Dionysus--none had been able to
resist the temptation to join the procession. It turned down the Moon-
street, keeping to the middle of the road which was planted with elms,
and had on each side of it a raised foot-way, which at this time of night
no one used. How clear was the sound of the double-pipes, how bravely
the girls hit the calf-skin of the tambourines with their soft fists, how
saucily the wind tossed and tangled the dishevelled hair of the riotous
women and played with the smoke of the torches which were wielded in the
air by audacious youths, disguised as Pan or as Satyrs, and shouting as
they went.

Here a girl, holding her tambourine high in the air, rattled the little
bells on its hoop, as she flew along, as violently as though she wanted
to shake the hollow metal balls out of their frame, and send them
whistling through the air on their own account-there, side by side with
his comrades, who were excited almost to madness, a handsome lad came