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Nay, to seize the fleece in spite of Aeetes is no easy task; so huge a serpent keeps guard round and about it, deathless and sleepless, which Earth herself brought forth on the sides of Caucasus, by the rock of Typhaon, where Typhaon, they say, smitten by the bolt of Zeus, son of Cronos, when he lifted against the god his sturdy hands, dropped from his head hot gore; and in such plight he reached the mountains and plain of Nysa, where to this day he lies whelmed beneath the waters of the Serbonian lake."
The second, who is said to have killed Nysa, was the son of Nilus. The third, who reigned in Asia, and for whom the Sabazia were instituted, was the son of Caprius. The fourth, for whom they celebrate the Orphic festivals, sprung from Jupiter and Luna. The fifth, who is supposed to have instituted the Trieterides, was the son of Nysus and Thyone.
In 679 Nicomedes III Philopator king of Bithynia, died, and as the last of his race for a son borne by Nysa was, or was said to be, illegitimate left his kingdom by testament to the Romans, who delayed not to take possession of this region bordering on the Roman province and long ago filled with Roman officials and merchants.
Are you carrying him to the nymphs on Mount Nysa?" And then more softly still he said, "Do not forget Creon, blessed god." When his father came back he found him still gazing into the quiet face and smiling tenderly with love of the beautiful thing. As Menon led him away, he waved a loving farewell to the god.
This remarkable contrast forms the subject of one of Martial's Epigrams, lib. iv. Ep. 44. It is thus rendered by Mr. Addison: "Vesuvius covered with the fruitful vine Here flourished once, and ran with floods of wine. Here Bacchus oft to the cool shades retired, And his own native Nysa less admired. Oft to the mountain's airy tops advanced, The frisking Satyrs on the summit danced.
But Cicero was not content with writing in some of his letters, that he was conducted by the royal attendants into the king's bed-chamber, lay upon a bed of gold with a covering of purple, and that the youthful bloom of this scion of Venus had been tainted in Bithynia but upon Caesar's pleading the cause of Nysa, the daughter of Nicomedes before the senate, and recounting the king's kindnesses to him, replied, "Pray tell us no more of that; for it is well known what he gave you, and you gave him."
He it was that drove the nursing women who were in charge of frenzied Bacchus through the land of Nysa, and they flung their thyrsi on the ground as murderous Lycurgus beat them with his oxgoad. Bacchus himself plunged terror-stricken into the sea, and Thetis took him to her bosom to comfort him, for he was scared by the fury with which the man reviled him.
For if these also, like Heracles the son of Amphitryon, had appeared before all men's eyes and had lived their lives to old age in Hellas, I mean Dionysos the son of Semele and Pan the son of Penelope, then one would have said that these also had been born mere men, having the names of those gods who had come into being long before: but as it is, with regard to Dionysos the Hellenes say that as soon as he was born Zeus sewed him up in his thigh and carried him to Nysa, which is above Egypt in the land of Ethiopia; and as to Pan, they cannot say whither he went after he was born.
Osiris was the son of this goddess who was really a Mai or Mary, the Celestial Mother, he being the only God of the Egyptians who was born upon this earth and lived among men. Of this Forlong remarks: "His birthplace was Mount Sinai; called by the Egyptians Nysa, hence his Greek name Dionysos."
In 679 Nicomedes III Philopator king of Bithynia, died, and as the last of his race for a son borne by Nysa was, or was said to be, illegitimate left his kingdom by testament to the Romans, who delayed not to take possession of this region bordering on the Roman province and long ago filled with Roman officials and merchants.
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