great equivocator and tempter, to whom, as you know, I once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits — the last, as it seems to me, who has offered a SACRIFICE to him, for I have found no one who could understand what I was then doing.

In the meantime, however, I have learned much, far too much, about the philosophy of this God, and, as I said, from mouth to mouth — I, the last disciple and initiate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last begin to give you, my friends, as far as I am allowed, a little taste of this philosophy? In a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny. The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that therefore Gods also philosophize, seems to me a novelty which is not unensnaring, and might