Read Online Demigods and Monsters by Rick Riordan - Free Book Online Page B

who lived on Mount Nysa. They were more successful guardians, raising the young godling in a cave, feeding him on honey. Zeus, grateful to the nymphs, set their images in the sky as stars and called them the Hyades. These are the stars that are believed to bring rain when they are near the horizon. As Edith Hamilton puts it in Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes :
    So the God of the Vine was born of fire and nursed by rain, the hard burning heat that ripens the grapes and water that keeps the plants alive.
    Dionysus managed to survive childhood and apparently even made his first wine on Mount Nysa. According to Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths , soon after Dionysus reached manhood, Hera recognized him as Semele’s son. Never one to give up a grudge, Hera promptly drove Dionysus mad. It was at this point that he began his wanderings, accompanied by his tutor Silenus and an extremely rowdy bunch of followers who terrified nearly everyone they met. These followers include satyrs and the dreaded Maenads, possessed women who worshipped Dionysus and had a nasty habit of getting
drunk then dismembering and devouring wild animals or the occasional unfortunate human. Dionysus’ followers were also known to tear apart and eat goats and satyrs, which may be why Mr. D makes Grover so nervous.
    Dionysus traveled to Egypt, India, and throughout the Aegean, bringing the vine with him and teaching wine-making. In most of these places he was welcomed and worshipped, which was clearly the safest approach to Dionysus.
    Not everyone was thrilled to host such a riotous god. Dionysus returned to his birthplace, Thebes, because he’d heard that the king’s mother, Agave, was denying that Dionysus was the son of Zeus. Essentially, they were dissing him, saying Dionysus wasn’t a god. Even worse, Pentheus, the king, 16 vowed to have Dionysus beheaded if he entered Thebes. Dionysus and his followers entered the city anyway, and Pentheus ordered them shackled. But Dionysus is, among other things, a master of illusions, and Pentheus, who was already beginning to lose his mind, wound up shackling a bull. The Maenads escaped the king’s guards and went dancing up a mountain where they tore a calf to pieces. Then Pentheus’ mother and sisters joined the Maenads. When Pentheus tried to stop them, the Maenads, led by Agave, Pentheus’ own mother, tore the king to pieces. She too was caught in the insanity of the wine god’s illusions and believed it was a lion she was killing when she was really murdering her own son. As Percy discovers, the gods have a tendency to take it very personally when they’re opposed.
    Pentheus’ attempts to protect his city from the wine god’s influence were understandable but also futile. Anyone who knows anything about the Greek gods would think he should have known better. Yet others made similar mistakes. When Dionysus, disguised
as a young girl, invited the three daughters of King Minyas to join his festival, they refused, choosing instead to stay at home and spin wool. Again, Dionysus summoned illusions that destroyed the mind. He drove the daughters of Minyas mad by filling their spinning room with phantom beasts and turning their threads to vines. One sister, in desperation, offered her own son as a sacrifice, and all three sisters in a wine-induced frenzy wound up tearing apart and devouring the boy.
    One of the best-known stories about Dionysus, and the source of those visions Percy gets when he first meets Mr. D, tells of how a bunch of sailors mistook Dionysus for a young prince. Thinking he’d be worth quite a ransom, they kidnapped him. But once they got him aboard and tried to tie him up, the ropes fell apart. Only the helmsman realized they’d captured a god, and he pleaded with his shipmates to release the young man. Ignoring him, the captain ordered the crew to set sail. Strangely, though the sails filled with wind, the ship wouldn’t move.