Once fairly uprooted from his native Thracian soil, it was easy to plant Dionysos anywhere and everywhere wherever went his worshippers. His homeless splendour grows and grows till by the time of Diodorus his birthplace is completely apocryphal. In Homer, as has been seen (p. 368), Nysa or as it is called Nyseïon, whether it be mountain or plain, is clearly in Thrace, home of Lycurgus son of Dryas. But already in Sophocles[963], in the beautiful fragment preserved by Strabo, wherever it may be, it is a place touched by magic, a silent land which ‘The horned Iacchus loves for his dear nurse, Where no shrill voice doth sound of any bird.’ Euripides[964] never expressly states where he supposes Nysa to be, but the name comes to his lips coupled with the Korykian peaks on Parnassos and the leafy haunts of Olympus, so we may suppose he believed it to be northwards. As the horizon of the Greeks widened, Nysa is pushed further and further away to an ever more remote _Nowhere_. Diodorus[965] with much circumstance settles it in Libya on an almost inaccessible island surrounded by the river Triton. It mattered little so long as it was a far-off happy land. Convinced as he was of this remote African Nysa and of the great Asiatic campaign of Dionysos, it is curious to note that even Diodorus cannot rid his mind of Thrace. He knows of course the story of the Thracian Lycurgus and mentions incidentally that it was in a place called Nysion that Lycurgus set upon the Maenads and slew them, he knows too of the connection between Dionysos and Orpheus[966] and never doubts but that Orpheus was a Thracian, a matter to be discussed later. Most significant of all, when he is speaking[967] of the trieteric ceremonies instituted in memory of the Indian expedition, he automatically records that these were celebrated not only by Boeotians and the other Greeks but _by the Thracians_. Thrace is obscured by the glories of Phrygia, Lydia, Phoenicia, Arabia and Libya, but never wholly forgotten. THE SATYRS. Dionysos then, whatever his nature, is an immigrant god, a late-comer, and he enters Greece from the north, from Thrace. He comes not unattended. With him are always his revel rout of Satyrs and of Maenads. This again marks him out from the rest of the Olympians; Poseidon, Athene, Apollo, Zeus himself has no such accompaniment. As man makes the gods in his own image, it may be well before we examine the nature and functions of Dionysos to observe the characteristics of his attendant worshippers, to determine who and what they are and whence they come. [Illustration: FIG. 117.]