Kitap 1
7
When we had advanced as much as six hundred yards from the sea through the woods we saw a pillar of wrought brass, bearing an inscription in Greek characters, blurred and rubbed away, which read: "Herakles and Dionysos came to this point." And there were two footprints in the rock close by--one a hundred feet long, the other smaller. I have no doubt that one of them, the smaller, was left by Dionysos, the other by Herakles. We paid our devotions and went forward. We had not gone far when we came to a river flowing with wine-more like the wine of Chios than any other. The stream was full and wide, so that in some places it was navigable. So it came home to us more than ever that we must believe the legend on the pillar when we saw these signs of Dionysos's passage that way. I made up my mind to explore the source of the river and ascended along the stream; but I found no spring, only a quantity of great vines full of grapes, with a drop of translucent wine trickling from the root of each, and from these the river took its rise. There were also a quantity of fish to be seen in it, very like wine in color and taste. In fact we got drunk from eating some of them that we caught, and we actually found them full of lees when we cut them open. Later, however, we bethought ourselves of the other sort of fish that live in water, and by mixing the two we mitigated the strength of our wine food.
