The child may seem to be seven years, the Bacchus eighteen of age." This description is comparatively correct, except that Condivi is obviously mistaken when he supposes that Michelangelo's young Bacchus faithfully embodies the Greek spirit.

The Greeks never forgot, in all their representations of Dionysos, that he was a mystic and enthusiastic deity.

Joyous, voluptuous, androgynous, he yet remains the god who brought strange gifts and orgiastic rites to men.

His followers, Silenus, Bacchantes, Fauns, exhibit, in their self-abandonment to sensual joy, the operation of his genius.

The deity descends to join their revels from his clear Olympian ether, but he is not troubled by the fumes of intoxication.