Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 23
In one part of the constellation Cancer there are certain stars called Asses, pictured on the shell of the Crab by Liber with two stars only. For Liber, when madness was sent upon him by Juno, is said to have fled wildly through Thesprotia intending to reach the oracle of Dodonaean Jove to ask how he might recover his former sanity. When he came to a certain large swamp which he couldn’t cross, it is said two asses met him. He caught one of them and in this way was carried across, not touching the water at all. So when he came to the temple of Dodonaean Jove, freed at once from his madness, he acknowledged his thanks to the asses and placed them among the constellations. Some say he gave a human voice to the ass which had carried him. This ass later had a contest with Priapus on a matter of physique, but was defeated and killed by him. Pitying him because of this, Liber numbered him among the stars, and so that it should be known that he did this as a god, not as a timid man fleeing from Juno, he placed him above the Crab which had been added to the stars by her kindness.
Scholia ad Nicandri Theriaca 377
They say that with no other wood is the creature (i.e., the serpent) killed except with the vine. Nikandros says in his Ophiaka that Dionysos, made frantic by Hera, fell asleep, and the serpent constrained his limbs, but he rose up, struck it with a branch and killed it; whence both of old and now it is said it was brought to an end with a branch.
