In Greek and Roman mythology, Acoetes (Ancient Greek Ἀκοίτης, Latin Acoetes) is the Tyrrhenian (Etruscan) pilot who alone recognizes the captive Dionysus/Bacchus when pirate shipmates seize the youthful god. When Liber transforms the rest into dolphins, Acoetes is spared. Distinct from Laocoön's father and from minor Virgilian and Statian namesakes.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Acoetes" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.The spared pilot
Apollodorus gives the outline: Dionysus, wishing to cross from Icaria to Naxos, hires a Tyrrhenian pirate ship; the crew sails past toward Asia to sell him. The god fills the vessel with ivy and flutes, turns gear to snakes, and the pirates leap into the sea as dolphins. Ovid's Metamorphoses (Pentheus episode) expands the tale through Acoetes' first-person witness: the pilot alone urges reverence, is bound by the crew, and survives when Bacchus remakes the ship and the men.
Hyginus Fabulae 134 belongs to the same Dionysus-and-pirates cluster. The story teaches recognition of the god disguised as a beautiful youth and the punishment of hybris at sea.
II.Homonyms
Wikipedia's Acoetes page lists four figures: the Bacchic fisherman-pilot; Laocoön's father (brother of Anchises in one strand); Evander's aged Arcadian squire in the Aeneid; and a soldier in Statius' Thebaid. The atlas id acoetes-tyrrhenian is only the Tyrrhenian pilot of Dionysus.