PEN. You allude to my delicacy.
BAC. In the hands of your mother.
PEN. And wilt thou compel me to be effeminate?
BAC. Ay, with such effeminacy.
PEN. I lay mine hands to worthy things.
BAC. You are terrible, terrible: and you go to terrible sufferings; so that
you shall find a renown reaching to heaven. Spread out, O Agave, your
hands, and ye, her sister, daughters of Cadmus! I lead this young man to a
mighty contest; and the conqueror shall be I and Bacchus! The rest the
matter itself will show.
CHOR. Go, ye fleet hounds of madness, go to the mountain where the
daughters of Cadmus hold their company; drive them raving against the
frantic spy on the Mænads,--him in woman's attire. First shall his mother
from some smooth rock or paling, behold him in ambush; and she will cry out
to the Mænads: Who is this of the Cadmeans who has come to the mountain,
the mountain, as a spy on us, who are on the mountain? Io Bacchæ! Who
brought him forth? for he was not born of the blood of women: but, as to
his race, he is either born of some lion, or of the Libyan Gorgons. Let
manifest justice go forth, let it go with sword in hand, slaying the
godless, lawless, unjust, earth-born offspring of Echion through the
throat; who, with wicked mind and unjust rage about your orgies, O Bacchus,
and those of thy mother,[53] with raving heart and mad disposition proceeds
as about to overcome an invincible deity by force. To possess without
pretext a wise understanding in respect to the Gods, and [a disposition]
befitting mortals, is a life ever free from grief. I joyfully hunt after
wisdom, if apart from envy, but the other conduct is evidently ever great
throughout life, directing one rightly the livelong day, to reverence
things honorable.[54] Appear as a bull, or a many-headed dragon, or a fiery
lion, to be seen. Go, O Bacchus! cast a snare around the hunter of the
Bacchæ, with a smiling face falling upon the deadly crowd of the Mænads.
MESS. O house, which wast formerly prosperous in Greece! house of the
Sidonian old man, who sowed in the land the earth-born harvest of the
dragon; how I lament for you, though a slave. But still the [calamities] of
their masters are a grief to good servants.
CHOR. But what is the matter? Tellest thou any news from the Bacchæ?
MESS. Pentheus is dead, the son of his father Echion.
CHOR. O, king Bacchus! truly you appear a great God!
MESS. How sayest thou? Why do you say this? Do you, O woman, delight at my
master being unfortunate?
CHOR. I, a foreigner, celebrate it in foreign strains; for no longer do I
crouch in fear under my fetters.
MESS. But do you think Thebes thus void of men?
CHOR. Bacchus, Bacchus, not Thebes, has my allegiance.
MESS. You, indeed may be pardoned; still, O woman, it is not right to
rejoice at the misfortunes which have been brought to pass.
CHOR. Tell me, say, by what fate is the wicked man doing wicked things
dead, O man?
MESS. When having left Therapnæ of this Theban land, we crossed the streams
of Asopus, we entered on the height of Cithæron, Pentheus and I, for I was
following my master, and the stranger who was our guide in this search, for
the sight: first, then, we sat down in a grassy vale, keeping our steps and
tongues in silence, that we might see, not being seen; and there was a
valley surrounded by precipices, irrigated with streams, shaded around with
pines, where the Mænads were sitting employing their hands in pleasant
labors, for some of them were again crowning the worn-out thyrsus, so as to
make it leafy with ivy; and some, like horses quitting the painted yoke,
shouted in reply to another a Bacchic melody. And the miserable Pentheus,
not seeing the crowd of women, spake thus: O stranger, where we are
standing, I can not come at the place where is the dance of the Mænads; but
climbing a mound, or pine with lofty neck, I could well discern the
shameful deeds of the Mænads. And on this I now see a strange deed of the
stranger; for seizing hold of the extreme lofty branch of a pine, he pulled
it down, pulled it, pulled it to the dark earth, and it was bent like a
bow, or as a curved wheel worked by a lathe describes a circle as it
revolves, thus the stranger, pulling a mountain bough with his hands, bent
it to the earth; doing no mortal's deed; and having placed Pentheus on the
pine branches, he let it go upright through his hands steadily, taking care
that it should not shake him off; and the pine stood firm upright to the
sky, bearing on its back my master, sitting on it; and he was seen rather
than saw the Mænads, for sitting on high he was apparent, as not
before.[55] And one could no longer see the stranger, but there was a
certain voice from the sky; Bacchus, as one might conjecture, shouted out:
O youthful women, I bring you him who made you and me and my orgies a
laughing-stock: but punish ye him. And at the same time he cried out, and
sent forth to heaven and earth a light of holy fire;[56] and the air was
silent, and the fair meadowed grove kept its leaves in silence, and you
could not hear the voice of the beasts; but they not distinctly receiving
the voice, stood upright, and cast their eyes around. And again he
proclaimed his bidding. And when the daughters of Cadmus' recognized the
distinct command of Bacchus, they rushed forth, having in the eager running
of their feet a speed not less than that of a dove; his mother, Agave, and
her kindred sisters, and all the Bacchæ: and frantic with the inspiration
of the God, they bounded through the torrent-streaming valley, and the
clefts. But when they saw my master sitting on the pine, first they threw
at him handfuls of stones, striking his head, mounting on an opposite piled
rock; and with pine branches some aimed, and some hurled their thyrsi
through the air at Pentheus, wretched mark;[57] but they failed of their
purpose; for he having a height too great for their eagerness, sat,
wretched, destitute through perplexity. But at last thundering together[58]
some oaken branches, they tore up the roots with levers not of iron; and
when they could not accomplish the end of their labors, Agave said, Come,
standing round in a circle, seize each a branch, O Mænads, that we may take
the beast[59] who has climbed aloft, that he may not tell abroad the secret
dances of the God. And they applied their innumerable hands to the pine,
and tore it up from the ground; and sitting on high, Pentheus falls to the
ground from on high, with numberless lamentations; for he knew that he was
near to ill. And first his mother, as the priestess, began his slaughter,
and falls upon him; but he threw the turban from his hair, that the
wretched Agave, recognizing him, might not slay him; and touching her
cheek, he says, I, indeed, O mother, am thy child,[60] Pentheus, whom you
bore in the house of Echion; but pity me, O mother! and do not slay me, thy
child, for my sins. But she, foaming and rolling her eyes every way, not
thinking as she ought to think, was possessed by Bacchus, and he did not
persuade her; and seizing his left hand with her hand, treading on the side
of the unhappy man, she tore off his shoulder, not by [her own] strength,
but the God gave facility to her hands; and Ino completed the work on the
other side, tearing his flesh. And Autonoe and the whole crowd of the
Bacchæ pressed on; and there was a noise of all together; he, indeed,
groaning as much as he had life in him, and they shouted; and one bore his
arm, another his foot, shoe and all; and his sides were bared by their
tearings, and the whole band, with gory hands, tore to pieces the flesh of
Pentheus: and his body lies in different places, part under the rugged
rocks, part in the deep shade of the wood, not easy to be sought; and as to
his miserable head, which his mother has taken in her hands, having fixed
it on the top of a thyrsus, she is bearing it, like that of a savage lion,
through the middle of Cithæron, leaving her sisters in the dances of the
Mænads; and she goes along rejoicing in her unhappy prey, within these
walls, calling upon Bacchus, her fellow-huntsman, her fellow-workman in the
chase, of glorious victory, by which she wins a victory of tears. I,
therefore, will depart out of the way of this calamity before Agave comes
to the palace; but to be wise, and to reverence the Gods, this, I think, is
the most honorable and wisest thing for mortals who adopt it.
CHOR. Let us dance in honor of Bacchus; let us raise a shout for what has
befallen Pentheus, the descendant of the dragon, who assumed female attire
and the wand with the beautiful thyrsus,--a certain death, having a
bull[61] as his leader to calamity. Ye Cadmean Bacchants, ye have
accomplished a glorious victory, illustrious, yet for woe and tears. It is
a glorious contest to plunge one's dripping hand in the blood of one's son.
But--for I see Agave, the mother of Pentheus, coining to the house with
starting eyes; receive the revel of the Evian God.
AGAVE. O Asiatic Bacchæ!
CHOR. To what dost thou excite me? O!
AG. We bring from the mountains a fresh-culled wreathing[62] to the house,
a blessed prey.
CHOR. I see it, and hail you as a fellow-reveler, O!
AG. I have caught him without a noose, a young lion, as you may see.
CHOR. From what desert?
AG. Cithæron.
CHOR. What did Cithæron?
AG. Slew him.
CHOR. Who was it who first smote him?
AG. The honor is mine. Happy Agave! We are renowned in our revels.
CHOR. Who else?
AG. Cadmus's.
CHOR. What of Cadmus?
AG. Descendants after me, after me laid hands on this beast.
CHOR. You are fortunate in this capture.
AG. Partake then of our feast.
CHOR. What shall I, unhappy, partake of?
AG. The whelp is young about the chin; he has just lost his soft-haired
head-gear.[63]
AG. For it is beautiful as the mane of a wild beast.
CHOR. Bacchus, a wise huntsman, wisely hurried the Mænads against this
beast.
CHOR. For the king is a huntsman.
AG. Do you praise?
CHOR. What? I do praise.
AG. But soon the Cadmeans.