_The permanent scene covered by movable scenery representing a wide
landscape--the valley of the Dirce. A pile of buildings occupies the
middle, to which the central entrance is an approach: these are the
Cadmeia and royal palaces. That on the left is the palace of Pentheus,
and further to the left is the mystic scene of Bacchus's birth--a heap
of ruins, still miraculously smouldering, and covered by trailing
vines. On the right is the palace of Cadmus, and the scene extends to
take in the Electron gate of Thebes, and (on the right turn-scene) the
slopes of Cithaeron._
DIONYSUS enters, in mortal guise, through the distance archway, and (in
formal prologue) opens the situation. He brings out the points of the
landscape before him, dear as the site of his miraculous birth and the
sad end of his mortal mother. Then he details the Asiatic realms
through which he has made triumphant progress, Lydia, Phrygia,
sun-seared Persia, Bactria; the wild, wintry Median land; Araby the
Blest, and the cities by the sea; everywhere his orgies accepted and
his godhead received. Now for the first time he has reached an
Hellenic city: and here--where least it should have been--his divinity
is questioned by his own mother's sisters who make the story of his
birth a false rumor, devised to cover Semele's shame, and avenged by
the lightning flash which destroyed her. To punish his unnatural kin
he has infected all their womenkind with his sacred phrensy, and
maddened out of their quiet life, they are now on the revel under the
pale pines of the mountain, unseemly mingled with the sons of Thebes:
so shall the recusant city learn her guilt, and make atonement to him
and his mother. Pentheus, it seems, is the main foe of his godhead,
who reigns as king over Thebes, the aged Cadmus having yielded the
sovereignty in his lifetime to his sister's son: he repels Bacchus from
the sacred libations, nor names him in prayer. So he and Thebes must
learn a dread lesson, and then away to make revelation in other lands.
As to force, if attempt is made to drive the Maenads from the
mountains, Bacchus himself will mingle in the war, and for this he has
assumed mortal shape.
He calls upon his 'Thyasus of women,' fellow-pilgrims from the lands
beyond the sea, to beat their Phrygian drums in noisy ritual about the
palace of Pentheus till all Thebes shall flock to hear; he goes to join
his worshippers on Cithaeron. {70}