DIONYSUS
Set out with watchful heed then for this very purpose; maybe thou wilt catch them, if thou be not first caught thyself.
PENTHEUS
Conduct me through the very heart of Thebes, for I am the only man among them bold enough to do this deed.
DIONYSUS
Thou alone bearest thy country's burden, thou and none other;wherefore there await thee such struggles as needs must.Follow me, for I will guide thee safely thither; another shall bring thee thence.
PENTHEUS
My mother maybe.
DIONYSUS
For every eye to see.
PENTHEUS
My very purpose in going.
DIONYSUS
Thou shalt be carried back, PENTHEUS
What luxury DIONYSUS
In thy mother's arms.
PENTHEUS
Thou wilt e'en force me into luxury.
DIONYSUS
Yes, to luxury such as this.
PENTHEUS
Truly, the task I am undertaking deserves it.
Exit PENTHEUS.
DIONYSUS
Strange, ah! strange is thy career, leading to scenes of woe so strange, that thou shalt achieve a fame that towers to heaven.Stretch forth thy hands, Agave, and ye her sisters, daughters of Cadmus;mighty is the strife to which I am bringing the youthful king, and the victory shall rest with me and Bromius; all else the event will show.
Exit DIONYSUS.
CHORUS
To the hills! to the hills! fleet hounds of madness, where the daughters of Cadmus hold their revels, goad them into wild fury against the man disguised in woman's dress, a frenzied spy upon the Maenads.First shall his mother mark him as he peers from some smooth rock or riven tree, and thus to the Maenads she will call, "Who is this of Cadmus' sons comes hasting to the mount, to the mountain away, to spy on us, my Bacchanals? Whose child can he be? For he was never born of woman's blood; but from some lioness maybe or Libyan Gorgon is he sprung." Let justice appear and show herself, sword in hand, to plunge it through and through the throat of the godless, lawless, impious son of Echion, earth's monstrous child! who with wicked heart and lawless rage, with mad intent and frantic purpose, sets out to meddle with thy holy rites, and with thy mother's, Bacchic god, thinking with his weak arm to master might as masterless as thine.This is the life that saves all pain, if a man confine his thoughts to human themes, as is his mortal nature, making no pretence where heaven is concerned.I envy not deep subtleties; far other joys have I, in tracking out great truths writ clear from all eternity, that a man should live his life by day and night in purity and holiness, striving toward a noble goal, and should honour the gods by casting from him each ordinance that lies outside the pale of right.Let justice show herself, advancing sword in hand to plunge it through and through the throat of Echion's son, that godless, lawless, and abandoned child of earth! Appear, O Bacchus, to our eyes as a bull or serpent with a hundred heads, or take the shape of a lion breathing flame! Oh! come, and with a mocking smile cast the deadly noose about the hunter of thy Bacchanals, e'en as he swoops upon the Maenads gathered yonder.
Enter SECOND MESSENGER.
SECOND MESSENGER
O house, so prosperous once through Hellas long ago, home of the old Sidonian prince, who sowed the serpent's crop of earth-born men, how do I mourn thee! slave though I be, yet still the sorrows of his master touch a good slave's heart.
CHORUS
How now? Hast thou fresh tidings of the Bacchantes?
SECOND MESSENGER
Pentheus, Echion's son is dead.
CHORUS
Bromius, my king! now art thou appearing in thy might divine.
SECOND MESSENGER
Ha! what is it thou sayest? art thou glad, woman, at my master's misfortunes?
CHORUS
A stranger I, and in foreign tongue I express my joy, for now no more do I cower in terror of the chain.
SECOND MESSENGER
Dost think Thebes so poor in men?[*]
[* Probably the whole of one iambic line with part of another is here lost.]
CHORUS
'Tis Dionysus, Dionysus, not Thebes that lords it over me.
SECOND MESSENGER
All can I pardon thee save this; to exult o'er hopeless suffering is sorry conduct, dames.
CHORUS
Tell me, oh! tell me how he died, that villain scheming villainy!
SECOND MESSENGER
Soon as we had left the homesteads of this Theban land and had crossed the streams of Asopus, we began to breast Cithaeron's heights, Pentheus and I, for I went with my master, and the stranger too, who was to guide us to the scene.First then we sat us down in a grassy glen, carefully silencing each footfall and whispered breath, to see without being seen.Now there was a dell walled in by rocks, with rills to water it, and shady pines o'erhead; there were the Maenads seated, busied with joyous toils.Some were wreathing afresh the drooping thyrsus with curling ivy-sprays; others, like colts let loose from the carved chariot-yoke, were answering each other in hymns of Bacchic rapture.But Pentheus, son of sorrow, seeing not the women gathered there, exclaimed, "Sir stranger, from where I stand, I cannot clearly see the mock Bacchantes; but I will climb a hillock or a soaring pine whence to see clearly the shameful doings of the Bacchanals." Then and there I saw the stranger work a miracle; for catching a lofty fir-branch by the very end he drew it downward to the dusky earth, lower yet and ever lower; and like a bow it bent, or rounded wheel, whose curving circle grows complete, as chalk and line describe it; e'en so the stranger drew down the mountain-branch between his hands, bending it to earth, by more than human agency.And when he had seated Pentheus aloft on the pine branches, he let them slip through his hands gently, careful not to shake him from his seat.
