recital enrages Pentheus still more, who
thereupon goes to Mount Cithaeron, to disturb the orgies then
celebrating there; on which his own mother and the other Bacchantes
tear him to pieces.

This thing, when known, brought deserved fame to the prophet through the
cities of Achaia;[78] and great was the reputation of the soothsayer.
Yet Pentheus,[79] the son of Echion, a contemner of the Gods above,
alone, of all men, despises him, and derides the predicting words of the
old man, and upbraids him with his darkened state, and the misfortune of
{having lost} his sight. He, shaking his temples, white with hoary hair,
says: "How fortunate wouldst thou be, if thou as well couldst become
deprived of this light, that thou mightst not behold the rites of
Bacchus. For soon the day will come, and even now I predict that it is
not far off, when the new {God} Liber, the son of Semele, shall come
hither. Unless thou shalt vouchsafe him the honor of a temple, thou
shalt be scattered, torn in pieces, in a thousand places, and with thy
blood thou shalt pollute both the woods, and thy mother and the sisters
of thy mother. {These things} will come to pass; for thou wilt not
vouchsafe honor to the Divinity; and thou wilt complain that under this
darkness I have seen too much."

The son of Echion drives him away as he says such things as these.
Confirmation follows his words, and the predictions of the prophet are
fulfilled. Liber comes, and the fields resound with festive howlings.
The crowd runs out; both matrons and new-married women mixed with the
men, both high and low, are borne along to the {celebration of} rites
{till then} unknown. "What madness," says Pentheus, "has confounded your
minds, O ye warlike men,[80] descendants of the Dragon? Can brass
knocked against brass prevail so much with you? And the pipe with the
bending horn, and these magical delusions? And shall the yells of women,
and madness produced by wine, and troops of effeminate {wretches}, and
empty tambourines[81] prevail over you, whom neither the warrior's sword
nor the trumpet could affright, nor troops with weapons prepared {for
fight}? Am I to wonder at you, old men, who, carried over distant seas,
have fixed in these abodes a {new} Tyre, and your banished household
Gods, {but who} now allow them to be taken without a struggle? Or you,
of more vigorous age and nearer to my own, ye youths; whom it was
befitting to be brandishing arms, and not the thyrsus