the
son of Echion, to whom I give power over the land. How fluttered he is!
what strange thing will he say?

PENTHEUS. I happened to be at a distance from this land, and I hear of
strange evils in this city, that the women have left our palace in
mad-wandering Bacchic rites; and that they are rushing about in the shady
mountains, honoring with dances this new God Bacchus, whoever he is; and
that full goblets stand in the middle of their assemblies, and that flying
each different ways into secrecy, they yield to the embraces of men, on
pretence, indeed, as [being] worshiping Maenads; but that they consider
Venus before Bacchus. As many then as I have taken, the servants keep them
bound as to their hands in the public strong-holds, and as many as are
absent I will hunt from the mountain, Ino, and Agave who bore me to Echion,
and the mother of Actaeon, I mean Autonoe; and having bound them in iron
fetters, I will soon stop them from this ill-working revelry. And they say
that some stranger has come hither, a juggler, a charmer, from the Lydian
land, fragrant in hair with golden curls, florid, having in his eyes the
graces of Venus, who days and nights is with them, alluring the young
maidens with Bacchic mysteries--but if I catch him under this roof, I will
stop him from making a noise with the thyrsus, and waving his hair, by
cutting off his neck from his body. He says he is the God Bacchus, [He was
once on a time sown in the thigh of Jove,[15] ] who was burned in the flame
of lightning, together with his mother, because she falsely claimed
nuptials with Jove. Are not these things deserving of a terrible halter,
for a stranger to insult us with these insults, whoever he be? But here is
another marvel--I see Tiresias the soothsayer, in dappled deer-skins, and
the father of my mother, most great absurdity, raging about with a
thyrsus--I deprecate it, O father, seeing your old age destitute of sense;
will you not dash away the ivy?[16] will you not, O father of my mother,
put down your hand empty of the thyrsus? Have you persuaded him to this, O
Tiresias? do you wish, introducing this new God among men, to examine birds
and to receive rewards for fiery omens? If your hoary old age did not
defend you, you should sit as a prisoner in the midst of the Bacchae, for
introducing these wicked rites; for where the joy of the grape-cluster is
present at a feast of women, I no longer say any thing good of their
mysteries.

CHOR. Alas