Masters of the Theatre

by Delphi Classics

  PEN. Look, do you arrange it, for we depend on you.

  BAC. And your girdle is loosened, and the fringes of your garments do not extend regularly round your legs.

  PEN. They seem so to me, too, about the right foot at least; but on this side the robe sits well along the leg.

  BAC. Will you not think me the first of your friends when, contrary to your expectation, you see the Bacchæ acting modestly?

  PEN. But shall I be more like a Bacchant holding the thyrsus in my right hand, or in this?

  BAC. You should [hold it in] your right hand, and raise it at the same time with your right foot; and I praise you for having changed your mind.

  PEN. Could I bear on my shoulders the glens of Cithæron, Bacchæ and all?

  BAC. You could if you were willing; but you had your mind unsound before; but now you have such as you ought.

  PEN. Shall we bring levers, or shall I tear them up with my hands, putting my shoulder or arm under the summits?

  BAC. No, lest you ruin the habitations of the Nymphs, and the seats of Pan where he plays his pipes.

  PEN. You speak well, — it is not with strength we should conquer women; but I will hide my body among the pines.

  BAC. Hide you the hiding in which you should be hidden, coming as a crafty spy on the Mænads.

  PEN. And, indeed, I think to catch them in the thickets, like birds in the sweet nets of beds.

  BAC. You go then as a watch for this very thing; and perhaps you will catch them, if you be not caught first.

  PEN. Conduct me through the middle of the Theban land, for I am the only man of them who would dare these things.

  BAC. You alone labor for this city, you alone; therefore the labors, which are meet, await you. But follow me, I am your saving guide, some one else will guide you away from thence.

  PEN. Yes, my mother.

  BAC. Being remarkable among all.

  PEN. For this purpose do I come.

  BAC. You will depart being borne.

  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, 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. 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. 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; 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; 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 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 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 t
he 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, 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 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 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.

  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.

  CHOR. And thy son Pentheus his mother —

  AG. — will praise, as having caught this lion-born prey.

  CHOR. An excellent prey.

  AG. Excellently.

  CHOR. You rejoice.

  AG. I rejoice greatly, having accomplished great and illustrious deeds for this land.

  CHOR. Show now, O wretched woman, thy victorious booty to the citizens, which you have come bringing with you.

  AG. O, ye who dwell in the fair-towered city of the Theban land, come ye, that ye may behold this prey, O daughters of Cadmus, of the wild beast which we have taken; not by the thonged javelins of the Thessalians, not by nets, but by the fingers, our white arms; then may we boast that we should in vain possess the instruments of the spear-makers; but we, with this hand, slew this beast, and tore its limbs asunder. Where is my aged father? let him come near; and where is my son Pentheus? let him take and raise the ascent of a wattled ladder against the house, that he may fasten to the triglyphs this head of the lion which I am present having caught.

  CAD. Follow me, bearing the miserable burden of Pentheus; follow me, O servants, before the house; whose body here, laboring with immeasurable search, I bear, having found it in the defiles of Cithæron, torn to pieces, and finding nothing in the same place, lying in a thicket, difficult to be searched. For I heard from some one of the daring deeds of my daughters just as I came to the city within the walls, with the old Tiresias, concerning the Bacchæ; and having returned again to the mountain, I bring back my child, slain by the Mænads. And I saw Autonoe, who formerly bore Actæon to Aristæus, and Ino together, still mad in the thicket, unhappy creatures; but some one told me that Agave was coming hither with frantic foot; nor did I hear a false tale, for I behold her, an unhappy sight.

  AG. O father! you may boast a great boast, that you of mortals have begotten by far the best daughters; I mean all, but particularly myself, who, leaving my shuttle at the loom, have come to greater things, to catch wild beasts with my hands. And having taken him, I bear in my arms, as you see, these spoils of my valor, that they may be suspended against your house. And do you, O father, receive them in your hands; and rejoicing over my successful capture, invite your friends to a feast; for you are blessed, blessed since I have done such deeds.

  CAD. O, woe! and not to be seen, of those who have accomplished a slaughter not to be measured by wretched hands; having stricken down a glorious victim for the Gods, you invite Thebes and me to a banquet. Alas me, first for thy ills, then for mine own; how justly, but how severely, has king Bromius destroyed us, being one of our own family!

  AG. How morose is old age in men! and sullen to the eye; would that my son may be fond of hunting, resembling the disposition of his mother, when with the Theban youths he would strive after the beasts — but he is only fit to contend with Gods. He is to be admonished, O father, by you and me, not to rejoice in clever evil. Where is he? Who will summon him hither to my sight, that he may see me, that happy woman?

  CAD. Alas, alas! knowing what ye have done, ye will grieve a sad grief; but if forever ye remain in the condition in which ye are, not fortunate, you will seem not to be unfortunate.

  AG. But what of these matters is not well, or what is grievous?

  CAD. First cast your eyes up to this sky.

  AG. Well; why do you bid me look at it?

  CAD. Is it still the same, or think you it is changed?

  AG. It is brighter than formerly, and more divine.

  CAD. Is then this fluttering still present to your soul?

  AG. I understand not your word; but I become somehow sobered, changing from my former mind.

  CAD. Can you then hear any thing, and answer clearly?

  AG. How I forget what we said before, O father!

  CAD. To what house did you come in marriage?

  AG. You gave me, as they say, to the sown Echion.

  CAD. What son then was born in your house to your husband?

  AG. Pentheus, by the association of myself and his father.

  CAD. Whose head then have you in your arms?

  AG. That of a lion, as those who hunted him said.

  CAD. Look now rightly; short is the toil to see.

  AG. Ah! what do I see? what is this I bear in my hands?

  CAD. Look at it, and learn more clearly.

  AG. I see the greatest grief, wretch that I am!

  CAD. Does it seem to you
to be like a lion?

  AG. No: but I, wretched, hold the head of Pentheus.

  CAD. Ay, much lamented before you recognized him.

  AG. Who slew him, how came he into my hands?

  CAD. O wretched truth, how unseasonably art thou come!

  AG. Tell me, since delay causes a quivering at my heart.

  CAD. You and your sisters slew him.

  AG. And where did he die, in the house, or in what place?

  CAD. Where formerly the dogs tore Actæon to pieces.

  AG. But why did he, unhappy, go to Cithæron?

  CAD. He went deriding the God and your Bacchic revels.

  AG. But on what account did we go thither?

  CAD. Ye were mad, and the whole city was frantic with Bacchus.

  AG. Bacchus undid us — now I perceive.

  CAD. Being insulted with insolence — for ye thought him not a God.

  AG. But the dear body of my child, O father!

  CAD. I having with difficulty traced it, bring it all.

  AG. What! rightly united in its joints? * * * *

  AG. But what part had Pentheus in my folly?

  CAD. He was like you, not reverencing the God, therefore he joined all in one ruin, both ye and this one, so as to ruin the house, and me, who being childless of male children, see this branch of thy womb, O unhappy woman! most miserably and shamefully slain — whom the house respected; you, O child, who supported my house, born of my daughter, and was an object of fear to the city; and no one wished to insult the old man, seeing you; for he would have received a worthy punishment. But now I shall be cast out of my house dishonored, I, the mighty Cadmus, who sowed the Theban race, and reaped a most glorious crop; O dearest of men, for although no longer in being, still thou shalt be counted by me as dearest of my children; no longer touching this, my chin, with thy hand, addressing me, your mother’s father, wilt thou embrace me, my son, saying, Who injures, who insults you, O father, who harasses your heart, being troublesome I say, that I may punish him who does you wrong, O father. But now I am miserable, and thou art wretched, and thy mother is pitiable, and thy relations are wretched. But if there is any one who despises the Gods, looking on this man’s death, let him acknowledge the Gods.