The Phrygian pipe attempering sweet
Their voices to respondence meet,
And placed in Rhea's hands:
The frantic Satyrs to the rites advance,
The Baccha join the festive bands,
And raptured lead the trieteric dance.
Raptured, when from the heights descending,
His nimbly-bounding train attending,
He rushes to the vales below,
Whilst loose his spotted vestments flow,
Pleased with the wild goat's offer'd blood,
Its flesh undress'd his followers' food.
To Phrygia's steeps, to Lydia's ridges high
He leads, exulting leads his train,
And, as they pass, through every plain
Whilst Evoe, Evoe, is the joyful cry,
Flows milk, flows wine, the nectar'd honey flows,
And round each soft gale Syrian odors throws.
But Bacchus, waving in his hand
The torch that from his hallow'd wand
Flames high, his roving Bacchæ leads,
And shouting as he nimbly treads,
Flings to the wanton wind his streaming hair,
And wakes the rapture-breathing air;
Haste, ye Bacchæ, haste your flight ;
From the gold-prolific height
As with measured steps ye go
To the mountain's craggy brow;
Like the colt with wanton pride
Bounding by its mother's side,
Up the ridgy height advance,
And to Bacchus lead the dance.
TIRESIAS, CADMUS, CHORUS.
TIR. Who at the gates calls Cadmus from the house, Agenor's son,
And built the towers of Thebes? Let him be told
Tiresias seeks him; wherefore I am come
He knows, the compact which my age hath form'd
With his maturer age, to take with him
The thyrsus, the fawn's spotted skin to wear,
And with the clustering ivy crown my head.
CAD. My honor'd friend, it joy'd me in the house
To hear thy voice, for thine is wisdom's voice.
Accoutred with these ensigns of the god
I come prepared; him, of my daughter born,
Declared a god to mortals, it behoves me,
Far as I may, to grace with highest honors.
Where shall we form the dance? Where fix our foot?
Where toss our hoary locks? Be thou my guide, 190
Thy age conducting mine, for thou art wise.
May I with foot unwearied through the night
And through the day the lengthen'd measure lead,
Shaking the thyrsus: for unactive ease
Like thee I feel new life,
TIR. Youth springs afresh, and dares the pleasing toil. CAD. Shall then my chariot bear us to the heights? TIR. That were not equal honor to the god. CAD. Old as I am then I will lead thy age.
TIR. The god shall lead us thither without toil. 200
CAD. Shall we alone to Bacchus lead the dance? TIR. We only judge aright; unwise the rest. CAD. The heights are distant, hang thou on my hand. TIR. Give me thy hand; thus side by side we go. CAD. It is not mine, a mortal born, to slight The gods, nor with irreverent eye to scan Their deity: the instructions of our fathers, From earliest times deliver'd down, we hold; No argument shall shake them, though devised With all the subtlety of deepest thought. Some one will say, I reverence not my age,
Joining the dance, my head with ivy wreathed;
But not distinctly did the god declare
If the fresh youth should lead the dance, or those
Of riper years; from every age he claims
These common honors; none exempt, from all
This reverence is his due. But since this light
Thine eyes behold not, I will be to thee
A prophet, each occurrence to explain.
Pentheus, to whom the sceptre of these reains
I gave, Echion's son, with speed advances:
He looks aghast: what tidings doth he bring?
PENTHEUS, CADMUS, TIRESIAS, CHORUS. PEN. After a casual absence from this land Return'd I hear strange evils in the city; That all our women, from their houses fled, Pretending rites to Bacchus, wildly range The tangled woods that shade the mountain's brow, To welcome this new god, whoe'er he is, And honor him with dances: in the midst Stand goblets full of wine; whilst some apart Fly to the lonely shades, in secret bowers Their paramours embracing; their pretence, The mystic worship of the Mænades ;
But Venus in their rites hath greater share
Than Bacchus. Some I seized; and these in bonds
The public prisons straitly guarded hold.
The absent from their heights will I dislodge,
Ino, and her who to Echion bore me,
Agave, and the mother of Actæon
Autonoe: these in chains of iron bound
Soon from their wicked revelry shall cease.
They say too that a stranger is arrived,
A cheat, a sorcerer, from the Lydian land,
His golden tresses waving from his head
In order'd ringlets, of a roseate hue,
The grace of love bright sparkling in his eyes.
He with the younger females all the day
Holds converse, all the night, mysterious rites
To Bacchus feigning. If beneath this roof
I catch him, he no more shall wave his wand
With ivy rattling, no more shake his locks,
His head lopp'd off. This Bacchus he reports
To be a god, whom Jove, he says, of old
Sew'd in his thigh; but in the lightning's flames
He perish'd with his mother, vengeance due
For her false tale of Jove's connubial bed.
Doth not this call aloud for punishment,
This stranger's insolence, whoe'er he be,
Affronting us with such rude outrages?
And here's another wonder; I behold
The seer Tiresias habited alike
With the fawn's dappled skin; and Cadmus too,
My mother's father, shake his Bacchic wand,
Sight ludicrous; nor, sire, can I approve
To see your age of reason so devoid.
Wilt thou not shake the ivy from thy head?
Wilt thou not throw the thyrsus from thy hand?
Thy counsel this, Tiresias; this new god
To mortals introducing, wouldst thou make him
Observe the flight of birds, and from the flames
Receive the hire: but that thy hoary hairs
Protect thee, thou shouldst sit in chains amidst
These madding dames, for such pernicious rites
Induced. To females when the joy of wine
Flows round the festive table, I pronounce
That in such orgies there is nothing good.
CHO. O Piety! Reverest thou not the gods,
Nor Cadmus, who the earth-born harvest sow'd?
Son of Echion, why defame thy race!
TIR. A wise man, when he takes occasions fair 280 To hold discourse, finds words that promptly flow
To grace his argument. Thou hast a tongue
As voluble as Wisdom, but thy words
Have not her power. A dangerous citizen
Is that audacious, pealing orator,
Who lacks discretion. This new god, whom thou
So in derision callest, shall be great,
How great, I have not words to express, through
There are two powers, young man, to mortal life
Of chief account; the goddess Ceres one,
She is the Earth, call her by either name;
With dry and solid aliment by her
Is man sustain'd: of different nature comes
This son of Semele the grape's moist juice,
His own invention he on man bestow'd:
This to unhappy mortals from their griefs
Gives respite, with the flowing vine when fill'd,
Gives sleep, and sweet oblivion of the cares
Each day brings with it; a more healing power
No medicine boasts. He to the gods, himself
Sprung from a god, is in libation pour'd,
That mortals might through him enjoy the sweets
Of life; yet thy rude tongue insultingly
Derides him, in the thigh of Jove as sew’d.
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