Euripides' BACCHAE Complete

Translated, with notes, by Th. Buckley.

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Pentheus: Pentheus, son of Agave, and of my father Echion.

Bacchus: You are suited to be miserable according to your name.[32]

Pentheus: Begone! confine him near the stable of horses that he may behold dim
darkness! There dance; and as for these women whom you bring with you, the
accomplices in your wickedness, we will either sell them away, or stopping
their hand from this noise and beating of skins, I will keep them as slaves
at the loom.

Bacchus: I will go--for what is not right it is not right to suffer; but as a
punishment for these insults Bacchus shall pursue you, who you say exists
not; for, injuring us, you put him in bonds.

Chorus: O daughter of Achelous, venerable Dirce, happy virgin, for thou didst
receive the infant of Jove in thy fountains when Jove who begat him saved
him in his thigh from the immortal fire; uttering this shout: Go, O
Dithyrambus, enter this my male womb, I will make you illustrious, O
Bacchus, in Thebes, so that they shall call you by this name. But you, O
happy Dirce, reject me having a garland-bearing company about you. Why dost
thou reject me? Why dost thou avoid me? Yet, I swear by the clustering
delights of the vine of Bacchus, yet shall you have a care for Bacchus.
What rage, what rage does the earth-born race show, and Pentheus once
descended from the dragon, whom the earth-born Echion begat, a fierce-faced
monster, not a mortal man, but like a bloody giant, an enemy to the Gods,
who will soon bind me, the handmaid of Bacchus, in halters, he already has
within the house my fellow-reveler, hidden in a dark prison. Dost thou
behold this, O son of Jove, Bacchus, thy prophets in the dangers of
restraint? Come, O thou of golden face, brandishing your thyrsus along
Olympus, and restrain the insolence of the blood-thirsty man. Where art
thou assembling thy bands of thyrsus-bearers, O Bacchus, is it near Nysa
which nourishes wild beasts, or in the summits of Corycus?[33] or perhaps
in the deep-wooded lairs of Olympus, where formerly Orpheus playing the
lyre drew together the trees by his songs, collected the beasts of the
fields; O happy Pieria, Evius respects you, and will come to lead the dance
with revelings having crossed the swiftly-flowing Axius, he will bring the
dancing Maenads, and [leaving] Lydia[34] the giver of wealth to mortals, and
the father whom I have heard fertilizes the country renowned for horses
with the fairest streams.

[32] Punning on πενθος, grief. Cf. Arist. Rhet. ii. 23, 29.

[33] i.e. of Parnassus. Elmsley (after Stanl. on AEsch. Eum. 22.) remarks that Κωρυκις πετρα means the Corycian cave in Parnassus, Κωρυκιαι κορυφαι, the heights of Parnassus.

[34] Hermann and Dindorf correct Λοιδιαν from Herodot. vii. 127.

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