Pentheus: We can do what we like; my part is completely prepared. Let us go; for
either I will go bearing arms, or I will be guided by your counsels.
Bacchus: O women! the man is in the toils,[44] and he will come to the Bacchae,
where, dying, he will pay the penalty. Now, Bacchus, 'tis thine office, for
you are not far off. Let us punish him; but first drive him out of his
wits, inspiring vain frenzy, since, being in his right mind, he will not be
willing to put on a female dress, but driving him out of his senses he will
put it on; and I wish him to furnish laughter to the Thebans, being led in
woman's guise through the city, after[45] his former threats, with which he
was terrible. But I will go to fit on Pentheus the dress, which, having
taken, he shall die, slain by his mother's hand. And he shall know Bacchus,
the son of Jupiter, who is in fact to men at once the most terrible, and
the mildest of deities.[46]
[44] Theocrit. i. 40. μεγα δικτυον ες βολον ελκει.
[45] But εκ των απειλων conveys a notion of change = instead of.
[46] Elmsley remarks that ανθρωποισι belongs to both members of the sentence. I have therefore supplied. The sense may be illustrated from Hippol. 5 sq.