Euripides' BACCHAE Complete

Translated, with notes, by Th. Buckley.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

58 pages - You are on Page 34

Bacchus: You, who are eager to see what you ought not, and hasty to do a deed
not of haste, I mean Pentheus, come forth before the house, be seen by me,
having the costume of a woman, of a frantic Bacchant, as a spy upon your
mother and her company! In appearance, you are like one of the daughters of
Cadmus.

Pentheus: And indeed I think I see two suns,[50] and twin Thebes, and
seven-gated city; and you seem to guide me, being like a bull, and horns
seem to grow on your head. But were you ever a beast? for you look like a
bull.

Bacchus: The God accompanies us, not propitious formerly, but now at truce with
us. You see what you should see.

Pentheus: How do I look? Does not my standing seem like that of Ino, or of
Agave, my mother?

Bacchus: I seem to see them as I behold you; but this lock of hair of yours is
out of its place, not as I dressed it beneath the turban.

Pentheus: Moving it within doors backward and forward, and practicing Bacchic
revelry, I disarranged it.

[50] Compare Virgil, AEn. iv. 469. "Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas." In the second passage of Clemens Alexandrinus quoted by Elmsley, γερων is probably a mistaken reference to Tiresias.

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