Euripides' BACCHAE Complete

Translated, with notes, by Th. Buckley.

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58 pages - You are on Page 42

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;[56] 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 Bacchae: 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;[57] 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[58]
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 Maenads, that we may take
the beast[59] 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 the
ground from on high, with numberless lamentations; for he knew that he was
near to ill.

[56] Alluded to by Oppian, Cyn. iv. 300. απτε σελας φλογερον πατρωιον, αν δ' ελεληξον Δαιαν, αταρτηρον δ' οπασον τισιν ωκα τυραννου. He then relates that Pentheus was transformed into a bull, the Maenads into panthers, who tore him to pieces.

[57] στοχος is either the aim itself, or the mark aimed at, as in this passage, and Xenoph. Ages. 1. 25.

[58] I have done my best with this extraordinary expression, of which Elmsley quotes another example from Archilochus Fragm. 36. Perhaps the notion of excessive rapidity is intended to be expressed.

[59] θηρ seems metaphorically said, as in AEsch. Eum. 47. Nonnus, 45. p. 784, 23. above, 922.

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