Euripides' BACCHAE Complete

Translated, with notes, by Th. Buckley.

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And first his mother, as the priestess, began his slaughter,
and falls upon him; but he threw the turban from his hair, that the
wretched Agave, recognizing him, might not slay him; and touching her
cheek, he says, I, indeed, O mother, am thy child,[60] Pentheus, whom you
bore in the house of Echion; but pity me, O mother! and do not slay me, thy
child, for my sins. But she, foaming and rolling her eyes every way, not
thinking as she ought to think, was possessed by Bacchus, and he did not
persuade her; and seizing his left hand with her hand, treading on the side
of the unhappy man, she tore off his shoulder, not by [her own] strength,
but the God gave facility to her hands; and Ino completed the work on the
other side, tearing his flesh. And Autonoe and the whole crowd of the
Bacchae pressed on; and there was a noise of all together; he, indeed,
groaning as much as he had life in him, and they shouted; and one bore his
arm, another his foot, shoe and all; and his sides were bared by their
tearings, and the whole band, with gory hands, tore to pieces the flesh of
Pentheus: and his body lies in different places, part under the rugged
rocks, part in the deep shade of the wood, not easy to be sought; and as to
his miserable head, which his mother has taken in her hands, having fixed
it on the top of a thyrsus, she is bearing it, like that of a savage lion,
through the middle of Cithaeron, leaving her sisters in the dances of the
Maenads; and she goes along rejoicing in her unhappy prey, within these
walls, calling upon Bacchus, her fellow-huntsman, her fellow-workman in the
chase, of glorious victory, by which she wins a victory of tears. I,
therefore, will depart out of the way of this calamity before Agave comes
to the palace; but to be wise, and to reverence the Gods, this, I think, is
the most honorable and wisest thing for mortals who adopt it.

[60] Compare Nonnus, 46. p. 784.

Και τοτε μιν λιπε λυσσα νοοσφαλεος Διονυσου,
και προτερας φρενας εσχε το δευτερον: αμφι δε γαιηι
γειτονα ποτμον εχων κενυρην εφθεγξατο φωνην.
* * * * * *
μητερ εμη δυσμητερ απηνεος ιοχεο λυσσης,
θηρα ποθεν καλεεις με τον υιεα.

The whole passage is very elegant, and even pathetic.

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