The awful deeds they do, surpassing wonder.

But answer first if I shall freely say

All that’s done there, or furl my prudent speech;

For thy quick temper I do fear, O king,

Thy sharp resentment and o’er-royal pride.

PENTHEUS

Speak freely. Thou shall part unharmed by me;

Wrath were not seemly ’gainst the unoffending.

But the more awful what thou sayst of these

Mad women, I the more on him who hath guiled them

To their wild life, will wreak my just revenge.

MESSENGER

Mine herds of heifers I was driving, slow

Winding their way along the mountain crags,

When the sun pours his full beams on the earth.

I saw three bands, three choirs of women: one

Autonoe led, thy mother led the second,

Agave — and the third Ino: and all

Quietly slept, their languid limbs stretched out:

Some resting on the ash-trees’ stem their tresses;

Some with their heads upon the oak-leaves thrown

Careless, but not immodest; as thou sayest,

That drunken with the goblet and shrill fife

In the dusk woods they prowl for lawless love.

Thy mother, as she heard the horned steers

Deep lowing, stood up ‘mid the Bacchanals

And shouted loud to wake them from their rest.

They from their lids shaking the freshening sleep,

Rose upright, wonderous in their decent guise,

The young, the old, the maiden yet unwed.

And first they loosed their locks over their shoulders,

Their fawn-skins fastened, wheresoe’er the clasps

Had lost their hold, and all the dappled furs

With serpents bound, that lolled out their lithe tongues.

Some in their arms held kid, or wild-wolf’s cub,

Suckling it with her white milk; all the young mother’s

Who had left their new-born babes, and stood with breasts

Full swelling: and they all put on their crowns

Of ivy, oak, or flowering eglantine.

One took a thyrsus wand, and struck the rock,

Leaped forth at once a dewy mist of water;

And one her rod plunged deep in the earth, and there

The god sent up a fountain of bright wine.

And all that longed for the white blameless draught

Light scraping with their finger-ends the soil

Had streams of exquisite milk; the ivy wands

Distilled from all their tops rich store of honey.

Hadst thou been there, seeing these things, the god

Thou now revil’st thou hadst adored with prayer.

And we, herdsmen and shepherds, gathered around

And there was strife among us in our words

Of these strange things they did, these marvelous things.

One city-bred, a glib and practised speaker,

Addressed us thus: “Ye that inhabit here

The holy mountain slopes, shall we not chase

Agave, Pentheus’ mother, from the Bacchanals,

And win the royal favour?” Well to us

He seemed to speak; so, crouched in the thick bushes,

We lay in ambush. They at the appointed hour

Shook their wild thyrsi in the Bacchic dance,

“Iacchus” with one voice, the son of Jove,

“Bromius” invoking. The hills danced with them;

And the wild beasts; was nothing stood unmoved.