Chorus
Cadmus of Tyre came to this land, and at his feet a four-footed, untamed heifer threw itself down, fulfilling an oracle, where the god’s prophecy told him to make his home in the plains rich with wheat, and where the lovely waters of Dirce pour over the fields, the green and deep-seeded fields; here Bromius’ mother gave birth from her union with Zeus; Bromius, round whom the ivy twined its wreaths while he was still a baby, covering him and blessing him in the shades of its green foliage, a Bacchic dance for the maids and wives inspired in Thebes.
Chorus
There was Ares’ murderous dragon, a savage guard, watching with wandering eye the watery rivers and fresh streams. Cadmus destroyed it with a jagged stone, when he came there to draw lustral water; smiting the deadly head with a blow of his beast-slaying arm; and by the counsel of the motherless goddess, he cast the teeth upon the deep fields to fall to the earth, from which the earth brought forth a sight fully-armed, above the surface of the soil; but grim slaughter once again united them to the earth they loved, bedewing with blood the ground that had shown them to the sunlit breath of heaven.
Chorus
And you, Epaphus, born from Io, our first mother, and child of Zeus: you I summon in foreign cry, oh! in foreign prayers: come, come to this land; your descendants settled here; and the goddesses of twofold name, Persephone and the kindly goddess Demeter the queen of all, Earth the nurse of all, won it for themselves; send to the help of this land those torch-bearing goddesses; for to gods all things are easy.
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