“So you also, my son, should beware of the resourceful anger of Lyaios. But you will say — I have mighty strength, I have in my nature the blood of the terrible giants that sprang of themselves from the sown Teeth. Then avoid the divine hand of Dionysos Giantslayer, who once beside the base of Tyrsenian Peloros smashed Alpos, the son of Earth who fought against gods, battering with rocks and throwing hills. No wayfarer then climbed the height of that rock, for fear of the raging Giant and his row of mouths ; and if one in ignorance travelled on that forbidden road whipping a bold horse, the son of Earth spied him, pulled him over the rock with a tangle of many hands, entombed man and colt in his gullet ! Often some old shepherd leading his sheep to pasture along the wooded hillside at midday was gobbled up. In those days melodious Pan never sat beside herds of goats or sheepcotes playing his tune on the assembled reeds, no imitating Echo returned the sounds of his pipes ; but prattler as she was, silence sealed those lips which were wont to sound with the pipe of Pan never silent, because the Giant then oppressed all. No cowherd then came, no band of woodmen cutting timbers for a ship troubled the Nymphs of the trees, their agemates, no clever shipwright clamped together a barge, the woodriveted car that travels the roads of the sea, until Bacchos on his travels passed by that peak, shaking his Euian thyrsus. As Lyaios passed, the huge son of Earth high as the clouds attacked him. A rock was the shield upon his shoulders, a hilltop was his missile ; he leapt on Bacchos, with a tall tree which he found near for a pike, some pine or planetree to cast at Dionysos. A pine was his club, and he pulled up an olive spire from the roots to whirl for a quick sword. But when he had stript the whole mountain for his long shots, and the ridge was bare of all the thick shady trees, then Bacchos thyrsus-wild sped his own shot whizzing as usual to the mark, and hit this towering Alpos full in the wide throat — right through the gullet went the sharp point of the greeny spear. Then the Giant pierced with the sharp little thyrsus rolled over half dead and fell in the neighbouring sea, filling the whole deephollo wed - abyss of the bay. He lifted the waters and deluged Typhaon’s rock, flooding the hot surface of his brother’s bed and cooling his scorched body with a torrent of water. Nay, my son, be careful, that you too may not see what the sons of Tyrsenia saw, what the bold son of Earth saw.”
He spoke, but could not convince ; and so with undaunted shoe he hurried to the high mountains with Cadmos, that he might share the dance. But Pentheus in flashing helm, shield on arm, cried to his armed warriors —
“My servants, make haste through the city and the depth of the woods — bring me here in heavy chains that weakling vagabond, that flogged by the repeated lashes of Pentheus he may cease to bewitch women with his drugged potion, and bend the knee instead. Bring back also out of the hills my fond mother Agaue now gone mad, separate her from the sleepless wandering dance — drag her by the hair now snood-less in her frenzy !
At this command, Pentheus’s men with swift foot ran to the rugged ridge of leafy woodland seeking the tracks of hillranging Dionysos. With difficulty the soldiers found the thyrsus-maddened god near a lonely rock ; they rushed upon him and wound straps about Bromios’s hands, binding him fast — that is how they meant to imprison invincible Dionysos ! But he disappeared — gone in a flash, untraceable, on his winged shoes. The men stood silent — speechless, cowed by divine compulsion, shrinking before the wrath of Lyaios unseen, terrified. And Bacchos in the likeness of a soldier with shield in hand, seized a wild bull by the horn, making as if he were one of the servants of Pentheus, crying out upon this false horned Dionysos. He put on a look of rage and came near to mad Pentheus where he sat, and mocked at the proud boasts of the frenzied king as he spoke unsmiling these deceitful threatening words :
“This is the man, your Majesty, who has sent your Agaue mad ! This is the man who covets the royal throne of Pentheus ! Take this horned vagabond Bacchos full of tricks — bind in galling fetters the pretender to your throne — and beware of the bull’s horns of Dionysos’s head, or he may catch you and pierce you with the long point of his horn !
When Bromios had finished, god-defiant Pentheus uttered reckless words, his mind being possessed by the delirium of Bromios :
“Bind him, bind him, the robber of my throne ! This is the enemy of my sceptre, this is he that comes coveting the royal seat of Semele and her father ! A fine thing for me to share my honour with Dionysos, the son of an illicit bed, a bull in human form, with a shape of borrowed glory upon his oxhorned face, whom Semele perhaps mothered for a bull, like another Pasiphae, mated with a grazing horned bedfellow !
He spoke, and bound fast the legs of the wild bull in galling shackles. Taking him for Lyaios he led him shackled near the horses’ manger, thinking his captive Semele’s bold son and no bull. He tied together with ropes the hands of all the ranks of Bassarids, sealed them up in a mouldy dungeon, a vaulted cavern, a house of joyless constraint, whence none could escape, dark as the Cimmerians, far from the light of day, these followers of Bromios in the revels ; their arms were bound in a clasp of galling straps, chains of bronze were sealed on their legs.
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