But when the time came for the quickturning dance, then danced the Mainads. The Bacchants like a storm shook loose the wrappings of their straps unbroken and circled quickly in tripping step, rattling a free Euian noise with rhythmic claps, while the turning of their feet broke the thick heavy fetters of bronze round their legs. A heavensent radiance filled the dark dungeon of the Bassarids, diffused over the gloomy roof; the doors of the darksome den opened of themselves ; the jailers were stupefied at the cries and the ferocious foaming teeth of the Bassarids, and their leaping feet, and fled in terror.
So they escaped and turned their way back to the forest in the lonely hills. One slew a herd of bulls with skinpiercing thyrsus, and soiled her hands in the gore, tearing the rough bull’s hide with her fingernails. Another cut to pieces a flock of sheep with bloody twigs, not tearing their soft wool ; another killed goats, and all were dyed with bloody streams of gore from the slaughtered herd. Another snatched from the father a threeyear child, and set it upon her shoulder untrembling, unshaken, unbound, balancing the boy in the winds’ charge — there he sat laughing, never falling in the dust. The boy asked the Bacchant for milk, thinking it was his mother, and pawed her breast — and milky drops ran of themselves to the breasts of the unwedded maiden, she opened her hairy wrap for the hungry boy, and offered a newly flowing teat to his childish lips ; so a virgin stilled the boy with an unfamiliar drink. Many forced away newborn cubs from a shaggychested honess and nursed them. Another struck the thirsty soil with the point of a thyrsus ; the top of the hill split at once, and the hard rock poured out purple wine of itself, or with a tap on the rock fountains of milk ran out of themselves in white streams. Another threw a snake at an oak ; the snake coiled round the tree, and turned into moving ivy running round girdling the trunk, just as snakes run their coils round and round. A Satyr rushed along carrying a snarling beast, a dangerous tiger which sat on his back, which for all its wild nature did not touch the bearer. One old Seilenos dragged a boar by the snout and threw the tusked swine up in the air for fun. Another with stormy leaps of his feet in a moment mounted upon a camel’s neck ; and one jumped on a bull and rode on his back.
So much for the mountains ; but in music-builded Thebes, Bacchos manifested many wonders to all the people. The women danced wildly with staggering feet . . . with foaming lips. All Thebes was shaken, and sparks of fire shot up from the streets ; all the foundations quaked, the immovable gates of the mansions bellowed as if they had throats like a bull ; even the unshaken building rumbled in confusion, as if giving voice with a stone trumpet of its own.
Yet Dionysos did not abate his wrath. He sent his divine voice into the sky as far as the seven orbits of the stars, bellowing with his own throat like a mad bull. He pursued frenzied Pentheus with his witnesses, the fires, and filled the whole house with the blaze. Tongues of fire danced gleaming over the walls right and left with showers of burning sparks ; over the king’s brilliant robes and the seapurple stuff about his chest ran spirals of fire which did not burn his garments. Separate streaks of fire went in hot leaps from foot to middleback, across his loins to the top of his backbone and round his neck ran the travelling flashes : often the divine light spat sparks that did not burn on the splendid bed of the earthborn king, the fire dancing about at random. Pentheus seeing this fire moving about of itself roared aloud and called his slaves to help, to bring saving water to drench the place with protective torrents and quench the burning flames. And the rounded cisterns were emptied, bared of water, the fountain of the river great as it was, dried up when those thousands of vessels were dipt in the water. Their trouble was useless, the water did no good, wet floods poured on the fire only made its flames grow hotter still ; there was a sound as of the echoing bellow of many bulls under that roof, and the palace of Pentheus resounded with internal thunders.
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