Thus he persuaded Pentheus, since he lashed the man’s mind, and shook him, in the clutches of throbbing madness and distraction. . . . Mene also helped Bromios, attacking Pentheus with her divine scourge ; the frenzied reckless fury of distracting Selene joining in displayed many a phantom shape to maddened Pentheus, and made the dread son of Echion forget his earlier intent, while she deafened his confused ears with the bray of her divine avenging trumpet, and she terrified the man.
Pentheus entered the house goaded to madness with a desire to see the secrets of Bacchos’s congregation. He opened the scented coffers, where lay the women’s garments dyed in purple of the Sidonian sea. He donned the embroidered robe of Agaue, bound Autonoe’s veil over his locks, laced his royal breast in a rounded handwork, passed his feet into women’s shoes ; he took a thyrsus in hand, and as he walked after the Bacchants a broidered smock trailed behind his hunting heel.
With mimicking feet Pentheus twirled in the dance, full of sweet madness ; he rattled the ground with sidelong boot, darting one foot away from another. Unmanning his two hands he shook them in alternate beats, like a dancing woman at play ; as drumming a double tune on the two plates of the cymbals, he loosed his long hair to float on the breezes of heaven and struck up a Euian melody of Lydia. You might fairly say you saw a wild Bacchant woman madly rollicking. Yes, and he saw two suns and two cities of Thebes ; he thought he could hold a gatehouse of sevengate Thebes, hoisting it upon his untiring shoulders.”
Round him the people assembled in a ring, climbing one on a round tump of earth, one conspicuous high on a rock, while a third rested an arm over the shoulder of a neighbour and raised his foot on tiptoe above the ground : here one made for some lump sticking out of the earth, another was on a projecting bastion, another watched with slanting eye from the towering ramparts ; another hugging a round pillar swarmed up with the flat of his feet, and watched Pentheus waving his thyrsus and fluttering his veil and leaping in the throes of madness.
Already he had gone round the walls of Thebes while the portals of the seven gates opened on self-moving pivots, already he had passed the soft waters of dragonfeeding Dirce before the city, with his hair blowing on the wind ; and beating mad feet in the circling dance he followed his course behind the vinegod.
But when he came to the place where the trees were, and the dances and rites of the congregation of Bromios, where also was the hunting of their prickets by the unshod Bassarids, then vinegod Bacchos was glad, and espied in the mountain forest an ancient firtree tall as the neighbouring rock, which cast a shade with its bushy leaves over the cloudhigh hills. With unflinching hand he seized the top of the tree and dragged it down, down to the ground. Pentheus lay along the ground [and Bacchos let go] the soaring spire, Pentheus clung to the tree that carried him on high, grasped the branches with his hands as they were borne aloft, and whirling his legs about this way and that way restlessly, moved lightly like a dancer.
Then came the dancing-hours for the Bassarids. They called to one another and tucked up their robes and threw on the fawnskins. Hillranging Agaue shouted aloud with foam on her lips —
“Autonoe, let us make haste to the dance of Lyaios, where the hillranging voice of the familiar pipe is heard, that I may recite the song that Euios loves, that I may learn who first will lead the dance for Dionysos, who will beat whom in doing worship to Lyaios ! You’re late, you slack dancer, Ino has got there before us ! She is no longer an exile in the sea, but here she too comes running from the brine with Melicertes the seafarer, she has come to defend hunted Dionysos, lest impious Pentheus overwhelm Lyaios. Mystics, to the mountains ! Ismenian Bacchants, here ! Let us celebrate our rites, and match the Lydian Bassarids with rival dances, that some one may say — Mainad Agaue has beaten Mygdonian Mimallon !
As the words were spoken, she saw sitting high in a tree, like a savage lion — the mother saw her impious son. She pointed him out to the frenzied Bacchants gathering there, and in the voice of a maniac called her own human son a wild beast. The women thronged round him girdlewise as he sat amid the leaves ; they embraced the trunk with a ring of skilful hands and tried to throw down the tree with Pentheus in it — but Agaue threw her two arms about the trunk, and with earthshaking heave pulled the tree up from its base, roots and all. The tree fell to the ground, and Cithairon was bare. Pentheus the audacious king shot through the air of himself with a dancing leap, rolling and tumbling like a diver. At that moment the madness left him which Dionysos had sent to confuse his mind, and he recovered his senses again. He saw fate near him on the earth, and cried in lamentable tones :
“Cover me, Hamadryad Nymphs ! Let not Agaue my loving mother destroy her son with her own hands ! O my mother, cruel mother, cease from this heartless frenzy ! How can you call me your son a wild beast ? Where is my shaggy chest ? Where is my roaring voice ? Do you not know me any longer whom you nursed, do not you see any longer ? Who has robbed you of sense and sight ? Farewell, Cithairon, farewell these mountains and trees ! Be happy, Thebes, be happy you too, Agaue my dear mother and my murderer ! See this chin with its young beard, see the shape of a man — I am no lion ; no wild beast is what you see. Spare the fruit of your womb, pitiless one, spare your breasts. Pentheus is before you, your nursling. Silence, my voice, keep your tale to yourself, Agaue will not hear ! But if you kill me to please Dionysos, let no other destroy your son, unhappy one, let not your son be destroyed by the alien hands of Bassarids.”
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