Book 45

45. You will look upon the forty-fifth book, where Pentheus binds a horn-dragging bull instead of Lyaeus.

So when Bromius had spoken, the bride ran out of the house, held by a raving joy, that she might behold the bridegroom Actaeon seated beside the archer-goddess; and with her, hastening on stumbling foot, racing with the breezes, to the mountain went the unveiled raving Agave, and her mind, scourged by the goad of the Cronian lash, shrieked out a senseless cry from her frenzied lips: Against worthless Pentheus I arm myself, that he may learn that Cadmus bore in Agave a bold Amazon. Full of manhood am I too; if I wish, even with bare hands I will overpower all of Pentheus, and with weaponless hand I will rend a well-armed host. I have a thyrsus; I lack no ash-spear, I brandish no lance; but with my vine-spear I strike down a spear-wielding man; I wear no corslet, and I will overpower the well-corsleted. And tossing my cymbals and the double-beaten oxhide I glorify the son of Zeus, and I do not honour Pentheus. Give me the Lydian rattles; why do you delay, raving Hours? I will go to the crags, where the Maenads, where the women, my agemates, hunt together with hunting Lyaeus. I am jealous, Dionysus, of lion-slaying Cyrene; spare Bromius for my sake, you fighter against gods; spare him, Pentheus; unhindered I will go to the crags, that I too may sing the Euian song and wheel a dance-beating step; no longer do I refuse the rites of clustering Bacchus, no longer do I loathe the dance of the Bassarids; but I myself fear Dionysus, whom an imperishable bed begot, whom the thunderbolts of Zeus who rules on high baptized. I will be swift-sandalled, lifting the nets of the archer-goddess my companion, and not the threads of Athena. So speaking she flew, a young Mimallon leaping, performing the Bacchus-loving leap of the winepress dance, crying Euoe to Bacchus and singing of Thyone; and she called Semele the wife of highest Zeus, and shrilled of the gleam of the bright-shining bridal thunderbolts. And the dance among the crags was great; round about the rocks cried out; and the plain of seven-gated Thebes was overrun by an echo of many forms; and at the one-tongued shout of the singers heavy-thundering Cithaeron crashed in answer; and the dewy clash of the sea made music; and one might behold the trees revelling and the cliff giving voice. And one dance-beating maiden leapt out from her chamber, when the horned pipe shrilled through its bored channels; and the loud-echoing clatter of the untanned oxhide drove the maidens to bacchic frenzy, and from their well-built halls to the high-headed mountain it drove the women to be solitary Bacchants. And one, goaded on storm-swift sandal, a girl with loosened hair, rushed from the maiden's chamber, leaving behind her shuttle and loom-finishing Athena; and casting off the unkempt veil from her locks she mingled with the Bassarids and became an Aonian Bacchant. And Teiresias sacrificed to Dionysus the averter of ill, setting up an altar, that he might restrain the outrage of Pentheus and scatter the unappeasable wrath of Lyaeus; but in vain he supplicated, since the thread of Fate had come. And the wise seer summoned the father of Semele, that they might share in the dancing of Dionysus. With heavy feet old Cadmus danced, crowning his snow-white locks with Aonian ivy; and Teiresias, faring with him, wheeling his sluggish foot, striking up a Phrygian revel for Mygdonian Dionysus, went as a companion to Cadmus as he rushed into the dance, leaning his aged arm upon the god-fearing fennel-wand. And beholding the old men, his companions, with a sidelong eye, Teiresias and Cadmus, reckless Pentheus cried out: Cadmus, why do you rave? For what god do you rouse a revel? Cadmus, lay aside the ivy from your defiled hair, lay aside also the fennel-wand of mind-wandering Dionysus; and lift the wise bronze of Oncaean Athena. Foolish Teiresias, garland-bearer, cast to the winds these leaves of your locks, a bastard crown; and instead of the thyrsus lift rather your Ismenian laurel of Phoebus. I respect your old age, and even of your own beyond-measure years I honour the grey lock as a witness; for if this old age and your hair did not restrain me, I would have wound your hands in galling fetters and sealed you a prisoner in a gloomy hall. Your mind does not escape me; for grudging it to Pentheus with crafty prophecies you make a man a bastard god, having taken gifts from the Lydian deceiver, gifts of the river said to be rich in gold. But you will say that Bacchus discovered the wine-yielding fruit; wine always draws the drunken to Aphrodite, wine rouses the mind of an unsteady man to murder. But he has the form and robes of Zeus his father, has he? Wearing golden robes, not fawnskins, Zeus who rules on high flashes lightning among the blessed; and Ares wars with men holding a bronze spear, not lifting a wine-dark thyrsus; Apollo is not horned with the horns of an ox. Did a river not wed Semele, and the bride bear a bastard horned son to a bull-horned husband? But you will say: bright-eyed Pallas Athena comes to the manly fray holding her father's spear and shield . . . do you too, then, stretch out the aegis of your father Cronion. So spoke Pentheus, and the wise seer answered: Why do you harass Dionysus, whom Zeus who rules on high begot, whom father Cronion bore in his pregnant thigh, and whom god-bearing Rhea nourished with child-tending milk, whom formerly, half-finished, still breathing from his mother, the unburning sparks of the thunderbolt baptized? He alone vies with sheaf-bearing Demeter, having a fair-clustered fruit to answer her ears of corn. But guard against the wrath of Bromius; and of impiety, my child, if you wish, I will tell you a Sicilian tale. Once the sons of the Tyrrhenians sailed the sea, stranger-slayers, wandering mariners, plunderers of wealth, seizing on every side the coastal flocks of sheep; and many a one, here and there, from their spear-won ships, an old sailor was rolled to a watery death, half-dead, and another, shielding his flock, a sturdy shepherd was reddened with murder among his grey hairs. If a merchant then sailed the sea, if ever a Phoenician held for sale the sea-purple robes of Sidonian deep, the Tyrrhenian vagrant, seizing him out on the sea, bore him off unforeseen upon his wealth-laden ships; and some man, having lost his boundless cargo without recompense, a Phoenician man, was ferried to Sicilian Arethusa in bonds, exiled from his city, bereft of his plundered wealth. But by guile Dionysus, changing into a cunning form, deceived the Tyrrhenians; he put on a bastard shape, like a lovely boy with an unmarked chin, wearing a golden ornament on his neck; and about his temple was the self-flowing radiance of a flashing garland, of an unquenched ruby, and the green-glowing surfaces of emerald, and an Indian stone, a sparkle of the bright sea; and he put on his skin robes brighter than the circling Dawn just now being inscribed, dyed with the Tyrian murex. And he stood by the brows of the shore, as if he too longed to set foot on the merchant ship. And they, leaping out, plundered the radiant guile-weaving son of Thyone and stripped him of his possessions; and a rope, running round, was bound about Dionysus' hands behind his back. And suddenly the youth grew great in divine form, manlike, horned, rising up to Olympus, striking the screen of the airy clouds; and with melodious cry, like a host of nine thousand, he bellowed from his throat. And the long cables became serpentine coils, shaped into living things, into the curving backs of snakes; and the forestays hissed; and the windborne horned god ran up with his trailing spirals to the horn of the mast; and shaded with green leaves, neighbour to the air, the mast was a topmost cypress; and at the mast-step the soaring ivy rose up, neighbour to the sky, twining a self-coiling rope about the cypress; and over the rudders, peering up out of the sea, the Bacchic pole was weighed down with vine-fruit; and as the stern of sweet-drinking Dionysus was weighed down a fountain, spouting wine, raved with drunkenness. And about all the benches, climbing up from the prow, wild beasts grew; and bulls bellowed, and a lion roared a grim cry from its throat. And the Tyrrhenians cried out, and raved in madness, goaded into terror. And from the plant-nurturing sea the surging water-streams spat out flowers; and a rose sprang up, and from on high, as in a garden, the foam-bearing hollows of the sea were crimsoned, and a lily shimmered amid the surges. And as they gazed upon the false meadows their eyes raved in frenzy, and a deep-wooded mountain appeared to them, and a woodland pasture, and a dance of country-folk and the flocks of shepherds, and they thought they heard the sound of a clear-voiced herdsman piping a tune on his shepherd's pipe, and hearing the strain of the clear, well-bored pipes sailing in the midst of the boundless deep sea they thought they saw land; and under mind-robbing frenzy rushing into the deep they danced over the calm, sea-faring dolphins; and with changing face the race of men was shaped into a fishy nature. And you too, my child, guard against the crafty wrath of Lyaeus. But you will say: I have a valiant body, and I claim the dread self-sown blood of the tooth-grown Giants. Flee the divine hand of Giant-slaying Dionysus, who once beside the foundation of Tyrrhenian Pelorus crushed Alpos, the god-fighting son of Earth, warring with crags and hurling hilltops as spears; and cowering before the row of throats of the raging Giant no wayfarer then trod that headland of rock; and if some heedless one was borne along the untrodden path lashing a bold horse, looking down from the crag the son of Earth, with his many-sprung hands twined about, entombed both charioteer and colt in his throat. And often, dragging through the well-wooded mountain to his pasture the flocks at midday, the old shepherd was carved up. Then no Pan, the music-tending one, seated beside the goat-folds or the pens, made melody on his joined reeds, nor did Echo answer the sound of the lyre with later-uttered voice; but, though she is talkative, of Pan who never falls silent silence sealed the voice that sang in concert with his accustomed pipe, because the Giant then assailed all; then no oxherd, no band of woodcutters grieved the Nymphs their agemates by cutting timber for ships, and no skilful shipwright fitted with pegs a wood-joined ship, the wayfaring car of the sea, until Bacchus came faring past those headlands, shaking the Euian thyrsus; and as Lyaeus passed by the cloud-high, vast son of Earth assailed him, lifting a rocky shield upon his shoulders; and a crag he held as a missile, and he leapt upon Bacchus holding a tall-coursing wooded spear at hand, hurling at Dionysus either a pine or a plane-tree. As a club he held a pine, and as if wielding a swift sword he lifted from the root an olive-bush, root and all. But when he had emptied the mountains of their far-flung hilltops, and the deep-wooded ridge of the shady wood was stripped bare, then thyrsus-maddened Bacchus, with his accustomed whirr, hurled his missile at the mark, and struck towering Alpos in his broad throat, and through the middle of his gullet the sharp green Bacchic point rushed; there the Giant, pierced by the small sharp thyrsus, rolled half-dead and fell into the neighbouring sea, filling all the deep-bosomed hollow of the sea; and lifting up the streams through the Typhaonian rock he flooded the warm back of his brother's couch on the ground, cooling his fiery body with a watery flood. But, my child, beware, lest you too suffer the like, as the sons of the Tyrrhenians, as the bold son of Earth. He spoke, and did not persuade him; and on fearless sandal Pentheus went rushing with Cadmus to the high-headed mountain, that he might lay hands on the dance. And to his iron-bearing warriors, lifting his shield, helmet-flashing Pentheus cried: My servants, going through the city and through the midst of the wood bring me this feeble vagrant in heavy bonds, that, struck by the answering lashes of Pentheus, he may no longer bewitch women with his drugged drink, but may bend his knee; and from the crags my own mother too, my child-loving Agave driven to bacchic frenzy, remove from the wandering, sleepless dance, dragging out the unfilleted cluster of her raving hair. So spoke Pentheus, and his attendants on swift foot ran to the hard-to-enter ridge of the high-tressed wood, seeking the tracks of mountain-roaming Dionysus. And scarcely catching sight of him near a solitary rock the warriors rushed upon thyrsus-mad Dionysus; and about the hands of Bromius they fastened thongs, wishing to cast bonds on unconquerable Dionysus; but he was unseen, having darted off on his winged sandal, unattainable, and in voiceless silence the servants were enslaved by divine constraint, shunning the wrath of the unseen Lyaeus in terror. And Bacchus, in the likeness of a shield-bearer, holding an unyoked bull, gripped its horn with his hand, as if a servant of Pentheus threatening Dionysus, the false horned one, and with an angry face came near to raving Pentheus, and as the raging king sat sporting his haughty boast, unsmiling he cried a dread, deceitful voice: This is the man, sceptred king, who maddened your Agave; this is the man who desires the royal seat of Pentheus; but taking the horned, guile-minded vagrant Bacchus bind in galling fetters this suitor of your throne, and guard your head against bull-horned Dionysus, lest he take you and strike you with his long-pointed horn. So spoke Bromius, and held by a knowing frenzy the god-fighter Pentheus cried out a threatening word: Bind, bind this man, the plunderer of my throne; this man arms himself against my sceptre, this man comes desiring the Cadmean ancestral seat of Semele. A fine thing for me, that Dionysus, whom a secret bed begot, should have some manlike bull as a sharer of his honour, flashing a bastard form with its ox-horned brow, which after Pasiphae Semele perhaps bore to a bull, joined with a grazing horned husband. He spoke, and pressing the feet of the field-roaming bull he bound it in galling fetters; and taking it instead of Lyaeus he led it, shackled, to the horse-manger nearby, as if penning up the bold son of Semele and some bull. And the band of the Bassarids, bound about with knotted hands, he sealed prisoners in a mouldering hall, into some hollow, deep house of joyless constraint, a likeness of the Cimmerians, hard to leave, bereft of Dawn, the revel-rout handmaids of Bromius, under whose bonds thongs were wound about their pressed hands, and a bronze chain was sealed upon their feet. But when the course of the swift-whirling dance came on, the Maenads danced; and a storm-swift Bacchant, restlessly whirling with the leaping quiver of her feet, snapped the back-slipping pull of the unbreakable thongs, and with her hands she clapped a free Euian echo with rhythmic clatter; and beneath the whirl of her feet the bronze-heavy chain swelled and split apart. And a god-sent radiance crowned the gloomy house, dripping down upon the dark hall of the Bassarids; and the gates of the dark pit were thrown open of themselves; and dumbfounded, with a trembling leap of feet, the guards, at the roar of the Bassarids and the wild foam of their teeth, were driven into terror. And they, having fled, bent their homeward steps to the solitary ridge of the wood, of whom one carved up the herd of cattle with her hide-piercing thyrsus, and defiled her hands with gore, splitting with her nails the rough oxhide covering; and another with blood-red cluster cut clean through the unbroken flocks of woolly sheep, and another slew the goats; and they were crimsoned with gore, with bloody drops, from the slaughtered flock. And another, snatching her three-year-old child from its parent, fearlessly, unshaken, unbound, high above her shoulders, stood lifting it, her dear son, into the storm-blasts, seated and laughing and not falling in the dust; and the boy asked for milk from the Bacchant, as from his own mother, and felt at her breasts; and from the unwedded maiden of themselves her breasts gushed up a milky moisture. And to the hungry child, opening her shaggy robes, she offered her fresh-flowing nipple to its infant lips, and the maiden satisfied the boy with unaccustomed dew; and many a one nursed the children of a freshly-delivered shaggy-breasted lioness, removed from their mother. Another struck the thirsty ground with her sharp thyrsus, smiting the topmost mountain newly-cleft; and of itself the hard rock, belching wine, grew purple, and as milk dripped from the battered rock the springs whitened with self-poured streams. Another flung a serpent over an oak; and about the tree the snake coiled its spire, and became a wandering ivy garlanding the trunk with its winding, twisted loop, imitating the knot of serpents writhing about. And a Satyr was borne along, carrying a snarling beast, a threatening tiger seated high upon his back, holding a savage temper and not touching its bearer; and old Silenus, dragging the jaw-tips of a boar, hurled the jagged tusker into the air in sport; another, with a storm-swift, foot-mounting leap, was lifted, unattainable, upon the hump of a camel; and one, leaping over its back, rode upon a bull. And these things were among the crags; but in lyre-built Thebes Bacchus showed manifold marvels to all the citizens; and on stumbling feet the women raved in bacchic frenzy . . . with foam-flecked lips; and all Thebes was shaken, and the streets shot out fiery sparks; all the foundations were shaken, and as from the throats of oxen the unbending gates of the halls bellowed; and the unshaken house roared in tumult, pouring a self-flowing echo with a stony trumpet. Nor did Dionysus cease from wrath; and a divine voice, faring through the air, toward the circle of the seven-pathed stars, like a raging bull, he bellowed from his throat; and harassing raving Pentheus with witnessing fire he filled the whole house with radiance; and about the walls facing one another flashed a many-cleft, leaping fire rushing down with a burning spark, and about the robes, the purple ones, and the breast of the sea-cloaked king a twining flame was borne, and yet did not burn his garments; and with chosen rays, torn off in a warm leap, from foot to the middle of the back, through the loins to the top of the spine, the wandering gleams ran about the neck-sinew of Pentheus; and often, with the leaping quiver of self-coursing fire, upon the well-spread bed of the earth-born king the marvellous radiance spat out unburning sparks. And seeing the self-coiling gleam Pentheus roared, and bade his servants bring defending water, that they might quench the kindled flame of the fire, sprinkling the house with ill-averting streams; and the water of the hollow vessels was seen laid bare, and, great though it was, the spring's stream was dried up as the river was drawn off in countless vessels. And the toil was useless and the water in vain. And the fire, pelted with watery drops, grew greater with hotter rays; and as from grey bulls with a loud bellowing the echo rose beneath the roof, the court of Pentheus crashed with inner peals of thunder.