Idyll 26

26. The Lenae, or Bacchantes Ino and Autonoe and apple-cheeked Agave

led three companies to the mountain, three themselves.

And some, gathering the wild leaves of the shaggy oak

and living ivy and asphodel that grows above the ground,

wrought in a clean meadow twelve altars,

three to Semele, nine to Dionysus.

And taking from the basket the sacred cakes in their hands

they laid them reverently on the new-cut altars,

as he had taught, as Dionysus himself was well pleased.

But Pentheus watched it all from a sheer rock,

hidden in an old mastic-tree, a plant of the country.

Autonoe saw him first and cried out terribly,

and with her feet she scattered the rites of frenzied Bacchus,

rushing suddenly upon them, the rites that the profane may not see.

She herself went mad, and at once the others too went mad.

Pentheus fled in terror, and they pursued him,

drawing their robes from the girdle up to the knee.

Pentheus said this: What do you want, women?

Autonoe said this: You shall soon know, before you hear.

His mother seized her son's head and roared over it,

loud as the roar of a lioness over her cubs;

and Ino tore off the great shoulder with the shoulder-blade,

planting her heel upon his belly; and Autonoe's way was the same;

and the other women carved up what flesh was left.

And they came to Thebes all spattered with blood,

bringing from the mountain mourning, and not Pentheus.

I do not care; nor let any other take thought

for one hateful to Dionysus, not even if he had suffered worse than this,

were he a child of nine years, or just entering his tenth;

but let me be pure, and please those who are pure.

This honor the eagle has from Zeus, lord of the aegis.

To the children of the pious comes the better part, and not to the impious.

Hail, Dionysus, whom Zeus most high, on snowy Dracanon,

set in his great thigh, having loosed it open;

and hail, fair Semele, and her sisters,

the daughters of Cadmus, honored by many heroines,

who did this deed at the stirring of Dionysus,

a deed not to be blamed. Let no one find fault with the works of the gods.