to
the broad streets of Greece! Bromius! whom formerly, being in the pains of
travail, the thunder of Jove flying upon her, his mother cast from her
womb, leaving life by the stroke of the thunder-bolt. And immediately
Jupiter, the son of Saturn, received him in a chamber fitted for birth; and
covering him in his thigh, shuts him with golden clasps hidden from Juno.
And he brought him forth, when the Fates had perfected the horned God, and
crowned him with crowns of snakes, whence the thyrsus-bearing Maenads are
wont to cover their prey with their locks. O Thebes, thou nurse of Semele,
crown thyself with ivy, flourish, flourish with the verdant yew bearing
sweet fruit, and be ye crowned in honor of Bacchus with branches of oak or
pine, and adorn your garments of spotted deer-skin with fleeces of
white-haired sheep,[6] and sport in holy games with the insulting wands,
straightway shall all the earth dance, when Bromius leads the bands to the
mountain, to the mountain, where the female crowd abides, away from the
distaff and the shuttle,[7] driven frantic by Bacchus. O dwelling of the
Curetes, and ye divine Cretan caves,[8] parents to Jupiter, where the
Corybantes with the triple helmet invented for me in their caves this
circle o'erstretched with hide; and with the constant sweet-voiced breath
of Phrygian pipes they mingled a sound of Bacchus, and put the instrument
in the hand of Rhea, resounding with the sweet songs of the Bacchae. And
hard by the raving satyrs went through the sacred rites of the mother
Goddess. And they added the dances of the Trieterides;[9] in which Bacchus
rejoices; pleased on the mountains, when after the running dance he falls
upon the plain, having a sacred garment of deer-skin, seeking a sacrifice
of goats, a raw-eaten delight,[10] on his way to the Phrygian, the Lydian
mountains; and the leader is Bromius, Evoe![11] but the plain flows with
milk, and flows with wine, and flows with the nectar of bees; and the smoke
is as of Syrian frankincense. But Bacchus bearing a flaming torch of pine
on his thyrsus, rushes about arousing in his course the wandering Choruses,
and agitating them with shouts, casting his rich locks loose in the
air,--and with his songs he shouts out such words as this: O go forth, ye
Bacchae; O go forth, ye Bacchae, delight of gold-flowing Tmolus. Sing Bacchus
'neath the loud drums, Evoe, celebrating the God Evius in Phrygian cries
and shouts. When the sweet-sounding sacred pip