for his impiety! O host, do you not reverence the Gods! and
being son of Echion, do you disgrace your race and Cadmus, who sowed the
earth-born crop?

TI. When any wise man takes a good occasion for his speech, it is not a
great task to speak well; but you have a rapid tongue, as if wise, but in
your words there is no wisdom; but a powerful man, when bold, and able to
speak, is a bad citizen if he has not sense. And this new God, whom you
ridicule, I am unable to express how great he will be in Greece. For, O
young man, two things are first among men; Ceres, the goddess, and she is
the earth, call her whichever name you will.[17] She nourishes mortals with
dry food; but he who is come as a match to her, the son of Semele, has
invented the liquid drink of the grape, and introduced it among mortals,
which delivers miserable mortals from grief,[18] when they are filled with
the stream of the vine; and gives sleep an oblivion of daily evils: nor is
there any other medicine for troubles. He who is a God is poured out in
libations to the Gods, that by his means men may have good things--and you
laugh at him, as to how he was sewn up in the thigh of Jove; I will teach
you that this is well--when Jove snatched him out of the lightning flame,
and bore him, a young infant, up to Olympus, Juno wished to cast him down
from heaven; but Jove had a counter contrivance, as being a God. Having
broken a part of the air which surrounds the earth, he placed in it, giving
him as a pledge, Bacchus, safe from Juno's enmity; and in time, mortals
say, that he was nourished in the thigh of Jove; changing his name, because
a God gave him formerly as a pledge to a Goddess, they having made
agreement.[19] But this God is a prophet--for Bacchanal excitement and
frenzy have much divination in them.[20] For when the God comes violent[21]
into the body, he makes the frantic to foretell the future; and he also
possesses some quality of Mars; for terror flutters sometimes an army under
arms and in its ranks, before they touch the spear; and this also is a
frenzy from Bacchus. Then you shall see him also on the Delphic rocks,
bounding with torches along the double-pointed district, tossing about, and
shaking the Bacchic branch, mighty through Greece. But be persuaded by me,
O Pentheus; do not boast that sovereignty has power among men, nor, even if
you think so, and your mind is disordered, believe that you are at all
wise. But receive the God into the lan