me? Why dost thou avoid me? Yet, I swear by the clustering
delights of the vine of Bacchus, yet shall you have a care for Bacchus.
What rage, what rage does the earth-born race show, and Pentheus once
descended from the dragon, whom the earth-born Echion begat, a fierce-faced
monster, not a mortal man, but like a bloody giant, an enemy to the Gods,
who will soon bind me, the handmaid of Bacchus, in halters, he already has
within the house my fellow-reveler, hidden in a dark prison. Dost thou
behold this, O son of Jove, Bacchus, thy prophets in the dangers of
restraint? Come, O thou of golden face, brandishing your thyrsus along
Olympus, and restrain the insolence of the blood-thirsty man. Where art
thou assembling thy bands of thyrsus-bearers, O Bacchus, is it near Nysa
which nourishes wild beasts, or in the summits of Corycus?[33] or perhaps
in the deep-wooded lairs of Olympus, where formerly Orpheus playing the
lyre drew together the trees by his songs, collected the beasts of the
fields; O happy Pieria, Evius respects you, and will come to lead the dance
with revelings having crossed the swiftly-flowing Axius, he will bring the
dancing Maenads, and [leaving] Lydia[34] the giver of wealth to mortals, and
the father whom I have heard fertilizes the country renowned for horses
with the fairest streams.

BAC. Io! hear ye, hear ye my song, Io Bacchae! O Bacchae!

CHOR. Who is here, who? from what quarter did the shout of Evius summon me?

BAC. Io, Io, I say again! I, the son of Semele, the son of Jove!

CHOR. Io! Io! Master, master! come now to our company. O Bromius! Bromius!
Shake this place, O holy Earth![35] O! O! quickly will the palace of
Pentheus be shaken in ruin--Bacchus is in the halls. Worship him. We
worship him. Behold these stone buttresses shaken with their pillars.
Bacchus will shout in the palace.

BAC. Light the burning fiery lamp; burn, burn the house of Pentheus.

SEM. Alas! Dost thou not behold the fire, nor perceive around the sacred
tomb of Semele the flame which formerly the bolt-bearing thunder of Jupiter
left?

SEM. Cast on the ground your trembling bodies, cast them down, O Maenads,
for the king turning things upside down is coming to this palace,
[Bacchus,] the son of Jupiter.

BAC. O barbarian women! have ye fallen to the ground thus stricken with
fear? Ye have felt, it seems, Bacchus shaking the house of Pentheus; but
lift up your bodies, and take courage, casting off fear from your f