or a fiery
lion, to be seen. Go, O Bacchus! cast a snare around the hunter of the
Bacchae, with a smiling face falling upon the deadly crowd of the Maenads.

MESS. O house, which wast formerly prosperous in Greece! house of the
Sidonian old man, who sowed in the land the earth-born harvest of the
dragon; how I lament for you, though a slave. But still the [calamities] of
their masters are a grief to good servants.

CHOR. But what is the matter? Tellest thou any news from the Bacchae?

MESS. Pentheus is dead, the son of his father Echion.

CHOR. O, king Bacchus! truly you appear a great God!

MESS. How sayest thou? Why do you say this? Do you, O woman, delight at my
master being unfortunate?

CHOR. I, a foreigner, celebrate it in foreign strains; for no longer do I
crouch in fear under my fetters.

MESS. But do you think Thebes thus void of men?

CHOR. Bacchus, Bacchus, not Thebes, has my allegiance.

MESS. You, indeed may be pardoned; still, O woman, it is not right to
rejoice at the misfortunes which have been brought to pass.

CHOR. Tell me, say, by what fate is the wicked man doing wicked things
dead, O man?

MESS. When having left Therapnae of this Theban land, we crossed the streams
of Asopus, we entered on the height of Cithaeron, Pentheus and I, for I was
following my master, and the stranger who was our guide in this search, for
the sight: first, then, we sat down in a grassy vale, keeping our steps and
tongues in silence, that we might see, not being seen; and there was a
valley surrounded by precipices, irrigated with streams, shaded around with
pines, where the Maenads were sitting employing their hands in pleasant
labors, for some of them were again crowning the worn-out thyrsus, so as to
make it leafy with ivy; and some, like horses quitting the painted yoke,
shouted in reply to another a Bacchic melody. And the miserable Pentheus,
not seeing the crowd of women, spake thus: O stranger, where we are
standing, I can not come at the place where is the dance of the Maenads; but
climbing a mound, or pine with lofty neck, I could well discern the
shameful deeds of the Maenads. And on this I now see a strange deed of the
stranger; for seizing hold of the extreme lofty branch of a pine, he pulled
it down, pulled it, pulled it to the dark earth, and it was bent like a
bow, or as a curved wheel worked by a lathe describes a circle as it
revolves, thus the stranger, pulling a mountain bough with his hands,