Book of illustrations : Ancient Tragedy

Unheeding Pentheus' anger, Came through the palace gate.
It seems even now his sandal Is sounding on its way;
Soon is he here before us, And what now will he say?
With ease will I confront him, Ire-breathing though he stand.
'Tis easy to a wise man To practice self-command. {651}

Blank verse is resumed as Pentheus enters, and meets his escaped prisoner who calmly confronts him. As Pentheus begins to threaten, Dionysus advises him first to hear the messenger even now entering from Cithaeron. An elaborate Messenger's Speech describes the miraculous life of the Maenads as they lie on the mountains, careless but not immodest. At the touch of their thyrsus the rock yields dew and the soil wine; their fingers lightly scraping the soil draw streams of exquisite milk, and honey distils from their ivied staffs. A city-bred agitator stirred up the herdsmen to confront them, but the phrensied women drove the men before them, and tore the herds to pieces; like a flock of birds they skimmed along the land, and all gave way before them.

And what they threw across their shoulders, clung
Unfastened, nor fell down to the black ground,
No brass, nor ponderous iron; on their locks
Was fire that burned them not.

Then god-given fountains washed off the stains of their toil, and their serpents licked them clean. Even the Messenger advises submission to so mighty a god, dispensing such gifts.

Pentheus breathes nothing but defiance, and issues orders for the whole military force of Thebes to assemble. He is bewildered by the stranger, who doing or suffering still holds his peace. In long-drawn parallel verses Dionysus gradually assumes the friend, and – still warning the king that he is on the side of the god – insinuates into the mind of Pentheus the idea of visiting the scene, disguised in the feminine robes of the revellers. As the king retires to prepare, Dionysus proclaims that he is fallen into the net, and vengeance shall first deprive him of sense and then destroy him. {868}

CHORAL INTERLUDE III

As the crisis comes nearer the Chorus long for the moment of escape – the sensation of the hart that has leaped the net and with storm-wind haste escaped the hunter's pursuit and reached the silent shadow of the old hospitable wood. VICTORY IS THE JOY OF JOYS. Slow and true are the avenging deities, with printless foot hounding the impious along their winding path: for law is old as oldest time. VICTORY IS THE JOY OF JOYS. Happy the sailor in port, he whose race is o'er: hopes hover over thousands, but

Happiness alone is his
That happy is to-day. {928}

EPISODE IV

Pentheus appears from the palace of Cadmus in disguise as a Maenad. Infatuation has become a phrensy: he sees double, Dionysus seems a bull, his eyes penetrate into distance and perceive his mother and her comrades. Unconscious of the laughter of Dionysus he adjusts his feminine dress and practices the Maenad step. Irony is added:

Dio. Follow me! thy preserver goes before thee; Another takes thee hence. Pen. Mean'st thou my mother? Dio. Aloft shalt thou be borne – Pen. O the soft carriage! Dio. In thy mother's hands. Pen. Wilt make me thus luxurious? Dio. Strange luxury, indeed! Pen. 'Tis my desert.

Exclaiming in ambiguous phrase as to the awful end to which he is destined, Dionysus leads the king out towards Cithaeron. {986}

CHORAL INTERLUDE IV

The crisis is come! Ho, to the mountains; where the Chorus picture the scene already being enacted, the hunter of the Bacchanals caught in the inexorable net of death. VENGEANCE ON THE LAWLESS SON OF ECHION is the recurrent burden of the ode. Its prayer is to hold fast the pious mind, the smooth painless life at peace with heaven and earth, instead of fighting with the invincible, aweless outcast from all law. {1036}

EPISODE V

A Messenger's Speech describes the catastrophe. How Pentheus, arrived within sight of the orderly Maenads, was not satisfied, but desired a higher station from which to view their unseemly life. Then a wonder: the stranger bent down an ash tree, and seating Pentheus in a fork of it let the tree return to its position, holding the wretched king aloft, seen of all.

The stranger from our view had vanished quite.
Then from the heavens a voice, as it should seem,
Dionysus, shouted loud, "Behold, I bring,
       O maidens, him that you and me, our rites,
Our orgies laughed to scorn; now take your vengeance."
And as he spake, a light of holy fire
Stood up, and blazed from earth straight up to heaven.
Silent the air, silent the verdant grove
Held its still leaves; no sound of living thing.
They, as their ears just caught the half-heard voice,
Stood up erect, and rolled their wandering eyes,
Again he shouted. But when Cadmus' daughters
Heard manifest the god's awakening voice,
Forth rushed they, fleeter than the winged dove,
Their nimble feet quick coursing up and down.

How then the Maenads set upon him and tore him to pieces, his own mother leading them on: in triumph dance they are bringing his head to the city. Adore the gods, is the moral. {1164}

CHORAL INTERLUDE V

A short outburst of triumph from the Chorus: then the {1180}

EXODUS

begins with the approach of the Maenads, Agave bearing her son's head on a thyrsus. In a brief lyric concerto between her and the mocking Chorus her phrensied triumph is brought out, and how she takes the bleeding object to be head of a young lion. At that moment the trumpet sounds, and the army that had been summoned appears at the Electran gate. Agave turns to them, and (in blank verse) calls all Thebans to behold the quarry she has taken without the useless weapons of the hunter; it shall be nailed up a trophy before her father's house. Shortly after enters on the right a melancholy procession of Cadmus and his servants bearing the fragments of Pentheus' body, with difficulty discovered and pieced together. In extended parallel dialogue between Cadmus and Evadne the phrensy gradually passes away from her and she recognizes the deed she has done. Cadmus sums up the final situation: all the house enwrapped in one dread doom. The Chorus sympathize with Cadmus, but have no pity for Agave. She then follows with a rhesis of woe, interrupted by {1365}

DIVINE INTERVENTION

Dionysus appears aloft, in divine form. The MSS. are defective here: from what we have the god appears to be painting the future of Cadmus: life in a dragon form, victories at the head of barbarian hosts, finally the Isles of the Blest. Agave as stained with blood is banished the land, vainly imploring the god's mercy. With lamentations at the thought of exile, which is the lot of both, the play ends.

PASSAGES

1

Evolution of human life

Prometheus. List rather to the deeds
I did for mortals: how, being fools before
I made them wise and true in aim of soul,
And let me tell you – not as taunting men,
But teaching you the intention of my gifts —
How, first beholding, they beheld in vain,
And hearing, heard not, but like shapes in dreams
Mixed all things wildly down the tedious time;
Nor knew to build a house against the sun
With wicketed sides, nor any woodcraft knew,
But lived, like silly ants, beneath the ground,
In hollow caves unsunned. There came to them
No steadfast sign of winter nor of spring,
Flower perfumed, nor summer full of fruit;
But blindly and lawlessly they did all things,
Until I taught them how the stars do rise
And set in mystery, and devised for them
Number, the inducer of philosophies,
The synthesis of letters, and, beside,
The artificer of all things, Memory,
That sweet Muse-Mother. I was first to yoke
The servile beasts in couples, carrying
An heirdom of man's burdens on their backs.
I joined to chariots steeds that love the bit