Metamorphoses

Ovid

Ovid. Metamorphoses. More, Brookes, translator. Boston: Cornhill Publishing Co., 1922.

  1. But Pentheus answered him: “A parlous tale,
  2. and we have listened to the dreary end,
  3. hoping our anger might consume its rage;—
  4. away with him! hence drag him, hurl him out,
  5. with dreadful torture, into Stygian night.”
  6. Quickly they seized and dragged Acoetes forth,
  7. and cast him in a dungeon triple-strong.
  8. And while they fixed the instruments of death,
  9. kindled the fires, and wrought the cruel irons,
  10. the legend says, though no one aided him,
  11. the chains were loosened and slipped off his arms;
  12. the doors flew open of their own accord.
  13. But Pentheus, long-persisting in his rage,
  14. not caring to command his men to go,
  15. himself went forth to Mount Cithaeron, where
  16. resound with singing and with shrilly note
  17. the votaries of Bacchus at their rites.
  18. As when with sounding brass the trumpeter
  19. alarms of war, the mettled charger neighs
  20. and scents the battle; so the clamored skies
  21. resounding with the dreadful outcries fret
  22. the wrath of Pentheus and his rage enflame.
  23. About the middle of the mount (with groves
  24. around its margin) was a treeless plain,
  25. where nothing might conceal. Here as he stood
  26. to view the sacred rites with impious eyes,
  27. his mother saw him first. She was so wrought
  28. with frenzy that she failed to know her son,
  29. and cast her thyrsus that it wounded him;
  30. and shouted, “Hi! come hither, Ho!
  31. Come hither my two sisters! a great boar
  32. hath strayed into our fields; come! see me strike
  33. and wound him!”
  34. As he fled from them in fright
  35. the raging multitude rushed after him;
  36. and, as they gathered round; in cowardice
  37. he cried for mercy and condemned himself,
  38. confessing he had sinned against a God.
  39. And as they wounded him he called his aunt;
  40. “Autonoe have mercy! Let the shade
  41. of sad Actaeon move thee to relent!”
  42. No pity moved her when she heard that name;
  43. in a wild frenzy she forgot her son.
  44. While Pentheus was imploring her, she tore
  45. his right arm out; her sister Ino wrenched
  46. the other from his trunk. He could not stretch
  47. his arms out to his mother, but he cried,
  48. “Behold me, mother!” When Agave saw,
  49. his bleeding limbs, torn, scattered on the ground,
  50. she howled, and tossed her head, and shook her hair
  51. that streamed upon the breeze; and when his head
  52. was wrenched out from his mangled corpse,
  53. she clutched it with her blood-smeared fingers, while
  54. she shouted, “Ho! companions! victory!
  55. The victory is ours!” So when the wind
  56. strips from a lofty tree its leaves, which touched
  57. by autumn's cold are loosely held, they fall
  58. not quicker than the wretch's bleeding limbs
  59. were torn asunder by their cursed hands.
  60. Now, frightened by this terrible event,
  61. the women of Ismenus celebrate
  62. the new Bacchantian rites; and they revere
  63. the sacred altars, heaped with frankincense.