CAD.  Bacchus, we beseech thee, we have erred.

BAC.  Ye have learned it too late; but when it behooved you, you knew it not.

CAD.  I knew it, but you press on us too severely.

BAC. [Ay,] for I, being a God, was insulted by you.

CAD.  It is not right for Gods to resemble mortals in anger.[66]

BAC.  My father, Jove, long ago decreed this.

AG.  Alas! a miserable banishment is the decree[67] [for us,] old man.

BAC.  Why do ye then delay what must needs be?

CAD.  O child, into what terrible evil have we come; both you wretched and your * * * * sisters,[68] and I miserable, shall go, an aged sojourner, to foreigners.  Still it is foretold that I shall bring into Greece a motley barbarian army, and leading their spears, I, a dragon, shall lead the daughter of Mars, Harmonia, my wife, having the fierce nature of a dragon, to the altars and tombs of the Greeks.  Nor shall I, wretched, rest from ills, nor even sailing over the Acheron below shall I be at rest.

AG.  O, my father! and I being deprived of you shall be banished.

CAD.  Why do you embrace me with your hands, O unhappy child, as a white swan does its exhausted[69] parent?

AG.  For whither can I turn, cast out from my country?

CAD.  I know not, my child; your father is a poor ally.

AG.  Farewell, O house! farewell, O ancestral city!  I leave you in misfortune a fugitive from my chamber.

CAD.  Go then, my child, to the land of Aristaeus * * * *.

AG.  I bemoan thee, O father!

CAD.  And I thee, my child; and I lament your sisters.

AG.  Terribly indeed has king Bacchus brought this misery upon thy house.

BAC. [Ay,] for I have suffered terrible things from ye, having a name unhonored in Thebes.

AG.  Farewell, my father.

CAD.  And you farewell, O miserable daughter; yet you can not easily arrive at this.

AG.  Lead me, O guides, where I may take my miserable sisters as the companions of my flight; and may I go where neither accursed Cithaeron may see me, nor I may see Cithaeron with my eyes, and where there is no memory of the thyrsus hallowed, but they may be a care to other Bacchae.

CHOR.  There are many forms of divine things; and the Gods bring to pass many in an unexpected manner:  both what has been expected has not been accomplished, and God has found out a means for doing things unthought of.  So, too, has this event turned out.[70]

* * * * *

NOTES ON THE BACCHAE

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[1] For illustrations of the fable of this play, compare Hyginus, Fab. clxxxiv., who evidently has a view to Euripides.  Ovid, Metam. iii. fab. v.  Oppian, Cyneg. iv. 241 sqq.  Nonnus, 45, p. 765 sq. and 46, p. 783 sqq., some of whose imitations I shall mention in my notes.  With the opening speech of this play compare the similar one of Venus in the Hippolytus.