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]
* * * *
*
* * * *
[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.
