The Messenger's Speech

It's a little too late for analysis tonight.

677-774

MESSENGER: The pastured herd of calves was ascending

towards the crags, when the sun was

sending its rays and warming to the earth.

I saw three bands of dancing women:

Autonoë led the first, your mother Agave

the second, and Ino led the third.

All were sleeping, relaxing their bodies,

some were leaning their heads against the bark of firs,

some were modestly placing their heads on piles

of oak leaves on the ground at random, and were not,

as you said, intoxicated from wine and the lotus-pipe’s noise,

hunting Aphrodite throughout the forest in solitude.

            Your mother howled out loud, standing up

in the middle of the Bacchae, rousing their bodies

from sleep, as if she’d heard the roars of bulls with horns.

They threw off the bloom of sleep from off their eyes

and stood upright, a marvel of good order,

old ladies, young girls, and unmarried women.

First they arranged their hair about their shoulders

and raised up the fawnskin bonds of the girdles

they had loosened, and girded their spotted

hides with snakes that were licking their cheeks.

They nursed with white milk baby deer and fierce

wolf-cubs that they held in the crooks of their arms,

as many as had just given birth and left their

infants behind, women whose breasts were swollen.

They put on garlands of ivy, of oak,

and of the flowering smilax tree. One of them

who had a thyrsus struck it against a rock,

and there the dewy moisture of water sprung forth.

Another struck her wand on the ground’s surface,

and the god sent forth a spring of wine at that spot.

For as many as desired the white drink,

when they scratched the earth with their fingertips,

they found streams of milk; from the ivy

of the thyrsoi dipped streams of honey.

So, if you’d been present and seen these things,

you’d be sharing in the prayers to the god you now accuse.

            We came together, we shepherds and cowherds,

debating with each other about what we’d all seen,

as the women were performing miracles worthy of wonder.

Some wanderer from the town, experienced in speaking,

told everyone: “Dwellers of the holy

mountain-plains, do you want us to hunt

Agave, mother of Pentheus, out of the splendor of

Bacchic rites and give heed to our lord?” He seemed

to us to speak rightly, so we lay in ambush in the

olive bushes and hid ourselves there.

At the appointed time, the women moved

their thyrsoi in a Bacchic ritual,

calling Iacchus, Bromios, the son of Zeus,

their voices combined. The entire mountain and the beasts

were involved in the rite, nothing was motionless.

            Since Agave happened to be near me, I sprang,

jumping out and intending to grab her,

leaving the thicket where I’d been hiding.

She shouted “My roaming dogs,

we’re being hunted by these men! But follow me,

chase them with the thyrsoi you have in your hands!”

            We fled, escaping being torn to pieces

by the Bacchae, while they attacked the herd of calves

grazing on the plants, making war without weapons.

You would have seen one holding a bellowing,

swollen-uddered heifer in her two hands,

while others tore steers into little pieces.

You’d see them tossing ribs and cloven hooves

in all directions. Stained with blood, they stuck in the

branches of pines, dripping with gore.

As for the bulls, who had vented their fury before

with their horns, their bodies fell to the ground,

dragged down by the hands of countless young women.

The expanse of flesh was torn apart faster

than you could close your royal eyelids.

They moved along the stretches of the plains

like lofty birds in flight, the plains beside Asopus

that produce fruitful grain for Thebes.

They made an attack on Hysia and Erythra,

towns situated below the rocks of Cithaeron,

and scattered everything in every direction.

They seized children from the houses, and whatever

they put over their shoulders, although it wasn’t bound

in place, it still didn’t fall to the black earth, whether

it was bronze or iron. There was fire in their hair,

but they did not burn. Some out of anger took up arms

against the Bacchae and advanced against them.

Then there was a dreadful sight to see, O lord.

The men didn’t bloody their lance-headed weapons,

while those women, fighting with thyrsoi hand-to-hand,

wounded the men and forced them to retreat,

not without some assistance from the god.

Then they returned to where they made their advance from,

to the springs which the god created for them.

They washed off the blood, and snakes licked the

drops of it off the skin of their cheeks with their tongues.

            Whoever this god is, O master, admit him

into the city. As he is powerful in these other ways,

as I hear, they say he is that divinity

who gives the pain-ending vine to mortals.

If there were no wine, there would be no Aphrodite

nor any other delight remaining for men.

Notes:

Iacchus is a regional title of Dionysus meaning "lord of cries".

Asopus refers to a river that runs near Mt. Cithaeron.