And after a long pause while the quarter started, we return to the Bacchae. This episode deals with the chorus' imagination of what is taking place in the mountain hills - as such, it creates the effect of portraying events for the audience which may or may not be accurate. Does their possession by Dionysus enable the chorus to see Pentheus' discovery and capture miles away? Certainly the god has powers of foresight and omnipresence, but how much carries over? We will find out in the next segment, which contains the messenger's lengthy description of affairs in the forest.
Ambiguity also reigns in terms of the narrative structure of the chorus. I'm not certain if I've mentioned this before, but Attic Greek (like many of its relatives) has no punctuation; the punctuation in our texts is placed there at the whim of the editor, and one must remember always that it serves as a reconstructed guide. When does the chorus-imagined speech of Agave end? Does it incorporate the repeated passage about manifest justice? Does it recur and involve the rest of the choral ode? My guess is entirely that - a guess - so feel free to interpret the passage as you will.
A further issue with this portion of the play is that "this passage is the hardest in the play, and full of textual uncertainties" (Dodds 202). The apparatus criticus (an explanation of variant readings between different manuscripts) is more extensive than usual here, and as I lack the expertise to offer any suggestions myself, I have read the passage as a compromise between Dodds' reconstruction and that of Gilbert Murray, which is the current text on the translation-aide website Perseus. Also of note: one line is stolen directly from Euripides' other play Medea, likely by some ancient grammarian or commentator. Additionally, it certainly does not help that this section contains numerous equational sentences and garbled syntax, so it may be best to conceptualize it as a series of connected phrases and fragments rather than a grammatically coherent song.
976-1042
CHORUS: Go to the mountain, swift dogs of madness,
where the maidens of Cadmus form their band;
goad him to madness,
attack him! The man in the woman-mocking dress,
an insane spy upon the maenads.
His mother, watching from a smooth rock
or a crag, will see him first
as he observes them – she will shout to the maenads:
“Who is that man running through the hills,
a sentry of Cadmus’ people, who goes and goes
from hill to hill, O Bacchae? Who gave him birth?
He wasn’t born from a woman’s blood – he’s
the offspring of some lioness
or of the Libyan Gorgons."
Go on, manifest justice – go on, sword-bearer,
murder him, cut through his throat,
kill the godless lawless mindless
earthborn spawn of Echion.
He, with unjust mind and illegal rage
against you, Bacchae, and your mother’s rites,
he’s set in his raging heart
and frenzied purpose,
trying to defeat the invincible through violence:
Death will correct his opinions, Death
who accepts no excuses in the matters of the gods.
To live life as a mortal should is painless;
I do not envy wisdom,
I rejoice in pursuing it. Other matters
are great and visible. O, may life flow
towards what is good, acting right
and being pious day and night, discarding
customs that are apart from justice,
and honoring the gods.
Go on, manifest justice – go on, sword-bearer,
murder him, cut through his throat,
kill the godless lawless mindless
earthborn child of Echion.
Be manifest as a bull or a many-headed serpent,
something to see, or appear as a blazing lion.
Go forth, o Bacchus, with smiling face
throw a deadly noose around this man
who hunts the Bacchae, as he falls beneath
the herd of maenads.
(Enter a MESSENGER)
MESSENGER: O house, which was earlier successful
in the land of Greece, house of the old man of Sidon,
who sowed the earthborn harvest of the serpent Ophis
in his land, how I groan on your behalf. I am your slave,
but still, good servants care about their masters’ affairs.
CHORUS: What’s this? Will you reveal news about the Bacchae?
MESSENGER: Pentheus, son of Echion, is dead.
CHORUS: O lord Bromios, as a great god you are revealed.
MESSENGER: What are you saying? What do you mean?
Do you rejoice, women, that things fared badly for our master?
CHORUS: I’m a foreign woman, and rejoice with barbarian song:
for no longer am I in chains, or cower in fear.
MESSENGER: Do you think Thebes has no men [ - - -
- - - here some text has been lost - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ]?
CHORUS: Dionysus, Dionysus, not the Thebans,
has power over me.
MESSENGER: I sympathize with you, o women,
but to rejoice in evil that has occurred is not something good.
CHORUS: Tell me, speak, in what way that unjust man,
who contrived unjust things, in what way did he die?
Notes:
The Gorgons are a group of ancient monstrous female creatures who vary in number and origin, depending on our sources. Medusa was notably a Gorgon.
Sidon is the Phoenician home city of Cadmus.
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