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The Bacchanals and Other Plays by Euripides
The Bacchanals and Other Plays by Euripides Author:Euripides Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EURIPIDES. The Bacchanals. PERSONS OF THE DRAMA. Dionysus. Chorus Of Bacchanals. TlRESrAS. Cadmus. Prntheus. Attendant. Messenger. Second M... more »essenger. Agave. Dionysus. Unto this land of Thebes I come, Jove's son, Dionysus ; he whom Semele of yore, '"Mid the dread midwifery of lightning fire, Bore, Cadmus' daughter. In a mortal form, The God put off, by Dirce's stream I stand, And cool Ismenos' waters ; and survey My mother's grave, the thunder-slain, the ruins Still smouldering of that old ancestral palace, The flame still living of the lightning fire, Here's immortal vengeance 'gainst my mother. And well hath reverent Cadmus set his ban On that heaven-stricken, unapproached place. His daughter's tomb, which I have mantled o'er With the pale verdure of the trailing vine. And I have left the golden Lydian shores, The Phrygian and the Persian sun-seared plains, And Bacti ia's walls ; the Medes' wild wintery land Have passed, and Araby the Blest; and all Of Asia, that along the salt-sea coast Lifts up her high-towered cities, where the Greeks, With the Barbarians mingled, dwell in peace. And everywhere my sacred choirs, mine Orgies Have founded, by mankind confessed a God. Now first in an Hellenic town I stand. Of all the Hellenic land here first in Thebes, I have raised my revel shout, my fawn-skin donned, Ta'en in my hand my thyrsus, ivy-crowned. But here, where least beseemed, my mother's sisters Vowed Dionysus was no son of Jove : That Semele, by mortal paramour won, Belied great Jove as author of her sin; 'Twas but old Cadmus' craft: hence Jove in wrath Struck dead the bold usurper of his bed. So from their homes I've goaded them in frenzy ; Their wits all crazed, they wander o'er the mountains, And I have forced them wear my ...« less