Bac. 'Twas even then I mocked him, he thought me in his chain;
He touched me not, nor reached me, his idle thoughts were vain."
Unharmed, unshackled, he again stands before the incensed king. A messenger now arrives—a herdsman from the mountains—who reports that the Bacchanals have broken prison, have defied all attempts to recapture them, are again engaged in their revelries, and have ravaged all the villages and herds that came in their way from the plain to the hill-country. The drama now takes a new turn. Pentheus, his madness fast coming on, admits his late prisoner into his counsels. He will go and witness with his own eyes these hateful orgies: he cannot trust his officers to deal with them. "These women," he says, "without force of arms, I'll bring them in. Give me mine armour." Bacchus offers to be his guide, but tells him that his armour will betray him to the women. He must attire himself in Bacchanalian costume:—
"Pen. Lead on and swiftly. Let no time be lost.
Bac. But first enwrap thee in these linen robes.
Pen. What, will he of a man make me a woman?
Bac. Lest they should kill thee, seeing thee as a man."
Here is the true irony of tragedy. Pentheus, who has derided his grandsire and the holy prophet for their unseemly attire and senile folly,—Pentheus, who has threatened to behead the Lydian wizard, and had imprisoned his attendants, is himself persuaded by the god he so abhors to put on the garb of a Bacchanal,
