And chastening human folly
And the mad pride unholy,
Of those who to the gods Low not their knees.
For hidden still and mute,
As glides their printless foot,
Th' impious on their winding path they hound,
For it is ill to know,
Beyond the law's inexorable bound."
Mania now seizes on Pentheus; two suns he seems to see: a double Thebes: his guide appears to him a horned bull: he recognises among the Bacchic revellers Ino his kinswoman, and Agavè his mother.
The decorum of the Greek stage, or perhaps its imperfect means for representing groups and rapid action, precluded poets generally from bringing before an audience the catastrophe of tragic dramas. Accordingly, we do not see, but are told, by the usual messenger on such occasions, of the miserable end of the proud and impious Theban king. When Bacchus and his victim have climbed one of the spurs of Mount Cithæron, they come
"To a rock-walled glen, watered by a streamlet,
And shadowed o'er with pines: the Mœnads there
Sat, all their hands busy with pleasant toil.
And some the leafy thyrsus, that its ivy
Had dropped away, were garlanding anew:
Like fillies some, unharnessed from the yoke,
Chanted alternate all the Bacchic hymn."
But Pentheus cannot, from the level on which he has halted, see the whole Bacchante troop: he desires to mount on a bank or a tall tree, in order that
"Clearly he may behold their deeds of shame."
