Kadmus.
My son, well hath Teiresias counselled thee. 330
Dwell with us, not without the pale of wont.
Thou'rt now in cloudland: naught thy wisdom is:
For, though no God were this,—as thou dost say,—
God be he called of thee; in glorious fraud
Be Semelê famed as mother of a God. 335
So upon all our house shall honour rest.
Rememberest thou Aktaion's wretched doom,
Whom the raw-ravening hounds himself had reared
Rent limb from limb in the meads, for that high boast
That Artemis in hunting he excelled? 340
Lest such be thy fate, let me crown thine head
With ivy: honour thou with us the God.
Pentheus.
Hence with thine hand! Go, play the Bacchanal,
Neither besmirch me with thy folly's stain.
This seer, thy monitor in senselessness, 345
Will I chastise. Let some one go with speed—
(To an attendant) Thou, hie thee to his seat of augury;
Upheave with levers, hurl it to the ground;
All in confusion turn it upside down;
His holy fillets fling to wind and storm: 350
For, doing so, I most shall wring his heart.
And some range through the city, and track down
That girl-faced stranger, who upon our wives
Bringeth strange madness, and defiles our beds.
And if ye catch him, hale him bound with chains 355
Hither, that death by stoning be his meed,
And so he rue his revelry in Thebes.
