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Pentheus
Don’t lay a hand on me! Go off and hold your revels, but don’t wipe your foolishness off on me. I will seek the punishment of this
teacher of your folly. Let someone go quickly to the seat where he watches the flights of birds, upset and overturn it with levers, turning everything upside down;
345
and release his garlands to the winds and storms. In this way I will especially wound him. And some of you hunt throughout the city for this effeminate stranger, who introduces a new disease to women and pollutes our beds.
350
If you catch him, bring him here bound, so that he might suffer as punishment a death by stoning, having seen a bitter Bacchic revelry in
Thebes
.
355
Don’t lay a hand on me! Go off and hold your revels, but don’t wipe your foolishness off on me. I will seek the punishment of this
teacher of your folly. Let someone go quickly to the seat where he watches the flights of birds, upset and overturn it with levers, turning everything upside down;
345
and release his garlands to the winds and storms. In this way I will especially wound him. And some of you hunt throughout the city for this effeminate stranger, who introduces a new disease to women and pollutes our beds.
350
If you catch him, bring him here bound, so that he might suffer as punishment a death by stoning, having seen a bitter Bacchic revelry in
Thebes
.
355
Teiresias
O wretched man, how little you know what you are saying! You are mad now, and even before you were out of your wits.
Let us go, Kadmos, and entreat the god, on behalf of him, though he is savage, and on behalf of the city, to do no ill. But follow me with the ivy-clad staff, and try to support my body, and I will try to support yours;
360
it would be shameful for two old men to fall down. But let that pass, for we must serve Bacchus, the son of Zeus. Beware lest Pentheus bring trouble to your house, Kadmos; I do not speak in prophecy, but judging from the state of things; for a foolish man speaks foolishness.
365
O wretched man, how little you know what you are saying! You are mad now, and even before you were out of your wits.
Let us go, Kadmos, and entreat the god, on behalf of him, though he is savage, and on behalf of the city, to do no ill. But follow me with the ivy-clad staff, and try to support my body, and I will try to support yours;
360
it would be shameful for two old men to fall down. But let that pass, for we must serve Bacchus, the son of Zeus. Beware lest Pentheus bring trouble to your house, Kadmos; I do not speak in prophecy, but judging from the state of things; for a foolish man speaks foolishness.
365
Bacchae. Euripides. T. A. Buckley (Translator). London. 1850.
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