CC - II : Story of Bacchus and pentheus

    - Liber has come, and the festive fields echo with cries. The crowd all run, fathers, mothers, young girls, princess and people, mixed together, Swept towards the unknown rites. Pentheus shouts-"what madness has stupefied your minds, children of the serpent, people of mars?" to be precise, he rejects the worship of Bacchus. If the rest of Thebes stand aside, you will quickly force Bacchus to confess that his pretended parentage and religion are inventions. He and the rest of the Thebes should not be terrified of his arrival when Acrisius had courage enough to defy a false god, and shut the gates of Argos at is coming. He orders his attendants-"Go quickly, blind him and drag him here......". His grandfather Cadmus, his uncle Athamas and the rest of his advisor reprove his words, and try in vain to rest rain him. His slaves, all smeared with blood, art black and reply that even though no Bacchus could be found, they nonetheless have capture his companion, a Bacchic priest Acoetes who is being interrogated-"why you follow the costumes of this new religion!". Acoetes narrate the story of the beautiful boy Bacchus and how his ship and crew(the Lydian sailors) are transformed by the god for having offended him. Out of twenty man that vessel carried, Acoetes alone was left, cold with terror, until the god encouraged him.

-"Dismiss your tears set sail for Naxos!" and since the time of his arrival there, he has been devoted to the God and  to his rites.

                   Having listened patiently to equities Acoetes's long-winded story, Pentheus orders his attendants to break his bones, rack him with dread torments and plague. Him lifeless into Stygian gloom, at once Acoetes was dragged out and chained in a thick walled cell. While they prepared the instruments of torture and hot irons, the doors open on their own and the chains fell from his Shoulders. But Pentheus kept his opposition he himself went to Cithaeron, the appointed site for the performance of The mysterious, and heard the song and loud cries of Bacchantes. And as he observe the mysterious with his performing eyes, the very first to sight him and pursue him in a frenzy, the first to wound him, with the wand she hurled, Was his own mother. In a seething mas one after another rush out after him from every side, driving him on; and he, now terrified, the autocratic no longer, speaking mildly, admits to them the error of his way. Wounded, he cries out, his aunt, Tears of his right arm, while Into in rapture savages the left. He has no arms to stretch out to his mother, unlucky man, but cries out-"Mother, look! "and shows her his torso with its missing limbs. Agave tears her son's head from his trunk swift as the wind that tears the last few leaves clinging to trees touched autumnal frost, those impious hands tore him all is sunder. By that example warned, Thebans  observe the new rite, bringing incense to its altars.