Scattered lies his corpse, part beneath the rugged rocks, and part amid the deep dark woods, no easy task to find; but his poor head hath his mother made her own, and fixing it upon the point of a thyrsus, as it had been a mountain lion's, she bears it through the midst of Cithaeron, having left her sisters with the Maenads at their rites.
And she is entering these walls exulting in her hunting fraught with woe, calling on the Bacchic god her fellow-hunter who had helped her to triumph in a chase, where her only prize was tears.
But I will get me hence, away from this piteous scene, before Agave reach the palace.To my mind self-restraint and reverence for the things of God point alike the best and wisest course for all mortals who pursue them.
Exit SECOND MESSENGER.
CHORUS
Come, let us exalt our Bacchic god in choral strain, let us loudly chant the fall of Pentheus from the serpent sprung, who assumed a woman's dress and took the fair Bacchic wand, sure pledge of death, with a bull to guide him to his doom.O ye Bacchanals of Thebes!
glorious is the triumph ye have achieved, ending in sorrow and tears.'Tis a noble enterprise to dabble the hand in the blood of a son till it drips.But hist! I see Agave, the mother of Pentheus, with wild rolling eye hasting to the house; welcome the revellers of the Bacchic god.