of his daughter; and I have covered it around with the cluster-bearing leaf of the vine.  And having left the wealthy lands of the Lydians and Phrygians, and the sun-parched plains of the Persians, and the Bactrian walls; and having come over the stormy land of the Medes, and the happy Arabia, and all Asia which lies along the coast of the salt sea, having fair-towered cities full of Greeks and barbarians mingled together; and there having danced and established my mysteries, that I might be a God manifest among men, I have come to this city first of the Grecian [cities,] and I have raised my shout first in Thebes of this land of Greece, fitting a deer-skin on my body, and taking a thyrsus in my hand, an ivy-clad[2] weapon, because the sisters of my mother, whom, it least of all became, said that I, Bacchus, was not born of Jove; but that Semele, having conceived by some mortal, charged the sin of her bed upon Jove, a trick of Cadmus; on which account they said that Jove had slain her, because she told a false tale about her marriage.  Therefore I have now driven them from the house with frenzy, and they dwell on the mountain, insane of mind; and I have compelled them to wear the dress of my mysteries.  And all the female seed of the Cadmeans, as many as are women, have I driven maddened from the house.  And they, mingled with the sons of Cadmus, sit on the roofless rocks beneath the green pines.  For this city must know, even though it be unwilling, that it is not initiated into my Bacchanalian rites, and that I plead the cause of my mother, Semele, in appearing manifest to mortals as a God whom she bore to Jove.  Cadmus then gave his honor and power to Pentheus, born from his daughter, who fights against the Gods as far as I am concerned, and drives me from sacrifices, and in his prayers makes no mention of me; on which account I will show him and all the Thebans that I am a God.  And having set matters here aright, manifesting myself, I will move to another land.  But if the city of the Thebans should in anger seek by arms to bring down the Bacchae from the mountain, I, general of the Maenads, will join battle.[3] On which account I have changed my form to a mortal one, and transformed my shape into the nature of a man.  But, O ye who have left Tmolus, the bulwark of Lydia; ye women, my assembly, whom I have brought from among the barbarians as assistants and companions to me; take your drums, your native instruments in the Phrygian cities, the invention of the mother Rhea[4] and myself, and coming beat them around this royal palace of Pentheus, that the city of Cadmus may see it.  And I, with the Bacchae, going to the dells of Cithaeron, where they are, will share their dances.