AGAVE.  O Asiatic Bacchae!

CHOR.  To what dost thou excite me?  O!

AG.  We bring from the mountains a fresh-culled wreathing[62] to the house, a blessed prey.

CHOR.  I see it, and hail you as a fellow-reveler, O!

AG.  I have caught him without a noose, a young lion, as you may see.

CHOR.  From what desert?

AG.  Cithaeron.

CHOR.  What did Cithaeron?

AG.  Slew him.

CHOR.  Who was it who first smote him?

AG.  The honor is mine.  Happy Agave!  We are renowned in our revels.

CHOR.  Who else?

AG.  Cadmus’s.

CHOR.  What of Cadmus?

AG.  Descendants after me, after me laid hands on this beast.

CHOR.  You are fortunate in this capture.

AG.  Partake then of our feast.

CHOR.  What shall I, unhappy, partake of?

AG.  The whelp is young about the chin; he has just lost his soft-haired head-gear.[63]

AG.  For it is beautiful as the mane of a wild beast.

CHOR.  Bacchus, a wise huntsman, wisely hurried the Maenads against this beast.

CHOR.  For the king is a huntsman.

AG.  Do you praise?

CHOR.  What?  I do praise.

AG.  But soon the Cadmeans.

CHOR.  And thy son Pentheus his mother—­

AG. —­will praise, as having caught this lion-born prey.

CHOR.  An excellent prey.

AG.  Excellently.

CHOR.  You rejoice.

AG.  I rejoice greatly, having accomplished great and illustrious deeds for this land.

CHOR.  Show now, O wretched woman, thy victorious booty to the citizens, which you have come bringing with you.

AG.  O, ye who dwell in the fair-towered city of the Theban land, come ye, that ye may behold this prey, O daughters of Cadmus, of the wild beast which we have taken; not by the thonged javelins of the Thessalians, not by nets, but by the fingers, our white arms; then may we boast that we should in vain possess the instruments of the spear-makers; but we, with this hand, slew this beast, and tore its limbs asunder.  Where is my aged father? let him come near; and where is my son Pentheus? let him take and raise the ascent of a wattled ladder against the house, that he may fasten to the triglyphs this head of the lion which I am present having caught.

CAD.  Follow me, bearing the miserable burden of Pentheus; follow me, O servants, before the house; whose body here, laboring with immeasurable search, I bear, having found it in the defiles of Cithaeron, torn to pieces, and finding nothing in the same place, lying in a thicket, difficult to be searched.  For I heard from some one of the daring deeds of my daughters just as I came to the city within the walls, with the old Tiresias, concerning the Bacchae; and having returned again to the mountain, I bring back my child, slain by the Maenads.  And I saw Autonoe, who formerly bore Actaeon to Aristaeus, and Ino together, still mad in the thicket, unhappy creatures; but some one told me that Agave was coming hither with frantic foot; nor did I hear a false tale, for I behold her, an unhappy sight.