Epeisodion 1
Teiresias
Who is at the gates? Call from the house Kadmos, son of Agenor, who leaving the city of Sidon built this towering city of the Thebans. Let someone go and announce that Teiresias is looking for him. He knows why I have come and
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what agreement I, an old man, have made with him, older still: to twine the thyrsoi, to wear fawn-skins, and to crown our heads with ivy branches.
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Kadmos
Dearest friend, for inside the house I heard and recognized your wise voice, the voice of a wise man;
I have come prepared with this equipment of the god. For we must extol him, the child of my daughter, Dionysus, who has appeared as a god to men as much as is in our power. Where must I dance, where set my feet
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and shake my grey head? Show me the way, Teiresias, one old man leading another; for you are wise. And so I shall never tire night or day striking the ground with the thyrsos. Gladly I have forgotten that I am old.
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Teiresias
Then you and I have the same feelings,
for I too feel young and will try to dance.
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Kadmos
Then will we go to the mountain in a chariot?
Teiresias
But then the god would not have equal honor.
Kadmos
I, an old man, will lead you, an old man, like a pupil.
Teiresias
The god will lead us there without trouble.
Kadmos
Are we the only ones in the city who will dance in Bacchus’ honor?
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Teiresias
Yes, for we alone think rightly, the rest wrongly.
Kadmos
The delay is long; come, take hold of my hand.
Teiresias
Here, take hold, and join your hand with mine.
Kadmos
Having been born mortal I do not scorn the gods.
Teiresias
We mortals have no cleverness in the eyes of the the gods.Dodds admits that the text, as it appears in Murray, should be translated this way, but feels that the line should mean nor do we use cleverness on the gods or something similar. He argues for another reading that would allow this. Our ancestral traditions, and those which we have held throughout our lives, no argument will overturn, not even if some craftiness should be discovered by the depths of our wits. This translation, though literal, fudges on the meaning: ἀκραὶ φρένες must mean something like best or most subtle minds. Will anyone say that I do not respect old age,
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being about to dance with my head covered in ivy? No, for the god has made no distinction as to whether it is right for men young or old to dance, but wishes to have common honors from all and to be extolled, setting no one apart.
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Kadmos
Since you do not see this light, Teiresias, I will be your interpreter. Pentheus, child of Echion, to whom I gave control of this land, is coming here to the house now in haste. How fluttered he is! What new matter will he tell us?
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Pentheus
I happened to be at a distance from this land, when I heard of strange evils throughout this city, that the women have left our homes in contrived Bacchic rites, and rush about in the shadowy mountains, honoring with dances
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this new deity Dionysus, whoever he is. I hear that mixing-bowls stand full in the midst of their assemblies, and that they each creep off different ways into secrecy to serve the beds of men, on the pretext that they are Maenads worshipping;
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but they consider Aphrodite before Bacchus.
As many of them as I have caught, servants keep in the public strongholds with their hands bound, and as many as are absent I will hunt from the mountains, I mean Ino and Agave, who bore me to Echion, and
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Autonoe, the mother of Actaeon. And having bound them in iron fetters, I will soon stop them from this ill-working revelry. And they say that some stranger has come, a sorcerer, a conjuror from the Lydian land,
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fragrant in hair with golden curls, having in his eyes the wine-dark graces of Aphrodite. He is with the young girls day and night, alluring them with joyful mysteries. If I catch him within this house,
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I will stop him from making a noise with the thyrsos and shaking his hair, by cutting his head off.
That one claims that Dionysus is a god, claims that he was once stitched into the thigh of Zeus—Dionysus, who was burnt up with his mother by the flame of lightning,
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because she had falsely claimed a marriage with Zeus. Is this not worthy of a terrible death by hanging, for a stranger to insult me with these insults, whoever he is?
But here is another wonder—I see Teiresias the soothsayer in dappled fawn-skins
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and my mother’s father—a great absurdity—raging about with a thyrsos. I shrink, father, from seeing your old age devoid of sense. Won’t you cast away the ivy? Grandfather, will you not free your hand of the thyrsos?
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You persuaded him to this, Teiresias. Do you wish, by introducing another new god to men, to examine birds and receive rewards for sacrifices? If your gray old age did not defend you, you would sit in chains in the midst of the Bacchae,
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for introducing wicked rites. For where women have the delight of the grape-cluster at a feast, I say that none of their rites is healthy any longer.
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Chorus Leader
Oh, what impiety! O stranger, do you not reverence the gods and Kadmos who sowed the earth-born crop?
