DIONYSUS, PAN, ECHO, AND NARCISSUS^279f
TIRESIAS: Who attends at the gate? Summon Cadmus from the house, the son
of Agenor, who came from Sidonia and fortified the city of the Thebans. Let
someone go and announce that Tiresias wants to see him. He already knows for
what reason I have come. I made an agreement with him, even though I am old
and he is even older, to make myself a thyrsus, wear a fawnskin, and crown my
head with shoots of ivy.
CADMUS: My dearest friend, I knew your voice from inside the palace, and
recognized the wise words of a wise man. I have come ready with the para-
phernalia of the god. For since Dionysus, who has revealed himself to mortals
as a god, is the son of my daughter, I must do everything in my power to mag-
nify his greatness. Where should we go to join the others in the dance, shaking
our gray heads in ecstasy? Tell me, an old man, Tiresias, for you are old too and
wise. I shall never grow tired by night or by day as I strike the ground with my
thyrsus. It will be a sweet pleasure to forget that we are old.
TIRESIAS: You experience the same sensations as I do, for I feel young again
and I shall attempt the dance.
CADMUS: Shall we not proceed to the mountain by chariot?
TIRESIAS: No, the god would not have as appropriate an honor.
CADMUS: I will lead the way for you, two old men together.
TIRESIAS: The god will lead the two of us there without any difficulty.
CADMUS: Are we to be the only men of the city to dance in honor of Bacchus?
TIRESIAS: We are the only ones who think the way one should; the others are
wrong and perverse.
CADMUS: We delay too long; give me your hand.
TIRESIAS: Here it is, take hold and join our hands together.
CADMUS: Being a mere mortal, I am not scornful of the gods.
TIRESIAS: About the gods we have no new wise speculations. The ancestral
beliefs that we hold are as old as time, and they cannot be destroyed by any ar-
gument or clever subtlety invented by profound minds. How could I help be-
ing ashamed, one will ask, as I am about to join in the dance, at my age, with
an ivy wreath on my head? The god does not discriminate whether young or
old must dance in his honor, but he desires to be esteemed by all alike and
wishes his glory to be magnified, making no distinctions whatsoever.
CADMUS: Since you are blind, Tiresias, I shall be a prophet for you, and tell
you what I see. Pentheus, the son of Echion, to whom I have given my royal
power in Thebes, comes in haste to this palace. How excited he is; what news
has he to tell us?
PENTHEUS: Although I happened to have been away from Thebes, I have
heard of the new evils that beset the city; the women have abandoned our homes
on the pretense of Bacchic rites, and gad about on the dark mountainside hon-
oring by their dances the new god, Dionysus, whoever he is. Bowls full of wine
stand in the midst of each group, and they sneak away one by one to solitary
places where they satisfy the lust of males. Their pretext is that they are Mae-
nad priestesses, but they put Aphrodite ahead of Bacchus. All those I have caught
are kept safe with their hands tied by guards in the state prison. The others, who
still roam on the mountain, I shall hunt out, including my own mother, Agave,