Pentheus was the king of Thebes who rejected the introduction of the worship of Bacchus and who was punished by the god for his impiety.
511–12 cognita res literally means ‘thing discovered’ but here means more ‘the discovery of the matter’. The seer referred to as vati…auguris is Tiresias who had prophesied the fate of Narcissus (348). Ovid makes the same point in different words in these lines – the spreading of the prophet’s fame being equivalent to his having ‘great renown’ (literally ‘name’).
513 Echionides means ‘son of Echion’ and refers to Pentheus. The use of the ‘patronymic’ is common in epic poetry (cf. how Aeneas is called Anchisiades in Virgil’s Aeneid), but has more point here as it reminds us of the ancestry of the king from the ‘sown men’, one of whom was his father Echion. These ‘sown men’ (spartoi) were the men who emerged from the ground after the sowing of the dragon’s teeth: Echion was one of few left alive after the sown men had finished their civil strife, and so Pentheus’ ancestry is both bloodstained and inhuman.
513–16 The contrast between the fame and respect shown to Tiresias by everyone else and the violent contempt felt for him by Pentheus alone (ex omnibus unus (‘he alone out of everybody’)) is well brought out here by the three strong verbs: spernit (‘rejects’) starts the sentence balanced and echoed by ridet (‘laughs at’) at the end of line 514 and concluded with the third verb obicit (‘throws it in his face’) emphasised by its position at the end of the sentence and the beginning of line 516. Pentheus is described as a ‘despiser of gods’ just as Mezentius in Virgil Aeneid 7.648 is called contemptor divum, and the signposting of this impiety is a powerful signal that all will end badly for him in the light of the previous stories in this book of gods avenging slights to their honour.
515 tenebras et cladem lucis ademptae is again something of a repetition: the ‘darkness’ is the blindness which is referred to as ‘the disaster of his lost sight’, with the word ‘light’ (lucis) substituted for ‘sight’ in metonymy. The language is expressive, as the ‘darkness’ of tenebras is well contrasted with the ‘light’ of lucis and the term cladem (‘disaster’) is ironically portentous as it is Pentheus who will suffer the ‘disaster’ in what is to come.
516 We know from the previous line (senis) that Tiresias is old; Ovid brings out the visual picture with the phrasing albentia tempora canis (‘temples white with grey hair’) and the dramatic head-shaking in movens.
517–18 Tiresias sees the future and so can foretell what is in the best interest of others even when they seem to be in control. Here he turns Pentheus’ mockery of his blindness around by stating that Pentheus too (tu quoque) would be better off blind as then he would not see the Bacchic rituals. The imperfect subjunctives here are unreal conditionals in present time (‘how happy you would be (now), if you were (already) blind…’). There is interesting variation of vocabulary here as lucis ademptae in lines 515 becomes luminis orbus in line 517. Tiresias’ words are all the more powerful for the spitting sibilant alliteration of felix esses si…luminis huius and also for the heavy spondees which impart weight and power to the sentiments.
518 In Euripides’ play Bacchae Pentheus is lured by Dionysus (Bacchus) onto the hillside to spy on the women performing his rituals and is there spotted by them and murdered by his mother and her sisters.
519 auguror picks up auguris in line 512. procul often means ‘far off’ in spatial terms; here it denotes far off in time.
520 veniat is present subjunctive and is most probably in a relative final clause (‘the day on which the new Liber is to come’).
The Greek god Dionysus was also known as Lyaeus (‘the loosener’ or ‘liberator’) and this is matched by the Roman use of the name Liber (which literally means ‘free’ and was the name of an Italian god of vegetation) for Bacchus, the Roman equivalent of Dionysus. The god was born of the union of the god Jupiter/Zeus and the mortal woman Semele who was tricked by Jupiter’s jealous wife Juno into asking her divine lover to use the full power of his divinity in their lovemaking and who was destroyed in the ensuing conflagration. The child Bacchus was rescued from the dying woman and implanted in the thigh of Jupiter from where he was ‘born’ later on. The story has been told by Ovid earlier in this book at lines 253–315.
521 fueris dignatus is the ‘periphrastic’ future perfect equivalent to dignatus eris (‘you will have thought him worthy’). Latin regularly uses the future perfect tense for the ‘protasis’ (‘if…’) section and then the future indicative (as here spargere…foedabis) in the ‘apodosis’ (‘then…’) section. dignor has the root sense ‘think it right’ but here it has the strong sense of dignus and so the whole sentence: ‘if you do not think him (i.e., Liber) worth honouring with temples, then you will be scattered, torn to pieces, in a thousand places…’ templorum is a defining genitive (‘honour consisting of temples’).
522 the violence is well brought out by the juxtaposition of lacer spargere and also by the exaggeration of mille, as well as the visual imagery of the blood (sanguine) and the alliteration of l in mille lacer … locis and s in sanguine silvas. The prophet’s words will come all too true, as line 722 lacerata est picks up lacer here. spargere is equivalent to spargeris (second person singular future passive: ‘you will be scattered’).
523 Pentheus’ mother was called Agaue and her two sisters named in the incident are Ino and Autonoe. The prophecy shows us the location of the event before zooming in on the human agents involved and affected by the horrible business, with the spondaic word foedabis powerfully placed in enjambement showing the ‘foulness’ of the deed.
524 Tiresias turns from conditional sentences to firm statement of the future with strong indicative verbs: eveniet, dignabere, quereris. The prophet both recalls his own earlier words (dignatus honore (521) – dignabere. honore (524)) and also the king’s mockery of his blindness (tenebras (515) – tenebris (525)) with the tart paradox that the king will lament that the old man saw too much in his darkness.
526 Echione natus (‘son of Echion’, literally ‘born from Echion’) recalls Echionides in 513 and forms a neat closural device for this paragraph. The strong verb proturbat in a vivid historic present tense suggests that the king roughly handles the old man and the present participle shows that the prophet was still speaking when he was shoved away.
527 Time has moved on and the prophet’s words came true: the present participle dicentem is picked up in the perfect passive participle dicta. The word fides means here ‘the fulfilment of a wish/prayer’ and so here means simply that his words came true. The poet again stresses the veracity of the words by repeating the sentiment in different words: ‘and the prophet’s responses are fulfilled’.
528 No sooner said than done, Liber is present in a short quick sentence showing the speed of his appearance, followed at once by the full clamour of his worship. The instantaneous spread of the ritual is shown by the rapid sequence of this line where the noise breaks out as soon as the god’s presence is announced. The line is heavily onomatopoeic: the alliteration of f and the howling vowels of ululatibus are highly effective, as is the metaphor of the fields roaring with the cries.
529–30 Ovid well brings out the general melée in these lines to show that the worship of Bacchus was performed by both sexes and all classes, even though these were rites they were not familiar with (ignota). The confusion of gender and age is well brought out by the rapid catalogue of mixtaeque viris matresque nurusque (men, mothers, younger women (literally ‘daughters-in-law’)) and the social mixing is neatly emphasised by the juxtaposition of vulgusque proceresque (the common folk and the leaders), all joined with a long string of connecting uses of que. The rapidity of the movement and its confusion is enhanced by the signposting of turba at the start of the sentence, the short swift present tense ruit followed at once by mixtae. The Roman state had also been very uneasy when the Bacchanalia began to admit men to what had been an exclusively female cult (see Introduction and Livy 39.15.9–14).
This speech attempts to appeal to the Thebans’ feelings of patriotic pride and also their sense of shame. They have achieved so much and yet here seem unable to stand up to a pathetic effeminate enemy. The speech makes use of standard rhetorical features – the indignant rhetorical questions (531–42 is a series of four such, and the speech draws to a conclusion with the indignant question about Acrisius in 559–61), the tricolon crescendo (534–5), the direct address to sections of the audience (538, 541), the striking contrast between the formidable enemy the snake and this bunch of women, as well as the obvious uses of metre, alliteration and assonance which the commentary will pick up. The arguments Pentheus uses are not so much the usual pre-battle sentiments of ‘liberate your country and die if need be’ (such as we find in e.g. Aeschylus Persai 401–5) but closer to the contemptuous language of Menelaus addressing his own men in Homer’s Iliad 7.96–102 (‘Greek women, not Greek men any longer’) or the dismissive reassurance of a Gylippus at Syracuse in Thucydides 7.66–8, seeking to inspire his men to face what he saw as a disorganised and shoddy bunch of Athenians. Pentheus takes victory for granted and so sees Theban failure to engage as a failure of courage and mettle, contrasting the new enemy unfavourably with the real foes they faced in the past.
The argument can be summarised thus:
– you old men made the heroic journey here only to be defeated thus (538–40)
– you younger men should be girt with weapons rather than the thyrsus. Remember your ancestors and take on the spirit of the dragon which defeated some brave men – whereas you are facing effeminates. (540–7)
531 The Thebans are called ‘dragon-born’ because their founding ancestor Cadmus peopled his new city of Thebes with men born from the teeth of the dragon whom he had killed; Cadmus had also married Harmonia, the daughter of Mars and Venus and so Thebans claimed descent from Mars (as did Ovid’s Roman audience whose own foundation myth involved twins (Romulus and Remus) born of the god Mars and a priestess). The appeal to be true to one’s forebears was a common theme of ancient oratory and epic poetry, and here the sense is that people born of such strong ancestors should not behave in this insane manner.
532–7 Pentheus mocks the Bacchic cult by reducing it to its component parts. His long sentence is beautifully constructed, with the tinkling cymbals of the Bacchic ‘bronze clashing against bronze’ contrasted with the real bellicus ensis (the insignificance of the former being hinted at in the ironical use of tantum which means ‘so much’), the ‘pipe with a curved horn’ contrasted unfavourably with the truly fearful trumpet (alliteration of t bringing out the sound of the tuba terruerit), ‘magic tricks’ against the ‘ranks of troops with their weapons drawn’. Pentheus makes effective use of the tricolon crescendo with repetition of non in 534–5 to build up the formidable foe of the past only to contrast this with the current enemy, described with hatred and contempt for what he sees: womanly voices (even though we know there are men there they are behaving like women), madness brought on by wine (apt for Bacchus who was the god of wine amongst other things but here discrediting the whole exercise), filthy animals (grex denoting a group of animals and thus suggesting that here people are behaving like animals in all their shameless sexuality) and drums which are inania – literally ‘empty’ as they must be to sound at all but which here suggests their futility and pointlessness. The speech thus conveys Pentheus’ view that the rites are both silly and also licentious, disgraceful and the result of a fraud perpetrated by ‘Bacchus’, shameless especially for Thebans with their noble military valour.
538–40 Pentheus singles out the old men first for criticism and reminds them that they shared Cadmus’ perilous voyage from Tyre in Phoenicia to found Thebes. This would make the old men the same generation as Pentheus’ grandfather Cadmus (father of the king’s mother Agaue). The subjunctive mirer in the question form is a deliberative or rhetorical subjunctive (‘am I to admire you?’). The language is an effective rebuke: the old men made a long sea journey (longa per aequora vecti, wording reminiscent of Catullus 101) and pitched Tyre in this place (Tyron being accusative case), giving their fugitive household gods a place to rest here rather as the fugitive Trojans were told to bring their household gods to Italy in Virgil’s Aeneid 2.293, only to be ‘captured’ without a fight now. penates are gods of the household, a very Roman institution and anachronistic in this Theban context. The contempt is enhanced by Pentheus’ spitting p alliteration of profugos posuistis…penates as well as by the rhetorical repetition of hac…hac and most of all by the way in which he describes the men’s past achievements in lengthy glowing clauses (lines 538–9) only to dismiss their current (nunc) madness in five short words (nunc…capi). Marte is ironic: it is metonymic for ‘warfare’ and so means ‘without a fight’ but it recalls the mention of Thebans’ ancestry alluded to in line 531.
540–2 Pentheus now turns to the younger men, asking the same question (mirer understood as repeated from line 538) and asserts his connection with them as being closer to him in age (propior meae (aetati)). He addresses them as acrior aetas (‘a more fierce age-group’) and his use of o shows his high emotion here. Once again he uses neat parallels to show the gap between what they should be (decebat) doing and the reality of what they are in fact doing: they should have arma rather than thyrsos, they should be protected by a galea rather than a feeble fronde. The thyrsus was a ritual staff wreathed in ivy and vine-leaves and used by Bacchants: Pentheus is wrong to dismiss it as a forceful implement – Euripides tells us that it can injure (Bacchae 762–3) and can also work miracles, making water spring from a rock (704–5) and Horace (Odes 2.19.8) describes Bacchus as gravi metuende thyrso (‘one to be feared for his powerful thyrsus’). The fronde referred to was the ivy which was worn by Bacchants to commemorate the use of these leaves by the nymphs of Mount Nysa to protect the infant Bacchus from the anger of his father’s jealous wife Juno.
543 Pentheus appeals to their ancestry; ‘remember from what stock you have been formed’. The Thebans were descended from the Spartoi who sprang from the dragon’s teeth (see 531n. above). The dignity of the sentiment is enhanced by the spondaic phrase qua sitis stirpe and also by the sibilant alliteration.
544–5 ‘Be like the dragon who killed many people’ may sound strange as the dragon was the beast who might have killed their founder Cadmus, but Ovid builds this up in the following lines in a series of contrasts between the young men’s collective feebleness and the dragon’s sole strength on the one hand and then between the animal needs of the one and the virtuous valour of the men. animos is plural, but this need not be pressed too hard: the men are to have ‘spirits’ such as that of the dragon, and the dragon had his ‘tempers’ as he killed people. As events turn out, Pentheus will be the one killed, and the phrase used there (715: ruit omnis in unum) is an ironic reversal – not ‘one against many’ but rather ‘all against one’.
545 The dragon was merely defending his watery abodes: the Thebans now need to defend their reputation. pro means ‘fighting for’ as in pro patria (‘for the fatherland’) to be found on war memorials. Pentheus brings out the contrast by his use of the pronouns ille and vos in this and the following lines.
546 The line begins with the emphatic interiit followed by a pause: it then has a strong imperative in the fifth foot (vincite) as does the following line (pellite). The final syllable of interiit is long in this case (as if it were a contraction of interivit).
547 The contrast here is between the ‘brave’ men killed by the dragon and the ‘effeminates’ whom the young men need to drive out. The adjective mollis means ‘soft’ and is usually applied to women or to effeminate men. The word is grammatically ambiguous but here has to be accusative to give an object to the imperative pellite, as well as balancing fortes. For the rhetoric of ‘womanly men’ cf. Menelaus in Homer Iliad 7.96 (‘you Greek women, no longer men’) – an insult already bandied at them by Thersites in Iliad 2.235.
548 ‘Hold on to the glory of your ancestors’ is a common appeal before a battle, whose intention is to preserve the status quo.
548–50 If Thebes were destined to fall, then let it fall at the hands of men rather than women, so that shame is not added to their defeat. Again, a familiar argument from e.g. Sophocles Antigone 679–80. The language of the sentence is strained: what starts out looking like a conditional (si fata vetabant) where the indicative suggests that si means ‘even if (as a matter of fact) fate was (all along) forbidding…’: only to switch to a wish clause for the present (utinam + imperfect subjunctive) – ‘would that it were siege engines and men who were destroying the walls’. Pentheus uses the masculine language of warfare to stir up his audience: tormenta virique/ moenia…ferrumque ignisque. ‘Fire and sword’ is a common enough combination in rhetoric (cf. Cicero Philippic 11.37, In Catilinam 3.1, Livy 5.14.7) and is made more effective here by the use of auditory imagery in the verb sonarent (‘would resound’), as in Virgil Aeneid 2.705–6.
551–2 Pentheus expresses the sentiment in three different ways: (a) we would not face any charge (of cowardice), (b) we could openly lament our fate and not hide it (in shame), and (c) our tears would not be ones tinged with shame. All three are the second half of the conditional implicit in the previous sentence – ‘if it were men who were destroying the walls, then…’ Pentheus brings out the suffering of defeat (miseri…querenda…lacrimae) to emphasise the attendant shame (crimine…celanda…pudore) which in this case would make the suffering a disgrace as well as a defeat. foret is the alternative form of esset (imperfect subjunctive of sum). Ovid makes the points in different words – essemus sine is similar to carerent, as crimine corresponds to pudore. sors (‘destiny’) picks up fata from line 548.
553–6 After the unreal subjunctives of lines 549–52 with their alternative world where defeat could be seen as noble, Pentheus brings his audience to the reality facing them now (at nunc) with a strong future indicative verb (capientur) and a derisory snort of indignation for the enemy they are facing – a boy (puero), who is not even armed (inermi postponed for effect to the end of the line) who does not even like fighting but rather enjoys dressing up as a woman. For the contemptuous use of puer cf. Mark Antony’s famous jibe at the young Octavian: tu puer, qui omnia nomini debes (‘you boy who owe everything to your name’, quoted Cicero Philippic 13.11).
554–6 The tastes of Bacchus are conveyed in two groups: the three things he does not like (bella…tela…usus equorum, all three the subjects of iuvant) followed by the more expressively described group of four things he does enjoy (madidus…crinis; mollesque coronae; purpura; pictis…aurum), which are also the subjects of iuvant.
555 For the contempt for perfumed hair, especially associated with men from the East, cf. Turnus’ prayer to the gods to let him ‘befoul in the dust his (Aeneas’) hair, curled as it is with hot iron and soaked with myrrh (murraque madentes)’ (Virgil Aeneid 12.99–100; a sentiment also expressed by the African Iarbas in Aeneid 4.215–17). Myrrh is a a fragrant substance produced from the gum of the myrrh-tree. Bacchus came from the East as he explains in the prologue to Euripides’ Bacchae (lines 1–63). crinis is singular here standing for the plural ‘hair’; madidus also means ‘drunk’ and here adds a further implied slur to his character, as the m alliteration supports. Garlands (coronae) were worn as the symbols of military victory but were also worn at drinking-parties: here they are the ‘effeminate’ (molles) party-gear rather than anything manly, but the ‘victorious’ sense is also there in the suggestion that this softie is going to defeat them in battle.
556 purpura is the exotic and hugely expensive cloth stained with the dye taken from the murex shellfish and proverbially costly and decadent. Bacchus completes his outfit with ‘gold woven into his decorated clothes’, with the interlacing word order perhaps reflecting the interweaving of the colours alluded to: Ovid leaves open whether it is the gold which is the decoration of his clothes or whether they are already decorated with other colours and gold is added as a finishing touch. Gold is of course obviously expensive but it is also a soft metal whose presence in the clothing would add colour but no protection to this unarmed (inermi; line 553) boy.
557 actutum is a very rare archaic word meaning ‘at once’ and the line reads as a reminiscence of an earlier poet such as Pacuvius (220–130 BC) who composed his own account of this story in a now lost play entitled Pentheus. The elisions in quid(em) eg(o) actutum are themselves archaic and the word actutum occurs only once in Virgil and only here in Ovid. This, and the parenthetic use of modo vos absistite all make the line more dramatic and effective. The confident final word of the line cogam (‘I will force him’) is rash and soon to be proved false.
558 Bacchus claimed that his father was Jupiter, but Pentheus does not believe this and promises to compel Bacchus to admit his ‘falsely claimed’ (assumptum) father and his ‘invented rites’ (commenta comes from comminiscor), with esse implied going with both terms. Bacchus will prove his true divinity by exacting punishment on the impious king (cf. Euripides Bacchae 47: ‘I will prove that I am a god’).
559 Acrisius also denied that Bacchus was a god and ended up regretting this when the women of Argos were driven mad by the god, although he was more famous for his attempt to defy destiny by imprisoning his daughter Danae in a tower to stop her producing the child who was destined to kill him (see Sophocles Antigone 944–54). Acrisius did not therefore die at the hands of Bacchus, and so although he ceases his resistance to the god later, he is a role-model here for Pentheus, whose death will prevent him from seeing Acrisius’ change of heart.
559–61 Pentheus contrasts himself unfavourably and indignantly with Acrisius: ‘does Acrisius have enough spirit (satis animi) to despise his empty godhead and lock the gates of Argos in his face (venienti is dative of disadvantage: “to him as he came”), but the stranger will terrify Pentheus and the whole of Thebes?’ There is effective juxtaposition here of contemnere vanum (to despise it as being empty) and note also the repeated infinitives in fifth-foot position (contemnere, claudere). Pentheus names himself haughtily in 561, his name balanced by the name of his city at the end of the line, and his alliteration of t suggests his indignation; as does his lack of any connective between the sentence an satis…portas and the next line, where we expect a ‘however’.
562 citi here means ‘quickly’ and is adverbial in sense. Notice the repeated ite showing his impatience. ducem refers to Bacchus who is ‘leading’ the people of Thebes into the confusion described at lines 529–30.
563 A slightly odd phrase, literally meaning: ‘let sluggish delay stay away from my orders’. The adjective segnis is unnecessary but adds force to mora.
564–5 The chorus of opposition to Pentheus is well brought out in the tricolon crescendo of 564, with three increasingly long phrases all beginning hunc: hunc avus – hunc Athamas – hunc cetera turba suorum/ corripiunt. The avus is Cadmus himself, while Athamas was the husband of Ino, the sister of Pentheus’ mother Agaue. The rest of ‘his folk’ (suorum) are summed up as a turba (cf. 529).
565 corripiunt here means ‘rebuke’ or ‘censure’ and the verb is strengthened by its position in enjambement at the start of the line. frustra…laborant go neatly together: for all their efforts (laborant) their words are ‘in vain’.
566 admonitu is a causal ablative: he is made all the keener ‘by their reproof’. The subject of irritatur is rabies in the next line. The metaphor is strong here: the ‘rage’ (rabies) is goaded by being held back (retenta) and grows (crescit), the suggestion being that the opposition made his eagerness all the greater and more inflamed, a device used in Ovid Amores 3.4.11.
567 The very (ipsa) means used to restrain him (moderamina) did more harm than good: literally ‘they caused harm’. The verb nocebant is a summarising imperfect tense after the vivid present indicatives est, irritatur, crescit.
568–71 A good analogy to illustrate the poet’s point, spoken in the first person with the authority of a didactic rather than an epic poet (ego…vidi: cf. for instance Lucretius 6.1044). The king’s rage is increased by obstruction just as a stream is made to flow more violently by being dammed. This use of analogy is familiar from the similes in epic poetry (e.g. Homer Iliad 16.384–93, where the roar of the charging horses was like the thundering of torrential rain) and also from the analogies found in philosophy (e.g. Plato’s image of the democratic state being like a ship where the crew all take turns on the rudder with disastrous results (Republic 488)) and didactic literature (e.g. Lucretius’ image of the old man reluctant to die being like a diner who does not know that it is time to leave the feast (DRN 3.938)).
568 eunti is dative singular of the present participle of eo and refers to the torrent in its movement. qua here means ‘where’, so the whole phrase means ‘where there was nothing obstructing its flow’. The rhythm of the line is powerfully spondaic, helping to convey the solid mass of the torrent.
569 lenius refers to the greater smoothness of the flow: strepitu indicates the noise it makes, the ablative being one of manner.
570 The obstructions in the channel are well evoked here by the use of language: there are two sorts of natural obstacles, wood (trabes) and rocks (saxa) and there is a piling up of ‘restraining’ verbs in the participle obstructa added to the main verb tenebant; also the build-up of consonants in obstructaque saxa well evokes the impediment to the stream.
571 lenius implied that the water flowed as a clear stream: spumeus shows us water as ‘foaming’ and is reinforced in fervens (literally ‘boiling’ and so ‘bubbling up’). The comparative lenius is further answered in the comparative saevior. Ab obice means ‘as a consequence of the blockage’: a(b) often has this meaning of ‘as a result of’.
572–3 The subject of the verb must be the servants whom Pentheus had sent off at line 562. They now return bloodied (cruentati) from their encounter. The order of words for translation is: negarunt domino – quaerenti ubi Bacchus esset – (se) vidisse Bacchum: ‘to their master, when he asked them where Bacchus was, they replied that they had not seen Bacchus’. The word esset is imperfect subjunctive as part of the indirect question construction after quaerenti.
574 The servants bring in Acoetes, whose narrative will occupy lines 582–691. He is described as a ‘companion and a servant of the rites’ and his arrival parallels the scene in Pacuvius’ play Pentheus where the poet apparently produced Acoetes as the Bacchic worshipper brought in for questioning; in Euripides’ Bacchae the god himself is brought before the furious king who does not believe that he is divine at all. tamen here picks up the previous line: they did not even ‘see’ Bacchus but they have captured this man here (hunc).
575 manibus…ligatis is an ablative absolute construction but also indicates the state he was in – ‘with his hands bound behind his back’.
576 At this stage the man is simply quendam: his identity will soon be revealed in great detail. The phrase Tyrrhena gente means ‘of Etruscan origin’: the tradition (Herodotus 1.94) was that the Etruscans derived from Lydian refugees and so the term here means ‘Lydian’ as is shown when Acoetes reveals that he was from Maeonia in Lydia (583), just as Dionysus tells Pentheus that he was from Lydia in Euripides Bacchae 464. The participle secutum agrees with quendam and governs sacra dei: this man was a follower of the rites of the god.
577 Before he speaks, Pentheus stares at the unnamed prisoner and the force of the gaze is brought out by the initial use of the present indicative aspicit followed by the detail of his eyes ‘which anger had made terrifying’. tremendos is a gerundive – literally ‘to be feared’.
578 The details of the poena are not spelled out here – in Euripides Bacchae (356–7) the king threatens death by stoning. vix often means ‘with difficulty’ as in the case of Silenus finding it hard to keep his seat on the donkey at Ars Amatoria 1.544: here it is the king’s reluctance to put off the punishment of the man which makes it hard for him to ask him for his story – a hesitant reluctance which is perhaps brought out by the slow spondees of et quamquam poenae.
579 The two uses of the vocative case of the future participle (periture…dature: ‘you who are going to perish…and provide.’) at either end of the line and the intensive use of o are marks of the king’s haughty and grandiose way of speaking. Note also the separation of tua from morte and the eloquent use of documenta (from doceo (‘I teach’)) and meaning here something like ‘lessons’, along with the emphatic position of morte at the start of the following line after the enjambement and followed by a solemn pause after the end of the king’s words (ait).
580–1 Pentheus cannot simply ask: ‘who are you?’ but has to tell the man (notice the king’s peremptory imperative ede) to give his name and that of his parents and his homeland. He then switches to an indirect question (‘tell me why…’). moris novi is something of a contradiction in terms as mos usually refers to the established ancestral custom (often termed mos maiorum (‘the customs of our ancestors’)) and here we have a ‘new’ custom. The word novus often signified ‘dangerously new-fangled’ as in the phrase res novae for ‘revolution’ or ‘sedition’ and here the word has exactly this sense in terms of religious innovation.
582 Pentheus has eyes which are terrifying (577) and yet Acoetes is ‘free of fear’ and his tale is told in a leisurely way full of homely details of the man’s childhood and his astronomical knowledge. The figure of Acoetes is interesting as he appeared in Pacuvius’ play on this subject in exactly this role, although there is no evidence that he narrated the tale of the sailors and this is probably Ovid’s own invention as a means of linking his two narratives together. The tale of Bacchus’ being taken by sailors who then pay for their impiety had been told in the seventh of the Homeric Hymns.
583 Acoetes answers Pentheus varying the order of the questions: he gives his name and then his patria (Maeonia was in the kingdom of Lydia, in what is now Turkey) and finally his parentage. The low social standing of Acoetes is something of which he is far from ashamed, and the following lines are expressive of the romantic idea of primitivity which Romans often expressed. The term plebe is very Roman and would be anachronistic in this Theban context.
584–5 Acoetes’ father had no lands to leave to his son; the subject of the main verb reliquit is pater in line 584 and the word order is deliberately confused in a device known as hyperbaton. The order for translation is: pater non reliquit mihi arva quae duri iuvenci colerent lanigerosve greges (‘father left me no fields for tough bullocks to cultivate, nor wool-bearing flocks’). The subjunctive colerent expresses purpose in the sense of ‘fields for bullocks to cultivate’. armenta signifies cattle as opposed to the ‘wool-bearing flocks’ of sheep; lanigeros is an effective compound adjective already used by Ennius, Accius and Lucretius but is here no mere idle epithet – the sheep would have been useful to provide Acoetes with wool if he had had any, just as the (non-existent) cattle could have tilled the (non-existent) fields.
586 The force of et ipse is that father was poor like Acoetes, the word pauper being stressed by its position at the start of the line and the sentence.
586–7 This is a spendid description of the skill of fishing: a matter of tricking (decipere) the fish with a line (lino), hooks (hamis) and rod (calamo) and then landing them (ducere) as they flail (salientes). There were other methods of catching fish (with nets, or spears) but this method suits the skilful father of Acoetes.
588 His skill was his income – a neat way of saying that he owed his living to his abilities as a fisherman. The word ars frames the line as being the only thing which father had to hand on to his son.
589–90 The object of accipe is postponed to the following line and the end of the sentence, and quas (literally ‘which’) here means something more like ‘whatever’. studium signifies both enthusiasm and application, and successor is the legal term for one who succeeds to property through inheritance, as is the more obvious term heres (‘heir’). The verb reliquit is repeated from 585.
590–1 Acoetes’ wistful sadness is well brought out by the ‘legacy’ of his father – water. The position of unum hoc and the heavy spondees of 591, along with the emotional elision of un(um) hoc poss(um) appellare is moving, as is the ending of the sentence with the key word paternum.
592 Acoetes longed for variety in his fishing and was clearly impatient with being ‘stuck always on the same rocks’; the arid toughness of the rocks symbolising his life.
593–4 The order for translation is: addidici flectere regimen carinae dextra moderante (‘I also learned the knowledge of turning the steering of a ship with my guiding right hand’). The prefix ad- conveys the sense that he was ‘extending’ his knowledge as a fisherman, while the terms regimen and moderante both convey the idea of control.
594–5 Sailing the seas required knowledge of the stars and Acoetes demonstrates this now. The ‘Goat Star’ Capella was said to be Amalthea transported to the heavens after her death; as Amalthea had been born in Olenus, the star is called ‘Olenian’. This star rises at the start of the rainy season in October and so is named here the ‘rainy star’ (pluviale sidus).
595 Taygetes is one of the Pleiades, while the Hyades are a group of five stars in Taurus whose name in Greek means ‘the raining ones’ and who marked the start and end of the rainy season. The original Hyades had been the nurses of Bacchus. Arctos is the Great Bear. All these stars denote rainy and stormy weather and showed Acoetes looking out for his own welfare and avoiding the storms which could have wrecked his ship and cost him his life; he did this himself (note the first-person verb notavi) and he did so from observation (oculis) and not from mere hearsay or books.
596 The theme of self-protection continues in Acoetes’ learning of the ‘abodes of the winds and the ports which were suitable for ships’. The winds were said to be enclosed in Aeolia, where their master Aeolus released them at intervals as described in Homer Odyssey 10.21–2, Virgil Aeneid 1.50–64; the meaning here is that Acoetes learned where the winds came from and where they were most likely to spring up and cause him trouble.
597 Acoetes was journeying to Delos and found himself by chance (forte) putting in to Chios (‘the shores of the Chian land’). His purpose in going to Delos is not discussed but we get the impression that he is no longer a mere fisherman and that he is engaged in larger trade with his new skills of seafaring.
598 The two verbs applicor and adducor are both passive in form but ‘middle’ in sense, meaning ‘I put in at’ and ‘I bring myself’, the verb of motion with its prepositional prefix (ad-) letting the accusative litora stand without any preposition. His self-confidence is again stressed with the words dextris…remis here meaning something like ‘skilful use of the oars’ and showing his awareness that landing a ship could be a dangerous business if the sailor were not experienced.
599 Acoetes describes his disembarkation with vivid present tenses and lively vocabulary: the jump from the ship (saltus) into the shallows (the jump was ‘light’ (levis)) and the sailor then lets himself sink into (immittor) the wet sand (udae harenae).
600 Acoetes put into Chios for the night: for all his star-gazing skills, he still prefers not to sail in the darkness and he gets up as soon as it is light. The rosy glow of dawn (rubescere) recalls the ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ of Homer (e.g. Odyssey 2.1). Acoetes’ impatience to get moving is conveyed by the paratactic series of simple verbs – coeperat, exsurgo – showing that once dawn ‘had started’ he gets up.
601–2 Acoetes has 20 men as his crew (see line 687) to whom he gives orders. He bids them bring fresh water (latices recentes) and shows them where to find it (undas here means the spring of fresh water rather than the ‘waves’ of the sea). The subjunctive ducat is one of purpose – the way which was to lead them.
603 While the others were fetching water, Acoetes himself (ipse) goes up to a high mound to gauge the wind. He needs to predict what the wind will do later on and so uses the expressive verb promittat (‘promises’) to see if it will take him to Delos rather than blow him elsewhere.
604 The eagerness of Acoetes is well conveyed in the three strong verbs here (prospicio, voco, repeto), as well as by the complex hyperbaton whereby he looks from the high mound and gauges the wind while he is there.
605 ‘Here we are, look!’. Opheltes is one of 11 sailors whom Ovid names in this tale.
606 Take utque putat after praedam. Opheltes got some ‘booty – as he thought…’
607 The description of the ‘boy with young girl’s appearance’ is different from the Homeric Hymn which describes him as being ‘like a young man’ but helps to explain why the sailors thought he would be an easy prey, especially when they decide in the next line that he is sleepy and/or drunk. The paradoxical mixture of genders is well stressed by the juxtaposition of virginea puerum.
608 ‘Heavy with unmixed wine and sleep’ helps to explain why the sailors were so confident of taking him but is ironically apt for the god of wine who has no need to fear any mortal foe. titubare is a good word to express his ‘staggering’ footsteps as he finds it hard (vix) to follow Opheltes.
609–10 Acoetes, like a good captain, is ahead of his men in intelligence and sees that this is no mere mortal. He assesses the boy’s dress (cultum), appearance (faciem) and movement (gradum) and deduces that there was nothing which could be thought to be mortal about any of them, the subjunctive posset being potential (‘could’). This is possibly hindsight on the part of the narrator, and Acoetes does not specify how he came to this correct conclusion.
611–12 Acoetes stresses that he told his sailors this important realisation at once with the spondaic phrase et sensi et dixi, emphasising his meaning with the sharp chiastic repetition (numen…corpore…corpore numen). The word numen derives from the word for ‘nodding’ and indicates the divine power which can change things simply by a nod of the head.
613 ‘Whoever you are’ is a common enough phrase in prayers to gods when we do not know their name but are sure of their power. faveas, adsis, des are all second person singular subjunctives forming polite requests (‘please would you…’). Humans seek the favour of the gods as their disfavour is often catastrophic, as has been shown in many stories in this poem already. laboribus indicates ‘endeavours’ as well as ‘toils’.
614 ‘Forgive these men’ – for they know not what they do, implies Acoetes here. The men immediately reply with a shrug: ‘stop praying on our behalf’. mitto + infinitive is common with the sense ‘give up (doing something)’.
615–16 The speaker was Dictys, who is now briefly described as a brilliant crew-member. The subtext of the lines is however that for all his swiftness as a sailor he was fatally slow as a judge of disguised gods. quo is ablative of comparison with ocior (‘swifter than whom’) and the sentence thus means: ‘than whom no one was swifter at climbing the topmost yard-arms and sliding back down after grasping the rope’. The infinitive ascendere is ‘epexegetic’ (i.e. explanatory) with ocior (‘swifter “at” climbing’), while prenso rudente is both ablative absolute (‘the rope having been grasped’) and also instrumental (he slid down using the grasped rope).
617–19 Epic poetry likes lists and catalogues, going back to Homer’s ‘catalogue of ships’ in Iliad 2, recalled in the gathering of Italian forces in Virgil Aeneid 7. Earlier in this book (206–25) we had the wonderful catalogue of Actaeon’s dogs. Here Ovid gives us a brief list of the crew members who gave their approval, linked by the anaphora of hoc…hoc. The purpose of this brief list is to give the detail which makes Acoetes’ tale more authoritative, and also to excuse his inability to stand against so many opponents in his view of Bacchus.
617 Melanthus’ job was to be forward lookout, and there is a nice irony in the fact that Melanthus (whose name in Greek means ‘black flower’) has fair hair (flavus).
618–19 Alcimedon has another significant name: in Greek this would mean ‘strong ruler’ and the name stresses the force of his opposition. Epopeus (whose name in Greek means ‘watcher-out’) was what we might call the cox: he used his voice to give the rhythm (modum) and the intervals between the strokes (here termed ‘rest’ (requiem) rather as a break between musical notes is termed a ‘rest’). The regular pattern of: rest – stroke – rest – stroke etc. is well brought out by the repeated -que in requiemque modumque. Acoetes nicely has the rhythm and the rest being given to the oars (remis) rather than the oarsmen themselves (although obviously it is the latter who are meant) and is the ‘encourager of their spirits’, hortator being the term used in this context for the cox.
620 Rather than name all the other crew, Acoetes summarises by telling us that the others all felt the same, the verb to be understood being probant. The moral point is then drawn by the statement of their base motive: ‘so blind was their lust for booty’, and the use of assonance of ae and alliteration of c, p, and d helps to underline this key point. Blindness is a theme which is developed throughout book 3, from Tiresias’ all-seeing blindness to the blindness of the servants who did not see Bacchus (573) to the blindness of Pentheus’ mother as she murders her own son.
621–2 Acoetes stands on his authority and stands up to the crowd. ‘No matter (tamen) – I will not allow this pinewood ship to be defiled with its holy cargo – I have the greatest authority in this matter’. pinum literally means ‘pine tree’ and is a good use of synecdoche as the material which made the ship is used to stand for the ship itself; and Acoetes’ authority is shown in his confident use of the future indicative perpetiar. The phrasing of sacro violari pondere is deliberately shocking: what he means is that he will not allow them to kidnap this god and so violate the ship by acting in an impious manner, but he expresses this with the paradox that the ‘sacred weight’ will ‘pollute’ the ship.
623 The verbs are in the vivid present tense as Acoetes tells his exciting story and the clash of the two men is well brought out by the juxtaposition of obsisto. furit. The aditus was the ‘way in’ for the ship and so would be something like a ‘gangplank’. furit is a good word to use here: it conveys both the rage felt at the captain’s obstruction and also has a sense of ‘madness’ which is what their behaviour towards the god amounts to.
624–5 Lycabas had ‘form’ for violence: he had been expelled from his Lydian home for murder and was sailing the seas in exile. exilium and poenam are in apposition to each other – the punishment consisted in the exile. Tuscus means ‘Etruscan’ but here means ‘Lydian’ as the ancients believed that Etruria was colonised from Lydia (see 576n.). Ominously he is going to suffer even more in the next few lines.
626–7 Lycabas assaults Acoetes as he ‘stands his ground’ (resto means resisto): he ‘shattered my throat with his young fist’. The adjective iuvenali suggests that Lycabas was younger and stronger than Acoetes and had the strength and the impetuosity of youth; the violence is brought out by the u assonance of guttura pugno and by the enjambement as the verb rupit is highlighted at the end of the phrase but the start of the next line.
627–8 Lycabas ‘would have sent [Acoetes] hurled into the sea’; the sentence is a remote conditional in past time, explaining how it was that Acoetes managed to stay on board. excussum misisset has a lot of powerful sibilant alliteration (expressive of the anger involved) and is a good example of the juxtaposition of strong verbs: excutio is the word commonly used for throwing overboard, and ending the line with two monosyllables si non makes the narrator sound out of breath as he no doubt was after the punch. amens is formed from the ‘alpha-privative’ (or negating ‘a’) added to the word mens (‘mind’) and so means ‘out of one’s mind’, ‘stunned’. The point of the word here is that Acoetes grasped the rope (fune) without even thinking about it, his salvation being shown in the two words at either end of the line (haesissem…retentus).
630 Acoetes had been right all along of course – ‘for it had been Bacchus’ – and now Bacchus stirs and speaks. Earlier on (608) Acoetes had described Bacchus as behaving like one who is drunk or sleepy; he now returns to this theme, but veluti followed by the subjunctive solutus sit shows that he was not in fact asleep or drunk but only behaving as if he were awakened by the shouting, the drowsiness well conveyed by the s alliteration of solutus/ sit sopor.
631 aque is in fact a + que (‘and from’); attaching que to a single-syllable preposition is unusual. The sense-organs are of course largely in the head, but the ancients commonly believed that the seat of understanding and thought is in fact in the breast rather than the brain (e.g. Lucretius DRN 3.140).
632–3 Bacchus fires four questions at the men, each beginning with a different question word, and developing in sophistication (almost as if he really were just waking up) from basic ‘what are you doing?’ and ‘what [is this] shouting?’ to ‘by what means, sailors, have I arrived here?’ and ‘where are you preparing to take me?’ ops means literally ‘power’ or ‘ability’ and the question qua ope suggests that Bacchus is aware that they seem to have overcome a god – for the moment. The tone of the questions suggests that Bacchus is in their hands (‘where are you taking me?’) whereas in fact of course they are soon going to be in his hands.
634–5 Proreus is the Greek word for the bow-man or forward lookout – the role of Melanthus (prorae tutela; 617). He now speaks patronisingly to Bacchus and promises to take him wherever he would like to go. This is obviously a lie – sailors have their voyages planned with a destination in advance and would not be able to make any detour to suit a stranger on board. It insults the intelligence of the god and will not do the crew any favours. The order of translation is: ede quos portus velis contingere (‘tell us which ports you would like to reach’). sistere is the second person singular future passive of sisto and so is a strong statement – ‘you will be landed’ – while petita agrees adjectivally with terra (‘on the desired land’).
636–7 Naxos needs no preposition – like all small islands, towns and cities. Naxon is the Greek accusative ending of Naxos. Naxos was a centre of worship of the god Bacchus, having been seen by some as his birthplace and as the place where Bacchus rescued the princess Ariadne after Theseus had left her there. Bacchus offers the sailors hospitality in his domus there, like a good Roman or Greek host. The god produces a neat sentence here, with mihi domus est balanced by vobis erit hospita tellus.
638 fallaces agrees with the subject of the verb (the crew) and describes them as ‘tricksters’ or ‘liars’ who are willing to swear by the sea and all the gods when they know that they have no intention of doing as they promise. For sailors to perjure themselves by the sea is foolish in the extreme and is a mark of their madness here.
639 fore is the contracted future infinitive of sum: the sailors swear ‘that it will be so’. The crew now order Aceotes to set sail – even though he is their master they have now taken charge of the vessel. The ship is pictae as many ancient ships were – painted with bands of colour and sometimes a pair of eyes. Acoetes tells a good story and fills it with this sort of vivid detail.
640 dextra here is ablative and means ‘on the right’ in both uses of the word in this line; lintea do means ‘I direct the sails’. Acoetes is now steering the ship in the direction the god wants.
641–2 There is major textual problem here. If pro se quisque stands then it has to mean ‘each man, shouting for himself, said…’ and we have to imagine the crew shouting quid facis… in chorus. The manuscripts read timet and this has been emended to tenet to make better sense. demens…furor (‘you madman!…what madness…’) is ironic here as it is the crew who are mad rather than Acoetes.
642–3 Most of them gesture silently with a nod, others whisper into his ear (aure here means literally ‘using my ear’ but should be translated as if it were in aurem).
644 Acoetes’ instant reaction is well brought out by a rapid dactylic line. obstipui is a strong verb: ‘I was struck dumb’. Acoetes cannot resist the rest of the crew but he refuses to be the instrument of their folly and tells them to let somebody else take over the helm (moderamina). aliquis is purposefully vague – ‘somebody’ means ‘anybody at all so long as it is not me’.
645 sceleris artisque is a hendiadys; ‘I detached myself from being the servant of their crime and my skill’ means that he refused to allow them to use his ars in pursuit of their scelus.
646 The unanimity of the condemnation of Acoetes is well brought out by the juxtaposition cunctis totumque and their incessant clamour is stressed by the repetition of similar ideas in the verbs increpor…immurmurat: the threatening force of their anger is also well conveyed in the heavy spondees of a cunctis totumque imm-.
647 scilicet (‘I suppose’) is heavily sarcastic here, as Aethalion takes over the helm stating that ‘all our safety is placed in you alone’, with the sibilant alliteration perhaps helping to show his scorn. The sarcasm is naturally misplaced irony, as subsequent events show and it turns out that their only hope of safety was to listen to Acoetes. The word order stresses the meaning: omnis in uno (‘all…in one’).
648–9 Aethalion’s actions are swift and decisive: there are four verbs in the present tense in quick succession (ait…subit…explet…petit) and his contrary nature is highlighted by his steering towards the direction ‘opposite to’ (diversa) Naxos, leaving the supposed destination behind (relicta in the ablative agreeing with Naxo as an ablative absolute).
650 The whole sentence shows the god of the theatre at his playful best: Bacchus mocks (illudens) the sailors by feigning surprise and helplessness, making himself look like (similis) one who was weeping (flenti is dative singular of the presente participle of fleo), ‘as if’ (tamquam) he had just noticed (modo senserit) at last their deceit. The irony is neat as the god responds to their deceit with deceit of his own.
651 There is effective p alliteration here as the ‘boy’ blubbers and stammers his feigned sadness.
652–5 Bacchus makes an impassioned short speech full of indignant questions, keeping up his role as the helpless victim. The balanced repetition of non haec mihi litora…non haec mihi terra in similar metrical positions in consecutive lines, the framing of line 653 with the parallel verbs promisistis…rogata est, then the double pairs of quo…quae and si…si…along with the oxymora of puerum iuvenes and multi…unum (arranged chiastically (A-B-B-A)) as he spells out the obvious unfairness of the situation. The main verb promisistis (‘you promised’) takes non haec litora as its object, while non haec terra is the subject of the passive verb rogata est. quo agrees with facto (literally ‘by what deed?’) and both iuvenes and multi are in agreement with the ‘you’ which is the subject of fallitis.
656 The narrator wept and his sorrow is stressed by the spondaic rhythm of iamdudum flebam as well as by the juxtaposition of flebam: lacrimas. Acoetes’ tears are summarily mocked by the crew – ridet being stressed by its position in enjambement at the start of the line, when the ‘unholy crew’ (manus impia) laugh at him and sail quickly away, their haste well brought out by the phrasing impellit aequora (‘[the crew] strikes the waves’) properantibus remis (‘with hurrying oars’), the interlaced word order itself suggesting the hurried motion of the oars.
658 The order for translation is: adiuro nunc tibi per ipsum [deum] (‘I swear to you by the god himself’). praesens when used of a god means ‘present and attentive to our prayers’ and then also ‘effective’. There is no god more praesens than that god (Bacchus).
659–60 Acoetes means that his words are as true as they seem to be untrue – a typical Ovidian paradox. tam…quam are correlatives (‘so true…as they are…’) used here with some concessive force (‘I am telling a tale as true as it seems beyond belief’). The language is compressed: veri fides meaning ‘faith in their truthfulness’. Acoetes forcefully repeats the pronoun tibi to the king and his alliteration of t (in tam…tibi) shows his excitement and certainty.
660–1 Bacchus now starts the transformation which makes this tale a fitting part of the Metamorphoses. The ship stood still on the waters just as if the ‘dry shipyard’ (siccum navale) held it fast, with the spondees of siccum navale suggestive of the static ship.
662 admirantes means ‘in their amazed surprise’ and the sluggish spondaic rhythm of the line (with every syllable heavy except for the expected dactylic fifth foot) well conveys their inability to move the static ship for all their efforts. verbere is used elsewhere of flogging people and here nicely depicts the men ‘flogging’ the oars against the water, their tenacity conveyed in perstant.
663 The oars are not working so they try to get the wind to move the ship by unfurling the sail. deducunt shows the men ‘unfurling’ the sail from the yardarm and the ‘twin power’ (gemina ope) is the use of oars and sails combined. currere is their wishful thinking: they will be lucky to move at all, let alone to ‘run’ especially when the ivy ‘impedes’ them in the next line.
664 The ship now disastrously begins to sprout the foliage appropriate to Bacchus. Ivy (hederae) clogs the oars and creeps up to the sails – and ivy was worn on the heads of worshippers of Bacchus. impediunt is stressed at the start of the line and the sentence, balanced and amplified by serpunt in the same position in the next line, its force being further enhanced by the enjambement. The entwining movement of the plant is well conveyed by the words nexu recurvo serpunt (‘they creep with twisting coil’) and the weight of the clusters (gravidis corymbis) helps to keep the ship still and prevent it moving. The verb distinguunt expresses the visual ‘decoration’ of the ship by the sudden growths.
666–7 ipse is Bacchus himself who now shows himself for what he is by his transformation from a boy into the god he was all along. racemiferis (formed from racemus + fero = ‘cluster-bearing’) is an impressive compound adjective, as grandiose as the god who now appears, and the god sports grapes (uvis) on his forehead. circumdatus (literally ‘girdled’) takes frontem as an accusative of respect (‘wreathed as to his forehead’). The helpless boy is now armed with a spear, suitably wreathed with vine leaves as befits the god of wine, which he brandishes.
668–9 Bacchus is often seen accompanied by tigers and other wild animals, and this terrifying sight is well brought out here by the spondaic rhythm of the start of line 668, as Acoetes recalls this awesome part of his experience. Bacchus here has the retinue of tigers, lynxes and panthers but they are all unreal images (simulacra inania – the term which Lucretius (DRN 4.994–5) uses for dreams). They are convincing enough to terrify the sailors, but are just another aspect of the theatricality of this god and his ability to conjure images out of nowhere. The three sorts of animals are described in a tricolon crescendo, with tigers (one word) followed by lynxes (three words) and then the panthers given an entire line to themselves. The panthers are ‘spotted’ (pictarum) and again the word suggests the artificial nature of these images; the Greek word pantherarum unusually for Ovid takes up the whole of the final two feet of line 669, giving a fifth foot spondee and having a very ‘Alexandrian’ sound. The device is normally reserved for Greek loan words (as here), such as that in Cicero’s spontaneous hexameter (Letters to Atticus 7.2.1):
flavit ab Epiro flavissimus Onchesmites
670 The men leapt up from the rowing benches, ‘whether it was madness which made this happen or fear [I do not know]’. The verb switches to the perfect tense exsiluere denoting the rapid action completed in an instant, with the verb promoted to the first word of the line and the sentence and the dactylic rhythm of the line showing the rapid movement of the men.
671 The men now begin their metamorphosis into dolphins and Acoetes narrates the transformation with tremendous linguistic skill.
672 Medon began to grow dark ‘in body’ and to be bent (flecti) as the ‘curve of his spine was forced out’ – that is, as his back was forced up to curve sharply.
673 Lycabas ‘begins [to speak] to this [man]’ and describes his change as miracula (a thing to be wondered at, but here something like ‘monster’).
674 While he was speaking (loquenti) the nose was already rounded (panda) and the gaping jaws (rictus) broad (lati), with their owner in the possessive dative case (loquenti being the dative masculine singular of the present participle of loquor).
675 ‘The hardened skin took on scales’ – an incorrect assertion, as dolphins do not in fact have scales but have soft skin, but effective for the hard consonants (q, c, d, t) in the Latin as the skin forms the hard surface. The imperfect tenses of the verbs erat and trahebat are striking: these events were happening while Acoetes was still speaking (loquenti) and so the effect is of the events unfolding frighteningly almost in ‘real time’.
676 Libys is trying to twist the oars out of the water, sliding the oar-handles into the body of the ship and keeping the blades well clear of the sea to stop them obstructing the natural floating of the vessel, and the effort involved is well brought out by the spondees of obstantes dum vult. ‘But while Libys is trying (literally “wanting”) to ship the oars which are in the way’.
677 He saw his hands ‘jump back’ into a small compass, and now saw that they were not hands any more but rather ‘fins’ (pinnas); Acoetes’ use of the verb vidit is especially striking as this takes us right into the first-hand experience of Lycabas himself. Line 678 is wonderfully balanced as Libys struggles to understand what has happened to him: he first realises that they are not ‘hands’ any more and then sees that they can be called fins, the repeated word manus showing his shocked disbelief (cf. the repeated bracchia in lines 679–80).
679 After Medon, Lycabas and Libys we now have a nameless ‘other man’ trying to work with arms which no longer exist. dare bracchia indicates ‘stretching out his arms’, while the ropes he is stretching towards are well described as intortos (‘plaited’ from intorqueo both in the simple sense that rope is made from plaiting something such as hemp, as well as the new plaits created by the ivy). Notice his frustration and surprise when the arms in line 679 are not arms in line 680.
680–1 After we have heard that he no longer had arms his body is described as trunco (‘limbless’, ‘mutilated’) and he leaps into the sea. repandus means ‘flattened’ and probably refers to the flattened face as Pacuvius had coined the compound adjective repandirostrum (‘flattened beaked’) to describe dolphins.
681 novissima cauda means ‘the end of his tail’. A falx was a sickle and so falcata means ‘sickle-shaped’ or ‘curved’, although the simile in the next line suggests a broader curve than would be found in a sickle.
682 An effective and brief simile to compare the shape of the tail with the half-moon. qualia takes cornua and dimidiae lunae go together (‘just as the horns of the half-moon’).
683–4 The men now look like dolphins and they now also begin to behave like them. The ‘leaping’ (saltus) in 683 is presumably the remaining crew members leaping into the sea but the image elides nicely with the leaping of dolphins already in the water. multaque aspergine rorant (‘they are drenched with much spray’) as they sink and then they re-emerge (note the repetition of ‘again and again’ in iterum redeuntque…rursus, with rursus deriving originally from reversus). The gradual emerging from the water is evoked by the spondaic rhythm of emergunt, and the following dactyls suggest the rapid dancing above the waves.
685–6 in chori…speciem means ‘looking like a dancing group’. The men were shocked to be transformed but they now show the happy playful behaviour always associated with dolphins: they ‘play’ (ludunt) and their bodies are ‘frisky’ (lasciva) as they ‘toss them about’ (iactant) and snort the sea water out of their spreading nostrils. acceptum can mean ‘pleasing’ as well as being the past participle of accipio (and so ‘taken in’), which adds to the imagery of pleasure and joy in this passage.
687 modo – ‘only a short time ago’. de viginti (‘out of the twenty’) shows the size of the original crew (‘for that is how many that vessel was carrying’).
688 The singular verb and the emphatic final word solus are eloquent in showing how only Acoetes survived the transformation intact.
688–9 Acoetes stresses the fear and cold: pavidum gelidoque trementem (agreeing with a me implied) where the ‘trembling’ is a result of the cold as well as the fear, and the cold is itself the paleness of shock; the phrase corpore vixque meo is wonderful: the body is ‘scarcely my own’ any more. The reassuring god however rewards his loyalty and gets his voyage to Naxos after all. There is a nice poignancy in the choice of excute for ‘shake off (fear)’ as this is the word used often of throwing people overboard (627).
690 tene here means ‘make for’ and is short for cursum tene. delatus must mean ‘borne (by the winds)’.
691 Acoetes is now a firm devotee as is shown by the repeated sacris…sacra, the respectful naming of the god in adjectival form Bacchea, and the switch from the perfect accessi (‘I joined’) to the present continuous frequento (‘I celebrate them assiduously’). We are not told how Acoetes made the journey from Naxos to Thebes; but it is clear that he now follows the rites of Bacchus wherever they go and so it is not implausible for him to come to Thebes to help set up what were ‘unknown’ (ignota; 530) rites at that time.
692 After the lively narrative, Pentheus responds with regal haughtiness, describing the detailed story as ‘lengthy ramblings’ (longis ambagibus) and seeming to feel that he is owed gratitude for lending Acoetes his ears.
693 Pentheus’ motive for listening is explained: so that the ‘wrath could spend its strength by the passage of time’. This seems unlikely in view of Pentheus’ next instructions.
694–5 The violence of these words suggests that his ira had lost none of its vires. praeceps usually means ‘headlong, head-over-heels’ and (after rapite) the image is of a man being hustled roughly and quickly forwards. crucio is to ‘torment, torture’ and the tormentis are unspecified instruments of torture: the ‘Stygian night’ is death; Styx was one of the rivers in the Underworld. The sequence of words is one of hideous cruelty: praecipitem rapite…cruciataque diris…tormentis Stygiae demittite nocti all conveying the wrath and the savagery of the king (corpora is plural for singular here), and the dactylic rhythm of line 694 well conveys the rapid fire of his cruel orders.
696 Acoetes is locked in prison awaiting his torture – a punishment which he of course does not deserve as he is defending the divinity of Bacchus. abstractus tells us that he was ‘dragged away’ and the prison is one that cannot be broken into or out of (solidis).
697–8 The ‘cruel tools of the commanded execution, the iron and the fires, are being prepared’. The ‘fire and sword’ theme is Pentheus’ typical way of acting as he stated in line 550.
699–700 ‘Of their own accord’ (sponte sua) is stated twice at the start of the two consecutive lines and is not entirely accurate of course, as we know that the god is behind this rescue. This is how the story goes and the narrator even distances himself from the tale he is telling with the phrase fama est (‘the story is told that…’), suggesting that this is what was told after the event. One almost pictures Acoetes cowering in his cell with eyes tightly shut. nullo solvente is ablative absolute with some concessive force (‘although nobody untied them’), and we have to understand esse with lapsas.
701 Pentheus stands on his nobility of race, and the promotion of the spondaic verb perstat to the start of the line and the sentence well conveys his fixedness of purpose. He is called ‘son of Echion’ as he rises to the challenge of going in person (ipse) rather than sending anybody else to sort out the Bacchic rites.
702–3 ‘where Cithaeron – chosen for the celebration of the rites – resounded with the singing and the bright voices of the Bacchants’. Cithaeron was suitable for the rites as it was near Thebes, and it will be ideal for what is to come in the following lines. Ad + gerundive signifies purpose – this is why Cithaeron had been chosen. The assonance and alliteration of Cithaeron/ cantibus et clara bacchantum voce sonabat well convey the ringing sound and clear singing of the worshippers, a sound which inflames Pentheus’ wrath further.
704–7 Ovid uses a brief epic simile comparing the effect of the Bacchants’ singing on the king to the effect of a trumpet-blast on a fierce horse; both animal and king become all the more eager for the fight. The obvious point of comparison is the music and the effect on the savage beast/king, but there is also a clear ironic subtext as the horse is carrying an attacker whereas Pentheus will shortly by hunted down as victim by these singers. The simile is perhaps reminiscent of Homer’s image of Paris going out to equally undistinguished fighting (Iliad 6.504–11) compared with a horse desperate to gallop out.
704 An expressive line, framed by words of sound (fremit…canoro) with aere (literally ‘bronze’) here standing for the bronze trumpet by metonymy but also well placed next to bellicus as bronze has a warlike tone.
705 The tubicen is the man who makes the tuba ‘sing’ (cano). amorem may seem an odd word to use here, but is apt for the horse which ‘takes on’ the passion for fighting from the sound of the instrument.
706 Pentheus is the object of the verb movit, the subject being the aether which has been ictus by the lengthy ‘howlings’. ululatibus is a very onomatopoeic word for the ritual noises, and ictus is foreshadowing the way in which Pentheus himself will shortly be ‘struck’ by more than music. The spondaic rhythm of sic ictus longis draws attention to this key moment in the story when his anger is rekindled by the noise, with the strong verb movit enhanced by its position in enjambement at the start of the next line.
707 There is a nice combination of verbs here showing the sequence of events: hearing (audito) causes the anger of the king to ‘re-glow’, the repeated c sounds in clamore recanduit also showing the noise.
708 The death of Pentheus takes place halfway up a mountain. There is a clearing surrounded by woods but which itself is free of trees which might obscure the view either for Pentheus watching the Bacchants or for them seeing him. The line is taken up with two phrases in the ablative, the one being local (‘on the middle point of a mountain’) and the second being the absolute construction (‘with woods encircling its edges’). The line neatly and economically sets the scene and the sense of being trapped (with the woods surrounding the hapless king) is ominous and apt.
709 purus ab means here ‘free from,’ ‘clear of’ and also has the sense that this was in some ways a sacred and pure place, soon to be defiled by the unholy presence of Pentheus with his oculis profanis. spectabilis means ‘able to be overlooked’ and also ‘worth looking at’ – strengthened by undique (‘on all sides’) – and helps to explain how this all came about: the topography helps Pentheus to see the women but it also means that they can see him, and he was something they were glad to see.
710–11 The sense is: hic mater prima videt illum oculis profanis cernentem sacra – ‘at this the mother was the first to see him seeing the rites with his uninitiated eyes’. Note the sharp oxymoron of sacra profanis and the neat irony of the mother seeing Pentheus seeing the rites in which she was taking part. The word profanus means originally ‘in front of the sanctuary’ (pro + fanum) and so comes to mean ‘uninitiated’ and gives us our word ‘profane’.
711–13 The tricolon crescendo of prima…prima…PRIMA is very effective, especially as it builds up the tension; we do not know who is meant by the adjective until line 713, when Agaue is described simply as ‘mother’ and the word mater given the greatest possible emphasis by being placed at the end of the sentence but at the start of a line. Euripides in the Bacchae (line 1114) also has the lead role in the murder of her son being taken by his mother Agaue who has been put into a hallucinatory trance by Dionysus/Bacchus.
711 insano concita cursu – ‘whipped up in a mad charge’: the alliteration adds to the violence of the attack about to happen and the word insano helps to emphasise the madness of the women, as does the striking phrase turba furens in line 716.
712 violavit is effective here, meaning to ‘abuse, violate, disfigure’; note also thyrso which is the word used throughout Euripides Bacchae for the Bacchic wand, sneered at by Pentheus at 542 but here used as a missile against him. The possessive adjective suum is highly pointed here as it was ‘her own’ son whom she killed, and the case is made more poignant still by Pentheus being named. The woman assaulted ‘her own Pentheus’, the name which she called him (when she was in her right mind) being added for pathetic effect.
713 The vocative o is generally used in states of high emotion (Lucretius 2.14) or in cases of religious ritual as here and at Virgil Aeneid 6.258 (procul o, procul este, profani). The two sisters of Agaue were Ino and Autonoe.
714–15 There is striking anaphora here of ille…ille and note also the way the word aper is picked up in the following line – a device known as epanalepsis (used again with trepidum in lines 716–17). maximus is a neat touch: the word denotes the pride of the killer in the size of her victim, it is appropriate as this ‘boar’ was the size of a man and so was ‘huge’ in boar terms, and its position within the relative clause helps to show the distracted state of Agaue’s mind. In Euripides Bacchae the crazed Bacchants think that Pentheus is a lion. Agaue here is claiming the right to strike the beast (the gerundive mihi feriendus denoting ‘is mine to strike’) and this notion of possession picks up nostris from the line before: the boar is wandering in ‘our’ fields and so ‘I’ must strike it. The irony of this whole scene rests on the fact that the women see Pentheus as a vicious animal and kill ‘it’ in animalistic frenzy themselves. Who is the ‘real’ animal here?
715–16 The rapid reactions of the women are well suggested by the dactylic rhythm of these lines; the enjambement throughout – as the story rushes over the end of one line into the next just as the mad crowd of women hurtle towards Pentheus – is striking, as is the emphatic word furens postponed to the end of the sentence. The hapless Pentheus may be a king but he is all alone (unum) as he faces the charging crowd (turba). furor is usually translated ‘madness’ and often has the key sense of ‘hallucinating’ as Agaue is doing here: cf. Hercules who killed his children thinking that they were the children of his enemy, chillingly shown in Seneca’s play Hercules Furens and in Euripides’ Heracles.
716 The alliteration of cunctae coeunt and assonance of –umque sequuntur make this a memorable line; but the repetition of trepidum is less effective and possibly Tarrant is correct in reading fremituque (‘with a roar’) in this line in place of trepidumque.
717–18 The repetition iam…iam…iam…iam is very effective; the pair of lines forms a neat symmetrical couplet, with each line containing the word iam twice. There is effective variation of vocabulary with three ‘speaking’ words (loquentem…damnantem…fatentem) with different senses (‘speaking’, ‘condemning’, ‘confessing’) each showing another stage in his demise and all agreeing with an understood eum. ‘Condemning himself’ is similar in meaning to ‘admitting that he had done wrong’ and the double phrase here shows Ovid’s skill in repeating a point without tedious repetition of terms, the repetition showing Pentheus’ own repeated protestations of his guilt. There is a notable slowing of the narrative pace in line 718, with its preponderance of spondaic heavy syllables as the poet lingers on the figure of the king trembling as he realises his sin and his doom – and notice the sly touch of verba minus violenta (he’s not threatening now!).
719 saucius is concessive: he was injured but he could still speak. matertera is the correct term for one’s mother’s sister, used here by Pentheus as additional leverage in his appeal (‘you are my aunt…’) as well as calling her by her name in the next line.
720 Pentheus now appeals to the family tree; ‘let the shades of Actaeon move your feelings’. Actaeon was the son of Autonoe killed by his own hounds as his punishment for seeing the goddess Diana bathing naked, a tale narrated in this book (131–252). Pentheus is appealing to a bereaved mother not to kill her nephew.
721 The women are in a state of ecstasis induced by the god and are unaware of anything; Autonoe does not know who Actaeon is, any more than Agaue recognises her son Pentheus in front of her. The verb sit is missed from the indirect question nescit quis Actaeon [sit]. There is a shocking end to the sentence: Pentheus extends his right hand in supplication to her and she rips it off, the violent sudden action well shown in the placing of abstulit at the start of the next line in enjambement; Ino then joins in and rips off the other hand.
722 Inous is an adjective meaning ‘belonging to Ino’ and so is to be taken with raptu (‘by Ino’s seizing of it’). lacero is a powerful verb, showing the bloody dismembering which was taking place.
723 Just as the sailor-turned-dolphin ‘had no arms’ (680) so now Pentheus is without arms with which to supplicate his mother as his aunts have taken them both off him – the slowness of his movement brought out by the spondaic rhythm of infelix quae matri. The adjective infelix (‘unfortunate’) is a massive understatement but here points the contrast between his arrogant cruelty earlier towards Acoetes and his current situation.
724 Pentheus shows his mother his bleeding stumps (literally ‘his amputated wounds’) now that his real limbs (membris) had been thrown down (deiectis, the phrase being an ablative absolute explaining how he came to be mutilated).
725 For all his sickening injuries, Pentheus can utter what are his last words – ‘look, mother’ – a phrase which is pathetic and sadly moving. The theme of ‘look’ in aspice is at once picked up as Agaue whooped at ‘what she saw’ (visis). ululavit is again onomatopoeic and denotes not shrieks of horror as would be expected but rather the ritual cries of the ecstatic worshipper as at 706.
726 Agaue tossed her head backwards and shook her hair wildly, as Bacchants often do in literature and art (e.g. Catullus 64.255, Euripides Bacchae 864–5, Aristophanes Lysistrata 1312, E. R. Dodds The Greeks and the Irrational (University of California Press, 1968) 273–4). The line is framed by colla…crinem (‘neck…hair’) and the two strong verbs are juxtaposed for violent effect (iactavit movitque).
727 Pentheus has now been decapitated. We are not shown the act but here his mother holds his ‘torn-off head’ in an ‘embrace’ (complexa) which is apt for mother and son but which is chillingly ironic in this context. Her fingers are ‘blood-stained’ (cruentis) which is as near as we get to Ovid telling us that she had done the decapitating.
728 opus hoc is in apposition to victoria nostra: ‘this deed represents victory for us’. She addresses her sisters and fellow-worshippers as comites (literally ‘companions’).
729–31 Ovid stresses the power of the god one last time here with his simile comparing the ease with which Pentheus’ limbs were stripped off him with the ease with which nature strips leaves off trees in autumn. The leaves are described in some detail – they are ‘touched by the cold of autumn’, finding it hard to cling on to their position high up on a tree – when they are summarily dispatched from their tree in three short words at the end of line 730. non citius, ‘no more quickly’ – i.e. ‘just as quickly do…’, and male has the sense of ‘only just’. The simile of leaves falling in autumn is a stock one – cf. Homer Iliad 6.146–9, Virgil Aeneid 6.309–10 – but here is used differently. The image is standard for the shortness and inevitable end of all human life, but there is nothing inevitable about Pentheus’ limbs falling off his body and the moral being pointed is that he was the architect of his own untimely demise. The precise comparison is here between the ease with which a wind can pull off leaves and the ease, with which a Bacchant can pull off the limbs of a man, showing the power of the god. The final word is however highly charged: nefandus means ‘unspeakable’ (derived from ne + fandus (‘not to be spoken’)) and is here applied to the ‘abominable’ hands of the women dismembering Pentheus. This is perhaps surprising as the women were simply obeying the commands of the god who sent them into the trance, and obeying gods is usually regarded as the right thing to do, and perhaps suggests that the exemplis in the next line are more ‘warnings’ than ‘models’ and that the tone of the ending of the book is the need to bow before the power of the god or risk being either the agent or the victim of his wicked force.
732–3 exemplis suggests either models of behaviour or else punishments designed to deter any future misbehaviour, and the ‘moral’ here is stark realism rather than any cosy theodicy. Ismenus is a river, which flows near Thebes, and so the ‘Ismenides’ are the Theban women – the word is one which Ovid uses three times in the Metamorphoses. The rites are nova which recalls Tiresias’ prophecy (520) of a novus Liber (‘a new Bacchus’) coming to Thebes and Pentheus’ sneering at the moris novi in line 581, as well as the description of the ignota…sacra in line 530. Just as Acoetes learned from the events he witnessed and ended up saying sacra frequento (line 691) so here the women sacra frequentant. tura dant means that they ‘make offerings of incense’ and the final couplet stresses above all the acceptance of the sacredness of Bacchus and his rites (sacra…sanctasque colunt…aras).