Messenger's Speech

MESSENGER: I saw those women in their Bacchic revels,
those sacred screamers, all driven crazy,
the ones who run barefoot from their homes.
I came to tell you the dreadful things they're doing
are beyond all wonder.

At dawn today when first the sun’s rays warmed the earth
The grazing cattle were just moving into upland pastures,
Right then I saw them, groups of dancing women.
They were all asleep, bodies quite relaxed,
some leaning back on leafy boughs of pine,
others cradling heads on oak-leaf pillows,
resting on the ground. They were not as legend tells
all drunk on wine or on the music of their flutes,
hunting for Aphrodite in the woods.
They heard the cattle lowing,
calling them to stir from sleep.
They rubbed refreshing sleep out of their eyes,
and stood up straight—a marvelous sight!
Women young and old and still unmarried girls.
First, they let their hair loose down their shoulders,
tied up the fawn skins. Then around those skins
they looped some snakes, who licked the women's cheeks.
Some held young gazelles or wild wolf cubs
and fed them on their own white milk, the ones
who'd left behind at home a new-born child
whose breasts were still swollen full of milk.
They draped themselves with garlands from oak trees,
ivy and flowering yew. Then one of them,
struck a rock and water gushed out, fresh as dew.
Another scraped the ground. At once,
the god sent fountains of wine up from the spot.
All those who craved white milk to drink
just scratched the earth with their fingertips—
it came out in streams. From the trees they touched
thick sweet honey dripped. Oh, if you'd been there,
if you'd seen this, you'd come with reverence
to that god

Host’ ei parestha, ton theon ton nun psegeis
Euchaisin an metelthes eisidon tade.

To show the eyes that did not see
we hid ourselves among the bushes.
At the appointed time, the women started their Bacchic ritual,
calling out to the god they cry to, Bromius.
The entire mountain and its wild animals
were, like them, in one Bacchic ecstasy.
As these women moved, they made all things dance.
One, by chance, was dancing close to me.
And catching sight of me she screamed out,
"Oh, my quick hounds, men are hunting us.
Come, follow me. Come on."

“All, hespesthe moi, hespesthe moi”
We ran off, and barely escaped being torn apart.
But then those Bacchic women, all unarmed,
went at the heifers browsing on the turf,
using their bare hands. Ripping a fat, young, lowing calf apart—
others tearing cows in pieces with their hands.
Ribs and cloven hooves tossed everywhere—hung up in branches
dripping blood and gore. And bulls, proud beasts till then,
with angry horns, collapsed there on the ground,
dragged down by the hands of a thousand girls.
Hides covering their bodies were stripped off
faster than you could wink your eye.
Then, like birds carried up by their own speed,
Like fighting troops, they raided towns, smashing
everything, snatching children from their homes.
Whatever they carried their shoulders,
even bronze or iron, never tumbled off
onto the dark earth, though nothing was tied down.
They carried fire in their hair, but those flames
never singed them. Some of the villagers,
enraged at being plundered by the Bacchae,
seized weapons. The sight of what happened next was dreadful. For their pointed spears did not draw blood.
But then those women with their bare hands,
they wounded them and drove them back in flight.
The women did this to men, but not without some god's assistance.
Then they went back to where they'd started from,
those fountains which the god had made for them.
They washed off the blood. Snakes licked their cheeks,
cleansing their skin of every drop.
A fearful sight, we must give welcome in our city to this god
and the fearsome Bacchae.

Ton daimon’ oun tond hostis est,
Bakchon, Bakchon, Bakchon