8o Ernest Heinrich Klotsche 



"... Son of Zeus, are his deeds of thine eye unbeholden, 

 Dionysus ? — thy prophets with tyranny wrestling in struggle and 



strain ? 

 Sweep down the slope of Olympus, uptossing thy -thyrsus golden : 

 Come to us. King, and the murderer's insolent fury refrain, etc." 



Having called upon the hounds of Madness to arouse the 

 Maenads against Pentheus, the godless intruder into their sacred 

 rites, the chorus invoke Justice and the presence of the God 

 himself : 



Bacch. 1012-23 : 



'Ltco diKa 4>avep6s, 'iroi ^i.(pri(f>6pos k. t. X. 

 W, 6} BctKxe, K. T. X. 



" Justice, draw nigh us, draw nigh, with the sword of avenging 



appear : 

 Slay the unrighteous, the seed of Echion, the earth-born, and 



shear 

 Clean through his throat ; for he f eareth not God, neither law 



doth he fear." 



" O Dionysus, reveal thee ! — appear as a bull to behold, 

 Or be thou seen as dragon, a monster of heads manifold. 

 Or as a lion with splendours of flame round the limbs of him 



rolled. 

 Come to us, Bacchus, and smiling in mockery compass him 



around 

 Now with the toils of destruction, and so shall the hunter be 



bound. 

 Trapped mid the throng of the Msenads, the quarry his questing 



hath found." 



Since the " Bacchse " apparently breathe a more religious spirit 

 than most of the earlier dramas of Euripides, scholars have often 

 maintained that the play is a sort of recantation on the part of the 

 poet, " a reactionary manifesto in favour of orthodoxy." In the 

 judgment of G. Murray this is a " view which hardly merits refu- 

 tation." Even in the " Bacchse," towards the close of the play in 

 the colloquy between Agave and Dionysus, Euripides does not 

 shrink from exposing the imperfections of the legend and repre- 

 senting the Gods in an obnoxious light : 



134 



