As the door opens to admit him, the scented air of the
vineyards (for the vine-blossom has an exquisite perfume) blows
through; while the convolvulus on his mystic rod represents all
wreathing flowery things whatever, with or without fruit, as in
America all such plants are still called vines. "Sweet upon the
mountains," the excitement of which he loves so deeply and to which
he constantly invites his followers--"sweet upon the mountains," and
profoundly amorous, his presence embodies all the voluptuous
abundance of Asia, its beating [63] sun, its "fair-towered cities,
full of inhabitants," which the chorus describe in their luscious
vocabulary, with the rich Eastern names--Lydia, Persia, Arabia Felix:
he is a sorcerer or an enchanter, the tyrant Pentheus thinks: the
springs of water, the flowing of honey and milk and wine, are his
miracles, wrought in person.
We shall see presently how, writing for that northern audience,
Euripides crosses the Theban with the gloomier Thracian legend, and
lets the darker stain show through. Yet, from the first, amid all
this floweriness, a touch or trace of that gloom is discernible. The
fawn-skin, composed now so daintily over the shoulders, may be worn
with the whole coat of the animal made up, the hoofs gilded and tied
together over the right shoulder, to leave the right arm disengaged
to strike, its head clothing the human head within, as Alexander, on
some of his coins, looks out from the elephant's scalp, and Hercules
out of the jaws of a lion, on the coins of Camarina.
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