But they are shy of the
untried dress, and one of them is blind--poi dei choreuein; poi
kathistanai poda; kai krata seisai polion;+ and then the difficulty
of the way! the long, steep journey to the glens! may pilgrims boil
their peas? might they proceed to the place in carriages? At last,
while the audience laugh more or less delicately at their aged
fumblings, in some co-operative manner, the eyes of the one combining
with the hands of the other, the pair are about to set forth.
Here Pentheus is seen approaching the palace in extreme haste. He
has been absent from home, and returning, has just heard of the state
of things at Thebes--the strange malady of the women, the dancings,
the arrival of the mysterious stranger: he finds all the women
departed from the town, and sees Cadmus and Teiresias in masque.
Like the exaggerated diabolical figures in some of the religious
plays and imageries of the Middle Age, he is an impersonation of
stupid impiety, one of those whom the gods willing to [67] destroy
first infatuate. Alternating between glib unwisdom and coarse
mockery, between violence and a pretence of moral austerity, he
understands only the sorriest motives; thinks the whole thing
feigned, and fancies the stranger, so effeminate, so attractive of
women with whom he remains day and night, but a poor sensual
creature, and the real motive of the Bacchic women the indulgence of
their lust; his ridiculous old grandfather he is ready to renounce,
and accuses Teiresias of having in view only some fresh source of
professional profit to himself in connexion with some new-fangled
oracle; his petty spite avenges itself on the prophet by an order to
root up the sacred chair, where he sits to watch the birds for
divination, and disturb the order of his sacred place; and even from
the moment of his entrance the mark of his doom seems already set
upon him, in an impotent trembling which others notice in him.
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