Agave comes on the stage,
then, blood-stained, exulting in her "victory of tears," still quite
visibly mad indeed, and with the outward signs of madness, and as her
mind wanders, musing still on the fancy that the dead head in her
hands is that of a lion she has slain among the mountains--a young
lion, she avers, as she notices the down on the young man's chin, and
his abundant hair--a fancy in which the chorus humour her, willing to
deal gently with the poor distraught creature. Supported by them,
she rejoices "exceedingly, exceedingly," declaring herself
"fortunate" in such goodly spoil; priding herself that the victim has
been slain, not with iron weapons, but with her own white fingers,
she summons all Thebes to come and behold. She calls for her aged
father to draw near and see; and for Pentheus himself, at last, that
he may mount and rivet her trophy, appropriately decorative there,
between the triglyphs of the cornice below the roof, visible to all.
And now, from this point onwards, Dionysus himself becomes more and
more clearly discernible [78] as the hunter, a wily hunter, and man
the prey he hunts for; "Our king is a hunter," cry the chorus, as
they unite in Agave's triumph and give their sanction to her deed.
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