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Ovid Metamorphoses III 511-733

Black = Latin text
Red = English translation
Green = literary points

Cognita res meritam vati per Achaidas urbes
News of this story brought the prophet well-deserved merit
attulerat famam, nomenque erat auguris ingens;
in all the towns of Greece
...

spernit Echionides tamen hunc ex omnibus unus
even so, one man alone, Pentheus, the son of Echion,
The use of the patronymic is common in epic poetry, but has more point here as it
reminds us of the ancestry of the king from ‘the sown men’, one of whom was his father
Echion
...
Echion was one of the few left alive after the sown
men had finished their civil strife and so Pentheus’s ancestry is both blood-stained and
inhuman
...

contemptor superum Pentheus praesagaque ridet
who scorned the gods, spurned him and mocked
verba senis tenebrasque et cladem lucis ademptae
515
the old man’s prophecies, taunting him with his blindness and the doom of his lost
sight
...
The darkness is the disaster which is referred to as the
disaster of the loss of his sight with the word ‘light’ substituted for ‘sight’ in metonymy
...

Pentheus is portrayed as both cruel to Tiresias and disrespectful to the gods, making
him an unsympathetic character
...
ille movens albentia tempora canis
Then, shaking his white head,
The contrast between the fame and respect shown from Tiresias from everyone else and
the violent contempt felt for him by Pentheus alone is well brought out here with the
three strong verbs: ‘spernit’ at the start, echoed by ‘ridet’ and concluded by ‘obicit’ in
emphatic position
...

There is enjambment on the word ‘obicit’, placing stress on the word and therefore
Pentheus’s cruelty
...
There is
interesting variation of vocabulary here as ‘lucis ademptae’ in line 515 becomes ‘luminis
orbus’ in line 517
...

orbus' ait 'fieres, ne Bacchica sacra videres!
and never saw the rites of Bacchus!
Here it is said what will cause Pentheus’s misfortune, but not how, resulting in
suspense
...

qua novus huc veniat, proles Semeleia, Liber,
520
where here shall come a new god Liber, son of Semele
‘veniat’ is in the present subjunctive and is most probably in a relative final clause (‘the
day the new Liber is to come’)
...
The story of his conception
and death is told earlier in the book (253-315)
...
Latin often uses the future perfect tense for the protasis (if…) and then the
future indicative in the apodonis
...
‘If you don’t think him worth
honouring with temples’…’templorum’ is the defining genitive, ‘honour consisting of
temples’
...


mille lacer spargere locis et sanguine silvas
you shall be torn to pieces and strewn far and wide, and with your blood
‘spagere’ is equivalent to ‘spargeris’, 2nd person future passive: ‘you will be scattered’
...
The prophecy will come true as line 722
‘lacerata est’ picks up ‘lacer’ here
...

you will defile the woods, and your mother and her sisters
...

eveniet! neque enim dignabere numen honore,
So it shall come to pass
...
The prophet both recalls his earlier
words ‘dignatus honore’ (521) and also the king’s mockery of his blindness ‘tenebras’
(515) – ‘tenebris’ (525) with the paradox that the king will lament that the old man saw
too much in his blindness
...

meque sub his tenebris nimium vidisse quereris
...
”
This sentence throws Pentheus’s taunt about blindness back at him
...

Recalls Echionides in 513 and forms a neat closure device for this paragraph
...

dicta fides sequitur, responsaque vatis aguntur
...

‘dicentem’ of the previous line is picked up by ‘dicta’; ‘fides’ here means the fulfilment
of a wish/prayer and so here it simply means that his words came true, the veracity of
the words stressed by the repeated sentiment of the words
...
The reveller’s wild shrieks ring through the fields
...
The rapid sequence of ‘festique fremunt ululatibus agri’
signifies the instantaneous spread of the festival, where the noise breaks out as soon as
the god’s presence is announced
...

turba ruit, mixtaeque viris matresque nurusque
The crowds come rushing out; men, women, nobles,
The polysyndeton here to show the general melee in the worship of Bacchus, the social
mixing it involved
...
The Roman
state was particularly worried when the Bacchanalia began to admit men to what used
to be exclusively female rites
...
15
...

commons old and young stream to the unknown rites
...
Cadmus had also married Harmonia, the daughter of Mars and Venus, so the
Thebans claimed descent from Mars as with Ovid’s contemporary Roman audience
...

attonuit mentes?' Pentheus ait; 'aerane tantum
has stolen your wits away?” Pentheus said; “can brazen cymbals
aere repulsa valent et adunco tibia cornu
clashing prevail, pipes with curving horns,
Pentheus mocks the Bacchic cult by reducing it to its component parts
...
Note the alliteration in ‘tuba terruerit’
...

The rites are therefore silly and licentious, disgraceful and the result of fraud
...

‘greges’ usually refers to animals but here refers to men
...
e
...

hac Tyron, hac profugos posuistis sede penates,
and building a new Tyre in this land, a refuge for your exiled gods
That would make the old men the same age as Pentheus’ grandfather Cadmus
...
The contempt is enhanced by
Pentheus’s spitting ‘p’ alliteration of ‘hac…hac’ and most of all by the way he describes
the men’s past achievements in lengthy, glowing clauses (538-9) only to dismiss their
current (nunc) madness in five short words (nunc…capi)
...


The young men are called ‘a more fierce age group’ and his use of ‘o’ shows his high
emotion here, and the alliteration of ‘acrior aetas’ suggests the eagerness of the young
men
...

non thyrsos, galeaque tegi, non fronde decebat?
not Bacchic wands and should be wearing helmets, not garlands?
Once again he uses neat parallels between what they should be doing (decebat) and the
reality of what they are in fact doing
...
Eurypides tells us that it can injure and work miracles, making
water spring from a rock, and Horace describes Bacchus as ‘gravi metuende thyrso’ –
‘one to be feared for his powerful thyrsus’ (Odes 2
...
8)
...

este, precor, memores, qua sitis stirpe creati,
Be mindful, I implore you, of the mighty stock you are
The dignity of the sentiment is enhanced by the spondaic phrase ‘qua sitis stirpe’ and
also by the sibilant alliteration
...
The phrase used here ‘qui multos
perdidit unus’ will be ironically reversed at 715, not one against many, but all against
one
...
For the sake of his fountain and his lake
interiit: at vos pro fama vincite vestra!
he gave his life: do you, by defeating the foe, defend the honour of your name?
The line begins with an emphatic word followed by a pause and a strong imperative in
the fifth foot (vincite) as does the following line (pellite)
...

ille dedit leto fortes: vos pellite molles
He slew men of valour: you then must route this feeble enemy
‘molles’ here implies effeminacy (reference to Menelaus at Iliad 7
...

stare diu Thebas, utinam tormenta virique
If Thebes is fated to fall so soon, how I wish, that gallant foemen
moenia diruerent, ferrumque ignisque sonarent!
550
were bringing down her walls with their engines of war, that the roar of flames and din
of battles were ringing in our ears!
The language here is strained: what starts out looking like a conditional (si fata
vetabant) where the indicative suggests that ‘si’ means ‘even if’ (fate was all along
forbidding), only to switch to a wish clause for the present (utiman + imperfect
subjunctive)
...
‘Fire and sword’ is common enough combination in the rhetoric and is made
more effective here with the use of auditory imagery in the verb ‘sonarent’
...

Theban failure to engage is a failure of courage and mettle, contrasting the new enemy
unfavourably with the real foes they faced in the past
...

at nunc a puero Thebae capientur inermi,
But now Thebes will be taken by an unarmed boy,
quem neque bella iuvant nec tela nec usus equorum,
one who takes no pleasure in war, its weapons and its cavalry,
sed madidus murra crinis mollesque coronae
555
but in myrrh-drenched hair, soft wreathes of leaves

purpuraque et pictis intextum vestibus aurum,
and embroidered robes woven with gold
...

adsumptumque patrem commentaque sacra fateri
...
Should Pentheus and the rest of Thebes
an satis Acrisio est animi, contemnere vanum
be terrified of his arrival, when Acrisius had courage enough to deny a man
‘contemnere vanum’ there is effective juxtaposition here (to despise it as being empty)
and not also the repeated infinitives in fifth foot positon (contemnere, claudere)
...
Acrisius did not die at the hands of Bacchus and so although he ceases his
resistance to the god later, he is a role model here for Pentheus, whose death will
prevent him from seeing Acrisuis’ change of heart
...
For a literary parallel to the
speech see Homer’s Iliad 7
...
Pentheus names
himself haughtily here, his name balanced by the name of his city at the end of the line
and his alliteration of ‘t’ suggests his indignation, as does his lack of any connectives
between the sentence ‘an satis…portas’ and the next line were we expect a ‘however’
...

attrahite huc vinctum! iussis mora segnis abesto!'
‘Go and drag that leader here in chains
...
’
hunc avus, hunc Athamas, hunc cetera turba suorum
His grandfather and Athamas and indeed his whole family

corripiunt dictis frustraque inhibere laborant
...

The chorus of opposition to Bacchus is well brought out by the tricolon crescendo here,
with three increasingly long phrases all beginning with ‘hunc’
...

The rest of his folk (suorum) are summed up as a ‘turba’
...

acrior admonitu est inritaturque retenta
Their warnings only roused him the more and his mad rage was
‘admonitu’ is a casual ablative: he is made all the keener by their reproof
...
The metaphor is strong here: the rage is goaded by
being held back (retenta) and grows (crescit)
...

et crescit rabies remoraminaque ipsa nocebant:
excited and increased by their attempts to restrain it
...

The verb ‘nocebant’ is a summarising imperfect tense after the vivid present indicatives
‘est’, ‘irritatur’, ‘crescit’
...
The rhythm of the line is powerful spondaic, helping it
convey the solid mass of the torrent
...
Also
the build-up of consonants in ‘obstructaque saxa evokes the impediment to the stream
...

it foamed and boiled, made fiercer by the obstacles
...
The comparative ‘lenius’ is further answered in the comparative
‘saevior’
...

Ecce cruentati redeunt et, Bacchus ubi esset,
Look: the band of soldiers returned, all stained in blood
...

'hunc' dixere 'tamen comitem famulumque sacrorum
‘But here is one of his companions,’ they said, ‘a priest who celebrates his sacred
mysteries
cepimus' et tradunt manibus post terga ligatis
575
that we have captured’ and they handed over a prisoner whose hands were bound
behind his back
...

He was a man of Lydian descent and follower of the god
...
The traditional (Herodotus
1
...

adspicit hunc Pentheus oculis, quos ira tremendos
Pentheus looked, anger making his eyes terrible
...
‘tremendos’ is a gerundive – literally ‘to
be feared’
...
In Euripides’ Bacchae the king
threatens death by stoning
...

'o periture tuaque aliis documenta dature
‘You are at the point of death and you will serve as a warning to others

morte,' ait, 'ede tuum nomen nomenque parentum
580
by your death; speak then and reveal your name and the name of your parents,
et patriam, morisque novi cur sacra frequentes!'
tell me where were you born and why you celebrate the rites of this new cult
...

Note also the separation of ‘tua’ from ‘morte’ and the eloquent use of ‘documenta’
(from doceo: teach) and the emphatic position of ‘morta’ in the beginning of the
following line after the enjambment followed by a solemn pause after the end of the
king’s words
...

ille metu vacuus 'nomen mihi' dixit 'Acoetes,
The other was quite unperturbed
...

I was born in Lydia and my parents were of humble stock
...


585

A tricolon of things that his father didn’t leave him
...

decipere et calamo salientis ducere pisces
...

Another tricolon of equipment
...

"accipe, quas habeo, studii successor et heres,"
“Take such riches as I have, be my successor and heir to my craft
...

dixit "opes," moriensque mihi nihil ille reliquit
So he died leaving me nothing but the waters
...

praeter aquas: unum hoc possum adpellare paternum
...

mox ego, ne scopulis haererem semper in isdem,
But soon as I did not want to spend my life on the self-same rocks
‘semper in isdem’ suggests monotony
...
Amalthea was from Olenus, so the star is called Olenian
...

Taygetenque Hyadasque oculis Arctonque notavi
595
Taygete and the Hyades, and the Bears, and made myself familiar
Taygetes is one of the Pleiades while the Hyades are a group of five stars in Taurus,
whose name in Greek means ‘the rainy ones’ and marked the start and end of the rainy
season
...
Arctos is the Great Bear
...
He did this himself (‘notavi’, 1st
person) and from observation (oculis)
ventorumque domos et portus puppibus aptos
...

forte petens Delum Chiae telluris ad oras
It happened that as I was making for Delos, I put in the shores of Chios
adplicor et dextris adducor litora remis
there I steered, by rowing easily to the beach
...

doque levis saltus udaeque inmittor harenae:
I leaped lightly from the boat and landed on the moist sand
...
When the first flash of Dawn
Acoetes put in Chios for the night
...
Acoetes’ impatience to get moving is
expressed by the paratactic series of simple verbs – ‘coeperat’ and ‘exsurgo’
...

The subjunctive ‘ducat’ is one of purpose: the one who was to lead them
...

then I called my men and made my way back to the ship
...

"adsumus en" inquit sociorum primus Opheltes,
605
Opheltes was the first of my crew to return: ‘Here we are,’ he cried
utque putat, praedam deserto nactus in agro,
And thinking he had taken possession of a prize having found him alone in a field,
‘utque putat’ is brought forward here to a highly emphatic position
...

he came along the shore bringing with him a boy as pretty as a girl
...


ille mero somnoque gravis titubare videtur
The boy, drowsy with sleep and wine, seemed to stumble
vixque sequi; specto cultum faciemque gradumque:
and was scarcely able to follow; I looked at his clothes, at his features and his bearing
nil ibi, quod credi posset mortale, videbam
...

The subjunctive ‘posset’ is potential (could)
...

corpore sit, dubito; sed corpore numen in isto est!
‘What god is within this body I cannot tell, but a god there is!’
Acoetes stresses that he told his sailors about his important realisation at once with the
spondaic phrase ‘et sensi et dixi’ emphasising his meaning with the sharp chiastic
repetition (numen copore…corpore numen)
...

Dictys ait, quo non alius conscendere summas
cried Dictys, the quickest man who ever climbed

615

Dictys is briefly described as a brilliant crew member
...
The infinitive ‘ascendere’ explains in what sense was Dictys swifter
than anyone else and is therefore called ‘expexegetic’ (explanatory)
...

ocior antemnas prensoque rudente relabi
...

hoc Libys, hoc flavus, prorae tutela, Melanthus,
Libys and blond Melanthus who was our look-out
Epic poetry likes lists and catalogues (e
...
the catalogue of ships, Iliad 2, and Virgil’s
Aeneid 7)
...
This detail makes Acoetes’ account more authoritative and
also explains why Acoetes was unable to stand against so many opponents in his view
of Bacchus
...

hoc probat Alcimedon et, qui requiemque modumque
and Alcimedon said the same and so did Epopeus whose task was to apportion spells of
rest
Alcimedon in Greek means strong ruler and the name stresses the strength of his
opposition
...
The regular pattern ‘stroke-rest-stroke’ is reflected by the repletion of
‘que’ in ‘requiemque modumque’
...

hoc omnes alii: praedae tam caeca cupido est
...

A moral point is drawn here by the statement of their base motive
...
It also fits well with
the theme of blindness in the poem
...

"non tamen hanc sacro violari pondere pinum
‘I will not allow a ship of mine to become accursed by carrying off
Acoetes confirms his authority and stands up to the crowd
...
Acoetes’ confidence is shown by his use of the future
infinitive ‘pereptiar’
...

perpetiar" dixi: "pars hic mihi maxima iuris"
holy cargo,’ I retorted
...

inque aditu obsisto: furit audacissimus omni
I barred the gangway to the ship
...
‘furit’ is a good word to use here: it conveys
both the rage felt at the captain’s obstruction and also has the sense of madness, which
is what this behaviour to the god amounts to
...
Tuscus means Etruscan, but it here means Lydians since the ancients believed that
Etruria was colonised from Lydia
...

exilium dira poenam pro caede luebat;
and he was enduring exile as a punishment
...
This is a good example of a juxtaposition of strong verbs
...

haesissem, quamvis amens, in fune retentus
...

Lycabas attacks Acoetes as he stands his ground (resto=resisto)
...
The violence is emphasised by the
assonance of ‘u’ in ‘iuvenal guttural pugno’ and the enjambment as the verb ‘rupit’ is
highlighted at the end of the phrase but at the start of the next line
...

‘veluti si’ or ‘tamquam si’ would have been preferred in prose
...

The drowsiness is well conveyed by the ‘s’ alliteration of ‘solutus sit sopor’
...
“Tell me, sailors,
‘quid…quis…qua: each of the four questions are introduced by a different case or
gender of the interrogative pronoun (homoioptoton)
...
‘ops’ means power of ability
and the question ‘qua ope’ suggests that Bacchus is aware that they think they have
overpowered a god
...

huc ope perveni? quo me deferre paratis?"
how did I come to this place? Where do you intend to take me?”
"pone metum" Proreus, "et quos contingere portus
‘Do not be afraid!’ Proreus soothed him
...
He insults the god’s intelligence, which will not
do the crew any favours
...

ede velis!" dixit; "terra sistere petita
...
’
"Naxon" ait Liber "cursus advertite vestros!
‘Direct your course towards Naxos,’ Liber told them
...
Bacchus offers his captors hospitality there like a good
Roman host
...
"
‘My home is there and that land will give you hospitality
...


sic fore meque iubent pictae dare vela carinae
...

‘pictae dare vela carinae’ is synecdoche
...

"quid facis, o demens? quis te furor," inquit "Acoete,"
Opheltes shouted, ‘You fool, what are you doing? What madness has possessed you,
Acoetes?’
What is ironic here of course is that the crew are mad, not Acoetes
...

Some indicated their purpose with a nod, but others whispered in my ear what they
meant to do
...
‘Someone else can take the rudder!’ I cried
Acoetes’ instant reaction is well brought out by a rapid dactylic line
...
Acoetes cannot fight against the rest of the crew, but
he refuses to be the instrument of their folly and tells them to let someone else take the
helm
...

meque ministerio scelerisque artisque removi
...

‘sceleris artisque’ is a hendiadys
...

increpor a cunctis, totumque inmurmurat agmen;
They all cursed me; my whole crew muttered angrily
...
-increpor a cunctis’ here constitutes the
theme, and ‘totumque inmurmurat agmen’ constitutes the variation (variation)
...
The sarcasm is naturally misplaced irony as it turns out their only hope of safety
would have been to have listened to Acoetes
...

and performed my duties
...

Aethalion’s actions are swift and decisive
...
(ait…subit…explet…petit) and his contrary nature is highlighted by
his steering towards the direction ‘opposite to’ Naxos, leaving the supposed destination
behind
...

tum deus inludens, tamquam modo denique fraudem
Then the god made sport of them
...

There is an effective ‘p’ alliteration as the boy blubbers and stammers her feigned
sadness
...

The god of theatre at his playful best
...
The
irony is that the god met their deceit with a deceit of their own
...
Notice the balanced repetition of ‘non haec mihi litora…non

haec mihi terra’ in similar metrical positions in consecutive lines; the framing of the line
653 with the parallel verbs ‘promisistis’ and ‘rogata est’; the double pairs of ‘quo…quae’
and ‘si…si’ along with the oxymoron ‘puerum…iuvenes’ and ‘multi…unum’ which are
arranged chiastically ABBA
...
Acoetes’ tears are mocked by the crew and ‘ridet’ is
being stressed by its position in enjambment at the start of the line
...

ridet et inpellit properantibus aequora remis
...

per tibi nunc ipsum (nec enim praesentior illo
Now I swear to you by that god himself for there is no god greater
est deus) adiuro, tam me tibi vera referre
than he, that what I tell you is surely true
‘praesans’ when used of a god means present and attentive to one’s prayers and then
effective – Bacchus is present in all possible ways
...
This is a typical Ovidian
paradox
...

haud aliter, quam si siccam navale teneret
...

The spondees of ‘siccum navale’ are suggestive of the static ship
...
‘verebere’ is commonly used for flogging and the sailors’
tenacity is also conveyed in ‘perstant’
...

inpediunt hederae remos nexuque recurvo
but their oars were hampered by ivy which tined up the blades in curling tendrils
‘inpediunt’ is stressed in the start of the line and the sentence, balanced and amplified
by ‘serpunt’ in the same position in the next line, its force being further enhanced by the
enjambment
...

serpunt et gravidis distinguunt vela corymbis
...


665

The verb ‘distinguunt’ expresses the decoration of the ship with the sudden growths
...
‘racemiferis’ is as an
impressive and grandiose as the god himself
...

quem circa tigres simulacraque inania lyncum
Around him lay phantom shapes of wide beasts, tigers and lynxes and
The terrifying sight is well brought out by the spondaic rhythm of the start of the line
668
...
They are another aspect of the theatricality of the god
and his ability to conjure images out of nowhere
...
The Greek word
‘parthenarum’ unusually for Ovid takes the whole of the final two feet of line 669,
giving a fifth foot spondee and having a very Alexandrian feel
...

pictarumque iacent fera corpora pantherarum
...

This line is separated by hyperbaton
...

sive timor, primusque Medon nigrescere toto
or in fear I cannot tell
...

incipit
...

675
his nostrils became hooked, and his skin hardened into scales
...

Expressing the hardness of the surface
...

at Libys obstantis dum vult obvertere remos,
And Libys, as he strove to pull the sluggish oars,
Libys’ effort is well brought out by the spondees of ‘obstantes dum vult’
...
The repetition of the word ‘manus’ showing his shocked
disbelief
...

so that they were no longer hands, but they could be called fins
...

alter ad intortos cupiens dare bracchia funes
Yet another, as he tried to lift his arms to handle the twisted ropes,

The ropes are described as ‘intortos’ (plaited) from ‘intorqueo’, both in the sense that
the ropes are made of material such as hemp plaited together as well as the new plaits
created by ivy
...
The end of his tail was sickle-shaped
qualia dividuae sinuantur cornua lunae
...

‘dividuae sinuantur cornua lunae’ – synchysis: 2 adjectives on one side of the verb with
nouns of the other side
...
There was the
jumping of the sailors into the sea but the dolphins already in the water are also
leaping
...

The gradual emergence from the water is evoked by the spondaic rhythm of ‘emergent’
and the following dactyls suggest the rapid dancing above the waves
...

and blowing out the sea-water that washed into their broad nostrils
...

de modo viginti (tot enim ratis illa ferebat)
Where there had lately been twenty men – for that was the ship’s crew restabam solus: pavidum gelidumque trementi
I alone remained
...
Acoetes stresses the fear and cold,
where trembling is a result of both and the cold is itself a result of the shock
...
627)
...
'
I was initiated into the sacred mysteries and since then I have one of Bacchus’s
worshippers
...

'Praebuimus longis' Pentheus 'ambagibus aures,'
Then spoke Pentheus: ‘We have listened to a long and rambling tale
Pentheus responds with regal haughtiness and seeming to feel that he is owed gratitude
for lending Acoetes his ears
...

in order that delay may serve to calm our anger
...
With
‘praeceps’ and ‘rapite’ the image is of a man being hustled forwards roughly and
quickly
...
The Stygian night is death
...

corpora tormentis Stygiae demittite nocti!'
695
with the worst torment and consign him to the shades of Styx
...

sponte sua patuisse fores lapsasque lacertis
the doors flew open of their own accord and the fetters fell from his arms
sponte sua fama est nullo solvente catenas
...

‘sponte sua’ is repeated for emphasis but is not entirely accurate as we know the god
was behind this rescue
...

Perstat Echionides, nec iam iubet ire, sed ipse
Still the son of Echion persisted in his folly; he no longer ordered others to go but
The emphatic position of ‘perstat’ and the fact that it is spondaic conveys Pentheus’
fixedness of purpose
...

vadit, ubi electus facienda ad sacra Cithaeron
went himself to Cithaeron, the mountain chosen for the sacred rites
Cithaeron was chosen because of its proximity to Thebes
...

cantibus et clara bacchantum voce sonabat
...

ut fremit acer equus, cum bellicus aere canoro
As a spirited horse on the battlefield whinnies when the trumpeter sounds the charge
An expressive line framed by words of sound (fremit…canoro)
signa dedit tubicen pugnaeque adsumit amorem,
on his brazen instrument and is eager for the fray,

705

‘amor’ might be a strange word here but is apt for the horse which takes on a passion
for fighting
...
The spondaic rhythm of ‘sic ictus longis’ draws attention to this key moment in
the story where his anger is rekindled by the noise, with the strong verb ‘movit’
enhanced by its position in enjambment at the start of the next line
...

make the air quiver and when he heard the shouting, his anger blazed up hotly once
more
...
The obvious point of comparison is the signing
and the effect of a trumpet blast on a fierce horse: they both became more eager for the
fight
...
The simile is
perhaps reminiscent of the Iliadic image of Paris in Iliad 6
...

Monte fere medio est, cingentibus ultima silvis,
Half-way up the mountain is a stretch of level ground hemmed in by forests
The line is taken up with two phrases in the ablative, the one being local (in the middle
point of the mountain) and the second one being the absolute construction (with woods
encircling its edges)
...

purus ab arboribus, spectabilis undique, campus:
but itself bare of trees, so that it can be seen from every side
...
‘spectobilis’ means ‘able to be overlooked’ as well as ‘worthy looking at’
strengthened by ‘undique’ and helps explain how all this has come about: the
topography helps Pentheus to see the women, but also to see him
...


prima suum misso violavit Penthea thyrso
the first to hurl her thyrsus at Pentheus and wound him
Note the irony of the thyrsus sneered by Pentheus at 542, now being used as a missile
against him
...

mater et 'o geminae' clamavit 'adeste sorores!
was his own mother
...
We do not know what is meant by the adjective until 713 when Agave is
described as mother
...

ille aper, in nostris errat qui maximus agris,
that huge boar, roaming into our preserves,
ille mihi feriendus aper
...
’

715

Striking anaphora here of ‘ille’ and epanalepsis of ‘aper’
...
The position of ‘maximus’ within the relative clause
helps to show the distracted condition of Agave’s mind
...
The irony of course is that the women who desire to kill the animal are in
face in an animalistic fury themselves
...

The rapid reactions of the women are suggested by the dactylic rhythm of these lines
and by the enjambment throughout, the story rushing from one line to the next, just as
the mad crowd of woman hurtle towards Pentheus with the word ‘furens’ which most
suitably describes them postponed until the end of the sentence
...

iam trepidum, iam verba minus violenta loquentem,
For now he was indeed panic-stricken; now he spoke less violently,
iam se damnantem, iam se peccasse fatentem
...

The repetition of ‘iam’ is very effective: the pair of lines 717-718 forms a neat
symmetrical couplet with each line containing the word ‘iam’ twice
...
‘Now cursing himself, now confessing himself at fault’ is not
boring repetition but shows Pentheus’ repeated protestations of his guilt in a
sympathetic light
...
Note the irony of ‘verba minus violenta loquentum’: Pentheus is no longer
threatening now
...

she tore off his right arm, while Ino seized the other and wrenched it away
...

non habet infelix quae matri bracchia tendat,
With no arms left to stretch towards his mother, the hapless man
trunca sed ostendens dereptis vulnera membris
showed her instead the gaping wounds where his limbs had been
Just as the sailor-dolphins had no arms, so here is Pentheus without arms to supplicate
his mother, the slowness of the movement being brought out by the spondaic rhythm of
‘infelix quae matri’
...

'adspice, mater!' ait
...

collaque iactavit movitque per aera crinem
tossed her head until her hair streamed through the air,
‘complexa’: the mother holding her son’s torn off head in her embrace is chillingly
ironic here
...

so swiftly did those terrible hands tear the king’s limbs apart
...
The leaves are described in some
detail before they are summarily dispatched from the tree in three short words at the
end of line 730
...
He is the architect of his own demise
...
The final word is highly charged: ‘nefandis’,
unspeakable to apply to the abominable hands of the women dismembering Pentheus
...

talibus exemplis monitae nova sacra frequentant
Taught by such a warning, the Theban women thronged to celebrate their new rites
turaque dant sanctasque colunt Ismenides aras
...

Just as Acoetes learn from the events he witnessed and ended up saying ‘sacra
frequento’ (691), so here the women ‘sacra frequentant’
...




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