His spine was arched: as when one, who doth know Chariots to build, excelling in his art, Having first heated in a fire-heat slow Bends for his wheel a fig-branch; with a start The fissile wild-fig flies far from his hands apart. Collected for the spring, and mad to rend me, On his hard shaggy head: he from above Fell ere he reached me, by the stroke subdued, And nodding with his head on trembling feet he stood. Darkness came over both his eyes: his brain I cast my quiver and my bow aside, And to his neck my throttling hands applied, With vigour in the death-clutch, and astride His body from behind from scath did clear me, So that he could not or with jaw or talons tear me. His hind feet with my heels I pressed aground; Then many projects did my thoughts divide, How best I might the monster's carcass bare, And from his dead limbs strip the shaggy hide: Hard task it was indeed, and much my patience tried. I tried and failed with iron, wood, and flint; The carcass and the hide: success did wait I wear his hide, that serves me to rebate Sharp-cutting war. The Nemean beast was laid Thus low, which had of men and flocks much havoc made. IDYL XXVI. THE BACCHE. ARGUMENT. Pentheus, who was an unbeliever in the divinity of Dionysus, from curiosity became a spectator of the orgies of the women who were possessed with frenzy by the influence of that god. The women, and among them his own mother and aunts, on discovering hunted him as huntsmen the hare, and mercilessly tore him in pieces. This is the subject of one of the finest plays of Euripides. IDYL XXVI. THE BACCHE. THREE troops three sisters to the mountain led; They stript oak-leaves and ivy green as well, In a pure lawn with these twelve altars placed; And, as their god had taught them and approved, Hid in a native mastic's sheltering shade, Them from a steep rock Pentheus then surveyed. |