"
Pentheus here exclaimed, "We have wasted time enough on this silly
story. Take him away and have him executed without delay." Acetes
was led away by the attendants and shut up fast in prison; but
while they were getting ready the instruments of execution the
prison doors came open of their own accord and the chains fell
from his limbs, and when they looked for him he was nowhere to be
found.
Pentheus would take no warning, but instead of sending others,
determined to go himself to the scene of the solemnities. The
mountain Citheron was all alive with worshippers, and the cries of
the Bacchanals resounded on every side. The noise roused the anger
of Pentheus as the sound of a trumpet does the fire of a war-
horse. He penetrated through the wood and reached an open space
where the chief scene of the orgies met his eyes. At the same
moment the women saw him; and first among them his own mother,
Agave, blinded by the god, cried out, "See there the wild boar,
the hugest monster that prowls in these woods! Come on, sisters! I
will be the first to strike the wild boar." The whole band rushed
upon him, and while he now talks less arrogantly, now excuses
himself, and now confesses his crime and implores pardon, they
press upon him and wound him. In vain he cries to his aunts to
protect him from his mother.
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