fawn-skin robes. "However," he proceeds, "I know which of you two fatuous old men is most in fault, and I will take such order with him as shall spoil his prophecies for some time to come:—
"Some one go;
The seats from which he spies the flight of birds,
False augur, with the iron forks o'erthrow,
Scattering in wild confusion all abroad,
And cast his chaplets to the winds and storms."
The elders implore him to cease from his blasphemies: and Cadmus, rather prudently than honestly, counsels him to profess faith in the new deity, if for no other reason, yet for the credit of the family:—
"Even if, as thou declar'st, he were no God,
Call thou him God. It were a splendid falsehood
If Semele be thought t' have borne a God."
But Pentheus spurns this accommodating advice, and Cadmus and Tiresias wend their way to the Bacchanal camp on the mountains. The Chorus takes up the charge of blasphemy, and hints at the end awaiting the impious king:—
"Of tongue unbridled, without awe,
Of madness spurning holy law,
Sorrow is the heaven-doomed close:
But the life of calm repose,
And modest reverence, holds her state,
Unbroken by disturbing fate;
And knits whole houses in the tie
Of sweet domestic harmony.
Beyond the range of mortal eyes
'Tis not wisdom to be wise."
