its walls together by his minstrelsy, been in such perturbation.
Who the young stranger with grape-bunch locks is, the audience are told by himself in the prologue. He is what he pretends to be, the son of Jupiter and Semele. He has travelled far before he came to Thebes to establish his rites and claim his kindred. "I have left," he says,
"The golden Lydian shores,
The Phrygian and the Persian sun-seared plains,
And Bactria's walls; the Medes' wild wintry land
Have passed, and Araby the blest; and all
Of Asia that along the salt-sea coast
Lifts up her high- towered cities, where the Greeks,
With the Barbarians mingled, dwell in peace."[1]
Hitherto, wherever I have come, mankind has acknowledged me a god: the first opposition I have met with is in this, the first Hellenic town I have entered:—
"But here, where least beseemed, my mother's sisters
Vowed Dionysus was no son of Jove;
That Semelè, by mortal paramour won,
Belied great Jove as author of her sin;
'Twas but old Cadmus' craft: hence Jove in wrath
Struck dead the bold usurper of his bed."
In requital for such usage, he has goaded all the women of Thebes into frenzy:—
"There's not a woman of old Cadmus' race
But I have maddened from her quiet house;
- ↑ The translated passages are all taken from Dean Milman's version of this drama.
