XXVI.—THE BACCHANALS
Three dames led three meinies[1] to the mountain, Ino, Autonoë, and apple-cheeked[2] Agavè, and gathering there wild leaves of the shag-haired oak, and living ivy and groundling asphodel, wrought in a lawn of the forest twelve altars, unto Semelè three and unto Dionysus nine. Then took they from a box offerings made of their hands and laid them in holy silence upon those altars of their gathering, as was at once the precept and the pleasure of the great Dionysus. Meanwhile Pentheus spied upon all they did from a steepy crag, being crept into an ancient mastich-tree such as grow in that country. Autonoe saw him first and gave a horrible shriek, and made quick confusion of the sacred things of the madding Bacchus with her feet, for these things are not to be seen of the profane. Mad was she now, and the others were straightway mad also. Pentheus, he fled afraid, and the women, girding their kirtles up about their thighs, they went in hot pursuit. Pentheus, he cried ‘What would you, ye women?” Autonoe, she cried “That shall you know ere you hear it.’’ Then took off the mother the head of her child and roared even as the roar of a milch lioness, while Ino setting foot upon his belly wrenched shoulder and shoulder-blade from the one side of
