Bacchae

Euripides

Euripides. The Tragedies of Euripides. Vol. I. Buckley, Theodore Alois, translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1850.

  1. O Thebes, nurse of Semele, crown yourself with ivy, flourish, flourish with the verdant yew bearing sweet fruit, and crown yourself in honor of Bacchus with branches of oak
  2. or pine. Adorn your garments of spotted fawn-skin with fleeces of white sheep, and sport in holy games with insolent thyrsoi [*](The thyrsos is a staff that is crowned with ivy and that is sacred to Dionysus and an emblem of his worship.). At once all the earth will dance—
  3. whoever leads the sacred band is Bromius—to the mountain, to the mountain, where the crowd of women waits, goaded away from their weaving by Dionysus.
Chorus
  1. O secret chamber of the Kouretes and you holy Cretan caves, parents to Zeus, where the Korybantes with triple helmet invented for me in their caves this circle,
  2. covered with stretched hide; and in their excited revelry they mingled it with the sweet-voiced breath of Phrygian pipes and handed it over to mother Rhea, resounding with the sweet songs of the Bacchae;