Page:Metamorphoses.djvu/185

 METAMORPHOSES BOOK III slaves-“go, bring this plotter hither, and in chains ! Let there be no dull delay to my bidding." His grandsire addresses him in words of reprimand, and Athamas, and all his counsellors, and they vainly strive to curb his will. He is all the more eager for their warning; his mad rage is fretted by restraint and grows apace, and their very efforts at control but make him worse. So have I seen a river, where nothing obstructed its course, flow smoothly on with but a gentle murmur; but, where it was held in check by dams of timber and stone set in its way, foaming and boiling it went, fiercer for the obstruction. But now the slaves come back, all covered with blood, and, when their master asks where Bacchus is, they say that they have not seen him; « but this companion of his," they say, "this priest of his sacred rites, we have taken," and they deliver up, his hands bound behind his back, one of Etruscan stock, a votary of Bacchus. Him Pentheus eyes awhile with gaze made terrible by his wrath; an with difficulty withholding his hand from punish- ment, he says: "Thou fellow, doomed to perish and by thy death to serve as a warning to others, tell me thy name, thy parents, and thy country; and why thou dost devote thyself to this new cult." He fearlessly replies: "My name is Acoetes, and my country is Maeonia; my parents were but humb'e folk. My father left me no fields or sturdy bullocks to till them; no woolly sheep, no cattle. He himself was poor and used to catch fish with hook and line and rod and draw them leaping from the stream His craft was all his wealth; and when he passed it on to me he said: 'Take this craft; 'tis all my fortune. Be you my heir and successor in it.' And in dying he left me nothing but the waters. This alone can