Let the people's hymn sound with the praise of Bacchus. Bind your streaming locks with the nodding ivy, and in your soft hands grasp the Nysaean thyrsus! Bright glory of the sky, come hither to the prayers which thine own illustrious Thebes, O Bacchus, offers to thee with suppliant hands. Hither turn with favour thy virginal face; with thy star-bright countenance drive away the clouds, the grim threats of Erebus, and greedy fate. Thee it becomes to circle thy locks with flowers of the springtime, thee to cover thy head with Tyrian turban, or thy smooth brow to wreathe with the ivy's clustering berries; now to fling loose thy lawless-streaming locks, again to bind them in a knot close-drawn; in such guise as when, fearing thy stepdame's wrath, thou didst grow to manhood with false-seeming limbs, a pretended maiden with golden ringlets, with saffron girdle binding thy garments. So thereafter this soft vesture has pleased thee, folds loose hanging and the long-trailing mantle. Seated in thy golden chariot, thy lions with long trappings covered, all the vast coast of the Orient saw thee, both he who drinks of the Ganges and whoever breaks the ice of snowy Araxes. On an unseemly ass old Silenus attends thee, his swollen temples bound with ivy garlands; while thy wanton initiates lead the mystic revels. Along with thee a troop of Bassarids in Edonian dance beat the ground, now on Mount Pangaeus' peak, now on the top of Thracian Pindus; now midst Cadmean dames has come a maenad, the impious comrade of Ogygian Bacchus, with sacred fawn-skins girt about her loins, her hand a light thyrsus brandishing. Their hearts maddened by thee, the matrons have set their hair a-flowing;
[…]
While the bright stars of the ancient heavens shall run in their courses; while Oceanus shall encircle the imprisoned earth with its waters; while full Luna shall gather again her lost radiance; while Lucifer shall herald the dawn of the morning and while the lofty Bears shall know naught of caerulean Nereus; so long shall we worship the shining face of beauteous Lyaeus.
Commentarius · Commentary
The Theban chorus sings to Bacchus while plague rages in the city. The card gives the prayer frame of the song, its beginning and its end; the narrative middle, which runs in the third person, is marked by the seam […].
The Thebans' position is delicate. Bacchus is their fellow-citizen, son of the Theban Semele, and Thebes is precisely where he was not acknowledged: Pentheus was torn apart, Ino driven mad. The city asks help of the god it nearly drove out, and reminds him of the kinship: "the vows which your own famous Thebes brings you".
More striking still is the middle the card omits: the list of the god's deeds, an obligatory part of a hymn. Pentheus, Ino, the Tyrrhenian pirates, Lycurgus — nearly every story is about someone who failed to recognise him and perished. Thebes praises the god with a catalogue of his reprisals, and two names on the list are Theban.
He is described meanwhile as a beauty: "soft arms", "maiden head", "starry face" — and carrying a thyrsus. Effeminacy and weaponry together; for Bacchus this is not a contradiction but a definition.
And what is asked of the god of wine is that he "scatter the grim threats of Erebus and greedy fate": that the plague stop. The deities field names Ariadne and Palaemon — they appear in the omitted middle.
Fons · Source
AuthorSeneca
WorkOedipus
Section403-441; 503-508
Period1st c. AD
Occasionchoral hymn to Bacchus from Seneca's Oedipus — Theban chorus invokes the god through a long catalogue of his myths, conquests and epiphanies
