Cho. Fortune smiled upon thy hunting here.
Aga. Come, share the banquet.
Cho. Share? ah! what?
Aga. ’Tis but a tender whelp, the down just sprouting on its cheek beneath a crest of falling hair.
Cho. The hair is like some wild creature’s.
Aga. The Bacchic god, a hunter skilled, roused his Mænads to pursue this quarry skilfully.
Cho. Yea, our king is a hunter indeed.
Aga. Dost approve?
Cho. Of course I do.
Aga. Soon shall the race of Cadmus——
Cho. And Pentheus, her own son, shall to his mother—
Aga. Offer praise for this her quarry of the lion’s brood.
Cho. Quarry strange!
Aga. And strangely caught.
Cho. Dost thou exult?
Aga. Right glad am I to have achieved a great and glorious triumph for my land that all can see.
Cho. Alas for thee! show to the folk the booty thou hast won and art bringing hither.
Aga. All ye who dwell in fair fenced Thebes, draw near! that ye may see the fierce wild beast that we daughters of Cadmus made our prey, not with the thong-thrown darts of Thessaly, nor yet with snares, but with our fingers fair. Ought men idly to boast and get them armourers’ weapons? when we with these our hands have caught this prey and torn the monster limb from limb? Where is my aged sire? let him approach. And where is Pentheus, my son? Let him bring a ladder and raise it against the house to nail up on the gables[1] this lion’s head, my booty from the chase.
- ↑ Liddell and Scott say that this word originally meant the projecting end of the beam; so that perhaps our word “gable” is the nearest modern approach to it.
