On all this house, in bitter wise, Our Lord and Master, Dionyse, Hath poured the utter dregs of pain! DIONYSUS. In bitter wise, for bitter was the shame Ye did me, when Thebes honoured not my name. AGAVE. Then lead me where my sisters be; Together let our tears be shed, Our ways be wandered; where no red Kithaeron waits to gaze on me; Nor I gaze back; no thyrsus stem, Nor song, nor memory in the air. Oh, other Bacchanals be there, Not I, not I, to dream of them! [AGAVE _with her group of attendants goes out on the side away from the Mountain_. DIONYSUS _rises upon the Cloud and disappears_. CHORUS. There be many shapes of mystery. And many things God makes to be, Past hope or fear. And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought. So hath it fallen here. [_Exeunt._ [Illustration] NOTES ON THE BACCHAE INTRODUCTORY NOTE The _Bacchae_, being from one point of view a religious drama, a kind of "mystery play," is full of allusions both to the myth and to the religion of Dionysus. 1. The Myth, as implied by Euripides. Semelê, daughter of Cadmus, being loved by Zeus, asked her divine lover to appear to her once in his full glory; he came, a blaze of miraculous lightning, in the ecstasy of which Semelê died, giving premature birth to a son. Zeus, to save this child's life and make him truly God as well as Man, tore open his own flesh and therein fostered the child till in due time, by a miraculous and mysterious Second Birth, the child of Semelê came to full life as God. 2. The Religion of Dionysus is hard to formulate or even describe, both because of its composite origins and because of its condition of constant vitality, fluctuation, and development. (_a_) The first datum, apparently, is the introduction from Thrace of the characteristic God of the wild northern mountains, a God of Intoxication, of Inspiration, a giver of superhuman or immortal life. His worship is superposed upon that of divers old Tree or Vegetation Gods, already worshipped in Greece. He becomes specially the God of the Vine. Originally a god of the common folk, despised and unauthorised, he is eventually so strong as to be adopted into the Olympian hierarchy as the "youngest" of the Gods, son of Zeus. His "Olympian" name, so to speak, is Dionysus, but in his worship he is addressed by numbers of names, more or less mystic and secret--Bromios, Bacchios or Baccheus, Iacchos, Eleuthercus, Zagreus, Sabazios, &c. Some of these may be the names of old spirits whom he has displaced; some are his own Thracian names. Bromos and Sabaja, for instance, seem to have been Thracian names for two kinds of intoxicating drink. Bacchos means a "wand." Together with his many names, he has many shapes, especially appearing as a Bull and a Serpent.