BAC ... changing, you shall become a dragon, and your wife becoming a beast, shall receive in exchange the form of a serpent, Harmonia, the daughter of Mars, whom you had, being a mortal. And as the oracle of Jove says, you shall drive with your wife a chariot of heifers, ruling over barbarians; and with an innumerable army you shall sack many cities; and when they plunder the temple of Apollo, they shall have a miserable return, but Mars shall defend you and Harmonia, and shall settle your life in the islands of the blessed. I say this, I, Bacchus, not born of a mortal father, but of Jove; and if ye had known how to be wise when ye would not, ye would have been happy, having the son of Jupiter for your ally. CAD. Bacchus, we beseech thee, we have erred. BAC. Ye have learned it too late; but when it behooved you, you knew it not. CAD. I knew it, but you press on us too severely. BAC. [Ay,] for I, being a God, was insulted by you. CAD. It is not right for Gods to resemble mortals in anger.[66] BAC. My father, Jove, long ago decreed this. AG. Alas! a miserable banishment is the decree[67] [for us,] old man. BAC. Why do ye then delay what must needs be? CAD. O child, into what terrible evil have we come; both you wretched and your * * * * sisters,[68] and I miserable, shall go, an aged sojourner, to foreigners. Still it is foretold that I shall bring into Greece a motley barbarian army, and leading their spears, I, a dragon, shall lead the daughter of Mars, Harmonia, my wife, having the fierce nature of a dragon, to the altars and tombs of the Greeks. Nor shall I, wretched, rest from ills, nor even sailing over the Acheron below shall I be at rest. AG. O, my father! and I being deprived of you shall be banished. CAD. Why do you embrace me with your hands, O unhappy child, as a white swan does its exhausted[69] parent? AG. For whither can I turn, cast out from my country? CAD. I know not, my child; your father is a poor ally. AG. Farewell, O house! farewell, O ancestral city! I leave you in misfortune a fugitive from my chamber. CAD. Go then, my child, to the land of Aristæus * * * *. AG. I bemoan thee, O father! CAD. And I thee, my child; and I lament your sisters. AG. Terribly indeed has king Bacchus brought this misery upon thy house. BAC. [Ay,] for I have suffered terrible things from ye, having a name unhonored in Thebes. AG. Farewell, my father. CAD. And you farewell, O miserable daughter; yet you can not easily arrive at this. AG. Lead me, O guides, where I may take my miserable sisters as the companions of my flight; and may I go where neither accursed Cithæron may see me, nor I may see Cithæron with my eyes, and where there is no memory of the thyrsus hallowed, but they may be a care to other Bacchæ.