METAMORPHOSES BOOK III
shippers. As a spirited horse snorts when the brazen trumpet with tuneful voice sounds out the battle and his eagerness for the fray waxes hot, so did the air, pulsing with the long-drawn cries, stir Pentheus, and the wild uproar in his ears heated his wrath white-hot.
About midway of the mountain, bordered with thick woods, was an open plain, free from trees, in full view from every side. Here, as Pentheus was spying with profane eyes upon the sacred rites, his mother was the first to see him, first to rush madly on him, first with hurled thyrsus to smite her son < Ho, there, my sisters, come!" she cried, "see that huge boar prowling in our fields. Now must I rend him." The whole mad throng rush on him; from all sides they come and pursue the frightened wretch— yes, frightened now, and speaking milder words, cursing his folly and confessing that he has sinned Sore wounded, he cries out: "Oh help, my aunt, Autonoë! Let the ghost of Actaeon move your heart." She knows not who Actaeon is, and tears the suppliant's right arm away; Ino in frenzy rends away his left. And now the wretched man has no arms to stretch out in prayer to his mother; but. showing his mangled stumps where his arms have been torn away, he cries: "Oh, mother, see!" Agave howls madly at the sight and tosses her head with wildly streaming hair. Off she tears his head, and holding it in bloody hands, she yells: See, comrades, see my toil and its reward of victory!" Not more quickly are leaves, when touched by the first cold of autumn and now lightly clinging, whirled from the lofty tree by the wind than is Pentheus torn limb from limb by those impious hands. Taught by such a warning, the Thebans throng the new god's sacred rites, burn incense, and bow down before his shrines.
