Third Stasimon
A small, terrible song — the question of what wisdom actually is, sung over a king who is being dressed inside the palace.
Summary
The chorus, alone after the priest has followed Pentheus inside, sing one of the most famous odes in surviving Greek tragedy. It opens with a long ache for the dances they cannot reach — on through the dark till the dim stars wane, the dew on the throat, the wind in the hair. They imagine themselves as a fawn fled to greenwood, leaping ahead of the hunt, beyond the snares and the deadly press; a voice still in the distance, but the dear lone lands ahead, untroubled by men, where the little things of the woodland live unseen.
The middle of the ode is the question that gives the play its standing in moral philosophy. What else is wisdom? What can man's striving, or god's high grace, be more lovely or more great? — To stand free of fear, to breathe and wait; to hold a hand uplifted over hate; and shall not loveliness be loved forever? They are not preaching the refrain; they are asking it. They turn from longing to warning. The strength of god is slow and still, yet never fails. Those who worship the ruthless will are followed hunter-wise, with time's unhurried stride.
The final strophe is a small lyric on what happiness actually is. Happy the man on the weary sea who has reached the haven; happy whoever has risen, free, above his striving. The orb of life is strangely graven; men in their millions seethe with hopes, and they win or miss their wills, and the hopes either die or are pined for still. But whoever can know, as the long days go, that simply to live is happiness — he has found his heaven. The song ends. The priest walks back out. He calls Pentheus by name.
- Scene 1The god alone in front of the palace where his mother died, in disguise as his own priest, telling the audience the whole plan....
- Scene 2The chorus of eastern women, alone after the god has gone, sing the long entrance song. They tell their journey from Asia, the...
- Scene 3Tiresias calls Cadmus out, dressed for the mountain. The two old men greet each other with affection and a slightly comic bravado...
- Scene 4The chorus's first long ode. They open in horror at Pentheus's blasphemy and ask the goddess of holiness if she has heard. They...
- Scene 5The guards return leading the foreign priest, and the captain has news he cannot explain: the women Pentheus arrested earlier have...
- Scene 6The chorus invoke Dirce and beg the god, wherever he is, to lift his wand against the tyrant. From inside the palace a voice cuts...
- Scene 7Pentheus comes out raging; the priest is calmly at the door. A herdsman runs in from the mountain and delivers the first long...
- Scene 8The most quoted song in the play. The chorus on the long dances on the mountain, on the feet of a fawn fleeing through loveliness...
- Scene 9The priest calls Pentheus out. The king emerges already half-mad: he sees double suns, double Thebes, the priest as a horned bull....
- Scene 10The chorus drop the composure of the earlier odes. They invoke the hounds of the maddened mind to drive the women to find...
- Scene 11The second messenger gives the longest speech in the play: the bent pine, the call from the sky, the dismemberment. Agave arrives...