When they knew it for their master’s, they sped swifter than doves. In divine madness they forded the rivers which had overflowed their banks, and thorny thickets parted to let them pass. At last they were close enough to recognize their king and persecutor clinging to the topmost boughs of the pine. First they hurled stones, boughs torn from trees, and their wands, but they could not reach the height where he hung precariously among the green needles. Then they took the hard wood of oak and dug around the pine until the roots were laid bare, and Pentheus, groaning aloud, fell with the falling trunk. His mother Agave, on whose lids the god had laid a spell so that she did not recognize her son, signed for the slaughter to begin. Terror had restored the king to his senses. “Not you, Mother! Let it not be you who punishes the sins of her own child!” he cried, throwing his arms about her neck. “Do you not know your own son, your son Pentheus, whom you bore in Echion’s house?” But the frantic priestess of Bacchus foamed at the mouth and stared at him with wide-open eyes. And what she saw was not her son but a mountain lion, and gripping his right shoulder she tore out his arm. Her sisters wrested out his left, and then the whole raging band closed upon him, each seizing some part of his body until he was wrenched limb from limb. Agave herself clutched his head in her bloodstained hands, fastened it upon her thyrsus, still believing it to be the head of a lion, and carried it triumphantly through the woods of Cithaeron.

Thus did the god Dionysus take revenge on one who had scoffed at his sacred rites.

PERSEUS

AN oracle had informed King Acrisius of Argos that his grandson would deprive him of his throne and his life. Because of this he had his daughter Danae and Perseus, her child by Zeus, shut in a chest and cast into the sea. Through wave and wind Zeus guided the course of the chest, and the tide at last beached it on the island of Seriphus, over which two brothers ruled: Dictys and Polydectes. Dictys was fishing when the chest hove out of the water, and he dragged it ashore. Both he and his brother lavished affection on Danae and her child. Polydectes took her to wife and had Perseus, the son of Zeus, carefully reared.

When he was fully grown, his stepfather urged him to go in search of adventure and undertake some quest that would bring him glory. The youth was willing enough, and soon they agreed that he was to find the Medusa, strike off her terrible head, and bring it to the king in Seriphus.

Perseus set out on his quest, and the gods guided him to a far-off region where Phorcys, father of many monsters, made his home. There Perseus came upon his three daughters, the Graeae. These were gray-haired from birth and had between them only one eye and one tooth, which they took turns in using. Perseus robbed them of both, and when they pleaded with him to return their priceless property, he consented on one condition: that they show him the way to the nymphs.

These nymphs were magical beings with certain prized possessions: a pair of winged shoes, a wallet, and a helmet of dog-hide. Whoever wore these things could fly wherever he wished and see whom he would without being seen himself. The daughters of Phorcys pointed out the road which led to the home of the nymphs, and so recovered their eye and tooth. From the nymphs Perseus found out what he wanted and seized the wallet, throwing it over his shoulder, the winged sandals, which he bound to his feet, and the helmet, which he set on his head. Hermes lent him a brazen shield, and furnished with all these aids he flew toward the ocean where the Gorgons, the three other daughters of Phorcys, lived. Only the third, who was called the Medusa, was mortal, and that was why Perseus had been sent to cut off her head. He found the Gorgons asleep. Instead of skin, they had dragon-scales, instead of hair, snakes twined their brows. Their teeth were like the tusks of a boar, and they had hands of metal and golden wings which could cleave the air. Perseus knew that anyone who looked at them would instantly be turned to stone, so he stood with his back to the sleepers, caught their triple image in his shining shield, and singled out the Medusa.