Ceres (standing in her chariot, impelled by wheels having wings at their hubs):
"Stop! Stop! Ah! it was with good reason that the exclusion of strangers, atheists, Epicureans, and Christians was commended! Now the mystery of the basket has been unveiled; the sanctuary profaned: all is lost!"
(She descends a precipitous slope—shrieking, despairing, tearing her hair.)
"Ah! lies, lies! Daira has not been restored to me. The voice of brass calls me to the dead. This is another Tartarus, whence there is no return! Horror!"
(The abyss engulfs her.)
Bacchus (with a frenzied laugh).
"What matters it? The Archon's wife is my spouse! The law itself reels in drunkenness! To me the new song, the multiplied forms!
"The fire by which my mother was devoured, flows in my veins! Let it burn yet more fiercely, even though I perish!
"Male and female, complaisant to all, I abandon myself to you, Bacchantes! I abandon myself to you, Bacchanalians!—and the vine shall twine herself about the tree-trunks! Howl! dance! writhe! Loosen the tiger and the slave!—rend flesh with ferocious bitings!"
(And Pan, Silenus, the Bacchantes, the Mimalonæides, and the Mænads,—with their serpents, torches, sable masks,—cast flowers at each other ... shake their tympanums, strike their thyrsi, pelt each other with shells, devour grapes, strangle a goat, and tear Bacchus asunder.)