Fig. 11.
Pentheus, wearing chlamys, pilos, and boots, crouches, with a drawn sword in his right hand, in a thicket denoted by two trees. A maenad who appears to have just discovered him rushes into the hiding-place with a torch in her right hand[[175]]; she is dressed in a plain, Doric peplos. Another maenad, similarly dressed but having a fawn-skin over the left hand and a sword in the right, does not seem to have sighted Pentheus. A third, dressed like the first one, holding a tympanon in the left hand and a thyrsos in the right, approaches wholly unconcerned with the discovery of her companions. On the right is another group of three maenads all dressed alike and all in rapid motion. The first holds in either hand the quarters of a kid or roe. The second shoulders the thyrsos with her left hand and makes an ecstatic gesture with her right. The third one, in even more violent motion, swings her veil about her and rushes on towards the left.
It should be noted, to begin with, that the vase is a Lower Italy fabric of the fourth century B.C., and that there is therefore no chronological difficulty in placing it under the influence of the Bakchai. The troop of maenads is arranged symmetrically, an equal number being on each side of the central scene, and this suggests the chorus in the play. The striking feature is the introduction of the landscape; there is no doubt as to where the catastrophe occurs. The artist did not allow himself the licence of placing Pentheus in the tree, for this had been too grotesque a sight for the fourth-century painter. The frequent references to the thicket[[176]] and the protection it was or the inconvenience it caused, is happily brought out in the picture, but the poet has not been followed in details. Pentheus does not appear with the thyrsos, talaric chiton, and dishevelled hair, for the simple reason that he would have been indistinguishable from the maenads. As he appears in the painting the contrast is striking and the eye at once grasps the situation. The torch held by the foremost maenad lights the way to the retreat of Pentheus, suggesting the words—
καὶ πρὸς οὐρανὸν
καὶ γαῖαν ἐστήριζε φῶς σεμνοῦ πυρός. v. 1082 f.
That one is armed with a sword while the others have no weapon finds also a parallel in Euripides, who says one time that they used nought but their hands—
χειρὸς ἀσιδήρου μέτα. v. 736.
and again that the sword shall do its work—
ἴτω ξιφηφόρος. vs. 992, 1012.