previous next


Chorus
Let him be mute and stand aside from our sacred dances
who has no experience of mystical language, or has not cleansed his mind
Who never has seen and never has danced in the rites of the noble Muses
Nor ever has been inducted into the Bacchic mysteries of beef-eating Cratinus
Or who takes delight in foolish words when doing this is ill-timed,
Whoever does not eliminate hateful factionalism, and is disagreeable to the citizens,
but kindles and fans civil strife, in his thirst for private advantage:
Whoever takes bribes when guiding the state through the midst of a storm
Or betrays our forts or our ships, smuggles contraband from Aegina
As Thorycion did, that wretched collector of taxes
Sending pads and sails and pitch to Epidauros,
Or persuades anyone to send supplies to the enemies' ships,
Or defiles Hecate's shrine, while singing dithyrambs,
Or any politician who bites off the pay of the poets
For being ridiculed in the ancestral rites of Dionysus.
All these I warn, and twice I warn, and thrice I warn again,
stand aside from our mystical dances; but as for you: arouse the song
and the night-long dances, that belong to our festival here.

load focus Greek (F.W. Hall and W.M. Geldart, 1907)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Epidauros (1)
Aegina City (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (1 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: