During this course I worked the Bacchae of Euripides a freshman from Greek. Not all my students are freaks of nature (no, not all) that enter college reciting choruses of tragedy. What happens is that, in Eugene, his father taught him Greek when he should have fourteen.
Of course it was a waste of time and enthusiasm to explain to this student that the beta comes after alpha. Instead we decided to dedicate the year to work a tragedy of Euripides, and I proposed were Bacchae. We have read and translated from the edition of Diggle . What is now hang my version of the prologue to the tragedy, given by Dionysus on his return to his homeland, Thebes.
Eugenio special plan has served him to become familiar with a genre that had never read the original Greek, to learn to sing trimeters and to enter the wonderful world of textual criticism. I have benefited as much as him in this symbiosis. In the times of Bologna will be a comfort to remember that my last class in Greek at the Faculty of Arts of my University of myself to make a text philology as Bacchae of Euripides.
Thanks, Eugene.
DIONISO
I introduce myself, son of Zeus, in this land Theban
Dionysus, which once bore the daughter of Cadmus,
Semele, who was lighting the fire that the carrier beam.
After trocar my way for a mortal god, I am
with the sources of Dirce and the water of Ismene.
And I see my mother's grave, a victim of lightning,
this is near the house, and the ruins of the palace
the smoke makes the flame of fire from Zeus, still alive, immortal
excess of Hera against my mother directed. I praise
Cadmus, who
this area has been impassable, her daughter's room, from the vine I
I have covered all around with the rich foliage clusters.
After leaving the plains of rich gold
Lydians and the Phrygians, the sun-whipped plains of the Persians, the walls
Bactrian and harsh winter land of the Medes
walked, and Saudi happy
and throughout Asia that together with the salty sea
spreads, which has its beautiful cities
towers filled in mixture of Greeks and, together, barbarians
this is the first city of the Greeks I have come to
after my form there choirs and institute my
mysteries, to be a divinity known by mortals.
And to this Theban land first
helena got aroused between cries, igniting a fawn skin of your body
tirso and putting in his hand, projectile ivy .
is that my mother's sisters, the least desirable,
were saying that I, Dionysus was not born of Zeus and Semele
after being seduced by any man, Zeus
attributed disgrace his bed,
tricks of Cadmus, thus the
killed Zeus, they claimed, because his pretended marriage.
Well, to themselves in the palace did I leave
crazy, and deranged mind inhabit mountain,
and carry the apparel of my rites of force.
And all the female offspring, few women were
the Cadmea, I took them, crazy, out of their homes. Together
mixed with the daughters of Cadmus
under the green firs settle on rocks homeless.
For this city must learn well, even unwittingly,
not start living in my Bacchic rites,
and I come out in defense of my mother Semele
showing to mortals as a divinity fathered by Zeus.
dignity is that Cadmus and Pentheus
tyranny has passed, born of his daughter,
which the gods fight me face and me from libations
and at any point in their pleas remembers me.
Therefore I will show that I was born as a god to him and all
Thebans. And in another land,
after tidying it from here, turn my foot,
showing me. And if the city of Thebes
viciously, with weapons, the mountain to get
Bacchae tries to maenads I will join in military action.
So I have changed my appearance by a mortal
and transformed my way to the natural male.
But they left the Tmolus, the bulwark of Lydia,
my aunts, women who from among the barbarians
suit as my assistants and companions on the road:
raise your eardrums, which in City of Phrygian
are on home soil, invention of mine and mother Rhea,
going to crash and be mounted on either side of this palace
that of Pentheus, who sees the city of Cadmus.
that I, going to the folds of Cithaeron,
where are the Bacchae, I will participate with them in the chorus.
Joseph B. Torres Guerra
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