Bacchae (Hackett Classics)

by Euripides

I have not devised speeches to make up for the lost passages at the end; instead, I have included an appendix with the main evidence we have that pertains to them.

No other literary work of the period goes so far in conveying the depth of feeling that belonged to the religious spirit of ancient Greece; none depicts a god behaving more savagely toward human beings.

It is a play about a kind of power that human beings must simply accept, that can lead them unwilling to sacrifice and initiation—or to terror and destruction. The play works by building, and at the same time resolving, conflicts between brute force and religion, between new and old, between savage and civilized, between city and mountain.

These Bacchae, as the women who celebrate Dionysus are called, are ushered on stage by the god himself.

Dionysus has many names in the play, and shows himself in many ways. He is Bacchus, Iacchus, and Evius—all names that evoke the joy of worshiping this god of peace and wine and dancing.

He is also Bromius, the Thunderer, born in a blast of lightning, bringing terror...

The boy’s name is Pentheus, and he thinks that because he is king he can put a stop to this new religion.

he appears to be concerned mostly about maintaining order among women, for fear that they will give way to orgies of sex.

Pentheus first plans to take an army against the Maenads on the mountain, but Dionysus forestalls this action.

In any case, he allows Dionysus to dress him as a woman—a very revealing disguise, for it brings out the part of Pentheus’ mind he is trying hardest to suppress—and lets the god lead him up the mountain to spy on the women.

There they spy him, mistaking him for a wild beast, and tear him limb from limb, playing catch with pieces of him.

Her punishment comes when she sees clearly, for the first time, what it is that she has been carrying, and realizes that she has killed her own son, brutally. Then she knows Dionysus for the potent god he is.

yet it strikes a chord in many readers today, perhaps because of late twentieth-century anxiety about the resistance that is felt from science and technology against fantasy, emotion, and religion.

Christianity has an ethical message that is missing from Dionysus-worship, which seems to preach little but passivity and reverence toward the gods.

The religious background of the play is elusive because it deals with rituals that were celebrated by women in secret,

This play, for example, brings an Athenian sensibility to bear on what it represents as the foundation of a cult in Thebes; and although Thebes is neighbor to Athens, the two cities see themselves as opposed in culture.

But it is primarily the city as a social unit that faces the gods in myth and in the theater that follows myth. Gods, for their part, make their appearances not to a few saints but in public, so as to assure a city of their power and to remind all human beings of mortality. The principal role of a god in myth and tragedy is to establish ascendancy.

Dionysus2 is best known as a god of wine and intoxication, but he has also the power to give a blessed madness to his votaries by means other than drinking.

At the same time, paradoxically, he is a god of deception,

Initiation is open to all, regardless of sex or age or citizenship, and so mystery religions provide a personal, egalitarian counterpoint to the public rituals of state religion.

Democratic Athens was devoted to a mystery religion celebrated in nearby Eleusis—the Eleusinian mysteries of the goddess Demeter—and the Athenians protected these mysteries as belonging uniquely to their city. Acts of irreverence toward mysteries are especially offensive and punishable by law. Reverence itself, a cardinal virtue in the period, is most deeply the sense of holiness that comes over an individual during initiation.

The religion of the chorus in the Bacchae is plainly a mystery religion based on initiation.

Dionysiac initiation and its trappings are seen in the play as preparations for the underworld (lines 857, 1157).

In sum, the main powers of Dionysus are these: he is a god of wine, joy, and healing; he is a life force who protects the dead; and he is a master of disguise who knows how to make himself known by becoming truly present to those who follow him.

the one celebrated in the Bacchae seems to have been a journey through darkness to light, by way of a symbolic death or sacrifice, leading in the end to a full recognition of the god in his power.

That paradox of losing one’s mind in order to gain it is fundamental to Dionysiac religion, even though celebrants evidently do not use words for madness (mania) of themselves.

The wisdom of initiation is a serene acceptance that comes through letting go, an acceptance achieved through the frenzy of initiation.

Maenadic rituals, though transgressing the usual norms, are historically orderly and benign—and so they are depicted in the Bacchae until they are interrupted by men.

The message of the play, as delivered by the chorus, is that peace, order, and control come through cult, and not through force of weapons (Pentheus’ choice) or through the New Learning (which Tiresias represents).

we see of this new order in the Bacchae is the ground of Thebes polluted by a killing within the royal family.

Aristophanes’ targets included the new teaching of persuasive speech, along with a series of reasoned {xvii} attacks on traditional religion, established law, and social custom.

On the one hand is the New Learning, which shows itself in fine speaking, is ambitious, and has little respect for tradition. On the other hand is the wisdom of acceptance, which leads to a quiet life, is modest, and resists innovation.

The chorus treats Pentheus as guilty of New Learning by association, inasmuch as both he and science resist religion.

Ancient and modern writers have made much of the criticism of gods that erupts in some of Euripides’ plays. Typical is the protest we hear from Cadmus against Dionysus. “You are too severe,” he says. “Anger does not become a god” (1346, 1348).

Women’s issues loom large in many of Euripides’ plays, as he gives expression both to the fears men have of women’s power {xix} and the anguish of women at their lack of freedom.

the cult of Dionysus is egalitarian and therefore especially appropriate for a democracy such as Athens.

the emphasis he gives to ordinary people in preference to well-born heroes

Claims to merit from high birth are emphat...

Nothing means more evil to a city than a tyrant. First of all there will be no public laws but one man will have control by owning the law, {xx} himself for himself, and this will not be fair. When the laws are written down, then he who is weak and he who is rich have equal justice

The chorus opposes Pentheus both because he is a monarch and because it thinks he is acting as if he were above the law.

In writing as if lawful democracy is a real possibility, Euripides is squaring off against those enemies of democracy who slander it as a lawless tyranny by the lower classes over everyone else.

Critics of democracy in this period tend to identify it with lawlessness (anomia) and use the word “good-law-government” (eunomia) as code for oligarchy, which means g...

In the late fifth century, reformers begin to appeal to nature against law—to the idea that nature has established permanent universal norms, whereas the laws made by human beings serve only relative to the interests of those who make them.

The chorus of the Bacchae insists on obedience to laws that are both long established and natural (895–96, on which see my endnote), and Jocasta in the {xxi} Phoenician Women declares, “Fairness is by nature the law (or norm) for human beings” (538).

The anti-intellectualism of the Bacchae is a corollary of conservative populism, an attack on those who try to stand out by means of intelligence or cultivation, and a defense against innovation.

“Our minds keep striving to be stronger than the god” (216–18).

Not surprisingly, it is women who suffer the most for showing signs of intelligence, and Euripides does not hesitate to bring this injustice into the open.

Sung lyrics are accompanied by the music of an aulos (conventionally translated “flute”) a reed instrument ancient audiences found especially arousing emotionally.

Only the verbal drama is enacted on stage, and the audience sees directly only debates, arguments, speeches, and conversations. Physical action takes place offstage and is reported to the audience.

The setting for many tragic plays is Thebes,11 and the time is before recorded history, soon after the founding of the city by Cadmus.