From ancient times, many students of Euripides have believed that he attacked religion in his earlier plays (p. xviii), was severely criticized for these attacks,20 and came to repent in old age, when he wrote the Bacchae. The play, on this view, serves as Euripides’ recantation (“palinode”) to the gods and his defense to the people of Athens on an unofficial charge of irreverence. The interpretation prevailed until late in the nineteenth century. In this century, however, scholars have almost unanimously rejected the idea that Euripides had such a change of heart.
