“Gods should be exempt from human passion.” – The Bacchae
I’m not a Bacchante. You know that. I’m a mad reader. I do not even drink wine. Iced tea, please. But wine is the chosen drink of Dionysus. And his followers, the Bacchae, get drunk and are possessed by the god, dance wildly, tear animals apart with their bare hands and eat the raw flesh, and perform other sacred rites.
Perhaps rereading Euripides’s The Bacchae is a sacred rite.
I learned that Dionysus is a secret blonde. Who knew? Early on in Euripides’s tragedy, Dionysus assumes the form of a golden-haired man. He does this to tease Pentheus, the young Theban king who despises the new rites and wants to abolish them. Pentheus’s mother, Agave, and other Theban women have already been driven mad by the god and lured from the city.
Euripides stresses the youthful nature of Pentheus, who considers the worship of Dionysus superstitious and morally suspect. The chorus of Asian Bacchae who have followed Dionysus to Thebes observe the young king’s rashness.
The chorus recognizes Pentheus’s hubris. They sing,
A tongue without reins
defiance,unwisdom -
their end is disaster.
Pentheus does not acknowledge Dionysus, the effeminate god of wine, intoxication, and ritual madness. But each god must be acknowledged, each must receive sacrifices. And Pentheus is punished violently for his hubris, his arrogance. He does not know his own nature yet, and does not understand the nature of the gods. In Greek tragedy, Dionysus is not a jolly lover of the grape. The destructive side of Dionysus is emphasized.
The Bacchae is violent and horrifying almost beyond imagination. It is not just Dionysus, it is the violence of the Bacchantes. I used to be able to separate myself from literary texts, but no longer. The excess, the malice, and the cruelty of Dionysus exhausted me, despite the beauty of Euripides’s language.
What does Euripides mean by it? Why does Pentheus, so young he does not have a beard, suffer such a cruel punishment? And the ancient Greeks tended to be lenient to the young because they are impetuous, inexperienced, and unwise. Euripides seems to feel the injustice of the punishment, and is subversive in the graphic description of the ah-tay, or fall, of Pentheus.
Can I read this as a radical condemnation of the god’s violence? I can and I will. But there are other factors to consider, if I had time: the relationship between religion and government, the culture and the conventions of Greek tragedy,. There is usually a murder, a hero in disguise, characters who rant against injustice, and a fall, or ruin, after hubris. And the ravings of the chorus express the anxiety of the general population.
Necessity requires the Greeks to worship Dionysus. It is necessary to indulge themselves, to get out of themselves, to be mystic, to forget self..
But often they’re just at a theater festival -very popular – or even a Dionysian festival.
There will be wine!
The quotes are from the translation of The Bacchae by William Arrowsmith.
It’s been many years since I’ve read this play; while much of its impact has necessarily faded, I do remember being fascinating by the questions it raises, which you discuss in your review. The ambiguity in these classics keeps them alive, don’t you think, as each era uses them as vehicles for its own preoccupations (for example, the Bacchae provides a loose background for Szymanowski’s c. 1925 opera “King Roger”). On a somewhat different note, have you come across Nina Maclaughlin’s “Wake Siren”? It’s a modern retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses & has a great piece (“Agave”) on this myth.
Euripides is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant and I think of him as the radical Greek tragedian, though his plays can be interpreted so many ways! And many are less emotional than mine. Thanks for the recommendation of Wake Siren, which I’ve never heard of. I love retold myths: they fascinated me!