A* Notes on Bacchae (Play, Plot, Reception, Characters, Themes)
Themes include:
- Nature of Theatre
- Hunting Imagery/The Animal Experience
- Greeks vs. Barbarians (foreignness and "the other")
- Disguise/Identity
- The Truth and Reality
- Rational vs. Irrational
- Control vs. Freedom
- ...
Bacchae – Euripides (first performed 405 BC)
Bacchae – Play
Plot
- Dionysus opens the play telling the story of his birth (son of mortal Semele and god Zeus) and his reasons
for visiting the city (some – including Semele’s sisters Autonoe, Agave, and Ino – claim it is a lie intended
to cover up the fact that Semele became pregnant by some mortal.)
o Dionysus reveals that he has driven the women of the city mad and led them into the mountains to
observe his ritual festivities. He has disguised himself as a mortal for the time being.
- Dionysus exits to the mountains and the chorus (composed of Bacchae) enters. They perform a choral ode
in praise of Dionysus.
- Tiresias appears and calls for Cadmus (founder and former king of Thebes) and both men start out to join
the revelry in the mountains when Cadmus’ grandson Pentheus (current king) enters.
o He is disgusted to see two old men in festival dress, scolds them, and orders his soldiers to arrest
anyone engaging in Dionysian worship, including the mysterious “foreigner” who has introduced this
worship (who he intends to stone to death).
- The guards soon return with Dionysus himself in tow. Pentheus questions him (sceptical of and fascinated
by the Dionysian rites) and Dionysus’ answers are cryptic.
o Infuriated, Pentheus has Dionysus taken away and chained to an angry bull in the palace stable.
o Dionysus shows his power:
Breaks free and razes the palace with an earthquake and fire.
- Herdsman arrives from Mount Cithaeron and reports that women there are behaving strangely: wandering
the forest, suckling animals, twining snakes in their hair, and performing miraculous feats.
o The herdsmen and the shepherd planned to capture Pentheus’ mother but when they jumped out to
grab her the Bacchae became frenzied and pursued the men.
The women fell upon the cattle, ripping them to shreds with their bare hands and went on
plundering two villages that were further down the mountain, stealing bronze, iron and babies.
When villagers attempted to fight back, the women drove them off using only their ceremonial
staffs of fennel.
o The women then returned to the mountain top and washed up, as snakes licked them clean.
- Dionysus, still in disguise, persuades Pentheus to forgo his plan to defeat and massacre the women and
suggests spying on them while disguised as a female Maenad would be better.
o He dresses Pentheus like this and leads him out of the house out of his wits (he thinks he sees two suns
in the sky and believes he has the strength to rip up mountains with his bare hands).
- Messenger arrives to report that once the party reached Mount Cithaeron, Pentheus wanted to climb an
evergreen tree to get a better view and the stranger used divine power to bend down the tall tree and place
the king in its highest branches before Dionysus revealed himself and revealed Pentheus to his followers.
o Led by Agave, the Maenads forced the trapped Pentheus down, ripped off his limbs and his head, and
tore his body into pieces.
- After the messenger has relayed this news, Agave arrives, carrying her son’s head which she believes is the
head of a mountain lion. She displays it to Cadmus and is confused at his horror, she calls on Pentheus to
marvel at her feat.
o Her madness begins to wane and Cadmus forces her to recognise that she has destroyed her son.
- As the play ends, the corpse of Pentheus is reassembled while the royal family is devastated and destroyed.
Agave and her sisters are sent into exile and Dionysus decrees that Cadmus and his wife Harmonia will be
turned into snakes and lead a barbarian horde to plunder the cities of Hellas.
Reception
- Religious commentary by Euripides
o Murray Gilbert holds that the play was an expression of Euripides’ religious devotion, as though the
author finally repented of his cynicism, and wrote a play that honours Dionysus and carries a dire
warning to nonbelievers.
o Winnington-Ingram argues that Euripides was pointing out the inadequacy of the Greek gods and
religions.
, Bacchae – Characters
Dionysus
- Identities and Appearance
o Identities
Immediately has two different identities, even before his disguise – Pentheus’ cousin and
Olympian God.
He also disguises himself as a mortal: “I have changed my form and taken the likeness of a
man.”
“Dual nature of Dionysus” – Judith Mossman
He comes to Thebes specifically because “my mother’s sisters said [...] that I, Dionysus, was not
Zeus’s son.” – Second time he has referred to himself and his father – identity = important.
Arrives with a grudge.
Dionysus “is a figure who confuses the boundaries of who we are” – Simon Goldhill
o Appearance
Pentheus: “your shape is not unhandsome”
Litotes – ironic understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its
contrary.
Pentheus: “these long curls cascading most seductively over your cheek.”
Dionysus is beguiling to Pentheus.
- Greekness vs. Other
o He has already been East to “the whole tract of the Asian coast” and this is “the first city of Hellas I
have visited”.
The East was seen as the land of barbarians.
o Animalistic
Compared to an animal by the guard
“Guard: “Pentheus, we’ve brought the prey you sent us out to catch”
“The beast was gentle”
The chorus call for Dionysus to appear in the shape of an animal and “swoop down” on “the
Hunter of the Bacchae” (hunter becomes hunted).
- Values
o Apollonian vs. Dionysian
Apollo – civilisation and the arts. / Dionysian – breakdown of typical order and return to nature.
o Opposition to social structure.
A King is a secular ruler in a political structure, Dionysus is anti-structure and is a religious
leader.
T: “You rely on force; but it is not force that governs human affairs.”
Teiresias argues that the relationship between mortals and gods is analogous to subjects and
their kings.
There is tension between a god like Dionysus who breaks down boundaries and hierarchies and a
King who sits at the top of this hierarchy.
Because the chorus are foreign they do not have to obey the rule of kings – “Dionysus commands
me; not Thebes, but Dionysus.”
o Individual vs. Collective
Dionysiac worship breaks down social barriers and connects people into one unit but Dionysus
himself is separate (as a god against mortals) and Pentheus (as an isolated King).
Dionysus: “I alone, at once, unaided, effortlessly freed myself.” (Emphasis via repetition).
- Control
o Dionysus asks Pentheus “What dread pain will you inflict?” This gives him an opportunity to set the
punishment and convict himself.
Dionysus is completely in control of the exchange. He holds all the cards.
Dionysus is “the director of the play” – Easterling
o Has bacchic followers:
“riotous crew of nymphs and satyrs” – Dodds
- Power
o The women attacked “Hysiae and Eyrthrae” and snatched babies and plunder, assisted by Dionysus
who ensured that “nothing fell to the ground” and that “no blood” of the women was spilled.
“There was the power of a god in that.”
o The messenger describes how Dionysus grabbed the “topmost branch” of the tree and bent it down, “a
thing no mortal man could do.”
, o “Dionysus is an inhuman tormentor” – Winnington-Ingram
Chorus
- Unusual for a chorus
o Foreign
Chorus: “I am no Greek”
o Loud/Energetic
Dionysus refers to them as an “army”.
Later the Herdsman describes them as “like a flight of spears” – they have lost a bit of their
humanity and are now the weapons of Dionysus.
o They are still alive as the Herdsman personifies them, describing how they were
“frantic”.
The Herdsman also describes them as “three separate companies of women” – structured
like an army.
o Hostile to main character
Unusual for tragedy/more common in comedy.
o Different role
The play is named after the chorus.
No mediation (as is normal in tragedy) – like comedy.
- Group power over individuality.
- Worshippers of Bacchae
o Initiated into Bacchic worship
Chorus: “Blest is the happy man who knows the mysteries the gods ordain”
They refer to the “ecstasy” of this worship and “Run, dance, delirious, possessed!”
The Chorus describe the benefits of being initiated, describe Dionysus’ birth, then describe Zeus’
birth – their language concerns mysticism and music (drums and chanting).
o Allies of Dionysus yet kept in the dark about his identity.
Chorus calls to Dionysus about Pentheus and says: “Soon he’ll chain us limb to limb”.
Chorus calling for Dionysus to save them – similar to Satyr play. The dynamic of rescue
from imprisonment is key to satyr plays.
But also refer to the Lydian stranger as their “comrade”
o Yet they still recognise both Dionysus and the stranger as saviours separately – “We
are saved!”
o Supporters of Dionysus
Chorus: “I shrink from speaking freely before the king; yet I will say it: there is no greater god
than Dionysus.”
The chorus are pleased when the messenger tells them Pentheus is dead: “Bromius, lord! Your
divine power is revealed!”
Gloating over an enemy’s death is distasteful. (In the Odyssey, Odysseus tells Eurycleia off
for it).
The messenger is shocked at their reaction but they say: “I am no Greek”
o Under Dionysus’ control?
Mad/Possessed - The chorus refer to each other as “Hounds of madness”
Still shocked by violence
The chorus still recoil from Pentheus’ head when Agave tries to boast.
o This scene features lyric dialogue (often used for scenes of heightened
emotion/tension).
o The chorus try to reason with Agave, referring to the head as having “his long hair”,
trying to explain Agave’s mistake: “Indeed, his long hair makes him look like some
wild creature.”
Pentheus
- Trying to be a good leader
o “the sensible defender of rational order” – Walter Burkert
o “Neither completely good nor completely bad” – Hannah Roisman
- God-fighter
o Does not believe in Dionysus.
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