Euripides: Bacchae ( Bά κ χ α ι ) Cast of characters:

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1 1 Euripides: Bacchae ( Bά κ χ α ι ) Cast of characters: D IONYSUS the god of wine and theater, SON of Zeus and Semele. He arrives disguised as a mortal, a STRANGER (see also ETHNICITY ) CHORUS of ASIAN worshippers of the new god (see also CHORUSES (LIST); FEMALE CHORUSES IN GREEK TRAGEDY ) TEIRESIAS the old and BLIND soothsayer (see also PRIESTS AND SEERS ), who speaks in favor of the new cult CADMUS the founder of THEBES, FATHER of Semele and grandfather to both Dionysus and PENTHEUS. He is also happy to join in the cult PENTHEUS the young king of Thebes (see also AGE: OLD AND YOUNG ). He is quick tempered and arrogant, and opposes the new religion SERVANT forced by Pentheus to capture Dionysus, and take him to the king First MESSENGER reports the actions of the MAENADS on the mountain, their sparagmos ( tearing apart ) of the cattle, and their victorious fight against the herdsmen Second MESSENGER reports the DEATH and sparagmo s of Pentheus AGAVE the mother of Pentheus, who has joined the dances on the mountain and in her manic possession leads the killing and dismemberment of her own son (see also CHILD MURDER ) The roles were distributed so that the same actor would play Agave and Pentheus; the Stranger, Teiresias and Dionysus; and Cadmus, the messengers and the servant. This offers suggestive reflections on the traits and motivations shared by different characters, as indicated by Pavlovskis ( 1977 : 123). (See also ACTORS AND ACTING; FEATURES OF GREEK TRAGEDY; PERFORMANCE.) The scene opens outside the royal palace, on the acropolis of Thebes, with the facade of the castle in the background. On the stage there is a tomb from which smoke is said to rise. (See also ANCIENT GREEK THEATERS; SPACE; THEATER ARCHITECTURE; THEATRICAL SPACE AND THE LOCALE ITSELF.) The Bacchae is EURIPIDES last play, written after the playwright had left A THENS and while he was staying in Macedonia (see also G REEK T RAGEDY AND M ACEDONIA ) as guest of the king Archelaus. The play was recovered after the poet s death ( BCE ) and staged only posthumously (405 BCE ), with great success. This status as last play and posthumous play contributes in no small measure to the reception of the Bacchae in the subsequent tradition. Within the youngest playwright s production, in fact (and especially within his production in the final years, in which there is an overt philosophical criticism of traditional RELIGION ), the Bacchae stands out. With its religious theme, its archaic diction and style (including Aeschylean words, for example), and its solemn STASIMA, with their liturgical style and rhythms associated with actual hymns of worship (Dodds 1960 : xxxvii viii; see also M ETER AND R HYTHM ), we can understand why the play might be interpreted as a last-minute change of mind for the now old rationalist poet (see also R ATIONALIST CRITICISM ), who had made a career out of shunning tradition and questioning the gods: most famously, it was Nietzsche in his Birth of Tragedy who interpreted the play as a palinode (see also N IETZSCHE on G REEK T RAGEDY AND THE T RAGIC ). Others have explained the contrast between the play and Euripides representations elsewhere by referring to aspects of PARODY of the religious drama and comic elements within it, or by seeing it as a play pervaded by a crisis of VALUES and general disbelief (see also C OMIC S CENES IN GREEK TRAGEDY ; H UMOR ). The dichotomy between these two interpretations still dominates scholarship. Two of The Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy, First Edition. Edited by Hanna M. Roisman John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

2 2 the most influential readings of the play in the past two decades, those of Charles Segal and Richard Seaford, also polarize around these two extremes. The first offers the image of a post-modern play, shaped by ambiguity and by a sense of crisis, a play that blurs the distinction between the opposites on which Greek culture appears to be founded. Dionysus is the god who destroys boundaries, the god of transformation and abandonment, the god of art and fiction; the Bacchae is a play about writing and seeing a play, about illusion and reality, about how meaning is created and shared, about identity and its reversals (Segal 1997a) (see also D RAMATIC I LLUSION AND R EALISM ). At the other end of the spectrum, Seaford s historical study (Seaford 2001 ) emphasizes the importance of ritual in the text (see R ITUAL AND T RAGEDY ). The Bacchae, on his reading, reflects very seriously on the importance of religion and civic cults. In many passages the text reflects (and glorifies) the gifts and dangers of mystery initiation (see also M YSTERY C ULT ). There is nothing open or ludic about this play; rather, it is a serious engagement with the worship of one of the most fundamental divinities of the Greek pantheon. The story staged by the Bacchae is to some extent a traditional theomachia, the vain fight of a human against a god (see G ODS R OLE/ GODS AND MORTALS ), as well as a typical rejection myth, a story in which a newcomer, often a god in disguise, is rejected by a community at its own peril. The MYTHS of Dionysus had been used before by the tragedians, and the myth of Pentheus was well known, as Oranje helpfully reviews (1984: ). Euripides, however, appears to have introduced several innovations, mostly in the direction of increasing emotional and psychological intensity (March 1989 ) (see also E URIPIDES : D RAMATIC I NNOVATIONS ; E URIPIDES : T REATMENT OF M YTH ; E URIPIDES AND S UBVERSIVENESS ). Plot P ROLOGUE (1 63): The play opens with the arrival of the god Dionysus, in human disguise, in the city of Thebes. He delivers the prologue and explains the background as he stands by the tomb of his mother Semele, who died in childbirth, struck by a lightning bolt from Zeus. Semele, the daughter of the city s founder Cadmus, conceived Dionysus after having sex with Zeus. However, the women of her FAMILY refused to believe her, accused her of using the name of the Olympian god to cover a humble human affair, and declared that Zeus manifested himself to her in divine form and killed her because she had lied about his paternity. Dionysus, now an adult, has returned to Thebes to establish his rites and AVENGE his mother for the unjust treatment received at the hands of her family. P ARODOS (64 169): The Chorus of Asian worshippers enters, celebrating the deeds of Dionysus and the blessings offered by his cult. First E PISODE ( ): The old king Cadmus and Teiresias, the blind seer, enter the stage. They have decided to join in the new worship, in case Dionysus turns out really to be a god. The two use different arguments: Teiresias, in a speech with SOPHISTIC overtones, rationalizes Dionysus as the wet principle of life to which the goddess Demeter is the dry counterpart, almost a natural force; Cadmus is mostly concerned with defending the good of the family and the HONOR that will ensue from claiming KINSHIP to a god. The young king in office, Pentheus, also arrives, to find a situation characterized by disorder and turmoil. The women of the city have been driven out of their houses to celebrate the orgies of the new cult, and even his own grandfather, Cadmus, is planning to join the dances. The king s reaction is stark and repressive: he orders his men to capture the stranger and throw him in prison, and he reproaches the two old men harshly (see also G ENDER AND ITS ROLE IN GREEK TRAGEDY ; S EXUALITY IN GREEK TRAGEDY ). First Stasimon ( ): The Chorus invokes holiness and religious PIETY, condemning the impious arrogance of mortals and celebrating the gifts of Eirene, Peace.

3 3 Second Episode ( ): Two servants enter the stage, leading the bound stranger to the king. The encounter between Pentheus and the disguised god is confrontational and ambiguous (see also A MBIGUITY ), as the god responds to the human s arrogance with seductive and DECEIVING words. Of the two characters, it clearly emerges that the captured stranger is in control of the situation. Second Stasimon (519 75): The Chorus evokes the birth of Zeus and stigmatizes Pentheus VIOLENT and unreasonable behavior. Third Episode ( ): A sudden noise and flashes of light terrify the Chorus: Dionysus, it seems, is shaking the royal palace. The god reassures his worshippers and gives a report of the so-called palace miracle (616 41). Earlier on, in the stable where the king had imprisoned him, the god drove Pentheus to MADNESS. In his hallucinations, Pentheus struggles against ghosts and seems to see, or actually witnesses, a FIRE and an earthquake destroying the palace. When the king recovers, a Messenger arrives and reports on the acts of supernatural violence that the women are carrying out on the mountain, repelling an attack by shepherds and herdsmen and slaughtering cattle in a bloody sparagmos. Pentheus, even more outraged, is determined to wage war against the Bacchants. There is a twist to the plot when the relationship between Pentheus and Dionysus changes, altering the dynamic of hostility between the two. Luring Pentheus into a trap, Dionysus drives him into a manic frenzy (or, perhaps, he MANIPULATES Pentheus deepest unspoken desires), convincing Pentheus to dress up as a woman and accompany him to the mountain to spy on the Maenads as they celebrate their rites (see also C OSTUME (AND SHOES) ). Pentheus accepts, adopting the disguise in the famous, and at times comical, dressing-up scene ( and ). Third Stasimon ( ): The Chorus evokes the swift flight of the grazing fawn as it escapes the threat posed by the hunters, which resembles the Maenad s dance. Then the Chorus reflects on the meaning of true WISDOM, sophia, and true happiness, eudaimonia, for mortals: to enjoy a happy life, day by day. Fourth Episode (912 76): Pentheus is now completely possessed; he sees double and abandons himself entirely to the control of the god. He is pleased with his woman s disguise and foolishly enthusiastic about the coming expedition. Fourth Stasimon ( ): The Chorus mood now changes, becoming aggressive and militant: the worshippers urge the band of Theban women to hunt the impious Pentheus and give him the PUNISHMENT he deserves, in a crescendo of frenzy that culminates in an invocation to Dionysus in the form of a bull. Fifth Episode ( ): A Messenger returns from the mountains and reports, in the presence of the Chorus, the death of Pentheus. Having reached the mountain with the stranger, Pentheus positioned himself on a high tree to spy on the worshippers. He quickly became surrounded by the frenzied women, who, led by Agave and urged on by Dionysus in divine form, killed him like an animal. He was torn to pieces (a sparagmos similar to the one reserved for the cattle earlier in the play) and his body scattered around the plain. Fifth Stasimon ( ): The Chorus celebrates the triumph of Dionysus over his mortal opponent. E XODOS ( ): Pentheus mother Agave returns with her son s head stuck on her thyrsus. She is still deranged and boasts to the Chorus of her great hunting skills (see also P ROPS ). With Cadmus help, Agave painfully comes to remember, and acknowledge, what she has done. The scene closes with the appearance of Dionysus, now EX MACHINA, above the castle. In his speech the god condemns the whole royal family; Cadmus, Agave, and her SISTERS are all to be EXILED for their crime (the ending of the play is lacunose: a recomposition of and MOURNING over Pentheus body was probably included here

4 4 [Thumiger 2007 : 99 n. 214]). They deserve their ruin because they rejected the god, and now they must depart. Interpretations In this play there is a depth of interlaced themes that have given rise to various critical interpretations. The main readings of the play in the past few decades are reviewed below. 1 Challenges to identity: female and foreigner Characters in the play contradict known typologies and stereotypes: accepted categories are systematically undermined. One may argue that theater has always been concerned with challenging identities; however, in the Bacchae, this function is paramount, especially in two respects: male and female, and Greek and barbarian. The model of the self-controlled (see also SōPHROSYNē ), rational Greek man of the DEMOCRATIC polis, who defines himself against the effeminate, debauched, drunken barbarian who obeys the orders of a tyrant (a model that Edith Hall deconstructed so well; Hall 1989 ), is patently reversed here: in the play, true religiosity is shown only by the Asian Chorus of newcomers, and the Greek players in the story are all ultimately exposed as being flawed and weak. The seminal clash of East and West, which was felt so strongly by the Greeks from the Persian Wars onwards, becomes the inferiority, for once, of the West: all the barbarians already dance my orgies for they have much wiser thoughts than the Greeks (483 4) (see also A THENIAN T RAGEDY AND H ISTORY ). 2 Pentheus and psychology Good material has been found in the play for psychological and psychoanalytic interpretations (see also P SYCHOLOGICAL A PPROACH TO GREEK TRAGEDY ). Pentheus and Agave in particular have been targeted. There is a complexity, lack of awareness, and self-denial in both these characters that is quite unique in extant tragedy. Pentheus desire to see the women s rites, for example, is initially disguised beneath the zeal of a diligent statesman; however, this could be described as a form of voyeurism (on which see Gregory 1985 ). Similarly his desire, mixed with reluctance, to dress up as a woman reveals a conflicted personality, repressed and prone to temptations. Outside gendered or sexual aspects, Pentheus also appears to have a pathological desire to control and constrain that will ultimately rebound against him. Agave s psychology is the focus of the recovery scene ( ). Through painstaking interrogation Cadmus leads her to regain her wits. This scene has been described as resembling a psychotherapy session (Devereux 1970 ). The deranged murderess has to gain awareness of the fact that she has killed her own child: the process is to undo, and then rebuild, layer by layer, the personality of Agave with reference to elements that are relevant to her: the world around her, the sky (1264); her MARRIAGE (1273 4); her son (1276); what she has in her hands (1277), and so on. At the end of this painful process, father and daughter mourn together, with a degree of closeness and awareness made possible only by the difficult steps just accomplished. 3 The Bacchae and ritual Ritual is part of the natural environment of Greek tragedy, and especially of a play that stages the establishment of Dionysiac rites in a Greek city. This theme is clearly spelt out by Dionysus in his prologue (1 63), and remains constantly in the background: in the first stasimon (64 167), the Chorus of the Asian Maenads appears onstage enacting a ritual procession and offering a commentary on the unfolding drama that combines observations on wisdom with invocations to the god and remarks on the nature of true religiosity. Scholarship is divided, as mentioned above, over the value of religion in the play: is Euripides expressing skeptical criticism or genuine engagement? Seaford s commentary offers the most complete ritual interpretation of the play (and of tragedy more generally), reading the Bacchae as a celebration of ritual within the democratic polis (Seaford 2001 ). To this effect, uncertain passages in the text are read to support a ritual-mystic interpretation: for

5 5 example, he retains phōs, light, instead of correcting to phasma, ghost, at 630 like most editors: on his reading, the god does not fashion a ghost to deceive Pentheus but causes a mystic light to appear. Seaford also reconstructs the lacunae after 1300 and 1329 so that they contain the final establishment of Dionysiac rituals in Thebes, a constructive outcome to the god s action. Not all readers are as optimistic in seeing the play as the ultimate celebration of positive establishment. The relevance of the ritual element in the drama cannot be denied, however, both as a central theme and as a suggestion through key words and rhythms. In his last play, Euripides wanted to offer a reflection on religion and politics, the importance of incorporating religiosity into political (and personal) life, and the dangers of excluding Dionysus from the life of the city (for a good illustration of this debate, see the exchange between Seaford and Friedrich ; ; ; and that between Seaford and Segal 1998 ; see also R ITUALISTIC I NTERPRETATION of G REEK T RAGEDY ). 4 Wisdom and sophistry In the Bacchae the motif of reason and wisdom is very important. Characteristically, however, a clear view of what this wisdom comprises does not emerge. Is it the religiosity of Cadmus and Teiresias? Or is it Pentheus rigid stance? Or the women s participation in the dances? Or Dionysus mercilessness? Or the Chorus incipient vulnerability when faced with critical events? Discussions on sophia, wisdom, recur at crucial moments (see Oranje 1984 : ) in the remarks of the Chorus and in comments by various characters, who question the wisdom of others: sophia, to sophon, sophizō. You are wise ( sophos ), says Cadmus at 186 with reference to the prophet s religious and intellectual superiority but is his rationalist vision of religion really a commendable one? Dionysus criticizes Pentheus at 480, to an ignorant man one will seem, when speaking wise things ( sopha ), to have no sense. At , respect for the gods is regarded by the Messenger as the wisest ( sophōtaton ) possession for men. These are only a few of many instances; the seminal example is found in the controversial choral passages at 877 and 897, what is wisdom? ( ti to sophon? ), followed by 1005, I do not envy cleverness ( to sophon ). Here the different sophiai, types of wisdom, Euripides is discussing are openly questioned, and no definitive answer appears possible. Finally, the word sophisma, clever invention, captious argument, brings out the deep misunderstandings between characters. Sophismata (pl.) is the word used by Dionysus to describe the arguments of Semele s female relatives, who refuse to believe that the baby is Zeus son (30); but Dionysus ethical claims (488: even in the daytime one might discover the shameful ) are described similarly by Pentheus as sophismata for which he will pay dearly (489). Dionysus arguments and subtle strategies may, in fact, carry sophistic suggestions; so do the words of Teiresias, who mocks, in his rationalization of religion, the figure of the manipulative sophist and modern intellectual. More broadly, we find in the play a radical debate in which reason, wisdom, and madness are traits that are no longer taken for granted but need requalification or to be taken as relative. In this sense, indeed, the play can be defined as a drama that stages a crisis of values. 5 A play on theater? There is one final strand of interpretation that has had a great impact in the past two decades, focusing on aspects of the text as text rather than on its historical context. M ETATHEATER is a broad and challenging notion that covers the idea of a play-within-the-play, ALLUSIONS to the theatrical medium, INTERTEXTUAL references that expose the fictionality of the drama, and so on, and has been discussed in various ways in its applicability to ancient drama (Thumiger 2009 ). The Bacchae appeared from the start to be an excellent candidate for such an interpretative frame: not only is Dionysus, the patron of theater, at the center of the play, but there is great emphasis on vision, exposure, and spectacle (costumes, MASKS, props).

6 6 This was explored in particular in Segal s influential monograph (Segal 1997a). In the dressing-up scene, Pentheus is invited by Dionysus to put on women s clothes and perform a dressing-up ritual in which, paradoxically, his psyche is unveiled and the nature of theatrical disguise is mimicked and placed at the forefront for all to see. Segal saw this scene (and other crucial references to visual items in the play) as a microcosm of the illusion-creating effects of the drama itself (Segal 1985a: 160). This interpretation may appear anachronistic, if understood in the prevalent sense of disguise and the theme of appearance in the play. Surely, however, the emphasis on what is seen (and unreliably so: a bull or Dionysus? earthquake or hallucination? and so on) is central, and points towards a criticism of reality as perceived by the senses and by common reason. These are themes that theater naturally evokes: in this sense, the Bacchae has indeed (like most other theatrical works) a metatheatrical level. Afterlife The Bacchae has enjoyed immense good fortune, both in the history of the classical tradition and in modern performance (since the beginning of the twentieth century it has been staged over 80 times in Britain, more than half of those performances since the 1990s). The suffering of Pentheus and Dionysus appeared so evocative of Christ s suffering that the anonymous author of a medieval passio borrowed several passages of the play in his draft of the Christus Patiens, thus preserving important passages that would otherwise have been lost to us. This analogy was spelt out in a seminal essay by Jan Kott ( 1973 ), who discusses from an anthropological perspective the relationship between human and divine in the Bacchae and Christian liturgy (see also A NTHROPOLOGICAL A PPROACH TO GREEK TRAGEDY ). In the twentieth century, after Nietzsche s Birth of Tragedy, the Bacchae became symbolic of all that defied the eighteenth-century neoclassical image of Greece as all reason and clarity : a Greece, instead, made up of blood, irrationality, and earthy rituals and orgiastic music (on various aspects of reception after Nietzsche, see Henrichs 1984 ; Nussbaum 1990 ; Fusillo 2006 ). Along these lines, the reception of the Bacchae persists as successful, exploiting mostly its ritual, collective aspects (as in Wole Soyinka s The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, 1973; see also R ECEPTION of G REEK T RAGEDY IN (SUB-S AHARAN ) A FRICAN L ITERATURE ) and its psychoanalytical-sexual implications (in various theatrical productions, or in Pasolini s film Teorema, 1968, more subtly inspired by the play). This success shows no signs of diminishing. The play, with its emphasis on gender, the political dynamics of participation and exclusion, and the roles played by reason and pleasure in human life, still has much to say to humankind in the third millennium (see also R ECEPTION ). see also ARISTOTLE S THEORY OF TRAGEDY ; TITLES OF TRAGEDIES; TRANSLATION (ENGLISH) OF/TRANSLATING EURIPIDES References Devereux, G The Psychotherapy Scene in Euripides Bacchae. JHS 90 : Dodds, E.R. 1960/1977. Euripides Bacchae, 2nd edn. Oxford : Clarendon Press. Friedrich, R Dionysus among the Dons: The New Ritualism in Richard Seaford s Commentary on the Bacchae. Arion 7.3 : Friedrich, R Don Quixote Responds to the Windmill: A Riposte to Richard Seaford on the New Ritualism. Arion 9.1 : Fusillo, M Il dio ibrido. Bologna : Il Mulino. Gregory, I Some Aspects of Seeing in Euripides Bacchae. G&R 32 : Hall, E Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self- Definition through Tragedy. Oxford : Clarendon Press. Henrichs, A Loss of Self, Suffering, Violence: The Modern View of Dionysus from Nietzsche to Girard. HSCPh 88 : Kott, J The Eating of the Gods: An Interpretation of Greek Tragedy. London : Eyre Methuen. March, J Euripides Bacchae : A Reconsideration in the Light of Vase-Paintings. BICS 36 :

7 7 Nussbaum, M.C The Transfiguration of Intoxication: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Dionysos. Arion 1 : Oranje, H Euripides Bacchae: The Play and Its Audience. Leiden : Brill. Pavlovskis, Z The Voice of the Actor in Greek Tragedy. CW 71 : Seaford, R The Dionysiac Don Responds to Don Quixote: Rainer Friedrich on the New Ritualism. Arion 8.3 : Seaford, R Bacchae. Warminster : Aris & Phillips. Segal, C The Bacchae as Metatragedy, in P. Burian (ed.), Directions in Euripidean Criticism. Durham, NC : Duke University Press : Segal, C Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides Bacchae. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Segal, C Reply to Richard Seaford s Review ( BMCR ) of Charles Segal, Dionysiac Poetics, Exp. Ed. (1997). BMCR Thumiger, C Hidden Paths: Self and Characterization in Greek Tragedy and Euripides Bacchae. London : Institute of Classical Studies. Thumiger, C On Ancient and Modern (Meta)theatres: Definitions and Practices. MD 62 : Further Reading Leinieks, V The City of Dionysus: A Study of Euripides Bakchai. Stuttgart : Teubner. Roux, J Euripide : Les Bacchantes. Paris : Les Belles Lettres. CHIARA THUMIGER