Greek Drama · Part 11 · Euripides · C1
Euripides: The Bacchae
Part 11 of Greek Drama: Euripides’ last and strangest masterpiece. Dionysus, the god of wine, ecstasy and the theatre itself, comes to Thebes disguised as a gentle stranger, to punish the city that denied he was a god. Its young king, Pentheus, tries to control him, and is destroyed. Participle clauses (Disguised as a stranger, Dionysus…; Having been warned, Pentheus…), the language of appearance and reality, control and freedom, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria. The play ends in a terrible death, which is told briefly.
Every play in this series has been performed for Dionysus. Tonight, Dionysus himself is the main character. Euripides wrote this play at the end of his life, in exile in Macedonia, and it was performed after his death. It won first prize.
A god who walks among men in disguise. I am curious how Euripides imagines him.
Gentle, smiling and dangerous, Philo. He has come to his mother’s city, Thebes, where his own aunts said he was not a god and his cousin the king has forbidden his worship. And the young king thinks he can control a god with soldiers and chains. Tonight’s grammar is participle clauses, very useful in storytelling and in academic writing.
Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, a princess of Thebes. Her sisters said she had lied about Zeus and that Dionysus was no god. Now Dionysus returns to Thebes disguised as a human stranger with long hair and a soft voice, followed by a chorus of women from Asia, the Bacchae. He has driven the women of Thebes into a sacred madness, and they are on Mount Cithaeron, dancing, suckling young animals and making milk and wine flow…
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