It is a play, too, which assumes an easy familiarity withĬertain myths, which may be unknown to most modern audiences. In many respects Bacchae is a product of its age, both a response and challenge to beliefs that were widely held at the end However, what Euripides meant to convey in BacchaeĪnd how modern readers or audiences understand the play are not necessarily the same things. Gloat in icy triumph over an enemy’s severed head. Vengeance and repression, foreignness and fanaticism so extreme that it leads young men (or, in this case, a young god) to Of gender and identity, madness and rationality, Which are as alive today as they were in the late fifth century bc. Show in this collection) drew heavily on earlier plays – Euripides wove a richly complex tragedy, pulsating with questions Using this basic storyline – a storyline, which (as Alan Sommerstein and others Torn apart by his own mother Agave and his aunts in the hallucinatory belief that he is a wild animal when Agave realizes what she has done, she is horrified, but the implacable Dionysus drivesīoth her and Cadmus into exile, effectively destroying the royal house of Thebes.

Spurring on the god to take grim revenge. Meanwhile King Pentheus threatens to persecute Dionysus and his followers, On the mountainside, hallucinating and delirious’. Moreover, many of his auntsĪnd female relatives refuse completely to accept his divinity, so he drives them ‘like cattle from their houses, maddened While the prophet Teiresias willingly accepts his godhead, his grandfatherĬadmus does so only out of expediency. Homeland, Thebes, accompanied by female devotees (called bacchae,Īfter another of the god’s names, Bacchus). Years spent in the East, the god Dionysus returns to Greece and his To email * Your name * Your email * Comment Please tick the box below *īacchae is one of Euripides’ most disturbing plays. He causes Pentheus to be torn apart by his own mother Agave and his aunts in the hallucinatory belief that he is a. Meanwhile King Pentheus threatens to persecute Dionysus and his followers, spurring on the god to take grim revenge. Moreover, many of his aunts and female relatives refuse completely to accept his divinity, so he drives them ‘like cattle from their houses, maddened on the mountainside, hallucinating and delirious’. Here he finds that, while the prophet Teiresias willingly accepts his godhead, his grandfather Cadmus does so only out of expediency. After years spent in the East, the god Dionysus returns to Greece and his homeland, Thebes, accompanied by female devotees (called bacchae, after another of the god’s names, Bacchus). Bacchae is one of Euripides’ most disturbing plays. In politics a speaker who has passion without wisdom can be very dangerous.

The bacchae