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Introduction to Bacchae 5 INTRODUCTION TO BACCHAE SI. TRADITION AND STRUCTURE For the Didascaliai report that after Euripides' death his son of the same at and Bacchae at the City name produced the Iphigeneia Aulis, Alkmeon, was one of the last Dionysia' (in Athens). Presumably then Bacchae very plays from Athens to the court of Written by Euripides, perhaps after his departure to ancient he died (in King Archelaos in Macedonia, where, according tradition, 407-6 BC). Exactly when it was posthumously produced we do not know The play shows us Dionysos' arrival, disguised as a mortal and his rites accompanied by a thiasos (sacred band) of Lydian women, to establish Semele had died birth to at Thebes, where Kadmos' daughter giving him, blasted by the thunderbolt of his father Zeus. He has driven all the women of him there with Thebes in a frenzy from their homes to Mt. Kithairon to worship new and can be dance and song. The young king Pentheus resists the cult, dissuaded from this resistance neither by his grandfather Kadmos and Teiresias, who are joining the worship of the new god, nor by Dionysos himself, nor by the escape of the imprisoned Dionysos amid the miraculous collapse of the royal of the house, nor by a herdsman's description of the miraculous powers maenads on Kithairon. But Dionysos does persuade him to go, disguised as a maenad, to spy on the maenads on the mountainside. There he is revealed by Dionysos to the maenads, who tear him apart, with his mother Agaue playing the leading role. She returns triumphantly to the royal house holding Pentheus' head, which she thinks is an animal's, and is brought out of her delusion by her father Kadmos, who has gathered from the mountainside the rest of Pentheus' dismembered body. Dionysos appears as a god, and announces the establishment of his rites at Thebes (1329-30n.) and the exile of Kadmos and his wife and daughters. This is a drama of divine punishment, like e.g. the Hippolytus.3 The story Schol.Ar.Frogs 67; the Didascaliai were theatrical records edited by Aristotle. 2 The frequency of resolutions in the iambic trimeters of Bacchae confirms its lateness in Eur.'s career: see most recently M.Cropp and G.Fick, Resolutions and Chronology in Euripides, BICS Suppl 43 (1985). The Testimonia for the life of Eur. are collected and translated by D.Kovacs, Euripidea (1994). 3 For a discussion of such dramas see Burnett. INTRODUCTION TO BACCHAE INTRODUCTION TO BACCHAE 27 Gods make.make myth. Gods visits in ilarities between Bacchae and the fragments of Aeschylus (or Naevius typical Greek disguise, patterns of as in the various e.g. myths of foundation of culcult, S )are mentioned in the Commentary on 100 (D. as bull), 118 (maenads combines the the household of PhilDemeter result in the called loose Hermes visiting mon and 221-5 women), 576-641 (the thiasos and this may and wool), (maenads of Zeus male c of a working Eleusis or of the offspring yal wting thunder and lightning, man-bull identification, etc.), 606-9 (epiphany). visiting the theme family also is and eststablishes himself ther Typical birthplace 833 Baucis. to his 678-9 (sun (maenadie returns Aga 21.-2and melting snow), 748 (maenads as birds), who Perseus, Theseus, etc). ere is oment oônprs, reaching to the feet). 912-76 (maenadic dress funerary), 918 (Dionysos) (Oedipus, Jason, violence transgression as with human is, 977 1020-3 as sometimes which mirror), (Lyssa), (maenads hunters). myth in speei acchae, 9 (Dionysos' aetiological foundation of cult.5 More of the for versions is of the a type ends with evidence disaster that or women Further other provided by vase-paintings king by he of these contemporary with Bacchae show the maenads punished by he is resisted by the Several roughly about Dionysos broken by punia rmvth.13 resistance inevitably is amed as a mae set of myths a ment Pentheus, who nad). This has a Ba. both'), aacking (and never disguised by even of kin 8 hints of familyó (in frenzied kiling (or eating) with the many imminent armed action in Bacchae king's consists of the been taken, together sometimes had been which and of Pentheus dramatised 50-2n.) and with Aesch.Eum.25-6 ('the god was general to (éotpatynoEv) resistance Lykourgos We know most The of little survives. aha for Pentheus a fate like that of a hare'), to indicate an from which very hakchai, contriving tragedies,° the few earlier resistance of Lykourgos, fragmentsof version with arms to dramatisation the earlier tragic in which Pentheus went out undisguised and of the fragments of the Roman This well be so, but it is to infer Aeschylus supplemented by attack the maenads. may illegitimate can be cautiously which been modelled on Aeschyus 10 of as (57-67) seems to have that Pentheus, just it is Lycurgus, which therefrom Euripides invented the transvestism Naevius' tragedy in the in several similarities with Bacchae, particular to infer from the fact that the vase-paintings the killer of treatment exhibits illegitimate Aeschylus' with for his effeminate named that was the of contempt Pentheus is never Agaue (and once Galenel3) Euripides capture and interrogation Dionys 0s, and miraculous escape of the maenads (443. first to have Pentheus killed by his mother.16 the imprisonment appearance,11 a bacchic Given the paucity of our evidence for Dionysos in tragedy (apart fromn the house as if it were in frenzy.12 Other 8n.), and the shaking of Bacchae), it is striking how many themes in Bacchae can be identified as probably traditional.17 Tragedy originated in the cult of Dionysos, and the very earliest themes were, it seems, Dionysiac,18 probably with the god playing the Demeter and Ovid Metamorphoses 8.624-724. 4Most notably narrated in the Homeric Hymn to Burnett 24 n.8. also and the list compiled by Note Od.17.485-7, 13 Artemis in and at Brauron in Attica. See $IV. See March; LIMC s. Pentheus. Most of the are of the death of Eg. in foundation myths of the cults of Sparta Philippart; depictions myth 0 Lykourgos in Thrace, Pentheus, the three daughters of Minyas at Orchomenos, the three Pentheus. resistance to D. and his cult are listed 14 most recently by March (cf. 50-2n.). daughters of Proitos at Argos. The numerous myths of in Har. Theol.Rev. 71 77-8 (only Perseus escapes punishment). n.39, of about 520 BC. by P.McGinty (1978) 165 ARV 16.14 = LIMC s.Pentheus 7 At Ba.26-31 the three daughters of king Kadmos reject the story of D.'s divine birth after the Against March on this latter point see Seaford in Faraone and Carpenter 123 n.38. See also death of his mother, their sister Semele. Dodds (1960) xodii-xov. Even if (and it is not impossible) Eur. did make these innovations, Lykourgos (Aesch.Lykourgeia; etc.: Sutton); Minyads (Anton. Lib. 10; etc.); Argive women both kin-killing (see below) and transvestism (912-76n.) were traditional Dionysiac themes. (Apollod. 2.22); ete.: Seaford (1994a) 253-6, 291, 340, 348, 353, 357. In general modern critics tend to assume that the first appearance of a theme is the same as Thespis Pentheus (?); Polyphrasmon's trilogy on Lykourgos; Aeschylus' tetralogy Edonians, innovation, even though what survives may always represent no more than a tiny portion of Bassarai, Neaniskoi, Lykourgos, and his titles Semele or Hydrophoroi, Xantriai, Bakch, the versions that once existed 17 (written, visual, oral). Pentheus, Trophoi, which have been variously arranged into a tetralogy on the Pentheus Versnel (189-205) rightly points to various respects in which Dionysos in Bacchae is story; Bakchai especially like a Hellenistic deity (notably: claim to universal worship, deity proved by Sophokles (?), Hydrophoroi (?); Xenokles Bakchai, Bakchai or Semele lophon 10 Pentheus; Spintharos Keraunoumene; Bakchai miracles, 'henotheism', personal submission to deity, futile resistance to deity). But I suspect Dodds xoox-ooii. Kleophon (5th.cent.?). 11 (1960) that, had we a Dionysiac myth in detail earlier than Bacchae, we would see that these Acsch Edonians fr61, ef. 59, 60, 62; Ba.353n., respects were not Euripidean innovations. 453-508; Naevius fr43, 44, 48, 50-1. 18 2576-641n.(b); Acsch Edonians f.58; Naevius frr.52-4. Seaford (1994a) 268, 272 n.165, 276. INTRODUCTION TO BACCHAE INTRODUCTION TO BACCHAE 29 28 I other extant tragedy). in no ave argued at home Bacchae but (575-659, 912-76) are each hetwo humiliations of Pentheus role (as in divinely-inspireired self-destruct central of the tion of or D10nysos pOwer out there on Kithairon (660-777 the importance the entrality of this the narratives elsewhere that from cen Cllowed by derived in part theme to in tragedy one ofthe very latest 1043-52). royal family Bacchae, although of extant which the drama is shaped moves towards the so single conflict by myth.1° And extant tragedyabout Diony The that transcend Dionysiac as the only s0s, in a of the god throug several phases the formal nevertheless be, victory may genre.2020 It is also possible inevitai After we learn in the prologue of the tragedies, the that choral odes and episodes. to the beginnings of the into the closest and style21 division sense extent Aeschylean) language caused the crisis, the cult is presented in two of its contrasting to some style2l came as that has drama's archaic (and rejection archaic theme. first the Asiatic naenads of the chorus, whose dithyrambic associated with the SIII), by coha aspects (cf. rituals and of the and naturally Bacchae S for Euripides unusually presents the myths thiasos, structure of (parodos, 64-169) Moreover the r$Ong the of universal suited to and eo men of who stres importance seems especialy tragic form, ven to two old Thebes, action of the play the Indeed, the end of the Dionvsne then by theatre.
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