The Bacchae

Written by Euripides in the last years of his life and produced after his death, The Bacchae tells how Dionysus returned to Thebes and punished King Pentheus for denying his divinity. It begins with the god Dionysus—son of Zeus and a Theban princess, Semele—coming to his mother’s city in the form of a mortal man to answer the slander that he is not a god (Bacchae 1–63). As he explains, Semele’s own sisters (Agave, Ino and Autonoe) said that she had taken a mortal lover and blamed Zeus, and that Zeus had struck her dead for the lie. Now Dionysus has driven all the women of Thebes out of their houses in frenzy, and they are celebrating his rites on Mount Cithaeron. The aged Cadmus and the seer Teiresias prepare to join them, but Pentheus, Agave’s son and the king of Thebes, reproaches the old men, orders his soldiers to hunt down the followers of the new god, and has the disguised Dionysus arrested and shut up near the palace stables. The god frees himself with ease, shaking the palace with an earthquake and fire. Meanwhile a herdsman reports that the women on the mountain are working miracles and, when attacked, tearing cattle apart with their bare hands. Pentheus gathers an army, but Dionysus persuades him instead to go and spy on the women himself, dressed as a woman. Soon a second messenger returns to tell how Pentheus was discovered in his tree and torn to pieces by the women, led by his own mother. Agave arrives proudly carrying his head, which she believes to be the head of a young lion. Cadmus brings her back to her senses, and Dionysus, now appearing in his divine form, justifies his vengeance, sends Agave and her sisters into exile, and foretells that Cadmus and Harmonia will be changed into serpents.

Date and Historical Background

The Bacchae belongs to the end of Euripides’ career. In his last years he went to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon, and he died and was buried in Macedonia (Pausanias 1.2.2; Lucian, The Parasite 35). According to an ancient note (scholion) on Aristophanes’ Frogs 67, which cites the official records of the dramatic contests, the play was staged after his death by his son, also called Euripides, at the City Dionysia, together with Iphigenia in Aulis and Alcmaeon. No ancient source gives the exact year of that production. The Suda, a Byzantine lexicon, records that one of Euripides’ five victories came after his death, when a play of his was staged by his nephew, also called Euripides; it does not name the plays.

The play is built from the Theban story that the Greeks told of Dionysus’ birth and of the house of Cadmus: Semele was struck by Zeus’ lightning, Zeus took the unborn child and sewed him into his thigh (Bacchae 88–98, 286–297), and Pentheus, the son of Echion and Agave, was torn apart by the women of his own family on Mount Cithaeron.

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Dionysus, son of Zeus and Semele, god of wine and of the ecstatic rites called the Bacchic mysteries
• Cadmus, founder of the city of Thebes, father of Semele and Agave, grandfather of both Pentheus and Dionysus
• Pentheus, king of Thebes, son of Agave and Echion, grandson of Cadmus and cousin of Dionysus
• Agave, mother of Pentheus, daughter of Cadmus, sister of Semele and aunt of Dionysus
• Teiresias, the blind prophet
• Servant, one of Pentheus’ guards, who brings in the captured stranger
• Messenger, a herdsman from Mount Cithaeron
• Second Messenger, a servant of Pentheus who followed him up the mountain
• Chorus of women worshippers of Dionysus (Bacchae or Maenads), the god’s own followers from Asia, whom he brought with him from Mount Tmolus in Lydia (Bacchae 55–61, 64–65)

Setting

The play is set before the royal palace of Thebes. Dionysus speaks the prologue beside the tomb of Semele, near the palace, where the fire of Zeus is still smouldering (Bacchae 6–12). The chorus is not made up of Theban women: they are the Asian Bacchae who travelled with the god, while the Theban women, including the daughters of Cadmus, are in the mountains.

Summary of The Bacchae

Prologue

(Bacchae 1–63) “Having taken a mortal form instead of a god’s,” Dionysus, son of Zeus and the Theban princess Semele, has returned to Thebes to answer the insult to his mother. He tells us that Semele’s sisters (Agave, Ino and Autonoe) said that he was not the child of Zeus: Semele, they claimed, had conceived by a mortal man, and then, with Cadmus’ help, ascribed “the sin of her bed” to Zeus, who killed her for the lie. Dionysus points to the tomb of Semele and the smoking ruins of her house as the proof of Zeus’ fire and of Hera’s lasting insult to his mother. He has come from Lydia, Phrygia, Persia, Bactria, Media and Arabia, where he has already established his rites, and Thebes is the first Greek city he is visiting. There he has driven all the women of the city mad, including the daughters of Cadmus, and sent them to dwell on the mountain under the pines; he is wearing a fawn-skin and carrying a thyrsos, the ivy staff of his rites. Pentheus, to whom Cadmus has given the rule of the city, fights against the gods, drives Dionysus away from the sacrifices and never mentions him in prayers. For this, Dionysus says, “I will show him and all the Thebans that I was born a god.” He has changed his shape to that of a man, and he calls his band of women from Tmolus to beat their drums around Pentheus’ palace so that the city will see; he himself goes to Cithaeron to dance with the Bacchae.

Parodos (Entrance Song)

(Bacchae 64–169) The Asian women of the chorus enter, called the Maenads or the Bacchae (Bacchus is another name of Dionysus), singing of their service to the god and calling for silence in the street so that the rites may be performed. They retell the story of Dionysus’ miraculous birth—Zeus snatched the unborn child from the fire that killed Semele and hid him in his thigh from Hera—and describe the running dances on the mountains, in which the earth flows with milk, wine and honey and the leader of the dance is Bromius.

First Episode

(Bacchae 170–369) The famous seer Teiresias arrives at the royal palace and calls for his old friend Cadmus to come out and meet him. Both old men have agreed to take thyrsoi, wear fawn-skins and crown their heads with ivy and join the Theban women in celebrating Dionysus, and they set off dancing towards the mountain.

Pentheus, Cadmus’ grandson, comes in as they are about to leave (lines 215–262). He has been away from Thebes, and he has heard of “new evils” in the city: the women have left their houses for “contrived Bacchic rites” (Bacchae 217–218), and they follow a stranger, “a sorcerer, a conjuror from the Lydian land, fragrant in hair with golden curls, having in his eyes the wine-dark graces of Aphrodite” (233–236). He has already had some of the women chained up in the public prison. While he is thinking about what he will do once he catches the man, he sees Cadmus and Teiresias dressed in the costume of the god and is shocked that two respected citizens have decided to follow Dionysus. He insists that he will deal with the stranger himself (lines 215–262).

Teiresias answers at length (lines 266–327): Dionysus is a mighty god, discoverer of wine, and a prophet, because the frenzy of the god gives the power to foretell the future (298–301). Cadmus adds that, even if Dionysus were not a god, it would be good to claim it, so that Semele might have the honour of bearing a god (333–336). Pentheus laughs away the advice. He orders his men to overturn Teiresias’ seat of augury, and to find the stranger, who has brought a new disease to the women and polluted their beds, and bring him bound, so that he may suffer the punishment of stoning (346–357). As Teiresias and Cadmus leave, the prophet warns Cadmus to take care that Pentheus does not bring trouble to his house. “I do not speak in prophecy, but judging from the state of things; for a foolish man speaks foolishness” (366–369).

In the first stasimon (lines 370–433), the chorus calls upon Holiness, the queen of the gods, to hear the unholy insolence of Pentheus against Bromius, and praises Dionysus for giving equal pleasure to the blessed and the less fortunate with the wine that ends grief, while hating anyone who does not care to live a happy life by day and a friendly one by night.

Second Episode

(Bacchae 434–518) A servant enters, leading the chained and disguised Dionysus. He tells Pentheus that the stranger was easy to arrest: he did not run away, did not even turn pale, but smiled and let himself be bound and led off, so that the servant, ashamed, told him he was acting only on Pentheus’ orders. In addition, the servant reports, the Bacchae who had been put into the public prison have been freed—their chains fell off by themselves and the doors opened without a hand to touch them—and they have gone off to the meadows calling on Dionysus. “This man has come to Thebes full of many wonders,” the servant concludes (lines 434–450).

Pentheus ignores the warning. He has the stranger’s hands freed, mocks his long hair and pale skin, and begins to question him (lines 451–518). Calm and composed, the stranger says that he comes from Lydia and Mount Tmolus and that Dionysus himself, the son of Zeus and Semele, gave him his rites; but it is not lawful for the uninitiated to hear what those rites are. The king threatens to cut off the stranger’s hair and take away his thyrsos; the stranger answers that his hair is sacred and that he is growing it for the god, and that the god himself will release him whenever he wishes. Pentheus’ reply is to have him locked up: “Shut him up near the horse stable, so that he may see only darkness,” and to threaten to sell the women of the chorus or keep them as slaves at the loom (509–514).

In the second stasimon (lines 519–575) the chorus reproaches Thebes for rejecting Dionysus, compares the descent of Pentheus, born of the dragon’s teeth, with that of the god, and calls on Dionysus to come down from Olympus and restrain the insolence of the bloodthirsty man.

Third Episode

(Bacchae 576–861) From inside the palace comes the voice of Dionysus calling on his followers (576–603). “Light the fiery lamp of lightning! Burn, burn Pentheus’ home!” The women of the chorus throw themselves to the ground, the palace begins to fall apart, and the flame on the tomb of Semele flares up. Then Dionysus comes out, still in the shape of the stranger, and tells the chorus how he mocked Pentheus (604–641): the king thought he was binding him, but bound a bull in the stable instead, while the stranger sat quietly near by. Bacchus then shook the house and kindled a flame on his mother’s tomb; Pentheus, thinking that the house was on fire, ran about calling for water, and then rushed at a phantom that the god had made in the courtyard, stabbing at the air as if he were killing his prisoner.

Pentheus comes out of the palace, worn out, and is amazed to find the stranger standing free before him (642–659). A herdsman from Cithaeron interrupts their argument with his report (660–774). Early in the morning, he says, he saw three companies of women, led by Autonoe, Agave and Ino, asleep on the mountain, modestly lying on pine and oak leaves. Agave woke them with a cry when she heard the lowing of the cattle. The women sprang up, put on their fawn-skins and tied them with snakes, fed gazelles and wolf-cubs at their breasts, and struck the rock with their thyrsoi so that water came out, struck the earth so that wine flowed, and scratched the ground so that milk came, while honey dripped from their ivy staffs. The herdsmen and shepherds, wishing to please the king, tried to capture Agave and bring her to Pentheus. The women attacked, and the men fled from them; but the women, with unarmed hands, tore the heifers apart, and then ran like birds to the plain below, to the villages of Hysiae and Erythrae, where they snatched children from their houses and plundered everything. They carried fire in their hair that did not burn them. When some villagers attacked them with weapons, the weapons did not wound the women, but the women’s thyrsoi wounded the men. The herdsman ends with the advice: “Receive this god then, whoever he is, into this city, master” (769–774), since among other gifts he has given men the vine that ends grief.

Pentheus is not moved. He sees in the women’s behaviour only an insult to the Greeks, and orders shield-bearers, cavalry, light-armed men and archers to assemble at the Electran gates (775–786). Dionysus tries again to dissuade him (787–846), warning him that he will be ashamed if the Bacchae put his bronze to flight, and offers to bring the women back to the city without arms. Pentheus calls for his armour, but the stranger asks him whether he would like to see the women sitting together on the mountain, and the king’s curiosity is aroused. The stranger tells him that he will be killed if he is seen as a man, and that he should put on a woman’s dress. Pentheus hesitates, then agrees that it is wiser to spy than to fight, and goes inside to put on the costume. Dionysus, left alone, announces to the chorus that the king is now caught in his net, prays that Pentheus be driven out of his wits so that he will put on the dress, and says that he will go to dress him in the clothes he will wear to Hades, killed by his mother’s hands (848–861).

Fourth Episode

(Bacchae 912–976) After a choral song (862–911), Dionysus calls Pentheus out of the palace; the king appears in the dress of a bacchant. The scene in which the god adjusts the king’s costume, his hair and his gait is among the most self-conscious in Greek drama: Dionysus tells him to hold the thyrsos in his right hand and raise it in time with his right foot (941–944), and Pentheus asks whether he looks like Ino or his mother Agave (925–944). It is clear that Pentheus is already under the god’s spell: “Oh look! I think I see two suns, and twin Thebes, the seven-gated city. And you seem to lead me, like a bull, and horns seem to grow on your head. But were you ever before a beast? For you have certainly now become a bull” (918–922). The scene ends with an ominous prophecy: after convincing the king that he alone bears the burden of the city, the god promises that he will come home “carried” by his mother (963–970).

In the choral song that follows (lines 977–1023), the women call on the hounds of Madness to go to the mountain, sing of the justice that kills the godless, lawless offspring of Echion, and call on Dionysus to appear as a bull, a many-headed serpent or a raging lion and throw a deadly noose around the hunter of the Bacchae.

Fifth Episode

(Bacchae 1024–1152) A second messenger arrives from Mount Cithaeron with the news that Pentheus is dead, killed by his own mother. He tells how he followed the king and the stranger to a valley, where the women were gathered, and how Pentheus, unable to see well from the ground, asked to be taken to a place from which he could see their shameful behaviour. The stranger took hold of the top of a tall fir, bent it down to the ground, set the king on it and let it spring back up straight, without shaking him off (1061–1075). The king was then more easily seen by the women than he could see them, and the stranger was nowhere to be seen. A voice from the air, which the messenger took to be that of Dionysus, cried out that he was bringing the man who had made a laughing-stock of the women, of the god and of his rites, and told them to punish him (1078–1081); a light of holy fire stood between heaven and earth, and the air fell silent. The women, led by Agave, first threw stones, branches and thyrsoi at Pentheus, but he was too high to be hit; then they broke off oak branches and tried to tear the tree out with them as levers, and finally, at Agave’s command, they all seized the trunk and dragged it from the ground (1086–1110). Pentheus fell crashing to the ground, and his mother, as priestess, began the slaughter. He threw off his headband so that she would recognise him, touched her cheek and said: “It is I, mother, your son Pentheus, whom you bore in the house of Echion. Pity me, mother, and do not kill your child for my mistakes” (1114–1121). But Agave, foaming at the mouth and rolling her eyes, was possessed by the god and did not listen. She took his left arm and, setting her foot against his side, tore out the shoulder—“not by her own strength, but the god gave facility to her hands” (1125–1128). Ino and Autonoe worked on the other side, and the whole band of Bacchae tore him apart, tossing his flesh to one another like a ball. His body lies scattered among rocks and in the forest; his head Agave fixed on the end of her thyrsos, thinking it a lion’s, and she is coming back to the city, “preening herself on the ill-fated prey,” and calling Bacchus her fellow hunter (1139–1147). The messenger leaves to avoid seeing her, and the chorus sings a short hymn of triumph to Bacchus (1153–1164).

Exodos (Exit Song)

(Bacchae 1165–1392) Agave comes in, holding the head. “I am bringing home from the mountain a freshly cut tendril to the house, a blessed prey,” she tells the chorus (1169–1170); “I caught this young wild lion cub without snares, as you can see.” The chorus endorses her hope that the whole of Thebes will praise her, and that her son will be proud of her.

Cadmus enters, followed by servants carrying the pieces of Pentheus’ body, which he has searched for on Mount Cithaeron (1216–1232). Agave boasts to him of her prize and asks him to take it and hang it on the palace, as she had earlier asked for the head to be nailed to the triglyphs (1211–1215, 1233–1243). Cadmus answers with grief, and slowly brings her back to her senses: he asks her to look at the sky, to see whether it seems the same, and then to look at what she holds in her arms (1263–1284). “I see the greatest pain, wretched that I am,” she says, and realises that it is Pentheus’ head. She and Cadmus lament the dead man, remembering how gently he had protected his grandfather, and Cadmus laments that Pentheus, like his mother, had not revered the god, and that the house is destroyed (1302–1326).

Dionysus now appears, in his divine form, to pronounce the sentence (1330–1343). He tells Cadmus that he will be changed into a dragon and his wife Harmonia, Ares’ daughter, into a serpent; they will drive a chariot of heifers, leading barbarian armies that will sack many cities. But when those armies plunder the oracle of Apollo they will have a miserable return, while Ares will protect Cadmus and Harmonia and settle them in the land of the blessed. Exile awaits Agave and her sisters, and Cadmus too will leave for a foreign land. Cadmus admits that the family has acted unjustly but says that the god has gone too far: “Gods should not resemble mortals in their anger”; Dionysus replies that Zeus long ago approved this (1344–1349). Agave and Cadmus part, each lamenting the exile, and Agave prays to go where Cithaeron may never see her nor she Cithaeron (1363–1387).

The chorus sings the closing lines that are found at the end of several of Euripides’ plays: many are the forms of the divine; the gods bring many things to pass unexpectedly; what was expected is not accomplished, and for the unexpected a god finds a way (1388–1392).

A Brief Analysis

Many readers have considered Euripides’ last play among the greatest of Greek tragedies. It is unusual in how closely the chorus and the god are bound into the action: the Asian Bacchae are the god’s own followers and share in his plans, and Dionysus himself is on stage throughout in disguise, so that his appearance at the end in his true form is prepared from the first speech (1–63, 1330–1343).

The play dramatises the god’s demand for recognition. In the prologue Dionysus states his purpose: the city must learn that it has not been initiated, and he will show that he was born a god (39–42, 47–48). Pentheus is told by three different people—Teiresias, the servant and the herdsman—that the god is to be respected, and each time rejects the advice (266–327, 434–450, 769–786). In the scene in which Pentheus is dressed as a bacchant, his double vision of two suns and two Thebes, and of the stranger as a bull (918–922), shows the change that the god has worked on him, and the god’s remark that he now sees “what you should see” (924) is one of the play’s most pointed lines.

The play does not state a single moral. Teiresias argues that Dionysus does not compel women to be chaste, and that a woman of sound mind will not be corrupted in his rites (314–318). The herdsman’s account shows the women, in their sleep and in their awakening, as orderly and harmless until they are attacked (677–713). But the same women then tear the cattle apart and, led by Agave, kill Pentheus; and after the killing Cadmus tells the god that he has gone too far (1346), after he has said that the god destroyed them justly, but too harshly (1249–1250). The final lines of the chorus do not resolve the question (1388–1392). It is difficult to say what Euripides intended, and readers in different periods have drawn opposite conclusions about whether the play defends the worship of Dionysus or condemns its violence.

The Bacchae Sources

The main source for this page is the play itself: Euripides, Bacchae 1–1392, read in the Greek text (Perseus Digital Library). Other ancient sources used are Pausanias 1.2.2 and Lucian, The Parasite 35 (Euripides at the court of Archelaus) and the scholion on Aristophanes, Frogs 67 (the posthumous production).

See Also: Dionysus, The Wanderings of Dionysus, Pentheus, Euripides