HOLY SHIT THE BACCHAE.

Pentheus:
"I shall give your got the sacrifice / that he deserves. His victim will be his women. / I shall make a great slaughter in the woods of Cithaeon."

Chorus:
"As a running fawn....she sprints...to dance for joy in the forest / to dance where the darkness is deepest/where no man is."

Cadamus:
"We have learned. But your sentence is too harsh."

Electra is one of my favorite Greek tragedies. I suppose that's only because she's one of the few young women who gets to star in her own show. Eh.

The Bacchae By:Euripides

The action of the play begins with Dionysus's return to Thebes years later. He arrives in town disguised as the stranger, accompanied by a band of bacchants, to punish the family for their treatment of his mother and their refusal to offer him sacrifices. During Dionysus's absence, Semele's father, Cadmus, had handed the kingdom over to his proud grandson Pentheus. It was Pentheus's decision to not allow the worship of Dionysus in Thebes. Dionysus tells the audience that when he arrived in Thebes he drove Semele's sisters mad, and they fled to Mt. Cithaeron to worship him and perform his rites on the mountainside.

probably everyone should read the bacchae wherein orgiastic women tear people limb from limb.

"Electra": Very good, though not as good as Sophocles' work. I thought Electra was a self-pitying, hypocritical whiner, and apparently that's just what Euripides wanted me to think. Orestes wasn't so bright either. The intro really clued me in to Electra's sexual frustrations, envy of Clytemnestra and jealousy/hatred of her mother's lover Aegisthus. Electra & Orestes' shock at everything still being bad, even after killing their mother, was well done --- it brought the point home dramatically: No one's in the right, no one's all bad or good, and violence rarely solves things, even in god-sanctioned "justice." A powerful piece.

"The Phoenecian Women": It was very good, holding my interest despite my familiarity with the plot. The character development, again, didn't quite hold up to Sophoclean standards, but the drama and dialogue were superb. The ending (when Creon takes charge) was especially gripping. Oedipus played a minor role, but his lines were pure poetry, with quite a bit of clever use of "light" and "dark" metaphor (he being blind and all).

"The Bacchae": Before I read the insightful intro by W. Arrowsmith, I was going to pan the play, but now I see the meaning and message of the play that I missed (although I still think character development is lacking). I now see the conflict between Pentheus and Dionysius is central as person vs. person, not merely hubris vs. a god. And what I thought was disorder and sloppiness --- Dionysius' transformation from the traditional Olympian in disguise to something like a force of nature --- I now see is intentional. I did like the way, minutes after the reader's sympathy has shifted from Dionysius to the torn-apart Pentheus and Agave, the Chorus also shows its humanity by ceasing its ecstatic reveling at Pentheus' death and pitying Agave, gently helping her regain her sanity. A good play, and even though this is my 2nd read, perhaps it bears even further investigation.

The Bacchae is excellent. The god gets his own back righteously. Elektra - saw this at Stratford this summer. An annoying lead.

Just revisited "The Bacchae" with friends and was delighted. The most striking element to me was the complexity of the characterizations. I kept finding myself rooting for the character I thought was supposed to be the protagonist and then they would do something unpleasant and my alliances would shift and then the cycle would repeat itself. Also there is some fantastic language about snakes licking droplets of blood off the women's faces and other far out things. The Greeks clearly inhabited a much more visceral world than we do today.

Read "The Phoenician Women" for the first time on the plane on Christmas Eve. Not my favorite Euripides play. From the introduction, it also sounds like a decent amount of it might not even be his writing. It's got the same meat as "Seven Against Thebes", namely the fight between Oedipus & Jocasta's sons for control of Thebes. Needless to say, it does not end well. There are a couple of nice moments, but mostly, it's slow going.

You know, this Dionysus, god of getting drunk in the woods, seems like my kind of deity.

"The Bacchae" won the first prize in the City Dionysia festival in Athens in 405 BC, for good reason I suppose. The structure, plot, and character development are among the best of Euripides. William Arrowsmith, the translator, compared it to "Oedipus the King", "Agamemnon" and "King Lear", as one of the greatest tragedies.

Truth be told, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. For example, is there anything more horrific and bizarre than the sight of a mother singing and dancing while holding in her hand as a trophy the severed head of her own son?

The Descent into Madness

On the surface, the plot of the play seems to be the power struggle between the young god Dionysus and King Pentheus of Thebes. Dionysus was intent on avenging himself on the Thebans, his kinsmen according to the flesh, for denying that he was a god born of Zeus; Pentheus was determined on banning the worship of Dionysus, which he regarded as wanton and ludicrous. Dionysus proved his power by gaining control over Pentheus, and led the latter into a trap. Pentheus was then torn apart by his own mother and aunts who were possessed by Dionysus.

What is most intriguing or ironic, to me, is the way Dionysus gained possession of Pentheus. It's not so much Dionysus' manipulation but Pentheus himself that caused his descent into madness. IOW, he wasn't of a sound mind to begin with. Dionysus simply exploited his follies and impetuosity against him. The Stoics say that everyone who is not wise is mad. If so, then most of us are susceptible to madness, in which state we would regard evil as good, folly as wisdom, and self-destruction as victory.

Euripides, who died just before the end of the Peloponnesian War and the fall and near total destruction of Athens, was perhaps suggesting indirectly that the whole of Athens had gone insane, although the Athenians believed themselves to be victorious, as Pentheus and his mother did in their madness. The Athenians were either magnanimous or foolish enough to posthumously award him first prize, one year after the playwright's death (406 BC) and before the fall of Athens (404 BC).

5 stars primarily for William Arrowsmith’s transcendent translation of The Bacchae. Simply solendid.

I think Euripides is my fav Greek tragedy writer