Some personal notes for each play, since Goodreads doesn't give me enough space under "Private notes". Definite Spoilers, if that matters for you here:



Ion
Nice play, with a happy ending. I liked it.

The Women of Troy
Well this was the complete opposite. It describes the fate of the various women of Troy. None of them is a good one.

Helen
So apparently the Helen in Troy was a hologram or a ghost or something. So they all killed each other over nothing. I guess this could be an allegory to the futility of war. Regardless, maybe my antipathy for Helen is too hardly engrained (or I'm on Team Troy) but I found myself not really rooting for her or Menelaus.

Bacchae
Man, these Gods are mean

I've given up trying to figure out how to rate this. I'm torn because Bacchae is certainly five stars, but I am less sure of the other two plays. Here is my biggest issue: Herakles didn't grab me emotionally. I've seen bits of Women of Trachis performed and that dramatic presentation of Herakles' downfall was much more riveting. The action in Euripides' Herakles was less visceral and was too intellectual/philosophical perhaps? It seemed to me to lack immediacy.

Phoenician Women was a fun play (despite criticisms that it lacks a central plot and is a bit too scattered). I like this reimagining of the fall of the House of Laios. The tensions between Polynices and Eteocles is brutal and riveting. The fact that Jocasta is still alive to see the ruin of her two sons is also a dastardly touch. Still, I think the critics are right when they say that there is something off structurally about the play...

Bacchae is a masterpiece (maybe Euripides' most brilliant and brutal?). The mysterious element gives the play its enormous power. This play is the Dionysian in full force. Everything is up for question. What is human? What is divine? What happens when one becomes the other? The central tension of society and order vs. release and unity/annihilation is beautifully drawn. The long narrative accounts of the women masquerading in the forest are brilliant and beautiful (before straying into the horrifying). So much richness here.

The Bacchae

- I have seen the holy Bacchae, who like a flight of spears
Went streaming bare-limbed, frantic, out of the city gate.

- What, woman? What was that you said? Do you exult
When such a cruel fate has overtaken the king?
- I am no Greek.
I sing my joy in a foreign tune.

- When bull led man to the ritual slaughter-ring.


He'd have been my god, were I Greek (or one of these foreign women). Even without him, I believe that his forces or his spheres, unacknowledged, are dangerous; whether religious or psychological, this play always spoke to me. Perhaps the part where Agave triumphs ignorantly with her son's head, is drawn-out, over-milked, but that's theatre for you. The effeminate foreigner who is Dionysus in disguise -- who celebrates that 'rare goddess', Peace; who cross-dresses the king to make a laughingstock of him; whose worshippers abandon the loom to tear wild beasts limb from limb... what's not to love and fascinate? So much, too, is uncannily familiar.

My personal no. 1 ancient Greek play.

This is a bit of a lie because I only actually read Bacchae, not the other plays. But Bacchae was excellent! Very crazy and party-filled.

To be honest, the fact that any of ancient tragedies remain is astonishing. Included within this volume are 5 of Euripides later works, one of a spurious nature.

The Phoenician Women, Orestes, The Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulus clearly have common structure and style. Above all, Euripides works are iconic and distinctive in ending almost every time with a god character situated on a crane above the other actors, a deus ex machina. These plot resolving artifices allow for great dramatic leaps right until the end, when this device neatly explains away any loose-ends. Recently reading Medea, an early work of Euripides, the ending is similar. The deus ex machina is not really something used by Aeschylus or Sophocles, except perhaps in The Eumenides, though the actual “crane” or “machene” may not have been part of the stage structure yet. Aeschylus seems to have more commonly introduced gods into his works.

Rhesus is a fascinating work taking place within a Trojan camp. The fact that it covers a story within The Iliad that I cannot remember reading about from so many years ago felt nostalgic and was a great way to end this collection. Stories of Hector, Odysseus, Diomedes, Athena, and Rhesus were rather fun to revisit and has me contemplating a re-read of Homer soon.

This edition was fantastic in learning about Euripides and the annotations were a fun reading after the fact. However, the overall effect of the stories was not as great as The Oresteia or Sophocles amazing Oedipal Cycle. I love I think The Bacchae most of all as its focus on Dionysian rites around Thebes, my now favorite setting of all the ancient tragedies. I am a huge fan of this genre and think everyone everywhere should read these 31 or 32 monumental, intertextual works. They portray ideas of a reality that persists in literature of the western world since. The thematic structure allows a writer or their readers a means to understand the complex tensions, conflicts, and irresolvable situations that make up universal human difficulties.

Pretty gruesome, barely finished

Ion (3⭐️)
Started out strong, I was pleasantly surprised at the acknowledgement of rape victims and the things women go through, but it eventually went downhill and the ending left me feeling unsatisfied, it felt a little empty and superficial to me. Still enjoyable and has some memorable quotes.

The women of Troy (3.75⭐️)
Not gonna lie, this was kind of a drag at first, nothing happened but suffering and I was waiting for the plot to move along. But then came Cassandra, Andromache and Helen to give this play a bit more plot. And I liked that! Helen was surprisingly interesting to me, they make you hate her and then she defends herself and it’s like oooh maybe it wasn’t her fault but then they make you hate her again. Even if she’s a little evil I like her. But yeah it was very interesting and dark to see all the awful things this war left behind, especially from a woman’s pov. I just really like plot and it’s hard for me to read mostly plotless things.

Helen (3.5⭐️)
That was fun! There was a stark contrast between the previous play, which was a tragedy that didn’t have much plot, and this play, which was lighthearted and had more action going on. I enjoyed it as an easy read, though I gotta say I’m a tragedy girl through and through. The plot was a bit predictable but I liked that Helen was the one that made up the whole plan for them to escape. Evil Helen is still a fave though. The take on Helen actually being in Egypt during the war was interesting, at first I was like “Well but that means the war was literally for nothing” but maybe that was the point... war is for nothing. Overall, it was nothing too special but I liked it!

The Bacchae (4.5 or 5⭐️)
Finally reached the whole reason I bought this book for. And holy shit... that was creepy and I loved it! Dionysus is one of my favorite Greek Gods, so I was extremely excited to read this. First of all, I loved the Maenads and their rites, they sort of gave me midsommar/the witch vibes. It was all very connected to nature and very creepy at the same time. The opposition between being civilized versus letting go and dancing in the mountains in a sort of hedonistic fashion is something very captivating to me, and it’s one of the reasons I like Dionysus so much. Wish I were a woman in a frenzy, dancing in the wild and drinking wine. MY DREAM ! Also, the scene were the possessed Theban women tear Pentheus apart limb by limb was chilling. Anyways OOOOOF don’t offend Gods folks! Or more that that, I think this play might be a lesson about letting your natural, free side flourish and not stifling it with reason and civilization. Or something idk. Everyone go dance in the mountains and let go and once in a while.

My edition has four plays: Ion, The Women of Troy, Helen, and The Bacchae.

Ion -- The orphan Ion tries to discover his origins. The play begins with a prologue by Hermes, the messenger god, who arrives at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. He recounts the tale of how Creusa, the mother of Ion, was raped by Apollo and secretly gave birth to a son. She abandoned him and Apollo sent Hermes to bring the boy to Delphi. I thought this was not as interesting as the other three plays.

The Women of Troy -- The fates of Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra and the other women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families about to be taken away as slaves. It takes place near the same time as Hecuba, which is not in this volume. I have read this one before in a newer translation. It is stunning.

Helen -- The play uses a variant of Helen's story that differs from the one in The Iliad: Helen of Sparta was in Egypt during the Trojan War while a phantom look-alike created by Hera and Hermes was carried off to Troy. (Herodotus, among others, had suggested that this is what really happened in his Histories.) Euripides has Helen taken to Egypt by the gods, and by the time the play opens, the real Helen has been living in Egypt for seventeen years. The Egyptian king Proteus, who had protected Helen, has died. His son Theoclymenus, intends to marry Helen, who after all these years remains loyal to her husband Menelaus.

The Bacchae -- One of the most disturbing Greek plays. This is probably my favorite play by Euripides. This is Euripides's last surviving tragedy. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC. The play begins with the god Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele, announcing that he has arrived in Thebes to disprove the slander, spread by his mother's family, that Zeus is not his real father and that he is not a god. As the play opens, Dionysus has driven the women of Thebes into an ecstatic frenzy, and they have gathered on Mount Cithaeron to dance.

The Bacchae to me, was a play that represented many problems that we have in our society today but was the norm back in ancient Greece. The play focuses on two opposing ideologies of society that clash, which are the Apollinians and Dionysians. The Dionysians consist of free-willed individuals who are chaotic and disregard rules, while the Apollinians are controlled and believe that there must be order in all aspects of society. Euripides most likely saw these opposing forces in his society and wrote about them in his play. I believe he intended to use this play as a representation for change in society and that there should be a balance in the Apollonians and Dionysians. This idea all relates to the fact that society must be balanced, and this is represented through Agave and her son Pentheus, when she is in a state of ecstasy with the other women or maenads, it is seen as blasphemy and that women should not be doing this. So, Pentheus, being the strict person that he is, attempts to stop her and ends up dying and all the women are then cast out of society. The only reason this had occured in the first place was that women were not allowed to do what they desired and only did what the men allowed them to. Women had to fit a certain mold and had their own place in society under the patriarchy of men. This all correlates to the idea that there must be a balance in society or it would fail. If there is too much freedom and liberation, on one side there would be no prosperity in society, and everyone would be doing what they want. On the other hand, if there are too many rules imposed on a society then it would cause rebellions and dissatisfaction in people’s lives. In the end, if there were to be an ideal society in which everyone would be able to flourish, there must be equality and balance between these two sides.
Overall, I thought that The Bacchae was a great play and it was interesting to read. I think that it is very unique that many of factors in the play such as how society is run and what is happening during those time can correspond with societal factors in the present day. It especially highlights what we are going through with our government and other things such as that.

3.5 stars. Review to follow.

Throughout the book, Euripides reflects upon the necessity and the importance of "structure" and how it affects a society as a whole. From this, differences amongst the Dionysian and the Apollonian followers are seen greatly as it creates many complications throughout the society. As Euripides introduces a Dionysian standpoint, they tend to be more laid back and refuse to obtain control by letting anything happen at any given point in time. As to oppose to an Apollonian point of view, they tend to be more controlling as order is needed in any position of society. As both viewpoints have valid and reasonable structures, it only shows that a crucial part of society will follow one and the others will follow another in which it creates a harsh tension between both set of groups. With having a society of being too controlling, it may have the followers retaliate and may be influenced to change the structures of society because not everyone will agree to what one person may say. As to a Dionysian, if too much liberation and freedom is given, many will be discouraged to help grow the society as it will create many problems for a near future. By analyzing the works of Euripides, I believe that everyone has their own views of building and following a structure because everyone is different and not everyone has the same mindset as others. Finding that perfect balance in life is the key to success because in modern times, we the people need to realize that not everyone will come into an agreement yet it all depends if everyone can communicate and see both sides of a structure. by seeing both sides of a structure, it will not only bring two groups together , yet it will unite as a strong society and disregard any complications it may see. Through this, we see the character of Agave and how open she was to finding that perfect "balance". However, there will always be that unbalance in society yet as being one big society, there will always be room for that compromise whether it may take a lot of time or a short amount of time. In my opinion, having a little yet no control of society is reasonable because the people need to be heard and will have their needs satisfied yet if it's not, living in a controlled environment will only lead to retaliation.

In Bacchae the god Dionysus arrives in Greece from Asia intending to introduce his orgiastic worship there. He is disguised as a charismatic young Asian holy man and is accompanied by his women votaries, who make up the play’s chorus. He expects to be accepted first in Thebes, but the Thebans reject his divinity and refuse to worship him, and the city’s young king, Pentheus, tries to arrest him. In the end Dionysus drives Pentheus insane and leads him to the mountains, where Pentheus’s own mother, Agave, and the women of Thebes in a bacchic frenzy tear him to pieces.