Phoenician Women: 4⭐️
Orestes: 3.5⭐️
Bacchae: 5⭐️
Iphigenia at Aulis: 4⭐️
Rhesus: 2⭐️

Definitely easier than Aristotle and Plato, and rather more fun. Four plays which give an insight into how cultured Greeks liked to keep themselves entertained. That said, the title play is a disturbing reminder of the frenzied nature of some Greek worship. No forgiveness or mercy to be found here. That's awaiting someone else coming from a land far, far away four hundred years later.

The Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis the two stand out plays from this collection.

The Bacchaehas a supernatural grimness that makes it resonate with an edge-of-your-seat energy. In contrast, Iphigenia sets up the foolhardy tragedy of the expedition to Troy with a frustrating experience of pathos and resignation.

Does translating a work give the translator a special insight into the work? Presumably the translator knows nuances of the source language and the way the particular author being translated uses the language in other works. But there must be some point at which a translator becomes merely another reader of the work and cannot claim an understanding equivalent to that of the author.

In his introduction to Euripides’ n  Ionn Phillip Vellacott offers an understanding of the play that is quite at odds with my reading of it in his translation.

The play presents us with three main human characters: CREUSA, descendant of the founder of Athens, who bore a son many years ago and left him to die of exposure immediately after birth; XUTHUS, husband of Creusa, a foreigner who was granted her hand after serving as an Athenian ally in a war in which Athens was victorious; and ION, an attendant at Apollo’s shrine at Delphi who was brought there as a foundling and raised by Apollo’s priestess.

In a lengthy exposition, we are told by Hermes at the beginning of the play that Ion is Creusa’s child by Apollo, brought by Hermes himself to the shrine to be raised there.

Creusa and Xuthus have come to Delphi to ask whether there is any hope of them producing children. In an indirect manner Creusa seeks to ask the oracle the fate of her child by Apollo, but Ion advises against this, saying she should avoid making such an accusation of the god. Xuthus is told by the oracle to adopt as his son the first man he sees on leaving the oracle – this is Ion – who will also be his actual son. On questioning by Ion, Xuthus recalls that he once long ago had sex with a drunken Bacchante during the feast of Bacchus at Delphi; he quickly convinces himself and Ion that Ion must be the result of that union.

When Creusa learns that a Xuthus plans to raise a non-Athenian to the throne of Athens, she plots to poison Ion and employs a slave to put the plot into effect. However, the plot is thwarted when Ion interprets a bad omen and pours out the poisoned drink without tasting it.

Things end happily when Creusa is able to identify the items found in Ion’s cradle as the ones she left with her abandoned son; Athena arrives and confirms Ion’s divine paternity and advises that Xuthus be allowed to believe the falsehood that Ion is his physical son and to raise him as his successor.

So, to summarize, we are told that Apollo is Ion’s father by Hermes, Creusa, and Athena and that Ion is Creusa’s son by Hermes, Athena, and the evidence of the cradle artifacts, a threefold witness of both Ion’s paternity and maternity. Nevertheless, Vellacott considers that the drunken Bacchante origin for Ion is the one Euripides intended and that the more intelligent members of a contemporary audience would have understood as true, perhaps allowing the likelihood that Xuthus was not actually Ion’s father, but that the youth is merely some random bastard adopted by the priestess.

Of course, if the play were an example of “kitchen sink” realism, the audience would accept, indeed insist on, the non-divine explanation of Ion’s parentage. But should we assume that Athenian playgoers, even though they may not have believed in actual gods, would also have understood the stage gods of the theater to be bogus?

In reading the play, I accepted the stage convention of the gods’ existence, and saw the play as a near-tragedy, a sort of anti-Oedipus where Creusa’s poisoning plot, if carried out, would have crushed her, but in this case the gods are merciful rather than remorseless and the truth is revealed before the tragic action could be fulfilled.


Euripides’ n  The Women of Troyn (translated by Phillip Vellacott) is not so much a tragedy as a meditation on tragic events. The play presents Troy at the nadir of its fortune: the city itself being eradicated, its ruler and warriors slaughtered, and its women awaiting transport to Greece, where they will live out their lives in slavery and concubinage. We are also informed that Troy's conquerors, the Greeks, after having suffered massive casualties in achieving their conquest, will have only a short-lived triumph: fierce maritime storms will sink and scatter their homeward bound fleet, and their leader Agamemnon will soon be butchered by his wife and her lover, who in turn will be murdered by Agamemnon's son Orestes.
Centering on a handful of women, society's least powerful group, their lack of agency compounded by being the survivors of a defeated nation, the play has two broad concerns. The first is the sense of identity of the victims of dire misfortune. Hecabe, Cassandra, and Andromache have been torn from their roles of queen, priestess, and mother and have seen the society which gave them their identities destroyed. Their lives and roles are subject to the whims of the conquering Greeks and the only choice they have, which becomes therefore their only way of still having a self, is how they will mentally deal with their captive status.
The second theme is a contemplation whether such devastating misfortune is solely the result of human decisions and actions or is attributable to forces outside the control of any human power. This issue is presented in the play's opening where Athene calls upon Poseidon to use his command of the seas to help her punish the impious Greeks who have desecrated her Trojan temple. But its most explicit and complex presentation is in the play's climactic confrontation, where Helen, now one of the captive women, is accused by Menelaus and Hecabe of primary responsibility for the onset and prolongation the now-concluded war.


Euripides’ n  Helenn uses a version of "alternate history" familiar in its more modern guise in the Strauss / Hofmannsthal opera Die Aegyptishe Helena: the idea that the "Helen" with whom Paris fled to Troy was a phantom, created by Hera, and that the real Helen was taken to Egypt by Hermes, where she remained throughout the Trojan War and afterward, until her husband Menelaus, blown off course from his post-war homecoming and wandering for seven years, finally arrives in Egypt and reclaims her. In effect, this conceit allows Euripides to re-write Menelaus' story as a kind of Odyssey with the now-faithful Helen as a second Penelope. There is even a kind of slaying of the suitors as Menelaus and his crew slaughter the crew of an Egyptian ship which they have obtained by trickery. In his introduction, translator Phillip Vellacott suggests that the "phantom Helen" scenario allows the playwright to critique war as a baseless pursuit, though to the modern reader, going to war over an abducted phantom hardly seems more absurd than war carried out due to a flesh-and-blood straying wife.

Euripides’ n  The Bacchaen is a difficult play to come to terms with. On the page, Dionysus, who controls the action from beginning to end, is too casually commandeering to be an appealing character. Though this might be mitigated by his embodiment on stage by a young, handsome, and charismatic actor - as the role should be cast - I’m not sure such an incarnation would do much to change my impression – for one thing, I seem to lack the gene that makes one susceptible to charisma.

The play can be approached as a type of Revenge Drama – Dionysus arrives in Thebes, the city of his mother and the place of his conception, to punish the descendants of Cadmus, his maternal grandfather, who have denied his divinity by refusing to admit that he was begotten by Zeus. But unlike other such plays, it is hard here to feel sympathy for the avenger, both because of his effortless control of the situation – he undergoes no risk in attaining his revenge – and because his retribution is so extreme. The punishments doled out in the course of the play even take in old Cadmus who, along with the blind and equally elderly Teiresias, does attempt to acknowledge Dionysus’ godhood, albeit with a limited understanding of the nature of his divinity. The main victim is Pentheus, ruler of Thebes, an authoritarian who will break before he bends and who ultimately suffers death at the hands of Dionysus’ second main victim, Agauë, Pentheus’ own mother.

Dionysus has turned the women of Thebes into a troop of Maenads who occupy the wilderness outside of Thebes, alternately tranquil and frenzied, capable of bare-handed deadly violence against beast and man. These women aren’t any kind of proto-feminist models of independence – they are portrayed as will-less, given over entirely to instinctual behavior – in terms of the play, behavior under the control of the male deity Dionysus. It is significant that when Dionysus overcomes the will of Pentheus the first action he has the ruler take is to dress himself as a woman.

Reading this immediately after finishing Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn, I was tempted to see Dionysus as a version of Charles Manson which Manson himself might have imagined: a deification of himself and a warning to his enemies about his deadly and irresistible power. It is extremely unlikely that the barely literate Manson ever heard of Euripides, making even more disturbing the parallels between the play's action and real-life events involving Manson and the large group of female followers over whom he exerted an uncanny control.

Here’s a sample of the strange harmonies between the two books. Manson’s arrest:

There was a closed cabinet beneath the sink, and it seemed to [California Highway Patrolman James] Pursell that in the flickering candlelight he saw a few strands of long hair hanging limply in the crack of the closed door. It was a tiny cabinet in a cramped space. It seemed impossible that anyone could squeeze inside there, but Pursell kept the candle near it and watched as the door was pushed open and a tiny figure began unfolding arms and legs out into the room. Pursell snapped, “If you make one false move, I’ll blow your head off,” and the diminutive man who emerged to stand before him replied “Hi,” in what struck the officer as a very friendly voice: “He was as polite as he could be.” Nonplussed by the man’s appearance of complete calm, Pursell asked, “What’s your name,” and his prisoner replied, “Charlie Manson.” Telling the tale years later, Pursell recalled, “I’ve had a lot of people, including a judge, ask, ‘Why didn’t you just shoot him?’ But I always answer, ‘How can you shoot a guy whose first word to you is ‘Hi’?”(pg. 300)

And the account of the arrest of Dionysus:

GUARD:Pentheus, we’ve brought the prey you sent us out to catch;
We hunted him, and here he is. But, Sir, we found
The beast was gentle; made no attempt to run away,
Just held his hands out to be tied; didn’t turn pale,
But kept his florid color, smiling, telling us
To tie him up and run him in; gave us no trouble
At all, just waited for us. Naturally I felt
A bit embarrassed. ‘You’ll excuse me, Sir,’ I said,
‘I don’t want to arrest you; it’s the king’s command.’ (pg. 205)

In the Chicago Euripides:
The Bacchae - Vol. 5
Helen - Vol. 2
The Women of Troy - Vol. 3
Ion - Vol. 3

The Bacchae by Euripides does well at showing two extremes the Dionysian’s and Apollinian’s in society. In this time period it is a patriarchal society. The God, Dionysus comes into the city to spread his love of wine and parties. He quickly gained followers who became entranced by the new found freedom they felt by being around him. Dionysus brings out the wild side of the women in society who have been restricted in the past. Pentheus the king of Thebes, is frustrated with Dionysus. He sees Dionysus as a trouble maker and wants to regain whatever control he lost. Pentheus represents the other extreme, control and order. There is this power struggle between the two. I believe Euripides wrote this play to question society’s hierarchy. Particularly in this play it is conveyed that women don’t have much power in this society. When Dionysus comes to Thebes, he creates an opportunity for women to come together and have fun. In the past women were not invited or included in such celebrations, or were allowed to act out like the men. There is a sense of unity for women and in a way they probably feel a bit included in their society. This idea of chaos in the city, upsets Pentheus. His friend, Cadmus, the previous King of Thebes goes to one of Dionysus parties. Pentheus is troubled why Cadmus would even go to parties. Cadmus, explains how he can learn something from going to Dionysus parties. Pentheus is shocked by this idea, and further questions Cadmus. I find Cadmus to be open minded and he is not quick to condemn Dionysus like Pentheus is. The conversation between Cadmus and Pentheus is one of the most important parts of the play because it foreshadows his doom. Cadmus gave advice on being open minded and allowing for new ideas. I think this is important in regards to society and allowing it to grow it must change. Pentheus has tunnel vision on this whole idea. I think if he isn't opened minded how will he understand society if he never sees it from a different perspective. As a king, it would make sense for him to try and understand the needs of his people. I do believe there should be some balance in this society, but for that to happen change must occur first. As this play is a Greek tragedy, I think part of the reason that Euripides created it was to have the effect of catharsis on the audience watching. I think this is a way to release any negative emotions they may feel about their society. Also, it is a great opportunity for viewers to question how a society should function and how power should be distributed.

The play "The Bacchae" by Euripides is about a play of a god named Dionysus who wishes to bring freedom and free choice to the people of Thebes through parties, drinking, etc. However the king of Thebes also known as Pentheus is worried that because the people, mainly the women in society are doing whatever they want without care, it would end up disrupting the patriarchal society put into place leading to women disregarding the rules and order of society thus creating chaos. In The Bacchae Euripides goes over multiple concepts and themes mainly that of freedom, restriction, and women and femininity. Throughout the whole book Euripides creates an amazing story were both freedom and restriction goes against each other. We can see the clash between the two sides through both Pentheus and Dionysus, the first side is the Apollonian which is represented by Pentheus and believes that there should be a well structured society consisting of rules and order thus representing restriction, and the Dionysian which is led by Dionysus in which believes in doing whatever pleases them representing the idea of freedom. In the play we can see how Pentheus because he's used to life through order and rules and living in a specific way he cant accept the idea of accepting new things into society and this can be seen as he tries to put into chains anyone who is involved or participates in Dionysian activities. While Dionysus just doesn't know when to stop or know when something has gone too far such as when Dionysus controls Agave Pentheus's mother and sisters to kill Pentheus. Lastly one final concept or theme that Euripides brings up throughout the play is that of women and femininity. In the play we can see how women are seen as objects or tools as they are commonly referred to as ours by men and have little to no freedom, and this can be seen as the men start to worry when the women leave their homes and aren't conforming to the roles that society has put into place for them thus always being dependent on men. Women are constantly being restricted or looked down upon and in the play Euripides makes it more clear to us how women shouldn't be treated any differently from that of men as they're people as well and can do just as much as any man can. We can see how in the play Euripides questions the structure of society as he continuously puts both the ideas of freedom and restriction against each other and he tries to shows us how too much restriction or too much freedom could lead to chaos and how in a perfect society there has to be a moderation of both rules, order, and freedom as too much of one can lead to disaster as we can see through both the death of Pentheus and the exiling of Agave and her sisters. For me this play has definitely put my view on the structure of society more in perspective as Euripides made it more apparent that in a society there has to be a fine balance of both freedom and restriction. In the end I'm glad that I read this play as it was refreshing experience of a tragedy for me, and also the themes and concepts that were gone over is also applicable to us currently.

Ion 4⭐️
Women of Troy 5⭐️
Helen 3⭐️
The Bacchae 3.5⭐️

4 plays, of differing quality:

Bacchae

Bacchae concerns the punishment of king Pentheus by the god Dionysus. Anything concerning Dionysus and his cult is automatically rather fascinating, however the story itself is but a familiar tale of impiety resulting in divine punishment.

Rhesus

Rhesus is pleasant surprise. It concerns the Arrival of the Thracian king Rhesus to aid the Trojans in their war. For fans of the illiad it is like a nice piece of extra content added on to that great story. One gets to spend some more time with familiar characters like devious Odysseus and heroic Hector, though the latter can be a bit frustratingly headstrong during this play.

Iphigenia at Aulis

Iphigenia is an inspiration. Like Polyxena in the play Hecuba, one cannot be helped but grow to love and respect her, staying so brave and dignified in the face of death. Agamemnon, though he can be seen as the culprit in a way, does not come out as a truly contemptible figure either. His flip-flopping over his decisions is entirely understandable, he is a man struck by fate, torn between feelings en neccessity.
The only weakness of the play is the ending, spoilers ahead:
Right as Iphigenia is about to be sacrificed, the gods snatch her away, and replaced her with a deer, who the blade hits in her stead. She thus ultimately does not perish, making the whole affair rather less meaningful than is she had actually died, like Polyxena did.

Iphigenia among the Taurians

Iphigenia among the Taurians could not have existed had the affairs at Aulis not concluded the way they did. So it already feels like it shouldn't exist. Orestes being re-unified withn his sister is a carbon copy of what happens in the play Electra, which does it better. (Not sure which play came first though). The strange lands of the Taurians could've been what made this play interesting, but it is not explored at all.

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.

desperately need to kiss euripides on the mouth right this second

The Bacchae is one of the most disturbing plays in the ancient Greek genre. Euripides delves into the religiousity of the time with the " beware of spying on secret rites". The other three plays, Ion, The Women of Troy and Helen, are noble but not as good.

The Bacchantes, or Maenads, could be a bad group of worshippers to run into, if one encountered them at the height of their religious devotion. These worshippers of the wine-god Dionysus (or Bacchus), as depicted by many writers of classical Greece, were so completely transported by the ecstasies of their religious ceremonies that they might tear to shreds any animal, or man, unfortunate enough to chance upon the site of their devotions. The playwright Euripides made the Bacchantes the subject of one of his greatest tragedies, a play that is appropriately grim for his purposes; but this volume of four of Euripides’ plays shows that tragedy was not the only kind of play that Euripides was capable of writing.

Ion, the protagonist and title character of Euripides’ Ion, is the son of the Athenian princess Creusa; raped by the god Apollo, Creusa subsequently bore in secret, and abandoned, the child of her misfortune. The baby Ion was brought to Delphi, and became the servant of the oracle there; and now, years later, Creusa has come to Athens with her husband Xuthus, king of Athens, to ask the oracle why they have remained childless for all these years. When Ion meets Creusa – neither of them knowing that the two are mother and son – the situation is rich in the sort of dramatic irony in which Euripides specialized:

ION: I was never nursed at the breast.
CREUSA: Poor child! You have suffered as I have….
CREUSA: Your poor mother! I wonder who she was.
ION: I am the child of some woman who was wronged, perhaps. (p. 51)

Xuthus is informed that Ion is the son for whom he has been searching, but that news does not solve the problems of the play. At different points in the play, Creusa plans to kill Ion (as an interloper who threatens to unjustly seize the Athenian throne), and Ion plans to kill Creusa for trying to poison him. But what Euripides is interested in with Ion is not a Medea- or Orestes-style tragedy of parent killing child, or child killing parent; this play goes in a different and more surprising direction.

The Trojan Women is one of Euripides’ most famous plays for modern readers, perhaps in part because Greek filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis, working from Edith Hamilton’s translation of the play, directed in 1971 a film adaptation that featured the proverbial all-star cast: Katharine Hepburn as Hecuba, Vanessa Redgrave as Andromache, Geneviève Bujold as Cassandra, and Irene Papas as Helen of Troy.

The play is long on characterization and relatively short on plotline: it functions as a study of how human beings endure the unendurable. Troy has fallen, and both Hecuba (queen of Troy) and Andromache (wife of Hector) have witnessed the violent deaths of their valiant husbands. Now, all the women of Troy -- the humble as well as the great -- wait to be taken to Greece, where they will be consigned to slavery in various Greek households. Cassandra, the prophetess whose unhappy fate it is to foretell the future without being believed, prophesies that Agamemnon will take her to Argos, where they will both be murdered by Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra and Clytemnestra’s lover Aegisthus; but as usual, no one listens to or believes Cassandra. Andromache faces an additional horror – the prospect that her baby son Astyanax will be flung from the walls of Troy to his death, so that he cannot grow up to be a Trojan warrior who would want to avenge his father and his city.

As a chorus of Trojan women contemplate their impending journey into slavery and exile, the question they ask of Zeus is the sort of question that many people have asked of their god or gods in times of supreme suffering: “Therefore we ask, Monarch of all that lives,/Firm in your heavenly throne,/While the destroying Fury gives/Our homes to ashes and our flesh to worms – /We ask, and ask: What does this mean to You?” (p. 125) In this time when wars around the world have created so many refugees that this year’s Olympic Games fielded for the first time a refugee team, no doubt many people are asking this very question today.

Helen of Troy is again the focus of Euripides’ attention in his play Helen. In this retelling of the story of the Spartan queen with the proverbial face that launched a thousand ships, Helen never really went to Troy with the Trojan prince Paris at all; rather, what Paris took with him from Sparta, as Helen tells it, was “not me, but a living image compounded of the ether, in my likeness. Paris believes that he possesses me: what he holds is nothing but an airy delusion” (p. 136). Euripides wrote Helen in 412 B.C., at which time the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta had been going on for almost twenty years: there seems something wonderfully subversive in the way the playwright suggests that the Trojan War – and, by implication, the Peloponnesian War, and all wars – are fought over things as insubstantial as air. Menelaus, Helen’s husband and king of Sparta, is shipwrecked with his men in Egypt, where Helen is held as a captive by Theoclymenus, the king of Egypt, who wants to marry the unwilling Helen; and once Menelaus is persuaded that the real Helen has indeed been true to him, the two work together to try to escape Theoclymenus’ clutches.

And if you are the sort of reader who wants a good old-fashioned classical tragedy – one in which the protagonist’s hubris (fatal pride) leads him to a moment of hamartia (a fateful decision resulting from a character flaw) that results in his destruction – then The Bacchae is for you. The tragic hero of The Bacchae is Pentheus, king of Thebes, who opposes the increasing popularity of the worship of Dionysus, god of wine and revelry. At the time of which Euripides is writing, Dionysus is one of the newer gods on the Olympian block, and his worship is a relatively new thing. Pentheus is a thoroughgoing Apollonian, a believer that the worship of the Olympian gods should be a manner of rationalist dignity and restraint, and he is offended by the wild, unrestrained, get-yer-ya-ya’s-out quality of Dionysiac worship. Therefore Pentheus proposes to ban the worship of Dionysus, and to arrest all those who participate in it; and in response, the god himself makes his way down from Olympus to Thebes, to visit upon Pentheus a punishment that will dramatize the grim fate that awaits anyone who dares offend any of the gods, including the new ones.

Taking the form of a young worshipper of Dionysus, the god arranges to meet Pentheus, and the subsequent dialogues between Dionysus and Pentheus once again feature characteristically Euripidean dramatic irony. Translator Philip Vellacott seems to be having particular fun here; when Pentheus says to Dionysus, “Still you side-step my question with an empty phrase,” Vellacott mischievously has Dionysus echo Shakespeare’s Hamlet when the god replies, “Just so. A prudent speech sleeps in a foolish ear” (p. 207). As translated by Vellacott, Euripides’ Dionysus also echoes Jesus’ words to the blinded Saul on the road to Damascus, in Chapter 9 of the Acts of the Apostles: Pentheus, angry that Dionysus has escaped the chains in which Pentheus bound him, says, “Now be content – or must I punish you again?”, and Dionysus replies, “I would control my rage and sacrifice to him/If I were you, rather than kick against the goad./Can you, a mortal, measure your strength with a god’s?” (p. 219; emphasis added).

Dionysus, pretending to be “helpful,” offers Pentheus a way in which the disapproving and yet fascinated Athenian king can watch the Bacchantes at their worship: dress up as a Bacchante (there is a great deal of focus on the ridiculous spectacle of a cross-dressing King of Thebes) and watch the Dionysiac rituals of worship in secret. And as you might expect, Pentheus’ attempt to play Peeping Tom with the Maenads does not end well.

Euripides is widely regarded as being the most “modern” of the great triumvirate of Athenian dramatists, when compared with his compeers Aeschylus and Sophocles. I concur in that assessment. This collection shows the variety of tones that Euripides struck in his dramatic art.