Euripides, The Bacchantes; I am a god, treat me as such

Its been a week of two distinct sides, on one hand I've been very productive both last week and this week and now have a buffer through to the end of November, on the other hand we buried one of the members of our church after his very sudden passing. This week coming I get a reprieve from the Greek plays and am reading the Edda from my Ad lit list, so I'm looking forward to the change of pace.
We are getting used to being in Tokoroa now and it has been a little over two months. We have chosen a church and joined the local RSA/club so now we have somewhere to go and socialise on a Friday evening, not that we are big drinkers mind you but the company is good.

I have had to re-read this play as too much time had elapsed between when I first read it and when I went to write about it, this is not something I plan to do often. The lists are just too large to spend a double amount of time on something!

The Story
Dionysus arrives in Thebes with the intention of teaching them to worship him as a god. He starts by relaying the story of his birth, how he is the son of Zeus and of Semele. He tells of Semele's death by lightning bolt and how Zeus rescued him from that fate and sewed him up in his thigh as a womb until his birth. He says he will drive the woman of Thebes mad in punishment for the thought that his mother was killed because she claimed she would bear Zeus' son not because Hera was mad. 

Tiresias , the blind seer, arrives and calls for Cadmus and together they, forgetting their old age, discuss joining the revelers giving praise to Dionysus, with dancing. Cadmus' grandson Pentheus, the current king of Thebes arrives and chastises them both for being dressed for the festival, he commands that the mysterious foreigner be brought to him bound and that all worshipers be arrested and bound in fetters. The guards return with Dionysus in tow and after a little discussion with Pentheus, Dionysus being very oblique and not answering questions in a straight fashion, Pentheus orders him to be bound and put in the dark of the stable. Dionysus states that Pentheus will not be able to bind him, but is seemingly bound and placed in the stable. Dionysus then causes the ground to shake and walks out. Pentheus finds him at the gate, after he attempts to attack a apparition of him and in doing so destroys the barn. 

Then a herdsman runs up and tells of what is happening with the women in the woods on the mountain and how they are dancing, have been miraculously provided with milk and wine and honey seemingly by the divine. And how when the men tried to apprehend them they went mad and after the men escaped tore their livestock limb from limb and then continue on to destroy and ravage a couple of towns.

Pentheus then enraged calls for the arming of his troop but Dionysus suggests he goes and spies on the women. Pentheus retreats to make a decision. Pentheus returns out of his mind, as the god had asked for, and with Dionysus' help dresses himself as a woman. They both exit the stage and then a messenger returns and tells the tale of Pentheus death at the hands of his mother, after he climbs a tree to see him better and is betrayed by Dionysus, the woman then tear down the tree and tear him limb from limb. His mother then mounts his head on wand and takes it back to Thebes and proceeds to order a feast for the young lion she has killed barehanded. Her father Cadmus comes to her and helps lift the madness and shows her it is the head of her son. Dionysus returns in his glory as a god and pronounces the fates of the woman of Pentheus' house and that of his father. The women are to be exiled and Cadmus and his wife are to be turned to snakes. The play ends with a comment on the ferocity of the wrath of a god.

Reflections

This is quite an interesting read it is a winding of a story/myth over something that must have taken place at some point. That is that at some point the worship of Dionysus came to Thebes from the east. It is easy as a modern reader to think of the Greek gods as a static group but this reminds us that occasionally the Greeks still borrowed gods from other areas and that their beliefs weren't entirely static. 

The story itself is the basic trope of a god scorned and getting revenge, though it does have its little bit of interesting additions and distractions. One of these is that Dionysus is in what should be his home town and yet because it is his hometown the king thinks he knows better.

It is also interesting to me that we see so much anger and wrath from Dionysus and yet he is the god of, well to borrow a phrase, sex, drugs and rock and roll. This seems to be quite diametrically opposite, yet it cannot cause to much discordance to its original audience or it would not have survived so well.

Euripides has framed Pentheus in a very stubborn and unseeing light and yet it is a bit fantastical from his point of view that a god from the east would come and basically drive half his city mad. If you knew someone died before birth would you really trust a stranger that says he's him and that he is a god? So while it is easy to put Pentheus aside from the way he is portrayed he does actually have something of a point even if he turn out to be wrong in the end.

Comparisons

This is the first time in the Greek plays a god is not automatically in a place of worship. Never before has there been a question on whether a god should have been offered to, whether it happened or not. This automatic regard for the gods says a lot about the mind set of the Greeks at the time of writing. It is not the first time we have seen a god get angry over the lack of offerings or worship for example Poseidon and the tragedy that he heaps on Odysseus in the Odyssey. 

In contrast to Ion also by Euripides where Ion is a demigod at best, where as Dionysus while also being a child of a god and a mortal woman is given the title and power of a full blown god. There seems to be no clue in the text as to why there is the difference and as it is so far the only example of godhood where as there are many examples, Achilles, Hercules and more, where they were just demigods.

Have you read The Bacchantes? If so what did you think of it?

Want to read The Bacchantes but haven't? Hopefully this inspires you to take the time to do so.
Get a copy of The Bacchantes.