Flayed alive by the Bacchae

by ROBIN ROBERTSON

Ancient Greek kylix showing a Maenad and Satyr, fifth century BC SOURCE/Makron

Bacchae was the final work—and thought by many to be the greatest—of the Athenian playwright Euripides, who Aristotle called “the most tragic of the poets.” First performed in Athens in 405 BC, a year after Euripides’ death, the play tells the story of the introduction of the worship of the god Dionysus—also referred to as Bromius and Iacchus—from Asia into Greece. But as Dionysus arrives in the Greek city of Thebes, he finds that the populace, led by its king, Pentheus, refuses to acknowledge his divinity. Dionysus sets out to punish the unfaithful, and as Daniel Mendelsohn, writing in the October 22, 2009 issue of the Review, put it, “stings the female population of Thebes with daemonic frenzy, sending them to the mountains outside of the city where they celebrate his rites at last.” In this passage, a messenger describes to Pentheus the sights he has seen on Mount Cithaeron, where the Theban women—now Bacchants, Dionysus’ female adherents—have fled. Among them are Pentheus’ mother Agave, and her sisters Autonoe and Ino.

Messenger

The sun had just risen and the earth was warming up
as we drove our herds?
along the ridge to the high meadow,?
when I saw three bands of women:
one led by Autonoe,
one by your mother, Agave, and one by Ino.
They lay exhausted,?
some resting on fir branches,?
others sleeping among oak leaves.?
They were modest and composed, not drunk
with wine as you say,?
not dancing wildly to pipe music,?
or chasing Aphrodite in some ecstasy.

The New York Review of Books for more

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