Beginning of the play to the exit of Teiresias and Cadmus. (Lines 1-369):

Summary:

We are before the royal palace of Thebes. On the left there is the path the wilderness of Cithaeron, and on the right the road leads to the city. Downstage (downstage: the part of the stage closer to the audience) is the tomb of Semele, the mother of Dionysus. Dionysus enters. He is a pretty young man, effeminate and beardless. He carries a thyrsus (stalk capped by ivy leaves) and wears fawn-skin, and on his face he wears a smiling mask.

He announces to the audience that he is Dionysus (also called Bromius, Bacchus, or Evius), a god and the son of Zeus (King of the gods). He has returned to Thebes, land where he was born, and he has come disguised as a mortal man. His mother Semele, a mortal woman and the daughter of Cadmus, was struck dead by lightning as she gave birth to Dionysus. The supernatural death was forced by Hera, Zeus's jealous wife and Queen of the gods; because Dionysus is Zeus's son, Zeus saved him and spirited him away. Dionysus has been in Asia. There, he has established his cult and given his gifts to mankind. He has returned to Thebes and possessed its women; they dress themselves in fawn-skin, carry the thyrsus, and cry out in divine ecstasy. The women have all run into the hills, leaving the city behind. Dionysus means to punish Semele's sisters: after her death, they spread the rumor that she was not pregnant with the child of Zeus. They claimed the lighting was punishment for Semele's lies. Now, Semele's sisters, though they are the daughters of Cadmus and princesses of Thebes, wander in the wilderness. They, too, are possessed by the Dionysian ecstasy.

Dionysus means to show the world that he is a god. In Thebes, old Cadmus has abdicated, and his young grandson Pentheus sits on the throne. Pentheus has denied the validity of the cult of Dionysus. He does not give offerings or prayers to the new god. Dionysus has come to establish his worship in Thebes; if Pentheus tries to retrieve the Maenads (the possessed women of Dionysus), then Dionysus will respond with force.

Dionysus has brought with him the Bacchae, Asian women devoted to him and his cult. They are not possessed, but they are fervent followers of the god. (Remember that "Asian" for the Greeks was not synonymous with the contemporary racial category. "Asian" in this case refers to anyone from the continent of Asia, and Dionysus has been attracting worshippers from the Southwestern regions of the continent, mainly the Near East, the Middle East, and South Asia. It must also be remembered that although modern travel makes these regions seem like neighbors of Greece, in ancient times these regions were incredibly remote and exotic for the Greeks.) As Dionysus exits, the Bacchae enter, dressed in fawn-skins and carrying thyrsi and musical instruments. The Bacchae are the Chorus of the play (see "About The Bacchae" for an explanation of the Chorus and its role in Greek drama). They sing a beautiful ode praising the glory of their god. They describe how he was delivered and raised by Zeus himself; they sing of their god's wild and rustic nature. He is of the hills and the wilderness, and he is a hunter who loves the taste of raw flesh. He is a god of dances and ecstasy.

Teiresias, the immortal blind sage of Thebes, enters. He, too, is dressed in fawn-skin and carrying a thyrsus. Teiresias is old and blind, and he moves very slowly. He calls for Cadmus. Cadmus enters, dressed likewise. He is a very old man. They too, are going to dance. Cadmus believes the story that Dionysus is Semele's son, delivered from the lightning blast. That makes the new god his grandson. They will go up the mountain and engage in the rituals to show respect the god. Cadmus will lead the blind Teiresias. They alone of all the men of Athens are going to dance. They speak with disapproval of the other men, who scorn the god. The two men agree that to worship a god is man's place, and they will do Dionysus' bidding.

Pentheus enters, accompanied by attendants. He speaks angrily about the religious fervor that has possessed the women of Thebes. He claims that the women engage in orgies in the mountains, giving themselves to any passing man; his troops have captured some of them, and Pentheus hopes to capture them all and put an end to this new cult. He has also heard that a foreign man has come from Lydia, with long curly blond hair, soft and pretty in appearance. This man is at the center of the revelry, and he claims Bacchus is a god, the divine child of the mortal Semele and the immortal Zeus. Pentheus will have this man captured, and perhaps executed. Pentheus believes that Semele lied about her child's parentage; the lightning, Pentheus says, was Zeus's punishment, and the child must have died with her. Coryphaeus, leader of the Chorus, warns Pentheus that he blasphemes.

Pentheus then notices that Cadmus and Teiresias are both dressed like worshippers of the god, and he becomes even more angry. He accuses Teiresias of opportunistically championing the new religion out of greed; with a popular new cult, profits for seers will be on the rise. Teiresias tells Pentheus that the new god will be great throughout Hellas (the lands of the Greeks). He has already given mankind the gift of wine. Men have begun to use wine to pour libations to the gods; therefore Dionysus has become an intermediary between mortals and the divine. Dionysus is a god of prophecy, and he has also taken over some of the functions of Ares, god of war. The new god is already powerful, and he will become more powerful still; it would be madness to oppose him. Teiresias denies Pentheus' claims about the orgies in the mountains, although admittedly Dionysus does not compel a woman to be chaste. Coryphaeus, leader of the Chorus, approves of Teiresias' words.

Cadmus tells Pentheus that even if Dionysus is not a true god, Pentheus should think of the prestige that will come of having a god in the family. He also reminds Pentheus of Actaeon, Pentheus' own cousin, who was devoured by his own hounds after he offended the goddess Artemis. To defy the gods is dangerous.

Pentheus is furious. He rejects the new religion as foolishness, and he orders his attendants to find Dionysus' shrine of prophecy and destroy it. He sends other attendants to scour the city for the blond foreigner; he demands that the man (who is, remember, Dionysus disguised as a mortal) be brought to him in chains.

Teiresias is horrified. He and Cadmus continue slowly on their trek, resolving to pray for mercy; Teiresias fears that Dionysus will punish Thebes and Cadmus' house because of Pentheus' blasphemy. The two old men exit, and Pentheus goes into the palace.

Analysis

Dionysus is a complicated and powerful deity. He is a young god, but he is primal: his element is wilderness, the world of beasts and the hunt. He "delights in the raw flesh" (ll. 136-8). The image is frightening, and it hints at the violence and savagery of which Bacchus is capable. But the Bacchae speak of his generosity as well: the abundance of nature is at his command. He is a god of wild ecstasies, dancing and revelry. He is also, Teiresias tells us, a god of war.

His nature is as ambivalent as the nature of his greatest gift. Wine is the product of civilization and the abundance of the earth. It is a part of celebration, and helps men to lose inhibitions. It is also a potentially dangerous substance, capable of making men lose control, even to the point of violence. Bacchus is as complicated, as beneficial and potentially dangerous, as his gift to mankind. He is the symbol and embodiment of the irrational, the religious, the popular, the primal, the very force (destructive and creative) of nature. His androgyny reflects his dual nature.

Some notes on Dionysiac rituals will be helpful. The rites of Dionysus involved ecstatic, divine possession. The rituals, most suitably taking place in wild and natural settings, involved drinking, frenzied dances, and flesh-eating rituals. In a ritual similar to the Christian Eucharist, an animal (or, in this play, a man) would be infused with the spirit of the god Dionysus and then killed. The worshippers of the god, called Bacchae, would eat the flesh, transformed by the ritual into the flesh of their god, and thereby share Bacchus' divine nature.

This play is extremely complex, and any attempt to boil it down to basic themes will oversimplify the depth and richness of the work. Many of the themes examined in this study guide will involve opposing forces: rationality versus irrationality, the Greek versus the foreign, skepticism versus piety, nature versus civilization, and so on. The reader must not mistake any one of these oppositions as being adequate in explaining the whole work. The Bacchae is about all of these forces, and more.

The Other is a central theme of The Bacchae. The god, though native born of Thebes, is in many ways not of Greece. Note the stage set up: we are at the palace. One exit leads to the city, symbol of Hellas and civilization. The other exit is into the wilderness, the world of the Bacchae, and beyond that, the far reaches of Asia. We are about to witness a clash between the familiar and the mysterious. The Other is everything that we are not: Bacchus is, in many ways, a mystery. He is symbol of the unknown, the alien, the aspects of God or the cosmos hidden from and terrifying to us. Although the Greek characterization of Asia as being barbaric or uncivilized is in many ways inaccurate, and at the least is an incredible overgeneralization, Euripides is not attempting to work with a factual Asia but with the idea of Asia. The Greeks had some concept of Asia's vastness, and in many ways it was natural to them to look to Asia as a great frontier. They knew the Mediterranean well, but the vast expanses of Asia were much harder to explore. Asia and Egypt were the source of many inventions and ideas adapted by Greek civilization; the people of Greece had benefited from the older civilizations on the larger continent. Dionysus hails from this larger world, one that was the source of both benefit and danger for the Greeks. The Chorus of the play is composed of a group of foreign women, devoted wholly to the god. The exotic elements contribute to an atmosphere of fear and unfamiliarity. Pentheus, a Greek man, stands in opposition to a vast world full of more mysteries and terrors than he can possible comprehend.

In the midst of the youthful, strong, foreign women of the Chorus, Teiresias and Cadmus seem pathetic and out of place. The sage Teiresias, often depicted in Greek drama as awe-inspiring and infallibly wise, is here depicted as vulnerable, a somewhat pathetic blind old man who needs to be led by another pathetic old man. He is right about Bacchus, but his authority seems undermined by his shrewdness. He predicts future greatness for Bacchus, and there is something calculating in his tone, suggesting that Pentheus' accusations might be true: Teiresias favors the god because new religious fervor will stuff a seer's pockets. Cadmus' calculating nature is more explicit: he argues to Pentheus that having a god in the family will confer great honor on their house. These old men, with their pragmatic approach, reveal an alternative reaction to the unknown. They are somewhere between Pentheus' violent antagonism and the Maenad's ecstasy. Wisdom (in Greek, sophia), in a huge variety of forms, is another important theme of the play. These men have an unambitious wisdom that comes with old age. They know that they must submit humbly to the new god; perhaps the submission is only for practical reasons, but it must come nonetheless.

In Sophocles' plays, a common theme is that though fate may seem capricious, gods' reasons are beyond man, and the justice of men does not apply to them. Deities need not justify themselves to mortals, and for mortals obedience to the gods is a virtue. This faith means that in Sophocles' plays there is a guideline for behavior, a sense, albeit often a complicated one, that there is a definite right and wrong. In Sophocles' plays (for example, Oedipus the King or Antigone), Teiresias is an awe-inspiring figure. He is authoritative and fearsome, never wrong, though often ignored or misunderstood. Teiresias is the mouthpiece of the gods and of a strongly defined ethical system. In both Oedipus the King and Antigone, he is a source of infallible truth. The use of Teiresias reflects Sophocles' vision; note the differences in how Euripides uses the same character. While the Teiresias of Sophocles is always right, providing characters with solid advice that could help them if only they would listen to it, the Teiresias in The Bacchae is a vulnerable and calculating old man. He speaks no prophecies, and his arguments resemble those of a lawyer. We are missing our link to the gods, our mouthpiece for moral order. Our only link to the gods is Bacchus himself. The result is that the gods and divine will become muddied, unknowable, and the kind of ultimate order envisioned by Sophocles is revealed to be a mask for something else. As Euripides depicts it, this "something else" is far more hostile, far more chaotic and destructive, something that does not respond to or care about humanity.

Another important theme is amathia, the opposite of sophia (Arrowsmith 144-5). In his excellent introductory essay, William Arrowsmith argues that Pentheus is the embodiment of amathia, the failure of a man to recognize his own nature. Prone to brutality and ignorance, Pentheus dooms himself by failing to recognize that Bacchus is a part of Truth and a part of himself. Bacchus as part of Pentheus is true on several different levels: remember that Pentheus is Bacchus' cousin. They are of the same blood; metaphorically, when Pentheus denies Bacchus, he denies himself.

The clash between order and chaos is an important theme of the play. Pentheus speaks of the need to restore order to Thebes; he wants to root out this new religion because it threatens established norms. But the foundations of Pentheus' order are fragile, which brings us to the theme of reason and the irrational. Although Pentheus denounces the Dionysiac rites as foolery and tries to claim the rational position, we see very quickly that he is far from rational (Arrowsmith 147). Teiresias denounces Pentheus' actions as lunacy (l. 359), and, however diminished the sage's status is in Euripides, Teiresias is right. Pentheus is violent, disrespectful to the age and position of his grandfather and Teiresias. Pentheus' orders are not considered choices: his commands are never spoken without anger. His orders are the uncontrolled outbursts of an immature and arrogant man.

If Pentheus cannot be said to truly embody reason, then it must also be said that "irrational" is an inadequate term for Dionysus (if "irrational" means "against reason"). Submitting fully to Dionysus' mystery means giving up rationality, but that is because Dionysus' necessity is something beyond reason. Logic is not part of its consideration. Dionysus is no more rational or irrational than a hurricane or an earthquake. He is a force of nature, and he will destroy, with indifference, anything that stands in his way. Note that he promised to meet with force any attempt to restrain or capture his Maenads; almost immediately after his entrance, Pentheus has promised to track down and lock up all of the possessed women (ll. 226-30). From their first entrances, the clash between Pentheus and Dionysus becomes inevitable.

From Choral Ode ("Holiness, queen of heaven") to the exit of Attendants with Dionysus held captive (Lines 370-519):

Summary:

The Chorus delivers an ode about Pentheus' blasphemy ("Holiness, queen of heaven, / Holiness on golden wing / who hover over earth, / do you hear what Pentheus says?") They praise Dionysus' gifts and warn of the fate of men who overstep mortal limits. They speak of the holy places of the earth and the devout worship of common people. As the people do, so will the Bacchae.

Attendants enter, bringing a bound Dionysus (disguised, remember, as a mortal). One of the Attendants reports that the man surrendered without struggle; he also tells Pentheus that the Maenads who were captured earlier have escaped. The chains on their legs snapped, and the women fled. The Attendant warns: "Sir, this stranger who has come to Thebes is full / of many miracles. I know no more than that. / The rest is your affair" (ll. 450-2). Pentheus orders that Dionysus' bonds be loosed. He mocks the god's soft, pretty looks, and then he begins to question him about the new religion. Dionysus claims to be a man of Lydia. He claims that Dionysus, in person, gave him the new rites for this new religion. Dionysus refuses to answer many of Pentheus' questions, saying that the answers are not for the uninitiated. They trade snappy comments, with Pentheus growing increasingly angry. Pentheus cuts off the god's curls, and he takes away his thyrsus. He also orders that the god be put in prison, chained. When Dionysus warns the attendants not to chain him, Pentheus repeats the order: "But I say: chain him. / And I am the stronger here" (ll. 503-4). Dionysus gives the famous response: "You do not know / the limits of your strength. / You do not know / what you do. You do not know who you are" (ll. 505-7). Pentheus intends to enslave the women of the Chorus. Dionysus promises that Pentheus will suffer for his blasphemy.

Analysis

The initial encounter between Dionysus and Pentheus is a brilliantly written scene, condensing many of the issues of the play into a relatively short exchange between the man and the god. It is loaded with dramatic irony: Dionysus insists, again and again, that the god is present and sees everything that is going on. As he exits, he promises Pentheus that in manacling him, he puts chains on Dionysus himself. The language of metaphor, so common in religion, becomes literal. Bacchus is a god of this world. The fruits of his worship are here, in this life. His presence takes the common religious metaphors about God's presence and transforms it into flesh and blood. He is here, now, no distant or indifferent deity.

Euripides sets up a number of parallels and contrasts between Pentheus and Dionysus. They are cousins, and both are young. Dionysus is a young god, and Pentheus is practically still a boy: we learn later that he does not even have a full beard yet, which would put his age at no older than his late teens. The dialogue implies that Pentheus is physically robust; he refers repeatedly to wrestling, mocking Dionysus' obvious inability to match him in that kind of struggle. Dionysus is soft, pretty, effeminate. Pentheus is a ruler of the mortal world; Dionysus rules in the spiritual realm.

Their confrontation is the symbolic clash between a number of different forces. Pentheus' questions and Dionysus' answers reveal that two very different kinds of knowledge are at work here. Pentheus goes about the interrogation like a well-trained detective: there is method, with clear goals in mind. There are also definite assumptions, and an attempt to be rational. Pentheus' questions revolve around knowledge as a form of control. Categorization and definitions constitute this kind of knowledge, and it is to be used as a means to order. Dionysus claims a different kind of knowledge, but he also calls his knowledge "sense," i.e. what is correct and obvious. He maddens Pentheus by refusing to play into the interrogation as expected. His answers are elusive, defiant, supple.

The theme of amathia comes up in Pentheus' outright rejection of other forms of wisdom. In the Choral ode that begins "Holiness, queen of heaven. . ." the Chorus speaks of the devout worship of common people. The Bacchae reject the need to feel above common piety; in fact, they embrace simple devotion. Here is the theme of piety versus skepticism. By the end of the play, Euripides shows us the excesses of both. Pentheus' immediate and outright rejection of the new piety is hardly rational. Though Pentheus claims that the devotees of the new religion are ignorant, there is nothing enlightened about his raving rejection of the new faith.

His mind is completely closed: when Dionysus tells him that foreigners in many lands now worship Bacchus, Pentheus responds that foreigners are more ignorant than Greeks. It is a very typical Greek attitude, and here Euripides touches on the theme of the Other, the exotic, the foreign. Dionysus' response is unequivocal: in this matter, foreigners are wiser. The difference is in custom, but there is nothing automatically wiser about the Greek way of doing things. The Greeks looked at foreigners with a mix of fear and contempt. Euripides takes away the all-too-easy comfort of contempt, although he does not necessarily take away fear. Customs differ. Certain truths about men do not; the Greeks who look with disgust on the customs of foreigners are distancing themselves from certain truths about man. Pentheus' problem is that he fails to see the connection between himself and the new cult. The god is his own cousin, and the rites correspond to truths that touch all men, himself included. Dionysus' powerful indictment of Pentheus is a warning against self-ignorance: Pentheus thinks he is in control. He believes he is the stronger, but he does not even know his own true nature.

And in Pentheus' response, the young king gives up his claims to being the more rational man. Pentheus, unable to verbally master Dionysus, decides to use brute force. He humiliates Dionysus but cutting the god's curls, and he puts the young god in chains. He also resolves to enslave the Bacchae. There is nothing rational about this brutality. A wise man, even a skeptic, makes room for people's beliefs.

A wise man does not lie to himself about his own nature. Pentheus speaks with great disgust for Dionysus' looks, saying with contempt that the real god of this new cult is Aphrodite. He speaks, again and again, about the lewd rites that supposedly take place in the mountains. But his ranting about these supposed orgies reveals his own sexual curiosity. As he questions Dionysus, he asks repeatedly what the Maenads do in the mountains. When Dionysus eludes the question, Pentheus' angry retort is an unintentional confession: "Your answers are designed to make me curious" (l. 474). This curiosity foreshadows how Dionysus will later trap Pentheus, using the boy's own imagination as bait. Remember that Pentheus is a young man, a teenager; sexual curiosity is natural for a boy of his age. And as with many who speak vehemently against sexual expression, not far beneath the surface lurks a powerful fascination for all things sexual.

From Choral Ode ("O Dirce, holy river") to the exit of the messenger (the herdsman of Mount Cithaeron) (Lines 520-774):

Summary:

Initially addressing the holy river of Thebes, the Chorus cries out about the rejection Bacchus faces in the place of his birth. The Bacchae promise that soon Thebes will know his name, and they cry out against Pentheus' outrages. In language replete with striking nature imagery, they pray to Bacchus to deliver them. Suddenly, lightning and thunder strike overhead, and the earth shakes; the Chorus becomes insane with fear. Dionysus' voice shouts out from within the palace. The palace is completely destroyed. Flames blaze from the tomb Semele. The Chorus prostrate themselves.

Dionysus emerges from the rubble, and he talks casually to the Chorus. He is still pretending to be a mortal man. He escaped the manacles with ease; inside the cell, as Pentheus tried to manacle Dionysus, the young king was deceived by an illusion. A bull came to the cell, and Pentheus, made mad by the god, thought the bull was Dionysus. He tried to chain the bull, but the task was impossible. Later, when the palace was in flames, Dionysus made an illusory double of himself to mislead Pentheus, who stabbed with his sword into thin air. Dionysus hears Pentheus approaching, and he says that Pentheus does not even have the power to anger him: "Wise men know constraint: our passions are controlled" (l. 642).

Pentheus enters, furious, demanding to know how Dionysus escaped. Dionysus answers that the god delivered him. Pentheus trades more barbs with Dionysus, and a Messenger, a herdsman from Mount Cithaeron, enters. The Messenger has fantastic news about the Maenads and the miracles they do; Pentheus is abrupt and bullying with the man, and the fearful Messenger asks if he can share the news, in his own words, without fear of punishment. Pentheus promises that the Messenger will not be hurt, but he also promises that the more terrible the news is, the more terrible the punishment of the new cult's priest will be.

The Messenger and some fellow herdsmen stumbled on three companies of Maenads, one of which was led by Pentheus' own mother, Agave. The women were sleeping, chaste and composed (instead of drunken and lewd, as Pentheus has imagined). On hearing the lowing of the cattle, the women woke. Some of the women's fawn-skins had slipped: they used snakes to refasten them. The mothers who had left infants behind in the city were nursing wolf cubs and young gazelles. One of the women struck the ground with her thyrsus and a cool spring began to flow freely from the ground. Another woman did the same, making a spring of wine. Thirsty Maenads scratched at the earth, and milk came bubbling up freely; honey flowed from the thyrsi. Then the Maenads began to celebrate wildly, dancing and running with the wild beasts. The herdsmen, hoping to win the favor of the king, decided to ambush the women; the men barely escaped alive. Provoked, the women then turned against the cattle, ripping the animals apart with their bare hands. The villages in the foothills were next: the Maenads destroyed everything in sight. When the men of the villages tried to fight back, the Maenads routed them without effort. The Maenads then returned to the wilderness and their celebration, the snakes licking the blood from the women's skin. The Messenger tells Pentheus to welcome the god. Dionysus is powerful, and he has many gifts to offer; it is madness to oppose him.

Analysis

Pentheus' humiliation begins. The description of his attempt to manacle Dionysus neatly captures the futility of his struggle: he is attempting to chain down a wild bull, a symbol for the force of nature. He does not know what he faces, and the effort leaves him exhausted; he has been made to look ridiculous. The god humiliates Pentheus again with the false image of himself; Pentheus takes wild swings at the air, and his physical strength comes to nothing. But the more miracles occur, the more Pentheus becomes obsessed with defeating the new religion.

Dionysus, just before Pentheus' entrance, makes a claim to wisdom. He says that Pentheus means nothing to him, and that the wise know how to restrain their passions. But by his own standards, Dionysus will fail. His revenge against Pentheus and his house will be excessively brutal. Remember that Pentheus is very young: this is Euripides' deliberate choice, which destroys the god's claim of restraint or wisdom. Wisdom is not a common attribute of boys who are Pentheus' age, but the god refuses to show any mercy to Pentheus. He makes no allowance for the boy's youth, and the lack of restraint exposes Bacchus as brutal and vindictive, god or not.

Pentheus claims to be rational, but in reality he is absolutely irrational. The miracles continue, and by rejecting them as proof of Dionysus' divinity, Pentheus proves he is as irrational and deluded as the most feverish cultist. His treatment of the Messenger shows his lack of self-control; he is short-tempered, and his behavior toward his subjects is tyrannous. He promises that the more terrible the news is, the more he will punish the priest for teaching this new kind of magic to the women: with this resolution, he shows the extent of his blindness. Even before hearing the Messenger's words, Pentheus has already rejected anything offered as proof of Bacchus' divinity. He does not accept, as the Messenger does, that the events are miraculous. He has reached his conclusion before hearing the evidence. This behavior is not rational or intelligent; for Pentheus, this struggle is no longer (if it ever was) about the truth. It is about winning.

The Messenger's story depicts a world where the women have rejoined the primal forces of nature. Nature and wilderness are an important theme of the play, and here a face of nature is pitted against the markers of human civilization. Like the forces of nature, Bacchus is capable of both destructiveness and benevolence. Initially, we see the Maenads in a complex mutual relationship with nature. It is no accident that women are Bacchus' chosen vessels. Because of the process of childbirth, women are seen as being more intimately connected with nature's cycles of birth and death. Nature provides for the Maenads abundantly, springs of wine and milk miraculously welling up from the ground. The women also provide for nature: the mothers among them provide milk for young gazelles and wolf cubs. But by attacking the women, the herdsmen incite the other face of nature: brutal, destructive, overpowering. Note that the women attack those things connected to civilization: domestic animals, villages. The beasts that have been mastered by man are destroyed; the buildings, crafted by the skill and ingenuity of man, are pillaged. The forged weapons are useless against the Maenads, while the Maenads, armed only with branches plucked from the forests, inflict mortal wounds on the villagers.

From the exit of the First Messenger to the Entrance of the Second Messenger (Lines 775-1024):

Summary:

Pentheus calls for his men to arm themselves. The full army of Thebes is going to storm Mount Cithaeron; he intends to crush the Maenads. Dionysus warns him again not to take up arms against the god. Pentheus rejects the advice. Dionysus even offers to bring the women back peacefully, but Pentheus rejects it as a trick. As Pentheus strides away, Dionysus calls out to him with a voice of command. He asks if the boy would like to see the revels on the mountain. Pentheus would. Dionysus tells him that he must go disguised as a woman. Pentheus objects, but the lure of seeing the Dionysian rites is too much from him. He is torn between male pride and a desire to see the rituals. Pentheus exits to consider Dionysus' offer.

With Pentheus gone, Dionysus promises the women that Pentheus will be humiliated. He will walk though the streets of Thebes dressed as a woman, and then he will be butchered by his own mother. Dionysus' divinity will then be beyond question. He goes to dress Pentheus. The Chorus sings of the glory of Bacchic ritual; the women are able to run free, in nature, where no man troubles them. They speak of the destruction that awaits those who defy the goods, and talk of the wisdom that comes from acceptance.

Dionysus reemerges, and then calls for Pentheus to come out. Pentheus is now dressed as a woman. He is dazed and under the power of the god; he has been possessed by Dionysus. He asks Dionysus for instruction; he now looks to the god as his guide. Dionysus attends to him dutifully, fixing his clothes and telling him what to expect: Pentheus will suffer for his city, and he will be carried back by his mother. Pentheus exits. Dionysus calls out to Agave and the daughters of Cadmus: he is bringing Pentheus to them. The day belongs to Bromius.

The Chorus sings of Pentheus' impending doom. They sing of Justice, and the power of the gods to lay low the pride of men. They praise humility and acceptance. The Second Messenger enters.

Analysis

A theme that holds great interest for Euripides is the relationship between gender and social order. Pentheus is outraged by the triumph of these women; he says again and again that the men cannot accept rebellion from females. Even among the peoples of the ancient world, Greek women had very little freedom. Euripides, ahead of his time in so many ways, recognized that gender and social order were inextricable parts of the same system. Greek culture was in part built on the oppression of women, and therefore the rebellion of a woman threatened the very stability of Greek society. Euripides, more acutely than any of his contemporaries, recognized that this social system was unjust. For society to function, it was necessary to silence women and comfort oneself with lies about the necessity of male rule or fantasies of female wickedness. Euripides' plays often call attention to these lies, exposing the shallowness of the fantasies of male rule. He depicts the position of women sympathetically. In the Choral ode that begins, "When shall I dance once more. . ." (ll. 862-911), the Chorus sings of a world free of civilization and free of men. Euripides is linking civilization (and its cultural constructions, social hierarchies, and sense of order) and male oppression; the fantasy of the women involves escape from both, as one cannot escape one without escaping the other.

Pentheus seeks to preserve male-dominated order, but by the end of the play Dionysus has robbed him of male dignity. The young boy is completely emasculated. The god demands that Pentheus dress himself as a woman, and Pentheus, perversely obsessed with the idea of seeing his mother and the other women revel in the mountains, complies. Pentheus, the young man who has insisted again and again that the old hierarchies of gender be preserved, is made to cross-dress. His reservations are real: "You want me, a man, to wear a woman's dress?" (l. 822). He senses that in playing the part of a woman, he will lose the privileges of being a man. But curiosity wins, and once he has wavered before the god, he loses himself. He exits considering Dionysus' proposal, overwhelmed by his sexual curiosity but still in control of himself. When he reenters, he has completely lost himself to the god.

When Pentheus reenters, he has affected female dress, as well as behavior traditionally ascribed to women. He primps and asks hopefully if he resembles his pretty mother and his aunts. He reverses many of his previous positions, following the priest's lead and saying that women should not be mastered with brute force.

The hunt is a theme of the play. Dionysus is described repeatedly as the hunter. Take note of the reversal: Pentheus was about to lead an army on a hunt for the women. Now, he is about to be emasculated, made into a woman himself, and transformed from the hunter into the hunted. Dionysus speaks using images of the hunt: "Women, our prey now thrashes / in the net we threw" (ll. 846-7). The net is the same image Pentheus used earlier: "We have him in our net. He may be quick, / but he cannot escape us now, I think"(ll. 453-4). Both men aspire to be hunters. But the god is more cunning than the man, and he also, as we shall see, has more brute force at his command.

Dionysus promises that Pentheus will have an important role: "You and you alone will suffer for your city" (l. 963). Pentheus is going to be made into the scapegoat. Remember Dionysiac rite: an animal is possessed by the god, slaughtered, and devoured. In this way, the believer shares in the god's divinity. Pentheus has been possessed: he, not Dionysus, is going to die. Ironically, the young man is going to be destroyed in the rituals that he has tried to suppress. He is to be part of a holy feast for the god whose religion he has tried to eradicate.

Because he is disguised as a mortal, Dionysus often refers to himself in the third person. These prayers have an additional effect: they suggest the difference between the personal god, the anthropomorphic form, and the abstraction, the mystery that the anthropomorphic form represents. Dionysus is both a personality and a force of nature. He is the embodiment of the force. He is god: as a force of nature, he seems beyond morality or immorality. But as a personality, he is petty and cruel. The personal god lacks those traits that distinguish humans from the indifferent forces of the cosmos. Although Euripides' universe is dark and chaotic, humans are special because they can emerge from their suffering with new wisdom and compassion. Frequently in Euripides, suffering produces no such thing. The oppressed often become brutal. But there are exceptions, and these exceptions represent what good can exist in Euripides' universe. Bacchus lacks this capacity to learn from pain; he can only lash back, as does a wild beast. As a god, he has no need to accept, nor does he need to learn compassion. Acceptance is an important theme of the play. Man must accept his limits, and man must accept his suffering. The Chorus expresses this truth in both of the odes here; acceptance is the first part of wisdom.

These scenes call attention to Pentheus' youth. He ceases behaving like a brutal and impatient king and starts to act like a teenage boy. His longing to see the women's revelry in the mountains is his undoing. But the revelation of Pentheus' immaturity condemns Bacchus more than it does Pentheus. The god is using a teenage boy's longings against him. This is not a fair hunt. Bacchus is preying on the weakness of the young, and his revenge against Pentheus will end any sympathy the audience might have had for the god.

Entrance of Second Messenger to the end of the play (Lines 1025-1394):

Summary:

A slave arrives, speaking with pity for the now-fallen house of Cadmus. He tells the Bacchae that Pentheus is dead. Coryphaeus, leader of the Chorus, shouts praises to Dionysus. The slave reproaches her for rejoicing in the disaster of the house, but Coryphaeus refuses to be cowed; she asked to know how it happened.

The slave accompanied Bacchus and Pentheus into the wilderness. At first, they hid and observed the women from afar, but Pentheus wanted a closer view. The god pulled down the top of a fir tree and allowed Pentheus to climb onto it; Dionysus then eased the fir tree back into place. But from his perch, Pentheus was visible to the Maenads. Dionysus called out to the women, telling them that the man in the fir tree had mocked the god's mysteries. The Maenads were possessed and were unable to understand the god's words, but they understood the tone of command. After several failed attempts to force Pentheus down from the tree, the women pulled the tree down with their bare hands. Agave was the first to reach Pentheus. He cried out to his mother for mercy, but Agave, possessed by the god, could not recognize him. The Maenads ripped Pentheus apart with their bare hands. Agave, the Messenger reports, impaled Pentheus' head on her thyrsus. She believes that she killed a lion, and she is coming down from the mountain, joyous and proud. The Messenger, out of pity, does not want to be present when she arrives.

The Bacchae sing praises to Dionysus and glorify his victory over Pentheus. Agave enters, covered in blood and carrying the head of Pentheus. The exchange between Agave and the Bacchae is very strange, and quite ambiguous. Agave talks to the women, telling them about the hunt in which she killed the "lion." The Bacchae ask questions and spur her on. Individual productions have a great deal of say in how the scene is to be interpreted: the Bacchae can seem to mock Agave, or they can seem compassionate, shocked into pity for the poor women. Certainly, by the time Cadmus enters, the Bacchae's tone has softened. They are no longer singing praises to Dionysus, and there is genuine pity when Coryphaeus addresses Agave: "Then, poor woman, show the citizens of Thebes / this great prize, this trophy you have won / in the hunt" (ll. 1200-02). Agave calls out to the citizens of Thebes, boasting about her kill. She calls for her father and her son to come see what she has won.

Cadmus enters, with attendants. The attendants carry a bier, on which lies the pieces of Pentheus' body. He had come down from the mountain with Teiresias when he heard of Pentheus' death, and the old man hurried to the scene of the murder. He and his men recovered what they could find of the body. Cadmus also found several of his daughters, still mad. They told him that Agave was heading to Thebes, still possessed by the god.

Agave rushes to her father proudly, glorying over her prize. He answers her with grief; she does not understand his reproaches. As they speak to each other, Agave's mind begins to clear. The madness of the god passes. Cadmus speaks gently to her, bringing her back to reality. Finally, he tells her to look at the head that she carries in her hands.

Agave screams. She has no idea how she came to carry Pentheus' head; she does not know how Pentheus died. Cadmus explains to her what has happened. Their house has been brought to ruins by Dionysus. Pentheus denied the god, as did Agave and her sisters when they said Semele was no bride of Zeus. Cadmus speaks to Pentheus' corpse: without the young Pentheus, beloved protector of their family, Cadmus is an old and defenseless man. He speaks of the lesson taught by his grandson's death: "If there is still any mortal man / who despises or defies the gods, let him look / on this boy's death and believe in the gods" (ll. 1325-7). Coryphaeus tells Cadmus that she pities him. Agave, crazed with grief, speaks of the horror that she has unwittingly done. She looks at the mutilated remains of her son and mourns for him.

Dionysus appears, in full glory as a god, above the palace. He says that Pentheus has died justly for his blasphemy. He exiles Agave and her sisters from Thebes forever; their hands are unclean with the murder of kin. Cadmus and his wife (Harmonia, daughter of the god Ares) will be transformed into serpents; they will be forced to lead a foreign army against Hellas. In the end, the god Ares will take pity on Cadmus and Harmonia. Ares will deliver them, but not in time to save them from suffering greatly.

Cadmus begs Dionysus for mercy; the punishment comes for a reason, but the god's revenge is too harsh. Dionysus is unmoved. Cadmus pleads: "Gods should be exempt from human passions" (l. 1347). Agave, realizing that Dionysus will not be moved, tells her father that it is fate. Cadmus and his daughter embrace each other, sorrowing over the fate of their family. They grieve for themselves, and they grieve for each other. Cadmus leaves his daughter with these words: "Farewell to you, unhappy child. / Fare well. But you shall find your faring hard" (l. 1379-80). Agave asks the attendants to take her to her sisters. The sisters will go into exile together. The Chorus has the last word, speaking of the gods' many shapes. What was not expected has come to pass. So ends The Bacchae.

Analysis

The theme of the hunt takes its final, horrible shape as Agave, with the help of her sisters, tears her own son to pieces. In the wilderness setting, the elements of the hunt become twisted, reshaped by the mystery of the god. Man, accustomed to being the hunter of animals, becomes either the hunted or the hunter of other men. Dionysus destroys the normal hierarchies of Pentheus' civilization: Pentheus is reduced to woman, and then reduced further to animal. Normal order gives way to the chaos of the god.

Pentheus has suffered for his amathia, his inability to recognize the essential mystery represented by Dionysus. The god is more than a personality who has given man the gift of wine; Dionysus is a necessity, a force of nature. None can stand in his way. Euripides makes Dionysus the embodiment of everything we fear: he is the exotic, the Other, the unknown, the irrational, the primal, the savage, the wild. But he is of a dual nature, "Most terrible, and yet most gentle, to mankind" (l. 861). He is Greek as well as foreign. He is dark and capable of terrible savagery, but he is also a god of Olympus. What we fear is inextricable connected to ourselves and to the nature of the cosmos: remember that all of the victims of Dionysus are related to him by blood, just as Dionysus himself is the son of God. Pentheus, unable to come to terms with the darker elements of human nature and the universe, is ripped to pieces by the forces he has tried to deny.

Compassion is arguably the central theme of the last four hundred lines of the play. It is the strongest reaction of all who witness Agave's degradation. The simple statement, "I pity you," is said by all of the important human characters. This, William Arrowsmith argues, is the highest form of human Sophia, the ability to learn compassion from suffering. The messenger, out of pity, refuses to be witness to Agave's further degradation. The Bacchae, though initially triumphant, cannot help but feel sorry for Cadmus and Agave. And finally, there is the heartrending farewell between Agave and Cadmus. Remember that for the Greeks, exile was often considered worse than a death sentence. To be forced from one's house or home country was viewed as the most terrible of fates. Daughter and Father embrace each other, weeping for each other as much as for themselves.

Dionysus' presence on stage is now an intrusion. This farewell is the force that he cannot understand; his interruption of their talk (ll. 1377-8: "I was terribly blasphemed, my name dishonored in Thebes") seems almost peevish. While the play is in its own way profoundly religious, Euripides is still raising his objections about the gods. Amathia is not a trait that touches only humans; the god's revenge has been excessive and brutal, an all-too-easy victory over a maddened woman, a pathetic old man, and a young boy. The irony is powerful: remember that this play was performed at the festival held in honor of Dionysus. And yet for human beings, who have little choice, it is necessary to accept the hostility of the universe. Think of Cadmus' words over his grandson's body: "If there is still any mortal man / who despises or defies the gods, let him look / on this boy's death and believe in the gods" (ll. 1325-7). But Cadmus' warning reveals a painful truth. While Pentheus' fate shows that it is madness to defy the gods, it also suggests that there is reason aplenty to despise them. Note that Cadmus tells us to believe in the gods, but not necessarily to love them.

The theme of acceptance is important. The universe may be hostile, but little can be done about it. Begging the gods for mercy is as useless as pleading with a hurricane or an earthquake; Agave pulls her father away from conversation with the god, telling him that all has been fated. Having killed her son, she goes now quietly into exile. Acceptance is the beginning of human wisdom, and compassion follows. Though the play is haunted by terror and anger, The Bacchae's final lesson is empathetic and compassionate. Agave and Cadmus are degraded, humiliated, exiled. But in their suffering and grief for one another, father and daughter leave the stage more noble and dignified than the god who has destroyed them.

• Biography of Euripides
• About The Bacchae
• Character List
• Major Themes
• Short Summary
• Full Summary and Analysis
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 1-369
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 370-519
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 520-774
• Summary and Analysis of Lines 775-1024
• Summary and Analysis of of Lines 1025-1394
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