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The Bacchae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

M. R. Glover
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Extract

The Bacchae remains a puzzle. It is hard to be content with an interpretation of the play which makes Dionysus the hero, and even approximates him to Christ. Dionysus is more like Judas; he fondles the man whom he means to kill (1. 933). It is equally hard to believe that he is, as Pentheus said, a mere human hypnotist, a γόης ἐπῳδὸς (1.234) and an impostor. For the play is the story of how Pentheus, acting on that belief, was ruined utterly.

I propose to argue, first, that Euripides is here, as elsewhere, a realist, giving us a picture of Dionysus worship as it really was; and that the miracles are meant as evidence of the presence of some supernatural power; and secondly, that if we want to know his judgment on that religion, we shall come nearest his thought, if not his vocabulary, in saying that it seemed to him devilish.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , 1929, pp. 82 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1929

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References

1 Prof. Murray's translation of lines 509, 510 suggests this.

2 Cf. Norwood, , The Riddle of the Bacchae, pp. 88 ff.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Macbeth. Did Shakespeare believe in witches? The play is immensely more powerful if you think he did, or at least that he contemplated them as possible; as he probably did.

4 I think I am here indebted to a remark of Prof. Murray's in his Introduction to the volume called Athenian Drama—Euripidea.

5 See Orph. L. Perikion, 47. 1 ff. Dr. Cook has also supplied me with the following note:—‘The epithet the “land-breaker,” has reference in all probability to the disruptic effect of earthquakes and is applied in Orphic hymns to “Dionysus.” Orph. L. Lys. Len. 50. 5; L. triet. 52. 9.’ See his third volume of Zeus, chapter ii. § 5.

6 See Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revival.

7 See Davenport, op. cit., p. 28 and passim.

8 Cf. Carpenter, , Mental Physiology, p. 327Google Scholar:—‘An old cook maid, tottering with age, having heard the alarm of fire, seized an enormous box containing her whole property, and ran downstairs with it as easily as she would have carried a dish of meat. After the fire had been extinguished she could not lift the box a hair's breadth from the ground, and it required two men to carry it upstairs again.’ Another and most interesting parallel has been supplied to me by a neurologist, one of whose patients, suffering from shell-shock, would sometimes be unable to control an impulse to go out and tear off the heads of living fowls. It is suggested that the desire to see blood, which in normal human beings is completely repressed, was in this case stimulated by the suggestion supplied by the man's experiences in the war; in the case of the maenads, a similar suggestion would be found in the ritual slaughter of animals, and particularly in the sacrifice of the bull to Dionysus.

9 One may note that there is no reason to suppose that the bull in question was as large as modern English prize cattle. The largest bulls in the ancient world came from Sicily and Epirus; what their actual size was I do not know; sculptured friezes do not always observe proportion.

10 (1. 75) his individuality is merged in the group?

11 See his Thucydides Mythistoricus.

12 Compare Prof. Gilbert Murray's remark that in order to deny the Aphrodite of the Hippolytus you would have to say not merely there is no such person, but there is no such thing.

13 ll. 970 ff., especially 988.

14 Here Euripides is, of course, strictly loyal to the actual cult.

15 Dionysus defeats Pentheus because he is able to win his trust (1. 934), while at the same time stimulating an unpleasant curiosity from which Pentheus had been free before.

16 1. 166,

17 1. 486.

18 1. 862 ff. and passim.