The Bacchae

Ancient Philosophy

Bacchus’ Birth

• Zeus loved Semele and had an affair with her unknown to Hera.

• Deceived by Hera, Zeus came to Semele in his divine form.

• Zeus came to her bridal chamber in a chariot, with lightnings and thunderings, and launched a thunderbolt.

• Semele is incinerateced

Bacchus’ Birth

• Zeus, snatching the sixth-month abortive child from the fire and sewed it in his thigh.

• At the proper time, Zeus undid the stitches and gave birth to Dionysus.

• The other daughters of Cadmus spread a report that Semele had bedded with a mortal man, and had falsely accused Zeus, and that therefore she had been blasted by thunder.

Bacchus

• Bacchus was thus half mortal and half divine.• The rule was that only those who were full-

blooded immortals could gain admittance to Mt. Olympus.

• Bacchus set himself the goal of making everyone worship him so that the gods would have to admit him to Mt. Olympus.

• He did and, thus, became the last god allowed onto Mt. Olympus.

Bacchus

• Ivy

• Bull

• Snakes

• Grapes and wine

• Feminine features

Cadmus• The founder of Thebes• Zeus, disguised as a bull, carried away Europa, Cadmus’ sister.• Cadmus went looking for his sister, but the Oracle of Delphi told him

to abandon the search.• Instead he was to go forth until he met a cow.• He was to follow this cow wherever it should lead and found a city

upon the spot where it lay down.• At that spot, he killed a dragon, offending Ares. • Cadmus populated his new city by sowing dragon teeth, which

sprouted into warriors that fought with one another until only five remained.

• Cadmus taught them the alphabet, which he had brought from Phoenicia

Cadmus

• He placated Ares and married Harmonia, one of Ares’ daughters.

• His daughters were Agave, Ino and Semele.• Agave and Ino spread the rumor that Semele

had intercourse with a mortal and blamed it on Zeus, which was why she was destroyed.

• Cadmus and Harmonia were turned into serpents.

Initial Scene

• Mixtures and contradictions– Divine mortal– Foreign native– Death (Semele) and eternity (ivy)– Moving from pure barbarian cities to mixed to pure

Hellenic city– Move from edge of Hellenic world to the center of it– Nature (fawn skin) and artificial (city)– Unfamiliar family members

Divine Possession

I have goaded them from the house in frenzy, and they dwell in the mountains, out of their wits; and I have compelled them to wear the outfit of my mysteries. [35] And all the female offspring of Thebes, as many as are women, I have driven maddened from the house, and they, mingled with the daughters of Kadmos , sit on roofless rocks beneath green pines.

Possession of Women

• Alienated and downtrodden

• Outside of the city-return to nature from the artificiality of civilization

• Refuse to perform the assigned jobs

Pentheus

• fights against the gods as far as I am concerned and drives me away from sacrifices, and in his prayers makes no mention of me, for which I will show him and all the Thebans that I was born a god.

Possession

• Ecstatic conversion experience – Dance– Drums– Flutes

• Rearrangement of the self with a new system of meaning– Produce of alienation and sense of meaninglessness

• Transcending a contaminated world through purity

Dervishes Dancing with the Divine

Origin

• Shamanistic experience of mediating group conflicts by traveling to a different level of reality

• Cultural revitalization movements– Religion– Great Cultural Revolution of China– Marxist movements of the 20th century

Chorus-Purity

Blessed is he who, being fortunate and knowing the rites of the gods, keeps his life pure and [75] has his soul initiated into the Bacchic revels, dancing in inspired frenzy over the mountains with holy purifications

Paradise

• Transcend to a better world

• “The plain flows with milk, it flows with wine, it flows with the nectar of bees”

Teiresias and Cadmus

• Both convert

• Old become young

• The only coverts in the city

Thyrsos

Pentheus

• Contrived Bacchic rites • Bacchus is “a sorcerer, a conjuror” • Engage in orgies-”to serve the beds of men, on the

pretext that they are Maenads worshipping; [225] but they consider Aphrodite before Bacchus.”

• Excuse to get drunk• Shows power

– Arrested some– Will hunt others down – Will cut off Bacchus’ head– Will hang Bacchus

Pentheus

• Repressed desires of a hierarchical order

• Mad women– Are the sane insane, or the insane sane?

Teiresias

• Sensible person is not sensible• “For two things, young man, [275] are first among men:

the goddess Demeter--she is the earth, but call her whatever name you wish; she nourishes mortals with dry food; but he who came afterwards, the offspring of Semele, discovered a match to it, the liquid drink of the grape, and introduced it [280] to mortals. It releases wretched mortals from grief, whenever they are filled with the stream of the vine, and gives them sleep, a means of forgetting their daily troubles, nor is there another cure for hardships. He who is a god is poured out in offerings to the gods, [285] so that by his means men may have good things.”

• Do not mock the god

Cadmos

“Even if, as you say, he is not a god, call him one; and tell a glorious falsehood, [335] so that Semele might seem to have borne a god, and honor might come to all our race.”

Pentheus

• Effeminate stranger

• Pollutes women

• Deserves death by stoning

Cadmus

“O wretched man, how little you know what you are saying! You are mad now, and even before you were out of your wits.”