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The Bacchae

Euripides' posthumous tragedy about Dionysus' revenge on Thebes.

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Euripides, while in Macedonia at the court of Archelaus I, wrote the ancient Greek tragedy The Bacchae, which recounts how the god Dionysus punished his cousin King Pentheus of Thebes and Pentheus's mother Agave for refusing to accept his cult.[1][2] In 405 BC, after Euripides' death, the play was first performed at the Theatre of Dionysus as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis and Alcmaeon in Corinth, with Euripides' son or nephew likely directing; it earned first prize at the City Dionysia festival.[1]

Key facts and history

Euripides wrote The Bacchae during his final years in Macedonia at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon.[1] The play was part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis and Alcmaeon in Corinth.[1] The women of Thebes, driven by Dionysus's frenzy, tear Pentheus apart.[3] Agave bears her son's head on a thyrsus to her father Cadmus.[3]

The play ends with Agave and her sisters sent into exile.[4] Taking the form of a foreign holy man, the god plans to bring Dionysian worship to the city.[2]

What the cited sources add

Hans Oranje calls the question of the play's meaning the riddle of the Bacchae, saying it concerns itself with "wisdom, cleverness, and soundness of mind"[5] Plutarch claimed that after Crassus's defeat at Carrhae in 53 BC, his head was used as a prop for Pentheus's head in a production of The Bacchae.[6]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "The Bacchae" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Rehm (1992, 23). (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "The Bacchae" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bacchae. Encyclopaedia Britannica; Murray Gilbert. Euripides and His Age. Oxford University Press. 1965. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "The Bacchae" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Corrigan, Robert W. editor. Classical Tragedy, Greek and Roman; Eight Plays in Authoritative Modern Translations. Euripides. Bagg, Robert, translator. The Bakkh (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "The Bacchae" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Euripides. Vellacott, Philip, translator. The Bacchae and Other Plays. Penguin Books. 1954. . p. 242. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "The Bacchae" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Oranje, "Euripides' Bacchae: the play and its audience", E.J. Brill, 1984, p. 2 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "The Bacchae" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Beard, "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome", Profile Books, 2016, p. 280 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article The Bacchae (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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