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The Bacchae and Other Plays
Euripides (c.484-406 B.C.) was the most controversial of the three great Greek tragedians and the most modern. His major themes- religious scepticism, the injustices suffered by women and the destructive folly of war-are issues still vitally important today.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 415
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Euripides
2,822 books1,973 followersEuripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.
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April 5, 2017
The Bacchae is one of the most disturbing plays in the ancient Greek genre. Euripides delves into the religiousity of the time with the " beware of spying on secret rites". The other three plays, Ion, The Women of Troy and Helen, are noble but not as good.
November 3, 2020
Ion 4⭐️
Women of Troy 5⭐️
Helen 3⭐️
The Bacchae 3.5⭐️
Women of Troy 5⭐️
Helen 3⭐️
The Bacchae 3.5⭐️
July 18, 2021
Finished this yesterday and RTC of each play breakdown and my thoughts on each.
Overall, this was one of the most enjoyable compilation of Euripides plays with most of the plays rating a 4 or 4.5****
Rtc
Overall, this was one of the most enjoyable compilation of Euripides plays with most of the plays rating a 4 or 4.5****
Rtc
August 15, 2014
I wanted to read The Bacchae because I had a sense that it had something to do with Dostoevsky's
Demons
, which I recently finished. It did, in the sense that both works tell the story of a city visited by Dionysian frenzy. In Euripides's drama, the frenzy is Dionysus's revenge on the women of Thebes for insulting his mother by claiming that she lied when she said that Zeus was his father. The dramatic conflict centers on Pentheus, king of the city and grandson of its founder, who wants to suppress the outbreak of Bacchic worship among the city's women. This draws him into combat with a disguised Dionysus himself, who eventually leads the proud Puritan--disguised as a female worshiper, ostensibly to spy on the reveling women--to his doom as he is torn to pieces by the frenzied women, including finally his own mother. The whole play reads like a mysterious rite that should have some official mythological title--The Sacrifice of the Stern King or something. The locus of the audience's sympathy is exactly nowhere--the raving puritanical leader, driven to increasing displays of power that reveal only his impotence, is, considered as a political "type," always bad news; while the vindictive god and his manipulated worshipers, who go by degrees from good anarchy (freedom and play in nature) to bad anarchy (violence without limit), offer a painful reminder of the checkered career of "revolution" in human history.
In the translator's preface to this volume, Philip Vellacott offers a kind of Freudian reading of the play in which Euripides is warning us that if we deny the claims of the Dionysian impulses to play and drunkenness--that is, if we become puritanical--these repressed urges will return with a vengeance and destroy us. That's as good an interpretation as any. Dostoevsky, writing after both monotheism and the Enlightenment, can't explicitly credit the Dionysian urges themselves--the necessity for relief from order, for a bit of creative destruction--because history offers them to him only under the sign of universalist political ideology (communism, anarchism, socialism), to which he counterposes Christianity. Maybe Euripides had the better poetic opportunity in being able to start from a polytheistic premise in which the different dimensions of human thought and feeling are each honored with autonomy. Then again, his tragedy moves with grim inevitability toward its violent end, so perhaps the translator's 20th-century optimism is misplaced because, whether in 5th-century Athens or 19th-century Russia, the rite must happen in full, including the bloodshed.
As for the rest of this volume:
I've owned it for almost 15 years, having bought it for a Greek civilization class in which we were assigned The Women of Troy. I only skimmed that play this time around, revisiting my undergraduate annotations, but it remains a remarkable work, less a drama than a series of lamentations by the eponymous women as they go into Greek slavery after the Trojan War. But the play is ironic--dramatically ironic, in fact--in that the Greeks have by their desecration of Troy's temples earned the gods' displeasure after their victory and are themselves about to be scattered over the seas, subject to the same violence from on high as the women they prey upon.
Helen is a strange comedy--a self-parody, acceding to the scholars, possibly first performed for an all-female audience at a festival honoring Demeter and Persephone. Fast-moving and uneven in tone, it posits (in an idea apparently derived from Herodotus) that the Helen taken by Paris to Troy was just an illusion generated by Hera to revenge herself on Athena, which means, as our translators points out, that the whole Trojan War was fought for literally nothing. This play finds Helen in Egyptian exile and dramatizes her reunion and escape with Menelaus.
The first and earliest play in the volume, Ion, is a bitterly and grotesquely funny story of paternity in which the title character, Apollo's son conceived in rape of a mortal woman, is reunited with his mother and both are convinced by the gods to pretend to go along with the idea that he is the illegitimate child of another man entirely, his mother's current husband, so that he can go on to found Greek settlements in Asia. This is Euripides at his most corrosive, with the gods as rapacious schemers and mortals as their changeable pawns; by the "happy ending," everybody stands accused.
Speaking of Dionysus and women and irony and intellectual reactionaries: I am reminded that Nietzsche hated Euripides for his subjection of the gods to ironic portrayal and criticism and for his sympathetic depiction of women and slaves and other untermenschen. For Nietzsche, Euripides was a kind of Ibsen of antiquity, a Socratic Enlightener dispelling the ritual quality of tragedy by forcing reason into the proceedings. But what makes Euripides great, sublime because not in spite of his pervasive mockery, is that his irony is so total--it encompasses the universe, so that we sympathize with the victims of history without imagining that much can be done about their plight, even as we also see that their tormentors and rulers are caught in the same capricious machinations of the amoral and immoral gods. If this is Ibsenite, it is more like The Wild Duck than like The Doll's House: a dramatic world in where there are no answers, where truth does not console, and where the innocent and the guilty alike pay the price.
In the translator's preface to this volume, Philip Vellacott offers a kind of Freudian reading of the play in which Euripides is warning us that if we deny the claims of the Dionysian impulses to play and drunkenness--that is, if we become puritanical--these repressed urges will return with a vengeance and destroy us. That's as good an interpretation as any. Dostoevsky, writing after both monotheism and the Enlightenment, can't explicitly credit the Dionysian urges themselves--the necessity for relief from order, for a bit of creative destruction--because history offers them to him only under the sign of universalist political ideology (communism, anarchism, socialism), to which he counterposes Christianity. Maybe Euripides had the better poetic opportunity in being able to start from a polytheistic premise in which the different dimensions of human thought and feeling are each honored with autonomy. Then again, his tragedy moves with grim inevitability toward its violent end, so perhaps the translator's 20th-century optimism is misplaced because, whether in 5th-century Athens or 19th-century Russia, the rite must happen in full, including the bloodshed.
As for the rest of this volume:
I've owned it for almost 15 years, having bought it for a Greek civilization class in which we were assigned The Women of Troy. I only skimmed that play this time around, revisiting my undergraduate annotations, but it remains a remarkable work, less a drama than a series of lamentations by the eponymous women as they go into Greek slavery after the Trojan War. But the play is ironic--dramatically ironic, in fact--in that the Greeks have by their desecration of Troy's temples earned the gods' displeasure after their victory and are themselves about to be scattered over the seas, subject to the same violence from on high as the women they prey upon.
Helen is a strange comedy--a self-parody, acceding to the scholars, possibly first performed for an all-female audience at a festival honoring Demeter and Persephone. Fast-moving and uneven in tone, it posits (in an idea apparently derived from Herodotus) that the Helen taken by Paris to Troy was just an illusion generated by Hera to revenge herself on Athena, which means, as our translators points out, that the whole Trojan War was fought for literally nothing. This play finds Helen in Egyptian exile and dramatizes her reunion and escape with Menelaus.
The first and earliest play in the volume, Ion, is a bitterly and grotesquely funny story of paternity in which the title character, Apollo's son conceived in rape of a mortal woman, is reunited with his mother and both are convinced by the gods to pretend to go along with the idea that he is the illegitimate child of another man entirely, his mother's current husband, so that he can go on to found Greek settlements in Asia. This is Euripides at his most corrosive, with the gods as rapacious schemers and mortals as their changeable pawns; by the "happy ending," everybody stands accused.
Speaking of Dionysus and women and irony and intellectual reactionaries: I am reminded that Nietzsche hated Euripides for his subjection of the gods to ironic portrayal and criticism and for his sympathetic depiction of women and slaves and other untermenschen. For Nietzsche, Euripides was a kind of Ibsen of antiquity, a Socratic Enlightener dispelling the ritual quality of tragedy by forcing reason into the proceedings. But what makes Euripides great, sublime because not in spite of his pervasive mockery, is that his irony is so total--it encompasses the universe, so that we sympathize with the victims of history without imagining that much can be done about their plight, even as we also see that their tormentors and rulers are caught in the same capricious machinations of the amoral and immoral gods. If this is Ibsenite, it is more like The Wild Duck than like The Doll's House: a dramatic world in where there are no answers, where truth does not console, and where the innocent and the guilty alike pay the price.
August 21, 2016
49. The Bacchae and Other Plays : Ion, The Women of Troy, Helen, The Bacchae by Euripides
Translated by Philip Vellacott, 1954, revised 1973
format: 249 page Penguin Classics paperback
acquired: from my library
read: Aug 7-11
rating: 4 stars
These are all late plays from Euripides. They show a lot of developed complexity compared to the collection of earlier plays I read previously. His understated satire is still prominent, but has become much more sophisticated and not entirely negative. His play structure no longer feels like a selection of long dull monologues that only affect in sum, and that are entirely disturbing. They are more dynamic, they keep the reader/viewer entertained, and still, there is so much going on behind the words that is completely counter to what is overtly being said. In sum, these are complex and interesting works that deserve multiple readings...but I have only read them once so far. They are also largely anti-war statements, a reflection of his times.
Euripides lived from c. 480 – c. 406 bce. This meant he lived through Athens 50 years of Greek dominance that lasted from roughly the battle of Salamis in 480 to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war in 431. Athenian citizens would struggle during the long wars with Sparta, especially during the last tens years, and Athens eventually lost in 404 bce. Euripides left Athens late in life, retiring in Macedonia.
Ion 414 bce
I can't recall how I know the story of Ion, but it must be somewhat common knowledge. Fathered by Apollo, his mother, Creusa, abandons him, then later becomes wife of the ruler of Athens, and barren. Ion is raised in Delphi by Apollo worshipers and becomes and attendant at the temple. Years later Creusa comes to Delphi to ask Apollo about her son. In the ritual process, her husband, Xuthus, is told that Ion is his own son and Creusa and Xuthus take him home to Athens to be their heir.
The play has many comic elements, such as when Ion and Creusa first meet and, not knowing who each other are, tell their parallel stories. Creusa's are told as if they are the tragic story of her close friend. But the heart of this story seems to an exploration of truth and how to deal with its uncertainty. Ion is quite a lovely character, but the more he learns the less he can be certain of. Even Athena's appearance does not really help. We sense, along with Ion, a great deal of uncomfortable doubt as the play closes.
The Women of Troy 415 bce
A really sad play set in Troy just after its fall. The Trojan women have lost their luxury, their sons and husbands and any hope for the future. They are to become slaves. Hecabe, queen of Troy, morning the loss of her husband and most of her children, including Hector, is the focus as she looks ahead to her future life of slavery. She is assigned to Odysseus. Cassandra, not yet raped, and knowing all that will come ahead, makes an appears, as does Andromache, who still has her and Hector's son. Then Helen appears. Her situation is in notable contrast to the hopeless defeated lives around her. Helen still has a future. Her speech is striking for its lack of guilt. But her words can be read in contrasting ways, making her the most interesting part of the play.
The Women of Troy was written in the shadow of the Battle of Melos in 415 bce. Melos had tried to stay neutral between Athens and Sparta. Athens attacked and had every man who could bear arms executed and enslaved the women and children.
Helen 412 bce
A surreal plot, has Helen sits in Egypt, trapped. She never was taken by Paris to Troy, but instead a ghost made of air was taken. The play is about her getting reunited with her husband, Menelaus, and their comic escape from Egypt. But, the unstated point is that Trojan war and all it's consequences were for nothing but a puff of air. It's a very strong antiwar play, told in a way to get past the Athenian censors.
The Bacchae 405 bce (posthumous)
Written in exile, and free of Athenian wartime censorship, Euripides put his whole life of play-writing into the The Bacchae. On the surface it's the story of how Dionysus, still a young unproven god, takes revenge on his family, rulers in Thebes. His cousin, Pentheus, bull-headed ruler of Thebes, has fiercely banned worship of Dionysos and this Bacchanal frenzy. But, worship continues. Dionysus uses the frenzy as his tool. He sets up Pentheus to be torn apart alive by his own mother and his aunts.
It's, first, a curious look into (the mythology of?) Bacchic worship and its rituals. Worshipers are viewed as promiscuous and insane, but are actually quite modest in their actions. A contrast is explored between the controlled cities and their view on what they see as civilization (think war-time, repressive Athens) and humanity's animal natures. It's the most interesting play of Euripides that I've read.
Translated by Philip Vellacott, 1954, revised 1973
format: 249 page Penguin Classics paperback
acquired: from my library
read: Aug 7-11
rating: 4 stars
These are all late plays from Euripides. They show a lot of developed complexity compared to the collection of earlier plays I read previously. His understated satire is still prominent, but has become much more sophisticated and not entirely negative. His play structure no longer feels like a selection of long dull monologues that only affect in sum, and that are entirely disturbing. They are more dynamic, they keep the reader/viewer entertained, and still, there is so much going on behind the words that is completely counter to what is overtly being said. In sum, these are complex and interesting works that deserve multiple readings...but I have only read them once so far. They are also largely anti-war statements, a reflection of his times.
Euripides lived from c. 480 – c. 406 bce. This meant he lived through Athens 50 years of Greek dominance that lasted from roughly the battle of Salamis in 480 to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war in 431. Athenian citizens would struggle during the long wars with Sparta, especially during the last tens years, and Athens eventually lost in 404 bce. Euripides left Athens late in life, retiring in Macedonia.
Ion 414 bce
I can't recall how I know the story of Ion, but it must be somewhat common knowledge. Fathered by Apollo, his mother, Creusa, abandons him, then later becomes wife of the ruler of Athens, and barren. Ion is raised in Delphi by Apollo worshipers and becomes and attendant at the temple. Years later Creusa comes to Delphi to ask Apollo about her son. In the ritual process, her husband, Xuthus, is told that Ion is his own son and Creusa and Xuthus take him home to Athens to be their heir.
The play has many comic elements, such as when Ion and Creusa first meet and, not knowing who each other are, tell their parallel stories. Creusa's are told as if they are the tragic story of her close friend. But the heart of this story seems to an exploration of truth and how to deal with its uncertainty. Ion is quite a lovely character, but the more he learns the less he can be certain of. Even Athena's appearance does not really help. We sense, along with Ion, a great deal of uncomfortable doubt as the play closes.
The Women of Troy 415 bce
A really sad play set in Troy just after its fall. The Trojan women have lost their luxury, their sons and husbands and any hope for the future. They are to become slaves. Hecabe, queen of Troy, morning the loss of her husband and most of her children, including Hector, is the focus as she looks ahead to her future life of slavery. She is assigned to Odysseus. Cassandra, not yet raped, and knowing all that will come ahead, makes an appears, as does Andromache, who still has her and Hector's son. Then Helen appears. Her situation is in notable contrast to the hopeless defeated lives around her. Helen still has a future. Her speech is striking for its lack of guilt. But her words can be read in contrasting ways, making her the most interesting part of the play.
The Women of Troy was written in the shadow of the Battle of Melos in 415 bce. Melos had tried to stay neutral between Athens and Sparta. Athens attacked and had every man who could bear arms executed and enslaved the women and children.
Helen 412 bce
A surreal plot, has Helen sits in Egypt, trapped. She never was taken by Paris to Troy, but instead a ghost made of air was taken. The play is about her getting reunited with her husband, Menelaus, and their comic escape from Egypt. But, the unstated point is that Trojan war and all it's consequences were for nothing but a puff of air. It's a very strong antiwar play, told in a way to get past the Athenian censors.
The Bacchae 405 bce (posthumous)
Written in exile, and free of Athenian wartime censorship, Euripides put his whole life of play-writing into the The Bacchae. On the surface it's the story of how Dionysus, still a young unproven god, takes revenge on his family, rulers in Thebes. His cousin, Pentheus, bull-headed ruler of Thebes, has fiercely banned worship of Dionysos and this Bacchanal frenzy. But, worship continues. Dionysus uses the frenzy as his tool. He sets up Pentheus to be torn apart alive by his own mother and his aunts.
It's, first, a curious look into (the mythology of?) Bacchic worship and its rituals. Worshipers are viewed as promiscuous and insane, but are actually quite modest in their actions. A contrast is explored between the controlled cities and their view on what they see as civilization (think war-time, repressive Athens) and humanity's animal natures. It's the most interesting play of Euripides that I've read.
March 7, 2015
The Bacchae
- I have seen the holy Bacchae, who like a flight of spears
Went streaming bare-limbed, frantic, out of the city gate.
- What, woman? What was that you said? Do you exult
When such a cruel fate has overtaken the king?
- I am no Greek.
I sing my joy in a foreign tune.
- When bull led man to the ritual slaughter-ring.
He'd have been my god, were I Greek (or one of these foreign women). Even without him, I believe that his forces or his spheres, unacknowledged, are dangerous; whether religious or psychological, this play always spoke to me. Perhaps the part where Agave triumphs ignorantly with her son's head, is drawn-out, over-milked, but that's theatre for you. The effeminate foreigner who is Dionysus in disguise -- who celebrates that 'rare goddess', Peace; who cross-dresses the king to make a laughingstock of him; whose worshippers abandon the loom to tear wild beasts limb from limb... what's not to love and fascinate? So much, too, is uncannily familiar.
My personal no. 1 ancient Greek play.
- I have seen the holy Bacchae, who like a flight of spears
Went streaming bare-limbed, frantic, out of the city gate.
- What, woman? What was that you said? Do you exult
When such a cruel fate has overtaken the king?
- I am no Greek.
I sing my joy in a foreign tune.
- When bull led man to the ritual slaughter-ring.
He'd have been my god, were I Greek (or one of these foreign women). Even without him, I believe that his forces or his spheres, unacknowledged, are dangerous; whether religious or psychological, this play always spoke to me. Perhaps the part where Agave triumphs ignorantly with her son's head, is drawn-out, over-milked, but that's theatre for you. The effeminate foreigner who is Dionysus in disguise -- who celebrates that 'rare goddess', Peace; who cross-dresses the king to make a laughingstock of him; whose worshippers abandon the loom to tear wild beasts limb from limb... what's not to love and fascinate? So much, too, is uncannily familiar.
My personal no. 1 ancient Greek play.
May 8, 2021
bacchanal anyone?? jkjk........unless ?
February 15, 2019
My edition has four plays: Ion, The Women of Troy, Helen, and The Bacchae.
Ion -- The orphan Ion tries to discover his origins. The play begins with a prologue by Hermes, the messenger god, who arrives at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. He recounts the tale of how Creusa, the mother of Ion, was raped by Apollo and secretly gave birth to a son. She abandoned him and Apollo sent Hermes to bring the boy to Delphi. I thought this was not as interesting as the other three plays.
The Women of Troy -- The fates of Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra and the other women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families about to be taken away as slaves. It takes place near the same time as Hecuba, which is not in this volume. I have read this one before in a newer translation. It is stunning.
Helen -- The play uses a variant of Helen's story that differs from the one in The Iliad: Helen of Sparta was in Egypt during the Trojan War while a phantom look-alike created by Hera and Hermes was carried off to Troy. (Herodotus, among others, had suggested that this is what really happened in his Histories.) Euripides has Helen taken to Egypt by the gods, and by the time the play opens, the real Helen has been living in Egypt for seventeen years. The Egyptian king Proteus, who had protected Helen, has died. His son Theoclymenus, intends to marry Helen, who after all these years remains loyal to her husband Menelaus.
The Bacchae -- One of the most disturbing Greek plays. This is probably my favorite play by Euripides. This is Euripides's last surviving tragedy. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC. The play begins with the god Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele, announcing that he has arrived in Thebes to disprove the slander, spread by his mother's family, that Zeus is not his real father and that he is not a god. As the play opens, Dionysus has driven the women of Thebes into an ecstatic frenzy, and they have gathered on Mount Cithaeron to dance.
Ion -- The orphan Ion tries to discover his origins. The play begins with a prologue by Hermes, the messenger god, who arrives at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. He recounts the tale of how Creusa, the mother of Ion, was raped by Apollo and secretly gave birth to a son. She abandoned him and Apollo sent Hermes to bring the boy to Delphi. I thought this was not as interesting as the other three plays.
The Women of Troy -- The fates of Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra and the other women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families about to be taken away as slaves. It takes place near the same time as Hecuba, which is not in this volume. I have read this one before in a newer translation. It is stunning.
Helen -- The play uses a variant of Helen's story that differs from the one in The Iliad: Helen of Sparta was in Egypt during the Trojan War while a phantom look-alike created by Hera and Hermes was carried off to Troy. (Herodotus, among others, had suggested that this is what really happened in his Histories.) Euripides has Helen taken to Egypt by the gods, and by the time the play opens, the real Helen has been living in Egypt for seventeen years. The Egyptian king Proteus, who had protected Helen, has died. His son Theoclymenus, intends to marry Helen, who after all these years remains loyal to her husband Menelaus.
The Bacchae -- One of the most disturbing Greek plays. This is probably my favorite play by Euripides. This is Euripides's last surviving tragedy. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC. The play begins with the god Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele, announcing that he has arrived in Thebes to disprove the slander, spread by his mother's family, that Zeus is not his real father and that he is not a god. As the play opens, Dionysus has driven the women of Thebes into an ecstatic frenzy, and they have gathered on Mount Cithaeron to dance.
September 16, 2021
3.5
yeah anne carson should be the only person allowed to translate greek tragedies
yeah anne carson should be the only person allowed to translate greek tragedies
December 31, 2015
This collection included Ion, The Women of Troy, Helen, and The Bacchae. I have reviewed these plays individually, so I won't discuss them here again. Let me just say that overall these plays were great, in particular the last three; in fact, I was so impressed by Euripides that I ordered the complete 5-volume edition of his plays as published by the University of Chicago Press. I will definitely be reading (and reviewing) the rest of his works at some point in the near future.
Links to reviews:
Ion
The Women of Troy
Helen
The Bacchae
Links to reviews:
Ion
The Women of Troy
Helen
The Bacchae
September 19, 2019
The Bacchae by Euripides does well at showing two extremes the Dionysian’s and Apollinian’s in society. In this time period it is a patriarchal society. The God, Dionysus comes into the city to spread his love of wine and parties. He quickly gained followers who became entranced by the new found freedom they felt by being around him. Dionysus brings out the wild side of the women in society who have been restricted in the past. Pentheus the king of Thebes, is frustrated with Dionysus. He sees Dionysus as a trouble maker and wants to regain whatever control he lost. Pentheus represents the other extreme, control and order. There is this power struggle between the two. I believe Euripides wrote this play to question society’s hierarchy. Particularly in this play it is conveyed that women don’t have much power in this society. When Dionysus comes to Thebes, he creates an opportunity for women to come together and have fun. In the past women were not invited or included in such celebrations, or were allowed to act out like the men. There is a sense of unity for women and in a way they probably feel a bit included in their society. This idea of chaos in the city, upsets Pentheus. His friend, Cadmus, the previous King of Thebes goes to one of Dionysus parties. Pentheus is troubled why Cadmus would even go to parties. Cadmus, explains how he can learn something from going to Dionysus parties. Pentheus is shocked by this idea, and further questions Cadmus. I find Cadmus to be open minded and he is not quick to condemn Dionysus like Pentheus is. The conversation between Cadmus and Pentheus is one of the most important parts of the play because it foreshadows his doom. Cadmus gave advice on being open minded and allowing for new ideas. I think this is important in regards to society and allowing it to grow it must change. Pentheus has tunnel vision on this whole idea. I think if he isn't opened minded how will he understand society if he never sees it from a different perspective. As a king, it would make sense for him to try and understand the needs of his people. I do believe there should be some balance in this society, but for that to happen change must occur first. As this play is a Greek tragedy, I think part of the reason that Euripides created it was to have the effect of catharsis on the audience watching. I think this is a way to release any negative emotions they may feel about their society. Also, it is a great opportunity for viewers to question how a society should function and how power should be distributed.
October 2, 2024
What a wild ride. "The Bacchae" is one of Euripides most famous plays, as it examines the brutal revenge of Dionysus onto his family. It looks at very interesting sociological elements, but also very important political ones. While it is clearly meant to be a lesson on divine worship, it can be applied to many modern instances.
Dionysus is a very interesting character in this story. He takes many forms, and is often depicted as a divinely beautiful being regardless of his appearance. Through his disguise, he works his magic of trickery and revenge. By completely deceiving his cousin Pentheus, he is able to trick him and eventually lead him to his brutal death at the hands of his own mother; who is blissfully unaware of her own actions. Although the play is extremely unforgiving at most times, it comes with many important lessons that were relevant to the era it was written in. Such as don't disrespect a God, or they will have your mother brutally rip you to pieces, and then her sisters will play catch with chunks of your flesh.
I thoroughly enjoyed Pentheus's character even though I was often wanting to bang my book against the table and yell at him for being so resistant to the one thing that could save him. He is definitely not a morally sound character, but his flaws and characteristics make him very enjoyable to read. After his talks with the disguised Dionysus, we see a new side of him. Before, he was a rigid King who was dead set on abolishing all belief of Dionysus from Thebes. But, curiosity got hold of him and dragged him to his doom. I found him to be incredibly voyeuristic, as he took an immense amount of pleasure in watching the bacchants indulge in bliss, wine, and well... orgies. But this indulgence was what brought him to his downfall, "curiosity killed the cat"-ed him if you must.
The ending of this tragedy was nothing short of a tragedy, and was filled with such raw emotion from Agave and Cadmus as they recognized the weight of their actions through dealing with this new God. Agave was completely ruined when she came to realize that she had brutally murdered and dismembered her only son, destroying her family's lineage. Cadmus was unable to live with the weight of disgrace his family, specifically his daughters had brought him, and swore himself into exile to escape it all.
All well being gruesome and just crazy, this play was extremely enjoyable and I would happily read it again!
Dionysus is a very interesting character in this story. He takes many forms, and is often depicted as a divinely beautiful being regardless of his appearance. Through his disguise, he works his magic of trickery and revenge. By completely deceiving his cousin Pentheus, he is able to trick him and eventually lead him to his brutal death at the hands of his own mother; who is blissfully unaware of her own actions. Although the play is extremely unforgiving at most times, it comes with many important lessons that were relevant to the era it was written in. Such as don't disrespect a God, or they will have your mother brutally rip you to pieces, and then her sisters will play catch with chunks of your flesh.
I thoroughly enjoyed Pentheus's character even though I was often wanting to bang my book against the table and yell at him for being so resistant to the one thing that could save him. He is definitely not a morally sound character, but his flaws and characteristics make him very enjoyable to read. After his talks with the disguised Dionysus, we see a new side of him. Before, he was a rigid King who was dead set on abolishing all belief of Dionysus from Thebes. But, curiosity got hold of him and dragged him to his doom. I found him to be incredibly voyeuristic, as he took an immense amount of pleasure in watching the bacchants indulge in bliss, wine, and well... orgies. But this indulgence was what brought him to his downfall, "curiosity killed the cat"-ed him if you must.
The ending of this tragedy was nothing short of a tragedy, and was filled with such raw emotion from Agave and Cadmus as they recognized the weight of their actions through dealing with this new God. Agave was completely ruined when she came to realize that she had brutally murdered and dismembered her only son, destroying her family's lineage. Cadmus was unable to live with the weight of disgrace his family, specifically his daughters had brought him, and swore himself into exile to escape it all.
All well being gruesome and just crazy, this play was extremely enjoyable and I would happily read it again!
January 3, 2025
“It is unjust to call men bad for copying what the gods find good: the sin lies with our examples!”
“If any man feels solid satisfaction at what he calls his established position in life, he is a fool. For the forces that control our lives are as unpredictable in their behaviour as any capering idiot. Assured happiness? - there is no such thing.”
Yes you should read these plays.
“If any man feels solid satisfaction at what he calls his established position in life, he is a fool. For the forces that control our lives are as unpredictable in their behaviour as any capering idiot. Assured happiness? - there is no such thing.”
Yes you should read these plays.
Read
October 26, 2021just read the bacchae!
very unhinged, fucking bonkers
book 3 for my drama & transgression: from prometheus to faust module
very unhinged, fucking bonkers
book 3 for my drama & transgression: from prometheus to faust module
January 8, 2023
I have no idea what was going on tbh
May 7, 2025
Iphigenia is now my favorite tragedy play by Euripides. I loved it. I had trouble understanding The Bacchae and so I purchased a few additional translations to read it again. Phoenician Women was very interesting and Orestes so good.
November 12, 2025
bro was literally named "Sad Man". Ancient Greek equivalent of sad Bart Simpson edits except with a lot more torn off limbs
September 22, 2023
I read The Bacchae. Quick read, but not my cup of tea. Still beautifully written.
November 23, 2021
Beautifully written, even in translation. It depends heavily on knowledge of works like those of Homer and ancient Greek mythology, but even with only a superficial idea one should be able to enjoy the plays for what they are. The aspect which made Euripides stand out for me personally was his use of plots which question the relationship between the human experience against godly explanations. His mixing of rationality and mythology is certainly worth analysis.
May 18, 2010
The Bacchae is a family tragedy, but as any audience will attest, it is more singularly Agaue's tragedy, which is all the more remarkable given that the queen only appears on stage for one scene. In fact, besides Pentheus, the Cadmus family (Cadmus and Agaue) only appears in the first and last scenes, while the core of the drama exclusively involves Dionysus and Pentheus. By keeping the Cadmus family at the periphery of the main action, Euripides uses them as background, frame and context. They amplify and filter the core events, but have no part in those events as physical characters on the stage. They also serve as commentators and critics (in theatrical terms they are an audience) on the core events and it is largely in the last scene that they get to flesh out various themes. Both members do accept responsibility for what happened to Pentheus, but in two different ways they also criticize Dionysus's justice. Agaue's heart- wrenching grief and murderous guilt testifies to Dionysus's excessive, harsh and cruel revenge. Cadmus reproaches Dionysus twice, directly saying that the god's retributive justice did not fit the offense. However, the god merely brushes these two laments aside with the fatalistic comment that Zeus set up a world of harsh gods.
While Euripides follows a number of formal classical traditions in The Bacchae, such as a complicated chorus and the use of messenger, he diverges quite starkly from Aristotle's ideal of drama. In classical Greek drama, and as defined by Aristotle in his Poetics, there is also a moment of recognition at the very end when our hero, full of hubris, realizes his error and passes from ignorance to knowledge. This is tied to the moment of catharsis for the audience, or the moment of the release of the emotions that had been built up before. Finally, there is a hearty lament. Pentheus does not truly repent and re-evaluate his mistake, nor indulge in metaphysical musings. He merely uses the word "error" in the one line where he begs his mother not to kill him. Importantly, too, the audience does not explicitly learn anything about Dionysus except that he wants Pentheus to show deference toward him. And the main "secret" of the play, Dionysus's disguise, is known from the start. Instead, Euripides writes a shocking, long, and pathos-filled lament. This disproportionate (in classical terms) emphasis on the lament signals two things: both the excessive cruelty and the absolute power of Dionysus.
One of the reasons that the last scene—depicting a demented Agaue proudly brandishing the head of her son—is effective because it is a acted out on the main stage instead of being relayed by messengers. Previously, all the gory, disturbing and violent actions of the play, such as the killing of the cattle and the palace miracles, had taken place offstage and were subsequently retold to the audience as a story. When this scene is actually played out, the audience is still fresh and able to be deeply shocked. Euripides does not flinch from gruesome touches such as having Agaue piece together the son she tore apart. Moreover, in this last gesture, the audience realizes that it is not just Pentheus's body that must be reconstructed but also the moral of the story and the future of both Cadmus and Agaue. Tragically, some pieces will always be missing.
While Euripides follows a number of formal classical traditions in The Bacchae, such as a complicated chorus and the use of messenger, he diverges quite starkly from Aristotle's ideal of drama. In classical Greek drama, and as defined by Aristotle in his Poetics, there is also a moment of recognition at the very end when our hero, full of hubris, realizes his error and passes from ignorance to knowledge. This is tied to the moment of catharsis for the audience, or the moment of the release of the emotions that had been built up before. Finally, there is a hearty lament. Pentheus does not truly repent and re-evaluate his mistake, nor indulge in metaphysical musings. He merely uses the word "error" in the one line where he begs his mother not to kill him. Importantly, too, the audience does not explicitly learn anything about Dionysus except that he wants Pentheus to show deference toward him. And the main "secret" of the play, Dionysus's disguise, is known from the start. Instead, Euripides writes a shocking, long, and pathos-filled lament. This disproportionate (in classical terms) emphasis on the lament signals two things: both the excessive cruelty and the absolute power of Dionysus.
One of the reasons that the last scene—depicting a demented Agaue proudly brandishing the head of her son—is effective because it is a acted out on the main stage instead of being relayed by messengers. Previously, all the gory, disturbing and violent actions of the play, such as the killing of the cattle and the palace miracles, had taken place offstage and were subsequently retold to the audience as a story. When this scene is actually played out, the audience is still fresh and able to be deeply shocked. Euripides does not flinch from gruesome touches such as having Agaue piece together the son she tore apart. Moreover, in this last gesture, the audience realizes that it is not just Pentheus's body that must be reconstructed but also the moral of the story and the future of both Cadmus and Agaue. Tragically, some pieces will always be missing.
December 13, 2023
“[…] the loveliness of eating fresh raw flesh, new-killed/and rushing to the eastern mountains/and our leader is the lord of the rumbling thunder! shout his name!"
"[…]
‘and after all this, what will i be told? a story of tears.’
‘don’t grieve in advance, my love: no need to be a prophet of pain.’"
the bacchae 5/5 (BIZARRA!!!!! muito muito boa parece que o leitor ta ali dentro das maeneds. não existe bondade nem piedade, relações de causa e efeito ou discussões sobre a justiça. apenas o ritual. o prazer. o horror)
women of troy 5/5 (a mais triste do mundo inteiro tive vontade de também cortar os cabelos e arranhar meu rosto todo)
helen 3/5 (meio breguinha amigas)
"[…]
‘and after all this, what will i be told? a story of tears.’
‘don’t grieve in advance, my love: no need to be a prophet of pain.’"
the bacchae 5/5 (BIZARRA!!!!! muito muito boa parece que o leitor ta ali dentro das maeneds. não existe bondade nem piedade, relações de causa e efeito ou discussões sobre a justiça. apenas o ritual. o prazer. o horror)
women of troy 5/5 (a mais triste do mundo inteiro tive vontade de também cortar os cabelos e arranhar meu rosto todo)
helen 3/5 (meio breguinha amigas)
September 18, 2019
The Bacchae written by Euripides, is a play written with the intent of making people aware of how a society cannot be constricted and controlled. Specifically the female population of society. Euripides wrote this play to question the status quo. Using Dionysus and Pentheus as the two opposing forces of society. Having them battle it out, with one being very controlling and the other being very laid back and just wanting to have fun. These opposing forces show how in order for society to flourish you can't be too much of both. Rather have a bit of both a balance. If you are too controlling eventually people are going to be fed up and if you are too laid back people are going to go do whatever they want and nothing will get done. Both end with a socially that falls. I believe Euripides was trying to show his greek people we have to have some flexibility in our lives. How being flexible is okay, and especially for women to be able to let off some steam and have fun rather than be stuck being controlled. When Euripides wrote this play, I doubt that he expected it to be relative to our present day society as it was to his. What shocked me about this play was how relevant it is to modern day society. Especially how society is structured. How we have laws and rules in place to control people from going out of control but we give people enough wiggle room to be able to have fun and let off some steam. I think that was very important to recognize and something to take away from the play that we as a society have a balance and try to have a little bit of both. Equally we all as individually have to have a balance or we will go crazy. The perfect example of this is Agave. At the end of the play Agave was so impower with the idea she is able to do whatever she wants after not being able to she broke. This is a very important part of the play to acknowledge because it shows you that partying and having no control at all will make people do crazy things. Reinforcing the fact that we all need to have a balance in our lives. But that it is okay to have fun and go blow off some steam from time to time. Highlighting the fact that we need to let women do that as much as men do, because if we don't nothing good will happen and eventually the inflexibility of the society will break. At first glance this play could just seem boring and have no point, I thought this at first but really analyzing and looking at the way it is written, how the characters are perceived and displayed. You come to understand how complex this play is and how throughout it really was. How Euripides put in hidden messages in the play to make people question the status quo.
May 20, 2023
4 plays, of differing quality:
Bacchae
Bacchae concerns the punishment of king Pentheus by the god Dionysus. Anything concerning Dionysus and his cult is automatically rather fascinating, however the story itself is but a familiar tale of impiety resulting in divine punishment.
Rhesus
Rhesus is pleasant surprise. It concerns the Arrival of the Thracian king Rhesus to aid the Trojans in their war. For fans of the illiad it is like a nice piece of extra content added on to that great story. One gets to spend some more time with familiar characters like devious Odysseus and heroic Hector, though the latter can be a bit frustratingly headstrong during this play.
Iphigenia at Aulis
Iphigenia is an inspiration. Like Polyxena in the play Hecuba, one cannot be helped but grow to love and respect her, staying so brave and dignified in the face of death. Agamemnon, though he can be seen as the culprit in a way, does not come out as a truly contemptible figure either. His flip-flopping over his decisions is entirely understandable, he is a man struck by fate, torn between feelings en neccessity.
The only weakness of the play is the ending, spoilers ahead:
Right as Iphigenia is about to be sacrificed, the gods snatch her away, and replaced her with a deer, who the blade hits in her stead. She thus ultimately does not perish, making the whole affair rather less meaningful than is she had actually died, like Polyxena did.
Iphigenia among the Taurians
Iphigenia among the Taurians could not have existed had the affairs at Aulis not concluded the way they did. So it already feels like it shouldn't exist. Orestes being re-unified withn his sister is a carbon copy of what happens in the play Electra, which does it better. (Not sure which play came first though). The strange lands of the Taurians could've been what made this play interesting, but it is not explored at all.
Bacchae
Bacchae concerns the punishment of king Pentheus by the god Dionysus. Anything concerning Dionysus and his cult is automatically rather fascinating, however the story itself is but a familiar tale of impiety resulting in divine punishment.
Rhesus
Rhesus is pleasant surprise. It concerns the Arrival of the Thracian king Rhesus to aid the Trojans in their war. For fans of the illiad it is like a nice piece of extra content added on to that great story. One gets to spend some more time with familiar characters like devious Odysseus and heroic Hector, though the latter can be a bit frustratingly headstrong during this play.
Iphigenia at Aulis
Iphigenia is an inspiration. Like Polyxena in the play Hecuba, one cannot be helped but grow to love and respect her, staying so brave and dignified in the face of death. Agamemnon, though he can be seen as the culprit in a way, does not come out as a truly contemptible figure either. His flip-flopping over his decisions is entirely understandable, he is a man struck by fate, torn between feelings en neccessity.
The only weakness of the play is the ending, spoilers ahead:
Right as Iphigenia is about to be sacrificed, the gods snatch her away, and replaced her with a deer, who the blade hits in her stead. She thus ultimately does not perish, making the whole affair rather less meaningful than is she had actually died, like Polyxena did.
Iphigenia among the Taurians
Iphigenia among the Taurians could not have existed had the affairs at Aulis not concluded the way they did. So it already feels like it shouldn't exist. Orestes being re-unified withn his sister is a carbon copy of what happens in the play Electra, which does it better. (Not sure which play came first though). The strange lands of the Taurians could've been what made this play interesting, but it is not explored at all.
August 11, 2024
what an engrossing set of plays.
phoenician women:
- was surprised by how much i enjoyed this. the tragedy of the house of oedipus has never been a favorite of mine, but i found the exploration being justice and self ambition to be engaging. interwoven with conversation over patriotism, or lack there of, and the divine show of fate adds depth to a plot concerning an attempted coup. is thebes just a place to rule or conquer? does family come before city? and what of the gods? are they just spectators or the perpetrators of this suffering?
orestes:
- orestes, electra, and pylades justify matricide using the power of friendship. (and thinly veiled homosexuality). this was my favorite of the collection due to the psychological journey we see overcome our main trio. the thought process (or descent into madness) from guilt and trying to reconcile with the murder of clytemnestra to pivoting to kill helen and kidnap her daughter as revenge for menelaus’ inaction towards orestes and electra’s executions was so engrossing to read. i cannot imagine how gripping this play would be on the stage. the exploration of the emphasis on friendship and upholding familial duty was intriguing displayed against this particular set of characters. in comparison to the orestia, i find the change of having the furies being an apparition of orestes' tormented conscious to be rather fascinating than having them appear as supernatural beings. it makes for orestes’ suffering at the beginning to come across as more vulnerable and human. as a reader, and even more so as an audience member, you empathize with him more, even despite knowing his crime and the grave consequences he has endowed not just on himself but on electra. anyways. menelaus is a BITCH. helen is rather grating. electra is conniving and witty and i love her. orestes? he’s a character. (i mean this is in a positive way) and pylades? the realest. i fucking LOVE this play.
the bacchae
so this play was the reason i bought this in the first place and that is due to my dear friend nietzsche and his writing on the birth of tragedy. i had been reading an article on the exploration of the dionysian self versus the apollonian ideal, thus finding myself in this rabbit hole. not to go without honorable mention is the secret history, my introduction to the frenzied fantastical world of bacchanals and the cult of dionysus. dionysus is a god that has always been special to me. (i have a replica of a coin with his face on it that i wear as a necklace). he speaks, or perhaps it is his fruit of vine, to the unrestrained primal spirit that is lurking beneath my skin. lets just say, if i was a woman in Ancient Greece, I’d be a maenad frolicking about during the dionysian mysteries. the bacchae is a tale exploring the nature of pluralities. male vs the feminine. logic vs irrationality. city vs nature. man vs god. it depicts the consequences of restricting the primal self in favor of the rigidity of human design. it shows the danger of suppressing the “feminine” in favor of masculine power. dionysus is wonderfully androgynous, striking the balance between repression and liberation. he is the voice and hand that guides us towards the elusive reality of ourselves that is hampered by reason. it is a tale of how human pride will always falter against the machinations of the unseen universe, displayed through the undermining of a man by a god’s fluctuating wrath. this was my second favorite. perhaps the most i have to say about any. i adore it. a stroke of brilliance.
iphigenia at aulis
this wrenched my heart out. parts faltered due to the questions of authorship. (some parts are clearly not crafted by euripides) but others, such as the speech by clytemnestra to agememnon had the most gorgeous writing in any of these plays. the question of honor is one not unfamiliar to those who have read homer, and euripides take is no less interesting. reading about agememnon’s moral turmoil over the sacrifice of his daughter was difficult and emotional. honor was such a crucial virtue to the greeks, so even if his plight seemed as if it had an obvious outcome, the modern reader can try and understand his positioning. he is a distressed man, burdened not just by the weight of appeasing his fatherly instincts and love but also the entirety of the Greek army. on top of having to satisfy the goddess artemis. the conflict between the brothers atreus is riveting and the whole play is rife with foreshadowing. perhaps or perhaps not it was meant to be tongue in cheek to the audience, but i enjoyed highlighting dialogue lines with the double meaning eluding towards the bloodied future. (achilles’ and clytemnestra’s deaths especially.) the anger of agememnon having to kill his own daughter just to rescue his brother’s wife, whom nobody seems to even particularly like was palpable from all parties, further adding dimensions of complexity to an already morally nebulous situation. just wow. the trojan war is not about the godlike men who search for glory and honor on the battlefield, but about the women that started it, and as seen in the iliad with the mourning of hector, the women who finish it.
rhesus
wowwww easily the worst one and saved only by the fact it is a retelling of one my favorite parts of the Iliad. (when the greeks’ favorite duo steals trojan horses and kills a king). i love odysseus. i love diomedes. i love it when they are together wrecking shit up for the Trojans. the prose and verses was inferior compared to the others, which makes sense considering that it is most likely this wasn’t written by euripides at all. i loved how much the trojans were obsessing over how intelligent and cunning and strong my man odysseus is. like there is a whole paragraph where they are inadvertently spouting pro odysseus propaganda and i for one am here for it. #odysseusisthebestgreekhero
phoenician women:
- was surprised by how much i enjoyed this. the tragedy of the house of oedipus has never been a favorite of mine, but i found the exploration being justice and self ambition to be engaging. interwoven with conversation over patriotism, or lack there of, and the divine show of fate adds depth to a plot concerning an attempted coup. is thebes just a place to rule or conquer? does family come before city? and what of the gods? are they just spectators or the perpetrators of this suffering?
orestes:
- orestes, electra, and pylades justify matricide using the power of friendship. (and thinly veiled homosexuality). this was my favorite of the collection due to the psychological journey we see overcome our main trio. the thought process (or descent into madness) from guilt and trying to reconcile with the murder of clytemnestra to pivoting to kill helen and kidnap her daughter as revenge for menelaus’ inaction towards orestes and electra’s executions was so engrossing to read. i cannot imagine how gripping this play would be on the stage. the exploration of the emphasis on friendship and upholding familial duty was intriguing displayed against this particular set of characters. in comparison to the orestia, i find the change of having the furies being an apparition of orestes' tormented conscious to be rather fascinating than having them appear as supernatural beings. it makes for orestes’ suffering at the beginning to come across as more vulnerable and human. as a reader, and even more so as an audience member, you empathize with him more, even despite knowing his crime and the grave consequences he has endowed not just on himself but on electra. anyways. menelaus is a BITCH. helen is rather grating. electra is conniving and witty and i love her. orestes? he’s a character. (i mean this is in a positive way) and pylades? the realest. i fucking LOVE this play.
the bacchae
so this play was the reason i bought this in the first place and that is due to my dear friend nietzsche and his writing on the birth of tragedy. i had been reading an article on the exploration of the dionysian self versus the apollonian ideal, thus finding myself in this rabbit hole. not to go without honorable mention is the secret history, my introduction to the frenzied fantastical world of bacchanals and the cult of dionysus. dionysus is a god that has always been special to me. (i have a replica of a coin with his face on it that i wear as a necklace). he speaks, or perhaps it is his fruit of vine, to the unrestrained primal spirit that is lurking beneath my skin. lets just say, if i was a woman in Ancient Greece, I’d be a maenad frolicking about during the dionysian mysteries. the bacchae is a tale exploring the nature of pluralities. male vs the feminine. logic vs irrationality. city vs nature. man vs god. it depicts the consequences of restricting the primal self in favor of the rigidity of human design. it shows the danger of suppressing the “feminine” in favor of masculine power. dionysus is wonderfully androgynous, striking the balance between repression and liberation. he is the voice and hand that guides us towards the elusive reality of ourselves that is hampered by reason. it is a tale of how human pride will always falter against the machinations of the unseen universe, displayed through the undermining of a man by a god’s fluctuating wrath. this was my second favorite. perhaps the most i have to say about any. i adore it. a stroke of brilliance.
iphigenia at aulis
this wrenched my heart out. parts faltered due to the questions of authorship. (some parts are clearly not crafted by euripides) but others, such as the speech by clytemnestra to agememnon had the most gorgeous writing in any of these plays. the question of honor is one not unfamiliar to those who have read homer, and euripides take is no less interesting. reading about agememnon’s moral turmoil over the sacrifice of his daughter was difficult and emotional. honor was such a crucial virtue to the greeks, so even if his plight seemed as if it had an obvious outcome, the modern reader can try and understand his positioning. he is a distressed man, burdened not just by the weight of appeasing his fatherly instincts and love but also the entirety of the Greek army. on top of having to satisfy the goddess artemis. the conflict between the brothers atreus is riveting and the whole play is rife with foreshadowing. perhaps or perhaps not it was meant to be tongue in cheek to the audience, but i enjoyed highlighting dialogue lines with the double meaning eluding towards the bloodied future. (achilles’ and clytemnestra’s deaths especially.) the anger of agememnon having to kill his own daughter just to rescue his brother’s wife, whom nobody seems to even particularly like was palpable from all parties, further adding dimensions of complexity to an already morally nebulous situation. just wow. the trojan war is not about the godlike men who search for glory and honor on the battlefield, but about the women that started it, and as seen in the iliad with the mourning of hector, the women who finish it.
rhesus
wowwww easily the worst one and saved only by the fact it is a retelling of one my favorite parts of the Iliad. (when the greeks’ favorite duo steals trojan horses and kills a king). i love odysseus. i love diomedes. i love it when they are together wrecking shit up for the Trojans. the prose and verses was inferior compared to the others, which makes sense considering that it is most likely this wasn’t written by euripides at all. i loved how much the trojans were obsessing over how intelligent and cunning and strong my man odysseus is. like there is a whole paragraph where they are inadvertently spouting pro odysseus propaganda and i for one am here for it. #odysseusisthebestgreekhero
September 13, 2015
My edition contained 4 plays of Euripides - Ion, The Trojan Women, Helen and The Bacchae. I had mixed feelings about them and thought that each play went downhill, in the order that I read them above. Overall, still a fantastic worth while read.
June 20, 2015
I can't believe this was written so long ago.
Different millennium, same blame game for rape victims.
Different millennium, same blame game for rape victims.
February 23, 2014
What is more terrible - a world with vengeful gods, or a world without them?
September 19, 2019
The Bacchae, written by Euripedes, is a great tragedy work that uses the plays complicated society structure to demonstrate the battle between the two extremes: too much freedom and too much control. The first half of the play details Pentheus and his control over Thebes, and by the end we discover that too much freedom and celebration displayed by Dionysius left the play a tragedy. As the audience, we discover the battle between Appollinian and Dionysian perspectives are the cause for the struggle in their society. The battle between the two opposing Gods, Dionysius versus Pentheus, is a battle between egos. Dionysius is a threat to Pentheus and his demand for order and control. Dionysius would rather promote liberation, celebration, and chaos. It is understood throughout the play that the power and role these two Gods serve is a threat to their society.
A primary theme in the story was the women empowerment and liberation led by Agave, Pentheus’ mother, and her sisters as well. This contradicts the Apollinian ideology that is represented by Pentheus. It is easy to not side with Pentheus because of his ideas of control and order, but by the end there is a clear understanding the delusion plagued by Dionysius on his followers. Agave having the power to kill her son, but not register until later revealed shows the power Dionysius has to delude a group of women. This is where a balance between order and chaos needs to be in place, so that conflict would not continue. The struggle for self control and moderation is needed in the society. The battle of excessive freedom and excessive control would result in a conflicted society,. Euripedes reveals the complexity of societal structures and the theoretical arguments that pertain to the story. idea of delusion would against would The women were so out of their mind that they were under the impression that Pentheus himself was a lion when disguised as a Maenad. Pentheus was manipulated by Dionysius to not use his power and force. Pentheus represents the order, Legality, and control over women. In order to abolish this societal structure, Dionysius is responsible for the extreme chaos resulted by the death of Penthus and the exile of Agave and her sisters. Euripede delivers the idea of how a society can result if order and chaos is not in balance.
The Bacchae was an interesting story from beginning to end. The short play kept me attentive and left me wanting to read more Greek tragedies. Euripides produced a play that starts as a drama and ends in a tragedy The play questions if there is room in this society for non rational in a seemingly structure, ordered society. Euripedes created the play around 400 BCE for a society that could be entertained, yet question those in power and what if women were empowered as depicted in the Bacchae. This same idea can be applied today and makes us question those in control in order to identify a balance that is progressive and just.
A primary theme in the story was the women empowerment and liberation led by Agave, Pentheus’ mother, and her sisters as well. This contradicts the Apollinian ideology that is represented by Pentheus. It is easy to not side with Pentheus because of his ideas of control and order, but by the end there is a clear understanding the delusion plagued by Dionysius on his followers. Agave having the power to kill her son, but not register until later revealed shows the power Dionysius has to delude a group of women. This is where a balance between order and chaos needs to be in place, so that conflict would not continue. The struggle for self control and moderation is needed in the society. The battle of excessive freedom and excessive control would result in a conflicted society,. Euripedes reveals the complexity of societal structures and the theoretical arguments that pertain to the story. idea of delusion would against would The women were so out of their mind that they were under the impression that Pentheus himself was a lion when disguised as a Maenad. Pentheus was manipulated by Dionysius to not use his power and force. Pentheus represents the order, Legality, and control over women. In order to abolish this societal structure, Dionysius is responsible for the extreme chaos resulted by the death of Penthus and the exile of Agave and her sisters. Euripede delivers the idea of how a society can result if order and chaos is not in balance.
The Bacchae was an interesting story from beginning to end. The short play kept me attentive and left me wanting to read more Greek tragedies. Euripides produced a play that starts as a drama and ends in a tragedy The play questions if there is room in this society for non rational in a seemingly structure, ordered society. Euripedes created the play around 400 BCE for a society that could be entertained, yet question those in power and what if women were empowered as depicted in the Bacchae. This same idea can be applied today and makes us question those in control in order to identify a balance that is progressive and just.
December 3, 2023
To be honest, the fact that any of ancient tragedies remain is astonishing. Included within this volume are 5 of Euripides later works, one of a spurious nature.
The Phoenician Women, Orestes, The Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulus clearly have common structure and style. Above all, Euripides works are iconic and distinctive in ending almost every time with a god character situated on a crane above the other actors, a deus ex machina. These plot resolving artifices allow for great dramatic leaps right until the end, when this device neatly explains away any loose-ends. Recently reading Medea, an early work of Euripides, the ending is similar. The deus ex machina is not really something used by Aeschylus or Sophocles, except perhaps in The Eumenides, though the actual “crane” or “machene” may not have been part of the stage structure yet. Aeschylus seems to have more commonly introduced gods into his works.
Rhesus is a fascinating work taking place within a Trojan camp. The fact that it covers a story within The Iliad that I cannot remember reading about from so many years ago felt nostalgic and was a great way to end this collection. Stories of Hector, Odysseus, Diomedes, Athena, and Rhesus were rather fun to revisit and has me contemplating a re-read of Homer soon.
This edition was fantastic in learning about Euripides and the annotations were a fun reading after the fact. However, the overall effect of the stories was not as great as The Oresteia or Sophocles amazing Oedipal Cycle. I love I think The Bacchae most of all as its focus on Dionysian rites around Thebes, my now favorite setting of all the ancient tragedies. I am a huge fan of this genre and think everyone everywhere should read these 31 or 32 monumental, intertextual works. They portray ideas of a reality that persists in literature of the western world since. The thematic structure allows a writer or their readers a means to understand the complex tensions, conflicts, and irresolvable situations that make up universal human difficulties.
The Phoenician Women, Orestes, The Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulus clearly have common structure and style. Above all, Euripides works are iconic and distinctive in ending almost every time with a god character situated on a crane above the other actors, a deus ex machina. These plot resolving artifices allow for great dramatic leaps right until the end, when this device neatly explains away any loose-ends. Recently reading Medea, an early work of Euripides, the ending is similar. The deus ex machina is not really something used by Aeschylus or Sophocles, except perhaps in The Eumenides, though the actual “crane” or “machene” may not have been part of the stage structure yet. Aeschylus seems to have more commonly introduced gods into his works.
Rhesus is a fascinating work taking place within a Trojan camp. The fact that it covers a story within The Iliad that I cannot remember reading about from so many years ago felt nostalgic and was a great way to end this collection. Stories of Hector, Odysseus, Diomedes, Athena, and Rhesus were rather fun to revisit and has me contemplating a re-read of Homer soon.
This edition was fantastic in learning about Euripides and the annotations were a fun reading after the fact. However, the overall effect of the stories was not as great as The Oresteia or Sophocles amazing Oedipal Cycle. I love I think The Bacchae most of all as its focus on Dionysian rites around Thebes, my now favorite setting of all the ancient tragedies. I am a huge fan of this genre and think everyone everywhere should read these 31 or 32 monumental, intertextual works. They portray ideas of a reality that persists in literature of the western world since. The thematic structure allows a writer or their readers a means to understand the complex tensions, conflicts, and irresolvable situations that make up universal human difficulties.
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