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    The Bacchae
    The Bacchae
    The Bacchae
    Ebook80 pages55 minutes

    The Bacchae

    By Euripides

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    Euripides, the youngest of the trio of great Greek tragedians was born at Salamis in 480 B.C., on the day when the Greeks won their momentous naval victory there over the fleet of the Persians. The precise social status of his parents is not clear but he received a good education, was early distinguished as an athlete, and showed talent in painting and oratory. He was a fellow student of Pericles, and his dramas show the influence of the philosophical ideas of Anaxagoras and of Socrates, with whom he was personally intimate. Like Socrates, he was accused of impiety, and this, along with domestic infelicity, has been supposed to afford a motive for his withdrawal from Athens, first to Magnesia and later to the court of Archelaues in Macedonia where he died in 406 B.C.

    Euripides's "The Bacchae" is considered by many to be one of his greatest surviving works. It is the story of Dionysus's arrival in Greece and his attempt to influence the people there to worship him.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2013
    ISBN9781420904130
    Author

    Euripides

    Charles Martin is a poet, translator, and essayist. The author of seven books of poems and translator of Catullus and Ovid, he is the recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine, and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.   A.E. Stallings is an American poet and translator who lives in Athens, Greece. Her most recent books are LIKE: Poems and a translation of Hesiod’s Works and Days.  

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      Book preview

      The Bacchae - Euripides

      THE BACCHAE

      OF EURIPIDES

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2670-5

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-0413-0

      This edition copyright © 2011

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTORY NOTE

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      THE BACCHAE

      INTRODUCTORY NOTE

      Euripides, the youngest of the trio of great Greek tragedians was born at Salamis in 480 B.C., on the day when the Greeks won their momentous naval victory there over the fleet of the Persians. The precise social status of his parents is not clear but he received a good education, was early distinguished as an athlete, and showed talent in painting and oratory. He was a fellow student of Pericles, and his dramas show the influence of the philosophical ideas of Anaxagoras and of Socrates, with whom he was personally intimate. Like Socrates, he was accused of impiety, and this, along with domestic infelicity, has been supposed to afford a motive for his withdrawal from Athens, first to Magnesia and later to the court of Archelaues in Macedonia where he died in 406 B.C.

      The first tragedy of Euripides was produced when he was about twenty-five, and he was several times a victor in the tragic contests. In spite of the antagonisms which he aroused and the criticisms which were hurled upon him in, for example, the comedies of Aristophanes, he attained a very great popularity; and Plutarch tells that those Athenians who were taken captive in the disastrous Sicilian expedition of 413 B.C. were offered freedom by their captors if they could recite from the works of Euripides. Of the hundred and twenty dramas ascribed to Euripides, there have come down to us complete eighteen tragedies and one satyric drama, Cyclops, beside numerous fragments.

      The works of Euripides are generally regarded as showing the beginning of the decline of Greek tragedy. The idea of Fate hitherto dominant in the plays of his predecessors, tends to be degraded by him into mere chance; the characters lose much of their ideal quality; and even gods and heroes are represented as moved by the petty motives of ordinary humanity. The chorus is often quite detached from the action; the poetry is florid; and the action is frequently tinged with sensationalism. In spite of all this, Euripides remains a great poet; and his picturesqueness and tendencies to what are now called realism and romanticism, while marking his inferiority to the chaste classicism of Sophocles, bring him more easily within the sympathetic interest of the modern reader.

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      DIONYSUS, THE GOD; son of Zeus and of the Theban princess Semelê.

      CADMUS, formerly King of Thebes, father of Semelê.

      PENTHEUS, King of Thebes, grandson of Cadmus.

      AGÂVÊ, daughter of Cadmus, mother of Pentheus.

      TEIRESIAS, an aged Theban prophet.

      A SOLDIER OF PENTHEUS' GUARD.

      TWO MESSENGERS.

      A CHORUS OF INSPIRED DAMSELS, following Dionysus from the East.

      THE BACCHAE

      The play was first produced after the death of Euripides by his son who bore the same name, together with the 'Iphigenia in Aulis' and the 'Alcmaeon,' probably in the year 405 B.C.

      The background represents the front of the Castle of PENTHEUS, King of Thebes. At one side is visible the sacred Tomb of Semelê, a little enclosure overgrown with wild vines, with a cleft in the rocky floor of it from which there issues at times steam or smoke. The God DIONYSUS is discovered alone.

      DIONYSUS

      Behold, God's Son is come unto this land

      Of heaven's hot splendour lit to life, when she

      Of Thebes, even I, Dionysus, whom the brand

      Who bore me, Cadmus' daughter Semelê,

      Died here. So, changed in shape from God to man,

      I walk again by Dircê's streams and scan

      Ismenus' shore. There by the castle side

      I see her place, the Tomb of the Lightning's Bride,

      The wreck of smouldering chambers, and the great

      Faint wreaths of fire undying—as the hate

      Dies not, that Hera held for Semelê.

      Aye, Cadmus hath done well; in purity

      He keeps this place apart, inviolate,

      His daughter's sanctuary; and I have set

      My green and clustered vines to robe it round

      Far now behind me lies the golden ground

      Of Lydian and of Phrygian; far away

      The wide hot plains where Persian

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