Throughout the course there has been a vast amount of myths and hymns read. They have been told through various perspectives depending on the author. Different versions of wars, stories, and gods change with the style of writing of the authors to the story they want to tell. This is also the case when comparing Euripides Bacchae to Ovid’s Bacchae. There are three main ways in which these two stories share the same concepts but may differ in the way they are presented. They are Pentheus hubris, the role of the gods, and Pentheus death. There are aspects of these stories that make them similar and completely different and analyzing how these changes both effect and reflect their respective authors will be determined. Pentheus hubris is an aspect of both stories where it ultimately leads to his demise. In both Ovid’s and Euripides portrayal of Pentheus he is full of himself …show more content…
Dionysus in both stories manages to get away from Pentheus either through escaping his chains in Euripides to killing his men in Ovid’s. Dionysus in Euripides can seem forgiving with the amount of opportunities he gives to Pentheus to admit and respect his presence. In Ovid’s story when Pentheus sends his guards to kill Bacchus they come back bloody and claim to have never seen him. They do however manage to return with just one of Bacchus “devotees” (Ovid Pg.83). Dionysus seems much more wrathful in Ovid’s version having killed Pentheus guards while in Euripides he allows multiple chances for Pentheus and in the end only ends up killing Pentheus. Even though Pentheus death at the hands of his own mother is more atrocious Dionysus gave Pentheus various opportunities to make up for his mistakes while in Ovid’s version it is set in prophecy by Tiresias. We hardly get to learn about Dionysus in Ovid’s version unlike in Euripides where Dionysus plays a much larger role in the demise of
This is the main difference between the songs of the Bards and Odysseus telling his story: the emotional component. Odysseus can add depth, as well as breadth to the tale of "The Great Odysseus", through his own firsthand account of events. Odysseus is sharing his thoughts, emotions, and fallacies with the Phaeacians. While Odysseus does compound upon his story further than the Bards can, they do share one similarity: persuasion and account of the audience. There is certainly some tweaking of the misfortunes that Odysseus suffers. Not denying the difficulties of the voyage, the emphasis on the hardships works in Odysseus's favor as it draws sympathy from the Phaeacians, thus compelling them further to aide him on a swift return to Ithaca. Odysseus probably plays "the sympathy card" because he knows that once the Phaeacians learn of Poseidon's dislike of him, the Phaeacians may be less inclined to lend him their aid. This understanding of his audience's higher loyalties, and the art of persuasion influences Odysseus in portraying himself in a sympathetic manner. Odysseus purposefully casts himself as the unfortunate victim of the wrath of a God, and as a devoted, suffering husband who yearns to return
A few of Euripides's most famous tragedies are Hippolytus, The Bacchae, Alcestis, and Medea. He displayed his first set of tragedies at the Great Dionysia in 455 B.C., but did not win his first award until 441. In fact, he won only five awards and the fifth of these was announced subsequent to his death. Medea won 3rd prize, Alcestis won second as well as The Trojan Women. Iphigenia at Aulis, Bacchae, and Hippolytus took 1st place. The Cyclops, the only complete satyr play that exists, was written early in Euripides' career. It is a funny version of Odysseus' encounter with the one-eyed beast, Polyphemus. And although this spirit of faith is difficult to recognize in many of Euripides' later plays, it never entirely fades. A few of his dramas, such as Helena, comes close to being a comedy. Even in The Bacchae, he mixes comedy with tragic. Thus, by dissolving the rigid structure of tragedy, Euripides created new forms of drama, as well as hybrids of existing
Prometheus Bound is quite different from other tragedies in that it is peopled entirely by gods. The play focuses on the story of Prometheus, and we have versions of this myth in Hesiod's famous works. There is reason to think that the author of Prometheus Bound was not only acquainted with Hesiod's version but actually drew on Hesiod directly in this play. This essay therefore aims to establish in what ways the author of Prometheus Bound seems to have drawn from Hesiod's version of myth, in what ways he has diverged from it, and what reasons he might have had for making these changes and innovations. This might therefore highlight any particular emphasis or purpose of Prometheus Bound and what its author might have been trying to get across. Though there is not space in this essay to discuss the problems of attributing this play, it must be recognised that this ambiguity of authorship and dating makes it even more difficult than usual to look at views and purposes behind the play.
The first difference in Ovid and Hesiod's writings of Jupiter and Zeus, is the god's position with the female deities. In mythology, Jupiter is all-powerful. However, Ovid portrays him as being afraid of his wife, Juno. There are two examples in Ovid's Metamorphoses (BkI: 601-621) of Jupiter's apparent fear of Juno. After Jupiter raped Io, Juno approached him. Afraid that Juno would catch him in the act, Jupiter transformed Io into a heifer hoping to avoid the consequences of Juno's wrath. When Juno asked where the "beautiful" heifer was from, Jupiter lied to her and said the heifer was "born from...
In contrast, Ovid conceived a different purpose for his epic. He wrote fifteen books, compared to Virgil's twelve, with many of his stories originating from Greek and Roman myth, concerned with the transformations of shapes, from the creation of the world to Julius Caesar's death and deification. He focuses on entertaining the reader in a humorous fashion, and rather than establishing Rome's origins in history, he is more concerned with establishing his own fame, for the future ages. These different backgrounds of the two authors illustrate that they each had contrasting agendas for their books. Thus, the portrayal of the gods differs greatly-Virgil's are austere and purposeful, whereas, Ovid's are humorous, reflecting his neoteric style, and intentionally different from the Virgilian gods.
Many different interpretations can be derived from themes in Euripides's The Bacchae, most of which assume that, in order to punish the women of Thebes for their impudence, the god Dionysus drove them mad. However, there is evidence to believe that another factor played into this confrontation. Because of the trend of male dominance in Greek society, women suffered in oppression and bore a social stigma which led to their own vulnerability in becoming Dionysus's target. In essence, the Thebian women practically fostered Dionysian insanity through their longing to rebel against social norms. Their debilitating conditions as women prompted them to search for a way to transfigure themselves with male qualities in order to abandon their social subordination.
In The Bacchae, Euripedes portrays the character of Pentheus as an ignorant, stubborn, and arrogant ruler. These character flaws accompanied with his foolish decisions set the stage for his tragic downfall. Pentheus' blatant disregard to all warnings and incidents, which prove that Dionysus is truly a god, lead him to his own death. In the end, his mistakes are unforgiving and his punishment is just.
Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound portrays a greek god detained by a superior for disobedience against the latter’s rule. On the other hand in Euripides’ Hippolytus portrays lust and vengeance of the gods and the extent that they can go to to avenge it.
Altogether, Euripides’ narrative, along with the three pieces
Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ The Bacchae are indubitably plays of antitheses and conflicts, and this condition is personified in the manifestation of their characters, each completely opposed to the other. Both tragedians reveal tensions between two permanent and irreconcilable moral codes; divine law represented by Antigone and Dionysus and human law represented by Creon and Pentheus. The central purpose is evidently the association of law which has its consent in political authority and the law which has its consent in the private conscience, the association of obligations imposed on human beings as citizens and members of state, and the obligations imposed on them in the home as members of families. Both these laws presenting themselves in their most crucial form are in direct collision. Sophocles and Euripides include a great deal of controversial material, once the reader realizes the inquiries behind their work. Inquiries that pertain to the very fabric of life, that still make up the garments of society today.
The main characters of each work are automatically associated with each other by their names, but they also share similar personalities and characteristics. Odysseus is a wily hero of the Trojan War who uses his deceptive...
There has long been a fashion among critics and historians, including Sir James Frazier and Graham Hancock, to insist upon taking the account of Odysseus' voyage to Hades in Book XI of the Odyssey at near face-value as a description of people and places familiar to a Greek audience of Homer's day. Both linguistics and comparative history have been employed to discover exactly how accurately this originally oral epic conveys this gritty realism. Something, however, is not right with this purely empiric approach. What is missing is an examination through the lens of ancient religious practices. Surely a literary work so teeming with deities-wise Athena, spiteful Poseidon, impish Hermes, omnipotent Zeus-deserves such study.
In Euripides’ play, “Bacchae”, Euripides reflects the Aristotelian principles well enough to be considered a “good” tragedy in Aristotle’s eyes. This is proven with the examples of the “imitation” of Pentheus’ death, the “reversal of the situation” when Dionysus switched from Pentheus’ prisoner to his aide in their quest to see the Bacchae, and the “recognition” of Pentheus’ mother when she realises what she has done to her son. Aristotle reflects in his book, Poetics, the importance of imitation in tragedies: “It [tragedy] should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation” (ch. 13). Humans find beauty in the accuracy of death and pain, and like to feel such emotions safely,
The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey both are held in high respect by literature analysts and historians alike for the characterization of the hero and his companion, the imagery brought to mind when one of them is read, and the impressive length in relation to the time period it was written in. The similarities that these two epics share do not end with only those three; in fact, the comparability of these works extend to even the information on the author and the archetypes used. However, The Odyssey and The Epic of Gilgamesh contrast from one another in their writing styles, character details, and main ideas. Both epics weave together a story of a lost man who must find his way, but the path of their stories contrast from one another.
This paper aims to study two significant playwrights, Sophocles and Euripides, and compare their respective attitudes by examining their plays in respect to plot and character structures. To achieve this goal, the paper is organized into two main sections. In the first section, we provide a brief biography of both Sophocles and Euripides. The second and last section includes summaries of Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Electra which were based on same essentials and give an opportunity to observe the differences of the playwrights. This section also includes the comparisons that are made by our observations about the plays.