The Bacchae Critical Analysis

Reading Response: Euripides’ The Bacchae
Euripides’ The Bacchae is a play about the cult of Dionysus, and more specifically about what happened to the city of Thebes after the king, Pentheus, prohibited the worship of Dionysus. The play begins with a lengthy monologue from Dionysus, in which he describes his birth, and journey throughout the East. As the first character to appear in the play, he also explains the reasons why future events will take place. He describes the actions of his mother’s sisters, his aunts, and the actions of the king, Pentheus. Dionysus is a vengeful god, and the message that this play sends to the audience is that “When insulted, gods do not forgive” (line 1818).
As Dionysus describes in his opening monologue, he was born from Zeus’s thigh after his

mother was struck down by lightning because of “Hera’s spiteful rage” (line 10). He describes his mother’s (Semele) death with sadness, and introduces the character of Cadmus, his mother’s father and his grandfather, who made a tomb and temple out of the ruins of Semele’s house. Dionysus then describes his journey through Asia, and says that he left those cities where people worship him freely to come to this city of Thebes, and to bring to the city “a new awareness” (line 28). Upon his return to the city, Dionysus finds that both his mother and himself are being snubbed by the people of Thebes, and namely by members of his and his mother’s own family.
After this brief introduction of his own background, Dionysus goes on to describe the hateful actions of his mother’s sisters, his aunts.

He says that they scorn both him and his mother, saying that they “gossiped that this Dionysus is no child of Zeus, that Semele having slept with some man proceeded…to attribute her sinful conception to God. No wonder Zeus struck her dead…” (line 34-38). So after hearing about the words and actions of his aunts, he drives the three of them mad, and they are compelled to go into the mountains to worship Dionysus along with the Bacchae (followers of Dionysus) and the rest of the women in Thebes. The god Dionysus is taking revenge against the city of Thebes, and even says that the people of the city “…must learn…how much it costs to scorn God’s mysteries” (line 48-50). But the vengeance is not only towards the entire city, but is made more personal because the people that are scorning his mother and his own divinity are his mother’s family. As the reigning king of Thebes, Pentheus, his own cousin, has outlawed worship of Dionysus, and the god cannot let this injustice stand. He even describes the events that follow as a score that must be settled (line

61).
The main events of the play consist of the dialogues between Dionysus (who has disguised himself as a mortal man who worships Dionysus) and Pentheus, as well as the bloody death of Pentheus at the hands of his mother and aunts. Although it is made quite clear that Pentheus is doomed from the start of the play, he receives many warnings of his impending death and destruction from both his grandfather, Cadmus, and from Dionysus himself. Cadmus urges his grandson to accept Dionysus as a god, and reminds him of the terrible fate of another member of his family, Actaeon, who had snubbed the goddess Artemis and was torn limb from limb by his own hounds (line 397-408). Dionysus later offers Pentheus a chance to gain his favor through sacrifice, knowing fully that Pentheus would never take this offer. Instead, Pentheus plans to fight the Bacchae in the mountains. And so even after hearing the warning signs of his own doom and refusing to back down, Pentheus is convinced by Dionysus to go to the mountains where his mother and aunts are in a trance. Because they have been driven mad by Dionysus, the three women see a lion instead of Pentheus, and tear him apart, limb from limb. His mother, still in a trance and thinking she had just killed a lion along with her sisters, then parades her son’s head through the city. Her father, Cadmus, then makes her realize her actions, and Dionysus reveals himself as a god to them. Agave is banished along with her sisters for her actions against the god and his mother.
Throughout the play, the message that the gods should not be questions, that the gods should not be scorned, is restated and reinforced by the events that take place. Cadmus says so in his plea to his grandson Pentheus, and Dionysus at the end of the play before banishing his aunts. He says “I was mocked at, chained, thrown into prison. Men like Pentheus who abuse their power in defiance of the Gods shall ever rediscover the inexorable terror of divine justice” (line1804-1806). Although this play is specifically about Dionysus and what happened when his divinity was brought into question, the message of the play can be applied to all gods and divine figures. The play even mentions the vengeance of other gods, like Hera and Artemis, whose rage brought destruction to mortals. “When insulted, gods do not forgive” (line 1818).