The Bacchae of Euripides Part 17

DIONYSUS.

In bitter wise, for bitter was the shame Ye did me, when Thebes honoured not my name.

AGAVE.

Then lead me where my sisters be; Together let our tears be shed, Our ways be wandered; where no red Kithaeron waits to gaze on me; Nor I gaze back; no thyrsus stem, Nor song, nor memory in the air.

Oh, other Baccha.n.a.ls be there, Not I, not I, to dream of them!

[AGAVE _with her group of attendants goes out on the side away from the Mountain_. DIONYSUS _rises upon the Cloud and disappears_.

CHORUS.

There be many shapes of mystery.

And many things G.o.d makes to be, Past hope or fear.

And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought.

So hath it fallen here. [_Exeunt._

[Ill.u.s.tration]

NOTES ON THE BACCHAE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The _Bacchae_, being from one point of view a religious drama, a kind of "mystery play," is full of allusions both to the myth and to the religion of Dionysus.

1. The Myth, as implied by Euripides. Semele, daughter of Cadmus, being loved by Zeus, asked her divine lover to appear to her once in his full glory; he came, a blaze of miraculous lightning, in the ecstasy of which Semele died, giving premature birth to a son. Zeus, to save this child's life and make him truly G.o.d as well as Man, tore open his own flesh and therein fostered the child till in due time, by a miraculous and mysterious Second Birth, the child of Semele came to full life as G.o.d.

2. The Religion of Dionysus is hard to formulate or even describe, both because of its composite origins and because of its condition of constant vitality, fluctuation, and development.

(_a_) The first datum, apparently, is the introduction from Thrace of the characteristic G.o.d of the wild northern mountains, a G.o.d of Intoxication, of Inspiration, a giver of superhuman or immortal life.

His worship is superposed upon that of divers old Tree or Vegetation G.o.ds, already worshipped in Greece. He becomes specially the G.o.d of the Vine. Originally a G.o.d of the common folk, despised and unauthorised, he is eventually so strong as to be adopted into the Olympian hierarchy as the "youngest" of the G.o.ds, son of Zeus. His "Olympian" name, so to speak, is Dionysus, but in his worship he is addressed by numbers of names, more or less mystic and secret--Bromios, Bacchios or Baccheus, Iacchos, Eleuthercus, Zagreus, Sabazios, &c. Some of these may be the names of old spirits whom he has displaced; some are his own Thracian names. Bromos and Sabaja, for instance, seem to have been Thracian names for two kinds of intoxicating drink. Bacchos means a "wand." Together with his many names, he has many shapes, especially appearing as a Bull and a Serpent.

(_b_) This religion, very primitive and barbarous, but possessing a strong hold over the emotions of the common people, was seized upon and transfigured by the great wave of religious reform, known under the name of Orphism, which swept over Greece and South Italy in the sixth century B.C., and influenced the teachings of such philosophers as Pythagoras, Aristeas, Empedocles, and the many writers on purification and the world after death. Orphism may very possibly represent an ancient Cretan religion in clash or fusion with one from Thrace. At any rate, it was grafted straight upon the Dionysus-worship, and, without rationalising, spiritualised and reformed it. Ascetic, mystical, ritualistic, and emotional, Orphism easily excited both enthusiasm and ridicule. It lent itself both to inspired saintliness and to imposture. In doctrine it laid especial stress upon sin, and the sacerdotal purification of sin; on the eternal reward due beyond the grave to the pure and the impure, the pure living in an eternal ecstasy--"perpetual intoxication," as Plato satirically calls it--the impure toiling through long ages to wash out their stains. It recast in various ways the myth of Dionysus, and especially the story of his Second Birth. All true worshippers become in a mystical sense one with the G.o.d; they are born again and are "Bacchoi." Dionysus being the G.o.d within, the perfectly pure soul is possessed by the G.o.d wholly, and becomes nothing but the G.o.d.

Based on very primitive rites and feelings, on the religion of men who made their G.o.ds in the image of snakes and bulls and fawns, because they hardly felt any difference of kind between themselves and the animals, the worship of Dionysus kept always this feeling of kinship with wild things. The beautiful side of this feeling is vividly conspicuous in _The Bacchae_. And the horrible side is not in the least concealed.

A curious relic of primitive superst.i.tion and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism--a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the sacrifice of Dionysus himself, and the purification of man by his blood.

It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in the fury of their worship on the mountains, when they were possessed by the G.o.d and became "wild beasts," actually tore with their teeth and hands any hares, goats, fawns, or the like that they came across. There survives a constant tradition of inspired Baccha.n.a.ls in their miraculous strength tearing even bulls asunder--a feat, happily, beyond the bounds of human possibility. The wild beast that tore was, of course, the savage G.o.d himself. And by one of those curious confusions of thought, which seem so inconceivable to us and so absolutely natural and obvious to primitive men, the beast torn was also the G.o.d! The Orphic congregations of later times, in their most holy gatherings, solemnly partook of the blood of a bull, which was, by a mystery, the blood of Dionysus-Zagreus himself, the "Bull of G.o.d," slain in sacrifice for the purification of man. And the Maenads of poetry and myth, among more beautiful proofs of their superhuman or infra-human character, have always to tear bulls in pieces and taste of the blood. It is noteworthy, and throws much light on the spirit of Orphism, that apart from this sacramental tasting of the blood, the Orphic worshipper held it an abomination to eat the flesh of animals at all. The same religious fervour and zeal for purity which made him reject the pollution of animal food, made him at the same time cling to a ceremonial which would utterly disgust the ordinary hardened flesh-eater. It fascinated him just because it was so incredibly primitive and uncanny; because it was a mystery which transcended reason!

It will be observed that Euripides, though certainly familiar with Orphism--which he mentions in _The Hippolytus_ and treated at length in _The Cretans_ (see Appendix)--has in _The Bacchae_ gone back behind Orphism to the more primitive stuff from which it was made. He has little reference to any specially Orphic doctrine; not a word, for instance, about the immortality of the soul. And his idealisation or spiritualisation of Dionysus-worship proceeds along the lines of his own thought, not on those already fixed by the Orphic teachers.

P. 80, l. 17, Asia all that by the salt sea lies, &c.], _i.e._ the coasts of Asia Minor inhabited by Greeks, Ionia, Aeolis, and Doris.

P. 80, l. 27, From Dian seed.]--Dian=belonging to Zeus. The name Dionysus seemed to be derived from [Greek: Dios], the genitive of "Zeus."

P. 81, l. 50, Should this Theban town essay with wrath and battle, &c.]--This suggestion of a possibility which is never realised or approached is perhaps a mark of the unrevised condition of the play. The same may be said of the repet.i.tions in the Prologue.

Pp. 82-86, ll. 64-169.--This first song of the Chorus covers a great deal of Bacchic doctrine and myth. The first strophe, "Oh blessed he in all wise," &c., describes the bliss of Bacchic purity; the antistrophe gives the two births of Dionysus, from Semele and from the body of Zeus, mentioning his mystic epiphanies as Bull and as Serpent. The next strophe is an appeal to Thebes, the birthplace or "nurse" of the G.o.d's mother, Semele; the antistrophe, an appeal to the cavern in Crete, the birthplace of Zeus, the G.o.d's father, and the original home of the mystic Timbrel. The Epode, or closing song, is full, not of doctrine, but of the pure poetry of the worship.

Pp. 86-95, ll. 170-369, Teiresias and Cadmus.]--Teiresias seems to be not a spokesman of the poet's own views--far from it--but a type of the more cultured sort of Dionysiac priest, not very enlightened, but ready to abate some of the extreme dogmas of his creed if he may keep the rest. Cadmus, quite a different character, takes a very human and earthly point of view: the G.o.d is probably a true G.o.d; but even if he is false, there is no great harm done, and the worship will bring renown to Thebes and the royal family. It is noteworthy how full of pity Cadmus is--the sympathetic kindliness of the sons of this world as contrasted with the pitilessness of G.o.ds and their devotees. See especially the last scenes of the play. Even his final outburst of despair at not dying like other men (p. 152), shows the same sympathetic humanity.

Pp. 89 ff., ll. 215-262.--Pentheus, though his case against the new worship is so good, and he might so easily have been made into a fine martyr, like Hippolytus, is left harsh and unpleasant, and very close in type to the ordinary "tyrant" of Greek tragedy (cf. p. 118). It is also noteworthy, I think, that he is, as it were, out of tone with the other characters. He belongs to a different atmosphere, like, to take a recent instance, Golaud in _Pelleas et Melisande_.

P. 91, l. 263, Injurious King, &c.]--It is a mark of a certain yielding to stage convention in Euripides' later style, that he allows the Chorus Leader to make remarks which are not "asides," but are yet not heard or noticed by anybody.

P. 91, l. 264, Sower of the Giants' sod.]--Cadmus, by divine guidance, slew a dragon and sowed the teeth of it like seed in the "Field of Ares." From the teeth rose a harvest of Earth-born, or "Giant" warriors, of whom Echion was one.

P. 92, l. 287, Learn the truth of it, cleared from the false.]--This timid essay in rationalism reminds one of similar efforts in Pindar (e.g. _Ol._ i.). It is the product of a religious and unspeculative mind, not feeling difficulties itself, but troubled by other people's questions and objections. (See above on Teiresias.)

P. 92, l. 292, The world-encircling Fire.]--This fire, or ether, was the ordinary material of which phantoms or apparitions were made.

Pp. 93-95, ll. 330-369.--These three speeches are very clearly contrasted. Cadmus, thoroughly human, thinking of sympathy and expediency, and vividly remembering the fate of his other grandson, Actaeon; Pentheus, angry and "tyrannical"; Teiresias speaking like a Christian priest of the Middle Ages, almost like Tennyson's Becket.

P. 95, l. 370.--The G.o.ddess [Greek: Hosia], "Purity," seems to be one of the many abstractions which were half personified by philosophy and by Orphism. It is possible that the word is really adjectival, "Immaculate One," and originally an epithet of some more definite G.o.ddess, _e.g._ as Miss Harrison suggests, of Nemesis.

In this and other choruses it is very uncertain how the lines should be distributed between the whole chorus, the two semi-choruses, and the various individual ch.o.r.eutae.

Pp. 97-98, ll. 402-430.--For the meaning of these lines, see Introduction, pp. lxi, lxii.

P. 100, l. 471, These emblems.]--There were generally a.s.sociated with mysteries, or special forms of worship, certain relics or sacred implements, without which the rites could not be performed. Cf. Hdt.

vii. 153, where Telines of Gela stole the sacred implements or emblems of the nether G.o.ds, so that no worship could be performed, and the town was, as it were, excommunicated.

P. 103, ll. 493 ff., _The soldiers cut off the tress._]--The stage directions here are difficult. It is conceivable that none of Pentheus'

threats are carried out at all; that the G.o.d mysteriously paralyses the hand that is lifted to take his rod without Pentheus himself knowing it.

But I think it more likely that the humiliation of Dionysus is made, as far as externals go, complete, and that it is not till later that he begins to show his superhuman powers.

P. 104, l. 508, So let it be.]--The name Pentheus suggests 'mourner,'

from _penthos_, 'mourning.'

P. 105, l. 519, Achelous' roaming daughter.]--Achelous was the Father of all Rivers.

P. 107, l. 556, In thine own Nysa.]--An unknown divine mountain, formed apparently to account for the second part of the name Dionysus.

P. 107, l. 571, Cross the Lydias, &c.]--These are rivers of Thrace which Dionysus must cross in his pa.s.sage from the East, the Lydias, the Axios, and some other, perhaps the Haliacmon, which is called "the father-stream of story."

P. 108, l. 579, A Voice, a Voice.]--Bromios, the G.o.d of Many Voices--for, whatever the real derivation, the fifth-century Greeks certainly a.s.sociated the name with [Greek: bremo], 'to roar'--manifests himself as a voice here and below (p. 136).

Pp. 109-112, ll. 602-641, Ye Damsels of the Morning Hills, &c.]--This scene in longer metre always strikes me as a little unlike the style of Euripides, and inferior. It may mark one of the parts left unfinished by the poet, and written in by his son. But it may be that I have not understood it.

P. 118, ll. 781 ff., Call all who spur the charger, &c.]--The typical 'Ercles vein' of the tragic tyrant.