Title: Classics 2200
Tags: Bacchae Iliad

Thetis bringing divine armour to Achilles

Achilles' Shield

Oedipus at Colonus
•Oedipus is in exile from Thebes, because of miasma.
•He wanders old, blind, in rags, guided by Antigone.
•He arrives at the sacred grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, where he seeks refuge by supplicating Theseus, king of Athens, who accepts despite the risk of miasma.
•Because of a prophecy, Oedipus’ two sons each seek Oedipus’ support in their civil war with one another.
•He curses them both.
•He undergoes a mysterious death in the sacred grove – becomes a cult hero, worshipped by inhabitants of Colonus.

Q: Antigone
- It is Antigone's nature to stand up for her [...] despite the risk of death.
A: principals

Antigone
•Oedipus’ sons fought over the rule of the city.
•Eteocles defends and Polyneices attacks with a foreign army
•Oedipus’ curse: they kill each other simultaneously
•Dramatized in Aeschylus’ play, Seven Against Thebes
•Creon, now king of Thebes, decrees that Eteocles is to be given a hero’s burial, but Polyneices is to be left unburied outside the city walls.

Antigone
•Antigone defies Creon and performs burial rites for Polyneices (loyalty to oikos). Her sister Ismene enacts a safer response to Creon’s authority. Antigone is heroic, but also scandalous.
•Creon condemns Antigone to be imprisoned alive in a rocky enclosure outside the city (loyalty to polis).
•But Antigone is a niece and ward of Creon and is engaged to Haemon, Creon's son.

Antigone
•Tiresias warns Creon that he is making a mistake by burying the living and denying burial to the dead.
•Creon threatens the prophet and accuses him of corruption.
•Creon realizes his mistake and has polyneices buried, then going to save Antigone.
•Antigone dies of suicide, becoming a bride of death.
•Haemon also kills himself at the cave, and upon hearing the news, the wife of Creon also commits suicide.
•Antigone’s intense attachment to her tragic household conflicts with a conventional transition to the role of wife and mother.

Antigone and Creon

Bacchus
- Cadmus asks the oracle where his sister, Europa went, and he is told he needs to start up a new city.
- Goes and slays a dragon, then farms the teeth, out of which an army pops up.
- 5 remain from the army and Cadmus' 4 daughters are married off to them (incl. Zeus).

Q: Bacchus
- [...]: A [...]
A: Theomachoi; human who fights a god

Bacchus
- Around the same time, there was a lot of anxiety about religious beliefs in and around Athens, due to the introduction of new cults.
- Violation (seeing) of the eleusian mysteries by Alcibiades.
- Charges against socrates incl. corrupting the youth and believing in new gods/ not the city gods

Bacchae

Death of Pentheus

Bacchae
- Nostos of Dionysus from Asia minor.
- He announces his intentions of establishing a cult, demonstration of his divinity and punishment of the Theban Royal family

Dionysus, also referred to as the stranger in the play
•He appears in human disguise (as a foreigner).
•He appears in animal form (to Pentheus).
•He appears in divine form (to Bacchants).
•He cannot be confined or contained.
•Miracles demonstrate his power.
•His divinity is recognized by the common people, but not by the king.

2 Groups of Maenads in Bacchae
1) Chorus of pious asian followers.
- In their songs they provide information about the cult.
- Honour the god.
- Describe an experience of ectasy
- Rites they sing are similar to those of the Phyrigan mother goddess, known as Cybele/Rhea

2 Groups of Maenads in Bacchae
2) Impious theban followers.
- Made mad/possessed by Dionysus.
- Include Agave and her sisters.
- Outside the city, in the wilderness

Pentheus in the Bacchae
•His name is related to a Greek word meaning ‘grief’.
•He is a new king, young, and insecure.
•His obsessions are: firm boundaries, clear distinctions, a stable social order.
•Policing of space, sexuality and gender roles.
•He has a confrontation with Teiresias, and accuses him of corruption.
•He relies on military action, prisons, hunting down his enemies.

Pentheus in the Bacchae
•He locks the chorus in his prison, but an earthquake destroys the walls.
•He has Dionysus bound in chains, but the chains fall off.
•He attacks Dionysus, who evades him by changing his shape many times.
•He orders the arrest of the Theban maenads, but a messenger returns from the mountain to report miracles, sparagmos of the cattle, and the maenads’ victory in battle over their pursuers.
•Pentheus calls in the army to wage war with the Bacchants.

Q: Pentheus in the Bacchae
•The bacchants were [...] to damage.
A: impervious

Q: Pentheus in the Bacchae
•Dionysus plays with him and gets him to admit he wants to see the [...].
- Still makes him feel in control.
A: orgy of bacchants

Q: Pentheus in the Bacchae
•Pentheus puts himself in the hands of [...], who takes him into the palace and dresses him as a [...].
•He [...] what he tried to suppress.
A: Dionysus; female bacchant; becomes

Pentheus' Transformation
•He becomes the sacrificial victim in a distorted ritual sparagmos.
•Tragic parody of phallophoria.
•He undergoes simultaneous anagnorisis and peripeteia.
•Was the hunter, is now the quarry.
•Agave carries a horrific form of thyrsus: topped with Pentheus’ head.

Pentheus' Death
•Dionysus pulls down a fir tree, letting Pentheus sit on it before he lets it rise again.
•With Pentheus visible at the top, Dionysus commands the bacchants to kill him, through a divine voice.
•Parody of phallophoria since he is exposed at the top of the tree.

Q: Pentheus' Death
•Despite performing supplication, [...] tears his head off, since she was [...].
•Compared to some sick [...] sacrifice.
A: Agave; possessed; animal

Q: Bacchae
•[...]: [...]
A: Enthusiasmos; Possession by a god

Bacchae
•Agave is punished for her blasphemy and denial of the god by destructive madness.
•She unwittingly destroys her only child.
•She believes that she has killed a lion.
•She performs a gender inversion (a hunter, warrior).
•Cadmus gently brings her to a gradual understanding of the truth (anagnorisis).
•She is exiled from her city, polluted by miasma.

Bacchae
•Cadmus reassembles the pieces of Pentheus’ body.
•He is the founder of the city, but is exiled from it.
•A dragon-slayer, he will undergo metamorphosis into a snake.
•Prophecy: he will lead barbarian armies against Greeks.

Q: Bacchae Questions
- What distinctions dissolve under dionysus' influence?
- Why is this significant?
A: Man vs woman
God vs man
Foreigner vs Greek
Animal vs man
All important distinctions for daily life, but may be dissolved occasionally in festivals.

Q: Bacchae Questions
- Who is destroyed? Who benefits?
A: Entire Theban house is destroyed.
Commonfolk and Dionysus benefit.

Q: Bacchae Questions
- Is Dionysus too cruel? Is Euripedes critical
A: Maybe, not particularly critical