Euripides - The Bacchae

While reading the Bacchae, I found the experience was much more intense

and graphic than while I was reading Antigone. In particular, when the sister Agave

runs around in a frenzied and possessed state with the head of her son, which she

personally ripped off with her own hands, it was intense to say the least. Just

imagining the amount of blood and body parts is sickening even in the context of

modern day violence and gory standards. Not only does she rip her son apart, she

also sticks his head on a pike and parades him through the street. One has to note

that the whole situation was the doings of the god Dionysus. He was the son of Zeus

and a mortal, Semele. Because people always suspected Dionysus to be an

illegitimate child and not as the god son of Zesus, he felt the need to take revenge

among the folks of Cadmus in Thebes.

I wonder how ordinary people in Greece felt towards adultery and out of

wedlock children compared to the modern day. It seems that the topic is not taboo

or forbidden, by any means, since it is featured prominently in the plot of the

Bacchae. The rivalries and jealousies of the gods mimic the regular human

emotions. For example, Zeus is known to have had many illegitimate children with

mortal women and Zeus’ wife is naturally very jealous and tends to take revenge on

the women. In Semele’s case, she is killed by Zeus’ lightning bolt at the urging of

Hera. Yet, the notion of giving birth to an illegitimate child still has some social

stigma attached to it, as evidenced by Semele’s family’s refusal to believe that

Dionysus is actually a god. Instead, they constantly accuse Semele of

blasphemously lying about the identity of the father and believe that the reason she
died was because of her decision to have an affair outside of marriage and giving

birth to that child.

This kind of sentiment is still relevant in modern times, thousands of years

later. It shows how the writings of Euripides are timeless and classic.