Euripides' Bacchae
1. In the absence of stage directions from Classical Greece, this impression is, of course, based on the interpretation of the author of this essay.
2. Atheism in Ancient Athens was not necessarily a complete disbelief in the existence of a god or gods, instead it represented a disbelief in the gods that had currency in Athens at that time (Dodds, 1929, p.101f).
3. "...it was certainly the Sophists who set him and his whole generation discussing fundamental moral questions in terms of nomos versus Physis, "Law" or "Custom" or "Convention" versus "Nature"." (Dodds, 1951, p.182)
4. It is important to understand that the Ancient Greeks were not merely imposing ideas of morality on the term "good"; a good life to them consisted of a life of happiness and virtue and benefit (Kerferd, 1981, p.129) (the Sophists and Socrates actually equated virtue with benefit - something which Judeo-Christian approaches do not).
5. Unfortunately, the exclusive use of the male pronoun here accurately reflects the gender imbalance in Ancient Greece.
6. John Porter, Department of Classics, University of Saskatchewan, Class 110: Sophocles' Oedipus, http://www.usask.ca/classics/CourseNotes/Oed.html
7. Lecture, Ancient Greek and Roman Theatre, Chris Mackie, March 14, 1990, Classical Studies Department, University of Melbourne
8. See the Tufts University Perseus Project Internet site - Encylclopaedia entry for "Eurpides":
9. Rainer Friedrich's article on the dramatic spaces occupied by nomos and physis in the form of city and mountain in The Bacchae looks at the dichotomy from a different perspective than the current examination. He questions the value of a union with nature, and he argues that it is a negative regression, a "re-bestialisation" of people. (Friedrich, 1990, 541ff)
10. Length constraints prevent a more detailed discussion of this element. However, it suffices to say here that due to the deep psychological approach that Euripides takes with his characters, his apparent interest in philosophical questions, his often satirical treatment of the gods in other plays, and etc., it would seem extremely anomolous for him to intend a literal reading of the divine players.
11. Dionysus had various cult titles that inextricably link him to nature/physis: "...the Power in the tree;...the blossom-bringer,...the fruit-bringer,...the abundance of life." (Dodds, 1944, p.x) (See also: Friedrich, 1990, p.540)
12. Zeitlin has an interesting take on the androgyny of Dionysus "...we might want to view the androgyny of Dionysos ... as a true mixture of masculine and feminine. This mixture, it can be argued, is one of the emblems of his paradoxical role as disrupter of the normal social categories; in his own person he attests to the coincidentia oppositorum that challenges the hierarchies and rules of the public masculine world, reintroducing into it confusions, conflicts, tensions, and ambiguities, insisting always on the more complex nature of life than masculine aspirations would allow. Such a view would stress male and female aspects alike; it would regard the god as embodying a dynamic process or as configuring in his person an alternate mode of reality." (Zeitlin, 1990A, p.66)
13. The evidence available tends to suggest that Dionysian revels were rarely to do with sexually illicit behaviour and the inebriation of the participants. Even the ritual practices of omophagia and sparagmos seem to have been limited to the handling of raw meat cut from an animal that was sacrificed in the normal way (Blundell, 1995, p.168).
14. Sparagmos is the tearing apart of a live animal by human hands.
15. "...the deeds done on Cithaeron were manifestations of hysteria in the raw, the compulsive mania which attacks the unbeliever." (Dodds, 1944, p.xiv).
16. There is inscriptional evidence that such rites as described by the Chorus were a real and regular part of sanctioned Dionysiac worship (Dodds, 1944, xi-xii)
17. The inscriptional evidence also suggests that the sanctioned sparagmos involved a limited number of victims. (Dodds, 1944, p.xiv)
18 Omophagia is the eating of an animal or the drinking of its blood immediately after sparagmos.
19. Another who has seen the gods Apollo and Dionysus as representing diametrically opposed principles but also the value of the achievements of bringing the two forces together was Nietzsche. In his work The Birth of Tragedy he personifies what he perceives to be opposing creative tendencies in people as the two gods and believes that the highest art forms are the result of a balance of the forces. Interestingly in the light of this essay, Nietzsche proposes the decline of ancient Tragedy, the artform most representative of a balance of the Apollonian and Dionysian, was exemplified by Euripides' application of rationality - too much of the Apollonian.
20. This reference is for the entire section regarding the Hippolytus - John Porter, Department of Classics, University of Saskatchewan, Class 110: Euripides' Hippolytus, http://www.usask.ca/classics/CourseNotes/Hipp.html
21. It is difficult to determine what state the Theban princesses were in before they became mad. All that is revealed is that they too rejected Dionysus, and that they were overly eager to defame their sister Semele as having immorally become pregnant. If any stress is to be laid, the latter point is interesting because it suggests a possible prurience much like that displayed by Pentheus; that they too readily said "what they should have been the last to say" (Dionysus, p.192).
22. "To resist Dionysus is to repress the elemental in one's own nature; the punishment is the sudden complete collapse of the inward dykes when the elemental breaks through perforce and civilisation vanishes." (Dodds, 1944, p.xiv) (See also: Dodds, 1944, p.xli-xlii)
23. Segal concludes that there is no resolution to the "problem of The Bacchae", that the tragedy resides in the clash between the two polarities and the destruction that is a result. He claims that there is "a sense of total disorientation" at the close and that "exile, suffering meted out far beyond what the offence seemed to merit, cruel and distant gods who liberate men and women from the limitations of their ordinary consciousness, but at the price of also releasing their most destructive impulses." (Segal, 1978, p.199) This interpretation, obviously in opposition to the one presented here, pays little heed to the idea that the motivation behind the literal Dionysus is to punish the disbelievers. The joyous release that he offers his devotees is not to be confused with what is offered the Theban women and their king. Of course there is a destructive element to the physis that the god embodies, but it is shown to come to the fore when the world of physis is denied. With regard to unmerited punishment, one need only consider again what Pentheus had planned for all the worshippers of Dionysus.
24. Croally notes that tragedy / Dionysus represent the "other" and that the movement into the polis by Dionysus in The Bacchae, reflects the existence of tragedy in the centre of Athens "...The Bacchae seems to tell us, through its use of Dionysus, the god of the theatre, that the centre of the polis is constituted by otherness." (1994, p.191)
