1. The Masks of Dionysus
Euripides Bacchae 1

2. “Nothing to do with Dionysus” (Chamaeleon)
Why are we reading eur’s Bacchae now, at this point in the semester? For in some ways it would make sense to read it together with the other plays by eur that we’ll be reading.
It is because asking what it all has to do with Dionysus may be a way to begin to grasp what ancient Athenian tragedy was.
You know now that tragedy was closely associated with the god, at least in terms of occasions when tragedies were performed and watched.
But does that connection with dio have anything more to say about tragedy than that?
Some have argued no. tragedies may have originated in the tom-foolery of Dionysian worship: masking, partying, phallic processioning.
“Nothing to do with Dionysus” (Chamaeleon)

3. Dionysus/Satyr Mask (Athenian, 500s BCE)
hero or villain?
savior or demon?
first, the matrrix photo. notice the mask-like quality of neo with his shades on – of neo, here, presumably embodying the savior figure. in this photo he is virtually that by reason of his whole getup.
but notice also how the photo’s mask-like quality distances neo from us: we feel his stare but we can’t stare back.
dionysus is very much like that. the mask creates distance: it conceals and removes its wearer from the here and now. I think that can be related to the initiatory character of dionysian religion. what we see – what we’re allowed to see – masks realities, access to which is allowed only those who have undergone initiation. so, for instance, the myth of dionysus’s mother being semele: that conceals – masks – a truth denied to all but the privileged few: that his mother was Persephone, goddess of the underworld. thus his association with wine and with fun obscures another truth: that he embodies everlasting life for those who bring him into their lives. it’s believed that it’s this conquest-of-death aspect of dionysus that, for the ancient grk historian herodotus, associates the grk god with egyptian osirus; but it’s also this same aspect that makes hdt reluctant to discuss with his grk audience the deeper connections between the two.
(compare the myth-interpretation that tiresias gives for “dithyrambos” – in the greek, the hiding in the thight [mēros] is treated as if a mistake for z’s breaking off a piece of the sky, he presented it to hera as a “hostage” [homēros]. cadmus then offers a rationale that similarly implies a kind of thought-masking: in a sense, pentheus is told at least to mask his disbelief with “belief” to avoid punishment like that experienced by the over-proud actaeon. this is, in other words, an impropitious hubris pen indulges in.)
at the same time, the mask transforms, even reduces distance. if I put on a mask and you don’t, that creates distance between us. but if you and I put the mask on together, that unites us.
Neo Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Dionysus/Satyr Mask (Athenian, 500s BCE)
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

4. Agenda Aristotle’s Poetics Bacchae: Background Discussion
Tragedy Explained?
Bacchae: Background
Drama Dramatized?
Discussion
Advice for Pentheus…
19-Sep-11
Bacchae 1

5. Aristotle’s Poetics Tragedy Explained? (Euripides’ Bacchae)
ASK YOURSELF: WILL THIS TREATISE HELP YOU IN APPRECIATING/CRITIQUING POETRY? (probably yes.) IN CREATING POETRY? (far more incomplete on that score. differs thus from ari's Rhetoric.) some of it really specifically concerned with critical questions, e.g., which better, epic or tragedy.
AND IF WE CAN VIEW ARISTOTLE’S as a critical-theoretical approach, does ari tell us anything useful about tragedy? what?
ari thus does not impart to readers tekhne (technical skill) as much as try to train them to recognize it, especially in areas that, for aristotle, count.
Aristotle’s Poetics
Tragedy Explained? (Euripides’ Bacchae)

6. Poetics: Approach Definition Classification Aetiology
Poetics: Approach
Method
Criteria
Definition
Classification
Aetiology
origins/causes
Critical evaluation
Organic coherence
Plausibility
Emotional impact
Utility
pleasure
therapy
pedagogy
i’ve started out by suggested that ari approaches drama as a tekhne, and seems to seek as much to illuminate appreciation of peotry as to inform practioners. let’s see how that plays out in his treatment. . .
method
classification, analysis, teleological explanation: poetry as a genus (collective category) to be divided into its constituent sub-species, individual poems as phenomena to be analyzed into their component elements. the evolution of an art as a gradual perfection.
teleology: poetry explained in terms of its purpose, in terms of forms ideally suited to the fulfilment of that purpose. hence its telos, perfect form inhering already in the immature manifestations of that form.
critical evaluation: this isn't just about what poems are, but about what good poems are.
critical foci
three principal values: the organic coherence of a drama, its plausibility and verisimilitude, its power to move an audience emotionally, to inspire pity and fear. plot aristotle's main focus: poetry as imitation of action (literally, drama). aristotle’s ideological investment, his “position” on poetry, viz., as something simultaneously pleasurable and useful - pleasurable in its utility, useful in its capacity to please. i.e., the poetics as a kind of answer to plato, about whom more later in the semester. ari’s approach
19-Sep-11
Bacchae 1
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

7. Aristotle’s Uses of Imitation?
please
teach
purge
ON THE ONE HAND, we move from from dionysus with ari’s rather cerebral approach to tragedy, an approach ultimately more concerned with texts than with performed impersonation.
but his privileging of imitation, of tragedy as a kind of textual mask projecting not facts but general truths communicated through (literal) non-facts, arguably preserves, even if it intellectualizes, that core, dionysian celebration of illusion.
add to that the element of purification through spectating, and we have something close to the experience of one initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus or of his close associate, Demeter.
13-Sep-11
Csapo

8. DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY: “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation (katharsis) of these emotions.” (p. 61)
POETRY VERSUS HISTORY: “Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.” (p. 68)
PLEASURE OF LEARNING “... to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general....” (p. 55)
WE SEEM, THOUGH, to move rather from from dionysus with ari’s rather cerebral approach to tragedy, an approach ultimately more concerned with texts than with performed impersonation.
but his privileging of imitation, of tragedy as a kind of textual mask projecting not facts but genenral truths communicated through literal non-facts, seems arguably preserves, even if it intellectualizes, that core, dionysian celebration of illusion.

9. Perfection of Plot (muthos)
Less Good
Better
Episodic
Simple lacks…
reversal (peripateia) and/or
recognition (anagnorisis)
Logical, plausible
Complex has…
reversal (peripateia) and/or
recognition (anagnorisis)
87. how best to go about conceiving a plot.
90. complication, unraveling. complication = plot up to reversal. then unraveling.
reversal should concern "the character between these two extremes [the very noble and the very wicked] - that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice pr depravity, but by some error or frailty [hamartia]." but aristotle means mistake. (76)
we're seeing recognition not simply of another's identity, but with that, of the moral implications, previously unknown, of a given action as connected to identity. so for instance there is no recognition in antigone, strictly speaking. but there is a point in the play when the delusion falls away from creon and he realizes just what he has been doing: he has been destroying himself, and it is his self-wrought reversal he notices. this dimension of learning in characters and in spectators only lightly touched on in ari, but a central theme of the tragedies themselves. see p. 85.
84. on recognition. relatively unimaginative-artistic: from tokens. (atekhnoterai.) this is about either recognition of, or employment of, tekhne, technical skill.
85. even less artistic, blatant "i am." (i.e., artificial.) ari likes recognition by inference. note that recognition can be of fate etc., not just ID.
86. best: from plot action - e.g., soph's OK.
13-Sep-11
Csapo

10. Concepts & Application: Bacchae
clas 215
4/17/2017
Concepts & Application: Bacchae
concept
Bacchae
ethos “character” (Pentheus)
stock tyrant’s paranoia (creon-like), stubborn.
hamartia “error”
hubris – arrogant in the face of Dionysus.
desis “complication”
lusis “unraveling, solution”
anagnorisis “recognition”
peripeteia “reversal (of fortune)”
catharsis “purification”
learning?
pleasure?
ethos “character” (Pentheus)
character traits revealed through speech and action, and thus presumed to motivate same.
arrogant, paranoid. very much like a creon. misogynist? (we’ll have more to say about pentheus next class.)
hamartia “error”
what is pentheus’ tragic mistake? it is surely to have resisted the worship of the god. mistake of agave and her sisters? to accuse Semele of an illicit human union – again, to deny the god.
note how this is hubris—insult—for the god.
desis “complication”. this can include external and internal devleopments.
thus surely the arrival of Dionysus and his new cult – what that means for thebes. but the family is clearly enmeshed in all sorts of dysfunction—anticipates the later line of labdacus (Cadmus => polydorus => labdacus [Chrysippus story] => Laius => Oedipus)
one way – not exactly Aristotle’s – is to view tragic action as less a solution to a desis than an atonement/purification [quasi-aristo] – see next.
lusis “unraveling, solution”
all the action leading to calamities experienced by … more soon.
anagnorisis “recognition”
more soon. but is there non-recognition in the scenes we have read?
peripeteia “reversal (of fortune)”
more soon
catharsis “purification”
learning?
pleasure?
more soon. [what’s fascinating is that the play dramatizes dress-up, impersonation, and spectating – all of which p does. p is tragedy….]
19-Sep-11
Bacchae 1
ascholtz

11.
Bacchae: Background
Drama Dramatized?
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

12. Quotes: Euripides’ Bacchae
“Happy the man whom the gods / Love, and whose secrets he knows” (Chorus, p. 399)
“For whoso leads the revel / He is always Dionysus” (Chorus, p. 400)
“There is no cure for madness, when the cure itself is mad” (Tiresias, p. 409)
“Happy the man whom the gods / Love, and whose secrets he knows” (p. 399)
“For whoso leads the revel / He is always Dionysus” (p. 400)
ambiguity – is bacchus anyone? or is leading the revel the specicial function of this god?
“There is no cure for madness, when the cure itself is made” (Tiresias, p. 409)
but is dionysus just? are the punishment endured by pentheus, by pentheus’ mother and his mother’s sisters, by cadmus, by thebes generally – are those punishments deserved?
what does this mask embody or conceal? is d like antigone, asserting the ancestral rites of home and temple against the artificial structures of political authority - an embodied warning that we, to our peril, ignore the entirely human need for fellowship, recreation, release?
is the truly horrific vengeance he wreaks truly just? or does he present a more unsettling figure - something outside the moral paradigms by which we mortals structure our lives?
if this contest of god versus human has been no contest all along, then where’s the drama?
or is it maybe to put the god on trial?
and if so, what’s the verdict?

13. Play Facts, Backstory Production Text Characters, Backstory
Play Facts, Backstory
Production
Iphigenia at Aulis
Alcmeon
Bacchae
satyr play (which?)
Text
Characters, Backstory
Dionysus, Pentheus
Cadmus, Tiresias
Agave, sisters
Chorus of Bacchants
Production: Dionysia of 405 (postumous).
Text
interpolation
corruption
Backstory
Cadmus founds Thebes
Semele scorned
Daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, spouse of Echion, mother of Pentheus. Her sisters were Autonoë, Ino and Semele
(Αὐτονόη; Autonóē). Daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, sister of Semele, Agave and Ino ( Leucothea), wife of Aristaeus, mother of Actaeon (Hes. Theog. 977; Apollod. 3,26; 30; Hyg. Fab. 184). In Euripides' Bacchae she leads a thiasos of Theban Maenads (230; 680; Ov. Met. 3,720). Following the death of her son, she goes to Megara; her tomb is mentioned by Pausanias (1,44,5).
(Ἰνώ; Inṓ). Daughter of Cadmus [1] and Harmonia, generally taken to be the second (first: schol. Hom. Il. 7,86 Bekker according to Philostephanus and Eust. ad locum; schol. Lycoph. 22) wife of Athamas in Thebes [2] (the first being Nephele [1]). She is the mother of Learchus and Melicertes. Envy of her stepchildren Phrixus and Helle prompted her to develop a cunning plan. She talked the women of the country into roasting the seed grains, thus causing a severe famine. She bribed the envoys sent by Athamas to Delphi to tell the king that the infertility of the land could only be reversed by offering Phrixus as a sacrifice. After Phrixus and his sister had been carried away by the ram sent by Nephele, Athamas succumbed to madness and, in the mistaken belief that he was out hunting, he killed his eldest son Learchus with arrows. I. fled and flung herself from a cliff into the sea together with her younger son Melicertes. From then on, she was cultically venerated as Leucothea
Pentheus king
Dionysus returns
19-Sep-11
Bacchae 1
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

14.
Semele, Daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, spouse of Echion, mother of Pentheus. Her sisters were Autonoë, Ino and Semele
(Αὐτονόη; Autonóē). Daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, sister of Semele, Agave and Ino ( Leucothea), wife of Aristaeus, mother of Actaeon (Hes. Theog. 977; Apollod. 3,26; 30; Hyg. Fab. 184). In Euripides' Bacchae she leads a thiasos of Theban Maenads (230; 680; Ov. Met. 3,720). Following the death of her son, she goes to Megara; her tomb is mentioned by Pausanias (1,44,5).
(Ἰνώ; Inṓ). Daughter of Cadmus [1] and Harmonia, generally taken to be the second (first: schol. Hom. Il. 7,86 Bekker according to Philostephanus and Eust. ad locum; schol. Lycoph. 22) wife of Athamas in Thebes [2] (the first being Nephele [1]). She is the mother of Learchus and Melicertes. Envy of her stepchildren Phrixus and Helle prompted her to develop a cunning plan. She talked the women of the country into roasting the seed grains, thus causing a severe famine. She bribed the envoys sent by Athamas to Delphi to tell the king that the infertility of the land could only be reversed by offering Phrixus as a sacrifice. After Phrixus and his sister had been carried away by the ram sent by Nephele, Athamas succumbed to madness and, in the mistaken belief that he was out hunting, he killed his eldest son Learchus with arrows. I. fled and flung herself from a cliff into the sea together with her younger son Melicertes. From then on, she was cultically venerated as Leucothea
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

15. Dionysus, Dionysianism
Dionysus, Dionysianism
Dionysian initiation
Maenads, maenadism
Cross-dressing
Mystic knowing
Ritual rebirth
Rapture
Thyrsus. . .
“. . . and with the fennel, join reverence to riot” (p. 400)
lit. “Sanctify the hubristic (hubristas) fennel rods all around!”
Sparagmos, Omophagia
Oresibasia
Mystery cults …
of Demeter
e.g., at Eleusis
of Dionysus
… involve
initiatory rite of passage
thematic foci
community
fertility
enlightenment
conquest of death
Bacchae, Initiation (cont.)
Cross-dressing
ritual transvestism as element of mystic, transformative rite of passage
the fluid, redefinition of self
ritual feminization preceding ritual death
p dressed in linen: 821, D to P “then you must put on a linen shift”
linen = bacchic-orphic burial garb
Mystic knowing
Ritual dying, rebirth
LIFE-DEATH-LIFE
maenads, thyrsi, etc.
marked oxymoron
holy / hubristic
“weaponized” thyrsi in play
ritual violence both given release and yet needs to be contained
and that foreshadows “terrorist action” of p. 103: “They tore like an invading army into the villages of Hysiae and Erythrae, … and turned them upside down, they snatched up babies out of homes …”
cf. women’s festival of hubristika, at argos: women exercising for a time strange powers and freedoms
HUBRIS AS GOOD!!!
god of paradox and reversal. in the midst of the most dead time of year, celebration of life-renewing license
Maenad/bacchant
19-Sep-11
Bacchae 1
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

16. Names Dionysus Bakkhos (“Bacchus”) Bromios/Bromius “Zeus of Nysa?”
“He of the cry iō bakkhe”
Bromios/Bromius
“The Roarer,” Dionysus as bull
19-Sep-11
Bacchae 1

17. Maenad (mainas “she who is mad”)
Io bakkhe! euoi
maenadic frenzy-ecstasy
note head back, open mouth
open mouth = not stupidity (which it can/does elsewhere mean), but transport,
divine possession
thyrsus (fennel rod)
Maenad (mainas “she who is mad”)
bacchant (bakkhē)
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

18. Analysis prologue (starts p. 395)
Dionysus
parodos (398): “Asian” (Anatolian) Bacchants. Cult hymn
1st episode (402)
Tiresias, Cadmus, Pentheus
1st stasimon (412)
Pentheus’ impiety
2nd episode (414)
Servant, Pentheus, Dionysus (in disguise)
2nd stasimon (417)
Thebes’ rejection of Dionysus
Choral dialogue (418): Chorus & D
Earthquake
Trochaic dialogue, D & Leader (420)
“messenger” scene
3rd episode (422)
Short dialogue, D&P
Messenger scene: hubris in the hills
3rd stasimon (431)
Hope restored, do not mock the god
4th episode (432)
D&P. Fitting scene
4th stasimon (436)
Excited song of vengeance
5th episode (438)
Messenger (servant on death of Pentheus)
5th stasimon (442)
Short song of triumph
exodos (443)
Agave’s mad scene
lyric dialogue
Cadmus’s return with Pentheus
recognition, reversal
Lament for Pentheus
Deus ex machina
prologue (starts p. 395)
Dionysus. I am changed, a god made man, d’s boundary-crossing aspect. cf. dress-up, geographical-cultural boundary-crossing, etc. he is a foreign god (“I come from Lydia” etc.) coming to conquer Greece. yet he is a native greek. (barbarian-greek divide.)
parodos (398): “Asian” (Anatolian) Bacchants. Cult hymn. celebrates the double birth of god: at thbes, on crete (p. 400, “p chamber of curetes”)
1st episode (402)
Tiresias, Cadmus, Pentheus. note the comedy of c and t, old geezers, done up in Dionysian garb.
tir: humanity has 2 blessings: demeter (earth, food), d (wine). encomium of wine: anodyne, soporific. the wine is d and vice versa. when we drink we are possessed.
286. t defends myth of 2ble birth. a mystic interpretation hinging on pun: meros/homeros. z, harboring d on olympus and thus angering hera, gives to h a piece of sky (aither) as "hostage." but the crowd understands that as meros, "thigh." the myth associates dionysus with the heavenly element, i.e., with zeus. aither is used to make the facsimile of helen, too. note that this interpretation is important: d is the god of facsimile, of the simulacrum. there is, in a sense, no real god there, only air. the process of imitation manifests the god.
1st stasimon (412)
Pentheus’ impiety
2nd episode (414)
Servant, Pentheus, Dionysus (in disguise)
soldier describes the miraculous escape of the Bacchae. note the quasi-sexual appreciation of d’s implicitly effeminate beauty. yet d is the bull god, the roarer, the quintessentially phallic deity. d plays at being an emissary of himself. he is playing someone other than himself, yet in so doing at a deeper level is very much himself. (p casannot see the god though he is looking at him – d is “where I am.) you are d if you are not yourself. this is the essence of Athenian drama.
2nd stasimon (417)
Thebes’ rejection of Dionysus
Choral dialogue (418): Chorus & D
Earthquake. self-freed’s power. adoration of him by bacchants.
Trochaic dialogue, D & Leader (420)
“messenger” scene. d describes his destruction of the palace of pentheus. note that the women, the bacchants of Anatolia, think d is a human worshipper of god. god’s playacting.
3rd episode (422)
Short dialogue, D&P
Messenger scene: hubris in the hills. the foreign women of the chorus are in town. the women of the town have burst free and, led by the royal sisters, wreak hubristic havoc in the countryside. here the fennel rods-thursoi-prove truly hubristic.

19.
Discussion
Advice for Pentheus…
CLA77, Andrew Scholtz

20. Journal Prompt (Agon pp. 414 ff)
Imagine yourself inside Euripides' play. What would you say to Pentheus? Is he in the right? In the wrong? What would be your advice for handling this problem he's got?
ON THE SUBJECT OF THE DISCUSSION PROMPT,. . .
The point of the exercise really is to probe whether – and if so, how – Pentheus is a tragic character. We see hints here of a Pentheus obsessed with his “quarry” – a certain sexual attraction to this seemingly effeminate figure who, the king suspects, seeks to ravish all the women of his city, a sneaky: cheeky, stranger-adulterer.
So question rephrased: WOULD IT HAVE BEEN WISDOM EXACTLY FOR PENTHEUS TO YIELD TO DIONYSUS, OR PRUDENCE? DOES DIONYSUS EMBODY A PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE OR OF DIVINE TYRANNY? AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT A PLAY PRODUCED IN THE CONTENT OF A DIONYSIAN CELEBRATION WOULD EVEN PROMPT THAT QUESTION?se
19-Sep-11
Bacchae 1

21. Advice… clas 215 4/17/2017 19-Sep-11 Bacchae 1 ascholtz NOTE HOW:
p wants to punish d by cutting latter’s “dainty lovelocks.”
p cannot see d who is “with” stranger – i.e., stranger in his disguise is a human possessed by the god, who is present through the strnger. but the stranger literally is the god who possesses. again, here too, the disguise don’t not so much conceal the god. the disguise is the god.
p’s eyes “don’t see a thing,” but of course his eyes do see; it’s his arrogance that is blind. as such, pentheus is a stereotypical tragic tyrant figure.
pentheus will finally need to see, to learn. but perhaps through viewing this play, the “seeing” of the audience can be illuminated without having “to suffer into truth,” to quote aeschylus.
d threatens to upset social order. should we be surprised that p is so concerned? we tell p to yield, but is that because d is right or because d is all-powerful. p is something of a tyrant here—but isn’t p in a way?
“I do not think there are bad or good guys in this play. It seems that this play is showing human nature and its fuitle flaws.” but is it questioning religion too?
is power and authority its own justification?
what about the parallel of actaeon? is actaeon bad? (in a way….)
“I think that Pentheus is in the right becuase he was just protecting his city. When folks worshpped Dionysus, they became crazy. Drinking and fornicating excessively.” well did they do that exactly? is he protecting his city or his own power?
19-Sep-11
Bacchae 1
ascholtz