Euripides’ Bacchae and Medea
Hey, sorry it took me so long to do these. I thought this exam was next week until this
morning. My apologies.
- Ben
Bacchae – Plot summary
OK, we’ve done this twice, so I’ll be brief. Dionysus has returned to Thebes to reestablish his religious worship. Dionysus has caused the Theban woman to go into
Bacchanalian frenzy, and they are up in the mountains doing their thing. Teiresias and
Cadmus (the current king’s father or grandfather) show up and participate in Dionysus’s
party. They look foolish, but are respectful of the god. Pentheus, the current king of
Thebes, shows up and refuses to acknowledge Dionysus as a god. Teiresias and the
chorus warn him against this course of action, but he refuses to listen. Pentheus captures
the women on the loose and ties up Dionysus and questions him in an attempt to disprove
his (Dionysus’s) godly status and bully him. Dionysus is led away. An earthquake shakes
Pentheus’s palace, and Dionysus and the Theban woman are free again. Pentheus comes
outside, sees them, and demands to know how Dionysus escaped. They are talking, and a
herdsman comes up and says that the Bacchants have ripped apart his cattle and such.
Pentheus decides to march against them. Dionysus talks him out of it, puts him under a
spell, making Pentheus want to see the Bacchants “having their orgies”. Dionysus dresses
Pentheus up as a woman, sends him out. A messenger runs in, with the news that
Pentheus has been killed. The messenger describes how Pentheus climbed a tree to spy
on the Bacchants, but was seen and shaken out of it by the Bacchants. Pentheus is ripped
apart by the Bacchants, and it is his own mother who is the one to kill him. Agave,
Pentheus’s mother enters the scene, carrying his head. She believes that she has caught a
lion, and is carrying its head. She shows Cadmus, but he makes her realize what she has
done. They grieve over Pentheus’s body. Agave and Cadmus are exiled. Then end.
Bacchae – Notes
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Themes of ecstasy, violence and death.
Pentheus’s neglect of Dionysus is a neglect of an aspect of human nature
“Nature” (Dionysus) destroys the palace – one cannot resist
Dionysus raised in Phrygia. Phrygia associated with goetia (shamans who led
the souls of the dead) and epoidai (charms) – both indicative of Dionysus in the
Bacchae
Dionysus effeminate, Pentheus seduced by him?
Sophrosyne = self-restraint
Dionysus the god of wine, associated with sleep, sex, partying, medicine, but
also with death
Dionysus aka Lysios (the loosener)
Pentheus enjoys dressing in drag, shows his potential femininity – subconscious
desires
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Women become masculine, men become feminine, Euripides showing
artificiality of gender division
Dionysian worship necessary to blow off societal steam.
Dionysus and Pentheus are actually first cousins – Pentheus does not seem to be
aware of this.
Medea – Plot Summary
The play opens with Medea’s childrens’ nurse lamenting over Medea’s fate and
that of the two children outside of the house. Jason has ostensibly left Medea for the
princess of Corinth in order to further his own ambition of one day being a king. Medea’s
voice is heard lamenting from inside. Medea and the chorus appear outside, and Medea
makes her famous speech about the gender inequalities in Greek society. Creon, the king
of Corinth, shows up to exile Medea and her children because (and he admits it) he is
afraid of what she might do. Medea begs for and is granted a one-day extension. Jason
comes by and tries to explain why he has left her. Medea doesn’t want to hear it, sends
him away without having accepted any help from him. Aegeus, the king of Athens
randomly shows up and offers Medea asylum in Athens, provided she can make it there.
Medea formulates her plan to poison the gifts she will give to the princess and kill her
own children. Jason comes back and is taken in by Medea’s apparent change of heart. He
accepts the gifts for the princess and goes off. Medea is told that her children have had
their exile repealed. This sparks a debate within her of whether or not she is capable of
killing her own offspring. In the end, she decides that she is. A messenger comes, and
Medea hears that her poisoned gifts have worked and that Creon and the princess are both
dead. Medea takes her children inside and kills them. Jason shows up and tries to get into
his house, where his sons are lying. Medea appears above the roof of the house in a fiery
chariot drawn by snakes, holding the bodies of her sons. Medea blames Jason, Jason
blames Medea, Medea foretells Jason’s death, exits.
Medea – Notes
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Medea a devotee of Hecate
Important brother/sister bond in ancient Greece. Brother would protect sister in
the event of a bad husband. Because Medea killed her brother, she has no such
protection.
Medea becomes a fury in the end (punishing force of divine justice)
Medea begins play as a sympathetic character. Euripides plays on gender
stereotypes by perverting them.
Women supposed to be emotionally overwrought. Men supposed to be wise,
self-controlled and rational.
Jason accuses Medea of being addicted to the marriage bed (oh that Jason)
Jason is overly rational – lacks human emotion
Jason breaks his vows – shows him as a pathetic hero, unmanly. Importance on
loyalty related to phalanx warfare?
Diapthero – to weaken, be seduced, take bribes, etc. To give in. Jason expects
Medea to, but she does not.
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Euripides wrote the Medea in response to Pericles’s citizenship laws (2
Athenian parents necessary for Athenian citizenship), Euripides was exploring
tensions surrounding the law.
Themes: the need to acknowledge all aspects of human nature