This play begins with the impregnation of Semele, princess of Thebes, by Zeus. She boasts excessively about this act and results in the angering of her sisters and Hera, Zeus' wife. Hera, against Zeus' will, strikes Semele with a lightning bolt during her delivery "killing her. Dionysus, Zeus' son, is swept away and held in secret, all the while growing to become a powerful deity. .
Dionysus develops a religion based upon passion and ecstasy and travels all over Asia teaching his rites to men, forming the Asian Bacchae. Dionysus corrupts the women of Thebes and basically turns them into savages. The King of Thebes, Pentheus, denounces this new religion and plans to overtake this leader of the Bacchae. He captures the leader, but is deceived, and is persuaded to come take a closer look at this religion on the foothills of Thebe where the women congregate. He is dressed as a woman to disguise himself but is revealed by Dionysus and is savagely killed by the women including his mother Agave. .
The play ends with the exile of Cadmus, Dionysus' grandfather, and Agave along with her sisters. Dionysus takes power.
This play was rather exciting. It blended violence, trickery, and deceit and ultimately ended with the total demise of a city. The characters were well-balanced and unique in their own ways adding an extra bonus to the play for me. This is one of the better Greek plays I have read to date.
Euripides, at the end of his life, wrote the Bacchae while he was living in exile in Mecedonia. ... The Bacchae opens with Dionysus grieving over his mother's death. ... The Bacchae on the hills of Cithaeron danced in ecstasy. ... The stranger then cries to his Bacchae from within. ... "We shall march against the Bacchae." ...
In the Greek play Bacchae by Euripides, many of the characters, such as Dionysus, Cadmus, and Pentheus, have at least one of these aforementioned attributes, but the one with all those characteristics who would most likely be the tragic heroine of Bacchae is Agave. ... As the drama Bacchae nears its end, Agave's fate turns out to be more and more like that of a tragic heroine. ... Thus, taking this factor into account along with Agave's tragic flaw that causes her to lose her son and go from a respected noble down to a despicable and wretched exile, one would conclude that Agave t...
Bacchae were one of Euripides many works, this particular work deals with the different relationships of theater to various aspects of society, including its relationship to art itself. Dionysus is the principle subject of Bacchae, is the god of wine and revelry. ... In Bacchae, Dionysus possess a multitude of powers and can take a variety of forms as a god born of a mortal mother, Dionysus comes from both the Olympian heights which highlights him both inside and outside of the play. ... Dionysus was also a god of illusion, in which he makes several characters in the Bacchae see things that...
In the three plays, Agamemnon, Oedipus Rex, and The Bacchae, the Chorus is used for a variety of different reasons. ... The third and final play is The Bacchae. ... The Chorus in The Bacchae is used a lot for praising the gods and worshiping them. ... In The Bacchae, the chorus is more straightforward. ...
Sophocles and Euripides have provoked audiences for centuries to question what constitutes justice. While watching the various events onstage, spectators are led to ask if a definite form of justice exists in these plays, or whether notions of justice in the world are absurd. Furthermore, by present...
He rewarded those who would listen to him and he brought madness and death to those who refuse to accept his divinity, as seen in Euripides' play, Bacchae. ... As he spread the message of his worship, Dionysus is accompanied by a band of devotees, consisting mainly of women, the Bacchae. ...
Manipulation Manipulation, are there forces strong enough change a person in such a way that they might even forget about the people that they love? Well, in modern society this question has been answered in many different ways. In our everyday lives we hear about drugs manipulating people to th...
Mikey Ritualistic Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Mythology The ritual of sacrifice in Greek literature played a prominent role in societal influence, defining many aspects of their culture. Sacrifice was the foundation of moral concern, as well as an effective means of narrative development in Greek tragedy. The thematic reoccurrence of sacrifice in Greek literature reveals its symbolic importance. At a time when politics and religion were one in the same, sacrifice was crucial in regulating governmental issues. Tragedies manipulate rituals in order to portray a community's current sense of...