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Some Aspects of Seeing in Euripides‘ Bacchae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Justina Gregory
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Extract

Absent from Thebes at the first outbreak of Bacchic excitement, King Pentheus returns in haste, deeply troubled by reports of revelry on Mount Cithaeron and accounts of the captivating stranger who has led the Theban women astray (Ba. 212–38). When he meets the stranger he asks him about the appearance of the god (469,477) and the features of the rites (471) and complains that he cannot see the divinity who, the stranger assures him, is right at hand (500,502). Pentheus manifests great eagerness to see the Bacchantes with his own eyes, and it is by playing on this desire that the stranger lures him to Cithaeron and his death (810ff.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , April 1985 , pp. 23 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

NOTES

1. Euripides Restitutus (Hamburg, 1844), ii. p. 551Google Scholar.

2. Euripides, Bacchae (Oxford, 1960 2), p. xliiiGoogle Scholar.

3. YCS 22 (1972), 71Google Scholar.

4. Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' Bacchae (Princeton, 1982), pp. 204–5Google Scholar.

5. The Bacchae of Euripides (Cambridge, 1900 4), p. lxiiGoogle Scholar.

6. Euripides: Les Bacchantes (Paris, 1972), i. p. 37Google Scholar.

7. Lines 45–6, 263, 325, 370–5, 490, 502, 516–18, 625–36, 794–5, 1080–1, 1255, 1293.

8. Cf. Dawe, R. D., HSCP 72 (1968), 89–123Google Scholar; and Bremer, J. M., Hamartia: Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam, 1969)Google Scholar. Suzanne Said reviews the history of hamartia in La faute tragique (Paris, 1978), pp. 9—16Google Scholar.

9. Cf. Freedman, A. M., Kaplan, H. I., and Sadock, B. J., Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry-III (Baltimore, 1960), ii. pp. 1770–82Google Scholar.

10. Apollod. 3.6.7.

11. Cf. Dover, K. J., Arethusa 6 (1973), 59Google Scholar.

12. Cf. Thuc. 1.6 on nakedness among Greeks and barbarians and Dissoi Logoi 2.4–16 on varying standards of sexual ethics.

13. For the connection between visual transgressions and blinding see Déonna, W., Le symbolisme de l'oeil (Paris, 1965), pp. 159–78Google Scholar and Esser, A., Das Antlitz der Blindheit in der Antike (Leiden, 1961), pp. 155–9Google Scholar.

14. Buxton, R. G. A., JHS 100 (1980), 22–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar discusses the mythical context of Oedipus' act. For a psychoanalytic interpretation see Devereux, G., JHS 93 (1973), 36–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. On similarities between the two cults see Seaford, R., CQ 31 (1981), 252–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Ancient references to the distinctions between the two grades are cited in Burkert, W., Homo Necans (Berlin and New York, 1972), p. 292 n. 1Google Scholar. Further discussion of the distinctions by Dowden, K., Rev. de l'Histoire des Religions 197 (1980), 410–27Google Scholar.

17. On the ἂρρητα cf. Hdt. 5.135, Ba. 472, Dem. Orat. 59.73, and, in general, Richardson, N. J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford, 1974), pp. 304–8Google Scholar.

18. HSCP 53 (1942), 1–36Google Scholar.

19. Cf. II. 20.131, Od. 16.161.

20. Pease, op. cit.

21. For the religious associations of lightning see Burkert, , Glotta 39 (1961), 208–13Google Scholar.

22. A point made by Burnett, A. P., CP 65 (1970), 25Google Scholar.

23. Aesch. Pers. 266; Soph. O.T. 6, Track. 747; Eur. Supp. 684, I.T 901. On the special painfulness of autopsy see Soph. O.T. 1238 and Eur. Tro. 481–2.

24. For a king's concern for the virtue of the families in his household cf. Od. 20.9–16; for the association of women's drinking with promiscuity, Dem. Orat. 59.24; for the connection between Dionysus and Aphrodite, , Ba. 402–5Google Scholar (the chorus) and 773–4 (the messenger), as well as Ion 550–5; for suspicion about rites held by night, Hipp. 106.

25. The many questions raised by the ‘palace miracle’ are reviewed by Castellani, V., TAP A 106 (1976), 61–83Google Scholar. Close to my own interpretation of the scene is Rohdich, H., Die euripideische Tragödie (Heidelberg, 1968), pp. 135–6Google Scholar.

26. Agaue, like her son an involuntary convert to the worship of Dionysus, has a similar double vision when she perceives Pentheus at once as a ‘climbing beast’ and as a man who can reveal secrets (1107–9).

27. These divergences are well brought out by Segal (above n. 4), pp. 231–2.