Βάκχαι
Bacchae
Euripides · Produced posthumously at the City Dionysia, 405 BC, by Euripides the younger · first prize
Dionysus comes to Thebes to prove he is a god. King Pentheus refuses to believe it, spies on the god’s women on the mountain, and is torn apart by his own mother.
Persons, in order of appearance
- Δι.Dionysus
- Χο.Chorus
- Τε.Teiresias
- Κα.Cadmus
- Πε.Pentheus
- Θε.Servant
- Αγγ.Messenger
- Αγγ. ΒSecond Messenger
- Αγα.Agave
Translations
- T. A. Buckleyprose · 1850 · aligned by line · with Murray's Greek
- A. S. Wayverse · 1912 · aligned by speech · with Murray's Greek
- Buckley, rev. Sens & Nagy (Kosmos Society)prose · aligned by speech · with Diggle's Greek
- Ian Johnston (VIU)verse · aligned by speech · with Diggle's Greek
- Gilbert Murrayverse · aligned by speech · with Murray's Greek
Greek texts
Cite as Eur. Ba. 1–1392
Full synopsis (tells the ending)
Dionysus has come to Thebes as a young man to establish his worship in the city of his mother Semele, whose sisters deny that he is Zeus's son. The women of Thebes are already on the mountain in his rites. Pentheus, the young king, has the stranger arrested. The stranger, freed, talks him into going to the mountain dressed as a woman to spy on them. The women, his mother Agave first, tear him apart. Agave comes home carrying his head as a lion's, and her father Cadmus brings her back to herself. Dionysus appears, exiles Agave and her sisters, and tells Cadmus and his wife Harmonia they will become snakes.
Drawing: Line drawing after Karl Reichhold's 1904 drawing of the Lenaia stamnos by the Dinos Painter, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81674 (Furtwängler and Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei I, Taf. 37); cut out and retraced.