Avernus

Dude(tte)! The Bacchae is The Best Greek Play Ever. The only one that still stands up properly as a good piece of drama that I've done. Though I don't get your pro-Pentheus stance - he shouldn't have banned the Dionysiac worship in the first place, else he'd have been fine. ESPECIALLY in Dionysus' home town, for crying out loud! I don't really sympathise with him much, you see...

(please excuse disjointed ramblings, but I LIKE Bacchae, and me finding a piece of classical literature I like gets me started on long ramblingnesses...)

He had to ban Dionysiac worship! Because Dionysiac religion, to which the dissolution of social bonds is integral, is inimical to the concept of autocratic monarchy! No absolute monarch, or for that matter any other representative of government, can allow Dionysiac religion!

And in any case, Dionysus was his fricking *cousin*. If your cousin started saying he was a god, would you worship him??

Umm, Dionysus is A GOD. Even if it's detrimental to your autocratic power, you don't turn down a god - these are "the times of yore", there's no grounds for agnosticism presented in the context of the Bacchae (indeed, the play is superficially pro-Dionysus, and for the purposes of this...friendly debate, delving into the message behind the play doesn't seem totally relevant (I hope, because I probably don't understand it! ^_^)), therefore we assume (despite Pentheus' impiety) that the gods are still revered appropriately. Pentheus has been repeatedly told Dionysus is divine, yet he dismisses it (note 242-3, the sneering tone of "they say this Dionysus is a god...") and even denies Semele's immolation, as does Agaue, out of loss of power. Despite the warnings of "The Stranger" he still yet forbids it, until the tables are turned. Why would I be pro-Pentheus when his motives are born out of fear and jealousy?

The evidence in Plutarch and fragmentary inscriptions suggests that the Bacchic rituals were *always* exclusively female, according to Dodds' introduction. The fact that Pentheus cannot control the Bacchic ritual due to his sex is an underlying motive - despite the apparent "hypnosis" by the Stranger, his keenness to don women's clothing and attend the rituals speaks more of his desire to understand and control this foreign threat rather than any undermining of autocratic power. Surely he has only exacerbated the situation by outright banning of the Dionysiac revels, thus further undermining his rule? Although this may only serve as aitiology for the future acceptance of Dionysian revelry into mainstream culture...

Damn, you really got me rambling. I'm supposed to be having an early night, curse you!

'the play is superficially pro-Dionysus'

Bollocks!

*coughs* Look, I'm not saying Pentheus is nice. I'm not saying he's a laudable character. Hell, when have you *ever* known me to like laudable characters? But I am saying that the play grows increasingly sympathetic towards Pentheus and anti-Dionysian as it goes on. Look at the situation Cadmus and Agaue are left in at the end - is there *any* way in which either of them deserve what Dionysus does to them? And even if they *did*, then, as Cadmus puts it, 'gods should not be like men in vindictiveness.'

Take the line from the Bellerophon - 'if the gods do something shameful, they are not gods.' Half the point of Euripides' religious questioning is to show that anthropomorphic gods are not gods at all - their morals cannot and should not be the pattern for humans. Humans are superior to gods simply because they have respect for human life. Dionysus doesn't care whether he destroys Agaue and Cadmus in order to destroy Pentheus - he only cares for his own slighted pride. That's no sort of behaviour for a true god.

This is not a play about Pentheus' foolishness in repressing Dionysiac worship, no matter what Dodds' otherwise excellent commentary may have told you. Pentheus could not have acted otherwise than he did, and Dionysus' behaviour was not suitable for a deity. Dionysus tricks Pentheus in a way that might be reasonable in a human, but in a god is nothing more than a sadistic game of cat and mouse. I don't see how one can possibly sympathise with Dionysus (or any god, for that matter) rather than Pentheus. Euripides was obviously guiding our sympathies towards Pentheus - just look at the pathetic picture he paints of Pentheus' death, reaching out to touch his mother's cheek and imploring her to recognise him. Or look at Cadmus' lament for Pentheus, 'the strength of my house', who will no longer 'sit on my lap and touch my beard and say, 'grandfather, who has hurt you?''.

So...yeah. Pentheus in no way an unflawed character, in fact very much the reverse. But he was not wrong in refusing the worship of Dionysus, and by the end of the play our sympathies are clearly meant to rest with him and his family.

Okay, okay, I bow to your superior knowledge of the Bacchae.

I have a twisted mind - our Greek class always found Pentheus' death vaguely funny - stretching out with arms that were no longer there and all that. But now I'm digressing 'cos you got me beat... X_X

(goes off to sulk in intellectual inferiority and write boring Aeneid essay...roll on next term...)