POETRY AND MYSTERIES: EURIPIDES’ BACCHAE AND THE DIONYSIAC RITES

Jens Holzhausen, Free University of Berlin

24grammata.com/ free ebook
[download]

The mysteries of Dionysus have been discussed so much that nobody will expect from me either striking novelties or a complete knowledge of what has been written about them. In this paper I shall therefore restrict myself to examining the limited question of whether the Bacchae, the tragedy written by Euripides in his Macedonian exile in about 407 B.C., can be considered as evidence for these mysteries. The clearest support for this point of view has been given by the most recent commentator on the play, Richard Seaford: “Of the fifth-century evidence for the Dionysiac mysteries the most important is the Bacchae itself” and “In his Bacchae Euripides dramatized the aition of the Dionysiac mysteries at Thebes.”1 Plutarch would have interpreted the Bacchae in the same way as Seaford. He refers to a source which explains the partiality of Alexander the Great’s mother for snakes (vit. Alex. 2):

24grammata.com/ free ebook
[download]