Euripides (Donne)/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
THE BACCHANALS.
"Over wide streams and mountains great we went,
And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy-tent,
Onward the tiger and the leopard pants
With Asian elephants:
We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing,
A-conquering!
Bacchus, young Bacchus! good or ill betide,
We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide:
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
To our wild minstrelsy."
This is the only extant Greek tragedy connected with the wanderings and worship of the wine-god, at whose festivals the Greek theatres were open, and from song and dance in whose honour the drama of Greece derived its origin. The subject, when Euripides took it up, was not new to the stage. Among the dramas ascribed to Thespis, one was entitled "Pentheus;" and another by him, "The Bachelors," may have treated of Lycurgus, also a vehement opposer of Bacchic rites. Æschylus exhibited two trilogies, in which Pentheus and Lycurgus were the principal characters. The serene muse of Sophocles appears to have avoided such exciting themes.
"The Bacchanals" was not brought out in the lifetime of Euripides. It was exhibited by a younger man of the same name, his son or his nephew. If it were, as it is supposed to have been, the work of one far advanced in years, it displays no trace of declining powers, and, in that respect, is on a par with the Sophoclean "Œdipus at Colonos." From its scenes and subject it was probably composed after Euripides had quitted Athens; and there may have been reasons for his writing this tragedy at Pella, as a compliment to his host and patron Archelaus. The play, indeed, was well suited to the genius of the land, and the people before whom it was represented. Northern Greece, Macedonia, and the adjoining districts, were devout worshippers of Bacchus, both in faith and practice. Alexander's "captains and colonels and knights at arms" astonished the more sober Asiatics by their capacity for deep potations. The women of Thrace, Thessaly, and Macedonia, when the purple vintage was garnered, and the vats overflowed with red juice, celebrated harvest-home by putting on ivy-chaplets and tunics made of lion or deer skins, by brandishing the thyrsus, and by wild and violent dances. Olympias, the mother of Alexander, was a Bacchantè, and at certain seasons of the year whirled around the altars of the god, with snakes depending from her girdle and her hair. In this picturesque, if rather savage dress, she is said to have won the heart of King Philip, himself a most loyal subject of the jovial deity.
The poet of "The Bacchanals," now a voluntary exile at Pella, seems to have reinvigorated himself under a new sky, and to exult in his freedom. He had gone from a land tamed and domesticated by the hand of man, to a land in which nature was still imperfectly subdued. In the place of vineyards, oliveyards, and gardens, forests and mountains greeted his eyes. Broad rivers were in the room of the narrow and uncertain streams that watered Attica. The snows on Mount Parnes disappeared when the sun rode in Cancer; but they never departed from the sides and summits of Ossa and Olympus. There is a Salvator-like grandeur in the scenery described in "The Bacchanals." The action of the play lies indeed in Bœotia; but, instead of loamy fields and sluggish rivers, we are placed among rocks where the eagle builds her eyrie, or among forests tenanted by the wolf and bear.
The religious elements in "The Bacchanals" are worth noticing, since they differ widely from those commonly found in other plays of its author. The presiding god is a terrible as well as a powerful being. He admits of no half-service; he cannot abide sceptics; he makes short work with opponents. All such free and easy dealing with the gods as are met with in "The Phrenzy of Hercules" or the "Electra" disappears. Perhaps the Macedonians were not sufficiently civilised to relish tampering with old beliefs. There may also have been a change in the feelings of the aged poet himself. He may have said to himself, "What has it profited me to have so long striven to make others see more clearly? Would it not have been wiser to do as my friend Sophocles has ever done, and view both gods and social relations with the eyes of the vulgar?" Unimpaired as his mental force must have been for him to write such a tragedy as "The Bacchanals," his bodily strength may have been touched by years. We are not told whether either of his wives accompanied him to Pella; if neither of them were with him, there was the less occasion for philosophy. Whatever the cause may have been, there is more faith than doubt or speculation to be found in this tragedy.
The action of "The Bacchanals" is laid in a remote age, and there is an Oriental quite as much as a Greek savour in the poetry. Cadmus, who has ceded the Theban sceptre to his grandson Pentheus, was by birth a Phœnician, not a Bœotian. He lived before the Greek Argo had rushed through the blue Symplegades to the Colchian strand. He is beyond recorded time; he "antiquates" common "antiquity." His intercourse with the gods has been intimate but not happy. Jupiter had taken a fancy to his sister Europa, and to one of his daughters—and by her, Semele, he is, though long unaware of it, grandfather to Bacchus.
When the play opens, all Thebes—its male population, at least—is perplexed in the extreme. The women are all gone mad: they are off to the mountains, and many of them have taken their children with them; for their customary suits they have donned fawn-skins; they brandish poles wreathed with ivy: shouting and singing, dancing and leaping, they scour the plains, climb the hills, and scare the fox and the wild cat from their holes. From this sudden mania neither age nor rank is free: sober housewives are themselves doing what a few days before they would have blushed to see done by others. Even the Queen Agavè and her attendant ladies are swept into the vortex, and prance like so many peasant girls at a wake.
The cause of this strange and unseemly revel is the appearance in Bœotia of a young man of handsome presence, with flowing locks like grape-bunches, and a delicate yet somewhat ruddy visage. His errand to Thebes is a strange one. He pretends to be a native of that city; he points to a charred mound of earth as his mother's grave, and, wondrous to relate, since he first visited it, the blackened turf is covered and canopied over with a luxuriant vine! He began by claiming near kinship "with the royal house of Cadmus; and because the female members scoffed at his pretensions, he drives them insane. His retinue are as strange as his errand. It is composed of dark-eyed swarthy women, such as might be seen in the streets of Tyre and Sidon celebrating the feast of Astartè with dance and song. The dull, yet by no means sober, Bœotians cannot tell what to make of these eccentric visitors. Some think that the magistrates—the Bœotarchs—should clap them into the town jail: but how to catch, and, when caught, how to keep, these wild damsels, is the difficulty; for they are as slippery to handle as the eels in Lake Copaïs, and as fierce as the lynxes that swarm on Mount Cithæron. Never had Thebes, since Amphion had drawn the stones of its walls together by his minstrelsy, been in such perturbation.
Who the young stranger with grape-bunch locks is, the audience are told by himself in the prologue. He is what he pretends to be, the son of Jupiter and Semele. He has travelled far before he came to Thebes to establish his rites and claim his kindred. "I have left," he says,
"The golden Lydian shores,
The Phrygian and the Persian sun-seared plains,
And Bactria's walls; the Medes' wild wintry land
Have passed, and Araby the blest; and all
Of Asia that along the salt-sea coast
Lifts up her high- towered cities, where the Greeks,
With the Barbarians mingled, dwell in peace."[1]
Hitherto, wherever I have come, mankind has acknowledged me a god: the first opposition I have met with is in this, the first Hellenic town I have entered:—
"But here, where least beseemed, my mother's sisters
Vowed Dionysus was no son of Jove;
That Semelè, by mortal paramour won,
Belied great Jove as author of her sin;
'Twas but old Cadmus' craft: hence Jove in wrath
Struck dead the bold usurper of his bed."
In requital for such usage, he has goaded all the women of Thebes into frenzy:—
"There's not a woman of old Cadmus' race
But I have maddened from her quiet house;
Unseemly mingled with the sons of Thebes,
On the roofless rocks 'neath the pale pines they sit."
Cadmus the king, and Tiresias the seer, well knowing that Bacchus is really what he assumes to be—after a little hesitation about their novel attire in fawn-skins, their ivy-crown, and thyrsus, determine to join the Bacchanal rout; and Tiresias, as the king's ghostly confessor, preaches to him the following doctrine, sound indeed in itself, but uncommon in Euripidean drama:—
"No wile, no paltering with the deities.
The ancestral faith, coeval with our race,
No subtle reasoning, if it soar aloft,
Even to the height of wisdom, can o'erthrow."
Their purpose, however, to speed at once to the mountains, is stayed by the entrance of Pentheus, who has been absent from home, but has come back, in hot haste, on hearing of these strange and evil doings in his city. He will crush, he will stamp out, this pestilent new religion—a religion having in it quite as much of Venus as of Bacchus. Gyves and the prison-house shall be the portion of these wild women; and as for that wizard from the land of Lydia,—
"If I catch him 'neath this roof, I'll silence
The beatings of his thyrsus, stay his locks'
Wild tossing, from his body severing his head."
As for his grandsire, and the "blind prophet" his companion, he cannot marvel enough at their folly; nay, wroth as he is, he can scarcely help laughing at their fawn-skin robes. "However," he proceeds, "I know which of you two fatuous old men is most in fault, and I will take such order with him as shall spoil his prophecies for some time to come:—
"Some one go;
The seats from which he spies the flight of birds,
False augur, with the iron forks o'erthrow,
Scattering in wild confusion all abroad,
And cast his chaplets to the winds and storms."
The elders implore him to cease from his blasphemies: and Cadmus, rather prudently than honestly, counsels him to profess faith in the new deity, if for no other reason, yet for the credit of the family:—
"Even if, as thou declar'st, he were no God,
Call thou him God. It were a splendid falsehood
If Semele be thought t' have borne a God."
But Pentheus spurns this accommodating advice, and Cadmus and Tiresias wend their way to the Bacchanal camp on the mountains. The Chorus takes up the charge of blasphemy, and hints at the end awaiting the impious king:—
"Of tongue unbridled, without awe,
Of madness spurning holy law,
Sorrow is the heaven-doomed close:
But the life of calm repose,
And modest reverence, holds her state,
Unbroken by disturbing fate;
And knits whole houses in the tie
Of sweet domestic harmony.
Beyond the range of mortal eyes
'Tis not wisdom to be wise."
The wish of Pentheus to have in his power the deluder of the Theban women is soon gratified. Bacchus, in a comely human form, is brought manacled before him. The king, thinking that now he cannot escape, leisurely contemplates the prisoner, and is greatly struck by his appearance:—
"There's beauty, stranger! woman-witching beauty
(Therefore thou art in Thebes) in thy soft form;
Thy fine bright hair, not coarse like the hard athletes,
Is mantling o'er thy cheek warm with desire;
And carefully thou hast cherished thy white skin;
Not in the sun's soft beams, but in cool shade,
Wooing soft Aphroditè with thy loveliness."
Then follows a close examination of the fair-visaged sorcerer about his race, his orgies, and his purpose in coming to Thebes, and at the end of it he is sent off to the "royal stable,"—
"That he may sit in midnight gloom profound:
There lead thy dance! But those thou hast hither led,
Thy guilt's accomplices, we'll sell for slaves;
Or, silencing their noise and beating drums,
As handmaids to the distaff set them down."
Bacchus does not long remain in the dark stable. He appears, "a god-confest," to his worshippers, who are prostrate on the ground, alarmed by the destruction of the palace of Pentheus. They ask how he obtained his freedom; he replies:—
"Myself, myself delivered—with ease and effort slight.
Cho. Thy hands, had he not bound them, in halters strong and tight?
Bac. 'Twas even then I mocked him, he thought me in his chain;
He touched me not, nor reached me, his idle thoughts were vain."
Unharmed, unshackled, he again stands before the incensed king. A messenger now arrives—a herdsman from the mountains—who reports that the Bacchanals have broken prison, have defied all attempts to recapture them, are again engaged in their revelries, and have ravaged all the villages and herds that came in their way from the plain to the hill-country. The drama now takes a new turn. Pentheus, his madness fast coming on, admits his late prisoner into his counsels. He will go and witness with his own eyes these hateful orgies: he cannot trust his officers to deal with them. "These women," he says, "without force of arms, I'll bring them in. Give me mine armour." Bacchus offers to be his guide, but tells him that his armour will betray him to the women. He must attire himself in Bacchanalian costume:—
"Pen. Lead on and swiftly. Let no time be lost.
Bac. But first enwrap thee in these linen robes.
Pen. What, will he of a man make me a woman?
Bac. Lest they should kill thee, seeing thee as a man."
Here is the true irony of tragedy. Pentheus, who has derided his grandsire and the holy prophet for their unseemly attire and senile folly,—Pentheus, who has threatened to behead the Lydian wizard, and had imprisoned his attendants, is himself persuaded by the god he so abhors to put on the garb of a Bacchanal, and in that guise to pass through the streets of Thebes. His eagerness to behold the Bacchantes makes him insensible to the indignity of the situation. He asks—
"What is the second portion of my dress?
Bac.Robes to thy feet, a bonnet on thy head;
A fawn-skin and a thyrsus in thy hand."
He takes for his guide to the mountains the handsome stranger whom he had so recently ordered to sit in darkness and prepare for death: he is even obsequious to him:—
"So let us on: I must go forth in arms,
Or follow the advice thou givest me."
Bacchus calls to his train, and gives his instructions to them how to deal with their prey, when they have him in the toils:—
"Women! this man is in our net; he goes
To find his just doom 'mid the Bacchanals.
Vengeance is ours. Bereave him first of sense;
Yet be his phrenzy slight. In his right mind
He never had put on a woman's dress;
But now, thus shaken in his mind, he'll wear it.
A laughing-stock I'll make him for all Thebes,
Led in a woman's dress through the wide city."
The Chorus respond to the summons of their divine leader in passionate and jubilant strains, and anticipate the doom of their persecuting foe:—
"Slow come, but come at length,
In their majestic strength,
Faithful and true, the avenging deities:
And chastening human folly
And the mad pride unholy,
Of those who to the gods Low not their knees.
For hidden still and mute,
As glides their printless foot,
Th' impious on their winding path they hound,
For it is ill to know,
Beyond the law's inexorable bound."
Mania now seizes on Pentheus; two suns he seems to see: a double Thebes: his guide appears to him a horned bull: he recognises among the Bacchic revellers Ino his kinswoman, and Agavè his mother.
The decorum of the Greek stage, or perhaps its imperfect means for representing groups and rapid action, precluded poets generally from bringing before an audience the catastrophe of tragic dramas. Accordingly, we do not see, but are told, by the usual messenger on such occasions, of the miserable end of the proud and impious Theban king. When Bacchus and his victim have climbed one of the spurs of Mount Cithæron, they come
"To a rock-walled glen, watered by a streamlet,
And shadowed o'er with pines: the Mœnads there
Sat, all their hands busy with pleasant toil.
And some the leafy thyrsus, that its ivy
Had dropped away, were garlanding anew:
Like fillies some, unharnessed from the yoke,
Chanted alternate all the Bacchic hymn."
But Pentheus cannot, from the level on which he has halted, see the whole Bacchante troop: he desires to mount on a bank or a tall tree, in order that
"Clearly he may behold their deeds of shame."
Then says the messenger,—
"A wonder then I saw that stranger do."
"He bent the stem of a tall ash-tree, and dragged it to earth till it was bent like a bow. He seated Penthens on a bough, and then let it rise up again, steadily and gently, so that my master should not fall as it mounted. Raised to this giddy height, 'tis true, he saw the women, but they too saw him, and speedily brought him down to the ground on which they were standing. But before they did so, the stranger had vanished, and a voice was heard from the heavens proclaiming in clear ringing tones:—
"Behold! I bring,
O maidens, him that you and me, our rites,
Our orgies laughed to scorn. Deal now with him
E'en as you list, and take a full revenge."
The presence of the god, though unseen, was announced by a column of bright flame reddening the sky, and an awful stillness fell on Cithæron and its dark pine-groves. A second shout proclaimed the deity, and the daughters of Cadmus sprang to their feet and rushed forth with the speed of doves on the wing. Down the torrent's bed, down from crag to crag they leaped—"mad with the god." Agavè led on her kin, and at first assailed the seat of Pentheus with idle weapons:—
"First heavy stones they hurled at him,
Climbing a rock in front: the branches of the ash
Darted at some: and some, like javelins,
Sent their sharp thyrsi shrilling through the air,
Pentheus their mark; but yet they struck him not,
His height still baffling all their eager wrath."
At length Agavè cried to her train, "Tear down the tree, and then we'll grasp the beast"—for her too had the god made blind—"that rides thereon." A thousand hands uprooted the tree, and Pentheus fell to the ground, well knowing that his end was near. It was his mother's hand that seized him first. In vain, dashing off his bonnet, he cried,—
"I am thy child, thine own, my mother."
She knew him not, and
"Caught him in her arms, seized his right hand,
And, with her feet set on his shrinking side,
Tore out the shoulder."
"Ino, Autonoe, and all the rest dismembered him; one bore away an arm, one a still sandalled foot: others rent open his sides: none went without some spoil of him whom, possessed by Bacchus, they deemed a lion's cub. With these bloody trophies of their prey they are now marching to Thebes: for my part, I fled at the sight of this dark tragedy."
The procession of the Bacchantes to the "seven-gated city" is ushered in by a choral song:—
"Dance and sing
In Bacchic ring;
Shout, shout the fate, the fate of gloom
Of Pentheus, from the dragon born;
He the woman's garb hath worn,
Following the bull, the harbinger that led him to his doom.
O ye Theban Bacchanals!
Attune ye now the hymn victorious,
The hymn all-glorious,
To the tear, and to the groan:
O game of glory!
To bathe the hands besprent and gory
In the blood of her own son."
Believing that she is bringing a lion's head to affix to the walls of the temple, she bears in her arms that of Pentheus, and in concert with the Chorus celebrates in song her ghastly triumph:—
"mmmmmAgavè.O ye Asian Bacchanals!
mmmmmChorus.Who is she on us who calls?
mmmmmAgavè.From the mountains, lo! we bear
To the palace gate
Our new-slain quarry fair.
mmmmmChorus.I see, I see, and on thy joy I wait.
mmmmmAgavè.Without a net, without a snare,
The lion's cub, I took him there."
But Cadmus soon undeceives her. He has been to Cithæron to collect the remains of his grandson which, the Bacchanals had left behind; and Agavè, restored to her senses, discerns in her gory burden the head of Pentheus her son. At the close of this fearful story Bacchus appears and informs Cadmus of his doom:—
"Thou, father of this earth-born race,
A dragon shalt become; thy wife shall take
A brutish form at last."
However, after cycles of time have gone by, Cadmus and his wife Harmonia shall resume their human forms, and be borne by Mars to the Isles of the Blest.
That a tragedy in some respects so un-Hellenic and so Oriental in its character should have been well known and highly estimated in the East, is not to be wondered at. Perhaps not the least memorable application of "The Bacchanals" to new circumstances is that mentioned by Plutarch in his 'Life of Crassus.' Great joy was there in the camp of Surenas, the Parthian general, one summer evening, for Crassus the Roman proconsul and the greater part of his army had been slain or taken prisoners, and the residue of the broken legions was hurrying back to the western bank of the Euphrates. Crassus himself lay a headless corpse. To gratify his victorious soldiers, Surenas exhibited a burlesque of a Roman triumph. Himself and his staff feasted in the commander's tent. To the door of the banqueting-hall the head of the Roman general was borne by a Greek actor from Tralles, who introduced it with some appropriate verses from "The Bacchanals" of Euripides. The bloody trophy was thrown at the feet of Surenas and his guests, and the player, seizing it in his hands, enacted the last scene—the frenzy of Agavè and the mutilation of Pentheus.
- ↑ The translated passages are all taken from Dean Milman's version of this drama.