MEDEA AND THE BACCHAE

Medea and the Bacchae

Medea and the Bacchae

Introduction

Euripides was the first one who consciously attempted to penetrate the secrets of the female soul, which were unknown before. If we analyze the development of the evil action, however, the male characters according to Euripides are almost always being selfish, mean and evil. But he tried to find out the evil among women through some of his writing including The Bacchae and Medea. The paper compares and contrasts the plays Medea and The Bacchae. It analyses the relationship among the characters and examples from the Greek times.

The Bacchae

The Bacchae is a Greek tragedy by Euripides. The drama chronicles the return of the god Dionysus to Thebes, and his vengeance of King Pentheus who refuses to acknowledge his cult. The term Bacchante (or maenad) refers to women who worshiped Dionysus (referring to another name of the god, Bacchus, became Bacchus in Roman mythology) (Calame,2001,97-111).

The relationship among the characters shows the lust for the political power and domination. Zeus shared the deadly layer of Semele, daughter of the king of Thebes, Cadmus. As a result of the jealousy of Hera, Zeus thunders Semele, but he pulled his son from the womb of its mother, and hacking the thigh, it sews the child to carry her pregnancy to term. Dionysus then spent his childhood and adolescence in Lydia, where he was worshiped. He then returned, in the guise of a mortal accompanied by Bacchantes, to Thebes, his birthplace, where he will meet with hostility from the family. He seeks revenge of Pentheus, who refuse to recognize and honor him as a god, and all those who deny that he was born of Zeus. He instantly makes women crazy of the city, and carried with it and takes them into the forest, where they engaged in orgiastic cult of Dionysus. Among them is Agave, the mother of Pentheus. Cadmus then decides to grant the requested worship, not because he is convinced of his divinity but and honor and interest of his family. The seer Tiresias also found that this attitude is the safest and most diplomatic (Calame,2001,97-111).

Pentheus, Dionysus's cousin, discovered the situation and decided to put this right because his grandfather had committed the government of the city. He imprisoned abroad, which no resistance, and women that accompany it. The Bacchae are then pushed to madness by god; they destroy and kill anything that gets in their way. The stranger, miraculously freed, offers Pentheus, that he got into hiding, dressed as a Bacchante, on Mount Cithaeron to see for himself the Dionysian orgies, convinced that it is forbidden pleasures that attract women into the mountains. It accepts and ridiculed by wearing women's clothes. By going to the mountain, he is discovered by the Bacchae which reduce it to pieces on the order of Dionysus, Agave at their head. It was only after the head back in triumph to the palace of Pentheus she realizes with horror that she killed her own ...