Chapter Ten, Lecture Two

Chapter Ten, Lecture Two

Dionysus in Thebes

Tragedy

Dionysus in Thebes

• Best known story of resistance to the Dionysus told by Eurpides in his tragedy, the Bacchae

• Dionysus in Thebes to spread his cult and to punish the blaspheme against his mother, Semelê, by her sisters Antonoë and Agavê

Dionysus in Thebes

• The women and others are already in the mountains

• The king, Pentheus, will oppose the cult

• Even old Tiresias and Cadmus have put on the fawn skins and are going out

• Dionysus, in disguise, is brought to Pentheus by soldiers

Dionysus in Thebes

• Pentheus thinks that he is only a priest of Dionysus and taunts him.

• Dionysus is led away; the palace is destroyed by an earthquake and Dionysus comes back

• A report comes in about miracles and wonders being performed in the mountains by the Maenads

Dionysus in Thebes

• Pentheus is about to go out with a force to capture the women, but Dionysus casts a spell over him

• Pentheus now wants to see the “orgies” for himself

• Dionysus helps disguise Pentheus as a woman and leads him away

Dionysus in Thebes

• A messenger reports that Pentheus was killed by the Bacchantes– He was pulled down from a tree and torn to

pieces– His own mother, Agavê, pulled off his head

• Agavê comes on stage with the head on her thyrsus

• She is shown by Cadmus what she has done

Dionysus’s Journey to the Land of the Dead

Journey to the Land of the Dead

• Dionysus goes to the underworld to release his mother, who had died

• Shown the way by a shepherd from Argos

• Near the swamp of Lerna

• Adorned the shepherd’s grave with a wooden phallus

• The two become immortal and live in Olympus

Observations: Myths of Dionysus

Observations

• Dio –

• -nysos– son?– Nysa– Another name for Dionysus (Hence Nysai)

Observations

• Eastern origins not doubted

• Names– Semelê < Zemelô– Thyrsus < Hittite tuwarsa (vine) ?– Dionysus = Lydian bakivali ?

• Myths– From Thrace or Phrygia and Lydia

Observations

• A historical fact– A new cult being brought into Greece around

800 BC ?– But he’s in Homer and Linear B tablets

• Etiological for viticulture ?

Observations

• Myths contain many folktale elements– Hasty wish– Vengeful stepmother– “portion of the kingdom” (Proetus and

Melampus)– Short-sighted fool

Observations

• Deeper meaning begins with the fact he is god of fertility, preserved in epithets– he of the trees– god of blossoms– he of the black goatskin– followers called boukoloi (“bullherders”)– god of “wet” vegetation

Observations

• A dying fertility god, like Dumuzi– Perhaps originally the consort of Semelê

(Zemelô)

• Resistance to his cult– But even devotees can be destroyed

• Always depicted as a new and foreign god– Reflects perhaps Greek aversion to violence

and irrationality

The Cult of Dionysus


• Different from other cults– Olympians remote and known through their

external works– Dionysus presence direct and personal


• “the god who comes”

• enthousiasmos

• ekstatis

• lysios

• sparagmos

• ômophagia


• Cult appealed especially to women• Reflection of and reaction to their

submissive social role?• Dionysus eventually tamed and give a

civic role– Romans suppressed it– Christians thought Dionysus was a demon,

but elements of his cult are similar to Christian practices and thinking

Dionysus, God of the Theater


• Tragedies performed at the Lenea– “Festival of the Maenads (those of the wine

vat)

• Tragedies also at the City Dionysia– Three days of tragedies– Three on each day– Each day ends with one satyr play


• The relationship between theater and the cult of Dionysus is murky

• Three main theories– Emerged from dithyramb (Aristotle)– Emerged from ritual performances

(anthological) – Emerged from a lament for the dead hero


• Perhaps a better explanation sees it as a literary invention and political need– Aristotle: Thespis first added the actor to a

choral song. This is the innovation to the old form

– Aeschylus added a second actor, and Sophocles the third and final


• This innovation (Thespis) made around the time of Pisistratus (530 BC)

• Pisistratus reorganized the old Dionysus festival and made it available to the dêmos of Athens– A citywide “drinking party” to celebrate the

new order of things


• Origins of comedy even more obscure– Perhaps much older

• Original Dionysiac kômos given dramatic elements – plot, setting, actors– Aristophanes the major source of information

about the earliest forms of comedy

End

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Chapter Ten, Lecture Two