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Bacchae and Antigone

Bacchae and Antigone. Man’s manifold strengths and weaknesses. Men’s action(s) and Dionysus’ reaction(s). He ‘ revolts against divinity, in me; thrusts me from his offerings; forgets my name in his prayers’ (45-47).

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Bacchae and Antigone

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  1. Bacchae and Antigone Man’s manifold strengths and weaknesses

  2. Men’s action(s) and Dionysus’ reaction(s) • He ‘revolts against divinity, in me; thrusts me from his offerings; forgets my name in his prayers’ (45-47). • ‘Therefore, I shall prove to him and every man in Thebes that I am god indeed’ (47-48). • But if the men in Thebes attempt to force my Bacchae from the mountainside by threat of arms, I shall marshal my Maenads and take the field’ (51-53).

  3. Dionysus’ Birth: The Religious View ‘So his mother bore him once in labor bitter; Lightning-struck, forced by fire that flared from Zeus, consumed, she died, untimely torn, in Childbed dead by blow of light! Of light the son Was born! Zeus it was who saved his son; with speed Outrunning mortal eye, bore him to a private place, Bound the boy with clasps of gold; in his thigh as in a Womb, concealed his son from Hera’s eyes’ (88-99)

  4. Wisdom vs. Foolishness • Wisdom is conformity to customs and traditions. • Wisdom is prudence. • Wisdom is ‘seeing,’ foolishness is blindness. • Wisdom is associated with rational thinking, foolishness with madness and glibness. • Wisdom is avoidance of hubris, the will to ‘outrange the limits of man.’ (397)

  5. Sophocles’ Antigone: ‘Ode to Man’ (332-375) Man is ‘the most wonderful of the many wonders’ of the earth

  6. Human Achievements I • He crosses the sea by taming the wind and the swelling waves. • He plows the earth year after year. • He ‘snares’ birds, ‘takes prisoner’ savage beasts and fish. • His contrivances make him master of domesticated and wild beasts. • He brings the horse to ‘bend underneath the yoke’ as well as the bull.

  7. Human Achievements II • He has taught himself speech, thought, ‘and the tempers that go with city living.’ • He knows how to avoid the frost and the rain. • ‘He has a way against everything, and he faces nothing that is to come without contrivance.’ • He escapes diseases. • ‘With some sort of cunning, inventive beyond all expectation’ he does sometimes evil and sometimes good.

  8. A Human Limitation, and a Word of Caution ‘Only against death can [man] call on no means Of escape.’ ‘If he honors the laws of the earth, and the justice of the gods …high is his city; no city has he with whom dwells dishonor prompted by recklessness. He who is so, may he never share my hearth! May he never think my thoughts!’

  9. Rationalizing Dionysus’ Birth ‘When Zeus rescued from the thunderbolt his infant son, he brought him to Olympus. Hera, however, plotted at heart to hurl the child from heaven. Like the god he is, Zeus countered her. Breaking off a tiny fragment of that Ether which surrounds the world, he molded from it a dummy Dionysus. This he showed (homeron) to Hera, but with Time men garbled the word and said that Dionysus had been Sewed into the thigh (en meroi) of Zeus. This was their story, Whereas, in fact, Zeus showed the dummy to Hera and Gave it as hostage for his son.’ (Bacchae 288-298)

  10. Who is Dionysus in Pentheus’ view? • A foreigner from Lydia • A charlatan magician with long yellow curls smelling of perfumes, with flushed cheeks and the spells of Aphrodite in his eyes • He spends his days and nights with women and girls. • An impostor, who claims falsely that he is the son of Zeus and who must be brought underneath the palace’s roof and have his head cut off • An effeminate stranger ‘who infects our women with this strange disease and pollutes our beds’ (Bacchae 354-355)

  11. What does Dionysiac religion involve in Pentheus’ view? • Women dance in mock ecstasies. They are ‘like animals.’ (228) • ‘In their midst stand bowls brimming with wine.’ (221) • ‘And then, one by one, the women wander off to serve the lusts of men. Priestesses of Bacchus they claim they are, but it’s really Aphrodite they adore.’ (222-225)

  12. Civic Authority on Display • Pentheus has ‘captured’ and imprisoned some of the women. • The rest of them will be ‘hunted down.’ • Soon all of them will be ‘trapped in iron nets.’ • ‘Go, someone, this instant, to the place where this prophet prophesies. Pry it open with crowbars,heave it over, upside down; demolish everything you see. Throw his fillets out to the wind and weather.’ (347-349)

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