![]() The play reads like a mysterious rite that should have an official mythological title- The Sacrifice of the Stern King. Disguised as a female worshiper, ostensibly to spy on the reveling women, he is torn to pieces by the frenzied women, including finally his own mother. This draws him into combat with a disguised Dionysus himself, who eventually leads the proud puritan to his doom. The dramatic conflict centers on Pentheus, king of the city and grandson of its founder, who wants to suppress the outbreak of Bacchic worship among the city’s women. In Euripides’s drama, the frenzy is Dionysus’s revenge on the women of Thebes for insulting his mother by claiming that she lied when she said that Zeus was his father. It did, in that both works tell the story of a city visited by Dionysian frenzy. ![]() ![]() ![]() I wanted to read The Bacchae because I had a sense that it had something to do with Dostoevsky’s Demons, which I recently finished. ![]()
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