§ 3. Bakchai.
Euripides’ Bakchai is our chief authority concerning the fate of Pentheus[[169]], yet this writer did not by any means establish the details of the story. This was done long before Thespis may have assayed to dramatize the tragic episode[[170]] and before Aischylos wrote his Pentheus[[171]]. It is not probable that Euripides materially altered the accepted form of the myth, and there may be in his play a mixture of the traditional and Aischylean versions. Pentheus’ death, like the madness of the Thracian king Lykurgos, was inseparably connected with the advent of the Dionysiac worship. The series of victories won by the orgiastic god from the wild North was not bloodless; his coming was attended with opposition. In the end, however, his foes were annihilated or ruined, and the new joy brought in by the foreign god captivated a nation and made it his devout worshipper. Euripides could say little or nothing new touching the triumph of Dionysos over the king of Thebes, yet this tragedy, one of the most brilliant pieces of Greek literature, paints in glorious colours the history of the victory.
The events, as told by Euripides, are briefly as follows. Dionysos has arrived in Thebes from Lydia and the East, where he had already established his choirs of Bacchanals. Thebes was the first city to which he came, and here, where he least expected opposition, scepticism met him. The sisters of his mother Semele circulated the report that he was no god but an impostor. He forthwith drove the Kadmeian women maddened from their homes to wander in the mountains attired in the Dionysiac dress; the Bacchic craze spread further, and seized even the seer Teiresias and Kadmos, who with thyrsoi and fawn-skins joined the orgies. Pentheus, on hearing of these strange doings, appears and chides them both, and threatens to hunt the women from the mountains and punish the stranger who has made his family drunk with frenzy. At v. 434 Dionysos, bewitchingly beautiful, is led a prisoner before Pentheus, who orders him to be bound and cast into the royal stable. Soon afterward the walls are heard to crash in and flames burst forth in every direction (v. 593 ff.). The god, to be sure, is safe, and Pentheus is mocked and wild with anger, while the former bids him be quiet and subdue his anger. At this point a messenger arrives to recount the strange sights that had met his eyes on the mountains. Three bands of women, led by Autonoë, Agave, and Ino, had rushed upon his herd of cattle and torn them limb from limb, and afterward they washed the blood from their hands in a fountain made to flow by the god. In the face of these wonders he urges Pentheus to honour the latter, but the king will not brook this Bacchic insolence and threatens to sacrifice a hekatomb of women on Kithairon rather than propitiate the unwelcome visitor. Dionysos advises him not to kick against the pricks (v. 795); in a moment Pentheus’ attitude is seen to change; the secret power of the god is working on him; he will see the strange actions himself, and would rather forfeit a thousand-weight in gold than forgo the opportunity (v. 812). The linen chiton is at once provided, and Dionysos, who is to lead the way, directs the arrangement of the dress so that Pentheus shall not be mistaken for a man. After some scruples as to the figure he may make before his citizens he is anxious to be off. Once in the mountains giddiness comes upon him. He sees two suns, and a double Thebes, and twice seven gates; he declares that the god himself has taken on a bull’s form with horns (v. 918 ff.). Immediately thereafter he obtains the first glimpse of the women. There are Ino and his mother Agave. Then he worries lest he may not hold his thyrsos correctly. This shows his sad predicament too plainly. Dionysos has done his work; his vengeance on the recalcitrant Pentheus is at hand. At first the latter feels himself able to overturn the whole mountain and asks the advice of the god as to the best means of annihilating the troop. When violence is not recommended he suggests that he had best hide in a pine-tree to view the sight (v. 954). Nothing further is ever heard from the king’s own lips except in his death-cry reported by the messenger who had accompanied him. When they had reached the band in the glen, shadowed by pines (πεύκη, v. 1052), the thicket was so dense that Pentheus requested that he might be allowed to ascend the bank or climb a tree (v. 1061) in order to command the field. Dionysos bent a tree to the ground, placed the king upon the boughs and allowed it to rise again, and, turning to his devotees, pointed to their prey. Stones and darts are directed at Pentheus, and finally the tree is pulled up by main force and he falls an easy victim to the maddened women. Agave, heeding none of his cries, tears out a shoulder; Ino, Autonoë, and the rest help in dismembering the king. His mother fixed his head upon a thyrsos and led the troop on a wild dance over Kithairon, finally coming to the palace. Gradually freed from the insanity, she realized the enormity of her crime. Dionysos’ godhead was, however, established, and the house of Kadmos remained a terrible witness of his power. These are the harrowing details of the murder, and one cannot wonder that there are numerous vase paintings based on the tragedy.
There is a long list of vases that can for the most part be passed over with a mere reference. They are all, with perhaps one exception, later than 500 B.C. This means that the impetus for the tragedy in art was given largely by the tragic drama. The oldest painting is older than the Pentheus of Aischylos and cannot, therefore, be connected with his play. There may have been an earlier dramatization, such as that recorded of Thespis, which figured in this monument[[172]]. All the remaining paintings belong to the latter part of the fifth century B.C. and the fourth century B.C., and are, with one exception, of too general a character to be used as evidence for one of the tragedies[[173]]. On the Munich hydria it seems to me there are clear traces of the Bakchai, and this widely-known work is given here in fig. 11[[174]].
Fig. 11.
Pentheus, wearing chlamys, pilos, and boots, crouches, with a drawn sword in his right hand, in a thicket denoted by two trees. A maenad who appears to have just discovered him rushes into the hiding-place with a torch in her right hand[[175]]; she is dressed in a plain, Doric peplos. Another maenad, similarly dressed but having a fawn-skin over the left hand and a sword in the right, does not seem to have sighted Pentheus. A third, dressed like the first one, holding a tympanon in the left hand and a thyrsos in the right, approaches wholly unconcerned with the discovery of her companions. On the right is another group of three maenads all dressed alike and all in rapid motion. The first holds in either hand the quarters of a kid or roe. The second shoulders the thyrsos with her left hand and makes an ecstatic gesture with her right. The third one, in even more violent motion, swings her veil about her and rushes on towards the left.
It should be noted, to begin with, that the vase is a Lower Italy fabric of the fourth century B.C., and that there is therefore no chronological difficulty in placing it under the influence of the Bakchai. The troop of maenads is arranged symmetrically, an equal number being on each side of the central scene, and this suggests the chorus in the play. The striking feature is the introduction of the landscape; there is no doubt as to where the catastrophe occurs. The artist did not allow himself the licence of placing Pentheus in the tree, for this had been too grotesque a sight for the fourth-century painter. The frequent references to the thicket[[176]] and the protection it was or the inconvenience it caused, is happily brought out in the picture, but the poet has not been followed in details. Pentheus does not appear with the thyrsos, talaric chiton, and dishevelled hair, for the simple reason that he would have been indistinguishable from the maenads. As he appears in the painting the contrast is striking and the eye at once grasps the situation. The torch held by the foremost maenad lights the way to the retreat of Pentheus, suggesting the words—
καὶ πρὸς οὐρανὸν
καὶ γαῖαν ἐστήριζε φῶς σεμνοῦ πυρός. v. 1082 f.
That one is armed with a sword while the others have no weapon finds also a parallel in Euripides, who says one time that they used nought but their hands—
χειρὸς ἀσιδήρου μέτα. v. 736.
and again that the sword shall do its work—
ἴτω ξιφηφόρος. vs. 992, 1012.
The wild revelry of the whole is instructive when studied with the poet. The Bacchanal who flaunts the quarters of her victim reminds one at once of the words—
ἀγρεύων | αἷμα τραγοκτόνον, ὠμοφάγον χάριν. v. 138 f.
In conclusion, reference should be made again to the newly discovered wall painting in Pompeii. It is so remarkably preserved and so thoroughly in the spirit of Euripides that there can be little doubt as to the influence of the Bakchai[[177]]. The only Pentheus painting recorded in classical literature was that in the Dionysos temple in Athens, which may also have been inspired by Euripides[[178]]. Is the Pompeian painting an echo of the celebrated one in Athens?