Bacchae In America

-by Dorothy Reik

Last night I went to see Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae.  As is almost always the case you can take Greek tragedy, written around 200 BC, and apply it directly to today.

As Euripides tells it, Dionysus returns to his hometown of Thebes to get revenge for the disrespect shown him by its young king, Pentheus, who denies that Dionysus is the son of the god Zeus. Sound familiar already?  He leads the women of the town into the surrounding hills and lures them into drunkenness, debauchery and madness. Hmmm-- these women seem a bit like the Republicans following their seductive leader.

Pentheus, sensing the danger, orders Dionysus captured and executed but the wily Dionysus talks his way out of trouble and persuades him to go with him into the woods to witness on the madness. Pentheus agrees to go and even allows Dionysus to dress him as a woman!

He is soon discovered by the Bacchae who drive him from his hiding place and dismember him with their bare hands, led by Pentheus’ own mother, Agave, who winds up with his head as a trophy. So if Pentheus represents the state… But on with our story.

Dionysus is nowhere to be seen as Pentheus’ mother shows off her trophy, which in her madness she thinks is the head of a lion, but which, in reality, is the head of her son. His grandfather, Cadmus, goes into the hills and returns with the rest of Pentheus’ bloody body parts which have been scattered over the mountains side much as the parts of our government have been torn apart and bloodied by our own Dionysus and his acolytes. As they realize what has happened there is much wailing and lamenting but it is too late.

Dionysus returns to the scene in triumph, dressed as a garbage man and pulling a trolley with trash cans and garbage bags. He banishes Pentheus’ mother, Agave, and turns Cadmus into a snake. Then he gathers up the garbage that was once the state of Thebes, puts it all in his garbage bags and dumps them into the cans, laughing as he works. Meanwhile in the Greek countryside the worship of the cult of Dionysus spreads far and wide as other city states learn of the fate of Thebes.

The Greek moral is never to disrespect the gods.  What is the moral for us?  Maybe to choose the gods we worship very carefully!