Part 4
My father, a great boast is thine this hour. Thou hast begotten daughters, high in power And valiant above all mankind--yea, all Valiant, though none like me! I have let fall The shuttle by the loom, and raised my hand For higher things, to slay from out thy land Wild beasts! See, in mine arms I bear the prize, That nailed above these portals it may rise To show what things thy daughters did! Do thou Take it, and call a feast. Proud art thou now And highly favoured in our valiancy!
CADMUS.
O depth of grief, how can I fathom thee Or look upon thee!--Poor, poor, bloodstained hand! Poor sisters!--A fair sacrifice to stand Before God's altars, daughter; yea, and call Me and my citizens to feast withal! Nay, let me weep--for thine affliction most, Then for mine own. All, all of us are lost, Not wrongfully, yet is it hard, from one Who might have loved--our Bromios, our own!
AGAVE.
How crabbed and how scowling in the eyes Is man's old age!--Would that my son likewise Were happy of his hunting, in my way, When with his warrior bands he will essay The wild beast!--Nay, his valiance is to fight With God's will! Father, thou shouldst set him right. . . . Will no one bring him hither, that mine eyes May look on his, and show him this my prize!
CADMUS.
Alas, if ever ye can know again The truth of what ye did, what pain of pain That truth shall bring! Or were it best to wait Darkened for evermore, and deem your state Not misery, though ye know no happiness?
AGAVE.
What seest thou here to chide, or not to bless?
CADMUS (_after hesitation, resolving himself_).
Raise me thine eyes to yon blue dome of air!
AGAVE.
'Tis done. What dost thou bid me seek for there?
CADMUS.
Is it the same, or changed in thy sight?
AGAVE.
More shining than before, more heavenly bright!
CADMUS.
And that wild tremor, is it with thee still?
AGAVE (_troubled_).
I know not what thou sayest; but my will Clears, and some change cometh, I know not how.
CADMUS.
Canst hearken then, being changed, and answer, now?
AGAVE.
I have forgotten something; else I could.
CADMUS.
What husband led thee of old from mine abode?
AGAVE.
Echion, whom men named the Child of Earth.
CADMUS.
And what child in Echion's house had birth?
AGAVE.
Pentheus, of my love and his father's bred.
CADMUS.
Thou bearest in thine arms an head--what head?
AGAVE (_beginning to tremble, and not looking at what she carries_).
A lion's--so they all said in the chase.
CADMUS.
Turn to it now--'tis no long toil--and gaze.
AGAVE.
Ah! But what is it? What am I carrying here?
CADMUS.
Look once upon it full, till all be clear!
AGAVE.
I see . . . most deadly pain! Oh, woe is me!
CADMUS.
Wears it the likeness of a lion to thee?
AGAVE.
No; 'tis the head--O God!--of Pentheus, this!
CADMUS.
Blood-drenched ere thou wouldst know him! Aye, 'tis his.
AGAVE.
Who slew him?--How came I to hold this thing?
CADMUS.
O cruel Truth, is this thine home-coming?
AGAVE.
Answer! My heart is hanging on thy breath!
CADMUS.
'Twas thou.--Thou and thy sisters wrought his death.
AGAVE.
In what place was it? His own house, or where?
CADMUS.
Where the dogs tore Actaeon, even there.
AGAVE.
Why went he to Kithaeron? What sought he?
CADMUS.
To mock the God and thine own ecstasy.
AGAVE.
But how should we be on the hills this day?
CADMUS.
Being mad! A spirit drove all the land that way.
AGAVE.
'Tis Dionyse hath done it! Now I see.
CADMUS (_earnestly_).
Ye wronged Him! Ye denied his deity!
AGAVE (_turning from him_).
Show me the body of the son I love!
CADMUS (_leading her to the bier_).
'Tis here, my child. Hard was the quest thereof.
AGAVE.
Laid in due state?
[_As there is no answer, she lifts the veil of the bier, and sees._
Oh, if I wrought a sin, 'Twas mine! What portion had my child therein?
CADMUS.
He made him like to you, adoring not The God; who therefore to one bane hath brought You and this body, wrecking all our line, And me. Aye, no man-child was ever mine; And now this first-fruit of the flesh of thee, Sad woman, foully here and frightfully Lies murdered! Whom the house looked up unto, [_Kneeling by the body._ O Child, my daughter's child! who heldest true My castle walls; and to the folk a name Of fear thou wast; and no man sought to shame My grey beard, when they knew that thou wast there, Else had they swift reward!--And now I fare Forth in dishonour, outcast, I, the great Cadmus, who sowed the seed-rows of this state Of Thebes, and reaped the harvest wonderful. O my beloved, though thy heart is dull In death, O still beloved, and alway Beloved! Never more, then, shalt thou lay Thine hand to this white beard, and speak to me Thy "Mother's Father"; ask "Who wrongeth thee? Who stints thine honour, or with malice stirs Thine heart? Speak, and I smite thine injurers!" But now--woe, woe, to me and thee also, Woe to thy mother and her sisters, woe Alway! Oh, whoso walketh not in dread Of Gods, let him but look on this man dead!
LEADER.
Lo, I weep with thee. 'Twas but due reward God sent on Pentheus; but for thee . . . 'Tis hard.
AGAVE.
My father, thou canst see the change in me,
* * * * * * * * * *
[_A page or more has here been torn out of the MS. from which all our copies of "The Bacchae" are derived. It evidently contained a speech of Agave (followed presumably by some words of the Chorus), and an appearance of_ DIONYSUS _upon a cloud. He must have pronounced judgment upon the Thebans in general, and especially upon the daughters of_ CADMUS, _have justified his own action, and declared his determination to establish his godhead. Where the MS. begins again, we find him addressing_ CADMUS.]
* * * * *
DIONYSUS.
* * * * * * * * * * And tell of Time, what gifts for thee he bears, What griefs and wonders in the winding years. For thou must change and be a Serpent Thing Strange, and beside thee she whom thou didst bring Of old to be thy bride from Heaven afar, Harmonia, daughter of the Lord of War. Yea, and a chariot of kine--so spake The word of Zeus--thee and thy Queen shall take Through many lands, Lord of a wild array Of orient spears. And many towns shall they Destroy beneath thee, that vast horde, until They touch Apollo's dwelling, and fulfil Their doom, back driven on stormy ways and steep. Thee only and thy spouse shall Ares keep, And save alive to the Islands of the Blest. Thus speaketh Dionysus, Son confessed Of no man but of Zeus!--Ah, had ye seen Truth in the hour ye would not, all had been Well with ye, and the Child of God your friend!
AGAVE.
Dionysus, we beseech thee! We have sinned!
DIONYSUS.
Too late! When there was time, ye knew me not!
AGAVE.
We have confessed. Yet is thine hand too hot.
DIONYSUS.
Ye mocked me, being God; this is your wage.
AGAVE.
Should God be like a proud man in his rage?
DIONYSUS.
'Tis as my sire, Zeus, willed it long ago.
AGAVE (_turning from him almost with disdain_).
Old Man, the word is spoken; we must go.
DIONYSUS.
And seeing ye must, what is it that ye wait?
CADMUS.
Child, we are come into a deadly strait, All; thou, poor sufferer, and thy sisters twain, And my sad self. Far off to barbarous men, A grey-haired wanderer, I must take my road. And then the oracle, the doom of God, That I must lead a raging horde far-flown To prey on Hellas; lead my spouse, mine own Harmonia, Ares' child, discorporate And haunting forms, dragon and dragon-mate. Against the tombs and altar-stones of Greece, Lance upon lance behind us; and not cease From toils, like other men, nor dream, nor past The foam of Acheron find my peace at last.
AGAVE.
Father! And I must wander far from thee!
CADMUS.
O Child, why wilt thou reach thine arms to me, As yearns the milk-white swan, when old swans die?
AGAVE.
Where shall I turn me else? No home have I.
CADMUS.
I know not; I can help thee not.
AGAVE.
Farewell, O home, O ancient tower! Lo, I am outcast from my bower, And leave ye for a worser lot.
CADMUS.
Go forth, go forth to misery, The way Actaeon's father went!
AGAVE.
Father, for thee my tears are spent.
CADMUS.
Nay, Child, 'tis I must weep for thee;
For thee and for thy sisters twain!
AGAVE.
On all this house, in bitter wise, Our Lord and Master, Dionyse, Hath poured the utter dregs of pain!
DIONYSUS.
In bitter wise, for bitter was the shame Ye did me, when Thebes honoured not my name.
AGAVE.
Then lead me where my sisters be; Together let our tears be shed, Our ways be wandered; where no red Kithaeron waits to gaze on me; Nor I gaze back; no thyrsus stem, Nor song, nor memory in the air. Oh, other Bacchanals be there, Not I, not I, to dream of them!
[AGAVE _with her group of attendants goes out on the side away from the Mountain_. DIONYSUS _rises upon the Cloud and disappears_.
CHORUS.
There be many shapes of mystery. And many things God makes to be, Past hope or fear. And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought. So hath it fallen here. [_Exeunt._
NOTES ON THE BACCHAE
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The _Bacchae_, being from one point of view a religious drama, a kind of "mystery play," is full of allusions both to the myth and to the religion of Dionysus.
1. The Myth, as implied by Euripides. Semele, daughter of Cadmus, being loved by Zeus, asked her divine lover to appear to her once in his full glory; he came, a blaze of miraculous lightning, in the ecstasy of which Semele died, giving premature birth to a son. Zeus, to save this child's life and make him truly God as well as Man, tore open his own flesh and therein fostered the child till in due time, by a miraculous and mysterious Second Birth, the child of Semele came to full life as God.
2. The Religion of Dionysus is hard to formulate or even describe, both because of its composite origins and because of its condition of constant vitality, fluctuation, and development.
(_a_) The first datum, apparently, is the introduction from Thrace of the characteristic God of the wild northern mountains, a God of Intoxication, of Inspiration, a giver of superhuman or immortal life. His worship is superposed upon that of divers old Tree or Vegetation Gods, already worshipped in Greece. He becomes specially the God of the Vine. Originally a god of the common folk, despised and unauthorised, he is eventually so strong as to be adopted into the Olympian hierarchy as the "youngest" of the Gods, son of Zeus. His "Olympian" name, so to speak, is Dionysus, but in his worship he is addressed by numbers of names, more or less mystic and secret--Bromios, Bacchios or Baccheus, Iacchos, Eleuthercus, Zagreus, Sabazios, &c. Some of these may be the names of old spirits whom he has displaced; some are his own Thracian names. Bromos and Sabaja, for instance, seem to have been Thracian names for two kinds of intoxicating drink. Bacchos means a "wand." Together with his many names, he has many shapes, especially appearing as a Bull and a Serpent.
(_b_) This religion, very primitive and barbarous, but possessing a strong hold over the emotions of the common people, was seized upon and transfigured by the great wave of religious reform, known under the name of Orphism, which swept over Greece and South Italy in the sixth century B.C., and influenced the teachings of such philosophers as Pythagoras, Aristeas, Empedocles, and the many writers on purification and the world after death. Orphism may very possibly represent an ancient Cretan religion in clash or fusion with one from Thrace. At any rate, it was grafted straight upon the Dionysus-worship, and, without rationalising, spiritualised and reformed it. Ascetic, mystical, ritualistic, and emotional, Orphism easily excited both enthusiasm and ridicule. It lent itself both to inspired saintliness and to imposture. In doctrine it laid especial stress upon sin, and the sacerdotal purification of sin; on the eternal reward due beyond the grave to the pure and the impure, the pure living in an eternal ecstasy--"perpetual intoxication," as Plato satirically calls it--the impure toiling through long ages to wash out their stains. It recast in various ways the myth of Dionysus, and especially the story of his Second Birth. All true worshippers become in a mystical sense one with the God; they are born again and are "Bacchoi." Dionysus being the God within, the perfectly pure soul is possessed by the God wholly, and becomes nothing but the God.
Based on very primitive rites and feelings, on the religion of men who made their gods in the image of snakes and bulls and fawns, because they hardly felt any difference of kind between themselves and the animals, the worship of Dionysus kept always this feeling of kinship with wild things. The beautiful side of this feeling is vividly conspicuous in _The Bacchae_. And the horrible side is not in the least concealed.
A curious relic of primitive superstition and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism--a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the sacrifice of Dionysus himself, and the purification of man by his blood.
It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in the fury of their worship on the mountains, when they were possessed by the God and became "wild beasts," actually tore with their teeth and hands any hares, goats, fawns, or the like that they came across. There survives a constant tradition of inspired Bacchanals in their miraculous strength tearing even bulls asunder--a feat, happily, beyond the bounds of human possibility. The wild beast that tore was, of course, the savage God himself. And by one of those curious confusions of thought, which seem so inconceivable to us and so absolutely natural and obvious to primitive men, the beast torn was also the God! The Orphic congregations of later times, in their most holy gatherings, solemnly partook of the blood of a bull, which was, by a mystery, the blood of Dionysus-Zagreus himself, the "Bull of God," slain in sacrifice for the purification of man. And the Maenads of poetry and myth, among more beautiful proofs of their superhuman or infra-human character, have always to tear bulls in pieces and taste of the blood. It is noteworthy, and throws much light on the spirit of Orphism, that apart from this sacramental tasting of the blood, the Orphic worshipper held it an abomination to eat the flesh of animals at all. The same religious fervour and zeal for purity which made him reject the pollution of animal food, made him at the same time cling to a ceremonial which would utterly disgust the ordinary hardened flesh-eater. It fascinated him just because it was so incredibly primitive and uncanny; because it was a mystery which transcended reason!
It will be observed that Euripides, though certainly familiar with Orphism--which he mentions in _The Hippolytus_ and treated at length in _The Cretans_ (see Appendix)--has in _The Bacchae_ gone back behind Orphism to the more primitive stuff from which it was made. He has little reference to any specially Orphic doctrine; not a word, for instance, about the immortality of the soul. And his idealisation or spiritualisation of Dionysus-worship proceeds along the lines of his own thought, not on those already fixed by the Orphic teachers.
* * * * *
P. 80, l. 17, Asia all that by the salt sea lies, &c.], _i.e._ the coasts of Asia Minor inhabited by Greeks, Ionia, Aeolis, and Doris.
P. 80, l. 27, From Dian seed.]--Dian=belonging to Zeus. The name Dionysus seemed to be derived from [Greek: Dios], the genitive of "Zeus."
P. 81, l. 50, Should this Theban town essay with wrath and battle, &c.]--This suggestion of a possibility which is never realised or approached is perhaps a mark of the unrevised condition of the play. The same may be said of the repetitions in the Prologue.
Pp. 82-86, ll. 64-169.--This first song of the Chorus covers a great deal of Bacchic doctrine and myth. The first strophe, "Oh blessed he in all wise," &c., describes the bliss of Bacchic purity; the antistrophe gives the two births of Dionysus, from Semele and from the body of Zeus, mentioning his mystic epiphanies as Bull and as Serpent. The next strophe is an appeal to Thebes, the birthplace or "nurse" of the God's mother, Semele; the antistrophe, an appeal to the cavern in Crete, the birthplace of Zeus, the God's father, and the original home of the mystic Timbrel. The Epode, or closing song, is full, not of doctrine, but of the pure poetry of the worship.
Pp. 86-95, ll. 170-369, Teiresias and Cadmus.]--Teiresias seems to be not a spokesman of the poet's own views--far from it--but a type of the more cultured sort of Dionysiac priest, not very enlightened, but ready to abate some of the extreme dogmas of his creed if he may keep the rest. Cadmus, quite a different character, takes a very human and earthly point of view: the God is probably a true God; but even if he is false, there is no great harm done, and the worship will bring renown to Thebes and the royal family. It is noteworthy how full of pity Cadmus is--the sympathetic kindliness of the sons of this world as contrasted with the pitilessness of gods and their devotees. See especially the last scenes of the play. Even his final outburst of despair at not dying like other men (p. 152), shows the same sympathetic humanity.
Pp. 89 ff., ll. 215-262.--Pentheus, though his case against the new worship is so good, and he might so easily have been made into a fine martyr, like Hippolytus, is left harsh and unpleasant, and very close in type to the ordinary "tyrant" of Greek tragedy (cf. p. 118). It is also noteworthy, I think, that he is, as it were, out of tone with the other characters. He belongs to a different atmosphere, like, to take a recent instance, Golaud in _Pelleas et Melisande_.
P. 91, l. 263, Injurious King, &c.]--It is a mark of a certain yielding to stage convention in Euripides' later style, that he allows the Chorus Leader to make remarks which are not "asides," but are yet not heard or noticed by anybody.
P. 91, l. 264, Sower of the Giants' sod.]--Cadmus, by divine guidance, slew a dragon and sowed the teeth of it like seed in the "Field of Ares." From the teeth rose a harvest of Earth-born, or "Giant" warriors, of whom Echion was one.
P. 92, l. 287, Learn the truth of it, cleared from the false.]--This timid essay in rationalism reminds one of similar efforts in Pindar (e.g. _Ol._ i.). It is the product of a religious and unspeculative mind, not feeling difficulties itself, but troubled by other people's questions and objections. (See above on Teiresias.)
P. 92, l. 292, The world-encircling Fire.]--This fire, or ether, was the ordinary material of which phantoms or apparitions were made.
Pp. 93-95, ll. 330-369.--These three speeches are very clearly contrasted. Cadmus, thoroughly human, thinking of sympathy and expediency, and vividly remembering the fate of his other grandson, Actaeon; Pentheus, angry and "tyrannical"; Teiresias speaking like a Christian priest of the Middle Ages, almost like Tennyson's Becket.
P. 95, l. 370.--The goddess [Greek: Hosia], "Purity," seems to be one of the many abstractions which were half personified by philosophy and by Orphism. It is possible that the word is really adjectival, "Immaculate One," and originally an epithet of some more definite goddess, _e.g._ as Miss Harrison suggests, of Nemesis.
In this and other choruses it is very uncertain how the lines should be distributed between the whole chorus, the two semi-choruses, and the various individual choreutae.
Pp. 97-98, ll. 402-430.--For the meaning of these lines, see Introduction, pp. lxi, lxii.
P. 100, l. 471, These emblems.]--There were generally associated with mysteries, or special forms of worship, certain relics or sacred implements, without which the rites could not be performed. Cf. Hdt. vii. 153, where Telines of Gela stole the sacred implements or emblems of the nether gods, so that no worship could be performed, and the town was, as it were, excommunicated.
P. 103, ll. 493 ff., _The soldiers cut off the tress._]--The stage directions here are difficult. It is conceivable that none of Pentheus' threats are carried out at all; that the God mysteriously paralyses the hand that is lifted to take his rod without Pentheus himself knowing it. But I think it more likely that the humiliation of Dionysus is made, as far as externals go, complete, and that it is not till later that he begins to show his superhuman powers.
P. 104, l. 508, So let it be.]--The name Pentheus suggests 'mourner,' from _penthos_, 'mourning.'
P. 105, l. 519, Acheloues' roaming daughter.]--Acheloues was the Father of all Rivers.
P. 107, l. 556, In thine own Nysa.]--An unknown divine mountain, formed apparently to account for the second part of the name Dionysus.
P. 107, l. 571, Cross the Lydias, &c.]--These are rivers of Thrace which Dionysus must cross in his passage from the East, the Lydias, the Axios, and some other, perhaps the Haliacmon, which is called "the father-stream of story."
P. 108, l. 579, A Voice, a Voice.]--Bromios, the God of Many Voices--for, whatever the real derivation, the fifth-century Greeks certainly associated the name with [Greek: bremo], 'to roar'--manifests himself as a voice here and below (p. 136).
Pp. 109-112, ll. 602-641, Ye Damsels of the Morning Hills, &c.]--This scene in longer metre always strikes me as a little unlike the style of Euripides, and inferior. It may mark one of the parts left unfinished by the poet, and written in by his son. But it may be that I have not understood it.
P. 118, ll. 781 ff., Call all who spur the charger, &c.]--The typical 'Ercles vein' of the tragic tyrant.
Pp. 120-124, ll. 810 ff.--This scene of the 'hypnotising'--if one may use the word--of Pentheus probably depends much on the action, which, however, I have not ventured to prescribe. Pentheus seems to struggle against the process all through, to be amazed at himself for consenting, while constantly finding fresh reasons for doing so.
P. 121, l. 822, Am I a woman, then?]--The robe and coif were, in the original legend, marks of the Thracian dress worn by the Thracian followers of Dionysus, and notably by Orpheus. The tradition became fixed that Pentheus wore such a robe and coif; and to the Greeks of Euripides' time such a dress seemed to be a woman's. Hence this turn of the story (cf. above, p. 167).
P. 125, ll. 877-881.--The refrain of this chorus about the fawn is difficult to interpret. I have practically interpolated the third line ("To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait"), in order (1) to show the connection of ideas; (2) to make clearer the meaning (as I understand it) of the two Orphic formulae, "What is beautiful is beloved for ever," and "A hand uplifted over the head of Hate." If I am wrong, the refrain is probably a mere cry for revenge, in the tone of the refrain, "Hither for doom and deed," on p. 132. It is one of the many passages where there is a sharp antagonism between the two spirits of the Chorus, first, as furious Bacchanals, and, secondly, as exponents of the idealised Bacchic religion of Euripides, which is so strongly expressed in the rest of this wonderful lyric.