1. DITHYRAMB II: DIONYSUS – THE BACCHAE

[The Bacchae of Euripides (translated by Gilbert Murray, Oxford 1902):]
Dionysus:
"Behold, God's Son is come unto this land
Of heaven's hot splendour lit to life, when she
Of Thebes, even I, Dionysus, whom the brand
Who bore me, Cadmus' daughter Semelê,
Died here. So, changed in shape from God to man,
I walk again by Dirce's streams and scan
Ismenus' shore. There by the castle side
I see her place, the Tomb of the Lightning's Bride,
The wreck of smouldering chambers, and the great
Faint wreaths of fire undying—as the hate
Dies not, that Hera held for Semelê.
Aye, Cadmus hath done well; in purity
He keeps this place apart, inviolate,
His daughter's sanctuary; and I have set
My green and clustered vines to robe it round.
Far now behind me lies the golden ground
Of Lydian and of Phrygian; far away
The wide hot plains where Persian sunbeams play,
The Bactrian war-holds, and the storm-oppressed
Clime of the Mede, and Araby the Blest,
And Asia all, that by the salt sea lies
In proud embattled cities, motley-wise
Of Hellene and Barbarian interwrought;
And now I come to Hellas—having taught
All the world else my dances and my rite
Of mysteries, to show me in men's sight
Manifest God.
And first of Hellene lands
I cry thus Thebes to waken; set her hands
To clasp my wand, mine ivied javelin,
And round her shoulders hang my wild fawn-skin.
For they have scorned me whom it least beseemed,
Semelê's sisters; mocked my birth, nor deemed
That Dionysus sprang from Dian seed.
My mother sinned, said they; and in her need,
With Cadmus plotting, cloaked her human shame
With the dread name of Zeus; for that the flame
From heaven consumed her, seeing she lied to God."

Silently he calls
Whispering within your dreams
Knocking on the walls
Tearing at the seams

Thrusting in your veins
Inside him I see your face
All you have to gain
All you have to taste

Roaring at the skies
Madness is your only friend
Severing the lies
Constant to the end

He shows you the truth
Eternal he is your test
With him nail and tooth
He blesses you with his rest

Spoken:
(The Bacchae, edited by E. R. Dodds. Oxford 1960)
‘To this experience the Greeks, like many other peoples, believed wine to be in certain circumstances an aid. Drunkenness, as William James observed, ‘expands, unites, and says Yes: it brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core; it makes him for the moment one with the truth’. Thus wine acquires religious value: he who drinks it becomes Entheos – he has drunk deity.

But wine was not the only or even most important means to communion. The Maenads in the Bacchae are not drunken, and in this Euripides is probably correct from a ritual point of view: for the other acts of his maenads belong to a winter ritual which seems to have not been a wine festival, and would not naturally be one. The right time for holy drunkenness is in the spring, when the new wine is ready to be opened.

But there were other ways of becoming Entheos; the strange mountain dancing, which is described in the Bacchae, is no fancy of the poet but the reflection of a ritual which was practised by women’s societies at Delphi down to Plutarch’s time, and for which we have inscriptional evidence from a number of other places in the Greek world.

The rite took place in midwinter in alternate years. It must have involved considerable discomfort, and even risk.

What was the object of this practice? Many people dance out of doors to make their crops grow, by sympathetic magic. But such dances elsewhere are annual like the crops, not biennial like these rites; their season is spring, not midwinter; and their scene is the cornland, not the barren mountain-tops. Late Greek writers thought of the dances as commemorative: ‘they dance’, says Diodorus, ‘in imitation of the maenads who are said to have been associated with the god in the old days’.

Probably he is right, as regards to his own time, or at least to the time of his source; but ritual is usually older than the myth by which people explain it, and has deeper psychological roots. There must have been a time when the maenads or Bacchae really became for a few hours or days what their name implies – wild women whose human personality has been temporarily replaced by another.’

Timelessness, he calls me
Deathless mysteries resurrect
He sleeps and wakes within
Tower of the third eye erect

Take him in, breath his scent
I see him, hear him in my dreams
Hear his call, sing his song
Dancing mad, tearing at the seams

Shoot the vine, drink the blood
I eat his flesh and see his face
Time to come, here he stands
See the shoot, flesh within that place

Revere him, it is done
He is dancing on mountain’s waves
The sea of madness comes
Spilling truth, madness your god saves

Timelessness you call me
Deathless mysteries resurrect
You sleep and wake within
Tower of the third eye erect

Take you in, breath your scent
I see you, hear you in my dreams
Hear your call, sing your song
Dancing mad, tearing at the seams

Shoot the vine, drink the blood
I eat your flesh and see your face
Time to come, here you stand
See the shoot, flesh within that place

Revere you, it is done
You are dancing on mountain’s waves
The sea of madness comes
Spilling truth, madness your god saves

Timelessness I call out
Deathless mysteries resurrect
I sleep and wake within
Tower of the third eye erect

Take me in, breath my scent
I see me, hear me in my dreams
Hear my call, sing my song
Dancing mad, tearing at the seams

Shoot the vine, drink the blood
I eat my flesh and see my face
Time to come, here I stand
See the shoot, flesh within that place

Revere me, it is done
I am dancing on mountain’s waves
The sea of madness comes
Spilling truth, madness I will save

[The Bacchae of Euripides (translated by Gilbert Murray, Oxford 1902) continued:]
[The Bacchae of Euripides (translated by Gilbert Murray, Oxford 1902) continued:]
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 crabbèd 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:
"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 changèd in thy sight?"

Agave:
"More shining than before, more heavenly bright!"

Cadmus:
"And that wild tremor, is it with thee still?"

Agave:
"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:
"Echîon, whom men named the Child of Earth."

Cadmus:
"And what child in Echîon'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:
"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:
"Ye wronged Him! Ye denied his deity!"

Agave:
"Show me the body of the son I love!"

Cadmus:
'Tis here, my child. Hard was the quest thereof.

Agave:
"Laid in due state?"

Narrator:
"As there is no answer, she lifts the veil of the bier, and sees."

Agave!
"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,"

Narrator: "Kneeling by the body."

Cadmus:
"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 belovèd, though thy heart is dull
In death, O still belovèd, and alway
Belovèd! 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,"

Editor:
"A page or more has here been torn out of the manuscript from which all our copies of 'The Bacchae' are derived. It evidently contained a speech of Agâvê (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:
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!

Narrator:
"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."