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Apollo & Dionysus IV: Euripides & Rasputin ‘the Holy Devil’
The Bacchae by Euripides depicts Dionysus and his followers initiating the ancient city of Thebes in his orgiastic ‘bacchanals’. The play begins with Dionysus expressing his anger at Thebes — the land of his mortal mother, Semele — for denying his divinity:
DIONYSUS. I am the son of Zeus, Dionysus. Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, bore me once in a birth precipitated by the lightning flame. I have transformed my appearance from god to man and come to this Theban land […] For this city must learn to the full — even if it does not wish to — that it is still uninitiated in my bacchanals
Dressed as an effeminate foreigner from the East, Dionysus is swarmed by the women of Thebes, who abandon their homes and head for the mountains where the orgiastic rites are traditionally performed. Pentheus, the King of Thebes, immediately seeks to end these ‘pernicious rites’ and reinstate law & order:
PENTHEUS. I shall hunt them down from the mountain […] I shall fasten them in iron snares and put a quick stop to these pernicious Bacchic rites […] And let the others comb the city and track down the foreigner who looks like a girl and is…
