COMMENTARYHypotheses

These are prefatory notes, originally prefixed to two differentancient editions of the play. The first is a ti1rd9eo'l.$' in the originalsense, i.e. a synopsis of the subject-matter, and is presumably thework of some ;w6o-ypciqbos of Alexandrine or Roman date. Its onlyinterest for us lies in the last sentence (unfortunately corrupt),which summarizes the closing scene of the play; the writer evidentlyhad an unmutilated text of this scene (see 1329 n.). The secondhypothesis is an extract from the preface to the Bacchae composedby the great Alexandrine scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium(c. 257-180 B.c.) for his" edition of the plays. On the content ofAristophanes’ prefaces, which were all built on the same formalplan, see Page’s Medea, pp. liii ff. Here Aristophanes disposes of theplot in a sentence, as he commonly does, and then notes thatthe subject was treated by Aeschylus in his Pentheus (cf. Introd.,p. xxxi), after which the extract breaks off.[l. 6. Eihhws, if right, = ‘rashly’: the mission was not ‘in vain’.

But d-rréaa-ethev lacks an object, and oi Sé lacks a reference. NeitherElmsley’s ciyyéhovs nor Wecklein’s 8,u65a.s is convincing: the formerdoes not suit persons charged to make an arrest, the latter is apurely poetic word. Perhaps simply d’/Vino; (cf. oi Se’, v. 352), incontrast with the agents implied in av/\AaB¢L»v é'81;aev.][l. 16. I suspect that some words have dropped out, an accident

to which these hypotheses are for some reason peculiarly liable.P01116112 proposes Ep-yocs <3’ $:'<;'>'q T01}; niv yéver. vov9e'r'ijoa.:.>, i.'va. pa‘;Adyotg, m-/\.: -r¢3v ém-6s then = ‘people outside the family’. But itmay perhaps be used in the Hellenistic sense of ‘people outside thereligious community’.]

ScaneOutside the Royal Castle on the Cadmeia or acropolis of Thebes.

On the stage is a tomb from whose neighbourhood smoke rises (6);over the fence surrounding it vine-shoots may trail (11 f.). The facadeof the castle, which forms the back-scene, is in the Doric style,with columns supporting an entablature (591, 1214).

Prologue (1-63)Like the majority of Eur.’s plays, the Bacchae opens with a

soliloquy (whereas Sophocles prefers dialogue). Here as elsewhereone purpose of the soliloquy is to situate the action in its contextof legendary tradition, by giving its time and place, a summary of

62

1

3.

5

COMMENTARY

the events leading up to it, and the relationships of the principalcharacters. This technique is not peculiar to Eur.; the openingspeeches of the Trachi1/ziae and the Philoetetes have a similar function.But in Eur.’s hands it had hardened into something like a stage con-vention (cf. Frogs 946), in which dramatic relevance is deliberatelysubordinated to the need for rapid and lucid exposition of -rd. é'§w-ro17"3pc£p.a-ros before the action begins.Both in tone and in substance this prologue resembles Aphro-

dite’s in the Hippolytus: each opens with an emphatic assertion ofthe speaker’s divinity (fixw Aids -rrais ~ Hipp. 1 -rroM'F; . . . Bed.xéxhqpm), shows how that divinity is slighted, and announces adesign for obtaining vengeance. But Dion. differs from Aphroditeand the other prologizing gods familiar to Eur.’s audiences in thathe will not vanish from the action when his sinister message hasbeen delivered, but will mingle unrecognized, in human form, withthe actors in the human drama. This point must be ‘put across’to every member of the audience: hence it is made no-t once butthree times (4, 53, 54).. "Hum: a favourite word with supernatural visitants: so Hec. 1 (theghost), Tro. 1 (Poseidon), Ion 5 (Hermes), PV. 284 (Oceanus).Alb; 1-mi‘; . . . Atdvuoosi ‘the imperious aflirmation of the divine per-sonality rings out like a challenge and a threat’ (Méridier). Cf. 27Atdvvoov . . . 41:69, 466 Altdvvoos . . . oi T05 Attis, 5'50 f. (.3 Aids‘ 1'raE'Alr.o'vvo£,859 f. -rdv Aids Zladvvoov. Eur. seems to connect the two namesetymologically, perhaps taking Atévvaos to mean ‘son of Zeus’,as do many modems. [Several grammarians quote the line withQqflafav, and this is the form which Eur.- uses everywhere else: cf.660, 961, 1.043, 1202, Phoen. 287, &c. But he may have preferred thegen. here as stressing Dion.’s mission to daihe people of Thebes.]‘With the lightning flame for midwife.’ éa-rpo.-m|¢6pq» (a tirrafAeydpevov) may be either passive in sense, ‘lightning-borne’ (fromr.i.0'rpu.1'r1i¢>op09), or active, ‘lightning-carrying’ (from do-rpa-.-n;¢>6pos).For the latter, cf. wavofixov qS.\6-ya, ‘the torch-holding flame’, i.e. thetorch-flame, Fr. trag. adesp. 160. .1'rd.p£|.|.u (adsum) implies previous motion: hence it is regularly usedeven in prose with sis, and occasionally by Eur. with a simpleaccus. of the goal of motion (Cyel. 95, 106, El. 1278). Dirce andIsmenus are the rivers of Thebes, the 3|.'rr6'ra,u.05' ~rr6.\¢s (Eur. Supp.621, cf. Her. 572 f., Phoen. 825 ff.).

6--12. Any place (or person) struck by lightning was felt in antiquityto be uncanny, a point where the natural world had been touchedby the supernatural. _]'ust as Capaneus became a Iepos vexpds whenthe lightning slew him, and must be buried in a place apart (Eur.Supp. 934 ff., quoted by Wilamowitz), so the spot of earth whichthe lightning has marked as its own becomes in Greece an e'v'q)uicn"ov,

LINES 1-12. 63

in Italy a bidmtal, and is kept taboo, d'Ba-rov (line 1o).1 Such placeswere dedicated 120 Zeus‘ KG.TG.l.B(i1"‘7]5‘ (Etym. _Magn. s.v. e'v'rp\|5ou:|.), andsacrifice was ofiered at them (Artemidorus 2. 9)? Such an c'iBo.'rovexisted at Thebes in Eur.’s day and for long after. [It is referred toin a recently discovered Delphic inscription of the third centuryB.C. (Delph. iii. 1, p. 195), where it is called, as here, Semele’s aqxdior ‘precinct’ (properly the precinct of a hero-tomb, Usener, Rh.Mus. xxix. 49); and it was still preserved as an c'|.'Ba.'rov and shown totourists as a holy place in the second century A.D., when Pausanias(9. 12. 3) and Aristides (Or. 25. 2, p. 72 Keil) visited Thebes. Boththese call it Semele’s Gdkapos; from Pausanias’ account it wasapparently part of ‘the old house of Cadmus’, of which some ruinssurvived on the acropolis (Eur.’s Sépwv épe¢'-ma). The Z'e,u.éA-qsp.vfi,u.a Paus. found elsewhere, in the Lower Town near the ProetidGate (9. 16. 7), whereas Eur. puts it close to the new palace ofPentheus, and apparently within the o-qx6s—th'e fire is among theépei-ma (7 f.) and ‘about the tomb of Semele’ (596 f.). This may befor dramatic convenience; or the p.vfip.a in the Lower Town may bean invention of later guides. In any case Eur. clearly has someknowledge of the Theban cult and cult-places. (On his familiaritywith Thebes see J. Mesk, Wien. Stud. lv [I937], 54.)]

Semele figures as the Theban bride of Zeus and mother of Dion.in the later stratum of epic tradition, IZ. 14. 3231"f., Hes. Theog.940 ff. Hesiod says that she bore Dion. ci6a'.va-rov 6v-q-r1§- vfiv 8’ci,u.¢61'epo:. Qeoi eicnv. This reverses the historical development. Itis probable that she was originally an Anatolian earth goddess(Kretschmer, Aus der Anomia, 17 ff., derived her name from theroot ghem, meaning ‘earth’, which appears in xapai, humus, NovaZembla).3 When the legends of Dion. were grafted upon Thebantradition she became a mortal princess; but traces of her originalexalted status survived both in saga and in cult, and the learnedguessed that she was Mother Earth (F. Gr. H. 244 F 131 Iacoby,Diodorus 3. 62). It is as earth goddess that she became the Bride ofthe Thunderbolt: in southern Europe the thunderstorm is beneficentas well as terrible—-the lightning blasts, but the rain quickens theseed in the earth, so that Semele perishes and Dion. is bom. But

1 Cf. the parasite who was nicknamed .K€pavv6S‘ because he madedinner-parties unapproachable (ciflci-revs) by descending on them (Anax-ippus, fr. 3 Kock).

9 For a full statement and discussion of the evidence see A. B. Cook,Zeus, ii. 13 ff.

3 But her alleged appearance alongside Zeus in a Phrygian inscrip-tion is apparently an error: see Calder, Monumenta Asiae Min0rz'sAntigua, vii, p. xxix.

64 COMMENTARY

Semele does not stay dead. As Pindar puts it (OZ. 2. 25), Leia.dwodavofoai in legend, Dion. brings her back from Hades ([Apollod.]3. 5. 3, &c.); in ritual, she has at Delphi and elsewhere a periodicd"vo8os or dvaywyfi like that of Kore.‘ In the Bacchae, though she ismortal, she has a place in her son’s cult: see 997—1oo1 n.

7-8. ‘And the ruins of her home that smoulder with the yet living flameof the fire of Zeus.’ Murray, I think rightly, follows Hermann intaking QSA6-ya as internal accus. with the intransitive middle participlervqfidpcva. There is no exact parallel, but such bold extensions ofthe ‘cognate’ usage are characteristic of Eur.’s later stvle: e.g. IonI238 rive. cfivydv 1-r1-epcicocrav . . . 1-ropevdcfi ; P110611. 334 o-revciflmv dpoisiib. I431 1'e1ipcu;.:.e'vovs' . . . mupiovg aipa)/(is: O1‘. 479 Spcixmv a1-Ulfietvoaa58er.s cia~rpa.1'rd.S‘- [Others follow Paley in putting a comma after1-v<{>6;.tcvu. and taking ¢u\o'-ya in ‘partial’ apposition 110 ripefarta -rv¢6p.eva,but the effect is awkward, as another appositional phrase of a differ-ent type follows. The unmetricala -re which the MSS. have after Sim;seems to have been inserted by a scribe to simplify the construction(as at Aesch. Supp. 42, and often). Porson’s Siov 1-’ E-rt rrvpds‘ is opento the objection that if the fire is actually visible at this point theeffect of its apparition at 596 is spoilt. The same applies to Elmsley’s1-vqS6,u.ev’ ¢i8po6 -re: moreover ¢i8p6s is non-tragic (though Soph. hasd.3p|5ve|.v, fl‘. 979), and Lliov iS supported by 599 Zliov Bpov-His, Ale. 5Afov rrvpds, and the antithesis with "Hpas in the next line. Plutarch’scitation of the line, from which ¢i.§poi3 comes, has evidently beenadapted to its context either by a copyist or by Plutarch himself.]

9. c‘i06.va-rov . . . ii|3pw: ‘the undying outrage’, i.e. an undying token ofthe outrage. Cf. Eur. El. 1261, where ;.t-fiviv similarly stands inapposition to the sentence in the sense ‘an act of wrath’. The senseOf dddvarov iS fixed by E-re. gciicrav above and 523 rrvpds €§ ddavdrov.When Semele’s chthonic character was forgotten, her blasting bythe lightning was explained by the story that Hera tempted herto require Zeus to appear to her in his true form ([Apollod.] 3.4- 3)-

11. Ouyu-rpbs ur|m:'w: family feeling is characteristic of Cadmus (cf. 181,334 n.). The vine marks the spot as a Dionysiac holy place; inanother version of the story it is not a vine but a miraculously rapidgrowth Of ivy (SCl1. Phoen. 651, Tcfiv Kaspcfmv Baoaleiwv xepa.vvcu9e'v--rmv moods mspi. 1-0135‘ 1-ciovas‘ ¢vci.s e'.=<ci)lv|,lrev ari-rciv [SC. Alidvvcrov], fromthe Alexandrine geographer Mnaseas).

13. Mmbv regularly introduces the starting-point of a journey (cf. 661),

1 Cf. now Ieanmaire, Dionysos, 343 f.2 Prato’s attempt (Maia, ix, 1957) to show that Euripides admitted

anapaests elsewhere than in the first foot of the trimeter does not carryconviction.

LINES 6-22 65

and Dion.’s starting-point was Phrygia and Lydia (55, 86, 234,462 ff., cf. Introd., p. xx), so we must construe only -yous with)u.m.5v and take the other accusatives with e’m:A0o5v: 6’ in 14 thenlinks -rrfiuixas with Tefxq, &c. [Christus Patiens 1588 (not 1583)reproduces the line without this 9’, and its omission would, as Paleysays, ‘make the sense plainer to readers of Greek who are not Greeks’;it appears, however, in Strabo’s two quotations of the passage.]1-rokuxpéaoug refers to the proverbial wealth of Lydia, and especiallyto the gold-dust found in the sands of the Pactolus, cf. 154 n., IA.786 oi nohixpvooa /1v3cuf, Archilochus fl‘. 25 of)‘ pot -rd. 1'15)/ecu -roii 1'ror\v-xpdoov péket. [Elmsley’s -rods for -rag is universally accepted. Butit is a little odd that the same mistake occurs Hel. 89, and odderthat Strabo twice quotes the present line with -rcis, as does Lydus also(Mag. 3. 58). Eur. has a liking for unusual forms: did he here usethe by-form yfiq, attested by Hesychius and Etym. Magn. s.v.?]

14-. n-luinas: here upland plains, plateaux (cf. 307, 718 f., and Ion 1267Hapvaooii whines); Persia is high country, as fifth-century Greeksmust have known.

15. 'reix'r| : walled towns. Soaxqiov : either ‘bleak’, in reference to theclimate, which Strabo says is cold (11. I3. 7); or, more generally,‘grim’, ‘sinister’.

16. Apufilav efifiaipovat ‘rich Arabia’, presumably from its wealth ofspices (Hdt. 3. 107). The epithet, like the others, is decorative, notdistinguishing: there is no contrast with the Arabian desert such asis implied in the later term Arabia Felix. Herodotus saw the G-reekDionysus in the Arabian god Orotalt (3. 8).

17. Aaiav, in the restricted sense of western Asia Minor, as the contextshows. Eur. represents it as already colonized by Greeks in thedays of Cadmus ; tragedy is generally indifferent to this sort of ana-chronism.

19. nuhhlnupydafoug 2 neologism for xahhwfipyovs (infra I202). It is inform a passive verbal adjective, though there is no verb :<a)\)\:.-wrvpydwt Cf. xpvcrox6)U\'q1'os beside xpvodxohhos, efixfixhwros besidee1'2':cvx)los‘, and other examples quoted by Wilamowitz on Her. 290.

20- 22. With this text we must, I think, translate ‘I came to this city ofGreeks first when (i.e. only when) I had set Asia dancing (xopefioascausative, as at Her. 871) and established there my mysteries, thatI might be manifest to mankind as god’. (S0 Verrall, Baeehamts ofEur. 32, n. 1, except that he somewhat awkwardly keeps Kdxct[MSS.] as ‘even in Asia’.) Dion. explains why he comes so late tohis native Thebes: his mission is to all mankind, and he began itamong the Bcipfiapot, passing then to the mixed populations of theAsiatic coast (18), and last of all to Greece. The common renderingof 20, ‘I came to this city first in Greece’, (a) leaves the followingparticiples as a weak tail dangling from the sentence, (b) makes 234003 .9 F

66 COMMENTARY

a repetition of 20 ; we might also expect 'rrpa'rr17v (Cobet), though thedistinction between adj. and adv. is not invariably maintained.[But even on the view suggested above the balance of the sentence ispoor (Kitto, C.R. lx [1946], 65), and there is good reason to doubtwhether Wilamowitz’s -rcixei‘ is the right way out of the difficulty.Keeping xcixci, one might with Paley suppose a line lost after 22,containing a statement of the god’s design for Greece; but I nowincline to prefer (with Campbell, C.Q. xlix [I956], 56) Pierson’sremedy of putting 20 after 22. Paley objected that this brought twotautologous lines together; but the tautology vanishes if at the endof 20 we read x9o‘va. (Chr. Pat.) in place of -n'ci)\w (L P), which couldeasily have come in by assimilation to the end of 19.1 The sequenceof thought is then natural: ‘I converted the eastern lands beforecoming to Greek soil (-r-rjv3e . . . ‘E/Vtvjvwv xddva). And on Greek soilmy first convert was Thebes.’ If this is right, the corruption is an oldone; for the author of the Christus Patiens would seem to havefound the lines in the same order in which they stand in L P.]

23. [-r'F|0'§e should perhaps be -rdafie (Pierson), ‘Thebes here’. Murraysuggests altering to 1n'p(.61"qv 8% @'rjB17v 1--:jv8e (Thebe being theeponymous nymph of Thebes), presumably to provide a personalobject for civtohdhv-fa: but cf. Eur. El. 691 6/\o)\d§c-rm. -rrfiv 8<I>,u.a,Her. I085 ci.v' ab’ Baxxefioea. .Ko.3,uefcuv wrrihv. With xporis and xefpo.the reader naturally, after dvwhdhvga, supplies 1'6'>v -yvvau<¢I:v.]

24-. &vu)\6)\u§c|.: ‘I stirred to women’s cries’, roused Thebes to the joy-cry ‘ololu’ (for the causative force of tivcr cf. ci'va.Bc|.rcxe:ie:.v, Her. 1085,Or. 338). The 6AOAU']/1) is the women’s ritual cry of triumph orthanksgiving. [qbwvfi 7/vvaucdbv 1'iv 1ror.o6v1'cu. eiv -rofs icpois etixdpevar,Etym. Magn. s.v., cf. Pollux 1. 28, Eust. on Od. 4. 767. 6AoAv-yfiis first mentioned in connexion with the worship of Athena, IZ. 6.301. For its use in orgiastic cults, cf. Menander fr. 326 Kock ; in cult ofCybele, Lucian, Tragodopod. 30 ff., Antk. Pal. 6. 173; of Dionysus,Lucian, Dion. 4 af ,uu.wd3€s' oriv dflohvyfi eive-rr'rj31)o'o.v aaivroifs, and theululatus of the Italian bacchanals, Livy 39. 10.] vefipifia : see 111 n.

25. On the thyrsus see 113 n., on the ritual use of ivy 81 n. |<i.o'o'l.vovBéhog, ‘my ivied javelin’ (Murray). This is no mere metaphor: thethyrsus is actually used as a missile (762, 1099). Cf. Ion 217 whereDion. slays a giant ti-:ro)lé‘juo:0:. moafvotoa. Bcimrpocs. The thyrsus wasformed by inserting a bunch of ivy leaves in the hollow tip of afennel-rod (176 n., 1054*5 n.). [MSS. have ,ue‘/\0s', but B and ,u. arenotoriously similar in many minuscule hands.]

26. [I should keep -fima-r’ éxpfiv (I. P), since it seems pretty clear that

1 One must admit, however, that xddva could no less easily be theresult of adaptation to the context in the Chr. Pat. (V. Longo, Antiqui-Ms. 1 [I946]. 43)-

LINES 20-36 67

Eur. used éxp-Fjv as well as xpfiv. Cf. Platnauer, C.R. lvi (1942), 4 f.,Harrison, ibid. 6 f., and infra, line 964.]

28. vupdaeufletauv: ‘made a woman’, a euphemism for seduced , cf.Ion 1371.

29. ‘Fathered on Zeus her maidenhood’s mischance’ (Sandys). Forthe (unusual) word-order cf. Eur. El. 368 ai qflfiaeas Bpo-rd‘>v, IA. 726 p.66os 2":lp'j/eciwv, and Denniston—Page on Aesch. Ag. 637.

30. l(6.8pou ooejaiopufl’ : accus. in apposition to the sentence Ee,u.e’/\-qv . . .dvaqbépetv: Semele’s sisters uncharitably thought that the story ofher mating with Zeus was invented by Cadmus to screen her lapsefrom virtue. [The words have sometimes actually been takenas in apposition to §q$a.0'Kov, as if Cadmus were the author of theidea that Semele was seduced by a mortal (so, most surprisingly,Wilamowitz in his translation, followed by Deichgraber, Hermeslxx. 327, and apparently by Kitto, Greek Tragedy, 375). This ismanifestly wrong, as appears from line 10, and still more from333-6-1

31. é§e|<uuxG:v9’: ‘they published gloatingly’ (&'-rr. he-'y.): the term ex-presses the malicious triumph of the sisters. K£I.Ux£i0p.O.l. and its cog-nates occur in comedy, but are elsewhere avoided by the tragedians.

32-33. vw ab-rés : ‘those same sisters’ : their alle ation that Semele was8punished brought punishment on themselves. iipos: Cithaeron(62), which lies about 8 miles from Thebes. It is still thickly woodedwith silver firs (the e’/\ci'ru.:. of 38), whence its modern name ’.E)\o.'rf.The summit is rocky.

34. alceufiv . . . épyiwv épév : ‘the livery of my service’. rip’)/I.a.,'fI'0II1 sameroot as Ep-yov, are properly ‘things done’ in a religious sense (cf.Epfietv, to sacrifice), the actions of a religious ritual: H. Dem. 473 if.1) Se’ . . . 3ci.’§£ : . . 3p'r;op.oo':.iv17v 9' iepciiv Kai. £"rre‘qf>pa5ev dpyia rrfiot.Custom restricted the application of the word mainly to the privaterites of the mystery cults (see L.S.° s.v.), more especially those ofDion. (dpyta rd uvarripaa, Kvpicus 5e’ rd Ar.0vvo'r.a.Kci, Etym. Magn. 629).The modern sense of ‘orgies’ derives from the Hellenistic and Romanconception of the nature of Dionysiac religion: it must not beimported into the Bacchae.

35-36. With this punctuation docu. 'yvvai'Kes fiaav is purely tautologousafter -adv -rd Bfihv o-rre‘p,u.a., like yvvaafii. 917)le[o.r.s 01'. I205. It cannotlimit the meaning of -rd Gfihv o'rre‘pp.0. by excluding the unmarried, for-napfiévm. are included, 694; nor by excluding children (Musgrave,&c.), for ‘J/UV?) does not mean a grown woman in contrast with agirl. Tautology can be avoided by putting the comma after O"rre‘pp.a.(H. VOn Arnim, Bruhn): Kadpeiwv 600.; 'yvva.E‘Ke5' fioav then limits themeaning by excluding slaves. But the repetition may be designedto emphasize the exclusion of men: this is a point of importancein the drama—-—cf. Pentheus’ unjust suspicions, 223, 354, and their

68 COMMENTARY

refutation, 686. Eur.’s usage, however, favours Arnim: he dislikesa strong pause before the last iambus (Wilamowitz on Her. 280).

37. ‘With the daughters of Cadmus amongst them’: in the Dionysiacworship gentle and simple mix without distinction. Wilamowitztook avapeperypévar. tomean ‘in disorder’, comparing Soph. El. 71567.1.05’ 8% 1rci.v1'€$‘ dvapepezypévot, Wl'1iCh describes drivers. ‘bunchedtogether’ at the start of a chariot race. But 693 Baily.’ i3si.’v €1iK0crp.ia9is against this, and the Sophocles passage strongly suggests that67.1.03 coheres With ci.vap.eper.-yp.e'vat (Cf. I8 p.|.'ya'o-r.v 57406), instead Ofgoverning arawiv as on Wilamowitz’s view it must do.

38. £wop6¢|>org 11'é1'pq.I.92 in contrast with overhanging-rocks or caves(Philoctetes’ cave is called a -nérpa, Soph. Phil. 16, 272: cf. also IZ.4. 107). For the local dat. cf. Eur. El. 315 apdvtfip K(£61]T(I.l.Z it is quiteneedless to alter to accusatives (Elmsley, Bruhn).

40. 6.1'£7\e01'0v ofiaav: best taken as equivalent toan object clause afteréKp.fl0€fv, ‘this town must learn its lesson to the end (éx-), that ithas still to gain the blessing of my worship’. Elmsley and Bruhn,objecting that Thebes knows this already, would take the participleas causal and understand -rd. Epci. ,3aKxe1ip.a'ra as Obj. Of |iK'p.a9e€v2but this is less natural. The god implies that the Th.ebans mustlearn to the full, suo eum malo, what it means to neglect somethingprofound and holy.

43-44. Kafipog pév prepares us for a Hevtkfis Se’, which is, however, re-placed by 6s (45). oiiv, resumptive, bringing us back to the pastafter lines 39-42 which hint at the future. 8i8m<n: ‘has given’, cf.213 n. ~

45. Beopaxei -ra no-r’ épé : ‘opens war on deity in my person’. The ratherrare verb Heopaxefv is twice again used (325, 1255) of Pentheus’ hope-less struggle against Dion. It has the same implication of a hopelessresistance to overwhelming power at IA. 1408 -rd Oeoaaxeiv -yap6.1-rohm-r0iJ'o‘, 5 oov Kpa-ref, I e'§er\0-yicrw rd. xpqora 'rciva'yKai."ci. -re, andMenander fr. 187 Kock, while at Xen. Oee. 16. 3 it is used of a futilestruggle against nature. The author of Acts may have had echoesof the Bacchae in his head when he wrote ci 8% e’K @606 écmv, 06Svwjoeode Ka1-ailfioaa afi~r0:5s' ,u.1j»n-01': Kai. Heopdxot eliped-r'j're (5. 39): hehad probably read the play (see on 443-8 and 795)}

49. 1-&v0év8e, used by a sort of attraction for -rd €v6c£8e, under the influ-ence of the associated idea of motion which is already implied ine’; 4'/\.\1;v X961-'a. The idiom is common even in prose, e.g. Plato,A1501. 40 C p.e'ra,3o)\1‘; Kai. ,u.e~r0fK'qcrl.s T06 T6-rrov rofi €vHe'v3e sis 6.‘/\Aov-r61-rov (Kiihner-Gerth i, § 448, n. 1).——According to ‘Apollodorus’

1 The history of the word and the idea has been traced by ]. C.Kamerbeek, ‘On the conception of 960p.d.xO5‘ in relation to GreekTragedy’, Mnemos.'1,948, 271 ff.

LINES 35-54 69(3. 5. 2), Dion. went on from Thebes to Argos, where he was againopposed and again cursed the women with madness.

52. §uv&\|Jm, sc. pcixqv (as Hdt. 4. 80, Ar. Aeh. 686), ‘I shall engage them’.patvaol.with o1'p<I.1'1'|Aa1'c'Bv(Cf. E111‘. El. 321, 917) 2 like 'rjr'yei.’o-Hat and otherverbs of leadership, cm-par1;)\a-reiv is used either with the gen. (stressingthe office) or with the dat. (stressing the physical act of leading).—Pentheus does not in fact attempt to recover the women by force,though he is on the point of doing so (784, 809, 845) ; so that the god’sthreat is never carried out. Bruhn saw evidence here that Eur.left the play unrevised at his death, arguing that when he wrotethe prologue he intended to follow a version which involved a fight,but later changed his mind. Such a version appears in fourth-century vase-paintings, and may be older (see Introd., p. xxxv).But Bruhn’s inference is unjustified. It is an old trick of Eur. toreserve a surprise for his audience by using a little judicious suggestiofalsi in the prologue (Dalmeyda, R.E.G. xxviii [1915], 43 ff. ; Zielinski,Tragodoumena Lib. I). [Thus Ion 71 f. suggests a course of eventswhich is quite different from the course they take in the play butmay correspond to the version followed in the Creusa of Sophocles.A similar device appears to be used in the prologues of the Hipp.(where I believe line 42 to be sound) and the Medea (where againline 42 is, I think, genuine in substance, though the passage seemsto have been garbled by actors). So too in the prologue to theSuppliants (25 f.) Eur. carefully keeps open the question whetherthe settlement with the Argives will be achieved by persuasion, asin the Eleusinians of Aeschylus, or by force of arms. The pointis interesting, since it shows that the element of surprise had moreimportance in Greek stage-craft than modern critics usually allow.]

53-54. Hermann found the tautology ‘putida’. Sandys offers the tripledefence that ,u.e-ré,8aAov sis‘ clears up the ambiguity of cikhdgag (whichcan mean ‘change to’ or ‘change from’, like Lat. muto) ; that ci.v3p65‘makes more precise the vague Hm;-rdv; and that this ‘parallelism ofsense’ at the end of the monologue has the same rhetorical effective-ness as the ‘parallelism of sound’ at the end of Shakespeare’sspeeches, which often close with a rhyming couplet. But there isalso a good practical reason for the repetition, in the necessity ofmaking it quite clear to the audience that the speaker, whom theyaccept as a god, will be accepted as a man by the people on thestage. [This motive might of course have led an actor to interpolatethe lines, as Bernhardy thought; and the rather clumsy repetitionof div ofivex’ from 47, where it is more clearly appropriate, lends somecolour to his suspicion, though it is hardly decisive. Hermann triedto palliate the tautology by reading e’-yof» for Exw and omitting -r’,Bothe by reading Befov for 6w;-révz but these half-measures do notconvince. 9w;-rév is supported by Chr. Pat. 1512 rfiv o1ivcK’ ¢E8os

70 COMMENTARY

1rpocr)\a,3<iJv 9v171-(iv q5e'per.s.] dhitdfias Ext»: the so-called ‘schemaSophocleum’, common also in Eur., originally developed from phraseslike Aafltbv Exw ‘I have taken and keep’, but in Herodotus andtragedy often practically equivalent to an English perfect (Goodwin,M. and T., § 47).

55-61. The god addresses himself to the Chorus. They give no sign ofhaving heard his words, and probably they are not meant to hearthem, for e’,aa1 (59) comes too near giving away his identity; but theymay nevertheless, as if in response to his will, begin at this pointto file into the orchestra through one of the side passages (1r¢f.p050:.).The device of making the prologist introduce the Chorus to theaudience is characteristic Euripidean technique: cf. Cyel. 36 ff.,Hipp. 54 ff., Supp. 8 ff., IT. 63 f., Or. 132. Eur. usually takes thisor some other opportunity to motive his Chorus’s presence: e.g. inhis Philoctetes he made the Chorus of Lemnians begin with an apologyfor not having called on Philoctetes sooner, whereas in Aeschylus’play on the same subject no explanations were offered (D'io Chrys.52- 1)-

55. Tpfinlkov: Mount Tmolus (mod. Musa Dagh), the great ridge whichforms the backbone of Lydia and dominates Sardis (463) and thebasins of the Hermus and the Cayster. It is a holy mountain(65, Aesch. Pers. 49), i.e. the Lydian bacchants practised theirdpuflaaia on its heights, as do the bacchants in Nonnus (40. 273);it is in this sense that H. Orph. 49. 6 calls it Kaadv ./.lv3oi.‘o:. Bdaopa.Its lower slopes were famous for their vineyards (Virg. Georg. 2. 98,Ov. Met. 6. I5).

56-57. Oiaaos épés, yuvatnes: ‘my sisterhood of worshippers’. Giaaosis a word of quite uncertain etymology, perhaps pre-Greek. It couldbe applied to any religious confraternity which existed for thepurpose of private as distinct from civic worship (e.g. there were0l.G.O'(I)T0.!. of Aphrodite at the Peiraeus); but it describes especiallythe characteristic unit of organization of Dionysiac religion, cf.680 n. 1-rapé8p0us nai. §uve|.|.1r6pous2 ‘comrades in rest and march’(Sandys).

58. -rréker, here not in the literal but in the social sense, and so =‘country’; Eur. applies the term to Euboea (Ion 294) and even tothe Peloponnese (fr. 730).

59. -nip-rrava: ‘tambourines’ or ‘kettledrums’. The 1-Jju.-rravov consisted ofa wooden hoop covered on one side with hide (124 flvpodrovovmiKAw,aa); sometimes it had pairs of small cymbals fastened roundthe rim, like the ‘jingles’ on a modern tambourine. It is, with theflute, the characteristic instrument of the orgiastic cults (on thereason for this see A. E. Crawley, Dress, Drink and Drums, 248 ff.);hence it is ‘the invention of Dionysus and Rhea (= Cybele)’: cf.120-34 n. [Similarly in fr. 586 Eur. speaks of Dion. 6s 4.’ "I8av I

LINES 53-61 71're'p-:rr£1'a.:. adv pa.-rpi. qiffiq. I 1-v,u.1r¢i.vcu.v 5,11’, Zaxais‘. F01’ its L156 in the cultOf the ‘Great Mother’ Cf. Pindar fl’. 61 o'e,u.v@ pév xarcipxea I p.o.-rip:1rci.p p.e-yci/\q. fidpfioz 1'v1rci.vwv, Diog. Ath. Trag. fl’. I, Catull. 63. IO; inthe related Thracian cult of Cotyto, Aesch. fr. 57, where its musicis compared to the rumbling of an earthquake; in the cult ofSabazius at A.thens, Dem. de cor. 284; in various orgiastic women’srites at Athens, Ar. Lys. I-3, 388. The tympanum seems to havehad no place in the oflicial Athenian worship of Dion., which wasnot orgiastic. In Attic vase-paintings of maenads it becomescommon only with the vogue of oriental cults at Athens late in thefifth century, and it is always associated with the wilder sort ofdances (Frickenhaus, Lendenvasen, I6; L. B. Lawler in MemoirsAmer. Acad. Rome, vi [I927], 107 f.).][Where the metre requires it, a short final syllable is lengthened

in tragedy before initial 5 (which was originally a double sound),e.g. Aesch. PV. 1023 pa’-ya fiéxos; and it is quite possible that hereEur. wrote not 1-fipwévd 76- but 1-{in-dvé 5- (cf. Hel. I347 and Housmanin P. Oxy. vol. xiii, p. 43). There are, however, instances in ‘tragedyof a vowel remaining short before initial ,6-, e.g. PV. 713 and 992,Ba. I28 (lyr.) and I338 (where see note).]

61. (ins épq. final subjunctive, ‘that the people of Cadmus may comeand see’.

Parodos (64-169)This falls into three parts. (1) 64-71 are a prelude (wpoofpiov),

which announces the following hymn and links it to the prologuebut is not itself part of the hymn: hence it is quite properly astrophic(cf. Med. 131 ff., Hel. 164 ff.), and strophic correspondence shouldnot be forced upon it by altering the text. It is sung as the Chorusenter the orchestra, and thus constitutes the -n-c£po8og in the narrowersense of the term. Murray divides it between two solo voices, butthere is no proof of this. (2) 72-134, two pairs of strophes, formingthe body of the hymn. (3) 135—69, a long epode, so long that it mayalmost be considered a second hymn without strophic correspon-dence. As Kranz notes (Stasimon, 240), such lengthy epodes arecharacteristic of Eur.’s last period (cf. e.g. IA. 277 ff., 773 ff.).Both in form and in content the ode seems to be fairly closely

modelled on an actual cult hymn Deichgraber, Hermes, lxx.323 ff.). This is a return to the oldest dramatic practice: cf. thestatement attributed to Aristotle (Them. Or. I6. 3161)) that T6 ,u.év-zrpcfrrov d xopds‘ eicraciw 58¢» sis -rods 9:065‘, and Prof. E. Fraenkel inPhilologus, lxxxvi. 3 ff. The Chorus themselves emphasize the point :they use a formula which must be designed to give the illusion ofa religious procession (68-70), and announce that they are about tosing ‘the traditional things in honour of Dionysus’ (71). The hymn