Dionysus In The Bacchae

In Greek mythology we have a lot of Greek gods and goddess. These gods can sometimes be nice and do nice things and good deeds for other gods and mortals, but sometimes they can be fickle, and immoral in their decisions. Then we have this new, young god named Dionysus. He is the god of wine, partying and madness. In the play The Bacchae, by the playwright Euripides, we see what happens when the worship of Dionysus is mocked and shunned in the city of Thebes. The control of the king and the release provided by Dionysus are so contradictory that when they collide they produce disastrous results. The murder of the king, Pentheus, by his family makes us wonder if we need Dionysus to help us find a balance of release, the letting go of all responsibilities

What is it? What am I holding in my hands? No! O gods, I see the greatest grief there is. Pentheus’ head–I hold.” (Euripides 74-75). Release all your life can also make you happy but unhappy. Dionysus helps us realize we need control in our lives to prevent too much harm from coming to us. After Agave and her sisters tear Pentheus apart and bring him back to the city, Cadmus tells her:

“If you realize what you have done, you shall suffer terribly. But if instead your present madness lasts until you die, you’ll not seem unhappy, but you won’t be happy.”(Euripides 73).

Much like people who do heroin or cocaine are just completely out of it and only care about their next high but in a state of release can only bring bad things. You never realize what is going on. This part of Dionysus makes us realize we need a balance of control and release.

When Pentheus comes out dressed as a woman he sees Dionysus with horns on his head. Dionysus tells him “the god was hostile formerly, but now declares truce and goes with us. You now see what you should. (Euripides 59). Dionysus basically tells Pentheus that he is now seeing what he should be seeing- a god. Pentheus is already so released from his own control that he is blind to the transformation of the god. He basically ignores Dionysus’s transformation and comments on how he looks like the other women in his

We need something more than just complete release or complete pleasure. He also shows that we should not give into too much pleasure. Dionysus makes people feel young. Tiresias tells Cadmus “I could dance night and day, untiringly beating the earth with my thyrsus! And how sweet it is to forget my old age!” (Euripides 26).

Cadmus and Teiresias are good examples of a good balance of release and control because both know they need to worship Dionysus. They say “walking (up the mountain) would be better. It shows more honor to the god” (Euripides 26). They worship Dionysus and realize that they need to worship him. What they do not do is completely give into the release provided by Dionysus.

Dionysus also shows that release can end up harming others. Pentheus wants release and ends up hurting himself and his family. At the end of the play Cadmus tells Dionysus that he is being unfair in his punishment and “the gods need to be exempt from human passions” (Euripides 79). In the book From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics, Dr. Louis Markos notes that Cadmus thinks the gods “should be able to overcome the excesses of human passions, to be true judges and mediators of the volatile extremes that tear humanity apart” (Markos